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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="/comments.php?id=116365" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>XI. Guido</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116365" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">You are the Cardinal Acciaiuoli, and you,<br>Abate Panciatichi—two good Tuscan names:<br>Acciaiuoli—ah, your ancestor it was<br>Built the huge battlemented convent-block<br>Over the little forky flashing Greve<br>That takes the quick turn at the foot o' the hill<br>Just as one first sees Florence: oh those days!<br>'T is Ema, though, the other rivulet,<br>The one-arched brown brick bridge yawns over,—yes,<br>Gallop and go five minutes, and you gain<br>The Roman Gate from where the Ema's bridged:<br>Kingfishers fly there: how I see the bend<br>O'erturreted by Certosa which he built,<br>That Senescal (we styled him) of your House!<br>I do adjure you, help me, Sirs! My blood<br>Comes from as far a source: ought it to end<br>This way, by leakage through their scaffold-planks<br>Into Rome's sink where her red refuse runs?<br>Sirs, I beseech you by blood-sympathy,<br>If there be any vile experiment<br>In the air,—if this your visit simply prove,<br>When all's done, just a well-intentioned trick,<br>That tries for truth truer than truth itself,<br>By startling up a man, ere break of day,<br>To tell him he must die at sunset,—pshaw!<br>That man's a Franceschini; feel his pulse,<br>Laugh at your folly, and let's all go sleep!<br>You have my last word,—innocent am I<br>As Innocent my Pope and murderer,<br>Innocent as a babe, as Mary's own,<br>As Mary's self,—I said, say and repeat,—<br>And why, then, should I die twelve hours hence? I—<br>Whom, not twelve hours ago, the gaoler bade<br>Turn to my straw-truss, settle and sleep sound<br>That I might wake the sooner, promptlier pay<br>His due of meat-and-drink-indulgence, cross<br>His palm with fee of the good-hand, beside,<br>As gallants use who go at large again!<br>For why? All honest Rome approved my part;<br>Whoever owned wife, sister, daughter,—nay,<br>Mistress,—had any shadow of any right<br>That looks like right, and, all the more resolved,<br>Held it with tooth and nail,—these manly men<br>Approved! I being for Rome, Rome was for me.<br>Then, there's the point reserved, the subterfuge<br>My lawyers held by, kept for last resource,<br>Firm should all else,—the impossible fancy!—fail,<br>And sneaking burgess-spirit win the day.<br>The knaves! One plea at least would hold,—they laughed,—<br>One grappling-iron scratch the bottom-rock<br>Even should the middle mud let anchor go!<br>I hooked my cause on to the Clergy's,—plea<br>Which, even if law tipped off my hat and plume,<br>Revealed my priestly tonsure, saved me so.<br>The Pope moreover, this old Innocent,<br>Being so meek and mild and merciful,<br>So fond o' the poor and so fatigued of earth,<br>So … fifty thousand devils in deepest hell!<br>Why must he cure us of our strange conceit<br>Of the angel in man's likeness, that we loved<br>And looked should help us at a pinch? He help?<br>He pardon? Here's his mind and message—death!<br>Thank the good Pope! Now, is he good in this,<br>Never mind, Christian,—no such stuff's extant,—<br>But will my death do credit to his reign,<br>Show he both lived and let live, so was good?<br>Cannot I live if he but like? "The law!"<br>Why, just the law gives him the very chance,<br>The precise leave to let my life alone,<br>Which the archangelic soul of him (he says)<br>Yearns after! Here they drop it in his palm,<br>My lawyers, capital o' the cursed kind,—<br>Drop life to take and hold and keep: but no!<br>He sighs, shakes head, refuses to shut hand,<br>Motions away the gift they bid him grasp,<br>And of the coyness comes—that off I run<br>And down I go, he best knows whither! mind,<br>He knows, who sets me rolling all the same!<br>Disinterested Vicar of our Lord,<br>This way he abrogates and disallows,<br>Nullifies and ignores,—reverts in fine<br>To the good and right, in detriment of me!<br>Talk away! Will you have the naked truth?<br>He's sick of his life's supper,—swallowed lies:<br>So, hobbling bedward, needs must ease his maw<br>Just where I sit o' the door-sill. Sir Abate,<br>Can you do nothing? Friends, we used to frisk:<br>What of this sudden slash in a friend's face,<br>This cut across our good companionship<br>That showed its front so gay when both were young?<br>Were not we put into a beaten path,<br>Bid pace the world, we nobles born and bred,<br>We body of friends with each his scutcheon full<br>Of old achievement and impunity,—<br>Taking the laugh of morn and Sol's salute<br>As forth we fared, pricked on to breathe our steeds<br>And take equestrian sport over the green<br>Under the blue, across the crop,—what care?<br>If we went prancing up hill and down dale,<br>In and out of the level and the straight,<br>By the bit of pleasant byeway, where was harm?<br>Still Sol salutes me and the morning laughs:<br>I see my grandsire's hoof-prints,—point the spot<br>Where he drew rein, slipped saddle, and stabbed knave<br>For daring throw gibe—much less, stone—from pale:<br>Then back, and on, and up with the cavalcade.<br>Just so wend we, now canter, now converse,<br>Till, 'mid the jauncing pride and jaunty port,<br>Something of a sudden jerks at somebody—<br>A dagger is out, a flashing cut and thrust,<br>Because I play some prank my grandsire played,<br>And here I sprawl: where is the company? Gone!<br>A trot and a trample! only I lie trapped,<br>Writhe in a certain novel springe just set<br>By the good old Pope: I'm first prize. Warn me? Why?<br>Apprise me that the law o' the game is changed?<br>Enough that I'm a warning, as I writhe,<br>To all and each my fellows of the file,<br>And make law plain henceforward past mistake,<br>"For such a prank, death is the penalty!"<br>Pope the Five Hundredth (what do I know or care?)<br>Deputes your Eminency and Abateship<br>To announce that, twelve hours from this time, he needs<br>I just essay upon my body and soul<br>The virtue of his brand-new engine, prove<br>Represser of the pranksome! I'm the first!<br>Thanks. Do you know what teeth you mean to try<br>The sharpness of, on this soft neck and throat?<br>I know it,—I have seen and hate it,—ay,<br>As you shall, while I tell you! Let me talk,<br>Or leave me, at your pleasure! talk I must:<br>What is your visit but my lure to talk?<br>Nay, you have something to disclose?—a smile,<br>At end of the forced sternness, means to mock<br>The heart-beats here? I call your two hearts stone!<br>Is your charge to stay with me till I die?<br>Be tacit as your bench, then! Use your ears,<br>I use my tongue: how glibly yours will run<br>At pleasant supper-time … God's curse! … to-night<br>When all the guests jump up, begin so brisk<br>"Welcome, his Eminence who shrived the wretch!<br>"Now we shall have the Abate's story!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116365" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Life!<br>How I could spill this overplus of mine<br>Among those hoar-haired, shrunk-shanked odds and ends<br>Of body and soul old age is chewing dry!<br>Those windlestraws that stare while purblind death<br>Mows here, mows there, makes hay of juicy me,<br>And misses just the bunch of withered weed<br>Would brighten hell and streak its smoke with flame!<br>How the life I could shed yet never shrink,<br>Would drench their stalks with sap like grass in May!<br>Is it not terrible, I entreat you, Sirs?—<br>With manifold and plenitudinous life,<br>Prompt at death's menace to give blow for threat,<br>Answer his "Be thou not!" by "Thus I am!"—<br>Terrible so to be alive yet die?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116365" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">How I live, how I see! so,—how I speak!<br>Lucidity of soul unlocks the lips:<br>I never had the words at will before.<br>How I see all my folly at a glance!<br>"A man requires a woman and a wife:"<br>There was my folly; I believed the saw.<br>I knew that just myself concerned myself,<br>Yet needs must look for what I seemed to lack,<br>In a woman,—why, the woman's in the man!<br>Fools we are, how we learn things when too late!<br>Overmuch life turns round my woman-side:<br>The male and female in me, mixed before,<br>Settle of a sudden: I'm my wife outright<br>In this unmanly appetite for truth,<br>This careless courage as to consequence,<br>This instantaneous sight through things and through,<br>This voluble rhetoric, if you please,—'t is she!<br>Here you have that Pompilia whom I slew,<br>Also the folly for which I slew her!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116365" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Fool!<br>And, fool-like, what is it I wander from?<br>What did I say of your sharp iron tooth?<br>Ah,—that I know the hateful thing! this way.<br>I chanced to stroll forth, many a good year gone,<br>One warm Spring eve in Rome, and unaware<br>Looking, mayhap, to count what stars were out,<br>Came on your fine axe in a frame, that fails<br>And so cuts off a man's head underneath,<br>Mannaia,—thus we made acquaintance first:<br>Out of the way, in a by-part o' the town,<br>At the Mouth-of-Truth o' the river-side, you know:<br>One goes by the Capitol: and wherefore coy,<br>Retiring out of crowded noisy Rome?<br>Because a very little time ago<br>It had done service, chopped off head from trunk<br>Belonging to a fellow whose poor house<br>The thing must make a point to stand before—<br>Felice Whatsoever-was-the-name<br>Who stabled buffaloes and so gained bread,<br>(Our clowns unyoke them in the ground hard by)<br>And, after use of much improper speech,<br>Had struck at Duke Some-title-or-other's face,<br>Because he kidnapped, carried away and kept<br>Felice's sister who would sit and sing<br>I' the filthy doorway while she plaited fringe<br>To deck the brutes with,—on their gear it goes,—<br>The good girl with the velvet in her voice.<br>So did the Duke, so did Felice, so<br>Did Justice, intervening with her axe.<br>There the man-mutilating engine stood<br>At ease, both gay and grim, like a Swiss guard<br>Off duty,—purified itself as well,<br>Getting dry, sweet and proper for next week,—<br>And doing incidental good, 't was hoped<br>To the rough lesson-lacking populace<br>Who now and then, forsooth, must right their wrongs!<br>There stood the twelve-foot-square of scaffold, railed<br>Considerately round to elbow-height,<br>For fear an officer should tumble thence<br>And sprain his ankle and be lame a month,<br>Through starting when the axe fell and head too!<br>Railed likewise were the steps whereby 't was reached.<br>All of it painted red: red, in the midst,<br>Ran up two narrow tall beams barred across,<br>Since from the summit, some twelve feet to reach,<br>The iron plate with the sharp shearing edge<br>Had slammed, jerked, shot, slid,—I shall soon find which!—<br>And so lay quiet, fast in its fit place,<br>The wooden half-moon collar, now eclipsed<br>By the blade which blocked its curvature: apart,<br>The other half,—the under half-moon board<br>Which, helped by this, completes a neck's embrace,—<br>Joined to a sort of desk that wheels aside<br>Out of the way when done with,—down you kneel,<br>In you're pushed, over you the other drops,<br>Tight you're clipped, whiz, there's the blade cleaves its best,<br>Out trundles body, down flops head on floor,<br>And where's your soul gone? That, too, I shall find!<br>This kneeling place was red, red, never fear!<br>But only slimy-like with paint, not blood,<br>For why? a decent pitcher stood at hand,<br>A broad dish to hold sawdust, and a broom<br>By some unnamed utensil,—scraper-rake,—<br>Each with a conscious air of duty done.<br>Underneath, loungers,—boys and some few men,—<br>Discoursed this platter, named the other tool,<br>Just as, when grooms tie up and dress a steed,<br>Boys lounge and look on, and elucubrate<br>What the round brush is used for, what the square,—<br>So was explained—to me the skill-less then—<br>The manner of the grooming for next world<br>Undergone by Felice What's-his-name.<br>There's no such lovely month in Rome as May—<br>May's crescent is no half-moon of red plank,<br>And came now tilting o'er the wave i' the west,<br>One greenish-golden sea, right 'twixt those bars<br>Of the engine—I began acquaintance with,<br>Understood, hated, hurried from before,<br>To have it out of sight and cleanse my soul!<br>Here it is all again, conserved for use:<br>Twelve hours hence, I may know more, not hate worse.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116365" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">That young May-moon-month! Devils of the deep!<br>Was not a Pope then Pope as much as now?<br>Used not he chirrup o'er the Merry Tales,<br>Chuckle,—his nephew so exact the wag<br>To play a jealous cullion such a trick<br>As wins the wife i' the pleasant story! Well?<br>Why do things change? Wherefore is Rome un-Romed?<br>I tell you, ere Felice's corpse was cold,<br>The Duke, that night, threw wide his palace-doors,<br>Received the compliments o' the quality<br>For justice done him,—bowed and smirked his best,<br>And in return passed round a pretty thing,<br>A portrait of Felice's sister's self,<br>Florid old rogue Albano's masterpiece,<br>As—better than virginity in rags—<br>Bouncing Europa on the back o' the bull:<br>They laughed and took their road the safelier home.<br>Ah, but times change, there's quite another Pope,<br>I do the Duke's deed, take Felice's place,<br>And, being no Felice, lout and clout,<br>Stomach but ill the phrase "I lost my head!"<br>How euphemistic! Lose what? Lose your ring,<br>Your snuff-box, tablets, kerchief!—but, your head?<br>I learnt the process at an early age;<br>'T was useful knowledge, in those same old days,<br>To know the way a head is set on neck.<br>My fencing-master urged "Would you excel?<br>"Rest not content with mere bold give-and-guard,<br>"Nor pink the antagonist somehow-anyhow!<br>"See me dissect a little, and know your game!<br>"Only anatomy makes a thrust the thing."<br>Oh Cardinal, those lithe live necks of ours!<br>Here go the vertebræ, here's Atlas, here<br>Axis, and here the symphyses stop short,<br>So wisely and well,—as, o'er a corpse, we cant,—<br>And here's the silver cord which … what's our word?<br>Depends from the gold bowl, which loosed (not "lost")<br>Lets us from heaven to hell,—one chop, we're loose!