The Poetry Corner

Guido

By Robert Browning

You are the Cardinal Acciaiuoli, and you, Abate Panciatichi two good Tuscan names: Acciaiuoli ah, your ancestor it was, Built the huge battlemented convent-block Over the little forky flashing Greve That takes the quick turn at the foot o the hill Just as one first sees Florence: oh those days! Tis Ema, though, the other rivulet, The one-arched, brown brick bridge yawns over, yes, Gallop and go five minutes, and you gain The Roman Gate from where the Emas bridged: Kingfishers fly there: how I see the bend Oerturreted by Certosa which he built, That Senescal (we styled him) of your House! I do adjure you, help me, Sirs! My blood Comes from as far a source: ought it to end This way, by leakage through their scaffold-planks Into Romes sink where her red refuse runs? Sirs, I beseech you by blood-sympathy, If there be any vile experiment In the air, if this your visit simply prove, When alls done, just a well-intentioned trick, That tries for truth truer than truth itself, By startling up a man, ere break of day, To tell him he must die at sunset, pshaw! That mans a Franceschini; feel his pulse, Laugh at your folly, and lets all go sleep! You have my last word, innocent am I As Innocent my Pope and murderer, Innocent as a babe, as Marys own, As Marys self, I said, say and repeat, And why, then, should I die twelve hours hence? I Whom, not twelve hours ago, the gaoler bade Turn to my straw-truss, settle and sleep sound That I might wake the sooner, promptlier pay His dues of meat-and-drink-indulgence, cross His palm with fee of the good-hand, beside, As gallants use who go at large again! For why? All honest Rome approved my part; Whoever owned wife, sister, daughter, nay, Mistress, had any shadow of any right That looks like right, and, all the more resolved, Held it with tooth and nail, these manly men Approved! I being for Rome, Rome was for me! Then, theres the point reserved, the subterfuge My lawyers held by, kept for last resource, Firm should all else, the impossible fancy! fail, And sneaking burgess-spirit win the day: The knaves! One plea at least would hold, they laughed, One grappling-iron scratch the bottom-rock Even should the middle mud let anchor go And hook my cause on to the Clergys, plea Which, even if law tipped off my hat and plume, Would show my priestly tonsure, save me so, The Pope moreover, this old Innocent, Being so meek and mild and merciful, So fond o the poor and so fatigued of earth, So . . . fifty thousand devils in deepest hell! Why must he cure us of our strange conceit Of the angel in mans likeness, that we loved And looked should help us at a pinch? He help? He pardon? Heres his mind and message death, Thank the good Pope! Now, is he good in this, Never mind, Christian, no such stuffs extant, But will my death do credit to his reign, Show he both lived and let live, so was good? Cannot I live if he but like? The law! Why, just the law gives him the very chance, The precise leave to let my life alone, Which the angelic soul of him (he says) Yearns after! Here they drop it in his palm, My lawyers, capital o the cursed kind, A life to take and hold and keep: but no! He sighs, shakes head, refuses to shut hand, Motions away the gift they bid him grasp, And of the coyness comes that off I run And down I go, he best knows whither, mind, He knows, and sets me rolling all the same! Disinterested Vicar of our Lord, This way he abrogates and disallows, Nullifies and ignores, reverts in fine To the good and right, in detriment of me! Talk away! Will you have the naked truth? Hes sick of his lifes supper, swallowed lies: So, hobbling bedward, needs must ease his maw Just where I sit o the door-sill. Sir Abate, Can you do nothing? Friends, we used to frisk: What of this sudden slash in a friends face, This cut across our good companionship That showed its front so gay when both were young? Were not we put into a beaten path, Bid pace the world, we nobles born and bred, The body of friends with each his scutcheon full Of old achievement and impunity, Taking the laugh of morn and Sols salute As forth we fared, pricked on to breathe our steeds And take equestrian sport over the green Under the blue, across the crop, what care? So we went prancing up hill and down dale, In and out of the level and the straight, By the bit of pleasant byeway, where was harm? Still Sol salutes me and the morning laughs: I see my grandsires hoof-prints, point the spot Where he drew rein, slipped saddle, and stabbed knave For daring throw gibe much less, stone from pale, Then back, and on, and up with the cavalcade; Just so wend we, now canter, now converse, Till, mid the jauncing pride and jaunty port, Something of a sudden jerks at somebody A dagger is out, a flashing cut and thrust, Because I play some prank my grandsire played, And here I sprawl: where is the company? Gone! A trot and a trample! only I lie trapped, Writhe in a certain novel springe just set By the good old Pope: Im first prize. Warn me? Why? Apprize me that the law o the game is changed? Enough that Im a warning, as I writhe, To all and each my fellows of the file, And make law plain henceforward past mistake, For such a prank, death is the penalty! Pope the Five Hundredth . . . what do I know or care? Deputes your Eminence and Abateship To announce that, twelve hours from this time, he needs I just essay upon my body and soul The virtue of his bran-new engine, prove Represser of the pranksome! Im the first! Thanks. Do you know what teeth you mean to try The sharpness of, on this soft neck and throat? I know it, I have seen and hate it, ay, As you shall, while I tell you: let me talk, Or leave me, at your pleasure! talk I must: What is your visit but my lure to talk? You have a something to disclose? a smile, At end of the forced sternness, means to mock The heart-beats here? I call your two hearts stone! Is your charge to stay with me till I die? Be tacit as your bench, then! Use your ears, I use my tongue: how glibly yours will run At pleasant supper-time . . . Gods curse! . . . to-night When all the guests jump up, begin so brisk Welcome, his Eminence who shrived the wretch! Now we shall have the Abates story! Life! How I could spill this overplus of mine Among those hoar-haired, shrunk-shanked, odds and ends Of body and soul, old age is chewing dry! Those windle-straws that stare while purblind death Mows here, mows there, makes hay of juicy me, And misses, just the bunch of withered weed, Would brighten hell and streak its smoke with flame! How the life I could shed yet never shrink, Would drench their stalks with sap like grass in May! Is it not terrible, I entreat you, Sirs? Such manifold and plenitudinous life, Prompt at deaths menace to give blow for threat, Answer his Be thou not! by Thus I am! Terrible so to be alive yet die? How I live, how I see! so, how I speak! Lucidity of soul unlocks the lips: I never had the words at will before. How I see all my folly at a glance! A man requires a woman and a wife: There was my folly; I believed the saw: I knew that just myself concerned myself, Yet needs must look for what I seemed to lack, In a woman, why, the womans in the man! Fools we are, how we learn things when too late! Overmuch life turns round my woman-side; The male and female in me, mixed before, Settle of a sudden: Im my wife outright In this unmanly appetite for truth, This careless courage as to consequence, This instantaneous sight through things and through, This voluble rhetoric, if you please, tis she! Here you have that Pompilia whom I slew, Also the folly for which I slew her! Fool! And, fool-like, what is it I wander from? What, of the sharpness of your iron tooth? Ah, that I know the hateful thing: this way. I chanced to stroll forth, many a good year gone, One warm Spring eve in Rome, and unaware Looking, mayhap, to count what stars were out, Came on your huge axe in a frame, that falls And so cuts off a mans head underneath, Mannaia, thus we made acquaintance first, Out of the way, in a bye-part o the town, At the Mouth-of-Truth o the river-side, you know: One goes by the Capitol: and wherefore coy, Retiring out of crowded noisy Rome? Because a very little time ago It had done service, chopped off head from trunk, Belonging to a fellow whose poor house The thing had made a point to stand before. Felice Whatsoever-was-the-name Who stabled buffaloes and so gained bread, (Our clowns unyoke them in the ground hard by) And, after use of much improper speech, Had struck at Duke Some-title-or-others face, Because he kidnapped, carried away and kept Felices sister that would sit and sing I the filthy doorway while she plaited fringe To deck the brutes with, on their gear it goes, The good girl with the velvet in her voice. So did the Duke, so did Felice, so Did Justice, intervening with her axe. There the man-mutilating engine stood At ease, both gay and grim, like a Swiss guard Off duty, purified itself as well, Getting dry, sweet and proper for next week, And doing incidental good, twas hoped To the rough lesson-lacking populace Who now and then, forsooth, must right their wrongs! There stood the twelve-foot square of scaffold, railed Considerately round to elbow-height: (Suppose an officer should tumble thence And sprain his ankle and be lame a month, Through starting when the axe fell and head too?) Railed likewise were the steps whereby twas reached. All of it painted red: red, in the midst, Ran up two narrow tall beams barred across, Since from the summit, some twelve feet to reach, The iron plate with the sharp shearing edge Had . . . slammed, jerked, shot or slid, I shall find which! There it lay quiet, fast in its fit place, The wooden half-moon collar, now eclipsed By the blade which blocked its curvature: apart, The other half, the under half-moon board Which, helped by this, completes a necks embrace, Joined to a sort of desk that wheels aside Out of the way when done with, down you kneel, In youre wheeled, over you the other drops, Tight you are clipped, whiz, theres the blade on you, Out trundles body, down flops head on floor, And wheres your soul gone? That, too, I shall find! This kneeling-place was red, red, never fear! But only slimy-like with paint, not blood, For why? a decent pitcher stood at hand, A broad dish to hold sawdust, and a broom By some unnamed utensil, scraper-rake, Each with a conscious air of duty done. Underneath, loungers, boys and some few men, Discoursed this platter and the other tool, Just as, when grooms tie up and dress a steed, Boys lounge and look on, and elucubrate What the round brush is used for, what the square, So was explained to me the skill-less man The manner of the grooming for next world Undergone by Felice Whats-his-name. Theres no such lovely month in Rome as May Mays crescent is no half-moon of red plank, And came now tilting oer the wave i the west, One greenish-golden sea, right twixt those bars Of the engine I began acquaintance with, Understood, hated, hurried from before, To have it out of sight and cleanse my soul! Here it is all again, conserved for use: Twelve hours hence I may know more, not hate worse. That young May-moon-month! Devils of the deep! Was not a Pope then Pope as much as now? Used not he chirrup oer the Merry Tales, Chuckle, his nephew so exact the wag To play a jealous cullion such a trick As wins the wife i the pleasant story! Well? Why do things change? Wherefore is Rome un-Romed? I tell you, ere Felices corpse was cold, The Duke, that night, threw wide his palace-doors, Received the compliments o the quality, For justice done him, bowed and smirked his best, And in return passed round a pretty thing, A portrait of Felices sisters self, Florid old rogue Albanos masterpiece, As better than virginity in rags Bouncing Europa on the back o the bull: They laughed and took their road the safelier home. Ah, but times change, theres quite another Pope, I do the Dukes deed, take Felices place, And, being no Felice, lout and clout, Stomach but ill the phrase I lose my head! How euphemistic! Lose what? Lose your ring, Your snuff-box, tablets, kerchief! but, your head? I learnt the process at an early age; Twas useful knowledge in those same old days, To know the way a head is set on neck. My fencing-master urged Would you excel? Rest not content with mere bold give-and-guard, Nor pink the antagonist somehow-anyhow, See me dissect a little, and know your game! Only anatomy makes a thrust the thing. Oh Cardinal, those lithe live necks of ours! Here go the vertebr, heres Atlas, here Axis, and here the symphyses stop short, So wisely and well, as, oer a corpse, we cant, And heres the silver cord which . . . whats our word? Depends from the gold bowl, which loosed (not lost) Lets us from heaven to hell, one chop, were loose! And not much pain i the process, quoth the sage: Who told him? Not Felices ghost, I think! Such losing is scarce Mother Natures mode. She fain would have cord ease itself away, Worn