Click in the field, then press CTRL+C to copy the HTML code
<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>VII. Pompilia</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I am just seventeen years and five months old,<br>And, if I lived one day more, three full weeks;<br>'T is writ so in the church's register,<br>Lorenzo in Lucina, all my names<br>At length, so many names for one poor child,<br>—Francesca Camilla Vittoria Angela<br>Pompilia Comparini,—laughable!<br>Also 't is writ that I was married there<br>Four years ago: and they will add, I hope,<br>When they insert my death, a word or two,—<br>Omitting all about the mode of death,—<br>This, in its place, this which one cares to know,<br>That I had been a mother of a son<br>Exactly two weeks. It will be through grace<br>O' the Curate, not through any claim I have;<br>Because the boy was born at, so baptized<br>Close to, the Villa, in the proper church:<br>A pretty church, I say no word against,<br>Yet stranger-like,—while this Lorenzo seems<br>My own particular place, I always say.<br>I used to wonder, when I stood scarce high<br>As the bed here, what the marble lion meant,<br>With half his body rushing from the wall,<br>Eating the figure of a prostrate man—<br>(To the right, it is, of entry by the door)<br>An ominous sign to one baptized like me,<br>Married, and to be buried there, I hope.<br>And they should add, to have my life complete,<br>He is a boy and Gaetan by name—<br>Gaetano, for a reason,—if the friar<br>Don Celestine will ask this grace for me<br>Of Curate Ottoboni: he it was<br>Baptized me: he remembers my whole life<br>As I do his grey hair.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">All these few things<br>I know are true,—will you remember them?<br>Because time flies. The surgeon cared for me,<br>To count my wounds,—twenty-two dagger-wounds,<br>Five deadly, but I do not suffer much—<br>Or too much pain,—and am to die to-night.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Oh how good God is that my babe was born,<br>—Better than born, baptized and hid away<br>Before this happened, safe from being hurt!<br>That had been sin God could not well forgive:<br>He was too young to smile and save himself.<br>When they took two days after he was born,<br>My babe away from me to be baptized<br>And hidden awhile, for fear his foe should find,—<br>The country-woman, used to nursing babes,<br>Said "Why take on so? where is the great loss?<br>"These next three weeks he will but sleep and feed,<br>"Only begin to smile at the month's end;<br>"He would not know you, if you kept him here,<br>"Sooner than that; so, spend three merry weeks<br>"Snug in the Villa, getting strong and stout,<br>"And then I bring him back to be your own,<br>"And both of you may steal to—we know where!"<br>The month—there wants of it two weeks this day!<br>Still, I half fancied when I heard the knock<br>At the Villa in the dusk, it might prove she—<br>Come to say "Since he smiles before the time,<br>"Why should I cheat you out of one good hour?<br>"Back I have brought him; speak to him and judge!"<br>Now I shall never see him; what is worse,<br>When he grows up and gets to be my age,<br>He will seem hardly more than a great boy;<br>And if he asks "What was my mother like?"<br>People may answer "Like girls of seventeen"—<br>And how can he but think of this and that,<br>Lucias, Marias, Sofias, who titter or blush<br>When he regards them as such boys may do?<br>Therefore I wish someone will please to say<br>I looked already old though I was young;<br>Do I not … say, if you are by to speak …<br>Look nearer twenty? No more like, at least,<br>Girls who look arch or redden when boys laugh,<br>Than the poor Virgin that I used to know<br>At our street-corner in a lonely niche,—<br>The babe, that sat upon her knees, broke off,—<br>Thin white glazed clay, you pitied her the more:<br>She, not the gay ones, always got my rose.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">How happy those are who know how to write!<br>Such could write what their son should read in time,<br>Had they a whole day to live out like me.<br>Also my name is not a common name,<br>"Pompilia," and may help to keep apart<br>A little the thing I am from what girls are.<br>But then how far away, how hard to find<br>Will anything about me have become,<br>Even if the boy bethink himself and ask!<br>No father that he ever knew at all,<br>Nor ever had—no, never had, I say!<br>That is the truth,—nor any mother left,<br>Out of the little two weeks that she lived,<br>Fit for such memory as might assist:<br>As good to as no family, no name,<br>Not even poor old Pietro's name, nor hers,<br>Poor kind unwise Violante, since it seems<br>They must not be my parents any more.<br>That is why something put it in my head<br>To call the boy "Gaetano"—no old name<br>For sorrow's sake; I looked up to the sky<br>And took a new saint to begin anew.<br>One who has only been made saint—how long?<br>Twenty-five years: so, carefuller, perhaps,<br>To guard a namesake than those old saints grow,<br>Tired out by this time,—see my own five saints!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">On second thoughts, I hope he will regard<br>The history of me as what someone dreamed,<br>And get to disbelieve it at the last:<br>Since to myself it dwindles fast to that,<br>Sheer dreaming and impossibility,—<br>Just in four days too! All the seventeen years,<br>Not once did a suspicion visit me<br>How very different a lot is mine<br>From any other woman's in the world.<br>The reason must be, 't was by step and step<br>It got to grow so terrible and strange.<br>These strange woes stole on tiptoe, as it were,<br>Into my neighbourhood and privacy,<br>Sat down where I sat, laid them where I lay;<br>And I was found familiarised with fear,<br>When friends broke in, held up a torch and cried<br>"Why, you Pompilia in the cavern thus,<br>"How comes that arm of yours about a wolf?<br>"And the soft length,—lies in and out your feet<br>"And laps you round the knee,—a snake it is!"<br>And so on.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Well, and they are right enough,<br>By the torch they hold up now: for first, observe,<br>I never had a father,—no, nor yet<br>A mother: my own boy can say at least<br>"I had a mother whom I kept two weeks!"<br>Not I, who little used to doubt … I doubt<br>Good Pietro, kind Violante, gave me birth?<br>They loved me always as I love my babe<br>(—Nearly so, that is—quite so could not be—)<br>Did for me all I meant to do for him,<br>Till one surprising day, three years ago,<br>They both declared, at Rome, before some judge<br>In some Court where the people flocked to hear,<br>That really I had never been their child,<br>Was a mere castaway, the careless crime<br>Of an unknown man, the crime and care too much<br>Of a woman known too well,—little to these,<br>Therefore, of whom I was the flesh and blood:<br>What then to Pietro and Violante, both<br>No more my relatives than you or you?<br>Nothing to them! You know what they declared.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">So with my husband,—just such a surprise,<br>Such a mistake, in that relationship!<br>Everyone says that husbands love their wives,<br>Guard them and guide them, give them happiness;<br>'T is duty, law, pleasure, religion: well,<br>You see how much of this comes true in mine!<br>People indeed would fain have somehow proved<br>He was no husband: but he did not hear,<br>Or would not wait, and so has killed us all.<br>Then there is … only let me name one more!<br>There is the friend,—men will not ask about,<br>But tell untruths of, and give nicknames to,<br>And think my lover, most surprise of all!<br>Do only hear, it is the priest they mean,<br>Giuseppe Caponsacchi: a priest—love,<br>And love me! Well, yet people think he did.<br>I am married, he has taken priestly vows,<br>They know that, and yet go on, say, the same,<br>"Yes, how he loves you!" "That was love"—they say,<br>When anything is answered that they ask:<br>Or else "No wonder you love him"—they say.<br>Then they shake heads, pity much, scarcely blame—<br>As if we neither of us lacked excuse,<br>And anyhow are punished to the full,<br>And downright love atones for everything!<br>Nay, I heard read out in the public Court<br>Before the judge, in presence of my friends,<br>Letters't was said the priest had sent to me,<br>And other letters sent him by myself,<br>We being lovers!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Listen what this is like!<br>When I was a mere child, my mother … that's<br>Violante, you must let me call her so<br>Nor waste time, trying to unlearn the word …<br>She brought a neighbour's child of my own age<br>To play with me of rainy afternoons;<br>And, since there hung a tapestry on the wall,<br>We two agreed to find each other out<br>Among the figures. "Tisbe, that is you,<br>"With half-moon on your hair-knot, spear in hand,<br>"Flying, but no wings, only the great scarf<br>"Blown to a bluish rainbow at your back:<br>"Call off your hound and leave the stag alone!"<br>"—And there are you, Pompilia, such green leaves<br>"Flourishing out of your five finger-ends,<br>"And all the rest of you so brown and rough:<br>"Why is it you are turned a sort of tree?"<br>You know the figures never were ourselves<br>Though we nicknamed them so. Thus, all my life,—<br>As well what was, as what, like this, was not,—<br>Looks old, fantastic and impossible:<br>I touch a fairy thing that fades and fades.<br>—Even to my babe! I thought, when he was born,<br>Something began for once that would not end,<br>Nor change into a laugh at me, but stay<br>For evermore, eternally quite mine.<br>Well, so he is,—but yet they bore him off,<br>The third day, lest my husband should lay traps<br>And catch him, and by means of him catch me.<br>Since they have saved him so, it was well done:<br>Yet thence comes such confusion of what was<br>With what will be,—that late seems long ago,<br>And, what years should bring round, already come,<br>Till even he withdraws into a dream<br>As the rest do: I fancy him grown great,<br>Strong, stern, a tall young man who tutors me,<br>Frowns with the others "Poor imprudent child!<br>"Why did you venture out of the safe street?<br>"Why go so far from help to that lone house?<br>"Why open at the whisper and the knock?"<br>Six days ago when it was New Year's-day,<br>We bent above the fire and talked of him,<br>What he should do when he was grown and great.<br>Violante, Pietro, each had given the arm<br>I leant on, to walk by, from couch to chair<br>And fireside,—laughed, as I lay safe at last,<br>"Pompilia's march from bed to board is made,<br>"Pompilia back again and with a babe,<br>"Shall one day lend his arm and help her walk!"<br>Then we all wished each other more New Years.<br>Pietro began to scheme—"Our cause is gained;<br>"The law is stronger than a wicked man:<br>"Let him henceforth go his way, leave us ours!<br>"We will avoid the city, tempt no more<br>"The greedy ones by feasting and parade,—<br>"Live at the other villa, we know where,<br>"Still farther off, and we can watch the babe<br>"Grow fast in the good air; and wood is cheap<br>"And wine sincere outside the city gate.