Quanto e Allegro!

    “Garibaldi died with the windows of his apartment wide open, and while the sun was setting. Before his last agony a bird slighted on the window-sill where it remained twittering. Garibaldi saw it and stammered: “Quando e Alllegro!” — “How joyful it is!”

Life-worn and battle-scarred the gray
Old warrior of the Freedom lay.
Slow-dying with the dying day.

Through golden films of misty skies
The sinking sun shed softened dyes
O’er the paled splendor of his eyes.

It glorified the thin gray hair,
That round a face sharp-lined with care,
Lay like the halo martyrs wear.

Around the memory of his life,
Through lurid clouds of storm and strife,
So shone his glory rife.

And see! A soft light from within
Illumes the eye and features thin,
Even while the final throes begin!

For lo, a bird with folded wings,
Perched at the open casement, sings,
And such a flood of gladness brings.

The rigid lines of pain and woe – 
The deep storm-marks of long ago, –
Unbend and soften in the flow.

Not life that goes, nor death that nears,
Nor clarion-clang of noisy years, –
Only that vibrant joy, – he hears!

And “Quanto e Allegro!” slips
In accents tremulous from lips
Almost immersed in death’s eclipse.

The gloomy past is swept away,
The future glows with breaking day,
In thrills of that glad virelay.

And so a troubled soul, who passed
O’er tyrants like a stormy blast, 
Went forth on joyful song at last,

And where undying laurels grow
To shade the dauntless hero’s brow. 
Breathes – “Quanto e Allegro!” now!

For there that joyous bird, with free
Broad vans that winnow land and sea,
Is the great angel, Liberty.

The beating of her pinions strong
Wafts hope to millions, and her song
Shakes down the pillared towers of wrong.

Humble to souls her spirit fed,
She twitters on the straw-thatched shed,
While Pope and Katzer hear with dead

Her eagle-scream, prolonged and loud,
Out of the bellowing thunder-cloud
That smites the temples of the proud!

Be strong, O champion of the oppressed!
Though wounds and exile mar thy breast,
The heavens bend o’er thee full of rest!

And every little bird and flower,
The twinkling book or summer shower,
May be their voice of love and power.

When waves of trouble o’er thee roll,
Open the windows of thy soul
To the broad heavens, thy loftier goal.

Some messenger of joy shall bring
The Eternal Promise on swift wing,
With songs the victor angels sing!