She began--"You have sent me letters, Sir:

I have read none, I can neither read nor write;

But she you gave them to, a woman here,

One of the people in whose power I am,

Partly explained their sense; I think, to me

Obliged to listen while she inculcates

That you, a priest, can dare love me, a wife,

Desire to live or die as I shall bid,

(She makes me listen if I will or no)

Because you saw my face a single time.

It cannot be she says the thing you mean;

Such wickedness were deadly to us both:

But good true love would help me now so much--

I tell myself, you may mean good and true.

You offer me, I seem to understand,

Because I am in poverty and starve,

Much money, where one piece would save my life.

The silver cup upon the altar-cloth

Is neither yours to give nor mine to take;

But I might take one bit of bread therefrom,

Since I am starving, and return the rest,

Yet do no harm: this is my very case.

I am in that strait, I may not dare abstain

From so much of assistance as would bring

The guilt of theft on neither you nor me;

But no superfluous particle of aid.

I think, if you will let me state my case,

Even had you been so fancy-fevered here,

Not your sound self, you must grow healthy now--

Care only to bestow what I can take.

That it is only you in the wide world,

Knowing me nor in thought nor word nor deed,

Who, all unprompted save by your own heart,

Come proffering assistance now,--were strange

But that my whole life is so strange: as strange

It is, my husband whom I have not wronged

Should hate and harm me. For his own soul's sake,

Hinder the harm! But there is something more,

And that the strangest: it has got to be

Somehow for my sake too, and yet not mine,

--This is a riddle--for some kind of sake

Not any clearer to myself than you,

And yet as certain as that I draw breath,--

I would fain live, not die--oh no, not die!

My case is, I was dwelling happily

At Rome with those dear Comparini, called

Father and mother to me; when at once

I found I had become Count Guido's wife:

Who then, not waiting for a moment, changed

Into a fury of fire, if once he was

Merely a man: his face threw fire at mine,

He laid a hand on me that burned all peace,

All joy, all hope, and last all fear away,

Dipping the bough of life, so pleasant once,

In fire which shrivelled leaf and bud alike,

Burning not only present life but past,

Which you might think was safe beyond his reach.

He reached it, though, since that beloved pair,

My father once, my mother all those years,

That loved me so, now say I dreamed a dream

And bid me wake, henceforth no child of theirs,

Never in all the time their child at all.

Do you understand? I cannot: yet so it is.

Just so I say of you that proffer help:

I cannot understand what prompts your soul,

I simply needs must see that it is so,

Only one strange and wonderful thing more.

They came here with me, those two dear ones, kept

All the old love up, till my husband, till

His people here so tortured them, they fled.

And now, is it because I grow in flesh

And spirit one with him their torturer,

That they, renouncing him, must cast off me?

If I were graced by God to have a child,

Could I one day deny God graced me so?

Then, since my husband hates me, I shall break

No law that reigns in this fell house of hate,

By using--letting have effect so much

Of hate as hides me from that whole of hate

Would take my life which I want and must have--

Just as I take from your excess of love

Enough to save my life with, all I need.

The Archbishop said to murder me were sin:

My leaving Guido were a kind of death

With no sin,--more death, he must answer for.

Hear now what death to him and life to you

I wish to pay and owe. Take me to Rome!

You go to Rome, the servant makes me hear.

Take me as you would take a dog, I think,

Masterless left for strangers to maltreat:

Take me home like that--leave me in the house

Where the father and the mother are; and soon

They 'll come to know and call me by my name,

Their child once more, since child I am, for all

They now forget me, which is the worst o' the dream--

And the way to end dreams is to break them, stand,

Walk, go: then help me to stand, walk, and go!

The Governor said the strong should help the weak:

You know how weak the strongest women are.

How could I find my way there by myself?

I cannot even call out, make them hear--

Just as in dreams: I have tried and proved the fact.

I have told this story and more to good great men,

The Archbishop and the Governor: they smiled.

'Stop your mouth, fair one!'--presently they frowned,

'Get you gone, disengage you from our feet!'

I went in my despair to an old priest,

Only a friar, no great man like these two,

But good, the Augustinian, people name

Romano,--he confessed me two months since:

He fears God, why then needs he fear the world?

And when he questioned how it came about

That I was found in danger of a sin--

Despair of any help from providence,--

'Since, though your husband outrage you,' said he,

'That is a case too common, the wives die

Or live, but do not sin so deep as this'--

Then I told--what I never will tell you--

How, worse than husband's hate, I had to bear

The love--soliciting to shame called love--

Of his brother,--the young idle priest i' the house

With only the devil to meet there. 'This is grave--

Yes, we must interfere: I counsel,--write

To those who used to be your parents once,

Of dangers here, bid them convey you hence!'

'But,' said I, 'when I neither read nor write?'

Then he took pity and promised 'I will write.'

If he did so,--why, they are dumb or dead:

Either they give no credit to the tale,

Or else, wrapped wholly up in their own joy

Of such escape, they care not who cries, still

I' the clutches. Anyhow, no word arrives.

All such extravagance and dreadfulness

Seems incident to dreaming, cured one way,--

Wake me! The letter I received this morn,

Said--if the woman spoke your very sense--

'You would die for me:' I can believe it now:

For now the dream gets to involve yourself.

First of all, you seemed wicked and not good,

In writing me those letters: you came in

Like a thief upon me. I this morning said

In my extremity, entreat the thief!

Try if he have in him no honest touch!

A thief might save me from a murderer.

'T was a thief said the last kind word to Christ:

Christ took the kindness and forgave the theft:

And so did I prepare what I now say.

But now, that you stand and I see your face,

Though you have never uttered word yet,--well, I know,

Here too has been dream-work, delusion too,

And that at no time, you with the eyes here,

Ever intended to do wrong by me,

Nor wrote such letters therefore. It is false,

And you are true, have been true, will be true.

To Rome then,--when is it you take me there?

Each minute lost is mortal. When?--I ask."

I answered, "It shall be when it can be.

I will go hence and do your pleasure, find

The sure and speedy means of travel, then

Come back and take you to your friends in Rome.

There wants a carriage, money and the rest,--

A day's work by to-morrow at this time.

How shall I see you and assure escape?"

She replied, "Pass, to-morrow at this hour.

If I am at the open window, well:

If I am absent, drop a handkerchief

And walk by! I shall see from where I watch,

And know that all is done. Return next eve,

And next, and so till we can meet and speak!"

"To-morrow at this hour I pass," said I.

She was withdrawn.

Here is another point

I bid you pause at. When I told thus far,

Some one said, subtly, "Here at least was found

Your confidence in error,--you perceived

The spirit of the letters, in a sort,

Had been the lady's, if the body should be

Supplied by Guido: say, he forged them all!

Here was the unforged fact--she sent for you,

Spontaneously elected you to help,

--What men call, loved you: Guido read her mind,

Gave it expression to assure the world

The case as just as he foresaw: he wrote,

She spoke."

Sirs, that first simile serves still,--

That falsehood of a scorpion hatched, I say,

Nowhere i' the world but in Madonna's mouth.

Go on! Suppose, that falsehood foiled, next eve

Pictured Madonna raised her painted hand,

Fixed the face Rafael bent above the Babe.

On my face as I flung me at her feet:

Such miracle vouchsafed and manifest,

Would that prove the first lying tale was true?

Pompilia spoke, and I at once received,

Accepted my own fact, my miracle

Self-authorized and self-explained,--she chose

To summon me and signify her choice.

Afterward,--oh! I gave a passing glance

To a certain ugly cloud-shape, goblin-shred

Of hell-smoke hurrying past the splendid moon

Out now to tolerate no darkness more,

And saw right through the thing that tried to pass

For truth and solid, not an empty lie:

"So, he not only forged the words for her

But words for me, made letters he called mine:

What I sent, he retained, gave these in place,

All by the mistress-messenger! As I

Recognized her, at potency of truth,

So she, by the crystalline soul, knew me,

Never mistook the signs. Enough of this--

Let the wraith go to nothingness again,

Here is the orb, have only thought for her!"

"Thought?" nay, Sirs, what shall follow was not thought:

I have thought sometimes, and thought long and hard.

I have stood before, gone round a serious thing,

Tasked my whole mind to touch and clasp it close,

As I stretch forth my arm to touch this bar.

God and man, and what duty I owe both,--

I dare to say I have confronted these

In thought: but no such faculty helped here.

I put forth no thought,--powerless, all that night

I paced the city: it was the first Spring.

By the invasion I lay passive to,

In rushed new things, the old were rapt away;

Alike abolished--the imprisonment

Of the outside air, the inside weight o' the world

That pulled me down. Death meant, to spurn the ground,

Soar to the sky,--die well and you do that.

The very immolation made the bliss;

Death was the heart of life, and all the harm

My folly had crouched to avoid, now proved a veil

Hiding all gain my wisdom strove to grasp:

As if the intense centre of the flame

Should turn a heaven to that devoted fly

Which hitherto, sophist alike and sage,

Saint Thomas with his sober gray goose-quill,

And sinner Plato by Cephisian reed,

Would fain, pretending just the insect's good,

Whisk off, drive back, consign to shade again.

Into another state, under new rule

I knew myself was passing swift and sure;

Whereof the initiatory pang approached,

Felicitous annoy, as bitter-sweet

As when the virgin-band, the victors chaste,

Feel at the end the earthly garments drop,

And rise with something of a rosy shame

Into immortal nakedness: so I

Lay, and let come the proper throe would thrill

Into the ecstasy and outthrob pain.

I' the gray of dawn it was I found myself

Facing the pillared front o' the Pieve--mine,

My church: it seemed to say for the first time,

"But am not I the Bride, the mystic love

O' the Lamb, who took thy plighted troth, my priest,

To fold thy warm heart on my heart of stone

And freeze thee nor unfasten any more?

This is a fleshly woman,--let the free

Bestow their life-blood, thou art pulseless now!"

See! Day by day I had risen and left this church

At the signal waved me by some foolish fan,

With half a curse and half a pitying smile

For the monk I stumbled over in my haste,

Prostrate and corpse-like at the altar-foot

Intent on his _corona:_ then the church

Was ready with her quip, if word conduced,

To quicken my pace nor stop for prating--"There!

Be thankful you are no such ninny, go

Rather to teach a black-eyed novice cards

Than gabble Latin and protrude that nose

Smooth to a sheep's through no brains and much faith!"

That sort of incentive! Now the church changed tone--

Now, when I found out first that life and death

Are means to an end, that passion uses both,

Indisputably mistress of the man

Whose form of worship is self-sacrifice:

Now, from the stone lungs sighed the scrannel voice,

"Leave that live passion, come be dead with me!"

As if, i' the fabled garden, I had gone

On great adventure, plucked in ignorance

Hedge-fruit, and feasted to satiety,

Laughing at such high fame for hips and haws,

And scorned the achievement: then come all at once

O' the prize o' the place, the thing of perfect gold,

The apple's self: and, scarce my eye on that,

Was 'ware as well o' the seven-fold dragon's watch.

Sirs, I obeyed. Obedience was too strange,--

This new thing that had been struck into me

By the look o' the lady,--to dare disobey

The first authoritative word. 'T was God's.

I had been lifted to the level of her,

Could take such sounds into my sense. I said,

"We two are cognizant o' the Master now;

She it is bids me bow the head: how true,

I am a priest! I see the function here;

I thought the other way self-sacrifice:

This is the true, seals up the perfect sum.

I pay it, sit down, silently obey."

So, I went home. Dawn broke, noon broadened, I--

I sat stone-still, let time run over me.

The sun slanted into my room, had reached

The west. I opened book,--Aquinas blazed

With one black name only on the white page.

I looked up, saw the sunset: vespers rang:

"She counts the minutes till I keep my word

And come say all is ready. I am a priest.

Duty to God is duty to her: I think

God, who created her, will save her too

Some new way, by one miracle the more,

Without me. Then, prayer may avail perhaps."

I went to my own place i' the Pieve, read

The office: I was back at home again

Sitting i' the dark. "Could she but know--but know

That, were there good in this distinct from God's,

Really good as it reached her, though procured

By a sin of mine,--I should sin: God forgives.

She knows it is no fear withholds me: fear?

Of what? Suspense here is the terrible thing.

If she should, as she counts the minutes, come

On the fantastic notion that I fear

The world now, fear the Archbishop, fear perhaps

Count Guido, he who, having forged the lies,

May wait the work, attend the effect,--I fear

The sword of Guido! Let God see to that--

Hating lies, let not her believe a lie!"

Again the morning found me. "I will work,

Tie down my foolish thoughts. Thank God so far!

I have saved her from a scandal, stopped the tongues

Had broken else into a cackle and hiss

Around the noble name. Duty is still

Wisdom: I have been wise." So the day wore.

At evening--"But, achieving victory,

I must not blink the priest's peculiar part,

Nor shrink to counsel, comfort: priest and friend--

How do we discontinue to be friends?

I will go minister, advise her seek

Help at the source,--above all, not despair:

There may be other happier help at hand.

I hope it,--wherefore then neglect to say?"

There she stood--leaned there, for the second time,

Over the terrace, looked at me, then spoke:

"Why is it you have suffered me to stay

Breaking my heart two days more than was need?

Why delay help, your own heart yearns to give?

You are again here, in the selfsame mind,

I see here, steadfast in the face of you,--

You grudge to do no one thing that I ask.

Why then is nothing done? You know my need.

Still, through God's pity on me, there is time

And one day more: shall I be saved or no?"

I answered--"Lady, waste no thought, no word

Even to forgive me! Care for what I care--

Only! Now follow me as I were fate!

Leave this house in the dark to-morrow night,

Just before daybreak:--there 's new moon this eve--

It sets, and then begins the solid black.

Descend, proceed to the Torrione, step

Over the low dilapidated wall,

Take San Clemente, there 's no other gate

Unguarded at the hour: some paces thence

An inn stands; cross to it; I shall be there."

She answered, "If I can but find the way.

But I shall find it. Go now!"

I did go,

Took rapidly the route myself prescribed,

Stopped at Torrione, climbed the ruined place,

Proved that the gate was practicable, reached

The inn, no eye, despite the dark, could miss,

Knocked there and entered, made the host secure:

"With Caponsacchi it is ask and have;

I know my betters. Are you bound for Rome?

I get swift horse and trusty man," said he.

Then I retraced my steps, was found once more

In my own house for the last time: there lay

The broad pale opened "Summa." "Shut his book,

There 's other showing! 'T was a Thomas too

Obtained--more favored than his namesake here--

A gift, tied faith fast, foiled the tug of doubt,--

Our Lady's girdle; down he saw it drop

As she ascended into heaven, they say:

He kept that safe and bade all doubt adieu.