<br>"I still have two or three old friends will grope<br>"Their way along the mere half-mile of road,<br>"With staff and lantern on a moonless night<br>"When one needs talk: they'll find me, never fear,<br>"And I'll find them a flask of the old sort yet!"<br>Violante said "You chatter like a crow:<br>"Pompilia tires o' the tattle, and shall to bed:<br>"Do not too much the first day,—somewhat more<br>"To-morrow, and, the next, begin the cape<br>"And hood and coat! I have spun wool enough."<br>Oh what a happy friendly eve was that!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And, next day, about noon, out Pietro went—<br>He was so happy and would talk so much,<br>Until Violante pushed and laughed him forth<br>Sight-seeing in the cold,—"So much to see<br>"I' the churches! Swathe your throat three times!" she cried,<br>"And, above all, beware the slippery ways,<br>"And bring us all the news by supper-time!"<br>He came back late, laid by cloak, staff and hat,<br>Powdered so thick with snow it made us laugh,<br>Rolled a great log upon the ash o' the hearth,<br>And bade Violante treat us to a flask,<br>Because he had obeyed her faithfully,<br>Gone sight-see through the seven, and found no church<br>To his mind like San Giovanni—"There's the fold,<br>"And all the sheep together, big as cats!<br>"And such a shepherd, half the size of life,<br>"Starts up and hears the angel"—when, at the door,<br>A tap: we started up: you know the rest.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Pietro at least had done no harm, I know;<br>Nor even Violante, so much harm as makes<br>Such revenge lawful. Certainly she erred—<br>Did wrong, how shall I dare say otherwise?—<br>In telling that first falsehood, buying me<br>From my poor faulty mother at a price,<br>To pass off upon Pietro as his child.<br>If one should take my babe, give him a name,<br>Say he was not Gaetano and my own,<br>But that some other woman made his mouth<br>And hands and feet,—how very false were that!<br>No good could come of that; and all harm did.<br>Yet if a stranger were to represent<br>"Needs must you either give your babe to me<br>"And let me call him mine for evermore,<br>"Or let your husband get him"—ah, my God,<br>That were a trial I refuse to face!<br>Well, just so here: it proved wrong but seemed right<br>To poor Violante—for there lay, she said,<br>My poor real dying mother in her rags,<br>Who put me from her with the life and all,<br>Poverty, pain, shame and disease at once,<br>To die the easier by what price I fetched—<br>Also (I hope) because I should be spared<br>Sorrow and sin,—why may not that have helped?<br>My father,—he was no one, any one,—<br>The worse, the likelier,—call him—he who came,<br>Was wicked for his pleasure, went his way,<br>And left no trace to track by; there remained<br>Nothing but me, the unnecessary life,<br>To catch up or let fall,—and yet a thing<br>She could make happy, be made happy with,<br>This poor Violante,—who would frown thereat?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Well, God, you see! God plants us where we grow.<br>It is not that because a bud is born<br>At a wild briar's end, full i' the wild beast's way,<br>We ought to pluck and put it out of reach<br>On the oak-tree top,—say "There the bud belongs!"<br>She thought, moreover, real lies were lies told<br>For harm's sake; whereas this had good at heart,<br>Good for my mother, good for me, and good<br>For Pietro who was meant to love a babe,<br>And needed one to make his life of use,<br>Receive his house and land when he should die.<br>Wrong, wrong and always wrong! how plainly wrong:<br>For see, this fault kept pricking, as faults do,<br>All the same at her heart: this falsehood hatched,<br>She could not let it go nor keep it fast.<br>She told me so,—the first time I was found<br>Locked in her arms once more after the pain,<br>When the nuns let me leave them and go home,<br>And both of us cried all the cares away,—<br>This it was set her on to make amends,<br>This brought about the marriage—simply this!<br>Do let me speak for her you blame so much!<br>When Paul, my husband's brother, found me out,<br>Heard there was wealth for who should marry me,<br>So, came and made a speech to ask my hand<br>For Guido,—she, instead of piercing straight<br>Through the pretence to the ignoble truth,<br>Fancied she saw God's very finger point,<br>Designate just the time for planting me<br>(The wild-briar slip she plucked to love and wear)<br>In soil where I could strike real root, and grow,<br>And get to be the thing I called myself:<br>For, wife and husband are one flesh, God says,<br>And I, whose parents seemed such and were none,<br>Should in a husband have a husband now,<br>Find nothing, this time, but was what it seemed,<br>—All truth and no confusion any more.<br>I know she meant all good to me, all pain<br>To herself,—since how could it be aught but pain,<br>To give me up, so, from her very breast,<br>The wilding flower-tree-branch that, all those years,<br>She had got used to feel for and find fixed?<br>She meant well: has it been so ill i' the main?<br>That is but fair to ask: one cannot judge<br>Of what has been the ill or well of life,<br>The day that one is dying,—sorrows change<br>Into not altogether sorrow-like;<br>I do see strangeness but scarce misery,<br>Now it is over, and no danger more.<br>My child is safe; there seems not so much pain.<br>It comes, most like, that I am just absolved,<br>Purged of the past, the foul in me, washed fair,—<br>One cannot both have and not have, you know,—<br>Being right now, I am happy and colour things.<br>Yes, everybody that leaves life sees all<br>Softened and bettered: so with other sights:<br>To me at least was never evening yet<br>But seemed far beautifuller than its day,<br>For past is past.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">There was a fancy came,<br>When somewhere, in the journey with my friend,<br>We stepped into a hovel to get food;<br>And there began a yelp here, a bark there,—<br>Misunderstanding creatures that were wroth<br>And vexed themselves and us till we retired.<br>The hovel is life: no matter what dogs bit<br>Or cats scratched in the hovel I break from,<br>All outside is lone field, moon and such peace—<br>Flowing in, filling up as with a sea<br>Whereon comes Someone, walks fast on the white,<br>Jesus Christ's self, Don Celestine declares,<br>To meet me and calm all things back again.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Beside, up to my marriage, thirteen years<br>Were, each day, happy as the day was long:<br>This may have made the change too terrible.<br>I know that when Violante told me first<br>The cavalier—she meant to bring next morn,<br>Whom I must also let take, kiss my hand—<br>Would be at San Lorenzo the same eve<br>And marry me,—which over, we should go<br>Home both of us without him as before,<br>And, till she bade speak, I must hold my tongue,<br>Such being the correct way with girl-brides,<br>From whom one word would make a father blush,—<br>I know, I say, that when she told me this,<br>—Well, I no more saw sense in what she said<br>Than a lamb does in people clipping wool;<br>Only lay down and let myself be clipped.<br>And when next day the cavalier who came—<br>(Tisbe had told me that the slim young man<br>With wings at head, and wings at feet, and sword<br>Threatening a monster, in our tapestry,<br>Would eat a girl else,—was a cavalier)<br>When he proved Guido Franceschini,—old<br>And nothing like so tall as I myself<br>Hook-nosed and yellow in a bush of beard,<br>Much like a thing I saw on a boy's wrist,<br>He called an owl and used for catching birds,—<br>And when he took my hand and made a smile—<br>Why, the uncomfortableness of it all<br>Seemed hardly more important in the case<br>Than,—when one gives you, say, a coin to spend,—<br>Its newness or its oldness; if the piece<br>Weigh properly and buy you what you wish,<br>No matter whether you get grime or glare!<br>Men take the coin, return you grapes and figs.<br>Here, marriage was the coin, a dirty piece<br>Would purchase me the praise of those I loved:<br>About what else should I concern myself?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">So, hardly knowing what a husband meant,<br>I supposed this or any man would serve,<br>No whit the worse for being so uncouth:<br>For I was ill once and a doctor came<br>With a great ugly hat, no plume thereto,<br>Black jerkin and black buckles and black sword,<br>And white sharp beard over the ruff in front,<br>And oh so lean, so sour-faced and austere!—<br>Who felt my pulse, made me put out my tongue,<br>Then oped a phial, dripped a drop or two<br>Of a black bitter something,—I was cured!<br>What mattered the fierce beard or the grim face?<br>It was the physic beautified the man,<br>Master Malpichi,—never met his match<br>In Rome, they said,—so ugly all the same!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">However, I was hurried through a storm,<br>Next dark eve of December's deadest day—<br>How it rained!—through our street and the Lion's-mouth<br>And the bit of Corso,—cloaked round, covered close,<br>I was like something strange or contraband,—<br>Into blank San Lorenzo, up the aisle,<br>My mother keeping hold of me so tight,<br>I fancied we were come to see a corpse<br>Before the altar which she pulled me toward.<br>There we found waiting an unpleasant priest<br>Who proved the brother, not our parish friend,<br>But one with mischief-making mouth and eye,<br>Paul, whom I know since to my cost. And then<br>I heard the heavy church-door lock out help<br>Behind us: for the customary warmth,<br>Two tapers shivered on the altar. "Quick—<br>"Lose no time!" cried the priest. And straightway down<br>From … what's behind the altar where he hid—<br>Hawk-nose and yellowness and bush and all,<br>Stepped Guido, caught my hand, and there was I<br>O' the chancel, and the priest had opened book,<br>Read here and there, made me say that and this,<br>And after, told me I was now a wife,<br>Honoured indeed, since Christ thus weds the Church,<br>And therefore turned he water into wine,<br>To show I should obey my spouse like Christ.<br>Then the two slipped aside and talked apart,<br>And I, silent and scared, got down again<br>And joined my mother who was weeping now.<br>Nobody seemed to mind us any more,<br>And both of us on tiptoe found our way<br>To the door which was unlocked by this, and wide.<br>When we were in the street, the rain had stopped,<br>All things looked better. At out own house-door,<br>Violante whispered "No one syllable<br>"To Pietro! Girl-brides never breathe a word!"<br>"—Well treated to a wetting, draggle-tails!"<br>Laughed Pietro as he opened—"Very near<br>"You made me brave the gutter's roaring sea<br>"To carry off from roost old dove and young,<br>"Trussed up in church, the cote, by me, the kite!<br>"What do these priests mean, praying folk to death<br>"On stormy afternoons, with Christmas close<br>"To wash our sins off nor require the rain?"