And so he was contented--one must do

Justice to the expedient which succeeds,

Strange as it seem: at flourish of the blade,

The crowd drew back, stood breathless and abashed,

Then murmured, "This should be no wanton wife,

No conscience-stricken sinner, caught i' the act,

And patiently awaiting our first stone:

But a poor hard-pressed all-bewildered thing,

Has rushed so far, misguidedly perhaps,

Meaning no more harm than a frightened sheep.

She sought for aid; and if she made mistake

I' the man could aid most, why--so mortals do:

Even the blessed Magdalen mistook

Far less forgivably: consult the place--

Supposing him to be the gardener,

'Sir,' said she, and so following." Why more words?

Forthwith the wife is pronounced innocent:

What would the husband more than gain his cause,

And find that honor flash in the world's eye.

His apprehension was lest soil had smirched?

So, happily the adventure comes to close

Whereon my fat opponent grounds his charge

Preposterous: at mid-day he groans "How dark!"

Listen to me, thou Archangelic swine!

Where is the ambiguity to blame,

The flaw to find in our Pompilia? Safe

She stands, see! Does thy comment follow quick,

"Safe, inasmuch as at the end proposed;

But thither she picked way by devious path--

Stands dirtied, no dubiety at all!

I recognize success, yet, all the same,

Importunately will suggestion prompt--

Better Pompilia gained the right to boast,

'No devious path, no doubtful patch was mine,

I saved my head nor sacrificed my foot!'

Why, being in a peril, show mistrust

Of the angels set to guard the innocent?

Why rather hold by obvious vulgar help

Of stratagem and subterfuge, excused

Somewhat, but still no less a foil, a fault,

Since low with high, and good with bad is linked?

Methinks I view some ancient bas-relief.

There stands Hesione thrust out by Troy,

Her father's hand has chained her to a crag,

Her mother's from the virgin plucked the vest,

At a safe distance both distressful watch,

While near and nearer comes the snorting orc.

I look that, white and perfect to the end,

She wait till Jove dispatch some demigod;

Not that,--impatient of celestial club

Alcmena's son should brandish at the beast,--

She daub, disguise her dainty limbs with pitch,

And so elude the purblind monster! Ay,

The trick succeeds, but 't is an ugly trick,

Where needs have been no trick!"

My answer? Faugh!

_Nimis incongrue!_ Too absurdly put!

_Sententiam ego teneo contrariam_,

Trick, I maintain, had no alternative.

The heavens were bound with brass,--Jove far at feast

(No feast like that thou didst not ask me to,

Arcangeli,--I heard of thy regale!)

With the unblamed Æthiop,--Hercules spun wool

I' the lap of Omphale, while Virtue shrieked--

The brute came paddling all the faster. You

Of Troy, who stood at distance, where 's the aid

You offered in the extremity? Most and least,

Gentle and simple, here the Governor,

There the Archbishop, everywhere the friends,

Shook heads and waited for a miracle,

Or went their way, left Virtue to her fate.

Just this one rough and ready man leapt forth!

--Was found, sole anti-Fabius (dare I say)

Who restored things, with no delay at all,

_Qui haud cunctando rem restituit!_ He,

He only, Caponsacchi 'mid a crowd,

Caught Virtue up, carried Pompilia off

Through gaping impotence of sympathy

In ranged Arezzo: what you take for pitch

Is nothing worse, belike, than black and blue,

Mere evanescent proof that hardy hands

Did yeoman's service, cared not where the gripe

Was more than duly energetic: bruised,

She smarts a little, but her bones are saved

A fracture, and her skin will soon show sleek.

How it disgusts when weakness, false-refined,

Censures the honest rude effective strength,--

When sickly dreamers of the impossible

Decry plain sturdiness which does the feat

With eyes wide open!

Did occasion serve,

I could illustrate, if my lords allow;

_Quid vetat_, what forbids I aptly ask

With Horace, that I give my anger vent,

While I let breathe, no less, and recreate,

The gravity of my Judges, by a tale?

A case in point--what though an apologue

Graced by tradition?--possibly a fact:

Tradition must precede all scripture, words

Serve as our warrant ere our books can be:

So, to tradition back we needs must go

For any fact's authority: and this

Hath lived so far (like jewel hid in muck)

On page of that old lying vanity

Called "Sepher Toldoth Yeschu:" God be praised,

I read no Hebrew,--take the thing on trust:

But I believe the writer meant no good

(Blind as he was to truth in some respects)

To our pestiferous and schismatic ... well,

My lords' conjecture be the touchstone, show

The thing for what it is! The author lacks

Discretion, and his zeal exceeds: but zeal,--

How rare in our degenerate day! Enough!

Here is the story: fear not, I shall chop

And change a little, else my Jew would press

All too unmannerly before the Court.

It happened once,--begins this foolish Jew,

Pretending to write Christian history,--

That three, held greatest, best and worst of men,

Peter and John and Judas, spent a day

In toil and travel through the country-side

On some sufficient business--I suspect,

Suppression of some Molinism i' the bud.

Foot-sore and hungry, dropping with fatigue,

They reached by nightfall a poor lonely grange,

Hostel or inn: so, knocked and entered there.

"Your pleasure, great ones?"--"Shelter, rest and food!"

For shelter, there was one bare room above;

For rest therein, three beds of bundled straw:

For food, one wretched starveling fowl, no more--

Meat for one mouth, but mockery for three.

"You have my utmost." How should supper serve?

Peter broke silence: "To the spit with fowl!

And while 't is cooking, sleep!--since beds there be,

And, so far, satisfaction of a want.

Sleep we an hour, awake at supper-time,

Then each of us narrate the dream he had,

And he whose dream shall prove the happiest, point

The clearliest out the dreamer as ordained

Beyond his fellows to receive the fowl,

Him let our shares be cheerful tribute to,

His the entire meal, may it do him good!"

Who could dispute so plain a consequence?

So said, so done: each hurried to his straw,

Slept his hour's-sleep and dreamed his dream, and woke.

"I," commenced John, "dreamed that I gained the prize

We all aspire to: the proud place was mine,

Throughout the earth and to the end of time

I was the Loved Disciple: mine the meal!"

"But I," proceeded Peter, "dreamed, a word

Gave me the headship of our company,

Made me the Vicar and Vice-gerent, gave

The keys of heaven and hell into my hand,

And o'er the earth, dominion: mine the meal!"

"While I," submitted in soft under-tone

The Iscariot--sense of his unworthiness

Turning each eye up to the inmost white--

With long-drawn sigh, yet letting both lips smack,

"I have had just the pitifullest dream

That ever proved man meanest of his mates,

And born foot-washer and foot-wiper, nay

Foot-kisser to each comrade of you all!

I dreamed I dreamed; and in that mimic dream

(Impalpable to dream as dream to fact)

Methought I meanly chose to sleep no wink

But wait until I heard my brethren snore;

Then stole from couch, slipped noiseless o'er the planks,

Slid downstairs, furtively approached the hearth,

Found the fowl duly brown, both back and breast,

Hissing in harmony with the cricket's chirp,

Grilled to a point; said no grace, but fell to,

Nor finished till the skeleton lay bare.

In penitence for which ignoble dream,

Lo, I renounce my portion cheerfully!

Fie on the flesh--be mine the ethereal gust,

And yours the sublunary sustenance!

See that whate'er be left ye give the poor!"

Down the two scuttled, one on other's heel,

Stung by a fell surmise; and found, alack,

A goodly savor, both the drumstick bones,

And that which henceforth took the appropriate name

O' the Merry-thought, in memory of the fact

That to keep wide awake is man's best dream.

So,--as was said once of Thucydides

And his sole joke, "The lion, lo, hath laughed!"--

Just so, the Governor and all that 's great

I' the city never meant that Innocence

Should quite starve while Authority sat at meat;

They meant to fling a bone at banquet's end:

Wished well to our Pompilia--in their dreams,

Nor bore the secular sword in vain--asleep.

Just so the Archbishop and all good like him

Went to bed meaning to pour oil and wine

I' the wounds of her, next day,--but long ere day,

They had burned the one and drunk the other, while

Just so, again, contrariwise, the priest

Sustained poor Nature in extremity

By stuffing barley-bread into her mouth,

Saving Pompilia (grant the parallel)

By the plain homely and straightforward way

Taught him by common sense. Let others shriek

"Oh what refined expedients did we dream

Proved us the only fit to help the fair!"

He cried, "A carriage waits, jump in with me!"

And now, this application pardoned, lords,--

This recreative pause and breathing-while,--

Back to beseemingness and gravity!

For Law steps in: Guido appeals to Law,

Demands she arbitrate,--does well for once.

O Law, of thee how neatly was it said

By that old Sophocles, thou hast thy seat

I' the very breast of Jove, no meanlier throned!

Here is a piece of work now, hitherto

Begun and carried on, concluded near,

Without an eye-glance cast thy sceptre's way;

And, lo, the stumbling and discomfiture!

Well may you call them "lawless" means, men take

To extricate themselves through mother-wit

When tangled haply in the toils of life!

Guido would try conclusions with his foe,

Whoe'er the foe was and whate'er the offence;

He would recover certain dowry-dues:

Instead of asking Law to lend a hand,

What pother of sword drawn and pistol cocked,

What peddling with forged letters and paid spies,

Politic circumvention!--all to end

As it began--by loss of the fool's head,

First in a figure, presently in a fact.

It is a lesson to mankind at large.

How other were the end, would men be sage

And bear confidingly each quarrel straight,

O Law, to thy recipient mother-knees!

How would the children light come and prompt go,

This, with a red-cheeked apple for reward,

The other, peradventure red-cheeked too

I' the rear, by taste of birch for punishment.

No foolish brawling murder any more!

Peace for the household, practice for the Fisc,

And plenty for the exchequer of my lords!

Too much to hope, in this world: in the next,

Who knows? Since, why should sit the Twelve enthroned

To judge the tribes, unless the tribes be judged?

And 't is impossible but offences come:

So, all 's one lawsuit, all one long leet-day!

Forgive me this digression--that I stand

Entranced awhile at Law's first beam, outbreak

O' the business, when the Count's good angel bade

"Put up thy sword, born enemy to the ear,

And let Law listen to thy difference!"

And Law does listen and compose the strife,

Settle the suit, how wisely and how well!

On our Pompilia, faultless to a fault,

Law bends a brow maternally severe,

Implies the worth of perfect chastity,

By fancying the flaw she cannot find.

Superfluous sifting snow, nor helps nor harms:

'T is safe to censure levity in youth,

Tax womanhood with indiscretion, sure!

Since toys, permissible to-day, become

Follies to-morrow: prattle shocks in church:

And that curt skirt which lets a maiden skip,

The matron changes for a trailing robe.

Mothers may aim a blow with half-shut eyes

Nodding above their spindles by the fire,

And chance to hit some hidden fault, else safe.

Just so, Law hazarded a punishment--

If applicable to the circumstance,

Why, well! if not so apposite, well too.

"Quit the gay range o' the world," I hear her cry,

"Enter, in lieu, the penitential pound:

Exchange the gauds of pomp for ashes, dust!

Leave each mollitious haunt of luxury!

The golden-garnished silken-couched alcove,

The many-columned terrace that so tempts

Feminine soul put foot forth, extend ear

To fluttering joy of lover's serenade,--

Leave these for cellular seclusion! mask

And dance no more, but fast and pray! avaunt--

Be burned, thy wicked townsman's sonnet-book!

Welcome, mild hymnal by ... some better scribe!

For the warm arms were wont enfold thy flesh,

Let wire-shirt plough and whip-cord discipline!"

If such an exhortation proved, perchance,

Inapplicable, words bestowed in waste,

What harm, since Law has store, can spend nor miss?

And so, our paragon submits herself,

Goes at command into the holy house,

And, also at command, comes out again:

For, could the effect of such obedience prove

Too certain, too immediate? Being healed,

Go blaze abroad the matter, blessed one!

Art thou sound forthwith? Speedily vacate

The step by pool-side, leave Bethesda free

To patients plentifully posted round,

Since the whole need not the physician! Brief,

She may betake her to her parents' place.

Welcome her, father, with wide arms once more;

Motion her, mother, to thy breast again!

For why? Since Law relinquishes the charge,

Grants to your dwelling-place a prison's style.

Rejoice you with Pompilia! golden days,

_Redeunt Saturnia regna_. Six weeks slip,

And she is domiciled in house and home

As though she thence had never budged at all.

And thither let the husband--joyous, ay,

But contrite also--quick betake himself,

Proud that his dove which lay among the pots

Hath mued those dingy feathers,--moulted now,

Shows silver bosom clothed with yellow gold!

So shall he tempt her to the perch she fled,

Bid to domestic bliss the truant back.

But let him not delay! Time fleets how fast,

And opportunity, the irrevocable,

Once flown will flout him! Is the furrow traced?

If field with corn ye fail preoccupy,

Darnel for wheat and thistle-beards for grain,

_Infelix lolium, carduus horridus_,

Will grow apace in combination prompt,

Defraud the husbandman of his desire.

Already--hist--what murmurs 'monish now

The laggard?--doubtful, nay, fantastic bruit

Of such an apparition, such return

_Interdum_, to anticipate the spouse,

Of Caponsacchi's very self! 'T is said,

When nights are lone and company is rare,

His visitations brighten winter up.

If so they did--which nowise I believe--

(How can I?--proof abounding that the priest,

Once fairly at his relegation-place,

Never once left it), still, admit he stole

A midnight march, would fain see friend again,

Find matter for instruction in the past,

Renew the old adventure in such chat

As cheers a fireside! He was lonely too,

He, too, must need his recreative hour.

Shall it amaze the philosophic mind

If he, long wont the empurpled cup to quaff,

Have feminine society at will,

Being debarred abruptly from all drink

Save at the spring which Adam used for wine,

Dreads harm to just the health he hoped to guard,

And, trying abstinence, gains malady?

Ask Tozzi, now physician to the Pope!

"Little by little break"--(I hear he bids

Master Arcangeli my antagonist,

Who loves good cheer, and may indulge too much:

So I explain the logic of the plea

Wherewith he opened our proceedings late)--

"Little by little break a habit, Don,

Become necessity to feeble flesh!"

And thus, nocturnal taste of intercourse

(Which never happened,--but, suppose it did)

May have been used to dishabituate

By sip and sip this drainer to the dregs

O' the draught of conversation,--heady stuff,

Brewage which, broached, it took two days and nights

To properly discuss i' the journey, Sirs!

