!^v^' --m 
 
 CORNELL __ 
 UNIVERSITY 
 LIBRARY 
 
 GOLDWIN SMITH LIBRARY 
 
Date Due 
 
 1 
 
 DATE 
 
 DUE 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 mm 
 
 ^^^'^ 
 
 flp 
 
 ( 
 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 GAYLORD 
 
 
 
 PRINTED (N USA 
 
 Cornell University Library 
 PR 4200.E95a 
 
 3 1924 013 442 615 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/cletails/cu31924013442615 
 
€f)e CamBti&gc €&ition of t^e ^oetjJ 
 
 BROWNING 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 HORACE E. SCUDDER 
 
€|)e Cambritige ^oetjS 
 
 
 Edited by 
 
 BROWNING 
 
 Horace E. Scudder 
 
 MRS. BROWNING 
 
 Harriet Waters Prieston 
 
 BURNS 
 
 W. E. Henley 
 
 BYRON 
 
 Paul E. More 
 
 CHAUCER 
 
 F. N. Robinson 
 
 DRYDEN 
 
 George R. Noyes 
 
 ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH 
 
 ) Helen Child Sargent 
 > George L. Kittredge 
 
 POPULAR BALLADS 
 
 HOLMES 
 
 Horace E. Scudder 
 
 KEATS 
 
 Horace E. Scudder 
 
 LONGFELLOW 
 
 Horace E. Scudder 
 
 LOWELL 
 
 Horace E. Scudder 
 
 MILTON 
 
 Harms Francis Fletcher 
 
 POPE 
 
 Henry W. Boynton 
 
 SCOTT 
 
 Horace E. Scudder 
 
 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 W. A. Neilson 
 
 SHELLEY 
 
 George E. Woodberry 
 
 SPENSER 
 
 R. E. Neil Dodge 
 
 TENNYSON 
 
 William J. Rolfe 
 
 WHITTIER 
 
 Horace E. Scudder 
 
 WORDSWORTH 
 
 A. J. George 
 
<Jm 
 
 BROWNING 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY BOSTON 
 
 Wtmcofi 
 
 Wit 3l&ibeTiSitie l^xtii Cam&ribge 
 
A 
 
 ^S'/J/^^ 
 
 COPYRIGHT 1895 BY HOUeHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
 ALL RIGHTS KESERVBS 
 
 C^ 
 
 .::OTH 
 
 CAMBRIDGE • MASSACHUSETTS 
 VKINIED V^ THE i;.S.A. 
 
PUBLISHERS' NOTE 
 
 The Riverside Edition of the Poetic and Dramatic Works of Robert Browning 
 was published first in 1887. It included all the writings which the American 
 publishers had from time to time brought out by arrangement with Mr. Browning 
 or his representatives. A year later the English publishers issued a new and 
 revised edition, whereupon the Riverside Edition was carefuUy compared with the 
 author's latest revision and made to agree with it. There had grown up, more- 
 over, about the writings a considerable body of comment and interpretation, and 
 to facilitate the study and enjoyment of the poems, the American publishers en- 
 gaged Mr. George Willis Cooke to prepare a Quide-Book which served as a very 
 desirable accompaniment to the Riverside Edition of the works. They added also 
 to the series, by arrangement with the English publishers, the authorized Life of 
 the poet by Mrs. Sutherland Orr. 
 
 The ten volumes thus brought together furnish a complete Browning collection, 
 but it has long been apparent that students and lovers of Browning would find 
 it very convenient to have the complete works of tneir author in a single porta- 
 ble volume, and the plan of the Cambridge Edition =o successfully applied to the 
 poems of Longfellow and Whittier was adopted for this purpose. By a careful 
 study of condensation with every regard for legibility it has been found possible 
 to bring the entire body of Browning's work into a single volume, and to equip 
 the edition with the requisite apparatus. The order of arrangement is chrono- 
 logical, with one or two obvious divergences. As in the other volumes of the 
 Cambridge Edition, a biographical sketch introduces the work, brief head-notes 
 chiefly pertaining to the origin of the respective poems have been supplied, drawn 
 largely from Mr. Cooke's admirable volume, and a small body of pertinent notes of 
 an explanatory character added, though the reader will readily see that the ex- 
 igencies of the volume have compelled the editor to be very frugal in this respect. 
 The appendix also contains the one notable piece of Browning's prose, a chrono- 
 logical list of his writings, and indexes of titles and first lines. 
 
 Boston, 4 Park Stkeet, August 1, 1895. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH . . ix 
 
 PAULINE: A FRAGMENT OF A 
 
 CONFESSION .... 1 
 
 Sonket: "Eyes, calm beside thee, 
 
 (Lady, couiiPST thou know!)" . 11 
 PARACELSUS. 
 
 I. Paracelsus aspikes . . 12 
 n. Paracelsus attains . . 19 
 
 III. Paracelsus . . . .25 
 
 IV. Paracelsus aspires . . 34 
 V. Paracelsus attains . . 40 
 
 STRAFFORD : A TRAGEDY . . 49 
 
 SORDELLO 74 
 
 PIPPA PASSES : A DRAMA . . 128 
 KING VICTOR AND KING CHARLES : 
 
 A TRAGEDY . . . .145 
 
 DRAMATIC LYRICS. 
 Cavalier Tunes. 
 
 I. Marching Alons . . 163 
 
 II. Give a Rouse . . .163 
 
 III. Boot and Saddle . . 16.3 
 
 The Lost Leader .... 164 
 
 " How they brought the Good 
 
 News from Ghent to Aix" . 164 
 Through the Metidja to Abd- 
 
 el-Kadb 165 
 
 Nationality in Drinks . . 166 
 Garden Fancies. 
 
 I. The Flower's Name . . 166 
 
 II. SiBRANDUS ScHAFNABURGEN- 
 
 sis 167 
 
 -»■ Soliloquy of the Spanish Clois- 
 ter 167 
 
 The Laboratory . . . 168 
 The Confessional . . . .169 
 
 Ceistina 169 
 
 The Lost Mistress . . . 170 
 Earth's Immortalities . . 170 
 Meeting at Night .... 170 
 Parting at Morning . . . 170 
 Song: " Nay but you, who do not 
 
 LOVE her" 170 
 
 A Woman's Last Word . . 171 
 Evelyn Hope 171 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Love among the Ruins . . 171 
 A Lovers' Quarrel . . . 172 
 Up at a Villa — Down in the 
 
 City 174 
 
 A Toccata of Galuppi's . . 175 
 Old Pictures in Florence . 176 
 "De Gustibus — " . . . .178 
 Home-Thoughts, from Abroad . 179 
 Home-Thoughts, from the Sea . 179 
 
 Saul 179 
 
 My Stab 184 
 
 By the Fireside . . . 185 
 
 Any Wife to Any Husband . 187 
 
 Two IN THE Campagna . . 189 
 Misconceptions .... 189 
 A Serenade at the Villa . 189 
 One Way of Love .... 190 
 Another Way of Love . . 190 
 A Pretty Woman .... 190 
 Respectability . . . .191 
 Love in a Life .... 191 
 Life in a Love .... 191 
 In Three Days . . . .192 
 
 In a Year 192 
 
 Women and Roses .... 193 
 
 Before 193 
 
 After 194 
 
 The Guabdian-Angel . . 194 
 
 Memorabilia 195 
 
 Popularity 195 
 
 Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha . 195 
 
 THE RETURN OF THE DRUSES . 197 
 A BLOT IN THE 'SCUTCHEON . 216 
 COLOMBE'S BIRTHDAY . . .230 
 DRAMATIC ROMANCES. 
 
 Incident of the French Camp . 251 
 The Patriot . . . .251 
 — My Last Duchess .... 252 
 Count Gismond .... 252 
 The Boy and the Angel . . 253 
 Instans Tyrannus . . . 254 
 
 Mesmerism 255 
 
 The Glove 256 
 
 Time's Revenges .... 258 
 The Italian in England . . 258 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 The Englishman in Italy . . 260 
 In a Gondola .... 262 
 
 Waking 264 
 
 The Twins 266 
 
 A Light Woman .... 267 
 The Last Ride Together . 267 
 
 The Pied Pipeb of Hamelin . 268 
 The Flight of the Duchess . 271 
 A Gbammabian's Funeral . . 219 
 The Heretic's Tragedy . . 280 
 Holy-Cross Day .... 281 
 
 Proths 283 
 
 The Statue and the Bust . . 283 
 — » Porphykia's Lovek . . . 286 
 " Childb Roland to the Dark 
 Tower Came " . . . .287 
 
 A SOUL'S TRAGEDY . . .289 
 
 LURIA 299 
 
 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER- 
 
 DAY. 
 
 Christmas-Eve 
 Easter-Day 
 
 316 
 327 
 
 MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 " Transcendentalism : a Poem in 
 
 Twelve Books" . . . 3.35 
 How it strikes a Contemporary 336 
 Artemis Prologizes . . . 337 
 An Epistle, containing the 
 Strange Mf,dical Experience 
 OF Karshish, the Arab Phy- 
 sician 338 
 
 Johannes Agricola in Medita- 
 tion 341 
 
 Pictor Ignotus .... 341 
 «— 'Fka Lippo Lippi . . . 342 
 
 —-Andrea del Sarto . . . 346 
 _^The Bishop orders his Tomb at 
 
 Saint Pbaxed's Church . . 348 
 Bishop Blougbam's Apology . 349 
 
 Cleon 358 
 
 RuDEL TO the Lady of Tripoli 361 
 One Word More .... 361 
 
 IN A BALCONY 364 
 
 Ben Karshook's Wisdom . . . 372 
 
 DRAMATIS PERSONS. 
 
 James Lee's Wife. 
 
 I. James Lee's Wife speaks 
 
 AT the Window . . 373 
 
 II. By the Fireside . . 373 
 
 III. In the Doorway . . 373 
 
 IV. Along the Bkach. . 374 
 V. On the Cliff . . .374 
 
 VI. Reading a Book, under 
 
 THE Cliff . . . 374 
 VII. Among the Rooks . . 375 
 VIII. Beside the Drawing- 
 
 BoABD .... 375 
 
 IX. On Deck . . . .376 
 
 Gold Hair : a Story of Pornio 376 
 
 The Worst of It . . . 378 
 
 Dis Aliteb Visum; or, Le Eyron 
 
 de Nos Jours .... 379 
 
 Too Late 380 
 
 Abt Vogler. after he has been 
 extemporizing upon the Mu- 
 sical Instrument of his Inven- 
 tion 382 
 
 Rabbi Ben Ezra . . . 383 
 
 A Death in the Desert . . 385 
 Caliban upon Setebos ; or, Natu- 
 ral Theology in the Island . 392 
 
 Confessions 394 
 
 May and Death .... 395 
 Deaf and Dumb : A Group by 
 
 WOOLNEB 395 
 
 Prospice 395 
 
 EuRYDiCB TO Orpheus : a Picture 
 
 BY Lbighton .... 395 
 Youth and Art .... 396 
 
 ■ A Face 396 
 
 A Likeness 396 
 
 Mr. Sludge, " the Medium " . . 397 
 Apparent Failure . . . 412 
 Epilogue ...... 413 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK. 
 
 I. The Ring and the Book . 414 
 
 II. Half-Rome . . . .427 
 
 III. The Other Half-Rome . 441 
 
 IV. Tertium Quid . . 456 
 V. Count Guido Fbancesohini 471 
 
 VI. Giuseppe Capon.sacchi . 489 
 
 VII. Pompilia 508 
 
 VIII. DoMiNus Hyacinthus de Arch- 
 
 ANGELIS, PAUPEBUM PBOCURA- 
 TOR 525 
 
 IX. Juris Doctor Johannes-Bap- 
 TISTA BOTTINirS, Fisci et 
 Rev. Cam. Apostol. Advo- 
 
 CATUS 540 
 
 X. The Pope .... 554 
 
 XI. Guroo 572 
 
 XII. The Book and the Ring . 594 
 
 Helen's Tower 601 
 
 BALAUSTION'S ADVENTURE, in- 
 cluding A Transcript from 
 EUEIPIDES .... 602 
 
 ARISTOPHANES' APOLOGY, includ- 
 ing A Transcript prom Euri- 
 pides, BEING the Last Adven- 
 ture OF Balaustion . . 623 
 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL - SCHWAN- 
 
 GAU, SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY 681 
 
 FIFINE AT THE FAIR. 
 
 Prologue 701 
 
 FiFINE AT THE FaIB . . . 702 
 
 Epilogue 735 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 KED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUN- 
 TRY ; OB TUKF AND TOWERS 736 
 
 THE INN ALBUM .... '773 
 
 PAGCHIAROTTO, WITH OTHER 
 
 POEMrt. 
 
 Pbologuk 802 
 
 Of Pacohiakotto, and how he 
 
 worked in dlstempek . . 802 
 At the '• Mebmaid " . . . 807 
 
 House 808 
 
 fciHOP 809 
 
 PiSGAH-SlGHTS 810 
 
 Fears and ISckuples . . .811 
 Natural Magic .... 811 
 Magical Nature .... 812 
 
 Bifurcation 812 
 
 Numpholeptos .... 812 
 
 Appearances 814 
 
 St. Martin's Summer . . . 814 
 
 Herve Riel 815 
 
 A Forgiveness .... 817 
 
 Cenciaja 820 
 
 FiLippo Baldinucci on the Privi- 
 lege of Burial . . . 823 
 Epilogue .... . 827 
 
 THE AGAMEMNON OF .^SCHYLUS 8.30 
 LA SAISIAZ .... 849 
 
 THE TWO POETS OF CROISIC . 859 
 
 Oh Love! Love 874 
 
 DRAMATK^ IDYLS: FIRST SERIES. 
 Martin Relph .... 875 
 
 Pheidippides 877 
 
 Halbert and Hob . . . 879 
 Ivan Ivanovitch .... 880 
 
 Tray 887 
 
 Ned Bratts 887 
 
 DRAMATIC IDYLS: SECOND SERIES. 
 
 Prologue 892 
 
 Echetlos 892 
 
 Clive 893 
 
 MuLEYKEH 897 
 
 PjETRO OF Aeano . . . 899 
 
 Doctor 906 
 
 Pan and Luna .... 909 
 
 Touch him ne'er so lightly . 910 
 
 The Blind Man to the Maiden . 910 
 
 Goldoni 910 
 
 JOCOSERIA. 
 
 Wanting is — What? . . 911 
 
 Donald 911 
 
 Solomon and Balkis . . . 913 
 Cristina and Monaldeschi . . 914 
 Mary Wollstonecbaft and Fn- 
 
 seli 916 
 
 Adam, Lilith, and Eve . . 916 
 IxiON 916 
 
 Jochanan Hakkadosh . . . 918 
 Never the Time and the Place 928 
 Pambo 928 
 
 FERISHTAH'S FANCIES. 
 
 Prologue 929 
 
 I. The Eagle . . .929 
 II. The Melon-Sellee . . 930 
 ni. Shah Abbas . . .930 
 IV. The Family . . . - 932 
 V. The Sun ... . 933 
 VI. Mihkae Shah . . .934 
 VII. A Camel-Driveb . . 936 
 VIII. Two Camels . . . .937 
 IX. Cherries .... 938 
 X. Plot-Culture . . . 939 
 XI. A Pillar at Sebzevak . 940 
 XII. A Bean-Stbipe : also Apple- 
 Eating . . . .942 
 
 Epilogue 946 
 
 Ratvdon Brown 947 
 
 The Foundeb of the Feast . . 947 
 
 The Names 947 
 
 Epitaph on Levi Lincoln Thaxteb 947 
 Why I AM a Libebal .... 948 
 
 AM 
 
 PARLEYINGS with CERTAIN 
 PEOPLE OF IMPORTANCE 
 IN THEIR DAY. 
 Apollo and the Fates 
 With Bernard de Mandeville 
 With Daniel Bartoli 
 With Christopher Smart 
 With George Bubb Dodington 
 With Francis Furini 
 With Gerard de Lairesse . 
 With Charles Avison 
 FuPT AND HIS Friends : an Epi- 
 
 948 
 952 
 955 
 959 
 961 
 964 
 970 
 974 
 
 979 
 
 ASOLANDO: FANCIES AND FACTS. 
 Prologue .... 
 ROSNY .... 
 
 Dubiety .... 
 
 Now 
 
 Humility .... 
 Poetics 
 
 SuMMUM BONUM . 
 
 A Pearl, a Girl . 
 Sphculative 
 White Witchcraft 
 Bad Dreams. I. . 
 Bad Dreams. II. . 
 Bad Dreams. III. 
 Bad Dreams. IV. . 
 Inappbehensiveness . 
 
 Which? 
 
 The Cardinal and the Dog 
 The Pope and the Net 
 The Bean-Feast . 
 Muckle-Mouth Meg 
 Arcades Ambo 
 
 987 
 987 
 987 
 988 
 988 
 988 
 988 
 988 
 988 
 989 
 
 990 
 990 
 991 
 991 
 991 
 992 
 992 
 993 
 993 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 The Lady and the Painter . 993 
 PoNTB dell' Angelo, Venice . 994 
 Beatrice Signorini . . . 996 
 Flute-Music, with an Accompani- 
 ment 999 
 
 " Imperantb Augusto natus 
 
 EST — " 1001 
 
 Development .... 1002 
 
 Rephan 1003 
 
 Reverie 1005 
 
 EriLOouit ..... 1007 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 I. An Essay on Shelley . . 1008 
 II. Notes and Illustrations . 1014 
 III. A List of Mr. Browning's Po- 
 ems iND Dramas, arrano3E 
 
 IN THE ORDER OF FIRST PUBLI- 
 CATION IN BOOK FORM . . 1023 
 
 INDEX OF FIRST LINES OF PO- 
 EMS 1027 
 
 GENERAL INDEX OF TITLES . 1031 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.' 
 
 It one sought to build any genealogical structure to account for Robert Browning's genius, he 
 •would find but slight foundation in fact, though what he found would be substantial so far as it 
 went. Browning's father was a bank clerk in London ; his father again was a bank clerk. Both 
 of these Brownings were christened Robert. The father of the poet's grandfather was Thomas 
 Browning, an innkeeper and small proprietor in Dorsetshire, and his stock apparently was west- 
 country English. Browning himself liked to believe that an earlier ancestor was a certain Captain 
 Micaiah Browning who raised the siege of Derry in 1689 by an act of personal bravery which cost 
 him his hfe. It is most to the point that Browning was London born with two generations of city 
 Londoners behind him. His mother was Sarah Anne — a name which became Sarianna in the poet's 
 sister — Wiedemann, the Scottish daughter of a Hamburg German, a shipowner in Dundee. 
 
 The characters of the poet's parents are clearly defuied. Robert Browning, senior, was a man 
 of business who performed his business duties punctiliously, and by frugality acquired a tolerably 
 comfortable fortune, but he was not a money-making man ; his real life was in his books and in the 
 gratification of literary and sesthetic tastes. He was a voracious reader, and in a prudent way a 
 book and print collector. " It was his habit," says Mrs. Orr, " when he bought a book — which 
 was generally an old one allowing of this addition — to have some pages of blank paper bound into 
 it. These he filled with notes, chronological tables, or such other supplementary matter as would 
 enhance the interest, or assist the mastering, of its contents : all written in a clear and firm, though 
 by no means formal, handwriting." He had a talent for versifying which he used for his enter- 
 tainment ; he had a cheerful nature and that genuine sociability which made him a delightful com- 
 panion in the small circle which satisfied his simple, ingenuous nature. He was bom and bred in 
 the Church of England, but in middle life became by choice a Dissenter, though never an exclusive 
 one. 
 
 Mrs. Browning, the poet's mother, was once described by Carlyle as " the true type of a Scottish 
 gentlewoman." She inherited from her father a love for music and drawing which in him was 
 manifested in execution, in her in good taste and appreciation. She was a woman of serene, gentle 
 and afFectionate nature, and of simple, earnest religious belief. She was brought up in the kirk 
 of Scotland, but, like her husband, connected herself in middle life with the Congregationalists. 
 She communicated of her own religions conviction to her children ; it is said that she handed down 
 also a nervous organization. 
 
 Of these parents Robert Browning was bom in the parish of St. Giles, Camberwell, London, May 
 7, 1812. He was the oldest of the small family, having two sisters, one, Clara, who died in child- 
 hood, and Sarianna, two years younger than himself, who outlived him. The country in which he 
 was born and where he spent his childhood has been delightfully described by his great contempo- 
 rary, Ruskin, whose Heme Hill was in the immediate neighborhood. Camberwell at that time 
 was a suburb of London, with rural spaces and near access to the open country, though the stony 
 foot of the metropolis was already stepping outward upon the pleasant lanes and fields. There 
 was room for gardening and the keeping of pets, while the country gave opportunity for forays into 
 nature's fastnesses. The boy kept owls and monkeys, magpies and hedgehogs, an eagle, snakes 
 even, and was touched with the collector's pride, as when he started a collection of rare creatures 
 with a couple of lady-birds brought home one winter day and placed in a box lined with cotton 
 
 • The materials for this sketch are drawn from Mrs. Sutherland Orr's Life and Letters of Robert Browning, Mr. 
 William Sharp's Life of Robert Browning, and Mr. Edmund Gosse's Robert Browning: Personalia. 
 
ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 wool and labelled, " Animals found surviving; in the depths of a severe -winter." It is easy for a 
 reader of his poems to detect the close, sympathetic observation which he disclosed for all lower 
 Ufe. 
 
 Indeed the characteristics of his mind as seen in his writings afterward were readily disclosed in 
 the evidence which remains to us of liis boyhood. He was insatiably curious and he was imagina- 
 tively dramatic, and he had from the first the sane and generous aid of his parents in both these 
 particulars. His father was passionately fond of children, and gave his own that best of gifts, 
 appreciative companionship. " He was fond," says Mr. Sharp in his Life of Browning^ " of taking 
 the little Robert in his arms and walking to and fro with him in the dusk in ' the library,' soothing 
 the child to sleep by singing to him snatches of Anacreon in the original to a favorite old tune of 
 his, ' A Cottage in a Wood ; ' " and agam the same biographer says : " One of his own [Robert's] 
 recollections was that of sitting on his father's knees iu the library, and listening with enthralled 
 attention to the Tale of Ti'oy, with marvellous illustrations among the glowing coals in the fire- 
 place ; with, below all, the vaguely heard accompaniment — from the neighboring room, where Mra. 
 Browning sat ' in her chief happiness, her hour of darkness and solitude and music ' — of a wild 
 Gaelic lament, with its insistent falling cadences." 
 
 The boy had an indifferent experience of formal schooling in his youth. The more fertilizing 
 influence of his intellectual taste was found in his father's books. As has been said, his father 
 had an intelligent and ciiltivated love of hooka, and eagerly shared his knowledge and his treasures 
 with his boy. A seventeenth century edition of Quarles's Mviblems, the first edition of Mob- 
 itison Crusoe, an early edition of Milton, bought for him by his father, old Bibles, a wide range of 
 Elizabethan literature — these were pastures in which the boy browsed. Besides, he knew the 
 eighteenth century writers, Walpole, Junius, and even Voltaire being included by the catholic 
 minded father. The special acquaintance with Greek came later, but Latin he began early. 
 
 His attendance at school ceased when he was fourteen, then came four years of private tutors, 
 and at eighteen he was matriculated at London University, where he spent two years. In this 
 period of private and public tuition, his scope was widening with systematic intent. He learned 
 dancing, riding, boxing and fencing. He became versed in French. He visited galleries, and 
 ma4e some progress in drawing, especially from casts. He studied music with able teachers. He 
 had a strong interest in the stage, and displayed on occasions a good deal of histrionic ability him- 
 self. 
 
 It is said that in this gi'owing, restless period, when indeed he had the wilfulness and aggressive- 
 ness of the young man who has the consciousness of inner power, bnt not yet the mastery eitlier of 
 art or of himself, it was an open question with him whether he should be poet, painter, sculptor 
 or musician ; an artist at any rate he knew he must be. To that all his being moved, and in his 
 youth he manifested that temperament, by alternation dreamy and dramatic, which under favojv 
 ing conditions is the background from which artistic possibilities are projected. From the vantage 
 ground of a wooded spot near liis home he could look out on the distant city lying on the western 
 horizon, and fretting the evening sky with its spires and towers and ragged lines. The sight for 
 him had a great fascination. Here would he lie for hours, looking and dreaming, and he has told 
 how one night of his boyhood he stole out to these elms and saw the great city glimmering through 
 the darkness. After all, the vision was more to him than that which brought woods and fields 
 beneath his ken. It was the world of men and women, toward wliich his gaze was directed all his 
 life. 
 
 In Browning's case, as in that of more than one recent poet, it is possible to see a very distinct 
 passing of the torch into his hand from that of a great predecessor. He had versified from child- 
 hood. He would scarcely have been his father's child had he not. His sister remembers that when 
 he was a very little child he would walk round and round the dining-room table, spanning the 
 table with his palm as he marked oft the scansion of the verses he had composed. Even before 
 this rhyme had been put into his hands as an instrument, for his father had taught him words by 
 their rhymes, and aided his memorizing of Latin declensions in the same way. So the boy lisped 
 in numbers, for the numbers came, and by the time he was twelve had accumulated a formidable 
 amount of matter, chiefly Byronic in manner. With the confidence of the very youthful poet, he tried 
 to find a publisher who would venture on the issue. He could not find one who would put his verses 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
 
 into print, but he found one of another sort in his mother, who read them with pride and showed 
 them to her friends. Thus they fell into the hands of Miss Flower, who showed them to her sis- 
 ter, Sarah Flower Adams, whose name is firmiy held in hynmologies, and with her appreciation 
 showed them also to the Kev. William Johnson Fox, who as preacher, editor, and man of letters 
 had a tolerably distinct position which has not yet been forgotten. Mr. Fox read and was em- 
 phatic in his recognition of promise, but with good sense advised against any attempt to get the 
 book into print. Book it was in manuscript, and this was the publication it received. Like 
 other first ventures, its audience was fit though few, and as will be seen later. Browning gained 
 the best thing that first ventures are likely to bring, a generous critic. 
 
 But shortly after this came the real fructifying of the poetic germ which lay in this youthful 
 nature. " Passing a bookstall one day," says Mr. Sharp, " he saw, in a box of second-hand vol- 
 umes, a little book advertised as ' Mr. Shelley's Atheistical Poem: very scarce.' He had never 
 heai'd of Shelley, nor did he leam for a long time that the Dcemon of the World and the miscellar 
 neous poems appended thereto constituted a literary piracy. Badly printed, shamefully muti- 
 lated, these discarded blossoms touched him to a new emotion. Pope became further removed 
 than ever : Byron, even, lost his magnetic supremacy. From vague remarks in reply to his inqui- 
 ries, and from one or two casual allusions, he learned that there really was a poet called Shelley; 
 that be had written several volumes; that he was dead," His mother set herself to search for 
 more of Shelley for her son, and after recourse to Mr. Fox, made her way to the OUiers in Vere 
 Street, and brought back not only a collection of Shelley's volumes, but of Keats's also, and thus 
 these two poets fell into Browning's hands. 
 
 It was on a May night. Browning told a friend, he entered upon this hitherto unknown world. 
 In a laburnum near by, and in a great copper beech not far away, two nightingales sang together. 
 So he sat and listened to them, and read by turns from these two poets. It was his initiation into 
 the same society. He did not at once join them, but when he made his first appearance in public, 
 at the age of twenty, it was with a poem, Pauline^ which not only held a glowing apostrophe to 
 Shelley but was throughout colored by his ardent devotion to the poet. Twenty years later he 
 wrote a prose apologia for Shelley in the form of an introduction to a collection of letters purport- 
 ing to come from Shelley, but which were discovered to be spurious immediately upon publication. 
 Both Pauline and an Essay on Percy Bysshe Shelley will be found in this volume, with introduc- 
 tions explaining the circumstances of publication, but the reader of Browning's poetry is likely to 
 carry longest in his mind the short lyric Memorabilia, beginning : — 
 
 *' Ah, did you once see Shelley plain," 
 
 in which as in a parable one may read how the sudden acquaintance with this poet was to Browne 
 ing the one memorable moment in his period of youthful dreaming. 
 
 The publication anonymously of Pauline, in January, 1833, was followed by a period of travel. 
 He went to Russia nominally as secretary to the Russian consul-general, and became so enamored 
 of diplomatic life that he essayed to enter it, but failed ; so strong a hold did it take on him that 
 he would have been glad in later life if his son had chosen this career. 
 
 The life of a poet who is not also a man of action is told mainly in the succession of his writings. 
 Two or three sonnets followed Pauline, but the first poem to which Browning attached his name 
 was Paracelsus, the dedication to which is dated March 15, 1835. The dedication — and the suc- 
 cession of these graceful compliments discloses many of Browning's friendships — was to Count 
 de Ripert-Monolar, a young French royalist, who was a private agent of the royal family, and had 
 become intimate with the poet, who was four years his junior. The count suggested the life of 
 Paracelsus to his friend as a subject for a poem, but on second thought advised against it as offering 
 insufficient materials for the treatment of love. A young poet, however, who would prefix a quota- 
 tion from Cornelius Agrippa to his first publication was one easily to be enticed by such a subject, 
 and Browning fell upon the literature relating to Paracelsus which he found in the British Museum, 
 and quickly mastered the facts, which became fused by his ardent imagination and eager specula- 
 tion into a consistent whole. But though he sought his material among books, as he needs must, 
 he found his constructive power in the silence of nature in the night. He had a great love for 
 walking in the dark. " There was in particular," says Mr. Sharp, " a wood near Dnlwich, 
 
ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 whither he was wont to go. There ne would walk swiftly and eagerly along the solitary and 
 lightless byways, finding a potent stimulus to imaginative thought in the happy isolation thus 
 enjoyed. ... At this time, too. he composed much in the open air. This he rarely, if ever, did in 
 later life. Not only many portions of Paracelsus but several scenes in Strafford were enacted 
 first in these midnight silences of the Dulwich woodland. Here, too, as the poet once declared, 
 he came to know the serene beautyof dawn: for every now and again, after having read late, or 
 written long, he would steal quietly from the house, and walk till the morning twilight graded to 
 the pearl and amber of the new day." 
 
 Poetry, it may be, more than any other form of literature, clears the way for friendship. At 
 any rate, Paracelsus introduced Browning to John Forster, and it was at this time also that Dick- 
 ens, Talfourd and Maoready, Leigh Hunt, Barry Cornwall, Wordsworth and Landor were more 
 than names to the young poet. There was doubtless something in the man as well as in his work 
 which won him recognition. Macready says he looked more the poet than any man he had ever 
 met. His head was crowned with wavy dark brown hair. He had singularly expressive eyes, a 
 sensitive, mobile mouth, a musical voice, and an alertness of manner, so that he was like a quiver- 
 ing, high bred animal. How marked he was by his companions, and singled out to be, as Hacready 
 says, " a leading spirit of his time," is instanced by a notable occurrence at Talfourd's house after 
 the first performance of lon^ when Talfourd included Browning with Wordsworth and Landor, 
 who were present, in a toast to the poets of England. 
 
 It was on this occasion that Macready, whom Browning already knew well, proposed to the poet 
 that he should write him a play as narrated in the Introduction to Strafford. The play was pro- 
 duced at the Covent Garden Theatre in May, 1837, and Macready and Miss Helen Faucit, after- 
 ward Lady Martin, gave distinction to its representation. It came, however, 'at an unfortunate 
 time in the management, and though it gave promise of a long run, certain difficulties in the 
 theatre compelled its withdrawal. It was published at once by Longmans, but like Browning's 
 former book, was a failure with the public. 
 
 The monologue of Pauline had been succeeded by what may be called the conversational drama 
 of Paracelsus, and that by the dramatic Strafford. The form now experimented with was to be 
 the dominant one for the next ten years, though his next attempt was in form almost a reveision to 
 Pauline. During the remainder of 1837 and until Easter, 1838, Browning was engaged on Sor- 
 dello, but interrupted this poem for a couple of years which have a special interest as the years 
 when he first visited Italy, and when he entered upon an order of production which was to be very 
 significant of his poetic choice of subject and treatment. Browning himself recognized the impor- 
 tance to him of his acquaintance with Italy. " It was my university," he was wont to say, when 
 asked if he had been a student at Oxford or Cambridge. The companion poems. The English- 
 man m Italy and The Italian in England, illustrate that double nationality in Browning's mind by 
 which the two countries were, so to speak, married for him. The latter of these two poems was 
 one which Mazzini used to read to his countrymen when he would demonstrate how generously 
 an Englishman could enter into the Italian's patriotic aspirations. The journey was a rapid one. 
 " I went," Browning says, " to Trieste, then Venice — then through Treviso and Bassano to the 
 mountains, delicious Asolo, all my places and castles, you will see. Then to Vicenza, Padua, 
 and Venice again. Then to Verona, Trent, Innspruck, Munich, Salzburg in Franconia, Frank- 
 fort and Mayence ; down the Rhine to Cologne, then to Aix-la-Chapelle, Si^ge and Antwerp ; then 
 home." 
 
 It would seem as if he had begun Sordello with a bookish knowledge only of Italy, and later 
 charged it with a more informing spirit of love for that country and embroidered it witli descriptive 
 scenes drawn from his personal observation. The poem was published in 1840, but the result of 
 the journey in Italy and of the poet's more complete finding of himself — a process by the bye 
 which may almost be taken as having its analogue in Sordello — were made most evident by the 
 next publication, the story of which is told in the Introduction to Pippa Passes, The very form 
 chosen for Bells and Pomegranates was a challenge to the public not so fantastically arrogant as 
 Home's famous publication of Orion at a farthing, but noticeable as an earnest of Browning's 
 appeal to his generation and not to a select circle of admiring friends. In this series of writings, 
 extending from 1841 through 1846, Browning struck the note again and again, in drama, lyric, and 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
 
 romance, which was to be the dominant note of his poetry, that disclosure of the soul of man in 
 all manner of circumstances, as if the world were to the poet a great laboratory of souls, and he 
 was forever to be engaged in solving, dissolving, and resolving the elements. 
 
 It is noticeable also that with this series closed Browning's serious attempts at dramatic composi- 
 tion for the stage. It would almost seem as if he finally parted company with theatrical mana^ 
 geis, partly because of the constant difficulty he had in making them subordinate to his purpose, 
 partly and no doubt more profoundly because his own genius, bent as it was upon the iuterpretar 
 tion of spiritual phenomena, could ill brook the demands of the acted drama that all this interpre- 
 tation should stop with visible, intelligible, and satisfactory action, capable of histrionic expression. 
 Browning's eager penetration of the arcana of life was too absorbing to permit him to call a halt 
 when the actor on the stage could go no farther. 
 
 An example of the practical difficulties he encountered with managers will be found in the 
 vicissitudes of A Blot in the 'Scutcheon, which was put on the stage in 1843 and formed the fifth in 
 the series of Bells and Pomegranates. Browning has himself told the story of his misfortunes so 
 fully and so graphically in a letter to Mr. Frank Hill, editor of the London Daily News, forty 
 years after the event, that it seems worth while to introduce it here. The letter, from which the 
 following passage is taken, was dated 19, Warwick Crescent, December 15, 1884 ; and was written 
 in consequence of a paragraph concerning the revival of the play, which Mr. Hill had sent in proof 
 to Browning, from a doubt he felt of its accuracy : — 
 
 "Maeready received and accepted the play, while he was engaged at the Haymarket, and re- 
 tained it for Drury Lane, of which I was ignorant that he was about to become the manager ; he 
 accepted it ' at the instigation ' of nobody, — and Charles Dickens was not in England when he 
 did so : it was read to him after his return by Forster — and the glowing letter which contains his 
 opinion of it, although directed by him to be shown to myself, was never heard of nor seen by me 
 till printed in Forster's book some thirty years after. When the Drury Lane season began, Mao- 
 ready informed me that he should act the play when he had brought out two others — The 
 Patrician's Daughter, and Plighted Troth, Having done so, he wrote to me that the former 
 had been unsuccessful in money-drawing, and the latter had ' smashed his arrangements alto- 
 gether,' but he would still produce my play. I had — in my ignorance of certain symptoms better 
 understood by Maeready 's professional acquaintances — no notion that it was a proper thing, in 
 such a case, to ' release him from his promise ; ' on the contrary, I should have fancied that such 
 a proposal was offensive. Soon after, Maeready begged that I would call on him ; he said the play 
 had been read to the actors the day before, and ' laughed at from beginning to end ; ' on my 
 speaking ray mind about this, he explained that the reading had been done by the prompter, a 
 grotesque person with a red nose and wooden leg, ill at ease in the love scenes, and that he would 
 himself make amends by reading the play next morning — which he did, and very adequately — 
 but apprised me that, in consequence of the state of his mind, harassed by business and various 
 trouble, the principal character must be taken by Mr. Phelps ; and again I failed to understand — 
 what Forster subsequently assured me was plain as the sun at noonday — that to allow at Mac- 
 ready's theatre any other than Maeready to play the principal part in a new piece was suicidal, — 
 and really believed I was meeting his exigencies by accepting the substitution. At the rehearsal, 
 Maeready announced that Mr. Phelps was ill, and that he himself would read the part ; on the 
 third rehearsal, Mr. Phelps appeared for the first time, and sat in a chair while Maeready more 
 than read — rehearsed the part. The next morning Mr. Phelps waylaid me at the stage-floor to say, 
 with much emotion, that it never was intended that he should be instrumental in the success of a 
 new tragedy, and that Maeready would play Tresham on the ground that himself, Phelps, was 
 unable to do so. He added that he could not expect me to waive such an advantage, but that, if I 
 were prepared to waive it, ' he would take ether, sit up all night, and have the words in his mem- 
 ory by next day.' I bade him follow me to the green-room, and hear what I decided upon — 
 which was that as Maeready had given him the part, he should keep it ; this was on a Thursday ; 
 he rehearsed on Friday and Saturday, — the play being acted the same evening, — of the fifth day 
 after the ' reading ' by Maeready. Maeready at once wished to reduce the importance of the ' play ' — 
 as he styled it in the bills, — tried to leave out so much of the text that I baffled him by get- 
 ting it printed in foi'r-and-t.wenty hours, by Moxon's assistance. He wanted me to call it TSe 
 
ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 Sister ! and I have before me, while I write, the stage-acting copy, with two lines of his own in- 
 sertion to avoid the tragical ending — Tresham was to announce liis intention of going into a 
 monastery ! all this, to keep up the belief that Macready, and Macready alone, could produce 
 a veritable ' tragedy,' unproduced before. Not a shilling was spent on scenery or dresses, and a 
 striking scene which had been used for The Patrician's Daughter did duty a second time. If 
 your critic considers this treatment of the play an instance of ' the failiire of powerful and ex- 
 perienced actors ' to ensure its success, I can only say that my own opinion was shown by at once 
 breaking off a friendship of many years — a friendship which had a right to be plainly and simply 
 told that the play I had contributed as a proof of it would, through a change of circumstances, no 
 longer be to my friend's advantage — all I could possibly care for. Only recently, when by the 
 publication of Maeready's journals the extent of his pecuniary embarrassments at that time was 
 made known, could I in a measure understand his motives for such conduct, and less than ever 
 understand why he so straixgely disguised and disfigured them. If ' applause ' meant success, the 
 l)lay thus maimed and maltreated was successful enough ; it ' made way ' for Maeready's own 
 Benefit, and the theatre closed a fortnight after." 
 
 Of the more profound separation between Browning and the theatre, due to the inherent impossi- 
 bility of his arresting his thought before it got beyond the actor's use, Luria and The Return of the 
 Druses afford good examples, and an illustration might fairly be taken from Colombe's Birthday, 
 which was put on the stage in 1853, but scarcely held its own, though Helen Faucit took the 
 heroine's part, and, when revjved forty years after, was so cut and slashed that though the splen- 
 did idea of Valence was retained in situation, the delicate, subtle shadows which passed and I'e- 
 passed before the reader's miind were wanting. 
 
 The period when Browning was writing his dramas was one of spendthrift enjoyment of life. For 
 it was a time not only of work in the British Museum and of excursions into all sorts of remote 
 fields of literature, but of long rambles, half gypsy experiences, hours when, stretched at full length 
 beneath the sky, he made familiar and minute acquaintance with bird and leaf, insect and snail, 
 the wind in the trees, the search for the northwest passage of argosies of clouds. He pursued all 
 manner of interests which absorbed him for the moment ; he was living, in. short, that abundant 
 life which was reflected later in multitudinous dramatic assumptions. 
 
 Then all at once there came a concentration of his passion and a sudden revelation to him which 
 never lost its wondrous light. Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning, knowing each other through 
 their writings, then by a common service to a common friend, then by an intermittent correspond- 
 ence, finally were brought together by John Kenyon, already a dear friend of each. The fragile 
 creature, scarce able to leave her couch, and the robust, exuberantly vital man, were as far separate 
 in external, superficial agreement as could well be, but ea^h knew the other with an instantaneous- 
 ness of knowledge and need. Again and again, not "'ily in verses directed openly to his wife, but 
 in those which like By the Fireside thinly veil personal feeling, the passionate constancy of this ex- 
 perimenting, daringly inquisitive poet towai'ds his poet wife is splendidly disclosed, with a certain 
 glory of frank confession which is the vehement sincerity of one who is in this one feehng genuine 
 poet and genuine man. 
 
 Miss Barrett was an invalid, guarded with the greatest care, and Browning, in urging marri^e 
 upon her, met with all the obstacles which the circumstances raised. He confronted indeed the 
 indomitable refusal of Miss Barrett's father. A physician had held out hopes that a removal to 
 Italy would give the invalid a chance to regain some degree of health, but Mr. Barrett, for some 
 not very clear reason, refused his consent to her taking the journey with her brother. It was then 
 that Browning, who can readily be conceived of as a masterful man, won Miss Barrett's consent to 
 a sudden and clandestine marriage, and a journey to Italy as his wife. " When she had finally 
 assented to this course," writes Mrs. Orr, " she took a preparatory step which, in so far as it was 
 known, must itself have been sufficiently startling to those about her ; she drove to Regent's Park, 
 and when there, stepped out of the carriage and on to the grass. I do not know how lone she 
 stood — probably only for a moment ; but I well remember hearing tliat when, after so long an 
 interval, she felt earth under her feet and air about her, the sensation was almost bewilderingly 
 strange." 
 
 They were married September 13, 1846. She would not entangle Mr. Kenyon or any of hep 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
 
 friends by announcing; even her engagement ; she preferred marrying without her father's know- 
 ledge, to marrying against his prohibition, For a week the husband and wife did not see each 
 other. Then they met by agreement and went to Paris, Mr. Barrett never forgave liis daughter, 
 but the consternation with which the Browning family heard of the event quickly turned to affec- 
 tionate regard for the frail wife. So far as Mrs. Browning's physical well-being was concerned, it 
 is clear that the marriage gave her a new lease of life ; and what seemed at the moment an 
 audacious taking of fate into their own hands proved to be a case where nature obtained her best 
 of both. 
 
 From Paris, by slow stages, they passed through France into Italy, and made their first long 
 halt in Pisa. It was here, we are told, that Mrs. Browning showed to her husband in manuscript 
 those Sonnets from the Portuguese which were her offering to him out of the darkness of her cham- 
 ber. From Pisa they went to Florence, to Anoona, and again back to Florence, where at last they 
 obtained a foothold in the old palace called Casa Guidi, a name to be endeared to the readers of 
 Mrs. Browning's poetry. Mr. George S, HiUard, in his Six Months in Italy, gives a pleasant ac- 
 count of the Brownings when he met them in Florence in lh47. 
 
 " It is well for the traveller to be chary of names. It is an ungrateful return for hospitable 
 attentions to print the conversation of your host, or describe his person, or give an inventory of his 
 furniture, or proclaim how his wife and daughters were dressed. But I trust I may be pardoned 
 if I .state that one of my most delightful associations with Florence arises from the fact that here 
 I made the acquaintance of Robert and Elizabeth Browning. These are even more familiar 
 names in America than in England, and their poetry is probably more read, and better under- 
 stood with us than among their own countrymen. A happier home and a more perfect union than 
 •theirs it is not easy to imagine ; and this completeness arises not only froni the rare qualities 
 which each possesses, but from their adaptation to each other. Browning's conversation is like the 
 poetry of Chaucer, or like his own, simplified and made transparent. His countenance is so full 
 of vigor, freshness, and refined power, that it seems impossible to think that he can ever grow old. 
 His poetry is subtle, passionate, and profound ; but he himself is simple, natural, and playful. 
 He has the repose of a man who has lived much in the open air ; with no nervous uneasiness and no 
 nnhealtJiy self-consciousness. Mrs. Browning is in many respects the correlative of her husband. 
 As he is full of manly power, so she is a type of the most sensitive and delicate womanhood. She 
 has been a great sufferer from ill-health, and the marks of pain are stamped upon her pereon and 
 manner. Her figure is slight, her countenance expressive of genius and sensibility, shaded by a 
 veil of long brown locks ; and her tremulous voice often flutters over her words, like the fiame of 
 a dying candle over the wick. I have never seen a human frame which seemed so nearly a trans- 
 parent veil for a celestial and immortal spirit. She is a soul of fire enclosed in a shell of pearl. 
 Her rare and fine genius needs no setting forth at my hands. She is also, what is not so generally 
 known, a woman of uncommon, nay, profound learning, even measured by a masculine standard. 
 Nor is she more remarkable for genius and learning, than for sweetness of temper, tenderness of 
 heart, depth of feeling, and purity of spirit. It is a privilege to know such beings singly and sep- 
 arately, but to see their powers quickened, and their happiness rounded, by the sacred tie of mar- 
 riage, is a cause for peculiar and lasting gratitude. A union so complete as theirs — in which the 
 mind has nothing to crave nor the heart to sigh for — is cordial to behold and something to 
 rememher." 
 
 During the fifteen years of their married life the Brownings lived for the most part in Italy, 
 with occasional summers in England and long sojourns in Paris. The record of Browning's pro- 
 ductions during this period is meagre, if one regards the fulness of his poetic activity both before 
 and after, The explanation is made that these new responsibilities, — for two sons were born to 
 them, one of whom died, — carried also great anxieties, for the frailty of Mrs. Browning's health 
 was a constant factor in the movements of the household. But though the record is meagre as to 
 quantity, lovers of Browning's poetry would be likely to regard this as not only a central period, 
 chronologically, but the period when he reached his highest expression. The first collected edi- 
 tion of his poems appeared in 1843, to he followed the next year by Christmas-Sue and Easter- 
 Day, and then, five years after that, in 1855, by Men and Women, a group of poems which still 
 
 rexnains the flower of Browning's genius. 
 
ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 The great range taken by these poems is a witness to the fecundity and versatility of Brown- 
 ing's genius. It is possible, also, that to the circumstances of his life, especially its beautiful dis- 
 tractions, we owe the fact of a multitude of short poems rather than longer-sustained efforts. 
 While Mrs. Browning, sheltered by the constant care exerted by her husband and stimulated by 
 his companionship, composed her longest work, Aurora Leigh, he, never long freed from anxious 
 thought, broke into more fragmentary production. A very good illustration of the alacrity of his 
 mind and the instantaneous power of seizing upon opportunity is given in a passage in Mr. 
 Gosse's Personalia: — 
 
 ** In recounting a story of some Tuscan noblemen who had shown him two exquisite miniature- 
 paintings, the work of a young artist who should have received for them the prize in some local 
 contest, and who, being unjustly defrauded, broke his ivories, burned his brushes, and indignantly 
 foreswore the thankless art forever, Mr. Browning suddenly reflected that there was, as he said, 
 ' stuff for a poem ' in that story, and immediately with extreme vivacity began to sketch the 
 form it should take, the suppression of what features and the substitution of what others were 
 needful ; and finally suggested the non-obvious or inverted moral of the whole, in which the act of 
 spirited defiance was shown to be, really, an act of tame renunciation, the poverty of the artist's 
 spirit being proved in his eagerness to snatch, even though it was by honest merit, a benefit simply 
 material. The poet said, distinctly, that he had never before reflected on this incident as one 
 proper to be vei-sified ; the speed, therefore, with which the creative architect laid the foundar 
 tions, built the main fabric, and even put on the domes and pinnacles of his poem was, no doubt, 
 of uncommon interest. He left it, in five minutes, needing nothing but the mere outward crust 
 of the versification." 
 
 It was an incident in Browning's life that when he was producing his most glorious work and 
 receiving the admiration and intelligent appreciation of his poetical wife, he was a very insig- 
 nificant figure in English literature of the day. Mrs. Browning was indignant over the neglect 
 her husband suffered, and in her letters drew sharp comparison between the attention paid 
 Browning in America and the neglect he received in England. Meanwhile, whether living in 
 Florence or sojourning in Paris or London, a choice company was always to be found welcoming 
 and honoring the two poets. Mr. and Mrs. Story, the Hawthomes, Cardinal Manning, Massimo 
 d'Azeglio, Sir Frederick Leighton, Mr. Odo Russell, Eossetti, Val Prinsep, Forster, Landor, 
 Fanny Kemble, — these are some of the names closely associated with that of the Brownings in 
 this period. 
 
 The death of Mrs. Browning, June 29, 1861, closed this most beautiful human companionship. 
 It made also a great change in Browning's habit of life, and no doubt affected in important ways 
 his poetical productiveness. He left Italy for England. He became absorbed, so far as personal 
 responsibilities went, in the education of his son. By some strange caprice, he chose to make his 
 home in an ugly part of London, and he approached it through a region of disorder and squalor. 
 But he also, with his robust nature, denied himself the luxury of a persistent solitariness, and lit- 
 tle by little returned to society, especially grateful for the friendship of women like Miss Isa Blag- 
 den, who stepped in at the moment of his descent into the valley of grief with their gentle minis- 
 trations. 
 
 The months that followed Mrs. Browning's death were in a way given to taking up again 
 dropped threads of work, and to intellectual occupations, which both satisfied and stimulated his 
 nature. He read Euripides again, perhaps in part because of the association in his mind with Ills 
 wife's scholarly interests. He resumed the poems on which he had been engaged in the last 
 months at Casa Guidi, and he pondered over his rnagnmn opus, the germ of which had been in his 
 mind for many months. But first, in 1863, he saw through the press a new and complete collec- 
 tion of his poetical works in three volumes. Then, the year following, he gathered the poems 
 which immediately preceded and followed Mrs. Browning's death into the volume of Dramatis 
 Personal, The reissue of his older poems and this new accession were accompanied by a clear re- 
 enforcement of his position as an English poet. He had come, too, to the point where volumes of 
 selections from his work were in demand, a pretty good sign of a widening of his audience. Other 
 signs followed. In 1867 he received the honorary degree of M. A. from the University of Oxford, 
 and a few months later was made honorary fellow of Balliol College. In the year following he 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
 
 was asked to stand for the Lord Rectorship of the University of St. Andrews, rendered vacant by 
 the death of J. S. Mill. 
 
 His mother had died in 1849, and in 1866 his father, who had been one of his most constant com- 
 panions since his wife's death, died also. Thereafter, he and his sister Sarianna, who had ijassed 
 a life of devotion to their parents, became inseparable. Though England was their home, they 
 spent many summers in Brittany, as his poems indicate, and now and then returned to Italy, where 
 his son was established finally as a painter. 
 
 In 1SB8 appeared the six volume uniform edition of his poems, and immediately afterward began 
 the publication, to be completed in four volumes, of The Bing and the Book. Mrs. Orr traces, in 
 an ingenious manner, the influence which Mrs. Browning's personality had in the conception of 
 Pompilia in thi^ poem. However much a single character may have been affected, it is easy to 
 believe that this elaborate construction building in Browning's mind dui^ing the closing years 
 of his wife's life and actually brought into existence in the years immediately following was, 
 more than any single work, a great monument which the poet raised to the memory of that com- 
 panion whose own poetic achievement always seemed to him of a higher worth than his own. 
 " The simple truthis," he wrote to a common friend, " that sfte was the poet and I the clever per- 
 son by comparison ; remember her limited experience of all kinds, and what she made of it. 
 Kemember, on the other hand, how my uninterrupted health and strength and practice with the 
 world have helped me." 
 
 After The Sing and the Book the only new departure, so to speak, of Browning's genius was in 
 the group of poems which were built upon the foundation of Greek poetry. In 1871 appeared 
 Balaustion's Adventure, in 1875 Aristophanes' Apology, and in 1877 The Agamemnon of /Sschylus. 
 They have their value as expressive of Browning's catholicity, and more particularly as his one 
 great literary feat. With all his interest in Italy, and his delving in Renaissance literature, there 
 can scarcely be said to be any criticism of Italian literature in the form of his own poetry. In like 
 manner his dramatic works are not, except in a very remote or general sense, criticism of the 
 Elizabethan drama. But his three poems above named do represent the thought and criticism 
 of a Gothic mind confronting and admiring the Greek art and thought. Browning in these works 
 is not a reproducer in his own terms of Greek life ; he is a poet of varied experience, who, coming 
 in contact with a great and distinct manifestation of human life, is moved to strike in here also 
 with his thought and fancy, and because of the very elemental natiire of the material, to find the 
 keenest delight in exercising his genius upon it. 
 
 Meanwhile the facility which his long and varied practice with the English language had brought 
 him made every new subject that appealed to him a plaything for his fertile imagination; and the 
 speculative temper which grew upon him as the maturity of experience enlarged and enriched his 
 material for thought, led him into long and tortuous ways. The Ring and the Book stands about 
 midway in the bulk of his work, but whereas all the poetry and drama before that work repre- 
 sent thirty-five years of his life, that which follows, nearly as great in amount, represents but 
 twenty years. 
 
 In these last years of his life, when fame had come to him and his versatility made him a ready 
 companion, he led a semi-public life. He was in demand in all directions. As Mr. Sharp has 
 rapidly summed it up : " Everybody wished him to come and dine ; and he did his utmost to 
 gratify everybody. He said everything ; read all the notable books ; kept himself acquainted with 
 the leading contents of the journals and magazines ; conducted a large correspondence ; read new 
 French, German, and Italian books of mark ; read and translated Euripides and ^sohylus ; knew 
 all the gossip of the literary clubs, salons, and the studios ; was a frequenter of afternoon-tea par- 
 ties ; and then, over and above it, he was Browning : the most profoundly subtle mind that has 
 exercised itself in poetry since Shakespeare." 
 
 In 1881 was founded the English Browning Society, one of the most singular testimonials to the 
 interest awakened by a contemporaneous poet known in literary history. The great mass of his 
 writings, the recondite nature of some of the material which he had used, but more than all, the 
 astounding variety of problems in human life and character which he had presented and either 
 solved or opened the way to solve, made Browning an object of the greatest interest to the curi- 
 ous, the sympathetic, and the restless of his day. Any such movement has on its edge a frayed 
 
ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 sort of membership, but ao one can note the names of members or read the communications which 
 appear in the society's proceedings without recognizing the intellectual ability that carried the 
 movement along. Browning's own attitude toward the society is pretty clearly expressed in 
 the following words which he wrote to Mr. Edmund Yates at the time of the society's foun- 
 dation : — 
 
 " The Browning Society, I need not say, as well as Browning himself, are fair game for criti- 
 cism. I had no more to do with the founding it than the babe unborn ; and, as Wilkes was no 
 Wilkesite, I am quite other than a Browningite, But I cannot wish harm to a society of, with a 
 few exceptions, names unknown to me, who are busied about my books so disinterestedly. The 
 exaggerations probably come of the fifty-years'-long charge of unintelligibility against my books ; 
 such reactions are possible, though I never looked for the beginning of one so soon. That there is 
 a grotesque side to the thing is certain ; but I have been surprised and touched by what cannot but 
 have been well intentioned, I think. Anyhow, as I never felt inconvenienced by hard words, you 
 will not expect me to wax bumptious because of undue compliment : so enough of ' Browning ' — 
 except that he is yours very truly ' while the machine is to him.' " 
 
 In 1887 Browning removed to a more agreeable quarter in De Vere Gardens in the west end of 
 London, and with his affection for Asolo, he set about purchasing a residence there in 1889, and it 
 was while engaged in negotiations for the pxirchase that he was taken ill with bronchial troubles, 
 and died at his son's home in Venice, December 12, 1889. He was buried in Poet's Comer, West- 
 minster Abbey, on the last day of the year. Italy rightly divided honors with Bngland, and on 
 the outer wall of the Rezzonico Palace in Venice iS' a memorial tablet with the inscription : ^ 
 
 A 
 
 RoBEBTO Browning 
 
 morto in questo palaz!zo 
 
 il 12 Dicembre 1889 
 
 Venezia 
 
 pose 
 
 Below, in the comer, are placed two lines from his poem, De Gustibus : — 
 
 " Open my heart and you will see 
 Graved inaide of it, 'Italy.' " 
 
 H. E. S. 
 
PAULINE : THE FRAGMENT OF A CONFESSION 
 
 The history of the earliest printed of Brown- 
 ing's writings is so curious that it seems worth 
 while to giye it at greater length than its in- 
 trinsic merit would require. As a boy Brown- 
 ing wrote an inordinate amount of verse, imita^ 
 tive largely of Byron, and some of it written 
 when he was twelve struck his father as good 
 enough to deserve printing, but no publisher 
 could be found ready to confirm this faith. 
 Then Browning fell into a Shelleyan mood, and 
 when he was twenty projected a great work of 
 which the introduction only was written. This 
 introduction was Pauline, which to be precise 
 was completed October 22, 1832. Browning's 
 aimt volunteered to pay the expenses of pub- 
 lication, and it was published anonymously 
 early in 1833 by Saunders & Otley. The most 
 authoritative person on literary matters in the 
 young poet's circle of friends was the Rev. 
 William Johnson Fox, a Unitarian clergyman 
 and editor of the Monthly Repository. He had 
 a few years before given emphatic commenda- 
 tion to the boy's verse, and now reviewed the 
 poem with great warmth in his own magazine, 
 so winning the poet's gratitude as to draw from 
 him the extravagant expression ; "I shall 
 never write a line without thinking of the 
 source of my first praise, be assured." The 
 poem missed what would have been from its 
 writer a more notable review. Mr, John 
 Stuart MUl, six years Browning's senior, was 
 so delighted with Pauline that he wrote to the 
 editor of TaWs Magazine, the only periodical 
 in which he could write freely, asking leave to 
 review the poem. The editor replied that he 
 had just printed a curt, contemptuous notice, 
 and could not at once take the other track. 
 When Mill died his copy of Pauline, crowded 
 with annotations, fell into Browning's hands 
 and may now be seen in the South Kensington 
 Museum. 
 
 In spite of such hopeful promise the poem 
 was still-bom from the press. Five years 
 later, Browning wrote in a copy "the only 
 remaining crab of the shapply.Tree of Life in 
 my Fool's Paradise." He appears never to 
 have spoken of it until a strikine circumstance 
 
 brought it again into light. Many years after 
 it was printed Dante Gabriel Bossetti was 
 browsing among the volumes of forgotten po- 
 etry in the British Museum. He came upon 
 a book in which a number of pamphlet poems 
 were bound in a heterogeneous collection. 
 Among these was Pauline. He read it, and 
 from its internal evidence was convinced that 
 it was an unacknowledged poem of Browning's. 
 The book was wholly out of print, and he 
 made a copy of it. He wrote to Browning after- 
 wards taxing the poet with the production, 
 and Browning, greatly surprised at Rossetti's 
 discoveiy, acknowledged the authorship. In 
 1865, the editor of this Cambridge edition, 
 meeting Rossetti in London, mentioned the 
 fact that he had been copying at the British 
 Museum Browning's prose introduction to the 
 suppressed spurious collection of Shelley's Let- 
 ters, whereupon Bossetti told him of this other 
 rare book. Afterwards on learning that he 
 had copied Paulina also he said : '^ I suppose 
 you will print it when you go back to 
 America." "By no means," replied the 
 editor ; "that would be a breach of faith. 1 
 copied it as a . student of Browning. I never 
 would make it public without Browning's con- 
 sent." A year or two later therefore when a 
 new edition of the coUeeted poems was pub- 
 lished, he thought himself not unlikely the un- 
 witting occasion of the inclusion of Pauline, for 
 in the introduction Browning wrote as follows : 
 " The first piece in the series (Pauline), I 
 acknowledge and retain with extreme repi:^ 
 nance, indeed purely of necessity ; for not long 
 ago I inspected one, and am certified of the 
 existence of other transcripts, intended sooner 
 or later to be published abroad : by forestalling 
 these, I can at least correct some znisprints 
 (no syllable is changed) and introduce a boyish 
 work by an exculpatory word. The thing was 
 my earliest attempt at "poetry always dra- 
 matic in principle, and so many utterances of 
 so many imaginary persons, not mine," which 
 I have since written according to a scheme less 
 extravagant and scale less impracticable than 
 were ventured upon in this crude preliminary 
 
PAULINE 
 
 sketch, — a sketch that, on reviewal, appears 
 not altogether wide of some hint of the char- 
 acteristic features of that particular dramatis 
 persona it would fain haye reproduced : good 
 draughtsmanship, however, and right handling 
 were far beyond the artist at that time. 
 LoNDOK, December 25, 1807. R. B." 
 
 Twenty years later, upon sending out his 
 final collective edition, Browning added to the 
 preface just quoted the following sentences : — 
 
 "I preserve, in order to supplement it, the 
 foregoing preface. I had thought, when com- 
 pelled to include in my collected works the 
 poem to which it refers, that the honest course 
 would be to reprint, and leave mere literary 
 errors unaltered. Twenty years' endurance of 
 an eyesore seems more than sufficient : my faults 
 remain duly recorded against me, and I claim 
 permission to somewhat diminish these, so far 
 
 as style is concerned, in the present and final 
 edition, where Pauline must needs, first of my 
 performances, confront the reader. I have 
 simply removed solecisms, mended the metre a 
 little and endeavored to strengthen the phrase- 
 ology — experience helping, in some degree, 
 the helplessness of juvenile haste and heat in 
 their untried adventure long ago." 
 London, February 27, 1888. 
 
 The text here given, as throughout this 
 volume, is that of Mr. Browning's latest 
 revision. The text of the first revision, i. e. 
 1867, may be found at the close of volume i. of 
 the Riverside edition. 
 
 The quotations from Marot and Cornelius 
 Agrippa which follow were prefixed to the 
 original edition of the poem. The note en- 
 closed in brackets was Browning's comment on 
 reprinting the poem the last time. 
 
 PAULINE 
 
 Plus ne suis ce que fai ^U, 
 Et ne le sqaurois jamais Hre. 
 
 Marot. 
 
 Non dubito, quin titulus libri nostri raritate 
 sua quamplurimos aUieiat ad legendum ; inter 
 quos nonnulli obliquse opinionis, mente languidi, 
 multi etiam maligni, et in ingenium nostrum in- 
 grati accedent, qui temeraria sua ignorantia, vix 
 conspecto titulo clamabunt. Nos vetita docere, 
 haeresium semina jaoere : piis auribus offiendi- 
 culo, prseclaris ingeniis scandalo esse : . . . adeo 
 conscientise suae consulentes, ut nee Apollo, nee 
 Musse omnes, neque Angelus de ccelo me ab 
 illorum exeoratione vindicare queant : quibus 
 et ego nunc consulo, ne scripta nostra legant, 
 nee intelligant, nee meminerint : nam noxia 
 sunt, venenosa sunt : Aeherontis ostium est in 
 hoc libro, lapides loquitur, caveant, ne cerebrum 
 illis excutiat. Vos autem, qui £equa mente ad 
 legendum venitis, si tantam prudentise discre- 
 tionem adhibueritis, quantam in melle legendo 
 apes, jam securi legite. Puto namque vos et 
 ntilitatis hand parum et voluptatis plurimum 
 accepturos. Quod si qua repereritis, quae vobis 
 non placeant, mittite ilia, nee utimini. Nam 
 
 ET EGO VOBIS ILLA NON PkOBO, SED NABRO. 
 
 Csetera tamen propterea non respuite . . . Idee, 
 si quid Uberius dictum sit, ignoscite adolescen- 
 tiae nostrse, qui minor quam adolescens hoc opus 
 composui. — Hen. Corn. Agrippa, De Occult. 
 Philosoph. in Prmfat. 
 London : January, 1833. 
 V. A. XX. 
 
 [This introduction would appear less absurdly 
 pretentious did it apply, as was intended, to a 
 completed structure of which the poem was 
 meant for only a beginning and remains a, 
 fragment.] 
 
 Pauline, mine own, bend o'er me — thy soft 
 
 breast 
 Shall pant to mine — bend o'er me — thy sweet 
 
 eyes. 
 And loosened hair and breathing lips, and arms 
 Drawing me to thee — these build up a screen 
 To shut me in with thee, and from all fear ; 
 So that I might unlock the sleepless brood 
 Of fancies from my soul, their lurking-place. 
 Nor doubt that each would pass, ne'er to return 
 To one so watched, so loved and so secured. 
 But what can guard thee but thy naked love ? 
 Ah dearest, whoso sucks a poisoned wound 
 Snvenoms his own veins ! Thou art so good. 
 So calm — if thou shouldst wear a brow less 
 
 light 
 For some wild thought which, but for me, were 
 
 kept 
 From out thy soul as from a sacred star ! 
 Yet till I have unlocked them it were vain 
 To hope to sing ; some woe would light on me ; 
 Nature would point at one whose quivering lip 
 Was bathed in her enchantments, whose brow 
 
 burned 
 Beneath the crown to which her secrets knelt, 
 Who learned the spell which can call up the 
 
 dead. 
 And then departed smiling like a fiend 
 Who has deceived God, — if such one should 
 
 seek 
 Again her altars and stand robed and crowned 
 Amid the faithful ! Sad confession first, 
 Remorse and pardon and old claims renewed, 
 Ere I can be — as I shall be no more. 
 
PAULINE 
 
 I had been spared this shame if I had sat 
 By thee foreTer from the first, in place 
 Of my wild dreams of beauty and of grood, 
 Or with them, as an earnest of their truth : 
 No thought nor hope having been shut from thee, 
 No vague wish unexplained, no wandering aim 
 Sent back to bind on fancy's wings and seek 
 Some strange fair world where it might be a 
 
 law ; 
 But, doubting nothing, had been led by thee, 
 Through youth, and saved, as one at length 
 
 awaked 
 Who has slept through a peril. Ah vain, vain ! 
 
 Thou lovest me ; the past is in its grave 
 Tliough its ghost haunts us ; still this much is 
 
 ours, 
 To cast away restraint, lest a worse thing 
 Wait for us in the dark. Thou lovest me ; 
 And thou art to receive not love but faith. 
 For which thou wilt be mine, and smile and 
 
 take 
 All shapes and shames, and veil without a fear 
 That form which music follows like a slave : 
 And I look to thee and I trust in thee. 
 As in a Northern night one looks alway 
 Unto the East for mom and spring and joy. 
 Thou seest then my aimless, hopeless state. 
 And, resting on some few old feelings won 
 Back by thy beauty, wouldst that I essay 
 The task which was to me what now thou art ; 
 And why should I conceal one weakness more ? 
 
 Tnou wilt remember one warm morn when 
 
 winter 
 Crept aged from the earth, and spring's first 
 
 breath 
 Blew soft from the moist hills ; the black-thorn 
 
 boughs. 
 So dark in the bare wood, when glistening 
 In the sunshine were white with coming buds. 
 Like the bright side of a sorrow, and the banks 
 Had violets opening from sleep like eyes. 
 I walked with thee who knew'st not a deep 
 
 shame 
 Lurked beneath smiles and careless words 
 
 which sought 
 To hide it till they wandered and were mute. 
 As we stood listening on a sunny mound 
 To the wind murmuring in the damp copse, 
 Like heavy breathings of some hidden thing 
 Betrayed by sleep ; until the feeling rushed 
 That 1 was low indeed, yet not so low 
 As to endure the calmness of thine eyes. 
 And so I told thee all, while the cool breast 
 1 leaned on altered not its quiet beating : 
 And long ere words like a hurt bird's complaint 
 Bade me look up and be what I had been, 
 I felt despair could never live by thee : 
 Thou wilt remember. Thou art not more dear 
 Than song was once to me ; and I ne'er sung 
 But as one entering bright halls where all 
 Will rise and shout for him : sure I must own 
 That I am fallen, having chosen gifts 
 Distinct from theirs — that I am sad and fain 
 Would give up all to be but where I was. 
 Not high as I had been if faithful found. 
 But low and weak yet full of hope, and sure 
 
 Of goodness as of life — that I would lose 
 All this gay mastery of mind, to sit 
 Once more with them, trusting in truth and love 
 And with an aim — not being what I am. 
 
 Pauline, I am ruined who believed 
 
 'That though my soul had floated from its 
 
 sphere 
 Of wild dominion into the dim orb 
 Of self — that it was strong and free as ever ! 
 It has conformed itself to that dim orb, 
 Eefleeting all its shades and shapes, and now 
 Must stay where it alone can be adored. 
 
 1 have felt this in dreams — in dreams in which 
 I seemed the fate from which I fled ; I felt 
 
 A strange delight in causing my decay. 
 I was a fiend in darkness chained forever 
 Within some ocean-cave j and ages rolled. 
 Till through the cleft rock, like a moonbeam, 
 
 came 
 A white swan to remain with me ; and ages 
 Kolled, yet I tired not of my first free joy 
 In gazing on the peace of its pure wings : 
 And then I said, ** It is most fair to me. 
 Yet its soft wings must sure have suffered 
 
 change 
 From the thick darkness, sure its eyes are dim. 
 Its silver pinions must be cramped and numbed 
 With sleeping ag'es here ; it cannot leave me. 
 For it would seem, in light beside its kind. 
 Withered, though here to mie most beautiful." 
 And then I was a young witch whose blue eyes, 
 As she stood naked by the river springs. 
 Drew down a god : I watched his radiant form 
 Growing less radiant, and it gladdened me ; 
 Till one morn, as he sat in the sunshine 
 Upon my knees, singing to me of heaven. 
 He turned to look at me, ere I could lose 
 The grin vrith which I viewed his perishii^ : 
 And he shrieked and departed and sat long 
 By his deserted throne, but sunk at last 
 Murmuring, as I kissed his lips and curled 
 Around him, " I am stiU a god — to thee." 
 
 Still I can lay my soul bare in its fall, 
 Since all the wandering and all the weakness 
 Will be a saddest comment on the song : 
 And if, that done, I can be young again, 
 I will give up all gained, as willingly 
 As one gives up a charm which shuts him out 
 From hope or part or care in human kind. 
 As life wanes, all its care and strife and toil 
 Seem strangely valueless, while the old trees 
 Which grew by our youth's home, the waving 
 
 mass 
 Of climbing plants heavy with bloom and dew. 
 The morning swallows with their songs like 
 
 words. 
 All these seem clear and only worth our 
 
 thoughts : 
 So, aught connected with my early life. 
 My rude songs or my wild imaginings. 
 How I look on them — most distinct amid 
 The fever and the stir of after years 1 
 
 I ne'er had ventured e'en to hope for this. 
 Had not the glow I felt at His award. 
 Assured me all was not extinct within : 
 
PAULINE 
 
 His wliom all honor, whose renown springs up 
 Like sunlight which will visit all the world, 
 So that e'en they who sneered at him at first, 
 Come out to it, as some dark spider crawls 
 From his foul nets which some lit torch invades. 
 Yet spinning stiE new films for his retreat. 
 Thou didst smile, poet, but can we forgive ? 
 
 Sun-treader, life and light be thine forever ! 
 Thou art gone from us ; years go by and spring 
 Gladdens and the young earth is beautiful. 
 Yet thy songs come not, other bards arise, 
 But none like thee : they Stand, thy majesties, 
 Like mighty works which tell some spirit there 
 Hath sat regardless of neglect and scorn, 
 Till, its long task completed, it hath risen 
 And left us, neyer to return, and all 
 Rush in to peer and praise when all in vain. 
 The air seems bright with thy past presence yet, 
 But thou art still for me as thou hast been 
 When I have stood with thee as on a throne 
 A'^ith all thy dim creations gathered round 
 Like mountains, and I felt of mould like them, 
 And with them creatures of my own wei* 
 
 mixed. 
 Like things half-lived, catching and giving life. 
 But thou art still for me who have adored 
 Though single, 'panting but to hear thy name 
 Which I believed a spell to me alone. 
 Scarce deeming thou wast as a star to men I 
 As one should worship long a sacred spring 
 Scarce worth a moth's flitting, which long 
 
 grasses cross. 
 And one-small tree embowers droopingly — 
 Joying to see some wandering insect won 
 To live in its few rushes, or some locust 
 To pasture on its boughs, or some wild bird 
 Stoop for its freshness from the trackless air : 
 And then should find it but the fountain-bead. 
 Long lost, of some great river washing towns 
 And towers, and seeing old woods which will live 
 But by its banks untrod of human foot. 
 Which, when the gj'eat suh sinks, lie quiverii^ 
 In light as some thing lieth half of life 
 Before God's foot, waiting a wondrous change ; 
 Then girt with rocks which seek to turn or stay 
 Its course in vain, for it does ever spread 
 Like a sea's arm as it goes rolling on. 
 Being the pulse of some great country — so 
 Wast thou to me, and art thou to the world I 
 And I, perchaaioe, half feel a strange regret 
 That I am not what I have been to thee : 
 Like a girl one has silently Ibved long 
 In her first loneliness in some retreat. 
 When, late emerged, all gaze and glow to view 
 Her fresh eyes and soft hair and Ups which 
 
 bloom 
 Like a mountain berry : doubtless it is sweet 
 To see her thus adored, but there have been 
 Moments when all the world was in our praise. 
 Sweeter than any pride of after hours. 
 Yet, sun-treafd'er, all hail ! From my heart's 
 
 heart 
 I bid thee hail ! E'en in my wildest dreams, 
 I proudly feel I would have thrown to dust 
 The wreaths of fame which seemed o'erhanging 
 
 me. 
 To see thee for a momont as thou art. 
 
 And if thou livieat, if thou lovest, spirit ! 
 Remember me who set this final seal 
 To wandering thought — that one so pure as thou 
 Could never die. Remember me who flun^ 
 All honor from my soul, yet paused and said, 
 " There is one spai'k of love remaining yet. 
 For I have naught in common with hun, shapes 
 Which followed him avoid me, and foul forms 
 Seek me, which ne'er could fasten on his mind ; 
 And thoug-h I feel how low I am to him. 
 Yet I aim not even to catch a tone 
 Of harmonies he called profusely up ; 
 So, one gleam still remains, although the last." 
 Remember me who praise thee e'en with tears, 
 For never more shall I walk calm with thee ; 
 Thy sweet i:majginings are as an air, 
 A melody some wondrous singer sings. 
 Which, though it haunt men oft in the still eve, 
 They dream not to essay ; yet it no less 
 But more is honored. I was thine in shame. 
 And now when all thy proud renown is out, 
 I am a watcher whose eyes have grown dim 
 With looking for some star which breaks on him 
 Altered and worn and weak and full of tears. 
 
 Autumn has come like spring returned to us, 
 
 Won from her girhshness ; like one returned 
 
 A friend that was a lover, nor forgets 
 
 The first warm lov«, but full of sober thoughts 
 
 Of fading years ; whose soft mouth quivers yet 
 
 With the old smile, but yet so changed and still ! 
 
 And here am I the scoffer, who have probed 
 
 Life's vanity, won by a word again 
 
 Into my own life ■ — by one little word 
 
 Of this sweet friend who lives in loving me, 
 
 Lives strangely on my thoughts and looks and 
 
 words. 
 As fathoii6s down some nameless ocean thing 
 Its silent course of quietness and joy. 
 
 dearest, if indeed I teU the past, 
 May'st thou forget it as a sad sick dream ! 
 Or if it linger — my lost soul too soon 
 Sinks to itself and whispers we shall be 
 
 But closer linked, two creatures whom the earth 
 Bears singly, with strange feelings unrevealed 
 Save to each other ; or two lonely things 
 Created by some power whose reign is done. 
 Having no part in God or his bright world. 
 
 1 am to sing whilst ebbing day dies soft. 
 As a lean scholar dies worn o'er his book. 
 And in the heaven stars steal out one by one 
 As hunted men steal to their mountain watch. 
 I must not think, lest this new impulse die 
 
 In which 1 trust ; I have no confidence : 
 So, I will sing on fast as fancies come ; 
 Rudely, the verse being as the mood it paints. 
 
 I strip my mind bare, whose first elements 
 I shall unveil — not as they struggle forth 
 In infancy, nor as they now exist. 
 When I am grown above them and can rule — 
 But in that middle sta^e when they were full 
 Yet ere I had disposed them to my will ; 
 And then I shall show how these elements 
 Produced my present state, and what it is. 
 
 I am made up of an intensest life. 
 Of a most clear idea of consciousness 
 
PAULINE 
 
 Of self, distinct from all its qualities, 
 
 From all affections, passions, feelings, powers ; 
 
 And thus far it exists, if tracked, in all : 
 
 But linked, in me, to self-supremacy, 
 
 Existing as a centre to all things. 
 
 Most potent to create and rule and call 
 
 Upon all things to minister to it ; 
 
 And to a principle of restlessness 
 
 Which would be all, have, see, know, taste, 
 
 feel, all - 
 This is myself ; and I should thus have been 
 Though gifted lower than the meanest soul. 
 
 And of my powers, one springs up to save 
 From utter death a soul with such desire 
 Confined to clay — of powers the only one 
 Which marks me — an imagination which 
 Has been a very angel, eommg not 
 In fitful visions, but beside me ever 
 And never failing me ; so, though my mind 
 Forgets not, not a shred of life forgets. 
 Yet I can take a secret pride in calling 
 The dark past up to quell it regally. 
 
 A mind like this must dissipate itself. 
 
 But I have always had one lode-star ; now, 
 
 As I look back, 1 see that I have halted 
 
 Or hastened as 1 looked towards that star — 
 
 A need, a trust, a yearning after God : 
 
 A feeling I have analyzed but late, 
 
 But it existed, and was reconciled 
 
 With a neglect of all I deemed his laws, 
 
 Which yet, when seen in others, I abhorred. 
 
 I felt as one beloved, and so shut in 
 
 From fear : and thence I date my trust in signs 
 
 And omens, for I saw God everywhere ; 
 
 And I can only lay it to the fruit 
 
 Of a sad after-time that I could doubt 
 
 Even his being — e'en the while I felt 
 
 His presence, never acted from myself, 
 
 Still trusted in a hand to lead me through 
 
 All danger ; and this feeling ever fought 
 
 Against my weakest reason and resolve. 
 
 And I can love nothing — and this dull truth 
 Has come the last : but sense supplies a love 
 Encircling me and mingling with my life. 
 
 These make myself : I have long sought in vain 
 To trace how they were formed by circumstance. 
 Yet ever found them mould my wildest youth 
 Where they alone displayed themselves, con- 
 verted 
 AU objects to their use : now see their course I 
 
 They came to me in my first dawn of life 
 Which passed alone vrith wisest ancient books 
 All halo-girt with fancies of my own ; 
 And I myself went with the tale — a god 
 Wandering after beauty, or a giant 
 Standing vast in the sunset — an old hunter 
 Talking with gods, or a high-crested chief 
 Sailing with troops of friends to Tenedos. 
 I tell you, naught has ever been so clear 
 As the place, the time, the fashion of those 
 
 lives : 
 I had not seen a work of lofty art. 
 Nor woman's beauty nor sweet nature's face, 
 
 Yet, I say, never morn broke clear as those 
 On the dim clustered isles in the blue sea, 
 The deep groves and white temples and wet 
 
 caves ; 
 And nothing ever will surprise me now — 
 Who stood beside the naked Swift-footed, 
 Who bound my forehead with Proserpine's hair. 
 
 And strange it is that I who could so dream 
 Should e'er have stooped to aim at aught be- 
 neath — • 
 Aught low or painful ; but I never doubted : 
 So, as I grew, I rudely shaped my life 
 To my immediate wants ; yet strong beneath 
 Was a vague sense of power thoiigh folded up — 
 A sense that, though those shades and times 
 
 were past. 
 Their spirit dwelt in me, with them should rule. 
 
 Then came a pause, and long restraint chained 
 
 down 
 My soul till it was changed. I lost myself, 
 And were it not that I so loathe that loss, 
 I could recall how first I learned to turn 
 My mind against itself ; and the effects 
 In deeds for which remorse were vain as for 
 The wanderings of delirious dream ; yet thence 
 Came cunning, envy, falsehood, all world's 
 
 wrong 
 That spotted me ; at length I cleansed my soul. 
 Yet long world's infi.uence remained ; and 
 
 naught 
 But the still life I led, apart once more. 
 Which left me free to seek soul's old delights. 
 Could e'er have brought me thus far back to 
 
 peace. 
 
 As peace returned, I sought out some pursuit ; 
 And son^ rose, no new impulse but the one 
 With which all others best could be combined. 
 My life has not been that of those whose heaven 
 Was lampless save where poesy shone out ; 
 But as a clime where glittering mountain-tops 
 And glancing sea and forests steeped in light 
 Give back reflected the far-flashing sun j 
 For music (which is earnfist. of n. lip ,-) v p p , 
 feeing we k now emotion s strange by it, 
 Not else io.^ reveaTedj^^^li^^a vojcg, 
 A I'bw voice"callmgT^^|^^]j^r^Sr 
 
 ■ftrSBen ^tyQds*m;^J^luaiJaSl:time : 
 ills all the way wit h dan cmg snapes 
 
 Z ~3"diey gb on 
 
 __^__.__ iem^ndsanda^fflriSthiejnr- 
 
 s thgy leave life's_.path,tor the twUiglit-world 
 Whgiajhe d eadgather . This was not at first. 
 For I scarce knew whgtt I would do. I had 
 An impulse but no yearning — only sang. 
 
 And first I sang as I in dream have seen 
 Music wait on a lyrist for some thought. 
 Yet singing to herself until it came. 
 I turned to those old times and scenes where all 
 That 's beautiful had birth for me, and made 
 Rude verses on them all ; and then I paused — 
 I had done nothing, so I sought to know 
 What other minds achieved. No fear outbroke 
 As on the works of mighty bards I gazed. 
 In the first joy at finding my own thoughts 
 
PAULINE 
 
 Recorded, my own fancies justified, 
 
 And their aspirings but my very own. 
 
 With them I first explored i^assion and mind, — 
 
 All to begin afresh ! I rather sought 
 
 To rival what I wondered at than form 
 
 Creations of my own ; if much was light 
 
 Lent by the others, much was yet my own. 
 
 I paused again: a change was coming — came : 
 1 was no more a boy, the past was breaking 
 Before the future and like fever worked. 
 I thought on my new self, and all my powers 
 Burst out. 1 dreamed not of restraint, but 
 
 gazed 
 On all things : schemes and systems went and 
 
 came, 
 And I was proud (being vainest of the weak) 
 In wandering o'er thought's world to seek some 
 
 one 
 To be my prize, as if you wandered o'er 
 The White Way for a star. 
 
 And my choice fell 
 Kot so much on a system as a man — 
 On one, whom praise of mine shall not offend, 
 Who was as calm as beauty, being such 
 Unto mankind as thou to me, Pauline, — 
 Believing in them and devoting all 
 His soul's strength to their winning back to 
 
 peace ; 
 Who sent forth hopes and longings for their sake. 
 Clothed in all passion's melodies : such first 
 Caug:ht me and set me, slave of a sweet task. 
 To disentangle, gather sense from song ; 
 Since, song-inwoven, lurked there words which 
 
 seemed 
 A key to a new world, the mutteruig 
 Of angels, something yet unguessed by man. 
 How my heart leapt as still 1 sought and found 
 Much there, I felt my own soul had conceived. 
 But there living and burning ! Soon the orb 
 Of his conceptions dawned on me ; its praise 
 Lives in the tongues of men, men's brows are 
 
 high 
 When his name means a triumph and a pride. 
 So, my weak voice may well forbear to shame 
 What seemed decreed my fate : I threw myself 
 "To meet it, I was vowed to liberty. 
 Men were to be as gods and earth as heaven. 
 And I — ah, what a life was mine to prove ! 
 My whole sonl rose to meet it. Now, Pauline, 
 I shall go mad, if I recall that time ! 
 
 Oh let me look back ere I leave forever 
 The time which was an hour one fondly waits 
 For a fair girl that comes a withered hag ! 
 And I was lonely, far from woods and fields, 
 And amid dullest sights, who should be loose 
 As a stag ; yet I was full of bliss, who lived 
 With Plato and who had the key to life ; 
 And I had dimly shaped my first attempt. 
 And many a thought did I bull ap on thought, 
 As the wild bee hangs cell to cell ; in vain, 
 for I must still advance, no rest for mind. 
 
 'T was in my plan to look on real life. 
 
 The life all new to me ; my theories 
 
 Were firm, so them I left, to look and learn 
 
 Mankind, its cares, hopes, fears, its woes and .ioys; 
 And, as 1 pondered on their ways, 1 sought 
 How best life's end might be attained — an end 
 Comprising every joy. I deeply mused. 
 
 And suddenly without heart-wreck I awoke 
 As from a dream: I said, " 'T was beautiful. 
 Yet but a dream, and so adieu to it ! " 
 As some world-wanderer sees in a far meadow 
 Strange towers and high-walled gardens thick 
 
 with trees. 
 Where song takes shelter and delicious mirth 
 From laughing fairy creatures peeping over. 
 And on the morrow when he comes to lie 
 Forever 'neath those garden-trees fruit-flushed 
 Sung round by fairies, all his search is vain. 
 First went my hopes of perfecting mankind. 
 Next — faith in them, and then in freedom's self 
 And virtue's self, then my own motives, ends 
 And aims and loves, and human love went last. 
 I felt this no decay, because new powers 
 Rose as old feelings left — wit, mockery, 
 Light-heartedness ; for I had oft been sad, 
 Mistrusting my resolves, but now I cast 
 Hope joyously awa,y : I laughed and said, 
 "No more of this!" I must not think: at 
 
 length 
 I looked again to see if all went well. 
 
 My powers were greater : as some temple seemed 
 My soul, where naught is changed and incense 
 
 rolls 
 Around the altar, only God is gone 
 And some dark spirit sitteth in his seat. 
 So, I passed through the temple and to me 
 Knelt troops of shadows, and they cried, " Hail, 
 
 kmg! 
 We serve thee now and thou shalt serve no 
 
 more ! 
 Call on us, prove us, let us worship thee ! " 
 And I said, ' ' Are ye strong ? Let fancy bear me 
 Far from the past ! " And I was borne away, 
 As Arab birds float sleeping in the wind. 
 O'er deserts, towers and forests, I being calm. 
 And I said, " I have nursed up energips. 
 They will prey on me." And a band knelt low 
 And cried, " Lord, we are here and we will 
 
 make 
 Safe way for thee in thine appointed life ! 
 But look on ns ! " And I said, " Ye will worship 
 Me ; should my heart not worship too ? " They 
 
 shouted, 
 "Thyself, thou art our king!" So, I stood 
 
 there 
 Smiling — oh, vanity of vanities ! 
 For buoyant and rejoicing was the spirit 
 With which I looked out how to end my course ; 
 I felt once more myself, my powers — all mine ; 
 I knew while youth and health so lifted me 
 That, spite of all life's nothingness, no grief 
 Came nigh me, I must ever be light-hearted ; 
 And that this knowledge was the only veil 
 Betwixt joy and despair ; so, if age came, 
 I should be left — a wreck linked to a soul 
 Yet fluttering, or mind-broken and aware 
 Of my decay. So a long summer morn 
 Found me ; and ere noon came, I had resolved 
 No age should come on me ere youth was spent 
 
PAULINE 
 
 For I would -wear myself out, like that morn 
 Wliich wasted not a sunbeam ; every hour 
 I would make mine, and die. 
 
 And thus I sought 
 To chain my spirit down which erst I freed 
 For flighte to fame : I said, " The troubled life 
 Of genius, seen so gay when working forth 
 t>ome trusted end, grows sad when all proyes 
 
 vain — 
 How sad when men have parted with truth's 
 
 peace 
 For falsest fancy's sake, which waited first 
 As an obedient spirit when delight 
 Came without fancy's call : but alters soon, 
 Comes darkened, seldom, hastens to depart. 
 Leaving a heavy darkness and warm tears. 
 But I shall never lose her ; she will live 
 Dearer for such seclusion. I but catch 
 A hue, a glance of what I sing : so, pain 
 Is linked with pleasure, for I ne'er may tell 
 Half the bright sights which dazzle me ; but 
 
 now 
 Mine shall be all the radiance : let them fade 
 Untold — others shall rise as fair, as fast ! 
 And when all 's done, the few dim gleams trans- 
 ferred," — 
 {For a new tnought sprang up how well it were, 
 Discarding shadowy hope, to weave such lays 
 As straight encircle men with praise and love, 
 Soi I should not die utterly, — should bring 
 One branch from the gold forest, like the knight 
 Of old tales, witnessing I had been there) — 
 "And when all's done, how vain seems e'en 
 
 The vaunted influence poets have o'er men ! 
 'Tis a fine thing that one weak as myself 
 Should sit in his lone room, knowing the words 
 He utters in his solitude shall move 
 Men like a swift wind — that though dead and 
 
 gone, 
 New eyes shall glisten when his beauteous 
 
 dreams 
 Of love come true in happier frames than his. 
 Ay, the still night biings thoughts like these, 
 
 but morn 
 Comes and the mockery again laughs out 
 At hollow praises, smiles allied to sneers ; 
 And my soul's idol ever whispers me 
 To dwell with him and his unhonored song : 
 And I foreknow my spirit, that would press 
 First in the struggle, fail again to make 
 All bow enslaved, and I again should sink. 
 
 " And then know that this curse will come on us, 
 To see our idols perish ; we may wither. 
 No marvel, we are clay, but our low fate 
 Should not extend to those whom trustii^ly 
 We sent before into time's yawning gulf 
 To face what dread may lurk in darkness there. 
 To find the painter's glory pass, and feel 
 Music can move us not as once, or, worst, 
 To weep decaying wits ere the frail body 
 Decays ! Naught makes me trust some love is 
 
 true, 
 But the delight of the contented lowness 
 With which I gaze on him I keep forever 
 Above me ; I to rise and rival him ? 
 
 Feed his fame rather from my heart' s best blood, 
 Wither unseen that he may flourish still." 
 
 Pauline, my soul's friend, thou dost pity yet 
 How this mood swayed me when that soid, found 
 
 thine. 
 When 1 had set myself to live this life, 
 Defying all past glory. Ere thou earnest 
 I seemed defiant, sweet, for old delights 
 Had flocked like birds again ; music, my life, 
 Nourished me more than ever ; then the lore 
 Loved for itself and all it shows — that king 
 Treading the purple calmly to his death, 
 While round nim, like the clouds of eve, all 
 
 dusk. 
 The giant shades of fate, silently flitting, 
 Pile the dim outline of the coming doom ; 
 And him sitting alone in blood while friends 
 Are hunting far in the sunshine ; and the bOy 
 With his white breast and brow and clustering 
 
 curls 
 Streaked with his mother's blood, but striving 
 
 hard 
 To tell his story ere his reason goes. 
 And when I loved thee as love seemed so oft, 
 Thou lovedst me indeed : I wondering searched 
 My heart to find some feeling like such love, 
 Believing I was still much I had been. 
 Too soon I found aU faith had gone from me. 
 And the late glow of life, like change on clouds, 
 Proved not the morn-blush widening into day, 
 But eve faint-colored by the dying sun 
 While darkness hastens quickly. I will tell 
 My state as though 't were none of mine — 
 
 despair 
 Cannot come near us — this it is, my state. 
 
 Souls alter not, and mine must still advance ; 
 Strange that I knew not, when I flung away 
 My youth's chief aims, their loss might lead to 
 
 loss 
 Of what few I retained, and no resource 
 Be left me : for behold how chained is aU ! 
 I cannot chain my soul : it will not rest 
 In its clay prison, this most narrow sphere : 
 It has strange impulse, tendency, desire, 
 Which nowise I account for nor explain. 
 But cannot stifle, being bound to ti-ust 
 All feelings equally, to hear all sides : 
 How can my life indulge them ? yet they live, 
 Referring to some state of life unknown. 
 
 My selfishness is satiated not, 
 
 It wears me like a flame ; my hunger for 
 
 All pleasure, howsoe'er minute, grows pain ; 
 
 I envy — how I envy him whose soul 
 
 Turns its whole energies to some one end, 
 
 To elevate an aim, pursue success 
 
 However mean ! So, my still baflled hope 
 
 Seeks out abstractions ; I would have one joy, 
 
 But one in life, so it were wholly mine, 
 
 One rapture all ray soid could fill : and this 
 
 Wild feeling places me in dream afar 
 
 In some vast country where the eye can see 
 
 No end to the far hills and dales bestrewn 
 
 With shining towers and towns, till I grow 
 
 mad 
 WeU-nigh, to know not one abode but holds 
 
6 
 
 PAULINE 
 
 Some pleasure, while my soul could grasp the 
 
 ■world, 
 But must remain this vile form's slave. I look 
 With hope to age at last, which quenching much. 
 May let me concentrate what sparks it spares. 
 
 This restlessness of passion meets in me 
 
 A craving after knowledge : the sole proof 
 
 Of yet commanding will is in that power 
 
 Kepressed ; for I beheld it in its dawn, 
 
 The sleepless harpy with just-hudding wings, 
 
 And I considered whether to forego 
 
 All happy ignorant hopes and fears, to live. 
 
 Finding a recompense in its wild eyes. 
 
 And when I found that I should perish so, 
 
 I hade its wild eyes close from me forever. 
 
 And I am left alone with old delights : 
 
 See ! it lies in me a chained thing, still prompt 
 
 To serve me if I loose its slightest bond : 
 
 I cannot but be proud of my bright slave. 
 
 How should this earth's life prove my only 
 
 sphere ? 
 Can I so narrow sense but that in life 
 Soul still exceeds it ? In their elements 
 My love outsoars my reason ; but since love 
 Perforce receives its object from this earth 
 While reason wanders chainless, the few truths 
 Caught from its wanderings have sufficed to 
 
 quell 
 Love chained below ; then what were love, set 
 
 free, 
 Which, with the object it demands, would pass 
 Keason companioning the seraphim ? 
 No, what I feel may pass aU human love 
 Yet fall far short of what my love should be. 
 And yet I seem more warped in this than aught. 
 Myself stands out more hideously : of old 
 I could forget myself in friendship, fame. 
 Liberty, nay, in love of mightier souls ; 
 But I begin to know what thing hate is — 
 To sicken and to quiver and grow white — 
 And I myself have furnished its first prey. 
 Hate of the weak and ever-wavering will, 
 The selfishness, the still-decaying frame . . . 
 But I must never grieve whom wing can waft 
 Far from such thoughts — asnow. Andromeda ! 
 And she is with me : years roll, I shall change. 
 But change can touch her not — so beautiful 
 With her iixed eyes, earnest and still, and hair 
 Lifted and spread by the salt-sweeping breeze. 
 And one red beam, all the stoian leaves in 
 
 heaven. 
 Besting npon her eyes and hair, such hair. 
 As she awaits the snake on the wet beach 
 By the dark rock and the white wave just 
 
 breaking 
 At her feet ; quite naked and alone j a thing 
 I doubt not, nor fear for, secure some god 
 To save will come in thunder from the stars. 
 Let it pass ! Soul requires another change. 
 I will be gifted with a wondrous mind. 
 Yet sunk by error to men's sympathy, 
 And in the wane of life, yet only so 
 As to call up their fears ; and there shall come 
 A time requiring youth's best energies ; 
 And lo, I fling age, sorrow, sickness off. 
 And rise triumphant, triumph through decay. 
 
 And thus it is that I supply the chasm 
 'Twixt what I am and all I fain would be : 
 But then to know nothing, to hope for nothing, 
 To seize on life's dull joys from a strange fear 
 Lest, losing them, all 's lost and naught remains ! 
 
 There 's some vile juggle with my reason here ; 
 I feel I but explain to my own loss 
 These impulses : they live no IcjS the same. 
 Liberty I what though I despair ? my blood 
 Hose never at a slave's name proud as now. 
 Oh sympathies, obscured by sophistries ! — 
 Why else have I sought refuge in myself. 
 But from the woes I saw and could not stay ? 
 Love 1 is not this to love thee, my Pauline ? 
 I cherish prejudice, lest 1 be left 
 Utterly loveless ? witness my belief 
 In poets, though sad change has come there too ; 
 No more I leave myself to follow them — 
 Unconsciously I measure me by them — 
 Let me forget it : and 1 cherish most 
 My love of England — how her name, a word 
 Of hers in a strange tongue makes my heart 
 beat! 
 
 Pauline, could I but break the spell ! Not 
 
 now — 
 All 's fever — but when calm shall come again, 
 I am prepaj-ed : I have made life my own. 
 1 woiud not be content with all the change 
 One frame should feel, but I have gone in 
 
 thought 
 Through all conjuncture, I have lived all life 
 When it is most alive, where strangest fate 
 New-shapes it past sui'mise — the throes of men 
 Bit by some curse or in the grasps of doom 
 Half-visible and stUl-increasmg round. 
 Or crowning their wide being's general aim. 
 
 These are wild fancies, but I feel, sweet friend. 
 As one breathing his weakness to the ear 
 Of pitying angel — dear as a vrinter flower, 
 A slight flower growing alone, and offering 
 Its frail cup of three leaves to the cold sun. 
 Yet joyous and confiding like the triumph 
 Of a child : and why am I not worthy thee ? 
 I can live all the life of plants, and gaze 
 Drowsily on the bees that flit and play. 
 Or bate my breast for sunbeams which will 
 
 km. 
 
 Or open in the night of sounds, to look 
 
 For the dim stars ; I can mount with the bird 
 
 Leaping airily his pyramid of leaves 
 
 And twisted boughs of some tall moimtain tree, 
 
 Or rise cheerfully springing to the heavens ; 
 
 Or Uke a fish breathe deep the morning air 
 
 In the misty sun-warm water ; or with flower 
 
 And tree can smile in light at the sinking sun 
 
 Just as the storm comes, as a girl would look 
 
 On a departing lover — most serene. 
 
 Pauline, come with me, see how I could build 
 A home for us, out of the world, in thought ! 
 I am uplifted : fly with me, Pauline 1 
 
 Night, and one single ridge of narrow path 
 Between the sullen river and the woo(£ 
 Waving and muttering, for the moonless night 
 
PAULINE 
 
 Has shaped them into images of life, : 
 Like the uprisin? of the giant-ghosts, 
 Looking on earth to know how their sons fare : 
 Thou art 30 close by me, the roughest swell 
 Of wind in the tree-tops hides not the panting 
 Of thy soft breasts. No, we will pass to morn- 
 ing- 
 Morning, the rocks and Talleys and old 'Woods. 
 How the sun brightens in the mist, and here, 
 Half in the air, like creatures of the place, 
 Trusting the element, living on high boughs ■ 
 That swing in the wind — look at the silver 
 
 spray 
 Flung from the foam-sheet of the cataract 
 Amid the broken rocks ! Shall we stay here 
 With the wild hawks ? No, ere the not noon 
 
 come. 
 Dive we down — safe ! See this our new retreat 
 Walled in with a sloped mound of matted 
 
 shrubs, 
 Dark, tangled, old and green, still sloping down 
 To a small pool whose waters lie asleep 
 Amid the trailing boughs turned water-plants : 
 And tall trees overarch to keep us in. 
 Breaking the sunbeams into emerald shafts. 
 And in the dreamy water one small group 
 Of two or three strange trees are got together 
 Wondering at all around, as strange beasts herd 
 Together far from their own land : all wildness. 
 No turf nor moss, for boughs and plants pave all, 
 And tongues of bank go shelving in the lymph. 
 Where the pale-throated snake reclines his head. 
 And old gray stones lie makii^ eddies there. 
 The wild-mice cross them dry-shod. Deeper in ! 
 Shut thy soft eyes — now look — still deeper in ! 
 This is the very heart of the woods all round 
 Mountain-like neaped above us ; yet even here 
 One pond of water gleams ; far off the river 
 iSweeps like a sea, barred out from land ; but 
 
 one — 
 One thin clear sheet has overleaped and wound 
 Into this silent depth, which gained, it lies 
 Still, as but let by sufferance ; the trees bend 
 O'er it as wild men watch a sleeping girl. 
 And through their roots long creeping plants 
 
 out-stretch 
 Their twined hair, steeped and sparkling ; far- 
 ther on. 
 Tall rushes and thick flag-knots have combined 
 To narrow it ; so, at length, a silver thread, 
 It winds, all noiselessly through the deep wood 
 Till through a cleft-way, through the moss and 
 
 stone. 
 It joins its parent-river with a shout. 
 
 Up for the glowing day, leave the old woods I 
 See, they part like a ruined arch : the sky ! 
 Nothing but sky appears, so close the roots 
 And grass of the hiU-top level with the air — 
 Blue sunny air, where a great cloud floats laden 
 With light, like a dead whale that white birds 
 
 .pick. 
 Floating away in the sun in some north sea. 
 Air, air, fresh life-blood, tbin and searching air. 
 The clear, dear breath of God that loveth us, 
 Where small birds reel and winds take their de- 
 
 light! 
 Water is beanti^ul, but not like air : 
 
 See, where the solid azure waters lie 
 Made as of thickened air, and down below. 
 The fern-tanks like a forest spread themselves 
 As though each pore could feel the element ; 
 Where the quick glancing serpent winds his 
 
 way. 
 Float with rae there, Pauline ! — but not like air. 
 
 Down the hill ! Stop — a clump of trees, see, set 
 On a heap of rock, which look o'er the far plain : 
 So, envious climbing shrubs would mount to rest 
 And peer from their spread boughs ; wide they 
 
 wave, looking 
 At the muleteers who whistle on their way, 
 To the merry chime of morning bells, past all 
 The little smoking cots, mid fields andT banks 
 And copses bright in the sun. My spirit wan- 
 ders: 
 Hedgerows for me — those living hedgerows 
 
 where 
 The bushes close and clasp above and keep 
 Thought in — I am concentrated — I feel ; 
 But my soul saddens when it looks beyond : 
 I cannot be immortal, taste all joy. 
 
 God, where do they tend — these struggling 
 
 aims? 
 What would I have? What is this "sleep" 
 
 which seems 
 To bound aU ? can there be a "waking " point 
 Of crowning life ? The soul would never rule ; 
 It would be first in all things, it would have 
 Its utmost pleasure filled, but, that complete. 
 Commanding, for commanding, sickens it. 
 The last point I can trace is — rest beneath 
 Some better essence than itself, in weakness ; 
 This is "myself," not what I think should be : 
 And what is that I hunger for but God ? 
 
 My God, my God, let me for once look on thee 
 As though nai^ht else existed, we alone ! 
 And as creation crumblesLiny soul's spark 
 Expands till I can say, — Even from myself 
 
 1 need thee and I feel thee and I love thee. 
 I do not plead my rapture in thy works 
 For love of tliee, nor that I feel as one 
 Who cannot die : but there is that in me 
 Which turns to thee, which loves or which 
 
 should love. 
 
 Why have I girt myself with this heU-dress ? 
 
 Why havfe I labored to put out my life ? 
 
 Is it not in my nature to adore. 
 
 And e'en for all my reason do I not 
 
 Feel him, and thank him, and pray to him — 
 
 now? 
 Can I forego the trust that he loves me ? 
 Do I not feel a Ibve which only one . . . 
 
 thou pale form, so dimly seen, deep-eyed 1 
 
 1 have denied thee calmly — do I not 
 
 Pant when I read of thy consummate power. 
 
 And bum to see thy c^m pure truths out-flash 
 
 The brightest gleams of earth's philosophy ? 
 
 Do I not shake to hear aught question thee ? 
 
 If I am erring save me, madden me, 
 
 Take from me powers and pleasures, let me die 
 
 Ages, so I see thee ! I am knit round 
 
 As with a charm by sin and lust and pride. 
 
10 
 
 PAULINE 
 
 Yet though my wandering dreams have seen 
 
 all shapes 
 Of strange delight, oft have I stood by thee — 
 Have I been keeping lonely "watch with thee 
 In the damp night by weeping Olivet, 
 Or leaning on thy bosom, proudly less, 
 Or dying with thee on the lonely cross. 
 Or witnessing thine outburst from the tomb. 
 
 A mortal, sin's familiar friend, doth here 
 Avow that he will give all earth's reward, 
 But to beUeve and numbly teach the faith. 
 In suffering and poverty and shame. 
 Only believing he is not unloved. 
 
 And now, my Pauline, I am thine forever ! 
 I feel the spirit which has buoyed me up 
 Desert me, and old shades are gathering fast ; 
 Yet while the last light waits, I would say much. 
 This chiefly, it is gain that I have said 
 Somewhat of love I ever felt for thee 
 But seldom told ; onr hearts so beat together 
 That speech seemed mockery ; but when dark 
 
 hours come, 
 And joy departs, and thou, sweet, deem'st it 
 
 strange 
 A sorrow moves me, thou canst not remove, 
 Look on this lay I dedicate to thee, 
 Which through thee I began, which thus I end, 
 Collecting the last gleams to strive to tell 
 How I am thine, and more than ever now 
 That I sink fast ; yet though I deeplier sink. 
 No less song proves one word has brought me 
 
 bliss. 
 Another still may win bliss surely back. 
 Thou knowest, dear, I could not think aU calm. 
 For fancies followed thought and bore me off. 
 And left all indistinct ; ere one was caught 
 Another glanced ; so, dazzled by my wealth, 
 I knew not whicn to leave nor which to choose. 
 For all so floated, naught was fijced and firm. 
 And then thou said'st a perfect bard was one 
 Who chronicled the stages of all life, 
 And so thou bad'st me shadow this first stage. 
 'T is done, and even now I recognize 
 The shift, the change from last to past — discern 
 Faintly how life is truth and truth is good. 
 And why thou must be mine is, that e'en now 
 In the dim hush of night, that I have done. 
 Despite the sad forebodings, love looks 
 
 thi'ough — 
 Whispers, — E'en at the last I have her still. 
 With her delicious eyes as clear as heaven 
 When rain in a quick shower has beat down 
 
 mist. 
 And clouds float white above like broods of 
 
 swans. 
 How the blood lies upon her cheek, outspread 
 As thinned by kisses ! only in her lips 
 It wells and pulses like a living thing. 
 And her neck looks like marble misted o'er 
 With love-breath, — a Pauline from heights 
 
 above. 
 Stooping beneath me, looking up — one look 
 As I might kill her and be loved the more. 
 
 So, love me — me, Pauline, and naught but me, 
 Xev«r leave Ipving ! Words are wild and weak, 
 
 Believe them not, Pauline I I stained myself 
 But to behold thee purer by my side. 
 To show thou art my breath, my life, a last 
 Resource, an extreme want : never believe 
 Aught better could so look on thee ; nor seek 
 Again the world of good thoughts left for mine ! 
 There were bright troops of undiscovered suns. 
 Each equal in uieir radiant course ; there were 
 Clusters of far fair isles which ocean kept 
 For his own joy, and his waves broke on them 
 Without a choice ; and there was a dim crowd 
 Of visions, each a part of some grand whole : 
 And one star left his peers and came with peace 
 Upon a storm, and all eyes pined for him ; 
 And one isle harbored a searbeaten ship. 
 And the crew wandered in its bowers and 
 
 plucked 
 Its fruits and gave up all their hopes of home ; 
 And one dream came to a pale poet's sleep. 
 And he said, " I am singled out by God, 
 No sin must touch me." Words are wild and 
 
 weak. 
 But what they would express is, — Leave me 
 
 not, 
 Still sit by me with beating breast and hair 
 Loosened, be watching earnest by my side, 
 Turning my books or kissing me when I 
 Look up — like summer wind ! Be stiU to me 
 A help to music's mystery which mind fails 
 To fathom, its solution, no mere clue ! 
 
 reason's pedantry, life's rule prescribed ! 
 
 1 hopeless, I the loveless, hope and love. 
 Wiser and better, know me now, not when 
 You loved me as I was. Smile not ! I have 
 Much yet to dawn on you, to gladden you. 
 
 No more of the past ! I '11 look within no more, 
 I have too trusted my own lawless wants. 
 Too trusted my vain self, vague intuition — 
 Draining soul's wine alone in the still night, 
 And seeing how, as gathering films arose. 
 As by an inspiration life seemed bare 
 And grinning in its vanity, while ends 
 Foul to be dreamed of, smiled at me as fixed 
 And fair, while others changed from fair to f onl 
 As a young witch turns an old hag at night. 
 No more of this ! We will go hand in hand, 
 I with thee, even as a child — love's slave. 
 Looking no farther than his liege commands. 
 
 And thou hast chosen where this life shall be : 
 The land which gave me thee shall be our home. 
 Where nature lies all wild amid her lakes 
 And snow-swathed mountains and vast pines 
 
 begirt 
 With ropes of snow — where nature lies all bare, 
 Suifei-ing none to view her but a race 
 Or stinted or deformed, like the mute dwarfs 
 Which wait upon a naked Indian queen. 
 And there (the time being when the heavens 
 
 are thick 
 With storm) I '11 sit with thee while thou dos) 
 
 m, ™^ 
 
 Thy native songs, gay as a desert bird 
 
 Which crieth as it flies for perfect joy, 
 
 Or telling me old stories of dead knights ; 
 
 Or I will read great lays to thee — how she, 
 
 The fair pale sister, went to her chill grave 
 
 With power to love and to be loved and live ; 
 
PAULINE 
 
 Or we will go together, like twin gods 
 Of the infernal world, with scented lamp 
 Over the dead, to call and to awake. 
 Over the unshaped images which lie 
 Withiji my mind's cave : only leaving all, 
 That tells of the past doubt. So, when spring 
 
 comes 
 With sunshine back again like an old smUe, 
 And the fresh waters and awakened birds 
 And budding woods await us, I shall be 
 Prepared, and we will question life once more, 
 Tin its old sense shall come renewed by change, 
 Like some clear thought which harsh words 
 
 veiled before ; 
 Feeling God loves us, and that all which errs 
 Is but a dream which death will dissipate. 
 And then what need of longer exile ? Seek 
 My England, and, again there, calm approach 
 All I once fled from, calmly look on those 
 The works of my past weakness, as one views 
 Some scene where danger met him long before. 
 Ah that such pleasant life should be but 
 
 dreamed ! 
 
 But whate'er come of it, and though it fade, 
 And though ere the cold morning all be gone. 
 As it may be ; — though music wait to wile, 
 And strange eyes and bright wine lure, laugh 
 
 like sin 
 Which steals back softly on a soul half saved, 
 And I the first deny, decry, despise, 
 With this avowal, these intents so fair, — 
 Still be it all my own, this moment's pride I 
 No less I make an end in perfect joy. 
 E'en in ray brightest time, a lurking fear 
 Possessed me : I well knew my weak resolves, 
 I felt the witchery that makes mind sleep 
 Over its treasure, as one half afraid 
 To make his riches definite : but now 
 These feelings shall not utterly be lost, 
 I shall not know again that nameless care 
 Lest, leaving all undone in youth, some new 
 And undreamed end reveal itself too late : 
 For this song shall remain to tell forever 
 That when I lost all hope of such a change, 
 Suddenly beauty rose on me again. 
 No less I make an end In perfect joy, 
 For I, who thus again was visited, 
 Shall doubt not many another bliss awaits. 
 And, though this weak soul sink and darkness 
 
 whelm, 
 Some little word shall light it, raise aloft, 
 
 To where I clearlier see and better love, 
 As I again go o'er the tracts of thought 
 Like one who has a right, and I shall live 
 With poets, calmer, purer still each time, 
 And beauteous shapes will come for me to seize, 
 And unknown secrets will be trusted me 
 Which were denied the waverer once ; but now 
 I shall be priest and prophet as of old, 
 
 Sun-treader, I believe in God and truth 
 And love ; and as one just escaped from death 
 Would bind himself in bands of friends to feel 
 He lives indeed, so, I would lean on thee ! 
 Thou must be ever with me, most in gloom 
 If such must come, but chiefly when I die. 
 For I seem, dying, as one going in the dark 
 To fight a giant : but live thou forever, 
 And be to all what thou hast been to me ! 
 All in whom this wakes pleasant thoughts of me 
 Know my last state is happy, free from doubt 
 Or touch of fear. Love me and wish me well. 
 
 SONNET. 
 
 Mr. Gosse in his Personalia copies from the 
 Monthly Heposkory the following sonnet. Three 
 other pieces first printed in the same periodical 
 will be found as afterward grouped in JBells 
 and Pomegranates. 
 
 Eyes, calm beside thee (Lady, couldst thou 
 know!) 
 May turn away thick with fast gathering 
 tears : 
 I glance not where all gaze : thrilling and low 
 Their passionate praises reach thee — my 
 cheek wears 
 Alone no wonder when thou passest by ; 
 Thy tremulous lids, bent and sufEused, reply 
 To the irrepressible homage which doth glow 
 
 On every lip but mine : if in thine ears 
 Their accents linger — and thou dost recall 
 Me as I stood, still, guarded, very pale, 
 Beside each votarist whose lighted brow 
 Wore worship like an aureole, " O'er them all 
 My beauty," thou wilt murmur, " did pre- 
 vail 
 Save that one only : " — Lady, couldst thou 
 
 know ! 
 August 17, 1834. 
 
12 
 
 PARACELSUS 
 
 PARACELSUS 
 
 INSCKIBBD TO 
 
 AMEDEE DE RIPERT-MONCLAR 
 
 BY HIS AFFECTIONATE FRIEND 
 
 London, March 15, 1835. 
 
 R. B. 
 
 The dedication of Paracelsus was, in a de- 
 gree, the payment of a debt, for it was the 
 youngs count, four years older than Browning, 
 and at the time a private agent in England be- 
 tween the Duchesse de Berri and her royalist 
 friends in France, who suggested the subject 
 to the poet. When first published Paracelsus 
 had the following Preface : " I am anxious that 
 the reader should not, at the very outset, — 
 mistaking my performance for one of a class 
 with which it has nothing in common, — judge 
 it by principles on which it was never moulded, 
 and subject it to a standard to which it was 
 never meant to conform. I therefore anticipate 
 his discovery, that it is an attempt, probably 
 more novel than happy, to reverse the method 
 usually adopted by writers whose aim it is to 
 set forth any phenomena of vhe mind or the 
 passions, by the operation of persons and events ; 
 and that, instead of having recourse to an ex- 
 ternal machinery of incidents to create and 
 evolve the crisis I desire to produce, I have 
 ventured to display somewhat minutely the 
 mood itself in its rise and progress, and have 
 suffered the agency by which it is influenced 
 and determined, to be generally discernible in 
 its effects alone, and subordinate throughout, if 
 not altogether excluded : and this for a reason. 
 I have endeavored to write a poem, not a drama : 
 the canons of the drama are well known, and I 
 cannot but think that, inasmuch as they have 
 
 immediate regard to sta^^e representation, the 
 peculiar advantages they hold out are really 
 such only so long as the purpose for which they 
 were at first instituted is kept in view. I do 
 not very well understand what is called a Dra- 
 matic Poem, wherein all those restrictions only 
 submitted to on account of compensating good 
 in the original scheme are scrupulotisly re- 
 tained, as though for some special fitness in 
 themselves — and all new facilities placed at ar 
 author's disposal by the vehicle he selects, as 
 pertinaciously rejected. It is certain, however, 
 that a work like mine depends on the intelli- 
 gence and sympathy of the reader for its 
 success, — indeed were my scenes stars, it must 
 be his cooperating fancy which, supplying all 
 cliasms, shall collect the scattered lights into 
 one constellation — a Lyre or a Crown. I trust 
 for his indulgence towards a poem which had 
 not been imagined six months ago: and that 
 even should he think slightingly of the present 
 (an experiment 1 am in no case likely to repeat) 
 he will not be prejudiced against other produc- 
 tions which may follow in a more popular, and 
 perhaps less difficult form." 
 
 Mr. Browning, senior, paid for the publication 
 of Paracelsus. In its final form, as here gjlven. 
 it is greatly changed, not in structure but iii 
 phrase. Mr. Cooke states that the change af 
 f ects nearly a third of the lines. 
 
 PERSONS 
 
 AuEEoms Paracelsus, a student. 
 Fbstus and Michal, his friends. 
 Aprils, an Italian poet. 
 
 I. PARACELSUS ASPIRES 
 
 Scene, Wurzhurg : a garden in the environs. 1512. 
 
 Festus, Paracelsus, Michal. 
 
 Paracelsus. Come close to me, dear friends ; 
 still closer ; thus ! 
 Close to the heart which, though longtime roll by 
 Ere it again beat quicker, pressed to yours. 
 As now it beats — perchance a long, long time — 
 At least henceforth your memories shall make 
 Quiet and fragrant as befits their home. 
 Nor shall my memory want a home in yours — 
 Alas, that it requires too well such free 
 Forgiving love as shall embalm it there T 
 
 For if you would remember me aright. 
 
 As I was bom to be, you must forget 
 
 All fitful, strange and moody waywardness 
 
 Which e'er confused my better spirit, to dwell 
 
 Only on moments such as these, dear friends I 
 
 — My heart no truer, but my words and ways 
 
 More true to it: as Michal, some months 
 
 hence. 
 Will say, " this autumn was a pleasant time,'' 
 For some few sunny days ; and overlook 
 Its bleak wind, hankering after pining leaves. 
 Autumn would fain be sunny ; I would look 
 Liker my nature's truth : and both are frail. 
 And both beloved, for all our frailty. 
 
 Michal. Aureole ! 
 
 Par. Drop by drop ! she is weeping like a 
 child ! 
 Not so ! I am content — more than content ; 
 Nay, autumn wins you best by this its mute 
 Appeal to sympathy for its decay : 
 Look up, sweet Michal, nor esteem the less 
 
PARACELSUS 
 
 13 
 
 Your stained and drooping vines their grapes 
 
 bow down, 
 Nor blame those creaking trees bent with their 
 
 fruit, 
 That apple-tree with a rare after-birth 
 Of peeping blooms sprinkled its wealth among I 
 Then for the winds — what wind that ever raved 
 Shall vex that ash which overlooks you both. 
 So proud it wears its berries ? Ah, at length. 
 The old smile meet for her, the lady of this 
 Sequestered nest ! — this kmgdom, limited 
 Alon'j by one old populous green wall 
 Tenanted by the ever-busy ilies. 
 Gray crickets and shy lizards and quick spiders, 
 Each family of the silver-threaded moss — 
 Which, look through near, this way, and it 
 
 appears 
 A stubble-field or a cane-brake, a marsh 
 Of bulrush whitening in the sun : laugh now 1 
 Fancy the crickets, each one in his house, 
 Iiooking out, wondering at the world — or best, 
 Ton painted snail with his gay shell of dew. 
 Travelling to see the glossy balls high up 
 Hnng by the caterpillar, like gold lamps, 
 Mich. In truth we have lived carelessly and 
 
 well. 
 Par. And shall, ray perfect pair I — each, 
 
 trust me, bom 
 For the other ; nay , your very hair, when mixed. 
 Is of one hue. For where save in this nook 
 Shall you two walk, when I am far away, 
 And wish me prosperous fortune ? Stay : that 
 
 plant 
 Shall never wave its tangles lightly and softly. 
 As a queen's languid and imperial arm 
 Which scatters crowns among her lovers, but you 
 Shall be reminded to predict to Tne 
 Some great success ! Ah see, the sun sinks broad 
 Behind Saint Saviour's : wholly gone, at last ! 
 Festus. Now, Aureole, stay those wandering 
 
 eyes awhile ! 
 You are ouis to-night, at least ; and while you 
 
 spoke 
 Of Miohal and her tears, I thought that none 
 Could willing leave what he so seemed to love : 
 But that last look destroys my dream — that 
 
 look 
 As if, where'er you gazed, there stood a star ! 
 How far was Wiirzburg with its church and spire 
 And garden-walls and all things they contain. 
 From that look's far alighting ? 
 
 Par. I but spoke 
 
 And looked alike from simple joy to see 
 The beings 1 love best, shut in so well 
 From all rude chances like to be my lot. 
 That, when afar, my weary spirit, — disposed 
 To lose awhile its care in soothing thoughts 
 Of them, their pleasant features, looks and 
 
 words, — 
 Needs never hesitate, nor apprehend 
 Encroaching trouble may have reached them 
 
 too, 
 Nor have recourse to fancy's busy aid 
 And fashion even a wish in their behalf 
 Beyond what they possess already here ; 
 But, unobstructed, may at once forget 
 Itself in them, assured how well they fare. 
 Beside, this Festus knows he holds me one 
 
 Whom quiet and its charms arrest in vain, 
 One scarce aware of aU the joys I quit, 
 Too filled with airy hopes to make account 
 Of soft delights his own heart garners up : 
 Whereas behold how much our sense of all 
 That 's beauteous proves alike 1 When Festus 
 
 learns 
 That every common pleasure of the world 
 Affects me as himself ; that I have just 
 As varied appetite for joy derived 
 From common things ; a stake in life, in short. 
 Like his ; a stake which rash pursuit of aims 
 That life affords not, would as soon destroy ; — 
 He may convince himself that, this in view, 
 I shall act well advised. And last, because. 
 Though heaven and earth and all things were 
 
 at stake. 
 Sweet Michal must not weep, our parting eve. 
 Fest. True : and the eve is deepening, and 
 
 we sit 
 As little anxious to begin our talk 
 As though to-raorrow I could hint of it 
 As we paced arm-in-arm the cheerful town 
 At sun-dawn ; or could whisper it by fits 
 (Trithemius busied with his class the while) 
 in that dim chamber where the noon-streaks p»er 
 Half -frightened by the awful tomes around ; 
 Or in some grassy lane unbosom all 
 From even-blush to midnight : but, to-morrow ! 
 Have I full leave to tell my imnost mind ? 
 We have been brothers, and henceforth th« 
 
 world 
 Will rise between us : — all my freest mind ? 
 'T is the last night, dear Aureole ! 
 
 Par. Oh, say on I 
 
 Devise some test of love, some arduous feat 
 To be performed for you : say on ! If night 
 Be spent the while, the better ! Recall how oft 
 My wondrous plans and dreams and hopes and 
 
 fears 
 Have — never wearied you, oh no ! — as I 
 Recall, and never vividly as now. 
 Your true affection, bom when Einsiedeln 
 And its green hills were all the world to us ; 
 And still increasing to this night which ends 
 My further stay at Wiirzbui^. Oh, one day 
 You shall be very proud ! Say on, dear friends ! 
 Fest. In truth ? 'T is for my proper peace, in- 
 deed. 
 Rather than yours ; for vain all projects seem 
 To stay your course : I said my latest hope 
 Is fading even now. A story tells 
 Of some far embassy despatched to win 
 The favor of an eastern king, and how 
 The gifts they offered proved but dazzling durt 
 Shed from the ore-beds native to his clime. 
 Just so, the value of repose and love, 
 Ijmeant should tempt you, better far than I 
 You seem to comprehend ; and yet desist 
 No whit from projects where repose nor love 
 Has part. 
 Par. Once more ? Alas ! As I foretold, 
 Fest. A solitary brier the bank puts forth 
 To save our swan's nest floating o"t to sea. 
 Par. Dear Festus, hear me. What is it you 
 
 wish ? 
 That I should lay aside my heart's pursuit. 
 Abandon the sole ends for which I five. 
 
14 
 
 PARACELSUS 
 
 Reject God's great commission, and so die ! 
 You bid me listen for your true love's sake : 
 Yet how has grown that love ? Even in a long 
 And patient cherishing of the self-^ame spirit 
 It now would quell ; as though a mother hoped 
 To stay the lusty manhood of the child 
 Once weak upon her knees. 1 was not bom 
 Informed and fearless from the first, but shrank 
 From aught which marked me out apart from 
 
 men: 
 I would have lived their life, and died their 
 
 death. 
 Lost in their ranks, eluding destiny : 
 But you first guided me through doubt and fear, 
 Taught me to know mankind and know myself ; 
 And now that I am strong and full of hope, 
 That, from my soul, I can reject all aims 
 Save those your earnest words made plain to me, 
 Now that I touch the brink of my design, 
 When I would have a triumph in their eyes, 
 A glad cheer in their voices — Michal weeps, 
 And Festus pondera gravely ! 
 
 Fest. When you deign 
 
 To hear my purpose . . . 
 
 Par. Hear it ? I can say 
 
 Beforehand all this evening's conference ! 
 'Tis this way, Michal, that he uses: first. 
 Or he declares, or I, the leading points 
 Of our best scheme of life, what is man's end 
 And what God's will : no two faiths e'er agreed 
 As his with mine. Next, each of us allows 
 Faith should be a«ted on as best we may ; 
 Accordingly, I venture to submit 
 My plan, in lack of better, for pursuing 
 The path which God's will seems to authorize. 
 Well, he discerns much good in it, avows 
 This motive worthy, that hope plausible, 
 A danger here to be avoided, there 
 An oversight to be repaired : in fine. 
 Our two minds go together — all the good 
 Approved by hun, I gladly recognize, 
 All he counts bad, I thankfully discard. 
 And naught forbids my looking up at last 
 For some stray comfort in his cautious brow. 
 When lo ! I learn that, spite of all, there lurks 
 Some innate and inexplicable gerra 
 Of failure !■' ray scheme ; so that at last 
 [t all amounts to this — the sovereign proof 
 That we devote ourselves to God, is seen 
 [n living just a." though no God there were ; 
 A. life which, prompted by the sad and blind 
 Folly of man, Festus abhors the most ; 
 But which these tenets sanctity at once. 
 Though to less subtle wits it seems the same. 
 Consider it how they may. 
 
 Mich. Is it so, Festus r 
 
 He speaks so calmly and kindly : is it so ? 
 Par. Reject those glorious visions of God's 
 love 
 And man's design ; laugh loud that God should 
 
 send 
 Vast longings to direct us ; say how soon 
 Power satiates these, or lust, or gold ; I know 
 The world's cry well, and how to answer it. 
 But this ambiguous warfare ... 
 
 Fest. . . . Wearies so 
 
 That you will grant no last leave to your friend 
 To urge it ? — for his sake, not yours ? I wish 
 
 To send my soul in good hopes after you ; 
 Never to sorrow that uncertain words 
 Erringly apprehended, a new creed 
 111 understood, begot rash trust in you, 
 Had share in your undoing. 
 
 Par. Choose yoor side^ 
 
 Hold or renounce : but meanwhile blame me not 
 Because I dare to act on your own views, 
 Nor shrink when they point onward, nor espy 
 A peril where they most ensure success. 
 Fest. Prove that to me — but that! Prove 
 
 you abide 
 Within their warrant, nor presumptuous boast 
 God's labor laid on you ; prove, all you covet, 
 A mortal may expect ; and, most of all. 
 Prove the strange course you now affect, will 
 
 lead 
 To its attainment — and I bid you speed. 
 Nay, count the minutes till you venture forth ! 
 You smile ; but I had gathered from slow 
 
 thought — 
 Much musing on the f o^unes of ray friend — 
 Matter I deemed could not be urged in vain ; 
 But it all leaves me at my need : in shreds 
 And fragments I must venture what remains. 
 Mich. Ask at once, Festus, wherefore he 
 
 should scorn. . . . 
 Fest. Stay, Michal : Aureole, I speak guard- 
 edly 
 And gravely, knowing well, whate'er your erroPv 
 This is no ill-considered choice of yours. 
 No sudden fancy of an ardent boy. 
 Not from your own confiding words alone 
 Am I aware your passionate heart long since 
 Gave birth to, nourished and at length matures 
 This scheme. I will not speak of Euisiedeln, 
 Where I was born your elder by some years 
 Only to watch yon fuUy from the first : 
 In all beside, our mutual tasks were fixed 
 Even then — 't was mine to have you in my view 
 As yon had your own soul and those intents 
 Wmch filled it when, to crown your dearest 
 
 wish. 
 With a tumultuous heart, you left with me 
 Our childhood's home to join the favored few 
 Whom, here, Trithemius condescends to teach 
 A portion of his lore : and not one youth 
 Of those so favored, whom you now despise. 
 Came earnest as you came, resolved, like you, 
 To grasp all, and retain all, and deserve 
 By patient toil a wide renown like his. 
 Now, this new ardor which supplants the old 
 I watched, too ; 't was significant and strange, 
 In one matched to his soul's content at length 
 With rivals in the search for wisdom's prize, 
 To see the sudden pause, the total change ; 
 From contest, the transition to repose — 
 From pressing onward as his fellows pressed, 
 To a blank idleness, yet most unlike 
 The dull stagnation of a soul, content. 
 Once foiled, to leave betimes a thriveless quest. 
 That careless bearing, free from all pretence 
 Even of contempt for what it ceased to seek — 
 Smiling humility, praising much, yet waiving 
 What it professed to praise — though not so well 
 Maintained but that rare outbreaks, fierce and 
 
 brief. 
 Revealed the hidden scorn, as quickly curbed. 
 
PARACELSUS 
 
 IS 
 
 That ostentatious show of past defeat, 
 That ready acquiescence in contempt^ 
 I deemed no other than the letting go 
 His shivered sword, of one about to spring 
 Upon his foe's throat : but it was not thus ; 
 Not that way looked your brooding purpose 
 
 then. 
 For after-signs disclosed, what you confirmed, 
 That you prepared to task to the uttermost 
 Your strength, in furtherance of a certain aim 
 Which — while it bore the name your rivals gave 
 Their own most puny efforts — was so vast 
 In scope that it included their best flights. 
 Combined them, and desired to gain one prize 
 In place of many, — the secret of the world. 
 Of man, and man's true purpose, path and fate. 
 — That you, not nursing as a mere vague dream 
 This purpose, with the sages of the past. 
 Have struck upon a way to this, if all 
 You trust be true, which following, heart and 
 
 soul. 
 You, if a man may, dare aspire to KNOW : 
 And that this aim shall differ from a host 
 Of aims alike in character and kind. 
 Mostly in this, — that in itself alone 
 Shall its reward be, not an alien end 
 Blending therewith ; no hope nor fear nor joy 
 Nor woe, to elsewhere move you, but this pure 
 Devotion to sustain you or betray : 
 Thus you aspire. 
 
 Par. You shall not state it thus ; 
 
 I should not differ from the dreamy crew 
 You speak of. I profess no other share 
 In the selection of my lot, than this 
 My ready answer to the will of God 
 who summons me to be his organ. All 
 Whose innate strength supports them shall suc- 
 ceed 
 No better than the sages. 
 
 Fest, Such the aim, then, 
 
 God sets before yon : and 't is doubtless need 
 That he appoint no less the way of praise 
 Than the desire to praise ; for, though I hold. 
 With you, the setting forth such praise to be 
 The natural end and service of a man, 
 And hold such praise is best attained when man 
 Attains the general welfare of his kind — 
 Yet this, the end, is not the instrument. 
 Presume not to serve God apart from such 
 Appointed channel as he wills shall gather 
 Imperfect tributes, for that sole obedience 
 Valued perchance ! He seeks not that his altars 
 Blaze, careless how, so that they do but blaze. 
 Suppose this, then ; that God selected you 
 To KNOW (heed well your answers, for my faith 
 Shall meet implicitly what they affirm), 
 I cannot think you dare annex to such 
 Selection aught beyond a steadfast will. 
 An intense hope ; nor let your gifts create 
 Scorn or neglect of ordinary means 
 Conducive to success, make destiny 
 Dispense with man's endeavor. Now, dare you 
 
 search 
 Your inmost heart, and candidly avow 
 Whether you have not rather wild desire 
 For this distinction than security 
 Of its existence ? whether you discern 
 The path to the fulfilment of your purpose 
 
 Clear as that purpose — and again, that purpose 
 Clear as your yearning to be singled out 
 For its pursuer. Dare you answer this ? 
 Far, (after a pause). No, I have naught to 
 fear ! Wno will may know 
 The seeret'st workings of my soul. What 
 
 though 
 It be so ? — if indeed the strong desire 
 Eclipse the aim in me ? — if splendor break 
 Upon the outset of my path alone. 
 And duskest shade succeed ? What fairer seal 
 Shall I require to my authentic mission 
 Than this fierce energy ? — this instinct striving 
 Because its nature is to strive ? — enticed 
 By the security of no broad course. 
 Without success forever in its eyes ! 
 How know I else such glorious fate my own, 
 But in the restless irresistible force 
 That works within me ? Is it for human will 
 To institute such impulses ? — still less. 
 To disregard their promptings ! What should I 
 Do, kept among you all ; your loves, your cares, 
 Your life — all to be mine ? Be sure that God 
 Ne'er dooms to waste the strength he deigns 
 
 impart ! 
 Ask the geier-eagle why she stoops at once 
 Into the vast and unexplored abyss. 
 What full-grown power informs her from the 
 
 first. 
 Why she not marvels, strenuously beating 
 The silent boundless regions of the sky ! 
 Be sure they sleep not whom God needs ! Nor 
 
 fear 
 Their holding light his charge, when every hour 
 That finds that charge delayed, is a new death. 
 This for the faith in which I trust ; and hence 
 I can abjure so well the idle arts 
 These pedants strive to learn and teach ; Black 
 
 Arts, 
 Grreat Works, the Secret and Sublinie,f orsooth — 
 Let others prize : too intimate a tie 
 Connects me with our God ! A sullen fiend 
 To do my bidding, fallen and hateful sprites 
 To help me — what are these, at best, beside 
 God helping, God directing everywhere. 
 So that the earth shall yield her secrets up. 
 And every object there be charged to strike, 
 Teach, gratify her master God appoints ? 
 And I am young, my Festus, happy and free I 
 I can devote jnyself ; I have a life 
 To give ; I, singled out for this, the One ! 
 Think, think I the wide East, where all Wis- 
 dom sprang ; 
 The bright South, where she dwelt ; the hopeful 
 
 North, 
 All are passed o'er — itlightsonme ! 'Tistim© 
 New hopes should animate the world, new light 
 Should dawn from new revealings to a race 
 Weighed down so long, forgotten so long ; thus 
 
 shall 
 The heaven reserved for ns at last receive 
 Creatures whom no unwonted splendors blind. 
 But ardent to confront the unclouded blaze. 
 Whose beams not seldom blessed their pilgrim- 
 age. 
 Not seldom glorified their life below. 
 Fest. My words have their old fate and 
 make faint stand 
 
i6 
 
 PARACELSUS 
 
 Againstyour glowing periods. Call this, truth — 
 Why not pursue it in a fast retreat, 
 Some one of Learning's many palaces, 
 After approved example ? — seeking there 
 Calm converse with the great dead, soul to soul, 
 Who laid up treasure with the like intent 
 ■ — So lift yourself into their airy plaxje, 
 And fill out full their unfulfilled careers, 
 Unravelling the knots their baffled skill 
 Pronounced inextricable, true ! — but left 
 Far less confused. A fresh eye, a fresh hand. 
 Might do much at their vigor's waning-point ; 
 Succeeding with new-breathed new-hearted 
 
 force. 
 As at old games the runner snatched the torch 
 From runner still : this way success might be. 
 But you have coupled with your enterprise 
 An arbitrary self-repugnant scheme 
 6f seeking it in strange and untried paths. 
 What books are in the desert ? Writes the sea 
 The secret of her yearning in vast caves 
 Where yours will fall the first of human feet ? 
 Has wisdom sat there and recorded aught 
 You press to read ? Why turn aside from her 
 To visit, where her vesture never glanced, 
 Now — solitudeb consigned to barrenness 
 By God's decree, which who shall dare impugn ? 
 Now — ruins where she paused but would not 
 
 stay. 
 Old ravaged cities that, renouncing her. 
 She called an endless curse on, so it came : 
 Or worst of all, now — men you visit, men, 
 Ignoblest troops who never heard her voice 
 Or hate it, men without one gift from Rome 
 Or Athens, — these shall Aureole's teachers he ! 
 Rejecting past example, practice, precept. 
 Aidless 'mid these he thinks to stand alone : 
 Thick like a glory round the Stagirite 
 Your rivals throng, the sages ; here stand you ! 
 Whatever you may protest, knowledge is not 
 Paramount in your love ; or for her sake 
 Yon would collect all help from every source — 
 Rival, assistant, friend, foe, all would merge 
 In the broad class of those who showed her 
 
 haunts. 
 And those who showed them not. 
 
 Par. What shaU I say ? 
 
 Festus, from childhood I have been possessed 
 By a fire — by a true fire, or faint or fierce. 
 As from without some master, so it seemed. 
 Repressed or urged its current : this but ill 
 Expresses what I would convey ; but rather 
 I will believe an angel ruled me thus, 
 Thau that my soul's own workings, own high 
 
 nature. 
 So became manifest. I knew not then 
 What whispered in the evening, and spoke out 
 At midnight. If some mortal, born too soon. 
 Were laid away in some great trance — the ages 
 Coming and going all the while — till dawned 
 His true time's advent ; and could then record 
 The words they spoke who kept watch by his 
 
 bed,— 
 Then I might teU more of the breath so light 
 Upon my eyelids, and the fingers light 
 Among my hair. Youth is confused ; yet never 
 So dull was I but, when that spirit passed, 
 I turned to him, scarce consciously, as turns 
 
 A water-snake when fairies cross his sleep. 
 And having this within me and about me 
 While Einsiedeln, its m^ountains, lakes and 
 
 woods 
 Confined me — what oppressive joy was mine 
 When life grew plain, and 1 first viewed the 
 
 throi^ed, 
 The everlasting concourse of mankind ! 
 Believe that ere I joined them, ere I knew 
 The purpose of the pageant, or the place 
 Consigned me in its ranks — while, just awake. 
 Wonder was freshest and delight most pure — 
 'T was then that least supportable appeared 
 A station with the brightest of the crowd, 
 A portion with the proudest of them all. 
 And from the tumult in my breast, this only 
 Could I collect, that I must thenceforth die 
 Or elevate myself far, far above 
 The gorgeous spectacle. I seemed to long 
 At once to trample on, yet save mankind. 
 To make some unexampled sacrifice 
 In their behalf, to wring some wondrous good 
 From heaven or earth for them, to perish, win- 
 ning 
 Eternal weal in the act : as who should dare 
 Pluck out the angry thunder from its cloud, 
 That, all its gathered flame discharged on him. 
 No storm might threaten summer's azure sleep : 
 Yet never to be mixed with men so much 
 As to have part even in my own work, share ' 
 In my own largess. Once the feat achieved, 
 I would withdraw from their offlcious praise, 
 Wo"!"! gently put aside their profuse thanks. 
 Like some knight traversing a wilderness. 
 Who, on his way, may chance to free a tribe 
 Of desert-people from their dragon-foe ; 
 When all the swarthy race press round to kiss 
 His feet, and choose him for their king, and yield 
 Their poor tents, pitched among the sand-hills, 
 
 for 
 His realm : and he points, smiling, to his scarf 
 Heavy with riveled gold, his burgonet 
 Gay set with twinkling stones — and to the East, 
 Where these must be displayed ! 
 
 ¥est. Good : let us hear 
 
 No more about your nature, " which first shrank 
 From all that marked you out apart from men ! " 
 Par. I touch on that ; these words but analyze 
 The first mad impulse : 'twas as brief as fond. 
 For as I gazed again upon the show, 
 I soon distinguished here and there a shape 
 Palm-wreathed and radiant, forehead and full 
 
 eye. 
 Well pleased was I their state should thus at once 
 Interpret my own thoughts : — " Behold the clue 
 To all," I rashly said, " and what I pine 
 To do, these have accomplished : we are peers. 
 They know and therefore rule : I, too, will 
 
 know ! " 
 You were beside me, Festus, as you say ; 
 You saw me plunge in their pursuits whom fame 
 Is lavish to attest the lords of mind. 
 Not pausing to maKe sure the prize in view 
 Would satiate my cravings when obtained, 
 But since they strove I strove. Tlien came a 
 
 slow 
 And strangling failure. We E^ired alike, 
 Yet not the meanest plodder, 'Tritheim counts 
 
PARACELSUS 
 
 17 
 
 A marvel, but was all-sufiicient, strong 
 Or staggered only at his own vast wits ; 
 While I was restless, nothing satisfied, 
 Distrustful, most perplexed. I would slur over 
 That struggle ; suffice it, that I loathed myself 
 As weak compared with them, yet felt somehow 
 A mighty power was brooding,' taking shape 
 Within me ; and this lasted till one night 
 When, as I sat revolving it and more, 
 A still voice from without said — " Seest thou 
 
 not. 
 Desponding child, whence spring defeat and 
 
 loss ? 
 Even from thy strength. Consider : hast thou 
 
 Presumptuously on wisdom's countenance, 
 No veil between ; and can thy faltering hands, 
 Unguided by the brain the sight absorbs, 
 Pursue their task as earnest blinkers do 
 Whom radiance ne'er distracted ? Live their life 
 If thou wouldst share their fortune, choose their 
 
 eyes 
 Unfed by splendor. Let each task present 
 Its petty good to thee. Waste not thy gifts 
 In profitless waiting for the gods' descent, 
 But have some idol of thine own to dress 
 With their array. Know,not for knowing's sake. 
 But to becmne a star to men forever ; 
 Know, for the gain it gets, the praise it brings. 
 The wonder it inspires, the love it breeds : 
 Look one step onward, and secure that step ! " 
 And I smiled as one never smiles but once. 
 Then first discovering my own aim's extent. 
 Which sought to comprehend the works of God, 
 And God himself, and all God's intercourse 
 With the human mind ; I understood, no less. 
 My fellows' studies, whose true worth I saw. 
 But smiled not, well aware who stood by me. 
 And softer came the voice — ■ " There is a way ; 
 'T is hard for flesh to tread therein, imbued 
 With frailty — hopeless, if indulgence first 
 Have ripened inborn germs of sin to strength; 
 Wilt thou adventure for my sake and man's. 
 Apart from all reward ?" And lasb it breathed — 
 " Be happy, my good soldier ; I am by thee. 
 Be sure, even to the end ! " — I answered not, 
 Knowing him. As he spoke, I was endued 
 With comprehension and a steadfast will ; 
 And when he ceased, my brow was sealed his 
 
 own. 
 If there took place no special change in me, 
 How comes it all things wore a difiPerent hue 
 Thenceforward ? — pregnant with vast conse- 
 quence. 
 Teeming with grand result, loaded with fate ? 
 So that when, quailing at the mighty range 
 Of secret truths which yearn for birth, I haste 
 To contemplate nndazzled some one truth. 
 Its bearings and effects alone — at once 
 What was a speck expands into a star. 
 Asking a life to pass exploring thus. 
 Till I near craze. I go to prove my soul ! 
 I see my way as birds their trackless way. 
 I shall arrive ! what time^ what circuit first, 
 I ask not : but unless God send his hail 
 Or blinding fireballs, sleet or stifling snow. 
 In some time, his good time, I shall arrive : 
 He guides me and the bird. In his good time 1 
 
 Mich. Vex him no further, Festus ; it is so ! 
 
 Feat. Just thus you help me ever. This 
 would hold 
 Were it the trackless air, and not a path 
 Inviting you, distinct with footprints yet 
 Of many a mighty marcher gone that way. 
 You may have purer viaws than theirs, perhaps, 
 But they were famous in their day — the proofs 
 Remain. At least accept the light they lend. 
 
 Par. Their light ! the sum of all is brieflj" 
 this; 
 They labored and grew famous, and the fruitA 
 Are best seen in a dark and groaning earth 
 Given over to a blind and endless strife 
 With evils, what of all their lore abates ? 
 No ; I reiect and spurn them utterly 
 And all they teach. Shall I still sit beside 
 Their dry wells, with a white lip and filmed eye, 
 While in the distance heaven is blue above 
 Mountains where sleep the unsunned tarns ? 
 
 Fest. And yet 
 
 As strong delusions have prevailed ere now. 
 Men have set out as gallantly to seek 
 Their ruin. I have heard of such : yourself 
 Avow all hitherto have failed and fallen. 
 
 Mich. Nay, Festus, when but as the pilgrims 
 faint 
 Through the drear way, do you expect to see 
 Their city dawn amid the clouds afar ? 
 
 Par. Ay, sounds it not like some old well- 
 known tale ? 
 For me, I estimate their works and them 
 So rightly, that at times I almost dream 
 I too have spent a life the sages' way. 
 And tread once more familiar paths. Perchance 
 I perished in an arrogant self-reliance 
 Ages ago ; and in that act, a prayer 
 For one more chance went up so earnest, so 
 Instinct with better light let in by death, 
 That life was blotted out — not so completely 
 But scattered wrecks enough of it remain. 
 Dim memories, as now, when once more seems 
 The goal in sight again. AU which, indeed. 
 Is foolish, and only means — the flesh I wear. 
 The earth I tread, are not more clear to me 
 Than my belief, explained to you or no. 
 
 Fest. And who am I, to challenge and dis- 
 pute 
 That clear belief ? I will divest aU fear. 
 
 Mich. Then Aureole is God's commissary ! 
 he shall 
 Be great and grand — and all for us ! 
 
 Par. No, sweet I 
 
 Not great and grand. If I can serve mankind 
 'Tis well j but there our intercourse must end : 
 I never will be served by those I serve. 
 
 Fest. Look well to this ; here is a plague~ 
 spot, here. 
 Disguise it how you may ! 'T is true, you utteh 
 TUs scorn while by our side and loving us ; 
 'T is but a spot as yet : but it will break 
 Into a hideous blotch if overlooked. 
 How can that course be safe which from the first 
 Produces carelessness to human love ? 
 Itseems you have abjured the helps which men 
 Who overpass their kind, as you would do. 
 Have humbly sought; I dare not thoroughly 
 probe 
 
i8 
 
 PARACELSUS 
 
 This matter, lest I learn too much. Let be 
 That popular praise would little instigate 
 Your efforts, nor particular approval 
 Reward you ; put reward aside ; alone 
 You shall go forth upon your arduous task, 
 None shall assist you, none partake your toil, 
 None share your triumph ; still you must retain 
 Some one to cast your glory on, to share 
 Your rapture with. Were 1 elect like you, 
 I would encircle me with love, and raise 
 A rampart of my fellows ; it should seem 
 Impossible for me to fail, so watched 
 By gentle friends who made my cause their 
 
 own. 
 They should ward off fate's envy — the great 
 
 gift. 
 Extravagant when claimed by me alone. 
 Being so a gift to them as well as me. 
 If danger daunted me or ease seduced. 
 How calmly their sad eyes should gaze re- 
 proach ! 
 Mien., Aureole, can I sing when all alone, 
 Without first calling, in my fancy, both 
 To listen by my side — even I ! And you ? 
 Do you not feel this ? Say that you feel this ! 
 Par. I feel 'tis pleasant that my aims, at 
 
 length 
 Allowed their weight, should be supposed to 
 
 need 
 A further strengthening in these goodly helps ! 
 My course allures for its own sake, its sole 
 Intrinsic worth : and ne'er shall boat of mine 
 Adventure forth for gold and apes at once. 
 Your sages say, " if human, therefore weak : " 
 If weak, more need to give myself entire 
 To my pursuit ; and by its side, all else . . . 
 No matter ! I deny myself but little 
 In waiving all assistance save its own. 
 Would there were some real sacrifice to make ! 
 Your friends the sages threw their joys away, 
 While I must be content with keeping mine. 
 Fest. But do not cut yourself from human 
 
 weal! 
 You cannot thrive — a man that dares effect 
 To spend his life in service to his kind 
 For no reward of theirs, unbound to them 
 By any tie ; nor do so. Aureole ! No — 
 There are strange punishments for such. Give 
 
 up 
 (Although no visible good flow thence) some 
 
 part 
 Of the glory to another ; hiding thus, 
 Even from yourself, that all is for yourself. 
 Say, say almost to God — "I have done all 
 For her, not for myself 1 " 
 
 Par. And who but lately 
 
 Was to rejoice in my success like you ? 
 Whom should I love but both of you ? 
 
 Fest. I know not : 
 
 But know thisj you, that 't is no will of mine 
 You should abjure the lofty claims you make ; 
 And this the cause — I can no longer seek 
 To overlook the truth, that there would be 
 A monstrous spectacle upon the earth. 
 Beneath the pleasant sun, among the trees : 
 — A being knowing not what love is. Hear 
 
 n\e ! 
 You are endowed with faculties which bear 
 
 Annexed to them as 't were a dispensation 
 To summon meaner spirits to do their will 
 And gather round them at their need ; inspiring 
 Such with a love themselves can never feel, 
 Passionless 'mid their passionate votaries. 
 I knoW' not if you joy in this or no. 
 Or ever dream that common men can live 
 On objects you prize lightly, but which make 
 Their heart's sole treasure : the affections seem 
 Beauteous at most to you, which we must taste 
 Or die : and this strange quality accords, 
 I know not how, with you ; sits well upon 
 That luminous brow, though in another it 
 
 scowls 
 An eating brand, a shame. I dare not judge 
 
 you. 
 The riiles of right and wrong thus set aside, 
 There 's no alternative — I own you one 
 Of higher order, under other laws 
 Than bind us ; therefore, curb not one bold 
 
 glance! 
 'T is best aspire. Once mingled with us all . . . 
 Mich. Stay with us. Aureole ! cast those 
 
 hopes away. 
 And stay with us ! An angel warns me, too, 
 Man should be humble : you are very proud : 
 And God, dethroned, has doleful plagues for 
 
 such! 
 — Warns me to have in dread no quick repulse, 
 No slow defeat, but a complete success : 
 You will find all you seek, and perish so ! 
 Par. {after a pause). Are these the barren 
 
 first-fruits of my quest ? 
 Is love like this the natural lot of all ? 
 How many years of pain might one such hour 
 O'erbalance ? Dearest Miohal, dearest Festus, 
 What shall I say, if not that I desire 
 To justify your love ; and will, dear friends, 
 In swerving nothing from my first resolves. 
 See, the great moon ! and ere the mottled owls 
 Were wide awake, I was to go. It seems 
 You acquiesce at last in all save this — 
 If I am like to compass what I seek 
 By the untried career I choose ; and then, 
 If that career, maldng but small account 
 Of much of life's delight, will yet retain 
 Sufficient to sustain my soul ; for thus 
 I understand these fond f eaxs just exi>ressed. 
 And firsi*" ; the lore you praise and I neglect, 
 The labors and the precepts of old time, 
 I have not lightly disesteemed. But, friends. 
 Truth is within ourselves ; it takes no rise 
 From outward things, whate'er you may be- 
 lieve. 
 There is an inmost centre in us all. 
 Where truth abides in fulness ; and around, 
 Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in. 
 This perfect, clear perception — which is truth. 
 A bafeUng and perverting carnal mesh 
 Binds it, and makes all error : and, to FNOW, 
 Rather consists in opening out a way 
 Whence the imprisoned splendor may escape, 
 Than in effecting entry for a light 
 Supposed to be without. Watch narrowly 
 The demonstration of a truth, its birth, 
 And you trace back the effluence to its spring 
 And source within us ; where broods radiance 
 
 vast, 
 
PARACELSUS 
 
 19 
 
 To be elicited ray by ray, aa chance 
 
 Shall favor : chance — for hitherto, your sage 
 
 Even as he knows not how those beams are 
 
 bom, 
 As little knows he what unlocks their fount : 
 And men have oft grown old among their books 
 To die case-hardened in their ignorance, 
 Whose careless youth had promised what long 
 
 years 
 Of unremitted labor ne'er performed : 
 While, contrary, it has chanced some idle day, 
 To autumn loiterers just as fancy-free 
 As the midges in the sun, gives birth at last 
 To truth — produced mysteriously as cape 
 Of cloud grown out of the invisible air. 
 Hence, may not truth be lodged alike in all. 
 The lowest as the highest ? some slight film 
 The interposing bar which binds a soul 
 And makes the idiot, just as makes the sage 
 Some film removed, the happy outlet whence 
 TVuth issues proudly ? See this soul of ours ! 
 How it strives weakly in the child, is loosed 
 In manhood, clogged by sickness, back com- 
 pelled 
 Ey age and waste, set free at last by death : 
 Why is it, flesh enthralls it or enthrones ? 
 What is this flesh we have to penetrate ? 
 Oh, not alone when life flows still, do truth 
 And power emerge, but also when strange 
 
 chance 
 Ruffles its current ; in unused conjuncture. 
 When sickness breaks the body — hunger, 
 
 watching. 
 Excess or languor — oftenest death's approach, 
 Peril, deep joy or woe. One man shall crawl 
 Through life surrounded with all stirring things. 
 Unmoved ; and he goes mad : and from the 
 
 wreck 
 Of what he was, by his wild talk alone. 
 You first collect how great a spirit he hid. 
 Therefore, set free the soul alike in all. 
 Discovering the true laws by which the flesh 
 Aeeloys the spirit ! We may not be doomed 
 To cope with seraphs, but at least the rest 
 ShaU cope with us. Make no more giants, God, 
 But elevate the race at once ! We ask 
 To put forth just our strength, our human 
 
 strength,. 
 All starting fairly, all equipped alike. 
 Gifted alike, all eagle-eyed, true-hearted — 
 See if we cannot beat thine angels yet ! 
 Such is my task. I go to gather this 
 The sacred knowledge, here and there dispersed 
 About the world, long lost or never found. 
 And why should I be sad or lorn of hope ? 
 Why ever make man's good distinct from God's, 
 Or, finding they are one, why dare mistrust ? 
 Who shall succeed if not one pledged like me ? 
 Mine is no mad attempt to build a world 
 Apart from his, like those who set themselves 
 To find the nature of the spirit they bore. 
 And, taught betimes that all their gorgeous 
 
 dreams 
 Were only born to vanish in this life. 
 Refused to fit them to its narrow sphere. 
 But chose to figure forth another world 
 And other frames meet for their vast desires, — 
 And all a dream ! Thus was life scorned ; but lif '^ 
 
 Shall yet be crowned : twine amaranth ! I anr 
 
 Sriest 1 
 for yielding with a lively spirit 
 A poor existence, parting with a youth 
 Like those who squander every energy 
 Convertible to good, on painted toys, 
 Breath-bubbles, gilded dust I And though ! 
 
 spurn 
 All adventitious aims, from empty praise 
 To love's award, yet whoso deems such helps 
 Important, and concerns himself for me. 
 May know even these will follow with the rest -^ 
 As in the steady rolling Mayne, asleep 
 Yonder, is mixed its mass of schistous ore. 
 My own affections, laid to rest awhile. 
 Will waken purified, subdued alone 
 By all I have achieved. Till then — till then . . . 
 Ah, the time-wiling loitering of a page 
 Through bower and over lawn, till eve shall 
 
 bring 
 The stately lady's presence whom he loves — 
 The broken sleep of the fisher whose rough coat 
 Enwraps the queenly pearl — these are faint 
 
 types ! 
 See, see, they look on me : I triumph now ! 
 But one thing, Festus, Michal ! I have told 
 All I shall e'er disclose to mortal : say — 
 Do you believe 1 shall accomplish this ? 
 
 Fest. I do believe ! 
 
 Mich. I ever did believe ! 
 
 Far. Those words shall never fade from out 
 my brain ! 
 This earnest of the end shall never fade ! 
 Are there not, Festus, are there not, dear 
 
 Michal, 
 Two points in the adventure of the diver. 
 One — when, a beggar, he prepares to plunge. 
 One — when, a prince, he rises with his pearl ? 
 Festus, I plunge ! 
 
 Fest. We wait you when you rise ! 
 
 II. PARACELSUS ATTAINS 
 
 Scene, CoTisiant'inople : iJie Tiouse of a Greek conjurer. 
 1521. 
 
 Paracelsus. 
 
 Over the waters in the vaporous West 
 The sun goes down as in a sphere of gold 
 Behind the arm of the city, which between. 
 With all that length of domes and minarets. 
 Athwart the splendor, black and crooked runs 
 Like a Turk verse along a scimitar. 
 There lie, sullen memorial, and no more 
 Possess my aching sight ! 'T is done at last. 
 Strange — and the juggles of a sallow cheat 
 Have won me to this act ! 'T is as yon cloud 
 Should voyage unwrecked o'er many a moun- 
 tain-top 
 And break upon a molehill. I have dared 
 Come to a pause with knowledge ; scan for onCe 
 The heights already reached, without regard 
 To the extent above ; fairly compute 
 All I have clearly gained ; for once excluding 
 A brilliant future to supply and perfect 
 All half -gains and conjectures and crude hopes; 
 And all because a fortune-teller will« 
 
20 
 
 PARACELSUS 
 
 His credulous seekers should inscribe thus 
 
 much 
 Their previous life's attainment, in his roll, 
 Before his promised secret, as he vaunts. 
 Make up the sum : and here, amid the scrawled 
 Uncouth recordings of the dupes of this 
 Old arch-genethliac, lie my life's results I 
 
 A few blurred characters suffice to note 
 A stranger wandered long through many lands 
 And reaped the fruit he coveted in a few 
 Discoveries, as appended here and there, 
 The fragmexitary produce of much toil, 
 In a dim heap, fact and surmise together 
 Confusedly massed as when acquired ; he was 
 Intent on gain to come too much to stay 
 And scrutinize the little gained : the whole 
 Slipt in the blank space 'twixt an idiot's gibber 
 And a mad lover's ditty — there it lies. 
 
 And yet those blottings chronicle a life — 
 
 A whole life, and my life ! Nothing to do, 
 
 No problem ifor the fancy, but a life 
 
 Spent and decided, wasted past retrieve 
 
 Or worthy beyond peer. Stay, what does this 
 
 Remembrancer set down concerning " life " ? 
 
 " ' Time fleets, youth fades, life is an empty 
 
 dream,' 
 It is the echo of time ; and he whose heart 
 Beat first beneath a human heart, whose speech 
 Was copied from a human tongue, can never 
 Recall when he was living yet Knew not this. 
 Nevertheless long seasons pass o'er him 
 Till some one hour's experience shows what no- 
 thing. 
 It seemed, could clearer show ; and ever after. 
 An altered brow and eye and gait and speech 
 Attest that now he knows the adage true, 
 'Time fleets, youth fades, life is an empty 
 dream.' " 
 
 Ay, my brave chronicler, and this same hour 
 As weU as any : now, let my time be ! 
 
 Now I I can go no farther ; well or ill, 
 'T is done. Imust desist and take my chance. 
 I cannot keep on the stretch : 't is no back- 
 shrinking — 
 For let but some assurance beam, some close 
 To my toil grow visible, and I proceed 
 At any price, though closing it, I die. 
 Else, here I pause. The old Greek's prophecy 
 Is like to turn out true : " I shall not quit 
 His chamber till I know what I desire ! " 
 Was it the light wind sang it o'er the sea ? 
 
 An end, a rest ! strange how the notion, once 
 Encountered, gathers strength by moments 1 
 
 Rest! 
 Where has it kept so long ? this throbbing brow 
 To cease, this beating heart to cease, all cruel 
 And gnawing thoughts to cease ! To dare let 
 
 down 
 My strung, so high-strung brain, to dare unnerve 
 My harassed o'ertasked frame, to know my 
 
 place. 
 My portion, my reward, even my failure. 
 Assigned, made sure forever 1 To lo°e myself 
 
 Among the common creatures of the world. 
 To draw some gaiii from having been a man. 
 Neither to hope nor fear, to live at length ! 
 Even in failure, rest ! But rest in truth 
 And power and recompense ... I hoped that 
 
 What, sunk insensibly so deep ? Has all 
 Been undergone for this ? Tliis the request 
 My labor qualified me to present 
 With no fear of refusal ? Had I gone 
 Slightingly through my task, and so judged fit 
 To moderate my hopes ; nay, were it now 
 My sole concern to exculpate myself. 
 End things or mend them, — why, I could not 
 
 choose 
 A humbler mood to wait for the event ! 
 No, no, there needs not this ; no, after all. 
 At worst I have performed my share of the 
 
 task: 
 The rest is God's concern ; mine, merely this, 
 To know that I have obstinately held 
 By my own work. The mortal whose brave foot 
 Has trod, unscathed, the temple-court so far 
 That he descries at length the shrine of shrines, 
 Must let no sneering of the demons' eyes. 
 Whom he could pass unquailing, fasten now 
 Upon him, fairly past their power ; no, no — 
 He must not stagger, faint, fall down at last, 
 Having a charm to baffle them ; behold, 
 He bares his front : a mortal ventures thus 
 Serene amid the echoes, beams and glooms 1 
 If he be priest henceforth, if he wake up 
 The god of theplace to ban and blast liim there, 
 Both well I What 's failure or success to me ? 
 I have subdued my life to the one purpose 
 Whereto I ordained it ; there alone I spy. 
 No doubt, that way I may be satisfied. 
 
 Yes, well have I subdued my life ! beyond 
 The obligation of my strictest vow. 
 The contemplation of my wildest bond. 
 Which gave my nature freely up, in truth, 
 But in its actual state, consenting fully 
 All passionate impulses its soil was formed 
 To rear, should wither ; but foreseeing not 
 The tract, doomed to perpetual barrenness, 
 Would seem one day, remembered as it was, 
 Beside the parched sand-waste which now it is, 
 Already strewn with faint blooms, viewless then, 
 I ne'er engaged to root up loves so frail 
 I felt them not ; yet now, 't is very plain 
 Some soft spots had their birth in me at first, 
 If not love, say, like love : there was a time 
 When yet this wolfish hunger after knowledge 
 Set not remorselessly love's claims aside. 
 This heart was human once, or why recall 
 Einsiedeln, now, and Wiirzburg which thft 
 
 Mayne 
 Forsakes her course to fold as with an arm ? 
 
 And Festus — my poor Festus, with his praise 
 And counsel and grave fears — where is ne now 
 With the sweet maiden, long ago his bride ? 
 I surely loved them — that last night, at least. 
 When we . . . gone ! gone ! the better. I am 
 
 saved 
 The sad review of an ambitious youth 
 
PARACELSUS 
 
 ar 
 
 Choked by vile lusts, unnoticed in their birth, 
 But let grow up and wind around a will 
 Till action was destroyed. No, I have gone 
 Purging my path successively of aught 
 Wearing tlie distinct likeness of such lusts. 
 I have made life consist of one idea : 
 Ere that was master, up till that was bom, 
 1 bear a memory of a pleasant life 
 Whose small events I treasure ; till one mom 
 1 ran o'er the seven little grassy fields. 
 Startling the flocks of nameless birds, to tell 
 Poor Festiis, leaping all the while for joy, 
 To leave all trouble for my future plans. 
 Since I had just determined to become 
 The greatest and most glorious man on earth. 
 And since that mom all life has been forgotten : 
 All is one day, one only step between 
 The outset and the end : one tyrpnt ail- 
 Absorbing aim fills up the interspace. 
 One vast unbroken chain of thought, kept up 
 Through a career apparently adverse 
 To its existence : lite, death, light and shadow. 
 The shows of the world, were bare receptacles 
 Or indices of truth to be wrung thence, 
 Not ministers of sorrow or delight : 
 A wondrous natural robe in which sht went. 
 For some one truth would dimly beacon me 
 From mountains rough with pines, and flit and 
 
 wink 
 O'er dazzling wastes of frozen snow, and tremble 
 Into assured light in some branching mine 
 Where ripens, swathed in fire, the liquid gold — 
 And all the beauty, all the wonder fell 
 On either side the truth, as its mere robe ; 
 I see the robe now — then I saw the form. 
 So far, then, I have voyaged with success. 
 So much is good, then, in this working aea 
 Which parts me from that happy strip of land : 
 But o'er that happy strip a sun shone, too ! 
 And fainter gleams it as the waves grow rotigh. 
 And still more faint as the sea widens ; last 
 I sicken on a dead gulf streaked with light 
 From its own putrefying depths alone. 
 Then, God was pledged to take me by the hand ; 
 Now, any miserable juggle can bid 
 My pride depart. All is alike at length : 
 God may take pleasure in confounding. pride 
 By hiding secrets with the scorned and base — 
 I am here, in shoi't ; so little have 1 paused 
 Throughout ! I never glanced behind to know 
 If I had kept my primal light from wane. 
 And thus insensibly am — what I am ! 
 
 Oh, bitter ; very bitter ! 
 
 And more bitter. 
 To fear a deeper curse, an inner ruin. 
 Plague beneath jplague, the last turning the first 
 To ught beside its darkness. Let me weep 
 My youth and its brave hopes, all dead and gone. 
 In tears which bum ! Would I were sure to win 
 Some startling secret in their stead, a tincture 
 Of force to flush old age with youth, or breed 
 Gold, or imprison moonbeams till they change 
 To opal shafts ! — only that, hurling it 
 Indignant back, I might convince myself 
 My aims remained supreme and pure as ever ! 
 Even now, why not desire, for mankind's sake. 
 That if I fail, some fault may be the cause. 
 
 That, though I sink, another may succeed ? 
 
 O God, the despicable heart of us ! 
 
 Shut out this hideous mockery from my heart! 
 
 'T was politic in you. Aureole, to reject 
 Single rewards, and ask them in the lump ; 
 At all events, once launched, to hold straight on : 
 For now 't is all or nothing. Mighty profit 
 Your gains will bring if they stop short of such 
 Pull consummation ! As a man, you had 
 A certain share of strength ; and that is gone 
 Already in the getting tiiese you boast. 
 Do not they seem to laugh, as who should say — 
 "Great master, we are here indeed, dragged 
 
 forth 
 To light ; this hast thou done : be glad I Now, 
 
 Tho stren^h to use which thou hast spent in 
 getting!" 
 
 And yet 't is much, surely 't is very much, 
 Thus to have emptied youth of all its gifts, 
 To feed a fire meant to hold out till mom 
 Arrived with inexhaustible light ; and lo, 
 I have heaped up my last, and day dawns not I 
 And I am left with gray hair, faded hands. 
 And furrowed brow. Ha, have I, after aU, 
 Mistaken the wild nursling of my breast ? 
 Knowledge it seemed, and power, and recom^ 
 
 pense I 
 Was she who glided through my room of nights. 
 Who laid my head on her soft knees and 
 
 smoothed 
 The damp locks,— whose sly soothings just began 
 When my sick spirit craved repose awhile — 
 God ! was I fighting sleep off for death's sake ? 
 
 God ! Thou art mind ! Unto the master-mind 
 Mind should be precious. Spare my mind alone 1 
 All else I will endure ; if , as I stand 
 Here, with my gains, thy thunder smite me 
 
 down, 
 I bow me ; 't is thy will, thy righteous will ; 
 I o'erpass life's restrictions, and I die ; 
 And if no trace of my career remain 
 Save a thin corpse at pleasure of the wind 
 In these bright chambers level with the air, 
 See thou to it ! But if my spirit fail. 
 My once proud spirit forsake me at the last. 
 Hast thou done well by me ? So do not thou I 
 Crush not my mind, dear God, though I ba 
 
 crushed ! 
 Hold me before the frequence of thy seraphs 
 And say, — " I crushed him, lest he should dis- 
 turb 
 My law. Men must not know their strei^th : 
 
 behold. 
 Weak and alone, how he had raised himself I " 
 
 But if delusions trouble me, and thou, 
 Not seldom felt with rapture in thy help 
 Throughout my toils and wanderings, dost in- 
 tend 
 To work man's welfare through my weak enr 
 
 deavor. 
 To crown my mortal forehead with a beam 
 From thine own blinding crown, to smile, and 
 guide 
 
PARACELSUS 
 
 This puny hand and let the work so wrought 
 Be styled my work, — hear me ! I covet not 
 A.n influx of new power, an angel's soul : 
 [t were no marvel then — but I have reached 
 Thus far, a man ; let me conclude, a ttian ! 
 Give but one hour of my first energy, 
 Of that invincible faith, but only one ! 
 That I may cover with an eagle-glance 
 The truths I have, and spy some certain way 
 To mould them, and completing them, possess ! 
 
 yet God is good : I started sure of that. 
 And why dispute it now ? I '11 not believe 
 But some undoubted warning long ere this 
 Had reached me : a fire-labarum was not deemed 
 Too much for the old founder of these walls. 
 Then, if my life has not been natural. 
 It has been monstrous ; yet, till late, my course 
 So ardently engrossed me, that delight, 
 \. pausing and reflecting joy, 't is plain, 
 Oould find no place in it. True, I am worn ; 
 3ut who clothes summer, who is life itself ? 
 jrod, that created all things, can renew ! 
 A-ud then, though after-life to please me now 
 Must have no likeness to the past, what hinders 
 Reward from springing out of toil, as changed 
 As bursts the flower from earth and root and 
 
 stalk? 
 What use were panishment, unless some sin 
 Be first detected ? let me know that first ! 
 N^o man could ever offend as I have done . , . 
 (.4 voice from within.) 
 I hear a voice, perchance I heard 
 Long ago, but all too low. 
 So that scarce a care it stirred 
 If the voice were real or no : 
 I heard it in my youth when first 
 The waters of my life outburst : 
 But, now their stream ebbs faint, I hear 
 That voice, still low, but fatal-clear — 
 As if all poets, God ever meant 
 Should save the world, and therefore lent 
 Great gifts to, but who, proud, refused 
 To do his work, or lightly used 
 Those gifts, or failed through weak endeavor, 
 So, mourn cast ofF by him forever, — 
 As if these leaned in airy ring 
 To take me ; this the song they sing. 
 
 " Lost, lost ! yet come. 
 
 With our wan troop make thy home. 
 
 Come, come ! for we 
 
 Win not breathe, so much as breathe 
 
 Reproach to thee. 
 
 Knowing what thou sink'st beneath. 
 
 So sank we in those old years. 
 
 We who bid thee, come ! thou last 
 
 Who, living yet, hast life o'erpast. 
 
 And altogether we, thy peers. 
 
 Will pardon crave for thee, the last 
 
 A¥hose trial is done, whose lot is cast 
 
 With those who watch but work no more, 
 
 Who gaze on life but live no more. 
 
 Yet we trusted thou shouldst speak 
 
 The message which our lips, too weak. 
 
 Kef used to utter, — shouldst redeem 
 
 Our fault : such trust, and all a dream I 
 
 Yet we chose thee a birthplace 
 
 Where the richness ran to flowers : 
 Couldst not sing one song for grace ? 
 Not make one blossom man's and ours ? 
 Must one more recreant to his race 
 Die with unexei-ted powers, 
 And join us, leaving as he found 
 The world, he was to loosen, bound ? 
 Anguish ! ever and forever ; 
 Still beginning, ending never ! 
 Yet, lost and last one, come ! 
 How couldst understand, alas. 
 What our pale ghosts strove to say. 
 As their shades did glance and pass 
 Before thee night and day ? 
 Thou wast blind as we were dumb : 
 Once more, therefore, come, come ! 
 How should we clothe, how arm the spirit 
 Shall next thy post of life inherit — 
 How guard him from thy speedy ruin ? 
 Tell us of thy sad undoing 
 Here, where we sit, ever pursuing 
 Our weary task, ever renewing 
 Sharp sorrow, far from God who gave 
 Our powers, and man they could not save ! " 
 (Afrile enters.) 
 
 Ha, ha ! our king that wouldst be, here at last? 
 
 Art thou the poet who shall save the world ? 
 
 Thy hand to mine! Stay, fix thine eyes on 
 mine ! 
 
 Thou wouldst be king ? Still fix thine eyes on 
 mine ! 
 Par. Ha, ha! why crouehest not? Am I 
 not king ? 
 
 So torture is not wholly unavailing ! 
 
 Have my fierce spasms compelled thee from 
 thy lair? 
 
 Art thou the sage I only seemed to be. 
 
 Itself of after-time, my very seK 
 
 With sight a little clearer, strength more firm, 
 
 Who robts him in my robe and grasps my 
 crown 
 
 For just a fault, a weakness, a neglect ? 
 
 I scarcely trusted God with the surmise 
 
 That such might come, and thou didst hear 
 the while ! 
 Aprile. Thine eyes are lustreless to mine: 
 my hair 
 
 Is soft, nay silken soft : to talk with thee 
 
 Flushes my cheek, and thou art ashy-pale. 
 
 Truly, thou hast labored, hast withstood her 
 .lips. 
 
 The siren's ! Yes, 't is like thou hast attained ! 
 
 Tell me, dear master, wherefore now thou 
 comest ? 
 
 I thought thy solemn songs would have their 
 meed 
 
 In after-time ; that I should hear the earth 
 
 Exult in thee and echo with thy praiss. 
 
 While I was laid forgotten in my grave. 
 Par. Ah fiend, I know thee, I am not thj 
 dupe! 
 
 Thou art ordained to foUow in my track. 
 
 Reaping my sowing, as I scorned to reap 
 
 The harvest sown by sages passed away. 
 
 Thou art the sober searcher, cautious stnver. 
 
 As if, except through me, thou hast searched 
 or striven ! 
 
 Ay, tell the world ! Degrade me after all, 
 
PARACELSUS 
 
 23 
 
 To an aspirant after fame, not truth — 
 To all but envy of thy fate, be sure ! 
 Apr. Nay, sing them to me ; I shall envy 
 
 not: 
 Thou shalt be king ! Sing thou, and I will sit 
 Beside, and call deep silence for thy songs, 
 And worship thee, as I had ne'er been meant 
 To fill thy throne : but none shall ever know ! 
 Sing to me ; for already thy wild eyes 
 Unlock my heart-strings, as some crystal-shaft 
 Reveals by some chance blaze its parent fount 
 After long time : so thou reveal'st my soul. 
 All will flash forth at last, with thee to hear ! 
 Far. (His secret I I shall get his secret — 
 
 fool !) 
 I am he that aspired to know : and thou ? 
 Apr. I would LOYB infinitely, and be loved ! 
 Far. Poor slave ! I am thy king indeed. 
 Apr. Thou deem'st 
 
 That — born a spirit, dowered even as thou, 
 Born for thy fate — because I could not curb 
 My yearnings to possess at once the full 
 Enjoyment, but neglected all the means 
 Of realizing even the frailest joy, 
 Gathering no fragments to appease my want, 
 Yet nursing up that want till thus I die — 
 Thou deem'st I cannot trace thy safe sure 
 
 march 
 O'er perils that o'erwhelm me, triumphing, 
 Neglecting naught below for aught above. 
 Despising nothing and ensuring all — 
 Nor that I could (my time to come again) 
 Lead thus my spirit securely as thine own. 
 Listen, and thou shalt see I know thee well. 
 I would love infinitely . . ■ 
 
 Ah, lost ! lost ! 
 
 Oh ye who armed me at such cost. 
 
 How shall I look on all of ye 
 
 With your gifts even yet on me ? 
 Far. (Ah, 'tis some moonstruck creativre 
 
 after all ! 
 Such fond fools as are like to haunt this den: 
 They spread contagion, doubtless : yet he 
 
 seemed 
 To echo one foreboding of my heart 
 So truly, that ... no matter ! How he stands 
 With eve's last sunbeam staying on his hair 
 Which turns to it as if they were akin : 
 And those clear smiling eyes of saddest blue 
 Nearly set free, so far they rise above 
 The painful fruitless striving of the brow 
 And enforced knowledge of the lips, firm-set 
 In slow despondency's eternal sigh ! 
 Has he, too, missed life's end, and learned the 
 
 cause ? ) 
 I charge thee, by thy fealty, be calm ! 
 Tell me what thou wouldst be, and what I am. 
 
 Apr. I would love infinitely, and be loved. 
 First ; I would carve in stone, or cast in brass. 
 The forms of earth. No ancient hunter lifted 
 Up to the gods by his renown, no nymph 
 Supposed the sweet soul of a woodland tree 
 Or sapphirine spirit of a twilight star. 
 Should be too hard for me; no shepherd-king 
 Begal for his white locks ; no youth who 
 
 stands 
 Silent and very calm amid the throng. 
 His right hand ever hid beneath his robe 
 
 Until the tyrant pass ; no lawgiver. 
 No swan-soft woman rubbed with lucid oils 
 Given by a god for love of her — too hard ! 
 Every passion sprung from man, conceived by 
 
 man, 
 Would I express and clothe it in its right form. 
 Or blend with others struggling in one form. 
 Or show repressed by an ungainly form. 
 Oh, if you marvelled at some mighty spirit 
 With a fit frame to execute its will — 
 Even unconsciously to work its will — 
 You should be moved no less beside some strong 
 Kare spirit, fettered to a stubborn body. 
 Endeavoring to subdue it and inform it 
 With its own splendor ! AU this I would do : 
 And I would say, this done, "His sprites 
 
 created, 
 God grants to each a sphere to be its world, 
 Appointed with the various objects needed 
 To satisfy its own peculiar want ; 
 So, I create a world for these my shapes 
 Fit to sustain their beauty and their strength !" 
 And, at the word, I would contrive and paint 
 Woods, valleys, rocks and plains, dells, sands 
 
 and wastes. 
 Lakes which, when morn breaks on their quiv- 
 ering bed. 
 Blaze like a wyvern flying round the sun. 
 And ocean isles so small, the dog-fish tracking 
 A dead whale, who should find them, woidd 
 
 swim thrice 
 Around them, and fare onward — all to hold 
 The offspring of my brain. Nor these alone : 
 Bronze labyrinth, palace, pyramid and crypt, 
 Baths, galleries, courts, temples and terraces, 
 Marts, theatres, and wharfs — all filled vrith 
 
 men. 
 Men everywhere ! And this performed in turn. 
 When those who looked on, pined to hear the 
 
 hopes 
 And fears and hates and loves which moved the 
 
 crowd, 
 I would throw down the pencil as the chisel, 
 And I would speak ; no thought which ever 
 
 stirred 
 A human breast should be untold ; all passions, 
 All soft emotions, from the turbulent stir 
 Within a heart fed with desires like mine. 
 To the last comfort shutting the tired lids 
 Of him who sleeps the sultry noon away 
 Beneath the tent-tree by the wayside well : 
 And this in language as the need should be, 
 Now poured at once forth in a burning flow, 
 Now piled up in a grand array of words. 
 This done, to perfect and consummate all. 
 Even as a luminous haze links star to star, 
 I would supply all chasms with music, breathing 
 Mysterious motions of the soul, no way 
 To be defined save in strange melodies. 
 Last, having thus revealed all I could love. 
 Having received all love bestowed on it, 
 I would die ; preserving so throughout my course 
 God full on me, as I was full on men : 
 He would approve my prayer, " I have gone 
 
 through 
 The loveliness of life ; create for me 
 If not for men, or take me to thyself, 
 Eternal, infinite love ! " 
 
24 
 
 PARACELSUS 
 
 If thou hast ne'er 
 Conceived this mighty aim, this full desire, 
 Thou hast not passed my trial, and thou art 
 Ko king of mine, 
 Far. Ah me ! 
 
 Apr. But thou art here ! 
 
 Thou didst not gaze like me upon that end 
 Till thine own powers for compassing the bliss 
 Were blind with glory ; nor grow mad to grasp 
 At once the prize long patient toil should claim, 
 Kor spurn all granted short of that. And I 
 Would do as thou, a second time : nay, listen ! 
 Knowing ourselves, our world, our task so great, 
 Our time so brief, 'tis clear if we refuse 
 The means so limited, the tools so rude 
 To execute our purpose, life wUl fleet, 
 And we shall fade, and leave our task undone. 
 We will be wise in time : what though our work 
 Be fashioned in despite of their ill-service. 
 Be crippled every way ? 'T were little praise 
 Did full resources wait on our goodwill 
 At every turn. Let all be as it is. 
 Some say the earth is even so contrived 
 That tree and flower, a vesture gay, conceal 
 A bare and skeleton framework. Had we means 
 Answering to our mind ! But now I seem 
 Wrecked on a savage isle : how rear thereon 
 My palace ? Branching palms the props shall be, 
 Fruit glossy mingling ; gems are for the East ; 
 Who heeds them ? I can pass them. Serpente' 
 
 scales. 
 And painted birds' down, furs and fishes' skins 
 Must help me ; and a little here and there 
 Is all I can aspire to : still my art 
 Shall show its birth was in a gentler clime. 
 '* Had I green jars of malachite, this way 
 I 'd range them : where those sea-shells glisten 
 
 above, 
 Cressets should hang, by right : this way we set 
 The purple carpets, as these mats are laid. 
 Woven of fern and rush and blossoming flag." 
 Or if, by fortune, some completer grace 
 Be spared to me, some fragment, some slight 
 
 sample 
 Of the prouder workmanship my own home 
 
 Some trifle little heeded there, but here 
 The place's one perfection — with what joy 
 Would I enshrine the relic, cheerfully 
 Foregoing all the marvels out of reach ! 
 Could I retain one strain of all the psalm 
 Of the angels, one word of the fiat of God, 
 To let my followers know what such things are ! 
 I would adventure nobly for their sakes : 
 When nights were still, and still the moaning sea. 
 And far away I could descry the land 
 Whence I departed, whither I return, 
 I would dispart the waves, and stand once more 
 At home, and load my bark, and hasten back. 
 And fling my gains to them, worthless or true. 
 "Friends," I would say, "I went far, far for 
 
 them. 
 Past the high rocks the haunt of doves, the 
 
 mounds 
 Of red earth from whose sides strange trees 
 
 grow out, 
 Past tracts of milk-white minute blinding sand, 
 TUl, by a mighty moon, I tremblingly 
 
 Gathered these magic herbs, berry and bud, 
 In haste, not pausing to reject the weeds. 
 But happy plucking them at any price. 
 To me, who have seen them bloom in their own 
 
 soil. 
 They are scarce lovely: plait and wear them, 
 
 you ! 
 And guess, from what they are, the springs that 
 
 fed them, 
 The stars that sparkled o'er them, night by 
 
 night. 
 The snakes that travelled far to sip their dew.'" 
 Thus for my higher loves ; and thus even weak- 
 ness 
 Would win me honor. But not these alone 
 Should claim my care ; for common life, its wants 
 And ways, would I set forth in beauteous hues; 
 The lowest hind should not possess a hope, 
 A fear, but I 'd be by him, saying better 
 Than he his own heart's language. Iwouldlivo 
 Forever in the thoughts I thus explored. 
 As a discoverer's memory is attached 
 To all he finds ; they should be mine henceforth, 
 Imbued with me, though free to all before : 
 For clay, once cast into my soul's rich mine, . 
 Should come up crusted o'er with gems. Nor 
 this I 
 
 Would need a meaner spirit than the first; 
 Nay, 't would be but the selfsame spirit, clothed 
 In humbler guise, but stiU the selfsame spirit : 
 As one spring wind unbinds the mountain snow 
 And comforts violets in their hermitage. 
 
 But, master, poet, who hast done all this. 
 How didst thou 'scape the ruin whelming me ? 
 Didst thou, when nerving thee to this attempt, 
 Ne'er range thy mind's extent, as some wide 
 
 hall, 
 Dazzled by shapes that filled its length with 
 
 light, 
 Shapes clustered there to rule thee, not obey, 
 That will not wait thy summons, will not rise 
 Singly, nor when thy practised eye and hand 
 Can well transfer their loveliness, but crowd 
 By thee forever, bright to thy despair ? 
 Didst thou ne'er gaze on each by turns, and ne'er 
 Resolve to single out one, though the rest 
 Should vanish, and to give that one, entire 
 In beauty, to the world ; fo^etting, so. 
 Its peers, whose number baffles mortal power ? 
 And, this determined, wast thou ne'er seduced 
 By memories and regrets and passionate love. 
 To glance once more farewell? and did their 
 
 eyes 
 Fasten thee, brighter and more bright, until 
 Thou conldst but stagger back unto their feet. 
 And laugh that man's applause or welfare ever 
 Could tempt thee to forsake them ? Or when 
 
 years 
 Had passed and still their love possessed thee 
 
 whoUy, 
 When from without some murmur startled thee 
 Of darkling mortals famished for one ray 
 Of thy so-hoarded luxury of light. 
 Didst thou ne'er strive even yet to break those 
 
 spells 
 And prove thou couldst recover and fulfil 
 Thy early mission, long ago renounced. 
 
PARACELSUS 
 
 2S 
 
 And to that end, select some shape once more ? 
 And did not mist-like influences, thick films, 
 Faint memories of the rest that charmed so long 
 Thine eyes, float fast, eonfuse thee, bear thee 
 
 off, 
 As whirling snow-drifts blind a man who treads 
 A mountain ridge, with guiding spear, through 
 
 storm ? 
 Say, though I fell, 1 had excuse to fall ; 
 Say, I was tempted sorely : say but this. 
 Dear lord, Aprile's lord I 
 
 Par. Clasp me not thus, 
 
 Aprils ! That the ti-uth should reach me thus ! 
 We are weak dust. Nay, clasp not or I faint 1 
 Apr. My king ! and envious thoughts could 
 
 outrage thee ? 
 Lo, 1 forget my ruin, and rejoice 
 In thy success, as thou I Let our God's praise 
 Go bravely through the world at last 1 What 
 
 care 
 Through me or thee ? I feel thy breath. Why, 
 
 tears ? 
 Tears in the darkness, and from thee to me ? 
 Par. Love me henceforth, Aprile, while I 
 
 learn 
 To love ; and, merciful God, forgive us both I 
 We wake at length from weary dreams ; but 
 
 both 
 Have slept in fairy-land ; though dark and drear 
 Appears the world before us, we no less 
 Wake with our wrists and ankles jewelled still. 
 I too have sought to know as thou to love — 
 Excluding love as thou refusedst knowledge. 
 Still thou hast beauty and I, power. We wake : 
 What penance canst devise for both of us ? 
 Apr. 1 hear thee faintly. The thick dark- 
 ness ! Even 
 Thine eyes are hid. 'T is as I knew : I speak. 
 And now I die. But I have seen thy face ! 
 
 poet, think of me, and sing of me 1 
 But to have seen thee and to die so soon ! 
 
 Par. Die not, Aprile ! We must never part. 
 Are we not halves of one dissevered world. 
 Whom this strange chance unites once more ? 
 
 Part ? never ! 
 Till thou the lover, know ; and I, the knower. 
 Love — until both are saved. Aprile, hear I 
 We will accept our gains, and use them — now ! 
 God, he will die upon my breast I ' Aprile ! 
 
 Apr. To speak but once, and die ! yet by 
 his side. 
 Hush! hush! 
 
 Ha ! go you ever girt about 
 With phantoms, powers ? I have created such. 
 But these seem real as I. 
 
 Par. Whom can you see 
 
 Through the accursed darkness ? 
 
 Apr. Stay ; I know, 
 
 1 know them : who should know them well as I ? 
 White brows, lit up with glory ; poets all ! 
 
 Par. Let him but live, and I have my re- 
 ward! 
 Apr. Yes; I see now. God is the perfect 
 poet. 
 Who in his person acts his own creations. 
 Had you but told me this at first I Hush 1 hush ! 
 Par. Live ! for my sake, because of my 
 great sin, 
 
 To help my brain, oppressed by these wild words 
 And their deep import. Live ! 't is not too 
 
 late. 
 I have a quiet home for us, and friends. 
 Michal shall smile on you. Hear yon ? Lean 
 
 thus. 
 And breathe my breath. I shall not lose one 
 
 word 
 Of all your speech, one little word, Aprile ! 
 Apr. No, no. Crown me ? 1 am not one o£ 
 
 yonl 
 'Tis he, the kin^, you seek. I am not one. 
 Par. Thy spirit, at least, Aprile ! Let mf 
 
 love. 
 
 I have attained, and now I may depart. 
 
 III. PARACELSUS 
 
 ScEHE, Basel : a chamber in the house o/ Pabacei.8118. 
 1526. 
 
 Paracelsus, Festus. 
 
 Par. Heap logs and let the blaze laugh out ! 
 
 Fest. True, true ! 
 
 'T is very fit all, time and chance and change 
 Have wrought since last we sat thus, face to 
 
 face 
 And soul to soul — all cares, far-looking fears, 
 Vague apprehensions, all vain fancies bred 
 By your long absence, should be cast away, 
 Forgotten in this glad iinhoped renewal 
 Of onr affections. 
 
 Par. Oh, omit not aught 
 
 Which witnesses your own and Michal's own 
 Affection : spare not that ! Only forget 
 The honors and the glories and what not, 
 It pleases you to tell profusely out. 
 
 Fest. Nay, even your honors, in a sense, I 
 waive : 
 The wondrous Paracelsus, life's dispenser. 
 Fate's commissary, idol of the schools 
 And courts, shall be no more than Aureole still. 
 Still Aureole and my friend as when we parted 
 Some twenty years ago, and I restrained 
 As best I could the promptings of my spirit 
 Which secretly advanced you, from the first. 
 To the pre-eminent rank which, since, your own 
 Adventurous ardor nobly triumphing. 
 Has won for you. 
 
 Par. Yes, yes. And Michal's face 
 
 Still wears that quiet and peculiar light 
 Like the dim circlet floating round a pearl ? 
 
 Fest. Just so. 
 
 Par. And yet her calm sweet countenance. 
 Though saintly, was not sad ; for she would sing 
 Alone. Does she still sing alone, bird-like. 
 Not dreaming yon are near ? Her carols dropt 
 In flakes through that old leafy bower bmlt 
 
 under 
 The sunny wall at Wiirzbui^, from her lattice 
 Among the trees above, while I, unseen. 
 Sat conning some rare scroll from Tritheim's 
 
 shelves. 
 Much wondering notes so simple could divert 
 My mind f roni study. Those were happy days. 
 Respect all such as sing when all alone I 
 
26 
 
 PARACELSUS 
 
 Fest. Scarcely alone ; her children, you may 
 
 Are wud beside her. 
 
 Par. Ah, those children quite 
 
 Unsettle the pure picture in my mind : 
 A gdrl, she was so perfect, so distinct : 
 No change, no change ! Not but this added 
 
 grace 
 May blend and harmonize with its compeers, 
 And Michal may become her motherhood ; 
 But 't is a change, and I detest all change, 
 And most a change in aught I loved long since. 
 So, Michal — you have said she thinks of me ? 
 Fest. very proud will Michal be of you ! 
 Imagine how we sat, long winter-nights. 
 Scheming and wondering, shaping your pre- 
 sumed 
 Adventure, or devising its reward ; 
 Shutting out fear with all the strength of hope. 
 For it was strange how, even when most secure 
 In our domestic peace, a certain dim 
 And flitting shade could sadden all ; it seemed 
 A restlessness of heart, a silent yearning, 
 A sense of something wanting, incomplete — 
 Not to be put in words, perhaps avoided 
 By mute consent — but, said or unsaid, felt 
 To point to one so loved and so long lost. 
 And then the hopes rose and shut out the fears — 
 How yon would laugh should I recount them 
 
 now ! 
 I still predicted your return at last 
 With gifts beyond the greatest of them all. 
 All Tritheim's wondrous troop ; did one of which 
 Attain renown by any chance, I smiled. 
 As well aware of who would prove his peer. 
 Michal was sure some woman, long ere this. 
 As beautiful as you were sa^e, had loved . . . 
 Par. Faivseeiug, truly, to discern so much 
 In the fantastic projects and day-dreams 
 Of a raw restless boy ! 
 
 Fest, Oh, no : the sunrise 
 
 Well warranted our faith in this full noon ! 
 Can I forget the anxious voice which said, 
 ' ' Festus, have thoughts like these e'er shaped 
 
 themselves 
 In other brains than mine ? have their possessors 
 Existed in like circumstance ? were they weak 
 As I, or ever constant from the first. 
 Despising youth's allurements and rejecting 
 As spideivfilms the shackles I endure ? 
 Is there hope for me ? " — and I answered gravely 
 As an acknowledged elder, calmer, wiser. 
 More gifted mortal. you must remember, 
 For all your glorious . . . 
 
 Par. Glorious ? ay, this hair. 
 
 These hands — nay, touch them, they are mine ! 
 
 Becall 
 With all the said recallings, times when thus 
 To lay them by your own ne'er turned you pale 
 As now. Most glorious, are they not ? 
 
 Fest. Why — why — 
 
 Something must be subtracted from success 
 So wide, no doubt. He would be scrupulous, 
 
 truly. 
 Who should object such drawbacks. Still, still. 
 
 Aureole, 
 you are changed, very changed 1 'T were los- 
 ing nothing 
 
 To look well to it : you must not be stolen 
 From the enjoyment of yoar well-won meed. 
 Par. My friend ! you seek my pleasure^ past 
 
 a doubt : 
 You will best gain your point, by talking, not 
 Of me, but of yourself. 
 
 Fest. Have I not said 
 
 All touching Michal and my children ? Sure 
 You know, by this, full well how Aennchen looks 
 Gravely, while one disparts her thick brown hair; 
 And Aureole's glee when some stray gannet 
 
 builds 
 Amid the birch-trees by the lake. Small hope 
 Have I that he will honor (the wild imp) 
 His namesake. Sigh not ! 't is too much to ask 
 That all we love should reach the same proud 
 
 fate. 
 But you are very kind to humor me 
 By showing interest in ray quiet life ; 
 You, who of old could never tame yourself 
 To tranquil pleasures, must at heart despise . . 
 Par. Festus, strange secrets are let out by 
 
 death 
 Who blabs so oft the follies of this world : 
 And I am death's familiar, as yon know. 
 I helped a man to die, some few weeks since. 
 Warped even from his go-cart to one end — 
 The living on princes' smiles, reflected from 
 A mighty herd of favorites. No mean trick 
 He left untried, and truly well-nigh wormed 
 All traces of God's finger out of mm : 
 Then died, grown old. And just an hour before, 
 Having lain long with blank and soulless eyes. 
 He sat up suddenly, and with natural voice 
 Said that in spite of thick air and closed doors 
 God told him it was June ; and he knew well. 
 Without such telling, harebells grew in June ,• 
 And all that kings could ever give or take 
 Would not be precious as those blooms to him 
 Just so, allowing I am passing sage. 
 It seems to me much worthier argument 
 Why pausies,! eyes that laugh, bear beauty's 
 
 prize 
 From violets, eyes that dream — (your Michal's 
 
 choice) — 
 Than all fools find to wonder at in me 
 Or in my fortunes. And be very sure 
 I say this from no prurient restlessness. 
 No self-complacency, itching to turn, 
 Vary and view its pleasure from all points. 
 And, in this instance, willing other men 
 May be at pains, demonstrate to itself 
 The realness of the very joy it tastes. 
 WTiat should delight me fike the news of friends 
 Whose memories were a solace to me oft, 
 As mountain-baths to wild fowls in their flight? 
 Ofter than you had wasted thought on me 
 Had you been wise, and rightly valued bliss. 
 But there 's no taming nor repressing hearts : 
 God knows I need such ! — So, you heard me 
 
 speak? 
 Fest. Speak? when? 
 
 Par. When but this moi-ning at my class ? 
 There was noise and crowd enough. I saw you 
 
 not. 
 Surely you know I am engaged to fill 
 
 1 Gitrinula (flammula) herba Paracelso multum famil 
 iariB. — DoMi. 
 
PARACELSUS 
 
 27 
 
 The chair here ? — that 't is part of my proud 
 
 fate 
 To lecture to as many thick-skulled youths 
 As please, each day, to throng the theatre. 
 To my great reputation, and no small 
 Danger of Basel's benches long unused 
 To crack beneath such honor ? 
 
 Fest. I was there ; 
 
 I mingled with the throng : shall I avow 
 Small care was mine to listen ? — too intent 
 On gathering from the murmurs of the crowd 
 A full corroboration of my hopes ! 
 What can I learn about your powers ? but they 
 Know, care for naught beyond your actual state. 
 Your actual value ; yet they worship you. 
 Those various natures whom you sway as one ! 
 But ere I go, be sure 1 shall attend . . . 
 Par. Stop, o' God's name : the thing 's by no 
 
 means yet 
 Past remedy ! Shall I read this morning's labor 
 
 — At least in substance ? Naught so worth the 
 
 gaining 
 As an apt scholar ! Thus then, with all due 
 Precision and emphasis — you, beside, are clearly 
 Guiltless of understanding more, a whit, 
 The subject than your stool — allowed to be 
 A notable advantage. 
 
 Fest. Surely, Aureole, 
 
 You laugh at me ! 
 
 Par, I laugh ? Ha, ha 1 thank heaven, 
 
 I charge you, if 't be so ! for I forget 
 Much, and what laughter should be like. No 
 
 less. 
 However, I forego that luxury 
 Since it alarms the friend who brings it back. 
 True, laughter like my own must echo strangely 
 To thinking men ; a smile were better far ; 
 So, make me smile ! If the exulting look 
 You wore but now be smiling, 't is JSo long 
 Since I have smiled ! ' Alas, such smiles are 
 
 born 
 Alone of hearts like yours, or herdsmen's souls 
 Of ancient time, whose eyes, calm as their flocks. 
 Saw in the stars mere garnishry of heaven. 
 And in the earth a stage for altars only. 
 Never change, Festus : I say, never change ! 
 Fest. My God, if he be wretched after aU ! 
 Par. When last we parted, Festus, you de- 
 clared, 
 
 — Or Michal, yes, her soft lips whispered words 
 I have preserved. She told me she believed 
 
 I should succeed (meaning, that in the search 
 I then eng^ed in, I should meet success ) 
 And yet be wretched : now, she augured false. 
 
 Fest. Thank heaven ! but you spoke strangely : 
 could I venture 
 To think bare apprehension lest your friend, 
 Dazzled by your resplendent course, might find 
 Henceforth less sweetness in his own, could move 
 Such earnest mood in you ? Fear not, dear 
 
 friend. 
 That I shall leave you, inwardly repining 
 Your lot was not my own ! 
 
 Par, And this forever ! 
 
 Forever ! gull who may, they will be gulled ! 
 They will not look nor think ; 't is nothing new 
 In them : but surely he is not of them ! 
 My Festus, do you know, I reckoned, you — 
 
 Though all beside were sand-blind — you, my 
 
 friend. 
 Would look at me, once close, with piercing eye 
 Untroubled hy the false glare that confounds 
 A weaker vision ; would remain serene. 
 Though singular amid a gaping throng. 
 I feared you, or I had come, sure, long ere this. 
 To Einsiedeln. Well, error has no end. 
 And Khasis is a sage, and Basel boasts 
 A tribe of wits, and I am wise and blest 
 Past all dispute ! 'T is vain to fret at it. 
 I have vowed long ago my worshippers 
 Shall owe to their own deep sagacity 
 All further infoi-mation, good or bad. 
 Small risk indeed my reputation runs, 
 Unless perchance the glance now searching me 
 Be fixed much longer ; for it seems to spell 
 Dimly the characters a simpler man 
 Might read distinct enough. Old eastern books 
 Say, the fallen prince of morning some short 
 
 space 
 Remained unchanged in semblance ; nay, his 
 
 brow 
 Was hued with triumph : every spirit then 
 Praising, his heart on flame the while : — a tale ! 
 Well, Festus, what discover you, I pray ? 
 Fest. Some foul deed sullies then a life which 
 else 
 Were raised supreme ? 
 
 Par. Good : I do well, most well ! 
 