<br>Violante gave my hand a timely squeeze,<br>Madonna saved me from immodest speech,<br>I kissed him and was quiet, being a bride.<br>When I saw nothing more, the next three weeks,<br>Of Guido—"Nor the Church sees Christ" thought I:<br>"Nothing is changed however, wine is wine<br>"And water only water in our house.<br>"Nor did I see that ugly doctor since<br>"That cure of the illness: just as I was cured,<br>"I am married,—neither scarecrow will return."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Three weeks, I chuckled—"How would Giulia stare,<br>"And Tecla smile and Tisbe laugh outright,<br>"Were it not impudent for brides to talk!"—<br>Until one morning, as I sat and sang<br>At the broidery-frame alone i' the chamber,—loud<br>Voices, two, three together, sobbings too,<br>And my name, "Guido," "Paolo," flung like stones<br>From each to the other! In I ran to see.<br>There stood the very Guido and the priest<br>With sly face,—formal but nowise afraid,—<br>While Pietro seemed all red and angry, scarce<br>Able to stutter out his wrath in words;<br>And this it was that made my mother sob,<br>As he reproached her—"You have murdered us,<br>"Me and yourself and this our child beside!"<br>Then Guido interposed "Murdered or not,<br>"Be it enough your child is now my wife!<br>"I claim and come to take her." Paul put in,<br>"Consider—kinsman, dare I term you so?—<br>"What is the good of your sagacity<br>"Except to counsel in a strait like this?<br>"I guarantee the parties man and wife<br>"Whether you like or loathe it, bless or ban.<br>"May spilt milk be put back within the bowl—<br>"The done thing, undone? You, it is, we look<br>"For counsel to, you fitliest will advise!<br>"Since milk, though spilt and spoilt, does marble good,<br>"Better we down on knees and scrub the floor,<br>"Than sigh, 'the waste would make a syllabub!'<br>"Help us so turn disaster to account,<br>"So predispose the groom, he needs shall grace<br>"The bride with favour from the very first,<br>"Not begin marriage an embittered man!"<br>He smiled,—the game so wholly in his hands!<br>While fast and faster sobbed Violante—"Ay,<br>"All of us murdered, past averting now!<br>"O my sin, O my secret!" and such like.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Then I began to half surmise the truth;<br>Something had happened, low, mean, underhand,<br>False, and my mother was to blame, and I<br>To pity, whom all spoke of, none addressed:<br>I was the chattel that had caused a crime.<br>I stood mute,—those who tangled must untie<br>The embroilment. Pietro cried "Withdraw, my child!<br>"She is not helpful to the sacrifice<br>"At this stage,—do you want the victim by<br>"While you discuss the value of her blood?<br>"For her sake, I consent to hear you talk:<br>"Go, child, and pray God help the innocent!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I did go and was praying God, when came<br>Violante, with eyes swollen and red enough,<br>But movement on her mouth for make-believe<br>Matters were somehow getting right again.<br>She bade me sit down by her side and hear.<br>"You are too young and cannot understand,<br>"Nor did your father understand at first.<br>"I wished to benefit all three of us,<br>"And when he failed to take my meaning,—why,<br>"I tried to have my way at unaware—<br>"Obtained him the advantage he refused.<br>"As if I put before him wholesome food<br>"Instead of broken victual,—he finds change<br>"I' the viands, never cares to reason why,<br>"But falls to blaming me, would fling the plate<br>"From window, scandalize the neighbourhood,<br>"Even while he smacks his lips,—men's way, my child!<br>"But either you have prayed him unperverse<br>"Or I have talked him back into his wits:<br>"And Paolo was a help in time of need,—<br>"Guido, not much—my child, the way of men!<br>"A priest is more a woman than a man,<br>"And Paul did wonders to persuade. In short,<br>"Yes, he was wrong, your father sees and says;<br>"My scheme was worth attempting: and bears fruit,<br>"Gives you a husband and a noble name,<br>"A palace and no end of pleasant things.<br>"What do you care about a handsome youth?<br>"They are so volatile, and tease their wives!<br>"This is the kind of man to keep the house.<br>"We lose no daughter,—gain a son, that's all:<br>"For 't is arranged we never separate,<br>"Nor miss, in our grey time of life, the tints<br>"Of you that colour eve to match with morn.<br>"In good or ill, we share and share alike,<br>"And cast our lots into a common lap,<br>"And all three die together as we lived!<br>"Only, at Arezzo,—that's a Tuscan town,<br>"Not so large as this noisy Rome, no doubt,<br>"But older far and finer much, say folk,—<br>"In a great palace where you will be queen,<br>"Know the Archbishop and the Governor,<br>"And we see homage done you ere we die.<br>"Therefore, be good and pardon!"—"Pardon what?<br>"You know things, I am very ignorant:<br>"All is right if you only will not cry!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And so an end! Because a blank begins<br>From when, at the word, she kissed me hard and hot,<br>And took me back to where my father leaned<br>Opposite Guido—who stood eyeing him,<br>As eyes the butcher the cast panting ox<br>That feels his fate is come, nor struggles more,—<br>While Paul looked archly on, pricked brow at whiles<br>With the pen-point as to punish triumph there,—<br>And said "Count Guido, take your lawful wife<br>"Until death part you!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">All since is one blank,<br>Over and ended; a terrific dream.<br>It is the good of dreams—so soon they go!<br>Wake in a horror of heart-beats, you may—<br>Cry "The dread thing will never from my thoughts!"<br>Still, a few daylight doses of plain life,<br>Cock-crow and sparrow-chirp, or bleat and bell<br>Of goats that trot by, tinkling, to be milked;<br>And when you rub your eyes awake and wide,<br>Where is the harm o' the horror? Gone! So here.<br>I know I wake,—but from what? Blank, I say!<br>This is the note of evil: for good lasts.<br>Even when Don Celestine bade "Search and find!<br>"For your soul's sake, remember what is past,<br>"The better to forgive it,"—all in vain!<br>What was fast getting indistinct before,<br>Vanished outright. By special grace perhaps,<br>Between that first calm and this last, four years<br>Vanish,—one quarter of my life, you know.<br>I am held up, amid the nothingness,<br>By one or two truths only—thence I hang,<br>And there I live,—the rest is death or dream,<br>All but those points of my support. I think<br>Of what I saw at Rome once in the Square<br>O' the Spaniards, opposite the Spanish House:<br>There was a foreigner had trained a goat,<br>A shuddering white woman of a beast,<br>To climb up, stand straight on a pile of sticks<br>Put close, which gave the creature room enough:<br>When she was settled there he, one by one,<br>Took away all the sticks, left just the four<br>Whereon the little hoofs did really rest,<br>There she kept firm, all underneath was air.<br>So, what I hold by, are my prayer to God,<br>My hope, that came in answer to the prayer,<br>Some hand would interpose and save me—hand<br>Which proved to be my friend's hand: and,—blest bliss,—<br>That fancy which began so faint at first,<br>That thrill of dawn's suffusion through my dark,<br>Which I perceive was promise of my child,<br>The light his unborn face sent long before,—<br>God's way of breaking the good news to flesh.<br>That is all left now of those four bad years.<br>Don Celestine urged "But remember more!<br>"Other men's faults may help me find your own.<br>"I need the cruelty exposed, explained,<br>"Or how can I advise you to forgive?"<br>He thought I could not properly forgive<br>Unless I ceased forgetting,—which is true:<br>For, bringing back reluctantly to mind<br>My husband's treatment of me,—by a light<br>That's later than my life-time, I review<br>And comprehend much and imagine more,<br>And have but little to forgive at last.<br>For now,—be fair and say,—is it not true<br>He was ill-used and cheated of his hope<br>To get enriched by marriage? Marriage gave<br>Me and no money, broke the compact so:<br>He had a right to ask me on those terms,<br>As Pietro and Violante to declare<br>They would not give me: so the bargain stood:<br>They broke it, and he felt himself aggrieved,<br>Became unkind with me to punish them.<br>They said 't was he began deception first,<br>Nor, in one point whereto he pledged himself,<br>Kept promise: what of that, suppose it were?<br>Echoes die off, scarcely reverberate<br>For ever,—why should ill keep echoing ill,<br>And never let our ears have done with noise?<br>Then my poor parents took the violent way<br>To thwart him,—he must needs retaliate,—wrong,<br>Wrong, and all wrong,—better say, all blind!<br>As I myself was, that is sure, who else<br>Had understood the mystery: for his wife<br>Was bound in some sort to help somehow there.<br>It seems as if I might have interposed,<br>Blunted the edge of their resentment so,<br>Since he vexed me because they first vexed him;<br>"I will entreat them to desist, submit,<br>"Give him the money and be poor in peace,—<br>"Certainly not go tell the world: perhaps<br>"He will grow quiet with his gains."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Yes, say<br>Something to this effect and you do well!<br>But then you have to see first: I was blind.<br>That is the fruit of all such wormy ways,<br>The indirect, the unapproved of God:<br>You cannot find their author's end and aim,<br>Not even to substitute your good for bad,<br>Your straight for the irregular; you stand<br>Stupefied, profitless, as cow or sheep<br>That miss a man's mind, anger him just twice<br>By trial at repairing the first fault.<br>Thus, when he blamed me, "You are a coquette,<br>"A lure-owl posturing to attract birds,<br>"You look love-lures at theatre and church,<br>"In walk, at window!"—that, I knew, was false:<br>But why he charged me falsely, whither sought<br>To drive me by such charge,—how could I know?<br>So, unaware, I only made things worse.<br>I tried to soothe him by abjuring walk,<br>Window, church, theatre, for good and all,<br>As if he had been in earnest: that, you know,<br>Was nothing like the object of his charge.<br>Yes, when I got my maid to supplicate<br>The priest, whose name she read when she would read<br>Those feigned false letters I was forced to hear<br>Though I could read no word of,—he should cease<br>Writing,—nay, if he minded prayer of mine,<br>Cease from so much as even pass the street<br>Whereon our house looked,—in my ignorance<br>I was just thwarting Guido's true intent;<br>Which was, to bring about a wicked change<br>Of sport to earnest, tempt a thoughtless man<br>To write indeed, and pass the house, and more,<br>Till both of us were taken in a crime.<br>He ought not to have wished me thus act lies,<br>Simulate folly: but,—wrong or right, the wish,—<br>I failed to apprehend its drift. How plain<br>It follows,—if I fell into such fault,<br>He also may have overreached the mark,<br>Made mistake, by perversity of brain,<br>I' the whole sad strange plot, the grotesque intrigue<br>To make me and my friend unself ourselves,<br>Be other man and woman than we were!