Such power has second-nature, men call use,

That undelightful objects get to charm

Instead of chafe: the daily colocynth

Tickles the palate by repeated dose,

Old sores scratch kindly, the ass makes a push

Although the mill-yoke-wound be smarting yet,

For mill-door bolted on a holiday:

Nor must we marvel here if impulse urge

To talk the old story over now and then,

The hopes and fears, the stoppage and the haste,--

Subjects of colloquy to surfeit once.

"Here did you bid me twine a rosy wreath!"

"And there you paid my lips a compliment!"

"Here you admired the tower could be so tall!"

"And there you likened that of Lebanon

To the nose of the beloved!" Trifles! still,

"_Forsan et hæc olim_,"--such trifles serve

To make the minutes pass in winter-time.

Husband, return then, I re-counsel thee!

For, finally, of all glad circumstance

Should make a prompt return imperative,

What in the world awaits thee, dost suppose?

O' the sudden, as good gifts are wont befall,

What is the hap of our unconscious Count?

That which lights bonfire and sets cask a-tilt,

Dissolves the stubborn'st heart in jollity.

O admirable, there is born a babe,

A son, an heir, a Franceschini last

And best o' the stock! Pompilia, thine the palm!

Repaying incredulity with faith,

Ungenerous thrift of each marital debt

With bounty in profuse expenditure,

Pompilia scorns to have the old year end

Without a present shall ring in the new--

Bestows on her too-parsimonious lord

An infant for the apple of his eye,

Core of his heart, and crown completing life,

True _summum bonum_ of the earthly lot!

"We," saith ingeniously the sage, "are born

Solely that others may be born of us."

So, father, take thy child, for thine that child,

Oh nothing doubt! In wedlock born, law holds

Baseness impossible: since "_filius est_

_Quem nuptiæ demonstrant_," twits the text

Whoever dares to doubt.

Yet doubt he dares!

O faith, where art thou flown from out the world?

Already on what an age of doubt we fall!

Instead of each disputing for the prize,

The babe is bandied here from that to this.

Whose the babe? "_Cujum pecus?_" Guido's lamb?

"_An Melibæi?_" Nay, but of the priest!

"_Non sed Ægonis!_" Some one must be sire:

And who shall say, in such a puzzling strait,

If there were not vouchsafed some miracle

To the wife who had been harassed and abused

More than enough by Guido's family

For non-production of the promised fruit

Of marriage? What if Nature, I demand,

Touched to the quick by taunts upon her sloth,

Had roused herself, put forth recondite power,

Bestowed this birth to vindicate her sway,

Like the strange favor Maro memorized

As granted Aristæus when his hive

Lay empty of the swarm? not one more bee--

Not one more babe to Franceschini's house!

And lo, a new birth filled the air with joy,

Sprung from the bowels of the generous steer,

A novel son and heir rejoiced the Count!

Spontaneous generation, need I prove

Were facile feat to Nature at a pinch?

Let whoso doubts, steep horsehair certain weeks,

In water, there will be produced a snake;

Spontaneous product of the horse, which horse

Happens to be the representative--

Now that I think on 't--of Arezzo's self,

The very city our conception blessed:

Is not a prancing horse the City-arms?

What sane eye fails to see coincidence?

_Cur ego_, boast thou, my Pompilia, then,

_Desperem fieri sine conjuge_

_Mater_--How well the Ovidian distich suits!--

_Et parere intacto dummodo_

_Casta viro?_ such miracle was wrought!

Note, further, as to mark the prodigy,

The babe in question neither took the name

Of Guido, from the sire presumptive, nor

Giuseppe, from the sire potential, but

Gaetano--last saint of our hierarchy,

And newest namer for a thing so new!

What other motive could have prompted choice?

Therefore be peace again: exult, ye hills!

Ye vales rejoicingly break forth in song!

_Incipe, parve puer_, begin, small boy,

_Risu cognoscere patrem_, with a laugh

To recognize thy parent! Nor do thou

Boggle, O parent, to return the grace!

_Nec anceps hære, pater, puero_

_Cognoscendo_--one may well eke out the prayer!

In vain! The perverse Guido doubts his eyes,

Distrusts assurance, lets the devil drive.

Because his house is swept and garnished now,

He, having summoned seven like himself,

Must hurry thither, knock and enter in,

And make the last worse than the first, indeed!

Is he content? We are. No further blame

O' the man and murder! They were stigmatized

Befittingly: the Court heard long ago

My mind o' the matter, which, outpouring full,

Has long since swept like surge, i' the simile

Of Homer, overborne both dyke and dam,

And whelmed alike client and advocate:

His fate is sealed, his life as good as gone,

On him I am not tempted to waste word.

Yet though my purpose holds,--which was and is

And solely shall be to the very end,

To draw the true _effigies_ of a saint,

Do justice to perfection in the sex,--

Yet let not some gross pamperer of the flesh

And niggard in the spirit's nourishment,

Whose feeding hath obfuscated his wit

Rather than law,--he never had, to lose--

Let not such advocate object to me

I leave my proper function of attack!

"What 's this to Bacchus?"--(in the classic phrase,

Well used, for once) he hiccups probably.

O Advocate o' the Poor, thou born to make

Their blessing void--_beati pauperes!_

By painting saintship I depicture sin:

Beside my pearl, I prove how black thy jet,

And, through Pompilia's virtue, Guido's crime.

Back to her, then,--with but one beauty more,

End we our argument,--one crowning grace

Pre-eminent 'mid agony and death.

For to the last Pompilia played her part,

Used the right means to the permissible end,

And, wily as an eel that stirs the mud

Thick overhead, so baffling spearman's thrust,

She, while he stabbed her, simulated death,

Delayed, for his sake, the catastrophe,

Obtained herself a respite, four days' grace,

Whereby she told her story to the world,

Enabled me to make the present speech,

And, by a full confession, saved her soul.

Yet hold, even here would malice leer its last,

Gurgle its choked remonstrance: snake, hiss free!

Oh, that 's the objection? And to whom?--not her

But me, forsooth--as, in the very act

Of both confession and (what followed close)

Subsequent talk, chatter and gossipry,

Babble to sympathizing he and she

Whoever chose besiege her dying-bed,--

As this were found at variance with my tale,

Falsified all I have adduced for truth,

Admitted not one peccadillo here,

Pretended to perfection, first and last,

O' the whole procedure--perfect in the end,

Perfect i' the means, perfect in everything,

Leaving a lawyer nothing to excuse,

Reason away and show his skill about!

--A flight, impossible to Adamic flesh,

Just to be fancied, scarcely to be wished,

And, anyhow, unpleadable in court!

"How reconcile," gasps Malice, "that with this?"

Your "this," friend, is extraneous to the law,

Comes of men's outside meddling, the unskilled

Interposition of such fools as press

Out of their province. Must I speak my mind?

Far better had Pompilia died o' the spot

Than found a tongue to wag and shame the law,

Shame most of all herself,--could friendship fail,

And advocacy lie less on the alert:

But no, they shall protect her to the end!

Do I credit the alleged narration? No!

Lied our Pompilia then, to laud herself?

Still, no! Clear up what seems discrepancy?

The means abound: art 's long, though time is short;

So, keeping me in compass, all I urge

Is--since, confession at the point of death,

_Nam in articulo mortis_, with the Church

Passes for statement honest and sincere,

_Nemo presumitur reus esse_,--then,

If sure that all affirmed would be believed,

'T was charity, in her so circumstanced,

To spend the last breath in one effort more

For universal good of friend and foe:

And,--by pretending utter innocence,

Nay, freedom from each foible we forgive,--

Re-integrate--not solely her own fame,

But do the like kind office for the priest

Whom telling the crude truth about might vex,

Haply expose to peril, abbreviate

Indeed the long career of usefulness

Presumably before him: while her lord,

Whose fleeting life is forfeit to the law,--

What mercy to the culprit if, by just

The gift of such a full certificate

Of his immitigable guiltiness,

She stifled in him the absurd conceit

Of murder as it were a mere revenge

--Stopped confirmation of that jealousy

Which, did she but acknowledge the first flaw,

The faintest foible, had emboldened him

To battle with the charge, balk penitence,

Bar preparation for impending fate!

Whereas, persuade him that he slew a saint

Who sinned not even where she may have sinned,

You urge him all the brisklier to repent

Of most and least and aught and everything!

Still, if this view of mine content you not,

Lords, nor excuse the genial falsehood here,

We come to our _Triarii_, last resource:

We fall back on the inexpugnable,

Submitting,--she confessed before she talked!

The sacrament obliterates the sin:

What is not,--was not, therefore, in a sense.

Let Molinists distinguish, "Souls washed white

But red once, still show pinkish to the eye!"

We say, abolishment is nothingness,

And nothingness has neither head nor tail,

End nor beginning! Better estimate

Exorbitantly, than disparage aught

Of the efficacity of the act, I hope!

_Solvuntur tabulæ?_ May we laugh and go?

Well,--not before (in filial gratitude

To Law, who, mighty mother, waves adieu)

We take on us to vindicate Law's self!

For,--yea, Sirs,--curb the start, curtail the stare!--

Remains that we apologize for haste

I' the Law, our lady who here bristles up,

"Blame my procedure? Could the Court mistake?

(Which were indeed a misery to think);

Did not my sentence in the former stage

O' the business bear a title plain enough?

_Decretum_"--I translate it word for word--

"'Decreed: the priest, for his complicity

I' the flight and deviation of the dame,

As well as for unlawful intercourse,

Is banished three years:' crime and penalty

Declared alike. If he be taxed with guilt,

How can you call Pompilia innocent?

If both be innocent, have I been just?"

Gently, O mother, judge men--whose mistake

Is in the mere misapprehensiveness!

The _Titulus_ a-top of your decree

Was but to ticket there the kind of charge

You in good time would arbitrate upon.

Title is one thing,--arbitration's self,

_Probatio_, quite another possibly.

_Subsistit;_ there holds good the old response,

_Responsio tradita_, we must not stick,

_Quod non sit attendendus Titulus_,

To the Title, _sed Probatio_, but the Proof,

_Resultans ex processu_, the result

O' the Trial, and the style of punishment,

_Et pœna per sententiam imposita_.

All is tentative, till the sentence come:

An indication of what men expect,

But nowise an assurance they shall find.

Lords, what if we permissibly relax

The tense bow, as the law-god Phœbus bids,

Relieve our gravity at labor's close?

I traverse Rome, feel thirsty, need a draught,

Look for a wine-shop, find it by the bough

Projecting as to say "Here wine is sold!"

So much I know,--"sold:" but what sort of wine?

Strong, weak, sweet, sour, home-made or foreign drink?

That much must I discover by myself.

"Wine is sold," quoth the bough, "but good or bad,

Find, and inform us when you smack your lips!"

Exactly so, Law hangs her title forth,

To show she entertains you with such case

About such crime. Come in! she pours, you quaff.

You find the Priest good liquor in the main,

But heady and provocative of brawls:

Remand the residue to flask once more,

Lay it low where it may deposit lees,

I' the cellar: thence produce it presently,

Three years the brighter and the better!

Thus,

Law's son, have I bestowed my filial help,

And thus I end, _tenax proposito;_

Point to point as I purposed have I drawn

Pompilia, and implied as terribly

Guido: so, gazing, let the world crown Law--

Able once more, despite my impotence,

And helped by the acumen of the Court,

To eliminate, display, make triumph truth!

What other prize than truth were worth the pains?

* * * * *

There 's my oration--much exceeds in length

That famed panegyric of Isocrates,

They say it took him fifteen years to pen.

But all those ancients could say anything!

He put in just what rushed into his head:

While I shall have to prune and pare and print.

This comes of being born in modern times

With priests for auditory. Still, it pays.

X

THE POPE

Like to Ahasuerus, that shrewd prince,

I will begin,--as is, these seven years now,

My daily wont,--and read a History

(Written by one whose deft right hand was dust

To the last digit, ages ere my birth)

Of all my predecessors, Popes of Rome:

For though mine ancient early dropped the pen,

Yet others picked it up and wrote it dry,

Since of the making books there is no end.

And so I have the Papacy complete

From Peter first to Alexander last;

Can question each and take instruction so.

Have I to dare!--I ask, how dared this Pope?

To suffer? Such-an-one, how suffered he?

Being about to judge, as now, I seek

How judged once, well or ill, some other Pope;

Study some signal judgment that subsists

To blaze on, or else blot, the page which seals

The sum up of what gain or loss to God

Came of his one more Vicar in the world.

So, do I find example, rule of life;

So, square and set in order the next page,

Shall be stretched smooth o'er my own funeral cyst.

Eight hundred years exact before the year

I was made Pope, men made Formosus Pope,

Say Sigebert and other chroniclers.

Ere I confirm or quash the Trial here

Of Guido Franceschini and his friends,

Read,--How there was a ghastly Trial once

Of a dead man by a live man, and both, Popes:

Thus--in the antique penman's very phrase.

"Then Stephen, Pope and seventh of the name,

Cried out, in synod as he sat in state,

While choler quivered on his brow and beard,

'Come into court, Formosus, thou lost wretch,

That claimedst to be late Pope as even I!'

"And at the word, the great door of the church

Flew wide, and in they brought Formosus' self,

The body of him, dead, even as embalmed

And buried duly in the Vatican

Eight months before, exhumed thus for the nonce.

They set it, that dead body of a Pope,

Clothed in pontific vesture now again,

Upright on Peter's chair as if alive.

"And Stephen, springing up, cried furiously,

'Bishop of Porto, wherefore didst presume

To leave that see and take this Roman see,

Exchange the lesser for the greater see,

--A thing against the canons of the Church?'

"Then one--(a Deacon who, observing forms,

Was placed by Stephen to repel the charge,

Be advocate and mouthpiece of the corpse)--

Spoke as he dared, set stammeringly forth

With white lips and dry tongue,--as but a youth,

For frightful was the corpse-face to behold,--

How nowise lacked there precedent for this.

"But when, for his last precedent of all,

Emboldened by the Spirit, out he blurts,

'And, Holy Father, didst not thou thyself

Vacate the lesser for the greater see,

Half a year since change Arago for Rome?'

'--Ye have the sin's defence now, synod mine!'

Shrieks Stephen in a beastly froth of rage:

'Judge now betwixt him dead and me alive!

Hath he intruded, or do I pretend?

Judge, judge!'--breaks wavelike one whole foam of wrath.

"Whereupon they, being friends and followers,

Said, 'Ay, thou art Christ's Vicar, and not he!

Away with what is frightful to behold!

This act was uncanonic and a fault.'

"Then, swallowed up in rage, Stephen exclaimed,

'So, guilty! So, remains I punish guilt!

He is unpoped, and all he did I damn:

The Bishop, that ordained him, I degrade:

Depose to laics those he raised to priests:

What they have wrought is mischief nor shall stand,

It is confusion, let it vex no more!