<br>"And not much pain i' the process," quoth a sage:<br>Who told him? Not Felice's ghost, I think!<br>Such "losing" is scarce Mother Nature's mode.<br>She fain would have cord ease itself away,<br>Worn to a thread by threescore years and ten,<br>Snap while we slumber: that seems bearable.<br>I'm told one clot of blood extravasate<br>Ends one as certainly as Roland's sword,—<br>One drop of lymph suffused proves Oliver's mace,—<br>Intruding, either of the pleasant pair,<br>On the arachnoid tunic of my brain.<br>That's Nature's way of loosing cord!—but Art,<br>How of Art's process with the engine here,<br>When bowl and cord alike are crushed across,<br>Bored between, bruised through? Why, if Fagon's self,<br>The French Court's pride, that famed practitioner,<br>Would pass his cold pale lightning of a knife,<br>Pistoja-ware, adroit 'twixt joint and joint,<br>With just a "See how facile, gentlefolk!"—<br>The thing were not so bad to bear! Brute force<br>Cuts as he comes, breaks in, breaks on, breaks out<br>O' the hard and soft of you: is that the same?<br>A lithe snake thrids the hedge, makes throb no leaf:<br>A heavy ox sets chest to brier and branch,<br>Bursts somehow through, and leaves one hideous hole<br>Behind him!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116365" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And why, why must this needs be?<br>Oh, if men were but good! They are not good,<br>Nowise like Peter: people called him rough,<br>But if, as I left Rome, I spoke the Saint,<br>—"Petrus, quo vadis?"—doubtless, I should hear,<br>"To free the prisoner and forgive his fault!<br>"I plucked the absolute dead from God's own bar,<br>"And raised up Dorcas,—why not rescue thee?"<br>What would cost one such nullifying word?<br>If Innocent succeeds to Peter's place,<br>Let him think Peter's thought, speak Peter's speech!<br>I say, he is bound to it: friends, how say you?<br>Concede I be all one bloodguiltiness<br>And mystery of murder in the flesh,<br>Why should that fact keep the Pope's mouth shut fast?<br>He execrates my crime,—good!—sees hell yawn<br>One inch from the red plank's end which I press,—<br>Nothing is better! What's the consequence?<br>How should a Pope proceed that knows his cue?<br>Why, leave me linger out my minute here,<br>Since close on death comes judgment and comes doom,<br>Not crib at dawn its pittance from a sheep<br>Destined ere dewfall to be butcher's-meat!<br>Think, Sirs, if I have done you any harm,<br>And you require the natural revenge,<br>Suppose, and so intend to poison me,<br>—Just as you take and slip into my draught<br>The paperful of powder that clears scores,<br>You notice on my brow a certain blue:<br>How you both overset the wine at once!<br>How you both smile! "Our enemy has the plague!<br>"Twelve hours hence he'll be scraping his bones bare<br>"Of that intolerable flesh, and die,<br>"Frenzied with pain: no need for poison here!<br>"Step aside and enjoy the spectacle!"<br>Tender for souls are you, Pope Innocent!<br>Christ's maxim is—one soul outweighs the world:<br>Respite me, save a soul, then, curse the world!<br>"No," venerable sire, I hear you smirk,<br>"No: for Christ's gospel changes names, not things,<br>"Renews the obsolete, does nothing more!<br>"Our fire-new gospel is re-tinkered law,<br>"Our mercy, justice,—Jove's rechristened God,—<br>"Nay, whereas, in the popular conceit,<br>"'T is pity that old harsh Law somehow limps,<br>"Lingers on earth, although Law's day be done,<br>"Else would benignant Gospel interpose,<br>"Not furtively as now, but bold and frank<br>"O'erflutter us with healing in her wings,<br>"Law being harshness, Gospel only love—<br>"We tell the people, on the contrary,<br>"Gospel takes up the rod which Law lets fall;<br>"Mercy is vigilant when justice sleeps!<br>"Does Law permit a taste of Gospel-grace?<br>"The secular arm allow the spiritual power<br>"To act for once?—no compliment so fine<br>"As that our Gospel handsomely turn harsh,<br>"Thrust victim back on Law the nice and coy!"<br>Yes, you do say so, else you would forgive<br>Me whom Law does not touch but tosses you!<br>Don't think to put on the professional face!<br>You know what I know: casuists as you are,<br>Each nerve must creep, each hair start, sting and stand,<br>At such illogical inconsequence!<br>Dear my friends, do but see! A murder's tried,<br>There are two parties to the cause: I'm one,<br>—Defend myself, as somebody must do:<br>I have the best o' the battle: that's a fact,<br>Simple fact,—fancies find no place just now.<br>What though half Rome condemned me? Half approved:<br>And, none disputes, the luck is mine at last,<br>All Rome, i' the main, acquitting me: whereon,<br>What has the Pope to ask but "How finds Law?"<br>"I find," replies Law, "I have erred this while:<br>"Guilty or guiltless, Guido proves a priest,<br>"No layman: he is therefore yours, not mine:<br>"I bound him: loose him, you whose will is Christ's!"<br>And now what does this Vicar of our Lord,<br>Shepherd o' the flock,—one of whose charge bleats sore<br>For crook's help from the quag wherein it drowns?<br>Law suffers him employ the crumpled end:<br>His pleasure is to turn staff, use the point,<br>And thrust the shuddering sheep, he calls a wolf,<br>Back and back, down and down to where hell gapes!<br>"Guiltless," cries Law—"Guilty" corrects the Pope!<br>"Guilty," for the whim's sake! "Guilty," he somehow thinks,<br>And anyhow says: 't is truth; he dares not lie!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116365" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Others should do the lying. That's the cause<br>Brings you both here: I ought in decency<br>Confess to you that I deserve my fate,<br>Am guilty, as the Pope thinks,—ay, to the end,<br>Keep up the jest, lie on, lie ever, lie<br>I' the latest gasp of me! What reason, Sirs?<br>Because to-morrow will succeed to-day<br>For you, though not for me: and if I stick<br>Still to the truth, declare with my last breath,<br>I die an innocent and murdered man,—<br>Why, there's the tongue of Rome will wag apace<br>This time to-morrow: don't I hear the talk!<br>"So, to the last he proved impenitent?<br>"Pagans have said as much of martyred saints!<br>"Law demurred, washed her hands of the whole case.<br>"Prince Somebody said this, Duke Something, that,<br>"Doubtless the man's dead, dead enough, don't fear!<br>"But, hang it, what if there have been a spice,<br>"A touch of … eh? You see, the Pope's so old,<br>"Some of us add, obtuse: age never slips<br>"The chance of shoving youth to face death first!"<br>And so on. Therefore to suppress such talk<br>You two come here, entreat I tell you lies,<br>And end, the edifying way. I end,<br>Telling the truth! Your self-styled shepherd thieves!<br>A thief—and how thieves hate the wolves we know:<br>Damage to theft, damage to thrift, all's one!<br>The red hand is sworn foe of the black jaw.<br>That's only natural, that's right enough:<br>But why the wolf should compliment the thief<br>With shepherd's title, bark out life in thanks,<br>And, spiteless, lick the prong that spits him,—eh,<br>Cardinal? My Abate, scarcely thus!<br>There, let my sheepskin-garb, a curse on't, go—<br>Leave my teeth free if I must show my shag!<br>Repent? What good shall follow? If I pass<br>Twelve hours repenting, will that fact hold fast<br>The thirteenth at the horrid dozen's end?<br>If I fall forthwith at your feet, gnash, tear,<br>Foam, rave, to give your story the due grace,<br>Will that assist the engine half-way back<br>Into its hiding-house?—boards, shaking now,<br>Bone against bone, like some old skeleton bat<br>That wants, at winter's end, to wake and prey!<br>Will howling put the spectre back to sleep?<br>Ah, but I misconceive your object, Sirs!<br>Since I want new life like the creature,—life<br>Being done with here, begins i' the world away:<br>I shall next have "Come, mortals, and be judged!"<br>There's but a minute betwixt this and then:<br>So, quick, be sorry since it saves my soul!<br>Sirs, truth shall save it, since no lies assist!<br>Hear the truth, you, whatever you style yourselves,<br>Civilization and society!<br>Come, one good grapple, I with all the world!<br>Dying in cold blood is the desperate thing;<br>The angry heart explodes, bears off in blaze<br>The indignant soul, and I'm combustion-ripe.<br>Why, you intend to do your worst with me!<br>That's in your eyes! You dare no more than death,<br>And mean no less. I must make up my mind.<br>So Pietro,—when I chased him here and there,<br>Morsel by morsel cut away the life<br>I loathed,—cried for just respite to confess<br>And save his soul: much respite did I grant!<br>Why grant me respite who deserve my doom?<br>Me—who engaged to play a prize, fight you,<br>Knowing your arms, and foil you, trick for trick,<br>At rapier-fence, your match and, maybe, more.<br>I knew that if I chose sin certain sins,<br>Solace my lusts out of the regular way<br>Prescribed me, I should find you in the path,<br>Have to try skill with a redoubted foe;<br>You would lunge, I would parry, and make end.<br>At last, occasion of a murder comes:<br>We cross blades, I, for all my brag, break guard,<br>And in goes the cold iron at my breast,<br>Out at my back, and end is made of me.<br>You stand confessed the adroiter swordsman,—ay,<br>But on your triumph you increase, it seems,<br>Want more of me than lying flat on face:<br>I ought to raise my ruined head, allege<br>Not simply I pushed worse blade o' the pair,<br>But my antagonist dispensed with steel!<br>There was no passage of arms, you looked me low,<br>With brow and eye abolished cut and thrust<br>Nor used the vulgar weapon! This chance scratch,<br>This incidental hurt, this sort of hole<br>I' the heart of me? I stumbled, got it so!<br>Fell on my own sword as a bungler may!<br>Yourself proscribe such heathen tools, and trust<br>To the naked virtue: it was virtue stood<br>Unarmed and awed me,—on my brow there burned<br>Crime out so plainly intolerably red,<br>That I was fain to cry—"Down to the dust<br>"With me, and bury there brow, brand and all!"<br>Law had essayed the adventure,—but what's Law?<br>Morality exposed the Gorgon shield!<br>Morality and Religion conquer me.<br>If Law sufficed would you come here, entreat<br>I supplement law, and confess forsooth?<br>Did not the Trial show things plain enough?<br>"Ah, but a word of the man's very self<br>"Would somehow put the keystone in its place<br>"And crown the arch!" Then take the word you want!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116365" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I say that, long ago, when things began,<br>All the world made agreement, such and such<br>Were pleasure-giving profit-bearing acts,<br>But henceforth extra-legal, nor to be:<br>You must not kill the man whose death would please<br>And profit you, unless his life stop yours<br>Plainly, and need so be put aside:<br>Get the thing by a public course, by law,<br>Only no private bloodshed as of old!<br>All of us, for the good of every one,<br>Renounced such licence and conformed to law:<br>Who breaks law, breaks pact therefore, helps himself<br>To pleasure and profit over and above the due,<br>And must pay forfeit,—pain beyond his share:<br>For, pleasure being the sole good in the world,<br>Anyone's pleasure turns to someone's pain,<br>So, law must watch for everyone,—say we,<br>Who call things wicked that give too much joy,<br>And nickname mere reprisal, envy makes,<br>Punishment: quite right! thus the world goes round.<br>I, being well aware such pact there was,<br>I, in my time who found advantage come<br>Of law's observance and crime's penalty,—<br>Who, but for wholesome fear law bred in friends,<br>Had doubtless given example long ago,<br>Furnished forth some friend's pleasure with my pain,<br>And, by my death, pieced out his scanty life,—<br>I could not, for that foolish life of me,<br>Help risking law's infringement,—I broke bond,<br>And needs must pay price,—wherefore, here's my head,<br>Flung with a flourish! But, repentance too?<br>But pure and simple sorrow for law's breach<br>Rather than blunderer's-ineptitude?<br>Cardinal, no! Abate, scarcely thus!<br>'T is the fault, not that I dared try a fall<br>With Law and straightway am found undermost,<br>But that I failed to see, above man's law,<br>God's precept you, the Christians, recognize?<br>Colly my cow! Don't fidget, Cardinal!<br>Abate, cross your breast and count your beads<br>And exorcize the devil, for here he stands<br>And stiffens in the bristly nape of neck,<br>Daring you drive him hence! You, Christians both?<br>I say, if ever was such faith at all<br>Born in the world, by your community<br>Suffered to live its little tick of time,<br>'T is dead of age, now, ludicrously dead;<br>Honour its ashes, if you be discreet,<br>In epitaph only! For, concede its death,<br>Allow extinction, you may boast unchecked<br>What feats the thing did in a crazy land<br>At a fabulous epoch,—treat your faith, that way,<br>Just as you treat your relics: "Here's a shred<br>"Of saintly flesh, a scrap of blessed bone,<br>"Raised King Cophetua, who was dead, to life<br>"In Mesopotamy twelve centuries since,<br>"Such was its virtue!"—twangs the Sacristan,<br>Holding the shrine-box up, with hands like feet<br>Because of gout in every finger joint:<br>Does he bethink him to reduce one knob,<br>Allay one twinge by touching what he vaunts?<br>I think he half uncrooks fist to catch fee,<br>But, for the grace, the quality of cure,—<br>Cophetua was the man put that to proof!<br>Not otherwise, your faith is shrined and shown<br>And shamed at once: you banter while you bow!<br>Do you dispute this? Come, a monster-laugh,<br>A madman's laugh, allowed his Carnival<br>Later ten days than when all Rome, but he,<br>Laughed at the candle-contest: mine's alight,<br>'T is just it sputter till the puff o' the Pope<br>End it to-morrow and the world turn Ash.<br>Come, thus I wave a wand and bring to pass<br>In a moment, in the twinkle of an eye,<br>What but that—feigning everywhere grows fact,<br>Professors turn possessors, realize<br>The faith they play with as a fancy now,<br>And bid it operate, have full effect<br>On every circumstance of life, to-day,<br>In Rome,—faith's flow set free at fountain-head!