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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>VI. Giuseppe Caponsacchi</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Answer you, Sirs? Do I understand aright?<br>Have patience! In this sudden smoke from hell,—<br>So things disguise themselves,—I cannot see<br>My own hand held thus broad before my face<br>And know it again. Answer you? Then that means<br>Tell over twice what I, the first time, told<br>Six months ago: 't was here, I do believe,<br>Fronting you same three in this very room,<br>I stood and told you: yet now no one laughs,<br>Who then … nay, dear my lords, but laugh you did,<br>As good as laugh, what in a judge we style<br>Laughter—no levity, nothing indecorous, lords!<br>Only,—I think I apprehend the mood:<br>There was the blameless shrug, permissible smirk,<br>The pen's pretence at play with the pursed mouth,<br>The titter stifled in the hollow palm<br>Which rubbed the eyebrow and caressed the nose,<br>When I first told my tale: they meant, you know,<br>"The sly one, all this we are bound believe!<br>"Well, he can say no other than what he says.<br>"We have been young, too,—come, there's greater guilt!<br>"Let him but decently disembroil himself,<br>"Scramble from out the scrape nor move the mud,—<br>"We solid ones may risk a finger-stretch!<br>And now you sit as grave, stare as aghast<br>As if I were a phantom: now 't is—"Friend,<br>"Collect yourself!"—no laughing matter more—<br>"Counsel the Court in this extremity,<br>"Tell us again!"—tell that, for telling which,<br>I got the jocular piece of punishment,<br>Was sent to lounge a little in the place<br>Whence now of a sudden here you summon me<br>To take the intelligence from just—your lips!<br>You, Judge Tommati, who then tittered most,—<br>That she I helped eight months since to escape<br>Her husband, was retaken by the same,<br>Three days ago, if I have seized your sense,—<br>(I being disallowed to interfere,<br>Meddle or make in a matter none of mine,<br>For you and law were guardians quite enough<br>O' the innocent, without a pert priest's help)—<br>And that he has butchered her accordingly,<br>As she foretold and as myself believed,—<br>And, so foretelling and believing so,<br>We were punished, both of us, the merry way:<br>Therefore, tell once again the tale! For what?<br>Pompilia is only dying while I speak!<br>Why does the mirth hang fire and miss the smile?<br>My masters, there's an old book, you should con<br>For strange adventures, applicable yet,<br>'T is stuffed with. Do you know that there was once<br>This thing: a multitude of worthy folk<br>Took recreation, watched a certain group<br>Of soldiery intent upon a game,—<br>How first they wrangled, but soon fell to play,<br>Threw dice,—the best diversion in the world.<br>A word in your ear,—they are now casting lots,<br>Ay, with that gesture quaint and cry uncouth,<br>For the coat of One murdered an hour ago!<br>I am a priest,—talk of what I have learned.<br>Pompilia is bleeding out her life belike,<br>Gasping away the latest breath of all,<br>This minute, while I talk—not while you laugh?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Yet, being sobered now, what is it you ask<br>By way of explanation? There's the fact!<br>It seems to fill the universe with sight<br>And sound,—from the four corners of this earth<br>Tells itself over, to my sense at least.<br>But you may want it lower set i' the scale,—<br>Too vast, too close it clangs in the ear, perhaps;<br>You'd stand back just to comprehend it more.<br>Well then, let me, the hollow rock, condense<br>The voice o' the sea and wind, interpret you<br>The mystery of this murder. God above!<br>It is too paltry, such a transference<br>O' the storm's roar to the cranny of the stone!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">This deed, you saw begin—why does its end<br>Surprise you? Why should the event enforce<br>The lesson, we ourselves learned, she and I,<br>From the first o' the fact, and taught you, all in vain?<br>This Guido from whose throat you took my grasp,<br>Was this man to be favoured, now or feared,<br>Let do his will, or have his will restrained,<br>In the relation with Pompilia? Say!<br>Did any other man need interpose<br>—Oh, though first comer, though as strange at the work<br>As fribble must be, coxcomb, fool that's near<br>To knave as, say, a priest who fears the world—<br>Was he bound brave the peril, save the doomed,<br>Or go on, sing his snatch and pluck his flower,<br>Keep the straight path and let the victim die?<br>I held so; you decided otherwise,<br>Saw no such peril, therefore no such need<br>To stop song, loosen flower, and leave path. Law,<br>Law was aware and watching, would suffice,<br>Wanted no priest's intrusion, palpably<br>Pretence, too manifest a subterfuge!<br>Whereupon I, priest, coxcomb, fribble and fool,<br>Ensconced me in my corner, thus rebuked,<br>A kind of culprit, over-zealous hound<br>Kicked for his pains to kennel; I gave place,<br>To you, and let the law reign paramount:<br>I left Pompilia to your watch and ward,<br>And now you point me—there and thus she lies!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Men, for the last time, what do you want with me?<br>Is it,—you acknowledge, as it were, a use,<br>A profit in employing me?—at length<br>I may conceivably help the august law?<br>I am free to break the blow, next hawk that swoops<br>On next dove, nor miss much of good repute?<br>Or what if this your summons, after all,<br>Be but the form of mere release, no more,<br>Which turns the key and lets the captive go?<br>I have paid enough in person at Civita,<br>Am free,—what more need I concern me with?<br>Thank you! I am rehabilitated then,<br>A very reputable priest. But she—<br>The glory of life, the beauty of the world,<br>The splendour of heaven, … well, Sirs, does no one move?<br>Do I speak ambiguously? The glory, I say,<br>And the beauty, I say, and splendour, still say I,<br>Who, priest and trained to live my whole life long<br>On beauty and splendour, solely at their source,<br>God,—have thus recognized my food in her,<br>You tell me, that's fast dying while we talk,<br>Pompilia! How does lenity to me,<br>Remit one death-bed pang to her? Come, smile!<br>The proper wink at the hot-headed youth<br>Who lets his soul show, through transparent words,<br>The mundane love that's sin and scandal too!<br>You are all struck acquiescent now, it seems:<br>It seems the oldest, gravest signor here,<br>Even the redoubtable Tommati, sits<br>Chop-fallen,—understands how law might take<br>Service like mine, of brain and heart and hand,<br>In good part. Better late than never, law<br>You understand of a sudden, gospel too<br>Has a claim here, may possibly pronounce<br>Consistent with my priesthood, worthy Christ,<br>That I endeavoured to save Pompilia?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Then,<br>You were wrong, you see: that's well to see, though late:<br>That's all we may expect of man, this side<br>The grave: his good is—knowing he is bad:<br>Thus will it be with us when the books ope<br>And we stand at the bar on judgment-day.<br>Well then, I have a mind to speak, see cause<br>To relume the quenched flax by this dreadful light,<br>Burn my soul out in showing you the truth.<br>I heard, last time I stood here to be judged,<br>What is priest's-duty,—labour to pluck tares<br>And weed the corn of Molinism; let me<br>Make you hear, this time, how, in such a case,<br>Man, be he in the priesthood or at plough,<br>Mindful of Christ or marching step by step<br>With … what's his style, the other potentate<br>Who bids have courage and keep honour safe,<br>Nor let minuter admonition tease?—<br>How he is bound, better or worse, to act.<br>Earth will not end through this misjudgment, no!<br>For you and the others like you sure to come,<br>Fresh work is sure to follow,—wickedness<br>That wants withstanding. Many a man of blood,<br>Many a man of guile will clamour yet,<br>Bid you redress his grievance,—as he clutched<br>The prey, forsooth a stranger stepped between,<br>And there's the good gripe in pure waste! My part<br>Is done; i' the doing it, I pass away<br>Out of the world. I want no more with earth.<br>Let me, in heaven's name, use the very snuff<br>O' the taper in one last spark shall show truth<br>For a moment, show Pompilia who was true!<br>Not for her sake, but yours: if she is dead,<br>Oh, Sirs, she can be loved by none of you<br>Most or least priestly! Saints, to do us good,<br>Must be in heaven, I seem to understand:<br>We never find them saints before, at least.<br>Be her first prayer then presently for you—<br>She has done the good to me …</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">What is all this?<br>There, I was born, have lived, shall die, a fool!<br>This is a foolish outset:—might with cause<br>Give colour to the very lie o' the man,<br>The murderer,—make as if I loved his wife,<br>In the way he called love. He is the fool there!<br>Why, had there been in me the touch of taint,<br>I had picked up so much of knaves'-policy<br>As hide it, keep one hand pressed on the place<br>Suspected of a spot would damn us both.<br>Or no, not her!—not even if any of you<br>Dares think that I, i' the face of death, her death<br>That's in my eyes and ears and brain and heart,<br>Lie,—if he does, let him! I mean to say,<br>So he stop there, stay thought from smirching her<br>The snow-white soul that angels fear to take<br>Untenderly. But, all the same, I know<br>I too am taintless, and I bare my breast.<br>You can't think, men as you are, all of you,<br>But that, to hear thus suddenly such an end<br>Of such a wonderful white soul, that comes<br>Of a man and murderer calling the white black,<br>Must shake me, trouble and disadvantage. Sirs,<br>Only seventeen!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Why, good and wise you are!<br>You might at the beginning stop my mouth:<br>So, none would be to speak for her, that knew.<br>I talk impertinently, and you bear,<br>All the same. This it is to have to do<br>With honest hearts: they easily may err,<br>But in the main they wish well to the truth.<br>You are Christians; somehow, no one ever plucked<br>A rag, even, from the body of the Lord,<br>To wear and mock with, but, despite himself,<br>He looked the greater and was the better. Yes,<br>I shall go on now. Does she need or not<br>I keep calm? Calm I'll keep as monk that croons<br>Transcribing battle, earthquake, famine, plague,<br>From parchment to his cloister's chronicle.<br>Not one word more from the point now!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I begin.<br>Yes, I am one of your body and a priest.<br>Also I am a younger son o' the House<br>Oldest now, greatest once, in my birth-town<br>Arezzo, I recognize no equal there—<br>(I want all arguments, all sorts of arms<br>That seem to serve,—use this for a reason, wait!)<br>Not therefore thrust into the Church, because<br>O' the piece of bread one gets there. We were first<br>Of Fiesole, that rings still with the fame<br>Of Capo-in-Sacco our progenitor:<br>When Florence ruined Fiesole, our folk<br>Migrated to the victor-city, and there<br>Flourished,—our palace and our tower attest,<br>In the Old Mercato,—this was years ago,<br>Four hundred, full,—no, it wants fourteen just.<br>Our arms are those of Fiesole itself,<br>The shield quartered with white and red: a branch<br>Are the Salviati of us, nothing more.<br>That were good help to the Church? But better still—<br>Not simply for the advantage of my birth<br>I' the way of the world, was I proposed for priest;<br>But because there's an illustration, late<br>I' the day, that's loved and looked to as a saint<br>Still in Arezzo, he was bishop of,<br>Sixty years since: he spent to the last doit<br>His bishop's-revenue among the poor,<br>And used to tend the needy and the sick,<br>Barefoot, because of his humility.<br>He it was,—when the Granduke Ferdinand<br>Swore he would raze our city, plough the place<br>And sow it with salt, because we Aretines<br>Had tied a rope about the neck, to hale<br>The statue of his father from its base<br>For hate's sake,—he availed by prayers and tears<br>To pacify the Duke and save the town.<br>This was my father's father's brother. You see,<br>For his sake, how it was I had a right<br>To the self-same office, bishop in the egg,<br>So, grew i' the garb and prattled in the school,<br>Was made expect, from infancy almost,<br>The proper mood o' the priest; till time ran by<br>And brought the day when I must read the vows,<br>Declare the world renounced and undertake<br>To become priest and leave probation,—leap<br>Over the ledge into the other life,<br>Having gone trippingly hitherto up to the height<br>O'er the wan water. Just a vow to read!