 Why strive to make men hear, feel, fret them- 
 selves 
 With what is past their power to comprehend ? 
 I should not strive now : only, having nursed 
 The faint surmise that one yet walked the earth, 
 One, at least, not the utter fool of show, 
 Not absolutely formed to be the dupe 
 Of shallow plausibilities alone : 
 One who, in youth, found wise enough to choose 
 The happiness his riper years apijrove. 
 Was yet so anxious for another's sake. 
 That, ere his friend could rush upon a mad 
 And ruinous course, the converse of his own, 
 His gentle spirit essayed, prejudged for him 
 The perilous path, foresaw its destiny. 
 And warned the weak one in such tender words, 
 Such accents — his whole heart in every tone — 
 That oft their memory comforted that friend 
 When it by right should have increased despair : 
 — Having believed, I say, that this one man 
 Could never lose the light thus from the first 
 His portion — how should I refuse to grieve 
 At even my gain if it disturb our old 
 Relation, if it make me out more wise ? 
 Therefore, once more reminding him how well 
 He prophesied, I note the single flaw 
 That spoils his prophet's title. In plain words, 
 You were deceived, and thus were you de- 
 ceived — 
 I have not been successful, and yet am 
 Most miserable ; 'tis said at last ; nor you 
 Give credit, lest you force me to concede 
 That common sense yet lives upon the world ! 
 Fest. You surely do not mean to banter me ? 
 Par.' You know, or — if you have been wise 
 enough 
 To cleanse your memory of such matters — 
 knew, 
 
28 
 
 PARACELSUS 
 
 As far as words of mine could make it clear, 
 That 't was my purpose to find joy or grief 
 Solely in the fulfilment of my plan 
 Or plot or whatsoe'er it was ; rejoicing 
 Alone as it proceeded prosperously, 
 Sorrowing then only when mischance retarded 
 Its progress. That was in those Wiirzburg days ! 
 Not to prolong a theme 1 thoroughly hate, 
 I have pursued this plan with all my strength ; 
 And having failed therein most signally. 
 Cannot object to ruin utter and drear 
 As all-excelling would have been the prize 
 Had fortune' favored me, I scarce have right 
 To vex your frank good spirit late so glad 
 In ray supposed prosperity, I know, 
 And, were 1 lucky in a glut of friends, 
 Would well agree to let your error live. 
 Nay, strengthen it with fables of success. 
 But mine is no condition to refuse 
 The transient solace of so rare a godsend, 
 My solitary luxury, my one friend : 
 Accordingly I venture to put off 
 The wearisome vest of falsehood galling me, 
 SecuTB when he is by. I lay me bare. 
 Prone at his mercy — but he is my friend I 
 Not that he needs retain his aspect grave ; 
 That answers not my purpose ; for 'tis like. 
 Some sunny morning — Basel being drained 
 Of its wise population, every corner 
 Of the amphitheatre crammed with learned 
 
 clerks, 
 Here CEcolampadius, looking worlds of wit. 
 Here Castellanus, as profound as he, 
 Munsterus here, Frobenius there, all squeezed 
 And staring, — that the zany of the show, 
 £ven Paracelsus, shall put oif before them 
 His trappings with a grace but seldom judged 
 Expedient in such cases : — the grim smile 
 That will go round I Is it not therefore best 
 To venture a rehearsal like the present 
 In a small way ? Where are the signs I seek, 
 The first-fruits and fair sample of the scorn 
 Due to all quacks ? Why, this will never do ! 
 Fest, These are foul vapors. Aureole ; naught 
 
 beside ! 
 The effect of watching, study, weariness. 
 Were there a spark of truth in the confusion 
 Of these wild words, you would not outrage thus 
 Your youth's companion. I shall ne'er regard 
 These wanderings, bred of faintness and much 
 
 study. 
 'T is not thus you would trust a trouble to me. 
 To Miohal's friend. 
 
 Par. I have said it, dearest Festus ! 
 
 For the manner, 't is ungracious probably ; 
 You may have it told in broken sobs, one day. 
 And scalding tears, ere long : but I thought best 
 To keep that off as long as possible. 
 Doyou wonder still ? 
 
 Fest. No ; it must oft fall out 
 
 That one whose labor perfects any work. 
 Shall rise from it with eye so worn that he 
 Of aU men least can mea.sure the extent 
 Of what he has accomplished. He alone 
 Who, nothing tasked, is nothing weary too. 
 May clearly scan the little he effects : 
 But we, the bystanders, untouched by toil, 
 Estimate each aright. 
 
 Par. This worthy Festus 
 
 Is one of them, at last ! 'T is so with all ! 
 First, they set down all progress as a dream ; 
 And next, when he whose quick discomfiture 
 Was counted on, accomplishes some few 
 And doubtful steps in his career, — behold. 
 They look for every inch of ground to vanish 
 Beneath his tread, so sure they spy success ! 
 
 Fest. Few doubtful steps? when death re- 
 tires before 
 Your presence — when the noblest of mankind. 
 Broken in body or subdued in soul, 
 May through your skill renew their vigor, raise 
 The shattered frame to pristine stateliness ? 
 When men in racking pain may purchase dreams 
 Of what delights them most, swooning at once 
 Into a sea of bliss or rapt along 
 As in a flying sphere of turbulent light ? 
 When we may look to you as one ordained 
 To free the flesh from fell disease, as frees 
 Our Luther's burning tongue the fettered soul ? 
 When ... 
 
 Par. When and where, the devil, did you get 
 This notable news ? 
 
 Fesi. Even from the common voice ; 
 
 From those whose envy, daring not dispute 
 The wonders it decries, attributes them 
 To magic and such folly. 
 
 Par. Folly? Why not 
 
 To ma^c, pray ? You flnd a comfort doubtless 
 In holding, God ne'er troubles him about 
 Us or our doings : once we were judged worth 
 The devil's tempting . . . I offend: forgive me, 
 And rest content. Your prophecy on the whole 
 Was fair enough as prophesyings go ; 
 At fault a little in detail, but quite 
 Precise enough in the main ; and hereupon 
 Ipay due homaee : you guessed long ago 
 (The prophet !) I should fail — and I have failed. 
 
 Fest. You mean to tell me, then, the hopes 
 which fed 
 Your youth have not been realized as yet ? 
 Some obstacle has barred them hitherto ? 
 Or that their innate . . . 
 
 Par. As I said but now, 
 
 You have' a very decent prophet's fame. 
 So you but shun details here. Little matter 
 Whether those hopes were mad, — the aims 
 
 they sought. 
 Safe and secure from all ambitious fools ; 
 Or whether ray weak wits are overcome 
 By what a better spirit would scorn : I fail. 
 And now methinks 'twere best to change a 
 
 therae 
 I am a sad fool to have sturabled on. 
 I say confusedly what comes uppermost ; 
 But there are tiraes when patience proves at 
 
 fault. 
 As now : this morning's strange encounter — you 
 Beside me once again ! you, whom I guessed 
 Alive, since hitherto (with Luther's leave) 
 No friend have I among the saints at peace. 
 To judge by any good their prayers effect. 
 I knew you would have helped me — why not he. 
 My strange competitor in enterprise. 
 Bound for the same end by another path. 
 Arrived, or ill or well, before the time. 
 At our disastrous journey's doubtful close ? 
 
PARACELSUS 
 
 29 
 
 How goes it With Aprile ? Ah, they miss 
 
 Your loue sad sunny idleness of heaven, 
 
 Our martyrs for the world's sake ; heaven shuts 
 
 fast: 
 The poor mad poet is howling by this time ! 
 Since you are my sole friend then, here or there, 
 I conld not quite repress the varied feelings 
 This meeting wakens ; they have had their vent, 
 And now forget them. Do the rear-mice still 
 Hang like a fretwork on the gate (or what 
 In my time was a gate) fronting the road 
 From Einaiedeln to Lachen ? 
 
 Fest. Trifle not : 
 
 Answer me, for my sake alone I You smiled 
 Just iiow, when I supposed some deed, unworthy 
 Yourself, might blot the else so bright result ; 
 Yet if your motives have continued pure. 
 Your will unfaltering, and in spite of this. 
 You have experienced a defeat, why then 
 I say not you would cheerfully withdraw 
 From contest — mortal hearts are not so fash- 
 ioned — 
 But surely you would ne'ertheless withdraw. 
 You sought not fame nor gain nor even love. 
 No end distinct from knowledge, — I repeat 
 Your very words : once satisfied that knowledge 
 Is a mere dream, you would announce as much. 
 Yourself the, first. But how is the event ? 
 You are defeated — and I find you here ! 
 Par. As though "here " did not signify de- 
 feat! 
 I spoke not of my little labors here. 
 But of the break-down of my general aims : 
 For you, aware of their extent and scope. 
 To look on these sage leeturings, approved 
 By beardless boys, and bearded dotards worse. 
 As a fit consummation of such aims, 
 Is worthy notice. A professorship 
 At Basel ! Since you see so much in it, 
 And think my life was reasonably drained 
 Of life's delights to render me a match 
 For duties arduous as such post demands, — 
 Be it far from me to deny my power 
 To fill the petty circle lotted out 
 Of infinite spa«e, or justify the host 
 Of honors thence accruing. So, take notice, 
 This jewel dangling from my neck preserves 
 The features of a prince, my skill restored 
 To plague his people some few years to come : 
 And all through a pure whim. He had eased 
 
 the earth 
 For me, but that the droll despair which seized 
 The vermin of his household, tickled me. 
 I came to see. Here drivelled the physician, 
 Whose most infallible nostrum was at fault ; 
 There quaked the astrologer, whose horoscope 
 Had promised him interminable years ; 
 Here a monk fumbled at the sick man's mouth 
 With some undoubted relic — a sudary 
 Of the Virgin ; while another piebald knave 
 Of the same brotherhood (he loved them ever) 
 Was actively preparing 'neath his nose 
 Such a sufftimigation as, once fired. 
 Had stunk the patient dead ere he could groan. 
 I cursed the doctor and upset the brother. 
 Brushed past the conjurer, vowed that the first 
 
 gust 
 Of stench from the ingredients just alight 
 
 Would raise a cross-grained devil in mj^ sword, 
 Not easily laid : and ere an hour the prince 
 Slept as he never slept since prince he was. 
 A day — and I was posting for my life, 
 Placarded through the town as one whose spite 
 Had near availed to stop the blessed effects 
 Of the doctor's nostrum which, well seconded 
 By the sudary, and most by the costly smoke — 
 Not leaving out the strenuous prayers sent up 
 Hard by in the abbey — raised the prince to lil« i 
 To the great reputation of the seer 
 Who, confident, expected all along 
 The glad event — the doctor's recompense — 
 Much largess from his highness to the monks -< 
 And the vast sola«e of his loving people, 
 Whose general satisfaction to increase. 
 The prince was pleased no longer to defer 
 The burning of some dozen heretics 
 Remanded till God's mercy should be shown 
 Touching his sickness : last of all were joined 
 Ample directions to all loyal folk 
 To swell the complement by seizing me 
 Who — doubtless some rank sorcerer — endeav- 
 ored 
 To thwart these pious offices, obstruct 
 The prince's cure, and frustrate heaven by help 
 Of certain devils dwelling in his sword. 
 By luck, the prince in his first fit of thanks 
 Had forced this bauble on me as an earnest 
 Of further favors. This one case may serve 
 To give sufficient taste of many such. 
 So, let them pass. Those shelves support a pile 
 Of patents, licenses, diplomas, titles 
 From Germany, France, Spain, and Italy ; 
 They authorize some honor ; ne'ertheless, 
 I set more store by this Erasmus sent ; 
 He trusts me ; our Frobenius is his friend, 
 And him " I raised " (nay, read it) " from the 
 
 dead." 
 I weary you, I see. I merely sought 
 To show, there 's no great wonder after all 
 That, while I fill the class-room and attract 
 A crowd to Basel, I get leave to stay. 
 And therefore need not scruple to accept 
 The utmost they can offer, if I please : 
 For 't is but right the world should be prepared 
 To treat with favor e'en fantastic wants 
 Of one like me, used up in serving her. 
 Just as the mortal, whom the gods in part 
 Devoured, received in place of his lost limb 
 Some virtue or other — cured disease, I think ; 
 You mind the fables we have read together. 
 
 Fest. You do not think I comprehend a word. 
 The time was. Aureole, you were apt enough 
 To clothe the airiest thoughts in specious 
 
 breath ; 
 But surely you must feel how vague and strange 
 These speeches sound. 
 
 Par. Well, then : you know my hopes ; 
 
 I am assured, at length, those hopes were vain ; 
 That truth is just as far from me as ever ; 
 That I have thrown my life away ; that sorrow 
 On that account is idle, and further effort 
 To mend and patch what 's marred beyond re- 
 pairing. 
 As useless : and all this was taught your friend 
 By the- convincing good old-fashioned method 
 Of force — by sheer compulsion. Is that plain ? 
 
3° 
 
 PARACELSUS 
 
 Fest. Dear Aureole, can it be my fears were 
 
 qust? 
 God wills not . . . 
 
 Par. Now, 't is this I most admire — 
 
 The constant talk men of your stamp keep up 
 Of God's will, as they style it ; one would swear 
 Man had but merely to uplift his eye. 
 And see the will in question charactered 
 On the heaven's vault. 'T is hardly wise to moot 
 Such topics : doubts are many and faith is weak. 
 I know as much of any will of God 
 As knows some dumb and tortured brute what 
 
 Man, 
 His stem lord, wills from the perplexing blows 
 That plague him every way ; but there, of 
 
 course. 
 Where least he suffers, longest he remains — 
 My case ; and for such reasons I plod on, 
 Subdued but not convinced. I know as little > 
 Why I deserve to fail, as why I hoped 
 Better things in my youth. I simply know 
 I am no master here, but trained and beaten 
 Into the path I tread ; and here I stay. 
 Until some further intimation reach me. 
 Like an obedient drudge. Though I prefer 
 To view the whole thii^ as a task imposed 
 Which, whether dull or pleasant, must be done — 
 Yet, I deny not, there is made provision 
 Of joys which tastes less jaded might affect ; 
 Nay, some which please me too, for all my 
 
 pride — 
 Pleasures that once were pains : the iron ring 
 Festering about a slave's neck grows at length 
 Into the flesh it eats, I hate no longer 
 A host of petty vile delights, undreamed of 
 Or spumed before ; such nowsupply the place 
 Of my dead aims : as in the autumn woods 
 Where tall trees used to flourish, from their 
 
 roots 
 Springs up a fungous brood sickly and pale, 
 Chill mushrooms colored like a corpse's cheek. 
 Fest. If I interpret well your words, I own 
 It troubles me but little that your aims. 
 Vast in their dawning and most likely grown 
 Extravagantly since, have bafBed you. 
 Perchance I am glad ; you merit greater praise ; 
 Because they are too glorious to be gained, . 
 You do not blindly cling to them and die ; 
 You fell, but have not sullenly refused 
 To rise, because an angel worsted yon 
 In wrestling, though the world holds not your 
 
 peer ; 
 And though too hai^h and sudden is the change 
 To yield content as yet, still you puraue 
 The raigracious path as though 't were rosy- 
 strewn. 
 'T is well : and your reward, or soon or late. 
 Will come from liim whom no man serves in 
 
 vain. 
 Par. Ah, very fine! For my part, I conceive 
 The very pausing from all further toil. 
 Which you find heinous, would become a seal 
 To the sincerity of all my deeds. 
 To be consistent I should die at once ; 
 I calculated on no after-life ; 
 Yet (how crept in, how fostered, I know not) 
 Here am I with as passionate regret 
 For youth and health and love so vainly lavished, 
 
 As if their preservation had been first 
 
 And foremost in my thoughts ; and this strange 
 
 fact 
 Humbled me wondrously, and had due force 
 In rendering me the less averse to follow 
 A certain counsel, a mysterious warning — 
 You will not understand — but 't was a man 
 With aims not mine and yet pursued like mine 
 With the same fervor and no more success, 
 Perishing in my sight ; who summoned me, 
 As I would shun the ghastly fate I saw. 
 To serve my race at once ; to wait no longer ; 
 That God should interfere in my behalf. 
 But to distrust myself, put pride away. 
 And give my gains, imperfect as they were. 
 To men. I have not leisure to explain 
 How, since, a singular series of events 
 Has raised me to the station yon behold. 
 Wherein I seem to turn to most account 
 The mere wreck of the past, — perhaps receive 
 Some feeble glimmering token that God views 
 And may approve my penance : therefore here 
 You find me, doing most good or least harm. 
 And if folks wonder mnen and profit little 
 'Tis not my fault ; only, I shall rejoice 
 When my part in the farce is shufBed through. 
 And the curtain falls : I must hold out till then. 
 Fest. Till when, dear Aureole ? 
 Par. Till I 'm fairly thrast 
 
 From my proud eminence. Fortune is fickle 
 And even professors fall : should that arrive, 
 I see no sin in ceding to my bent. 
 You little fancy what rude shocks apprise us 
 We sin ; God's intimations rather fail 
 In clearness than in energy : 't were well 
 Did they but indicate the course to take 
 Like that to be forsaken. I would fain 
 Be spared a further sample. Here I stand, 
 And here Istay, be sure, till forced to flit. 
 Fest._ Be you but flrm on that head! long 
 
 ere then 
 All I expect will come to pass, I trust : 
 The cloud that wraps you will have disappeared. 
 Meantime, I see small chance of such event : 
 They praise you here as one whose lore, already 
 Divulged, eclipses all the past can sliow. 
 But whose achievements, marvellous as they be, 
 Are faint anticipations of a glory 
 About to be revealed. When Basel's crowds 
 Dismiss their teacher, I shall be content 
 That he depart. 
 
 Par. This favor at their hands 
 
 I look for earlier than your view of things 
 Would warrant. Of the crowd you saw to-day, 
 Remove the full half sheer amazement draws, 
 Mere novelty, naught else ; and next, the tribe 
 Whose innate blockish dulness just perceives 
 That unless miracles (as seem my works) 
 Be wrought in their behalf, their chance is 
 
 slight 
 To puzzle the devil ; next, the numerous set 
 Who bitterly hate established schools, and help 
 The teacher that oppugns them, till he once 
 Have planted his own doctrine, when the 
 
 teacher 
 May reckon on their rancor in his turn ; 
 Take, too, the sprinkling of sagacious knaves 
 Whose cunning runs not counter to the vogue. 
 
PARACELSUS 
 
 31 
 
 But seeks, by flattery and crafty nursing, 
 To force my system to a premature 
 Short-lived development. Why swell the list ? 
 Each has his end to serve, and his best way 
 Of serving it : remove all these, remains 
 A scantling, a poor dozen at the best, 
 Worthy to look for sympathy and service, 
 And likely to draw profit from my pains. 
 
 Fest. 'T is no encouraging picture : still 
 these few 
 Redeem their fellows. Once the germ im- 
 planted, 
 Its growth, if slow, is sure. 
 
 Par. God grant it so 1 
 
 I would make some amends : but if I fail. 
 The luckless rogues have this excuse to I'rge, 
 That much is in my method and my manner. 
 My uncouth habits, my impatient spirit, 
 Wiiieh hinders of reception and result 
 My doctrine ; much to say, small skill to speak I 
 These old aims suffered not a looking-off 
 Though for an instant ; therefore, only when 
 I thus renounce them and resolved to reap 
 Some present fruit — to teach mankind some 
 
 truth 
 So dearly purchased — only then I found 
 Such teaching was an art requiring cares 
 And qualities peculiar to itself : 
 That to possess was one thing — to display 
 Another. With renown first in my thoughts, 
 Or popular praise, I had soon discovered it : 
 One grows but little apt to learn these things. 
 
 Fest. If it be so, which nowise I believe, 
 There needs no waiting fuller dispensation 
 To leave a labor of so little use. 
 Why not throw up the irksome charge at once ? 
 
 Par. A task, a task ! 
 
 But wherefore hide the whole 
 Extent of degradation once engaged 
 In the confessing vein ? Despite of all 
 My fine talk of obedience and repugnance. 
 Docility and what not, 't is yet to learn 
 If when the task shall really be performed, 
 My inclination free to choose once more, 
 I shall do aught but slightly modify 
 The nature of the hated t.isk I quit. 
 In plain words, I am spoiled ; my life still tends 
 As first it tended ; I am broken and trained 
 To my old habits : they are part of me. 
 I know, and none so well, my darling ends 
 Are proved impossible : no less, no less. 
 Even now what humoi-s me, fond fool, as when 
 Their faint ghosts sit with me and flatter me 
 And send me back content to my dull round ? 
 How can I change this soul ? — this apparatus 
 Constructed solely for their purposes, 
 So well adapted to their every want, 
 To search out and discover, prove and perfect ; 
 This intricate machine whose most minute 
 And meanest motions have their charm to me 
 Though to none else — an aptitude I seize. 
 An object I perceive, a use, a meaning, 
 A property, a fitness, I explain 
 And I alone : — how can I change my soul ? 
 And this wronged body, worthless save when 
 
 tasked 
 Under that soul's dominion — used to care 
 For its bright master's cares and quite subdue 
 
 Its proper cravings — not to ail nor pine 
 So he but prosper — whither drag this poor 
 Tried patient body ? God ! how I essayed 
 To live like that mad poet, for a while, 
 To love alone ; and how I felt too warped 
 And twisted and defoi'med ! What should I do, 
 Even though released from drudgery, but re- 
 turn 
 Faint, as you see, and halting, blind and sore, 
 To my old life and die as I began ? 
 I cannot feed on beauty for the sake 
 Of beauty only, nor can drink in balm 
 From lovely objects for their loveliness ; 
 My nature cannot lose her first imprint ; 
 I still must hoard and heap and class all truths 
 With one ulterior purpose : I must know ! 
 Would God translate me to his throne, believe 
 That I should only listen to his word 
 To further my own aim ! For other men. 
 Beauty is prodigally strewn around. 
 And I were happy could I quench as they 
 This mad and thriveless longing, and content 
 
 me 
 With beauty for itself alone : alas, 
 I have addressed a frock of heavy mail 
 Yet may not join the troop of sacred knights ; 
 And now the forest-creatures fly from me. 
 The grass-banks cool, the sunbeams warm no 
 
 more. 
 Best follow, dreaming that ere night arrive, 
 I shall o'ertake the company and ride 
 Glittering as they ! 
 
 Fest. I tliink I apprehend 
 
 What you would say : if you, in truth, design 
 To enter once more on the life thus left, 
 Seek not to hide that all this consciousness 
 Of failure is assumed I 
 
 Par. My friend, my friend, 
 
 I toil, you listen ; I explain, perhaps 
 You understand : there our commmiion ends. 
 Have you learnt nothing from to-day's dis- 
 course ? 
 When we would thoroughly know the sick 
 
 man's state 
 We feel awhile the fluttering pulse, press soft 
 The hot brow, look upon the languid eye. 
 And thence divine the rest. Must I lay bare 
 My heart, hideous and beating, or tear up 
 My vitals for your gaze, ere you will deem 
 Enough made known ? You ! who are you, 
 
 forsooth ? 
 That is the crowning operation claimed 
 By the areh-demonstrator — heaven the hall. 
 And earth the audience. Let Aprile and you 
 Secure good places : 't will be worth the while. 
 Fest. Are you mad. Aureole ? What can I 
 have said 
 To call for this ? I judged from your own 
 words. 
 Par. Oh, doubtless! A sick wretch de- 
 scribes the ape 
 That mocks him from the bed-foot, and all 
 
 gravely 
 You thither turn at once : or he recounts 
 The perilous journey he has late performed. 
 And you are puzzled much how that could be 1 
 You find me here, half stupid and half mad ; 
 It makes no part of my deught to seprch 
 
32 
 
 PARACELSUS 
 
 Into these nrntters, much less undergo 
 Another's scrutiny ; but so it chances 
 That I am led to trust my state to you : 
 And the event is, you combine, contrast 
 And ponder on my foolish words as though 
 They thoroughly conveyed all hidden here — 
 Here, loathsome with despair and hate and 
 
 rage ! 
 Is there no fear, no shrinking and no shame ? 
 Will you guess nothing ? will you spare me no- 
 thing ? 
 Must I go deeper ? Ay or no ? 
 Fest, Dear friend , . . 
 
 Par. True : I am brutal ^ 't is a part of it ; 
 The plague's sign — you are not a lazai^haunter, 
 How should you know ? Well then, you think 
 
 it strange 
 I should profess to have failed utterly, 
 And yet propose an ultimate return 
 To courses void of hope : and this, because 
 You know not what temptation is, nor how 
 'T is like to ply men in the sickliest part. 
 You are to understand that we who make 
 Sport for the gods, are hunted to the end; 
 There is not one sharp volley shot at us. 
 Which 'scaped with life, though hurt, we 
 
 slacken pace 
 And gather by the wayside herbs and ropts_ 
 To stanch our wounds, secure from further 
 
 harm : 
 We are assailed to life's extremest verge. 
 It will be well indeed if I return, 
 A harmless busy fool, to my old ways ! 
 I would forget hints of another fate. 
 Significant enough, which silent hours 
 Have lately scared me with. 
 Fest. Another ! and what ? 
 
 Par. After all, Pestus, you say well : I am 
 A man yet : I need never humble me. 
 I would have been — something, I know not 
 
 what ; , , 
 
 But though I cannot soar, I do not crawl. 
 There are worse portions than this one of mine. 
 You say well ! 
 Fest. Ah ! 
 
 Par. And deeper degradation ! 
 
 If -'lihe mean stimulants of vulgar praise, 
 If vanity should become the chosen food 
 Of a sunk mind, should stifle even the wish 
 To find its early aspirations true. 
 Should teach it to breathe ■falsehood like life- 
 breath — 
 An atmosphere of craft and trick and lies ; 
 Should make it proud to emulate, surpass 
 Base natures in the practices which Woke 
 Its most indignant loathing once . . . No, no ! 
 Utter damnation is reserved for hell ! 
 I had immortal feelings ; such shall never 
 Be whoily quenched ; no, no ! 
 
 My friend, you wear 
 A melancholy face, and certain 't is 
 There 's little cheer in all this dismal work. 
 But was it my desire to set abroach 
 Such memories and forebodings ? I foresaw 
 Where they would drive. 'T were better wo 
 
 discuss 
 News from Lucerne or ^lurich ; ask and tell 
 Of Egypt's flaring sky or Spain's cork-groves. 
 
 Fest. I have thought : trust me, this mood 
 
 will pass away ! 
 I know you and the lofty spirit you bear, 
 And easily ravel out a clue, to aU. 
 These are the trials meet for such as you, 
 Nor must you hope exemption ; to be naortal 
 Is to be plied with trials manifold. 
 Look round ! The obstacles which kept the rest 
 From your ambition, have been spumed by you j 
 Their fears, their doubts, the chains that bind 
 
 them all, 
 Were flax before your resolute soul, which 
 
 naught 
 Avails to awe save these delusions bred 
 From its own strength, its selfsame strength dis- 
 guised. 
 Mocking itself. Be brave, dear Aureole ! Since 
 The rabbit has his shade to frighten him. 
 The fawn a rustling bough, mortals their cares, 
 And higher natures yet would slight and laugh 
 At these entangling fantasies, as you 
 At trammels of a weaker intellect, — 
 Measure your mind's height by the shade it 
 
 casts! 
 I know you. 
 
 Par, And I know you, dearest Festns ! 
 
 And how you love unworthily ; and how 
 All admiration renders blind. 
 
 Fest. You hold 
 
 That admiration blinds ? 
 Par. Ay and alas ! 
 
 Fest. Naught blinds you less than admiration, 
 
 friend ! 
 Whether it be that all love renders wise 
 In its degree ; from love which blends with 
 
 love — 
 Heart answering heart — to love which spends 
 
 itself 
 In silent mad idolatry of some 
 Pre-eminent mortal, some great soul of souls. 
 Which ne'er will know how well it is adored. 
 I say, such love is never blind ; but rather 
 Alive to every the minutest spot 
 Which mars its object, and which hate (supposed 
 So vigilant and searching) dreams not of. 
 Love broods on such ; wiiat then ? When first 
 
 perceived 
 Is there no sweet strife to forget, to change, 
 To overflush those blemishes with all 
 The glow of general goodness they disturb ? 
 — To make those very defects an endless source 
 Of new affection grown from hopes and fears ? 
 And, when all fails, is there no gaUant stand 
 Made even for much proved weak ? no shrinking- 
 
 back 
 Lest, since all love assimilates the soul 
 To what it loves, it should at length become 
 Almost a rival of its idol ? Trust me. 
 If there be fiends who seek to work our hurt. 
 To ruin and drag down earth's mightiest spirits 
 Even at God's foot, 't will be from such as love, 
 Their zeal will gather most to serve their cause ; 
 And least from those who hate, who most essay 
 By contumely and scorn to blot the light ' , .. 
 Which forces entrance even to their hearts : 
 For thence will our defender tear the veil 
 And show within each heart, as in a shrine, 
 The giant image of perfection, grown 
 
PARACELSUS 
 
 33 
 
 In hate's despite, whose calumnies were spawned 
 
 In the untroubled presence of its eyes. 
 
 Trne admiration blinds not j nor am I 
 
 So blind. I call your sin exceptional ; 
 
 It springs from one whose lite has passed the 
 
 bounds 
 Prescribed to life. Compound that fault with 
 
 God! 
 I speak of men ; to common men like me 
 The weakness you reveal endears you more, 
 Like the far traces of decay in suns. 
 I bid you have good cheer ! 
 
 Par. Prcedare ! Optime ! 
 
 Think of a quiet mountain-cloistered priest 
 Instructing Paracelsus ! yet 't is so. 
 Come, I will show you where my merit lies. - 
 'T is in the advance of individual minds 
 That the slow crowd should ground their expec- 
 tation 
 Eventually to follow ; as the sea 
 Waits ages in its bed till some one wave 
 Out of the multitudinous mass, extends 
 The empire of the whole, some feet perhaps, 
 Over -the strip of sand which could confine 
 Its fellows so long time : thenceforth the rest. 
 Even to the meanest, hurry in at once. 
 And so much is clear gained. I shall be glad 
 If all my labors, failing of aught else. 
 Suffice to make such inroad and procure 
 A wider range for thought ; nay, they do this ; 
 For, whatsoe'er my notions of true knowledge 
 And a legitimate success, may be, 
 I am not blind to my undoubted rank 
 When classed with others ; I precede my age : 
 And whoso wills is very free to mount 
 These labors as a platform whence his own 
 May have a prosperous outset. But, alas ! 
 My followers — they are noisy as you heard ; 
 But, for intelligence, the best of them 
 So clumsily wield the weapons I supply 
 And they extol, that I begin to doubt 
 Whether their own rude clubs and pebble-stones 
 Would not do better service than my arms 
 Thus vilely swayed — if error will not fall 
 Sooner before the old awkward batterings 
 Than ray more subtle warfare, not half learned. 
 Fest. I would supply that art, then, or with- 
 hold 
 New arms until you teach their mystery. 
 Far. Content you, 't is my wish ; I have 
 recourse 
 To the simplest training. Day by day I seek 
 To wake the mood, the spirit which alone 
 Can make those arms of any use to men. 
 Of course they are for swaggering forth at once 
 Graced with Ulysses' bow, Achilles' shield — 
 Flash on us, aU in armor, thou Achilles ! 
 Make our hearts dance to thy resounding step ! 
 A proper sight to scare the crows away ! 
 Fest. Pity you choose not then some other 
 method 
 Of coming at your point. The marvellous art 
 At length established in the world bids fair 
 To remedy all hindrances like these : 
 Trust to Probenius' press the precious lore 
 Obscured by uncouth manner, or unfit 
 For raw beginners ; let his types secure 
 A deathless monument to after-time ; 
 
 Meanwhile wait confidently and enjoy 
 The ultimate effect : sooner or later 
 You shall be aU-revealed. 
 
 Par. The old dull question 
 
 In a new form ; no more. Thus : I possess 
 Two sorts of knowledge ; one, — vast, shadowy, 
 Hints of the unbounded aim I once pursued : 
 The other consists of many secrets, caught 
 While bent on nobler prize, — perhaps a few 
 Prime principles which may conduct to much : 
 These kst I offer to my followers here. 
 Now, bid me chronicle the first of these, 
 My ancient study, and in effect you bid 
 Revert to the wild courses just abjured : 
 I must go find them scattered through the world. 
 Then, for the principles, they are so simple 
 (Being chiefly of the overturning sort), 
 That one time is as proper to propound them 
 As any other -^ to-morrow at my class. 
 Or half a century hence embalmed in print. 
 For if mankind intend to learn at all. 
 They must begin by giving faith to them 
 And acting on them : and I do not see 
 But that my lectures serve indifferent well : 
 No doubt these dogmas fall not to the earth, 
 For all their novelty and rugged setting. 
 I think my class wiE not forget the day 
 I let them know the gods of Israel, 
 Aetius, Oribasius, Galen, Rhasis, 
 Serapion, Avicenna, Averroes, 
 Were blocks ! 
 
 Fest. And that reminds me, I heard some- 
 thing 
 About your waywardness ; you burned their 
 
 books. 
 It seems, instead of answering those sages. 
 
 Par. And who said that ? 
 
 Fest. Some I met yesternight 
 
 With (Ecolampadius. As you know, the purpose 
 Of this short stay at Basel was to learn 
 His pleasure touching certain missives sent 
 For our Zuinglius and himself. 'T was he 
 Apprised me that the famous teacher here 
 Was my old friend. 
 
 Par. Ah, I forgot: you went . . . 
 
 Fest. From Zurich with advices for the ear 
 Of Luther, now at Wittenberg — (you know, 
 I make no doubt, the differences of late 
 With Carolostadius) — and returning sought 
 Basel and . . . 
 
 Par. I remember. Here 's a case, now, 
 
 Will teaeh you why I answer not, but burn 
 The books you mention. Pray, does Luther 
 
 dream 
 His arguments convince by their own force 
 The crowds that own his doctrine ? No, indeed 1 
 His plain denial of established points 
 Ages had sanctified and men supposed 
 Could never be oppugned while earth was under 
 And heaven above them — points which chance 
 
 or time 
 Affected not — did more than the array 
 Of argument which followed. Boldly deny ! 
 There is much breath-stopping, hair-stiffening 
 Awhile ; then, amazed glances, mute awaiting 
 The thunderbolt which does not come : and next, 
 Reproachful wonder and inquiry ; those 
 Who else had never stirred, are able now 
 
34 
 
 PARACELSUS 
 
 To find the rest ont for themselves, perhaps 
 To outstrip him who set the whole at work, 
 — As never will my wise class its instmetor. 
 And you saw Luther ? 
 
 Fest. 'T is a wondrous soul ! 
 
 Par. True : the so-heavy chain which galled 
 mankind 
 Is shattered, and the noblest of ns all 
 Must bow to the deliverer — nay, the worker 
 Of our own project — we who long before 
 Had burst our trammels, but forgot the crowd, 
 We should have taught, still groaned beneath 
 
 their load : 
 This he has done and nobly. Speed that may ! 
 Whatever be my chance or my mischance. 
 What benefits mankind must glad me too ; 
 And men seem made, though not as I believed. 
 For something better than the times produce. 
 Witness these gangs of peasants your new lights 
 From Suabia have possessed, whom Miinzer 
 
 And whom the duke, the landgrave and the 
 
 elector 
 Will calm in blood ! Well, well ; 't is not my 
 
 world ! 
 Fest. Hark ! 
 
 Par. 'T is the melancholy wind astir 
 
 Within the trees ; the embers too are gray : 
 Morn must be near. 
 
 Fest. Best ope the easement : see. 
 
 The night, late strewn with clouds and flying 
 
 stars. 
 Is blank and motionless : how peaceful sleep 
 The tree-tops altogether ! Like an asp. 
 The wind slips whispering from bough to bough. 
 Par. Ay ; you would gaze on a wind-shaken 
 
 tree 
 By the hour, nor count time lost. 
 
 Fest. So you shall gaze : 
 
 Those happy times will come again. 
 
 Par. Gone, gone. 
 
 Those pleasant times ! Does not the moaning 
 
 wind 
 Seem to bewail that we have gained such gains 
 And bartered sleep for them ? 
 
 Fest. It is our trust 
 
 That there is yet another world to mend 
 All error and mischance. 
 
 Par. Another world ! 
 
 And why this world, this common world, to be 
 A make-shift, a mere foil, how fair soever, 
 To some fine life to come ? Man must be fed 
 With angels' food, forsooth ; and some few 
 
 traces 
 Of a diviner nature which look out 
 Through his corporeal baseness, warrant him 
 In a supreme contempt of all provision 
 For his inferior tastes — some straggling marks 
 Which constitute his essence, just as truly 
 As here and there a gem would constitute 
 The rook, their barren bed, one diamond. 
 But were it so — were man all mind — he gains 
 A station little enviable. From God 
 Down to the lowest spirit ministrant. 
 Intelligence exists which casts our mind 
 Into immeasurable shade. No, no : 
 Love, hope, fear, faith — these make humanity ; 
 These are its sign and note and character, 
 
 And these I have lost ! — gone, shut from me 
 
 forever. 
 Like a dead friend safe from imkindness more ! 
 See, morn at length. The heavy darkness seems 
 Diluted, gray and clear without the stars ; 
 The shrubs bestir and rouse themselves as if 
 Some snake, that weighed them down all night, 
 
 let go 
 His hold ; and from the East, fuller and fuller 
 Day, like a mighty river, flowing in ; 
 But clouded, wintry, desolate and cold. 
 Yet see how that broad prickly star-shaped 
 
 plant. 
 Half-down in the crevice, spreads its wooUy 
 
 leaves 
 All thick and glistering with diamond dew. 
 And you depart for Einsiedeln this day. 
 And we have spent all n^ht in talk like this ! 
 If you would have me better for your love, 
 Kevert no more to these sad themes. 
 
 Fest. One favor, 
 
 And I have done. I leave you, deeply moved ; 
 Unwilling to have fared so well, the while 
 My friend has changed so sorely. If this mood 
 Shall pass away, if Ught once more arise 
 Where all is darkness now, if you see fit 
 To hope and trust again, and strive again, 
 You will remember — not our love alone — 
 But that my faith in God's desire that man 
 Should trust on his support, (as I must think 
 You trusted) is obscured and dim through you ; 
 For you are thus, and this is no reward. 
 Will you not call me to your side, dear Aureole ? 
 
 IV. PARACELSUS ASPIRES 
 
 ScBKE, Colviar in Alsatia : an Inn. 1528. 
 
 Paracelsus, Festtts. 
 
 Par. (to Johannes Opokinus, Ais Secretary). 
 
 Sic itur ad astra ! Dear Von Visenbui^ 
 Is scandalized, and poor Torinus paralyzed, 
 And every honest soul that Basel holcU 
 Aghast ; and yet we live, as one may say. 
 Just as though Liechtenfels had never set 
 So true a value on his sorry carcass. 
 And learned Piitter had not frowned us dumb. 
 We live ; and shall as stirely start to-morrow 
 For Nuremberg, as we drink speedy scathe 
 To Basel in this mantling wine, suffused 
 A dehcate blush, no fainter tinge is born 
 I' the shut heart of a bud. Pledge me, good 
 
 John — 
 " Basel ; a hot plague ravage it, and Piitter 
 Oppose the plague ! " Even so ? Do you too share 
 Their panic, the reptiles ? Ha, ha ; faint through 
 
 these. 
 Desist for these ! They manage matters so 
 At Basel, 't is like : but othera may find means 
 To bring the stoutest braggart of the tribe 
 Once more to crouch in silence — means to breed 
 A stupid wonder in each fool again. 
 Now big with admiration at the skill 
 Which stript a vain pretender of his plumes ; 
 And, that done, — means to brand each slavish 
 
 brow 
 
PARACELSUS 
 
 35 
 
 So deeply, surely, ineffaceably, .. i ,, ' 
 
 That henceforth flattery shall not pucker it 
 Out of the furrow ; there that stamp shall stray 
 To show the next they fawn on, what they are. 
 This Basel with its magnates, — fill, my cup, — 
 Whom I curse soul and limb. And now dispatch. 
 Dispatch, my trusty John ; and what remains 
 To do, whate'er arrangements for our trip 
 Are yet to be completed, see you hasten 
 This night ; we '11 weather the storm at least : 
 
 to-morrow 
 For Nuremberg ! Now leave us ; this grave clerk 
 Has divers weighty matters for my ear : 
 
 , [Opobinus goes out. 
 And spare my lungs. At last, my gallant Festus, 
 I am rid of this arch-knave that dogs my heels 
 As a gaunt crow a gasping sheep ; at last 
 May give a loose to my delight. How kind. 
 How very kind, my first best only friend ! 
 Why, this looks like fidelity. Embrace me I 
 Not a hair silvered yet ? Right ! you shall live 
 Till I am worth your love ; you shall be proud, 
 And I — but let time show ! Did you not won- 
 der? 
 I sent to you because our compact weighed 
 Upon my conscience — (you recall the night 
 At Basel, which the gods confound !) — beca 
 Once more I aspire. I call you to my side : 
 You come. You thought my message strange ? 
 Fest. So strange 
 
 That I must hope, indeed, your messenger 
 Has mingled his own fancies with the words 
 Purporting to be yours. 
 
 Par. He said no more, 
 
 'T is probable, than the precious folk I leave 
 Said fiftyf old more roughly. Welladay, 
 'T is true ! poor Paracelsus is exposed 
 At last ; a most egregious quack he proves : 
 And those he overreached must spit their hate 
 On one who, utterly beneath contempt, 
 Could yet deceive their topping wits. You 
 
 heard 
 Bare truth ; and at ray bidding you come here 
 To speed me on my enterprise, as once 
 Your lavish wishes sped me, ray own friend ! 
 Fest. What is your purpose. Aureole ? 
 Par. Oh, for purpose. 
 
 There is no lack of precedents in a case 
 Like mine ; at least, if not precisely mine. 
 The case of men cast off by those they sought 
 To benefit. 
 
 Fest, They really cast you off ? 
 
 I only heard a vague tale of some priest. 
 Cured by your skiU, who wrangled at your 
 
 claim. 
 Knowing his life's worth best ; and how the 
 
 judge 
 The matter was referred to saw no cause 
 To interfere, nor you to hide your full 
 Contempt of him ; nor he, again, to smother 
 His wrath thereat, which raised so fierce a 
 
 flame 
 That Basel soon was made no plaee for you. 
 Par. The affair of Liechtenf els ? the shal- 
 lowest fable. 
 The last and silliest outrage — mere pretence ! 
 I knew it, I foretold it from the first. 
 How soon the stupid wonder you mistook 
 
 For genuine loyalty — a cheering promise 
 Of better things to come — would pall and pass ; 
 And every word comes true. Saul is among 
 The prophets ! Just so long as I was pleased 
 To play off the mere antics of my art. 
 Fantastic gambols leading to no end, 
 I got, huge praise: but one can ne'er keep down 
 Our fooush nature's weakness. There they 
 
 flocked. 
 Poor devils, jostling, swearing and perspiring, 
 'Till the walls rang again ; and all for me ! 
 I had a kindness for them, which was right ; 
 But then I stopped not till I tacked to that 
 A trust in them and a respect — a sort 
 Of sympathy for them ; I must needs begin 
 To teach them, not amaze them, '' to impart 
 The spirit which should instigate the search 
 Of truth," just what you bade me ! I spokeout. 
 Forthwith a mighty squadron, in disgust, 
 FUed off — "the sifted chaff of the sack," I 
 
 said. 
 Redoubling my endeavors to secure 
 The rest. When lo ! one man had tarried so 
 
 long 
 Only to ascertain if I supported 
 This tenet of his, or that ; another loved 
 To hear impartially before he judged, 
 And having heard, now judged ; this bland 
 
 disciple 
 Passed for my dupe, but all along, it seems, 
 Spied error where his neighbors marvelled 
 
 most ; 
 That fiery doctor who had hailed me friend. 
 Did it because my by-paths, once proved wrong 
 And beaconed properly, would commend again 
 The good old ways our sires jogged safely o'er. 
 Though not their squeamish sons ; the other 
 
 worthy 
 Discovered divers verses of St. John, 
 Which, read successively, refreshed the soul, 
 But, muttered backwards, cured the gout, the 
 
 stone. 
 The colic and what not. Quid mvlta f The end 
 Was a clear class-room, and a quiet leer 
 From grave folk, and a sour reproachful glance 
 From those in chief who, cap in hand, installed 
 The new professor scarce a year before ; 
 And a vdst flourish about patient merit 
 Obscured awhile by flashy tricks, but sure 
 Sooner or later to emerge in splendor — 
 Of which the example was some luckless wight 
 Whom my arrival had discomfited. 
 But now, it seems, the general voice recalled 
 To fill my chair and so efface the stain 
 Basel had long incurred. I sought no better, 
 Only a quiet dismissal from my post. 
 And from my heart I wished them better suited 
 And better served. Good night to Basel. 
 
 then! 
 But fast as I proposed to rid the tribe 
 Of my obnoxious back, I could not spare them 
 The pleasure of a parting kick. 
 
 -Fes*. You smile : 
 
 Despise them as they merit ! 
 
 PO'-r-. If I smile, 
 
 T is with as very contempt as ever turned 
 Flesh into stone. This courteous recompense. 
 This grateful . . . Festus, were your nature fit 
 
36 
 
 PARACELSUS 
 
 To be defiled, your eyes the eyes to ache 
 At gangrene-blotches, eating poison-'blains, 
 The ulcerous barky scuri: of leprosy 
 Which finds — a man, and leaves — a hideous 
 
 thing 
 That cannot but be mended by hell-fire, 
 — I would lay bare to you the human heart 
 Which God cursed loiig ago, and devils make 
 
 since 
 Their pet nest and their never-tiring home. 
 Oh, sages have discovered we are bom 
 For various ends — ;to love, to know : has ever 
 One stumbled, in his search, on any signs 
 Of a nature in us formed to hate ? To hate ? 
 If that be our true object which evokes 
 Our powers in fullest strength, be sure 't is hate ! 
 Yet men have doubted if^Qie best and bravest 
 Of spirits can nourish him with hate alone. 
 I had not the monopoly of fools, 
 It seems, at Basel. 
 
 Fest. But your plans, your plans ! 
 
 I have yet to learn your purpose. Aureole ! 
 Par. Whether to sink beneath such ponder- 
 ous shame, 
 To shrink up like a crushed snail, undergo 
 In silence and desist from further toil. 
 And so subside into a vnonument 
 Of one their censure blasted ? or to bow 
 Cheerfully as submissively, to lower 
 My old pretensions even as Basel dictates, 
 To drop into the rank her wits assign me 
 And live as they prescribe, and make that use 
 Of my poor knowledge which their rules allow, 
 Proud to be patted now and then, and careful 
 To practise the true posture for receiving 
 The amplest benefit from their hoofs' appliance 
 When they shall C9ndescend to tutor me ? 
 Then, one may feel resentment like a fiame 
 Within, and deck false systems in truth's garb, 
 And tangle and entwine mankind with error. 
 And give them darkness for a dower and false- 
 hood 
 For a possession, ages : or one may mope 
 Into a shade through thinking, or else drowse 
 Into a dreamless sleep and so die off. 
 But I, — now Festus shall divine ! — but I 
 Am merely setting out once more, embracing 
 My earliest aims again ! What thinks he now ? 
 Fest. Your aims ? the aims ? — to Know ? 
 and where is found 
 The early trust . . . 
 
 Far. Nay, not so fast ; I say, 
 
 The aims — not the old means. You know 
 
 they made me 
 A laughing-stock ; I was a fool ; you know 
 The when and the how: hardly those means 
 
 again ! 
 Not but they had their beauty ; who should 
 
 know 
 Their passing beauty, if not I ? Still, dreams 
 They were, so let them vanish, yet in beauty 
 If that may be. Stay : thus they pass in song 1 
 
 \_He sings. 
 Heap cassia, sandal-buds and stripes 
 Of labdanum, and aloe-balls, 
 Smeared with dull nard an Indian wipes 
 From out her hair : such balsam falls 
 Down sea-side mountain pedestals. 
 
 From tree-tops where tired winds are fain, 
 Spent with the vast and howling main, 
 'lo treasure half their island-gain. 
 
 And strew faint sweetness from some old 
 
 Egyptian's fine worm-eaten shroud 
 Which breaks to dust when once unrolled ; 
 
 Or shredded perfume, like a cloud 
 Prom closet long to quiet vowed, 
 With mothed and dropping arras hung. 
 Mouldering her lute and books among. 
 As when a queen, long dead, was young. 
 
 Mine, every word ! And on such pile shall die 
 My lovely fancies, with fair perished things. 
 Themselves fair and forgotten ; yes, forgotten, 
 Or why abjure them ? So, I made this rhyme 
 That fitting dignity might be preserved ; 
 No little proud was I ; though the list of drugs 
 Smacks of my old vocation, and the verse 
 Halts like the best of Luther's psalms. 
 
 Fest. But, Aureole, 
 
 Talk not thus wildly and madly. I am here — 
 Did you know all ! I have travelled far, in- 
 deed. 
 To learn your wishes. Be yourself again 1 
 For in this mood I recognize you less 
 Than in the horrible despondency 
 I witnessed last. You may account this, joy ; 
 But rather let me gaze on that despair 
 Than hear these incoherent words and see 
 This flushed cheek and intensely-sparkling eye. 
 
 Far. Why, man, I was light-hearted m my 
 prime, 
 I am light-hearted now ; what would you have ? 
 Aprile was a poet, I make songs — 
 'T is the very augury of success I want ! 
 Why should I not be joyous now as then i" 
 
 Fest. Joyous ! and how ? and what remains 
 for joy ? 
 You have declared the ends (which I am sicl» 
 Of naming) are imipracticable. 
 
 Par. Ay, 
 
 Pursued as I pursued them — the arch-fool \ 
 Listen : my plan will please you not, 't is like. 
 But you are little versed in tiie world's ways. 
 This is my plan — (first drinking its good luck) — 
 I will accept all helps ; all I despised 
 So rashly at the outset, equally 
 With early impulses, late years have quenched: 
 I have tried each way singly : now for both ! 
 AH helps ! no one sort shall exclude the rest. 
 I seek to know and to enjoy at once. 
 Not one without the other as before. 
 Suppose my labor should seem God's own cause 
 Once more, as first I dreamed, — it shall not 
 
 balk me 
 Of the meanest eartbliest sensnalest delight 
 That may be snatched ; for every joy is gain. 
 And gain is gain, however small. My soul 
 Can die then, nor be taunted — "what was 
 
 gained ? " 
 Nor, on the other hand, should pleasure follow 
 As though I had not spumed her hitherto. 
 Shall she o'ercloud my spirit's rapt communion 
 With the tumultuous past, the teeming future. 
 Glorious with visions of a full success. 
 
 Fest. Success ! 
 
PARACELSUS 
 
 3? 
 
 Far. And wherefore not? Why not prefer 
 Results obtained in my best state of being, 
 To those derived alone from seasons dark 
 As the thoughts they bred? When I weis best, 
 
 my youth 
 Un'vvasted, seemed. success not surest too ? 
 It is the nature of darkness to obscure. 
 I am a wanderer ; I remember well 
 One journey, how I feared the track was missed. 
 So long the city I desired to reach 
 Lay hid ; when suddenly its spires afar 
 B'lashed through the circling clouds ; you may 
 
 conceive 
 My transport. Soon the vapors closed again, 
 But I had seen the city, and one such glance 
 No darkness could obscure : nor shall the pres- 
 ent— 
 A few dull hours, a passing shame or two. 
 Destroy the vivid memories of the past. 
 I will fight the battle out ; a little spent 
 Perhaps, but still an able combatant. 
 You look at my gray hair and furrowed brow ? 
 But I can turn even weakness to account : 
 Of many tricks I know, 't is not the least 
 To push the ruins of my frame, whereon 
 The fire of vigor trembles scarce alive, 
 Into a heap, and send the flame aloft. 
 What shoald I do with age ? So, sickness lends 
 An aid ; it bein^, I fear, the source of all 
 We boast of : mind is nothing but disease, 
 And natural health is ignorance. 
 
 Fest. I see , 
 
 But one good symptom in this notable scheme. 
 I feared your sudden journey had in view 
 To wreak immediate vengeance on your foes. 
 ^T is not so : I am glad. 
 
 Par. And if I please 
 
 To spit on them, to trample them, what then ? 
 'T is sorry warfare truly, but the fools 
 Provoke it. I would spare their self-conceit, 
 But if they must provoke me, cannot suffer 
 Forbearance on my part, if I may keep 
 No quality in the shade, must needs put forth 
 Power to match power, my strength against 
 
 their strength. 
 And, teach them their own game with their 
 
 own arras — 
 Why, be it so and let them take their chance ! 
 I am above them like a god, there 's no 
 Hiding the fact : what idle scruples, then, 
 Were those that ever bade me soften it, 
 Communicate it gently to the world, 
 Instead of proving my supremacy. 
 Taking my natural station o'er their head, 
 Then owning all the glory was a man's ! 
 — And in my elevation man's would be. 
 But live and learn, though life 's short, learn- 
 ing hard ! 
 And therefore, though the wreck of my past self, 
 I fear, dear Piitter, that your lecture-room 
 Must wait awhile for its best ornament. 
 The penitent empiric, who set up 
 For somebody, but soon was taught his place ; 
 Now, but too happy to be let coraess 
 His error, snuff the candles, and illustrate 
 (Fiat experientia corpare vili) 
 Your medicine's soundness in his person. Wait, 
 Good Piitter I 
 
 Fest. He who sneers thus, is a god I 
 
 Par. Ay, ay, laugh at me ! I am very glad 
 You are not gulled by all this swaggering ; you 
 Can see the root of the matter ! — how 1 strive 
 To put a good face on '^he overthrow 
 I have: experienced, and to bury and hide 
 My degradation in its length and breadth ; 
 How the mean motives I would make you think 
 Just mingle as is due with nobler aims. 
 The appetites I modestly allow 
 May influence me as being mortal still — 
 Do goad me, dri\ e me on, and fast supplant 
 My youth's desires. Yon are no stupid dupe : 
 You find me out ! Yes, I had sent for you 
 To palm these childish lies upon you, Festus I 
 Laugh — you shall lau^ at me ! 
 
 Fest. The past, then. Aureole, 
 
 Proves nothing ? Is our interchange of love 
 Yet to begin ? Have I to swear I mean 
 No flattery in this speech or that ? For you, 
 Whate'er you say, there is no degradation ; . 
 These low thoughts are no inmates of your mind, 
 Or wherefore this disorder ? You are vexed 
 As much by the intrusion of base views, 
 Familiar to your adversaries, as they 
 Were troubled should your qualities alight 
 Amid their murky souls ,: not otherwise, 
 A stray wolf which the winter forces down 
 From our bleak hills, suiHces to affright 
 A village in the vales — while foresters 
 bleep calm, though all night long the famished 
 
 troop 
 Snuff round and scratch against their crazy huts. 
 These evil thoughts are monsters, and will flee. 
 
 Par. May you be happy, Festus, my owB 
 friend ! 
 
 Fest. Nay, further ; the delights you fair 
 would think 
 The superseders of your nobler aims, 
 Though ordinary and harmless stimulants, 
 Will ne'er content you. . . . 
 
 Par. Hush 1 I once despised them 
 
 But that soon passes. We are high at first 
 In our demand, nor will abate a jot 
 Of toil's strict value ; but time passes o'er. 
 And humbler spirits accept what we refuse : 
 In short, when some such comfort is doled out 
 As these delights, we cannot long retain 
 Bitter contempt which urges us at first 
 To hurl it baok, but hug it to our breast 
 And thankfully retire. This life of mine 
 Must be lived out and a grave thorough]] 
 
 earned : 
 I am just fit for that and naught beside. 
 I told you once, I cannot now enjoy. 
 Unless I deem my knowledge gains through joy : 
 Nor can I know, but straight warm tears reveal 
 My need of linking also joy to knowledge : 
 So, on I drive, enjoying all I can. 
 And knowing all I can. I speak, of course. 
 Confusedly ; this wiU better explain — feel here ' 
 Quick beating, is it not ? — a fire of the heart 
 To work off some way, this as well as any. 
 So, Festus sees me fairly launched ; his calm 
 Compassionate look might have disturbed W^ 
 
 once, 
 But now, far from rejecting, I invite 
 What bids me press the closer, lay myself 
 
38 
 
 PARACELSUS 
 
 Open before him, and be soothed with pity ; 
 
 1 hope, if he command hope, and believe 
 
 As he directs me — satiating myself 
 
 With his enduring love. And Festus quits me 
 
 To give place to some credulous disciple ' 
 
 Who holds that God is wise, but Paracelsus 
 
 Has his peculiar merits : I suck in 
 
 That homage, chuckle o'er that admiration. 
 
 And then dismiss the fool ; for night is come, 
 
 And I betake myself to study again. 
 
 Till patient searchings after hidden lore 
 
 Half wring some bright truth from its prison ; 
 
 my frame 
 Trembles, my forehead's veins swell out, my 
 
 hair 
 Tingles for triumph. Slow and sure the mom 
 Shall break on my pent room and dwindling 
 
 lamp 
 And furnace dead, and scattered earths and 
 
 ores ; 
 When, with a failing heart and throbbing brow, 
 I must review my captured truth, sum up 
 Its value, trace what ends to what begins. 
 Its present power with its eventual bearings. 
 Latent affinities, the views it opens. 
 And its fuU length in perfecting my scheme. 
 I view it sternly circumscribed, cast down 
 From the high place my fond hopes yielded it. 
 Proved worthless — which, in getting, yet ha!d 
 
 cost 
 Another wrench to this fast-falling frame. 
 Then, quick, the cup to quaff, that chases sor- 
 row ! 
 I lapse back into youth, and take again 
 My fluttering pulse for evidence that God 
 Means good to me, will make my cause his own. 
 See ! i have cast off this remorseless care 
 Which clogged a spirit born to soar so free. 
 And my dim chamber has become a tent, 
 Festus is sitting by me, and his Michal . . . 
 Why do you start ? I say, she listening here, 
 (For yonder — Wiirzburg through the orchard- 
 bough !) 
 Motions as though such ardent words should 
 
 find 
 No echo in a maiden's quiet soul. 
 But her pure bosom heaves, her eyes fill fast 
 With tears, her sweet lips tremble all the while ! 
 Ha, ha ! 
 
 Fest. It seems, then, you expect to reap 
 No unreal joy from this your present course, 
 But rather . . . 
 
 Par. Death! To die! I owe that much 
 
 To what, at least, I was. I should be sad 
 To live contented after such a fall. 
 To thrive and fatten after sneh reverse ! 
 The whole plan is a makeshift, but will last 
 My time. 
 
 Fest. And you have never mused and said, 
 " I had a noble purpose, and the strength 
 To compass it ; but I have stopped half-way. 
 And wrongly given the first-fruits of my toil 
 To objects little worthy of the gift. 
 Why linger round them still ? why clench mv 
 
 fai>lt? 
 Why seek for consolation in defeat, 
 In vain endeavors to derive a beauty 
 From ugliness ? why seek to make the most 
 
 Of what no power can change, nor strive instead 
 With mighty effort to redeem the past 
 And, gathering up the treasures thus cast down, 
 To hold a stei^fast course till I arrive 
 At their fit destination and my own ? " 
 You have never pondered thus ? 
 
 Par. Have I, you ask ? 
 
 Often at midnight, when most fancies come. 
 Would some such airy project visit me : 
 But ever at the end ... or will you hear 
 The same thing in a tale, a parable ? 
 You and I, wandering over the world wide. 
 Chance to set foot upon a desert coast. 
 Just as we cry, " No human voice before 
 Broke the inveterate silence of these rocks ! " 
 — Their querulous echo startles us ; we turn : 
 What ravaged structure still looks o'er the sea ? 
 Some characters remain, too ! While we read. 
 The sharp salt wind, impatient for the last 
 Of even this record, wistfully comes and goes. 
 Or sings what we recover, mocking it. 
 This is the record ; and my voice, the wind's. 
 
 IHe siTigs. 
 Over the sea our galleys went. 
 With cleaving prows in order brave 
 To a speeding wind and a bounding wave 
 
 A gallant armament : 
 Each bark built out of a forest-tree 
 
 Left leafy and rough as fii'st it grew, 
 And nailed all over the gaping sides. 
 Within and without, with black bull-hides. 
 Seethed in fat and suppled in flame. 
 To bear the playful billows' game : 
 So, each good ship was rude to see, 
 Rude and bare to the outward view. 
 
 But eacli upbore a stately tent 
 Where cedar pales in scented row 
 Kept out the flakes of the dancing brine. 
 And an awning drooped the mast below. 
 In fold on fold of the purple fine. 
 That neither noontide nor starshine 
 Nor moonlight cold which maketh mad, 
 
 Might pierce the regal tenement. 
 When the sun dawned, oh, gay and glad 
 We set the sail and plied the oar ; 
 But when the night-wind blew like breath. 
 For joy of one day's voyage more, 
 We sang together on the wide sea. 
 Like men at peace on a peaceful shore ; 
 Each sail was looped to the wind so free. 
 Each helm made sure by the twilight star, 
 And in a sleep as calm as death, 
 We, the voyagers from afar. 
 
 Lay stretched along, each weary crew 
 In a circle round its wondrous tent 
 Whence gleamed soft light and curled rich 
 scent. 
 And with light and perfume, music too : 
 So the stars wheeled round, and the darkness 
 
 past. 
 And at morn we started beside the mast. 
 And still each ship was sailing fast. 
 
 Now, one morn, land appeared — a speck 
 Dim trembling betwixt sea and sky: 
 "Avoid it," cried our pilot, "cheek 
 
 The shout, restrain the eager -^ye ! " 
 But the heaving sea was black dehind 
 
PARACELSUS 
 
 39 
 
 For many a night and many a day, 
 And land, though but a rock, drew nigh ; 
 So, "we broke the cedar pales away. 
 Let the purple awning flap in the wind, 
 
 And a statue bright was on every deck I 
 We shouted, every man of us, 
 And steered right into the harbor thus, 
 With pomp and pseau glorious. 
 
 A hundred shapes of lucid stone ! 
 
 All day we built its shrine for each, 
 A shrine of rock for every one, 
 Nor paused till in the westering sun 
 
 We sat together on the beach 
 To sing because our task was done. 
 When lo ! what shouts and merry songs ! 
 What laughter all the distance stirs ! 
 A loaded raft with happy throngs 
 Of gentle islanders ! 
 "Our isles are just at hand," they cried, 
 
 " Like cloudlets faint in even sleeping. 
 Our temple-gates are opened wide. 
 
 Our olive-groves thick shade are keeping 
 For these majestic forms " — they cried. 
 Oh, then we awoke with sudden start 
 From our deep dream, and knew, too late. 
 How bare the rock, how desolate, 
 Which had received our precious freight : 
 
 Yet we called out — " Depart ! 
 Our gifts, once given, must here abide. 
 
 Our work is done ; we have no heart 
 To mar our work," — we cried. 
 
 Fest. In truth? 
 
 Par. Nay, wait : all this in tracings faint 
 
 On rugged stones strewn here and there, but 
 
 piled 
 In order once ; then follows — mark what fol- 
 lows ! 
 " The sad rhyme of the men who proudly clung 
 To their iirst fault, and withered in their pride." 
 
 Fest. Come back then. Aureole ; as you fear 
 God, come ! 
 This is foul sin ; come back ! Renounce the past. 
 Forswear the future ; look for joy no more. 
 But wait death's summons amid holy sights. 
 And trust me for the event — peace, if not joy. 
 Return with me to Einsiedeln, dear Aureole ! 
 
 Par. No way, no way ! it would not turn to 
 good. 
 A spotless child sleeps on the flowering moss — 
 'T is well for him ; but when a sinful man. 
 Envying such slumber, may desire to put 
 His guilt away, shall he return at ones 
 To rest by lying there ? Our sires knew well 
 (^ite of the grave discoveries of their sons) 
 The fitting course for such : dark cells, dim 
 
 lamps, 
 A stone floor one may writhe on like a worm : 
 No mossy pillow blue with violets ! 
 
 Fest. I see no symptom of these absolute 
 And tyrannous passions. You are calmer now. 
 This verse-making can purge you well enough 
 Without the terrible penance you describe. 
 You love me still : the Insts you fear will never 
 Outrage your friend. To Einsiedeln, once more ! 
 Say but the word ! 
 
 Par, No, no ; those lusts forbid : 
 
 They crouch, I know, cowering with half-shut 
 
 eye 
 Beside you ; 't is their nature. Thrust yourself 
 Between them and their prey; let some fool 
 
 style me 
 Or king or quack, it matters not — then try 
 Your wisdom, urge them to forego their treat 1 
 No, no ; learn better and look deeper, Festus ! 
 If you knew how a devil sneers within me 
 While you are talking now of this, now that. 
 As though we differed scarcely save in trifles ! 
 Fest. Do we so differ? True, change must 
 
 proceed. 
 Whether for good or iU ; keep from me, which ! 
 Do not confide all secrets : I was born 
 To hope, and you ... 
 Par. To trust ; you know the fruits ! 
 
 Fest. Listen : I do believe, what you call trust 
 Was self-delusion at the best : for, see ! 
 So long as God would kindly pioneer 
 A path for you, and screen you from the world. 
 Procure you full exemption from man's lot, 
 Man's common hopes and fears, on the mere 
 
 pretext 
 Of your engagement in his service — yield you 
 A limitless license, make you God, in fact. 
 And turn your slave — you were content to say 
 Most courtly praises ! What is it, at last. 
 But selfishness without example ? None 
 Could trace God's will so plain as you, while 
 
 yours 
 Remained implied in it ; but now you fail. 
 And we, who prate about that will, are fools ! 
 In short, God's service is established here 
 As he determines fit, and not your way. 
 And this you cannot brook. Such discontent 
 Is weak. Renounce all creatureship at once ! 
 Affirm an absolute right to have and use 
 Your energies ; as though the rivers should 
 
 say — 
 " We rush to the ocean ; what have we to do 
 With feeding streamlets, lingering in the vales. 
 Sleeping in lazy pools ? " Set up that plea. 
 That will be bold at least ! 
 
 Par. 'T is like enough. 
 
 The serviceable spirits are those, no doubt. 
 The East produces : lo, the master bids, — 
 They wake, raise terraces and garden-grounds 
 In one night's space ; and, this done, straight 
 
 begin 
 Another century's sleep, to the great praise 
 Of him that framed them wise and beautiful, 
 Till a lamp's rubbing or some chance akin. 
 Wake them again. 1 am of different mould. 
 I would have soothed my lord, and slaved for 
 
 him 
 And done him sendee past my narrow bond. 
 And thus I get rewarded for my pains ! 
 Beside, 't is vain to talk of forwarding 
 God's glory otherwise ; this is alone 
 The sphere of its increase, as far as men 
 Increase it ; why, then, look beyond this sphere ? 
 We are his glory ; and if we be glorious. 
 Is not the thing achieved ? 
 
 Fest. Shall one like me 
 
 Judge hearts like yours ? Though years have 
 
 changed you much. 
 And you have left your first love, and retain 
 
40 
 
 PARACELSUS 
 
 Its empty shade to veil your crooked ways, 
 Yet I still hold that you have honored God. 
 And who shall call your course without reward ? 
 For, wherefore this repining at defeat 
 Had triumph ne'er inured you to high hopes ? 
 I urge you to forsake the lite you curse, 
 And what success attends me ? — simply talk 
 Of passion, weakness and remorse ; in short, 
 Anything but the naked truth — you choose 
 This so-despised career, and cheaply hold 
 My happiness, or rather other men's. 
 Once more, return ! 
 
 Par. And quickly. John the thief 
 
 Has pilfered half my secrets by this time : 
 And we depart by daybreak. I am weary, 
 I know not how ; not even the wine-cup soothes 
 My brain to-night . . . 
 Do you not thoroughly despise me, Festus ? 
 No flattery ! One like you needs not be told 
 We live and breathe deceiving and deceived. 
 Do you not scorn me from your heart of hearts, 
 Me and my cant, each petty subterfuge, 
 My rhymes and all this frothy shower of words. 
 My glozing self-deceit, my outward crust 
 Of lies which wrap, as tetter, morphew, furfur 
 Wrap the sound flesh ? — so, see you flatter not 1 
 Even God flatters : but my friend , at least, 
 Is true, I would depart, secure henceforth 
 Against all further insult, hate and wrong 
 Fi'om puny foes ; my one friend's scorn shall 
 
 brand me : 
 No fear of sinking deeper ! 
 
 Fest. No, dear Aureole ! 
 
 No, no ; I came to counsel faithfully. 
 There are old rules, made long ere we were 
 
 born, 
 By which I judge you. I, so fallible, 
 So infinitely low beside your mighty 
 Majestic spirit ! — even I can see 
 You own some higher law than ours which call 
 Sin, what is no sin — weakness, what is strengrth. 
 But I have only these, such as they are, 
 To guide me ; and I blame you where they bid. 
 Only so long as blaniing promises 
 To win peace for your soul : the more, that 
 
 sorrow 
 Has fallen on me of late, and they have helped me 
 So that I faint not under my distress. 
 But wherefore should I scruple to avow 
 In spite of all, as brother judging brother, 
 Your fate is most inexplicable to me ? 
 And should you perish without recompense 
 And satisfaction yet — too hastily 
 I have relied on love : you may have sinned, 
 But you have loved. As a mere human mat- 
 ter — 
 As I would have God deal with fragile men 
 In the end — I say that you will triumph yet ! 
 Par. Have you felt sorrow, Festus ? — 't is 
 
 because 
 You love me. Sorrow, and sweet Michal yours ! 
 Well thought on : never let her know this last 
 Dull winding-up of all : these miscreants dared 
 Insult ]ne — me she loved : — so, grieve her not ! 
 Fest. Your ill success can little grieve her 
 
 now. 
 Par. Michal is dead I pray Christ we do not 
 
 craze I 
 
 Fest. Aureole, dear Aureole, look not on me 
 thus ! 
 Fool, fool! this is the heart grown sorrow- 
 proof — 
 I cannot bear those eyes. 
 
 Par, Nay, really dead ? 
 
 Fest. 'T is scarce a month. 
 
 Par. Stone dead ! — then you have laid her 
 Among the flowers ere this. Now, do you 
 
 know, 
 I can reveal a secret which shall comfort 
 Even you. I have no julep, as men think, 
 To cheat the grave ; but a far better secret. 
 Know, then, you did not ill to trust your love 
 To the cold earth : I have thought much of it : 
 For I believe we do not wholly die. 
 
 Fest.. Aureole ! 
 
 Par. Nay, do not laugh ; there is a reason 
 For what I say : I think the soul can never 
 Taste death. I am, just now, as you may see. 
 Very unfit to put so strange a thought 
 In an intelligible dress of words ; 
 But take it as my trust, she is not dead. 
 
 Fest. But not on this account alone? you 
 surely, 
 — AiMreole, you have believed this aU aloi^ ? 
 
 Par. And Michal sleeps among the roots 
 and dews, 
 While I am moved at Basel, and full of schemes 
 For Nuremberg, and hoping and despairing, 
 As though it mattered how the farce plays out, 
 So it be quickly played. Away, away 1 
 Have your will, rabble ! while we fight tJie 
 
 prize, 
 Troop you in safety to the snug back-seats 
 And leave a clear arena for the brave 
 About to perish for your sport ! — Behold ! 
 
 V. PARACELSUS ATTAINS 
 
 Scene, Salzburg : a cell in the Hospital of St. Sebastian. 
 1541. 
 
 Festus, Fabacelsits. 
 
 Fest. No change ! The weary night is well- 
 nigh spent. 
 The lamp bums low, and through the casement- 
 bars 
 Gray morning glimmers feebly : yet no change ! 
 Another night, and still no sigh has stirred 
 That fallen discolored mouth, no pang relit 
 Those fixed eyes, quenched by the decaying 
 
 body. 
 Like torch-flame choked in dust. While all 
 
 beside 
 Was breaking, to the last they held out bright. 
 As a stronghold where life intrenched itself ; 
 But they are dead now — very blind and dead : 
 He will drowse into death without a groan. 
 
 My Aureole — my foi^otten, ruined Aureole ! 
 The days are gone, are gone I How grand thou 
 
 wast I 
 And now not one of those who struck thee 
 
 down — 
 Poor glorious spirit — concerns him even to s+ay 
 
PARACELSUS 
 
 41 
 
 And satisfy himself his little hand 
 Gould turn God's image to a livid thing:. 
 
 Another night, and yet no change ! 'T is much 
 That I should sit by him, and bathe his brow. 
 And chafe his hands ; 't is much : but he will 
 
 sure 
 Know me, and look on me, and speak to me 
 Once more — but only once ! His hollow cheek 
 Looked all night long as though a creeping 
 
 laugh 
 At his own state were just about to break 
 From the dying man : my brain swam, my 
 
 throat swelled. 
 And yet I could not turn away. In truth, 
 They told me how, when first brought here, he 
 
 Resolved to live, to lose no faculty ; 
 Thus striving to keep up his shattered strength. 
 Until they bore him to this stifling cell : 
 When straight his features fell, an hour made 
 
 white 
 The flushed face, and relaxed the quivering 
 
 limb, 
 Only the eye remained intense awhile 
 As though it recognized the tomb-like place, 
 And then he lay as here he lies. 
 
 Ay, here ! 
 Here is earth's noblest, nobly garlanded — 
 Her bravest champion with his well-won 
 
 prize — 
 Her best achievement, her sublime amends 
 For countless generations fleeting fast 
 And followed by no trace ; — the creature-god 
 She instances when angels would dispute 
 The title "f her brood to rank with them. 
 Angels, this is our angel ! Those bright forms 
 We clothe with purple, crown and call to 
 
 thrones, 
 Are human, but not his ; those are but men 
 Whom other men press round and kneel before ; 
 Those palaces are dwelt in by mankind ; 
 Higher provision is for him you seek 
 Amid our pomps and glories ; see it here ! 
 Behold earth's paragon! Now, raise thee, 
 
 clay! 
 
 God ! Thou art love ! I build my faith on that. 
 Even as I watch beside thy tortured child 
 Unconscious whose hot tears fall fast by him. 
 So doth thy right hand guide us through the 
 
 world 
 Wherein we stumble. God ! what shall we say ? 
 How has he sinned ? How else should he have 
 
 done? 
 Surely he sought thy praise — thy praise, for all 
 He might be busied by the task so much 
 As half forget awhile its proper end. 
 Dost thou well. Lord ? Thou canst not but pre- 
 fer 
 That I should range myself upon his side — 
 How could he stop at every step to set 
 Thy glory forth ? Hadst thou but granted him 
 Success, thy honor would have crowned success, 
 A halo round a star. Or, say he erred, — 
 Save him, dear God ; it will be like thee : bathe 
 
 him 
 In light and life I Thou art not made like us ; 
 
 We should be wroth in such a case ; but thou 
 Forgivest— so, forgive these passionate thoughts 
 Which come unsought and will not pass away I 
 I know thee, who hast kept my path, and made 
 Light for me in the darkness, tempering sorrow 
 So tliat it reached me like a solemn joy ; 
 It were too strange that I should doubt thy love. 
 But what am I ? Thou madest him and knowest 
 How he was fashioned. I could never err 
 That way : the quiet place beside thy feet, 
 Reserved for me, was ever in my thoughts : 
 But he — thou shouldst have favored him as 
 well! 
 
 Ah 1 he wakens ! Aureole, I am here ! 't is 
 
 Festus ! 
 I cast away all wishes save one wish — 
 Let him but know me, only speak to me ! 
 He mutters ; louder and loudTer ; any other 
 Than I, with brain less laden, could collect 
 What he pours forth. Dear Aureole, do but 
 
 look! 
 Is it talking or singing, this he utters fast ? 
 Misery that he should fix me with his eye. 
 Quick talking to some other all the while 1 
 If he would husband this wild vehemence 
 Which frustrates its intent ! — I heard, I know 
 I heard my name amid those rapid words. 
 Oh, he will know me yet I Could I divert 
 This current, lead it somehow gently back 
 Into the charmels of the past ! — His eye 
 Brighter than ever ! It must recognize me I 
 
 I am Erasmus : I am here to pray 
 That Paracelsus use his skill for me. 
 The schools of Paris and of Padua send 
 These questions for your learning to resolve. 
 We are your students, noble master : leave 
 This wretched cell, what business have you 
 
 here? 
 Our class awaits you ; come to us once more ! 
 (O agony ! the utmost I can do 
 Touches him not ; how else arrest his ear ?) _ 
 I am commissioned ... I shall craze like him. 
 Better be mute and see what God shall send. 
 
 Par. Stay, stay with me ! 
 
 Fest. I will ; I am come here 
 
 To stay with you — Festus, you loved of old ; 
 Festus, you know, you must know ! 
 
 Par. Festus! Where's 
 
 Aprile, then ? Has he not chanted softly 
 The melodies I heard all night ? I could not 
 Get to him for a cold hand on ray breast. 
 But I made out his music well enough, 
 
 well enough ! If they have filled him full 
 With magical music, as they freight a star 
 With light, and have remitted all his sin. 
 They wiU forgive me too, I too shall know ! 
 
 Fest. Festus, your Festus ! 
 Par. Ask him if Aprile 
 
 Knows as he Loves — if I shall Love and Know ? 
 
 1 try ; but that cold hand, like lead — so cold 1 
 Fest. My hand, see ! 
 
 Par. Ah, the curse, Aprile, Aprile 1 
 
 We get so near — so very, very near ! 
 'T is an old tale ; Jove strikes the Titans down, 
 Not when they set about their mountain-piling 
 But when another rock would crown the work* 
 
42 
 
 PARACELSUS 
 
 And Phaeton — doubtless his first radiant plunge 
 Astonished mortals, though the gods were calm, 
 And Jove prepared his thunder : all old tales ! 
 Fest. And what are these to you ? 
 Par. Ay, fiends must laugh 
 
 So cruelly, so well ! most like 1 never 
 Could tread a single pleasure underfoot, 
 But they were grinning by my side, were chuck- 
 
 ling 
 To see me toil and drop away by fiakes ! 
 Hell-spawn ! I am glad, most glad, that thus I 
 
 fail! 
 Your cunning has o'ershot its aim. One year, 
 One month, perhaps, and I had served your 
 
 turn ! 
 You should have curbed your spite awhile. But 
 
 now. 
 Who will believe 't was you that held me back ? 
 Listen : there 's shame and hissing and con- 
 tempt. 
 And none but laughs who names me, none but 
 
 spits 
 Measureless scorn upon me, me alone, 
 The quack, the cheat, the liar, — all on me ! 
 And thus your famous plan to sink mankind 
 In silence and despair, by teaching them 
 One of their race had probed the inmost truth. 
 Had done all man could do, yet failed no less — 
 Your wise plan proves abortive. Men despair ? 
 Ha, ha ! why, they are hooting the empiric. 
 The ignorant and incapable fool who rushed 
 Madly upon a work beyond his wits : 
 Nor doubt they but the simplest of themselves 
 Could bring the matter to triumphant issiie. 
 So, pick and choose among them all, accursed ! 
 Try now, persuade some other to slave for you, 
 To ruin body and soul to work your ends 1 
 No, no ; I am the first and last, 1 think. 
 Fest. Dear friend, who are accursed? who 
 
 has done . . . 
 Par. What have I done ? Fiends dare ask 
 that ? or you. 
 Brave men? Oh, you can chime in boldly, 
 
 backed 
 By the others ! What had you to do, sage peers ? 
 Here stand my rivals ; Latin, Arab, Jew, 
 Greek, join dead hands against me : all I ask 
 Is, that the world enroll my name with theirs. 
 And even this poor privilege, it seems. 
 They range themselves, prepared to disallow. 
 Only observe ! why, fiends may learn from them ! 
 How they talk calmly of my throes, my fierce 
 Aspirings, terrible watehings, each one claiming 
 Its price of blood and brain ; how they dissect 
 And sneeringly disparage the few truths 
 Got at a life s cost ; they too hanging the while 
 About my neck, their lies misleading me 
 And their dead names browbeating me ! Gray 
 
 crew. 
 Yet steeped in fresh malevolence from hell, 
 Is there a reason for your hate ? My truths 
 Have shaken a little the palm about each prince ? 
 Just think, Aprile, all these leering dotards 
 Were bent on nothing less than to be crowned 
 As we 1 That yellow blear-eyed wretch in chief 
 To whom the rest cringe low with feigned re- 
 spect, 
 Galen of Pergamos and hell — nar speak 
 
 The tale, old man ! We met there face to face : 
 I said the crown should fall from thee. Once 
 
 more 
 We meet as in that ghastly vestibule : 
 Look to my brow ! Have I redeemed my pledge ? 
 
 Fesl. Peace, peace ; ah, see ! 
 
 Par. Oh, emptiness of fame 1 
 
 Persic Zoroaster, lord of stars ! 
 
 — Who said these old renowns, dead long ago, 
 Could make me overlook the living world 
 To gaze through gloom at where they stood, in- 
 deed, 
 But stand no longer ? What a warm light life 
 After the shade ! In truth, my delicate witch. 
 My serpent-queen, you did but well to hide 
 The .iuggles I had else detected. Fire 
 May well run harmless o'er a breast like yours | 
 The cave was not so darkened by the smoke 
 But that your white limbs dazzled me : oh, white. 
 And panting as they twinkled, wildly dancing I 
 
 1 cared not for your passionate gestures then. 
 But now I have forgotten the charm of charms. 
 The foolish knowledge which I came to seek. 
 While I remember that quaint dance ; and thus 
 I am come back, not for those mummeries, 
 But to love you, and to kiss your little feet 
 Soft as an ermine's winter coat ! 
 
 Fest. A light 
 
 Will struggle through these thronging words at 
 
 last, , 
 As in the angry and tumultuous West 
 A soft star trembles through the drifting clouds. 
 These are the strivings of a spirit which hates 
 So sad a vault should coop it, and calls up 
 The past to stand between it and its fate. 
 Were he at Einsiedeln — or Michal here ! 
 Par. Cruel ! I seek her now — 1 kneel — I 
 
 shriek — 
 I clasp her vesture — but she fades, stUl fades ; 
 And she is gone ; sweet human love is gone ! 
 'T is only when they spring to heaven that angels 
 Reveal themselves to you ; they sit all day 
 Beside you, and lie down at night by you 
 Who care not for their presence, muse or sleep. 
 And all at once they leave you, and you know 
 
 them ! 
 We are so fooled, so cheated ! A^Tiy, even now 
 I am not too secure against foul play ; 
 The shadows deepen and the walls contract : 
 No doubt some treachery is going on. 
 'T is very dusk. Where are we put, Aprile ? 
 Have they left us in the lurch ? This murky 
 
 loathsome 
 Death-trap, this slaughter-house, is not the hall 
 In the golden city ! Keep by me, Aprile ! 
 There is a hand groping amid the blackness 
 To catch us. Have the spidei^fingers got you, 
 Poet ? Hold on me for your life ! If once 
 They pull you!— Hold! 
 
 'T is but a dream — no more ! 
 I have you still ; the sun comes out again ; 
 Let us be happy : all will yet go well ! 
 Let us confer : is it not like, Aprile, 
 That spite of trouble, this ordeal passed. 
 The value of my labors ascertained. 
 Just as some stream foams long among the 
 
 rocks 
 But after glideth glassy to the sea, 
 
PARACELSUS 
 
 43 
 
 So, full content shall henceforth be my lot ? 
 What think you, poet ? Louder 1 Your dear 
 
 voice ■ i 
 
 Vibrates too like a harp-string. Do you ask 
 How could I still remain on earth, should God 
 Grant me the great approval which I seek ? 
 I, you, and God can comprehend each other, 
 Bat men would murmur, and with cause enough; 
 For when they saw me, stainless of all sin. 
 Preserved and sanctified by inward light, 
 They would complain that comfort, shut from 
 
 them, 
 I drank thus unespied ; that they live on, 
 Nor taste the quiet of a constant joy, 
 For ache and care and doubt and weariness, 
 While I am calm ; help being vouchsafed to me. 
 And hid from them. — 'Twere beat consider 
 
 that! 
 You reason well, Aprile ; but at least 
 Let me know this, and die ! Is this too much ? 
 I will learn this, if God so please, and die ! 
 
 If thou shalt please, dear God, if thou shalt 
 
 please ! 
 We are so weak, we know our motives least 
 In their confused beginning. If at first 
 I sought . . . but wherefore bare my heart to 
 
 thee? 
 I know thy mercy; and already thoughts 
 Flock fast about my soul to comfort it. 
 And intimate I cannot wholly fail. 
 For love and praise would clasp me willingly 
 Could I resolve to seek them. Thou art good. 
 And I should be content. Yet — yet first show 
 I have done wrong in darii^ I Rather give 
 The supernatural consciousness of strength 
 Which fed my youth ! Only one hour of that. 
 With thee to help — what should bar me 
 
 then! 
 
 Lost, lost ! Thus things are ordered here ! 
 
 God's creatures, 
 And yet he takes no pride in us ! — none, none ! 
 Truly there needs another life to come ! 
 If this be all — (I must tell Festus that) 
 And other life await us not — for one, 
 I say 'tis a poor cheat, a stupid bungle, 
 A wretched failure. I, for one, protest 
 Against it, and I hurl it back with scorn. 
 
 Well, onward though alone! Small time re- 
 mains, 
 And much to do : I must have fruit, must reap 
 *e™e profit from my toils. I doubt iqy body 
 WiU hardly serve me through ; while I have la- 
 bored 
 It has decayed ; and now that I demand 
 Its best assistance, it will crumble fast: 
 A sad thought, a sad fate ! How very full 
 Oi wormwood 'tis, that just at altar-service, 
 Ihe rapt hymn rising with the rolling smoke. 
 When glory dawns and all is at the best, 
 Ihe sacred fire may flicker and grow faint 
 And die for want of a wood-piler's help ! 
 Thus fades the flagging body, and the soul 
 Is pulled down in the overthrow. Well, well — 
 Let men catch every word, let them lose naught 
 Of what I say ; something may yet be done. 
 
 They are ruins I Trust me who am one of you ! 
 All ruins, glorious once, but lonely now. 
 It makes my heart sick to behold you crouch 
 Beside your desolate fane : the arches dim, 
 The crumbling columns grand against the moon. 
 Could I but rear them up once more — but that 
 May never be, so leave them ! Trust me, 
 
 friends. 
 Why should you linger here when I have built 
 A far resplendent temple, aU your own ? 
 Trust me, they are but ruins ! See, Aprile, 
 Men wUl not heed ! Yet were I not prepared 
 With better refuge for them, congnie of mine 
 Should ne'er reveal how blank their dwelling is : 
 I would sit down in silence with the rest. 
 
 Ha, what ? you spit at me, you grin and shriek 
 Contempt into my ear — my ear which drank 
 God's accents once ? you curse me ? Why men, 
 
 men, 
 I am not formed for it ! Those hideous eyes 
 Will be before me sleeping, waking, praying. 
 They will not let me even die. Spare, spare me. 
 Sinning or no, forget that, only spare me 
 The horrible scorn ! You thought I could sup- 
 port it. 
 But now you see what silly fragile creature 
 Cowers thus. I am not good nor bad enough. 
 Not Christ nor Cain, yet even Cain was saved 
 From Hate like this. Let me but totter back I 
 Perhaps I shall elude those jeei-s which creep 
 Into my very brain, and shut these scorched 
 Eyelids and keep those mocking faces out. 
 
 Listen, Aprile ! I am very calm : 
 Be not deceived, there is no passion here 
 Where the blood leaps like an imprisoned thing ; 
 I am calm : I will exterminate the race ! 
 Enough of that : 't is said and it shall be. 
 And now be merry : safe and sound am I 
 Wlio broke through their best ranks to get at 
 
 you. 
 And such a havoc, such a rout, Aprile ! 
 Fest. Have you no thought, no memory for 
 
 me. 
 Aureole ? I am so wretched — my pure Michal 
 Is gone, and you alone are left me now, 
 And even you forget me. Take my hand — 
 Lean on niethus. Do you not know me, Au- 
 reole ? 
 Par. Festns, my own friend, you are come at 
 
 last? 
 As you say, 't is an awful enterprise ; 
 But yon believ«T shall go through with it : 
 'Tis like you, and I thank you. Thank him 
 
 for me, 
 Dear Michal ! See how bright St. Saviour's spire 
 Flames in the sunset ; all its figures quaint 
 Gay in the glancing light : you might conceive 
 
 them 
 A troop of yellow-vested white-haired Jews 
 Boimd for their own land where redemption 
 dawns. 
 Fest. Not that blest time — not our youth's 
 
 time, dear God ! 
 Par. Ha — stay ! true, I forget — all is done 
 
 since, 
 And he is come to judge me. How he speaks. 
 
44 
 
 PARACELSUS 
 
 How calm, how well ! yes, it is true, all true ; 
 
 All quackery ; all deceit ; myself can laugh 
 
 The hrst at it, if you desire : but still 
 
 You know the obstacles which taught me tricks 
 
 So foreigfn to my nature — envy and hate, 
 
 Blind opposition, brutal prejudice. 
 
 Bald ignorance — what wonder if 1 sunk 
 
 To humor men the way they most approved ? 
 
 My cheats were never palmed on such as you. 
 
 Dear Festus ! I will kneel if you require me, 
 
 Impart the meagre knowledge I possess, 
 
 Explain its bounded nature, and avow 
 
 My insufficiency — whate'er you will : 
 
 I give the fight up : let there be an end, 
 
 A privacy, an obscure nook for me. 
 
 I want to be forgotten even by God. 
 
 But if that cannot be, dear Festus, lay me. 
 
 When I shaU die, within some narrow grave. 
 
 Not by itself — for that would be too proud — 
 
 But where such graves are thickest ; let it look 
 
 Nowise distinguished from the hillocks round, 
 
 So that the peasant at his brother's bed 
 
 May tread upon my own and know it not ; 
 
 And we shall all be equal at the last. 
 
 Or classed according to life's natural ranks. 
 
 Fathers, sons, brothers, friends — not rich, nor 
 
 wise. 
 Nor gifted : lay me thus, then say, " He lived 
 Too much advanced before his brother men ; 
 They kept him still in front : 't was for their 
 
 good. 
 But yet a dangerous station. It were strange 
 That he should tell God he had never ranked 
 With men : so, here at least he is a man." 
 JFest. That God shall take thee to his breast, 
 
 dear spirit, 
 Unto his breast, be sure ! and here on earth 
 Shall splendor sit upon thy name forever. 
 Sun ! all the heaven is glad for thee : what care 
 If lower mountains light their snowy phares 
 At thine effulgence, yet acknowledge not 
 The source of day ? Their theft shall be their 
 
 bale: 
 For after-ages shall retrack thy beams. 
 And put aside the crowd of busy ones 
 And worship thee alone — the uoaster-mind. 
 The thinker, the explorer, the creator ! 
 Then, who should sneer at the convulsive throes 
 With which thy deeds were bom, would scorn 
 
 as well 
 The sheet of winding subterraneous fire 
 Which, pent and writhing, sends no less at last 
 Huge islands np amid tho simmering sea. 
 Behold thy might in me ! thou 'hast infused 
 Thy soul in mine ; and I am grand jia thou. 
 Seeing I comprehend thee — I so simple. 
 Thou so august. I recognize thee first ; 
 I saw thee rise, I watched thee early and late, 
 And though no glance reveal thou dost accept 
 My homage — thus no less I proffer it. 
 And bid thee enter gloriously thy rest. 
 Par. Festus ! 
 
 Fest. I am for noble Aureole, God ! 
 
 I am upon his side, come weal or woe. 
 His portion shall be mine. He has done well. 
 I would have sinned, had I been strong enough. 
 As he has sinned. Reward him or I waive 
 Reward 1 If thou canst fioid no place for him. 
 
 He shall be king elsewhere, and I will be 
 His slave forever. There are two of us. 
 Far. Dear Festus ! 
 
 Fest. Here, dear Aureole ! ever by you ! 
 
 Par. Nay, speak on, or I dream again. 
 Speak on ! 
 Some story, anything — only your voice. 
 I shall dream else. Speak on I ay, leaning so ! 
 Fest. Thxis the Mayne glideth 
 Where my Love abideth. ■ 
 Sleep 's no softer : it proceeds 
 On through lawns, on through meads. 
 On and on, whate er befall. 
 Meandering and musical. 
 Though the niggard pasturage 
 Bears not on its shaven ledge 
 Aught but weeds and waving grasses 
 To view the river as it passes. 
 Save here and there a scanty patch 
 Of primroses too faint to catch 
 A weary bee. 
 Far. More, more ; say on ! 
 Fest. And scarce it pushes 
 
 Its gentle way through strangling rushes 
 Where the glossy kingfisher 
 Flutters when noon-heats are near. 
 Glad the shelving banks to shun. 
 Red and steaming in the sun. 
 Where the shrew-mouse with pale throat 
 Burrows, and the speckled stoat ; 
 Where the quick sandpipers flit 
 In and out the marl and grit 
 That seems to breed them, brown as they ; 
 Naught disturbs its quiet way. 
 Save some lazy stork that springs. 
 Trailing it with legs and wings. 
 Whom the shy fox from the hill 
 Rouses, creep he ne'er so still. 
 Par. My heart ! they loose my heart, those 
 simple words ; 
 Its darkness passes, which naught else could 
 
 touch : 
 Like some dark snake that force may not expel, 
 Which glideth out to music sweet and low. 
 What were you doing when your voice broke 
 
 through 
 A chaos of ugly images ? You, indeed ! 
 Are you alone here ? 
 
 Fest. All alone: you know me? 
 
 This ceU ? 
 
 Par. An unexceptionable vault : 
 
 Good brick and stone: the bats kepc out, the 
 
 rats 
 Kept in : a snug nook : how should I mistake it ? 
 Fest. But wherefore am I here ? 
 Par. Ah, well remembered i 
 
 Why, for a purpose — for a purpose, Festus ! 
 'T is like me : here I trifle while time fleets. 
 And this occasion, lost, will ne'er return. 
 You are here to be instructed. I will tell 
 God's message : but I have so much to say, 
 I fear to leave half out. AU is confused 
 No doubt ; but doubtless you will learn in time. 
 He would not else have brought you here : no 
 
 doubt 
 I shall see clearer soon. 
 
 Fest. Tell me but this — 
 
 Yoii are not in despair ? 
 
PARACELSUS 
 
 45 
 
 Par. I ? and for what ? 
 
 Fest. Alas, alas ! he knows not, uj I feared t 
 
 Par. What is it you would ask me with that 
 earnest 
 Dear searching face ? 
 
 Fest. How feel yon. Aureole ? 
 
 Par. WeU: 
 
 Well. 'T is a strange thing; I am dying, Festns, 
 And now that fast the stoiin of life subsides, 
 I first perceive how great the whirl has been, 
 I was calm then, who am so dizzy now — 
 Calm in the thick of the tempest, but no less 
 A partner of its motion and mixed up 
 With its career. The hurricane is spent, 
 Ajid the good boat speeds through the brighten- 
 ing weather ; 
 But is ic earth or sea that heaves below ? 
 The gulf roUs like a meadow-swell, o'erstrewn 
 With ravaged boughs and remnants of the shore ; 
 And now some islet, loosened from the land. 
 Swims past with all its trees, sailing to ocean ; 
 And now the air is full of uptorn canes. 
 Light strippings from the fan-trees, tamarisks 
 Unrooted, with their birds still clinging to them, 
 All high in the wind. Even so my varied life 
 Drifts by me ; I am young, old, happy, sad, 
 Hoping, desponding, acting, taking rest. 
 And all at once : that is, those past conditions 
 Float back at once on me. If I select 
 Some special epoch from the crowd, 't is but 
 To will, and straight the rest dissolve away. 
 And only that particular state is present 
 With all its long^forgotten circumstance 
 Distinct and vivid as at first — myself 
 A careless looker-on and nothing more. 
 Indifferent and amused, but nothing more. 
 And this is death : I understand it all. 
 New being waits me ; new perceptions must 
 Be born in me before I plunge therein ; 
 Which last is Death's affair ; and while I speak. 
 Minute by minute he is filling me 
 With power ; and while my foot is on the thresh- 
 old 
 Of boundless life — the doors unopened yet. 
 All preparations not complete within — 
 I turn new knowledge upon old events. 
 And the effect is . . . but I must not tell ; 
 It is not lawful. Your own turn will come 
 One day. Wait, Festus ! You wiU die like me. 
 
 Fest. 'Tis of that past life that I burn to 
 hear. 
 
 Par. You wonder it engages me just now ? 
 In truth, I wonder too. What 's life to me ? 
 Where'er I look is'fire, where'er I listen 
 Music, and where I tend bliss evermore. 
 Yet how can I refrain ? 'T is a refined 
 Delight to view those chances, — one last view. 
 I am so near the perils I escape, 
 That I must play with them and turn them over. 
 To feel how icully they are past and gone. 
 Still, it is like, some further cause exists 
 For this peculiar mood -^ some hidden purpose i 
 Did I not tell you something of it, Festus ? 
 I had it fast, but it has somehow slipt 
 Away from me ; it will return anonl 
 
 Fest. (Indeed his cheek seems young again, 
 his voice 
 Complete with its old tones : that little laugh 
 
 Concluding every phrase, with upturned eye. 
 As though one stooped above his head to whom 
 He looked for confirmation and approval, 
 Where was it gone so long, so well preserved ? 
 Then, the forefinger pointing as he speaks. 
 Like one who traces m an open book 
 The matter he declares ; 't is many a year 
 Since I remarked it last : and this in him. 
 But now a ghastly wreck I; 
 
 And can it be. 
 Dear Aureole, you have then found out at last 
 That worldly things are utter vanity ? 
 That man is made for weakness, and should wait 
 In patient ignorance, till God appoint . . . 
 
 Par. Ha, the purpose : the true purpose : 
 that is it ! 
 How could I fail to apprehend ! You here, 
 1 thus ! But no more trifling : I see all, 
 I know all : my last mission shall be done 
 If strength suffice. No trifling ! Stay ; this 
 
 posture 
 Hardly befits one thus about to speak : 
 I will arise. 
 
 Fest. Nay, Aureole, are you wild ? 
 
 You cannot leave your couch. 
 
 Par. No help ; no help ; 
 
 Not even your hand. So ! there, I stand once 
 
 more ! 
 Speak from a couch ? I never lectured thus. 
 My gown — the scarlet lined with fur ; now put 
 The chain about my neck ; ray signet-ring 
 Is still upon my hand, I think — even so ; 
 Last, my good sword ; ah, trusty Azoth, leapest 
 Beneath thy master's grasp for the last time ? 
 This couch shall be my throne ; I bid these walls 
 Be consecrate, this wretched cell become 
 A shxine, for here God speaks to men through 
 
 me. 
 Now, Festus, I am ready to begin. 
 
 Fest. I am dumb with wonder. 
 
 Par. Listen, therefore, Festus ! 
 
 There will be time enough, but none to spare. 
 I must content myself with telling only 
 The most important paints. You doubtless feel 
 That I am happy, Festus ; very ha^py. 
 
 Fest, 'T is no delusion which uplifts him thus I 
 Then you are pardoned. Aureole, all your sin ? 
 
 Par. Ay, pardoned ; yet why pardoned ? 
 
 Fest. 'Tis God's praise 
 
 That man is bound to seek, and you . . . 
 
 Par. Have lived ! 
 
 We have to live alone to set forth well 
 God's praise. 'Tis true, I sinned much, as I 
 
 thought. 
 And in effect need mercy, for ] strove 
 To do that very thing ; but, do your best 
 Or worst, praise rises, and will rise forever. 
 Pardon from him, because of praise denied — 
 Who calls me to himself to exalt himself ? 
 He might laugh as I laugh ! 
 
 Fest. But all comes 
 
 To the same thing. 'Tis fruitless for man- 
 kind 
 To fret themselves with what concerns them not ; 
 They are no use that way : they should lie down 
 Content as God has made them, nor go mad 
 In thriveless cares to better what is ill. 
 
 Par. No, no ; mistake me not ; let me not work 
 
46 
 
 PARACELSUS 
 
 More harm than I have worked ! This is my 
 
 case : 
 If I go joyous hack to God, yet bring 
 No offei'ing, if I render up my soul 
 Without the fruits it was ordained to hear, 
 If I appear the hetter to love God 
 For sin, as one who has no claim on him, 
 Be not deceived ! It may be surely thus 
 With me, while higher prizes still await 
 The mortal persevering to the end. 
 Beside I am not all so valueless : 
 I have been something, though too soon I left 
 Following the instincts of that happy time. 
 
 Fest. What happy +lme? For God's sake, 
 for man's sake, 
 What time was happy ? All I hope to know 
 That answer will decide. What happy time ? 
 
 Par. When but the time I vowed myself to 
 man? 
 
 Fest. Great God, thy judgments are inscruta- 
 ble ! 
 
 Par. Yes, it was in me ; I was born for it — 
 I, Paracelsus : it was mine by right. 
 Doubtless a searching and impetuous soul 
 Might learn from its own motions that some task 
 Like this awaited it about the world ; 
 Might seek somewhere in this blank life of ours 
 For fit delights to stay its longings vast ; 
 And, grappling Nature, so prevail on her 
 To fill the creature full she dared thus frame 
 Hungry for joy ; and, bravely tyrannous. 
 Grow in demand, still craving more and more, 
 And make each joy conceded prove a pledge 
 Of other joy to follow — bating naught 
 Of L^ desires, still seizing fresh pretence 
 To turn the knowledge and the rapture wrung 
 As an extreme, last boon, from destiny, 
 Into occasion for new covetings. 
 New strifes, new triumphs: — doubtless a strong 
 
 soul. 
 Alone, unaided might attain to this. 
 So glorious is our nature, so august 
 Man's inborn uninstructed impulses, 
 His naked spirit so majestical ! 
 But this was born in me j I was made so ; 
 Thus much time saved : the feverish appetites. 
 The tumult of unproved desire, the unaimed 
 Uncertain yearnings, aspirations blind. 
 Distrust, mistake, and all that ends in tears 
 Were saved me ; thus I entered on my course. 
 You may be sure I was not all exempt 
 From human trouble ; just so much of doubt 
 As bade me plant a surer foot upon 
 The sun-road, kept my eye unruined 'mid 
 The fierce and flashing splendor, set my heart 
 Trembling so much as warned me I stood there 
 On sufferance — not to idly gaze, but east 
 Light on a darkling race ; save for that doubt, 
 I stood at first where all aspire at last 
 To stand : the secret of the world was mine. 
 I knew, I felt, (perception unexpressed, 
 Uncomprehended by our narrow thought. 
 But somehow felt and known in every shift 
 And change in the spirit, — nay, in every pore 
 Of the bodj, even,) — what God is, what we are. 
 What life is — how God tastes an infinite joy 
 In infinite ways — one everlasting bliss, 
 From whom all being emanates, all power 
 
 Proceeds ; in whom is life forevermore. 
 Yet whom existence in its lowest form 
 Includes ; where dwells enjoyment there is he : 
 With still a flying point of bliss remote, 
 A happiness in store afar, a sphei-e 
 Of distant glory in full view ; thus climbs 
 Pleasure its heights forever and forever. 
 The centre-fire heaves underneath the earth, 
 And the earth chaises like a human face ; 
 The molten ore burats up among the rocks. 
 Winds into the stone's heart, outbranches bright 
 In hidden mines, spots barren river-beds. 
 Crumbles into fine sand where sunbeams bask — 
 God joys therein. The wroth sea's waves are 
 
 edged 
 With foam, white as the bitten lip of hate, 
 When, in the solitary waste, strange groups 
 Of young voleanos come up, cyclops-like, 
 Staring together with their eyes on flame — 
 God tastes a pleasure in their uncouth pride. 
 Then all is still ; earth is a wintry clod : 
 But spring-wind, like a dancing psaltress, passes 
 Over its breast to waken it, rare verdure 
 Buds tenderly upon rough banks, between 
 The withered tree-roots and the cracks of frost, 
 Like a smile striving with a wrinkled face ; 
 The grass gi'ows bright, the boughs are swoln 
 
 with blooms 
 Like chrysalids impatient for the air. 
 The shining dorrs are busy, beetles run 
 Along the furrows, ants make their ado ; 
 Above, birds fly in merry flocks, the lark 
 Soars up and up, shivering for very joy ; 
 Afar the ocean sleeps ; white fishing-gulls 
 Flit where the strand is piu*ple with iis tribe 
 Of nested limpets ; savage creatures seek 
 Their loves in wood and plain — and God renews 
 His ancient rapture. Thus he dwells in all. 
 From life's minute beginnings, up at last 
 To man — the consummation of this scheme 
 Of being, the completion of this sphere 
 Of life : whose attributes had here and there 
 Been scattered o'er the visible world before. 
 Asking to be combined, dim fragments meant 
 To be united in some wondrous whole. 
 Imperfect qualities throughout creation. 
 Suggesting some one creature yet to make, 
 Some point where all those scattered rays should 
 
 meet 
 Convergent in the faculties of man. 
 Power — neither put forth blindly, nor con- 
 trolled 
 Calmly by perfect knowledge ; to be used 
 At risk, inspired or checked by hope and fear : 
 Knowledge — not intuition, but the slow 
 Uncertain fruit of an enliancing toil. 
 Strengthened by love : love — not serenely pure, 
 But strong from weakness, like a chance-sown 
 
 plant 
 Which, cast on stubborn soil, puts forth changed 
 
 buds 
 And softer stains, unknown in happier climes ; 
 Love which endures and doubts and is oppressed 
 And cherished, suffering much and much sus- 
 tained, 
 And blind, oft-failing, yet believing love, 
 A half -enlightened, often-checkered trust ; — 
 Hints and previsions of which faculties, 
 
PARACELSUS 
 
 47 
 
 Ai'e strewn confusedly everywhere about 
 The inferior natures, and all lead up higher, 
 All shape out dimly the superior race, 
 The heir of hopes too fair to turn out false, 
 And man aj^pears at last. So far the seal 
 Is put on lite ; one stage of bein|; complete, 
 One scheme wound up : and from the grand 
 
 result 
 A supplementary re£ux of light, 
 Illustrates all the inferior grades, explains 
 Each back step in the circle. Not alone 
 For their possessor dawn those qualities. 
 But the new glory mixes with the heaven 
 And earth ; man, once descried, imprints forever 
 His presence on all lifeless things ; the winds 
 Are henceforth voices, wailing or a shout, 
 A querulous mutter or a quick gay laugh. 
 Never a senseless gust now man is born. 
 The herded pines commune and have deep 
 
 thought, 
 A secret they assemble to discuss 
 When the sun drops behind their trunks which 
 
 glare 
 Like grates of hell : the peerless cup afloat 
 Of the lake-lily is an urn, some nymph 
 Swims bearing high above her head : no bird 
 Whistles unseen, but through the gaps above 
 That let light in upon the gloomy woods, 
 A shape peeps from the breezy forest-top. 
 Arch with small puckered mouth and mocking 
 
 eye. 
 The mui'n has enterprise, deep quiet droops 
 With evening, triumph takes the sunset hour, 
 Voluptuous transport ripens with the corn 
 Beneath a warm moon like a happy face : 
 — And this to fill us with regard for man. 
 With apprehension of his passing worth. 
 Desire to work his proper nature out, 
 And ascertain his rank and final place. 
 For these things tend still upward, progress is 
 The law of life, man is not Man as yet. 
 Nor shall I deem his object served, his end 
 Attained, his genuine strength put fairly forth. 
 While only here and there a star dispels 
 The darkness, here and there a tOAvering mind 
 O'erlooks its prostrate fellows : when the host 
 Is out at once to the despair of night. 
 When all mankind alike is perfected. 
 Equal in full-blown powers — then, not till then, 
 I say, begins man's general infancy. 
 For wherefore make account of feverish starts 
 Of restless members of a dormant whole, 
 Impatient nerves which quiver while the body 
 Slumbers as in a grave ? Oh, long ago 
 The brow was twitched, the tremulous lids 
 
 astir. 
 The peaceful mouth disturbed; half uttered 
 
 speech 
 Ruffled the lip, and then the teeth were set, 
 The breath drawn sharp, the strong right-hand 
 
 clenched stronger. 
 As it would pluck a lion by the jaw ; 
 The glorious creature laughed out even in 
 
 sleep ! 
 But when full roused, each giant-limb awake. 
 Each sinew strung, the great heart pulsing fast. 
 He shall start up and stand on his own earth. 
 Then shall his long triumphant march begin. 
 
 Thence shall his being date, — thus wholly 
 
 roused. 
 What he achieves shall be set down to him. 
 When all the race is perfected alike 
 As man, that is ; all tended to mankind. 
 And, man produced, all has its end thus far : 
 But in completed man begins anew 
 A tendency to God. Prognostics told 
 Man's near approach ; so in man's self arise 
 August anticipations, symbols, types 
 Of a dim splendor ever on before 
 In that eternal circle life pursues. 
 For men begin to pass their nature's bound. 
 And find new hopes and cares which fast sup- 
 plant 
 Their proper joys and griefs ; they grow too 
 
 great 
 For narrow creeds of right and wrong, which 
 
 fade 
 Before the unmeasured thirst for good : while 
 
 peace 
 Rises within them ever more and more. 
 Such men are even now upon the earth. 
 Serene amid the half-formed creatures round 
 Who should be saved by them and joined with 
 
 them. 
 Such was my task, and I was bom to it — 
 Free, as I said but now, from much that chains 
 Spirits, high-dowered but limited and vexed 
 By a divided and delusive aim, 
 A shadow mocking a reality 
 Whose truth avails not wholly to disperse 
 "The flitting mimic called up by itself. 
 And so remains perplexed and nigh put out 
 By its fantastic fellow's wavering gleam. 
 I, from the first, was never cheated thus ; 
 I never fashioned out a fancied good 
 Distinct from man's ; a service to be done, 
 A glory to be ministered unto 
 With powers put forth at man's expense, with- 
 drawn 
 From laboring in his behalf ; a strength 
 Denied that might avail him. 1 cared not 
 Lest his success ran counter to success 
 Elsewhere : for God is glorified in man. 
 And to man's glory vowed I soul and limb. 
 Yet, constituted thus, and thus endowed, 
 I failed : I gazed on power till I grew blind. 
 Power ; I could not take my eyes from that : 
 That only, I thought, should be preserved, in- 
 creased 
 At any risk, displayed, struck out at once — 
 The sign and note and character of man. 
 I saw no use in the past : only a scene 
 Of degradation, ugliness and tears, 
 The record of disgraces best forgotten, 
 A sullen page in human chronicles 
 Fit to erase. I saw no cause why man 
 Should not stand all-sufficient even now. 
 Or why his annals should be forced to tell 
 That once the tide of light, about to break 
 Upon the world, was sealed within its spring : 
 I would have had one day, one moment's space. 
 Change man's condition, push each slumbering 
 
 claim 
 Of mastery o'er the elemental world 
 At once to full maturity, then roll 
 Oblivion o'er the work, and hide from man 
 
48 
 
 PARACELSUS 
 
 What night had ushered mom. Not so, dear 
 
 chUd 
 Of after-days, wilt thou reject the past 
 Big with deep warnings of the proper tenure 
 By which thou hast the earth : for thee the 
 
 present 
 Shall have distinct and trembling beauty, seen 
 Beside that past's own shade when, in relief. 
 Its brightness shall stand out : nor yet on thee 
 Shall burst the future, as successive zones 
 Of several wonder open on some spirit 
 Flying secure and glad from heaven to heaven : 
 But thou shalt painfully attain to joy, 
 While hope and fear and love shall keep thee 
 
 man! 
 All this was liid from me : as one by one 
 My dreams grew dim, my wide aims circum- 
 scribed. 
 As actual good within my reach decreased, 
 While obstacles sprung up this way and that 
 To keep me from effecting half the sum. 
 Small as it proved ; as objects, mean within 
 The primal aggregate, seemed, even the least. 
 Itself a match for my concentred strength — 
 What wonder if I saw no way to shun 
 Despair ? The power I sought for man, seemed 
 
 God's. 
 In this conjuncture, as I prayed to die, 
 A strange adventure made me know, one sin 
 Had spotted my career from its uprise ; 
 I saw Aprile — my Aprile there ! 
 And as the poor melodious wretch disburdened 
 His heart, and moaned his weakness in my ear, 
 I learned my own deep error ; love's undoing 
 Taught me the worth of love in man's estate. 
 And what proportion love should hold with 
 
 power 
 In his right constitution ; love preceding 
 Power, and with much power, always much 
 
 more love ; 
 Love still too straitened in his present means, 
 And earnest for new power to set love free. 
 I learned this, and supposed the whole was 
 
 learned : 
 And thus, when men received with stupid won- 
 der 
 My first revealings, would have worshipped me. 
 And I despised and loathed their proffered 
 praise — 
 
 When, with awakened eyes, they took revenge 
 
 For past credulity in casting shame 
 
 On my real knowledge, and I hated them — 
 
 It was not strange I saw no good in man, 
 
 To overbalance all the wear and waste 
 
 Of faculties, displayed in vain, but bom 
 
 To prosper in some better sphere : and why ? 
 
 In my own heart love had not been made wise 
 
 To trace love's faint beginnings in mankind, 
 
 To know even hate is but a mask of love's, 
 
 To see a good in evil, and a hope , 
 
 In ill-success ; to sj'mpathize, be proud 
 
 Of their half-reasons, faint aspirings, dim 
 
 Struggles for truth, their poorest fallacies. 
 
 Their prejudice and fears and cares and doubts ; 
 
 All with a touch of nobleness, despite 
 
 Their error, upward tending all though weak, 
 
 Like plants in mines which never saw the sun. 
 
 But dream of . him, and guess where he may 
 
 be. 
 And do their best to climb and get to him. 
 All this I knew not, and I failed. Let men 
 Regard me, and the poet dead long ago 
 Who loved too rashly ; and shape forth a third 
 And better-tempered spirit, warned by both ; 
 As from the over-radiant star too mad 
 To drink the life-springs, beamless thence it- 
 self— 
 And the dark orb which borders the abyss. 
 Ingulfed in icy night, — might have its course, 
 A temperate and equidistant world. 
 Meanwhile, I have done well, though not all 
 
 well. 
 As yet men cannot do without contempt ; 
 'T is for their good, and therefore fit awhile 
 That they reject the weak, and scorn the false, 
 Rather than praise the strong and true, in me : 
 But after, they will know me. If I stoop 
 Into a dark tremendous sea of cloud, 
 It is but for a time ; I press God's lamp 
 Close to my breast ; its splendor, soon or late, 
 Will pierce the gloom : I shall emei'ge one day. 
 Yon understand me ? I have said enough ! 
 
 Fest. Now die, dear Aureole ! 
 
 Par. Festus, let my hand — 
 
 This hand, lie in your own, my own true friend ! 
 Aprile ! Hand in hand with you, Aprile ! 
 
 Fest. And this was Paracelsus 1 
 
STRAFFORD 
 
 49 
 
 STRAFFORD 
 
 A TRAGEDY 
 
 DEDICATED, IN ALL AFFECTIONATE ADMIRATION, 
 TO 
 
 WILLIAM C. MACREADY 
 London, April 23, 1837 
 
 Paracelsus found an enthusiastic reader in 
 the actor Macready, who begged Browning to 
 ■write him a play, even suggesting the subject 
 to him, which did not awaken the poet's 
 interest. More than a year passed, when the 
 two met at a supper given by Macready after 
 the successful presentation of Talfourd's Ion. 
 As the guests were leaving, Macready said to 
 Browning ; " Write a play. Browning, and 
 keep me from going to America. " " Shall it be 
 historical and English ? " replied Browning. 
 " What do yon say to a drama on Strafford ? " 
 and the poet now had his subject. His choice 
 is readily explained by the fact that he was at 
 this time helping his friend John Forster with 
 his Life of Strafford contained in Lives of Emi- 
 nent British Statesmen. Indeed, Mr. Fumivall 
 says without hesitation that the agreement of 
 the Strafford of the play with the Strafford of 
 Forster's biography is due to the fact that 
 Browning wrote the whole of the Life of Straf- 
 ford after the first seven paragraphs. 
 
 When the play was rehearsing Browning 
 gave Macready a lUt which he had composed 
 for the children's song in Act V. It was not 
 used, because the two children who were to 
 sing wished a more pretentious song. The lilt 
 which Browning composed was purposely no 
 more than a crooning measure. He afterward 
 gave it to Miss Hickey for her special edition 
 of Strafford, and it is reproduced here in its 
 place. The following is Browning's preface to 
 the first edition : — 
 
 "I had for some time been engaged in a 
 Poem of a very different nature, when induced 
 
 to make the present attempt; and am not 
 without apprehension that my eagerness to 
 freshen a jaded mind, by diverting it to the 
 healthy natures of a grand epoch, may have 
 operated unfavorably on the represented play, 
 which is one of Action in Character, rather 
 than Character in Action. To remedy this, in 
 some degree, considerable curtailment will be 
 necessary, and, in a few instances, the supply- 
 ing details not required, I suppose, by the 
 mere reader. While a trifling success would 
 much gratify, failure wUl not wholly discour- 
 age me from another effort ; experience is to 
 come ; and earnest endeavor may yet remove- 
 many disadvantages, 
 
 " The portraits are, I think, faithful ; and 
 I am exceedingly fortunate in being able, 
 in proof of this, to refer to the subtle and 
 eloquent exposition of the characters of Eliot 
 and Strafford, in the Zdves of Eminent British 
 Statesmen, now in the course of publication in 
 Lardner's Cyclopedia, by a writer [John Fors- 
 ter] whom I am proud to call my friend ; and 
 whose biographies of Hampden, Pyra, and 
 Vane, will, I am sure, fitly Ulnstrate the pres- 
 ent year — the Second Centenary of the Trial 
 concerning Ship-Money. My Carlisle, however, 
 is purely imaginary: I at first sketched her 
 singular likeness roughly in, as suggested by 
 Matthews and the memoir- writers — but it was 
 too artificial, and the substituted outline is ex- 
 clusively from Voiture and Waller. 
 
 '* The Italian boat-song in the last scene is 
 from Redi's ' Baeco,' long since naturalized in 
 the joyous and delicate version of Leigh Hunt." 
 
 PERSONS 
 Ghaiiles I. 
 Eflri jf Holland. 
 Lord Savilb. 
 Sir Henry Vane. 
 Wbhtworth, Viscount Wentwobth, Earl of Straf- 
 
 FOPD. 
 
 John Pvm. 
 
 John Hampden. 
 
 Tlie younger Vane. 
 
 Denzil Hollis, 
 
 Benjamin Rudyard. 
 
 Nathaniel Fiennes. 
 
 Earl of Loudon. 
 
 Maxwell, Usher of the Black Rod. 
 
 Balfovr, Constable of the Tower. 
 
 A Puritan. 
 
 Queen Henrietta. 
 
 Lucy Percy, Countess of Carlisle. 
 
 Presbyterians, Scots Commissioners, Adherents of 
 
 Straiford, Secretaries, Officers of the Court, etc. 
 Two of Strafford's Children. 
 
 ACT I 
 
 Scene I. A House near Whitehall. Hamfoen, Hollis, 
 the younger Vanb, Rudyard, Fiennes and many 0} 
 the Presbyterian Party: Loudon and other Scots 
 Commissioners. 
 
5° 
 
 STRAFFORD 
 
 Vane. I say, if he he here — 
 Rudyard. (And he is here !) — 
 
 Hollis, For England's sake let every man be 
 still 
 Nor speak of him, so much as say his name. 
 Till Pym rejoin us ! Kudyard ! Henry Vane ! 
 One rash conclusion may decide our course 
 And with it England's fate — think — England's 
 
 fate ! 
 Hampden, for England's sake they should be 
 still! 
 Vane. You say so, Hollis ? Well, I must be 
 still. 
 It is indeed too bitter that one man. 
 Any one man's mere presence, should suspend 
 England's combined endeavor : little need 
 To name him ! 
 Mud. For you are his brother, Hollis ! 
 
 Hampden. Shame on you, Rudyaxd ! time to 
 tell him that 
 When he forgets the Mother of us all. 
 Bud. Do I forget her ? 
 Hamp. You talk idle hate 
 
 Against her foe ; is that so strange a thing ? 
 Is hating Wentworth all the help she needs ? 
 A Puritan. The Philistine strode, cursing as 
 he went ; 
 But David — five smooth pebbles from the brook 
 Within his scrip . . . 
 Bud. Be you as stiU as David ! 
 
 Fiennes. Here 's Rudyard not ashamed to 
 wag a tongue 
 Stiff with ten years' disuse of Parliaments : 
 Why, when the last sat, Wentworth sat with us ! 
 Bud. Let 's hope for news of them now he 
 returns — 
 He that was safe in Ireland, as we thought ! 
 
 — But I '11 abide Pym's coming. 
 
 Vane. Now, by Heaven, 
 
 Then may be cool who can, silent who will — 
 Some have a gift that way ! Wentworth is here. 
 Here, and the King 's safe closeted with him 
 Ere this. And when I think on all that 's past 
 Since that man left us, how his single arm 
 RoUed the advancing good of England back 
 And set the woeful past up in its place. 
 Exalting Dagon where the Ark should be, — 
 How that man has made firm the fickle King 
 (Hampden, I will speak out !) — in aught he 
 
 feared 
 To venture on before ; taught tyranny 
 Her dismal trade, the use of all her tools, 
 To ply the scourge yet screw the gag so close 
 That strangled agony bleeds mute to death — 
 How he turns Ireland to a private stage 
 For training infant villanies, new ways 
 Of wringing treasure out of tears and blood, 
 Unheard oppressions nourished in the dark 
 To try how much man's nature can endure 
 
 — If he dies under it, what harm ? if not, 
 Why, one more trick is added to the rest 
 Worth a king's knowing, and what Ireland bears 
 England may learn to bear : — how all this while 
 That man has set himself to one dear task, 
 The bringing Charles to relish more and more 
 Power, power without hiw, power and blood too 
 
 — Can I be still ? 
 
 Hamp. For tliat you should be still. 
 
 Vane. Oh Hampden, then and now! The 
 year he left us, 
 The People in fuU Parliament could wrest 
 The Bill of Rights from the reluctant King ; 
 And now, he 'U find in an obscure small room 
 A stealthy gathering of great-hearted men 
 That take up England's cause : England is here ! 
 Hamp. And who despairs of England ? 
 Bud. That do I, 
 
 If Wentworth comes to rule her. I am sick 
 To think her wretched masters, Hamilton, 
 The muckworm Cottington, the maniac Land, 
 May yet be longed-for back again. I say, 
 I do despair. 
 
 Vane. And, Rudyard, I '11 say this — 
 
 Which all true men say after me, not loud 
 But solemnly and as you 'd say a prayer ! 
 This King, who treads our England underfoot. 
 Has just so much ... it may be fear or craft. 
 As bids him pause at each fresh outrage ; 
 
 friends, 
 He needs some sterner hand to grasp his own. 
 Some voice to ask, " Why shrink ? Am I not 
 
 by?" 
 Now, one whom England loved for serving her. 
 Found in his heart to say, *' I know where best 
 The iron heel shall bruise her, for she leans 
 Upon me when yon trample." Witness, yon ! 
 So Wentworth heartened Charles, so England 
 
 fell. 
 But inasmuch as life is hard to take 
 From England . . . 
 Many Voices. Go on. Vane ! 'T is well said. 
 
 Vane! 
 Vane. Who has not so forgotten Runny- 
 
 raede ! — 
 Voices. 'T is well and bravely spoken. Vane 1 
 
 Go on! 
 Vane. There are some little signs of late she 
 knows 
 The ground no place for her. She glances round, 
 Wentworth has dropped the hand, is gone his 
 
 way 
 On other service : what if she arise ? 
 No ! the King beckons, and beside him stands 
 The same bad man once more, with the same 
 
 smile 
 And the same gesture. Now shall England 
 
 crouch, 
 Or catch at us and rise ? 
 
 Voices. The Renegade 1 
 
 Haman! Ahithophel! 
 
 Hamp. Gentlemen of the North, 
 
 It was not thus the night j'our claims were urged. 
 And we pronounced the League and Covenant, 
 The cause of Scotland, England's cause as well: 
 Vane there, sat motionless the whole night 
 through. 
 Vane. Hampden ! 
 Fien. Stay, Vane ! 
 
 Loudon. Be just and patient. Vane ! 
 
 Vane. Mmd how you counsel patience, Lou- 
 don ! you 
 Have still a Parliament, and this yonr League 
 To back it ; yon are free in Scotland still : 
 While we are brothers, hope 's for England yet. 
 But know you wherefore Wentworth comes ? 
 to quench 
 
STRAFFORD 
 
 SI 
 
 This last of hopes ? that he brings war with him ? 
 Know you the man's self ? what he dares ? 
 
 Lou. We know, 
 
 All know — 't is nothing new. 
 
 Vaw. And what 's new, then, 
 
 In calling for his life ? Why, Pym himself — 
 You must have heard — ere Wentworth dropped 
 
 our cause 
 He would see Pym first ; there were many more 
 Strong on the people's side and friends of his, 
 Eliot that 's dead, Rudyard and Hampden here. 
 But for these Wentworth cared not ; only, Pym 
 He would see — Pym and he were sworn, 't is 
 
 said, 
 To live and die together ; so, they met 
 At Greenwich. Wentworth, yon are sure, was 
 
 long, 
 Specious enough, the devil's argument 
 Lost nothing on his lips ; he 'd have Pym own 
 A patriot coidd not play a purer part 
 Than follow in his track ; they two combined 
 Might put down England. Well, Pym heard 
 
 him out ; 
 One glance — you know Pym's eye — one word 
 
 was all: 
 "You leave us, Wentworth ! while your head 
 
 is on, 
 I '11 not leave you." 
 
 Hamp. Has he left Wentworth, then ? 
 
 Has England lost him ? Will you let him speak. 
 Or put your crude surmises in his mouth ? 
 Away with this ! Will you have Pym or Vane ? 
 
 Voices. Wait Pym's arrival I Pym shall speak. 
 
 Samp. _ Meanwhile 
 
 Let Loudon read the Parliament's report 
 From Edinburgh : our last hope, as vane says. 
 Is in the stand it makes. Loudon ! 
 
 _ Vane. No, no ! 
 
 Silent I can be : not indifferent ! 
 
 Hamp. Then each keep silence, praying God 
 to spare 
 His anger, cast not England quite away 
 In this her visitation ! 
 
 A Puritan. Seven years long 
 
 The Midianite drove Israel into dens 
 And caves. Till God sent forth a mighty man, 
 
 (Pym enters.) 
 Even Gideon ! 
 
 Pyvi. Wentworth 's come : nor sickness, care. 
 The ravaged body nor the ruined soul, 
 More than the winds and waves that beat his 
 
 ship. 
 Could keep him from the King. He has not 
 
 reached 
 Whitehall : they 've hurried up a Council there 
 To lose no time and find him work enough. 
 Where 's Loudon ? your Scots' Parliament . . . 
 
 iow- Holds firm: 
 
 We were about to read reports. 
 
 Pym. The King 
 
 Has just dissolved your Parliament. 
 
 L<m. and other Scots. Great God ! 
 
 An oath-breaker ! Stand by us, England, then ! 
 
 Pym. The King's too sanguine; doubtless 
 Wentworth 's here ; 
 But still some little form might be kept up. 
 
 Hamp. Now speak. Vane ! Kudyard, you 
 had much to say I 
 
 Hoi. The rumor 's false, then ... 
 Pym. Ay, the Court gives out 
 
 His own concerns have brought him back: I 
 
 know 
 'T is the King calls him. Wentworth supersedes 
 The tribe of Cottingtona and Hamiltons 
 Whose part is played ; there 's talk enough, by 
 
 this, — 
 Merciful talk, the King thinks : time is now 
 To turn the record's last and bloody leaf 
 Which, chronicling a nation's great despair. 
 Tells they were long rebellious, and their lord 
 Indulgent, till, all kind expedients tried. 
 He drew the sword on them and reigned in 
 
 peace- 
 Laud's laying his religion on the Scots 
 Was the last gentle entry : the new page 
 Shall run, the King thinks, " Wentworth thrust 
 
 it down 
 At the sword's point." 
 
 A Puritan. I '11 do your bidding, Pym, 
 
 England's and God's — one blow ! 
 
 Pym. A goodly thing — 
 
 We aU say, friends, it is a goodly thing 
 To right that England, Heaven grows dark 
 
 above ; 
 Let 's snatch one moment ere the thunder fall, 
 To say how well the English spirit comes out 
 Beneath it ! All have done their best, indeed, 
 From lion Eliot, that grand Englishman, 
 To the least here : and who, the least one here, 
 When she is saved (for her redemption dawns 
 Dimly, most dimly, but it dawns — it dawns) 
 Who d give at any price his hope away 
 Of being named along with the Great Men ? 
 We would not — no, we would not give that up ! 
 Hamp. And one name shall be dearer than all 
 
 names. 
 When children, yet unborn, are taught that 
 
 name 
 After their fathers', — taught what matchless 
 
 man . . . 
 Pym. . . . Saved England ? What if Went- 
 
 worth's should be still 
 That name ? 
 Bud. and others. We have just said it, Pym I 
 
 His death 
 Saves her ! We said it — there 's no way be- 
 side ! 
 I 'II do God's bidding, Pym ! They struck 
 
 down Joab 
 And purged the land. 
 
 Vane. No viUanous striking-down ! 
 
 Bud. No, a calm vengeance: let the whole 
 
 land rise 
 And shout for it. No Feltons ! 
 
 Pym. Kudyard, no ! 
 
 England rejects all Feltons ; most of all 
 Since Wentworth . . . Hampden, say the trust 
 
 again 
 Of England in her servants — but I '11 think 
 You kiow me, all of you. Then, I believe. 
 Spite of the past, Wentworth rejoins you, 
 
 friends ! 
 Vane and others. Wentworth? Apostate! 
 
 Judas! Double-dyed 
 A traitor ! Is it Pym, indeed . . . 
 Pym. . . Wliosays 
 
52 
 
 STRAFFORD 
 
 Vane never knew that Wentworth, loved that 
 
 man^ 
 Was used to stroll with him, arm locked in arm, 
 Along the streets to see the people pass, 
 And read in every island-countenance 
 Fresh argument for God against the King, — 
 Never sat down, say, in the very house 
 Where Kliofs brow grew broad with noble 
 
 thoughts, 
 (You 've joined us, Hampden — HoUis, you as 
 
 well,) 
 And then left talking over Graoehus's death . . 
 Vane. To frame, we know it well, the choi- 
 cest clause 
 In the Petition of Right : he framed such clause 
 One month before he took at the King's hand 
 His Northern Presidency, which that BiU 
 Denounced. 
 
 Pym. Too true ! Never more, never more 
 Walked we together ! Most alone I went. 
 I have had friends — all here are fast my 
 
 friends — 
 But I shaJl never quite forget that friend. 
 And yet it could not but be real in him ! 
 You, Vane, — you, Rudyard, have no right to 
 
 trust 
 To Wentworth : but can no one hope with me ? 
 Hampden, will Wentworth dare shed English 
 
 blood 
 Like water ? 
 Hamp. Ireland is Aceldama. 
 
 Pym. Will he turn Scotland to a huntings 
 
 ground 
 To please the King, now that he knows the 
 
 King? 
 The People or the King? and that King, 
 
 Charles ! 
 Hamp. Pym, all here know you : you '11 not 
 
 set your heart 
 On any baseless dream. But say one deed 
 Of Wentworth's, since he left us . . . [Shouting 
 
 without. 
 Vane. There ! he comes. 
 
 And they shout for him! WentwoHh's at 
 
 Whitehall, 
 The King embracing him, now, as we speak, 
 And he, to be his match in courtesies. 
 Taking the whole war's risk upon himself. 
 Now, while you tell us here how changed he is ! 
 Hear you ? 
 
 Pym. And yet if 't is a dream, no more. 
 That Wentworth chose their side, and brought 
 
 the King 
 To love it as though Laud had loved it first, 
 And the Queen after ; that he led their cause 
 Calm to success, and kept it spotless through, 
 So that our very eyes could look upon 
 The travail of our souls, and close content 
 That violence, which something mars even right 
 Which sanctions it, had taken off no grace 
 From its serene regard. Only a dream ! 
 Hamp, We meet here to accomplish certain 
 
 good 
 By obvious means, and keep tradition up 
 Of free assemblages, else obsolete. 
 In this poor chamber : nor without effect 
 Has friend met friend to counsel and confirm, 
 As, listening to the beats of England's heart, 
 
 We spoke its wants to Scotland's prompt reply 
 
 By these her delegates. Remains alone 
 
 That word grow deed, as with God's help it 
 
 shall — 
 But with the devil's hindrance, who doubts too ? 
 Looked we or no that tyranny should turn 
 Her engines of oppression to their use ? 
 Whereof, suppose the worst be Wentworth 
 
 here — 
 Shall we break off the tactics which succ&ed 
 In drawing out our formidablest foe. 
 Let bickering and disunion take their place ? 
 Or count his presence as our conquest's proof, 
 And kgep the old arms at their steady play ? 
 Proceed to England's work 1 Fiennes, read the 
 
 list! 
 Fien. Ship-money is refused or fiercely 
 
 paid 
 In every county, save the northern parts 
 Where Wentworth's influence . . . [Shouting. 
 Vane. I, in England's name, 
 
 Declare her work, this day, at end ! Till now, 
 Up to this moment, peaceful strife was best. 
 We English had free leave to think ; till now, 
 We had a shadow of a Parliament 
 In Scotland. But all 's changed : they change 
 
 the first. 
 They try brute-force for law, they, first of 
 
 all. . . 
 Voices. Good ! Talk enough ! The old true 
 
 hearts with Vane ! 
 Vane. Till we crush Wentworth for her, 
 
 there 's no a<jt 
 Serves England ! 
 
 Voices. Vane for England ! 
 
 Pym. Pym should be 
 
 Something to England. I seek Wentworth, 
 
 friends. 
 
 ScBHB II. Whitehall. 
 Lady Carlisle and Wektworth. 
 
 Wentworth. And the King ? 
 
 Lady Carlisle. Wentworth, lean on me I 
 Sit then ! 
 I '11 tell you all ; this horrible fatigue 
 Wm kill you. 
 
 Went. No ; — or, Lucy, just your arm ; 
 I '11 not sit till I 've cleared this up with him: 
 After that, rest. The King ? 
 
 Lady Car. Confides in you. 
 
 Went. Why ? or, why now ? — They have 
 kind throats, the knaves ! 
 Shout for me — they ! 
 
 Lady Car. You come so strangely soon : 
 Yet we took measures to keep off the crowd — 
 Did they shout for you ? 
 
 Went. Wherefore should they not ? 
 
 Does the King take such measures for himself ? 
 Beside, there 's such a dearth of malcontents, 
 You say ! 
 
 Lady Car. I said but few dared carp at you. 
 
 Went. At me ? at us, I hope I The King 
 and I! 
 He 's surely not disposed to let me bear 
 The fame away from him of these late deeds 
 In Ireland ? I am yet his instrument 
 Be it tor well or ill ? He trusts me, too i 
 
STRAFFORD 
 
 S3 
 
 Zfady Car. The King, dear Weirtworth, pur- 
 poses, I said. 
 To grant you, in the face of all the Court . . . 
 Went. All the Court 1 Evermore the Court 
 about us ! 
 Savile ard Holland, Hamilton and Vane 
 About us, — then the King will gi'ant me — 
 
 what? 
 That he for onee put these aside and say — 
 " Tell nie your whole mind, Wentworth ! " 
 
 Ladj/ Car. You professed 
 
 You would be calm. 
 
 Went. Lucy, and I am calm I 
 
 How else shall I do all I come to do, 
 Broken, as you may see, body and mind. 
 How shall I serve the King ? Time wastes mean- 
 while. 
 You have not told me half. His footstep ! No, 
 Quick, then, before I meet him, — I am calm — 
 Why does the King distrust me ? 
 
 Lady Car. He does not 
 
 Distrust you. 
 
 Went. Lucy, you can help me ; you 
 
 Have even seemed to care for me ; one word ! 
 Is it the Queeu ? 
 
 Lady Car. No, not the Queen : the party 
 That poisons the Queen's ear, Savile and Hol- 
 land. 
 Went. I know, I know : old Vcne, too, he 's 
 one too ? 
 Go on — and he 's made Secretary. Well ? 
 Or leave them out and go straight to the charge ; 
 The cha^e ! 
 Lady Car. Oh, there 's no charge, no precise 
 charge ; 
 Only they sneer, make light of — one may say. 
 Nibble at what yon do. 
 
 Went. I know I but, Lucy, 
 
 I reckoned on you from the first ! — Go on ! 
 — Was sure could I once see this gentle friend 
 When I arrived, she 'd throw an hour away 
 To help her . . . what am I ? 
 
 Lady Car. You thought of me, 
 
 Deal' Wentworth ? 
 
 Went. But go on! The party here ! 
 
 liady Car. They do not think your Irish 
 government 
 Of that surpassing value . . . 
 
 Went. The one thing 
 
 Of value ! The one service that the crown 
 May count on ! All that keeps these vei-y Vanes 
 In power, to vex rae — not that they do vex, 
 Only it might vex some to hear that service 
 Decried, the sole support that 's left the King ! 
 Lady Car. So the Archbishop says. 
 Wen*. Ah? well, perhaps 
 
 The only hand held up in my defence 
 May be old Laud's ! These Hollands then, these 
 
 Saviles 
 Nibble ? They nibble ? — that 's the very word ! 
 Lady Car. Your profit in the Customs, Bris- 
 tol says. 
 Exceeds the due proportion : while the tax . . . 
 ^ Went. Enough! 'tis too unworthy, — I am not 
 bo patient as I thought I What 'sPy™ about ? 
 Lady Car. Pym? 
 Went. Pym and the People. 
 
 Lady Car. Oh, the Faction I 
 
 Extinct — of no account : there '11 never be 
 Another Parliament. 
 
 Went. Tell Savile that ! 
 
 You may know — (ay, you do — the creatures 
 
 here 
 Never forget !) that in my earliest life 
 I was not . . . much that I am now ! The TTing 
 May take my word on points concerning Pym 
 Before Lord Savile 's, Lucy, or if not, 
 I bid them ruin their wise selves, not me. 
 These Vanes and Hollands I I 'U not be their 
 
 tool 
 Who might be Pym's friend yet. 
 
 But there 's the King ! 
 Where is he ? 
 Lady Car. Just apprised that you arrive. 
 Went. And why not here to meet me ? I was 
 told 
 He sent for me, nay, longed for me. 
 
 Lady Car. Because, — 
 
 He is now ... I think a Council 's sitting now 
 About this Scots affair. 
 
 Went. A Council sits ? 
 
 They have not taken a decided course 
 Without me in the matter ? 
 Lady Car. I should say . . . 
 
 Went. The war ? They caimot have agreed 
 to that? 
 Not the Soots' war ? — without consulting me — 
 Me, that am here to show how rash it is. 
 How easy to dispense with ? — Aii, you too 
 Against me ! well, — the King may take his 
 
 time. 
 — Forget it, Lucy ! Cares make peevish : mine 
 Weigh me (but 't is a secret) to my grave. 
 Lady Car. For life or death I am your own, 
 dear friend ! [Goes out. 
 
 Went. Heartless ! but all are heartless here. 
 Go now. 
 Forsake the People I I did not forsake 
 The People : they shall know it, when the King 
 Will trust me ! — who trusts all beside at onfie, 
 While I have not spoke Vane and Savile fair. 
 And am not trusted : have but saved the throne: 
 Have not picked up the Queen's glove prettily, 
 And am not trusted. But he '11 see me now. 
 Weston is dead : the Queen 's half English now — 
 More English : one decisive word will brush 
 These insects from . . . the step 1 know so well ! 
 The King ! But now, to tell him . . .no — to 
 
 ask 
 What 's in me he distrusts : — or, best begin 
 By proving that this frightful Scots affair 
 Is just what I foretold. So much to say, 
 And the flesh fails, now, and the time is come, 
 And one false step no way to be repaired. 
 You were avenged, Pym, could yon look on me. 
 (Pym entej-s.) 
 Went. I little thought of you just then. 
 Pyi^- No? I 
 
 Thmk always of you, Wentworth. 
 
 W^ent. The old voice I 
 
 I wait the King, sir. 
 
 Pyn . True — you look so pale I 
 
 A Council sits -within ; when that breaks up 
 He '11 see you. 
 
 Went. Sir, I thank you. 
 
 Pym. 
 
 Ohj thank Laud I 
 
54 
 
 STRAFFORD 
 
 You know when Land once gets on Church af- 
 fairs 
 The ease is desperate : he '11 not be long 
 To-day : he only means to prove, to-day, 
 We English aU are mad to have a hand 
 In butchsring the Scots for serving God 
 After their fathers' fashion : only that ! 
 
 Went. Sir, keep your jests for those who 
 relish them ! 
 (Does he enjoy their confidence ?) 'T is kind 
 To tell me what the Council does. 
 
 Pym. You grudge 
 
 That I should know it had resolved on war 
 Before you came ? no need : you shall have all 
 The credit, trust me ! 
 
 Went. Have the Council dared — 
 
 They have not dared . . . that is — I know you 
 
 not. 
 Farewell, sir : times are changed. 
 
 Pym. — Since we two met 
 
 At Greenwich ? Yes : poor patriots though we 
 
 be. 
 You cut a figure, makes some slight return 
 For your exploits in Ireland ! Changed indeed, 
 Could our friend Eliot look from out his grave ! 
 Ah, Wentworth, one thing for acquaintance' 
 
 sake. 
 Just to decide a question ; have you, now, 
 Felt your old self since you forsook us T 
 Went. Sir ! 
 
 Pym. Spare me the gesture ! you misappre- 
 hend. 
 Think not I mean the advantage is with me. 
 I was about to say that, for my part, 
 I never quite held up my head since then — 
 Was quite myself since then : for first, you see, 
 I lost all credit after that event 
 With those who recollect how sure I was 
 Wentworth would outdo Eliot on our side. 
 Forgive me : Savile, old Vane, Holland here, 
 Eschew plain-speaking : 't is a trick I keep. 
 Went. How, when, where, Savile, Vane, and 
 Holland speak. 
 Plainly or otherwise, would have my scorn. 
 All of my scorn, sir . . . 
 
 Pym. . . . Did not my poor thoughts 
 
 Claim somewhat ? 
 
 Went. Keep your thoughts ! believe the Kii^ 
 Mistrusts me for their prattle, all these Vanes 
 And Saviles ! make your mind up, o' God's love. 
 That I am discontented with the King ! 
 
 Pym. Why, you may be : I should he, that 
 I know. 
 Were I like you. 
 
 Went. Like me ? 
 
 Pym. I care not much 
 
 For titles : our friend Eliot died no lord, 
 Hampden 's no lord, and Savile is a lord ; 
 But you care, since you sold your soul for one. 
 I can't think, therefore, your soul's purchaser 
 Did well to laugh you to such utter scorn 
 When you twice prayed so humbly for its price, 
 The thirty silver pieces ... I should say, 
 The Earldom you expected, still expect. 
 And may. Your letters were the movingest ! 
 Console yourself ; I 've borne him prayers just 
 
 now 
 From Scotland not to be oppressed by Land, 
 
 Words moving in their way : he '11 pay, be sure. 
 As iTQUch attention as to those you sent. 
 
 Went. False, sir! Who showed them you ? 
 Suppose it so. 
 The King did very well . . . nay, I was glad 
 When it was shown me : I refused, the first ! 
 John Pym, you were my friend — forbear me 
 once ! 
 Pym. Oh, Wentworth, ancient brother of 
 ray soul. 
 That aU should come to this ! 
 
 Went. Leave me ! 
 
 Pym. My friend, 
 
 Why should I leave you ? 
 
 Went. To tell Rudyard this. 
 
 And Hampden this ! 
 
 Pym. Whose faces once were bright 
 
 At my approach, now sad with doubt and fear, 
 Because 3 hope in you — yes, Wentworth, you 
 Who never mean to ruin England — you 
 Who shake off, with God's help, an obscene 
 
 dream 
 In this Ezekiel chamber, where it crept 
 Upon you first, and wake, yourself, your true 
 And proper self, our Leader, England's Chief, 
 And Hampden's friend ! 
 
 This is the proudest day ! 
 Come, Wentworth ! Do not even see the King i 
 The rough old room will seem itself again ! 
 We '11 both go in together : you 've not seen 
 Hampden so long : come : and there 's Fiennes : 
 
 you '11 have 
 To know young Vane. This is the proudest day ! 
 IT/ie Kiisa enters. Wentwoeth lets /all Pym's hand. 
 Charles. Arrived, my lord ? — This gentle- 
 man, we know 
 Was your old friend. 
 
 The Scots shall he informed 
 What we determine for their happiness. 
 
 [Pym goes out. 
 You have made haste, my lord. 
 
 Went. Sir, I am come . . . 
 
 Cha. To see an old familiar — nay, 't is well ; 
 
 Aid us with his experience : this Scots' League 
 
 And Covenant spreads too far, and we have 
 
 proofs 
 That they intrigue with France : the Faction 
 
 too. 
 Whereof your friend there is the head and front, 
 Abets them, — as he boasted, very like. 
 
 Went. Sir, trust me ! but for this once, trust 
 
 me, sir ! 
 Cha. What can you mean ? 
 Went. That you should trust me, sir I 
 
 Oh — not for n:iy sake ! but 't is sad, so saxl 
 That for distrusting me, you suffer — you 
 Whom I would die to serve : sir, do you think 
 That I would die to serve you ? 
 Cha. But rise, Wentworth ! 
 
 Went. What shall convince you ? Wliat does 
 Savile do 
 To prove him . . . Ah, one can't tear out one's 
 
 heart 
 And show it, how sincere a thing it is ! 
 Cha. Have I not trusted you ? 
 Went. Say ajight hut that ! 
 
 There is my comfort, mark you : all will be 
 So different when you trust me — as you shall ! 
 
STRAFFORD 
 
 55 
 
 It has not been your fault, — I was away, 
 Mistook, maligned, how was the King to know ? 
 I am here, now — he means to trust me, now — 
 All will go on so well ! 
 
 Cha. Be sure I do — 
 
 I 've heard that I should trust you : as you came. 
 Your friend, the Countess, told me . . . 
 
 Went. No, — hear nothing — 
 
 Be told nothing ahout me ! — you 're not told 
 Your right-hand serves you, or your children 
 love you ! 
 Cha. You love me, Wentworth : rise ! 
 Went. I can speak now. 
 
 I have no right to hide the truth. 'T is I 
 Can save you : only I. Sir, what must be ? 
 Cha. Since Laud's assured (the minutes are 
 within) 
 — Loath as I am to spill my subjects' blood . . . 
 Went. That is, he 'U have a war : what 's 
 
 done is done ! 
 Cha. They have intrigued with France j 
 
 that 's clear to Laud. 
 Went. Has Laud suggested any way to meet 
 The war's expense ? 
 
 Cha. He 'd not decide so far 
 
 Until you joined us. 
 
 Went. Most considerate ! 
 
 He 's certain they intrigue with France, these 
 
 Scots ? 
 The People would be with us. 
 Cha. Pym should know. 
 
 Went. The People for us — were the People 
 for us ! 
 Sir, a great thought comes to reward your trust : 
 Summon a Parliament ! in Ireland first. 
 Then, here. 
 Cha. In truth? 
 
 Went, That saves us ! that puts off 
 
 The war, gives time to right their grievances — 
 To talk with Pym. I know the Faction — Laud 
 So styles it — tutors Scotland : all their plans 
 Suppose no Parliament : in calling one 
 You take them by surprise. Produce the proofs 
 Of Scotland's treason ; then bid England help : 
 Even Pym will not refuse. 
 
 Cha. You would begin 
 
 With Ireland? 
 
 Went. Take no care for that : that's sure 
 To prosper. 
 
 Cha. You shall rule me. You were best 
 
 Return at once : but take this ere you go ! 
 Now, do I trust you ? You 're an Earl : my 
 
 Friend 
 Of Friends : yes, while . . . You hear me not ! 
 Went. Say it all o'er again — but once again: 
 The first was for the music : once again ! 
 
 Cha. Strafford, my friend, there may have 
 been reports. 
 Vain rumors. Henceforth touching Strafford is 
 To touch the apple of my sight : why gaze 
 So earnestly ? 
 
 Went. I am grown young again. 
 
 And foolish. What was it we spoke of ? 
 
 Cha, Ireland, 
 
 The Parliament, — 
 
 Went. I may go when I will ? 
 
 -Now? 
 Cha. Are you tired so soon of us ? 
 
 Went. My King 1 
 
 But you will not so utterly abhor 
 A Parliament ? I 'd serve you any way. 
 
 Cha. You said just now this was the only 
 way. 
 
 Went. Sir, I will serve you ! 
 
 Cha. Strafford, spare yourself : 
 
 You are so sick, they tell me. 
 
 Went. 'Tismysoul 
 
 That 's well and prospers now. 
 
 This Parliament — 
 We 'U summon it, the English one — I '11 care 
 For everything. You shall not need them much. 
 
 Cha. If they prove restive . . . 
 
 Went. I shall be with you. 
 
 Cha, Ere they assemble ? 
 
 Went, I will come, or else 
 
 Deposit this infirm humanity 
 I' the dust. My whole heart stays with you, 
 my King ! 
 
 lAs Wentworth goes out, the Qdebn enters, 
 
 Cha, That man must love me. 
 
 Queen, Is it over then ? 
 
 Why, he looks yellower than ever ! Well, 
 At least we shall not hear eternally 
 Of service — services : he 's paid at least. 
 
 Cha. Not done with : he engages to surpass 
 All yet performed in Ireland. 
 
 Queen. I had thought 
 
 Nothing beyond was ever to be done. 
 The war, Charles — will he raise supplies 
 enough ? 
 
 Cha. We 've hit on an expedient ; he . . . 
 that is, 
 I have advised ... we have decided on 
 The calling — in Ireland — of a Parliament. 
 
 Queen. truly ! You agree to that ? Is that 
 The first-fruit of his counsel ? But I guessed 
 As much. 
 
 Cha. This is too idle, Henriette ! 
 I should know best. He will strain every nerve. 
 And once a precedent established . . . 
 
 Queen. Notice 
 
 How sure he is of a long term of favor ! 
 He '11 see the next, and the next after that ; 
 No end to Parliaments ! 
 
 Cha. Well, it is done. 
 
 He talks it smoothly, doubtless. If, indeed. 
 The Commons here ... 
 
 Queen. Here ! you will summon them 
 
 Here ? Would I were in Franca again to see 
 A King! 
 
 Cha. But, Henriette . . . 
 
 Queen. Oh, the Scots see clear I 
 
 Why should they bear your rule ? 
 
 Cha. But listen, sweet '. 
 
 Queen. Let Wentworth listen — you confide 
 in him ! 
 
 Cha. I do not, love, — I do not so confide I 
 The Parliament shall never trouble us I 
 . . Nay, hear me ! I have schemes, such 
 
 schemes ; we '11 buy 
 The leaders off: without that, Wentworth's 
 
 counsel 
 Had ne'er prevailed on me. Perhaps I call it 
 To have excuse for breaking it forever, 
 And whose vriU then the blame be ? See you 
 not? 
 
S6 
 
 STRAFFORD 
 
 Come, dearest I — look, the little fairy, now. 
 That cannot reach my shoulder I Dearest, 
 come ! 
 
 ACT II 
 
 Scene I. (As in Act I. Scene 1.) 
 
 The same Party enters. 
 
 Sud. Twelve subsidies ! 
 Vane. Rudyard, do not laugh 
 
 At least ! 
 Bud. True : Strafford called the Parlia- 
 ment — 
 'T is he should laugh ! 
 
 A Puritan. Out of the serpent's root 
 
 Comes forth a cockatrice. 
 
 Fien. — A stinging one. 
 
 If that 's the Parliament : twelve subsidies ! 
 A stinging one ! but, brotherj vsrhere 's your 
 
 , word 
 For Strafford's other nest-egg, the Scots' war ? 
 The Puritan. His fruit shall be a fiery flying 
 
 serpent. 
 Fien. Shall be ? It chips the shell, man ; 
 peeps abroad. 
 Twelve subsidies ! — Why, how no"w. Vane ? 
 Sud. Peace, Fiennes I 
 
 Fien. Ah ? — But he was not more a dupe 
 than I, 
 Or you, or any here, the day that Pym 
 Returned with the good news. Look up, friend 
 
 Vane! 
 We all believe that Strafford meant us well 
 In summoning the Parliament. 
 (Haufden enters.) 
 Vane. Now, Hampden, 
 
 Clear me ! I would have leave to sleep again : 
 I 'd look the People in the face again : 
 Clear me from having, from the first, hoped, 
 
 dreamed 
 Better of Strafford ! 
 
 Hamp. You may grow one day 
 
 A steadfast light to England, Henry Vane ! 
 Rud. Meantime, by fiashes I make shift to 
 see 
 Strafford revived our Parliaments ; before. 
 War was but talked of ; there 's an army, now : 
 Still, we 've a Parliament ! Poor Ireland bears 
 Another wrench (she dies the hardest death !) — 
 Why, speak of it in Parliament ! and lo, 
 'Tis spoken, so console yourselves 1 
 
 Fien. The jest! 
 
 We clamored, I suppose, thus long, to win 
 The privilege of laying on our backs 
 A sorer burden than the King dares lay. 
 Mud. Mark now : we meet at length, com- 
 plaints pour in 
 From every county, all the land cries out 
 On loans and levies, curses ship-money. 
 Calls vengeance on the Star Chamber ; we lend 
 An ear. " Ay, lend them all the ears you 
 
 have ! " 
 Puts in the King; "my subjects, as you find, 
 Are fretful, and conceive great things of yon. 
 Just listen to them, friends ; you '11 sanction me 
 The measures they most wince at, make them 
 vours, 
 
 Instead of mine, I know : aud, to begin. 
 They say my levies pinch them, — raise me 
 
 straight 
 Twelve subsidies ! " 
 
 Fien. All England cannot furnish 
 
 Twelve subsidies! 
 
 Hoi. But Strafford, just returned 
 
 From Ireland — what has he to do with that ? 
 How could he speak his mind? He left her 
 
 fore 
 The Parliament assembled. Pym, who knows 
 Strafford . . . 
 
 Rud. Would I were sure we know ourselves ' 
 What is for good, what, bad — who friend, who 
 foe! 
 
 Mol. Do you count Parliaments no gain ? 
 
 Rud. A gain f 
 
 While the King's creatures overbalance us ? 
 — There 's going on, beside, among ourselves 
 A quiet, slow, but most effectual course 
 Of buying over, sapping,' leavening 
 The lump till all is leaven. Glanville's gone. 
 I '11 put a case ; had not the Court declared 
 That no sum short of just twelve subsidies 
 Will be accepted by the King — our House, 
 I say, would have consented to that offer 
 To let us buy off ship-money ! 
 
 Hoi. Most like, 
 
 If, say, six subsidies will buy it off, 
 The House . . . 
 
 Rud. Will grant them ! Hampden, do you 
 hear? 
 Congratulate with me I the King 's the king. 
 And gains his point at last — our own assent 
 To that detested tax ! All 's over, then 
 There 's no more taking refuge in this room. 
 Protesting, "Let the King do what he will, 
 We, England, are no party to our shame : 
 Our day wiU come ! " Congratulate with me ! 
 (Ptm enters.) 
 
 Vane. Pym, Strafford called this Parliament, 
 you say. 
 But we 'n not have our Parliaments like those 
 In Ireland, Pym ! 
 
 Rud. Let him stand forth, your friend I 
 
 One doubtful act hides far too many sins ; 
 It can be stretched no more, and, to my mind, 
 B^ins to drop from those it covered. 
 
 Other Voices. Good] 
 
 Let him avow himself ! No fitter time ! 
 We wait thus long for you. 
 
 Rud. Perhaps, too long ! 
 
 Since nothing but the madness of the Court, 
 In thus unmasking its designs at once. 
 Has saved us from betraying England . Stay — 
 This Parliament is Strafford's : let us vote 
 Our list of Grievances too black by far 
 To suffer talk of subsidies : or best, 
 That ship-money 's disposed of long ago 
 By England : any vote that 's broad enough : 
 And then let Strafford, for the love of it, 
 Support his Parliament ! 
 
 Vane. And vote as well 
 
 No war to be with Scotland ! Hear you, Pym ? 
 We '11 vote, no war I No part nor lot in it 
 For England 1 
 
 Many Voices. Vote, no war ! Stop the new 
 levies 1 
 
STRAFFORD 
 
 57 
 
 No Bishops' war I At once I Wlien next we 
 meet ! 
 Pym. Much more when next we meet ! 
 Friends, which of you 
 Since first the course of Strafford was in doubt, 
 Has fallen the most away in soul from me ? 
 
 Vane. I sat apart, eTen now under God's eye, 
 Pondering the words that should denounce you. 
 
 In presence of us all, as one at league 
 With England's enemy. 
 
 Pym. You are a good 
 
 And gallant spirit, Henry. Take my hand 
 And say you pardon me for all the pain 
 TiU now ! Strafford is wholly om-s. 
 
 Many Voices. Sure ? sure ? 
 
 Pym, Most sure : foi^ Charles dissolves the 
 Parliament 
 While I speak here; 
 
 — And I must speak, friends, now ! 
 Strafford is ours. The King detects the change. 
 Casts Strafford off forever, and resumes 
 His ancient path : no Parliament for us, 
 No Strafford for the King ! 
 
 Come, all of you. 
 To bid the King farewell, predict success 
 To his Scots' expedition, and receive 
 Strafford, our comrade now. The next will be 
 Indeed a Parliament 1 
 
 Vane. Forgive me, Pym ! 
 
 Voices,, This looks like truth ; Strafford can 
 have, indeed. 
 No choice. 
 
 Pym. Friends, follow me ! He 's with the 
 King. 
 Come, Hampden, and come, Kudyard, and 
 
 come, Vane ! 
 This is no sullen day for England, sirs ! 
 Strafford shall teU you ! 
 
 Voices. To Whitehall then ! Come! 
 
 Scene II. Whiietmll. 
 Charles and Btbafford. 
 
 Cha. Strafford! 
 
 Strafford. Is it a dream ? my papers, here — 
 Thus, as I left them, all the plans yon found 
 So happy — (look ! the track you pressed my 
 
 hand 
 For pointing out) — and in this very room. 
 Over these very plans, you tell me, sir, 
 With the same face, too — tell me just one thing 
 That ruins them! How's this? What may 
 
 this mean ? 
 Sir, who has done this ? 
 
 Cha. Strafford, who but I ? 
 
 You bade me put the rest away : indeed 
 You are alone. 
 
 Straf. Alone, and like to be ! 
 
 No fear, when some unworthy scheme grows 
 
 ripe. 
 Of those, who hatched it, leaving me to loose 
 The mischief on the world ! Laud hatches war. 
 Falls to his nrayers, and leaves the rest to me. 
 And I 'm alone, 
 
 Cha. At least, you knew as much 
 
 When first you imdertook tiie war. 
 
 Straf. My liege, 
 
 Was this the way ? I said, since Laud would lap 
 A little blood, 't were best to hurry over 
 The loathsome business, not to be whole months 
 At slaughter — one blow, only one, then, peace, 
 Save for the dreams. I said, to please you both 
 I 'd lead an Irish army to the West, 
 While in the South au English . . . but you look 
 As though you had not told me fifty times 
 'T was a brave plan ! My army is all raised, 
 I am prepared to join it . . . 
 
 Cha. Hear me, Strafford I 
 
 Straf, , , , When, for some little thing, my 
 whole design' ■ 
 Is set aside — (where is the wretched paper ?) 
 I am to lead — (ay, here it is) — to lead 
 The English army : why ? Norihumberland, 
 That I appointed, chooses to be sick — 
 Is frightened : and, meanwhile, who answers for 
 The Irish Parliament ? or army, either ? 
 Is this my plan ? 
 
 Cha. . So disrespectful, sir ? 
 
 Straf. My liege, do not believe it ! I am yours. 
 Yours ever : 't is too late to think about : 
 To the death, yours. Elsewhere, this untoward 
 
 step 
 Shall pass for mine ; the world shall think it 
 
 mine. 
 But here ! But here ! I am so seldom here, 
 Seldom with you, my King ! I, soon to rush 
 Alone upon a giant in, the dark ! 
 
 Cha. My Strafford! 
 
 Straf. [Examines papers awhile.'] "Seize 
 the passes of the Tyne ! " 
 But, sir, you see — see all, I say is true ? 
 My plan was sure to prosper, so, no cause 
 To ask the Parliament for help ; whereas 
 We need them frightfully. 
 
 Cha. Need the Parliament ? 
 
 Straf. Now, for God's sake, sir, not one error 
 more ! 
 We can afford no error; we draw, now, 
 Upon our last resource : the Parliament 
 Must help us ! 
 
 Cha. I 've undone you, Strafford ! 
 
 Straf. Nay — 
 
 Nay — why despond, sir, 't is not come to that I 
 I have not hurt you ? Sir, what have I said 
 To hurt you ? I unsay it ! Don't despond ! 
 Sir, do yon turn from me ? 
 
 Cha, My friend of friends ! 
 
 Straf. We 'U make a shift. Leave me tTas 
 Parliament ! 
 Help they us ne'er so little and I 'U make 
 Sufficient out of it. We '11 speak them fair. 
 They're sitting, that's one great thing; that 
 
 halt gives 
 Their sanction to us; that's much; don't de- 
 spond ! 
 Why, let them keep their money, at the worst 1 
 The reputation of the People's help 
 Is all we want : we 'U make shift yet ! 
 
 Cha, Good Strafford ! 
 
 Straf. But meantime, let the sum be ne'er so 
 small 
 They offer, we '11 accept it : any sum — 
 For the look of it : the least grant tells the SoolB 
 The Parliament is ours — their stanch ally 
 
S8 
 
 STRAFFORD 
 
 Turned ours : that told, there 's half the blow to 
 
 strike! 
 What will the grant be ? What does GlanviUe 
 think ? 
 
 Cha. Alas! 
 
 Straf. My liege ? 
 
 Cha. Strafford! 
 
 Straf. But answer me ! 
 
 Have they . . . Oh surely not refused us half ? 
 Half the twelve subsidies ? We never looked 
 For all of them. How many do they give ? 
 
 Cha. You have not heard . . . 
 
 Straf. (What has he done ?) — Heard what ? 
 But speak at once, sir, this grows terrible ! 
 
 {_The King continuing silent. 
 You have dissolved them 1 — I 'U not leave this 
 man, 
 
 Cha. 'T was old Vane's ill-judged vehemence. 
 
 Straf. Old Vane ? 
 
 Cha. He told them, just about to vote the 
 half. 
 That nothing short of all twlve subsidies 
 Would serve our turn, or be accepted. 
 
 Straf. Vane ! 
 
 Vane ! Who, sir, promised me, that very 
 
 Vane . . . 
 O God, to have it gone, quite gone from me. 
 The one last hope — I that despair, my hope — 
 That I should reach his heart one day, and cure 
 All bitterness one day, be proud again 
 And young again, care for the sunshine too, 
 And never think of Eliot any more, — 
 God, and to toil for this, go far for this. 
 Get nearer, and still nearer, reaxih this heart 
 And find Vane there ! 
 
 ISuddenly taking up a paper^ and continuing with a 
 forced calnvness. 
 
 Northumberland is sick : 
 Well, then, I take the army : Wilmot leads 
 The horse, and he, with Conway, must secure 
 The passes of the Tyne : Ormond supplies 
 My place in Ireland. Here, we '11 try the City : 
 If they refuse a loan — debase the coin 
 And seize the bullion ! we 've no other choice. 
 Herbert . . . 
 
 And this while I am here ! with you ! 
 And there are hosts such , hosts like Vane ! I go. 
 And, I once gone, they 'll close around you, sir. 
 When the least pique, pettiest mistrust, is sure 
 To ruin me — and you along with me ! 
 Do you see that ? And you along with me ! 
 — Sir, yon '11 not ever listen to these men. 
 And I away, fighting your battle ? Sir, 
 If they — if She — charge me, no matter how — 
 Say you, " At any time when he returns 
 His head is mine ! " Don't stop me there I You 
 
 know 
 My head is yours, but never stop me there ! 
 
 Cha. Too shameful, Strafford ! You advised 
 the war, 
 And . . . 
 
 Straf. I ! I ! that was never spoken with 
 Till it was entered on ! That loathe the war ! 
 That say it is the maddest, wickedest . . . 
 Do you know, sir, I think within my heart. 
 That you would say I did advise the war ; 
 And if, through your own weakness, or, what 's 
 worse, 
 
 These Scots, with God to help them, drive ma 
 
 back. 
 You will not step between the raging People 
 And me, to say ... 
 
 I knew it ! from the first 
 I knew it ! Never was so cold a heart ! 
 Remember that I said it — that I never 
 Believed you for a moment 1 
 
 — And, you loved rae ? 
 You thought your pei'fidy profoundly hid 
 Because i could not share the whisperings 
 With Vane, with Savile ? What, the face wa« 
 
 masked ? 
 I had the heart to see, sir ! Face of flesh. 
 But heart of stone — of smooth cold frightful 
 
 stone ! 
 Ay, call them I Shall I call for you ? The Scots 
 Goaded to madness ? Or the English — Pym — 
 Shall I call Pym, your subject ? Oh, you think 
 I '11 leave them in the dark about it all ? 
 They shall not know you? Hampden, Pym 
 
 shall not ? 
 
 (Pym, Hampden, Ya^e, etc., enter.) 
 [Dropping on his knee. ] Thus favored with your 
 
 gracious countenance 
 What shall a rebel League avail against 
 Your servant, utterly and ever yours ? 
 So, gentlemen, the King 's not even left 
 The privilege of bidding me farewell 
 Who haste to save the People — that you style 
 Your People — from the mercies of the Scots 
 And France their friend ? 
 [ To Chakles.] Pym's grave gi'ay eyes are fixed 
 Upon you, sir ! 
 
 Your pleasure, gentlemen. 
 JJamp. The King dissolved us — 't is the King 
 
 we seek 
 And not Lord Strafford. 
 
 Sti-af. Strafford, guilty too 
 
 Of counselling the measure. [To Charles.] 
 
 (Hush . . . you know — 
 You have forgotten — sir, I counselled it) 
 A heinous matter, truly ! But the King 
 WUl yet see cause to thank me for a course 
 Which now, perchance . . . (Sir, tell them so !) 
 
 — he blames. 
 Well, choose some fitter time to make yoni 
 
 charge : 
 I shall be with the Scots, you understand ? 
 Then yelp at me ! 
 
 Meanwhile, your Majesty 
 Binds me, by this fresh token of your trust . . . 
 lUnder the prefetice of an earTiest farewell, Sthafford 
 conducts Charles to the door^ in such a vianner as to 
 hide his agitation from the rest : ai the King disap- 
 pears, they turn as by one impulse to Pym, who has 
 not changed his original posture of surpHse. 
 
 Hamp. Leave we this arrogant strong wicked 
 
 man! 
 Vane and others. Hence, Pym ! Come out of 
 this unworthy place 
 To our old room again I He 's gone. 
 lSteaffoed, >M( about tofollmo the King, looks back. 
 Pym. Not gone! 
 
 [ To Stbaffokd. ] Keep tryst ! the old appoint 
 
 ment 's made anew : 
 Forget not we shall meet again ! 
 
 Straf So be it! 
 
STRAFFORD 
 
 59 
 
 And if an army follows me ? 
 
 Vane. His friends 
 
 Will entertain your ai'my I 
 
 Pyni. I 'U not say 
 
 You have misreckoned, Strafford : time shows. 
 
 Perish 
 Body and spirit ! Fool to feign a doubt, 
 Pretend the scrupulous anc* nice reserve 
 Of one whose prowess shall achieve the feat ! 
 What share have I in it ? Do I affect 
 To see no dismal sign above your head 
 When God suspends his ruinous thimder there ? 
 Strafford is doomed. Touch him no one of you ! 
 [Pru, Hampden, etc., go out. 
 
 Straf. Pym, we shall meet again 1 
 (Lady Carlisle mters.) 
 
 You here, child ? 
 
 Lady Car. Hush — 
 
 I kuow it all : hush, Strafford ! 
 
 Straf. Ah! you know? 
 
 Well. I shall make a sorry soldier, Lucy I 
 All knights begin their enterprise, we read. 
 Under the best of auspices ; 't is morn, 
 The Lady girds his sword upon the Youth 
 (He 's always very young) — ■ the trumpets sound. 
 Cups pledge him, and, why, the King blesses 
 
 him — 
 Yon need not tura a page of the romance 
 To learn the Dreadful Giant's fate. Indeed, 
 We 've the fair Lady here ; but she apart, — 
 A poor man, rarely having handled lance. 
 And rather old, weary, and far fron* sure 
 His Squires are not the Giant's friends. All 's 
 
 one; 
 Let us go forth I 
 
 Lady Car. Go forth ? 
 
 Strc^. _ What matters it ? 
 
 We shall die gloriously — as the book says. 
 
 Lady Car. To Scotland ? not to Scotland ? 
 
 Straf. Am I sick 
 
 Like your good brother, brave Northumber- 
 land? 
 Beside, these walls seem falling on me. 
 
 Lady Car. Strafford, 
 
 The wind that saps these walls can undermine 
 Your camp in Scotland, too. Whence creeps 
 
 the wind ? 
 Have you no eyes except for Pym ? Look here ! 
 A. breed of silken creatures lurk and thrive 
 tn your contempt. You '11 vanquish Pym? Old 
 
 Vane 
 Can vanquish yon. And Vane you think to fly ? 
 Kush on the Scots I Do nobly I Vane's slight 
 
 sneer 
 Shall test success, adjust the praise, suggest 
 The faint result : Vane's sneer shall reach you 
 
 there. 
 —You do not listen ! 
 
 Straf. ^ Oh, — I give that up! 
 
 There 's fate in it : I give all here quite up. 
 Cai'e not what old Vane does or Holland does 
 Against me 1 'T is so idle to withstand ! 
 In no case tell me what they do ! 
 
 Lady Car. But, Strafford . . . 
 
 Sirc^. I want a little strife, beside ; real strife ; 
 This petty palace-warfare does me harm : 
 I shall feel better, fairly out of it. 
 
 Lady Car. Why do you smile ? 
 
 Straf. I got to fear them, child ! 
 
 I could have torn his throat at fii'St, old V ane's, 
 As he leered at me on his stealthy way 
 To the Queen's closet. Ijord, one loses heart ! 
 I often found it on my lips to say, 
 " Do not traduce me to her I " 
 
 Lady Car. But the King . . . 
 
 Straf. The King stood there, 't is not so long 
 ago, 
 — There ; and the whisper, Lucy, " Be my friend 
 Of friends !" — My King ! I would have . . . 
 
 Lady Car. . . . Died for him ? 
 
 Straf. Sworn him true, Lucy : I can die for 
 nim. 
 
 Lady Car. But go not, Strafford ! But you 
 must renounce 
 This project on the Scots I Die, wherefore die ? 
 Charles never loved you. 
 
 Straf. And he never will. 
 
 He 's not of those who care the more for men 
 That they 're unfortunate. 
 
 Lady Car. Then wherefore die 
 
 For such a master ? 
 
 Straf. You that told me first 
 
 How good he was — when I must leave true 
 
 friends 
 To find a truer friend ! — that drew me here 
 From Ireland, — "I had but to show myself, 
 And Charles would spurn Vane, Savile, and the 
 
 rest" — 
 You, child, to ask me this ? 
 
 Lady Car. (If he have set 
 
 His heart abidingly on Charles !) 
 
 Then, friend, 
 I shall not see you any more. 
 
 Straf. Yes, Lucy. 
 
 There 's one man here I have to meet. 
 
 Lady Car. (The King ! 
 
 What way to save him from the King ? 
 
 My soul — 
 That lent from its own store the charmed dis- 
 guise 
 Which clothes the King— he shall behold my 
 
 soul !) 
 Strafford, — I shall speak best if you 'U not gaze 
 Upon me : I had never thought, indeed. 
 To speak, but you would perish too, so sure ! 
 Could you but know what 'tis to bear, my 
 
 friend. 
 One image stamped within you, turning blank 
 The else imperial brilliance of your mind, — 
 A weakness, but most precious, — like a flaw 
 I' the diamond, which should shape foi-th some 
 
 sweet face 
 Yet to create, and meanwhile treasured there 
 Let nature lose her gracious thought forever ! 
 
 Straf. When could it be ? no ! Yet . . . was 
 it the day 
 We waited in the anteroom, till Holland 
 Should leave the presence-chamber ? 
 
 Lady Car. What? 
 
 Straf. — That I 
 
 Described to you my love for Charles ? 
 
 Lady Car. (Ah, no — 
 
 One must not lure him from a love like that ! 
 Oh, let him love the King and die ! 'T is past 
 I shall not serve him worse for that one brief 
 And passionate hope, silent forever now !) 
 
6o 
 
 STRAFFORD 
 
 And you are really bound for Scotland then ? 
 I wish you well : you must be very sure 
 Of the King's faith, for Pym and all his crew 
 Will not be idle — setting Vane aside ! 
 Straf. If Pym is busy, — you may write of 
 
 Pym. 
 Lady Car. What need, since there 's your 
 King to take your part ? 
 He may endure Vane's counsel ; but for Pym — 
 Think you he '11 suffer Pym to . . . 
 
 Straf. Child, your hair 
 
 ts glossier than the Queen's ! 
 
 Lady Car. Is that to ask 
 
 A. curl of me ? 
 Straf. Scotland — the weary way ! 
 
 Lady Car. Stay, let me fasten it. 
 
 — A rival's, Strafford ? 
 Straf. [shoiving the George.l He hung it 
 
 there : twine yours around it, child ! 
 Lady Car. No — no — another time — I trifle 
 so ! 
 And there 's a masque on foot. Farewell. The 
 
 Court 
 is dull : do something to enliven us 
 In Scotland : we expect it at your hands. 
 Straf. I shall not fail in Scotland. 
 Lady Car. Prosper — if 
 
 You 'U think of me sometunes I 
 
 Straf. How think of him 
 
 And not of you ? of you, the lingering streak 
 (A golden one) in my good fortune's eve. 
 Lady Car. Strafford . . . Well, when the 
 eve has its last streak 
 The night has its first star. IShe goes ovi. 
 
 Straf. That voice of hers — 
 
 fou 'd think she had a heart sometimes ! His 
 
 voice 
 Is soft too. 
 
 Only God can save him now. 
 Be Thou about his bed, about his path ! 
 His path ! Where 's England's path ? Diverge 
 
 ing wide, 
 And not to join again the track my foot 
 Must follow — whither ? All that forlorn way 
 Among the tombs! Far — far — till . . , What, 
 
 they do 
 Then join again, these paths ? For, huge in the 
 
 dusk, 
 There 's — Pym to face ! 
 
 Why then, I have a foe 
 To dose with, and a fight to fight at last 
 Worthy my soul ! Wnat, do they beard the 
 
 King, 
 And shall the King want Strafford at his need ? 
 Am I not here ? 
 
 Not in the market-place, 
 Pressed on by the rough artisans, so proud 
 To catch a glance from Wentworth I They lie 
 
 down 
 Hungry yet smile, "Why, it must end some 
 
 day: 
 Is he not watching for our sake ? " Not there 1 
 But in Whitehall, the whited sepulchre. 
 The . . . 
 
 Curse nothing to-night ! Only one name 
 They '11 curse in all those streets to-night. 
 
 Whose fault ? 
 Did I make kings? set up, the first, a man 
 
 To represent the multitude, receive 
 All love in right of them — supplant them so, 
 Until you love the man and not the king — 
 The man with the mild voice and mournful eyes 
 Which send me forth. 
 
 — To breast the bloody sea 
 That sweeps before me : with one star for guide. 
 Night has its first, supreme, forsaken sta)'. 
 
 ACT III 
 
 Scene I. Opposite Westminster Halt. 
 
 Sir Henry Vane, Loed Savile, Loed Holland and 
 others of the Court. 
 
 SirH. Vane. The Commons thrust you out? 
 
 Savile. And what kept you 
 
 From sharing their civility ? 
 
 Vane. Kept me ? 
 
 Fresh news from Scotland, sir ! worse than the 
 
 last. 
 If that may be. All 's up with Strafford there : 
 Nothing to bar the mad Scots marching hither 
 Next Lord's-day morning. That detained me, 
 
 sir! 
 Well now, before they thrust you out, — go on,— 
 Their Speaker — did the f eUow Lenthal say 
 All we set down for him ? 
 
 Holland. Not a word missed. 
 
 Ere he began, we entered, Savile, I 
 And Bristol and some more, with hope to breed 
 A wholesome awe in the new Parliament. 
 But such a gang of graceless rufflans. Vane, 
 As glared at us ! 
 
 Vane. So many ? 
 
 Sow. Not a bench 
 
 Without its complement of burly knaves ; 
 Your hopeful son among them : Hampden leant 
 Upon his shoulder — think of that ! 
 
 yarn. I 'd think 
 
 On Lenthal's speech, if I could get at it. 
 Urged he, I ask, how grateful they should prove 
 For this unlooked-for summons from the King ? 
 
 HoU. Just as we drilled him. 
 
 Vane. That the Scots will march 
 
 On London ? 
 
 HoU. All, and made so much of it, 
 
 A dozen subsidies at least seemed sure 
 To follow, when . . . 
 
 Vane. Well? 
 
 HolL 'T is a strange thing now 1 
 
 I 've a v^^ie memory of a sort of sound, 
 A voice, a kind of vast unnatural voice — 
 Pym, sir, was speaking 1 Savile, help me out ■. 
 What was it all ? 
 
 Sav. Something about " a matter " — 
 
 No, — " work for England." 
 
 HoU. " England's grreat revenge " 
 
 He talked of. 
 
 Sav. How should I get used to Pym 
 
 More than yourselves ? 
 
 HoU. However that may be, 
 
 'T was something with which we had naught to 
 
 do. 
 For we were "strangers," and 'twas "Eng- 
 land's work " — 
 (All this while looking us straight in the face) 
 
STRAFFORD 
 
 6l 
 
 In other words, our presence might be spared. 
 
 So, in the twinkling of an eye, befoi-e 
 
 I settled to my mind what ugly brute 
 
 Was likest Pym just then, they yelled us out, 
 
 Locked the doors after us, and here are we. 
 
 Vane, Eliot's old method . . . 
 
 Sav. Prithee, Vane, a truce 
 
 To Eliot and his times, and the great Duke, 
 And how to manage Parliaments ! 'Twas you 
 Advised the Queen to summon this : why, Straf- 
 ford 
 (To do him justice) would not hear of it. 
 
 Vane, Say rather, you have done the best of 
 turns 
 To StrafEord : he 's at York, we all know why. 
 1 would you had not set the Scots on Strafford 
 Till Strafford put down Pym for us, my lord ! 
 
 Sav, Was it I altered Strafford's plans ? did 
 
 (A Messenger entel'S.) 
 
 Mes, The Queen, my lords — she sends me : 
 follow me 
 At once ; 't is very urgent ! she requires 
 Your counsel ; something perilous and strange 
 Occasions her command. 
 
 Sav, We follow, friend I 
 
 Now, Vane ; — your Parliament will plague us 
 all! 
 
 Vane. No Strafford here beside ! 
 
 Sav If you dare hint 
 
 I had a hand in his betrayal, sir . . . 
 
 Holl. Nay, find a fitter time for quan'els — 
 Pym 
 Will overmatch the best of you ; and, think, 
 The Queen I 
 
 Vane, Come on, then : understand, I loathe 
 Strafford as much as any — but his use ! 
 To^keep off Pyni, to screen a friend or two, 
 I would we had reserved him yet awhile. 
 
 Scene II. Whitehall, 
 The Queen and Lady Carlisle. 
 
 Queen, It camiot be. 
 
 Lady Car, It is so. 
 
 Queen, Why, the House 
 
 Have hardly met. 
 
 Lady Car, They met for that. 
 
 Queen, No, no 1 
 
 Meet to impeach Lord Strafford ? 'T is a jest. 
 
 Lady Car, A bitter one. 
 
 Queen, Consider ! 'T is the House 
 
 We summoned so reluctantly, which nothing 
 But the disastrous issue of the war 
 Persuaded us to summon. They '11 wreak all 
 Their spite on us, no doubt ; but the old way 
 Is to begin by talk of grievances : 
 They have their grievances to busy them. 
 
 Lady Car, Pym has begun his speech. 
 
 Queen, Where 's Vane ? — That is, 
 
 Pym will impeach Lord Strafford if he leaves 
 His Pi'esidency ; he 's at York, we know, 
 Since the Scots beat him : why should he leave 
 York? 
 
 Lady Car. Because the King sent for him. 
 
 Queen, Ah — but if 
 
 The King did send for him, he let him know 
 We had been forced to eaJl a Parliament — 
 
 A step which Strafford, now I come to think. 
 Was vehement against. 
 
 Lady Car, The policy 
 
 Escaped him, of first stiiking Parhaments 
 To earth, then setting them upon their feet 
 And giving them a sword : but this is idle. 
 Did the King send for Strafford ? He will come. 
 
 Queen, And what am I to do ? 
 
 Lady Car, What do ? Fail, madam ! 
 
 Be ruined for his sake ! what matters how. 
 So it but stand on record that you made 
 An effort, only one ? 
 
 Queen, The King away 
 
 At Theobald's! 
 
 Lady Car. Send for him at once : he must 
 Dissolve the House. 
 
 Queen, Wait till Vane finds the truth 
 
 Of the report : then . . . 
 
 Lady Car, — It will matter littla 
 
 What the King does. Strafford that lends hii 
 
 arm 
 And breaks his heart for you ! 
 
 (Sir H. Vane enters. ) 
 
 Vane, The Commons, madam, 
 
 Are sitting with closed doors. A huge debate. 
 No lack of noise ; but nothing, I should guess. 
 Concerning Strafford : Pym has certainly 
 Not spokenyet. 
 
 Queen, [To Lady Cablisle.] You hear ? 
 
 Lady Car, I do not hear 
 
 That the King 's sent for ! 
 
 Vane, Savile will be able 
 
 To tell you more. 
 
 (Holland enters.) 
 
 Queen, The last news, Holland ? 
 
 Holl, Pym 
 
 Is raging like a fii'e. The whole House means 
 To follow him together to Whitehall 
 And force the King to give up Strafford. 
 
 Queen, Strafford ? 
 
 Holl, If they content themselves with Stiaf- 
 ford ! Laud 
 Is talked of, Cottington and Windebank too. 
 Pym has not left out one of them — I would 
 You heard Pym raguig ! 
 
 Queen. Vane, go find the King I 
 
 Tell the King, Vane, the People follow Pym 
 To brave us at Whitehall ! 
 
 (SAvn.B enierj.) 
 
 Sav, Not to Whitehall - 
 
 'T is to the Lords they go : they seek redress 
 On Strafford from his peel's — the legal way, 
 TheyoaUit. 
 
 Queen, (Wait, Vane !) 
 
 Sav, But the adage gives 
 
 Long life to threatened men. Strafford can save 
 Himself so readily : at York, remember. 
 In his own county : what has he to fear ? 
 The Commons only mean to frighten him 
 From leaving York. Surely, he will not come. 
 
 Queen, Lucy, he will not come ! 
 
 Lady Car, Once more, the King 
 
 Has sent for Strafford. He will come. 
 
 Vane, Oh doubtless ! 
 
 And bring destruction with him ; that 's his way. 
 
 What but his coming spoilt all Conway's plan ? 
 
 The King must take his counsel, choose his 
 
 friends, 
 
62 
 
 STRAFFORD 
 
 Be ■wholly ruled by him ! What 's the result ? 
 The North that was to rise, Ireland to help, — 
 What came of it ? In my poor mind, a fright 
 Is no prodigious punishment. 
 
 Lady Car. A frig-ht ? 
 
 Pymwill fail worse than Strafford if he thinks 
 To frighten liira. [To the Qoben.] You will 
 not save him then ? 
 
 Sav. When something like a charge is made, 
 the King 
 Will best know how to save him : and 't is clear, 
 While Strafford suffers nothing by the matter. 
 The King may reap advantage : this in question, 
 No dinning you with ship-money complaints ! 
 
 Queen. [To Lady Caklisle.] If we dissolve 
 them, who will pay the army ? 
 Protect us from the insolent Scots ? 
 
 Lady Car. In truth, 
 
 1 know not, madam. Strafford's fate concerns 
 Me little : yon desired to learn what course 
 Would save him ; I obey you. 
 
 Vane, Notice, too. 
 
 There can't be fairer ground for taking full 
 Eevenge — (Strafford 's revengeful) — than he 'U 
 
 have 
 Against his old friend Pym. 
 
 Queen. Why, he shall claim 
 
 Vengeance on Pym ! 
 
 Vane. And Strafford, who is he 
 
 To 'scape unscathed amid the accidents 
 That harass all beside ? I, for my part. 
 Should look for something of discomfiture 
 Had the King trusted me so thoroughly 
 And been so paid for it. 
 
 Holl. He 'U keep at York : 
 
 All will blow over : he '11 return no worse, 
 Humbled a little, thankful for a place 
 Under as good a man. Oh, we 'U dispense 
 With seeing Strafford for a month or two I 
 (Steappoed enXers. ) 
 
 Queen. You here ! 
 
 Straf. The King sends for me, madam. 
 
 Queen. Sir, 
 
 The King . . . 
 
 Straf. An urgent matter that imports 
 
 the King ! 
 [To Lady Carlisle.] Why, Lucy, what's in 
 
 agitation now. 
 That all this muttering and shrugging, see, 
 Begins at me ? They do not speak ! 
 
 Lady Car. 'T is welcome ! 
 
 For we are proud of you — happy and proud 
 To have you with us, Strailord ! You were 
 
 stanch 
 At Dm-ham : you did well there 1 Had you not 
 Been stayed, you might have ... we said, even 
 
 now, 
 Our hope 's in you ! 
 
 Vane. [To Lady Carlisle.] The Queen 
 would speak with you. 
 
 Straf. Will one of yon, Ms servants here, 
 vouchsafe 
 To signify my presence to the King ? 
 
 Sav. An urgent matter ? 
 
 Straf. None that touches you, 
 
 Lord Savile ! Say, it were some treacherous 
 iSly pitiful intriguing with the Scots — 
 You would go free, at least I (They half divine 
 
 My purpose !) Madam, shall I see the King ? 
 The service I would render, much concerns 
 His welfare. 
 
 Queen. But his Majesty, my lord. 
 
 May not be here, may . . . 
 
 Straf. Its importance, then. 
 
 Must plead excuse for this withdrawal, madam. 
 And for the grief it gives Lord Savile here. 
 Queen. [ Who has been conversing with Vake 
 and HoLLAMD.] The King wUl see yon, 
 sir! 
 [To Lady Carlisle.] Mark me : Pym's worst 
 Is done by now : he has impeached the Earl, 
 Or found the Earl too strong for him, by now. 
 Let us not seem instructed ! We should work 
 No good to Strafford, but deform ourselves 
 With shame in the world's eye. [To Straf- 
 ford.] His Majesty 
 Has much to say with you. 
 
 Straf. Time fleeting, too ! 
 
 [To Lady Carlisle.] No means of getting 
 
 them away ? And She — 
 What does she whisper ? Does she know my 
 
 purpose ? 
 What does she think of it ? Get them away ! 
 Queen. [To Lady Carlisle.] He comes to 
 baffle Pym — he thinks the danger 
 Far off : tell him no word of it ! a time 
 For help will come ; we '11 not be wanting then. 
 Keep him in play, Lucy — you, self-possessed 
 And calm ! [To Strafford.] To spare your 
 
 lordship some delay 
 I will myself acquaint the King. [To Lady 
 Carlisle.] Beware ! 
 [TAe Queen, Vane, Holland, and Savile go out. 
 Straf. She knows it ? 
 Lady Car. Tell me, Strafford ! 
 
 Straf. Afterward ! 
 
 This moment 's the great moment of all time. 
 She knows my purpose ? 
 
 Lady Car. Thoroughly : just now 
 
 She bade me hide it from you. 
 
 Straf. Quick, dear child, 
 
 The whole o' the scheme ? 
 
 Lady Car. (Ah, he would learn if they 
 
 Connive at Pym's procedure ! Could they but 
 Have once apprised the King ! But there 's no 
 
 time 
 For falsehood, now.) Strafford, the whole is 
 known. 
 Straf. Known and approved ? 
 Lady Car. Hardly discountenanced. 
 
 Straf. And the King — say, the King con- 
 sents as well ? 
 Lady Car. The King's not yet informed, 
 but will not dare 
 To interi)ose. 
 
 Straf. What need to wait him, then ? 
 
 He '11 sanction it ! I stayed, child, tell him, 
 
 long ! 
 It vexed me to the soul — this waiting here. 
 You know him, there 's no counting on tlm 
 
 King. 
 Tell him I waited long ! 
 
 Lady Car. (What can he mean? 
 
 Rejoice at the King's hollowness ?) 
 
 Straf. _ I knew 
 
 They would be glad of it, — all over once, 
 
STRAFFORD 
 
 63 
 
 I knew they would be glad : but he 'd oontriTe, 
 The Queen and he, to mar, by helping it, 
 An angel's making. 
 
 Lady Car. (la he mad ?) Dear StrafBord, 
 You were not wont to look so happy. 
 
 Straf. Sweet, 
 
 I tried obedience thoroughly. I took 
 The King's wild plan: of course, ere I could 
 
 reach 
 My army, Conway ruined it. I drew 
 The wrecks together, raised all heaven and 
 
 earth. 
 And would haye fought the Scots : the King at 
 
 once 
 Made truce with them. Then, Lucy, then, 
 
 dear child, 
 God put it in my mind to love, serve, die 
 For Charles, but never to obey him more ! 
 While he endured their insolence at Ripon 
 I fell on them at Durham. But you '11 tell 
 The King I waited ? All the anteroom 
 Is filled with my adherents. 
 
 Lady Car. Strafford — Strafford, 
 
 What daring act is this you hint ? 
 
 Straf. _ _ No, no ! 
 
 'T is here, not daring if you knew ? all here ! 
 
 {Drawing papers from Mi breast. 
 Full proof ; see, ample proof — does the Queen 
 
 know 
 I have such damning proof ? Bedford and 
 
 Brooke, Warwick, Savile (did you notice Sa- 
 
 vile? 
 The simper that I spoilt ?), Saye, MandeviUe — 
 Sold to the Scots, body and soul, by Pym ! 
 
 Lady Car. Great heaven ! 
 
 Straf. From Savile and his lords, to Pym 
 And his losels, crushed ! — Pym shall not ward 
 
 the blow 
 Nor Savile creep aside from it ! The Crew 
 And the Cabal — I crush them ! 
 
 Lady Car. And you go — 
 
 Strafford, — and now you go ? — 
 
 Straf. — About no work 
 
 In the backgroimd, I promise you ! I go 
 Straight to the House of Lords to claim these 
 
 knaves. 
 Mainwaring ! 
 
 Lady Car. Stay — stay, Strafford ! 
 
 Strcf. _ She '11 return. 
 
 The Queen — some little project of her own ! 
 No time to lose : the King takes fright perhaps. 
 
 Lady Car. Pym 's strong, remember ! 
 
 Straf. ^ ^®^ strong, as fits 
 
 The Faction's head — with no offence to Hamp- 
 den, 
 Vane, Rudyard, and my loving HoUis : one 
 And all they lodge within the Tower to-night 
 In just equality. Bryan ! Mainwaring ! 
 
 {Many of his Adherents enter. 
 The Peers debate just now (a lucky chance) 
 On the Scots' war : my visit 's opportune. 
 When all is over, Bryan, you proceed 
 To Ireland : these dispatches, mark me, Bryan, 
 Are for the Deputy, and these for Ormond : 
 We want the army here — my army, raised 
 At such a cost, that should have done such good. 
 And was inactive all the time ! no matter. 
 
 We '11 find a use for it. Willis . . . or, no — 
 
 youl 
 You, friend, make haste to York : bear this, at 
 
 once . . . 
 Or, — better stay for form's sake, see yourself 
 The news you carry. You remain with me 
 To execute the Parliament's command, 
 Mainwaring ! Help to seize these lesser knaves. 
 Take care there 's no escaping at backdoors : 
 I '11 not have one escape, mind me — not one I 
 I seem revengeful, Lucy ? Did yon know 
 What these men dare ! 
 
 Lady Car. It is so much they dare t 
 
 Straf. I proved that long ago ; my turn is 
 now. 
 Keep sharp watch. Goring, on the citizens ! 
 Observe who harbors any of the brood 
 That scramble off ; be sure they smart for it ! 
 Our coffers are but lean. 
 
 And you, child, too, 
 Shall have your task ; deliver this to Laud. 
 Laud wUl not be the slowest in my praise : 
 "Thorough," he'll cry! — ^ Foolish, to be so 
 
 glad! 
 This life is gay and glowing, after all : 
 'T is worth while, Lucy, having foes like mine 
 Just for the bliss of crushing them. To-day 
 Is worth the living for. 
 
 Lady Car. That reddening brow 1 
 
 You seem . . . 
 
 Straf. Well — do I not ? I would be well — 
 I could not but be well on such a day ! 
 And, this day ended, 't is of slight import 
 How long the ravaged frame subjects the soul 
 In Strafford. 
 
 Lady Car. Noble Strafford ' 
 
 Straf. No farewell ! 
 
 I '11 see you anon, to-morrow — the first thing. 
 — If She should come to stay me ! 
 
 Lady Car. Go — 't is nothing — 
 
 Only my heart that swells : it has been thus 
 Ere now ; go, Strafford ! 
 
 Straf. To-night, then, let it be. 
 
 I must see Him ; yon, the next after Him. 
 I '11 tell you how Pym looked. Follow me, 
 
 friends ! 
 You, gentlemen, shall see a sight this hour 
 To talk of all your lives. Close after me ! 
 " My friend of friends ! " 
 
 [Strafford and the rest go out. 
 
 Lady Car. The King — ever the King ! 
 No thought of one beside, whose little word 
 Unveils the King to him — one word from me, 
 Which yet I do not breathe ! 
 
 Ah, have I spared 
 Strafford a pang, and shall I seek reward 
 Beyond that memory ? Surely too, some way 
 He is the better for my love. No, no — 
 He would not look so joyous — I '11 believe 
 His very eye would never sparkle thus. 
 Had I not prayed for him this long, long while. 
 
 Scene III. Th£ Antechamber of the House of Lords. 
 
 Many of the Presbyterian Party. The Adherents of 
 Strafford, etc. 
 
 A Group of Presbyterians. — 1. I tell you he 
 struck Maxwell : Maxwell sought 
 
64 
 
 STRAFFORD 
 
 To stay the Earl : he struck him and passed on. 
 
 2. Fear as you may, keep a good countenance 
 Before these rufBers. 
 
 3. Strafford here the first, 
 With the great army at his back ! 
 
 4. No doubt. 
 I would Pym had made haste : that 's Bryan, 
 
 hush — 
 The gallant pointing. 
 Strafford's Followers. — 1. Mark these wor- 
 thies, now ! 
 
 2. A goodly gathering ! " Where the carcass 
 
 is 
 There shall the eagles " — What 's the rest ? 
 
 3. For eagles 
 Say crows. 
 
 A Presbyterian. Stand back, sirs ! 
 
 One of Strafford's Followers. Are we in 
 
 Geneva ? 
 A Presbyterian. No, nor in Ireland ; we have 
 
 leave to breathe. 
 One of Strafford's Followers. Truly? Be- 
 hold how privileged we be 
 That serve " King Pym " ! There 's Some-one 
 
 at Whitehall 
 Who skulks obscure ; but Pym struts . . . 
 The Presbyterian. Nearer. 
 
 A Follower of Strafford. Higher, 
 
 We look to see him. [ To his Companions.] I 'm 
 
 to have St. John 
 In charge ; was he among the knaves just now 
 That followed Pym within there ? 
 
 Another. The gaunt man 
 
 Talking with Rudyard. Did the Earl expect 
 Pym at his heels so fast ? I like it not. 
 (Maxwell enters.) 
 Another. Why, man, they rush into the net ! 
 Here 's Maxwell — 
 Ha, Maxwell ? How the brethren flock around 
 The fellow ! Do you feel the Earl's hand yet 
 Upon your shoulder, Maxwell ? 
 
 Maxwell. Gentlemen, 
 
 Stand back I a great thing passes here. 
 A Follower of Strafford. [To another. '\ The 
 Earl 
 Is at his work ! [To M.] Say, Maxwell, what 
 
 great thing ! 
 Speak out \ [To a Presbyterian.] Friend, I ' ve 
 
 a kindness for you ! Friend, 
 I 've seen you with St. John : O stockishness ! 
 Wear such a ruff, and never call to mind 
 St, John's head in a charger ? How, the plague. 
 Not laugh ? 
 Another. Say, Maxwell, what great thing 1 
 Another. _ Nay, wait: 
 
 The jest will be to wait. 
 
 First. And who 's to bear 
 
 These demure hypocrites ? You 'd swear they 
 
 came . . . 
 Came . . . just as we come ! 
 {_A Puritan enters hastily and without observing Sthaf- 
 ford's Followers. 
 The Puritan, How goes on the work ? 
 
 Has Pym . . . 
 A Follower of Strafford. The secret 'a out at 
 last. Alia, 
 The carrion 's scented ! Welcome, crow the 
 first I 
 
 Gorge merrily, you with the blinking eye ! 
 " Kii^ Pym has fallen ! " 
 The Puritan. Pym ? 
 
 A Strafford. Pym! _, , 
 
 A Presbyterian. Only Pym ? 
 
 Many of Strafford's Followers. No, brother, 
 not Pym only ; Vane a-s well, i 
 
 Rudyard as well, Hampden, St. John as well ! ' 
 A Presbyterian. My mind misgives : can it be 
 
 true? 
 Another. Lost! Lost! 
 A Strqfford. Say we true. Maxwell ? 
 The Puritan. Pride before destruction, 
 
 A haughty spirit goeth before a fall. 
 Many of Strafford's Followers. Ah now ! The 
 very thing ! A word in season ! 
 A golden apple in a silver picture 
 To greet Pym as he passes ! 
 
 \_The doors at the back begin to open, noise and light 
 
 issuing. 
 Max. Stand back, aU ! 
 
 Many of the Presbyterians. I hold with Pym ! 
 
 And I ! 
 Strafford's Followers. Now forthe text ! 
 
 He comes ! Quick ! 
 
 The Puritan. How hath the oppressor ceased ! 
 The Lord hath broken the staff of the wicked ! 
 The sceptre of the rulers, he who smote 
 The people in wrath with a continual stroke, 
 That ruled the nations in his anger — he 
 Is persecuted and none hindereth ! 
 [_The doors ttpen, and Steappobd issues in the greatest 
 disorder, and amid cries from within of " Void the 
 House ! " 
 
 Straf. Impeach me ! Pym ! I never struck, I 
 think, 
 The felon on that calm insulting mouth 
 When it proclaimed — Pym's mouth proclaimed 
 
 me , . . God ! 
 Was it a word, only a word that held 
 The outrageous blood back on my heart — 
 
 which beats ! 
 Which beats! Some one word — "Traitor," 
 
 did he say. 
 Bending that eye, brimful of bitter fire. 
 Upon me ? 
 
 Max. In the Commons' name, their servant 
 Demands Lord Strafford's sword. 
 Straf. What did you say ? 
 
 Max. The Commons bid me ask your lord- 
 ship's sword. 
 Straf. Let us go forth : follow me, gentlemen ! 
 Draw your swords too : cut any down that bar 
 
 us. 
 On the King's service ! Maxwell, clear the way ! 
 [The Presbyterians prepare to dispute his passage. 
 Straf. I stay : the King himseU shall see me 
 here. 
 Your tablets, fellow ! 
 
 [To Mainwaeing.] Give that to the King ! 
 Yes, Maxwell, for the next half-hour, let be ! 
 Nay, you shall take my sword 1 
 
 [Maxwell advances to take it. 
 Or, no — not that ! 
 Their blood, perhaps, may wipe out all thus far, 
 All up to that — not that ! Wny, friend, you see 
 When the King lays your head beneath my foot 
 It will not pay for that. Go, all of you ! 
 
STRAFFORD 
 
 6S 
 
 Max. I dare, my lord, to diaobey : none stir I 
 
 Straf. This gentle Maxwell ! — Do not touch 
 him, Bi'yan ! 
 
 \To the Presbyterians.] Whichever our of you 
 will carry this 
 Escapes his fellow's fate. None saves his life ? 
 None ? [^CfiesJ'rom viithin of " Strappord !" 
 
 Slingrsby, I 've loved you at least ; make haste 1 
 Stab me ! I have not time to tell you why. 
 You then, my Bryan ! Mainwaring, you then 1 
 Is it because I spoke so hastily 
 At Allerton ? The King had vexed me. 
 
 \To the Presbyterians] You 1 
 
 — Not even you ? If I five over this. 
 The King Is sure to have your heads, you know 1 
 But whfeit if I can't Jive this minute through ? 
 Pym, who is there with his pursuing smile ! 
 
 \_Louder cnes of " Strappord I " 
 The King ! I troubled him, stood in the way 
 Of his negotiations, was the one 
 Great obstacle to peace, the Enemy 
 Of Scotland : and he sent for me, from York, 
 My safety guaranteed — having prex)ared 
 A Parliament — I see ! And at Wliitehall 
 The Queen was whispering with Vane — I see 
 The trap ! ITearing off the George. 
 
 1 tread a gewgaw underfoot, 
 And cast amemory from me. One stroke, now ! 
 
 {_His own Adherents disarm him. Eenewed cries 
 of*^ Steafpord ! " 
 England ! I see thy arm in this and yield. 
 Pray you now — Pym awaits me — pray you 
 
 nowl 
 [Strafford reaches the doors ; they open wide. Hamp- 
 , DBN and a crowd discovered^ and, at the bar, Pym 
 
 standing apart. As Strappord kneels^ the scene 
 
 shuts. 
 