to a thread by threescore years and ten, Snap while we slumber: that seems bearable: Im told one clot of blood extravasate Ends one as certainly as Rolands sword, One drop of lymph suffused proves Olivers mace, Intruding, either of the pleasant pair, On the arachnoid tunic of my brain. Thats Natures way of loosing cord! but Art, How of Arts process with the engine here? When bowl and cord alike are crushed across, Bored between, bruised through? Why, if Fagons self, The French Courts pride, that famed practitioner, Would pass his cold pale lightning of a knife Pistoja-ware, adroit twixt joint and joint, With just a See how facile, gentlefolks! The thing were not so bad to bear! Brute force Cuts as he comes, breaks in, breaks on, breaks out O the hard and soft of you: is that the same? A lithe snake thrids the hedge, makes throb no leaf: A heavy ox sets chest to brier and branch, Bursts somehow through, and leaves one hideous hole Behind him! And why, why must this needs be? Oh, if men were but good! They are not good, Nowise like Peter: people called him rough, But if, as I left Rome, I spoke the Saint, Petrus, quo vadis? doubtless, I should hear, To free the prisoner and forgive his fault! I plucked the absolute dead from Gods own bar, And raised up Dorcas, why not rescue thee? What would cost such nullifying word? If Innocent succeeds to Peters place, Let him think Peters thought, speak Peters speech! I say, he is bound to it: friends, how say you? Concede I be all one bloodguiltiness And mystery of murder in the flesh, Why should that fact keep the Popes mouth shut fast? He execrates my crime, good! sees hell yawn One inch from the red planks end which I press, Nothing is better! Whats the consequence? How does a Pope proceed that knows his cue? Why, leaves me linger out my minute here, Since close on death come judgment and the doom, Nor cribs at dawn its pittance from a sheep Destined ere dewfall to be butchers-meat! Think, Sirs, if I had done you any harm, And you require the natural revenge, Suppose, and so intend to poison me, Just as you take and slip into my draught The paperful of powder that clears scores, You notice on my brow a certain blue: How you both overset the wine at once! How you both smile! Our enemy has the plague! Twelve hours hence hell be scraping his bones bare Of that intolerable flesh, and die, Frenzied with pain: no need for poison here! Step aside and enjoy the spectacle! Tender for souls are you, Pope Innocent! Christs maxim is one soul outweighs the world: Respite me, save a soul, then, curse the world! No, venerable sire, I hear you smirk, No: for Christs gospel changes names, not things, Renews the obsolete, does nothing more! Our fire-new gospel is retinkered law, Our mercy, justice, Joves rechristened God Nay, whereas, in the popular conceit, Tis pity that old harsh Law somehow limps, Lingers on earth, although Laws day be done, Else would benignant Gospel interpose, Not furtively as now, but bold and frank Oerflutter us with healing in her wings, Law is all harshness, Gospel were all love! We like to put it, on the contrary, Gospel takes up the rod which Law lets fall; Mercy is vigilant when justice sleeps; Does Law let Guido taste the Gospel-grace? The secular arm allow the spiritual power To act for once? what compliment so fine As that the Gospel handsomely be harsh, Thrust back Laws victim on the nice and coy? Yes, you do say so, else you would forgive Me, whom Law dares not touch but tosses you! Dont think to put on the professional face! You know what I know, casuists as you are, Each nerve must creep, each hair start, sting, and stand, At such illogical inconsequence! Dear my friends, do but see! A murders tried, There are two parties to the cause: Im one, Defend myself, as somebody must do: I have the best o the battle: thats a fact. Simple fact, fancies find no place beside: What though half Rome condemned me? Half approved: And, none disputes, the luck is mine at last, All Rome, i the main, acquits me: whereupon What has the Pope to ask but How finds Law? I find, replies Law, I have erred this while: Guilty or guiltless, Guido proves a priest, No layman: he is therefore yours, not mine: I bound him: loose him, you whose will is Christs! And now what does this Vicar of the Lord, Shepherd o the flock, one of whose charge bleats sore For crooks help from the quag wherein it drowns? Law suffers him put forth the crumpled end, His pleasure is to turn staff, use the point, And thrust the shuddering sheep he calls a wolf, Back and back, down and down to where hell gapes! Guiltless, cries Law Guilty, corrects the Pope! Guilty, for the whims sake! Guilty, he somehow thinks, And anyhow says: tis truth; he dares not lie! Others should do the lying. Thats the cause Brings you both here: I ought in decency Confess to you that I deserve my fate, Am guilty, as the Pope thinks, ay, to the end, Keep up the jest, lie on, lie ever, lie I the latest gasp of me! What reason, Sirs? Because to-morrow will succeed to-day For you, though not for me: and if I stick Still to the truth, declare with my last breath, I die an innocent and murdered man, Why, theres the tongue of Rome will wag a-pace This time to-morrow, dont I hear the talk! So, to the last he proved impenitent? Pagans have said as much of martyred saints! Law demurred, washed her hands of the whole case. Prince Somebody said this, Duke Something, that. Doubtless the mans dead, dead enough, dont fear! But, hang it, what if there have been a spice, A touch of . . . eh? You see, the Popes so old, Some of us add, obtuse, age never slips The chance of shoving youth to face death first! And so on. Therefore to suppress such talk You two come here, entreat I tell you lies, And end, the edifying way. I end, Telling the truth! Your self-styled shepherd thieves! A thief and how thieves hate the wolves we know: Damage to theft, damage to thrift, alls one! The red hand is sworn foe of the black jaw! Thats only natural, thats right enough: But why the wolf should compliment the thief With the shepherds title, bark out life in thanks, And, spiteless, lick the prong that spits him, eh, Cardinal? My Abate, scarcely thus! There, let my sheepskin-garb, a curse ont go Leave my teeth free if I must show my shag! Repent? What good shall follow? If I pass Twelve hours repenting, will that fact hook fast The thirteenth at the horrid dozens end? If I fall forthwith at your feet, gnash, tear, Foam, rave, to give your story the due grace, Will that assist the engine half-way back Into its hiding-house? boards, shaking now, Bone against bone, like some old skeleton bat That wants, now winters dead, to wake and prey! Will howling put the spectre back to sleep? Ah, but I misconceive your object, Sirs! Since I want new life like the creature, life Being done with here, begins i the world away: I shall next have Come, mortals, and be judged! Theres but a minute betwixt this and then: So, quick, be sorry since it saves my soul! Sirs, truth shall save it, since no lies assist! Hear the truth, you, whatever you style yourselves, Civilisation and society! Come, one good grapple, I with all the world! Dying in cold blood is the desperate thing; The angry heart explodes, bears off in blaze The indignant soul, and Im combustion-ripe. Why, you intend to do your worst with me! Thats in your eyes! You dare no more than death, And mean no less. I must make up my mind! So Pietro, when I chased him here and there, Morsel by morsel cut away the life I loathed, cried for just respite to confess And save his soul: much respite did I grant! Why grant me respite who deserve my doom? Me who engaged to play a prize, fight you, Knowing your arms, and foil you, trick for trick, At rapier-fence, your match and, may be, more. I knew that if I chose sin certain sins, Solace my lusts out of the regular way Prescribed me, I should find you in the path, Have to try skill with a redoubted foe; You would lunge, I would parry, and make end. At last, occasion of a murder comes: We cross blades, I, for all my brag, break guard, And in goes the cold iron at my breast, Out at my back, and end is made of me. You stand confessed the adroiter swordsman, ay, But on your triumph you increase, it seems, Want more of me than lying flat on face: I ought to raise my ruined head, allege Not simply I pushed worse blade o the pair, But my antagonist dispensed with steel! There was no passage of arms, you looked me low, With brow and eye abolished cut-and-thrust Nor used the vulgar weapon! This chance scratch, This incidental hurt, this sort of hole I the heart of me? I stumbled, got it so! Fell on my own sword as a bungler may! Yourself proscribe such heathen tools, and trust To the naked virtue: it was virtue stood Unarmed and awed me, on my brow there burned Crime out so plainly, intolerably, red, That I was fain to cry Down to the dust With me, and bury there brow, brand and all! Law had essayed the adventure, but whats Law? Morality exposed the Gorgon-shield! Morality and Religion conquer me. If Law sufficed would you come here, entreat I supplement law, and confess forsooth? Did not the Trial show things plain enough? Ah, but a word of the mans very self Would somehow put the keystone in its place And crown the arch! Then take the word you want! I say that, long ago, when things began, All the world made agreement, such and such Were pleasure-giving profit-bearing acts, But henceforth extra-legal, nor to be: You must not kill the man whose death would please And profit you, unless his life stop yours Plainly, and need so be put aside: Get the thing by a public course, by law, Only no private bloodshed as of old! All of us, for the good of every one, Renounced such licence and conformed to law: Who breaks law, breaks pact, therefore, helps himself To pleasure and profit over and above the due, And must pay forfeit, pain beyond his share: For pleasure is the sole good in the world, Any ones pleasure turns to some ones pain, So, let law watch for everyone, say we, Who call things wicked that give too much joy, And nickname the reprisal, envy makes, Punishment: quite right! thus the world goes round. I, being well aware such pact there was, Who in my time have found advantage too In laws observance and crimes penalty, Who, but for wholesome fear law bred in friends, Had doubtless given example long ago, Furnished forth some friends pleasure with my pain, And, by my death, pieced out his scanty life, I could not, for that foolish life of me, Help risking laws infringement, I broke bond, And needs must pay price, wherefore, heres my head, Flung with a flourish! But, repentance too? But pure and simple sorrow for laws breach Rather than blunderers-ineptitude? Cardinal, no! Abate, scarcely thus! Tis the fault, not that I dared try a fall With Law and straightway am found undermost, But that I fail to see, above mans law, Gods precept you, the Christians recognise? Colly my cow! Dont fidget, Cardinal! Abate, cross your breast and count your beads And exorcise the devil, for here he stands And stiffens in the bristly nape of neck, Daring you drive him hence! You, Christians both? I say, if ever was such faith at all Born in the world, by your community Suffered to live its little tick of time, Tis dead of age now, ludicrously dead; Honour its ashes, if you be discreet, In epitaph only! For, concede its death, Allow extinction, you may boast unchecked What feats the thing did in a crazy land At a fabulous epoch, treat your faith, that way, Just as you treat your relics: Heres a shred Of saintly flesh, a scrap of blessed bone, Raised King Cophetua, who was dead, to life In Mesopotamy twelve centuries since, Such was its virtue! twangs the Sacristan, Holding the shrine-box up, with hands like feet Because of gout in every finger-joint: Does he bethink him to reduce one knob, Allay one twinge by touching what he vaunts? I think he half uncrooks fist to catch fee, But, for the grace, the quality of cure, Cophetua was the man put that to proof! Not otherwise, your faith is shrined and shown And shamed at once: you banter while you bow! Do you dispute this? Come, a monster-laugh, A madmans laugh, allowed his Carnival Later ten days than when all Rome, but he, Laughed at the candle-contest: mines alight, Tis just it sputter till the puff o the Pope End it to-morrow and the world turn Ash. Come, thus I wave a wand and bring to pass In a moment, in the twinkle of an eye, What but that feigning everywhere grows fact, Professors turn possessors, realise The faith they play with as a fancy now, And bid it operate, have full effect On every circumstance of life, to-day, In Rome, faiths flow set free at fountain-head! Now, youll own, at this present when I speak, Before I work the wonder, theres no man Woman or child in Rome, faiths fountain-head, But might, if each were minded, realise Conversely unbelief, faiths opposite Set it to work on life unflinchingly, Yet give no symptom of an outward change: Why should