<br>Think it out, you who have the time! for me,—<br>I cannot say less; more I will not say.<br>Leave it to God to cover and undo!<br>Only, my dulness should not prove too much!<br>—Not prove that in a certain other point<br>Wherein my husband blamed me,—and you blame,<br>If I interpret smiles and shakes of head,—<br>I was dull too. Oh, if I dared but speak!<br>Must I speak? I am blamed that I forwent<br>A way to make my husband's favour come.<br>That is true: I was firm, withstood, refused …<br>—Women as you are, how can I find the words?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I felt there was just one thing Guido claimed<br>I had no right to give nor he to take;<br>We being in estrangement, soul from soul:<br>Till, when I sought help, the Archbishop smiled,<br>Inquiring into privacies of life,<br>—Said I was blameable—(he stands for God)<br>Nowise entitled to exemption there.<br>Then I obeyed,—as surely had obeyed<br>Were the injunction "Since your husband bids,<br>"Swallow the burning coal he proffers you!"<br>But I did wrong, and he gave wrong advice<br>Though he were thrice Archbishop,—that, I know!—<br>Now I have got to die and see things clear.<br>Remember I was barely twelve years old—<br>A child at marriage: I was let alone<br>For weeks, I told you, lived my child-life still<br>Even at Arezzo, when I woke and found<br>First … but I need not think of that again—<br>Over and ended! Try and take the sense<br>Of what I signify, if it must be so.<br>After the first, my husband, for hate's sake,<br>Said one eve, when the simpler cruelty<br>Seemed somewhat dull at edge and fit to bear,<br>"We have been man and wife six months almost:<br>"How long is this your comedy to last?<br>"Go this night to my chamber, not your own!"<br>At which word, I did rush—most true the charge—<br>And gain the Archbishop's house—he stands for God—<br>And fall upon my knees and clasp his feet,<br>Praying him hinder what my estranged soul<br>Refused to bear, though patient of the rest:<br>"Place me within a convent," I implored—<br>"Let me henceforward lead the virgin life<br>"You praise in Her you bid me imitate!"<br>What did he answer? "Folly of ignorance!<br>"Know, daughter, circumstances make or mar<br>"Virginity,—'t is virtue or 't is vice.<br>"That which was glory in the Mother of God<br>"Had been, for instance, damnable in Eve<br>"Created to be mother of mankind.<br>"Had Eve, in answer to her Maker's speech<br>"'Be fruitful, multiply, replenish earth'—<br>"Pouted 'But I choose rather to remain<br>"'Single'—why, she had spared herself forthwith<br>"Further probation by the apple and snake,<br>"Been pushed straight out of Paradise! For see—<br>"If motherhood be qualified impure,<br>"I catch you making God command Eve sin!<br>"—A blasphemy so like these Molinists',<br>"I must suspect you dip into their books."<br>Then he pursued "'T was in your covenant!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">No! There my husband never used deceit.<br>He never did by speech nor act imply<br>"Because of our souls' yearning that we meet<br>"And mix in soul through flesh, which yours and mine<br>"Wear and impress, and make their visible selves,<br>"—All which means, for the love of you and me,<br>"Let us become one flesh, being one soul!"<br>He only stipulated for the wealth;<br>Honest so far. But when he spoke as plain—<br>Dreadfully honest also—"Since our souls<br>"Stand each from each, a whole world's width between,<br>"Give me the fleshly vesture I can reach<br>"And rend and leave just fit for hell to burn!"—<br>Why, in God's name, for Guido's soul's own sake<br>Imperilled by polluting mine,—I say,<br>I did resist; would I had overcome!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">My heart died out at the Archbishop's smile;<br>—It seemed so stale and worn a way o' the world,<br>As though 't were nature frowning—"Here is Spring,<br>"The sun shines as he shone at Adam's fall,<br>"The earth requires that warmth reach everywhere:<br>"What, must your patch of snow be saved forsooth<br>"Because you rather fancy snow than flowers?"<br>Something in this style he began with me.<br>Last he said, savagely for a good man,<br>"This explains why you call your husband harsh,<br>"Harsh to you, harsh to whom you love. God's Bread!<br>"The poor Count has to manage a mere child<br>"Whose parents leave untaught the simplest things<br>"Their duty was and privilege to teach,—<br>"Good wives' instruction, gossips' lore: they laugh<br>"And leave the Count the task,—or leave it me!"<br>Then I resolved to tell a frightful thing.<br>"I am not ignorant,—know what I say,<br>"Declaring this is sought for hate, not love.<br>"Sir, you may hear things like almighty God.<br>"I tell you that my housemate, yes—the priest<br>"My husband's brother, Canon Girolamo—<br>"Has taught me what depraved and misnamed love<br>"Means, and what outward signs denote the sin,<br>"For he solicits me and says he loves,<br>"The idle young priest with nought else to do.<br>"My husband sees this, knows this, and lets be.<br>"Is it your counsel I bear this beside?"<br>"—More scandal, and against a priest this time!<br>"What, 't is the Canon now?"—less snappishly—<br>"Rise up, my child, for such a child you are,<br>"The rod were too advanced a punishment!<br>"Let's try the honeyed cake. A parable!<br>"'Without a parable spake He not to them.'<br>"There was a ripe round long black toothsome fruit,<br>"Even a flower-fig, the prime boast of May:<br>"And, to the tree, said … either the spirit o' the fig,<br>"Or, if we bring in men, the gardener,<br>"Archbishop of the orchard—had I time<br>"To try o' the two which fits in best: indeed<br>"It might be the Creator's self, but then<br>"The tree should bear an apple, I suppose,—<br>"Well, anyhow, one with authority said<br>"'Ripe fig, burst skin, regale the fig-pecker—<br>"'The bird whereof thou art a perquisite!'<br>"'Nay,' with a flounce, replied the restif fig,<br>"'I much prefer to keep my pulp myself:<br>"'He may go breakfastless and dinnerless,<br>"'Supperless of one crimson seed, for me!'<br>"So, back she flopped into her bunch of leaves.<br>"He flew off, left her,—did the natural lord,—<br>"And lo, three hundred thousand bees and wasps<br>"Found her out, feasted on her to the shuck:<br>"Such gain the fig's that gave its bird no bite!<br>"The moral,—fools elude their proper lot,<br>"Tempt other fools, get ruined all alike.<br>"Therefore go home, embrace your husband quick!<br>"Which if his Canon brother chance to see,<br>"He will the sooner back to book again."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">So, home I did go; so, the worst befell:<br>So, I had proof the Archbishop was just man,<br>And hardly that, and certainly no more.<br>For, miserable consequence to me,<br>My husband's hatred waxed nor waned at all,<br>His brother's boldness grew effrontery soon,<br>And my last stay and comfort in myself<br>Was forced from me: henceforth I looked to God<br>Only, nor cared my desecrated soul<br>Should have fair walls, gay windows for the world.<br>God's glimmer, that came through the ruin-top,<br>Was witness why all lights were quenched inside:<br>Henceforth I asked God counsel, not mankind.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">So, when I made the effort, freed myself,<br>They said—"No care to save appearance here!<br>"How cynic,—when, how wanton, were enough!"<br>—Adding, it all came of my mother's life—<br>My own real mother, whom I never knew,<br>Who did wrong (if she needs must have done wrong)<br>Through being all her life, not my four years,<br>At mercy of the hateful: every beast<br>O' the field was wont to break that fountain-fence,<br>Trample the silver into mud so murk<br>Heaven could not find itself reflected there.<br>Now they cry "Out on her, who, plashy pool,<br>"Bequeathed turbidity and bitterness<br>"To the daughter-stream where Guido dipt and drank!"<br>Well, since she had to bear this brand—let me!<br>The rather do I understand her now,<br>From my experience of what hate calls love,—<br>Much love might be in what their love called hate.<br>If she sold … what they call, sold … me her child—<br>I shall believe she hoped in her poor heart<br>That I at least might try be good and pure,<br>Begin to live untempted, not go doomed<br>And done with ere once found in fault, as she.<br>Oh and, my mother, it all came to this?<br>Why should I trust those that speak ill of you,<br>When I mistrust who speaks even well of them?<br>Why, since all bound to do me good, did harm,<br>May not you, seeming as you harmed me most,<br>Have meant to do most good—and feed your child<br>From bramble-bush, whom not one orchard-tree<br>But drew bough back from, nor let one fruit fall?<br>This it was for you sacrificed your babe?<br>Gained just this, giving your heart's hope away<br>As I might give mine, loving it as you,<br>If … but that never could be asked of me!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">There, enough! I have my support again,<br>Again the knowledge that my babe was, is,<br>Will be mine only. Him, by death, I give<br>Outright to God, without a further care,—<br>But not to any parent in the world,—<br>So to be safe: why is it we repine?<br>What guardianship were safer could we choose?<br>All human plans and projects come to nought:<br>My life, and what I know of other lives,<br>Prove that: no plan nor project! God shall care!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And now you are not tired? How patient then<br>All of you,—Oh yes, patient this long while<br>Listening, and understanding, I am sure!<br>Four days ago, when I was sound and well<br>And like to live, no one would understand.<br>People were kind, but smiled "And what of him,<br>"Your friend, whose tonsure the rich dark-brown hides?<br>"There, there!—your lover, do we dream he was?<br>"A priest too—never were such naughtiness!<br>"Still, he thinks many a long think, never fear,<br>"After the shy pale lady,—lay so light<br>"For a moment in his arms, the lucky one!"<br>And so on: wherefore should I blame you much?<br>So we are made, such difference in minds,<br>Such difference too in eyes that see the minds!<br>That man, you misinterpret and misprise—<br>The glory of his nature, I had thought,<br>Shot itself out in white light, blazed the truth<br>Through every atom of his act with me:<br>Yet where I point you, through the crystal shrine,<br>Purity in quintessence, one dew-drop,<br>You all descry a spider in the midst.<br>One says "The head of it is plain to see,"<br>And one, "They are the feet by which I judge,"<br>All say, "Those films were spun by nothing else."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Then, I must lay my babe away with God,<br>Nor think of him again, for gratitude.