Since I revoke, annul and abrogate

All his decrees in all kinds: they are void!

In token whereof and warning to the world,

Strip me yon miscreant of those robes usurped,

And clothe him with vile serge befitting such!

Then hale the carrion to the market-place;

Let the town-hangman chop from his right hand

Those same three fingers which he blessed withal;

Next cut the head off, once was crowned forsooth:

And last go fling them, fingers, head and trunk,

To Tiber that my Christian fish may sup!'

--Either because of ΙΧΘΥΣ which means Fish

And very aptly symbolizes Christ,

Or else because the Pope is Fisherman,

And seals with Fisher's-signet.

"Anyway,

So said, so done: himself, to see it done,

Followed the corpse they trailed from street to street

Till into Tiber wave they threw the thing.

The people, crowded on the banks to see,

Were loud or mute, wept or laughed, cursed or jeered,

According as the deed addressed their sense;

A scandal verily: and out spake a Jew,

'Wot ye your Christ had vexed our Herod thus?'

"Now when, Formosus being dead a year,

His judge Pope Stephen tasted death in turn,

Made captive by the mob and strangled straight,

Romanus, his successor for a month,

Did make protest Formosus was with God,

Holy, just, true in thought and word and deed.

Next Theodore, who reigned but twenty days,

Therein convoked a synod, whose decree

Did reinstate, repope the late unpoped,

And do away with Stephen as accursed.

So that when presently certain fisher-folk

(As if the queasy river could not hold

Its swallowed Jonas, but discharged the meal)

Produced the timely product of their nets,

The mutilated man, Formosus,--saved

From putrefaction by the embalmer's spice,

Or, as some said, by sanctity of flesh,--

'Why, lay the body again,' bade Theodore,

'Among his predecessors, in the church

And burial-place of Peter!' which was done.

'And,' addeth Luitprand, 'many of repute,

Pious and still alive, avouch to me

That, as they bore the body up the aisle,

The saints in imaged row bowed each his head

For welcome to a brother-saint come back.'

As for Romanus and this Theodore,

These two Popes, through the brief reign granted each,

Could but initiate what John came to close

And give the final stamp to: he it was,

Ninth of the name, (I follow the best guides)

Who,--in full synod at Ravenna held

With Bishops seventy-four, and present too

Eude King of France with his Archbishopry,--

Did condemn Stephen, anathematize

The disinterment, and make all blots blank.

'For,' argueth here Auxilius in a place

_De Ordinationibus_, 'precedents

Had been, no lack, before Formosus long,

Of Bishops so transferred from see to see,--

Marinus, for example:' read the tract.

"But, after John, came Sergius, reaffirmed

The right of Stephen, cursed Formosus, nay

Cast out, some say, his corpse a second time,

And here,--because the matter went to ground,

Fretted by new griefs, other cares of the age,--

Here is the last pronouncing of the Church,

Her sentence that subsists unto this day.

Yet constantly opinion hath prevailed

I' the Church, Formosus was a holy man."

Which of the judgments was infallible?

Which of my predecessors spoke for God?

And what availed Formosus that this cursed,

That blessed, and then this other cursed again?

"Fear ye not those whose power can kill the body

And not the soul," saith Christ, "but rather those

Can cast both soul and body into hell!"

John judged thus in Eight Hundred Ninety Eight,

Exact eight hundred years ago to-day

When, sitting in his stead, Vicegerent here,

I must give judgment on my own behoof.

So worked the predecessor: now, my turn!

In God's name! Once more on this earth of God's,

While twilight lasts and time wherein to work,

I take his staff with my uncertain hand,

And stay my six and fourscore years, my due

Labor and sorrow, on his judgment-seat,

And forthwith think, speak, act, in place of him--

The Pope for Christ. Once more appeal is made

From man's assize to mine: I sit and see

Another poor weak trembling human wretch

Pushed by his fellows, who pretend the right,

Up to the gulf which, where I gaze, begins

From this world to the next,--gives way and way,

Just on the edge over the awful dark:

With nothing to arrest him but my feet.

He catches at me with convulsive face,

Cries "Leave to live the natural minute more!"

While hollowly the avengers echo "Leave?

None! So has he exceeded man's due share

In man's fit license, wrung by Adam's fall,

To sin and yet not surely die,--that we,

All of us sinful, all with need of grace,

All chary of our life,--the minute more

Or minute less of grace which saves a soul,--

Bound to make common cause with who craves time,

--We yet protest against the exorbitance

Of sin in this one sinner, and demand

That his poor sole remaining piece of time

Be plucked from out his clutch: put him to death!

Punish him now! As for the weal or woe

Hereafter, God grant mercy! Man be just.

Nor let the felon boast he went scot-free!"

And I am bound, the solitary judge,

To weigh the worth, decide upon the plea,

And either hold a hand out, or withdraw

A foot and let the wretch drift to the fall.

Ay, and while thus I dally, dare perchance

Put fancies for a comfort 'twixt this calm

And yonder passion that I have to bear,--

As if reprieve were possible for both

Prisoner and Pope,--how easy were reprieve!

A touch o' the hand-bell here, a hasty word

To those who wait, and wonder they wait long,

I' the passage there, and I should gain the life!--

Yea, though I flatter me with fancy thus,

I know it is but Nature's craven-trick.

The case is over, judgment at an end,

And all things done now and irrevocable:

A mere dead man is Franceschini here,

Even as Formosus centuries ago.

I have worn through this sombre wintry day,

With winter in my soul beyond the world's,

Over these dismalest of documents

Which drew night down on me ere eve befell,--

Pleadings and counter-pleadings, figure of fact

Beside fact's self, these summaries, to wit,--

How certain three were slain by certain five:

I read here why it was, and how it went,

And how the chief o' the five preferred excuse,

And how law rather chose defence should lie,--

What argument he urged by wary word

When free to play off wile, start subterfuge,

And what the unguarded groan told, torture's feat

When law grew brutal, outbroke, overbore

And glutted hunger on the truth, at last,--

No matter for the flesh and blood between.

All 's a clear rede and no more riddle now.

Truth, nowhere, lies yet everywhere in these--

Not absolutely in a portion, yet

Evolvable from the whole: evolved at last

Painfully, held tenaciously by me.

Therefore there is not any doubt to clear

When I shall write the brief word presently

And chink the hand-bell, which I pause to do.

Irresolute? Not I, more than the mound

With the pine-trees on it yonder! Some surmise,

Perchance, that since man's wit is fallible,

Mine may fail here? Suppose it so,--what then?

Say,--Guido, I count guilty, there 's no babe

So guiltless, for I misconceive the man!

What 's in the chance should move me from my mind?

If, as I walk in a rough country-side,

Peasants of mine cry, "Thou art he can help,

Lord of the land and counted wise to boot:

Look at our brother, strangling in his foam,

He fell so where we find him,--prove thy worth!"

I may presume, pronounce, "A frenzy-fit,

A falling-sickness or a fever-stroke!

Breathe a vein, copiously let blood at once!"

So perishes the patient, and anon

I hear my peasants--"All was error, lore!

Our story, thy prescription: for there crawled

In due time from our hapless brother's breast

The serpent which had stung him: bleeding slew

Whom a prompt cordial had restored to health."

What other should I say than "God so willed:

Mankind is ignorant, a man am I:

Call ignorance my sorrow, not my sin!"

So and not otherwise, in after-time,

If some acuter wit, fresh probing, sound

This multifarious mass of words and deeds

Deeper, and reach through guilt to innocence,

I shall face Guido's ghost nor blench a jot.

"God who set me to judge thee, meted out

So much of judging faculty, no more:

Ask him if I was slack in use thereof!"

I hold a heavier fault imputable

Inasmuch as I changed a chaplain once,

For no cause,--no, if I must bare my heart,--

Save that he snuffled somewhat saying mass.

For I am 'ware it is the seed of act,

God holds appraising in his hollow palm,

Not act grown great thence on the world below,

Leafage and branchage, vulgar eyes admire.

Therefore I stand on my integrity,

Nor fear at all: and if I hesitate,

It is because I need to breathe awhile,

Rest, as the human right allows, review

Intent the little seeds of act, my tree,--

The thought, which, clothed in deed, I give the world

At chink of bell and push of arrased door.

O pale departure, dim disgrace of day!

Winter's in wane, his vengeful worst art thou,

To dash the boldness of advancing March!

Thy chill persistent rain has purged our streets

Of gossipry; pert tongue and idle ear

By this, consort 'neath archway, portico.

But wheresoe'er Rome gathers in the gray,

Two names now snap and flash from mouth to mouth--

(Sparks, flint and steel strike)--Guido and the Pope.

By this same hour to-morrow eve--aha,

How do they call him?--the sagacious Swede

Who finds by figures how the chances prove,

Why one comes rather than another thing,

As, say, such dots turn up by throw of dice,

Or, if we dip in Virgil here and there

And prick for such a verse, when such shall point.

Take this Swede, tell him, hiding name and rank,

Two men are in our city this dull eve;

One doomed to death,--but hundreds in such plight

Slip aside, clean escape by leave of law

Which leans to mercy in this latter time;

Moreover in the plenitude of life

Is he, with strength of limb and brain adroit,

Presumably of service here: beside,

The man is noble, backed by nobler friends:

Nay, they so wish him well, the city's self

Makes common cause with who--house-magistrate,

Patron of hearth and home, domestic lord--

But ruled his own, let aliens cavil. Die?

He 'll bribe a jailer or break prison first!

Nay, a sedition may be helpful, give

Hint to the mob to batter wall, burn gate,

And bid the favorite malefactor march.

Calculate now these chances of escape!

"It is not probable, but well may be."

Again, there is another man, weighed now

By twice eight years beyond the seven-times-ten,

Appointed overweight to break our branch.

And this man's loaded branch lifts, more than snow,

All the world's cark and care, though a bird's nest

Were a superfluous burden: notably

Hath he been pressed, as if his age were youth,

From to-day's dawn till now that day departs,

Trying one question with true sweat of soul,

"Shall the said doomed man fitlier die or live?"

When a straw swallowed in his posset, stool

Stumbled on where his path lies, any puff

That 's incident to such a smoking flax,

Hurries the natural end and quenches him!

Now calculate, thou sage, the chances here,

Say, which shall die the sooner, this or that?

"That, possibly, this in all likelihood."

I thought so: yet thou tripp'st, my foreign friend!

No, it will be quite otherwise,--to-day

Is Guido's last: my term is yet to run.

But say the Swede were right, and I forthwith

Acknowledge a prompt summons and lie dead:

Why, then I stand already in God's face

And hear, "Since by its fruit a tree is judged,

Show me thy fruit, the latest act of thine!

For in the last is summed the first and all,--

What thy life last put heart and soul into,

There shall I taste thy product." I must plead

This condemnation of a man to-day.

Not so! Expect nor question nor reply

At what we figure as God's judgment-bar!

None of this vile way by the barren words

Which, more than any deed, characterize

Man as made subject to a curse: no speech--

That still bursts o'er some lie which lurks inside,

As the split skin across the coppery snake,

And most denotes man! since, in all beside,

In hate or lust or guile or unbelief,

Out of some core of truth the excrescence comes,

And, in the last resort, the man may urge

"So was I made, a weak thing that gave way

To truth, to impulse only strong since true,

And hated, lusted, used guile, forwent faith."

But when man walks the garden of this world

For his own solace, and, unchecked by law,

Speaks or keeps silence as himself sees fit,

Without the least incumbency to lie,

--Why, can he tell you what a rose is like,

Or how the birds fly, and not slip to false

Though truth serve better? Man must tell his mate

Of you, me and himself, knowing he lies,

Knowing his fellow knows the same,--will think

"He lies, it is the method of a man!"

And yet will speak for answer "It is truth"

To him who shall rejoin "Again a lie!"

Therefore these filthy rags of speech, this coil

Of statement, comment, query and response,

Tatters all too contaminate for use,

Have no renewing: He the Truth is, too,

The Word. We men, in our degree, may know

There, simply, instantaneously, as here

After long time and amid many lies,

Whatever we dare think we know indeed

--That I am I, as He is He,--what else?

But be man's method for man's life at least!

Wherefore, Antonio Pignatelli, thou

My ancient self, who wast no Pope so long

But studiedst God and man, the many years

I' the school, i' the cloister, in the diocese

Domestic, legate-rule in foreign lands,--

Thou other force in those old busy days

Than this gray ultimate decrepitude,--

Yet sensible of fires that more and more

Visit a soul, in passage to the sky,

Left nakeder than when flesh-robe was new--

Thou, not Pope but the mere old man o' the world,

Supposed inquisitive and dispassionate,

Wilt thou, the one whose speech I somewhat trust,

Question the after-me, this self now Pope,

Hear his procedure, criticise his work?

Wise in its generation is the world.

This is why Guido is found reprobate.

I see him furnished forth for his career,

On starting for the life-chance in our world,

With nearly all we count sufficient help:

Body and mind in balance, a sound frame,

A solid intellect: the wit to seek,

Wisdom to choose, and courage wherewithal

To deal in whatsoever circumstance

Should minister to man, make life succeed.

Oh, and much drawback! what were earth without?

Is this our ultimate stage, or starting-place

To try man's foot, if it will creep or climb,

'Mid obstacles in seeming, points that prove

Advantage for who vaults from low to high

And makes the stumbling-block a stepping-stone?

So, Guido, born with appetite, lacks food:

Is poor, who yet could deftly play-off wealth:

Straitened, whose limbs are restless till at large.

He, as he eyes each outlet of the cirque

And narrow penfold for probation, pines

After the good things just outside its grate,

With less monition, fainter conscience-twitch,

Rarer instinctive qualm at the first feel

Of greed unseemly, prompting grasp undue,

Than nature furnishes her main mankind,--

Making it harder to do wrong than right

The first time, careful lest the common ear

Break measure, miss the outstep of life's march.

Wherein I see a trial fair and fit

For one else too unfairly fenced about,

Set above sin, beyond his fellows here:

Guarded from the arch-tempter all must fight,

By a great birth, traditionary name,

Diligent culture, choice companionship,

Above all, conversancy with the faith

Which puts forth for its base of doctrine just,

"Man is born nowise to content himself,

But please God." He accepted such a rule,

Recognized man's obedience; and the Church,

Which simply is such rule's embodiment,

He clave to, he held on by,--nay, indeed,

Near pushed inside of, deep as layman durst,

Professed so much of priesthood as might sue

For priest's-exemption where the layman sinned,--

Go this arm frocked which, bare, the law would bruise,

Hence, at this moment, what's his last resource,

His extreme stay and utmost stretch of hope

But that,--convicted of such crime as law

Wipes not away save with a worldling's blood,--

Guido, the three-parts consecrate, may 'scape?

