Excerpt from Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Poetical Works, Vol. 4

These poems were written under the pressure of the events they indicate, after a residence in Italy of so many years that the present triumph of great principles is heightened to the writer's feelings by the disastrous issue of the last movement, witnessed from Casa Guidi Windows in 1849. Yet, if the verses should appear to English readers too pungently rendered to admit of a patriotic respect to the English sense of things, I will not excuse myself on such grounds, nor on the ground of my attachment to the Italian people and my admiration of their heroic constancy and union. What I have written has simply been written because I love truth and justice qua/12d meme, more than Plato and Plato's country, more than Dante and Dante's country, more even than Shakespeare and Shakespeare's country.

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