Prophets in a Wood -- 4

"Want a brave new world, boy? Want to start a muss?
Boy, you _got_ a new one. You got _us_!"

IV

Milton's grave was rifled. Galileo lies
With Santa Croce spire to point disciples to his charted skies
That he thought glorious enough without a fabled Paradise,
Constellations more stupendous than a pearl-gold Paradise.

The world, grown swift and mad now, has never understood
What prophet said to prophet in the Vallombrosa wood.

But maybe the nightingales, after all,
Heard the prophets' call.
Perhaps in Milton the Puritan
They knew the lonely and longing man,
And read, in the lovely nightingale tongue,
All the Allegros he wrote when young.

Perhaps, though they scanted his call to rebel,
His hate of the monarchs, his pride in Hell,
They echoed his frenzy to be free.
A spirit can never be else than free,
If it sings all night in an ilex tree,
Sings of desire and you and me
And what love might be.

Perhaps they loved Milton. The nightingale
When the night grows stormy outsings its wail,
Sings of a glassy prophetic sea,
And sings the Maestro Galilee
And his accurate chart of the apogee --
Sings, and is free!

Florence -- March 1950