LITMIR.BIZ

      When of tender mind and body

         I was moved by minstrelsy,

      And that strain “The Bridge of Lodi”

         Brought a strange delight to me.

      In the battle-breathing jingle

         Of its forward-footing tune

      I could see the armies mingle,

         And the columns cleft and hewn

      On that far-famed spot by Lodi

         Where Napoleon clove his way

      To his fame, when like a god he

         Bent the nations to his sway.

      Hence the tune came capering to me

         While I traced the Rhone and Po;

      Nor could Milan’s Marvel woo me

         From the spot englamoured so.

      And to-day, sunlit and smiling,

         Here I stand upon the scene,

      With its saffron walls, dun tiling,

         And its meads of maiden green,

      Even as when the trackway thundered

         With the charge of grenadiers,

      And the blood of forty hundred

         Splashed its parapets and piers.

      Any ancient crone I’d toady

         Like a lass in young-eyed prime,

      Could she tell some tale of Lodi

         At that moving mighty time.

      So, I ask the wives of Lodi

         For traditions of that day;

      But alas! not anybody

         Seems to know of such a fray.

      And they heed but transitory

         Marketings in cheese and meat,

      Till I judge that Lodi’s story

         Is extinct in Lodi’s street.

      Yet while here and there they thrid them

         In their zest to sell and buy,

      Let me sit me down amid them

         And behold those thousands die.

      – Not a creature cares in Lodi

         How Napoleon swept each arch,

      Or where up and downward trod he,

         Or for his memorial March!

      So that wherefore should I be here,

         Watching Adda lip the lea,

      When the whole romance to see here

         Is the dream I bring with me?

      And why sing “The Bridge of Lodi”

         As I sit thereon and swing,

      When none shows by smile or nod he

         Guesses why or what I sing?.

      Since all Lodi, low and head ones,

         Seem to pass that story by,

      It may be the Lodi-bred ones

         Rate it truly, and not I.

      Once engrossing Bridge of Lodi,

         Is thy claim to glory gone?

      Must I pipe a palinody,

         Or be silent thereupon?

      And if here, from strand to steeple,

         Be no stone to fame the fight,

      Must I say the Lodi people

         Are but viewing crime aright?

      Nay; I’ll sing “The Bridge of Lodi” —

         That long-loved, romantic thing,

      Though none show by smile or nod he

         Guesses why and what I sing!

      My ardours for emprize nigh lost

      Since Life has bared its bones to me,

      I shrink to seek a modern coast

      Whose riper times have yet to be;

      Where the new regions claim them free

      From that long drip of human tears

      Which peoples old in tragedy

      Have left upon the centuried years.

      For, wonning in these ancient lands,

      Enchased and lettered as a tomb,

      And scored with prints of perished hands,

      And chronicled with dates of doom,

      Though my own Being bear no bloom

      I trace the lives such scenes enshrine,

      Give past exemplars present room,

      And their experience count as mine.

      When mid-autumn’s moan shook the night-time,

         And sedges were horny,

      And summer’s green wonderwork faltered

         On leaze and in lane,

      I fared Yell’ham-Firs way, where dimly

         Came wheeling around me

      Those phantoms obscure and insistent

         That shadows unchain.

      Till airs from the needle-thicks brought me

         A low lamentation,

      As ’twere of a tree-god disheartened,

         Perplexed, or in pain.

      And, heeding, it awed me to gather

         That Nature herself there

      Was breathing in aërie accents,

         With dirgeful refrain,

      Weary plaint that Mankind, in these late days,

         Had grieved her by holding

      Her ancient high fame of perfection

         In doubt and disdain.

      –

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