Nay, the portentous brothers of the man

Are veritably priests, protected each

May do his murder in the Church's pale,

Abate Paul, Canon Girolamo!

This is the man proves irreligiousest

Of all mankind, religion's parasite!

This may forsooth plead dinned ear, jaded sense,

The vice o' the watcher who bides near the bell,

Sleeps sound because the clock is vigilant,

And cares not whether it be shade or shine,

Doling out day and night to all men else!

Why was the choice o' the man to niche himself

Perversely 'neath the tower where Time's own tongue

Thus undertakes to sermonize the world?

Why, but because the solemn is safe too,

The belfry proves a fortress of a sort,

Has other uses than to teach the hour:

Turns sunscreen, paravent and ombrifuge

To whoso seeks a shelter in its pale,

--Ay, and attractive to unwary folk

Who gaze at storied portal, statued spire,

And go home with full head but empty purse.

Nor dare suspect the sacristan the thief!

Shall Judas--hard upon the donor's heel,

To filch the fragments of the basket--plead

He was too near the preacher's mouth, nor sat

Attent with fifties in a company?

No,--closer to promulgated decree,

Clearer the censure of default. Proceed!

I find him bound, then, to begin life well;

Fortified by propitious circumstance,

Great birth, good breeding, with the Church for guide,

How lives he? Cased thus in a coat of proof,

Mailed like a man-at-arms, though all the while

A puny starveling,--does the breast pant big,

The limb swell to the limit, emptiness

Strive to become solidity indeed?

Bather, he shrinks up like the ambiguous fish,

Detaches flesh from shell and outside show,

And steals by moonlight (I have seen the thing)

In and out, now to prey and now to skulk.

Armor he boasts when a wave breaks on beach,

Or bird stoops for the prize: with peril nigh,--

The man of rank, the much-befriended man,

The man almost affiliate to the Church,

Such is to deal with, let the world beware!

Does the world recognize, pass prudently?

Do tides abate and sea-fowl hunt i' the deep?

Already is the slug from out its mew,

Ignobly faring with all loose and free,

Sand-fly and slush-worm at their garbage-feast,

A naked blotch no better than they all:

Guido has dropped nobility, slipped the Church,

Plays trickster if not cut-purse, body and soul

Prostrate among the filthy feeders--faugh!

And when Law takes him by surprise at last,

Catches the foul thing on its carrion-prey,

Behold, he points to shell left high and dry,

Pleads "But the case out yonder is myself!"

Nay, it is thou, Law prongs amid thy peers,

Congenial vermin; that was none of thee,

Thine outside,--give it to the soldier-crab!

For I find this black mark impinge the man,

That he believes in just the vile of life.

Low instinct, base pretension, are these truth?

Then, that aforesaid armor, probity,

He figures in, is falsehood scale on scale;

Honor and faith,--a lie and a disguise,

Probably for all livers in this world,

Certainly for himself! All say good words

To who will hear, all do thereby bad deeds

To who must undergo; so thrive mankind!

See this habitual creed exemplified

Most in the last deliberate act; as last,

So, very sum and substance of the soul

Of him that planned and leaves one perfect piece,

The sin brought under jurisdiction now,

Even the marriage of the man: this act

I sever from his life as sample, show

For Guido's self, intend to test him by,

As, from a cup filled fairly at the fount,

By the components we decide enough

Or to let flow as late, or stanch the source.

He purposes this marriage, I remark,

On no one motive that should prompt thereto--

Farthest, by consequence, from ends alleged

Appropriate to the action; so they were:

The best, he knew and feigned, the worst he took.

Not one permissible impulse moves the man,

From the mere liking of the eye and ear,

To the true longing of the heart that loves,

No trace of these: but all to instigate,

Is what sinks man past level of the brute,

Whose appetite if brutish is a truth.

All is the lust for money: to get gold,--

Why, lie, rob, if it must be, murder! Make

Body and soul wring gold out, lured within

The clutch of hate by love, the trap's pretence!

What good else get from bodies and from souls?

This got, there were some life to lead thereby,

--What, where or how, appreciate those who tell

How the toad lives: it lives,--enough for me!

To get this good--but with a groan or so,

Then, silence of the victims--were the feat.

He foresaw, made a picture in his mind,--

Of father and mother stunned and echoless

To the blow, as they lie staring at fate's jaws

Their folly danced into, till the woe fell;

Edged in a month by strenuous cruelty

From even the poor nook whence they watched the wolf

Feast on their heart, the lamb-like child his prey;

Plundered to the last remnant of their wealth,

(What daily pittance pleased the plunderer dole,)

Hunted forth to go hide head, starve and die,

And leave the pale awe-stricken wife, past hope

Of help i' the world now, mute and motionless,

His slave, his chattel, to first use, then destroy.

All this, he bent mind, how to bring about,

Put plain in act and life, as painted plain,

So have success, reach crown of earthly good,

In this particular enterprise of man,

By marriage--undertaken in God's face

With all these lies so opposite God's truth,

For end so other than man's end.

Thus schemes

Guido, and thus would carry out his scheme:

But when an obstacle first blocks the path,

When he finds none may boast monopoly

Of lies and trick i' the tricking lying world,--

That sorry timid natures, even this sort

O' the Comparini, want nor trick nor lie

Proper to the kind,--that as the gor-crow treats

The bramble-finch so treats the finch the moth,

And the great Guido is minutely matched

By this same couple,--whether true or false

The revelation of Pompilia's birth,

Which in a moment brings his scheme to naught,--

Then, he is piqued, advances yet a stage,

Leaves the low region to the finch and fly,

Soars to the zenith whence the fiercer fowl

May dare the inimitable swoop. I see.

He draws now on the curious crime, the fine

Felicity and flower of wickedness;

Determines, by the utmost exercise

Of violence, made safe and sure by craft.

To satiate malice, pluck one last arch-pang

From the parents, else would triumph out of reach,

By punishing their child, within reach yet,

Who, by thought, word or deed, could nowise wrong

I' the matter that now moves him. So plans he,

Always subordinating (note the point!)

Revenge, the manlier sin, to interest

The meaner,--would pluck pang forth, but unclench

No gripe in the act, let fall no money-piece.

Hence a plan for so plaguing, body and soul,

His wife, so putting, day by day, hour by hour,

The untried torture to the untouched place,

As must precipitate an end foreseen,

Goad her into some plain revolt, most like

Plunge upon patent suicidal shame,

Death to herself, damnation by rebound

To those whose hearts he, holding hers, holds still:

Such plan as, in its bad completeness, shall

Ruin the three together and alike,

Yet leave himself in luck and liberty,

No claim renounced, no right a forfeiture,

His person unendangered, his good fame

Without a flaw, his pristine worth intact,--

While they, with all their claims and rights that cling,

Shall forthwith crumble off him every side,

Scorched into dust, a plaything for the winds.

As when, in our Campagna, there is fired

The nest-like work that overruns a hut;

And, as the thatch burns here, there, everywhere,

Even to the ivy and wild vine, that bound

And blessed the home where men were happy once,

There rises gradual, black amid the blaze,

Some grim and unscathed nucleus of the nest,--

Some old malicious tower, some obscene tomb

They thought a temple in their ignorance,

And clung about and thought to lean upon--

There laughs it o'er their ravage,--where are they?

So did his cruelty burn life about,

And lay the ruin bare in dreadfulness,

Try the persistency of torment so

Upon the wife, that, at extremity,

Some crisis brought about by fire and flame,

The patient frenzy-stung must needs break loose,

Fly anyhow, find refuge anywhere,

Even in the arms of who should front her first,

No monster but a man--while nature shrieked

"Or thus escape, or die!" The spasm arrived,

Not the escape by way of sin,--O God,

Who shall pluck sheep thou holdest, from thy hand?

Therefore she lay resigned to die,--so far

The simple cruelty was foiled. Why then,

Craft to the rescue, let craft supplement

Cruelty and show hell a masterpiece!

Hence this consummate lie, this love-intrigue,

Unmanly simulation of a sin,

With place and time and circumstance to suit--

These letters false beyond all forgery--

Not just handwriting and mere authorship,

But false to body and soul they figure forth--

As though the man had cut out shape and shape

From fancies of that other Aretine,

To paste below--incorporate the filth

With cherub faces on a missal-page!

Whereby the man so far attains his end

That strange temptation is permitted,--see!

Pompilia, wife, and Caponsacchi, priest,

Are brought together as nor priest nor wife

Should stand, and there is passion in the place,

Power in the air for evil as for good,

Promptings from heaven and hell, as if the stars

Fought in their courses for a fate to be.

Thus stand the wife and priest, a spectacle,

I doubt not, to unseen assemblage there.

No lamp will mark that window for a shrine,

No tablet signalize the terrace, teach

New generations which succeed the old,

The pavement of the street is holy ground:

No bard describe in verse how Christ prevailed

And Satan fell like lightning! Why repine?

What does the world, told truth, but lie the more?

A second time the plot is foiled; nor, now,

By corresponding sin for countercheck,

No wile and trick that baffle trick and wile,--

The play o' the parents! Here the blot is blanched

By God's gift of a purity of soul

That will not take pollution, ermine-like

Armed from dishonor by its own soft snow.

Such was this gift of God who showed for once

How he would have the world go white: it seems

As a new attribute were born of each

Champion of truth, the priest and wife I praise,--

As a new safeguard sprang up in defence

Of their new noble nature: so a thorn

Comes to the aid of and completes the rose--

Courage to wit, no woman's gift nor priest's,

I' the crisis; might leaps vindicating right.

See how the strong aggressor, bad and bold,

With every vantage, preconcerts surprise,

Leaps of a sudden at his victim's throat

In a byway,--how fares he when face to face

With Caponsacchi? Who fights, who fears now?

There quails Count Guido, armed to the chattering teeth,

Cowers at the steadfast eye and quiet word

O' the Canon of the Pieve! There skulks crime

Behind law called in to back cowardice!

While out of the poor trampled worm the wife,

Springs up a serpent!

But anon of these!

Him I judge now,--of him proceed to note,

Failing the first, a second chance befriends

Guido, gives pause ere punishment arrive.

The law he called, comes, hears, adjudicates,

Nor does amiss i' the main,--secludes the wife

From the husband, respites the oppressed one, grants

Probation to the oppressor, could he know

The mercy of a minute's fiery purge!

The furnace-coals alike of public scorn,

Private remorse, heaped glowing on his head,

What if--the force and guile, the ore's alloy,

Eliminate, his baser soul refined--

The lost be saved even yet, so as by fire?

Let him, rebuked, go softly all his days

And, when no graver musings claim their due,

Meditate on a man's immense mistake

Who, fashioned to use feet and walk, deigns crawl--

Takes the unmanly means--ay, though to ends

Man scarce should make for, would but reach through wrong,--

May sin, but nowise needs shame manhood so:

Since fowlers hawk, shoot, nay and snare the game,

And yet eschew vile practice, nor find sport

In torch-light treachery or the luring owl.

But how hunts Guido? Why, the fraudful trap--

Late spurned to ruin by the indignant feet

Of fellows in the chase who loved fair play--

Here he picks up its fragments to the least,

Lades him and hies to the old lurking-place

Where haply he may patch again, refit

The mischief, file its blunted teeth anew,

Make sure, next time, first snap shall break the bone.

Craft, greed and violence complot revenge:

Craft, for its quota, schemes to bring about

And seize occasion and be safe withal:

Greed craves its act may work both far and near,

Crush the tree, branch and trunk and root beside,

Whichever twig or leaf arrests a streak

Of possible sunshine else would coin itself,

And drop down one more gold piece in the path:

Violence stipulates, "Advantage proved,

And safety sure, be pain the overplus!

Murder with jagged knife! Cut but tear too!

Foiled oft, starved long, glut malice for amends!"

And what, craft's scheme? scheme sorrowful and strange

As though the elements, whom mercy cheeked,

Had mustered hate for one eruption more,

One final deluge to surprise the Ark

Cradled and sleeping on its mountain-top:

Their outbreak-signal--what but the dove's coo,

Back with the olive in her bill for news

Sorrow was over? 'T is an infant's birth,

Guido's first-born, his son and heir, that gives

The occasion: other men cut free their souls

From care in such a case, fly up in thanks

To God, reach, recognize his love for once:

Guido cries, "Soul, at last the mire is thine!

Lie there in likeness of a money-bag,

My babe's birth so pins down past moving now,

That I dare cut adrift the lives I late

Scrupled to touch lest thou escape with them!

These parents and their child my wife,--touch one,

Lose all! Their rights determined on a head

I could but hate, not harm, since from each hair

Dangled a hope for me: now--chance and change!

No right was in their child but passes plain

To that child's child and through such child to me.

I am a father now,--come what come will,

I represent my child; he comes between--

Cuts sudden off the sunshine of this life

From those three: why, the gold is in his curls!

Not with old Pietro's, Violante's head,

Not his gray horror, her more hideous black--

Go these, devoted to the knife!"

'T is done:

Wherefore should mind misgive, heart hesitate?

He calls to counsel, fashions certain four

Colorless natures counted clean till now,

--Rustic simplicity, uncorrupted youth,

Ignorant virtue! Here 's the gold o' the prime

When Saturn ruled, shall shock our leaden day--

The clown abash the courtier! Mark it, bards!

The courtier tries his hand on clownship here,

Speaks a word, names a crime, appoints a price,--

Just breathes on what, suffused with all himself,

Is red-hot henceforth past distinction now

I' the common glow of hell. And thus they break

And blaze on us at Rome, Christ's birthnight-eve!

Oh angels that sang erst "On the earth, peace!

To man, good will!"--such peace finds earth to-day!

After the seventeen hundred years, so man

Wills good to man, so Guido makes complete

His murder! what is it I said?--cuts loose

Three lives that hitherto he suffered cling,

Simply because each served to nail secure,

By a corner of the money-bag, his soul,--

Therefore, lives sacred till the babe's first breath

O'erweights them in the balance,--off they fly!

So is the murder managed, sin conceived

To the full: and why not crowned with triumph too?

Why must the sin, conceived thus, bring forth death?

I note how, within hair's-breadth of escape,

Impunity and the thing supposed success,

Guido is found when the check comes, the change,

The monitory touch o' the tether--felt

By few, not marked by many, named by none

At the moment, only recognized aright

I' the fulness of the days, for God's, lest sin

Exceed the service, leap the line: such check--

A secret which this life finds hard to keep,

And, often guessed, is never quite revealed--

Needs must trip Guido on a stumbling-block

Too vulgar, too absurdly plain i' the path!