 ACT IV 
 Scene I. Whitehall. 
 
 The ElNO, th^ Queen, Hollis, Lady Carlisle. (Vane, 
 Holland, SAVUiE, in the background.) 
 
 Lady Car. Answer them, Hollis, for his 
 
 sake ! One word ! 
 Cha. [To HoLiiis.l You stand, silent and 
 cold, as though I were 
 Deceiving yon — my friend, my playfellow 
 Of other times. What wonder after all ? 
 Just so, I dreamed my People loved me. 
 
 Hoi. Sir, 
 
 It is yburself that you deceive, not me. 
 You '11 quit me comforted, your mind made up 
 That, since you've talked thus much and 
 
 grieved thus much. 
 All you can do for Strafford has been done. 
 Queen. If you kill Strafford — (come, we 
 grant you leave. 
 Suppose) — 
 aol. I may withdraw, sir ? 
 
 Lady Car. Hear them out ! 
 
 'Tis the last chance for Strafford ! Hear them 
 out! 
 Hoi. "If we kiU Strafford"— on the eigh- 
 teenth day 
 Of Strafford's trial— " We ! " 
 Cha. Pym, my good Hollis — 
 
 Pym, I should say ! 
 
 Hoi. Ah, true — sir, pardon me ! 
 
 You witness our proceedii^ every day ; 
 But the screened gallery, rmight have guessed. 
 Admits of such a partial glimpse at us, 
 Pym takes up all the room, shuts ont the view. 
 Still,' on my honor, sir, the rest of the place 
 Is not unoccupied. The Commons sit 
 — That 's England ; Ireland sends, and Soot- 
 land too, 
 Their representatives ; the Peers that judgr 
 Are easily distinguished ; one remarks 
 The People here and there : but the close cur- 
 tain 
 Must hide so much ! 
 
 Queen. Acquaint your insolent crew, 
 
 This day the curtain shall be dashed aside ! 
 It served a purpose. 
 
 Hoi. Think 1 This very day ? 
 
 Ere Strafford rises to defend himself ? 
 
 Cha. 1 win defend him, sir ! — sanction the 
 past 
 This day : it ever was my purpose. Kage 
 At me, not Strafford ! 
 
 Lady Car. Nobly ! — will he not 
 
 Do nobly ? 
 
 Hoi. Sir, you will do honestly ; 
 
 And, for that deed, I too would be a king. 
 
 Cha. Only, to do this now ! — " deaf " (in 
 yoiir style) 
 "To subjects' prayers," — I must oppose them 
 
 now ! 
 It seems their will the trial should proceed, — 
 So palpably their wiU ! 
 
 Hoi. You peril much, 
 
 But it were no bright moment save for that. 
 Strafford, your prime support, the sole roof- 
 tree 
 Which props this quaking House of Privilege, 
 (Flood comes, winds beat, and see — the treach- 
 erous sand !) 
 Doubtless, if the mere putting forth an arm 
 Could save him, you 'd save Strafford. 
 
 Cha. And they dare 
 
 Consummate calmly this great wrong ! No 
 
 hope ? 
 This ineffaceable wrong ! No pity then ? 
 
 Hoi. No plague in store for perfidy ? — 
 Farewell ! 
 You call me, sir — [To Lady Carlisle.] You, 
 
 lady, bade me come 
 To save the Earl : I came, thank God for it. 
 To learn how far such perfidy can go I 
 You, sir, concert with me on saving him 
 Who have just ruined Strafford ! 
 
 Cha. I? — and how? 
 
 Hoi. Eighteen days long he throws, one after 
 one, 
 Pym's charges back : a blind moth-eaten law ! 
 — He 'E break from it at last : and whom to 
 
 thank? 
 The mouse that gnawed the lion's net for him 
 Got a good friend, — but he, the other mouse, 
 That looked on while the lion freed himself — 
 Fared he so well, does any fable say ? 
 
 Cha. What can you mean ? 
 
 Hd. _ Pym never could have proved 
 
 Strafford's design of bringing up the troops 
 
66 
 
 STRAFFORD 
 
 To force this kingdom to obedience : Vane — 
 Your servant, not our friend, has proved it. 
 
 Cha. Vane? 
 
 HoL This day. Did Vane deliver up or no 
 Those notes which, furnished by his son to Pym, 
 Seal Strafford's fate ? 
 
 Cha, Sir, as I live, I know 
 
 Nothing that Vane has done ! What treason 
 
 next? 
 I wash my hands of it. Vane, speak the truth ! 
 Ask Vane himself ! 
 
 Hoi. I will not speak to Vane, 
 
 Who speak to Pym and Hampden every day. 
 
 Queen. Speak to Vane's master then ! 
 What gain to him 
 Were Strafford's death ? 
 
 Hoi. Ha ? Strafford cannot turn 
 
 As you, sir, sit there — bid you forth, demand 
 If every hateful act were not set down 
 In his commission ? — whether you contrived 
 Or no, that all the violence should seem 
 His work, the gentle ways — your own, — his 
 
 part. 
 To counteract the King's kind impulses — 
 While . . . but you know what he could say I 
 
 And then 
 He might produce — mark, sir ! — a certain 
 
 charge 
 To set the King's express command aside, 
 a need were, and be blameless. He might 
 add . . . 
 
 Cha. Enough! 
 
 Hoi. — Who bade him break the Parlia^ 
 ment, 
 Find some pretence for setting up sword-law^ ! 
 
 Queen. Ketire ! 
 
 Cha. Once more, whatever Vane dared do, 
 I know not : he is rash, a fool — I know 
 Nothing of Vane ! 
 
 Hoi. Well — I believe you. Sir, 
 
 Believe me, in return, that . . . 
 [Turning to Lady Caklislb.] Gentle lady, 
 The few words I would say, the stones might 
 
 hear 
 Sooner than these, — I rather speak to you. 
 You, with the heart ! The question, trust me, 
 
 takes 
 Another shape, to-day : not, if the King 
 Or England shall succumb, — but, who shall pay 
 The forfeit, Strafford or his master. Sir, 
 You loved me once : think on my warning now 1 
 
 [Goes out. 
 
 Cha. On you and on your warning both ! — 
 Carlisle ! 
 That paper 1 
 
 Queen. But consider ! 
 
 Gha. Give it me ! 
 
 There, signed — wiU that content you ? Do not 
 
 speak I 
 You have betrayed me. Vane ! See ! any day, 
 According to the tenor of that paper. 
 He bids your brother bring the army up, 
 Strafford shaU head it and take fuU revenge. 
 Seek Strafford ! Let him have the same, before 
 He rises to defend himseK ! 
 
 Queen. In truth ? 
 
 That your shrewd Hollis should have worked a 
 change 
 
 Like this ! You, late reluctant ... 
 
 Cha. Say, Carlisle, 
 
 Your brother Percy brings the army up. 
 Falls on the Parliament — (I '11 think of you, 
 My Hollis !) say, we plotted long — 't is mine. 
 The scheme is mine, remember I Say, I cursed 
 Vane's folly in your hearing ! If the Earl 
 Does rise to do us shame, the fault shall lie 
 With you, Carlisle ! 
 
 Lady Car. Nay, fear not me I but still 
 
 That 's a bright moment, sir, you throw away. 
 Tear down the veil and save him ! 
 
 Queen. Go, Carlisle ! 
 
 Lady Car. (I shall see Strafford — speak to 
 him ; my heart 
 Must never beat so, then ! And if I tell 
 The truth ? What 's gained by falsehood ? 
 
 There they stand 
 Whose trade it is, whose life it is ! How vain 
 To gild such rottenness ! Strafford shall know, 
 Thoroughly know them !) 
 
 Queen. Trust to me! [To Caklisle.] 
 
 Carlisle, 
 You seem inclined, alone of all the Court, 
 To serve poor Strafford : this bold plan of youra 
 Merits much praise, and yet . . . 
 
 Lady Car. Time presses, madam. 
 
 Queen. Yet — may it not be sometmiig pre- 
 mature ? 
 Strafford defends himself to-day — reserves 
 Some wondrous effort, one may well suppose ! 
 
 Lady Car. Ay, Hollis hints as much. 
 
 Cha. Wliy linger then ? 
 
 Haste with the scheme — my scheme : I shall 
 
 be there 
 To watch his look. Tell him I watch his look I 
 
 Queen. Stay, we 'U precede you ! 
 
 Lady Car. At your pleasure. 
 
 Cha. Say — 
 
 Say, Vane is hardly ever at Whitehall ! 
 I shall be there, remember ! 
 
 Lady Car. Doubt me not. 
 
 Cha. On our return, Carlisle, we wait yon 
 here! 
 
 Lady Car. I '11 bring his answer. Sir, I fol- 
 low you. 
 (Prove the King faithless, and I take away 
 All Strafford cares to live for : let it be — 
 'T is the Kill's scheme ! 
 
 My Strafford, I can save. 
 Nay, I have saved you, yet am scarce content, 
 Because my poor name will not cross your mind. 
 Strafford, how much I am unworthy you !J 
 
 ScEHE II. A passage adjoining Westminster Hall. 
 
 Many groups of Spectators of the Trial. Officers of the 
 Court, etc. 
 
 \st Spec. More crowd than ever I Not know 
 Hampden, man? 
 That 's he, by Pym, Pym that is speaking now. 
 No, truly, if you look so high you '11 see 
 Little enough of either ! 
 
 2rf Spec. Stay : Pym's arm 
 
 Points like a prophet's rod. 
 
 3d Spec. Ay, ay, we 've heard 
 
 Some pretty speaking : yet the Earl escapes. 
 
 ith Spec. I fear it ; just a foolish word or two 
 
STRAFFORD 
 
 67 
 
 About his children — and we see, forsooth, 
 Not England's foe in Strafford, hut the man 
 Who, sick, half-blind . . . 
 
 2d Spec. What 's that Pyiu 's saying now 
 
 Which makes the curtains flutter ? look 1 A 
 
 hand 
 Clutches them. Ah ! The King's hand ! 
 
 5th Spec. I had thought 
 
 Pym was not near so tall. What said he, 
 friend ? 
 
 2d Spec. *' Nor is this way a novel way of 
 blood," 
 And the Earl turns as if to . . . Look ! look I 
 
 Many Spectators. There ! 
 
 What ails him ? No — he rallies, see — goes on. 
 And Strafford smiles. Strange ! 
 
 An Officer. Haselrig ! 
 
 Many Spectators. Friend ? Friend ? 
 
 The Officer, Lost, utterly lost: just when 
 we looked for Pym 
 To make a stand against the ill effects 
 Of the Earl's speech I Is Haselrig without ? 
 Pym'a message is to him. 
 
 3rf Spec. Now, said I true ? 
 
 Will the Earl leave them yet at fault or no ? 
 
 1st Spec. Never believe it, man ! These 
 notes of Vane's 
 Ruin the Earl. 
 
 5th Spec. A brave end : not a whit 
 
 Less firm, less Pym all over. Then, the trial 
 Is closed. No — Strafford means to speak 
 again ? 
 
 An Officer. Stand back, there 1 
 
 5th Spec. Why, the Earl is coming hither ! 
 Before the court breaks up 1 His brother, 
 
 look, — 
 You 'd say he 'd deprecated some fierce act 
 In Strafford's mind just now. 
 
 An Offif^er. Stand back, I say ! 
 
 2d Spec. Who '3 the veiled woman that he 
 talks with ? 
 
 Many Spectators. Hush — 
 The Earl ! the Earl ! 
 [Enter Steavfobd, Slingsby, ami other Secretaries, 
 
 HoLLis, Lady Cablisle, Maxwell, Balfoub, etc. 
 
 Stbaffobd converses with Lady Gablisle, 
 
 md. So near the end ! Be patient — 
 
 Return ! 
 
 Straf. [To his Secretaries.] Here — any- 
 where — or, 'tis freshest here ! 
 To spend one's April here, the blossom-month : 
 Set it down here ! 
 
 [They arrange a tahle, papers^ etc. 
 
 So, Pym can quail, can cower 
 
 Because I glance at him, yet more 's to do. 
 
 What 's to be answered, SUngsby ? Let us end ! 
 
 [To Lady Caklislb.] Child, I refuse his offer ; 
 
 whatsoe'er 
 It be ! Too late ! TeU me no word of him ! 
 'T is something, HoUis, I assure you that — 
 To stand, sick as you are, some eighteen days 
 Fighting for life and fame against a pack 
 Of very curs, that lie through thick and thin. 
 Eat flesh and bread by wholesale, and can't say 
 "Strafford " if it woidd take my life ! 
 
 Lady Car. Be moved ! 
 
 Glance at the paper ! 
 
 Straf. Already at my heels ! 
 
 Pym's faulting bloodhounds scent the track 
 
 again. 
 Peace, child ! Now, SUngsby ! 
 [MeBsengers /rom Lane anrfo/Aero/STBAPPoED's Conn- 
 Bel witMn the Hall are coining and going during the 
 Scene. 
 Straf. [setting himself to vn-ite and dictate.] 
 
 i shall beat you, HolUs ! 
 Do you know that ? In spite of St. John's tricks. 
 In spite of Pym — your Pym who shrank from 
 
 me ! 
 Eliot would have contrived it otherwise. 
 [To a Messenger.] In truth ? This slip, tell 
 
 Lane, contains as much 
 As I can call to mind about the matter. 
 Eliot would have disdained . . . 
 [Calling after the Messenger.] And Badcliffe, 
 
 say. 
 The only person who could answer Pym, 
 Is safe in prison, just for that. 
 
 Well, well I 
 It had not been recorded in that case, 
 I baffied you. 
 [To Lady Caklisle.] Nay, child, why look so 
 
 grieved ? 
 All 's gained without the King ! You saw Pym 
 
 quail ? 
 What shall I do when they acquit me, think 
 
 you. 
 But tranquilly resume my task as though 
 Nothing had intervened since I proposed 
 To call that traitor to account ! Snch tricks. 
 Trust me, shall not he played a second time. 
 Not even against Laud, with his gray hair — ■ 
 Your good work, Hollis ! Peace ! To make 
 
 amends. 
 You, Lucy, shall be here when I impeach 
 Pym and his fellows. 
 
 Hoi. Wherefore not protest 
 
 Against our whole proceeding, long ago ? 
 Why feel indignant now ? Why stand this while 
 Enduring patiently ? 
 
 Straf Child, I'UteUyou- 
 
 You, and not Pym — you, the slight graceful girl 
 Tall for a flowering lily, and not Hollis — 
 Why I stood patient ! I was fool enough 
 To see the will of England in Pym's will ; 
 To fear, myself had wronged her, and to wait 
 Her judgment : when, behold, in place of it . . , 
 [To a messengei who whispers.] Tell Lane to 
 
 answer no such question ! Law, — 
 I grapple with their law ! I 'm here to try 
 My actions by their standard, not my own I 
 Their law allowed that levy : what 's the rest 
 To Pym, or Lane, any but God and me ? 
 Lady Car. The King 's so weak ! Secure 
 
 this chance ! 'T was Vane, 
 Never forget, who furnished Pym the notes . . . 
 Straf. Fit, — very fit, those precious notes 
 
 of Vane, 
 To close the Trial worthily ! I feared 
 Some spice of nobleness might linger yet 
 And spoil the character of all the past. 
 Vane eased me . . . and I will go back and say 
 Asmueh — to Pym, to England! Follow me, 
 I have a word to say ! There, my defence 
 Is done I 
 
 Stay 1 why he proud ? Why care to own 
 
68 
 
 STRAFFORD 
 
 My gladness, my surprise ? — Nay, not surprise ! 
 
 Wherefore insist upon the little pride 
 
 Of doing all myself, and sparing him 
 
 The pain ? Child, say the triumph is my King's I 
 
 When Pym grew pale, and trembled, and sank 
 
 down, 
 One image was before me : could I fail ? 
 Child, care not for the past, so indistinct, 
 Obscure — there 's nothing to forgive in it, 
 'T is so forgotten ! From this day begins 
 A new life, founded on a new belief 
 In Charles. 
 
 Hoi. In Charles ? Rather believe in Pym i 
 And here he comes in proof ! Appeal to Pym ! 
 Say how unfair . . . 
 
 Straf. To Pym ? I would say nothing ! 
 
 I would not look upon Pym's face again. 
 Lady Car. Stay, let me have to think I 
 
 pressed your hand I 
 
 [Strafford and his Friends go out. 
 (Enter Hampden mtd Vane.) 
 Vane. Hampden, save the great misguided 
 
 man ! 
 Plead Strafford's cause with Pym ! I have re- 
 marked 
 He moved no muscle when we all declaimed 
 Against him: you had but to breathe — he turned 
 Those kind calm eyes upon you. 
 {Enter Ptm, the Solicitor-General St. John, the Mana- 
 gers of the Trial, Fibnnes, Rudyard, etc. 
 Bud. Horrible ! 
 
 Till now all hearts were with yon : I withdraw 
 For one. Too horrible I But we mistake 
 Your purpose, Pym ; you cannot snatch away 
 The last spar from the drowning man. 
 
 Fien. He talks 
 
 With St. John of it — see, how quietly ! 
 [To other Presbyterians.] You '11 join us ? 
 
 Strafford may deserve the worst : 
 But this new course is monstrous. Vane, take 
 
 heart I 
 This Bill of his Attainder shall not have 
 One true man's hand to it. 
 
 Vane. Consider, Pym ! 
 
 Confront your Bill, your own Bill : what is 
 
 it? 
 Yon cannot catch the Earl on any charge, — 
 No man will say the law has hold of him 
 On any charge ; and therefore you resolve 
 To take the general sense on his desert. 
 As though no law existed, and we met 
 To found one. You refer to Parliament 
 To speak its thought upon the abortive mass 
 Of half-borne-ont assertions, dubious hints 
 Hereafter to be cleared, distortions — ay, 
 And wild inventions. Every man is saved 
 The task of fixing any single charge 
 On Strafford : he has but to see in him 
 The enemy of England. 
 
 Pym. A right scruple ! 
 
 I have heard some called England's enemy 
 With less consideration. 
 
 Vane. Pity me I 
 
 Indeed you make me think I was your friend I 
 I who have murdered Strafford, how remove 
 That memory from me? 
 
 Pym. I absolve you. Vane. 
 
 Take you no care for aught that you nave done ! 
 
 Vane. John Hampden, not this Bill ! Re- 
 ject this Bill ! 
 He staggers through the ordeal : let him go. 
 Strew no fresh fire before him ! Plead for us I 
 When Strafford spoke, your eyes were thick 
 with tears ! 
 Samp. England speaks louder : who are we, 
 to play 
 The generous pardoner at her expense. 
 Magnanimously waive advantages. 
 And, if he conquer us, applaud his skill ? 
 Vane. He was your friend. 
 Pym. I have heard that before, 
 
 Fien. And England trusts you. 
 Samp. Shame be his, who turns 
 
 The opportunity of serving her 
 She trusts him with, to his own mean account — 
 Who would look nobly frank at her expense ! 
 Fien, I never thought it could have come to 
 
 this. 
 Pym. But I have made myself fanuliar, 
 Fiennes, 
 With this one thought — have walked, and sat, 
 
 and slept. 
 This thought before roe. I have done such. 
 
 things. 
 Being the chosen man that should destroy 
 The traitor. You have taken up tliis thought 
 To play with, for a gentle stimulant. 
 To give a dignity to idler life 
 By the dim prospect of emprise to come, 
 But ever with the softening, sure belief. 
 That all would end some strange way right at 
 last. 
 Fien. Had we made out some weightier 
 
 charge ! 
 Pym. You say 
 
 That these are petty charges : can we come 
 To the real chaise at all ? There he is safe 
 In tyranny's stronghold. Apostasy 
 Is not a crime, treachery not a crime : 
 The cheek bums, the blood tingles, when you 
 
 The words, but where 's the power to take re- 
 venge 
 
 Upon them ? We must make occasion serve, — 
 
 The oversight shall pay for the main sin 
 
 That mocks us. 
 Bud. But this unexampled course. 
 
 This Bill ! 
 Pym. By this, we roll the clouds away 
 
 Of precedent and custom, and at once 
 
 Bid the great beacon-light Grod sets in all. 
 
 The conscience of each bosom, shine upon 
 
 The guilt of Strafford : each man lay his hand 
 
 Upon his breast, and judge ! 
 
 Vane. I oijy see 
 
 Strafford, nor pass his corpse for all b^ond ! 
 Bud. and others. Forgive him ! He would 
 join us, now he finds 
 
 What the King counts reward I The pardon, 
 too. 
 
 Should be your own. Yourself should bear to 
 Strafford 
 
 The pardon of the Commons, 
 Pym. Meet him? Strafford? 
 
 Have we to meet once more, then ? Be it so 1 
 
 And yet — the prophecy seemed half fulfilled 
 
STRAFFORD 
 
 When, at the Trial, as he gazed, my youth. 
 Our t'rieudship, divers thoughts came back at 
 
 once 
 And left me, for a time ... 'T is very sad I 
 To-morrow we discuss the points of law 
 "With Lane — to-morrow ? 
 
 Vane. Not before to-morrow — 
 
 So, time enough ! I knew you would relent 1 
 
 Pym. The next day, Haaelrig, you introduce 
 The Bill of his Attainder. Pray for me ! 
 
 Scene III. Whitehall. 
 The KiHG. 
 
 CJia. My loyal servant ! To defend himself 
 Thus irresistibly, — withholding aught 
 That seemed to implicate us ! 
 
 We have done 
 Less gallantly by Strafford. Well, the future 
 Must recompense the past. 
 
 She tarries long. 
 I understand you, Strafford, now ! 
 
 The scheme — 
 Carllile's mad scheme — he '11 sanction it, I fear, 
 For love of me. 'T was too precipitate : 
 Before the army 's fairly on its march, 
 He 'U be at large : no matter. 
 
 Well, Carlisle ? 
 {Enter Ptm.) 
 
 Pym. Fear me not, sir: — my mission is to 
 save, 
 This time. 
 
 Cha. To break thus on me ! unannounced I 
 
 Pym. It is of Strafford I would speak. 
 
 Cha. No more 
 
 Of Strafford 1 I have heard too much from 
 you. 
 
 Pym. I spoke, sir, for the People ; will you 
 hear 
 A word upon ray own account ? 
 
 Cha. Of Strafford ? 
 
 (So turns the tide abeady ? Have we tamed 
 The insolent brawler ? — Strafford's eloquence 
 Is swift in its effect.) Lord Strafford, sir, 
 Has spoken for himself. 
 
 Pym. Sufficiently. 
 
 I would apprise you of the novel course 
 The People take : the Trial fails. 
 
 Cha. _ ^ Yes, yes : 
 
 We are aware, sir : for your part in it 
 Means shall be found to thank you. 
 
 Pym. Pray you, read 
 
 This schedule ! I would learn from your own 
 
 mouth 
 — (It is a matter much concerning me) — 
 Whether, if two Estates of us concede 
 The death of Strafford, on the grounds set forth 
 Within that parchment, you, sir, can resolve 
 To grant your own consent to it. This Bill 
 Is framed by me. If you determine, sir. 
 That England's manifested will should guide 
 Your judgment, ere another week such will 
 Shall manifest itself. If not, — I cast 
 Aside the measure. 
 
 Cha. You can hindei;, then. 
 
 The introduction of this Bill ? 
 
 Pym. I can. 
 
 Cha. He is my friend, sir : I have wronged 
 him : mark you. 
 Had I not wronged him, this might be. Yon 
 
 think 
 Because you hate the Earl . . . (turn not away, 
 We know you hate himj — no one else could love 
 Strafford : but he has saved me, some ailifra. 
 Think of his pride ! And do you know one 
 
 strange. 
 One frightful thing ? We all have used the man 
 As though a drudge of ours, with not a source 
 Of happy thoughts except in us ; and yet 
 Strafford has wife and children, household cares, 
 Just as if we had never been. Ah, sir, 
 You are moved, even you, a solitary man 
 Wed to your cause — to England if you will I 
 
 Pym. Yes — think, my soul — to England! 
 Draw not back ! 
 
 Cha. Prevent that BUI, sir ! All your course 
 seems fair 
 Till now. Why, in the end, 't is I should sign 
 The warrant for his death ! You have said much 
 I ponder on ; I never meant, indeed, 
 Strafford should serve me any more. I take 
 The Commons' counsel ; but this Bill is yours — 
 Nor worthy of its leader : care not, sir. 
 For that, however ! I will quite forget 
 You named it to me. You are satisfied ? 
 
 Pym. Listen to me, sir ! Eliot laid his hand, 
 Wasted and white, upon my forehead once : 
 Wentworth — he 's gone now ! — has talked on, 
 
 whole nights. 
 And I beside him ; Hampden loves me : sir, 
 How can 1 breathe and not wish England well, 
 And her King well ? 
 
 Cha. I thank you, sir, who leave 
 
 That King his servant. Thanks, sir ! 
 
 Pym, Let me speak ! 
 
 — Who may not speak again ; whose spirit yearns 
 For a cool night after this weary day : 
 
 — Who would not have my soul turn sicker yet 
 In a new task, more fatal, more august. 
 
 More fuU of England's utter weal or woe. 
 I thought, sir, could I find myself with yon, 
 After this trial, alone, as man to man — 
 I might say something, warn you, pray you, 
 
 save — 
 Mark me. King Charles, save — you ! 
 But God must do it. Yet I warn you, sir — 
 (With Strafford's faded eyes yet full on me) 
 As you would have no deeper question moved 
 
 — ' How long the Many must endure the One," 
 Assure me, sir, if England give assent 
 
 To Strafford's death, you will not interfere I 
 Or — 
 
 Cha. God forsakes me. I am in a net 
 And cannot move. Let all be as you say ! 
 {Enter Lady Carlisle.) 
 
 Lady Car. He loves you — looking beautiful 
 with joy 
 Because you sent me ! he would spare you all 
 The paiu ! he never dreamed you would forsake 
 Your servant in the evil day — nay, see 
 Your scheme returned 1 That generous heart. 
 
 of his ! 
 He needs it not — or, needing it, disdains 
 A course that might endanger you — you, sir, 
 Whom Strafford from his inmost soul . . . 
 
10 
 
 STRAFFORD 
 
 {Seeing Pym.] Well met ! 
 
 No fear for btrafford ! AH that 's true and brave 
 On your own side shall help us : we are now 
 Stronger than ever. 
 
 Ha — what, sir, is this ? 
 All is not well! What parchment have you 
 there ? 
 
 Pym, Sir, much is saved us both. 
 
 Lady Car. This Bill! Your Up 
 
 Whitens — you could not read one line to me 
 Your voice would falter so ! 
 
 Pym. No recreant yet ! 
 
 The ffreat word went from England to my soul, 
 And I arose. The end is very near. 
 
 Lady Car. I am to save him ! All have 
 shrunk beside ; 
 'T is only I am left. Heaven wiU make strong 
 The hand now as the heart. Then let both die ! 
 
 ACT V 
 
 Scene I. Whitehall. 
 
 HoLLis, Lady Carlisle. 
 
 Hoi. Tell the King then ! Come in with me ! 
 
 Lady Car, ^ _ Not so ! 
 
 He must not hear till it succeeds. 
 
 Sol. Succeed ? 
 
 No dream was half so vain — you 'd rescue Straf- 
 ford 
 And outwit Pym ! I cannot tell you , . . lady. 
 The block pursues me, and the hideous show. 
 To-day ... is it to-day ? And all the while 
 He 's sure of the King's pardon. Think, I have 
 To tell this man he is to die. The King 
 May rend his hair, for me I I 'II not see Straf- 
 ford 
 
 Lady Car, Only, if I succeed, remember — 
 Charles 
 Has saved him. He would hardly value life 
 Unless his gift. My stanch friends wait. Go in — 
 You must go in to Charles ! 
 
 Hoi. And all beside 
 
 Left Strafford long ago. The King has signed 
 The warrant for his death ! the Queen was 
 
 sick 
 Of the eternal subject. For the Court, — 
 The Trial was amusing in its way. 
 Only too much of it : the Earl withdrew 
 In time. But yon, fragile, alone, so young, 
 Amid rude mercenaries — yon devise 
 A plan to save him ! Even though it fails, 
 What shall reward you ! 
 
 Lady Car, I may go, you think. 
 
 To France with him? And you reward me, 
 
 friend, 
 Who lived with Strafford even from his youth 
 Before he set his heart on state-affairs 
 And they bent down that noble brow of his. 
 I have learned somewhat of his latter life. 
 And all the future I shall know ; but, Hollis, 
 I ought to make his youth my own as well. 
 Tell me, — when he is saved ! 
 
 Hoi. My gentle friend. 
 
 He should know all and love you, but 't is vain ! 
 
 Lady Car. Love ? no — too late now I Let 
 him love the King I 
 
 'Tis the King's scheme 1 I have your word, 
 rememiber ! 
 
 We '11 keep the old delusion up. But, quick ! 
 
 Quick ! Each of us has work to do, beside ! 
 
 Go to the King ! I hope — Hollis — I ho^e 1 
 
 Say nothing of my scheme ! Hush, wlule we 
 speak 
 
 Think where he is ! Now for my gallant friends ! 
 Hoi. Where he is ? Calling wildly upon 
 Charles, 
 
 Gruessing his fate, pacii^ the prison-floor. 
 
 Let the King tell him ! I '11 not look on Straf- 
 ford. 
 
 Scene II. The Tower. 
 
 Steapford Hiimg loUh his Children. 
 
 O bell' andare 
 Per barca in mare, 
 Verso la sera 
 Di Primavera ! 
 
 They sing. 
 
 Andante, 
 
 i 
 
 R=^=^ 
 
 -A^ 
 
 M=# 
 
 ifcN 
 
 EfS?^^ 
 
 O beir an- da - re, Per bar-ca in 
 
 ma - re, Ver - so la se - ra, Dl prl-ma- 
 
 l¥. 
 
 ^i 
 
 iftt 
 
 i=^ 
 
 -A^s- 
 
 ve - ra, O bell' an 
 slentando e diminuendo, 
 
 N 
 
 da - re. 
 
 O bell' an - da 
 
 William, The boat 's in the broad moonlight 
 all this while — 
 
 Verso la sera 
 Di Primavera ! 
 
 And the boat shoots from underneath the moos 
 Into the shadowy distance ; only still 
 You hear the dipping oar — 
 
 Verso la sera. 
 
 And faint, and fainter, and then all 's quite gone, 
 Music and light and all, like a lost star. 
 Anne, But you should sleep, father : you 
 
 were to sleep. 
 Straf. I do sleep, Anne ; or if not — you must 
 know 
 There 's such a thing as . . . 
 
STRAFFORD 
 
 V 
 
 Wil. You 're too tired to sleep ? 
 
 Straf. It will eome by-and-by and aU day long, 
 In that old quiet house I told you of : 
 We sleep sate there. 
 
 Anne. Why not in Ireland ? 
 
 iS'fra/. No I 
 
 Too many dreams ! — That song 's for Venice, 
 
 William: 
 You know how Venice looks upon the map — 
 Isles that the mainland hardly can let go ? 
 
 Wil. You 've been to Venice, father? 
 
 Slraf. I was young, then. 
 
 Wu. A city with no King ; that 's why I like 
 Even a song that comes from Venice. 
 
 Siraf. Wiffiam? 
 
 ^Wil. Oh, I know why 1 Anne, do you love 
 the Kino:? 
 But I '11 see Venice for myself one day. 
 
 Straf. See many lands, boy — England last 
 of all, — 
 That way you 'U love her best. 
 
 Wil. Why do men say 
 
 You sought to ruin her, then ? 
 
 &traf. Ah, — they say that. 
 
 Wit. Why? 
 
 Straf. I suppose they must have words to say. 
 As you to sing. 
 
 Anns. But they make songs beside : 
 
 Last night I heard one, in the street beneath, 
 That called you . . . Oh, the names I 
 
 Wil. Don't mind her, father ! 
 
 They soon left off when I cried out to them. 
 
 Straf. We shall so soon be out of it, my boy ! 
 'T is not worth while : who heeds a foolish song ? 
 Wil. Why, not the King. 
 
 Straf. Well : it has been the fate 
 
 Of better ; and yet, — wherefore not feel sure 
 That Time, who in the twilight comes to mend 
 AU the fantastic day's caprice, consign 
 To the low ground once more the ignoble Term, 
 And raise the Genius on his orb again, — 
 That Time will do me right ? 
 
 Anne. (ijhall we sing, William ? 
 
 He does not look thus when we sing\) 
 
 l^iraf. ForlreUnd, 
 
 bomething is done : too little, but enough 
 To show what might have been. 
 
 ^ii' (I have no heart 
 
 lo smg now ! Amie, how very sad he looks I 
 Oh^ I so hate the King for all he says !) 
 
 Straf. Forsook them? What, the common 
 songs will run 
 That I forsook the People ? Nothing more ? 
 Ay, Fame, the busy scribe, wiU pause, no doubt. 
 Turning a deaf ear to her thousand slaves 
 Noisy to be enrolled, — wUl repster 
 The curious glosses, subtle notices, 
 Bigenious olearings-up one fain would see 
 Beside that plain inscription of The Name — 
 The Patriot Pym, or the Apostate Strafford ! 
 IThe Children resvme iheir song timidly^ hut break off. 
 {JSrUer HoLLia and an Attendant.) 
 
 Straf. No, — Hollis ? in good time 1 — Who 
 is he? 
 
 B.ol. One 
 
 That must be present. 
 
 Straf. Ah — I understand. 
 
 They will not let me see poor Laud alone. 
 
 How politic ! They 'd use me by degrees 
 
 To solitude : and, just as you came in, 
 
 I was solicitous what life to lead 
 
 When Strafford 's " not so much as Constable 
 
 In the Eng's service." Is there any means 
 
 To keep one's self awake ? What would you do 
 
 After this bustle, Hollis, in my place ? 
 
 Rol. Strafford 1 
 
 Straf. Observe, not but that Pym and you 
 Will find me news enough — news I shall hear 
 Under a quince-tree by a fish-pond side 
 At Wentworth. Garrard must be re-engaged 
 My newsman. Or, a better project now — 
 What if when aU 's consummated, and the Saints 
 Reign, and the Senate's work goes swim- 
 
 ingly, — 
 What if I venture up, some day, unseen. 
 To saunter through the Town, notice how Pym, 
 Your Tribune, likes Whitehall, drop quietly 
 Into a tavern, hear a point discussed. 
 As, whether Strafford's name were John or 
 
 James ^ 
 And be myself apijealed to — I, who shaU 
 Myself have near forgotten ! 
 
 Jiol. I would speak . . . 
 
 Straf. Then you shaU speak, — not now. I 
 want just now, 
 To hear the sound of my own tongue. This 
 
 place 
 Is fuU of ghosts. 
 
 Mol, Nay, you must hear me, Strafford ! 
 
 Straf. Oh, readUy ! Only, one rare thing 
 more, — 
 The minister ! Who wiU advise the King, 
 Turn his Sejanus, RicheUeu and what not. 
 And yet have health — children, for aught I 
 
 kuow — 
 My patient pair of traitors ! Ah, — but, Wil- 
 liam — 
 Does not his cheek grow thin ? 
 
 Wil. 'T is you look thin, 
 
 Father ! 
 
 Straf. A scamper o'er the breezy wolds 
 Sets ail to-rights. 
 
 Hoi. ^ You cannot sure forget 
 
 A prison-roof is o'er you, Strafford ? 
 
 Straf. No, 
 
 Why, no. I would not touch on that, the first. 
 I left you that. WeU, Hollis ? Say at once. 
 The King can find no time to set me free ! 
 A mask at Theobald's ? 
 
 Hoi. _ Hold : no such affair 
 
 Detains him. 
 
 Straf. True : what needs so great a matter ? 
 The Queen's lip may be sore. Well : when he 
 
 pleases, — 
 Only, I want the air : it vexes flesh 
 To be pent up so long. 
 
 Hoi. The King — I bear 
 
 Uis message, Strafford : pray you, let me speak .' 
 
 Straf. Go, William! Anne, try o'er your 
 song again ! 
 
 [The Children refire. 
 They shall be loyal, friend, at aU events. 
 I know your message : you have nothing new 
 To teU me ; from the first I guessed as much. 
 1 know, instead of coming here himself. 
 Leading me forth in public by the hand. 
 
72 
 
 STRAFFORD 
 
 The King prefers to leave the door ajar 
 As though I were escaping — hids me trudge 
 While the mob gapes upon some show prepared 
 On the other side of the river ! Give at once 
 His order of release ! I 've heard, as well, 
 Of certain poor manffiuvres to avoid 
 The granting pardon at his proper risk ; 
 First, he must prattle somewhat to the Lords, 
 Must talk a trifle with the Commons first, 
 Be grieved I should abuse his confidence. 
 And far from blaming them, and . . . Where 's 
 
 the order ? 
 JBol. Spare me ! 
 
 Straf. Why, he 'd not have me steal away ? 
 With an old doublet and a steeple hat 
 Like Prynne's? Be smuggled into France, 
 
 perhaps ? 
 Hollis, 't is for my children 1 'T was for them 
 I first consented to stand day by day 
 And give your Puritans the best of words. 
 Be patient, speak when called upon, observe 
 Their rules, and not return them prompt their 
 
 Ue! 
 What 's in that boy of mine that he should prove 
 Son to a prison-breaker ? I shall stay 
 And he '11 stay with me. Charles should know 
 
 as much, 
 He too has children ! 
 [Turning to Hoixis's companion.^ Sir, you 
 
 feel for me ! 
 No need to hide that face! Though it have 
 
 looked 
 Upon me from the judgment-seat ... I know 
 Strangely, that somewhere it has looked on 
 
 me . . . 
 Your coming has my pardon, nay, my thanks : 
 For there is one who comes not. 
 
 Hoi. Whom forgive, 
 
 /is one to die I 
 
 Straf. True, all die, and all need 
 
 Forgiveness : I forgive him from my soul. 
 Hoi. "T is a world's wonder : Strafford, you 
 
 must die ! 
 Straf. Sir, if your errand is to set me free 
 This heartless jest mars much. Ha ! Tears in 
 
 truth? 
 We 'n end this! See this paper, warm — feel 
 
 — warm 
 With lying next my heart t Whose hand is 
 
 there ? 
 Whose promise ? Read, and loud for God to 
 
 hear ! 
 * ' Strafford shall take no hurt " — read it, I say ! 
 " In person, honor, nor estate " — 
 Hoi. The King . . . 
 
 Straf. I could unking him by a breath ! 
 
 You sit 
 Where Loudon sat, who came to prophesy 
 The certain end, and offer me Pym's grace 
 If I 'd renounce the King : and I stood firm 
 On the King's faith. The King who lives . . . 
 Hoi. To sign 
 
 The warrant for your death. 
 
 Straf. " Put not your trust 
 
 In princes, neither in the sons of men. 
 In whom is no salvation I " 
 
 Hoi. Trust in God ! 
 
 The scaffold is prepared : they wait for you : 
 
 He has consented. Cast the earth behind ! 
 Cha. You would not see me, Strafford, at 
 your foot ! 
 It was wrung from me ! Only, curse me not ! 
 Hoi. [To Stbaffokd.] As you hope grace 
 and pardon in your need. 
 Be mercitii to this most wretched man. 
 
 [Voices from within. 
 
 Verso la sera 
 in Primavera. 
 
 Straf. You 'U be good to those chUdreh, sir ? 
 
 I know 
 You '11 not believe her, even should the Queen 
 Think they take after one they rarely saw. 
 I had intended that my son should live 
 A stranger to these matters : but you are 
 So utterly deprived of friends ! He too 
 Must serve you — will you not be good to him ? 
 Or, stay, sir, do not promise — do not swear I 
 You, Hollis — do the best you can for me ! 
 I 've not a soul to trust to : Wandesford 's dead, 
 And you 've got Eadcliffe safe. Laud's turn 
 
 comes next : 
 I 've f onnd small time of late for my affairs. 
 But I trust any of you, Pym himself — 
 No one could hurt them ; there 's an infant, 
 
 too, — 
 These tedious cares ! Your Majesty could spare 
 
 them. 
 Nay — pardon me, my King ! I had forgotten 
 Your education, trials, much temptation, 
 Some weakness : there escaped a peevish 
 
 word — 
 'T is gone : I bless you at the last. You know 
 All 's between you and me : what has the world 
 To do with it ? Farewell ! 
 
 Cha. [at the door.] Balfour ! Balfour ' 
 
 {Entfr Balfour.) 
 The Parliament ! — go to them : I grant aU 
 Demands. Their sittings shall be permanent: 
 Tell them to keep their money if they wiU : 
 I '11 come to them for every coat I wear 
 And every crust I eat ; only I choose 
 To pardon rtrafford. As the Queen shall 
 
 choose ! 
 — You never heard the People howl for blood, 
 Beside ! 
 
 Balfour. Your Majesty may hear them now : 
 The walls can hardly keep their murmurs out : 
 Please yon retire ! 
 
 Cha. Take all the troops, Balfour ! 
 
 lial. There are some hundred thousand of 
 
 the crowd. 
 Cha. Come with me, Strafford ! You '11 not 
 
 fear, at least ! 
 Straf. Balfour, say nothing to the world of 
 
 this ! 
 I charge you, as a dying man, forget 
 You gazed upon this agony of one . . . 
 Of one . . . or if . . . why, you may say, Bal- 
 four, 
 The King was sorry : 't is no shame in him : 
 Yes, you may say he even wept, Balfour. 
 And that I walked the lighter to the block 
 Because of it. I shall walk lightly, sir ! 
 Earth fades, heaven breaks on me : I shall 
 
 stand next 
 
STRAFFORD 
 
 73 
 
 Before God's throne : the moment 's close at 
 
 hand 
 When man the first, last time, has leave to lay 
 His whole heart bare before its Maker, leave 
 To clear up the long error of a life 
 And choose one happiness for evennore. 
 With all mortality about me, Charles, 
 The sudden wreck, the dregs of violent death — 
 What if, despite the opening angel-song, 
 There penetrate one prayer for you ? Be saved 
 Through me ! Bear witness, no one could pre- 
 vent 
 My death ! Lead on ! ere he awake — best, 
 
 now ! 
 AH must be ready ; did you say, Balfour, 
 The crowd began to murmur? They'll be 
 
 kept 
 Too late for sermon at St. Antholin's 1 
 Now ! But tread softly — children are at play 
 In the next room. Precede ! I follow — 
 (Enter Lady Gablislb, with many Attendants.) 
 Lady Car. Me ! 
 
 FoUow me, Strafford, and be saved I The 
 
 King? 
 [To the King.] Well — as you ordered, they 
 
 are ranged without. 
 The convoy . . . [seeing the King's state.'\ 
 [To Stbaffoed.] You know all, then I Why, 
 
 I thought 
 It looked best that the King should save you, 
 
 — Charles 
 Alone; 'tis a shame that you should owe me 
 
 aught. 
 Or no, not shame ! Strafford, you 'U not feel 
 
 sha'me 
 At being saved by me ? 
 
 Hoi. AU true ! Oh Strafford, 
 
 She saves you I all her deed ! this lady's deed I 
 And is the boat in readiness ? You, friend. 
 Are Billingsley, no doubt. Speak to her, 
 
 Strafford ! 
 See how she trembles, waiting for your voice ! 
 The world 's to learn its bravest story yet. 
 Lady Car. Talk afterward ! Long nights 
 in France enough. 
 To sit beneath the vines and talk of home. 
 Straf. You love me, child ? Ah, Strafford 
 can be loved 
 As well as Vane ! I could escape, then ? 
 
 Lady Car. Haste ! 
 
 Advance the torches, Bryan ! 
 
 Straf. I will die. 
 
 They call me proud : but England had no right. 
 When she encountered me — her strength to 
 
 mine — 
 To find the chosen foe a craven. Grirl, 
 I fought her to the utterance, I fell, 
 I am hers now, and I will die. Beside, 
 The lookers-on ! Eliot is all about 
 This place, with his most uncomplaining brow. 
 Lady Car. Strafford ! 
 Strttf. I think if you could know how much 
 I love you, you would be repaid, my friend 1 
 Lady Car, Then, for my sake I 
 Straf. Even for your sweet sake. 
 
 To heqneath a stain ? 
 
 Hoi. For their ake 1 
 Straf 
 
 Leave me ! Girl, humor me and let me die I 
 
 Lady Car. Bid him escape — wake, King I 
 Bid him escape I 
 
 Straf. True, I wUl go I Die and forsake the 
 King? 
 I 'U not draw back from the last service. 
 
 Lady Car. Strafford ! 
 
 Strctf. And, after all, what is disgrace to me ? 
 Let us come, child 1 That it should end this 
 
 way ! 
 Lead then ! but I feel strangely : it was not 
 To end this way. 
 
 Lady Car. Lean — lean on me ! 
 
 Straf. My King 1 
 
 Oh, had he trtisted me — his friend of friends 1 
 
 Lady Car. I can support him, Hollis ! 
 
 A'ira/. '■■■ ■ Not this way! 
 
 This gate — I dreamed of it, this very gate. 
 
 Lady Car. It opens on the river : our good 
 boat 
 Is moored below, our friends are there. 
 
 Straf. The same : 
 
 Only with something ominous and dark, 
 Fatal, inevitable. 
 
 Lady Car. Strafford ! Strafford ! 
 
 Straf. Not by this gate ! I feel what will 
 be there ! 
 I dreamed of it J! tell you ; touch it not I 
 
 Lady Car. To save the King, — Strafford, 
 to save the King ! 
 [_As Steafpord opens the door, Ptm is. discovered with 
 
 Hampden, VANB,,,ei(?, , Strafford falls i^ach : Pym 
 
 follows slowly and confronts Idm. 
 
 Pym. Have I done well ? Speak, England ! 
 Whose sole sake 
 I still have labored for, with disregard 
 To my own heart, — for whom my youth was 
 
 made 
 Barren, my manhood waste, to offer up 
 Her sacrifice — this friend, this Wentworth 
 
 here — 
 Who walked in youth with me, loved me, it 
 
 may be. 
 And whom, for his forsaking England's cause, 
 I hunted by all means (trusting that she 
 Would sanctify all means) even to the block 
 Which waits for him. And saying this, I 
 
 feel 
 No bitterer pang than first I felt, the hour 
 I swore that Wentworth might leave us, but I 
 Would never leave him : I do leave him now. 
 I render up my charge (be witness, God !) 
 To England who imposed it. I have done 
 Her bidding — poorly, wrongly, — it may be, 
 With iU effects — for I am weak, a man : 
 Stai, I have done my best, my human best. 
 Not faltering for a moment. It is done. 
 And this said, if I say . . . yes, I will say 
 I never loved but one man — David not 
 More Jonathan ! Even thus, I love him now : 
 And look for my chief portion in that world 
 Where great hearts led astray are turned again, 
 (Soon it may be, and, certes, will be soon ; 
 My mission over, I shall not live long,) — 
 Ay, here I know I talk — I dare and must, 
 Of England, and her great reward, as all 
 I look for there ; but in my inmost heart, 
 Believe, I think of stealing quite away 
 
74 
 
 SORDELLO 
 
 To walk once more with Wentworth — my 
 
 youth's friend 
 Pulled from all error, gloriously renewed. 
 And Eliot shall not blame us. Then indeed . . . 
 This is no meeting, Wentworth! Tears in- 
 crease 
 Too hot. A thin mist — is it blood ? — enwraps 
 The face I loved once. Then, the meeting be ! 
 Straf. I have loved England too ; we '11 meet 
 
 then, Pym ; 
 As well die now ! Youth is the only time 
 To think and to decide on a great course : 
 Manhood with action follows ; but 't is dreary 
 To have to alter our whole life in age — 
 The time past, the strength gone ! As well die 
 
 now. 
 When we meet, Pym, I 'd be set right — not 
 
 now! 
 Best die. Then if there 's any fault, fault too 
 Dies, smothered up. Poor gray old little Laud 
 May dream his dream out, of a perfect Church, 
 In some blind corner. And there 's no one 
 
 left. 
 I trust the King now wholly to you, Pym ! 
 And yet, I know not : 1 shall not be there ; 
 Friends fail — if he have any. And he 's weak. 
 And loves the Queen, and . . . Oh, my fate is 
 
 nothing — 
 Nothing ! But not that awful head — not that ! 
 Pym. If England shall declare such will to 
 
 me . . . 
 Straf. Pym, you help England ! I, that am 
 
 to die. 
 What I must see ! 't is here — all here ! My 
 
 God, 
 Let me but gasp out, in one word of fire. 
 How thou wUt plague him, satiating hell ! 
 
 What ? England that yon help, become through 
 
 you 
 A green and putrefying eharnel, left 
 Our children . . . some of us have children, 
 
 Pym - 
 Some who, without that, still must ever wear 
 A darkened brow, an over-serious look. 
 And never properly be young 1 No word ? 
 What if I curse you? bend a strong curse 
 
 forth 
 Clothed from my heart, lapped round with hor- 
 ror till 
 She 's fit with her white face to walk the world 
 Scaring kind natures from your cause and you — 
 Then to sit down with you at the board-head. 
 The gathering for prayer ... speak, but 
 
 speak ! 
 . . . Creep up, and quietly follow each one home, 
 You, you, you, be a nestling care for each 
 To sleep with, — hardly moaning in his dreams, 
 She gnaws so quietly, — till, lo he starts. 
 Gets off with half a heart eaten away ! 
 Oh, shall you 'scape with less if she 's my child ? 
 You will not say a word — to me — to Him ? 
 Pym. If England shall declare such will to 
 
 me . . . 
 Straf. No, not for England now, not for 
 
 Heaven now, — 
 See, Pym, for my sake, mine who kneel to you ! 
 There, I will thank you for the death, my 
 
 friend ! 
 This is the meeting : let me love you well ! 
 Pym. England, — I am thine own ! Dost 
 
 thou exact 
 That service ? I obey thee to the end. 
 Straf. God, I shall die first — I shall die 
 
 firatl 
 
 SORDELLO 
 
 Beowning began Sordetlo in 1837, inter- 
 rupted his work to write the earlier parts of 
 Bells and Pomegranates, but resumed it and 
 completed it in 1840, when it was published by 
 Moxon, In 1863, when reprinting the poem. 
 Browning dedicated it as below to M. Milsand, 
 and in his dedication wrote practically a pre- 
 face to the poem. 
 
 TO J. MILSAND, OF DIJON 
 
 Dear Fbiend, — Let the next poem be in- 
 troduced by your name, therefore remembered 
 along with one of the deepest of my affections, 
 and so repay all trouble it ever cost me. I wrote 
 it twenty-five years ago for only a few, counting 
 even in these on somewhat more care about its 
 subject than they really had. My own faults of 
 exDression were manv ; but with care for a man 
 
 or book such would be surmounted, and with- 
 out it what avails the faultlessness of either ? 
 I blame nobody, least of all myself, who did my 
 best then and since ; for I lately gave time and 
 pains to turn my work Into what the many 
 might — instead of what the few must — like ; 
 but after all, I im^ned another thing at first, 
 and therefore leave as I find it. The historical 
 decoration was purposely of no more importance 
 than a background requires ; and my stress lay 
 on the incidents in the development of a soul : 
 little else is worth study. I, at least, always 
 thought so ; you, with many known and un- 
 known to me, think so ; others may one day 
 think so ; and whether my attempt remain for 
 them or not, I trust, though away and past it 
 to continue ever yours, 
 
 E. B 
 London, Jwne 9, 1863. 
 
SORDELLO 
 
 IS 
 
 Conceraing tliia revised edition he wrote to 
 a friend : — 
 
 "I do not understand -what can mean 
 
 by saying that Sordello hag been ' rewritten.' I 
 did certainly at one time intend to rewrite ranch 
 of it, but changed my mind, — and the edition 
 which I reprinted was the same in all respects 
 as its predecessors — only with an elucidatory 
 heading to each page, and some few alterations, 
 
 SORDELLO 
 
 BOOK THE FIRST 
 
 Who will, may hear Bordello's story told : 
 His story ? Who believes me shall behold 
 The man, pursue his fortunes to the end, 
 Like me : for as the friendless-people's friend 
 
 „ . ,. Spied from his hill-top ones, despite 
 atS the din 
 
 ' ' And dust of multitudes, Pentapolin 
 Named o' the Naked Arm, I single out 
 Sordello, compassed murkily about 
 With ravage of six long sad hundred years. 
 Only believe me. Ye believe ? 
 
 Appears 
 Verona . . . Never, I should warn you first, 
 Of my own choice had this, if not the worst 
 Yet not the best expedient, served to tell 
 A story I could body forth so well 
 By making speak, myself kept out of view, 
 The very man as he was wont to do. 
 And leaving you to say the rest for him. 
 Since, though I might be proud to see the dim 
 Abysmal past divide its hateful surge, 
 Letting of all men this one man emerge 
 Because it pleased me, yet, that moment past, 
 I should delight in watching first to last 
 His progress as you watch it, not a whit 
 More in the secret than yourselves who sit 
 Fresh-chapleted to listen. But it seems 
 Your setters-forth of unexampled themes. 
 Makers of quite new men, producing them. 
 Would best chalk broadly on eaoh vesture's 
 
 hem 
 The wearer's quality ; or take their stand, 
 Motley on back and pointing-pole in hand. 
 Beside him. So, for once I face ye, friends. 
 Why the Summoned together from the world's 
 Poet him- four ends, 
 
 self ad- Dropped down from heaven or cast 
 dresaes his „p from hell, 
 audience- r^^ jjear the story I propose to teU. 
 Confess now, poets know the dragnet's trick, 
 Catching the dead, if fate denies the quick. 
 And shaming her ; 'tis not for fate to choose 
 Silence or song because she can refuse 
 Real eyes to glisten more, real hearts to ache 
 Less oft, real brows turn smoother for our sake : 
 I have experienced something of her spite ; 
 But there 's a realm wherein she has no right 
 And I have many lovers. Say, but few 
 Friends fate accords me ? Here they are : now 
 
 view 
 The host I muster ! Many a lighted face 
 Foul with no vestige of the grave's disgrace ; 
 
 presumably for the better, in the text, such as 
 occur in most of my works. I cannot remember 
 a single instance of any importance that is re- 
 written, and 1 only suppose that has taken 
 
 project for performance, and set down as ' done ' 
 what was for a while intended to be done." 
 
 For the sake of such elucidation as these 
 head-lines give, they are introduced here as side- 
 notes. 
 
 What else should tempt them back to taste our 
 
 air 
 Except to see how their successors tare ? 
 My audience I and they sit, each ghostly man 
 Striving to look as living as he can, 
 Brother by breathing brother ; thoii art set, 
 Clear-witted critic, by . . . but I '11 not fret 
 A wondrous soul of them, nor move death's 
 
 spleen 
 
 Who loves not to unlock them. Friends ! I mean 
 
 The living in good earnest — ye elect 
 
 Few liv- Chiefly for love — suppose not I reject 
 
 dea'd""^"^ Judicious praise, who contrary shall 
 
 peep. 
 Some fit occasioii, forth, for fear ye sleep. 
 To glean your bland approvals. Then, appear, 
 Verona ! stay — thou, spirit, come not near 
 Shelleyde- Now — not this time desert thy 
 parting, cloudy place 
 
 Verona ap- To scare me, thus employed, with 
 pears. that pure face ! 
 
 I need not fear this audience, I make free 
 With them, but then this is no place for thee ! 
 The thunder-phrase of the Athenian, grown 
 Up out of memories of Marathon, 
 Wonld echo like his own sword's griding screech 
 Braying a Persian shield, — the silver speech 
 Of Sidney's self, the starry paladin, _ 
 Turn intense as a trumpet sounding in 
 The knights to tilt, — wert thou to hear ! What 
 
 heart 
 Have I to play my puppets, bear my part 
 Before these worthies ? 
 
 Lo, the past is hurled 
 In twain : up-thrust, out-staggering on the world. 
 Subsiding into shape, a darkness rears 
 Its outhue, kindles at the core, appears 
 Verona. 'T is six hundred years and more 
 Since an event. The Second Friedrich wore 
 The purple, and the Third Honorius filled 
 The holy chair. That autumn eve was stilled ; 
 A last remains of sunset dimly bui-ned 
 O'er the far forests, like a torch-flame turned 
 By the wind back upon its bearer's hand 
 In one long flare of crimson ; as a brand. 
 The woods beneath lay bla«k. A single eye 
 From all Verona cared for the soft sky. 
 But, gathering in its ancient market-place. 
 Talked group with restless group ; and not a face 
 But wrath made livid, for among them were 
 Death's stanch purveyors, such as have in care 
 To feast him. Fear had long since taken root 
 In every breast, and now these crushed its fruit. 
 The ripe hate^ like a wine : to note the way 
 It worked whde each grew drunk ! Men grave 
 and gray 
 
76 
 
 SORDELLO 
 
 Stood, with shut eyelids, rooking to and fro, 
 _ , Letting the silent luxury trickle slow 
 
 r,?!!*. J.. About the hollows where a heart 
 
 G-uells are i u n 
 
 disoom- should be ; 
 
 flted. B lit the young gulped with a delirious 
 
 glee 
 Some foretaste of their first debauch in blood 
 At the fierce news : for, be it understood. 
 Envoys apprised Verona that her prince 
 Count Richard of Saint Boniface, joined since 
 A year with Azzo, Este's Lord, to thrust 
 Taurello Salinguerra, prime in trust 
 With Ecelin Romano, from his seat 
 Ferrara, — over-zealous in the feat 
 And stumbling on a peril unaware. 
 Was captive, trammelled in his proper snare, 
 Tiiey ijhrase it, taken by his own intrigue. 
 
 Immediate succor from the Lombard 
 Why they League 
 
 Limtar^^ Of fifteen cities that affect the Pope, 
 League, ^<"' Azzo, therefore, and his fellow- 
 hope 
 Of tlie Guelf cause, a glory overcast ! 
 Men's faces, late agape, are now aghast. 
 " Prone is the purple pavis ; Este makes 
 Mirth for the devil when he undertakes 
 To play the Ecelin ; as if it cost 
 Merely your pushing-by to gain a post 
 Like his ! The patron tells ye, once for all. 
 There be sound reasons that preferment faJl 
 On our beloved "... 
 
 " Duke o' the Rood, why not ? " 
 Shouted an Estian, "^ grudge ye such a lot ? 
 The hill-oat boasts some cunning of her own. 
 Some stealthy trick to better beasts unknown. 
 That quick with prey enough her hunger blunts. 
 And feeds her fat while gaunt the lion hunts." 
 
 '' Taurello," quoth an envoy, " as in wane 
 Dwelt at Ferrara. Like an osprey fain 
 To fly but forced the earth his couch to make 
 Far inland, till his friend the tempest wake, 
 Waits he the Kaiser's coming ; and as yet 
 That fast friend sleeps, and he too sleeps ; but let 
 Only the billow freshen, and he snuffs 
 The aroused hurricane ere it euroughs 
 The sea it means to cross because of him. 
 Sinketh the breeze ? His hope-sick eye grows 
 
 dim ; 
 Creep closer on the creature ! Every day 
 Strengthens the Pontiff ; Ecelin, they say. 
 Dozes now at Oliero, with dry lips 
 Telling upon his perished fingei--tip3 
 How many ancestors are to depose 
 Ere he be Satan's Viceroy when the doze 
 Deposits him in hell. So, Guelfs rebuilt 
 Their houses ; not a drop of blood was spilt 
 When Cino Boechimpane chanced to meet 
 Buceio Virtii — God's wafer, and the street 
 Is narrow 1 Tutti Santi, think, arswarm 
 With Ghibellins, and yet he took no harm ! 
 This could not last. Off Salinguerra went 
 To Padua, Podesta,, ' with pure intent,' 
 Said he, ' ray presence, judged the single bar 
 To permanent tranquillity, may jar 
 No longer ' — so ! his hack is fairly turned ? 
 The pair of goodly palaces are burned, 
 The gardens ravaged, and our Guelfs laugh, 
 drunk 
 
 A week with joy. The next, their laughter sunk 
 In sobs of blood, for they found, some strange 
 
 way. 
 Old Salinguerra back agam — I say. 
 
 Old Salinguerra in the town once 
 In their more 
 
 changed Uprooting, overturning, flame before, 
 iVrZa Blood fetlock-high beneath him. 
 
 Azzo tied ; 
 Who 'scaped the carnage followed ; then the 
 
 dead 
 Were pushed aside from Sahnguerra's throne. 
 He ruled once more Ferrara, all alone. 
 Till Azzo, stunned awhile, revived, woiUd 
 
 pounce 
 Coupled with Boniface, like lynx and ounce. 
 On the gorged bird. The barghers ground their 
 
 teeth 
 To see trooj) after troop encamp beneath 
 I' the standing corn thick o'er the scanty patch 
 It took so many patient months to snatch 
 Out of the marsh ; while just within their walls 
 Men fed on men. At length Taurello calls 
 A parley : ' let the Count wind up the war ! 
 Richard, light-hearted as a plunging star. 
 Agrees to enter for the kindest ends 
 Ferrara, flanked with fifty chosen friends. 
 No horse-boy more, for fear your timid sort 
 Should fly Ferrara at the bare report. 
 Quietly thi-ough the town they rode, jog-jog ; 
 ' Ten, twenty, thirty, — curse the catalogue 
 Of burnt Guelf houses ! Strange, Taurello shows 
 Not the least sign of life ' — whereat arose 
 A general growl: 'How? With his victors by? 
 I and my Veronese ? My troops and I ? 
 Receive us, was your word ? ' So jogged they on. 
 Nor laughed their host too openly : once gone 
 Into the trap ! " — 
 
 Six hundred years ago ! 
 Such the time's aspect and peculiar woe 
 {Yourselves may spell it yet in chronicles. 
 Albeit the worm, our busy bi-other, drills 
 His sprawling path through letters anciently 
 Made fine and large to suit some abbot's eye) 
 When the new Hohenstauffen di'opped the mask. 
 Flung John of Brienne's favor from his casque. 
 Forswore crusading, had no mind to leave 
 Saint Peter's proxy leisure to retrieve 
 Losses to Otho and to Barbaross, 
 Or make the Alps less easy to recross ; 
 And, thus confirming Pope Honorius' fear, 
 Was excommunicate that very year. 
 " The triple-bearded Teuton come to life ! " 
 Groaned the Great Lea^e ; and, aiining for the 
 
 tta'esgrow yide Lombardy, on tiptoe to begin, 
 stormy ^ °°^ up, as it was Guelf or GhibeUin, 
 again. Its cry ; what cry ? 
 
 ' ' The Emperor to come 1 " 
 His crowd of feudatories, all and some. 
 That leapt down with a crash of swords, speais, 
 
 shields. 
 One fighter on his fellow, to our fields. 
 Scattered anon, took station here and there. 
 And carried it, till now, with little care — 
 Cannot but cry for him ; how else rebut 
 Us longer? Cliffs, an earthquake suffered jut 
 In the mid-sea, eaxjh domineering crest 
 
SORDELLO 
 
 n 
 
 Which naught save such another throe can wrest 
 From out (conceive) a certain chokeweed e:i'own 
 Since o'er the watere, twine and tang-le thrown 
 Too thick, too fast accumulating' round, 
 Too sure to over-riot and confound 
 Ere long each brilliant islet with itself, 
 Unless a second shock save shoal and shelf, 
 Whirling the sea-drift wide : alas, the bruised 
 And sullen wreck I {Stinlight to be diffused 
 For that! Sunlight, 'neath which, a scum at 
 
 first, 
 The million fibres of our chokeweed nurst 
 Dispread themselves, mantling the troubled 
 
 main, 
 And, shattered by those rocks, took hold agam. 
 So kindly blazed it — that same blaze to brood 
 O'er every cluster of the multitude 
 Still hazarding new clasps, ties, filaments, 
 An emuloiis exchange of pulses, vents 
 Of nature into nature ; till some growth 
 Unfancied yet, exuberantly clothe 
 Tlie Ghi- A surface solid now, continuous, one ; 
 bellins' "The Pope, for us the People, who 
 wish : the begun 
 
 Guelfs' The People, carries on the People 
 ^^^- thus, 
 
 To keep that Kaiser off and dwell with us ! " 
 See you ? 
 
 Or say, Two Principles that live 
 Each fitly by its Kepresentative. 
 *' Hill-cat " — who called him so ? — the grace- 
 fullest 
 Adventurer, the ambiguous strangei^giiest 
 Of Lombardy (sleek but that ruffiing fur, 
 Those talons to their sheath !) whose velvet 
 
 purr 
 Soothes jealous neighbors when a Saxon scout 
 
 — Arpo or Yoland, is it ? — one without 
 A country or a name, presumes to couch 
 Beside their noblest ; until men avouch 
 That, of all Houses in the Trevisan, 
 Conrad descries no fitter, rear or van, 
 
 „ „ Than Ecelo ! They laughed as they 
 How Ece- enrolled 
 
 ^evJ^head That name at MUan on the page of 
 of those, ^Sold, , _ _ ,r . 
 
 Godego s lord, — Kamon, Marostica, 
 Cartiglion, Bassano, Loria, 
 And every sheep-cote on the Suabian's fief ! 
 No laughter when his son, " the Lombard Chief " 
 Forsooth, as Barbarossa's path was bent 
 To Italy along the Vale of Trent, 
 Welcomed him at Roncaglia ! Sadness now — 
 The hamlets nested on the Tyrol's brow, 
 The Asolan and Euganean hills, 
 The Rhetian and the Julian, sadness fills 
 Them all, for Ecelin vouchsafes to stay 
 Among and care about them ; day by day 
 Choosing this pinnacle, the other spot, 
 A castle building to defend a cot, 
 A cot built for a, castle to defend, 
 Nothing but castles, castles, nor an end 
 To boasts how mountain ridge may join with 
 
 ridge 
 By sunken gallery and soaring bridge. 
 He takes, in brief, a figure that beseems 
 The griesliest nightmare of the Church's dreams, 
 
 — A Signory firm-rooted, imestranged 
 
 From its old interests, and nowise changed 
 By its new neighborhood : perchance the vaunt 
 Of Otho, " my own Este shall supplant 
 Your Este," come to pass. The sire led in 
 A son as cruel ; and this Ecelin 
 Had sonsj in turn, and daughters sly and taU 
 And curhng and compliant ; but for all 
 Romano (so they styled him) throve, that neck 
 Of his so pinchfcd and white, that hunpry cheek 
 Proved 'twas some fiend, not him, the man's- 
 
 flesh went 
 To feed : whereas Romano's instrument. 
 Famous Taurello Salinguerra, sole 
 I' the world, a tree whose boughs were slipt the 
 
 bole 
 Successively, why should not he shed blood 
 To further a design ? Men understood 
 Living was pleasant to him as he wore 
 His careless surcoat, glanced some missive o'er, 
 Propped on his truncheon in the public way, 
 While his lord lifted writhen hands to pray, 
 Lost at Oliero's convent. 
 
 Hill-cats, face 
 Our Azzo, our Guelf-Lion ! Why disgrace 
 As Azzo A worthiness conspicuous near and 
 Lord of far 
 
 Este heads ( Atii at Rome while free and consu- 
 these. lar, 
 
 Este at Padua who repulsed the Hun) 
 ^y trumpeting the Church's princely son? 
 — Styled Patron of Rovigo's Polesine, 
 Ancona's marcli, Ferrara's . . . ask, i^ fine. 
 Our chronicles, commenced when some old monk 
 Found it intolerable to be sunk 
 (Vexed to the quick by his revolting cell) 
 Quite out of summer while alive and well : 
 Ended when by his mat the Prior stood, 
 'Mid busy promptings of the brotherhood, 
 Striving to coax from his decrepit brains 
 The reason Father Porphyry took pains 
 To blot those ten lines out which used to stand 
 First on their charter drawn by Hildebrand. 
 
 The same night wears. Verona's rule of yore 
 Was vested in a certain Twenty-four ; 
 Coimt And while within his palace these de- 
 
 Richard's bate 
 
 Palace at Concerning Richard and Ferrara's 
 Verona. f^te, 
 
 Glide we by clapping doors, with sudden glare 
 Of cressets vented on the dark, nor care 
 For ai^ht that 's seen or heard until we shut 
 The smother in, the lights, all noises but 
 The earroch's booming ; safe at last ! Why 
 
 strange 
 Such a recess should lurk behind a range 
 Of banquet-rooms ? Your finger — thus — you 
 
 push 
 A spring, and the wall opens, would you rush 
 Upon the banqueters, select your prey. 
 Waiting (the slaughter-weapons in the way 
 Strewing this very bench) with sharpened ear 
 A i)reconcerted signal to appear ; 
 Or if you simply crouch with beating heart, 
 Of the Bearing in some voluptuous pageajit 
 
 couple pai-t 
 
 found To startle them. Nor mutes nor 
 
 therein, masquers now ; 
 
 Nor any , . . does that one man sleep whose brow 
 
78 
 
 SORDELLO 
 
 T^e dying lamp-flame sinks and rises o'er ? 
 Wliat woman stood beside him ? not the more 
 Is he unfastened from the earnest eyes 
 Because that arras fell between ! Her wise 
 And lulling words are yet about the room, 
 Her presence wholly poured upon the gloom 
 Down even to her vesture's creeping stir. 
 And so reclines he, saturate with her. 
 Until an outcry from the square beneath 
 Pierces the charm: he springs up, glad to 
 
 breathe. 
 Above the cunning element, and shakes 
 The stupor off as. (look you) morning breaks 
 On the gay dress, and, near concealed by it, 
 The lean frame like a half-burnt taper, lit 
 Erst at some marriage-feast, then laid away 
 Till the Armenian bridegroom's dying day, 
 In his wool wedding-robe. 
 
 For he — for he. 
 Gate-vein of this hearts' blood of Lombardy, 
 (If I should falter now) — for he is thine ! 
 Sordello, thy forerunner, Florentine ! 
 A herald-star I know thou didst absorb 
 Relentless into the consummate orb 
 That scared it from its right to roll along 
 A sempiternal path with dance and song 
 Fulfilling its allotted period, 
 Serenest of the progeny of God — 
 Who yet resigns it not ! His darling stoops 
 With no quenched lights, desponds with no blank 
 
 troops 
 Of disenfranchised brilliances, for, blent 
 Utterly with thee, its shy element 
 Like thine upburneth prosperous and clear. 
 Still, what if I approach the august sphere 
 Named now with only one name, disentwine 
 That under-current soft and argentine 
 From its fierce mate in the niajestic ma^s 
 Leavened as the sea whose fire was mixt with 
 
 glass 
 In John's transcendent vision, — launch once 
 
 more 
 That lustre ? Dante, pacer of the shore 
 Where glutted hell disgorgeth filthiest gloom, 
 Unbitten by its whirring sulphur-spume — 
 Or whence the grieved and obscure waters slope 
 Into a darkness quieted by hope ; 
 Plucker of amaranths grown beneath God's eye 
 In gracious twilights where his chosen lie, — 
 1 would do this ! If I should faltpr now ! 
 
 In Mantua territory half is slough. 
 One be- Half pine-tree forest ; maples, scarlet 
 
 dS his °^'^ 
 
 Birthplace, ^^^eed o'er the river-beds ; even Min- 
 
 cio chokes 
 With sand the summer through : but 't is mo- 
 rass 
 In winter up to Mantua walls. There was. 
 Some thirty years before this evening's coil. 
 One spot reclaimed from the surrounding spoil, 
 Goito ; just a castle built amid 
 A few low mountains ; firs and larches hid 
 Their main defiles, and rina« of vineyard bound 
 The rest. Some captured creature in a pound, 
 Whose artless wonder quite precludes distress. 
 Secure beside in its own loveliness. 
 So peered with airy head, below, above, 
 The castle at its toils, the lapwings love 
 
 To glean among at grape-time. Pass within. 
 A maze of corridors contrived for sin. 
 Dusk winding-stairs, dim galleries got past. 
 You gain the inmost chambers, gain at last 
 A maple-panelled room : that haze which seems 
 Floating about the panel, if there gleams 
 A sunbeam over it, will turn to gold 
 And in light-graven characters unfold 
 The Arab's wisdom everywhere ; what shade 
 Marred them a moment, those slim pillars made. 
 Cut like a company of palms to prop 
 The roof, each kissing top entwined with top, 
 Leaning together ; in the carver's mind 
 Some knot of bacchanals, flushed cheek com- 
 bined 
 With straining forehead, shoulders purpled, hair 
 Diffused between, who in a goat-skin bear 
 A vintage j graceful sister-palms ! But quick 
 To the main wonder, now. A vault, see ; thick 
 Black shade about the ceiling, though 
 Ay?"L' fine slits 
 
 Castle it° Across the buttress suffer light byfits 
 Goito Upon a marvel in the midst. Nay, 
 
 stoop — 
 A dullish gray-streaked cumbrous font, a group 
 Round it, — each side of it, where'er one sees, — 
 Upholds it ; shrinking Caryatides 
 Of just-tinged marble like Eve's lilied flesh 
 Beneath her maker's finger when the fresh 
 First pulse of life shot brightening the snow. 
 The font's edge burdens every shoulder, so 
 They muse upon the ground, eyelids half closed ; 
 Some, with meek arms behind their backs dis- 
 posed. 
 Some, crossed above their bosoms, some, to veil 
 Their eyes, some, propping chin and cheek so 
 
 pale. 
 Some, hanging slack an utter helpless length 
 Dead as a buried vestal whose whole strength 
 Goes when the grate above shuts heavily. 
 So dwell these noiseless girls, patient to see, 
 Like priestesses because of sin impure 
 Penanced forever, who resigned endure. 
 Having that once drunk sweetness to the dregs. 
 And every eve, Sordello's visit begs 
 Pardon for them : constant as eve he came 
 To sit beside each in her turn, the same 
 As one of them, a certain space : and awe 
 
 Made a great indistinctness till he saw 
 o"'',T,''^' Sunset slant cheerful through the 
 wo'ulds°ee buttress-clunks, 
 there. Gold seven times globed ; surely our 
 
 maiden shrinks 
 And a smile stirs her as if one faint grain 
 Her load were lightened, one shade less the stain 
 Obscured her forehead, yet one more bead slipt 
 From off the rosary whereby the crypt 
 Keeps count of the contritions of its charge ? 
 Then with a step more light, a heart more large, 
 He may depart, leave her and every one 
 To linger out the penance in mute stone. 
 Ah, but Sordello ? 'Tis the tale I mean 
 To tell you. 
 
 In this castle may be seen. 
 On the hill-tops, or underneath the vines. 
 Or eastward by the mound of firs and pines 
 That shuts out Mantua, still in loneliness, 
 A slender boy in a loose page's dress. 
 
SORDELLO 
 
 79 
 
 Bordello : do but look on him awhile 
 Watching ('t is autumn) with an earnest smile 
 The noisy nock of thievish birds at work 
 Among the yellowing vinej^ards ; see him lurk 
 
 ('Tis winter with its sullenest of 
 Hisboy- storms) 
 
 the domain -^^^'^6 that arras-length of broidered 
 of Eceliu. forms, 
 
 On tiptoe, lifting in both hands a light 
 Which makes yon warrior's visage flutter bright 
 — £celo, dismal father of the brood, 
 And Ecelin, close to the girl he wooed, 
 Auria, and their Child, with all his wives 
 From Agnes to the Tuscan that survives. 
 Lady of the castle, Adelaide. His face 
 — Look, now he tuins away 1 Yourselves shall 
 
 , trace 
 (The delicate nostril swerving wide and fine, 
 A sharp and restless lip, so well combine 
 With that oahn brow) a soul fit to receive 
 Delight at every sense ; you can believe 
 Sordello foremost in the regal class 
 Nature has broadly severed from her mass 
 Of men, and framed for pleasure, as she frames 
 Some happy lands, that nave luxurious names, 
 For loose fertility ; a footfall there 
 Suffices to upturn to the warm air 
 Half-germinating spices ; mere decay 
 Produces richer life : and day by day 
 New pollen on the lily-petal grows. 
 And still more labyrinthine buds the rose. 
 You recognize at once the finer dress 
 Of flesh that amply lets in loveliness 
 At eye and ear, while round the rest is furled 
 (As though she would not trust them with her 
 
 world) 
 A veil that shows a sky not near so blue, 
 And lets but half the sun look fervid through'. 
 
 How can such love ? — like souls on 
 How a each full-fraught 
 
 P"?,'" ?^?i Discovery brooding, bUnd at first to 
 comes into , . *' *' 
 
 plj aught 
 
 Beyond its beauty, till exceeding love 
 Becomes an aching weight ; and, to remove 
 A curse that haunts such natures ^- to preclude 
 Their finding out themselves can work no good 
 To what they love nor make it very blest 
 By their endeavor, — they are fain invest 
 The lifeless thing with life from their own soul, 
 AvaiUng it to purpose, to control. 
 To dwell distinct and have peculiar joy 
 And separate interests that may employ 
 That beauty fltly, for its proper sake. 
 Nor rest they here ; fresh births of beauty wake 
 Fresh homage, every grade of love is past. 
 With every mode of loveliness : then cast 
 Inferior idols off their borrowed crown 
 Before a coming glory. Up and down 
 Buns arrowy fire, while earthly forms com- 
 bine 
 To throb the secret forth ; a touch divine — 
 And the scaled eyeball owns the mystic rod ; 
 Visibly through his garden walketh God. 
 What de- So fare they. Now revert. One 
 notes such character 
 
 a soul's Denotes them through the progress 
 progress. and the stir, — 
 
 A need to blend with each external charm. 
 
 Bury themselves, the whoie heart wida and 
 
 warm, — 
 In something not themselves f they would be- 
 
 .long 
 To what they worship — stronger and more 
 
 strong 
 Thus prodigally fed — which gathers shape 
 And feature, soon imprisons past escape 
 The votary framed to love and to submit 
 Nor ask, as passionate he kneels to it, 
 Whence grew the idol's empery. So runs 
 A legend ; light had birth ere moons and suns, 
 Flowing turough space a river and alone. 
 Till chaos burst and blank the spheres wew 
 
 strown 
 Hither and thither, foundering and blind : 
 When into each of them rushed light — to find 
 Itself no place, foiled of its radiant chance. 
 Let such forego their just inheritance ! 
 For there 's a class that eagerly looks, too, 
 On beauty, but, unlike the gentler crew. 
 Proclaims eiach new revealment bom a twin 
 With a distinctest consciousness within. 
 Referring still the quality, now first 
 Revealed, to their own soul — its instinct nursed 
 In silence, now remembered better, shown 
 More thoroughly, but not the less their own ; 
 A dream come true ; the special exercise 
 How poets Of any special function that implies 
 class at The being fair, or good, or wise, or 
 length— strong. 
 
 Dormant within their nature all along — 
 Whose fault ? So, homage, other souls direct 
 Without, turns inward. How should this de- 
 ject 
 Thee, soul ? " they murmur ; " wherefore 
 
 strength be quelled 
 Beoaxise, its trivial accidents withheld, 
 Organs are missed that clog the world, inert, 
 Wanting a will, to quicken and exert. 
 Like thine — existence cannot satiate. 
 Cannot surprise ? Laugh thou at envious fate, 
 Who, fromearth's simplest combination stampt 
 With individuality — uncrampt 
 By living its faint elemental Hfe, 
 Dost soar to heaven's complexest essence, rife 
 With grandeurs, unafEronted to the last, 
 w™ 1.™™ Equal to being aU ! " 
 For honor, •* In truth? Thou hast 
 
 Life, then — wilt challenge life for us : our race 
 Is vindicated so, obtains its place 
 In thy ascent, the first of us ; whom we 
 May follow, to the meanest, finally, 
 „ , With our more bounded wills ? 
 
 Or shame- Ah, but to find 
 
 A certain mood enervate such a mind, 
 Counsel it slumber in the solitude 
 Thus reached, nor, stooping, task for man- 
 kind's good 
 Its nature just as life and time accord 
 " — Too narrow an arena to reward 
 Emprise — the world's occasion worthless since 
 Not absolutely fitted to evince 
 Its mastery!" Or if yet worse befall, 
 And a desire possess it to put all 
 That nature forth, forcing our straitened sphere 
 Contain it, •— to displa;^ completely here 
 The mastery another life should learn. 
 
8o 
 
 SORDELLO 
 
 Thrusting: in time eternity's concern, — 
 So that Sordello ... 
 
 Fool, who sjiied the mark 
 mav the ^^ leprosy upon him, violet-dark 
 Gods avert Already as he loiters? Born just 
 
 now, 
 With the new century, beside the glow 
 And efflorescence out of barbarism ; 
 Witness a Greek or two from the abysm 
 That stray through Florence-town with studi- 
 ous air, 
 Calming the chisel of that Pisan pair : 
 If Nicolo should carve a Christus yet ! 
 While at Siena is Guidone set, 
 Forehead on hand : a painful birth must be 
 Matured ere Saint Euf emia's sacristy 
 Or transept gather fruits of one great gaze 
 At the moon ; look you ! The same orange 
 
 haze, — 
 The same blue stripe round that — and, in the 
 
 midst. 
 Thy spectral whiteness, Mother-maid, who didst 
 Pursue the dizzy painter ! 
 
 Woe, then, worth 
 Any officious babble letting forth 
 The leprosy confirmed and ruinous 
 To spirit lodged in a contracted house ! 
 Go back to the beginning, rather ; blend 
 It gently with Sordello's life ; the end 
 Is piteous, you may see, but much between 
 Pleasant enough. Meantime, some pyx to screen 
 The full-grown pest, some lid to shut upon 
 The gobhn ! So they found at Babylon, 
 (Colleagues, mad Lucius and sage Antonine) 
 Sacking the city, by Apollo's shrine. 
 In rummaging among the rarities, 
 A certain coffer ^ he who made the prize 
 Opened it greedily ; and out there curled 
 Just such another plague, for half the world 
 Was stung. Crawl in then, hag, and couch 
 
 asquat. 
 Keeping that blotchy bosom thick in spot 
 Until your time is ripe ! The eoffer-lid 
 Is fastened, and the coffer safely hid 
 Under the Loxian's choicest gifts of gold. 
 
 Who will may hear Sordello's story told, 
 And how he never could remember when 
 He dwelt not at Goito. Calmly, then, 
 
 About this secret lodge of Ade- 
 rrom SOT- laide's 
 
 ?n child- "^ Ctlided his youth away ; beyond the 
 hood. glades 
 
 On the fir-forest border, and the rim 
 Of the. low range of mountain, was for him 
 No other world : but this appeared his own 
 To wander through at pleasure and aloiie; 
 The castle too seemed empty ; far and wide 
 Might he disport ; only the northern side 
 Lay under a mysterious interdict — 
 Slight, just enough remembered to restrict 
 His roaming to the corridors, the vault 
 Where those font-bearers expiate their fault. 
 The maple-chamber, and the little nooks 
 And nests, and breezy parapetthat looks 
 Over the woods to Mantua : there he strolled. 
 Some foreign women-servants, very old. 
 Tended and crept about him — all his clue 
 To the world's business and embroiled ado 
 
 Distant a dozen hill-tops at the most. 
 
 And first a simple sense of life 
 The de- engrossed 
 
 K^?J Sordello in his drowsy Paradise ; 
 ishfan™' The day's adventures for the day 
 
 suffice — 
 Its constant tribute of perceptions strange. 
 With sleep and stir in healthy interchange, 
 Suffice, and leave him for the next at ease 
 Like the great palmer-worm that strips the 
 
 trees, 
 Eats the life out of every luscious plant, 
 And, when September finds them sere or scEint, 
 Puts forth two wondrous winglets, alters quite, 
 And hies him after unforeseen delight. 
 So fed SordeUo, not a shard dissheathed ; 
 As ever, round each new discovery, wreathed 
 Luxuriantly the fancies infantine 
 His admiration, bent on making fine 
 Its novel friend at any risk, would fling 
 In gay profusion forth ; a ficklest king, 
 Confessed those minions ! — eager to dispense 
 So much from his own stock of thought and 
 
 sense 
 As might enable each to stand alone 
 And serve him for a fellow ; with his own. 
 Joining the qualities that just before 
 Had graced some older favorite. Thus they 
 
 wore 
 A fluctuating halo, yesterday 
 Set flicker and to-morrow filched away, — 
 Those upland objects each of separate name, 
 Each with an aspect never twice the same, 
 Waxing and waning as the new-bom host 
 Of fancies, like a single night's hoai^frost, 
 ^, . , Gave to familiar things a face gro- 
 
 ^hjcH tesque ; 
 
 blowout Only, presenring through the mad 
 a great burlesque 
 
 bubble, A grave regard. Conceive ! the 
 
 orpine patch 
 Blossoming earliest on the log-house thatch 
 The day those' archers wound along the vines — 
 Related to the Chief that left their lines 
 To climb with clinking step the northern stair 
 Up to the solitary chambers where 
 Sordello never came. Thus tlirall reached 
 
 thrall ; 
 He o'er-festooning every interval. 
 As the adventurous spider, making light 
 Of distance, shoots her threads from depth to 
 
 height. 
 From barbican to battlement : so flung 
 Fantasies forth and in their centre swung 
 Our architect, — the breezy morning fresh 
 Above, and merry, — all his waving mesh 
 Laughing with lucid dew-drops rainbow-edged. 
 
 This world of ours by tacit pact is pledged 
 To laying such a spangled fabric low 
 Whether by gradual brush or gallant blow. 
 But its abundant will was balked here : doubt 
 Being Rose tardily in one so fenced about 
 
 secure From most that nurtures judgment, 
 
 awhile care and pain ; 
 
 irom in- Judgment, that dull expedient we 
 tension. j„,e f^in. 
 
 Less favored, to adopt betimes and force 
 Stead us, diverted from our natural course 
 
SORDELLO 
 
 8i 
 
 Of joys — contrive some yet amid the dearth, 
 Vary and render them, it may be, worth 
 Most we foreffo. Suppose JSordello hence 
 Selfish enough, without a moral sense 
 HowcTer feeble ; what informed the boy 
 Others desired a portion in his joy ? 
 Or say a ruthful chance broke woof and 
 
 warp — 
 A heron's nest beat down by March winds sharp, 
 A fawn breathless beneath the precipice, 
 A bird with unsoiled breast and unfilmed eyes 
 Warm in the brake — could these undo the 
 
 trance 
 Lapping Sordello ? Not a circumstance 
 That makes for you, friend Naddo ! Eat fern- 
 seed 
 And peer beside us and report indeed 
 If (your word) "genius" dawned with throes 
 
 and stings 
 And the whole fiery catalogue, while springs. 
 Summers and winters quietly came and went. 
 Time put at length that period to content, 
 By right the world should have imposed : be- 
 reft 
 Of its good offices, Sordello, left 
 To study his companions, managed rip 
 Their fringe off, learn the true relationship, 
 Core with its crust, their nature with his own ; 
 Amid his wild- wood sights he lived alone. 
 As if the poppy felt with him ! Though he 
 Partook the poppy's red effrontery 
 Till Autumn spoiled their fleering quite with 
 
 rain, 
 And, turbanless, a coarse brown rattling crane 
 Lay bare. That 's gone : yet why renounce, 
 
 for that. 
 His disenchanted tributaries — flat 
 Perhaps, but scarce so utterly forlorn. 
 Their simple presence might not well be borne 
 Whose parley was a transport once : recall 
 The poppy's gifts, it flaunts you, after all, 
 A poppy ; — why distrust the evidence 
 Of each soon satisfied and healthy sense ? 
 But it The new-born judgment answered, 
 
 comes ; " little boots 
 
 and new- Beholding other creatures' attributes 
 bom And having none ! " or, say that it 
 
 judgment sufficed, 
 
 " Yet, could one but possess, one's self," (enticed 
 Judgment) " some special office ! " Naught 
 
 beside 
 Serves you ? " Well then, be somehow justi- 
 fied 
 For this ignoble wish to circumscribe 
 And concentrate, rather than swell, the tribe 
 Of actual pleasures : what, now, from without 
 EJfects it ? — proves, despite a lurking doubt, 
 Mere sympathy sufficient, trouble spared ? 
 That, tasting joys by proxy thus, you fared 
 
 The better for them ? " Thus much 
 Decides craved his soul, 
 
 needs Alas, from the beginning love is 
 
 sympa- whole 
 
 thizers. And true ; if sure of naught beside, 
 
 most sure 
 Of its own truth at least ; nor may endure 
 A crowd to see its face, that cannot know 
 How hot the pulses throb its heart below. 
 
 While its own helplessness and utter want 
 
 Of means to worthily be ministrant 
 
 To what it worships, do but fan the more 
 
 Its flame, exalt the idol far before 
 
 Itself as it would have it ever be. 
 
 Souls like Sordello, on the contrary. 
 
 Coerced and put to shame, retaining will. 
 
 Care little, take mysterious comfort still. 
 
 But look forth tremblingly to ascertain 
 
 If others judge their claims not urged in vain. 
 
 And say for them their stifled thoughts aloud. 
 
 So, they must ever live before a crowd : 
 
 — " Vanity," Naddo tells you. 
 
 Whence contrive 
 A crowd, now ? From these women just alive, 
 That archer-troop? Forth glided — not alone 
 Each painted warrior, every girl of stone. 
 Nor Adelaide (bent double o'er a scroll. 
 One maiden at her knees, that eve, his soul 
 Shook as he stumbled through the arras'd 
 
 glooms 
 On them, for, 'mid quaint robes and weird per- 
 fumes. 
 Started the meagre Tuscan up, — her eyes. 
 The maiden's, aJso, bluer with surprise) 
 
 — But the entire out-world : whatever, scraps 
 And snatches, song and story, dreams per- 
 haps, 
 
 Conceited the world's offices, and he 
 
 Had hitherto transferred to flower or tree, 
 
 Not counted a befitting heritage 
 
 Each, of its own right, singly to engage 
 
 Some man, no other, — such now dared to stand 
 
 Alone. Strength, wisdom, grace on every hand 
 
 Soon disengaged themselves, and he discerned 
 
 A sort of human life : at least, was turned 
 
 „ ,. A stream of lifelike figures through 
 
 tee his brain. 
 
 creates Lord, liegeman, valvassor and suze- 
 
 such a rain, 
 
 company; Ere he could choose, surrounded 
 
 him ; a stuff 
 To work his pleasure on ; there, sure enough : 
 But as for gazing, what shall fix that gaze ? 
 Are they to simply testify the ways 
 He who convoked them sends his sonl along 
 With the cloud's thunder or a dove's brood- 
 song ? 
 
 — While they live each his life, boast each his 
 Each of own 
 
 which. Peculiar dower of bliss, stand each 
 
 leading alone 
 
 its own Xn some one point where something 
 '"*' dearest loved 
 
 Is easiest gained — far worthier to be proved 
 Than aught he envies in the forest-wights ! 
 No simple and self-evident delights. 
 But mixed desires of unimagined range. 
 Contrasts or combinations, new and strange, 
 Irksome perhaps, yet plainly recognized 
 By this, the sadden company — loves prized 
 By those who are to prize his own amount 
 Of loves. Once care because such make ac- 
 count, 
 Allow that foreign recognitions stamp 
 The current value, and his crowd shall vamp 
 Him counterfeits enough ; and so their print 
 Be on the piece, 't is gold, attests the mint. 
 
&2. 
 
 SORDELLO 
 
 And "good," pronounce they whom his new 
 
 appeal 
 Is made to : if their casual print conceal — 
 This arbitrary g»od of theirs o'ergloss 
 What he has lived without, nor felt the loss — 
 Qualities strange, ungainly, wearisome, 
 
 — What matter ? So must speech expand the 
 
 dumb 
 Part-sigh, part-smile with which SordeUo, late 
 Whom no poor woodland-sights could satiate. 
 Betakes himself to study hungrily 
 Just what the puppets his crude fantasy 
 Supposes notablest, — popes, kings, priests, 
 
 knights, — 
 May please to promulgate for appetites ; 
 Accepting all their artificial joys 
 Not as he views them, but as he employs 
 Bach shape to estimate the other's stock 
 Of attributes, whereon — a marshalled flock 
 Of authorized enjoyments — he may spend 
 Himself, be men, now, as he used to blend 
 With tree and flower — nay more entirely, 
 
 else 
 'Twere mockery ; for instance, *' How excels 
 My life that chieftain's?" (who apprised the 
 
 youth 
 Ecelin, here, becomes this month, in truth. 
 Imperial Vicar ?) '' Turns he in his tent 
 Remissly ? Be .it so — my head is bent 
 Reliciously amid my girls to sleep. 
 What if he stalks the Trentine-pass ? Yon steep 
 I climbed an hour ago with little toil : 
 We are alike there. But can I, too, foil 
 The Guelf 's paid stabber, carelessly afford 
 Saint Mark's a spectacle, the sleight o' the 
 
 sword 
 Baffling the treason in a moment ? " Here 
 No rescue I Poppy he is none, but peer 
 To Ecelin, assuredly : his hand. 
 Fashioned no otherwise, shoidd wield a brand 
 With Ecelin's success — try, now ! He soon 
 Was satisfied, returned as to the moon 
 From earth ; left each abortive boy's-attempt 
 Has quail- For feats, from failure happily ex- 
 kies ImpoB- empt, 
 Bible to a In fancy at his beck. " One day I 
 
 boy. wai 
 
 Accomplish it ! Are they not older still 
 
 — Not grown up men and women ? 'T is be- 
 
 side 
 ftnly a dream ; and though I must abide 
 mth dreams now, I may find a thorough vent 
 For all myself, acquire an instrument 
 For acting what these people act ; my soid 
 Hunting a body out m^^ gain its whole 
 Desire some day 1 " How else express chagrin 
 And resignation, show the hope steal in 
 With which he let sink from an aching wrist 
 The rough-hewn ash-bow ? Straight, a gold 
 
 shaft hissed 
 Into the Syrian air, struck Malek down 
 Superbly ! " Crosses to the breach 1 God's 
 
 Town 
 Is gained him back I " Why bend rough ash- 
 bows more ? 
 Thus lives he : if not careless as before, 
 Comforted : for one may anticipate. 
 Rehearse the future, be prepared when fate 
 
 Shall have prepared in turn real men whose 
 
 names 
 Startle, real places of enormous fames, 
 Este abroad and Ecelin at home 
 To worship him, — Mantua, Verona, Kome 
 To witness it. Who grudges time so spent ? 
 Rather test qualities to heart's content -- 
 Summon them, thrice selected, near and tar — 
 Compress the starriest into one star. 
 So, only to And grasp the whole at once ! 
 be appro- The pageant thmned 
 
 priated in Accordingly ; from rank to rank, 
 fancy, Jikg wind 
 
 His spirit passed to winnow and divide ; 
 Back fell the simpler phantasms ; every side 
 The strong clave to the wise ; with either 
 
 classed 
 The beauteous ; so, till two or three amassed 
 Mankind's beseemingnesses, and reduced 
 Themselves eventually, graces loosed. 
 Strengths lavished, all to heighten up One 
 
 Shape 
 Whose potency no creature should escape. 
 Can it be Friedrich of the bowmen's talk ? 
 Surely that grape-juice, bubbling at the stalk, 
 Is some gray scorching Sarasenic wine 
 The Kaiser quaffs with the Miramoline — 
 Those swarthy hazel-elnsters, seamed and 
 
 chapped. 
 Or filberts russet-sheathed and velvet-capped, 
 Are dates plucked from the bough John Bri- 
 
 enne sent, 
 To keep in mind his sluggish armament 
 Of Canaan : — Friedrioh's, all the pomp and 
 
 fierce 
 Demeanor ! But harsh sounds and sights trans- 
 pierce 
 So rarely the serene cloud where he dwells. 
 And prac- Whose looks enjoin, whose lightest 
 tised on words are spells 
 
 till the real On the obdurate ! That right arm in- 
 come, deed 
 Has thunder for its slave ; but where 's the 
 
 need 
 Of thunder if the stricken multitude 
 Hearkens, arrested in its angriest mood. 
 While songs go up exulting, then dispread. 
 Dispart, disperse, lingering overhead 
 Like an escape of angels ? 'Tis the tune, 
 Nor much unlike the words his women croon 
 Smilingly, colorless and faint-designed 
 Each, as a worn-out queen's face some remind 
 Of her extreme youth's love-tales. " Eglamor 
 Made that ! " Half minstrel and half emperor. 
 What but ill objects vexed him ? Such he 
 
 slew. 
 The kinder sort were easy to subdue 
 By those ambrosial glances, dulcet tones ; 
 And these a gracious hand advanced to thrones 
 Beneath him. Wherefore twist and torture 
 
 this. 
 Striving to name afresh the antique bliss. 
 Instead of saying, neither less nor more. 
 He means He had discovered, as our world be- 
 to be per- fore, 
 
 feet — say, Apollo? That shall be the name j 
 Apollo i nor )ji,i 
 
 Me rag by rag expose how patchwork hid 
 
sordello 
 
 83 
 
 The youth — what thefts of every clime and 
 
 day 
 Contributed to purfle the array 
 He climbed with (June at deep) some close 
 
 ravine 
 'Mid clatter of its million pebbles sheen, 
 Over which, singing- soft, the runnel sUpped 
 Elate with rains : into whose streamlet dipped 
 He foot, yet trod, you thought, with unwet 
 
 sock — 
 Though really on the stubs of living rock 
 Ages ago it crenelled : vines for roof, 
 Lindens for wall ; before him, aye aloof. 
 Flittered in the cool some azure damsel-fly. 
 Born of the simmering quiet, there to die. 
 Emerging whence, Apollo still, he spied 
 Mighty descents of forest ; multiplied 
 Tuft on tuft, here, the frolic myrtle-trees. 
 There gendered the grave maple stocks at ease, 
 And, proud of its observer, straight the wood 
 Tried old surprises on him j bla«k it stood 
 A sudden barrier ('t was a cloud passed o'er) 
 So dead and dense, the tiniest brute no more 
 Must pass ; yet presently (the cloud dispatched) 
 Each clump, behold, was glistening detached 
 A shrub, oak-boles shrunk into ilex-stems I 
 Yet could not he denounce the stratagems 
 He saw thro', till, hours thence, aloft would 
 
 hang 
 White summer-lightnings ; as it sank and 
 
 sprang 
 To measure, that whole palpitating breast 
 Of heaven, 't was Apollo, nature prest 
 At eve to worship. 
 
 Time stole : by degrees 
 The Pythons perish off> ; his votaries 
 Sink to respectful distance : songs redeem 
 Their pains, but briefer ; their dismissals seem 
 Emphatic ; only girls are very slow 
 To disappear — his Delians ! Some that glow 
 O' the instant, more with earlier loves to wrench 
 Away, reserves to quell, disdains to quench ; 
 Alike in one material circumstance — 
 All soon or late adore Apollo ! Glance 
 The bevy through, divine Apollo's choice. 
 And Apol- His Daphne! "We secure Count 
 lomustone Richard's voice 
 day find In Este's counsels, good for Este's 
 Daphne. ends 
 
 As our Taurello," say his faded friends, 
 "By granting him our Palma ! " — the sole 
 
 child, 
 They mean, of Agnes Este who beguiled 
 Ecelin, years before this Adelaide 
 Wedded and turned him wicked : "but the 
 
 maid 
 Bejects his suit," those sleepy women boast. 
 She, scorning all beside, deserves the most 
 Sordello : so, conspicuous in his world 
 Of dreams sat Palma. How the tresses curled 
 Into a sumptuous swell of gold and wound 
 About her like a glory I even the ground 
 Was bright as with spilt sunbeams ; breathe 
 
 not, breathe 
 Not ! — poised, see, one leg doubled underneath. 
 Its small foot buried in the dimpling snow. 
 Rests, but the other, listlessly below, 
 O'er the couch-side swings feeling for cool air. 
 
 The vein-streaks swollen a richer violet where 
 
 The languid blood lies heavily ; yet calm 
 
 On her shght prop, each flat and outspread palm, 
 
 As but suspended in the act to rise 
 
 By consciousness of beauty, whence her eyes 
 
 But when Turn with so frank a triumph, for 
 
 will this she meets 
 
 dream turn Apollo's gaze in the pine glooms. 
 
 truth? Time fleets: 
 
 That 's worst 1 Because the pre-appointed age 
 
 Approaches. Fate is tardy with the stage 
 
 And crowd she promised. Lean he grows and 
 
 pale. 
 Though restlessly at rest. Hardly avail 
 Fancies to soothe him. Time steals, yet alone 
 He tarries here 1 The earnest smile is gone. 
 How long this might continue matters not ; 
 For the — Forever, possibly ; since to the spot 
 time is None come : our lingering Taurello 
 ripe, and quits 
 
 he ready. Mantua at last, and light our lady flits 
 Back to her place disbm'dened of a care. 
 Strange — to be constant here if he is there ! 
 Is it distrust ? Oh, never ! for they both 
 Goad Ecelin alike, Romano's growth 
 Is daily manifest, with Azzo dumb 
 And Richard wavering : let but Friedrich come, 
 Find matter for the minstrelsy's report ! 
 — Lured from the Isle and its young Kaiser's 
 
 court 
 To sing us a Messina morning up. 
 And, double rillet of a drinking cup. 
 Sparkle along to ease the land of drouth. 
 Northward to Provence that, and thus far south 
 The other. ' What a method to apprise 
 NeighlDors of births, espousals, obsequies ! 
 Which in their very tongue the Troubadour 
 Records ; and his performance makes a tour, 
 For Trouveres bear the miracle about. 
 Explain its cunning, to the vulgar rout. 
 Until the Formidable House is famed 
 Over the- country — as. Taurello aimed. 
 Who introduced, although the rest adopt. 
 The novelty. Such games, her absence stopped. 
 Begin afresh now Adelaide, recluse 
 No longer, in the light of day pursues 
 Her plans at Mantua : whence an accident 
 Which, breaking on Sordello's mixed content, 
 Opened, like any flash that cures the blind. 
 The veritable business of mankind. 
 
 BOOK THE SECOND 
 
 The woods were long austere with snow : at last 
 Pink leaflets budded on the beech, 
 
 and fast 
 Larches, scattered through pine-tree 
 solitudes. 
 Brightened, *' as in the slumbrous heart o' the 
 
 woods 
 Our buried year, a witch, grew young again 
 To placid incantations, and that stain 
 About were from her caldron, green smoke' blent 
 With those black pines" — so Eglamor gave 
 
 vent 
 To a chance fancy. Whence a just rebuke 
 From his companion ; brother Naddo shook 
 
 This bub- 
 ble of 
 fancy. 
 
84 
 
 SORDELLO 
 
 The solemnest of brows ; " Beware," he said, 
 " Of setting up conceits in nature's stead ! " 
 Forth wandered our Sordello. Naught so sure 
 As that to-day's adventure will seciire 
 Palma, the visioned lady — only pass 
 O'er yon damp mound and its exhausted grass. 
 Under that brake where sundawn feeds the 
 
 stalks 
 Of withered fern with gold, into those walks 
 Of pine and take her ! Buoyantly he went. 
 Again his stooping forehead was besprent 
 With dew-di'ops from the skirting ferns. Then 
 
 wide 
 Opened the great morass, shot every side 
 With flashing water through and through ; 
 
 a-shine, 
 Thick steaming, all alive. Whose shape di- 
 vine, 
 Quivered i' the farthest rainbow-vapor, glanced 
 Athwart the flying herons ? He advanced. 
 But warily ; though Mincio leaped no more, 
 Each footfall burst up in the marish-floor 
 A diamond jet : and if he stopped to pick 
 Eose-lichen, or molest the leeches quick. 
 And circling blood-worms, minnow, newt or 
 
 loach, 
 A sudden pond would silently encroach 
 This way and that. On Palma passed. The 
 
 verge 
 Of a new wood was gained. She will emerge 
 Flushed, now, and panting, — crowds to see, — 
 
 will own 
 She loves him — Boniface to hear, to groan. 
 To leave his suit ! One screen of pine-trees still 
 Opposes : but — the startling spectacle — 
 Mantua, this time ! Under the walls — a crowd 
 Indeed, real men and women, gay and loud 
 Round a pavilion. How he stood ! 
 
 In truth 
 T t ^^ WV^^'^ ^^ come to pass : his 
 
 ISVright- r y??*^ • J ,, 
 
 est, bursts, i" its prime now — and where was 
 
 homage poured 
 Upon Sordello ? — born to be adored. 
 And suddenly discovered weak, scarce made 
 To cope with any, cast into the shade 
 By this and this. Yet something seemed to 
 
 prick 
 And tingle in his blood ; a sleight — a trick — 
 And much would be explained. It went for 
 
 naught — 
 The best of their endowments were ill bought 
 With his identity : nay, the conceit. 
 That this day's roving led to Palma's feet 
 Was not so vain — list ! The word, " Palma I " 
 
 Steal 
 Aside, and die, Sordello ; this is real, 
 And this — abjure ! 
 
 What next ? The curtains see 
 Dividing I She is there ; and presently 
 He will be there — the proper You, at length — 
 In your own cherished dress of grace and 
 
 strength : 
 Most like, the very Boniface ! 
 
 Not so. 
 It was a showy man advanced ; but though 
 A glad cry welcomed him, then every sound 
 Sank and the crowd disposed themselves around. 
 
 Sordello, 
 before Pal- 
 ma, con- 
 quers hbu, 
 
 — "This is not he," Sordello felt I while, "Plaea 
 For the best Troubadour of Boniface ! " 
 Hollaed the Jongleurs, — " Eglamor, whose lay 
 Concludes his patron's Court of Love to-day ! " 
 Obsequious Naddo strung the master's lute 
 With the new lute-sti-ing, "Elys, "named to suit 
 At a Court The song : he stealthily at watch, the 
 of Love a while, 
 
 minstrel Biting liis lip to keep down a great 
 sings. smile 
 
 Of pride : then up he struck. Sordello's brain 
 Swam ; for he knew a sometime deed again ; 
 So, could supply each foolish gap and chasm 
 The minstrel left in his enthusiasm, 
 Mistaking its true version — was the tale 
 Not of Apollo ? Only, what avail 
 Luring her down, that Elys an he pleased. 
 If the man dared no further ? Has he ceased ? 
 And, lo, the people's frank applause half done, 
 Sordello was beside him, had begun 
 (Spite of indignant twitchings from his friend 
 The Trouvere) the true lay with the true end. 
 Taking the other's names and time and place 
 For his. On flew the song, a giddy race. 
 
 After the flying story ; word made 
 
 leap 
 Out word, rhyme — rhyme ; the lay 
 could barely keep 
 Pace with the action visibly rushing past : 
 Both ended. Back fell Naddo more aghast 
 Than some Egyptian from the harassed bull 
 That wheeled abrupt and, bellowing, fronted 
 
 full 
 His plague, who spied a scarab 'neath the 
 
 tongue. 
 And found 't was Apis' flank his hasty prong 
 Insulted. But the people — but the cries. 
 The crowding round, and profEering the prize ! 
 
 — For he had gained some prize. He seemed 
 
 to shrink 
 Into a sleepy cloud, just at whose brink 
 One sight withheld him. There sat Adelaide, 
 Silent ; but at her knees the very maid 
 Of the North Chamber, her red lips as rich. 
 The same pure fleecy hair ; one weft of which. 
 Golden and great, quite touched his cheek as 
 
 o'er 
 She leant, speaking some six words and no more. 
 He answered something, anytliing ; and she 
 Unbound a scarf and laid it heavily 
 Upon him, her neck's warmth and all. Again 
 Moved the arrested magic ; in his brain 
 Noises grew, and a light that turned to glare, 
 And greater glare, until the intense flare 
 Engulfed him, shut the whole scene from his 
 
 sense. 
 And when he woke 't was many a furlong 
 
 thence. 
 At home ; the sun shining his ruddy wont ; 
 The customary birds'-chirp ; but his front 
 Receives Was crowned — was crowned ! Her 
 scented scarf ai'ound 
 His neck ! Whose gorgeous vesture 
 heaps the ground ? 
 A prize ? He turned, and peeringly on him 
 Brooded the women-faces, kind and dim. 
 Ready to talk — " The Jongleurs in a troop 
 Had brought him back, Naddo and Squareialupe 
 
 the prize, 
 and rumi- 
 nates. 
 
SORDELLO 
 
 SS' 
 
 And Tagrliafer ; how strange ! a childhood spent 
 In taking, well for him, so brave a bent ! 
 Since Eglamor," they heard, "was dead with 
 
 spite, 
 And Palma chose him for her minstrel." 
 
 Light 
 Sordello rose — to think, now ; hitherto 
 He had perceived. Sure, a discovery grew 
 Out of it aU ! Best Hve from first to last 
 The transport o'er again. A week he passed. 
 Sucking the sweet out of each circumstance. 
 From the bard's outbreak to the luscious trance 
 Bounding his own achievement. Strange ! A 
 
 man 
 Recounted an adventure, but began 
 Imperfectly ; his own task was to fill 
 The frame-work up, sing well what he sung iB, 
 Supply the necessary points, set loose 
 As many incidents of little use 
 — More imbecile the other, not to see 
 Their relative importance clear as he ! 
 But, for a special pleasure in the act 
 Of sinring — had he ever turned, in fact, 
 From Elys, to sing Elys ? — from each fit 
 Of rapture to contrive a song of it ? 
 True, this snatch or the other seemed to wind 
 Into a treasure, helped himself to find 
 A beauty in himself ; for, see, he soared 
 By means of that mere snatch, to many a hoard 
 Of fancies ; as some falling cone bears soft 
 The eye along the fir-tree spire, aloft 
 To a dove's nest. Then, how divine the cause 
 Why such performance should exact applause 
 From men, if they had fancies too ? Did fate 
 Decree they found a beauty separate 
 In the poor snatch itself ? — " Take Elys, there, 
 — ' Her head that 's sharp and perfect like a 
 
 pear, 
 So close and smooth are laid the few fine locks 
 Colored like honey oozed from topmost rocks 
 Sun-blanched the livelong summer ' — if they 
 
 heard 
 Just those two rhymes, assented at my word. 
 And loved them as I love them who have run 
 These fingers through those pale locks, let the 
 
 sun 
 Into the white cool skin — who first could clutch, 
 Then praise — I needs must be a god to such. 
 Or what if some, above themselves, and yet 
 How had Beneath me, like their Eglamor, 
 he been 8u- have set 
 
 perior to An impress on our gift ? So, men 
 Eglamor? believe 
 
 And worsiiip what they know not, nor receive 
 Delight from. Have they fancies — slow, per- 
 chance. 
 Not at their beck, which indistinctly glance 
 Until, by song, each floating part be linked 
 To each, and all grow palpable, distinct ? " 
 He pondered this. 
 
 Meanwhile, sounds low and drear 
 Stole on him, and a noise of footsteps, near 
 And nearer, while the underwood was pushed 
 Aside, the larches grazed, the dead leaves 
 
 crushed 
 At the approach of men. The wind seemed laid ; 
 Only, the trees shrunk slightly and a shade 
 Came o'er the sky although 't was mid-day yet : 
 
 by Egla- 
 mor him- 
 self: 
 
 You saw each half-shut downcast floweret 
 Flutter — "a Roman bride, when they 'd dispart 
 Her unbound tresses with the Sabine dart. 
 Holding that famous rape in memory still, 
 Felt creep into her curls the iron chill, 
 And looked thus,' ' Eglamor would say — indeed 
 This is 'T is Eglamor, no other, these precede 
 
 answered Home hither in the woods. " 'T were 
 surely sweet 
 
 Far from the scene of one's forlorn 
 defeat 
 
 To sleep ! " judged Naddo, who in person led 
 Jongleurs and Trouveres, chanting at their head, 
 A scanty company ; for, sooth to say. 
 Our beaten Troubadour had seen Teas day. 
 Old worshippers were something shamed, old 
 
 friends 
 Nigh weary ; still the death proposed amends. 
 " Let us but get them safely through my song 
 And home again ! " quoth Naddo. 
 
 All along. 
 This man (they rest the bier upon the sand) 
 — This calm corpse with the loose flowers in his 
 
 hand, 
 Eglamor, lived Sordello's opposite. 
 For him indeed was Naddo's notion right. 
 And vei-se a temple-worship vague and vast, 
 A ceremony that witlidrew the last 
 Opp osing bolt, looped back the lingering veil 
 Which hid the holy place : should one so frail 
 Stand there without such effort ? or repine 
 If much was blank, uncertain at the shrine 
 He knelt before, till, soothed by many a rite. 
 The power responded, and some sound or sight 
 
 Grew up, his own forever, to be fixed. 
 
 In rhyme, the beautiful, forever I — 
 mixed 
 
 With his own life, unloosed when he 
 should please, 
 Having it safe at hand, ready to ease 
 All pain, remove aU trouble ; every time 
 He loosed that fancy from its bonds of rhyme, 
 (Like Perseus when he loosed his naked love) 
 Faltering ; so distinct and far above 
 Himself, these fancies ! He, no genius rare, 
 Transfiguring in fire or wave or air 
 At will, but a poor gnome that, cloistered up 
 In some rock-chamber with his agate cup. 
 His topaz rod, his seed-pearl, in these few 
 And their arrangement finds enough to do 
 For his best art. Then, how he loved that art ! 
 The calling marking him a man apart 
 From men — one not to care, take counsel for 
 Cold hearts, comfortless faces — (Eglamor 
 Was neediest of his tribe) — since verse, the gift. 
 Was his, and men, the whole of them, must shift 
 Without it, e'en content themselves with wealth 
 And pomp and power, snatching a life by stealth. 
 So, Eglamor was not without his pride ! 
 LoTinghis The sorriest bat which cowers 
 art and re- throughout noontide 
 warded by While other birds are jocund, has one 
 "' time 
 
 When moon and stars are blinded, and the prime 
 Of earth is his to claim, nor find a peer ; 
 And Eglamor was noblest poet here — 
 He well knew, 'mid those April woods, he cast 
 Conceits upon in plenty as he passed. 
 
 One who 
 belonged 
 to what 
 he loved, 
 
86 
 
 SORDELLO 
 
 That Naddo might suppose him not to think 
 
 Entirely on the coming triumph : wink 
 
 At the one weakness ! 'T was a fervid child, 
 
 That song of his ; no brother of the guild 
 
 Had e'er conceived its like. The rest you know, 
 
 The exaltation and the overthrow : 
 
 Our poet lost his purpose, lost his rank, 
 
 His life — to that it came. Yet envy sank 
 
 Within him, as he heard Sordello out. 
 
 And, for the first time, shouted — tried to shout 
 
 Like others, not from any zeal to show 
 
 Pleasure that way ; the common sort did so. 
 
 What else was Eglamor ? who, bending down 
 
 As they, placed his beneath Sordello's crown. 
 
 Printed a kiss on his successor's hand. 
 
 Left one great tear on it, then joined his band 
 
 — In time ; for some were watching at the door : 
 Who knows what envy msty effect? "Give 
 
 o'er, 
 Nor charm his lips, nor craze him ! " (here one 
 
 spied 
 And disengaged the withered crown) — " Beside 
 Hia crown ? How prompt and clear those verses 
 
 rang 
 To answer yours ! nay, sing them ! " And he 
 
 sang 
 Them calmly. Home he went ; friends used to 
 
 wait 
 His coming, zealous to congratulate ; 
 But, to a man, — so quickly runs report, — 
 Could do no less than leave him, and escort 
 His rival. That eve, then, bred many a thought : 
 What must his future life be ? was he brought 
 So low, who stood so lofty this Spring mom ? 
 At length he said, *' Best sleep now with my 
 
 scorn. 
 And by to-morrow I devise some plain 
 Expedient ! " So, he slept, nor woke again. 
 Ending They found as much, those friends, 
 with what when they returned 
 had pos- O'erflowing with the marvels they 
 sessed him. had learned 
 About Sordello's paradise, his roves 
 Among the hills and vales and plains and groves. 
 Wherein, no doubt, this lay was roughly cast. 
 Polished by slow degrees, completed last 
 To Eglamor's discomfiture and death. 
 Such form the chanters now, and, out of 
 
 breath. 
 They lay the beaten man in his abode, 
 Naddo reciting that same luckless ode. 
 Doleful to hear. Sordello could explore 
 By means of it, however, one step more 
 In joy ; and, mastering the round at length. 
 Learnt how to live in weakness as in strength. 
 When from hia covert forth he stood, addressed 
 Eglamor, bade the tender ferns invest, 
 PrimsBval pines o'eroanopy his coxich. 
 And, most of all, his fame — (shall I avouch 
 Eglamor heard it, dead though he might look, 
 And laughed as from his brow Sordello took 
 The crown, and laid on the bard's breast, and 
 
 said 
 It was a crown, now, fit for poet's head ?) 
 
 — Continue. Nor the prayer quite fruitless fell, 
 A plant they have, yielding a three-leaved bell 
 Which whitens at the heart ere noon, and ails 
 Till evening ; evening gives it to her gales 
 
 To clear away with such forgotten things 
 As are an ejresore to the morn : this brings 
 Him to their mind, and bears his very name. 
 Eglamor So much for Eglamor. My own 
 done with, month came ; 
 
 Sordello 'Twas a sunrise of blossoming and 
 begins. May. 
 
 Beneath a flowering laurel thicket lay 
 SordeUo ; each new sprinkle of white stars 
 That smell fainter of wine than Massic .jars 
 Dug up at Baiee, when the south wind shed 
 The ripest, made him happier ; filleted 
 And.robed the same, only a lute beside 
 Lay on the turf. Before him far and wide 
 The countiT stretched : Goito slept behind 
 
 — The castle and its covert, which confined 
 Him with his hopes and fears ; so fain of old 
 To leave the story of his birth untold. 
 
 At intervals, 'spite the fantastic glow 
 
 Of his Apollo-life, a certain low 
 
 And wretched whisper, winding through the 
 
 bliss. 
 Admonished, no such fortune could be his. 
 All was quite false and sure to fade one day: 
 The closelier drew he round him his array 
 Of brilliance to expel the truth. But when 
 A reason for his dmerence from men 
 Surprised him at the grave, he took no rest 
 While aught of that old life, superbly dressed 
 Down to its meanest incident, remained 
 A mystery : alas, they soon explained 
 Away Apollo' ! and the tale amounts 
 To this : when at Vicenza both her counts 
 Who he Banished the Vivaresi kith and kin, 
 really was, Those Maltraversi hung on Ecelin, 
 and why Reviled him as he followed ; he for 
 at Goito. spite. 
 
 Must fire their quarter, though that self-same 
 
 night 
 Among the flames young Ecelin was bom 
 Of Adelaide, there too, and barely torn 
 From the roused poptdace hard on the rear, 
 By a poor archer when his chieftain's fear 
 Grew high ; into the thick Elcorte leapt. 
 Saved her, and died ; no creature left except 
 His child to thank. And when the full escape 
 Was known — how men impaled from chine to 
 
 nape 
 Unlucky Prata, all to pieces spurned 
 Bishop ristore's concubines, and burned 
 Taurello's entire household, flesh and fell. 
 Missing the sweeter prey — such courage well 
 Might claim reward. The orphan, ever since, 
 Sordello, had been nurtured by his prince 
 Within a blind retreat where Adelaide — 
 (For, once this notable discovery made. 
 The past at every point was understood) 
 
 — Might harbor easily when times were rude, 
 When Azzo schemed for Palma, to retrieve 
 That pledge of Agnes Este — loth to leave 
 Mantua unguarded with a vigilant eye. 
 While there Tauxello bode ambiguously — 
 He who could have no motive now to moil 
 For his own fortunes since their utter spoil — 
 As it were worth while yet (went the report) 
 To disengage himself from her. In short, 
 Apollo vamshed ; a mean youth, just named 
 His lady's minstrel, was to be proclaimed 
 
SORDELLO 
 
 87 
 
 — How shall I phrase it? — Monai'oh of the 
 
 He, BO lit- World 1 
 
 tie, would For, on the day when that array was 
 
 fain be so furled 
 
 much : Forever, and in place of one a slave 
 
 To longings, wild indeed, but longings save 
 
 In dreams as wild, suppressed — one daring 
 
 not 
 Assume the mastery such dreams allot, 
 Until a magical equipment, strength, 
 Grace, wisdom, decked him too, — he chose at 
 
 length, 
 Content with unproved wits and failing frame, 
 In virtue of his simple will, to claim 
 That mastery, no less — to do his best 
 With means so limited, and let tlie rest 
 Go by, — the seal was set : never again 
 Sordello could in his own sight remain 
 Leaves the One of the many, one with hopes and 
 dream he cares 
 
 maybe And interests nowise distinct from 
 Bomethmg, theirs. 
 Only peculiar in a thriveless store 
 Of fancies, which were fancies and no more ; 
 Never again for him and for the Crowd 
 A common law was challenged and allowed 
 If calmly reasoned of, howe'er denied 
 By a mad impulse nothing justified 
 Short of Apollo's presence. The divorce 
 Is clear ; why needs Sordello square his course 
 By any known example ? Men no more 
 Compete with him than tree and flower before. 
 Himself, inactive, yet is greater far 
 Tlian such as act, each stooping to his star, 
 Acquiring thence his function ; he has gained 
 The same result with meaner mortals trained 
 To strength or beauty, moulded to express 
 Each the idea that rules him ; since no less 
 He comprehends that function, but can still 
 Embrace the others, take of might his All > 
 With Kichard as of grace with Palma, mix 
 Their qualities, or for a moment fix 
 On one ; abiding free meantime, uncramped 
 By any partial organ, never stamped 
 Strong, and to strength turning all energies — 
 Wise, and restricted to becoming wise — 
 That is, he lovea not, nor possesses One 
 Idea that, star-like over, lures him on 
 To its exclusive purpose. " Fortunate ! 
 This flesh of mine ne'er strove to emulate 
 A soul so various — took no casual mould 
 Of the first fancy and, contracted, cold. 
 Clogged her forever — soul averse to change 
 As flesh : whereas flesh leaves soul free to range, 
 Bemains itself a blank, cast into shade, 
 Encumbers little, if it cannot aid. 
 Tor the So, range, free soul ! — who, by self- 
 fact that consciousness, 
 
 he can do The last drop of all beauty dost ex- 
 nothing, press — 
 The grace of seeing grace, a quintessence 
 For thee : while for the world, that can dispense 
 Wonder on men who, themselves, wonder — 
 
 make 
 A shift to love at second-hand, and take 
 Por idols those who do but idolize, 
 iSemselves, — the world that cowiis men strong 
 
 or wise. 
 
 Who, themselves, court strength, wisdom,— it 
 
 shall bow 
 Sui'ely in unexampled worship now. 
 Discerning me ! " — 
 
 (Dear monarch, I beseech. 
 Notice how lamentably wide a breaah 
 Is here ; discovering this, discover too 
 What our poor world has possibly to do 
 With it 1 As pigmy natures as you iilease — 
 So much the better for you ; take your ease. 
 Look on, and laugh ; style yourself God alone ; 
 Strangle some day with a cross olive-stone ! 
 All that is right enough : but why want us 
 To know that you yourself know thus and thus ?) 
 " The world shall bow to me conceiving all 
 Man's life, who see its blisses, great and small, 
 Afar — not tasting any ; no machine 
 To exercise my utmost will is mine : 
 Be mine mere consciousness ! Let men perceive 
 What I could do, a mastery believe. 
 Asserted and established to the throng 
 By their selected evidence of song 
 Which now shall prove, whate'er they are, or 
 
 To be, I am — whose words, not actions speak, 
 Who change no standards of perfection, vex 
 With no strange forms created to perplex, 
 But just perform their bidding and no more, 
 At their own satiating-poiut give o'er, 
 While each shall love in me the love that leads 
 His soul to power's perfection." Song, not 
 
 deeds, 
 (For we get tired) was chosen. Fate would 
 
 brook 
 Mankind no other organ ; he would look 
 For not another channel to dispense 
 His own volition by, receive men's sense 
 Of its supremacy — would live content. 
 Obstructed else, with merely verse for vent. 
 Yet is able Nor should, for instance, strength an 
 to imagine outlet seek 
 
 every- And, striving, be admired ; nor grace 
 
 thing, bespeak 
 
 Wonder, displayed in gracious attitudes ; 
 Nor vrisdom, poured forth, change unseemly 
 
 moods; 
 But he would give and take on song's one point. 
 Like some huge throbbing stone that, poised 
 
 a-joint. 
 Sounds, to affect on its basaltic bed, 
 Must sue in just one accent ; tempests shed 
 Thunder, and raves the windstorm : only let 
 That key by any little noise be set — 
 The far benighted hunter's halloo pitch 
 On that, the hungry curlew chance to scritch 
 Or serpent hiss it, rustling through the rift. 
 However loud, however low — all lift 
 The groaning monster, stricken to the heart. 
 
 Lo ye, the world's concernment, for lis part, 
 If the And this, for his, will hardly inter> 
 
 world es- fere ! 
 teem this Its businesses in blood and blaze this 
 
 equivalent. 
 
 year 
 
 But while the hour away — a pastime slight 
 Till he shall step upon the platform : right ! 
 And, now thus much is settled, cast in rough, 
 Pi'oved feasible, be counselled ! thought 
 enough, — 
 
88 
 
 SORDELLO 
 
 Slumber, Sordello ! any day "will serve : 
 Were it a less digested plan ! how swerve 
 To-morrow ? Meanwhile eat these sun-dried 
 
 grapes, 
 And watch the soaring hawk there I Life es- 
 capes 
 Merrily thus. 
 
 He thoroughly read o'er 
 His tmchman Naddo's missive six times more, 
 Praying him visit Mantua and supply 
 A famished world. 
 
 The evening star was high 
 When he reached Mantua, but his fame ar- 
 rived 
 Before him : friends applauded, f oea connived, 
 And Naddo looked an angel, and the rest 
 Angels, and all these angels would be blest 
 Supremely by a song — the thrice-renowned 
 Goito-manufacture. Then he found 
 (Casting about to satisfy the crowd) 
 He has That happy vehicle, so late allowed, 
 loved A sore annoyance ; 't was the song's 
 
 HODg's re- effect 
 
 3ults, not He cared for, scarce the song itself ; 
 song; reflect ! 
 
 In the past life, what might be singing's use ? 
 Just to delight his Deliana, whose profuse 
 Praise, not the toilsome process which procured 
 That praise, enticed Apollo : dreams abjured, 
 No overleaping means for ends — take both 
 For granted or take neither ! I am loth 
 To say the rhymes at last were Eglamor's j 
 But Naddo, chuckling, bade competitors 
 '3o pine ; " the master certes meant to waste 
 No effort, cautiously had probed the taste 
 He 'd please anon : true bard, in short, disturb 
 His title if they could ; nor spur nor curb. 
 Fancy nor reason, wanting in him ; whence 
 The staple of his verses, common sense : 
 He built on man's broad nature — gift of gifts, 
 That power to build ! The world contented 
 
 shifts 
 With counterfeits enough, a dreary sort 
 Of warriors, statesmen, ere it can extort 
 Its poet-soul — that 's, after all, a freak 
 (The having eyes to see and tongue to speak) 
 With our herd's stupid sterUng happiness 
 So plainly incompatible that — yes — 
 Yes — should a son of his improve the breed 
 And turn out poet, he were cursed indeed ! " 
 "Well, there s Goitoand its woods anon, 
 If the worst happen ; best go stoutly on 
 Now 1 " thought Sordello. 
 
 So, must Ay, and goes on yet I 
 
 effect this You pother with your glossaries to 
 to obtain get 
 
 those. ^ notion of the Troubadour's intent 
 
 In rondel, tenzon, virlai, or sirvent — 
 Muoh as you study arras how to twirl 
 His ahgelot, plaything of page and girl 
 Once ; but you surely reach, at last, — or, no 1 
 Never quite reach what struck the people so. 
 As from the welter of their time he drew 
 Its elements successively to view. 
 Followed all actions backward on their course. 
 And catching up, unmingled at the source. 
 Such a strength, such a weakness, added then 
 A touch or two. and turned them into men. 
 
 Virtue took form, nor vice refused a shape ; 
 Here heaven opened, there was hell agape. 
 As Saint this simpered past in sanctity. 
 Sinner the other flared portentous by 
 A greedy people. Then why stop, surprised 
 At his success ? The scheme was realized 
 Too suddenly in one respect : a crowd 
 Praising, eyes q^uick to see, and lips as loud 
 To speak, delicious homage to receive. 
 The woman's breath to feel upon his sleeve. 
 Who said, " But Anaf est — why asks he less 
 Than Lucio, in your verses ? how confess. 
 It seemed too much but yestereve!" — the 
 
 youth. 
 Who bade him earnestly, " Avow the truth ! 
 You love Bianca, surely, from your song ; 
 I knew I was unworthy ! " — soft or strong. 
 In poured such tributes ere he had arranged 
 Ethereal ways to take them, sorted, changed. 
 Digested. Courted thus at unawares. 
 In spite of his pretensions and his cares. 
 He caught himself shamefully hankering 
 After the obvious petty joys that spring 
 From true life, fain relinquish pedestal 
 He sue- And condescend with pleasures — 
 ceeds a one and all 
 
 little, but To be renounced, no doubt ; for, thus 
 tails to chain 
 
 more ; Himself to single joys and so refrain 
 
 From tasting their quintessence, frustrates, 
 
 sure, 
 His prime design ; each joy must he abjure 
 Even for love of it. 
 
 He laughed : what sage 
 But perishes if from his magic page 
 He look because, at the first line, a proof 
 'T was heard salutes him from the cavern roof ? 
 " On ! Give yourself, excluding aught beside, 
 To the day's task ; compel your slave provide 
 Its utmost at the soonest ; turn the leaf 
 Thoroughly conned. These lays of yours, in 
 
 brief — 
 Cannot men bear, now, something better? — 
 
 fly 
 A pitch beyond this unreal pageantry 
 Of essences ? the period sure has ceased 
 For such : present us with ourselves, at least. 
 Not portions of ourselves, mere loves and hates 
 Made flesh : wait not ! " 
 
 Tries Awhile the poet waits 
 
 again, is However. The first trial was 
 no better enough ; 
 
 satisfied, jjg left imagining, to try tlie stuff 
 That held the imaged thing, and, let it wTithe 
 Never so fiercely, scarce allowed a tithe 
 To reach the light — his Language. How he 
 
 sought 
 The cause, conceived a cure, and slow re- 
 wrought 
 That Language, — welding words into the crude 
 Mass from the new speech round him, till a 
 
 rude 
 Armor was hammered out, in time to be 
 Approved beyond the Roman panoply 
 Melted to make it, — boots not. This obtained 
 With some ado, no obstacle remained 
 To using it ; accordingly he took 
 An action with its actors, quite forsook 
 
SORDELLO 
 
 89 
 
 Himself to live in each, retnmed anon 
 With the result — a creature, and, by one 
 And_ one, proceeded leisurely to equip 
 Its limbs in harness of his workmanship. 
 " Accomplished I Listen, Mantuans ! " Pond 
 
 essay I 
 Piece after piece that armor broke away, 
 Because perceptions whole, like that he sought 
 To clothe, reject so pure a work of thought 
 As language : thought may take perception's 
 
 place 
 But hardly co-exist in any case, 
 Being its mere presentment — of the whole 
 By parts, the simultaneous and the sole 
 By the successive and the many. Lacks 
 The crowd perception ? painfully it tacks 
 Thought to thought, which SordeUo, needing 
 
 such. 
 Has rent perception into : it 's to clutch 
 And reconstruct — his office to diffuse, 
 Destroy : as hard, then, to obtain a Muse 
 As to become Apollo. " For the rest. 
 E'en if some wondrous vehicle expressed 
 The whole dream, what impertinence in me 
 So to express it, Avho myself can be 
 The dream ! nor, on the other hand, are those 
 I sing to, over-likely to suppose 
 And de- A higher than the highest I present 
 clinea Now, which they praise already : be 
 
 from the content 
 
 ideal of Both parties, rather — they with the 
 song. old verse, 
 
 And I with the old praise — far go, fare 
 
 worse ! " 
 A few adhering rivets loosed, upsprings 
 The angel, sparkles off his mail, which rings 
 Whirled from each delicatest limb it warps. 
 So might Apollo from the sudden corpse 
 Of Hyacinth have east his luckless quoits. 
 He set to celebrating the exploits 
 Of Montfort o'er the Mountaineers. 
 
 Then came 
 The world's revenge : their pleasure, now his aim 
 Merely, — what was it ? Not to play the fool 
 So much as learn our lesson in your school ! " 
 Keplied the world. He found that, every time 
 He gained applause by any ballad-rhyme, 
 His auditory recognized no jot 
 As he intended, and, mistaking not 
 Him for his meanest hero, ne'er was dunce 
 Sufficient to believe him — all, at once. 
 His wUl . . . conceive it oaring for his will ! 
 — Mantuans, the main of them, admiring still 
 How a mere singer, ugly, stunted, weak. 
 Had Montfort at completely (so to speak) 
 His fingers' ends ; while past the praise-tide 
 
 swept 
 To Montfort, cither's share distinctly kept : 
 The true meed for true merit I — his abates 
 What is Into a sort he most repudiates, 
 the And on them angrily he turns. Who 
 
 world's were 
 
 reoogni- The Mantuans, after all, that he 
 ''™ should care 
 
 worth ? About their recognition, ay or no ? 
 In spite of the convention months ago, 
 (Why blink the truth?) was not he forced to 
 
 help 
 
 This same ungrateful audience, every whelp 
 Of Naddo's litter, make them pass for peers 
 With the bright band of old Goito years. 
 As erst he toiled for flower or tree ? Why, 
 
 there 
 Sat Palma I Adelaide's funereal hair 
 Ennobled the next corner. Ay, he strewed 
 A fairy dust upon that multitude. 
 Although he feigned to take them by them- 
 selves ; 
 His giants dignified those puny elves, 
 Submne their faint applause. In short, he 
 
 found 
 Himself still footing a delusive round. 
 Remote as ever from the self-display 
 He meant to compass, hampered every way 
 By what he hoped assistance. Wherefore then 
 Continue, make believe to find in men 
 A use he found not ? 
 
 Weeks, months, years went by, 
 And lo, Sordello vanished utterly. 
 Sundered in twain ; each spectral part at strife 
 With each : one jarred against another life ; 
 How, poet The Poet thwarting hopelessly the 
 no longer ■ Man, 
 
 in unity Who, fooled no longer, free in fancy 
 with man, p^j, 
 
 Here, there, — let slip no opportunities 
 As pitiful, forsooth, beside the pidze 
 To drop on him some no-time and acquit 
 His constant faith (the Poet-half's to wit — 
 That waiving any compromise between 
 No joy and all joy kept the hunger keen 
 Beyond most methods) — of incurring scoff 
 From the Man-portion — not to be put off 
 With self-reflectii^3 by the Poet's scheme. 
 Though ne'er so bright. Who sauntered fortV 
 
 in dream. 
 Dressed anyhow, nor waited mystic frames, 
 Immeasurable gifts, astounding claims. 
 But just his sorry self ? — who yet might be 
 Sorrier for aught he in reality 
 Achieved, so pinioned Man's the Poet-part, 
 Fondling, in turn of fancy, verse ; the Art 
 Developing his soul a thousand ways — 
 Potent, by its assistance, to amaze 
 The multitude with majesties, convince 
 Fach soit of nature, that the nature's prince 
 Accosted it. Language, the makeshift, grew 
 Into a bravest of expedients, too ; 
 Apollo, seemed it now, perverse had thrown 
 Quiver and bow away, the lyre alone 
 Sufficed. While, out of dream, his day's work 
 
 went 
 To tune a crazy tenzon or sirvent — 
 So hampered him the Man-part, thrust to judge' 
 Between the bard and the bard's audience,. 
 
 grudge 
 A minute's toil that missed its due reward f 
 But the complete SordeUo, Man and Bard, 
 
 John's cloud-girt angel, this foot on 
 the land. 
 
 That on the sea, with, open in his 
 hand, 
 
 A bitter-sweetling of a book — was 
 gone. 
 TPhen, if internal struggles to be one 
 Which frittered him incessantly piecemeal, 
 
 The whole 
 
 visible 
 
 SordeUo 
 
 goes 
 
 wrong 
 
90 
 
 SORDELLO 
 
 Referred, ne'er so obliquely, to the real 
 Intruding Mantuans 1 ever with some call 
 To action while he pondered, once for aU, 
 Which looked the easier effort — to pursue 
 This course, still leap o'er paltry joys, yearn 
 
 through 
 The present ill-appreeiated stage 
 Of seif-reveaiment, and compel the age 
 Know him ; or else, forswearing bard-craft, wake 
 From out his lethargy and nobly shake 
 Off timid habits of denial, mix 
 With men, enjoy Hke men. Ere he coidd fix 
 On aught, in rushed the Mantuans ; much they 
 
 cared 
 For his perplexity I Thus unprepared. 
 The obvious if not only shelter lay 
 With those In deeds, the duU conventions of his 
 too hard day 
 
 for half of Prescribed the like of him : why not 
 ''™' be glad 
 
 'T is settled Palma's minstrel, good or bad. 
 Submits to this and that established rule ? 
 Let Vidal change, or any other fool. 
 His murrey-colored robe for filamot. 
 And crop his hair ; too skin-deep, is it not. 
 Such vigor ? Then, a soiTow to the heart. 
 His talk ! Whatever topics they might start 
 Had to be groped for in his consciousness 
 Straight, and as straight delivered them by 
 
 guess. 
 Only obKged to ask himself, " What was," 
 A speedy answer followed ; but, alas. 
 One of God's large ones, tardy to condense 
 Itself into a period ; answers whence 
 A tangle of conclusions must be stripped 
 At any risk ere, trim to pattern clipped. 
 They matched rare specimetis the Mantuan flock 
 Regaled him with, each talker from his stock 
 Of sorted-o'er opinions, every stage. 
 Juicy in youth or desiccate with age. 
 Fruits like the fig-tree's, rathe-ripe, rotten-rich. 
 Sweet-sour, all tastes to take : a practice which 
 He too had not impossibly attained. 
 Once either of those fancy-flights restrained ; 
 (For, at conjecture how might words appear 
 To others, playing there what happened here, 
 And occupied abroad by what he spurned 
 At home, 't was slipped, the occasion he returned 
 To seize :) he 'd strike that lyre adroitly — 
 
 speech, 
 Would but a twenty-cubit pleetre reach ; 
 A clever hand, consummate instrument. 
 Were both brought close ; each excellency went 
 For nothing, else. The question Naddo asked. 
 Had just a lifetime moderately tasked 
 To answer, Naddo's fashion. More disgust 
 Of whom And more : why move his soul, since 
 he is also move it must 
 
 too con- At minute's notice or as good it 
 temptuouB. failed 
 
 To move at all ? The end was, he retailed 
 Some ready-made opinion, put to use 
 This quip, that maxim, ventured reproduce 
 Gestures and tones — at any folly caught 
 Serving to finish with, nor too much sought 
 If false or true 't was spoken ; praise and blame 
 Of what he said grew pretty nigh the same 
 -^Mfiantinie awards to meantime acts : his soul. 
 
 Unequal to the compassing a whole. 
 
 Saw, in a tenth part, less and less to strive 
 
 About. And as for men in turn . . . contrive 
 
 Who could to take eternal interest 
 
 In them, so hate the worst, so love the best I 
 
 Though, in pursuance of his passive plan. 
 
 He hailed, decried, the proper way. 
 
 As Man 
 So figured he ; and how as Poet ? Verse 
 Came only not to a stand-still. The worse, 
 That his poor piece of daily work to do 
 Was, not sink under any rivals ; who 
 He pleases Loudly and long enough, without 
 neither these qualms, 
 
 himself Turned, from Bocafoli's stark-naked 
 nor them : psalms. 
 To Plara's sonnets spoilt by toying with, 
 " As knops that stud some ahnug to the pith 
 Pricked for gum, wry thence, and orinklAd 
 
 worse 
 Than pursed eyelids of a riveivhorse 
 Sunning himself o' the sUme when whirrs the 
 
 breeze " — 
 Gad-fly, that is. He might compete with these ! 
 But — but — 
 
 " Observe a pompion-twine afloat ; 
 Pluck me one cup from off the castle-moat ! 
 Which the Along with cup you raise leaf, stalk 
 best judges and root, 
 
 account The entire surface of the pool to 
 'or- boot. 
 
 So could I pluck a cup, put in one song 
 A single sight, did not my hand, too strong. 
 Twitch in the least the root-strings of the whole. 
 How should externals satisfy my soul ? " 
 " Why that 's precise the error Squarcialupe " 
 (Hazarded Naddo) "finds; 'the man can't stoop 
 To sing us out,' quoth he, ' a mere romance ; 
 He 'd fain do better than the best, enhance 
 The subjects' rarity, work problems out 
 Therewith.' Now, you 're a bard, a bard past 
 
 doubt, 
 And no philosopher ; why introduce 
 Crotchets like these ? fine, surely, but no use 
 In poetry — which still must be, to strike. 
 Based upon common sense ; there 's nothing like 
 Appealing to our nature ! what beside 
 Was your first poetry ? No tricks were tried 
 In that, no hollow thrills, affected throes ! 
 ' The man,' said we, ' tells his own joys and 
 
 woes : 
 We 'U trust him.' Would you have your songs 
 
 endure ? 
 Build on the human heart I — why, to be sure 
 Yours is one sort of heart — but I mean theirs, 
 Ours, every one's, the healthy heart one cares 
 To build on ! Central peace, mother of strength. 
 That 's father of . . . nay, go yourself that 
 
 length, 
 Ask those calm-hearted doers what they do 
 When they have got their calm ! And is it 
 
 true, 
 Fire rankles at the heart of every globe ? 
 Perhaps. But these are matters one may probe 
 Too deeply for poetic purposes : 
 Rather select a theory that . . yes. 
 Laugh I what does that prove ? — stations you 
 
 midway 
 
SORDELLO 
 
 91 
 
 And saves some little o'er-refining. Nay, 
 That 's rank injustice done me I 1 restrict 
 The poet ? Don't I hold the poet picked 
 Out of a host of warriors, statesmen . . . did 
 I tell you ? Very like ! As well you hid 
 That sense of power, you have 1 True bards 
 
 believe 
 All able to achieve what they achieve — 
 That is, just nothing — in one point abide 
 Profounder simpletons than all beside. 
 Oh, ay ! The knowledge that you are a bard 
 Must constitute your prime, nay sole, reward ! " 
 So prattled Naddo, busiest of the tribe 
 Of genius-haunters — how shall I describe 
 What grubs or nips or rubs or rips — your louse 
 For love, your flea for hate, magnanimous. 
 Their Malignant, Pappacoda, Tagliafer, 
 
 criticiBma Picking a sustenance from wear and 
 give small tear 
 
 comfort ; By implements it sedulous employs 
 To undertake, lay down, mete out, o'er-toise 
 Sordello ? Fifty creepers to elude 
 At once ! They settled stanehly : shame ensued : 
 Behold the monarch ef mankind succumb 
 To the last fool who turned him round his 
 
 thumb. 
 As Naddo styled it ! 'T was not worth oppose 
 The matter of a moment, gainsay those 
 He aimed at getting rid of ; better think 
 Their thoughts and speak their speech, secure 
 
 to slink 
 Back expeditiously to his safe place. 
 And chew the cud — what he and what his race 
 Were really, each of them. Yet even this 
 Conformity was partial. He would miss 
 Some point, brought into contact with them ere 
 Assured in what small segment of the sphere 
 Of his existence they attended him ; 
 Whence blunders, falsehoods rectified — a grim 
 List — slur it over ! How ? If dreams were 
 
 tried. 
 His will swayed sicklily from side to side, 
 Nor merely neutralized his waking act 
 But tended e'en in fancy to distract 
 The intermediate wUl, the choice of means. 
 He lost the art of dreaming ; Mantuan scenes 
 Supplied a baron, say, he sang before. 
 Handsomely reckless, full to running o'er 
 Of gallantries ; " abjure the soul, content 
 With body, therefore ! " Scarcely had he bent 
 Himself in dream thus low, when matter fast 
 Cried out, he found, for spirit to contrast 
 And task it duly ; by advances slight, 
 The simple stuff becoming composite. 
 Count Lori grew Apollo — best recall 
 His fancy ! Then would some rough' peasant- 
 Paul, 
 Like those old Ecelin confers with, glance 
 His gay apparel o'er ; that countenance 
 Gathered his shattered fancies into one. 
 And, body clean abolished, soul alone 
 Sufficed the gray Paulician : by and by. 
 And his To balance the ethereality, 
 own de- Passions were needed ; f oued he sank 
 gradation again. 
 
 is com- Meanwhile the world rejoiced ('tis 
 P'"«- time explain) 
 
 Because a sudden sickness set it free 
 
 From Adelaide. Missing the mother-bee, 
 Her mountain-hive Romano swarmed ; at once 
 A rustle-forth of daughters and of sons 
 Blackened the valley. ^^ 1 am sick too, old. 
 Half-crazed I think j what good 's the Kaiser's 
 
 gold 
 To such an one ? God help me ! for I catch 
 My children's greedy sparkling eyes at watch — 
 ' He bears that double breastplate on,' they say, 
 'So many minutes less than yesterday ! ' 
 Beside, Monk Hilary is on his knees 
 Now, sworn to kneel and pray till God shall 
 
 please 
 Exact a punishment for many things 
 You know, and some you never knew ; which 
 
 brings 
 To memory, Azzo's sister Beatrix 
 And Richard's Griglia are my Alberio's 
 And Ecelin's betrothed ; the Count himself 
 Must get my Palma : Ghibellin and Guelf 
 Mean to embrace each other." So began 
 Adelaide's Romano's missive to his fighting 
 death : man 
 
 what ha.p- Taurello — on the Tuscan's death. 
 
 pens on it : 
 
 away 
 
 With Friedrich sworn to sail from Naples' bay 
 Next month for Syria. Never thunder-clap 
 Out of Vesuvius' throat, like this mishap 
 Startled him. *' That accursed Vicenza I I 
 Absent, and she selects this time to die ! 
 Ho, fellows, for Vicenza ! " Half a score 
 Of horses ridden dead, he stood before 
 Romano in his reeking spurs : too late — 
 " Boniface urged me, Este could not wait," 
 The chieftain stammered; "let me die in 
 
 peace — 
 Forget me ! Was it I who craved increase 
 Of rule ? Do you and Friedrich plot your worst 
 Against the Father ; as you found me first 
 So leave me now. Forgive me ! Palma, sure, 
 Is at Goito still. Retain that lure — 
 Only be pacified ! " 
 
 The country rung 
 With such a piece of news : on every tongue, 
 How Ecelin's great servant, congeed off. 
 Had done a long day's service, so, might doff 
 The green and yellow, and recover breath 
 At Mantua, whither, — since Retrude's death, 
 {The girlish slip of a Sicilian bride 
 From Otho's house, he carried to reside 
 At Mantua till the Ferrarese should pile 
 A structure worthy her imperial style. 
 The gardens raise, the statues there enshrine. 
 She never lived to see) — although his line 
 Was ancient in her archives and she took 
 A pride in him, that city, nor forsook 
 Her child when he forsook himself and spent 
 A prowess on Romano surely meant 
 For his own growth — whither he ne'er resorts 
 If wholly satisfied (to trust reports) 
 With Ecelin. So, forward in a trice 
 Were shows to greet him. " Take a friend's 
 
 advice," 
 Quoth Naddo to Sordello, " nor be rash 
 Because your rivals (nothing can abash 
 Some folks) demur that we pronounced you best 
 To sound the great man's welcome ; 't is a test. 
 Remember ! Strojavacca looks asquint. 
 
And a 
 trouble 
 it occa- 
 sions Sor- 
 deUo. 
 
 92 
 
 The rough fat sloven ; and there 's plenty hint 
 Your pinions have received of late a shock — 
 Outsoar them, cobswan of the silver flock ! 
 
 Sing well ! " A signal wonder, song '3 
 no whit 
 
 Facilitated. 
 
 Fast the minutes flit ; 
 
 Another day, SordeUo finds, will 
 bring 
 
 The soldier, and he cannot choose but sing ; 
 So, a last shift, quits Mantua — slow, alone : 
 Out of that aching brain, a very stone. 
 Song must be struck. What occupies that 
 
 front? 
 Just how he was more awkward than his wont 
 The night before, when Naddo, who had seen 
 Taurello on his progress, praised the mien 
 For dignity no crosses coiild affect — 
 Such was a joy, and might not he detect 
 A satisfaction if established joys 
 Were proved imposture ? Poetry annoys 
 Its utmost : wherefore fret ? Verses may come 
 Or keep away ! And thus he wandered, dumb 
 Till evening, when he paused, thoroughly spent. 
 On a blind hill-top : down the gorge he went. 
 Yielding himself up as to an embrace. 
 The moon came out ; like features of a face, 
 A querulous fraternity of pines. 
 Sad blackthorn clumps, leafless and grovelling 
 
 vines 
 Also came out, made gradually up 
 The picture ; 't was Goito's mountain-cup 
 And castle. He had dropped through one de- 
 file 
 He never dared explore, the Chief erewhile 
 
 Had vanished by. Back rushed the 
 dream, enwrapped 
 
 Him wholly. 'Twas Apollo now 
 they lapped. 
 
 Those mountains, not a pettish min- 
 strel meant 
 To wear his soul away in discontent, 
 Brooding on fortune's malice. Heart and brain 
 Swelled ; he expanded to himself again. 
 As some thin seedling spice-tree starved and 
 
 frail. 
 Pushing between cat's head and ibis' tail 
 Crusted into the porphyry pavement smooth, 
 — Suffered remam just as it sprung, to soothe 
 The Soldan's pining daughter, never yet 
 Well in her chilly green-glazed minaret, — ■ 
 When rooted up, the sunny day she died. 
 And flung into the common court beside 
 Its parent tree. Come home, SordeUo ! Soon 
 Was he low muttering, beneath the moon. 
 Of sorrow saved, of quiet evermore, — 
 Since from the purpose, he maintained before, 
 Only resulted wailing and hot tears. 
 Bees out Ah, the slim castle ! dwindled of 
 failure in late years, 
 
 all done But more mysterious | gone to ruin 
 trails 
 
 SORDELLO 
 
 He 
 
 chances 
 upon his 
 old en- 
 Tironment, 
 
 Of vine through every loop-hole. Naught avails 
 The night as, torch in hand, he must explore 
 The maple chamber : did I say, its floor 
 Was made of intersecting cedar beams ? 
 Worn now with gaps so large, there blew cold 
 streams 
 
 Of air quite from the dungeon ; lay your ear 
 Close and 't is like, one after one, you hear 
 In the blind darkness water drop. The nests 
 And nooks retain their long ranged vesture- 
 chests 
 Empty and smelling of the iris root 
 The Tuscan grated o'er them to recruit 
 Her wasted wits. Palma was gone that day, 
 Said the remaining women. Last, he lay 
 Beside the Carian group reserved and stUl. 
 The Body, the Machine for Acting Will, 
 Had been at the commencement proved unfit ; 
 That for Demonstrating, Reflecting it. 
 Mankind —no fitter : was the Will Itself 
 In fault ? 
 
 His forehead pressed the moonlit shelf 
 Beside the youngest marble maid awhile ; 
 Then, raising it, he thought, with a long smile, 
 and re- "I shall be king again!" as he 
 solves to withdrew 
 
 desist The envied scarf ; into the font he 
 
 from the threw 
 
 '*®- His crown. 
 
 Next day, no poet ! " Wherefore ? " asked 
 Taurello, when the dance of Jongleurs, masked 
 As devils, ended ; " don't a song come next ? " 
 The master of the pageant looked perplexed 
 Till Naddo's whisper came to his relief. 
 " His Highness knew what poets were : in brief. 
 Had not the tetchy race prescriptive right 
 To peevishness, caprice ? or, call it spite. 
 One must receive their nature in its length 
 And breadth, expect the weakness with the 
 
 stren^h 1 " 
 — So phrasing, till, his stock of phrases spent. 
 The easy-natnred soldier smiled assent, 
 Settled his portly person, smoothed his chin. 
 And nodded that the bull-bait might begin. 
 
 BOOK THE THIRD 
 
 And the font took them : let our laurels lie ! 
 
 Braid moonfern now with mystic trifoly 
 
 Because once more Goito gets, once m.ore, 
 
 Sordello to itself ! A dream is o'er. 
 
 And the suspended life begins anew ; 
 
 Quiet those throbbing temples, then, subdue 
 
 Nature That cheek's distortion ! Nature's 
 
 may strict embrace, 
 
 triumph Putting aside the past, shall soon 
 
 therefore j efface 
 
 Its print as well — factitious humors grown 
 
 Over the true — loves, hatreds not his own — 
 
 And turn him pure as some forgotten vest 
 
 Woven of painted byssus, silkiest 
 
 Tufting the Tyrrhene whelk's pearl-sheeted 
 
 lip, 
 Left welter where a trireme let it slip 
 I' the sea, and vexed a satrap ; so the stain 
 0' the world forsakes Sordello, witii its pain. 
 Its pleasure : how the tinct loosening escapes. 
 Cloud after cloud I Mantua's familiar shapeB 
 Die, fair and foul die, fading as they flit. 
 Men, women, and the pathos and the wit. 
 Wise speech and foolish, deeds to smile or sigh 
 For, good, bad, seemly or ignoble, die. 
 The last face glances through the eglantines. 
 
SORDELLO 
 
 93 
 
 The last voice murmurs, 'twixt the blossomed 
 
 vines, 
 Of Men, of that machine supplied hy thought 
 To compass self -perception with, he sought 
 By forcing half hinaself — ■ an insane pulse 
 Of a god's blood, on clay it could convulse. 
 Never transmute — on human sights and sounds, 
 To "watch the other half with ; irksome bounds 
 It ebbs from to its source, a fountain sealed 
 Forever. Better sure be uiirevealed 
 Than part revealed : SordeUo well or ill 
 Is finished : then what further use of Will, 
 Point in the prime idea not realized. 
 An oversight ? inordinately prized. 
 No less, and pampered with enough of ea«h 
 Delight to prove the whole above its reach. 
 ** To need become all natures, yet retain 
 The law of my own nature — to remain 
 Myself, yet yearn ... as if that chestnut, think. 
 Should yearn for this first larch-bloom crisp and 
 
 pink. 
 Or those pale fragrant tears where zephyrs 
 
 stanch 
 March wounds along the fretted pine-tree 
 
 branch ! 
 Will and the means to show will, great and 
 
 small. 
 Material, spiritual, — abjure them all 
 Save any so distinct, they may be left 
 To amuse, not tempt become ! and, thus bereft. 
 Just as I first was fashioned would I be ! 
 Nor, moon, is it Apollo now, but me 
 For her Thou visitest to comfort and he- 
 son, lately friend ! 
 
 alive, dies gwim thou into my heart, and there 
 "f "'• an end, 
 
 Since I possess thee ! — nay, thus shut mine eyes 
 And know, quite know, by this heart's fall and 
 
 rise, 
 When thou dost bury thee in clouds, and when 
 Out-standest : wherefore practise upon men 
 To make that plainer to myself ? " 
 
 Slide here 
 Over a sweet and solitary year 
 Wasted ; or simply notice change in him — 
 How eyes, once with exploring bright, grew dim 
 And satiate with receiving. Some distress 
 Was caused, too, by a sort of consciousness 
 Under the imbecility, — naught kept 
 That down ; he slept, but was aware he slept, 
 So, frustrated ; as who brainsick made pact 
 Erst with the overhanging cataract 
 To deafen him, yet still distinguished plain 
 His own blood's measured clicking at his brain. 
 
 To finish. One declining Autumn day — 
 Few birds about the heaven chill and gray. 
 No wind that cared trouble the tacit woods — 
 He sauntered home complacently, their moods 
 According, his and nature's. Every spark 
 Was found Of Mantua life was trodden out ; so 
 and is lost. dark 
 
 The embers, that the Troubadour, who sung 
 Hundreds of songs, forgot, its trick his tongue. 
 Its craft his brain, how either brought to pass 
 Singing at all ; that faculty might class 
 With any of Apollo's now. The year 
 Began to find its early promise sere 
 As well. Thus beauty vanishes ; thus stone 
 
 Outlingers flesh : nature's and his youth gone. 
 They left the world to you, and wished you joy, 
 When, stopping his benevolent employ, 
 A presage shuddered throuigh the welkin ; liarsh 
 The earth's remonstrance followed. 'T wi^ the 
 
 marsh 
 Gone of a sudden. Mincio, in its place. 
 Laughed, a broad water, in next morning's face. 
 And, where the mists broke up immense and 
 
 white 
 I' the steady wind, burned like a spilth of light 
 Out of the crashing of a myriad stars. 
 And here was nature, bound by the same bars 
 Of fate with him ! 
 
 Butnatuie " No ! youth once gone is gone : 
 
 is one Deeds let escape are never to be done, 
 
 thing, man Leaf -fall and grass-spring for the 
 another — year ; for us — 
 Oh forfeit I unalterably thus 
 My chance ? nor two lives wait me, this to spend. 
 Learning save that ? Nature has time, may 
 
 mend 
 Mistake, she knows occasion will recur ; 
 Landslip or seabreach, how affects it her 
 With her magnificent resources ? — I 
 Must perish once and perish utterly. 
 Not any strollings now at even-close 
 Down the field-path, Sordello ! by thorn-rows 
 Alive with lamp-flies, swimming spots of fire 
 And dew, outlining the black cypress' spire 
 She waits you at, Elys, who heard you first 
 Woo her, the snow-month through, but ere she 
 
 durst 
 Answer 'twas April. Linden-flower-time-long 
 Her eyes were on the ground ; 't is July, strong 
 Now ; and because white dust-clouds overwhelm 
 The woodside, here or by the village elm 
 That holds the moon, she meets you, somewhat 
 
 pale. 
 But letting you lift up her coarse flax veil 
 And whisper (the damp little hand in yours) 
 Of love, heart's love, your heart's love that en- 
 dures 
 Till death. Tush ! No mad mixing with the 
 
 rout 
 Of haggard ribalds wandering about 
 The hot torchlit wine-scented island-house 
 Where Friedrich holds his wickedest carouse, 
 Parading, — to the gay Palermitans, 
 Soft Messinese, dusk Saracenic clans 
 Having Nuocera holds, — those tall grave 
 multifari- dazzling Norse, 
 0U3 sym- High-cheeked, lank-haired, toothed 
 pathies, whiter than the morse. 
 
 Queens of the caves of jet stalactites. 
 He sent his barks to fetch through icy seas. 
 The blind night seas without a saving star. 
 And here in snowy birdskin robes they are, 
 Sordello ! — here, moUitious alcoves gUt 
 Superb as Byzant domes that devils built ! 
 — Ah, Byzant, there a^ain ! no chance to go 
 Ever like august cheery Dandolo, 
 Worshipping hearts about him for a wall. 
 Conducted, blind eyes, hundred years and all. 
 Through vanquished Byzant where friends note 
 
 for him 
 What pillar, marble massive, sardins slim, 
 'T were fittest he transport to Venice' Square -^ 
 
94 
 
 SORDELLO 
 
 Flattered and promised life to touch them there 
 
 Soon, by those fervid sons of senators I 
 
 No more lifes, deaths, loves, hatreds, peaces, 
 
 wars! 
 Ah, fragments of a whole ordained to be. 
 Points in the life I waited ! what are ye 
 But roundels of a ladder which appeared 
 Awhile the very platform it was reared 
 To lift me on ? — that happiness I find 
 Proofs of my faith in, even in the blind 
 Instinct which bade forego you all unless 
 Ye led me past yourselves. Ay, happiness 
 He may Awaited me ; the way life should be 
 neither re- used 
 
 nouncenor Was to acquire, and deeds like you 
 satisfy ; conduced 
 
 To teach it by a self-revealment, deemed 
 Life's very use, so long ! Whatever seemed 
 Progress to that, was pleasure ; aught that 
 
 stayed 
 My reaching it — no pleasure. I have laid 
 The ladder down ; I climb not ; still, aloft 
 The platform stretches I Blisses strong and 
 
 soft, 
 I dared not entertain, elude me ; yet 
 Never of what they promised could I get 
 A glimpse tUl now ! The common sort, the 
 
 crowd. 
 Exist, perceive ; with Being are endowed. 
 However slight, distinct from what they See, 
 However bounded ; Happiness must be. 
 To feed the first by gleanings from the last. 
 Attain its qualities, and slow or fast 
 Become what they behold j such peace-in-strife 
 By transmutation, is the Use of Life, 
 The Alien turning Native to the soul 
 Or body — which instructs me ; I am whole 
 There and demand a Palma ; had the world 
 Been from ray soul to a like distance hurled, 
 'T were Happiness to make it one with me : 
 Whereas I must, ere I begin to Be, 
 Include a world, in fiesh, 1 comprehend 
 In spirit now ; and this done, what 's to blend 
 With? Naught is Alien in the world — my 
 
 Will 
 Owns all already ; yet can turn it — still 
 Less — Native, smce my Means to correspond 
 With Win are so unworthy, 't was my bond 
 In the To tread the very joys that tantalize 
 
 process to Most now, into a grave, never to rise, 
 which is I die then 1 Will the rest agree to 
 pleasure, die ? 
 
 Next Age or no ? Shall its Sordello try 
 Clue after clue, and catch at last the clue 
 I miss ? — that 's underneath my finger too. 
 Twice, thrice a day, perhaps, — some yearning 
 
 traced 
 Deeper, some petty consequence embraced 
 Closer ! Why fled I Mantua, then ? — com- 
 plained 
 So much my Will was fettered, yet remained 
 Content within a tether half the range 
 I could assign it ? — able to exchange 
 My ignorance {I felt) for knowledge, and 
 Idle because I could thus understand — 
 Could e'en have penetrated to its core 
 Our mortal mystery, yet — fool — forbore. 
 Preferred elaborating in the dark 
 
 My casual stuff, by any wretched spark 
 Bom of my predecessors, though one stroke 
 Of mine had brought the flame forth ! Mantua's 
 
 My minstrel's-trade, was to behold mankind, — 
 My own concern was just to bring my mind 
 Behold, just extricate, for my acquist. 
 Each object suffered stifle in the mist 
 Which hazard, custom, blindness interpose 
 Betwixt things and myself." 
 
 Whereat he rose. 
 The level wind carried above the firs 
 Clouds, the irrevocable travellers. 
 Onward. 
 
 " Pushed thus into a drowsy copse. 
 Arms twine about my neck, each eyelid drops 
 Under a humid finger ; while there fleets, 
 Outside the screen, a pageant time repeats 
 Never again ! To be deposed, immured 
 While re- Clandestinely — still petted, stiU as- 
 nunciation sured 
 
 ensures de- To govern were fatiguing work — 
 spair. the Sight 
 
 Fleeting meanwhile 1 'Tis noontide: wreak 
 
 ere night 
 Somehow my will upon it, rather ! Slake 
 This thirst somehow, the poorest impress take 
 That serves ! A blasted bud displays yon, 
 
 torn. 
 Faint rudiments of the fuU flower unborn ; 
 But who divines what glory coats o'erclasp 
 Of the bulb dormant in the mummy's grasp 
 Taurellosent?" . . . 
 
 " Tanrello ? Palma sent 
 Your Trouvere," (Naddo interposing leant 
 Over the lost bard's shoulder) — " and, believe, 
 You cannot more reluctantly receive 
 Than I pronounce her message: we depart 
 Together. What avail a poet's heart 
 Verona's pomps and gauds ? five blades of grasa 
 Suffice him. News ? Why, where your marish 
 
 was, 
 On its mud-banks smoke rises after smoke 
 I' the valley, like a spout of hell new-broke. 
 Oh, the world's tidings ! small your thanks, I 
 
 guess, 
 For them. The father of our Patroness 
 Has played Tanrello an astounding trick. 
 Parts between Eeelin and Alberic 
 His wealth and goes into a convent : both 
 Wed Guelfs : the Count and Palma plightecl 
 
 troth 
 A week since at Verona : and they want 
 You doubtless to contrive the marriage-chant 
 Ere Richard storms Ferrara." Then was told 
 The tale from the beginning — how, made bold 
 By Salinguerra's absence, Guelfs had burned 
 And pillaged till he unawares returned 
 To take revenge : how Azzo and his friend 
 Were doing their endeavor, how the end 
 0' the siege was nigh, and how the Count, re- 
 leased 
 From further care, woidd with his marriage- 
 There is feast 
 
 yet a way Inaugurate a new and better rule, 
 of escaping Absorbing thus Romano. 
 '•"« ' " Shall I school 
 
 My master," added Naddo, " and suggest 
 
SORDELLO 
 
 95 
 
 How you may clothe 'n a poetic vest 
 
 These doings, at Verona ? Your response 
 
 To Palma 1 Wherefore jest ? ' Depart at once ? ' 
 
 A good resolve 1 In truth, I hardly hoped 
 
 So prompt an acquiescence. Have you groped 
 
 Out wisdom in the wilds here ? — Thoughts 
 
 may he 
 Over-poetical for poetry. 
 Pearl-white, you poets liken Palma' s neck ; 
 And yet what spoils an orient like some speck 
 Of genuine white, turning its own white gray ? 
 You take me ? Curse the cicala ! " 
 
 One more day, 
 One eve — appears Verona ! Many a group, 
 (You mind) instructed of the osprey's swoop 
 On lynx and ounce, was gathering — Christen- 
 dom 
 Sure to receive, whate'er the end was, from 
 The evening's purpose cheer or detriment. 
 Since Friedrich only waited some event 
 Like this, of Ghihellins estahlishing 
 Themselves within Ferrara, ere, as King 
 Of Lomhardy, he 'd glad descend there, wage 
 Old warfare with the Pontiff, disengage 
 His harons from the burghers, and restore 
 The rule of Charlemagne, broken of yore 
 By Hildebrand. 
 
 Which he ^' ^he palace, each by each, 
 
 now takes Sordello sat and Palma : little speech 
 by obeying At first in that dim closet, face with 
 Palma : face 
 
 (Despite the tumult in the market-place) 
 Exchanging quick low laughters: now would 
 
 rush 
 Word upon word to meet a sudden flush, 
 A look left off, a shifting lips' surmise — 
 But for the most part their two histories 
 Who there- Kan best through the locked fingers 
 upon be- and linked arms, 
 
 comes his And so the night flew on with its 
 associate. alarms 
 
 Till in burst one of Palma's retinue ; 
 "Now, Lady!" gasped he. Then arose the 
 
 two 
 And leaned into Verona's air, dead-still. 
 A balcony lay black beneath until 
 Out, 'mid a gush of torchfire, gray-haired men 
 Came on it and harangued the people : then 
 Searlike that people surging to and fro 
 Shouted, '* Hale forth the carroch — tnmipets, 
 
 ho, 
 A flourish ! Run it in the ancient grooves ! 
 Back from the bell! Hammer — that whom 
 
 behooves 
 May hear the League is up ! Peal — learn who 
 
 list, 
 Verona means not first of towns break tryst 
 To-morrow with the League ! " 
 
 Enough. Now turn — 
 Over the eastern cypresses : discern ! 
 Is any beacon set a-glinmier ? 
 
 Rang 
 The air with shouts that overpowered the clang 
 Of the incessant carroch, even : " Haste — 
 The candle 's at the gateway ! ere it waste, 
 Each soldier stand beside it, armed to march 
 With Tiso Sampler through the eastern arch ! " 
 Ferrara 's succored, Palma. ! 
 
 Once again 
 They sat together ; some strange thing in train 
 To say, so difficult was Palma's place 
 In taking, with a coy fastidious grace 
 Like the hird's flutter ere it fix and feed. 
 But when she felt she held her friend indeed 
 Safe, she threw hst£k her curls, began imphint 
 Her lessons : telling of another want 
 As her Goito's quiet nourished than his 
 
 own histo- own ; 
 
 ry will ac- Palma — to serve him — to be served, 
 count for, along 
 
 Importing ; Agnes' milk so neutralized 
 The blood of Ecelin. Nor be surprised 
 If, while Sordello fain had captive led 
 Nature, in dream was Palma subjected 
 To some out-soul, which dawned not though she 
 
 pined 
 Delaying till its advent, heart and mind, 
 Their life. " How dared I let expand the force 
 Within me, till some out-soul, whose resource 
 It grew for, should direct it ? Every law 
 Of life, its every fitness, every flaw. 
 Must One determine whose corporeal shape 
 Would be no other than the prime escape 
 And revelation to me of a Will 
 Orb-like o'ershrouded and inscrutable 
 Above, save at the point which, I should know, 
 Shone that myself, ray powers, might overflow 
 So far, so much ; as now it signified 
 Which earthly shape it henceforth chose my 
 
 guide, 
 Whose mortal lip selected to declare 
 Its oracles, what fleshly garb would wear 
 — The first of intimations, whom to love ; 
 The next, how love him. Seemed that orb, 
 
 above 
 The castle-covert and the mountain-close. 
 Slow in appearing, — it beneath it rose 
 Cravings, aversions, — did our green precinct 
 Take pride in me, at unawares distinct 
 With this or that endowment, — how, repressed 
 At once, such jetting power shrank to the rest ! 
 Was I to have a chance touch spoil me, leave 
 My spirit thence unfitted to receive 
 The consummating spell ? — that spell so near 
 Moreover ! ' Waits he not the waking year ? 
 His almond-blossoms must be honey-ripe 
 By this ; to welcome him, fresh runnels stripe 
 The thawed ravines ; because of him, the wind 
 Walks like a herald. I shall surely find 
 Him now ! ' 
 
 *' And chief, that earnest April mom 
 Of Richard's Love-court, was it time, so worn 
 A reverse And white my cheek, so idly my 
 to, and blood beat, 
 
 comple- Sitting that morn beside the Lady's 
 tion of, his. feet 
 
 And saying as she prompted ; till outburst 
 One face from all the faces. Not then first 
 I knew it ; where in maple chamber glooms. 
 Crowned with what sangnine-heart pomegran- 
 ate blooms 
 Advanced it ever ? Men's acknowledgment 
 Sanctioned my own : 't was taken, Raima's 
 
 bent, — 
 Sordello, ■ — recognized, accepted. 
 
 " Dumb 
 
96 
 
 SORDELLO 
 
 Sat she still soheiuinff. Eoelln would come 
 
 Gaunt, scared, ' Cesano baities me,' he 'd say : 
 
 ' Better I fought it out, my father's way ! 
 
 Strangle Ferrara in its drowning: flats. 
 
 And you and your Taurello yonder ! — what 's 
 
 Komano's business there ? ' An hour's concern 
 
 To cure the froward Chief ! — induce return 
 
 As heartened from those overmeaning eyes, 
 
 Wound up to persevere, — his enterprise 
 
 Marked out anew, its exigent of wit 
 
 Apportioned, — she at liberty to sit 
 
 And scheme against the next emergence, I — 
 
 To covet her Taurello-sprite, made fly 
 
 Or fold the wing — to con your horoscope 
 
 For leave command those steely shafts shoot 
 
 ope. 
 Or straight assuage their blinding eagerness 
 In blank smooth snow. What semblance of 
 
 success 
 To any of my plans for making you 
 How she Mine and Romano's? Break the 
 ever as- first wall through, 
 
 pired for Tread o'er the ruins of the Chief, 
 his sake, supplant 
 
 His sons beside, still, vainest were the vaunt : 
 There, Salinguerra would obstruct me sheer, 
 And the insuperable Tuscan, here. 
 Stay me ! But one wild eve that Lady died 
 In her lone chamber ; only I beside : 
 Taurello far at Naples, and my sire 
 At Padua, Ecelin away in ire 
 With Alberic. She held me thus — a clutch 
 Circum- To make our spirits as our bodies 
 stances touch — 
 
 helping or And so began flinging the past up, 
 hindering. heaps 
 
 Of uncouth treasure from their sunless' sleeps 
 Within her soul ; deeds rose along with dreams. 
 Fragments of many miserable schemes, 
 Secrets, more secrets, then — no, not the last — 
 'Mongst others, like a casual trick o' the past, 
 How . . . ay, she told me, gathering up her 
 
 face. 
 All left of it, into one arch-grimace 
 To die with . . . 
 
 " Friend, 'tis gone ! but not the fear 
 Of that fell laughing, heard as now I hear. 
 Nor faltered voice, nor seemed her heart grow 
 
 weak 
 When i' the midst abrupt she ceased to speak 
 — Dead, as to serve a purpose, mark I — for in 
 Rushed o' the very instant Ecelin 
 (How summoned, who divines ?) — looking as if 
 He understood why Adelaide lay stiffi 
 Already in my arms ; for, ' Girl, how must 
 I manage Este in the matter thrust 
 Upon me, how unravel your bad coil ? — 
 Since ' (he declared) ' 't is on your brow — a soil 
 Like hers there ! ' then in the same breath, 
 
 ' he lacked 
 No counsel after all, had signed no pact 
 With devils, nor was treason here or there, 
 Goito or Vicenza, his affair ; 
 He buried it in Adelaide's deep grave. 
 Would begin life afresh, now, — would not 
 
 slave 
 For any Friedrioh's nor Taurello's sake ! 
 What booted him to meddle or to make 
 
 In Lombardy ? ' And afterward I knew 
 The meaning of his promise to undo 
 All she had done — why marriages were made. 
 New friendships entered on, old followers paid 
 With curses for their pains, — new fnends 
 
 amaze o ■ i 
 
 At height, when, passing out by Gate baint 
 
 Blaise, 
 He stopped short in Vicenza, bent his head 
 Over a friar's neck, — ' had vowed, ' he said, 
 ' Long since, nigh thirty years, because his wife 
 And child were saved there, to bestow his life 
 On God, his gettings on the Church.' ^ .^ ., , 
 
 ' ExUed 
 Within Goito, still one dream beguiled 
 My days and nights; 'twas found, the orb I 
 
 sought 
 How sue- To serve, those glimpses came of 
 se'emed Fomtalliaut, 
 
 possible, No other: but how serve itc — 
 
 authorize 
 You and Romano mingled destinies ? 
 And straight Romano's angel stood beside 
 Me who had else been BonQaee's bride. 
 For Salinguerra 't was, with neck low bent, 
 And voice lightened to music, (as he meant 
 To learn, not teach me,) who withdrew the pall 
 From the dead past and straight revived it all. 
 Making me see how first Romano waxed. 
 Wherefore he waned now, why, if I relaxed 
 My grasp (even I !; would drop a thing effete, 
 Frayed by itself, unequal to complete 
 Its course, and counting every step astray 
 By the in- A gain so much. Romano, every 
 terveution way 
 
 of Salin- Stable, a Lombard House now — why 
 Sierra: start back 
 
 Into the very outset of its track ? 
 This patching principle which late allied 
 Our House with other Houses — what beside 
 Concerned the apparition, the first Knight 
 Who followed Conrad hither in such plight 
 His utmost wealth was summed in his one 
 
 steed ? 
 For Ecelo, that prowler, was decreed 
 A task, in the beginning hazardous 
 To him as ever task can be to us ; 
 But did the weather-beaten thief despair 
 When first our crystal cincture of warm air, 
 That binds the Trevisan, — as its spice-belt 
 (Crusaders say) the tract where Jesus dwelt, — 
 Furtive he pierced, and Este was to face — 
 Despaired Saponian strength of Lombard 
 
 grace? 
 Tried he at making surer aught made sure. 
 Maturing what already was mature ? 
 No J his heart prompted Ecelo, ' Confront 
 Este, inspect yourself. What 's nature ? Wont. 
 Discard three-parts your nature, and adopt 
 Who rem- The rest as an advantage ! ' Old 
 edied ill strength propped 
 
 wrought The man who first grew Podest^ 
 by Ecelm, among 
 The Vieentines, no less than, while there 
 
 sprung 
 His palace up in Padua like a threat. 
 Their noblest spied a grace, unnoticed yet 
 In Conrad's crew. Thus far the object gained 
 
SORDELLO 
 
 97 
 
 Romano was established — has remained — 
 ' For are you not Italian, truly peers 
 With Este ? " Azzo " better soothes our ears 
 Than " Alberio " ? or is this lion's-erine 
 From over-mounts ' (this yellow hair of mine) 
 ' So weak a graft on Agnes Este's stock ? ' 
 (Thus went he on with something of a mock) 
 Wherefore recoil, then, from the rery fate 
 Conceded you, refuse to imitate 
 Your model farther ? Este long since left 
 Being mere Este : as a blade its heft, 
 Este required the Pope to further him ; 
 And you, the Kaiser — whom your father's 
 
 whim 
 Foregoes or, better, never shall forego 
 If Palma dare pursue what Ecelo 
 Commenced, but Eoelin desists from : just 
 As Adelaide of Susa could intrust 
 Her donative, — her Piedmont given the Pope, 
 Her Alpine-pass for him to shut or ope 
 'Tfrixt France and Italy, — to the superb 
 Matilda's perfecting, — so, lest aught curb 
 Our Adelaide's great counteivproject for 
 Giving her Trentine to the Emperor 
 With passage here from Germany, — shall you 
 Take it, — my slender plodding talent, too ! ' 
 — Urged me Taurello with his naif-smile. 
 
 "He 
 As Patron of the scattered family 
 Conveyed me to his Mantua, kept in bruit 
 Azzo's alliances and Richard's suit 
 Until, the Kaiser excommunicate, 
 ' Nothing remains,' Taurello said, ' but wait 
 Some rash procedure : Palma was the link. 
 As Agnes' child, between us, and they shrink 
 And had a From losing Palma : judge if we 
 project advance, 
 
 for her Your father's method, your inherit- 
 own ance ! ' 
 
 glory, ^e j^y J ^^s betrothed to Boniface 
 
 At Padua by Taurello's self, took place 
 The outrage of the Ferrarese : again, 
 The day I sought Verona with the train 
 Agreed for, — by Taurello's policy 
 Convicting Richard of the fault, since we 
 Were present to annul or to confirm, — 
 Richard, whose patience had outstayed its 
 
 terra. 
 Quitted Verona for the siege. 
 
 " And now 
 What glory may engird Sordello's brow 
 Through this ? A month since at Oliero slunk 
 AU that was Eeelin into a monk ; 
 But how could Salinguerra so forget 
 His liege of thirty years as grudge even yet 
 One effort to recover him ? He sent 
 Forthwith the tidings of this last event 
 To Eeelin — declared that he, despite 
 The recent folly, recognized his right 
 T'o order Salinguerra : ' Should he wring 
 Its uttermost advantage out, or fling 
 This chance away? Or were his sons now 
 
 Head 
 0' the House ? ' Through me Taurello's mis- 
 sive sped ; 
 My father's answer will by me return. 
 Behold ! ' For him,' he writes, ' no more con- 
 <5en; 
 
 With strife than, for his children, with fresh 
 
 plots 
 Of Friedrieh. Old engagements out he blots 
 For aye : Taurello shsul no more subserve. 
 Nor Eeelin impose.' Lest this unnerve 
 Taurello at this juncture, slack his grip 
 Of Richard, suffer the occasion slip, — 
 L in his sons' default (who, mating with 
 Este, forsake Romano as the frith 
 Its mainsea for that firmland, sea makes head 
 Against) I stand , Romano, — in their stead 
 Assume the station they desert, and give 
 Still, as the Kaiser's representative, 
 Taurello license he demands. Midnight — 
 Morning — by noon to-morrow, making light 
 Which she Of the League's issue, we, in some 
 would gay weed 
 
 change Like yours, disguised together, may 
 to Sor- precede 
 
 dello's. 'pgg arbitrators to Ferrara : reeich 
 Him, let Taurello's noble accents teach 
 The rest ! Then say if I have misconceived 
 Your destiny, too readily believed 
 The Kaiser's cause your own ! " 
 
 And Palma 's fled. 
 Though no a£&rmative disturbs the head, 
 A dying lamp-flame sinks and rises o'er, 
 Like the alighted planet Pollux wore. 
 Until, morn breaking, he resolves to be 
 Gate-vein of this heart's blood of Lombardy, 
 Soul of this body — to wield this aggregate 
 Of souls and bodies, and so conquer fate 
 Though he should live — a centre of disgust 
 Even — apart, core of the outward crust 
 He vivifies, assimilates. For thus 
 I bring SordeUo to the rapturous 
 Thus then, Exclaim at the crowd's cry, because 
 having one round 
 
 completed Of life was quite accomplished ; and 
 a circle, he found 
 
 Not only that a soul, whate'er its might. 
 Is insufficient to its own delight. 
 Both in corporeal organs and in skill 
 By means of such to body forth its Will — 
 And, after, insufficient to apprise 
 Men of that Will, oblige them recognize 
 The Hid by the Revealed — but that, the last 
 Nor lightest of the struggles overpast. 
 Will he bade abdicate, which would not void 
 The throne, might sit there, suffer he enjoyed 
 Mankind, a varied and divine array 
 Incapable of homage, the first way. 
 Nor fit to render incidentally 
 Tribute connived at, taken by the by. 
 In joys. If thus with warrant to rescind 
 The ignominious exile of mankind — 
 Whose proper service, ascertained intact 
 As yet, (to be by him themselves made act, 
 Not watch Sordello acting each of them) 
 Was to secure — it the true diadem 
 Seemed imminent while our Sordello drank 
 The wisdom of that golden Palma, — thank 
 Verona's Lady in her citadel 
 Founded by Gaulish Brennus, legends tell : 
 And truly when she left him, the sun reared 
 A head like the first clamberer's who peered 
 A-top the Capitol, his face on flame 
 With triumph, triimiphing till Manlius came. 
 
98 
 
 SORDELLO 
 
 Nor slight too much my rhymes — that spring, 
 
 dispread, 
 Dispart, disperse, lingering overhead 
 Like an escape of angels ! Bather say. 
 The poet My transcendental platan ! mounting 
 may pauBe gay 
 
 ™<i (An archimage so courts a novice- 
 
 breathe, queen) 
 
 With tremulous silvered trunk, whence branches 
 
 sheen 
 Laugh out, thick foliaged next, a-shiver soon 
 With colored buds, then glowing like the moon 
 One mild flame, — last a pause, a burst, and 
 
 all 
 Her ivory limbs are smothered by a fall. 
 Bloom-flinders and f ruit-«iparkles and leaf -dust, 
 Ending the weird work prosecuted just 
 For her amusement ; he decrepit, stark. 
 Dozes ; her uncontrolled delight may mark 
 Apart — 
 
 Yet not so, surely never so ! 
 Only, as good my soul were suffered go 
 O'er the lagune : forth fare thee, put aside — 
 Entrance thy synod, as a god may glide 
 Out of the world he flUs, and leave it mute 
 For myriad ages as we men compute. 
 Returning into it without a break 
 Being 0' the consciousness ! They sleep, 
 
 really in and I awake 
 
 the flesh O'er the lagune, being at Venice, 
 at Venice, Note, 
 
 In just such songs as Eglamor (say) wrote 
 With heart and soul and strength, for he be- 
 lieved 
 Himself achieving all to be achieved 
 By singer — in such songs yon find alone 
 Completeness, judge the song and singer one, 
 And either purpose answered, his in it 
 Or its in him : while from true works (to wit 
 Bordello's dream-performances that will 
 Never be more than dreamed) escapes there 
 
 still 
 Some proof, the singer's proper life was 'neath 
 The life his song exhibits, this a sheath 
 To that ; a passion and a knowledge far 
 Transcending these, majestic as they are. 
 Smouldered ; his lay was but an episode 
 In the bard's life ; which evidence you owed 
 To some slight weariness, some looking-off 
 Or start-away. The childish skit or scoff 
 In " Charlemagne," (his poem, dreamed divine 
 In every point except one siUy line 
 About the restiff daughters) — what may lurk 
 In that? "My life commenced before this 
 
 work," 
 (So I interpret the significance 
 Of the bard's start aside and look askance) — 
 " My life continues after : on I fare 
 With no more stopping, possibly, no care 
 
 To note the undercurrent, the why 
 ■*°?.. and how, 
 
 his own* Where, when, o' the deeper Ufe, as 
 life some- thus just now. 
 times. But, silent, shall I cease to live ? 
 
 Alas 
 For you I who sigh, ' When shall it come to pass 
 We read that story ? How will he compress 
 The future gains, his life's true business. 
 
 Into the better lay which — that one flout, 
 Howe'er inopportune it be, lets out — 
 Engrosses him already, though professed 
 To meditate with us eternal rest. 
 And partnership in all his life has found ? ' 
 'T is but a sailor's promise, weather-bound : 
 ' ' Strike sail, slip cable, here the bark be moorSd 
 For once, the awning stretched, the poles as- 
 sured ! 
 Noontide above ; except the wave's crisp dash, 
 Or buzz of colibri, or tortoise' splash, 
 The margin 's silent ; out with every spoil 
 Made in our tracking, coil by mighty coil, 
 This serpent of a river to his head 
 I' the midst ! Admire each treasure, as we 
 
 spread 
 The bank, to help us tell our history 
 Aright : give ear, endeavor to descry 
 The groves of giant rushes, how they grew 
 Like demons' endlong tresses we sailed through. 
 What mountains yawned, forests to give us Vent 
 Opened, each doleful side, yet on we went 
 Tul . . . may that beetle (shake your cap) at- 
 test 
 The springing of a land-wind from the West !" 
 — Wherefore ? Ah yes, you frolic it to-day ! 
 To-morrow, and, the pageant moved away 
 Down to the poorest tent-pole, we and you 
 Part company ; no other may pursue 
 Eastward your voyage, be informed what fate 
 Intends, if triumph or decline await 
 The tempter of the everlasting steppe. 
 
 I muse this on a ruined palaee-step 
 At Venice : why should I break off, nor sit 
 Longer upon my step, exhaust the fit 
 England gave birth to ? Who 's adorable 
 
 Enough reclaim a no Bordello's Will 
 
 AlacKi! — be queen to me ? That Bassanese 
 
 Busied among her smoking fruit-boats ? These 
 
 Perhaps from our delicious Asolo 
 
 Who twinkle, pigeons o'er the portico 
 
 Not prettier, bind June lilies into sheaves 
 
 To deck the bridge-side chapel, dropping leaves 
 
 Because it Soiled by their own loose gold-meal ? 
 
 ia pleasant Ah, beneath 
 
 to be The cool arch stoops she, brownest 
 
 young, cheek ! Her wreath 
 
 Endures a month — a half month — if I make 
 
 A queen of her, continue for her sake 
 
 Sordello's story ? Nay, that Paduan girl 
 
 Splashes with barer legs where a live whirl 
 
 In the dead black Giudecca proves sea-weed 
 
 Drifting has sucked down three, four, all indeed 
 
 Save one pale-red striped, pale-blue turbaned 
 
 post 
 For gondolas. 
 
 You sad dishevelled ghost 
 That pluck at me and point, are you advised 
 I breathe ? Let stay those girls (e'en her dis- 
 
 — -Jewels i' the locks that love no crownet like 
 Their native field-buds and the green wheat- 
 spike. 
 So fair 1 —who left this end of June's turmoil, 
 Shook off, as might a lily its gold soil. 
 Pomp, save a foolish gem or two, and free 
 In dream, came join the peasants o'er the sea) 
 Look they too happy, too tricked out ? Confess 
 
SORDELLO 
 
 99 
 
 There is such niggard stock of happiness 
 
 To share, that, do one's uttermost, dear wretch. 
 
 One labors ineffectually to stretch 
 
 "Would but It o'er you so that mother and chil- 
 
 suflering dreu, both 
 
 liumaaity May equitably flaunt the sumpter- 
 
 allow I cloth ! 
 
 Divide the robe yet farther : be content 
 
 With seeing just a score pre-eminent 
 
 Through shreds of it, acknowledged happy 
 
 wights, 
 Engrossing what should furnish all, by rights I 
 For, these in evidence, you clearlier claim 
 A like garb for the rest, — grace all, the same 
 As these my peasants. I ask youth and strength 
 And health for each of you, not more — at length 
 (srrown wise, who asked at home that the whole 
 
 race 
 Might add the spirit's to the body's grace. 
 And all be dizened out as chiefs and bards. 
 But in this magic weather one discards 
 Much old requirement. Venice seems a type 
 Of Life — 'twixt blue and blue extends, a stripe. 
 As Life, the somewhat, hangs 'twixt naught 
 
 and naught : 
 'T is Venice, and 't is Life — as good you 
 
 sought 
 To spare me the Piazza's slippery stone 
 Or keep me to the unchoked canals alone. 
 As hinder Life the evil with the good 
 Which make up Living, rightly understood. 
 Which Only, do finish something!. Peasants, 
 instigates queens, 
 
 to tasks Ta;ke them, made happy by whatever 
 like this, means. 
 
 Parade them for the common credit, vouch 
 That a luckless residue, we send to crouch 
 In corners out of sight, was just as framed 
 For happiness, its portion might have claimed 
 As well, and so, obtaining joy, had stalked 
 Fastuous as any I — such my project, balked 
 Already ; I hardly venture to adjust 
 The first rags, when you find nxe. To mistrust 
 Me ! — nor unreasonably. ' You, no doubt. 
 Have the true knack of tiring suitors out 
 With those thin lips on tremble, lashless eyes 
 Inveterately tear-shot — there, be wise. 
 Mistress of mine, there, there, as if 1 meant 
 You insult I — shall your, friend (not slave) be 
 
 shent 
 For speaking home ? Beside, care-bit erased 
 Broken-up beauties ever took my taste 
 Supremely : and I love you more, far more 
 Thau her I looked should foot Life's temple- 
 floor. 
 Years ago, leagues at distance, when and where 
 A whisper came, " Let others seek ! — thy care 
 And doubt- Is found, thy life's provision ; if thy 
 lessly com- race 
 
 pensates Should be thy mistress, and into one 
 theni, fagg 
 
 The many faces crowd ? " Ah, had I, judge. 
 Or no, your secret ? Rough apparel — grudge 
 All ornaments save tag or tassel worn 
 To hint we are not thoroughly forlorn — 
 Slouch bonnet, unloop mantle, careless go 
 Alone (that 's saddest, but it must be so) 
 Through Venice, sing now and now glance a^de, 
 
 Aught desultory or undignified, — 
 
 Then, ravishingest lady, will you pass 
 
 Or not each formidable group, the mass 
 
 Before the Basilic (that feast gone bj^, 
 
 God's great day of the Corpus Domini) 
 
 And, wistfully foregoing proper men, 
 
 Come timid up to me for alms ? And then 
 
 Irhe luxury to hesitate, feign do 
 
 Some unexampled grace ! — when, whom but 
 
 you 
 Dare I bestow your own upon ? And hear 
 Further before you say, it is to sneer 
 I call you ravisning ; for I regret 
 Little that she, whose early foot was set 
 Forth as she 'd plant it on a pedestal. 
 Now, i' the silent city, seems to fall 
 Toward me — no wreath, only a lip's unrest 
 To quiet, surcharged eyelids to be pressed 
 Dry of -their tears upon my bosom. Strange 
 Such sad chance should produce in thee such 
 
 change. 
 My love ! Warped souls and bodies ! yet God 
 
 spoke 
 Of right-hand, foot and eye — selects our yoke, 
 Sordello, as your poetship may fiind ! 
 So, sleep upon my shoulder, child, nor mind 
 Their foolish taik ; we '11 manage reinstate 
 Your old worth ; ask moreover, when they prate 
 Of evil men past hope, " Don't each contrive. 
 Despite the evil you abuse, to live ? — 
 Keeping, each losel, through a maze of lies. 
 His own conceit of truth ? to which he hies 
 By obscure windings, tortuous, if you wUl, 
 But to himself not inaccessible ; 
 He sees'truth, and his lies are for the crowd 
 Who cannot see ; some fancied right allowed 
 His vilest wrong, empowered the losel clutch 
 One pleasure from a multitude of sueh 
 As those Denied him." Then assert, "All 
 who desist men appear 
 
 should To think all better than themselves, 
 
 remember. y^y ]iere 
 
 Trusting a crowd they wrong ; but really," say, 
 " All men think all men stupider than they. 
 Since, save themselves, no other comprehends 
 The complicated scheme to make amends 
 — Evil, the scheme by which, through Igno- 
 rance, 
 Good labors to exist." A slight advance, — 
 Merely to find the sickness you die through, 
 And naught beside ! but if one can't eschew 
 One's portion in the common lot, at least 
 One can avoid an ignorance increased 
 Tenfold by dealing out hint after hint 
 How naught were like dispensing without stiui, 
 The water of life — so easy to dispense 
 Beside, when one has probed the centre whence 
 Commotion 's bom — could tell you of it all ! 
 " — Meantime, just meditate my madrigal 
 0' the mugwort that conceals a dewdrop safe I '■ 
 What, duUard ? we and you in smothery chafe^ 
 Babes, baldheads, stumbled thus far into Zin 
 The Horrid, getting neither out nor in, 
 A hungry sun above us, sands that bung 
 Our throats, — each dromedary lolls a tongue. 
 Each camel churns a sick and frothy chap. 
 And you, 'twixt tales of Potiphar's mishap. 
 And sonnets on the earliest ass that spoke. 
 
SORDELLO 
 
 — Remark, you wonder any one needs choke 
 With founts about ! Potsherd him, Gibeon- 
 
 ites ! 
 While awkwardly enough your Moses smites 
 The rock, though he forego his Promised Land 
 Thereby, have fcjatan claim his carcass, and 
 Figure as Metaphysie Poet . . . ah, , 
 Mark ye the dim first oozings ? Meribah ! 
 Then, quaffing at the fount my courage gained. 
 Recall — not that I prompt ye — who ex- 
 plained . . . 
 " Presumptuous ! "' interrupts one. You, not I 
 'T is, brother, marvel at and magnify 
 Let the Such office : "office," quotha? can 
 poet take we get 
 
 his own To the begiiming of the office yet ? 
 part, then, What do we here ? simply experiment 
 Each on the other's power and its intent 
 When elsewhere tasked, — if this of mine were 
 
 trucked 
 For yours to cither's good, — we watch con- 
 struct. 
 In short, an engine : with a finished one. 
 What it can do, is all, — naught, how 't is done. 
 But this of ours yet in probation, dusk 
 A kernel of strange wheelwork through its husk 
 Grows into shape by quarters and by halves : 
 Remark this tooth's spring, wonder what that 
 
 valve's 
 Fall bodes, presume each faculty's device. 
 Make out each other more or less precise — 
 The scope of the whole engine 's to be proved ; 
 We die : which means to say, the whole 's 
 
 removed. 
 Dismounted wheel by wheel, this complex 
 
 To be set up anew elsewhere, begin 
 
 A task indeed, but with a clearer clime 
 
 Than the murk lodgment of our building-time. 
 
 And then, I grant you, it behoves forget 
 
 How 't is done — all that must amuse us yet 
 
 So long : and, while you turn upon your heel. 
 
 Pray that I be not busy slitting steel 
 
 Should any Or shredding brass, camped on some 
 
 olDjectthat virgin shore 
 
 he was Under a cluster of fresh stars, be- 
 
 duU fore 
 
 I name a tithe o' the wheels I trust to do ! 
 
 So occupied, then, are we : hitherto. 
 At present, and a weary while to come. 
 The office of ourselves, — nor blind nor dumb. 
 And seeing somewhat of man's state, — has been, 
 For the worst of us, to say they so have seen ; 
 For the better, what it was they saw ; the best 
 Impart the gift of seeing to the rest : 
 " So that I glance," says such an one, " around, 
 And there 's no face but I can read profound 
 Disclosures in ; this stands for hope, that — fear, 
 And for a speech, a deed in proof, look here ! 
 ' Stoop, else the strings of blossom, where the 
 
 nuts 
 O'erarch, will blind thee ! Said I not ? She 
 
 shuts 
 Both eyes this time, so close the hazels meet ! 
 Thus, prisoned in the Piombi, I repeat 
 Events one rove occasioned, o'er and o'er, 
 Putting 'twixt me and madness evermore 
 Thy sweet shape, Zanze ! TTierefore stoop 1 ' 
 
 ' That 's truth I ' 
 (Adjudge you) ' the incarcerated youth 
 Would say that ! ' 
 
 Youth ? Plara the bard ? Set down 
 That Plara spent his youth in a grim town 
 Whose cramped ill-featured streets huddled 
 
 about 
 The minster for protection, never out 
 Of its black belfry's shade and its bells' roar. 
 The brighter shone the suburb, — all the more 
 Ugly and absolute that shade's reprooi' 
 Of any chance escape of joy, — some roof. 
 Taller than they, allowed the rest detect, — 
 Before the sole permitted laugh (susiiect 
 Who could, 't was meant for laughter, that 
 
 ploughed cheek's 
 Repulsive gleam !J when the sun stopped both 
 
 peaks 
 Of the cleft belfry like a fiery wedge, 
 Then sank, a huge flame on its socket edge, 
 With leavings on the gray glass oriel-pane 
 Ghastly some minutes more. No fear of rain — 
 The minster minded that ! in heaps the dust 
 Lay everywhere. This town, the minster's trust, 
 Beside his Held Plara ; who, its denizen, bade 
 sprightlier hail 
 
 predeces- In twice twelve sonnets, Tempe's 
 sors. dewy vale." 
 
 " ' Exact the town, the minster and the 
 
 street! ' " 
 " As all mirth triumphs, sadness means defeat : 
 Lust triumphs and is gay. Love 's triumphed 
 
 o'er 
 And sad : but Lucio 's sad. I said before. 
 Love 's sad, not Lucio ; one who loves may 
 
 be 
 As gay his love has leave to hope, as he 
 Downcast that lusts' desire escapes the springe : 
 ' T is of the mood itself I speak, what tinge 
 Determines it, else colorless, — or mirth. 
 Or melancholy, as from heaven or earth." 
 " ' Ay, that 's the variation's gist ! ' 
 
 Indeed ? 
 Thus far advanced in safety then, proceed ! 
 And having seen too what I saw, be bold 
 And next encounter what I do behold 
 (That 's sure) but bid you take on trust ! " 
 
 Attack 
 The use and purpose of such sights ? Alack, 
 Not so unwisely does the crowd dispense 
 On Salinguerras praise in preference 
 One ought To the Sordellos : men of action, 
 not blame these ! 
 
 but praise Who, seeing just as little as you 
 tms ; please. 
 
 Yet turn that little to account, — engage 
 With, do not gaze at, — carry on, a stage. 
 The work o' the world, not merely make report 
 The work existed ere their day ! In short. 
 When at some future no-time a brave band 
 Sees, using what it sees, then shake my hand 
 In heaven, my brother ! Meanwhile where 's 
 
 the hurt 
 Of keeping the Makers-see on the alert. 
 At whose defection mortals stare aghast 
 As though heaven's bounteous windows were 
 
 slammed fast 
 Incontinent ? Whereas all you, beneath. 
 
SORDELLO 
 
 Should scowl at, bruise their lips and break their 
 
 teeth 
 Who ply ths pullies, for neglecting you : 
 And therefore have 1 moulded, made anew 
 A Man, and give him to be turned and tried, 
 Be angry with or pleased at. On your side, 
 Have ye times, places, afitors of your own ? 
 
 Try them upon Sordello when full- 
 At all grown, 
 
 events, his j^^ then — ah then! If Hercules 
 eTcemay: fii'st parched 
 
 His foot in Egypt only to be marched 
 A sacrifice for Jove with pomp to suit, 
 What chance have I ? The demigod was mute 
 Till, at the altar, where time out of mind 
 Such guests became oblations, chaplets twined 
 His forehead long enough, and he began 
 Slaying the slayers, nor escaped a man. 
 Take not affront, my gentle andience ! whom 
 No Hercules shall make his hecatomb, 
 Believe, nor from his brows your chaplet rend — 
 That 's your kind suffrage, yours, my patron- 
 friend. 
 Whose great verse blares unintermittent on 
 Lfike your own trumpeter at Marathon, — 
 You who, Plattea and Salamis being scant. 
 Put up with ^tna for a stimulant — 
 And did well, I acknowledged, as he loomed 
 Over the midland sea last month, presumed 
 Long, lay demolished in the blazing West 
 At eve, while towards him tUting cloudlets 
 
 Like Persian ships at Salamis. Friend, wear 
 A crest proud as desert while I declare 
 Had I a flawless ruby fit to wring 
 Tears of its color from that painted king 
 Who lost it, I would, for that smile which 
 
 went 
 To my heart, fling it in the sea, content, 
 Whatil Wearing your verse in place, an 
 things amulet 
 
 brighten, Sovereign against all passion, wear 
 who knows? and fret ! 
 My English Eyebright, if you are not glad 
 That, as I stopped my task awhile, the sad 
 Dishevelled form, wherein I put mankind 
 To come at times and keep ray pact in mind. 
 Renewed me, — hear no crickets in the hedge, 
 Nor let a glowworm spot the river's edge 
 At home, and may the summer showers gush 
 Without a warning from the missel thrush ! 
 So, to our business, now — the fate of such 
 As find our common nature — overmuch 
 Despised because restricted and unfit 
 To bear the burden they impose on it — 
 CUng when they would discard it ; craving 
 
 strength 
 To leap from the allotted world, at length 
 They do leap, — flounder on without a term, 
 Each a god's germ, doomed to remain a germ 
 In unexpanded infancy, unless . . . 
 But that 's the story — dull enough, confess ! 
 There might be fitter subjects to allure ; 
 Still, neither misconceive my portraiture 
 Nor undervalue its adornments quaint : 
 What seems a fiend perchance may [jrove a saint. 
 Ponder a story ancient pens transmit. 
 Then say if you condemn me or acquit. 
 