I too have seen a lady and hold a grace."

I know not how the night passed: morning broke,

Presently came my servant. "Sir, this eve--

Do you forget?" I started. "How forget?

What is it you know?" "With due submission, Sir,

This being last Monday in the month but one,

And a vigil, since to-morrow is Saint George,

And feast-day, and moreover day for copes,

And Canon Conti now away a month,

And Canon Crispi sour because, forsooth,

You let him sulk in stall and bear the brunt

Of the octave ... Well, Sir, 't is important!"

"True!

Hearken, I have to start for Rome this night.

No word, lest Crispi overboil and burst!

Provide me with a laic dress! Throw dust

I' the Canon's eye, stop his tongue's scandal so!

See there 's a sword in case of accident."

I knew the knave, the knave knew me.

And thus

Through each familiar hindrance of the day

Did I make steadily for its hour and end,--

Felt time's old barrier-growth of right and fit

Give way through all its twines, and let me go.

Use and wont recognized the excepted man,

Let speed the special service,--and I sped

Till, at the dead between midnight and morn,

There was I at the goal, before the gate,

With a tune in the ears, low leading up to loud,

A light in the eyes, faint that would soon be flare,

Ever some spiritual witness new and new

In faster frequence, crowding solitude

To watch the way o' the warfare,--till, at last,

When the ecstatic minute must bring birth,

Began a whiteness in the distance, waxed

Whiter and whiter, near grew and more near,

Till it was she: there did Pompilia come:

The white I saw shine through her was her soul's,

Certainly, for the body was one black,

Black from head down to foot. She did not speak,

Glided into the carriage,--so a cloud

Gathers the moon up. "By San Spirito,

To Rome, as if the road burned underneath!

Reach Rome, then hold my head in pledge, I pay

The run and the risk to heart's content!" Just that,

I said,--then, in another tick of time,

Sprang, was beside her, she and I alone.

So it began, our flight through dusk to clear,

Through day and night and day again to night

Once more, and to last dreadful dawn of all.

Sirs, how should I lie quiet in my grave

Unless you suffer me wring, drop by drop,

My brain dry, make a riddance of the drench

Of minutes with a memory in each,

Recorded motion, breath or look of hers,

Which poured forth would present you one pure glass,

Mirror you plain--as God's sea, glassed in gold,

His saints--the perfect soul Pompilia? Men,

You must know that a man gets drunk with truth

Stagnant inside him! Oh, they 've killed her, Sirs!

Can I be calm?

Calmly! Each incident

Proves, I maintain, that action of the flight

For the true thing it was. The first faint scratch

O' the stone will test its nature, teach its worth

To idiots who name Parian--coprolite.

After all, I shall give no glare--at best

Only display you certain scattered lights

Lamping the rush and roll of the abyss:

Nothing but here and there a fire-point pricks

Wavelet from wavelet: well!

For the first hour

We both were silent in the night, I know:

Sometimes I did not see nor understand.

Blackness engulfed me,--partial stupor, say--

Then I would break way, breathe through the surprise,

And be aware again, and see who sat

In the dark vest with the white face and hands.

I said to myself--"I have caught it, I conceive

The mind o' the mystery: 't is the way they wake

And wait, two martyrs somewhere in a tomb

Each by each as their blessing was to die;

Some signal they are promised and expect,--

When to arise before the trumpet scares:

So, through the whole course of the world they wait

The last day, but so fearless and so safe!

No otherwise, in safety and not fear,

I lie, because she lies too by my side."

You know this is not love, Sirs,--it is faith,

The feeling that there 's God, he reigns and rules

Out of this low world: that is all; no harm!

At times she drew a soft sigh--music seemed

Always to hover just above her lips,

Not settle,--break a silence music too.

In the determined morning, I first found

Her head erect, her face turned full to me,

Her soul intent on mine through two wide eyes.

I answered them. "You are saved hitherto.

We have passed Perugia,--gone round by the wood,

Not through, I seem to think,--and opposite

I know Assisi; this is holy ground."

Then she resumed. "How long since we both left

Arezzo?"--"Years--and certain hours beside."

It was at ... ah, but I forget the names!

'T is a mere post-house and a hovel or two;

I left the carriage and got bread and wine

And brought it her.--"Does it detain to eat?"

"--They stay perforce, change horses,--therefore eat!

We lose no minute: we arrive, be sure!"

This was--I know not where--there's a great hill

Close over, and the stream has lost its bridge,

One fords it. She began--"I have heard say

Of some sick body that my mother knew,

'T was no good sign when in a limb diseased

All the pain suddenly departs,--as if

The guardian angel discontinued pain

Because the hope of cure was gone at last:

The limb will not again exert itself,

It needs be pained no longer: so with me,

--My soul whence all the pain is past at once:

All pain must be to work some good in the end.

True, this I feel now, this may be that good,

Pain was because of,--otherwise, I fear!"

She said,--a long while later in the day,

When I had let the silence be,--abrupt--

"Have you a mother?" "She died, I was born."

"A sister then?" "No sister." "Who was it--

What woman were you used to serve this way,

Be kind to, till I called you and you came?"

I did not like that word. Soon afterward--

"Tell me, are men unhappy, in some kind

Of mere unhappiness at being men,

As women suffer, being womanish?

Have you, now, some unhappiness, I mean,

Born of what may be man's strength overmuch,

To match the undue susceptibility,

The sense at every pore when hate is close?

It hurts us if a baby hides its face

Or child strikes at us punily, calls names

Or makes a mouth,--much more if stranger men

Laugh or frown,--just as that were much to bear!

Yet rocks split,--and the blow-ball does no more,

Quivers to feathery nothing at a touch;

And strength may have its drawback, weakness 'scapes."

Once she asked, "What is it that made you smile,

At the great gate with the eagles and the snakes,

Where the company entered, 't is a long time since?"

"--Forgive--I think you would not understand:

Ah, but you ask me,--therefore, it was this.

That was a certain bishop's villa-gate,

I knew it by the eagles,--and at once

Remember this same bishop was just he

People of old were wont to bid me please

If I would catch preferment: so, I smiled

Because an impulse came to me, a whim--

What if I prayed the prelate leave to speak,

Began upon him in his presence-hall

--'What, still at work so gray and obsolete?

Still rocheted and mitred more or less?

Don't you feel all that out of fashion now?

I find out when the day of things is done!'"

At eve we heard the _angelus:_ she turned--

"I told you I can neither read nor write.

My life stopped with the play-time; I will learn,

If I begin to live again: but you--

Who are a priest--wherefore do you not read

The service at this hour? Read Gabriel's song,

The lesson, and then read the little prayer

To Raphael, proper for us travellers!"

I did not like that, neither, but I read.

When we stopped at Foligno it was dark.

The people of the post came out with lights:

The driver said, "This time to-morrow, may

Saints only help, relays continue good,

Nor robbers hinder, we arrive at Rome.

I urged,--"Why tax your strength a second night?

Trust me, alight here and take brief repose!

We are out of harm's reach, past pursuit: go sleep

If but an hour! I keep watch, guard the while

Here in the doorway." But her whole face changed,

The misery grew again about her mouth,

The eyes burned up from faintness, like the fawn's

Tired to death in the thicket, when she feels

The probing spear o' the huntsman. "Oh, no stay!"

She cried, in the fawn's cry, "On to Rome, on, on--

Unless 't is you who fear,--which cannot be!"

We did go on all night; but at its close

She was troubled, restless, moaned low, talked at whiles

To herself, her brow on quiver with the dream:

Once, wide awake, she menaced, at arms' length

Waved away something--"Never again with you!

My soul is mine, my body is my soul's:

You and I are divided ever more

In soul and body: get you gone!" Then I--

"Why, in my whole life I have never prayed!

Oh, if the God, that only can, would help!

Am I his priest with power to cast out fiends?

Let God arise and all his enemies

Be scattered!" By morn, there was peace, no sigh

Out of the deep sleep.

When she woke at last,

I answered the first look--"Scarce twelve hours more,

Then, Rome! There probably was no pursuit,

There cannot now be peril: bear up brave!

Just some twelve hours to press through to the prize:

Then, no more of the terrible journey!" "Then,

No more o' the journey: if it might but last!

Always, my life long, thus to journey still!

It is the interruption that I dread,--

With no dread, ever to be here and thus!

Never to see a face nor hear a voice!

Yours is no voice; you speak when you are dumb;

Nor face, I see it in the dark. I want

No face nor voice that change and grow unkind."

That I liked, that was the best thing she said.

In the broad day, I dared entreat, "Descend!"

I told a woman, at the garden-gate

By the post-house, white and pleasant in the sun,

"It is my sister,--talk with her apart!

She is married and unhappy, you perceive;

I take her home because her head is hurt;

Comfort her as you women understand!"

So, there I left them by the garden-wall,

Paced the road, then bade put the horses to,

Came back, and there she sat: close to her knee,

A black-eyed child still held the bowl of milk,

Wondered to see how little she could drink,

And in her arms the woman's infant lay.

She smiled at me, "How much good this has done!

This is a whole night's rest and how much more!

I can proceed now, though I wish to stay.

How do you call that tree with the thick top

That holds in all its leafy green and gold

The sun now like an immense egg of fire?"

(It was a million-leaved mimosa.) "Take

The babe away from me and let me go!"

And in the carriage, "Still a day, my friend!

And perhaps half a night, the woman fears.

I pray it finish since it cannot last.

There may be more misfortune at the close,

And where will you be? God suffice me then!"

And presently--for there was a roadside-shrine--

"When I was taken first to my own church

Lorenzo in Lucina, being a girl,

And bid confess my faults, I interposed

'But teach me what fault to confess and know."

So, the priest said--'You should bethink yourself:

Each human being needs must have done wrong!'

Now, be you candid and no priest but friend--

Were I surprised and killed here on the spot,

A runaway from husband and his home,

Do you account it were in sin I died?

My husband used to seem to harm me, not ...

Not on pretence he punished sin of mine,

Nor for sin's sake and lust of cruelty,

But as I heard him bid a farming-man

At the villa take a lamb once to the wood

And there ill-treat it, meaning that the wolf

Should hear its cries, and so come, quick be caught,

Enticed to the trap: he practised thus with me

That so, whatever were his gain thereby,

Others than I might become prey and spoil.

Had it been only between our two selves,--

His pleasure and my pain,--why, pleasure him

By dying, nor such need to make a coil!

But this was worth an effort, that my pain

Should not become a snare, prove pain threefold

To other people--strangers--or unborn--

How should I know? I sought release from that--

I think, or else from,--dare I say, some cause

Such as is put into a tree, which turns

Away from the north wind with what nest it holds,--

The woman said that trees so turn: now, friend,

Tell me, because I cannot trust myself!

You are a man: what have I done amiss?"

You must conceive my answer,--I forget--

Taken up wholly with the thought, perhaps,

This time she might have said,--might, did not say--

"You are a priest." She said, "my friend."

Day wore,

We passed the places, somehow the calm went,

Again the restless eyes began to rove

In new fear of the foe mine could not see.

She wandered in her mind,--addressed me once

"Gaetano!"--that is not my name: whose name?

I grew alarmed, my head seemed turning too.

I quickened pace with promise now, now threat:

Bade drive and drive, nor any stopping more.

"Too deep i' the thick of the struggle, struggle through!

Then drench her in repose though death's self pour

The plenitude of quiet,--help us, God,

Whom the winds carry!"

Suddenly I saw

The old tower, and the little white-walled clump

Of buildings and the cypress-tree or two,--

"Already Castelnuovo--Rome!" I cried,

"As good as Rome,--Rome is the next stage, think!

This is where travellers' hearts are wont to beat.

Say you are saved, sweet lady!" Up she woke.

The sky was fierce with color from the sun

Setting. She screamed out, "No, I must not die!

Take me no farther, I should die: stay here!

I have more life to save than mine!"

She swooned.

We seemed safe: what was it foreboded so?

Out of the coach into the inn I bore

The motionless and breathless pure and pale

Pompilia,--bore her through a pitying group

And laid her on a couch, still calm and cured

By deep sleep of all woes at once. The host

Was urgent, "Let her stay an hour or two!

Leave her to us; all will be right by morn!"

Oh, my foreboding! But I could not choose.

I paced the passage, kept watch all night long.

I listened,--not one movement, not one sigh.

"Fear not: she sleeps so sound!" they said: but I

Feared, all the same, kept fearing more and more,

Found myself throb with fear from head to foot,

Filled with a sense of such impending woe,

That, at first pause of night, pretence of gray,

I made my mind up it was morn.--"Reach Rome,

Lest hell reach her! A dozen miles to make,

Another long breath, and we emerge!" I stood

I' the courtyard, roused the sleepy grooms. "Have out

Carriage and horse, give haste, take gold!" said I.

While they made ready in the doubtful morn,--

'T was the last minute,--needs must I ascend

And break her sleep; I turned to go.

And there

Faced me Count Guido, there posed the mean man

As master,--took the field, encamped his rights,

Challenged the world: there leered new triumph, there

Scowled the old malice in the visage bad

And black o' the scamp. Soon triumph suppled the tongue

A little, malice glued to his dry throat,

And he part howled, part hissed ... oh, how he kept

Well out o' the way, at arm's length and to spare!--

"My salutation to your priestship! What?

Matutinal, busy with book so soon

Of an April day that 's damp as tears that now

Deluge Arezzo at its darling's flight?--

'T is unfair, wrongs feminity at large,

To let a single dame monopolize

A heart the whole sex claims, should share alike:

Therefore I overtake you, Canon! Come!

The lady,--could you leave her side so soon?

You have not yet experienced at her hands

My treatment, you lay down undrugged, I see!

Hence this alertness--hence no death-in-life

Like what held arms fast when she stole from mine.

To be sure, you took the solace and repose

That first night at Foligno!--news abound

O' the road by this time,--men regaled me much,

As past them I came halting after you,

Vulcan pursuing Mars, as poets sing,--

Still at the last here pant I, but arrive,

Vulcan--and not without my Cyclops too,

The Commissary and the unpoisoned arm

O' the Civil Force, should Mars turn mutineer.

Enough of fooling: capture the culprits, friend!

Here is the lover in the smart disguise

With the sword,--he is a priest, so mine lies still.

There upstairs hides my wife the runaway,

His leman: the two plotted, poisoned first,

Plundered me after, and eloped thus far

Where now you find them. Do your duty quick!

Arrest and hold him! That 's done: now catch her!"

During this speech of that man,--well, I stood

Away, as he managed,--still, I stood as near

The throat of him,--with these two hands, my own,--

As now I stand near yours, Sir,--one quick spring,

One great good satisfying gripe, and lo!

There had he lain abolished with his lie,

Creation purged o' the miscreate, man redeemed,

A spittle wiped off from the face of God!