Study this single oversight of care,

This hebetude that marred sagacity,

Forgetfulness of all the man best knew,--

How any stranger having need to fly,

Needs but to ask and have the means of flight.

Why, the first urchin tells you, to leave Rome,

Get horses, you must show the warrant, just

The banal scrap, clerk's scribble, a fair word buys,

Or foul one, if a ducat sweeten word,--

And straight authority will back demand,

Give you the pick o' the post-house!--how should he,

Then, resident at Rome for thirty years,

Guido, instruct a stranger! And himself

Forgets just this poor paper scrap, wherewith

Armed, every door he knocks at opens wide

To save him: horsed and manned, with such advance

O' the hunt behind, why, 't were the easy task

Of hours told on the fingers of one hand,

To reach the Tuscan frontier, laugh at home,

Light-hearted with his fellows of the place,--

Prepared by that strange shameful judgment, that

Satire upon a sentence just pronounced

By the Rota and confirmed by the Granduke,--

Ready in a circle to receive their peer,

Appreciate his good story how, when Rome,

The Pope-King and the populace of priests

Made common cause with their confederate

The other priestling who seduced his wife,

He, all unaided, wiped out the affront

With decent bloodshed and could face his friends,

Frolic it in the world's eye. Ay, such tale

Missed such applause, and by such oversight!

So, tired and footsore, those blood-flustered five

Went reeling on the road through dark and cold,

The few permissible miles, to sink at length,

Wallow and sleep in the first wayside straw,

As the other herd quenched, i' the wash o' the wave,

--Each swine, the devil inside him: so slept they,

And so were caught and caged--all through one trip.

One touch of fool in Guido the astute!

He curses the omission, I surmise,

More than the murder. Why, thou fool and blind,

It is the mercy-stroke that stops thy fate,

Hamstrings and holds thee to thy hurt,--but how?

On the edge o' the precipice! One minute more,

Thou hadst gone farther and fared worse, my son,

Fathoms down on the flint and fire beneath!

Thy comrades each and all were of one mind,

Thy murder done, to straightway murder thee

In turn, because of promised pay withheld.

So, to the last, greed found itself at odds

With craft in thee, and, proving conqueror,

Had sent thee, the same night that crowned thy hope,

Thither where, this same day, I see thee not,

Nor, through God's mercy, need, to-morrow, see.

Such I find Guido, midmost blotch of black

Discernible in this group of clustered crimes

Huddling together in the cave they call

Their palace, outraged day thus penetrates.

Around him ranged, now close and now remote,

Prominent or obscure to meet the needs

O' the mage and master, I detect each shape

Subsidiary i' the scene nor loathed the less,

All alike colored, all descried akin

By one and the same pitchy furnace stirred

At the centre: see, they lick the master's hand,--

This fox-faced horrible priest, this brother-brute

The Abate,--why, mere wolfishness looks well,

Guido stands honest in the red o' the flame,

Beside this yellow that would pass for white,

Twice Guido, all craft but no violence,

This copier of the mien and gait and garb

Of Peter and Paul, that he may go disguised,

Rob halt and lame, sick folk i' the temple-porch!

Armed with religion, fortified by law,

A man of peace, who trims the midnight lamp

And turns the classic page--and all for craft,

All to work harm with, yet incur no scratch!

While Guido brings the struggle to a close,

Paul steps back the due distance, clear o' the trap

He builds and baits. Guido I catch and judge;

Paul is past reach in this world and my time:

That is a case reserved. Pass to the next,

The boy of the brood, the young Girolamo,

Priest, Canon, and what more? nor wolf nor fox.

But hybrid, neither craft nor violence

Wholly, part violence part craft: such cross

Tempts speculation--will both blend one day,

And prove hell's better product? Or subside

And let the simple quality emerge,

Go on with Satan's service the old way?

Meanwhile, what promise,--what performance too!

For there 's a new distinctive touch, I see,

Lust--lacking in the two--hell's own blue tint

That gives a character and marks the man

More than a match for yellow and red. Once more,

A case reserved: why should I doubt? Then comes

The gaunt gray nightmare in the furthest smoke,

The hag that gave these three abortions birth,

Unmotherly mother and unwomanly

Woman, that near turns motherhood to shame,

Womanliness to loathing: no one word,

No gesture to curb cruelty a whit

More than the she-pard thwarts her playsome whelps

Trying their milk-teeth on the soft o' the throat

O' the first fawn, flung, with those beseeching eyes,

Flat in the covert! How should she but couch,

Lick the dry lips, unsheathe the blunted claw,

Catch 'twixt her placid eyewinks at what chance

Old bloody half-forgotten dream may flit,

Born when herself was novice to the taste,

The while she lets youth take its pleasure. Last,

These God-abandoned wretched lumps of life,

These four companions,--country-folk this time,

Not tainted by the unwholesome civic breath,

Much less the curse o' the court! Mere striplings too,

Fit to do human nature justice still!

Surely when impudence in Guido's shape

Shall propose crime and proffer money's-worth

To these stout tall rough bright-eyed black-haired boys,

The blood shall bound in answer to each cheek

Before the indignant outcry break from lip!

Are these i' the mood to murder, hardly loosed

From healthy autumn-finish of ploughed glebe,

Grapes in the barrel, work at happy end,

And winter near with rest and Christmas play?

How greet they Guido with his final task--

(As if he but proposed "One vineyard more

To dig, ere frost come, then relax indeed!")

"Anywhere, anyhow and anywhy,

Murder me some three people, old and young,

Ye never heard the names of,--and be paid

So much!" And the whole four accede at once.

Demur? Do cattle bidden march or halt?

Is it some lingering habit, old fond faith

I' the lord o' the land, instructs them,--birthright badge

Of feudal tenure claims its slaves again?

Not so at all, thou noble human heart!

All is done purely for the pay,--which, earned,

And not forthcoming at the instant, makes

Religion heresy, and the lord o' the land

Fit subject for a murder in his turn.

The patron with cut throat and rifled purse,

Deposited i' the roadside-ditch, his due,

Naught hinders each good fellow trudging home,

The heavier by a piece or two in poke,

And so with new zest to the common life,

Mattock and spade, plough-tail and wagon-shaft,

Till some such other piece of luck betide,

Who knows? Since this is a mere start in life,

And none of them exceeds the twentieth year.

Nay, more i' the background yet? Unnoticed forms

Claim to be classed, subordinately vile?

Complacent lookers-on that laugh,--perchance

Shake head as their friend's horse-play grows too rough

With the mere child he manages amiss--

But would not interfere and make bad worse

For twice the fractious tears and prayers: thou know'st

Civility better, Marzi-Medici,

Governor for thy kinsman the Granduke!

Fit representative of law, man's lamp

I' the magistrate's grasp full-flare, no rushlight-end

Sputtering 'twixt thumb and finger of the priest!

Whose answer to the couple's cry for help

Is a threat,--whose remedy of Pompilia's wrong,

A shrug o' the shoulder, and facetious word

Or wink, traditional with Tuscan wits,

To Guido in the doorway. Laud to law!

The wife is pushed back to the husband, he

Who knows how these home-squabblings persecute

People who have the public good to mind,

And work best with a silence in the court!

Ah, but I save my word at least for thee,

Archbishop, who art under, i' the Church,

As I am under God,--thou, chosen by both

To do the shepherd's office, feed the sheep--

How of this lamb that panted at thy foot

While the wolf pressed on her within crook's reach?

Wast thou the hireling that did turn and flee?

With thee at least anon the little word!

Such denizens o' the cave now cluster round

And heat the furnace sevenfold: time indeed

A bolt from heaven should cleave roof and clear place,

Transfix and show the world, suspiring flame,

The main offender, scar and brand the rest

Hurrying, each miscreant to his hole: then flood

And purify the scene with outside day--

Which yet, in the absolutest drench of dark,

Ne'er wants a witness, some stray beauty-beam

To the despair of hell.

First of the first,

Such I pronounce Pompilia, then as now

Perfect in whiteness: stoop thou down, my child,

Give one good moment to the poor old Pope

Heart-sick at having all his world to blame--

Let me look at thee in the flesh as erst,

Let me enjoy the old clean linen garb,

Not the new splendid vesture! Armed and crowned,

Would Michael, yonder, be, nor crowned nor armed,

The less pre-eminent angel? Everywhere

I see in the world the intellect of man,

That sword, the energy his subtle spear,

The knowledge which defends him like a shield--

Everywhere; but they make not up, I think,

The marvel of a soul like thine, earth's flower

She holds up to the softened gaze of God!

It was not given Pompilia to know much,

Speak much, to write a book, to move mankind,

Be memorized by who records my time.

Yet if in purity and patience, if

In faith held fast despite the plucking fiend,

Safe like the signet stone with the new name

That saints are known by,--if in right returned

For wrong, most pardon for worst injury,

If there be any virtue, any praise,--

Then will this woman-child have proved--who knows?--

Just the one prize vouchsafed unworthy me,

Seven years a gardener of the untoward ground

I till,--this earth, my sweat and blood manure

All the long day that barrenly grows dusk:

At least one blossom makes me proud at eve

Born 'mid the briers of my enclosure! Still

(Oh, here as elsewhere, nothingness of man!)

Those be the plants, imbedded yonder South

To mellow in the morning, those made fat

By the master's eye, that yield such timid leaf,

Uncertain bud, as product of his pains!

While--see how this mere chance-sown, cleft-nursed seed,

That sprang up by the wayside 'neath the foot

Of the enemy, this breaks all into blaze,

Spreads itself, one wide glory of desire

To incorporate the whole great sun it loves

From the inch-height whence it looks and longs! My flower,

My rose, I gather for the breast of God,

This I praise most in thee, where all I praise,

That having been obedient to the end

According to the light allotted, law

Prescribed thy life, still tried, still standing test,--

Dutiful to the foolish parents first,

Submissive next to the bad husband,--nay,

Tolerant of those meaner miserable

That did his hests, eked out the dole of pain,--

Thou, patient thus, couldst rise from law to law,

The old to the new, promoted at one cry

O' the trump of God to the new service, not

To longer bear, but henceforth fight, be found

Sublime in new impatience with the foe!

Endure man and obey God: plant firm foot

On neck of man, tread man into the hell

Meet for him, and obey God all the more!

Oh child that didst despise thy life so much

When it seemed only thine to keep or lose,

How the fine ear felt fall the first low word

"Value life, and preserve life for My sake!"

Thou didst ... how shall I say?... receive so long

The standing ordinance of God on earth,

What wonder if the novel claim had clashed

With old requirement, seemed to supersede

Too much the customary law? But, brave,

Thou at first prompting of what I call God,

And fools call Nature, didst hear, comprehend,

Accept the obligation laid on thee,

Mother elect, to save the unborn child,

As brute and bird do, reptile and the fly,

Ay and, I nothing doubt, even tree, shrub, plant

And flower o' the field, all in a common pact

To worthily defend the trust of trusts,

Life from the Ever Living:--didst resist--

Anticipate the office that is mine--

And with his own sword stay the upraised arm,

The endeavor of the wicked, and defend

Him who--again in my default--was there

For visible providence: one less true than thou

To touch, i' the past, less practised in the right,

Approved less far in all docility

To all instruction,--how had such an one

Made scruple "Is this motion a decree?"

It was authentic to the experienced ear

O' the good and faithful servant. Go past me

And get thy praise,--and be not far to seek

Presently when I follow if I may!

And surely not so very much apart

Need I place thee, my warrior-priest,--in whom

What if I gain the other rose, the gold,

We grave to imitate God's miracle,

Greet monarchs with, good rose in its degree?

Irregular noble scapegrace--son the same!

Faulty--and peradventure ours the fault

Who still misteach, mislead, throw hook and line,

Thinking to land leviathan forsooth,

Tame the scaled neck, play with him as a bird,

And bind him for our maidens! Better bear

The King of Pride go wantoning awhile,

Unplagued by cord in nose and thorn in jaw,

Through deep to deep, followed by all that shine,

Churning the blackness hoary: He who made

The comely terror, He shall make the sword

To match that piece of netherstone his heart,

Ay, nor miss praise thereby; who else shut fire

I' the stone, to leap from mouth at sword's first stroke,

In lamps of love and faith, the chivalry

That dares the right and disregards alike

The yea and nay o' the world? Self-sacrifice,--

What if an idol took it? Ask the Church

Why she was wont to turn each Venus here,--

Poor Rome perversely lingered round, despite

Instruction, for the sake of purblind love,--

Into Madonna's shape, and waste no whit

Of aught so rare on earth as gratitude!

All this sweet savor was not ours but thine,

Nard of the rock, a natural wealth we name

Incense, and treasure up as food for saints,

When flung to us--whose function was to give

Not find the costly perfume. Do I smile?

Nay, Caponsacchi, much I find amiss,

Blameworthy, punishable in this freak

Of thine, this youth prolonged, though age was ripe,

This masquerade in sober day, with change

Of motley too,--now hypocrite's disguise,

Now fool's-costume: which lie was least like truth,

Which the ungainlier, more discordant garb,

With that symmetric soul inside my son,

The churchman's or the worldling's,--let him judge,

Our adversary who enjoys the task!

I rather chronicle the healthy rage,--

When the first moan broke from the martyr-maid

At that uncaging of the beasts,--made bare

My athlete on the instant, gave such good

Great undisguised leap over post and pale

Right into the mid-cirque, free fighting-place.

There may have been rash stripping--every rag

Went to the winds,--infringement manifold

Of laws prescribed pudicity, I fear,

In this impulsive and prompt self-display!

Ever such tax comes of the foolish youth;

Men mulct the wiser manhood, and suspect

No veritable star swims out of cloud.

Bear thou such imputation, undergo

The penalty I nowise dare relax,--

Conventional chastisement and rebuke.

But for the outcome, the brave starry birth

Conciliating earth with all that cloud,

Thank heaven as I do! Ay, such championship

Of God at first blush, such prompt cheery thud

Of glove on ground that answers ringingly

The challenge of the false knight,--watch we long,

And wait we vainly for its gallant like

From those appointed to the service, sworn

His body-guard with pay and privilege--

White-cinct, because in white walks sanctity,

Red-socked, how else proclaim fine scorn of flesh,

Unchariness of blood when blood faith begs!

Where are the men-at-arms with cross on coat?

Aloof, bewraying their attire: whilst thou

In mask and motley, pledged to dance not fight,

Sprang'st forth the hero! In thought, word and deed,

How throughout all thy warfare thou wast pure,

I find it easy to believe: and if

At any fateful moment of the strange

Adventure, the strong passion of that strait,

Fear and surprise, may have revealed too much,--

As when a thundrous midnight, with black air

That burns, raindrops that blister, breaks a spell,

Draws out the excessive virtue of some sheathed

Shut unsuspected flower that hoards and hides

Immensity of sweetness,--so, perchance,

Might the surprise and fear release too much

The perfect beauty of the body and soul

Thou sayedst in thy passion for God's sake,

He who is Pity. Was the trial sore?