 John the Beloved, banished Antioch 
 For Patmos, bade collectively his flock 
 Where- Farewell, but set apart the closing 
 upon, with eve 
 
 a story to To comfort those his exile most 
 the point, ^,o„i^ grieve, 
 He knew : a touching spectacle, that house 
 In motion to receive him ! Xanthus' spouse 
 You missed, made panther's meat a month 
 
 since ; but 
 Xanthus himself (his nephew 't was, they shut 
 'Twixt boards and sawed asunder), Polyearp, 
 Soft Charicle, next year no wheel could warp 
 To swear by Caesar's fortune, with the rest 
 Were ranged ; through whom the gray disciple 
 
 Busily blessing right and left, just stopped 
 To pat one infant's curls, the hangman cropped 
 Soon after, reached the portal. On its hinge 
 The door turns and he enters: what quick 
 
 twinge 
 Ruins the smiling mouth, those wide eyes fix 
 Whereon, why like some spectral candlestick's 
 Branch the disciple's arms ? Dead swooned he, 
 
 woke 
 Anon, heaved sigh, made shift to gasp, heart- 
 broke, 
 " Get thee behind me, Satan ! Have I toiled 
 To no more purpose ? Is the gospel foiled 
 Here too, and o'er my son's, my Xanthus' 
 
 hearth. 
 Portrayed with sooty garb and features 
 
 swarth — 
 Ah, Xanthus, am I to thy roof beguiled 
 To see the — the — the Devil domiciled ? " 
 Whereto sobbed Xanthus, "Father, 'tis your- 
 self 
 Installed, a limning which our utmost pelf 
 Went to procure against to-morrow's loss ; 
 He takes And that 's no twy-prong, but a pas- 
 up the toral cross, 
 
 thread of You 'repainted with ! " 
 discourse. jjis puckered brows unfold — 
 
 And you shall hear Sordello's story told. 
 
 BOOK THE FOURTH 
 
 Meantime Ferrara lay in rueful case ; 
 
 The lady-city, for whose sole embrace 
 
 Her pair of suitors struggled, felt their arms 
 
 A brawny mischief to the fragile charms 
 
 They tugged for — one discovering that to 
 
 twist 
 Her tresses twice or thrice about his wrist 
 Secured a point of vantage — one, how best 
 He 'd parry that by planting in her breast 
 His elbow spike — each party too intent 
 Men suf °^ noticing,howe'er the battle went, 
 
 fered much '^^ conqueror would but have a 
 
 ' corpse to kiss. 
 " May Boniface be duly damned for this ! " 
 — Howled some old Gmbellin, as up he turned. 
 From the wet heap of rubbish where they 
 
 burned 
 His house, a little skull with dazzling teeth : 
 " A boon, sweet Christ — let Salinguerra seethe 
 In hell forever, Christ, and let myself 
 
102 
 
 SORDELLO 
 
 Be there to laugh at him ! " -4 nloaned; some 
 
 young Guelf 
 Stum1)ling upon a shiivelled hand nailed fast 
 To the charred lintel of the doorway, last 
 His father stood within to bid him speed. 
 The thoroughfares were overrun with weed 
 — Docks, quitchgrass, loathy mallows no man 
 
 plants. 
 The stranger, none of its inhabitants 
 Whichever Crept out of doors to taste fresh air 
 of the par- again, 
 
 ties was And ask the purpose of a splendid 
 victor. train 
 
 Admitted on a morning ; every town 
 Of the Bast League was come by envoy down 
 To treat for Richard's ransom : here you saw 
 The Vicentine, here snowy oxen draw 
 The Paduan carroch, its vermilion cross 
 On its white field. A-tiptoe o'er the fosse 
 Looked Legate Montelungo wistfully 
 After the flock of steeples he might spy 
 In Este's time, gone (doubts he) long ago 
 To mend the ramparts : sure the laggards know 
 The Pope 's as good as here ! They paced the 
 
 streets 
 More soberly. At last, " Taurello greets 
 The League," announced a pursuivant, — *' will 
 
 match 
 Its courtesy, and labors to dispatch 
 At earliest Tito, Friedrioh's Pretor, sent 
 On pressing matters from his post at Trent, 
 With Mainard Count of Tyrol, — simply waits 
 Their going to receive the delegates." 
 " Tito ! " Our delegates exchanged a glance. 
 And, keeping the main way, admired askance 
 The lazy engines of outlandish birth, 
 Couched like a king each on its bank of earth — 
 Arbalist, manganel and catapult ; 
 While stationed by, as waiting a result. 
 Lean silent gangs of mercenaries ceased 
 Working to watch the strangers. " This, at 
 
 Were better spared ; he scarce presumes gainsay 
 The League's decision I Get our friend away 
 And profit for the future ; how else teach 
 Fools 't is not safe to stray within claw's reach 
 Ere Salinguerra's final gasp be blown ? 
 Those mere convulsive scratches find the bone. 
 Who bade him bloody the spent osprey 's nare ? ' ' 
 
 The carrochs halted in the public square. 
 Pennons of every blazon once a-flaunt. 
 Men prattled, f reelier that the "crested gaunt 
 How White ostrich with a horse-shoe in 
 
 Guelfa her beak 
 
 criticise Was missing, and whoever chose 
 Ohibellin might speak 
 
 work ^ u Egeii„ >f boldly out : so, — " Ecelin 
 Needed his wife to swallow half the sin 
 And sickens by himself : the devil's whelp. 
 He styles his son, dwindles away, no help 
 From conserves, your fine triple-curded froth 
 Of virgin's blood, your Venice viper-broth — 
 Eh ? Jubilate I " — " Peace ! no little word 
 You utter here that 's not distinctly heard 
 Up at Oliero : he was absent sick 
 When we besieged Bassano — who, i' the thick 
 0' the work, perceived the progress Azzo made, 
 Like Ecelin, through his witch Adelaide ? 
 
 She managed it so well that, night by night, 
 At their bed-foot stood up a soldier-sprite. 
 First fresh, pale by-and-by without a wound, 
 And, when it came with eyes filmed as m swound, 
 They knew the place was taken." — " Ominous 
 That GhibeUina should get what cautelous 
 Old Redbeard sought from Azzo's sire to wrench 
 Vainly; Saint George contrived his town a 
 
 trench ,, ,_ „ 
 
 0' the marshes, an impermeable bar. 
 " — Young Ecehn is meant the tutelar 
 Of Padua, rather ; veins embrace upon 
 His hand like Brenta and Bacchiglion. 
 What now ? — " The founts ! God's bread, 
 
 touch not a plank ! 
 A crawling hell of carrion — every tank 
 As iinusu- Choke fuU ! — found out just now to 
 ally ener- Cino's cost — 
 
 getic in The same who gave Taurello up for 
 this case. lost. 
 
 And, making no account of fortune's freaks, 
 Refused to budge from Padua then, but sneaka 
 Back now with Concorezzi — 'faith ! they drag 
 Their carroch to San Vitale, plant the flag 
 On his own palace, so adroitly razed 
 He knew it not ; a sort of Guelf folk gazed 
 And laughed apart ; Cino disliked their air — 
 Must pluck up spirit, show he does not care — 
 Seats himself on the tank's edge — will begin 
 To hum, za, za, Cavaler Mcehn — 
 A silence ; he gets warmer, clinks to chime, 
 Now both feet plough the ground, deeper each 
 
 time, 
 At last, za, za, and up with a fierce kick 
 Comes his own mother's face caught by the 
 
 thick 
 
 Gray hair about his spur ! " 
 
 Which means, they lift 
 
 The covering, Salinguerra made a shift 
 
 To stretch upon the truth ; as well avoid 
 
 Further disclosures ; leave them thus employed. 
 
 Our dropping Autumn morning clears apace, 
 
 And poor Ferrara puts a softened face 
 
 On her misfortunes. Let us scale this tall 
 
 Huge foursquare line of red brick garden-wall 
 
 Bastioned within by trees of every 
 How, pass- goj.j 
 
 torouEh ^" three sides, slender, spreading, 
 
 the rare ^ loW ^^d short ; 
 
 garden. Each grew as it contrived, the poplar 
 
 ramped. 
 The fig-tree reared itself, — but stark and 
 
 cramped. 
 Made fools of, like tamed lions : whence, on the 
 
 edge. 
 Running 'twixt trunk and trunk to smooth one 
 
 ledge 
 Of shade, were shrubs inserted, warp and woof, 
 Which smothered up that variance. Scale tlie 
 
 roof 
 Of solid tops, and o'er the slope you slide 
 Down to a grassy space level and wide. 
 Here and there dotted with a tree, but trees 
 Of rarer leaf, each foreigner at ease, 
 Set by itself ; and in the centre spreads. 
 Borne upon three uneasy leopards' heads, 
 A laver, broad and shallow, one bright spirt 
 Of water bubbles in. The walls be^rt 
 
SORDELLO 
 
 103 
 
 With trees leave oS on either hand ; piuane 
 
 Your path along^ a wondrous avenue 
 
 Those walls abut on, heaped of gleamy stone, 
 
 With aloes leering everywhere, gray-grown 
 
 From many a Moorish summer : how theywind 
 
 Out of the fissures ! likelier to bind 
 
 The building than those rusted cramps which 
 
 drop 
 Already in the eating sunshine. Stop, 
 You fleeting shapes above there ! Ah, the pride 
 Or else despair of the whole country-side ! 
 A range of statues, swarming o'er with wasps, 
 Salinguer- God, goddess, woman, man, the 
 ra COD- Greek rough-rasps 
 
 trived for lu crumbling Naples marble — meant 
 a purpose, to look 
 
 Like those Messina marbles Constance took 
 Delight in, or Taurello's self conveyed 
 To Mantua for his mistress, Adelaide, 
 A certain font with caryatides 
 Since cloistered at Goito ; only, these 
 Are up and doing, not abashed, a troop 
 Able to right themseh es — who see you, stoop 
 Their arms o' the instant after you ! U nplucked 
 By this or that, you pass ; for they conduct 
 To terrace raised on terrace, and, between. 
 Creatures of brighter mould and braver mien 
 Than any yet, the choicest of the Isle 
 No doubt. Here, left a sullen breathing-while, 
 Up-gathered on himself the Fighter stood 
 For his last fight, and, wiping treacherous 
 
 blood 
 Out of the eyelids just held ope beneath 
 Those shadmg fingers in their iron sheath. 
 Steadied his strengths amid the buzz and stir 
 Of the dusk hideous amphitheatre 
 At the announcement of his oveivmatch 
 To wind the day's diveraion up, dispatch 
 The pertinacious Gaul : while, limbs one heap. 
 The Slave, no breath in her round mouth, 
 
 watched leap 
 Dart after dart forth, as her hero's car 
 Clove dizzily the solid of the war 
 — Let coil about his knees for pride in him. 
 We reach the farthest terrace, and the grim 
 San Pietro Pala«e stops us. 
 
 Such the state 
 Of Salinguerra's plan to emulate 
 Sicilian marvels, that his girlish wife 
 Betrude still might lead her ancient life 
 lu her new home : whereat enlai^ed so much 
 Neighbors upon the novel princely touch 
 He took, — who here imprisons Boniface. 
 Here must the Envoys come to sue for gra«e ; 
 And here, emerging from the labyrinth 
 Below, Sordello paused beside the plinth 
 Of the door-pillar. 
 
 Soidello He had really left 
 
 pouders all Verona for the cornfields (a poor theft 
 seen and From the morass) where Este's camp 
 heard, -was made. 
 
 The Envoys' march, the Legate's cavalcade — 
 AU had been seen by him, but scarce as when, — 
 Eager for cause to stand aloof from men 
 At every point save the fantastic tie 
 Acknowledged in his boyish sophistry, — 
 He made account of such. A crowd, — he meant 
 To task the whole of it ; each part's intent 
 
 Concerned him therefore : and, the more he 
 
 pried. 
 The less became SordeUo satisfied 
 With his own figure at the moment. Sought 
 He respite from his task ? Descried he aught 
 Novel in the anticipated sight 
 Of all these livers upon all delight ? 
 This phalanx, as of myriad points combined, 
 Whereby he still had imaged the mankind 
 His youth was passed in dreams of rivalling, 
 His age — in plans to prove at least such thing 
 Had been so dreamed, — which now he most 
 
 impress 
 With his own will, effect a happiness 
 By theirs, — supply a body to his soul 
 Thence, and become eventually whole 
 With them as he had hoped to be without — 
 Finds in Made these the mankind he once 
 men no raved about ? 
 
 machine Because a few of them were notable, 
 for his Should all be figui'ed worthy note ? 
 
 "^*' As well 
 
 Expect to fijid Taurello's triple line 
 Of trees a single and prodigious pine. 
 Real pines rose here and there ; but, close among. 
 Thrust into and mixed up vrith pines, a throng 
 Of shrubs, be saw, — a nameless common sort 
 O'erpast in dreams, left out of the report 
 And hurried into corners, or at best 
 Admitted to be fancied like the rest. 
 Reckon that morning's proper chiefs — how few ! 
 And yet the people grew, the people gi*ew, 
 Grew ever, as if the many there indeed. 
 More left behind and most who should suc- 
 ceed, — 
 Simply in virtue of their mouths and eyes. 
 Petty enjoyments and huge miseries, — 
 Mingled with, and made veritably great 
 Those chiefs : he overlooked not Mainard's state 
 Nor Concorezzi's station, but instead 
 Of stopping there, each dwindled to be head 
 Of infinite and absent Tyrolese 
 Or Paduans ; startling all the more, that these 
 Seemed passive and disposed of, uneared for. 
 Yet doubtless on the whole (like Eglamor) 
 Smiling ; for if a wealthy man decays 
 And out of store of robes must wear, all days, 
 One tattered suit, alike in sun and shade, 
 'Tis commonly some tarnished gay brocade 
 Fit for a feast-night's flourish and no more ; 
 Nor otherwise poor Misery from her store 
 Of looks is fain upgather, keep unfurled 
 For common wear as she goes through the world, 
 The faint remainder of some wom-out smile 
 Meant for a feast-night's service merely. While 
 Crowd upon crowd rose on Sordello thus, — 
 (Crowds no way interfering to discuss, 
 Much less dispute, life's joys with one employed 
 In envying them, — or, if they aught enjoyed, 
 Where lingered something indefinable 
 In every look and tone, the mirth as well 
 As woe, that fixed at once his estimate 
 Of the result, their good or bad estate) — 
 But a Old memories returned with new 
 
 thing with effect : 
 
 life of its And the new body, ere he could sns- 
 <"">< pect. 
 
 Cohered, mankind and he were really fused, 
 
104 
 
 SORDELLO 
 
 The new self seemed impatient to be used 
 
 By him, but utterly another way 
 
 Thau that anticipated : strange to say, 
 
 They were too much below him, more in thrall 
 
 Than he, the adjunct than the principal. 
 
 What booted scattered units ? — here a mind 
 
 And there, which might repay his own to find, 
 
 And stamp, and use ? — a few, howe'er august, 
 
 If all the rest were grovelling in the dust ? 
 
 No : first a mighty equilibrium, sure. 
 
 Should he establish, privilege procure 
 
 For all, the few had long possessed ! He felt 
 
 An error, an exceeding error melt — 
 
 While he was occupied with Mantnan chants, 
 
 Behoved him think of men, and take their 
 
 wants, 
 Such as he now distinguished every side, 
 As his own want which might be satisfied, — 
 And, after that, think of rare qualities 
 Of his own soul demanding exercise. 
 It followed naturally, through no claim 
 On their part, which made virtue of the aim 
 At serving them, on his, — that, past retrieve. 
 He felt now in their toils, theirs, — nor could 
 
 leave 
 Wonder how, in the eagerness to rule. 
 Impress his wiU on mankind, he (the fool !) 
 Had never even entertained the thought 
 That this his last arrangement might be fraught 
 With incidental good to them as well. 
 And rights And that mankind's delight would 
 hitherto help to swell 
 
 ignored by His own. So, if he sighed, as foi^ 
 h™, merly 
 
 Because the merry time of life must fleet, 
 'T was deeplier now, — for could the crowds re- 
 peat 
 Their poor experiences ? His hand that shook 
 Was twice to be deplored. " The Legate, look ! 
 With eyes, Hke fresh-blown thrush-eggs on a 
 
 thread. 
 Faint-blue and loosely floating in his head, 
 Large tongue, moist open mouth ; and this long 
 
 while 
 That owner of the idiotic smile 
 A fault he Serves them ! " 
 is now He fortunately saw in time 
 
 anxious to His fault however, and since the of- 
 repair, ggg pnTne 
 
 Includes the secondary — best accept 
 Both offices ; Taurello, its adept. 
 Could teach him the preparatory one, 
 And how to do what he had fancied done 
 Long previously, ere take the greater task. 
 How render first these people happy ? Ask 
 The people's friends: for there must be one 
 
 good, 
 One way to it — the Cause ! — he understood 
 The meaning now of Palma ; why the jar 
 Else, the ado, the trouble wide and far 
 Of Guelfs and Ghibellins, the Lombard hope 
 And Rome's despair ? — 'twixt Emperor and 
 
 Pope 
 The confused shifting sort of Eden tale — 
 Hardihood still recurring, still to fail — 
 That foreign interloping fiend, this free 
 And native overbrooding deity — 
 Yet a dire fascination o'er the palms 
 The Kaiser ruined- troubling eveB the calms 
 
 Of paradise — or, on the other hand, 
 
 Since he The Pontiff, as the Kaisers under- 
 
 appre- stand, 
 
 heuds its One snake-like cursed of God to love 
 
 full extent, the gi'ound. 
 
 Whose heavy length breaks in the noon profound 
 
 Some saving tree — which needs the Kaiser, 
 
 dressed 
 As the dislodging angel of that pest. 
 Yet flames that pest bedropped, flat head, full 
 
 fold, 
 With coruscating dower of dyes. " Behold 
 The secret, so to speak, and master-spring 
 0' the contest ! — which of the two Powers shall 
 
 bring 
 Men good — perchance the most good — ay, it 
 
 may 
 Be that ! — the question, which best knows the 
 
 way." 
 And hereupon Count Mainard strutted past 
 Out of San Pietro ; never seemed the last 
 Of archers, slingers ; and our friend began 
 To recollect strange modes of serving man, 
 Arbalist, catapult, brake, manganel, 
 And more. This way of theirs may, — who 
 
 can tell ? — 
 Need perfecting," said he : '" let all be solved 
 At once ! Taurello 't is, the task devolved 
 On late — confront Taurello ! " 
 
 And at last 
 He did confront him. Scarce an hour had past 
 When forth Sordello came, older by years 
 Than at his entry. Unexampled fears 
 Oppressed him, and he staggered ofl^, blind, mute 
 And deaf, like some fresh-mutilated brute. 
 Into Ferrara — not the empty town 
 That morning witnessed : he went up and down 
 Streets whence the veil had been stripped shi^ed 
 
 by shred. 
 So that, in place of huddling with their dead 
 Indoors, to answer Salinguerra's ends. 
 Townsfolk make shift to crawl fortli, sit like 
 
 friends 
 With any one. A woman gave him choice 
 Of her two daughters, the infantile voice 
 Or the dimpled knee, for half a chain, his throat 
 Was clasped with ; but an archer knew the 
 
 coat — 
 Its blue cross and eight lilies, — bade beware 
 One dogging him in concert with the pair 
 Though thrumming on the sleeve tliat hid his 
 
 knife. 
 Night set in early, autumn dews were rife, 
 They kindled great fires while the Leaguers' 
 
 mass 
 
 Began at every carroch — he must pass 
 
 Between the kneeling people. Presently 
 
 The carroch of Verona caught his eye 
 
 With purple trappings ; silently he bent 
 
 Over its fire, when voices violent 
 
 Began, " Affirm not whom the youth was like 
 
 That struck me from the porcli, I did not strike 
 
 Again ; I too have chestnut hair ; my kin 
 
 And would Hate Azzo and stand up for Ece- 
 
 fain have lin. 
 
 llf'Pfi, Here, minstrel, drive bad thoughts 
 someway, ^^^y , g. , rj,^^^ S 
 
 My glove for guerdon 1 '' And for that man's 
 sake 
 
SORDELLO 
 
 105 
 
 He turned : " A song of Eglamor's ! " — scarce 
 
 named, 
 When, " Our Sordello's rather ! " — all ex- 
 claimed ; 
 " Ib not Sordello famousest for rhyme ? " 
 He had been happy to deny, this time, — 
 Profess as heretofore the aching head 
 And failing heart, — suspect that in his stead 
 Some true Apollo had the charge of them. 
 Was champion to reward or to condenm. 
 So his intolerable risk might shift 
 Or share itself ; but Naddo's precious gift 
 Of gifts, he owned, be certain ! At the close — 
 " I made that," said he to a youth who rose 
 As if to hear : 't was Palma through the band 
 Conducted him in silence by her hand. 
 
 Back now for tsalinguerra. Tito of Trent 
 Gave place to Falma and her friend ; who went 
 In turn at Montelungo's visit — one 
 After the other were they come and gone, — 
 These spokesmen for the Kaiser and the Pope, 
 This incarnation of the People's hope, 
 Sordello, — all the say of each was said ; 
 And Salinguerra sat, himself instead 
 Of these to talk with, lingered musing yet. 
 'T was a drear vast presence-chamber roughly 
 
 set 
 In order for the morning's use ; full face. 
 The Kaiser's ominous sign-mark had first place. 
 The crowned grim twy-necked eagle, coarsely- 
 blacked 
 With ochre on the naked wall ; nor lacked 
 Komano's green andyellow either side ; 
 But the new token Tito brought had tried 
 The Legate's patience — nay, if Palma knew 
 What Kalinguerra almost meant to do 
 Until the sight of her restored his lip 
 A certain half -smile, three months' chieftainship 
 Had banished ! Afterward, the Legate f oundT 
 No change in him, nor asked what badge he 
 
 wound 
 And unwound carelessly. Now sat the Chief 
 But Salin- Silent as when our couple left, whose 
 guerra is brief 
 
 also pre- Encounter wrought so opportmie ef- 
 occupied ; fgct 
 
 In thoughts he summoned not, nor would reject, 
 Though time 't was now if ever, to pause — fix 
 On any sort of ending : wiles and tricks 
 Exhausted, judge ! his charge, the crazy town, 
 Just managed to be hindered crashii^ down — 
 His last sound troops ranged — care observed to 
 
 post 
 His best of the maimed soldiers innermost — 
 So much was plain enough, but somehow struck 
 Him not before. And now with this strange luck 
 Of Tito's news, rewarding his address 
 So well, what thought he of ? — how the success 
 With Friedrich's rescript there would either 
 
 hush 
 Old Eoelin's scruples, bring the manly flush 
 To his young son's white cheek, or, last, exempt 
 Himself from telling what there was to tempt ? 
 No : that this minstrel was Romano's last 
 Besem- Servant — himself the first! CoiUd 
 Ming Sor- he contrast 
 
 delloinno- The whole ! — that minstrel's thirty 
 thing else. years just spent 
 
 In doing naught, their notablest event 
 This morning's journey hither, as I told — 
 Who yet was lean, outworn and really old, 
 A stammering awkward man that scarce dared 
 
 raise 
 His eye before the magisterial gaze — 
 And Salinguerra with his fears and hopes 
 Of sixty years, his Emperors and Popes, 
 Cares and contrivances, yet, you would say, 
 'T was a youth nonchalantly looked away 
 Through the embrasure northward o'er the sick 
 Expostulating trees — so agile, quick 
 How he And graceful turned the head on the 
 was made broad chest 
 
 in body Encased in pliant steel, his constant 
 and spirit, yest. 
 
 Whence split the sun off in a spray of fire 
 Across the room ; and, loosened of its tire 
 Of steel, that head let breathe the comely brown 
 Large massive locks discolored as if a crown 
 Encircled them, so frayed the basnet where 
 A sharp white line divided clean the hair ; 
 Glossy above, glossy below, it swept 
 Curling and fine about a brow thus kept 
 Calm, laid coat upon coat, marble and sound : 
 This was the mystic mark the Tuscan found, 
 Mused of, turned over books about. Square- 
 faced, 
 No lion more ; two vivid eyes, enchased 
 In hollows filled with many a shade and streak 
 Settling from the bold nose and bearded cheek. 
 Nor might the half-smile reach them that de- 
 formed 
 A lip supremely perfect else — unwarmed, 
 Unwidened, less or more ; indifferent 
 Whether on trees or men his thoughts were bent. 
 Thoughts rarely, after all, in trim and train 
 As now a period was fulfilled again : 
 Of such, a series made his life, compressed 
 In each, one story serving for the rest — 
 And what How his life-streams rolling arrived 
 Itad been at last 
 
 his career ^t the barrier, whence, v'3re it once 
 of old. overpast. 
 
 They would emerge, a river to the end, — 
 Gathered themselves up, paused, bade fate be- 
 friend. 
 Took the leap, hung a minute at the height, 
 Then fell back to oblivion infinite : 
 Therefore he smiled. Beyond stretched gar- 
 den-grounds 
 Where late the adversary, breaking bounds, 
 Had gained him an occasion. That above. 
 That eagle, testified he could improve 
 Effectually. The Kaiser's symbol lay 
 Beside his rescript, a new badge by way 
 Of baldric ; while, — another thing that marred 
 Alike emprise, achievement and reward, — 
 Ecelin's missive was conspicuous too. 
 What past life did those flying thoughts pur- 
 sue? 
 As his, few names in Mantua half so old ; 
 But at Ferrara, where his sires em-olled 
 It latterly, the Adelardi spared 
 No pains to rival them : both factions shared 
 Ferrara, so that, counted out, 't would yield 
 A product very like the city's shield, 
 Half black and white, or GhibeUin and Guelf 
 
io6 
 
 SORDELLO 
 
 As after Salinguerra styled Himself 
 And Este, who, till Marchesalla died, 
 (Last of the Adelardi) — never tried 
 His fortune there : with Marchesalla's child 
 Would pass — could Blacks and Whites be rec- 
 onciled, 
 And young Taurello wed Linguetta — wealth 
 And sway to a sole grasp. Each treats hy stealth 
 Already : when the Guelfs, the Karemiese 
 Arrive, assault the Pietro quarter, seize 
 Linguetta, and are gone ! Men's first dismay 
 Abated somewhat, hurries down, to lay 
 The after indignation, Boniface, 
 This Richard's father. ' ' Learn the full disgrace 
 Averted, ere you blame us Guelfs, who rate 
 Your tSalinguerra, your sole potentate 
 That mighl have been, 'mongst Este's valvas- 
 
 sors — 
 Ay, Azzo's — who, not privy to, abhors 
 Otir step ; but we were zealous." Azzo 's then 
 To do with ! Straight a meeting of old men : 
 " Old Salinguerra dead, his heir a boy, 
 What if we change our ruler and decoy 
 The Lombard Eagle of the azure sphere 
 With Italy to build in, fix him here, 
 Settle the city's troubles in a trice ? 
 For private wrong, let public good suffice 1 " 
 Ihe origi- In fine, young Salinguerra's stanch- 
 ual cheek est friends 
 
 to his for- Talked of the townsmen making him 
 tunes, amends. 
 
 Gave him a goshawk, and affirmed there was 
 Rare sport, one morning, over the green grass 
 A mile or so. He satmtered through the plain, 
 Was restless, fell to thinking, turned again 
 In time for Azzo's entry with the bride ; 
 Count Boniface rode smirking at their side ; 
 " She brings him half Ferrara," whispers flew, 
 " And all Ancona ! If the stripling knew ! " 
 
 Anon the stripling was in Sicily 
 Where Heim-ich ruled in riglit of Constance ; he 
 Was gracious nor his guest incapable ; 
 Each understood the other. So it fell, 
 One Spring, when Azzo, thoroughly at ease. 
 Had near forgotten by what precise degrees 
 He crept at f&st to such a downy seat. 
 The Count trudged over in a special heat 
 To bid him of God's love dislodge from each 
 Of Salinguerra's palaces, — a breach 
 Might yawn else, not so readily to shut. 
 For who was just arrived at Mantua but 
 The youngster, sword on thigh and tuft on chin. 
 Which he With tokens for Celano, Ecelin, 
 was in the Pistore, and the like ! Next news, — 
 way to re- no whit 
 
 trieve, J)q any of Ferrara 's domes befit 
 
 His wife of Heinrieh's very blood : a band 
 Of foreigners assemble, understand 
 Garden-constructing, level and surround. 
 Build up and bury in. A last news crowned 
 The consternation : since his infant's birth, 
 He only waits they end his wondrous girth 
 Of trees that link San Pietro with Tom^, 
 To visit Mantua. When the Podestii 
 Ecelin, at Vicenza, called his friend 
 Taurello thither, what could be their end 
 But to restore the Ghibellins' late Head, 
 The Kaiser helping ? He with most to dread 
 
 From vengeance and reprisal, Azzo, there 
 
 With Boniface beforehand, as aware 
 
 Of plots in progress, gave alarm, expelled 
 
 Botti plotters : but the Guelfs in triumph yelled 
 
 Too hastily. The burning and the flight, 
 
 And how Taurello, occupied that night 
 
 With Ecelin, lost wife and son, I told : 
 
 When a — Not how he bore the blow, r&-- 
 
 fresh oa^ tained his hold, 
 
 lamity de- Got friends safe through, left ene- 
 
 stroyedall: mies the worst 
 
 0' the fray, and hardly seemed to care at first: 
 
 But afterward men heard not constantly 
 
 Of Salinguerra's House so sure to be ! 
 
 Though Azzo simply gained by the event 
 
 A shifting of his plagues — the first, content 
 
 To fall behind the second and estrange 
 
 So far his nature, suffer such a change _ 
 
 That in Romano sought he wife and child 
 
 And for Romano's sake seemed reconciled 
 
 To losing individual life, which shrunk 
 
 As the other prospered — mortised in his trunk ; 
 
 Like a dwarf palm which wanton Arabs foil 
 
 Of bearing its own proper wine and oil. 
 
 By grafting into it the stranger-vine, 
 
 Which sucks its heart out, sly and serpentine, 
 
 Till forth one vine-palm feathers to the root, 
 
 And red drops moisten the insipid fruit. 
 
 Once Adelaide set on, — the subtle mate 
 
 Of the weak soldier, urged to emulate 
 
 The Church's valiant women deed for deed. 
 
 And i>aragon her namesake, win the meed 
 
 O' the great MatUda, — soon they overbore 
 
 The rest of Lombardy, — not as before 
 
 By an instinctive truculence, but patched 
 
 The Kaiser's strategy until it matched 
 
 The Pontiff's, sought old ends by novel means, 
 
 " Only, why is it Salinguerra screens 
 
 Himself behind Romano ? — him we bade 
 
 Enjoy our shine i' the front, not seek the shade ! " 
 
 — Asked Heinrich, somewhat of the tardiest 
 
 To comprehend. Nor Philip acquiesced 
 
 At once in the arrangement ; reasoned, plied 
 
 His friend with offers of another bride, 
 
 A statelier function — fruitlessly : 't was plain 
 
 He sank Taurello through some we^oiess 
 
 into a sec- must remain 
 
 ondary Obscure. And Otho, free to iadge of 
 
 personage, both, 
 
 — Ecelin the unready,harsh and loth, 
 
 And this more plausible and facile wight 
 
 With every point a-sparkle — chose the right, 
 
 Admiring how his predecessors harped 
 
 On the wrong man: "thus," quoth he, "wits 
 
 are warped 
 By outsides ! " Carelessly, meanwhUe, his life 
 Suffered its many turns of peace and strife 
 In many lands — you hardly could surprise 
 The man ; who shamed Sordello (recognize !) 
 In this as much beside, that, unconcerned 
 What qualities were natural or earned. 
 With no ideal of graces, as they came 
 He took them, singularly well the same — 
 Speaking the Greek's own language, just be- 
 cause 
 Your Greek eludes you, leave the least of flaws 
 In contracts with him ; while, since Arab lore 
 Holds the stars' secret— take one trouble more 
 
SORDELLO 
 
 107 
 
 And master it ! 'T is done, and now deter 
 Who may the Tuscan, once Jove trined for her, 
 From Friedrich's path ! — Friedrioh, whose pil- 
 grimage 
 The same man puts aside, whom he '11 engage 
 To leave next year John Brienne in the lurch, 
 Oome to Bassano, see Saint Francis' church 
 And judge of Guido the Bolognian's piece 
 Whieh, lend TanreUo credit, rivals Greece — 
 Angels, with aureoles like golden quoits 
 Pitched home, applauding Ecelin's exploits. 
 For elegance, be strung the angelot. 
 With the Made rhymes thereto ; for prowess, 
 appropri- clove he not 
 
 ate graces Tiso, last siege, from crest to crup- 
 ofsuoh. per? Why 
 
 Detail you thus a varied mastery 
 But to show how Taurello, on the watch 
 For men, to read their hearts and thereby catch 
 Their capabilities and purposes. 
 Displayed himself so far as displayed these : 
 While our iSordello only cared to know 
 About men as a means whereby he 'd show 
 Himself, and men had much or little worth 
 According as they kept in or drew forth 
 That self ; the other's choicest instruments 
 Surmised him shallow. 
 
 Meantime, malcontents 
 Dropped off, town after town grew wiser. 
 
 "How 
 Change the world's face ? " asked people ; " as 
 
 't is now 
 It has been, will be ever : very fine 
 Subjecting things profane to things divine, 
 In talk ! This contumacy will fatigue 
 The vigilance of Este and the League ! 
 The Ghibellins gain on us ! " — as it happed. 
 Old Azzo and old Boniface, entrapped 
 By Ponte Alto, both in one month's space 
 Slept at Verona : either left a brace 
 Of sons — but, three years after, cither's pair 
 Lost Gnglielm and Aldobrand its heir : 
 Azzo remained and Richard — all the stay 
 Of Este and Saint Boniface, at bay 
 But Ece- As 't were. Then, either Ecelin 
 liii, he set grew old 
 
 ill front, Or his brain altered — not o' the 
 falling, proper mould 
 
 For new appliances — his old palm-stock 
 Endured no influx of strange strengths. He 'd 
 
 rock 
 As in a drunkenness, or chuckle low 
 As proud of the completeness of his woe, 
 Then weep real tears ; — now make some mad 
 
 onsfaught 
 On Este, heedless of the lesson taught 
 So painfully, — now cringe for peace, sue peace 
 At price of past gain, bar of fresh increase 
 To the fortunes of Romano. Up at last 
 Rose Este, down Romano sank as fast. 
 And men remarked these freaks of peace and 
 
 war 
 Happened while Salinguerra was afar : 
 Whence every friend besought him, all in vain, 
 To use his old adherent's wits again. 
 Not he ! — " who had advisers in his sons, 
 Could plot himself, nor needed any one's 
 Advice." 'T was Adelaide's remaining stanch 
 
 Prevented his destruction root and branch 
 Forthwith; but when she died, doom fell, for 
 
 gay 
 He made alliances, gave lands away 
 To whom it pleased accept thsm, and withdrew 
 Forever from the world. Taurello, who 
 Was summoned to the convent, then refused 
 A word at the wicket, patience thus abused, 
 Promptly threw off alike his imbecile 
 Ally's yoke, and his own frank, foolish smile. 
 Soon a few movements of the happier sort 
 Changed matters, put himself in men's report 
 As heretofore ; he had to fight, beside, 
 
 And that became him ever. So, n 
 Salin- pride 
 
 must again ^"^ Anshing of this kind of seeoni 
 
 come fir- „y°^^\ j -ii ui v^ ■ 
 
 ward -ti-e ciealt a good-will blow. Histe v 
 
 truth. 
 Lay prone — and men remem'bered, somewha 
 
 late, 
 A laug'hing old outrageous sti£ed hate 
 He bore to E8te — how it would outbreak 
 At times spite of disguise, like an earthquake 
 In sunny weather — as that noted day 
 When with his himdred friends he tried to slay- 
 Azzo before the Kaiser's face : and how, 
 On Azzo's calm refusal to allow 
 A liegeman's challenge, straight he too wa*i 
 
 calmed : 
 As if his hate could bear to lie embalmea, 
 Bricked up, the moody Pharaoh, and survive 
 All intermediate crumblings, to arrive 
 At earth's catastrophe — 't was Este's crash, 
 Not Azzo's he demanded, so, no rash 
 Procedure ! Este's true antagonist 
 Kose out of Ecelin : all voices whist. 
 All eyes were sharpened, wits predicted. He 
 'Twas, leaned in the embrasure absently. 
 Why and Amused with his own efforts, now, 
 how, is let to trace 
 
 out in With his steel-sheathed forefinger 
 
 soliloquy. Friedrich's face 
 
 I' the dust : but as the trees waved sere, his 
 
 smile 
 Deepened, and words expressed its thought 
 
 erewhile. 
 **■ Ay, fairly housed at last, my old compeer? 
 That we should stick together, all the year 
 I kept Vicenza ! — How old Boniface, 
 Old Azzo caught us in its market-plaee. 
 He by that pillar, I at this, — caught each 
 In mid swing, more than fury of his speech, 
 Egging the rabble on to disavow 
 Allegiance to their Marquis — Bacchus, how 
 They boasted ! Ecelin must turn their drudge, 
 Nor, if released, will tialinguerra grudge 
 Paying arreare of tribute due long since — 
 Bacchus ! My man could promise then, nor 
 
 wince. 
 The bones-and-muscles ! Sound of wind and 
 
 limb, 
 Spoke he the set excuse I framed for him : 
 And now he sits me, slavering and mute. 
 Intent on chafing each starved purple foot 
 Benumbed past aching with the altar slab — 
 Will no vein throb there when some monk shaii 
 
 blab 
 
to8 
 
 SORDELLO 
 
 Spitefully to the circle of bald scalps, 
 
 Ecelin, he ' Friedrich 's affirmed to he our side 
 
 did all ioi', the Alps ' 
 
 is a monk — Eh, brother Lactanee, brother 
 
 "ow, Anaelet? 
 
 Sworn to abjure the world, its fume and fret, 
 
 God's own now ? Drop the dormitory bar, 
 
 Enfold the scanty gray serge scapular 
 
 Twice o'er the cowl to mume memories oat ! 
 
 So ! But the midnight whisper turns a shoiit, 
 
 Eyes wink, mouths open, pulses circulate 
 
 In the stone walls : the past, the world you hate 
 
 Is with you, ambush, open field — or see 
 
 The surgineflame — we fire Vicenza — glee ! 
 
 Follow, let Pilio and Bernardo chafe ! 
 
 Bring up the Mantuans — through San Biagio — 
 
 safe ! 
 Ah, the mad people waken ? Ah, they writhe 
 And reach us? If they block the gate? No 
 
 tithe 
 Can pass — keep back, you Bassanese ! Tlie 
 
 edn-e. 
 Use the edge — shear, thrust, hew, melt down 
 
 the wedge. 
 Let out til 9 black of those black upturned eyes ! 
 Hell — are they sprinkling fire too ? The blood 
 
 fries 
 And hisses on your brass gloves as they tear 
 Those upturned faces choking with despair. 
 Brave ! Slidder through the reeking gate ! 
 
 * How now ? 
 You six had charge of her ? ' And then the vow 
 Comes, and the foam spirts, hair 's plucked, till 
 
 one shriek 
 (I hear it) and you fling — you cannot speak — 
 Your gold-flowered basnet to a man who haled 
 The Adelaide he dared scarce view unveiled 
 This morn, naked across the fire ; how crown 
 The archer that exhausted lays you down 
 Your infant, smiling at the flame, and dies ? 
 While one, while mine . . . 
 
 "Bacchus! I think there lies 
 More than one corpse there " (and he paced the 
 
 room) 
 " — Another cinder somewhere : 't was ray doom 
 Beside, my doom ! If Adelaide is dead, 
 I live the same, this Azzo lives instead 
 Of that to me, and we pull, any how, 
 Este into a heap : the matter 's now 
 Just when At the true juncture slipping us so 
 the prize oft. 
 
 awaits Ay, Heinrich died and Otho, please 
 
 somebody ; you, doifed 
 His crown at such a juncture ! Still, if holds 
 Our Friedrich's purpose, if this chain enfolds 
 The neck of . . . who but this same Ecelin 
 That must recoil when the best days begin \ 
 Recoil ? that 's naught ; if the recoiler leaves 
 His name for me to fight with, no one grieves : 
 But he must interfere, forsooth, unlock 
 His cloister to become my stumbling-block 
 Just as of old ! Ay , ay, there 't is ag-ain — 
 The land's inevitable Head — explain 
 The reverences that subject us ! Count 
 These Ecelins now ! Not to say as fount, 
 Originating power of thought, — from twelve 
 That drop i' the trenches they joined hands to 
 
 delve. 
 
 Six shall surpass him, but . . . why, men must 
 
 twine ■ T^ !• , 
 
 Somehow with something ! Ecelm s a hue 
 Himself, if Clear name! 'Twere simpler, doubt- 
 it were ' less, twine with me 
 only worth At once our cloistered friend s car 
 while, paoity 
 
 Was of a sort ! I had to share myself 
 In fifty portions, like an o'ertasked elf 
 That 's forced illume in fifty points the vast 
 Kare vapor he 's environed by. At last 
 My strengths, though sorely frittered, e'en con- 
 verge 
 And crown ... no, Bacchus, they have yet to 
 
 urge 
 The man be crowned ! 
 
 " That aloe, an he durst, 
 Would climb ! .Just such a bloated sprawlei 
 
 first 
 I noted in Messina's castle-coiirt 
 The day I came, when Heinrich asked in sport 
 If I would pledge my faith to win him back 
 His right in Lombardy : ' for, once bid pack 
 Marauders,' he continued, 'in my stead 
 You rule, Taurello ! ' and upon this head 
 Laid the silk glove of Constance — I see her 
 Too, mantled head to foot in miniver, 
 Eetrude foEowing ! 
 
 "I am absolved 
 From further toil : the empery devolved 
 On me, 'twas Tito's word : I have to lay 
 For once my plan, pursue my plan my way, 
 Prompt nobody, and render an account 
 Taurello to Taurello ! Nay, I mount 
 To Friedrich : he conceives the post I kept, 
 — Who did true service, able or inept. 
 Who 's worthy guerdon, Ecelin or I. 
 Me guerdoned, counsel follows : would he vie 
 With the Pope really ? Azzo, Boniface 
 Compose a right-ai*m Hohenstauffeu's race 
 Must break ere govern Lombardy. I point 
 How easy 't were to twist, once out of joint, 
 The socket from the bone : my Azzo's stare 
 Meanwhile ! for I, this idle strap to wear, 
 Shall — fret myself abundantly, what end 
 To serve ? There 's left me twenty years to 
 As it may Spend 
 
 be — but — How better than my old way? 
 also, as it Had I one 
 
 may not -^ho labored to o'erthrow my work 
 '^~ —a son 
 
 Hatching with Azzo superb treachery. 
 To root my pines up and then poison me, 
 Suppose — 't were worth while frustrate that ! 
 
 Beside, 
 Another life 's ordained me : the world's tide 
 Rolls, and what hope of parting from the press 
 Of waves, a single wave through weariness 
 Gently lifted aside, laid upon shore ? 
 My life must be lived out in foam and roar. 
 No question. Fifty yeai's the province held 
 Taurello ; troubles raised, and troubles quelled, 
 He in the midst — who leaves this quaint stone 
 
 place, 
 These trees a year or two, then not a trace 
 Of him! How obtain hold, fetter men's 
 
 tongues 
 Like this poor minstrel with the foolish songs — 
 
SORDELLO 
 
 109 
 
 To which, despite our bustle, he is linked ? 
 — Flowers one may tease, that never grow ex- 
 tinct. 
 Ay, that patch, surely, green as ever, where 
 I set Her Moorish lentisk, by the stair, 
 To overawe the aloes ; and we trod 
 Those flowers, how call you such?— into the 
 
 sod; 
 A stately foreigner — a world of pain 
 To make it thrive, arrest rough winds — all 
 
 vain I 
 It would decline ; these would not be de- 
 stroyed : 
 And now, where is it ? where can you avoid 
 The flowers ? I frighten children twenty years 
 Longer ! — which way, too, Ecelin appears 
 To thwart me, for his son's besotted youth 
 Gives promise of the proper tiger-tooth : 
 They feel it at Vicenza ! Fate, fate, fate, 
 My fine Taurello ! Go you, promulgate 
 Friedrioh'5 decree, and, hero's shall aggrandize 
 Young Ecelin — your Prefect's badge ! a prize 
 The suppo- Too precious, certainly. 
 Bition he " How now ? Compete 
 
 most In- With my old comrade ? shuffle from 
 clinea to ; their seat 
 His children ? Paltry dealing ! Don't I 
 
 know 
 Ecelin ? now, I think, and years ago ! 
 What's changed — the weakness? did not I 
 
 compound 
 For that, and undertake to keep him sound 
 Despite it ? Here 's Taurello hankering 
 After a boy's preferment — this plaything 
 To carry, Bacchus ! " And he laughed. 
 
 Remark 
 Why schemes' wherein cold-blooded men em- 
 bark 
 Prosper, when your enthusiastic sort 
 Fail : while these last are ever stopping short — 
 (So nmch they should — so little they can do!) 
 The careless tribe see nothing to pursue 
 If they desist ; meantime their scheme suc- 
 
 Thoughts were caprices in the course of deeds 
 Methodic with Taurello ; so, he turned. 
 Enough amused by fancies fairly earned 
 Of Este's horror-struck submitted neck. 
 And Richard, the cowed braggart, at his beck, 
 Being con- To his own petty but immediate 
 tented doubt 
 
 with mere I£ he could pacify the League with- 
 vengeauce. |,„t 
 
 Conceding Richard ; just to this was brought 
 That interval of vain discursive thought ! 
 As, shall I say, some Ethiop, past pursuit 
 Of all enslavers, dips a shackled foot 
 Burnt to the blood, into the drowsy black 
 Enormous watercourse which guides him ba«k 
 To his own tribe again, where he is king ; 
 And laughs because he guesses, numbering 
 The yellower poison-wattles on the pouch 
 Of the first lizard wrested from its couch 
 Under the slime (whose skin, the while he strips 
 To cure his nostril with, and festered lips. 
 And eyeballs bloodshot through the desert- 
 blast) 
 rhat he has reached its boundary, at last 
 
 May breathe ; — thinks o'er enchantments of 
 
 the South 
 Sovereign to plague his enemies, their mouth, 
 Eyes, nails, and hair ; but, these enchantments 
 
 tried 
 In fancy, puts them soberly aside 
 For truth, projects a cool return with friends, 
 The likelihood of winning mere amends 
 Ere long ; thinks that, takes comfort silently. 
 Then, from the river's brink, his wrongs and 
 
 he. 
 Hugging revenge close to their hearts, are soon 
 Off-striding for the Mountains of the Moon. 
 
 Midnight : the watcher nodded on his spear. 
 Since clouds dispersing left a passage clear 
 For any meagre and discolored moon 
 To venture forth ; and such was peering soon 
 Above the harassed city — her close lanes 
 Closer, not half so tapering her fanes. 
 As though she shrunk into herself to keep 
 What little life was saved, more safely. Heap 
 By heap the watch-fires mouldered, and beside 
 The blackest spoke Sordello and replied 
 Palma with none to listen. " 'T is your cause : 
 _ , „ What makes a Ghibellin? There 
 
 Sht "' ^^""^^ '»« '*'"» ~ 
 
 what (Remember how my youth escaped ! 
 
 Ghibeliins _, I trust 
 
 are, To you for manhood, Palma; tell 
 
 me just 
 As any child) — there must be laws at work 
 Explaining this. Assure me, good may lurk 
 Under the bad, — my multitude has part 
 In your designs, their welfare is at heart 
 With Salinguerra, to their interest 
 Refer the deeds he dwelt on, — so divest 
 Our conference of much that scared me. Why 
 Affect that heartless tone to Tito ? I 
 Esteemed myself, yes, in my inmost mind 
 This mom, a recreant to my race — mankind 
 O'erlooked till now : why boast my spirit's 
 
 force, 
 — Such force denied its object? why divorce 
 These, then admire ray spirit's flight the same 
 As though it bore up, helped some half-orbed 
 
 flame 
 Else quenched in the dead void, to living space ? 
 That orb cast off to chaos and disgrace. 
 Why vaunt so much my unencumbered dance, 
 Making a feat's facilities enhance 
 Its marvel ? But I front Taurello, one 
 Of happier fate, and all I should have done, 
 He does ; the people's good being paramount 
 With him, their progress may perhaps account 
 For his abidingstill ; whereas you heard 
 The talk with Tito — the excuse preferred 
 For burning those five hostages, — and broached 
 By way of blind, as you and 1 approached, 
 I do beUeve." 
 
 She spoke : then he, " My thought 
 Plainlier expressed ! All to your profit — 
 
 naught 
 Meantime of these, of conquests to achieve 
 For them, of wretchedness he might relieve 
 And what While profiting your party. Azzo, 
 Guelfs, „ too. , „ ^ 
 
 approves Supports a cause ; what cause c Do 
 o£ neither. Guelfs pursue 
 
no 
 
 SORDELLO 
 
 Their ends by means like yours, or Ijetter ? " 
 
 When 
 The Guelfs were proved alike, men ■weighed 
 
 with men, 
 And deed with deed, blaze, blood, with blood 
 
 and blaze. 
 Mom broke : ' Once more, Sordello, meet its 
 
 gaze 
 Proudly — the people's charge against thee fails 
 In every point, wlule either party quails ! 
 These are the busy ones : be silent thou ! 
 Two parties take the world up, and allow 
 No third, yet have one principle, subsist 
 By the same injustice ; whoso shall enlist 
 With either, ranks with man's inveterate foes. 
 80 there is one less quarrel to compose : 
 The Guelf , the Ghibellin may be to curse — 
 I have done nothing, but both sides do worse 
 Tlian nothing. Nay, to me, forgotten, reft 
 Of insight, lapped by trees and flowers, was 
 
 left 
 The notion of a service — ha ? What lured 
 Me here, what mighty aim was I assured 
 Must move Taureflo ? What if there remained 
 „ A cause, intact, distinct from these, 
 
 H»™ men ordained 
 distinct ^°^ ™*' ^*^ ^^^^ discoverer ? " 
 from Some one pressed 
 
 both? Before them here, a watcher, to 
 
 The subject for a ballad : " They must know 
 
 The tale of the dead worthy, long ago 
 
 Consul of Rome — that 's long ago for us, 
 
 Minstrels and bowmen, idly squabbling thus 
 
 In the world's corner — but too late no doubt. 
 
 For the brave time he sought to bring about, 
 
 „^ —Not know Crescentius Nomen- 
 
 ttefamtd t™us ? " Then 
 
 Roman ^® "^^ ^'•ont for terms to tell him, 
 
 Ciescen- when 
 
 tius? Sordello disavowed it, how they 
 
 used 
 Whenever their Superior introduced 
 A novice to the Brotherhood — ('*for I 
 Was just a brown-sleeve brother, merrily 
 Appointed too," quoth he, *' till Innocent 
 Bade me relinquish, to my small content. 
 My wife or my brown sleeves ") — some brother 
 
 spoke 
 Ere noctums of Crescentius, to revoke 
 The edict issued, after his demise, 
 Which blotted fame alike and effigies, 
 All out except a floating power, a name 
 Including, tending to produce the same 
 Great act. Rome, dead, forgotten, lived at least 
 Within that brain, though to a vulgar priest 
 And a vile stranger, — two not worth a slave 
 Of Rome's, Pope John, King Otho, — fortune 
 
 gave 
 The rule there : so, Crescentius, haply dressed 
 In white, called Roman Consul for a jest. 
 Taking the people at their word, forth stepped 
 As upon Brutus' heel, nor ever kept 
 Rome waiting, — stood erect, and from his brain 
 Gave Rome out on its ancient place again. 
 Ay, bade proceed with Brutus' Rome, Kings 
 
 styled 
 Themselves mere citizens of, aud, beguiled 
 
 Into great thoughts thereby, would choose the 
 
 gem 
 Out of a lapfull, spoil their diadem 
 — The Senate's cypher was so hard to scratch 1 
 He flashes like a phanal, all men catch 
 The flame, Rome 's just accomplished ! when 
 
 returned 
 Otho, with John, the Consul's step had spumed, 
 And Hugo Lord of Este, to redress 
 The wrongs of each. Crescentius in the stress 
 Of adverse fortune bent. " They crucified 
 Their Consul in the Fomm ; and abide 
 E'er since such slaves at Rome, that I — (for I 
 Was once a brown-sleeve brother, merrily 
 Appointed) — I had option to keep wife 
 Or keep brown sleeves, and managed in the strife 
 Lose both. A song of Rome ! " 
 
 And Rome, indeed, 
 Robed at Goito in fantastic weed. 
 The Mother-City of his Mantuan days. 
 Looked an established point of light whence rays 
 Traversed the world ; for, all the clustered 
 
 homes . 
 Beside of men, seemed bent on being Romes 
 In their degree ; the question was, how each 
 Should most resemble Rome, clean out of reach. 
 Nor, of the Two, did either principle 
 How if, in Struggle to change — but to possess 
 the reinte- — Rome, still, 
 gration of Guelf Rome or Ghibellin Rome. 
 ™™^' Let Rome advance ! 
 
 Rome, as she struck Sordello 's ignorance — 
 How could he doubt one moment ? Rome 's the 
 
 Cause! 
 Rome of the Pandects, all the world's new 
 
 laws — 
 Of the Capitol, of Castle Angelo ; 
 New structures, that inordinately glow. 
 Subdued, brought back to hamiouy, made ripe 
 By many a relic of the archetype 
 Extant for wonder ; every upstart church 
 That hoped to leave old temples in the lurch. 
 Corrected, by the Theatre forlom 
 That, — as a mundane shell, its world late 
 
 born, — 
 Lay and o'ershadowed it. These hints combined. 
 Be typified Rome typiiies the scheme to put man- 
 the tri- kind 
 
 umph of Once more in full possession of their 
 mankmd? rights. 
 
 " Let us have Rome again ! On me it lights 
 To build up Rome — on me, the first and last : 
 For such a future was endured the past ! " 
 And tlius, in the gray twilight, f ortji he sprung 
 To give his thought consistency among 
 The very People — let their facts avaU 
 Finish the dream grown from the archer's tale. 
 
 BOOK THE FIFTH 
 
 Is it the same Sordello in the dusk 
 As at the dawn ? — merely a perished husk 
 Now, that arose a power fit to build 
 Mankind Up Rome a«^ain? The proud con- 
 triumph of ception chilled 
 a sudden ? ^° soon i" Ay, watch that latest 
 dream of thine 
 
SORDELLO 
 
 III 
 
 — A Borne indebted to no Palatine — 
 Drop arch by arch, Sordello 1 Art possessed 
 Of thy wish now, rewarded for thy quest 
 To-daj^ among Fen-ara's squalid sons ? 
 Are this and this and this the shining ones 
 Meet for the Shining City ? Sooth to say, 
 Your favored tenantry pursue their way 
 After a fashion I This companion slips 
 On the smooth causey, t' other bUnkard trips 
 At his mooned sandal. *^ Leave to lead the 
 
 brawls 
 Here i' the atria?" No, friend! He that sprawls 
 On aught but a stibadium . . . what his dues 
 Who puts the lustral vase to such an use ? 
 Oh, huddle up the day's disasters ! March, 
 Ye runagates, and drop thou, arch by arch, 
 Bome! 
 
 Yet before they quite disband — a whim — 
 Study mere shelter, now, for him, and him. 
 Nay, even the worst, — just house them ! Any 
 
 cave 
 Suffices: throw out earth ! A loophole? Brave! 
 They ask to feel the sun shine, see the gi-ass 
 Grow, hear the larks sing ? Dead art thou, alas, 
 And I am dead ! But here 's our son excels 
 At hurdle-weaving any Scythian, fells 
 Oak and devises rafters, dreams and shapes 
 His dream into a door-post, just escapes 
 The mystery of hinges. Lie we both 
 Perdue another age. The goodly growth 
 Of brick and stone ! Our building-pelt was 
 
 rough, 
 But that descendant's garb siiits well enough 
 A portico-contriver. Speed the years — 
 Why, the What 's time to us ? At last, a city 
 work rears 
 
 should be Itself ! nay, enter — what 's the grave 
 one of ages, tons? 
 
 Lo, our forlorn acquaintance carry thus 
 The head ! Successively sewer, forum, cirque — 
 Last age, an aqueduct was counted work. 
 But now they tire the artificer upon 
 Blank alabaster, black obsidion, 
 — Careful, Jove's face be duly f al°rurant. 
 And mother Venus' kiss-creased nipples pant 
 Back into pristine pulpiness, ere fixed 
 Above the baths. What difference betwixt 
 This Bome and ours — resemblance what, be- 
 tween 
 That scurvy dumb - show and this pageant 
 
 sheen — 
 These Komaus and our rabble ? Use thy wit ! 
 The work marched : step by step, — a workman 
 
 fit 
 Took each, nor too fit, — to one task, one time, — 
 No leaping o'er the petty to the prime. 
 If per- When just the substituting osier lithe 
 
 formed For brittle bulrush, sound wood for 
 equally soft withe, 
 
 and thor- To further loam-and-roughoast-work 
 oughly; a stage,— 
 
 Exacts an architect, exacts an age : 
 No tables of the Mauritanian tree 
 For men whose maple log 's their luxury ! 
 That way was Rome built. "Better" (say 
 
 you) " merge 
 At once all workmen in the demiurge. 
 All epochs in a lifetime, every task 
 
 In one I " oo should the sudden city bask 
 
 I' the day — while those we 'd feast there, want 
 
 tne knaok 
 Of keeping fresh-chalked gowns from speck and 
 
 brack. 
 Distinguish not rare peacock from vile swan, 
 Nor Mareotic juice from Csecuban. 
 " Enough of Rome ! 'Twas happy to conceive 
 Rome on a sudden, nor shall fate bereave 
 Me of that credit ; for the rest, her spite 
 Is an old story — serves my folly right 
 By adding yet another to the duU 
 List of abortions — things proved beautiful 
 Could they be doue, Sordello cannot do." 
 
 He sat upon the terrace, plucked and threw 
 The powdery aloe-cusps away, saw shift 
 Rome's walls, and drop arch after arch, and 
 
 drift 
 Mist-like afar those pillars of all stripe, 
 Mounds of all majesty. " Thou archetype. 
 Last of my dreams and loveliest, depart I '' 
 
 And then a low voice wound into his heart : 
 '* Sordello ! " (low as some old Pythoness 
 Conceding to a Lydian King's distress 
 The cause of his long error — one mistake 
 Of her past oracle) Sordello, wake ! 
 God has conceded two sights to a man — 
 Andaman One, of men's whole work, time's 
 can do but completed plan, 
 a man's The other, of the minute's work, 
 portion. man's first 
 
 Step to the plan's completeness : what 's dis- 
 persed 
 Save hope of that supreme step which, descried 
 Earliest, was meant still to remain untried 
 Only to give you heart to take your own 
 Step', and there stay — leaving the rest alone ? 
 Where is the vanity ? Why count as one 
 The first step, with the last step ? What is gone 
 Except Rome's aSry magnificence. 
 That last step you 'd take first ? — an evidence 
 You were God : be man now ! Let those glances 
 
 faU! 
 The basis, the beginning step of all. 
 Which proves you just a man — is thkt gone too ? 
 Pity to disconcert one versed as you 
 In fate's ill-nature ! but its full extent 
 Eludes Sordello, even : the veil rent, 
 Read the black writing — that collective man 
 Outstrips the individual ! Who began 
 The last of The acknowledged greatnesses ? Ay, 
 each series your own art 
 
 of work- Shall serve us : put the poet's mimes 
 ™™ apart — 
 
 Close with the poet's self, and lo, a dim 
 Yet too plain form divides itself from him I 
 Alcamo's song enmeshes the lulled Isle, 
 Woven into the echoes left erewhile 
 By Nina, one soft web of song : no more 
 Turning his name, then, flower-like o'er and 
 
 o'er! 
 An elder poet in the younger's place ; 
 Nina 's the strength, but Alcamo 's the grace : 
 Each neutraUzes each then ! Search your fill ; 
 You get no whole and perfect Poet — still 
 New Ninas, Alcamos, tiU time's raid-night 
 Shrouds aU — or better say, the shutting light 
 Of a forgotten yesterday. Dissect 
 
SORDELLO 
 
 Every ideal workman — (to reject 
 
 In faror of your fearful ig^icrance 
 
 The thousand phantasms eager to advance, 
 
 Bums up in And point you but to those within 
 
 himself all your reach) — 
 
 predeces- Were you the first who brought — 
 
 sois. (j^ modem speech) 
 
 The Multitude to be materialized ? 
 
 That loose eternal unrest — who devised 
 
 An apparition i' the midst ? The rout 
 
 Was checked, a breathless ring was formed 
 
 about 
 That sudden flower : get round at any risk 
 The gold-rough pointel, silver-blazing disk 
 0' the lily ! Swords across it ! Keign thy reign 
 We just And serve thy frolic service, Charle- 
 see Char- magne ! 
 
 leraagne, — The very child of over-joyousness, 
 Hilde- Unfeeling thence, strong therefore : 
 
 brand, Strength by stress 
 
 Of Strength comes of that forehead confident, 
 Those widened eyes expecting heart's content, 
 A calm as oat of just-quelled noise ; nor swerves 
 For doubt, the ample cheek in gracious curves 
 Abutting on the upthrnst nether lip : 
 He wills, how should he doubt then ? Ages slip : 
 Was it Sordello pried into the work 
 80 far accomplished, and discovered lurk 
 A company amid the other clans. 
 Only distinct in priests for castellans 
 And popes for suzerains (their rule confessed 
 Its rule, their interest its interest. 
 Living for sake of living — there an end, — 
 Wrapt in itself, no energy to spend 
 In making adversaries or allies), — 
 Dived you into its capabilities 
 And dared create, out of that sect, a soul 
 Should turn a midtitude, already whole, 
 into its body ? Speak plainer ! Is 't so sure 
 God's church lives by a King's investiture ? 
 Look to last step ! A staggering — a shock — 
 What 's mere sand is demolished, while the rock 
 Endures : a column of black fiery dust 
 Blots heaven — that help was prematurely thrust 
 Aside, perchance ! — but air clears, naught 's 
 
 erased 
 Of the true outline ! Thus much being firm 
 
 The other was a scaffold. See him stand 
 Buttressed upon his mattock, Hildebrand 
 Of the huge brain-mask welded ply o'er ply 
 As in a forge ; it buries either eye 
 White and extinct, that stupid brow ; teeth 
 
 clenched. 
 The neck tight-corded, too, the chin deep- 
 trenched. 
 As if a cloud enveloped him while fought 
 Under its shade, grim prizers, thought with 
 
 thought 
 At dead-lock, agonizing he, until 
 The victor thought leap radiant up, and WiU, 
 The slave with folded arms and drooping lids 
 They fought for, lean forth flame-like as it 
 
 bids. 
 Call him no flower — a mandrake of the earth. 
 Thwarted and dwarfed and blasted in its birth, 
 Rather, — a fruit of sufl:ering's excess, 
 Thence feeling, therefore stronger : still bv stress 
 
 Of Strength, work Knowledge I Full three hun- 
 dred years 
 Have men to wear away m smiles and tears 
 Between the two that nearly seemed to touch, 
 In com- Observe you ! quit one workman and 
 posite you clutch ,,,.,. 
 
 work they Another, lettmg both their trains go 
 end and by — 
 
 name. The actors-out of either's policy, 
 
 Heinrich, on this hand, Otho, Barbaross, 
 Carry the three Imperial crowns across, 
 Aix' Iron, Milan's Silver, and Rome's Gold — 
 While Alexander, Innocent uphold 
 On that, each Papal key — but, link on link, 
 Why is it neither chain betrays a chink ? 
 How coalesce the small and great ? Alack, 
 For one thrust forward, fifty such fall back ! 
 Do the popes coupled there help Gregory 
 Alone ? Hark — from the hermit Peter's cry 
 At Claremont, dovni to the first serf that says 
 Friedrich 's no liege of his while he delays 
 Getting the Pope s curse off him ! The Cru- 
 sade — 
 Or trick of breeding Strength by other aid 
 Than Strength, is safe. Hark — from the wild 
 
 harangue 
 Of Vimmercato, to the carroch's clang 
 Yonder! 'The League — or trick of turning 
 
 Strength 
 Against Pernicious Strength, is safe at length. 
 Yet hark — from Mantuan Albert making cease 
 The fierce ones, to Saint Francis preaching peace 
 Yonder ! God's Truce — or trick to supersede 
 The very Use of Strength, is safe. Indeed 
 We trench upon the future. Who is found 
 To take next step, next age — trail o'er the 
 
 f round — 
 say, gourd-like ? — not the flower's dis- 
 play 
 Nor the root's prowess, but the plenteous way 
 0' the plant — produced by joy and sorrow, 
 
 whence 
 Unfeeling and yet feeling, strongest thence ? 
 Knowledge by stress of merely Knowledge ? 
 
 No — 
 E'en were Sordello ready to forego 
 His life for this, 't were overleaping work 
 Some one has first to do, howe'er it irk. 
 Nor stray a foot's breadth from the beaten road. 
 Who means to help must still support the load 
 Hildebrand lifted — ' why hast Thou,' he 
 
 groaned, 
 ' Imposed on me a burden, Paul had moaned, 
 And Moses dropped beneath ? ' Much done — 
 
 and yet 
 Doubtless that grandest task God ever set 
 On man, left much to do : at his arm's wrench, 
 Charlemagne's scaffold fell ; but pillars blench 
 Merely, start back again — perchance have been 
 Taken for buttresses : crash every screen. 
 Hammer the tenons better, and engage 
 A gang about your work, for the next age 
 Or two, of Knowledge, part by Strength and part 
 By Knowledge ! Then, indeed, perchance may 
 
 start 
 Sordello on his race — would time divulge 
 Such secrets ! If one step 's awry, one bulge 
 Calls for correction by a step we thought 
 
SORDELLO 
 
 113 
 
 Got over long since, why, till that is wrought. 
 No progress ! And the scaffold in its turn 
 Becomes, its service o'er, a thing to spuru. 
 Meanwhile, if your half-dozen years of life 
 In store dispose you to forego the strife. 
 Who takes exception ? Only bear in mind, 
 Ferrara 's reached, Goito 's left behind : 
 n associ- As you then were, as half yourself, 
 ates trou- desist 1 
 
 blB you, — The warrior-part of you may, an 
 stand oU! it list. 
 
 Finding real falchijans difficult to poise, 
 Fling them afar and taste the cream of joys 
 By wielding such in fancy, — what is bard 
 Of you may spurn the vehicle that marred 
 Elys so much, and in free fancy glut 
 His sense, yet write no verses — you have but 
 To please yourself for law, and once could please 
 What once appeared yourself, by dreaming these 
 Bather than doing these, in days gone by. 
 But all is changed the moment you descry 
 Mankind as half yourself, — then, fancy's trade 
 Ends once and always : how may half evade 
 The other half ? men are found half of you. 
 Out of a thousand helps, just one or two 
 Can be accomplished presently : but flinch 
 From these (as from the falchion, raised an inch, 
 Elys, described a couplet) and make proof 
 Of fancy, — then, while one half loUs aloof 
 I' the vines, completing Bome to the tip-top — 
 See if, for that, your other half will stop 
 Should the A tear, begin a smile ! The rabble's 
 new sym- woes, 
 
 pathies al- Ludicrous in their patience as they 
 low you. ehose 
 
 To sit about their town and quietly 
 Be slaughtered, — the poor reckless soldiery. 
 With their ignoble rhymes on Richard, how 
 ' Polt-foot,' sang they, ' was in a pitfall now,' 
 Cheering each other from the engine-mounts, — 
 That crippled sprawling idiot who recounts 
 How, lopped of limbs, he lay, stupid as stone. 
 Till the pains crept from out him one by one, 
 And wriggles round the archers on his head 
 To earn a morsel of their chestnut bread, — 
 And Cino, always in the self-same place 
 Weeping ; beside that other wretch's case, 
 Eyepits to ear, one gangrene since he plied 
 The engine in his coat of raw sheep's hide 
 A double watch in the noon sun ; and see 
 Lucchino, beauty, with the favors free. 
 Trim hacqueton, spruce beard and scented hair. 
 Campaigning it for the first time — cut there 
 In two already, boy enough to crawl 
 For latter orpine round the southern wall, 
 Tomi., where Richard 's kept, because that 
 
 whore 
 Marfisa, the fool never saw before. 
 Sickened for flowers this wearisomest siege : 
 And Tiso's wife — men liked their pretty liege. 
 Cared for her least of whims once, — Berta, wed 
 A twelvemonth gone, and, now poor Tiso 's dead, 
 Delivering herself of his first child 
 On that chance heap of wet filth, reconciled 
 To fifty gazers ! " — (Here a wind below 
 Made moody music augural of woe 
 From the pine barrier) — " What if, now the 
 scene 
 
 Draws to a close, yourself have really been 
 
 Time having — I ou, plucking purples in Goito's 
 
 been lost, moss 
 
 choose quick I Like edges of a trabea (not to cross 
 
 Your consul-humor) or dry aloe-shafts 
 
 For fasces, at Ferrara — he, fate wafts. 
 
 This very age, her whole inheritance 
 
 Of opportunities ? Yet you advance 
 
 Upon the last ! Since talking is your trade, 
 
 There 's Salinguerra left you to persuade : 
 
 Fail .'then" — 
 
 " No — no — which latest chance secure ! " 
 Leaped up and cried Sordello : ' ' this made sure. 
 The past were yet redeemable ; its work 
 Was — help the Guelfs, whom I, howe'er it irk, 
 Thus help ! " He shook the foolish aloe-haulm 
 „ . , , . Out of his doublet, paused, pro- 
 first stop as° ceededcalm 
 a Guelf ■ ^^ *^® appointed presence. The 
 
 lai^e head 
 Turned on its socket ; "And your spokesman,'' 
 
 said 
 The large voice, " is Elcorte's happy sprout? 
 Few such " — (so finishii^ a speech no doubt 
 Addressed to Falma, silent at his side) 
 '* — My sober councils have diversified. 
 Elcorte's son ! g'ood : forward as you may, 
 Our lady's minstrel with so much to say ! " 
 The hesitating' sunset floated back, 
 Kosily traversed in the wonted track 
 The chamber, from the lattice o'er the girth 
 Of pines, to the huge eagle blacked in earth 
 Opposite, — outlined sudden, spur to crest, 
 That solid Salinguen-a, and caressed 
 Palma's contour ; 't was day looped back night's 
 
 pall; 
 Sordello had a chance left spite of all. 
 
 And much he made of the convincing speech 
 Meant to compensate for the past and reach 
 Through his youth's daybreak of unprofit, quite 
 To his noon's labor, so proceed till night 
 Leisurely ! The great a^ument to bind 
 Taurello with the Guelf Cause, body and mind, 
 — Came the consummate rhetoric to that ? 
 Yet most Sordello's argument dropped flat 
 Through his accustomed fault of breaking yoke, 
 Disjoining him, who felt from him who spoke. 
 Was 't not a touching incident — so prompt 
 A rendering the world its just accompt, 
 Once proved its debtor? Who'd suppose, be- 
 fore 
 This proof, that he, Goito's god of yore, 
 At duty's instance could demean himself 
 So memorably, dwindle to a Guelf ? 
 Be sure, in such delicious flattery steeped, 
 His inmost self at the oiit-portion peeped, 
 Thus occupied ; then stole a glance at those 
 Appealed to, curious if her color rose 
 Or nis lip moved, while he discreetly ui^ed 
 The need of Lombardy becoming purged 
 At soonest of her barons ; tlie poor part 
 Abandoned thus., missing the blood at heart 
 And spirit in brain, unseasonably off 
 Elsewhere ! But, though his speech was worthy 
 
 scoff, 
 Good-humored Salinguerra, famed for tact 
 And tongue, who, careless of his phrase, ne'er 
 lacked 
 
"4 
 
 SORDELLO 
 
 The right phrase, and harangued Honorius 
 
 dumb 
 At his accession, — looked as all fell plumb 
 To purpose and hiipself f oimd interest 
 In eveiy point his new instructor pressed 
 
 — Left playing with the rescript's white wax 
 
 sea) 
 To scrutinize SordeUo head and heel. 
 He means to yield assent sure ? No, alas I 
 All he replied was, " What, it comes to pass 
 That poesy, sooner than politics. 
 Makes fade young hair?" To think such 
 
 speech could fix 
 TaureUo ! 
 
 Then a flash of bitter truth : 
 So fantasies could break and fritter youth 
 That he had long ago lost earnestness, 
 ■D i i. ■„ Lost will to work, lost power to 
 Sdtod^'ile even express 
 different : "^^ need of working ! Earth was 
 
 turned a grave : 
 No more occasions now, though he should crave 
 Just one, in right of superhuman toil, 
 To do what was undone, repair such spoil. 
 Alter the past — nothing would give the chance ! 
 Not that he was to die ; he saw askance , 
 Protract the ignominious years beyond 
 To dream in — time to hope and time despond, 
 Kemember and forget, be sad, rejoice 
 As saved a trouble ; he might, at his choice, 
 One way or other, idle life out, drop 
 He may No few smooth verses by the way 
 
 sleep ou the — for prop, 
 bed he has A thyrsus, these sad people, all 
 made. ^ the same. 
 
 Should pick up, and set store by, — far from 
 
 blame. 
 Plant o'er his hearse, convinced his better part 
 Survived him . ' ' Rather tear men out the heart 
 O' the truth!" — Sordello muttered, and re- 
 newed 
 His propositions for the Multitude. 
 
 But Salinguerra, who at this attack 
 Had thrown great breast and ruffling corselet 
 
 back 
 To hear the better, smilingly resumed 
 His task; beneath, the carroch's warning 
 
 boomed ; 
 He must decide with Tito ; courteously 
 He turned then, even seeming to agree 
 With his admonislier — *' Assist the Pope, 
 Extend Guelf domination, fill the scope 
 0' the Church, thus based on All, by All, for 
 
 AU— 
 Change Secular to Evangelical " — : 
 Echoing his very sentence : all seemed lost. 
 When suddenly he looked up, laughingly al- 
 most. 
 To Falma: "This opinion of your friend's — 
 For instance, would it answer Palma's ends ? 
 Best, were it not, turn Guelf, submit our 
 
 Strength " — 
 (Here he drew out his baldric to its length) 
 
 — "To the Pope's Knowlec^e — let our captive 
 
 slip. 
 Wide to the walls throw ope our gates, equ ip 
 Azzo with . . . what I hold here I Who 'U 
 
 subscribe 
 
 To a trite censure of the minstrel tribe 
 Henceforward ? or pronounce, as Heiurich used, 
 'Spear-heads for battle, burr-heads for the 
 joust ! ' 
 
 — When Constance, for his couplets, would 
 
 promote 
 Alcamo, from a parti-coloi'ed coat. 
 To holding her lord's stiiTup in the wars. , 
 Not that I see where couplet-making jars 
 With common sense : at Mantua I had borne 
 This chanted, better than their most forlorn 
 Of buU-baits, —that 's indisputable ! " 
 
 Brave ! 
 Whom vanity nigh slew, contempt shall save ! 
 All 's at an end : a Troubadour suppose 
 Mankind wiU class him with their friends or 
 „ „. foes? 
 
 beorn flings ^ uncouth ailing vassal think 
 
 to his"fac? The world and him bound in some 
 
 ' special Mnk ? 
 Abrupt the visionary tether burst. 
 What were rewarded here, or what amerced 
 H a poor drudge, solicitous to dream 
 Deservingly, got tangled by his theme 
 So far as to conceit tlie knack or gift 
 Or whatsoe'er it be, of verse, might lift 
 The globe, a lever like the hand and head 
 Of — " Men of Action, " as the Jongleura said, 
 
 — " The Great Men," in the people's dialect ? 
 And not a moment did this scorn affect 
 
 Arouses liim Sordello : scorn the poet ? They, 
 
 at last, to for once, 
 
 some pur- Asking " what was," obtained a full 
 
 pose, response. 
 
 Bid Naddo think at Mantua, he had but 
 
 To look into his promptuary, put 
 
 Finger on a set thought in a set speech : 
 
 But was SordeUo fitted thus for each 
 
 Conjecture ? Nowise ; since within his soul. 
 
 Perception brooded unexpressed and whole, 
 
 A healthy spirit like a healthy frame 
 
 Craves aliment in plenty — all the same. 
 
 Changes, assimilates its aliment. 
 
 Perceived Sordello, on a truth intent ? 
 
 Next day no formularies more you saw 
 
 Than figs or olives in a sated maw. 
 
 'Tis Knowledge, whither such perceptions tend; 
 
 They lose themselves in that, means to an end, 
 
 The many old producing some one new, 
 
 A last unlike the first. If lies are true. 
 
 The Caliph's wheel-work man of brass receives 
 
 A meal, munched millet grains and lettuce 
 
 leaves 
 Together in his stomach rattle loose ; 
 You find them perfect next day to produce : 
 But ne'er expect the man, on strength of that, 
 Can roll an iron camel-collar flat 
 Like Haronn's self 1 I tell yon, what was stored 
 And thus Bit by bit through Sordello's life, 
 gets the ut- outpoured 
 
 most out of That eve, was, for that age, a novel 
 l"™- thing: 
 
 And round those three the People formed a ring. 
 Of visionary judges whose award 
 He recognized in full —faces that barred 
 Henceforth return to the old careless life, 
 Li whose great presence , therefore, his first strife 
 For their sake must not be ignobly fought ; 
 
SORDELLO 
 
 "5 
 
 All these, for once, approved of him, he thought, 
 Suspended their own vengeance, chose await 
 The issue of this strife to reinstate 
 Them in the right of taking it — in fact 
 He must be proved king ere they could exact 
 Vengeance for such king's defalcation. Last, 
 A reason why the phrases flowed so fast 
 Was in his quite forgetting for a time 
 Himself in his amazement that the rhyme 
 Disguised the royalty so much : he there — 
 And Salinguerra yet all unaware 
 Who was the lord, who liegeman ! 
 
 " Thus I lay 
 On thine my spirit and compel obey 
 His lord, — my liegeman, — impotent to build 
 Another Rome, but hardly so unskilled 
 In what such builder should have been, as brook 
 One shame beyond the charge that X forsook 
 His function ! Free me from that shame, I bend 
 A brow before, suppose new years to spend, — 
 Allow each chance, nor fruitlessly, recur — 
 Measure thee with the Minstrel, then, demur 
 He asserts At any crowd he claims ! That I 
 the poet's must cede 
 
 rank and Shamed now, my right to my especial 
 right, meed — 
 
 Confess thee fitter help the world than I 
 Ordained its champion from eternity. 
 Is much : but to behold thee scorn the post 
 I quit in thy behalf — to hear thee boast 
 What makes my own despair ! " And while he 
 
 rang 
 The changes on this theme, the roof up-sprung. 
 The sad walls of the presence-chamber died 
 Into the distance, or embowering vied 
 With f a:i>away Goito's vine-frontier ; 
 And crowds of faces — (only keeping clear 
 The rose-light in the midst, his vantage-ground 
 To fight flieir battle from) — deep clustered 
 
 round 
 Sordello, with good wishes no mere breath. 
 Kind prayers for him no vapor, since, come 
 
 death, 
 Come life, he was fresh-sinewed every joint. 
 Each bone new-marrowed as whom gods anoint 
 Though mortal to their rescue. Now let sprawl 
 The snaky volumes hither ! Is Typhon all 
 For Hercules to trample — good report 
 From Salinguerra only to extort ? 
 " So was I " (closed he his inculcating, 
 A poet must be earth's essential king) 
 Basing " So was I, royal so, and if I fail, 
 
 these on 'T is not the royalty^ ye witness 
 their quail, 
 
 proper B„t one deposed who, caring not 
 
 ground, ^j^g^t 
 
 Its proper essence, trifled malapert 
 With accidents instead — good things assigned 
 As heralds of a better thing behind — 
 And, worthy through display of these, put 
 
 forth 
 Never the inmost all-surpassing worth 
 That constitutes him king precisely since 
 As yet no other spirit may evince 
 Its like : the power he took most pride to test. 
 Whereby all forms of life had been professed 
 At pleasure, forms already on the eai-th. 
 Was but a means to power beyond, whose birth 
 
 Should, in its novelty, be kingship's proof. 
 Now, whether he came near or kept aloof 
 The several forms he longed to imitate. 
 Not there the kingship lay, he sees too late. 
 Those forms, unalterable first as last. 
 Proved him her copier, not the protoplast 
 Of nature : what would come of being free, 
 By action to exhibit tree for tree. 
 Bird, beast, for beast and bird, or prove earth 
 
 bore 
 One veritable man or woman more ? 
 Means to an end, such proofs are ; what tlie 
 
 end? 
 Let essence, whatsoe'er it be, extend — 
 Never contract. Already you include 
 The multitude ; then let the multitude 
 Include yourself ; and the result were new : 
 Themselves before, the multitude turn you. 
 This were to live and move and have, in them, 
 Your being, and secure a diadem 
 You should transmit (because no cycle yearns 
 Beyond itself, but on itself returns) 
 Wlien, the full sphere in wane, the world o'er- 
 
 laid 
 Long since with you, shall have in turn obeyed 
 Some orb still prouder, some displayer, still 
 More potent than the last, of human wiU, 
 Recogniz- And some new king depose the old. 
 ing true Of such 
 
 dignity in Am I — whom pride of this elatasi 
 service, too much ? 
 
 Safe, rather say, 'mid troops of peers again ; 
 I, with my words, hailed brother of the train 
 Deeds once sufficed : for, let the world roll back, 
 Who fails, through deeds howe'er diverse, re- 
 track 
 My purpose still, my task ? A teeming crust -^ 
 Air, flame, earth, wave at conflict T Then, 
 
 needs must 
 Emerge some Calm embodied, these refer 
 The brawl to — yellow-bearded Jupiter ? 
 No ! Saturn ; some existence like a pact 
 And protest against Chaos, some first fact 
 I' the faint of time. My deep of life, I know, 
 Is unavailing e'en to poorly show " . '. . 
 For here the Chief immeasurably yawned) 
 . . . "Deeds in their due gradation till Song 
 
 dawned — 
 The fullest elHuenee of the finest mind, 
 All in degree, no way diverse in kind 
 From minds about it, minds which, more or 
 
 less. 
 Lofty or low, move seeking to impress 
 Whether Themselves on somewhat ; but one 
 succes- mind has climbed 
 
 sively that Step after step, by just ascent sub- 
 o£ epoist, limed. 
 
 Thought is the soul of act, and, stage by stage, 
 Soul is from body still to disengage 
 As tending to a freedom which rejects 
 Such help and incorporeally afEects 
 "The world, producing deeds but not by deeds, 
 Swaying, in others, frames itself exceeds. 
 Assigning them the simpler tasks it used 
 To patiently perform till Song produced 
 Acts, by thoughts only, for the mind ; divest 
 Mind of e'en Thought, and, lo, God's unex- 
 pressed 
 
ii6 
 
 SORDELLO 
 
 Will draws above us ! AU then is to win 
 Save that. How much for me, then? where 
 
 begin 
 My work ? About me, faces ! and they flock, 
 The earnest faces. What shall I unlock 
 By song ? behold me prompt, whate'er it be, 
 To minister : how much can mortals see 
 Of Life ? No more than so ? I take the task 
 And marshal you Life's elemental masque, 
 Show Men, on evil or on good lay stress, 
 Dramatist, This light, this shade make promi- 
 or, 80 to nent, suppress 
 
 call him, AU ordinary hues that softening 
 analyst, blend 
 
 Such natures with the level. Apprehend 
 Which sinner is, which saint, if 1 allot 
 Hell, Purgatory, Heaven, a blaze or blot. 
 To those you doubt concerning ! I enwomb 
 Some wretched Friedrich with his red-hot tomb ; 
 Some dubious spirit, Lombard Agilulph 
 With the black chastening river I engulf 1 
 Some unapproached Matilda I enshiine 
 With languors of the planet of decline — 
 These, fail to recognize, to arbitrate 
 Between henceforth, to rightly estimate 
 Thus marshalled in the masque ! Myself, the 
 
 while. 
 As one of you, am witness, shrink or smile 
 At my own showing! Next age — what 's to 
 
 do? 
 The men and women stationed hitherto 
 Will I unstation, good and bad, conduct 
 Kach nature to its farthest, or obstruct 
 At soonest, in the world: light, thwarted, 
 
 breaks 
 A limpid purity to rainbow flakes, 
 Or shadow, massed, freezes to gloom ; behold 
 How such, with fit assistance to unfold. 
 Or obstacles to crush them, disengage 
 Their forms, love, hate, hope, fear, peace 
 
 make, war wage. 
 In presence of you all ! Myself, implied 
 Superior now, as, by the platform's side, 
 I bade them do and suffer, — would last con- 
 tent 
 The world , . .no — that 's too far ! I cir- 
 cumvent 
 A few, my masque contented, and to these 
 Offer unveil the last of mysteries — 
 Man's inmost life shall have yet freer play : 
 Once more I cast external things away, 
 And natures composite, so decompose 
 That" . . . Why, he writes Sordello! 
 
 "How I rose. 
 And how have you advanced ! since evermore 
 Yourselves effect what I was fain before 
 Effect, what I supplied yourselves suggest. 
 What I leave bare yourselves can now invest. 
 How we attain to talk as brothers talk. 
 In half-words, call things by half-names, no 
 
 balk 
 From discontinuing old aids. To-day 
 Takes in account the work of Yesterday : 
 Has not the world a Past now, its adept 
 Consults ere he dispense with or accept 
 New aids ? a single touch more may enhance, 
 A touch less turned to insignificance 
 Those structures' symmetry the past has strewed 
 
 The world with, once so bare. Leave the mere 
 
 rude 
 Who turns Explicit details I 'tis but brother's 
 '" ^™ speech 
 
 synttotist. We need, speech where an accent's 
 
 change gives each 
 The other's soul — no speech to understand 
 By former audience : need was then to expand, 
 Expatiate — hardly were we brothers ! true ~ 
 Nor I lament my small remove from you. 
 Nor reconstruct what stands already. Ends 
 Accomplished turn to means : my art intends 
 New structure from the ancient : as they 
 
 changed 
 The spoils of every clime at Venice, ranged 
 The homed and snouted Libyan god, upright 
 As in his desert, by some simple bright 
 Clay cinerary pitcher — Thebes as Kome, 
 Athens as Byzant rifled, till their Dome 
 From earth's reputed consuimiiations razed 
 A seal, the all-transmuting Triad blazed 
 Above. Ah, whose that fortune ? Ne'erthe- 
 
 less 
 E'en he must stoop contented to express 
 No tithe of what 's to say — the vehicle 
 Never sufficient : but his work is still 
 For faces like the faces that select 
 This for The single service I am bound 
 one day : effect, — 
 
 now, serve That bid me cast aside such fancies, 
 aa Guelf ! "ho-w 
 
 Taurello to the Guelf cause, disallow 
 The Kaiser's coming — which with heart, soul, 
 
 strength, 
 I labor for, this eve, who feel at length 
 My past career's outrageous vanity, 
 And would, as it amends, die, even die 
 Now I first estimate the boon of life. 
 If death might win compliance — sure, this strife 
 Is right for once — the People my support." 
 
 My poor Sordello ! what may we extort 
 By this, I wonder ? Palma's lighted eyes 
 Turned to Taurello who, long x^ast surprise. 
 Began, *'You love him — what you'd say at 
 
 large 
 Let me say briefly. First, your father's charge 
 To me, his friend, peruse : I guessed indeed 
 You were no stranger to the course decreed. 
 Salin- He bids me leave his children to the 
 
 guerra, saints : 
 
 dislodged As for a certain project, he acquaints 
 from his The Pope with that, and offers him 
 P"^'- the best 
 
 Of your possessions to permit the rest 
 Go peaceably — to Eeelin, a stripe 
 Of soil the cursed Vicentines will gripe, 
 — To Alberic, a patch the Trevisan 
 Clutches already ; extricate, who can, 
 Treyille, Villarazzi, Pnissolo, 
 Loria and Cartiglione ! — all must go. 
 And with them go my hopes. 'T is lost, then I 
 
 Lost 
 This eve, onr crisis, and some pains it cost 
 Procuring ; thirty years — as good I 'd spent 
 Like oul admonisher ! But each his bent 
 Pursues : no question, one might live absurd 
 One's self this while, by deed as he by word 
 Persisting to obtrude an influence where 
 
SORDELLO 
 
 117 
 
 'T is made account of, much as . . . nay, you 
 
 fare 
 With twice the fortune, youngster I — I submit, 
 Happy to parallel my waste of wit 
 With the renowned bordello's : you decide 
 A course for me. Romano may abide 
 Komano, — Bacchus ! After all, what dearth 
 Of Ecelins and Alberics on earth ? 
 Say there 's a prize in prospect, must disgrace 
 Betide competitora, unless they style 
 Themselves Komano ? Were it worth my whUe 
 To try my own luck 1 But an obscure place 
 Suits me — there wants a youth to bustle, 
 
 stalk 
 And attitudinize — some fight, more talk, 
 Most flaunting badges — how, I might make 
 
 clear 
 Since Friedrioh's very purposes lie here 
 
 — Here, pity they are like to lie ! For me. 
 With station fixed unceremoniously 
 Long since, small use contesting ; I an} but 
 TheHegeman — you are born the lieges — shut 
 That gentle mouth now ! or resume your kin 
 In your sweet self ; were Palma Ecelin 
 
 For me to work with ! Could that neck en- 
 dure 
 This bauble for a cumbrous garniture. 
 She should ... or might one bear it for her ? 
 
 Stay — 
 I have not been so fiattered many a day 
 As by your pale friend — Bacchus ! The least 
 
 help 
 Would lick the hind's fawn to a lion's whelp : 
 His neck is broad enough — a ready tongue 
 Beside — too writhled — but, the main thing, 
 
 young — 
 I could . . . why, look ye ! " 
 
 And the badge was thrown 
 limov- Across Bordello's neck: "This 
 "door t^ ^'^Se alone 
 
 Bordello Makes you Romano's Head — be- 
 comes superb 
 On your bare neck, which woxxld, on mine, dis- 
 turb 
 The pauldron," said Taurello. A mad act, 
 Nor even dreamed about before — in fact. 
 Not when his sportive arm rose for the nonce — 
 But he had dallied overmuch, this once, 
 With power : the thing was done, and he, aware 
 The thing was done, proceeded to declare — 
 (So like a nature made to serve, excel 
 In serving, only feel by service well !) 
 
 — 'That he would make Sordello that and more. 
 " As good a scheme as any. What 's to pore 
 At in my face ? " he asked — " ponder instead 
 This piece of news ; you are Romano's Head ! 
 One cannot slacken pace so near the goal. 
 Suffer my Azzo to escape heart-whole 
 
 This time ! For you there 's Palma to 
 
 espouse — 
 For me, one crowning trouble ere I house 
 Like my compeer." 
 
 On which ensued a strange 
 And solemn visitation ; there came change 
 O'er every one of them ; each looked on each : 
 Up in the midst a truth grew, without speech. 
 And when the giddiness sank and the haze 
 Subsided, they were sitting, no amaze, 
 
 Sordello with the baldric on, his sire 
 
 Who is de- Silent, though his proportions seemed 
 
 clared Sal- aspire 
 
 inguerra's Momently ; and, interpreting the 
 
 son, thriU 
 
 Right at its ebb, Palma was found there still 
 
 Relating somewhat Adelaide confessed 
 
 A year ago, while dying on her breast, — 
 
 Of a contrivance that Vicenza night 
 
 When Ecelin had birth. " Their convoy's Bight, 
 
 Cut off a moment, coiled inside the flame 
 
 That wallowed like a dragon at his game 
 
 The toppling city through — San Biagio rocks ! 
 
 And wounded lies in her delicious locks 
 
 Retrude, the frail mother, on her face, 
 
 None of her wasted, just in one embrace 
 
 Covering her child : when, as they lifted her, 
 
 Cleaving the tumult, mighty, mightier 
 
 And mightiest Taurello's cry outbroke, 
 
 Leapt Uke a tongue of fire that cleaves the 
 
 smoke, 
 Midmost to cheer his Mantuans onward — 
 
 drown 
 His colleague Ecelin's clamor, up and down 
 The disarray : failed Adelaide see then 
 Who was the natural chief, the man of men ? 
 Outstripping time, her infant there burst 
 
 swathe. 
 Stood up with eyes haggard beyond the scathe 
 From wandering after his heritage 
 Lost once and lost for aye — and why that rage, 
 That deprecating glance ? A new shape leant 
 On a familiar shape — gloatingly bent 
 O'er his discomfiture ; -'mid wreaths it wore. 
 Still one outflamed the rest — her child's be- 
 fore 
 'T was Salinpierra's for his child : scorn, hate. 
 Rage now might startle her when all too late ! 
 Then was the moment ! — rival's foot had 
 Hidden ^ spumed , , , 
 
 hitherto Never that House to earth else ! 
 b3j Ade- Sense returned — 
 
 laide's The act conceived, adventured and 
 
 policy. complete. 
 
 They bore away to an obscure retreat 
 Mother and child — Retnide's self not slain ]' 
 (Nor even here Taurello moved) " though pain 
 Was fled : and what assured them most 't was 
 
 fled. 
 All pain, was, if they raised the pale hushed 
 
 head 
 'T would turn this way and that, waver awhile, 
 And only settle into its old smile — 
 (Gracefvd as the disquieted water-flag 
 Steadying itself, remarked they, in the quag 
 On either side their path) —when suffered look 
 Down on her child. They marched : no sign 
 
 once shook 
 The company's close litter of crossed spears 
 TiU, as they reached Goito, a few tears 
 Slipped in the sunset from her long black lash, 
 And she y/aiigone. So far the action rash ; 
 No crime. They laid Retrude in the font, 
 Taurello's very gift, her child was wont 
 To sit beneath — constant as eve he came 
 To sit by its attendant girls the same 
 As one of them. For Palma, she would blend 
 With this magnific spirit to the end, 
 
iiB 
 
 SORDELLO 
 
 That ruled her first ; but scarcely had she 
 
 dared 
 To disobey the Adelaide who scared 
 Her into vowing never to disclose 
 A secret to her husband, "which so froze 
 His blood at half-recital, she contrived 
 To hide from him Taurello's infant lived, 
 Lest, by revealing: that, himself should mar 
 Romano's fortunes. And, a crime so far, 
 PaJma received that action : she was told 
 Of SaUngnerra's nature, of his cold 
 Calm acquieseence in his lot ! But free 
 To impart the secret to Romano, she 
 How the Engaged to repossess Kordello of 
 discovery His heritage, and hers, and that way 
 moves doff 
 
 Salin- Xhe mask , but after years, long years : 
 
 guerra, ^mg „o^^ 
 
 Was not Romano's sign-mark on that brow ? " 
 Across Taurello's heart his arms were locked : 
 And when he did speak 't was as if he mocked 
 The minstrel, " who had not to move," he said, 
 " Nor stir — should fate defraud him of a shred 
 Of his son's infancy ? much less his youth ! " 
 (Laughingly all this)'^ — ^' which to aid, in truth, 
 Hilnself , reserved on purpose, had not grown 
 Old, not too old — 't was best they kept alone 
 Till now, and never idly met till now : " 
 
 — Then, in the same breath, told Sordello how 
 All intimations of this eve's event 
 
 Were Hes, for Friedrich must advance to Trent, 
 Thence to Verona, then to Rome, there stop. 
 Tumble the Church down, institute a-top 
 The Alps a Prefecture of Lombardy ; 
 
 — " That's now ! — no prophesying what may 
 
 be 
 Anon, with a new monarch of the clime, 
 Native of Gesi, passing his youth's prime 
 At Naples. Tito bids my choice decide 
 On whom" . . . 
 
 "Embrace him, madman ! " Palma cried. 
 Who through the laugh saw sweat-drops burst 
 
 ■apace, 
 And his lips blanching : he did not embrace 
 Sordello, but he laid ISordeUo's hand 
 On his own eyes, mouth, forehead. 
 
 Understand, 
 This while Sordello was becoming flushed 
 And Sor- Ou* "f his whiteness ; thoughts 
 dellothe rushed, fancies .rushed ; 
 
 finally-de- He pressed his hand upon his head 
 termined, and signed 
 
 Both should forbear him. " Nay, the best 's be- 
 hind!" 
 Taurello laughed — not quite with the same 
 
 laugh : 
 ** The truth is, thus we scatter, ay, like chaff 
 These Guelfs, a despicable monk recoils 
 From : nor expect a fickle Kaiser spoils 
 Our triumph ! — Friedrich ? Think you, I in- 
 tend 
 Friedrich shall reap the fruits of blood I spend 
 And brain I waste ? Think you, the people clap 
 Their bauds at my out-hewing this wild gap 
 For any Friedrich to fill up ? 'T is mine — 
 That 's yours : I tell you, towards some such 
 
 design 
 Have I worked blindly, yes, and idly, yes, 
 
 And for another, yes — but worked no less 
 With instinct at my heart ; I else had swerved, 
 While now —look round ! My cunning has pre^ 
 
 served 
 Samminiato — that 's a central place 
 Secures us Florence, boy, —in Pisa's case. 
 By Jand as she by sea ; with Pisa ours. 
 And Florence, and Pistoia, one devoms 
 The land at leisure ! Gloriously dispersed — 
 Brescia, observe, MUan, Piaeenza first 
 That flanked us (ah, you know not !) m the 
 
 March ; 
 On these we pile, as keystone of our arch, 
 Romagna and Bologna, whose first span 
 Covered the Trentine and the Valsugan ; 
 Sofia's Egna by Bolgiano 's sure ! " . . . 
 So he proceeded : half of all this, pm'e 
 The devil Delusion, doubtless, nor the rest too 
 putting true, 
 
 forth his But what was undone he felt sure to 
 potency : do. 
 
 As ring by ring he wrung off, flung away 
 The pauldron-rings to give his sword-arm play — 
 Need of the sword now ! That would soon ad- 
 just 
 Aught wrong at present : to the sword intrust 
 Sordello's whiteness, undersize : 't was plain 
 He hardly rendered right to his own brain — 
 Like a brave hound, men educate to pride 
 Himself on speed or scent nor aught beside. 
 As though he could not, gift by gift, match men ! 
 Since Sor- Palma had listened patiently : but 
 dello, who when 
 
 began by 'T was time expostulate, attempt 
 rhyming, withdraw 
 
 Taurello from his child, she, without awe 
 Took off his iron arms from, one by one, 
 Sordello's shrinking shoulders, and, that done, 
 Made him avert his visage and relieve 
 Sordello (you might see his corselet heave 
 The while) who, loose, rose — tried to speak, 
 
 then sank : 
 They left him in the chamber. All was blank. 
 
 And even reeling down the narrow stair 
 Taurello kept up, as though unaware 
 Palma was by to guide him, the old device 
 — Something of Milan — "how we muster 
 
 thrice 
 The Torriani's strength there ; all along 
 Our own Visconti cowed them " — thus the song 
 Continued even while she bade him stoop, 
 Thrid somehow, by some glimpse of arrow-loop. 
 The turnings to tne gallery below. 
 Where he stopped short as Palma let bim 
 
 go. 
 When he had sat in silence long enough 
 Splintering the stone bench, braving a rebuff 
 She stopped the truncheon ; only to commence 
 One of Sordello's poems, a pretence 
 For speaking, some poor rhyme of " Elys' hair 
 And head that 's sharp and perfect like a pear. 
 So smooth and close are laid the few fine locks 
 May, even Stained Uke pale honey oozed from 
 from tlie topmost rooks 
 
 depths of Sun-blanched the livelong summer " 
 failure -from his worst 
 
 Performance, the Goito, as his first; 
 And that at end, conceiving from the brow 
 
SORDELLO 
 
 119 
 
 And open mouth no silence would serve now, 
 Went on to say the whole world loved that man 
 And, for that matter, thought his face, though 
 
 wan, 
 Eclipsed the Count's — he sucking in each 
 
 phrase 
 As if an angel spoke. The foolish praise 
 Ended, he drew her on his mailed knees, made 
 Her f a^e a framework with his hands, a shade, 
 A crown, an aureole : there must she remain 
 (Her little mouth compressed with smiling pain 
 As in his gloves she felt her tresses twitch) 
 To get the best look at, in fittest niche 
 Dispose his saint. That done, he kissed her 
 
 brow, 
 
 — " Lauded her father for his treason now,'' 
 He told her, " only, how could one suspect 
 The wit in him ? — whose clansman, recollect, 
 Was ever Salinguerra — she, the same, 
 Romano and his lady — so, might claim 
 
 To know all, as she should " — and thus begun 
 Schemes with a vengeance, schemes on schemes, 
 
 "not one 
 Fit to be told that foolish boy," he said, 
 " But only let Sordello Palma wed, 
 
 — Then!" 
 
 'T was a dim long narrow place at best : 
 Yet spring Midway a sole grate showed the fiery 
 to the sum- West, 
 
 mit of sue- As shows its corpse the world's end 
 cess, some split tomb — 
 
 A gloom, a rift of fire, another gloom. 
 Faced Palma — but at length Taurello set 
 Her free ; the grating held one ragged jet 
 Of fierce gold nre ; he lifted her within 
 The hollow underneath — how else begin 
 Fate's second marvellous cycle, else renew 
 The ages than with Palma plain in view ? 
 Then paeed the passage, hands clenched, head 
 
 erect. 
 Pursuing his discourse ; a grand unchecked 
 Monotony made out from his quick talk 
 And the recurring noises of his walk ; 
 
 — Somewhat too much like the o'ercnarged as- 
 
 sent 
 Of two resolved friends in one danger blent, 
 Who hearten each the other against heart ; 
 Boasting there 's naught to care for, when, 
 
 apart 
 The boaster, all 's to care for. He, beside 
 Some shape not visible, in power and pride 
 Approached, out of the dark, ginglingly near, 
 Nearer, passed close in the broad light, his ear 
 Crimson, eyeballs suffused, temples full- 
 fraught. 
 Just a snatch of the rapid speech you caught. 
 And on he strode into the opposite dark. 
 Till presently the harsh heel's turn, a spark 
 1' the stone, and whirl of some loose embossed 
 
 thong 
 That crashed against the angle aye so long 
 After the last, punctual to an amount 
 Of mailed great paces you could not but count, - — 
 Prepared you for the pacing back again. 
 And by the snatches you might ascertain 
 That, Friedrich's Prefecture surmounted, left 
 By this alone in Italy, they cleft 
 Asunder, crushed together, at command 
 
 Of none, were free to break up Hildebrand, 
 If he con- Rebuild, he and SorQeilo, Charle- 
 Bent to op- magne — 
 
 press the But garnished. Strength with Know- 
 world, le^gg^ .. jf ^g jgjg„ 
 
 Accept that compromise and stoop to give 
 
 Rome law, the Caesar's Representative." 
 
 Enough, that the illimitable flood 
 
 Of triumphs after triumphs, understood 
 
 In its faint reflux (you shall hear) sufficed 
 
 Young Ecelin for appanage, enticed 
 
 Him on till, these long quiet in their graves. 
 
 He found 'twas looked for that a whole life's 
 
 braves 
 Should somehow be made good ; so, weak and 
 
 worn. 
 Must stagger up at Milan, one gray mom 
 Of the to-come, and fight his latest fight. 
 But, Salingnerra's prophecy at height — 
 Just this He voluble with a raised arm and 
 decided, as stiff, 
 
 it now may A blaring voice, a blazing eye, as if 
 ^' He had our very Italy to keep 
 
 Or east away, or gather in a heap 
 To garrison the better — ay, his word 
 Was, " run the cucumber into a gourd. 
 Drive Trent upon Apulia" — at their pitch 
 Who spied the continents and islands which 
 Grew mulberry-leaves and sickles, in the 
 
 map — 
 (Strange that three such confessions so should 
 
 hap 
 To Palma, Dante spoke with in the clear 
 Amorous silence of the Swooning-sphere, ■ — 
 Cunizza^ as he called her ! Never ask 
 Of Palma more ! She sat, knowing her ta^k 
 Was done, the labor of it, — for, success 
 Concerned not Palma, passion's votaress) 
 Triumph at height, and thus Sordello crowned — 
 Above the passage suddenly a sound 
 Stops speech, stops walk : back shrinks Tau- 
 rello, bids 
 With large involuntary asking lids, 
 Palma interpret, " 'T is his own foot-stamp — 
 Your hand ! His summons ! Nay, this idle 
 
 damp 
 Befits not ! " Out they two reeled dizzily. 
 " Visconti 's strong at Milan," resumed he, 
 In the old, somewhat insignificant way — 
 (Was Palma wont, years afterward, to say) 
 As though the spirit's flight, sustained thus 
 
 far. 
 Dropped at that very instant. 
 
 Gone they are — 
 Pahna, Taurello ; Eglamor anon, 
 Ecelin, — only Naddo 's never gone ! 
 — Labors, this moonrise, what the Master 
 
 meant — 
 " Is Sqnarcialupo speckled? — purulent, 
 I 'd say, but when was Providence put out ? 
 He carries somehow handily about 
 His spite nor fouls himself ! " Goito's vines 
 Stand like a cheat detected — stark rough 
 
 lines. 
 The moon breaks through, a giay mean scale 
 
 against 
 The vault where, this eve's Maiden, thou re- 
 
 main'st 
 
120 
 
 SORDELLO 
 
 Like some fresh martyr, eyes fixed — who can 
 
 tell? 
 As Heaven, now all 's at end, did not so well, 
 . , Spite of the faith and victory, to 
 
 ^■iwe leave 
 
 done. -t*^ virgin quite to death in the lone 
 
 eve. 
 While the persisting hermit-bee ... ha ! wait 
 No longer : these in compass, forward fate I 
 
 BOOK THE SIXTH 
 
 The thought of Eglamor's least like a thought. 
 
 At the And yet a false one, was, "Man 
 
 close of a shrinks to naught 
 
 day or a If matched with symbols of immens- 
 
 life, ity ; 
 
 Must quail, forsooth, before a quiet sky 
 
 Or sea, too little for their quietude : " 
 
 And, truly, somewhat in Sordello's mood 
 
 Confirmed its speciousness, while eve slow sank 
 
 Down the near terrace to the farther bank. 
 
 And only one spot left from out the night 
 
 Glimmered upon the river opposite — 
 
 A breadth of watery heaven Uke a bay, 
 
 A sky-like space of water, ray for ray. 
 
 And star for star, one richness where they 
 
 mixed 
 As this and that wing of an angel, fixed. 
 Tumultuary splendors folded in 
 To die. Nor turned he till Ferrara's din 
 (Say, the monotonous speech from a mau's lip 
 Wlio lets some first and eager irarpose slip 
 In a new fancy's birth ; the speech keeps on 
 Though elsewhere its informing soul be gone) 
 — Aroused him, surely offered succor. Fate 
 Paused with this eve ; ere she precipitate 
 Herself, — best put off new strange thoughts 
 
 awhile. 
 That voice, those large hands, that portentous 
 
 smile, — 
 What help to pierce the future as the past, 
 Lay in the plaining city ? 
 
 And at last 
 The main discovery and prime concern, 
 AH that just now imported him to learn. 
 Truth's self, Uke yonder slow moon to com- 
 plete 
 Heaven, rose again, and, naked at his feet, 
 Lighted his old life's eveiy shift and change. 
 Past pro- Effort with counter-effort ; nor the 
 cednre is range 
 
 fitliest re- Of each looked wrong except wherein 
 viewed, it checked 
 
 Some other — which of these could he suspect. 
 Prying into them by the sudden blaze ? 
 The real way seemed made up of all the ways — 
 Mood after mood of the one mind in him ; 
 Tokens of the existence, bright or dim. 
 Of a transcendent all-embracing sense 
 Demanding only outward influence^, 
 A soul, in Palma's phrase, above his soul. 
 Power to uplift his power, — such moon's con- 
 trol 
 Over such sea-depths, — and their mass had 
 
 swept 
 Onward from the beginning and still kept 
 
 Its course : bui years and years the sky above 
 Held none, and so, untasked of any love. 
 His sensitiveness idled, now amort. 
 Alive now, and, to sullenness or sport 
 Given wholly up, disposed itself anew 
 At every passing instigation, grew 
 And dwindled at caprice, in foam-showers spilt, 
 Wedge-like insisting, quivered now a gilt 
 Shield in the sunshine, now a blinding race 
 Of whitest ripples o'er the reef — found place 
 For much display ; not gathered up and, nurled 
 Right from its heart, encompassing the world. 
 So had Sordello been, by consequence, 
 Without a function : others made pretence 
 To strength not half his own, yet had some core 
 Within, submitted to some moon, before 
 Them still, superior stUl whate'er their force, -- 
 Were able therefore to fulfil a course, 
 Nor missed life's crown, authentic attribute. 
 To each who lives must be a certain fruit 
 Of having lived in his degree, — a stage. 
 Earlier or later in men's pilgrimage. 
 To stop at ; and to this the spirits tend 
 Who, still discovering beauty without end. 
 Amass the scintillations, make one star 
 — Something unlike them, self-sustained, 
 
 afar, — 
 And meanwhile nurse the dream of being blest 
 By winning it to notice and invest 
 Their souls with alien glory, some one day 
 As more Whene'er the nucleus, gathering 
 apprecia- shape alway, 
 
 ble in its Round to the perfect circle — soon 
 entirety. <,, late, 
 
 According as themselves are formed to wait ; 
 Whether mere human beauty will suffice 
 
 — The yellow hair and the luxurious eyes. 
 Or human intellect seem best, or each 
 Combine in some ideal form past reach 
 
 On earth, or else some shade of these, some aim, 
 Some love, hate even, take their place, the same, 
 So to be served — all this they do not lose. 
 Waiting for death to live, nor idly choose 
 What must be Hell — a progress tlius pursued 
 Through all existence, still above the food 
 That 's offered them, still fain to reach beyond 
 The widened range, in virtue of their bond 
 Of sovereignty. Not that a Palma's Love, 
 A Salingjuerra's Hate, would equal prove 
 To swaying all Sordello : but why doubt 
 Strong, lie Some love meet for such strength, 
 needed some moon without 
 
 external Would match his sea ? — or fear, 
 strength: Good manifest. 
 Only the Best breaks faith ? — Ah, but the Best 
 Somehow eludes us ever, still might be 
 And is not ! Crave we gems ? No penury 
 Of their material round us ! Pliant earth 
 And plastic flame — what balks the mage his 
 birth 
 
 — Jacinth in balls or lodestone by the block ? 
 Flmders enrich the strand, veins swell the rock ; 
 Naught more ! Seek creatures ? Life 's i' the 
 
 tempest, thought 
 Clothes the keen hill-top, mid-day woods are 
 
 fraught 
 With fervors : human forms are well enough ! 
 But we had hoped, encouraged by the stuff 
 
SORDELLO 
 
 Ii2I 
 
 Profuse at nature's pleasure, men beyond 
 These actual men ! — and thus are over-fond 
 In aiding, from Good — the Best, from force 
 Divided — force (Combined, an ocean's course 
 From this our sed whose mere intestine pants 
 Mfeht seem at times sufficient to our wants. 
 
 External power ? If none be adequate, 
 And he stand forth ordained (a prouder fate) 
 Himself a law to his own sphere ? — remove 
 All incompleteness, for that law, that love ? 
 Nay, if all other laws be feints, — truth veiled 
 Helpfully to weak vision that had failed 
 To grasp aught but its special want, — for lure, 
 Embodied ? Stronger vision could endure 
 The unbodied want: no part — the whole of 
 
 truth 1 
 The People were himself ; nor, by the ruth 
 At their condition, was he less impelled 
 Even now, To alter the discrepancy beheld, 
 where can Than if, from the sound whole, a 
 he per- sickly part 
 
 ceive Subtracted were transformed, decked 
 
 »"'=•'' out with art. 
 
 Then palmed on him as alien woe — the Guelf 
 To succor, proud that lie forsook himself. 
 Internal All is himself ; all service, therefore, 
 strength rates 
 
 must suf- Alike, nor serving one part, immo- 
 flce then, lates 
 
 The rest: but all in time! "That lance of 
 
 yours 
 Makes havoc soon with Malek and his Moors, 
 That buckler's lined with many a giant's beard. 
 Ere long, our champion, be the lance upreared, 
 The buckler wielded handsomely as now ! 
 But view your escort, bear in mind your vow. 
 Count the pale tracts of sand to pass ere that. 
 And, if you hope we struggle through the flat. 
 Put lance and buckler by ! Next half-month 
 
 lacks 
 Mere sturdy exercise of ma«e and axe 
 To cleave this dismal brake of prickly-pear 
 Which bristling holds Cydippe by the hair. 
 Lames barefoot Agathon: this felled, we 'U 
 
 try 
 The picturesque achievements by and by — 
 Next life!" 
 
 Ay, rally, mock, People, urge 
 Your claims! — for thus he ventured, to the 
 
 verge. 
 Push a vain mummery which perchance dis- 
 trust 
 Of his fast-slipping resolution thrust 
 Likewise : accordingly the Crowd — (as yet 
 He had unconsciously contrived forget, 
 I' the whole, to dwell o' the points . . . one 
 
 might assuage 
 The signal horrors easier than engage 
 With a dim vulgar vast unobvious grief 
 Not to be fancied off, nor gained relief 
 In brilliant fits, cured by a happy quirk. 
 But by dim vulgar vast unobvious work 
 To corrrespond . . .) — this Crowd then, forth 
 
 they stood. 
 " And now content thy stronger vision, brood 
 On thy bare want ; uncovered, turf by turf, 
 Study the corpse-face through the taint-worma' 
 
 scurf ! '' 
 
 Down sank the People's Then ; up-rose their 
 Now 
 These sad ones render service to ! And how 
 His sym- Piteously little must that service 
 pathy prove 
 
 with the — Had surely proved in any case ! 
 people, to for, move 
 
 "' ' Each other obstacle away, let youth 
 
 Become aware it had surprised a truth 
 'T were service to impart — can truth be seized, 
 Settled forthwith, and, of the captive eased, 
 Its captor find fresh prey, since this alit 
 So happily, no gesture luring it. 
 The earnest of a flock to foflow ? Vain, 
 Most vain ! a life to spend ere this he chain 
 To the poor crowd's complacence : ere the crowd 
 Pronounce it captured, he descries a cloud 
 Its kin of twice the plume ; which he, in turn. 
 If he shall live as many lives, may leaiii 
 How to secure : not else. Then Mantua called 
 Back to his mind how certain bards were 
 thralled 
 
 — Buds blasted, but of breath more like per- 
 
 fume 
 Than Naddo's staring nosegay's carrion bloom ; 
 Some insane rose that burnt heart out in sweets, 
 A spendthrift in the spring, no summer greets ; 
 Some Dularete, drunk with truths and wine. 
 Grown bestial, dreaming how become divine. 
 Yet to surmount this obstacle, commence 
 With the commencement, nierits crownin£ ! 
 
 Hence 
 Must truth be casual truth, elicited 
 In sparks so mean, at intervals dispread 
 So rarely, that 't is like at no one time 
 Of the world's story has not truth, the prime 
 Of truth, the very truth which, loosed, had 
 
 hurled 
 The world's course right, been really in the 
 
 world 
 
 — Content the while with some mean spark by 
 
 dint 
 Of some chance-blow, the solitary hint 
 Of buried fire, which, rip earth's breast, would 
 
 stream 
 Sky-ward ! 
 
 Sordello's miserable gleam 
 Was looked for at the moment : he would dash 
 This badge, and all it brought, to earth, — abash 
 Taurello thus, perhaps persuaide him wrest 
 The Kaiser from his purpose, — would attest 
 His own belief, in any case. Before 
 Of which, He dashes it however, think once 
 try now more ! 
 
 the inher- For, were that little, truly service ? 
 ent force ! "Ay 
 I' the end, no doubt ; but meantime ? Plain 
 
 you spy 
 Its ultimate effect, but many flaws 
 Of vision blur each intervening cause. 
 Were the day's fraction clear as the life's sum 
 Of service. Now as filled as teems To-come 
 With evidence of good — nor too minute 
 A share to vie with evil I No dispute, 
 'T were fitliest maintain the Guelf s in rule : 
 That makes your life's work : but you have to 
 
 school 
 Your day's work on these natures circumstanced 
 
122 
 
 SORDELLO 
 
 Tims variously, which ypt, as each advaneed 
 Or might impede the Gnelr rule, must be moved 
 Nowj for the Then's sake, — hating what you 
 
 , ! loved. 
 Loving old hatreds ! Nor if one man tore 
 Brand upon temples, while his fellow wore 
 The aureole, would it task you to decide : 
 But, portioned duly out, the future vied 
 Never with the unparcelled present ! Smite 
 Or spare so much on warrant all so sl^ht ? 
 The present's complete sympathies to break. 
 Aversions bear with, for a future's sake 
 So feeble ? Tito ruined through one speck. 
 The Legate saved by his sole lightish fleck ? • 
 This were work, true, but work performed at 
 
 cost 
 Of other work ; aught gained here, elsewhere 
 
 lost. 
 For a new segment spoil an orb half-done ? 
 Rise with the People one step, and sink — one ? 
 Were it but one step, less than the whole face 
 Of things, your novel duty bids erase ! 
 Harms to abolish ! What, the prophet saith. 
 The minstrel singeth vainly then ? Old faith. 
 Old courage, only bom because of harms. 
 Were not, from highest to the lowest, charms ? 
 Flame may persist ; but is not glare as stanch ? 
 Where the salt marshes stagnate, crystals 
 
 branch ; 
 Blood dries to crimson ; Evil 's beautified 
 In every shape. Thrust Beauty then aside 
 And banish Evil ! Wherefore ? After all. 
 Is Evil a result less natural 
 Than Good ? For overlook the seasons' strife 
 With tree and flower, — the hideous animal hfe, 
 (Of which who seeks shall find a grimiing taunt 
 How much For his solution, and endure the vaunt 
 of man's Of nature's angel, as a child that 
 ill may be knows 
 
 removed ? Himself befooled, unable to propose 
 Aught better than the fooling) — arid but care 
 For men, for the mere People then and there, — 
 In these, could you but see that Good and 111 
 Claimed you alike! Whence rose their claim 
 
 but still 
 From 111, as fruit of 111 ? What else could knit 
 You theirs but Sorrow ? Any free from it 
 Were also free from yon ! Whose happiness 
 Could be distinguished in this morning's press 
 Of miseries ? — the fool's who passed a gibe 
 'On thee,' jeered he, ' so wedded to thy tiibe. 
 Thou earnest green and yellow tokens in 
 Thy very face that thou art Ghibellin ! ' 
 Much hold on you that fool obtained ! Nay 
 
 mount 
 Yet higher — and upon men's own account 
 How much Must evil stay : for, what is joy ? — 
 of ill ought to heave 
 
 to be re- Up one obstruction more, and coin- 
 moved ? mon leave 
 What was peculiar, by such act destroy 
 Itself ; a partial death is every joy ; 
 The sensible escape, enfranchisement 
 Of a sphere's essence : once the vexed — content. 
 The cramped — at large, the growing circle — 
 
 round. 
 All 's to begin again — some novel bound 
 To break, some new enlargement to entreat ; 
 
 The sphere though larger is not more completa 
 Now for Mankind's experience : who alone _ 
 Might style the unobstructed world his own ? 
 WTiom palled Goito with its perfect things ? 
 Bordello's self : whereas for Mankind springs 
 Salvation by ea«h hindrance interposed. 
 They climb ; life's view is not at once disclosed 
 To creatures caught up, on the summit left. 
 Heaven plain above them, yet of wings bereft : 
 But lower laid, as at the mountain's foot 
 So, range on range, the girdling forests shoot 
 Twixt your plain prospect and the throngs who 
 
 Height after height, and pierce mists, veil by 
 
 Teil, . , . 1 
 
 Heartened with each discovery ; m their soul. 
 The Whole they seek by Parts — but, found that 
 
 Whole, 
 Could they revert, enjoy past gains ? The space 
 Of time you .judge so meagre to embrace 
 The Parts were more than plenty, once attained 
 The Whole, to quite exhaust it : naught were 
 
 gained 
 But leave to look — not leave to do : Beneath 
 Soon sates the looker — look above, and Death 
 Tempts ere a tithe of Life be tasted. Live 
 First, and die soon enough, Sordello ! Give 
 If re- Body and spirit the first right they 
 
 moved, at claim, 
 
 what cost And pasture soul on n voluptuous 
 to Sor- shame 
 
 dello ? That you, a pageant-city's denizen. 
 
 Are neither vilely lodged 'midst Lombard men^ 
 Can force joy out of sorrow, seem to truck 
 Bright attributes away for sordid muck, 
 Yet manage from that very muck educe 
 Gold ; then subject nor scruple, to your cruce 
 The world's discardings! Though real ingots 
 
 pay 
 
 Your pains, the clods that yielded them are 
 
 clay 
 To all beside, — would clay remain, though 
 
 quenched 
 Your purging-fu-e ; who 's robbed then ? Had 
 
 you wrenched 
 An ampler treasure forth ! — As 't is, they crave 
 A share that ruins you and will not save 
 Them. Why should sympathy command you 
 
 quit 
 The course that makes your joy, nor will remit 
 Their woe ? Would all arrive at joy ? Reverse 
 Men win The order (time instructs you) nor 
 little coerce 
 
 thereby; Each nnit till, some predetermined 
 he loses mode, 
 
 *" • The total be emancipate ; men's road 
 
 Is one, men's times of travel many ; thwart 
 No enterprising soul's precocious start 
 Before the general march ! If slow or fast 
 All straggle up to the same ^oint at last. 
 Why grudge your having gained, a month ago. 
 The brakes at balm-shed, asphodels in blow. 
 While they were landlocked ? Speed their Then, 
 
 but how 
 This badge would suffer you improve youi 
 
 Now 1 " 
 His time of action for, against, or with 
 Our world (I labor to extract the pith 
 
SORDELLO 
 
 123 
 
 Of this his problem) grew, that even-tide, 
 
 Gigantic with its power of joy, beside 
 
 The world's eternity of impotence 
 
 To profit though at his whole joy's expense. 
 
 For he can "Make nothii^ of my day because 
 
 infinitely so brief ? 
 
 enjoy him- Rather make more : instead of joy, 
 
 ^®"' use grief 
 
 Before its novelty have time subside ! 
 
 Wait not for the late savor, leave untried 
 
 Virtue, the creaming honey-wine, quick squeeze 
 
 Vice like a biting spirit from the lees 
 
 Of life I Together let wrath, hatred^ lust. 
 
 All tyrannies in every shape, be thrust 
 
 Upon this Now, which time may reason out 
 
 As mischiefs, far from benefits, no doubt ; 
 
 But long ere then Sordello will have shipped 
 
 Away ; you teach him at Goito's crypt, 
 
 There 's a blank issue to that fiery thrul. 
 
 Stirring, the few cope with the many, still : 
 
 So much of sand as, quiet, makes a mass 
 
 Unable to produce three tufts of grass. 
 
 Shall, troubled by the whirlwind, render void 
 
 The whole calm glebe's endeavor : be employed I 
 
 And e'en though somewhat smart the Crowd for 
 
 this. 
 Contribute each his pang to make your bHss, 
 'T is but one pang — one blood-drop to the bowl 
 Which brimful tempts the sluggish asp uneowl 
 At last, stains ruddily the dull red cape, 
 And, kindling orbs gray as the unripe grape 
 Before, avails forthwith to disentrance 
 The portent, soon to lead a mystic dance 
 Among you ! For, who sits alone in Home ? 
 Have those great hands indeed hewn out a home, 
 And set me there to live ? Oh life, life-breath, 
 Life-blood, — ere sleep, come travail, life ere 
 
 death ! 
 This life stream on my soul, direct, obHque, 
 But always streaming ! Hindrances ? They 
 
 pique : 
 Helps ? such . . , but why repeat, my soul o'er- 
 
 tops 
 Each height, then every depth profoundlier 
 
 drops ? 
 Enough that I can live, and would live ! Wait 
 For some transcendent life reserved by Fate 
 To follow this ? Oh, never ! Fate, I trust 
 The same, my soul to ; for, as who flings dust, 
 Perchance (so facile was the deed) she checked 
 The void with these materials to affect 
 My soul diversely : these consigned anew 
 To naught by death, what marvel if she threw 
 A second and superber spectacle 
 Before me ? What may serve for sun, what still 
 Wander a moon above me ? What else wind 
 About me like the pleasures left behind, 
 And how shall some new flesh that is not flesh 
 Cling to me ? What 's new laughter ? Soothes 
 
 the fresh 
 Sleep like sleep ? Fate 's exhaustless for my sake 
 In brave resource : but whether bids she slake 
 My thirst at this first rivulet, or count 
 No draught worth Up save from some rocky 
 
 fount 
 Above i' the clouds, while here she 's provident 
 Of pure loquacious pearl, the soft tree-tent 
 Guards, with its face of reate and sedge, nor fail 
 
 The silver globules and gold-sparkling grail 
 At bottom ? Oh, -t were too absurd to slight 
 For the hereafter the to-day's delight I 
 Quench thirst at this, then seek next well-spring: 
 
 wear 
 Home-lilies ere strai^e lotus in my hair ! 
 Here is the Crowd, whom I with freest heart 
 OfBer to serve, contented for my part 
 Freed from To give life up in service, — only 
 a problem- grant 
 
 atic obli- That I do serve ; if otherwise, why 
 gation, -^ant 
 
 Aught further of me ? If men cannot choose 
 But set aside life, why should I refuse 
 The gift ? I take it — I, for one, engage 
 Never to falter through my pilgrimage — 
 Nor end it howHng that the stock or stone 
 Were enviable, truly : I, for one. 
 Will praise the world, you style mere anteroom 
 To palace — be it so ! shall I assume 
 — My foot the courtly gait, my tongue the trope. 
 My mouth the smirk, before the doors fly ope 
 One moment ? What ? with guarders row on 
 
 row. 
 Gay swarms of varletry that come and go, 
 Pages to dice with, waiting-^irls unlace 
 The plackets of, pert claimants help displace, 
 Heart-heavy suitors get a rank for, — laugh 
 At yon sleek parasite, break his own staff 
 'CrossBeetle-browsthe Usher's shoulder,— why, 
 Admitted to the presence by and by. 
 Should thought of having lost these make me 
 
 grieve 
 Among new joys I reach, for joys I leave ? 
 Cool citrine-crystals, fierce pyropus-stone. 
 Are floor-work there ! But do I let alone 
 That black-eyed peasant in the vestibule 
 Once and forever ? — Flooi^work ? No such fool .' 
 Kather, were heaven to forestall earth, I 'd say 
 I, is it, must be blessed ? Then, my own way 
 And ac- Bless me ! Give firmer arm and 
 cepting fleeter foot, 
 
 life on its I 'U thank you : but to no mad wings 
 own terms, transmute 
 These limbs of mine — our greensward was so 
 
 soft I 
 Nor camp I on the thunder-cloud aloft : 
 We feel the bliss distinctlier, having thus 
 Engines subservient, not mixed up with us. 
 Better move palpably through heaven: nor, 
 
 freed 
 Of fleshj foraooth, from space to space proceed 
 'Mid flying synods of worlds ! No : in heaven's 
 
 marge 
 Show Titan stUl, recumbent o'er his targe 
 Solid with stars — the Centanr at his game. 
 Made trenmlously out in hoary flame ! 
 
 "" Life ! Yet the very enp whose extreme dull 
 Dregs, even, I would quaff, was dashed, at full, 
 Aside so oft ; the death I fly, revealed 
 So oft a better life this life concealed. 
 And which sage, champion, martyr, through 
 Which, yet, each path 
 
 others Have hunted fearlessly — the horrid 
 
 have re- bath, 
 
 nounced: 'pim crippling - irons and the fler^ 
 ^"'^^ chair. 
 
 'T was well for them^ ; let me become aware 
 
124 
 
 SORDELLO 
 
 As they, and I relinquish life, too ! Let 
 What masters life disclose itself ! Forget 
 Vain ordinances, I have one appeal — 
 I feel, am what I feel, know what I feel ; 
 So much is truth to me. What Is, then ? Since 
 One object, viewed diversely, may evince 
 Beauty and ugliness — this way attract, 
 That way repel, — why gloze upon the fact ? 
 Why must a single of the sides be right ? 
 What bids choose this and leave the opposite ? 
 Where 's abstract Right for me ? — in youth en- 
 dued 
 With Right still present, still to he pursued, 
 Through all the interchange of circles, rife 
 Each with its proper law and mode of life. 
 Each to be dwelt at ease in : where, to sway 
 Absolute with the Kaiser, or obey 
 Implicit with his serf of fluttering heart. 
 Or, like a sudden thought of God's, to start 
 Up, Brutus in the presence, then go shout 
 That some should pick the unstrung jewels oul — 
 Each, well!" 
 
 And, as in moments when the past 
 Gave partially enfranchisement, he cast 
 Himself quite through mere secondary states 
 Of his soul's essence, little loves and hates, 
 Because Into the mid deep yearnings overlaid 
 there is a By these ; as who should pierce hUl, 
 life beyond plain, grove, glade, 
 life, And on into the very nucleus probe 
 
 That first determined there exist a globe. 
 As that were easiest, half the globe dissolved. 
 So seemed Bordello's closing-truth evolved 
 By his flesh-half's break up ; the sudden swell 
 Of his expanding soul showed HI and Well, 
 Sorrow and Joy, Beauty and Ugliness, 
 Virtue and Vice, the Larger and the Less, 
 All qualities, in fine, recorded here. 
 Might be but modes of Time and this one sphere. 
 Urgent on these, but not of force to bind 
 Eternity, as Time — as Matter — Mind, 
 If Mind, Eternity, should choose assert 
 Their attributes within a Life : thus girt 
 With circumstance, next change beholds them 
 
 cinct 
 Quite otherwise — with Good and 111 distinct, 
 Joys, sorrows, tending to a like result — 
 Contrived to render easy, difficult. 
 This or the other course of . . . what new bond 
 In place of flesh may stop their flight beyond 
 Its new sphere, as that course does harm or good 
 To its arrangements. Once this understood. 
 As suddenly he felt himself alone. 
 Quite out of Time and this world ; all was 
 
 known. 
 What made the secret of his past despair ? 
 — Most imminent when he seemed most aware 
 Of his own self-sufficiency ; made mad 
 By craving to expand the power he had. 
 And not new power to be expanded ? — just 
 This made it ; Soul on Matter being thrust, 
 Joy comes when so much Soul is wreaked in 
 
 Time 
 On Matter, — let the Soul's attempt sublime 
 Matter beyond the scheme and so prevent 
 By more or less that deed's accomplishment. 
 And Sorrow follows ; Sorrow how avoid ? 
 Let the employer match the thing employed, 
 
 Fit to the finite his infimtyj 
 
 And thus proceed forever, m degree 
 
 And with Changed but in kind the same, still 
 
 new condi- limited 
 
 tions of To the appointed circumstance and 
 
 success, dead 
 
 To all beyond. A sphere is but a sphere ; 
 
 Small, Great, are merely terms we bandy here ; 
 
 Since to the spirit's absoluteness aU 
 
 Are like. Now, of the present sphere we call 
 
 Life, are conditions ; take but this among 
 
 Many ; the body was to be so long 
 
 Youthful, no longer : but, since no control 
 
 Tied to that body's purooses his soul. 
 
 She chose to imderstand the body's trade 
 
 More than the body's self— had fain conveyed 
 
 Her boundless, to the body's bounded lot. 
 
 Hence, the soul permanent, the body not, — 
 
 Scarcely its minute for enjoying hei'e, — 
 
 The soul must needs instruct her weak compeer, 
 
 Run o'er its capabihties and wring 
 
 A joy thence, she held worth experiencing : 
 
 Which, far from half discovered even, — lo. 
 
 The minute gone, the body's power let go 
 
 Apportioned to that joy's acquirement ! Broke 
 
 Nor such Morning o'er earth, he yearned for 
 
 as, in this, all it woke — 
 
 produce From the volcano's vapor-flag, winds 
 
 failure. ligigt 
 
 Black o'er the spread of sea, — down to the moist 
 
 Dale's silken barley-spikes sullied with rain, 
 
 Swayed earthwards, heavily to rise again — 
 
 The Small, a sphere as perfect as the Great 
 
 To the soul's absoluteness. Meditate 
 
 Too long on such a morning's cluster-chord 
 
 And the whole music it was framed afford, — 
 
 The chord's might half discovered, what should 
 
 pluck 
 One string, his finger, was found palsy-struck. 
 And then no marvel if the spirit, shown 
 A saddest sight — the body lost alone 
 Through her officious proffered help, deprived 
 Of this and that enjoyment Fate contrived, — 
 Virtue, Good, Beauty, each allowed slip hence, — 
 Vaingloriously were fain, for recompense. 
 To stem the ruin even yet, protract 
 The body's terra, supply the power it lacked 
 From her infinity, compel it learn 
 These qualities were only Time's concern. 
 And body may, with spirit helping, barred — 
 Advance the same, vanquished — obtain reward, 
 Reap joy where sorrow was intended grow, 
 Of Wrong make Right, and turn 111 Good below. 
 And the result is, the poor body soon 
 Sinks under what was meant a wondrous boon, 
 Leaving its bright accomplice all aghast. 
 
 So much was plain then, proper in the past ; 
 To be complete for, satisfy the whole 
 Series of spheres — Eternity, his soul 
 Needs must exceed, prove mcomplete for, each 
 Single sphere — Time. But does our know- 
 ledge reach 
 No farther ? Is the cloud of hindi'ance broke 
 But, even But by the failing of the fleshly yoke, 
 here, is Its loves and hates, as now when 
 failure in- death lets soar 
 evitable 1 Sordello, self-sufficient as before. 
 Though during the mere space that shall elapse 
 
SORDELLO 
 
 125 
 
 'TVixt his enthralment in new bonds, perhaps ? 
 Must life be ever just escaped, which should 
 Have been enjoyed? — nay, might have been 
 
 and would. 
 Each purpose ordered right — the soul 's no whit 
 Beyond the body's purpose under it — 
 Like yonder breadth of watery heaven, a bay. 
 And that sky-space of water, ray for ray 
 And star for star, one richness where they mixed 
 As this and that wing of an angel, fixed. 
 Tumultuary splendors folded in 
 To die — would soul, proportioned thus, begin 
 Exciting discontent, or surelier quell 
 The body if, aspiring, it rebel ? 
 But how so order life ? Still brutalize 
 The soul, the sad world's way, with muffled eyes 
 To all that was before, all that shall be , 
 After this sphere — all and each quality 
 Save some sole and immutable Great-Good 
 And Beauteous whither fate has loosed its hood 
 „ To follow? Never may some soul 
 
 Or may ggg ^jj 
 
 S be — The Great Before and After, and 
 
 success „tl»e Small 
 
 also JNow, yet be saved by this the smi- 
 
 plest lore. 
 And take the single course prescribed before. 
 As the king-bird with ages on his plumes 
 Travels to die in his ancestral glooms ? 
 But where descry the Love that shall select 
 That course ? Here is a soul whom, to affect. 
 Nature has plied with all her means, from trees 
 And flowers e'en to the Multitude ! — and these, 
 Decides he save or no ? One word to end ! 
 
 Ah, my Sordello, I this once befriend 
 And speak for you. Of a Power above you still 
 Which, utterly incomprehensible. 
 Is out of rivalry, which thus you can 
 _,, Love, though imloving all conceived 
 
 Iv^'Tb' tyman- 
 lavet ^ What need ! And of — none the 
 
 minutest duct 
 To that out-nature, naught that would instruct 
 And so let rivalry begin to live — 
 But of a Power its representative 
 Who, heing for authority the same. 
 Communication difPerent, should claim 
 A course, the first chose but this last revealed — 
 This Human clear, as that Divine concealed — 
 What utter need 1 
 
 What has Sordello found ? 
 Or can his spirit go the mighty round. 
 End where poor Eglamor begun ? So, says 
 Old fable, the two eagles went two ways 
 About the world : where, in the midst, they met. 
 Though on a shifting waste of sand, men set 
 Jove's temple. Quick, what has Sordello found ? 
 For they approa<}h — ■ approach — that 
 Sordello foot's rebound 
 
 knows ; Palma ? No, Salinguerra though in 
 
 mail ; 
 They mount, have reached the threshold, dash 
 
 the veil 
 Aside — and you divine who sat there dead. 
 Under his foot the badge : still, Palma said, 
 A triumph lingering in the wide eyes. 
 Wider than some spent swimmer's if he spies 
 Help from above in his extreme despair. 
 
 And, head far back on shoulder thrust, turns 
 
 there 
 With short quick passionate cry : as Palm* 
 
 In one great kiss, her lips upon his breast. 
 It beat. 
 
 By this, the hermit-bee has stopped 
 His daj;'s toil at Goito : the new-cropped 
 Dead vine-leaf answers, now 't is eve, he bit, 
 Twirled so, and filed all day : the mansion 's fit, 
 God counselled for. As easy guess the word 
 That passed betwixt them, and become the 
 
 third 
 To the soft small unfrighted bee, as tax 
 Him with one fault — so, no remembrance 
 
 S?» .'"„?, Of the stone maidens and the font of 
 insect Stone 
 
 knows He, creeping through the crevice, 
 
 sooner. leaves alone. 
 
 Alas, my friend, alas Sordello, whom 
 Anon they laid within that old font-tomb, 
 And, yet again, alas ! 
 
 And now is 't worth 
 Our while bring back to mind, much less set 
 
 forth 
 How Salinguerra extricates himself 
 Without Sordello ? Ghibellin and Guelf 
 May fight their fiercest out ? If Richard 
 
 sulked 
 In durance or the Marquis paid his mulct. 
 Who cares,Sordello gone ? The upshot, sure, 
 On his die- Was peace ; our chief made some 
 appear- frank overture 
 
 ance from That prospered ; compliment feE 
 the stage, thick and fast 
 On its disposer, and Taurello passed 
 With foe and friend for an outstripping soul. 
 Nine days at least. Then, — fairly reached the 
 
 goal, — 
 He, by one effort, blotted the great hope 
 Out of his mind, nor further tried to cope 
 With Este, that mad evening's style, but sent 
 Away the Legate and the League, content 
 No blame at least the brothers had incurred, 
 — Dispatched a message to the Monk, he heard 
 Patiently first to last, scarce shivered at. 
 Then curled his hmbs up on his wolfskin mat 
 And ne'er spoke more, — informed the Fer- 
 
 rarese 
 He but retained their rule so long as these 
 Lingered in pupilage, — and last, no mode 
 Apparent else of keeping safe the road 
 From Germany direct to Lorabardy 
 For Friedrich, — none, that is, to guarantee 
 The faith and promptitude of who should next 
 Obtain Sofia's dowry, — sore perplexed — 
 (Sofia being youngest of the tribe 
 The next Of daughters, Ecelin was wont to 
 aspirant bribe 
 
 can press The envious magnates with — nor, 
 forward ; since he sent 
 
 Henry of Egna this fair child, had Trent 
 Once failed the Kaiser's purposes — " we lost 
 Egna last year, and who takes Egna's post — 
 Opens the Lombard gate if Friedrich knock ? ") 
 lumself espoused the Lady of the Rock 
 In pure necessity, and, so destroyed 
 
126 
 
 SORDELLO 
 
 His slender last of chances, quite made void 
 Old prophecy, and spite of all the schemes 
 Overt and covert,youth's deeds, ague's dreams. 
 Was sucked into Komano. And so hushed 
 He up this evening's work, that, when 't was 
 
 brushed 
 Somehow against by a blind chronicle 
 Which, chronicling whatever woe befell 
 Ferrara, noted this the obscure woe 
 Of " SaUnguerra's sole son Giacomo 
 Deceased, fatuous and doting, ere his sire," 
 The townsfolk rubbed their eyes, could but 
 
 admire 
 Which of Sofia's five was meant. 
 
 The chaps 
 Of earth's dead hope were tardy to coUapse, 
 Obliterated not the beautiful 
 Distinctive features at a crash : but dull 
 And duller these, next year, as Guelf s withdrew 
 Each to his stronghold. Then (securely too 
 JEcelin at Campese slept ; close by. 
 Who likes may see him in Solagna lie. 
 With cushioned head and gloved hand to denote 
 The cavalier he was) — then his heart smote 
 Young EceUn at last ; long since adult. 
 And, save Vicenza's business, what result 
 In blood and blaze ? (So hard to intercept 
 Sordello tiU his plain withdrawal !) Stepped 
 Salin- Then ite new lord on Lombardy. I' 
 
 guerra'a the nick 
 
 part laps- Of time when Eoelin and Alberic 
 S^S*" Closed with TaureUo, come pre- 
 
 ='=^"°' ciselynews 
 
 That in Verona half the souls refuse 
 Allegiance to the Marquis and the Count — 
 Have cast them from a throne they bid him 
 
 mount, 
 Their PodestJl, through his ancestral worth, 
 Ecelin flew there, and the town henceforth 
 Was wholly his — Taurello sinking back 
 From temporary station to a track 
 That suited. News received of this acquist, 
 Friedrich did come to Lombardy : who missed 
 Taurello then ? Another year : they took 
 Vicenza, left the Marquis scarce a nook 
 For refuge, and, when hundreds two or three 
 Of Guelf s conspired to call themselves " The 
 
 Free," 
 Opposing Alberic, — vile Bassanese, — 
 (Without Sordello !) — Ecelin at ease 
 Slaughtered them so observably, that oft 
 A little Salinguerra looked with soft 
 Blue eyes up, asked his sire the proper age 
 To get appointed his proud uncle's page. 
 More years passed, and that sire had dwindled 
 
 down 
 To a mere showy turbulent soldier, grown 
 Better through age, his parts still m repute. 
 Subtle — how else ? — but hardly so astute 
 As his contemporaneous friends professed ; 
 Undoubtedly a brawler : for the rest, 
 Knovm by each neighbor, and allowed for, let 
 Keep his incorrigible ways, nor fret 
 Men who would miss their boyhood's bugbear : 
 
 " trap 
 The ostrich, suffer our bald osprey flap 
 A battered pinion 1 " — was the word. In fine. 
 One flap too much and Venice's marine 
 
 Was meddled with ; no overlooking that ! 
 She captured him in his Ferrara, fat 
 And florid at a banquet, more by fraud 
 Than force, to speak the truth ; there 's slander 
 
 laud 
 Ascribed you for assisting eighty years 
 To pull his death on such a man ; fate shears 
 The Hfe-cord prompt enough whose last fine 
 
 thread 
 You fritter ; so, presiding his board-head. 
 The old smile, your assurance all went well 
 With Friedrich (as if he were like to tell !) 
 In rushed (a plan contrived before) our friends. 
 Made some pretence at fighting, some amends 
 For the shame done his eighty years — (apart 
 The principle, none found it in his heart 
 To be much angry with Taurello) — gained 
 Their galleys with the prize, and what remained 
 But carry him to Venice for a show ? 
 — Set him, as 't were, down gently — free to go 
 His gait, inspect our square, pretend observe 
 The swallows soaring their eternal curve 
 'Twixt Theodore and Mark, if citizens 
 Gathered importunately, fives and tens, 
 'To point their children the Magnifico, 
 Who, with All but a monarch once in firm-land, 
 his go 
 
 brother, His gait among them now — "it 
 played it took, indeed, 
 
 """*' FuUy this Ecelin to supersede 
 
 That man," remarked the seniors. Singular ! 
 Sordello's inability to bar 
 
 Rivals the stage, that evening, mainly brought 
 About by his strange disbelief that aught 
 Was ever to be done, — this thrust the Twain 
 Under Taurello's tutelage, — whom, brain 
 And heart and hand, he forthwith in one rod 
 Indissolubly bound to bafBe God 
 Who loves the world — and thus allowed the 
 
 thin 
 Gray wizened dwarfish devU Ecelin, 
 And massy-muscled big-boned Alberip 
 (Mere man, alas !) to put his problem quick 
 To demonstration — prove wherever 's will 
 To do, there 's plenty to be done, or ill 
 Or good. Anointed, then, to rend and rip — 
 Kings of the gag and fiesh-hook, screw and 
 
 whip, 
 They plagued the world : a touch of HUde- 
 
 brand 
 (So far from obsolete !) made Lombards band 
 Together, cross their coats as for Christ's cause. 
 And saving Milan win the world's applause. 
 Ecelin perished : and I think grass grew 
 Never so pleasant as in Valley Eii 
 And went By San Zenon where Alberic in turn 
 horne duly Saw his exasperated captors burn 
 to their Seven children and their mother ; 
 reward. then, regaled 
 
 So far, tied on to a wild horse, was trailed 
 To death through raunce and bramble-bush. 1 
 
 take 
 God's part and testify that 'mid the brake 
 Wild o'er his castle on the pleasant knoU, 
 You hear its one tower left, a belfry, toll — 
 The earthquake spared it last year, laying flat 
 The modem church beneath, — no harm in 
 
 thatl 
 
SORDELLO 
 
 127 
 
 Chirrups the contumacious grasshopper, 
 Bustles the lizard and the cushats chirre 
 Above the ravage : there, at deep of day 
 A week since, heard I the old Canon say 
 He saw with his own eyes a barrow hurst 
 And Alberic's huge skeleton unhearsed 
 Only five years ago. He added, " June 's 
 The month for carding off our first cocoons 
 The silkworms fabricate " — a double news, 
 Nor he nor I could tell the worthier. Choose ! 
 And Naddo gone, all 's gone ; not Eglamor 1 
 Believe, I knew the face I waited for, 
 A guest my spirit of the golden courts ! 
 Oh strange to see how, despite ill-reports. 
 Disuse, some wear of years, that face retained 
 Its joyous look of love ! Suns waxed and 
 
 waned. 
 And still ray spirit held an upward flight, 
 Spiral on spiral, gyres of life and light 
 More and more gorgeous — ever that face there 
 The last admitted ! crossed, too, with some care 
 As perfect triumph were not sure for all. 
 Good will But, on a few, enduring damp must 
 — ill luck, fall, 
 
 get second — A transient struggle, haply a pain- 
 prize : f ul sense 
 Of the inferior nature's clinging — whence 
 Slight starting tears easily wiped away. 
 Fine jealousies soon stifled in the play 
 Of irrepressible admiration — not 
 Aspiring, aU considered, to their lot 
 Who ever, just as they prepare ascend 
 Spiral on spiral, wish thee well, impend 
 Thy frank delight at their exclusive track, 
 That upturned fervid face and hair put back ! 
 
 Is there no more to say ? He of the rhymes — 
 Many a tale, of this retreat betimes. 
 Was bom : Sordello die at once for men ? 
 The Chroniclers of Mantua tired their pen 
 Telling how Sordello Prince Visconti saved 
 Mantua, and elsewhere notably behaved^ 
 Who thus, by fortune ordering events, 
 Passed with posterity, to all intents. 
 For just the god he never could become. 
 As Slight, Bard, Gallant, men were never 
 
 dumb 
 In praise of him : while what he should have 
 
 been, 
 Could be, and was not — the one step too mean 
 For him to take, — we suffer at this day 
 Because of : Ecelin had pushed away 
 Its chance ere Dante could arrive and take 
 What least That step Sordello spurned, for the 
 one may I world's sake : 
 award He did much — but SordeUo's chance 
 
 Bordello ? ^g^ gone. 
 Thus, had Sordello dared that step alone, 
 Apollo had been compassed — 'twas a fit 
 
 He wished should go to him, not he to it 
 — As one content to merely be supposed 
 Singing or fighting elsewhere, while he dozed 
 Really at home — one who was chiefly glad 
 To have achieved the few real deeds he had. 
 Because that way assured they were not worth 
 Doing, so spared from doing them henceforth — 
 A tree that covets fruitage and yet tastes 
 Never itself, itself. Had he embraced 
 Their cause then, men had plucked Hesperian 
 
 fruit 
 And, praising that, just thrown him in to boot 
 All he was anxious to appear, but scarce 
 Solicitous to be. A sorry farce 
 Such life is, after all ! Cannot I say 
 This — that He lived for some one better thing ? 
 must per- this way. — 
 
 force con- Lo, on a heathy brown and nameless 
 tent him, 1,^1] 
 
 By sparkling Asolo, in mist and chill. 
 
 Morning just up, higher and higher runs 
 
 A child barefoot and rosy. See ! the sun 's 
 
 On the square castle's inner-court's low wall 
 
 Like the chine of some extinct animal 
 
 Half tamed to earth and flowers ; and through 
 
 the haze 
 (Save where some slender patches of gray 
 
 maize 
 Are to be overleaped) that boy has crossed 
 The whole hiU-side of dew and powder-frost 
 Mattii^ the balm and mountain camomile. 
 Up and up goes he, singing all the while 
 Some unintelligible words to beat 
 The lark, God's poet, swooning at his feet. 
 So worsted is he at "the few fine locks 
 Stained like pale honey oozed from topmost 
 
 rocks 
 Sun-blanched the livelong summer," — all that '3 
 
 left 
 Of the Goito lay ! And thus bereft, 
 Sleep and forget, Sordello ! In effect 
 He sleeps, the feverish poet — I suspect 
 As no prize Not utterly companionless ; but, 
 at all, has friends, 
 
 contented Wake up ! The ghost 's gone, and 
 ™e- • the story ends 
 
 I 'd fain hope, sweetly; seeiMt,_peri or ghoul. 
 That spirits are conjectured fair or foul, 
 Evil or good, judicious authors think, 
 According as they vanish in a stink 
 Or in a perfume. Friends, be frank ! ye snuff 
 Civet, I warrant. ReaUy ? Like enough ! 
 Merely the savor's rareness ; any nose 
 May ravage with impunit;^ a rose : 
 Kifle a musk-pod and 't will ache like yours I 
 I 'd tell you that same pungency ensures 
 An after-gust, but that were overbold. 
 Who would has heard SordeUo's story told. 
 
128 
 
 PIPPA PASSES 
 
 PIPPA PASSES 
 
 A DRAMA 
 
 Sordello did not prove commercially suc- 
 cessfiil, and Browning was reluctant to go on 
 publishing his poetry at his father's expense. 
 " One day," Mr. Gosse says, "as the poet was 
 discussing the matter with Mr, Edward Moxon, 
 the publisher, the latter remarked that at that 
 time he was bringing out some editions of the 
 old Elizabethan dramatists in a comparatively 
 cheap form, and that if Mr. Browning would 
 consent to print his poems as pamphlets, using 
 this cheap type, the expense would be very in- 
 considerable." Browning accepted the sugges- 
 tion at once and began the issue of a cheap se- 
 ries of pamphlets, each sixteen octavo pages in 
 double column, printed on poor paper and sold 
 first for a sixpence each, the price afterward be- 
 ing raised to a sliilling and then to half a crown. 
 The series consisted of eight numbers under the 
 general fanciful title Bells and Pomegranates. 
 Apparently the passage in Exodus xxviii. 33, 
 " And beneath upon the hem of it [the priest's 
 robe] thou shalt make pomegranates of blue, 
 and of purple, and of scarlet, round about the 
 hem thereof ; and bells of gold between them 
 round about," suggested the title, but as all 
 sorts of speculations sprang up about its sig- 
 nificance, Browning appended the following 
 note to the eighth and final number of the 
 
 "Here ends my first series of Bdls and Pome- 
 granates, and I take the opportunity of explain- 
 ing, in reply to inquiries, that I only meant by 
 that title to indicate an endeavor towards some- 
 thing like an alteration, or mixture, of music 
 with discoursing, sound with sense, poetry with 
 thought ; which looks too ambitious, thus ex- 
 pressed, so the symbol was preferred. It is 
 little to the purpose, that such is actually one of 
 the most familiar of the many Rabbinical (and 
 Patristic) acceptations of the phrase ; because I 
 confess that, letting authority alone, I suppose 
 the bare words, in such juxtaposition, would 
 sufiieiently convey the desired meaning. ' Faith 
 
 and good works ' is another fancy, for instance, 
 and perhaps no easier to arrive at ; yet Giotto 
 placed a pomegranate fruit in the hand of Dante, 
 and RafBaeUo crowned his Theology (in the 
 Camera della Segnatura) with blossoms of the 
 same ; as it the Bellari and Vasari would be 
 sure to come after, and explain that it was 
 merely ' simbolo delle buone opere — il qual Pomo- 
 granato fu perb usato nelle veste del Pontefice 
 appresso gli Ebrei.'' 
 
 "R. B." 
 
 The first number of Bells and Pomegranates 
 contained Pippa Passes. It was published in 
 1841 and was introduced by the following dedi- 
 catory preface : — 
 
 ADVERTISEMENT 
 
 Two or three years ago I wrote a Play, about 
 which the chief matter I much care to recollect 
 at present is, that a PitfuU of good-natured 
 people applauded it : ever since, I have been 
 desirous of doing something in the same way 
 that should better reward their attention. 
 What follows, I mean for the first of a series of 
 Dramatical Pieces, to come out at intervals ; 
 and I amuse myself by fancying that the cheap 
 mode in which they appear, will for once help 
 me to a sort of Pit-audience again. Of course 
 such a work must go on no longer than it is 
 liked ; and to provide against a too certain and 
 but too possible contingency, let me hasten to say 
 now — what, if I were sure of success, I would 
 try to say circumstantially enough at the close 
 — that I dedicate my best intentions most ad- 
 miringly to the Author of Ion — most affection- 
 ately to Sergeant Talfourd. 
 
 Robert Browning. 
 
 The phrases in the closing sentence were af- 
 terward used by Browning as a dedication when 
 he discarded the advertisement in the collectivs 
 editions of his poems. 
 
 Pippa. 
 
 Ottima. 
 
 Sebald. 
 
 Foreign Students. 
 
 Gottlieb. 
 
 Schramm. 
 
 PERSONS 
 
 Jules. 
 
 Phene. 
 
 Austrian Police. 
 
 Bluphocks. 
 
 Lmoi and his mother. 
 
 Poor Girls. 
 
 MoNsiONOR and his attendants. 
 
PIPPA PASSES 
 
 129 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 New Year's Day at Asolo in the Trevisan 
 
 A large mean airy chamber. A girl^ PippA, from the 
 silk-mills^ springing out of bed. 
 
 Day! 
 
 Faster and more fast, 
 O'er night's brim, day boils at last : 
 Boils, pure gold, o'er the cloud-cup's brim 
 Where spurting and suppressed it lay. 
 For not a froth-flake touched the rim 
 Of yonder gap in the solid gray 
 Of the eastern cloud, an hour away ; 
 But forth one wavelet, then another, curled, 
 TiU the whole sunrise, not to be suppressed. 
 Rose, reddened, and its seething breast 
 Flickered in bounds, grew gold, then overflowed 
 the world. 
 
 Oh Day, if I squander a wavelet of thee, 
 
 A mite of ray twelve-hours' treasure. 
 
 The least of thy gazes or glances, 
 
 (Be they grants thou art bound to or gifts above 
 
 measure) 
 One of thy choices or one of thy chances, 
 (Be they tasks God imposed thee or freaks at 
 
 thy pleasure) 
 — My Day, if I squander such labor or leisure. 
 Then shame fall on Asolo, mischief on me ! 
 
 Thy long blue solemn hours serenely flowing. 
 Whence earth, we feel, gets steady help and 
 
 good — 
 Thy fitful sunshine-minutes, coming, going. 
 As if eartii turned from work in gamesome 
 
 mood — 
 All shall be mine ! But thou must treat me not 
 As prosperous ones are treated, those who live 
 At hand here, and enjoj' the higher lot. 
 In readiness to take what thou wilt give, 
 And free to let alone what thou refusest ; 
 For, Day, my holiday, if thou ill-usest 
 Me, who am only Pippa, — old-year's sorrow. 
 Cast ofP last night, will come again to-morrow ; 
 Whereas, if thou prove gentle, I shall borrow 
 Sufiioientstrengrth of thee for new-year's sorrow. 
 All other men and women that this earth 
 Belongs to, who all days alike possess. 
 Make general plenty cure particular dearth. 
 Get more joy one way, if another, less : 
 Thou art my single day, God lends to leaven 
 What were all earth else, with a feel of 
 
 heaven, — 
 Sole light that helps me through the year, thy 
 
 sun's ! 
 Try now ! Take Asolo's Four Happiest Ones — 
 And let thy morning rain on that superb 
 Great haughty Ottiraa ; can rain disturb 
 Her Sebald's homage ? All the while thy rain 
 Beats fiercest on her shrub-house window-pane 
 He will but press the closer, breathe more warm 
 Against her cheek ; how should she mind the 
 
 storm? 
 And, morning past, if mid-day shed a gloom 
 O'er Jules and Phene, — what care bride and 
 
 gro'yri 
 
 Save for their dear selves? 'Tis their mar- 
 riage-day : 
 And while they leave church and go home their 
 
 way. 
 Hand clasping hand.within each breast would be 
 Sunbeams and pleasant weather spite of thee. 
 Then, for another trial, obscure thy eve 
 With mist, — will Luigi and his mother grieve — 
 The lady and her child, unmatched, forsooth. 
 She in her age, as Lmgi in his youth. 
 For true content ? Ilie cheerful town, warm, 
 
 close 
 And safe, the sooner that thou art morose. 
 Receives them. And yet once again, outbreak 
 In storm at night on Monsignor, they make 
 Such stir about, — whom they expect from 
 
 Rome 
 To visit Asolo, his brothers' home. 
 And say here masses proper to release 
 A soul from pain, — what storm dares hurt his 
 
 peace ? 
 Calm would he pray, with his own thoughts to 
 
 ward 
 Thy thunder off, nor want the angels' guard. 
 But Pippa — just one such mischance would 
 
 spoil 
 Her day that lightens the next twelvemonth's 
 
 ton 
 
 At wearisome silk-winding, coU on coil ! 
 And here I let time slip for naught ! 
 
 Aha, yon foolhardy sunbeam, caught 
 
 With a single splash from my ewer ! 
 
 You that would mock the best pursuer. 
 
 Was my basin over-deep ? 
 
 One splash of water ruins you asleep. 
 
 And up, up, fleet your brilliant bits 
 
 Wheeling and counterwheeling. 
 
 Reeling, broken beyond healing : 
 
 Now grow together on the ceiling ! 
 
 That will task your wits. 
 
 Whoever it was quenched fire first, hoped to see 
 
 Morsel after morsel flee 
 
 As merrily, as giddily . . . 
 
 Meantime, what lights my sunbeam on. 
 
 Where settles by degrees the radiant crixjple ? 
 
 Oh, is it surely blown, my martagon ? 
 
 New-blown and ruddy as St. Agnes' nipple. 
 
 Plump as the flesh-bunch on some Turk bird's 
 poU ! 
 
 Be sure if corals, branching 'neath the ripple 
 
 Of ocean, bud there, — fairies watch unroU 
 
 Such turban-fiowers ; I say, such lamps disperse 
 
 Thick red flame through that dusk green uni- 
 verse ! 
 
 I am queen of thee, floweret ! 
 
 And each fleshy blossom 
 
 Preserve I not — (safer 
 
 Than leaves that embower it. 
 
 Or shells that embosom) 
 
 — From weevil and chafer ? 
 
 Laugh through my pane then ; solicit the bee j 
 Gibe him, be sure ; and, in midst of thy glee. 
 Love thy queen, worship me ! 
 
 — Worship whom else ? For am I not, this day, 
 Whate'er 1 please ? What shall I please to-day ? 
 My morn, noon, eve and night — how spend my 
 
»3o 
 
 PIPPA PASSES 
 
 To-morrow I must be Pippa who winds silk, 
 The whole year round, to earn just bread and 
 
 milk: 
 But, this one day, I have leave to go, 
 And play out my fancy's fullest games ; 
 I may fancy aU day — and it shall be so — 
 That I taste of the pleasures, am called by the 
 
 names 
 Of the Happiest Four in our Asolo ! 
 
 See ! Up the hillside yonder, through the morn- 
 ing, 
 Some one shall love me, as the world calls love : 
 I am no less than Ottima, take warning ! 
 The gardens, and the great stone house above. 
 And other house for shrubs, all glass in front. 
 Are mine ; where Sebald steals, as he is wont. 
 To court me, while old Luca yet reposes : 
 And therefore, till the shrub-house door un- 
 
 I . . . what now? — give abundant cause for 
 
 prate 
 About me — Ottima, I mean — of late. 
 Too bold, too confident she '11 stiU face down 
 The spitefullest of talkers in our town. 
 How we talk in the little town below ! 
 But love, love, love — there's better love, I 
 
 know! 
 This foolish love was only day's first offer ; 
 I choose my next love to defy the scofPer : 
 For do not our Bride and Bridegroom sally 
 Out of Fossagno church at noon ? 
 Their house looks over Orcana valley : 
 Why should not I be the bride as soon 
 As Ottima ? For 1 saw, beside. 
 Arrive last night that little bride — 
 Saw, if you call it seeing her, one flash 
 Of the pale snow-pure cheek and bla^k bright 
 
 tresses. 
 Blacker than all except the black eyelash ; 
 I wonder she contrives those lids no dresses ! 
 — So strict was she, the veil 
 Should cover close her pale 
 Pure cheeks — a bride to look at and scarce 
 
 touch. 
 Scarce touch, remember, Jules ! For are not such 
 Used to be tended, flower-hke, every feature. 
 As if one's breath would fray the lily of a 
 
 creature ? 
 A soft and easy life these ladies lead : 
 Whiteness in us were wonderful indeed. 
 Oh, save that brow its virgin dimness. 
 Keep that foot its lady primness. 
 Let those ankles never swerve 
 From their exquisite reserve. 
 Yet have to trip along the streets like me. 
 All but naked to the knee ! 
 How will she ever grant her Jules a bliss 
 So startling as her real first infant kiss ? 
 Oh, no — not envy, this ! 
 
 — Not envy, sure ! — for if you gave me 
 
 Leave to take or to refuse. 
 
 In earnest, do you think I 'd choose 
 
 That sort of new love to enslave me ? 
 
 Mine should have lapped me round from the 
 
 beginning: 
 As little fear of losing it as winning : 
 
 Lovers grow cold, men learn to hate their wives, 
 And only parents' love can last our lives. 
 At eve the Son and Mother, gentle pair. 
 Commune inside our turret : what prevents 
 My being Luigi ? While that mossy lair 
 Of lizards through the winter-time is stirred 
 With each to each imparting sweet intents 
 For this new-year, as brooding bird to bird — 
 (For I observe of late, the evening walk 
 Of Luigi and his mother, always ends 
 Inside our ruined turret, where they talk,_ 
 Calmer than lovers, yet more kind than friends) 
 — Let me be cared about, kept out of harm. 
 And schemed for, safe in love as with a charm t 
 Let me be Luigi ! If I only knew 
 Wliat was my mother's face — my father, too I 
 
 Nay, if you come to that, best love of all 
 Is God's ; then why not have God's love be^ 
 
 fall 
 Myself as, in the palace by the Dome, 
 Monsignor ? — who to-night will bless the home 
 Of his dead brother ; and God bless in turn 
 That heart which beats, those eyes which 
 
 mildly bum 
 With love for all men ! I, to-night at least. 
 Would be that holy and beloved priest. 
 
 Now wait ! — even I already seem to share 
 
 In God's love : what does New-year's hymn 
 
 declare ? 
 What other meaning do these verses bear ? 
 
 All service ranks the same with God : 
 
 If now, as formerly he trod 
 
 Paradise, his presence Jills 
 
 Our earth, each only as God wills 
 
 Can work — God's puppets, best and worst. 
 
 Are we ; there is no last nor first. 
 
 Say not "a small event ! " Why "small " ? 
 Costs it more pain that this, ye call 
 A " great event,'' should come to pass, 
 Than that ? Untwine me from the mass 
 Of deeds which make up life, one deed 
 Power shall fall short m or exceed ! 
 
 And more of it, and more of it ! — oh yes — 
 
 I will pass each, and see their happiness, 
 
 And envy none — being just as great, no doubt. 
 
 Useful to men, and dear to God, as they 1 
 
 A pretty thing to care about 
 
 So mightily, this single holiday ! 
 
 But let the sun shine ! Wherefore repine ? 
 
 — With thee to lead me, O Day of mine, 
 
 Down the grass path gray with dew, 
 
 Under the pine-wood, blind with boughs. 
 
 Where the swallow never flew 
 
 Nor yet cicala dared carouse — 
 
 No, dared carouse ! {She enters the street 
 
 I. MORNING 
 
 Up the Hillside, inside the Shnii-howse. LncA's Wife, 
 Ottima, and li^r Paramour, the German Sebald. 
 
 Sebald. [sings.} Let the watching lids wink ! 
 
 Day 's ablaze with eyes, think 1 
 Deep into the night, drink ! 
 
PIPPA PASSES 
 
 131 
 
 Ottima. Night ? Such may be your Rhine- 
 land nights, perhaps ; 
 But this blood-red beam through the shutter's 
 
 chink 
 — We call such light, the morning : let us see ! 
 Mind how you grope your way, though 1 How 
 
 these tall 
 Naked geraniums strag^e ! Push the lattice 
 Behind that frame ! — Nay, do I bid you ? — 
 
 Sebald, 
 It shakes the dust down on me ! Why, of 
 
 course 
 The slide-bolt catches. Well, are you content. 
 Or must 1 find you something else to spoil ? 
 Kiss and be friends, my ISebald 1 Is 't full 
 
 morning ? 
 Oh, don't speak then I 
 
 beb. Ay, thus it used to be ! 
 
 Ever ^our house was, I remember, shut 
 Till mid-day ; I observed that, as I strolled 
 On mornings through the vale here ; country 
 
 girls 
 Were noisy, washing garments in the brook, 
 Hinds drove the slow white oxen up the hills : 
 But nOj your house was mute, would ope no eye ! 
 And wisely : you were plotting one thing there. 
 Nature, another outside. I looked up — 
 Bough white wood shutters, rusty iron bars. 
 Silent as death, blind in a flood of light. 
 Oh, I remember t — and the peasants laughed 
 And said, " The old man sleeps with the young 
 
 wife." 
 This house was his, this chair, this window — 
 
 his. 
 Otti. Ah, the clear morning I I can see Saint 
 
 Mark's ; 
 That black streak is the belfry. Stop : Vioenza 
 Should lie . . . there 's Padua, plain enough, 
 
 that blue ! 
 Look o'er my shoulder, follow my filler ! 
 
 Seb. Morning? 
 
 It seems to me a night with a sun added. 
 Where 's dew, where 's freshness ? That bruised 
 
 plant, I bruised 
 In getting through the lattice yestereve. 
 Droops as it did. See, here 's my elbow's mark 
 I' the dust o' the sUI. 
 Otti. Oh, shut the lattice, pray ! 
 
 Seb. Let me lean out. I cannot scent blood 
 
 here, 
 Foul as the morn may be. 
 
 There, shut the world out ! 
 How do you feel now, Ottima ? There, curse 
 The world and all outside ! Let us throw off 
 This mask : how do you bear yourself ? Let 's 
 
 out 
 With all of it ! 
 
 Otti. Best never speak of it. 
 
 Seb. Best speak again and yet again of it. 
 Till words C3ase to be more than words. " His 
 
 blood," 
 For instance — let those two words mean, "His 
 
 blood" 
 And nothing more. Notice, I '11 say them now, 
 " His blood." 
 
 Otti. Assuredly if I repented 
 
 The deed — 
 Seb. Repent ? Who should repent, or why ? 
 
 What puts that in your head ? Did I once say 
 That 1 repented ? 
 
 Otti. No ; I said the deed . . . 
 
 Seb. "The deed" and "the event" — just 
 now it was 
 "Our passion's fruit" — the devil take such 
 
 cant I 
 Say, once and always, Luca was a wittol, 
 I am his cut-throat, you are . . . 
 
 Otti. Here 's the wine ; 
 
 I brought it when we left the house above. 
 And glasses too — wine of both sorts. Black ? 
 White then? : 
 
 Seb. But am not I his out-throat? What 
 areyou ? 
 
 Otti. There trudges on his business from the 
 Duomo 
 Benet the Capuchin, with his brown hood 
 And bare feet ; always in one place at church. 
 Close under the stone wall by the south entry. 
 I used to take him for a brown cold piece 
 Of the wall's self, as out of it he rose 
 To let me pass — at first, I say, I used : 
 Now, so has that dumb figure fastened on me, 
 I rather should account the plastered wall 
 A piece of him, so chilly does it strike. 
 This, Bebald ? 
 
 Seb. No, the white wine — the wMte wine ! 
 Well, Ottima, I promised no new year 
 Should rise on us the ancient shameful way ; 
 Nor does it rise. Pour on! To your black 
 
 eyes ! 
 Do you remember last damned New Year's day ? 
 
 Otti. You brought those foreign prints. We 
 looked at them 
 Over the wine and fruit. I had to scheme 
 To get him from the fire. Nothing but saying 
 His own set wants the proof-mark, roused him 
 
 up 
 To hunt them out. 
 
 Seb. 'Faith, he is not ahve 
 
 To fondle you before my face. 
 
 Otti. Do you 
 
 Fondle me then I Who means to take your lif? 
 For that, my Sebald ? 
 
 Seb. Hark you, Ottima ! 
 
 One thing to guard against. We '11 not make 
 
 much 
 One of the other — that is, not make more 
 Parade of warmth, chUdish officious coil, 
 Than yesterday : as if, sweet, I supposed 
 Proof upon proof were needed now, now first. 
 To show I love you — yes, still love you — lova 
 
 you 
 In spite of Luca and what 's come to him 
 — Suire sign we had him ever in our thoughts. 
 White sneering old reproachful face and all ! 
 We '11 even quarrel, love, at times, as if 
 We still could lose each other, were not tied 
 By this : conceive you ? 
 
 Otti. Love ! 
 
 Seb. Not tied so sure ! 
 
 Because though I was wrought upon, have 
 
 struck 
 His insolence back into him — am I 
 So surely yours ? — therefore forever yours ? 
 
 Otti. Love, to be wise, (one counsel pays 
 another,) 
 
132 
 
 PIPPA PASSES 
 
 Should we have — months ago, when first we 
 
 loved, 
 For instance that May morning we two stole 
 Under the green ascent of sycamores — 
 If we had come upon a thing like that 
 Suddenly . . . 
 
 Seb. " A thing" — there again — " athing ! " 
 
 Otti, Then, Venus' body, had we come upon 
 My husband Luca Gaddi's murdered corpse 
 Within there, at his couch-foot, covered close — 
 Would you have pored upon it ? Why persist 
 In poring now upon it ? For 't is here 
 As much as there in the deserted house : 
 You cannot rid your eyes of it. For me, 
 Now he is dead I hate him worse ; X hate . , . 
 Dare you stay here ? I would go back and hold 
 His two dead hands, and say, ' 'I hate you worse, 
 Luca, than" . . . 
 
 Seb, Off, off — take your hands off mine, 
 'T is the hot evening — off ! oh, morning is it ? 
 
 Otti. There 's one thing must be done ; you 
 know what thing. 
 Come in and help to carry. We may sleep 
 Anywhere in the whole wide house to-night. 
 
 Seb. What would come, think you, if we let 
 him lie 
 Just as he is ? Let him lie there until 
 The angels take him ! He is turned by this 
 Off from his face beside, as yon will see. 
 
 Otti. Tills dusty pane might serve for look- 
 ing-glass. 
 Three, four — four gray hairs ! Is it so you said 
 A plait of hair should wave across my neck ? 
 No — this way. 
 
 Seb. Ottima, I would give your neck. 
 
 Each splendid shoulder, both those breasts of 
 
 yours. 
 That this were undone ! KiUing ! Kill the 
 
 world, 
 So Luca lives again ! — ay, lives to sputter 
 His fulsome dotage on you — yes, and feign 
 Surprise that I return at eve to sup. 
 When all the morning I was loitering here — 
 Bid me dispatch my business and begone. 
 I would . , . 
 
 Otti. See ! 
 
 Seb. No, I '11 finish. Do you think 
 
 T fear to speak the bare truth once for all ? 
 All we have talked of, is, at bottom, fine 
 To suffer ; there 's a recompense in guilt ; 
 One must be venturous and fortunate ; 
 What is one young for, else ? In age we 'U sigh 
 O'er the wild reckless wicked days flown over ; 
 Still, we have lived : the vice was in its place. 
 But to have eaten Luca's bread, have worn 
 His clothes, have felt his money swell my 
 
 purse — 
 Do lovers in romances sin that way ? 
 Why, I was starving when I used to call 
 And teach you music, starving while you 
 
 plucked me 
 These flowers to smell ! 
 
 Otti. My poor lost friend ! 
 
 Seb. He gave me 
 
 Life, nothing less : what if he did reproach 
 My perfidy, and threaten, and do more — 
 Had he no right ? What was to wonder at ? 
 He sat by ua at table quietly : 
 
 Why must you lean across till our cheeks 
 
 touched ? . 
 
 Could he do less than make pretence to strike f 
 'Tis not the crime's sake — I'd commit ten 
 
 crimes 
 Grreater, to have this crime wiped out, undone I 
 And you — ho w feel you ? Feel you for me ? 
 
 Otti. Well then, I love you better now than 
 ever. 
 And best (look at me while I speak to you) — 
 Best for the crime ; nor do I grieve, in truth. 
 This mask, this simulated ignorance, 
 This affectation of simplicity. 
 Falls off our crime ; this naked crime of ours 
 May not now be looked over : look it down ! 
 Great ? let it be great ; but the joys it brought, 
 Pay they or no its price ? Come : they or it 1 
 Speak not ! The past, would you give up the 
 
 past 
 Such as it is, pleasure and crime together ? 
 Give up that noon I owned my love for you ? 
 The garden's silence : even the single bee 
 Persisting in his toil, suddenly stopped. 
 And where he hid you only could surmise 
 By some campanula chalice set a-swing. 
 Who stammered — " Yes, I love you ? " 
 
 Seb. And I drew 
 
 Back; putfar back yourface with both myhands 
 Lest you should grow too full of me — your face 
 So seemed athirst for my whole soul and body I 
 
 Otti. And when I ventured to receive yon 
 here, 
 Made you steal hither in the mornings — 
 
 Seb. When 
 
 I used to look up 'neath the shrub-house here, 
 Till the red fire on its glazed windows spread 
 To a yellow haze ? 
 
 Otti. Ah — my sign was, the sun 
 
 Inflamed the sere side of yon chestnut-tree 
 Nipped by the first frost. 
 
 oeb. You would always laugh 
 
 At my wet boots : I had to stride through grass 
 Over my ankles. 
 
 Otti. Then our crowning night ! 
 
 Seb. The July night ? 
 
 Otti. The day of it too, Sebald I 
 
 When heaven's pillars seemed o'erbowed with 
 
 heat, 
 Its black-blue canopy suffered descend 
 Close on us both, to weigh down each to each, 
 And smother up all life except our life. 
 So lay we till the storm came. 
 
 Seb. How it came I 
 
 Otti. Buried in woods we lay, you recollect ; 
 Swift ran the searching tempest overhead ; 
 And ever and anon some bright white shaft 
 Bm-ned through the pine-tree roof, here burned 
 
 and there, 
 As if God's messenger through the close wood 
 
 screen 
 Plunged and replunged his weapon at a venture, 
 Feeling for guilty thee and me : then broke 
 The thunder like a whole sea overhead — 
 
 Seb. Yes! 
 
 Otti. — While I stretched myself upon you, 
 hands 
 To hands, my mouth to your hot mouth, and 
 shook 
 
PIPPA PASSES 
 
 133 
 
 AU my locks loose, and covered you with 
 
 them — 
 You, Sebald, the same you ! 
 
 Seb, Slower, Ottima ! 
 
 Qui. And as we lay — 
 
 Seb. Less vehemently ! Love me ! 
 
 Forgive me ! Take not words, mere words, to 
 
 heart! 
 Your breath is worse than wine. Breathe slow, 
 
 speak slow ! 
 Do not lean on me ! 
 
 Otti. Sebald, as we lay, 
 
 Rising and falling only with our pants. 
 Who said, " Let death come now ! 'T is right 
 
 to die ! 
 Eight to be punished ! Naught com.pletes such 
 
 bliss 
 But woe ! " Who said that ? 
 
 Seb. How did we ever rise ? 
 
 Was 't that we slept ? Why did it end ? 
 
 Otti. I felt you 
 
 Taper into a point the ruffled ends 
 Of my loose locks 'twixt both your humid lips. 
 My hair is fallen now ; knot it again ! 
 
 Seb, I kiss you now, dear Ottima, now and 
 now! 
 This way? Will you forgive me — be once 
 
 more 
 My great queen ? 
 
 Otti. Bind it thrice about my brow ; 
 
 Crown me your queen, your spirit's arbitress, 
 Magnificent in sin. Say that ! 
 
 Seb. I crown you 
 
 My great white queen, my spirit's arbitress. 
 Magnificent . . . 
 
 \From without is heard the voice 0/ Pipfa singing — 
 
 The year 's at the spring 
 And day 's at the morn ; 
 Morning 's at seven ; 
 The hillside 's dew-jiearled ; 
 The lark 's on the wing; 
 The snail 's on the thorn: 
 God 's in his heaven — 
 All 's right with the world ! 
 
 [PippA passes. 
 
 Seb. God 's in his heaven ! Do you hear 
 that ? Who spoke ? 
 You, you spoke ! 
 
 Otti. Oh — that little ragged girl ! 
 
 She must have rested on the step: we give 
 
 them 
 But this one holiday the whole year round. 
 Did you ever see our silk-mills — their inside ? 
 There are ten silk-miUs now belong to you. 
 She stoops to pick my double heartsease . . . 
 
 Sh! 
 She does not hear : call you out louder ! 
 
 Seb. Leave me I 
 
 60, get your clothes on — dress those shoulders ! 
 
 Otti. Sebald ? 
 
 Seb. Wipe off that paint ! I hate you. 
 
 Otti. Miserable! 
 
 Seb. My God, and she is emptied of it now ! 
 Outright now ! — how miraculously gone 
 All of the grace — had ske not strange grace 
 once? 
 
 Why, the blank cheek hangs listless as it likes, 
 No purpose holds the features up together. 
 Only the cloven brow and puckered chin 
 Stay in their places : and the very hair. 
 That seemed to have a sort of life in it. 
 Drops, a dead web 1 
 Otti. Speak to me — not of me ! 
 
 Seb. — That round great full-orbed face, 
 where not an angle 
 Broke the delicious indolence — all broken ! 
 Otti. To me — not of me ! Ungrateful, per- 
 jured cheat ! 
 A coward too : but ingrate 's worse than all ! 
 Beggar — my slave — a fawning, cringing lie ! 
 Leave me ! Betray me ! I can see your drift ! 
 A lie that walks and eats and drinks ! 
 
 Seb. My God! 
 
 Those morbid olive faultless shoulder-blades — 
 I should have known there was no blood be- 
 neath ! 
 Otti. You hate me then? You hate me 
 
 then? 
 Seb. To think 
 
 She would succeed in her absurd attempt. 
 And fascinate by sinning, show herself 
 Superior — guUt from its excess superior 
 To innocence ! That little peasant's voice 
 Has righted all again. Though I be lost, 
 I know which is the better, never fear. 
 Of vice or virtue, purity or lust. 
 Nature or trick ! I see what I have done. 
 Entirely now ! Oh I am proud to feel 
 Such torments — let the world take credit 
 
 thence — 
 I, having done my deed, pay too its price ! 
 I hate, hate — curse you ! God 's in his heaven ! 
 Otti. ^ —Me! 
 
 Me ! no, no, Sebald, not yourself — hill me ! 
 Mine is the whole crime. Do but kill me — 
 
 then 
 Yourself — then — presently — first hear me 
 
 speak ! 
 I always meant to kill myself — wait, you ! 
 Lean on my breast — not as a breast ; don't 
 
 love me 
 The more because you lean on me, my own 
 Heart's Sebald ! There, there, both deaths 
 presently ! 
 Seb. My brain is drowned now — quite 
 drowned : all I feel 
 Is ... is, at swift-recurring intervals, 
 A hurry-down within me, as of waters 
 Loosened to smother up some ghastly pit ; 
 There they go — whirls from a black fiery sea ! 
 Otti. Not me — to him, O God, be merciful 1 
 
 Talk by the way, while Pippa is passing /rom the hill- 
 side to Orcana. Foreign Students of painting and 
 sculpture, from Venice, assembled opposite the liouse 
 ofjvjjis, a young French statuary, at Fassagno. 
 
 1st Student. Attention ! My own post is be- 
 neath this window, but the pomegranate clump 
 yonder will hide three or four of you with a 
 little squeezing, and Schramm and his pipe 
 must lie flat in the balcony. Four, five — 
 who 's a defaulter ? We want everybody, for 
 Jules must not be suffered to hurt his bride 
 when the jest 's found out. 
 
134 
 
 PIPPA PASSES 
 
 2d Stud. All here ! Only our poet 's away 
 — never having much meant to he present, 
 moonstrike him ! The airs of that fellow, that 
 Giovacchino ! He was in violent love with 
 himself, and had a fair prospect of thriving^ in 
 his suit, so unmolested was it, — when suddenly 
 a woman falls in love with him, too ; and out 
 of pure jealousy he takes himself off to Trieste, 
 immortal poem and all : whereto is this pro- 
 phetical epitaph appended already, as filu- 
 phocks assures me, — '^ Here a mammoth-poem 
 lies, Fouled to death by butterfiies." His own 
 fault, the simpleton ! Instead of cramp coup- 
 lets, each like a knife in your entrails, he 
 should write, says Bluphocks, hoth classically 
 and intelligibly. — ^scMlapius, an Epic. Cat- 
 alogue of the drugs : Hebe^s plaister — One strip 
 Cools your lip. Phoebus^ emulsion — One bottle 
 Clears your throttle. Mercury's bolus — One box 
 Cures . . . 
 
 &d Stud. Subside, my fine fellow ! If the 
 marriage was over by ten o'clock, Jules will 
 certainly he here in a minute with his hride. 
 
 2d Stud. Good ! — only, so should the poet's 
 muse have been universally acceptable, aays 
 Bluphocks, et canibus nostris . . . and Delia 
 not hotter known to our literary dogs than the 
 hoy Giovacchino ! 
 
 1st Stud. To the point, now. Where 's Gott- 
 lieb, the new-comer ? Oh, — listen, Gottlieh, 
 to what has called down this piece of friendly 
 vengeance on Jules, of which we now assemble 
 to witness the winding-up. We are all agreed, 
 all in a tale, observe, when Jules shall burst out 
 on us in a fury by and by : I am spokesman — 
 the verses that are to undeceive Jules bear my 
 name of Lutwyche — but each professes him- 
 self alike insulted by this strutting stone- 
 squarer, who came along from Paris to Munich, 
 and thence with a crowd of us to Venice and 
 Possagno here, but proceeds in a day or two 
 alone again — oh, alone indubitably ! — to 
 Rome and Florence. He, forsooth, take up his 
 
 Eortion with these dissolute, brutalized, heart- 
 !ss bunglers ! — so he was heard to call ua all. 
 Now, is Schramm brutalized, I should like to 
 know ? Am I heartless ? 
 
 Gottlieb. Why, somewhat heartless ; for, sup- 
 pose Jules a coxcomb as much as you choose, 
 still, for this mere coxcombry, you will have 
 brushed off — what do folks style it ? — the 
 bloom of his life. Is it too late to alter ? 
 These love-letters now, you call his — I can't 
 laugh at them. 
 
 ith Stud. Because you never read the sham 
 letters of our inditing which drew forth these. 
 
 Gott. His discovery of the truth will be 
 frightful. 
 
 ith Stud. That's the joke. But you should 
 have joined us at the beginning : there 's no 
 doubt he loves the girl — loves a model he 
 xoight hire by the hour ! 
 
 Gott. See here ! " He has been accustomed," 
 he writes, " to have Canova's women about 
 him, in stone, and the world's women beside 
 him, in flesh ; these being as much below, as 
 those above, his soul's aspiration : but now he 
 is to have the reality." There yon laugh 
 
 again ! I say, you wipe off the very dew of his 
 youth. J, 
 
 1st Stud. Schramm ! (Take the pipe out of 
 his month, somebody!) Will Jules lose the 
 bloom of his youth ? , , . . 
 
 ' Schramm. Nothing worth keepmg is ever 
 lost in this world : look at a blossom — it drops 
 presently, having done its service and lasted its 
 time ; but fruits succeed, and where would he 
 the blossom's place could it continue ? As weU 
 affirm that your eye is no longer in your body, 
 because its earUest favorite, whatever it may 
 have first loved to look on, is dead and done 
 with — as that any affection is lost to the soul 
 when its first object, whatever happened first to 
 satisfy it, is superseded in due course. Keep 
 hut ever looking, whether with the body's eye 
 or the mind's, and you will soon find something 
 to look on! Has a man done wondering at 
 women? — there follow men, dead and alive, 
 to wonder at. Has he done wondering at men ? 
 — there 's God to wonder at : and the faculty 
 of wonder may he, at the same time, old and 
 tired enough with respect to its first object, and 
 yet young and fresh sufficiently, so far as con- 
 cerns its novel one. Thus . . . 
 
 1st Stud. Put Schramm's pipe into his 
 mouth again ! 'There, you see ! WeU, this 
 Jules ... a wretched fribble — oh, I watched 
 his disportings at Possagno, the other day ! 
 Canova s gallery — you know ; there he marches 
 first resolvedly past great works by the dozen 
 without vouchsafing an eye : all at once he stops 
 full at the Psiche-fanciulla — cannot pass that 
 old acquaintance without a nod of encourage- 
 ment — "In your new place, beauty? Then 
 behave yourself as well here as at Munich — I 
 see you ! " Next he posts himself deliberately 
 before the unfinished Pieta for half an hour 
 without moving, till up he starts of a sudden, 
 and thrusts his very nose into — I say, into — 
 the group ; by which gesture you are informed 
 that precisely the sole point he had not fully 
 mastered in Canova's practice was a certain 
 method of using the drill in the articulation of 
 the knee-joint — and that, likewise, has he mas- 
 tered at length ! Good-by, therefore, to poor 
 Oanova — whose gallery no longer needs detain 
 his successor Jules, the predestinated novel 
 thinker in marble ! 
 
 5th Stud. Tell him about the women : go on 
 to the women ! 
 
 Is* Stud. Why, on that matter he could never 
 be supercilious enough . How should we be other 
 (he said) than the poor devils you see, with those 
 debasing habits we cherish ? He was not to 
 wallow in that mire, at least : he would wait, 
 and love only at the proper time, and meanwhile 
 put up with the Psiche-fanciulla. Now, I hap- 
 pened to hear of a young Greek —real Greek 
 girl at Malamoeco ; a true Islander, do you 
 see, with Alciphron's "hair like sea^moss'"' — 
 Schramm knows ! — white and quiet as an ap- 
 parition, and fourteen years old at farthest, — 
 a daughter of Natalia, so she swears — that hag 
 Natalia,who helps us to models at three lire an 
 hour. We selected this girl for the heroine of 
 our jest. So first, Jules received a scented 
 
PIPPA PASSES 
 
 I3S 
 
 letter — somebody had seen his Tydeus at the 
 Academy, and my picture was nothing to it : a 
 profound admirer bade him persevere — would 
 make herself known to him ere long. (Paolina, 
 my little friend of the Fenice, transcribes di- 
 vinely.) And in due time, the mysterious cor- 
 respondent gave certain hints of her peculiar 
 charms — the pale cheeks, the black hair — 
 whatever, in short, had struck us in our Mala- 
 mocco model: we retained her name, too — 
 Fhene, which is, by interpretation, sea-eagle. 
 Now, think of Jules iinding himself distin- 
 
 Snished from the herd of us by such a creature ! 
 a his very first answer he proposed marrying 
 his monitress : and fancy us over these letters, 
 two, three times a day, to receive and dispatch ! 
 I concocted the main of it : relations were in 
 the way — secrecy must be observed — in fine, 
 would he wed her on trust, and only speak to 
 her when they were indissolubly united ? St — 
 st — Here they come ! 
 
 6tk Stud. Both of them! Heaven's love, 
 speak softly, speak within yourselves 1 
 
 5lh Stud. Look at the bridegroom ! Half 
 his hair in storm and half in calm, — patted 
 down over the left temple, — like a frothy cup 
 one blows on to cool it : and the same old blouse 
 that he murders the marble in. 
 
 '2d Stud. Not a rich vest like yours, Hanni- 
 bal Scratchy ! — rich, that your face may the 
 better set it off. 
 
 6th Stud. And the bride I Yes, sure enough, 
 our Phene ! Should you have known her in her 
 clothes ? How magnificently pale I 
 
 Gott. She does not also take it for earnest, I 
 hope? 
 
 Is* Stud. Oh, Nataha's concern, that is! 
 We settle with Natalia. 
 
 6tk Stud. She does not speak — has evidently 
 let out no word. The only thing is, will she 
 equally remember the rest of her lesson, and 
 repeat correctly all those verses which are to 
 break the secret to Jules ? 
 
 Gott. How he gazes on her ! Pity — pity! 
 
 1st Stud. They go in : now, silence ! You 
 three, — not nearer the window, mind, than that 
 pomegranate : just where the little girl, who a 
 few minutes ago passed us singing, is seated 1 
 
 II. NOON 
 
 Over Orcana. The house of Juleb, who crosses its 
 ihresliold with Phene ; she is silent^ on which Jules 
 
 Do not die, Phene ! I am yours now, you 
 Are mine now ; let fate reach me how she likes. 
 If you '11 not die : so, never die ! Sit here — 
 My work-room's single seat. I over-lean 
 This length of hair and lustrous front ; they 
 
 turn 
 Like an entire flower upward : eyes, lips, last ^ 
 Your chin — no, last your throat turns: 'tis 
 
 their scent 
 Pulls down my face upon you. Nay, look ever 
 This one way till I change, grow you — I could 
 Change into you, beloved ! 
 
 You by me, 
 And I by you ; this is your hand in mine. 
 
 And side by side we sit : all 's true. Thank 
 
 God! 
 I have spoken : speak you ! 
 
 my life to come ! 
 My Tydeus must be carved that 's there in clay ; 
 Yet how be carved, with you about the room ? 
 Where must 1 place you ? When I think that 
 
 once 
 This room-full of rough block-work seemed my 
 
 heaven 
 Without you ! Shall I ever work again, 
 Get fairly into my old ways again, 
 Bid each conception stand while, trait by trait, 
 My hand transfers its lineaments to stone ? 
 Will my mere fancies live near you, their 
 
 truth — 
 The live truth, passing and repassing me. 
 Sitting beside me ? 
 
 Now speak ! 
 
 Only firet. 
 See, all your letters ! Was 't not well con- 
 trived ? 
 Their hiding-place is Psyche's robe ; she keeps 
 Your letters next her skin : which drops out 
 
 foremost ? 
 Ah, — this that swam down like a first moon- 
 beam 
 Into my world ! 
 
 Again those eyes complete 
 Their melancholy survey, sweet and slow. 
 Of all my room holds ; to return and rest 
 On me, with pity, yet some wonder too ; 
 As if God bade some spirit plague a world. 
 And this were the one luoment of surprise 
 And sorrov ' while she took her station, pausivg 
 O'er what she sees, finds good, and must de 
 
 stroy ! 
 What gaze you at? Those? Books, I told 
 
 you of ; 
 Let your first word to me rejoice them, too : 
 This minion, a Coluthus, writ in red. 
 Bistre and azure by Bessarion's scribe — 
 Read this line . . . no, shame — Homer's be the 
 
 Greek 
 First breathed me from the hps of my Greek 
 
 girl! 
 This Odyssey in coarse black vivid type 
 With faded yellow blossoms 'twixt page and 
 
 page. 
 To mark great places with due gratitude j 
 " He saidl and on Antinous directed 
 A bitter shaft "... a flower blots out the rest ! 
 Again upon your search ? My statues, then ! 
 — Ah, do not mind that — better that will look 
 When cast in bronze — an Alraaign Kaiser, that. 
 Swart-green and gold, with truncheon based on 
 
 hip. 
 This, rather, turn to ! What, unrecognized ? 
 I thought you would have seen that here you fflt 
 As I imagined you, — Hippolyta, 
 Naked upon her bright Numidian horse. 
 Recall you this then ? ' ' Carve in bold relief ' ' — 
 So you commanded — " carve, against I come, 
 A Greek, in Athens, as our fashion was. 
 Feasting, bay-filleted and thunder-free. 
 Who rises 'neath the lifted myrtle-branch. 
 ' Praise those who slew Hipparchus ! ' cry the 
 
136 
 
 PIPPA PASSES 
 
 ' While o'er thy head the singer's myrtle waves 
 As erst above onr champion : stand up, all I '" 
 See, I have labored to express your thought. 
 Quite round, a cluster of mere hands and arms 
 (Thrust in all senses, all ways, from all sides, 
 Only consenting at the branch's end 
 They strain toward) serves for frame to a sole 
 
 face, 
 The Praiser's, in the centre : who with eyes 
 Sightless, so bend they back to light inside 
 His brain where visionary forms throng up. 
 Sings, minding not that palpitating arch 
 Of hands and arms, nor the quick drip of wine 
 From the drenched leaves o'erhead, nor crowns 
 
 cast off, 
 Violet and parsley crowns to trample on — 
 Sings, pausing as the patron-ghosts approve, 
 Devoutly their unconquerable hymn. 
 But you must say a "well" to that — say 
 
 "weU!" 
 Because you gaze — am I fantastic, sweet ? 
 Gaze like my very life's-stuff, marble — mar- 
 
 bly 
 Even to the silence ! Why, before I found 
 The real flesh Phene, I inured myself 
 To see, throughout all nature, varied stufF 
 For better natxire's birth by means of art : 
 With me, each substance tended to one form 
 Of beauty — to the human archetype. 
 On every side occurred suggestive germs 
 Of that — the tree, the flower — or take the 
 
 fruit, — 
 Some rosy shape, oontinning the peach. 
 Curved beewise o'er its bough ; as rosy limbs. 
 Depending, nestled in the leaves ; and iust 
 From a cleft rose-peach the whole Dryad sprang. 
 But of the stuffs one can be master of, 
 How I divined their capabilities ! 
 From the soft-rinded smoothening facile chalk 
 That yields your outline to the air's embrace. 
 Half-softened by a halo's pearly gloom ; 
 Down to the crisp imperious steel, so sure 
 To cut its one confided thought clean out 
 Of all the world. But marble ! — 'neath my 
 
 tools 
 More pliable than jelly — as it were 
 Some clear primordial creature dug from depths 
 In the earth's heart, where itself breeds itself. 
 And whence all baser substance may be worked ; 
 Refine it off to air, you may, — condense it 
 Down to the diamond ; — is not metal there. 
 When o'er the sudden speck my chisel trips ? 
 — Not flesh, aa flake off flake I scale, approach. 
 Lay bare those bluish veins of blood asleep ? 
 Lurks flame in no strange windings where, sur- 
 prised 
 By the swift implement sent home at once. 
 Flushes and glowings radiate and hover 
 About its track ? 
 
 Phene ? what — why is this ? 
 That whitening cheek, those still dilating eyes ! 
 Ah, you will die — I knew that you would die ! 
 
 Phene begins, on his having long remained silent. 
 
 Now the end 's coming ; to be sure, it must 
 Have ended sometime ! Tush, why need I speak 
 Their foolish speech ? I cannot bring to mind 
 One half of it, beside ; and do not care 
 
 For old Natalia now, nor any of them. 
 Oh, you — what are you ? — if I do not try 
 To say the words Natalia made me learn. 
 To please your friends, — it is to keep niyself 
 Where your voice lifted me, by letting that 
 Proceed : but can it ? Even you, perhaps, 
 Cannot take up, now you have once let fall, 
 The music's life, and me along with that — 
 No, or you would ! We 'U stay, then, as we are : 
 Above the world. 
 
 You creature with the eyes ! 
 If I could look forever up to them. 
 As now you let me, — I believe, all sin, 
 All memory of wrong done, suffering borne. 
 Would drop down, low and lower, to the earth 
 Whence all that 's low comes, and there touch 
 
 and stay 
 — Never to overtake the rest of me. 
 All that, unspotted, reaches up to you. 
 Drawn by those eyes ! What rises is myself. 
 Not me the shame and suffering ; but they sink. 
 Are left, I rise above them. Keep me so. 
 Above the world 1 
 
 But you sink, for your eyes 
 Are altering — altered! Stay — "I lore you, 
 
 love" . . . 
 I could prevent it if I understood : 
 More of your words to me : was 't in the tone 
 Or the words, your power ? 
 
 Or stay — I will repeat 
 Their speech, if that contents you ! Only change 
 No more, and I shall find it presently 
 Far back here, in the brain yourself filled up. 
 Natalia threatened me that harm should follow 
 Unless I spoke their lesson to the end. 
 But harm to me, I thought she meant, not you. 
 Your friends, — Natalia said they were your 
 
 friends 
 And meant you well, — because, I doubted it. 
 Observing (what was very strange to see) 
 On every face, so different in all else. 
 The same smile girls like me are used to bear. 
 But never men, men cannot stoop so low ; 
 Yet your friends, speaking of you, used thai 
 
 smile, 
 Tha.t hateful smirk of boundless self-conceit 
 Which seems to take possession of the world 
 And make of God a tame confederate, 
 Purveyor to their appetites . . . you know ! 
 But still Natalia said they were your friends. 
 And they assented though they smiled the more, 
 And all came round me, — that thin Englishman 
 With light lank hair seemed leader of the rest ; 
 He held a paper — " What we want," said he. 
 Ending some explanation to his friends — 
 " Is something slow, involved and mystical. 
 To hold Jules long in doubt, yet take his taste 
 And lure him on until, at innermost 
 Where he seeks sweetness' soul, he may fiud 
 
 — this! 
 — As in the apple's core, the noisome fly : 
 For insects on the rind are seen at once. 
 And brushed aside as soon, but this is found 
 Only when on the lips or loathing tongue." 
 And so he read what I have got by heart : 
 I '11 speak it, — " Do not die, love ! I am 
 
 yours" . . . 
 No— i% uot that, or like that, part of words 
 
frPPA VASSES 
 
 137 
 
 Fonrself began by speaking ? Strange to lose 
 Wbat cost sucb pains to learn ! Is tbis more 
 right? 
 
 lam a painter who cannot paint ; 
 
 In my life, a devil rather than saint ; 
 
 In my brain, as poor a creature too : 
 
 No end to all I cannot do I 
 
 Yet do one thing at least I can — 
 
 Love a man or hate a man 
 
 Bupremely: thus my lore began. 
 
 Through the Valley of Love I went, 
 
 In the lovingest spot to abide. 
 
 And just on the verge where I pitched my tent, 
 
 I found Hate dwelling beside. 
 
 (Let the Bridegroom ask what thepainter meant. 
 
 Of his Bride, of the peerless Bride!) 
 
 And further, I traversed Haters grove, 
 
 In the hatefullest nook to dwell ; 
 
 But lo, where I. flung myselffyrone, couched Love 
 
 Where the shadow threefold fell. 
 
 {The meaning — those black bride' s-eyes above, 
 
 Nat a painter'' s lip should tell .') 
 