I, in some measure, seek a poor excuse

For what I left undone, in just this fact

That my first feeling at the speech I quote

Was--not of what a blasphemy was dared,

Not what a bag of venomed purulence

Was split and noisome,--but how splendidly

Mirthful, how ludicrous a lie was launched!

Would Molière's self wish more than hear such man

Call, claim such woman for his own, his wife,

Even though, in due amazement at the boast,

He had stammered, she moreover was divine?

She to be his,--were hardly less absurd

Than that he took her name into his mouth,

Licked, and then let it go again, the beast,

Signed with his slaver. Oh, she poisoned him,

Plundered him, and the rest! Well, what I wished

Was, that he would but go on, say once more

So to the world, and get his meed of men,

The fist's reply to the filth. And while I mused,

The minute, oh the misery, was gone!

On either idle hand of me there stood

Really an officer, nor laughed i' the least:

Nay, rendered justice to his reason, laid

Logic to heart, as 'twere submitted them

"Twice two makes four."

"And now, catch her!" he cried.

That sobered me. "Let myself lead the way--

Ere you arrest me, who am somebody,

Being, as you hear, a priest and privileged,--

To the lady's chamber! I presume you--men

Expert, instructed how to find out truth,

Familiar with the guise of guilt. Detect

Guilt on her face when it meets mine, then judge

Between us and the mad dog howling there!"

Up we all went together, in they broke

O' the chamber late my chapel. There she lay,

Composed as when I laid her, that last eve,

O' the couch, still breathless, motionless, sleep's self,

Wax-white, seraphic, saturate with the sun

O' the morning that now flooded from the front

And filled the window with a light like blood.

"Behold the poisoner, the adulteress,

--And feigning sleep too! Seize, bind!" Guido hissed.

She started up, stood erect, face to face

With the husband: back he fell, was buttressed there

By the window all aflame with morning-red,

He the black figure, the opprobrious blur

Against all peace and joy and light and life.

"Away from between me and hell!" she cried:

"Hell for me, no embracing any more!

I am God's, I love God, God--whose knees I clasp,

Whose utterly most just award I take,

But bear no more love-making devils: hence!"

I may have made an effort to reach her side

From where I stood i' the doorway,--anyhow

I found the arms, I wanted, pinioned fast,

Was powerless in the clutch to left and right

O' the rabble pouring in, rascality

Enlisted, rampant on the side of hearth,

Home and the husband,--pay in prospect too!

They heaped themselves upon me. "Ha!--and him

Also you outrage? Him, too, my sole friend,

Guardian and savior? That I balk you of,

Since--see how God can help at last and worst!"

She sprang at the sword that hung beside him, seized,

Drew, brandished it, the sunrise burned for joy

O' the blade," Die," cried she, "devil, in God's name!"

Ah, but they all closed round her, twelve to one

--The unmanly men, no woman-mother made,

Spawned somehow! Dead-white and disarmed she lay.

No matter for the sword, her word sufficed

To spike the coward through and through: he shook,

Could only spit between the teeth--"You see?

You hear? Bear witness, then! Write down ... but no--

Carry these criminals to the prison-house,

For first thing! I begin my search meanwhile

After the stolen effects, gold, jewels, plate,

Money and clothes, they robbed me of and fled,

With no few amorous pieces, verse and prose,

I have much reason to expect to find."

When I saw that--no more than the first mad speech,

Made out the speaker mad and a laughing-stock,

So neither did this next device explode

One listener's indignation,--that a scribe

Did sit down; set himself to write indeed,

While sundry knaves began to peer and pry

In corner and hole,--that Guido, wiping brow

And getting him a countenance, was fast

Losing his fear, beginning to strut free

O' the stage of his exploit, snuff here, sniff there,--

Then I took truth in, guessed sufficiently

The service for the moment. "What I say,

Slight at your peril! We are aliens here,

My adversary and I, called noble both;

I am the nobler, and a name men know.

I could refer our cause to our own court

In our own country, but prefer appeal

To the nearer jurisdiction. Being a priest,

Though in a secular garb,--for reasons good

I shall adduce in due time to my peers,--

I demand that the Church I serve, decide

Between us, right the slandered lady there.

A Tuscan noble, I might claim the Duke:

A priest, I rather choose the Church,--bid Rome

Cover the wronged with her inviolate shield."

There was no refusing this: they bore me off,

They bore her off, to separate cells o' the same

Ignoble prison, and, separate, thence to Rome.

Pompilia's face, then and thus, looked on me

The last time in this life: not one sight since,

Never another sight to be! And yet

I thought I had saved her. I appealed to Rome:

It seems I simply sent her to her death.

You tell me she is dying now, or dead;

I cannot bring myself to quite believe

This is a place you torture people in:

What if this your intelligence were just

A subtlety, an honest wile to work

On a man at unawares? 'T were worthy you.

No, Sirs, I cannot have the lady dead!

That erect form, flashing brow, fulgurant eye,

That voice immortal (oh, that voice of hers!)

That vision in the blood-red daybreak--that

Leap to life of the pale electric sword

Angels go armed with,--that was not the last

O' the lady! Come, I see through it, you find--

Know the manœuvre! Also herself said

I had saved her: do you dare say she spoke false?

Let me see for myself if it be so!

Though she were dying, a Priest might be of use,

The more when he 's a friend too,--she called me

Far beyond "friend." Come, let me see her--indeed

It is my duty, being a priest: I hope

I stand confessed, established, proved a priest?

My punishment had motive that, a priest

I, in a laic garb, a mundane mode,

Did what were harmlessly done otherwise.

I never touched her with my finger-tip

Except to carry her to the couch, that eve,

Against my heart, beneath my head, bowed low,

As we priests carry the paten: that is why

--To get leave and go see her of your grace--

I have told you this whole story over again.

Do I deserve grace? For I might lock lips,

Laugh at your jurisdiction: what have you

To do with me in the matter? I suppose

You hardly think I donned a bravo's dress

To have a hand in the new crime; on the old,

Judgment's delivered, penalty imposed,

I was chained fast at Civita hand and foot--

She had only you to trust to, you and Rome,

Rome and the Church, and no pert meddling priest

Two days ago, when Guido, with the right,

Hacked her to pieces. One might well be wroth;

I have been patient, done my best to help:

I come from Civita and punishment

As friend of the court--and for pure friendship's sake

Have told my tale to the end,--nay, not the end--

For, wait--I 'll end--not leave you that excuse!

When we were parted,--shall I go on there?

I was presently brought to Rome--yes, here I stood

Opposite yonder very crucifix--

And there sat you and you, Sirs, quite the same.

I heard charge, and bore question, and told tale

Noted down in the book there,--turn and see

If, by one jot or tittle, I vary now!

I' the color the tale takes, there's change perhaps;

'T is natural, since the sky is different,

Eclipse in the air now; still, the outline stays.

I showed you how it came to be my part

To save the lady. Then your clerk produced

Papers, a pack of stupid and impure

Banalities called letters about love--

Love, indeed,--I could teach who styled them so,

Better, I think, though priest and loveless both!

"--How was it that a wife, young, innocent,

And stranger to your person, wrote this page?"--

"--She wrote it when the Holy Father wrote

The bestiality that posts through Rome,

Pat in his mouth by Pasquin." "Nor perhaps

Did you return these answers, verse and prose,

Signed, sealed and sent the lady? There 's your hand!"

"--This precious piece of verse, I really judge,

Is meant to copy my own character,

A clumsy mimic; and this other prose,

Not so much even; both rank forgery:

Verse, quotha? Bembo's verse! When Saint John wrote

The tract '_De Tribus_,' I wrote this to match."

"--How came it, then, the documents were found

At the inn on your departure?"--"I opine,

Because there were no documents to find

In my presence,--you must hide before you find.

Who forged them hardly practised in my view;

Who found them waited till I turned my back."

"--And what of the clandestine visits paid,

Nocturnal passage in and out the house

With its lord absent? 'T is alleged you climbed" ...

"--Flew on a broomstick to the man i' the moon!

Who witnessed or will testify this trash?"

"--The trusty servant, Margherita's self,

Even she who brought you letters, you confess,

And, you confess, took letters in reply:

Forget not we have knowledge of the facts!"

"--Sirs, who have knowledge of the facts, defray

The expenditure of wit I waste in vain,

Trying to find out just one fact of all!

She who brought letters from who could not write,

And took back letters to who could not read,--

Who was that messenger, of your charity?"

"--Well, so far favors you the circumstance

That this same messenger ... how shall we say? ...

_Sub imputatione meretricis_

_Laborat_,--which makes accusation null:

We waive this woman's:--naught makes void the next.

Borsi, called Venerino, he who drove,

O' the first night when you fled away, at length

Deposes to your kissings in the coach,

--Frequent, frenetic" ... "When deposed he so?"

"After some weeks of sharp imprisonment" ...

"Granted by friend the Governor, I engage"--

"--For his participation in your flight!

At length his obduracy melting made

The avowal mentioned" ... "Was dismissed forthwith

To liberty, poor knave, for recompense.

Sirs, give what credit to the lie you can!

For me, no word in my defence I speak,

And God shall argue for the lady!"

So

Did I stand question, and make answer, still

With the same result of smiling disbelief,

Polite impossibility of faith

In such affected virtue in a priest;

But a showing fair play, an indulgence, even,

To one no worse than others after all--

Who had not brought disgrace to the order, played

Discreetly, ruffled gown nor ripped the cloth

In a bungling game at romps: I have told you, Sirs--

If I pretended simply to be pure

Honest and Christian in the case,--absurd!

As well go boast myself above the needs

O' the human nature, careless how meat smells,

Wine tastes,--a saint above the smack! But once

Abate my crest, own flaws i' the flesh, agree

To go with the herd, be hog no more nor less,

Why, hogs in common herd have common rights:

I must not be unduly borne upon,

Who just romanced a little, sowed wild oats,

But 'scaped without a scandal, flagrant fault.

My name helped to a mirthful circumstance:

"Joseph" would do well to amend his plea:

Undoubtedly--some toying with the wife,

But as for ruffian violence and rape,

Potiphar pressed too much on the other side!

The intrigue, the elopement, the disguise,--well charged!

The letters and verse looked hardly like the truth.

Your apprehension was--of guilt enough

To be compatible with innocence,

So, punished best a little and not too much.

Had I struck Guido Franceschini's face,

You had counselled me withdraw for my own sake,

Balk him of bravo-hiring. Friends came round,

Congratulated, "Nobody mistakes!

The pettiness o' the forfeiture defines

The peccadillo: Guido gets his share:

His wife is free of husband and hook-nose,

The mouldy viands and the mother-in-law.

To Civita with you and amuse the time,

Travesty us '_De Raptu Helenæ!_'

A funny figure must the husband cut

When the wife makes him skip,--too ticklish, eh?

Do it in Latin, not the Vulgar, then!

Scazons--we 'll copy and send his Eminence.

Mind--one iambus in the final foot!

He 'll rectify it, be your friend for life!"

Oh, Sirs, depend on me for much new light

Thrown on the justice and religion here

By this proceeding, much fresh food for thought!

And I was just set down to study these

In relegation, two short days ago,

Admiring how you read the rules, when, clap.

A thunder comes into my solitude--

I am caught up in a whirlwind and cast here,

Told of a sudden, in this room where so late

You dealt out law adroitly, that those scales,

I meekly bowed to, took my allotment from,

Guido has snatched at, broken in your hands,

Metes to himself the murder of his wife,

Full measure, pressed down, running over now!

Can I assist to an explanation?--Yes,

I rise in your esteem, sagacious Sirs,

Stand up a renderer of reasons, not

The officious priest would personate Saint George

For a mock Princess in undragoned days.

What, the blood startles you? What, after all

The priest who needs must carry sword on thigh

May find imperative use for it? Then, there was

A Princess, was a dragon belching flame,

And should have been a Saint George also? Then,

There might be worse schemes than to break the bonds

At Arezzo, lead her by the little hand,

Till she reached Rome, and let her try to live?

But you were law and gospel,--would one please

Stand back, allow your faculty elbow-room?

You blind guides who must needs lead eyes that see!

Fools, alike ignorant of man and God!

What was there here should have perplexed your wit

For a wink of the owl-eyes of you? How miss, then,

What 's now forced on you by this flare of fact--

As if Saint Peter failed to recognize

Nero as no apostle, John or James,

Till some one burned a martyr, made a torch

O' the blood and fat to show his features by!

Could you fail read this cartulary aright

On head and front of Franceschini there,--

Large-lettered like hell's masterpiece of print,--

That he, from the beginning pricked at heart

By some lust, letch of hate against his wife,

Plotted to plague her into overt sin

And shame, would slay Pompilia body and soul,

And save his mean self--miserably caught

I' the quagmire of his own tricks, cheats and lies?

--That himself wrote those papers,--from himself

To himself,--which, i' the name of me and her,

His mistress-messenger gave her and me,

Touching us with such pustules of the soul

That she and I might take the taint, be shown

To the world and shuddered over, speckled so?

--That the agent put her sense into my words,

Made substitution of the thing she hoped,

For the thing she had and held, its opposite,

While the husband in the background bit his lips

At each fresh failure of his precious plot?

--That when at the last we did rush each on each,

By no chance but because God willed it so--

The spark of truth was struck from out our souls--

Made all of me, descried in the first glance,

Seem fair and honest and permissible love

O' the good and true--as the first glance told me

There was no duty patent in the world

Like daring try be good and true myself,

Leaving the shows of things to the Lord of Show

And Prince o' the Power of the Air. Our very flight,

Even to its most ambiguous circumstance,

Irrefragably proved how futile, false ...

Why, men--men and not boys--boys and not babes--

Babes and not beasts--beasts and not stocks and stones!--

Had the liar's lie been true one pin-point speck,

Were I the accepted suitor, free o' the place,

Disposer of the time, to come at a call

And go at a wink as who should say me nay,--

What need of flight, what were the gain therefrom

But just damnation, failure or success?

Damnation pure and simple to her the wife

And me the priest--who bartered private bliss

For public reprobation, the safe shade

For the sunshine which men see to pelt me by:

What other advantage--we who led the days

And nights alone i' the house--was flight to find?

In our whole journey did we stop an hour,

Diverge a foot from strait road till we reached

Or would have reached--but for that fate of ours--

The father and mother, in the eye of Rome,

The eye of yourselves we made aware of us

At the first fall of misfortune? And indeed

You did so far give sanction to our flight,

Confirm its purpose, as lend helping hand,

Deliver up Pompilia not to him

She fled, but those the flight was ventured for.

