How I live, how I see! so,--how I speak!

Lucidity of soul unlocks the lips:

I never had the words at will before.

How I see all my folly at a glance!

"A man requires a woman and a wife:"

There was my folly; I believed the saw.

I knew that just myself concerned myself,

Yet needs must look for what I seemed to lack,

In a woman,--why, the woman 's in the man!

Fools we are, how we learn things when too late!

Overmuch life turns round my woman-side;

The male and female in me, mixed before,

Settle of a sudden: I 'm my wife outright

In this unmanly appetite for truth,

This careless courage as to consequence,

This instantaneous sight through things and through,

This voluble rhetoric, if you please,--'t is she!

Here you have that Pompilia whom I slew,

Also the folly for which I slew her!

Fool!

And, fool-like, what is it I wander from?

What did I say of your sharp iron tooth?

All,--that I know the hateful thing! this way.

I chanced to stroll forth, many a good year gone,

One warm Spring eve in Rome, and unaware

Looking, mayhap, to count what stars were out,

Came on your fine axe in a frame, that falls

And so cuts off a man's head underneath,

Mannaia,--thus we made acquaintance first:

Out of the way, in a by-part o' the town,

At the Mouth-of-Truth o' the river-side, you know:

One goes by the Capitol: and wherefore coy,

Retiring out of crowded noisy Rome?

Because a very little time ago

It had done service, chopped off head from trunk,

Belonging to a fellow whose poor house

The thing must make a point to stand before.

Felice Whatsoever-was-the-name

Who stabled buffaloes and so gained bread,

(Our clowns unyoke them in the ground hard by,)

And, after use of much improper speech,

Had struck at Duke Some-title-or-other's face,

Because he kidnapped, carried away and kept

Felice's sister who would sit and sing

I' the filthy doorway while she plaited fringe

To deck the brutes with,--on their gear it goes,--

The good girl with the velvet in her voice.

So did the Duke, so did Felice, so

Did Justice, intervening with her axe.

There the man-mutilating engine stood

At ease, both gay and grim, like a Swiss guard

Off duty,--purified itself as well,

Getting dry, sweet and proper for next week,--

And doing incidental good, 't was hoped

To the rough lesson-lacking populace

Who now and then, forsooth, must right their wrongs!

There stood the twelve-foot-square of scaffold, railed

Considerately round to elbow-height,

For fear an officer should tumble thence

And sprain his ankle and be lame a month,

Through starting when the axe fell and head too!

Railed likewise were the steps whereby 't was reached.

All of it painted red: red, in the midst,

Ran up two narrow tall beams barred across,

Since from the summit, some twelve feet to reach,

The iron plate with the sharp shearing edge

Had slammed, jerked, shot, slid,--I shall soon find which!

And so lay quiet, fast in its fit place,

The wooden half-moon collar, now eclipsed

By the blade which blocked its curvature: apart,

The other half,--the under half-moon board

Which, helped by this, completes a neck's embrace,--

Joined to a sort of desk that wheels aside

Out of the way when done with,--down you kneel,

In you 're pushed, over you the other drops,

Tight you 're clipped, whiz, there 's the blade cleaves its best,

Out trundles body, down flops head on floor,

And where 's your soul gone? That, too, I shall find!

This kneeling-place was red, red, never fear!

But only slimy-like with paint, not blood,

For why? a decent pitcher stood at hand,

A broad dish to hold sawdust, and a broom

By some unnamed utensil,--scraper-rake,--

Each with a conscious air of duty done.

Underneath, loungers,--boys and some few men,--

Discoursed this platter, named the other tool,

Just as, when grooms tie up and dress a steed,

Boys lounge and look on, and elucubrate

What the round brush is used for, what the square,--

So was explained--to me the skill-less then--

The manner of the grooming for next world

Undergone by Felice What's-his-name.

There 's no such lovely month in Rome as May--

May's crescent is no half-moon of red plank,

And came now tilting o'er the wave i' the west,

One greenish-golden sea, right 'twixt those bars

Of the engine--I began acquaintance with,

Understood, hated, hurried from before,

To have it out of sight and cleanse my soul!

Here it is all again, conserved for use:

Twelve hours hence, I may know more, not hate worse.

That young May-moon-month! Devils of the deep!

Was not a Pope then Pope as much as now?

Used not he chirrup o'er the Merry Tales,

Chuckle,--his nephew so exact the wag

To play a jealous cullion such a trick

As wins the wife i' the pleasant story! Well?

Why do things change? Wherefore is Rome un-Romed?

I tell you, ere Felice's corpse was cold,

The Duke, that night, threw wide his palace-doors,

Received the compliments o' the quality

For justice done him,--bowed and smirked his best,

And in return passed round a pretty thing,

A portrait of Felice's sister's self,

Florid old rogue Albano's masterpiece,

As--better than virginity in rags--

Bouncing Europa on the back o' the bull:

They laughed and took their road the safelier home.

Ah, but times change, there's quite another Pope,

I do the Duke's deed, take Felice's place,

And, being no Felice, lout and clout,

Stomach but ill the phrase, "I lose my head!"

How euphemistic! Lose what? Lose your ring,

Your snuff-box, tablets, kerchief!--but, your head?

I learnt the process at an early age;

'Twas useful knowledge, in those same old days,

To know the way a head is set on neck.

My fencing-master urged, "Would you excel?

Rest not content with mere bold give-and-guard,

Nor pink the antagonist somehow-anyhow!

See me dissect a little, and know your game!

Only anatomy makes a thrust the thing."

Oh, Cardinal, those lithe live necks of ours!

Here go the vertebræ, here's _Atlas_, here

_Axis_, and here the symphyses stop short,

So wisely and well,--as, o'er a corpse, we cant,--

And here's the silver cord which ... what's our word?

Depends from the gold bowl, which loosed (not "lost")

Lets us from heaven to hell,--one chop, we're loose!

"And not much pain i' the process," quoth a sage:

Who told him? Not Felice's ghost, I think!

Such "losing" is scarce Mother Nature's mode.

She fain would have cord ease itself away,

Worn to a thread by threescore years and ten,

Snap while we slumber: that seems bearable.

I'm told one clot of blood extravasate

Ends one as certainly as Roland's sword,--

One drop of lymph suffused proves Oliver's mace,--

Intruding, either of the pleasant pair,

On the arachnoid tunic of my brain.

That's Nature's way of loosing cord!--but Art,

How of Art's process with the engine here,

When bowl and cord alike are crushed across,

Bored between, bruised through? Why, if Fagon's self,

The French Court's pride, that famed practitioner,

Would pass his cold pale lightning of a knife,

Pistoja-ware, adroit 'twixt joint and joint,

With just a "See how facile, gentlefolk!"--

The thing were not so bad to bear! Brute force

Cuts as he comes, breaks in, breaks on, breaks out

O' the hard and soft of you: is that the same?

A lithe snake thrids the hedge, makes throb no leaf:

A heavy ox sets chest to brier and branch,

Bursts somehow through, and leaves one hideous hole

Behind him!

And why, why must this needs be?

Oh, if men were but good! They are not good,

Nowise like Peter: people called him rough,

But if, as I left Rome, I spoke the Saint,

--"_Petrus, quo vadis?_"--doubtless, I should hear,

"To free the prisoner and forgive his fault!

I plucked the absolute dead from God's own bar,

And raised up Dorcas,--why not rescue thee?"

What would cost one such nullifying word?

If Innocent succeeds to Peter's place,

Let him think Peter's thought, speak Peter's speech!

I say, he is bound to it: friends, how say you?

Concede I be all one bloodguiltiness

And mystery of murder in the flesh,

Why should that fact keep the Pope's mouth shut fast?

He execrates my crime,--good!--sees hell yawn

One inch from the red plank's end which I press,--

Nothing is better! What's the consequence?

How should a Pope proceed that knows his cue?

Why, leave me linger out my minute here,

Since close on death comes judgment and comes doom,

Not crib at dawn its pittance from a sheep

Destined ere dewfall to be butcher's-meat!

Think, Sirs, if I have done you any harm,

And you require the natural revenge,

Suppose, and so intend to poison me,

--Just as you take and slip into my draught

The paperful of powder that clears scores,

You notice on my brow a certain blue:

How you both overset the wine at once!

How you both smile, "Our enemy has the plague!

Twelve hours hence he'll be scraping his bones bare

Of that intolerable flesh, and die,

Frenzied with pain: no need for poison here!

Step aside and enjoy the spectacle!"

Tender for souls are you, Pope Innocent!

Christ's maxim is--one soul outweighs the world:

Respite me, save a soul, then, curse the world!

"No," venerable sire, I hear you smirk,

"No: for Christ's gospel changes names, not things,

Renews the obsolete, does nothing more!

Our fire-new gospel is re-tinkered law,

Our mercy, justice,--Jove's rechristened God,--

Nay, whereas, in the popular conceit,

'T is pity that old harsh Law somehow limps,

Lingers on earth, although Law's day be done,

Else would benignant Gospel interpose,

Not furtively as now, but bold and frank

O'erflutter us with healing in her wings,

Law being harshness, Gospel only love--

We tell the people, on the contrary,

Gospel takes up the rod which Law lets fall;

Mercy is vigilant when justice sleeps!

Does Law permit a taste of Gospel-grace?

The secular arm allow the spiritual power

To act for once?--no compliment so fine

As that our Gospel handsomely turn harsh,

Thrust victim hack on Law the nice and coy!"

Yes, you do say so,--else you would forgive

Me, whom Law does not touch but tosses you!

Don't think to put on the professional face!

You know what I know,--casuists as you are,

Each nerve must creep, each hair start, sting and stand,

At such illogical inconsequence!

Dear my friends, do but see! A murder's tried,

There are two parties to the cause: I'm one,

--Defend myself, as somebody must do:

I have the best o' the battle: that's a fact,

Simple fact,--fancies find no place just now.

What though half Rome condemned me? Half approved

And, none disputes, the luck is mine at last,

All Rome, i' the main, acquitting me: whereon,

What has the Pope to ask but "How finds Law?"

"I find," replies Law, "I have erred this while:

Guilty or guiltless, Guido proves a priest,

No layman: he is therefore yours, not mine:

I bound him: loose him, you whose will is Christ's!"

And now what does this Vicar of our Lord,

Shepherd o' the flock,--one of whose charge bleats sore

For crook's help from the quag wherein it drowns?

Law suffers him employ the crumpled end:

His pleasure is to turn staff, use the point,

And thrust the shuddering sheep, he calls a wolf,

Back and back, down and down to where hell gapes!

"Guiltless," cries Law--"Guilty," corrects the Pope!

"Guilty," for the whim's sake! "Guilty," he somehow thinks,

And anyhow says: 't is truth; he dares not lie!

Others should do the lying. That's the cause

Brings you both here: I ought in decency

Confess to you that I deserve my fate,

Am guilty, as the Pope thinks,--ay, to the end,

Keep up the jest, lie on, lie ever, lie

I' the latest gasp of me! What reason, Sirs?

Because to-morrow will succeed to-day

For you, though not for me: and if I stick

Still to the truth, declare with my last breath,

I die an innocent and murdered man,--

Why, there's the tongue of Rome will wag apace

This time to-morrow,--don't I hear the talk!

"So, to the last he proved impenitent?

Pagans have said as much of martyred saints!

Law demurred, washed her hands of the whole case.

Prince Somebody said this, Duke Something, that.

Doubtless the man's dead, dead enough, don't fear!

But, hang it, what if there have been a spice,

A touch of ... eh? You see, the Pope's so old,

Some of us add, obtuse,--age never slips

The chance of shoving youth to face death first!"

And so on. Therefore to suppress such talk

You two come here, entreat I tell you lies,

And end, the edifying way. I end,

Telling the truth! Your self-styled shepherd thieves!

A thief--and how thieves hate the wolves we know:

Damage to theft, damage to thrift, all's one!

The red hand is sworn foe of the black jaw.

That's only natural, that's right enough:

But why the wolf should compliment the thief

With shepherd's title, bark out life in thanks,

And, spiteless, lick the prong that spits him,--eh,

Cardinal? My Abate, scarcely thus!

There, let my sheepskin-garb, a curse on 't, go--

Leave my teeth free if I must show my shag!

Repent? What good shall follow? If I pass

Twelve hours repenting, will that fact hold fast

The thirteenth at the horrid dozen's end?

If I fall forthwith at your feet, gnash, tear,

Foam, rave, to give your story the due grace,

Will that assist the engine half-way back

Into its hiding-house?--boards, shaking now,

Bone against bone, like some old skeleton bat

That wants, at winter's end, to wake and prey!

Will howling put the spectre back to sleep?

Ah, but I misconceive your object, Sirs!

Since I want new life like the creature,--life,

Being done with here, begins i' the world away:

I shall next have "Come, mortals, and be judged!"

There's but a minute betwixt this and then:

So, quick, be sorry since it saves my soul!

Sirs, truth shall save it, since no lies assist!

Hear the truth, you, whatever you style yourselves,

Civilization and society!

Come, one good grapple, I with all the world!

Dying in cold blood is the desperate thing;

The angry heart explodes, bears off in blaze

The indignant soul, and I'm combustion-ripe.

Why, you intend to do your worst with me!

That's in your eyes! You dare no more than death,

And mean no less. I must make up my mind!

So Pietro--when I chased him here and there,

Morsel by morsel cut away the life

I loathed--cried for just respite to confess

And save his soul: much respite did I grant!

Why grant me respite who deserve my doom?

Me--who engaged to play a prize, fight you,

Knowing your arms, and foil you, trick for trick,

At rapier-fence, your match and, maybe, more.

I knew that if I chose sin certain sins,

Solace my lusts out of the regular way

Prescribed me, I should find you in the path,

Have to try skill with a redoubted foe;

You would lunge, I would parry, and make end.

At last, occasion of a murder comes:

We cross Hades, I, for all my brag, break guard,

And in goes the cold iron at my breast,

Out at my back, and end is made of me.

You stand confessed the adroiter swordsman,--ay,

But on your triumph you increase, it seems,

Want more of me than lying flat on face:

I ought to raise my ruined head, allege

Not simply I pushed worse blade o' the pair,

But my antagonist dispensed with steel!

There was no passage of arms, you looked me low,

With brow and eye abolished cut and thrust,

Nor used the vulgar weapon! This chance scratch,

This incidental hurt, this sort of hole

I' the heart of me? I stumbled, got it so!

Fell on my own sword as a bungler may!

Yourself proscribe such heathen tools, and trust

To the naked virtue: it was virtue stood

Unarmed and awed me,--on my brow there burned

Crime out so plainly, intolerably red,

That I was fain to cry--"Down to the dust

With me, and bury there brow, brand and all!"

Law had essayed the adventure,--but what's Law?

Morality exposed the Gorgon shield!