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I stopped short awe-struck. "How shall holiest flesh<br>"Engage to keep such vow inviolate,<br>"How much less mine? I know myself too weak,<br>"Unworthy! Choose a worthier stronger man!"<br>And the very Bishop smiled and stopped my mouth<br>In its mid-protestation. "Incapable?<br>"Qualmish of conscience? Thou ingenuous boy!<br>"Clear up the clouds and cast thy scruples far!<br>"I satisfy thee there's an easier sense<br>"Wherein to take such vow than suits the first<br>"Rough rigid reading. Mark what makes all smooth,<br>"Nay, has been even a solace to myself!<br>"The Jews who needs must, in their synagogue,<br>"Utter sometimes the holy name of God,<br>"A thing their superstition boggles at,<br>"Pronounce aloud the ineffable sacrosanct,—<br>"How does their shrewdness help them? In this wise;<br>"Another set of sounds they substitute,<br>"Jumble so consonants and vowels—how<br>"Should I know?—that there grows from out the old<br>"Quite a new word that means the very same—<br>"And o'er the hard place slide they with a smile.<br>"Giuseppe Maria Caponsacchi mine,<br>"Nobody wants you in these latter days<br>"To prop the Church by breaking your back-bone,—<br>"As the necessary way was once, we know,<br>"When Diocletian flourished and his like.<br>"That building of the buttress-work was done<br>"By martyrs and confessors: let it bide,<br>"Add not a brick, but, where you see a chink,<br>"Stick in a sprig of ivy or root a rose<br>"Shall make amends and beautify the pile!<br>"We profit as you were the painfullest<br>"O' the martyrs, and you prove yourself a match<br>"For the cruelest confessor ever was,<br>"If you march boldly up and take your stand<br>"Where their blood soaks, their bones yet strew the soil,<br>"And cry 'Take notice, I the young and free<br>"'And well-to-do i' the world, thus leave the world,<br>"'Cast in my lot thus with no gay young world<br>"'But the grand old Church: she tempts me of the two!'<br>"Renounce the world? Nay, keep and give it us!<br>"Let us have you, and boast of what you bring.<br>"We want the pick o' the earth to practise with,<br>"Not its offscouring, halt and deaf and blind<br>"In soul and body. There's a rubble-stone<br>"Unfit for the front o' the building, stuff to stow<br>"In a gap behind and keep us weather-tight;<br>"There's porphyry for the prominent place. Good lack!<br>"Saint Paul has had enough and to spare, I trow,<br>"Of ragged run-away Onesimus:<br>"He wants the right-hand with the signet-ring<br>"Of King Agrippa, now, to shake and use.<br>"I have a heavy scholar cloistered up,<br>"Close under lock and key, kept at his task<br>"Of letting Fénelon know the fool he is,<br>"In a book I promise Christendom next Spring.<br>"Why, if he covets so much meat, the clown,<br>"As a lark's wing next Friday, or, any day,<br>"Diversion beyond catching his own fleas,<br>"He shall be properly swinged, I promise him.<br>"But you, who are so quite another paste<br>"Of a man,—do you obey me? Cultivate<br>"Assiduous that superior gift you have<br>"Of making madrigals—(who told me? Ah!)<br>"Get done a Marinesque Adoniad straight<br>"With a pulse o' the blood a-pricking, here and there,<br>"That I may tell the lady 'And he's ours!'"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">So I became a priest: those terms changed all,<br>I was good enough for that, nor cheated so;<br>I could live thus and still hold head erect.<br>Now you see why I may have been before<br>A fribble and coxcomb, yet, as priest, break word<br>Nowise, to make you disbelieve me now.<br>I need that you should know my truth. Well, then,<br>According to prescription did I live,<br>—Conformed myself, both read the breviary<br>And wrote the rhymes, was punctual to my place<br>I' the Pieve, and as diligent at my post<br>Where beauty and fashion rule. I throve apace,<br>Sub-deacon, Canon, the authority<br>For delicate play at tarocs, and arbiter<br>O' the magnitude of fan-mounts: all the while<br>Wanting no whit the advantage of a hint<br>Benignant to the promising pupil,—thus:<br>"Enough attention to the Countess now,<br>"The young one; 't is her mother rules the roast,<br>"We know where, and puts in a word: go pay<br>"Devoir to-morrow morning after mass!<br>"Break that rash promise to preach, Passion-week!<br>"Has it escaped you the Archbishop grunts<br>"And snuffles when one grieves to tell his Grace<br>"No soul dares treat the subject of the day<br>"Since his own masterly handling it (ha, ha!)<br>"Five years ago,—when somebody could help<br>"And touch up an odd phrase in time of need,<br>"(He, he!)—and somebody helps you, my son!<br>"Therefore, don't prove so indispensable<br>"At the Pieve, sit more loose i' the seat, nor grow<br>"A fixture by attendance morn and eve!<br>"Arezzo's just a haven midway Rome—<br>"Rome's the eventual harbour,—make for port,<br>"Crowd sail, crack cordage! And your cargo be<br>"A polished presence, a genteel manner, wit<br>"At will, and tact at every pore of you!<br>"I sent our lump of learning, Brother Clout,<br>"And Father Slouch, our piece of piety,<br>"To see Rome and try suit the Cardinal.<br>"Thither they clump-clumped, beads and book in hand,<br>"And ever since 't is meat for man and maid<br>"How both flopped down, prayed blessing on bent pate<br>"Bald many an inch beyond the tonsure's need,<br>"Never once dreaming, the two moony dolts,<br>"There's nothing moves his Eminence so much<br>"As—far from all this awe at sanctitude—<br>"Heads that wag, eyes that twinkle, modified mirth<br>"At the closet-lectures on the Latin tongue<br>"A lady learns so much by, we know where.<br>"Why, body o' Bacchus, you should crave his rule<br>"For pauses in the elegiac couplet, chasms<br>"Permissible only to Catullus! There!<br>"Now go to duty: brisk, break Priscian's head<br>"By reading the day's office—there's no help.<br>"You've Ovid in your poke to plaster that;<br>"Amen's at the end of all: then sup with me!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Well, after three or four years of this life,<br>In prosecution of my calling, I<br>Found myself at the theatre one night<br>With a brother Canon, in a mood and mind<br>Proper enough for the place, amused or no:<br>When I saw enter, stand, and seat herself<br>A lady, young, tall, beautiful, strange and sad.<br>It was as when, in our cathedral once,<br>As I got yawningly through matin-song,<br>I saw facchini bear a burden up,<br>Base it on the high-altar, break away<br>A board or two, and leave the thing inside<br>Lofty and lone: and lo, when next I looked,<br>There was the Rafael! I was still one stare,<br>When—"Nay, I'll make her give you back your gaze"—<br>Said Canon Conti; and at the word he tossed<br>A paper-twist of comfits to her lap,<br>And dodged and in a trice was at my back<br>Nodding from over my shoulder. Then she turned,<br>Looked our way, smiled the beautiful sad strange smile.<br>"Is not she fair? 'T is my new cousin," said he:<br>"The fellow lurking there i' the black o' the box<br>"Is Guido, the old scapegrace: she's his wife,<br>"Married three years since: how his Countship sulks!<br>"He has brought little back from Rome beside,<br>"After the bragging, bullying. A fair face,<br>"And—they do say—a pocketful of gold<br>"When he can worry both her parents dead.<br>"I don't go much there, for the chamber's cold<br>"And the coffee pale. I got a turn at first<br>"Paying my duty: I observed they crouched<br>"—The two old frightened family spectres—close<br>"In a corner, each on each like mouse on mouse<br>"I' the cat's cage: ever since, I stay at home.<br>"Hallo, there's Guido, the black, mean and small,<br>"Bends his brows on us—please to bend your own<br>"On the shapely nether limbs of Light-skirts there<br>"By way of a diversion! I was a fool<br>"To fling the sweetmeats. Prudence, for God's love!<br>"To-morrow I'll make my peace, e'en tell some fib,<br>"Try if I can't find means to take you there."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">That night and next day did the gaze endure,<br>Burnt to my brain, as sunbeam thro' shut eyes,<br>And not once changed the beautiful sad strange smile.<br>At vespers Conti leaned beside my seat<br>I' the choir,—part said, part sung—"In ex-cel-sis—<br>"All's to no purpose; I have louted low,<br>"But he saw you staring—quia sub—don't incline<br>"To know you nearer: him we would not hold<br>"For Hercules,—the man would lick your shoe<br>"If you and certain efficacious friends<br>"Managed him warily,—but there's the wife:<br>"Spare her, because he beats her, as it is,<br>"She's breaking her heart quite fast enough—jam tu—<br>"So, be you rational and make amends<br>"With little Light-skirts yonder—in secula<br>"Secu-lo-o-o-o-rum. Ah, you rogue! Every one knows<br>"What great dame she makes jealous: one against one,<br>"Play, and win both!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Sirs, ere the week was out,<br>I saw and said to myself "Light-skirts hides teeth<br>"Would make a dog sick,—the great dame shows spite<br>"Should drive a cat mad: 't is but poor work this—<br>"Counting one's fingers till the sonnet's crowned.<br>"I doubt much if Marino really be<br>"A better bard than Dante after all.<br>"'T is more amusing to go pace at eve<br>"I' the Duomo,—watch the day's last gleam outside<br>"Turn, as into a skirt of God's own robe,<br>"Those lancet-windows' jewelled miracle,—<br>"Than go eat the Archbishop's ortolans,<br>"Digest his jokes. Luckily Lent is near:<br>"Who cares to look will find me in my stall<br>"At the Pieve, constant to this faith at least—<br>"Never to write a canzonet any more."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">So, next week, 't was my patron spoke abrupt,<br>In altered guise. "Young man, can it be true<br>"That after all your promise of sound fruit,<br>"You have kept away from Countess young or old<br>"And gone play truant in church all day long?<br>"Are you turning Molinist?" I answered quick:<br>"Sir, what if I turned Christian? It might be.<br>"The fact is, I am troubled in my mind,<br>"Beset and pressed hard by some novel thoughts.<br>"This your Arezzo is a limited world;<br>"There's a strange Pope,—'t is said, a priest who thinks.<br>"Rome is the port, you say: to Rome I go.<br>"I will live alone, one does so in a crowd,<br>"And look into my heart a little." "Lent<br>"Ended,"—I told friends—"I shall go to Rome."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">One evening I was sitting in a muse<br>Over the opened "Summa," darkened round<br>By the mid-March twilight, thinking how my life<br>Had shaken under me,—broke short indeed<br>And showed the gap 'twixt what is, what should be,—<br>And into what abysm the soul may slip,<br>Leave aspiration here, achievement there,<br>Lacking omnipotence to connect extremes—<br>Thinking moreover … oh, thinking, if you like,<br>How utterly dissociated was I<br>A priest and celibate, from the sad strange wife<br>Of Guido,—just as an instance to the point,<br>Nought more,—how I had a whole store of strengths<br>Eating into my heart, which craved employ,<br>And she, perhaps, need of a finger's help,—<br>And yet there was no way in the wide world<br>To stretch out mine and so relieve myself,—<br>How when the page o' the Summa preached its best,<br>Her smile kept glowing out of it, as to mock<br>The silence we could break by no one word,—<br>There came a tap without the chamber-door,<br>And a whisper; when I bade who tapped speak out.<br>And, in obedience to my summons, last<br>In glided a masked muffled mystery,<br>Laid lightly a letter on the opened book,<br>Then stood with folded arms and foot demure,<br>Pointing as if to mark the minutes' flight.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I took the letter, read to the effect<br>That she, I lately flung the comfits to,<br>Had a warm heart to give me in exchange,<br>And gave it,—loved me and confessed it thus,<br>And bade me render thanks by word of mouth,<br>Going that night to such a side o' the house<br>Where the small terrace overhangs a street<br>Blind and deserted, not the street in front:<br>Her husband being away, the surly patch,<br>At his villa of Vittiano.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"And you?"—I asked:<br>"What may you be?" "Count Guido's kind of maid—<br>"Most of us have two functions in his house.<br>"We all hate him, the lady suffers much,<br>"'T is just we show compassion, furnish help,<br>"Specially since her choice is fixed so well.<br>"What answer may I bring to cheer the sweet<br>"Pompilia?"