Temptation sharp? Thank God a second time!

Why comes temptation but for man to meet

And master and make crouch beneath his foot,

And so be pedestalled in triumph? Pray

"Lead us into no such temptations, Lord!"

Yea, but, O Thou whose servants are the bold,

Lead such temptations by the head and hair,

Reluctant dragons, up to who dares fight,

That so he may do battle and have praise!

Do I not see the praise?--that while thy mates

Bound to deserve i' the matter, prove at need

Unprofitable through the very pains

We gave to train them well and start them fair,--

Are found too stiff, with standing ranked and ranged,

For onset in good earnest, too obtuse

Of ear, through iteration of command,

For catching quick the sense of the real cry,--

Thou, whose sword-hand was used to strike the lute,

Whose sentry-station graced some wanton's gate,

Thou didst push forward and show mettle, shame

The laggards, and retrieve the day. Well done!

Be glad thou hast let light into the world,

Through that irregular breach o' the boundary,--see

The same upon thy path and march assured,

Learning anew the use of soldiership,

Self-abnegation, freedom from all fear,

Loyalty to the life's end! Ruminate,

Deserve the initiatory spasm,--once more

Work, be unhappy but bear life, my son!

And troop you, somewhere 'twixt the best and worst,

Where crowd the indifferent product, all too poor

Makeshift, starved samples of humanity!

Father and mother, huddle there and hide!

A gracious eye may find you! Foul and fair,

Sadly mixed natures: self-indulgent,--yet

Self-sacrificing too: how the love soars,

How the craft, avarice, vanity and spite

Sink again! So they keep the middle course,

Slide into silly crime at unaware,

Slip back upon the stupid virtue, stay

Nowhere enough for being classed, I hope

And fear. Accept the swift and rueful death,

Taught, somewhat sternlier than is wont, what waits

The ambiguous creature,--how the one black tuft

Steadies the aim of the arrow just as well

As the wide faultless white on the bird's breast!

Nay, you were punished in the very part

That looked most pure of speck, 't was honest love

Betrayed you,--did love seem most worthy pains,

Challenge such purging, since ordained survive

When all the rest of you was done with? Go!

Never again elude the choice of tints!

White shall not neutralize the black, nor good

Compensate bad in man, absolve him so:

Life's business being just the terrible choice.

So do I see, pronounce on all and some

Grouped for my judgment now,--profess no doubt

While I pronounce: dark, difficult enough

The human sphere, yet eyes grow sharp by use,

I find the truth, dispart the shine from shade,

As a mere man may, with no special touch

O' the lynx-gift in each ordinary orb:

Nay, if the popular notion class me right,

One of wellnigh decayed intelligence,--

What of that? Through hard labor and good will,

And habitude that gives a blind man sight

At the practised finger-ends of him, I do

Discern, and dare decree in consequence,

Whatever prove the peril of mistake.

Whence, then, this quite new quick cold thrill,--cloud-like,

This keen dread creeping from a quarter scarce

Suspected in the skies I nightly scan?

What slacks the tense nerve, saps the wound-up spring

Of the act that should and shall be, sends the mount

And mass o' the whole man's-strength,--conglobed so late--

Shudderingly into dust, a moment's work?

While I stand firm, go fearless, in this world,

For this life recognize and arbitrate,

Touch and let stay, or else remove a thing,

Judge "This is right, this object out of place,"

Candle in hand that helps me and to spare,--

What if a voice deride me, "Perk and pry!

Brighten each nook with thine intelligence!

Play the good householder, ply man and maid

With tasks prolonged into the midnight, test

Their work and nowise stint of the due wage

Each worthy worker: but with gyves and whip

Pay thou misprision of a single point

Plain to thy happy self who lift'st the light,

Lament'st the darkling,--bold to all beneath!

What if thyself adventure, now the place

Is purged so well? Leave pavement and mount roof,

Look round thee for the light of the upper sky,

The fire which lit thy fire which finds default

In Guido Franceschini to his cost!

What if, above in the domain of light,

Thou miss the accustomed signs, remark eclipse?

Shalt thou still gaze on ground nor lift a lid,--

Steady in thy superb prerogative,

Thy inch of inkling,--nor once face the doubt

I' the sphere above thee, darkness to be felt?"

Yet my poor spark had for its source, the sun;

Thither I sent the great looks which compel

Light from its fount: all that I do and am

Comes from the truth, or seen or else surmised,

Remembered or divined, as mere man may:

I know just so, nor otherwise. As I know,

I speak,--what should I know, then, and how speak

Were there a wild mistake of eye or brain

As to recorded governance above?

If my own breath, only, blew coal alight

I styled celestial and the morning-star?

I, who in this world act resolvedly,

Dispose of men, their bodies and their souls,

As they acknowledge or gainsay the light

I show them,--shall I too lack courage?--leave

I, too, the post of me, like those I blame?

Refuse, with kindred inconsistency,

To grapple danger whereby souls grow strong?

I am near the end; but still not at the end;

All to the very end is trial in life:

At this stage is the trial of my soul

Danger to face, or danger to refuse?

Shall I dare try the doubt now, or not dare?

O Thou,--as represented here to me

In such conception as my soul allows,--

Under Thy measureless, my atom width!--

Man's mind, what is it but a convex glass

Wherein are gathered all the scattered points

Picked out of the immensity of sky,

To reunite there, be our heaven for earth,

Our known unknown, our God revealed to man?

Existent somewhere, somehow, as a whole;

Here, as a whole proportioned to our sense,--

There, (which is nowhere, speech must babble thus!)

In the absolute immensity, the whole

Appreciable solely by Thyself,--

Here, by the little mind of man, reduced

To littleness that suits his faculty,

In the degree appreciable too;

Between Thee and ourselves--nay even, again,

Below us, to the extreme of the minute,

Appreciable by how many and what diverse

Modes of the life Thou madest be! (why live

Except for love,--how love unless they know?)

Each of them, only filling to the edge,

Insect or angel, his just length and breadth,

Due facet of reflection,--full, no less,

Angel or insect, as Thou framedst things.

I it is who have been appointed here

To represent Thee, in my turn, on earth,

Just as, if new philosophy know aught,

This one earth, out of all the multitude

Of peopled worlds, as stars are now supposed,--

Was chosen, and no sun-star of the swarm,

For stage and scene of Thy transcendent act

Beside which even the creation fades

Into a puny exercise of power.

Choice of the world, choice of the thing I am,

Both emanate alike from Thy dread play

Of operation outside this our sphere

Where things are classed and counted small or great,--

Incomprehensibly the choice is Thine!

I therefore bow my head and take Thy place.

There is, beside the works, a tale of Thee

In the world's mouth, which I find credible:

I love it with my heart: unsatisfied,

I try it with my reason, nor discept

From any point I probe and pronounce sound.

Mind is not matter nor from matter, but

Above,--leave matter then, proceed with mind!

Man's be the mind recognized at the height,--

Leave the inferior minds and look at man!

Is he the strong, intelligent and good

Up to his own conceivable height? Nowise.

Enough o' the low,--soar the conceivable height,

Find cause to match the effect in evidence,

The work i' the world, not man's but God's; leave man!

Conjecture of the worker by the work:

Is there strength there?--enough: intelligence?

Ample: but goodness in a like degree?

Not to the human eye in the present state,

An isoscele deficient in the base.

What lacks, then, of perfection fit for God

But just the instance which this tale supplies

Of love without a limit? So is strength,

So is intelligence; let love be so,

Unlimited in its self-sacrifice,

Then is the tale true and God shows complete.

Beyond the tale, I reach into the dark,

Feel what I cannot see, and still faith stands:

I can believe this dread machinery

Of sin and sorrow, would confound me else,

Devised--all pain, at most expenditure

Of pain by Who devised pain--to evolve,

By new machinery in counterpart,

The moral qualities of man--how else?--

To make him love in turn and be beloved,

Creative and self-sacrificing too,

And thus eventually God-like, (ay,

"I have said ye are Gods,"--shall it be said for naught?)

Enable man to wring, from out all pain,

All pleasure for a common heritage

To all eternity: this may be surmised,

The other is revealed,--whether a fact,

Absolute, abstract, independent truth,

Historic, not reduced to suit man's mind,--

Or only truth reverberate, changed, made pass

A spectrum into mind, the narrow eye,--

The same and not the same, else unconceived--

Though quite conceivable to the next grade

Above it in intelligence,--as truth

Easy to man were blindness to the beast

By parity of procedure,--the same truth

In a new form, but changed in either case:

What matter so intelligence be filled?

To a child, the sea is angry, for it roars:

Frost bites, else why the tooth-like fret on face?

Man makes acoustics deal with the sea's wrath,

Explains the choppy cheek by chymic law,--

To man and child remains the same effect

On drum of ear and root of nose, change cause

Never so thoroughly: so my heart be struck,

What care I,--by God's gloved hand or the bare?

Nor do I much perplex me with aught hard,

Dubious in the transmitting of the tale,--

No, nor with certain riddles set to solve.

This life is training and a passage; pass,--

Still, we march over some flat obstacle

We made give way before us; solid truth

In front of it, what motion for the world?

The moral sense grows but by exercise.

'T is even as man grew probatively

Initiated in Godship, set to make

A fairer moral world than this he finds,

Guess now what shall be known hereafter. Deal

Thus with the present problem: as we see,

A faultless creature is destroyed, and sin

Has had its way i' the world where God should rule.

Ay, but for this irrelevant circumstance

Of inquisition after blood, we see

Pompilia lost and Guido saved: how long?

For his whole life: how much is that whole life?

We are not babes, but know the minute's worth,

And feel that life is large and the world small,

So, wait till life have passed from out the world.

Neither does this astonish at the end,

That whereas I can so receive and trust,

Other men, made with hearts and souls the same,

Reject and disbelieve,--subordinate

The future to the present,--sin, nor fear.

This I refer still to the foremost fact,

Life is probation and the earth no goal

But starting-point of man: compel him strive,

Which means, in man, as good as reach the goal,--

Why institute that race, his life, at all?

But this does overwhelm me with surprise,

Touch me to terror,--not that faith, the pearl,

Should be let lie by fishers wanting food,--

Nor, seen and handled by a certain few

Critical and contemptuous, straight consigned

To shore and shingle for the pebble it proves,--

But that, when haply found and known and named

By the residue made rich forevermore,

These,--that these favored ones, should in a trice

Turn, and with double zest go dredge for whelks,

Mud-worms that make the savory soup! Enough

O' the disbelievers, see the faithful few!

How do the Christians here deport them, keep

Their robes of white unspotted by the world?

What is this Aretine Archbishop, this

Man under me as I am under God,

This champion of the faith, I armed and decked,

Pushed forward, put upon a pinnacle,

To show the enemy his victor,--see!

What 's the best fighting when the couple close?

Pompilia cries, "Protect me from the wolf!"

He--"No, thy Guido is rough, heady, strong,

Dangerous to disquiet: let him bide!

He needs some bone to mumble, help amuse

The darkness of his den with: so, the fawn

Which limps up bleeding to my foot and lies,

--Come to me, daughter!--thus I throw him back!"

Have we misjudged here, over-armed our knight,

Given gold and silk where plain hard steel serves best,

Enfeebled whom we sought to fortify,

Made an archbishop and undone a saint?

Well, then, descend these heights, this pride of life,

Sit in the ashes with a barefoot monk

Who long ago stamped out the worldly sparks,

By fasting, watching, stone cell and wire scourge,

--No such indulgence as unknits the strength--

These breed the tight nerve and tough cuticle,

And the world's praise or blame runs rillet-wise

Off the broad back and brawny breast, we know!

He meets the first cold sprinkle of the world,

And shudders to the marrow. "Save this child?

Oh, my superiors, oh, the Archbishop's self!

Who was it dared lay hand upon the ark

His betters saw fall nor put finger forth?

Great ones could help yet help not: why should small?

I break my promise: let her break her heart!"

These are the Christians not the worldlings, not

The sceptics, who thus battle for the faith!

If foolish virgins disobey and sleep,

What wonder? But, this time, the wise that watch,

Sell lamps and buy lutes, exchange oil for wine,

The mystic Spouse betrays the Bridegroom here,

To our last resource, then! Since all flesh is weak,

Bind weaknesses together, we get strength:

The individual weighed, found wanting, try

Some institution, honest artifice

Whereby the units grow compact and firm!

Each props the other, and so stand is made

By our embodied cowards that grow brave.

The Monastery called of Convertites,

Meant to help women because these helped Christ,--

A thing existent only while it acts,

Does as designed, else a nonentity,--

For what is an idea unrealized?--

Pompilia is consigned to these for help.

They do help: they are prompt to testify

To her pure life and saintly dying days.

She dies, and lo, who seemed so poor, proves rich!

What does the body that lives through helpfulness

To women for Christ's sake? The kiss turns bite,

The dove's note changes to the crow's cry: judge!

"Seeing that this our Convent claims of right

What goods belong to those we succor, be

The same proved women of dishonest life,--

And seeing that this Trial made appear

Pompilia was in such predicament,--

The Convent hereupon pretends to said

Succession of Pompilia, issues writ,

And takes possession by the Fisc's advice."

Such is their attestation to the cause

Of Christ, who had one saint at least, they hoped:

But, is a title-deed to filch, a corpse

To slander, and an infant-heir to cheat?

Christ must give up his gains then! They unsay

All the fine speeches,--who was saint is whore.

Why, scripture yields no parallel for this!

The soldiers only threw dice for Christ's coat;

We want another legend of the Twelve

Disputing if it was Christ's coat at all,

Claiming as prize the woof of price--for why?

The Master was a thief, purloined the same,

Or paid for it out of the common bag!

Can it be this is end and outcome, all

I take with me to show as stewardship's fruit,

The best yield of the latest time, this year

The seventeen-hundredth since God died for man?

Is such, effect proportionate to cause?

And still the terror keeps on the increase

When I perceive ... how can I blink the fact?

That the fault, the obduracy to good,

Lies not with the impracticable stuff

Whence man is made, his very nature's fault,

As if it were of ice the moon may gild

Not melt, or stone 't was meant the sun should warm

Not make bear flowers,--nor ice nor stone to blame:

But it can melt, that ice, can bloom, that stone,

Impassible to rule of day and night!