 " And here," said he, " Jules probably -will 
 
 ask, 
 'You have black eyes. Lore, — you are, sure 
 
 enough, 
 My peerless bride, — then do you tell indeed 
 What needs some explanation! What means 
 
 this?'" 
 — And I am to go on, without a word — 
 
 So, I grew wise in Love and Hate, 
 From simple that I was of late. 
 Once, when I loved, I would enlace 
 Breast, eyelids, hands, feet, form and face 
 Of her I loved, in one embrace — 
 As if by mere love I could love immensely I 
 Once, when I hated, I would plunge 
 My sword, and wipe with the first lunge 
 My foe's whole life out like a sponge — 
 As if by mere hate I could hate intensely .'_ 
 But now I am wiser, know better the fashion 
 How passion seeks aid from its opposite pas- 
 sion : 
 And if I see cause to love more, hate more 
 Than ever man loved, ever hated before — 
 And seek in the Valley of Love 
 The nest, or the nook in Hate's Grove 
 Where my soul may surely reach 
 The essence, naught less, of each, 
 The Hate of all Hates, the Love 
 Of all Loves, in the Valley or Grove, — 
 I fl,nd them the very warders 
 i:ach of the other's borders. 
 When I love most, Love is disguised 
 In Hate; and when Hate is surprised 
 In Love, then I hate most : ask 
 How Love smiles through Hate's iron casque. 
 Hate grins through Love's rose-braided mask, — 
 And how. having hated thee, 
 I sought long and painfully 
 To reach thy heart, nor prick 
 The skin but pierce to the quick — 
 Ask this, my Jules, and be answered straight 
 By thy bride — how the painter Lutwyche can 
 hate! 
 
 Jules interposes. 
 Lutwyche 1 Who else ? But all of them, no 
 
 doubt, 
 Hated me : they at Venice — presently 
 Their turn, however ! You I shall not meet : 
 If I dreamed, saying this would wake me. 
 
 Keep 
 What 's here, the gold — we cannot meet again, 
 Consider ! and the money was but meant 
 For two years' travel, which is over now. 
 All chance or hope or care or need of it. 
 This — and what comes from selling these, ray 
 
 casts 
 And books and medals, except ... let them go 
 Together, so the produce keeps you safe 
 Out of Natalia's clutches ! If by chance 
 (For all 's chance here) I should survive the gang 
 At Venice, root out all fifteen of them. 
 We might meet somewhere, since the world ii 
 
 wide. 
 [From without is heard ike voice of Pippa, singing -^ 
 
 Give her but a least excuse to love me ! 
 
 When — where — 
 
 How — can this arm establish her above me. 
 
 If fortune fixed her as my lady there, 
 
 There already, to eternally reprove me 9 
 
 ('■ Hist .' " — said Kate the Queen ; 
 
 But "Oh!" cried the maiden, binding he> 
 
 tresses, 
 " ' jT/s only a page that carols unseen. 
 Crumbling your hounds their messes ! ") 
 
 Is she wronged ? — To the rescue of her honor, 
 
 My heart ! 
 
 Is she poor?— What costs it to be styled a do- 
 nor ? 
 
 Merely an earth to cleave, a sea to part. 
 
 But that fortune should have thrust all this upon 
 her! 
 
 (" Nay, list! " —bade Kate the Queen; 
 
 And still cried the maiden, binding her tresses, 
 
 " 'T is only a page that carols unseen. 
 
 Fitting your hawks their jesses ! ") 
 
 [Pippa passes. 
 
 Jtjlbs resumes. 
 What name was that the little girl sang forth ? 
 Kate ? The Comaro, doubtless, who renounced 
 The crown of Cyprus to be lady here 
 At Asolo, where still her memory stays, 
 And peasants sing how once a certain page 
 Pined for the grace of her so far above 
 His power of doing good to, ' ' Kate the Queen — 
 She never could be wronged, be poor," he 
 
 sighed, 
 " Need him to help her ! " 
 
 Yes, a bitter thing 
 To see our lady above all need of us ; 
 Yet so we look ere we will love ; not I, 
 But the world looks so. If whoever loves 
 Must be, in some sort, god or worshipper. 
 The blessing or the blest one, queen or page. 
 Why should we always choose the page's part ? 
 Here is a woman with utter need of me, — 
 I find myself queen here, it seems ! 
 
 How strange I 
 Look at the woman here with the new soul. 
 Like my own Psyche, —fresh upon her Ups 
 
J38 
 
 PIPPA PASSES 
 
 Alit, the visionary butterfly, 
 
 Waiting my word to enter and make bright, 
 
 Or flutter off and leave all blank as first. 
 
 This body had no soul before, but slept 
 
 Or stirred, was beauteous or ungainly, free 
 
 From taint or foul with stain, as outward 
 
 things 
 Fastened their image on its passiveness : 
 Now, it will wake, feel, live — or die again ! 
 Shall to produce form out of unshaped stuff 
 Be Art — and further, to evoke a soul 
 From form be nothing? This new soul is 
 
 mine ! 
 
 Now, to kill Lutwyche, what woiild that do ? — 
 
 save 
 A wretched dauber, men will hoot to death 
 Without me, from their hooting. Oh, to hear 
 God^s voice plain as 1 heard it first, before 
 They broke in with their laughter ! I heard 
 
 them 
 Henceforth, not God. 
 
 To Ancona — Greece — some isle I 
 I wanted silence only ; there is clay 
 Everywhere. One may do whate'er one likes 
 In Art : the only thing is, to make sure 
 That one does nke it — which takes pains to 
 
 know. 
 Scatter all this, my Phene — this mad dream ! 
 Who, what is Lutwyche, what Natalia's friends. 
 What the whole world except our love — my 
 
 own. 
 Own Phene ? But I told you, did I not, 
 Ere night we travel for your land — some isle 
 With the sea's silence on it ? Stand aside — 
 I do but break these paltry models up 
 To begin Art afresh. Meet Lutwyche, I — 
 And save him from raj statue meeting him ? 
 Some unsuspected isle in the far seas ! 
 Like a god going through his world, there 
 
 stands 
 One mountain for a moment in the dusk. 
 Whole brotherhoods of cedars on its brow : 
 And you are ever by me while I gaze 
 — Are in my arms as now — as now — as now ! 
 Some unsuspected isle in the far seas ! 
 Some unsuspected isle in far-off seas ! 
 
 Talk by the way, while TretA. is passing /rom. Orcana to 
 the Turrtt. Two or three of the Austrian Police 
 loitering with Bluphocks, an English vagabond, just 
 in view of the Turret. 
 
 Bluphocks.^ So, that is your Pippa, the lit- 
 tle girl who passed us singing? Well, your 
 Bishop's Intendant's money shall be honestly 
 earned : — now, don't make me that sour face 
 because I bring the Bishop's name into the busi- 
 ness ; we know he can have nothing to do with 
 such horrors : we know that he is a saint and 
 all that a bishop should be, who is a great man 
 beside. Oh were but every worm a maggot, 
 Every fly a grig. Every bough a Christmas fagot. 
 Every tune a jig ! In fact^ I have abjured all 
 religions ; but the last I mclined to was the 
 Armenian : for I have travelled, do you see, 
 and at Koenigsberg, Prussia Improper (so 
 
 1 '^ He maketh his sun to riBe on the evil and on the 
 good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust." 
 
 styled because there 's a sort of bleak hungry 
 sun there), you might remark, over a venerable 
 house-porch, a certain Chaldee inscription ; and 
 brief as it is, a mere glance at it used absolutely 
 to change the mood of every bearded passenger. 
 In they turned, one and all ; the young and 
 Ughtsome, with no irreverent pause, the aged 
 and decrepit, with a sensible alacrity : 't was 
 the Grand Rabbi's abode, in short. Struck 
 with curiosity, I lost no time in learning Syriac 
 — (these are vowels, you dogs, — follow my 
 stick's end in the mud — CelarenU Barii, 
 Ferio !) and one morning presented myself, 
 spelling-book in hand, a, b, c, — I picked it out 
 letter by letter, and what was the purport of 
 this miraculous posy ? Some cherished legend 
 of the past, you'll say — ''Bow Moses hocus- 
 pocussed EgypVs land with fly and locust," — 
 or, " How to Jonah sounded harshish. Get thee 
 up and go to Tarshish, " — or " How the angel 
 meeting Balaam, Straight his ass returned 
 a salaam." In no wise! " Shackabrack — 
 Boach — somebody or athei — Isaach, Ee-cei-ver, 
 Pur-cha-ser and Ex-chan-ger of — Stolen 
 Goods ! •" So, taJk to me of the religion of 
 a bishop ! I have renounced all bishops save 
 Bishop Beveridge ! — mean to live so — and 
 die — As some Greek dog-sage, dead and merry, 
 Hellward bound in Charon's wherry. With food 
 for both worlds, under and upper. Lupine-seed 
 and Hecate's supper. And never an obolus 
 . . . (though thanks to you, or this Intendant 
 through you, or this Bishop through his Inten- 
 dant — I possess a burning pocket-tull of zwan- 
 zigers) . . .To pay the Stygian Ferry ! 
 
 1st Policeman. There is the girl, then ; go 
 and deserve them the moment you have pointed 
 out to us Signer Luigi and his mother. [To the 
 rest.] I have been noticing a house yonder, this 
 long whUe : not a shutter unclosed since morn- 
 ing! 
 
 2d Pol. Old Luca Gaddi's, that owns the 
 silk-miUs here: he dozes by the hour, wakes 
 up, sighs deeply, says he should like to be 
 Prince Mettemich, and then dozes again, after 
 having bidden young Sebald, the foreigner, set 
 his wife to playing draughts. Never molest 
 such a household, they mean well. 
 
 Blup. Only, cannot you tell me something of 
 this little Pippa, I must have to do with ? One 
 could make something of that name. Pippa — 
 that is, short for Feljppa — rhyming to Panvrge 
 consults Hertrippa — Believest thou. King Agrip- 
 pa ? Something might be done with that name. 
 
 2d Pot. Put into rhyme that your head and 
 a ripe muskmelon would not be dear at half a 
 zwanziger ! Leave this fooling, and look out ; 
 the afternoon 's over or nearly so. 
 
 3d Pol. Where in this passport of Signer 
 Luigi does our Principal instruct you to watch 
 him so narrowly ? There ? What 's there be- 
 side a simple signature ? (That English fool 'a 
 busy watching.) 
 
 2d Pol. Flourish all round — " Put all possi- 
 ble obstacles in his way; " oblong dot at the 
 end — "Detain him till further advices reach 
 you;" scratch at bottom — "Send hira back 
 on pretence of some informality in the above ; " 
 
PIPPA PASSES 
 
 139 
 
 I 
 
 ink-spirt on righthand side (iwhich is the case 
 here) — " Arrest him at once." Why and 
 wherefore, I don't concern myself , but my in- 
 structions amount to this : if Signor Luigi leaves 
 home to-night for Vienna — well and good, the 
 )assport deposed with us for our visa is really 
 br nis own use, they haye misinformed the 
 OMce, and he means well ; but let him stay 
 over to-night — there has been the pretence we 
 suspect, the accounts of his corresponding and 
 holding intelligence with the Carbonari are cor- 
 rect, we arrest him at once, to-morrow comes 
 Venice, and presently Spielberg. Bluphocks 
 makes the signal, sure enough ! That is he, 
 entering the turret with his mother, no doubt. 
 
 III. EVENING 
 
 Inside the Turret on the Hill above Asolo. Luiai and 
 his Mother entering. 
 
 Mother, If there blew wind, you 'd hear a 
 long sigh, easing 
 The utmost heaviness of music's heart. 
 Luigi. Here in the archway ? 
 Mother. Oh no, no — in farther. 
 
 Where the echo is made, on the ridge. 
 
 Luigi. Here surely, then. 
 
 How plain the tap of my heel as I leaped up ! 
 Hark — " Lucius Junius ! " The very ghost of 
 
 a voice 
 Whose body is caught and kept by . . . what 
 
 are those ? 
 Mere withered wallflowers, waving overhead ? 
 They seem an elvish group with thin bleached 
 
 hair 
 That lean out of their topmost fortress — look 
 And listen, mountain men, to what we say. 
 Hand under chin of each grave earthy face. 
 Up and show faces all of you 1 — *' All of you ! " 
 That 's the king dwarf with the scarlet comb ; 
 
 old Franz, 
 Come down and meet your fate ? Hark — 
 " Meet your fate ! " 
 Mother. Let him not meet it, my Luigi — do 
 not 
 Go to his City ! Putting crime aside. 
 Half of these ills of Italy are feigned : 
 Your Pellioos and writers for effect. 
 Write for effect. 
 Ifuigi. Hush ! Say A writes, and B. 
 
 Mother. These A's and B's write for effect, 
 I say. 
 Then, evil is in its nature loud, while good 
 Is silent ; you hear each petty injury. 
 None of his virtues ; he is old beside. 
 Quiet and kind, and densely stupid. Why 
 Do A and B kill not him themselves ? 
 
 Luigi. They teach 
 
 Others to kill him — me — and, if I fail, 
 Others to succeed ; now, if A tried and failed, 
 1 could not teach that : mine 's the lesser task. 
 Mother, they visit night by night . . . 
 
 Mother. — You, Luigi? 
 
 Ah, will you let me tell you what you are ? 
 Luigi. Why not ? Oh, the one thing yon fear 
 to hint, 
 You may assure yourself I say and say 
 Ever to myself ! At times — nay, even as now 
 
 We sit — I think my mind is touched, suspect 
 
 All ia not sound : but is not knowing that. 
 
 What constitutes one sane or otherwise ? 
 
 I know I am thus — so, all ia right again. 
 
 I laugh at myself as through the town I walk, 
 
 And see men merry as if no Italy 
 
 Were suffering ; then I ponder — " I am rich. 
 
 Young, healthy; why should this fa<Jt trouble me. 
 
 More than it troubles these ? " But it does 
 
 trouble. 
 No, trouble 's a bad word : for as I walk 
 There 's springing and melody and giddiness. 
 And old quaint turns and passages of my youth, 
 Dreams long forgotten, little in themselves. 
 Return to me — whatever may amuse me ; 
 And earth seems in a truce with me, and heaven 
 Accords with me, all things suspend their strife. 
 The very cicala laughs There goes he, and 
 
 there ! 
 Feast him, the time is short ; he is on his way 
 For the world's sake ; feast him this once, our 
 
 friend ! " 
 And in return for all this, I can trip 
 Cheerfully up the scaffold-steps. I go 
 This evening, mother 1 
 
 Mother. But mistrust yourself — 
 
 Mistrust the judgment you pronounce on him ! 
 Luigi. Oh, there I feel — am sure that I am 
 
 right ! 
 Mother. Mistrust your judgment then, of the 
 
 mere means 
 To this wild enterprise : say, you are right, — 
 How should one in your state e'er bring to pass 
 What would require a cool head, a cool heart. 
 And a calm hand ? You never will escape. 
 Luigi. Escape? To even wish that, would 
 
 spoil all. 
 The dying is best part of it. Too much 
 Have I enjoyed these fifteen years of mine. 
 To leave myself excuse for longer life : 
 Was not life pressed down, running o'er with 
 
 .ioy. 
 That I might finish with it ere my fellows 
 Who, sparelier feasted, make a longer stay ? 
 I was put at the board-head, helped to all 
 At first ; I rise up happy and content. 
 God must be glad one loves his world so much. 
 I can give news of earth to all the dead 
 Who ask me: — last year's sunsets, and great 
 
 stars 
 Which had a right to come first and see ebb 
 The crimson wave that drifts tlie sun away — 
 Those crescent moons with notched and burn- 
 ing rims 
 That strengthened into sharp fire, and there 
 
 stood, 
 Impatient of the azure — and that day 
 In March, a double rainbow stopped the storm — 
 May's warm slow yellow moonlit summer 
 
 nights — 
 Gone are they, but I have them in my soul ! 
 Mother. (He will not go !) 
 Luigi. You smile at me ? 'T is true, — 
 
 Voluptuousness, grotesqueness, ghastliness. 
 Environ iny devotedness as quaintly 
 As round about some antique altar wreathe 
 The rose festoons, goats' horns, and oxen's 
 
 skulls. 
 
140 
 
 PIPPA PASSES 
 
 Mother. See now : you reach the city, you must 
 
 cross 
 His threshold — how ? 
 
 Luigi. Oh, that 's if we conspired I 
 
 Then would come pains in plenty, as you guess — 
 But guess not how the qualities most iit 
 For such an office, qualities I have, 
 Would little stead me, otherwise employed, 
 Yet prove of rarest merit only here. 
 Every one knows for what his excellence 
 Will serve, but no one ever will consider 
 For what his worst defect might serve : and yet 
 Have you not seen me range otxt COT)pice yonder 
 In seaxch of a distorted ash ? — I find 
 The wry spoilt branch a natural perfect bow. 
 Fawcy the thrice-sage, thrice-precautioned man 
 Arriving at the palace on my errand ! 
 No, no ! I have a handsome dress packed up — 
 White satin here, to set off my black hair ; 
 In I shall march — for you may watch your life 
 
 out 
 Behind thick walls, make friends there to be- 
 tray you ; 
 More than one man spoils everything. March 
 
 straight — 
 Only, no clumsy knife to fumble for. 
 Take the great gate, and walk (not savinter) on 
 Through guards and guards — I have re- 
 hearsed it all 
 Inside the turret here a hundred times. 
 Don't ask the way of whom you meet, observe ! 
 But where they cluster thickliest is the door 
 Of doors ; they '11 let you pass — they '11 never 
 
 blab 
 Ea«h to the other, he knows not the favorite. 
 Whence he is bound and what 's his business 
 
 now. 
 Walk in — straight up to him ; you have no 
 
 knife : 
 Be prompt, how should he scream ? Then, out 
 
 with you ! 
 Italy, Italy, my Italy ! 
 You 're free, you 're free ! Oh mother, I could 
 
 dream 
 They got about me — Andrea from his exile, 
 Pier from his dungeon, Gualtier from his grave ! 
 Mother. Well, you shall go. Yet seems this 
 
 patriotism 
 The easiest virtue for a selfish man 
 To acquire : he loves himself — and next, the 
 
 world — 
 If he must love beyond, — but naught between : 
 As a short-sighted man sees naught midway 
 His body and the sun above. But you 
 Are my adored Luigi, ever obedient 
 To my least wish, and running o'er with love ; 
 I could not call you cruel or unkind. 
 Once more, your ground for killing him ! — then 
 
 go! 
 Luigi. Now do you try me, or make sport of 
 
 me? 
 How first the Austrians got these provinces . . . 
 (If that is all, I 'U satisfy you soon) 
 — Never by conquest but by cunning, for 
 That treaty whereby . . . 
 Mother. Well? 
 
 Luigi. (Sure, he 's arrived, 
 
 The tell-tale cuckoo : spring 's his confidant, 
 
 And he lets out her April purposes I) 
 Or . . . better go at once to modem time. 
 He has . . . they have ... in fact, I under- 
 stand 
 But can't restate the matter ; that 's my boast : 
 Others could reason it out to you, and prove 
 Things they have made me feel. 
 
 Mother. Why go to-night i" 
 
 Mom 's for adventure. Jupiter is now 
 A morning-star. I cannot hear you, Luigi ! 
 
 Luigi. " I am the bright and moraing-star," 
 saith God — 
 And, " to such an one I give the moming-star." 
 The gift of the morning-star ! Have I God's gift 
 Of the moming-star ? 
 
 Mother. Chiara will love to see 
 
 That Jupiter an evening-star next June. 
 
 Luigi. True, mother. Well for those who 
 live through June ! 
 Great noontides, thunder-storms, all glaring 
 
 pomps 
 That triumph at the heels of June the god 
 Leading his revel through oui' leafy world. 
 Yes, Chiara will be here. 
 
 Mother. In June : remember. 
 
 Yourself appointed that month for her coming. 
 
 Luigi. Was that low noise the echo ? 
 
 Mother. The night-wind. 
 
 She must be grown — with her blue eyes up- 
 turned 
 As if life were one long and sweet surprise : 
 In June she comes. 
 
 Luigi. We were to see together 
 
 The Titian at Treviso. There, again ! 
 
 \^Frmn without is heard the voice of Pippa, singing — 
 
 A Icing lived long ago., 
 In the morning of the world, 
 When earth was nightr htamn than now ; 
 And the king's locks curled. 
 Disparting o'er a forehead jfull 
 As the milk-white space Hwixt horn and horn 
 Of some sacrificial bull — 
 Only calm as a babe new-born : 
 Fw he was got to a sleepy mood. 
 So safe from all decrepitude. 
 Age with its bane, so sure gone by, 
 {The gods so loved him while he dreamed) 
 That, having lived thus long, there seemed 
 No need the king should ever die. 
 
 Luigi. No need that sort of king should 
 ever die ! 
 
 Among the rocks his city was : 
 Before his palace, in the sun, 
 He sat to see his people pass. 
 And judge them every one 
 From its threshold of smooth stone. 
 They haled him many a valley-thief 
 Caught in the sheep-pens, robber-chief 
 Swarthy and shameless, beggar-cheat. 
 Spy-prowler, or rough pirate found 
 On the sea-sand left aground ; 
 And sometimes clung about his feet. 
 With bleeding lip and burning cheek, 
 A woman, bitterest wrong to speak 
 Of one with sullen thickset brows : 
 And sometimes from the prison-house 
 
PIPPA PASSES 
 
 141 
 
 The artffry priests a pale ufretch brought. 
 
 Who through some chinkhad pushed and pressed 
 
 On knees and elbows, belly and breast. 
 
 Worm-like into ihe temple, — caught 
 
 He was by the very god. 
 
 Who ever in the darkness strode 
 
 Backward and forward, keeping watch 
 
 OUr his brazen bowls, such rogues to catch ! 
 
 These, all and every one. 
 
 The king judged, sitting in the sun. 
 
 Luigi. That king should still judge sitting in 
 the sun ! 
 
 His councillors, on left and right. 
 Looked anxioUs up, — but no surprise 
 Disturbed the king's old smiling eyes 
 Where the veryblue had turned to white. 
 'Tis said, a Python scared one day 
 The breathless city, till he came, 
 Withforky tongue and eyes on flame. 
 Where the old king sat to judge alway ; 
 But when he saw the sweepy hair 
 Girt with a crown of berries rare 
 Which the god will hardly give to wear 
 To the maiden who singeth, dancing bare 
 In the altar-smoke by thepine-torch lights. 
 At his wondrous forest rites, — 
 Seeing this, he did not dare 
 Approach that threshold in the sun. 
 Assault the old king smiling there. 
 Such grace had kings when the world begun ! 
 
 [PippA passes 
 Luigi. And such grace have they, now that 
 the world ends ! 
 The Python at the city, on the throne, 
 And brave men, God would crown for slaying 
 
 him, 
 Lark in by-comers lest they fall his prey. 
 Are crowns yet to be won in this late time, 
 Which weakness makes me hesitate to reach ? 
 'T is God's voice calls : how could I stay ? 
 
 Farewell ! 
 Talk by the way, while PiPPA is passing from the Turret, 
 to the Bishop's Brother^s House, close to the Duovfio 
 S. Maria. Poor OlBItS sitting on the steps. 
 1st Girl. There goes a swallow to Venice — 
 the stout seafarer ! 
 Seeing those birds fly, makep -ne wish for wings. 
 Let ns all wish ; you, wish first ! 
 
 2rf (Mrl. I ? This sunset 
 
 To finish. 
 
 3rf Girl. That old — somebody I know, 
 (Jrayer and older than my grandfather. 
 To give me the same treat he gave last week — 
 Feeding me on his knee with fig-peckers. 
 Lampreys and red Breganze-wine, and mum- 
 
 bfing 
 The while some f oUy about how well I fare, 
 Let sit and eat my supper quietly : 
 Since had he not himself been late this morning 
 Detained at — never mind where, — had he 
 
 " Eh, baggage, had I not I " - 
 2d Girl How she can he ! 
 
 M Girl. I^ok there — by the nails 1 
 2d Girl. What makes your fingers red ? 
 
 3rf Girl. Dipping them into wine to write bad 
 words with I 
 
 On the bright table : how he laughed ! 
 
 1st Girl. My turn, 
 
 opnng s come and summer 's coming. I would 
 
 wear 
 A long loose gown, down to the feet and hands, 
 With plaits here, close about the throat, all day ; 
 And all night lie, the cool long nights, in bed ; 
 And have new milk to drink, apples to eat, 
 Deuzans and junetings, leather-coats ... ah, I 
 
 should say. 
 This is away in the fields — miles ! 
 
 3d Girl. Say at once 
 
 You d be at home : she 'd always be at home ! 
 Now comes the story of the farm among 
 The cherry orchards, and how April snowed 
 White blossoms on her as she ran. Why, fool 
 They 've rubbed the chalk-mark out, how tall 
 
 you were. 
 Twisted your starling's neck, broken his cage, 
 Made a dung-hill of your garden ! 
 
 1st Girl. They destroy 
 
 My garden since I left them ? well — perhaps 
 I would have done so : so I hope they have ! 
 A fig-tree curled out of our cottage wall ; 
 They called it mine, I have forgotten why, 
 It must have been there long ere I was born : 
 Cric — cn'c — I think I hear the wasps o'er- 
 
 head 
 Pricking thepapers strung to flutter there 
 And keep off birds in fruit-time — coarse long 
 
 papers. 
 And the wasps eat them, prick them through 
 
 and through. 
 3d Girl. How her mouth twitches ! Where 
 
 was I ? — before 
 She broke in with her wishes and long gowns 
 And wasps — would I be such a fool ! — Oh, 
 
 here ! 
 This is my way : I answer every one 
 Who asks me why I make so much of him — 
 (If you say, " you love him " — straight " he '11 
 
 not be gulled ! ") 
 " He that seduced me when I was a girl 
 Thus high — had eyes like yoxirs, or hair like 
 
 yours, 
 Brown, red, white," — as the case may be: 
 
 that pleases I 
 See how that beetle burnishes in the path ! 
 There sparkles he along the dust : and, there — 
 Your journey to that maize-tuft spoiled at least ! 
 1st Girl. When I was young, they said if yon 
 
 killed one 
 Of those sunshiny beetks, that his friend 
 Up there, would shine no more that day nor 
 
 next. 
 2d Girl. When you were young ? Nor are 
 
 you young, that 's true. 
 How your plump arms, that were, have dropped 
 
 away! 
 Why, I can span them. Cecco beats you still ? 
 No matter, so you keep your curious hair. 
 I wish they "d find a way to dye our hair 
 Your color — any lighter tint, indeed. 
 Than black : the men say they are sick of black. 
 Black eyes, black hair ! 
 
 ith Girl. Sick of yours, like enough. 
 
 Do you pretend you ever tasted lampreys 
 And ortolans ? Giovita, of the palace. 
 
142 
 
 PIPPA PASSES 
 
 Engaged (but there 's no trusting him) to alice 
 
 me 
 Polenta with a knife that had cut up 
 An ortolan. 
 
 2d Girl. Why, there ! Is not that Pippa 
 We are to talk to, under the window, — 
 
 quick ! — 
 Where the lights are ? 
 
 Is* Girl. That she ? No, or she would sing. 
 For the Intendant said . . . 
 
 3d Girl. Oh, you sing first ! 
 
 Then, if she listens and comes close . . . 1 '11 
 
 tell you, — 
 Sing that song the young English noble made. 
 Who took you for the purest of the pure, 
 And meant to leave the world for you — what 
 fun ! 
 2d Girl. [Sings.] 
 
 You HI love me yet ! — and I can tarry 
 Your lovers protracted growing : 
 
 June reared that bunch of flowers you carry.. 
 From seeds of April's sowing. 
 
 I plant a heartfull now : some seed 
 
 At least is sure to strike, 
 And yield — what you 'II not pluck indeed. 
 
 Not love, but, may be, like. 
 
 You '11 look at least on love's remains, 
 
 A grave's one violet : 
 Your look ? — that pays a thousand pains. 
 
 What 's death 1 You 'II love me yet 1 
 
 3d Girl. [ToFiFFAwho approaches.] Oh, you 
 
 lay come closer — we shall not eat you ! Why, 
 
 you seem the very person that the great rich 
 
 handsome Englishman has fallen so violently in 
 
 love with. I '11 tell you all about it. 
 
 IV. NIGHT 
 
 Inside the Palace by the Ditomo. Monsionor, dis- 
 wAssing his Attendants. 
 
 Monsignor. Thanks, friends, many thanks! 
 I chiefly desire life now, that I may recompense 
 every one of you. Most I know something of 
 already. What, a repast prepared ? Benedicto 
 benedicatur . . . ugh, ugh ! Where was I ? Oh, 
 as you were remarking, Ugo, the weather is mild, 
 very unlike winter-weather : but I am a Sicilian, 
 you know, and shiver in your Julys here. To 
 be sure, when 't was full summer at Messina, as 
 we priests used to cross in procession the great 
 square on Assumption Day, you might see our 
 thickest yellow tapers twist suddenly in two, 
 each like a falling star, or sink down on them- 
 selves in a gore of wax. But go, my friends, but 
 go! [To (Ae Intendant.] Not you, Ugo ! [The 
 others leave the apartment.] I have long wanted 
 to converse with you, Ugo. 
 
 Intendant. Ugncoio — 
 
 Mon. . . . 'guoeio Stefani, man ! of Ascoli, 
 Fermo and Fossombruno ; — what I do need in- 
 structing about, are these accoimts of your ad- 
 ministration of my poor brother's affairs. Ugh ! 
 I shall never get through a third part of your 
 accounts j take some of these dainties before we 
 
 attempt it, however. Are you bashful to that 
 degree ? For me, a crust and water suffice. 
 
 Inten. Do you choose this esoecial night • to 
 question me ? , ^,. , j 
 
 Mon. This night, Ugo. You have managed 
 my late brother's affairs since the death of our 
 elder brother : fourteen years and a month, all 
 but three days. On the Third of December, I 
 find him ... 
 
 Inten. If you have so intimate an acquamtance 
 with vour brother's affairs, you will be tender 
 of turning so far back : they will hardly bear 
 looking into, so far back. 
 
 Mon. Ay, ay, ugh, ugh, — nothing but disap- 
 pointments here below ! I remark a consider- 
 able payment made to yourself on this Tliird of 
 December. Talk of disappointments ! There 
 was a young fellow here, Jules, a foreign sculptor 
 I did my utmost to advance, that the Church 
 might be a gainer by us both : he was going on 
 hopefully enough, and of a sudden he notifies to 
 me some marvellous change that has happened in 
 his notions of Art. Here's his letter, — /'He 
 never had a clearly conceived Ideal within his 
 brain till to-day. Yet since his hand could man- 
 age a chisel, he has practised expressing other 
 men's Ideals ; and, in the very perfection he has 
 attained to, he foresees an ultimate failure : his 
 unconscious hand will pursue its prescribed 
 course of old years, and will reproduce with a 
 fatal expertness the ancient types, let the novel 
 one appear never so palpably to his spirit. 
 There is but one method of escape : confiding 
 the virgin type to as chaste a hand, he will turn 
 painter instead of sculptor, and paint, not carve, 
 its characteristics," — strike out, I dare say, a 
 school like Correggio : how think you, Ugo ? 
 
 Inten. Is Correg^o a painter ? 
 
 Mon. Foolish Jules ! and yet, after all, why 
 foolish ? He may — probably will — fail egre- 
 giously ; but if there should arise a new painter, 
 will it not be in some such way, by a poet now, 
 or a musician (spirits who have conceived and 
 perfected an Ideal through some other channel), 
 transferi'ing it to this, and escaping our conven- 
 tional roads by pure ignorance of them ; eh, 
 Ugo ? If you have no appetite, talk at least, 
 Ugo ! 
 
 Inten, Sir, I can submit no longer to this 
 course of yours. First, you select the group 
 of which I formed one, — next yon thin it 
 gra,duaUy, — always retaining me with your 
 smile, — and so do you proceed till you have 
 fairly got me alone with you between four stone 
 walls. And now then ? Let this farce, this 
 chatter end now : what is it you want with me ? 
 
 Mon. Ugo ! 
 
 Inten. From the instant you arrived, I felt 
 your smile on me as you questioned me about 
 this and the other article in tliose papers — 
 why your brother should have given me this 
 villa, that podere, —and your nod at the end 
 meant, — what ? 
 
 Mon. Possibly that I wished for no loud talk 
 here. If once you set me coughing, Ugo ! — 
 
 Inten. I have your brother's hand and seal 
 to all I possess : now ask me what for ! what 
 service I did him — ask me ! 
 
PIPPA PASSES 
 
 143 
 
 Mon, I would better not: I should rip up 
 old disgraces, let out ray poor brother's weak- 
 nesses. By the way, Marfeo of Forli, (which, I 
 foi^ot to observe, is your true name,) was the 
 interdict ever taken ofB you for robbing that 
 church at Cesena ? 
 
 Inten. No, nor needs be : for when I mur^ 
 dered your brother's friend, Pasqiiale, for 
 him . . . 
 
 Mon. Ah, he employed you in that busi- 
 ness, did he ? Well, I must let you keep, as 
 you say, this villa and that podere, for fear the 
 world should find out my relations were of so 
 indifferent a stamp ? Maffeo, my family is the 
 oldest in Messina, and century after century 
 have my progenitors gone on polluting them- 
 selves with every wickedness under heaven : 
 my own father . . . rest his soul ! — I have, I 
 know, a chapel to support that it may rest : 
 my dear two dead brothers were, — what you 
 know tolerably well ; I, the youngest, might 
 have rivalled them in vice, if not in wealth : 
 but from my boyhood I came out from among 
 them, and so am not partaker of their plagues. 
 My glory springs from another source ; or if 
 from this, by contrast only, — for I, the bishop, 
 am the brother of your employers, Ugo. I 
 hope to repair some of their wrong, however ; 
 so far as my brother's ill-gotten treasure reverts 
 to me, I can stop the consequences of his crime : 
 and not one soldo shall escape mie, Maffeo, the 
 sword we quiet men spurn away, you shrewd 
 knaves pick up and commit m.urders with ; 
 what opportunities the virtuous forego, the 
 villanous seize. Because, to i>leasure myself 
 apart from other considerations, my food 
 would be millet-cake, my dress sackcloth, and 
 my couch straw, — am^ I therefore to let you, 
 the off-scouring of the earth, seduce the poor 
 and ignorant by appropriating a pomp these 
 will be sure to think lessens the abomina-tions 
 so unaceoimtably and exclusively associated 
 with it ? Must I let villas and poderi go to 
 you, a murderer and thief, that you may beget 
 by means of them other m.urderers and thieves ? 
 No — if my cough would but allow me to speak ! 
 
 Inten. What am I to expect ? You are go- 
 ing to punish me ? 
 
 Mon. Must punish you, Maffeo. I cannot af- 
 ford to cast away a chance. I have whole cen- 
 turies of sin to redeem, and only a month or two 
 of life to do it in. How should I dare to say . . . 
 
 Inten, " Forgive us our trespasses " ? 
 
 Mon. My friend, it is because I avow 
 myself a very worm, sinful beyond measure, 
 that I reject a line of conduct you would 
 applaud perhaps. Shall I proceed, as it were, 
 a-pardoniug ? — I ? — who have no symptom of 
 reason to assume that aught less than my stren- 
 uousest efforts will keep myself out of mortal 
 sin, much less keep others out. No : I do 
 trespass, but will not double that by allowing 
 you to trespass. 
 
 Inten. And suppose the villas are not your 
 brother's to give, nor yours to take ? Oh, you 
 
 are hasty enough just now ! 
 Mon. 1, 2 — No 31 — 
 
 substance of a letter. 
 
 can you read the 
 3» I have received 
 
 from Home ? It is precisely on the ground 
 there mentioned, of the suspicion 1 have 
 that a certain child of my late elder brother, 
 who would have succeeded to his estates, was 
 murdered in infancy by you, Maffeo, at the in- 
 stigation of ray late yoimger brother — that the 
 Pontiff enjoins on rae not merely the bringing 
 that Maffeo to condign punishment, but the 
 taking all pains, as guardian of the infant's 
 heritage for the Church, to recover it parcel 
 by parcel, howsoever, whensoever, and where- 
 soever. While you are now gnawing those 
 fingers, the police are engaged in seahng up 
 your papers, Maffeo, and the mere raising my 
 voice brings my people from the next room to 
 dispose of yourself. But I want you to confess 
 quietly, and save me raising my voice. Why, 
 man, do I not know the old story ? The heir 
 between the succeeding heir, and this heir's 
 ruffianly instrument, and their coraplot's ef- 
 fect, and the life of fear and bribes and omi- 
 nous smiling silence ? Did you throttle or stab 
 my brother's infant ? Come now ! 
 
 Inten. So old a story, and tell it no better ? 
 When did such an instrument ever produce 
 such an effect ? Either the child smiles in his 
 face ; or, most likely, he is not fool enough 
 to put himself in the employer's power so 
 thoroughly : the child is always ready to pro- 
 duce — as you say — howsoever, wheresoever, 
 and whensoever. 
 
 Mon. Liar ! 
 
 Inten. Strike me? Ah, so might a father 
 chastise ! I shall sleep soundly to-night at 
 least, though the gallows await me to-morrow ; 
 for what a life did I lead ! Carlo of Cesena re- 
 minds me of his connivance, every time I pay 
 his annuity : which happens coramonly thrice a 
 year. K I remonstrate, he will confess all to 
 the good bishop — you ! 
 
 Mon. I see through the trick, caitiff ! I 
 would you spoke truth for once. All shall be 
 sifted, however — seven times sifted. 
 
 Inten. And how my absurd riches encum- 
 bered me ! I dared not lay claim to above half 
 my possessions. Let me but once unbosom 
 myself, glorify Heaven, and die ! 
 
 Sir, you are no brutal dastardly idiot like 
 your brother I frightened to death : let us 
 understand one another. Sir, I will make 
 away with her for you — the girl — here close 
 at hand ; not the stupid obvious kind of kill- 
 ing ; do not speak — know nothing of her nor 
 of me ! I see her every day — saw her this 
 morning : of course there is to be no killing ; 
 but at Korae the courtesans perish off every 
 three years, and I can entice her thither — have 
 indeed begun operations already. There 's a 
 certain lusty blue-eyed fiorid-complexioned 
 English knave, I and the Police employ occa- 
 sionally. You assent, I perceive — no, that's 
 not it — assent I do not say — but you wiU let 
 me convert my present havings and holdings 
 into cash, and give me time to cross the Alps ? 
 'T is but a littie black-eyed pretty singing Fe- 
 lippa, gay silk-winding girl. I have kept her 
 out of harm's way up to this present ; for I 
 always intended to make your life a plague to 
 
144 
 
 PIPPA PASSES 
 
 I 
 
 jiou with her. 'T is as well settled once and 
 
 forever. Some women I have procured will 
 lass Bluphooks, my handsome scoundrel, off 
 or somebody ; and once Pippa entangled ! — 
 
 you conceive ? Through her singing ? Is it a 
 
 bargain ? 
 
 1- From without is heard the voice of Pippa, singing — 
 
 Overhead the tree-tops meet, 
 
 Flowers and grass spring '■math one's feet; 
 
 There was naught above me, naught below. 
 
 My childhood had not learned to know : 
 
 For, what are the voices of birds 
 
 — Ay, and of beasts, — bitt words, our words, 
 
 Only so much more sweet ? 
 
 The knowledge of that with my life begun. 
 
 But I had so near made out the sun. 
 
 And counted your stars, the seven and one, 
 
 Like the fingers of my hand : 
 
 Nay, I could all but understand 
 
 Wherefore through heaven the white moon ran- 
 ges; 
 
 And just when out of her soft fifty changes 
 
 No unfamiliar face might overlook me — 
 
 Suddenly God took me. 
 
 [Pippa passes. 
 
 Mon. [Springing up.] My people — one and 
 all — all — within there ! Gag this villain — 
 tie him hand and foot ! He dares ... I know 
 not half he dares — but remove him — quick ! 
 Miserere mei, Domine ! Quick, I say ! 
 
 Pippa's Chamber again. She enters it. 
 
 The hee with his comb, 
 
 The mouse at her dray, 
 
 The grub in his tomb. 
 
 While winter away : 
 
 But the fire-fly and nedgershrtw and lob-worm, 
 
 I pray. 
 How fare they ? 
 
 Ha, ha, thanks for your counsel, my Zanze I 
 *' Feast upon lampreys, quaff Breganze " — 
 The summer of life so easy to spend, 
 And care for to-morrow so soon put away I 
 But winter hastens at summer's end, 
 And fire-fly, hedge-shrew, lob-worm, pray. 
 How fare they ? 
 
 No bidding me then to . . . what did Zanze say ? 
 " Pare your nails pearlwise, get your small feet 
 
 shoes 
 More like "... (what said she ?) — " and less 
 
 like canoes ! " 
 How pert that girl was ! — would I be those pert 
 Impudent staring women ! It had done me. 
 However, surely no such mighty hurt 
 To learn his name who passed that jest upon 
 
 me; 
 No foreigner, that I can recollect, 
 Came, as she says, a month since, to inspect 
 Our silk-mills — none with blue eyes and thick 
 
 rings 
 Of raw-silk-colored hair, at all events. 
 Well, if old Luca keep his good intents, 
 We shall do better, see what next year brings I 
 I may buy shoes, my Zanze, not appear 
 More destitute than you perhaps next year 1 
 Bluph . . . something ! I had caught the un- 
 couth name 
 
 But for Monsignor's peojjle's sudden clatter 
 
 Above us — bound to spoil such idle chatter 
 
 As em's : it were indeed a serious matter 
 
 If siUy talk like ours should put to shame 
 
 The pious man, the man devoid of blame, 
 
 The ... ah but — ah but, all the same. 
 
 No mere mortal has a right 
 
 To carry that exalted air ; 
 
 Best people are not angels quite : 
 
 While — not the worst of people's doings scare 
 
 The devil ; so there 's that proud look to sparel 
 
 Which is mere counsel to myself, mind ! for 
 I have just been the holy Monsignor : 
 And I was you too, Luigi's gentle niother. 
 And you too, Luigi ! — how that Luigi started 
 Out of the turret — doubtlessly departed 
 On some good errand or another. 
 For he passed just now in a traveller's trim, 
 And the sullen company that prowled 
 About his path, I noticed, scowled 
 As if they had lost a prey in him. 
 And I was Jules the sculptor's bride. 
 And I was Ottima beside. 
 And now what am 1 ? — tired of fooling. 
 Day for folly, night for schooling ! 
 New year 's day is over and spent, 
 111 or well, I must be content. 
 
 Even my lily 's asleep, I vow : 
 Wake up — here 's a friend I've plucked you I 
 Call this flower a heart's-ease now ! 
 Something rare, let me instruct you. 
 Is this, with petals triply swollen, 
 Three times spotted, thrice the pollen ; 
 While the leaves and parts that witness 
 Old proportions and their fitness. 
 Here remain unchanged, unmoved now ; 
 Call this pampered thing improved now ! 
 Suppose there 's a king of the flowers 
 And a girl-show held in his bowers — 
 "Look ye, buds, this growth of ours," 
 Says he, " Zanze from the Brenta, 
 I have made her gorge polenta 
 Till both cheeks are near as bouncing 
 As her . . . name there 's no pronouncing I 
 See this heightened color too. 
 For she swilled Breganze wine 
 Till her nose turned deep carmine ; 
 'T was but white when wild she grew. 
 And only by this Zanze's eyes 
 Of which we could not change the size. 
 The magnitude of all achieved 
 Otherwise, may be perceived," 
 
 Oh what a drear dark close to my poor day ! 
 How could that red sun drop in that bleicll 
 
 cloud? 
 Ah Pippa, morning's rule is moved away. 
 Dispensed with, never more to be allowed ! 
 Day 's turn is over, now arrives the night's. 
 Oh lark, be day's apostle 
 To mavis, merle and throstle. 
 Bid them their betters jostle 
 From day and its delights ! 
 But at night, brother owlet, over the woods, 
 Toll the world to thy chantry ; 
 Sing to the bats' sleek sisterhoods 
 FuU complines with gallantry : 
 Then, owls and bats. 
 
KING VICTOR AND KING CHARLES 
 
 145 
 
 Cowls and Wats, 
 
 Monks and nuns, in a cloister's moods, 
 
 Adjourn to the oak-stump pantry I 
 
 \_After she has begun to undress herself. 
 Now, one thing I should like to really know : 
 How near I ever might approach all these 
 I only fancied being, this long day : 
 — Approach, I mean, so as to touch them, so 
 As to ... in some way . . . move them — if 
 
 you please. 
 Do good or evil to them some slight way. 
 For instance, if I wind 
 Silk to-morrow, my silk may bind 
 
 [SUting on the bedside. 
 
 And border Ottima's cloak's hem. 
 
 Ah me, and my important part with them. 
 
 This morning's hymn half promised when I 
 
 rose ! 
 True in some sense or other, I suppose. 
 
 lAs she lies down. 
 God bless me I I can pray no more to-night. 
 No doubt, some way or other, hymns say 
 
 right. 
 
 All service ranks the same with God ■ — 
 With God, whose puppets, best and worst, 
 Are we ; there is no last nor first. 
 
 {She sleeps. 
 
 KING VICTOR AND KING CHARLES 
 
 A TRAGEDY 
 
 This was No. II. of Bells and Pomegranates 
 and was issued in 1842, though it appears to 
 have been written before the publication of 
 Pippa Passes. The following is the advertise- 
 ment prefixed to the tragedy when first pub- 
 lished and always afterward retained. 
 
 "So far as I know, this tragedy is the first ar- 
 tistic consequence of what Voltaire termed ' a 
 terrible event without consequences ; ' and al- 
 though it professes to be historical, I have taken 
 more pains to arrive at the history than most 
 readers would thank me for particularizing : 
 since acquainted, as I will hope them to be, with 
 the chief circumstances of Victor's remarkable 
 European career — nor quite ignorant of the sad 
 and suprising facts I am about to reproduce (a 
 tolerable account of which is to be found, for 
 instance, in Abbe Roman's Bicit, or even the 
 fifth of Lord Orrery's Letters from Italy) — I 
 cannot expect them to be versed, nor desirous 
 
 of becoming so, in all the detail of the memoirs, 
 correspondence, and relations of the time. 
 From these only may be obtained a knowledge 
 of the fiery and audacious temper, unscrupu- 
 lous selfishness, profound dissimulation, and 
 singular fertility in resources, of Victor — the 
 extreme and painful sensibility, prolonged im- 
 maturity of powers, earnest good purpose and 
 vacillating will of Charles — the noble and right 
 woman's manliness of his wife — and the ill- 
 considered rascality and subsequent better- 
 advised rectitude of D'Ormea. When I say, 
 therefore, that I cannot but believe my state- 
 ment (combining as it does what appears cor- 
 rect in Voltaire and plausible in Condorcet) 
 more true to person and thing than any it has 
 hitherto been my fortune to meet with, no 
 doubt my word will be taken, and my evidence 
 spared as readily. E. B." 
 
 London, 1842. 
 
 PERSONS 
 
 Victor Auadeus, first King of Sardinia. 
 Charles Emandel, his son, Prince of Piedmont. 
 PoLTrXENA, wife of Charles. 
 D'Oruea, minister. 
 
 FIRST YEAR, 1730. — KING VICTOR 
 PART I 
 
 Scene. — The Council Chamber 0/ Eivoli Palace, near 
 Turin, eonvmunicaiing with a Hall at the back, an 
 Apartment to the left, and another to the right of th£ 
 
 Charles. 
 
 Time, 1730-31. 
 Charles, Poltxena, 
 You think so ? Well, I do not. 
 
 Polyxena. My belovedi 
 
 AU must clear up ; we shall be happy yet : 
 This cannot last forever — oh, may change 
 To-day or any day ! 
 
 Cha. — May change ? Ah yes ~ 
 
 May change ! 
 
 Pol. Endure it, then. 
 
 Cha. No doubt a life 
 
 Like this drags on, now better and now worse. 
 My father may . . . may take to loving me ; 
 And he may take D'Ormea closer yet 
 To counsel him ; — may even cast off her 
 — That bad Sebastian ; but he also may 
 ... Or no, Polyxena, my only friend. 
 He may not force you from me ? 
 
 Pol, Now, force me 
 
146 
 
 KING VICTOR AND KING CHARLES 
 
 From you ! — me, close by you as if there 
 
 gloomed 
 No Sebastians, no D'Ormeas on our path — 
 At Rivoli or Turin, still at hand, 
 Arch-eounsellor, prime confidant . . , force 
 
 me ! 
 Cha. Because I felt as sure, as I feel sure 
 We clasp hands now, of being happy once. 
 Young was I, quite neglected, nor concerned 
 By the world's business that engrossed so much 
 My father and my brother : if I peered 
 From out my privacy, — amid the crash 
 And blaze of nations, domineered those two. 
 'T was war, peace — France our foe, now — 
 
 Fngland, friend — 
 In love with Spain — at feud with Austria! 
 
 WeU — 
 I wondered, laughed a moment's laugh for pride 
 In the chivalrous couple, then let drop 
 My curtain — "I am out of it," I said — 
 When . . . 
 Pol. You have told me, Charles. 
 
 Cha. Polyxena — 
 
 When suddenly, — a warm March day, just 
 
 that! 
 Just so much sunshine as the cottage child 
 Basks in delighted, while the cottager 
 Takes off his bonnet, as he ceases work. 
 To catch the more of it — and it must fall 
 Heavily on my brother ! Had you seen 
 Philip — the lion-featured ! not like me ! 
 Poi. I know — 
 
 Cha. And Philip's mouth yet fast to mine. 
 His dead cheek on my cheek, his arm still 
 
 round 
 My neck, — they bade me rise, " for I was heir 
 To the Duke," they said, "the right hand of 
 
 the Duke:" 
 Till then he was my father, not the Duke. 
 So . . . let me finish . . . the whole intricate 
 World's-business their dead boy was born to, I 
 Must conquer, — ay, the brilliant thing he was 
 I of a sudden must be : my faults, my follies, 
 — All bitter truths were told me, all at once, 
 To end the sooner. What I simply styled 
 Their overlooking me, had been contempt : 
 How should the Duke employ himself, forsooth, 
 With such an one, while lordly Philip rode 
 By him their Turin through ? But he was 
 
 punished. 
 And must put up with — me ! 'T was sad 
 
 enough 
 To learn my future portion and submit. 
 And then the wear and worry, blame on blame ! 
 For, spring-sounds in my ears, spring-smells 
 
 about. 
 How could I but grow dizzy in their pent 
 Dim palace-rooms at first ? My mother's look 
 As they discussed my insignificance, 
 She and my father, and I sitting by, — 
 I bore ; I knew how brave a son they missed ; 
 Philip had gayly run state-papers through. 
 While Charles was spelling at them painfully ! 
 But Victor was my father spite of that. 
 " Duke Victor's entire life has been," I said, 
 *' Innumerable efforts to one end ; 
 And on the point now of that end's success. 
 Our Ducal turning to a Kingly crown. 
 
 Where 's time to be reminded 't is his child 
 He spurns?" And so I suffered — scarcely 
 
 suffered. 
 Since I had you at length ! 
 
 Pf)l_ To serve m place 
 
 Of monarch, minister and mistress, Charles ! 
 Cha. But, once that crown obtained, then 
 
 was 't not liks 
 Our lot would alter ? " When he rests, takes 
 
 breath, 
 Glances around, sees who there 's left to love — 
 Now that my mother's dead, sees I am left — 
 Is it not like he 'U love me at the last ? " 
 WeU, Savoy turns Sardinia ; the Duke 's King: 
 Could I — precisely then — could you expect 
 His harshness to redouble ? These few months 
 Have been . . . have been . . . Polyxena, do you 
 And God conduct me, or I lose myself ! 
 What would he have ? What is 't they want 
 
 with me ? 
 Him with this mistress and this minister, 
 — You see me and you hear him ; judge us 
 
 both! 
 Pronounce what I should do, Polyxena ! 
 Pol. Endure, endure, beloved ! Say you 
 
 not 
 He is your father ? All 's so incident 
 To novel sway ! Beside, our life must change : 
 Or you '11 acquire his kingcraft, or he '11 find 
 Harshness a soiTy way of teaching it. 
 I bear this — not that there 's so much to bear. 
 Cha. You bear ? Do not I know that you, 
 
 though bound 
 To silence for my sake, are perishing 
 Piecemeal beside me ? And how otherwise 
 When every creephole from the hideous Court 
 Is stopped ; the Minister to dog me, here — 
 The Mistress posted to entrap you, there ! 
 And thus shall we grow old in such a life ; 
 Not careless, never estranged, — but old : to 
 
 alter 
 Our life, there is so much to alter ! 
 
 Pol. Come — 
 
 Is it agreed that we forego complaint 
 Even at Turin, yet complain we here 
 At Rivoli ? 'T were wiser you announced 
 Our presence to the King. What 's now afoot 
 I wonder ? Not that any more 's to dread 
 Than every day's embarrassment : but guess 
 For me, why train so fast succeeded train 
 On the high-road, each gayer still than each ! 
 I noticed your Archbishop's pursuivant. 
 The sable cloak and silver cross ; such pomp 
 Bodes . . . what now, Charles ? Can you con- 
 ceive ? 
 Cha. Not I. 
 
 Pol. A matter of some moment — 
 Cha. There 's our life I 
 
 Which of the group of loiterers that stare 
 From the lime-avenue, divines that I — 
 About to figure presently, he thinks. 
 In face of all assembled — am the one 
 Who knows precisely least about it ? 
 
 r.,^"'- , . Tush! 
 
 D Ormea's contrivance ! 
 
 Cha. Ay, how otherwise 
 
 Should the young Prince serve for the old Kins'a 
 foil? 
 
KING VICTOR AND KING CHARLES 
 
 147 
 
 — So that, the simplest courtier iriay remark 
 'T "were idle raisins: parties for a Prince 
 Content to linger the court's laughing-stock. 
 Something, 't is like, about that weary business 
 [Pointing to papers he has laid down^ and which 
 
 PoLYXENA examines. 
 
 — Not that I comprehend three words, of course, 
 After all last night's study. 
 
 Pol. The faint heart ! 
 
 Why, as we rode and you rehearsed just now 
 Its substance . . . (that 's the folded speech I 
 
 mean, 
 Concerning the Reduction of the Fiefs) 
 — What would you have? — I fancied while 
 
 you spoke, 
 Some tones were just your father's. 
 Cha. Flattery ! 
 
 Pol. I fancied so : — and here lurks, sure 
 
 enough. 
 My note upon the Spanish Claims ! You 've 
 
 mastered 
 The fief-speech thoroughly : this other, mind. 
 Is an opinion you deliver, — stay. 
 Best read it slowly over once to me ; 
 Read — there 's bare time ; you read it fii-mly — 
 
 loud 
 
 — Rather loud, looking in his face, — don't sink 
 Your eye once — ay, thus ! "If Spain claims " 
 
 . . . begin 
 ' — Just as you look at me ! 
 
 Cha. At you ! Oh truly, 
 
 You have I seen, say, marshalling your troops. 
 Dismissing councils, or, through doors ajar, 
 Head sunk on hand, devoured by slow chagrins 
 
 — Then radiant, for a crown had all at once 
 Seemed possible again ! I can behold 
 Him, whose least whisper ties my spirit fast. 
 In tms sweet brow, naught could divert me from 
 Save objects like Sebastian's shameless lip. 
 
 Or worse, the clipped gray hair and dead white 
 
 face 
 And dwindling eye as if it ached with guile, 
 D'Ormea wears . . . 
 
 {As he kisses her, enter from the King's apartment 
 D'Ormba.) 
 
 I said he would divert 
 My kisses from your brow ! 
 
 I)''Ormea. \_Aside.^ Here! So, King Victor 
 Spoke truth for once ; and who 's ordained, 
 
 but I 
 To make that memorable ? Both in call. 
 As he declared ! Were 't better gnash the teeth. 
 Or laugh outright now ? 
 
 • CAa. [(0 Pol. 1 What's his visit for? 
 
 1)^0. \Aside.\ I question if they even speak 
 
 to me. ' 
 Pol. [to Cha.] Face the man ! He 'U sup- 
 pose you fear him else. 
 [Aloud.^ The Marquis bears the King's com- 
 mand, no doubt ? 
 Z)' 0. [Asi^de.^ Precisely ! — If I threatened 
 him, perhaps? 
 Well, this at least is punishment enough ! 
 Men used to promise punishment would come. 
 Cha. Deliver the King's message. Marquis ! 
 D'O. [Aside.} Ah — 
 
 So anxious for his fate? [Aloud.^ A word, 
 my Prince, 
 
 Before you see your father — just one word 
 Of counsel ! 
 
 Cha. Oh, your counsel certainly ! 
 Polyxena, the Marquis counsels us ! 
 Well, sir ? Be brief, however ! 
 
 -D'O. What? You know 
 
 As much as I ? — preceded me, most like. 
 In knowledge I So! ('T is in his eye, beside — 
 His voice : he knows it, and his heart 's on flame 
 Already !) You surmise why you, myself, 
 Del Borgo, Spava, fifty nobles more. 
 Are summoned thus ? 
 
 Cha. Is the Prince used to know, 
 
 At any time, the pleasure of the King, 
 Before his minister ? — Polyxena, 
 Stay here till I conclude my task : I feel 
 Your presence (smile not) through the walls, 
 
 and take 
 Fresh heart. The King '3 within that chamber ? 
 
 X)'0. [Passing the table wliereon a paper lies, 
 exclaims, as he glances at it] Spain ! " 
 
 Pol. [Aside to Cha.J Tarry awhile : what 
 ails the minister ? 
 
 D''0. Madam, I do not often trouble you. 
 The Prince loathes, and you scorn me — let that 
 
 pass ! 
 But since it touches him and you^ not me, 
 Bid tlie Prince listen ! 
 
 Pol [to ChaJ Surely you will listen : 
 
 — Deceit ? — Those fingers crumpling up his 
 
 vest ? 
 Cha. Deceitful to the very fingers' ends ! 
 D'O. [who has approadied them, overlooks the 
 other paper Chakles amtinues to hold]. 
 My project for the Fiefs I As I supposed ! 
 Sir, I must give you light upon those measures 
 
 — For this is mine, and that I spied of Spain, 
 Mine too ! 
 
 Cha. Release me ! Do you gloze on me 
 
 Who bear in the world's face (that is, the world 
 You make for me at Turin) your contempt ? 
 
 — Your measures? — WTien was not a hateful 
 
 task 
 D'Ormea's imposition ? Leave my robe ! 
 What post can I bestow, what grant concede ? 
 Or do you take me for the King ? 
 
 X>'0. Not I! 
 
 Not yet for King, — not for, as yet, thank God, 
 One who in . . . shall I say a year, a month ? 
 Aj^ ! — shall be wretcheder than e'er was slave 
 In his Sardinia, — Europe's spectacle 
 And the world's by-word ! What ? The Princf 
 
 That I excluded him our counsels ? Here 
 
 [Touching the paper in Chaeles's hand. 
 
 Accept a method of extorting gold 
 
 From Savoy 's nobles, who must wring its worth 
 
 In silver first from tillers of the soil. 
 
 Whose hinds again have to contribute brass 
 
 To make up the amount : there 's counsel, sir, 
 
 My counsel, one year old ; and the fruit, this — 
 
 Savoy 's become a mass of misery 
 
 And wrath, which one man has to meet — the 
 
 King : 
 You 're not the King ! Another counsel, sir ! 
 Spain entertains a project (here it lies) 
 Which, guessed, makes Austria oifer that same 
 
 King 
 
r48 
 
 KING VICTOR AND KING CHARLES 
 
 Thna much to bafHe Spain ; he promises ; 
 Then comes Upain, breathless lest she be fore- 
 stalled, 
 Her offer follows ; and he promises , , , 
 
 Cha. — Promises, sir, when he has just agreed 
 To Austria 's offer ? 
 
 WO. That 's a counsel, Prince ! 
 
 But past our foresight, Spain and Austria 
 
 (choosing 
 To make their quarrel up between themselves 
 Without the intervention of a friend) 
 Produce both treaties, and both promises . . . 
 
 Cha. How? 
 
 D'O. Prince, a counsel! And the fruit of 
 that? 
 Both parties covenant afresh, to fall 
 Together on their friend, blot out his name, 
 Abolish him from Europe. So, take note. 
 Here 's Austria and here 's Spain to fight 
 
 against. 
 And what sustains the King but Savoy here, 
 A miserable people mad with wrongs ? 
 You 're not the King ! 
 
 Cha. Polyxena, you said 
 
 All would clear up : all does clear up to me. 
 
 D'O. Clear up! 'T is no such thing to 
 envy, then ? 
 You see the King's state in its length and 
 
 breadth ? 
 You blame me now for keeping you aloof 
 From counsels and the fruit of counsels ? Wait 
 Till I explain this mornmg 's business ! 
 
 Cha. [Aside.'] No — 
 
 Stoop to my father, yes, — D'Ormea, no ; 
 
 — The King's son, not to the King 's counsel- 
 
 lor! 
 I will do something, but at least retain 
 The credit of my deed ! \^Alimd.] Then it is 
 
 this 
 You now expressly come to tell me ? 
 
 D'O. This 
 
 To tell ! You apprehend me ? 
 
 Cha. Perfectly. 
 
 Further, D 'Ormea, you have shown yourself. 
 For the first time these many weeks and 
 
 months. 
 Disposed to do my bidding ? 
 D'O. From the heart ! 
 
 Cha. Acquaint my father, first, I wait his 
 pleasure : 
 Next . . . or, I '11 tell you at a fitter time. 
 Acquaint the King ! 
 
 D'O. lAside.] If I 'scape Victor yet ! 
 First, to prevent this stroke at me : if not, — 
 Then, to avenge it! [To Cha. J Gracious sir, 
 I go. iGoes. 
 
 Cha. God, I forbore ! Which more offends, 
 that man 
 Or that man's master ? Is it come to this ? 
 Have they supposed (the sharpest insult yet) 
 I needed e'en his intervention ? No I 
 No — dull am I, conceded, — but so dull. 
 Scarcely ! Their step decides me. 
 Pol. How decides ? 
 
 Cha. You would be freed D'Ormea 's eye 
 and hers ? 
 
 — Could fl jr the court with me and live content ? 
 So, this it IS for which the knights aaswrnible I 
 
 The whispers and the closeting of late, 
 The savageness and insolence of old, 
 — For this! 
 
 Pol. What mean you ? 
 
 Cha. How ? You fail to catch 
 
 Their clever plot ? I missed it, but could you ? 
 These last two months of care to inculcate 
 How dull I am, — D'Ormea's present visit 
 To prove that, being duU, I might be worse 
 Were I a King — as wretched as now dull — 
 You recognize in it no winding up 
 Of a long plot ? 
 
 Pol. Why should there be a plot ? 
 
 Cha. The crown's secure now; I should 
 shame the crown — 
 An old complaint ; the point is, how to gain 
 My place for one more fit in Victor's eyes, 
 His mistress the Sebastian's child. 
 
 Pol. In truth ? 
 
 Cha. They dare not quite dethrone Sardi- 
 nia's Prince : 
 But they may descant on my dnlness till 
 They sting me into even praying them 
 Grant leave to hide my head, resign ray state, 
 And end the coil. Not see now ? In a word, , 
 They 'd have me tender them myself my rights 
 As one incapable ; — some cause for that. 
 Since I delayed thus long to see their drift ! 
 1 shall apprise the King he may resume 
 My rights this moment. 
 
 Pol. Pause ! I dare not think 
 
 So ill of Victor. 
 
 Cha. Think no ill of him ! 
 
 Pol. — Nor think him, then, so shallow as to 
 suffer 
 His purpose be divined thus easily. 
 And yet — you are the last of a great line ; 
 There 's a great heritage at stake ; new days 
 Seemed to await this newest of the realms 
 Of Europe : — Charles, you must withstand 
 this ! 
 
 Cha. Ah ! 
 
 You dare not then renounce the splendid court 
 For one whom all the world despises ? Speak ! 
 
 Pol. My gentle husband, speak I will, and 
 truth. 
 Were this as you believe, and I once sure 
 Your duty lay in so renouncing rule, 
 I could . . . could? Oh what happiness it 
 
 were 
 To live, my Charles, and die, alone with you I 
 
 Cha. I grieve I asked yon. To the pres- 
 enccLthen ! 
 By this, D'Ormea acquaints the King, no 
 
 doubt. 
 He fears I am too simple for mere hints. 
 And that no less will serve than Victor's mouth 
 Demonstrating in council what I am. 
 I have not breathed, I think, these many years ! 
 
 Pol. Why, it may be! — if he desire to wed 
 That woman, call legitimate her child. 
 
 Cha. You see as much? Oh, let his will 
 have way 1 
 You '11 not repent confiding in me, love ? 
 There 's many a brighter spot in Piedmont, far, 
 Than Rivoli. I '11 seek him : or, suppose 
 You hear first how I mean to speak my mind ? 
 Loudly and firmly both, this time, be sure ! 
 
KING VICTOR AND KING CHARLES 
 
 149 
 
 I yet may see your Rhine-land, who cantell? 
 Once away, ever then away ! 1 breathe. ■ 
 
 Pd, And I too breathe. 
 
 Cha. Come, my Polyzena I 
 
 KING VICTOR 
 PART II 
 
 Enter Kino Victor, heaHng the regalia on a euahion^ 
 Jrom Ms apartment. He calls loudly — 
 
 D'Ormea ! — for patience fails me, treading thus 
 Among the obscure trains I have laid, — my 
 
 knights 
 Safe in the hall here — in that anteroom. 
 My son, — D 'Ormea, where ? Of this, one 
 
 touch — {_Laying down the crown. 
 
 This fireball to these mute black culd trains — 
 
 then 
 Outbreak enough ! 
 
 {Contemplating it.] To lose all, after all ! 
 This, glancing o'er my house for ages — shaped. 
 Brave meteor, like the crown of Cyprus now, 
 Jerusalem, Spain, England, every change 
 The braver, — and when I have clutched a 
 
 prize 
 My ancestry died wan with watching for, 
 To lose it I — by a slip, a fault, a trick 
 Learnt to advantage once and -not unlearned 
 When past the use, — " just this once more " (I 
 
 thought) 
 *' Use it with Spain and Austria happily. 
 And then away with trick ! " An oversight 
 I 'd have repaired thrice over, any time 
 These fifty years, must happen now I There 's 
 
 peace 
 At length ; and Ij to make the most of peace, 
 Ventured my project on our people here. 
 As needing not their help : which Europe 
 
 knows, 
 And means, cold-blooded, to dispose herself 
 (Apart from plausibilities of war) 
 To crush the new-made King — who ne'er till 
 
 now 
 Feared her. As Duke, I lost each foot of earth 
 And laughed at her: my name was left, my 
 
 sword 
 Left, all was left ! But she can take, she 
 
 knows. 
 This crown, herself conceded . . . 
 
 That's to try. 
 Kind Europe!^ My career's not closed as 
 
 yet. 
 This boy was ever subject to my will, 
 Timid and tame — the fitter ! — D'Ormea, too 
 What if the sovereign also rid himself 
 Of thee, his prime of parasites ? I delay ! 
 D'Ormea! 
 
 {As D'Obmea enters^ the King seats himself.). 
 
 My son, the Prince — attends he ? ' 
 
 D'O. Sir, 
 
 He does attend. The crown prepared ! — it 
 
 That you persist in your resolve. 
 
 Victor. Who's come? 
 
 The chancellor and the chamberlain? My 
 knights ? 
 
 D'O. The whole Annunziata. If, my liege, 
 Your fortune had not tottered worse tl^n 
 now ... 
 
 Vic, Del Boigo has drawn up the schedules ? 
 mine — 
 My son's, too ? Excellent ! Only, beware 
 Of the least blunder, or we look but fools. 
 First, you read the Annulment of the Oaths ; 
 Del Borgo follows . . , no, the Prince shall sign; 
 Then let Del Borgo read the Instrument : 
 On which, I enter. 
 
 D'O. ■ Sir, this may be truth ; 
 
 You, sir, may do as you affect — may break 
 Your engine, me, to pieces : try at least 
 If not a spring remain worth saving ! Take 
 My counsel as I 've counselled many times I 
 What if the Spaniard and the Aiistrian threat ? 
 There 's England, Holland, Venice — which ally 
 Select you ? 
 
 Vic. Aha ! Come, D'Ormea, — "truth " 
 
 Was on your lip a minute since. Allies ? 
 I 've broken faith with Venice, Holland, Ei^- 
 
 land 
 — As who knows if not you ? 
 
 D''0. But why with me 
 
 Break faith — with one ally, your best, break 
 faith? 
 
 Vic. When first I stumbled on you. Marquis 
 — 'twas 
 At Mondovi — a little lawyer's clerk . . . 
 
 D'O. Therefore your soul's ally! — who 
 brought you through 
 Your quarrel with the Pope, at pains enough — 
 Who simply echoed' you in these affairs — 
 On whom you cannot therefore visit these 
 Affairs' ill fortune — whom you trust to guide 
 You safe (yes, on my soul) through these affairs ! 
 
 Vic. I was about to notice, had you not 
 Prevented me, that since that great town kept 
 With its chicane D'Ormea 's satchel stuffed 
 And D'Ormea's self sufficiently recluse. 
 He missed a sight, — my naval armament 
 When I burned Toulon. How the skiff exults 
 Upon the galliot's wave I — rises its height, 
 O'ertops it even ; but the great wave bursts. 
 And hell-deep in the horrible profound 
 Buries itself the galliot : shall the skiff 
 Think to escape the sea's black trough in turn f 
 Apply this : you have been my minister 
 — T>rext me, above me possibly ; — sad post. 
 Huge care, abundant lack of peace of mind ; 
 Wlio would desiderate the eminence ? 
 You gave your soul to get it ; you 'd yet ^ve 
 Your soul to keep it, as I mean you shall, 
 D'Ormea ! What if the wave ebbed with me ? 
 Whereas it cants you to another crest ; 
 I toss you to my son ; ride out your ride I 
 
 D'O. Ah, you so much despise me ? , 
 
 Vic. You, D'Ormea? 
 
 Nowise : and I '11 inform you why. A king 
 Must in his time have many ministers. 
 And I 've been rash enough to part with mine 
 When I thought proper. Of the tribe, not one 
 ( ... Or wait, did Pianezze ? ... ah, just the 
 
 same !) ' ' 
 Not one of thein, ere his remonstrance reached 
 The length of yours, but has assured me (com" 
 monly 
 
f50 
 
 KING VICTOR AND KING CHARLES 
 
 Standing much as you stand, — or nearer, say. 
 The door to make his exit on his speech) 
 — I should repent of what I did. D'Ormea, 
 3e candid, you approached it when I bade you 
 Prepare the schedules ! But you stopped in 
 
 time, 
 Sfou have not so assured me : how should I 
 Despise you then ? 
 
 {Enter Charles.) 
 '^ic. {Changing histone.] Ai-e you instructed? 
 Do 
 My order, point by point ! About it, sir ! 
 X)'0. You so despise me 1 \_Aside.'\ Chie last 
 stay remains — 
 The boy 's discretion there. 
 
 \To Cha.] For your sake. Prince, 
 I pleaded, wholly in your interest. 
 To save you from this fate ! 
 
 Cha. yAside.'] Must I be told 
 
 The Prince was supplicated for — by him ? 
 Vic, [To jD'O.J Apprise Del Borgo, Spava, 
 and the rest. 
 Our son attends them ; then return. 
 ^'O. . One word ! 
 
 Cha. [Aside.l\ A moment's pause and they 
 would drive me hence, 
 I do believe ! 
 H'O. [Aside.'] Let but the boy be firm ! 
 Vic. You disobey ? 
 
 Cha. iTo D'0.1 You do not disobey 
 
 Me, at least. Did you promise that or no ? 
 D'O. Sir, I am yours: what would you? 
 
 Yours am I ! 
 Cha. When I have said what I shall say, 
 'tis like 
 Your face will ne'er again disgust me. Go ! 
 Through you, as through a breast of glass, I see. 
 And for your conduct, from my youth till now. 
 Take my contempt! You might have spared 
 
 me much. 
 Secured me somewhat, nor so harmed yourself : 
 That 's over now. Go, ne'er to come again ! 
 
 D'O. As son, the father — father, as the son ! 
 My wits ! My wits ! IGoes. 
 
 Vic. [Seated.] And you, what meant you, 
 pray, 
 Speaking thus to D'Ormea ? 
 
 CAa. Let us not 
 
 Waste words upon D'Ormea ! Those I spent 
 Have half unsettled what I came to say. 
 His presence vexes to my very soul. 
 
 Vic. One called to manage a kingdom, Charles, 
 needs heart 
 To bear up under worse annoyances 
 Than seems D'Ormea — to me, at least. 
 
 Cha. [Aside.] Ah, good I 
 
 He keeps me to the point 1 Then be it so. 
 lAloudT] Last night, sir, brought me certain 
 
 papers — these — 
 To be reported on, — your way of late. 
 Is it last night's result that you demand ? 
 Vic. For God's sake, what has night brought 
 forth ? Pronounce 
 The . . . what 's your word ? — result ! 
 
 Cha. Sir, that had proved 
 
 Quite Worthy of your sneer, no doubt : — a few 
 Lame thoughts, regard for you alone could 
 wring, 
 
 Lame as they are, from brains like mine, be- 
 
 lieve ! 
 As 't is, sir, I am spared both toil and sneer. 
 These are the papers. 
 
 Vic. Well, sir ? I suppose 
 
 You hardly burned them . Now for your result ! 
 
 Cha. I never should have done great things, 
 of course, 
 But ... oh my father, had you loved me more I 
 
 Vic. Loved ? [Aside.] Has D'Ormea played 
 me false, I wonder ? 
 [Aloud.] Why, Charles, a king's love is diffused 
 
 — yourself 
 May overlook, ijerchance, your part in it. 
 Our monarchy is absolntest now 
 In Europe, or my trouble 's thrown away. 
 I love, my mode, that subjects each and all 
 May have the power of loving, all and each. 
 Their mode : I doubt not, many have their sons 
 To trifle with, talk soft to, all day long : 
 I have that crown, this chair, D'Ormea, Charles! 
 
 Cha. 'T is well I am a subject then, not you. 
 
 Vic. [Aside.] D'Ormea has told him every- 
 thing. [Aloud.] Aha, 
 I apprehend you : when all 's said, you take 
 Your private station to be prized beyond 
 My own, for instance ? 
 
 Cha. — Do and ever did 
 
 So take it : 't is the method you pursue 
 That grieves . . . 
 
 Vic. These words ! Let me express, my 
 friend, 
 Your thoughts. You penetrate what I supposed 
 Secret. D'Ormea plies his trade betimes ! 
 I purpose to resign my crown to you. 
 
 Cha. Tome? 
 
 Vic. Now, — in that chamber. 
 
 Cha. You resign 
 
 The crown to me ? 
 
 Vic. And time enough, Charles, sure ? 
 
 Confess with me, at four-and-sixty yeara 
 A crown 's a load. I covet quiet once 
 Before I die, and summoned you for that. 
 
 Cha. 'T is I will speak : you ever hated mo, 
 I bore it, — have insulted me, borne too — 
 Now you insult yourself ; and I remember 
 What I believed you^what you really are. 
 
 And cannot bear it. What I My life has ps 
 
 Under your eye, tormented as you know, — 
 Your whole sagacities, one after one. 
 At leisure brought to play on me — to prove me 
 A fool, I thought and I submitted ; now 
 You 'd prove . . . what would you prove me ' 
 ^,^«<:;, , , This to me? 
 
 1 hardly know you ! 
 
 Cha. Know me ? Oh indeed 
 
 You do not ! Wait till I complain next time 
 Of my simplicity ! — for here s a sage 
 Knows the world well, is not to be deceived, 
 And his experience and his Macchiavels, 
 D'Ormeas, teach him — what ? — that I this 
 
 while 
 Have envied him his crown ! He has not smiled, 
 I warrant, — has not eaten, drunk, nor slept, 
 l^r 1 was plotting with my Princess yonder ! 
 Who knows what we might do or might not do ? 
 Go now, be politic, astound the world ! 
 That sentry in the antechamber — nay, 
 
KING VICTOR AND KING CHARLES 
 
 151 
 
 The varlet who disposed this precious trap 
 
 iPomting to the crown. 
 That was to take me — ask them if they think 
 Their own sons envy them their posts ! — Know 
 me! 
 Vic. But you know me, it seems : so, learn, 
 in brief. 
 My pleasure. This assembly is convened . . . 
 Cha. Tell me, that woman put it in your 
 head! 
 You were not sole contriver of the scheme. 
 My father ! 
 
 Vic. Now observe me, sir ! I jest 
 
 Seldom — on these points, never. Here, I say. 
 The knights assemble to see me concede, 
 And you accept, Sardinia's crown. 
 
 Cha. Farewell! 
 
 'T were vain to hope to change this : I can end it. 
 Not that I cease from being yours, when sunk 
 Into obscurity : I '11 die for you. 
 But not annoy you with my presence. Sir, 
 Farewell! Farewell! 
 
 {Snier D'Ormea.) 
 
 D'O. [Aside.] Ha, sure he 's changed again — 
 Means not to fall into the cunning trap ! 
 Then, Victor, I shall yet escape you, Victor ! 
 Vic. [Suddenly placing the crown upon the 
 head of Charles.] D'Ormea, your king ! 
 [To Cha.] My son, obey me ! Charles, 
 
 Your father, clearer-sighted than youraelf , 
 Decides it must be so. 'Faith, this looks real ! 
 My reasons after ; reason upon reason 
 After : but now, obey me ! Trust in me ! 
 By this, you save Sardinia, yon save me ! 
 Why, the boy swoons ! [To X)'0.] Come this 
 side ! 
 D'O. [As Chakles turns from him to VlC- 
 
 TOK.] You persist ? 
 Vic. Yes, I conceive the gesture's meaning. 
 'Faith, 
 He almost seems to hate you : how is that ? 
 Be reassured, my Charles ! Is 't over now ? 
 Then, Marquis, tell the new King what remains 
 To do ! A moment's work. Del Borgo reads 
 The Act of Abdication out, you sign it, 
 Then I sign ; after that, come back to me. 
 JD'O. Sir, for the last time, pause I 
 Vic. Five minutes longer 
 
 I am your sovereign. Marquis. Hesitate — 
 And I '11 so turn those minutes to account 
 That . . . Ay, you recollect me ! [Aside.^ 
 
 Could I bring 
 My foolish mind to undergo the reading 
 That Act of Abdication ! 
 
 [j45 Chablbs motions D'Ormea to precede him. 
 Thanks, dear Charles ! 
 
 [Chables and D'Oemea retire. 
 Vic. A novel feature in the boy, — indeed 
 Just what I feared he wanted most. Quite 
 
 right, 
 This earnest tone : your truth, now for effect ! 
 It answers every purpose : with that look. 
 That voice, — I hear him : "I began no 
 
 treaty," 
 (He speaks to Spain,) "nor ever dreamed of 
 
 this 
 You show me ; this I from my soul regret ; 
 But if my father signed it, bid not me 
 
 Dishonor him — who gave me all, beside : " 
 And, " true," says Spain, " 't were harsh to 
 
 visit that 
 Upon the Prince.'" Then come the nobles 
 
 trooping : 
 " I grieve at these exactions — I had cut 
 This hand off ere impose them ; but shall I 
 Undo my father's deed ? " — and they confer : 
 " Doubtless he was no party, after all ; 
 Give the Prince time ! " 
 
 Ay, give us time, but time I 
 Only, he must not, when the dark day comes, 
 Refer our friends to me and frustrate all. 
 We '11 have no child's play, no desponding fits. 
 No Charles at each cross turn entreating Victor 
 To take his crown again. Guard against that ! 
 
 CBnter D'Okmea.) 
 Long live King Charles ! 
 
 No — Charles's counsellor ! 
 Well, is it over. Marquis ? Did I jest ? 
 D'O. "King Charles!" What then may 
 
 you be ? 
 Vic. Anything ! 
 
 A country gentleman that, cured of bustle. 
 Now beats a quick retreat toward Chambery, 
 Would hunt and hawk and leave you noisy folk 
 'I'o drive your trade without him. I 'm Count 
 
 Remont — 
 Count Tende — any little place's Count ! 
 
 D'O. Then Victor, Captain against Catinat 
 At Staffarde, where the French beat you j and 
 
 Duke 
 At Turin, where you beat the French; King 
 
 late 
 Of Savoy, Piedmont, Montferrat, Sardinia, 
 — Now, " any little place's Count " — 
 
 Vic. Proceed ! 
 
 D'O. Breaker of vows to God, who crovraed 
 
 you first ; 
 Breaker of vows to man, who kept you since ; 
 Most profligate to me who outraged God 
 And man to serve you, and am made pay crimes 
 I was but privy to, by passing thus 
 To your imbecile son — who, well you know, 
 Must — (when the people here, and nations 
 
 there. 
 Clamor for you the main delinquent, slipped 
 From King to — " Count of any little place )" 
 Must needl surrender me, all in his reach, — 
 I, sir, forgive you ; for I see the end — 
 See you on your return — (you will return) — 
 To him you trust, a moment . . . 
 
 Vic. Trust him ? How ? 
 
 My poor man, merely a prime-minister. 
 Make me know where my trust errs ! 
 
 D'O. In his fear. 
 
 His love, his — but discover for yourself 
 What you are weakest, trusting in ! 
 
 Vic. Aha, 
 
 D'Ormea, not a shrewder scheme than this 
 In your repertory ? You know old Victor — 
 Vain, choleric, inconstant, rash — (I 've heard 
 Talkers who little thought the King so close) — 
 Felicitous now, were 't not, to provoke him 
 To clean forget, one minute afterward. 
 His solemn act, and call the nobles back 
 And pray them give again the very power 
 He has abjured ? —for the dear sake of what i" 
 
1 52 
 
 KING VICTOR AND KING CHARLES 
 
 Vengeance on you, D'Ormea ! No : such am I, 
 Count Tende or Count anything you please, 
 — Only, the same that did the things you say, 
 And, among other things you say not, used 
 Your finest fibre, meanest muscle, — you 
 I used, and now, since you will have it so, 
 Leave to your fate — mere lumber in the midst. 
 You and your works. Why, what on earth be- 
 side 
 Are you made for, you sort of ministers ? 
 
 D'O. Not left, though, to my fate ! Your 
 witless son 
 Has more wit than to load himself with lumber : 
 He foils you that way, and I follow you. 
 
 Via. Stay with my son — protect the weaker 
 side! 
 
 D^O. Ay, to be tossed the people like a rag, 
 And flung by them for Spain and Austria's 
 
 sport, 
 Abolishing the record of your part 
 In all this perfidy ! 
 
 Vic. Prevent, beside. 
 
 My own return ! 
 
 X)'0. That 's half prevented now 1 
 
 'T will go hard but you find a wondrous charm 
 In exile, to discredit me. The Alps, 
 SUk-mills to watch, vines asking vigilance — 
 Hounds open for the stag, your hawk 's 
 
 a- wing — 
 Brave days that wait the Louis of the South, 
 Italy's Janus ! 
 
 Vic. So, the lawyer's clerk 
 
 Won't tell me that I shall repent ! 
 
 D'O. You give me 
 
 Full leave to ask if you repent ? 
 
 Vic. Whene'er 
 
 Sufficient time 's elapsed for that, you judge ! 
 
 IShouis inside, " Kino Charles ! " 
 
 D'O. Do you repent ? 
 
 Vie. [After a slight pause.'] ... I 've kept 
 
 them waiting? Yes ! 
 Come in, complete the Abdication, sir! {They 
 
 go out. 
 
 {Enter Poltxena.) 
 Pol. A shout I The sycophants are free of 
 
 Charles I 
 Oh, is not this like Italy ? No fruit 
 Of nis or iny distempered fancy, this, 
 But just an ordinary fact ! Beside, 
 Here they 've set forms for such proceedings ; 
 
 Victor 
 Imprisoned his own mother : he should know. 
 If any, how a son 's to be deprived 
 Of a son's right. Our duty 's palpable. 
 Ne'er was my husband for the wily king 
 And the unworthy subjects : be it so ! 
 Come you safe out of them, my Charles 1 Our 
 
 life 
 Grows not the broad and dazzling life, I 
 
 dreamed 
 Might prove your lot ; for strength was shut in 
 
 you 
 None guessed but I — strength which, untram- 
 melled once. 
 Had little shamed your vaunted ancestry — 
 Patience and self-devotion, fortitude, 
 Simplicity and utter truthfulness 
 — All which, th*^v shout to lose I 
 
 So, now my work 
 Begins — to save him from regret. Save 
 
 Charles , „ , j 
 
 Regret ? — the noble nature 1 He 's not made 
 Like these Italians : 't is a German soul. 
 
 (Chables enters crowned.) 
 Oh, Where's the King's heir? Gone:— the 
 
 Crown-prince ? Gone : — 
 Where's Savoy? Gone !— Sardinia ? Gone! 
 
 But Charles 
 Is left 1 And when my Rhine-land bowers ar- 
 rive, 
 If he looked almost handsome yester-twilight 
 As his gray eyes seemed widening into black 
 Because I praised him, then how wiU he look ? 
 Farewell, you stripped and whited mulberry- 
 trees 
 Bound each to each by lazy ropes of vine ! 
 Now I '11 teach you my language : I 'm not 
 
 forced 
 To speak Italian now, Charles ? 
 [She sees the crown.] What is this ? 
 
 Answer me — who has done this ? Answer ! 
 
 Cha. He! 
 
 I am King now. 
 
 Pol. Oh worst, worst, worst of all ! 
 
 Tell me ! What, Victor ? He has made yon 
 
 King? 
 What 's he then? What 's to follow this ? You, 
 King? 
 Cha. Have I done wrong ? Yes, for you were 
 
 not by 1 
 Pol, Tell me from first to last. 
 Cha. Hush — a new world 
 
 Brightens before me ; he is moved away 
 — 'The dark form that eclipsed it, he subsides 
 Into a shape supporting me like you. 
 And I, alone, tend upward, more and more 
 Tend upward : I am grown Sardinia's King. 
 Pol. Now stop : was not this Victor, fhike 
 of Savoy 
 At ten years old ? 
 
 Cha. He was. 
 
 Pol. And the Duke spent, 
 
 Since then, just four-and-fifty years in toil 
 To be — what? 
 Cha. ^me. 
 
 Pol. Then why unking himself ? 
 
 Cha. Those years are cause enough. 
 Pol. The only cause ? 
 
 Cha. Some new perplexities. 
 Pol. Which you can solve 
 
 Although he cannot ? 
 
 Cha. He assures me so. 
 
 Pol. And this he means shall last — how 
 
 long? 
 Cha. How long? 
 
 Think you I fear the perils I confront ? 
 He 's praising me before the people's face — 
 My people I 
 Pol. Then he 's changed — grown kind, the 
 King? 
 Where can the trap be ? 
 
 Cha. Heart and soul I pledge ! 
 
 My father, could I guard the crown you gained. 
 Transmit as I received it, — all good else 
 Would I surrender ! 
 Pol. Ah, it opens then 
 
KING VICTOR AND KING CHARLES 
 
 153 
 
 Before you, all you dreaded formerly 1 
 You are rejoiced to be a king, my Charles ? 
 Cha. So much to dare ? The better, — much 
 
 to dread : 
 The better, I '11 adTentnre though alone. 
 Triumph or die, there 's Victor still to witness 
 Who dies or triumphs — either way, alone ! 
 Pol. Once I had found my share in triumph, 
 
 Charles, 
 Or death. 
 
 Cha. But you are I ! But you I call 
 To take. Heaven's proxy, vows I tendered 
 
 Heaven 
 A moment since. I will deserve the crown I 
 Pol. You will. [Aside.l No doubt it were a 
 
 glorious thing 
 For any people, if a heart like his 
 Ruled over it. I would I saw the trap. 
 
 {Enter Victoe.) 
 'Tis he must show me. 
 
 Vic. So, the mask falls off 
 
 An old man's foolish love at last. Spare thanks I 
 I know you, and Polyxena I know. 
 Here 's Charles — I am his guest now — does he 
 
 bid me 
 Be seated ? And my light-haired blue-eyed 
 
 chUd 
 Must not forget the old man far away 
 At Chambery, who dozes while she reigns. 
 Pol. Most grateful shall we now be, talking 
 
 least 
 Of gratitude — indeed of anything 
 That hinders what yourself must need to say 
 To Charles. 
 
 Cha. Pray speak, sir ! 
 Vic. 'Faith, not much to say : 
 
 Only what shows itself, you once i' the point 
 Of sight. You 're now the King : you U com- 
 prehend 
 Much yon may oft have wondered at — the 
 
 shifts, 
 Dissimulation, wiliness I showed. 
 For what 's our post ? Here 's Savoy and here 's 
 
 Piedmont, 
 Here 's Montf errat — a breadth here, a space 
 
 there — 
 To o'er-sweep all these, what '3 one weapon 
 
 worth ? 
 I often think of how they fought in Greece 
 (Or Rome, which was it ? You 're the scholar, 
 
 Charles !) 
 You made a frontrthrust ? But if your shield 
 
 too 
 Were not adroitly planted, some shrewd knave 
 Reached you behind ; and him foiled, straight if 
 
 thong 
 And handle of that shield were not cast loose. 
 And you enabled to outstrip the wind, 
 Fresh foes assailed you, either side ; 'scape these. 
 And reach your place of refuge— e'en then, 
 
 odds 
 If the gate opened unless breath enough 
 Were left in you to make its lord a speech. 
 Oh, you will see ! 
 
 Cha. No : straight on shall I go, 
 
 Truth helping ; win with it or die with it. 
 Vic, 'Faith, Charles, you're not made 
 
 Europe's fighting-man I 
 
 The barner-guarder, if you please. You clutch 
 Hold and consolidate, with envious France 
 This side, with Austria that, the territory 
 I held — ay, and will hold . . . which you shall 
 
 hold 
 Despite the couple ! But I 've surely earned 
 JSxemption from these weary politics, 
 
 — The privilege to prattle with my son 
 
 And dai^hter here, though Europe wait the 
 wlme. 
 
 Pol. Nay, sir, — at Chambery, away forever, 
 As soon you will be, 't is farewell we bid you : 
 Turn these few fleeting moments to account ! 
 'T is just as though it were a death. 
 
 Vic- Indeed! 
 
 Pol. [Aside.l Is the trap there ? 
 
 Clia. Ay, call this parting — death! 
 
 The sacreder your memory becomes. 
 If I misrule Sardinia, how bring back 
 My father ? 
 
 Vic. I mean . . . 
 
 Pol. \who watches Victor narrowly this 
 while]. Your father does not mean 
 
 You should be ruling for your father's sake : 
 It is your people must concern you wholly 
 Instead of him. You mean this, sir ? (He drops 
 My hand !) 
 
 Cha. That people is now part of me. 
 
 Vic. About the people ! I took certain 
 measures 
 Some short time since . . . Oh, I know well, 
 
 you know 
 But little of my measures ! These affect 
 The nobles ; we 've resumed some grants, im- 
 posed 
 A tax or two : prepare yourself, in short, 
 For clamor on that score. Mark me : you yield 
 No jot of aught entrusted you 1 
 
 Pol. No jot 
 
 You yield ! 
 
 Cha. My father, when I took the oath. 
 
 Although my eye might stray in search of yours, 
 I heard it, understood it, promised God 
 What you require. Till from this eminence 
 He move me, here I keep, nor shall concede 
 The meanest of my rights. 
 
 Vic. [Aside.] The boy 's a fool ! 
 
 — Or rather, I 'm a fool : for, what '3 wrong 
 
 here? 
 To-day the sweets of reigning : let to-morrow 
 Be ready with its bitters. 
 
 {Enter D'Ormea.) 
 
 There 's beside 
 Somewhat to press upon your notice first. 
 
 Cha. Then why delay it for an instant, sir ? 
 That Spanish claim perchance ? And, now yon 
 
 — This morning, my opinion was mature. 
 Which, boy-like, I was bashful in producing 
 To one I ne'er am like to fear in future ! 
 My thought is formed upon that Spanish claim. 
 
 Vic. Betimes indeed. Not now, Charles ! 
 You require 
 A host of papers on it. 
 
 B'O. [Coming forward.] Here they are. 
 ]To Cha.] I, sir, was minister and much beside 
 Of the late monarch ; to say little, him 
 I served : on you I have, to say e'en less. 
 
154 
 
 KING VICTOR AND KING CHARLES 
 
 No claim. This ease contains those papers: 
 
 with them 
 I tender you my oi&ce, 
 
 Vic. IHastily.] Keep him, Charles ! 
 
 There 's reason for it — many reasons : you 
 Distrust him, nor are so far wrong there, — but 
 He 's mixed up in this matter — he '11 desire 
 To quit you, for occasions known to me : 
 Do not accept those reasons : have him stay I 
 
 Pol. [Aside.] His minister thrust on us ! 
 
 Cha. ITo D'O.] Sir, belicTC, 
 
 In justice to myself, you do not need 
 E'en this commending : howsoe'er might seem 
 My feelings toward you, as a private man. 
 They quit me in the vast and untried field 
 Of action. Though I shall myself (as late 
 In your own hearing I engaged to do) 
 Preside o'er my Sardinia, yet your help 
 Is necessary. Think the past forgotten 
 And serve me now ! 
 
 D'O. I did not ofEer you 
 
 My service — would that I could serve you, sir ! 
 As for the Spanish matter . . . 
 
 Vic. But dispatch 
 
 At least the dead, in my good daughter's phrase, 
 Before the living ! Help to house me safe 
 Ere with D'Ormea you set the world agape ! 
 Here is a paper — will yon overlook 
 What I propose reserving for my needs ? 
 I get as far from you as possible : 
 Here 's what I reckon my expenditure. 
 
 Cha. [Reading.] A miserable fifty thousand 
 crowns ! 
 
 Vic. Oh, quite enough for country gentle- 
 men! 
 Beside, the exchequei^ happens . . . but find 
 
 out 
 All that, yourself ! 
 
 Cha. [Still reading.] "Count Tende" — 
 what means this ? 
 
 Vic. Me : you were but an infant when I 
 burst 
 Through the defile of Tende upon France. 
 Had only my allies kept true to me ! 
 No matter. Tende 's, then, a name I take 
 Just as . . . 
 
 ■D'O. — The Marchioness Sebastian takes 
 The name of Spigno. 
 
 Cha. How, sir ? 
 
 Vic. [To D'O.] Fool! All that 
 
 Was for my own detailing. [To Cha.] That 
 anon! 
 
 Cha. [To D'O.] Explain what you have 
 said, sir ! 
 
 D'O. I supposed 
 
 The marriage of the King to her I named, 
 Profoundly kept a secret these few weeks, 
 Was not to be one, now he 's Count. 
 
 Fol. [Aside.] With us 
 
 The minister — with him the mistress 1 
 
 Cha. [To Vic] No — 
 
 Tell me you have not takev her — that wo- 
 man — 
 To live with, past recall ! 
 
 Vic. And where 's the crime . . . 
 
 Pol. [To Cha.] True, sir, this is a matter 
 past recall 
 And past your cognizance, A day before, 
 
 And you had been compelled to note this-» 
 
 now 
 Why note it ? The King saved his House 
 
 from shame : 
 What the Count did, is no concern of yours. 
 Cha. [After a pause.] The Spanish claim, 
 
 D'Ormea ! 
 Vic. Why, my son, 
 
 I took some ill-advised . . . one's age, in fa<!t, 
 Spoils everything : though I was overreached, 
 A younger brain, we 'U trust, may extricate 
 Sardinia readily. To-morrow, D'Ormea, 
 Inform the King I 
 D'O. [Without regarding Viotok, and 
 
 '^h 
 
 hus stands the case with Spain : 
 When first the Infant Carlos claimed his proper 
 Succession to the throne of Tuscany . . . 
 
 Vic. I tell you, that stands over ! Let that 
 rest ! 
 There is the policy ! 
 
 Cha. [ToD'O.] Thus much I know, 
 And more — too much. The remedy ? 
 
 D'O. Of course I 
 
 l<lo glimpse of one. 
 
 Vic. No remedy at all ! 
 
 It makes the remedy itself — time makes it. 
 D'O. [To Cha.] But if . . . 
 Vic. [Still more hastily.] In fine, I shall 
 take care of that : 
 And, with another project that I have . . . 
 D'O. [Turning on him.] Oh, since Count 
 Tende means to take again 
 King Victor's crown ! — 
 Pol. [Throwing herself at Victor's feet.] 
 E'en now retake it, sir ! 
 Oh, speak ! We are your subjects both, once 
 
 more ! 
 Say it — a word effects it ! You meant not. 
 Nor do mean now, to take it : but you must ! 
 'T is in you — in your nature — and the shame 'a 
 Not half the shame 't would grow to afterwards ! 
 Cha. Polyxena! 
 
 Pol. A word recalls the knights — 
 
 Say it ! — What 's promising and what 's the 
 
 past? 
 Say you are still King Victor ! 
 
 D'O. Better say 
 
 The Count repents, in brief ! 
 
 [ViCTOH }n^es. 
 Cha. With such a crime 
 
 I have not charged you, sir ! 
 Pol. Charles turns from me ! 
 
 SECOND YEAR, 1731. — KING CHARLES 
 PART I 
 
 Enter Qdben Poltxbma and D'Obmea. — A pause. 
 
 Pol. And now, sir, what have you to say ? 
 
 ^'0- .^ -r Count Tende . . . 
 
 Pol. Affirm not I betrayed you ; you rs 
 solve 
 On uttering this strange intelligence 
 — Nay, post yourself to find me ere I reach 
 The capital, because yon know King Charles 
 Tames a day or two at Evian baths 
 
KING VICTOR AND KING CHARLES 
 
 >55 
 
 Behind me : — but take warning, — here and 
 thus [Seating herself in the royal seat. 
 
 I listen, if I listen — not your friend. 
 Sxplicitly the statement, if you still 
 Persist to urge it on me, must proceed : 
 I am not made for aught else. 
 
 D'O. Good! Count Tende . . . 
 
 Pd. I, who mistrust you, shall acquaint 
 King Charles, 
 Who even more mistrusts you. 
 
 B'O. Does he so? 
 
 Pol. Why should he not ? 
 
 X)'0. Ay, why not? Motives, seek 
 
 You virtuous people, motives ! Say, I serve 
 God at the devil's bidding — will that do ? 
 I 'm proud : our people have been pacified, 
 Keally I know not how — 
 
 Pol. By truthfulness. 
 
 D'O. Exactly; that shows I had naught to 
 do 
 With pacifying them. Our foreign perils 
 Also exceed my means to stay : but here 
 'T is otherwise, and my pride 's piqued. Count 
 
 Tende 
 Completes a full year's absence : would you, 
 
 madam, 
 Have the old monarch back, his mistress back, 
 His measures back ? I pray you, act upon 
 My counsel, or they will be. 
 
 Pol. When? 
 
 D'O. Let's think. 
 
 Home-matters settled — Victor 's coming now ; 
 Let foreign matters settle — Victor 's here 
 Unless I stop him ; as I will, this way. 
 
 Pol, [Reading thepapershe presents,] If this 
 should prove a plot 'twixt you and Victor ? 
 You seek annoyances to give the pretext 
 For what you say you fear ! 
 
 B'O, Oh, possibly ! 
 
 I go for nothing. Only show King Charles 
 That thus Count Tende purposes return. 
 And style me his inviter, if you please ! 
 
 Pol. Half of your tale is true ; most like, 
 the Count 
 Seeks to return : but why stay you with .us ? 
 To aid in such emergencies. 
 
 D' 0. Keep safe 
 
 Those papers : or, to serve me, leave no proof 
 I thus have counselled! When the Count re- 
 turns, 
 And the Kii^ abdicates, 't will stead me little 
 To have thus counselled. 
 
 Pol, The King abdicate ! 
 
 D'O, He's good, we knew long since — 
 wise, we discover — 
 Firm, let us hope : — but I 'd have gone to work 
 With him away. Well ! 
 
 [Chakles without,'] In the Council Chamber ? 
 
 D'O, AU'slost! 
 
 Pol, Oh, surely not King Charles ! He 's 
 changed — 
 That 's not this year's care-burdened voice and 
 
 step: 
 T is last year's step, the Prince's voice ! 
 
 D'O. I know. 
 
 {Enter Chables — D'Obmea retiring a tittle,) 
 
 Cha. Now wish me joy, Polyxena ! Wish it 
 me 
 
 The old way ! [She embraces him. 
 
 There was too much cause for that ! 
 But 1 have found myself again. What news 
 At Turin ? Oh, if you but felt the load 
 I 'm free of — free ! I said this year would 
 
 end 
 Or it, or me — but I am free, thank God ! 
 
 Pol. How, Charles ? 
 
 Cha. You do not pruess ? The day I found 
 Sardinia's hideous coil, at home, abroad, 
 And how my father was involved in it, — 
 Of course, I vowed to rest and smile no more 
 Until I cleared his name from obloquy. 
 We did the people right — 't was much to 
 
 gain 
 That point, redress our nobles' grievance, too ~ 
 But that took place here, was no crying shame : 
 All must be done abroad, — if I abroad 
 Appeased the justly-angered Powers, destroyed 
 The scandal, took down Victor's name at last 
 From a bad eminence, I then might breathe 
 And rest ! No moment was to lose. Behold 
 The proud result — a Treaty, Austria, Spain 
 Agree to — 
 
 X>'0. [Aside,] I shall merely stipulate 
 For an experienced headsman. 
 
 Cha. Not a soul 
 
 Is compromised : the blotted past 's a blank : 
 Even D'Ormea escapes unquestioned. See ! 
 It reached me from Vienna ; I remained 
 At Evian to dispatch the Count his news j 
 'T is gone to Chambery a week ago — 
 And here am I : do I deserve to feel 
 Your warm white arms around me ? 
 
 D'O. [Coming forward.] He knows that? 
 
 Cha. What, in Heaven's name, means this ? 
 
 D'O. He knows that matters 
 
 Are settled at Vieima? Not too late! 
 Plainly, unless you post this very hour 
 Some man you trust (say, me) to Chambery 
 And take precautions I acquaint you with, 
 Your father will return here. 
 
 Cha, Are you crazed, 
 
 D'Ormea ? Here ? For what ? As well re- 
 turn 
 To take his crown ! 
 
 D'O. He will return for that. 
 
 Cha. [To Pol.] You have not listened to 
 this man ? 
 
 Pol. He spoke 
 
 About your safety — and I listened. 
 
 [I£e disengages himself from her arms. 
 
 Cha. [To D'O.] What 
 
 Apprised you of the Count's intentions ? 
 
 j6'0. Me? 
 
 His heart, sir ; you may not be used to read 
 Such evidence however ; therefore read 
 
 [Pointing to Polyxena's papers. 
 My evidence. 
 
 Cha. [To Pol.] Oh, worthy this of you ! 
 And of your speech I never have forgotten. 
 Though I prof essed forgetf ulness ; which haunts 
 
 me 
 As if I did not know how false it was ; 
 Which made me toil unconsciously thus long 
 That there might be no least occasion left 
 For aught of its prediction coming true ! 
 And now, when there is left no least occasion 
 
156 
 
 KING VICTOR AND KING CHARLES 
 
 To instigate my father to such crime — 
 When I might venture to forget (I hoped) 
 That speech and recognize Polyxena — 
 Oh worthy, to revive, and tenfold worse. 
 That plague ! D'Ormea at your ear, his slan- 
 ders 
 Still in your hand ! Silent ? 
 
 Pol. As the wronged are. 
 
 Cha. And you, D'Ormea, since when have 
 you presumed 
 To spy upon my father ? I conceive 
 What that wise paper shows, and easily. 
 Since when ? 
 
 D'O. The when and where and how belong 
 To me. 'T is sad work, but I deal in such. 
 You of ttimes serve yourself ; I 'd serve rou here : 
 Use makes me not so squeamish. In a word, 
 Since the first hour he went to Charabery, 
 Of his seven servants, five have I suborned. 
 
 Cha. You hate my father ? 
 
 Ji'O. Oh, just as yon will I 
 
 ILooking at Poltxena. 
 A minute since, I loved him — hate him, now I 
 What matter ? — if you ponder just one thing : 
 Has he that treaty ? — he is setting forward 
 Already. Are your guards here ? 
 
 Cha. Well for you 
 
 They are not ! [To Pol.] Him I knew of old, 
 
 but you — 
 To hear that pickthank, further his designs ! 
 
 ITo D'O. 
 Guards ? — were they here, I 'd bid them, for 
 
 your trouble. 
 Arrest you. 
 
 JD'O. Guards you shall not want. Ilived 
 The servant of your choice, not of your need. 
 You never greatly needed me till now 
 That you discard' me. This is my arrest. 
 Ag ain I tender you my charge — its duty 
 Would bid me press you read those documents. 
 Here, sir I iOffering his badge of Office. 
 
 Cha. [Taking it.] The papers also ! Do you 
 think 
 I dare not read them ? 
 
 Pol. Read them, sir ! 
 
 Cha. They prove, 
 
 My father, stiU a month within the year 
 Since he so solemnly consigned it me. 
 Means to resume his crown ? They shall prove 
 
 that, 
 Or my best dungeon , . , 
 
 D^O. Even say, Chambery ! 
 
 'T is vacant, I surmise, by this. 
 
 Cha. You prove 
 
 Your words or pay their forfeit, sir. Go there ! 
 Polyxena, one chance to rend the veil 
 Thickening and blackening 'twixt us two ! Do 
 
 say. 
 You '11 see the falsehood of the charges proved ! 
 Do say, at least, you wish to see them proved 
 False charges — my heart's love of other times ! 
 
 Pol. Ah, Charles! 
 
 Cha. [To D'O.] Precede me, sir ! 
 
 D' 0. And I 'm at length 
 
 A martyr for the truth ! No end, they say, 
 Of miracles. My consoions innocence I 
 (At they go ouif enter — by the middle dooVf at which 
 be pauses — Viotob.) 
 
 Vic. Sure 1 heard voices ? No. Well, 1 
 do best , , , 
 
 To make at once for this, the heart o' the place. 
 The old room ! Nothing changed ! tjo near my 
 
 D'Ormea ? [Pushing away the stool which is by 
 the King's chatr. 
 
 I want that meeting over first, 
 I know not why. Tush, he, D'Ormea, slow 
 To hearten me, the supple knave ? That burst 
 Of.spite so eased him! He 'U inf onn me . . . 
 
 What? 
 Why come I hither ? All 's in rough : let all 
 Remain rough. There 's f uU time to draw baxjk 
 
 — nay. 
 There's naught to draw back from, as yet; 
 
 whereas. 
 If reason should be, to arrest a course 
 Of error — reason good, to interpose 
 And save, as I have saved so many times, 
 Our House, admonish my son's giddy youth. 
 Relieve him of a weight that proves too much — 
 Now is the time, — or now, or never. 
 
 'Faith, 
 This kind of step is pitiful, not due 
 To Charles, this stealuig back — hither, be- 
 cause 
 He 's from his capital ! Oh Victor ! Victor ! 
 But thus it is. The age of crafty men 
 Is loathsome ; youth contrives to carry off 
 Dissimulation ; we may intersperse 
 Extenuating passages of strength, 
 Ardor, vivacity and wit — may turn 
 E'en guile into a voluntary grace : 
 But one's old age, when graces drop away 
 And leave guile the pure staple of our lives — 
 Ah, loathsome ! 
 
 Not so — or why pause I ? Turin 
 Is mine to have, were I so minded, for 
 The asking ; all the army '3 mine — I 've wit- 
 
 Each private fight beneath me ; all the Court 's 
 Mine too ; and, best of all, D'Ormea's still 
 D'Ormea and mine. There 's some grace cling- 
 ing yet. 
 Had I decided on this step, ere midnight 
 I 'd take the crown. 
 
 No. Just this step to rise 
 Exhausts me. Here am I arrived : the rest 
 Must be done for me. Would I could sit here 
 And let things right themselves, the masque 
 
 unmasque 
 Of the old King, crownless, gray hair and hot 
 
 bloody— 
 The young King, crowned, but calm before his 
 
 time. 
 They say, — the eager mistress with her 
 
 taunts, — 
 And the sad earnest wife who motions me 
 Away — ay, there she knelt to me 1 E'en yet 
 I can return and sleep at Chambery 
 A dream out. 
 
 Rather shake it off at Turin, 
 King Victor ! Say : to Turin — yes, or no ? 
 
 'T is this relentless noonday-lighted chamber. 
 Lighted like life but silent as the grave. 
 That disconcerts me. That 's the change must 
 strike. 
 
KING VICTOR AND KING CHARLES 
 
 IS7 
 
 No silence last year I Some one flung doors 
 
 wide 
 (Those two great doors which scrutinize me now) 
 And out I went 'mid crowds of men — men talk- 
 
 Men watching if my lip fell or brow knit, 
 Men saw me safe forth, put me on my road : 
 That makes the misery of this retnm. 
 Oh had a battle done it I Had I dropped. 
 Haling some battle, three entire days old, 
 Hither and thither by the forehead — dropped 
 In Spain, in Austria, best of all, in France — 
 Spumed on its horns or underneath its hoofs. 
 When the spent monster went upon its knees 
 To pad and pash the prostrate wretch — I, Vic- 
 tor, 
 Sole to have stood up against France, beat 
 
 down 
 By inches, brayed to pieces finally 
 In some vast unimaginable charge, 
 A flying hell of horse and foot and guns 
 Over me, and all 's lost, forever lost, 
 There 's no more Victor when the world wakes 
 
 npl 
 Then silence, as of a raw battlefield. 
 Throughout the world. Then after (as whole 
 
 days 
 After, you catch at intervals faint noise 
 Through the stiff crust of frozen blood) — there 
 
 creeps 
 A rumor forth, so faint, no noise at all, 
 That a strange old man, with face outworn for 
 
 wounds. 
 Is stumbling on from frontier town to town. 
 Begging a pittance that may help him find 
 His Turin out ; what scorn and laughter follow 
 The coin you mng into his cap ! And last. 
 Some bright mom, how men crowd about the 
 
 midkt 
 O' the market-place, where takes the old king 
 
 breath 
 Ere with his crutch he strike the palace-gate 
 Wide ope 1 
 
 To Turin, yes or no — or no ? 
 {Re-enter Chablbs toith papa's.) 
 Cha. Just as I tnought 1 A miserable false- 
 hood 
 Of hirelings discontented with their pay 
 And longing for enfranchisement I A few 
 Testy expressions of old age that thinks 
 To keep alive its dignity o'er slaves 
 By means that suit their natures ! 
 
 [Tearing them.'] Thus they shake 
 
 My faifli in Victor ! 
 
 ITuming, ke discover it Victor. 
 
 Vic. [After a pause.] Not at Evian, Charles ? 
 
 What's this? Why do you run to close the 
 
 doors? 
 No welcome for your father ? 
 
 Cha. [Aside.] Not his voice ! 
 
 What would I give for one imperious tone 
 Of the old sort! That 's gone forever. 
 
 Vic. Must 
 
 I ask once more . . . 
 
 Cha. No — I concede it, sir ! 
 
 You are returned for . . . true, your health 
 
 declines ; 
 True, Chambery 's a bleak unkindly spot ; 
 
 You 'd choose one fitter for your final lodge — 
 Veneria, or Moncaglier — ay, that 's close 
 And I concede it. 
 
 Vic. I received advices 
 
 Of the conclusion of the Spanish matter. 
 Dated from Evian Baths . . . 
 
 Cha. And yon forbore 
 
 To visit me at Evian, satisfied 
 The work I had to do would fully tasK 
 The little wit I have, and that your presence 
 Would only disconcert me — 
 
 Vic. Charles ? 
 
 Cha. — Me, set 
 
 Forever in a foreign course to yours. 
 And .... 
 
 Sir, this way of wile were good to catch, 
 But I have not the sleight of it. The truth ! 
 Though I sink under it! What brings you 
 here? 
 Vic. Not hope of this reception, certainly. 
 From one who 'd scarce assume a stranger mode 
 Of speech, did I return to bring about 
 Some awfullest calamity ! 
 
 Cha. — You mean. 
 
 Did you require your crown again ! Oh yes, 
 I should speak otherwise ! But turn not that 
 To jesting 1 Sir, the truth ! Yoiir health de- 
 clines ? 
 Is aught deficient in your equipage ? 
 Wisely you seek myself to make complaint, 
 And foil the malice of the world which laughs 
 At petty discontents ; but I shall care 
 That not a soul knows of this visit. Speak ! 
 Vic. [Aside.] Here is the grateful much-pro- 
 fessing son 
 Prepared to worship me, for whose sole sake 
 I thmk to waive my plans of public good ! 
 [Aloud.] Nay, Charles, if I did seek to take 
 
 once more 
 My crown, were so disposed to plague myself, 
 Wiat would be warrant for this bitterness ? 
 I gave it — grant I would resume it — well ? 
 Cha. I should say simply — leaving out the 
 why 
 And how — you made me swear to keep that 
 
 crown : 
 And as you then intended . . . 
 
 Vie. Fool ! What way 
 
 Could I intend or not intend ? As man. 
 With a man's will, when I say " I intend," 
 I can intend up to a certain point. 
 No farther. I intended to preserve 
 The crown of Savoy and Sardinia whole : 
 And if events arise demonstrating 
 The way, I hoped should guard it, rather like 
 To lose it . . . 1 . 1 
 
 Cha. Keep within your sphere and mme ! 
 It is God's province we usurp on, else. 
 Here, blindfold through the maze of things we 
 
 walk 
 By a slight clue of false, true, right and wrong ; 
 All else is rambling and presumption. I 
 Have sworn to keep this kingdom : there 's my 
 truth. 
 Vic. Truth, boy, is here, within my breast j 
 and in 
 Your recognition of it, truth is, too ; 
 And in the effect of all this tortuous dealing 
 
158 
 
 KING VICTOR AND KING CHARLES 
 
 With falsehood, used to carry out the truth, 
 — In its success, this falsehood tnrus, again. 
 Truth for the world ! But you are right : these 
 
 themes 
 Are over-subtle, I should rather say 
 In such a case, frankly, — it fails, my scheme : 
 I hoped to see you bring about, yourself. 
 What I must bring about. I interijose 
 On your behalf — "with my son's good in sight — 
 To hold what he is nearly letting go. 
 Confirm his title, add a grace perhaps. 
 There 's Sicily, for instance, — granted me 
 And taken back, some years since : till I give 
 That island with the rest, my work 's half 
 
 done. 
 For his sake, therefore, as of those he rules . . . 
 Cha. Our sakes are one ; and that, you could 
 
 not say. 
 Because my answer would present itself 
 Forthwith : — a year has wrought an a^e's 
 
 chaise. 
 This people 's not the people now, you once 
 Could benefit ; nor is my policy 
 Your policy. 
 
 Vie. [With an outburst.] I know it! You undo 
 All I have done — my life of toil and care ! 
 I left you this the absolutest rule 
 In Europe : do you think I sit and smile, 
 Bid you throw power to the populace — 
 See my Sardinia, that has kept apart, 
 Join in the mad and democratic whirl 
 Whereto I see all Europe haste full tide ? 
 England casts off her kings; France mimics 
 
 England ; 
 This realm I hoped was safe ! Yet here I talk, 
 When I can save it, not by force alone. 
 But bidding plagues, which follow sons like you. 
 Fasten upon my disobedient ... 
 
 [Becollecting himself.'] Surely 
 I eould say this — if minded so — my son ? 
 Cha. You could not. Bitterer curses than 
 
 four curse 
 long since denounced upon myself ■ 
 If I misused my power. In fear of these 
 I entered on those measures — will abide 
 By them : so, I should say, Count Tende . . . 
 Vic. No ! 
 
 But no ! But if, my Charles, your — more than 
 
 old — 
 Half-foolish father urged these arguments. 
 And then confessed them futile, but said plainly 
 That he forgot his promise, found his strength 
 Fail him, had thought at savag:e Chambery ■' 
 Too much of brilliant Turin, Rivoli here, 
 And Susa, and Veneria, and Superga — 
 Pined for the pleasant places he had built 
 When he was fortunate and young — 
 
 Cha. _ _ My father! 
 
 Vic. Stay yet ! — and if he said he could not 
 
 die 
 Deprived of baubles he had put aside, 
 He deemed, forever — of the Crown that binds 
 Your brain up, whole, sound and impregnable. 
 Creating kingliness — the Sceptre too. 
 Whose mere wind, should you wave it, back 
 
 would beat 
 Invaders — and the golden Ball which throbs 
 As if you grasped the palpitating heart 
 
 Indeed o' the realm, to mould as choose yon 
 may ! 
 
 — If I must totter up and down the streets 
 My sires built, where myself have introduced 
 And fostered laws and letters, sciences, 
 
 The civil and the military arts ! 
 
 Stay, Charles ! I see you letting me pretend 
 
 To live my former self once more — King Victor, 
 
 The venturous yet politic : they style me 
 
 Again, the Father of the Prince : friends wink 
 
 Good-humoredly at the delusion you 
 
 So sedulously guard from all rough truths 
 
 That else would break upon my dotage 1 — 
 
 Y'ou — 
 Whom now I see preventing my old shame — 
 I tell not, point by cruel point, ray tale — 
 For is 't not in your breast my brow is hid ? 
 Is not your hand extended ? Say you not . . . 
 {Fnter D'Ohmea, leading in Poltxbna.) 
 Pol. {Advancing and withdrawing Charles 
 
 — to ViCTOB.] 
 
 In this coninneture even, he would say 
 (Though with a moistened eye and quivering lip) 
 The suppliant is my father. I must save 
 A great man from himself, nor see him fling 
 His well-earned fame away ; there must not 
 
 follow 
 Ruin so utter, a break-down of worth 
 So absolute : no enemy shall learn. 
 He thrust his child 'twixt danger and himself. 
 And, when that child somehow stood danger 
 
 . out. 
 Stole back with serpent wiles to ruin Charles 
 
 — Body, that 's much, — and soul, that 's more 
 
 — ' and realm. 
 That 's most of all I No enemy shall »ay . . , 
 J)'-0. Do you repent, sir ? 
 Vic. [Besuming himself. \ D'Oimea ? This is 
 
 well! 
 Worthily done. King Charles, craftily done ! 
 Judiciously you post these, to o'erhear 
 The little your importunate father thrusts 
 Himself on you to say ! — Ah, they '11 correct 
 The amiable blind facility 
 You show in answering his peevish suit. 
 What can he need to sue for ? Thaijis, 
 
 D'Ormea ! 
 You have fulfilled your ofBce ; but for you. 
 The old Count might have drawn some few 
 
 more livres 
 To swell his income ! Had you, lady, missed 
 The moment, a permission might be granted 
 To buttress up my ruinous old pile ! 
 But you remember properly the list 
 Of wise precautions 1 took when I gave 
 Nearly as much away — to reap the fruits 
 I should have looked for ! 
 
 Cha. Thanks, sir : degrade mej 
 
 So you remain yourself ! Adieu ! 
 
 Fie. I '11 not 
 
 Forget it for the future, nor presume 
 Next time to slight such mediatora ! Nay — 
 Had I first moved them both to intercede, 
 I might secure a chamber in Moncaglier 
 
 — Who knows ? 
 
 Cha. Adieu ! 
 
 T''!c. You bid me this adieu 
 
 With the old spirit ? 
 
KING VICTOR AND KING \LriARLEb 
 
 '59 
 
 Cha. Adieu 1 
 
 Vic. Charles — Charles I 
 
 Cha. Adieu ! 
 
 [Victor goes, 
 Cha. You were mistaken, Marquis, as you 
 hear! 
 'Twas for another purpose the Count came. 
 The Count desires Monoag-lier. Give the order ! 
 D'O. ILeisurely,] Your minister has lost 
 your confidence. 
 Asserting late, for his own purposes. 
 Count Tende would . . . 
 Cha. [Flinging his badi^' back.'] Be still the 
 minister j 
 And give a loose to your insulting joy ; 
 It irks me more thus stifled than expressed ; 
 Loose it I 
 
 D^O. There 's none to loose, alas ! I see 
 I never am to die a martyr. 
 Pol. Charles ! 
 
 Cha. No praise, at least, Folyxena — no 
 oraise I 
 
 KING CHARLES 
 
 PART II 
 
 D'OluiEA seated, folding papers he has been examining. 
 
 This at the last effects it : now, King Charles 
 Or else King Victor — that's a balance: but 
 
 now, 
 D'Ormea the arch-culprit, either turn 
 0' the scale, — that 's sure enough. A point to 
 
 solve, 
 My masters, moralists, whate'er your style ! 
 When you discover why I push myself 
 Into a pitfall you 'd pass safely by. 
 Impart to me among the rest ! No matter. 
 Prompt are the righteous ever with their rede 
 To us the wrongful : lesson them this once ! 
 For safe among the wicked are you set, 
 D'Ormea ! We lament life's brevity. 
 Yet quarter e'en the threescore years and ten. 
 Nor stick to call the quarter roundly " life." 
 D'Ormea was wicked, say, some twenty years ; 
 A tree so long was stunted ; afterward. 
 What if it grew, continued growing, till 
 No fellow of the forest equalled it ? 
 'T was a stump then ; a stump it still must be : 
 While forward saplings, at the outset checked, 
 In virtue of that first sprout keep their style 
 Amid the forest's green fraternity. 
 Thus I shoot up to surely get lopped down 
 And bound up for the burning. Now for it ! 
 
 (Enter Charles and Poltxena wWA Attendants.) 
 
 JD'O. [Rises.] Sir, in the due discharge of 
 this my omce — 
 This enforced summons of yourself from Turin, 
 And the disclosure I am bound to make 
 To-night, — there must already be, I feel. 
 So much that wounds . . . 
 
 Cha. WeH, sir? 
 
 D^O. — That I, perchance. 
 
 May utter also what, another time. 
 Would irk much, — it may prove less irksome 
 now. 
 
 Cha. What would you utter? 
 
 P'O. That I from my soul 
 
 Grrieve at to-night's event : for you I grieve, 
 E'en grieve for . . . 
 
 Cha. Tush, another time for talk ! 
 
 Mv kingdom is in imminent danger ? 
 
 D'O. Let 
 
 The Count communicate with France — its 
 
 King, 
 His grandson, wUl have Fleury's aid for this. 
 Though for no other war. 
 
 Cha. First for the levies : 
 
 What forces can I muster presently ? 
 
 [D'Ormea delivers papers which Charles inspects. 
 Cha. Good — very good. Montorio . . . 
 how is this ? 
 — Equips me double the old complement 
 Of soldiers? 
 
 Z)' O. Since his land has been relieved 
 
 From double imposts, this he manages : 
 But under the late monarch . . . 
 
 Cha. Pea«e ! I know. 
 
 Count Spava has omitted mentioning 
 What proxy is to head these troops of his. 
 D'O. Count Spava means to head his troops 
 himself. 
 Something to fight for now; "Whereas,'' says 
 
 he, 
 " Under the sovereign's father "... 
 
 Cha. It would seem 
 
 That all my people love me. 
 
 D'O. Yes. 
 
 [To PoLYXENA while Charles continues to inspect iha 
 paper^ ,, 
 
 A temper 
 Like Victor's may avajt Ut keep a state ; 
 He terrifies men and they fall not off ; 
 Good to restrain : best, if restraint were all, . 
 But, with the silent circle round him, ends 
 Such sway ; our King's begins precisely there. 
 For to suggest, impel and set at work. 
 Is quite another function. Men may slight. 
 In time of peace, the King who brought them 
 
 peace : 
 In war, — his voice, his eyes, help more than 
 
 fear. 
 They love you, sir ! 
 Cha. ['To Attendants.] Bring the regalia 
 forth! 
 Quit the room! And now. Marquis, answer 
 
 me ! 
 Why should the King of France invade my 
 realm? 
 D'O. Why? Did I not acquaint your Ma- 
 jesty 
 An hour ago ? 
 
 Cha. I choose to hear again 
 
 What then I heard. 
 
 D'O. Because, sir, as I said. 
 
 Your father is resolved to have his crown 
 At any risk ; and, as I judge, calls in 
 The foreigner to aid him. 
 
 Cha. And your reason 
 
 For saying this ? 
 
 D'O. [Aside.] Ay, just his father's way ! 
 [To Cha.] The Count wrote yesterdayto your 
 
 forces' Chief, 
 Ehebinder — made demand of help — 
 
 CJia. To try 
 
l6o 
 
 KING VICTOR AND KING CHARLES 
 
 HUebinder — he 's of alien blood. Aught else ? 
 
 D'O. Reeeivmg a refusal, — some hours 
 after, 
 The Count called on Del Borgo to deliver 
 The Act of Abdication : he refusing, 
 Or hesitating, rather — 
 ' Cha. What ensued ? 
 
 D'O. At midnight, only two hours since, at 
 Turin, 
 He rode in person to the citadel 
 With one attendant, to Soccorso gate. 
 And bade the governor, San Kemi, open — 
 Admit him. 
 
 Cha. For a purpose I divine. 
 
 These three were faithful, then ? 
 
 D'O. They told it me : 
 
 Audi — 
 
 Cha. Most faithful — 
 
 D'O. Tell it you — with this 
 
 Moreover of my own : if, an hour hence. 
 You have not interposed, the Count will be 
 O' the road to France for succor. 
 
 Cha. Very good ! 
 
 You do your duty now to me your monarch 
 Fully, I warrant ? — have, that is, your project 
 For saving both of us disgrace, no doubt? 
 
 D'O. I give my counsel, — and the only 
 one. 
 A. month since, I besought you to employ 
 Restraints which had prevented many a pang : 
 But now the harsher course must be pursued. 
 These papers, made for the emergency. 
 Will pain you to subscribe : this is a list 
 Of those suspected merely — men to watch ; 
 This — of the few of the Count's very house- 
 hold 
 You must, however reluctantly, arrest ; 
 While here 's a method of remonstrance — sure 
 Not stronger than the case demands ^- to take 
 With the Count's self . 
 
 Cha. Deliver those three papers. 
 
 Pol. [While Charles inspects them — to 
 D'Okmka.] 
 Your measures are not over-harsh, sir : France 
 Will hardly be deterred from her intents 
 By these. 
 
 D'O. If who proposes might dispose, 
 I could soon satisfy you. Even these. 
 Hear what he '11 say at my presenting ! 
 
 Cha. [who has signed thsm] . There I 
 
 About the warrants I You 've my signature. 
 What turns you pale ? I do my duty by you 
 In acting boldly thus on your advice. 
 
 D'O. [Reaaingthem separately.} Arrest the 
 people I suspected merely ? 
 
 Cha. Did you suspect them ? 
 
 D'O. Doubtless : but — but — sir. 
 
 This Forquieri 's governor of Turin, 
 And Rivarol and he have influence over 
 Half of the capital ! Rabella, too ? 
 Why, sir — 
 
 (fha. Oh, leave the fear to me ! 
 
 D'O. [Still reading.] You bid me 
 
 Incarcerate the people on this list ? 
 Sir- 
 
 Cha. But you never bade arrest those xien, 
 So close related to my father too. 
 On trifling grounds ? 
 
 D'O. Oh, as for that, St. George, 
 
 President of Chambery's senators, 
 Ishatohing treason! still— - 
 
 [More troubled.} Sir, Count Cumiane 
 Is brother to your father's wife ! Wl»at s 
 
 here? 
 Arrest the wife herself ? 
 
 CVla. You seem to think 
 
 A venial crime this plot against me. Well? 
 
 D'O. [who has read the last paperj. Where- 
 fore am I thus ruined ? Why not take 
 My life at once ? This poor formality 
 la, let me say, unworthy you ! Prevent it 
 You, madam! I have served you, am pre- 
 pared 
 For aU disgraces : only, let disgrace 
 Be plain, be proper — proper for the world 
 To pass its judgment on 'tvrixt you and me ! 
 Take back your warrant, I will none of it ! 
 
 Cha. Here is a man to talk of fickleness ! 
 He stakes his life upon my father's falsehood ; 
 I bid him . . . 
 
 D'O. Not you ! Were he trebly false, 
 
 You do not bid me . . . 
 
 Cha. Is 't not written there ? 
 
 I thought so : give — I 'U set it right. 
 
 D'O. Is it there? 
 
 Oh yes, and plain — arrest him now — drag 
 
 here 
 Your father ! And were all six times as plain, 
 Do you suppose I trust it ? 
 
 Cfha. Just one word ! 
 
 You bring him, taken in the act of flight. 
 Or else your life is forfeit. 
 
 D'O. Ay, to Turin 
 
 I bring him, and to-morrow ? 
 
 Cha. Here and now ! 
 
 The whole thing is a lie, a hateful lie. 
 As I believed and as my father said. 
 I knew it from the first, but was compelled 
 To circumvent you ; and the great D'Ormea, 
 That baffled Alberoni and tricked Coscia, 
 The miserable sower of such discord 
 'Twixt sire and son, is in the toils at last. 
 Oh I see ! you arrive — this plan of yours. 
 Weak as it is, toiinents sufficiently 
 A sick old peevish man — wrings hasty speech. 
 An ill-considered threat from him; that's 
 
 noted ; 
 Then out you ferret papers, his amusement 
 In lonely hours of lassitude — examine 
 The day-by-day report of your paid spies — 
 And back you come : all was not ripe, you iind. 
 And, as you hope, may keep from ripening yet, 
 But you were in bare time ! Only, 't wei-e best 
 I never saw my father — these old men 
 Are potent in excuses : and meanwhile, 
 D'Ormea 's the man I cannot do without ! 
 
 Pol. Charles — 
 
 Cha. Ah, no question ! You against me too 5 
 You 'd have me eat and drink and sleep, live, 
 
 die. 
 With this lie coiled about me, choking me ! 
 No, no, D'Ormea I You venture life, you say^ 
 Upon my father's perfidjr ; and I 
 Have, on the whole, no right to disregard 
 The chains of testimony you thus wind 
 About me ; though I do — do from my soul 
 
KING VICTOR AND KING CHARLES 
 
 l6i 
 
 Discredit them : still I must authorize 
 These measures, and I will. Perugia ! 
 
 [Many Officers enter.] Count — 
 
 You and Solar, with all the force you have, 
 Stand at the Marquis' orders ; what he bids, 
 Implicitly perform ! You are to bring 
 A traitor here ; the man that 's likest one 
 At present, fronts me ; you are at his beck 
 For a full hour ! he undertakes to show 
 A fouler than himself, — but, failing that, 
 Beturn with him, and, as my father lives. 
 He dies this night ! The clemency you blame 
 So oft, shall be revoked — rights exercised. 
 Too long abjured. 
 
 [To Z>'O.J Now, sir, about the work 1 
 
 To save your king and country 1 Take the 
 warrant ! 
 
 D^O. You hear the sovereign's mandate. 
 Count Perugia ? 
 Obey me ! As your diligence, expect 
 Reward I All follow to Montcaglier I 
 
 [B'Obmea goes. 
 
 Cha. \_In great anguish.} D'Ormea ! 
 He goes, lit up with that appalling smile ! 
 
 [roPoLTXENA after a pause. 
 At least you understand all this ? 
 
 Pol. These means 
 
 Of our defence — these measures of precaution ? 
 
 Cha. It must be the best way : I should 
 have else 
 Withered beneath his scorn. 
 
 Pd. What would you say ? 
 
 Cha. Why, do you think I mean to keep 
 the croAvn, Polyxena ? 
 
 Pol. You then believe the story 
 
 In spite of all — that Victor comes ? 
 
 Cm. Believe it ? 
 
 I know that he is coming — feel the stren^h 
 That has upheld me leave me at his coming ! 
 'T was mine, and now he takes his own again. 
 Some kinds of strength are well enough to 
 
 have ; 
 But who's to have that strength? Let my 
 
 crown go ! 
 I meant to keep it ; but I cannot — cannot I 
 Only, he shall not taunt me — he, the first . . . 
 See if he would not be the first to taunt me 
 With having left his kingdom at a word. 
 With letting it be conquered without stroke. 
 With . , . no — no — 't is no worse than when 
 
 he left ! 
 I 've just to bid him take it, and, that over, 
 We '11 fly away — fly. for I loathe this Turin, 
 This Rivoli, all titles loathe, all state. 
 We 'd best go to your country — unless God 
 Send I die now 1 
 
 Pol. Charles, hear me ! 
 
 Cha. And again 
 
 Shall you be my Polyxena — you '11 take me 
 Out of this woe ! Yes, do speak, and keep 
 
 speaking ! 
 I would not let you speak just now, for fear 
 You 'd counsel me against him : but talk, now, 
 As we two used to talk in blessed times ; 
 Bid me endure all his caprices ; take me 
 From this mad post above him ! 
 
 Pol. I believe 
 
 We are undone, but from a different cause. 
 
 All your resources, down to the least guard. 
 Are at D'Ormea's beck. What if, the while, 
 He act in concert with your father ? We 
 Indeed were lost. This lonely Rivoli — 
 Where find a better place for them ? 
 
 Clia. [Pacing the room.] And why 
 
 Does Victor come ? To undo all that 's done, 
 Kestore the past, prevent the future ! Seat 
 His mistress in your seat, and place iu mine 
 . . . Oh, my own people, whom will you find 
 
 there. 
 To ask of, to consult with, to care for. 
 To hold up with your hands ? Whom ? One 
 
 that 's false — 
 False — from the head's crown to the foot's 
 
 sole, false ! 
 The best is, that I knew it in my heart 
 From the beginning,, and expected this, 
 And hated you, Polyxena, because 
 You saw through him, though I too saw through 
 
 him. 
 Saw that he meant this while he crowned me, 
 
 while 
 He prayed for me, — nay, while he kissed my 
 
 brow, 
 I saw — 
 
 Pol. But if your measures take effect, 
 
 D'Ormea true to you ? 
 
 Cha. Then worst of all ! 
 
 I shall have loosed that callous wretch on him I 
 Well may the woman tamit him with his child — 
 I, eating here his bread, clothed in his clothes. 
 Seated upon his seat, let slip D'Ormea 
 To outrage himl We talk — perchance he 
 
 tears 
 My father from his bed ; the old hands feel 
 For one who is not, but who should be there : 
 He finds D'Ormea ! D'Ormea too finds him ! 
 The crowded chamber when the lights go 
 
 out — 
 Closed doors — the horrid scuffle in the dark — 
 The accursed prompting of the minute ! My 
 
 guards I 
 To horse — and after, with me — and prevent ! 
 Pol. [Seisinff his hand.] King Charles! 
 
 Pause here upon this strip of time 
 Allotted you out of eternity ! 
 Crowns are from God : you in his name hold 
 
 yours. 
 Your life 's no least thing, were it fit your life 
 Should be abjured along with rule ; but now. 
 Keep both ! Your duty is to live and rule — 
 You, who would vulgarly look fine enough 
 In the world's eye, deserting your soul's 
 
 charge, — 
 Ay, you would have men's praise, this Rivoli 
 Would be illumined ! Wliile, as 't is, no doubt, 
 Something of stain will ever rest on you ; 
 No one will rightly know why you refused 
 To abdicate ; they 'U talk of deeds you could 
 Have done, no doubt, — nor do I much expect 
 Future achievement will blot out the past, 
 Envelope it in haze — nor shall we two 
 Live happy any more. 'T will be, I feel. 
 Only in moments that the duty 's seen 
 As palpably as now : the months, the years 
 Of painful indistinctness are to come. 
 While daily must we tread these palace-rooms 
 
1 62 
 
 KING VICTOR AND KING CHARLES 
 
 Pregnant with memories of the past : your eye 
 May turn to mine and find no comfort there, 
 Through fancies that beset me, as yourself, 
 Of other courses, with far other issues, 
 We might have taken this gi'eat night: such 
 
 bear. 
 As I will bear ! What matters happiness ? 
 Duty ! There 's man's one moment : this is 
 
 yours ! 
 {^Putting the crown on his head, and t?ie sceptre in his 
 hand, site places him on his seat : a tonff pause and 
 silence. 
 
 (Enter D'Oemba and Victor, with Guards.) 
 Vic. At last I speak ; but once — that once, 
 
 to you ! 
 'T is you I ask, not these your rarletry, 
 Wlio 's King of us ? 
 Cha. [From his seat.] Count Tende . . . 
 Vic. What your spies 
 
 Assert I ponder in my soul, I say — 
 Here to your face, amid your guards ! I choose 
 To take again the crown whose shadow I gave — 
 For still its potency surrounds the weak 
 White locks their felon hands have discomposed. 
 Or I '11 not ask who 's King, but simply, who 
 Withholds the crown I claim ? Deliver it ! 
 I have no friend in the wide world : nor France 
 Nor England cares for me : you see the sum 
 Of what I can avail. Deliver it ! 
 Cha. Take it, my father ! 
 
 And now say in turn. 
 Was it done well, my father — sure not well. 
 To try me thus ! I might have seen much cause 
 ii'or keeping it — too easily seen cause ! 
 But, from that moment, e'en more woefully 
 My life had pined away, than pine it will. 
 Already you have much to answer for. 
 My life to pine is nothing, — her sunk eyes 
 Were happy once ! No doubt, my people think 
 I am their King still . . . but I cannot strive ! 
 Take it ! 
 
 Vic. [One hand on the crown Chakles offers, 
 
 the other on his neck.] So few years give it 
 
 quietly. 
 My son ! It will drop from me. See you 
 
 not ? 
 A crown 's unlike a sword to give away — 
 That, let a strong hand to a weak hand give ! 
 But crowns should slip from palsied brows to 
 
 heads 
 Young as this head : yet mine is weak enough. 
 E'en weaker than I knew. I seek for phrases 
 To vindicate my right. 'T is of a piece ! 
 AH is alike gone by with me — who beat 
 Once D'Orleans in his lines — his very lines ! 
 To have been Eugene's comrade, Louis's rival. 
 And now . . . 
 
 Cha. [Putting the crown on him, to the rest.] 
 
 The King speaks, yet none kneels, I 
 
 think! 
 Vic, I am then Eang ! As I became a King 
 
 Despite the nations, kept myself a King, 
 So I die King, with Kingship dying too 
 Around me ! I have lasted Europe's time ! 
 What wants my story of completion ? Where 
 Must needs the damning break show ? Wha 
 
 mistrusts 
 My children here — tell they of any break 
 'Twixt my day's sunrise and its fiery fall ? 
 And who were by me when I died but they ? 
 D'Ormea there ! 
 Cha. What means he ? 
 
 Vic. Ever there ! 
 
 Charles — how to save your story ! Mine must 
 
 go! 
 Say — say that you refused the crown to me ! 
 Charles, yours shall be my story! You imi- 
 
 mured 
 Me, say, at Rivoli. A single year 
 I spend without a sight of you, then die. 
 That -will serve every purpose — tell that tale 
 The world ! 
 
 Cha. Mistrust me ? Help ! 
 Vic. Past help, past reach ! 
 
 'T is in the heart — you cannot reach the heart : 
 This loroke mine, that I did believe, you, 
 
 Charles, 
 Would have denied me and disgraced me. 
 
 Pol. Charles 
 
 Has never ceased to be your subject, sir ! 
 He reigned at first through setting up yourself 
 As pattern : if he e'er seemed harsh to you, 
 'T was from a too intense appreciation 
 Of your own character : he acted you — 
 Ne'er for an instant did I think it real, 
 Nor look for any other than this end. 
 I hold him worlds the worse on that account ; 
 But so it was. 
 
 Cha. [To Pol.] I love you now indeed ! 
 [To Vic] You never knew me ! 
 
 Vic. Hardly till this moment, 
 
 When I seem learning many other things 
 Because the time for using them is past. 
 If 't were to do again ! That 's idly wished. 
 Truthfulness might prove policy as good 
 As guile. Is this my daughter's forehead? 
 
 Yes: 
 I 've made it fitter now to be a queen's 
 Than formerly : I * ve ploughed the deep lines 
 
 there 
 Which keep too well a crown from slipping o£B. 
 No matter. Guile has made me King again. 
 Louis — 't was in King Victor's time : — long 
 
 since. 
 When Louis reigned and, also, Victor reigned. 
 How the world talks already of us two ! 
 God of eclipse and each discolored star, 
 Why do I linger then ? 
 
 Ha ! Wliere lurks he ? 
 D'Ormea ! Nearer to your King I Now stand ! 
 
 [^Collecting his strength as D'Ormea approaches. 
 You lied, D'Ormea I I do not repent. [Diex 
 
CAVALIER TUNES 
 
 163 
 
 DRAMATIC LYRICS 
 
 The third number of Bells and Pomegranates, 
 published in 1842, contained a collection of short 
 poems under the general head of Dramatic hyr- 
 ics. When Browning made his first collective 
 edition, he redistributed all his groups of poems, 
 retaining this title and making it cover some of 
 the poems included in the original group, but 
 many more first published under other headings. 
 The arrangement here given is that adopted 
 finally by Browning. " Such Poems," he says, 
 " as the majority in this volume (Dramatic Lyr- 
 
 ics) might also come properly enough, I sup- 
 pose, under the head of Dramatic Pieces; be- 
 ing, though often Lyric in expression, always 
 Dramatic in principle, and so many utterances 
 of so many imaginary persons, not mine. Part 
 of the Poems were inscribed to my dear friend, 
 John Kenyon ; I hope the whole may obtain the 
 honor of an association with his memory." 
 
 The third of the Cavalier Tunes was originally 
 entitled My Wife Gertrude. The three songs 
 have been set to music by Dr. Villiera Stanford 
 
 CAVALIER TUNES 
 I. MARCHING ALONG 
 
 Kentish Sir Byng stood for his King, 
 Bidding the crop-headed Parliament swing : 
 And, pressing a troop unable to stoop 
 And see the rogues flourish and honest folk 
 
 droop, 
 Marched them along, fifty-score strong. 
 Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song. 
 
 God for King Charles ! Pym and such carles 
 To the Devil that prompts 'em their treasonous 
 
 paries ! 
 Cavaliers, up ! Lips from the cup. 
 Hands from the pasty, nor bite take nor sup 
 Till you 're — 
 Choktjs. — Marching along, fifty-score strong. 
 Great-hearted gentlemen, singing 
 this song. 
 
 Hampden to hell, and his obsequies' kneU. 
 Serve Hazelrig, Fiennes, and young Harry as 
 
 weUI 
 England, good cheer ! Rupert is near ! 
 Kentish and loyalists, keep we not here. 
 Cho. — Marching along, fifty-score strong. 
 
 Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this 
 song? 
 
 Then, God for King Charles ! Pym and his 
 
 snarls 
 To the Devil that pricks on such pestilent 
 
 carles ! 
 Hold by the right, you double your might ; 
 So, onward to Nottingham, fresh for the fight, 
 Cho. — March we along, fifty-score strong, 
 
 Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this 
 song ! 
 
 II. GIVE A ROUSE 
 
 King Charles, and who '11 do him right now ? 
 King Charles, and who 's ripe for fight now ? 
 Give a rouse ; here '3, in hell's despite now, 
 King Charles ! 
 
 Who gave me the goods that went since f 
 Who raised me the house that sank once ? 
 Who helped me to gold I spent since ? 
 Who found me in wine you drank once ? 
 Cho. — King Charles, and who '11 do him 
 right now ? 
 King Charles, and who 's ripe for fight 
 
 now? 
 Grive a rouse : here 's, in hell's de 
 
 spite now. 
 King Charles ! 
 
 To whom used my boy George quaff else, 
 By the old fool's side that begot him ? 
 For whom did he cheer and laugh else. 
 While Noll's damned troopers shot him ? 
 Cho. — King Charles, and who 'E do him. 
 right now ? 
 King Charles, and who 's ripe forfighi 
 
 now ? 
 Give a rouse : here 's, in hell's de 
 
 spite now. 
 King Charles ! 
 
 III. BOOT AND SADDLE 
 
 Boot, saddle, to horse, and away ! 
 Rescue my castle before the hot day 
 Brightens to blue from its silvery gray. 
 Cho. — Boot, saddle, to horse, and away ! 
 
 Ride past the suburbs, asleep as you 'd say ; 
 Many 's the friend there, will listen and pray 
 " God's luck to gallants that strike up the lay — 
 Cho. — Boot, saddle, to horse, and away ! " 
 
 Forty miles off, like a roebuck at bay, 
 
 Flouts Castle Brancepeth the Roundheads' 
 
 array : 
 Who laughs, " Good fellows ere this, by my fay, 
 Cho. — Boot, saddle, to horse, and away ! " 
 
 Who ? My wife Gertrude ; that, honest ai>^ 
 gay, , 
 
 Laughs when you talk of suiTendering, " Nay: 
 I 've better counsellors ; what counsel they/ 
 Cho. — Boot, saddle, to horse, and awar 
 
164 
 
 DRAMATIC LYRICS 
 
 THE LOST LEADER 
 
 Browning was beset with questions by peo- 
 ple asking if he referred to Wordsworth in this 
 poem. He answered the question more than 
 once, as an artist would : the following letter 
 to Rey. A. B. Grosart, the editor of Words- 
 worth's Prose Works, sufficiently states his po- 
 sition, 
 
 " 19 Warwick-Crescent, W., Feb. 24, '75. 
 
 " Dear Mr. Gbosart, — I have been asked 
 the question you now address me with, and as 
 duly answered it, I can't remember how many 
 times ; there is no sort of objection to one more 
 assurance or rather confession, on my part, that 
 I did in my hasty youth presume to use the 
 great and venerated personality of Wordsworth 
 as a sort of painter's model ; one from which 
 this or the other particular feature may be 
 selected and turned to account j had I intended 
 more, above all, such a boldness as portraying 
 the entire man, I should not have talked about 
 ' handfnls of silver and bits of ribbon.' These 
 never influenced the change of politics in the 
 great poet, whose defection, nevertheless, ac- 
 comi^anied as it was by a regular face-about 
 of his special party, was to my juvenile appre- 
 hension, and even mature consideration, an 
 event to deplore. But just as in the tapestry 
 on my wall 1 can recognize figures which have 
 struck out a fancy, on occasion, that though 
 truly enough thus derived, yet would be pre- 
 posterous as a copy, so, though I dare not deny 
 the original of my little poem, I altogether re- 
 fuse to have it considered as the ' very effigies ' 
 of such a moral and intellectual superiority. 
 " Faithfully yours, 
 
 " RoEEKT Browning." 
 
 Just for a handful of silver he left us. 
 
 Just for a riband to stick in his coat — 
 Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us. 
 
 Lost all the others she lets us devote ; 
 They, with the gold to give, doled him out 
 silver, 
 So much was theii's who so little allowed : 
 How all our copper had gone for his service ! 
 Rags — were they purple, his heart had been 
 proud ! 
 We that had loved him so, followed him, hon- 
 ored him. 
 Lived in liis mild and magnificent eye. 
 Learned his great language, caught his clear 
 accents. 
 Made him our pattern to live and to die 1 
 Shakespeare was of us, Milton was for us. 
 Burns, Shelley, were with us, — they watch 
 from their graves 1 
 He alone breaks from the van and the freemen, 
 — He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves ! 
 
 We shall march prospering, — not through hjg 
 presence ; 
 Songs may inspirit us, — not from his lyre : 
 Deeds will be done,— while he boasts his 
 quiescence. 
 Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade 
 aspire : 
 Blot out his name, then, record one lost sou] 
 more. 
 One task more declined, one more footpath 
 untrod. 
 One more devils'-triumph and sorrow for an- 
 gels. 
 One wrong more to man, one more insult to 
 God! 
 Life's night begins : let him never come back 
 to us! 
 There would be doubt, hesitation and pain, 
 Forced praise on our part — the glimmer of 
 twilight. 
 Never glad confident morning again ! 
 Best fight on well, for we taught him — strike 
 gallantly. 
 Menace our heart ere we master his own ; 
 Then let him receive the new knowledge and 
 wait us, 
 Pardoned in heaven, the first by the throne ! 
 
 "HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD 
 NEWS FROM GHENT TO AIX " 
 
 Browning wrote to an American inquirer 
 about this poem : " There is no sort of histori- 
 cal foundation for the poem about ' Good News 
 from Ghent.' I wrote it under the bulwark of 
 a vessel, off the African coast, after I had been 
 at sea long enough to appreciate even the fancy 
 of a gallop on the ba«k of a certain good horse 
 ' York,' then in my stable at home. It was 
 written in pencil on the fly-leaf of Bartoli'a 
 Simboli, I remember." 
 
 [16-] 
 
 I SPRANG to the stirrup, and Joris, and he j 
 
 I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three ; 
 
 " Good speed ! " cried the watch, as the gate- 
 bolts undrew ; 
 
 "Speed ! " echoed the wall to us galloping 
 tlirough ; 
 
 Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to 
 rest, 
 
 And into the midnight we galloped abreast. 
 
 Not a word to each other ; we kept the gi'eat 
 
 pace 
 Neck by neck, stride by stride, never changing 
 
 our place ; 
 I turned in my saddle and made its girths tight, 
 Then shortened each stirrup, and set the pique 
 
 right, 
 Rebuekled the cheek-strap, chained slacker the 
 
 bit. 
 Nor galloped less steadily Roland a whit. 
 
THROUGH THE METIDJA TO ABD-EL-KADR 
 
 'T was moonset at starting ; but while we drew 
 
 near 
 Lokeren, the cocks crew and twilight dawned 
 
 clear ; 
 At Boom, a great yellow star came out to see ; 
 At DiifEeld, t was morning as plain as could 
 
 be; 
 And from Mechein church-steeple we heard the 
 
 half-chirae, 
 So Joris broke silence with, "Yet there is 
 
 time ! " 
 
 At Aershot, u{> leaped of a sudden the sun, 
 And against him the cattle stood black every 
 
 one, 
 To stare through the mist at us galloping past. 
 And I saw my stout galloper Roland at &at, 
 With resolute shoulders, each butting away 
 The haze, as some bluS river headland its spray : 
 
 And his low head and crest, just one sharp ear 
 
 bent back 
 For my voice, and the other pricked out on his 
 
 track; 
 And one eye's black intelligence, — ever that 
 
 glance 
 O'er its white edje at me, his own master, 
 
 askance ! 
 And the thick heavy spume-flakes which aye 
 
 and anon 
 His fierce lips shook upwards in galloping on. 
 
 By Hasselt, Dirok groaned ; and cried Joris, 
 "Stay spur! 
 
 Your Roos galloped bravely, the fault 's not in 
 her. 
 
 We '11 remember at Aix " — for one heard the 
 quick wheeze 
 
 Of her chest, saw the stretched neck and stag- 
 gering knees. 
 
 And sunk tail, and horrible heave of the flank, 
 
 As down on her haunches she shuddered and 
 sank. 
 
 So, we were left galloping, Joris and I, 
 Past Looz and past Tongres, no cloud in the sky ; 
 The broad sun above laughed a pitiless laugh, 
 'Neath our feet broke the brittle bright stubble 
 
 like chaff ; 
 Till over by Dalhem a dome-spire sprang white. 
 And "GaUop," gasped Joris, "for Aix is in 
 
 sight!'' 
 
 " How they '11 greet us ! " — and all in a moment 
 
 his roan 
 Rolled neck and croup over, lay dead as a stone ; 
 And there was my Roland to bear the whole 
 
 weight 
 Of the news which alone could save Aix from 
 
 her fate. 
 With his nostrils like pits full of blood to the 
 
 brim, 
 And with circles of red for his eye-sockets' rim. 
 
 Then I cast loose my buffcoat, each holster let 
 
 fall. 
 Shook off both my jack-boots, let go belt and all, 
 
 i6s 
 
 Stood up m the stirrup, leaned, patted his ear. 
 
 Called my Roland his pet-name, my horse with- 
 out peer ; 
 
 Clapped my hands, laughed and sang, any noise, 
 bad or good, 
 
 Till at leiigth into Aix Roland galloped and 
 Aodd. 
 
 And all I remember is— friends flocking round 
 As I sat with his head 'twixt my knees on the 
 
 ground ; 
 And no voice but was praising this Roland of 
 
 mine. 
 As I poured down his throat our last measure 
 
 of wine. 
 Which (the burgesses voted by common consent) 
 Was no more than his due who brought good 
 
 news from Ghent. 
 
 THROUGH THE METIDJA TO ABD-EL- 
 KADR 
 
 As I ride, as I ride. 
 
 With a full heart for my guide. 
 
 So its tide rocks my side. 
 
 As I ride, as I ride. 
 
 That, as I were double-eyed. 
 
 He, in whom our Tribes confide. 
 
 Is descried, ways untried. 
 
 As I ride, as I ride. 
 
 As I ride, as I ride 
 
 To our Chief and his Allied, 
 
 Who dares chide my heart's pride 
 
 As I ride, as I ride ? 
 
 Or are witnesses denied — 
 
 Through the desert waste and wide 
 
 Do I gUde unespied 
 
 As I ride, as I ride ? 
 
 As I ride, as I ride. 
 
 When an inner voice has cried. 
 
 The sands slide, nor abide 
 
 (As I ride, as I ride) 
 
 O'er each visioned homicide 
 
 That came vaunting (has he lied?) 
 
 To reside — where he died, 
 
 As I ride, as I ride. 
 
 As I ride, as I ride, 
 
 Ne'er has spur my swift horse plied. 
 
 Yet his hide, streaked and pied. 
 
 As I ride, as I ride. 
 
 Shows where sweat has sprung and dried, 
 
 — Zebra-footed, ostrich-thighed — 
 
 How has vied stride with stride 
 
 As I ride, as I ride ! 
 
 As I ride, as I ride, 
 
 Could I loose what Fate has tied. 
 
 Ere I pried, she should hide 
 
 (As I ride, as I ride) 
 
 All that 's meant me — satisfied 
 
 When the Prophet and the Bride 
 
 Stop veins I 'd have subside 
 
 As I ride, as I ride ! 
 
i66 
 
 DRAMATIC LYRICS 
 
 NATIONALITY IN DRINKS 
 
 The first two of this group, under the titles 
 Claret and Tokay, were published in Hood's 
 Magazine, June, 1844, at the request of Bichard 
 Monckton Milnes, who was editing the magazine 
 during Hood's iUness. The third, first entitled 
 Beer, was called out by the description of Nel- 
 son's coat at Greenwich, given by the captain of 
 the vessel in which Browning was sailing to Italy. 
 
 Mt heart sank with ovir Claret-flask, 
 Just now, beneath the heavy sedges 
 
 That serve this pond's black face for mask ; 
 And still at yonder broken edges 
 
 O' the hole, where up the bubbles glisten, 
 
 After my heart I look and listen. 
 
 Our laughing little flask, compelled 
 
 Through depth to depth more bleak and 
 shady ; 
 As when, both arms beside her held. 
 
 Feet straightened out, some gay French lady 
 Is caught up from life's light and motion, 
 And dropped into death's silent ocean I 
 
 II 
 
 — Up jumped Tokay on our table, 
 
 Like a pygmy castle-warder. 
 
 Dwarfish to see, but stout and able, 
 
 Arras and accoutrements all in order ; 
 
 And fierce he looked North, then, wheeling 
 
 South, 
 Blew with his bugle a challenge to Drouth, 
 Cocked his flap-hat with the tosspot-feather. 
 Twisted his thumb in his red moustache. 
 Jingled his huge brass spurs together. 
 Tightened his waist with its Buda sash, 
 And then, with an impudence naught could 
 
 abash, 
 Slirugged his hump-shoulder, to tell the be- 
 holder. 
 For twenty such knaves he should laugh but 
 
 the bolder : 
 And so, with his sword-hilt gallantly jutting. 
 And dexter-hand on his haunch abutting. 
 Went the little man, Sir Ausbruch, strutting ! 
 
 — Here 's to Nelson's memory I 
 'T is the second time that I, at sea. 
 Right off Cape Trafalgar here, 
 Have drunk it deep in British Beer. 
 Nelson forever — any time 
 Am I his to command in prose or rhyme ! 
 Give me of Nelson only a touch. 
 And I save it, be it little or much : 
 Here 's one our Captain gives, and so 
 Down at the word, by George, shall it go ! 
 He says that at Greenwich they point the be- 
 holder 
 To Nelson's coat, '" stiU with tar on the shoulder : 
 
 For he used to lean with one shoulder digging, 
 Jigging, as it were, and zig-zag-zigging 
 Up against the mizzen-rigging ! 
 
 GARDEN FANCIES 
 
 These two poems also appeared in Hood's 
 Magazine, July, 1844. 
 
 I. THE flower's name 
 
 Hebe 's the garden she walked across. 
 
 Arm in my arm, such a short while since: 
 Hark, now I push its wicket, the moss 
 
 Hinders the hinges and makes them wince ! 
 She must have reached this shrub ere she turned, 
 
 As back with that murmur the wicket swung ; 
 For she laid the poor snail, my chance foot 
 spumed. 
 
 To feed and forget it the leaves among. 
 
 Down this side of the gravel-walk 
 
 She went while her robe's edge brushed the 
 box: 
 And here she paused in her gracious talk 
 
 To point me a moth on the milk-white phlox, 
 Roses, ranged in valiant row, 
 
 I will never think that she passed you by I 
 She loves you, noble roses, I know ; 
 
 But yonder, see, where the rock-plants lie ! 
 
 This flower she stopped at, finger on Up, 
 
 Stooped over, in doiibt, as settling its claim ; 
 Till she gave me, with pride to make no slip. 
 
 Its soft meandering Spanish name ; 
 What a name ! Was it love or praise ? 
 
 Speech half -asleep or song half-awake ? 
 I must learn Spanish, one of these days, 
 
 Only for that slow sweet name's sake. 
 
 Roses, if I live and do well, 
 
 I may bring her, one of these days. 
 To fix you fast with as fine a spell. 
 
 Fit you each with his Spanish phrase ; 
 But do not detain me now ; for she lingers 
 
 There, like sunshine over the ground, 
 And ever I see her soft white fingers 
 
 Searching after the bud she found. 
 
 Flower, you Spaniard, look that you grow not, 
 
 Stay as you a.re and be loved forever ! 
 Bud, if I kiss you 't is that you blow not. 
 
 Mind, the shut pink mouth opens never ! 
 For while it pouts, her fingers wrestle. 
 
 Twinkling the audacious leaves between. 
 Till round they turn and down they nestle — 
 
 Is not the dear mai'k still to be seen ? 
 
 Where I find her not, beauties vanish ; 
 
 Whither I follow her, beauties flee ; 
 Is there no method to tell her in Spanish 
 
 June 's twice June since she breathed it with 
 me? 
 Come, bud, show me the least of her traces. 
 
 Treasure my lady's lightest footfall 1 
 — Ah, you may flout and turn up your faces — 
 
 Roses, yon are not so fair after all ■ 
 
SOLILOQUY OF THE SPANISH CLOISTER 
 
 167 
 
 II. SIBRANDUS SCHAFNABURGENSIS 
 
 Plague take all your pedants, say 1 1 
 
 He who wrote what I hold in my hand, 
 GentuTies back was so good as to die. 
 
 Leaving this rubbish to cumber the land ; 
 This, that was a book in its time, 
 
 Printed on paper and bound in leather, 
 Last month in the white of a matin-prime, 
 
 Just when the birds sang all together. 
 
 Into the garden I brought it to read. 
 
 And under the arbute and laurustine 
 Bead it, so help me grace in ray need. 
 
 From titleyage to closing line. 
 Chapter on chapter did I count. 
 
 As a curious traveller counts Stonehenge j 
 Added up the mortal amount ; 
 
 And then proceeded to my revenge. 
 
 Yonder 's a plum-tree with a crevice 
 
 An owl would build in, were he but sage ; 
 For a lap of moss, like a fine pont-levis 
 
 In a castle of the Middle Age, 
 Joins to a lip of gum, pure amber ; 
 
 When he 'd be private, there might he spend 
 Hours alone in his lady's chamber : 
 
 Into this crevice I dropped our friend. 
 
 Splash, went he, as under he ducked, 
 
 — At the bottom, I knew, rain-drippings 
 stagnate ; 
 Next, a handful of blossoms I plucked 
 
 To bury him with, my bookshelf's magnate ; 
 Then I went in-doors, brought out a loaf, 
 
 Half a cheese, and a bottle of Chablis ; 
 Lay on the grass and forgot the oaf 
 
 Over a joMy chapter of Rabelais. 
 
 Now, this morning, betwixt the moss 
 
 And gum that locked our friend in limbo, 
 A spider had spun his web across. 
 
 And sat in the midst with arms akimbo ; 
 So, I took pity, for learning's sake, 
 
 And, de profundis, accentibus hetis, 
 Caniate ! quoth I, as I got a rake ; 
 
 And up I fished his delectable treatise. 
 
 Here you have it, dry in the sun. 
 
 With all the binding all of a blister, 
 And great blue spots where the ink has run, 
 
 And reddish streaks that wink and glister 
 O'er the page so beautifully yellow : 
 
 Oh, well have the droppings played their 
 tricks ! 
 Did he guess how toadstools grow, this fel- 
 low? 
 
 Here 's one stuck in his chapter six ! 
 
 How did he like it when the live creatures 
 Tickled and toused and browsed him all 
 over, 
 And worm, slug, eft, with serious features. 
 
 Came in, each one, for his right of trover ? 
 — When the water-beetle with great blind deaf 
 face 
 Made of her eggs the stately deposit, 
 
 And the newt borrowed just so much of the 
 preface 
 As tiled in the top of his black wife's closet ? 
 
 All that life and fun and romping, 
 
 All that frisking and twisting and coupling. 
 While slowly our poor friend's leaves were 
 swamping 
 
 And clasps were cracking and covers suppling ! 
 As if you had carried sour John Knox 
 
 To the play-house at Paris, Vienna or Munich, 
 Fastened him into a front-row box. 
 
 And danced off the ballet with trousers and 
 tunic. 
 
 Come, old martyr ! What, torment enough is it ? 
 
 Back to my room shall you take your sweet 
 self. 
 Good-bye, mother-beetle ; husband-eft, sufficit ! 
 
 See the snug niche I have made on my shelf ! 
 A's book shall prop you up, B's shall cover you. 
 
 Here 's C to be grave with, or D to be gay. 
 And with E on each side, and F right over you, 
 
 Dry-rot at ease tUl the Judgment-day ! 
 
 SOLILOQUY OF THE SPANISH 
 CLOISTER 
 
 When first printed in Bells and Pome- 
 granates^ this poem was the second of a group 
 of two bearing the general title Camp arid 
 Cloister, the first of the two being Incident of 
 the French Camp. 
 
 Gb-r-r — there go, my heart's abhorrence ! 
 
 Water your damned flower-pots, do ! 
 If hate killed men. Brother Lawrence, 
 
 God's blood, would not mine kill you ! 
 What ? your myrtle-bush wante trimming ? 
 
 Oh, that rose has prior claims — 
 Needs its leaden vase filled brimming ? 
 
 Hell dry you up with its flan;ies ! 
 
 At the meal we sit together ; 
 
 Salve tibi ! I must hear 
 Wise talk of the kind of weather, 
 
 Sort of season, time of year : 
 Not a plenteous cork-crov : scarcely 
 
 Dare we hope oak-galls, I doubt : 
 What 's the Latin name for ''^parsley " ? 
 
 What 's the Greek name for Swine's Snout f 
 
 Whew ! We '11 have our platter burnished, 
 
 Laid with care on our own shelf ! 
 With a fire-new spoon we 're furnished, 
 
 And a goblet for ourself, 
 Rinsed like something sacrificial 
 
 Ere 't is fit to touch onr chaps — 
 Marked with L for our initial ! 
 
 (He-he ! There his lily snaps !) 
 
 Saint, forsooth ! While brown Dolores 
 
 Squats outside the Convent bank 
 With Sanchiclia, telling stories, 
 
 Steeping tresses in the tank, 
 Blue-black, lustrous, thick like horsehairs, 
 
 — Can't I see his dead eye glow, 
 
1 68 
 
 DRAMATIC LYRICS 
 
 Bright as 't were a Barbary corsair's ? 
 (That is, if he 'd let it show I) 
 
 When he finishes refection, 
 
 Knife and fork he never lays 
 Cross-wise, to my recollection, 
 
 As do I, in Jesu's praise, 
 I the Trinity illustrate, 
 
 Drinking watered orange-pulp — 
 In three sips the Arian frustrate ; 
 
 While he drains his at one gulp. 
 
 Oh, those melons ! If he 's able 
 
 We 're to have a feast ! so nice ! 
 One goes to the Abbot's table. 
 
 All of us get each a slice. 
 How go on your flowers ? None double ? 
 
 Not one fruit-sort can you spy ? 
 Strange ! — And I, too, at such trouble 
 
 Keep them close-nipped on the sly ! 
 
 There ^s a great text in Galatians, 
 
 Once you trip on it, entails 
 Twenty-nine distinct damnations, 
 
 One sure, if another fails : 
 If I trip him just a-dying. 
 
 Sure of heaven as sure can be. 
 Spin him round and send him flying 
 
 Off to hell, a Maniehee ? 
 
 Or, my scrofiJous French novel 
 
 On gray paper with blunt type 1 
 Simply glance at it, you grovel 
 
 Hand and foot in Belial's gripe : 
 If I double down its pages 
 
 At the woeful sixteenth print. 
 When he gathers his greengages. 
 
 Ope a sieve and slip it in 't ? 
 
 Or, there 's Satan ! — one plight venture 
 
 Pledge one's soul to him, yet leave 
 Such a flaw in the indenture 
 
 As he 'd miss till, past retrieve. 
 Blasted lay that rose-acacia 
 
 We 're so proud of ! Hy, Zy, Hine . . . 
 'St, there 's V espers ! Plena gratiU, 
 
 Ave, Virgo! Gr-r-r — you swine! 
 
 THE LABORATORY 
 
 ANCIEN REGIME 
 
 Published first in Hood's Magazine, June, 
 1844. In Bells and Pomegranates it was grouped 
 with The Confessional under the title France 
 and Spain. 
 
 Now that I, tying thy glass mask tightly, 
 May gaze through these faint smokes curling 
 
 whitely. 
 As thou pliest thy trade in this devil's-smithy — 
 Which is the poison to poison her, prithee ? 
 
 He is with her, and they know that I know 
 Where they are, what they do : they believe 
 my tears flow 
 
 While they laugh, laugh at me, at me fled to 
 
 the drear 
 Empty church, to pray God in, for them ! —1 
 
 am here. 
 
 Grind away, moisten and mash up thy paste, 
 Pound at thy powder, — I am not in haste ! 
 Better sit thus, and observe thy strange thinra, 
 Than go where men wait me and dance at the 
 King's. 
 
 That in the mortar — you call it a gum ? 
 
 Ah, the brave tree whence such gold oozings 
 
 come ! 
 And yonder soft phial, the exquisite blue, 
 Sure to taste sweetly, — is that poison too ? 
 
 Had I but aU of them, thee and thy treasures, 
 What a wild crowd of invisible pleasures ! 
 To carry pure death in an earring, a casket, 
 A signet, a fan-mount, a filigree basket ! 
 
 Soon, at the King's, a mere lozenge to give, 
 And Pauline should have just thirty minutes to 
 
 live ! 
 But to light a pastile, and Elise, with her head 
 And her breast and her arms and her hands, 
 
 should drop dead ! 
 
 Quick — is it finished ? The color 's too grim ! 
 Why not soft hke the phial's, enticing and 
 
 dim? 
 Let it brighten her drink, let her turn it and 
 
 stir. 
 And try it and taste, ere she £x and prefer ! 
 
 What a drop ! She 's not little, no minion like 
 
 me! 
 That 's why she ensnared him : this never will 
 
 free 
 The soul from those masculine eyes, — say, 
 
 "no!" 
 To that pulse's magnificent come-and-go. 
 
 For only last night, as they whispered, I brought 
 My own eyes to bear on her so, that I thought 
 Coidd I keep them one half minute fixed, she 
 
 would fall 
 Shrivelled ; she fell not ; yet this does it all ! 
 
 Not that I bid you spare her the pain ; 
 Let death be felt and the proof remain : 
 Brand, burn up, bite into its grace — 
 He is sure to remember her dying face ! 
 
 Is it done ? Take my mask off ! Nay, be not 
 
 morose ; 
 It kills her, and this prevents seeing it close : 
 The delicate droplet, my whole fortune's fee J 
 If it hurts her, beside, can it ever hurt me ? 
 
 Now, take all my jewels, gorge gold to your 
 
 fill. 
 You may kiss me, old man, on my mouth if you 
 
 will! 
 But brush this dust off me, lest horror it brings 
 Ere I know it — next moment I dance at ^e 
 
 King's ! 
 
CRISTINA 
 
 169 
 
 THE CONFESSIONAL 
 
 It is a lie — their Priests, their Pope, 
 Their Saints, their . . . aJl they fear or hope 
 Are lies, and lies — there ! through my door 
 And ceiling, there ! and walls and floor. 
 There, lies, they lie — shall still be hurled 
 Till spite of them I reach the world I 
 
 You think Priests just and holy men 1 
 Before they put me in this den 
 I was a human creature too. 
 With flesh and blood like one of you, 
 A girl that laughed in beauty's pride 
 Like lilies in your world outside. 
 
 I had a lover — shame avaunt ! 
 
 This poor wrenched body, grim and gaunt. 
 
 Was kissed all OTor till it burned, 
 
 By lips the truest, love e'er turned 
 
 His heart's own tint : one night they kissed 
 
 My soul out in a burning mist. 
 
 So, next day when the accustomed train 
 Of things grew round my sense again, 
 " That is a sin," I said : and slow 
 With downcast eyes to church I go. 
 And pass to the confession-chair, 
 And tell the old mild father there. 
 
 But when I falter Eeltran's name, 
 
 " Ha ! " quoth the father : " much I blame 
 
 The sin ; yet wherefore idly grieve ? 
 
 Despair not — strenuously retrieve ! 
 
 Nay, I will turn this love of thine 
 
 To lawful love, almost divine ; 
 
 " For he is young, and led astray. 
 This Beltran, and he schemes, men say. 
 To change the laws of church and state ; 
 So, thine shall be an angel's fate. 
 Who, ere the thunder breaks, should roll 
 Its cloud away and save his soul. 
 
 " For, when he lies upon thy breast, 
 Thou mayest demand and be possessed 
 Of all his plans, and next day steal 
 To me, and all those plans reveal. 
 That I and every priest, to purge 
 His soul, may fast and use the scourge." 
 
 That father's beard was long and white,_ 
 With love and truth his brow seemed bright ; 
 I went back, all on fire with joy. 
 And, that same evening, bade the boy 
 Tell me, as lovers should, heart-free. 
 Something to prove his love of me. 
 
 He told me what he would not tell 
 For hope of heaven or fear of hell ; 
 And I lay listening in such pride I 
 And, soon as he had left my side. 
 Tripped to the church by morning-light 
 To save his soul in his despite. 
 
 I told the father all his schemes. 
 Who were his comrades, what their dreams ; 
 " And now make haste," I said, " to pray 
 The one spot from his soul away ; 
 To-night he comes, but not the same 
 Will look ! " At night he never came. 
 
 Nor next night : on the after-morn, 
 I went forth with a strength new-bom. 
 The church was empty ; something drew 
 My steps into the street ; I knew 
 It led me to the market-place : 
 Where, lo, on high, the father's face ! 
 
 That horrible black scaffold dressed. 
 That stapled block . . . God sink ^e rest I 
 That head strapped back, that blinding vest, 
 Those knotted hands and naked breast, 
 Till near one busy hangman pressed, 
 And, on the neck these arms caressed . . . 
 
 No part in aught they hope or fear I 
 No heaven with them, no hell ! — and here. 
 No earth, not so much space as pens 
 My body in their worat of dens 
 But shall bear God and man my cry. 
 Lies — lies, again — and still, they lie 1 
 
 CRISTINA 
 
 In Bells and Pomeffranates, this poem was 
 the second of a group headed Queen- Worship, 
 the first being Budel and the Lady of Tripoli. 
 
 She should never have looked at me 
 
 If she meant I should not love her ! 
 There are plenty . . . men, you call such, 
 
 I suppose . . . she may discover 
 All her soul to, if she pleases. 
 
 And yet leave much as she found them : 
 But I 'm not so, and she knew it 
 
 When she fixed me, glancing round them. 
 
 What ? To fix me thus meant nothing ? 
 
 But I can't tell (there 's my weakness) 
 What her look said ! — no vile cant, sure. 
 
 About "need to strew the bleakness 
 Of some lone shore with its pearl-seed. 
 
 That the sea feels " — no " strange yearning 
 That such souls have, most to lavish 
 
 Where there 's chance of least returning.'' 
 
 Oh, we 're sunk enough here, God knows ! 
 
 But not quite so sunk that moments. 
 Sure though seldom, are denied us. 
 
 When the spirit's true endowments 
 Stand out plainly from its false ones, 
 
 And apprise it if pursuing 
 Or the right way or the wrong way. 
 
 To its triumph or undoing. 
 
 There are flashes struck from midnights, 
 There are fire-flames noondays kindle. 
 
 Whereby piled-up honors perish. 
 Whereby swollen ambitions dwindle. 
 
I70 
 
 DRAMATIC LYRICS 
 
 While just this or that poor impulse, 
 Which for once had play unstifled, 
 
 Seems the sole work of a lifetime, 
 That away the rest have trifled. 
 
 Doubt you if, in some such moment, 
 
 As she fixed me, she felt clearly. 
 Ages past the soul existed. 
 
 Here an age 't is resting merely, 
 And hence fleets again for ages, 
 
 While the true end, sole and single. 
 It stops here for is, this love-way, 
 
 With some other soul to mingle ? 
 
 Else it loses what it lived for, 
 
 And eternally must lose it ; 
 Better ends may be in prospect. 
 
 Deeper blisses (if you choose it). 
 But this life's end and this love-bliss 
 
 Have been lost here. Doubt you whether 
 This she felt as, looking at me. 
 
 Mine and her souls rushed together ? 
 
 Oh, observe ! Of course, next moment. 
 
 The world's honore, in derision. 
 Trampled out the light forever : 
 
 Never fear but there 's provision 
 Of the devil's to quench knowledge 
 
 Lest we walk the earth in rapture ! 
 — Making those who catch God's secret 
 
 Just so much more prize their capture ! 
 
 Such am I : the secret 's mine now ! 
 
 She has lost me, I have gained her ; 
 Her soul 's mine : and thus, grown perfect, 
 
 I shall pass my life's remainder. 
 Life will just hold out the proving 
 
 Both our powers, alone and blended : 
 And then, come the next life quickly ! 
 
 This world's use wiU have been ended. 
 
 THE LOST MISTRESS 
 
 All 's over, then : does truth sound bitter 
 
 As one at first believes ? 
 Hark, 't is the sjjarrows' good-night twitter 
 
 About your cottage eaves ! 
 
 And the leaf-buds on the vine are wooUy, 
 
 I noticed that, to-day ; 
 One day more bursts them open fully 
 ■ — You know the red turns gray. 
 
 To-morrow we meet the same then, dearest ? 
 
 May I take your hand in mine ? 
 Mere friends are we, — well, friends the merest 
 
 Keep much that I resign : 
 
 For each glance of the eye so bright and black 
 Though I keep with heart's endeavor, — 
 
 Your voice, when you wish the snowdrops back, 
 Though it stay in my soul forever ! — 
 
 Yet I will but say what mere friends say, 
 
 Or only a thought stronger ; 
 I will hold your hand but as long as all may, 
 
 Or so very little longer ! 
 
 EARTH'S IMMORTALITIES 
 
 FAME 
 
 See, as the prettiest graves will do in time, 
 Our poet's wants the freshness of its prime ; 
 Spite of the sexton's browsing horse, the sods 
 Have struggled through its binding osier rods ; 
 Headstone and half-sunk footstone lean awry, 
 Wanting the brick-work promised by-and-by ; 
 How the minute gray lichens, plate o'er plate. 
 Have softened down the crisp-out name and 
 date ! 
 
 So, the year 's done with ! 
 
 (Love me forever !) 
 All March begun with, 
 
 April's endeavor ; 
 May-wreaths that bound me 
 
 June needs must sever ; 
 Now snows fall round me, 
 
 Quenching June's fever — 
 
 (Love me forever J) 
 
 MEETING AT NIGHT 
 
 This and its companion piece were published 
 originally simply as Night and Morning. 
 
 The gray sea and the long black land ; 
 And the yellow half-moon large and low ; 
 And the startled little waves that leap 
 In fiery ringlets from their sleep, 
 As I gain the cove with pushing prow. 
 And quench its speed i' the slushy sand. 
 
 Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach ; 
 
 Three fields to cross till a farm appears ; 
 
 A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch 
 
 And blue spurt of a lighted match, 
 
 And a voice less loud, through its joys and 
 
 fears. 
 Than the two hearts heating each to each ! 
 
 PARTING AT MORNING 
 
 Bound the cape of a sudden came the sea. 
 And the sun looked over the mountain's rim ! 
 And straight was a path of gold for him. 
 And the need of a world of men for me. 
 
 SONG 
 
 Nay but you, who do not love her. 
 Is she not pure gold, my mistress ? 
 
 Holds earth aught — speak truth — above her f 
 Aught like this tress, see, and this tress. 
 
 And this last fairest tress of all. 
 
 So fair, see, ere I let it fall ? 
 
 Because you spend your lives in praising ; 
 To praise, you search the wide world over ; 
 
LOVE AMONG THE RUINS 
 
 171 
 
 Then why not witness, calmly gazing, 
 If earth holds aught — speak truth — above 
 her ? 
 Above this tress, and this, I touch 
 But cannot praise, I love so much I 
 
 A WOMAN'S LAST WORD 
 
 Let 's contend no more. Love, 
 
 Strive nor weep : 
 All be as before, Love, 
 
 — Only sleep ! 
 
 What so wild as words are ? 
 
 I and thou 
 In debate, as birds are. 
 
 Hawk on bough t 
 
 See the creature stalking 
 
 While we speak ! 
 Hush and hide the talking, 
 
 Cheek on cheek ! 
 
 What so false as truth is, 
 
 False to thee ? 
 Where the serpent's tooth is 
 
 Shun the tree — 
 
 Where the apple reddens 
 
 Never pry — 
 Lest we lose our Edens, 
 
 Eve and I. 
 
 Be a god and hold me 
 
 With a charm ! 
 Be a man and fold me 
 
 With thine arm ! 
 
 Teach me, only teach. Love ! 
 
 As I ought 
 I will speak thy speech. Love, 
 
 Think thy thought — 
 
 Meet, if thou require it. 
 
 Both demands. 
 Laying flesh and spirit 
 
 In thy hands. 
 
 That shall be to-morrow. 
 
 Not to-night : 
 I must bury sorrow 
 
 Out of sight : 
 
 — Must a little weep. Love, 
 
 (Foolish me 1 ) 
 And so fall asleep. Love, 
 
 Loved by thee. 
 
 EVELYN HOPE 
 
 BEAtTTiruii Evelyn Hope is dead ! 
 
 Sit and watch by her side an hour. 
 That is her book-shelf, this her bed ; 
 
 She plucked that piece of geranium-flower. 
 Beginning to die too, in the glass ; 
 
 Little has yet been changed, I think : 
 
 The shutters are shut, no light may pass 
 Save two long rays through the hinge's chink. 
 
 Sixteen years old when she died I 
 
 Perhaps she had scarcely heard my name ; 
 It was not her time to love ; beside. 
 
 Her life had many a hope and aim. 
 Duties enough and little cares, 
 
 And now was quiet, now astir. 
 Till God's hand beckoned unawares, — 
 
 And the sweet white brow is all of her. 
 
 Is it too late then, Evelyn Hope ? 
 
 What, your soul was pure and true. 
 The good stars met in your horoscope. 
 
 Made you of spirit, fire and dew — 
 And, just because I was thrice as old 
 
 And our paths in the world diverged so wide. 
 Each was naught to each, must I be told ? 
 
 We were fellow mortals, naught beside ? 
 
 No, indeed ! for God above 
 
 Is great to grant, as mighty to make. 
 And creates the love to reward the love : 
 
 I claim you stiU, for my own love's sake ! 
 Delayed it may be for more lives yet. 
 
 Through worlds I shall traverse, not a few : 
 Much is to learn, much to forget 
 
 Ere the time be come for taking you. 
 
 But the time will come, — at last it will. 
 
 When, Evelyn Hope, what meant (I shall say) 
 In the lower earth, in the years long still, 
 
 That body and soul so pure and gay ? 
 Why your hair was amber, I shall divine, 
 
 And your mouth of your own geranium's 
 red — 
 And what you would do with me, in fine, 
 
 In the new life come in the old one's stead. 
 
 I have lived (I shall say) so much since then. 
 
 Given up myself so many times, 
 Gained me the gains of various men. 
 
 Ransacked the ages, spoiled the climes ; 
 Yet one thing, one, in ray soul's full scope, 
 
 Either I missed or itself missed me : 
 And I want and find you, Evelyn Hope ! 
 
 What is the issue ? let us see ! 
 
 I loved you, Evelyn, all the while ! 
 
 My heart seemed full as it could hold ; 
 There was place and to spare for the frank 
 young smile. 
 And the red young mouth, and the hair's 
 young gold. 
 So, hush, — I will give you this leaf to keep : 
 
 See, I shut it inside the sweet cold hand ! 
 There, that is our secret : go to sleep ! 
 You will wake, and remember, and under- 
 stand. 
 
 LOVE AMONG THE RUINS 
 
 Wheke the quiet-colored end of evening smiles 
 
 Miles and miles 
 On the solitary pastures where our sheep 
 
 Half-asleep 
 
172 
 
 DRAMATIC LYRICS 
 
 Tinkle homeward through the twilight, stray 
 or stop 
 
 As they crop — 
 Was the site once of a city great and gay, 
 
 (So they say) 
 Of our country's very capital, its prince 
 
 Ages since 
 Held his court in, gathered councils, wielding far 
 
 Peace or war. 
 
 Now, — the country does not even boast a tree. 
 
 As you see, 
 To distii^uish slopes of verdure, certain rills 
 
 From the hills 
 Intersect and give a name to, (else they run 
 
 Into one,) 
 Where the domed and daring palace shot its 
 spires 
 
 Up like fires 
 O'er the hundred-gated circuit of a wall 
 
 Bounding all. 
 Made of marble, men might march on nor be 
 
 Twelve abreast. 
 
 And such plenty and perfection, see, of grass 
 
 Never was ! 
 Such a carpet as, this summer-time, overspreads 
 
 And embeds 
 Every vestige of the city, guessed alone, 
 
 Stock or stone — 
 Where a multitude of men breathed joy and woe 
 
 Long ago ; 
 Lust of glory pricked their hearts up, dread of 
 shame 
 
 Struck them tame ; 
 And that glory and that shame alike, the gold 
 
 Bought and sold. 
 
 Now, — the single little turret that remains 
 
 On the plains, 
 By the caper overrooted, by the gourd 
 
 Overseored, 
 While the patching houseleek's head of blos- 
 som winks 
 Through the chinks — 
 Marks the basement whence a tower in ancient 
 time 
 Sprang sublime. 
 And a burning ring, all round, the chariots 
 traced 
 As they raced, ' 
 And the monarch and his minions and his 
 dames 
 Viewed the games. 
 
 And I know, while thus the quiet-colored eve 
 
 Smfles to leave 
 To their folding, all our many-tinkling fleece 
 
 In such pea<}e, 
 And the slopes and riUs in undistinguished 
 gray 
 
 Melt away — 
 That a girl with eager eyes and yellow hair 
 
 Waits me there 
 In the turret whence the charioteers caught 
 soul 
 
 For the goal. 
 
 When the king looked, where she looks now, 
 breathless, dumb 
 Till I come. 
 
 But he looked upon the city, every side, 
 
 Far and wide, 
 All the mountains topped with temples, aU tha 
 glades' 
 
 Colonnades, 
 All the causeys, bridges, aqueducts, — and then. 
 
 All the men ! 
 When I do come, she will speak not, she will 
 stand. 
 
 Either hand 
 On my shoulder, give her eyes the first embrace 
 
 Of my face. 
 Ere we rash, ere we extinguish sight and speech 
 
 Each on each. 
 
 In one year they sent a million fighters forth 
 
 South and North, 
 And they built their gods a brazen pillar high 
 
 As the sky. 
 Yet reserved a thousand chariots in full force — 
 
 Gold, of course. 
 Oh heart ! oh blood that freezes, blood that 
 bums I 
 
 Earth's returns 
 For whole centuries of folly, noise and sin ! 
 
 Shut them in. 
 With their triumphs and their glories and the 
 rest ! 
 
 Love is best. 
 
 A LOVERS' QUARREL 
 
 Oh, what a dawn of day ! 
 
 How the March sun feels like May ! 
 
 All is blue again 
 
 After last night's rain. 
 And the South dries the hawthorn-spray. 
 
 Only, my Love 's away ! 
 I 'd as lief that the blue were gray. 
 
 Runnels, which rillets swell. 
 Must be dancing down the dell. 
 
 With a foaming head 
 
 On the beryl bed 
 Paven smooth as a hermit's cell ; 
 
 Each with a tale to tell. 
 Could my Love but attend as well. 
 
 Dearest, three months ago ! 
 
 When we lived blocked-up with snow, — 
 
 When the wind would edge 
 
 In and in his wedge. 
 In, as far as the point could go — 
 
 Not to our ingle, though. 
 Where we loved each the ol£er so I 
 
 Laughs with so little cause ! 
 We devised games out of straws, 
 
 We would try and trace 
 
 One another's face 
 In the ash, as an artist draws ; 
 
 Free on each other's flaws, 
 How we chattered like two church da wsf 
 
A LOVERS' QUARREL 
 
 173 
 
 What 's in the " Times " ? — a scold 
 At the Emperor deep and cold ; 
 
 He has taken a bride 
 
 To his grruesome side, 
 That 'a as fair aa himself is bold : 
 
 There they sit ermine-stoled, 
 And she powders her hair with gold. 
 
 Fancy the Pampas' sheen ! 
 Miles and miles of gold and green 
 
 Where the sunflowei^ blow 
 
 In a solid glow. 
 And — to break now and then the screen - 
 
 Black neck and eyeballs keen. 
 Up a wild horse leaps between ! 
 
 Try, will our table turn ? 
 
 Lay your hands there light, and yearn 
 
 Till the yearning slips 
 
 Through the finger-tips 
 In a fire which a few discern. 
 
 And a very few feel bum. 
 And the rest, they may live and learn ! 
 
 Then we would up and pace. 
 For a change, about the place. 
 
 Each with arm o'er neck: 
 
 'T is our quarter-deck. 
 We are seamen in woefid case. 
 
 Help in the ocean-space ! 
 Or, if no help, we '11 embrace. 
 
 See, how she looks now, dressed 
 In a sledging-cap and vest ! 
 
 'T is a huge fur cloak — 
 
 Like a reindeer's yoke 
 Falls the lappet along the breast : 
 
 Sleeves for her arms to rest, 
 Or to hang, as my Love likes best. 
 
 Teach me to flirt a fan 
 As the Spanish ladies can, 
 
 Or I tint your lip 
 
 With a burnt stick's tip 
 And you turn into such a man ! 
 
 Just the two spots that span 
 Half the bill of the young male swan. 
 
 Dearest, three months ago 
 When the mesmerizer Snow 
 
 With his hand's first sweep 
 
 Put the earth to sleep : 
 'T was a time when the heart could show 
 
 All — how was earth to know, 
 'Neath the mute hand's to-and-fro ? 
 
 Dearest, three months ago 
 When we loved each other so. 
 
 Lived and loved the same 
 
 Till an evening camo 
 When a shaft from the devil's bow 
 
 Pierced to our ingle-glow. 
 And the friends were friend and foe I 
 
 Not from the heart beneath — 
 'T was a bubble born of breath, 
 
 Neither sneer nor vaunt. 
 
 Nor reproach nor taunt. 
 
 See a word, how it severeth ! 
 
 Oh, power of life and death 
 In the tongue, as the Preacher saith I 
 
 Woman, and will you cast 
 For a word, quite off at last 
 
 Me, your own, your You, — 
 
 Since, as truth is true, 
 I wa^ You all the happy past — 
 
 Me do you leave aghast 
 With the memories We amassed ? 
 
 Love, if you knew the light 
 That your soul casts in my sight, 
 
 How I look to you 
 
 For the pure and true. 
 And the beauteous and the right, — 
 
 Bear with a moment's spite 
 When a mere mote threats the white I 
 
 What of a hasty word ? 
 
 Is the fleshly heart not stirred 
 By a worm's pin-prick 
 Where its roots are quick ? 
 
 See the eye, by a fly's-foot blurred — 
 Ear, when a straw is heard 
 
 Scratch the brain's coat of curd ! 
 
 Foul be the world or fair 
 
 More or less, how can I care ? 
 'T is the world the same 
 For my praise or blame. 
 
 And endurance is easy there. 
 
 Wrong in the one thing rare — 
 
 Oh, it is hard to bear 1 
 
 Here 's the spring back or close. 
 When the alraond-blossom blows ; 
 
 We shall have the word 
 
 In a minor third. 
 There is none but the cuckoo knows : 
 
 Heaps of the guelder-rose ! 
 I must bear with it, I suppose. 
 
 Gould but November come. 
 Were the noisy birds struck dumb 
 
 At the warning slash 
 
 Of his driver'srlasli — 
 I would laugh like the valiant Thumb 
 
 Facing the castle glimi 
 And the giant's fee-faw-fum ! 
 
 Then, were the world well stripped 
 
 Of the gear wherein equipped 
 We can stand apart, 
 Heart dispense with heart 
 
 In the snn, with the flowere unnipped, - 
 Oh, the world's hangings ripped. 
 
 We were both in a bare-walled crypt ! 
 
 Each in the crypt would cry 
 
 " But one freezes here ! and why ? 
 When a heart, as chill. 
 At my own would thrill 
 
 Back to life, and its fires out-fly ? 
 Heart, shall we live or die ? 
 
 The rest, . . . settle by and by ! " 
 
174 
 
 DRAMATIC LYRICS 
 
 So, she 'd efface the score, 
 And forgive me as before. 
 
 It is twelye o'clock : 
 
 I shall hear her knock 
 In the worst of a storm's uproar, 
 
 I shall ptdl her through the door, 
 1 shall have her for evermore ! 
 
 UP AT A VILLA — DOWN IN THE CITY 
 
 (as distinguished by an ITALIAN PERSON OF 
 
 quality) 
 
 Had I but plenty of money, money enough and 
 
 to spare. 
 The house for me, no doubt, were a house in the 
 
 city-square ; 
 Ah, such a life, such a life, as one leads at the 
 
 window there ! 
 
 Something to see, by Bacchus, something to 
 
 hear, at least ! 
 There, the whole day long, one's life is a perfect 
 
 feast; 
 While up at a villa one lives, I maintain it, no 
 
 more than a beast. 
 
 Well now, look at our villa ! stuck like the horn 
 
 of a bull 
 Just on a mountain-edge as bare as the erear 
 
 ture's skull. 
 Save a mere shag of a bush with hardly a leaf 
 
 to pull ! 
 — I scratch my own, sometimes, to see if the 
 
 hair 's turned wool. 
 
 But the city, oh the city — the square with the 
 houses ! Why ? 
 
 They are stone-faced, white as a curd, there 's 
 something to take the eye ! 
 
 Houses in four straight lines, not a single front 
 awry ; 
 
 You watch who crosses and gossips, who saun- 
 ters, who hurries by ; 
 
 Green blinds, as a matter of course, to draw 
 when the sun gets high ; 
 
 And the shops with fanciful signs which are 
 painted properly. 
 
 What of a villa ? Though winter be over in 
 March by rights, 
 
 'T is May perhaps ere the snow shall have with- 
 ered well off the heights : 
 
 You 've the brown ploughed land before, where 
 the oxen steam and wheeze. 
 
 And the hills over-smoked behind by the faint 
 gray olive-trees. 
 
 Is it better in May, I ask you ? You 've sum- 
 mer all at once ; 
 
 In a day he leaps complete with a few strong 
 April suns. 
 
 'Mid the sharp short emerald wheat, scarce 
 risen three fingers well. 
 
 The wild tulip, at end of its tube, blows out its 
 great red bell 
 
 Like a thin clear bubble of blood, for the 
 children to pick and sell. 
 
 Is it ever hot in the square ? There 's a foun- 
 tain to spout and splash ! 
 
 In the shade it sings and springs ; in the shine 
 such foambows flash 
 
 On the horses with curling fish-tails, that prance 
 and paddle and pash 
 
 Round the lady atop in her conch — fifty gazers 
 do not abash, 
 
 Though all that she wears is some weeds round 
 her waist in a sort of sash. 
 
 All the year long at the villa, nothing to see 
 
 though you linger. 
 Except yon cypress that points like death's lean 
 
 lifted forefinger. 
 Some think fireflies pretty, when they mix i' the 
 
 corn and mingle, 
 Or thrid the stinking hemp tiU the stalks of it 
 
 seem a-tingle. 
 Late August or early September, the stunning 
 
 cicala is shrill. 
 And the bees keep their tiresome whine round 
 
 the resinous firs on the hiU. 
 Enough of the seasons, — I spare you the 
 
 months of the fever and chiU. 
 
 Ere you open your eyes in the city, the blessed 
 church-bells begin : 
 
 No sooner the bells leave off than the diligence 
 rattles in : 
 
 You get the pick of the news, and it costs you 
 never a pin. 
 
 By and by there 's the travelling doctor gives 
 pills, lets blood, draws teeth ; 
 
 Or the PulcineUo-trumpet breaks up the mar- 
 ket beneath. 
 
 At the post-of&ce such a scene-picture — the 
 new play, piping hot ! 
 
 And a notice how, only this morning, three 
 liberal thieves were shot. 
 
 Above it, behold the Archbishop's most fa- 
 therly of rebukes. 
 
 And beneath, with his crown and his lion, some 
 little new law of the Duke's ! 
 
 Or a sonnet with flowery marge, to the Rever- 
 end Don So-and-so, 
 
 Who is Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarca, Saint Je- 
 rome, and Cicero, 
 
 "And moreover," (the sonnet goes rhyming,) 
 " the skirts of Saint Paul has reached. 
 
 Having preached us those six Lent-lectures more 
 unctuous than ever he preached." 
 
 Noon strikes, — here sweeps the procession ! 
 our Lady borne smiling and smart 
 
 With a pink gauze gown all spangles, and seven 
 swords stuck in her heart ! 
 
 Bang-whang-whang goes the drum, tootle-te- 
 tootle the fife ; 
 
 No keeping one's haunches stiU : it 's the great- 
 est pleasure in life. 
 
 But bless you, it's dear — it's dear! fowls, 
 
 wine, at double the rate. 
 They have clapped a new tax upon salt, and 
 
 what oil pays passing the gate 
 It 's a horror to think of. And so, the villa foi 
 
 me, not the city I 
 
A TOCCATA OF GALUPPI'S 
 
 175 
 
 Beggars can scarcely be ehoosei'S : but still — 
 
 ah, the pity, the pity ! 
 Look, two and two go the priests, then the 
 
 monks with cowls and sandals. 
 And the penitents dressed in white shirts, 
 
 a-holding the yellow candles ; 
 One, he carries a flag up straight, and another 
 
 a cross with handles. 
 And the Duke's guard brings up the rear, for 
 
 the better prevention of scandals : 
 Bang-whang-whang goes the drum, tootte-te-tootle 
 
 the fife. 
 Oh, a, day in the city-square, there is no such 
 
 pleasure in life ! 
 
 A TOCCATA OF GALUPPI'S 
 
 Published in Men and Women in 1855. An 
 American author, visiting Browning and his 
 wife at Casa Guidi in 1847, wrote of their occu- 
 pations : " Mrs. Browning," he said, '* was still 
 too much of an invalid to walk, but she sat 
 under the great trees upon the lawn-like hill- 
 sides near the convent, or in the seats of the 
 dusky convent chapel, while Robert Browning 
 at the organ chased a fugue, or dreamed out 
 upon the twilight keys a faint throbbing toccata 
 of Galuppi." 
 
 Oh Galuppi, Baldassare, this is very sad to 
 
 find! 
 I can hardly misconceive you ; it would prove 
 
 me deaf and blind ; 
 But although I take your meaning, 't is with 
 
 such a heavy mind ! 
 
 Here you come with your old music, and here 's 
 
 all the good it brings. 
 What, they lived once thus at Venice where 
 
 the merchants were the kin^. 
 Where St. Mark's is, where the Doges used to 
 
 wed the sea with rings ? 
 
 Ay, because the sea's the street there; and 
 't is arched by , . . what you call 
 
 . . . Shylook's bridge with houses on it, where 
 they kept the carnival : 
 
 I was never out of England — it 's as if I saw it 
 all. 
 
 Did young people take their pleasure when the 
 
 sea was warm in May ? 
 Balls and masks begun at midnight, burning 
 
 ever to mid-day, 
 When they made up fresh adventures for the 
 
 morrow, do you say ? 
 
 Was a lady such a lady, cheeks so round and 
 lips so red, — 
 
 On her neck the small face buoyant, like a bell- 
 flower on its bed, 
 
 O'er the breast's superb abundance where a 
 man might base his head ? 
 
 Well, and it was graceful of them— they'd 
 break talk off and afford 
 
 — She, to bite her mask's black velvet — he, to 
 
 finger on his sword. 
 While you sat and played Toccatas, stately at 
 the clavichord ? 
 
 What ? Those lesser thirds so plaintive, sixths 
 
 diminished, sigh on sigh. 
 Told them something? Those suspensions, 
 
 those solutions — " Must we die ? " 
 Those commiserating sevenths — "Life might 
 
 last ! we can but try ! " 
 
 " Were you happy ? " — " Yes." — " And are 
 you still as happy ? " — " Yes. And 
 you ? " 
 
 — " Then, more kisses ! " — " Did 2 stop them, 
 
 when a million seemed so few ? " 
 Hark, the dominant's persistence till it must 
 be answered to ! 
 
 So, an octave struck the answer. Oh, they 
 
 praised you, I dare say ! 
 *' Brave Galuppi ! that was music ! good alike 
 
 at grave and gay ! 
 I can always leave off talking when I hear a 
 
 master play ! " 
 
 Then they left you for their pleasure : till in 
 
 due time, one by one. 
 Some with lives that came to nothing, some 
 
 with deeds as well undone, 
 Death stepped tacitly and took them where 
 
 they never see the sun. 
 
 But when I sit down to reason, think to take 
 my stand nor swerve. 
 
 While I triumph o'er a secret wrung from na- 
 ture's close reserve. 
 
 In you come with your cold music till I creep 
 through every nerve. 
 
 Yes, you, like a ghostly cricket, creaking where 
 
 a house was burned : 
 " Dust and ashes, dead and done with, Venice 
 
 spent what Venice earned. 
 The soul, doubtless, is immortal — where a soul 
 
 can be discerned. 
 
 " Yours for instance : you know physics, some- 
 thing of geology. 
 
 Mathematics are your pastime ; souls shall rise 
 in their degree ; 
 
 Butterflies may dread extinction, — you '11 not 
 die, it cannot be ! 
 
 " As for Venice and her people, merely bom 
 to bloom and drop, 
 
 Here on earth they bore their fruitage, mirth 
 and folly were the crop ; 
 
 What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kiss- 
 ing had to stop ? 
 
 "Dust and ashes!" So you creak it, and I 
 
 want the heart to scold. 
 Dear dead women, with such hair, too — what 's 
 
 become of all the gold 
 Used to hang and brush their bosoms ? I feel 
 
 chilly and grown old. 
 
176 
 
 DRAMATIC LYRICS 
 
 OLD PICTURES IN FLORENCE 
 
 Tee morn when first it thunders in March, 
 
 The eel in the pond gives a leap, they say : 
 As I leaned and looked over the aloed arch 
 
 Of the villa-gate this warm March day, 
 No flash snapped, no dumb thunder rolled 
 
 In the valley beneath where, white and wide 
 And washed by the morning water-gold, 
 
 Florence lay out on the mountain-side. 
 
 River and bridge and street and square 
 
 Lay mine, as much at my beck and call, 
 Through the live translucent bath of air, 
 
 As the sights in a magic crystal ball. 
 And of all I saw and of all I praised, 
 
 The most to praise and the best to see, 
 Was the startling bell-tower Giotto raised : 
 
 But why did it more than startle me ? 
 
 Giotto, how, with that soul of yours. 
 