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Then I took a pen and wrote<br>"No more of this! That you are fair, I know:<br>"But other thoughts now occupy my mind.<br>"I should not thus have played the insensible<br>"Once on a time. What made you,—may one ask,—<br>"Marry your hideous husband? 'T was a fault,<br>"And now you taste the fruit of it. Farewell."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"There!" smiled I as she snatched it and was gone—<br>"There, let the jealous miscreant,—Guido's self,<br>"Whose mean soul grins through this transparent trick,—<br>"Be baulked so far, defrauded of his aim!<br>"What fund of satisfaction to the knave,<br>"Had I kicked this his messenger down stairs,<br>"Trussed to the middle of her impudence,<br>"And set his heart at ease so! No, indeed!<br>"There's the reply which he shall turn and twist<br>"At pleasure, snuff at till his brain grow drunk,<br>"As the bear does when he finds a scented glove<br>"That puzzles him,—a hand and yet no hand,<br>"Of other perfume than his own foul paw!<br>"Last month, I had doubtless chosen to play the dupe,<br>"Accepted the mock-invitation, kept<br>"The sham appointment, cudgel beneath cloak,<br>"Prepared myself to pull the appointer's self<br>"Out of the window from his hiding-place<br>"Behind the gown of this part-messenger<br>"Part-mistress who would personate the wife.<br>"Such had seemed once a jest permissible:<br>"Now I am not i' the mood."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Back next morn brought<br>The messenger, a second letter in hand.<br>"You are cruel, Thyrsis, and Myrtilla moans<br>"Neglected but adores you, makes request<br>"For mercy: why is it you dare not come?<br>"Such virtue is scarce natural to your age.<br>"You must love someone else; I hear you do,<br>"The Baron's daughter or the Advocate's wife,<br>"Or both,—all's one, would you make me the third—<br>"I take the crumbs from table gratefully<br>"Nor grudge who feasts there. 'Faith, I blush and blaze!<br>"Yet if I break all bounds, there's reason sure.<br>"Are you determinedly bent on Rome?<br>"I am wretched here, a monster tortures me:<br>"Carry me with you! Come and say you will!<br>"Concert this very evening! Do not write!<br>"I am ever at the window of my room<br>"Over the terrace, at the Ave. Come!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I questioned—lifting half the woman's mask<br>To let her smile loose. "So, you gave my line<br>"To the merry lady?" "She kissed off the wax,<br>"And put what paper was not kissed away,<br>"In her bosom to go burn: but merry, no!<br>"She wept all night when evening brought no friend,<br>"Alone, the unkind missive at her breast;<br>"Thus Philomel, the thorn at her breast too,<br>"Sings" … "Writes this second letter?" "Even so!<br>"Then she may peep at vespers forth?"—"What risk<br>"Do we run o' the husband?"—"Ah,—no risk at all!<br>"He is more stupid even than jealous. Ah—<br>"That was the reason? Why, the man's away!<br>"Beside, his bugbear is that friend of yours,<br>"Fat little Canon Conti. He fears him,<br>"How should he dream of you? I told you truth:<br>"He goes to the villa at Vittiano—'t is<br>"The time when Spring-sap rises in the vine—<br>"Spends the night there. And then his wife's a child:<br>"Does he think a child outwits him? A mere child:<br>"Yet so full grown, a dish for any duke.<br>"Don't quarrel longer with such cates, but come!"<br>I wrote "In vain do you solicit me.<br>"I am a priest: and you are wedded wife,<br>"Whatever kind of brute your husband prove.<br>"I have scruples, in short. Yet should you really show<br>"Sign at the window … but nay, best be good!<br>"My thoughts are elsewhere," "Take her that!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"Again<br>"Let the incarnate meanness, cheat and spy,<br>"Mean to the marrow of him, make his heart<br>"His food, anticipate hell's worm once more!<br>"Let him watch shivering at the window—ay,<br>"And let this hybrid, this his light-of-love<br>"And lackey-of-lies,—a sage economy,—<br>"Paid with embracings for the rank brass coin,—<br>"Let her report and make him chuckle o'er<br>"The break-down of my resolution now,<br>"And lour at disappointment in good time!<br>"—So tantalize and so enrage by turns,<br>"Until the two fall each on the other like<br>"Two famished spiders, as the coveted fly<br>"That toys long, leaves their net and them at last!"<br>And so the missives followed thick and fast<br>For a month, say,—I still came at every turn<br>On the soft sly adder, endlong 'neath my tread.<br>I was met i' the street, made sign to in the church,<br>A slip was found i' the door-sill, scribbled word<br>'Twixt page and page o' the prayer-book in my place.<br>A crumpled thing dropped even before my feet,<br>Pushed through the blind, above the terrace-rail,<br>As I passed, by day, the very window once.<br>And ever from corners would be peering up<br>The messenger, with the self-same demand<br>"Obdurate still, no flesh but adamant?<br>"Nothing to cure the wound, assuage the throe<br>"O' the sweetest lamb that ever loved a bear?"<br>And ever my one answer in one tone—<br>"Go your ways, temptress! Let a priest read, pray,<br>"Unplagued of vain talk, visions not for him!<br>"In the end, you'll have your will and ruin me!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">One day, a variation: thus I read:<br>"You have gained little by timidity.<br>"My husband has found out my love at length,<br>"Sees cousin Conti was the stalking-horse,<br>"And you the game he covered, poor fat soul!<br>"My husband is a formidable foe,<br>"Will stick at nothing to destroy you. Stand<br>"Prepared, or better, run till you reach Rome!<br>"I bade you visit me, when the last place<br>"My tyrant would have turned suspicious at,<br>"Or cared to seek you in, was … why say, where?<br>"But now all's changed: beside, the season's past<br>"At the villa,—wants the master's eye no more.<br>"Anyhow, I beseech you, stay away<br>"From the window! He might well be posted there."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I wrote—"You raise my courage, or call up<br>"My curiosity, who am but man.<br>"Tell him he owns the palace, not the street<br>"Under—that's his and yours and mine alike.<br>"If it should please me pad the path this eve,<br>"Guido will have two troubles, first to get<br>"Into a rage and then get out again.<br>"Be cautious, though: at the Ave!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">You of the Court!<br>When I stood question here and reached this point<br>O' the narrative,—search notes and see and say<br>If someone did not interpose with smile<br>And sneer, "And prithee why so confident<br>"That the husband must, of all needs, not the wife,<br>"Fabricate thus,—what if the lady loved?<br>"What if she wrote the letters?"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Learned Sir,<br>I told you there's a picture in our church.<br>Well, if a low-browed verger sidled up<br>Bringing me, like a blotch, on his prod's point,<br>A transfixed scorpion, let the reptile writhe,<br>And then said "See a thing that Rafael made—<br>"This venom issued from Madonna's mouth!"<br>I should reply, "Rather, the soul of you<br>"Has issued from your body, like from like,<br>"By way of the ordure-corner!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">But no less,<br>I tired of the same long black teasing lie<br>Obtruded thus at every turn; the pest<br>Was far too near the picture, anyhow:<br>One does Madonna service, making clowns<br>Remove their dung-heap from the sacristy.<br>"I will to the window, as he tempts," said I:<br>"Yes, whom the easy love has failed allure,<br>"This new bait of adventure tempts,—thinks he.<br>"Though the imprisoned lady keeps afar,<br>"There will they lie in ambush, heads alert,<br>"Kith, kin, and Count mustered to bite my heel.<br>"No mother nor brother viper of the brood<br>"Shall scuttle off without the instructive bruise!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">So I went: crossed street and street: "The next street's turn,<br>"I stand beneath the terrace, see, above,<br>"The black of the ambush-window. Then, in place<br>"Of hand's throw of soft prelude over lute,<br>"And cough that clears way for the ditty last,"—<br>I began to laugh already—"he will have<br>"'Out of the hole you hide in, on to the front,<br>"'Count Guido Franceschini, show yourself!<br>"'Hear what a man thinks of a thing like you,<br>"'And after, take this foulness in your face!'"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">The words lay living on my lip, I made<br>The one-turn more—and there at the window stood,<br>Framed in its black square length, with lamp in hand,<br>Pompilia; the same great, grave, griefful air<br>As stands i' the dusk, on altar that I know,<br>Left alone with one moonbeam in her cell,<br>Our Lady of all the Sorrows. Ere I knelt—<br>Assured myself that she was flesh and blood—<br>She had looked one look and vanished.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I thought—"Just so:<br>"It was herself, they have set her there to watch—<br>"Stationed to see some wedding band go by,<br>"On fair pretence that she must bless the bride,<br>"Or wait some funeral with friends wind past,<br>"And crave peace for the corpse that claims its due.<br>"She never dreams they used her for a snare,<br>"And now withdraw the bait has served its turn.<br>"Well done, the husband, who shall fare the worse!"<br>And on my lip again was—"Out with thee,<br>"Guido!" When all at once she re-appeared;<br>But, this time, on the terrace overhead,<br>So close above me, she could almost touch<br>My head if she bent down; and she did bend,<br>While I stood still as stone, all eye, all ear.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">She began—"You have sent me letters, Sir:<br>"I have read none, I can neither read nor write;<br>"But she you gave them to, a woman here,<br>"One of the people in whose power I am,<br>"Partly explained their sense, I think, to me<br>"Obliged to listen while she inculcates<br>"That you, a priest, can dare love me, a wife,<br>"Desire to live or die as I shall bid,<br>"(She makes me listen if I will or no)<br>"Because you saw my face a single time.<br>"It cannot be she says the thing you mean;<br>"Such wickedness were deadly to us both:<br>"But good true love would help me now so much—<br>"I tell myself, you may mean good and true.<br>"You offer me, I seem to understand,<br>"Because I am in poverty and starve,<br>"Much money, where one piece would save my life.<br>"The silver cup upon the altar-cloth<br>"Is neither yours to give nor mine to take;<br>"But I might take one bit of bread therefrom,<br>"Since I am starving, and return the rest,<br>"Yet do no harm: this is my very case.<br>"I am in that strait, I may not dare abstain<br>"From so much of assistance as would bring<br>"The guilt of theft on neither you nor me;<br>"But no superfluous particle of aid.<br>"I think, if you will let me state my case,<br>"Even had you been so fancy-fevered here,<br>"Not your sound self, you must grow healthy now—<br>"Care only to bestow what I can take.<br>"That it is only you in the wide world,<br>"Knowing me nor in thought nor word nor deed,<br>"Who, all unprompted save by your own heart,<br>"Come proffering assistance now,—were strange<br>"But that my whole life is so strange: as strange<br>"It is, my husband whom I have not wronged<br>"Should hate and harm me. For his own soul's sake,<br>"Hinder the harm! But there is something more,<br>"And that the strangest: it has got to be<br>"Somehow for my sake too, and yet not mine,<br>"—This is a riddle—for some kind of sake<br>"Not any clearer to myself than you,<br>"And yet as certain as that I draw breath,—<br>"I would fain live, not die—oh no, not die!<br>"My case is, I was dwelling happily<br>"At Rome with those dear Comparini, called<br>"Father and mother to me; when at once<br>"I found I had become Count Guido's wife:<br>"Who then, not waiting for a moment, changed<br>"Into a fury of fire, if once he was<br>"Merely a man: his face threw fire at mine,<br>"He laid a hand on me that burned all peace,<br>"All joy, all hope, and last all fear away,<br>"Dipping the bough of life, so pleasant once,<br>"In fire which shrivelled leaf and bud alike,<br>"Burning not only present life but past,<br>"Which you might think was safe beyond his reach.<br>"He reached it, though, since that beloved pair,<br>"My father once, my mother all those years,<br>"That loved me so, now say I dreamed a dream<br>"And bid me wake, henceforth no child of theirs,<br>"Never in all the time their child at all.<br>"Do you understand? I cannot: yet so it is.<br>"Just so I say of you that proffer help:<br>"I cannot understand what prompts your soul,<br>"I simply needs must see that it is so,<br>"Only one strange and wonderful thing more.