<br>Now, you'll own, at this present, when I speak,<br>Before I work the wonder, there's no man<br>Woman or child in Rome, faith's fountain-head,<br>But might, if each were minded, realize<br>Conversely unbelief, faith's opposite—<br>Set it to work on life unflinchingly,<br>Yet give no symptom of an outward change:<br>Why should things change because men disbelieve<br>What's incompatible, in the whited tomb,<br>With bones and rottenness one inch below?<br>What saintly act is done in Rome to-day<br>But might be prompted by the devil,—"is"<br>I say not,—"has been, and again may be,—"<br>I do say, full i' the face o' the crucifix<br>You try to stop my mouth with! Off with it!<br>Look in your own heart, if your soul have eyes!<br>You shall see reason why, though faith were fled,<br>Unbelief still might work the wires and move<br>Man, the machine, to play a faithful part.<br>Preside your college, Cardinal, in your cape,<br>Or,—having got above his head, grown Pope,—<br>Abate, gird your loins and wash my feet!<br>Do you suppose I am at loss at all<br>Why you crook, why you cringe, why fast or feast?<br>Praise, blame, sit, stand, lie or go!—all of it,<br>In each of you, purest unbelief may prompt,<br>And wit explain to who has eyes to see.<br>But, lo, I wave wand, made the false the true!<br>Here's Rome believes in Christianity!<br>What an explosion, how the fragments fly<br>Of what was surface, mask and make-believe!<br>Begin now,—look at this Pope's-halberdier<br>In wasp-like black and yellow foolery!<br>He, doing duty at the corridor,<br>Wakes from a muse and stands convinced of sin!<br>Down he flings halbert, leaps the passage-length,<br>Pushes into the presence, pantingly<br>Submits the extreme peril of the case<br>To the Pope's self,—whom in the world beside?—<br>And the Pope breaks talk with ambassador,<br>Bids aside bishop, wills the whole world wait<br>Till he secure that prize, outweighs the world,<br>A soul, relieve the sentry of his qualm!<br>His Altitude the Referendary,—<br>Robed right, and ready for the usher's word<br>To pay devoir,—is, of all times, just then<br>'Ware of a master-stroke of argument<br>Will cut the spinal cord … ugh, ugh! … I mean,<br>Paralyse Molinism for evermore!<br>Straight he leaves lobby, trundles, two and two,<br>Down steps to reach home, write, if but a word<br>Shall end the impudence: he leaves who likes<br>Go pacify the Pope: there's Christ to serve!<br>How otherwise would men display their zeal?<br>If the same sentry had the least surmise<br>A powder-barrel 'neath the pavement lay<br>In neighbourhood with what might prove a match,<br>Meant to blow sky-high Pope and presence both—<br>Would he not break through courtiers, rank and file,<br>Bundle up, bear off and save body so,<br>The Pope, no matter for his priceless soul?<br>There's no fool's-freak here, nought to soundly swinge,<br>Only a man in earnest, you'll so praise<br>And pay and prate about, that earth shall ring!<br>Had thought possessed the Referendary<br>His jewel-case at home was left ajar,<br>What would be wrong in running, robes awry,<br>To be beforehand with the pilferer?<br>What talk then of indecent haste? Which means,<br>That both these, each in his degree, would do<br>Just that,—for a comparative nothing's sake,<br>And thereby gain approval and reward,—<br>Which, done for what Christ says is worth the world,<br>Procures the doer curses, cuffs and kicks.<br>I call such difference 'twixt act and act,<br>Sheer lunacy unless your truth on lip<br>Be recognized a lie in heart of you!<br>How do you all act, promptly or in doubt,<br>When there's a guest poisoned at supper-time<br>And he sits chatting on with spot on cheek?<br>"Pluck him by the skirt, and round him in the ears,<br>"Have at him by the beard, warn anyhow!"<br>Good, and this other friend that's cheat and thief<br>And dissolute,—go stop the devil's feast,<br>Withdraw him from the imminent hell-fire!<br>Why, for your life, you dare not tell your friend<br>"You lie, and I admonish you for Christ!"<br>Who yet dare seek that same man at the Mass<br>To warn him—on his knees, and tinkle near,—<br>He left a cask a-tilt, a tap unturned,<br>The Trebbian running: what a grateful jump<br>Out of the Church rewards your vigilance!<br>Perform that self-same service just a thought<br>More maladroitly,—since a bishop sits<br>At function!—and he budges not, bites lip,—<br>"You see my case: how can I quit my post?<br>"He has an eye to any such default.<br>"See to it, neighbour, I beseech your love!"<br>He and you know the relative worth of things,<br>What is permissible or inopportune.<br>Contort your brows! You know I speak the truth:<br>Gold is called gold, and dross called dross, i' the Book:<br>Gold you let lie and dross pick up and prize!<br>—Despite your muster of some fifty monks<br>And nuns a-maundering here and mumping there,<br>Who could, and on occasion would, spurn dross,<br>Clutch gold, and prove their faith a fact so far,—<br>I grant you! Fifty times the number squeak<br>And gibber in the madhouse—firm of faith,<br>This fellow, that his nose supports the moon;<br>The other, that his straw hat crowns him Pope:<br>Does that prove all the world outside insane?<br>Do fifty miracle-mongers match the mob<br>That acts on the frank faithless principle,<br>Born-baptized-and-bred Christian-atheists, each<br>With just as much a right to judge as you,—<br>As many senses in his soul, and nerves<br>I' neck of him as I,—whom, soul and sense,<br>Neck and nerve, you abolish presently,—<br>I being the unit in creation now<br>Who pay the Maker, in this speech of mine,<br>A creature's duty, spend my last of breath<br>In bearing witness, even by my worst fault,<br>To the creature's obligation, absolute,<br>Perpetual: my worst fault protests, "The faith<br>"Claims all of me: I would give all she claims,<br>"But for a spice of doubt: the risk's too rash:<br>"Double or quits, I play, but, all or nought,<br>"Exceeds my courage: therefore, I descend<br>"To the next faith with no dubiety—<br>"Faith in the present life, made last as long<br>"And prove as full of pleasure as may hap,<br>"Whatever pain it cause the world." I'm wrong?<br>I've had my life, whate'er I lose: I'm right?<br>I've got the single good there was to gain.<br>Entire faith, or else complete unbelief!<br>Aught between has my loathing and contempt,<br>Mine and God's also, doubtless: ask yourself,<br>Cardinal, where and how you like a man!<br>Why, either with your feet upon his head,<br>Confessed your caudatory, or, at large,<br>The stranger in the crowd who caps to you<br>But keeps his distance,—why should he presume?<br>You want no hanger-on and dropper-off,<br>Now yours, and now not yours but quite his own,<br>According as the sky looks black or bright.<br>Just so I capped to and kept off from faith—<br>You promised trudge behind through fair and foul,<br>Yet leave i' the lurch at the first spit of rain.<br>Who holds to faith whenever rain begins?<br>What does the father when his son lies dead,<br>The merchant when his money-bags take wing,<br>The politician whom a rival ousts?<br>No case but has its conduct, faith prescribes:<br>Where's the obedience that shall edify?<br>Why, they laugh frankly in the face of faith<br>And take the natural course,—this rends his hair<br>Because his child is taken to God's breast.<br>That gnashes teeth and raves at loss of trash<br>Which rust corrupts and thieves break through and steal,<br>And this, enabled to inherit earth<br>Through meekness, curses till your blood runs cold!<br>Down they all drop to my low level, rest<br>Heart upon dungy earth that's warm and soft,<br>And let who please attempt the altitudes.<br>Each playing prodigal son of heavenly sire,<br>Turning his nose up at the fatted calf,<br>Fain to fill belly with the husks, we swine<br>Did eat by born depravity of taste!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116365" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Enough of the hypocrites. But you, Sirs, you—<br>Who never budged from litter where I lay,<br>And buried snout i' the draff-box while I fed,<br>Cried amen to my creed's one article—<br>"Get pleasure, 'scape pain,—give your preference<br>"To the immediate good, for time is brief,<br>"And death ends good and ill and everything!<br>"What's got is gained, what's gained soon is gained twice,<br>"And,—inasmuch as faith gains most,—feign faith!"<br>So did we brother-like pass word about:<br>—You, now,—like bloody drunkards but half-drunk,<br>Who fool men yet perceive men find them fools,—<br>Vexed that a titter gains the gravest mouth,—<br>O' the sudden you must needs re-introduce<br>Solemnity, straight sober undue mirth<br>By a blow dealt me your boon companion here<br>Who, using the old licence, dreamed of harm<br>No more than snow in harvest: yet it falls!<br>You check the merriment effectually<br>By pushing your abrupt machine i' the midst,<br>Making me Rome's example: blood for wine!<br>The general good needs that you chop and change!<br>I may dislike the hocus-pocus,—Rome,<br>The laughter-loving people, won't they stare<br>Chap-fallen!—while serious natures sermonize<br>"The magistrate, he beareth not the sword<br>"In vain; who sins may taste its edge, we see!"<br>Why my sin, drunkards? Where have I abused<br>Liberty, scandalized you all so much?<br>Who called me, who crooked finger till I came,<br>Fool that I was, to join companionship?<br>I knew my own mind, meant to live my life,<br>Elude your envy, or else make a stand,<br>Take my own part and sell you my life dear.<br>But it was "Fie! No prejudice in the world<br>"To the proper manly instinct! Cast your lot<br>"Into our lap, one genius ruled our births,<br>"We'll compass joy by concert; take with us<br>"The regular irregular way i' the wood;<br>"You'll miss no game through riding breast by breast,<br>"In this preserve, the Church's park and pale,<br>"Rather than outside where the world lies waste!"<br>Come, if you said not that, did you say this?<br>Give plain and terrible warning, "Live, enjoy?<br>"Such life begins in death and ends in hell!<br>"Dare you bid us assist your sins, us priests<br>"Who hurry sin and sinners from the earth?<br>"No such delight for us, why then for you?<br>"Leave earth, seek heaven or find its opposite!"<br>Had you so warned me, not in lying words<br>But veritable deeds with tongues of flame,<br>That had been fair, that might have struck a man,<br>Silenced the squabble between soul and sense,<br>Compelled him to make mind up, take one course<br>Or the other, peradventure!—wrong or right,<br>Foolish or wise, you would have been at least<br>Sincere, no question,—forced me choose, indulge<br>Or else renounce my instincts, still play wolf<br>Or find my way submissive to your fold,<br>Be red-crossed on my fleece, one sheep the more.<br>But you as good as bade me wear sheep's wool<br>Over wolf's skin, suck blood and hide the noise<br>By mimicry of something like a bleat,—<br>Whence it comes that because, despite my care,<br>Because I smack my tongue too loud for once,<br>Drop baaing, here's the village up in arms!<br>Have at the wolfs throat, you who hate the breed!<br>Oh, were it only open yet to choose—<br>One little time more—whether I'd be free<br>Your foe, or subsidized your friend forsooth!<br>Should not you get a growl through the white fangs<br>In answer to your beckoning! Cardinal,<br>Abate, managers o' the multitude,<br>I'd turn your gloved hands to account, be sure!<br>You should manipulate the coarse rough mob:<br>'T is you I'd deal directly with, not them,—<br>Using your fears: why touch the thing myself<br>When I could see you hunt, and then cry "Shares!<br>"Quarter the carcase or we quarrel; come,<br>"Here's the world ready to see justice done!"<br>Oh, it had been a desperate game, but game<br>Wherein the winner's chance were worth the pains!<br>We'd try conclusions!—at the worst, what worse<br>Than this Mannaia-machine, each minute's talk<br>Helps push an inch the nearer me? Fool, fool!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116365" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">You understand me and forgive, sweet Sirs?<br>I blame you, tear my hair and tell my woe—<br>All's but a flourish, figure of rhetoric!<br>One must try each expedient to save life.<br>One makes fools look foolisher fifty-fold<br>By putting in their place men wise like you,<br>To take the full force of an argument<br>Would buffet their stolidity in vain.<br>If you should feel aggrieved by the mere wind<br>O' the blow that means to miss you and maul them,<br>That's my success! Is it not folly, now,<br>To say with folk, "A plausible defence—<br>"We see through notwithstanding, and reject?"<br>Reject the plausible they do, these fools,<br>Who never even make pretence to show<br>One point beyond its plausibility<br>In favour of the best belief they hold!<br>"Saint Somebody-or-other raised the dead:"<br>Did he? How do you come to know as much?<br>"Know it, what need? The story's plausible,<br>"Avouched for by a martyrologist,<br>"And why should good men sup on cheese and leeks<br>"On such a saint's day, if there were no saint?"<br>I praise the wisdom of these fools, and straight<br>Tell them my story—"plausible, but false!"<br>False, to be sure! What else can story be<br>That runs—a young wife tired of an old spouse,<br>Found a priest whom she fled away with,—both<br>Took their full pleasure in the two-days' flight,<br>Which a grey-headed greyer-hearted pair,<br>(Whose best boast was, their life had been a lie)<br>Helped for the love they bore all liars. Oh,<br>Here incredulity begins! Indeed?<br>Allow then, were no one point strictly true,<br>There's that i' the tale might seem like truth at least<br>To the unlucky husband,—jaundiced patch—<br>Jealousy maddens people, why not him?<br>Say, he was maddened, so forgivable!<br>Humanity pleads that though the wife were true,<br>The priest true, and the pair of liars true,<br>They might seem false to one man in the world!<br>A thousand gnats make up a serpent's sting,<br>And many sly soft stimulants to wrath<br>Compose a formidable wrong at last<br>That gets called easily by some one name<br>Not applicable to the single parts,<br>And so draws down a general revenge,<br>Excessive if you take crime, fault by fault.<br>Jealousy! I have known a score of plays,<br>Were listened to and laughed at in my time<br>As like the everyday-life on all sides,<br>Wherein the husband, mad as a March hare,<br>Suspected all the world contrived his shame.