Why then could you, who stopped short, not go on

One poor step more, and justify the means,

Having allowed the end?--not see and say,

"Here 's the exceptional conduct that should claim

To be exceptionally judged on rules

Which, understood, make no exception here"--

Why play instead into the devil's hands

By dealing so ambiguously as gave

Guido the power to intervene like me,

Prove one exception more? I saved his wife

Against law: against law he slays her now:

Deal with him!

I have done with being judged.

I stand here guiltless in thought, word and deed,

To the point that I apprise you,--in contempt

For all misapprehending ignorance

O' the human heart, much more the mind of Christ,--

That I assuredly did bow, was blessed

By the revelation of Pompilia. There!

Such is the final fact I fling you, Sirs,

To mouth and mumble and misinterpret: there!

"The priest 's in love," have it the vulgar way!

Unpriest me, rend the rags o' the vestment, do--

Degrade deep, disenfranchise all you dare--

Remove me from the midst, no longer priest

And fit companion for the like of you--

Your gay Abati with the well-turned leg

And rose i' the hat-rim, Canons, cross at neck

And silk mask in the pocket of the gown,

Brisk bishops with the world's musk still unbrushed

From the rochet; I 'll no more of these good things:

There 's a crack somewhere, something that 's unsound

I' the rattle!

For Pompilia--be advised,

Build churches, go pray! You will find me there,

I know, if you come,--and you will come, I know.

Why, there 's a Judge weeping! Did not I say

You were good and true at bottom? You see the truth--

I am glad I helped you: she helped me just so.

But for Count Guido,--you must counsel there!

I bow my head, bend to the very dust,

Break myself up in shame of faultiness.

I had him one whole moment, as I said--

As I remember, as will never out

O' the thoughts of me,--I had him in arm's reach

There,--as you stand, Sir, now you cease to sit,--

I could have killed him ere he killed his wife,

And did not: he went off alive and well

And then effected this last feat--through me!

Me--not through you--dismiss that fear! 'T was you

Hindered me staying here to save her,--not

From leaving you and going back to him

And doing service in Arezzo. Come,

Instruct me in procedure! I conceive--

In all due self-abasement might I speak--

How you will deal with Guido: oh, not death!

Death, if it let her life be: otherwise

Not death,--your lights will teach you clearer! I

Certainly have an instinct of my own

I' the matter: bear with me and weigh its worth!

Let us go away--leave Guido all alone

Back on the world again that knows him now!

I think he will be found (indulge so far!)

Not to die so much as slide out of life,

Pushed by the general horror and common hate

Low, lower,--left o' the very ledge of things,

I seem to see him catch convulsively

One by one at all honest forms of life,

At reason, order, decency and use--

To cramp him and get foothold by at least;

And still they disengage them from his clutch.

"What, you are he, then, had Pompilia once

And so forwent her? Take not up with us!"

And thus I see him slowly and surely edged

Off all the table-land whence life upsprings

Aspiring to be immortality,

As the snake, hatched on hill-top by mischance,

Despite his wriggling, slips, slides, slidders down

Hillside, lies low and prostrate on the smooth

Level of the outer place, lapsed in the vale:

So I lose Guido in the loneliness,

Silence and dusk, till at the doleful end,

At the horizontal line, creation's verge,

From what just is to absolute nothingness--

Whom is it, straining onward still, he meets?

What other man deep further in the fate,

Who, turning at the prize of a footfall

To flatter him and promise fellowship,

Discovers in the act a frightful face--

Judas, made monstrous by much solitude!

The two are at one now! Let them love their love

That bites and claws like hate, or hate their hate

That mops and mows and makes as it were love!

There, let them each tear each in devil's-fun,

Or fondle this the other while malice aches--

Both teach, both learn detestability!

Kiss him the kiss, Iscariot! Pay that back,

That smatch o' the slaver blistering on your lip,

By the better trick, the insult he spared Christ--

Lure him the lure o' the letters, Aretine!

Lick him o'er slimy-smooth with jelly-filth

O' the verse-and-prose pollution in love's guise!

The cockatrice is with the basilisk!

There let them grapple, denizens o' the dark,

Foes or friends, but indissolubly bound,

In their one spot out of the ken of God

Or care of man, forever and evermore!

Why, Sirs, what 's this? Why, this is sorry and strange!

Futility, divagation: this from me

Bound to be rational, justify an act

Of sober man!--whereas, being moved so much,

I give you cause to doubt the lady's mind:

A pretty sarcasm for the world! I fear

You do her wit injustice,--all through me!

Like my fate all through,--ineffective help!

A poor rash advocate I prove myself.

You might be angry with good cause: but sure

At the advocate,--only at the undue zeal

That spoils the force of his own plea, I think?

My part was just to tell you how things stand,

State facts and not be flustered at their fume.

But then 't is a priest speaks: as for love,--no!

If you let buzz a vulgar fly like that

About your brains, as if I loved, forsooth,

Indeed, Sirs, you do wrong! We had no thought

Of such infatuation, she and I:

There are many points that prove it: do be just!

I told you,--at one little roadside-place

I spent a good half-hour, paced to and fro

The garden; just to leave her free awhile,

I plucked a handful of Spring herb and bloom:

I might have sat beside her on the bench

Where the children were: I wish the thing had been,

Indeed: the event could not be worse, you know:

One more half-hour of her saved! She 's dead now, Sirs!

While I was running on at such a rate,

Friends should have plucked me by the sleeve: I went

Too much o' the trivial outside of her face

And the purity that shone there--plain to me,

Not to you, what more natural? Nor am I

Infatuated,--oh, I saw, be sure!

Her brow had not the right line, leaned too much,

Painters would say; they like the straight-up Greek:

This seemed bent somewhat with an invisible crown

Of martyr and saint, not such as art approves.

And how the dark orbs dwelt deep underneath,

Looked out of such a sad sweet heaven on me!

The lips, compressed a little, came forward too,

Careful for a whole world of sin and pain.

That was the face, her husband makes his plea,

He sought just to disfigure,--no offence

Beyond that! Sirs, let us be rational!

He needs must vindicate his honor,--ay,

Yet shirks, the coward, in a clown's disguise,

Away from the scene, endeavors to escape.

Now, had he done so, slain and left no trace

O' the slayer,--what were vindicated, pray?

You had found his wife disfigured or a corpse,

For what and by whom? It is too palpable!

Then, here 's another point involving law:

I use this argument to show you meant

No calumny against us by that title

O' the sentence,--liars try to twist it so:

What penalty it bore, I had to pay

Till further proof should follow of innocence--

_Probationis ob defectum_,--proof?

How could you get proof without trying us?

You went through the preliminary form,

Stopped there, contrived this sentence to amuse

The adversary. If the title ran

For more than fault imputed and not proved,

That was a simple penman's error, else

A slip i' the phrase,--as when we say of you

"Charged with injustice"--which may either be

Or not be,--'t is a name that sticks meanwhile.

Another relevant matter: fool that I am!

Not what I wish true, yet a point friends urge:

It is not true,--yet, since friends think it helps,--

She only tried me when some others failed--

Began with Conti, whom I told you of,

And Guillichini, Guido's kinsfolk both,

And when abandoned by them, not before,

Turned to me. That 's conclusive why she turned.

Much good they got by the happy cowardice!

Conti is dead, poisoned a month ago:

Does that much strike you as a sin? Not much,

After the present murder,--one mark more

On the Moor's skin,--what is black by blacker still?

Conti had come here and told truth. And so

With Guillichini; he 's condemned of course

To the galleys, as a friend in this affair,

Tried and condemned for no one thing i' the world,

A fortnight since by who but the Governor?--

The just judge, who refused Pompilia help

At first blush, being her husband's friend, you know.

There are two tales to suit the separate courts,

Arezzo and Rome: he tells you here, we fled

Alone, unhelped,--lays stress on the main fault,

The spiritual sin, Rome looks to: but elsewhere

He likes best we should break in, steal, bear off,

Be fit to brand and pillory and flog--

That 's the charge goes to the heart of the Governor:

If these unpriest me, you and I may yet

Converse, Vincenzo Marzi-Medici!

Oh, Sirs, there are worse men than you, I say!

More easily duped, I mean; this stupid lie,

Its liar never dared propound in Rome,

He gets Arezzo to receive,--nay more,

Gets Florence and the Duke to authorize!

This is their Rota's sentence, their Granduke

Signs and seals! Rome for me henceforward--Rome,

Where better men are,--most of all, that man

The Augustinian of the Hospital,

Who writes the letter,--he confessed, he says,

Many a dying person, never one

So sweet and true and pure and beautiful.

A good man! Will you make him Pope one day?

Not that he is not good too, this we have--

But old,--else he would have his word to speak,

His truth to teach the world: I thirst for truth,

But shall not drink it till I reach the source.

Sirs, I am quiet again. You see, we are

So very pitiable, she and I,

Who had conceivably been otherwise.

Forget distemperature and idle heat!

Apart from truth's sake, what 's to move so much?

Pompilia will be presently with God;

I am, on earth, as good as out of it,

A relegated priest; when exile ends,

I mean to do my duty and live long.

She and I are mere strangers now: but priests

Should study passion; how else cure mankind,

Who come for help in passionate extremes?

I do but play with an imagined life

Of who, unfettered by a vow, unblessed

By the higher call,--since you will have it so,--

Leads it companioned by the woman there.

To live, and see her learn, and learn by her,

Out of the low obscure and petty world--

Or only see one purpose and one will

Evolve themselves i' the world, change wrong to right:

To have to do with nothing but the true,

The good, the eternal--and these, not alone

In the main current of the general life,

But small experiences of every day,

Concerns of the particular hearth and home:

To learn not only by a comet's rush

But a rose's birth,--not by the grandeur, God,--

But the comfort, Christ. All this, how far away!

Mere delectation, meet for a minute's dream!--

Just as a drudging student trims his lamp,

Opens his Plutarch, puts him in the place

Of Roman, Grecian; draws the patched gown close,

Dreams, "Thus should I fight, save or rule the world!"--

Then smilingly, contentedly, awakes

To the old solitary nothingness.

So I, from such communion, pass content ...

O great, just, good God! Miserable me!

VII

POMPILIA

I am just seventeen years and five months old,

And, if I lived one day more, three full weeks;

'T is writ so in the church's register,

Lorenzo in Lucina, all my names

At length, so many names for one poor child,

--Francesca Camilla Vittoria Angela

Pompilia Comparini,--laughable!

Also 't is writ that I was married there

Four years ago: and they will add, I hope,

When they insert my death, a word or two,--

Omitting all about the mode of death,--

This, in its place, this which one cares to know,

That I had been a mother of a son

Exactly two weeks. It will be through grace

O' the Curate, not through any claim I have;

Because the boy was born at, so baptized

Close to, the Villa, in the proper church:

A pretty church, I say no word against,

Yet stranger-like,--while this Lorenzo seems

My own particular place, I always say.

I used to wonder, when I stood scarce high

As the bed here, what the marble lion meant,

With half his body rushing from the wall,

Eating the figure of a prostrate man--

(To the right, it is, of entry by the door)--

An ominous sign to one baptized like me,

Married, and to be buried there, I hope.

And they should add, to have my life complete,

He is a boy and Gaetan by name--

Gaetano, for a reason,--if the friar

Don Celestine will ask this grace for me

Of Curate Ottoboni: he it was

Baptized me: he remembers my whole life

As I do his gray hair.

All these few things

I know are true,--will you remember them?

Because time flies. The surgeon cared for me,

To count my wounds,--twenty-two dagger-wounds,

Five deadly, but I do not suffer much--

Or too much pain,--and am to die to-night.

Oh how good God is that my babe was born,

--Better than born, baptized and hid away

Before this happened, safe from being hurt!

That had been sin God could not well forgive:

He was too young to smile and save himself.

When they took, two days after he was born,

My babe away from me to be baptized

And hidden awhile, for fear his foe should find,--

The country-woman, used to nursing babes,

Said, "Why take on so? where is the great loss?

These next three weeks he will but sleep and feed,

Only begin to smile at the month's end;

He would not know you, if you kept him here,

Sooner than that; so, spend three merry weeks

Snug in the Villa, getting strong and stout,

And then I bring him back to be your own,

And both of you may steal to--we know where!"

The month--there wants of it two weeks this day!

Still, I half fancied when I heard the knock

At the Villa in the dusk, it might prove she--

Come to say, "Since he smiles before the time,

Why should I cheat you out of one good hour?

Back I have brought him; speak to him and judge!"

Now I shall never see him; what is worse,

When he grows up and gets to be my age,

He will seem hardly more than a great boy;

And if he asks, "What was my mother like?"

People may answer, "Like girls of seventeen"--

And how can he but think of this and that,

Lucias, Marias, Sofias, who titter or blush

When he regards them as such boys may do?

Therefore I wish some one will please to say

I looked already old though I was young;

Do I not ... say, if you are by to speak ...

Look nearer twenty? No more like, at least,

Girls who look arch or redden when boys laugh,

Than the poor Virgin that I used to know

At our street-corner in a lonely niche,--

The babe, that sat upon her knees, broke off,--

Thin white glazed clay, you pitied her the more:

She, not the gay ones, always got my rose.

How happy those are who know how to write!

Such could write what their son should read in time,

Had they a whole day to live out like me.

Also my name is not a common name,

"Pompilia," and may help to keep apart

A little the thing I am from what girls are.

But then how far away, how hard to find

Will anything about me have become,

Even if the boy bethink himself and ask!

No father that ever knew at all,

Nor ever had--no, never had, I say!

That is the truth,--nor any mother left,

Out of the little two weeks that she lived,

Fit for such memory as might assist:

As good too as no family, no name,

Not even poor old Pietro's name, nor hers,

Poor kind unwise Violante, since it seems

They must not be my parents any more.

That is why something put it in my head

To call the boy "Gaetano"--no old name

For sorrow's sake; I looked up to the sky

And took a new saint to begin anew.

One who has only been made saint--how long?

Twenty-five years: so, carefuller, perhaps,

To guard a namesake than those old saints grow,

Tired out by this time,--see my own five saints!

On second thoughts, I hope he will regard

The history of me as what some one dreamed,

And get to disbelieve it at the last:

Since to myself it dwindles fast to that,

Sheer dreaming and impossibility,--

Just in four days too! All the seventeen years,

Not once did a suspicion visit me

How very different a lot is mine

From any other woman's in the world.

The reason must be, 't was by step and step

It got to grow so terrible and strange.

These strange woes stole on tiptoe, as it were,

Into my neighborhood and privacy,

Sat down where I sat, laid them where I lay;

And I was found familiarized with fear,

When friends broke in, held up a torch and cried,

"Why, you Pompilia in the cavern thus,

How comes that arm of yours about a wolf?