 Could yon play me false who loved you so ? 
 Some slights if a certain heart endures 
 
 Yet it f eels4 1 would have your fellows know ! 
 I' faith, I perceive not why I should care 
 
 To break a silence that suits them best, 
 Bui the thing grows somewhat hard to bear 
 
 When I find a Giotto join the rest. 
 
 On the arch where olives overhead 
 
 Print the blue sky with twig and leaf, 
 (That sharp-curled leaf which they never shed) 
 
 'Twixt the aloes, I used to lean in chief. 
 And mark through the winter afternoons. 
 
 By a gift God grants me now and then. 
 In the mild decline of those suns like moons. 
 
 Who walked in Florence, besides her men. 
 
 They might chirp and chafFer, come and go 
 For pleasure or profit, her men alive — 
 
 My business was hardly vrith them, I trow. 
 But with empty cells of the human hive ; 
 
 — With the chaptei^room, the cloister-porch. 
 The church's apsis, aisle or nave. 
 
 Its crypt, one fingers along with a torch, 
 Its face set full for the sun to shave. 
 
 Wherever a fresco peels and drops, 
 Wherever an outline weakens and wanes 
 
 Till the latest life in the painting stops. 
 Stands One whom each fainter pnlse-tick 
 pains : 
 
 One, wishful each scrap should clutch the brick. 
 Each tinge not wholly escape the plaster, 
 
 — A lion who dies of an ass's kick. 
 
 The wronged great soul of an ancient Master. 
 
 For oh, this world and the wrong it does ! 
 
 They are safe in heaven with their backs to 
 it. 
 The Michaels and Rafaels, you hum and buzz 
 
 Round the works of, you of the little wit 1 
 Do their eyes contract to the earth's old scope. 
 
 Now that they see God face to face. 
 And have all attained to be poets, I hope ? 
 
 'T is their holiday now, in any case. 
 
 Much they reck of your praise and you ! 
 
 But the wronged great souls — can they be 
 quit 
 Of a world where their work is all to do. 
 
 Where you style them, you of the little wit, 
 Old Master This and Early the Other, 
 
 Not dreaming that Old and New are fellows : 
 A younger succeeds to an elder brother. 
 
 Da Vinois derive in good time from DeUos. 
 
 And here where your praise might yield returns, 
 
 And a handsome word or two give help. 
 Here, after your kind, the mastiff girns 
 
 And the puppy pack of poodles yelp. 
 What, not a word for Stefano there. 
 
 Of brow once prominent and starry. 
 Called Nature's Ape, and the world's despair 
 
 For his peerless painting ? (See Vasari.) 
 
 There stands the Master. Study, my friends, 
 
 What a man's work comes to ! So he plans 
 it. 
 Performs it, perfects it, makes amends 
 
 For the toiling and moiling, and then, sic 
 transit ! 
 Happier the thrifty blind-folk labor. 
 
 With upturned eye while the hand is busy. 
 Not sidling a glance at the coin of their 
 
 . , neighbor ! 
 
 'T is looking downward that makes one dizzy. 
 
 " if you knew their work you would deal your 
 dole." 
 
 May I take upon me to instruct you ? 
 When Greek Art ran and reached the goal. 
 
 Thus much had the world to boast infructu — 
 The Truth of Man, as by God first spoken, 
 
 Which the actual generations garble. 
 Was re-uttered, and Soul fwhich Limbs betoken) 
 
 And Limbs (fcjoul informs) made new in 
 marble. 
 
 So you saw yourself as you wished you were. 
 
 As you might have been, as you cannot be ; 
 Earth here, rebuked by Olympus there : 
 
 And grew content in your poor degree 
 With your little power, by those statues' god- 
 head. 
 
 And your little scope, by their eyes' full sway, 
 And your little grace, by their grace embodied, 
 
 And your little date, by their forms that stay. 
 
 You would fain be kinglier, say, than I am ? 
 
 Even so, you will not sit like Theseus. 
 You would prove a model ? The Son of Priam 
 
 Has yet the advantage in arms' and knees' 
 use. 
 You 're wroth — can you slay your snake like 
 Apollo ? 
 
 You 're grieved — still Niobe 's the grander! 
 You live — there 's the Racers' frieze to follow : 
 
 You die — there 's the dying Alexander. 
 
 So, testing your weakness by their strength. 
 Your meagre charms by their rounded beauty, 
 
 Measured by Art in your breadth and length, 
 You learned — to submit is a mortal's diity. 
 
OLD PICTURES IN FLORENCE 
 
 177 
 
 — When I say " you " 'tis the common soul, 
 The collective, I mean : the race of Man 
 
 That receives life in parts to live in a whole. 
 And grow here according to God's clear plan. 
 
 Growth came when, looking your last on them 
 all. 
 
 You turned your eyes inwardly one fine day 
 And cried with a start -7- What if we so small 
 
 Be greater and grander the while than they ? 
 Are th^y perfect of lineament, pei-fect of stat- 
 ure? 
 
 In both, of such lower types are we 
 Precisely because of our wider nature ; 
 
 For time, theirs — ours, for eternity. 
 
 To-day's brief passion limits their range ; 
 
 It seethes with the morrow for us and more. 
 They are perfect — how else ? they shall never 
 change : 
 We are faulty — why not ? we have time in 
 store. 
 The Artificer's hand is not arrested 
 With us ; we are rough-hewn, nowise pol- 
 ished : 
 They stand for our copy, and, once invested 
 With all they can teach, we shall see them 
 abolished. 
 
 'T is a life-long toil till our lump be leaven - 
 
 "■ " _ r! " " 
 
 perishes. 
 
 The better! What's come to perfection 
 
 Things learned on earth, we shall practise in 
 heaven ; 
 
 Works done least rapidly, Art most cherishes. 
 Thyself shalt afPord the example, Giotto ! 
 
 Thy one work, not to decrease or diminish, 
 Done at a stroke, was just (was it not ?) " ! " 
 
 Thy great Campanile is still to finish. 
 
 Is it true that we are now, and shall be here- 
 after, 
 
 But what and where depend on life's minute ? 
 HaUs heavenly cheer or infernal laughter 
 
 Our first step out of the gulf or in it ? 
 Shall Man, such step within his endeavor, 
 
 Man's face, have no more play and action 
 Than joy which is crystallized forever, 
 
 Or grief, an eternal petrifaction ? 
 
 On which I conclude, that the early painters, 
 To cries of " Greek Art and what more wish 
 you?"- 
 Beplied, " To become now self-acqnainters, 
 And paint man, man,whatever'the issue I 
 Make new hopes shine through the flesh they 
 fray. 
 New fears aggrandize the rags and tatters : 
 To bring the invisible full into play ! 
 Let the visible go to the dogs — what mat- 
 ters?" 
 
 Give these, I exhort you, their guerdon and 
 glory 
 
 For daring so much, before they well did it. 
 The first of the new, in our race's story. 
 
 Beats the last of the old ; 't is no idle quiddit. 
 The worthies began a revolution. 
 
 Which if on earth you intend to acknowledge. 
 Why, honor them now 1 (ends my allocution) 
 Nor confer your degree when the folk leave 
 college . 
 
 There 's a fancy some lean to and others hate — 
 
 That, when this life is ended, begins 
 New work for the soul in another state. 
 
 Where it strives and gets weary, loses and 
 wins: 
 Where the strong and the weak, this world's 
 congeries. 
 
 Repeat in large what they practised in small, 
 Through life after life in unlimited series ; 
 
 Only the scale 's to be changed, that 's all. 
 
 Yet I hardly know. When a soul has seen 
 
 By the means of Evil that Good is best, 
 And, through earth and its noise, what is 
 heaven's serene, — 
 
 When our faith in the same has stood the 
 test — 
 Why, the child grown man, you bum the rod, 
 
 The uses of labor are surely done ; 
 There remaineth a rest for the people of God : 
 
 And I have had troubles enough, for one. 
 
 But at any rate I have loved the season 
 
 Of Art's sijrihg-birth so dim and dewy ; 
 My sculijtor is Nicolo the Pisan, 
 
 My painter — who but Cimabue ? 
 Nor ever was man of them all indeed. 
 
 From these to Ghiberti and Ghirlandajo, 
 Could say that he missed my critic-meed. 
 
 So, now to my special grievance — heigh-ho ! 
 
 Their ghosts still stand, as I said before, 
 
 Watching each fresco flaked and rasped. 
 Blocked up, knocked out, or whitewashed o'er : 
 
 — No getting again what the church has 
 grasped ! 
 The works on the wall must take their chance ; 
 
 " Works never conceded to England's thick 
 clime ! " 
 (I hope they prefer their inheritance 
 
 Of a bucketful of Italian quick-lime.) 
 
 When they go at length, with such a shaking 
 
 Of heads o'er the old delusion, sadly 
 Each master his way through the black streets 
 taking. 
 Where many a lost work breathes though 
 badly — 
 Why don't they bethink them of who has mer- 
 ited ? 
 Why not reveal, while their pictures dree 
 Such doom, how a captive might be out-ferreted ? 
 Why is it they never remember me ? 
 
 Not that I expect the great Bigo'rdi, 
 
 Nor Sandro to hear me, ohivalric, bellicose ; 
 Nor the wronged Lippino ; and not a word I 
 
 Say of a scrap of Fr^ Angelico's : 
 But are you too fine, Taddeo Gaddi, 
 
 To grant me a taste of your intonaco. 
 Some Jerome that seeks the heaven with a sad 
 eye ? 
 
 Not a churlish saint, Lorenzo Monaco ? 
 
178 
 
 DRAMATIC LYRICS 
 
 Could not the ghost with the close red cap, 
 
 My PoUajolo, the twice a craftsman, 
 Save me a sample, give me the hap 
 
 Of a muscular Christ that shows the draughts- 
 man ? 
 No Virgin by him the somewhat petty, 
 
 Of finical touch and tempera crumbly — 
 Could not Alesso Baldovinetti 
 
 Contribute so much, I ask him humbly ? 
 
 Mai^heritone of Arezzo, 
 
 With the grave-clothes garb and swaddling 
 barret, 
 (Why pui-se up mouth and beak in a pet so. 
 
 You bald old saturnine poll-clawed parrot ?) 
 Not a poor glimmering Crucifixion, 
 
 Where in the foreground kneels the donor ? 
 If such remain, as is my conviction, 
 
 The hoarding it does you but little honor. 
 
 They pass ; for them the panels may thrill. 
 
 The tempera grow alive and tinglish ; 
 Their pictures are left to the mercies still 
 
 Of dealers and stealers, Jews and the Eng- 
 lish, 
 Who, seeing mere money's worth in their prize. 
 
 Will sell it to somebody calm as Zeno 
 At naked High Art, and in ecstasies 
 
 Before some clay-cold vile Carlino I 
 
 No matter for these ! But Giotto, you. 
 
 Have you allowed, as the town-tongues babble 
 it, — 
 Oh, never ! it shall not be counted true — 
 
 That a certain precious little tablet 
 Which Buonarroti eyed like a lover — 
 
 Was buried so long in oblivion's womb 
 And, left for another than I to discover. 
 
 Turns up at last ! and to whom ? — to whom ? 
 
 I, that have haunted the dim San Spirito, 
 
 (Or was it rather the Ognissanti ?) 
 Patient on altar-step planting a weary toe ! 
 
 Nay, I shall have it yet ! Detur amanti ! 
 My Koh-i-noor — or (if that 's a platitude) 
 
 Jewel of Giamschid, the Persian Sofi's eye ; 
 So, in anticipative gratitude, 
 
 What if I take up my hope and prophesy ? 
 
 When the hour grows ripe, and a certain do- 
 tard 
 
 Is pitched, no parcel that needs invoicing, 
 To the worse side of the Mont St. Gothard, 
 
 We shall begin by way of rejoicing ; 
 None of that shooting the sky (blank cartridge). 
 
 Nor a civic guard, all plumes and lacquer, 
 Hnntinp Radetzky's soul like a partridge 
 
 Over Morello with squib and cracker. 
 
 This time we 'U shoot better game and bag 'em 
 hot — 
 
 No mere display at the stone of Dante, 
 But a kind of sober Witanagemot 
 
 (Ex : " Casa Guidi," quod videos ante) 
 Shall ponder, once Freedom restored to Florence, 
 
 How Art may return that departed with her. 
 Goj hated house, go each trace of the Loraine's, 
 
 And bring us the days of Orgagna hither 1 
 
 How we shall prolognize, how we sliall perorate, 
 
 Utter fit things upon art and history. 
 Feel truth at blood-heat and falsehood at zero 
 rate. 
 
 Make of the want of the age no mystery ; 
 Contrast the fructuous and sterile eras, 
 
 Show — monarchy ever its uncouth cub licks 
 Out of the bear's shape into Chimsera's, 
 
 While Pure Art's birth is still the republic's. 
 
 Then one shall propose in a speech (curt Tuscan, 
 
 Expurgate and sober, with scai'cely an 
 *' issimo,^^) 
 To end now our half-told tale of Cambuscan, 
 
 And turn the bell-tower's alt to altissimoi 
 And fine as the beak of a young beccaccia 
 
 The Campanile, the Duomo's fit ally. 
 Shall soar up in gold full fifty braccia. 
 
 Completing Florence, as Florence Italy. 
 
 Shall I be alive that morning the scaffold 
 
 Is broken away, and the long-pent fire. 
 Like the golden hope of the world, unbailed 
 
 Springs from its sleep, and up goes the spire 
 While God and the People" plain for its 
 motto, 
 
 Thence the new tricolor flaps at the sky ? 
 At least to foresee that glory of Giotto 
 
 And Florence together, the first am I ! 
 
 "DE GUSTIBUS — " 
 
 YocR ghost will walk, you lover of trees, 
 
 (If our loves remain) 
 
 In an English lane. 
 By a cornfield-side a-flutter with poppies. 
 Hark, those two in the hazel coppice — 
 A boy and a girl, if the good fates please. 
 
 Making love, say, — 
 
 The happier they ! 
 Draw yourself up from the light of the moon, 
 And let them pass, as they will too soon. 
 
 With the beanflowers' boon, 
 
 And the blackbird's tune. 
 
 And May, and June I 
 
 What I love best in all the world 
 Is a castle, precipice-encurled. 
 In a gash of the wind-grieved Apennine. 
 Or look for me, old fellow of mine, 
 (If I get my head from out the mouth 
 0' the grave, and loose my spirit's bands. 
 And come again to the land of lands) — 
 In a sea-side house to the farther iSouth, 
 Where the baked cicala dies of drouth, 
 And one sharp tree — 't is a eyijress — stands, 
 By the many hundred years red-rusted. 
 Rough iron-spiked, ripe fruit-o'ercrusted. 
 My sentinel to guard the sands 
 To the water's edge. For, what expands 
 Before the house, but the great opaque 
 Blue breadth of sea without a break ? 
 While, in the house, forever crumbles 
 Some fragment of the frescoed walls. 
 From blisters where a scorpion sprawls. 
 A girl bare-footed brings, and tumbles 
 I Down on the pavement, green-flesh melons. 
 
SAUL 
 
 179 
 
 And says there 's news to-day — the king ■ • 
 
 Was shot at, touched in the fiver-wing, 
 
 Goes with his Bourbon arm in a sling : 
 
 ■ — She hopes they have not caught the felons. 
 
 Italy, my Italy I 
 
 Queen Mary's saying serves for me — 
 
 (When fortune's malice 
 
 Lost her, Calais) 
 Open m^ heart and you will see 
 Graved inside of it, Italy." 
 Such lovers old are I and she : 
 So it always was, so shall ever be 1 
 
 HOME-THOUGHTS, FROM ABROAD 
 
 This and the following poem were first pub- 
 lished along with Beer, which bore the name 
 Here 's to Nelson'' s Memory, under the general 
 heading Home-Thoughts, from Abroad. The final 
 member of the group, Home-Thoughts, from the 
 Sea, was written under the same circumstances 
 as the poem. How They brought the Good News 
 from Ghent to Aix. 
 
 Oh, to be in England 
 
 Now that April 's there. 
 
 And whoever wakes in England 
 
 Sees, some morning, unaware, 
 
 That the lowest boughs and the brush-wood 
 
 sheaf 
 Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf. 
 While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough 
 In England — now ! 
 
 And after April, when May follows. 
 And the whitetliroat builds, and all the swal- 
 lows ! 
 Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the 
 
 hedge 
 Leans to the field and scatters on the clover 
 Blossoms and dewdrops — at the bent spray's 
 
 That 's the wise thrush ; he sings each song 
 
 twice over, 
 Lest you should think he never could recapture 
 The first fine careless rapture ! 
 And though the fields look rough with hoary 
 
 dew. 
 All will be gay when noontide wakes anew 
 The buttercups, the little children's dower 
 — Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower I 
 
 HOME-THOUGHTS, FROM THE SEA 
 
 Nobly, nobly Cape Saint Vincent to the North- 
 west died away ; 
 
 Sunset ran, one glorious blood-red, reeking into 
 Cadiz Bay ; 
 
 Bluish 'mid the burning water, full in face Tra- 
 falgar lay ; 
 
 In the dimmest Northeast distance dawned 
 Gibraltar grand and gray ; 
 
 " Here and here did England help me : how can 
 I help England? " — say. 
 
 Whoso turns as I, this evening, turn to God to 
 
 praise and pray. 
 While Jove's planet rises yonder, silent over 
 
 Africa. 
 
 SAUL 
 
 The first nine sections of this poem were 
 printed under the same title in No. VII. of Bells 
 arid Pomegranates, in 1845. The poem as en- 
 larged was published in Men and Women in 
 1855. 
 
 I 
 
 Said Abner, " At last thou art come ! Ere I 
 
 tell, ere thou speak. 
 Kiss my cheek, wish me well ! " Then I wished 
 
 it, and did kiss his cheek. 
 And he : "Since the King, O my friend, for thy 
 
 countenance sent. 
 Neither drunken nor eaten have we ; nor until 
 
 from his tent 
 Thou return with the joyful assurance the King 
 
 liveth yet. 
 Shall our lip with the honey be bright, with the 
 
 water be wet. 
 For out of the black mid-tent's silence, a space 
 
 of three days. 
 Not a sound hath escaped to thy servants, of 
 
 prayer nor of praise. 
 To betoken that Saul and the Spirit have ended 
 
 their strife. 
 And that, faint in his triumph, the monarch 
 
 sinks back upon life. 
 
 " Yet now ray heart leaps, beloved ! God'i 
 
 child with his dew 
 On thy gracious gold hair, and those lilies still 
 
 living and blue 
 Just broken to twine round thy harp-strings, as 
 
 if no wild heat 
 Were now raging to torture the desert ! " 
 
 III 
 
 Then I, as was meet. 
 Knelt down to the God of my fathers, and rose 
 
 on my feet. 
 And ran o'er the sand burnt to powder.. The 
 
 tent was unlooped ; 
 I pulled up the spear that obstructed, and 
 
 under I stooped ; 
 Hands and knees on the slippery grass-patch, 
 
 all withered and gone. 
 That extends to the second enclosure, I groped 
 
 my way on 
 Till I felt where the foldskirts fly open. Then 
 
 once more I prayed. 
 And opened the foldskirts and entered, and was 
 
 not afraid 
 But spoke, "Here is David, thy servant!" 
 
 And no voice replied. 
 At the first I saw naught but the blackness ; 
 
 but soon I descried 
 A something more black than the blackness — 
 
 the vast, the upright 
 Main prop which sustains the pavilion : and slow 
 
 into sig-bt 
 
r8o 
 
 DRAMATIC LYRICS 
 
 Grei^ a figure against it, g;igaiitic and blackest 
 of aU. 
 
 Then a sunbeam, that buist through the tent- 
 roof, showed tiaul. 
 
 He stood as erect as that tent-prop, both arms 
 
 stretched but wide 
 On the great cross-support in the centre, that 
 
 goes to each side ; 
 He relaxed not a muscle, but hung there as, 
 
 caught in his pangs 
 And waiting his change, the king-serpent all 
 
 heavily hangs. 
 Far away from his kind, in the pine, till delir- 
 
 erance come 
 With the spring-time, — so agonized Saul, drear 
 
 and stark, blind and dumb. 
 
 Then I tuned my harp, — took off the lilies we 
 
 twine round its chords 
 Lest they snap 'ncath the stress of the noontide 
 
 — those sunbeams like swords ! 
 And I first played the tune all our sheep know, 
 
 as, one after one. 
 So docile they come to the pen-door till folding 
 
 be done. 
 They are white and untorn by the bushes, for 
 
 lo, they have fed 
 Where the long grasses stifle the water within 
 
 the stream's bed ; 
 And now one after one seeks its lodging, as star 
 
 follows star 
 Into eve and the blue far above us, — so blue 
 
 and so far ! 
 
 — Then the tune for which quails on the corn- 
 land will each leave his mate 
 To fly after the player ; then, what makes the 
 
 crickets elate 
 Till for boldness they fight one another; and 
 
 then, what has weight 
 To set the quick jerboa a-musing outside his 
 
 sand house — 
 There are none such as he for a wonder, half 
 
 bird and half mouse ! 
 6od made all the creatures and gave them our 
 
 iove and our fear. 
 To give sign, we and they are his children, one 
 
 family here. 
 
 Then I ijlayed the help-tune of our reapers, 
 their wine-song, when hand 
 
 Grasps at hand, eye lights eye in good friend- 
 ship, and great hearts expand 
 
 And grow one in the sense of this world's life. 
 
 — And then, the last song 
 
 When the dead man is praised on his journey — 
 
 " Bear, bear him alon^, 
 With his few faults shut up like dead flowerets ! 
 
 Are balm seeds not nere 
 To console us ? The land has none left such as 
 
 he on the bier. 
 Oh, would we might keep thee, my brother I " 
 
 — And then, the glad channt 
 
 Of the marriagej — first go the young maidens, 
 next, she whom we vaunt 
 
 As the beauty, the pride of our dwelling. — And 
 theii', the great march 
 
 Wherein man runs to man to assist. him and 
 buttress an arch 
 
 Naught can break ; who shall harm them, our 
 friends ? Then, the chorus intoned 
 
 As the Levites go up to the altar inglory en- 
 throned. 
 
 But I stopped here: for here in the darkness 
 Saul groaned. 
 
 And I paused, held my breath in such silence, 
 and listened apart ; 
 
 And the tent shook, for mighty Saul shuddered : 
 and sparkles 'gan dart 
 
 From the jewels that woke in his turban, at 
 once with a start, 
 
 All its lordly male-sapphires, and rubies coura- 
 geous at heart. 
 
 So the nead : but the body still moved not, still 
 hung there erect. 
 
 And I bent once again to my playing, pursued 
 it unchecked. 
 
 As I sang : — 
 
 " Oh, our manhood's prime vigor ! No spirit 
 
 feels waste. 
 Not a muscle is stopped in its playing nor sinew 
 
 unbraced. 
 Oh, the wild joys of living ! the leapuig from 
 
 rock up to rock. 
 The strong rending of boughs from the fii^tree, 
 
 the cool silver shock 
 Of the plunge in a pool's living water, the hunt 
 
 of the bear. 
 And the sultriness showing the lion is couched 
 
 in his lair. 
 And the meal, the rich dates yellowed over with 
 
 gold dust divine. 
 And the locust-flesh steeped in the pitcher, the 
 
 full draught of wine. 
 And the sleep in the dried river-channel where 
 
 bulrushes tell 
 That the water was wont to go warbling so 
 
 softly and well. 
 How good is man's Ufe, the mere living ! how 
 
 fit to employ 
 All the heart and the soul and the senses for- 
 ever in joy ! 
 Hast thou loved the white locks of thy father, 
 
 whose sword thou didst guard 
 When he trusted thee forth with the armies, 
 
 for glorious reward ? 
 Didst thou see the thin hands of thy mother, 
 
 held up as men sung 
 The low song of the nearly-departed, and hear 
 
 her faint tongue 
 Joining in while it could to the witness, ' Let 
 
 one more attest, 
 I have lived, seen God's hand through a life- 
 time, and all was for best ' ? 
 Then they sung through their tears In strong 
 
 triumph, not much, but the rest. 
 
SAUL 
 
 i8i 
 
 And thy brothers, the help and the contest, the 
 
 working whence grew 
 Such result as, from seething grape-bundles, the 
 
 spirit strained true : 
 And the friends of thy boyhood — that boyhood 
 
 of wonder and nope. 
 Present promise and wemh of the future beyond 
 
 the eye's scope, — 
 Till lo, thou art grown to a monarch ; a people 
 
 is thine ; 
 And all gifts, which the world offers singly, on 
 
 one head combine ! 
 On one head, all the beauty and strength, love 
 
 and rage (like the throe 
 That, a-work in the rock, helps its labor and 
 
 lets the gold go) 
 High ambition and deeds which surpass it,: fame 
 
 crowning them, — all 
 Brought to blaze on the head of one creature — 
 
 King Saul!" 
 
 And lo, with tliat leap of my spirit, — heart, 
 
 hand, harp and voice, > 
 Each lifting Saul's name out of sorrow, each 
 
 bidding rejoice 
 Saul's fame in the light it was made for — as 
 
 when, dare I say, 
 The Lord's army, in rapture of service, strains 
 
 through its array. 
 And upsoareth the cherubim-chariot — ' ' Saul ! ' ' 
 
 cried I, and stopped. 
 And waited the thing that should f oUow. Then 
 
 Saul, who hung propped 
 By the tent's cross-support in the centre, was 
 
 struck by his name. 
 Have ye seen when ijpring's arrowy summons 
 
 goes right to the aim. 
 And some mountain, the last to withstand her, 
 
 that held (he alone. 
 While the vale laughed in freedom and flowers) 
 
 on a broad bust of stone 
 A year's snow bound about for a breastplate, — 
 
 leaves grasp of the sheet ? 
 Fold on fold all at once it crowds thunderously 
 
 down to his feet, 
 And there fronts you, stark, black, but alive 
 
 yet, your mountain of old, 
 With his rents, the successive bequeathings of 
 
 ages untold — 
 Yea, each harm got in fighting your battles, 
 
 ea^jh furrow and scar 
 Of his head: thrust 'twixt you and the tempest 
 
 — all hail, there they are ! 
 — Now again to be softened with verdure, again 
 
 hold the nest 
 Of the dove, tempt the goat and its young to 
 
 the green on his crest 
 For their food in the ardors of summer. One 
 
 long shudder thrilled 
 All the tent tiU the very air tingled, then sank 
 
 and was stilled 
 At the King's self left standing before me, re- 
 leased and aware. 
 What was gone, what remained? All to tra^ 
 
 verse 'twixt hope and despair. 
 Death was past, life not come : so he waited. 
 
 Awhile his right hand' 
 
 Held the brow, helped the eyes left too vacant 
 
 forthwith to remand 
 To their place what new objects should enter : 
 
 't was Saul as before. 
 I looked up and dared gaze at those eyes, nor 
 
 was hurt any more 
 Than by slow pallid sunsets in autumn, ye 
 
 watch from the shore. 
 At their sad level gaze o'er the ocean — a sun's 
 
 slow decline 
 Over hills which, resolved in stern silence, o'er- 
 
 lap and entwine 
 Base with base to knit strength more intensely; 
 
 so, arm folded arm 
 O'er the chest whose slow heavings subsided. 
 
 What spell or what charm, 
 (For awhile there was trouble within me,) what 
 
 next should 1 urge 
 To sustain him where song had restored him ? 
 
 — fcsong filled to the verge 
 His cup with the wine of tliis life, pressing all 
 
 that it yields 
 Of mere fruitage, the strength and the beauty : 
 
 beyond, on what fields. 
 Glean a vintage more potent and perfect to 
 
 brighten the eye 
 And bring blood to the lip, and commend them 
 
 the cup they put by ? 
 He saith, " It is grood ; " still he drinks not : he 
 
 lets me praise life, 
 Gives assent, yet would die for his own part. 
 
 Then fancies grew rife 
 Which had come long ago on the pasture, when 
 
 round me the sheep 
 Fed in silence-^ above, the one eagle wheeled 
 
 slow as in sleep ; 
 And I lay in my hollow and mused on the world 
 
 that might lie 
 'Neath his ken, though I saw but the strip 
 
 'twixt the hill and the sky : 
 And I laughed — "Since my days are ordained 
 
 to be passed with my flocks. 
 Let me people at least, with my fancies,.. the 
 
 plains and the rocks. 
 Dream the life I am never to mix with, and 
 
 image the show 
 Of mankind as they live in those fashions I 
 
 hardly shall know ! 
 Schemes of life, its best rules and right uses, 
 
 the courage that gains. 
 And the prudence that keeps what men strive 
 
 for." And now these old trains 
 Of vague thought came a^ain ; I grew surer ; 
 
 so, once more the string 
 Of my harp made response to my spirit, as 
 
 thus — 
 
 XIII 
 
 "Yea, my King," 
 I began- — "thou dost well in rejecting mere 
 
 comforts that spring 
 From the mere mortal life held in common by 
 
 man and by brute : 
 In our flesh grows the branch of this life, in our 
 
 soul it bears fruit. 
 
l82 
 
 DRAMATIC LYRICS 
 
 Thou hast marked the slow rise of the tree, — 
 
 how its stem trembled first 
 Till it passed the kid's lip, the stag's antler ; 
 
 then safely outburst 
 The fan-branches all round ; and thou mindest 
 
 when these too, in turn, 
 Broke ar-bloom and the palm-tree seemed per- 
 fect : yet more was to learn. 
 E'en the good that comes in with the palm-fruit. 
 
 Our dates shall we slight. 
 When their juice brings a cure for all sorrow ? 
 
 or care for the plight 
 Of the palm's self whose slow growth produced 
 
 them ? Not so I stem and branch 
 Shall decay, nor be known in their place, while 
 
 the palm-wine shall stanch 
 Every wound of man's spirit in winter. I pour 
 
 thee such wine. 
 Leave the flesh to the fate it was fit for ! the 
 
 spirit be thine ! 
 By the spirit, when age shall o'ercome thee, 
 
 thou still shalt enjoy 
 More indeed, than at first when inconscious, the 
 
 life of a boy. 
 Crush that life, and behold its wine running! 
 
 Each deed thou hast done 
 Dies, revives, goes to work in the world ; until 
 
 e'en as the sun 
 Looking down on the earth, though clouds 
 
 spoil him, though tempests efirace. 
 Can find nothing his own deed produced not, 
 
 must everywhere trace 
 The results of his past summer-prime, — so, 
 
 each ray of thy will. 
 Every flash of thy passion and prowess, long 
 
 over, shall thrill 
 Thy whole people, the countless, with ardor, 
 
 till they too give forth 
 A like cheer to their sons, who in turn, fill the 
 
 South and the North 
 With the radiance thy deed was the germ of. 
 
 Carouse in the past ! 
 But the license of age has its limit ; thou diest 
 
 at last : 
 As the lion when age dims his eyeball, the rose 
 
 at her height. 
 So with man — so his power and his beauty for- 
 ever take flight. 
 No I Again a long draught of my soul-wine ! 
 
 Look forth o er the years ! 
 Thou hast done now with eyes for the actual ; 
 
 begin with the seer's ! 
 Is Saul dead ? In the depth of the vale make 
 
 his tomb — bid arise 
 A gray mountain of marble heaped four-square, 
 
 till, built to the skies, 
 Let it mark where the great First King slum- 
 bers : whose fame would ye know ? 
 Up above see the rook's naked face, where 
 
 the record shall go 
 In great characters cut by the scribe, — Such 
 
 was Saul, so he did ' 
 With the sages directing the work, by the popu- 
 lace chid, — 
 For not half, they '11 affirm, is comprised there ! 
 
 Which fault to amend. 
 In the grove with his kind grows the cedar, 
 
 whereon they shall spend 
 
 (See, in tablets 't is level before them) their 
 
 praise, and record 
 With the gold of the graver, Saul's story, — 
 
 the statesman's great word 
 Side by side with the poet's sweet comment. 
 
 'The river 's a^wave 
 With smooth paper-reeds grazing each other 
 
 when prophet-winds rave : 
 So the pen gives unborn generations their due 
 
 and their part 
 In thy being! Then, first of the mighty, 
 
 thank God that thou art ! " 
 
 And behold while I sang . . . but Thou who 
 
 didst grant me that day. 
 And before it not seldom hast granted thy help 
 
 to essay. 
 Carry on and complete an adventure, — my 
 
 shield and my sword 
 In that act where my soul was thy servant, 
 
 thy word was my word, — 
 Still be with me, who then at the summit of 
 
 human endeavor 
 And scaling the highest, man's thought could, 
 
 gazed hopeless as ever 
 On the new stretch of heaven above me — till, 
 
 mighty to save. 
 Just one lift of thy hand cleared that distance 
 
 — God's throne from man's grave ! 
 Let me tell out my tale to its ending — my 
 
 voice to piy heart 
 Which can scarce dare believe iai what marvels 
 
 last night I took part. 
 As this morning I gather the fragments, alone 
 
 with my sheep. 
 And still fear lest the terrible glory evanish 
 
 like sleep ! 
 For I wake in the gray dewy covert, while 
 
 Hebron upheaves 
 The dawn struggling with night on his shoulder, 
 
 and Kidron retrieves 
 Slow the damage of yesterday's sunshine. 
 
 I say then, — my song 
 While I sang thus, assuring the monarch, and 
 
 ever more strong 
 Made a proif er of good to console him — he 
 
 slowly resumed 
 His old motions and habitudes kingly. The 
 
 right hand replumed 
 His black locks to their wonted composure, ad- 
 justed the swathes 
 Of his turban, and see — the huge sweat that 
 
 his countenance bathes. 
 He wipes oif with the robe ; and he girds now 
 
 his loins as of yore. 
 And feels slow for the armlets of price, with 
 
 the clasp set before. 
 He is Saul, ye remember in glory, — ere error 
 
 had bent 
 The broad brow from the daily communion: 
 
 and still, though much spent 
 Be the life and the bearing that front you, the 
 
 same, God did choose. 
 To receive what a man maj' waste, desecrate 
 
 never quite lose. 
 
SAUL 
 
 183 
 
 So sank he along by the tent-prop till, stayed 
 
 _ by the pile 
 Of his armor and war-cloak and garments, he 
 
 leaned there awhile. 
 And sat out my singing, — one arm round the 
 
 tent-prop, to raise 
 His bent head, and the other hung slack — till 
 
 I touched on the praise 
 1 foresaw from all men in all time, to the man 
 
 patient there ; 
 And thus ended, the harp falling forward. 
 
 Then first I was 'ware 
 That he sat, as I say, with my head just above 
 
 his vast knees 
 Which were thrust out on each side around 
 
 me, like oak roots which please 
 To encircle a lamb when it slumbers. I looked 
 
 up to know 
 If the beat I could do had brought solace : he 
 
 spoke not, but slow 
 Lifted up the hand slack at his side, till he laid 
 
 it with care 
 Soft and grave, but in mild settled will, on my 
 
 brow : through my hair 
 The large fingers were pushed, and he bent 
 
 back my head, with kind power — 
 All my face back, intent to peruse it, as men do 
 
 a flower. 
 Thus held he me there with his great eyes that 
 
 scrutinized mine — 
 And oh, all my heart how it loved him ! but 
 
 wnere was 
 
 the £ 
 
 I yearned — *' Could f help thee, my father, 
 
 inventing a bliss, 
 I would add, to that life of the past, both the 
 
 future and this ; 
 1 would give thee new life altogether, as good, 
 
 ages hence, 
 As this moment, — had love but the warrant, 
 
 love's heart to dispense ! " 
 
 XVI 
 
 Then the truth came upon me. No harp more 
 — no song more ! outbroke — 
 
 " I have gone the whole round of creation : I 
 saw and I spoke : 
 
 I, a work of God s hand for that purpose, re- 
 ceived in my brain 
 
 And pronounced on the rest of his handwork — 
 returned him again 
 
 His creation's approval or censure : I spoke as 
 I saw : 
 
 I report, as a man may of God's work — all 's 
 love, yet all 's law. 
 
 Now 1 lay down the judgeship he lent me. 
 Each faculty tasked 
 
 To perceive him, has gained an abyss, where a 
 dewdrop was asked. 
 
 Have I knowledge ? confounded it shrivels at 
 Wisdom laid bare. 
 
 Have I forethought ? how purblind, how blank, 
 to the Infinite Care ! 
 
 Do I task any faculty highest, to image suc- 
 cess? 
 
 I but open my eyes, — and perfection, no more 
 and no less. 
 
 In the kind I imagined, full-fronts me, and 
 
 God is seen God 
 In the star, in the stone, in the flesh, in the 
 
 soul and the clod. 
 And thus looking within and around me, I ever 
 
 renew 
 (With that stoop of the soul which in bending 
 
 upraises it too) 
 The submission of man's nothing-perfect to 
 
 God's all-complete. 
 As by each new obeisance in spirit, I climb to 
 
 his feet. 
 Yet with all this abounding experience, this 
 
 deity known, 
 I shall dare to discover some province, some 
 
 gift of my own. 
 There 's a faculty pleasant to exercise, hard to 
 
 hoodwink, 
 I am fain to keep still in abeyance, (I laugh as 
 
 I think) 
 Lest, insisting to claim and parade in it, wot ye, 
 
 I worst 
 E'en the Giver in one gift. — Behold, I could 
 
 love if I durst ! 
 But I sink the pretension as fearing a man may 
 
 o'ertake 
 God's own speed m the one way of love : I ab- 
 stain for love's sake. 
 — What, ray soul ? see thus far and no farther ? 
 
 when doors great and small, 
 Nine-and-ninety flew ope at our touch, should 
 
 the hundredth appall ? 
 In the least things have faith, yet distrust in 
 
 the greatest of all ? 
 Do I find love so full in my nature, God's ulti- 
 mate gift. 
 That I doubt his own love can compete with 
 
 it ? Here, the parts shift ? 
 Here, the creature surpass the Creator, — the 
 
 end, what Began? 
 Would I fain in my impotent yearning do aU 
 
 for this man. 
 And dare doubt he alone shall not help him, 
 
 who yet alone can ? 
 Would it ever have entered my mind, the bare 
 
 will, much less power, 
 To bestow on this Saul what I sang of, the 
 
 marvellous dower 
 Of the life he was gifted and filled with ? to 
 
 make such a soul, 
 Such a body , and then such an earth for inspher- 
 
 ing the whole ? 
 And doth it not enter my mind (as my warm 
 
 tears attest) 
 These good things being given, to go on, and 
 
 give one more, the best ? 
 Ay, to save and redeem and restore him, main- 
 tain at the height 
 This perfection, — succeed with life's day- 
 spring, death's minute of night ? 
 Interpose at the difficult minute, snatch Saul 
 
 the mistake, 
 Saul the failure, the ruin he seems now, — and 
 
 bid him awake 
 From the dream, the probation, the prelude, to 
 
 find himself set 
 Clear and safe in new light and new life, — a 
 
 new harmony yet 
 
i84 
 
 DRAMATIC LYRICS 
 
 To be run, and continued, and ended — who 
 knows ? — or endure ! 
 
 The man taught enough by life's dream, of the 
 rest to make sure ; 
 
 By the pain-throb, triumphantly winning inten- 
 sified bliss. 
 
 And the next world's reward and repose, by the 
 struggles in this. 
 
 "I believe it! 'Tis thou, God, that givest, 
 
 'tis I who receive : 
 In the first is the last, in thy will is my power 
 
 to believe. 
 All 's one gift : thou canst grant it moreover, 
 
 as prompt to my prayer 
 As I breathe out this breath, as I open these 
 
 arms to the air. 
 From thy will stream the worlds, life and na- 
 ture, thy dread Sabaoth : 
 I will ? — the mere atoms despise me ! Why 
 
 am I not loth 
 To look that, even that in the face too ? Why 
 
 is it I dare 
 Think but lightly of such impuissance ? What 
 
 stops my despair ? 
 This ; — 't is not what man Does which exalts 
 
 him, but what man Would do ! 
 See the King — I would help him but cannot, 
 
 the wishes fall through. 
 Could I wrestle, to raise him from sorrow, grow 
 
 poor to enrich, 
 To fill up his life, starve my own out, I Would — 
 
 knowing which, 
 I know that my sei-vice is perfect. Oh, speak 
 
 through me now ! 
 Would I suner for him that I love ? So wouldst 
 
 thou — so wilt thou ! 
 So shaU crown thee the topmost, ineffablest, 
 
 uttermost crown — 
 And thy love fill infinitude wholly, nor leave up 
 
 nor down 
 One spot for the creature to stand in ! It is. by 
 
 no breath. 
 Turn of eye, wave of hand, that salvation joins 
 
 issue with death ! 
 As thy Love is discovered almighty, almighty 
 
 be proved 
 Thy power, that exists with and for it, of beii^ 
 
 Beloved ! 
 He who did most, shall bear most ; the strong- 
 est shall stand the most weak. 
 'Tis the weakness in strength, that I cry for I 
 
 my fiesh, that I seek 
 In the Godhead ! I seek and I find it. Saul, 
 
 it shall be 
 A Face like my face that receives thee ; a Man 
 
 like to me. 
 Thou shalt love and be loved by, forever; a 
 
 Hand like this hand 
 Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee I 
 
 See the Christ stand ! " 
 
 I kxiow not too well how I found my way home 
 
 in the night. 
 There were witnesses, cohorts about me, to left 
 
 and to right. 
 
 Angels, powers, the unuttered, unseen, the 
 
 alive, the aware : 
 I repressed, I got through them as hardly, as 
 
 strugglingly there, , . , j 
 
 As a runner beset by the populace lamishett 
 
 for news — 
 Life or death. The whole earth was awakened, 
 
 hell loosed with her crews ; 
 And the stars of night beat with emotion, and 
 
 tingled and shot 
 Out in fire the strong pain of pent knowledge,: 
 
 but I fainted not. 
 For the Hand still impelled me at once and 
 
 supported, suppressed 
 All the tumult, and quenched it with quiet, 
 
 and holy behest. 
 Till the rapture was shut in itself, and the 
 
 earth sank to rest. 
 Anon at the dawn, all that trouble had with- 
 ered from earth — 
 Not so much, but I saw it die out in the day's 
 
 tender birth ; 
 In the gathered intensity brought to the gray 
 
 of the hiUs; 
 In the shuddering forests' held breath ; in the 
 
 sudden wind-thrills ; 
 In the startled wild beasts that bore off, ea«h 
 
 with eye sidling still 
 Though averted with wonder and dread ; in the 
 
 birds stiff and chill 
 That'rose heavily, as I approached them, made 
 
 stupid with awe : 
 E'en the serpent that slid away silent, — he felt 
 
 the new law. 
 The same stared in the white humid faces up- 
 turned by the flowers ; 
 The same worked in the heart of the cedar and 
 
 moved the vine-bowers : 
 And the little brooks witnessing murmured, 
 
 persistent and low. 
 With their obstinate, all but hushed voices — 
 
 " E'en so, it is so ! " 
 
 MY STAR 
 
 This poem has been held to refer pointedly to 
 Mrs. Browning. An inference to this end may 
 be drawn from the fact that it stands first in a 
 volume of Selections from the Poetical Works of 
 Robert Browning, published in 1872 and dedi- 
 cated to Alfred Tennyson. " In Poetry -^ Il- 
 lustrious and consummate : In Friendship — 
 Noble and sincere." The selection was made 
 under Browning's supervision and contains the 
 following preface : — 
 
 "In the present selection from my poetry, 
 there is an attempt to escape from the embar- 
 rassment of appearing to pronounce upon what 
 myself may consider the best of it. I adopt 
 another principle ; and by simply stringing to- 
 gether certain pieces on the thread of an ima/- 
 gined personality, I present them in succession, 
 rather as the natural development of a particu- 
 
BY THE FIRESIDE 
 
 185 
 
 lar experience than because I account them the 
 most noteworthy poi'tiou of my work. Such an 
 attempt was made in the volume of selections 
 from the poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning : 
 to which — in outwai'd uniformity, at least — 
 my own wonld venture to become a companion. 
 
 " A few years ago, had such an opportunity 
 presented itself, I might have been tempted to 
 say a word in reply to the objections my poetry 
 was used to encounter. Time has kindly coop- 
 erated with my disinclination to write the poetiy 
 and the criticism besides. The rea4ei's I am at 
 last privileged to expect, meet me fully half- 
 way ; and if, from the fitting stand-point, they 
 must still * censure me in their wisdom,' they 
 have previously ^ awakened their senses that 
 they may the better judge.' Nor do I appre- 
 hend any more charges of being willfully ob- 
 scure, unconscientionsly careless, or perversely 
 harsh. Having hitherto done my utmost in the 
 art to which my life is a devotion, I cannot en- 
 gage to increase the effort ; but I conceive that 
 there may be helpful light, as well as reassuring 
 warmth, in the attention and sympathy I grate- 
 fully acknowledge. R. B." 
 
 LOHDOH, May 14, 1872. 
 
 All that 1 know 
 
 Of a certain star 
 Is, it can throw 
 
 (Like the angled spar) 
 Now a dart of red. 
 
 Now a dart of blue ; 
 Till my friends have said 
 They would fain see, too, 
 My star that dartles the red and the blue ! 
 Then it stops like a bird ; like a fldwer, hangs 
 furled : 
 They must solace themselves with the Saturn 
 above it. 
 What matter to me if their star is a world ? 
 Mine has opened its soul to me ; therefore I 
 love it. 
 
 BY THE FIRESIDE 
 
 The scene of the declaration in this poem is 
 laid in a little mountain gorge adjacent to the 
 Baths of Lucca, where the Brownings spent 
 the summer of 1853. 
 
 How well I know what I mean to do 
 When the long dark autumn evenings come ; 
 
 And where, my soul, is thy pleasant hue ? 
 With the music of all thy voices, dumb 
 
 In life's November too I 
 
 I shall be found by the fire, suppose, 
 0[er a great wise book as beseemeth age. 
 
 While the shutters flap as the cross-wind blows, 
 And I turn the page, and I turn the page, 
 
 Not verse now, only prose 1 
 
 TUl the young ones whisper, finger on Up, 
 " There he is at it, deep in Greek : 
 
 Now then, or never, out we slip 
 To cut from the hazels by the creek 
 
 A inaimnast for our ship ! " 
 
 I shall be at it indeed, my friends \ 
 Grreek puts already on either side 
 
 Such a branch-work forth as soon extends 
 To a vista opening far and wide. 
 
 And I pass out where it ends. 
 
 The outside-frame, like your hazel-trees — 
 But the inside-archway widens fast. 
 
 And a rarer sort succeeds to these, 
 And we slope to Italy at last 
 
 And youth, by gieen degrees. 
 
 I follow wherever I am led. 
 Knowing so well the leader's hand : 
 
 Oh woman-country, wooed not wed. 
 Loved all the more by earth's male-lands, 
 
 Laid to their hearts instead ! 
 
 Look at the ruined chapel again 
 Half-way up in the Alpine gorge ! 
 
 Is that a tower, I point you plain. 
 Or is it a miU, or an iron forge 
 
 Breaks solitude in vain ? 
 
 A turn, and we stand in the heart of things ; 
 
 The woods are round us, heaped and dim ; 
 From slab to slab how it slips and springs, 
 
 The thread of water single and slim. 
 Through the ravage some torrent brings ! 
 
 Does it feed the little lake below ? 
 
 That speck of white just on its marge 
 Is Bella ; see, in the evening-glow. 
 
 How sharp the silver spear-heads charge 
 When Alp meets heaven in snow ! 
 
 On our other side is the straight-up rock ; 
 
 And a path is kept 'twixt the goitre and it 
 By boulderrstones where lichens mock 
 
 The marks on a moth, and small ferns fit 
 Their teeth to the iiolished block. 
 
 Oh the sense of the yellow mountain-flowers. 
 And thorny balls, each three in one, 
 
 The chestnuts throw on our path in showers 1 
 For the drop of the woodland fruit 's begun, 
 
 These early November hours. 
 
 That crimson the creeper's leaf across 
 Like a splash of blood, intense, abrupt. 
 
 O'er a shield else gold from rim to boss, 
 And lay it for show on the fairy-cupped 
 
 Elf-needled mat of moss. 
 
 By the rose-flesh mushrooms, undivulged 
 Last evening — nay, in to-day's first dew 
 
 Yon sudden coral nipple bulged. 
 Where a freaked fawn-colored flaky crew 
 
 Of toad-stools peep indulged. 
 
 And yonder, at foot of the fronting ridge 
 That takes the turn to a ransre beyond. 
 
1 86 
 
 DRAMATIC LYRICS 
 
 Is the chapel reached by the one-arched bridge 
 Where the water is stopped in a stagnant pond 
 Danced over by the midge. 
 
 The chapel and bridge are of stone alike, 
 
 Bla«kish-gi'ay and mostly wet ; 
 Cut hemp-stalks steep in the narrow dyke. 
 
 See here again, how the lichens fret 
 And the roots of the ivy strike ! 
 
 Poor little pla«e, where its one priest comes 
 On a f esta-day, if he comes at all, 
 
 To the dozen folk from their scattered homes. 
 Gathered within that precinct small 
 
 By the dozen ways one roams — 
 
 To drop from the charcoal-burners' huts. 
 Or climb from the hemp-dressers' low shed. 
 
 Leave the grange where the woodman stores 
 his nuts. 
 Or the wattled cote where the fowlers spread 
 
 Their gear on the rock's bare juts. 
 
 It has some pretension too, this front. 
 With its bit of fresco half -moon-wise 
 
 Set over the porch, Art's early wont : 
 'T is John in the Desert, I surmise. 
 
 But has borae the weather's brunt — 
 
 Not from the fault of the builder, though. 
 For a pent-house properly projects 
 
 Where three carved beams make a certain show, 
 Dating — good thought of our architect's — 
 
 'Five, six, nine, he lets you know. 
 
 And all day long a bird sings there. 
 And a stray sheep drinks at the pond at times ; 
 
 The place is silent and aware ; 
 It has had its scenes, its joys and crimes, 
 
 But that is its own affair. 
 
 My perfect wife, my Leonor, 
 
 Oh heart, my own, oh eyes, mine too, 
 
 Whom else could I dare look backward for, 
 With whom beside should 1 dare pursue 
 
 The path gray heads abhor ? 
 
 For it leads to a crag's sheer edge with them ; 
 
 Youth, flowery all the way, there stops — 
 Not they ; age threatens and they contemn. 
 
 Till they reach the gulf wherein youth drops. 
 One inch from life's safe hem ! 
 
 With me, youth led ... I will speak now. 
 
 No longer watch yon as yoTi sit 
 Reading by fire-light, that great brow 
 
 And the spirit-small hand propping it, 
 Mutely, my heart knows how — 
 
 When, if I think but deep enough. 
 You are wont to answer, prompt as rhyme ; 
 
 And you, too, find without rebuff 
 Response your soul seeks many a time 
 
 Piercing its fine flesh-stuff. 
 
 My own, confirm me ! If I tread 
 
 This path back, is it not in pride 
 To think how little I dreamed it led 
 
 To an age so blest that, by its side, 
 Youth seems the waste instead ? 
 
 My own, see where the years conduct '. 
 
 At fiiBt, 't was something our two souls 
 Should mix as mists do ; each is sucked 
 
 In each now : on, the new stream rolls. 
 Whatever rocks obstruct. 
 
 Think, when our one soul understands 
 
 The great Word which makes all things new 
 
 When earth breaks up and heaven expands, 
 How will the change strike me and you 
 
 In the house not made with hands ? 
 
 Oh, I must feel your brain prompt mine, 
 
 Your heart anticipate my heart. 
 You must be just before, in fine, 
 
 See and make me see, for your part. 
 New depths of the divine ! 
 
 But who could have expected this 
 
 When we two drew together first 
 Just for the obvious human bliss. 
 
 To satisfy life's daily thirst 
 With a thing men seldom miss ? 
 
 Come back with me to the firat of all. 
 Let us lean and love it over again. 
 
 Let us now forget and now recall, 
 Break the rosary in a pearly rain 
 
 And gather what we let fall ! 
 
 What did I say ? — that a small bird sings 
 All day long, save when a brown pair 
 
 Of hawks from the wood float with wide wings 
 Strained to a bell : 'gainst noon-day glare 
 
 You count the streaks and rings. 
 
 But at afternoon or almost eve 
 
 'T is better ; then the silence grows 
 
 To that degree, you half believe 
 It must get rid of what it knows. 
 
 Its bosom does so heave. 
 
 Hither we walked then, side by side, 
 
 Arm in arm and cheek to cheek. 
 And still I questioned or replied, 
 
 While my heart, convulsed to really speak, 
 Lay choking in its pride. 
 
 Silent the crumbling bridge we cross. 
 And pity and praise the chapel sweet, 
 
 And care about the fresco's loss, 
 And wish for our souls a like retreat, 
 
 And wonder at the moss. 
 
 Stoop and kneel on the settle under, 
 Look through the window's grated square : 
 
 Nothing to see I For fear of plunder, 
 The cross is down and the altar bare. 
 
 As if thieves don't fear thunder. 
 
 We stoop a,nd look in through the grate. 
 See the little porch and rustic door. 
 
 Read duly the dead builder's date ; 
 Then cross the bridge that we crossed before 
 
 Take the path again — but wait ! 
 
ANY WIFE TO ANY HUSBAND 
 
 187 
 
 Oh moment, one and infinite ! 
 
 The Avater slips o'er stock and stone ; 
 Tlie West is tender, hardly bright : 
 
 How gray at once is the evemng grown — 
 One star, its chrysolite I 
 
 We two stood there with never a third, 
 But each by each, as each knew well : 
 
 The sights we saw and the sounds we heard. 
 The lights and the shades made up a spell 
 
 Till the trouble grew and stirred. 
 
 Oh, the little more, and how much it is ! 
 
 And the little less, and what worlds away I 
 How a sound shall quicken content to bliss. 
 
 Or a breath suspend the blood's best play. 
 And life be a proof of this ! 
 
 Had she willed it, still had stood the screen 
 So slight, so sure, 'twixt my love and her ; 
 
 I could fix her face with a guard between. 
 And find her soul as when friends confer, 
 
 Friends — lovers that might have been. 
 
 For my heart had a touch of the woodland- 
 time, 
 
 Wanting to sleep now over its best. 
 Shake the whole tree in the summer-prime, 
 
 But bring to the last leaf no such test 1 
 " Hold the last fast ! " runs the rhyme. 
 
 For a chance to make your little much. 
 
 To gain a lover and lose a friend, 
 Venture the tree and a myriad such. 
 
 When nothing you mar but the year can 
 mend : 
 But a last leaf — fear to touch ! 
 
 Yet should it unfasten itself and fall 
 Eddying down till it find your face 
 
 At some slight wind — best chance of all ! 
 Be your heart henceforth its dwelling-place 
 
 You trembled to forestall ! 
 
 Worth how well, those dark gray eyes. 
 That hair so dark and dear, how worth 
 
 That a man should strive and agonize, 
 And taste a veriest hell on earth 
 
 For the hope of such a prize ! 
 
 Yon might have turned and tried a man. 
 Set him a space to weary and wear. 
 
 And prove which suited more your plan. 
 His best of hope or his worst despair. 
 
 Yet end as he began. 
 
 But you spared me this, like the heart you 
 are, 
 
 And filled my empty heart at a word. 
 If two lives join, there is oft a scar, 
 
 They are one and one, with a shsidowy third ; 
 One near one is too far. 
 
 A moment after, and hands unseen 
 Were hanging the night around us fast ; 
 
 But we knew tiiat a bar was broken between 
 Life and life : we were mixed at last 
 
 In spite of the mortal screen. 
 
 The forests had done it ; there they stood ; 
 
 We caught for a moment the powers at play : 
 They had mingled us so, for once and good. 
 
 Their work was done — we might go or stay. 
 They relapsed to their ancient mood. 
 
 How the world is made for each of us ! 
 
 How all we perceive and kuow in it 
 Tends to some moment's product thus. 
 
 When a soul declares itself — to wit, 
 By its fruit, the thing it does ! 
 
 Be hate that fruit or love that frait. 
 It forwards the general deed of man, 
 
 And each of the Many helps to recruit 
 The life of the race by a general plan ; 
 
 Each living his own, to boot. 
 
 I am named and known by that moment's feat ; 
 
 There took my station and degree ; 
 So grew my own small life complete. 
 
 As nature obtained her best of me — ■ 
 One born to love you, sweet ! 
 
 And to watch you sink by the fireside now 
 
 Back again, as you mutely sit 
 Musing by fire-light, that great brow 
 
 And the spirit-small hand propping it. 
 Yonder, my heart knows how ! 
 
 So, earth has gained by one man the more, 
 And the gain of earth must be heaven's gain 
 too; 
 
 And the whole is well worth thinking o'er 
 When autumn comes : which I mean to do 
 
 One day, as I said before. 
 
 ANY WIFE TO ANY HUSBAND 
 
 Mt love, this is the bitterest, that thou — 
 Who art all truth, and who dost love me now 
 
 As thine eyes say, as thy voice breaks to say — 
 Shonldst love so truly, and couldst love me still 
 A whole long life through, had but love its will. 
 
 Would death that leads me from thee brook 
 delay. 
 
 I have but to be by thee, and thy hand 
 Will never let mine go, nor heart withstand 
 
 The beating of my heart to reach its place. 
 When shall I look for thee and feel thee gone ? 
 When cry for the old comfort and find none ? 
 
 Never, I know ! Thy soul is in thy face. 
 
 Oh, I should fade— 'tis willed so! Might I 
 
 save. 
 Gladly X would, whatever beauty gave 
 
 Joy to thy sense, for that was precious too. 
 It is not to be granted. But the soul 
 Whence the love comes, all ravage leaves that 
 whole ; 
 Vainly the flesh fades ; soul makes all things 
 new. 
 
 It would not be because my eye grew dim 
 Thou couldst not find the love there, thanks to 
 
DRAMATIC LYRICS 
 
 Who never is dishonored in the spark 
 He gave us from his fire of fires, and bade 
 Remember whence it sprang, nor be afraid 
 
 WhUe that bums on, though all the rest grow 
 dark. 
 
 i3o, how thou wouldst be perfect, white and 
 
 clean 
 Outside as inside, soul and soul's demesne 
 
 Alike, this body given to show it by ! 
 Oh, three-parts through the worst of life's 
 
 What plaudits from the next world after this, 
 Couldst thou repeat a stroke. and gain the 
 sky ! 
 
 And is it not the bitterer to think 
 
 That disengage our hands and thou wilt sink 
 
 Although thy love was love in very deed ? 
 I know that nature ! Pass a festive day. 
 Thou dost not throw its relic-flower away 
 
 Nor bid its music's loiteiiug echo speed. 
 
 Thou let'st the stranger's glove lie where it fell ; 
 If old things remain old thiiigs all is well. 
 
 For thou art grateful as becomes man best : 
 And hadst thou only heard me jjlay one tune. 
 Or viewed me from a window, not so soon 
 
 With thee would such things fade as with the 
 rest. 
 
 I seem to see ! We meet and part ; 't is brief ; 
 The book 1 opened keeps a folded leaf. 
 
 The very chair I sat on, breaks the rank ; 
 That is a portrait of me on the wall — 
 Three lines, my face comes at so sUghta call : 
 
 And for all this, one little hour to thank 1 
 
 But now, because the hour through years was 
 
 fixed. 
 Because our inmost beings met and mixed. 
 Because thou once hast loved me — vrilt thou 
 dare 
 Say to thy soul and Who may list beside, 
 " Therefore she is immortally my bride ; 
 Chance cannot change my love, nor time 
 impair. 
 
 " So, what if in the dusk of life that's left, 
 I, a tired traveller of my sun bereft, 
 Look from my path when, mimicking the 
 same. 
 The flre-fly glimpses past me, come and gone ? 
 — Where was it till the simset ? Where anon 
 It will be at the sunrise ! What 's to 
 blame?" 
 
 Is it so helpful to thee ? Canst thou take 
 The mimic up, nor, for the true thing's sake, 
 
 Put gently by such efforts at a beam ? 
 Is the remainder of the way so long, 
 Thou need'st the little solace, thou the strong ? 
 
 Watch out thy watch, let weak ones doze and 
 dream 1 
 
 Ah, but the fresher faces I " Is it true," 
 Thou 'It ask, " some eyes are beautiful and 
 new? 
 
 Some hair, — how can one choose but grasp 
 such wealth ? 
 And if a man would press his lips to lips 
 Fresh as the wilding hedge-rose-cup there slips 
 
 The dewdrop out of, must it be by stealth ? 
 
 " It cannot change the love still kept for Her, 
 More than if such a Incture I prefer 
 
 Passing a day with, to a room's bare side : 
 The painted form takes nothing she possessed, 
 Yet, while the Titian's Venus lies at rest, 
 
 A man looks. Once more, what is there to 
 chide ? " 
 
 So must I see, from where I sit and watch, 
 My own self sell myself, my hand attach 
 
 Its warrant to the ve^ thefts from me — 
 Thy singleness of soul that made me proud. 
 Thy purity of heart I loved aloud. 
 
 Thy man's-truth I was bold to bid God see I 
 
 Love so, then, if thou wilt ! Give all thou canst 
 Away to the new faces — disentranced, 
 
 (Say it and think it) obdurate no more : 
 Re-issue looks and words from the old mint. 
 Pass them afresh, no matter whose the print 
 
 Image and superscription once they bore ! 
 
 Re-coin thyself and give it them to spend, — 
 It all comes to the same thing at the end. 
 Since mine thou wast, mine art and mine 
 shalt be. 
 Faithful or faithless, sealing up the sum 
 Or lavish of my treasure, thou must come 
 Back to the heart's place here I keep for 
 thee ! 
 
 Only, why should it be with stain at all ? 
 Why must I, 'twixt the leaves of coronal. 
 
 Put any kiss of pardon on thy brow ? 
 Why need the other women know so much. 
 And talk together, "Such the look and such 
 
 The smile he used to love with, then as now ! " 
 
 Might I die last and show thee I Should I find 
 Such hardship in the few years left behind. 
 
 If free to take and light my lamp, and go 
 Into thy tomb, and shut the door and sit. 
 Seeing thy face on those four sides of it 
 
 The better that they are so blank, I know I 
 
 Why, time was what I wanted, to turn o'er 
 Within my mind each look, get more and more 
 By heart each word, too much to learn at 
 first : 
 And join thee all the fitter for the pause 
 'Neath the low doorway's lintel. That were 
 cause 
 For lingering, though thou calledst, if I 
 durst ! 
 
 And yet thou art the nobler of us two : 
 
 What dare I dream of, that thou canst not do. 
 
 Outstripping my ten smaU steps with one 
 stride '! 
 I '11 say then, here 's a trial and a task — 
 Is it to bear ? — if easy, I '11 not ask : 
 
 Though love fail, I can trust on in thy pride 
 
A SERENADE AT THE VILLA 
 
 Catch your soul's warmth, — I plnck the rose 
 And loTe it more than tongue can speak — 
 Then the good minute goes. 
 
 Already how am I so far 
 
 Out of that minute ? Must I go 
 Still like the thistle-ball, no bar, 
 
 Onward, whenever light winds blow, 
 Fixed by no friendly star ? 
 
 Just when 1 seemed about to learn ! 
 
 Where is the thread now ? Off again 1 
 The old trick 1 Only I discern — 
 
 Infinite passion, and the pain 
 Of finite hearts that yearn. 
 
 MISCONCEPTIONS 
 
 This is a spray the Bird clung to. 
 
 Making it blossom with pleasure. 
 
 Ere the high tree-top she sprung to, 
 
 Fit for her nest and her treasure. 
 
 Oh, what a hope beyond measure 
 
 Was the poor spray's, which the flying fetet 
 
 hung to, -^ 
 So to be singled out, built in, and sung to ! 
 
 This is a heart the Queen leant on. 
 
 Thrilled in a minute erratic, 
 Kre the true bosom she bent on. 
 Meet for love's regal dalmatic. 
 Oh, what a fancy ecstatic 
 Was the poor heart's, ere the wanderer went 
 
 on— 
 Love to be saved for it, proffered to, spent on ! 
 
 A SERENADE AT THE VILLA 
 
 That was I, you heard last night, 
 When there rose no moon at all, 
 
 Nor, to pierce the strained and tight 
 Tent of heaven, a planet small : 
 
 Life was dead and so was light. 
 
 Not a twinkle from the fly. 
 Not a glimmer from the worm j 
 
 When the crickets stopped their cry, 
 When the owls forebore a term. 
 
 You heard music ; that was I. 
 
 Earth turned in her sleep with pain, 
 
 Sultrily suspired for proof ; 
 In at heaven and out again. 
 
 Lightning I — where it broke the roof, 
 Bloodlike, some few drops of rain. 
 
 What they could my words expressed, 
 
 my love, my all, my one ! 
 Singitig helped the verses best. 
 
 And when singing's best was done, 
 To my lute I left the rest. 
 
 So wore night ; the East was gray. 
 
 White the broad-faced hemlock-flowers : 
 There would be another day ; 
 
 Pride ? — when those eyes forestall the life be- 
 hind 
 The death I have to go through ! — when I find. 
 
 Now that I want thy help most) all of thee J 
 What did I fear ? Thy love shall hold me fast 
 Until the little minute's sleep is past 
 
 And I wake saved. — And yet it will not be ! 
 
 TWO IN THE CAMPAGNA 
 
 I WOOTJEB do you feel to-day 
 As I have felt since, hand in hand. 
 
 We sat down on the grass, to stray 
 In spirit better through the land, 
 
 This mom of Rome and May ? 
 
 For me, I touched a thought, I know. 
 
 Has tantalized me many times, 
 (Like turns of thread the spiders throw 
 
 Mocking across our path) for rhymes 
 To catch at and let go. 
 
 Help me to hold it I First it left 
 The yellowing fennel, run to seed 
 
 There, branching from the brickwork's cleft, 
 Some old tomb's ruin : yonder weed 
 
 Took up the floating weft. 
 
 Where one small orange cup amassed 
 Five beetles, — blind and green they grope 
 
 Among the honey-meal : and last. 
 Everywhere on the grassy slope 
 
 I traced it. Hold it fast ! 
 
 The champaign with its endless fleece 
 
 Of feathery grasses everywhere I 
 Silence' and passion, joy and peace. 
 
 An everlasting wash of air — 
 Home's ghost since her decease. 
 
 Such life here, through such lengths of hours. 
 Such miracles performed in play. 
 
 Such primal naked forms of flowers. 
 Such letting nature have her way 
 
 While heaven looks from its towers ! 
 
 How say you ? Let us, my dove. 
 
 Let us be unashamed of soul. 
 As earth lies bai'e to heaven above ! 
 
 How is it under our control 
 To love or not to love ? 
 
 I would that you were all to me. 
 You that are just so much, no more. 
 
 Nor yours nor mine, nor slave nor free ! 
 Where does the fault lie ? What llie core 
 
 O' the wound, since wound must be ? 
 
 I would I could adopt your will. 
 See with your eyes, and set my heart 
 
 Beating by yours, and drink ray fill 
 At your soul's springs, — your part my part 
 
 In life, for good and ill. 
 
 No. I yearn upward, touch yon close. 
 Then stand away. I kiss your cheek, 
 
jpo 
 
 DRAMATIC LYRICS 
 
 Ere its first of heavy hours 
 Found me, I had passed away. 
 
 What became of all the hopes, 
 Words and song and lute as well ? 
 
 Say, this struck you — " When life gropes 
 Feebly for the path where fell 
 
 Light last on the evening slopes, 
 
 " One friend in that path shall be, 
 To secure my step from wrong ; 
 One to count night day for me. 
 
 Patient through the watches long, 
 Serving most with none to see." 
 
 Never say — as something bodes — 
 " So, the worst has yet a worse ! 
 
 When life halts 'neath double loads, 
 Better the task-master's curse 
 
 Than such music on the roads ! 
 
 " When no moon succeeds the sun, 
 Nor can pierce the midnight's tent 
 
 Any star, the smallest one. 
 While some drops, where lightning rent. 
 
 Show the final storm begun — 
 
 " When the fire-fly hides its spot. 
 
 When the garden-voices fail 
 In the darkness thick and hot, — 
 
 Shall another voice avail. 
 That shape be where these are not ? 
 
 *' Has some plague a longer lease. 
 
 Proffering its help uncouth ? 
 Can't one even die in peace ? 
 
 As one shuts one's eyes on youth. 
 Is that face the last one sees ? " 
 
 Oh, how dark your villa was, 
 
 Windows fast and obdurate ! 
 How the garden grudged me grass 
 
 Where I stood — the iron gate 
 Ground its teeth to let me pass ! 
 
 ONE WAY OF LOVE 
 
 AiiL June I bound the rose in sheaves. 
 Now, rose by rose, I strip the leaves 
 And strew them where Pauline may paBS. 
 She will not turn aside ? Alas ! 
 Let them lie. Suppose they die ? 
 The chance was they might take her eye. 
 
 How many a month I strove to suit 
 These stubborn fingers to the lute ! 
 To-day I venture all I know. 
 She will not hear my music ? So I 
 Break the string ; fold music's wing : 
 Suppose Pauline had bade me sing ! 
 
 My whole life long I learned to love. 
 This hour my utmost art I prove 
 And speak my passion — heaven or hell ? 
 She will not give me heaven ? 'T is well! 
 Lose who may — I still can say, 
 Those whn wm heaven, blest are they I 
 
 ANOTHER WAY OF LOVE 
 
 June was not over 
 
 Though past the full. 
 And the best of her roses 
 Had yet to blow. 
 When a man I know 
 (But shall not discover, 
 
 Since ears are dull. 
 And time discloses) 
 Turned him and said with a man's true air. 
 Half sighing a smile in a jrawn, as 't were, — 
 " If I tire of your June, will she greatly care ? " 
 
 Well, dear, in-doors with you ! 
 
 True ! serene deadness 
 Tries a man's temper. 
 What 's in the blossom 
 June wears on her bosom ? 
 Can it clear scores with you ? 
 Sweetness and redness, 
 Eadem semper ! 
 Go, let me care for it greatly or slightly ! 
 If June mend her bower now, your hand left 
 
 unsightly 
 By plucking the roses, — my June will do 
 rightly. 
 
 And after, for pastime, 
 If June be refulgent 
 With flowers in completeness. 
 All petals, no prickles, 
 Delicious as trickles 
 Of wine poured at mass-time, — 
 And choose One indulgent 
 To redness and sweetness : 
 Or if, with experience of man and of spider, 
 June use ray June-lightning, the strong insect- 
 
 ridder. 
 And stop the fresh film-work, — why, June will 
 consider. 
 
 A PRETTY WOMAN 
 
 That fawn-skin-dappled hair of hers, 
 
 And the blue eye 
 
 Dear and dewy. 
 And that infantine fresh air of hers ! 
 
 To think men cannot take you. Sweet, 
 
 And enfold you. 
 
 Ay, and hold you, 
 And so keep you what they make yon. Sweet I 
 
 You like us for a glance, you know — 
 
 For a word's sake 
 
 Or a sword's sake, 
 All 's the same, whate'er the chance, you know. 
 
 And in turn we make you ours, we say — 
 
 Yon and youth too. 
 
 Eyes and mouth too. 
 All the face composed of flowers, we say. 
 
 All 's our own, to make the most of, Sweet — 
 Sing and say for, 
 
LIFE IN A LOVE 
 
 191 
 
 Watch and pray for, 
 Keep a secret or go boast of, Sweet I 
 
 But for loving, why, you would not. Sweet, 
 
 Though we prayed you, 
 
 Paid you, brayed you 
 In a mortar — for you could not. Sweet I 
 
 So, we leave the sweet face fondly there : 
 
 Be its beauty 
 
 Its sole duty ! 
 Let all hope of grace beyond, lie there ! 
 
 And while the face lies quiet there, 
 
 Who shall wonder 
 
 That I ponder 
 A conclusion ? I will try it there. 
 
 As, — why must one, for the love foregone, 
 
 Scout mere liking ? 
 
 Thunder-striking 
 Earth, — the heaven, we looked above for, gone ! 
 
 Why, with beauty, needs there money be, 
 
 Love with liking ? 
 
 Crush the fly-king 
 In his gauze, because no honey-bee ? 
 
 May not liking be so simple-sweet. 
 
 If love grew there 
 
 'T would undo there 
 AH that breaks the cheek to dimples sweet ? 
 
 Is the creature too imperfect, say ? 
 
 Would you mend it 
 
 And so end it ? 
 Since not all addition perfects aye I 
 
 Or is it of its kind, perhaps, 
 
 Just perfection — 
 
 Whence, rejection 
 Of a grace not to its mind, perhaps ? 
 
 Shall we bum up, tread that face at once 
 
 Into tinder, 
 
 And so hinder 
 Sparks from kindling all the place at once ? 
 
 Or else kiss away one's soul on her ? 
 
 Your love-fancies ! 
 
 — A sick man sees 
 Truer, when his hot eyes roU on her ! 
 
 Thus the craftsman thinks to grace the rose, — 
 
 Plucks a mould-flower 
 
 For his gold flower. 
 Uses fine things that efface the rose : 
 
 Rosy rubies make its cup more rose, 
 
 Precious metals 
 
 Ape the petals, — 
 Last, some old king locks it up, morose ! 
 
 Then how grace a rose ? I know a way I 
 
 Leave it, rather. 
 
 Must you gather ? 
 Smell, kiss, wear it — at last, throw away 1 
 
 RESPECTABILITY 
 
 Dbab, had the world in its caprice 
 Deigned to proclaim " I know you both, 
 Have recognized your plighted troth, 
 
 Am sponsor for you : live in peace ! " — 
 
 How many precious months and years 
 Of youth had passed, that speed so fast, 
 Before we found it out at last. 
 
 The world, and what it fears ! 
 
 How much of priceless life were spent 
 With men that every virtue decks. 
 And women models of their sex. 
 
 Society's true ornament, — 
 
 Ere we dared wander, nights like this, 
 Through wind and rain, and watch the Seine, 
 And feel the Boulevard break again 
 
 To warmth and light and bliss ! 
 
 I know I the world proscribes not love ; 
 
 Allows my finger to caress 
 
 Your li^s' contour and downiness, 
 Provided it supply a glove. 
 The world's good word ! — the Institute ! 
 
 Guizot receives Montalembert ! 
 
 Eh ? Down the court three lampions flare : 
 Put forward your best foot ! 
 
 LOVE IN A LIFE 
 
 Room after room, 
 
 I hunt the house through 
 
 We inhabit together. 
 
 Heart, fear nothing, for, heart, thou shalt find 
 her — 
 
 Next time, herself! — not the trouble behind 
 her 
 
 Left in the curtain, the couch's perfume 1 
 
 As she brushed it, the cornice-wreath blos- 
 somed anew ; 
 
 Yon looking-glass gleamed at the wave of her 
 feather. 
 
 Yet the day wears. 
 
 And door succeeds door ; 
 
 I try the fresh fortune — 
 
 Range the wide house from the wing to the 
 centre. 
 
 Still the same chance ! she goes out as I enter. 
 
 Spend my whole day in the quest, — who cares ? 
 
 But 'tis twilight, you see, — with such suites to 
 explore. 
 
 Such closets to search, such alcoves to impor- 
 tune ! 
 
 LIFE IN A LOVE 
 
 Escape me ? 
 Never — 
 Beloved I 
 While I am I, and you are you. 
 So long as the world contains us both. 
 Me the loving and you the loth. 
 While the one eludes, must the other pursue. 
 
192 
 
 DRAMATIC LYRICS 
 
 It seems too muck like a fate, indeed ! 
 Though I do my best I shall scarce succeed. 
 But "what if I fail' of my purpose here ? 
 It is hut to keep the nerves at strain, 
 
 To dry one's eyes and laugh at a fall, 
 And baffled, get up and begin again, — 
 
 So the chase takes up one's life, that 's all. 
 While, look but once from your farthest bound 
 
 At me so deep in the dust and dark, 
 No sooner the old hope goes to ground 
 Than a new one, straight to the selfsame mark, 
 I shape me — 
 Ever 
 Removed I 
 
 IN THREE DAYS 
 
 So, I shall see her in three days 
 And just one night, but nights are short, 
 Then two long hours, and that is mom. 
 See how I come, unchanged, unworn ! 
 Feel, where my life broke off from thine, 
 How fresh the splinters keep and fine, — 
 Only a touch and we combine ! 
 
 Too long, this time of year, the days ! 
 But nights, at least the nights are short. 
 As night shows where her one moon is, 
 A hand's-breadth of pure light and bliss. 
 So life's night gives my lady birth 
 And my eyes hold her ! What is worth 
 The rest of heaven, the rest of earth ? 
 
 O loaded curls, release your store 
 Of warmth and scent; as once before 
 The tingling hair did, lights and darks 
 Outbreaking into fairy sparks, _ 
 When under curl and curl I pried 
 After the warmth and scent inside. 
 Through lights and darks how manifold — 
 The dark inspired, the light controlled ! 
 As early Art embrowns the gold. 
 
 What great fear, should one say, " Three days 
 
 That change the world might change as well 
 
 Your fortune ; and if joy delays. 
 
 Be happy that no worse befell ! " 
 
 What small fear, if another says, 
 
 " Three days and one short night beside 
 
 May throw no shadow on your ways ; 
 
 But years must teem with change untried, 
 
 With chance not easily defied. 
 
 With an end somewhere undescried." 
 
 No fear ! — ^or if a fear be born 
 
 This minute, it dies out in scorn. 
 
 Fear ? I shall see her in three days 
 
 And one night, now the nights are short, 
 
 Then just two hours, and that is mom. 
 
 IN A YEAR 
 
 Nevek any more. 
 
 While I live, 
 Need I hope to see his face 
 
 As before. 
 
 Once his love grown chill. 
 
 Mine may strive : 
 Bitterly we re-embrace, 
 
 Single still. 
 
 Was it something said, 
 
 Something done. 
 Vexed him? Was it touch of hand» 
 
 Turn of head ? 
 Strange ! that very way 
 
 Love begun ; 
 I as little understand 
 
 Love's decay. 
 
 When I sewed or drew, 
 
 I recall 
 How he looked as if I sung, 
 
 — Sweetly too. 
 If I spoke a word. 
 
 First of all 
 Up his cheek the color sprung, 
 Then he heard. 
 
 Sitting by my side, 
 
 At my feet. 
 So he breathed but air I breathed^ 
 
 Satisfied ! 
 I, too, at love's brim 
 
 Touched the sweet : 
 I would die if death bequeathed 
 
 Sweet to him. 
 
 ' Speak, I love thee best ! " 
 
 He exclaimed : 
 ' Let thy love my own foretell I " 
 
 I confessed : 
 * Clasp my heart on thine 
 
 Now nnblamed. 
 Since upon thy soul as well 
 
 Hangeth mine ! " 
 
 Was it wrong to own. 
 
 Being truth ? 
 Why should all the giving prove 
 
 His alone ? 
 I had wealth and ease. 
 
 Beauty, youth ; 
 Since my lover gave me love, 
 
 I gave these. 
 
 That was all I meant, 
 
 — To be just. 
 
 And the passion I had raised. 
 
 To content. 
 Since he chose to change 
 
 Gold for dust, 
 If I gave him what he praised 
 
 Was it strange ? 
 
 Would he loved me yet. 
 
 On and on, 
 AVhile I found some way undreamed 
 
 — Paid my debt ! 
 Gave more life and more. 
 
 Till, all gone, 
 He should smile "She never seemed 
 Mine bsfore. 
 
BEFORE 
 
 I9:> 
 
 " What, she felt the while. 
 Must I think ? 
 Love 's so different with us men ! " 
 He should smile : 
 ** Dying for my sake — 
 White and pink ! 
 Can't we touch these bubbles then 
 But they break ? ' ' 
 
 Dear, the pang is brief, 
 
 Do thy part, 
 Have thy pleasure ! How perplexed 
 
 Grows belief ! 
 Well, this cold clay clod 
 
 Was man's heart : 
 Cnjmble it, and what comes next ? 
 
 Is it God? 
 
 WOMEN AND ROSES 
 
 Written on the suggestion of some roses sent 
 Mrs. Browning. At the time of writing. 
 Browning was carrying out a resolve to write a 
 poem a day, a resolve which lasted a fortnight. 
 
 I DBEAM of a red-rose tree. 
 And which of its roses three 
 Is the dearest rose to me ? 
 
 Bound and round, like a dance of snow 
 In a dazzling drift, as its guardians, go 
 Floating the women faded for ages. 
 Sculptured in stone, on the poet's pa^es. 
 Then follow women fresh and gay. 
 Living and loving and loved to-day. 
 Last, in the rear, flee the multitude of maidens. 
 Beauties yet unborn. And all, to one cadence. 
 They circle their rose on my rose tree. 
 
 Dear rose, thy term is reached, 
 Thy leaf hangs loose and bleached : 
 Bees pass it unimpeached. 
 
 Stay then, stoop, since I cannot climb. 
 You, great shapes of the antique time ! 
 How shall I fix you, fire you, freeze you. 
 Break my heart at your feet to please you ? 
 Oh, to possess and be possessed ! 
 Hearts that beat 'neath each pallid breast ! 
 Once but of love, the poesy, the passion, 
 Diink but once and die ! — In vain, the same 
 
 fashion. 
 They circle their rose on my rose tree. 
 
 Dear rose, thy joy 's undimmed. 
 
 Thy cup is ruby-rimmed. 
 
 Thy cup's heart nectar-brimmed. 
 
 Deep, as drops from a statue's plinth 
 The bee sucked in by the hyacinth, 
 
 So will I bury me while burning, 
 Quench like him at a plunge my yearning. 
 Eyes in your eyes, lips on your lips ! 
 Fold me fast where the cincture slips. 
 Prison all my soul in eternities of pleasure, 
 Girdle me for once 1 But no — the old measure. 
 They circle their rose on my rose tree. 
 
 Dear rose without a thorn. 
 Thy bud 's the babe unborn: 
 First streak of a new morn. 
 
 Wings, lend wings for the cold, the clear ! 
 What is far conquers what is near. 
 Roses will bloom nor want beholders. 
 Swung from the dust where our flesh moulders, 
 What shall arrive with the cycle's change ? 
 A novel grace and a beauty strange. 
 I will make an Eve, be the artist that began her. 
 Shaped her to his mind ! — Alas ! in like man- 
 ner 
 They circle their rose on my rose tree. 
 
 BEFORE 
 
 Let them fight it out, friend ! things have gone 
 
 too far. 
 God must judge the couple : leave them as they 
 
 are 
 — Whichever one 's the guiltless, to his glory, 
 And whichever one the guilt 's with, to my 
 
 story! 
 
 Why, you would not bid men, sunk in such a 
 slough. 
 
 Strike no aim out further, stick and stink as 
 now. 
 
 Leaving right and wrong to settle the embroil- 
 ment, ■ 
 
 Heaven with snaky hell, in torture and entoil- 
 ment ? 
 
 Who's the culprit of them? How must he 
 
 conceive 
 God — the queen he caps to, laughii^ in his 
 
 sleeve, 
 " *Tis but decent to profess one's self beneath 
 
 her : 
 Still, one must not be too much in earnest, 
 
 either!" 
 
 Better sin the whole sin, sure that God ob- 
 serves ; 
 
 Then go live his life out! Life will try his 
 nerves, 
 
 When the sky, which noticed all, makes no dis- 
 closure. 
 
 And the earth keeps up her terrible composure. 
 
 Let him pace at pleasure, past the walls of rose. 
 Pluck their fruits when grape-trees graze him 
 
 as he goes ! 
 For he 'gins to guess the purpose of the garden. 
 With the sly mute thing, beside there, for a 
 
 warden. 
 
194 
 
 DKAMATXC LYRICS 
 
 What 's the leopard-dog-thing, constant at his 
 side, _ 
 
 A leer and lie in every eye of its obsequious hide? 
 
 When will come an end to aU the mock obei- 
 sance, 
 
 And the price appear that pays for the misfea- 
 sance ? 
 
 So much for the culprit. Who 's the martyred 
 
 man ? 
 Let him bear one stroke more, for be sure he can! 
 He that strove thus evil's lump with good to 
 
 leaven. 
 Let him give his blood at last and get his 
 
 heaven ! 
 
 All or nothing, stake it ! Trusts he God or no ? 
 Thus far and no farther ? farther ? be it so ! 
 Now, enough of youi* chicane of prudent pauses. 
 Sage provisos, sub-intents and saving-clauses ! 
 
 Ah, "forgive" you bid him? While God's 
 
 champion lives. 
 Wrong shall be resisted : dead, why, he forgives. 
 But you must not end my friend ere you begin 
 
 him; 
 Evil stands not crowned on earth, while breath 
 
 is in him. 
 
 Once more — Will the wronger, at this last of all, 
 Dare to say, " I did wrong," rising in his fall? 
 No ? — Let go, then ! Both the fighters to their 
 
 places ! 
 While I count three, step you back as many 
 
 paces ! 
 
 AFTER 
 
 Take the cloak from his face, and at first 
 Let the corpse do its worst ! 
 
 How he lies in his rights of a man ! 
 
 Death has done all death can. 
 And, absorbed in the new life he leads. 
 
 He recks not, he heeds 
 Nor his wrong nor my vengeance ; both strike 
 
 On his senses alike. 
 And are lost in the solemn and strange 
 
 Surprise of the change. 
 
 Ha, what avails death to erase 
 
 His offence, my disgrace ? 
 I would we were boys as of old 
 
 In the field, by the fold : 
 His outrage, God's patience, man's scorn 
 
 Were so easily borne ! 
 
 I stand here now, he lies in hb place : 
 Cover the face ! 
 
 THE GUARDIAN-ANGEL 
 
 A PICTURE AT FANO 
 
 Dkak and great Angel, wouldst thou only leave 
 That child, when thou hast done with him, 
 for me I 
 
 Let me sit all the day here, that when eve 
 
 Shall find performed thy special ministry. 
 And time come for departure, thon, suspending, 
 Thy flight, may'st see another child for tending. 
 Another still, to quiet and retrieve. 
 
 Then I shall feel thee step one step, no more. 
 From where thou standest now, to where I 
 gaze, 
 — And suddeiJy my head is covered o'er 
 With those wings, white above the child who 
 prays 
 Now on that tomb — and I shall feel thee 
 
 guarding 
 Me, out of all the world ; for me, discarding 
 Yon heaven thy home, that waits and opes its 
 door. 
 
 I would not look up thither past thy head 
 
 Because the door opes, like that child, I know, 
 For I should have thy gracious face instead. 
 Thou bird of God ! And wilt thou bend me 
 low 
 Like him, and lay, like his, my hands together, 
 And lift them up to pray, and gently tether 
 Me, as thy lamb there, with thy garment's 
 spread ? 
 
 If this was ever granted, I would rest 
 
 My head beneath thine, while thy healing 
 hands 
 Close-covered both my eyes beside thy breast. 
 Pressing the brain, which too much thought 
 expands. 
 Back to its proper size again, and smoothing 
 Distortion down till every nerve had soothing, 
 And all lay quiet, happy and suppressed. 
 
 How soon all worldly wrong would be repaired ! 
 
 I think how I should view the earth and skies 
 And sea, when once again my brow was bared 
 
 After thy healing, with such different eyes. 
 world, as God has made it ! All is beauty : 
 And knowing this, is love, and love is duty. 
 
 What further may be sought for or declared ? 
 
 Guercino drew this angel I saw teach 
 (Alfred, dear friend!; — that little child to 
 pray. 
 Holding the little hands up, each to each 
 Pressed gently, — with his own head turned 
 away 
 Over the earth where so much lay before him 
 Of work to do, though heaven was opening o'ei 
 him. 
 And he was left at Fano by the beach. 
 
 We were at Fano, and three times we went 
 To sit and see him in his chapel there. 
 
 And drink his beauty to our soul's content 
 — My angel with me too : and since I care 
 
 For dear Guercino's fame (to which in power 
 
 And glory comes this picture for a dower. 
 Fraught with a pathos so magnificent) — 
 
 And since he did not work thus earnestly 
 At all times, and has else endured some 
 wrong — 
 
MASTER HUGUES OF SAXE-GOTHA 
 
 I9S 
 
 I took one thought his picture struck from 
 me, 
 And spread it out, translating it to song. 
 My love is here. Where are you, dear old 
 
 friend ? 
 How rolls the Wairoa at your world's far end ? 
 This is Aucona, yonder is the sea. 
 
 MEMORABILIA 
 
 Ah, did you once see Shelley plain, 
 And did he stop and speak to you. 
 
 And did you speak to him again ? 
 How strange it seems and new ! 
 
 But you were living hefore that. 
 And also you are living after ; 
 
 And the memory I started at — 
 My starting moves your laughter ! 
 
 I crossed a moor, with a name of its own 
 And a certain use in the world no douht, 
 
 Yet a hand's-breadth of it shines alone 
 'Mid the blank miles round about ; 
 
 For there I picked up on the heather, 
 And there I put inside my breast 
 
 A moulted feather, an eagle-feather ! 
 Well, I forget the rest. 
 
 POPULARITY 
 
 As the previous poem was an appreciation of 
 Shelley, so this, of Keats. 
 
 Stand still, true poet that you are ! 
 
 I know you ; let me try and draw you. 
 Some night you '11 fail us ; when afar 
 
 You rise, remember one man saw you. 
 Knew you, and named a star ! 
 
 My star, God's glow-worm ! Why extend 
 that loving hand of his which leads you, 
 
 Yet locks you safe from end to end 
 Of this dark world, unless he needs you, 
 
 Just saves your light to spend ? 
 
 His clenched hand shall unclose at last, 
 I know, and let out all the beauty : 
 
 My poet holds the future fast. 
 Accepts the coming ^es' duty, 
 
 Their present for this past. 
 
 That day, the earth's feast-master's brow 
 Shall clear, to God the chalice raising ; 
 
 " Others give best at first, but thou 
 Forever set'st our table praising, 
 
 Keep'st the good wine till now ! " 
 
 Meantime, I '11 draw you as yon stand, 
 With few or none to watch and wonder ; 
 
 I '11 say — a fisher, on the sand 
 By Tyre the old, with ocean-plunder, 
 
 A netful, brought to land. 
 
 Who has not heard how Tyrian shells 
 Enclosed the blue, that dye of dyes 
 
 Whereof one drop woi-ked miracles. 
 And colored like Astarte's eyes 
 
 Kaw silk the merchant sells ? 
 
 And each bystander of them all 
 Could criticise, and quote tradition 
 
 How depths of blue sublimed some pall 
 
 — To get which, pricked a king's ambition ; 
 
 Worth sceptre, crown and ball. 
 
 Yet there 's the dye, in that rough mesh, 
 The sea has only just o'er-whispered ! 
 
 Live whelks, each lip's beard dripping fresh, 
 As if they still the water's lisp heard 
 
 Through foam the rock-weeds thresh. 
 
 Enoiigh to furnish Solomon 
 Such hangings for his cedar-house. 
 
 That, when gold-robed he took the throne 
 In that abyss of blue, the Spouse 
 
 Might swear his presence shone 
 
 Most like the centre-spike of gold 
 
 Which burns deep in the bluebell's womb 
 What time, with ardors maiuf old, 
 . The bee goes singing to her groom, 
 Drunken and overbold. 
 
 Mere conchs ! not fit for warp or woof ! 
 
 Till cunning come to pound and squeeze 
 And clarify, — refine to proof 
 
 The liquor filtered by degrees. 
 While the world stands aloof. 
 
 And there 's the extract, fi asked and fine, 
 
 And priced and salable at last ! 
 And Hobbs, Nobbs, Stokes and Nokes eombin? 
 
 To paint the future from the past. 
 Put blue into their Une. 
 
 Hobbs hints blue, — straight he turtle eats : 
 Nobbs prints blue, — claret crowns his cup : 
 
 Nokes outdares Stokes in azure feats, — 
 Both gorge. Who fished the murex up ? 
 
 What porridge had John Keats ? 
 
 MASTER HUGUES OF SAXE-GOTHA 
 
 Whomever Browning may have had in mind, 
 there was no historical figure with this name 
 and place. 
 
 Hist, but a word, fair and soft ! 
 
 Forth and be judged. Master Hngues ! 
 Answer the question I 've put you so oft : 
 
 What do you mean by your mountainous 
 fugues ? 
 See, we 're alone in the loft, — 
 
 I, the poor organist here, 
 
 Hugues, the composer of note. 
 Dead though, and done with, this many a year : 
 
 Let 's have a colloquy, something to quote. 
 Make the world prick up its ear I 
 
196 
 
 DRAMATIC LYRICS 
 
 See, the church empties apace : 
 
 Fast they extinguish the lights. 
 Hallo there, sacristan ! Five minutes' grace ! 
 
 Here 's a crank pedal wants setting to rights, 
 Balks one of holding the base. 
 
 See, our huge house of the sounds, 
 
 Hushing its hundreds at once 
 Bids the last loiterer back to his bounds ! 
 
 — you may challenge them, not a response 
 Get the church-saints on their rounds ! 
 
 (Saints go their rounds, who shall doubt ? 
 
 — March, with the moon to admire. 
 
 Up nave, down chancel, turn transept about, 
 Supervise all betwixt pavement and spire, 
 Put rats and mice to the rout — 
 
 Aloys and Jurien and Just — 
 
 Order things back to their place. 
 Have a sharp eye lest the candlesticks rust. 
 
 Rub the church-plate, dam the sacrament- 
 lace. 
 Clear the desk-velvet of dust.) 
 
 Here *s your book, younger folks shelve ! 
 
 Played I not off-hand and runningly, 
 Just now, your masterpiece, hard number 
 twelve ? 
 Here 's what should strike, could one handle 
 it cunningly : 
 Help the axe, give it a helve ! 
 
 Page after page as I played. 
 
 Every bar's rest where one wipes 
 Sweat from one's brow, I looked up and sur- 
 veyed. 
 
 O'er my three claviers, yon forest of pipes 
 Whence you still peeped in the shade. 
 
 Sure you were wishful to speak ? 
 
 You, with brow ruled like a score, 
 Yes; and eyes buried in pits on each cheek, 
 
 Like two great breves, as they wrote them 
 of yore. 
 Each side that bar, your straight beak ! 
 
 Sure you said — " Good, the mere notes ! 
 
 Still, couldst thou take my intent. 
 Know what procured me our Company's 
 votes — 
 ' A master were lauded and scioHsts shent. 
 Parted the sheep from the goats ! " 
 
 Well then, speak up, never flinch ! 
 
 Quick, ere my candle 's a snuff 
 — Burnt, do you see ? to its uttermost inch — 
 
 I believe in you, but that 's not enough : 
 Give my conviction a clinch I 
 
 First you deliver your phrstse 
 
 — Nothing propound, that I see. 
 
 Fit in itself for much blame or much praise — 
 
 Answered no less, where no answer needs be ; 
 Off start the Two on their ways. 
 
 Straight must a Third interpose. 
 Volunteer needlessly help ; 
 
 In strikes a Fourth, a Fifth thrusts in his nose. 
 
 So the cry 's open, the kennel 's a-yelp. 
 Argument 's hot to the close. 
 
 One dissertates, he is candid ; 
 
 Two must discept, —has distinguished ; 
 Three helps the couple, if ever yet man did ; 
 
 Four protests ; Five makes a dart at the 
 thing wished : 
 Back to One, goes the case bandied. 
 
 One says his say with a difference ; 
 
 More of expounding, explaining ! 
 All now is wrangle, abuse and vociferance ; 
 
 Now there 's a truce, all 's subdued, self -re- 
 straining : 
 Five, though, stands out all the stiffer hence. 
 
 One is incisive, corrosive : 
 
 Two retorts, nettled, curt, crepitant ; 
 Three makes rejoinder, expansive, explosive ; 
 
 Pour overbeara them all, strident and strepi- 
 tant : 
 Five ... Danaides, O Sieve ! 
 
 Now, they ply axes and crowbars ; 
 
 Now, they prick pins at a tissue 
 Fine as a skein of the casuist Escobar's 
 
 Worked on the bone of a lie. To what issue ? 
 Where is our gain at the Two-bars ? 
 
 Estfuga, volvitur rota. 
 
 On we drift : where looms the dim port ? 
 One, Two, Three, Four, Five, contribute their 
 quota ; 
 Something is gained, if one caught but the 
 import — 
 Show it us, Hugues of Saxe-Gotha ! 
 
 What with affirming, denying. 
 
 Holding, risposting, subjoining. 
 All's like . . . it's like . . . for an instance 
 I 'm trying . . . 
 There ! See our roof, its gilt moulding and 
 groining 
 Under those spider-webs lying ! 
 
 So your fugue broadens and thickens, 
 
 Greatens and deepens and lengthens. 
 Till we exclaim ^ — "But where 's music, the 
 dickens ? 
 Blot ye the gold, while your spider-web 
 strengthens 
 — Blacked to the stoutest of tickens ? " 
 
 I for man's effort am zealous: 
 Prove me such censure unfounded ! 
 
 Seems it surprising a lover grows jealous — 
 Hopes 'twas for something, his organ-pipes 
 sounded. 
 
 Tiring three boys at the bellows ? 
 
 Is it your moral of Life ? 
 
 Such a web, simple and subtle. 
 Weave we on earth here in impotent strife, 
 
 Backward and forwartj each throwing his 
 shuttle. 
 Death ending all with a knife ? 
 
THE RETURN OF THE DRUSES 
 
 197 
 
 Over our heads truth and nature -r- ■ 
 Still our life's zigzags and dodges, 
 
 Ins and outs, weaving a new legislature — 
 God's gold just shining its last where that 
 
 Palled beneath man's usurpature. 
 
 So we o'ershroud stars and roses. 
 
 Cherub and trophy and garland ; 
 Nothings grow something which quietly closes 
 
 Heaven's earnest eye : not a ^impae of the 
 far land 
 Gets through our comments and glozes. 
 
 Ah, but traditions, inventions, i. 
 
 (Say we and make up a visage) 
 So many men with such various intentions, 
 Down the past ages, must know more than this 
 
 age f 
 Leave we the web its dimensions ! 
 
 Who thinks Hugues wrote for the deaf. 
 Proved a mere mountain in labor ? 
 
 Better submit ; try again ; what 's the clef ? 
 'Faith, 'tis no trifle for pipe and for tabor — 
 
 Four flats, the minor in F. 
 
 Friend, your fugue taxes the finger : 
 
 Learning it once, who would lose it ? 
 Yet all the while a misgiving will linger. 
 Truth 's golden o'er us although we refuse 
 it- 
 Nature, through cobwebs we string her. 
 
 Hugues ! I advise me& posncL 
 
 (Counterpoint glares like a Gorgon) 
 Bid One, Two, Three, Four, Five, clear the 
 arena ! 
 Say the word, straight 1 unstop the full or- 
 gan, 
 Blare out the mode Palestrina. 
 
 While in the roof, if I 'm right there, 
 
 . . . Lo you, the wick in the socket ! 
 Hallo, you sa^jristan, show us a light there t 
 
 Down it dips, gone like a rocket. 
 What, you want, do you, to come unawares, 
 Sweeping the church up for first morning- 
 prayers. 
 And find a poor devil has ended his cares 
 At the foot of your rotten-runged rat-riddled 
 stairs? 
 Do I carry the moon in my pocket ? 
 
 THE RETURN OF THE DRUSES 
 
 A TRAGEDY 
 
 Originally published as No. IV. of Bells and 
 Pomegranates in 1843. The manuscript was 
 first named Mansoor the Hierophant, 
 
 PERSONS 
 
 The Grrand-Master^a Prefect. 
 The Patriarch's Nuncio. 
 The Republic's Admiral. 
 LoYB DB Drbux, Knight-Novlce. 
 
 Initiated Druses — Djabal, Khalil, Anabl, Maani, 
 Kabshook, Raghib, Ayoob, and others. 
 
 Uniuitiated Druses, Prefect's Guard, Nuncio's Attend- 
 ants, Admiral's Force. 
 
 Time, U— . 
 
 Flacb, , ^n Islet of the Southern Sporades, colonised by 
 Zh'iises 0/ Lebanon^ and garrisoned by the Knighis- 
 ifosp-Uallers 0/ Rhodes, 
 
 Scene, A Hall in the PrefecVs Palace. 
 
 ACT I 
 
 Enter sieitlthily Kabshook, Raghib, Ayoob, and oth6r 
 initiated Druses, each as he enters casting off a robe 
 that conceals Ms distinctive black vest and white tur- 
 ban ; then^ as gim/ng a loose to exultation, — 
 
 Karshook, The moon is carried off in purple 
 fire : 
 Day breaks at last ! Break glory, with the day. 
 On Djabal's dread incarnate mystery 
 Now ready to resume its pristine shape 
 Of Hakeem, as the Khalif vanished erst 
 In what seemed death to uninstrncted eyes. 
 On red Mokattam's verge — bur Founder's flesh, 
 As he resumes our Founder's function I 
 
 Baghib. — Death 
 
 Sweep to the Christian Prefect that enslaved 
 So long us sad Druse exiles O'er the sea ! 
 
 Ayoob, -^ Most joy be thine, O Mother-mount I 
 Thy brood 
 
 Returns to thee, no outcasts as we left. 
 
 But thus — but thus ! Behind, our Prefect's 
 
 corse ; 
 Before, a presence like the morning — thine. 
 Absolute Djabal late, — God Hakeem now 
 That day breaks ! 
 
 Kar. Off then, with disguise at last 1 
 
 As from our forms this hateful garb we strip, 
 Lose every tongue its glozing accent too. 
 Discard each limb the ignoble gestnre ! Cry, 
 'T is the Druse Nation, warders on our Mount 
 Of the world's secret, since the birth of time, 
 — No kindred slips, no offsets from thy stock. 
 No spawn of Christians are we. Prefect, we 
 Wlio rise ■ . . 
 
 Ay, Who shout . . . 
 
 Bagh. Who seize, a first-fruits, ha— 
 
 Spoil of the spoiler 1 Brave ! 
 IThey begin to tear down-, tind to dispute for, the decora^ 
 lions of t/ie huJ'L 
 
198 
 
 THE RETURN OF THE DRUSES 
 
 Hold! 
 
 — Mine, I say ; 
 
 Kar. 
 Ay. 
 And mine shall it continue I 
 
 Kar. Just this fringe ! 
 
 Take anything beside ! Lo, spire on spire, 
 Curl serpentwise wreathed columns to the top 
 O' the roof, and hide themselves mysteriously 
 Among the twinkling lights and darks that 
 
 haunt 
 Yon cornice ! Where the huge veil, they suspend 
 Before the Prefect's chamber of delight, 
 Floats wide, then falls again as if its slave. 
 The scented air, took heart now, and anon 
 Lost heart to buoy its breadths of gorgeous- 
 
 ness 
 Above the gloom they droop in — all the porch 
 Is jewelled o'er with frostwork charactery ; 
 And, see, you eight-point cross of white flame, 
 
 winking 
 Hoar - silvery like some fresh - broke marble 
 
 stone : 
 Kaze out the Rhodian cross there, so thou leav'st 
 
 me 
 This single fringe ! 
 
 Ap. Ha, wouldst thou, dog-fox ? Help ! 
 
 — Three hand-breadths of gold fringe, my son 
 
 was set 
 To twist, the night he died ! 
 
 Kar. Nay, hear the knave ! 
 
 And I could witness my one daughter borne, 
 A week since, to the Prefect's couch, yet fold 
 These arms, be mute, lest word of mine should 
 
 mar 
 Our Master's work, delay the Prefect here 
 A day, prevent his sailing hence for Rhodes — 
 How know I else ? — Hear me denied my right 
 By such a knave ! 
 Ragh. [^Interposing.^ Each ravage for him- 
 self ! 
 Booty enough ! On, Druses ! Be there foimd 
 Blood and a heap behind us ; with us, Djabal 
 Turned Hakeem ; and before us, Lebanon ! 
 Yields the porch ? Spare not ! There his min- 
 ions dragged 
 Thy daughter, Karshook, to the Prefect's 
 
 couch ! 
 Ayoob! Thy son, to soothe the Prefect's 
 
 pride, 
 Bent o'er that task, the death-sweat on his 
 
 brow. 
 Carving the spice-tree's heart in scroll-work 
 
 there ! 
 Onward in Djabal's name ! 
 
 {As the tuviult is at heiglU^ enter Khalil. A pause and 
 silence.) 
 Khalil. Was it for this, 
 
 Djabal hath summoned you ? Deserve you 
 
 thus 
 Aportion in to-day's event ? What, here — 
 When most behoves your feet fall soft, your 
 
 eyes 
 Sink low, your tongues lie still, — at Djabal's 
 
 side, 
 Close in his very hearing, who, perchance, 
 Assumes e'en now God Hakeem's dreaded 
 
 Dispute you for these gauds ? 
 Ay, How say'st thou, Khalil ? 
 
 Doubtless our Master prompts thee 1 Take the 
 
 fringe, 
 Old Karshook ! I supposed it was a day . . . 
 Kha. For pillage? 
 
 Kar. Hearken, Khalil ! Never spoke 
 
 A boy so like a song-bii'd ; we avouch thee 
 Prettiest of all our Master's instruments 
 Except thy bright twin-sister ; thou and Anael 
 Challenge his prime regard : but we may crave 
 (Such nothings as we be) a portion too 
 Of Djabal's favor ; in him we believed. 
 His bound ourselves, him moon by moon 
 
 obeyed, . 
 
 Kept silence till this daybreak — so, may claim 
 Reward : who grudges me my claim ? 
 
 Ay. To-day 
 
 Is not as yesterday ! 
 Ragh. Stand ofE ! 
 
 Kha. Rebel you? 
 
 Must I, the delegate of Djabal, draw 
 His wrath on you, the day of our Return ? 
 Other JDruses. Wrench from their grasp the 
 
 fringe ! Hounds ! must the earth 
 Vomit her plagues on us through thee ? — and 
 
 thee? 
 Plague me not, Khalil, for their fault ! 
 
 Kha. Oh, shame ! 
 
 Thus breaks to-day on you, the mystic tribe 
 Who, flying the approach of Osman, bore 
 Our faith, a merest spark, from Syria's ridge, 
 Its birthplace, hither ! " Let the sea divide 
 These hunters from their prey," you said; 
 
 *' and safe 
 In this dim islet's virgin solitude 
 Tend we our faith, the spark, till happier time 
 Fan it to fire ; till Hakeem rise again. 
 According to his word that, in the flesh 
 Wliich faded on Mokattam ages since. 
 He, at our extreme need, would interpose, 
 And, reinstating all in power and bliss. 
 Lead us himself to Lebanon once more." 
 Was 't not thus you departed years ago. 
 Ere I was born ? 
 Druses. 'T was even thus, years ago. 
 
 Kha. And did you call — (according to old 
 
 laws 
 Which bid us, lest the sacred grow profane, 
 Assimilate oui-selves in outward rites 
 With strangers fortune makes our lords, and 
 
 live 
 As Christian with the Christian, Jew with Jew 
 Druse only with the Druses) — did you call 
 Or no, to stand 'twixt you and Osman's rage, 
 (Mad to pursue e'en hither through the sea 
 ■The remnant of our tribe,) a race self vowed 
 To endless warfare with his hordes and him. 
 The White-cross Knights of the adjacent Isle ? 
 Kar. And why else rend we down, wrench 
 
 up, rase out ? 
 These Knights of Rhodes we thus solicited 
 For help, bestowed on us a fiercer pest 
 Than aught we fled — their Prefect ; who began 
 His promised mere paternal governance. 
 By a prompt massacre of all our Sheikhs 
 Able to thwart the Order in its scheme 
 Of crushing, with our nation's memory. 
 Each chance of our return, and taming us 
 Bondslaves to Rhodes forever — all, he thinks 
 
THE RETURN OF THE DRUSES 
 
 199 
 
 To end by this day's treason. 
 
 Kha. Say I not? 
 
 Toil, fitted to the Order's purposes. 
 Your 8heikhs cut off, your rights, your garb 
 
 proscribed. 
 Must yet receive one degradation more ; 
 The Knights at last throw off the mask — 
 
 transfer. 
 As tributary now and appanage. 
 This islet they are but protectors of. 
 To their own ever-cravmg liege, the Church, 
 Who licenses all crimes that pay her thus. 
 You, from their Prefect, were to be consigned 
 (Pursuant of I know not what vile pact) 
 To the Knights' Patriarch, ardent to outvie 
 His predecessor in all wickedness. 
 When suddenly rose Djabal in the midst, 
 Djabal, the man in semblance, but our Grod 
 Confessed by signs and portents. Ye saw fire 
 Bicker round Djabal, heard strange music fiit 
 Bird-like about his brow ? 
 
 Druses. We saw — we heard ! 
 
 Djabal is Hakeem, the incarnate Dread, 
 The phantasm Khalif , King of Prodigies ! 
 
 Kha. And as he said has not our Khalif 
 done. 
 And so disposed events (from land to land 
 Passing invisibly) that when, this mom, 
 The pact of villany complete, there comes 
 This Patriarch's Nuncio with this Master's 
 
 Prefect 
 Their treason to consummate, — each will face 
 For a crouching handful, an uplifted nation ; 
 For simulated Christians, confessed Druses ; 
 And, for slaves past hope of the Mother-mount, 
 Freedmen returning there 'neath Venice' flag ; 
 That Venice which, the Hospitallers' foe. 
 Grants us from Candia escort home at price 
 Of our relinquished isle, Rhodes counts her 
 
 own — 
 Venice, whose promised argosies should stand 
 Toward harbor : is it now that you, and you, 
 And you, selected from the rest to bear 
 The burden of the Khalif 's secret, further 
 To-day's event, entitled by your wrongs. 
 And witness in the Prefect's hall his fate — 
 That you dare clutch these gauds ? Ay, drop 
 them! 
 
 Kar. True, 
 
 Most true, all this ; and yet, may one dare hint. 
 Thou art the youngest of us ? — though em- 
 ployed 
 Abundantly as Djabal's confidant, 
 Transmitter of his mandates, even now. 
 Much less, whene'er beside him Anael graces 
 The cedar throne, his queen-bride, art thou like 
 To occupy its lowest step that day ! 
 Now, Khalil, wert thou checked as thou aspir- 
 
 est. 
 Forbidden such or such an honor, — say, 
 Would silence serve so amply ? 
 
 Kha. Karshook thinks 
 
 I covet honors ? Well, nor idly thinks ! 
 Honors ? I have demanded of them all 
 The greatest 1 
 
 Kar. I supposed so. 
 
 Kha. Judge, yourselves ! 
 
 Turn, thus : 't is in the alcove at the back 
 
 Of yonder colunmed porch, whose entrance now 
 The veil hides, that our Prefect holds his state, 
 Receives tlie Nuncio, when the one, from 
 
 Rhodes, 
 The other lands from Syria ; there they meet. 
 Now, I have sued with earnest prayei-s . . . 
 
 Kar. For what 
 
 Shall the Bride's brother vainly sue ? 
 
 Kha. _ That mine — 
 
 Avenging in one blow a myriad wrongs 
 — Might be the hand to slay the Prefect there I 
 Djab^ reserves that office for himself. 
 
 lA silence. 
 Thus far, as youngest of you all, I speak 
 
 — bcarce more enlightened than yourselves; 
 
 since, near 
 As I approach him, nearer as I trust 
 Soon to approach our Master, he reveals 
 Only the God's power, not the glory yet. 
 Therefore I reasoned with you ; now, as servant 
 To Djabal, bearing his authority. 
 Hear me appoint your several posts ! Till noon 
 None see him save myself and Anael : once 
 The deed achieved, our Khalif, casting off 
 The embodied Awe's tremendous mystery. 
 The weakness of the flesh disguise, resumes 
 TTis proper glory, ne'er to fade again. 
 {Enter a Druse.) 
 The Druse. Our Prefect lands from Rhodes f 
 — without a sign 
 That he suspects aught since he left our Isle j 
 Nor in his train a single guard beyond 
 The few he sailed with hence : so have we 
 
 learned 
 From Leys. 
 
 Kar. Loys ? Is not Loys gone 
 
 Forever ? 
 Ay. Loys, the Frank Knight, returned ? 
 The Druse. Loys, the boy, stood on the 
 leading prow 
 Conspicuous in his gay attire, and leapt 
 Into the surf the foremost. Since day-dawn 
 I kept watch to the Northward ; take but note 
 Of my poor vigilance to Djabal ! 
 
 Kha. Peace ! 
 
 Thou, Karshook, with thy company, receive 
 The Prefect as appointed : see, all keep 
 The wonted show of servitude ; announce 
 His entry here by the accu-storaed peal 
 Of trumpets, then await the further pleasure 
 Of Djabal ! (Loys back, whom Djabal sent 
 To Rhodes that we might spare the single Knight 
 Worth sparing !) 
 
 {Enter a second Druse.) 
 The Druse. I espied it first ! Say, I 
 First spied the Nuncio's galley from the South I 
 Said'st thou a Crossed-keys' flag would flap the 
 
 mast ? 
 It nears apace ! One galley and no more. 
 If Djabal chance to ask who spied the flag, 
 Forget not, I it was ! 
 
 Kha. Thou, Ayoob, bring 
 
 The Nuncio and his followers hither ! Break 
 One rule prescribed, ye wither in your blood. 
 Die at your fault ! 
 
 {Enter a third Druse.) 
 The Druse. I shall see home, see home ! 
 
 — Shall banquet in the sombre groves again ! 
 
200 
 
 THE RETURN OF THE DRUSES 
 
 Hail to thee, Khalil ! Veuice looms afar.; 
 The argosies of Venice^ like a cloud, 
 Bear up from Candia in the distance ! 
 
 Kha. Joy ! 
 
 Summon our people, Baghib ! Bid all forth ! 
 Tell them the long-kept secret, old and young ! 
 Set free the captive, let the trampled raise 
 Their faces from the dust, because at length 
 The cycle is complete, God Makeem's reign 
 Begins anew ! ISay, Venice for our guard. 
 Ere night ive steer for Syria ! Hear you. Druses ? 
 Hear you this crowning witness to the claims 
 Of Djabal ? Oh, I spoke of hope and fear, 
 Reward and punishment, because he .bade 
 Who has the right : for me, what should I say 
 But, mar not those imperial lineaments, 
 No majesty of all that rapt regard 
 Vex by the least omission ! Let him rise 
 Without a cheek from you ! 
 Druses. Let Djabal rise I 
 
 {Enter Lot3. — The Druses are silent.) 
 Lays. Who speaks of Djabal ? — for I seek 
 
 him, friends ! 
 [Aside.} Tu Dieu ! 'T is as om: Isle broke out 
 
 in song 
 For joy, its Prefect-incubus drops off 
 To-day, and I succeed him in his rule ! 
 But no — they cannot dream of their good for- 
 tune! 
 [Aloud.} Peace to you. Druses I I have tidings 
 
 for you. 
 But first for Djabal: where 's your tall be- 
 
 witcher. 
 With that small Arab thin-lipped silver-mouth ? 
 Kha. [Aside to'KAK.} Loys, in truth ! Yet 
 
 Djabal cannot err ! 
 Kar. [I'oKha.] And who takes charge of 
 
 Loys ? That 's forgotten. 
 Despite thy wariness ! Will Loys stand 
 And see his comrades slaughtered ? 
 
 Lays. [Aside.} How they shrink 
 
 And whisper, with those rapid faces ! What ? 
 The sight of me in their oppressors' garb 
 Strikes terror to the simple tribe ? God's 
 
 shnm6 
 On those that bring our Order ill repute ! 
 But all 's at end now ; better days begin 
 For these mild mountaineers from over-sea ; 
 The timidest shall have in me no Prefect 
 To cower at thus ! [Aloud.} I asked for 
 
 Djabal — 
 Kar. [Aside.} Better , . 
 One lured him, ere he can suspect, inside 
 The corridor ; 't were easy to dispatch 
 A yoimgster. [To Loys.] Djabal passed some 
 
 minutes since 
 Through yonder porch, and ... 
 
 Kha. [/Istrfe.] Hold ! Wliat, him dispatch ? 
 The only Christian of them all we charge 
 No tyranny upon ? Who, — noblest Knight 
 Of all that learned from time to time their 
 
 trade 
 Of lust and cruelty among uSi — heir 
 To Europe's pomp, a truest child of pride, — 
 Yet stood between the Prefect and ourselves 
 From the beginning ? Loys, Djabal makes 
 Account of, and precisely sent to Rhodes 
 For safety ? I take charge of him ! 
 
 [To Loys.] Sir Loys, — _ 
 
 Loys. There, cousins ! Does Sir Loys strikf 
 
 you dead ? 
 Kha. [Advancing.} Djabal has intercourse 
 with few or none 
 Till noontide : but, your pleasure ? 
 
 — Loys. " Intercourse 
 With few or none ? " — (Ah, Khalil, when you 
 
 spoke 
 I saw not your smooth fa«e ! AU health ! — 
 
 and health 
 To Anael ! How fares Anael ?) — " Intercourse 
 With few or none ? " Forget you, I 've been 
 
 friendly 
 With Djabal long ere you or any Druse ? 
 
 — Enough of him at Rennes, I think, beneath 
 The Dukb my father's roof ! He 'd tell by the 
 
 ■ hour. 
 With fixed white eyes beneath his swarthy brow, 
 Plausiblest stories . . . 
 
 Kha. Stories, say yon ? — Ah, 
 
 The quaint attire ! 
 
 Loys. My dress for the last time ! 
 
 How sad 1 cannot make you understand. 
 This ermine, o'er a shield, betokens me 
 Of Bretagne, ancientest of provinces 
 And noblest ; and, what 's best and oldest there. 
 See, Dreux', our house's blazon, which the 
 
 Nuncio 
 Tacks to an Hospitaller's vest to-day ! 
 Kha. The Nuncio v e await ? What brings 
 you back 
 From Rhodes, Sir Loys ? 
 
 Loys. How you island-tribe 
 
 Forget the world's awake while here you 
 
 drowse ! 
 What brings me back ? What should not bring 
 
 me, rather ! 
 Our Patriarch's Nuncio visits you to-day — 
 Is not my year's probation out ? I come 
 To take the knightly vows. 
 Kha. What 's that you wear ? 
 
 Loys. This Rliodian cross ? The cross your 
 Prefect wore. 
 You should have seen, as I saw, the full Chap- 
 ter 
 Rise, to a man, while tlipy transferred this cross 
 From that unworthy Prefect's neck to . . . 
 
 (fool — 
 My secret will escape me!) In a word. 
 My year's probation passed, a Knight ere eve 
 Am I ; bound, like the rest, to yield my wealth 
 To the common stock, to live in chastity, 
 (We Knights espouse alone our Order's fame) 
 
 — Change this gay weed for the black white- 
 
 crossed gown. 
 And fight to death against the Infidel 
 
 — Not, therefore, against you, you Christians 
 
 with 
 Such pai tial difference only as befits 
 The peacefullest of tribes. But Khalil, pri- 
 thee, 
 Is not the Isle brighter than wont to-day ? 
 Kha. Ah, the new sword ! 
 Loys. See now ! You handle sword 
 
 As 't were a camel-staff 1 Pull ! That 's my 
 
 motto. 
 Annealed " Pro,fide," on the Made in blue. 
 
THE RETURN OF THE DRUSES 
 
 Eha. No curve in it ? Surely a blade should 
 
 curve. 
 Lays. Straight from the wrist ! Loose — it 
 
 should poise itself ! 
 KJia . [ Waving w ith irrepressible exultation the 
 
 sward . ] We are a nation, Loys, of old fame 
 Araon^ the mountains I Bights have we to 
 
 keep 
 With the sword too ! 
 [Remembering himself.] But I forget — you bid 
 
 me 
 Seek Djabal ? 
 Loys. What ! A sword's sight scares you 
 
 not? 
 (The People I will make of him and them ! 
 Oh let my Prefect-away begin at once !) 
 Bring Djabal — say, indeed, that come he must ! 
 Klia. At noon seek Djabal in the Prefect's 
 
 Chamber, 
 And find . . . [Aside.] Nay, 't is thy cursed 
 
 race's token. 
 Prank pride, no special insolence of thine ! 
 [Aloud.] Tarry, and I will do your bidding, 
 
 Loys ! 
 [To the rest aside.] Now, forth you 1 I pro- 
 ceed to Djabal straight. 
 Leave this poor boy, who knows not what he 
 
 says ! 
 Oh will it not add joy to even thy joy, 
 Djabal, that I report all friends were true ? 
 
 [Ehalil goes, followed by the Druses. 
 Loys. Tu Dieu ! How happy I shall make 
 
 these Druses ! 
 Was 't not surpassingly contrived of me 
 To get the long list of their wrongs by heart, 
 Then take the first pretence for stealing off 
 From these poor islanders, present myself 
 Sudden at Rhodes befoi'e the noble Chapter, 
 And (as best proof of ardor in its cause 
 Which ere to-night will have become, too, mine) 
 Acquaint it with this plague-sore in its body, 
 This Prefect and his villanous career ? 
 The princely Synod ! All I dared request 
 Was his dismissal ; and they graciou^y 
 Consigned his very ofiice to myself — • 
 Myself may cure the Isle diseased ! 
 
 And well 
 For them, they did so ! Since I never felt 
 How lone a lot, though brilliant, 1 embrace, 
 Till now that, past retrieval, it is mine. 
 To live thus, and thus die ! Yet, as I leapt 
 On shore, so home a feeling greeted me 
 That I could half believe in Djabal's story. 
 He used to tempt my father with, at Rennes — 
 And me, too, since the story brought me here — 
 Of some Count Dreux and ancestor of ours 
 Who, sick of wanderii^ from Bouillon's war, 
 Left his old name in Lebanon. 
 
 Long days 
 At least to spend in the Isle ! and, my news 
 
 known 
 An hour hence, what if Anael turn on me 
 The great black eyes I must forget ? 
 
 Why, fool. 
 Recall them, then ? My business is with Dja- 
 bal, 
 Not Anael ! Djabal tarries ; if I seek him ? ^- 
 Xhe Isle is brighter than its wont to-day ! 
 
 ACT II 
 
 Enter Djabal. 
 
 Dja. That a strong man should think him- 
 self a God ! 
 I — Hakeem ? To have wandered through the 
 
 world. 
 Sown falsehood, and thence reaped now scorn, 
 
 now faith, 
 For my one chant with many a change, my 
 
 tale 
 Of outrage, and my prayer for vengeance — this 
 Required, forsooth, no mere man's faculty, 
 Naught less than Hakeem's ? The persuading 
 
 Loys 
 To pass probation here : the getting access 
 By Loys to the Prefect ; worst of all. 
 The gainii^ my tribe's confidence by fraud 
 That would disgrace the very Frank, — a few 
 Of Europe's secrets which subdue the flame. 
 The wave, — to ply a simple tribe with these. 
 Took Hakeem? 
 
 And I feel this first to-day ! 
 Does the day break, is the hour imminent 
 When one deed, when my whole life's deed, raiy 
 
 deed 
 Must be accomplished ? Hakeem ? Why the 
 
 God? 
 Shout, rather, " Djabal, Youssof's child, 
 
 thought slain 
 With his whole race, the Druses' Sheikhs, this 
 
 Prefect 
 Endeavored to extirpate — saved, a child. 
 Returns from traversing the world, a man. 
 Able to take revenge, lead back the march 
 To Lebanon" — so shout, and who gainsays? 
 But now, because delusion mixed itself . 
 Insensibly with this career, all 's changed I 
 Have I brought Venice to afford us convoy ? 
 "True — but my jugglings wrought that!" 
 
 Put I heart 
 Into our people where no heart lurked ? — " Ah, 
 What cannot an impostor do ! " 
 
 Not this I 
 Not do this which I do ! Not bid avaunt 
 Falsehood ! Thou shalt not keep thy hold on 
 
 me ! 
 — Nor even get a hold on me ! 'T is now — 
 This day — hour — minute — 't is as here I stand 
 On the accursed threshold of the Prefect, 
 ']?hat I am found deceiving and deceived ! 
 And now what do I ? — hasten to the few 
 Deceived, ere they deceive the many — shout, 
 " As I professed, I did believe myself ! 
 Say, Druses, had you seen a butchery — 
 
 If Ayoob, Karshook saw Maani there 
 
 Must tell you how I saw my father sink ; 
 My mother's arms twine still about my neck ; 
 I near my brother shriek, here 's yet the scar 
 Of what was meant for my own death-blow — 
 
 say. 
 If you had woke like me, grown year by year 
 Out of the tiimult in a fai'-off clime, 
 Would it be wondrous such delusion grew ? 
 I walked the world, asked help at every hand ; 
 Came help or no ? Not this and this ? Which 
 
 helos 
 
202 
 
 THE RETURN OF THE DRUSES 
 
 When I returned with, found the Prefect here, 
 The Druses here, all here but Hakeem's self, 
 The Khalif of the thousand prophecies. 
 Reserved for such a juncture, — could I call 
 My mission aught but Hakeem's? Promised 
 
 Hakeem 
 More than performs the Djabal — you absolve ? 
 
 — Me, you will never shame before the crowd 
 Yet happily ignorant ? — Me, both throngs sur- 
 round, 
 
 The few deceived, the many unabused, 
 
 — Who, thus surrounded, slay for you and them 
 The Prefect, lead to Lebanon ? No Khalif, 
 But Sheikh once more ! Mere Djabal — not "... 
 
 {Enter KhaxUj haslily.) 
 Kha. — God Hakeem ! 
 
 'T is told ! The whole Druse nation knows thee, 
 
 Hakeem, 
 As we ! and mothers lift on high their babes 
 "Who seem aware, so glisten their great eyes. 
 Thou hast not failed us ; ancient brows are 
 
 proud ; 
 Our elders could not earlier die, it seems. 
 Than at thy coming ! The Druse heart is thine ! 
 Take it ! my lord and theirs, be thou adored ! 
 Dja. [-dsirfe.] Adored ! — but I renounce 
 
 it utterly ! 
 Kha. Already are they instituting choirs 
 And dances to the Khalif, as of old 
 'T is chronicled thou bad'st them. 
 
 Dja. \_Aside.^ I abjure it ! 
 
 'Tis not mine — not for me ! 
 
 Kha. Why pour they wine 
 
 Flavored like honey and bruised mountain- 
 herbs. 
 Or wear those strings of sun-dried cedar- fruit ? 
 Oh, let me tell thee — Esaad, we supposed 
 Doting, is carried forth, eager to see 
 The last sun rise on the Isle : he can see now ! 
 The shamed Druse women never wept before : 
 They can look up when we reach home, they 
 
 say. 
 Smell ! — sweet cane, saved in LUith's breast 
 
 thus long — 
 Sweet ! — it grows wild in Lebanon. And I 
 Alone do nothing for thee ! 'Tis my office 
 Just to announce what well thou know'st — but 
 
 thus 
 Thou bidst me. At this self-same moment tend 
 The Prefect, Nuncio and the Admiral 
 Hither by their three searpaths : nor forget 
 Who were the trusty watchers ! — thou forget ? 
 Like me, who do forget that Anael bade . . . 
 Dja. [Aside\. Ay, Anael, Anael — is that 
 
 said at last ? 
 Louder than all, that would be said, I knew ! 
 What does abjnriiig mean, confessing mean, 
 'To the people ? Till that woman crossed my 
 
 path. 
 On went I, sole^ for my people's sake : 
 I saw her, and I then first saw myself, 
 And slackened pace : " If I should prove indeed 
 Hakeem — with Anael by ! " 
 
 Kha. \^Aside.'\ Ah, he is rapt ! 
 
 Dare I at such a moment break on him 
 Even to do my sister's bidding ? Yes : 
 The eyes are Djabal's and not Hakeem's yet, 
 Though but till I have spoken this, perchance. 
 
 Dja. {Aside.} To yearn to tell her, and yet 
 
 have no one , , 
 
 Great heart's word that will tell her ! 1 could 
 
 Sasp 
 ;ss one such word out, and die. _ 
 
 {Aloud.] You said 
 
 That Anael ... , , .^, 
 
 Kha. . . . Fain would see thee, speak with 
 thee, 
 Before thou change, discard this Djabal s shape 
 She knows, for Hakeem's shape she is to know. 
 Something to say that will not from her mind I 
 I know not what — " Let him but come ! ' she 
 said. 
 Dja. {Half apart.'] My nation— all my 
 Druses — how fare they ? 
 Those I must save, and suffer thus to save. 
 Hold they their posts ? Wait they their Khalif 
 too? 
 Kha. All at the signal pant to flock around 
 That banner of a brow ! 
 
 Dja. [Aside.] And when they flock, 
 
 Confess them this : and after, for reward. 
 Be chased with;howlings to her feet perchance ! 
 — Have the poor outraged Druses, deaf and 
 
 blind. 
 Precede me there, forestall my story there. 
 Tell it in mocks and jeers ! 
 
 I lose myself ! 
 Who needs a Hakeem to direct him now ? 
 I need the veriest child — why not this child ? 
 [_Tuming abruptly to Khalil. 
 
 You are a Druse too, Khalil ; you were nourished 
 Like Anael with our mysteries : if she 
 Could vow, so nourished, to love only one 
 Who should avenge the Druses, whence pro- 
 ceeds 
 Your silence ? Wlierefore made you no essay, 
 Who thus implicitly can execute 
 My bidding ? What have I done, you could not ? 
 Who, knowing more than Anael the prostration 
 Of our ouee lofty tribe, the daily life 
 Of this detested . . . 
 
 Does he come, you say. 
 This Prefect ? All 's in readiness ? 
 
 Kha. The sword, 
 
 The sacred robe, the Khalif's mystic tiar. 
 Laid up so long, are all disposed beside 
 The Prefect's chamber. 
 Dja. — Why did you despair ? 
 
 Kha. I know our nation's state ? Too surely 
 
 know. 
 As thou who speak'st to prove me ! Wrongs 
 
 like ours 
 Should wake revenge : but when I sought the 
 
 wronged 
 And spoke, — " The Prefect stabbed your son — 
 
 arise ! 
 Your daughter, while you starve, eats shameless 
 
 bread 
 In his pavilion — then arise ! " — my speech 
 Fell idly : 't was, " Be silent, or worse fare ! 
 Endure till time 's slow cycle prove complete ! 
 Who may'st thou be that takest on thee to 
 
 thrust 
 Into this peril — art thou Hakeem ? " No ! 
 Only a mission like thy mission renders 
 All these obedient at a breath, subdues 
 
THE RETURN OF THE DRUSi-S 
 
 203 
 
 Their private passions, brings their wills to one ! 
 Dja. You think so ? 
 
 Kha. Even now — when they have witnessed 
 Thy miracles — had 1 not threatened all 
 With Hakeem's vengeance, they would mar the 
 
 work. 
 And couch ere this, each with his special prize. 
 Safe in his dwelling, leaving our main hope 
 To perish. No ! When these have kissed thy 
 
 feet 
 At Lebanon, the past purged off, the present 
 Clear, — for the future, even Hakeem s mission 
 May end, and I perchance, or any youth, 
 IShall rule them thus renewed. — I tutor thee ! 
 Dja. And wisely. (He is Anael's brother, 
 pure 
 As Anael's self.) Go say, I come to her. 
 Haste ! I will follow you. [Khalil goes. 
 
 Oh, not confess 
 To these, the blinded multitude — confess, 
 Before at least the fortune of my deed 
 Half authorize its means ! Only to her 
 Let me confess my fault, who in my path 
 Curled up like incense from a Mage-king's 
 
 tomb 
 When he would have the wayfarer descend 
 Through the earth's rift and bear hid treasure 
 
 forth ! 
 How should child's-carelesaness prove man- 
 hood's Clime 
 Till now that I, whose lone youth hurried past. 
 Letting each joy 'scape for the Druses' sake. 
 At length recover in one Druse all joy ? 
 Were her brow brighter, her eyes richer, stUl 
 Would I confess ! On the gulf's verge I pause. 
 How could I slay the Prefect, thus and thus ? 
 Anael, be mine to guard me, not destroy ! lOoes. 
 {Enter Akael, and Maani who is assisting to array her 
 in the ancient dress of the Druses.) 
 Anael. Those saffron vestures of the tabret- 
 girls! 
 Conies Djabal, think you ? 
 Maani. Doubtless Djabal comes. 
 
 An. Dost thou snow-swathe thee kinglier, 
 Lebanon, 
 Than in my dreams ? — Nay, all the tresses off 
 My forehead ! Look I lovely so ? He says 
 That I am lovely. 
 
 Maa. Lovely : nay, that hangs 
 
 Awry. 
 
 An. You tell me how a khandjar hangs ? 
 The sharp side, thus, along the heart, see, 
 
 marks 
 The maiden of our class. Are you content 
 For Djabal as for me ? 
 Maa. Content, my child. 
 
 An. Oh mother, tell me more of him ! He 
 comes 
 Even now — tell more, fill up my soul with him ! 
 Maa. And did I not . . . yes, surely . . . 
 
 teUyouall? 
 An. Wnat will be changed in Djabal when 
 the Change 
 Arrives ? Which feature ? Not his eyes 1 
 
 Maa. 'T is writ 
 
 Our Hakeem's eyes rolled fire and clove the 
 
 dark 
 Superbly. 
 
 A n. Not his eyes ! His voice perhaps ? 
 Yet that 's no change ; for a grave current lived 
 
 — Grandly beneath the surface ever lived. 
 That, scattering, broke as in live silver spray 
 While . . . ah, the bliss ... he would dis- 
 course to me 
 
 In that enforced still fashion, word on word ! 
 
 'T is the old current which must swell through 
 that. 
 
 For what least tone, Maani, could I lose ? 
 
 'T is surely not his voice will change ! 
 
 — If Hakeem 
 
 Only stood by ! If Djabal, somehow, passed 
 
 Out of the radiance as from out a robe ; 
 
 Possessed, but was not it ! 
 
 He lived with you f 
 
 Well ' — and that mornii^ Djabal saw me first. 
 
 And heard me vow never to wed but one 
 
 Who saved my People — on that day . . . pro- 
 ceed ! 
 Maa. Once more, then : from the time of 
 his return 
 
 In secret, changed so since he left the Isle 
 
 That I, who screened our Emir's last of sons, 
 
 This Djabal, from the Prefect's massacre 
 
 — Who bade him ne'er forget the child he was, 
 
 — Who dreamed so long the youth he might be- 
 
 come — 
 I knew not in the man that child ; the man 
 Who spoke alone of hope to save our tribe. 
 How he had gone from land to land to save 
 Our tribe — allies were sure, nor foes to dread ; 
 And much he mused, days, nights, alone he 
 
 mused : 
 But never till that day when, pale and worn 
 As by a persevering woe, he cried 
 '*Is there not one Druse left me?" — and i 
 
 showed 
 The way to Khalil's and your hiding-place 
 From the abhorred eye of the Prefect here. 
 So that he saw you, heard you speak — tUl then, 
 Never did he announce — (how the moon seemed 
 To ope and shut, the while, above us both !) 
 
 — His mission was the mission promised us ; 
 The cycle had revolved ; all things renewing. 
 He was lost Hakeem clothed in flesh to lead 
 His children home anon, now veiled to work 
 Great purposes : the Druses now would change ! 
 
 An. And they have changed ! And obsta- 
 cles did sink. 
 And furtherances rose ! And round his form 
 Played fire, and music beat her angel wings ! 
 My people, let me more rejoice, oh more 
 For yon than for myself ! Did I but watch 
 Afar the pageant, feel our Khalif pass. 
 One of the throng, how proud were I — thougli 
 
 ne'er 
 Singled by Djabal's glance ! But to be chosen 
 His own from all, the most his own of all. 
 To be exalted with him, side by side. 
 Lead the exulting Druses, meet . . .ah, how 
 Worthily meet the maidens who await 
 Ever beneath the cedars — how deserve 
 This honor, in their eyes ? So bright are they 
 Who saffron-vested sound the tabret there. 
 The girls who throng there in my dream ! One 
 
 hour 
 And all is over : how shall I do ayght 
 
204 
 
 THE RETURN OF THE DRUSES 
 
 That may deserve next hour's exalting ? — 
 
 How ? — iSuddenly to JUaanx. 
 
 Mother, I am not worthy him ! I read it 
 Still in his eyes ! He stands as if to tell me 
 I am not, yet forbears. Why else revert 
 To one theme ever ? — how mere human ffifts 
 Suffice him in myself — whose worship fades, 
 Whose awe goes ever off at his approach, 
 As now, who when he comes . . . 
 (BjABAL etUers.) 
 
 Oh why is it 
 1 cannot kneel to you ? 
 
 Hja. Rather, 'tis I 
 
 Should kneel to you, my Anael ! 
 
 An. Even so ! 
 
 For never seem you — shall I speak the truth ? — 
 Never a God to me I 'T is the Man's hand, 
 Eye, voice ! Oh, do you veil these to our people. 
 Or but to me ? To them, I think, to them f 
 And brightness is their veil, shadow — my truth ! 
 You mean that I should never kneel to you 
 ■ — So, thus I kneel ! 
 Dja. ^Preventing her.] No — no! 
 
 {_Feeling the khandjar as he raises her. 
 
 Ha, have you chosen . . , 
 
 4". The khandjar with our ancient garb. 
 
 But, Djabal, 
 Change not, be not exalted yet ! Give time 
 That I may plan more, perfect more I My blood 
 Beats, beats ! 
 [Aside.] Oh, miist I then — since Loys leaves 
 
 us 
 Never to come again, renew in me 
 These doubts so near effaced already — must 
 I needs confess them now to Djabal ? -— own 
 That when I saw that stranger, heard his voice. 
 My faith fell, and the woeful thought flashed 
 
 first 
 That each effect of D jabal's presence, taken 
 For proof of more than human attributes 
 In him, by rae whose heart at his approach 
 Beat fast, whose brain while he was by swam 
 
 round. 
 Whose soul at his departure died away, 
 — That every such effect might have been 
 
 wrought 
 In other frames, though not in mine, by Loys 
 Or any merely mortal presence ? Doubt 
 Is fading fast : shall I reveal it now ? 
 How shall I meet the rapture presently. 
 With doubt unexpiated, undisclosed ? 
 Dja. [Aside.] Avow the truth ? I cannot ! 
 
 In what words 
 Avow that all she loved in me was false ? 
 ■ — Which yet has served that flower-like love of 
 
 hers 
 To climb by, like the clinging gourd, and clasp 
 With its divinest wealth of leaf and bloom.' 
 Could I take down the prop-work, in itself 
 So vile, yet interlaced and overlaid 
 With painted cups and fruitage — might these 
 
 still 
 Bask in the sun, unconscious their own strength 
 Of matted stalk and tendril had replaced 
 The old support thus silently withdrawn ! 
 But no; the beauteous fabric crushes too. 
 'T is not for my sake but for Anael's sake 
 I leave her soul this Hakeem where it leans. 
 
 Oh could I vanish from her, quit the Isle ! 
 And yet — a thought comes : here my work is 
 
 done 
 At every point ; the Druses must return — 
 Have convoy to their birth-place back, whoe'er 
 The leader be, myself or any Dmse — 
 Venice is pledged to that : 't is for myself. 
 For my own vengeance in the Prefect's death, 
 I stay now, not for them : to slay or spare 
 The Prefect, whom imports it save myself ' 
 He cannot bar their passage from the Isle ; 
 What would his death be but my own reward ? 
 Then, mine I will forego. It is foregone ! 
 Let mm escape with aU my House's blood ! 
 Ere he can reach land, Djabal disappears, 
 And Hakeem, Anael loved, shall, fresh as first, 
 Live in her memory, keeping her sublime 
 Above the world. She cannot touch that world 
 By ever knowing what I truly am. 
 Since Loys, — of mankind the only one 
 Able to link my present with my past. 
 My life in Europe with my Island life. 
 Thence, able to unmask me, — I 've disposed 
 Safely at last at Rhodes, and , . . 
 {Enter KsAlAL.) 
 
 Kha. Loys greets thee ! 
 
 Dja, Loys ? To drag me back ? It cannot 
 be ! 
 
 An. [Aside.] Loys ! Ah, doubt may not be 
 stifled so ! 
 
 Khai Can I have erred that thou so gazest ? 
 Yes, 
 I told thee not in the glad press of tidings 
 Of higher import, Loys is returned 
 Before the Prefect, with, if possible. 
 Twice the light-heartedness of old. As though 
 On some inauguration he expects. 
 To-day, the world's fate hung ! 
 
 Dja. — And asks for me ? 
 
 Kha. Thou knowest all things. Thee in 
 chief he greets. 
 But every Druse of us is to be happy 
 At his arrival, he declares : were Loys 
 Thou, Master, he could have no wider soul 
 To take us in with. How I love that Loys ! 
 
 Dja. [Aside.] Shame winds me with her 
 cether round and round ! 
 
 An. [Aside.] Loys? I take the trial! it 
 is meet, 
 The little I can do, be done ; that faith, 
 All I can offer, want no perfecting 
 Which my own act may compass. Ay, this 
 
 way 
 All may go well, nor that ignoble doubt 
 Be chased by other aid than mine. Advance 
 Close to my fear, weigh Loys with my Lord, 
 The mortal with the more dian mortal gifts ! 
 
 Dja. [Aside.] Before, there were so few 
 deceived! and now 
 There 's doubtless not one least Druse in the 
 
 Isle 
 But, having learned ray superhuman claims. 
 And calling me his Khalif-God, will clash 
 The whole truth out from Loys at first word ! 
 While Loys, for his part, will hold me up, 
 With a Frank's unimaginable scorn 
 Of such imposture, to my people's eyes ! 
 Could I but keep him longer yet awhile 
 
THE RETURN OF THE DRUSES 
 
 205 
 
 From them, amuse him here until 1 plan 
 How he and I at once may leave the Isle 1 
 Khalil I cannot part with from my side — 
 My only help in this emergency : 
 There '3 Anael ! 
 
 Ati. Please you? 
 
 Dja. Anael — none but she ! 
 
 [ To Anael.] I pass some minutes in the cham- 
 ber there, 
 Ere I see Loys : you shall speak with him 
 Until I join you. Khalil follows me. 
 
 An. [Aside.] As 1 divined : he bids me 
 save myself, 
 Offers me a probation — I accept ! 
 Let me see toys ! 
 
 Loys. [ Without.] Djabal ! 
 
 An. [Aside.] 'T is his voice. 
 
 The smooth Frank triiler with our people's 
 
 wrongs, 
 The self-complacent boy-inquirer, loud 
 On this and that inflicted tyranny, 
 — Aught serving to parade an ignorance 
 Of how wrong feels, inflicted ! Let me close 
 With what I viewed at distance : let myself 
 Probe this delusion to the core ! 
 
 Dja. He comes. 
 
 Khalil, along with me ! while Anael waits 
 Till I return once more — and but once more ! 
 
 ACT III 
 Anael and Lots. 
 
 An. Here leave me ! Here I wait another. 
 
 'Twas 
 For no mad jjrotestation of a love 
 Like this you say possesses you, I came. 
 Loys- Love ? how protest a love I dare not 
 
 feel? 
 Mad words may doubtless have escaped me : 
 
 you 
 Are here — I only feel you here ! 
 An. No more ! 
 
 Lays. But once again, whom could you love ? 
 
 1 dare, 
 Alas, say nothing of myself, who am 
 A Ejiight now, for when Knighthood we em- 
 brace. 
 Love we abjure : so, speak on safely : speak. 
 Lest I speak, and betray my faith ! And yet 
 To say your breathing passes through me, 
 
 changes 
 My blood to spirit, and my spirit to you, 
 As Heaven the saerificer's wine to it — 
 This is not to protest my love ! You said 
 You could love one . . , 
 
 An. One only ! We are bent 
 
 To earth — who raises up my tribe, I love ; 
 The Prefect bows us — who removes him ; we 
 Have ancient rights — who gives them back to 
 
 ns, 
 I love. Forbear me ! Let my hand go ! 
 
 Loys. Him 
 
 You could love only? Where is Djabal? 
 
 Stay I 
 [Aside.] Yet wherefore stay ? Who does this 
 
 but myself ? 
 Had I apprised her that I come to do 
 
 Just this, what more could she acknowledge ? 
 
 No, 
 She sees into my heart's core ! What is it 
 Feeds either cheek with red, as June some 
 
 rose? 
 Why turns she from me ? Ah fool, over-fond 
 To dream I could call up . . . 
 
 . . . What never dream 
 Yet feigned ! 'Tis love ! Oh Anael, speak to 
 
 me! 
 Djabal — 
 
 An. Seek Djabal by the Prefect's chamber 
 
 At noon ! [_Slle paces the room. 
 
 Loys. [Aside.] And am I not the Prefect 
 
 now ? 
 Is it my fate to be the only one 
 Able to win her love, the only one 
 Unable to accept her love ? The past 
 Breaks up beneath my footing : came I here 
 This morn as to a slave, to set her free 
 And take her thanks, and then spend day by 
 
 day 
 Content 'oeside her in the Isle ? What works 
 This knowledge in me now ? Her eye has 
 
 broken 
 The faint disguise away : for Anael's sake 
 I left the Isle, for her espoused the cause 
 Of the Druses, all for her I thought, till now, 
 To live without ! 
 
 — As I must live ! To-day 
 Ordains me Knight, forbids me . . . never shau 
 Forbid me to profess myself, heart, arm. 
 Thy soldier ! 
 An. _ Djabal you demanded, comes ! 
 
 Loys. iAside.]^ What wouldst thou, Loys ? 
 
 see him ? Naught beside 
 Is wanting: I have felt his voice a spell 
 From first to last. He brought me here, made 
 
 known 
 The Druses to me, drove me hence to seek 
 Redress for them ; and shall I meet him now, 
 When naught is wanting but a word of his, 
 To — what ? — induce me to spurn hope, faith, 
 
 pride, 
 Honor away, — to cast my lot among 
 His tribe, become a proverb in men's mouths. 
 Breaking my high pact of companionship 
 With those who graciously bestowed on me 
 The very opportunities I turn 
 Against them ! Let me not see Djabal now ! 
 An. The Prefect also comes ! 
 Loys. [Aside.] Him let me see, 
 
 Not Djabal ! Him, degraded at a word. 
 To soothe me, — to attest belief in me — 
 And after, Djabal ! Yes, ere I return 
 To her, the Nuncio's vow shall have destroyed 
 This heart's rebellion, and coerced this will 
 Forever. 
 
 Anael, not before the vows 
 Irrevocably fix me . . . 
 
 Let me fly ! 
 The Prefect, or I lose myself forever ! [Goes, 
 An. Yes, I am calm now ; just one way 
 
 remains — 
 One, to attest my faith in him : for, see, 
 I were quite lost else : Loys, Djabal, stand 
 On either side — two men ! 1 balance looks 
 And words, give Djabal a man's preference, 
 
206 
 
 THE RETURN OF THE DRUSES 
 
 Ko more. In Djabal, Hakeem is alssorbed ! 
 And for a lore like this, the God who saves 
 My race, selects me for his bride ? One way ! — 
 \Enter Djabal.) 
 Dja. [ To himself.^ No moment is to waste 
 
 then ; 't is resolved. 
 If Khalil may be. trusted to lead back 
 My Druses, and If Loys can be lured 
 Out of the Isle — if I procure his silence. 
 Or promise never to return at least, — 
 All 's over. Even now my bark awaits : 
 I reach the next wild islet and the next, 
 And lose myself beneath the sun forever. 
 And now, to Anael!. 
 An. Djabal, I am thine ! 
 
 Dja. Mine? Djabal's?— As if Hakeem 
 
 had not been ? 
 An. Not Djabal's ? Say first, do you read 
 
 my thoug-ht ? 
 Why need I speak, if you can read my thought ? 
 Dja. 1 do not, 1 have said a thousand times. 
 An. (My secret 's safe, I shall surprise him 
 
 yet!) 
 Djabal, I knew your secret from the first : 
 Djabal, when first I saw you . . . (by our porch 
 You leant, and pressed the tinkling veil away. 
 And one fringe fell behind your neck — I 
 
 see!) 
 , , . I knew you were not human, for I said 
 " This dim secluded house where the sea beats 
 Is heaven to me — my people's'huts are hell 
 To them ; this august form will follow me. 
 Mix with the waves his voice will, — I have 
 
 him ; 
 And they, the Prefect ! ' OK my happiness 
 Rounds to the full whether I choose or no ! 
 His eyes met mine, he was about to speak, 
 His hand ' grew damp — surely he meant to 
 
 say 
 He let me love him ; in that moment's bliss 
 I shall forgei' my people pine for home' — 
 They pass and tiiey repass with pallid eyes ! " 
 I vowed at once a certain vow ; this vow — 
 Not to embrace you till my tribe was saved, 
 Embrace me ! 
 Dja. \_Apart.'[ And she loved me ! Naught 
 
 remained 
 But that ! Nay, Anael, is the Prefect dead ? 
 An. Ah, you reproach me ! True, his death 
 
 crowns all, 
 I know — or should know : and I would do 
 
 much. 
 Believe ! but, death ! Oh, you, who have 
 
 known death,' 
 Would never doom the Prefect, were death 
 
 fearful 
 As we report ! 
 
 Death ! — a fire curls within us 
 From the foot's palm, and fills up to the brain, 
 Up, out, then shatters the whole bubble-shell 
 Of flesh, perchance ! 
 
 Death ! — witness, I would die, 
 Whate'er death be, would venture now to die 
 For Khalil, for Maani — what for thee ? 
 Nay, but embrace me, Djabal, in assurance 
 My vow will not be broken, for I must 
 Do something to attest my faith in you, 
 Be worthy you ! 
 
 Dja. [Avoiding her. 1 I come for that — to 
 say ' 
 
 Such an occasion is at hand : 't is like 
 I leave you — that we part, my Anael, — part 
 Forever ! 
 An. We part ? Just so ! I have Suc- 
 cumbed, — 
 I am, he thinks, unworthy — and naught leaili ; 
 Will serve than such approval of my faith. 
 Then, we part not ! Remains there no way- 
 short 
 Of that? Oh, not that! 
 
 Death ! — yet a hurt bird 
 Died in my hands; its eyes filmed — "Nay, it 
 
 I said, "will wake to-morrow well:" 'twas 
 
 dead. 
 Dja. I stand here and time fleets. Anael 
 
 — I come 
 To bid a last farewell to you : perhaps 
 We never meet again. But, ere the Prefect ■•■ 
 Arrive ... 
 
 {Enter Khalil, breathlessly.) 
 Kha. He's here! The Prefect! Twenty 
 
 guards. 
 No more — no sign he dreams of danger. All 
 Awaits thee only. Ayoob, Karshook, keep 
 Their posts — wait but the deed's accomplish- 
 ment 
 To join us with thy Druses to a man. 
 Still holds his course the Nuncio — near and 
 
 near 
 The fleet from Candia steering. 
 .Dja. [Aside.] AH is lost! 
 
 — Or won ? 
 
 Kha. And I have laid the sacred robe, 
 
 The sword, the head-tiar, at the porch — the 
 
 place 
 Commanded. Thou wilt hear the Prefect's 
 
 trumpet. 
 Dja. Then I keep Anael, — him then, past 
 
 recall, 
 I slay — 't is forced on me ! As I began 
 I must conclude — so be it ! 
 
 Kha. For the rest. 
 
 Save Loys, our foe's solitary sword. 
 All is so safe that ... I will ne'er entreat 
 Thy post again of thee : though danger none, 
 There must be glory only meet for thee 
 In slaying the Prefect ! 
 
 An. [Aside.] And 't is now that Djabal 
 
 Would leave me ! — in the glory meet for him ! 
 
 Dja. As glory, I would yield the deed to 
 
 you 
 Or any Druse ; what peril there may be, 
 I keep. [Aside.] All things conspire to hound 
 
 me on ! 
 Not now, my soul, draw back, at least ! Not 
 
 now ! 
 The course is plain, howe'er obscure all else. 
 Once offer this tremendous sacrifice. 
 Prevent what else will be irreparable. 
 Secure these transcendental helps, regain 
 The Cedars — then let aU dark clear itself ! 
 I slay him ! 
 
 r~?^- Anael, and no part for us ! 
 
 [^0 Dja.] Hast thou possessed her with . , . 
 Dm. [To An.] Whom speak you to ? 
 
THE RETURN OF THE DRUSES 
 
 207 
 
 Wliat is it you behold there ? Nay, this smile 
 Turns stranger. Shudder you? The man 
 
 must die, 
 As thousands of our race have died through 
 
 him. 
 One blow, and I discharge his weary soul 
 From the flesh that pollutes it ! Let him fill 
 Straight some new expiatory form, of earth 
 Or sea, the reptile or some aery thing : 
 What is there in hia death ? 
 
 An, My brother said. 
 
 Is there no part in it for us ? 
 
 Dja. For KhalU, — 
 
 The trumpet will announce the Nuncio's entry ; 
 Here, I shall find the Prefect hastening 
 In the Pavilion to receive him — here 
 I slay the Prefect ; meanwhile Ayoob leads 
 The Nuncio with his guards vrithin : once these 
 Secured in the outer hall, bid Ayoob bar 
 Entry or egress till I give the sign 
 Which waits the landmg of the argosies 
 You will announce to me : this double sign 
 That justice is performed and help arrived. 
 When Ayoob snail receive, but not before, 
 Let him throw ope the palace doors, admit 
 The Druses to behold their tyrant, ere 
 We leave forever this detested spot. 
 Go, Khalil, hurry all ! No pause, no pause 1 
 Whirl on the dream, secure to wake anon ! 
 
 Kha. What sign ? and who the bearer ? 
 
 Dja. Who shall show 
 
 My ring, admit to Ayoob. How she stands ! 
 Haveiuot . . . I must have some task for her. 
 Anael, not that way ! 'T is the Prefect's 
 
 chamber ! ^ 
 Anael, keep you the ring — give you the sign I 
 
 gt holds her safe amid the stir.) You will 
 e faithful? 
 
 An. [Taking the ring.] I would fain be wor- 
 thy. Hark ! [Trwmpei without. 
 Kha. He comes ! ' 
 Dja. . And I too come. 
 An. One word, but one I 
 Say,^hall you be exalted at the deed ? 
 Then? On the instant? 
 
 Dja. I exalted? What? 
 
 He, there — we, thus — our wrongs revenged, 
 
 our tribe 
 Set free ? Oh, then shall I, assure yourself. 
 Shall you, shall each of us, be in his death 
 £xalted I 
 Kha. He is here ! 
 
 Dja. . ' Away — away! IThey go. 
 
 , {ErUer the Viwe2ieT vnthGtVKB.OB^ and JjOys.) 
 The Prefect. [To Guards.] Back, I say, to 
 the galley every guard ! 
 That 's my sole care now ; see each bench re- 
 tains 
 Its complement of rowers ; I embark 
 0' the instant, since this Knight will have it 
 
 so. 
 Alas me ! Could you have the heart, my Leys ! 
 [To a Guard who whispers.] Oh, bring the holy 
 Nuncio here forthwith ! IThe Guards go. 
 Leys, a rueful sight, confess, to see 
 The gray discarded Prefect leave his post. 
 With tears i' the eye ! So, you are Prefect 
 now ? 
 
 You depose me — you succeed me ? Ha, ha ! 
 Lays. And dare you laugh, whom laughter 
 less becomes 
 Than yesterday's forced meekness we be- 
 held . . . 
 Pref. — When you so eloquently pleaded, 
 Leys, 
 For my cGsmissal from the post ? Ah, meek 
 With cause enough, consult the Nuncio else 1 
 And wish him the like meekness : for so stanch 
 A servant of the church can scarce have bought 
 His share in the Isle, and paid for it, hard 
 
 pieces 1 
 You 've my successor to condole with. Nuncio I 
 I shall be safe by then i' the galley. Leys 1 
 Lays, You make as you would tell me you 
 rejoice 
 To leave your scene of . . . 
 
 Pr^. Trade in the dear Druses ? 
 
 Blood and sweat traffic ? Spare what yesterday 
 We heard enough of ! Drove I in the Isle 
 A profitable game ? Learn wit, my son. 
 Which you '11 need shortly ! Did it never 
 
 breed 
 Suspicion in you, all was not pure profit. 
 When I, the insatiate . . . and so forth — was 
 
 bent 
 On having a partaker in my rule ? 
 Why did I yield this Nuncio half the gain. 
 If not that I might also shift — what on him ? 
 Half of the peril. Leys I 
 Loys. Peril ? 
 
 Pref. Hark you ! 
 
 I 'd love you if you 'd let me — ^this for reason. 
 You save my life at price of . . , well, say risk 
 At least, of yours. I came a long time since 
 To the Isle ; our Hospitallers bade me tame 
 These savage wizards, and reward myself' — , 
 Zioys. The Knights who so repudiate your 
 
 crime? 
 Pref. Loys, the Knights ! we doubtless un- 
 derstood 
 Ea«h other ; as for trusting to reward 
 From any friend beside myself , . . no, no ! 
 I clutched mine on the spot, when it was sweet. 
 And I had taste for it. I felt these wizards 
 Alive — was sure they were not on me, only 
 When I was on them : but with age comes 
 
 caution : 
 And stinging pleasures please less and sting 
 
 more. 
 Year by year, fear by fear '. Tbe girls were 
 
 brighter 
 Than ever ('faith, there 's yet one Anae! left, 
 I set my heart upon — Oh, prithee, let 
 That brave new sword lie still !) — These joys 
 
 looked brighter. 
 But silenter the town, too, as I passed. 
 With this alcove's delicious memories 
 Began to mingle visions of gaunt fathers, 
 Quick-eyed sons, fugitives from the mine, the 
 
 oar. 
 Stealing to catch me. Brief, when I began 
 To quake with fear — (I think I hear the Chap- 
 ter 
 Solicited to let me leave, now all 
 Worth staying for was gained and gone!) — I 
 say, 
 
208 
 
 THE RETURN OF THE DRUSES 
 
 Just wlien, for the remainder of my life, 
 All methods of escape seemed lost — that then 
 Up should a young hot-headed Loys spiing, 
 Talk very long and loud, — in fine, compel 
 The Knights to break their whole arrangement, 
 
 have me 
 Home for pure shame — from this saf ehold of 
 
 mine 
 Where but ten thousand Druses seek my life. 
 To my -wild place of banishment, San Gines 
 By Murcia, where my three fat manors lying. 
 Purchased by gains here and the Nuncio's gold. 
 Are all I have to guard me, — that such f ortime 
 Should fall to me, I hardly could expect. 
 Therefore I say, I 'd love you, 
 
 Loys. Can it be ? 
 
 I play into your hands then ? Oh no, no ! 
 The V enerable Chapter, the Great Order 
 Sunk o' the sudden into fiends of the pit ? 
 But I will back — vrill yet unveil you ! 
 
 Pref. Me ? 
 
 To whom ? — perhaps Sir Galeas, who in Chapter 
 Shook his white head thrice — and some dozen 
 
 times 
 My hand next morning shook, for value paid 1 
 To that Italian saint. Sir Cosimo ? — 
 Indignant at my wringing year by year 
 A thousand bezants from the coral divers. 
 As you recounted J felt the saint aggrieved 
 Well might he — I allowed for his half-share 
 Merely one hundred ! To Sir . . , 
 
 Loys. See ! you dare 
 
 Inculpate the whole Order ; yet should I, 
 A youth, a sole voice, have the power to change 
 Their evU way, had they been firm in it ? 
 Answer me ! 
 
 Pref. Oh, the son of Bretagne's Duke, 
 
 And that son's wealth, the father's influence, 
 
 too, 
 And the young arm, we '11 even say, my Loys, 
 — The fear of losing or diverting these 
 Into another channel, by gainsaying 
 A novice too abruptly, could not influence 
 The Order! You might join, for aught they 
 
 cared. 
 Their red-cross rivals of the Temple I Well, 
 I thank you for my part, at all events. 
 Stay here till they withdraw you ! You '11 in- 
 habit 
 My palace — sleep, perchance, in the alcove 
 Wnither I go to meet our holy friend. 
 Good ! and now disbelieve me if you can, — 
 This is the first time for long years I enter 
 Thus Uifts the arras^ without feeling just as if 
 
 I lifted 
 the lid up of my tomb. 
 
 Loys. They share his crime ! 
 
 God's punishment will overtake you yet. 
 Pref. Thank you it does not ! Pardon this 
 
 last flash ; 
 I bear a sober visage presently 
 With the disinterested Nuncio here — 
 His purchase-money safe at Murcia, too I 
 Let me repeat— for the first time, no draught 
 Coming as from a sepulchre salutes me. 
 When we next meet, this folly may have passed, 
 We '11 hope. Ha, ha ! iGoes through trie arms. 
 Loys, Assure me but ... he 's gone ! 
 
 He could not lie. Then what have I escaped, 
 L who had so nigh given up happiness 
 Forever, to be linked with him and them ! 
 Oh, opportunest of discoveries ! I 
 Their Knight ? I utterly renounce them aU ! 
 Hark! What, he meets by this the Nuncio i" 
 
 Yes 
 The same liysena groan-like laughter ! Quick — 
 ToDjabal! I am one of them at last. 
 These simple-hearted Druses — Anael s tnbe I 
 Diabal ! She 's mine at last. Djabal, I say ! 
 ■" IGoes. 
 
 ACT IV 
 
 Enter Djasai.. 
 
 Dja. Let me but slay the Prefect. The end 
 now! 
 To-morrow will be time enough to pry 
 Into the means I took : suffice, they served. 
 Ignoble as they were, to hurl revenge 
 ■ftue to its object. {.Seeing tlie robe, etc. disposed. 
 
 Mine should never so 
 Have hurried to accomplishment ! Thee, 
 
 Djabal, 
 Far other mood befitted ! Calm the Robe 
 Should clothe this doom's awarder ! 
 
 [Taking the robe.] _ Shall I dare 
 
 Assume my nation's Robe V I am at least 
 A Druse again, chill Europe's poUct 
 Drops from me : I dare take the Kobe. Why 
 
 not 
 The Tiar ? I rule the Druses, and what more 
 Betokens it than rule ? — yet — yet — 
 
 ILays down the tiar. 
 [Footsteps in the alcove.] He comes ! 
 
 [.Takivg the sword. 
 If the Sword serve, let the Tiar lie ! So, feet 
 Clogged with the blood of twenty years can 
 
 fall 
 Thus lightly ! Round me, all ye ghosts ! He 'U 
 
 lift . . . 
 Which arm to push the arras wide ? — or both ? 
 Stab from the neck down to the lieart — there 
 
 stay! 
 Near he comes — nearer — the next footstep! 
 Now! 
 [_As he dashes aside the arras, Anael is discovered. 
 Ha ! Ana«l ! Nay, my Anael, can it be ? 
 Heard you the trumpet ? I must slay him 
 
 here. 
 And here you ruin all. Why speak you not ? 
 Anael, the Prefect comes! [Anael screams,] 
 
 So slow to feel 
 'T is not a sight for you to look upon ? 
 A moment's work — but such work ! Till yon 
 
 go, _ 
 I must be idle — idle, I lisk all ! 
 
 IPointing to her hair. 
 Those locks are well, and you are beauteous 
 
 thus. 
 But with the daf^er 'tis, I have to do! 
 An. With mine ! 
 Dja. Blood — Anael? 
 
 An. Djabal, 'tis thy deed! 
 
 It must be ! I had hoped to claim it mine — 
 Be worthy thee — but I must needs confess 
 
THE RETURN OF THE DRUSES 
 
 209 
 
 'T was not I, but thyaelf . . . not I have . . . 
 
 Djabal! 
 Speak to me ! 
 J)ja. Oh my pmiishment ! 
 
 An, Speak to me 
 
 While I can speak ! touch me, despite the blood ! 
 When the command passed from thy soul to 
 
 mine, 
 I went, fire leading me, muttering of thee. 
 And the approaching exaltation, — "make 
 One sacrifice ' " I said, — and he sat there. 
 Bade me approach ; and, as I did approach, 
 Thy fire ■with music burst into my brain. 
 *T was but a moment's work, thou saidst — per- 
 chance 
 It may have been so ! Well, it is thy deed ! 
 Dja. It is my deed ! 
 
 An. His blood all this ! — this ! and . . . 
 And more ! Sustain me, Djabal ! Wait not — 
 
 now 
 Let flash thy glory ! Change thyself and me ! 
 It must be ! Ere the Druses flock to us ! 
 At least confirm me ! Djabal, blood gushed 
 
 forth — 
 He was our tyrant — but I looked he 'd fall 
 Prone as asleep — why else is death called sleep ? 
 Sleep? He bent o'er his breast ! 'Tis sin, I 
 
 know, — 
 Punish me, Djabal, but wilt thou let him V 
 Be it thou that punishest, not he — who creeps 
 On his red breast — is here ! 'Tis the small 
 
 groan 
 Of a child — no worse ! Bestow the new life, 
 
 then ! 
 Too swift it cannot be, too strange, surpassing ! 
 [^Following him up as he retreats. 
 Now! Change us both! Change me and 
 
 change thou ! 
 Dja. [Sinks on his knees.'] Thus ! 
 Behold my change! You have done nobly. 
 
 An. Can Hakeem kneel ? 
 Dja. No Hakeem, and scarce Djabal ! 
 
 I have dealt falsely, and this woe is come. 
 No — hear me ere scorn blast me ! Once and 
 
 ever, 
 The deed is mine ! Oh think upon the past ! 
 An. [To herself.'] Did I strike once, or twice, 
 
 or many times V 
 Dja. I came to lead my tribe where, bathed 
 in glooms, 
 Doth Bahumid the Renovator sleep : 
 Anael, I saw my tribe : I said, "Without 
 A miracle this cannot be " — I said 
 ' Be there a miracle ! " — for I saw you ! 
 An. His head lies south the jjortal ! 
 Dja. — Weighed with this 
 
 The general good, how could I choose my 
 
 own? 
 What matter was my purity of soul ? 
 Little by little I engaged myself — 
 Heaven would accept me for its instrument, 
 I hoped : I said Heaven had accepted me ! 
 An. Is it this blood breeds dreams in me ? 
 — Who said 
 You were not Hakeem 'I And your miracles — 
 The fire that plays innocuous rourd your form ? 
 {Again changing her whole manner. 
 
 Ah, thou wouldst try me — thou art Hakeem 
 
 stiU! 
 Dja. Woe — woe! As if the Druses of the 
 
 Mount 
 (Scarce Arabs, even there, but here, in the Isle, 
 Beneath their former selves) should comprehend 
 The subtle lore of Europe ! A few secrets 
 That would not easily affect the meanest 
 Of the crowd there, could wholly subjugate 
 The best of our poor tribe. Again that eye V 
 An. [After a pause springs to his neck.] Djabal, 
 
 in this there can be no deceit ! 
 Why, Djabal, were you human only, — think, 
 Maani is but human, Khalil human. 
 Leys is human even — did their words 
 Haunt me, their looks pursue me '/ Shame on 
 
 you 
 So to have tried me ! Bather, shame on me 
 So to need trying ! Could I, with the Prefect 
 And the blood, there — could I see only youV 
 
 — Hang by your neck over this gulf of blood ? 
 Speak, I am saved ! Speak, Djabal ! Am I 
 
 saved ? 
 lAs Djabal slowly unclasps her arms^ and puts her 
 
 sil&tily from him. 
 Hakeem would save me ! Thou art Djabal ! 
 
 Crouch ! 
 Bow to the dust, thou basest of our kind ! 
 The pile of thee, I reared up to the cloud — 
 Full, midway, of our fathers' trophied tombs, 
 Based on the living rock, devoured not by 
 The unstable desert's jaws of sand, — falls 
 
 prone ! 
 Fire, nmsic, quenched : and now thou liest there 
 A ruin, obscene creatures will moan through ! 
 
 — Let us come, Djabal ! 
 
 Dja. Whither come ? 
 
 An. At once — 
 
 Lest so it grow intolerable. Come ! 
 Will I not share it with thee ? Best at once ! 
 So, feel less pain ! Let them deride, — thy tribe 
 Now trusting in thee, — Leys shall deride I 
 Come to them, hand in hand, with me ! 
 
 Dja. Where come ? 
 
 An. Where ? — to the Druses thou hast 
 wronged ! Confess, 
 Now that the end is gained — (I love thee now — ) 
 That thou hast so deceived them — (perchance 
 
 love thee 
 Better than ever !) Come, receive their doom 
 Of infamy ! Oh, best of all I love thee ! 
 Shame with the man, no triumph with the God, 
 Be mine ! Come ! 
 
 Dja. Never ! More shame yet ? and why ? 
 ^Vhy ? You have called this deed mine — it is 
 
 mine ! 
 And with it I accept its circumstance. 
 How can I longer strive with fate ? The past 
 Is past ; m.y false life shall henceforth show 
 
 true. 
 Hear me ! The argosies touch land by this ; 
 They bear us to fresh scenes and happier skies ; 
 What if we reign together ? — if we keep 
 Our secret for the Druses' good ? — by means 
 Of even their superstition, plant in them 
 New life ? 1 learn from Europe ; all who seek 
 Man's good must awe man, by such means an 
 these. 
 
210 
 
 THE RETURN OF THE DRUSES 
 
 We two will be divine to them — we are ! 
 
 All great works in this world spring from the 
 
 ruins 
 Of greater projects — ever, on onr earth, 
 Babels men block out, Babylons they build, 
 i wrest the weapon from your hand ! I claim 
 The deed ! Retire ! You have my ring — you bar 
 AU access to the Nuncio till the forces 
 From Venice land ! 
 An. Thou wilt feign Hakeem then ? 
 
 Dja,' [Putting the Tiara of Hakeem on his 
 
 head.] And from this moment that I 
 
 dare ope wide 
 Eyes that till now refused to see, begins 
 My true dominion ; for I know myself. 
 And what am I to personate. No word ? 
 
 [Ahael goes. 
 'Tis come on me at last ! His blood on her — 
 What memories wUl follow that ! Her eye. 
 Her fierce distorted lip and ploughed black 
 
 brow ! 
 Ah, fool ! Has Europe then so poorly tamed 
 The Syrian blood from out thee ? Thou, pre- 
 sume 
 To work in this foul earth by means not foul ? 
 Scheme, as for heaven, — but, on the earth, be 
 
 glad 
 If a least ray like heaven's be left thee ! 
 
 Thus 
 I shall be calm — in readiness — no way 
 Surprised. W noise without. 
 
 This should be Khalil and my Jjruses. 
 Venice is come then ! Thus I grasp thee, sword ! 
 Druses, 'tis Hakeem saves yon! In! Behold 
 your Prefect ! 
 
 {Enter LoYs. Djabal hides the khandjar in his robe.) 
 Lays. Oh, well found, Djabal ! — but no time 
 
 for words. 
 Tou know who waits there ? 
 
 [^Pointing to the alcove. 
 Well ! — and that 't is there 
 He meets the Nuncio? Well? Now, a surprise — 
 He there — 
 Dja. I know — 
 
 Loys. — is now no mortal's lord, 
 
 Is absolutely powerless — call him, dead — 
 He is no longer Prefect — you are Prefect ! 
 Oh, shrink not ! I do nothing in the dark. 
 Nothing unworthy Breton blood, believe I 
 I understood at once your urgency 
 That I should leave this isle for Rhodes ; I felt 
 What you were loath to speak — your need of 
 
 help. 
 I have fulfilled the task, that earnestness 
 Imposed on me : have, face to face, confronted 
 The Prefect in full Chapter, charged on him 
 The enormities of his long rule ; he stood 
 Mute, offered no defence, no crime denied. 
 On which, I spoke of you, and of your tribe. 
 Your faith so like our own, and all you urged 
 Of old to me — I spoke, too, of your goodness. 
 Your patience — brief, I hold henceforth the 
 
 Isle 
 In charge, am nominally lord, — but you. 
 You are associated in my rule — 
 Are the true Prefect ! Ay, such faith had they 
 In my assurance of your loyalty 
 (For who insults an imbecile old man ?) 
 
 That we assume the Prefecture this hour I 
 You gaze at me ? Hear greater wonders yet— 
 I cast down all the fabric I have buUt ! 
 These Knights, I was prepared to worship . . . 
 
 but 
 Of that another time ; what 's now to say, 
 Is — I shall never be a Knight ! Oh, Djabal, 
 Here first I throw all prejudice aside. 
 And call you brother ! I am Druse like you : 
 My wealth, my friends, my power, are whoUy 
 
 yours, 
 Your people's, which is now my people : for 
 There is a maiden of your tribe, I love — 
 She loves me — Khalil's sister — 
 I)ja. Anael? 
 
 Loys. Start you ? 
 
 Seems what I say, unknightly ? Thus it chanced : 
 When first I came, a novice, to the isle . . . 
 {Enter one of the Nuncio's, Guards /t-otti the alcove.) 
 Guard. Oh horrible ! Sir Loys ! Here is Loys ! 
 And here — [^Others enter from the alcove. 
 
 [Pointing to Djabal.] Secure him, bind him — 
 this is he ! [.They sm"round Djabaii. 
 
 Loys. Madmen — what is 't you do ? Stand 
 from my friend. 
 And tell me ! 
 
 Guard. Thou canst have no part in this — 
 Surely no part ! But slay him not ! The Nuncio 
 Commanded, slay him not ! 
 Loys. Speak, or . . . 
 
 Guard. The Prefect 
 
 Lies murdered there by him thou dost embrace. 
 Loys. By Djabal ? Miserable fools ! How 
 Djabal ? 
 \_A Guard lifts Djabal's robe ; Djabal flings down the 
 Utandjar. 
 Loys. {.After a jjoMse.] Thou hast received 
 some insult worse than all. 
 Some outrage not to be endured — 
 
 [To the Guards.] Stand back ! 
 He is my friend — more than my friend ! Thou 
 
 hast 
 Slain him upon that provocation ! 
 
 Guard. No ! 
 
 No provocation ! 'T is a long devised 
 Conspiracy : the whole tribe is involved. 
 He is their Khalif — 't is on that pretence — 
 Their mighty Khalif who died long ago. 
 And now comes back to life and light again I 
 All is just now revealed, I know not how, 
 By one of his confederates — who, struck 
 With horror at this nmrder, first apprised 
 The Nuncio. As 't was said, we find this Djabal 
 Here where we take him. 
 
 Dja. [Aside.'] Who broke faith with me ? 
 ioys. [To Djabal.] Hear'stthou? Speak! 
 Till thou speak I keep off these. 
 Or die with thee. Deny this story 1 'Thou 
 A Khalif, an impostor ? Thou, ray friend, 
 Whose tale was of an inoffensive tribe. 
 With . . . but thou know'st — on that tale's 
 
 truth I pledged 
 My faith before the Chapter : what art thou ? 
 Dja. Loys, I am as thou hast heard. All 's 
 true ! 
 No more concealment ! As these tell thee, all 
 Was long since planned. Our Druses are enough 
 To crush this handful : the Venetians land 
 
THE RETURN OF THE DRUSES 
 
 Even now in our behalf. Loya, we part ! 
 Thou, serving much, wonldat fain have served 
 
 me more ; 
 It might not be. I thank thee. As thou hear- 
 
 est. 
 We are a separated tribe : farewell ! 
 Lays. Oh, where will truth be found now ? 
 
 Canst thou so 
 Belie the Druses ? Do they share thy crime ? 
 Those thou professest of our Breton stock. 
 Are partners with thee ? Why, I saw but 
 
 now 
 Khalil, my friend — he spoke with me — no 
 
 word 
 Of this ! and Anael —whom I love, and who 
 Loves me — she spoke no word of this ! 
 
 I)ja. Poor boy ! 
 
 Anael, who loves thee ? Khalil, fast thy friend 1 
 We, offsets from a wandering Count of Dreux ? 
 No : older than the oldest, prinoelier 
 Than Europe's princeliest race, our tribe : 
 
 enough 
 For thine, that on our simple faith we found 
 A monarchy to shame your monarchies 
 At their own trick and secret of success. 
 The child of this our tribe shall laugh upon 
 The palace-step of him whose life ere night 
 Is forfeit, as that child shall know, and yet ' 
 Shall laugh there ! What, we Druses wait for- 
 sooth 
 The kind interposition of a boy 
 
 — Can only save ourselves if thou concede ? 
 
 — Khalil admire thee ? He is my right hand, 
 My delegate ! — Anael accept thy love ? 
 
 She is my bride ! 
 
 Lays. Thy bride ? She one of them ? 
 
 Dja. My bride ! 
 
 Lays. And she retains her glorious eyes ! 
 
 She, with those eyes, has shared this miscreant's 
 
 guilt! 
 Ah — who but she directed me to find 
 Djabal within the Prefect's chamber ? Khalil 
 Bade me seek Djabal there, too ! All is truth ! 
 What spoke the Prefect worse of them than 
 
 this? 
 Did the Church ill to institute long since 
 Perpetual warfare with such serpentry ? 
 And I — have I desired to shift my part, 
 Evade my share in her design ? 'T is well ! 
 
 Bja. Leys, I wronged thee -^ but unwittingly : 
 I never thought there was in thee a virtue 
 That could attach itself to what thou deem- 
 
 est 
 A race below thine own. I wronged thee, Loys, 
 But that is over : all is over now. 
 Save the protection I ensure against 
 My people's anger. By their KhaJif 's side. 
 Thou art secure and may'st depart : so, come ! 
 
 Lays. Thy side? I take protection at thy 
 hand? 
 
 {Enter other Guards.) 
 
 Guards. Fly with him ! Fly, Sir Loys ! 'T is 
 too true ! 
 And only by his side thou may'st escape ! 
 The whole tribe is in fuU revolt : they flock 
 About the palace — will be here — on thee — 
 And there are twenty of us, we the Guards 
 O' the Nuncio, to withstand them ! Even we 
 
 Had stayed to meet our death in ignorance, 
 But that one Druse, a single faithful Druse, 
 Made known the horror to the Nuncio. Fly I 
 The Nuncio stands aghast. At least let ns 
 Escape thy wrath, O Hakeem ! We are naught 
 In thy tribe's persecution! [To Lots.] Keep 
 
 by him ! 
 They hail him Hakeem, their dead Prince re- 
 turned : 
 He is their God, they shout, and at his beck 
 Are life and death ! 
 
 [Loys, springing at the khandjar Djabal Twd thrown 
 down., seizes him by the throat. 
 
 Thus by his side am I ! 
 Thus I resume my knighthood and its war- 
 fare, 
 Thus end thee, miscreant, is thy pride of place ! 
 Thus art thou caught. Without, thy dupes may 
 
 cluster. 
 Friends aid thee, foes avoid thee, — thou art 
 
 Hakeem, 
 How say they ? — God art thou ! but also here 
 Is the least, youngest, meanest the Church 
 
 calls 
 Her servant, and his single arm avails 
 To aid her as she lists. I rise, and thou 
 Art crushed ! Hordes of thy Druses flock with- 
 out: 
 Here thou hast me, who represent the Cross, 
 Honor and Faith, 'gainst HeU, Mahound and 
 
 thee. 
 Die ! [DjABAii remains calm.] Implore my 
 
 mercy, Hakeem, that my scorn 
 May help me ! Nay, I cannot ply thy trade ; 
 I am no Druse, no stabber : and thine eye. 
 Thy form^ are too much as they were — my 
 
 friend 
 Had such ! Speak ! Beg for mercy at my foot ! 
 [Djabal still silent. 
 Heaven could not ask so much of me — not, 
 
 sure. 
 So much ! I cannot kill him so ! 
 
 [After a pause.] Thou art 
 Strong in thy cause, then — dost outbrave us, 
 
 then. 
 Heardst thou that one of thine accomplices, 
 Thy very people, has accused thee ? Meet 
 His charge ! Thou hast not even slain the Pre- 
 fect 
 As thy own vile creed warrants. Meet that 
 
 Druse ! 
 Come with me and disprove him — be thou tried 
 By him, nor seek appeal ! Promise me this, 
 Or I will do God's olfice ! What, shalt thou 
 Boast of assassins at thy beck, yet truth 
 Want even an executioner ? Consent, 
 Or I will strike — look in my face — I will ! 
 Dja. Give me again my khandiar, if thou 
 darest ! [I^*s gives U. 
 
 Let but one Druse accuse me, and I plunge 
 This home. A Druse betray me ? Let us go ! 
 [Aside.] Who has betrayed me ? 
 
 [^Shonts without. 
 
 Hearest thou ? I hear 
 No plainer than long years ago I heard 
 That shout — but in no dream now ! They re- 
 turn ! 
 Wilt thou be leader with me, Loys ? Well 1 
 
THE RETURN OF THE DRUSES 
 
 ACT V 
 
 The uninitiated BrueeB, filling the hall tumultuouslpj 
 and speaking together. 
 
 Here flock we, obeying the summons. Lo, 
 Hakeem hath appeared, and the Prefect is 
 dead, and we return to Lebanon ! My manu- 
 facture of goats' fleece must, I doubt, soon fall 
 away there. Come, old Nasif — link thine arm 
 in mine — we fight, if needs be. Come, what 
 is a great fight-word? — "Lebanon?" (My 
 daughter — my daughter!) — But is Khalil to 
 have the office of Hamza ? — Nay, rather, if he 
 be wise, the monopoly of henna and cloves. 
 Where is Hakeem ? — The only prophet I ever 
 saw, prophesied at Cairo once, in my youth : a 
 little black Copht, dressed all in black too, 
 with a great stripe of yellow cloth flapping 
 down behind him like the baok-fia of a water- 
 serpent. Is this he ? Biamrallah ! Biamreh ! 
 Hakeem ! 
 
 {Enter the NuHCio, with Guards.) 
 
 Nuncio. [To his Attendants.] Hold both, the 
 sorcerer and this accomplice 
 Ye talk of, that accuseth him ! And tell 
 Sir Loys he is mine, the Church's hope : 
 Bid him approve himself our Knight indeed ! 
 Lo, this black disembogruing of the Isle ! 
 [To the Druses.] Ah, children, what a sight for 
 
 these old eyes 
 That kept themselves alive this voyage through 
 To smile their very last on yon ! I came 
 To gather one and all you wandering sheep 
 Into ray fold, as though a father came . . . 
 As though, in coming, a father should . . . 
 
 \To his Guards.] (Ten, twelve 
 — Twelve guards of you, and not an outlet? 
 
 None? 
 The wizards stop each avenue ? Keep close !) 
 [To the Druses.] As if one came toason's house, 
 
 I say, 
 So did I come — no guard with me — to find . . . 
 Alas — alas ! 
 
 A Druse. Who is the old man ? 
 
 Another. Oh, ye are to shout ! 
 
 Children, he styles you. 
 
 Druses. Ay, the Prefect 's slain ! 
 
 Glory to the Khalif, our Father ! 
 
 Nuncio. Even so ! 
 
 I find (ye prompt aright) your father slain ! 
 While most he plotted for your good, that father 
 (Alas, how kind, ye never knew) — lies slain ! 
 [Aside.] (And hell's worm gnaw the glozing 
 
 knave — with me, 
 For being duped by his cajoleries ! 
 Are these the Christians? These the docUe 
 
 crew 
 My bezants went to make me Bishop o'er ?) 
 [To his Attendants, who whisper.] What say ye 
 
 does this wizard style himself ? 
 Hakeem ? Biamrallah ? The third Fatemite ? 
 What is this jargon ? He — the insane Khalif, 
 Dead near three hundred years ago, come back 
 In flesh and blood again ? 
 
 Druses. He mutters ! Hear ye ? 
 
 He is blaspheming Hakeem. The old man 
 Is our dead Prefect'"" friend. Tear him I 
 
 Nuncio. Ye dare not ! 
 
 I stand here with my five-and-seventy years. 
 The Patriarch's power behind me, God's above ! 
 Those years have witnessed sin enough ; ere now 
 Misguided men arose against their lords. 
 And found excuse ; but ye, to be enslaved 
 By sorceries, cheats — alas I the same tricks, 
 
 tried 
 On my poor children in this nook o' the earth, 
 Could triumph, that have been successively 
 Exploded, laughed to scorn, all nations through : 
 " Momaioi, loudaioitekai proselutoi, 
 Cretes and Arabians," — you are duped the 
 
 last. 
 Said I, refrain from tearing me ? I pray ye 
 Tear me ! Shall I return to teU the Patriarch 
 That so much love was wasted — every gift 
 Rejected, from his benison I brought, 
 Down to the galley-full of bezants, sunk 
 An hour since at the harbor's mouth, by that . . . 
 That . . . never will I speak his hated name ! 
 [To his Servants.] What was the name his fel- 
 low slip-fetter 
 Called their arch-wizard by? [They whisper.] 
 Oh, DjabaJ was 't ? 
 Druses. But how a sorcerer ? false wherein ? 
 Nuncio. (Ay, Djabal!) 
 
 How false? Ye know not, Djabal has con- 
 fessed . . . 
 Nay, that by tokens found on him we learn . . , 
 What I sailed hither solely to divulge — 
 How by his spells the demons were allured 
 To seize you : not that these be aught save lies 
 And mere illusions. Is this clear ? I say. 
 By measures such as these, he would have led 
 
 you 
 Into a monstrous ruin : follow ye ? 
 Say, shall ye perish for his sake, my sons ? 
 Druses. Hark ye ! 
 
 Nuncio. — Be of one privilege amerced ? 
 
 No ! Infinite the Patriarch's mercies are ! 
 No ! With the Patriarch's license, still I bid 
 Tear him to pieces who misled you ! Haste ! 
 
 Druses. The old man's beard shakes, and 
 his eyes are white fire ! After all, I know no- 
 thing of Djabal beyond what Karshook says ; 
 he knows but what Khalil says, who knows 
 just what Djabal says himself. Now, the little 
 Copht Prophet, I saw at Cairo in my youth, 
 began by promising each bystander three full 
 measures of wheat . . . 
 
 (Enter Khalu. and the initiated Druses.) 
 Kka. Venice and her deliverance are at hand: 
 Their fleet stands through the harbor! Hath 
 
 he slain 
 The Prefect yet ? Is Djabal's change come yet ? 
 Nuncio. [To Attendants.] What's tliis of 
 Venice ? Who 's this boy ? 
 
 [Attendants whisper.] One Khalil ? 
 Djabal's accomplice, Loys called, but now, 
 Tm ™tI5ruse, save Djabal's self, to fear ? 
 [To the Druses.] I cannot hear ye with these 
 
 aged ears ; 
 Is it so ? Ye would have my troops assist ? 
 Doth he abet him in his sorceries ? 
 Down with the cheat, guards, as my children 
 bid ! 
 iThey spring at Khalil ; as he teats them baei, 
 
THE RETURN OF THE DRUSES 
 
 213 
 
 Stay ! No more bloodshed ! Spare deluded 
 
 youth ! 
 Whom seek'at thou ? (I will teach hini) — 
 
 'whom, my child ? 
 Thou know'st not wh^t these know, what these 
 
 declare. 
 I am an old man, aa thou seest — have done 
 With life ; and what shotild move me but the 
 
 truth? 
 Art thou the only fond one of thy tribe ? 
 'T is I interpret for thy tribe ! 
 
 Kha. Oh, this 
 
 Is the expected Nuncio ! Druses, hear — 
 Endure ye this ? Unworthy to partake 
 The glory Hakeem gains you I While I speak. 
 The ships touch land : who makes for Lebanon r 
 They plant the wincfed lion in these halls ! 
 Nuncio. [Aside7\ If it be true ! Venice ? 
 
 Oh, never true ! 
 Yet Venice would so gladly thwart our Knights, 
 So fain get footing here, stand close by Rhodes ! 
 Oh, to be duped this way ! 
 
 Kha. Ere he appear 
 
 And lead you gloriously, repent, I say ! 
 Nuncio. [Aside.^ Nor any way to stretch 
 
 the arch-wizard stark 
 Ere the Venetians come ? Cut ofF the head, 
 The trunk were easily stilled. [To the Druses.] 
 
 He ? Bring him forth ! 
 Since so you needs will have it, I assent ! 
 You 'd judge him, say you, on the spot ? — 
 
 confound 
 The sorcerer in his very circle ? Where 's 
 Our short black-beard ed sallow friend who swore 
 He 'd earn the Patriarch's guerdon by one stab ? 
 Bring Djabal forth at once ! 
 
 Druses. Ay, bring him forth ! 
 
 The Patriarch drives a trade in oil and silk. 
 And we 're the Patriarch's children — true 
 
 men, we ! 
 Where is the glory ? Show us all the glory 1 
 Kha. You dare not so insult him ! What, 
 
 not see . . .1 
 (I tell thee, Nuncio, these are uninstructed, 
 Untnisted— they know nothing of our Khalif !) 
 — Not see that fi he lets a doubt arise 
 'T is but to give yourselves the chance of 
 
 seeming 
 To have some influence in your own return ! 
 That all may say ye would have trusted him 
 Without the all-convincing glory — ay. 
 And did I Embrace the occasion, friends ! For, 
 
 think — 
 What wonder when his change takes place ? 
 
 But now 
 For your sakes, he should not reveal himself. 
 No — could I ask and have, I would not ask 
 The change yet ! 
 
 {Enter Djabal arid Lots.) 
 
 Spite of all, reveal thyself ! 
 I had said, pardon them for me — for Anael — 
 For our sakes pardon these besotted men — 
 Ay, for thine own — they hurt not thee ! Yet 
 
 now 
 One thought swells in me and keeps down all 
 
 else. 
 This Nuncio couples shame with thee, has called 
 Imposture thy whole course, all bitter things 
 
 Has said : he is but an old fretful man ! 
 Hakeem — nay, I must call thee Hakeem now — 
 Keveal thyself ! See ! Where is Anael ? See ! 
 Loys. [To Dja.] Here are thy people ! Keep 
 
 thy word to me ! 
 Dja. Who of my people hath accused me f 
 Nuncio. So ! 
 
 So this is Djabal, Hakeem, and what not ? 
 A fit deed, Loys, for thy first Knight's day 1 
 May it be augury of thy after-life ! 
 Ever prove truncheon of the Church as now 
 That, Nuncio of the Patriarch, having charge 
 Of the Isle here, I claim thee \furning to Dja.] 
 
 as these bid me, 
 Forfeit for murder done thy lawful prince, 
 Thou conjurer that peep'st and mutterest ! 
 Why should I hold thee from their hands ? 
 
 {Spells, children ? 
 But hear how I dispose of all his spells !) 
 Thou art a propnet ? — wouldst entice thy 
 
 tribe 
 From me ? — thou workest miracles ? (Attend ! 
 Let him but move me with his spells !) I, 
 
 Nuncio . . . 
 Dja. . . . Which how thou camest to be, 1 
 
 say not now. 
 Though I have also been at Stamboul, Luke ! 
 Ply thee with spells, forsooth ! What need of 
 
 spells ? 
 If Venice, in her Admiral's person, stoop 
 To ratify thy compact with her foe. 
 The Hospitallers, for this Isle — withdraw 
 Her warrant of the deed which reinstates 
 My people in their freedom, tricked away 
 By him I slew, — refuse to convoy us 
 To Lebanon and keep the Isle we leave — 
 Then will be time to trf what spells can do 1 
 Dost thou dispute the Republic s power ? 
 
 Nuncio. Lo ye ! 
 
 He tempts me too, the wily exorcist ! 
 No ! llie renowned Republic was and is 
 The Patriarch's friend : 't is not for courting 
 
 Venice 
 That I — that these implore thy blood of me ! 
 Lo ye, the subtle miscreant ! Ha, so subtle ? 
 Ye Druses, hear him ! Will ye be deceived ? 
 How he evades me ! Where 's the miracle 
 He works ? I bid him to the proof — fish up 
 Your galley full of bezants that he sank ! 
 That were a miracle ! One miracle ! 
 Enough of triflingLfor it chafes my years. 
 I am the Nuncio, Druses ! I stand forth 
 To save you from the good Republic's rage 
 When she shall find her fleet was summoned here 
 To aid the mummeries of a knave like this ! 
 
 \_As the Druses hesitate^ his Attendants whisper. 
 Ah, well suggested ! Why, we hold the whue 
 One who, his close confederate till now. 
 Confesses Djabal at the last a cheat. 
 And every miracle a cheat ! Who throws me 
 His head ? I make three offers, once I offer, - 
 And twice . . . 
 Dja. Let who moves perish at my foot 
 
 Ktia. Thanks, Hakeem, thanks ! Oh, Anael 
 
 Maani, 
 Why tarry they ? 
 Druses. [To each other.'] He can 1 He can ] 
 
 Live fare — 
 
214 
 
 THE Return of the druses 
 
 [To the Nuncio.]" I say he can, old man! 
 
 Thou know st him not. 
 Live fire like that thou seest now in his eyes, 
 Plays fawning round him. See ! The change 
 
 begins ! 
 All the brow lightens as he lifts his arm ! 
 Look not at me ! It was not I ! 
 
 IDJa. What Druse 
 
 Accused me, as he saith ? I bid each bone 
 Crumble within that Druse ! None, Loys; none 
 Of my own people, as thou said'st, nave raised 
 A voice against me. 
 Nuncio. [Aside.] Veni8e,to come ! Dfeatli ! 
 Dja. [ Continuing.} , Confess and go unscathed, 
 
 however false ! 
 Seest thou my Druses, Luke ? I would submit 
 To thy pure malice did one Druse confess ! 
 How said I, Loys ? 
 Nuncio. [ To ftis Attendants jcAowHsper.] Ah, 
 
 ye counsel so ? • 
 
 [Aloud.] Bring in the witness, then, who, first 
 
 of all. 
 Disclosed the treason! Now I have thee, 
 
 wizard ! 
 Te hear that ? If one speaks, he bids you tear 
 
 him 
 Joint after joint: well then, one does speak! 
 
 Onfe, 
 Befooled by Djabal, even as yourselves, 
 But who hath voluntarily proposed 
 To expiate, by confessing thus, the fault 
 Of having trusted him. 
 
 IThey bring in a veiled Bruse. 
 Loj/s. Now, Djabal, now ! 
 
 Nuncio. Friendj Djabal fronte thee ! Make 
 
 a nng^ons. i-j^co-^ . 
 Expose this Djabal — what he was, and how ; 
 The wiles he used, the aims he cherished ; all. 
 Explicitly as late 't was spoken to these 
 My servants : I absolve and pardon thee. _ 
 Juoys. Thou hast the dagger ready, Djabal ? 
 Dja. Speak, 
 
 Recreant ! 
 Druses. Stand back, fool ! farther ! Sud- 
 '^ denly 
 You shall see some huge serpent glide from 
 
 under 
 The empty vest, or down will thunder crash'! 
 Back, Khalil ! 
 
 Kha. I go back ? Thus go I ba«k ! 
 
 [To An.] Unveil ! Nay, thou shalt face the 
 
 Khalifl Thus! 
 [_He (liars away Anael's veil ; Djabal foMs hits arms 
 and bows his head ; ihe pmaes fall back ; Loys 
 spHngsfrom the side of Djabal and/ ihe Nttncio. 
 Loys. Then she was true — she only of them 
 aU! 
 True to her eyes — may keep those glorious 
 
 eyes, 
 And now' be mine, once again' mine ! Oh, 
 
 Anael ! 
 Dared I think thee a partner in his crime — 
 That blood could soil that hand ? nay, 't is 
 
 mine — Anael, 
 — Not mine ? — Who offer thee before all these 
 My heart, my sword, ray name — so thou wilt 
 
 say 
 That Djabal, who affirms thou art his bride, 
 
 Lies — say but that he lies ! ^ ' ,. 
 
 Dja, Thou, Anael ( 
 
 Loys. Nay, Djabal, nay, one chance for rae 
 
 — the last ! , , 
 
 Thou hast had' eVery other ; thou hast spfoken 
 Days, nights, what falsehood listed thee— le| 
 
 me 
 Speak first now ; I will speak now ! 
 
 Nuncio. Loys, pause I 
 
 Thou art the Duke's son, Bretagne's choicest 
 
 stock, 
 Loys of Dreux, God's sepulchre's first sword : 
 This wilt thou spit on, this degrade, this tram- 
 ple 
 To earth ? 
 Loys. [To An.] Who had foreseen that one 
 
 day, Loys 
 Would stake these gifts against some other good 
 In the whole world? Lgive them thee! I 
 
 would 
 My strong wiH might bestow real shape on them, 
 That I might see, with my own eyes, thy foot 
 Tread on their very neck ! 'T is not by gifts 
 I put aside this Djahal : we will stand — 
 We 'do standi see, two men ! Djabal, stand 
 
 forth! 
 Who 's worth her, I or thou ? I — who for 
 
 Anael 
 Uprightly, purely kept my way, the long 
 True way — left thee each by-path, boldly lived 
 Without the lies and blood, — or thou, or thou ? 
 Me ! love me, Anael ! Leave the blood and 
 
 him! . I 
 
 [To Dja.]' Now speak — now, quick on this 
 
 that I have said, — 
 Thou with the bloodj speak if thou art a man ! 
 Dja. [To As.] And was it thou betrayedst 
 
 me? 'T is well! 
 I have deserved this of thee, and submit; 
 Nor 'tis much evil thou inflictest; life 
 Ends here. The cedars shall not wave for us : 
 For there was crime, and must be punishment. 
 See fate ! By thee I was seduced, by thee 
 I perish : yet do I — ^can I repent ? 
 I -with my Arab instinct, thwarted ever 
 By my Frank policy, — and with, in turn. 
 My Frank brain, thwarted by my Arab heart — 
 While these remained in equipoise, I lived 
 — Nothing ; had either been predominant. 
 As a Frank schemer or an Arab mystic, 
 I had been something ; — now, each has de- 
 stroyed 
 The other — and behold, from out their crash, 
 A third and better nature rises up — 
 My mere man's-natnre ! And I yield to it : 
 I love thee, I who did not love before ! 
 An. Djabal ! 
 
 Dja. It secimed love, but it was not love : 
 How could I love while thou adoredst me ? 
 Now thou despisest, art above me so 
 Immeasurably ! Thou, no other, doomest 
 My death now ; this my steel shall execute 
 Thy judgment ; I shall feel thy hand in it ! 
 ,0h, luxury to worship, to submit. 
 Transcended, doomed to death by thee ! 
 , 4"- ^ My Djabal! 
 
 Dja. Dost hesitate? I force thee then! 
 
 Approach, 
 
THE RETURN OF THE DRUSES 
 
 2r5 
 
 Druses ! for I am out of reach of fate ; 
 No further evil waits me. Speak the doom ! 
 Hear, Druses, and hear, Nuncio, and hear, 
 Loys! 
 An. Hakebm! \She falls dead. 
 
 [The Druses scream^ granelting before him. 
 Druses. Ah, Hakeem 1 — not on me thy 
 ■wrath 1 
 Biamrallah, pardon ! never doubted 1 1 
 Ha, dog, how sayeat thou ? 
 
 IThey surround and seize the Nuncio attd his Guards. 
 Loys flings himself upon the body of Anael, on 
 which Djabal continues to gaze as stupefied. 
 
 Nuncio. Caitiffs ! Have ye eyes ? 
 
 Whips, racks should teach you! What, his 
 
 fools? his dupes? 
 Leave me 1 unhand me I 
 Kha. [Approaching Djabal timidly.] Save 
 
 her for my sake I 
 She was already thine ; she wonld have shared 
 To-day thine exaltation ; think, this day 
 Her hair was plaited thus because of thee ! 
 Yes, feel the soft brigfht hair — feel I 
 Nuncio. [Struggling with those who have seized 
 
 him.] What, because 
 His leman dies for him ? Yon think it hard 
 To die ? Oh, would you were at Rhodes, and 
 
 choice 
 Of deaths should suit you I 
 Kha. [Bending over Anael's body.] Just 
 
 restore her life ! ■ ' 
 
 So little does it ! there — the eyelids tremble I 
 'T was not my breath that made theni : and the 
 
 lips 
 Move of themselves. I cotdd restore her life ! 
 Hakeem, we have forgotten — have presumed ■ 
 On our free converse ; we are better taught. 
 See, I kiss — how I kiss thy garment's hem 
 For her ! She kisses it — Oh, take her deed 
 In mine I Thou dost believe now, Anael ? rr- ' 
 
 See, 
 She smiles I Were her lips open o'er the teeth 
 Thus, when I spoke first? She believes in 
 
 thee I 
 Go not vrithout her to the cedars, Iprd ! 
 Or leave us both — I cannot go alone ! 
 I have obeyed thee, if 1 dare so speak :, 
 Hath Hakeem thus forgot all Djabal knew ? 
 Thou f eelest then my tears fall hot and fast 
 Upon thy hand, and yet thou speakest not ? 
 Ere the Venetian trumpet sound — ere thou 
 Exalt thyself, Hakeem ! save thou her 1 
 Nuncio. Arid the acetirsed Republic will 
 
 arrive 
 And find me in their toils — dead, very like, 
 Under their feet ! 
 