This terrifies me, thus compelled perceive,

Whatever love and faith we looked should spring

At advent of the authoritative star,

Which yet lie sluggish, curdled at the source,--

These have leapt forth profusely in old time,

These still respond with promptitude to-day,

At challenge of--what unacknowledged powers

O' the air, what uncommissioned meteors, warmth

By law, and light by rule should supersede?

For see this priest, this Caponsacchi, stung

At the first summons,--"Help for honor's sake,

Play the man, pity the oppressed!"--no pause,

How does he lay about him in the midst,

Strike any foe, right wrong at any risk,

All blindness, bravery and obedience!--blind?

Ay, as a man would be inside the sun,

Delirious with the plenitude of light

Should interfuse him to the finger-ends--

Let him rush straight, and how shall he go wrong?

Where are the Christians in their panoply?

The loins we girt about with truth, the breasts

Righteousness plated round, the shield of faith,

The helmet of salvation, and that sword

O' the Spirit, even the word of God,--where these?

Slunk into corners! Oh, I hear at once

Hubbub of protestation! "What, we monks,

We friars, of such an order, such a rule,

Have not we fought, bled, left our martyr-mark

At every point along the boundary-line

'Twixt true and false, religion and the world,

Where this or the other dogma of our Church

Called for defence?" And I, despite myself,

How can I but speak loud what truth speaks low,

"Or better than the best, or nothing serves!

What boots deed, I can cap and cover straight

With such another doughtiness to match,

Done at an instinct of the natural man?"

Immolate body, sacrifice soul too,--

Do not these publicans the same? Outstrip!

Or else stop race you boast runs neck and neck,

You with the wings, they with the feet,--for shame!

Oh, I remark your diligence and zeal!

Five years long, now, rounds faith into my ears,

"Help thou, or Christendom is done to death!"

Five years since, in the Province of To-kien,

Which is in China as some people know,

Maigrot, my Vicar Apostolic there,

Having a great qualm, issues a decree.

Alack, the converts use as God's name, not

_Tien-chu_ but plain _Tien_ or else mere _Shang-ti_,

As Jesuits please to fancy politic,

While, say Dominicans, it calls down fire,--

For _Tien_ means heaven, and _Shang-ti_, supreme prince,

While _Tien-chu_ means the lord of heaven: all cry,

"There is no business urgent for dispatch

As that thou send a legate, specially

Cardinal Tournon, straight to Pekin, there

To settle and compose the difference!"

So have I seen a potentate all fume

For some infringement of his realm's just right.

Some menace to a mud-built straw-thatched farm

O' the frontier; while inside the mainland lie,

Quite undisputed-for in solitude,

Whole cities plague may waste or famine sap:

What if the sun crumble, the sands encroach,

While he looks on sublimely at his ease?

How does their ruin touch the empire's bound?

And is this little all that was to be?

Where is the gloriously-decisive change,

Metamorphosis the immeasurable

Of human clay to divine gold, we looked

Should, in some poor sort, justify its price?

Had an adept of the mere Rosy Cross

Spent his life to consummate the Great Work,

Would not we start to see the stuff it touched

Yield not a grain more than the vulgar got

By the old smelting-process years ago?

If this were sad to see in just the sage

Who should profess so much, perform no more,

What is it when suspected in that Power

Who undertook to make and made the world,

Devised and did effect man, body and soul,

Ordained salvation for them both, and yet ...

Well, is the thing we see, salvation?

I

Put no such dreadful question to myself,

Within whose circle of experience burns

The central truth, Power, Wisdom, Goodness,--God:

I must outlive a thing ere know it dead:

When I outlive the faith there is a sun,

When I lie, ashes to the very soul,--

Some one, not I, must wail above the heap,

"He died in dark whence never morn arose."

While I see day succeed the deepest night--

How can I speak but as I know?--my speech

Must be, throughout the darkness, "It will end:

The light that did burn, will burn!" Clouds obscure--

But for which obscuration all were bright?

Too hastily concluded! Sun-suffused,

A cloud may soothe the eye made blind by blaze,--

Better the very clarity of heaven:

The soft streaks are the beautiful and dear.

What but the weakness in a faith supplies

The incentive to humanity, no strength

Absolute, irresistible, comports?

How can man love but what he yearns to help?

And that which men think weakness within strength,

But angels know for strength and stronger yet--

What were it else but the first things made new,

But repetition of the miracle,

The divine instance of self-sacrifice

That never ends and aye begins for man?

So, never I miss footing in the maze,

No,--I have light nor fear the dark at all.

But are mankind not real, who pace outside

My petty circle, world that 's measured me?

And when they stumble even as I stand,

Have I a right to stop ear when they cry,

As they were phantoms who took clouds for crags,

Tripped and fell, where man's march might safely move?

Beside, the cry is other than a ghost's,

When out of the old time there pleads some bard,

Philosopher, or both, and--whispers not.

But words it boldly. "The inward work and worth

Of any mind, what other mind may judge

Save God who only knows the thing he made,

The veritable service he exacts?

It is the outward product men appraise.

Behold, an engine hoists a tower aloft:

'I looked that it should move the mountain too!'

Or else 'Had just a turret toppled down,

Success enough!'--may say the Machinist

Who knows what less or more result might be:

But we, who see that done we cannot do,

'A feat beyond man's force,' we men must say.

Regard me and that shake I gave the world!

I was born, not so long before Christ's birth

As Christ's birth haply did precede thy day,--

But many a watch before the star of dawn:

Therefore I lived,--it is thy creed affirms,

Pope Innocent, who art to answer me!--

Under conditions, nowise to escape,

Whereby salvation was impossible.

Each impulse to achieve the good and fair,

Each aspiration to the pure and true,

Being without a warrant or an aim,

Was just as sterile a felicity

As if the insect, born to spend his life

Soaring his circles, stopped them to describe

(Painfully motionless in the mid-air)

Some word of weighty counsel for man's sake,

Some 'Know thyself' or 'Take the golden mean!'

--Forwent his happy dance and the glad ray,

Died half an hour the sooner and was dust.

I, born to perish like the brutes, or worse,

Why not live brutishly, obey brutes' law?

But I, of body as of soul complete,

A gymnast at the games, philosopher

I' the schools, who painted, and made music,--all

Glories that met upon the tragic stage

When the Third Poet's tread surprised the Two,--

Whose lot fell in a land where life was great

And sense went free and beauty lay profuse,

I, untouched by one adverse circumstance,

Adopted virtue as my rule of life,

Waived all reward, loved but for loving's sake,

And, what my heart taught me, I taught the world,

And have been teaching now two thousand years.

Witness my work,--plays that should please, forsooth!

'They might please, they may displease, they shall teach,

For truth's sake,' so I said, and did, and do.

Five hundred years ere Paul spoke, Felix heard,--

How much of temperance and righteousness,

Judgment to come, did I find reason for,

Corroborate with my strong style that spared

No sin, nor swerved the more from branding brow

Because the sinner was called Zeus and God?

How nearly did I guess at that Paul knew?

How closely come, in what I represent

As duty, to his doctrine yet a blank?

And as that limner not untruly limns

Who draws an object round or square, which square

Or round seems to the unassisted eye,

Though Galileo's tube display the same

Oval or oblong,--so, who controverts

I rendered rightly what proves wrongly wrought

Beside Paul's picture? Mine was true for me.

I saw that there are, first and above all,

The hidden forces, blind necessities,

Named Nature, but the thing's self unconceived:

Then follow--how dependent upon these,

We know not, how imposed above ourselves,

We well know--what I name the gods, a power

Various or one: for great and strong and good

Is there, and little, weak and bad there too,

Wisdom and folly: say, these make no God,--

What is it else that rules outside man's self?

A fact then,--always, to the naked eye,--

And so, the one revealment possible

Of what were unimagined else by man.

Therefore, what gods do, man may criticise,

Applaud, condemn,--how should he fear the truth?--

But likewise have in awe because of power,

Venerate for the main munificence,

And give the doubtful deed its due excuse

From the acknowledged creature of a day

To the Eternal and Divine. Thus, bold

Yet self-mistrusting, should man bear himself,

Most assured on what now concerns him most--

The law of his own life, the path he prints,--

Which law is virtue and not vice, I say,--

And least inquisitive where search least skills,

I' the nature we best give the clouds to keep.

What could I paint beyond a scheme like this

Out of the fragmentary truths where light

Lay fitful in a tenebrific time?

You have the sunrise now, joins truth to truth,

Shoots life and substance into death and void;

Themselves compose the whole we made before:

The forces and necessity grow God,--

The beings so contrarious that seemed gods,

Prove just his operation manifold

And multiform, translated, as must be,

Into intelligible shape so far

As suits our sense and sets us free to feel.

What if I let a child think, childhood-long,

That lightning, I would have him spare his eye,

Is a real arrow shot at naked orb?

The man knows more, but shuts his lids the same:

Lightning's cause comprehends nor man nor child.

Why then, my scheme, your better knowledge broke,

Presently readjusts itself, the small

Proportioned largelier, parts and whole named new:

So much, no more two thousand years have done!

Pope, dost thou dare pretend to punish me,

For not descrying sunshine at midnight,

Me who crept all-fours, found my way so far--

While thou rewardest teachers of the truth,

Who miss the plain way in the blaze of noon,--

Though just a word from that strong style of mine,

Grasped honestly in hand as guiding-staff,

Had pricked them a sure path across the bog,

That mire of cowardice and slush of lies

Wherein I find them wallow in wide day!"

How should I answer this Euripides?

Paul--'t is a legend--answered Seneca,

But that was in the day-spring; noon is now,

We have got too familiar with the light.

Shall I wish back once more that thrill of dawn?

When the whole truth-touched man burned up, one fire?

--Assured the trial, fiery, fierce, but fleet,

Would, from his little heap of ashes, lend

Wings to that conflagration of the world

Which Christ awaits ere he makes all things new:

So should the frail become the perfect, rapt

From glory of pain to glory of joy; and so,

Even in the end,--the act renouncing earth,

Lands, houses, husbands, wives and children here,--

Begin that other act which finds all, lost,

Regained, in this time even, a hundredfold,

And, in the next time, feels the finite love

Blent and embalmed with the eternal life.

So does the sun ghastlily seem to sink

In those north parts, lean all but out of life,

Desist a dread mere breathing-stop, then slow

Re-assert day, begin the endless rise.

Was this too easy for our after-stage?

Was such a lighting-up of faith, in life,

Only allowed initiate, set man's step

In the true way by help of the great glow?

A way wherein it is ordained he walk,

Bearing to see the light from heaven still more

And more encroached on by the light of earth,

Tentatives earth puts forth to rival heaven,

Earthly incitements that mankind serve God

For man's sole sake, not God's and therefore man's.

Till at last, who distinguishes the sun

From a mere Druid fire on a far mount?

More praise to him who with his subtle prism

Shall decompose both beams and name the true.

In such sense, who is last proves first indeed;

For how could saints and martyrs fail see truth

Streak the night's blackness? Who is faithful now,

Who untwists heaven's white from the yellow flare

O' the world's gross torch, without night's foil that helped

Produce the Christian act so possible

When in the way stood Nero's cross and stake--

So hard now when the world smiles "Right and wise!

Faith points the politic, the thrifty way.

Will make who plods it in the end returns

Beyond mere fool's-sport and improvidence.

We fools dance through the cornfield of this life,

Pluck ears to left and right and swallow raw,

--Nay, tread, at pleasure, a sheaf underfoot,

To get the better at some poppy-flower,--

Well aware we shall have so much less wheat

In the eventual harvest: you meantime

Waste not a spike,--the richlier will you reap!

What then? There will be always garnered meal

Sufficient for our comfortable loaf,

While you enjoy the undiminished sack!"

Is it not this ignoble confidence,

Cowardly hardihood, that dulls and damps,

Makes the old heroism impossible?

Unless ... what whispers me of times to come?

What if it be the mission of that age

My death will usher into life, to shake

This torpor of assurance from our creed,

Reintroduce the doubt discarded, bring

That formidable danger back, we drove

Long ago to the distance and the dark?

No wild beast now prowls round the infant camp:

We have built wall and sleep in city safe:

But if some earthquake try the towers that laugh,

To think they once saw lions rule outside,

And man stand out again, pale, resolute,

Prepared to die,--which means, alive at last?

As we broke up that old faith of the world,

Have we, next age, to break up this the new--

Faith, in the thing, grown faith in the report--

Whence need to bravely disbelieve report

Through increased faith i' the thing reports belie?

Must we deny,--do they, these Molinists,

At peril of their body and their soul,--

Recognized truths, obedient to some truth

Unrecognized yet, but perceptible?--

Correct the portrait by the living face,

Man's God, by God's God in the mind of man?

Then, for the few that rise to the new height,

The many that must sink to the old depth,

The multitude found fall away! A few,

E'en ere new law speak clear, may keep the old,

Preserve the Christian level, call good good

And evil evil, (even though razed and blank

The old titles,) helped by custom, habitude,

And all else they mistake for finer sense

O' the fact that reason warrants,--as before.

They hope perhaps, fear not impossibly,

At least some one Pompilia left the world

Will say "I know the right place by foot's feel,

I took it and tread firm there; wherefore change?"

But what a multitude will surely fall

Quite through the crumbling truth, late subjacent,

Sink to the next discoverable base,

Rest upon human nature, settle there

On what is firm, the lust and pride of life!

A mass of men, whose very souls even now

Seem to need re-creating,--so they slink

Worm-like into the mud, light now lays bare,--

Whose future we dispose of with shut eyes

And whisper--"They are grafted, barren twigs,

Into the living stock of Christ: may bear

One day, till when they lie death-like, not dead,"--

Those who with all the aid of Christ succumb,

How, without Christ, shall they, unaided, sink?

Whither but to this gulf before my eyes?

Do not we end, the century and I?

The impatient antimasque treads close on kibe

O' the very masque's self it will mock,--on me,

Last lingering personage, the impatient mime

Pushes already,--will I block the way?

Will my slow trail of garments ne'er leave space

For pantaloon, sock, plume and castanet?

Here comes the first experimentalist

In the new order of things,--he plays a priest;

Does he take inspiration from the Church,

Directly make her rule his law of life?

Not he: his own mere impulse guides the man--

Happily sometimes, since ourselves allow

He has danced, in gayety of heart, i' the main

The right step through the maze we bade him foot.

But if his heart had prompted him break loose

And mar the measure? Why, we must submit,

And thank the chance that brought him safe so far.

Will he repeat the prodigy? Perhaps.

Can he teach others how to quit themselves,

Show why this step was right while that were wrong?

How should he? "Ask your hearts as I asked mine,

And get discreetly through the morrice too;

If your hearts misdirect you,--quit the stage,

And make amends,--be there amends to make!"

Such is, for the Augustin that was once,

This Canon Caponsacchi we see now.