<br>Yes, my last breath shall wholly spend itself<br>In one attempt more to disperse the stain,<br>The mist from other breath fond mouths have made,<br>About a lustrous and pellucid soul:<br>So that, when I am gone but sorrow stays,<br>And people need assurance in their doubt<br>If God yet have a servant, man a friend,<br>The weak a saviour and the vile a foe,—<br>Let him be present, by the name invoked,<br>Giuseppe-Maria Caponsacchi!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">There,<br>Strength comes already with the utterance!<br>I will remember once more for his sake<br>The sorrow: for he lives and is belied.<br>Could he be here, how he would speak for me!<br>I had been miserable three drear years<br>In that dread palace and lay passive now,<br>When I first learned there could be such a man.<br>Thus it fell: I was at a public play,<br>In the last days of Carnival last March,<br>Brought there I knew not why, but now know well.<br>My husband put me where I sat, in front;<br>Then crouched down, breathed cold through me from behind,<br>Stationed i' the shadow,—none in front could see,—<br>I, it was, faced the stranger-throng beneath,<br>The crowd with upturned faces, eyes one stare,<br>Voices one buzz. I looked but to the stage,<br>Whereon two lovers sang and interchanged<br>"True life is only love, love only bliss:<br>"I love thee—thee I love!" then they embraced.<br>I looked thence to the ceiling and the walls,—<br>Over the crowd, those voices and those eyes,—<br>My thoughts went through the roof and out, to Rome<br>On wings of music, waft of measured words,—<br>Set me down there, a happy child again<br>Sure that to-morrow would be festa-day,<br>Hearing my parents praise past festas more,<br>And seeing they were old if I was young,<br>Yet wondering why they still would end discourse<br>With "We must soon go, you abide your time,<br>"And,—might we haply see the proper friend<br>"Throw his arm over you and make you safe!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Sudden I saw him; into my lap there fell<br>A foolish twist of comfits, broke my dream<br>And brought me from the air and laid me low,<br>As ruined as the soaring bee that's reached<br>(So Pietro told me at the Villa once)<br>By the dust-handful. There the comfits lay:<br>I looked to see who flung them, and I faced<br>This Caponsacchi, looking up in turn.<br>Ere I could reason out why, I felt sure,<br>Whoever flung them, his was not the hand,—<br>Up rose the round face and good-natured grin<br>Of one who, in effect, had played the prank,<br>From covert close beside the earnest face,—<br>Fat waggish Conti, friend of all the world.<br>He was my husband's cousin, privileged<br>To throw the thing: the other, silent, grave,<br>Solemn almost, saw me, as I saw him.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">There is a psalm Don Celestine recites,<br>"Had I a dove's wings, how I fain would flee!"<br>The psalm runs not "I hope, I pray for wings,"—<br>Not "If wings fall from heaven, I fix them fast,"—<br>Simply "How good it were to fly and rest,<br>"Have hope now, and one day expect content!<br>"How well to do what I shall never do!"<br>So I said "Had there been a man like that,<br>"To lift me with his strength out of all strife<br>"Into the calm, how I could fly and rest!<br>"I have a keeper in the garden here<br>"Whose sole employment is to strike me low<br>"If ever I, for solace, seek the sun.<br>"Life means with me successful feigning death,<br>"Lying stone-like, eluding notice so,<br>"Forgoing here the turf and there the sky.<br>"Suppose that man had been instead of this!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Presently Conti laughed into my ear,<br>—Had tripped up to the raised place where I sat—<br>"Cousin, I flung them brutishly and hard!<br>"Because you must be hurt, to look austere<br>"As Caponsacchi yonder, my tall friend<br>"A-gazing now. Ah, Guido, you so close?<br>"Keep on your knees, do! Beg her to forgive!<br>"My cornet battered like a cannon-ball.<br>"Good-bye, I'm gone!"—nor waited the reply.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">That night at supper, out my husband broke,<br>"Why was that throwing, that buffoonery?<br>"Do you think I am your dupe? What man would dare<br>"Throw comfits in a stranger lady's lap?<br>"'T was knowledge of you bred such insolence<br>"In Caponsacchi; he dared shoot the bolt,<br>"Using that Conti for his stalking-horse.<br>"How could you see him this once and no more,<br>"When he is always haunting hereabout<br>"At the street-corner or the palace-side,<br>"Publishing my shame and your impudence?<br>"You are a wanton,—I a dupe, you think?<br>"O Christ, what hinders that I kill her quick?"<br>Whereat he drew his sword and feigned a thrust.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">All this, now,—being not so strange to me,<br>Used to such misconception day by day<br>And broken-in to bear,—I bore, this time,<br>More quietly than woman should perhaps;<br>Repeated the mere truth and held my tongue.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Then he said, "Since you play the ignorant,<br>"I shall instruct you. This amour,—commenced<br>"Or finished or midway in act, all's one,—<br>"'T is the town-talk; so my revenge shall be.<br>"Does he presume because he is a priest?<br>"I warn him that the sword I wear shall pink<br>"His lily-scented cassock through and through,<br>"Next time I catch him underneath your eaves!"<br>But he had threatened with the sword so oft<br>And, after all, not kept his promise. All<br>I said was "Let God save the innocent!<br>"Moreover death is far from a bad fate.<br>"I shall go pray for you and me, not him;<br>"And then I look to sleep, come death or, worse,<br>"Life." So, I slept.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">There may have elapsed a week,<br>When Margherita,—called my waiting-maid,<br>Whom it is said my husband found too fair—<br>Who stood and heard the charge and the reply,<br>Who never once would let the matter rest<br>From that night forward, but rang changes still<br>On this the thrust and that the shame, and how<br>Good cause for jealousy cures jealous fools,<br>And what a paragon was this same priest<br>She talked about until I stopped my ears,—<br>She said, "A week is gone; you comb your hair,<br>"Then go mope in a corner, cheek on palm,<br>"Till night comes round again,—so, waste a week<br>"As if your husband menaced you in sport.<br>"Have not I some acquaintance with his tricks?<br>"Oh no, he did not stab the serving-man<br>"Who made and sang the rhymes about me once!<br>"For why? They sent him to the wars next day.<br>"Nor poisoned he the foreigner, my friend<br>"Who wagered on the whiteness of my breast,—<br>"The swarth skins of our city in dispute:<br>"For, though he paid me proper compliment,<br>"The Count well knew he was besotted with<br>"Somebody else, a skin as black as ink,<br>"(As all the town knew save my foreigner)<br>"He found and wedded presently,—'Why need<br>"'Better revenge?'—the Count asked. But what's here?<br>"A priest that does not fight, and cannot wed,<br>"Yet must be dealt with! If the Count took fire<br>"For the poor pastime of a minute,—me—<br>"What were the conflagration for yourself,<br>"Countess and lady-wife and all the rest?<br>"The priest will perish; you will grieve too late:<br>"So shall the city-ladies' handsomest<br>"Frankest and liberalest gentleman<br>"Die for you, to appease a scurvy dog<br>"Hanging's too good for. Is there no escape?<br>"Were it not simple Christian charity<br>"To warn the priest be on his guard,—save him<br>"Assured death, save yourself from causing it?<br>"I meet him in the street. Give me a glove,<br>"A ring to show for token! Mum's the word!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I answered "If you were, as styled, my maid,<br>"I would command you: as you are, you say,<br>"My husband's intimate,—assist his wife<br>"Who can do nothing but entreat 'Be still!'<br>"Even if you speak truth and a crime is planned,<br>"Leave help to God as I am forced to do!<br>"There is no other help, or we should craze,<br>"Seeing such evil with no human cure.<br>"Reflect that God, who makes the storm desist,<br>"Can make an angry violent heart subside.<br>"Why should we venture teach Him governance?<br>"Never address me on this subject more!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Next night she said "But I went, all the same,<br>"—Ay, saw your Caponsacchi in his house,<br>"And come back stuffed with news I must outpour.<br>"I told him 'Sir, my mistress is a stone:<br>"'Why should you harm her for no good you get?<br>"'For you do harm her—prowl about our place<br>"'With the Count never distant half the street,<br>"'Lurking at every corner, would you look!<br>"T is certain she has witched you with a spell.<br>"'Are there not other beauties at your beck?<br>"'We all know, Donna This and Monna That<br>"'Die for a glance of yours, yet here you gaze!<br>"'Go make them grateful, leave the stone its cold!'<br>"And he—oh, he turned first white and then red,<br>"And then—'To her behest I bow myself,<br>"'Whom I love with my body and my soul:<br>"'Only a word i' the bowing! See, I write<br>"'One little word, no harm to see or hear!<br>"'Then, fear no further!' This is what he wrote.<br>"I know you cannot read,—therefore, let me!<br>"'My idol!'" …</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">But I took it from her hand<br>And tore it into shreds. "Why, join the rest<br>"Who harm me? Have I ever done you wrong?<br>"People have told me 't is you wrong myself:<br>"Let it suffice I either feel no wrong<br>"Or else forgive it,—yet you turn my foe!<br>"The others hunt me and you throw a noose!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">She muttered "Have your wilful way!" I slept.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Whereupon … no, I leave my husband out<br>It is not to do him more hurt, I speak.<br>Let it suffice, when misery was most,<br>One day, I swooned and got a respite so.<br>She stooped as I was slowly coming to,<br>This Margherita, ever on my trace,<br>And whispered—"Caponsacchi!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">If I drowned,<br>But woke afloat i' the wave with upturned eyes,<br>And found their first sight was a star! I turned—<br>For the first time, I let her have her will,<br>Heard passively,—"The imposthume at such head,<br>"One touch, one lancet-puncture would relieve,—<br>"And still no glance the good physician's way<br>"Who rids you of the torment in a trice!<br>"Still he writes letters you refuse to hear.<br>"He may prevent your husband, kill himself,<br>"So desperate and all fordone is he!<br>"Just hear the pretty verse he made to-day!<br>"A sonnet from Mirtillo. 'Peerless fair …'<br>"All poetry is difficult to read,<br>"—The sense of it is, anyhow, he seeks<br>"Leave to contrive you an escape from hell,<br>"And for that purpose asks an interview.<br>"I can write, I can grant it in your name,<br>"Or, what is better, lead you to his house.<br>"Your husband dashes you against the stones;<br>"This man would place each fragment in a shrine:<br>"You hate him, love your husband!