things change because men disbelieve? Whats incompatible, in the whited tomb, With bones and rottenness one inch below? What saintly act is done in Rome to-day But might be prompted by the devil, is I say not, has been, and again may be, I do say, full i the face o the crucifix You try to stop my mouth with! Off with it! Look in your own heart, if your soul have eyes! You shall see reason why, though faith were fled, Unbelief still might work the wires and move Man, the machine, to play a faithful part. Preside your college, Cardinal, in your cape, Or, having got above his head, grown Pope, Abate, gird your loins and wash my feet! Do you suppose I am at loss at all Why you crook, why you cringe, why fast or feast? Praise, blame, sit, stand, lie or go! all of it, In each of you, purest unbelief may prompt, And wit explain to who has eyes to see. But, lo, I wave wand, make the false the true! Heres Rome believes in Christianity! What an explosion, how the fragments fly Of what was surface, mask, and make-believe! Begin now, look at this Popes-halberdier In wasp-like black and yellow foolery! He, doing duty at the corridor, Wakes from a muse and stands convinced of sin! Down he flings halbert, leaps the passage-length, Pushes into the presence, pantingly Submits the extreme peril of the case To the Popes self, whom in the world beside? And the Pope breaks talk with ambassador, Bids aside bishop, wills the whole world wait Till he secure that prize, outweighs the world, A soul, relieve the sentry of his qualm! His Altitude the Referendary, Robed right, and ready for the ushers word To pay devoir, is, of all times, just then Ware of a master-stroke of argument Will cut the spinal cord . . . ugh, ugh! . . . I mean, Paralyse Molinism for evermore! Straight he leaves lobby, trundles, two and two, Down steps, to reach home, write if but a word Shall end the impudence: he leaves who likes Go pacify the Pope: theres Christ to serve! How otherwise would men display their zeal? If the same sentry had the least surmise A powder-barrel neath the pavement lay In neighbourhood with what might prove a match, Meant to blow sky-high Pope and presence both Would he not break through courtiers, rank and file, Bundle up, bear off and save body so, O the Pope, no matter for his priceless soul? Theres no fools-freak here, nought to soundly swinge, Only a man in earnest, youll so praise And pay and prate about, that earth shall ring! Had thought possessed the Referendary His jewel-case at home was left ajar, What would be wrong in running, robes awry, To be beforehand with the pilferer? What talk then of indecent haste? Which means, That both these, each in his degree, would do Just that, for a comparative nothings sake, And thereby gain approval and reward Which, done for what Christ says is worth the world, Procures the doer curses, cuffs, and kicks. I call such difference twixt act and act, Sheer lunacy unless your truth on lip Be recognised a lie in heart of you! How do you all act, promptly or in doubt, When theres a guest poisoned at supper-time And he sits chatting on with spot on cheek? Pluck him by the skirt, and round him in the ears, Have at him by the beard, warn anyhow! Good, and this other friend thats cheat and thief And dissolute, go stop the devils feast, Withdraw him from the imminent hell-fire! Why, for your life, you dare not tell your friend You lie, and I admonish you for Christ! Who yet dare seek that same man at the Mass To warn him on his knees, and tinkle near, He left a cask a-tilt, a tap unturned, The Trebbian running: what a grateful jump Out of the Church rewards your vigilance! Perform that self-same service just a thought More maladroitly, since a bishop sits At function! and he budges not, bites lip, You see my case: how can I quit my post? He has an eye to any such default. See to it, neighbour, I beseech your love! He and you know the relative worth of things, What is permissible or inopportune. Contort your brows! You know I speak the truth: Gold is called gold, and dross called dross, i the Book: Gold you let lie and dross pick up and prize! Despite your master of some fifty monks And nuns a-maundering here and mumping there, Who could, and on occasion would, spurn dross, Clutch gold, and prove their faith a fact so far, I grant you! Fifty times the number squeak And gibber in the madhouse firm of faith, This fellow, that his nose supports the moon, The other, that his straw hat crowns him Pope: Does that prove all the world outside insane? Do fifty miracle-mongers match the mob That acts on the frank faithless principle, Born-baptised-and-bred Christian-atheists, each With just as much a right to judge as you, As many senses in his soul, or nerves I neck of him as I, whom, soul and sense, Neck and nerve, you abolish presently, I being the unit in creation now Who pay the Maker, in this speech of mine, A creatures duty, spend my last of breath In bearing witness, even by my worst fault To the creatures obligation, absolute, Perpetual: my worst fault protests, The faith Claims all of me: I would give all she claims, But for a spice of doubt: the risks too rash: Double or quits, I play, but, all or nought, Exceeds my courage: therefore, I descend To the next faith with no dubiety Faith in the present life, made last as long And prove as full of pleasure as may hap, Whatever pain it cause the world. Im wrong? Ive had my life, whateer I lose: Im right? Ive got the single good there was to gain. Entire faith, or else complete unbelief, Aught between has my loathing and contempt, Mine and Gods also, doubtless: ask yourself, Cardinal, where and how you like a man! Why, either with your feet upon his head, Confessed your caudatory, or at large The stranger in the crowd who caps to you But keeps his distance, why should he presume? You want no hanger-on and dropper-off, Now yours, and now not yours but quite his own, According as the sky looks black or bright. Just so I capped to and kept off from faith You promised trudge behind through fair and foul, Yet leave i the lurch at the first spit of rain. Who holds to faith whenever rain begins? What does the father when his son lies dead, The merchant when his money-bags take wing, The politician whom a rival ousts? No case but has its conduct, faith prescribes: Wheres the obedience that shall edify? Why, they laugh frankly in the face of faith And take the natural course, this rends his hair Because his child is taken to Gods breast, That gnashes teeth and raves at loss of trash Which rust corrupts and thieves break through and steal, And this, enabled to inherit earth Through meekness, curses till your blood runs cold! Down they all drop to my low level, ease Heart upon dungy earth thats warm and soft, And let who will, attempt the altitudes. We have the prodigal son of heavenly sire, Turning his nose up at the fatted calf, Fain to fill belly with the husks we swine Did eat by born depravity of taste! Enough of the hypocrites. But you, Sirs, you Who never budged from litter where I lay, And buried snout i the draff-box while I fed, Cried amen to my creeds one article Get pleasure, scape pain, give your preference To the immediate good, for time is brief, And death ends good and ill and everything: Whats got is gained, whats gained soon is gained twice, And, inasmuch as faith gains most, feign faith! So did we brother-like pass word about: You, now, like bloody drunkards but half-drunk, Who fool men yet perceive men find them fools, And that a titter gains the gravest mouth, Othe sudden you must needs re-introduce Solemnity, must sober undue mirth By a blow dealt your boon companion here Who, using the old licence, dreamed of harm No more than snow in harvest: yet it falls! You check the merriment effectually By pushing your abrupt machine i the midst, Making me Romes example: blood for wine! The general good needs that you chop and change! I may dislike the hocus-pocus, Rome, The laughter-loving people, wont they stare Chap-fallen! while serious natures sermonise The magistrate, he beareth not the sword In vain; who sins may taste its edge, we see! Why my sin, drunkards? Where have I abused Liberty, scandalised you all so much? Who called me, who crooked finger till I came, Fool that I was, to join companionship? I knew my own mind, meant to live my life, Elude your envy, or else make a stand, Take my own part and sell you my life dear: But it was Fie! No prejudice in the world To the proper manly instinct! Cast your lot Into our lap, one genius ruled our births, Well compass joy by concert; take with us The regular irregular way i the wood; Youll miss no game through riding breast by breast, In this preserve, the Churchs park and pale, Rather than outside where the world is waste! Come, if you said not that, did you say this? Give plain and terrible warning, Live, enjoy? Such life begins in death and ends in hell! Dare you bid us assist you to your sins Who hurry sin and sinners from the earth? No such delight for us, why then for you? Leave earth, seek heaven or find its opposite! Had you so warned me, not in lying words But veritable deeds with tongues of flame, That had been fair, that might have struck a man, Silenced the squabble between soul and sense, Compelled him make his mind up, take one course Or the other, peradventure! wrong or right, Foolish or wise, you would have been at least Sincere, no question, forced me choose, indulge Or else renounce my instincts, still play wolf Or find my way submissive to the fold, Be red-crossed on the fleece, one sheep the more. But you as good as bade me wear sheeps wool Over wolfs skin, suck blood and hide the noise By mimicry of something like a bleat, Whence it comes that because, despite my care, Because I smack my tongue too loud for once, Drop baaing, heres the village up in arms! Have at the wolfs throat, you who hate the breed! Oh, were it only open to choose One little time more whether Id be free Your foe, or subsidised your friend forsooth! Should not you get a growl through the white fangs In answer to your beckoning! Cardinal, Abate, managers o the multitude, Id turn your gloved hands to account, be sure! You should manipulate the coarse rough mob: Tis you Id deal directly with, not them, Using your fears: why touch the thing myself When I could see you hunt and then cry Shares! Quarter the carcass or we quarrel; come, Heres the world ready to see justice done! Oh, it had been a desperate game, but game Wherein the winners chance were worth the pains To try conclusions! at the worst, whats worse Than this Mannaia-machine, each minutes talk, Helps push an inch the nearer me? Fool, fool! You understand me and forgive, sweet Sirs? I blame you, tear my hair and tell my woe Alls but a flourish, figure of rhetoric! One must try each expedient to save life. One makes fools look foolisher fifty-fold By putting in their place the wise like you To take the full force of an argument Would buffet their stolidity in vain. If you should feel aggrieved by the mere wind O the blow that means to miss you and maul them, Thats my success! Is it not folly, now, To say with folks, A plausible defence We see through notwithstanding, and reject? Reject the plausible they do, these fools, Who never even make pretence to show One point beyond its plausibility In favour of the best belief they hold! Saint Somebody-or-other raised the dead: Did he? How do you come to know as much? Know it, what need? The storys plausible, Avouched for by a martyrologist, And why should good men sup on cheese and leeks On such a saints day, if there were no saint? I praise the wisdom of these fools, and straight Tell them my story plausible, but false! False, to be sure! What else can story be That runs a young wife tired of an old spouse, Found a priest whom she fled away with, both Took their full pleasure in the two-days flight, Which a grey-headed greyer-hearted pair, (Whose best boast was, their life had been a lie) Helped for the love they bore all liars. Oh, Here incredulity begins! Indeed? Allow then, were no one point strictly true, Theres that i the tale might seem like truth at least To the unlucky husband, jaundiced patch, Jealousy maddens people, why not him? Say, he was maddened, so, forgivable! Humanity pleads that though the wife were true, The priest true, and the pair of liars true, They might seem false to one man in the world! A thousand gnats make up a serpents sting, And many sly soft stimulants to wrath Compose a formidable wrong at last, That gets called easily by some one name Not applicable to the single parts, And so draws down a general revenge, Excessive if you take crime, fault by fault. Jealousy! I have known a score of plays, Were listened to and laughed at in my time As like the everyday-life on all sides, Wherein the husband, mad as a March hare, Suspected all the world contrived his shame; What did the wife? The wife kissed both eyes blind, Explained away ambiguous circumstance, And while she held