On the Monument Erected to Mazzini at Genoa

Italia, mother of the souls of men, 
        Mother divine, 
Of all that serv’d thee best with sword or pen, 
        All sons of thine, 
 
Thou knowest that here the likeness of the best
        Before thee stands: 
The head most high, the heart found faithfulest, 
        The purest hands. 
 
Above the fume and foam of time that flits, 
        The soul, we know,
Now sits on high where Alighieri sits 
        With Angelo. 
 
Nor his own heavenly tongue hath heavenly speech 
        Enough to say 
What this man was, whose praise no thought may reach,
        No words can weigh. 
 
Since man’s first mother brought to mortal birth 
        Her first-born son, 
Such grace befell not ever man on earth 
        As crowns this One.
 
Of God nor man was ever this thing said: 
        That he could give 
Life back to her who gave him, that his dead 
        Mother might live. 
 
But this man found his mother dead and slain,
        With fast-seal’d eyes, 
And bade the dead rise up and live again, 
        And she did rise: 
 
And all the world was bright with her through him: 
        But dark with strife,
Like heaven’s own sun that storming clouds bedim, 
        Was all his life. 
 
Life and the clouds are vanish’d; hate and fear 
        Have had their span 
Of time to hurt and are not: He is here
        The sunlike man. 
 
City superb, that hadst Columbus first 
        For sovereign son, 
Be prouder that thy breast hath later nurst 
        This mightier One.
 
Glory be his forever, while this land 
        Lives and is free, 
As with controlling breath and sovereign hand 
        He bade her be. 
 
Earth shows to heaven the names by thousands told
        That crown her fame: 
But highest of all that heaven and earth behold 
        Mazzini’s name.