<br>What did the wife? The wife kissed both eyes blind,<br>Explained away ambiguous circumstance,<br>And while she held him captive by the hand,<br>Crowned his head,—you know what's the mockery,—<br>By half her body behind the curtain. That's<br>Nature now! That's the subject of a piece<br>I saw in Vallombrosa Convent, made<br>Expressly to teach men what marriage was!<br>But say "Just so did I misapprehend,<br>"Imagine she deceived me to my face,"<br>And that's pretence too easily seen through!<br>All those eyes of all husbands in all plays,<br>At stare like one expanded peacock-tail,<br>Are laughed at for pretending to be keen<br>While horn-blind: but the moment I step forth—<br>Oh, I must needs o' the sudden prove a lynx<br>And look the heart, that stone-wall, through and through!<br>Such an eye, God's may be,—not yours nor mine.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116365" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Yes, presently . . what hour is fleeting now?<br>When you cut earth away from under me,<br>I shall be left alone with, pushed beneath<br>Some such an apparitional dread orb<br>As the eye of God, since such an eye there glares:<br>I fancy it go filling up the void<br>Above my mote-self it devours, or what<br>Proves—wrath, immensity wreaks on nothingness.<br>Just how I felt once, couching through the dark,<br>Hard by Vittiano; young I was, and gay,<br>And wanting to trap fieldfares: first a spark<br>Tipped a bent, as a mere dew-globule might<br>Any stiff grass-stalk on the meadow,—this<br>Grew fiercer, flamed out full, and proved the sun.<br>What do I want with proverbs, precepts here?<br>Away with man! What shall I say to God?<br>This, if I find the tongue and keep the mind—<br>"Do Thou wipe out the being of me, and smear<br>"This soul from off Thy white of things, I blot!<br>"I am one huge and sheer mistake,—whose fault?<br>"Not mine at least, who did not make myself!"<br>Someone declares my wife excused me so!<br>Perhaps she knew what argument to use.<br>Grind your teeth, Cardinal: Abate, writhe!<br>What else am I to cry out in my rage,<br>Unable to repent one particle<br>O' the past? Oh, how I wish some cold wise man<br>Would dig beneath the surface which you scrape,<br>Deal with the depths, pronounce on my desert<br>Groundedly! I want simple sober sense,<br>That asks, before it finishes with a dog,<br>Who taught the dog that trick you hang him for?<br>You both persist to call that act a crime,<br>Which sense would call ... yes, I maintain it, Sirs,...<br>A blunder! At the worst, I stood in doubt<br>On cross-road, took one path of many paths:<br>It leads to the red thing, we all see now,<br>But nobody saw at first: one primrose-patch<br>In bank, one singing-bird in bush, the less,<br>Had warned me from such wayfare: let me prove!<br>Put me back to the cross-road, start afresh!<br>Advise me when I take the first false step!<br>Give me my wife: how should I use my wife,<br>Love her or hate her? Prompt my action now!<br>There she is, there she stands alive and pale,<br>The thirteen-years' old child, with milk for blood,<br>Pompilia Comparini, as at first,<br>Which first is only four brief years ago!<br>I stand too in the little ground-floor room<br>O' the father's house at Via Vittoria: see!<br>Her so-called mother,—one arm round the waist<br>O' the child to keep her from the toys, let fall<br>At wonder I can live yet look so grim,—<br>Ushers her in, with deprecating wave<br>Of the other,—and she fronts me loose at last,<br>Held only by the mother's finger-tip.<br>Struck dumb,—for she was white enough before!—<br>She eyes me with those frightened balls of black,<br>As heifer—the old simile comes pat—<br>Eyes tremblingly the altar and the priest.<br>The amazed look, all one insuppressive prayer,—<br>Might she but breathe, set free as heretofore,<br>Have this cup leave her lips unblistered, bear<br>Any cross anywhither anyhow,<br>So but alone, so but apart from me!<br>You are touched? So am I, quite otherwise,<br>If 't is with pity. I resent my wrong,<br>Being a man: I only show man's soul<br>Through man's flesh: she sees mine, it strikes her thus!<br>Is that attractive? To a youth perhaps—<br>Calf-creature, one-part boy to three-parts girl,<br>To whom it is a flattering novelty<br>That he, men use to motion from their path,<br>Can thus impose, thus terrify in turn<br>A chit whose terror shall be changed apace<br>To bliss unbearable when grace and glow,<br>Prowess and pride descend the throne and touch<br>Esther in all that pretty tremble, cured<br>By the dove o' the sceptre! But myself am old,<br>O' the wane at least, in all things: what do you say<br>To her who frankly thus confirms my doubt?<br>I am past the prime, I scare the woman-world,<br>Done-with that way: you like this piece of news?<br>A little saucy rose-bud minx can strike<br>Death-damp into the breast of doughty king<br>Though 't were French Louis,—soul I understand,—<br>Saying, by gesture of repugnance, just<br>"Sire, you are regal, puissant and so forth,<br>"But—young you have been, are not, nor will be!"<br>In vain the mother nods, winks, bustles up,<br>"Count, girls incline to mature worth like you!<br>"As for Pompilia, what's flesh, fish, or fowl<br>"To one who apprehends no difference,<br>"And would accept you even were you old<br>"As you are … youngish by her father's side?<br>"Trim but your beard a little, thin your bush<br>"Of eyebrow; and for presence, portliness,<br>"And decent gravity, you beat a boy!"<br>Deceive yourself one minute, if you may,<br>In presence of the child that so loves age,<br>Whose neck writhes, cords itself against your kiss,<br>Whose hand you wring stark, rigid with despair!<br>Well, I resent this; I am young in soul,<br>Nor old in body,—thews and sinews here,—<br>Though the vile surface be not smooth as once,—<br>Far beyond that first wheelwork which went wrong<br>Through the untempered iron ere 't was proof:<br>I am the wrought man worth ten times the crude,<br>Would woman see what this declines to see,<br>Declines to say "I see,"—the officious word<br>That makes the thing, pricks on the soul to shoot<br>New fire into the half-used cinder, flesh!<br>Therefore 't is she begins with wronging me,<br>Who cannot but begin with hating her.<br>Our marriage follows: there she stands again!<br>Why do I laugh? Why, in the very gripe<br>O' the jaws of death's gigantic skull, do I<br>Grin back his grin, make sport of my own pangs?<br>Why from each clashing of his molars, ground<br>To make the devil bread from out my grist,<br>Leaps out a spark of mirth, a hellish toy?<br>Take notice we are lovers in a church,<br>Waiting the sacrament to make us one<br>And happy! Just as bid, she bears herself,<br>Comes and kneels, rises, speaks, is silent,—goes:<br>So have I brought my horse, by word and blow,<br>To stand stock-still and front the fire he dreads.<br>How can I other than remember this,<br>Resent the very obedience? Gain thereby?<br>Yes, I do gain my end and have my will,—<br>Thanks to whom? When the mother speaks the word,<br>She obeys it—even to enduring me!<br>There had been compensation in revolt—<br>Revolt's to quell: but martyrdom rehearsed,<br>But predetermined saintship for the sake<br>O' the mother?—"Go!" thought I, "we meet again!"<br>Pass the next weeks of dumb contented death,<br>She lives,—wakes up, installed in house and home,<br>Is mine, mine all day-long, all night-long mine.<br>Good folk begin at me with open mouth<br>"Now, at least, reconcile the child to life!<br>"Study and make her love … that is, endure<br>"The … hem! the … all of you though somewhat old,<br>"Till it amount to something, in her eye,<br>"As good as love, better a thousand times,—<br>"Since nature helps the woman in such strait,<br>"Makes passiveness her pleasure: failing which,<br>"What if you give up boy-and-girl-fools'-play<br>"And go on to wise friendship all at once?<br>"Those boys and girls kiss themselves cold, you know,<br>"Toy themselves tired and slink aside full soon<br>"To friendship, as they name satiety:<br>"Thither go you and wait their coming!" Thanks,<br>Considerate advisers,—but, fair play!<br>Had you and I, friends, started fair at first<br>We, keeping fair, might reach it, neck by neck,<br>This blessed goal, whenever fate so please:<br>But why am I to miss the daisied mile<br>The course begins with, why obtain the dust<br>Of the end precisely at the starting-point?<br>Why quaff life's cup blown free of all the beads,<br>The bright red froth wherein our beard should steep<br>Before our mouth essay the black o' the wine?<br>Foolish, the love-fit? Let me prove it such<br>Like you, before like you I puff things clear!<br>"The best's to come, no rapture but content!<br>"Not love's first glory but a sober glow,<br>"Not a spontaneous outburst in pure boon,<br>"So much as, gained by patience, care and toil,<br>"Proper appreciation and esteem!"<br>Go preach that to your nephews, not to me<br>Who, tired i' the midway of my life, would stop<br>And take my first refreshment, pluck a rose:<br>What's this coarse woolly hip, worn smooth of leaf,<br>You counsel I go plant in garden-plot,<br>Water with tears, manure with sweat and blood,<br>In confidence the seed shall germinate<br>And, for its very best, some far-off day,<br>Grow big, and blow me out a dog-rose bell?<br>Why must your nephews begin breathing spice<br>O' the hundred-petalled Provence prodigy?<br>Nay, more and worse,—would such my root bear rose—<br>Prove really flower and favourite, not the kind<br>That's queen, but those three leaves that make one cup<br>And hold the hedge-bird's breakfast,—then indeed<br>The prize though poor would pay the care and toil!<br>Respect we Nature that makes least as most,<br>Marvellous in the minim! But this bud,<br>Bit through and burned black by the tempter's tooth,<br>This bloom whose best grace was the slug outside<br>And the wasp inside its bosom,—call you "rose"?<br>Claim no immunity from a weed's fate<br>For the horrible present! What you call my wife<br>I call a nullity in female shape,<br>Vapid disgust, soon to be pungent plague,<br>When mixed with, made confusion and a curse<br>By two abominable nondescripts,<br>That father and that mother: think you see<br>The dreadful bronze our boast, we Aretines,<br>The Etruscan monster, the three-headed thing,<br>Bellerophon's foe! How name you the whole beast?<br>You choose to name the body from one head,<br>That of the simple kid which droops the eye,<br>Hangs the neck and dies tenderly enough:<br>I rather see the griesly lion belch<br>Flame out i' the midst, the serpent writhe her rings,<br>Grafted into the common stock for tail,<br>And name the brute, Chimæra which I slew!<br>How was there ever more to be—(concede<br>My wife's insipid harmless nullity)—<br>Dissociation from that pair of plagues—<br>That mother with her cunning and her cant—<br>The eyes with first their twinkle of conceit,<br>Then, dropped to earth in mock-demureness,—now,<br>The smile self-satisfied from ear to ear,<br>Now, the prim pursed-up mouth's protruded lips,<br>With deferential duck, slow swing of head,<br>Tempting the sudden fist of man too much,—<br>That owl-like screw of lid and rock of ruff!<br>As for the father,—Cardinal, you know,<br>The kind of idiot!—such are rife in Rome,<br>But they wear velvet commonly; good fools,<br>At the end of life, to furnish forth young folk<br>Who grin and bear with imbecility:<br>Since the stalled ass, the joker, sheds from jaw<br>Corn, in the joke, for those who laugh or starve.<br>But what say we to the same solemn beast<br>Wagging his ears and wishful of our pat,<br>When turned, with holes in hide and bones laid bare,<br>To forage for himself i' the waste o' the world,<br>Sir Dignity i' the dumps? Pat him? We drub<br>Self-knowledge, rather, into frowzy pate,<br>Teach Pietro to get trappings or go hang!<br>Fancy this quondam oracle in vogue<br>At Via Vittoria, this personified<br>Authority when time was,—Pantaloon<br>Flaunting his tom-fool tawdry just the same<br>As if Ash-Wednesday were mid-Carnival!<br>That's the extreme and unforgiveable<br>Of sins, as I account such. Have you stooped<br>For your own ends to bestialize yourself<br>By flattery of a fellow of this stamp?<br>The ends obtained or else shown out of reach,<br>He goes on, takes the flattery for pure truth,—<br>"You love, and honour me, of course: what next?"<br>What, but the trifle of the stabbing, friend?—<br>Which taught you how one worships when the shrine<br>Has lost the relic that we bent before.<br>Angry! And how could I be otherwise?<br>'T is plain: this pair of old pretentious fools<br>Meant to fool me: it happens, I fooled them.<br>Why could not these who sought to buy and sell<br>Me,—when they found themselves were bought and sold,<br>Make up their mind to the proved rule of right,<br>Be chattel and not chapman any more?<br>Miscalculation has its consequence;<br>But when the shepherd crooks a sheep-like thing<br>And meaning to get wool, dislodges fleece<br>And finds the veritable wolf beneath,<br>(How that staunch image serves at every turn!)<br>Does he, by way of being politic,<br>Pluck the first whisker grimly visible?<br>Or rather grow in a trice all gratitude,<br>Protest this sort-of-what-one-might-name sheep<br>Beats the old other curly-coated kind,<br>And shall share board and bed, if so it deign,<br>With its discoverer, like a royal ram?<br>Ay, thus, with chattering teeth and knocking knees,<br>Would wisdom treat the adventure! these, forsooth,<br>Tried whisker-plucking, and so found what trap<br>The whisker kept perdue, two rows of teeth—<br>Sharp, as too late the prying fingers felt.<br>What would you have? The fools transgress, the fools<br>Forthwith receive appropriate punishment:<br>They first insult me, I return the blow,<br>There follows noise enough: four hubbub months,<br>Now hue and cry, now whimpering and wail—<br>A perfect goose-yard cackle of complaint<br>Because I do not gild the geese their oats,—<br>I have enough of noise, ope wicket wide,<br>Sweep out the couple to go whine elsewhere,<br>Frightened a little, hurt in no respect,<br>And am just taking thought to breathe again,<br>Taste the sweet sudden silence all about,<br>When, there they raise it, the old noise I know,<br>At Rome i' the distance! "What, begun once more?<br>"Whine on, wail ever, 't is the loser's right!"<br>But eh, what sort of voice grows on the wind?<br>Triumph it sounds and no complaint at all!<br>And triumph it is. My boast was premature:<br>The creatures, I turned forth, clapped wing and crew<br>Fighting-cock-fashion,—they had filched a pearl<br>From dung-heap, and might boast with cause enough!