him captive by the hand, Crowned his head, you know whats the mockery, By half her body behind the curtain. Thats Nature now! Thats the subject of a piece I saw in Vallombrosa Convent, made Expressly to teach men what marriage was! But say Just so did I misapprehend! Or Just so she deceived me to my face! And thats pretence too easily seen through! All those eyes of all husbands in all plays, At stare like one expanded peacock-tail, Are laughed at for pretending to be keen While horn-blind: but the moment I step forth Oh, I must needs o the sudden prove a lynx And look the heart, that stone-wall, through and through! Such an eye, Gods may be, not yours nor mine. Yes, presently . . . what hour is fleeting now? When you cut earth away from under me, I shall be left alone with, pushed beneath Some such an apparitional dread orb; I fancy it go filling up the void Above my mote-self it devours, or what Immensity please wreak on nothingness. Just so I felt once, couching through the dark, Hard by Vittiano; young I was, and gay, And wanting to trap fieldfares: first a spark Tipped a bent, as a mere dew-globule might Any stiff grass-stalk on the meadow, this Grew fiercer, flamed out full, and proved the sun. What do I want with proverbs, precepts here? Away with man! What shall I say to God? This, if I find the tongue and keep the mind Do Thou wipe out the being of me, and smear This soul from off Thy white of things, I blot! I am one huge and sheer mistake, whose fault? Not mine at least, who did not make myself! Someone declares my wife excused me so! Perhaps she knew what argument to use. Grind your teeth, Cardinal, Abate, writhe! What else am I to cry out in my rage, Unable to repent one particle O the past? Oh, how I wish some cold wise man Would dig beneath the surface which you scrape, Deal with the depths, pronounce on my desert Groundedly! I want simple sober sense, That asks, before it finishes with a dog, Who taught the dog that trick you hang him for? You both persist to call that act a crime, Sense would call . . . yes, I do assure you, Sirs, . . . A blunder! At the worst, I stood in doubt On cross-road, took one path of many paths: It leads to the red thing, we all see now, But nobody at first saw one primrose In bank, one singing-bird in bush, the less, To warn from wayfare: let me prove you that! Put me back to the cross-road, start afresh! Advise me when I take the first false step! Give me my wife: how should I use my wife, Love her or hate her? Prompt my action now! There she stands, there she is alive and pale, The thirteen-years-old child, with milk for blood, Pompilia Comparini, as at first, Which first is only four brief years ago! I stand too in the little ground-floor room O the fathers house at Via Vittoria: see! Her so-called mother, one arm round the waist O the child to keep her from the toys let fall, At wonder I can live yet look so grim, Ushers her in, with deprecating wave Of the other, there she fronts me loose, at large, Held only by her mothers finger-tip Struck dumb, for she was white enough before! She eyes me with those frightened balls of black, As heifer the old simile comes pat Eyes tremblingly the altar and the priest: The amazed look, all one insuppressive prayer, Might she but be set free as heretofore, Have this cup leave her lips unblistered, bear Any cross anywhither anyhow, So but alone, so but apart from me! You are touched? So am I, quite otherwise, If tis with pity. I resent my wrong, Being a man: we only show mans soul Through mans flesh, she sees mine, it strikes her thus! Is that attractive? To a youth perhaps Calf-creature, one-part boy to three-parts girl, To whom it is a flattering novelty That he, men use to motion from their path, Can thus impose, thus terrify in turn A chit whose terror shall be changed apace To bliss unbearable when, grace and glow, Prowess and pride descend the throne and touch Esther in all that pretty tremble, cured By the dove o the sceptre! But myself am old, O the wane at least, in all things: what do you say To her who frankly thus confirms my doubt? I am past the prime, I scare the woman-world, Done-with that way: you like this piece of news? A little saucy rose-bud minx can strike Death-damp into the breast of doughty king Though twere French Louis, soul I understand, Saying, by gesture of repugnance, just Sire, you are regal, puissant and so forth, But young you have been, are not, nor will be! In vain the mother nods, winks, bustles up Count, girls incline to mature worth like you! As for Pompilia, whats flesh, fish, or fowl To one who apprehends no difference, And would accept you even were you old As you are . . . youngish by her fathers side? Trim but your beard a little, thin your bush Of eyebrow; and for presence, portliness And decent gravity, you beat a boy! Deceive you for a second, if you may, In presence of the child that so loves age, Whose neck writhes, cords itself against your kiss, Whose hand you wring stark, rigid with despair! Well, I resent this; I am young in soul, Nor old in body, thews and sinews here, Though the vile surface be not smooth as once, Far beyond the first wheelwork that went wrong Through the untempered iron ere twas proof: I am the steel man worth ten times the crude, Would woman see what this declines to see, Declines to say I see, the officious word That makes the thing, pricks on the soul to shoot New fire into the half-used cinder, flesh! Therefore tis she begins with wronging me, Who cannot but begin with hating her. Our marriage follows: there we stand again! Why do I laugh? Why, in the very gripe O the jaws of deaths gigantic skull do I Grin back his grin, make sport of my own pangs? Why from each clashing of his molars, ground To make the devil bread from out my grist, Leaps out a spark of mirth, a hellish toy? Take notice we are lovers in a church, Waiting the sacrament to make us one And happy! Just as bid, she bears herself, Comes and kneels, rises, speaks, is silent, goes: So have I brought my horse, by word and blow, To stand stock-still and front the fire he dreads. How can I other than remember this, Resent the very obedience? Gain thereby? Yes, I do gain my end and have my will, Thanks to whom? When the mother speaks the word, She obeys it even to enduring me! There had been compensation in revolt Revolts to quell: but martyrdom rehearsed, But determined saintship for the sake O the mother? Go! thought I, we meet again! Pass the next weeks of dumb contented death, She lives, wakes up, installed in house and home, Is mine, mine all day-long, all night-long mine. Good folks begin at me with open mouth Now, at least, reconcile the child to life! Study and make her love . . . that is, endure The . . . hem! the . . . all of you though somewhat old, Till it amount to something, in her eye, As good as love, better a thousand times Since nature helps the woman in such strait, Makes passiveness her pleasure: failing which, What if you give up boys and girls fools-play And go on to wise friendship all at once? Those boys and girls kiss themselves cold, you know. Toy themselves tired and slink aside full soon To friendship, as they name satiety; Thither go you and wait their coming! Thanks, Considerate advisers, but, fair play! Had you and I but started fair at first We, keeping fair, might reach it, neck by neck, This blessed goal, whenever fate so please: But why am I to miss the daisied mile The course begins with, why obtain the dust Of the end precisely at the starting-point? Why quaff lifes cup blown free of all the beads, The bright red froth wherein our beard should steep Before our mouth essay the black o the wine? Foolish, the love-fit? Let me prove it such Like you, before like you I puff things clear! The bests to come, no rapture but content! Not the first glory but a sober glow, Nor a spontaneous outburst in pure boon, So much as, gained by patience, care and toil! Go preach that to your nephews, not to me Who, tired i the midway of my life, would stop And take my first refreshment in a rose: Whats this coarse woolly hip, worn smooth of leaf, You counsel I go plant in garden-pot, Water with tears, manure with sweat and blood, In confidence the seed shall germinate And, for its very best, some far-off day, Grow big, and blow me out a dog-rose bell? Why must your nephews begin breathing spice O the hundred-petalled Provence prodigy? Nay, more and worse, would such my root bear rose Prove really flower and favourite, not the kind Thats queen, but those three leaves that make one cup. And hold the hedge-birds breakfast, then indeed The prize though poor would pay the care and toil! Respect we Nature that makes least as most, Marvellous in the minim! But this bud, Bit through and burned black by the tempters tooth, This bloom whose best grace was the slug outside And the wasp inside its bosom, call you rose? Claim no immunity from a weeds fate For the horrible present! What you call my wife I call a nullity in female shape, Vapid disgust, soon to be pungent plague, When mixed with, made confusion and a curse By two abominable nondescripts, That father and that mother: think you see The dreadful bronze our boast, we Aretines, The Etruscan monster, the three-headed thing, Bellerophons foe! How name you the whole beast? You choose to name the body from one head, That of the simple kid which droops the eye, Hangs the neck and dies tenderly enough: I rather see the griesly lion belch Flame out i the midst, the serpent writhe her rings, Grafted into the common stock for tail, And name the brute, Chimra, which I slew! How was there ever more to be (concede My wifes insipid harmless nullity) Dissociation from that pair of plagues That mother with her cunning and her cant The eyes with first their twinkle of conceit, Then, dropped to earth in mock-demureness, now, The smile self-satisfied from ear to ear Now, the prim pursed-up mouths protruded lips, With deferential duck, slow swing of head, Tempting the sudden fist of man too much, That owl-like screw of lid and rock of ruff! As for the father, Cardinal, you know, The kind of idiot! rife are such in Rome, But they wear velvet commonly, such fools, At the end of life, can furnish forth young folk Who grin and bear with imbecility, Since the stalled ass, the joker, sheds from jaw Corn, in the joke, for those who laugh or starve: But what say we to the same solemn beast Wagging his ears and wishful of our pat, When turned, with hide in holes and bones laid bare, To forage for himself i the waste o the world, Sir Dignity i the dumps? Pat him? We drub Self-knowledge, rather, into frowzy pate, Teach Pietro to get trappings or go hang! Fancy this quondam oracle in vogue At Via Vittoria, this personified Authority when time was, Pantaloon Flaunting his tom-fool tawdry just the same As if Ash-Wednesday were mid-Carnival! Thats the extreme and unforgivable Of sins, as I account such. Have you stooped For your own ends to bestialise yourself By flattery of a fellow of this stamp? The ends obtained, or else shown out of reach, He goes on, takes the flattery for pure truth, You love and honour me, of course: what next? What, but the trifle of the stabbing, friend? Which taught you how one worships when the shrine Has lost the relic that we bent before. Angry? And how could I be otherwise? Tis plain: this pair of old pretentious fools Meant to fool me: it happens, I fooled them, Why could not these who sought to buy and sell Me, when they found themselves were bought and sold, Make up their mind to the proved rule of right, Be chattel and not chapman any more? Miscalculation has its consequence; But when the shepherd crooks a sheep-like thing And meaning to get wool, dislodges fleece And finds the veritable wolf beneath, (How that staunch image serves at every turn!) Does he, by way of being politic, Pluck the first whisker grimly visible? Or rather grow in a trice all gratitude, Protest this sort-of-what-one-might-name sheep Beats the old other curly-coated kind, And shall share board and bed, if so it deign, With its discoverer, like a royal ram? Ay, thus, with chattering teeth and knocking knees, Would wisdom treat the adventure: these, forsooth, Tried whisker-plucking, and so found what trap The whisker kept perdue, two rows of teeth Sharp, as too late the prying fingers felt. What would you have? The fools transgress, the fools Forthwith receive appropriate punishment: They first insult me, I return the blow, There follows noise enough: four hubbub months, Now hue and cry, now whimpering and wail A perfect goose-yard cackle of complaint Because I do not gild the geese their oats, I have enough of noise, ope wicket wide, Sweep out the couple to go whine elsewhere, Frightened a little, hurt in no respect, And am just taking thought to breathe again, Taste the sweet sudden silence all about, When, there they are at it, the old noise I know, At Rome i the distance! What, begun once more? Whine on, wail ever, tis the losers right! But eh, what