Rienzi, the Patriot of Rome.

Rienzi, the Patriot of Rome.

Scholar and patriot! deathless is thy fame;

But Rome, ungrateful, as unworthy thee:
She felt no spark of holy Liberty
In all her soul. Thou hadst a God-given claim
To rule thy country; and thy honour’d name 5
By all the wise in every clime shall be
Utter’d with love and tears. Patriot and bard
Rehearse thy praise and feel delight that one
So brave and wise and good e’er sat upon
Rome’s tribune-seat: and they have mourn’d thy fall 10
As that of Freedom, Commerce, Peace, and all
That benefits a people. Thy fate was hard:
Priests, barons, people, base were all the three,
To plot the fall of Liberty and thee.

George Markham Tweddell
p. 10 [in Miscellaneous Sonnets]
London Journal, May 12, 1849. Cooper’s Journal, Ap. 27/50. Bury Times, Aug.
14/58. Stockton Gazette and Middlesbro’ Times, July 12/61. South Durham and
Cleveland Mercury, Apr. 21/66


From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cola_di_Rienzo (read more on Wiki)
"Cola di Rienzo was the hero of one of the finest of Petrarch's odes, Spirito gentil,

Having advocated both the abolition of the Pope's temporal power and the Unification of Italy, Cola re-emerged in the 19th century, transformed into a romantic figure among politically liberal nationalists and adopted as a precursor of the 19th century Risorgimento, which struggled for and eventually achieved both aims. In this process he was reimagined as a "the romantic stereotype of the inspired dreamer who foresees the national future" as Adrian Lyttleton expressed it, illustrating his point with Federico Faruffini's Cola di Rienzo Contemplating the Ruins of Rome (1855) of which he remarks, "The language of martyrdom could be freed from its religious context and used against the Church."