<br>"They came here with me, those two dear ones, kept<br>"All the old love up, till my husband, till<br>"His people here so tortured them, they fled.<br>"And now, is it because I grow in flesh<br>"And spirit one with him their torturer,<br>"That they, renouncing him, must cast off me?<br>"If I were graced by God to have a child,<br>"Could I one day deny God graced me so?<br>"Then, since my husband hates me, I shall break<br>"No law that reigns in this fell house of hate,<br>"By using—letting have effect so much<br>"Of hate as hides me from that whole of hate<br>"Would take my life which I want and must have—<br>"Just as I take from your excess of love<br>"Enough to save my life with, all I need.<br>"The Archbishop said to murder me were sin:<br>"My leaving Guido were a kind of death<br>"With no sin,—more death, he must answer for.<br>"Hear now what death to him and life to you<br>"I wish to pay and owe. Take me to Rome!<br>"You go to Rome, the servant makes me hear.<br>"Take me as you would take a dog, I think,<br>"Masterless left for strangers to maltreat:<br>"Take me home like that—leave me in the house<br>"Where the father and the mother are; and soon<br>"They'll come to know and call me by my name,<br>"Their child once more, since child I am, for all<br>"They now forget me, which is the worst o' the dream—<br>"And the way to end dreams is to break them, stand,<br>"Walk, go: then help me to stand, walk and go!<br>"The Governor said the strong should help the weak:<br>"You know how weak the strongest women are.<br>"How could I find my way there by myself?<br>"I cannot even call out, make them hear—<br>"Just as in dreams: I have tried and proved the fact.<br>"I have told this story and more to good great men,<br>"The Archbishop and the Governor: they smiled.<br>"'Stop your mouth, fair one!'—presently they frowned,<br>"'Get you gone, disengage you from our feet!'<br>"I went in my despair to an old priest,<br>"Only a friar, no great man like these two,<br>"But good, the Augustinian, people name<br>"Romano,—he confessed me two months since:<br>"He fears God, why then needs he fear the world?<br>"And when he questioned how it came about<br>"That I was found in danger of a sin—<br>"Despair of any help from providence,—<br>"'Since, though your husband outrage you,' said he,<br>"'That is a case too common, the wives die<br>"'Or live, but do not sin so deep as this'—<br>"Then I told—what I never will tell you—<br>"How, worse than husband's hate, I had to bear<br>"The love,—soliciting to shame called love,—<br>"Of his brother,—the young idle priest i' the house<br>"With only the devil to meet there. 'This is grave—<br>"'Yes, we must interfere: I counsel,—write<br>"'To those who used to be your parents once,<br>"'Of dangers here, bid them convey you hence!'<br>"'But,' said I, 'when I neither read nor write?'<br>"Then he took pity and promised 'I will write.'<br>"If he did so,—why, they are dumb or dead:<br>"Either they give no credit to the tale,<br>"Or else, wrapped wholly up in their own joy<br>"Of such escape, they care not who cries, still<br>"I' the clutches. Anyhow, no word arrives.<br>"All such extravagance and dreadfulness<br>"Seems incident to dreaming, cured one way,—<br>"Wake me! The letter I received this morn,<br>"Said—if the woman spoke your very sense—<br>"'You would die for me:' I can believe it now:<br>"For now the dream gets to involve yourself.<br>"First of all, you seemed wicked and not good,<br>"In writing me those letters: you came in<br>"Like a thief upon me. I this morning said<br>"In my extremity, entreat the thief!<br>"Try if he have in him no honest touch!<br>"A thief might save me from a murderer.<br>"'T was a thief said the last kind word to Christ:<br>"Christ took the kindness and forgave the theft:<br>"And so did I prepare what I now say.<br>"But now, that you stand and I see your face,<br>"Though you have never uttered word yet,—well, I know,<br>"Here too has been dream-work, delusion too,<br>"And that at no time, you with the eyes here,<br>"Ever intended to do wrong by me,<br>"Nor wrote such letters therefore. It is false,<br>"And you are true, have been true, will be true.<br>"To Rome then,—when is it you take me there?<br>"Each minute lost is mortal. When?—I ask."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I answered "It shall be when it can be.<br>"I will go hence and do your pleasure, find<br>"The sure and speedy means of travel, then<br>"Come back and take you to your friends in Rome.<br>"There wants a carriage, money and the rest,—<br>"A day's work by to-morrow at this time.<br>"How shall I see you and assure escape?"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">She replied, "Pass, to-morrow at this hour.<br>"If I am at the open window, well:<br>"If I am absent, drop a handkerchief<br>"And walk by! I shall see from where I watch,<br>"And know that all is done. Return next eve,<br>"And next, and so till we can meet and speak!"<br>"To-morrow at this hour I pass," said I.<br>She was withdrawn.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Here is another point<br>I bid you pause at. When I told thus far,<br>Someone said, subtly, "Here at least was found<br>"Your confidence in error,—you perceived<br>"The spirit of the letters, in a sort,<br>"Had been the lady's, if the body should be<br>"Supplied by Guido: say, he forged them all!<br>"Here was the unforged fact—she sent for you,<br>"Spontaneously elected you to help,<br>"—What men call, loved you: Guido read her mind,<br>"Gave it expression to assure the world<br>"The case was just as he foresaw: he wrote,<br>"She spoke."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Sirs, that first simile serves still,—<br>That falsehood of a scorpion hatched, I say,<br>Nowhere i' the world but in Madonna's mouth.<br>Go on! Suppose, that falsehood foiled, next eve<br>Pictured Madonna raised her painted hand,<br>Fixed the face Rafael bent above the Babe,<br>On my face as I flung me at her feet:<br>Such miracle vouchsafed and manifest,<br>Would that prove the first lying tale was true?<br>Pompilia spoke, and I at once received,<br>Accepted my own fact, my miracle<br>Self-authorized and self-explained,—she chose<br>To summon me and signify her choice.<br>Afterward,—oh! I gave a passing glance<br>To a certain ugly cloud-shape, goblin-shred<br>Of hell-smoke hurrying past the splendid moon<br>Out now to tolerate no darkness more,<br>And saw right through the thing that tried to pass<br>For truth and solid, not an empty lie:<br>"So, he not only forged the words for her<br>"But words for me, made letters he called mine:<br>"What I sent, he retained, gave these in place,<br>"All by the mistress-messenger! As I<br>"Recognized her, at potency of truth,<br>"So she, by the crystalline soul, knew me,<br>"Never mistook the signs. Enough of this—<br>"Let the wraith go to nothingness again,<br>"Here is the orb, have only thought for her!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"Thought?" nay, Sirs, what shall follow was not thought:<br>I have thought sometimes, and thought long and hard.<br>I have stood before, gone round a serious thing,<br>Tasked my whole mind to touch and clasp it close,<br>As I stretch forth my arm to touch this bar.<br>God and man, and what duty I owe both,—<br>I dare to say I have confronted these<br>In thought: but no such faculty helped here.<br>I put forth no thought,—powerless, all that night<br>I paced the city: it was the first Spring.<br>By the invasion I lay passive to,<br>In rushed new things, the old were rapt away;<br>Alike abolished—the imprisonment<br>Of the outside air, the inside weight o' the world<br>That pulled me down. Death meant, to spurn the ground.<br>Soar to the sky,—die well and you do that.<br>The very immolation made the bliss;<br>Death was the heart of life, and all the harm<br>My folly had crouched to avoid, now proved a veil<br>Hiding all gain my wisdom strove to grasp:<br>As if the intense centre of the flame<br>Should turn a heaven to that devoted fly<br>Which hitherto, sophist alike and sage,<br>Saint Thomas with his sober grey goose-quill,<br>And sinner Plato by Cephisian reed,<br>Would fain, pretending just the insect's good,<br>Whisk off, drive back, consign to shade again.<br>Into another state, under new rule<br>I knew myself was passing swift and sure;<br>Whereof the initiatory pang approached,<br>Felicitous annoy, as bitter-sweet<br>As when the virgin-band, the victors chaste,<br>Feel at the end the earthly garments drop,<br>And rise with something of a rosy shame<br>Into immortal nakedness: so I<br>Lay, and let come the proper throe would thrill<br>Into the ecstasy and outthrob pain.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I' the grey of dawn it was I found myself<br>Facing the pillared front o' the Pieve—mine,<br>My church: it seemed to say for the first time<br>"But am not I the Bride, the mystic love<br>"O' the Lamb, who took thy plighted troth, my priest,<br>"To fold thy warm heart on my heart of stone<br>"And freeze thee nor unfasten any more?<br>"This is a fleshly woman,—let the free<br>"Bestow their life-blood, thou art pulseless now!"<br>See! Day by day I had risen and left this church<br>At the signal waved me by some foolish fan,<br>With half a curse and half a pitying smile<br>For the monk I stumbled over in my haste,<br>Prostrate and corpse-like at the altar-foot<br>Intent on his corona: then the church<br>Was ready with her quip, if word conduced,<br>To quicken my pace nor stop for prating—"There!<br>"Be thankful you are no such ninny, go<br>"Rather to teach a black-eyed novice cards<br>"Than gabble Latin and protrude that nose<br>"Smoothed to a sheep's through no brains and much faith!"<br>That sort of incentive! Now the church changed tone—<br>Now, when I found out first that life and death<br>Are means to an end, that passion uses both,<br>Indisputably mistress of the man<br>Whose form of worship is self-sacrifice:<br>Now, from the stone lungs sighed the scrannel voice<br>"Leave that live passion, come be dead with me!"<br>As if, i' the fabled garden, I had gone<br>On great adventure, plucked in ignorance<br>Hedge-fruit, and feasted to satiety,<br>Laughing at such high fame for hips and haws,<br>And scorned the achievement: then come all at once<br>O' the prize o' the place, the thing of perfect gold,<br>The apple's self: and, scarce my eye on that,<br>Was 'ware as well o' the seven-fold dragon's watch.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Sirs, I obeyed. Obedience was too strange,—<br>This new thing that had been struck into me<br>By the look o' the lady,—to dare disobey<br>The first authoritative word. 'T was God's.<br>I had been lifted to the level of her,<br>Could take such sounds into my sense. I said<br>"We two are cognisant o' the Master now;<br>"She it is bids me bow the head: how true,<br>"I am a priest! I see the function here;<br>"I thought the other way self-sacrifice:<br>"This is the true, seals up the perfect sum.<br>"I pay it, sit down, silently obey."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">So, I went home. Dawn broke, noon broadened, I—<br>I sat stone-still, let time run over me.<br>The sun slanted into my room, had reached<br>The west. I opened book,—Aquinas blazed<br>With one black name only on the white page.<br>I looked up, saw the sunset: vespers rang:<br>"She counts the minutes till I keep my word<br>"And come say all is ready. I am a priest.<br>"Duty to God is duty to her: I think<br>"God, who created her, will save her too<br>"Some new way, by one miracle the more,<br>"Without me. Then, prayer may avail perhaps."<br>I went to my own place i' the Pieve, read<br>The office: I was back at home again<br>Sitting i' the dark. "Could she but know—but know<br>"That, were there good in this distinct from God's,<br>"Really good as it reached her, though procured<br>"By a sin of mine,—I should sin: God forgives.<br>"She knows it is no fear withholds me: fear?<br>"Of what? Suspense here is the terrible thing.<br>"If she should, as she counts the minutes, come<br>"On the fantastic notion that I fear<br>"The world now, fear the Archbishop, fear perhaps<br>"Count Guido, he who, having forged the lies,<br>"May wait the work, attend the effect,—I fear<br>"The sword of Guido! Let God see to that—<br>"Hating lies, let not her believe a lie!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Again the morning found me. "I will work,<br>"Tie down my foolish thoughts. Thank God so far!<br>"I have saved her from a scandal, stopped the tongues<br>"Had broken else into a cackle and hiss<br>"Around the noble name. Duty is still<br>"Wisdom: I have been wise." So the day wore.