sort of voice grows on the wind? Triumph it sounds and no complaint at all! And triumph it is! My boast was premature: The creatures, I turned forth, clapped wing and crew Fighting-cock-fashion, they had filched a pearl From dung-heap, and might boast with cause enough! I was defrauded of all bargained for, You know, the Pope knows, not a soul but knows My dowry was derision, my gain muck, My wife (the Church declared my flesh and blood) The nameless bastard of a common whore: My old name turned henceforth to . . . shall I say He that received the ordure in his face? And they who planned this wrong, performed this wrong, And then revealed this wrong to the wide world, Rounded myself in the ears with my own wrong, Why, these were . . . note hells lucky malice, now! . . . These were just they, and they alone, could act And publish in this wise their infamy, Secure that men would in a breath believe Compassionate and pardon them, for why? They plainly were too stupid to invent, Too simple to distinguish wrong from right, Inconscious agents they, the silly-sooth, Of heavens retributive justice on the strong Proud cunning violent oppressor me! Follow them to their fate and help your best, You Rome, Arezzo, foes called friends of mine, They gave the good long laugh to at my cost! Defray your share o the cost since you partook The entertainment! Do! assured the while, That not one stab, I dealt to right and left, But went the deeper for a fancy this That each might do me two-fold service, find A friends face at the bottom of each wound, And scratch its smirk a little! Panciatichi! Theres a report at Florence, is it true? That when your relative the Cardinal Built, only the other day, that barrack-bulk, The palace in Via Larga, some one picked From out the street a saucy quip enough That fell there from its days flight through the town, About the flat front and the windows wide And ugly heap of cornice, hitched the joke Into a sonnet, signed his name thereto, And forthwith pinned on post the pleasantry. For which hes at the galleys, rowing now Up to his waist in water, just because Panciatic and lymphatic rhymed so pat: I hope, Sir, those who passed this joke on me Were not unduly punished? What say you, Prince of the Church, my patron? Nay, indeed! I shall not dare insult your wits so much As think this problem difficult to solve! This Pietro and Violante, then, I say, These two ambiguous insects, changing name And nature with the seasons warmth or chill, Now, grovelled, grubbing toiling moiling ants, A very synonym of thrift and peace, Anon, with lusty June to prick their heart, Soared i the air, winged flies for more offence, Circled me, buzzed me deaf and stung me blind, And stunk me dead with fetor in the face Until I stopped the nuisance: theres my crime! Pity I did not suffer them subside Into some further shape and final form Of execrable life? My masters, no! I, by one blow, wisely cut short at once Them and their transformations of disgust In the snug little Villa out of hand. Grant me confession, give bare time for that! Shouted the sinner till his mouth was stopped. His life confessed! that was enough for me, Who came to see that he did penance. S death! Heres a coil raised, a pother and for what? Because strength, being provoked by weakness, fought And conquered, the world never heard the like! Pah, how I spend my breath on them, as if Twas their fate troubled me, too hard to range Among the right and fit and proper things! Ay, but Pompilia, I await your word, She, unimpeached of crime, unimplicate In folly, one of alien blood to these I punish, why extend my claim, exact Her portion of the penalty? Yes, friends, I go too fast: the orators at fault: Yes, ere I lay her, with your leave, by them As she was laid at San Lorenzo late, I ought to step back, lead her by degrees, Recounting at each step some fresh offence, Up to the red bed, never fear, I will! Gaze on her, where you place her, to begin, Confound me with her gentleness and worth! The horrible pair have fled and left her now, She has her husband for her sole concern, His wife, the woman fashioned for his help, Flesh of his flesh, bone of his bone, the bride To groom as is the Church and Spouse, to Christ: There she stands in his presence, Thy desire Shall be to the husband, oer thee shall he rule! Pompilia, who declare that you love God, You know who said that: then, desire my love, Yield me contentment and be ruled aright! She sits up, she lies down, she comes and goes, Kneels at the couch-side, overleans the sill O the window, cold and pale and mute as stone, Strong as stone also. Well, are they not fled? Am I not left, am I not one for all? Speak a word, drop a tear, detach a glance, Bless me or curse me of your own accord! Is it the ceiling only wants your soul, Is worth your eyes? And then the eyes descend And do look at me. Is it at the meal? Speak! she obeys, Be silent! she obeys, Counting the minutes till I cry Depart, As brood-bird when you saunter past her eggs, Departed, just the same through door and wall I see the same stone strength of white despair. And all this will be never otherwise! Before, the parents presence lent her life: She could play off her sexs armoury, Intreat, reproach, be female to my male, Try all the shrieking doubles of the hare, Go clamour to the Commissary, bid The Archbishop hold my hands and stop my tongue, And yield fair sport so: but the tactics change, The hare stands stock-still to enrage the hound! Since that day when she learned she was no child Of those she thought her parents, that their trick Had tricked me whom she thought sole trickster late, Why, I suppose she said within herself Then, no more struggle for my parents sake, And, for my own sake, why needs struggle be? But is there no third party to the pact? What of her husbands relish or dislike For this new game of giving up the game, This worst offence of not offending more? Ill not believe but instinct wrought in this, Set her on to conceive and execute The preferable plague . . . how sure they probe, These jades, the sensitivest soft of man! The long black hair was wound now in a wisp, Crowned sorrow better than the wild web late: No more soiled dress, tis trimness triumphs now, For how should malice go with negligence? The frayed silk looked the fresher for her spite! There was an end to springing out of bed, Praying me, with face buried on my feet, Be hindered of my pastime, so an end To my rejoinder, What, on the ground at last? Vanquished in fight, a supplicant for life? What if I raise you? Ware the casting down When next you fight me! Then, she lay there, mine: Now, mine she is if I please wring her neck, A moment of disquiet, working eyes, Protruding tongue, a long sigh, then no more As if one killed the horse one could not ride! Had I enjoined Cut off the hair! why, snap The scissors, and at once a yard or so Had fluttered in black serpents to the floor: But till I did enjoin it, how she combs, Uncurls and draws out to the complete length, Plaits, places the insulting rope on head To be an eyesore past dishevelment! Is all done? Then sit still again and stare! I advise no one think to bear that look Of steady wrong, endured as steadily, Through what sustainment of deluding hope? Who is the friend i the background that notes all? Who may come presently and close accounts? This self-possession to the uttermost, How does it differ in aught, save degree, From the terrible patience of God? All which just means, She did not love you! Again the word is launched And the fact fronts me! What, you try the wards With the true key and the dead lock flies ope? No, it sticks fast and leaves you fumbling still! You have some fifty servants, Cardinal, Which of them loves you? Which subordinate But makes parade of such officiousness That, if theres no love prompts it, love, the sham, Does twice the service done by love, the true. God bless us liars, wheres one touch of truth In what we tell the world, or world tells us, Oh how we like each other? All the same, We calculate on word and deed, nor err, Bid such a man do such a loving act, Sure of effect and negligent of cause, Just as we bid a horse, with cluck of tongue, Stretch his legs arch-wise, crouch his saddled back To foot-reach of the stirrup all for love, And some for memory of the smart of switch On the inside of the foreleg what care we? Yet wheres the bond obliges horse to man Like that which binds fast wife to husband? God Laid down the law: gave man the brawny arm And ball of fist woman the beardless cheek And proper place to suffer in the side: Since it is he can strike, let her obey! Can she feel no love? Let her show the more, Sham the worse, damn herself praiseworthily! Whos that soprano Rome went mad about Last week while I lay rotting in my straw? The very jailor gossiped in his praise How, dressed up like Armida, though a man; And painted to look pretty, though a fright, He still made love so that the ladies swooned, Being an eunuch. Ah, Rinaldo mine! But to breathe by thee while Jove slays us both! All the poor bloodless creature never felt, Si, do, re, me, fa, squeak and squall for what? Two gold zecchines the evening! Heres my slave, Whose body and soul depend upon my nod, Cant falter out the first note in the scale For her life! Why blame me if I take the life? All women cannot give men love, forsooth! No, nor all pullets lay the henwife eggs Whereat she bids them remedy the fault, Brood on a chalk-ball: soon the nest is stocked Otherwise, to the plucking and the spit! This wife of mine was of another mood Would not begin the lie that ends with truth, Nor feign the love that brings real love about: Wherefore I judged, sentenced and punished her. But why particularise, defend the deed? Say that I hated her for no one cause Beyond my pleasure so to do, what then? Just on as much incitement acts the world, All of you! Look and like! You favour one, Brow-beat another, leave alone a third, Why should you master natural caprice? Pure nature! Try plant elm by ash in file; Both unexceptionable trees enough, They ought to overlean each other, pair At top and arch across the avenue The whole path to the pleasaunce: do they so Or loathe, lie off abhorrent each from each? Lay the fault elsewhere, since we must have faults: Mine shall have been, seeing theres ill in the end Come of my course, that I fare somehow worse For the way I took, my fault . . . as Gods my judge I see not where the fault lies, thats the truth! I ought . . . oh, ought in my own interest Have let the whole adventure go untried, This chance by marriage, or else, trying it, Ought to have turned it to account some one O the hundred otherwises? Ay, my friend, Easy to say, easy to do, step right Now youve stepped left and stumbled on the thing, The red thing! Doubt I any more than you That practice makes man perfect? Give again The chance, same marriage and no other wife, Be sure Ill edify you! Thats because Im practised, grown fit guide for Guidos self. You proffered guidance, I know, none so well, You laid down law and rolled decorum out, From pulpit-corner on the gospel-side, Wanted to make your great experience mine, Save me the personal search and pains so: thanks! Take your word on lifes use? When I take his The muzzled ox that treadeth out the corn, Gone blind in padding round and round one path, As to the taste of green grass in the field! What do you know o the world thats trodden flat And salted sterile with your daily dung, Leavened into a lump of loathsomeness? Take your opinion of the modes of life, The aims of life, lifes triumph or defeat, How to feel, how to scheme and how to do Or else leave undone? You preached long and loud On high-days, Take our doctrine upon trust! Into the mill-house with you! Grind our corn, Relish our chaff, and let the green grass grow! I tried chaff, found I famished on such fare, So made this mad rush at the mill-house-door, Buried my head up to the ears in dew, Browsed on the best, for which you brain me, Sirs! Be it so! I conceived of life that way, And still declare life, without absolute use Of the actual sweet therein, is death, not life. Give me, pay down, not promise, which is air, Something thats out of life and better still, Make sure reward, make certain punishment, Entice me, scare me, Ill forego this life; Otherwise, no! the less that words, mere wind, Would cheat me of some minutes while they plague. The fulness of revenge here, blame yourselves For this eruption of the pent-up soul You prisoned first and played with afterward! Deny myself meant simply pleasure you, The sacred and superior, save the mark! You, whose stupidity and insolence I must defer to, soothe at every turn, Whose swine-like snuffling greed and grunting lust I had to wink at or help gratify, While the same passions, dared they perk in me, Me, the immeasurably marked, by God, Master of the whole world of such as you, I, boast such passions? Twas Suppress them straight! Or stay, well pick and