<br>I was defrauded of all bargained for:<br>You know, the Pope knows, not a soul but knows<br>My dowry was derision, my gain—muck,<br>My wife, (the Church declared my flesh and blood)<br>The nameless bastard of a common whore:<br>My old name turned henceforth to … shall I say<br>"He that received the ordure in his face?"<br>And they who planned this wrong, performed this wrong,<br>And then revealed this wrong to the wide world,<br>Rounded myself in the ears with my own wrong,—<br>Why, these were (note hell's lucky malice, now!)<br>These were just they who, they alone, could act<br>And publish and proclaim their infamy,<br>Secure that men would in a breath believe<br>Compassionate and pardon them,—for why?<br>They plainly were too stupid to invent,<br>Too simple to distinguish wrong from right,—<br>Inconscious agents they, the silly-sooth,<br>Of heaven's retributive justice on the strong<br>Proud cunning violent oppressor—me!<br>Follow them to their fate and help your best,<br>You Rome, Arezzo, foes called friends of me,<br>They gave the good long laugh to, at my cost!<br>Defray your share o' the cost, since you partook<br>The entertainment! Do!—assured the while,<br>That not one stab, I dealt to right and left,<br>But went the deeper for a fancy—this—<br>That each might do me two-fold service, find<br>A friend's face at the bottom of each wound,<br>And scratch its smirk a little!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116365" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Panciatichi!<br>There's a report at Florence,—is it true?—<br>That when your relative the Cardinal<br>Built, only the other day, that barrack-bulk,<br>The palace in Via Larga, someone picked<br>From out the street a saucy quip enough<br>That fell there from its day's flight through the town,<br>About the flat front and the windows wide<br>And bulging heap of cornice,—hitched the joke<br>Into a sonnet, signed his name thereto,<br>And forthwith pinned on post the pleasantry:<br>For which he's at the galleys, rowing now<br>Up to his waist in water,—just because<br>Panciatic and lymphatic rhymed so pat!<br>I hope, Sir, those who passed this joke on me<br>Were not unduly punished? What say you,<br>Prince of the Church, my patron? Nay, indeed,<br>I shall not dare insult your wits so much<br>As think this problem difficult to solve.<br>This Pietro and Violante then, I say,<br>These two ambiguous insects, changing name<br>And nature with the season's warmth or chill,—<br>Now, grovelled, grubbing toiling moiling ants,<br>A very synonym of thrift and peace,—<br>Anon, with lusty June to prick their heart,<br>Soared i' the air, winged flies for more offence,<br>Circled me, buzzed me deaf and stung me blind,<br>And stunk me dead with fetor in the face<br>Until I stopped the nuisance: there's my crime!<br>Pity I did not suffer them subside<br>Into some further shape and final form<br>Of execrable life? My masters, no!<br>I, by one blow, wisely cut short at once<br>Them and their transformations of disgust,<br>In the snug little Villa out of hand.<br>"Grant me confession, give bare time for that!"—<br>Shouted the sinner till his mouth was stopped.<br>His life confessed!—that was enough for me,<br>Who came to see that he did penance. 'S death!<br>Here's a coil raised, a pother and for what?<br>Because strength, being provoked by weakness, fought<br>And conquered,—the world never heard the like!<br>Pah, how I spend my breath on them, as if<br>'T was their fate troubled me, too hard to range<br>Among the right and fit and proper things!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116365" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Ay, but Pompilia,—I await your word,—<br>She, unimpeached of crime, unimplicate<br>In folly, one of alien blood to these<br>I punish, why extend my claim, exact<br>Her portion of the penalty? Yes, friends,<br>I go too fast: the orator's at fault:<br>Yes, ere I lay her, with your leave, by them<br>As she was laid at San Lorenzo late,<br>I ought to step back, lead you by degrees,<br>Recounting at each step some fresh offence,<br>Up to the red bed,—never fear, I will!<br>Gaze at her, where I place her, to begin,<br>Confound me with her gentleness and worth!<br>The horrible pair have fled and left her now,<br>She has her husband for her sole concern:<br>His wife, the woman fashioned for his help,<br>Flesh of his flesh, bone of his bone, the bride<br>To groom as is the Church and Spouse to Christ:<br>There she stands in his presence: "Thy desire<br>"Shall be to the husband, o'er thee shall he rule!"<br>—"Pompilia, who declare that you love God,<br>"You know who said that: then, desire my love,<br>"Yield me contentment and be ruled aright!"<br>She sits up, she lies down, she comes and goes,<br>Kneels at the couch-side, overleans the sill<br>O' the window, cold and pale and mute as stone,<br>Strong as stone also. "Well, are they not fled?<br>"Am I not left, am I not one for all?<br>"Speak a word, drop a tear, detach a glance,<br>"Bless me or curse me of your own accord!<br>"Is it the ceiling only wants your soul,<br>"Is worth your eyes?" And then the eyes descend,<br>And do look at me. Is it at the meal?<br>"Speak!" she obeys, "Be silent!" she obeys,<br>Counting the minutes till I cry "Depart,"<br>As brood-bird when you saunter past her eggs.<br>Departs she? just the same through door and wall<br>I see the same stone strength of white despair.<br>And all this will be never otherwise!<br>Before, the parents' presence lent her life:<br>She could play off her sex's armoury,<br>Entreat, reproach, be female to my male,<br>Try all the shrieking doubles of the hare,<br>Go clamour to the Commissary, bid<br>The Archbishop hold my hands and stop my tongue,<br>And yield fair sport so: but the tactics change,<br>The hare stands stock-still to enrage the hound!<br>Since that day when she learned she was no child<br>Of those she thought her parents,—that their trick<br>Had tricked me whom she thought sole trickster late,—<br>Why, I suppose she said within herself<br>"Then, no more struggle for my parents' sake!<br>"And, for my own sake, why needs struggle be?"<br>But is there no third party to the pact?<br>What of her husband's relish or dislike<br>For this new game of giving up the game,<br>This worst offence of not offending more?<br>I'll not believe but instinct wrought in this,<br>Set her on to conceive and execute<br>The preferable plague: how sure they probe—<br>These jades, the sensitivest soft of man!<br>The long black hair was wound now in a wisp,<br>Crowned sorrow better than the wild web late:<br>No more soiled dress, 't is trimness triumphs now,<br>For how should malice go with negligence?<br>The frayed silk looked the fresher for her spite!<br>There was an end to springing out of bed,<br>Praying me, with face buried on my feet,<br>Be hindered of my pastime,—so an end<br>To my rejoinder, "What, on the ground at last?<br>'Vanquished in fight, a supplicant for life?<br>"What if I raise you? 'Ware the casting down<br>"When next you fight me!" Then, she lay there, mine:<br>Now, mine she is if I please wring her neck,—<br>A moment of disquiet, working eyes,<br>Protruding tongue, a long sigh, then no more,—<br>As if one killed the horse one could not ride!<br>Had I enjoined "Cut off the hair!"—why, snap<br>The scissors, and at once a yard or so<br>Had fluttered in black serpents to the floor:<br>But till I did enjoin it, how she combs,<br>Uncurls and draws out to the complete length,<br>Plaits, places the insulting rope on head<br>To be an eyesore past dishevelment!<br>Is all done? Then sit still again and stare!<br>I advise—no one think to bear that look<br>Of steady wrong, endured as steadily<br>—Through what sustainment of deluding hope?<br>Who is the friend i' the background that notes all?<br>Who may come presently and close accounts?<br>This self-possession to the uttermost,<br>How does it differ in aught, save degree,<br>From the terrible patience of God?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116365" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"All which just means,<br>"She did not love you!" Again the word is launched<br>And the fact fronts me! What, you try the wards<br>With the true key and the dead lock flies ope?<br>No, it sticks fast and leaves you fumbling still!<br>You have some fifty servants, Cardinal,—<br>Which of them loves you? Which subordinate<br>But makes parade of such officiousness<br>That,—if there's no love prompts it,—love, the sham,<br>Does twice the service done by love, the true.<br>God bless us liars, where's one touch of truth<br>In what we tell the world, or world tells us,<br>Of how we love each other? All the same,<br>We calculate on word and deed, nor err,—<br>Bid such a man do such a loving act,<br>Sure of effect and negligent of cause,<br>Just as we bid a horse, with cluck of tongue,<br>Stretch his legs arch-wise, crouch his saddled back<br>To foot-reach of the stirrup—all for love,<br>And some for memory of the smart of switch<br>On the inside of the foreleg—what care we?<br>Yet where's the bond obliges horse to man<br>Like that which binds fast wife to husband? God<br>Laid down the law: gave man the brawny arm<br>And ball of fist—woman the beardless cheek<br>And proper place to suffer in the side:<br>Since it is he can strike, let her obey!<br>Can she feel no love? Let her show the more,<br>Sham the worse, damn herself praiseworthily!<br>Who's that soprano, Rome went mad about<br>Last week while I lay rotting in my straw?<br>The very jailer gossiped in his praise—<br>How,—dressed up like Armida, though a man;<br>And painted to look pretty, though a fright,—<br>He still made love so that the ladies swooned,<br>Being an eunuch. "Ah, Rinaldo mine!<br>"But to breathe by thee while Jove slays us both!<br>All the poor bloodless creature never felt,<br>Si, do, re, mi, fa, squeak and squall—for what?<br>Two gold zecchines the evening. Here's my slave,<br>Whose body and soul depend upon my nod,<br>Can't falter out the first note in the scale<br>For her life! Why blame me if I take the life?<br>All women cannot give men love, forsooth!<br>No, nor all pullets lay the henwife eggs—<br>Whereat she bids them remedy the fault,<br>Brood on a chalk-ball: soon the nest is stocked—<br>Otherwise, to the plucking and the spit!<br>This wife of mine was of another mood—<br>Would not begin the lie that ends with truth,<br>Nor feign the love that brings real love about:<br>Wherefore I judged, sentenced and punished her<br>But why particularize, defend the deed?<br>Say that I hated her for no one cause<br>Beyond my pleasure so to do,—what then?<br>Just on as much incitement acts the world,<br>All of you! Look and like! You favour one<br>Browbeat another, leave alone a third,—<br>Why should you master natural caprice?<br>Pure nature Try: plant elm by ash in file;<br>Both unexceptionable trees enough,<br>They ought to overlean each other, pair<br>At top, and arch across the avenue<br>The whole path to the pleasaunce: do they so—<br>Or loathe, lie off abhorrent each from each?<br>Lay the fault elsewhere: since we must have faults,<br>Mine shall have been,—seeing there's ill in the end<br>Come of my course,—that I fare somehow worse<br>For the way I took: my fault … as God's my judge,<br>I see not where my fault lies, that's the truth!<br>I ought … oh, ought in my own interest<br>Have let the whole adventure go untried,<br>This chance by marriage: or else, trying it,<br>Ought to have turned it to account, some one<br>O' the hundred otherwises? Ay, my friend,<br>Easy to say, easy to do: step right<br>Now you've stepped left and stumbled on the thing,<br>—The red thing! Doubt I any more than you<br>That practice makes man perfect? Give again<br>The chance,—same marriage and no other wife,<br>Be sure I'll edify you! That's because<br>I'm practised, grown fit guide for Guido's self.<br>You proffered guidance,—I know, none so well,—<br>You laid down law and rolled decorum out,<br>From pulpit-corner on the gospel-side,—<br>Wanted to make your great experience mine,<br>Save me the personal search and pains so: thanks!<br>Take your word on life's use? When I take his—<br>The muzzled ox that treadeth out the corn,<br>Gone blind in padding round and round one path,—<br>As to the taste of green grass in the field!<br>What do you know o' the world that's trodden flat<br>And salted sterile with your daily dung,<br>Leavened into a lump of loathsomeness?<br>Take your opinion of the modes of life,<br>The aims of life, life's triumph or defeat,<br>How to feel, how to scheme, and how to do<br>Or else leave undone? You preached long and loud<br>On high-days, "Take our doctrine upon trust!<br>"Into the mill-house with you! Grind our corn,<br>"Relish our chaff, and let the green grass grow!"<br>I tried chaff, found I famished on such fare,<br>So made this mad rush at the mill-house-door,<br>Buried my head up to the ears in dew,<br>Browsed on the best: for which you brain me, Sirs!<br>Be it so. I conceived of life that way,<br>And still declare—life, without absolute use<br>Of the actual sweet therein, is death, not life.<br>Give me,—pay down,—not promise, which is air,—<br>Something that's out of life and better still,<br>Make sure reward, make certain punishment,<br>Entice me, scare me,—I'll forgo this life;<br>Otherwise, no!—the less that words, mere wind,<br>Would cheat me of some minutes while they plague,<br>Baulk fulness of revenge here,—blame yourselves<br>For this eruption of the pent-up soul<br>You prisoned first and played with afterward<br>"Deny myself" meant simply pleasure you,<br>The sacred and superior, save the mark!<br>You,—whose stupidity and insolence<br>I must defer to, soothe at every turn,—<br>Whose swine-like snuffling greed and grunting lust<br>I had to wink at or help gratify,—<br>While the same passions,—dared they perk in me,<br>Me, the immeasurably marked, by God,<br>Master of the whole world of such as you,—<br>I, boast such passions? 'T was "Suppress them straight!<br>"Or stay, we'll pick and choose before destroy.<br>"Here's wrath in you, a serviceable sword,—<br>"Beat it into a ploughshare! What's this long<br>"Lance-like ambition? Forge a pruning-hook,<br>"May be of service when our vines grow tall!<br>"But—sword use swordwise, spear thrust out as spear?<br>"Anathema! Suppression is the word!"