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">At evening—"But, achieving victory,<br>"I must not blink the priest's peculiar part,<br>"Nor shrink to counsel, comfort: priest and friend—<br>"How do we discontinue to be friends?<br>"I will go minister, advise her seek<br>"Help at the source,—above all, not despair:<br>"There may be other happier help at hand.<br>"I hope it,—wherefore then neglect to say?"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">There she stood—leaned there, for the second time,<br>Over the terrace, looked at me, then spoke:<br>"Why is it you have suffered me to stay<br>"Breaking my heart two days more than was need?<br>"Why delay help, your own heart yearns to give?<br>"You are again here, in the self-same mind,<br>"I see here, steadfast in the face of you,—<br>"You grudge to do no one thing that I ask.<br>"Why then is nothing done? You know my need.<br>"Still, through God's pity on me, there is time<br>"And one day more: shall I be saved or no?"<br>I answered—"Lady, waste no thought, no word<br>"Even to forgive me! Care for what I care—<br>"Only! Now follow me as I were fate!<br>"Leave this house in the dark to-morrow night,<br>"Just before daybreak:—there's new moon this eve—<br>"It sets, and then begins the solid black.<br>"Descend, proceed to the Torrione, step<br>"Over the low dilapidated wall,<br>"Take San Clemente, there's no other gate<br>"Unguarded at the hour: some paces thence<br>"An inn stands; cross to it; I shall be there."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">She answered, "If I can but find the way.<br>"But I shall find it. Go now!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I did go,<br>Took rapidly the route myself prescribed,<br>Stopped at Torrione, climbed the ruined place,<br>Proved that the gate was practicable, reached<br>The inn, no eye, despite the dark, could miss,<br>Knocked there and entered, made the host secure:<br>"With Caponsacchi it is ask and have;<br>"I know my betters. Are you bound for Rome?<br>"I get swift horse and trusty man," said he.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Then I retraced my steps, was found once more<br>In my own house for the last time: there lay<br>The broad pale opened Summa. "Shut his book,<br>"There's other showing! 'T was a Thomas too<br>"Obtained,—more favoured than his namesake here,—<br>"A gift, tied faith fast, foiled the tug of doubt,—<br>"Our Lady's girdle; down he saw it drop<br>"As she ascended into heaven, they say:<br>"He kept that safe and bade all doubt adieu.<br>"I too have seen a lady and hold a grace."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I know not how the night passed: morning broke;<br>Presently came my servant. "Sir, this eve—<br>"Do you forget?" I started. "How forget?<br>"What is it you know?" "With due submission, Sir,<br>"This being last Monday in the month but one<br>"And a vigil, since to-morrow is Saint George,<br>"And feast day, and moreover day for copes,<br>"And Canon Conti now away a month,<br>"And Canon Crispi sour because, forsooth,<br>"You let him sulk in stall and bear the brunt<br>"Of the octave … Well, Sir, 't is important!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"True!<br>"Hearken, I have to start for Rome this night.<br>"No word, lest Crispi overboil and burst!<br>"Provide me with a laic dress! Throw dust<br>"I' the Canon's eye, stop his tongue's scandal so!<br>"See there's a sword in case of accident."<br>I knew the knave, the knave knew me.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And thus<br>Through each familiar hindrance of the day<br>Did I make steadily for its hour and end,—<br>Felt time's old barrier-growth of right and fit<br>Give way through all its twines, and let me go.<br>Use and wont recognized the excepted man,<br>Let speed the special service,—and I sped<br>Till, at the dead between midnight and morn,<br>There was I at the goal, before the gate,<br>With a tune in the ears, low leading up to loud,<br>A light in the eyes, faint that would soon be flare,<br>Ever some spiritual witness new and new<br>In faster frequence, crowding solitude<br>To watch the way o' the warfare,—till, at last,<br>When the ecstatic minute must bring birth,<br>Began a whiteness in the distance, waxed<br>Whiter and whiter, near grew and more near,<br>Till it was she: there did Pompilia come:<br>The white I saw shine through her was her soul's,<br>Certainly, for the body was one black,<br>Black from head down to foot. She did not speak,<br>Glided into the carriage,—so a cloud<br>Gathers the moon up. "By San Spirito,<br>"To Rome, as if the road burned underneath!<br>"Reach Rome, then hold my head in pledge, I pay<br>"The run and the risk to heart's content!" Just that<br>I said,—then, in another tick of time,<br>Sprang, was beside her, she and I alone.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">So it began, our flight thro' dusk to clear,<br>Through day and night and day again to night<br>Once more, and to last dreadful dawn of all.<br>Sirs, how should I lie quiet in my grave<br>Unless you suffer me wring, drop by drop,<br>My brain dry, make a riddance of the drench<br>Of minutes with a memory in each,<br>Recorded motion, breath or look of hers,<br>Which poured forth would present you one pure glass,<br>Mirror you plain,—as God's sea, glassed in gold,<br>His saints,—the perfect soul Pompilia? Men,<br>You must know that a man gets drunk with truth<br>Stagnant inside him! Oh, they've killed her, Sirs!<br>Can I be calm?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Calmly! Each incident<br>Proves, I maintain, that action of the flight<br>For the true thing it was. The first faint scratch<br>O' the stone will test its nature, teach its worth<br>To idiots who name Parian—coprolite.<br>After all, I shall give no glare—at best<br>Only display you certain scattered lights<br>Lamping the rush and roll of the abyss:<br>Nothing but here and there a fire-point pricks<br>Wavelet from wavelet: well!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">For the first hour<br>We both were silent in the night, I know:<br>Sometimes I did not see nor understand.<br>Blackness engulphed me,—partial stupor, say—<br>Then I would break way, breathe through the surprise,<br>And be aware again, and see who sat<br>In the dark vest with the white face and hands.<br>I said to myself—"I have caught it, I conceive<br>"The mind o' the mystery: 't is the way they wake<br>"And wait, two martyrs somewhere in a tomb<br>"Each by each as their blessing was to die;<br>"Some signal they are promised and expect,—<br>"When to arise before the trumpet scares:<br>"So, through the whole course of the world they wait<br>"The last day, but so fearless and so safe!<br>"No otherwise, in safety and not fear,<br>"I lie, because she lies too by my side."<br>You know this is not love, Sirs,—it is faith,<br>The feeling that there's God, he reigns and rules<br>Out of this low world: that is all; no harm!<br>At times she drew a soft sigh—music seemed<br>Always to hover just above her lips,<br>Not settle,—break a silence music too.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">In the determined morning, I first found<br>Her head erect, her face turned full to me,<br>Her soul intent on mine through two wide eyes.<br>I answered them. "You are saved hitherto.<br>"We have passed Perugia,—gone round by the wood,<br>"Not through, I seem to think,—and opposite<br>"I know Assisi; this is holy ground."<br>Then she resumed. "How long since we both left<br>"Arezzo?" "Years—and certain hours beside."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">It was at … ah, but I forget the names!<br>'T is a mere post-house and a hovel or two;<br>I left the carriage and got bread and wine<br>And brought it her. "Does it detain to eat?"<br>"They stay perforce, change horses,—therefore eat!<br>"We lose no minute: we arrive, be sure!"<br>This was—I know not where—there's a great hill<br>Close over, and the stream has lost its bridge,<br>One fords it. She began—"I have heard say<br>"Of some sick body that my mother knew,<br>"'T was no good sign when in a limb diseased<br>"All the pain suddenly departs,—as if<br>"The guardian angel discontinued pain<br>"Because the hope of cure was gone at last:<br>"The limb will not again exert itself,<br>"It needs be pained no longer: so with me,<br>"—My soul whence all the pain is past at once:<br>"All pain must be to work some good in the end.<br>"True, this I feel now, this may be that good,<br>"Pain was because of,—otherwise, I fear!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">She said,—a long while later in the day,<br>When I had let the silence be,—abrupt—<br>"Have you a mother?" "She died, I was born."<br>"A sister then?" "No sister." "Who was it—<br>"What woman were you used to serve this way,<br>"Be kind to, till I called you and you came?"<br>I did not like that word. Soon afterward—<br>"Tell me, are men unhappy, in some kind<br>"Of mere unhappiness at being men,<br>"As women suffer, being womanish?<br>"Have you, now, some unhappiness, I mean,<br>"Born of what may be man's strength overmuch,<br>"To match the undue susceptibility,<br>"The sense at every pore when hate is close?<br>"It hurts us if a baby hides its face<br>"Or child strikes at us punily, calls names<br>"Or makes a mouth,—much more if stranger men<br>"Laugh or frown,—just as that were much to bear!<br>"Yet rocks split,—and the blow-ball does no more,<br>"Quivers to feathery nothing at a touch;<br>"And strength may have its drawback weakness scapes."<br>Once she asked "What is it that made you smile,<br>"At the great gate with the eagles and the snakes,<br>"Where the company entered, 't is a long time since?"<br>"—Forgive—I think you would not understand:<br>"Ah, but you ask me,—therefore, it was this.<br>"That was a certain bishop's villa-gate,<br>"I knew it by the eagles,—and at once<br>"Remembered this same bishop was just he<br>"People of old were wont to bid me please<br>"If I would catch preferment: so, I smiled<br>"Because an impulse came to me, a whim—<br>"What if I prayed the prelate leave to speak,<br>"Began upon him in his presence-hall<br>"—'What, still at work so grey and obsolete?<br>"'Still rocheted and mitred more or less?<br>"'Don't you feel all that out of fashion now?<br>"'I find out when the day of things is done!'"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">At eve we heard the angelus: she turned—<br>"I told you I can neither read nor write.<br>"My life stopped with the play-time; I will learn,<br>"If I begin to live again: but you—<br>"Who are a priest—wherefore do you not read<br>"The service at this hour? Read Gabriel's song,<br>"The lesson, and then read the little prayer<br>"To Raphael, proper for us travellers!"<br>I did not like that, neither, but I read.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">When we stopped at Foligno it was dark.<br>The people of the post came out with lights:<br>The driver said, "This time to-morrow, may<br>"Saints only help, relays continue good,<br>"Nor robbers hinder, we arrive at Rome."<br>I urged, "Why tax your strength a second night?<br>"Trust me, alight here and take brief repose!<br>"We are out of harm's reach, past pursuit: go sleep<br>"If but an hour! I keep watch, guard the while<br>"Here in the doorway." But her whole face changed,<br>The misery grew again about her mouth,<br>The eyes burned up from faintness, like the fawn's<br>Tired to death in the thicket, when she feels<br>The probing spear o' the huntsman. "Oh, no stay!"<br>She cried, in the fawn's cry, "On to Rome, on, on—<br>"Unless 't is you who fear,—which cannot be!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">We did go on all night; but at its close<br>She was troubled, restless, moaned low, talked at whiles<br>To herself, her brow on quiver with the dream:<br>Once, wide awake, she menaced, at arms' length<br>Waved away something—"Never again with you!<br>"My soul is mine, my body is my soul's:<br>"You and I are divided ever more<br>"In soul and body: get you gone!" Then I—<br>"Why, in my whole life I have never prayed!<br>"Oh, if the God, that only can, would help!<br>"Am I his priest with power to cast out fiends?<br>"Let God arise and all his enemies<br>"Be scattered!" By morn, there was peace, no sigh<br>Out of the deep sleep.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">When she woke at last,<br>I answered the first look—"Scarce twelve hours more,<br>"Then, Rome! There probably was no pursuit,<br>"There cannot now be peril: bear up brave!<br>"Just some twelve hours to press through to the prize:<br>"Then, no more of the terrible journey!" "Then,<br>"No more o' the journey: if it might but last!