Morality and Religion conquer me.

If Law sufficed would you come here, entreat

I supplement law, and confess forsooth?

Did not the Trial show things plain enough?

"Ah, but a word of the man's very self

Would somehow put the keystone in its place

And crown the arch!" Then take the word you want!

I say that, long ago, when things began,

All the world made agreement, such and such

Were pleasure-giving profit-bearing acts,

But henceforth extra-legal, nor to be:

You must not kill the man whose death would please

And profit you, unless his life stop yours

Plainly, and need so be put aside:

Get the thing by a public course, by law,

Only no private bloodshed as of old!

All of us, for the good of every one

Renounced such license and conformed to law:

Who breaks law, breaks pact therefore, helps himself

To pleasure and profit over and above the due,

And must pay forfeit,--pain beyond his share:

For, pleasure being the sole good in the world,

Any one's pleasure turns to some one's pain,

So, law must watch for every one,--say we,

Who call things wicked that give too much joy,

And nickname mere reprisal, envy makes,

Punishment: quite right! thus the world goes round.

I, being well aware such pact there was,

I, in my time who found advantage come

Of law's observance and crime's penalty,--

Who, but for wholesome fear law bred in friends,

Had doubtless given example long ago,

Furnished forth some friend's pleasure with my pain,

And, by my death, pieced out his scanty rife,--

I could not, for that foolish life of me,

Help risking law's infringement,--I broke bond,

And needs must pay price,--wherefore, here's my head,

Flung with a flourish! But, repentance too?

But pure and simple sorrow for law's breach

Rather than blunderer's-ineptitude?

Cardinal, no! Abate, scarcely thus!

'Tis the fault, not that I dared try a fall

With Law and straightway am found undermost,

But that I failed to see, above man's law,

God's precept you, the Christians, recognize?

Colly my cow! Don't fidget, Cardinal!

Abate, cross your breast and count your beads

And exorcise the devil, for here he stands

And stiffens in the bristly nape of neck,

Daring you drive him hence! You, Christians both?

I say, if ever was such faith at all

Born in the world, by your community

Suffered to live its little tick of time,

'Tis dead of age, now, ludicrously dead;

Honor its ashes, if you be discreet,

In epitaph only! For, concede its death,

Allow extinction, you may boast unchecked

What feats the thing did in a crazy land

At a fabulous epoch,--treat your faith, that way,

Just as you treat your relics: "Here's a shred

Of saintly flesh, a scrap of blessed bone,

Raised King Cophetua, who was dead, to life

In Mesopotamy twelve centuries since,

Such was its virtue!"--twangs the Sacristan,

Holding the shrine-box up, with hands like feet

Because of gout in every finger-joint:

Does he bethink him to reduce one knob,

Allay one twinge by touching what he vaunts?

I think he half uncrooks fist to catch fee,

But, for the grace, the quality of cure,--

Cophetua was the man put that to proof!

Not otherwise, your faith is shrined and shown

And shamed at once: you banter while you bow!

Do you dispute this? Come, a monster-laugh,

A madman's laugh, allowed his Carnival

Later ten days than when all Rome, but he,

Laughed at the candle-contest: mine's alight,

'T is just it sputter till the puff o' the Pope

End it to-morrow and the world turn Ash.

Come, thus I wave a wand and bring to pass

In a moment, in the twinkle of an eye,

What but that--feigning everywhere grows fact,

Professors turn possessors, realize

The faith they play with as a fancy now,

And bid it operate, have full effect

On every circumstance of life, to-day,

In Rome,--faith's flow set free at fountain-head!

Now, you'll own, at this present, when I speak,

Before I work the wonder, there's no man,

Woman or child in Rome, faith's fountain-head,

But might, if each were minded, realize

Conversely unbelief, faith's opposite--

Set it to work on life unflinchingly,

Yet give no symptom of an outward change:

Why should things change because men disbelieve?

What's incompatible, in the whited tomb,

With bones and rottenness one inch below?

What saintly act is done in Rome to-day

But might be prompted by the devil,--"is"

I say not,--"has been, and again may be,"--

I do say, full i' the face o' the crucifix

You try to stop my mouth with! Off with it!

Look in your own heart, if your soul have eyes!

You shall see reason why, though faith were fled,

Unbelief still might work the wires and move

Man, the machine, to play a faithful part.

Preside your college, Cardinal, in your cape,

Or,--having got above his head, grown Pope,--

Abate, gird your loins and wash my feet!

Do you suppose I am at loss at all

Why you crook, why you cringe, why fast or feast?

Praise, blame, sit, stand, lie or go!--all of it,

In each of you, purest unbelief may prompt,

And wit explain to who has eyes to see.

But, lo, I wave wand, make the false the true!

Here's Rome believes in Christianity!

What an explosion, how the fragments fly

Of what was surface, mask and make-believe!

Begin now,--look at this Pope's-halberdier

In wasp-like black and yellow foolery!

He, doing duty at the corridor,

Wakes from a muse and stands convinced of sin!

Down he flings halbert, leaps the passage-length,

Pushes into the presence, pantingly

Submits the extreme peril of the case

To the Pope's self,--whom in the world beside?--

And the Pope breaks talk with ambassador,

Bids aside bishop, wills the whole world wait

Till he secure that prize, outweighs the world,

A soul, relieve the sentry of his qualm!

His Altitude the Referendary--

Robed right, and ready for the usher's word

To pay devoir--is, of all times, just then

'Ware of a master-stroke of argument

Will cut the spinal cord ... ugh, ugh!... I mean,

Paralyze Molinism forevermore!

Straight he leaves lobby, trundles, two and two,

Down steps to reach home, write, if but a word

Shall end the impudence: he leaves who likes

Go pacify the Pope: there's Christ to serve!

How otherwise would men display their zeal?

If the same sentry had the least surmise

A powder-barrel 'neath the pavement lay

In neighborhood with what might prove a match,

Meant to blow sky-high Pope and presence both--

Would he not break through courtiers, rank and file,

Bundle up, bear off, and save body so,

The Pope, no matter for his priceless soul?

There's no fool's-freak here, naught to soundly swinge,

Only a man in earnest, you'll so praise

And pay and prate about, that earth shall ring!

Had thought possessed the Referendary

His jewel-ease at home was left ajar,

What would be wrong in running, robes awry,

To be beforehand with the pilferer?

What talk then of indecent haste? Which means,

That both these, each in his degree, would do

Just that--for a comparative nothing's sake,

And thereby gain approval and reward--

Which, done for what Christ says is worth the world,

Procures the doer curses, cuffs and kicks.

I call such difference 'twixt act and act,

Sheer lunacy unless your truth on lip

Be recognized a lie in heart of you!

How do you all act, promptly or in doubt,

When there's a guest poisoned at supper-time

And he sits chatting on with spot on cheek?

"Pluck him by the skirt, and round him in the ears,

Have at him by the beard, warn anyhow!"

Good; and this other friend that's cheat and thief

And dissolute,--go stop the devil's feast,

Withdraw him from the imminent hell-fire!

Why, for your life, you dare not tell your friend,

"You lie, and I admonish you for Christ!"

Who yet dare seek that same man at the Mass

To warn him--on his knees, and tinkle near,--

He left a cask a-tilt, a tap unturned,

The Trebbian running: what a grateful jump

Out of the Church rewards your vigilance!

Perform that selfsame service just a thought

More maladroitly,--since a bishop sits

At function!--and he budges not, bites lip,--

"You see my case: how can I quit my post?

He has an eye to any such default.

See to it, neighbor, I beseech your love!"

He and you know the relative worth of things,

What is permissible or inopportune.

Contort your brows! You know I speak the truth:

Gold is called gold, and dross called dross, i' the Book:

Gold you let lie and dross pick up and prize!

--Despite your muster of some fifty monks

And nuns a-maundering here and mumping there,

Who could, and on occasion would, spurn dross,

Clutch gold, and prove their faith a fact so far,--

I grant you! Fifty times the number squeak

And gibber in the madhouse--firm of faith,

This fellow, that his nose supports the moon;

The other, that his straw hat crowns him Pope:

Does that prove all the world outside insane?

Do fifty miracle-mongers match the mob

That acts on the frank faithless principle,

Born-baptized-and-bred Christian-atheists, each

With just as much a right to judge as you,--

As many senses in his soul, and nerves

I' neck of him as I,--whom, soul and sense,

Neck and nerve, you abolish presently,--

I being the unit in creation now

Who pay the Maker, in this speech of mine,

A creature's duty, spend my last of breath

In bearing witness, even by my worst fault,

To the creature's obligation, absolute,

Perpetual: my worst fault protests, "The faith

Claims all of me: I would give all she claims,

But for a spice of doubt: the risk's too rash:

Double or quits, I play, but, all or naught,

Exceeds my courage: therefore, I descend

To the next faith with no dubiety--

Faith in the present life, made last as long

And prove as full of pleasure as may hap,

Whatever pain it cause the world." I 'm wrong?

I've had my life, whate'er I lose: I'm right?

I've got the single good there was to gain.

Entire faith, or else complete unbelief!

Aught between has my loathing and contempt,

Mine and God's also, doubtless: ask yourself,

Cardinal, where and how you like a man!

Why, either with your feet upon his head,

Confessed your caudatory, or, at large,

The stranger in the crowd who caps to you

But keeps his distance,--why should he presume?

You want no hanger-on and dropper-off,

Now yours, and now not yours but quite his own,

According as the sky looks black or bright.

Just so I capped to and kept off from faith--

You promised trudge behind through fair and foul,

Yet leave i' the lurch at the first spit of rain.

Who holds to faith whenever rain begins?

What does the father when his son lies dead,

The merchant when his money-bags take wing,

The politican whom a rival ousts?

No case but has its conduct, faith prescribes:

Where's the obedience that shall edify?

Why, they laugh frankly in the face of faith

And take the natural course,--this rends his hair

Because his child is taken to God's breast,

That gnashes teeth and raves at loss of trash

Which rust corrupts and thieves break through and steal,

And this, enabled to inherit earth

Through meekness, curses till your blood runs cold!

Down they all drop to my low level, rest

Heart upon dungy earth that's warm and soft,

And let who please attempt the altitudes:

Each playing prodigal son of heavenly sire,

Turning his nose up at the fatted calf,

Fain to fill belly with the husks, we swine

Did eat by born depravity of taste!

Enough of the hypocrites. But you, Sirs, you--

Who never budged from litter where I lay,

And buried snout i' the draff-box while I fed,

Cried amen to my creed's one article--

"Get pleasure, 'scape pain,--give your preference

To the immediate good, for time is brief,

And death ends good and ill and everything!

What's got is gained, what's gained soon is gained twice,

And--inasmuch as faith gains most--feign faith!"

So did we brother-like pass word about:

--You, now,--like bloody drunkards but half-drunk,

Who fool men yet perceive men find them fools,--

Vexed that a titter gains the gravest mouth,--

O' the sudden you must needs reintroduce

Solemnity, straight sober undue mirth

By a blow dealt me your boon companion here,

Who, using the old license, dreamed of harm

No more than snow in harvest: yet it falls!

You check the merriment effectually

By pushing your abrupt machine i' the midst,

Making me Rome's example: blood for wine!

The general good needs that you chop and change!

I may dislike the hocus-pocus,--Rome,

The laughter-loving people, won't they stare

Chapfallen!--while serious natures sermonize,

"The magistrate, he beareth not the sword

In vain; who sins may taste its edge, we see!"

Why my sin, drunkards? Where have I abused

Liberty, scandalized you all so much?

Who called me, who crooked finger till I came,

Fool that I was, to join companionship?

I knew my own mind, meant to live my life,

Elude your envy, or else make a stand,

Take my own part and sell you my life dear.

But it was "Fie! No prejudice in the world

To the proper manly instinct! Cast your lot

Into our lap, one genius ruled our births,

We'll compass joy by concert; take with us

The regular irregular way i' the wood;

You'll miss no game through riding breast by breast,

In this preserve, the Church's park and pale,

Rather than outside where the world lies waste!"

Come, if you said not that, did you say this?

Give plain and terrible warning, "Live, enjoy!

Such life begins in death and ends in hell!

Dare you bid us assist your sins, us priests

Who hurry sin and sinners from the earth?

No such delight for us, why then for you?

Leave earth, seek heaven or find its opposite!"

Had you so warned me, not in lying words

But veritable deeds with tongues of flame,

That had been fair, that might have struck a man,

Silenced the squabble between soul and sense,

Compelled him to make mind up, take one course

Or the other, peradventure!--wrong or right,

Foolish or wise, you would have been at least

Sincere, no question,--forced me choose, indulge

Or else renounce my instincts, still play wolf

Or find my way submissive to your fold,

Be red-crossed on my fleece, one sheep the more.

But you as good as bade me wear sheep's-wool

Over wolf's-skin, suck blood and hide the noise

By mimicry of something like a bleat,--

Whence it comes that because, despite my care,

Because I smack my tongue too loud for once,

Drop baaing, here 's the village up in arms!

Have at the wolf's throat, you who hate the breed!

Oh, were it only open yet to choose--

One little time more--whether I 'd be free

Your foe, or subsidized your friend forsooth!

Should not you get a growl through the white fangs

In answer to your beckoning! Cardinal,

Abate, managers o' the multitude,

I 'd turn your gloved hands to account, be sure!

You should manipulate the coarse rough mob:

'T is you I 'd deal directly with, not them,--

Using your fears: why touch the thing myself

When I could see you hunt, and then cry "Shares!

Quarter the carcass or we quarrel; come,

Here 's the world ready to see justice done!"

Oh, it had been a desperate game, but game

Wherein the winner's chance were worth the pains!

We 'd try conclusions!--at the worst, what worse

Than this Mannaia-machine, each minute's talk

Helps push an inch the nearer me? Fool, fool!

You understand me and forgive, sweet Sirs?

I blame you, tear my hair and tell my woe--

All 's but a flourish, figure of rhetoric!

One must try each expedient to save life.

One makes fools look foolisher fifty-fold

By putting in their place men wise like you,

To take the full force of an argument

Would buffet their stolidity in vain.

If you should feel aggrieved by the mere wind

O' the blow that means to miss you and maul them,

That 's my success! Is it not folly, now,

To say with folk, "A plausible defence--

We see through notwithstanding, and reject"?

Reject the plausible they do, these fools,

Who never even make pretence to show

One point beyond its plausibility

In favor of the best belief they hold!

"Saint Somebody-or-other raised the dead:"

Did he? How do you come to know as much?

"Know it, what need? The story 's plausible,

Avouched for by a martyrologist,

And why should good men sup on cheese and leeks

On such a saint's day, if there were no saint?"

I praise the wisdom of these fools, and straight

Tell them my story--"plausible, but false!"