<br>My nature, when the outrage was too gross,<br>Widened itself an outlet over-wide<br>By way of answer, sought its own relief<br>With more of fire and brimstone than you wished.<br>All your own doing: preachers, blame yourselves!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116365" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">'T is I preach while the hour-glass runs and runs!<br>God keep me patient! All I say just means—<br>My wife proved, whether by her fault or mine,—<br>That's immaterial,—a true stumbling-block<br>I' the way of me her husband. I but plied<br>The hatchet yourselves use to clear a path,<br>Was politic, played the game you warrant wins,<br>Plucked at law's robe a-rustle through the courts,<br>Bowed down to kiss divinity's buckled shoe<br>Cushioned i' the church: efforts all wide the aim!<br>Procedures to no purpose! Then flashed truth.<br>The letter kills, the spirit keeps alive<br>In law and gospel: there be nods and winks<br>Instruct a wise man to assist himself<br>In certain matters, nor seek aid at all.<br>"Ask money of me,"—quoth the clownish saw,—<br>"And take my purse! But,—speaking with respect,—<br>"Need you a solace for the troubled nose?<br>"Let everybody wipe his own himself!"<br>Sirs, tell me free and fair! Had things gone well<br>At the wayside inn: had I surprised asleep<br>The runaways, as was so probable,<br>And pinned them each to other partridge-wise,<br>Through back and breast to breast and back, then bade<br>Bystanders witness if the spit, my sword,<br>Were loaded with unlawful game for once—<br>Would you have interposed to damp the glow<br>Applauding me on every husband's cheek?<br>Would you have checked the cry "A judgment, see!<br>"A warning, note! Be henceforth chaste, ye wives,<br>"Nor stray beyond your proper precinct, priests!"<br>If you had, then your house against itself<br>Divides, nor stands your kingdom any more.<br>Oh why, why was it not ordained just so?<br>Why fell not things out so nor otherwise?<br>Ask that particular devil whose task it is<br>To trip the all-but-at perfection,—slur<br>The line o' the painter just where paint leaves off<br>And life begins,—put ice into the ode<br>O' the poet while he cries "Next stanza—fire!"<br>Inscribe all human effort with one word,<br>Artistry's haunting curse, the Incomplete!<br>Being incomplete, my act escaped success.<br>Easy to blame now! Every fool can swear<br>To hole in net that held and slipped the fish.<br>But, treat my act with fair unjaundiced eye,<br>What was there wanting to a masterpiece<br>Except the luck that lies beyond a man?<br>My way with the woman, now proved grossly wrong,<br>Just missed of being gravely grandly right<br>And making mouths laugh on the other side.<br>Do, for the poor obstructed artist's sake,<br>Go with him over that spoiled work once more!<br>Take only its first flower, the ended act<br>Now in the dusty pod, dry and defunct!<br>I march to the Villa, and my men with me,<br>That evening, and we reach the door and stand.<br>I say … no, it shoots through me lightning-like<br>While I pause, breathe, my hand upon the latch,<br>"Let me forebode! Thus far, too much success:<br>"I want the natural failure—find it where?<br>"Which thread will have to break and leave a loop<br>"I' the meshy combination, my brain's loom<br>"Wove this long while, and now next minute tests?<br>"Of three that are to catch, two should go free,<br>"One must: all three surprised,—impossible!<br>"Beside, I seek three and may chance on six,—<br>"This neighbour, t' other gossip,—the babe's birth<br>"Brings such to fireside, and folks give them wine,—<br>"'T is late: but when I break in presently<br>"One will be found outlingering the rest<br>"For promise of a posset,—one whose shout<br>"Would raise the dead down in the catacombs,<br>"Much more the city-watch that goes its round.<br>"When did I ever turn adroitly up<br>"To sun some brick embedded in the soil,<br>"And with one blow crush all three scorpions there?<br>"Or Pietro or Violante shambles off—<br>"It cannot be but I surprise my wife—<br>"If only she is stopped and stamped on, good!<br>"That shall suffice: more is improbable.<br>"Now I may knock!" And this once for my sake<br>The impossible was effected: I called king,<br>Queen and knave in a sequence, and cards came,<br>All three, three only! So, I had my way,<br>Did my deed: so, unbrokenly lay bare<br>Each tænia that had sucked me dry of juice,<br>At last outside me, not an inch of ring<br>Left now to writhe about and root itself<br>I' the heart all powerless for revenge! Henceforth<br>I might thrive: these were drawn and dead and damned<br>Oh Cardinal, the deep long sigh you heave<br>When the load's off you, ringing as it runs<br>All the way down the serpent-stair to hell!<br>No doubt the fine delirium flustered me,<br>Turned my brain with the influx of success<br>As if the sole need now were to wave wand<br>And find doors fly wide,—wish and have my will,—<br>The rest o' the scheme would care for itself: escape<br>Easy enough were that, and poor beside!<br>It all but proved so,—ought to quite have proved,<br>Since, half the chances had sufficed, set free<br>Anyone, with his senses at command,<br>From thrice the danger of my flight. But, drunk,<br>Redundantly triumphant,—some reverse<br>Was sure to follow! There's no other way<br>Accounts for such prompt perfect failure then<br>And there on the instant. Any day o' the week,<br>A ducat slid discreetly into palm<br>O' the mute post-master, while you whisper him—<br>How you the Count and certain four your knaves,<br>Have just been mauling who was malapert,<br>Suspect the kindred may prove troublesome,<br>Therefore, want horses in a hurry,—that<br>And nothing more secures you any day<br>The pick o' the stable! Yet I try the trick,<br>Double the bribe, call myself Duke for Count,<br>And say the dead man only was a Jew,<br>And for my pains find I am dealing just<br>With the one scrupulous fellow in all Rome—<br>Just this immaculate official stares,<br>Sees I want hat on head and sword in sheath,<br>Am splashed with other sort of wet than wine,<br>Shrugs shoulder, puts my hand by, gold and all,<br>Stands on the strictness of the rule o' the road!<br>"Where's the Permission?" Where's the wretched rag<br>With the due seal and sign of Rome's Police,<br>To be had for asking, half-an-hour ago?<br>"Gone? Get another, or no horses hence!"<br>He dares not stop me, we five glare too grim,<br>But hinders,—hacks and hamstrings sure enough,<br>Gives me some twenty miles of miry road<br>More to march in the middle of that night<br>Whereof the rough beginning taxed the strength<br>O' the youngsters, much more mine, both soul and flesh,<br>Who had to think as well as act: dead-beat,<br>We gave in ere we reached the boundary<br>And safe spot out of this irrational Rome,—<br>Where, on dismounting from our steeds next day,<br>We had snapped our fingers at you, safe and sound,<br>Tuscans once more in blessed Tuscany,<br>Where laws make wise allowance, understand<br>Civilized life and do its champions right!<br>Witness the sentence of the Rota there,<br>Arezzo uttered, the Granduke confirmed,<br>One week before I acted on its hint,—<br>Giving friend Guillichini, for his love,<br>The galleys, and my wife your saint, Rome's saint,—<br>Rome manufactures saints enough to know,—<br>Seclusion at the Stinche for her life.<br>All this, that all but was, might all have been,<br>Yet was not! baulked by just a scrupulous knave<br>Whose palm was horn through handling horses' hoofs<br>And could not close upon my proffered gold!<br>What say you to the spite of fortune? Well,<br>The worst's in store: thus hindered, haled this way<br>To Rome again by hangdogs, whom find I<br>Here, still to fight with, but my pale frail wife?<br>—Riddled with wounds by one not like to waste<br>The blows he dealt,—knowing anatomy,—<br>(I think I told you) bound to pick and choose<br>The vital parts! 'T was learning all in vain!<br>She too must shimmer through the gloom o' the grave,<br>Come and confront me—not at judgment-seat<br>Where I could twist her soul, as erst her flesh,<br>And turn her truth into a lie,—but there,<br>O' the death-bed, with God's hand between us both,<br>Striking me dumb, and helping her to speak,<br>Tell her own story her own way, and turn<br>My plausibility to nothingness!<br>Four whole days did Pompilia keep alive,<br>With the best surgery of Rome agape<br>At the miracle,—this cut, the other slash,<br>And yet the life refusing to dislodge,<br>Four whole extravagant impossible days,<br>Till she had time to finish and persuade<br>Every man, every woman, every child<br>In Rome, of what she would: the selfsame she<br>Who, but a year ago, had wrung her hands,<br>Reddened her eyes and beat her breasts, rehearsed<br>The whole game at Arezzo, nor availed<br>Thereby to move one heart or raise one hand!<br>When destiny intends you cards like these,<br>What good of skill and preconcerted play?<br>Had she been found dead, as I left her dead,<br>I should have told a tale brooked no reply:<br>You scarcely will suppose me found at fault<br>With that advantage! "What brings me to Rome?<br>"Necessity to claim and take my wife:<br>"Better, to claim and take my new born babe,—<br>"Strong in paternity a fortnight old,<br>"When't is at strongest: warily I work,<br>"Knowing the machinations of my foe;<br>"I have companionship and use the night:<br>"I seek my wife and child,—I find—no child<br>"But wife, in the embraces of that priest<br>"Who caused her to elope from me. These two,<br>"Backed by the pander-pair who watch the while,<br>"Spring on me like so many tiger-cats,<br>"Glad of the chance to end the intruder. I—<br>"What should I do but stand on my defence,<br>"Strike right, strike left, strike thick and threefold, slay,<br>"Not all-because the coward priest escapes.<br>"Last, I escape, in fear of evil tongues,<br>"And having had my taste of Roman law."<br>What's disputable, refutable here?—<br>Save by just this one ghost-thing half on earth,<br>Half out of it,—as if she held God's hand<br>While she leant back and looked her last at me,<br>Forgiving me (here monks begin to weep)<br>Oh, from her very soul, commending mine<br>To heavenly mercies which are infinite,—<br>While fixing fast my head beneath your knife!<br>'T is fate not fortune. All is of a piece!<br>When was it chance informed me of my youths?<br>My rustic four o' the family, soft swains,<br>What sweet surprise had they in store for me,<br>Those of my very household,—what did Law<br>Twist with her rack-and-cord-contrivance late<br>From out their bones and marrow? What but this—<br>Had no one of these several stumbling-blocks<br>Stopped me, they yet were cherishing a scheme,<br>All of their honest country homespun wit,<br>To quietly next day at crow of cock<br>Cut my own throat too, for their own behoof,<br>Seeing I had forgot to clear accounts<br>O' the instant, nowise slackened speed for that,—<br>And somehow never might find memory,<br>Once safe back in Arezzo, where things change,<br>And a court-lord needs mind no country lout.<br>Well, being the arch-offender, I die last,—<br>May, ere my head falls, have my eyesight free,<br>Nor miss them dangling high on either hand,<br>Like scarecrows in a hemp-field, for their pains!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116365" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And then my Trial,—'t is my Trial that bites<br>Like a corrosive, so the cards are packed,<br>Dice loaded, and my life-stake tricked away!<br>Look at my lawyers, lacked they grace of law,<br>Latin or logic? Were not they fools to the height,<br>Fools to the depth, fools to the level between,<br>O' the foolishness set to decide the case?<br>They feign, they flatter; nowise does it skill,<br>Everything goes against me: deal each judge<br>His dole of flattery and feigning,—why,<br>He turns and tries and snuffs and savours it,<br>As some old fly the sugar-grain, your gift;<br>Then eyes your thumb and finger, brushes clean<br>The absurd old head of him, and whisks away,<br>Leaving your thumb and finger dirty. Faugh!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116365" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And finally, after this long-drawn range<br>Of affront and failure, failure and affront,—<br>This path, 'twixt crosses leading to a skull,<br>Paced by me barefoot, bloodied by my palms<br>From the entry to the end,—there's light at length,<br>A cranny of escape: appeal may be<br>To the old man, to the father, to the Pope,<br>For a little life—from one whose life is spent,<br>A little pity—from pity's source and seat,<br>A little indulgence to rank, privilege,<br>From one who is the thing personified,<br>Rank, privilege, indulgence, grown beyond<br>Earth's bearing, even, ask Jansenius else!<br>Still the same answer, still no other tune<br>From the cicala perched at the tree-top<br>Than crickets noisy round the root: 't is "Die!"<br>Bids Law—"Be damned!" adds Gospel,—nay,<br>No word so frank,—'t is rather, "Save yourself!"<br>The Pope subjoins—"Confess and be absolved!<br>"So shall my credit countervail your shame,<br>"And the world see I have not lost the knack<br>"Of trying all the spirits: yours, my son,<br>"Wants but a fiery washing to emerge<br>"In clarity! Come, cleanse you, ease the ache<br>"Of these old bones, refresh our bowels, boy!"<br>Do I mistake your mission from the Pope?<br>Then, bear his Holiness the mind of me!<br>I do get strength from being thrust to wall,<br>Successively wrenched from pillar and from post<br>By this tenacious hate of fortune, hate<br>Of all things in, under, and above earth.<br>Warfare, begun this mean unmanly mode,<br>Does best to end so,—gives earth spectacle<br>Of a brave fighter who succumbs to odds<br>That turn defeat to victory. Stab, I fold<br>My mantle round me! Rome approves my act:<br>Applauds the blow which costs me life but keeps<br>My honour spotless: Rome would praise no more<br>Had I fallen, say, some fifteen years ago,<br>Helping Vienna when our Aretines<br>Flocked to Duke Charles and fought Turk Mustafa;<br>Nor would you two be trembling o'er my corpse<br>With all this exquisite solicitude.<br>Why is it that I make such suit to live?<br>The popular sympathy that's round me now<br>Would break like bubble that o'er-domes a fly:<br>Solid enough while he lies quiet there,<br>But let him want the air and ply the wing,<br>Why, it breaks and bespatters him, what else?