 , _ What way^^ not one way yet 
 
 To foil them ? None ? lObserving Djabal's 
 
 face.] What ails the Khalif? Ah,: 
 That ghastly face I A way to foil them yet ! 
 [To the Druses.] Look to your Khalif, Druses ! 
 
 Is that face 
 God Hakeem's? Where is triumph, — where 
 
 is . ., . what 
 Baid he of exaltation — hath he promised 
 So much to-day ? Why then, exalt thyself I' 
 Cast off that husk, thy form, set free, thy soul 
 
 In splendor ! Now, bear witness ! here I 
 
 stand — 
 I challenge him exalt himself, and I 
 Become, for that, a Druse like all of you 1 
 The Druses. Exalt thyself 1 Exalt thyself, 
 
 Hakeem ! 
 Dja. [Advances.] I can confess now all 
 from first to last. 
 There is no longer shame for me. I am , . . 
 [Here the Venetian trumpet sounds : the Druees shout, 
 Djabal 's eye catches the expression of those about 
 hvm, and, as the old drea/m comes baohj lie is again 
 confident and inspired. 
 — Am I not Hakeem? And ye wonld have 
 
 crawled 
 But yesterday within these impure courts 
 Where now ye stand erect 1 Not grand enough ? 
 
 — What more could be conceded to such beasts 
 As all of you, so sunk and base as you. 
 
 Than a mere man ? A man among such beasts 
 Was miracle enough : yet him you doubt. 
 Him you forsake, him fain would you destroy — 
 With the Venetians at your gate, the Nuncio 
 Thus — (see the baffled hypocrite ! ) and, best. 
 The Prefect there ! 
 Druses. No, Hakeem, ever thine I 
 
 Nuncio. He lies -^ and twice he lies — and 
 
 Exalt thyself, Mahound ! Exalt thyself ! 
 Dja. Druses ! we shall henceforth be far 
 
 away — 
 Out of mere mortal ken — above the cedars — 
 But we shall see ye go, hear ye return, 
 Repeopling the old solitudes, — through thee. 
 My Khalil ! Thou art f uU of me : I fiU 
 Thee full — my hands thus fill thee! Yester- 
 
 eve, 
 
 — Nay, but this mom, 1 deemed thee igno- 
 
 rant 
 Of all to do, requiring word of mine 
 To teach it : now, thou hast all gifts in one. 
 With truth and purity go other gifts. 
 All gifts come clustering to that. Go, lead 
 My people home whate'er betide ! 
 
 [Turning to the Druses.] Ye take 
 This Khalil for iny delegate ? To him 
 Bow as to me ? He leads to Lebanon — 
 YefoUow? 
 Druses. We follow ! Now exalt thyself I 
 Dja. [Raises Loys.] Then to thee, Loys I 
 How I wronged thee, Loys I 
 Yet, vraonged, no less thou shalt have full re- 
 venge. 
 Fit for thy noble self, revenge — and thus. 
 Thou, loaded with such wrongs, the princely 
 
 soul. 
 The fij^t sword of Christ's sepulchre — thou 
 
 shalt : , 
 
 Guard Khalil and my Druses home again ! 
 Justice, no less, God's justice and no more, : 
 For those I leave ■! — to seeking this, devote ■ 
 Some few days out of thy Knight's brilliant 
 
 life; 
 And, this obtained them, leave their Lebanon, 
 My Druses' blessing in thine ears — (they shall 
 Bless thee with blessing sure to have its way) 
 
 — One cedar-blossom in thy ducal cap. 
 
 One thought of Anael in thy heart, — perchance, 
 
2l6 
 
 A BLOT IN THE 'SCUTCHEON 
 
 One thought of him who thus, to bid thee 
 
 speed, 
 His last word to the living speaks ! This done, 
 Resume thy eouise, and, first amidst the first 
 In Europe, take my heart along with thee ! 
 Go boldly, go serenely, go augustly — 
 What shall withstand thee then ? 
 
 [He bends over Anael.] And last to thee I 
 Ah, did I dream I was to have, this day. 
 Exalted thee ? A vain dream : hast thou not 
 Won greater exaltation ? What remains 
 But press to thee, exalt myself to thee 'i 
 
 Thus I exalt myself, set free my soul I 
 ISe slabs himself. As Iw fails, supported by KHALUi 
 and LoYS, the Vehetiaks enter; the ADMmAL ott- 
 vances. 
 
 Admiral. God and St. Mark for Venice! 
 Plant the Lion ! 
 iAt the clash of the planted standard, the Druses shout, 
 and move tumulluously forward. Lots drawing his 
 sword. 
 
 Dja. [Leadinff them a few steps between Kha- 
 JAL, and LoYS.] On to the Mountain I 
 At the Mountain, Druses 1 C-'W**' 
 
 A BLOT IN THE 'SCUTCHEON 
 
 A TRAGEDY 
 
 This play was written in 1843 at the request 
 of Maeready, and very rapidly, in four or five 
 days. A misunderstanding with Maeready, 
 fully related in Mrs. Orr's I/ife and Letters of 
 Robert Browning, 1. 168-184, and in Mr. Gosse's 
 Personalia, led to a breach between the two 
 friends. 
 
 The play was received with great applause. 
 
 but circumstances prevented it from being kept 
 on the boards. It has, however, been repro- 
 duced both in England and in America, near the 
 close of Browning's life and after his death. 
 Helen Fauoit, afterward Lady Martiii, took the 
 part of Mildred. The play was printed shortly 
 after it first appeared, as No. V. of Sells and 
 Pomegranates. 
 
 PERSONS 
 Mildred Tresham. 
 
 GUBNDOLEN TRESHAM. 
 
 Thorold, Earl Tresham. 
 
 Austin Treshau. 
 
 Henry, Earl Hertoun. 
 
 Gerard, and other Retainers of Lord Tresham. 
 
 Time, IT- 
 ACT I 
 
 Scene I. The interior of a lodge in Lord Tresham's 
 park. Many Retainers ci'owded at the window, sup- 
 posed to command a view of the entrance to his man- 
 sion. Gerard, the Warrener, his back to a table on 
 which are flagons, etc. 
 
 1st Hetainer. Ay, do ! push, friends, and 
 then you '11 push down me ! 
 — What for ? Does any hear a runner's foot 
 Or a steed's trample or a coach-wheel's cry ? 
 Is the Earl come or his least poursuivant ? 
 But there 's no breeding in a man of you 
 Save Gerard yonder : here 's a half-place yet. 
 Old Gerard 1 
 
 Gerard, Save your courtesies, my friend. 
 Here is my place. 
 
 2d Bet. Now, Gerard, out with it ! 
 
 What makes you sullen, this of all the days 
 I' the year ? To-day that young rich bountiful 
 Handsome Earl Miertoun, whom alone they 
 
 match 
 With our Lord Tresham through the country- 
 side. 
 Is coming here in utmost bravery 
 
 To ask our master's sister's hand ? 
 Ger. What then? 
 
 2d Bet. What then? Why, you, she speaks 
 
 to, if she meets 
 Your worship, smiles on as you hold apart 
 The boughs to let her through her forest walks, 
 You, always favorite for your no-deserts, 
 You 've heard, these three days, how Earl Mer- 
 
 toun sues 
 To lay his heart and house and broad lands too 
 At Lady Mildred's feet : and while we squeeze 
 Ourselves into a mousehole lest we miss 
 One congee of the least page in his train, 
 You sit o' one side — " there 's the Earl," say 
 
 " What then ? " say you I 
 
 3d Bet. I 'U wager he has let 
 
 Both swans he tamed for Lady Mildred swim 
 Over the falls and gain the river ! 
 
 Ger. _ Ealph, 
 
 Is not to-morrow my inspecting-day 
 For you and for your hawks ? 
 
 ith Bet. Let Gerard be I 
 
 He's coarse-grained, like his carved black 
 
 crosis-bow stock. 
 Ha, look now, while we squabble with him, 
 
 look! 
 Well done, now — is not this beginning, now. 
 To purpose ? 
 
 1st Bet. Our retainers look as fine — 
 
 That 's comfort. Lord, how Richard holds 
 
 himself 
 With his white staff I Will not a knave behind 
 Prick him upright ? 
 
A BLOT IN THE 'SCUTCHEON 
 
 217 
 
 ith Bet. He 's only bowing, fool ! 
 
 The Earl's man bent us lower by this much. 
 1st Bet. That 's comfort. Here 's a very cav- 
 alcade I 
 Sd Bet. I don't see wherefore Richard, and 
 his troop 
 Of silk and silver varlets there, should find 
 Their perfumed selves so indispensable 
 On high days, holidays I Would it so disgrace 
 Our family, ir I, for instance, stood — 
 In my right hand a cast of Swedish hawks, 
 A leash of greyhounds in my left ? — 
 
 Ger. —With Hugh 
 
 The logman for supporter, in his right 
 The biU-hook, in his left the brushwood-shears ! 
 3d Bet, Out on you, crab ! What next, 
 
 what next? The Earl! 
 1st Bet. Oh Walter, groom, our horses, do 
 they match 
 The Earl's ? Alas, that first mir of the six — 
 They paw the ground — Ah, Walter ! and that 
 
 brute 
 Just on his haunches by the wheel .' 
 
 mhBet. Ay — Ay! 
 
 You, Philip, are a special hand, I hear. 
 At soups and sauces ; what 's a horse to you ? 
 D' ye mark that beast they 've slid into the 
 
 midst 
 So cunningly ? — then, Philip, mark this fur- 
 ther; 
 No leg has he to stand on ! 
 1st Bet. No ? That 's comfort. 
 
 2d Bet. Peace, Cook ! The Earl descends. 
 — Well, Gerard, see 
 The Earl at least ! Come, there '3 a proper 
 
 man, 
 I hope ! Why, Kalph, no falcon, Pole or 
 
 Swede, 
 Has got a starrier eye. 
 
 3d Bet. His eyes are blue — 
 
 But leave my hawks alone ! 
 
 ith Bet. So young, and yet 
 
 So tall and shapely ! 
 
 6th Bet. Here 's Lord Tresham's self ! 
 
 There now — there 's what a nobleman should 
 
 be! 
 He 's older, graver, loftier, he 's more like 
 A House's head ! 
 
 2rf Bet. But you 'd not have a boy 
 
 — And what 's the Earl beside ? — possess too 
 
 soon 
 That stateliness? 
 
 1st Bet. Our master takes his hand — 
 
 Richard and his white staff are on the move — 
 Back fall our people — (tsh ! — there 's Timo- 
 thy 
 Sure to get tangled in his ribbon-ties. 
 And Peter's cursed rosette 's a-coming off !) 
 — At last I see our lord's back and his friend's ; 
 And the whole beautiful bright company 
 Close round them : in they go ! [Jumj>ing down 
 from the window-bench, ana making for the 
 table and its J^gs-l Good health, long life 
 Great joy to our Lord Tresham and his House ! 
 6th Bet. My father drove his father first to 
 court. 
 After his marriage-day — ay, did he I 
 2d Bet. God bless 
 
 Lord Tresham, Lady Mildred, and the Earl ! 
 Here, Gerard, reach your beaker ! 
 
 Ger. Drink, my boys ! 
 
 Don't mind me — all 's not right about me — 
 drink ! 
 
 2d Bet. [Aside.] He 's vexed, now, that he 
 let the show escape I 
 [To Geb.] Remember that the Earl returns 
 this way. 
 
 Ger. That way? 
 
 2a! Bet. Just so. 
 
 Ger. Then my way 's here. [Goes. 
 
 2d Bet. Old Gerard 
 
 Will die soon — mind, I said it I He was used 
 To care about the pitifullest thing 
 That touched the House's honor, not an eye 
 But his could see wherein : and on a cause 
 Of scarce a quarter this importance, Gerard 
 Fairly had fretted flesh and bone away 
 In cares that this was right, nor that was 
 
 wrong. 
 Such point decorous, and such square by rule — 
 He knew such niceties, no herald more : 
 And now — you see his humor : die he will ! 
 
 2d Bet. God help him ! Who 's for the 
 great servants'-hall 
 To hear what 's going on inside ? They 'd fol- 
 low 
 Lord Tresham into the saloon. 
 
 3d Bet. I ! — 
 
 ith Bet. _ I! — 
 
 Leave Frank alone for catching, at the door, 
 Some hint of how the parley goes inside ! 
 Prosperity to the great House once more ! 
 Here 's the last drop ! 
 
 1st Bet. Have at you ! Boys, hurrah 1 
 
 Scene II. A saloon in the Mansion. 
 
 Enter Lord Tbebhau, Lord Mertotth, Austin, tmd 
 Gtjendolen. 
 
 Tresham. I welcome you, Lord Mertoun, yet 
 once more. 
 To this ancestral roof of mine. Your name 
 — Noble among the noblest in itself. 
 Yet taking in your person, fame avers. 
 New price and lustre, — (as that gem you wear, 
 Transmitted from a hundred knightly breasts. 
 Fresh chased and set and fixed by its last lord, 
 Seems to rekindle at the core) — your name 
 Would win you welcome ! 
 
 Mertoun. Thanks ! 
 
 Tresh. — But add to that. 
 
 The worthiness and grace and dignity 
 Of your proposal for uniting both 
 Our Houses even closer than respect 
 Unites them now — add these, and you must'"- 
 
 grant 
 One favor more, nor that the least, — to think 
 The welcome I should give ; — 't is given ! My 
 
 lord. 
 My only brother, Austin — he 's the king's. 
 Our cousin, Lady Gruendolen — betrothed 
 To Aastin : all are yours. 
 
 Mer. I thank you — less 
 
 For the expressed commendings which your seal. 
 And only that, authenticates — forbids 
 My putting from me ... to my heart I take 
 
zi8 
 
 A BLOT IN THE 'SCUTCHEON 
 
 Your praise . . , but praise ' less claims my 
 
 gratitude, ' ' ' ' 
 
 Than the indulgent insight it implies 
 Of "what must needs be uppermost with one ' 
 Who comes, like me, with the bare leave to 
 
 ask. 
 In weighed and measured nnimpassioned words, 
 A gift, which, if as calmly 't is denied. 
 He must withdraw, content upon his cheek. 
 Despair within his soul. That I dare ask 
 Firmly, near boldly, near with confidence 
 That gift, I have to thank you. Yes, Lord 
 
 Tresham, 
 I love your sister — as you 'd have one love 
 That lady ... oh more, more I love her ! 
 
 Wealth, 
 Kank, all the world thinks me, they 're yours, 
 
 you know. 
 To hold or part with, at your choice — but grant 
 My true self, me without a rood of land, 
 A piece of gold, a name of yesterday. 
 Grant me that lady, and you . . . Death or 
 
 life? 
 Gwendolen. [Apart to Atrs.] Why, this is 
 
 loving, Austin ! 
 Austin. He 's so young ! 
 
 Guen. Young ? Old enough, I think, to half 
 
 surmise 
 He never had obtained an entrance here, 
 Were all this fear and trembling needed. 
 
 Aus. Hush ! 
 
 He reddens. 
 
 Guen. Mark him, Austin ; that 's true love ! 
 Ours must begin again. 
 
 Tresh. We |11 sit, my lord. 
 
 Ever with best desert goes di£&dence. 
 I may speak plainly nor be misconceived. 
 That I am wholly satisfied with you 
 On this occasion, when a falcon's eye 
 Were dull compared with mine to search out 
 
 faults. 
 Is somewhat. Mildred's hand is hers to give 
 Or to refuse. 
 
 Mer. But you, you grant my suit ? 
 
 I have your word if hers ? 
 
 Tresh. My best of words 
 
 If hers encourage you. I trust it will. 
 Have you seen Lady Mildred, by the way ? 
 Mer. I . . . I . . . our two demesnes, re- 
 member, touch ; 
 I have been used to wander carelessly 
 After my stricken game ; the heron roused _ 
 Deep in my woods, has trailed its broken wing 
 "Through thicks and glades a mile in yours, — 
 
 or else 
 Some eyass iU-reclaimed has taken flight 
 And lured me after her from tree to tree, 
 I marked not whither. I have come upon 
 The lady's wondrous beauty unaware. 
 And ^ and then . . . I have seen her. 
 
 Guen. [Aside to Aus.] Note that mode 
 
 Of faltering out that, when a lady passed, 
 He, having eyes, did see her ! You had said — 
 *' On such a day I scanned her, head to foot ; 
 Observed a red, where red should not have 
 
 been, 
 Outside her elbow ; but was pleased enough 
 Upcn the whole." Let such irreverent talk 
 
 Be lessoned for the future I 
 
 Tresh. What 's to say 
 
 May be said briefly. She has never known 
 A mother's care ; 1 stand for father too. 
 Her beauty is not strange to you, it seems — 
 You cannot know the good and tender heart, 
 Its girl's trust and its woman's constancy. 
 How pure yet passionate, how calm yet kind. 
 How grave yet joyous, how reserved yet free 
 As light where friends are — how imbued with 
 
 lore 
 The world most prizes, yet the simplest, yet 
 The . . . one might know I talked of Mildred 
 
 — thus 
 We brothers talk ! 
 
 Mer. I thank you. 
 
 Tresh. In a word, 
 
 Control 's not for this lady ; but her wish 
 To please me outstrips in its subtlety 
 My power of being pleased : herself creates 
 The want she means to satisfy. My heart 
 Prefers your suit to her as 't were its own. 
 Can I say more ? 
 
 Mer. No more — thanks, thanks — no more ! 
 
 Tresh. This matter then discussed . . . 
 
 Mer. — We '11 waste no breath 
 
 On aught less jireoious. I 'm beneath the roof 
 Which holds her : while I thought of that, my 
 
 speech 
 To you would wander — as it must not do, 
 Since as you favor me I stand or fall. 
 I pray you suffer that I take my leave ! 
 
 Tresh. With less regret 't is suffered, that 
 again 
 We meet, I hope, so shortly. 
 
 Mer. We ? again ? — 
 
 Ah yes, forgive me — when shall . . . you will 
 
 crown 
 Your goodness by forthwith apprising me 
 When ... if ... the lady will appoint a day 
 For me to wait on you — and her. 
 
 Tresh. So soon 
 
 As I am made acquainted with her thoughts 
 On your proposal — howsoe'er they lean — 
 A messenger shall bring you the result. 
 
 Mer. You cannot bind me more to you,, my 
 lord. 
 Farewell till we renew ... I trust, renew 
 A converse ne'er to disunite again. 
 
 Tresh. So may it prove ! 
 
 Mer. You, lady, you, sir, take 
 
 My humble salutation ! 
 
 Guen. and Aus. Thanks ! 
 
 Tresh. Witliin there ! 
 
 (Servants enter. Tresham conducts Mertodn to the 
 
 door. Meantime Austin remarks) 
 
 Well, 
 Here I have an advantage of the Earl, 
 Confess now ! I 'd not think that all was safe 
 Because my lady's brother stood my friend ! 
 Why, he makes sure of her — ^'do you say, 
 
 yes — 
 She 'Unot say, no," — what comes it to beside ? 
 I should have prayed the brother, "speak this 
 
 speech. 
 For Heaven's sake urge this on her — put in 
 
 this — 
 Foriget not, as you 'd save me, t' other thing, — 
 
A BLOT IN THE 'SCUTCHEON 
 
 219 
 
 Then set down what she says, and how she looks, 
 And if she smiles, and " (in an under breath) 
 " Only let her accept me, and do you 
 And all the world refuse me, if you dare I " 
 
 Guen. That way you'd take, friend Austin ? 
 What a shame 
 I was your cousin, tamely from the first 
 Your bride, and all this fervor 's run to waste I 
 Do you know you speak sensibly to-day ? 
 The Earl 's a fool. 
 
 Aus. Here 's Thorold. Tell him so ! 
 
 Tresh. [Returning.] Now, voices, Toioea ! 'St! 
 the lady 's first I 
 How seems he ? — seems he not . . . come, 
 
 faith give fraud 
 The mercy-stroke whenever they engage ! 
 Down with fraud, up with faith ! How seems 
 
 the Earl? 
 A name ! a blazon ! if you knew their worth. 
 As you will never ! come — the Earl ? 
 
 Guen, He 's young. 
 
 Tresh. What 's she ? an infant save in heart 
 and brain. 
 Young! Mildred is fourteen, remark ! And 
 
 you . . . 
 Austin, how old is she ? 
 
 Guen. There 's tact for you I 
 
 I meant that being young was good excuse 
 If one should tax him . . . 
 
 Tresh. Well? 
 
 Guen. — With lacking wit. 
 
 Tresh, He lacked wit ? Where might he 
 lack wit, so please you ? 
 
 Guen. In standing straighter than the stew- 
 ard's rod 
 And making you the tiresomest harangue. 
 Instead of slipping over to my side 
 And softly whispering in my ear, " Sweet lady. 
 Your cousin there wifl do me detriment 
 He little dreams of : he 's absorbed, I see. 
 In my old nam.e and fame — be sure he '11 leave 
 My Mildred, when his best account of me 
 Is ended, in full confidence I wear 
 My grandsire's periwig down either cheek, 
 I 'mlost unless your gentleness vouchsafes" . . . 
 
 Tresh. ... To give a best of best accounts, 
 yourself. 
 Of me and my demerits.'' You are right I 
 He should have said what now I say for him. 
 You golden creature, will you help us all ? 
 Here 's Austin means to vouch for much, but you 
 
 — You are . , . what Austin only knows 1 
 
 Come up. 
 All three of us : she 's in the library 
 No doubt, for the day 's wearing fast. Precede ! 
 
 Guen. Austin, how we must — ! 
 
 Tresh. Must what ? Must speak truth, 
 
 Malignant tongue ! Detect one faulb in him ! 
 I challenge you ! 
 
 Guen. Witchcraft 's a fault in him. 
 
 For you 're bewitched. 
 
 Tresh, What 's urgent we obtain 
 
 Is, that she soon receive him — say, to-morrow — 
 Next day at furthest. 
 
 Guen. Ne'er instruct me I 
 
 Tresh, Come 1 
 
 — He 's out of your good graces, since forsooth, 
 He stood not as he 'd carry us by storm 
 
 With his perfections I You 're for the com- 
 
 posed 
 Manly assured becoming confidence I 
 
 — Get her to say," To-morrow," and I'll give 
 
 you . . . 
 I '11 give you black Urganda, to be spoiled 
 With petting and snail-pa«es. Will you? 
 
 Come ! 
 
 Scene III. Mildbbd's Chamber. A painted window 
 overlooks the Park. IVIildbed and Gubndolen. 
 
 Guen. Now, Mildred, spare those pains. I 
 have not left 
 Our talkers in the library, and climbed 
 The wearisome ascent to this your bower 
 In company with you, — I have not dared . . , 
 Nay, worked such prodigies as sparii^ you 
 Lord Mertoun's pedigree before the flood. 
 Which Thorold seemed in very act to tell 
 
 — Or bringing Austin to pluck up that most 
 Firm-rooted heresy — your suitor's eyes, ..■ 
 He would maintain, were gray instead of blue' — 
 I think I brought him to contrition 1 — Well, 
 
 I have not done such things, (all to deserve 
 A minute's quiet cousins' talk with you,) 
 To be dismissed so coolly ! 
 
 Mildred. Guendolen ! 
 
 What have I done ? what could suggest . . ; 
 
 Guen. There, there ! 
 
 Do I not comprehend you 'd be alone 
 To throw those testimonies in a heap, 
 Thorold's enlargings, Austin's brevities. 
 With that poor silly heartless Guendolen's 
 Ill-timed misplaced attempted smartnesses — 
 And sift their sense out ? now, I come to spare 
 
 you 
 Nearly a whole night's labor. Ask and have ! 
 Demand, be answered ! Lack I ears and eyes ? 
 Am I perplexed which side of the rock-tablft 
 The Conqueror dined on when he landed first. 
 Lord Mertoun's ancestor was bidden take — 
 The bow-hand or the arrow-hand's great meed ? 
 Mildred, the Earl has soft blue eyes ! 
 
 Mil. My brother — 
 
 Did he . . . you said that he received him well? 
 
 Guen. If I said only ' ' well ' ' I said not much. 
 Oh, stay — which brother ? 
 
 Mil. Thorold! who — who else? 
 
 Guen. Thorold (a secret) is too proud by 
 half, — 
 Nay, hear me out — with us he 's even gentler 
 Than we are with our birds. Of this great 
 
 House 
 The least retainer that e'er caught his glance 
 Would die for him, real dying — no mere talk : 
 And in the world, the court, if men would cite 
 The perfect spirit of honor, Thorold's name 
 Rises of its clear nature to their lips. 
 But he should take men's homage, trust in it. 
 And care no more about what drew it down. 
 He has desert, and that, acknowledgment ; 
 Is he content ? 
 
 Mil. You wrong him, Guendolen. 
 
 Guen. He 's proud, confess ; so proud with 
 brooding o'er 
 The light of his interminable line, 
 An ancestry with men all paladins. 
 And women all . . . 
 
A BLOT IN THE 'SCUTCHEON 
 
 Mil. Dear Guendolen, 't is late I 
 
 When yonder purple pane the climbing moon 
 Pierces, I know 't is midnight. 
 
 Guen. Well, that Thorold 
 
 Should rise up from such musings, and receive 
 One come audaciously to graft himself 
 Into this peerless stock, yet find no flaw, 
 No slightest spot in such an one . . . 
 
 Mil. Who finds 
 
 A spot in Mertoun ? 
 
 Guen. Not your brother ; therefore, 
 
 Not the whole world. 
 
 Mil. I am weary, Guendolen. 
 
 Beai' with me ! 
 
 Guen. I am foolish. 
 
 Mil. Oh no, kind I 
 
 But I would rest. 
 
 Guen. Good night and rest to you I 
 
 I said how gracefully his mantle lay 
 Beneath the rings of his light hair ? 
 Mil. Brown hair. 
 
 Guen. Brown ? why, it is brown : how could 
 
 you know that ? 
 Mil. How ? did not you — Oh, Austin 't was 
 declared 
 His hair was light, not brown — my head ! — 
 
 and look. 
 The moon-beam purpling the dark chamber! 
 
 Sweet, 
 Good night ! 
 Guen. Forgive me — sleep the soundlier for 
 Tiae ! IGoing, she turns suddenly. 
 
 Mildred ! 
 Perdition ! all 's discovered ! Thorold finds 
 — That the Earl's greatest of all grandmothers 
 Was grander daughter stUl — to that fair dame 
 Whose garter slipped down at the famous dance ! 
 
 IGoes. 
 
 Mil. Is she — can she be really gone at last ? 
 
 My heart ! I shall not reach the window. 
 
 Needs 
 Must I have sinned much, so to suffer ! 
 She lifts the small lamp which is suspended before the 
 Virgin^s image in the window, and places it by the 
 purple pane. 
 
 There ! 
 
 [She returns to the seat in front. 
 
 Mildred and Mertoun ! Mildred, with consent 
 
 Of ail the world and Thorold, Mertoun's bride ! 
 
 Too late ! 'T is sweet to think of, sweeter 
 
 still 
 To hope for, that this blessed end soothes up 
 The curse of the begimiing ; but I know 
 It comes too late : 't wiU sweetest be of all 
 To dream my soul away and die upon. 
 
 \^A noise without. 
 The voice ! Oh why, why glided sin the snake 
 Into the paradise Ileaven meant us both ? 
 
 [2%e window opens softly. A low voice sings. 
 
 There 's a woman like a dew-drop, she 's so purer 
 
 than the purest ; 
 And her noble heart 's the noblest, yes, and her 
 
 sure faith^s the surest: 
 A nd her eyes are dark and humid, like the depth 
 
 on depth of lustre 
 Hid i' the harebell, while her tresses, sunnier than 
 
 the wild-grape cluster. 
 
 Gush in cjolden-tinted plenty down her neck's rose- 
 misted marble : „ . , .„ i i 
 
 Then her voice's music . . . call tt the well s bub- 
 bling, the bird's warble J 
 
 lA figure wrapped in a mantle appears at the window. 
 
 And this woman says, ''My days were sunless 
 
 and my nights were moonless, 
 Parched the pleasant April herbage, and the 
 
 lark's heart's outbreak tuneless. 
 If you loved me not .'" And I who — (ah, for 
 
 words of flame !) adore her. 
 Who am mad to lay my spirit prostrate palpably 
 
 before her — 
 [He enters, approaches her seat, and bends over her. 
 
 I may enter at her portal soon, as now her lattice 
 
 takes me. 
 And by noontide as by midnight make her mine, 
 
 as hers she makes me ! 
 
 [The Eael tha-ows off his slouched hat and long cloak. 
 My very heart sings, so I sing, Beloved ! 
 
 Mil. Sit, Henry — do not take my hand ! 
 
 Mer. 'T is mine. 
 
 The meeting that appalled us both so much 
 Is ended. 
 
 Mil. What begins now ? 
 
 Mer. Happiness 
 
 Such as the "world contains not. 
 
 Mil. That is it. 
 
 Our happiness would, as you say, exceed 
 The whole world's best of blisses : we — do we 
 Deserve that ? Utter to your soul, what mine 
 Long since. Beloved, has grown used to hear. 
 Like a death-kneU, so much regarded once, 
 And so familiar now ; this will not be ! 
 
 Mer. Oh, Mildred, have I met your brother's 
 face? 
 Compelled myself — if not to speak untruth, 
 Yet to disguise, to shun, to put aside 
 The truth, as — what had e'er prevailed on me 
 Save you, to venture ? Have 1 gained at last 
 Your brother, the one scai'er of your dreams, 
 And waking thoughts' sole apprehension too ? 
 Does a new life, like a young sunrise, break 
 On the strange unrest of our night, confused 
 With rain and stormy flaw — and will you see 
 No dripping blossoms, no fire-tinted drops 
 On each live spray, no vapor steaming up, 
 And no expressless glory in the East / 
 When I am by you, to be ever by you. 
 When I have won you and may worship you, 
 Oh, Mildred, can you say "this will not be " ? 
 
 Mil. Sin has surprised us, so will punishment. 
 
 Mer. No — me alone, who sinned alone ! 
 
 Mil. The night 
 
 You likened our past life to — was it storm 
 Throughout to you then, Henry ? 
 
 Mer. Of your life 
 
 I spoke — what am I, what my life, to waste 
 A thought about when you are by me ? — you 
 It was, I said my foUy called the storm 
 And pulled the night upon. 'T was day with 
 
 me — 
 Perpetual dawn with me. 
 
 Mil. Come what come will, 
 
 You have been happy : take my hand ! 
 
A BLOT IN THE 'SCUTCHEON 
 
 221 
 
 Mer. [After apause.'] How good 
 
 Your brother is f I figured him a cold — 
 Shall I say, haughty man ? 
 
 Mil. They told me all. 
 
 I know all, 
 
 Mer. It will soon be over. 
 
 Mil. Over ? 
 
 Oh, what is over ? what must I live through 
 And aay, " 't is over " ? Is our meeting over ? 
 Have I received in presence of them all 
 The partner of my guilty love — with brow 
 Trying to seem a maiden's brow — with lips 
 Which make believe that when they strive to 
 
 form 
 Replies to you and tremble as they strive, 
 It is the nearest ever they approached 
 A stranger's . . . Henry, yours that stranger's 
 
 ... lip — 
 With cheek that looks a virgin's, and that is . . . 
 Ah God, some prodigy of thine will stop 
 This planned piece of deliberate wickedness 
 In its birth even ! some fierce leprous spot 
 Will mar the brow's dissimulating ! I 
 Shall murmur no smooth speeches got by heart, 
 But, frenzied, pour forth all our woeful story. 
 The love, the shame, and the despair — with 
 
 them 
 Round me aghast as round some cursed fount 
 That should spirt water, and spouts blood. I '11 
 
 not 
 . . . Henry, you do not wish that I should 
 
 draw 
 This vengeance down ? I '11 not afBect a grace 
 That's gone from me — gone once, and gone 
 forever ! 
 
 Mer. Mildred, my honor is your own. I '11 
 share 
 Disgrace I cannot suffer by myself. 
 A word informs your brother I retract 
 This morning's offer ; time will yet bring forth 
 Some better way of saving both of us. 
 
 Mil. I '11 meet their faces, Henry ! 
 
 Mer. When ? to-morrow ! 
 
 Get done with it ! 
 
 Mil. Oh, Henry, not to-morrow ! 
 
 Next day ! I never shall prepare my words 
 And looks and gestures sooner. — How you 
 
 must 
 Despise me ! 
 
 Mer. Mildred, break it if you choose, 
 
 A heart the love of you uplifted — still 
 Uplifts, through this protracted agony. 
 To heaven 1 but, Mildred, answer me, — first 
 
 pace 
 The chamber with me — once again — now, say 
 Calmly the part, the . . . what it is of me 
 You see contempt (for you did say contempt) 
 — Contempt for you in ! I would pluck it off 
 And cast it from me ! — but no — no, you '11 not 
 Repeat that ? — will you, Mildred, repeat that ? 
 
 Mil. Dear Henry ! 
 
 Mer. I was scarce a boy — e'en now 
 
 What am I more ? And you were infantine 
 When first I met you ; why, your hair fell loose 
 On either side ! My fool's-cheek reddens now 
 Only in the recalling how it burned 
 That morn to see the shape of many a dream 
 ~- You know we boys are prodigal of charms 
 
 To her we dream of — I had heard of one. 
 Had dreamed of her, and I was close to her. 
 Might speak to her, might live and die her own, 
 Who knew ? I spoke. Oh, Mildred, feel you 
 
 not 
 That now, while I remember every glance 
 Of yours, each word of yours, with power to test 
 And weigh them in the diamond scales of pride, 
 Resolved the treasure of a first and last 
 Heart's love shall have been bartered at its 
 
 worth, 
 — That now I think upon your purity 
 And utter ignorance of guilt — your own 
 Or other's guilt — the girlish undisguised 
 Delight at a strange novel prize — (I talk 
 A siUy language, but interpret, you !) 
 If I, with fancy at its full, and reason 
 Scarce in Its germ, enjoined you secrecy. 
 If you had pity on my passion, pity 
 On my protested sickness of the soul 
 To sit beside you, hear you breathe, and watch 
 Your eyelids and the eyes beneath — if yon 
 Accorded gifts and knew not they were gifts — 
 If I grew mad at last with enterprise 
 And must behold my beauty in her bower 
 Or perish — (I was ignorant of even 
 My own desires — what then were you ?) if sor- 
 row — 
 Sin — if the end came — must I now renounce 
 My reason, blind myself to light, say truth 
 Is false and lie to God and my own soul ? 
 Contempt were all of this ! 
 
 Mil. Do you believe . , , 
 
 Or, Henry, I 'II not wrong you — you believe 
 That I was ignorant. I scarce grieve o'er 
 The past ! We '11 love on : you will love me 
 still ! 
 Mer. Oh, to love less what one has injured I 
 Dove, 
 Whose pinion I have rashly hurt, my breast — 
 Shall my heart's warmth not nurse thee into 
 
 strength ? 
 Flower I have crushed, shall I not care for 
 
 thee? 
 Bloom o'er my crest, my fight-mark and device ! 
 Mildred, I love you and you love me I 
 
 Mil. Go ! 
 
 Be that your last word. I shall sleep to-night. 
 Mer. This is not our last meeting ? 
 Mil. One night more. 
 
 Mer. And then — think, then ! 
 Mil. Then, no sweet courtship-days. 
 
 No dawning consciousness of love for us. 
 No strange and palpitating births of sense 
 From words and looks, no innocent fears and 
 
 hopes. 
 Reserves and confidences : morning 's over ! 
 Mer. How else should love's peneeted noon- 
 tide follow ? 
 All the dawn promised shall the day perform. 
 Mil. So may it be ! but — 
 
 You are cautious, Love ? 
 Are sure that unobserved you scaled the walls ? 
 Mer. Oh, trust me ! Then our final meet- 
 ing 's fixed 
 To-morrow night ? 
 Mil. Farewell! Stay, Henry . . . where- 
 fore? 
 
222 
 
 A BLOT IN THE 'SCUTCHEON 
 
 His foot is on the yew-tree bongli : the turf 
 Receives him : now the moonlight as he runs 
 Embraces him — but he must go '— is gone. 
 Ah, once again he turns — thanks, thanks, my 
 
 Love ! 
 He 's gone. Oh, I '11 believe him every word.! 
 I was so young, I loved him so, I had 
 No mother, God forgot me, and I fell. 
 There may be pardon yet : all 's doubt beyond. 
 Surely the bitterness of death is past ! 
 
 ACT II 
 Scene. The lAbrary. 
 Enter Lord Tresham, hastily^ , , : 
 
 Tresh. This way ! In, Gerard, quick ! 
 
 [i4.s Gerard enters, Tresham secures the door. 
 
 Now speak ! or, wait — 
 
 I 'U bid you speak directly. [.Seats himself. 
 
 Now repeat 
 Firmly and circumstantially the tale 
 You just now told me ; it eludes me ; either 
 I did not listen, or the half is gone 
 Away from me. How long have you lived 
 
 here ? ■ ^ 
 
 Here in my house, your father kept our woods 
 Before you? 
 
 Ger. — As his father did, my lord. 
 
 I have been eating, sixty years almost. 
 Your bread. ' . 
 
 Tresh. Yes, yes. You ever were of all 
 
 The servant in my father's house, I know. 
 The trusted one. You '11 speak the truth. 
 
 Ger. I '11 speak 
 
 God's truth. Night after night . . . 
 
 Tresh. Since when ? 
 
 Ger. _ At least 
 
 A month — each midnight has some man access 
 To Lady Mildred's chamber. 
 
 Tresh. Tush, " access " — 
 
 No wide words like " access " to me ! 
 
 Ger. He runs 
 
 Along the woodside, crosses to the south. 
 Takes the left tree that ends the avenue . . . 
 
 Tresh. The last great yew-tree ? 
 
 Ger. You might stand upon 
 
 The main boughs like a platfonu. Then 
 he . . . 
 
 Tresh. Quick ! 
 
 Ger. CKmbs up, and, where they lessen at 
 the top, 
 — I cannot see distinctly, but he throws, 
 I think — for this I do not vouch — a line 
 That reaches to the lady's casement — 
 
 Tresh. —Which 
 
 He enters not ! Gerard, some wretched fool 
 Dares pry into my sister's privacy ! 
 When such are young, it seems a precious thing 
 To have approached, — to merely have ap- 
 proached. 
 Got sight of, the abode of her they set 
 Their frantic thoughts uponl He does not 
 
 enter ? 
 Gerard ? 
 
 Ger. There is a lamp that 's full i' the midst, 
 Under a red square in the painted glass 
 
 Of Lady Mildred's ... , w ii » 
 
 Tresh. Leave that name out ! WeU? 
 
 That lamp? ■ , , . , 
 
 Ger. — Is moved at midnight higher up 
 
 To one pane — a small dark-blue pane : he waits 
 For that among the boughs : at sight of that, 
 I see him, plain as I see you, my lord. 
 Open the lady's casement, enter there . . . 
 
 Tresh. — And stay ? 
 
 Ger. An hour, two hours. 
 
 Tresh. And this you saw 
 
 Once P'— twice ? —quick ! 
 
 Ger. Twenty times. 
 
 Tresh. And what brings you 
 
 Under the yew-trees ? 
 
 Ger. The first night I left 
 
 My range so far, to track the stranger stag 
 That broke the pale, I saw the man. 
 
 Tresh. Yet sent 
 
 No cross-bow shaft through the marauder ? 
 
 Ger. But 
 
 He came, my lord, the first time he was seen. 
 In a great moonlight, Ught as any day, 
 From Lady Mildred's chamber. 
 
 Tresh. [After a pause.l You have no cause 
 — Who could have cause to do my sister wrong ? 
 
 Ger. Oh, my lord, only once — let me this 
 once 
 Speak what is on my mind ! Since first I noted 
 AU this, I 've groaned as if a fiery net 
 Plucked me this way and that — fire if I turned 
 To her, fire if I turned to you, and fire 
 If down I flung myself aiid strove to die. 
 The lady could not have been seven years old 
 When I was trusted to conduct her safe 
 Through the deer-herd to stroke the snow-white 
 
 fawn 
 I brought to eat bread from her tiny hand 
 Within a month. She ever had a smile 
 To greet me with — she . . . if it could undo 
 What 's done, to lop each limb from oif this 
 
 trunk ... 
 All that is foolish talk, not fit for you — 
 I mean, I could not speak and bring her hurt 
 For Heaven's compelling. But when I was 
 
 fixed 
 To hold my peace, each morsel of your food 
 Eaten beneath your roof, my birth-place too. 
 Choked me. I wish I had grown mad in doubts 
 What it behoved me do. This morn it seemed 
 Either I must confess to you, or die ; 
 Now it is done, I seem the vilest worm 
 That crawls, to have betrayed my lady ! 
 
 Tresh. No— 
 
 No, Gerard ! 
 
 Ger. Let me go ! 
 
 Tresh. A man, you say : 
 
 What man ? Young ? Not a vulgar hind ? 
 What dress ? 
 
 Ger. A slouched hat and a large dark foreign 
 cloak 
 Wraps his whole form ; even his face is hid ; 
 But I should judge him young: no hind, be 
 sure I 
 
 Tresh. Why ? 
 
 Ger. He is ever armed : his sword projects 
 Beneath the cloak. 
 
 Tresh. Gerard, — I will not say 
 
A BLOT IN THE 'SCUTCHEON 
 
 223 
 
 No word, no breath of this ! 
 
 Ger. Thanks, thanlu, my lord I {.Goes. 
 
 Trbsham paces the room. After a pause, 
 Oh, thought 's absurd 1 — as with some mon- 
 strous fact 
 Which, when ill thoughts beset us, seems to 
 
 give 
 Merciful God that made the sun and stars. 
 The waters and the green delights of earth. 
 The lie ! I apprehend the monstrous fact — 
 Yet know the maker of all worlds is good. 
 And yield my reason up inadequate 
 To reconcile what yet 1 do behold ^- 
 Blasting my sense ! There 's cheerful day out- 
 side : 
 This' is my library, and this the chair 
 My father used to sit in carelessly 
 After his soldieivfashion, while I stood 
 Between his knees to question him : and here 
 Gerard our gray retainer, — as he says. 
 Fed with our food, from sire to son, an age — 
 Has told a story — I am to believe ! 
 That MUdred . . . oh, no, no ! both tales are 
 
 true. 
 Her pure cheek's story and the forester's ! 
 Would she, or could she, err — much less, con- 
 found 
 AU guilts of treachery, of craft, of . . . Heaven 
 Keep me within its hand ! — I will sit here 
 Until thought settle and I see my course. 
 Avert, God, only this woe from me ! 
 \A.s he sinks his Jiead between his arms on the table, 
 
 GUBNDOLEN'8 voice is heard at the door. 
 Lord Tresham ! iShe knocks.} Is Lord Tresham 
 
 there ? 
 [TassHAM, hastily turning, pulls down the Jirst hook 
 above him and opens it. 
 
 Tresh. Come in ! [.She enters. 
 
 Ha, Guendolen ! — good morning. 
 
 Uuen. Nothing more ? 
 
 Tresh. What should I say more ? 
 
 Guen. Pleasant question ! more ? 
 
 This more. Did I besiege poor Mildred's brain 
 Last night till close on morning with ' ' the Earl, ' ' 
 *^ The iLarl " — whose worth did 1 asseverate 
 Till I am very fain to hope that ... Thorold, 
 What is all this ? You are not well ! 
 
 Tresh. Who, I ? 
 
 You laugh at me. 
 
 Guen. Has what I 'm fain to hope. 
 
 Arrived then ? Does that huge tome show some 
 
 blot 
 In the Earl's 'scutcheon come no longer back 
 Than Arthur's time ? 
 
 Tresh. When left you Mildred's chamber? 
 
 Guen, Oh, late enouo-h, I told you ! The main 
 thing 
 To ask is, how I left her chamber, — sure. 
 Content yourself, she '11 grant this paragon 
 Of Earls no such ungracious . . . 
 
 Tresh. Send her here ! 
 
 Guen. Thorold ? 
 
 Tresh. I mean — acquaint her, Guendolen, 
 — But mildly ! 
 
 Guen. MUdly ? 
 
 Tresh. Ah, you guessed aright ! 
 
 I am not well : there is no hiding it. 
 But tell her I would see her at her leisure ^ 
 
 That is, at once ! here in the library ! 
 The passage iu that old Italian book 
 We hunted for so long is found, say, found — 
 And if I let it slip again . . . yon see. 
 That she must come — and instantly ! 
 
 Guen. I 'U die 
 
 Piecemeal, record that, if there have not 
 
 gloomed 
 SoTde blot i' the 'scutcheon ! 
 
 Tresh. Go ! or, Guendolen, 
 
 Be you at call, — with Austin, if you choose, — 
 In the adjoining gallery ! There, go : 
 
 [Guendolen goes. 
 Another lesson to me ! Yon might bid 
 A child disguise his heart's sore, and conduct 
 Some sly investigation point by point 
 With a smooth brow, as well as bid me catch 
 The inquisitorial cleverness some praise ! 
 If you had told me yesterday, " There 's one 
 You needs must circumvent and jDractise with, 
 Entrap by policies, if you would worm 
 The truth out ; and that one is — Mildred I " 
 
 There, 
 There — reasoning is thrown away on it ! 
 Prove she 's unchaste . . . why, you may after 
 
 prove 
 That she 's a poisoner, traitress, what you wiU ! 
 Where I can comprehend naught, naught 's to 
 
 say, 
 Or do, or think ! Force on me but the first 
 Abomination, — then outpour all plagues. 
 And I shall ne'er make count of them ! 
 {Enter Mildred.) 
 Mil. What book 
 
 Is it I wanted, Thorold ? Guendolen 
 Thought you were pale; you are not pale. 
 
 That book? 
 That 's Latin surely. 
 
 Tresh. Mildred, here 's a line, 
 
 (Don't lean on me : I '11 English it for yoa) 
 * Love conquers all things." What love con- 
 quers them ? 
 What love should you esteem — best love ? 
 Mil. True love. 
 
 Tresh. I mean, and should have said, whose 
 
 love is best 
 Of all that love or that profess to love ? 
 Mil. The list 's so long : there 's father's, 
 
 mother's, husband's . . . 
 Tresh. Mildred, I do believe a brother's love 
 For a sole sister must exceed them all. 
 For see now, only see ! there 's no alloy 
 Of earth that creeps into the perfect'st gold 
 Of other loves — no gratitude to claim ; 
 You never gave her life, not even aught 
 That keeps Ufe — never tended her, instructed, 
 Enriched her — so, your love can claim no right 
 O'er her save pure love's claim : that 's what I 
 
 call 
 Freedom from earthliness. You '11 never hope 
 To be such friends, for instance, she and yon. 
 As when you hunted cowslips in the woods 
 Or played together in the meadow hay. 
 Oh yes — with age, respect comes, and your 
 
 worth 
 Is felt, there 's growing sympathy of tastes. 
 There 's ripened friendship, there 's confirmed 
 
 esteem : 
 
224 
 
 A BLOT IN THE 'SCUTCHEON 
 
 — Much head these make against the new- 
 
 comer ! 
 The starthng apx^arition, the strange youth — 
 Whom one half-hour's conversing with, or, say, 
 Mere gazing at, shall change (beyond all change 
 This Ovid ever sang about) your soul 
 . . . Her soul, that is, — the sister's soul ! With 
 
 her 
 'T was winter yesterday ; now, all is warmth, 
 The green leaf 's springing and the turtle's voice, 
 "Arise and come away!" Come whither? — 
 
 far 
 Enough from the esteem, respect, and all 
 The brother's somewhat insignificant 
 Array of rights ! All which he knows before, 
 Has calculated on so long ago ! 
 I think such love, (apart from yours and mine,) 
 Contented with its little term of life, 
 Intending to retire betimes, aware 
 How soon the background must be place for it, 
 
 — I think, am sure, a brother's love exceeds 
 All the world's love in its uuworldliness. 
 
 Mil. What is this for ? 
 
 Tresli. This, Mildred, is it for 1 
 
 Or, no, I cannot go to it so soon ! 
 That 's one of many points my haste left out — 
 £ach day, each hour throws forth its silk-slight 
 
 film 
 Between the being tied to you by birth. 
 And you, until those slender threads compose 
 A web that shrouds her daily life of hopes 
 And fears and fancies, all her life, from yours : 
 So close you live and yet so far apart ! 
 And must I rend this web, tear up, break down 
 The sweet and palpitating mystery 
 That makes her sacred ? You — for you I mean. 
 Shall 1 speak, shall 1 not speak ? 
 
 Mil. Speak ! 
 
 Tresh. I will, 
 
 Is there a story men could — any man 
 Could tell of you, you would conceal from me ? 
 I '11 never think there 's falsehood on that lip. 
 Say " There is no such story men could tell,'' 
 And I '11 believe you, though I disbelieve 
 The world — the world of better men than I, 
 And women such as I suppose you. Speak ! 
 [After a pause.'\ Not speak ? Explain then ! 
 
 Clear it up then ! Move 
 Some of the miserable weight away 
 That presses lower than the grave ! Not speak ? 
 Some of the dead weight, Mildred ! Ah, if I 
 Coidd bring myself to plainly make their charge 
 Against you ! Must I, Mildred ? Silent still ? 
 [After a pause.] Is there a gallant that has 
 
 night by night 
 Admittance to your chamber ? 
 
 [After a pause.] Tlien, his name ! 
 
 Till now, 1 only had a thought for you : 
 But now, — his name ! 
 
 Mil. Thorold, do you devise 
 
 Fit expiation for my guilt, if fit 
 There be ! 'T is naught to say that I '11 endure 
 And bless you, — that my spirit yearns to purge 
 Her stains off in the fierce renewing fire : 
 But do not plunge me into other guilt ! 
 Oh, guilt enough ! I cannot tell his name. 
 
 Tresh. Then judge yourself ! How should I 
 act ? Pronounce 1 
 
 Mil. Oh, Thorold, you must never tempt rae 
 thus ! 
 To die here in this chamber by that sword 
 Would seem like punishment : so should I glide, 
 Like an arch-cheat, into extremest bliss 1 
 'T were easily arranged for me : but you — 
 What woiild become of you ? 
 
 Tresh. And what will now 
 
 Become of me ? I '11 hide your shame and mine 
 From every eye ; the dead must heave their 
 
 hearts 
 Under the marble of our chapel-floor ; 
 They cannot rise and blast you. You may wed 
 Your paramour above our mother's tomb ; 
 Our mother cannot move from 'neath your foot. 
 We too will somehow wear this one day out : 
 But with to-morrow hastens here — the Earl ! 
 The youth without suspicion face can come 
 From heaven, and heart from . . . whence 
 
 proceed such hearts ? 
 I have dispatched last night at your command 
 A missive bidding him present himself 
 To-morrow — here — thus much is said ; the 
 
 rest 
 Is understood as if 't were written down — 
 "His suit finds favor in your eyes." Now 
 
 dictate 
 This morning's letter that shall countermand 
 Last night's — do dictate that ! 
 
 Mil. But, Thorold — if 
 
 I will receive him as I said ? 
 
 Tresh. The Earl? 
 
 Mil. I will receive him. 
 Tresh. [Starting up.] Ho there ! Guendolen ! 
 (GuENDOLEN and Austin enter.) 
 And, Austin, you are welcome, too ! Look 
 
 there ! 
 The woman there 1 
 Am. and Guen. How ? Mildred ? 
 Tresh. Mildred once ! 
 
 Now the receiver night by night, when sleep 
 Blesses the inmates of her father's house, 
 — I say, the soft sly wanton that receives 
 Her guilt's accomplice 'neath this roof which 
 
 holds 
 You, Guendolen, you, Austin, and has held 
 A thousand Treshams — never one like her ! 
 No lighter of the signal-lamp her quick 
 Foul breath near quenches in hot eagerness 
 To mix with breath as foul ! no loosener 
 0' the lattice, practised in the stealthy tread, 
 The low voice and the noiseless come-and-go ! 
 Not one composer of the bacchant's mien 
 Into — what you thought Mildred's, in a word ! 
 Know her ! 
 
 Guen. Oh, Mildred, look to me, at least ! 
 Thorold— she's dead, I'd say, bat that she 
 
 stands 
 Eigid as stone and whiter ! 
 
 Tresh. You have heard . . . 
 
 Guen. Too much ! You must proceed no 
 
 further. 
 Mil. Yes — 
 
 Proceed ! All 's truth. Go from me ! 
 
 Tresh. AH is truth, 
 
 bhe tells you ! Well, you know, or ought to 
 
 know. 
 All this I would forgive in her. I 'd con 
 
A BLOT IN THE 'SCUTCHEON 
 
 225 
 
 Each precept the harsh world enjoins, I 'd take 
 
 Our ancestors' stern verdicts one hy one, 
 
 I 'd bind myself before them to exact 
 
 The prescribed vengeance — and one word of 
 
 hers. 
 The sight of her, the bare least memory 
 Of Mildred, my one sister, my heart's pride 
 Above all prides, my all in all so long. 
 Would scatter every trace of my resolve. 
 What were it silently to waste away 
 And see her waste away from this day forth, 
 Two soathM things with leisure to repent. 
 And grow acquainted with the grave, and die 
 Tired out if not at peace, and be forgotten ? 
 It were not so impossible to bear. 
 But this — that, fresh from last night's pledge 
 
 renewed 
 Of love with the successful gallant there. 
 She calmly bids me help her to entice. 
 Inveigle an unconscious trusting youth 
 Who thinks her all that 's chaste and good and 
 
 pure, 
 ^Invites me to betray him . . . who so fit 
 As honor's self to cover shame's arch-deed ? 
 — That she 'U receive Lord Mertoun — (her own 
 
 phrase) — 
 This, who could bear ? Why, you have heard 
 
 of thieves, 
 Stabbers, the earth's disgrace, who yet have 
 
 laughed, 
 " Talk not to me of torture — I '11 betray 
 No comrade I 've pledged faith to!" — you 
 
 have heard 
 Of wretched women — all but Mildreds — tied 
 By wild Ulicit ties to losels vile 
 You 'd tempt them to forsake ; and they 'U 
 
 reply 
 " Gold, friends, repute, I left for him, I find 
 In him, why should I leave him then for gold, 
 Kepute or &iends ? " — and you have felt your 
 
 heart 
 Kespond to such poor outcasts of the world 
 As to so many friends ; bad as you please. 
 You've felt they were God's men and women 
 
 stm. 
 
 So, not to be disowned by you. But she 
 That stands there, calmly gives her lover up 
 As means to wed the Earl that she may hide 
 Their intercourse the surelier : and, for this, 
 I curse her to her face before you all. 
 Shame hnnt her from the earth ! Then Heaven 
 
 do right 
 
 To both ! It hears me now — shall judge her 
 
 then! 
 
 {^As iltiLDBSD faints and falls, Tbeshau rushes out. 
 
 Aus. Stay, Tresham, we '11 accompany you ! 
 
 Guen. We? 
 
 What, and leave Mildred? We? Why, 
 
 where 's my place 
 But by her side, and where yours but by mine ? 
 Mildred — one word ! Only look at me, then ! 
 Aus. No, GuendolenI I echo Thorold's 
 voice. 
 She is unworthy to behold . . . 
 
 Guen. Us two ? 
 
 If you spoke on reflection, and if I 
 Approved your speech — if you (to put the thing 
 At lowest) you the soldier, bound to make 
 
 The king's cause yours and fight for it, and 
 
 throw 
 Regard to others of its right or wrong, 
 
 — If with a death-white woman you can help. 
 Let alone sister, let alone a Mildred, 
 
 You left her — or if I, her cousin, friend 
 This morning, playfellow but yesterday. 
 Who said, or thought at least a thousand times, 
 "I'd serve you if I could," should now face 
 
 round 
 And say, " Ah, that 's to only signify 
 I 'd serve you while you 're fit to serve yourseK.. 
 So long as fifty eyes await the turn 
 Of yours to forestall its yet half -formed wish, 
 I '11 proffer my assistance you '11 not need — 
 When every tongue is praising you, I '11 join 
 The praisers' chorus — when you 're hemmed 
 
 about 
 With lives between you and detraction — lives 
 To be laid down if a rude voice, rash eye, 
 Rough hand should violate the sacred ring 
 Their worship throws about you, — then indeed, 
 Who '11 stand up for you stout as I ? " If so 
 We said, and so we did, — not Mildred there 
 Would be unworthy to behold us both. 
 But we should be unworthy, both of us. 
 To be beheld tiy — by — your meanest dog. 
 Which, if that sword were broken in your 
 
 face 
 Before a crowd, that badge torn off your breast, 
 And you cast out with hooting and contempt, 
 
 — Would push his way through all the hooters. 
 
 gain 
 Your side, go off with you and all your shame 
 To the next ditch you choose to die in I A.ustin 
 Do you love me ? Here '3 Austin, Mildred, -^ 
 
 here 's 
 Your brother says he does not believe half — 
 No, nor half that — of all he heard ! He says, 
 Look up and take his hand ! 
 
 Aus. Look up and take 
 
 My hand, dear Mildred ! 
 
 Mil. I — I was so yoimg I 
 
 Beside, I loved him, Thorold — and I had 
 No mother : God forgot me : so, I fell. 
 
 Guen. Mildred 1 
 
 Mil. Require no further ! Did I dream 
 
 That I could palliate what is done ? All 's true. 
 Now, pimish me ! A woman takes my hand ? 
 Let go my hand ! You do not know, I see. 
 I thought that Thorold told you. 
 
 Guen. What is this ? 
 
 Where start you to ? 
 
 Mil. Oh, Austin, loosen me ! 
 
 You heard the whole of it — your eyes were 
 
 worse, 
 In their surprise, than Thorold's ! Oh, unless 
 You stay to execute his sentence, loose 
 My hand ! Has Thorold gone, and are you here ? 
 
 Guen. Here, Mildred, we two friends of yours 
 will wait 
 Your bidding ; be you silent, sleep or muse 1 
 Only, when you shall want your bidding done, 
 How can we do it if we are not by ? 
 Here 's Austin waiting patiently your will ! 
 One spirit to command, and one to love 
 And to believe in it and do its best, 
 Poor as that is, to help it — why, the world 
 
226 
 
 A BLOT IN THE 'SCUTCHEON 
 
 Has been won many a time, its length and 
 
 breadth, 
 By just such a beg:inhing ! 
 
 Mil. I belieye 
 
 If once I threw my arms about your neck 
 And sunk my head upon your breast, that I 
 Should weep again. 
 
 Cfuen. Let go her hand now, Austin ! 
 
 Wait for me. Pace the gallery and think 
 On the world's seemings and realities, 
 Until I call you. [Auerra goes. 
 
 Mil. No — I cannot weep. 
 
 No more tears from this brain — no sleep — no 
 tears! 
 
 Guendolen, I love you ! 
 
 Chien. Yes : and " love " 
 
 Is a short word that says so very much 1 
 It says that you confide in me. 
 
 Mil. Confide! 
 
 Guen. Your lover's name, then ! I 've so 
 mnch to learn. 
 Ere I can work in your behalf ! 
 
 Mil. My friend. 
 
 You know I cannot tell his name. 
 
 Guen. At least 
 
 He is your lover ? and you love him too ? 
 
 Mil, Ah, do you ask me that? — but I am 
 fallen 
 So low ! 
 
 Guen. You love him still, then ? 
 
 Mil. My sole prop 
 
 Against the guilt that crushes me ! I say, 
 Each night ere I lie down, " I was so young — 
 
 1 had no mother, and I loved him so ! " 
 And then God seems indulgent, and I dare 
 Trust him my soul in sleep. 
 
 Guen. How could you let us 
 
 S'en talk to yon'about Lord Mertoun then ? 
 
 ■Mil. There is a cloiid, around me. ■ 
 
 Guen. But jrou said 
 
 f ou iwould receive his suit in spite of this ? 
 
 Mil. I say there is a cloud . . 
 
 Guen. No cloud to me ! 
 
 Lord Mertoun and your lover are the same ! 
 
 Mil. What maddest fancy . . . 
 
 Guen. [Calling aloud.] Austin ! (spare your 
 pains — 
 When I have got a truth, that truth I keep) — 
 
 Mil. By all you love, sweet Guendolen, for- 
 beair ! 
 Have I confided in you ... 
 
 Guen. Just for this ! 
 
 Austin ! — Oh, not to guess it at the first ! 
 But I did ^less it — that is, I divined. 
 Felt by an instinct how it was : why else 
 Should I pronounce you free from all that heap 
 Of sins which had been irredeemable ? 
 I felt they were not yours — what other way 
 Than this, not yours ? The secret 's whoUy 
 mine ! 
 
 Mil. If you would see me die before his face . . . 
 
 Guen. I 'd hold my peace ! And if the Earl 
 returns 
 To-night ? 
 
 Mil. Ah Heaven, he 's lost ! 
 
 Guen. I thought so. Austin 1 
 
 {Enler Austim.) 
 Oh, where have you been hidine ? 
 
 Aus. Thorold 's gone, 
 
 I know not how, across the meadow-land. 
 I watched him till I lost him in the skirts 
 0' the beech-wood. 
 
 Guen. Gone ? All thwarts us. 
 
 JIf j7. Thorold too ? 
 
 Guen. I have thought. First lead this Mil- 
 dred to her room. 
 Go on the other side : and then we'U seek 
 Your brother : and I 'E tell you, by the way, 
 The greatest comfort in the world. You said 
 There was a clue to all. Remember, Sweet, 
 He said there was a clue ! I hold it. Come I 
 
 ACT III 
 
 ScEKB I. The end of the Yew-tree Avenue under Mn> 
 dbbd's window.. A light seen through a central red 
 paiie. 
 
 Enter Teesham through the trees. 
 
 Tresh. Again here ! But I cannot lose my- 
 self. 
 The heath — the orchard — I have traversed 
 
 And dells and bosky paths which used to lead 
 Into green wild-wood depths, bewildering 
 My boy's adventurous step. And now they tend 
 Hither or soon or late ; the blackest shade 
 Breaks up, the thronged trunks of the trees ope 
 
 wide. 
 And the dim turret I have fled from, fronts 
 Again my step ; the very river put 
 Its arm about me and conducted me 
 To this detested spot. Why then, I '11 shun 
 Their will no longer : do your wiU with me 1 
 Oh, bitter I To have reared a towering scheme 
 Of happiness, and to behold it razed, 
 Were nothing ; all men ho^e, and see their hopes 
 Frustrate, and grieve awlule, and hope anew. 
 But I ... to hope that from a line fike ours 
 No horrid prodigy like this would spring, 
 Were just as though I h6ped that from these old 
 Confederates against the sovereign day. 
 Children of older and yet older sires. 
 Whose living coral berries dropped, as now 
 On me, on many a baron's surcoat once. 
 On many a beauty's wimple — would proceed 
 No poison-tree, to thrust, from hell its root, 
 Hither and thither its strange snaky arms. 
 Why came I here ? What must I do ? [A bell 
 
 sir-ties.] A bell ? 
 Midnight ! and 't is at midnight . . . Ah, I catch 
 — Woods, river, plains, I catch your meaning 
 
 now. 
 And I obey you ! Hist 1 This tree will serve. 
 [_IIe retires behind one of the trees. After a pause, 
 enter MERrouir cloaked as before. 
 Mer. Not time ! Beat out thy last voluptuous 
 
 beat 
 Of hope and fear, my heart ! I thought the 
 
 clock 
 I' the chapel struck as I was pushing through 
 The ferns. And so I shall no more see rise 
 My love-star ! Oh, no matter for the past 1 
 So much the more delicious task to watch 
 Mildred revive : to pluck out, thorn by tliorii, 
 AH traces of the rough forbidden path 
 
A BLOT IN THE 'SCUTCHEON 
 
 227 
 
 My rash love lured her to ! Each day mnst see 
 Some fear of hers effaced, some hope renewed : 
 Then there will be surprises, unforeseen 
 Delights in store. I 'U not regret the past. 
 
 [TAe light is planed above in the purple pane. 
 And see, my signal rises, Mildred's star I 
 I never saw it lovelier than now 
 It rises for the last time. If it sets, 
 'T is that the reassuring sun may dawn. 
 lAs he prepares to ascend the last tree of the avenue^ 
 
 Tbeshau arrests his arm. 
 Unhand me — peasant, by your grasp ! Here 's 
 
 gold. 
 'T was a mad freak of mine. I said I 'd pluck 
 A branch from the white-blossomed shrub be- 
 neath 
 The casement there. Take this, and hold your 
 peace: 
 Tresk. Into the moonlight yonder, come with 
 me ! 
 Out of this shadow. 
 Mer. I am armed, fool I 
 
 Tresh. Yes, 
 
 Or no ? You '11 come into the light, or no ? 
 My hand is on your throat — refuse ! — 
 
 Mer. That voice ! 
 
 Where have I heard . . . no — that was mild 
 
 I '11 come with you. [^A*!/ advance. 
 
 Tresh. You 're armed : that 's well. Declare 
 Your name : who are you ? 
 
 Mer. (Tresham! — she is lost!) 
 
 Tresh. Oh, silent? Do you know, you bear 
 yourself 
 Exactly as, in curious dreams I 've had 
 How felons, this wild earth is full of, look 
 When they're detected, still your kind has 
 
 looked ! 
 The bravo holds an assured countenance, 
 The thief is voluble and plausible. 
 But silently the slave of lust has crouched 
 When I have fancied it before a man. 
 Your name ! 
 
 Mer. I do conjure Lord Tresham — ay, 
 
 Kissing his foot, if so I might prevail — 
 That he for his owii sake forbear to ask 
 My name ! As heaven 's above, his future weal 
 Or woe depends upon ray silence ! Vain ! 
 I read your white inexorable face. 
 Know me. Lord Tresham ! 
 
 [If e throws oj^ his disguises. 
 
 Tresh. Mertoun ! 
 
 ■ ' [After a pause.] Draw now ! 
 
 Mer. Hear me 
 
 But speak first ! 
 
 Tresh. ■ Not one least word on your life ! 
 
 Be sure that I will strangle in your throat 
 The least word that informs me how you live 
 And yet seem what you seem ! No doubt 'twas 
 
 you 
 Taught Mildred still to keep that face and sin. 
 We should join hands in frantic sympathy 
 If you once taught me the unteachable. 
 Explained how you can live so, and so lie. 
 With God's help 1 retain, despite my sense, 
 The old belief — a life like yours is still 
 tei^ossible. Now draw ! 
 
 Mer. Not for my sake. 
 
 Do I entreat a hearing — for your sake. 
 And most, for her sake 1 
 
 Tresh. Ha ha, what should 1 
 
 Know of your ways ? A miscreant like yourself. 
 How must one rouse his ire ? A blow ? — that 's 
 
 pride 
 No doubt, to him ! One spurns him, does one 
 
 not? 
 Or sets the foot upon his mouth, or spits 
 Into his face ! Come 1 Which, or all of these ? 
 
 Mer. 'TwLxt him and me and Mildred. 
 Heaven be judge I 
 Can I avoid this ? Have yoiir will, my lord ! 
 
 life draws and^ after a few passes^ falls. 
 
 Tresh. You are not hurt ? 
 
 Mer. You 'U hear me now ! 
 
 Tresh. But rise ! 
 
 Mer. Ah, Tresham, say I not "you'll hear 
 me now ! " 
 And what procures a man' the right to speak 
 In his defence before his fellow man, 
 But — I suppose — the thoi^ht that presently 
 He may have leave to speak before his God 
 His whole defence ? 
 
 Tresh. Not hurt ? It cannot be I 
 
 You made no effort to resist me. Where 
 Did my sword reach you? Why not have re^ 
 
 turned 
 My thrnsts ? Hurt where ? 
 
 Mer. My lord — 
 
 Tresh. How young he is t 
 
 Mer. Lord Tresham, I am very young, and 
 yet 
 I have entangled other lives with mine. 
 Do let me speak, and do believe my speech ! 
 That when I die before you presently, — 
 
 Tresh. Can you stay here till I return with 
 help? 
 
 Mer. Oh, stay by me ! When I was less 
 
 I ' ' than boy 
 I did you grievous wrong and knew it not — 
 Upon my honor, knew it not ! Once known^ 
 I could not find what seemed a better way 
 To right you than I took : my life — you feel 
 How less than nothing were the giving you 
 The life you 've taken ! But I thought my way 
 The better ■ — only for your sake and hers : 
 And as you have decided otherwise, 
 Would I had an infinity of lives 
 To offer you i Now say — instruct me — think 1 
 Can you, from the brief minutes I have left. 
 Eke out ray reparation ? Oh think — think ! 
 For I must wnng a partial — dare I say, 
 Forgiveness from you, ere I die ? 
 
 Tresh. I do 
 
 Forgive you. 
 
 Mer. Wait and ponder that great word 1 
 
 Because, if you forgive me, I shall hope 
 To speak to you of — Mildred ! 
 
 Tresh. Mertoun, haste 
 
 And anger have undone ns. 'T is not you 
 Should tell me for a novelty you 're young. 
 Thoughtless, unable to recall the past. 
 Be but your pardon ample as my own ! 
 
 Mer. Ah, Tresham, that a sword-stroke and 
 a drop 
 Of blood or two, should bring all this about ! 
 Why, 't was my very fear of yon, my love 
 
228 
 
 A BLOT IN THE 'SCUTCHEON 
 
 Of you — (what passion like a boy's for one 
 Like you ?) — that ruined me 1 I dreamed of 
 
 you — 
 You, all accomplished, courted eveiywhere, 
 The scholar and the gentleman. I burned 
 To knit myself to you : but I was young, 
 And your surpassing reputation kept me 
 So far aloof ! Oh, wherefore all that love ? 
 With less of love, my glorious yesterday 
 Of praise and gentlest words and kindest looks, 
 Had taken place perchance six months ago. 
 Even now, how happy we had been ! And yet 
 I know the thought of this escaped you, 
 
 Tresham ! 
 Let me look up into your face ; I feel 
 'Tis changed above me : yet my eyes are glazed. 
 Where ? where ? 
 
 {_As he endeavors to raise himself his eye catches the 
 lamp. 
 Ah, Mildred ! What will Mildred do ? 
 Tresham, her life is bound up in the life 
 That 's bleeding fast away ! I '11 live — must 
 
 live. 
 There, if you '11 only turn me I shall live 
 And save her ! Tresham — oh, had you but 
 
 heard ! 
 Had you but heard ! What right was yours to 
 
 set 
 The thoughtless foot upon her life and mine, 
 And then say, as we perish, " Had I thought. 
 All had gone otherwise " Y We 've sinned and 
 
 die : 
 Never you sin. Lord Tresham ! for you 'U die, 
 And God will judge you. 
 
 Tresh. Yes, be satisfied ! 
 
 That process is begun. 
 
 Mer. And she sits there 
 
 Waiting for me ! Now, say you this to her — 
 You, not another — say, I saw him die 
 As he breathed this, I love her " — you don't 
 
 know 
 What those three small words mean ! Say, lov- 
 ing her 
 Lowers me down the bloody slope to death 
 With memories ... I speak to her, not you. 
 Who had no pity, will have no remorse. 
 Perchance intend her . . . Die along with me, 
 Dear Mildred ! 't is so easy, and you '11 'scape 
 So much unkindness ! Can I lie at rest. 
 With rude speech spoken to you, ruder deeds 
 Done to you ? — heartless men shall have my 
 
 heart. 
 And I tied down with grave-clothes and the 
 
 worm. 
 Aware, perhaps, of every blow — oh God ! — 
 Upon those lips — yet of no power to tear 
 The felon stripe by stripe ! Die, Mildred ! 
 
 Leave 
 Their honorable world to them ! For God 
 We 're good enough, though the world casts us 
 
 out. [-4 whistle is heard. 
 
 Tresh. Ho, Gerard ! 
 {Enter Gerard, Austin and Guendolen, with ligJUs.) 
 No one speak ! You see what 's done. 
 1 cannot bear another voice. 
 
 Mer. There 's light — 
 
 Light all about me, and I move to it. 
 Tresham, did I not tell you — did you not 
 
 Just promise to deliver words of mine 
 To Mildred? 
 
 Tresh. I will bear those words to her. 
 
 Mer. Now ? 
 
 Tresh. Now. Lift you the body, and leave 
 me 
 The head. 
 \^As they luive half raised Mertoun, he turns suddenly. 
 
 Mer. I knew they turned me : turn me not 
 from her I 
 There ! stay you ! there ! [Dies 
 
 Guen. [After a pause.^ Austin, remain you 
 here 
 With Thorold until Gerard comes with help : 
 Then lead him to his chamber. I must go 
 To Mildred. 
 
 Tresh. Guendolen, 1 hear each word 
 
 You utter. Did you hear him bid me gjve 
 His message ? Did you hear my promise ? 1, 
 And only I, see Mildred. 
 
 Giien. She will die. 
 
 Tresh. Oh no, she will not die I I dare not 
 hope 
 She'll die. What ground have you to think 
 
 she '11 die? 
 Why, Austin 's with you ! 
 
 Aus. Had we but arrived 
 
 Before you fought ! 
 
 Tresh. There was no fight at all. 
 
 He let me slaughter him — the boy ! I '11 trust 
 The body there to you and Gerard — thus ! 
 Now bear him on before me. 
 
 Aus. Whither bear him ? 
 
 Tresh. Oh, to my chamber ! When we meet 
 there next. 
 We shall be friends. 
 
 IThey bear out the body of Mertouit. 
 Will she die, Guendolen ? 
 
 Guen. Where are you taking me ? 
 
 Tresh. He fell iost here. 
 
 Now answer me. Shall you in your whole life 
 — You who have naught to do with Mertoun'a 
 
 fate. 
 Now you have seen his breast upon the turf, 
 Shall you e'er walk this way if you can help ? 
 When you and Austin wander arm-in-arm 
 Through our ancestral grounds, will not a shads 
 Be ever on the meadow and the waste — 
 Another kind of shade than when the night 
 Shuts the woodside with all its whispers up ? 
 But will you ever so forget his breast 
 As carelessly to cross this bloody turf 
 Under the black yew avenue ? That 's well I 
 You turn your head : and I then ? — 
 
 Guen. What is done 
 
 Is done. My care is for the living. Thorold, 
 Bear up against this burden : more remains 
 To set the neck to ! 
 
 Tresh. Dear and ancient trees 
 
 My fathers planted, and I loved so well ! 
 What have 1 done that, like some fabled crime 
 Of yore, lets loose a Fury leading thus 
 Her miserable dance amidst you all ? 
 Oh, never more for me shall winds intone 
 With all your tops a vast antiphony. 
 Demanding and responding in God's praise ! 
 Hers ye are now, not mine ! Farewell — fare- 
 well [ 
 
A BLOT IN THE 'SCUTCHEON 
 
 229 
 
 ScENB II. HiLDRSD's Chamber. Mildred alone. 
 
 Mil. He comes not ! I have heard of those 
 who seeemed 
 Resourceless hi prosperity, — you thought 
 SqiTow might slay them when she listed ; yet 
 Did they so gather up their diffused strength 
 At her first menace, that they bade her strike. 
 And stood and laughed her subtlest skill to 
 
 scorn. 
 Oh, 't is not so with me ! The first woe fell. 
 And the rest fall upon it, not on me : 
 Else should I bear that Henry comes not ? — 
 
 fails 
 Just this first night out of so many nights ? 
 Loving is done with. Were he sitting now, 
 As so few hours since, on that seat, we 'd love 
 No more — contrive no thousand happy ways 
 To hide love from the loveless, any more. 
 I think I might have urged some little point 
 In my defence, to Thorold ; he was breathless 
 For the least hint of a defence : but no. 
 The first shame over, all that would might fall. 
 No Heiwy ! Yet I merely sit and think 
 The morn's deed o'er and o'er. I must have 
 
 crept 
 Out of myself. A MUdred that has lost 
 Her lover — oh, I dare not look upon 
 Such woe ! I crouch away from it ! 'T is she, 
 Mildred, will break her heart, not I ! The 
 
 world 
 Foisakes me : only Henry '3 left me — left ? 
 When I have lost him, for he does not come. 
 And I sit stupidly . . . Oh Heaven, break up 
 This woi-se than anguish, this mad apathy. 
 By any means or any messenger ! 
 
 Tresh. [ Without!] Mildred ! 
 
 Mil. Come in ! Heaven hears me ! 
 
 [Enter Tbbsham.] You ? alone ? 
 Oh, no more cui-sing ! 
 
 Tresh. Mildred, I must sit. 
 
 There — you sit I 
 
 Mil, Say it, Thorold — do not look 
 
 The curse ! deliver all you come to say ! 
 What must become of me ? Oh, speak that 
 
 thought 
 Which makes your brow and cheeks so pale ! 
 
 Tresh. My thought? 
 
 Mil. All of it 1 
 
 Tresh. tlow we waded — years ago — 
 
 After those water-lilies, till the plash, 
 I know not how, surprised us : and you dared 
 Neither advance nor turn back : so, we stood 
 Laughing and crying until Gerard came — 
 Once safe upon the turf, the loudest too, 
 For once more reaching the relinquished prize ! 
 How idle thoughts are, some men's, dying 
 
 men's ! 
 Mildred, — 
 
 Mil. You call me kindlier by my name 
 
 Than even yesterday : what is in that ? 
 
 Tresh, \t weighs so much upon ray mind 
 that I 
 This morning took an office not my own ! 
 I might ... of course, I must be glad or 
 
 grieved, 
 Content or not, at every little thing 
 That touches you. I may with a wrung heart 
 
 Even reprove you, Mildred ; I did more : 
 Will vou forgive me ? 
 
 Mil. Thorold ? do you mock ? 
 
 Or no . . . and yet you bid me . . . say that 
 word ! 
 Tresh. Forgive me, Mildred ! — are you si- 
 lent. Sweet ? 
 Mil. [Starting up.'] Why does not Henry 
 Mertoun come to-night ? 
 Are you, too, silent ? 
 
 IDashing his vwntle aside^ and pointing to his scab- 
 bard, ivhich is empty. 
 
 Ah, this speaks for you ! 
 You 've murdered Henry Mertoun ! Now pro- 
 ceed ! 
 What is it I mnst pardon ? This and all ? 
 Well, I do pardon you — I think I do. 
 Thorold, how veiy wretched you must be ! 
 Tresh. He bade me tell you . . . 
 Mil. What I do forbid 
 
 Your utterance of ! So much that you may tell 
 And will not — how you murdered him . , . 
 
 but, no ! 
 You '11 tell me that he loved me, never more 
 Than bleeding out his life there : must I say 
 " Indeed," to that ? Enough! I pardon you. 
 Tresh, You cannot, Mildred ! for the harsh 
 words, yes : 
 Of this last deed Another 's judge ; whose doom 
 I wait in doubt, despondency and fear. 
 Mil. Oh, trne ! There 's naught for me to 
 liardon ! True ! 
 Yon loose my soul of all its cares at once. 
 Death makes me sure of him forever ! You 
 Tell me his last words ? He shall tell me them, 
 And take my answer — not in words, but read- 
 ing 
 Himself the heart I had to read him late. 
 Which death . . . 
 
 Tresh. Death ? You are dying too ? Well 
 said 
 Of Guendolen ! I dared not hope you 'd die : 
 But she was sure of it. 
 
 Mil, Tell Guendolen 
 
 I loved her, and tell Austin . . . 
 
 Tresh. Him you loved : 
 
 And me ? 
 
 Mil. Ah, Thorold ! Was 't not rashly done 
 To quench that blood, on fire with youth and 
 
 hope 
 And love of me — whom you loved too, and yet 
 Suffered to sit here waiting his approach 
 While you were slaying him ? Oh, doubtlessly 
 You let him speak his poor confused boy's- 
 
 speech 
 — Do his poor utmost to disarm your wrath 
 And respite me ! — you let him try to give 
 The story of our love and ignorance. 
 And the brief madness and the long despair — 
 Yon let him plead all this, because your code 
 Of honor bids you hear before you strike : 
 But at the end, as he looked up for life 
 Into your eyes — you struck him down ! 
 
 Tresh. No ! No I 
 
 Had I but heard him — had I let him speak 
 Half the truth — less — had I looked long on 
 
 him 
 I had desisted ! Why, as he lay tlipre. 
 
230 
 
 COLOMBE'S ; BIRTHDAY 
 
 The moon on his flushed cheek, I gathered all 
 The story ere he told it : I saw through 
 The troubled surface of his crime and yours 
 A depth of purity immovable ; .1 
 
 Had I but glanced, where all seemed turbidest 
 Had gleamed some inlet to the calm beneath ; 
 I would not glance : my punishment 's at hand. 
 There, Mildred, is the truth! and you — say 
 
 on — 
 You curse me ? 
 
 Mil. As I dare approach that Heaven 
 
 Which has not bade a living thing despair, 
 Which needs no code to keep its grace from 
 
 stain. 
 But bids the vilest worm that turns on it 
 Desist and be forgiven, — I — forgive not. 
 But bless you, Thorold, from my soul of souls ! 
 \_Falls on his neck. 
 There ! Do not think too much upon the past ! 
 The cloud that 's broke was all the same a cloud 
 While it stood up between my friend and you ; 
 You hurt him 'neath its shadow : but is that 
 So past retrieve ? I have his heart, you know ; 
 I may dispose of it : I give it you ! 
 It loves you as mine loves ! Confirm me, 
 Henry ! \_Dies. 
 
 Tresh. I wish thee joy, Beloved ! I am glad 
 In thy fvJl gladness ! 
 
 Gtien. [Without.] Mildred! Tresham! 
 [Entering with Austin.] ThOrold, 
 
 I could desist no longer. Ah, she swoons 1 
 That 's well. 
 
 Tresh. Oh, better far than that ! 
 
 Gwen. She 's dead ! 
 
 Let me unlock her arms I 
 
 Tresh. She threw them thus 
 
 About my neek, and blessed me, and then died : 
 You '11 let them stay now, Guendolen ! 
 
 Aus. Leave her 
 
 And look to him ! What ails you, Thorold ? 
 
 Guen. White 
 
 As she, and whiter 1 Austin! quick — this 
 side I 
 
 Aus. A froth is oozing through his clenchfed 
 teeth ; 
 Both lips, where they 're not bitten through, 
 
 are black : 
 Speak, dearest Thorold ! 
 
 Tresh. Something does weigh down 
 
 My neck beside her weight : thanks : I should 
 
 fall 
 But for you, Austin, I believe ! —there, there, 
 'Twill pass away soon!— ah, — I had foi> 
 
 gotten : 
 I am dying. 
 Guen. Thorold— Tliorold — why was this? 
 Tresh. I said, just as I drank the poison off. 
 The earth would be no longer earth to me, 
 The life out of all life was gone from me. 
 There are blind ways provided, the foredone 
 Heart-weaiy player in this pageant-world 
 Drops out by, letting the main masque defile 
 By the conspicuous portal : I am through — 
 Just through ! 
 
 Guen. Don't leave him, Austin ! Death is 
 
 close. 
 Tresh. Already Mildred's face is peaoefuller. 
 I see you, Austin — feel yon : here 's my hand, 
 Put yours in it — you, Guendolen, yours too ! 
 You 're lord and lady now — you 're Treshams ; 
 
 name 
 And fame are yours : you hold our 'scutcheon 
 
 up. 
 Austin, no blot on it ! You see how blood 
 Must wash one blot away : the first blot came 
 And the first blood came. To the vain world's 
 
 ' eye 
 All 's gules again : no care to the vain world. 
 From whence the red was drawn ! 
 Aus. No blot shall come ! 
 
 Tresh. I said that ; yet it did come. Should 
 it come. 
 Vengeance is God's, not man's. Remember me ! 
 
 IDies. 
 Guen. [Letting fall the pulseless arm.] Ah, 
 Thorold, we can but — remember you I 
 
 COLOMBE'S BIRTHDAY 
 
 A PLAY 
 
 " Ivy and violet, what do ye here 
 Witli blossom and slioot in the warm spring-weather, 
 Hiding the arms of Mondienci and Vere ? " 
 
 Hanmer. 
 
 NO ONE LOVES AND HONORS BARRY CORNWALL MORE THAN DOES 
 ROBERT browning; 
 WHO, HAVING NOTHING BETTER THAN THIS PLAY 
 TO GIVE HIM IN PROOF OF IT, MUST SAY SO. 
 
 Bhowning was stimulated by the enthusiastic 
 reception of A Blot in the ^Scutcheon to write 
 another play for the stage, but for some reason 
 it was not performed for ten years or so. It 
 
 was printed in 1844 as No. VT. of Belts and 
 Pomegranates. Mr. Gosse in his Personalia 
 says : — 
 "I have before me at the present moment a 
 
COLOMBE'S BIRTHDAY 
 
 231 
 
 copy of the first edition, marked for acting by 
 the author, -who has written : ' I made the 
 alterations in this copy to suit some — I for- 
 get what — pi'ojected stage representation ; not 
 tliat of Miss Faucit, which was carried into 
 effect long- afterward.' The stage directions 
 are numerous and minute, showing the science 
 which the dramatist had gained since he first 
 essayed to put his creations on the hoards. 
 
 Some of the suggestions are characteristic 
 enough. For instance: 'Unless a rery good 
 Valence is found, this extremely fine speech, 
 [in Act IV. where Valence describes Berthold 
 to Colombe], perhaps the jewel of the play, is 
 to be left out.' In the present editions the 
 verses run otherwise." 
 
 The play has recently [1895] been rearranged 
 in three acts and brought again on the stage. 
 
 PERSONS 
 
 CoiiOMBE OF Bavestein, Duchess of Jiiliers and Cleves. 
 
 Sabyne, Adolf, her Attendants. 
 
 GulBERT, Gaucelue, Maufboy, Cluonet, CoiirtieTS. 
 
 Valence, Advocate of Cleves. 
 
 Prince Bebtholo, Claimant of the Duchy, 
 
 Melchiok, his Confidant. 
 
 Place, Tlie Palace at Juliers. 
 
 Time, 16—. 
 
 ACT I 
 
 Moi-ning. Scene. A corridor leading to the Audience- 
 chamber. 
 Gaucblme, Clugnet, Maufrot OTid other Courtiers, 
 
 round Guibbbt who is silently reading a paper: as 
 
 he drops it at the end — 
 
 Guibert. That this should be her birthday ; 
 and the day 
 We all invested her, twelve months ago, _ 
 As the late Duke's true heiress and our liege ; 
 And that this also must become the day . . , 
 Oh, miserable lady I 
 Is* Courtier. Ay, indeed ? 
 
 2d Court. Well, Guibert ? 
 Sd Court. But your news, my friend, your 
 news ! 
 The sooner, friend, one learns Prince Berthold's 
 
 pleasure. 
 The better for us all : how writes the Prince ? 
 Give me ! I 'U read it for the common good. 
 Gui. In time, sir, — but till time comes, par- 
 don me ! 
 Our old Duke just disclosed his cliild's re- 
 treat. 
 Declared her true succession to his rule, 
 And died : this birthday was the day, last year. 
 We convoyed her from Castle Ravestein — 
 That sleeps out trustfully its extreme age 
 On the Meuse' quiet bank, where she lived 
 
 queen 
 Over the water-buds, — to Juliers' court 
 AVith joy and bustle. Here again we stand ; 
 Sir Gaucelme's buckle 's constant to his cap : 
 To-day 's much such another sunny day ! 
 Gaucdme. Come, Guibert, this outgrows a 
 jest, I think I 
 You 're hardly such a novice as to need 
 The lesson, you pretend. 
 
 Gui. What lesson, sir 1 
 
 That everybody, if he 'd thrive at court. 
 Should, first and last of all, look to himself ? 
 Why, no : and therefore with your good ex- 
 ample. 
 
 (—Ho, Master Adolf !) — to myself I '11 look. 
 {Enter Adolf.) 
 Gui. The Prince's letter ; why, of all men 
 
 else, 
 Comes it to me ? 
 
 Adolf. By virtue of your place. 
 
 Sir Guibert I 'T was the Prince's express 
 
 charge. 
 His envoy told us, that the missive there 
 Should only reach our lady by the hand 
 Of whosoever held your place. 
 Gui. Enough ! 
 
 [Adolf retires. 
 Then, gentles, who '11 accept a certain poor 
 Indifferently honorable place. 
 My friends, I make no doubt, have gnashed 
 
 their teeth 
 At leisure minutes these half-dozen years. 
 To find me never in the mood to quit ? 
 Who asks may have it. with my blessing, and — 
 This to present our lady. Who '11 accept ? 
 You, — you, — you ? There it lies, and may, 
 
 for me ! 
 Maufroy. [A youth, picking up the paper, reads 
 
 aloud A " Prince Berthold, proved by 
 
 titles following 
 Undoubted Lord of Juliers, comes this day 
 To claim his own, with license from the Pope, 
 The Emperor, the Kings of Spain and 
 
 France" . . . 
 Gau. Sufficient " titles following," I judge I 
 Don't read another 1 Well, — "to claim, his 
 
 own?" 
 Mau. ' ' — And take possession of the Duchy 
 
 held 
 Since twelve months, to the true heir's preju- 
 dice. 
 By" . . . Colombe, Juliers' mistress, so she 
 
 thinks. 
 And Ravestein's mere lady, as we find ! 
 Who wants the place and paper? Guibert 's 
 
 right. 
 I hope to climb a little in the world, — 
 I'd push my fortunes, — but, no more than 
 
 he. 
 Could tell her on this happy day of days. 
 That, save the nosegay in her hand, perhaps. 
 There 's nothing left to call her own. Sir 
 
 Clugnet, 
 You famish for promotion ; what say you ? 
 Clugnet. [An old man.] To give this letter 
 
 were a sort, I take it. 
 Of service : services ask recompense : 
 What kind of comer may be Ravestein ? 
 
 Gui. The castle? Oh, you'd share her 
 
 fortunes ? Good 1 
 
232 
 
 COLOMBE'S BIRTHDAY 
 
 Three walls stand upright, full as good as four, 
 With no such had remainder of a roof. 
 
 Cluff. Oh, — but the town ? 
 
 Gui, Five houses, fifteen huts ; 
 
 A church whereto was once a spire, 't is judged ; 
 And half a dyke, except in time of thaw. 
 
 Clue;, Still there 's some revenue ? 
 
 Gm. Else Heaven forfend ! 
 
 Yon hang a heaeon out, should fogs increase ; 
 So, when the Autumn floats of pine-wood steer 
 Safe 'mid the white confusion, thanks to you. 
 Their grateful raftsman flings a guilder in ; 
 — That 's if he mean to pass your way next 
 time. 
 
 Clue/. If not ? 
 
 Gm. Hang guilders, then ! he blesses yon. 
 
 Clug. What man do you suppose me ? Keep 
 yoiir paper ! 
 And, let me say, it shows no handsome spirit 
 To dally with misfortune ; keep your place ! 
 
 Gau. Some one must tell her. 
 
 Gui. 
 
 Some one may : you may 
 
 Gau. Sir Guibert, 't is no trifle turns me sick 
 Of court-hypocrisy at years like mine. 
 But this goes near it. Where 's there news at 
 
 all? 
 Who 'U have the face, for instance, to afdrm 
 He never heard, e'en while we crowned the 
 
 girl, 
 That Juliers' tenure was by Salic law ; 
 That one, confessed her father's cousin's child, 
 And, she away, indisputable heir. 
 Against our choice protesting and the Duke's, 
 Claimed Juliers ? — nor, as he preferred his 
 
 claim, 
 That first this, then another potentate, 
 Inclined to its allowance ? — I or you, 
 Or any one except the lady's self ? 
 Oh, it had been the direst cruelty 
 To break the business to her ! Things might 
 
 change ; 
 At all events, we 'd see next masque at end, 
 Next mummery over first : and so the edge 
 Was taken oif sharp tidings as they came. 
 Till here 's the Prince upon us, and there 's 
 
 she 
 — Wreathing her hair, a song between her lips, 
 With just the faintest notion possible 
 That some such claimant earns a livelihood 
 About the world, by feigning grievances — 
 Few pay the story of, but grudge its price, 
 And fewer listen to, a second time. 
 Your method proves a failure ; now try mine ! 
 A-ud, since this must be carried . . . 
 Gui. [Snatching the paper from him.J By 
 
 your leave ! 
 Your zeal transports you ! 'T will not serve 
 
 the Prince 
 So much as you expect, this course you 'd take. 
 If she leaves quietly her palace, — well ; 
 But if she died upon its threshold, — no : 
 He 'd have the trouble of removing her. 
 Come, gentles, we're all — what the devil 
 
 knows ! 
 You, Gaucelme, won't lose character, beside — 
 You broke your father's heart superiorly 
 To gather his succession — never blush ! 
 You 're from my province, and, be comforted. 
 
 They teU of it with wonder to this day. 
 Yon can afford to let your talent sleep. 
 We '11 take the very worst supposed, as true : 
 There, the old Duke knew, when he hid biB 
 
 child 
 Among the river-flowers at Eavestem, 
 With whom the right lay ! Call the Prince our 
 
 Duke ! 
 There, she 's no Duchess, she 's no anything 
 More than a young maid with the bluest eyes : 
 And now, sirs, we '11 not break this young 
 
 maid's heart 
 Coolly as Gaucelme could and would ! No 
 
 haste! 
 His talent 's full-blown, ours but in the bud : 
 We '11 not advance to his perfection yet — 
 WiU we. Sir Mauf roy ? See, I 've ruined Mau- 
 
 froy 
 Forever as a courtier ! 
 
 Gau. Here 's a coil ! 
 
 And, count us, will yon ? Count its residue, 
 This boasted convoy, this day last year's crowd ! 
 A birthday, too, a gratulation day ! 
 I 'm dumb : bid that keep silence ! 
 
 Mau. and others. Eh, Sir Guibert ? 
 
 He 's right : that does say something : that 's 
 
 bare truth. 
 Ten — twelve, I make : a perilous droppmg off ! 
 Gui. Pooh — is it audience hour ? The ves- 
 tibule 
 Swarms too, I wager, with the common sort 
 That want our privilege of entiy here. 
 Gau. Adolf ! [Re-enter Adolf.] Who 's 
 
 outside ? 
 Gm. Oh, your looks suffice ! 
 
 Nobody waiting ? 
 Mau. [Looking through the door-folds.^ Scarce 
 
 our number ! 
 Gui. 'Sdeath ! 
 
 Nothing to beg for, to complain about ? 
 It can't be ! Ill news spreads, but not so fast 
 As thus to frighten all the world ! 
 
 Gau. The world 
 
 Lives out of doors, sir — not with you and me 
 By presence-chamber porches, state-room stairs. 
 Wherever warmth 's perpetual : outside 's free 
 To every wind from every compass-point 
 And who may get nipped needs be weather- 
 wise. 
 The Prince comes and the lady's People go ; 
 The snow-goose settles down, the swallows 
 
 flee — 
 Why should they wait for winter-time ? 'T is 
 
 instinct : 
 Don't you feel somewhat chilly ? 
 
 Gui. That 's their craft ? 
 
 And last year's crowders-round and criers-forth 
 That strewed the garlands, overarched the 
 
 roads. 
 Lighted the bonfires, sang the loyal songs ! 
 Well 't is my comfort, you could never call me 
 The People's Friend ! The People keep their 
 
 word — 
 I keep my place : don't doubt I '11 entertain 
 The People when the Prince comes, and the 
 
 People 
 Are talked of ! Then, their speeches— no one 
 tongue 
 
COLOMBE'S BIRTHDAY 
 
 233 
 
 Found respite, not a pen had holiday 
 
 — For they wrote, too, as well as spoke, these 
 
 knaves ! 
 Now see : we tax and tithe them, pill and poll, 
 They wince and fret enough, but pay they must 
 
 — We manage that, — so, pay with a good grace 
 They might as well, it costs so little more. 
 But when we 've done with taxes, meet folk 
 
 next 
 Outside the toll-booth and the rating-place. 
 In public — there they have us if they will. 
 We 're at their mercy after that, you see ! 
 For one tax not ten devils could extort — 
 Over and above necessity, a grace ; 
 This prompt disbosoming of love, to wit — 
 Their vine-leaf wrappage of our tribute penny, 
 And crowning attestation, all works well. 
 Yet this precisely do they thrust on us ! 
 These cappings quick, these crook-and-cringings 
 
 low. 
 Hand to the heart, and forehead to the knee. 
 With grin that shuts the eyes and opes the 
 
 mouth — 
 So tender they their love ; and, tender made, 
 Go home to curse us, the first doit we ask. 
 As if their souls were any longer theirs ! 
 As if they had not given ample warrant 
 To who should clap a collar on their neck. 
 Rings in their nose, a goad to either flank. 
 And take them for the brute they boast them- 
 selves ! 
 Stay — there 's a bustle at the outer door — 
 And somebody entreating . . . that 's my name I 
 Adolf, — I heard my name ! 
 
 Adolf. 'T was probably 
 
 The suitor. 
 
 Gui. Oh, there is one ? 
 
 Adolf. With a suit 
 
 He 'd fain enforce in person. 
 
 Chti. . The good heart 
 
 -— And the great fool ! Just ope the mid-door's 
 
 fold! 
 Is that a lappet of his cloak, I see ? 
 
 Adolf. LE it bear plenteous sign of travel 
 ... ay. 
 The very cloak my comrades tore I 
 
 Gui. Why tore ? 
 
 Adolf. He seeks the Duchess' presence in 
 that trim : 
 Since daybreak, was he posted hereabouts 
 Lest he should miss the moment. 
 
 Gui. Where 's he now ? 
 
 Adolf. Gone for a minute possibly, not more : 
 They have ado enough to thrust him baxik. 
 
 G^i. Ay — but my name, I caught ? 
 
 Adolf. Oh, sir — he said 
 
 — What was it? — You had known him for- 
 
 merly. 
 And, he believed, would help him did you 
 
 guess 
 He waited now ; you promised him as much : 
 The old plea I 'Faith, he 's back, — renews the 
 
 charge ! 
 {Speaking at the door.] So long as the man 
 
 parleys, peace outside — 
 Nor be too ready with your halberts, there ! 
 Gau. My horse bespattered, as he blocked 
 
 the path 
 
 A thin sour man, not unlike somebody. 
 Adolf. He holds a paper in his breast, 
 
 whereon 
 He glances when his cheeks flush and his brow 
 At each repulse — • 
 Gau. I noticed he 'd a brow. 
 
 Adolf. So glancing, he grows calmer, leans 
 
 awhile 
 Over the balustrade, adjusts his dress. 
 And presently turns round, quiet again. 
 With some new pretext for admittance. — 
 
 Baek! 
 [To GuiBERT.]— Sir, he has seen you! Now 
 
 cross halberts 1 Ha — 
 Pascal is prostrate — there lies Fabian too ! 
 No passage ! Whither would the madman 
 
 press ? 
 Close the doors quick on me ! 
 
 Gui. Too late ! He 's here. 
 
 {Enter, hastily and with discomposed dress, Valencb.) 
 
 Valence. Sir Guibert, wiU you help me ? — 
 
 Me, that come 
 Charged by your townsmen, all who starve at 
 
 Cleves, 
 To represent their heights and depths of woe 
 Before our Duchess and obtain relief ! 
 Such errands barricade such doors, it seems : 
 But not a common hindrance drives me back 
 On all the sad yet hopeful faces, lit 
 With hope for the first time, which sent me 
 
 forth. 
 Cleves, speak for me ! Cleves' men and wo- 
 men, speak ! 
 Who followed me — your strongest — many a 
 
 mile 
 That I might go the fresher from their ranks, 
 
 — Who sit — your weakest — by the city gates, 
 To take me fuller of what news I brii^ 
 
 As I return — for I must needs return ! 
 
 — Can I ? 'T were hard, no listener for their 
 
 wrongs. 
 To turn them back upon the old despair — 
 Harder, Sir Guibert, than imploring thus — 
 So, I do — any way you please — implore ! 
 If you . . . but how should you remember 
 
 Cleves? 
 Yet they of Cleves remember you so well ! 
 Ay, comment on each trait of you they keep. 
 Your words and deeds caught up at second 
 
 hand, — 
 Proud, I believe, at bottom of their hearts, 
 0' the very levity and recklessness 
 Which only prove that you forget their wrongs, 
 Cleves, the grand town, whose men and women 
 
 starve. 
 Is Cleves forgotten ? Then, remember me ! 
 You promised me that you would help me once 
 For other purpose : will you keep your word ? 
 Gui. And who may you be, friend ? 
 Val. Valence of Cleves. 
 
 Gui. Valence of . . . not the advocate of 
 
 Cleves, 
 I owed my whole estate to, three yeais back ? 
 Ay, well may you keep silence ! Why, my 
 
 lords. 
 You 've heard, I 'm sure, how, Pentecost three 
 
 years, 
 I was so nearly ousted of my land 
 
234 
 
 COLOMBE'S BIRTHDAY 
 
 By some knave's-pretext — (eh ? when you re- 
 fused me 
 
 Your ugly daughter, Clugnet !) — and you 've 
 heard 
 
 How I recovered it by miracle 
 
 — (When I refused her I) Hero 'a the very 
 ,i ' friend, 
 
 — Valence of Cleres, all parties have to 
 
 thank I 
 Nay, Valence, this procedure 's vile in you ! 
 I 'm no more grateful than a courtier should, 
 But politic am I — I bear a brain, 
 Can oast about a little, might require 
 Your services a second time. I tried 
 To tempt you with advancement here to court 
 
 — " No ! " — well, for curiosity at least 
 
 To view our life here — " No ! " — our Duchess, 
 
 then, — 
 A pretty woman 's worth some pains to see, 
 Nor is she spoiled, I take it, if a crown 
 Complete the forehead pale and tresses 
 pure . . . 
 
 Val. Our city trusted me its miseries. 
 And I am come. 
 
 Gui, So much for taste I But "come," — 
 So may you be, for anytliing I know, 
 To beg the Pope's cross, or Sir Clugnet's 
 
 daughter, 
 And with an equal chance you get all three I 
 If it was ever worth your while to come. 
 Was not the proper way worth finding too ? 
 
 Vol. Straight to the palace-portal, sir, I 
 came — 
 
 Gui. — And said ? — 
 
 Vol. — That I had brought the miseries 
 
 Of a whole city to relieve. 
 
 Gui. — Which saying. 
 
 Won your admittance ? You saw me, indeed, 
 And here, no doubt, you stand : as certainly. 
 My intervention, I shall not dispute. 
 Procures you audience ; which, if I procure, — 
 That paper 's closely written. t- by Saint Paul, 
 Here flock the Wrongs, follow the Remedies, : 
 Chapter and verse, One, Two, A, B and C 1 
 Perhaps you 'd enter, make a reverence, 
 And launch these 
 last? 
 
 VcU. How should they let me pause or turn 
 aside ? 
 
 Gau. [To Valence.] My worthy sir, one 
 question ! You 've come straight 
 From Cleves, you tell us : heard you any talk 
 At Cleves about our lady ? 
 
 Val. Much. 
 
 Gau. And what ? 
 
 V.al. Her wish was to redress all wrongs she 
 knew. 
 
 Gau. That, you believed ? 
 
 Val. You see me, sir ! 
 
 Gau. — Nor stopped 
 
 Upon the road from Cleves to Juliers here. 
 For any — rumors you might find afloat ? 
 
 Val. I had my townsmen's, wrongs to busy 
 me. 
 
 Gau, This is the lady's birthday, do you 
 know ? 
 ^ Her day of pleasure ? 
 
 Vul. — That the great, I know, 
 
 ' miseries " from first to 
 
 For pleasure bom, should still be on the watch 
 To exclude pleasure when a duty offers : 
 Even as, for duty born, the lowly too 
 May ever snatch a pleasure if in reach : 
 Both wiU have plenty of their birthright, sir 1 
 Gau. [Aside to Guibebt.] Sir Guibert, 
 here 's your man ! No scruples now — 
 You 'U never find his like ! Time presses hard. 
 i 've seen your drift and Adolf's too, this whUe, 
 But you can't keep the hour of audience back 
 Much longer, and at noon the Prince arrives. 
 [Pointing to Valence.] Entrust him with it — 
 fool no chance away ! 
 Gui. Him ? 
 Gau. — With the missive I What 's the man 
 
 to her? 
 Gui. No bad thought 1 — Yet, 't is yours, 
 who ever played 
 The tempting serpent: else 't were no bad 
 
 thought ! 
 I should — and do — mistrust it for your sake. 
 Or else . . . 
 
 {Enter an Official who communKaies with Adolf.) 
 
 Adolf. The Duchess will receive the court ! 
 
 Gui. Give us a moment, Adolf f Valence, 
 friend, 
 I '11 help you. We of the service, you 're to 
 
 mark, 
 Have special entry, while the herd . . . the folk 
 Outside, get access through our help alone ; 
 — Well, it is so, was so, and I suppose 
 So ever will be : your natural lot is, therefore. 
 To wait your turn and opportunity, 
 And probably miss both. Now, I engage 
 To set you, here and in a minute's space, 
 Before the lady, with full leave to plead 
 Chapter and verse, and A, and B, and C, 
 To heart's content. 
 
 Vai. I grieve that I must aak, — 
 
 This being, yourself admit, the custom here, — 
 To what the price of such a favor mounts ? ' 
 
 Gui. Just so ! You 're not without a courtier's 
 tact. 
 Little at court, as your quick instinct prompts, 
 Do such as we without a recompense. 
 
 Val. Yours is ? 
 
 &ai. A trifle : here 's a document 
 
 'T is some one's duty to present her Grace — 
 I say, not mine — these say, not theirs — such 
 
 points 
 Have weight at court. WiU you relieve us all 
 And take it ? Just say, " I am bidden lay 
 This paper at the Duchess' feet ! " 
 
 Val. No more ? 
 
 I thank you, sir ! 
 
 Adolf. Her Grace receives the court ! 
 
 Gui. [Aside.] Now, sureum corda, quoth 
 the mass-priest ! Do — 
 Whoever 's my kind saint, do let alone 
 These pushings to and fro, and pullings back ; 
 Peacieably let me han^ o' the devil's ai-m 
 The downward path, if you can't pluck me off 
 Completely ! Let me live quite hie, or yours ! 
 iThe Courtiers iegin to range themselves, and more 
 
 toward the door. 
 After me. Valence I So, our famous Cleves 
 Lacks bread ? Yet don't we gallants buy their 
 lace? 
 
GOLOMBE'S BIRTHDAY 
 
 235 
 
 And dear enough — it beggars nip,'l knowj 
 To keep my very gloves fringed properly. 
 This, Valenee, is our Great State Hall you cross ; 
 Yon gray urn's veritable marcasite, ■ ' 
 The Pope's gift : and those salvers testify 
 The Emperor. Presently you '11 set your foot 
 . . . But you don't speak, friend V^ence I 
 Val. I shall speak. 
 
 Gau. [Aside to GuiB^RT.^ Guibert — it were 
 
 no such ungraceful thing 
 If you and I, at first, seemed horror-struck 
 With the bad news. Look here, what you shall 
 
 do! 
 Suppose you, first, clap hand to sword and cry 
 "Yield strangers our aUegiance? First I'll 
 
 perish 
 Beside your Graxse ! " — and so give me the cue 
 To . . . 
 Gui. — Clap your hand to note-book and jot 
 • down 
 That to regale the Prince with ? I conceive. 
 [To Valence.] Do, Valence, speak, or I shall 
 
 half suspect 
 You 're plotting to supplant us, me the first, 
 I' the lady's favor ! Is 't the grand harangue 
 You mean to make, that thus engrosses you ? 
 — Which of her virtues you '11 apostrbphize ? 
 Or is 't the fashion you aspire to start. 
 Of that close-curled, not unbecoming hair ? 
 Or what else ponder you ? 
 
 Ytd. My townsmen's wrongs. 
 
 ACT II 
 
 Noon, Scene. The Presenc&^hamber. 
 
 The Duchess and Sabynb. 
 
 Duchess. Announce that I am ready for the 
 
 court ! . 
 
 Sabyne. 'T is scarcely audience-hour, I think ; 
 your Grace 
 May best consult your own relief, no doubt. 
 And shun the crowd : but few can have arrived. 
 Duch. Lst those not yet arrived, then, keep 
 
 away 
 
 'T was me, this day last year at Kavestein, 
 You hurried. It has been full time, beside, 
 This half-hour. Do you hesitate ? 
 
 Sab. Forgive me ! 
 
 Duch. Stay, Sabyne ; let me hasten to make 
 sure 
 Of one true thanker : here with you begins 
 My audience, claim you first its privilege ! 
 It is my birth's event they celebrate : 
 You need not wish me more such happy days. 
 But — ask some favor I Have you none to ask ? 
 Has Adolf none, then ? this was far from least 
 Of much I waited for impatiently. 
 Assure yourself ! It seemed so natural 
 Your gift, beside this bunch of river-bells. 
 Should be the power and leave of doing good 
 To you, and greater pleasure to myself. 
 You ask my leave to-day to marry Adolf ? 
 The rest is my concern. 
 
 Sab. Your Grace is ever 
 
 Our lady of dear Ravestein, — but, for 
 AdoM. .. 
 
 Duch. "But"? You have not, sure, changed 
 in your regard 
 And purpose towards him ? 
 Sab. We change ? 
 
 Duch. Well then? WeU? 
 
 Sab, How could we two be happy, and, most 
 like. 
 Leave Juliers, when — when . . . but 't is 
 audience-time ! 
 Duch. " When, if you left me, I were left 
 indeed ! " 
 Would you subjoin that ? Bid the court 
 
 approach ! 
 — Why should we play thus with each other, 
 
 Sabyne? 
 Do I not know, if courtiers prove remiss. 
 If friends detain me, and get blame for it. 
 There is a cause ? Of last year's fervid throng 
 Scarce one half comes now. 
 Sab. [Aside.] One half? No, alas! 
 
 Duch. So can the mere suspicion of a clo\id 
 Over my fortunes, strike each loyal heart. 
 They 've heard of this Prince Berthold ; and, 
 
 forsooth. 
 Some foolish arrogant pretence he makes. 
 May grow more foolish and more arrogant, 
 They please to apprehend ! I thank their love. 
 Admit them ! 
 Sab. [Aside.] How much has she really 
 
 learned ? 
 Duch. Surely, whoever 's absent, Tristan 
 waits ? 
 
 — Or at least Romuald, whom my father raised 
 From nothing — come, he 's faithful to me, 
 
 come ! 
 ^abyne, I should but be the prouder — yes. 
 The fitter to comport myself aright) 
 Not Romuald ? Xavier — what said he to that ? 
 For Xavier hates a parasite, I know ! 
 
 [Sabyne goes out. 
 Duch. Well, sunshine 's everywhere, and 
 
 summer too. 
 Next year 't is the old plaoe again, perhaps — 
 The water-breeze again, the birds again. 
 
 — It cannot be ! It is too late to be ! 
 What part had I, or choice in all of it ? 
 Hither they brought me ; I had not to think 
 Nor care, concern myself with doing good 
 Or ill, my task was just — to live, — to live. 
 And, answering ends there was no need explain, 
 To render Juliers happy — so they said. 
 
 All could not have been falsehood: some was 
 
 love. 
 And wonder and obedience. I did all 
 They looked for : why then cease to do it now ? 
 Yet this is to be calmly set aside, 
 And —ere next birthday's dawn, for aught I 
 
 know. 
 Things change, a claimant may arrive, and 
 
 It cannot nor it shall not be ! His right ? 
 Well then, he has the right, and I have not, 
 
 — But who bade all of you surround my life 
 And close its growth up with your ducal crown 
 Which, plucked off rudely, leaves me perishing ? 
 I could have been like one of you, — loved, hoped. 
 Feared, lived and died like one of you — but 
 
 you 
 
236 
 
 COLOMBE'S BIRTHDAY 
 
 Would take that life away and give me this, 
 And I will keep this ! I will face you I Come ! 
 {Enter the Courtiers and Valence.) 
 The Courtiers. Many such happy mornings 
 
 to your Grrace ! 
 Duch. [Aside, as they pay their devoir.] The 
 
 same words, the same faces, — the same 
 
 love ! 
 I have been overfeai-ful. These are few ; 
 But these, at least, stand firmly: these are 
 
 mine. 
 As many come as may ; and if no more, 
 'T is tliat these few suffice — they do suffice ! 
 What succor may not next year bring me? 
 
 Plainly, 
 I feared too soon. [To «Ae Courtiers.] I thank 
 
 you, sirs : all thanks ! 
 Val. [Aside, as the Duchess passes from one 
 
 group to another, conversing.] 'T is she — 
 
 the vision this day last year brought. 
 When, for a golden moment at our Cleves, 
 She tarried in her progress hither. Cleves 
 Chose me to speak its welcome, and I spoke 
 
 — Not that she could have noted the recluse 
 
 — Ungainly, old before his time — who gazed. 
 Well, Heaven's gifts are not wasted, and that 
 
 gaze 
 Kept, and shall keep me to the end, her own ! 
 She was above it — but so would not sink 
 My gaze to earth ! The People caught it, hers — 
 Thenceforward, mine ; but thus entirely mine. 
 Who shall affirm, had she not raised my soul 
 Ere she retired and left me — them ? She 
 
 turns — 
 There 's all her wondrous face at once ! The 
 
 ground 
 Reels and . . . 
 
 [Suddenly occupying himself with his paper."] 
 
 These wrongs of theirs I have to plead ! 
 
 Duch. [To Me Courtiers.] Nay, compliment 
 
 enough ! and kindness' self 
 Should pause before it wish me more such years. 
 'T was fortunate that thus, ere youth escaped, 
 I tasted life's pure pleasure — one such, pure, 
 Is worth a thousand, mixed — and youth 's for 
 
 pleasure : 
 Mine is received ; let my age pay for it. 
 
 Gau. So, pay, and pleasure paid for, thinks 
 
 your Grace, 
 Should never go together ? 
 
 Gui. How, Sir Gaucelme ? 
 
 Hurry one's feast down unenjoyingly 
 At the snatched breathing-intervals of work ? 
 As good you saved it till the dull day's-end 
 When, stiff and sleepy, appetite is gone. 
 Eat first, then work upon the strength of food ! 
 Duch. True : you enable me to risk my 
 
 future. 
 By giving me a past beyond recall. 
 I lived, a girl, one happy leisure year : 
 Let me endeavor to be the Duchess now I 
 And so, — what news. Sir Guibert, spoke you 
 
 of? 
 
 lAs they advance a little, and Guibert speaks — 
 ■ — That gentleman ? 
 
 Val. [Aside]. I feel her eyes on me. 
 Gui. [To VALENCE.] The Duchess, sir, 
 
 inclines to hear your suit. 
 
 Advance ! He is from Cleves. , , mi - 
 
 Val. [Coming forward.] [Aside.] Their 
 
 wrongs — their wrongs ! 
 Duck. And you, sir, are from Cleves ? How 
 
 fresh in mind. 
 The hour or two I passed at queenly Cleves ! 
 She entertained me bravely, but the best 
 Of her good pageant seemed its standers-by 
 With insuppressive joy on every face ! 
 What says my ancient famous happy Cleves ? 
 Vol. Take the truth, lady — you are made 
 
 for truth ! 
 So think my friends : nor do they less deserve 
 The having you to take it, you shall think, 
 AVhen you know all — nay, when you oidy know 
 How, on that day yon recollect at Cleves, 
 When the poor acquiescing multitude 
 Who thrust themselves with all their woes apart 
 Into unnoticed comers, that the few. 
 Their means sufficed to muster trappings for, 
 Might fin the foreground, occupy your sight 
 With joyous faces fit to bear away 
 And boast of as a saniple of all Cleves 
 
 — How, when to daylight these crept out once 
 
 more. 
 Clutching, unconscious, each his empty rags 
 Whence the scant coin, which had not half 
 
 bought bread. 
 That mom he shook forth, counted piece by 
 
 piece. 
 And, well-advisedly, on perfumes spent them 
 To bum, or flowers to strew, before your path 
 
 — How, when the golden flood of music and bliss 
 Ebbed, as their moon retreated, and again 
 Left the sharp black-point I'oeks of misery bare 
 
 — Then I, their friend, had only to suggest 
 " Saw she the horror as she saw the pomp ! " 
 And as one man they cried, "He speaks the 
 
 truth : 
 Show her the horror ! Take from our own 
 
 mouths 
 Our wrongs and show them, she will see them 
 
 too ! " 
 This they cried, lady ! I have brought the 
 
 wrongs. 
 Duch. Wrongs? Cleves has wrongs —ap- 
 parent now and thus ? 
 I thank you ! In that paper ? Give it me ! 
 Val. (There, Cleves!) In this ! (What did 
 
 I promise, Cleves ?) 
 Our weavers, clothiers, spinners ai'e reduced 
 Since . . . Oh, I crave your pardon ! I forget 
 I buy the privilege of this approach, 
 And promptly would discharge my debt. I lay 
 This paper humbly at the Duchess' feet. 
 
 ^Presenting GuiBEHT's^npcn 
 Gui. Stay ! for the present . . . 
 Duch. Stay, sir ? I take aught 
 
 Tliat teaches me their wrongs with greater pride 
 Than this your ducal circlet. Thank you, sir ! 
 [The DncHESs reads hastily .■ then, turning to the Coiir- 
 ^^ tiers — 
 
 What have I done to yon ? Your deed or mine 
 Was it, this crowning me ? I gave myself 
 No more a title to your homage, no. 
 Than church-flowers, born this season, wrote 
 
 the words 
 In the saint's-book that sanctified them first. 
 
COLOMBE'S BIRTHDAY 
 
 237 
 
 For such a flower, you plucked lue ; well, you 
 
 erred — 
 Well, 'twas a weed; remove the eye-aore 
 
 quick ! 
 But should you not remember it has lain 
 Steeped in the candles' glory, palely shrined. 
 Nearer God's Mother than most earthly things ? 
 — That if 't be faded 'tis with prayer's sole 
 
 breath — 
 That the one day it boasted was God's day ? 
 Still, I do thank you ! Had you used respect. 
 Here might I dwindle to my last white leaf. 
 Here lose life's latest freshness, which even yet 
 May yield some wandering insect rest and food : 
 So, fling me forth, and — all is best for all ! 
 [After a pause.] Prince Berthold, who art 
 
 Juliers' Duke it seems — 
 The King's choice, and the Emperor's, and the 
 
 Pope's — 
 Be mine, too ! Take this Pe6ple ! TeU not me 
 Of rescripts, precedents, authorities, 
 
 — But take them, from a heart that yearns to 
 
 give ! 
 Find out their love, — I could not ; find their 
 
 fear, — 
 I would not ; find their like, — I never shall. 
 Among the flowers ! ITaking off her coronet. 
 
 Colombe of Bavestein 
 Thanks God she is no longer Duchess here ! 
 Vol. [Advancing to Guieekt.] Sir Guibert, 
 
 knight, they call you — this of mine 
 Is the first step I ever set at court. 
 You dared make me your instrument, I find ; 
 For that, so sure as you and I are men. 
 We reckon to the utmost presently ; 
 But as you are a courtier and I none. 
 Your knowledge may instruct me. I, already. 
 Have too far outraged, by my ignorance 
 Of coui-tier-ways, this lady, to proceed 
 A second step and risk addressing her : 
 
 — I am degraded — you let me address ! 
 Out of her presence, all is plain enough 
 What I shedl do — but in her presence, too, 
 Surely there 's something proper to be done. 
 [To me others.] You, gentles, tell me if I guess 
 
 aright — 
 May I not strike this man to earth ? 
 The Courtiers. [As Guibert springs forward, 
 withholding him.] Let go ! 
 
 — The clothiers' spokesman, Guibert ? Grace a 
 
 ehm'l ? 
 Duch. [To Valence.] Oh, be acquainted 
 
 with your party, sir ! 
 He 's of the oldest lineage Juliers boasts ; 
 A lion crests him for a cognizance ; 
 "Scorning to waver " — that 's his 'scutcheon's 
 
 word ; 
 His ofEice with the new Duke — probably 
 The same in honor as with me ; or more, 
 By so much as this gallant turn deserves. 
 He 's now, I dare say, of a thousand times 
 The rank and influence that remain with her 
 Whose part you take ! So, lest for taking it 
 You suffer . . . 
 
 Vol. , I may strike him then to earth ? 
 
 Gui. [Falling on his knee.] Great and dear 
 
 lady, pardon me ! Hear once ! 
 Believe me and be merciful — be just ! 
 
 I could not bring myself to give that paper 
 Without a keener pang than I dared meet 
 
 — And so felt Clugnet here, and Mauf roy here 
 — No one dared meet it. Protestation's cheap,— 
 But, if to die for you did any good, 
 
 [To Gaucelme.] Would not I die, sir? Say 
 
 your worst of me ! 
 But it does no good, that 's the mournful tnith. 
 And since the hint of a resistance, even, 
 Would just precipitate, on you the first, 
 A speedier ruin — I shall not deny. 
 Saving myself indubitable pain, 
 I thought to give you pleasure (who might say ?) 
 By showing that your only subject found 
 To carry the sad notice was the man 
 Precisely ignorant of its contents ; 
 A nameless, mere provincial advocate ; 
 One whom 't was like you never saw before. 
 Never would see again. All has gone wrong : 
 But I meant right, God knows, and you, I trust ! 
 Duch. A nameless advocate, this gentleman ? 
 
 — (I pardon you. Sir Guiberi I) 
 
 Gm. [Rising, to Yalehce.] Sir, and you? 
 Val. — Bejoice that you are lightened of a 
 load. 
 Now, you have only me to reckon with. 
 Duch. One I have never seen, much less 
 
 obliged ? 
 Val. Dare I speak, lady ? 
 Duch. Dare you ! Heard you not 
 
 I rule no longer ? 
 
 Val. Lady, if your rule 
 
 Were based alone on such a ground as these 
 
 ^Pointing to the Courtiers. 
 Could furnish you, — abjure it! They have 
 
 hidden 
 A source of true dominion from your sight. 
 Duch. You hear them — no such source is 
 
 left . . . 
 Val. Hear Cleves ! 
 
 Whose haggard craftsmen rose to starve this 
 
 day. 
 Starve now, and will lie down at night to starve. 
 Sure of a like to-morrow — but as sure 
 Of a most unlike moiTow-after-that, 
 Since end things must, end howsoe'er things 
 
 may. 
 What curbs the brute-force instinct in its hour ? 
 What makes — instead of rising, all as one. 
 And teaching fingers, so expert to wield 
 Their tool, the broadsword's play or carbine's 
 trick, 
 
 — What makes that there 's an easier help, they 
 
 think. 
 For you, whose name so few of them can spell, 
 Whose face scarce one in every hundred saw, — 
 You simply have to understand their wrongs, 
 And wrongs will vanish — so, still trades are 
 
 plied, 
 And swords lie rusting, and myself stand here ? 
 There is a vision in the heart of each 
 Of justice, mercy, wisdom, tenderness ^ 
 To wrong and pain, and knowledge of its cure : 
 And these embodied in a woman's form 
 That best transmits them, pure as first received, 
 From God above her, to mankind below. 
 Will you derive your rule from such a ground. 
 Or rather hold it by the suffrage, say. 
 
238 
 
 COLOMBE'S BIRTHDAY 
 
 Of this man — this -^ and this ? , 
 
 Dueh. [After a pause.] You come from Cleves : 
 How maiiy are at Cleves of such a mind ? 
 Vat. [From his paper.] " We, all the manu- 
 facturers of Cleves — " 
 Duch. Or stay, sir — lest I seem too cov- 
 etous — 
 Are you my subject ? such as you describe, 
 Am I to you, though to no other man ? 
 
 Vol. [From his paper.] — " Valence, ordained 
 
 your Advocate at Cleves " — 
 Duch. [Ueplacing the coronet.] Then I re- 
 main Cleves' Duchess ! Take you note. 
 While Cleves but yields one subject of this 
 
 stamp, 
 I stand her lady till she waves me off ! 
 For her sake, all the Prince claims I withliold ; 
 Laugh at each menace ; and, his power defy- 
 ing, 
 Geturn his missive with its due contempt ! 
 
 [^Casting it <^way. 
 Gui. [Picking itup.],^- Which to the Pijnce 
 I will deliver, lady, 
 (Note it down, Gaucehne) — with your message 
 too! 
 Duch. I think the office is a subject's, sir ! 
 — Either . . . how style you him ? — my special 
 
 guarder 
 The Marshal's — for who knows but violence 
 May follow the delivery ? — Or, perhaps, , 
 My Chancellor's — for law may be to urge 
 On its receipt ! — Or, even my Chamberlain's — 
 For I may violate established form I 
 [To Valence.) Sir, — for the half -hour till this 
 
 service ends, , 
 Will you become all these to me ? 
 
 Val. [Falling on his: knee.] My liege ! 
 
 Duch. Give me ! 
 
 [TVte Courtiers pre^eni their badges of o£ice. 
 [Putting them by.] Whatever was their virtue 
 
 once. 
 They need new consecration. [Raising Va- 
 lence.] Are you mine ? 
 I wiU be Duchess, yet! IShe retires. 
 
 The Courtiers. Our Duchess yet ! 
 
 A, glorious lady ! Worthy love and dread ! 
 I '11 stand by her, — and I, whate'er betide I 
 Ghii. [To Valence.] Well done, well done, 
 sir ! I care not who knows, 
 You have done nobly and I envy you — 
 Though I am but unfairly used, I think : 
 For when one gets a place like this I hold. 
 One gets too the remark that its mere wages. 
 The pay and the preferment, make our ijrize. 
 Talk about zeal and faith apart from these. 
 We 're laughed at — much would zeal and faith 
 
 subsist 
 Without these also I Yet, let these be stopped. 
 Our wages discontinue, — then, indeed. 
 Our zeal and faith, (we hear on every side,) 
 Are not released — having been pledged away 
 I wonder, for what zeal and faith in turn ? 
 Hard money purchased me my place 1 No, 
 
 no — 
 I 'm right, sir — but your wrong is better still. 
 If I had time and skill to argue it. 
 Therefore, I say, I '11 serve you, how you 
 please — 
 
 If you like, —fight you, as you seem to wish 
 (The kinder of me that, in sober truth, 
 I never dreamed 1 did you any harm) . . . 
 
 Gau. — Or, kinder still, you '11 introduce, no 
 doubt, , , . , J 
 
 His merits to the Prince who 's just at hand, 
 And let no hint drop he 's made Chancellor 
 And Chamberlain and Heaven knows what be- 
 side ! 
 
 Clug. [To Valence.] You stare, young sir, 
 and threaten ! Let me say. 
 That at your age, when first I came to court, 
 I was not much above a gentleman ; 
 While now ... „r , 
 
 Val. — You are Head-Lackey ? With your 
 office 
 I have not yet been graced, sir ! 
 
 Other Courtiers. [To Clugnet.] Let him talk! 
 Fidelity, disinterestedness. 
 Excuse so much ! Men claim my worship ever 
 Who stanchly and steadfastly . . . 
 (Enter Adol;.) 
 
 Adolf. The Prince arrives. 
 
 Courtiers. Ha? How? 
 
 Adolf. He leaves his guard a stage behind 
 At Aix, and enters almost by himself. 
 
 1st Court. The Prince I This foolish busi- 
 ness puts all out. 
 
 2d Court. Let Gauoelme speak first ! 
 
 3d Court. Better I began 
 
 About the state of Jnliers : should one say 
 All 's prosperous and invitmg him ? 
 
 ifh Court . — Or rather. 
 
 All 's prostrate and imploring him ? 
 
 Bth Court. That 's best. 
 
 Where 's the Cleves' paper, by the way ? 
 
 ith Court. [To Valence.] Sir — sir — 
 
 If you 'U but lend that paper — trust it me, 
 I 'U warrant . . . 
 
 5th Court. Softly, sir — the Marshal's duty ! 
 
 Clug. Has not the Chamberlain a hearing 
 first 
 By virtue of his patent ? 
 
 Gau. Patents ? — Duties ? 
 
 All that, my masters, must begin again ! 
 One word composes the whole controversy : 
 We 're simply now — the Prince's ! 
 
 The Others. Ay — the Prince's t 
 
 {Enter Sabyne.) 
 
 Sab. Adolf! Bid . . . Oh, no time for 
 ceremony ! 
 Where 's whom our lady calls her only subject ? 
 She needs him. Who is here the Duchess's ? 
 Val. [Starting from his reverie.] Most grate- 
 fully I follow to her feet. 
 
 ACT III 
 
 Afternoon, Scbhb. The Vestibule. 
 Enter Prince Berthold and Melchior. 
 
 Berthold. A thriving little burgh this Jnliers 
 looks. 
 [Half-apartJ Keep Jullers, and as good you 
 
 kept Cologne : 
 Better try Aix, though ! — 
 
 Melchior. PIpjibb 't. ycm Hijrbuess sneak f 
 
COLOMBE'S BIRTHDAY 
 
 239 
 
 Berth. [As btfore.'} Aix, Cologne, Frankfort, 
 
 — Milan ; — Rome ! — 
 Mel. The Grave. 
 
 More weary seems yonr Highness, I remark, 
 Than sundry conquerors whose path I 've 
 
 watched 
 Through fire and blood to any prize they gain. 
 I could well wish you, for your proper sake. 
 Had met some shade of opposition here 
 — Found a blunt seneschal refuse unlock. 
 Or a scared usher lead your steps astray. 
 You must not look for next achievement's palm 
 So easily : this will hurt your conquering. 
 Berth. My next ? Ay, as you say, my next 
 
 and next ! 
 Well, I am tired, that 's truth, and moody too, 
 This quiet entrance-morning: listen why] 
 Our little burgh, now, Juliers — 't is indeed 
 One link, however insignificant. 
 Of the great chain by which I reach my hope, 
 -'A link I must secure ; but otherwise. 
 You 'd wonder I esteem it worth my grasp. 
 Just see what life is, with its shifts and turns ! 
 It happens now — this very nook — to be 
 A place that once . . . not a long whila since, 
 
 neither — 
 When I lived an ambiguous hanger-on 
 Of foreign courts, and bore my claims about. 
 Discarded by one kinsman, and the other 
 A poor priest merely, — then, I say, this place 
 Shone my ambition's object ; to be Duke — 
 Seemed then, what to be Emperor seems now. 
 My rights were far from judged as plain and 
 
 sure 
 In those days as of late, I promise you : 
 And't was my day-dream, Lady Colombe here 
 Might e'en compound the matter, pity me. 
 Be struck, say, with my chivalry and grace 
 (I was a boy ! ) — bestow her hand at length, . 
 And make me Duke, in her right it not mine. 
 Here am I, Duke confessed, at Juliers now. 
 Hearken : if ever I be Emperor, 
 Remind me what I felt and said to-day I 
 Mel. AU this consoles a bookish man like 
 < me. 
 — Aiid so will weariness cling to you. Wrong, 
 Wrong ! Had you sought the lady's court your- 
 self, — 
 Faced the redoubtables composing it. 
 Flattered this, threatened that man, bribed the 
 
 other, — 
 Pleaded by writ and word and deed, your 
 
 cause, — 
 Oonquered a footing inch by painful inch, — ; . 
 And, after long years' struggle, pounced at last 
 On her for prize, — the right life had been lived. 
 And justice done to divers faculties 
 Shut in that brow. Yourself were visible 
 As you stood victor, then ; whom now — (your 
 
 pardon !) 
 I am forced narrowly to search and see. 
 So are you hid by helps — this Pope, your 
 
 uncle — 
 Your cousin, the other King 1 You are a mind, — 
 They, body : too much of mere legs-and-arms 
 Obstructs the mind so 1 Match these with their 
 
 like : 
 Hatch mind with mind ! 
 
 Berths And where 's your mind to match ? 
 They show me legs-and-arms to cope withal ! 
 I 'd subjugate this city — where 's its mind ? 
 i,T he Coxatiava e/nter slowly.) 
 Mel. Got out of sight when you came troops 
 and all ! 
 And in its stead, here greets you flesh-and-blood : 
 A smug economy of both, this first ! 
 
 \_As Gluqnet bows obsequiously. 
 Well done, gout, all considered I — I may go ?' 
 Berth. Help me receive them I 
 Mel. Oh, they just will say 
 
 What yesterday at Aix their fellows said, — 
 At Treves, the day before ! Sir Prince, my 
 
 friend. 
 Why do you let your life slip thus ? — Meantime, 
 I have my little Juliei'S to achieve — 
 The understanding this tough Platonist, 
 Your holy uncle disinterred, Amelius : 
 Lend me a company of horse and foot, 
 ■To help me through hii tractate — gain my 
 Duchy ! 
 Berth. And Empire, after that is gained, will 
 
 be — ? 
 Mel. To help me through your uncle's com- 
 ment. Prince 1 [.Goes. 
 Berth, Ah ? Well ; he o'er-refines — the schol- 
 ar's fault ! 
 How do I let my life slip ? Say, this life, 
 I lead now, differs from the common life 
 Of other men in mere degree, not kind. 
 Of joys and griefs, — still there is such degree 
 Mere largeness in a life is something, sure, — 
 Enough to care about and struggle for. 
 In this world ; for this world, the size of things ; 
 The sort of things, for that to come, no doubt. 
 A great is better than a little aim : 
 And when I wooed Priscilla's rosy mouth 
 And failed so, under that gray convent-wall. 
 Was I more happy than I should be now 
 
 [By this time, ike Courtiere are ranged be/ore him. 
 If failing of my Empire ? Not a whit. 
 — Here comes the mind, it once had tasked me 
 
 sore 
 To baffle, but for my advantages ! 
 All 's best as 't is : these scholars talk and talk, 
 
 [Seats hmiself. 
 The Courtiers. Welcome our Prince to Juliers ! 
 — to his heritage ! 
 Our dntifullest service profFer we ! 
 Cliig. I, please your Highness, having exer- 
 cised 
 The function of Grand Chamberlain at court. 
 With much acceptance, as men testify . . . 
 Berth. I cannot greatly thank you, gentle- 
 men! 
 The Pope declares my claim to the Duchy 
 
 founded 
 On strictest justice — you concede it, therefore, 
 I do not wonder : and the kings my friends 
 Protest they mean to see such claim enforced, — 
 You easily may offer to assist. 
 But there 's a slight discretionary power 
 To serve me in the matter, you 've had long. 
 Though late you use it. This is well to say — 
 But could you not have said it months ago ? 
 I'm not denied my own Duke'S truncheon, 
 true — 
 
240 
 
 COLOMBE'S BIRTHDAY 
 
 'Tis flung me — I stoop down, and from the 
 
 ground 
 Pick it, with all you placid standers-by : 
 And now 1 have it, gems and mire at once, 
 Grace go with it to my soiled hands, you say ! 
 
 Gui. (By Paul, the advocate oui' doughty 
 friend 
 Cuts the best figure !) 
 
 Gau. If our ignorance 
 
 May have offended, sure our loyalty . . . 
 
 Berth. Loyalty? Yours? Oh — of yourselves 
 you speak ! 
 I mean the Duchess all this time, I hope ! 
 And since I have been forced repeat my claims 
 As if they never had been urged before, 
 As 1 began, so must 1 end, it seems. 
 The formal answer to the grave demand ! 
 What says the lady ? 
 
 Courtiers. [One to another.'] 1st Court. Mar- 
 shal I 2c? Court. Orator I 
 
 Gui. A variation of our mistress' way ! 
 Wipe off his boots' dust, Clugnet ! — that, he 
 waits ! 
 
 1st Court. Your place ! 
 
 2d Court. Just now it was your own ! 
 
 Gui. The devil's I 
 
 Berth. [To GniBEBT.] Come forward, friend 
 — you with the paper, there I 
 Is Juliers the first city I 've obtained ? 
 By this time, I may boast proficiency 
 In each decorum of the circumstance. 
 Give it me as she gave it — the petition. 
 Demand, you style it ! What 's required, in 
 
 brief? 
 What title's reservation, appanage's 
 Allowance ? I heard all at Treves, last week. 
 
 Gau. [To GuiBEBT.] "Give it him as she 
 gave it I" 
 
 Gui. And why not ? 
 
 [jTo Berthold.I The lady crushed your sum- 
 mons thus together. 
 And bade me, with the very greatest scorn 
 So fair a frame could hold, inform you . , . 
 
 Courtiers. Stop — 
 
 Idiot ! 
 
 Gui. — Inform you she denied your claim, 
 Defied yourself ! (I tread upon his heel, 
 The blustering advocate !) 
 
 Berth. By heaven and earth I 
 
 Dare you jest, sir ? 
 
 Gm. Did they at Treves, last week ? 
 
 Berth, [Starting up.] Why then, I look much 
 bolder than I knew. 
 And you prove better actors than I thought : 
 Since, as I live, I took you as you entered 
 For just so many dearest friends of mine, 
 Fled from the sinking to the rising power 
 — The sneaking'st crew, in short, I e'er de- 
 
 Whereas, I am alone here for the moment, 
 With every soldier left behind at Aix ! 
 Silence ? That means the worst ? I thought 
 
 as much ! 
 What follows next ? 
 Courtiers. Gracious Prince — he raves ! 
 
 Gui. He asked the truth and why not get the 
 truth? 
 
 Berth. Am I a prisoner ? Speak, will some- 
 tody ? ., „ 
 
 — But why stand paltering with imbeciles .•" 
 Let me see her, or . . . 
 
 Gui. Her, without her leave, 
 
 Shall no one see : she 's Duchess yet ! 
 
 Courtiers. [Footsteps without, as they are dis- 
 puting.] Good chance ! 
 She's here — the Lady Colombo's self 1 
 
 Berth. 'Tis well I 
 
 [Aside.] Array a handful thus gainst my 
 
 world ? 
 Not iU done, truly ! Were not this a mind 
 To match one's mind with? Colombo! Let 
 
 us wait ! 
 I failed so, under that gray convent wall ! 
 She comes. 
 
 Gui. The Duchess ! Strangers, range your- 
 selves ! 
 [As the Duchess enters m conversation with Vaibhce^ 
 Berthold and the Courtiers /af/ back a little. 
 Duch. Presagef ully it beats, presagefully, 
 My heart : the right is Berthold's and not mine. 
 Val. Grant that he has the right, dare I mis- 
 trust 
 Your power to acquiesce so patiently 
 As you believe, in such a dream-like change 
 Of fortune — change abrupt, profound, com- 
 plete ? 
 Buck. Ah, the first bitterness is over now ! 
 Bitter I may have felt it to confront 
 The truth, and ascertain those natures' value 
 I had so counted on ; that was a pang : 
 But I did bear it, and the worst is over. 
 Let the Prince take them ! 
 
 Val. And take Juliers too ? 
 
 — Your people without crosses, wands and 
 
 chains — 
 Only with hearts ? 
 
 Duch. There I feel guilty, sir ! 
 
 I cannot give up what I never had : 
 For I ruled these, not them — these stood be- 
 tween. 
 Shall I confess, sir ? I have heard by stealth 
 Of Berthold from the first ; more news and 
 
 more ; 
 Closer and closer swam the thunder cloud. 
 But I was safely housed with these, I knew. 
 At times when to the casement I would turn, 
 At a bird's passage or a fiower-trail's play, 
 I caught the storm's red glimpses on its edge — 
 Yet I was sure some one of all these friends 
 Would interpose : I followed the bird's flight 
 Or plucked the flower — some one would inter- 
 pose! 
 Val. Not one thought on the People — and 
 
 Cleves there ! 
 Duch. Now, sadly conscious my real sway 
 was missed, 
 Its shadow goes without so much regret : 
 Else could Inot again thus calmly bid you, 
 Answer Prince Berthold ! 
 
 Val. Tlien you acquiesce"? 
 
 Buck. Remember over whom it was I ruled ! 
 Gui. [Stepping forward.] Prince Berthold, 
 
 yonder, craves an audience, lady ! 
 Buck [To Valence.] I only have to turn, 
 and I shall face 
 
COLOMBE'S BIRTHDAY 
 
 Prince Berthold ! Oh, my ve^ heart is siek ! 
 
 It is the daughter of a line of Dukes 
 
 This scornful insolent adventurer 
 
 Will hid depart from my dead father's halls ! 
 
 I shall not answer him — dispute with him — 
 
 But, as he hids, depart ! Prevent it, sir ! 
 
 Sir — but a mere day's respite ! Urge for me 
 
 — What I shall call to mind I should have 
 
 urged 
 When time 's gone by — 't will all be mine, you 
 
 urge I 
 A day — an hour — that I myself may lay 
 My rule down ! 'T is too sudden — must not be ! 
 The world 's to hear of it I Once done — for- 
 ever ! 
 How will it read, sir ? How be sung about ? 
 Prevent it 1 
 Berth. [Approaching.] Your frank indignar 
 
 tion, lady. 
 Cannot escape me. Overbold I seem ; 
 But somewhat should be pardoned my surprise 
 At this reception, — this defiance, rather. 
 And if, for their and your sake, I rejoice 
 Your virtues could inspire a trusty few 
 To make such gallant stand in your behalf, 
 I cannot but be sorry, for my own. 
 Your friends should force me to retrace my 
 
 steps : 
 Since I no longer am permitted speak 
 After the pleasant peaceful course prescribed 
 No less by courtesy than relationship — 
 Which I remember, if you once forgot. 
 But never must attack pass unrepeiled. 
 Suffer that, through you, I demand of these, 
 Who controverts my claim to Juliers ? 
 
 Duch. — Me 
 
 You say, you do not speak to — 
 
 Berth. Of your subjects 
 
 I ask, then : whom do yon accredit ? Where 
 Stand those should answer ? 
 
 Val. [Advancing.'] The lady is alone. 
 
 Berth. Alone, and thus ? So weak and yet 
 
 so bold ? 
 Val. I said she was alone — 
 Berth. And weak, I said. 
 
 Val. When is man strong until he feels 
 
 alone ? 
 It was some lonely strength at first, be sure. 
 Created organs, such as those you seek. 
 By which to give its varied purpose shape : 
 And, naming the selected ministrants, 
 Took sword, and shield, and sceptre, — each, a 
 
 man! 
 That strength performed its work and passed 
 
 its way : 
 Yon see our lady ; there, the old shapes stand ! 
 
 — A Marshal, Cfhamberlain, and Chancellor — 
 " Be helped their way, into their death put life 
 And find advantage ! " — so you counsel us. 
 But let strength feel alone, seek help itself, — 
 And, as the inland-hatched sea-creature hunts 
 The sea's breast out, — as, littered 'mid the 
 
 waves 
 The desert-brute makes for the desert's joy, 
 So turns our lady to her true resource, 
 Passing o'er hollow fictions, worn-out types, 
 
 — And I am first her instinct fastens on. 
 And prompt I say, as clear as heart can speak. 
 
 241 
 
 The People will not have you ; nor shall have ! 
 
 It is not merely I shall go bring Cleves 
 
 And fight you to the last, — though that does 
 
 much. 
 And men and children, — ay, and women too. 
 Fighting for home, are rather to be feared 
 Than mercenaries fighting for their pay — 
 But, say you beat us, since such things have 
 
 been, 
 And, where this Juliers laughed, you set your 
 
 foot 
 Upon a steaming bloody plash — what then ? 
 Stand you the more our lord that there you 
 
 stand ? 
 Lord it o'er troops whose force you concentrate, 
 A pillared flame whereto all ardors tend — 
 Lord it 'mid priests whose schemes you amplify, 
 A cloud of smoke 'neath which all shadows 
 
 brood — 
 But never, in this gentle spot of earth. 
 Can you become our Colombo, our play-queen. 
 For whom, to furnish lilies for her hair. 
 We 'd pour our veins forth to enrich the soil ! 
 — Our conqueror ? Yes ! — Our despot ? Yes ! 
 
 — Our Duke ? 
 Know yourself, know us ! 
 Berth. [ Who has been in thought.] Know your 
 lady, also ! 
 [Very deferentially.] — To whom I needs must 
 
 exculpate myself 
 For having made a rash demand, at least. 
 Wherefore to you, sir, who appear to be 
 Her chief adviser, I submit my claims, 
 
 {_&,ving papers. 
 But, this step taken, take no further step. 
 Until the Duchess shall pronounce their worth. 
 Here be our meeting-place ; at night, its time : 
 Till when I humbly take the lady's leave ! 
 \_He withdraws. As the Duchbbs turns to Valence, 
 the Courtiers interchange glances and come forward 
 a little. 
 
 \st Court. So, this was their device ! 
 2d Court. No bad device ! 
 3d Court. You 'd say they love each other, 
 Guibert's friend 
 From Cleves, and she, the Duchess ! 
 
 ith Court. — And moreover, 
 
 That all Prince Berthold comes for, is to help 
 Their loves ! 
 5th Court. Pray, Guibert, what is next to do ? 
 Gui. [Advancing.] I laid my office at the 
 
 Duchess' foot — 
 Others. And I — and I — and I ! 
 Buch. I took them, sirs. 
 
 Gui. [Apart to Valence.] And now, sir, I 
 am simple knight again — 
 Guibert, of the great ancient house, as yet 
 That never bore affront ; whate'eryour birth, — 
 As things stand now, I recognize yourself 
 (If you 'U accept experience of some date) 
 As like to be the leading man o' the time, 
 Therefore as much above me now, as I 
 Seemed above you this morning. Then, I of- 
 fered 
 To fight you : will you be as generous 
 And now fight me ? , . . , 
 
 Vol. Ask when my hf e is mme ! 
 
 Gui. ('Tis hers now !) 
 
242 
 
 COLOMBE'S BIRTHDAY 
 
 Clug. [Apart to Valence, as Buiebkt turns 
 from Aim.] You, sir, have insulted .lue 
 Grossly, — will grant me, too, the selfsame favor 
 You Ve granted him, just now, I make no ques- 
 tion? 
 
 Val. I promise you, as him, sir. 
 
 Clug. Do you so ? 
 
 Handsomely said ! I hold you to it, sir. 
 You 'U get me reinstated in my office 
 As you will Guibert ! 
 
 Duch. I would he alone ! 
 
 \Thby begin to retire slowly : as Valence is about to 
 I ■ ■ follow — 
 
 Alone, sir — only with my heart : you stay ! 
 , Qau. You hear that? Ah, light breaks 
 
 upon me ! Cleves — 
 It was at Cleves some man harangued us all — 
 With great effect, — so those who listened said. 
 My thoughts being busy elsewhere : was this he r 
 Guibert, — your strange, disinterested man ! 
 Your uncorrupted, if uneourtly friend ! 
 The modest worth you mean to patronize ! 
 He cares about no Duchesses, not he ! 
 His sole concern is with the vprongs of Cleves ! 
 What, Guibert? What, it breaks on you at 
 last? 
 
 Gui. Would this hall's floor were a mine's 
 _ roof ! I 'd back 
 And in her very face . . , 
 
 Gau. Apply the match 
 
 That fired the train, — and where would you 
 be, pray ? 
 
 Gui. With him! 
 
 Gau, Stand, rather, safe outside with me ! 
 The mine 's charged : shall I furnish you the 
 
 match 
 And place you properly ? To the antechamber ! 
 
 Gui. Can you ? 
 
 Gau. Try me ! Your friend 's in fortune ! 
 
 Gui. Quick — 
 
 To the antechamber ! He is pale with bliss ! 
 
 Gau. No wonder ! Mark her eyes ! 
 
 Gui. To the antechamber ! 
 
 \_The Courtiers retire. 
 
 Duck. Sir, could you know all you have done 
 for me 
 You were content ! You spoke, and I am saved. 
 
 Val. Be not too sanguine, lady ! Ere you 
 dneam. 
 That transient flush of generosity 
 Fades off, perchance ! The man, beside, is 
 
 gone, — 
 Him we might bend ; but see, the papers here — 
 Inalterably his requirement stays. 
 And cold hard words have we to deal with now. 
 In that large eye there seemed a latent pride. 
 To self-denial not incompetent. 
 But very like to hold itself dispensed 
 From such a gi-ace : however, let us hope ! 
 He is a noble spirit in noble form. 
 I wish he less had bent that brow to smile 
 As with the fancy how he could subject 
 Himself upon occasion to — himself ! 
 From rudeness, violence, you rest secure ; 
 But do not think your Duchy rescued yet 1 
 
 Duch. You, who have opened a new world 
 to me. 
 Will never take the faded language up 
 
 Of that I leave ? My Duchy — keepmg it, 
 Or losing it — is that my sole world now ? 
 
 Val. Ill have I spoken if you thence despise 
 JuUers ; although the lowest, on true grounds,- ' 
 Be worth more than the highest rule, on false : 
 Aspire to rule, on the true grounds ! 
 
 Duch. ^ Nay, hear — 
 
 False, I wUl never — rash, I would not be ! 
 This is indeed my birthday — soul and body. 
 Its hours have done on me the work of years. 
 You hold the requisition : ponder it ! 
 If I have right, my duty's plain : if he — 
 Say so, nor ever change a tone of voice ! 
 At night you meet the Prince ; meet me at eve I 
 Till when, farewell ! This discomposes you ? 
 Believe in your own nature, and its force 
 Of renovating mine ! I take my stand 
 Only as under me the earth is firm : 
 So, prove the first step stable, all will prove. 
 That first, I choose — [Laying her hand on his] 
 — the next to take, choose you ! 
 
 IShe wittidrawt, 
 
 Val. [After a pause.] What drew down 
 this on me ? — on me, dead once. 
 She thus bids live, — since all I hitherto 
 Thought dead in me, youth's ardors and em- 
 prise. 
 Burst into life before her, as she bids 
 Who needs them. Whither will this reach, 
 
 where end ? 
 Her hand's print bums on mine . . . Yet she 's 
 
 above — 
 So very far above me ! All 's too plain : 
 I served her when the others sank away, 
 And she rewards me as such souls reward — 
 The changed voice, the suffusion of the cheek, 
 The eye's acceptance, the expressive hand, 
 
 — Reward, that 's little, in her generous 
 
 thought, 
 Though all to me . . . 
 
 I cannot so disclaim 
 Heaven's gift, nor call it other than it is ! 
 She loves me ! 
 [Looking at the Prince's papers.] — Which love, 
 
 these, perchance, forbid. 
 Can I decide against myself — pronounce 
 She is the Duchess and no mate for me ? 
 
 — Cleves, help me ! Teach me, — every hag- 
 
 gard face, — 
 To sorrow and endure ! I will do right 
 Whatever be the issue. Help me, Cleves ! 
 
 ACT IV 
 
 Evening. Scene. An AntecJiamber. 
 Enter the Courtiers. 
 
 Mau. Now, then, that we may speak — 
 
 how spring this mine ? 
 Gau. Is Guibert ready for its match ? He 
 cools ! 
 Not so friend Valence with the Duchess there ! 
 " Stay, Valence ! Are not you my better 
 
 self?" 
 And her cheek mantled — 
 
 Gut. Well, she loves him, sir , 
 
 And more, — since you will have it I grow 
 cool, — 
 
COLOMBE'S BIRTHDAY 
 
 243 
 
 She 'b right : he 's worth ifcr 
 
 Gau. For his deeds to-day ? 
 
 Say 89 I 
 
 Gui. What should I say beside ? 
 
 Gau. Not this — 
 
 For friendship's sake leave this for me to say — 
 That we 're the dupes of an egregious cheat 1 
 This plain unpractised suitor, who found way 
 To the Duchess through the merest die's turn- 
 up, 
 A year ago had seen her and been seen, 
 Loved and been loved. 
 
 Gui. Impossible I 
 
 Gau. — Nor say, 
 
 How sly and exquisite a trick, moreover. 
 Was this which — taking not their stand on 
 
 facts 
 Boldly, for that had been endurable. 
 But worming on their way by craft, they 
 
 choose 
 Resort to, rather, — and which you and we, 
 Sheep-like, assist them in the playing-off ! 
 The Duchess thus parades him as preferred. 
 Not on the honest ground of preference. 
 Seeing first, liking more, and there an end — 
 But as we all had started equally. 
 And at the close of a fair race he proved 
 The only valiant, sage and loyal man. 
 Herself, too, with the pretty fits and starts, — 
 The careless, winning, candid ignorance 
 Of what the Prince might challenge or forego — 
 She had a hero in reserve ! What risk 
 Ran she ? This deferential easy Prince 
 Who brings his claims for her to ratify 
 — He 's just her puppet for the nonce I You '11 
 
 see, — 
 Valence pronounces, as is equitable, 
 Against him ; off goes the confederate : 
 As equitably. Valence takes her hand ! 
 
 The Chancellor. You run too fast: her 
 hand, no subject takes. 
 Do not our archives hold her father's will ? 
 That will provides against such accident. 
 And gives next heir, Prince Berthold, the re- 
 version 
 Of Juliers, which she forfeits, wedding so. 
 
 Gau. I know that, well as yon, — but does 
 the Prince ? 
 Knows Berthold, think you, that this plan, he 
 
 helps, 
 For Valence's ennoblement, — would end. 
 If crowned with the success which seems its due, 
 In making him the very thing he plays. 
 The actual Duke of Juliers ? All agree 
 That Colombe's title waived or set aside, 
 He is next heir. 
 
 The Chan. Incontrovertibly. 
 
 Gau. Guibert, your match, now, to the 
 train ! 
 
 Gui. Enough ! 
 
 I 'm with you : selfishness is best again. 
 I thought of turning honest — what a dream 
 Let 's wake now ! 
 
 Gau. Selfish, friend, you never were : 
 
 'T was but a series of revenges taken 
 On your unselfishness for prospering ill. 
 But now that you 're grown wiser, what 's our 
 
 Gui. — Wait, I suppose, till Valence weds our 
 lady. 
 And then, if we must needs revenge ourselves. 
 Apprise the Prince. 
 
 Gau. — The Prince, ere then dismissed 
 
 With thanks for playing his mock part so weM ? 
 Tell the Prince now, sir ! Ay, this very night. 
 Ere he accepts his dole and goes his way. 
 Explain how such a marriage makes him Duke, 
 Then trust his gi'atitnde for the surprise ! 
 
 Gui. — Our lady wedding Valence all the 
 same 
 As if the penalty were undisclosed ? 
 Good I If she loves, she '11 not disown her love, 
 Throw Valence up. I wonder you see that, 
 
 Gau. The shame of it — the suddenness and 
 shame ! 
 Within her, the inclining heart — without, 
 A terrible array of witnesses — 
 And Valence by, to keep her to her word. 
 With Berthold's indignation or disgust ! 
 We '11 try it ! — Not that we can venture much. 
 Her confidence we 've lost forever : Berthold's 
 Is all to gain. 
 
 Gui. To-night, then, venture we I 
 
 Yet — if lost confidence might be renewed ? 
 
 Gau. Never in noble natures ! With the 
 base ones, — 
 Twist o£f the crab's claw, wait a smarting- 
 
 while. 
 And something grows and grows and gets to be 
 A mimic of the lost joint, just so like 
 As keeps in mind it never, never will 
 Replace its predecessor 1 Crabs do that : 
 But lop the lion's foot — and . . . 
 
 Gui. To the Prince ! 
 
 Gau. [Aside.^ And come what will to the 
 lion's foot, I pay you, 
 My cat's paw, as I long have yearned to pay ! 
 [Aloud.] Footsteps ! Himseu I 'T is Valence 
 
 breaks on us, 
 Exulting that their scheme succeeds. We '11 
 
 hence -^ 
 And perfect ours ! Consult the archives, 
 
 firat — 
 Then, fortified with knowledge, seek the Halll 
 
 Clug. [To Gaucelme ojs they retire.] You 
 have not smUed so since your father died ! 
 (,As they retire^ enter Valence withpnpers.) 
 
 Val. So must it be ! I have examined these 
 With scarce a palpitating heart — so calm. 
 Keeping her image almost wholly off, 
 Setting upon myself determined watch. 
 Repelling to the uttermost his claims : 
 And the result is — all men would pronounce, 
 And not I, only, the result to be — 
 Berthold is heir ; she has no shade of right 
 To the distinction which divided us. 
 But, suffered to rule first, I know not wlw, 
 Her rule connived at by those Kings and Popes, 
 To serve some devil's - purpose, — now 't is 
 
 Whate'er it was, the nde expires as well. 
 
 — Valence, this rapture . . . selfish can it be ? 
 Eject it from your heart, her home ! — It stays ! 
 Ahi the brave world that opens on us both !\ 
 
 — Do my poor townsmen so esteem it ? 
 
 Cleves, — 
 
244 
 
 COLOMBE'S BIRTHDAY 
 
 I need not your pale faces ! This, reward 
 For service done to you ? Too horrible ! 
 I never served you : 't was myself I served — 
 Nay, served not — rather saved from punish- 
 ment 
 Which, had I failed you then, would plague me 
 
 now ! 
 My life continues yours, and your life, mine. 
 But if, to take God's gift, I swerve no step — 
 Cleves ! If I breathe no prayer for it — if she, 
 IFoolsteps without. 
 Colombe, that comes now, freely gives herself — 
 Will Cleves require, that, turning thus to her, 
 
 {Enter Prince Bekthold.) 
 Pardon, sir ! I did not look for you 
 Tm night, i' the Hall ; nor have as yet declared 
 My judgment to the lady. 
 Serth. So I hoped. 
 
 Val. And yet I scarcely know why that 
 should check 
 The frank disclosure of it first to you — 
 What her right seems, and what, in conse- 
 
 Suence, 
 1 decide on. 
 
 Berth. That I need not ask. 
 
 Val. Yon need not: I have proved tho 
 lady's mind : 
 And, justice being to do, dare act for her. 
 
 Berth. Doubtless she has a very noble mind. 
 
 Val. Oh, never fear but she '11 in each con- 
 juncture 
 Bear herself bravely ! She no whit depends 
 On circumstance ; as she adorns a throne. 
 She had adorned . . . 
 
 Berth, A cottage — in what book 
 
 Have I read that, of every queen that lived ? 
 A throne ! You have not been instructed, sure. 
 To forestall my request ? 
 
 Val. 'T is granted, sir ! 
 
 My heart instructs me. I have scrutinized 
 Your claims . . . 
 
 Berth. Ah — claims, you mean, at first pre- 
 ferred ? 
 I come, before the hour appointed me, 
 To pray you let those claims at present rest. 
 In favor of a new and stronger one. 
 
 Val. You shall not need a stronger : on the 
 part 
 0' the lady, all you offer I accept, 
 Since one clear right suffices : yours is clear. 
 Propose ! 
 
 Berth. I offer her my hand. 
 
 Val. Your hand ? 
 
 Berth. A Duke's, yourself say ; and, at no 
 far time. 
 Something here whispers me — an Emperor's. 
 The lady's mind is noble : which induced 
 This seizure of occasion : ere my claims 
 Were — settled, let us amicably say ! 
 
 Val. Your hand ! 
 
 Berth. {He will fall down and kiss it next 1) 
 Sir, this astonishment 's too flattering, 
 Nor must you hold your mistress' worth so 
 
 cheap. 
 Enhance it, rather, — urge that blood is blood — 
 The daughter of the Burgraves, Landgraves, 
 Markgraves, 
 
 Remains their daughter ! I shall scarce gain- 
 say. 
 Elsewhere, or here, the lady needs must rule : 
 Like the imperial crown's great chrysoprase, 
 They talk of — somewhat out of keeping there, 
 And yet no jewel for a meaner cap. 
 Val. You wed the Duchess ? 
 Berth. Cry you mercy, friend ! 
 
 Will the match also influence fortunes here ? 
 A natural solicitude enough. 
 Be certain, no bad chance it proves for you ! 
 However high you take your present stand. 
 There 's prospect of a higher still remove — 
 For Juliers will not be my resting-place. 
 And, when I have to choose a substitute 
 To rule the little burgh, I 'U think of you 
 Who need not give your mates a character. 
 And yet I doubt your fitness to supplant 
 The gray smooth Chamberlain : he 'd hesitate 
 A doubt his lady could demean herself 
 So low as to accept me. Courage, sir ! 
 I like your method better : feeling's play 
 Is franker much, and flatters me beside. 
 Val. 1 am to say, you love her ? 
 Berth. Say that too ! 
 
 Love has no great concernment, tliinks the 
 
 world. 
 With a Duke's marriage. How go precedents 
 In Juliers' story — how use Juliers' Dukes ? 
 I see you have them here in goodly row ; 
 Yon must be Luitpold — ay, a stalwart sire ! 
 Say, I have been arrested suddenly 
 In my ambition's course, its rocky course, 
 By this sweet flower : I fain would gather it 
 And then proceed : so say and speedily 
 — (Nor stand there like Duke Luitpold's brazen 
 
 self !) 
 Enough, sir : you possess my mind, I think. 
 This is my claim, the others being withdrawn. 
 And to this be it that, i' the Hall to-night. 
 Your lady's answer comes : till when, farewell ! 
 
 [^He retires. 
 Val. [After a pause.] The heavens and 
 
 eaHh stay as they were ; my heart 
 Beats as it beat : the truth remains the truth. 
 What falls away, then, if not faith in her ? 
 Was it my faith, that she could estimate 
 Love's value, and, such faith still guiding me, 
 Dare I now test her ? Or grew faith so strong 
 Solely because no power of test was mine ? 
 {E?iter the Duchess.) 
 Duck. My fate, sir! Ah, you turn away. 
 
 All 's over. 
 But you are sorry for me ? Be not so ! 
 What I might have become, and never was. 
 Regret with me ! What I have merely been. 
 Rejoice I am no longer ! What I seem 
 Beginning now, in my new state, to be, 
 Hope that I am ! — for, once my rights proved 
 
 void, 
 This heavy roof seems easy to exchange 
 For the blue sky outside — my lot henceforth. 
 Val. And what a lot is Berthold's ! 
 Duch. How of him ? 
 
 Val. He gathers earth's whole good into his 
 
 arms; 
 Standing, as man now, stately, strong and wise, 
 Marching to fortune, not surprised by her. 
 
COLOMBE'S BIRTHDAY 
 
 245 
 
 One great aim, like a guiding-star, above — 
 Which tasks strength, wisdom, stateliness, to lift 
 His manhood to the height that takes the prize ; 
 A prize not near — lest overlooking earth 
 He rashly spring to seize it — nor remote, 
 So that he rest upon his path content : 
 But day by day, while shimmering grows shine, 
 And the faint circlet prophesies the orb. 
 He sees so much as, just evolving these, 
 The stateliness, the wisdom and the strength, 
 To due completion, wiU suffice this life, 
 And lead him at his grandest to the grave. 
 After this star, out of a night he springs ; 
 A beggar's cradle for the throne of thrones 
 He quits ; so, mounting, feels each step he 
 
 mounts. 
 Nor, as from each to each exultinglj 
 He passes, overleaps one grade of joy. 
 This, for his own good : — with the world, each 
 
 Of God and man, —reality, tradition. 
 Fancy and fact — so well environ him. 
 That as a mystic panoply they serve — 
 Of force, untenanted, to awe mankind, 
 And work his purpose out with half the world. 
 While he, their master, dexterously slipt 
 From such encumbrance, is meantime em- 
 ployed 
 With his own prowess on the other half. 
 Thus shall he prosper, every day's success 
 Adding, to what is he, a solid strength — 
 An aery might to what encircles him. 
 Till at the last, so life's routine lends help. 
 That as the Emperor only breathes and moves. 
 His shadow shall be watched, his step or stalk 
 Become a comfort or a portent, how 
 He trails his ermine take significance, — 
 Till even his power shall cease to be most 
 
 power. 
 And men shall dread his weakness more, nor 
 
 dare 
 Peril their earth its bravest, first and best. 
 Its typified invincibility. 
 
 Thus shall he go on, greatening, till he ends — 
 The man of mien, the spirit of all flesh, 
 The fiery centre of an earthly world ! 
 
 Duch. Some such a fortune I had dreamed 
 should rise 
 Out of my own — that is, above my power 
 Seemed other, greater potencies to stretch — 
 
 Val. For you ? 
 
 Ihich. It was not I moved there, I think : 
 But one I could, — though constantly beside, 
 And aye approaching, — still keep distant from, 
 And so adore. 'T was a man moved there. 
 
 Val. Who ? 
 
 Duck. I felt the spirit, never saw the face. 
 
 Val. See it 1 'TisBerthold's! He enables 
 you 
 To realize your vision. 
 
 Buck. Berthold ? 
 
 Val. Duke — 
 
 Emperor to be : he proffers you his hand. 
 
 Duck. Generous and princely ! 
 
 Val. He is all of this. 
 
 Duch. Thanks, Berthold, for my father's 
 sake. No hand 
 Degrades me ! 
 
 Val. You accept the proffered hand ? 
 
 Duch. That he should love me ! 
 Val. " Loved " I did not say . 
 
 Had that been — love might so incline the 
 
 Prince 
 To the world's good, the world that 's at his 
 
 foot, — 
 I do not know, this moment, I should dare 
 Desirb that you refused the world — and 
 
 Cleves — 
 The sacrifice he asks. 
 Duch. Not love me, sir ? 
 
 Val. He scarce affirmed it. 
 Duch. May not deeds affirm ? 
 
 Val. What does he ? . . . Yes, yes, very 
 much he does ! 
 All the shame saved, he thinks, and sorrow 
 
 saved — 
 Immitigable sorrow, so he thinks, — 
 Sorrow that 's deeper than we dream, per 
 chance ! 
 Duch. Is not this love ? 
 Val. So very much he does I 
 
 For look, you can descend now gi-aeef uUy : 
 ^11 doubts are banished, that the world might 
 
 have. 
 Or worst, the doubts yourself, in afteI^-time, 
 May call up of your heart's sincereness now. 
 To such, reply, " I could have kept my rule — 
 Increased it to the utmost of my dreams — 
 Yet I abjured it." This, he does for you : 
 It is munificently much. 
 
 Duch. StiU "much!" 
 
 But why is it not love, sir ? Answer me ! 
 Val. Because not one of Berthold's word& 
 and looks 
 Had gone with love's presentment of a flower 
 To the beloved : because bold confidence. 
 Open Superiority, free pride — 
 Love owns not, yet were all that Berthold 
 
 owned: 
 Because where reason, even, finds no flaw, 
 Unerringlya lover's instinct may. 
 Duch. lou reason, then, and doubt ? 
 Val. I love, and know. 
 
 Duch. You love ? How strange ! I never 
 cast a thought 
 On that ! Just see our selfishness ! You seemed 
 So much my own ... I had no ground — and 
 
 yet, 
 I never dreamed another might divide 
 My power with you, much less exceed it. 
 
 Val. Lady, 
 
 I am yours wholly. 
 
 Duch. Oh, no, no, not mine ! 
 
 'T is not the same now, never more can be. 
 — Your first love, doubtless. Well, what'J 
 
 gone from me ? 
 What have I lost in you ? 
 
 Val. My heart replies — 
 
 No loss there I So, to Berthold back again : 
 This offer of his hand, he bids me make — 
 Its obvious magnitude is well to weigh 
 Duch. She 's . . . yes, she must be very fai' 
 
 for you ! 
 Val. I am a simple advocate of Cleves. 
 Duch. You ! With the heart and brain thai 
 so helped me. 
 
246 
 
 COLOMBE'S BIRTHDAY 
 
 I fancied them exeiusively my Own, 
 Yet find are subject to a stronger sway ! 
 She must be . . . tell me, is she very fair ? 
 
 Val. Most fair, beyond conception or belief. 
 
 iOuch. Black eyes ? — no matter ! Colombo, 
 the world leads 
 Its life without you, whom your friends pro- 
 
 The only woman — see how true they spoke ! 
 One lived this while, who never saw your face, 
 Nor heard your voice — unless ... Is she 
 from Cleves ? 
 Val, Cleves knows her well. 
 buck. Ah — just a fancy, now ! 
 
 When you poured forth the wrongs of Cleves, — 
 I said, 
 
 — Thought, that is, afterward . . . 
 
 Val. You thought of me ? 
 
 I)uch. Of whom else? Only such grea;t 
 cause, I thought. 
 For such effect : see what true love can do ! 
 Cleves is his love. I almost feair to ask 
 . . . And wUl not. This is idling ; to our 
 
 work! 
 Admit before the Prince, without reserve. 
 My claims misgrounded; then may follow 
 
 better 
 . . . When you potu^ed out Cleves' wrongs im- 
 petuously. 
 Was she in your mind ? 
 
 Val. All done was done for her 
 
 — To humble me ! 
 
 Duck, She will be proud at least. 
 
 Vol. She?- 
 
 Duch. When you tell her. 
 
 Val. That will never be. 
 
 Duch, How — are there sweeter things you 
 hope to tell ? 
 No, sir ! You counselled me, — I counsel you 
 In the one point I — .any woman — can. 
 Yoxtr worth, the first thing ; let her own come 
 
 next — 
 Say what you did through her, and she through 
 
 you — 
 The praises of her beauty afterward 1 
 Will yon ? 
 
 Val. I dare not. 
 
 Duch. Dare not ? 
 
 : Val. She I love 
 
 Suspects not such a love in me. 
 
 Duch. You jest. 
 
 Vol. The lady is above me and away. 
 Not only the brave form, and the bright mind. 
 And the great heart, combine to press me low — 
 But all the world calls' rank divides us. 
 
 Duch. Rank ! 
 
 Now grant me patience ! Here 's a man de- 
 clares 
 Oracularly in another's case — ' 
 
 Sees the true value and the false, for them - — 
 Nay, bids them see it, and they straight do see. 
 You called my court's love worthless — so it 
 
 turned : 
 I threw away as dross my heap of wealthy ■ 
 And here you stickle for a piece or two I 
 First — has she seen you ? 
 
 Val. Yes. 
 
 Duck. She loves you, then. 
 
 Vai. One flash of hope burst j then succeeded 
 night : 
 And all 's at darkest now. Impossible ! 
 Duch. We '11 try : you are — so to speak — 
 
 my subject yet ? 
 Val. As ever — to the death. 
 Duch. Obey me, then! 
 
 Val. I must. , i- ^ n 
 
 Duch. Approach her, and ... no ! hrst ot 
 all 
 Get more assurance. " My instructress,' say, 
 " Was great, descended from a line of kings. 
 And even fair " — (wait why I say this folly) — 
 "She said, of all men, none for eloquence. 
 Courage, and " (what east even these to shade) 
 " The heart they sprung from, — none deserved 
 
 like him 
 Who saved her at her need : if she said this. 
 What should not one I love, say ? " 
 
 Val. Heaven — this hope — 
 
 Oh, lady, you are filling me with fire ! 
 
 Duch. Say this ! — nor think I bid you cast 
 aside 
 One touch of all the awe and reverence ; 
 Nay, malke her proud for once to heart's con- 
 tent ' ' - ' 
 That all this-iwealth of heart and soul's her 
 
 o-wn ! 
 Think you are all of this, — and, thinking it, 
 . . . (Obey!) 
 
 Val. I cannot choose. 
 
 Duch. Then, kneel to her ! 
 
 ' ' ' [Valehce sinks on his hnee. 
 
 I dream! 
 
 Vai. • Have mercy ! Yours, unto the death, — 
 I have obeyed. Despise, and let me die ! 
 Duch. Alas, sir, is it to be ever thus ? 
 Even with yon as with the world ? I know 
 This morning's service was no vulgar deed 
 Whose motive, once it dares avow itself, 
 Explains all done and infinitely more. 
 So, takes the shelter of a nobler cause. 
 Your service named its true source, — loyalty ! 
 The rest 's nnsaid again. The Duchess bids you, 
 Rise, sir I The Prince's words were in debate. 
 Val. [Rising,] Rise ? Truth, as ever, lady, 
 comes from you ! 
 I should rise — I who spoke for Cleves, can 
 
 speak 
 For Man ^- yet tremble now, who stood firm 
 
 then. 
 I laughed — for 't was past tears — that Cleves 
 
 should starve 
 With all hearts beating loud the infamy, 
 And no tongue daring trust as much to air : 
 Yet here, where all hearts speak, shaJl I ha 
 
 rante ? 
 Oh, lady, for your own sake look on me ! 
 On all I am, and have, and do — heart, brain, 
 Body and soul, — this Valence and his gifts ! 
 I was proud Once ; I saw you, and they sank. 
 So that each, magnified a thousand times. 
 Were nothing to you — but such nothingness. 
 Would a crown gild it, or a sceptre prop, 
 A treasure speed, a laurel-wreath enhance ? 
 What is my own desert ? But should your love 
 Have . . . there 's no language helps here . . . 
 singled me, — 
 
COLOMBE'S BIRTHDAY 
 
 247 
 
 Then — oh, that wild word " then ! " — be just 
 to love, 
 
 In generosity its! attribute ! 
 
 Love, since you pleased to love ! All 's cleared 
 — a stage 
 
 For trial of the question kept so long : 
 
 Judge you — Is love or vanity the best ? 
 
 You, solve it for the world's sake — you, speak 
 first 
 
 What all will shout one day — you, vindicate 
 
 Our earth and be its angel ! All is said. 
 
 Lady, I offer nothing — I am yours : 
 
 But, for the cause' sake, look on me and him, 
 
 And speak ! 
 Duck. I have received the Prince's mes- 
 sage : 
 
 Say, I prepare my answer ! 
 
 Val. Take me, Cleves ! 
 
 [_He withdraws. 
 Duch. Mournful — that nothing 's what it 
 calls itself ! 
 
 Devotion, zeal, faith, loyalty — mere love ! 
 
 And, love in question, what may Berthold's be ? 
 
 I did ill to mistrust the world so soon ; 
 
 Already was this Berthold at my side. 
 
 The valley-level has its hawks, no doubt : 
 
 May not the rock-top have its eagles, too ? 
 
 Yet Valence . . . let me see his rival then ! 
 
 ACT V 
 
 Night. Scene. The Hall. 
 
 Enter Bebthold and Melchiob. 
 
 Met. And here you wait the matter's issue ? 
 
 Berth. Here. 
 
 Mel. I don't regret I shut Amelias, then. 
 But tell me, on this grand disclosure, — ^how 
 Behaved our spokesman with the forehead ? 
 
 Berth. Oh, 
 
 Turned out no better than the f oreheadless — 
 Was dazzled not so very soon, that 's all ! 
 For my part, this is scarce the hasty showy 
 Ohiva&ous measure you give me credit of. 
 Perhaps I had a fancy, — but 't is gone. 
 
 — Let her commence the unfriended 'innocent 
 And carry wrongs about from court to court ? 
 No, truly ! The least shake of fortune's sand, 
 
 — My uncle-Pope chokes in a coughing fit, 
 King-cousin takes a fancy to blue eyes, — 
 And wondrously her claims would brighten 
 
 up ; 
 Forth comes a new gloss on the ancient law, 
 O'er-looked provisoes, o'er-past premises, 
 Follow in plenty. No : 't is the safe step. 
 The hour beneath the convent-wall is lost : 
 Juliers and she, once mine, are ever mine. 
 Mel. Which is to say, you, losing heart 
 
 already. 
 Elude the adventure. 
 
 Berth. Not so — or, if so — 
 
 Why not confess at once that I advise 
 None of our kingly craft and guild jnst now 
 To lay, one moment, down their privilege 
 With the notion they can any time at pleasure 
 Retake it : that may turn out hazardous. 
 We seem, in Europe, pretty well at end 
 
 C the night, with our great masque: those 
 
 favored few 
 Who keep the chamber's top, and honor's 
 
 chance 
 Of the early evening, may retain their place 
 And figure as they fist till out of breath. 
 But it is growing late : and I observe 
 A dim grim kind of tipstaves at the doorway 
 Not only bar new-comers entering now, 
 But caution those who left, for any cause. 
 And would return, that morning draws too near ; 
 The ball must die off, shut itself up. We — 
 I think, may dance lights out and sunshine in, 
 And sleep off headache on our frippery : 
 But friend the other, who cunningly stole out. 
 And, after breathing the fresh air outside, 
 Means to re-enter with a new costume. 
 Will be advised go back to bed, I fear. 
 I stick to privilege, on second thoughts. 
 
 Mel. Yes — you evade the adventure : and, 
 beside, 
 Give yourself out for colder than you are. 
 King Philip, onlyj notes the lady's eyes ? 
 Don't they come in for somewhat of the motive 
 With you too ? 
 
 Berth. Yes — no : I am past that now. 
 
 Gone 't is : I cannot shut my soul to fact. 
 Of course, I might by forethought and contri- 
 vance 
 Reason myself into a rapture. Gone : 
 And something better come instead, no doubt. 
 
 Mel, So be it ! Yet, all the same, proceed 
 my way. 
 Though to your ends ; so shall you prosper best I 
 The lady — to be won for selfish ends — 
 Will be won easier my unselfish . . . call it, 
 Romantic way. 
 
 Berth. Won easier ? 
 
 Mel. Will not she ? 
 
 Berth. ' There I profess humility without 
 bound : 
 111 cannot speed — not I — the Emperor. 
 
 Mel. And I should think the Emperor best 
 waived. 
 From your description of her mood and way. 
 You could look, if it pleased you, into hearts ; 
 But are too indolent and fond of watching 
 Your own — you know that, for you study it. 
 
 Berth. Had you but seen the orator her 
 friend, 
 So bold and voluble an hour before. 
 Abashed to earth at aspect of the change ! 
 Make her an Empress ? Ah, that changed the 
 
 case ! 
 Oh, I read hearts ! 'T is for my own behoof, 
 I court her with my true worth : wait the event ■! 
 I learned my final lesson on that head 
 When years ago, -^ my first and last essay — 
 Before the priest ray uncle could by help 
 Of his superior raise me from the dirt — 
 Priscilla left me for a Brabant lord 
 Whose cheek was like tb3 topaz on his thumb. 
 I am past illusion on that score. 
 
 Mel. Here comes 
 
 The lady — 
 
 Berth. — And there you go. But do not ! 
 Give me 
 Audther chance to please you ! Hear me plead I 
 
248 
 
 COLOMBE'S BIRTHDAY 
 
 Mel, You '11 keep, then, to the lover, to the 
 man ? 
 (^Enter the Duchbsb — followed by Adolf and Sabynb, 
 and, after an interval, by the Courtiers.) 
 
 Berth. Good auspice to our meeting I 
 
 Duck. May it prove ! 
 
 — And you, sir, will be Emperor one day ? 
 
 Berth. {Ay, that 's the point I) I may be 
 Emperor. 
 
 Duck. 'T is not for my sake only, I am 
 proud 
 Of this you offer : I am prouder far 
 That from the highest state should duly spring 
 The highest, since most generous, of deeds. 
 
 Berth. (Generous — still that!) You under- 
 rate yourself. 
 You are, what I, to be complete, must gain — 
 Find now, and may not find, another time. 
 While I career on all the world for stage. 
 There needs at home my representative. 
 
 Duch. — Such, rather, would some warrior- 
 woman be — 
 One dowered with lands and gold, or rich in 
 
 friends — 
 One like yourself. 
 
 Berth. Lady, I am myself, 
 
 And have all these : I want what 's not myself. 
 Nor has all these. Why give one hand two 
 
 swords ? 
 Here 's one already : be a friend's next gift 
 A silk glove, if you will — I have a sword. 
 
 Duch. You love me, then ? 
 
 Berth. Your lineage I revere. 
 
 Honor your virtue, in your truth believe, 
 Do homage to your intellect, and bow 
 Before your peerless beauty. 
 
 Duch. But, for love — 
 
 Berth. A further love I do not understand. 
 Our best course is to say these hideous truths. 
 And see them, once said, grow endurable : 
 Like waters shuddering from their central bed. 
 Black with the midnight bowels of the earth. 
 That, once up-spouted by an earthquake's throe, 
 A portent and a terror — soon subside, 
 Freshen apace, take gold and rainbow hues 
 In sunshine, sleep in shadow, and at last 
 Grow common to the earth as hills or trees — 
 Accepted by all things they came to scare. 
 
 Duch. X ou cannot love, then ? 
 
 Berth. — Charlemagne, perhaps ! 
 
 Are you not over-curious In love-lore ? 
 
 Duch. I have become so, very recently. 
 It seems, then, I shall best deserve esteem 
 Respect, and all your candor promises, 
 By putting on a calculating mood — 
 Asking the terms of my becoming yours ? 
 
 Berth. Let me not do myself injustice, neither. 
 Because I will not condescend to fictions 
 That promise what my soul can ne'er acquit, 
 It does not follow that my guarded phrase 
 May not include far more of what you seek, 
 Than wide profession of less scrupulous men. 
 You will be Empress, once for all : with me 
 The Pope disputes supremacy — you stand. 
 And none gainsays, the earth's first woman. 
 
 Duch. That — 
 
 Or simple Lady of Ravestein again ? 
 
 Berth. The matter 's not in my arbitrament : 
 
 Now I have made my claims — which I regret — 
 Cede one, cede all. 
 
 Duch. This claim then, you enforce r 
 
 Berth. The world looks on. 
 
 Duch. And when must I decide ? 
 
 Berth. When, lady? Have I said thus 
 much so promptly 
 For nothing ? — Poured out, with such pains, 
 
 at once 
 What I might else have suffered to ooze forth 
 Droplet by droplet in a lifetime long — 
 For aught less than as prompt an answer, 
 
 too? 
 AU 's fairly told now : who can teach you more ? 
 
 Duch. I do not see him. 
 
 Berth. I shall ne'er deceive. 
 
 This offer should be made befittingly 
 Did time aUow the better setting forth 
 The good of it, with what is not so good. 
 Advantage, and disparagement as well : 
 But as it is, the sum of both must serve. 
 I am already weary of this place ; 
 My thoughts are next stage on to Rome. 
 
 Decide ! 
 The Empire — or, — not even Juliers now ! 
 HaU to the Empress — farewell to the Duchess ! 
 \Thfi Courtiers, who have been drawing nearer and 
 nearer, interpose. 
 
 Gau. — "Farewell," Prince ? when we break 
 in at our risk — 
 
 Clug. Almost upon court-Bcense trespassing — 
 
 Gau. — To point out how your claims are 
 valid yet ! 
 You know not, by the Duke her father's will, 
 The lady, if she weds beneath her rank, 
 Forfeits her Duchy in the next heir's favor — 
 So 'tis expressly stipulate. And if 
 It can be shown 'tis her intent to wed 
 A subject, then yourself, next heir, by right 
 Succeed to Juliers. 
 
 Berth. What insanity ? — 
 
 Gui. Sir, there 's one Valence, the pale fiery 
 man 
 You saw and heard this morning — thought, no 
 
 doubt. 
 Was of considerable standinghere : 
 I put it to your penetration. Prince, 
 If aught save love, the truest love for her 
 Could make him serve the lady as he did ! 
 He 's simply a poor advocate of Cleves 
 — Creeps here with difficulty, finds a place 
 With danger, gets in by a miracle. 
 And for the f&st time meets the lady's face — 
 So runs the story : is that credible ? 
 For, first — no sooner in, than he 's apprised 
 Fortunes have changed ; you are all-powerful 
 
 here. 
 The lady as powerless ; he stands fast by her ! 
 
 Duch. [Aside.^ And do such deeds spring 
 up from love alone ? 
 
 Gui. But here occurs the question, does the 
 lady 
 Love him again ? I say, how else can she ? 
 Can she forget how he stood singly forth 
 In her defence, dared outrage all of us. 
 Insult yourself — for what, save love 's reward ? 
 
 Duch. [Aside.'\ And is love then the sole 
 reward of love ? 
 
COLOMBE'S BIRTHDAY 
 
 249 
 
 Gui. But, love him as she may and must — 
 you ask, 
 Means she to wed him ? " Yes," both natures 
 
 answer ! 
 Both, in their pride, point out the sole result ; 
 Naught less would he accept nor she propose. 
 For each conjecture was she great enough 
 —Will be, for this. 
 
 Clug. Though, now that this is known, 
 
 Policy, doubtless, urges she deny . . . 
 
 Duck. — What, sir, and wherefore ? — since I 
 am not sure 
 That all is any other than you say I 
 You take this Valence, hold him close to me. 
 Him with his actions : can I choose but look ? 
 I am not sure, lore trulier shows itself 
 Than in this man, you hate and would degrade, 
 Yet, with your worst abatement, show me thus. 
 Nor am I — (thus made look within myself, 
 Ere I had dared) — now that the look is dared — 
 Sure that I do not love him ! 
 
 Gui, Hear you. Prince ? 
 
 Berth. And what, sirs, please you, may this 
 prattle mean 
 Unless to prove with what alacrity 
 You give your lady's secrets to the world ? 
 How much indebted, for discovering 
 That quality, you make me, will be found 
 When there 's a keeper for my own to seek. 
 
 Courtiers. " Our lady ? " 
 
 Berth. — She assuredly remains. 
 
 Duch. Ah, Prince — and you too can be gen- 
 erous ? 
 You could renounce your power, if this were so, 
 And let me, as these phrase it, wed my love 
 Yet keep my Duchy ? You perhaps exceed 
 Him, even, in disinterestedness ! 
 
 Berth. How, lady, should all this affect my 
 purpose ? 
 Your will and choice are still as ever, free. 
 Say, you have known a worthier than myself 
 In mind and heart, of happier form and face — 
 Others must have their birthright ; I have gifts. 
 To balance theirs, not blot them out of sight. 
 A^^ainst a hundred alien qualities, 
 I lay the prize 1 offer. I am nothing : 
 Wed you the Empire ? 
 
 Duch. And my heart away ? 
 
 Berth. When have I made pretension to your 
 heart? 
 Igive none. I shall keep your honor safe ; 
 With mine I trust you, as the sculptor trusts 
 Yon marble woman with the marble rose. 
 Loose on her hand, she never will let fall, 
 In graceful, slight, silent security. 
 You will be proud of my world-wide career. 
 And I content in you the fair and good. 
 What were the use of planting a few seeds 
 The thankless climate never would mature — 
 Affections all repelled by circumstance ? 
 Enough : to these no credit I attach, — 
 To what you own, find nothing to object. 
 Write simply on my requisition's face 
 What shall content my friends — that you 
 
 admit. 
 As Colombe of Eavestein, the claims therein, 
 Or never need admit them, as my wife — 
 And either way, all 's ended I 
 
 Duch. Let all end ! 
 
 Berth. The requisition ! 
 
 Gui. — Valence holds, of course ! 
 
 Berth. Desire his presence ! [ADOLy goes out. 
 
 Courtiers. [To each other.'] Out it all comes 
 yet ; 
 He '11 have his word against the bargain yet ; 
 He 's not the man to tamely acquiesce. 
 One passionate appeal — upbraiding even. 
 May turn the tide again. Despair not yet ! 
 
 {_They retire a little. 
 
 Berth. [To Melchiok.] The Empire has its 
 old success, my friend I 
 
 Mel. You 've had your way : before the 
 spokesman speaks 
 Let me, but this once, work a problem out. 
 And ever more be dumb ! The Empire wins ? 
 To better purpose have I read my books ! 
 {Enter Valence. ) 
 
 Mel. [To the Courtiers.] Apart, my masters ! 
 [To Valence.] Sir, one word with you ! 
 I am a poor dependant of the Prince's — 
 Pitched on to speak, as of slight consequence. 
 You are no higher, I find : in other words. 
 We two, as probably the wisest here. 
 Need not hold diplomatic talk like fools. 
 Suppose I speak, divesting the plain fact 
 Of all their tortuous phrases, fit for them ? 
 Do you reply so, and what trouble saved ! 
 The Prince, then — an embroiled strange heap 
 
 of news 
 This moment reaches him — if true or false. 
 All dignity forbids he should inquire 
 In person, or by worthier deputy ; 
 Yet somehow must inquire, lest slander come : 
 And so, 't is I am pitched on. You have heard 
 His offer to your lady ? 
 
 Val. Yes. 
 
 Mel. — Conceive 
 
 Her joy thereat ? 
 
 Val. I cannot. 
 
 Mel. No one can. 
 
 All draws to a conclusion, therefore. 
 
 Val. [Aside.] So! 
 
 No after-judgment — no first thought revised — 
 Her first and last decision I — me, she leaves. 
 Takes him ; a simple heart is flung aside. 
 The ermine o'er a heartless breast embraced. 
 Oh Heaven, this mockery has been played too 
 
 of t ! 
 Once, to surprise the angels — twice, that fiends. 
 Recording, might be proud they chose not so — 
 Thrice, many thousand times, to teach the world 
 All men should pause, misdoubt their strength, 
 
 since men 
 Can have such chance yet fail so signally 
 — But ever, ever this farewell to Heaven, _ 
 Welcome to earth — this taking death for life — ■ 
 This spurning love and kneelin? to the world — 
 Oh Heaven, it is too often and too old ! 
 
 Mel. Well, on this point, what but an absurd 
 rumor 
 Arises — these, its source — its subject, you 1 
 Your faith and loyalty misconstruing. 
 They say, your service claims the lady's hand ! 
 Of course, nor Prince nor lady can respond : 
 Yet something must be said : for, were it true 
 You made such claim, the Prince would . . . 
 
ajo 
 
 COLOMBE'S BIRTHDAY 
 
 Val. WeU, sir, — would ? 
 
 Mel. — Not only probably ■withdraw his siat, 
 But, very like, the lady might be forced 
 Accept your own. Oh, there are reasons why ! 
 But you '11 excuse at present all save one, — 
 I think so. What we want is, your own witness. 
 For, or against — her good, or yours : decide ! 
 
 Val, [Aside.] Be it her good if she accounts 
 it so! 
 [After a contest.] For what am I but hers, to 
 
 choose as she ? 
 Who knows how far, beside, the light from her 
 May reach, and dwell with, what she looks 
 upon ? 
 
 Mel. [To the Prince.] Now to him, you ! 
 
 Berth. [To Valenoe.] My friend acquaints 
 you, sir, 
 The nois6 runs . . . 
 
 Val. — Prince, how fortunate are you. 
 
 Wedding her as you willi in spite of noise. 
 To show belief in love ! Let her but love you, 
 All else you disregard ! What else can be ? 
 You know how love is incompatible 
 With falsehood — purifies, assimilates 
 All other passions to itseU. 
 
 Mel. Ay, sir : 
 
 But softly ! Where, in the object we select. 
 Such love is, perchance, wanting ? 
 
 Val. Then indeed. 
 
 What is it you can take ? 
 
 Mel. Nay, ask the world ! 
 
 Youth, beauty, virtue, an illustrious name. 
 An inniience o'er mankind. 
 
 Val. When man perceives , . . 
 
 — Ah, I can only speak as for myself ! 
 Duch. Kpeak for yourself ! 
 
 Val. May I ? — no, I have spoken. 
 
 And time 's gone by. Had I seen such an one. 
 As I loved her — weighing thoroughly that 
 
 word — 
 So should my task be to evolve her love : 
 If for myself ! ^if for another — well. 
 Berth. Heroic truly! And your sole re- 
 ward, — 
 The secret pride in yielding up love's right ? 
 Val. Who thought upon rewaid ? And yet 
 how much 
 Comes after — oh, what amplest recompense I 
 Is the knowledge of her, naught ? the memory, 
 naught ? 
 
 — Lady, should such an one have looked on 
 
 you. 
 Ne'er wrong yourself so far as quote the world 
 And say, love can go unrequited here I 
 You will have blessed him to his whole life's 
 
 end — 
 Low passions hindered, baser cares kept back. 
 All goodness cherished where you dwelt — and 
 
 dwell. 
 What would he have ? He holds you — you, 
 
 both form 
 And mind, in his, — where self-love makes such 
 
 room 
 For love of you, he would not serve you now 
 The vulgar way, — repulse your enemies. 
 Win you new realms, or best, to save the old 
 Die blissfully — that 's past so long ago ! 
 He wishes vou no need, thought, care of him — 
 
 Your good, by any means, himself unseen, 
 Away, forgotten I — He gives that life s task 
 
 As it were . . . but this charge which I re- 
 turn — 
 
 ^Offers tlw requisition, which she lakes. 
 Wishing your good. ., , . , . , 
 
 Buch. [Having subscribed it.] And oppor- 
 tunely, sir — .... 
 Since at a birthday's close, like this of mme. 
 Good wishes gentle deeds reciprocate. 
 Most on a wedding-day, as mine is too. 
 Should gifts be thought of : yours comes first 
 
 by right. 
 Ask of me ! 
 
 Berth. He shall have whate er he asks. 
 
 For your sake and his own. 
 
 Val. [Aside.] If I should ask — 
 
 The withered bunch of flowers she wears — peiv 
 
 One last touch of her hand, I never more 
 Shall see ! 
 
 \_After a patise, presenting his paper to the Prince. 
 Cleves' Prince, redress the wrongs of Cleves ! 
 Berth. I will, sir ! 
 
 Duch. [As Valence prepares to retire.] — 
 Nay, do out your duty, first ! 
 You bore this paper ; I have registered 
 My answer to it : read it and have done ! 
 
 [Valence reads ii. 
 I take him — give up Juliers and the world. 
 This is my Birthday. 
 
 Mel. Berthold, my one hero 
 
 Of the world she gives up, one friend worth my 
 
 books. 
 Sole man I think it pays the pains to watch, — 
 Speak, for I know you through your Popes and 
 Kings I 
 Berth. [After a pause.] Lady, well rewarded ! 
 Sir, as well deserved I 
 I could not imitate — I hardly envy — 
 I do admire you. All is for the best. 
 Too costly a flower were this, I see it now, 
 To pluck and set upon my barren helm 
 To wither — any garish pltmie will do. 
 I '11 not insult you and refuse your Duchy — 
 You can so well afford to yield it me. 
 And I were left, without it, sadly lorn. 
 As it is — for me — if that will flatter you, 
 A somewhat wearier life seems to remain 
 Than I thought possible where . . . 'faith, theit 
 
 life 
 Begins already ! They 're too occupied 
 To listen ; and few words content me best. 
 [Abruptly to the Courtiers.] I am your Duke, 
 though ! Who obey me here ? 
 Buch. Adolf and Sabyne follow us — 
 Gui. [Starting from the Courtiers.] — And I ? 
 Do I not follow them, if I may n't you ? 
 Shall not I get some little duties up 
 At Ravestein and emulate the rest ? 
 God save you, Gaucelme 1 'T is ray Birthday, 
 too I 
 Berth. You happy handful that remain with 
 me 
 . . . That is, with Dietrich the black Bai-na- 
 I bite 
 
 i I shall leave over you — will earn your wages 
 
THE PATRIOT 
 
 251 
 
 Or Dieti'ioh has forgot to ply his trade ! 
 Meantime, — go copy me the precedents 
 Of every installation, proper styles 
 And pedigrees of all your Juliers' Dukes — 
 While I prepare to plod on my old way, 
 
 And somewhat wearily, I must confess I . 
 Duch. [ With a light joyous laugh as she turns 
 fromthem.\ Come, Valence, toourfriends, 
 
 God's earth , 
 Val. [As she falls into his arms.'] - 
 
 - And thee ! 
 
 DRAMATIC ROMANCES 
 
 The seventh number of Bells and Pomegran- 
 ates was entitled Dramatic Romances and Lyr- 
 ics, In the redistribution of his shorter poems 
 when he collected his writings, Browning hav- 
 ing abeady a group of Dramatic Lyrics made 
 a second of Dramatic Homances^ taking the 
 occasion to make a little nicer discrimination. 
 Thus some of the poems originally included un- 
 
 der the combined title were distributed among 
 the Lyrics, and some at first grouped under 
 Lyrics were transferred to this division of Ro- 
 mances. The fii'st poem in the group was ori- 
 ginally contained in Dramatic Lyrics along with 
 Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister under the gen- 
 eral title of Camp and Cloister, this poem rep- 
 resenting the camp. 
 
 INCIDENT OF THE FRENCH CAMP 
 
 You know, we French stormed Batisbon : 
 
 A mile or so away. 
 On a little mound, Napoleon 
 
 Stood on our storming-day ; 
 With neck out-thrust, you fancy how, 
 
 Legs wide, arms locked behind, 
 As if to balance the prone brow 
 
 Oppressive with its mind. 
 
 Just as perhaps he mused " My plans 
 
 That soar, to earth may fall. 
 Let once my army-leader Lannes 
 
 Waver at yonder wall," — 
 Out 'twixt the battery-smokes there flew 
 
 A rider, bound on bound 
 Full-galloping ; nor bridle drew 
 
 Until he reached the mound. 
 
 Then off there flung in smiling joy, 
 
 And held himself erect 
 By just his horse's mane, a boy : 
 
 You hardly could suspect — 
 (So tight he kept his lips compressed. 
 
 Scarce any blood came through) 
 You looked twice ere you saw his breast 
 
 Was all but shot in two. 
 
 " Well," cried he, " Emperor, by God's grace 
 
 We 've got you Katisbon ! 
 The Marshal 's in the market-place, 
 
 And you '11 be there anon 
 To see yonr flag-bird flap his vans 
 
 Where I, to heart's desire. 
 Perched him ! " The chief's eye flashed ; his 
 plans 
 
 Soared up again like fire. 
 
 The chief's eye flashed ; but presently 
 
 Softened itself, as sheathes 
 A film the mother-eagle's eye 
 
 When her bruised eaglet breathes ; 
 
 "You're wounded!" "Nay," the soldier's 
 pride 
 
 Touched to the quick, he said : 
 " I 'ni killed. Sire f" And his chief beside, 
 
 Smiling the boy fell dead. 
 
 THE PATRIOT 
 
 AN OLD STORY 
 
 Mr. Brownii^ has denied that this poem re- 
 fers to Arnold of Brescia. It is imaginative, 
 not historical in its dramatic action. It was 
 possibly to relieve the poem of its apparent dis- 
 tinct reference to history that he removed the 
 name of Brescia, which was used in the poem in 
 its first form. ^ ,. a-U', ? c t ,,. ^ 
 
 It was roses, roses, all the way, 
 
 With myrtle mixed in my path like mad : 
 The house-roofs seemed to heave and sway. 
 
 The church-spires flamed, such flags they had, 
 A year a^o on this very day. 
 
 The air broke into a mist with bells. 
 The old walls rocked with the crowd and 
 cries. 
 Had; I said, " Good folk, mere noise repels — 
 But give me your sun from yonder skies ! " 
 They had answered, " And afterward, what 
 else?" 
 
 Alack, it was I who leaped at the sun 
 To give it my loving friends to keep ! 
 
 Naught man could do, have I left undone : 
 And you see my harvest, what I reap 
 
 This very day, now a year is run. 
 
 There 's nobody on the house-tops now — 
 Just a palsied few at the windows set ; 
 For the best of the sight is, all allow. 
 
252 
 
 DRAMATIC ROMANCES 
 
 At the Shambles' Gate — or, better yet, 
 By the very sca£Fold's foot, I trow, l-i U_t— ,y— 
 
 I go in the rain, and, more than needs, 
 A rope cuts both my wrists behind ; 
 
 And I think, by the feel, my forehead bleeds, 
 For they fling, whoever has a mind. 
 
 Stones at me for my year's misdeeds. 
 
 Thus I entered, and thus I go ! 
 
 In triumphs, people have dropped down dead. 
 " Paid by the world, what dost thou owe 
 
 Me ? " — God might question ; now instead, 
 'Tis God shall repay : I am safer so. 
 
 MY LAST DUCHESS 
 
 In Dramatic Lyrics this was entitled Italy ^ and 
 grouped with Count Gismond under the head 
 Italy and France. 
 
 That 's my last Duchess painted on the wall, 
 Looking as if she were alive. I call 
 That piece a wonder, now : Fr^ Pandolf 's hands 
 Worked busily a day, and there she stands. 
 Will 't please you sit and look at her ? I said 
 " Fr^ Pandolf " by design, for never read 
 Strangers like you that pictured countenance, 
 The depth and passion of its earnest glance. 
 But to myself they turned (since none puts by 
 The curtain I have drawn for you, but I) 
 And seemed as they would ask me, if they 
 
 durst. 
 How such a glance came there ; so, not the first 
 Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 't was not 
 Her husband's presence only, called that spot 
 Of j(^ into the Duchess' cheek : perhaps 
 Fr^ Pandolf chanced to say, *' Her mantle laps 
 Over my lady's wrist too much," or " Paint 
 Must never hope to reproduce the faint 
 Half-flush that dies along her throat: " such 
 
 stufB 
 Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough 
 For calling up that spot of joy. She had 
 A heart — how shall I say? — -too soon made 
 
 glad, 
 Too easily impressed : she liked whate'er 
 She looked on, and her looks went everywhere. 
 Sir, 't was all one ! My favor at her breast. 
 The dropping of the daylight in the West, 
 The bough of cherries some officious fool 
 Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule 
 She rode with round the terrace — all and each 
 Would draw from her alike the approving 
 
 Or blush, at least. She thanked men, — good ! 
 
 but thanked 
 Somehow — I know not how — as if she ranked 
 My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name 
 With anybody's gift. Who 'd stoop to blame 
 This sort of trifling ? Even had you skill 
 In speech — (which I have not) — to make your 
 
 will 
 Quite clear to such an one, and say, " Just this 
 Or that in you disgusts me ; here you miss. 
 