And the soft length,--lies in and out your feet

And laps you round the knee,--a snake it is!"

And so on.

Well, and they are right enough,

By the torch they hold up now: for first, observe,

I never had a father,--no, nor yet

A mother: my own boy can say at least,

"I had a mother whom I kept two weeks!"

Not I, who little used to doubt ... _I_ doubt

Good Pietro, kind Violante, gave me birth?

They loved me always as I love my babe

(--Nearly so, that is--quite so could not be--)

Did for me all I meant to do for him,

Till one surprising day, three years ago,

They both declared, at Rome, before some judge

In some court where the people flocked to hear,

That really I had never been their child,

Was a mere castaway, the careless crime

Of an unknown man, the crime and care too much

Of a woman known too well,--little to these,

Therefore, of whom I was the flesh and blood:

What then to Pietro and Violante, both

No more my relatives than you or you?

Nothing to them! You know what they declared.

So with my husband,--just such a surprise,

Such a mistake, in that relationship!

Every one says that husbands love their wives,

Guard them and guide them, give them happiness;

'T is duty, law, pleasure, religion: well,

You see how much of this comes true in mine!

People indeed would fain have somehow proved

He was no husband: but he did not hear,

Or would not wait, and so has killed us all.

Then there is ... only let me name one more!

There is the friend,--men will not ask about,

But tell untruths of, and give nicknames to,

And think my lover, most surprise of all!

Do only hear, it is the priest they mean,

Giuseppe Caponsacchi: a priest--love,

And love me! Well, yet people think he did.

I am married, he has taken priestly vows,

They know that, and yet go on, say, the same,

"Yes, how he loves you!" "That was love"--they say,

When anything is answered that they ask:

Or else "No wonder you love him"--they say.

Then they shake heads, pity much, scarcely blame--

As if we neither of us lacked excuse,

And anyhow are punished to the full,

And downright love atones for everything!

Nay, I heard read out in the public court

Before the judge, in presence of my friends,

Letters 't was said the priest had sent to me,

And other letters sent him by myself,

We being lovers!

Listen what this is like!

When I was a mere child, my mother ... that 's

Violante, you must let me call her so,

Nor waste time, trying to unlearn the word,...

She brought a neighbor's child of my own age

To play with me of rainy afternoons:

And, since there hung a tapestry on the wall,

We two agreed to find each other out

Among the figures. "Tisbe, that is you,

With half-moon on your hair-knot, spear in hand,

Flying, but no wings, only the great scarf

Blown to a bluish rainbow at your back:

Call off your hound and leave the stag alone!"

"--And there are you, Pompilia, such green leaves

Flourishing out of your five finger-ends,

And all the rest of you so brown and rough:

Why is it you are turned a sort of tree?"

You know the figures never were ourselves

Though we nicknamed them so. Thus, all my life,--

As well what was, as what, like this, was not,--

Looks old, fantastic and impossible:

I touch a fairy thing that fades and fades.

--Even to my babe! I thought, when he was born,

Something began for once that would not end,

Nor change into a laugh at me, but stay

Forevermore, eternally quite mine.

Well, so he is,--but yet they bore him off,

The third day, lest my husband should lay traps

And catch him, and by means of him catch me.

Since they have saved him so, it was well done:

Yet thence comes such confusion of what was

With what will be,--that late seems long ago,

And, what years should bring round, already come,

Till even he withdraws into a dream

As the rest do: I fancy him grown great,

Strong, stern, a tall young man who tutors me,

Frowns with the others, "Poor imprudent child!

Why did you venture out of the safe street?

Why go so far from help to that lone house?

Why open at the whisper and the knock?"

Six days ago when it was New Year's day,

We bent above the fire and talked of him,

What he should do when he was grown and great.

Violante, Pietro, each had given the arm

I leant on, to walk by, from couch to chair

And fireside,--laughed, as I lay safe at last,

"Pompilia's march from bed to board is made,

Pompilia back again and with a babe,

Shall one day lend his arm and help her walk!"

Then we all wished each other more New Years.

Pietro began to scheme--"Our cause is gained;

The law is stronger than a wicked man:

Let him henceforth go his way, leave us ours!

We will avoid the city, tempt no more

The greedy ones by feasting and parade,--

Live at the other villa, we know where,

Still farther off, and we can watch the babe

Grow fast in the good air; and wood is cheap

And wine sincere outside the city gate.

I still have two or three old friends will grope

Their way along the mere half-mile of road,

With staff and lantern on a moonless night

When one needs talk: they 'll find me, never fear,

And I 'll find them a flask of the old sort yet!"

Violante said, "You chatter like a crow:

Pompilia tires o' the tattle, and shall to bed:

Do not too much the first day,--somewhat more

To-morrow, and, the next, begin the cape

And hood and coat! I have spun wool enough."

Oh what a happy friendly eve was that!

And, next day, about noon, out Pietro went--

He was so happy and would talk so much,

Until Violante pushed and laughed him forth

Sight-seeing in the cold,--"So much to see

I' the churches! Swathe your throat three times!" she cried,

"And, above all, beware the slippery ways,

And bring us all the news by supper-time!"

He came back late, laid by cloak, staff and hat,

Powdered so thick with snow it made us laugh,

Rolled a great log upon the ash o' the hearth,

And bade Violante treat us to a flask,

Because he had obeyed her faithfully,

Gone sight-see through the seven, and found no church

To his mind like San Giovanni--"There 's the fold,

And all the sheep together, big as cats!

And such a shepherd, half the size of life,

Starts up and hears the angel"--when, at the door,

A tap: we started up: you know the rest.

Pietro at least had done no harm, I know;

Nor even Violante, so much harm as makes

Such revenge lawful. Certainly she erred--

Did wrong, how shall I dare say otherwise?--

In telling that first falsehood, buying me

From my poor faulty mother at a price,

To pass off upon Pietro as his child.

If one should take my babe, give him a name,

Say he was not Gaetano and my own,

But that some other woman made his mouth

And hands and feet,---how very false were that!

No good could come of that; and all harm did.

Yet if a stranger were to represent

"Needs must you either give your babe to me

And let me call him mine forevermore,

Or let your husband get him"--ah, my God,

That were a trial I refuse to face!

Well, just so here: it proved wrong but seemed right

To poor Violante--for there lay, she said,

My poor real dying mother in her rags,

Who put me from her with the life and all,

Poverty, pain, shame and disease at once,

To die the easier by what price I fetched--

Also (I hope) because I should be spared

Sorrow and sin,--why may not that have helped?

My father,--he was no one, any one,--

The worse, the likelier,--call him,--he who came,

Was wicked for his pleasure, went his way,

And left no trace to track by; there remained

Nothing but me, the unnecessary life,

To catch up or let fall,--and yet a thing

She could make happy, be made happy with,

This poor Violante,--who would frown thereat?

Well, God, you see! God plants us where we grow.

It is not that, because a bud is born

At a wild brier's end, full i' the wild beast's way,

We ought to pluck and put it out of reach

On the oak-tree top,--say, "There the bud belongs!"

She thought, moreover, real lies were lies told

For harm's sake; whereas this had good at heart,

Good for my mother, good for me, and good

For Pietro who was meant to love a babe,

And needed one to make his life of use,

Receive his house and land when he should die.

Wrong, wrong, and always wrong! how plainly wrong!

For see, this fault kept pricking, as faults do,

All the same at her heart: this falsehood hatched,

She could not let it go nor keep it fast.

She told me so,--the first time I was found

Locked in her arms once more after the pain,

When the nuns let me leave them and go home,

And both of us cried all the cares away,--

This it was set her on to make amends,

This brought about the marriage--simply this!

Do let me speak for her you blame so much!

When Paul, my husband's brother, found me out,

Heard there was wealth for who should marry me,

So, came and made a speech to ask my hand

For Guido,--she, instead of piercing straight

Through the pretence to the ignoble truth,

Fancied she saw God's very finger point,

Designate just the time for planting me

(The wild-brier slip she plucked to love and wear)

In soil where I could strike real root, and grow,

And get to be the thing I called myself:

For, wife and husband are one flesh, God says,

And I, whose parents seemed such and were none,

Should in a husband have a husband now,

Find nothing, this time, but was what it seemed,

--All truth and no confusion any more.

I know she meant all good to me, all pain

To herself,--since how could it be aught but pain

To give me up, so, from her very breast,

The wilding flower-tree-branch that, all those years,

She had got used to feel for and find fixed?

She meant well: has it been so ill i' the main?

That is but fair to ask: one cannot judge

Of what has been the ill or well of life,

The day that one is dying,--sorrows change

Into not altogether sorrow-like;

I do see strangeness but scarce misery,

Now it is over, and no danger more.

My child is safe; there seems not so much pain.

It comes, most like, that I am just absolved,

Purged of the past, the foul in me, washed fair,--

One cannot both have and not have, you know,--

Being right now, I am happy and color things.

Yes, everybody that leaves life sees all

Softened and bettered: so with other sights:

To me at least was never evening yet

But seemed far beautifuller than its day,

For past is past.

There was a fancy came,

When somewhere, in the journey with my friend,

We stepped into a hovel to get food;

And there began a yelp here, a bark there,--

Misunderstanding creatures that were wroth

And vexed themselves and us till we retired.

The hovel is life: no matter what dogs bit

Or cat scratched in the hovel I break from,

All outside is lone field, moon and such peace--

Flowing in, filling up as with a sea

Whereon comes Someone, walks fast on the white,

Jesus Christ's self, Don Celestine declares,

To meet me and calm all things back again.

Beside, up to my marriage, thirteen years

Were, each day, happy as the day was long:

This may have made the change too terrible.

I know that when Violante told me first

The cavalier--she meant to bring next morn,

Whom I must also let take, kiss my hand--

Would be at San Lorenzo the same eve

And marry me,--which over, we should go

Home both of us without him as before,

And, till she bade speak, I must hold my tongue,

Such being the correct way with girl-brides,

From whom one word would make a father blush,--

I know, I say, that when she told me this,

--Well, I no more saw sense in what she said

Than a lamb does in people clipping wool;

Only lay down and let myself be clipped.

And when next day the cavalier who came--

(Tisbe had told me that the slim young man

With wings at head, and wings at feet, and sword

Threatening a monster, in our tapestry,

Would eat a girl else,--was a cavalier)--

When he proved Guido Franceschini,--old

And nothing like so tall as I myself,

Hook-nosed and yellow in a bush of beard,

Much like a thing I saw on a boy's wrist,

He called an owl and used for catching birds,--

And when he took my hand and made a smile--

Why, the uncomfortableness of it all

Seemed hardly more important in the case

Than--when one gives you, say, a coin to spend--

Its newness or its oldness; if the piece

Weigh properly and buy you what you wish,

No matter whether you get grime or glare!

Men take the coin, return you grapes and figs.

Here, marriage was the' coin, a dirty piece

Would purchase me the praise of those I loved:

About what else should I concern myself?

So, hardly knowing what a husband meant,

I supposed this or any man would serve,

No whit the worse for being so uncouth:

For I was ill once and a doctor came

With a great ugly hat, no plume thereto,

Black jerkin and black buckles and black sword,

And white sharp beard over the ruff in front,

And oh so lean, so sour-faced and austere!--

Who felt my pulse, made me put out my tongue,

Then oped a phial, dripped a drop or two

Of a black bitter something,--I was cured!

What mattered the fierce beard or the grim face?

It was the physic beautified the man,

Master Malpichi,--never met his match

In Rome, they said,--so ugly all the same!

However, I was hurried through a storm,

Next dark eve of December's deadest day--

How it rained!--through our street and the Lion's-mouth

And the bit of Corso,--cloaked round, covered close,

I was like something strange or contraband,--

Into blank San Lorenzo, up the aisle,

My mother keeping hold of me so tight,

I fancied we were come to see a corpse

Before the altar which she pulled me toward.

There we found waiting an unpleasant priest

Who proved the brother, not our parish friend,

But one with mischief-making mouth and eye,

Paul, whom I know since to my cost. And then

I heard the heavy church-door lock out help

Behind us: for the customary warmth,

Two tapers shivered on the altar. "Quick--

Lose no time!" cried the priest. And straightway down

From ... what 's behind the altar where he hid--

Hawk-nose and yellowness and bush and all,

Stepped Guido, caught my hand, and there was I

O' the chancel, and the priest had opened book,

Read here and there, made me say that and this,

And after, told me I was now a wife,

Honored indeed, since Christ thus weds the Church,

And therefore turned he water into wine,

To show I should obey my spouse like Christ.

Then the two slipped aside and talked apart,

And I, silent and scared, got down again

And joined my mother, who was weeping now.

Nobody seemed to mind us any more,

And both of us on tiptoe found our way

To the door which was unlocked by this, and wide.

When we were in the street, the rain had stopped,

All things looked better. At our own house-door,

Violante whispered, "No one syllable

To Pietro! Girl-brides never breathe a word!"

"--Well treated to a wetting, draggle-tails!"

Laughed Pietro as he opened--"Very near

You made me brave the gutter's roaring sea

To carry off from roost old dove and young,

Trussed up in church, the cote, by me, the kite!

What do these priests mean, praying folk to death

On stormy afternoons, with Christmas close

To wash our sins off nor require the rain?"

Violante gave my hand a timely squeeze,

Madonna saved me from immodest speech,

I kissed him and was quiet, being a bride.

When I saw nothing more, the next three weeks,

Of Guido--"Nor the Church sees Christ" thought I:

"Nothing is changed however, wine is wine

And water only water in our house.

Nor did I see that ugly doctor since

That cure of the illness: just as I was cured,

I am married,--neither scarecrow will return."

Three weeks, I chuckled--"How would Giulia stare,

And Tecla smile and Tisbe laugh outright,

Were it not impudent for brides to talk!"--

Until one morning, as I sat and sang

At the broidery-frame alone i' the chamber,--loud

Voices, two, three together, sobbings too,

And my name, "Guido," "Paolo," flung like stones

From each to the other! In I ran to see.

There stood the very Guido and the priest

With sly face,--formal but nowise afraid,--

While Pietro seemed all red and angry, scarce

Able to stutter out his wrath in words;

And this it was that made my mother sob,

As he reproached her--"You have murdered us,

Me and yourself and this our child beside!"

Then Guido interposed, "Murdered or not,

Be it enough your child is now my wife!

I claim and come to take her." Paul put in,

"Consider--kinsman, dare I term you so?--

What is the good of your sagacity

Except to counsel in a strait like this?

I guarantee the parties man and wife

Whether you like or loathe it, bless or ban.

May spilt milk be put back within the bowl--

The done thing, undone? You, it is, we look

For counsel to, you fitliest will advise!

Since milk, though spilt and spoilt, does marble good,

Better we down on knees and scrub the floor,

Than sigh, 'the waste would make a syllabub!'