<br>Cardinal, if the Pope had pardoned me,<br>And I walked out of prison through the crowd,<br>It would not be your arm I should dare press!<br>Then, if I got safe to my place again,<br>How sad and sapless were the years to come!<br>I go my old ways and find things grown grey;<br>You priests leer at me, old friends look askance<br>The mob's in love, I'll wager, to a man,<br>With my poor young good beauteous murdered wife:<br>For hearts require instruction how to beat,<br>And eyes, on warrant of the story, wax<br>Wanton at portraiture in white and black<br>Of dead Pompilia gracing ballad-sheet,<br>Which eyes, lived she unmurdered and unsung,<br>Would never turn though she paced street as bare<br>As the mad penitent ladies do in France.<br>My brothers quietly would edge me out<br>Of use and management of things called mine;<br>Do I command? "You stretched command before!<br>Show anger? "Anger little helped you once!"<br>Advise? "How managed you affairs of old?"<br>My very mother, all the while they gird,<br>Turns eye up, gives confirmatory groan;<br>For unsuccess, explain it how you will,<br>Disqualifies you, makes you doubt yourself,<br>—Much more, is found decisive by your friends.<br>Beside, am I not fifty years of age?<br>What new leap would a life take, checked like mine<br>I' the spring at outset? Where's my second chance?<br>Ay, but the babe … I had forgot my son,<br>My heir! Now for a burst of gratitude!<br>There's some appropriate service to intone,<br>Some gaudeamus and thanksgiving psalm!<br>Old, I renew my youth in him, and poor<br>Possess a treasure,—is not that the phrase?<br>Only I must wait patient twenty years—<br>Nourishing all the while, as father ought,<br>The excrescence with my daily blood of life.<br>Does it respond to hope, such sacrifice,—<br>Grows the wen plump while I myself grow lean?<br>Why, here's my son and heir in evidence,<br>Who stronger, wiser, handsomer than I<br>By fifty years, relieves me of each load,—<br>Tames my hot horse, carries my heavy gun,<br>Courts my coy mistress,—has his apt advice<br>On house-economy, expenditure,<br>And what not? All which good gifts and great growth<br>Because of my decline, he brings to bear<br>On Guido, but half apprehensive how<br>He cumbers earth, crosses the brisk young Count,<br>Who civilly would thrust him from the scene.<br>Contrariwise, does the blood-offering fail?<br>There's an ineptitude, one blank the more<br>Added to earth in semblance of my child?<br>Then, this has been a costly piece of work,<br>My life exchanged for his!—why he, not I,<br>Enjoy the world, if no more grace accrue?<br>Dwarf me, what giant have you made of him?<br>I do not dread the disobedient son:<br>I know how to suppress rebellion there,<br>Being not quite the fool my father was.<br>But grant the medium measure of a man,<br>The usual compromise 'twixt fool and sage,<br>—You know—the tolerably-obstinate,<br>The not-so-much-perverse but you may train,<br>The true son-servant that, when parent bids<br>"Go work, son, in my vineyard!" makes reply<br>"I go, Sir!"—Why, what profit in your son<br>Beyond the drudges you might subsidize,<br>Have the same work from, at a paul the head?<br>Look at those four young precious olive-plants<br>Reared at Vittiano,—not on flesh and blood,<br>These twenty years, but black bread and sour wine!<br>I bade them put forth tender branch, hook, hold,<br>And hurt three enemies I had in Rome:<br>They did my hest as unreluctantly,<br>At promise of a dollar, as a son<br>Adjured by mumping memories of the past.<br>No, nothing repays youth expended so—<br>Youth, I say, who am young still: grant but leave<br>To live my life out, to the last I'd live<br>And die conceding age no right of youth!<br>It is the will runs the renewing nerve<br>Through flaccid flesh that faints before the time.<br>Therefore no sort of use for son have I—<br>Sick, not of life's feast but of steps to climb<br>To the house where life prepares her feast,—of means<br>To the end: for make the end attainable<br>Without the means,—my relish were like yours.<br>A man may have an appetite enough<br>For a whole dish of robins ready cooked,<br>And yet lack courage to face sleet, pad snow,<br>And snare sufficiently for supper.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116365" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Thus<br>The time's arrived when, ancient Roman-like,<br>I am bound to fall on my own sword: why not<br>Say—Tuscan-like, more ancient, better still?<br>Will you hear truth can do no harm nor good?<br>I think I never was at any time<br>A Christian, as you nickname all the world,<br>Me among others: truce to nonsense now!<br>Name me, a primitive religionist—<br>As should the aboriginary be<br>I boast myself, Etruscan, Aretine,<br>One sprung,—your frigid Virgil's fieriest word,—<br>From fauns and nymphs, trunks and the heart of oak,<br>With,—for a visible divinity,—<br>The portent of a Jove Ægiochus<br>Descried 'mid clouds, lightning and thunder, couched<br>On topmost crag of your Capitoline:<br>'T is in the Seventh Æneid,—what, the Eighth?<br>Right,—thanks, Abate,—though the Christian's dumb,<br>The Latinist's vivacious in you yet!<br>I know my grandsire had our tapestry<br>Marked with the motto, 'neath a certain shield,<br>Whereto his grandson presently will give gules<br>To vary azure. First we fight for faiths,<br>But get to shake hands at the last of all:<br>Mine's your faith too,—in Jove Ægiochus!<br>Nor do Greek gods, that serve as supplement,<br>Jar with the simpler scheme, if understood.<br>We want such intermediary race<br>To make communication possible;<br>The real thing were too lofty, we too low,<br>Midway hang these: we feel their use so plain<br>In linking height to depth, that we doff hat<br>And put no question nor pry narrowly<br>Into the nature hid behind the names.<br>We grudge no rite the fancy may demand;<br>But never, more than needs, invent, refine,<br>Improve upon requirement, idly wise<br>Beyond the letter, teaching gods their trade,<br>Which is to teach us: we'll obey when taught.<br>Why should we do our duty past the need?<br>When the sky darkens, Jove is wroth,—say prayer!<br>When the sun shines and Jove is glad,—sing psalm!<br>But wherefore pass prescription and devise<br>Blood-offering for sweat-service, lend the rod<br>A pungency through pickle of our own?<br>Learned Abate,—no one teaches you<br>What Venus means and who's Apollo here!<br>I spare you, Cardinal,—but, though you wince,<br>You know me, I know you, and both know that!<br>So, if Apollo bids us fast, we fast:<br>But where does Venus order we stop sense<br>When Master Pietro rhymes a pleasantry?<br>Give alms prescribed on Friday: but, hold hand<br>Because your foe lies prostrate,—where's the word<br>Explicit in the book debars revenge?<br>The rationale of your scheme is just<br>"Pay toll here, there pursue your pleasure free!"<br>So do you turn to use the medium-powers,<br>Mars and Minerva, Bacchus and the rest,<br>And so are saved propitiating—whom?<br>What all-good, all-wise and all-potent Jove<br>Vexed by the very sins in man, himself<br>Made life's necessity when man he made?<br>Irrational bunglers! So, the living truth<br>Revealed to strike Pan dead, ducks low at last,<br>Prays leave to hold its own and live good days<br>Provided it go masque grotesquely, called<br>Christian not Pagan. Oh, you purged the sky<br>Of all gods save the One, the great and good,<br>Clapped hands and triumphed! But the change came fast:<br>The inexorable need in man for life—<br>(Life, you may mulct and minish to a grain<br>Out of the lump, so that the grain but live)<br>Laughed at your substituting death for life,<br>And bade you do your worst: which worst was done<br>In just that age styled primitive and pure<br>When Saint this, Saint that, dutifully starved,<br>Froze, fought with beasts, was beaten and abused<br>And finally ridded of his flesh by fire:<br>He kept life-long unspotted from the world!<br>Next age, how goes the game, what mortal gives<br>His life and emulates Saint that, Saint this?<br>Men mutter, make excuse or mutiny,<br>In fine are minded all to leave the new,<br>Stick to the old,—enjoy old liberty,<br>No prejudice in enjoyment, if you please,<br>To the new profession: sin o' the sly, henceforth!<br>The law stands though the letter kills: what then?<br>The spirit saves as unmistakeably.<br>Omniscience sees, Omnipotence could stop,<br>Omnibenevolence pardons: it must be,<br>Frown law its fiercest, there's a wink somewhere!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116365" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Such was the logic in this head of mine:<br>I, like the rest, wrote "poison" on my bread,<br>But broke and ate:—said "Those that use the sword<br>"Shall perish by the same;" then stabbed my foe.<br>I stand on solid earth, not empty air:<br>Dislodge me, let your Pope's crook hale me hence!<br>Not he, nor you! And I so pity both,<br>I'll make the true charge you want wit to make:<br>"Count Guido, who reveal our mystery,<br>"And trace all issues to the love of life.<br>"We having life to love and guard, like you,<br>"Why did you put us upon self-defence?<br>"You well knew what prompt pass-word would appease<br>"The sentry's ire when folk infringed his bounds,<br>"And yet kept mouth shut: do you wonder then<br>"If, in mere decency, he shot you dead?<br>"He can't have people play such pranks as yours<br>"Beneath his nose at noonday: you disdained<br>"To give him an excuse before the world<br>"By crying 'I break rule to save our camp!'<br>"Under the old rule, such offence were death;<br>"And you had heard the Pontifex pronounce<br>"'Since you slay foe and violate the form,<br>"'Slaying turns murder, which were sacrifice<br>"'Had you, while, say, law-suiting foe to death,<br>"'But raised an altar to the Unknown God<br>"'Or else the Genius of the Vatican.'<br>"Why then this pother?—all because the Pope,<br>"Doing his duty, cried 'A foreigner,<br>"'You scandalize the natives: here at Rome<br>"'Romano vivitur more: wise men, here,<br>"'Put the Church forward and efface themselves.<br>"'The fit defence had been,—you stamped on wheat,<br>"'Intending all the time to trample tares,—<br>"'Were fain extirpate, then, the heretic,<br>"'You now find, in your haste was slain a fool:<br>"'Nor Pietro, nor Violante, nor your wife<br>"'Meant to breed up your babe a Molinist!<br>"'Whence you are duly contrite. Not one word<br>"'Of all this wisdom did you urge: which slip<br>"'Death must atone for.'"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116365" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">So, let death atone!<br>So ends mistake, so end mistakers!—end<br>Perhaps to recommence,—how should I know?<br>Only, be sure, no punishment, no pain<br>Childish, preposterous, impossible,<br>But some such fate as Ovid could foresee,—<br>Byblis in fluvium, let the weak soul end<br>In water, sed Lycaon in lupum, but<br>The strong become a wolf for evermore!<br>Change that Pompilia to a puny stream<br>Fit to reflect the daisies on its bank!<br>Let me turn wolf, be whole, and sate, for once,—<br>Wallow in what is now a wolfishness<br>Coerced too much by the humanity<br>That's half of me as well! Grow out of man,<br>Glut the wolf-nature,—what remains but grow<br>Into the man again, be man indeed<br>And all man? Do I ring the changes right?<br>Deformed, transformed, reformed, informed, conformed!<br>The honest instinct, pent and crossed through life,<br>Let surge by death into a visible flow<br>Of rapture: as the strangled thread of flame<br>Painfully winds, annoying and annoyed,<br>Malignant and maligned, thro' stone and ore,<br>Till earth exclude the stranger: vented once,<br>It finds full play, is recognized a-top<br>Some mountain as no such abnormal birth<br>Fire for the mount, the streamlet for the vale!<br>Ay, of the water was that wife of mine—<br>Be it for good, be it for ill, no run<br>O' the red thread through that insignificance!<br>Again, how she is at me with those eyes!<br>Away with the empty stare! Be holy still,<br>And stupid ever! Occupy your patch<br>Of private snow that's somewhere in what world<br>May now be growing icy round your head,<br>And aguish at your foot-print,—freeze not me,<br>Dare follow not another step I take,<br>Not with so much as those detested eyes,<br>No, though they follow but to pray me pause<br>On the incline, earth's edge that's next to hell!<br>None of your abnegation of revenge!<br>Fly at me frank, tug while I tear again!<br>There's God, go tell Him, testify your worst!<br>Not she! There was no touch in her of hate:<br>And it would prove her hell, if I reached mine!<br>To know I suffered, would still sadden her,<br>Do what the angels might to make amends!<br>Therefore there's either no such place as hell,<br>Or thence shall I be thrust forth, for her sake,<br>And thereby undergo three hells, not one—<br>I who, with outlet for escape to heaven,<br>Would tarry if such flight allowed my foe<br>To raise his head, relieved of that firm foot<br>Had pinned him to the fiery pavement else!<br>So am I made, "who did not make myself:"<br>(How dared she rob my own lip of the word?)<br>Beware me in what other world may be!—<br>Pompilia, who have brought me to this pass!<br>All I know here, will I say there, and go<br>Beyond the saying with the deed. Some use<br>There cannot but be for a mood like mine,<br>Implacable, persistent in revenge.<br>She maundered "All is over and at end:<br>"I go my own road, go you where God will!<br>"Forgive you? I forget you!" There's the saint<br>That takes your taste, you other kind of men!<br>How you had loved her! Guido wanted skill<br>To value such a woman at her worth!<br>Properly the instructed criticize<br>"What's here, you simpleton have tossed to take<br>"Its chance i' the gutter? This a daub, indeed?<br>"Why, 't is a Rafael that you kicked to rags!"<br>Perhaps so: some prefer the pure design:<br>Give me my gorge of colour, glut of gold<br>In a glory round the Virgin made for me!<br>Titian 's the man, not Monk Angelico<br>Who traces you some timid chalky ghost<br>That turns the church into a charnel: ay,<br>Just such a pencil might depict my wife!<br>She,—since she, also, would not change herself,—<br>Why could not she come in some heart-shaped cloud,<br>Rainbowed about with riches, royalty<br>Rimming her round, as round the tintless lawn<br>Guardingly runs the selvage cloth of gold?