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Robert Browning - The Ring And The Book - Chapter XI - Guido
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YOU ARE the Cardinal Acciaiuoli, and you,
Abate Panciatichi—two good Tuscan names:
Acciaiuoli—ah, your ancestor it was,
Built the huge battlemented convent-block
Over the little forky flashing Greve
That takes the quick turn at the foot o’ the hill
Just as one first sees Florence: oh those days!
’Tis Ema, though, the other rivulet,
The one-arched, brown brick bridge yawns over,—yes,
Gallop and go five minutes, and you gain
The Roman Gate from where the Ema’s bridged:
Kingfishers fly there: how I see the bend
O’erturreted by Certosa which he built,
That Senescal (we styled him) of your House!
I do adjure you, help me, Sirs! My blood
Comes from as far a source: ought it to end
This way, by leakage through their scaffold-planks
Into Rome’s sink where her red refuse runs?
Sirs, I beseech you by blood-sympathy,
If there be any vile experiment
In the air,—if this your visit simply prove,
When all’s done, just a well-intentioned trick,
That tries for truth truer than truth itself,
By startling up a man, ere break of day,
To tell him he must die at sunset,—pshaw!
That man’s a Franceschini; feel his pulse,
Laugh at your folly, and let’s all go sleep!
You have my last word,—innocent am I
As Innocent my Pope and murderer,
Innocent as a babe, as Mary’s own,
As Mary’s self,—I said, say and repeat,—
And why, then, should I die twelve hours hence? I—
Whom, not twelve hours ago, the gaoler bade
Turn to my straw-truss, settle and sleep sound
That I might wake the sooner, promptlier pay
His dues of meat-and-drink-indulgence, cross
His palm with fee of the good-hand, beside,
As gallants use who go at large again!
For why? All honest Rome approved my part;
Whoever owned wife, sister, daughter,—nay,
Mistress,—had any shadow of any right
That looks like right, and, all the more resolved,
Held it with tooth and nail,—these manly men
Approved! I being for Rome, Rome was for me!
Then, there’s the point reserved, the subterfuge
My lawyers held by, kept for last resource,
Firm should all else,—the impossible fancy!—fail,—
And sneaking burgess-spirit win the day:
The knaves! One plea at least would hold, they laughed,
One grappling-iron scratch the bottom-rock
Even should the middle mud let anchor go—
And hook my cause on to the Clergy’s,—plea
Which, even if law tipped off my hat and plume,
Would show my priestly tonsure, save me so,—
The Pope moreover, this old Innocent,
Being so meek and mild and merciful,
So fond o’ the poor and so fatigued of earth,
So . . . fifty thousand devils in deepest hell!
Why must he cure us of our strange conceit
Of the angel in man’s likeness, that we loved
And looked should help us at a pinch? He help?
He pardon? Here’s his mind and message—death,
Thank the good Pope! Now, is he good in this,
Never mind, Christian,—no such stuff’s extant,—
But will my death do credit to his reign,
Show he both lived and let live, so was good?
Cannot I live if he but like? ‘The law!’
Why, just the law gives him the very chance,
The precise leave to let my life alone,
Which the angelic soul of him (he says)
Yearns after! Here they drop it in his palm,
My lawyers, capital o’ the cursed kind,—
A life to take and hold and keep: but no!
He sighs, shakes head, refuses to shut hand,
Motions away the gift they bid him grasp,
And of the coyness comes that off I run
And down I go, he best knows whither,—mind,
He knows, and sets me rolling all the same!
Disinterested Vicar of our Lord,
This way he abrogates and disallows,
Nullifies and ignores,—reverts in fine
To the good and right, in detriment of me!
Talk away! Will you have the naked truth?
He’s sick of his life’s supper,—swallowed lies:
So, hobbling bedward, needs must ease his maw
Just where I sit o’ the door-sill. Sir Abate,
Can you do nothing? Friends, we used to frisk:
What of this sudden slash in a friend’s face,
This cut across our good companionship
That showed its front so gay when both were young?
Were not we put into a beaten path,
Bid pace the world, we nobles born and bred,
The body of friends with each his scutcheon full
Of old achievement and impunity,—
Taking the laugh of morn and Sol’s salute
As forth we fared, pricked on to breathe our steeds
And take equestrian sport over the green
Under the blue, across the crop,—what care?
So we went prancing up hill and down dale,
In and out of the level and the straight,
By the bit of pleasant byeway, where was harm?
Still Sol salutes me and the morning laughs:
I see my grandsire’s hoof-prints,—point the spot
Where he drew rein, slipped saddle, and stabbed knave
For daring throw gibe—much less, stone—from pale,
Then back, and on, and up with the cavalcade;
Just so wend we, now canter, now converse,
Till, ’mid the jauncing pride and jaunty port,
Something of a sudden jerks at somebody—
A dagger is out, a flashing cut and thrust,
Because I play some prank my grandsire played,
And here I sprawl: where is the company? Gone!
A trot and a trample! only I lie trapped,
Writhe in a certain novel springe just set
By the good old Pope: I’m first prize. Warn me? Why?
Apprize me that the law o’ the game is changed?
Enough that I’m a warning, as I writhe,
To all and each my fellows of the file,
And make law plain henceforward past mistake,
“For such a prank, death is the penalty!”
Pope the Five Hundredth . . . what do I know or care?