False, to be sure! What else can story be

That runs--a young wife tired of an old spouse,

Found a priest whom she fled away with,--both

Took their full pleasure in the two-days' flight,

Which a gray-headed grayer-hearted pair

(Whose best boast was, their life had been a lie)

Helped for the love they bore all liars. Oh,

Here incredulity begins! Indeed?

Allow then, were no one point strictly true,

There 's that i' the tale might seem like truth at least

To the unlucky husband,--jaundiced patch,--

Jealousy maddens people, why not him?

Say, he was maddened, so forgivable!

Humanity pleads that though the wife were true,

The priest true, and the pair of liars true,

They might seem false to one man in the world!

A thousand gnats make up a serpent's sting,

And many sly soft stimulants to wrath

Compose a formidable wrong at last,

That gets called easily by some one name

Not applicable to the single parts,

And so draws down a general revenge,

Excessive if you take crime, fault by fault.

Jealousy! I have known a score of plays,

Were listened to and laughed at in my time

As like the every-day life on all sides,

Wherein the husband, mad as a March hare,

Suspected all the world contrived his shame.

What did the wife? The wife kissed both eyes blind,

Explained away ambiguous circumstance,

And while she held him captive by the hand,

Crowned his head--you know what 's the mockery--

By half her body behind the curtain. That 's

Nature now! That 's the subject of a piece

I saw in Vallombrosa Convent, made

Expressly to teach men what marriage was!

But say, "Just so did I misapprehend,

Imagine she deceived me to my face,"

And that 's pretence too easily seen through!

All those eyes of all husbands in all plays,

At stare like one expanded peacock-tail,

Are laughed at for pretending to be keen

While horn-blind: but the moment I step forth--

Oh, I must needs o' the sudden prove a lynx

And look the heart, that stone-wall, through and through!

Such an eye, God's may be,--not yours nor mine.

Yes, presently ... what hour is fleeting now?

When you cut earth away from under me,

I shall be left alone with, pushed beneath

Some such an apparitional dread orb

As the eye of God, since such an eye there glares:

I fancy it go filling up the void

Above my mote-self it devours, or what

Proves wrath, immensity wreaks on nothingness

Just how I felt once, couching through the dark.

Hard by Vittiano; young I was, and gay,

And wanting to trap fieldfares: first a spark

Tipped a bent, as a mere dew-globule might

Any stiff grass-stalk on the meadow,--this

Grew fiercer, flamed out full, and proved the sun.

What do I want with proverbs, precepts here?

Away with man! What shall I say to God?

This, if I find the tongue and keep the mind--

"Do Thou wipe out the being of me, and smear

This soul from off Thy white of things, I blot!

I am one huge and sheer mistake,--whose fault?

Not mine at least, who did not make myself!"

Some one declares my wife excused me so!

Perhaps she knew what argument to use.

Grind your teeth, Cardinal, Abate, writhe!

What else am I to cry out in my rage,

Unable to repent one particle

O' the past? Oh, how I wish some cold wise man

Would dig beneath the surface which you scrape,

Deal with the depths, pronounce on my desert

Groundedly! I want simple sober sense,

That asks, before it finishes with a dog,

Who taught the dog that trick you hang him for?

You both persist to call that act a crime,

Which sense would call ... yes, I maintain it, Sirs, ...

A blunder! At the worst, I stood in doubt

On cross-road, took one path of many paths:

It leads to the red thing, we all see now,

But nobody saw at first: one primrose-patch

In bank, one singing-bird in bush, the less,

Had warned me from such wayfare: let me prove!

Put me back to the cross-road, start afresh!

Advise me when I take the first false step!

Give me my wife: how should I use my wife,

Love her or hate her? Prompt my action now!

There she is, there she stands alive and pale,

The thirteen-years'-old child, with milk for blood,

Pompilia Comparini, as at first,

Which first is only four brief years ago!

I stand too in the little ground-floor room

O' the father's house at Via Vittoria: see!

Her so-called mother--one arm round the waist

O' the child to keep her from the toys, let fall

At wonder I can live yet look so grim--

Ushers her in, with deprecating wave

Of the other,--and she fronts me loose at last,

Held only by the mother's finger-tip.

Struck dumb, for she was white enough before!

She eyes me with those frightened balls of black,

As heifer--the old simile comes pat--

Eyes tremblingly the altar and the priest.

The amazed look, all one insuppressive prayer,--

Might she but breathe, set free as heretofore,

Have this cup leave her lips unblistered, bear

Any cross anywhither anyhow,

So but alone, so but apart from me!

You are touched? So am I, quite otherwise,

If 't is with pity. I resent my wrong,

Being a man: I only show man's soul

Through man's flesh: she sees mine, it strikes her thus!

Is that attractive? To a youth perhaps--

Calf-creature, one-part boy to three-parts girl,

To whom it is a flattering novelty

That he, men use to motion from their path,

Can thus impose, thus terrify in turn

A chit whose terror shall be changed apace

To bliss unbearable when grace and glow,

Prowess and pride descend the throne and touch

Esther in all that pretty tremble, cured

By the dove o' the sceptre! But myself am old,

O' the wane at least, in all things: what do you say

To her who frankly thus confirms my doubt?

I am past the prime, I scare the woman-world,

Done-with that way: you like this piece of news?

A little saucy rose-bud minx can strike

Death-damp into the breast of doughty king

Though 't were French Louis,--soul I understand,--

Saying, by gesture of repugnance, just

"Sire, you are regal, puissant, and so forth,

But--young you have been, are not, nor will be!"

In vain the mother nods, winks, bustles up,

"Count, girls incline to mature worth like you!

As for Pompilia, what 's flesh, fish or fowl

To one who apprehends no difference,

And would accept you even were you old

As you are ... youngish by her father's side?

Trim but your beard a little, thin your bush

Of eyebrow; and for presence, portliness,

And decent gravity, you beat a boy!"

Deceive yourself one minute, if you may,

In presence of the child that so loves age,

Whose neck writhes, cords itself against your kiss,

Whose hand you wring stark, rigid with despair!

Well, I resent this; I am young in soul,

Nor old in body,--thews and sinews here,--

Though the vile surface be not smooth as once,--

Far beyond that first wheelwork-which went wrong

Through the untempered iron ere 't was proof:

I am the rock man worth ten times the crude,--

Would woman see what this declines to see,

Declines to say "I see,"--the officious word

That makes the thing, pricks on the soul to shoot

New fire into the half-used cinder, flesh!

Therefore 't is she begins with wronging me,

Who cannot but begin with hating her.

Our marriage follows: there she stands again!

Why do I laugh? Why, in the very gripe

O' the jaws of death's gigantic skull, do I

Grin back his grin, make sport of my own pangs?

Why from each clashing of his molars, ground

To make the devil bread from out my grist,

Leaps out a spark of mirth, a hellish toy?

Take notice we are lovers in a church,

Waiting the sacrament to make us one

And happy! Just as bid, she bears herself,

Comes and kneels, rises, speaks, is silent,--goes:

So have I brought my horse, by word and blow,

To stand stock-still and front the fire he dreads.

How can I other than remember this,

Resent the very obedience? Gain thereby?

Yes, I do gain my end and have my will,--

Thanks to whom? When the mother speaks the word,

She obeys it--even to enduring me!

There had been compensation in revolt--

Revolt 's to quell: but martyrdom rehearsed,

But predetermined saintship for the sake

O' the mother?--"Go!" thought I, "we meet again!"

Pass the next weeks of dumb contented death,

She lives,--wakes up, installed in house and home,

Is mine, mine all day-long, all night-long mine.

Good folk begin at me with open mouth:

"Now, at least, reconcile the child to life!

Study and make her love ... that is, endure

The ... hem! the ... all of you though somewhat old,

Till it amount to something, in her eye,

As good as love, better a thousand times,--

Since nature helps the woman in such strait,

Makes passiveness her pleasure: failing which,

What if you give up boy-and-girl-fools'-play

And go on to wise friendship all at once?

Those boys and girls kiss themselves cold, you know,

Toy themselves tired and slink aside full soon

To friendship, as they name satiety:

Thither go you and wait their coming!" Thanks,

Considerate advisers,--but, fair play!

Had you and I, friends, started fair at first,

We, keeping fair, might reach it, neck by neck,

This blessed goal, whenever fate so please:

But why am I to miss the daisied mile

The course begins with, why obtain the dust

Of the end precisely at the starting-point?

Why quaff life's cup blown free of all the beads,

The bright red froth wherein our beard should steep

Before our mouth essay the black o' the wine?

Foolish, the love-fit? Let me prove it such

Like you, before like you I puff things clear!

"The best 's to come, no rapture but content!

Not love's first glory but a sober glow,

Not a spontaneous outburst in pure boon,

So much as, gained by patience, care and toil,

Proper appreciation and esteem!"

Go preach that to your nephews, not to me

Who, tired i' the midway of my life, would stop

And take my first refreshment, pluck a rose:

What 's this coarse woolly hip, worn smooth of leaf,

You counsel I go plant in garden-plot,

Water with tears, manure with sweat and blood,

In confidence the seed shall germinate

And, for its very best, some far-off day,

Grow big, and blow me out a dog-rose bell?

Why must your nephews begin breathing spice

O' the hundred-petalled Provence prodigy?

Nay, more and worse,--would such my root bear rose--

Prove really flower and favorite, not the kind

That 's queen, but those three leaves that make one cup

And hold the hedge-bird's breakfast,--then indeed

The prize though poor would pay the care and toil!

Respect we Nature that makes least as most,

Marvelous in the minim! But this bud,

Bit through and burned black by the tempter's tooth,

This bloom whose best grace was the slug outside

And the wasp inside its bosom,--call you "rose"?

Claim no immunity from a weed's fate

For the horrible present! What you call my wife

I call a nullity in female shape,

Vapid disgust, soon to be pungent plague,

When mixed with, made confusion and a curse

By two abominable nondescripts,

That father and that mother: think you see

The dreadful bronze our boast, we Aretines,

The Etruscan monster, the three-headed thing,

Bellerophon's foe! How name you the whole beast?

You choose to name the body from one head,

That of the simple kid which droops the eye,

Hangs the neck and dies tenderly enough:

I rather see the griesly lion belch

Flame out i' the midst, the serpent writhe her rings,

Grafted into the common stock for tail,

And name the brute, Chimæra, which I slew!

How was there ever more to be--(concede

My wife's insipid harmless nullity)--

Dissociation from that pair of plagues--

That mother with her cunning and her cant--

The eyes with first their twinkle of conceit,

Then, dropped to earth in mock-demureness,--now,

The smile self-satisfied from ear to ear,

Now, the prim pursed-up mouth's protruded lips,

With deferential duck, slow swing of head,

Tempting the sudden fist of man too much,--

That owl-like screw of lid and rock of ruff!

As for the father,--Cardinal, you know

The kind of idiot!--such are rife in Rome,

But they wear velvet commonly; good fools,

At the end of life, to furnish forth young folk

Who grin and bear with imbecility:

Since the stalled ass, the joker, sheds from jaw

Corn, in the joke, for those who laugh or starve.

But what say we to the same solemn beast

Wagging his ears and wishful of our pat,

When turned, with holes in hide and bones laid bare,

To forage for himself i' the waste o' the world,

Sir Dignity i' the dumps? Pat him? We drub

Self-knowledge, rather, into frowzy pate,

Teach Pietro to get trappings or go hang!

Fancy this quondam oracle in vogue

At Via Vittoria, this personified

Authority when time was,--Pantaloon

Flaunting his tom-fool tawdry just the same

As if Ash-Wednesday were mid-Carnival!

That 's the extreme and unforgivable

Of sins, as I account such. Have you stooped

For your own ends to bestialize yourself

By flattery of a fellow of this stamp?

The ends obtained or else shown out of reach,

He goes on, takes the flattery for pure truth,--

"You love, and honor me, of course: what next?"

What, but the trifle of the stabbing, friend?--

Which taught you how one worships when the shrine

Has lost the relic that we bent before.

Angry! And how could I be otherwise?

'T is plain: this pair of old pretentious fools

Meant to fool me: it happens, I fooled them.

Why could not these who sought to buy and sell

Me,--when they found themselves were bought and sold,

Make up their mind to the proved rule of right,

Be chattel and not chapman any more?

Miscalculation has its consequence;

But when the shepherd crooks a sheep-like thing

And meaning to get wool, dislodges fleece

And finds the veritable wolf beneath,

(How that stanch image serves at every turn!)

Does he, by way of being politic,

Pluck the first whisker grimly visible?

Or rather grow in a trice all gratitude,

Protest this sort-of-what-one-might-name sheep

Beats the old other curly-coated kind,

And shall share board and bed, if so it deign,

With its discoverer, like a royal ram?

Ay, thus, with chattering teeth and knocking knees,

Would wisdom treat the adventure! these, forsooth,

Tried whisker-plucking, and so found what trap

The whisker kept perdue, two rows of teeth--

Sharp, as too late the prying fingers felt.

What would you have? The fools transgress, the fools

Forthwith receive appropriate punishment:

They first insult me, I return the blow,

There follows noise enough: four hubbub months,

Now hue and cry, now whimpering and wail--

A perfect goose-yard cackle of complaint

Because I do not gild the geese their oats,--

I have enough of noise, ope wicket wide,

Sweep out the couple to go whine elsewhere,

Frightened a little, hurt in no respect,

And am just taking thought to breathe again,

Taste the sweet sudden silence all about,

When, there they raise it, the old noise I know,

At Rome i' the distance! "What, begun once more?

Whine on, wail ever, 't is the loser's right!"

But eh, what sort of voice grows on the wind?

Triumph it sounds and no complaint at all!

And triumph it is. My boast was premature:

The creatures, I turned forth, clapped wing and crew

Fighting-cock-fashion,--they had filched a pearl

From dung-heap, and might boast with cause enough!

I was defrauded of all bargained for:

You know, the Pope knows, not a soul but knows

My dowry was derision, my gain--muck,

My wife (the Church declared my flesh and blood)

The nameless bastard of a common whore:

My old name turned henceforth to ... shall I say

"He that received the ordure in his face"?

And they who planned this wrong, performed this wrong,

And then revealed this wrong to the wide world,

Rounded myself in the ears with my own wrong,--

Why, these were (note hell's lucky malice, now!)

These were just they who, they alone, could act

And publish and proclaim their infamy,

Secure that men would in a breath believe,

Compassionate and pardon them,--for why?

They plainly were too stupid to invent,

Too simple to distinguish wrong from right,--

Inconscious agents they, the silly-sooth,

Of heaven's retributive justice on the strong

Proud cunning violent oppressor--me!

Follow them to their fate and help your best,

You Rome, Arezzo, foes called friends of me,

They gave the good long laugh to, at my cost!