<br>"Always, my life-long, thus to journey still!<br>"It is the interruption that I dread,—<br>"With no dread, ever to be here and thus!<br>"Never to see a face nor hear a voice!<br>"Yours is no voice; you speak when you are dumb;<br>"Nor face, I see it in the dark. I want<br>"No face nor voice that change and grow unkind."<br>That I liked, that was the best thing she said.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">In the broad day, I dared entreat, "Descend!"<br>I told a woman, at the garden-gate<br>By the post-house, white and pleasant in the sun,<br>"It is my sister,—talk with her apart!<br>"She is married and unhappy, you perceive;<br>"I take her home because her head is hurt;<br>"Comfort her as you women understand!"<br>So, there I left them by the garden-wall,<br>Paced the road, then bade put the horses to,<br>Came back, and there she sat: close to her knee,<br>A black-eyed child still held the bowl of milk,<br>Wondered to see how little she could drink,<br>And in her arms the woman's infant lay.<br>She smiled at me "How much good this has done!<br>"This is a whole night's rest and how much more!<br>"I can proceed now, though I wish to stay.<br>"How do you call that tree with the thick top<br>"That holds in all its leafy green and gold<br>"The sun now like an immense egg of fire?"<br>(It was a million-leaved mimosa.) "Take<br>"The babe away from me and let me go!"<br>And in the carriage "Still a day, my friend!<br>"And perhaps half a night, the woman fears.<br>"I pray it finish since it cannot last<br>"There may be more misfortune at the close,<br>"And where will you be? God suffice me then!"<br>And presently—for there was a roadside-shrine—<br>"When I was taken first to my own church<br>"Lorenzo in Lucina, being a girl,<br>"And bid confess my faults, I interposed<br>"'But teach me what fault to confess and know!'<br>"So, the priest said—'You should bethink yourself:<br>"'Each human being needs must have done wrong!'<br>"Now, be you candid and no priest but friend—<br>"Were I surprised and killed here on the spot,<br>"A runaway from husband and his home,<br>"Do you account it were in sin I died?<br>"My husband used to seem to harm me, not …<br>"Not on pretence he punished sin of mine,<br>"Nor for sin's sake and lust of cruelty,<br>"But as I heard him bid a farming-man<br>"At the villa take a lamb once to the wood<br>"And there ill-treat it, meaning that the wolf<br>"Should hear its cries, and so come, quick be caught,<br>"Enticed to the trap: he practised thus with me<br>"That so, whatever were his gain thereby,<br>"Others than I might become prey and spoil.<br>"Had it been only between our two selves,—<br>"His pleasure and my pain,—why, pleasure him<br>"By dying, nor such need to make a coil!<br>"But this was worth an effort, that my pain<br>"Should not become a snare, prove pain threefold<br>"To other people—strangers—or unborn—<br>"How should I know? I sought release from that—<br>"I think, or else from,—dare I say, some cause<br>"Such as is put into a tree, which turns<br>"Away from the north wind with what nest it holds,—<br>"The woman said that trees so turn: now, friend,<br>"Tell me, because I cannot trust myself!<br>"You are a man: what have I done amiss?"<br>You must conceive my answer,—I forget—<br>Taken up wholly with the thought, perhaps,<br>This time she might have said,—might, did not say—<br>"You are a priest." She said, "my friend."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Day wore,<br>We passed the places, somehow the calm went,<br>Again the restless eyes began to rove<br>In new fear of the foe mine could not see.<br>She wandered in her mind,—addressed me once<br>"Gaetano!"—that is not my name: whose name?<br>I grew alarmed, my head seemed turning too.<br>I quickened pace with promise now, now threat:<br>Bade drive and drive, nor any stopping more.<br>"Too deep i' the thick of the struggle, struggle through!<br>"Then drench her in repose though death's self pour<br>"The plenitude of quiet,—help us, God,<br>"Whom the winds carry!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Suddenly I saw<br>The old tower, and the little white-walled clump<br>Of buildings and the cypress-tree or two,—<br>"Already Castelnuovo—Rome!" I cried,<br>"As good as Rome,—Rome is the next stage, think!<br>"This is where travellers' hearts are wont to beat.<br>"Say you are saved, sweet lady!" Up she woke.<br>The sky was fierce with colour from the sun<br>Setting. She screamed out "No, I must not die!<br>"Take me no farther, I should die: stay here!<br>"I have more life to save than mine!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">She swooned.<br>We seemed safe: what was it foreboded so?<br>Out of the coach into the inn I bore<br>The motionless and breathless pure and pale<br>Pompilia,—bore her through a pitying group<br>And laid her on a couch, still calm and cured<br>By deep sleep of all woes at once. The host<br>Was urgent "Let her stay an hour or two!<br>"Leave her to us, all will be right by morn!"<br>Oh, my foreboding! But I could not choose.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I paced the passage, kept watch all night long.<br>I listened,—not one movement, not one sigh.<br>"Fear not: she sleeps so sound!" they said: but I<br>Feared, all the same, kept fearing more and more,<br>Found myself throb with fear from head to foot,<br>Filled with a sense of such impending woe,<br>That, at first pause of night, pretence of gray,<br>I made my mind up it was morn.—"Reach Rome,<br>"Lest hell reach her! A dozen miles to make,<br>"Another long breath, and we emerge!" I stood<br>I' the court-yard, roused the sleepy grooms. "Have out<br>"Carriage and horse, give haste, take gold!" said I.<br>While they made ready in the doubtful morn,—<br>'T was the last minute,—needs must I ascend<br>And break her sleep; I turned to go.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And there<br>Faced me Count Guido, there posed the mean man<br>As master,—took the field, encamped his rights,<br>Challenged the world: there leered new triumph, there<br>Scowled the old malice in the visage bad<br>And black o' the scamp. Soon triumph suppled the tongue<br>A little, malice glued to his dry throat,<br>And he part howled, part hissed … oh, how he kept<br>Well out o' the way, at arm's length and to spare!—<br>"My salutation to your priestship! What?<br>"Matutinal, busy with book so soon<br>"Of an April day that's damp as tears that now<br>"Deluge Arezzo at its darling's flight?—<br>"'T is unfair, wrongs feminity at large,<br>"To let a single dame monopolize<br>"A heart the whole sex claims, should share alike:<br>"Therefore I overtake you, Canon! Come!<br>"The lady,—could you leave her side so soon?<br>"You have not yet experienced at her hands<br>"My treatment, you lay down undrugged, I see!<br>"Hence this alertness—hence no death-in-life<br>"Like what held arms fast when she stole from mine.<br>"To be sure, you took the solace and repose<br>"That first night at Foligno!—news abound<br>"O' the road by this time,—men regaled me much,<br>"As past them I came halting after you,<br>"Vulcan pursuing Mars, as poets sing,—<br>"Still at the last here pant I, but arrive,<br>"Vulcan—and not without my Cyclops too,<br>"The Commissary and the unpoisoned arm<br>"O' the Civil Force, should Mars turn mutineer.<br>"Enough of fooling: capture the culprits, friend!<br>"Here is the lover in the smart disguise<br>"With the sword,—he is a priest, so mine lies still.<br>"There upstairs hides my wife the runaway,<br>"His leman: the two plotted, poisoned first,<br>"Plundered me after, and eloped thus far<br>"Where now you find them. Do your duty quick!<br>"Arrest and hold him! That's done: now catch her!"<br>During this speech of that man,—well, I stood<br>Away, as he managed,—still, I stood as near<br>The throat of him,—with these two hands, my own,—<br>As now I stand near yours, Sir,—one quick spring,<br>One great good satisfying gripe, and lo!<br>There had he lain abolished with his lie,<br>Creation purged o' the miscreate, man redeemed,<br>A spittle wiped off from the face of God!<br>I, in some measure, seek a poor excuse<br>For what I left undone, in just this fact<br>That my first feeling at the speech I quote<br>Was—not of what a blasphemy was dared,<br>Not what a bag of venomed purulence<br>Was split and noisome,—but how splendidly<br>Mirthful, how ludicrous a lie was launched!<br>Would Molière's self wish more than hear such man<br>Call, claim such woman for his own, his wife<br>Even though, in due amazement at the boast,<br>He had stammered, she moreover was divine?<br>She to be his,—were hardly less absurd<br>Than that he took her name into his mouth,<br>Licked, and then let it go again, the beast,<br>Signed with his slaver. Oh, she poisoned him,<br>Plundered him, and the rest! Well, what I wished<br>Was, that he would but go on, say once more<br>So to the world, and get his meed of men,<br>The fist's reply to the filth. And while I mused,<br>The minute, oh the misery, was gone!<br>On either idle hand of me there stood<br>Really an officer, nor laughed i' the least:<br>Nay, rendered justice to his reason, laid<br>Logic to heart, as 't were submitted them<br>"Twice two makes four."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"And now, catch her!" he cried.<br>That sobered me. "Let myself lead the way—<br>"Ere you arrest me, who am somebody,<br>"Being, as you hear, a priest and privileged,—<br>"To the lady's chamber! I presume you—men<br>"Expert, instructed how to find out truth,<br>"Familiar with the guise of guilt. Detect<br>"Guilt on her face when it meets mine, then judge<br>"Between us and the mad dog howling there!"<br>Up we all went together, in they broke<br>O' the chamber late my chapel. There she lay,<br>Composed as when I laid her, that last eve,<br>O' the couch, still breathless, motionless, sleep's self,<br>Wax-white, seraphic, saturate with the sun<br>O' the morning that now flooded from the front<br>And filled the window with a light like blood.<br>"Behold the poisoner, the adulteress,<br>"—And feigning sleep too! Seize, bind!" Guido hissed.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">She started up, stood erect, face to face<br>With the husband: back he fell, was buttressed there<br>By the window all a flame with morning-red,<br>He the black figure, the opprobrious blur<br>Against all peace and joy and light and life.<br>"Away from between me and hell!" she cried:<br>"Hell for me, no embracing any more!<br>"I am God's, I love God, God—whose knees I clasp,<br>"Whose utterly most just award I take,<br>"But bear no more love-making devils: hence!"<br>I may have made an effort to reach her side<br>From where I stood i' the door-way,—anyhow<br>I found the arms, I wanted, pinioned fast,<br>Was powerless in the clutch to left and right<br>O' the rabble pouring in, rascality<br>Enlisted, rampant on the side of hearth<br>Home and the husband,—pay in prospect too!<br>They heaped themselves upon me. "Ha!—and him<br>"Also you outrage? Him, too, my sole friend,<br>"Guardian and saviour? That I baulk you of,<br>"Since—see how God can help at last and worst!"<br>She sprang at the sword that hung beside him, seized,<br>Drew, brandished it, the sunrise burned for joy<br>O' the blade, "Die," cried she, "devil, in God's name!"<br>Ah, but they all closed round her, twelve to one<br>—The unmanly men, no woman-mother made,<br>Spawned somehow! Dead-white and disarmed she lay<br>No matter for the sword, her word sufficed<br>To spike the coward through and through: he shook,<br>Could only spit between the teeth—"You see?<br>"You hear? Bear witness, then! Write down . . but no—<br>"Carry these criminals to the prison-house,<br>"For first thing! I begin my search meanwhile<br>"After the stolen effects, gold, jewels, plate,<br>"Money and clothes, they robbed me of and fled,<br>"With no few amorous pieces, verse and prose,<br>"I have much reason to expect to find."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">When I saw that—no more than the first mad speech,<br>Made out the speaker mad and a laughing-stock,<br>So neither did this next device explode<br>One listener's indignation,—that a scribe<br>Did sit down, set himself to write indeed,<br>While sundry knaves began to peer and pry<br>In corner and hole,—that Guido, wiping brow<br>And getting him a countenance, was fast<br>Losing his fear, beginning to strut free<br>O' the stage of his exploit, snuff here, sniff there,—<br>Then I took truth in, guessed sufficiently<br>The service for the moment. "What I say,<br>"Slight at your peril! We are aliens here,<br>"My adversary and I, called noble both;<br>"I am the nobler, and a name men know.