choose before destroy: Heres wrath in you, a serviceable sword, Beat it into a ploughshare! Whats this long Lance-like ambition? Forge a pruning-hook, May be of service when our vines grow tall! But sword used swordwise, spear thrust out as spear? Anathema! Suppression is the word! My nature, when the outrage was too gross, Widened itself an outlet over-wide By way of answer? sought its own relief With more of fire and brimstone than you wished? All your own doing: preachers, blame yourselves! Tis I preach while the hour-glass runs and runs! God keep me patient! All I say just means My wife proved, whether by her fault or mine, Thats immaterial, a true stumbling-block I the way of me her husband: I but plied The hatchet yourselves use to clear a path, Was politic, played the game you warrant wins, Plucked at laws robe a-rustle through the courts, Bowed down to kiss divinitys buckled shoe Cushioned i the church: efforts all wide the aim! Procedures to no purpose! Then flashed truth! The letter kills, the spirit keeps alive In law and gospel: there be nods and winks Instruct a wise man to assist himself In certain matters nor seek aid at all. Ask money of me, quoth the clownish saw, And take my purse! But, speaking with respect, Need you a solace for the troubled nose? Let everybody wipe his own himself! Sirs, tell me free and fair! Had things gone well At the wayside inn: had I surprised asleep The runaways, as was so probable, And pinned them each to other partridge-wise, Through back and breast to breast and back, then bade Bystanders witness if the spit, my sword, Were loaded with unlawful game for once Would you have interposed to damp the glow Applauding me on every husbands cheek? Would you have checked the cry A judgment, see! A warning, note! Be henceforth chaste, ye wives, Nor stray beyond your proper precinct, priests! If you had, then your house against itself Divides, nor stands your kingdom any more. Oh, why, why was it not ordained just so? Why fell not things out so nor otherwise? Ask that particular devil whose task it is To trip the all-but-at perfection, slur The line o the painter just where paint leaves off And life begins, puts ice into the ode O the poet while he cries Next stanza fire! Inscribes all human effort with one word, Artistrys haunting curse, the Incomplete! Being incomplete, the act escaped success. Easy to blame now! Every fool can swear To hole in net that held and slipped the fish. But, treat my act with fair unjaundiced eye, What was there wanting to a masterpiece Except the luck that lies beyond a man? My way with the woman, now proved grossly wrong, Just missed of being gravely grandly right And making critics laugh o the other side. Do, for the poor obstructed artists sake, Go with him over that spoiled work once more! Take only its first flower, the ended act Now in the dusty pod, dry and defunct! I march to the Villa, and my men with me, That evening, and we reach the door and stand. I say . . . no, it shoots through me lightning-like While I pause, breathe, my hand upon the latch, Let me forebode! Thus far, too much success: I want the natural failure find it where? Which thread will have to break and leave a loop I the meshy combination, my brains loom Wove this long while and now next minute tests? Of three that are to catch, two should go free, One must: all three surprised, impossible! Beside, I seek three and may chance on six, This neighbour, tother gossip, the babes birth Brings such to fireside and folks give them wine, Tis late: but when I break in presently One will be found outlingering the rest For promise of a posset, one whose shout Would raise the dead down in the catacombs, Much more the city-watch that goes its round. When did I ever turn adroitly up To sun some brick embedded in the soil, And with one blow crush all three scorpions there? Or Pietro or Violante shambles off It cannot be but I surprise my wife If only she is stopped and stamped on, good! That shall suffice: more is improbable. Now I may knock! And this once for my sake The impossible was effected: I called king, Queen and knave in a sequence, and cards came, All three, three only! So, I had my way, Did my deed: so, unbrokenly lay bare Each tnia that had sucked me dry of juice, At last outside me, not an inch of ring Left now to writhe about and root itself I the heart all powerless for revenge! Henceforth I might thrive: these were drawn and dead and damned. Oh Cardinal, the deep long sigh you heave When the loads off you, ringing as it runs All the way down the serpent-stair to hell! No doubt the fine delirium flustered me, Turned my brain with the influx of success As if the sole need now were to wave wand And find doors fly wide, wish and have my will, The rest o the scheme would care for itself: escape? Easy enough were that, and poor beside! It all but proved so, ought to quite have proved, Since, half the chances had sufficed, set free Any one, with his senses at command, From thrice the danger of my flight. But, drunk, Redundantly triumphant, some reverse Was sure to follow! Theres no other way Accounts for such prompt perfect failure then And there on the instant. And day o the week, A ducat slid discreetly into palm O the mute post-master, while you whisper him How you the Count and certain four your knaves, Have just been mauling who was malapert, Suspect the kindred may prove troublesome, Therefore, want horses in a hurry, that And nothing more secures you any day The pick o the stable! Yet I try the trick, Double the bribe, call myself Duke for Count, And say the dead man only was a Jew, And for my pains find I am dealing just With the one scrupulous fellow in all Rome Just this immaculate official stares, Sees I want hat on head and sword in sheath, Am splashed with other sort of wet than wine, Shrugs shoulder, puts my hand by, gold and all, Stands on the strictness of the rule o the road! Wheres the Permission? Wheres the wretched rag With the due seal and sign of Romes Police, To be had for asking, half-an-hour ago? Gone? Get another, or no horses hence! He dares not stop me, we five glare too grim, But hinders, hacks and hamstrings sure enough, Gives me some twenty miles of miry road More to march in the middle of that night Whereof the rough beginning taxed the strength O the youngsters, much more mine, such as you see, Who had to think as well as act: dead-beat, We gave in ere we reached the boundary And safe spot out of this irrational Rome, Where, on dismounting from our steeds next day, We had snapped our fingers at you, safe and sound, Tuscans once more in blessed Tuscany, Where the laws make allowance, understand Civilised life and do its champions right! Witness the sentence of the Rota there, Arezzo uttered, the Granduke confirmed, One week before I acted on its hint, Giving friend Guillichini, for his love, The galleys, and my wife your saint, Romes saint, Rome manufactures saints enough to know, Seclusion at the Stinche for her life, All this, that all but was, might all have been, Yet was not! baulked by just a scrupulous knave Whose palm was horn through handling horses hoofs And could not close upon my proffered gold! What say you to the spite of fortune? Well, The worsts in store: thus hindered, haled this way To Rome again by hangdogs, whom find I Here, still to fight with, but my pale frail wife? Riddled with wounds by one not like to waste The blows he dealt, knowing anatomy, (I think I told you) one to pick and choose The vital parts! Twas learning all in vain! She too must shimmer through the gloom o the grave, Come and confront me not at judgment-seat Where I could twist her soul, as erst her flesh, And turn her truth into a lie, but there, O the death-bed, with Gods hand between us both, Striking me dumb, and helping her to speak, Tell her own story her own way, and turn My plausibility to nothingness! Four whole days did Pompilia keep alive, With the best surgery of Rome agape At the miracle, this cut, the other slash, And yet the life refusing to dislodge, Four whole extravagant impossible days, Till she had time to finish and persuade Every man, every woman, every child In Rome of what she would: the selfsame she Who, but a year ago, had wrung her hands, Reddened her eyes and beat her breasts, rehearsed The whole game at Arezzo, nor availed Thereby to move one heart or raise one hand! When destiny intends you cards like these, What good of skill and preconcerted play? Had she been found dead, as I left her dead, I should have told a tale brooked no reply: You scarcely will suppose me found at fault With that advantage! What brings me to Rome? Necessity to claim and take my wife: Better, to claim and take my new-born babe, Strong in paternity a fortnight old, When tis at strongest: warily I work, Knowing the machinations of my foe; I have companionship and use the night: I seek my wife and child, I find no child But wife, in the embraces of that priest Who caused her to elope from me. These two, Backed by the pander-pair who watch the while, Spring on me like so many tiger-cats, Glad of the chance to end the intruder. I What should I do but stand on my defence, Strike right, strike left, strike thick and threefold, slay, Not all because the coward priest escapes. Last, I escape, in fear of evil tongues, And having had my taste of Roman law. Whats disputable, refutable here? Save by just one ghost-thing half on earth, Half out of it, as if she held Gods hand While she leant back and looked her last at me, Forgiving me (here monks begin to weep) Oh, from her very soul, commending mine To heavenly mercies which are infinite, While fixing fast my head beneath your knife! Tis fate not fortune! All is of a piece! What was it you informed me of my youths? My rustic four o the family, soft swains, What sweet surprise had they in store for me, Those of my very household, what did Law Twist with her rack-and-cord-contrivance late From out their bones and marrow? What but this Had no one of these several stumbling-blocks Stopped me, they yet were cherishing a scheme, All of their honest country homespun wit, To quietly next day at crow of cock, Cut my own throat too, for their own behoof, Seeing I had forgot to clear accounts O the instant, nowise slackened speed for that, And somehow never might find memory, Once safe back in Arezzo, where things change, And a court-lord needs mind no country lout. Well, being the arch-offender, I die last, May, ere my head falls, have my eyesight free, Nor miss them dangling high on either hand, Like scarecrows in a hemp-field, for their pains! And then my Trial, tis my Trial that bites Like a corrosive, so the cards are packed, Dice loaded, and my life-stake tricked away! Look at my lawyers, lacked they grace of law, Latin or logic? Were not they fools to the height, Fools to the depth, fools to the level between, O the foolishness set to decide the case? They feign, they flatter; nowise does it skill, Everything goes against me: deal each judge His dole of flattery and feigning, why, He turns and tries and snuffs and savours it, As an old fly the sugar-grain, your gift; Then eyes your thumb and finger, brushes clean The absurd old head of him, and whisks away, Leaving your thumb and finger dirty. Faugh! And finally, after this long-drawn range Of affront, failure, failure and affront, This path, twixt crosses leading to a skull, Paced by me barefoot, bloodied by my palms From the entry to the end, theres light at length, A cranny of escape, appeal may be To the old man, to the father, to the Pope For a little life from one whose life is spent, A little pity from pitys source and seat, A little indulgence to rank, privilege, From one who is the thing personified, Rank, privilege, indulgence, grown beyond Earths bearing, even, ask Jansenius else! Still the same answer, still no other tune From the cicala perched at the tree-top Than crickets noisy round the root, tis Die! Bids Law Be damned! adds Gospel, nay, No word so frank, tis rather, Save yourself! The Pope subjoins Confess and be absolved! So shall my credit countervail your shame, And the world see I have not lost the knack Of trying all the spirits, yours, my son, Wants but a fiery washing to emerge In clarity! Come, cleanse you, ease the ache Of these old bones, refresh our bowels, boy! Do I mistake your mission from the Pope? Then, bear his Holiness the mind of me! I do get strength from being thrust to wall, Successively wrenched from pillar and from post By this tenacious hate of fortune, hate Of all things in, under, and above earth. Warfare, begun this mean unmanly mode, Does best to end so, gives earth spectacle Of a brave fighter who succumbs to odds That turn defeat to victory. Stab, I fold My mantle round me! Rome approves my act: Applauds the blow which costs me life but keeps My honour spotless: Rome would praise no more Had I fallen, say, some fifteen years ago, Helping Vienna when our Aretines Flocked to Duke Charles and fought Turk Mustafa: Nor would you two be trembling oer my corpse With all this exquisite solicitude. Why is it that I make such suit to live? The popular sympathy thats round me now Would break like bubble that oer-domes a fly Pretty enough while he lies quiet there, But let him want the air and ply the wing, Why, it breaks and bespatters him, what else? Cardinal, if the Pope had pardoned me, And I walked out of prison through the crowd, It would not be your arm I should dare press! Then, if I got safe to my place again, How sad and sapless were the years to come! I go my old ways and find things grown grey; You priests leer at me, old friends look askance; The mobs in love, Ill wager, to a man, With my poor young good beauteous murdered wife: For hearts require instruction how to beat, And eyes, on warrant of the story, wax Wanton at portraiture in white and black Of dead Pompilia gracing ballad-sheet, Which, had she died unmurdered and unsung, Would never turn though she paced street as bare As the mad penitent ladies do in France. My brothers quietly would edge me out Of use and management of things called mine; Do I command? You stretched command before! Show anger? Anger little helped you once! Advise? How managed you affairs of old? My very mother, all the while they gird, Turns eye up, gives confirmatory groan, For unsuccess, explain it how you will, Disqualifies you, makes you doubt yourself, Much more, is found decisive by your friends. Beside, am I not fifty years of age? What new leap would a life take, checked like mine I the spring at outset? Wheres my second chance? Ay, but the babe . . . I had forgot my son, My heir! Now for a burst of gratitude! Theres some appropriate service to intone, Some gaudeamus and thanksgiving-psalm! Old, I renew my youth in him, and poor Possess a treasure, is not that the phrase? Only I must wait patient twenty years Nourishing all the while, as father ought, The excrescence with my daily blood of life. Does it respond to hope, such sacrifice, Grows the wen plump while I myself grow lean? Why, heres my son and heir in evidence, Who stronger, wiser, handsomer than I By fifty years, relieves me of each load, Tames my hot horse, carries my heavy gun, Courts my coy mistress, has his apt advice On house-economy, expenditure, And what not? All which good gifts and great growth Because of my decline, he brings to bear On Guido, but half apprehensive how He cumbers earth, crosses the brisk young Count, Who civilly would thrust him from the scene. Contrariwise, does the blood-offering fail? Theres an ineptitude, one blank the more Added to earth in semblance of my child? Then, this has been a costly piece of work, My life exchanged for his! why he, not I, Enjoy the world, if no more grace accrue? Dwarf me, what giant have you made of him? I do not dread the disobedient son I know how to suppress rebellion there, Being not quite the fool my father was. But grant the medium measure of a man, The usual compromise twixt fool and sage, You know the tolerably-obstinate, The not-so-much-perverse but you may train, The true son-servant that, when parent bids Go work, son, in my vineyard! makes reply I go, Sir! Why, what profit in your son Beyond the drudges you might subsidise, Have the same work from at a paul the head? Look at those four young precious olive-plants Reared at Vittiano, not on flesh and blood, These twenty years, but black bread and sour wine! I bade them put forth tender branch, and hook And hurt three enemies I had in Rome: They did my hest as unreluctantly, At promise of a dollar, as a son Adjured by mumping memories of the past! No, nothing repays youth expended so Youth, I say, who am young still, give but leave To live my life out, to the last Id live And die conceding age no right of youth! It is the will runs the renewing nerve Through flaccid flesh, would faint before the time. Therefore no sort of use for son have I Sick, not of lifes feast but of steps to climb To the house where life prepares her feast, of means To the end: for make the end attainable Without the means, my relish were like yours. A man may have an appetite enough For a whole dish of robins ready cooked, And yet lack courage to face sleet, pad snow, And snare sufficiency for supper. Thus The times arrived when, ancient Roman-like, I am bound to fall on my own sword, why not Say Tuscan-like, more ancient, better still? Will you hear truth can do no harm nor good? I think I never was at any time A Christian, as you nickname all the world, Me among others: truce to nonsense now! Name me, a primitive religionist As should the aboriginary be I boast myself, Etruscan, Aretine, One sprung, your frigid Virgils fieriest word, From fauns and nymphs, trunks and the heart of oak, With, for a visible divinity, The portent of a Jove giochus Descried mid clouds, lightning and thunder, couched On topmost crag of your Capitoline Tis in the Seventh neid, what, the Eighth? Right, thanks, Abate, though the Christians dumb, The Latinists vivacious in you yet! I know my grandsire had out tapestry Marked with the motto, neath a certain shield His grandson presently will give some gules To vary azure. First we fight for faiths, But get to shake hands at the last of all: Mines your faith too, in Jove giochus! Nor do Greek gods, that serve as supplement, Jar with the simpler scheme, if understood. We want such intermediary race To make communication possible; The real thing were too lofty, we too low, Midway hang these: we feel their use so plain In linking height to depth, that we doff hat And put no question nor pry narrowly Into the nature hid behind the names. We grudge no rite the fancy may demand; But never, more than needs, invent, refine, Improve upon requirement, idly wise Beyond the letter, teaching gods their trade, Which is to teach us: well obey when taught. Why should we do our duty past the due? When the sky darkens, Jove is wroth, say prayer! When the sun shines and Jove is glad, sing psalm! But where fore pass prescription and devise Blood-offering for sweat-service, lend the rod A pungency through pickle of our own? Learned Abate, no one teaches you What Venus means and whos Apollo here! I spare you, Cardinal, but, though you wince, You know me, I know you, and both know that! So, if Apollo bids us fast, we fast: But where does Venus order we stop sense When Master Pietro rhymes a pleasantry? Give alms prescribed on Friday, but, hold hand Because your foe lies prostrate, wheres the word Explicit in the book debars revenge? The rationale of your scheme is just Pay toll here, there pursue your pleasure free! So do you turn to use the medium-powers, Mars and Minerva, Bacchus and the rest, And so are saved propitiating what? What all good, all wise and all potent Jove Vexed by the very sins in man, himself Made lifes necessity when man he made? Irrational bunglers! So, the living truth Revealed to strike Pan dead, ducks low at last, Prays leave to hold its own and live good days Provided it go masque grotesquely, called Christian not Pagan? Oh, you purged the sky Of all gods save One, the great and good, Clapped hands and triumphed! But the change came fast: The inexorable need in man for life Life, you may mulct and minish to a grain Out of the lump, so the grain left but live, Laughed at your substituting death for life, And bade you do your worst, which worst was done Pass that age styled the primitive and pure When Saint this, Saint that, dutifully starved, Froze, fought with beasts, was beaten and abused, And finally ridded of his flesh by fire, Keeping the while unspotted from the world! Good: but next age, how goes the game, who gives His life and emulates Saint that and this? They mutiny, mutter who knows what excuse? In fine make up their minds to leave the new, Stick to the old, enjoy old liberty, No prejudice, all the same, if so it please, To the new profession: sin o the sly, henceforth! Let the law stand: the letter kills, what then? The spirit saves as unmistakeably. Omniscience sees, Omnipotence could stop, All-mercifulness pardons, it must be, Frown law its fiercest, theres a wink somewhere. Such was the logic in this head of mine: I, like the rest, wrote poison on my bread; But broke and ate: said those that use the sword Shall perish by the same; then stabbed my foe. I stand on solid earth, not empty air: Dislodge me, let your Popes crook hale me hence! Not he, nor you! And I so pity both, Ill make the speech you want the wit to make: Count Guido, who reveal our mystery, You trace all issues to the love of life: We have a life to love and guard, like you. Why did you put us upon self-defence? You well knew what prompt pass-word would appease The sentrys ire when folk infringe his bounds, And yet kept mouth shut: do you wonder then If, in mere decency, he shot you dead? He cant have people play such pranks as you Beneath his nose at noonday, who disdain To give him an excuse before the world, By crying I break rule to save our camp! Under the old rule, such offence were death; And so had you heard Pontifex pronounce Since you slay foe and violate the form, That turns to murder, which were sacrifice Had you, while, say, law-suiting him to death, But raised an altar to the Unknown God, Or else the Genius of the Vatican. Why then this pother? all because the Pope Doing his duty, cries A foreigner, You scandalise the natives: here at Rome Romano vivitur more: wise men, here, Put the Church forward and efface themselves. The fit defence had been, you stamped on wheat, Intending all the time to trample tares, Were fain extirpate, then, the heretic, And now find, in your haste you slew a fool: Nor Pietro, nor Violante, nor your wife Meant to breed up your babe a Molinist! Whence you are duly contrite. Not one word Of all this wisdom did you urge! Which slip Death must atone for! So, let death atone! So ends mistake, so end mistakers! end Perhaps to recommence, how should I know? Only, be sure, no punishment, no pain Childish, preposterous, impossible, But some such fate as Ovid could foresee, Byblis in fluvium, let the weak soul end In water, sed Lycaon in lupum, but The strong become a wolf for evermore! Change that Pompilia to a puny stream Fit to reflect the daisies on its bank! Let me turn wolf, be whole, and sate, for once, Wallow in what is now a wolfishness Coerced too much by the humanity Thats half of me as well! Grow out of man, Glut the wolf-nature, what remains but grow Into the man again, be man indeed And all man? Do I ring the changes right Deformed, transformed, reformed, informed, conformed! The honest instinct, pent and crossed through life, Let surge by death into a visible flow Of rapture: as the strangled thread of flame Painfully winds, annoying and annoyed, Malignant and maligned, thro stone and ore, Till earth exclude the stranger: vented once, It finds full play, is recognised a-top Some mountain as no such abnormal birth. Fire for the mount, the streamlet for the vale! Ay, of the water was that wife of mine Be it for good, be it for ill, no run O the red thread through that insignificance! Again, how she is at me with those eyes! Away with the empty stare! Be holy still, And stupid ever! Occupy your patch Of private snow thats somewhere in what world May now be growing icy round your head, And aguish at your foot-print, freeze not me, Dare follow not another step I take. Not with so much as those detested eyes, No, though they follow but to pray me pause On the incline, earths edge thats next to hell! None of your abnegation of revenge! Fly at me frank, tug while I tear again! Theres God, go tell Him, testify your worst! Not she! There was no touch in her of hate: And it would prove her hell, if I reached mine! To know I suffered, would still sadden her, Do what the angels might to make amends! Therefore theres either no such place as hell, Or thence shall I be thrust forth, for her sake, And thereby undergo three hells, not one I who, with outlet for escape to heaven, Would tarry if such flight allowed my foe To raise his head, relieved of that firm foot Had pinned him to the fiery pavement else! So am I made, who did not make myself: (How dared she rob my own lip of the word?) Beware me in what other world may be! Pompilia, who have brought me to this pass! All I know here, will I say there, and go Beyond the saying with the deed. Some use There cannot but be for a mood like mine, Implacable, persistent in revenge. She maundered All is over and at end: I go my own road, go you where God will! Forgive you? I forget you! Theres the saint That takes your taste, you other kind of men! How you had loved her! Guido wanted skill To value such a woman at her worth! Properly the instructed criticise Whats here, you simpleton have tossed to take Its chance i the gutter? This a daub, indeed? Why, tis a Rafael that you kicked to rags! Perhaps so: some prefer the pure design: Give me my gorge of colour, glut of gold In a glory round the Virgin made for me! Titians the man, not Monk