Defray your share o' the cost, since you partook

The entertainment! Do!--assured the while,

That not one stab, I dealt to right and left,

But went the deeper for a fancy--this--

That each might do me twofold service, find

A friend's face at the bottom of each wound,

And scratch its smirk a little!

Panciatichi!

There 's a report at Florence,--is it true?--

That when your relative the Cardinal

Built, only the other day, that barrack-bulk,

The palace in Via Larga, some one picked

From out the street a saucy quip enough

That fell there from its day's flight through the town,

About the flat front and the windows wide

And bulging heap of cornice,--hitched the joke

Into a sonnet, signed his name thereto,

And forthwith pinned on post the pleasantry:

For which he 's at the galleys, rowing now

Up to his waist in water,--just because

_Panciatic_ and _lymphatic_ rhymed so pat!

I hope, Sir, those who passed this joke on me

Were not unduly punished? What say you,

Prince of the Church, my patron? Nay, indeed,

I shall not dare insult your wits so much

As think this problem difficult to solve.

This Pietro and Violante then, I say,

These two ambiguous insects, changing name

And nature with the season's warmth or chill,--

Now, grovelled, grubbing toiling moiling ants,

A very synonym of thrift and peace,--

Anon, with lusty June to prick their heart,

Soared i' the air, winged flies for more offence,

Circled me, buzzed me deaf and stung me blind,

And stunk me dead with fetor in the face

Until I stopped the nuisance: there 's my crime!

Pity I did not suffer them subside

Into some further shape and final form

Of execrable life? My masters, no!

I, by one blow, wisely cut short at once

Them and their transformations of disgust,

In the snug little Villa out of hand.

"Grant me confession, give bare time for that!"--

Shouted the sinner till his mouth was stopped.

His life confessed!--that was enough for me,

Who came to see that he did penance. 'S death!

Here 's a coil raised, a pother and for what?

Because strength, being provoked by weakness, fought

And conquered,--the world never heard the like!

Pah, how I spend my breath on them, as if

'T was their fate troubled me, too hard to range

Among the right and fit and proper things!

Ay, but Pompilia,--I await your word,--

She unimpeached of crime, unimplicate

In folly, one of alien blood to these

I punish, why extend my claim, exact

Her portion of the penalty? Yes, friends,

I go too fast: the orator 's at fault:

Yes, ere I lay her, with your leave, by them

As she was laid at San Lorenzo late,

I ought to step back, lead you by degrees,

Recounting at each step some fresh offence,

Up to the red bed,--never fear, I will!

Gaze at her, where I place her, to begin,

Confound me with her gentleness and worth!

The horrible pair have fled and left her now,

She has her husband for her sole concern:

His wife, the woman fashioned for his help,

Flesh of his flesh, bone of his bone, the bride

To groom as is the Church and Spouse to Christ:

There she stands in his presence: "Thy desire

Shall be to the husband, o'er thee shall he rule!"

--"Pompilia, who declare that you love God,

You know who said that: then, desire my love,

Yield me contentment and be ruled aright!"

She sits up, she lies down, she comes and goes,

Kneels at the couch-side, overleans the sill

O' the window, cold and pale and mute as stone,

Strong as stone also. "Well, are they not fled?

Am I not left, am I not one for all?

Speak a word, drop a tear, detach a glance,

Bless me or curse me of your own accord!

Is it the ceiling only wants your soul,

Is worth your eyes?" And then the eyes descend,

And do look at me. Is it at the meal?

"Speak!" she obeys. "Be silent!" she obeys,

Counting the minutes till I cry "Depart,"

As brood-bird when you saunter past her eggs.

Departs she, just the same through door and wall

I see the same stone strength of white despair,

And all this will be never otherwise!

Before, the parents' presence lent her life:

She could play off her sex's armory,

Entreat, reproach, be female to my male,

Try all the shrieking doubles of the hare,

Go clamor to the Commissary, bid

The Archbishop hold my hands and stop my tongue,

And yield fair sport so: but the tactics change,

The hare stands stock-still to enrage the hound!

Since that day when she learned she was no child

Of those she thought her parents,--that their trick

Had tricked me whom she thought solo trickster late,--

Why, I suppose she said within herself,

"Then, no more struggle for my parents' sake!

And, for my own sake, why needs struggle be?"

But is there no third party to the pact?

What of her husband's relish or dislike

For this new game of giving up the game,

This worst offence of not offending more?

I'll not believe but instinct wrought in this,

Set her on to conceive and execute

The preferable plague: how sure they probe,--

These jades, the sensitivest soft of man!

The long black hair was wound now in a wisp,

Crowned sorrow better than the wild web late:

No more soiled dress, 't is trimness triumphs now,

For how should malice go with negligence?

The frayed silk looked the fresher for her spite!

There was an end to springing out of bed,

Praying me, with face buried on my feet,

Be hindered of my pastime,--so an end

To my rejoinder, "What, on the ground at last?

Vanquished in fight, a supplicant for life?

What if I raise you? 'Ware the casting down

When next you fight me!" Then, she lay there, mine:

Now, mine she is if I please wring her neck,--

A moment of disquiet, working eyes,

Protruding tongue, a long sigh, then no more,--

As if one killed the horse one could not ride!

Had I enjoined "Cut off the hair!"--why, snap

The scissors, and at once a yard or so

Had fluttered in black serpents to the floor:

But till I did enjoin it, how she combs,

Uncurls and draws out to the complete length,

Plaits, places the insulting rope on head

To be an eyesore past dishevelment!

Is all done? Then sit still again and stare!

I advise--no one think to bear that look

Of steady wrong, endured as steadily

--Through what sustainment of deluding hope?

Who is the friend i' the background that notes all?

Who may come presently and close accounts?

This self-possession to the uttermost,

How does it differ in aught, save degree,

From the terrible patience of God?

"All which just means,

She did not love you!" Again the word is launched

And the fact fronts me! What, you try the wards

With the true key and the dead lock flies ope?

No, it sticks fast and leaves you fumbling still!

You have some fifty servants, Cardinal,--

Which of them loves you? Which subordinate

But makes parade of such officiousness

That--if there 's no love prompts it--love, the sham,

Does twice the service done by love, the true.

God bless us liars, where 's one touch of truth?

In what we tell the world, or world tells us,

Of how we love each other? All the same,

We calculate on word and deed, nor err,--

Bid such a man do such a loving act,

Sure of effect and negligent of cause,

Just as we bid a horse, with cluck of tongue,

Stretch his legs arch-wise, crouch his saddled back

To foot-reach of the stirrup--all for love,

And some for memory of the smart of switch

On the inside of the foreleg--what care we?

Yet where 's the bond obliges horse to man

Like that which binds fast wife to husband? God

Laid down the law: gave man the brawny arm

And ball of fist--woman the beardless cheek

And proper place to suffer in the side:

Since it is he can strike, let her obey!

Can she feel no love? Let her show the more,

Sham the worse, damn herself praiseworthily!

Who 's that soprano, Rome went mad about

Last week while I lay rotting in my straw?

The very jailer gossiped in his praise--

How,--dressed up like Armida, though a man;

And painted to look pretty, though a fright,--

He still made love so that the ladies swooned,

Being an eunuch. "Ah, Rinaldo mine!

But to breathe by thee while Jove slays us both!"

All the poor bloodless creature never felt,

_Si, do, re, mi, fa_, squeak and squall--for what?

Two gold zecchines the evening. Here 's my slave,

Whose body and soul depend upon my nod,

Can't falter out the first note in the scale

For her life! Why blame me if I take the life?

All women cannot give men love, forsooth!

No, nor all pullets lay the henwife eggs--

Whereat she bids them remedy the fault,

Brood on a chalk-ball: soon the nest is stocked--

Otherwise, to the plucking and the spit!

This wife of mine was of another mood--

Would not begin the lie that ends with truth,

Nor feign the love that brings real love about:

Wherefore I judged, sentenced, and punished her.

But why particularize, defend the deed?

Say that I hated her for no one cause

Beyond my pleasure so to do,--what then?

Just on as much incitement acts the world,

All of you! Look and like! You favor one,

Browbeat another, leave alone a third,--

Why should you master natural caprice?

Pure nature! Try: plant elm by ash in file;

Both unexceptionable trees enough,

They ought to overlean each other, pair

At top, and arch across the avenue

The whole path to the pleasaunce: do they so--

Or loathe, lie off abhorrent each from each?

Lay the fault elsewhere: since we must have faults,

Mine shall have been--seeing there 's ill in the end

Come of my course--that I fare somehow worse

For the way I took: my fault ... as God 's my judge,

I see not where my fault lies, that 's the truth!

I ought ... oh, ought in my own interest

Have let the whole adventure go untried,

This chance by marriage,--or else, trying it,

Ought to have turned it to account, some one

O' the hundred otherwises? Ay, my friend,

Easy to say, easy to do: step right

Now you 've stepped left and stumbled on the thing,

--The red thing! Doubt I any more than you

That practice makes man perfect? Give again

The chance,--same marriage and no other wife,

Be sure I 'll edify you! That 's because

I 'm practised, grown fit guide for Guido's self.

You proffered guidance,--I know, none so well,--

You laid down law and rolled decorum out,

From pulpit-corner on the gospel-side,--

Wanted to make your great experience mine,

Save me the personal search and pains so: thanks!

Take your word on life's use? When I take his--

The muzzled ox that treadeth out the corn,

Gone blind in padding round and round one path,--

As to the taste of green grass in the field!

What do you know o' the world that 's trodden flat

And salted sterile with your daily dung,

Leavened into a lump of loathsomeness?

Take your opinion of the modes of life,

The aims of life, life's triumph or defeat,

How to feel, how to scheme, and how to do

Or else leave undone? You preached long and loud

On high-days, "Take our doctrine upon trust!

Into the mill-house with you! Grind our corn,

Relish our chaff, and let the green grass grow!"

I tried chaff, found I famished on such fare,

So made this mad rush at the mill-house-door,

Buried my head up to the ears in dew,

Browsed on the best: for which you brain me, Sirs!

Be it so. I conceived of life that way,

And still declare--life, without absolute use

Of the actual sweet therein, is death, not life.

Give me,--pay down,--not promise, which is air,--

Something that 's out of life and better still,

Make sure reward, make certain punishment,

Entice me, scare me,--I 'll forego this life;

Otherwise, no!--the less that words, mere wind,

Would cheat me of some minutes while they plague,

Balk fulness of revenge here,--blame yourselves

For this eruption of the pent-up soul

You prisoned first and played with afterward!

"Deny myself" meant simply pleasure you,

The sacred and superior, save the mark!

You,--whose stupidity and insolence

I must defer to, soothe at every turn,--

Whose swine-like snuffling greed and grunting lust

I had to wink at or help gratify,--

While the same passions,--dared they perk in me,

Me, the immeasurably marked, by God,

Master of the whole world of such as you,--

I, boast such passions? 'T was, "Suppress them straight!

Or stay, we 'll pick and choose before destroy.

Here 's wrath in you, a serviceable sword,--

Beat it into a ploughshare! What 's this long

Lance-like ambition? Forge a pruning-hook,

May be of service when our vines grow tall!

But--sword used swordwise, spear thrust out as spear?

Anathema! Suppression is the word!"

My nature, when the outrage was too gross,

Widened itself an outlet over-wide

By way of answer, sought its own relief

With more of fire and brimstone than you wished.

All your own doing: preachers, blame yourselves!

'T is I preach while the hour-glass runs and runs!

God keep me patient! All I say just means--

My wife proved, whether by her fault or mine,--

That 's immaterial,--a true stumbling-block

I' the way of me her husband. I but plied

The hatchet yourselves use to clear a path,

Was politic, played the game you warrant wins,

Plucked at law's robe a-rustle through the courts,

Bowed down to kiss divinity's buckled shoe

Cushioned i' the church: efforts all wide the aim!

Procedures to no purpose! Then flashed truth.

The letter kills, the spirit keeps alive

In law and gospel: there be nods and winks

Instruct a wise man to assist himself

In certain matters, nor seek aid at all.

"Ask money of me,"--quoth the clownish saw,--

"And take my purse! But,--speaking with respect,--

Need you a solace for the troubled nose?

Let everybody wipe his own himself!"

Sirs, tell me free and fair! Had things gone well

At the wayside inn: had I surprised asleep

The runaways, as was so probable,

And pinned them each to other partridge-wise,

Through back and breast to breast and back, then bade

Bystanders witness if the spit, my sword,

Were loaded with unlawful game for once--

Would you have interposed to damp the glow

Applauding me on every husband's cheek?

Would you have checked the cry, "A judgment, see!

A warning, note! Be henceforth chaste, ye wives,

Nor stray beyond your proper precinct, priests!"

If you had, then your house against itself

Divides, nor stands your kingdom any more.

Oh why, why was it not ordained just so?

Why fell not things out so nor otherwise?

Ask that particular devil whose task it is

To trip the all-but-at perfection,--slur

The line o' the painter just where paint leaves off

And life begins,--put ice into the ode

O' the poet while he cries "Next stanza--fire!"

Inscribe all human effort with one word,

Artistry's haunting curse, the Incomplete!

Being incomplete, my act escaped success.

Easy to blame now! Every fool can swear

To hole in net that held and slipped the fish.

But, treat my act with fair unjaundiced eye,

What was there wanting to a masterpiece

Except the luck that lies beyond a man?

My way with the woman, now proved grossly wrong,

Just missed of being gravely grandly right

And making mouths laugh on the other side.

Do, for the poor obstructed artist's sake,

Go with him over that spoiled work once more!

Take only its first flower, the ended act

Now in the dusty pod, dry and defunct!

I march to the Villa, and my men with me,

That evening, and we reach the door and stand.

I say ... no, it shoots through me lightning-like

While I pause, breathe, my hand upon the latch,

"Let me forebode! Thus far, too much success:

I want the natural failure--find it where?

Which thread will have to break and leave a loop

I' the meshy combination, my brain's loom

Wove this long while, and now next minute tests?

Of three that are to catch, two should go free,

One must: all three surprised,--impossible!

Beside, I seek three and may chance on six,--

This neighbor, t' other gossip,--the babe's birth

Brings such to fireside, and folks give them wine,--

'T is late: but when I break in presently

One will be found outlingering the rest

For promise of a posset,--one whose shout

Would raise the dead down in the catacombs,

Much more the city-watch that goes its round.

When did I ever turn adroitly up

To sun some brick embedded in the soil,

And with one blow crush all three scorpions there?

Or Pietro or Violante shambles off--

It cannot be but I surprise my wife--

If only she is stopped and stamped on, good!

That shall suffice: more is improbable.

Now I may knock!" And this once for my sake

The impossible was effected: I called king,

Queen and knave in a sequence, and cards came,

All three, three only! So, I had my way,

Did my deed: so, unbrokenly lay bare

Each tænia that had sucked me dry of juice,

At last outside me, not an inch of ring

Left now to writhe about and root itself

I' the heart all powerless for revenge! Henceforth

I might thrive: these were drawn and dead and damned.