Deputes your Eminence and Abateship
To announce that, twelve hours from this time, he needs
I just essay upon my body and soul
The virtue of his bran-new engine, prove
Represser of the pranksome! I’m the first!
Thanks. Do you know what teeth you mean to try
The sharpness of, on this soft neck and throat?
I know it,—I have seen and hate it,—ay,
As you shall, while I tell you: let me talk,
Or leave me, at your pleasure! talk I must:
What is your visit but my lure to talk?
You have a something to disclose?—a smile,
At end of the forced sternness, means to mock
The heart-beats here? I call your two hearts stone!
Is your charge to stay with me till I die?
Be tacit as your bench, then! Use your ears,
I use my tongue: how glibly yours will run
At pleasant supper-time . . . God’s curse! . . . to-night
When all the guests jump up, begin so brisk
“Welcome, his Eminence who shrived the wretch!
“Now we shall have the Abate’s story!” 
                                                            Life!
How I could spill this overplus of mine
Among those hoar-haired, shrunk-shanked, odds and ends
Of body and soul, old age is chewing dry!
Those windle-straws that stare while purblind death
Mows here, mows there, makes hay of juicy me,
And misses, just the bunch of withered weed,
Would brighten hell and streak its smoke with flame!
How the life I could shed yet never shrink,
Would drench their stalks with sap like grass in May!
Is it not terrible, I entreat you, Sirs?
Such manifold and plenitudinous life,
Prompt at death’s menace to give blow for threat,
Answer his “Be thou not!” by “Thus I am!”—
Terrible so to be alive yet die? 

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,—’tis 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, of the sharpness of your iron tooth?
Ah,—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 huge 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 bye-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 had made 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 that 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, ’twas 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:
(Suppose 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 ’twas 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 or slid,—I shall find which!
There it 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 wheeled, over you the other drops,
Tight you are clipped, whiz, there’s the blade on you,
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 and 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 man—
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 the 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, gentlefolks!”—
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 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 does a Pope proceed that knows his cue?
Why, leaves me linger out my minute here,
Since close on death come judgment and the doom,
Nor cribs at dawn its pittance from a sheep
Destined ere dewfall to be butcher’s-meat!
Think, Sirs, if I had 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 retinkered law,
“Our mercy, justice,—Jove’s rechristened God—
“Nay, whereas, in the popular conceit,
“’Tis 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 is all harshness, Gospel were all love!—
“We like to put it, on the contrary,—
“Gospel takes up the rod which Law lets fall;
“Mercy is vigilant when justice sleeps;
“Does Law let Guido taste the Gospel-grace?
“The secular arm allow the spiritual power
“To act for once?—what compliment so fine
“As that the Gospel handsomely be harsh,
“Thrust back Law’s victim on the nice and coy?”
Yes, you do say so,—else you would forgive
Me, whom Law dares 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 beside:
What though half Rome condemned me? Half approved:
And, none disputes, the luck is mine at last,
All Rome, i’ the main, acquits me: whereupon
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 the Lord,
Shepherd o’ the flock,—one of whose charge bleats sore
For crook’s help from the quag wherein it drowns?
Law suffers him put forth 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: ’tis 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 a-pace
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 the 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 hook 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, now winter’s dead, 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,
Civilisation 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, may be, 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 blades, 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 licence 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 is the sole good in the world,
Any one’s pleasure turns to some one’s pain,
So, let law watch for everyone,—say we,
Who call things wicked that give too much joy,
And nickname the reprisal, envy makes,
Punishment: quite right! thus the world goes round.
I, being well aware such pact there was,
Who in my time have found advantage too
In 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 life,—
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 fail to see, above man’s law,
God’s precept you, the Christians recognise?
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;
Honour 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,
’Tis 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, realise
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, realise
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,
Paralyse Molinism for evermore!
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 neighbourhood 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,
O’ the Pope, no matter for his priceless soul?
There’s no fool’s-freak here, nought 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-case 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 recognised 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 self-same 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, neighbour, 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 master 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-baptised-and-bred Christian-atheists, each
With just as much a right to judge as you,—
As many senses in his soul, or 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 nought,
“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 politician 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, ease
Heart upon dungy earth that’s warm and soft,
And let who will, attempt the altitudes.
We have the 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,
And that a titter gains the gravest mouth,—
O’the sudden you must needs re-introduce
Solemnity, must sober undue mirth
By a blow dealt your boon companion here
Who, using the old licence, 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
Chap-fallen!—while serious natures sermonise
“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, scandalised 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 is 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 you to your sins
“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 make his 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 the fold,
Be red-crossed on the 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 to choose—
One little time more—whether I’d be free
Your foe, or subsidised 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:
’Tis 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
To try conclusions!—at the worst, what’s 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 the 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 folks, “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 favour 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 grey-headed greyer-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 everyday-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!”
Or “Just so 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;
I fancy it go filling up the void
Above my mote-self it devours, or what
Immensity please wreak on nothingness.
Just so 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!”
Someone 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,
Sense would call . . . yes, I do assure you, 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 at first saw one primrose
In bank, one singing-bird in bush, the less,
To warn from wayfare: let me prove you that!
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 stands, there she is 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,—there she fronts me loose, at large,
Held only by her 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 be 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 ’tis with pity. I resent my wrong,
Being a man: we 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
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