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I returned<br>"It is not true I love my husband,—no,<br>"Nor hate this man. I listen while you speak,<br>"—Assured that what you say is false, the same:<br>"Much as when once, to me a little child,<br>"A rough gaunt man in rags, with eyes on fire,<br>"A crowd of boys and idlers at his heels,<br>"Rushed as I crossed the Square, and held my head<br>"In his two hands, 'Here's she will let me speak!<br>"'You little girl, whose eyes do good to mine,<br>"'I am the Pope, am Sextus, now the Sixth;<br>"'And that Twelfth Innocent, proclaimed to-day,<br>"'Is Lucifer disguised in human flesh!<br>"'The angels, met in conclave, crowned me!'—thus<br>"He gibbered and I listened; but I knew<br>"All was delusion, ere folk interposed<br>"'Unfasten him, the maniac!' Thus I know<br>"All your report of Caponsacchi false,<br>"Folly or dreaming; I have seen so much<br>"By that adventure at the spectacle,<br>"The face I fronted that one first, last time:<br>"He would belie it by such words and thoughts.<br>"Therefore while you profess to show him me,<br>"I ever see his own face. Get you gone!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"—That will I, nor once open mouth again,—<br>"No, by Saint Joseph and the Holy Ghost!<br>"On your head be the damage, so adieu!"<br>And so more days, more deeds I must forget,<br>Till … what a strange thing now is to declare!<br>Since I say anything, say all if true!<br>And how my life seems lengthened as to serve!<br>It may be idle or inopportune,<br>But, true?—why, what was all I said but truth,<br>Even when I found that such as are untrue<br>Could only take the truth in through a lie?<br>Now—I am speaking truth to the Truth's self:<br>God will lend credit to my words this time.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">It had got half through April. I arose<br>One vivid daybreak,—who had gone to bed<br>In the old way my wont those last three years,<br>Careless until, the cup drained, I should die.<br>The last sound in my ear, the over-night,<br>Had been a something let drop on the sly<br>In prattle by Margherita, "Soon enough<br>"Gaieties end, now Easter's past: a week,<br>"And the Archbishop gets him back to Rome,—<br>"Everyone leaves the town for Rome, this Spring,—<br>"Even Caponsacchi, out of heart and hope,<br>"Resigns himself and follows with the flock."<br>I heard this drop and drop like rain outside<br>Fast-falling through the darkness while she spoke:<br>So had I heard with like indifference,<br>"And Michael's pair of wings will arrive first<br>"At Rome, to introduce the company,<br>"And bear him from our picture where he fights<br>"Satan,—expect to have that dragon loose<br>"And never a defender!"—my sole thought<br>Being still, as night came, "Done, another day!<br>"How good to sleep and so get nearer death!"—<br>When, what, first thing at daybreak, pierced the sleep<br>With a summons to me? Up I sprang alive,<br>Light in me, light without me, everywhere<br>Change! A broad yellow sunbeam was let fall<br>From heaven to earth,—a sudden drawbridge lay,<br>Along which marched a myriad merry motes,<br>Mocking the flies that crossed them and recrossed<br>In rival dance, companions new-born too.<br>On the house-eaves, a dripping shag of weed<br>Shook diamonds on each dull grey lattice-square,<br>As first one, then another bird leapt by,<br>And light was off, and lo was back again,<br>Always with one voice,—where are two such joys?—<br>The blessed building-sparrow! I stepped forth,<br>Stood on the terrace,—o'er the roofs, such sky!<br>My heart sang, "I too am to go away,<br>"I too have something I must care about,<br>"Carry away with me to Rome, to Rome!<br>"The bird brings hither sticks and hairs and wool,<br>"And nowhere else i' the world; what fly breaks rank,<br>"Falls out of the procession that befits,<br>"From window here to window there, with all<br>"The world to choose,—so well he knows his course?<br>"I have my purpose and my motive too,<br>"My march to Rome, like any bird or fly!<br>"Had I been dead! How right to be alive!<br>"Last night I almost prayed for leave to die,<br>"Wished Guido all his pleasure with the sword<br>"Or the poison,—poison, sword, was but a trick,<br>"Harmless, may God forgive him the poor jest!<br>"My life is charmed, will last till I reach Rome!<br>"Yesterday, but for the sin,—ah, nameless be<br>"The deed I could have dared against myself!<br>"Now—see if I will touch an unripe fruit,<br>"And risk the health I want to have and use!<br>"Not to live, now, would be the wickedness,—<br>"For life means to make haste and go to Rome<br>"And leave Arezzo, leave all woes at once!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Now, understand here, by no means mistake!<br>Long ago had I tried to leave that house<br>When it seemed such procedure would stop sin;<br>And still failed more the more I tried—at first<br>The Archbishop, as I told you,—next, our lord<br>The Governor,—indeed I found my way,<br>I went to the great palace where he rules,<br>Though I knew well 't was he who,—when I gave<br>A jewel or two, themselves had given me,<br>Back to my parents,—since they wanted bread,<br>They who had never let me want a nosegay,—he<br>Spoke of the jail for felons, if they kept<br>What was first theirs, then mine, so doubly theirs,<br>Though all the while my husband's most of all!<br>I knew well who had spoke the word wrought this:<br>Yet, being in extremity, I fled<br>To the Governor, as I say,—scarce opened lip<br>When—the cold cruel snicker close behind—<br>Guido was on my trace, already there,<br>Exchanging nod and wink for shrug and smile,<br>And I—pushed back to him and, for my pains<br>Paid with … but why remember what is past?<br>I sought out a poor friar the people call<br>The Roman, and confessed my sin which came<br>Of their sin,—that fact could not be repressed,—<br>The frightfulness of my despair in God:<br>And, feeling, through the grate, his horror shake,<br>Implored him, "Write for me who cannot write,<br>"Apprise my parents, make them rescue me!<br>"You bid me be courageous and trust God:<br>"Do you in turn dare somewhat, trust and write<br>"'Dear friends, who used to be my parents once,<br>"'And now declare you have no part in me,<br>"'This is some riddle I want wit to solve,<br>"'Since you must love me with no difference.<br>"'Even suppose you altered,—there's your hate,<br>"'To ask for: hate of you two dearest ones<br>"'I shall find liker love than love found here,<br>"'If husbands love their wives. Take me away<br>"'And hate me as you do the gnats and fleas,<br>"'Even the scorpions! How I shall rejoice!'<br>"Write that and save me!" And he promised—wrote<br>Or did not write; things never changed at all:<br>He was not like the Augustinian here!<br>Last, in a desperation I appealed<br>To friends, whoever wished me better days,<br>To Guillichini, that's of kin,—"What, I—<br>"Travel to Rome with you? A flying gout<br>"Bids me deny my heart and mind my leg!"<br>Then I tried Conti, used to brave—laugh back<br>The louring thunder when his cousin scowled<br>At me protected by his presence: "You—<br>"Who well know what you cannot save me from,—<br>"Carry me off! What frightens you, a priest?"<br>He shook his head, looked grave—"Above my strength!<br>"Guido has claws that scratch, shows feline teeth;<br>"A formidabler foe than I dare fret:<br>"Give me a dog to deal with, twice the size!<br>"Of course I am a priest and Canon too,<br>"But . . by the bye . . though both, not quite so bold<br>"As he, my fellow-Canon, brother-priest,<br>"The personage in such ill odour here<br>"Because of the reports—pure birth o' the brain!<br>"Our Caponsacchi, he's your true Saint George<br>"To slay the monster, set the Princess free,<br>"And have the whole High-Altar to himself:<br>'I always think so when I see that piece<br>"I' the Pieve, that's his church and mine, you know:<br>"Though you drop eyes at mention of his name!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">That name had got to take a half-grotesque<br>Half-ominous, wholly enigmatic sense,<br>Like any by-word, broken bit of song<br>Born with a meaning, changed by mouth and mouth<br>That mix it in a sneer or smile, as chance<br>Bids, till it now means nought but ugliness<br>And perhaps shame.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">—All this intends to say,<br>That, over-night, the notion of escape<br>Had seemed distemper, dreaming; and the name,—<br>Not the man, but the name of him, thus made<br>Into a mockery and disgrace,—why, she<br>Who uttered it persistently, had laughed,<br>"I name his name, and there you start and wince<br>"As criminal from the red tongs' touch!"—yet now,<br>Now, as I stood letting morn bathe me bright,<br>Choosing which butterfly should bear my news,—<br>The white, the brown one, or that tinier blue,—<br>The Margherita, I detested so,<br>In she came—"The fine day, the good Spring time!<br>"What, up and out at window? That is best.<br>"No thought of Caponsacchi?—who stood there<br>"All night on one leg, like the sentry crane,<br>"Under the pelting of your water-spout—<br>"Looked last look at your lattice ere he leave<br>"Our city, bury his dead hope at Rome.<br>"Ay, go to looking-glass and make you fine,<br>"While he may die ere touch one least loose hair<br>"You drag at with the comb in such a rage!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I turned—"Tell Caponsacchi he may come!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"Tell him to come? Ah, but, for charity,<br>"A truce to fooling! Come? What,—come this eve?<br>"Peter and Paul! But I see through the trick!<br>"Yes, come, and take a flower-pot on his head,<br>"Flung from your terrace! No joke, sincere truth?"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">How plainly I perceived hell flash and fade<br>O' the face of her,—the doubt that first paled joy,<br>Then, final reassurance I indeed<br>Was caught now, never to be free again!<br>What did I care?—who felt myself of force<br>To play with silk, and spurn the horsehair-springe.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"But—do you know that I have bade him come,<br>"And in your own name? I presumed so much,<br>"Knowing the thing you needed in your heart.<br>"But somehow—what had I to show in proof?<br>"He would not come: half-promised, that was all,<br>"And wrote the letters you refused to read.<br>"What is the message that shall move him now?"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"After the Ave Maria, at first dark,<br>"I will be standing on the terrace, say!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"I would I had a good long lock of hair<br>"Should prove I was not lying! Never mind!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Off she went—"May he not refuse, that's all—<br>"Fearing a trick!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I answered, "He will come."<br>And, all day, I sent prayer like incense up<br>To God the strong, God the beneficent,<br>God ever mindful in all strife and strait,<br>Who, for our own good, makes the need extreme,<br>Till at the last He puts forth might and saves.