Oh, Cardinal, the deep long sigh you heave

When the load 's off you, ringing as it runs

All the way down the serpent-stair to hell!

No doubt the fine delirium flustered me,

Turned my brain with the influx of success

As if the sole need now were to wave wand

And find doors fly wide,--wish and have my will,--

The rest o' the scheme would care for itself: escape?

Easy enough were that, and poor beside!

It all but proved so.--ought to quite have proved,

Since, half the chances had sufficed, set free

Any one, with his senses at command,

From thrice the danger of my flight. But, drunk,

Redundantly triumphant,--some reverse

Was sure to follow! There 's no other way

Accounts for such prompt perfect failure then

And there on the instant. Any day o' the week,

A ducat slid discreetly into palm

O' the mute post-master, while you whisper him--

How you the Count and certain four your knaves,

Have just been mauling who was malapert,

Suspect the kindred may prove troublesome,

Therefore, want horses in a hurry,--that

And nothing more secures you any day

The pick o' the stable! Yet I try the trick,

Double the bribe, call myself Duke for Count,

And say the dead man only was a Jew,

And for my pains find I am dealing just

With the one scrupulous fellow in all Rome--

Just this immaculate official stares,

Sees I want hat on head and sword in sheath,

Am splashed with other sort of wet than wine,

Shrugs shoulder, puts my hand by, gold and all,

Stands on the strictness of the rule o' the road!

"Where 's the Permission?" Where 's the wretched rag

With the due seal and sign of Rome's Police,

To be had for asking, half an hour ago?

"Gone? Get another, or no horses hence!"

He dares not stop me, we five glare too grim,

But hinders,--hacks and hamstrings sure enough,

Gives me some twenty miles of miry road

More to march in the middle of that night

Whereof the rough beginning taxed the strength

O' the youngsters, much more mine, both soul and flesh,

Who had to think as well as act: dead-beat,

We gave in ere we reached the boundary

And safe spot out of this irrational Rome,--

Where, on dismounting from our steeds next day,

We had snapped our fingers at you, safe and sound,

Tuscans once more in blessed Tuscany,

Where laws make wise allowance, understand

Civilized life and do its champions right!

Witness the sentence of the Rota there,

Arezzo uttered, the Granduke confirmed,

One week before I acted on its hint,--

Giving friend Guillichini, for his love,

The galleys, and my wife your saint, Rome's saint,--

Rome manufactures saints enough to know,--

Seclusion at the Stinche for her life.

All this, that all but was, might all have been,

Yet was not! balked by just a scrupulous knave

Whose palm was horn through handling horses' hoofs

And could not close upon my proffered gold!

What say you to the spite of fortune? Well,

The worst 's in store: thus hindered, haled this way

To Rome again by hangdogs, whom find I

Here, still to fight with, but my pale frail wife?

--Riddled with wounds by one not like to waste

The blows he dealt,--knowing anatomy,--

(I think I told you) bound to pick and choose

The vital parts! 'T was learning all in vain!

She too must shimmer through the gloom o' the grave,

Come and confront me--not at judgment-seat

Where I could twist her soul, as erst her flesh,

And turn her truth into a lie,--but there,

O' the death-bed, with God's hand between us both,

Striking me dumb, and helping her to speak,

Tell her own story her own way, and turn

My plausibility to nothingness!

Four whole days did Pompilia keep alive,

With the best surgery of Rome agape

At the miracle,--this cut, the other slash,

And yet the life refusing to dislodge,

Four whole extravagant impossible days,

Till she had time to finish and persuade

Every man, every woman, every child

In Rome, of what she would: the selfsame she

Who, but a year ago, had wrung her hands,

Reddened her eyes and beat her breasts, rehearsed

The whole game at Arezzo, nor availed

Thereby to, move one heart or raise one hand!

When destiny intends you cards like these,

What good of skill and preconcerted play?

Had she been found dead, as I left her dead,

I should have told a tale brooked no reply:

You scarcely will suppose me found at fault

With that advantage! "What brings me to Rome?

Necessity to claim and take my wife:

Better, to claim and take my new-born babe,--

Strong in paternity a fortnight old,

When 't is at strongest: warily I work,

Knowing the machinations of my foe;

I have companionship and use the night:

I seek my wife and child,--I find--no child

But wife, in the embraces of that priest

Who caused her to elope from me. These two,

Backed by the pander-pair who watch the while,

Spring on me like so many tiger-cats,

Glad of the chance to end the intruder. I--

What should I do but stand on my defence,

Strike right, strike left, strike thick and threefold, slay,

Not all--because the coward priest escapes.

Last, I escape, in fear of evil tongues,

And having had my taste of Roman law."

What 's disputable, refutable here?--

Save by just this one ghost-thing half on earth,

Half out of it,--as if she held God's hand

While she leant back and looked her last at me,

Forgiving me (here monks begin to weep)

Oh, from her very soul, commending mine

To heavenly mercies which are infinite,--

While fixing fast my head beneath your knife!

'T is fate, not fortune. All is of a piece!

When was it chance informed me of my youths?

My rustic four o' the family, soft swains,

What sweet surprise had they in store for me,

Those of my very household,--what did Law

Twist with her rack-and-cord-contrivance late

From out their bones and marrow? What but this--

Had no one of these several stumbling-blocks

Stopped me, they yet were cherishing a scheme,

All of their honest country homespun wit,

To quietly next day at crow of cock

Cut my own throat too, for their own behoof,

Seeing I had forgot to clear accounts

O' the instant, nowise slackened speed for that,--

And somehow never might find memory,

Once safe back in Arezzo, where things change,

And a court-lord needs mind no country lout.

Well, being the arch-offender, I die last,--

May, ere my head falls, have my eyesight free,

Nor miss them dangling high on either hand,

Like scarecrows in a hemp-field, for their pains!

And then my Trial,--'t is my Trial that bites

Like a corrosive, so the cards are packed,

Dice loaded, and my life-stake tricked away!

Look at my lawyers, lacked they grace of law,

Latin or logic? Were not they fools to the height,

Fools to the depth, fools to the level between,

O' the foolishness set to decide the case?

They feign, they flatter; nowise does it skill,

Everything goes against me: deal each judge

His dole of flattery and feigning,--why,

He turns and tries and snuffs and savors it,

As some old fly the sugar-grain, your gift;

Then eyes your thumb and finger, brushes clean

The absurd old head of him, and whisks away,

Leaving your thumb and finger dirty. Faugh!

And finally, after this long-drawn range

Of affront and failure, failure and affront,--

This path, 'twixt crosses leading to a skull,

Paced by me barefoot, bloodied by my palms

From the entry to the end,--there 's light at length,

A cranny of escape: appeal may be

To the old man, to the father, to the Pope,

For a little life--from one whose life is spent,

A little pity--from pity's source and seat,

A little indulgence to rank, privilege,

From one who is the thing personified,

Rank, privilege, indulgence, grown beyond

Earth's bearing, even, ask Jansenius else!

Still the same answer, still no other tune

From the cicala perched at the tree-top

Than crickets noisy round the root,--'t is "Die!"

Bids Law--"Be damned!" adds Gospel,--nay,

No word so frank,--'t is rather, "Save yourself!"

The Pope subjoins--"Confess and be absolved!

So shall my credit countervail your shame,

And the world see I have not lost the knack

Of trying all the spirits: yours, my son,

Wants but a fiery washing to emerge

In clarity! Come, cleanse you, ease the ache

Of these old hones, refresh our bowels, boy!"

Do I mistake your mission from the Pope?

Then, bear his Holiness the mind of me!

I do get strength from being thrust to wall,

Successively wrenched from pillar and from post

By this tenacious hate of fortune, hate

Of all things in, under, and above earth.

Warfare, begun this mean unmanly mode,

Does best to end so,--gives earth spectacle

Of a brave fighter who succumbs to odds

That turn defeat to victory. Stab, I fold

My mantle round me! Rome approves my act:

Applauds the blow which costs me life but keeps

My honor spotless: Rome would praise no more

Had I fallen, say, some fifteen years ago,

Helping Vienna when our Aretines

Flocked to Duke Charles and fought Turk Mustafa;

Nor would you two be trembling o'er my corpse

With all this exquisite solicitude.

Why is it that I make such suit to live?

The popular sympathy that 's round me now

Would break like bubble that o'er-domes a fly--

Solid enough while he lies quiet there,

But let him want the air and ply the wing,

Why, it breaks and bespatters him, what else?

Cardinal, if the Pope had pardoned me,

And I walked out of prison through the crowd,

It would not be your arm I should dare press!

Then, if I got safe to my place again,

How sad and sapless were the years to come!

I go my old ways and find things grown gray;

You priests leer at me, old friends look askance;

The mob 's in love, I 'll wager, to a man,

With my poor young good beauteous murdered wife:

For hearts require instruction how to beat,

And eyes, on warrant of the story, wax

Wanton at portraiture in white and black

Of dead Pompilia gracing ballad-sheet,

Which eyes, lived she unmurdered and unsung,

Would never turn though she paced street as bare

As the mad penitent ladies do in France.

My brothers quietly would edge me out

Of use and management of things called mine;

Do I command? "You stretched command before!"

Show anger? "Anger little helped you once!"

Advise? "How managed you affairs of old?"

My very mother, all the while they gird,

Turns eye up, gives confirmatory groan;

For unsuccess, explain it how you will,

Disqualifies you, makes you doubt yourself,

--Much more, is found decisive by your friends.

Beside, am I not fifty years of age?

What new leap would a life take, checked like mine

I' the spring at outset? Where 's my second chance?

Ay, but the babe ... I had forgot my son,

My heir! Now for a burst of gratitude!

There 's some appropriate service to intone,

Some _gaudeamus_ and thanksgiving-psalm!

Old, I renew my youth in him, and poor

Possess a treasure,--is not that the phrase?

Only I must wait patient twenty years--

Nourishing all the while, as father ought,

The excrescence with my daily blood of life.

Does it respond to hope, such sacrifice,--

Grows the wen plump while I myself grow lean?

Why, here 's my son and heir in evidence,

Who stronger, wiser, handsomer than I

By fifty years, relieves me of each load,--

Tames my hot horse, carries my heavy gun,

Courts my coy mistress,--has his apt advice

On house-economy, expenditure,

And what not? All which good gifts and great growth,

Because of my decline, he brings to bear

On Guido, but half apprehensive how

He cumbers earth, crosses the brisk young Count,

Who civilly would thrust him from the scene.

Contrariwise, does the blood-offering fail?

There 's an ineptitude, one blank the more

Added to earth in semblance of my child?

Then, this has been a costly piece of work,

My life exchanged for his!--why he, not I,

Enjoy the world, if no more grace accrue?

Dwarf me, what giant have you made of him?

I do not dread the disobedient son--

I know how to suppress rebellion there,

Being not quite the fool my father was.

But grant the medium measure of a man,

The usual compromise 'twixt fool and sage,

--You know--the tolerably-obstinate,

The not-so-much-perverse but you may train,

The true son-servant that, when parent bids

"Go work, son, in my vineyard!" makes reply

"I go, Sir!"--Why, what profit in your son

Beyond the drudges you might subsidize,

Have the same work from, at a paul the head?

Look at those four young precious olive-plants

Reared at Vittiano,--not on flesh and blood,

These twenty years, but black bread and sour wine!

I bade them put forth tender branch, hook, hold,

And hurt three enemies I had in Rome:

They did my best as unreluctantly,

At promise of a dollar, as a son

Adjured by mumping memories of the past.

No, nothing repays youth expended so--

Youth, I say, who am young still: grant but leave

To live my life out, to the last I 'd live

And die conceding age no right of youth!

It is the will runs the renewing nerve

Through flaccid flesh that faints before the time.

Therefore no sort of use for son have I--

Sick, not of life's feast but of steps to climb

To the house where life prepares her feast,--of means

To the end: for make the end attainable

Without the means,--my relish were like yours.

A man may have an appetite enough

For a whole dish of robins ready cooked,

And yet lack courage to face sleet, pad snow,

And snare sufficiently for supper.

Thus

The time 's arrived when, ancient Roman-like,

I am bound to fall on my own sword: why not

Say--Tuscan-like, more ancient, better still?

Will you hear truth can do no harm nor good?

I think I never was at any time

A Christian, as you nickname all the world,

Me among others: truce to nonsense now!

Name me, a primitive religionist--

As should the aboriginary be

I boast myself, Etruscan, Aretine,

One sprung--your frigid Virgil's fieriest word--

From fauns and nymphs, trunks and the heart of oak,

With--for a visible divinity--

The portent of a Jove Ægiochus

Descried 'mid clouds, lightning and thunder, couched

On topmost crag of your Capitoline:

'T is in the Seventh Æneid,--what, the Eighth?

Right,--thanks, Abate,--though the Christian 's dumb,

The Latinist 's vivacious in you yet!

I know my grandsire had our tapestry

Marked with the motto, 'neath a certain shield,

Whereto his grandson presently will give gules

To vary azure. First we fight for faiths,

But get to shake hands at the last of all:

Mine 's your faith too,--in Jove Ægiochus!

Nor do Greek gods, that serve as supplement,

Jar with the simpler scheme, if understood.

We want such intermediary race

To make communication possible;

The real thing were too lofty, we too low,

Midway hang these: we feel their use so plain

In linking height to depth, that we doff hat

And put no question nor pry narrowly

Into the nature hid behind the names.

We grudge no rite the fancy may demand;

But never, more than needs, invent, refine,

Improve upon requirement, idly wise

Beyond the letter, teaching gods their trade,

Which is to teach us: we 'll obey when taught.

Why should we do our duty past the need?

When the sky darkens, Jove is wroth,--say prayer!

When the sun shines and Jove is glad,--sing psalm!

But wherefore pass prescription and devise

Blood-offering for sweat-service, lend the rod

A pungency through pickle of our own?

Learned Abate,--no one teaches you

What Venus means and who 's Apollo here!

I spare you, Cardinal,--but, though you wince,

You know me, I know you, and both know that!

So, if Apollo bids us fast, we fast:

But where does Venus order we stop sense

When Master Pietro rhymes a pleasantry?

Give alms prescribed on Friday,--but, hold hand

Because your foe lies prostrate,--where 's the word

Explicit in the book debars revenge?

The rationale of your scheme is just

"Pay toll here, there pursue your pleasure free!"

So do you turn to use the medium-powers,

Mars and Minerva, Bacchus and the rest,

And so are saved propitiating--whom?

What all-good, all-wise, and all-potent Jove

Vexed by the very sins in man, himself

Made life's necessity when man he made?