Angelico Who traces you some timid chalky ghost That turns the church into a charnel: ay, Just such a pencil might depict my wife! She, since she, also, would not change herself, Why could not she come in some heart-shaped cloud, Rainbowed about with riches, royalty Rimming her round, as round the tintless lawn Guardingly runs the selvage cloth of gold? I would have left the faint fine gauze untouched, Needle-worked over with its lily and rose, Let her bleach unmolested in the midst, Chill that selected solitary spot Of quietude she pleased to think was life: Purity, pallor grace the lawn no doubt When theres the costly bordure to unthread And make again an ingot: but whats grace When you want meat and drink and clothes and fire? A tale comes to my mind thats apposite Possibly true, probably false, a truth Such as all truths we live by, Cardinal! Tis said, a certain ancestor of mine Followed whoever was the potentate, To Paynimrie, and in some battle, broke Through more than due allowance of the foe And, risking much his own life, saved the lords Battered and bruised, the Emperor scrambles up, Rubs his eyes and looks round and sees my sire, Picks a furze-sprig from out his hauberk-joint, (Token how near the ground went majesty) And says Take this, and, if thou get safe home, Plant the same in thy garden-ground to grow: Run thence an hour in a straight line, and stop: Describe a circle round (for central point) The furze aforesaid, reaching every way The length of that hours run: I give it thee, The central point, to build a castle there, The circumjacent space, for fit demesne, The whole to be thy childrens heritage, Whom, for my sake, bid thou wear furze on cap! Those are my arms: we turned the furze a tree To show more, and the greyhound tied thereto, Straining to start, means swift and greedy both; He stands upon a triple mount of gold By Jove, then, hes escaping from true gold And trying to arrive at empty air! Aha! the fancy never crossed my mind! My father used to tell me, and subjoin As for the castle, that took wings and flew: The broad lands, why, to traverse them to-day Would task my gouty feet, though in my prime I doubt not I could stand and spit so far: But for the furze, boy, fear no lack of that, So long as fortune leaves one field to grub! Wherefore hurra for furze and loyalty! What may I mean, where may the lesson lurk? Do not bestow on man by way of gift Furze without some substantial framework, grace Of purity, a furze-sprig of a wife, To me i the thick of battle for my bread, Without some better dowry, house and land! No other gift than sordid muck? Yes, Sir! Many more and much better. Give them me! O those Olimpias bold, those Biancas brave, That brought a husband will worth Ormuz wealth! Cried Thou being mine, why, what but thine am I? Be thou to me law, right, wrong, heaven and hell! Let us blend souls, be thou in me to bid Two bodies work one pleasure! What are these Called king, priest, father, mother, stranger, friend? They fret thee or they frustrate? Give the word Be certain they shall frustrate nothing more! And who is this young florid foolishness That holds thy fortune in his pigmy clutch, Being a prince and potency, forsooth! And hesitates to let the trifle go? Let me but seal up eye, sing ear to sleep Sounder than Samson, pounce thou on the prize Shall slip from off my breast, and down couch-side And on to floor, and far as my lords feet Where he stands in the shadow with the sword Waiting to see what Delilah dares do! Is the youth fair? What is a man to me Who am thy call-bird? Twist his neck my dupes, Then take the breast shall turn a breast indeed! Such women are there; and they marry whom? Why, when a man has gone and hanged himself Because of what he calls a wicked wife, See, if the turpitude, he makes his moan, Be not mere excellence the fool ignores! His monster is perfection, Circe, sent Straight from the sun, with rod the idiot blames As not an honest distaff to spin wool! O thou Lucrezia, is it long to wait Yonder where all the gloom is in a glow With thy suspected presence? virgin yet, Virtuous again in face of whats to teach Sin unimagined, unimaginable, I come to claim my bride, thy Borgias self Not half the burning bridegroom I shall be! Cardinal, take away your crucifix! Abate, leave my lips alone, they bite! Tis vain you try to change, what should not change, And cannot. I have bared, you bathe my heart It grows the stonier for your saving dew! You steep the substance, you would lubricate, In waters that but touch to petrify! You too are petrifactions of a kind: Move not a muscle that shows mercy; rave Another twelve hours, every word were waste! I thought you would not slay impenitence, Teazed first contrition from the man you slew, I thought you had a conscience. Cardinal, You know I am wronged! wronged, say, and wronged maintain. Was this strict inquisition made for blood When first you showed us scarlet on your back, Called to the College? That straightforward way To that legitimate end, I think it passed Over a scantling of heads brained, hearts broke, Lives trodden into dust, how otherwise? Such is the way o the world, and so you walk: Does memory haunt your pillow? Not a whit. God wills you never pace your garden-path One appetising hour ere dinner-time But your intrusion there treads out of life An universe of happy innocent things: Feel you remorse about that damsel-fly Which buzzed so near your mouth and flapped your face, You blotted it from being at a blow? It was a fly, you were a man, and more, Lord of created things, so took your course. Manliness, mind, these are things fit to save, Fit to brush fly from: why, because I take My course, must needs the Pope kill me? kill you! Because this instrument he throws away Is strong to serve a master: it were yours To have and hold and get such good from out! The Pope who dooms me, needs must die next year; Ill tell you how the chances are supposed For his successor: first the Chamberlain, Old San Cesario, Colloredo, next, Then, one, two, three, four, I refuse to name, After these, comes Altieri; then come you Seventh on the list you are, unless . . . ha, ha, How can a dead hand give a friend a lift? Are you the person to despise the help O the head shall drop in pannier presently? So a child seesaws on or kicks away The fulcrum-stone thats all the sage requires To fit his lever to and move the world. Cardinal, I adjure you in Gods name, Save my life, fall at the Popes feet, set forth Things your own fashion, not in words like these Made for a sense like yours who apprehend! Translate into the court-conventional Count Guido must not die, is innocent! Fair, be assured! But what an he were foul, Blood-drenched and murder-crusted head to foot? Spare one whose death insults the Emperor, And outrages the Louis you so love! He has friends who will avenge him; enemies Who hate the church now with impunity Missing the old coercive: would you send A soul straight to perdition, dying frank An atheist? Go and say this, for Gods sake! Why, you dont think I hope youll say one word? Neither shall I persuade you from your stand Nor you persuade me from my station: take Your crucifix away, I tell you twice! Come, I am tired of silence! Pause enough! You have prayed: I have gone inside my soul And shut its door behind me: tis your torch Makes the place dark, the darkness let alone Grows tolerable twilight, one may grope And get to guess at length and breadth and depth. What is this fact I feel persuaded of This something like a foothold in the sea, Although Saint Peters bark scuds, billow-borne, Leaves me to founder where it flung me first? Spite of your splashing, I am high and dry! God takes his own part in each thing he made; Made for a reason, he conserves his work, Gives each its proper instinct of defence. My lamblike wife could neither bark nor bite, She bleated, bleated, till for pity pure, The village roused it, ran with pole and prong To the rescue, and behold the wolfs at bay! Shall he try bleating? or take turn or two, Since the wolf owns to kinship with the fox, And failing to escape the foe by these, Give up attempt, die fighting quietly? The last bad blow that strikes fire in at eye And on to brain, and so out, life and all, How can it but be cheated of a pang While, fighting quietly, the jaws enjoy Their re-embrace in mid back-bone they break, After their weary work thro the foes flesh? Thats the wolf-nature. Dont mistake my trope! The Cardinal is qualmish! Eminence, My fight is figurative, blows i the air, Brain-war with powers and principalities, Spirit-bravado, no real fisticuffs! I shall not presently, when the knock comes, Cling to this bench nor flee the hangmans face, No, trust me! I conceive worse lots than mine. Whether it be the old contagious fit And plague o the prison have surprised me too, The appropriate drunkenness of the death-hour Creep on my sense, the work o the wine and myrrh, I know not, I begin to taste my strength, Careless, gay even: whats the worth of life? The Pope is dead, my murderous old man, For Tozzi told me so: and you, forsooth Why, you dont think, Abate, do your best, Youll live a year more with that hacking cough And blotch of crimson where the cheeks a pit? Tozzi has got you also down in book. Cardinal, only seventh of seventy near, Is not one called Albano in the lot? Go eat your heart, youll never be a Pope! Inform me, is it true you left your love, A Pucci, for promotion in the church? Shes more than in the church, in the churchyard! Plautilla Pucci, your affianced bride, Has dust now in the eyes that held the love, And Martinez, suppose they make you Pope, Stops that with veto, so, enjoy yourself! I see you all reel to the rock, you waves Some forthright, some describe a sinuous track, Some crested, brilliantly with heads above, Some in a strangled swirl sunk who knows how, But all bound whither the main-current sets, Rockward, an end in foam for all of you! What if I am oertaken, pushed to the front By all you crowding smoother souls behind, And reach, a minute sooner than was meant, The boundary, whereon I break to mist? Go to! the smoothest safest of you all, Most perfect and compact wave in my train, Spite of the blue tranquillity above, Spite of the breadth before of lapsing peace Where broods the halcyon and the fish leaps free, Will presently begin to feel the prick At lazy heart, the push at torpid brain, Will rock vertiginously in turn, and reel, And, emulative, rush to death like me: Later or sooner by a minute then, So much for the untimeliness of death, And, as regards the manner that offends, The rude and rough, I count the same for gain Be the act harsh and quick! Undoubtedly The souls condensed and, twice itself, expands To burst thro life, in alternation due, Into the other state whateer it prove. You never know what life means till you die: Even throughout life, tis death that makes life live, Gives it whatever the significance. For see, on your own ground and argument, Suppose life had no death to fear, how find A possibility of nobleness In man, prevented daring any more? Whats love, whats faith without a worst to dread? Lack-lustre jewelry; but faith and love With death behind them bidding do or die Put such a foil at back, the sparkles born! From out myself how the strange colours come! Is there a new rule in another world? Be sure I shall resign myself: as here I recognised no law I could not see, There, what I see, I shall acknowledge too: On earth I never took the Pope for God, In heaven I shall scarce take God for the Pope. Unmanned, remade: I hold it probable With something changeless at the heart of me To know me by, some nucleus thats myself: Accretions did it wrong? Away with them You soon shall see the use of fire! Till when, All that was, is; and must for ever be. Nor is it in me to unhate my hates, I use up my last strength to strike once more Old Pietro in the wine-house-gossip-face, To trample underfoot the whine and wile Of that Violante, and I grow one gorge To loathingly reject Pompilias pale Poison my hasty hunger took for food. A strong tree wants no wreaths about its trunk, No cloying cups, no sickly sweet of scent, But sustenance at root, a bucketful. How else lived that Athenian who died so, Drinking hot bulls-blood, fit for men like me? I lived and died a man, and take mans chance, Honest and bold: right will be done to such. Who are these you have let descend my stair? Ha, their accursed psalm! Lights at the sill! Is it Open they dare bid you? Treachery! Sirs, have I spoken one word all this while Out of the world of words I had to say? Not one word! All was folly I laughed and mocked! Sirs, my first true word all truth and no lie, Is save me notwithstanding! Life is all! I was just stark mad, let the madman live Pressed by as many chains as you please pile! Dont open! Hold me from them! I am yours, I am the Grandukes no, I am the Popes! Abate, Cardinal, Christ, Maria, God, . . . Pompilia, will you let them murder me?