Help us so turn disaster to account,

So predispose the groom, he needs shall grace

The bride with favor from the very first,

Not begin marriage an embittered man!"

He smiled,--the game so wholly in his hands!

While fast and faster sobbed Violante--"Ay,

All of us murdered, past averting now!

O my sin, O my secret!" and such like.

Then I began to half surmise the truth;

Something had happened, low, mean, underhand,

False, and my mother was to blame, and I

To pity, whom all spoke of, none addressed:

I was the chattel that had caused a crime.

I stood mute,--those who tangled must untie

The embroilment. Pietro cried, "Withdraw, my child!

She is not helpful to the sacrifice

At this stage,--do you want the victim by

While you discuss the value of her blood?

For her sake, I consent to hear you talk:

Go, child, and pray God help the innocent!"

I did go and was praying God, when came

Violante, with eyes swollen and red enough,

But movement on her mouth for make-believe

Matters were somehow getting right again.

She bade me sit down by her side and hear.

"You are too young and cannot understand,

Nor did your father understand at first.

I wished to benefit all three of us,

And when he failed to take my meaning,--why,

I tried to have my way at unaware--

Obtained him the advantage he refused.

As if I put before him wholesome food

Instead of broken victual,--he finds change

I' the viands, never cares to reason why,

But falls to blaming me, would fling the plate

From window, scandalize the neighborhood,

Even while he smacks his lips,--men's way, my child!

But either you have prayed him unperverse

Or I have talked him back into his wits:

And Paolo was a help in time of need,--

Guido, not much--my child, the way of men!

A priest is more a woman than a man,

And Paul did wonders to persuade. In short,

Yes, he was wrong, your father sees and says;

My scheme was worth attempting: and bears fruit,

Gives you a husband and a noble name,

A palace and no end of pleasant things.

What do you care about a handsome youth?

They are so volatile, and tease their wives!

This is the kind of man to keep the house.

We lose no daughter,--gain a son, that 's all:

For 't is arranged we never separate,

Nor miss, in our gray time of life, the tints

Of you that color eve to match with morn.

In good or ill, we share and share alike,

And cast our lots into a common lap,

And all three die together as we lived!

Only, at Arezzo,--that 's a Tuscan town,

Not so large as this noisy Rome, no doubt,

But older far and finer much, say folk,--

In a great palace where you will be queen,

Know the Archbishop and the Governor,

And we see homage done you ere we die.

Therefore, be good and pardon!"--"Pardon what?

You know things, I am very ignorant:

All is right if you only will not cry!"

And so an end! Because a blank begins

From when, at the word, she kissed me hard and hot,

And took me back to where my father leaned

Opposite Guido--who stood eying him,

As eyes the butcher the cast panting ox

That feels his fate is come, nor struggles more,--

While Paul looked archly on, pricked brow at whiles

With the pen-point as to punish triumph there,--

And said, "Count Guido, take your lawful wife

Until death part you!"

All since is one blank,

Over and ended; a terrific dream.

It is the good of dreams--so soon they go!

Wake in a horror of heart-beats, you may--

Cry, "The dread thing will never from my thoughts!"

Still, a few daylight doses of plain life,

Cock-crow and sparrow-chirp, or bleat and bell

Of goats that trot by, tinkling, to be milked;

And when you rub your eyes awake and wide,

Where is the harm o' the horror? Gone! So here.

I know I wake,--but from what? Blank, I say!

This is the note of evil: for good lasts.

Even when Don Celestine bade "Search and find!

For your soul's sake, remember what is past,

The better to forgive it,"--all in vain!

What was fast getting indistinct before,

Vanished outright. By special grace perhaps,

Between that first calm and this last, four years

Vanish,--one quarter of my life, you know.

I am held up, amid the nothingness,

By one or two truths only--thence I hang,

And there I live,--the rest is death or dream,

All but those points of my support. I think

Of what I saw at Rome once in the Square

O' the Spaniards, opposite the Spanish House:

There was a foreigner had trained a goat,

A shuddering white woman of a beast,

To climb up, stand straight on a pile of sticks

Put close, which gave the creature room enough:

When she was settled there, he, one by one,

Took away all the sticks, left just the four

Whereon the little hoofs did really rest,

There she kept firm, all underneath was air.

So, what I hold by, are my prayer to God,

My hope, that came in answer to the prayer,

Some hand would interpose and save me--hand

Which proved to be my friend's hand: and,--blest bliss,--

That fancy which began so faint at first,

That thrill of dawn's suffusion through my dark,

Which I perceive was promise of my child,

The light his unborn face sent long before,--

God's way of breaking the good news to flesh.

That is all left now of those four bad years.

Don Celestine urged, "But remember more!

Other men's faults may help me find your own.

I need the cruelty exposed, explained,

Or how can I advise you to forgive?"

He thought I could not properly forgive

Unless I ceased forgetting,--which is true:

For, bringing back reluctantly to mind

My husband's treatment of me,--by a light

That 's later than my lifetime, I review

And comprehend much and imagine more,

And have but little to forgive at last.

For now,--be fair and say,--is it not true

He was ill-used and cheated of his hope

To get enriched by marriage? Marriage gave

Me and no money, broke the compact so:

He had a right to ask me on those terms,

As Pietro and Violante to declare

They would not give me: so the bargain stood:

They broke it, and he felt himself aggrieved,

Became unkind with me to punish them.

They said 't was he began deception first,

Nor, in one point whereto he pledged himself,

Kept promise: what of that, suppose it were?

Echoes die off, scarcely reverberate

Forever,--why should ill keep echoing ill,

And never let our ears have done with noise?

Then my poor parents took the violent way

To thwart him,--he must needs retaliate,--wrong,

Wrong, and all wrong,--better say, all blind!

As I myself was, that is sure, who else

Had understood the mystery: for his wife

Was bound in some sort to help somehow there.

It seems as if I might have interposed,

Blunted the edge of their resentment so,

Since he vexed me because they first vexed him;

"I will entreat them to desist, submit,

Give him the money and be poor in peace,--

Certainly not go tell the world: perhaps

He will grow quiet with his gains."

Yes, say

Something to this effect and you do well!

But then you have to see first: I was blind.

That is the fruit of all such wormy ways,

The indirect, the unapproved of God:

You cannot find their author's end and aim,

Not even to substitute your good for bad,

Your straight for the irregular; you stand

Stupefied, profitless, as cow or sheep

That miss a man's mind; anger him just twice

By trial at repairing the first fault.

Thus, when he blamed me, "You are a coquette,

A lure-owl posturing to attract birds,

You look love-lures at theatre and church,

In walk, at window!"--that, I knew, was false:

But why he charged me falsely, whither sought

To drive me by such charge,--how could I know?

So, unaware, I only made things worse.

I tried to soothe him by abjuring walk,

Window, church, theatre, for good and all,

As if he had been in earnest: that, you know,

Was nothing like the object of his charge.

Yes, when I got my maid to supplicate

The priest, whose name she read when she would read

Those feigned false letters I was forced to hear

Though I could read no word of,--he should cease

Writing,--nay, if he minded prayer of mine,

Cease from so much as even pass the street

Whereon our house looked,--in my ignorance

I was just thwarting Guido's true intent;

Which was, to bring about a wicked change

Of sport to earnest, tempt a thoughtless man

To write indeed, and pass the house, and more,

Till both of us were taken in a crime.

He ought not to have wished me thus act lies,

Simulate folly: but--wrong or right, the wish--

I failed to apprehend its drift. How plain

It follows,--if I fell into such fault,

He also may have overreached the mark,

Made mistake, by perversity of brain,

I' the whole sad strange plot, the grotesque intrigue

To make me and my friend unself ourselves,

Be other man and woman than we were!

Think it out, you who have the time! for me,--

I cannot say less; more I will not say.

Leave it to God to cover and undo!

Only, my dulness should not prove too much!

--Not prove that in a certain other point

Wherein my husband blamed me,--and you blame,

If I interpret smiles and shakes of head,--

I was dull too. Oh, if I dared but speak!

Must I speak? I am blamed that I forwent

A way to make my husband's favor come.

That is true: I was firm, withstood, refused ...

--Women as you are, how can I find the words?

I felt there was just one thing Guido claimed

I had no right to give nor he to take;

We being in estrangement, soul from soul:

Till, when I sought help, the Archbishop smiled,

Inquiring into privacies of life,

--Said I was blamable--(he stands for God)

Nowise entitled to exemption there.

Then I obeyed,--as surely had obeyed

Were the injunction "Since your husband bids,

Swallow the burning coal he proffers you!"

But I did wrong, and he gave wrong advice

Though he were thrice Archbishop,--that, I know!--

Now I have got to die and see things clear.

Remember I was barely twelve years old--

A child at marriage: I was let alone

For weeks, I told you, lived my child-life still

Even at Arezzo, when I woke and found

First ... but I need not think of that again--

Over and ended! Try and take the sense

Of what I signify, if it must be so.

After the first, my husband, for hate's sake,

Said one eve, when the simpler cruelty

Seemed somewhat dull at edge and fit to bear,

"We have been man and wife six months almost:

How long is this your comedy to last?

Go this night to my chamber, not your own!"

At which word, I did rush--most true the charge--

And gain the Archbishop's house--he stands for God--

And fall upon my knees and clasp his feet,

Praying him hinder what my estranged soul

Refused to bear, though patient of the rest:

"Place me within a convent," I implored--

"Let me henceforward lead the virgin life

You praise in her you bid me imitate!"

What did he answer? "Folly of ignorance!

Know, daughter, circumstances make or mar

Virginity,--'t is virtue or 't is vice.

That which was glory in the Mother of God

Had been, for instance, damnable in Eve

Created to be mother of mankind.

Had Eve, in answer to her Maker's speech

'Be fruitful, multiply, replenish earth'--

Pouted 'But I choose rather to remain

Single'--why, she had spared herself forthwith

Further probation by the apple and snake,

Been pushed straight out of Paradise! For see--

If motherhood be qualified impure,

I catch you making God command Eve sin!

--A blasphemy so like these Molinists',

I must suspect you dip into their books."

Then he pursued "'T was in your covenant!"

No! There my husband never used deceit.

He never did by speech nor act imply

"Because of our souls' yearning that we meet

And mix in soul through flesh, which yours and mine

Wear and impress, and make their visible selves,

--All which means, for the love of you and me,

Let us become one flesh, being one soul!"

He only stipulated for the wealth;

Honest so far. But when he spoke as plain--

Dreadfully honest also--"Since our souls

Stand each from each, a whole world's width between,

Give me the fleshly vesture I can reach

And rend and leave just fit for hell to burn!"--

Why, in God's name, for Guido's soul's own sake

Imperilled by polluting mine,--I say,

I did resist; would I had overcome!

My heart died out at the Archbishop's smile;

--It seemed so stale and worn a way o' the world,

As though 't were nature frowning--"Here is Spring,

The sun shines as he shone at Adam's fall,

The earth requires that warmth reach everywhere:

What, must your patch of snow be saved forsooth

Because you rather fancy snow than flowers?"

Something in this style he began with me.

Last he said, savagely for a good man,

"This explains why you call your husband harsh,

Harsh to you, harsh to whom you love. God's Bread!

The poor Count has to manage a mere child

Whose parents leave untaught the simplest things

Their duty was and privilege to teach,--

Goodwives' instruction, gossips' lore: they laugh

And leave the Count the task,--or leave it me!"

Then I resolved to tell a frightful thing.

"I am not ignorant,--know what I say,

Declaring this is sought for hate, not love.

Sir, you may hear things like almighty God.

I tell you that my housemate, yes--the priest

My husband's brother, Canon Girolamo--

Has taught me what depraved and misnamed love

Means, and what outward signs denote the sin,

For he solicits me and says he loves,

The idle young priest with naught else to do.

My husband sees this, knows this, and lets be.

Is it your counsel I bear this beside?"

"--More scandal, and against a priest this time!

What, 't is the Canon now?"--less snappishly--

"Rise up, my child, for such a child you are,

The rod were too advanced a punishment!

Let 's try the honeyed cake. A parable!

'Without a parable spake he not to them.'

There was a ripe round long black toothsome fruit,

Even a flower-fig, the prime boast of May;

And, to the tree, said ... either the spirit o' the fig,

Or, if we bring in men, the gardener,

Archbishop of the orchard--had I time

To try o' the two which fits in best: indeed

It might be the Creator's self, but then

The tree should bear an apple, I suppose,--

Well, anyhow, one with authority said,

'Ripe fig, burst skin, regale the fig-pecker--

The bird whereof thou art a perquisite!'

'Nay,' with a flounce, replied the restif fig,

'I much prefer to keep my pulp myself:

He may go breakfastless and dinnerless,

Supperless of one crimson seed, for me!'

So, back she flopped into her bunch of leaves.

He flew off, left her,--did the natural lord,--

And lo, three hundred thousand bees and wasps

Found her out, feasted on her to the shuck:

Such gain the fig's that gave its bird no bite!

The moral,--fools elude their proper lot,

Tempt other fools, get ruined all alike.

Therefore go home, embrace your husband quick!

Which if his Canon brother chance to see,

He will the sooner back to book again."

So, home I did go; so, the worst befell:

So, I had proof the Archbishop was just man,

And hardly that, and certainly no more.

For, miserable consequence to me,

My husband's hatred waxed nor waned at all,

His brother's boldness grew effrontery soon,

And my last stay and comfort in myself

Was forced from me: henceforth I looked to God

Only, nor cared my desecrated soul

Should have fair walls, gay windows for the world.

God's glimmer, that came through the ruin-top,

Was witness why all lights were quenched inside:

Henceforth I asked God counsel, not mankind.

So, when I made the effort, freed myself,

They said--"No care to save appearance here!

How cynic,--when, how wanton, were enough!"

--Adding, it all came of my mother's life--

My own real mother, whom I never knew,

Who did wrong (if she needs must have done wrong)

Through being all her life, not my four years,

At mercy of the hateful: every beast

O' the field was wont to break that fountain-fence,

Trample the silver into mud so murk

Heaven could not find itself reflected there.

Now they cry, "Out on her, who, plashy pool,

Bequeathed turbidity and bitterness

To the daughter-stream where Guido dipt and drank!"

Well, since she had to bear this brand--let me!

The rather do I understand her now,--

From my experience of what hate calls love,--

Much love might be in what their love called hate.

If she sold ... what they call, sold ... me, her child--

I shall believe she hoped in her poor heart

That I at least might try be good and pure,

Begin to live untempted, not go doomed

And done with ere once found in fault, as she.

Oh and, my mother, it all came to this?

Why should I trust those that speak ill of you,

When I mistrust who speaks even well of them?