"But my heart answers to another tune,"

Puts in the Abate, second in the suite;

"I have my taste too, and tread no such step!

You choose the glorious life, and may, for me!

I like the lowest of life's appetites,--

So you judge,--but the very truth of joy

To my own apprehension which decides.

Call me knave and you get yourself called fool!

I live for greed, ambition, lust, revenge;

Attain these ends by force, guile: hypocrite,

To-day perchance to-morrow recognized

The rational man, the type of common sense."

There 's Loyola adapted to our time!

Under such guidance Guido plays his part,

He also influencing in the due turn

These last clods where I track intelligence

By any glimmer, these four at his beck

Ready to murder any, and, at their own,

As ready to murder him;--such make the world!

And, first effect of the new cause of things,

There they lie also duly,--the old pair

Of the weak head and not so wicked heart,

With the one Christian mother, wife and girl,

--Which three gifts seem to make an angel up,--

The world's first foot o' the dance is on their heads!

Still, I stand here, not off the stage though close

On the exit: and my last act, as my first,

I owe the scene, and Him who armed me thus

With Paul's sword as with Peter's key. I smite

With my whole strength once more, ere end my part,

Ending, so far as man may, this offence.

And when I raise my arm, who plucks my sleeve?

Who stops me in the righteous function,--foe

Or friend? Oh, still as ever, friends are they

Who, in the interest of outraged truth

Deprecate such rough handling of a lie!

The facts being proved and incontestable,

What is the last word I must listen to?

Perchance--"Spare yet a term this barren stock,

We pray thee dig about and dung and dress

Till he repent and bring forth fruit even yet!"

Perchance--"So poor and swift a punishment

Shall throw him out of life with all that sin:

Let mercy rather pile up pain on pain

Till the flesh expiate what the soul pays else!"

Nowise! Remonstrants on each side commence

Instructing, there 's a new tribunal now

Higher than God's--the educated man's!

Nice sense of honor in the human breast

Supersedes here the old coarse oracle--

Confirming none the less a point or so

Wherein blind predecessors worked aright

By rule of thumb: as when Christ said,--when, where?

Enough, I find it pleaded in a place,--

"All other wrongs done, patiently I take:

But touch my honor and the case is changed!

I feel the due resentment,--_nemini_

_Honorem trado_ is my quick retort."

Right of Him, just as if pronounced to-day!

Still, should the old authority be mute

Or doubtful, or in speaking clash with new,

The younger takes permission to decide.

At last we have the instinct of the world

Ruling its household without tutelage:

And while the two laws, human and divine,

Have busied finger with this tangled case,

In pushes the brisk junior, cuts the knot,

Pronounces for acquittal. How it trips

Silverly o'er the tongue! "Remit the death!

Forgive, ... well, in the old way, if thou please,

Decency and the relies of routine

Respected,--let the Count go free as air!

Since he may plead a priest's immunity,--

The minor orders help enough for that,

With Farinacci's license,--who decides

That the mere implication of such man,

So privileged, in any cause, before

Whatever Court except the Spiritual,

Straight quashes law-procedure,--quash it, then!

Remains a pretty loophole of escape

Moreover, that, beside the patent fact

O' the law's allowance, there 's involved the weal

O' the Popedom: a son's privilege at stake,

Thou wilt pretend the Church's interest,

Ignore all finer reasons to forgive!

But herein lies the crowning cogency--

(Let thy friends teach thee while thou tellest beads)

That in this case the spirit of culture speaks,

Civilization is imperative.

To her shall we remand all delicate points

Henceforth, nor take irregular advice

O' the sly, as heretofore: she used to hint

Remonstrances, when law was out of sorts

Because a saucy tongue was put to rest,

An eye that roved was cured of arrogance:

But why be forced to mumble under breath

What soon shall be acknowledged as plain fact,

Outspoken, say, in thy successor's time?

Methinks we see the golden age return!

Civilization and the Emperor

Succeed to Christianity and Pope.

One Emperor then, as one Pope now: meanwhile,

Anticipate a little! We tell thee 'Take

Guido's life, sapped society shall crash,

Whereof the main prop was, is, and shall be

--Supremacy of husband over wife!'

Does the man rule i' the house, and may his mate

Because of any plea dispute the same?

Oh, pleas of all sorts shall abound, be sure,

One but allowed validity,--for, harsh

And savage, for, inept and silly-sooth,

For, this and that, will the ingenious sex

Demonstrate the best master e'er graced slave:

And there 's but one short way to end the coil,--

Acknowledge right and reason steadily

I' the man and master: then the wife submits

To plain truth broadly stated. Does the time

Advise we shift--a pillar? nay, a stake

Out of its place i' the social tenement?

One touch may send a shudder through the heap

And bring it toppling on our children's heads!

Moreover, if ours breed a qualm in thee,

Give thine own better feeling play for once!

Thou, whose own life winks o'er the socket-edge,

Wouldst thou it went out in such ugly snuff

As dooming sons dead, e'en though justice prompt?

Why, on a certain feast, Barabbas' self

Was set free, not to cloud the general cheer:

Neither shalt thou pollute thy Sabbath close!

Mercy is safe and graceful. How one hears

The howl begin, scarce the three little taps

O' the silver mallet silent on thy brow,--

'His last act was to sacrifice a Count

And thereby screen a scandal of the Church!

Guido condemned, the Canon justified

Of course,--delinquents of his cloth go free!'

And so the Luthers chuckle, Calvins scowl,

So thy hand helps Molinos to the chair

Whence he may hold forth till doom's day on just

These _petit-maître_ priestlings,--in the choir,

_Sanctus et Benedictus_, with a brush

Of soft guitar-strings that obey the thumb,

Touched by the bedside, for accompaniment!

Does this give umbrage to a husband? Death

To the fool, and to the priest impunity!

But no impunity to any friend

So simply over-loyal as these four

Who made religion of their patron's cause,

Believed in him and did his bidding straight,

Asked not one question but laid down the lives

This Pope took,--all four lives together make

Just his own length of days,--so, dead they lie,

As these were times when loyalty 's a drug,

And zeal in a subordinate too cheap

And common to be saved when we spend life!

Come, 't is too much good breath we waste in words:

The pardon, Holy Father! Spare grimace,

Shrugs and reluctance! Are not we the world,

Art not thou Priam? let soft culture plead

Hecuba-like, '_non tali_' (Virgil serves)

'_Auxilio_,' and the rest! Enough, it works!

The Pope relaxes, and the Prince is loth,

The father's bowels yearn, the man's will bends,

Reply is apt. Our tears on tremble, hearts

Big with a benediction, wait the word

Shall circulate through the city in a trice,

Set every window flaring, give each man

O' the mob his torch to wave for gratitude.

Pronounce then, for our breath and patience fail!"

I will, Sirs: but a voice other than yours

Quickens my spirit. "_Quis pro Domino?_

Who is upon the Lord's side?" asked the Count.

I, who write--

"On receipt of this command,

Acquaint Count Guido and his fellows four

They die to-morrow: could it be to-night,

The better, but the work to do, takes time.

Set with all diligence a scaffold up,

Not in the customary place, by Bridge

Saint Angelo, where die the common sort;

But since the man is noble, and his peers

By predilection haunt the People's Square,

There let him be beheaded in the midst,

And his companions hanged on either side:

So shall the quality see, fear, and learn.

All which work takes time: till to-morrow, then,

Let there be prayer incessant for the five!"

For the main criminal I have no hope

Except in such a suddenness of fate.

I stood at Naples once, a night so dark

I could have scarce conjectured there was earth

Anywhere, sky or sea or world at all:

But the night's black was burst through by a blaze--

Thunder struck blow on blow, earth groaned and bore,

Through her whole length of mountain visible:

There lay the city thick and plain with spires,

And, like a ghost disshrouded, white the sea.

So may the truth be flashed out by one blow,

And Guido see, one instant, and be saved.

Else I avert my face, nor follow him

Into that sad obscure sequestered state

Where God unmakes but to remake the soul

He else made first in vain; which must not be.

Enough, for I may die this very night:

And how should I dare die, this man let live?

Carry this forthwith to the Governor!

XI

GUIDO

You are the Cardinal Acciaiuoli, and you,

Abate Panciatichi--two good Tuscan names:

Acciaiuoli--ah, your ancestor it was

Built the huge battlemented convent-block

Over the little forky flashing Greve

That takes the quick turn at the foot o' the hill

Just as one first sees Florence: oh those days!

'T is Ema, though, the other rivulet,

The one-arched brown brick bridge yawns over,--yes,

Gallop and go five minutes, and you gain

The Roman Gate from where the Ema 's bridged:

Kingfishers fly there: how I see the bend

O'erturreted by Certosa which he built,

That Senescal (we styled him) of your House!

I do adjure you, help me, Sirs! My blood

Comes from as far a source: ought it to end

This way, by leakage through their scaffold-planks

Into Rome's sink where her red refuse runs?

Sirs, I beseech you by blood-sympathy,

If there be any vile experiment

In the air,--if this your visit simply prove,

When all 's done, just a well-intentioned trick,

That tries for truth truer than truth itself,

By startling up a man, ere break of day,

To tell him he must die at sunset,--pshaw!

That man 's a Franceschini; feel his pulse,

Laugh at your folly, and let 's all go sleep!

You have my last word,--innocent am I

As Innocent my Pope and murderer,

Innocent as a babe, as Mary's own,

As Mary's self,--I said, say and repeat,--

And why, then, should I die twelve hours hence? I--

Whom, not twelve hours ago, the jailer bade

Turn to my straw-truss, settle and sleep sound

That I might wake the sooner, promptlier pay

His due of meat-and-drink-indulgence, cross

His palm with fee of the good-hand, beside,

As gallants use who go at large again!

For why? All honest Rome approved my part;

Whoever owned wife, sister, daughter,--nay,

Mistress,--had any shadow of any right

That looks like right, and, all the more resolved,

Held it with tooth and nail,--these manly men

Approved! I being for Rome, Rome was for me.

Then, there 's the point reserved, the subterfuge

My lawyers held by, kept for last resource,

Firm should all else--the impossible fancy!--fail,

And sneaking burgess-spirit win the day.

The knaves! One plea at least would hold,--they laughed,--

One grappling-iron scratch the bottom-rock

Even should the middle mud let anchor go!

I hooked my cause on to the Clergy's,--plea

Which, even if law tipped off my hat and plume,

Revealed my priestly tonsure, saved me so.

The Pope moreover, this old Innocent,

Being so meek and mild and merciful,

So fond o' the poor and so fatigued of earth,

So ... fifty thousand devils in deepest hell!

Why must he cure us of our strange conceit

Of the angel in man's likeness, that we loved

And looked should help us at a pinch? He help?

He pardon? Here 's his mind and message--death!

Thank the good Pope! Now, is he good in this,

Never mind, Christian,--no such stuff 's extant,--

But will my death do credit to his reign,

Show he both lived and let live, so was good?

Cannot I live if he but like? "The Law!"

Why, just the law gives him the very chance,

The precise leave to let my life alone,

Which the archangelic soul of him (he says)

Yearns after! Here they drop it in his palm,

My lawyers, capital o' the cursed kind,--

Drop life to take and hold and keep: but no!

He sighs, shakes head, refuses to shut hand,

Motions away the gift they bid him grasp,

And of the coyness comes--that off I run

And down I go, he best knows whither! mind,

He knows, who sets me rolling all the same!

Disinterested Vicar of our Lord,

This way he abrogates and disallows,

Nullifies and ignores,--reverts in fine

To the good and right, in detriment of me!

Talk away! Will you have the naked truth?

He 's sick of his life's supper,--swallowed lies:

So, hobbling bedward, needs must ease his maw

Just where I sit o' the doorsill. Sir Abate,

Can you do nothing? Friends, we used to frisk:

What of this sudden slash in a friend's face,

This cut across our good companionship

That showed its front so gay when both were young?

Were not we put into a beaten path,

Bid pace the world, we nobles born and bred,

We body of friends with each his 'scutcheon full

Of old achievement and impunity,--

Taking the laugh of morn and Sol's salute

As forth we fared, pricked on to breathe our steeds

And take equestrian sport over the green

Under the blue, across the crop,--what care?

If we went prancing up hill and down dale,

In and out of the level and the straight,

By the bit of pleasant byway, where was harm?

Still Sol salutes me and the morning laughs:

I see my grandsire's hoofprints,--point the spot

Where he drew rein, slipped saddle, and stabbed knave

For daring throw gibe--much less, stone--from pale:

Then back, and on, and up with the cavalcade.

Just so wend we, now canter, now converse,

Till, 'mid the jauncing pride and jaunty port,

Something of a sudden jerks at somebody--

A dagger is out, a flashing cut and thrust,

Because I play some prank my grandsire played,

And here I sprawl: where is the company? Gone!

A trot and a trample! Only I lie trapped,

Writhe in a certain novel springe just set

By the good old Pope: I 'm first prize. Warn me? Why?

Apprise me that the law o' the game is changed?

Enough that I 'm a warning, as I writhe,

To all and each my fellows of the file,

And make law plain henceforward past mistake,

"For such a prank, death is the penalty!"

Pope the Five Hundredth (what do I know or care?)

Deputes your Eminency and Abateship

To announce that, twelve hours from this time, he needs

I just essay upon my body and soul

The virtue of his brand-new engine, prove

Represser of the pranksome! I 'm the first!

Thanks. Do you know what teeth you mean to try

The sharpness of, on this soft neck and throat?

I know it,--I have seen and hate it,--ay,

As you shall, while I tell you! Let me talk,

Or leave me, at your pleasure! talk I must:

What is your visit but my lure to talk?

Nay, you have something to disclose?--a smile,

At end of the forced sternness, means to mock

The heart-beats here? I call your two hearts stone!

Is your charge to stay with me till I die?

Be tacit as your bench, then! Use your ears,

I use my tongue: how glibly yours will run

At pleasant supper-time ... God's curse! ... to-night

When all the guests jump up, begin so brisk,

"Welcome, his Eminence who shrived the wretch!

Now we shall have the Abate's story!"

Life!

How I could spill this overplus of mine

Among those hoar-haired, shrunk-shanked odds and ends

Of body and soul old age is chewing dry!

Those windle-straws that stare while purblind death

Mows here, mows there, makes hay of juicy me,

And misses just the bunch of withered weed

Would brighten hell and streak its smoke with flame!

How the life I could shed yet never shrink,

Would drench their stalks with sap like grass in May!

Is it not terrible, I entreat you, Sirs?

With manifold and plenitudinous life,

Prompt at death's menace to give blow for threat,

Answer his "Be thou not!" by "Thus I am!"--

Terrible so to be alive yet die?