<br>"I could refer our cause to our own Court<br>"In our own country, but prefer appeal<br>"To the nearer jurisdiction. Being a priest,<br>"Though in a secular garb,—for reasons good<br>"I shall adduce in due time to my peers,—<br>"I demand that the Church I serve, decide<br>"Between us, right the slandered lady there.<br>"A Tuscan noble, I might claim the Duke:<br>"A priest, I rather choose the Church,—bid Rome<br>"Cover the wronged with her inviolate shield."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">There was no refusing this: they bore me off,<br>They bore her off, to separate cells o' the same<br>Ignoble prison, and, separate, thence to Rome.<br>Pompilia's face, then and thus, looked on me<br>The last time in this life: not one sight since,<br>Never another sight to be! And yet<br>I thought I had saved her. I appealed to Rome:<br>It seems I simply sent her to her death.<br>You tell me she is dying now, or dead;<br>I cannot bring myself to quite believe<br>This is a place you torture people in:<br>What if this your intelligence were just<br>A subtlety, an honest wile to work<br>On a man at unawares? 'T were worthy you.<br>No, Sirs, I cannot have the lady dead!<br>That erect form, flashing brow, fulgurant eye,<br>That voice immortal (oh, that voice of hers!)<br>That vision in the blood-red day-break—that<br>Leap to life of the pale electric sword<br>Angels go armed with,—that was not the last<br>O' the lady! Come, I see through it, you find—<br>Know the manoeuvre! Also herself said<br>I had saved her: do you dare say she spoke false?<br>Let me see for myself if it be so!<br>Though she were dying, a Priest might be of use,<br>The more when he's a friend too,—she called me<br>Far beyond "friend." Come, let me see her—indeed<br>It is my duty, being a priest: I hope<br>I stand confessed, established, proved a priest?<br>My punishment had motive that, a priest<br>I, in a laic garb, a mundane mode,<br>Did what were harmlessly done otherwise.<br>I never touched her with my finger-tip<br>Except to carry her to the couch, that eve,<br>Against my heart, beneath my head, bowed low,<br>As we priests carry the paten: that is why<br>—To get leave and go see her of your grace—<br>I have told you this whole story over again.<br>Do I deserve grace? For I might lock lips,<br>Laugh at your jurisdiction: what have you<br>To do with me in the matter? I suppose<br>You hardly think I donned a bravo's dress<br>To have a hand in the new crime; on the old,<br>Judgment's delivered, penalty imposed,<br>I was chained fast at Civita hand and foot—<br>She had only you to trust to, you and Rome,<br>Rome and the Church, and no pert meddling priest<br>Two days ago, when Guido, with the right,<br>Hacked her to pieces. One might well be wroth;<br>I have been patient, done my best to help:<br>I come from Civita and punishment<br>As friend of the Court—and for pure friendship's sake<br>Have told my tale to the end,—nay, not the end—<br>For, wait—I'll end—not leave you that excuse!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">When we were parted,—shall I go on there?<br>I was presently brought to Rome—yes, here I stood<br>Opposite yonder very crucifix—<br>And there sat you and you, Sirs, quite the same.<br>I heard charge, and bore question, and told tale<br>Noted down in the book there,—turn and see<br>If, by one jot or tittle, I vary now!<br>I' the colour the tale takes, there's change perhaps;<br>'T is natural, since the sky is different,<br>Eclipse in the air now; still, the outline stays.<br>I showed you how it came to be my part<br>To save the lady. Then your clerk produced<br>Papers, a pack of stupid and impure<br>Banalities called letters about love—<br>Love, indeed,—I could teach who styled them so,<br>Better, I think, though priest and loveless both!<br>"—How was it that a wife, young, innocent,<br>"And stranger to your person, wrote this page?"—<br>"—She wrote it when the Holy Father wrote<br>"The bestiality that posts thro' Rome,<br>"Put in his mouth by Pasquin." "Nor perhaps<br>"Did you return these answers, verse and prose,<br>"Signed, sealed and sent the lady? There's your hand!"<br>"—This precious piece of verse, I really judge,<br>"Is meant to copy my own character,<br>"A clumsy mimic; and this other prose,<br>"Not so much even; both rank forgery:<br>"Verse, quotha? Bembo's verse! When Saint John wrote<br>"The tract 'De Tribus,' I wrote this to match."<br>"—How came it, then, the documents were found<br>"At the inn on your departure?"—"I opine,<br>"Because there were no documents to find<br>"In my presence,—you must hide before you find.<br>"Who forged them hardly practised in my view;<br>"Who found them waited till I turned my back."<br>"—And what of the clandestine visits paid,<br>"Nocturnal passage in and out the house<br>"With its lord absent? 'T is alleged you climbed …"<br>"—Flew on a broomstick to the man i' the moon!<br>"Who witnessed or will testify this trash?"<br>"—The trusty servant, Margherita's self,<br>"Even she who brought you letters, you confess,<br>"And, you confess, took letters in reply:<br>"Forget not we have knowledge of the facts!"<br>"—Sirs, who have knowledge of the facts, defray<br>"The expenditure of wit I waste in vain,<br>"Trying to find out just one fact of all!<br>"She who brought letters from who could not write,<br>"And took back letters to who could not read,—<br>"Who was that messenger, of your charity?"<br>"—Well, so far favours you the circumstance<br>"That this same messenger … how shall we say? …<br>"Sub imputatione meretricis<br>"Laborat,—which makes accusation null:<br>"We waive this woman's: nought makes void the next.<br>"Borsi, called Venerino, he who drove,<br>"O' the first night when you fled away, at length<br>"Deposes to your kissings in the coach,<br>"—Frequent, frenetic …" "When deposed he so?"<br>"After some weeks of sharp imprisonment …"<br>"—Granted by friend the Governor, I engage—"<br>"—For his participation in your flight!<br>"At length his obduracy melting made<br>"The avowal mentioned . ." "Was dismissed forthwith<br>"To liberty, poor knave, for recompense.<br>"Sirs, give what credit to the lie you can!<br>"For me, no word in my defence I speak,<br>"And God shall argue for the lady!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">So<br>Did I stand question, and make answer, still<br>With the same result of smiling disbelief,<br>Polite impossibility of faith<br>In such affected virtue in a priest;<br>But a showing fair play, an indulgence, even,<br>To one no worse than others after all—<br>Who had not brought disgrace to the order, played<br>Discreetly, ruffled gown nor ripped the cloth<br>In a bungling game at romps: I have told you, Sirs—<br>If I pretended simply to be pure<br>Honest and Christian in the case,—absurd!<br>As well go boast myself above the needs<br>O' the human nature, careless how meat smells,<br>Wine tastes,—a saint above the smack! But once<br>Abate my crest, own flaws i' the flesh, agree<br>To go with the herd, be hog no more nor less,<br>Why, hogs in common herd have common rights:<br>I must not be unduly borne upon,<br>Who just romanced a little, sowed wild oats,<br>But 'scaped without a scandal, flagrant fault.<br>My name helped to a mirthful circumstance:<br>"Joseph" would do well to amend his plea:<br>Undoubtedly—some toying with the wife,<br>But as for ruffian violence and rape,<br>Potiphar pressed too much on the other side!<br>The intrigue, the elopement, the disguise,—well charged!<br>The letters and verse looked hardly like the truth.<br>Your apprehension was—of guilt enough<br>To be compatible with innocence,<br>So, punished best a little and not too much.<br>Had I struck Guido Franceschini's face,<br>You had counselled me withdraw for my own sake,<br>Baulk him of bravo-hiring. Friends came round,<br>Congratulated, "Nobody mistakes!<br>"The pettiness o' the forfeiture defines<br>"The peccadillo: Guido gets his share:<br>"His wife is free of husband and hook-nose,<br>"The mouldy viands and the mother-in-law.<br>"To Civita with you and amuse the time,<br>"Travesty us 'De Raptu Helenoe!'<br>"A funny figure must the husband cut<br>"When the wife makes him skip,—too ticklish, eh?<br>"Do it in Latin, not the Vulgar, then!<br>"Scazons—we'll copy and send his Eminence.<br>"Mind—one iambus in the final foot!<br>"He'll rectity it, be your friend for life!"<br>Oh, Sirs, depend on me for much new light<br>Thrown on the justice and religion here<br>By this proceeding, much fresh food for thought!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And I was just set down to study these<br>In relegation, two short days ago,<br>Admiring how you read the rules, when, clap,<br>A thunder comes into my solitude—<br>I am caught up in a whirlwind and cast here,<br>Told of a sudden, in this room where so late<br>You dealt out law adroitly, that those scales,<br>I meekly bowed to, took my allotment from,<br>Guido has snatched at, broken in your hands,<br>Metes to himself the murder of his wife,<br>Full measure, pressed down, running over now!<br>Can I assist to an explanation?—Yes,<br>I rise in your esteem, sagacious Sirs,<br>Stand up a renderer of reasons, not<br>The officious priest would personate Saint George<br>For a mock Princess in undragoned days.<br>What, the blood startles you? What, after all<br>The priest who needs must carry sword on thigh<br>May find imperative use for it? Then, there was<br>A Princess, was a dragon belching flame,<br>And should have been a Saint George also? Then,<br>There might be worse schemes than to break the bonds<br>At Arezzo, lead her by the little hand,<br>Till she reached Rome, and let her try to live?<br>But you were law and gospel,—would one please<br>Stand back, allow your faculty elbow-room?<br>You blind guides who must needs lead eyes that see!<br>Fools, alike ignorant of man and God!<br>What was there here should have perplexed your wit<br>For a wink of the owl-eyes of you? How miss, then,<br>What's now forced on you by this flare of fact—<br>As if Saint Peter failed to recognize<br>Nero as no apostle, John or James,<br>Till someone burned a martyr, made a torch<br>O' the blood and fat to show his features by!<br>Could you fail read this cartulary aright<br>On head and front of Franceschini there,<br>Large-lettered like hell's masterpiece of print,—<br>That he, from the beginning pricked at heart<br>By some lust, letch of hate against his wife,<br>Plotted to plague her into overt sin<br>And shame, would slay Pompilia body and soul,<br>And save his mean self—miserably caught<br>I' the quagmire of his own tricks, cheats and lies?<br>—That himself wrote those papers,—from himself<br>To himself,—which, i' the name of me and her,<br>His mistress-messenger gave her and me,<br>Touching us with such pustules of the soul<br>That she and I might take the taint, be shown<br>To the world and shuddered over, speckled so?<br>—That the agent put her sense into my words,<br>Made substitution of the thing she hoped,<br>For the thing she had and held, its opposite,<br>While the husband in the background bit his lips<br>At each fresh failure of his precious plot?<br>—That when at the last we did rush each on each,<br>By no chance but because God willed it so—<br>The spark of truth was struck from out our souls—<br>Made all of me, descried in the first glance,<br>Seem fair and honest and permissible love<br>O' the good and true—as the first glance told me<br>There was no duty patent in the world<br>Like daring try be good and true myself,<br>Leaving the shows of things to the Lord of Show<br>And Prince o' the Power of the Air. Our very flight,<br>Even to its most ambiguous circumstance,<br>Irrefragably proved how futile, false …<br>Why, men—men and not boys—boys and not babes—<br>Babes and not beasts—beasts and not stocks and stones!—<br>Had the liar's lie been true one pin-point speck,<br>Were I the accepted suitor, free o' the place,<br>Disposer of the time, to come at a call<br>And go at a wink as who should say me nay,—<br>What need of flight, what were the gain therefrom<br>But just damnation, failure or success?<br>Damnation pure and simple to her the wife<br>And me the priest—who bartered private bliss<br>For public reprobation, the safe shade<br>For the sunshine which men see to pelt me by:<br>What other advantage,—we who led the days<br>And nights alone i' the house,—was flight to find?<br>In our whole journey did we stop an hour,<br>Diverge a foot from straight road till we reached<br>Or would have reached—but for that fate of ours—<br>The father and mother, in the eye of Rome,<br>The eye of yourselves we made aware of us<br>At the first fall of misfortune? And indeed<br>You did so far give sanction to our flight,<br>Confirm its purpose, as lend helping hand,<br>Deliver up Pompilia not to him<br>She fled, but those the flight was ventured for.