<br>An old rhyme came into my head and rang<br>Of how a virgin, for the faith of God,<br>Hid herself, from the Paynims that pursued,<br>In a cave's heart; until a thunderstone,<br>Wrapped in a flame, revealed the couch and prey<br>And they laughed—"Thanks to lightning, ours at last!"<br>And she cried "Wrath of God, assert His love!<br>"Servant of God, thou fire, befriend His child!"<br>And lo, the fire she grasped at, fixed its flash,<br>Lay in her hand a calm cold dreadful sword<br>She brandished till pursuers strewed the ground,<br>So did the souls within them die away,<br>As o'er the prostrate bodies, sworded, safe,<br>She walked forth to the solitudes and Christ:<br>So should I grasp the lightning and be saved!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And still, as the day wore, the trouble grew<br>Whereby I guessed there would be born a star,<br>Until at an intense throe of the dusk,<br>I started up, was pushed, I dare to say,<br>Out on the terrace, leaned and looked at last<br>Where the deliverer waited me: the same<br>Silent and solemn face, I first descried<br>At the spectacle, confronted mine once more.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">So was that minute twice vouchsafed me, so<br>The manhood, wasted then, was still at watch<br>To save me yet a second time: no change<br>Here, though all else changed in the changing world!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I spoke on the instant, as my duty bade,<br>In some such sense as this, whatever the phrase.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"Friend, foolish words were borne from you to me;<br>"Your soul behind them is the pure strong wind,<br>"Not dust and feathers which its breath may bear:<br>"These to the witless seem the wind itself,<br>"Since proving thus the first of it they feel.<br>"If by mischance you blew offence my way,<br>"The straws are dropt, the wind desists no whit,<br>"And how such strays were caught up in the street<br>"And took a motion from you, why inquire?<br>"I speak to the strong soul, no weak disguise.<br>"If it be truth,—why should I doubt it truth?—<br>"You serve God specially, as priests are bound,<br>"And care about me, stranger as I am,<br>"So far as wish my good,—that miracle<br>"I take to intimate He wills you serve<br>"By saving me,—what else can He direct?<br>"Here is the service. Since a long while now,<br>"I am in course of being put to death:<br>"While death concerned nothing but me, I bowed<br>"The head and bade, in heart, my husband strike.<br>"Now I imperil something more, it seems,<br>"Something that's truelier me than this myself,<br>"Something I trust in God and you to save.<br>"You go to Rome, they tell me: take me there,<br>"Put me back with my people!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">He replied—<br>The first word I heard ever from his lips,<br>All himself in it,—an eternity<br>Of speech, to match the immeasurable depth<br>O' the soul that then broke silence—"I am yours."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">So did the star rise, soon to lead my step,<br>Lead on, nor pause before it should stand still<br>Above the House o' the Babe,—my babe to be,<br>That knew me first and thus made me know him,<br>That had his right of life and claim on mine,<br>And would not let me die till he was born,<br>But pricked me at the heart to save us both,<br>Saying "Have you the will? Leave God the way!"<br>And the way was Caponsacchi—"mine," thank God!<br>He was mine, he is mine, he will be mine.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">No pause i' the leading and the light! I know,<br>Next night there was a cloud came, and not he:<br>But I prayed through the darkness till it broke<br>And let him shine. The second night, he came.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"The plan is rash; the project desperate:<br>"In such a flight needs must I risk your life,<br>"Give food for falsehood, folly or mistake,<br>"Ground for your husband's rancour and revenge"—<br>So he began again, with the same face.<br>I felt that, the same loyalty—one star<br>Turning now red that was so white before—<br>One service apprehended newly: just<br>A word of mine and there the white was back!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"No, friend, for you will take me! 'T is yourself<br>"Risk all, not I,—who let you, for I trust<br>"In the compensating great God: enough!<br>"I know you: when is it that you will come?"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"To-morrow at the day's dawn." Then I heard<br>What I should do: how to prepare for flight<br>And where to fly.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">That night my husband bade<br>"—You, whom I loathe, beware you break my sleep<br>"This whole night! Couch beside me like the corpse<br>"I would you were!" The rest you know, I think—<br>How I found Caponsacchi and escaped.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And this man, men call sinner? Jesus Christ!<br>Of whom men said, with mouths Thyself mad'st once,<br>"He hath a devil"—say he was Thy saint,<br>My Caponsacchi! Shield and show—unshroud<br>In Thine own time the glory of the soul<br>If aught obscure,—if ink-spot, from vile pens<br>Scribbling a charge against him—(I was glad<br>Then, for the first time, that I could not write)—<br>Flirted his way, have flecked the blaze!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">For me,<br>'T is otherwise: let men take, sift my thoughts<br>—Thoughts I throw like the flax for sun to bleach!<br>I did pray, do pray, in the prayer shall die,<br>"Oh, to have Caponsacchi for my guide!"<br>Ever the face upturned to mine, the hand<br>Holding my hand across the world,—a sense<br>That reads, as only such can read, the mark<br>God sets on woman, signifying so<br>She should—shall peradventure—be divine;<br>Yet 'ware, the while, how weakness mars the print<br>And makes confusion, leaves the thing men see,<br>—Not this man sees,—who from his soul, re-writes<br>The obliterated charter,—love and strength<br>Mending what's marred. "So kneels a votarist,<br>"Weeds some poor waste traditionary plot<br>"Where shrine once was, where temple yet may be,<br>"Purging the place but worshipping the while,<br>"By faith and not by sight, sight clearest so,—<br>"Such way the saints work,"—says Don Celestine.<br>But I, not privileged to see a saint<br>Of old when such walked earth with crown and palm,<br>If I call "saint" what saints call something else—<br>The saints must bear with me, impute the fault<br>To a soul i' the bud, so starved by ignorance,<br>Stinted of warmth, it will not blow this year<br>Nor recognize the orb which Spring-flowers know.<br>But if meanwhile some insect with a heart<br>Worth floods of lazy music, spendthrift joy—<br>Some fire-fly renounced Spring for my dwarfed cup,<br>Crept close to me, brought lustre for the dark,<br>Comfort against the cold,—what though excess<br>Of comfort should miscall the creature—sun?<br>What did the sun to hinder while harsh hands<br>Petal by petal, crude and colourless,<br>Tore me? This one heart gave me all the Spring!<br>Is all told? There's the journey: and where's time<br>To tell you how that heart burst out in shine?<br>Yet certain points do press on me too hard.<br>Each place must have a name, though I forget:<br>How strange it was—there where the plain begins<br>And the small river mitigates its flow—<br>When eve was fading fast, and my soul sank,<br>And he divined what surge of bitterness,<br>In overtaking me, would float me back<br>Whence I was carried by the striding day—<br>So,—"This grey place was famous once," said he—<br>And he began that legend of the place<br>As if in answer to the unspoken fear,<br>And told me all about a brave man dead,<br>Which lifted me and let my soul go on!<br>How did he know too,—at that town's approach<br>By the rock-side,—that in coming near the signs<br>Of life, the house-roofs and the church and tower,<br>I saw the old boundary and wall o' the world<br>Rise plain as ever round me, hard and cold,<br>As if the broken circlet joined again,<br>Tightened itself about me with no break,—<br>As if the town would turn Arezzo's self,—<br>The husband there,—the friends my enemies,<br>All ranged against me, not an avenue<br>To try, but would be blocked and drive me back<br>On him,—this other, … oh the heart in that!<br>Did not he find, bring, put into my arms<br>A new-born babe?—and I saw faces beam<br>Of the young mother proud to teach me joy,<br>And gossips round expecting my surprise<br>At the sudden hole through earth that lets in heaven.<br>I could believe himself by his strong will<br>Had woven around me what I thought the world<br>We went along in, every circumstance,<br>Towns, flowers and faces, all things helped so well!<br>For, through the journey, was it natural<br>Such comfort should arise from first to last?<br>As I look back, all is one milky way;<br>Still bettered more, the more remembered, so<br>Do new stars bud while I but search for old,<br>And fill all gaps i' the glory, and grow him—<br>Him I now see make the shine everywhere.<br>Even at the last when the bewildered flesh,<br>The cloud of weariness about my soul<br>Clogging too heavily, sucked down all sense,—<br>Still its last voice was, "He will watch and care;<br>"Let the strength go, I am content: he stays!"<br>I doubt not he did stay and care for all—<br>From that sick minute when the head swam round,<br>And the eyes looked their last and died on him,<br>As in his arms he caught me, and, you say,<br>Carried me in, that tragical red eve,<br>And laid me where I next returned to life<br>In the other red of morning, two red plates<br>That crushed together, crushed the time between,<br>And are since then a solid fire to me,—<br>When in, my dreadful husband and the world<br>Broke,—and I saw him, master, by hell's right,<br>And saw my angel helplessly held back<br>By guards that helped the malice—the lamb prone,<br>The serpent towering and triumphant—then<br>Came all the strength back in a sudden swell,<br>I did for once see right, do right, give tongue<br>The adequate protest: for a worm must turn<br>If it would have its wrong observed by God.<br>I did spring up, attempt to thrust aside<br>That ice-block 'twixt the sun and me, lay low<br>The neutralizer of all good and truth.<br>If I sinned so,—never obey voice more<br>O' the Just and Terrible, who bids us—"Bear!"<br>Not—"Stand by, bear to see my angels bear!"<br>I am clear it was on impulse to serve God<br>Not save myself,—no—nor my child unborn!<br>Had I else waited patiently till now?—<br>Who saw my old kind parents, silly-sooth<br>And too much trustful, for their worst of faults,<br>Cheated, brow-beaten, stripped and starved, cast out<br>Into the kennel: I remonstrated,<br>Then sank to silence, for,—their woes at end,<br>Themselves gone,—only I was left to plague.<br>If only I was threatened and belied,<br>What matter? I could bear it and did bear;<br>It was a comfort, still one lot for all:<br>They were not persecuted for my sake<br>And I, estranged, the single happy one.