Why, since all bound to do me good, did harm,

May not you, seeming as you harmed me most,

Have meant to do most good--and feed your child

From bramble-bush, whom not one orchard-tree

But drew bough back from, nor let one fruit fall?

This it was for you sacrificed your babe?

Gained just this, giving your heart's hope away

As I might give mine, loving it as you,

If ... but that never could be asked of me!

There, enough! I have my support again,

Again the knowledge that my babe was, is,

Will be mine only. Him, by death, I give

Outright to God, without a further care,--

But not to any parent in the world,--

So to be safe: why is it we repine?

What guardianship were safer could we choose?

All human plans and projects come to naught:

My life, and what I know of other lives,

Prove that: no plan nor project! God shall care!

And now you are not tired? How patient then

All of you,--oh yes, patient this long while

Listening, and understanding, I am sure!

Four days ago, when I was sound and well

And like to live, no one would understand.

People were kind, but smiled, "And what of him,

Your friend, whose tonsure the rich dark-brown hides?

There, there!--your lover, do we dream he was?

A priest too--never were such naughtiness!

Still, he thinks many a long think, never fear,

After the shy pale lady,--lay so light

For a moment in his arms, the lucky one!"

And so on: wherefore should I blame you much?

So we are made, such difference in minds,

Such difference too in eyes that see the minds!

That man, you misinterpret and misprise--

The glory of his nature, I had thought,

Shot itself out in white light, blazed the truth

Through every atom of his act with me:

Yet where I point you, through the crystal shrine,

Purity in quintessence, one dew-drop,

You all descry a spider in the midst.

One says, "The head of it is plain to see,"

And one, "They are the feet by which I judge,"

All say, "Those films were spun by nothing else."

Then, I must lay my babe away with God,

Nor think of him again for gratitude.

Yes, my last breath shall wholly spend itself

In one attempt more to disperse the stain,

The mist from other breath fond mouths have made,

About a lustrous and pellucid soul:

So that, when I am gone but sorrow stays,

And people need assurance in their doubt

If God yet have a servant, man a friend,

The weak a savior, and the vile a foe,--

Let him be present, by the name invoked,

Giuseppe-Maria Caponsacchi!

There,

Strength comes already with the utterance!

I will remember once more for his sake

The sorrow: for he lives and is belied.

Could he be here, how he would speak for me!

I had been miserable three drear years

In that dread palace and lay passive now,

When I first learned there could be such a man.

Thus it fell: I was at a public play,

In the last days of Carnival last March,

Brought there I knew not why, but now know well.

My husband put me where I sat, in front;

Then crouched down, breathed cold through me from behind,

Stationed i' the shadow,--none in front could see,--

I, it was, faced the stranger-throng beneath,

The crowd with upturned faces, eyes one stare,

Voices one buzz. I looked but to the stage,

Whereon two lovers sang and interchanged

"True life is only love, love only bliss:

I love thee--thee I love!" then they embraced.

I looked thence to the ceiling and the walls,--

Over the crowd, those voices and those eyes,--

My thoughts went through the roof and out, to Rome

On wings of music, waft of measured words,--

Set me down there, a happy child again,

Sure that to-morrow would be festa-day,

Hearing my parents praise past festas more,

And seeing they were old if I was young,

Yet wondering why they still would end discourse

With "We must soon go, you abide your time,

And,--might we haply see the proper friend

Throw his arm over you and make you safe!"

Sudden I saw him; into my lap there fell

A foolish twist of comfits, broke my dream

And brought me from the air and laid me low,

As ruined as the soaring bee that's reached

(So Pietro told me at the Villa once)

By the dust-handful. There the comfits lay:

I looked to see who flung them, and I faced

This Caponsacchi, looking up in turn.

Ere I could reason out why, I felt sure,

Whoever flung them, his was not the hand,--

Up rose the round face and good-natured grin

Of one who, in effect, had played the prank,

From covert close beside the earnest face,--

Fat waggish Conti, friend of all the world.

He was my husband's cousin, privileged

To throw the thing: the other, silent, grave,

Solemn almost, saw me, as I saw him.

There is a psalm Don Celestine recites,

"Had I a dove's wings, how I fain would flee!"

The psalm runs not "I hope, I pray for wings,"--

Not "If wings fall from heaven, I fix them fast,"--

Simply "How good it were to fly and rest,

Have hope now, and one day expect content!

How well to do what I shall never do!"

So I said, "Had there been a man like that,

To lift me with his strength out of all strife

Into the calm, how I could fly and rest!

I have a keeper in the garden here

Whose sole employment is to strike me low

If ever I, for solace, seek the sun.

Life means with me successful feigning death,

Lying stone-like, eluding notice so,

Foregoing here the turf and there the sky.

Suppose that man had been instead of this!"

Presently Conti laughed into my ear,

--Had tripped up to the raised place where I sat--

"Cousin, I flung them brutishly and hard!

Because you must be hurt, to look austere

As Caponsacchi yonder, my tall friend

A-gazing now. Ah, Guido, you so close?

Keep on your knees, do! Beg her to forgive!

My cornet battered like a cannon-ball.

Good-by, I'm gone!"--nor waited the reply.

That night at supper, out my husband broke,

"Why was that throwing, that buffoonery?

Do you think I am your dupe? What man would dare

Throw comfits in a stranger lady's lap?

'T was knowledge of you bred such insolence

In Caponsacchi; he dared shoot the bolt,

Using that Conti for his stalking-horse.

How could you see him this once and no more,

When he is always haunting hereabout

At the street-corner or the palace-side,

Publishing my shame and your impudence?

You are a wanton,--I a dupe, you think?

O Christ, what hinders that I kill her quick?"

Whereat he drew his sword and feigned a thrust.

All this, now,--being not so strange to me,

Used to such misconception day by day

And broken-in to bear,--I bore, this time.

More quietly than woman should perhaps;

Repeated the mere truth and held my tongue.

Then he said, "Since you play the ignorant,

I shall instruct you. This amour,--commenced

Or finished or midway in act, all's one,--

'T is the town-talk; so my revenge shall be.

Does he presume because he is a priest?

I warn him that the sword I wear shall pink

His lily-scented cassock through and through,

Next time I catch him underneath your eaves!"

But he had threatened with the sword so oft

And, after all, not kept his promise. All

I said was, "Let God save the innocent!

Moreover, death is far from a bad fate.

I shall go pray for you and me, not him;

And then I look to sleep, come death or, worse,

Life." So, I slept.

There may have elapsed a week,

When Margherita,--called my waiting-maid,

Whom it is said my husband found too fair--

Who stood and heard the charge and the reply,

Who never once would let the matter rest

From that night forward, but rang changes still

On this the thrust and that the shame, and how

Good cause for jealousy cures jealous fools,

And what a paragon was this same priest

She talked about until I stopped my ears,--

She said, "A week is gone; you comb your hair,

Then go mope in a corner, cheek on palm,

Till night comes round again,--so, waste a week

As if your husband menaced you in sport.

Have not I some acquaintance with his tricks?

Oh no, he did not stab the serving-man

Who made and sang the rhymes about me once!

For why? They sent him to the wars next day.

Nor poisoned he the foreigner, my friend,

Who wagered on the whiteness of my breast,--

The swarth skins of our city in dispute:

For, though he paid me proper compliment,

The Count well knew he was besotted with

Somebody else, a skin as black as ink,

(As all the town knew save my foreigner)--

He found and wedded presently,--'Why need

Better revenge?'--the Count asked. But what's here?

A priest that does not fight, and cannot wed,

Yet must be dealt with! If the Count took fire

For the poor pastime of a minute,--me--

What were the conflagration for yourself,

Countess and lady-wife and all the rest?

The priest will perish; you will grieve too late:

So shall the city-ladies' handsomest

Frankest and liberalest gentleman

Die for you, to appease a scurvy dog

Hanging's too good for. Is there no escape?

Were it not simple Christian charity

To warn the priest be on his guard,--save him

Assured death, save yourself from causing it?

I meet him in the street. Give me a glove,

A ring to show for token! Mum's the word!"

I answered, "If you were, as styled, my maid,

I would command you: as you are, you say,

My husband's intimate,--assist his wife

Who can do nothing but entreat 'Be still!'

Even if you speak truth and a crime is planned

Leave help to God as I am forced to do!

There is no other help, or we should craze,

Seeing such evil with no human cure.

Reflect that God, who makes the storm desist,

Can make an angry violent heart subside.

Why should we venture teach him governance?

Never address me on this subject more!"

Next night she said, "But I went, all the same,

--Ay, saw your Caponsacchi in his house,

And come back stuffed with news I must outpour.

I told him, 'Sir, my mistress is a stone:

Why should you harm her for no good you get?

For you do harm her--prowl about our place

With the Count never distant half the street,

Lurking at every corner, would you look!

'T is certain she has witched you with a spell.

Are there not other beauties at your beck?

We all know, Donna This and Monna That

Die for a glance of yours, yet here you gaze!

Go make them grateful, leave the stone its cold!'

And he--oh, he turned first white and then red,

And then--'To her behest I bow myself,

Whom I love with my body and my soul:

Only a word i' the bowing! See, I write

One little word, no harm to see or hear!

Then, fear no further!' This is what he wrote.

I know you cannot read,--therefore, let me!

'_My idol!_'" ...

But I took it from her hand

And tore it into shreds. "Why, join the rest

Who harm me? Have I ever done you wrong?

People have told me 't is you wrong myself:

Let it suffice I either feel no wrong

Or else forgive it,--yet you turn my foe!

The others hunt me and you throw a noose!"

She muttered, "Have your wilful way!" I slept.

Whereupon ... no, I leave my husband out!

It is not to do him more hurt, I speak.

Let it suffice, when misery was most,

One day, I swooned and got a respite so.

She stooped as I was slowly coming to,

This Margherita, ever on my trace,

And whispered--"Caponsacchi!"

If I drowned,

But woke afloat i' the wave with upturned eyes,

And found their first sight was a star! I turned--

For the first time, I let her have her will,

Heard passively,--"The imposthume at such head,

One touch, one lancet-puncture would relieve,--

And still no glance the good physician's way

Who rids you of the torment in a trice!

Still he writes letters you refuse to hear.

He may prevent your husband, kill himself,

So desperate and all fordone is he!

Just hear the pretty verse he made to-day!

A sonnet from Mirtillo. '_Peerless fair_....'

All poetry is difficult to read,

--The sense of it is, anyhow, he seeks

Leave to contrive you an escape from hell,

And for that purpose asks an interview.

I can write, I can grant it in your name,

Or, what is better, lead you to his house.

Your husband dashes you against the stones;

This man would place each fragment in a shrine:

You hate him, love your husband!"

I returned,

"It is not true I love my husband,--no,

Nor hate this man. I listen while you speak,

--Assured that what you say is false, the same:

Much as when once, to me a little child,

A rough gaunt man in rags, with eyes on fire,

A crowd of boys and idlers at his heels,

Rushed as I crossed the Square, and held my head

In his two hands, 'Here 's she will let me speak!

You little girl, whose eyes do good to mine,

I am the Pope, am Sextus, now the Sixth;

And that Twelfth Innocent, proclaimed to-day,

Is Lucifer disguised in human flesh!

The angels, met in conclave, crowned me!'--thus

He gibbered and I listened; but I knew

All was delusion, ere folk interposed,

'Unfasten him, the maniac!' Thus I know

All your report of Caponsacchi false,

Folly or dreaming: I have seen so much

By that adventure at the spectacle,

The face I fronted that one first, last time:

He would belie it by such words and thoughts.

Therefore while you profess to show him me,

I ever see his own face. Get you gone!"

"--That will I, nor once open mouth again,--

No, by Saint Joseph and the Holy Ghost!

On your head he the damage, so adieu!"

And so more days, more deeds I must forget,

Till ... what a strange thing now is to declare!

Since I say anything, say all if true!

And how my life seems lengthened as to serve!

It may be idle or inopportune,

But, true?--why, what was all I said but truth,

Even when I found that such as are untrue

Could only take the truth in through a lie?

Now--I am speaking truth to the Truth's self:

God will lend credit to my words this time.

It had got half through April. I arose

One vivid daybreak,--who had gone to bed

In the old way my wont those last three years,

Careless until, the cup drained, I should die.

The last sound in my ear, the over-night,

Had been a something let drop on the sly

In prattle by Margherita, "Soon enough

Gayeties end, now Easter 's past: a week,

And the Archbishop gets him back to Rome,--

Every one leaves the town for Rome, this Spring,--

Even Caponsacchi, out of heart and hope,

Resigns himself and follows with the flock."

I heard this drop and drop like rain outside

Fast-falling through the darkness while she spoke:

So had I heard with like indifference,

"And Michael's pair of wings will arrive first

At Rome, to introduce the company,

And bear him from our picture where he fights

Satan,--expect to have that dragon loose

And never a defender!"--my sole thought

Being still, as night came, "Done, another day!

How good to sleep and so get nearer death!"--

When, what, first thing at daybreak, pierced the sleep

With a summons to me? Up I sprang alive,

Light in me, light without me, everywhere

Change! A broad yellow sunbeam was let fall

From heaven to earth,--a sudden drawbridge lay,

Along which marched a myriad merry motes,

Mocking the flies that crossed them and re-crossed

In rival dance, companions new-born too.

On the house-eaves, a dripping shag of weed

Shook diamonds on each dull gray lattice-square,

As first one, then another bird leapt by,

And light was off, and lo was back again,

Always with one voice,--where are two such joys?--

The blessed building-sparrow! I stepped forth,

Stood on the terrace,--o'er the roofs, such sky!

My heart sang, "I too am to go away,

I too have something I must care about,

Carry away with me to Rome, to Rome!

The bird brings hither sticks and hairs and wool,

And nowhere else i' the world; what fly breaks rank,

Falls out of the procession that befits,

From window here to window there, with all

The world to choose,--so well he knows his course?

I have my purpose and my motive too,

My march to Rome, like any bird or fly!

Had I been dead! How right to be alive!

Last night I almost prayed for leave to die,

Wished Guido all his pleasure with the sword

Or the poison,--poison, sword, was but a trick,

Harmless, may God forgive him the poor jest!

My life is charmed, will last till I reach Rome!

Yesterday, but for the sin,--ah, nameless be

The deed I could have dared against myself!

Now--see if I will touch an unripe fruit,

And risk the health I want to have and use!

Not to live, now, would he the wickedness,--

For life means to make haste and go to Rome

And leave Arezzo, leave all woes at once!"

Now, understand here, by no means mistake!