<br>I would have left the faint fine gauze untouched,<br>Needle-worked over with its lily and rose,<br>Let her bleach unmolested in the midst<br>Chill that selected solitary spot<br>Of quietude she pleased to think was life.<br>Purity, pallor grace the lawn no doubt<br>When there's the costly bordure to unthread<br>And make again an ingot: but what's grace<br>When you want meat and drink and clothes and fire?<br>A tale comes to my mind that's apposite—<br>Possibly true, probably false, a truth<br>Such as all truths we live by, Cardinal!<br>'T is said, a certain ancestor of mine<br>Followed—whoever was the potentate,<br>To Paynimrie, and in some battle, broke<br>Through more than due allowance of the foe,<br>And, risking much his own life, saved the lord's.<br>Battered and bruised, the Emperor scrambles up,<br>Rubs his eyes and looks round and sees my sire,<br>Picks a furze-sprig from out his hauberk-joint,<br>(Token how near the ground went majesty)<br>And says "Take this, and if thou get safe home,<br>"Plant the same in thy garden-ground to grow:<br>"Run thence an hour in a straight line, and stop:<br>"Describe a circle round (for central point)<br>"The furze aforesaid, reaching every way<br>"The length of that hour's run: I give it thee,—<br>"The central point, to build a castle there,<br>"The space circumjacent, for fit demesne,<br>"The whole to be thy children's heritage,—<br>"Whom, for thy sake, bid thou wear furze on cap!"<br>Those are my arms: we turned the furze a tree<br>To show more, and the greyhound tied thereto,<br>Straining to start, means swift and greedy both;<br>He stands upon a triple mount of gold—<br>By Jove, then, he's escaping from true gold<br>And trying to arrive at empty air!<br>Aha! the fancy never crossed my mind!<br>My father used to tell me, and subjoin<br>"As for the castle, that took wings and flew:<br>"The broad lands,—why, to traverse them to day<br>"Scarce tasks my gouty feet, and in my prime<br>"I doubt not I could stand and spit so far:<br>"But for the furze, boy, fear no lack of that,<br>"So long as fortune leaves one field to grub!<br>"Wherefore, hurra for furze and loyalty!"<br>What may I mean, where may the lesson lurk?<br>"Do not bestow on man, by way of gift,<br>"Furze without land for framework,—vaunt no grace<br>"Of purity, no furze-sprig of a wife,<br>"To me, i' the thick of battle for my bread,<br>"Without some better dowry,—gold will do!"<br>No better gift than sordid muck? Yes, Sirs!<br>Many more gifts much better. Give them me!<br>O those Olimpias bold, those Biancas brave,<br>That brought a husband power worth Ormuz' wealth!<br>Cried "Thou being mine, why, what but thine am I?<br>"Be thou to me law, right, wrong, heaven and hell!<br>"Let us blend souls, blent, thou in me, to bid<br>"Two bodies work one pleasure! What are these<br>"Called king, priest, father, mother, stranger, friend?<br>"They fret thee or they frustrate? Give the word—<br>"Be certain they shall frustrate nothing more!<br>"And who is this young florid foolishness<br>"That holds thy ortune in his pigmy clutch,<br>"—Being a prince and potency, forsooth!—<br>"He hesitates to let the trifle go?<br>"Let me but seal up eye, sing ear to sleep<br>"Sounder than Samson,—pounce thou on the prize<br>"Shall slip from off my breast, and down couchside,<br>"And on to floor, and far as my lord's feet—<br>"Where he stands in the shadow with the knife,<br>"Waiting to see what Delilah dares do!<br>"Is the youth fair? What is a man to me<br>"Who am thy call-bird? Twist his neck—my dupe's,—<br>"Then take the breast shall turn a breast indeed!"<br>Such women are there; and they marry whom?<br>Why, when a man has gone and hanged himself<br>Because of what he calls a wicked wife,—<br>See, if the very turpitude bemoaned<br>Prove not mere excellence the fool ignores!<br>His monster is perfection,—Circe, sent<br>Straight from the sun, with wand the idiot blames<br>As not an honest distaff to spin wool!<br>O thou Lucrezia, is it long to wait<br>Yonder where all the gloom is in a glow<br>With thy suspected presence?—virgin yet,<br>Virtuous again, in face of what's to teach—<br>Sin unimagined, unimaginable,—<br>I come to claim my bride,—thy Borgia's self<br>Not half the burning bridegroom I shall be!<br>Cardinal, take away your crucifix!<br>Abate, leave my lips alone,—they bite!<br>Vainly you try to change what should not change,<br>And shall not. I have bared, you bathe my heart—<br>It grows the stonier for your saving dew!<br>You steep the substance, you would lubricate,<br>In waters that but touch to petrify!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116365" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">You too are petrifactions of a kind:<br>Move not a muscle that shows mercy. Rave<br>Another twelve hours, every word were waste!<br>I thought you would not slay impenitence,<br>But teased, from men you slew, contrition first,—<br>I thought you had a conscience. Cardinal,<br>You know I am wronged!—wronged, say, and wronged, maintain.<br>Was this strict inquisition made for blood<br>When first you showed us scarlet on your back,<br>Called to the College? Your straightforward way<br>To your legitimate end,—I think it passed<br>Over a scantling of heads brained, hearts broke,<br>Lives trodden into dust! How otherwise?<br>Such was the way o' the world, and so you walked.<br>Does memory haunt your pillow? Not a whit.<br>God wills you never pace your garden-path,<br>One appetizing hour ere dinner-time,<br>But your intrusion there treads out of life<br>A universe of happy innocent things:<br>Feel you remorse about that damsel-fly<br>Which buzzed so near your mouth and flapped your face?<br>You blotted it from being at a blow:<br>It was a fly, you were a man, and more,<br>Lord of created things, so took your course.<br>Manliness, mind,—these are things fit to save,<br>Fit to brush fly from: why, because I take<br>My course, must needs the Pope kill me?—kill you!<br>You! for this instrument, he throws away,<br>Is strong to serve a master, and were yours<br>To have and hold and get much good from out!<br>The Pope who dooms me needs must die next year;<br>I'll tell you how the chances are supposed<br>For his successor: first the Chamberlain,<br>Old San Cesario,—Colloredo, next,—<br>Then, one, two, three, four, I refuse to name;<br>After these, comes Altieri; then come you—<br>Seventh on the list you come, unless … ha, ha,<br>How can a dead hand give a friend a lift?<br>Are you the person to despise the help<br>O' the head shall drop in pannier presently?<br>So a child seesaws on or kicks away<br>The fulcrum-stone that's all the sage requires<br>To fit his lever to and move the world.<br>Cardinal, I adjure you in God's name,<br>Save my life, fall at the Pope's feet, set forth<br>Things your own fashion, not in words like these<br>Made for a sense like yours who apprehend!<br>Translate into the Court-conventional<br>Count Guido must not die, is innocent!<br>"Fair, be assured! But what an he were foul,<br>"Blood-drenched and murder-crusted head to foot?<br>"Spare one whose death insults the Emperor,<br>"Nay, outrages the Louis you so love!<br>"He has friends who will avenge him; enemies<br>"Who will hate God now with impunity,<br>"Missing the old coercive: would you send<br>"A soul straight to perdition, dying frank<br>"An atheist?" Go and say this, for God's sake!<br>—Why, you don't think I hope you'll say one word?<br>Neither shall I persuade you from your stand<br>Nor you persuade me from my station: take<br>Your crucifix away, I tell you twice!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116365" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Come, I am tired of silence! Pause enough!<br>You have prayed: I have gone inside my soul<br>And shut its door behind me: 't is your torch<br>Makes the place dark: the darkness let alone<br>Grows tolerable twilight: one may grope<br>And get to guess at length and breadth and depth.<br>What is this fact I feel persuaded of—<br>This something like a foothold in the sea,<br>Although Saint Peter's bark scuds, billow-borne,<br>Leaves me to founder where it flung me first?<br>Spite of your splashing, I am high and dry!<br>God takes his own part in each thing He made;<br>Made for a reason, He conserves his work,<br>Gives each its proper instinct of defence.<br>My lamblike wife could neither bark nor bite,<br>She bleated, bleated, till for pity pure<br>The village roused up, ran with pole and prong<br>To the rescue, and behold the wolf's at bay!<br>Shall he try bleating?—or take turn or two,<br>Since the wolf owns some kinship with the fox,<br>And, failing to escape the foe by craft,<br>Give up attempt, die fighting quietly?<br>The last bad blow that strikes fire in at eye<br>And on to brain, and so out, life and all,<br>How can it but be cheated of a pang<br>If, fighting quietly, the jaws enjoy<br>One re-embrace in mid back-bone they break,<br>After their weary work thro' the foe's flesh?<br>That's the wolf-nature. Don't mistake my trope!<br>A Cardinal so qualmish? Eminence,<br>My fight is figurative, blows i' the air,<br>Brain-war with powers and principalities,<br>Spirit-bravado, no real fisticuffs!<br>I shall not presently, when the knock comes,<br>Cling to this bench nor claw the hangman's face,<br>No, trust me! I conceive worse lots than mine.<br>Whether it be, the old contagious fit<br>And plague o' the prison have surprised me too,<br>The appropriate drunkenness of the death-hour<br>Crept on my sense, kind work o' the wine and myrrh,—<br>I know not,—I begin to taste my strength,<br>Careless, gay even. What's the worth of life?<br>The Pope's dead now, my murderous old man,<br>For Tozzi told me so: and you, forsooth—<br>Why, you don't think, Abate, do your best,<br>You'll live a year more with that hacking cough<br>And blotch of crimson where the cheek's a pit?<br>Tozzi has got you also down in book!<br>Cardinal, only seventh of seventy near,<br>Is not one called Albano in the lot?<br>Go eat your heart, you'll never be a Pope!<br>Inform me, is it true you left your love,<br>A Pucci, for promotion in the church?<br>She's more than in the church,—in the churchyard!<br>Plautilla Pucci, your affianced bride,<br>Has dust now in the eyes that held the love,—<br>And Martinez, suppose they make you Pope,<br>Stops that with veto,—so, enjoy yourself!<br>I see you all reel to the rock, you waves—<br>Some forthright, some describe a sinuous track,<br>Some, crested brilliantly, with heads above,<br>Some in a strangled swirl sunk who knows how,<br>But all bound whither the main-current sets,<br>Rockward, an end in foam for all of you!<br>What if I be o'ertaken, pushed to the front<br>By all you crowding smoother souls behind,<br>And reach, a minute sooner than was meant,<br>The boundary whereon I break to mist?<br>Go to! the smoothest safest of you all,<br>Most perfect and compact wave in my train,<br>Spite of the blue tranquillity above,<br>Spite of the breadth before of lapsing peace,<br>Where broods the halcyon and the fish leaps free,<br>Will presently begin to feel the prick<br>At lazy heart, the push at torpid brain,<br>Will rock vertiginously in turn, and reel,<br>And, emulative, rush to death like me.<br>Later or sooner by a minute then,<br>So much for the untimeliness of death!<br>And, as regards the manner that offends,<br>The rude and rough, I count the same for gain.<br>Be the act harsh and quick! Undoubtedly<br>The soul's condensed and, twice itself, expands<br>To burst thro' life, by alternation due,<br>Into the other state whate'er it prove.<br>You never know what life means till you die:<br>Even throughout life, 't is death that makes life live,<br>Gives it whatever the significance.<br>For see, on your own ground and argument,<br>Suppose life had no death to fear, how find<br>A possibility of nobleness<br>In man, prevented daring any more?<br>What's love, what's faith without a worst to dread?<br>Lack-lustre jewelry! but faith and love<br>With death behind them bidding do or die—<br>Put such a foil at back, the sparkle's born!<br>From out myself how the strange colours come!<br>Is there a new rule in another world?<br>Be sure I shall resign myself: as here<br>I recognized no law I could not see,<br>There, what I see, I shall acknowledge too:<br>On earth I never took the Pope for God,<br>In heaven I shall scarce take God for the Pope.<br>Unmanned, remanned: I hold it probable—<br>With something changeless at the heart of me<br>To know me by, some nucleus that's myself:<br>Accretions did it wrong? Away with them—<br>You soon shall see the use of fire!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116365" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Till when,<br>All that was, is; and must forever be.<br>Nor is it in me to unhate my hates,—<br>I use up my last strength to strike once more<br>Old Pietro in the wine-house-gossip-face,<br>To trample underfoot the whine and wile<br>Of beast Violante,—and I grow one gorge<br>To loathingly reject Pompilia's pale<br>Poison my hasty hunger took for food.<br>A strong tree wants no wreaths about its trunk,<br>No cloying cups, no sickly sweet of scent,<br>But sustenance at root, a bucketful.<br>How else lived that Athenian who died so,<br>Drinking hot bull's blood, fit for men like me?<br>I lived and died a man, and take man's chance,<br>Honest and bold: right will be done to such.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116365" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Who are these you have let descend my stair?<br>Ha, their accursed psalm! Lights at the sill!<br>Is it "Open" they dare bid you? Treachery!<br>Sirs, have I spoken one word all this while<br>Out of the world of words I had to say?<br>Not one word! All was folly—I laughed and mocked!<br>Sirs, my first true word, all truth and no lie,<br>Is—save me notwithstanding! Life is all!<br>I was just stark mad,—let the madman live<br>Pressed by as many chains as you please pile!<br>Don't open! Hold me from them! I am yours,<br>I am the Granduke's—no, I am the Pope's!<br>Abate,—Cardinal,—Christ,—Maria,—God, …<br>Pompilia, will you let them murder me?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br/></a><a href="https://poems.citatepedia.com/">poem</a> by <strong><a rel="author" href="https://authors.citatepedia.com/by.php?a=Robert+Browning">Robert Browning</a></strong> from <em><a href="https://sources.citatepedia.com/from.php?a=Robert+Browning&d=The+Ring+and+the+Book">The Ring and the Book</a></em></div>

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