<br>But when at last, all by myself I stood<br>Obeying the clear voice which bade me rise,<br>Not for my own sake but my babe unborn,<br>And take the angel's hand was sent to help—<br>And found the old adversary athwart the path—<br>Not my hand simply struck from the angel's, but<br>The very angel's self made foul i' the face<br>By the fiend who struck there,—that I would not bear,<br>That only I resisted! So, my first<br>And last resistance was invincible.<br>Prayers move God; threats, and nothing else, move men!<br>I must have prayed a man as he were God<br>When I implored the Governor to right<br>My parents' wrongs: the answer was a smile.<br>The Archbishop,—did I clasp his feet enough,<br>Hide my face hotly on them, while I told<br>More than I dared make my own mother know?<br>The profit was—compassion and a jest.<br>This time, the foolish prayers were done with, right<br>Used might, and solemnized the sport at once.<br>All was against the combat: vantage, mine?<br>The runaway avowed, the accomplice-wife,<br>In company with the plan-contriving priest?<br>Yet, shame thus rank and patent, I struck, bare,<br>At foe from head to foot in magic mail,<br>And off it withered, cobweb-armoury<br>Against the lightning! 'T was truth singed the lies<br>And saved me, not the vain sword nor weak speech!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">You see, I will not have the service fail!<br>I say, the angel saved me: I am safe!<br>Others may want and wish, I wish nor want<br>One point o' the circle plainer, where I stand<br>Traced round about with white to front the world.<br>What of the calumny I came across,<br>What o' the way to the end?—the end crowns all.<br>The judges judged aright i' the main, gave me<br>The uttermost of my heart's desire, a truce<br>From torture and Arezzo, balm for hurt,<br>With the quiet nuns,—God recompense the good!<br>Who said and sang away the ugly past.<br>And, when my final fortune was revealed,<br>What safety while, amid my parents' arms,<br>My babe was given me! Yes, he saved my babe:<br>It would not have peeped forth, the bird-like thing,<br>Through that Arezzo noise and trouble: back<br>Had it returned nor ever let me see!<br>But the sweet peace cured all, and let me live<br>And give my bird the life among the leaves<br>God meant him! Weeks and months of quietude,<br>I could lie in such peace and learn so much—<br>Begin the task, I see how needful now,<br>Of understanding somewhat of my past,—<br>Know life a little, I should leave so soon.<br>Therefore, because this man restored my soul,<br>All has been right; I have gained my gain, enjoyed<br>As well as suffered,—nay, got foretaste too<br>Of better life beginning where this ends—<br>All through the breathing-while allowed me thus,<br>Which let good premonitions reach my soul<br>Unthwarted, and benignant influence flow<br>And interpenetrate and change my heart,<br>Uncrossed by what was wicked,—nay, unkind.<br>For, as the weakness of my time drew nigh,<br>Nobody did me one disservice more,<br>Spoke coldly or looked strangely, broke the love<br>I lay in the arms of, till my boy was born,<br>Born all in love, with nought to spoil the bliss<br>A whole long fortnight: in a life like mine<br>A fortnight filled with bliss is long and much.<br>All women are not mothers of a boy,<br>Though they live twice the length of my whole life,<br>And, as they fancy, happily all the same.<br>There I lay, then, all my great fortnight long,<br>As if it would continue, broaden out<br>Happily more and more, and lead to heaven:<br>Christmas before me,—was not that a chance?<br>I never realized God's birth before—<br>How He grew likest God in being born.<br>This time I felt like Mary, had my babe<br>Lying a little on my breast like hers.<br>So all went on till, just four days ago—<br>The night and the tap.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Oh it shall be success<br>To the whole of our poor family! My friends<br>… Nay, father and mother,—give me back my word!<br>They have been rudely stripped of life, disgraced<br>Like children who must needs go clothed too fine,<br>Carry the garb of Carnival in Lent.<br>If they too much affected frippery,<br>They have been punished and submit themselves,<br>Say no word: all is over, they see God<br>Who will not be extreme to mark their fault<br>Or He had granted respite: they are safe.<br>For that most woeful man my husband once,<br>Who, needing respite, still draws vital breath,<br>I—pardon him? So far as lies in me,<br>I give him for his good the life he takes,<br>Praying the world will therefore acquiesce.<br>Let him make God amends,—none, none to me<br>Who thank him rather that, whereas strange fate<br>Mockingly styled him husband and me wife,<br>Himself this way at least pronounced divorce,<br>Blotted the marriage-bond: this blood of mine<br>Flies forth exultingly at any door,<br>Washes the parchment white, and thanks the blow.<br>We shall not meet in this world nor the next,<br>But where will God be absent? In His face<br>Is light, but in His shadow healing too:<br>Let Guido touch the shadow and be healed!<br>And as my presence was importunate,—<br>My earthly good, temptation and a snare,—<br>Nothing about me but drew somehow down<br>His hate upon me,—somewhat so excused<br>Therefore, since hate was thus the truth of him,—<br>May my evanishment for evermore<br>Help further to relieve the heart that cast<br>Such object of its natural loathing forth!<br>So he was made; he nowise made himself:<br>I could not love him, but his mother did.<br>His soul has never lain beside my soul<br>But for the unresisting body.—thanks!<br>He burned that garment spotted by the flesh.<br>Whatever he touched is rightly ruined: plague<br>It caught, and disinfection it had craved<br>Still but for Guido; I am saved through him<br>So as by fire; to him—thanks and farewell!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Even for my babe, my boy, there's safety thence—<br>From the sudden death of me, I mean: we poor<br>Weak souls, how we endeavour to be strong!<br>I was already using up my life,—<br>This portion, now, should do him such a good,<br>This other go to keep off such an ill!<br>The great life; see, a breath and it is gone!<br>So is detached, so left all by itself<br>The little life, the fact which means so much.<br>Shall not God stoop the kindlier to His work,<br>His marvel of creation, foot would crush,<br>Now that the hand He trusted to receive<br>And hold it, lets the treasure fall perforce?<br>The better; He shall have in orphanage<br>His own way all the clearlier: if my babe<br>Outlived the hour—and he has lived two weeks—<br>It is through God who knows I am not by.<br>Who is it makes the soft gold hair turn black,<br>And sets the tongue, might lie so long at rest,<br>Trying to talk? Let us leave God alone!<br>Why should I doubt He will explain in time<br>What I feel now, but fail to find the words?<br>My babe nor was, nor is, nor yet shall be<br>Count Guido Franceschini's child at all—<br>Only his mother's, born of love not hate!<br>So shall I have my rights in after-time.<br>It seems absurd, impossible to-day;<br>So seems so much else, not explained but known!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Ah! Friends, I thank and bless you every one!<br>No more now: I withdraw from earth and man<br>To my own soul, compose myself for God.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116361" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Well, and there is more! Yes, my end of breath<br>Shall bear away my soul in being true!<br>He is still here, not outside with the world,<br>Here, here, I have him in his rightful place!<br>'T is now, when I am most upon the move,<br>I feel for what I verily find—again<br>The face, again the eyes, again, through all,<br>The heart and its immeasurable love<br>Of my one friend, my only, all my own,<br>Who put his breast between the spears and me.<br>Ever with Caponsacchi! Otherwise<br>Here alone would be failure, loss to me—<br>How much more loss to him, with life debarred<br>From giving life, love locked from love's display,<br>The day-star stopped its task that makes night morn!<br>O lover of my life, O soldier-saint,<br>No work begun shall ever pause for death!<br>Love will be helpful to me more and more<br>I' the coming course, the new path I must tread—<br>My weak hand in thy strong hand, strong for that!<br>Tell him that if I seem without him now,<br>That's the world's insight! Oh, he understands!<br>He is at Civita—do I once doubt<br>The world again is holding us apart?<br>He had been here, displayed in my behalf<br>The broad brow that reverberates the truth,<br>And flashed the word God gave him, back to man!<br>I know where the free soul is flown! My fate<br>Will have been hard for even him to bear:<br>Let it confirm him in the trust of God,<br>Showing how holily he dared the deed!<br>And, for the rest,—say, from the deed, no touch<br>Of harm came, but all good, all happiness,<br>Not one faint fleck of failure! Why explain?<br>What I see, oh, he sees and how much more!<br>Tell him,—I know not wherefore the true word<br>Should fade and fall unuttered at the last—<br>It was the name of him I sprang to meet<br>When came the knock, the summons and the end.<br>"My great heart, my strong hand are back again!"<br>I would have sprung to these, beckoning across<br>Murder and hell gigantic and distinct<br>O' the threshold, posted to exclude me heaven:<br>He is ordained to call and I to come!<br>Do not the dead wear flowers when dressed for God?<br>Say,—I am all in flowers from head to foot!<br>Say,—not one flower of all he said and did,<br>Might seem to flit unnoticed, fade unknown,<br>But dropped a seed, has grown a balsam-tree<br>Whereof the blossoming perfumes the place<br>At this supreme of moments! He is a priest;<br>He cannot marry therefore, which is right:<br>I think he would not marry if he could.<br>Marriage on earth seems such a counterfeit,<br>Mere imitation of the inimitable:<br>In heaven we have the real and true and sure.<br>'T is there they neither marry nor are given<br>In marriage but are as the angels: right,<br>Oh how right that is, how like Jesus Christ<br>To say that! Marriage-making for the earth,<br>With gold so much,—birth, power, repute so much,<br>Or beauty, youth so much, in lack of these!<br>Be as the angels rather, who, apart,<br>Know themselves into one, are found at length<br>Married, but marry never, no, nor give<br>In marriage; they are man and wife at once<br>When the true time is: here we have to wait<br>Not so long neither! Could we by a wish<br>Have what we will and get the future now,<br>Would we wish aught done undone in the past?<br>So, let him wait God's instant men call years;<br>Meantime hold hard by truth and his great soul,<br>Do out the duty! Through such souls alone<br>God stooping shows sufficient of His light<br>For us i' the dark to rise by. And I rise.</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>

solid border dashed border dotted border double border groove border ridge border inset border outset border no border blue green red purple cyan gold silver black