Irrational bunglers! So, the living truth

Revealed to strike Pan dead, ducks low at last,

Prays leave to hold its own and live good days

Provided it go masque grotesquely, called

Christian not Pagan. Oh, you purged the sky

Of all gods save the One, the great and good,

Clapped hands and triumphed! But the change came fast:

The inexorable need in man for life

(Life, you may mulct and minish to a grain

Out of the lump, so that the grain but live)

Laughed at your substituting death for life,--

And bade you do your worst: which worst was done

In just that age styled primitive and pure

When Saint this, Saint that, dutifully starved,

Froze, fought with beasts, was beaten and abused

And finally ridded of his flesh by fire:

He kept life-long unspotted from the world!--

Next age, how goes the game, what mortal gives

His life and emulates Saint that, Saint this?

Men mutter, make excuse, or mutiny,

In fine are minded all to leave the new,

Stick to the old,--enjoy old liberty,

No prejudice in enjoyment, if you please,

To the new profession: sin o' the sly, henceforth!

The law stands though the letter kills: what then?

The spirit saves as unmistakably.

Omniscience sees, Omnipotence could stop,

Omnibenevolence pardons: it must be,

Frown law its fiercest, there 's a wink somewhere!

Such was the logic in this head of mine:

I, like the rest, wrote "poison" on my bread,

But broke and ate:--said "Those that use the sword

Shall perish by the same;" then stabbed my foe.

I stand on solid earth, not empty air:

Dislodge me, let your Pope's crook hale me hence!

Not he, nor you! And I so pity both,

I 'll make the true charge you want wit to make:

"Count Guido, who reveal our mystery,

And trace all issues to the love of life:

We having life to love and guard, like you,

Why did you put us upon self-defence?

You well knew what prompt pass-word would appease

The sentry's ire when folk infringed his bounds,

And yet kept mouth shut: do you wonder then

If, in mere decency, he shot you dead?

He can't have people play such pranks as yours

Beneath his nose at noonday: you disdained

To give him an excuse before the world

By crying 'I break rule to save our camp!'

Under the old rule, such offence were death;

And you had heard the Pontifex pronounce,

'Since you slay foe and violate the form,

Slaying turns murder, which were sacrifice

Had you, while, say, lawsuiting foe to death,

But raised an altar to the Unknown God,

Or else the Genius of the Vatican.'

Why then this pother?--all because the Pope,

Doing his duty, cried 'A foreigner,

You scandalize the natives: here at Rome

_Romano vivitur more:_ wise men, here,

Put the Church forward and efface themselves.

The fit defence had been,--you stamped on wheat,

Intending all the time to trample tares,--

Were fain extirpate, then, the heretic,

You now find, in your haste was slain a fool:

Nor Pietro, nor Violante, nor your wife

Meant to breed up your babe a Molinist!

Whence you are duly contrite. Not one word

Of all this wisdom did you urge: which slip

Death must atone for.'"

So, let death atone!

So ends mistake, so end mistakers!--end

Perhaps to recommence,--how should I know?

Only, be sure, no punishment, no pain

Childish, preposterous, impossible,

But some such fate as Ovid could foresee,--

_Byblis in fluvium_, let the weak soul end

In water, _sed Lycaon in lupum_, but

The strong become a wolf forevermore!

Change that Pompilia to a puny stream

Fit to reflect the daisies on its bank!

Let me turn wolf, be whole, and sate, for once,--

Wallow in what is now a wolfishness

Coerced too much by the humanity

That 's half of me as well! Grow out of man,

Glut the wolf-nature,--what remains but grow

Into the man again, be man indeed

And all man? Do I ring the changes right?

Deformed, transformed, reformed, informed, conformed!

The honest instinct, pent and crossed through life,

Let surge by death into a visible flow

Of rapture: as the strangled thread of flame

Painfully winds, annoying and annoyed,

Malignant and maligned, through stone and ore,

Till earth exclude the stranger: vented once,

It finds full play, is recognized atop

Some mountain as no such abnormal birth,

Fire for the mount, not streamlet for the vale!

Ay, of the water was that wife of mine--

Be it for good, be it for ill, no run

O' the red thread through that insignificance!

Again, how she is at me with those eyes!

Away with the empty stare! Be holy still,

And stupid ever! Occupy your patch

Of private snow that 's somewhere in what world

May now be growing icy round your head,

And aguish at your footprint,--freeze not me,

Dare follow not another step I take,

Not with so much as those detested eyes,

No, though they follow but to pray me pause

On the incline, earth's edge that 's next to hell!

None of your abnegation of revenge!

Fly at me frank, tug while I tear again!

There 's God, go tell him, testify your worst!

Not she! There was no touch in her of hate:

And it would prove her hell, if I reached mine!

To know I suffered, would still sadden her,

Do what the angels might to make amends!

Therefore there 's either no such place as hell,

Or thence shall I be thrust forth, for her sake,

And thereby undergo three hells, not one--

I who, with outlet for escape to heaven,

Would tarry if such flight allowed my foe

To raise his head, relieved of that firm foot

Had pinned him to the fiery pavement else!

So am I made, "who did not make myself:"

(How dared she rob my own lip of the word?)

Beware me in what other world may be!--

Pompilia, who have brought me to this pass!

All I know here, will I say there, and go

Beyond the saying with the deed. Some use

There cannot but be for a mood like mine,

Implacable, persistent in revenge.

She maundered, "All is over and at end:

I go my own road, go you where God will!

Forgive you? I forget you!" There 's the saint

That takes your taste, you other kind of men!

How you had loved her! Guido wanted skill

To value such a woman at her worth!

Properly the instructed criticise,

"What 's here, you simpleton have tossed to take

Its chance i' the gutter? This a daub, indeed?

Why, 't is a Rafael that you kicked to rags!"

Perhaps so: some prefer the pure design:

Give me my gorge of color, glut of gold

In a glory round the Virgin made for me!

Titian 's the man, not Monk Angelico

Who traces you some timid chalky ghost

That turns the church into a charnel: ay,

Just such a pencil might depict my wife!

She,--since she, also, would not change herself,--

Why could not she come in some heart-shaped cloud,

Rainbowed about with riches, royalty

Rimming her round, as round the tintless lawn

Guardingly runs the selvage cloth of gold?

I would have left the faint fine gauze untouched,

Needle-worked over with its lily and rose,

Let her bleach unmolested in the midst,

Chill that selected solitary spot

Of quietude she pleased to think was life.

Purity, pallor grace the lawn no doubt

When there 's the costly bordure to unthread

And make again an ingot: but what 's grace

When you want meat and drink and clothes and fire?

A tale comes to my mind that 's apposite--

Possibly true, probably false, a truth

Such as all truths we live by, Cardinal!

'T is said, a certain ancestor of mine

Followed--whoever was the potentate,

To Paynimrie, and in some battle, broke

Through more than due allowance of the foe,

And, risking much his own life, saved the lord's.

Battered and bruised, the Emperor scrambles up,

Rubs his eyes and looks round and sees my sire,

Picks a furze-sprig from out his hauberk-joint,

(Token how near the ground went majesty,)

And says, "Take this, and if thou get safe home,

Plant the same in thy garden-ground to grow:

Run thence an hour in a straight line, and stop:

Describe a circle round (for central point)

The furze aforesaid, reaching every way

The length of that hour's run: I give it thee,--

The central point, to build a castle there,

The space circumjacent, for fit demesne,

The whole to be thy children's heritage,--

Whom, for the sake, bid thou wear furze on cap!"

Those are my arms: we turned the furze a tree

To show more, and the greyhound tied thereto,

Straining to start, means swift and greedy both;

He stands upon a triple mount of gold--

By Jove, then, he 's escaping from true gold

And trying to arrive at empty air!

Aha! the fancy never crossed my mind!

My father used to tell me, and subjoin,

"As for the castle, that took wings and flew:

The broad lands,--why, to traverse them to-day

Scarce tasks my gouty feet, and in my prime

I doubt not I could stand and spit so far:

But for the furze, boy, fear no lack of that,

So long as fortune leaves one field to grub!

Wherefore, hurrah for furze and loyalty!"

What may I mean, where may the lesson lurk?

"Do not bestow on man, by way of gift,

Furze without land for framework,--vaunt no grace

Of purity, no furze-sprig of a wife,

To me, i' the thick of battle for my bread,

Without some better dowry,--gold will do!"

No better gift than sordid muck? Yes, Sirs!

Many more gifts much better. Give them me!

O those Olimpias bold, those Biancas brave,

That brought a husband power worth Ormuz' wealth!

Cried, "Thou being mine, why, what but thine am I?

Be thou to me law, right, wrong, heaven and hell!

Let us blend souls, blent, thou in me, to bid

Two bodies work one pleasure! What are these

Called king, priest, father, mother, stranger, friend?

They fret thee or they frustrate? Give the word--

Be certain they shall frustrate nothing more!

And who is this young florid foolishness

That holds thy fortune in his pygmy clutch,

--Being a prince and potency, forsooth!--

He hesitates to let the trifle go?

Let me but seal up eye, sing ear to sleep

Sounder than Samson,--pounce thou on the prize

Shall slip from off my breast, and down couch-side,

And on to floor, and far as my lord's feet--

Where he stands in the shadow with the knife,

Waiting to see what Delilah dares do!

Is the youth fair? What is a man to me

Who am thy call-bird? Twist his neck--my dupe's,--

Then take the breast shall turn a breast indeed!"

Such women are there; and they marry whom?

Why, when a man has gone and hanged himself

Because of what he calls a wicked wife,--

See, if the very turpitude bemoaned

Prove not mere excellence the fool ignores!

His monster is perfection,--Circe, sent

Straight from the sun, with wand the idiot blames

As not an honest distaff to spin wool!

O thou Lucrezia, is it long to wait

Yonder where all the gloom is in a glow

With thy suspected presence?--virgin yet,

Virtuous again, in face of what's to teach--

Sin unimagined, unimaginable,--

I come to claim my bride,--thy Borgia's self

Not half the burning bridegroom I shall be!

Cardinal, take away your crucifix!

Abate, leave my lips alone,--they bite!

Vainly you try to change what should not change,

And shall not. I have bared, you bathe my heart--

It grows the stonier for your saving dew!

You steep the substance, you would lubricate,

In waters that but touch to petrify!

You too are petrifactions of a kind:

Move not a muscle that shows mercy; rave

Another twelve hours, every word were waste!

I thought you would not slay impenitence,

But teased, from men you slew, contrition first,--

I thought you had a conscience. Cardinal,

You know I am wronged!--wronged, say, and wronged, maintain.

Was this strict inquisition made for blood

When first you showed us scarlet on your back,

Called to the College? Your straightforward way

To your legitimate end,--I think it passed

Over a scantling of heads brained, hearts broke,

Lives trodden into dust!--how otherwise?

Such was the way o' the world, and so you walked.

Does memory haunt your pillow? Not a whit.

God wills you never pace your garden-path,

One appetizing hour ere dinner-time,

But your intrusion there treads out of life

A universe of happy innocent things:

Feel you remorse about that damsel-fly

Which buzzed so near your mouth and flapped your face?

You blotted it from being at a blow:

It was a fly, you were a man, and more,

Lord of created things, so took your course.

Manliness, mind,--these are things fit to save,

Fit to brush fly from: why, because I take

My course, must needs the Pope kill me?--kill you!

You! for this instrument, he throws away,

Is strong to serve a master, and were yours

To have and hold and get much good from out!

The Pope who dooms me needs must die next year;

I 'll tell you how the chances are supposed

For his successor: first the Chamberlain,

Old San Cesario,--Colloredo, next,--

Then, one, two, three, four, I refuse to name;

After these, comes Altieri; then come you--

Seventh on the list yon come, unless ... ha, ha,

How can a dead hand give a friend a lift?

Are you the person to despise the help

O' the head shall drop in pannier presently?

So a child seesaws on or kicks away

The fulcrum-stone that 's all the sage requires

To fit his lever to and move the world.

Cardinal, I adjure you in God's name,

Save my life, fall at the Pope's feet, set forth

Things your own fashion, not in words like these

Made for a sense like yours who apprehend!

Translate into the Court-conventional

"Count Guido must not die, is innocent!

Fair, be assured! But what an he were foul,

Blood-drenched and murder-crusted head to foot?

Spare one whose death insults the Emperor,

Nay, outrages the Louis you so love!

He has friends who will avenge him; enemies

Who will hate God now with impunity,

Missing the old coercive: would you send

A soul straight to perdition, dying frank

An atheist?" Go and say this, for God's sake!

--Why, you don't think I hope you 'll say one word?

Neither shall I persuade you from your stand

Nor you persuade me from my station: take

Your crucifix away, I tell you twice!

Come, I am tired of silence! Pause enough!

You have prayed: I have gone inside my soul

And shut its door behind me: 't is your torch

Makes the place dark: the darkness let alone

Grows tolerable twilight: one may grope

And get to guess at length and breadth and depth.

What is this fact I feel persuaded of--

This something like a foothold in the sea,

Although Saint Peter's bark scuds, billow-borne,

Leaves me to founder where it flung me first?

Spite of your splashing, I am high and dry!

God takes his own part in each thing he made;

Made for a reason, he conserves his work,

Gives each its proper instinct of defence.

My lamblike wife could neither bark nor bite,

She bleated, bleated, till for pity pure

The village roused up, ran with pole and prong

To the rescue, and behold the wolf 's at bay!

Shall he try bleating?--or take turn or two,

Since the wolf owns some kinship with the fox,

And, failing to escape the foe by craft,

Give up attempt, die fighting quietly?

The last bad blow that strikes fire in at eye

And on to brain, and so out, life and all,

How can it but be cheated of a pang

If, fighting quietly, the jaws enjoy

One re-embrace in mid backbone they break,

After their weary work through the foe's flesh?

That 's the wolf-nature. Don't mistake my trope!

A Cardinal so qualmish? Eminence,

My fight is figurative, blows i' the air,

Brain-war with powers and principalities,

Spirit-bravado, no real fisticuffs!

I shall not presently, when the knock comes,

Cling to this bench nor claw the hangman's face,

No, trust me! I conceive worse lots than mine.

Whether it be, the old contagious fit

And plague o' the prison have surprised me too,

The appropriate drunkenness of the death-hour

Crept on my sense, kind work o' the wine and myrrh,--

I know not,--I begin to taste my strength,

Careless, gay even. What's the worth of life?

The Pope 's dead now, my murderous old man,

For Tozzi told me so: and you, forsooth--

Why, you don't think, Abate, do your best,

You 'll live a year more with that hacking cough

And blotch of crimson where the cheek 's a pit?

Tozzi has got you also down in book!

Cardinal, only seventh of seventy near,

Is not one called Albano in the lot?

Go eat your heart, you 'll never be a Pope!

