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Robert Browning - The Ring And The Book - Chapter XI - Guido
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And finally ridded of his flesh by fire,
Keeping the while unspotted from the world!—
Good: but next age, how goes the game, who gives
His life and emulates Saint that and this?
They mutiny, mutter who knows what excuse?
In fine make up their minds to leave the new,
Stick to the old,—enjoy old liberty,
No prejudice, all the same, if so it please,
To the new profession: sin o’ the sly, henceforth!
Let the law stand: the letter kills, what then?
The spirit saves as unmistakeably.
Omniscience sees, Omnipotence could stop,
All-mercifulness 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 speech you want the wit to make:
“Count Guido, who reveal our mystery,
“You trace all issues to the love of life:
“We have a 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 infringe 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 you
“Beneath his nose at noonday, who disdain
“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 so had you heard Pontifex pronounce
“‘Since you slay foe and violate the form,
“‘That turns to murder, which were sacrifice
“‘Had you, while, say, law-suiting him 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, cries ‘A foreigner,
“‘You scandalise 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,
“‘And now find, in your haste you slew 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 for evermore!
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, thro’ stone and ore,
Till earth exclude the stranger: vented once,
It finds full play, is recognised a-top
Some mountain as no such abnormal birth.
Fire for the mount, the 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 foot-print,—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, ’tis a Rafael that you kicked to rags!”
Perhaps so: some prefer the pure design:
Give me my gorge of colour, 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!
’Tis 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 circumjacent space, for fit demesne,
“The whole to be thy children’s heritage,—
“Whom, for my 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
“Would task my gouty feet, though 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 hurra for furze and loyalty!”
What may I mean, where may the lesson lurk?
“Do not bestow on man by way of gift
“Furze without some substantial framework,—grace
“Of purity, a furze-sprig of a wife,
“To me i’ the thick of battle for my bread,
“Without some better dowry,—house and land!”
No other gift than sordid muck? Yes, Sir!
Many more and much better. Give them me!
O those Olimpias bold, those Biancas brave,
That brought a husband will 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, be 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 pigmy clutch,
“—Being a prince and potency, forsooth!—
“And 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 sword
“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 turpitude, he makes his moan,
Be not mere excellence the fool ignores!
His monster is perfection, Circe, sent
Straight from the sun, with rod 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!
’Tis vain you try to change, what should not change,
And cannot. 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,—
Teazed first contrition from the man you slew,— 
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? That straightforward way
To that legitimate end,—I think it passed
Over a scantling of heads brained, hearts broke,
Lives trodden into dust,—how otherwise?
Such is the way o’ the world, and so you walk:
Does memory haunt your pillow? Not a whit.
God wills you never pace your garden-path
One appetising hour ere dinner-time
But your intrusion there treads out of life
An 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!
Because this instrument he throws away
Is strong to serve a master: it were yours
To have and hold and get such 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 you are, 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,
“And outrages the Louis you so love!
“He has friends who will avenge him; enemies
“Who hate the church 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: ’tis 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 it, 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 to kinship with the fox,
And failing to escape the foe by these,
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
While, fighting quietly, the jaws enjoy
Their re-embrace in mid back-bone they break,
After their weary work thro’ the foes’ flesh?
That’s the wolf-nature. Don’t mistake my trope!
The Cardinal is 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 flee 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
Creep on my sense, the 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 is dead, 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 am 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 thro’ life, in alternation due,
Into the other state whate’er it prove.
You never know what life means till you die:
Even throughout life, ’tis 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 colours come!
Is there a new rule in another world?
Be sure I shall resign myself: as here
I recognised 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, remade: 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 for ever 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 that 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?
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