The Two Foscari16
Ho! gentlemen of Venice!
Ho! soldiers of St. Mark!
Pile high your blazing beacon-fire,
The night is wild and dark,
Behoves us all be wary,
Behoves us have a care
No traitor spy of Austria
Our watch is prowling near.
Time was, would princely Venice
No foreign tyrant brook;
Time was, before her stately wrath
The proudest Kaiser shook;
When o’er the Adriatic
The Wingéd Lion hurled
Destruction on his enemies—
Defiance to the world.
’Twas when the Turkish crescent
Contended with the cross,
And many a Christian kingdom rued
Discomfiture and loss;
We taught the turban’d Paynim—
We taught his boastful fleet,
Venetian freemen scorned alike
Submission or retreat.
Alas, for fair Venezia,
When wealth and pomp and pride
—The pride of her patrician lords—
Her freedom thrust aside:
When o’er the trembling commons
The haughty nobles rode,
And red with patriotic blood
The Adrian waters flowed.
’Twas in the year of mercy
Just fourteen fifty two
—When Francis Foscari was Doge,
A valiant prince and true—
He won for the Republic
Ravenna—Brescia bright—
And Crema—aye, and Bergamo
Submitted to his might:
Young Giacopo, his darling,
—His last and fairest child—
A gallant soldier in the wars,
In peace serene and mild—
Woo’d gentle Mariana,
Old Contarini’s pride,
And glad was Venice on that day
He claimed her for his bride.
The Bucentaur showed bravely
In silks and cloth of gold,
And thousands of swift gondolas
Were gay with young and old;
Where spann’d the Canalazo
A boat-bridge wide and strong,
Amid three hundred cavaliers
The bridegroom rode along.
Three days were joust and tourney,
Three days the Plaza bore
Such gallant shock of knight and steed
Was never dealt before,
And thrice ten thousand voices
With warm and honest zeal,
Loud shouted for the Foscari
Who loved the Commonweal.
For this the Secret Council—
The dark and subtle Ten—
Pray God and good San Marco
None like may rule again!
Because the people honoured
Pursued with bitter hate,
And foully charged young Giacopo
With treason to the state.
The good old prince, his father—
Was ever grief like his!—
They forced, as judge, to gaze upon
His own child’s agonies!
No outward mark of sorrow
Disturb’d his awful mien—
No bursting sigh escaped to tell
The anguish’d heart within.
Twice tortured and twice banish’d,
The hapless victim sighed
To see his old ancestral home,
His children and his bride:
Life seem’d a weary burthen
Too heavy to be borne,
From all might cheer his waning hours
A hopeless exile torn.
In vain—no fond entreaty
Could pierce the ear of hate—
He knew the Senate pitiless,
Yet rashly sought his fate;
A letter to the Sforza
Invoking Milan’s aid,
He wrote, and placed where spies might see—
’Twas seen, and was betrayed.
Again the rack—the torture—
Oh! cruelty accurst!—
The wretched victim meekly bore—
They could but wreak their worst;
So he but lay in Venice,
Contented, if they gave
What little space his bones might fill—
The measure of a grave.
The white-haired sire, heart-broken,
Survived his happier son,
To learn a Senate’s gratitude
For faithful service done;
What never Doge of Venice
Before had lived to tell,
He heard for a successor peal
San Marco’s solemn bell.
When, years before, his honours
Twice would he fain lay down,
They bound him by his princely oath
To wear for life the crown;
But now, his brow o’ershadow’d
By fourscore winters’ snows,
Their eager malice would not wait
A spent life’s mournful close.
He doff’d his ducal ensigns
In proud obedient haste,
And through the sculptured corridors
With staff-propt footsteps paced;
Till on the giant’s staircase,
Which first in princely pride
He mounted as Venezia’s Doge,
The old man paused—and died.
Thus govern’d the Patricians
When Venice owned their sway,
And thus Venetian liberties
Became a helpless prey:
They sold us to the Teuton,
They sold us to the Gaul—
Thank God and good San Marco,
We’ve triumph’d over all!
Ho! gentlemen of Venice!
Ho! soldiers of St. Mark!
You’ve driven from your palaces
The Austrian, cold and dark!
But better for Venezia
The stranger ruled again,
Than the old patrician tyranny,
The Senate and the Ten!