Inform me, is it true you left your love,

A Pucci, for promotion in the church?

She 's more than in the church--in the churchyard!

Plautilla Pucci, your affianced bride,

Has dust now in the eyes that held the love,--

And Martinez, suppose they make you Pope,

Stops that with _veto_,--so, enjoy yourself!

I see you all reel to the rock, you waves--

Some forthright, some describe a sinuous track,

Some, crested brilliantly, with heads above,

Some in a strangled swirl sunk who knows how,

But all bound whither the main-current sets,

Rockward, an end in foam for all of you!

What if I be o'ertaken, pushed to the front

By all you crowding smoother souls behind,

And reach, a minute sooner than was meant,

The boundary whereon I break to mist?

Go to! the smoothest safest of you all,

Most perfect and compact wave in my train,

Spite of the blue tranquillity above,

Spite of the breadth before of lapsing peace,

Where broods the halcyon and the fish leaps free,

Will presently begin to feel the prick

At lazy heart, the push at torpid brain,

Will rock vertiginously in turn, and reel,

And, emulative, rush to death like me.

Later or sooner by a minute then,

So much for the untimeliness of death!

And, as regards the manner that offends,

The rude and rough, I count the same for gain.

Be the act harsh and quick! Undoubtedly

The soul 's condensed and, twice itself, expands

To burst through life, by alternation due,

Into the other state whate'er it prove.

You never know what life means till you die:

Even throughout life, 't is death that makes life live,

Gives it whatever the significance.

For see, on your own ground and argument,

Suppose life had no death to fear, how find

A possibility of nobleness

In man, prevented daring any more?

What 's love, what 's faith without a worst to dread?

Lack-lustre jewelry! but faith and love

With death behind them bidding do or die--

Put such a foil at back, the sparkle 's born!

From out myself how the strange colors come!

Is there a new rule in another world?

Be sure I shall resign myself: as here

I recognized no law I could not see,

There, what I see, I shall acknowledge too:

On earth I never took the Pope for God,

In heaven I shall scarce take God for the Pope,

Unmanned, remanned: I hold it probable--

With something changeless at the heart of me

To know me by, some nucleus that 's myself:

Accretions did it wrong? Away with them--

You soon shall see the use of fire!

Till when,

All that was, is; and must forever be.

Nor is it in me to unhate my hates,--

I use up my last strength to strike once more

Old Pietro in the wine-house-gossip-face,

To trample underfoot the whine and wile

Of beast Violante,--and I grow one gorge

To loathingly reject Pompilia's pale

Poison my hasty hunger took for food.

A strong tree wants no wreaths about its trunk,

No cloying-cups, no sickly sweet of scent,

But sustenance at root, a bucketful.

How else lived that Athenian who died so,

Drinking hot bull's blood, fit for men like me?

I lived and died a man, and take man's chance,

Honest and bold: right will be done to such.

Who are these you have let descend my stair?

Ha, their accursed psalm! Lights at the sill!

Is it "Open" they dare bid you? Treachery!

Sirs, have I spoken one word all this while

Out of the world of words I had to say?

Not one word! All was folly--I laughed and mocked!

Sirs, my first true word, all truth and no lie,

Is--save me notwithstanding! Life is all!

I was just stark mad,--let the madman live

Pressed by as many chains as you please pile!

Don't open! Hold me from them! I am yours,

I am the Granduke's--no, I am the Pope's!

Abate,--Cardinal,--Christ,--Maria,--God, ...

Pompilia, will you let them murder me?

XII

THE BOOK AND THE RING

Here were the end, had anything an end:

Thus, lit and launched, up and up roared and soared

A rocket, till the key o' the vault was reached,

And wide heaven held, a breathless minute-space,

In brilliant usurpature: thus caught spark,

Rushed to the height, and hung at full of fame

Over men's upturned faces, ghastly thence,

Our glaring Guido: now decline must be.

In its explosion, you have seen his act,

By my power--maybe, judged it by your own,--

Or composite as good orbs prove, or crammed

With worse ingredients than the Wormwood Star.

The act, over and ended, falls and fades:

What was once seen, grows what is now described,

Then talked of, told about, a tinge the less

In every fresh transmission; till it melts,

Trickles in silent orange or wan gray

Across our memory, dies and leaves all dark,

And presently we find the stars again.

Follow the main streaks, meditate the mode

Of brightness, how it hastes to blend with black!

After that February Twenty Two,

Since our salvation, Sixteen Ninety Eight,

Of all reports that were, or may have been,

Concerning those the day killed or let live,

Four I count only. Take the first that comes.

A letter from a stranger, man of rank,

Venetian visitor at Rome,--who knows,

On what pretence of busy idleness?

Thus he begins on evening of that day.

* * * * *

"Here are we at our end of Carnival;

Prodigious gayety and monstrous mirth,

And constant shift of entertaining show:

With influx, from each quarter of the globe,

Of strangers nowise wishful to be last

I' the struggle for a good place presently

When that befalls fate cannot long defer.

The old Pope totters on the verge o' the grave:

You see, Malpichi understood far more

Than Tozzi how to treat the ailments: age,

No question, renders these inveterate.

Cardinal Spada, actual Minister,

Is possible Pope; I wager on his head,

Since those four entertainments of his niece

Which set all Rome a-stare: Pope probably--

Though Colloredo has his backers too,

And San Cesario makes one doubt at times:

Altieri will be Chamberlain at most.

"A week ago the sun was warm like May,

And the old man took daily exercise

Along the river-side; he loves to see

That Custom-house he built upon the bank,

For, Naples-born, his tastes are maritime:

But yesterday he had to keep in-doors

Because of the outrageous rain that fell.

On such days the good soul has fainting-fits,

Or lies in stupor, scarcely makes believe

Of minding business, fumbles at his beads.

They say, the trust that keeps his heart alive

Is that, by lasting till December next,

He may hold Jubilee a second time,

And, twice in one reign, ope the Holy Doors.

By the way, somebody responsible

Assures me that the King of France has writ

Fresh orders: Fénelon will be condemned:

The Cardinal makes a wry face enough,

Having a love for the delinquent: still,

He 's the ambassador, must press the point.

Have you a wager too, dependent here?

"Now, from such matters to divert awhile,

Hear of to-day's event which crowns the week,

Casts all the other wagers into shade.

Tell Dandolo I owe him fifty drops

Of heart's blood in the shape of gold zecchines!

The Pope has done his worst: I have to pay

For the execution of the Count, by Jove!

Two days since, I reported him as safe,

Re-echoing the conviction of all Rome:

Who could suspect its one deaf ear--the Pope's?

But prejudices grow insuperable,

And that old enmity to Austria, that

Passion for France and France's pageant-king

(Of which, why pause to multiply the proofs

Now scandalously rife in Europe's mouth?)

These fairly got the better in our man

Of justice, prudence, and _esprit de corps_,

And he persisted in the butchery.

Also, 't is said that in his latest walk

To that Dogana-by-the-Bank he built,

The crowd,--he suffers question, unrebuked,--

Asked, 'Whether murder was a privilege

Only reserved for nobles like the Count?'

And he was ever mindful of the mob.

Martinez, the Cæsarean Minister,

--Who used his best endeavors to spare blood,

And strongly pleaded for the life 'of one,'

Urged he, 'I may have dined at table with!'--

He will not soon forget the Pope's rebuff,

--Feels the slight sensibly, I promise you!

And but for the dissuasion of two eyes

That make with him foul weather or fine day,

He had abstained, nor graced the spectacle:

As it was, barely would he condescend

Look forth from the _palchetto_ where he sat

Under the Pincian: we shall hear of this!

The substituting, too, the People's Square

For the out-o'-the-way old quarter by the Bridge,

Was meant as a conciliatory sop

To the mob; it gave one holiday the more.

But the French Embassy might unfurl flag,--

Still the good luck of France to fling a foe!

Cardinal Bouillon triumphs properly!

_Palchetti_ were erected in the Place,

And houses, at the edge of the Three Streets,

Let their front windows at six dollars each:

Anguisciola, that patron of the arts,

Hired one; our Envoy Contarini too.

"Now for the thing; no sooner the decree

Gone forth,--'t is four-and-twenty hours ago,--

Than Acciaiuoli and Panciatichi,

Old friends, indeed compatriots of the man,

Being pitched on as the couple properest

To intimate the sentence yesternight,

Were closeted ere cock-crow with the Count.

They both report their efforts to dispose

The unhappy nobleman for ending well,

Despite the natural sense of injury,

Were crowned at last with a complete success.

And when the Company of Death arrived

At twenty-hours,--the way they reckon here,--

We say, at sunset, after dinner-time,--

The Count was led down, hoisted up on car,

Last of the five, as heinousest, you know:

Yet they allowed one whole car to each man.

His intrepidity, nay, nonchalance,

As up he stood and down he sat himself,

Struck admiration into those who saw.

Then the procession started, took the way

From the New Prisons by the Pilgrim's Street,

The street of the Governo, Pasquin's Street,

(Where was stuck up, 'mid other epigrams,

A quatrain ... but of all that, presently!)

The Place Navona, the Pantheon's Place,

Place of the Column, last the Corso's length,

And so debouched thence at Mannaia's foot

I' the Place o' the People. As is evident,

(Despite the malice,--plainly meant, I fear,

By this abrupt change of locality,--

The Square 's no such bad place to head and hang),

We had the titillation as we sat

Assembled, (quality in conclave, ha?)

Of, minute after minute, some report

How the slow show was winding on its way.

Now did a car run over, kill a man,

Just opposite a pork-shop numbered Twelve:

And bitter were the outcries of the mob

Against the Pope: for, but that he forbids

The Lottery, why, Twelve were Tern Quatern!

Now did a beggar by Saint Agnes, lame

From his youth up, recover use of leg,

Through prayer of Guido as he glanced that way:

So that the crowd near crammed his hat with coin.

Thus was kept up excitement to the last,

--Not an abrupt out-bolting, as of yore,

From Castle, over Bridge and on to block,

And so all ended ere you well could wink!

"To mount the scaffold-steps, Guido was last

Here also, as atrociousest in crime.

We hardly noticed how the peasants died,

They dangled somehow soon to right and left,

And we remained all ears and eyes, could give

Ourselves to Guido undividedly,

As he harangued the multitude beneath.

He begged forgiveness on the part of God,

And fair construction of his act from men,

Whose suffrage he entreated for his soul,

Suggesting that we should forthwith repeat

A _Pater_ and an _Ave_, with the hymn

_Salve Regina Cœli_, for his sake.

Which said, he turned to the confessor, crossed

And reconciled himself, with decency,

Oft glancing at Saint Mary's opposite,

Where they possess, and showed in shrine to-day,

The blessed _Umbilicus_ of our Lord,

(A relic 't is believed no other church

In Rome can boast of)--then rose up, as brisk

Knelt down again, bent head, adapted neck,

And, with the name of Jesus on his lips,

Received the fatal blow.

"The headsman showed

The head to the populace. Must I avouch

We strangers own to disappointment here?

Report pronounced him fully six feet high,

Youngish, considering his fifty years,

And, if not handsome, dignified at least.

Indeed, it was no face to please a wife!

His friends say, this was caused by the costume:

He wore the dress he did the murder in,

That is, a _just-a-corps_ of russet serge,

Black camisole, coarse cloak of baracan

(So they style here the garb of goat's-hair cloth),

White hat and cotton cap beneath, poor Count,

Preservative against the evening dews

During the journey from Arezzo. Well,

So died the man, and so his end was peace;

Whence many a moral were to meditate.

Spada--you may bet Dandolo--is Pope!

Now for the quatrain!"

* * * * *

No, friend, this will do!

You 've sputtered into sparks. What streak comes next?

A letter: Don Giacinto Arcangeli,

Doctor and Proctor, him I made you mark

Buckle to business in his study late,

The virtuous sire, the valiant for the truth,

Acquaints his correspondent,--Florentine,

By name Cencini, advocate as well,

_Socius_ and brother-in-the-devil to match,--

A friend of Franceschini, anyhow,

And knit up with the bowels of the case,--

Acquaints him (in this paper that I touch)

How their joint effort to obtain reprieve

For Guido had so nearly nicked the nine

And ninety and one over,--folk would say,

At Tarocs,--or succeeded,--in our phrase.

To this Cencini's care I owe the Book,

The yellow thing I take and toss once more,--

How will it be, my four-years'-intimate,

When thou and I part company anon?--

'T was he, the "whole position of the case,"

Pleading and summary, were put before;

Discreetly in my Book he bound them all,

Adding some three epistles to the point.

Here is the first of these, part fresh as penned,

The sand, that dried the ink, not rubbed away,

Though penned the day whereof it tells the deed:

Part--extant just as plainly, you know where,

Whence came the other stuff, went, you know how,

To make the Ring that 's all but round and done.

* * * * *

"Late they arrived, too late, egregious Sir,

Those same justificative points you urge

Might benefit His Blessed Memory

Count Guido Franceschini now with God:

Since the Court,--to state things succinctly,--styled

The Congregation of the Governor,

Having resolved on Tuesday last our cause

I' the guilty sense, with death for punishment,

Spite of all pleas by me deducible

In favor of said Blessed Memory,--

I, with expenditure of pains enough,

Obtained a respite, leave to claim and prove

Exemption from the law's award,--alleged

The power and privilege o' the Clericate:

To which effect a courier was dispatched.

But ere an answer from Arezzo came,

The Holiness of our Lord the Pope (prepare!)

Judging it inexpedient to postpone

The execution of such sentence passed,

Saw fit, by his particular chirograph,

To derogate, dispense with privilege,

And wink at any hurt accruing thence

To Mother Church through damage of her son:

Also, to overpass and set aside

That other plea on score of tender age,

Put forth by me to do Pasquini good,

One of the four in trouble with our friend.

So that all five, to-day, have suffered death

With no distinction save in dying,--he,

Decollate by mere due of privilege,

The rest hanged decently and in order. Thus

Came the Count to his end of gallant man,

Defunct in faith and exemplarity:

Nor shall the shield of his great House lose shine

Thereby, nor its blue banner blush to red.

This, too, should yield sustainment to our hearts--

He had commiseration and respect

In his decease from universal Rome,

_Quantum est hominum venustiorum_,

The nice and cultivated everywhere:

Though, in respect of me his advocate,

Needs must I groan o'er my debility,

Attribute the untoward event o' the strife

To nothing but my own crass ignorance

Which failed to set the valid reasons forth,

Find fit excuse: such is the fate of war!

May God compensate us the direful blow

By future blessings on his family,

Whereof I lowly beg the next commands;

--Whereto, as humbly, I confirm myself" ...

And so forth,--follow name and place and date.

On next leaf--

"_Hactenus senioribus!_

There, old fox, show the clients t' other side

And keep this corner sacred, I beseech!