Long ago had I tried to leave that house

When it seemed such procedure would stop sin;

And still failed more the more I tried--at first

The Archbishop, as I told you,--next, our lord

The Governor,--indeed I found my way,

I went to the great palace where he rules,

Though I knew well 't was he who,--when I gave

A jewel or two, themselves had given me,

Back to my parents,--since they wanted bread,

They who had never let me want a nosegay,--he

Spoke of the jail for felons, if they kept

What was first theirs, then mine, so doubly theirs,

Though all the while my husband's most of all!

I knew well who had spoke the word wrought this:

Yet, being in extremity, I fled

To the Governor, as I say,--scarce opened lip

When--the cold cruel snicker close behind--

Guido was on my trace, already there,

Exchanging nod and wink for shrug and smile,

And I--pushed back to him and, for my pains,

Paid with ... but why remember what is past?

I sought out a poor friar the people call

The Roman, and confessed my sin which came

Of their sin,--that fact could not be repressed,--

The frightfulness of my despair in God:

And feeling, through the grate, his horror shake,

Implored him, "Write for me who cannot write,

Apprise my parents, make them rescue me!

You bid me be courageous and trust God:

Do you in turn dare somewhat, trust and write,

'Dear friends, who used to be my parents once,

And now declare you have no part in me,

This is some riddle I want wit to solve,

Since you must love me with no difference.

Even suppose you altered,--there's your hate,

To ask for: hate of you two dearest ones

I shall find liker love than love found here,

If husbands love their wives. Take me away

And hate me as you do the gnats and fleas,

Even the scorpions! How I shall rejoice!'

Write that and save me!" And he promised--wrote

Or did not write; things never changed at all:

He was not like the Augustinian here!

Last, in a desperation I appealed

To friends, whoever wished me better days,

To Guillichini, that 's of kin,--"What, I--

Travel to Rome with you? A flying gout

Bids me deny my heart and mind my leg!"

Then I tried Conti, used to brave--laugh back

The louring thunder when his cousin scowled

At me protected by his presence: "You--

Who well know what you cannot save me from,--

Carry me off! What frightens you, a priest?"

He shook his head, looked grave--"Above my strength!

Guido has claws that scratch, shows feline teeth;

A formidabler foe than I dare fret:

Give me a dog to deal with, twice the size!

Of course I am a priest and Canon too,

But ... by the bye ... though both, not quite so bold

As he, my fellow-Canon, brother-priest,

The personage in such ill odor here

Because of the reports--pure birth o' the brain!

Our Caponsacchi, he 's your true Saint George

To slay the monster, set the Princess free,

And have the whole High-Altar to himself:

I always think so when I see that piece

I' the Pieve, that 's his church and mine, you know:

Though you drop eyes at mention of his name!"

That name had got to take a half-grotesque

Half-ominous, wholly enigmatic sense,

Like any by-word, broken bit of song

Born with a meaning, changed by mouth and mouth

That mix it in a sneer or smile, as chance

Bids, till it now means naught but ugliness

And perhaps shame.

--All this intends to say,

That, over-night, the notion of escape

Had seemed distemper, dreaming; and the name,--

Not the man, but the name of him, thus made

Into a mockery and disgrace,--why, she

Who uttered it persistently, had laughed,

"I name his name, and there you start and wince

As criminal from the red tongs' touch!"--yet now,

Now, as I stood letting morn bathe me bright,

Choosing which butterfly should bear my news,--

The white, the brown one, or that tinier blue,--

The Margherita, I detested so,

In she came--"The fine day, the good Spring time!

What, up and out at window? That is best.

No thought of Caponsacchi?--who stood there

All night on one leg, like the sentry crane,

Under the pelting of your water-spout--

Looked last look at your lattice ere he leave

Our city, bury his dead hope at Rome.

Ay, go to looking-glass and make you fine,

While he may die ere touch one least loose hair

You drag at with the comb in such a rage!"

I turned--"Tell Caponsacchi he may come!"

"Tell him to come? Ah, but, for charity,

A truce to fooling! Come? What,--come this eve?

Peter and Paul! But I see through the trick!

Yes, come, and take a flower-pot on his head.

Flung from your terrace! No joke, sincere truth?"

How plainly I perceived hell flash and fade

O' the face of her,--the doubt that first paled joy,

Then, final reassurance I indeed

Was caught now, never to be free again!

What did I care?--who felt myself of force

To play with silk, and spurn the horsehair-springe.

"But--do you know that I have bade him come,

And in your own name? I presumed so much,

Knowing the thing you needed in your heart.

But somehow--what had I to show in proof?

He would not come: half-promised, that was all,

And wrote the letters you refused to read.

What is the message that shall move him now?"

"After the Ave Maria, at first dark,

I will be standing on the terrace, say!"

"I would I had a good long lock of hair

Should prove I was not lying! Never mind!"

Off she went--"May he not refuse, that 's all--

Fearing a trick!"

I answered, "He will come."

And, all day, I sent prayer like incense up

To God the strong, God the beneficent,

God ever mindful in all strife and strait,

Who, for our own good, makes the need extreme,

Till at the last he puts forth might and saves.

An old rhyme came into my head and rang

Of how a virgin, for the faith of God,

Hid herself, from the Paynims that pursued,

In a cave's heart; until a thunderstone,

Wrapped in a flame, revealed the couch and prey:

And they laughed--"Thanks to lightning, ours at last!"

And she cried, "Wrath of God, assert his love!

Servant of God, thou fire, befriend his child!"

And lo, the fire she grasped at, fixed its flash,

Lay in her hand a calm cold dreadful sword

She brandished till pursuers strewed the ground,

So did the souls within them die away,

As o'er the prostrate bodies, sworded, safe,

She walked forth to the solitudes and Christ:

So should I grasp the lightning and be saved!

And still, as the day wore, the trouble grew

Whereby I guessed there would be born a star,

Until at an intense throe of the dusk,

I started up, was pushed, I dare to say,

Out on the terrace, leaned and looked at last

Where the deliverer waited me: the same

Silent and solemn face, I first descried

At the spectacle, confronted mine once more.

So was that minute twice vouchsafed me, so

The manhood, wasted then, was still at watch

To save me yet a second time: no change

Here, though all else changed in the changing world!

I spoke on the instant, as my duty bade,

In some such sense as this, whatever the phrase.

"Friend, foolish words were borne from you to me;

Your soul behind them is the pure strong wind,

Not dust and feathers which its breath may bear:

These to the witless seem the wind itself,

Since proving thus the first of it they feel.

If by mischance you blew offence my way,

The straws are dropt, the wind desists no whit,

And how such strays were caught up in the street

And took a motion from you, why inquire?

I speak to the strong soul, no weak disguise.

If it be truth,--why should I doubt it truth?--

You serve God specially, as priests are bound,

And care about me, stranger as I am,

So far as wish my good, that--miracle

I take to imitate he wills you serve

By saying me,--what else can he direct?

Here is the service. Since a long while now,

I am in course of being put to death:

While death concerned nothing but me, I bowed

The head and bade, in heart, my husband strike.

Now I imperil something more, it seems,

Something that 's trulier me than this myself,

Something I trust in God and you to save.

You go to Rome, they tell me: take me there,

Put me back with my people!"

He replied--

The first word I heard ever from his lips,

All himself in it,--an eternity

Of speech, to match the immeasurable depth

O' the soul that then broke silence--"I am yours."

So did the star rise, soon to lead my step,

Lead on, nor pause before it should stand still

Above the House o' the Babe,--my babe to be,

That knew me first and thus made me know him,

That had his right of life and claim on mine,

And would not let me die till he was born,

But pricked me at the heart to save us both,

Saying, "Have you the will? Leave God the way!"

And the way was Caponsacchi--"mine," thank God!

He was mine, he is mine, he will be mine.

No pause i' the leading and the light! I know,

Next night there was a cloud came, and not he:

But I prayed through the darkness till it broke

And let him shine. The second night, he came.

"The plan is rash; the project desperate:

In such a flight needs must I risk your life,

Give food for falsehood, folly or mistake,

Ground for your husband's rancor and revenge"--

So he began again, with the same face.

I felt that, the same loyalty--one star

Turning now red that was so white before--

One service apprehended newly: just

A word of mine and there the white was back!

"No, friend, for you will take me! 'T is yourself

Risk all, not I,--who let you, for I trust

In the compensating great God: enough!

I know you: when is it that you will come?"

"To-morrow at the day's dawn." Then I heard

What I should do: how to prepare for flight

And where to fly.

That night my husband bade

"--You, whom I loathe, beware you break my sleep

This whole night! Couch beside me like the corpse

I would you were!" The rest you know, I think--

How I found Caponsacchi and escaped.

And this man, men call sinner? Jesus Christ!

Of whom men said, with mouths Thyself mad'st once,

"He hath a devil"--say he was Thy saint,

My Caponsacchi! Shield and show--unshroud

In Thine own time the glory of the soul

If aught obscure,--if ink-spot, from vile pens

Scribbling a charge against him--(I was glad

Then, for the first time, that I could not write)--

Flirted his way, have flecked the blaze!

For me,

'T is otherwise: let men take, sift my thoughts

--Thoughts I throw like the flax for sun to bleach!

I did pray, do pray, in the prayer shall die,

"Oh, to have Caponsacchi for my guide!"

Ever the face upturned to mine, the hand

Holding my hand across the world,--a sense

That reads, as only such can read, the mark

God sets on woman, signifying so

She should--shall peradventure--be divine;

Yet 'ware, the whole, how weakness mars the print

And makes confusion, leaves the thing men see,

--Not this man sees,--who from his soul, rewrites

The obliterated charter,--love and strength

Mending what 's marred. "So kneels a votarist,

Weeds some poor waste traditionary plot,

Where shrine once was, where temple yet may be,

Purging the place but worshipping the while,

By faith and not by sight, sight clearest so,--

Such way the saints work,"--says Don Celestine.

But I, not privileged to see a saint

Of old when such walked earth with crown and palm,

If I call "saint" what saints call something else--

The saints must bear with me, impute the fault

To a soul i' the bud, so starved by ignorance,

Stinted of warmth, it will not blow this year

Nor recognize the orb which Spring-flowers know.

But if meanwhile some insect with a heart

Worth floods of lazy music, spendthrift joy--

Some fire-fly renounced Spring for my dwarfed cup,

Crept close to me, brought lustre for the dark,

Comfort against the cold,--what though excess

Of comfort should miscall the creature--sun?

What did the sun to hinder while harsh hands

Petal by petal, crude and colorless,

Tore me? This one heart gave me all the Spring!

Is all told? There 's the journey: and where 's time

To tell you how that heart burst out in shine?

Yet certain points do press on me too hard.

Each place must have a name, though I forget:

How strange it was--there where the plain begins

And the small river mitigates its flow--

When eve was fading fast, and my soul sank,

And he divined what surge of bitterness,

In overtaking me, would float me back

Whence I was carried by the striding day--

So,--"This gray place was famous once," said he--

And he began that legend of the place

As if in answer to the unspoken fear,

And told me all about a brave man dead,

Which lifted me and let my soul go on!

How did he know too--at that town's approach

By the rock-side--that in coming near the signs

Of life, the house-roofs and the church and tower,

I saw the old boundary and wall o' the world

Rise plain as ever round me, hard and cold,

As if the broken circlet joined again,

Tightened itself about me with no break,--

As if the town would turn Arezzo's self,--

The husband there,--the friends my enemies,

All ranged against me, not an avenue

To try, but would be blocked and drive me back

On him,--this other, ... oh the heart in that!

Did not he find, bring, put into my arms

A new-born babe?--and I saw faces beam

Of the young mother proud to teach me joy,

And gossips round expecting my surprise

At the sudden hole through earth that lets in heaven.

I could believe himself by his strong will

Had woven around me what I thought the world

We went along in, every circumstance,

Towns, flowers and faces, all things helped so well!

For, through the journey, was it natural

Such comfort should arise from first to last?

As I look back, all is one milky way;

Still bettered more, the more remembered, so

Do new stars bud while I but search for old,

And fill all gaps i' the glory, and grow him--

Him I now see make the shine everywhere.

Even at the last when the bewildered flesh,

The cloud of weariness about my soul

Clogging too heavily, sucked down all sense,--

Still its last voice was, "He will watch and care;

Let the strength go, I am content: he stays!"

I doubt not he did stay and care for all--

From that sick minute when the head swam round,

And the eyes looked their last and died on him,

As in his arms he caught me, and, you say,

Carried me in, that tragical red eve,

And laid me where I next returned to life

In the other red of morning, two red plates

That crushed together, crushed the time between,

And are since then a solid fire to me,--

When in, my dreadful husband and the world

Broke,--and I saw him, master, by hell's right,

And saw my angel helplessly held back

By guards that helped the malice--the lamb prone,

The serpent towering and triumphant--then

Came all the strength back in a sudden swell,

I did for once see right, do right, give tongue

The adequate protest: for a worm must turn

If it would have its wrong observed by God.

I did spring up, attempt to thrust aside

That ice-block 'twixt the sun and me, lay low

The neutralizer of all good and truth.

If I sinned so,--never obey voice more

O' the Just and Terrible, who bids us--"Bear!"

Not--"Stand by, bear to see my angels bear!"

I am clear it was on impulse to serve God

Not save myself,--no--nor my child unborn!

Had I else waited patiently till now?--

Who saw my old kind parents, silly-sooth

And too much trustful, for their worst of faults,

Cheated, browbeaten, stripped and starved, cast out

Into the kennel: I remonstrated,

Then sank to silence, for,--their woes at end,

Themselves gone,--only I was left to plague.

If only I was threatened and belied,

What matter? I could bear it and did bear;

It was a comfort, still one lot for all:

They were not persecuted for my sake

And I, estranged, the single happy one.

But when at last, all by myself I stood

Obeying the clear voice which bade me rise,

Not for my own sake but my babe unborn,

And take the angel's hand was sent to help--

And found the old adversary athwart the path--

Not my hand simply struck from the angel's, but

The very angel's self made foul i' the face

By the fiend who struck there,--that I would not bear,

That only I resisted! So, my first

And last resistance was invincible.

Prayers move God; threats, and nothing else, move men!

I must have prayed a man as he were God

When I implored the Governor to right

My parents' wrongs: the answer was a smile.

The Archbishop,--did I clasp his feet enough,

Hide my face hotly on them, while I told

More than I dared make my own mother know?

The profit was--compassion and a jest.

This time, the foolish prayers were done with, right

Used might, and solemnized the sport at once.

All was against the combat: vantage, mine?

The runaway avowed, the accomplice-wife,

In company with the plan-contriving priest?

Yet, shame thus rank and patent, I struck, bare,

At foe from head to foot in magic mail,

And off it withered, cobweb-armory

Against the lightning! 'T was truth singed the lies

And saved me, not the vain sword nor weak speech!