<br>Why then could you, who stopped short, not go on<br>One poor step more, and justify the means,<br>Having allowed the end?—not see and say<br>"Here's the exceptional conduct that should claim<br>"To be exceptionally judged on rules<br>"Which, understood, make no exception here"—<br>Why play instead into the devil's hands<br>By dealing so ambiguously as gave<br>Guido the power to intervene like me,<br>Prove one exception more? I saved his wife<br>Against law: against law he slays her now:<br>Deal with him!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I have done with being judged.<br>I stand here guiltless in thought, word and deed,<br>To the point that I apprise you,—in contempt<br>For all misapprehending ignorance<br>O' the human heart, much more the mind of Christ,—<br>That I assuredly did bow, was blessed<br>By the revelation of Pompilia. There!<br>Such is the final fact I fling you, Sirs,<br>To mouth and mumble and misinterpret: there!<br>"The priest's in love," have it the vulgar way!<br>Unpriest me, rend the rags o' the vestment, do—<br>Degrade deep, disenfranchise all you dare—<br>Remove me from the midst, no longer priest<br>And fit companion for the like of you—<br>Your gay Abati with the well-turned leg<br>And rose i' the hat-rim, Canons, cross at neck<br>And silk mask in the pocket of the gown,<br>Brisk Bishops with the world's musk still unbrushed<br>From the rochet; I'll no more of these good things:<br>There's a crack somewhere, something that's unsound<br>I' the rattle!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">For Pompilia—be advised,<br>Build churches, go pray! You will find me there,<br>I know, if you come,—and you will come, I know.<br>Why, there's a Judge weeping! Did not I say<br>You were good and true at bottom? You see the truth—<br>I am glad I helped you: she helped me just so.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">But for Count Guido,—you must counsel there!<br>I bow my head, bend to the very dust,<br>Break myself up in shame of faultiness.<br>I had him one whole moment, as I said—<br>As I remember, as will never out<br>O' the thoughts of me,—I had him in arm's reach<br>There,—as you stand, Sir, now you cease to sit,—<br>I could have killed him ere he killed his wife,<br>And did not: he went off alive and well<br>And then effected this last feat—through me!<br>Me—not through you—dsimiss that fear! 'T was you<br>Hindered me staying here to save her,—not<br>From leaving you and going back to him<br>And doing service in Arezzo. Come,<br>Instruct me in procedure! I conceive—<br>In all due self-abasement might I speak—<br>How you will deal with Guido: oh, not death!<br>Death, if it let her life be: otherwise<br>Not death,—your lights will teach you clearer! I<br>Certainly have an instinct of my own<br>I' the matter: bear with me and weigh its worth!<br>Let us go away—leave Guido all alone<br>Back on the world again that knows him now!<br>I think he will be found (indulge so far!)<br>Not to die so much as slide out of life,<br>Pushed by the general horror and common hate<br>Low, lower,—left o' the very ledge of things,<br>I seem to see him catch convulsively<br>One by one at all honest forms of life,<br>At reason, order, decency and use—<br>To cramp him and get foothold by at least;<br>And still they disengage them from his clutch.<br>"What, you are he, then, had Pompilia once<br>"And so forwent her? Take not up with us!"<br>And thus I see him slowly and surely edged<br>Off all the table-land whence life upsprings<br>Aspiring to be immortality,<br>As the snake, hatched on hill-top by mischance,<br>Despite his wriggling, slips, slides, slidders down<br>Hill-side, lies low and prostrate on the smooth<br>Level of the outer place, lapsed in the vale:<br>So I lose Guido in the loneliness,<br>Silence and dusk, till at the doleful end,<br>At the horizontal line, creation's verge,<br>From what just is to absolute nothingness—<br>Whom is it, straining onward still, he meets?<br>What other man deep further in the fate,<br>Who, turning at the prize of a footfall<br>To flatter him and promise fellowship,<br>Discovers in the act a frightful face—<br>Judas, made monstrous by much solitude!<br>The two are at one now! Let them love their love<br>That bites and claws like hate, or hate their hate<br>That mops and mows and makes as it were love!<br>There, let them each tear each in devil's-fun,<br>Or fondle this the other while malice aches—<br>Both teach, both learn detestability!<br>Kiss him the kiss, Iscariot! Pay that back,<br>That smatch o' the slaver blistering on your lip,<br>By the better trick, the insult he spared Christ—<br>Lure him the lure o' the letters, Aretine!<br>Lick him o'er slimy-smooth with jelly-filth<br>O' the verse-and-prose pollution in love's guise!<br>The cockatrice is with the basilisk!<br>There let them grapple, denizens o' the dark,<br>Foes or friends, but indissolubly bound,<br>In their one spot out of the ken of God<br>Or care of man, for ever and ever more!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Why, Sirs, what's this? Why, this is sorry and strange!<br>Futility, divagation: this from me<br>Bound to be rational, justify an act<br>Of sober man!—whereas, being moved so much,<br>I give you cause to doubt the lady's mind:<br>A pretty sarcasm for the world! I fear<br>You do her wit injustice,—all through me!<br>Like my fate all through,—ineffective help!<br>A poor rash advocate I prove myself.<br>You might be angry with good cause: but sure<br>At the advocate,—only at the undue zeal<br>That spoils the force of his own plea, I think?<br>My part was just to tell you how things stand,<br>State facts and not be flustered at their fume.<br>But then 't is a priest speaks: as for love,—no!<br>If you let buzz a vulgar fly like that<br>About your brains, as if I loved, forsooth,<br>Indeed, Sirs, you do wrong! We had no thought<br>Of such infatuation, she and I:<br>There are many points that prove it: do be just!<br>I told you,—at one little roadside-place<br>I spent a good half-hour, paced to and fro<br>The garden; just to leave her free awhile,<br>I plucked a handful of Spring herb and bloom:<br>I might have sat beside her on the bench<br>Where the children were: I wish the thing had been,<br>Indeed: the event could not be worse, you know:<br>One more half-hour of her saved! She's dead now, Sirs!<br>While I was running on at such a rate,<br>Friends should have plucked me by the sleeve: I went<br>Too much o' the trivial outside of her face<br>And the purity that shone there—plain to me,<br>Not to you, what more natural? Nor am I<br>Infatuated,—oh, I saw, be sure!<br>Her brow had not the right line, leaned too much,<br>Painters would say; they like the straight-up Greek:<br>This seemed bent somewhat with an invisible crown<br>Of martyr and saint, not such as art approves.<br>And how the dark orbs dwelt deep underneath,<br>Looked out of such a sad sweet heaven on me!<br>The lips, compressed a little, came forward too,<br>Careful for a whole world of sin and pain.<br>That was the face, her husband makes his plea,<br>He sought just to disfigure,—no offence<br>Beyond that! Sirs, let us be rational!<br>He needs must vindicate his honour,—ay,<br>Yet shirks, the coward, in a clown's disguise,<br>Away from the scene, endeavours to escape.<br>Now, had he done so, slain and left no trace<br>O' the slayer,—what were vindicated, pray?<br>You had found his wife disfigured or a corpse,<br>For what and by whom? It is too palpable!<br>Then, here's another point involving law:<br>I use this argument to show you meant<br>No calumny against us by that title<br>O' the sentence,—liars try to twist it so:<br>What penalty it bore, I had to pay<br>Till further proof should follow of innocence—<br>Probationis ob defectum,—proof?<br>How could you get proof without trying us?<br>You went through the preliminary form,<br>Stopped there, contrived this sentence to amuse<br>The adversary. If the title ran<br>For more than fault imputed and not proved,<br>That was a simple penman's error, else<br>A slip i' the phrase,—as when we say of you<br>"Charged with injustice"—which may either be<br>Or not be,—'t is a name that sticks meanwhile.<br>Another relevant matter: fool that I am!<br>Not what I wish true, yet a point friends urge:<br>It is not true,—yet, since friends think it helps,—<br>She only tried me when some others failed—<br>Began with Conti, whom I told you of,<br>And Guillichini, Guido's kinsfolk both,<br>And when abandoned by them, not before,<br>Turned to me. That's conclusive why she turned.<br>Much good they got by the happy cowardice!<br>Conti is dead, poisoned a month ago:<br>Does that much strike you as a sin? Not much,<br>After the present murder,—one mark more<br>On the Moor's skin,—what is black by blacker still?<br>Conti had come here and told truth. And so<br>With Guillichini; he's condemned of course<br>To the galleys, as a friend in this affair,<br>Tried and condemned for no one thing i' the world,<br>A fortnight since by who but the Governor?—<br>The just judge, who refused Pompilia help<br>At first blush, being her husband's friend, you know.<br>There are two tales to suit the separate courts,<br>Arezzo and Rome: he tells you here, we fled<br>Alone, unhelped,—lays stress on the main fault,<br>The spiritual sin, Rome looks to: but elsewhere<br>He likes best we should break in, steal, bear off,<br>Be fit to brand and pillory and flog—<br>That's the charge goes to the heart of the Governor:<br>If these unpriest me, you and I may yet<br>Converse, Vincenzo Marzi-Medici!<br>Oh, Sirs, there are worse men than you, I say!<br>More easily duped, I mean; this stupid lie,<br>Its liar never dared propound in Rome,<br>He gets Arezzo to receive,—nay more,<br>Gets Florence and the Duke to authorize!<br>This is their Rota's sentence, their Granduke<br>Signs and seals! Rome for me henceforward—Rome,<br>Where better men are,—most of all, that man<br>The Augustinian of the Hospital,<br>Who writes the letter,—he confessed, he says,<br>Many a dying person, never one<br>So sweet and true and pure and beautiful.<br>A good man! Will you make him Pope one day?<br>Not that he is not good too, this we have—<br>But old,—else he would have his word to speak,<br>His truth to teach the world: I thirst for truth,<br>But shall not drink it till I reach the source.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Sirs, I am quiet again. You see, we are<br>So very pitiable, she and I,<br>Who had conceivably been otherwise.<br>Forget distemperature and idle heat!<br>Apart from truth's sake, what's to move so much?<br>Pompilia will be presently with God;<br>I am, on earth, as good as out of it,<br>A relegated priest; when exile ends,<br>I mean to do my duty and live long.<br>She and I are mere strangers now: but priests<br>Should study passion; how else cure mankind,<br>Who come for help in passionate extremes?<br>I do but play with an imagined life<br>Of who, unfettered by a vow, unblessed<br>By the higher call,—since you will have it so,—<br>Leads it companioned by the woman there.<br>To live, and see her learn, and learn by her,<br>Out of the low obscure and petty world—<br>Or only see one purpose and one will<br>Evolve themselves i' the world, change wrong to right:<br>To have to do with nothing but the true,<br>The good, the eternal—and these, not alone<br>In the main current of the general life,<br>But small experiences of every day,<br>Concerns of the particular hearth and home:<br>To learn not only by a comet's rush<br>But a rose's birth,—not by the grandeur, God—<br>But the comfort, Christ. All this, how far away!<br>Mere delectation, meet for a minute's dream!—<br>Just as a drudging student trims his lamp,<br>Opens his Plutarch, puts him in the place<br>Of Roman, Grecian; draws the patched gown close,<br>Dreams, "Thus should I fight, save or rule the world!"—<br>Then smilingly, contentedly, awakes<br>To the old solitary nothingness.<br>So I, from such communion, pass content …</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116360" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">O great, just, good God! Miserable me!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br/></a><a href="https://poems.citatepedia.com/">poem</a> by <strong><a rel="author" href="https://authors.citatepedia.com/by.php?a=Robert+Browning">Robert Browning</a></strong> from <em><a href="https://sources.citatepedia.com/from.php?a=Robert+Browning&d=The+Ring+and+the+Book">The Ring and the Book</a></em></div>

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