You and your pleas and proofs were what folk call

Pisan assistance, aid that comes too late,

Saves a man dead as nail in post of door.

Had I but time and space for narrative!

What was the good of twenty Clericates

When Somebody's thick headpiece once was bent

On seeing Guido's drop into the bag?

How these old men like giving youth a push!

So much the better: next push goes to him,

And a new Pope begins the century.

Much good I get by my superb defence!

But argument is solid and subsists,

While obstinacy and ineptitude

Accompany the owner to his tomb;

What do I care how soon? Beside, folks see!

Rome will have relished heartily the show,

Yet understood the motives, never fear,

Which caused the indecent change o' the People's Place

To the People's Playground,--stigmatize the spite

Which in a trice precipitated things!

As oft the moribund will give a kick

To show they are not absolutely dead,

So feebleness i' the socket shoots its last,

A spirt of violence for energy!

"But thou, Cencini, brother of my breast,

O fox, whose home is 'mid the tender grape,

Whose couch in Tuscany by Themis' throne,

Subject to no such ... best I shut my mouth

Or only open it again to say,

This pother and confusion fairly laid,

My hands are empty and my satchel lank.

Now then for both the Matrimonial Cause

And the case of Gomez! Serve them hot and hot!

"_Reliqua differamus in crastinum!_

The impatient estafette cracks whip outside:

Still, though the earth should swallow him who swears

And me who make the mischief, in must slip--

My boy, your godson, fat-chaps Hyacinth,

Enjoyed the sight while Papa plodded here.

I promised him, the rogue, a month ago,

The day his birthday was, of all the days,

That if I failed to save Count Guido's head,

Cinuccio should at least go see it chopped

From trunk--'So, latinize your thanks!' quoth I,

'That I prefer, _hoc malim_,' raps me out

The rogue: you notice the subjunctive? Ah!

Accordingly he sat there, bold in box,

Proud as the Pope behind the peacock-fans:

Whereon a certain lady-patroness

For whom I manage things (my boy in front,

Her Marquis sat the third in evidence;

Boys have no eyes nor ears save for the show)

'This time, Cintino,' was her sportive word,

When whiz and thump went axe and mowed lay man,

And folk could fall to the suspended chat,

'This time, you see, Bottini rules the roast,

Nor can Papa with all his eloquence

Be reckoned on to help as heretofore!'

Whereat Cinone pouts; then, sparkishly--

'Papa knew better than aggrieve his Pope,

And balk him of his grudge against our Count,

Else he 'd have argued-off Bottini's' ... what?

'His nose,'--the rogue! well parried of the boy!

He's long since out of Cæsar (eight years old)

And as for tripping in Eutropius ... well,

Reason the more that we strain every nerve

To do him justice, mould a model-mouth,

A Bartolus-cum-Baldo for next age:

For that I purse the pieces, work the brain,

And want both Gomez and the marriage-case,

Success with which shall plaster aught of pate

That 's broken in me by Bottini's flail,

And bruise his own, belike, that wags and brags.

_Adverti supplico humiliter_

_Quod_, don't the fungus see, the fop divine

That one hand drives two horses, left and right?

With this reign did I rescue from the ditch

The fortune of our Franceschini, keep

Unsplashed the credit of a noble House,

And set the fashionable cause at Rome

A-prancing till bystanders shouted ''ware!'

The other rein's judicious management

Suffered old Somebody to keep the pace,

Hobblingly play the roadster: who but he

Had his opinion, was not led by the nose

In leash of quibbles strung to look like law!

You 'll soon see,--when I go to pay devoir

And compliment him on confuting me,--

If, by a back-swing of the pendulum,

Grace be not, thick and threefold, consequent.

'I must decide as I see proper, Don!

I 'm Pope, I have my inward lights for guide.

Had learning been the matter in dispute,

Could eloquence avail to gainsay fact,

Yours were the victory, he comforted!'

Cinuzzo will be gainer by it all.

Quick then with Gomez, hot and hot next case!"

* * * * *

Follows, a letter, takes the other side.

Tall blue-eyed Fisc whose head is capped with cloud,

Doctor Bottini,--to no matter who,

Writes on the Monday two days afterward.

Now shall the honest championship of right,

Crowned with success, enjoy at last, unblamed,

Moderate triumph! Now shall eloquence

Poured forth in fancied floods for virtue's sake,

(The print is sorrowfully dyked and dammed,

But shows where fain the unbridled force would flow,

Finding a channel)--now shall this refresh

The thirsty donor with a drop or two!

Here has been truth at issue with a lie:

Let who gained truth the day have handsome pride

In his own prowess! Eh? What ails the man?

* * * * *

"Well, it is over, ends as I foresaw:

Easily proved, Pompilia's innocence!

Catch them entrusting Guido's guilt to me

Who had, as usual, the plain truth to plead.

I always knew the clearness of the stream

Would show the fish so thoroughly, child might prong

The clumsy monster: with no mud to splash,

Small credit to lynx-eye and lightning-spear!

This Guido--(much sport he contrived to make,

Who at first twist, preamble of the cord,

Turned white, told all, like the poltroon he was!)--

Finished, as you expect, a penitent,

Fully confessed his crime, and made amends,

And, edifying Rome last Saturday,

Died like a saint, poor devil! That 's the man

The gods still give to my antagonist:

Imagine how Arcangeli claps wing

And crows! 'Such formidable facts to face,

So naked to attack, my client here,

And yet I kept a month the Fisc at bay,

And in the end had foiled him of the prize

By this arch-stroke, this plea of privilege,

But that the Pope must gratify his whim,

Put in his word, poor old man,--let it pass!'

--Such is the cue to which all Rome responds.

What with the plain truth given me to uphold,

And, should I let truth slip, the Pope at hand

To pick up, steady her on legs again,

My office turns a pleasantry indeed!

Not that the burly boaster did one jot

O' the little was to do--young Spreti's work!

But for him,--manikin and dandiprat,

Mere candle-end and inch of cleverness

Stuck on Arcangeli's save-all,--but for him

The spruce young Spreti, what is bad were worse!

"I looked that Rome should have the natural gird

At advocate with case that proves itself;

I knew Arcangeli would grin and brag:

But what say you to one impertinence

Might move a stone? That monk, you are to know,

That barefoot Augustinian whose report

O' the dying woman's words did detriment

To my best points it took the freshness from,

--That meddler preached to purpose yesterday

At San Lorenzo as a winding-up

O' the show which proved a treasure to the church.

Out comes his sermon smoking from the press:

Its text--'Let God be true, and every man

A liar'--and its application, this,

The longest-winded of the paragraphs,

I straight unstitch, tear out and treat you with:

'T is piping hot and posts through Rome to-day.

Remember it, as I engage to do!

* * * * *

"But if you rather be disposed to see

In the result of the long trial here,--

This dealing doom to guilt and doling praise

To innocency,--any proof that truth

May look for vindication from the world,

Much will you have misread the signs, I say.

God, who seems acquiescent in the main

With those who add 'So will he ever sleep'--

Flutters their foolishness from time to time,

Puts forth his right-hand recognizably;

Even as, to fools who deem he needs must right

Wrong on the instant, as if earth were heaven,

He wakes remonstrance--'Passive, Lord, how long?'

Because Pompilia's purity prevails,

Conclude you, all truth triumphs in the end?

So might those old inhabitants of the ark,

Witnessing haply their dove's safe return,

Pronounce there was no danger, all the while

O' the deluge, to the creature's counterparts,

Aught that beat wing i' the world, was white or soft,--

And that the lark, the thrush, the culver too,

Might equally have traversed air, found earth,

And brought back olive-branch in unharmed bill.

Methinks I hear the Patriarch's warning voice--

'Though this one breast, by miracle, return,

No wave rolls by, in all the waste, but bears

Within it some dead dove-like thing as dear,

Beauty made blank and harmlessness destroyed!'

How many chaste and noble sister-fames

Wanted the extricating hand, so lie

Strangled, for one Pompilia proud above

The welter, plucked from the world's calumny,

Stupidity, simplicity,--who cares?

"Romans! An elder race possessed your land

Long ago, and a false faith lingered still,

As shades do, though the morning-star be out.

Doubtless some pagan of the twilight-day

Has often pointed to a cavern-mouth,

Obnoxious to beholders, hard by Rome,

And said,--nor he a bad man, no, nor fool,--

Only a man born blind like all his mates,--

Here skulk in safety, lurk, defying law,

The devotees to execrable creed,

Adoring--with what culture ... Jove, avert

Thy vengeance from us worshippers of thee! ...

What rites obscene--their idol-god an Ass!'

So went the word forth, so acceptance found,

So century re-echoed century,

Cursed the accursed,--and so, from sire to son,

You Romans cried, 'The offscourings of our race,

Corrupt within the depths there: fitly fiends

Perform a temple-service o'er the dead:

Child, gather garment round thee, pass nor pry!'

Thus groaned your generations: till the time

Grew ripe, and lightning had revealed, belike,--

Through crevice peeped into by curious fear,--

Some object even fear could recognize

I' the place of spectres; on the illumined wall,

To wit, some nook, tradition talks about,

Narrow and short, a corpse's length, no more:

And by it, in the due receptacle,

The little rude brown lamp of earthenware,

The cruse, was meant for flowers, but now held blood,

The rough-scratched palm-branch, and the legend left

_Pro Christo_. Then the mystery lay clear:

The abhorred one was a martyr all the time,

Heaven's saint whereof earth was not worthy. What?

Do you continue in the old belief?

Where blackness bides unbroke, must devils brood?

Is it so certain not another cell

O' the myriad that make up the catacomb,

Contains some saint a second flash would show?

Will you ascend into the light of day

And, having recognized a martyr's shrine,

Go join the votaries that gape around

Each vulgar god that awes the market-place?

Are these the objects of your praising? See!

In the outstretched right hand of Apollo, there,

Lies screened a scorpion: housed amid the folds

Of Juno's mantle lurks a centipede!

Each statue of a god were fitlier styled

Demon and devil. Glorify no brass

That shines like burnished gold in noonday glare,

For fools! Be otherwise instructed, you!

And preferably ponder, ere ye judge,

Each incident of this strange human play

Privily acted on a theatre

That seemed secure from every gaze but God's,--

Till, of a sudden, earthquake laid wall low

And let the world perceive wild work inside,

And how, in petrifaction of surprise,

The actors stood,--raised arm and planted foot,--

Mouth as it made, eye as it evidenced,

Despairing shriek, triumphant hate,--transfixed,

Both he who takes and she who yields the life.

"As ye become spectators of this scene--

Watch obscuration of a pearl-pure fame

By vapory films, enwoven circumstance,

--A soul made weak by its pathetic want

Of just the first apprenticeship to sin,

Which thenceforth makes the sinning soul secure

From all foes save itself, soul's truliest foe,--

Since egg turned snake needs fear no serpentry,--

As ye behold this web of circumstance

Deepen the more for every thrill and throe,

Convulsive effort to disperse the films

And disenmesh the fame o' the martyr,--mark

How all those means, the unfriended one pursues,

To keep the treasure trusted to her breast,

Each struggle in the flight from death to life,

How all, by procuration of the powers

Of darkness, are transformed,--no single ray,

Shot forth to show and save the inmost star,

But, passed as through hell's prism, proceeding black

To the world that hates white: as ye watch, I say,

Till dusk and such defacement grow eclipse

By--marvellous perversity of man!--

The inadequacy and inaptitude

Of that selfsame machine, that very law

Man vaunts, devised to dissipate the gloom,

Rescue the drowning orb from calumny,

--Hear law, appointed to defend the just,

Submit, for best defence, that wickedness

Was bred of flesh and innate with the bone

Borne by Pompilia's spirit for a space,

And no mere chance fault, passionate and brief:

Finally, when ye find,--after this touch

Of man's protection which intends to mar

The last pin-point of light and damn the disc,--

One wave of the hand of God amid the worlds

Bid vapor vanish, darkness flee away,

And let the vexed star culminate in peace

Approachable no more by earthly mist--

What I call God's hand,--you, perhaps,--mere chance

Of the true instinct of an old good man

Who happens to hate darkness and love light,--

In whom too was the eye that saw, not dim,

The natural force to do the thing he saw,

Nowise abated,--both by miracle,--

All this well pondered,--I demand assent

To the enunciation of my text

In face of one proof more that 'God is true

And every man a liar'--that who trusts

To human testimony for a fact

Gets this sole fact--himself is proved a fool;

Man's speech being false, if but by consequence

That only strength is true! while man is weak,

And, since truth seem reserved for heaven not earth,

Plagued here by earth's prerogative of lies,

Should learn to love and long for what, one day,

Approved by life's probation, he may speak.

"For me, the weary and worn, who haply prompt

To mirth or pity, as I move the mood,--

A friar who glides unnoticed to the grave,

With these bare feet, coarse robe and rope-girt waist,--

I have long since renounced your world, ye know:

Yet what forbids I weigh the prize foregone.

The worldly worth? I dare, as I were dead,

Disinterestedly judge this and that

Good ye account good: but God tries the heart.

Still, if you question me of my content

At having put each human pleasure by,

I answer, at the urgency of truth:

As this world seems, I dare not say I know

--Apart from Christ's assurance which decides--

Whether I have not failed to taste much joy.

For many a doubt will fain perturb my choice--

Many a dream of life spent otherwise--

How human love, in varied shapes, might work

As glory, or as rapture, or as grace:

How conversancy with the books that teach,

The arts that help,--how, to grow good and great,

Rather than simply good, and bring thereby

Goodness to breathe and live, nor born, i' the brain,

Die there,--how these and many another gift

Of life are precious though abjured by me.

But, for one prize, best meed of mightiest man,

Arch-object of ambition,--earthly praise,

Repute o' the world, the flourish of loud trump,

The softer social fluting,--Oh, for these,

--No, my friends! Fame,--that bubble which, world-wide

Each blows and bids his neighbor lend a breath,

That so he haply may behold thereon

One more enlarged distorted false fool's-face,

Until some glassy nothing grown as big

Send by a touch the imperishable to suds,--

No, in renouncing fame, my loss was light,

Choosing obscurity, my chance was well!"

* * * * *

Didst ever touch such ampollosity

As the monk's own bubble, let alone its spite?

What's his speech for, but just the fame he flouts?

How he dares reprehend both high and low,

Nor stoops to turn the sentence "God is true

And every man a liar--save the Pope

Happily reigning--my respects to him!"

And so round off the period. Molinism

Simple and pure! To what pitch get we next?

I find that, for first pleasant consequence,

Gomez, who had intended to appeal

From the absurd decision of the Court,

Declines, though plain enough his privilege,

To call on help from lawyers any more--

Resolves earth's liars may possess the world,

Till God have had sufficiency of both:

So may I whistle for my job and fee!