 Or there exceed the mark " — and if she let 
 Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set 
 Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse, 
 — E'en then would be some stooping ; and 1 
 
 choose 3 T-i. 
 
 Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt, 
 Whene'er I passed her ; but who passed without 
 Much the same smile ? This grew ; I gave 
 
 commands ; 
 Then all smiles stopped together. There she 
 
 stands . 
 
 As if alive. Will 't please you rise ? We '11 
 
 meet 
 The company below, then. I repeat. 
 The Count your master's known munificence 
 Is ample warrant that no just pretence 
 Of mine for dowry wiU be disallowed ; 
 Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed 
 At starting, is mj; object. Nay, we '11 go 
 Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though, 
 Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity. 
 Which Glaus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for 
 
 me! 
 
 COUNT GISMOXD 
 
 AIX IN PROVENCE 
 
 Christ God who savest man, save most 
 Of men Count Gismond who saved me ! 
 
 Count Gauthier, when he chose his post. 
 Chose time and place and company 
 
 To suit it ; when he struck at length 
 
 My honor, 't was with all his strength. 
 
 And doubtlessly ere he could draw 
 All points to one, he must have schemed ! 
 
 That miserable morning saw 
 Few half so happy as I seemed. 
 
 While being dressed in queen's array 
 
 To give our tourney prize away. 
 
 I thought they loved me, did me grace 
 To please themselves ; 't was all their deed; 
 
 God makes, or fair or foul, our face : 
 If showing mine so caused to bleed 
 
 My cousins' hearts, they should have dropped 
 
 A word, and straight the play had stopped. 
 
 They, too, so beauteous ! Each a queen 
 By virtue of her brow and breast ; 
 
 Not needing to be crowned, I mean. 
 As I do. E'en when I was dressed. 
 
 Had either of them spoke, instead 
 
 Of glancing sideAvays with still head ! 
 
 But no : they let me laugh, and sing 
 My birthday song quite through, adjust 
 
 The last rose in my garland, fling 
 A last look on the mirror, trust 
 
 My arms to each an arm of theirs. 
 
 And so descend the castle-stairs — 
 
 And come out on the moming^troop 
 Of merry friends who kissed my cheek. 
 
 And called me queen, and made me stoop 
 Under the canopy — (a streak 
 
THE BOY AND THE ANGEL 
 
 253 
 
 That pierced it, of the outside sun, 
 Powdered with gold its gloom's soft dun) — 
 
 And they could let me take my state 
 And foolish throne amid applause 
 
 Of all come there to celebrate 
 My queen's-day — Oh I think the cause 
 
 Of much was, they forgot no crowd 
 
 Makes up for parents in their shroud ! 
 
 Howe'er that be, all eyes were bent 
 
 Upon me, when my cousins cast 
 Theirs down ; 't was time 1 should present 
 
 The victor's crown, but . . . there, 't will last 
 No long time . . . the old mist again 
 Blinds me as then it did. How vain ! 
 
 See ! Gismond 's at the gate, in talk 
 With his two boys : I can proceed. 
 
 Well, at that moment, who should stalk 
 Forth boldly — to my face, indeed — 
 
 But Gauthier, and he thundered, " Stay I " 
 
 And all stayed. " Bring no crowns, I say ! 
 
 " Bring torches ! Wind the penance-sheet 
 About her ! Let her shun the chaste, 
 
 Or lay herself before their feet ! 
 Shall she whose body I embraced 
 
 A night long, queen it in the day ? 
 
 For honor's sake no crowns, I say ! " 
 
 I ? What I answered ? As I live, 
 
 I never fancied such a thing 
 As answer possible to give. 
 
 What says the body when they spring 
 Some monstrous torture-engine's whole 
 Strength on it ? No more says the soul. 
 
 TUl out strode Gismond ; then I knew 
 
 That I was saved. I never met 
 His face before, but, at first view, 
 
 I felt quite sure that God had set 
 Himself to Satan ; who would spend 
 A minute's mistrust on the end ? 
 
 He strode to Gantliier, in his throat 
 Gave him the lie, then struck his mouth 
 
 With one back-handed blow that wrote 
 In blood men's verdict there. North, South, 
 
 East, West, I looked. The lie was dead. 
 
 And damned, and truth stood up instead. 
 
 This glads me most, that I enjoyed 
 The heart of the joy, with my content 
 
 In watching Gismond unalloyed 
 By any doubt of the event : 
 
 God took that on him — I was bid 
 
 Watch Gismond for my part : I did. 
 
 Did I not watch him while he let 
 His armorer just brace his greaves. 
 
 Rivet his hauberk, on the fret 
 The while ! His foot . . . my memory leaves 
 
 No least stamp out, nor how anou 
 
 He pulled his ringing gauntlets on. 
 
 And e'en before the trumpet's sound 
 Was finished, prone lay the false knie'ht. 
 
 Prone as his lie, upon the ground : 
 
 Gismond flew at him, used no sleight 
 0' the sword, but open-breasted drove. 
 Cleaving till out the truth he clove. 
 
 Which done, he dragged him to my feet 
 And said, " Here die, but end thy breath 
 
 In full confession, lest thou fleet 
 From my first, to God's second death ! 
 
 Say, hast thou lied ? " And, " I have lied 
 
 To God and her," he said, and died. 
 
 Then Gismond, kneeling to me, asked 
 — What safe my heart holds, though no word 
 
 Could I repeat now, if I tasked 
 My powers forever, to a third 
 
 Dear even as you are. Pass the rest 
 
 Until I sank upon his breast. 
 
 Over my head his arm he flung 
 Against the world ; and scarce I felt 
 
 His sword (that dripped by me and swung) 
 A little shifted in its belt : 
 
 For he began to say the while 
 
 How South our home lay many a mile. 
 
 So 'mid the shouting multitude 
 We two walked forth to never more 
 
 Return. My cousins have pursued 
 Their life, untroubled as before 
 
 I vexed them. Gauthier's dwelling-place 
 
 God lighten ! May his soul find grace ! 
 
 Our elder boy has got the clear 
 
 Great brow ; though Avhen his brother's black 
 Full eye shows scorn, it . . . Gismond here ? 
 
 And have you brought my tercel back ? 
 I just was telling Adela 
 How many birds it struck since May. 
 
 THE BOY AND THE ANGEL 
 
 First published in Hood's Magazine, August, 
 1844. It was rewritten, with five new coui>- 
 lets, and was published in 184.5, in Dramatic 
 Romances and Lyrics, or No. VII. of Bells and 
 Pomegranates. When it appeared in the Poeti- 
 cal Works of 1868, a fresh verse was added. 
 In 1844 the poem ended as follows : — 
 
 " Go back and praise again 
 The early way, while I remain.^ 
 
 " Be again the boy all curl'd ; 
 I will finish with the world." 
 
 Theocrite grew old at home, 
 Gabriel dwelt in Peter's dome. 
 
 Morning, evening, noon and night, 
 " Praise God ! " sang Theocrite. 
 
 Then to his poor trade he turned, 
 Whereby the daily meal was earned. 
 
 Hard he labored, long and well : 
 O'er his work the bov's cnrls fell. 
 
254 
 
 DRAMATIC ROMANCES 
 
 But ever, at each period, 
 
 He stopped and sang, " Praise God ! " 
 
 Then back again his curls he threw, 
 And cheerful turned to work anew. 
 
 Said Blaise, the listening monk, ' ' Well done ; 
 I doubt not thou art heard, my son : 
 
 " As well as if thy Toioe to-day 
 
 Were praising God, the Pope's great way. 
 
 " This Easter Day, the Pope at Rome 
 Praises God from Peter's dome." 
 
 Said Theoerite, " Would God that I 
 
 Might praise him that great way, and die ! " 
 
 Nightpassed, day shone. 
 And Theoerite was gone. 
 
 With God a day endures alway, 
 A thousand years are but a day. 
 
 God said in heaven, " Nor day nor night 
 Now brings the voice of my delight." 
 
 Then Gabriel, like a rainbow's birth. 
 Spread his wings and sank to earth ; 
 
 Entered, in flesh, the empty cell. 
 
 Lived there, and played the craftsman well ; 
 
 And morning, evening, noon and night. 
 Praised God in place of Theoerite. 
 
 And from a boy, to youth he grew : 
 The man put off the stripling's hue : 
 
 The man matured and fell away 
 Into the season of decay : 
 
 And ever o'er the trade he bent, 
 And ever lived on earth content. 
 
 (He did God's will ; to him, all one 
 If on the earth or in the sun.) 
 
 God said, " A praise is in mine ear ; 
 There is no doubt in it, no fear : 
 
 *' So sing old worlds, and so 
 
 New worlds that from my footstool go. 
 
 " Clearer loves sound other ways : 
 I miss my little human praise." 
 
 Then forth sprang Gabriel's wings, off fell 
 The flesh disguise, remained the cell. 
 
 'T was Easter Day : he flew to Rome, 
 And paused above Saint Peter's dome. 
 
 In the tiring-room close by 
 The great outer gallery, 
 
 With his holy vestments dight, 
 ?tood the new Pope, Theoerite • 
 
 And all his past career 
 Came back upon him clear. 
 
 Since when, a boy, he plied his trade, 
 Till on his life the sickness weighed ; 
 
 And in his cell, when death drew near. 
 An angel in a dream brought cheer : 
 
 And rising from the sickness drear. 
 He grew a priest, and now stood here^ 
 
 To the East with praise he turned, 
 And on his sight the ai^el burned. 
 
 " I bore thee from thy craftsman's cell, 
 And set thee here ; I did not well. 
 
 " Vainly I left my angel-sphere. 
 Vain was thy dream of many a year, 
 
 " Thy voice's praise seemed weak ; it 
 
 dropped — 
 Creation's chorus stopped ! 
 
 " Go back and praise again 
 The early way, while I remain. 
 
 " With that weak voice of our disdain, 
 Take up creation's pausing strain. 
 
 " Back to the cell and poor employ : 
 Resume the craftsman and the boy ! " 
 
 Theoerite grew old at home ; 
 
 A new Pope dwelt in Peter's dome. 
 
 One vanished as the other died : 
 They sought God side by side. 
 
 INSTANS TYRANNUS 
 
 Of the million or two, more or less, 
 I rule and possess, 
 One man, for some cause undefined, 
 Was least to my mind. 
 
 I struck him, he grovelled of course — 
 
 For, what was his force ? 
 
 I pinned him. to earth with my weight 
 
 And persistence of hate : 
 
 And he lay, would not moan, would not curses 
 
 As his lot might be worse. 
 
 " Were the object less mean, would he stand 
 
 At the swing of my hand ! 
 
 For obscurity helps him and blots 
 
 The hole where he squats." 
 
 So, I set my five wits on the stretch 
 
 To inveigle the wretch. 
 
 All in vain ! Gold and jewels I threw, 
 
 Still he couched there perdue ; 
 
 I tempted his blood and his flesh, 
 
 Hid in rosea my mesh. 
 
MESMERISM 
 
 255 
 
 Choicest cates and the flagon's best spilth : 
 Still he kept to his filth. 
 
 Had he kith now or kin, were access 
 
 To his heart, did I press : 
 
 Just a son or a mother to seize ! 
 
 No such booty as these. 
 
 Were it simply a friend to pursue 
 
 'Mid my million or two, 
 
 Who could pay me in person or pelf 
 
 What he owes me himself ! 
 
 No : I could not but smile through my chafe : 
 
 For the fellow lay safe 
 
 As his mates do, the midge and the nit, 
 
 — Through minuteness, to wit. 
 
 Then a humor more great took its place 
 
 At the thought of his face. 
 
 The droop, the low cares of the mouth. 
 
 The trouble uncouth 
 
 'Twixt the brows, all that air one is fain 
 
 To put out of its pain. 
 
 And, " no ! " 1 admonished myself, 
 
 " Is one mocked by an elf. 
 
 Is one bafBed by toad or by rat ? 
 
 The gravamen 's in that ! 
 
 How the lion, who crouches to suit 
 
 His back to my foot. 
 
 Would admire that 1 stand in debate ! 
 
 But the small turns the great 
 
 If it vexes you, — that is the thing ! 
 
 Toad or rat vex the king ? 
 
 Though I waste half my realm to unearth 
 
 Toad or rat, 'tis well worth ! " 
 
 So, I soberly laid my last plan 
 
 To extinguish the man. 
 
 Hound his creep-hole, with never a break, 
 
 Ran my fires for his sake ; 
 
 Ovei^head, did my thunder combine 
 
 With my underground mine : 
 
 Till I looked from my labor content 
 
 To enjoy the event. 
 
 When sudden . . . how think ye, the end ? 
 
 Did I say *' without friend " ? 
 
 Say rather, from marge to blue marge 
 
 The whole sky grew his targe 
 
 With the sun's self for visible boss. 
 
 While an Arm ran across 
 
 Which the earth heaved beneath like a breast 
 
 Where the wretch was safe prest ! 
 
 Do you see ? Just my vengeance complete, 
 
 The man sprang to his feet. 
 
 Stood erect, caught at God's skirts, and prayed 1 
 
 — So, J was afraid ! 
 
 MESMERISM 
 
 All I believed is true ! 
 
 I am able yet 
 All I want, to get 
 
 By a method as strange as new : 
 Dare I trust the same to you ? 
 
 If at night, when doors are shut, 
 And the wood-worm picks, 
 And the death-watch ticks, 
 And the bar has a flag of smut. 
 And a cat 's in the water-butt — 
 
 And the socket floats and flares. 
 And the house-beams groan, 
 And a foot unknown 
 
 Is surmised on the gaiTCt-stairs, 
 
 And the locks sUp unawares — 
 
 And the spider, to serve his ends, 
 
 By a sudden thread. 
 
 Arms and legs outspread. 
 On the table's midst descends, 
 Comes to find, God knows what friends ! - 
 
 If since eve drew in, I say, 
 
 I have sat and brought 
 
 (So to speak) my thought 
 To bear on the woman away. 
 Till I felt my hair turn gray — 
 
 Till I seemed to have and hold, 
 
 In the vacancy 
 
 'Twixt the v/all and me. 
 From the hair-plait's chestnut-gold 
 To the foot in its muslin fold — 
 
 Have and hold, then and there. 
 
 Her, from head to foot. 
 
 Breathing and mute. 
 Passive and yet aware, 
 In the grasp of my steady stare — 
 
 Hold and have, there and then. 
 
 All her body and soul 
 
 That completes my whole. 
 All that women add to men. 
 In the clutch of my steady ken — 
 
 Having and holding, till 
 
 I imprint her fast 
 
 On the void at last 
 As the sun does whom he will 
 By the calotypist's skill — • 
 
 Then, — if my heart's strength serve, 
 
 And through aU and each 
 
 Of the veils I reach 
 To her soul and never swerve, 
 Knitting an iron nerve — 
 
 Command her soul to advance 
 
 And inform the shape 
 
 Which haa made escape 
 And before my countenance 
 Answers me glance for glance — 
 
 I, stUl with a gesture fit 
 
 Of my hands that best 
 
 Do my soul's behest. 
 Pointing the power from it. 
 While myself do steadfast sit — 
 
S56 
 
 DRAMATIC ROMANCES 
 
 Steadfast and still the same 
 On my object bent, 
 While the hands give vent 
 To my ardor and my aim 
 And break into very flame — 
 
 Then I reach, I must believe, 
 
 Not her soul in vain, 
 
 For to me again 
 It reaches, and past retrieve 
 Is wound in the toils I weave ; 
 
 And must follow as I require. 
 
 As befits a thrall. 
 
 Bringing flesh and all. 
 Essence and earth-attire. 
 To the source of the tractile fire : 
 
 Till the house called hers, not mine. 
 
 With a growing weight 
 
 Seems to suffocate 
 If she break not its leaden line 
 And escape from its close confine. 
 
 Out of doors into the night ! 
 
 On to the maze 
 
 Of the wild wood-ways, 
 Not turning to left nor right 
 From the pathway, blind with sight — 
 
 Making through rain and wind 
 O'er the broken shrubs, 
 'Twixt the stems and stubs, 
 With a still, composed, strong mind, 
 Nor a care for the world behmd — 
 
 Swifter and still more swift. 
 
 As the crowding peace 
 
 Doth to joy increase 
 In the wide blind eyes uplift 
 Through the darkness and the drift 1 
 
 While I — to the shape, 1 too 
 
 Feel my soul dilate 
 
 Nor a whit abate. 
 And relax not a gesture due. 
 As I see my belief come true. 
 
 For, there ! have I drawn or no 
 
 Life to that lip ? 
 
 Do my fingers dip 
 In a flame which again they throw 
 On the cheek that breaks aglow ? 
 
 Ha ! was the hair so first ? 
 
 What, unfilleted. 
 
 Made alive, and spread 
 Through the void with a rich outburst. 
 Chestnut gold-interspersed ? 
 
 Like the doors of a casket-shrine. 
 
 See, on either side, 
 
 Her two arms divide 
 Till the heart betwixt makes sign. 
 Take me, for I am thine ! 
 
 " Now — now " — the door is heard ! 
 Hark, the stairs 1 and near — 
 
 Nearer — and here — 
 " Now ! " and at call the third 
 She enters without a word. 
 
 On doth she march and on 
 
 To the fancied shape ; 
 
 It is, past escape, 
 Herself, now : the dream is done 
 And the shadow and she are one. 
 
 First I will pray. Do Thou 
 
 That ownest the soul. 
 
 Yet wilt grant control 
 To another, nor disallow 
 For a time, restrain me now ! 
 
 I admonish me while I may. 
 Not to squander guilt. 
 Since require Thou wilt 
 
 At my hand its price one day ! 
 
 What the price is, who can say ? 
 
 THE GLOVE 
 
 (peter ronsard loguitiir.) 
 
 " Heigho," yawned one day King Francis, 
 
 " Distance all value enhances ! 
 
 When a man 's busy, why, leisure 
 
 Strikes him as wonderful pleasure : 
 
 'Faith, and at leisure once is he ? 
 
 Straightway he wants to be busy. 
 
 Here we 've got peace ; and aghast I 'm 
 
 Caught thinking war the true pastime. 
 
 Is there a reason in metre ? 
 
 Give us your speech, master Peter ! " 
 
 I who, if mortal dare say so. 
 
 Ne'er am at loss with my Naso, 
 
 "Sire," I replied, " joys prove cloudlets : 
 
 Men are the merest Ixions " — 
 
 Here the King whistled aloud, " Let 's 
 
 — Heigho — go look at our lions ! " 
 
 Such are the sorrowful chances 
 
 If you talk fine to King Francis. 
 
 And so, to the courtyard proceeding 
 
 Our company, Francis was leading. 
 
 Increased by new followers tenfold 
 
 Before he arrived at the penfold ; 
 
 Lords, ladies, like clouds which bedizen 
 
 At sunset the western horizon. 
 
 And Sir De Lorge pressed 'mid the foremost 
 
 With the dame he professed to adore most. 
 
 Oh, what a face ! One by fits eyed 
 
 Her, and the horrible pitside ; 
 
 For the penfold sun'ounded a hollow 
 
 Which led where the eye scarce dared foUow, 
 
 And shelved to the chamber secluded 
 
 Where Bluebeard, the great lion, brooded. 
 
 The King hailed his keeper, an Arab 
 
 As glossy and black as a scarab. 
 
 And bade him make sport and at once stir 
 
 Up and out of his den the old monster. 
 
 They opened a hole in the wire-work 
 
 Across it, and dropped there a firework. 
 
 And fled : one's heart's beating redoubled ; 
 
 Apause, while the pit's mouth was troubled, 
 
 The blackness and silence so utter. 
 
THE GLOVE 
 
 257 
 
 By the firework's slow sparkling and sputter ; 
 Then earth in a sudden contortion 
 Gave out to our gaze her abortion. 
 Such a brute ! Were I friend Clement Marot 
 (Whose experience of nature 's but narrow, 
 And whose faculties move in no small mist 
 When he versifies David the Psalmist) 
 I should study that brute to describe you 
 Ilium Juda Leonem de Tribu. 
 
 One's whole blood grew curdling and creepy 
 
 To see the black mane, vast and heapy, 
 
 The tail in the air stiff and straining;, 
 
 The wide eyes, nor waxing nor waning, 
 
 As over the barrier which bounded 
 
 His platform, and us who surrounded 
 
 The barrier, they reached and they rested 
 
 On space that might stand him in best stead : 
 
 Forwhoknew, he thought, what the amazement, 
 
 The eruption of clatter and blaze meant, 
 
 And if, in this minute of wonder. 
 
 No outlet, 'mid lightning and thunder. 
 
 Lay broad, and, his shackles all shivered, 
 
 The lion at last was delivered ? 
 
 Ay, that was the open sky o'erhead ! 
 
 And you saw by the flash on his forehead. 
 
 By the hope in those eyes wide and steady, 
 
 He was leagues in the desert already. 
 
 Driving the flocks up the mountain. 
 
 Or catlike couched hard by the fountain 
 
 To waylay the date-gathering negress : 
 
 So guarded he entrance or egress. 
 
 " How he stands ! " quoth the King : " we may 
 
 well swear, 
 (No novice, we 've won our spurs elsewhere 
 And so can afford the confession,) 
 We exercise wholesome discretion 
 In keeping aloof from his threshold, 
 Once hold you, those jaws want no fresh hold, 
 Their first would too pleasantly purloin 
 The visitor's brisket or surloin : 
 But who 's he would prove so fool-hardy? 
 Not the best man of Marignan, pardie ! " 
 
 The sentence no sooner was uttered. 
 Than over the rails a glove fluttered, 
 Fell close to the lion, and rested : 
 The dame 't was, who flung it and jested 
 With life so, De Lorge had been wooing 
 For months past ; he sat there pursuing 
 His suit, weighing out with nonchalance 
 Fine speeches like gold from a balance. 
 
 Sound the trumpet, no true knight 's a tarrier ! 
 De Loi^e made one leap at the barrier. 
 Walked straight to the glove, — while the lion 
 Ne'er moved, kept his far-reaching eye on 
 The palm-tree-edged desert-spring's sapphire. 
 And the musky oiled skin of the Kaffir, — 
 Picked it up, and as calmly retreated. 
 Leaped back where the lady was seated, 
 And full in the faee of its owner 
 Flung the glove. 
 
 " Your heart's queen, you dethrone her? 
 So should I ! " — cried the King — '* 't was mere 
 
 vanity, 
 Vot love, set that task to humanity ! " 
 
 Lords and ladies alike turned with loathing 
 From such a proved wolf in sheep's clothing. 
 
 Not so, I ; for I caught an expression 
 
 In her brow's undisturbed self-possession 
 
 Amid the Court's scoffing and merriment, — 
 
 As if from no pleasing experiment 
 
 She rose, yet of pain not much heedftd 
 
 So long as the process was needful, — 
 
 As if she had tried in a crucible. 
 
 To what "speeches like gold " were reducible, 
 
 And, finding the finest prove copper. 
 
 Felt the smoke in her face was but proper ; 
 
 To know what she had not to trust to, 
 
 Was worth all the ashes and dust too. 
 
 She went out 'mid hooting and laughter ; 
 
 Clement Marot stayed ; I followed after, 
 
 And asked, as a grace, what it all meant ? 
 
 If she wished not the rash deed's recallment ? 
 
 *' For I " — so I spoke — " am a poet : 
 
 Human nature, — behooves that I know it ! " 
 
 She told me, " Too long had I heard 
 Of the deed proved alone by the word : 
 For my love — what De Lorge would not dare 1 
 With my scorn — what De Lorge could com- 
 pare ! 
 And the endless descriptions of death 
 He would brave when my lip formed a breath, 
 I must reckon as braved, or, of course, 
 Doubt his word — and moreover, perforce, 
 For such gifts as no lady could spurn, 
 Miist offer my love in return. 
 When I looked on your lion, it brought 
 All the dangers at once to my thought. 
 Encountered by all sorts of men, 
 Before he was lodged in his den, — 
 From the poor slave whose club or bare hands 
 Dug the trap, set the snare on the sands. 
 With no King and no Court to applaud, 
 By no shame, should he shrink, overawed, 
 Yet to capture the creature made shift, 
 That his rude boys might laugh at the gift, 
 
 — To the page who last leaped o'er the fence 
 Of the pit, on no greater pretence 
 
 Than to get back the bonnet he dropped, 
 
 Lest his pay for a week should be stopped. 
 
 So, wiser I judged it to make 
 
 One trial what * death for my sake ' 
 
 Beally meant, while the power was yet mine, 
 
 Than to wait until time should define 
 
 Such a phrase not so simply as I, 
 
 Who took it to mean just ' to die.' 
 
 The blow a glove gives is but weak : 
 
 Does the mark yet discolor my cheek ? 
 
 But when the heart suffers a blow. 
 
 Will the pain pass so soon, do you know ? " 
 
 I looked, as away she was sweeping. 
 
 And saw a youth eagerly keeping 
 
 As close as he dared to the doorway. 
 
 No doubt that a noble should more weigh 
 
 His life than befits a plebeian ; 
 
 And yet, had our brate been Nemean — 
 
 (I judge by a certain calm fervor 
 
 The youth stepped with, forward to serve her) 
 
 — He 'd have scarce thought yon did him the 
 
 worst turn 
 
258 
 
 DRAMATIC ROMANCES 
 
 If you whispered, "Friend, what you'd get, 
 
 first earn ! " 
 And when, shortly after, she carried 
 Her shame from the Court, and they married. 
 To that marriage some happiness, maugre 
 The voice of the Court, I dared augur. 
 
 For De Lorge, he made, women with men vie. 
 Those in wonder and praise, these in envy ; 
 And in short stood so plain a head taller 
 That he wooed and won . , , how do you call 
 
 her? 
 The beauty, that rose in the sequel 
 To the King's love, who loved her a week well. 
 And 't was noticed he never would honor 
 De Lorge (who looked daggers upon her) 
 With the easy commission of stretching 
 His legs in the service, and fetching 
 His wixe, from her chamber, those straying 
 Sad gloves she was always mislaying. 
 While the King took the closet to chat in, — 
 But of coui-se this adventure came pat in. 
 And never the King told the story. 
 How bringing a glove brought such glory. 
 But the wife sniuled — "Bfis nerves are grown 
 
 firmer ; 
 Mine he brings now and utters no munnur." 
 
 Venienti occurrite morbo ! 
 
 With which moral I drop my theorbo. 
 
 TIME'S REVENGES 
 
 I 'VE a Friend, over the sea ; 
 
 I like him, but he loves me. 
 
 It all grew out of the books I write ; 
 
 They find such favor in his sight 
 
 That he slaughters you with savage looks 
 
 Because you don't admire my books. 
 
 He does himself though, — and if some vein 
 
 Were to snap to-night in this heavy brain. 
 
 To-morrow month, if I lived to try, 
 
 Round should I just turn quietly. 
 
 Or out of the bedclothes stretch my hand 
 
 Till I found him, come from his foreign ,land 
 
 To be my uurse in this poor place. 
 
 And make my broth and wash my face 
 
 And light my fire and, all the while. 
 
 Bear with his old good-humored smUe 
 
 That I told him "Better have kept away 
 
 Than come and kill me, night and day. 
 
 With, worse than fever throbs and shoots, 
 
 The creaking of his clumsy boots." 
 
 I am as sure that this he would do. 
 
 As that Saint Paul's is striking two. 
 
 And I think I rather . . . woe is me ! 
 
 — Yes, rather should see him than not see, 
 If lifting a hand could seat him there 
 Before me in the empty chair 
 To-night, when my head aches indeed, 
 And I can neither think nor read. 
 Nor make these purple fingers hold 
 The pen ; this garret 's freezing cold ! 
 
 And I 've a Lady — there he wakes. 
 The laughing fiend and prince of snakes 
 
 Within me, at her name, to pray 
 
 Fate send some creature in the way 
 
 Of my love for hei-, to be down-torn, 
 
 Upthrnst and outward-borne. 
 
 So I might prove myself that sea 
 
 Of passion which I needs must be ! _ 
 
 Call my thoughts false and my fancies quaint 
 
 And my stjrle infirm and its figures faint, 
 
 All the critics say, and more blame yet. 
 
 And not one angiy word you get. 
 
 But, please you, wonder I would put 
 
 My cheek beneath that lady's foot 
 
 Rather than trample under mine 
 
 The laurels of the Florentine, 
 
 And you shall see how the devil spends 
 
 A fire God gave for other ends ! 
 
 I tell you, fstride up and down 
 
 This garret, crowned with love's best crown. 
 
 And feasted with love's perfect feast. 
 
 To think I kill for her, at least. 
 
 Body and soul and peace and fame. 
 
 Alike youth's end and manhood's aim, 
 
 — So is my spirit, as fiesh with sin. 
 Filled full, eaten out and in 
 
 With the face of her, the eyes of her. 
 
 The lips, the little chin, the stir 
 
 Of shadow round her mouth ; and she 
 
 — I '11 tell you — calmly wordd decree 
 That I should roast at a slow fire, 
 
 If that would compass her desire 
 And make her one whom they invite 
 To the famous ball to-morrow night. 
 
 There may be heaven ; there must be hell ; 
 Meantime, there is our earth here — well ! 
 
 THE ITALIAN IN ENGLAND 
 
 Both this poem and the following were writ 
 ten after Browning's visit to Italy in 1844. A, 
 originally published they were entitled Itcd, 
 in England and England in Italy. The dra, 
 matic incident in the former poem was not ? 
 rescript of a particular historic incident. 
 
 That second time they hunted me 
 
 From hUl to plain, from shore to sea. 
 
 And Austria, hounding far and wide 
 
 Her blood-hounds through the country-side, 
 
 Breathed hot and instant on ray trace, — 
 
 I made six days a hiding-place 
 
 Of that dry green old aqueduct 
 
 Where I and Charles, when boys, have plucked 
 
 The fire-flies from the roof above, . 
 
 Bright creepii^ through the moss they love : 
 
 — How long it seems since Charles was lost 1 
 Six days the soldiers crossed and crossed 
 The country in my very sight ; 
 
 And when that peril ceased at night, 
 The sky broke out in red dismay 
 With signal fires ; well, there I lay 
 Close covered o'er in my recess. 
 Up to the neck in ferns and cress, 
 Thinking on Metteniich our friend. 
 And Charles's miserable end. 
 And much beside, two days ; the third. 
 
THE ITALIAN IN ENGLAND 
 
 2S9 
 
 Hung:er o'ercame me when I heaTd 
 The peasants from the village go 
 To work among the maize ; you know, 
 With ns in Lombardy, they bring 
 Provisions packed on mules, a string 
 With little bells that cheer their task, 
 And casks, and boughs on every cask 
 To keep the sun's heat from the wine ; 
 These 1 let pass in jingling line, 
 And, close on them, dear noisy crew. 
 The peasants from the village, too ; 
 For at the very rear would troop 
 Their wives and sisters in a group 
 To help, 1 knew. When thtse had passed, 
 I threw my glove to strike the last, 
 Taking the chance : she did not start. 
 Much less cry out, but stooped apart. 
 One instant rapidly glanced round, 
 And saw me beckon from the ground ; 
 A wild bush grows and hides my crypt ; 
 She picked ray glove up while she stripped 
 A branch off, then irejciined the rest 
 With that ; my glove lay in her breast. 
 Then I drew breath : they disappeared : 
 It was for Italy I feared. 
 
 An hour, and she returned alone 
 Exaetly where my glove was thrown. 
 Meanwhile came many thoughts ; on me 
 Bested the hopes of Italy ; 
 I had devised a certain tale 
 Which, when 't was told her, could not fail 
 Persuade a peasant of its truth ; 
 I meant to call a freak of youth 
 TTiis hiding, and give hopes of pay. 
 And no temptation to betray. 
 But when I saw that woman's face, 
 Its calm simplicity of grace. 
 Our Italy's own attitude 
 En which she walked thus far, and stood, 
 Planting each naked foot so firm. 
 To crush the snake and spare the worm — 
 At first sight of her eyes, I said, 
 " I am that man upon whose head 
 They fix the price, because I hate 
 The Austriana over us : the State 
 Will give you gold — oh, gold so much ! — 
 If you betray me to their clutch. 
 And be your death, for aught I know, 
 If once they find you saved their foe. 
 Now, you must bring nie food and drink, 
 And also paper, pen and ink. 
 And carry safe what 1 shall write 
 To Padua, which yoU '11 reach at night 
 Before the duomo shuts ; go in. 
 And wait till Tenebrse begin ; 
 Walk to the third confessional. 
 Between the pillar and the wall. 
 And kneeling whisper. Whence conies peace f 
 Say it a second time, then cease ; 
 And if the voice inside returns. 
 From Christ and Freedom ; what concerns 
 The cause of Peace f — for answer, slip 
 My letter where you placed your lip ; 
 Then come back happy we have done ■ 
 Our mother service — I, the son, 
 As you the daughter of our land ! " 
 
 Three mornings more, she took her stand 
 In the same place, with the same eyes : 
 I was no surer of sunrise 
 Than of her coming. We conferred 
 Of her own prospects, and I heard 
 She had a lover — stout and tall. 
 She said — then let her eyelids fall, 
 " He could do much " — as if some doubt 
 Entered' her heart, — then, passing out, 
 '* She could not speak for others, who 
 Had other thoughts ; herself she knew : " 
 And so she brought me drink and food. 
 After four days, the scouts pursued 
 Another path : at last arrived 
 The help my Paduan friends contrived 
 To furnish me : she brought the news. 
 For the first time I could not choose 
 But kiss her hand, and lay my own 
 Upon her head — ' This faith was shown 
 To Italy, our mother ; she 
 Uses niy hand and blesses thee." 
 She followed down to the searshore ; 
 I left and never saw her more. 
 
 How very long since I have thought 
 Concerning — much less wished for — aught 
 Beside the good of Italy, 
 For which I live and mean to die ! 
 X never was in love ; and since 
 Charles proved false, what shall now convince 
 My inmost heart I have a friend ? 
 However, if I pleased to spend 
 Real wishes on myself — say, three — 
 I know at least what one should be. 
 I would grasp Metternieh until 
 I felt his red wet throat distil 
 In blood through these two hands. And next 
 
 — Nor much for that am I perplexed — 
 Charles, periured traitor, for his part. 
 Should die slow of a broken heart 
 Under his new employei-s. Last 
 
 — Ah, there, what should I wish ? For fast 
 Do I grow old and out of strength. 
 
 If I resolved to seek at length 
 My father's house again, how scared 
 They all would look, and unprepared ! 
 My brothers live in Austria's pay 
 
 — Disowned me long ago, men say ; 
 And all my early mates who used 
 To praise me so — perhaps induced 
 More than one early step of mine — 
 Are turning wise : while some opine 
 
 " Freedom grows license," some suspect 
 " Haste breeds delay," and recollect 
 They always said, such premature 
 Beginnings never could endure ! 
 So, with a sullen " AU 's for best," 
 The land iseems settling to its rest. 
 I think then, I should wish to stand 
 This evening in that dear, lost land, 
 Over the sea the thousand miles. 
 And know if yet that woman smiles 
 With the calm smile ; some little farm 
 She lives in there, no doubt : what harm 
 If I sat on the door-side bench. 
 And, while her spindle made a trench 
 Fantastically in the dust. 
 Inquired of all her fortunes — just 
 
26o 
 
 DRAMATIC ROMANCES 
 
 Her children's ages and their names, 
 And what may be the husband's aims 
 For each of them, 1 'd talk this out, 
 And sit there, for an hour about, 
 Then kiss her hand once more, and lay 
 Mine on her head, and go my way. 
 
 So much for idle wishing — how 
 It steals the time ! To business now. 
 
 THE ENGLISHMAN IN ITALY 
 
 PIANO DI SORRENTO 
 
 FoBTU, Fortd, my beloyed one, 
 
 Sit here by my side. 
 On my knees put up both little feet ! 
 
 I was sure, if 1 tried, 
 I could make you laugh spite of Sciroeco. 
 
 Now, open your eyes, 
 Let me keep you amused till he vanish 
 
 In black from the skies. 
 With telling my memories over 
 
 As you tell your beads : 
 All the Plain saw me gather, I garland 
 
 — The flowers or the weeds. 
 Time for rain I for your long hot dry Autumn 
 
 Had net-worked with brown 
 The white skin of each grape on the bunches. 
 
 Marked like a quail's crown. 
 Those creatures you make such account of, 
 
 Whose heads, — speckled white 
 Over brown like a great spider's back, 
 
 As I told you last night, — 
 Your mother bites off for her supper. 
 
 Red-ripe as could be, 
 Pomegranates were chapping and splitting 
 
 In halves on the tree : 
 And betwixt the loose walls of great flintstone. 
 
 Or in the thick dust 
 On the path, or straight out of the rock-side. 
 
 Wherever could thrust 
 Some burnt sprig of bold hardy rock-flower 
 
 Its yellow face up. 
 For the ^rize were great butterflies fighting. 
 
 Some five for one cup. 
 So, I guessed, ere I got up this morning, 
 
 What change was in store, 
 Bythe quick rustle-down of the quail-nets 
 
 Which woke me before 
 I could open my shutter, made fast 
 
 With a bough and a stone, 
 And look through the twisted dead vine-twigs. 
 
 Sole lattice that 's known. 
 Quick and sharp rang the rings down the net- 
 poles. 
 
 While, busy beneath. 
 Your priest and his brother tugged at them. 
 
 The rain in their teeth. 
 And out upon all the flat house-roofs 
 
 Where split figs lay drying. 
 The girls took the frails under cover : 
 
 Nor use seemed in trying 
 Toget out the boats and go fishing, 
 
 For, under the cliff. 
 Fierce the black water frothed o'er the blind- 
 rock. 
 
 No seeing our skiff 
 
 Arrive about noon from Amalfi, 
 
 — Our fisher arrive. 
 
 And pitch down his basket before us, 
 
 All trembling alive . 
 
 With pink and gray jellies, your sea-fruit ; 
 
 You touch the strange lumps. 
 And mouths gape there, eyes open, all manner 
 
 Of honis and of humps. 
 Which only the fisher looks grave at, 
 
 While round him like imps 
 Cling screaming the children as naked 
 
 And brown as his shrimps ; 
 Himself too as bare to the middle 
 
 — You see round his neek 
 
 The string and its brass coin suspended. 
 
 That saves him from wreck. 
 But to-day not a boat reached Salerno, 
 
 So ba<}k, to a man. 
 Came our friends, with whose help in the vine- 
 yards 
 
 Grape-harvest began. 
 In the vat, halfway up in our house-side. 
 
 Like blood the juice spins. 
 While your brother all bare-legged is dancing 
 
 Till breathless he grins 
 Dead-beaten in effort on effort 
 
 To keep the grapes under. 
 Since still when he seems all but master, 
 
 In pours the fresh plunder 
 From girls who keep coming and going 
 
 With basket on shoulder. 
 And eyes shut against the rain's driving ; 
 
 Your girls that are older, — 
 For under the hedges of aloe, 
 
 And where, on its bed 
 Of the orchard's black mould, the love-apple 
 
 Lies pulpy and red. 
 All the young ones are kneeling and filling 
 
 Their laps with the snails 
 Tempted out by this first rainy weather, — 
 
 Your best of regales. 
 As to-night will be proved to my sorrow. 
 
 When, supping in state. 
 We shall feast our grape-gleaners (two dozen, 
 
 Three over one plate) 
 With lasagne so tempting to swallow 
 
 In slippery ropes. 
 And gourds fried in great purple slices. 
 
 That color of popes. 
 Meantime, see the grape bunch they 've brought 
 you: 
 
 The rain-water slips 
 O'er the heavy blue bloom on each globe 
 
 Which the wasp to your lips 
 Still follows with fretful persistence : 
 
 Nay, taste, while awake. 
 This half of a curd-white smooth cheese-ball 
 
 That peels, flake by flake. 
 Like an onion, each smoother and whiter ; 
 
 Next, sip this weak wine 
 From the thin green glass flask, with its stop 
 per, 
 
 A leaf of the vine ; 
 And end with the prickly-pear's red flesh 
 
 That leaves through its juice 
 The stony black seeds on your pearl-teeth, 
 
 Sciroeco is loose ! 
 Hark, the quick, whistling pelt of the olives 
 
THE ENGLISHMAN IN ITALY 
 
 261 
 
 Which, thick in one'fa track, 
 Tempt the stranger to pick up and bite them, 
 
 Though not yet half black ! 
 How the old twisted olive trunks shudder, 
 
 The medlars let tall 
 Their hard fruit, and the brittle great fig- 
 trees 
 
 Snap o£E, figs and all. 
 For here comes the whole of the tempest ! 
 
 No refuge, but creep 
 Back again to my side and my shoulder, 
 
 And Esten or sleep. 
 
 Oh, how wiU your country show next week, 
 
 When all the yine-boughs 
 Hare been stripped of their foliage to pasture 
 
 The mules and the cows ? 
 Last eve, I rode over the mountains ; 
 
 Your brother, my guide. 
 Soon left me, to feast on the myrtles 
 
 That offered, each side, 
 Their fruit-balls, black, glossy and luscious, — 
 
 Or strip from the sorbs 
 A treasure, or, rosy and wondrous. 
 
 Those hairy ^old orbs ! 
 But my mule picked his sure sober path out, 
 
 Just stopping to neigh 
 When he recognized down in the valley 
 
 His mates on their way 
 With the faggots and barrels of water ; 
 
 And soon we emerged 
 From the plain, where the woods could scarce 
 follow ; 
 And still as we urged 
 Our way, the woods wondered, and left us. 
 
 As up still we trudged. 
 Though the wild path grew wilder each instant, 
 
 And place was e'en grudged 
 'Mid the rock-chasms and piles of loose stones 
 
 Like the loose broken teeth 
 Of some monster which climbed there to die 
 
 From the ocean beneath — 
 Place was grudged to the silver-gray fume-weed 
 
 That clung to the path. 
 And dark rosemary ever a-dying 
 That, 'spite the wind's wrath, 
 So loves the salt rock's face to seaward. 
 
 And lentisks as stanch 
 To the stone where they root and bear berries. 
 
 And . . . what shows a branch 
 Coral-colored, transparent, with circlets 
 
 Of pale seagreen leaves ; 
 Over all trod my mule with the caution 
 
 Of gleaners o'er sheaves. 
 Still, foot after foot like a lady, 
 
 Till, round after round, 
 He climbed to the top of Calvano, 
 
 And God's own profound 
 Was above me, and round me the mountains. 
 
 And under, the sea. 
 And within me my heart to bear witness 
 
 What was and shall be. 
 Oh, heaven and the terrible crystal ! 
 
 No rampart excludes 
 Your eye from the life to be lived 
 
 In the blue solitudes. 
 Oh, those moimtains, their infinite movement 1 
 Still moving with you ; 
 
 For, ever some new head and breast of them 
 
 Thrusts into view 
 To observe the intruder ; you see it 
 
 If quickly you turn 
 And, before they escajje you, surprise them. 
 
 They grudge you should learn 
 How the soft plains they look on, lean over 
 
 And love (they pretend) 
 — Cower beneath them, the flat sea-pine 
 crouches, 
 
 The wild fruit-trees bend. 
 E'en the myrtle-leaves curl, shrink and shut : 
 
 All is silent and grave : 
 'T is a sensual and timorous beauty. 
 
 How fair ! but a slave. 
 So, I turned to the sea ; and there slumbered 
 
 As greenly as ever 
 Those isles of the siren, your Galli ; 
 
 No ages can sever 
 The Three, nor enable their sister 
 
 To join them, — halfway 
 On the voyage, she looked at Ulysses — 
 
 No farther to-day, 
 Though the small one, just launched in the wave 
 
 Watches breast-high and steady 
 From under the rock, her bold sister 
 
 Swum halfway already. 
 Forti, shall we sail there together 
 
 And see from the sides 
 Quite new rocks show their faces, new haunts 
 
 Where the siren abides ? 
 Shall we sail round and round them, close over 
 
 The rocks, though unseen. 
 That ruffle the gray glassy water 
 
 To glorious green ? 
 Then scramble from splinter to splinter, 
 
 Reach land and explore. 
 On the largest, the strange square black tnrret 
 
 With never a door, 
 Just a loop to admit the quick lizards ; 
 
 Then, stand there and hear 
 The birds' quiet singing, that tells us 
 
 What life is, so clear ? 
 — The secret they sang to Ulysses 
 
 When, ages ago. 
 He heard and he knew this life's secret 
 
 I bear and I know. 
 
 Ah, see ! The sun breaks o'er Calvano ; 
 
 He strikes the great gloom 
 And flutters it o'er the mount's summit 
 
 In airy gold fume. 
 All is over. Look out, see the gypsy. 
 
 Our tinker and smith. 
 Has arrived, set up beUows and forge, 
 
 And down-squatted forthwith 
 To his hammering, under the wall there ; 
 
 One eye keeps aloof 
 The urchins that itch to be putting 
 
 His jews'-harps to proof, . 
 
 While the other, through locks of curled wire, 
 
 Is watching how sleek . , n n 
 
 Shines the hog, come to share m the wmdtaU 
 
 — Chew abbot's own cheek ! 
 AU is over. Wake up and come out no-v. 
 
 And down let us go. 
 And see the fine things got in order 
 
 At church for the show 
 
Z62 
 
 DRAMATIC ROMANCES 
 
 Of the Sacrament, set forth this evening ; 
 
 To-morrow 's the Feast 
 Of the Rosary's Virgin, by no means 
 
 Of Virgins the least, 
 As you 'U hear in the off-hand discourse 
 
 Which (all nature, no art) 
 The Dominican brother, these three weeks, 
 
 Was getting by heart. 
 Not a pillar nor post but is dizened 
 
 With red and blue papers ; 
 All the roof waves with ribbons, each altar 
 
 Ablaze with long tapers ; 
 But the great masterpiece is the scaffold 
 
 Rigged glorious to hold 
 All the fiddlers and fifers and drummers 
 
 And trumpeters bold, 
 Not afraid of Bellini nor Auber, 
 
 Wlio, when the priest, 's hoarae, 
 Will strike us up something that 's brisk 
 
 For the feast's second course. 
 And then will the flaxen-wigged Image 
 
 Be carried in pomp 
 Through the plain, while in gallant proces- 
 sion 
 
 The priests mean to stomp. 
 All round the glad church lie old bottles 
 
 With gunpowder stopped. 
 Which wUl be, when the Image re-enters, 
 
 Religiously popped ; 
 And at night from the crest of Oalvano 
 
 Grreat bonfires will hang, 
 On the plain will the trumpets join chorus, 
 
 And more proppers bang. 
 At all events, come — to the garden 
 
 As far as the wall ; 
 See me tap with a hoe on the plaster 
 
 Till out there shall fall 
 A scorpion with wide angry nippers I 
 
 — " Such trifles ! " you say ? 
 Forth, in my England at home. 
 
 Men meet gravely to-day 
 And debate, if abolishing Corn-laws 
 
 Be righteous and wise 
 •- If *t were proper, Scirocco should vardsh 
 
 In black from the skies ! 
 
 IN A GONDOLA 
 
 In a letter to Miss Haworth, Browning writes, 
 ''I am getting to love painting as I did once. 
 ... I chanced to call on Forster the other day, 
 and he pressed me into committing verse on the 
 instant, not the minute, in Maclise's behalf, who 
 has wrought a divine Venetian work, it seems, 
 for the British Institution. Forster described 
 it well — but I could do nothing better than 
 this wooden ware — (all the ' properties, ' as 
 we say, were given and the problem was how 
 to catalogue them in rhyme and unreason.)" 
 Thereupon followed the first stanza of th,e 
 following poem ; but after seeing the picture lie 
 was moved to go on and carry the poem through 
 to a real end. 
 
 He sings. 
 
 I SEND my heart up to thee, all my heart 
 
 In this my singing. 
 For the stars help me, and the sea bears part ; 
 
 The very night is clinging 
 Closer to Venice' streets to leave one space 
 
 Above me, whence thy face 
 May light my joyous heart to thee its dwellings 
 place. 
 
 She speaks. 
 
 Say after me, and try to say 
 My very words, as if each word 
 Came from you of your own accord. 
 In your own voice, in your own way : 
 ""This woman's heart and soul and brain 
 Are mine as much as this gold chain 
 She bids me wear ; which^' (say again) 
 " I choose to make by cherishing 
 A precious thing, or choose to fling 
 Over the boat-side, ring by ring." 
 And yet once more say ... no word more I 
 Since words are only words. Give o'er ! 
 
 Unless you call me, all the same, 
 
 Familiarly by my pet name, 
 
 Which if the Three should hear you call, 
 
 And me reply to, would proclaim 
 
 At once our secret to them all. 
 
 Ask of me, too, command me, blame — 
 
 Do, break down the partition-wall 
 
 'Twixt us, the daylight world beholds 
 
 Curtained in dusk and splendid folds ! 
 
 What 's left but — all of me to take ? 
 
 I am. -the Three's : prevent them, slake 
 
 Your thirst ! 'T is said, the Arab sage. 
 
 In practising with gems, can loose 
 
 Their subtle spirit in his cruce 
 
 And leave but ashes : so, sweet mage. 
 
 Leave them my ashes when thy use 
 
 Sucks out my soul, thy heritage ! 
 
 He sivgs. 
 
 Past we glide, and past, and past ! 
 
 What 's that poor A^ese doing 
 Where they make the shutters fast ? 
 
 Gray Zanobi 's just a-wooing 
 To his couch the purchased bride : 
 
 Past we glide ! 
 
 Past we glide, and past, and past ! 
 
 Why 's the Pucci Palace flaring 
 Like a beacon to the blast ? 
 
 Guests by hundreds, not one caring 
 If the dear host's neck were wried: 
 
 Past we glide ! 
 
 She sings. 
 
 The moth's kiss, first ! 
 
 Kiss me as if you made believe 
 
 You were not sure, this eve, 
 
 How my face, your flower, had pursed 
 
 Its petals up ; so, here and there 
 
 You brush it, till I grow aware 
 
 Who wants me, and wide ope I burst. 
 
 The bee's kiss, now ! 
 
 Kiss me as if you entered gay 
 
IN A GONDOLA 
 
 263 
 
 My heart at some noonday, 
 A bud that dares uot disallow 
 The claim, so all is rendered up, 
 And passively its shattered cup 
 Over your head to sleep I bow. 
 He sings. 
 
 What are we two ? 
 
 I am a Jew, 
 
 Aud caiTy thee, farther than friends can pursue. 
 
 To a feast of our tribe ; 
 
 Where they need thee to bribe 
 
 The devil that blasts thein unless he imbibe 
 
 Thy . . . Scatter the vision forever ! And 
 
 now, 
 As of old, I am I, thou art thou ! 
 
 Say again, what we are ? 
 
 The sprite of a star, 
 
 I lure thee above where the destinies bar 
 
 My plumes their full play 
 
 Till a ruddier ray 
 
 Thau my pale one announce there is withering 
 
 away 
 Some . . . Scatter the vision forever! And 
 
 now. 
 As of old, I am I, thou art thou ! 
 
 He muses. 
 
 Oh, which were best, to roam or rest ? 
 The land's lap or the water's breast ? 
 To sleep on yeEow millet-sheaves, 
 Or swim in lucid shallows just 
 Eluding water-lily leaves, 
 An inch from Death's black fingers, thrust 
 To look you, whom release he must ; 
 Which life were best on Summer eves ? 
 
 He speaks^ tnusing. 
 
 Lie back ; could thought of mine improve you ? 
 
 From this shoulder let there spring 
 
 A wing ; from this, another wing ; 
 
 Wings, not legs and feet, shall move you ! 
 
 Snow-white must they spring, to blend 
 
 With your flesh, but I intend 
 
 They shall deepen to the end. 
 
 Broader, into burning gold. 
 
 Till both wings crescent-wise enfold 
 
 Your perfect self, from 'neath your feet 
 
 To o'er your head, where, lo, they meet 
 
 As if a million sword-blades hurled 
 
 Defiance from you to the world ! 
 
 Rescue me thou, the only real ! 
 And scare away this mad ideal 
 That came, nor motions to depart ! 
 Thanks ! Now, stay ever as thou art ! 
 
 StUl he TTvuses. 
 
 What if the Three should catch at last 
 Thy serenader ? While there 's oast 
 Paul's cloak about my head, and fast 
 Oian pinions me. Himself has past 
 His stylet through rny back ; I reel ; 
 And . . . is it thou I feel ? 
 
 They trail xne, these three godless knaves. 
 Past every church that saints and saves, 
 
 Nor stop tiU, where the cold sea raves 
 By Lido's wet accursed graves. 
 They scoop mine, roU me to its brink, 
 And ... on thy breast I sink ! 
 
 She replies, musing. 
 
 Dip your arm o'er the boat-side, elbow-deep. 
 As Ido ; thus : were death so unlike sleep. 
 Caught this way ? Death 's to fear from flame 
 
 or steel. 
 Or poison doubtless ; but from water — feel ! 
 
 Go find the bottom ! Would you stay me ? 
 
 There ! 
 Now pluck a great blade of that ribbon-grass 
 To plait in where the foolish jewel was, 
 I flung away : since you have praised my hair, 
 'T is proper to be choice in what I wear. 
 
 He speaks. 
 
 Row home ? must we row home ? Too siu'ely 
 
 Know I where its front 's demurely 
 
 Over the Giudeoca piled ; 
 
 Window just with window mating. 
 
 Door on door exactly waiting, 
 
 All 's the set face of a child : 
 
 But behind it, where 's a trace 
 
 Of the staiduess and reserve, 
 
 Aud formal lines without a curve. 
 
 In the same child's playing-faee ? 
 
 No two windows look one way 
 
 O'er the small sea-water thread 
 
 Below them. Ah, the autumn day 
 
 I, passing, saw you overhead ! 
 
 First, out a cloud of curtain blew. 
 
 Then a sweet cry, and last came you — 
 
 To catch your lory that must needs 
 
 Escape just then, of all times then, 
 
 To peck a tall plant's fleecy seeds. 
 
 And make lue happiest of men. 
 
 I scarce could breathe to see you reach 
 
 So far back o'er the balcony 
 
 To catch him ere he climbed too high 
 
 Above you in the Smyrna peach. 
 
 That quick the round smooth cord of gold, 
 
 This coiled hair on your head, unrolled. 
 
 Fell down you like a gorgeous snake 
 
 The Roman girls were wont, of old. 
 
 When Rome there was, for coolness' sake 
 
 To let lie curling o'er their bosoms. 
 
 Dear lory, may his beak retain 
 
 Ever its deUcate rose stain 
 
 As if the wounded lotus-blossoms 
 
 Had marked their thief to know again ! 
 
 Stay longer yet. for others' sake 
 
 Than mine ! What should your chamber do ? 
 
 — With all its rarities that ache 
 
 In silence while day lasts, but wake 
 
 At night-time and their life renew. 
 
 Suspended just to pleasure you 
 
 Who brought against their will together 
 
 These objects, and, while day lasts, weave 
 
 Around them such a magic tether 
 
 That dumb they look : your harp, believe, 
 
 With all the sensitive tight strings 
 
 Which dare not speak, now to itself 
 
 Breathes slumberously, as if some elf 
 
264 
 
 DRAMATIC ROMANCES 
 
 Went in and out the chords, his wings 
 
 Make murmur wheresoe'er they graze, 
 
 As an angel may, between the maze 
 
 Of midnight palaee-pillars, on 
 
 And on, to sow God's plagues, have gone 
 
 Through guilty glorious Babylon. 
 
 And while such murmurs flow, the nymph 
 
 Bends o'er the hari)-top from her shell 
 
 As the dry limpet for tne lymph 
 
 Come with a tune he knows so well. 
 
 And how your statues' hearts must swell ! 
 
 And how your pictures must descend 
 
 To see each other, friend with friend ! 
 
 Oh, Could you take them by surprise, 
 
 You 'd find Schidone's eager Duke 
 
 Doing the quaintest courtesies 
 
 To that prim saint by Haste-thee-Luke 1 
 
 And, deeper into her rock den, 
 
 Bold Castelfranco's Magdalen 
 
 You 'd find retreated from the ken 
 
 Of that robed counsel-keeping Ser — 
 
 As if the Tizian thinks of her, 
 
 And is not, rather, gi'avely bent 
 
 On seeing for himself what toys 
 
 Are these, his progeny invent. 
 
 What litter now the board employs 
 
 Whereon he signed a document 
 
 That got him murdered ! Each enjoys 
 
 Its night so well, you cannot break 
 
 The sport up, so, indeed must make 
 
 More stay with me, for others' sake. 
 
 SJie speaks. 
 
 To-morrow, if a harp-string, say. 
 Is used to tie the jasmine back 
 That overfloods ray room with sweets, 
 Contrive your Zorzi somehow meets 
 My Zanze ! If the ribbon 's black. 
 The Three are watching : keep away ! 
 
 Your gondola — let Zorzi wreathe 
 
 A mesh of water-weeds about 
 
 Its prow, as if he unaware 
 
 Had struck some quay or bridge-foot stair ! 
 
 That I may throw a paper out 
 
 As you and he go underneath. 
 
 There 's Zanze 's vigilant taper ; safe are we. 
 Only one minnte more to-night with me ? 
 Resume your past self of a month ago ! 
 Be you the bashful gallant, I will be 
 The lady with the colder breast than snow. 
 Now bow you, as becomes, nor touch my hand 
 More than I touch yours when I step to land. 
 And say, " All thanks, Siora ! " — 
 
 Heart to heart 
 And lips to lips ! Yet once more, ere we part. 
 Clasp me and make me thine, as mine thou art ! 
 
 He is surprised, and stabbed. 
 It was ordained to be so, sweet ! — and best 
 Comes now, beneath thine eyes, upon thy 
 
 breast. 
 Still kiss me ! Care not for the cowards ! Care 
 Only to put aside thy beauteous hair 
 My blood win hurt ! The Three, I do not scorn 
 To death, because they never lived : but I 
 Have lived indeed, and so — (yet one more 
 
 kiss ) — can die ! 
 
 WARING 
 
 An account of Alfred Domett, Browning's 
 early friend, who was the occasion of this poem, 
 will be foimd in the notes. 
 
 I 
 
 What 's become of Waring 
 Since he gave us all the slip, 
 Chose land-travel or seafaring, 
 Boots and chest or staff and scrip, 
 Rather than jjace up and down 
 Any longer London town ? 
 
 Who 'd have guessed it from his Up 
 
 Or his brow's accustomed bearing. 
 
 On the night he thus took ship 
 
 Or started landward ? — little caring 
 
 For us, it seems, who supped together 
 
 (Friends of his too, I remember) 
 
 And walked home through the merry weather. 
 
 The snowiest in all December. 
 
 I left his arm that night myself 
 
 For what 's-his-name's, the new prose-poet 
 
 Who wrote the book there, on the sheK — 
 
 How, forsooth, was I to know it 
 
 If Waring meant to glide away 
 
 Like a ghost at break of day ? 
 
 Never looked he half so gay ! 
 
 He was prouder than the devil : 
 
 How he must have cursed our revel ! 
 
 Ay and many other meeting. 
 
 Indoor visits, outdoor greetings. 
 
 As up and down he paced this London, 
 
 With no work done, but great works undone, 
 
 Where scarce twenty knew his name. 
 
 Why not, then, have earlier spoken. 
 
 Written, bustled ? Who 's to blame 
 
 If your silence kept unbroken ? 
 
 " True, but there were sundrj'" jottings, 
 
 Stray-leaves, fragments, blurs and blottings. 
 
 Certain firet steps were achieved 
 
 Already which ' — (is that your meaning ?) 
 
 " Had well borne out whoe'er beKeved 
 
 In more to come ! " But who goes gleaning 
 
 Hedgeside chance-blades, while f uU-sheaved 
 
 Stand cornfields by him ? Pride, o'erweening 
 
 Pride alone, puts forth such claims 
 
 O'er the day's distinguished names. 
 
 Meantime, how much I loved him, 
 
 I find out now I 've lost him. 
 
 I who cared not if I moved him. 
 
 Who could so carelessly accost hixn. 
 
 Henceforth never shall get free 
 
 Of his ghostly company. 
 
 His eyes that just a little wink 
 
 As deep I go into the merit 
 
 Of this and that distinguished spirit — 
 
 His cheeks' raised color, soon to sink. 
 
WARING 
 
 265 
 
 As long I dwell on some stupendons 
 And tremendous (Heaven defend us I ) 
 Monstr'-informMngens-horrend-ous 
 Demoniaeo-seraphlc 
 Penman's latest piece of graphic. 
 Nay, my very wrist grows warm 
 With his dragging weight of arm. 
 E'en so, swimmingly appeal's. 
 Through one's after-supper musings, 
 Some lost lady of old years 
 With her beauteous vain endeavor 
 And goodness unrepaid as ever ; 
 The face, accustomed to refusings. 
 We, puppies that we were . . . Oh never 
 Surely, nice of conscience, scrupled 
 Being aught like false, forsooth, to ? 
 Telling aught but honest truth to ? 
 What a sin, had we centupled 
 Its possessor's grace and sweetness ! 
 No ! she heard in its completeness 
 Truth, for truth 's a weighty matter. 
 And truth, at issue, we can't flatter ! 
 Well, 't is done with ; she 's exemiJt 
 From damning us through such a sally ; 
 And so she glides, as down a valley, 
 Taking up with her contempt. 
 Past our reach ; and in, the flowere 
 Shut her unregarded hours. 
 
 Oh, could I have him back once more. 
 
 This Waring, but one half-day more ! 
 
 Back, with the quiet face of yore, 
 
 So hungry for acknowledgment 
 
 Like mine ! 1 'd fool him to his bent. 
 
 Feed, should not he, to heart's content ? 
 
 I 'd say, '* to only have conceived. 
 
 Planned your great works, apart from progi'ess. 
 
 Surpasses little works achieved ! " 
 
 I 'd lie so, I should be believed. 
 
 I 'd make such havoc of the claims 
 
 Of the day's distinguished names 
 
 To feast him with, as feasts an ogi'ess 
 
 Her feveiish sharp-toothed gold-crowned child ! 
 
 Or as one feasts a creature rarely 
 
 Captured here, unreconciled 
 
 To capture ; and completely gives 
 
 Its pettish humors license, barely 
 
 Requiring that it lives. 
 
 Ichabod, Ichabod, 
 
 The gloiy is departed ! 
 
 Travels Waring East away ? 
 
 Who, of knowledge, by hearsay. 
 
 Reports a man upstarted 
 
 Somewhere as a god, 
 
 Hordes grown European-hearted, 
 
 Millions of the wild made tame 
 
 On a sudden at his fame ? 
 
 In Vishnu-land what Avatar ? 
 
 Or who in Moscow, toward the Czar, 
 
 With the demurest of footfalls 
 
 Over the Kremlin's pavement bright 
 
 With serpentine and syenite, 
 
 Steps, with five other Generals 
 
 That simultaneously take snuff. 
 
 For each to have pretext enough 
 
 And kerchief wise unfold his sash 
 
 Which, softness' self, is yet the stuff 
 
 To hold fast where a steel chain snaps. 
 
 And leave the grand white neck no gash ? 
 
 Waring in Moscow, to those rough 
 
 Cold northern natures bom perhaps. 
 
 Like the lambwhite maiden dear 
 
 From the circle of mute kings 
 
 Unable to repress the tear. 
 
 Each as his sceptre down he flings. 
 
 To Dian's fane at Tanrica, 
 
 Where now a captive priestess, she alway 
 
 Mingles her tender gi'ave Hellenic speech 
 
 With theii's, tuned to the hailstone-beaten beach 
 
 Aa poui-s some pigeon, from the myiThy lands 
 
 Rapt by the whirlblast to fierce Scythian 
 
 strands 
 Where breed the swallows, her melodious cry 
 Amid their barbarous twitter ! 
 In Russia ? Never ! Spain were fitter ! 
 Ay, most likely 't is in Spain 
 That we and Waring meet again 
 Now, while he turns down that cool narrow Ian*' 
 Into the blackness, out of grave Madrid 
 All fire and shine, abrupt as when there 's slid 
 Its stiff gold blazing paU 
 From some black comn-lid. 
 Or, best of all, 
 I love to think 
 
 The leaving us was just a, feint ; 
 Back here to London did he slink. 
 And uow works on without a wink 
 Of sleep, and we are on the brink 
 Of something great in fresco-paint : 
 Some garret s ceiling, walls and floor. 
 Up and down and o'er and o'er 
 He splashes, as none splashed before 
 Since great Caldara Polidore. 
 Or Music means this land of ours 
 Some favor yet, to pity won 
 By Purcell from his Rosy Bowers, — 
 *' Give me my so-long promised son. 
 Let Waring end what I begun ! " 
 Then down he creeps and out he steals 
 Only when the night conceals 
 His face ; in Kent 't is cherry-time. 
 Or hox)S are picking : or at prime 
 Of March he wanders as, too happy. 
 Years ago when he was young, 
 Some mild eve when woods grew sappy 
 And the early moths had sprung 
 To life from many a trembling sheath 
 Woven the warm boughs beneath ; 
 While small birds said to themselves 
 What should soon be actual song, 
 And young gnats, by tens and twelves. 
 Made as if they were the throng 
 That crowd around and carry aloft 
 The sound they have nui'sed,so sweet and pnre^ 
 Out of a myriad noises soft. 
 Into a tone that can endure 
 Amid the noise of a July noon 
 When all God's creatures crave their boon. 
 All at once and all in tune. 
 And get it, happy as Waring then. 
 Having first within his ken 
 What a man might do with men : 
 And far too glad, in the even-glow. 
 
266 
 
 DRAMATIC ROMANCES 
 
 To mix with the world he meant to take 
 
 Into his hand, he told you, so — 
 
 And out of it his world to make, 
 
 To contract and to expand 
 
 As he shut or oped his hand. 
 
 Waring, what 's to really be ? 
 
 A clear stage and a crowd to see ! 
 
 Some Garrick, say, out shall not he 
 
 The heart of Hamlet's mystery pluck ? 
 
 Or, where most unclean beasts are rife. 
 
 Some Junius — am I right ? — shall tuck 
 
 His sleeve, and forth with flayine-knife ! 
 
 Some Chatterton shall have the luck 
 
 Of calling Rowley into life ! 
 
 Some one shall somehow run a/-muck 
 
 With this old world for want of strife 
 
 Sound asleep. Contrive, contrive 
 
 To rouse us, Waring ! Who 's alive ? 
 
 Our men scarce seem in earnest now. 
 
 Distinguished names ! — but 'tis, somehow, 
 
 As if they played at being names 
 
 Still more distingruished, like the games 
 
 Of children. Turn our sport to earnest 
 
 With a visage of the sternest ! 
 
 Bring the real times back, confessed 
 
 Still better than our very best ! 
 
 II 
 
 " When I last saw Waring ..." 
 (How all turned to him who spoke ! 
 You saw Waring ? Truth or joke ? 
 In land-travel or sea-faring ?) 
 
 " We were sailing by Triest 
 Where a day or two we harbored : 
 A sunset was in the West, ; 
 
 When, looking over the vessel's side, 
 One of our company espied 
 A sudden speck to larboard. 
 And a£ a sea-duck flies and swim's 
 At once, so came the light craft up, 
 With its sole lateen sail that trims 
 And turns (the water round its rims 
 Dancing, as round a sinking cup) 
 And by us like a fish it curled. 
 And drew itself up close beside, 
 Its great sail on the instant furled, 
 And o'er its thwarts a shrill voice cried, 
 (A neck as bronzed as a Lascar's) 
 
 Buy wine of ns, you English brig ? 
 Or fruit, tobacco and cigars ? 
 A pilot for yon to Triest ? 
 Without one, look you ne'er so big, 
 They '11 never let you up the bay T 
 We natives should know best.' 
 I turned, and ' just those fellows' way,' 
 Our captain said, ' The 'long-shore thieves 
 Are laughing at us in their sleeves.' 
 
 " In truth, the boy leaned laughing back ; 
 And one, half-hidden by his side 
 Under the furled sail, soOn I spied, 
 With great grass hat and kerchief black, 
 
 Who looked up with his kingly throat 
 
 Said somewhat, while the other shook 
 
 His hair back from his eyes to look 
 
 Their longest at us ; then the boat, 
 
 I know not how, turned sharply round, 
 
 Laying her whole side on the sea 
 
 As a leaping fish does ; from the lee 
 
 Into the weather, cut somehow 
 
 Her sparkling path beneath our bow 
 
 And so went on, as with a bound, 
 
 Into the rosy and golden haJf 
 
 0' the sky, to overtake the sun 
 
 And reach the shore, like the sea-caM 
 
 Its singing cave ; yet I caught one 
 
 Glance ere away the boat quite passed, 
 
 And neither time nor toil could mar 
 
 Those features : so I saw the last 
 
 Of Waring I " — You ? Oh, never star 
 
 Was lost here "but it rose afar ! 
 
 Look East, where whole new thousands are ! 
 
 In Vishnu-larid what Avatar ? 
 
 THE TWINS 
 
 " Give " and " It-shall-be-given-mito-you " 
 
 Originally published in 1854, in connection 
 with a poem by Mrs. Browning, A Plea for the 
 Ragged Schools of London, in a volume issued 
 for a bazaar to benefit the "Refuge for Young 
 Destitute Girls." 
 
 Grand rough old Martin Luther 
 Bloomed fables — flowers on furze, 
 
 The better the uncouther : 
 Do roses stick like burrs ? 
 
 A beggar asked an alms 
 
 One day at an abbey-door. 
 Said Luther ; but, seized with qualms, 
 
 The Abbot replied, " We 're poor ! 
 
 *' Poor, who had plenty once. 
 When gifts fell thick as rain ; 
 But they give us naught, for the nonce, 
 And how should we give again ? " 
 
 Then the beggar, " See your sins ! 
 
 Of old, unless I err. 
 Ye had brothers for inmates, twins. 
 
 Date and Dabitur. 
 
 " While Date was in good case 
 Dabitur flourished too : 
 For Dabitur's lenten face 
 No wonder if Date rue. 
 
 " Would ye retrieve the one ? 
 
 Try and make plump the other ! 
 When Date's penance is done, 
 Dabitur helps his brother. 
 
 ' Onlv, beware relapse ! " 
 
 The Abbot hung his head. 
 This beggar might be perhaps 
 An angel, Luther said. 
 
THE LAST RIDE TOGETHER 
 
 267 
 
 A LIGHT WOMAN 
 
 So far as our story approaches the end, 
 Which do you pity the most of ua three ? — 
 
 My friend, or the mistress of my friend 
 With her wanton eyes, or me ? 
 
 My friend was already too good to lose, 
 And. seemed in t^e way of improvement 
 yet. 
 When she crossed his path with her hunting- 
 noose, 
 And oyer him drew her net. 
 
 When I saw him tarried in her toils, 
 A shame, said 1, if she adds just him 
 
 To her nine-and-ninety other spoils. 
 The hundredth for a whim ! 
 
 And before my friend be wholly hers, 
 
 How easy to prove to him, I said. 
 An eagle 's the game her pride prefers. 
 
 Though she snaps at a wren instead ! 
 
 So, I gave her eyes my own eyes to take. 
 My nand sought hers as in lamest need, 
 
 And round she turned for my noble sake. 
 And gave me herself indeed. 
 
 The eagle am I, with my fame in the world. 
 The wren is he, with his maiden face. 
 
 — You look away and yoiu- lip is curled ? 
 Patience, a moment's'space ! 
 
 For see, my friend goes shaking and white ; 
 
 He eyes me as the basilisk ; 
 I have turned, it appears, his day to night, 
 
 Eclipsing his sun's disk. 
 
 And I did it, he thinks, as a very thief : 
 
 " Though I love her — that, he compre- 
 hends — 
 
 One should master one's passions, (loye, in chief) 
 And be loyal to one's friends ! " 
 
 And she, — she lies in my hand as tame 
 As a pear late basking over a wall ; 
 
 Just a touch to try and off it came ; 
 'T is mine, — can I let it fall? 
 
 With no mind to eat it, that 's the worst ! 
 
 Were it thrown in the road, would the case 
 assist? 
 'T was quenching a dozen blue-flies' thirst 
 
 When I gave its stalk a twist. 
 
 And I, — what I seem to my friend, you see : 
 What I soon shall seem to his love, you 
 guess: 
 
 What I seem to myself, do you ask of me ? 
 No hero, I confess. 
 
 'T is an awkward thing to play with souls, 
 And matter enough to save one's own : 
 
 fet think of my friend, and the burning coals 
 He played with for bite of stone ! 
 
 One likes to show the truth for the truth ; 
 
 That the woman was light is very true ; 
 But suppose she says, — Never mind that 
 youth ! 
 
 What wrong have I done to yon ? 
 
 Well, anyhow, here the story stays. 
 
 So far at least as 1 understand ; 
 And, Robert Browning, you writer of plays. 
 
 Here 's a subject nuSe to your hand i 
 
 THE LAST RIDE TOGETHER 
 
 I SAID — Then, dearest, since 'tis so, 
 Since now at length my fate I know. 
 Since nothing all my love avails, 
 Since all, my life seemed meant for, fails. 
 
 Since this was written and needs must be — 
 My whole heart rises up to bless 
 Your name in pride and thankfulness ! 
 Take back the hope you gave, — I claim 
 Only a memory of the same, 
 — And this beside, if you will not blame. 
 
 Your leave for one more last ride with me. 
 
 My mistress bent that brow of hers ; 
 Those deep dark eyes where pride demurs 
 When pity would be softening through, 
 Fixed me a breathing-while or two 
 
 With life or death in the balance : right ! 
 The blood replenished me again ; 
 My last thought was at least not vain : 
 I and my mistress, side by side 
 ShaE be together, breathe and ride. 
 So, one day more am I deifled. 
 
 Who knows but the world may end to-night ? 
 
 Hush ! if J on saw some western cloud 
 
 All billowy-bosomed, over-bowed 
 
 By many benedictions — sun's 
 
 And moon's and evening-star's at once — 
 
 And so, you, looking and loving best. 
 Conscious grew, your passion drew 
 Cloud, sunset, moonrise, star-shine too, 
 Down on yon, near and yet more near, 
 Till flesh must fade for heaven was here ! — 
 Thus leant she and lingered — joy and fear ! 
 
 Thus lay she a moment on my breast. 
 
 Then we began to ride. My soul 
 Smoothed itself out, a long-cramped scroll 
 Freshening and fluttering in the wind. 
 Past hopes already lay behind. 
 
 What need to strive with a life awry ? 
 Had I said that, had I done this. 
 So might I gain, so might I miss. 
 Might she have loved me ? jiist as well 
 She might have hated, who can tell ! 
 Where had I been now if the worst befell ? 
 
 And here we are riding, she and I. 
 
 Fail I alone, in words and deeds ? 
 Why, all men strive, and who succeeds ? 
 We rode ; it seemed my spirit flew. 
 Saw other regions, cities new. 
 As the world rushed by on either side. 
 
268 
 
 DRAMATIC ROMANCES 
 
 I thought, — All labor, yet no less 
 Bear up beneath their unsuccess. 
 Look at the end of work, contrast 
 The petty done, the undone vast. 
 This present of theirs with the hopeful past ! 
 I hoped she would love me ; here we ride. 
 
 What hand and brain went ever paired ? 
 What heart alike conceived and dared ? 
 What act proved all its thought had been ? 
 What will but felt the fleshly screen ? 
 
 We ride and I see her bosom heave. 
 There 's many a crown for who can reach. 
 Ten lines, a statesman's life in each ! 
 The flag stuck on a heap of bones, 
 A soldier's doing ! what atones ? 
 They scratch his name on the Abbey-stones. 
 
 My riding is better, by their leave. 
 
 What does it all mean, poet ? Well, 
 Your brains beat into rhythm, you tell 
 What we felt only ; you expressed 
 You hold things beautiful the best. 
 
 And place them in rhyme so, side by side. 
 'T is something, nay 't is much : but then. 
 Have you yourself what 's best for men ? 
 Are you — poor, sick, old ere your time — 
 Nearer one whit your own sublime 
 Than we who never have turned a rhyme ? 
 
 Sing, riding 's a joy ! For me, I ride. 
 
 And you, great sculptor — so, you gave 
 A score of yeai-s to Art, her slave, 
 And that 's your Venus, whence we turn 
 To yonder girl that fords the burn ! 
 
 You acquiesce, and shall I repine ? 
 What, man of music, you grown gray 
 With notes and nothing else to say. 
 Is this your sole praise from a friend, 
 " Greatly his opera's strains intend. 
 But in music we know how fashions end ! " 
 
 I gave my youth ; but we ride, in fine. 
 
 Who knows what 's fit for us ? Had fate 
 Proposed bliss here should sublimate 
 My being — had I signed the bond — 
 Still one must lead some life beyond. 
 
 Have a bliss to die with, dim-descried. 
 This foot once planted on the goal. 
 This glory-garland round my soul. 
 Could I descry such ? Try and test ! 
 I sink back shuddering from the quest. 
 Earth being so good, would heaven seem best ? 
 
 Now, heaven and she are beyond this ride. 
 
 And yet — she has not spoke so long ! 
 What if heaven bo that, fair and strong 
 At life's best, with our eyes upturned 
 Whither life's flower is first discerned. 
 
 We, fixed so, ever should so abide ? 
 What if we still ride on, we two, 
 With life forever old yet new. 
 Changed not in kind but in degree. 
 The instant made eternity, — 
 And heaven just prove that I and she 
 
 Kide, ride together, forever ride ? 
 
 THE PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN 
 
 A child's stoky 
 
 ( Written/or, and inscribed to, W. M. tlu Younger) 
 
 Maeready's eldest son when a child was con- 
 fined to the house by illness, and Browning 
 wrote this jea d'esprit to amuse the child and 
 give him a subject for illustrative drawings. 
 
 HameIiIN Town 's in Brunswick, 
 
 By famous Hanover city ; 
 The river Weser, deep and wide. 
 Washes its wall on the southern side ; 
 A pleasanter spot you never spied ; 
 
 But, when begins my ditty. 
 Almost five hundred years ago. 
 To see the townsfolk suffer so 
 From vermin, was a pity. 
 
 Eats! 
 They fought the dogs and killed the cats, 
 
 And bit the babies in the cradles. 
 And ate the cheeses out of the vats, 
 
 And licked the soup from the cooks' own 
 ladles. 
 Split open the kegs of salted sprats. 
 Made nests inside men's Sunday hats, 
 And even spoiled the women's chats 
 
 By drowning their speakuig 
 
 With shrieking and squeaking 
 In fifty different sharps and flats. 
 
 At last the people in a body 
 
 To the Town Hall came flocking : 
 " 'T is clear," cried they, "our Mayor 's 
 noddy ; 
 And as for our Corporation — shocking 
 To think we buy gowns lined with ermine 
 For dolts that can't or won't determine 
 What 's best to rid us of our vermin ! 
 Yon hope, because you 're old and obese. 
 To find in the furry civic robe ease ? 
 Rouse up, sirs ! Give your brains a racking 
 To find the remedy we 're lacking. 
 Or, sure as fate, we '11 send you packing I " 
 At this the Mayor and Corporation 
 Quaked with a mighty consternation. 
 
 An hour they sat in council ; 
 
 At lengrth the Mayor broke silence : 
 '' For a guilder I 'd my ermine gown sell, 
 
 I wish I were a mile hence ! 
 It 's easy to bid one rack one's brain — 
 I 'm sure my poor head aches again, 
 I 've scratched it so, and aU in vain. 
 Oh for a trap, a trap, a trap ! " 
 Just as he said this, what should hap 
 At the chamber-door but a gentle tap ? 
 " Bless us," cried the Mayor, " what 's that ? " 
 (With the Corporation as ne sat. 
 
THE PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN 
 
 269 
 
 Looking little thouprh wondrous fat ; 
 Nor brigliter was his eye, nor moister 
 Than a too-long-opened oyster, 
 Save when at noon his paunch grew mutinous 
 For a plate of turtle green and glutinous) 
 " Onljr a seraping of shoes on the mat ? 
 Anything like the sound of a rat 
 Makes my heart go pit-a-pat ! " 
 
 " Come in ! " — the Mayor cried, looking 
 
 _ bigger : 
 And in did come the strangest figure I 
 His queer long coat from heel to head 
 Was half of yellow and half of red. 
 And he himself was tall and thin, 
 With sharp blue eyes, each like a pin, 
 And light loose hair, yet swarthy skin, 
 Xo tuft on cheek nor beard on chin, 
 But lips where smiles went out and in ; 
 There was no guessing his kith and kin : 
 And nobody could enough admire 
 The tail man and his quaint attire. 
 Quoth one : " It 's as my great-grandsire. 
 Starting up at the Trump of Doom's tone, 
 Had walked this way from his painted tomb- 
 stone ! " 
 
 He advanced to the council-table : 
 
 And, " Please your honors," said he, " I 'm 
 able. 
 
 By means of a secret charm, to draw 
 
 All creatures living beneath the sun, 
 
 That creep or swim or fly or run, 
 
 After me so as you never saw ! 
 
 And I chiefly use my charm 
 
 On creatures that do people harm. 
 
 The mole and toad and newt and viper ; 
 
 And people call me the Pied Piper." 
 
 lAnd nere they noticed round his neck 
 
 A scarf of red and yellow stripe. 
 
 To match with his coat of the seli^arae cheque ; 
 
 And at the scarf's end hung a pipe ; 
 
 And his fingers, they noticed, were ever stray- 
 ing 
 
 As if impatient to be playing 
 
 Upon this pipe, as low it dangled 
 
 Over his vesture so old-fangled.) 
 
 " Yet," said he, "poor piper as I am. 
 
 In Tartary I freed the Cham, 
 
 Last June, from his huge swarms of gnats ; 
 
 1 eased in Asia the Nizam 
 
 Of a monstrous brood of varapire-bats : 
 
 And as for what your brain bewilders. 
 
 If I can rid your town of rats 
 
 Will you give me a thousand guilders ? " 
 
 "One? fifty thousand !" —was the exclama- 
 tion 
 
 Of the astonished Mayor and Corporation. 
 
 Into the street the Piper stept. 
 
 Smiling first a little smile, 
 As if he knew what magic slept 
 
 In his quiet pipe the while ; 
 Then, like a musical adept. 
 To blow the pipe i"» lips *»« wrinkled, 
 
 And green and blue his sharp eyes twinkled. 
 Like a oandle-fiame where salt is sprinkled ; 
 And ere three shiill notes the pipe uttered, 
 You heard as if an army muttered ; 
 And the muttering grew to a grumbling ; 
 And the grumbling grew to a mighty rumbling ;_ 
 And out of the houses the rats came tumbling. 
 Grreat rats, small rats, lean rats, brawny rats. 
 Brown rats, black rats, gray rats, tawny rats. 
 Grave old plodders, gay young friskers, 
 
 Fathers, mothers, micles, cousins. 
 Cocking tails and pricking whiskei's, 
 
 Families by tens and dozens, 
 Brothers, sisters, husbands, wives — 
 Followed the Piper for their lives. 
 From street to street he piped advancing, 
 And step for step they followed dancuig. 
 Until they came to the river Weser, 
 Wherein all plunged and perished ! 
 
 — Save one who, stout as Julius Caesar, 
 Swam across and lived to carry 
 
 (As he, the manuscript he cherished) 
 To Rat-land home his commentary : 
 Which was, " At the first shrill notes of the 
 
 pipe, 
 I heard a sound as of scraping tripe. 
 And putting apples, wondrous ripe. 
 Into a cider-press's gripe : 
 And a moving away of pickle-tub-boards. 
 And a leaving ajar of consei-ve-eupboards. 
 And a drawing the corks of train-oil-flasks. 
 And a breaking the hoops of butter-casks : 
 And it seemed as if a voice 
 (Sweeter far than by harp or by psaltery 
 Is breathed) called out, ' Oh rats, rejoice ! 
 The world is grown to one vast drysaltery ! 
 So munch on, crunch on, take your nuncheon,, 
 Breakfast, supper, dinner, luncheon ! ' 
 And just as a bulky sugar-puncheon. 
 All ready staved, like a gieat sun shone 
 Glorious scarce an inch before me, 
 Just as methoudit it saidj ' Come, bore me 1 ^ 
 
 — I found the Weser rolling o'er me." 
 
 You should have heard the Hamelin people 
 Ringing the bells till they rocked the steeple.. 
 " Go," cried the Mayor, " and get long poles,. 
 Poke out the nests and block up the holes 1 
 Consult with carpenters and builders. 
 And leave in our town not even a trace 
 Of the rats ! " — when suddenly, up the fa<je 
 Of the Piper perked in the market-place. 
 With a, " First, it you please, my thousand: 
 guilders ! " 
 
 IX 
 
 A thousand guilders ! The Mayor looked blue^ 
 
 So did the Corporation too. 
 
 For council dinners made rare havoc 
 
 With Claret, Moselle, Vin-de-Graye, Hock ; 
 
 And half the money would replenish 
 
 Their cellar's biggest butt with Rhenish. 
 
 To pay this sum to a wandering fellow 
 
 With a gypsy coat of red and yellow ! 
 
 "Beside,'' quoth the Mayor with a knowing 
 
 wink, 
 " Our business was done at the river's brink ;, 
 
270 
 
 DRAMATIC ROMANCES 
 
 We saw with our eyes the vermin sink, 
 And what 's dead can't come to life, I think. 
 So, friend, we 'le not the folks to shrink 
 From the duty of giving you something for 
 
 drink. 
 And a matter of money to put in your poke ; 
 But as for the guilders, what we spoke 
 Of them, as you very well know, was in joke. 
 Beside, our losses have made us thrifty. 
 A thousand guilders ! Come, take fifty ! " 
 
 X 
 
 The Piper's face fell, and he cried, 
 
 " No trifling ! I can't wait, beside ! 
 
 I 've promised to visit by dinner time 
 
 Bagdat, and accept the prime 
 
 Of the Head-Cook's pottage, all he 's rich in, 
 
 For having left, in the Caliph's kitchen, 
 
 Of a nest of scorpions no survivor : 
 
 With him I proved no bargain-driver. 
 
 With you, don't think I 'U bate a stiver ! 
 
 And folks who put me in a passion 
 
 May find me pipe after another fashiou.'' 
 
 " How ? " cried the Mayor, " d' ye think I brook 
 
 Being worse treated than a Cook ? 
 
 Insulted by a lazy ribald 
 
 With idle pipe and vesture piebald ? 
 
 You threaten us, fellow ? Do your worst, 
 
 Blow your pipe there till you burst ! " 
 
 Once more he stept into the street. 
 And to his lips again 
 
 Laid his long pipe of smooth straight cane ; 
 And ere he blew three notes (such sweet 
 
 Soft notes as yet musician's cunning 
 Never gave the enraptured air) 
 
 There was a rustling that seemed like a bustling 
 
 Of merry crowds justling at pitching and hus- 
 tling ; 
 
 Small feet were pattering, wooden shoes clat- 
 tering. 
 
 Little hajids clapping and little tongues chat- 
 tering. 
 
 And, like fowls in a farm-yard when barley is 
 scattering. 
 
 Out came the children running. 
 
 All the little boys and girls. 
 
 With rosy cheeks and flaxen curls. 
 
 And sparkling eyes and teeth like pearls. 
 
 Tripping and skipping, ran merrily after 
 
 The wonderful music with shouting and laugh- 
 ter. 
 
 XIII 
 
 The Mayor was dumb, and the Council stood 
 
 As if they were changed into blocks of wood. 
 
 Unable to move a step, or cry 
 
 To the children merrily skipping by, 
 
 — Could only follow with the eye 
 
 That joyous crowd at the Piper's back. 
 
 But how the Mayor was on tlie rack. 
 
 And the wretched Council's bosoms beat, 
 
 As the Piper turned from the High Street 
 
 To where the Weser rolled its waters 
 
 Right in the way of their sons and daughters 1 
 
 However, he turned from South to West, 
 
 And to Koppelberg Hill his steps addressed. 
 And after him the children pressed ; 
 Great was the joy in every breast. 
 " He never can cross that mighty top ! 
 He 's forced to let the piping drop. 
 And we shall see our children stop ! " 
 When, lo, as they reached the mountain-side, 
 A wondrous ijortal opened wide. 
 As if a cavern was suddenly hollowed ; 
 And the Piper advanced and the children fol- 
 lowed, 
 And when all were in to the very last. 
 The door in the mountain-side shut fast. 
 Did I say, all ? No ! One was lame. 
 And could not dance the whole of the way ; 
 And in after years, if yon would blame 
 His sadness, he was used to say, — 
 " It 's dull in our town since my playmates left ! 
 I can't forget that I 'm bereft 
 Of all the pleasant sights they see. 
 Which the Piper also promised me. 
 For he led ns, he said, to a joyous land. 
 Joining the town and just at hand. 
 Where waters gushed and fruit-trees grew 
 And flowers put forth a fairer hue. 
 And everything was strange and new ; 
 The sparrows were brighter than peacocks here. 
 And theu" dogs outran oar fallow deer. 
 And honey-bees had lost their stings, 
 And horses were bom with eagles' wings : 
 And just as I became assured 
 My lame foot would be speedily cured, 
 The music stopped and I stood still, 
 And found myself outside the hill. 
 Left alone against my will, 
 To go now limping as before. 
 And never hear of that country more ! " 
 
 XIV 
 
 Alas, alas for Hamelin ! 
 
 There came into many a burgher's pate 
 
 A text which says that heaven's gate 
 
 Opes to the rich at as easy rate 
 As the needle's eye takes a camel in ! 
 The Mayor sent East, West, North and South, 
 To offer the Piper, by word of mouth. 
 
 Wherever it was men's lot to find him. 
 Silver and gold to his heart's content. 
 If he 'd only return the way he went. 
 
 And bring the children behind him. 
 But when they saw 't was a lost endeavor, 
 And Piper and dancers were gone forever, 
 They made a decree that lawyers never 
 
 Should think their records dated didy 
 If, after the day of the month and year, 
 These words did not as well appear, 
 " And so long after what happened here 
 
 On the Twenty-second of July, 
 Thirteen hundred and seventy six: " 
 And the better in memory to fix 
 The place of the children's last retreat. 
 They called it, the Pied Piper's Street — 
 Where any one playing on pipe or tabor 
 Was sure for the future to lose his labor. 
 Nor suffered they hostelry or tavern 
 
 To shock with mirth a street so solemn ; 
 But opposite the place of the cavern 
 
 They wrote the story on a column. 
 
THE FLIGHT OF THE DUCHESS 
 
 271 
 
 And on the great church-window painted 
 
 The same, to make the world acquainted 
 
 How their children were stolen away, 
 
 And there it stands to this very day. 
 
 And I must not omit to say 
 
 That in Transylvania there 's a tribe 
 
 Of alien people who ascribe 
 
 The outlandish ways and dress 
 
 On which their neighbors lay such stress, 
 
 To their fathers and mothers having risen 
 
 Out of some subterraneous prison 
 
 Into which they were trepanned 
 
 Long time ago in a mighty band 
 
 Out of Hamelin town in Brunswick laud, 
 
 But how or why, they don't understand. 
 
 So, Willy, let me and you be wipers 
 
 Of scores out with all men — especially pipers ! 
 
 And, whether they pipe us free fr(5m rats or 
 
 fr6m mice, 
 If we 've promised them aught, let us keep our 
 
 promise ! 
 
 THE FLIGHT OF THE DUCHESS 
 
 The first nine sections of this poem were 
 printed in Hood's Magazine for April, 1845. 
 
 The poem took its rise from, a line — "Fol- 
 lowii^ the Queen of the Gypsies, O ! " the bur- 
 den of a song which the poet, when a boy, heard 
 a woman sii^ng on a Guy Fawkes' Day, As 
 Browning was writing it, he was interrupted by 
 the arrival of a friend on some important busi- 
 ness, which drove all thoughts of the Duchess, 
 and the scheme of her story, out of the poet's 
 head. But some months after the publication 
 of the first part, when he was staying at Bettis- 
 field Park, in Shropshire, a guest, speaking of 
 early winter, said, " The deer had already to 
 break the ice in the pond." On this a fancy 
 struck the poet, and, returning home, he worked 
 it up into the conclusion of the poem as it now 
 stands. 
 
 You *re my friend : 
 
 I was the man the Duke spoke to ; 
 
 I helped the Duchess to cast o£E his yoke, too ; 
 
 So, here 's the tale from beginning to end, 
 
 My friend ! 
 
 II 
 
 Ours is a great wild country : 
 
 If you climb to our castle's top, 
 
 I don't see where your eye can stop • 
 
 For when you Ve passed the corufield country, 
 
 Where vineyards leave off, flocks are packed, 
 
 And sheep-range leads to cattle-tract. 
 
 And cattle-tract to open-chase, 
 
 And open-chase to the very base 
 
 Of the mountain where, at a funeral pace, 
 
 Hound about, solemn and slow, 
 
 One by one, row after row, 
 
 Up and up the pine-trees go. 
 
 So, like black priests up, anil so 
 
 Down the other side again 
 
 To another greater, wilder country, 
 
 That 's one vast red drear burnt-up plain, 
 
 Branched through and thiough with many a 
 
 vein 
 Whence iron 's dug, and copper 's dealt ; 
 Look right, look left, look straight before, — 
 Beneath they mine, above they amelt. 
 Copper-ore and iron-ore. 
 And f oi^e and furnace mould and melt, 
 And so on, more and ever more, 
 Till at the last, for a bounding belt. 
 Comes the salt sand hoar of the great searshorCr 
 
 — And the whole is our Duke's country. 
 
 Ill 
 
 I was born the day this present Duke was — 
 
 (And 0, says the song, ere I was old ! ) 
 
 In the castle where the other Duke was — 
 
 (When I was happy and young, not old ! ) 
 
 I in the kennel, he in the bower : 
 
 We are of like age to an hour. 
 
 My father was huntsman in that day ; 
 
 Who has not heard my father say 
 
 That, when a boar was brought to bay. 
 
 Three times, four times out of five. 
 
 With his huntspear he 'd contrive 
 
 To get the killing-place transfixed. 
 
 And pin him true, both eyes betwixt ? 
 
 And that 's why the old Duke would rather 
 
 He lost a salt-pit than my father, 
 
 And loved to have him ever in call ; 
 
 That 's why my father stood in the hall 
 
 When the old Duke brought his infant out 
 
 To show the people, and while they passed 
 
 The wondrous bantling round about. 
 
 Was first to start at the outside blast 
 
 As the Kaiser's courier blew his horn, 
 
 Just a month after the babe was bom. 
 
 " And," quoth the Kaiser's courier, *' since 
 
 The Duke has got an heir, our Prince 
 
 Needs the Duke's self at his side : " 
 
 The Duke looked down and seemed to wince, 
 
 But he thought of wars o'er the world wide, 
 
 Castles a-fire, men on their march, 
 
 The toppling tower, the crashing arch ; 
 
 And up he looked, and awhile he eyed 
 
 The row of crests and shields and banners 
 
 Of all achievements after all manners. 
 
 And " ay," said the Duke with a surly pride. 
 
 The more was his comfort when he died 
 
 At next :^ear's end, in a velvet suit. 
 
 With a gilt glove on his hand, his foot 
 
 In a silken shoe for a leather boot, 
 
 Petticoated like a herald. 
 
 In a chamber next to an ante-room, 
 
 Where he breathed the breath of page and 
 
 groom. 
 What he called stink, and they, perfume : 
 
 — They should have set him on red Berold 
 Mad with pride, like fire to manage ! 
 
 They should have got his cheek fresh tannage 
 Such a day as to-day in the merry sunshine ! 
 Had they stuck on his fist a rough-foot merlin I 
 (Hark, the wind's on tlie heath at its game ! 
 Oh for a noble faleou-lanner 
 
272 
 
 DRAMATIC ROMANCES 
 
 To flap each broad wing like a banner, 
 
 And turn in the wind, and danee like flame !) 
 
 Had they broached a white-beer cask from 
 
 Berlin 
 — Or if you incline to prescribe mere wine 
 Put to his lips, when they saw him pine, 
 A cup of our own Moldavia fine, 
 Cotnar for instance, green as May sorrel 
 And ropy with sweet, — we shall not quarrel. 
 
 IV 
 
 So, at home, the sick tall yellow Duchess 
 
 Was left with the infant in her clutches. 
 
 She being the daughter of God knows who : 
 
 And now was the time to revisit her tribe. 
 
 Abroad and afar they went, the two. 
 
 And let our people rail and gibe 
 
 At the empty hall and extinguished fire, 
 
 As loud as we liked, but ever in vain, 
 
 Tai after long years we had our desire. 
 
 And back came the Duke and his mother again. 
 
 And he came back the pertest little ape 
 That ever affronted human shape ; 
 Full of his travel, struck at himself. 
 You 'd say, he despised our bluff old ways ? 
 
 — Not he ! For in Paris they told the elf 
 Our rough North land was the Land of Lays, 
 The one good thing left in evil days; 
 
 Since the Mid-Age was the Heroic TSme, 
 And only in wild nooks like ours 
 Could you taste of it yet as in its prime. 
 And see true castles, with proper towera. 
 Young-hearted women, old-minded men. 
 And manners now as manners were then. 
 So, all that the old Dukes had been, without 
 
 knowing it. 
 This Duke would fain know he was, without 
 
 being it ; 
 'T was not for the joy's self, but the joy of his 
 
 showing it. 
 Nor for the pride's self, but the pride of our 
 
 seeing it. 
 He revived all usages thoroughly worn-out. 
 The souls of them fumed-forth, the hearts of 
 
 them torn-out : 
 And chief in the chase his neck he perilled. 
 On a lathy horse, all legs and length, 
 With blood for bone, all speed, no strength ; 
 
 — They should have set him on red Bertild 
 With the red eye slow consuming in fire. 
 And the thin stiff ear like an abbey spire ! 
 
 Well, such as he was, he most marry, we heard : 
 
 And out of a convent, at the word. 
 
 Game the lady, in time of spring. 
 
 — Oh, old thoughts they cling, they cling ! 
 
 That day, I know, with a dozen oaths 
 
 I clad myself in thick hunting-clothes 
 
 Fit for the chase of uroohs or buffle 
 
 In winter-time when you need to mnfile. 
 
 But the Duke had a mind we should cut a 
 
 figure. 
 And so we saw the lady arrive : 
 My friend, I have seen a white crane bigger I 
 She was the smallest lady alive. 
 
 Made in a piece of nature's madness. 
 
 Too small, almost, for the life and gladness 
 
 That over-filled her, as some hive 
 
 Out of the bears' reach on the high trees 
 
 Is crowded with its safe merry bees : 
 
 In truth, she was not hard to please ! 
 
 Up she looked, down she looked, round at the 
 
 mead. 
 Straight at the castle, that 's best indeed 
 To look at from outside the walls : 
 As for us, styled the " serfs and thralls," 
 She as much thanked me as if she had said it, 
 (With her eyes, do you understand ?) 
 Because 1 patted her horse while I led it ; 
 And Max, who rode on her other hand. 
 Said, no bird flew past but she inquired 
 Wliat its tme name was, nor ever seemed 
 
 tired — 
 If that was an eagle she saw hover. 
 And the green and gray bird on the field was 
 
 the plover. 
 When suddenly appeared the Duke : 
 And as down she sprung, the small foot pointed 
 On to my hand, — as with a rebuke. 
 And as if his backbone were not jointed. 
 The Duke stepped rather aside than forward, 
 And welcomed her with his grandest smile ; 
 And, mind yon, his mother all the while 
 Chilled in the rear, like a wind to Nor'ward ; 
 And uj), like a weary yawn, with its pulleys 
 Went, in a shriek, the rusty portcullis ; 
 And, like a glad sky the north-wind sullies, 
 The lady's face stopped its play. 
 As it her first hair had grown gray ; 
 For such things must begin some one day. 
 
 VII 
 
 In a day or two she was well again ; 
 
 As who should say, " You labor in vain ! 
 
 This is all a jest against God, who meant 
 
 I should ever be, as I am, content 
 
 And glad in his sight ; therefore, glad I will 
 
 be." 
 So, smiling as at first went she. 
 
 She was active, stirring, aU fire — 
 
 Could not rest, could not tire — 
 
 To a stone she might have given life ! 
 
 (I myself loved once, in my day) 
 
 — For a shepherd's, miner's, huntsman's wife, 
 
 (I had a wife, I know what I say) 
 
 Never in all the world such an one ! 
 
 And here was plenty to be done. 
 
 And she that could do it, great or small, 
 
 She was to do nothing at all. 
 
 There was already this man in his post. 
 
 This in his station, and that in his office. 
 
 And the Duke's plan admitted a wife, at most, 
 
 To meet his eye, with the other trophies, 
 
 Now outside the hall, now in it. 
 
 To sit thus, stand thxis, see and be seen. 
 
 At the proper place in the proper minute. 
 
 And die away the life between. 
 
 And it was amusing enough, each infraction 
 
 Of rule — (but for aftei^sadness that came) 
 
 To hear the consummate self-satisfaction 
 
 With which the young Duke and the old dame 
 
THE FLIGHT OF THE DUCHESS 
 
 273 
 
 Would let her advise, and criticise, 
 
 And, being: a fool, instruct the wise, 
 
 And, child-like, parcel out praise or blame : 
 
 They bore it all in complacent guise. 
 
 As though an artificer, after contriving 
 
 A wheel-work image as if it were living, 
 
 Should find with delight it could motion to 
 
 strike him ! 
 So found the Duke, and his mother like him : 
 The lady hardly got a rebuff — 
 That had not been contemptuous enough. 
 With his cursed smirk, as he nodded applaiue, 
 And kept off the old mother-cat's claws. 
 
 So, the little lady grew silent and thin. 
 
 Paling and ever paling, 
 As the way is with a hid chagrin : 
 
 And the Duke perceived that she was ailing. 
 And said in his heai't, " 'T is done to spite me, 
 But I shall find in my power to right me ! " 
 Don't swear, friend I The old one, many a 
 
 year. 
 Is in hell, and the Duke's self , . . you shall 
 
 hear. 
 
 Well, early in autumn, at first winteivwaming, 
 When the stag had to break with his foot, of a 
 
 morning, 
 A drinking-hole out of the fresh tender ice 
 That covered the pond till the sun, in a trice. 
 Loosening it, let out a ripple of gold. 
 And another and another, and faster and faster, 
 Till, dimpling to blindness, the wide water 
 
 rolled : 
 Then it so chanced that the Duke our master 
 Asked himself what were the pleasures in 
 
 season, 
 And found, since the calendar bade him be 
 
 hearty. 
 He should do the Middle Age no treason 
 In resolving on a hunting-party. 
 Always provided, old books showed the way of 
 
 it! 
 What meant old poets by their strictures ? 
 And when old poets had said their say of it, 
 How taught old painters in their pictures ? 
 We must revert to the proper channels, 
 Workings in tapestry, paintings on panels. 
 And gather up woodcraft's authentic tradi- 
 tions : 
 Here was food for our various ambitions, 
 As on each case, exactly stated — 
 To encourage your dog, now, the properest 
 
 chirrup. 
 Or best prayer to Saint Hubert on mounting 
 
 Jour stirrup — 
 the household took thought and de- 
 bated. 
 Blessed was he whose back ached with the jerkin 
 His sire was wont to do forest-work in ; 
 Blesseder he vpho nobly sunk " ohs " 
 And *^ ahs " "while he tugged on his grandsire's 
 
 trunk-hose ; 
 What signified hats if they had no rims on. 
 Each slouching before and behind like the scal- 
 lop, 
 
 And able to serve at sea fur a shallop, 
 Loaded with lacquer and looped with crimson ? 
 So that the deer now, to make a short rhyme 
 
 on 't. 
 What with our Venerers, Prickers and Verder- 
 
 ers. 
 Might hope for real hunters at length and not 
 
 murderers, 
 And oh the Duke's tailor, he had a hot time 
 
 on'tl 
 
 XI 
 
 Now you must know that when the first dizzi- 
 ness 
 Of fiap-hats and bu£F-coats and jack-boots sub- 
 sided, 
 The Duke put this question, " The Duke's 
 
 part provided, 
 Had not the Duchess some share in the busi- 
 ness ? " 
 For out of the mouth of two or three witnesses 
 Did he establish all fit-oivunfitnesses : 
 And, after much laying of heads together. 
 Somebody's cap got a notable feather 
 By the announcement with proper unction 
 That he had discovered the lady's function ; 
 Since ancient authors gave this tenet, 
 "When horns wind a mort and the deer is at 
 
 siege. 
 Let the dame of the castle prick forth on her 
 
 jennet. 
 And, with water to wash the hands of her liege 
 In a clean ewer with a fair towelling, 
 Let her preside at the disembowelling." 
 Now, my friend, if you had so little religion 
 As to catch a hawk, some falcou-lanner. 
 And thrust her broad wings like a banner 
 Into a coop for a vulgar pigeon ; 
 And if day by day and week by week 
 You cut her claws, and sealed her eyes. 
 And clipped her wings, and tied her beak. 
 Would it cause you any great surprise 
 If, when you decided to give her an airii^. 
 You found she needed a little preparing ? 
 — I say, should you be such a curmudgeon. 
 If she clung to the perch, as to take it in dud- 
 geon ? 
 Yet when the Duke to his lady signified, 
 Just a day before, as he judged most dignified, 
 In what a pleasure she was to participate, — 
 And, instead of leaping wide in fiashes. 
 Her eyes just lifted their long lashes, 
 As if preyed by fatigu.e even he could not dissi- 
 pate, 
 And duly acknowledged the Duke's fore- 
 thought. 
 But spoke of her health, if her health were 
 
 worth aught, 
 Of the weight by day and the watch by night. 
 And much wrong now that used to be right, 
 So, thanking him, declined the hunting, — 
 Was conduct ever more affronting ? 
 With all the ceremony settled — 
 With the towel ready, and the sewer 
 Polishing up his oldest ewer. 
 And the jennet pitched upon, a piebald, 
 Black-barred, cream-coated and pink eye- 
 baUed, — 
 
274 
 
 DRAMATIC ROMANCES 
 
 No wonder if the Duke was nettled ! 
 And when she persisted nevertheless, — 
 Well, I suppose here 's the time to confess 
 That there ran half round our lady's chamber 
 A balcony none of the hardest to clamber : 
 And that Jacynth the tire-woman, ready in 
 
 waatins. 
 Stayed in call outside, what need of relating ? 
 And since Jacynth was like a June rose, why, a 
 
 fervent 
 Adorer of Jacynth of course was your servant ; 
 And if she had the habit to peep through the 
 
 casement. 
 How could I keep at any vast distance ? 
 And so, as 1 say, on the lady's persistence, 
 The Duke, dumb-stricken with amazement, 
 Stood for a while in a sultry smother, 
 And then, with a smile that partook of the aw- 
 ful. 
 Turned her over to his yellow mother 
 To learn what was held decorous and lawful ; 
 And the mother smelt blood with a cat-like 
 
 instinct. 
 As her cheek quick whitened through all its 
 
 quince-tinct. 
 Oh, but the lady heard the whole truth at once ! 
 What meant she ? — Who was she ? — Her 
 
 duty and station. 
 The wisdom of ago and the folly of youth, at 
 
 once. 
 Its decent regard and its fitting relation — 
 In brief, my friend, set aU the devils in hell 
 
 free 
 And turn them out to carouse in a belfry 
 And treat the priests to a fifty-part canon. 
 And then you may guess how that tongue of 
 
 hers ran on ! 
 Well, soniehow or other it ended at last 
 And, licking her whiskers, out she passed ; 
 And after her, — making (he hoped) a face 
 Like Emperor Nero or Sultan Saladin, 
 Stalked the Duke's self with the austere grace 
 Of ancient hero or modern paladin, 
 From door to staircase — oh such a solemn 
 Unbending of the vertebral column ! 
 
 However, at sunrise our company mustered ; 
 And here was the huntsman bidding unken- 
 nel. 
 And there 'neath his bonnet the pricker blus- 
 tered. 
 With feather dank as a bough of wet fennel ; 
 For the court-yard walls were filled with fog 
 You might have cut as an axe chops a log — 
 Like so much wool for color and bulkiness ; 
 And out rode the Duke in a perfect sulkiness. 
 Since, before breakfast, a man feels but queasily. 
 And a sinking at the lower abdomen 
 Begins the day with indifferent omen. 
 And lo, as he looked around uneasily. 
 The sun ploughed the fog up and drove it asun- 
 der 
 This way and that from the valley under ; 
 And, looking through the court-yard arch, 
 Down in the valley, what should meet hira 
 But a troop of Gypsies on their march ? 
 No doubt with the annual gifts to greet him. 
 
 Now, in your land, Gypsies reach you, only 
 
 After reaching all lands beside ; 
 
 North they go. South they go, trooping or 
 
 lonely. 
 And stiU, as they travel far and wide. 
 Catch they and keep now a trace here, a trace 
 
 there, 
 That puts you in mind of a place here, a place 
 
 there. 
 But with us, I believe they rise out of the 
 
 ground. 
 And nowhere else, I take it, are found 
 With the earth-tint yet so freshly embrowned : 
 Born, no doubt, like insects which breed on 
 The very fruit they are meant to feed on. 
 For the earth — not a use to which they don't 
 
 turn it, 
 The ore that grows in the mountain's womb, 
 Or the sand in the pits like a honeycomb. 
 They sift and soften it, bake it and burn it — 
 Whether they weld you, for instance, a snaffle 
 With side-bars never a brute can baffle ; 
 Or a lock that 's a puzzle of wards within wards ; 
 Or, if your colt's forefoot inclines to curve in- 
 wards. 
 Horseshoes they hammer which turn on a swivel 
 And won't allow the hoof to shrivel. 
 Then they cast bells like the shell of the winkle 
 That keep a stout heart in the ram with their 
 
 tinkle ; 
 But the sand — they pinch and pound it like 
 
 otters ; 
 Commend me to Gypsy glass-makers and pot- 
 ters ! 
 Glasses they 'U blow you, crystal-clear. 
 Where just a faint cloud of rose shall appear, 
 As if in pure water you dropped and let die 
 A bruised black -blooded mulberry ; 
 And that other sort, their crowning pride, 
 With long white threads distinct inside. 
 Like the lake-flower's fibrous roots which dangle 
 Loose such a length and never tangle. 
 Where the bold sword-lily cuts the clear waters. 
 And the cup-lily couches with all the white 
 
 daughters : 
 Such are the works they put their hand to, 
 The uses they turn and twist iron and sand to. 
 And these made the troop, which our Duke saw 
 
 sally 
 Toward his castle from out of the valley. 
 Men and women, like new-hatched spiders. 
 Come out with the morning to greet our riders. 
 And up they wound till they reached the ditch, 
 Whereat all stopped save one, a witch 
 That I knew, as she hobbled from the group, 
 By her gait directly and her stoop, 
 I, whom .Jacynth was used to importune 
 To let that same witch tell us our fortune, 
 The oldest Gypsy then above ground ; 
 And, sure as the autumn season came round, 
 She paid us a visit for profit or pastime. 
 And every time, as she swore, for the last tima 
 And presently she was seen to sidle 
 Up to the Duke till she touehea His bridle, 
 So that the horse of a sudden reared up 
 As under its nose the old witch peered up 
 
THE FLIGHT OF THE DUCHESS 
 
 275 
 
 With her worn-out eyes, or rather eye-holes 
 
 Of no use now but to gather brine, 
 
 And began a kind of level whine 
 
 Such as they use to sing to their viols 
 
 When their ditties they go grinding 
 
 Up and down with nobody minding : 
 
 And then, as of old, at the end of the humming 
 
 Her usual presants were forthcoming 
 
 — A dog-whistle blowing the fiercest of trebles, 
 
 (Just a sea-shore stone holding a dozen fine 
 
 pebbles,) 
 Or a porcelain mouthpiece to screw on a pipe- 
 end, — 
 And so she awaited her annual stipend. 
 But this time, the Duke would scarcely vouch- 
 safe 
 A word in reply : and in vain she felt 
 With twitchmg fingers at her belt 
 For the purse of sleek pine-marten pelt, 
 Ready to put what he gave in her pouch safe, — 
 Till, either to quicken his apprehension. 
 Or possibly with an after^intention, 
 She was come, she said, to pay her duty 
 To the new Duchess, the youthful beauty. 
 No sooner had she named his lady, 
 Than a shine lit up the face so shaidy. 
 And its smirk returned with a novel meaning — 
 For it struck him, the babe just wanted wean- 
 ing J 
 If one gave her a taste of what life was and 
 
 sorrow, 
 She, foolish to-day, would be wiser to-morrow ; 
 And who so fit a teacher of trouble 
 As this sordid crone bent well-nigh double ? 
 So, glancing at her wolf-skin vesture, 
 (Li such it was, for they grow so hirsute 
 That their own fleece serves for natural fur- 
 suit) 
 He was contrasting, 't was plain from his ges- 
 ture. 
 The life of the lady so flower-like and delicate 
 With the loathsome squalor of this helicat. 
 L in brief, was the man the Duke beckoned 
 From out of the throng, and while I drew near 
 He told the crone — as I since have reckoned 
 By the way he bent and spoke into her ear 
 With circumspection and mystery — 
 The main of the lady's history, 
 Her frowardness and ingratitude : 
 And for all the crone's submissive attitude 
 I could see round her mouth the loose plaits 
 
 tightening. 
 And her brow with assenting intelligence 
 
 brightening, 
 As though she engaged with hearty goodwill 
 Whatever he now might enjoin to fulfil. 
 And promised the lady a thorough frightening. 
 And so, just giving her a glimpse 
 Of a purse, with the air of a man who imps 
 The wing of the hawk that shall fetch the hern- 
 
 shaw. 
 He bade me take the Gypsy mother 
 And set her telling some story or other 
 Of hill or dale, oak-wood or femshaw, 
 To while awaj'^ a weary hour 
 For the lady left alone in her bower, 
 Whose mind and body craved exertion 
 And vet shrank from all better diversion. 
 
 Then clapping heel to his horse, the mere 
 
 curveter, 
 Out rode the Duke, and after his hollo 
 Horses and hounds swept, huntsman and servi- 
 tor. 
 And back I turned and bade the crone follow. 
 And what makes me confident what's to be 
 
 told you 
 Had all along been of this crone's devising, 
 Is, that, on looking round sharply, behold you, 
 There was a novelty quick as surprising : 
 For first, she had shot up a full head in stature, 
 And her step kept pace with mine nor faltered, 
 As if age had foregone its usurpature, 
 And the ignoble mien was wholly altered, 
 And the face looked quite of another nature. 
 And the change reached too, whatever the 
 
 change meant. 
 Her shaggj^ wolf-skin cloak's arrangement : 
 For where its tatters hung loose like sedges, 
 Gold coins were glittering on the edges, 
 Like the band-roll strung with tomans 
 Which proves the veil a Persian woman's : 
 And under her brow, like a snail's horns newly 
 Come out as after the rain he paces, 
 Two unmistakable eye-points duly 
 Live and aware looked out of their places. 
 So, we went and found Jacynth at the entry 
 Of the lady's chamber standing sentry ; 
 I told the command and produced my com- 
 panion, 
 And Jacynth rejoiced to admit any one, 
 For since last night, by the same token, 
 Not a single word had the lady spoken : 
 They went in both to the presence t(^ether, 
 Whue I in the balcony watched the weather. 
 
 And now, what took place at the very first of all, 
 
 I cannot tell, as I never could learn it : 
 
 Jacynth constantly wished a curse to fall 
 
 On that Uttle head of hers and burn it. 
 
 If she knew how she came to drop so soundly 
 
 Asleep of a sudden and there continue 
 
 The whole time sleeping as profoundly 
 
 As one of the boars my father would pin yon 
 
 'Twixt the eyes where life holds garrison, 
 
 — Jacynth forgive me the comparison ! 
 
 But where I begin my own nan-ation 
 
 Is a little after I took my station 
 
 To breathe the fresh air from the balcony. 
 
 And, having in those days a falcon eye, 
 
 To follow the hunt through the open country, 
 
 From where the bushes thinlier crested 
 
 The hillocks, to a plain where 's not one tree. 
 
 When, in a moment, my ear was arrested 
 
 By — was it singing, or was it saying. 
 
 Or a strange mnsical instrument playing 
 
 In the chamber ? — and to be certain 
 
 I pushed the lattice, pulled the curtain, 
 
 And there lay Jacynth asleep. 
 
 Yet as if a watch she tried to keep, 
 
 In a rosy sleep along the floor 
 
 With her head against the door ; 
 
 While in the midst, on the seat of state, 
 
 Was a queen — the Gypsy woman late. 
 
276 
 
 DRAMATIC ROMANCES 
 
 With head and face downbeat 
 
 On the lady 's head and face intent : 
 
 For, coiled at her feet like a child at ease, 
 
 The lady sat between her knees, 
 
 And o'er them the lady's clasped hands met. 
 
 And on those hands her chin was set, 
 
 And her upturned face met the face of the crone 
 
 Wherein the eyes had grown and grown 
 
 As if she could double and quadruple 
 
 At pleasure the play of either pupil 
 
 — Very like, by her hands' slow fanning, 
 
 As up and down like a gor-crow's Happers 
 
 They moved to measure, or bell clappers. 
 
 I said, " Is it blessing, is it banning, 
 
 Do they applaud you or burlesque you — 
 
 Those hands and fingers with no flesh on ? " 
 
 But, just as I thought to spring in to the rescue, 
 
 At once I was stopped by the lady's expression ; 
 
 For it was life her eyes were drinking 
 
 From the crone's wide pair above unwinking, 
 
 — Life's pure fire received without shrinking. 
 Into the heart and breast whose heaving 
 Told you no single drop they were leaving, 
 
 — Life, that filling her, passed redundant 
 Into her very hair, back swerving 
 
 Over each shoulder, loose and abundant, 
 
 As her head thrown back showed the white 
 
 throat curving ; 
 And the very tresses shared in the pleasure, 
 Moving to the mystic measure. 
 Bounding as the bosom bounded. 
 I stoi)ped short, more and more confounded. 
 As still her cheeks burned and eyes glistened. 
 As she listened and she listened : 
 When all at once a hand detained me. 
 The selfsame contagion gained me, 
 And I kept time to the wondrous chime. 
 Making out words and prose and rhyme, 
 Till it seemed that the music furled 
 Its wings like a task fulfilled, and dropped 
 From under the words it first had propped. 
 And left them midway in the world : 
 Word took word as hand takes hand, 
 I could hear at last, and understand. 
 And when I held the unbroken thread, 
 The Gypsy said : — 
 
 " And so at last we find my tribe. 
 
 And so I set thee in the midst. 
 
 And to one and all of them describe 
 
 What thou saidst and what thou didst, 
 
 Our long and terrible journey through, 
 
 And all thou art ready to say and do 
 
 In the trials that remain : 
 
 I trace them the vein and the other vein 
 
 Hat meet on thy brow and part again, 
 
 Making our rapid miystic mark ; 
 
 And I bid my people prove and probe 
 
 Each eye's profound and glorious globe 
 
 Till they detect the kindred spark 
 
 In those depths so dear and dark. 
 
 Like the spots that snap and burst and flee. 
 
 Circling over the midnight sea. 
 
 And on that round young cheek of thine 
 
 I make them recognize the tin^e, 
 
 As when of the costly scarlet wine 
 
 They drip so much as will impinge 
 
 And spread in a thinnest scale afloat 
 
 One thick gold drop from the olive's coat 
 
 Over a silver plate whose sheen 
 
 Still through the mixture shall be seen. 
 
 For so I prove thee, to one and all, 
 
 Fit, when my people ope their breast. 
 
 To see the sign, and hear the call. 
 
 And take the vow, and stand the test 
 
 Which adds one more child to the rest — 
 
 When the breast is bare and the arms are wide, 
 
 And the world is left outside. 
 
 For there is probation to decree. 
 
 And many and long must the trials be 
 
 Thou shalt victoriously endure, 
 
 If that brow is true and those eyes are sure ; 
 
 Like a jewel-fiuder's fierce assay 
 
 Of the prize he dug from its mountain tomb — 
 
 Let once the vindicating ray 
 
 Leap out amid the anxious glooni. 
 
 And steel and fire have done their part 
 
 And the prize falls on its finder's heart ; 
 
 So, trial after trial past. 
 
 Wilt thou fall at the very last 
 
 Breathless, half in trance 
 
 With the thrill of the great deliverance. 
 
 Into our arms f orevermore ; 
 
 And thou shalt know, those arms once curled 
 
 About thee, what we knew before. 
 
 How love is the only good in the world. 
 
 Henceforth be loved as heart can love. 
 
 Or brain devise, or hand approve ! 
 
 Stand up, look below. 
 
 It is our life at thy feet we throw 
 
 To step with into light and joy ; 
 
 Not a power of life but we employ 
 
 To satisfy thy nature's want ; 
 
 Art thou the tree that props the plant. 
 
 Or the climbing plant that seeks the tree — 
 
 Canst thou help us, must we help thee ? 
 
 If any two creatures grew into one. 
 
 They would do more than the world has done; 
 
 Though each apart were never so weak. 
 
 Ye vainly through the world should seek 
 
 For the knowledge and the might 
 
 Which in such union grew their right : 
 
 So, to approach at least that end. 
 
 And blend, — as much as may be, blend 
 
 Thee with us or us with thee, — 
 
 As climbing plant or propping tree, 
 
 Shall some one deck thee, over and down. 
 
 Up and about, with blossoms and leaves ? 
 
 Fix his heart's fruit for thy garland-crown, 
 
 Cling with his soul as the gourd-vine cleaves, 
 
 Die on thy boughs and disappear 
 
 While not a leaf of thine is sere ? 
 
 Or is the other fate in store. 
 
 And art thou fitted to adore. 
 
 To give thy wondrous self away, 
 
 And take a stronger nature's sway ? 
 
 I foresee and could foretell 
 
 Thy future portion, sure and well : 
 
 But those passionate eyes speak true, speah 
 
 true. 
 Let them say what thou shalt do ! 
 Only be sure thy daily life. 
 In its peace or in its strife. 
 Never shall be unobserved ; 
 We pursue thy whole career. 
 And hope for it, or doubt, or fear, — 
 
THE FLIGHT OF THE DUCHESS 
 
 ?77 
 
 Lo, hast thou kept thy path or swerved, 
 
 We are beside thee in all thy ways, 
 
 With our hlame, with our praise. 
 
 Our shame to feel, our pride to show, 
 
 Glad, angyy — but indifferent, no I 
 
 Whether it be thy lot to go. 
 
 For the good of us all, where the haters meet 
 
 In the crowded city's horrible street ; 
 
 Or thou step alone through the morass 
 
 Where never sound yet was 
 
 Save the dry quick clap of the stork's bill, 
 
 For the air is still, and the water still, 
 
 When the blue breast of the dipping coot 
 
 Dives under, and all is mute. 
 
 So, at the last shall come old age. 
 
 Decrepit as befits that stage ; 
 
 How else wouldst thou retire apart 
 
 With the hoarded memories of thy heart, 
 
 And gather all to the very least 
 
 Of the fragments of life's earlier feast, 
 
 Let fall through eagerness to find 
 
 The crowning dainties yet behind ? 
 
 Ponder on the entire past 
 
 Laid together thus at last. 
 
 When the twilight helps to fuse 
 
 The first fresh with the faded hues, 
 
 And the outline of the whole, 
 
 As roimd eve's shades their framework roU, 
 
 Grandly fronts for once thy soul. 
 
 And then as, 'mid the dark, a gleam 
 
 Of yet another morning breaks, 
 
 And like the hand which ends a dream, 
 
 Death, with the might of his sunbeam. 
 
 Touches the flesh and the soul awakes, 
 
 Then"- 
 
 Ay, then indeed something would happen ! 
 But what ? For here her voice changed like a 
 
 bird's ; 
 There grew more of the music and less of the 
 
 words ; 
 Had Jaeynth only been by me to dap pen 
 To paper and put you down every syllable 
 With those clever clerkly fingers. 
 All 1 've forgotten as well as what lingers 
 In this old brain of mine that 's but ill able 
 To give you even this poor version 
 Of the speech I spoil, as it were, with stammer- 
 ing 
 — More fault of those who had the hammering 
 Of prosody into me and syntax, 
 And did it, not with hobnails but tinta^ks ! 
 But to return from this excursion, — 
 Just, do you mark, when the song was sweetest. 
 The peace most deep and the charm completest. 
 There came, shall I say, a snap — 
 And the charm vanished ! 
 And my sense returned, so strangely banished, 
 And, starting as from a nap, 
 I knew the crone was bewitching my lady. 
 With Jaeynth asleep ; and but one spring made I 
 Down from the casement, round to the portal. 
 Another minute and I had entered, — 
 When the door opened, and more than mortal 
 Stood, with a face where to my mind centred 
 All beauties 1 ever saw or shall see. 
 The Duchess : I stopped as if struck by palsy. 
 She was so different, happy and beautiful, 
 I felt at once that all was best, 
 
 And that I had nothing to do, for the rest. 
 But wait her commands, obey and be dutiful. 
 Not that, in fact, there was any commanding j 
 I saw the glory of her eye, 
 And the brow's height and the breast's expand- 
 ing, 
 And I was hers to live or to die. 
 As for finding what she wanted. 
 You know God Almighty granted 
 Such little signs should serve wild creatures 
 To tell one another all their desires. 
 So that each knows what his friend requires. 
 And does its bidding without teachers. 
 I preceded her ; the crone 
 Followed silent and alone ; 
 I spoke to her, but she merely jabbered 
 In the old style ; both her eyes had slunk 
 Back to their pits ; her stature shrunk ; 
 In short, the soul in its body sunk 
 Like a blade sent home to its scabbard. 
 We descended, I preceding ; 
 Crossed the court with nobody heeding ; 
 All the world was at the chase. 
 The court-yard like a desert-place, 
 The stable emptied of its smEul fry ; 
 I saddled myself the very palfrey 
 I remember patting while it carried her, 
 The day she arrived and the Duke married her. 
 And, do you know, though it 's easy deceiving 
 One's self in such matters, I can't help believing 
 The lady had not forgotten it either, 
 And knew the poor devil so much beneath her 
 Would have been only too glad for her service 
 To dance on hot ploughshares like a Turk der- 
 
 vise, 
 But, unable to pay proper duty where owing it, 
 Was reduced to that pitiful method of showing 
 
 it: 
 For though the moment I began setting 
 His saddle on my own nag of Berold's begetting, 
 (Not that I meant to be obtrusive) 
 She stopped me, while his rug was shifting, 
 By a single rapid finger's lifting. 
 And, with a gesture kind but conclosive. 
 And a little shake of the head, refused me, — 
 I say, although she never used me. 
 Yet when she was mounted, the Gypsy behind 
 
 her. 
 And I ventured to remind her, 
 I suppose with a voice of less steadiness 
 Than usual, for my feeling exceeded me, 
 — Something to the effect that I was in readiness 
 Whenever God should please she needed me, — 
 Then, do you know, her face looked down on me 
 With a look that placed a crown on me. 
 And she felt in her bosom, — mark, her bosom — 
 And, as a flower-tree drops its blossom. 
 Dropped me . . . ah, had it been a purse 
 Of silver, my friend, or gold that 's worse. 
 Why, you see, as soon as I found myself 
 So understood, — that a true heart so may gain 
 Such a reward, — 1 should have gone home 
 
 again. 
 Kissed Jaeynth, and soberly drowned myself ! 
 It was a little plait of hair 
 Such as friends in a convent make 
 To wear, each for the other's sake, — 
 This, see, which at my breast I wear. 
 
278 
 
 DRAMATIC ROMANCES 
 
 Ever did (rather to Ja<;ynth's grudg:ment), 
 And ever shall, till the Day of Judgment. 
 And then, — and then, — to cut short, — this is 
 
 idle, 
 These are feeling:s it is not good to foster, — 
 I pushed the gate wide, she shook the bridle, 
 And the palfrey bounded, — and so we lost her. 
 
 When the liquor 's out why clink the cannikin ? 
 
 I did think to describe you the panic in 
 
 The redoubtable breast of our master the man- 
 
 nikin. 
 And what was the pitch of his mother's yellow- 
 ness, 
 How she turned as a shark to snap the spare- 
 rib 
 Clean off, sailors say, from a pearl-diving Carib, 
 When she heard, what she called the night of 
 
 the feloness 
 — But it seems such child's play. 
 What they said and did with the lady away ! 
 And to dance on, when we 've lost the music. 
 Always made me — and no doubt makes you — 
 
 sick. 
 Nay, to my mind, the world's face looked so 
 
 stern 
 As that sweet form disappeared through the 
 
 postern, 
 She that kept it in constant good-humor, 
 It ought to have stopped ; there seemed nothing 
 
 to do more. 
 But the world thought otherwise and went on, 
 And my head 's one that its spite was spent on : 
 Thirty years are fled since that morning. 
 And with them all my head's adorning. 
 Nor did the old Duchess die outright. 
 As you expect, of suppressed spite. 
 The natural end of every adder 
 Not suffered to empty its poison-bladder : 
 But she and her son agreed, I take it. 
 That no one should touch on the story to wake 
 
 it. 
 For the wound in the Duke's pride rankled fiery, 
 So, they made no search and small inquiry — 
 And when fresh Gypsies have paid us a visit, 
 
 I've 
 Noticed the couple were never inquisitive, 
 But told them they 're folks the Duke don't 
 
 want here. 
 And bade them make haste and cross the fron- 
 tier. 
 Brief, the Duchess was gone and the Duke was 
 
 glad of it. 
 And the old one was in the young one's stead. 
 And took, in her place, the household's head. 
 And a blessed time the household had of it ! 
 And were I not, as a man may say, cautious 
 How I trench, more than needs, on the nauseous, 
 I could favor you with sundry touches 
 Of the paint-smutches with which the Duchess 
 Heightened the mellowness of her cheek's yel- 
 lowness 
 (To get on faster) until at last her 
 Cheek grew to be one master-plaster 
 Of mucus and f ucus from mere use of ceruse : 
 In short, she grew from scalp to udder 
 Just the object to make you shudder. 
 
 You 're my friend — 
 
 What a thing friendship is, world without end ! 
 How it gives the heart and soul a stir-up 
 As if somebody broached you a glorious runlet. 
 And poured out, all lovelily, sparklingly, sunlit, 
 Our green Moldavia, the streaky syrup, 
 Cotnar as old as the time of the Druids — 
 Friendship may match with that monarch of 
 
 fluids ; 
 Each supples a dry brain, fills you its ins-and- 
 
 outs. 
 Gives your life's hour-glass a shake when the 
 
 thin sand doubts 
 Whether to run on or stop short, and guarantees 
 Age is not all made of stark sloth and arrant 
 
 ease. 
 I have seen my little lady once more, 
 Jacynth, the Gypsy, Berold, and the rest of it, 
 For to me spoke the Duke, as I told you before ; 
 I always wanted to make a clean breast of it : 
 And now it is made — why, my heart's blood, 
 
 that went trickle. 
 Trickle, but anon, in such muddy driblets. 
 Is pumped up brisk now, through the main ven- 
 tricle. 
 And genially floats me about the giblets. 
 I '11 tell you what I intend to do : 
 I must see this fellow his sad life through — 
 He is our Duke, after all. 
 And I, as he says, but a serf and thrall. 
 My father was born here, and I inherit 
 His fame, a chain he bound his son with ; 
 Could I pay in a lump I should prefer it. 
 But there 's no mine to blow up and get done 
 
 with : 
 So, I must stay till the end of the chapter. 
 For, as to our middle-age-manners-adapter. 
 Be it a thing to be glad on or sorry on. 
 Some day or other, his head in a morion 
 And breast in a hauberk, his heels he '11 kick up, 
 Slain by an onslaught fierce of hiccup. 
 And then, when red doth the sword of our 
 
 Duke rust. 
 And its leathern sheath lie o'ergrown with a 
 
 blue crust. 
 Then I shall scrape together my earnings ; 
 For, you see, in the churchyard Jacynth reposes. 
 And our children all went the way of the roses : 
 It 's a long lane that knows no turnings. 
 One needs but little tackle to travel in ; 
 So, just one stout cloak shall I indue : 
 And for a staff, what beats the javelin 
 With which his boars my father pinned you ? 
 And then, for a purpose you shall hear presently, 
 Taking some Cotnar, a tight plump skinful, 
 I shall go journeying, who but I, pleasantly ! 
 Sorrow is vain and despondency sinful. 
 What 's a man's age ? He must hurry more, 
 
 that 's all ; 
 Cram in a day, what his youth took a year to 
 
 hold : 
 When we mind labor, then only, we 're too old — 
 What age had Methusalem when he begat Saul ? 
 And at last, as its haven some buffeted ship sees, 
 (Come all the way from the north-parts with 
 
 sperm oil) 
 
A GRAMMARIAN'S FUNERAL 
 
 279 
 
 I hope to get safely out of the turmoil 
 
 And arrive one day at the land of the Gypsies, 
 
 And find my lady, or hear the last news of her 
 
 From some old thief and son of Lucifer, 
 
 His forehead chapleted green with wreathy hop. 
 
 Sunburned all over like an ^thiop. 
 
 And when my Cotnar begins to operate 
 
 And the tongue of the rogue to run at a proper 
 
 rate. 
 And our •wine-skin, tight once, shows each flac- 
 cid dent, 
 I shall drop in with — as if by accident — 
 " You never knew, then, how it all ended. 
 What fortune good or bad attended 
 The little lady your Queen befriended ? " 
 — And when that '3 told me, what 's remaining ? 
 This world 's too hard for my explaining. 
 The same wise judge of matters equine 
 Who still preferred some slim four-year-old 
 To the big-boned stock of mighty Berold, 
 And, for strong Cotnar, drank French weak 
 
 wine, 
 He also must be such a lady's scomer ! 
 Smooth Jacob still robs homely Esau : 
 Now up, now down, the world's one see-saw. 
 ^ So, I shall find out some snug comer 
 Under a hedge, like Orson the wood-knight, 
 Turn myself round and bid the world good- 
 night ; 
 And sleep a sound sleep till the trumpet's blow- 
 ing 
 Wakes me (unless priests cheat us laymen)_ 
 To a world where wiU be no further throwing 
 Pearls before swine that can't value them. 
 Amen ! 
 
 A GRAMMARIAN'S FUNERAL 
 
 SHORTLY AFTER THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING 
 IN EUROPE 
 
 Let us begin and carry up this corpse. 
 
 Singing together. 
 Leave we the common crofts, the vulgar 
 thorpes 
 
 Each in its tether 
 Sleeping safe on the bosom of the plain, 
 
 Cared-f or till cock-crow : 
 Look out if yonder be not day again 
 
 Kimming the rock-row ! 
 That 's the appropriate country ; there, man's 
 thought. 
 
 Rarer, intenser. 
 Self-gathered for an outbreak, as it ought. 
 
 Chafes in the censer. 
 Leave we the unlettered plain its herd and crop ; 
 
 Seek we sepulture 
 On a tall mountain, citied to the top. 
 
 Crowded with culture ! 
 All the peaks soar, but one the rest excels ; 
 
 Clouds overcome it ; 
 No ! yonder sparkle is the citadel's 
 
 Circling its summit. 
 Thither our path lies ; wind we up the heights ; 
 
 Wait ye the warning ? 
 Our low life was the level's and the night's ; 
 
 He 's for the morning. 
 
 Step to a tune, square chests, erect each head, 
 
 'Ware the beholders ! 
 This is our master, famous, calm and dead. 
 
 Borne on our shoulders. 
 
 Sleep, crop and herd ! sleep, darkling thorpe 
 and croft. 
 
 Safe from the weather ! 
 He, whom we convoy to his grave aloft. 
 
 Singing together, 
 He was a man born with thy face and throat, 
 
 Lyric Apollo ! 
 Long he lived nameless: how should Spring 
 take note 
 
 Winter would follow ? 
 Till lo, the little touch, and youth was gone I 
 
 Cramped and diminished. 
 Moaned he, " New measures, other feet anon 1 
 
 My dance is finished " ? 
 No, that 's the world's way : (keep the moun- 
 tain-side. 
 
 Make for the city !) 
 He knew the signal, and stepped on with pride 
 
 Over men 's pity ; 
 Left play for work, and grappled with the 
 world 
 
 Bent on escaping : 
 ** What 's in the scroll," quoth he, "thou 
 keepest furled ? 
 
 Show me their shaping. 
 Theirs who most studied man, the bard and 
 sage, — 
 
 Grive I " — So, he gowned him, 
 Strak^ht got by heart that book to its last page : 
 
 Learned, we found him. 
 Yea, but we found him bald too, eyes like lead, 
 
 Accents uncertain ; 
 " Time to taste life," another would have said, 
 
 " Up with the curtain ! " 
 This man said rather, *' Actual life comes next ? 
 
 Patience a moment ! 
 Grant I have mastered learning's crabbed text. 
 
 Still there 's the comment. 
 Let me know all ! Prate not of most or least. 
 
 Painful or easy ! 
 Even to the crumbs I 'd fain eat up the feast. 
 
 Ay, nor feel queasy." 
 Oh, such a life as he resolved to live, 
 
 When he had learned it. 
 When he had gathered all books had to give ! 
 
 Sooner, he spumed it. 
 Image the whole, then execute the parts — 
 
 Fancy the fabric 
 Quite, ere you build, ere steel strike fire from 
 quartz. 
 
 Ere mortar dab brick ! 
 
 (Here 's the town-gate reached : there 's the 
 market-place 
 
 Gaping before us.) 
 Yea, this in him was the peculiar grace 
 
 (Hearten our chorus !) 
 That before living he 'd learn how to live — 
 
 No end to learning : 
 Earn the means first — God surely will contrive 
 
 Use for our earning. 
 Others mistrust and say, " But time escapes : 
 
 Live now or never 1 " 
 
z8o 
 
 DRAMATIC ROMANCES 
 
 He said, " What 's time ? Leare Now for dogs 
 and apes ! 
 
 Ma.nlias Forever." 
 Back to his book then : deeper drooped his head : 
 
 Calculus racked him : 
 Leaden before, his eyes grew dross of lead : 
 
 Tussis attacked him, 
 " Now, master, take a little rest ! " — not he ! 
 
 (Caution redoubled, 
 Step two abreast, the way winds narrowly ! ) 
 
 Not a whit troubled. 
 Back to his studies, fresher than at first, 
 
 Fierce as a dragon 
 He (soul-hydroptic with a sacred thirst) 
 
 Sucked at the flagon. 
 Oh, if we draw a circle premature. 
 
 Heedless of far gain. 
 Greedy for quick returns of profit, sure 
 
 Bad is our bargain ! 
 Was it not great ? did not he throw on God, 
 
 {He loves the burthen) — 
 God's task to make the heavenly period 
 
 Perfect the earthen ? 
 Did not he magnify the mind, show clear 
 
 Just what it all meant ? 
 He would not discount life, as fools do here, 
 
 Paid by instalment. 
 He ventured neck or nothing — heaven's success 
 
 Found, or earth's failure : 
 " Wilt thou trust death or not ? " He answered 
 " Yes ! 
 
 Hence with life's pale lure ! " 
 That low man seeks a little thing to do, 
 
 Sees it and does it : 
 This high man, with a great thing to pursue. 
 
 Dies ere he knows it. 
 That low man goes on adding one to one. 
 
 His hundred 's soon hit : 
 This high man, aiming at a million, 
 
 Misses an unit. 
 That, has the world here — should he need the 
 next. 
 
 Let the world mind him ! 
 This, throws himself on God, and unperplexed 
 
 Seeking shall find him. 
 So, with the throttling hands of death at strife, 
 
 Ground he at grammar ; 
 Still, through the rattle, parts of speech were 
 rife: 
 
 While he could stammer 
 He settled Hoti's business — let it be ! — 
 
 Properly based Own — 
 Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic De, 
 
 Dead from the waist down. 
 Well, here 's the platform, here 's the proper 
 place : 
 
 Hail to your purlieus. 
 All ye highfliers of the feathered race, 
 
 Swallows and curlews ! 
 Here 's the top-peak ; the multitude below 
 
 Live, for they can, there : 
 This man decided not to Live but Know — 
 
 Bury this man there ? 
 Here — here 's his place, where meteors shoot, 
 clouds form, 
 
 Lightnings are loosened, 
 Stars come and go 1 Let joy break with die 
 storm. 
 
 Peace let the dew send ! 
 Lofty designs must close in like e£Eeots : 
 
 LoftUy lying. 
 Leave him — still loftier than the world suspects. 
 
 Living and dying. 
 
 THE HERETIC'S TRAGEDY 
 
 A MIDDLE-AGE INTERLUDE 
 
 Jlesa MuTidi; seu, fulciie me Florilms. A Conceit oj 
 Master Gysbrecht, Cano?i~Regular of Saint Jodocus- 
 hy-ike-Bar., Ypres City. Cantugue, Virgilius. And 
 hath often been sung at Hoch-tide and Festivals. 
 Gavisus eraWj Jessides. 
 
 (It would seem to be a glimpse from the 
 burning of Jacques du Bourg-Molay, at Paris, 
 A. D. 1314 ; as distorted by the refraction from 
 Flemish brain to brain, during the course of a 
 couple of centuries. li. B.) 
 
 PREADMONISHETH THE ABBOT DEODAET 
 
 The Lord, we look to once for all. 
 
 Is the Lord we should look at, all at once : 
 He knows not to vary, saith Saint Paul, 
 
 Nor the shadow of turning, for the nonce. 
 See him no other than as he is ! 
 
 Give both the infinitudes their due — 
 Infinite mercy, but, I wis. 
 
 As infinite a justice too. 
 
 [Organ : plagal-cadence. 
 
 As infinite a justice too, 
 
 ONE SINGETH 
 
 John, Master of the Temple of God, 
 
 Falling to sin the Unknown Sin, 
 What he bought of Emperor Aldabrod, 
 
 He sold it to Sultan Saladin : 
 TiU, caught by Pope Clement, a-buzzing there, 
 
 Hornet-prince of the mad wasps' hive. 
 And clipt of his wings in Paris square, 
 
 They bring him now to be burned alive. 
 lAnd wanteth there grace of lute or clavicithem, ye 
 shall say to confirm him who singeth — 
 
 We bring John now to be burned alive. 
 
 In the midst is a goodly gallows built ; 
 
 'Twixt fork and fork, a stake is stuck ; 
 But first they set divers tumbrils a-tilt. 
 
 Make a trench all round with the city muck ; 
 Inside they pile log upon log, good store ; 
 
 Fagots not few, blocks great and small, 
 Reach a man's mid-thigh, no less, no more, — 
 
 For they mean he should roast in the sight of 
 all, 
 Cho. — We mean he should roast in the sight 
 of all. 
 
 Good sappy bavins that kindle forthwith ; 
 
 Billets that blaze substantial and slow ; 
 Pine-stump split deftly, dry as pith ; 
 
 Larch-heart that chars to a chalk-white glow: 
 Then up they hoist me John in a chafe, 
 
HOLY-CROSS DAY 
 
 281 
 
 Sling him fast like a hog to scorch, 
 Spit in his face, then leap back safe, 
 
 Sing " Laudes " and bid clap-to the torch. 
 Cho, — Laus Deo — who bids clap-to the torch. 
 
 John of the Temple, whose fame so bragged, 
 
 Is burning alive in Paris square ! 
 How can he curse, if his mouth is gagged ? 
 
 Or wri^le his neck, with a collar there ? 
 Or heave his chest, which a band goes round ? 
 
 Or threat with his fist, since his arms are 
 spliced ? 
 Or kick with his feet, now his legs are bound ? 
 
 — Thinks John, I wiU call upon Jesus Christ. 
 IHere one crosseth himsel/. 
 
 Jesus Christ — John had bought and sold, 
 
 Jesus Christ — John had eaten and drunk ; 
 To him, the Flesh meant silver and gold. 
 
 (Salva reverentia.) 
 Now it was, " Saviour, bountiful lamb, 
 
 I have roasted thee Turks, though men roast 
 me ! 
 See thy servant, the plight wherein I am 1 
 
 Art thou a saviour ? Save thou me ! " 
 Cho. — 'T is John the mocker cries, ' ' Save thou 
 
 Who maketh God's menace an idle word ? 
 
 — Saith, it no more means what it proclaims, 
 Than a damsel's threat to her wanton bird ? — 
 
 For she too prattles of ugly names. 
 — Saith, he knoweth but one thing, — what he 
 knows ? 
 
 That God is good and the rest is breath ; 
 Why else is the same styled Sharon's rose ? 
 
 Once a rose, ever a rose, he saith. 
 Cho. — Oh, John shall yet find a rose, he saith ! 
 
 Alack, there be roses and roses, John ! 
 
 Some, honeyed of taste like your leman's 
 tongue : 
 Some, bitter ; for why? (roast gayly on !) 
 
 Their tree struck root in devil's dung. 
 When Paul once reasoned of righteousness 
 
 And of temperance and of judgment to come. 
 Good Felix trembled, he could no less : 
 
 John, snickering, crook'd his wicked thumb. 
 Cho. — What cometh to John of the wicked 
 thumb? 
 
 Ha ha, John plucketh now at his rose 
 
 To rid himself of a sorrow at heart ! 
 Lo, — petal on petal, fierce rays unclose ; 
 
 Anther on anther, sharp spikes outstart ; 
 And with blood for dew, the bosom boils ; 
 
 And a gust of sulphur is all its smell ; 
 And lo, he is horribly in the toils 
 
 Of a coal-black giant flower of hell ! 
 Cho. — What maketh heaven,That maketh hell. 
 
 So, as John called now, through the fire amain. 
 On the Name, he had cursed with, all his 
 life — 
 
 To the Person, he bought and sold again — 
 For the Face, with his daily buffets rife — 
 
 Feature by feature It took its place : 
 And his voice, like a mad dog's choking bark. 
 
 At the steady whole of the Judge's face — 
 Died. Forth John's soul flared into the dark. 
 
 SUBJOINETH THE ABBOT DEODAET 
 
 God help all poor souls lost in the dark ! 
 
 HOLY-CROSS DAY 
 
 ON WHICH THE JEWS WERE FORCED TO ATTEND 
 AN ANNUAL CHRISTIAN SERMON IN ROME 
 
 The passage from a mock-historic Diary which 
 follows is by Browning himself, 
 
 *' Now was come about Holy-Cross Day, and 
 now must my lord preach his flrst sermon to the 
 Jews : as it was of old cared for in the merciful 
 bowels of the Church, that, so to speak, a crumb 
 at least from her conspicuous table here in 
 Home should be, though but once yearly, cast 
 to the famishing dogs, under-trampled and be- 
 spitten-upon beneath the feet of the guests. 
 And a moving sight in truth, this, of so many 
 of the besotted blind restif and ready-to-perish 
 Hebrews ! now maternally brought — nay, (for 
 He saith, ' Compel them to come in ') haled, as 
 it were, by the head and hair, and against their 
 obstinate hearts, to partake of the heavenly 
 grace. What awakening, what striving with 
 tears, what working of a yeasty conscience ! 
 Nor was my lord wanting to himself on so apt 
 an occasion ; witness the abundance of conver- 
 sions which did incontinently reward him: 
 though not to my lord be altogether the glory." 
 — Diary by the Bishop's Secretary, 1600. 
 
 What the Jews really said, on thus being 
 driven to church, was rather to this effect : — 
 
 Feb, faw, fum ! bubble and squeak ! 
 Blessedest Thursday 's the fat of the week. 
 Eumble and tumble, sleek and rough. 
 Stinking and savory, smug and gruff. 
 Take the church-road, for the bell's due chime 
 Gives us the summons — 't is sermon-time ! 
 
 Boh, here 's Barnabas ! Job, that ]s you ? 
 Up stumps Solomon — bustling too V 
 Shame, man ! greedy beyond your years 
 To handsel the bishop's shaving-shears ? 
 Fair play 's a jewel ! Leave friends in the 
 
 lurch ? 
 Stand on a line ere you start for the church I 
 
 Higgledy piggledy, packed we lie. 
 Bats in a hamper, swine in a sty. 
 Wasps in a bottle, frogs in a sieve. 
 Worms in a carcass, fleas in a sleeve. 
 Hist ! square shoulders, settle your thumbs 
 And buzz for the bishop — here he comes. 
 
 Bow, wow, wow — a bone for the dog ! 
 I liken his Grra«e to an accrued hog. 
 
282 
 
 DRAMATIC ROMANCES 
 
 What, a, boy at his side, with the bloom of a 
 
 lass, 
 To help and handle my lord's hour-glass ! 
 Didst ever behold so lithe a chine ? 
 Uis cheek hath laps like a fresh-singed swine. 
 
 Aaron 's asleep — shoTe hip to haunch. 
 Or somebody deal him a dig in the paunch ! 
 Look at the purse with the tassel and knob, 
 And the gown with the angel and thingum- 
 bob ! 
 What 's he at, quotha ? reading hb text ! 
 Now you 've his curtsey — and what comes 
 next ? 
 
 See to our converts — you doomed black dozen — 
 No stealing away — nor cog nor cozen ! 
 You five, uiat were thieves, deserve it fairly ; 
 You seven, that were beggars, will live less 
 
 sparely ; 
 You took your turn and dipped in the hat, 
 Got fortune — and fortune gets you ; mind that ! 
 
 Give your first groan — compunction 's at work ; 
 And soft ! from a Jew you mount to a Turk. 
 Lo, Micah, — the selfsame beard on chin 
 He was four times already converted in ! 
 Here 's a knife, clip quick — it 's a sign of 
 
 gra«e — 
 Or he ruins us all with his hanging-fa^e. 
 
 Whom now is the bishop a-leering at ? 
 
 I know a point where his text falls pato 
 
 I '11 tell him to-morrow, a word just now 
 
 Went to my heart and made me vow 
 
 I meddle no more with the worst of trades — 
 
 Let somebody else pay his serenades. 
 
 Groan all together now, whee — hee — hee ! 
 It 's a-work, it 's a-work, ah, woe is me 1 
 It began, when a herd of us, picked and placed, 
 Were spurred through the Corso, stripped to 
 
 the waist ; 
 Jew brutes, with sweat and blood well spent 
 To usher in worthily Christian Lent. 
 
 It grew, when the hangman entered our bounds, 
 Yelled, pricked us out to his church like 
 
 hounds : 
 Itgot to a pitch, when the hand indeed 
 Which gutted my purse would throttle my 
 
 creed ; 
 And it overflows, when, to even the odd, 
 Men I helped to their sins help me to their 
 
 God. 
 
 But now, while the scapegoats leave our flock. 
 And the rest sit silent and count the clock. 
 Since forced to muse the appointed time 
 On these precious facts and truths sublime, — 
 Let us fitly employ it, under our breath, 
 Jn saying Ben Ezra's Song of Death. 
 
 Vov Rabbi Ben Ezra, the night he died, 
 
 •Called sons and sons' sons to his side. 
 
 And spoke, " This world has been harsh and 
 
 strange ; 
 'Something is wrong : there needeth a change. 
 
 But what, or where ? at the last or first ? 
 In one point only we sinned, at worst. 
 
 " The Lord will have mercy on Jacob yet, 
 And again in his border see Israel set. 
 When Judah beholds Jerusalem, 
 The stranger-seed shall be joined to them : 
 To Jacob's House shall the Gentiles cleave. 
 So the Prophet saith and his sons believe. 
 
 " Ay, the children of the chosen race 
 Shall carry and bring them to their place : 
 In the land of the Lord shall lead the same. 
 Bondsmen and handmaids. Who shall blame. 
 When the slaves enslave, the oppressed ones o el 
 The oppressor triumph f orevermore ? 
 
 " God spoke, and gave us the word to keep : 
 Bade never fold the hands nor sleep 
 'Mid a faithless world, — at watch and waid. 
 Till Christ at the end relieve our guard. 
 By his servant Moses the watch was set : 
 Though near upon cock-crow, we keep it yet. 
 
 " Thou ! if thou wast he, who at mid- watch 
 
 came, 
 By the starlight, naming a dubious name ! 
 And if, too heavy with sleep — too rash 
 With fear — thou, if that martyr- gash 
 Fell on thee coming to take thine own. 
 And we gave the Cross, when we owed the 
 
 Throne — 
 
 " Thou art the Judge. We are bruised thus. 
 But, the Judgment over, join sides with us ! 
 Thine too is the cause ! and not more thine 
 Thac ours, is the work of these dogs and swine. 
 Whose life laughs through and spits at their 
 
 creed. 
 Who maintain thee in word, and defy thee in 
 
 deed ! 
 
 " We withstood Christ then ? Be mindful how 
 
 At least we withstand Barabbas now ! 
 
 Was our outrage sore? But the worst we 
 
 spared. 
 To have called these — Christians, had we 
 
 dared ! 
 Let defiimce to them pay mistrust of thee. 
 And Rome make amends for Calvary ! 
 
 " By the torture, prolonged from age to age. 
 By the infamy, Israel's heritage, 
 By the Ghetto's plague, by the garb's disgrace, 
 By the badge of shame, by the felon's pla«e, 
 By the branding-tool, the bloody whip. 
 And the summons to Christian fellowship, — 
 
 " We boast our proof that at least the Jew 
 Would wrest Christ's name from the Devil's 
 
 crew. 
 Thy face took never so deep a shade 
 But we fought them in it, God our aid ! 
 Atrophy to bear, as we march, thy band. 
 South, East, and on to the Pleasant Land ! " l 
 
 1 Pope Gregory XYI. abolished this bad business oi 
 the Sermon. — B. B 
 
THE STATUE AND THE BUST 
 
 283 
 
 PROTUS 
 
 Among these latter busts we count by scores, 
 
 Half-emperors and quarter-emperors, 
 
 Each with his bay-leaf fillet, loose-thonged 
 
 vest, 
 Loric and low-browed Gorgon on the breast, — 
 One loves a baby face, with violets there, 
 Violets instead of laurel in the hair, 
 As those were all the little locks could bear. 
 
 Now read here. " Protus ends a period 
 
 Of empery beginning with a god ; 
 
 Born in the porphyry chamber at Byzant. 
 
 Queens by his cradle, proud and miniatrant : 
 
 And if he quickened breath there, 't would like 
 
 fire 
 Pantingly through the dim vast realm transpire. 
 A fame that he was missing spread afar : 
 The world, from its four comers, rose in war, 
 Till he was borne out on a balcony 
 To pacify the world when it should see. 
 The captains ranged before him, one, his hand 
 Made baby points at, gained the chief command. 
 And day by day more beautiful he grew 
 In shape, all said, in feature and in hue. 
 While young Greek sculptors, gazing on the 
 
 chUd, 
 Became with old Greek sculpture reconciled. 
 Already sages labored to condense 
 In easy tomes a life's experience : 
 And artists took grave counsel to impart 
 In one breath and one hand-sweep, all their 
 
 art — 
 To make his graces prompt as blossoming 
 Of plentifuUy-watered palms in spring : 
 Since well beseems it, whoso mounts the throne, 
 For beauty, knowledge, strength, should stand 
 
 alone, 
 And mortals love the letters of his name." 
 
 — Stop ! Have you turned two pages ? Still 
 
 the same 
 New reign, same date. The scribe goes on to 
 
 say 
 How that same year, on such a month and day, 
 *' John the Pannonian, groundedly believed 
 A blacksmith^s bastard, whose hard hand re- 
 prieved 
 The Empire from its fate the year before, — 
 Came, had a mind to take the crown, and wore 
 The same for six years (during which the Huns 
 Kept off their fingers from us), till his sons 
 Put something in his liquor " — and so forth. 
 Then a new reign. Stay — "Take at its just 
 
 worth " 
 (Subjoins an annotator) " what I grive 
 As hearsay. Some think, John let Protus live 
 And slip away. 'T is said, he reached man's age 
 At some bHnd northern court ; made, first a 
 
 page, 
 Then tutor to the children ; last, of use 
 About the hunting-stables, I deduce 
 He wrote the little tract * On worming dogs,' 
 Whereof the name in sundry catalogues 
 Is extant yet. A Protus of the race 
 Is rumored to have died a monk in Thrace, — 
 
 And if the same, he reached senility." 
 Here's John the Smith's rough -hammered 
 
 head. Great eye, 
 Gross jaw and griped lips do whatgranite can 
 To give you the crown-grasper. What a man 1 
 
 THE STATUE AND THE BUST 
 
 This poem was published first in 1855 as an 
 independent issue. A correspondent of an 
 American paper once asked the following ques- 
 tions respecting this poem : — 
 
 "1. When, how, and where did it happen? 
 Browning's divine vagueness lets one gather 
 only that the lady's husband was a Eiccardi. 
 2. Who was the lady ? who the duke ? 3. The 
 magnificent house wherein Florence lodges her 
 pr^fet is known to all Florentine ball-goers as 
 the Palazzo Riccardi. It was bought by the 
 Riccardi from the Medici in 1659. From none 
 of its windows did the lady gaze at hfer more 
 than royal lover. From what window, then, if 
 from any ? Are the statue and the bust still in 
 their original positions ? " 
 
 The letter fell into the hands of Mr, Thomas 
 J. Wise, who sent it to Mr. Browning, and re- 
 ceived the following answer. 
 
 Jan., 8, 1887. 
 ' ' De AK Mr. Wise, —I have seldom met with 
 such a strai^e inability to understand what 
 seems the plainest matter possible : ^ ball- 
 goers ' are probably not history-readers, but 
 any guide-book would confirm what is suffi- 
 ciently stated in the poem. I will append a note 
 or two, however. 1. ' This story the townsmen 
 tell; ' 'when, how, and where,' constitutes the 
 subject of the poem. 2. The lady was the wife 
 of Riccardi ; and the duke, Ferdinand, just as 
 the poem says. 3. As it was built by, and in- 
 habited by, the Medici till sold, long after, to 
 the Riccardi, it was not from the duke's pal- 
 ace, but a window in that of the Riccardi, 
 that the lady gazed at her lover riding by. 
 The statue is still in its place, looking at the 
 window under which 'now is the empty shrine.' 
 Can anything be clearer ? My ' vagueness ' 
 leaves what to be ' gathered ' when all these 
 things are put down in black and white ? Oh, 
 'ball-goers'!" 
 
 There 's a palace in Florence, the world knows 
 
 well, 
 And a statue watches it from the square. 
 And this story of both do our townsmen tell. 
 
 Ages ago, a lady there. 
 
 At the farthest window facing the East 
 
 Asked, " Who rides by with the royal air ? " 
 
284 
 
 DRAMATIC ROMANCES 
 
 The bridesmaids' prattle around her ceased ; 
 
 She leaned forth, one on either hand ; 
 
 They saw how the blush of the bride increased — 
 
 They felt by its beats her heart expand — 
 As one at each ear and both in a breath 
 Whispered, " The Great-Duke Ferdinand." 
 
 That selfsame instant, underneath, 
 The Duke rode past in his idle way, 
 Empty and fine like a swordless sheath. 
 
 Gay he rode, with a friend as gay. 
 
 Till he threw his head back — "Who is she ? " 
 
 — ^ " A bride the Rieeardi brings home to-day." 
 
 Hair in heaps lay heavily 
 
 Over a pale brow spirit-pure — 
 
 Carved like the heart of the coal-black tree, 
 
 Crisped like a war-steed's encolure — 
 And vainly sought to dissemble her eyes 
 Of the blackest black our eyes endure, 
 
 And lo, a blade for a knight's emprise 
 Filled the fine empty sheath of a man, — 
 The Duke grew straightway brave and wise. 
 
 He looked at her, as a lover can ; 
 
 She looked at him, as one who awakes : 
 
 The past was a sleep, and her life began. 
 
 Now, love so ordered for both their sakes, 
 
 A feast w£is held that selfsame night 
 
 In the pile which the mighty shadow makes. 
 
 (For Via Larga is three-parts light. 
 
 But the palace overshadows one. 
 
 Because of a crime, which may God requite ! 
 
 To Florence and God the wrong was done. 
 Through the first republic's murder there 
 By Cosimo and his cursed son.) 
 
 The Duke (with the statue'sface in the square) 
 Turned in the midst of his multitude 
 At the bright approach of the bridal pair. 
 
 Face to face the lovers stood 
 A single minute and no more. 
 While the bridegroom bent as a man subdued — 
 
 Bowed till his bonnet brushed the floor — 
 For the Duke on the lady a kiss conferred. 
 As the courtly custom was of yore. 
 
 In a minute can lovers exchange a word ? 
 If a word did pass, which I do not think, 
 Only one out of a thousand heard. 
 
 That was the bridegroom. At day's brink 
 He and his bride were alone at last 
 In a bed chamber by a taper's blink. 
 
 Calmly he said that her lot was cast. 
 
 That the door she had passed was shut on 
 
 her 
 Till the final catafalk repassed. 
 
 The world meanwhile, its noise and stir. 
 Through a certain window facing the Kast 
 She could watch like a convent's clironicler. 
 
 Since passing the door might lead to a feast, 
 And a feast might lead to so much beside, 
 He, of many evils, chose the least. 
 
 " Freely I choose too," said the bride — 
 " Your window and its world suffice," 
 Replied the tongue, while the heart replied — 
 
 " If I spend the night with that devil twice. 
 May his window serve as my loop of hell 
 Whence a damned soul looks on paradise ! 
 
 " I fly to the Duke who loves me well. 
 Sit by his side and laugh at sorrow 
 Ere I count another ave-bell. 
 
 " 'T is only the coat of a page to borrow, 
 
 And tie my hair in a horse-boy's trim. 
 
 And I save my soul — but not to-morrow " — 
 
 (She checked herself and her eye grew dim) 
 
 My father tarries to bless my state ; 
 I must keep it one day more for him. 
 
 " Is one day more so long to wait ? 
 Moreover the Duke rides past, I know ; 
 We shall see each other, sure as fate." 
 
 She turned on her side and slept. Just so ! 
 So we resolve on a thing and sleep : 
 So did the lady, ages ago. 
 
 That night the Duke said, " Dear or cheap 
 As the cost of this cup of bliss may prove 
 To body or soul, I will drain it deep." 
 
 And on the morrow, bold with love, 
 
 He beckoned the bridegroom (close on call, 
 
 As his duty bade, by the Duke's aicove) 
 
 And smiled " 'T was a very funeral. 
 Your lady will think, this feast of ours, — 
 A shame to efface, whate'er befall ! 
 
 " What if we break from the Arno bowers. 
 And try if Petraja, cool and green. 
 Cure last night's fault with this moming'a 
 flowers ? " 
 
 The bridegroom, not a thought to be seen 
 On his steady brow and quiet mouth. 
 Said, " Too much favor for me so mean ! 
 
 " But, alas ! my lady leaves the South ; 
 Each wind that comes from the Apennine 
 Is a menace to her tender youth : 
 
 " Nor a way exists, the wise opine. 
 If she quits her palace twice this year. 
 To avert the flower of life's decline." 
 
 Quoth the Duke, " A sage and a kindly fear. 
 Moreover Petraja is cold this spring : 
 Be our feast to-night as usual here ! " 
 
THE STATUE AND THE BUST 
 
 285 
 
 And then to hiraaelf — " Which night shall bring 
 Thy bride to her lover's embraces, fool — 
 Or I am the fool, and thou art the king ! 
 
 "Yet my passion must wait a night, nor cool — 
 For to-night the Envoy arrives from France 
 Whose heart I unlock with thyself, my tool. 
 
 " I need thee still and might miss perchance. 
 
 To-day is not wholly lost, beside. 
 
 With its hope of my lady's countenance : 
 
 " For I ride — what should I do but ride ? 
 
 And passing her palace, if 1 list. 
 
 May glance at its window — well betide ! " 
 
 So said, so done : nor the lady missed 
 One ray that broke from the ardent brow, 
 Nor a curl of the lips where the spirit kissed. 
 
 Be sure that each renewed the vow, 
 No morrow's sun should arise and set 
 And leave them then as it left them now. 
 
 But next day passed, and next day yet, 
 With still fresh cause to wait one day more 
 Ere each leaped over the parapet. 
 
 And still, as love's brief morning wore. 
 With a gentle start, half smile, half sigh, 
 They found love not as it seemed before. 
 
 They thought it would work infallibly. 
 But not in despite of heaven and earth : 
 The rose would blow when the storm passed 
 by. 
 
 Meantime they could profit in winter's dearth 
 By store of fruits that supplant the rose ; 
 The world and its ways have a certain worth : 
 
 And to press a point while these oppose 
 
 Were simple policy ; better wait : 
 
 We lose no friends and we gain no foes. 
 
 Meantime, worse fates than a lover's fate, 
 Who daily may ride and pass and look 
 Where his lady watches behind the grate ! 
 
 And she — she watched the square like a 
 
 book 
 Holding one picture and only one, 
 Which daily to find she undertook : 
 
 When the picture was reached the book was 
 
 done. 
 And she turned from the picture at night to 
 
 scheme 
 Of tearing it out for herself next sun. 
 
 So weeks grew months, years ; gleam by gleam 
 The glory dropped from their youth and love, 
 And both perceived they had dreamed a dream ; 
 
 Which hovered as dreams do, still above : 
 But who can take a dream for a truth ? 
 Oh, hide our eyes from the next remove ! 
 
 One day as the lady saw her youth 
 Depart, and the silver thread that streaked 
 Her hair, and, worn by the serpent's tooth, 
 
 The brow so puckered, the chin so peaked, — 
 And wondered who the woman was, 
 Hollow-eyed and haggard-cheeked, 
 
 Fronting her silent in the glass — 
 " Summon here," she suddenly said, 
 " Before the rest of my old self pass, 
 
 " Him, the Carver, a hand to aid. 
 
 Who fashions the clay no love will change. 
 
 And fixes a beauty never to fade. 
 
 " Let Robbia's craft so apt and strange 
 Anest the remains of young and fair. 
 And rivet them while the seasons range. 
 
 " Make me a face on the window there, 
 Waiting as ever, mute the while. 
 My love to pass below in the square ! 
 
 ■' And let me think that it may beguile 
 Dreary days which the dead must spend 
 Down in their darkness under the aisle, 
 
 " To say, ' What matters it at the end ? 
 I did no more while my heart was warm 
 Than does that image, my pale-faced friend.' 
 
 " Where is the use of the lip's red charm, 
 The heaven of hair, the pride of the brow. 
 And the blood that blues the inside arm — 
 
 " Unless we turn, as the soul knows how, 
 The earthly gift to an end divine ? 
 A lady of clay is as good, I trow." 
 
 But long ere Robbia's cornice, fine. 
 
 With flowers and fruits which leaves enlace. 
 
 Was set where now is the empty shrine — 
 
 (And, leaning out of a bright blue space. 
 As a ghost might lean from a chink of sky, 
 The passionate pale lady's face — 
 
 Eying ever, with earnest eye 
 
 And quick-turned neck at its breathless stretch, 
 
 Some one who ever is passing by — ) 
 
 The Duke had sighed like the simplest wretch 
 In Florence, " Youth — my dream escapes ! 
 Will its record stay ? " And he bade them fetch 
 
 Some subtle moulder of brazen shapes — 
 " Can the soul, the wiU, die out of a man 
 Ere his body find the grave that gapes ? 
 
 *' John of Douay shall effect my plan. 
 Set me on horseback here aloft, 
 Alive, as the crafty sculptor can, 
 
 " In the very square I have crossed so oft : 
 That men may admire, when future suns 
 Shall touch tlie eyes to a purpose soft, 
 
286 
 
 DRAMATIC ROMANCES 
 
 *' While the mouth and the brow stay brave in 
 
 bronze — 
 Admire and say, ' When he was alive 
 How he would take his pleasure once ! ' 
 
 " And it shall go hard but I contrive 
 
 To listen the while, and laug^h in my tomb 
 
 At idleness which aspires to strive. 
 
 So ! Wliile these wait the trump of doom, 
 How do their spirits pass, I wonder, 
 Nights and days in the narrow room ? 
 
 Still, I suppose, they sit and ponder 
 What a gift life was, ages ago, 
 Six steps out of the chapel yonder. 
 
 Only they see not God, I know. 
 
 Nor all that chivalry of his, 
 
 The soldier-saints who, row on row, 
 
 Burn upward each to his point of bliss — 
 Since, the end of life being manifest. 
 He had burned his way through the world to 
 this. 
 
 I hear you reproach, "But delay was best, 
 For their end was a crime." — Oh, a crime will 
 
 do 
 As well, I reply, to serve for a test. 
 
 As a virtue golden through and through. 
 
 Sufficient to vindicate itself 
 
 And prove its worth at a moment's view ! 
 
 Must a game be played for the sake of pelf ? 
 Where a button goes, 't were an epigram 
 To offer the stamp of the very Gnelph. 
 
 The true has no value beyond the sham : 
 As well the counter as coin, I submit, 
 When your table 's a hat, and your prize, a 
 dram. 
 
 Stake your counter as boldly every whit. 
 
 Venture as warily, use the same skill. 
 
 Do your best, whether winning or losing it, 
 
 If you choose to play ! — is my principle. 
 Let a man contend to the uttermost 
 For his life's set prize, be it what it will ! 
 
 The counter our lovers staked was lost 
 
 As surely as if it were lawful coin : 
 
 And the sin I impute to each frustrate ghost 
 
 Is — the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin. 
 Though the end in sight was a vice, I say. 
 You of the virtue (we issue join) 
 How strive you ? De ie, fabula ! 
 
 PORPHYRIA'S LOVER 
 
 First printed in Mr. Fox's Monthly Hepository 
 in 1836, under the signature Z. When issued in 
 
 Bells and Pomegranates it was grouped with 
 Johannes Agricola in Meditation as No. 11. of 
 Madhouse Cells. The poem has an interest as 
 the earliest, apparently, of Browning's mono- 
 logues. 
 
 The rain set early in to-night. 
 
 The sullen wind was soon awake, 
 It tore the elm-tops down for spite, 
 
 And did its woret to vex the lake : 
 I listened with heart fit to break. 
 When glided in Porphyria ; straight 
 
 She shut the cold out and the storm. 
 And kneeled and made the cheerless grate 
 
 Blaze up, and all the cottage warm ; 
 Which done, she rose, and from her form 
 Withdrew the diippiug cloak and shawl. 
 
 And laid her soiled gloves by, untied 
 Her hat and let the damp hair fall. 
 
 And, last, she sat down by my side 
 And called me. When no voice replied, 
 She put my arm about her waist, 
 
 And made her smooth white shoulder bare 
 And all her yellow hair displaced, 
 
 And, stooping, made my cheek lie there, 
 And spread, o'er all, her yellow hair. 
 Murmuring how she loved me — she 
 
 Too weak, for all her heart's endeavor, 
 To set its struggling passion free 
 
 From pride, and vainer ties dissever. 
 And give herself to me forever. 
 But passion sometimes would prevail. 
 
 Nor coiild to-night's gay feast restrain 
 A sudden thought of one so pale 
 
 For love of her, and all in vain : 
 So, she was come through wind and rain. 
 Be sure I looked up at her eyes 
 
 Happy and proud ; at last I knew 
 Porphyria woreliipped me ; surprise 
 
 Made my heart swell, and still it grew 
 While I debated what to do. 
 That moment she was mine, mine, fair, 
 
 Perfectly pure and good : I found 
 A thing to do, and all her hair 
 
 In one long yellow string I wound 
 Three times her little throat around. 
 And strangled her. No pain felt she ; 
 
 I am quite sure she felt no pain. 
 As a shut bud that holds a bee, 
 
 I warily oped her lids : again 
 Laughed the blue eyes without a stain. 
 And I untightened next the tress 
 
 About her neck ; her cheek once more 
 Blushed bright beneath my burning kiss : 
 
 I propped her head up as before, 
 Oi.ly, this time my shoulder bore 
 Her head, which droops upon it still : 
 
 The smiling rosy little head. 
 So glad it has its utmost will. 
 
 That all it scorned at once is fled. 
 And I, its love, am gained instead ! 
 Porphyria's love : she guessed not how 
 
 Her darling one wish would be heard. 
 And thus we sit together now. 
 
 And all night long we have not stirred, 
 And yet God has not said a word ! 
 
'CHILDE ROLAND TO THE DARK TOWER CAME" 287 
 
 " CHILDE ROLAND TO THE DARK 
 TOWER CAME" 
 
 See Edgar's song In "Lear. 
 
 My first thought was, he lied in every word, 
 That hoary cripple, with malicious eye 
 Askance to watch the working of his lie 
 On mine, and mouth scarce able to afEord 
 Suppression of the glee, that pursed and scored 
 Its edge, at one more victim gained thereby. 
 
 What else should he be set for, with his sta£E ? 
 What, save to waylay with his lies, ensnare 
 All travellers who might find him posted 
 there. 
 And ask the road ? I guessed what skull-like 
 
 laugh 
 Would break, what crutch 'gin write my epitaph 
 For pastime in the dusty thoroughfare, 
 
 If at his counsel I should turn aside 
 Into that ominous tract which, all a^ee. 
 Hides the Dark Tower. Yet acquieseingly 
 I did turn as he pointed : neither pride 
 Nor hope rekindling at the end descried, 
 So much as gladness that some end might be. 
 
 For, what with my whole world-wide wander- 
 ing, . 
 What with my search drawn out through 
 
 years, my hope 
 Dwindled into a ghost not fit to cope 
 With that obstreperous joy success would 
 
 bring, — 
 I hardly tried now to rebuke the spring 
 My heart made, finding failure in its scope. 
 
 As when a sick man very near to death 
 Seems dead indeed, and feels begin and end 
 The tears, and takes the farewell of each 
 friend. 
 And hears one bid the other go, draw breath 
 Freelier outside, ("since all is o'er," he saith, 
 "And the blow fallen no grieving can 
 amend ; ") 
 
 While some discuss if near the other graves 
 Be room enough for this, and when a day 
 Suits best for carrying the corpse away. 
 
 With care about the banners, scarves and 
 
 And still the man hears all, and only craves 
 He may not shame such tender love and stay. 
 
 Thus, I had so long suffered in this quest. 
 Heard failure prophesied so oft, been writ 
 So many times among * ' The Band " — to wit. 
 The knights who to the Dark Tower's search 
 
 addressed 
 Their steps — that just to fail as they, seemed 
 best. 
 And all the doubt was now — should I be fit ? 
 
 So, quiet as despair, I turned from him. 
 That hateful cripple, out of his highway 
 Into the path he pointed. All the day 
 
 Had been a dreary one at best, and dim 
 Was settling to its close, yet shot one grim 
 Red leer to see the plain catch its estray. 
 
 For mark ! no sooner was I fairly found 
 Pledged to the plain, after a pace or two, 
 Than, pausing to throw backward a last view 
 
 O'er the safe road, 't was gone ; gray plain all 
 round : 
 
 Nothing but plain to the horizon's bound. 
 I might go on ; naught else remained to do. 
 
 So, on I went. I think I never saw 
 Such starved ignoble nature ; nothing throve : 
 For flowers — as well expect a cedar grove 1 
 But cockle, spurge, according to their Uiw 
 Might propsigate their kind, with none to awe, 
 You'd think; a burr had been a treasure 
 trove. 
 
 No ! penury, inertness and grimace. 
 In some strange sort, were the land's portion, 
 
 "See 
 Or shut your eyes," said Nature peevishly, 
 " It nothing skills : I cannot help my case : 
 'Tis the Last Judgment's fire must cure this 
 place. 
 Calcine its clods and set my prisoners free," 
 
 If there ])ushed any ragged thistle-stalk 
 Above its mates, the head was chopped ; the 
 
 bents 
 Were jealous else. What made those holes 
 and rents 
 In the dock's harsh swarth leaves, bruised as to 
 
 balk 
 All hope of greenness ? 't is a brute must walk 
 Fashing their life out, with a brute's intents. 
 
 As for the grass, it grew as scant as hair 
 
 In leprosy ; thin dry blades pricked the mud 
 Which underneath looked kneaded up with 
 blood. 
 One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare. 
 Stood stupefied, however he came there : 
 
 Thrust out past service from the devil's stud ! 
 
 Alive ? he might be dead for aught I know. 
 With that red gaunt and coUoped neck 
 
 a-strain. 
 And shut eyes underneath the rusty mane ; 
 
 Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe ; 
 
 I never saw a brute I hated so ; 
 He must be wicked to deserve such pain. 
 
 I shut my eyes and turned them on my heart. 
 As a man calls for wine before he fights, 
 I asked one draught of earlier, happier sights, 
 
 Ere fitly I could hope to play my part. 
 
 Think first, fight afterwards — the soldier's art : 
 One taste of the old time sets all to rights. 
 
 Not it ! I fancied Cuthbert's reddening face 
 Beneath its garniture of curly gold. 
 Dear fellow, tiU I almost felt him fold 
 An arm in mine to fix me to the place. 
 That way he used. Alas, one night's disgrace ! 
 Out went my heart's new fire and left it cold. 
 
 
288 
 
 DRAMATIC ROMANCES 
 
 Giles then, the soul of honor — there he stands 
 
 Frank as ten years ag'o when knig'hted first. 
 
 What honest man should dare (he said) he 
 
 durst. 
 
 Good — hut the scene shifts — faugh! what 
 
 hangman hands 
 Pin to his hreast a parchment ? His own hands 
 Read it. Poor traitor, spit upon and curst ! 
 
 Better this present than a past like that ; 
 Back therefore to my darkening path again I 
 No sound, no sight as far as eye could strain. 
 
 Will the night send a howlet or a bat ? 
 
 1 asked : when something on the dismal flat 
 Came to arrest my thoughts and change their 
 train. 
 
 A sudden little river crossed my path 
 As unexpected as a serpent comes. 
 No sluggish tide congenial to the glooms ; 
 This, as it frothed by, might have been a bath 
 For the fiend's glowing hoof — to see the wrath 
 Of its black eddy bespate with flakes and 
 spumes. 
 
 So petty yet so spiteful ! All along. 
 Low scrubby alders kneeled down over it ; 
 Drenched willows flung them headlong in a 
 fit 
 Of mute despair, a suicidal throng : 
 The river which had done them all the wrong, 
 Whatever that was, rolled by, deterred no 
 whit. 
 
 Which, while I forded, — good saints, how I 
 feared 
 To set my foot upon a dead man's cheek, 
 fFach step, or feel the spear I thrust to seek 
 
 For hollows, tangled in his hair or beard ! 
 
 — It may have been a water-rat I speared, 
 But, ugh ! it sounded like a baby's shriek. 
 
 Glad was I when I reached the other bank. 
 
 Now for a better country. Vain presage ! 
 
 Who were the strugglers, what war did they 
 wage. 
 Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank 
 Soil to a plash ? Toads in a poisoned tank, 
 
 Or wild eats in a red-hot iron cage — 
 
 The fight must so have seemed in that fell 
 cirque. 
 What penned them there, with all the plain 
 
 to choose ? 
 No footprint leading to that horrid mews, 
 None out of it. Mad brewage set to work 
 Their brains, no doubt, like galley-slaves the 
 Turk 
 Pits for his pastime. Christians against Jews. 
 
 And more than that — a furlong on — why, 
 there ! 
 What bad use was that engine for, that wheel. 
 Or brake, not wheel — that harrow fit to reel 
 Men's bodies out like sUk ? with all the air 
 Of Tophet's tool, on earth left unaware. 
 Or brought to sharpen its rusty teeth of steel. 
 
 Then came a bit of stubbed ground, once a 
 wood. 
 Next a marsh, it would seem, and now mere 
 
 Desperate and done with: (so a fool finds 
 
 mirth, . .,, , . , 
 
 Makes a thing and then mars it, till his mood 
 
 Changes and off he goes !) within a rood — 
 
 Bog, clay and rubble, sand and stark black 
 
 dearth. 
 
 Now blotches rankling, colored gay and grim. 
 Now patches where some leanness of tue 
 
 soil's 
 Broke into moss or substances like boils ; 
 Then came some palsied oak, a cleft in him 
 Like a distorted mouth that splits its rim 
 Gaping at death, and dies while it recoils. 
 
 And just as far as ever from the end ! 
 Naught in the distance but the evening, 
 
 naught 
 To point my footstep further! At the 
 thought, 
 A great black bird, ApoUyon's bosom-friend, 
 SaUed past, nor beat his wide wing dragon- 
 penned 
 That brushed my cap — perchance the guide 
 I sought. 
 
 For, looking up, aware I somehow grew, 
 'Spite of the dusk, the plain had given place 
 AU round to mountains — with such name to 
 grace 
 Mere ugly heights and heaps now stolen in 
 
 view. 
 How thus they Lad surprised me, — solve it, 
 you! 
 How to get from them was no clearer case. 
 
 Yet half I seemed to recognize some trick 
 Of mischief happened to me, God knows 
 
 when — 
 In a bad dream perhaps. Here ended, then. 
 Progress this way. When, in the very nick 
 Of giving up, one time more, came a click 
 As when a trap shuts — you 're inside the 
 den! 
 
 Burningly it came on me all at once, 
 This was the place ! those two hills on the 
 
 right. 
 Crouched like two bulls locked horn in horn 
 in fight ; 
 While to the left, a tall scalped mountain . . . 
 
 Dunce, 
 Dotard, ardozing at the very nonce. 
 After a life spent training for the sight ! 
 
 What in the midst lay but the Tower itseK ? 
 The round squat turret, blind as the fool's 
 
 heart. 
 Built of brown stone, without a counterpart 
 In the whole world. The tempest's mocking 
 
 elf 
 Points to the shipman thus the unseen shelf 
 He strikes on, only when €ke timbers start. 
 
A SOUL'S TRAGEDY 
 
 289 
 
 Not see ? because of night perhaps ? — why, day 
 Came back again for that ! before it left, 
 The dyinpr sunset kindled through a cleft: 
 The hills, like giants at a hunting, lay, 
 Chin upon hand, to see the game at bay, — 
 *' Now stab and end the creature — to the 
 heft I " 
 
 Not hear ? when noise was everywhere ! it tolled 
 Increasing like a bell. Names in my ears, 
 Of all the lost adventurers my peers, — 
 
 How such a oue was strong, and such was bold, 
 
 And such was fortunat*, yet each of old 
 Lost, lost I one moment knelled the woe of 
 
 There they stood, ranged along the hillsides, 
 met 
 To view the last of me, a living frame 
 For one more picture 1 in a sheet of flame 
 I saw them and 1 knew them all. And yet 
 Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set. 
 And blew. '^Childe Boland to the Bark 
 Tower came." 
 
 A SOUL'S TRAGEDY 
 
 ACT FIRST, BEING WHAT WAS CALLED THE POETRY OF CHIAPPINO'S LIFE; 
 AND ACT SECOND, ITS PROSE 
 
 This drama was first printed with Luria as 
 the concluding number of Bells and Pomegran- 
 ates in April, 1846. 
 
 PERSONS 
 
 LniTOLFO and Eni.Ai.iA, betrothed lovers. 
 Chiafpino, their Irieud. 
 OoNiBBN, the Pope's Legate. 
 Gitizeiis of Faenza. 
 
 Time, 16—. Place, Faehza. 
 
 ACT I 
 
 Inside LuiTOLFo's house. Chiappiko, Eulalia. 
 Eulalia. What is it keeps Luitolf o ? Night 's 
 fast falling, 
 And 't was scarce sunset . . . had the ave-bell 
 Sounded before he sought the Provost's house ? 
 I think not : all he had to say would take 
 Few minutes, such a very few, to say ! 
 How do you think, Chiappino ? If our lord 
 The Provost were less friendly to your friend 
 Than everybody here professes him, 
 I should begin to tremble — should not you ? 
 Why are you silent when so many times 
 1 turn and speak to you ? 
 Chiappino. That 's good ! 
 
 Mu. You laugh ! 
 
 Ch. Yes. I had fancied nothing that bears 
 price 
 In the whole world was left to call my own ; 
 And, maybe, felt a little pride thereat. 
 Up to a single man's or woman's love, 
 Down to the right in my own flesh and blood, 
 There 's nothing mine, I fancied, ■ — till you 
 
 spoke : 
 — Counting, you see, as "nothing " the permis- 
 sion 
 To study this peculiar lot of mine 
 In sUence : well, go silence with the rest 
 Of the world's good ! What can I say, shall 
 serve ? 
 
 Eu, This, — lest you, even more than needs, 
 embitter 
 Our parting : say your wrongs have cast, for 
 
 once, 
 A cloud across your spirit ! 
 
 Ch. How a cloud ? 
 
 Eu. No man nor woman loves you, did you 
 
 say? 
 Ch. My God, were 't not for thee ! 
 Eu. Ay, God remains. 
 
 Even did men forsake you. 
 
 Ch. Oh, not so ! 
 
 Were 't not for God, I mean, what hope of 
 
 truth — 
 Speaking truth, hearing truth, would stay with 
 
 man? 
 I, now — the homeless friendless penniless 
 Proscribed and exiled wretch who speak to 
 
 you,— 
 Oi^ht to speak truth, yet could not, for my 
 
 death, 
 (The thing that tempts me most) help speaking 
 
 lies 
 About your friendship and Luitolfo's courage 
 And all our townsfolk's equanimity — 
 Through sheer incompetence to rid myself 
 Of the old miserable lying trick 
 Caught from the liars I have lived with, — Gcul, 
 Did I not turn to thee ! It is thy prompting 
 I dare to be ashamed of, and thy counsel 
 Would die along ray coward lip, I know. 
 But I do turn to thee. This craven tongue, 
 These features which refuse the soul its way, 
 Bedaim thou! Give me truth — truth, power 
 
 to speak 
 — And after be sole present to approve 
 The spoken truth ! Or, stay, that spoken truth, 
 Who knows but you, too, may approve ? 
 
 Eu. Ah, well — 
 
 Keep silence then, Chiappino ! 
 
 Ch. You would hear, — 
 
 You shall now, — why the thing we please to 
 
 style 
 My gratitude to you and all your friends 
 
290 
 
 A SOUL'S TRAGEDY 
 
 For service done me, is just gi-atitude 
 
 So much as yours was service : no whit more. 
 
 I was born here, so was Luitolfo ; both 
 
 At one time, nmch with the same circumstance 
 
 Of rank and wealth ; and both, up to this night 
 
 Of parting: company, have side by side 
 
 StiU fared, he in the sunshiuii — I, the shadow. 
 
 " Why ? " asks the world. ■■' Because," replies 
 
 the world 
 To its complacent self, " these playfellows, 
 Who took at church the holy-water drop 
 Each from the other's finger, and so foi-th, — 
 Were of two moods : Luitolfo was the proper 
 Friend-making, everywhere friend-finding soul, 
 Fit for the sunshine, so, it followed him. 
 A happy-tempered bringer of the best 
 Out of the worst ; who bears with what 's past 
 
 cure, 
 And puts so good a face on 't — wisely passive 
 Where action 's fruitless, while he remedies 
 In silence what the foolish rail against ; 
 A man to smooth such natures as parade 
 Of opposition must exasperate ; 
 No general gauntlet-gatlierer for the weak 
 Against the strong, yet over-scru])ulons 
 At lucky junctures ; one who won't forego 
 The after-battle work of binding wounds. 
 Because, forsooth he 'd have to bring himself 
 To side with wound-inllictors for their leave ! " 
 — Why do you gaze, nor help me to repeat 
 What comes so glibly from the common mouth. 
 About Luitolfo and his so-styled friend ? 
 
 Eu. Because, that friend's sense is ob- 
 scured . . . 
 
 Ch. I thought 
 
 You would be readier with the other half 
 Of the world's story, my half ! Yet, 't is true. 
 For all the world does say it. Say your worst ! 
 True, I thank God, 1 ever said " you sin," 
 When a man did sin : if I could not say it, 
 I glared it at him ; if 1 could not glare it, 
 I prayed against him ; then my part seemed over. 
 God's may begin yet : so it will, I trust. 
 
 Eu. If the world outraged you, did we ? 
 
 Ch. What's'^ me" 
 
 That you use well or ill ? It 's man, in me. 
 All your successes are an outrage to. 
 You all, whom sunshine follows, as you say ! 
 Here 's our Faenza birthplace ; they send here 
 A provost from Ravenna : how he rules, 
 You can at times be eloquent about. 
 " Then, end his rule ! " — " Ah yes, one stroke 
 
 does that ! 
 But patience under wrong works slow and sure. 
 Must violence still bring peace forth? He, 
 
 beside. 
 Returns so blandly one's obeisance ! ah — 
 Some latent virtue may be lingeiing yet, 
 Some human sympathy which, once excite, 
 And all the lump were leavened quietly : 
 So, no more talk of striking, for this time ! " 
 But I, as one of those he rules, won't bear 
 These pretty takings-up and layings-down 
 Our cause, just as you think occasion suits. 
 Enough of earnest, is there ? You 'U play, will 
 
 you ? 
 Diversify your tactics, give submission, 
 Obsequiousness and flattery a turn. 
 
 While we die in our misery patient deaths ? 
 
 We all are outraged then, and I the first : 
 
 L for mankind, resent each shrug and smirk, 
 
 Each beck and bend, each ... all you do and 
 are, 
 
 I hate ! ^ 
 
 Eu. We share a common censure, then. 
 
 'T is well you have not poor Luitolfo's part 
 
 Nor mine to point out in the wide offence. 
 Ch. Oh, shall I let you so escape me, lady ? 
 
 Come, on your own ground, lady, — from your- 
 self, 
 
 (Leaving the people's wrong, which most is 
 mine) 
 
 What have I got to be so grateful for ? 
 
 These three last fines, no doubt, one on the 
 other 
 
 Paid by Luitolfo ? 
 Eu, Shame, Chiappino ! 
 
 Ch. Shame 
 
 Fallpresently on who deserves it most ! 
 
 — Which is to see. He paid my fines — my 
 
 friend, 
 Your prosperous smooth lover presently, 
 Then, scarce j'our wooer, — soon, your hus- 
 band : well — 
 I loved you, 
 Eu. Hold ! 
 
 Ch. You knew it, yeajs ago. 
 
 When my voice faltered and my eye grew dim 
 Because you gave me your silk mask to hold — 
 My voice that greatens when there's need to 
 
 curse 
 The people's Provost to their heart's content, 
 
 — My eye, the Provost, who bears all men's 
 
 eyes. 
 Banishes now because he cannot bear, — 
 You knew . . . but you do your parts — my 
 
 part, I : 
 So be it 1 You flourish. I decay: all 's well. 
 Eu. I hear this for the first time. 
 Ch. The fault's there? 
 
 Then my days spoke not, and my nights of fire 
 Were voiceless ? Then the very heart may 
 
 burst. 
 Yet all prove naught, because no mincing 
 
 speech 
 Tells leisurely that thus it is and thus ? 
 Eulalia, truce with toying for this once ! 
 A banished fool, who troubles you to-night 
 For the last time — why, what 's to fear from 
 
 me? 
 You knew I loved you ! 
 
 Eu. Not so, on my faith ! 
 
 You were my now-affianced lover's friend — 
 Came in, went out with him, could speak as he. 
 All praise your ready parts and pregnant wit ; 
 See how your words come from you in a crowd I 
 Luitolfo s first to place you o'er himself 
 In all that challenges respect and love ; 
 Yet you were silent then, who blame me now 
 I say all this by fascination, sure : 
 I, all but wed to one I love, yet listen I 
 It must be, you are wronged, and that the 
 
 wrongs 
 Luitolfo pities . . . 
 
 Ch. — You too pity ? Do I 
 
 But hear fii-st what my wrongs are ; so began 
 
A SOUL'S TRAGEDY 
 
 291 
 
 This talk and so shall end this talk. I say, 
 Was 't not enough that I must strive (I saw) 
 To grow so far familiar with your charms 
 As next contrive some way to win them — which 
 To do, an age seemed far too brief — fop, see ! 
 We all aspire to heaven ; and there lies heaven 
 Above us ; go there ! Uare we go ? no, surely I 
 How dare we go without a reverent pause, 
 A growing less unfit for heaven ? Just so, 
 I dared not speak : the greater fool, it seems ! 
 Was 't not enough to struggle with such foUy, 
 But I must have, beside, the very man 
 Whose slight free loose and incapacious soul 
 Gave his tongue scope to say whate'er he would 
 
 — Must have him load ma with his benefits 
 
 — For fortune's fiercest stroke ? 
 
 Ea. Justice to him 
 
 That '3 now entreating, at his risk perhaps. 
 Justice for you ! Did he once call those acts 
 Of simple friendship — bounties, benefits ? 
 Ch. No : the straight course had been to call 
 
 them thus. 
 Then, I had flung them back, and kept myself 
 Unhampered, free as he to win the prize 
 We both sought. But "the gold was dross," 
 
 he said : 
 "He loved me, and I loved him not: why 
 
 spurn 
 A trifle out of superfluity ? 
 He had forgotten he had done as much." 
 So had not! ! Henceforth, try as I could 
 To take him at his word, there stood by you 
 My benefactor ; who might speak and laugh 
 And urge his nothings, even banter me 
 Before you — but my tongue was tied. A 
 
 dream ! 
 Let 's wake : your husband . . .how you shake 
 
 at that ! 
 Good — my revenge ! 
 
 Eli. Why should I shake ? What forced 
 Or forces me to be Luitolfo's bride ? 
 
 Ch. There 's ray revenge, that nothing 
 
 forces you. 
 No gratitude, no liking of the eye 
 Nor longing of the heart, but the poor bond 
 Of habit — here so many times he came. 
 So much he spoke, — all these compose the tie 
 That pulls you from me. Well, he paid my 
 
 fines, 
 Nor missed a cloak from wardrobe, dish from 
 
 table ; 
 He spoke a good word to the Provost here. 
 Held me up when ray fortunes fell away, 
 
 — It had not looked so well to let me drop, — 
 Men take pains to preserve a tree-stump, even, 
 Whose boughs they played beneath — much 
 
 more a friend. 
 But one grows tired of seeing, after the first, 
 Pains spent upon impracticable stuff 
 Like me. I could not change : you know the 
 
 rest: 
 I 've spoke my mind too fully out, by chance, 
 This morning to om- Provost ; so, ere night 
 I leave the city on pain of death. And now 
 On my account there 's gallant intercession 
 Goes forward — that 's so graceful ! — and anon 
 He 'U noisily come back : "the intercession 
 Was made and fails ; all 's over for us both ; 
 
 'T is vain contending ; I would better go." 
 And I do go — and straight to you he turns 
 Light of a load ; and ease of that permits 
 His visage to repair' the natural bland 
 (Economy, sore broken late to suit 
 My discontent. Thus, all are pleased — you, 
 
 with him. 
 He with himself, and all of you with me 
 — "Who," say the citizens, "had done far 
 
 better 
 In letting people sleep upon their woes. 
 If not possessed with talent to relieve them 
 When once awake ; — but then I had," they ''11 
 
 say, 
 " Doubtless some unknown compensating pride 
 In what I did ; and as I seem content 
 With ruining myself , why, so should they be." 
 And so they are, and so be with his prize 
 The devil, when he gets them speedily I 
 Why does not your Luitolfo come ? I long 
 To don this cloak and take the Lugo path. 
 It seems you never loved me, then ? 
 fJu. Chiappino 1 
 
 Ch. Never ? 
 Mu. Never. 
 
 Ch. That 's sad. Say what I might. 
 
 There was no help from being sure this while 
 You loved me. Love like mine must have 
 
 return, 
 I thought ; no river starts but to some sea. 
 And had you loved me, I could soon devise 
 Some specious reason why you stifled love. 
 Some fancied self-denial on your part. 
 Which made you choose Luitolfo ; so, except- 
 ing 
 From the wide condemnation of all here. 
 One woman. Well, the other dream may 
 
 break ! 
 If I knew any heart, as mine loved you. 
 Loved me, though in the vilest breast 'twere 
 
 lodged, 
 I should, 1 think, be forced to love again : 
 Else there 's no right nor reason in the world. _ 
 Eu. "If you knew," say you, — but I did 
 
 not know. 
 That 's where you 're blind, Chiappino ! — a 
 
 disease 
 Which if I may remove, I 'U not repent 
 The listening to. You cannot, will not, see 
 How, place you but in every circumstance 
 Of us, you are just now indignant at. 
 You 'd be as we. 
 
 Ch. I should be? . . . that; again! 
 
 I, to my friend, my country and my love. 
 Be as Luitolfo and these Faentines V 
 Eu. As we. 
 
 Ch. Now, I 'U say something to remember. 
 I trust in nature for the stable laws 
 Of beauty and utility. — Spring shall plant, 
 And Autumn garner to the end of time : 
 I trust in God — the right shall be the right 
 And other than the wrong, while he endures : 
 I trust in my own soul, that can perceive 
 The outward and the inward, nature's good 
 And God's ; 30, seeing these men and myself, 
 Having a right to speak, thus do I speak. 
 I'U not curse — God bears with them, well 
 
 may I — 
 
292 
 
 A SOUL'S TRAGEDY 
 
 But I — protest against their claiming' lue. 
 
 I simply say, if that 's allowable, 
 
 I wonld not (broadly; do as they have done. 
 
 — God curse this townf ul of born slaves, bred 
 
 slaves. 
 Branded into the blood and bone, slaves! 
 
 Curse 
 Whoever loves, above his liberty, 
 House, land or life ! and . . . 
 
 [_A knocking ivithout, 
 — bless my hero-friend, 
 Lnitolf o ! 
 J^u. How he knocks ! 
 
 Ch. The peril, lady ! 
 
 " Ghiappino, I have run a risk — a risk ! 
 For when I prayed the Provost (he 's my friend) 
 To grant you a week's respite of the sentence 
 That confiscates your goods, exiles yourself. 
 He shrugged his shoulder — I say, shrugged it ! 
 
 Yes, 
 And fright of that drove all else from my head. 
 Here 's a good purse of scudi : off with you, 
 Lest of that shrug come what God only knows I 
 The scudi — friend, they 're trash — no thanks, 
 
 I beg! 
 Take the north gate, — for San Vitale's suburb. 
 Whose double taxes yon appealed against, 
 In discomposure at your ill-success 
 Is apt to stone you : there, there — only go ! 
 Beside, Eulalia here looks sleepily. 
 Shake . . . oh, you hurt me, so you squeeze 
 
 my wrist! " 
 
 — Is it not thus you'll speak, adventurous 
 
 friend ? 
 [_As fie opens the door, Luitolfo rushes in, his gar- 
 ments disordered, 
 
 Eu. Luitolfo ! Blood ? 
 
 Luitolfo. There 's more — and more of it ! 
 Eulalia — take the garment ! No — yon, friend 3 
 STon take it and the blood from me — you dare ! 
 
 JSu. Oh, who has hurt you ? where 's the 
 wound ? 
 
 Ch. " Who," say you ? 
 
 The man with many a touch of virtue yet ! 
 The Provost's friend has proved too frank of 
 
 speech, 
 And this comes of it. Miserable houndJ 
 This comes of temporizing, as I said ! 
 Here 's fruit of your smooth speeches and soft 
 
 looks ! 
 Now see my way ! As God lives, I go straight 
 To the palace and do justice, once for all ! 
 
 Luit. What says he ? 
 
 Ch. I '11 do justice on him. 
 
 Luit. Him V 
 
 Ch. The Provost. 
 
 i/mt. I 've just killed him. 
 
 A. Oh, my God! 
 
 Luit. My friend, they 're on my trace ; 
 they 'U have me — now ! 
 They 're round him, busy with him : soon 
 
 they '11 find 
 He 's past their help, and then they '11 be on 
 
 me ! 
 Ghiappino, save Eulalia ! I forget . . , 
 Were you not bound f or . . . 
 
 Ch. Lugo? 
 
 Luit. Ah — yes — yes 1 
 
 That was the point I prayed of him to change. 
 Well, go — be nappy ! Is Eulalia safe r 
 They 're on me ! ^t_ , 
 
 Ch. 'T is through me they reach you, then 1 
 Friend, seem the man you are ! Lock arms — 
 
 that's right! , . , 
 
 Now tell me what you 've done ; explam Jiow 
 
 That still' professed forbearance, still preached 
 
 peace. 
 Could bring youraelf ... „,..., 
 
 Luit. What was peace for, Chiappmo t 
 
 I tried peace: did that promise, when peace 
 
 failed. 
 Strife should not follow? All my peaceful 
 
 days 
 Were just the prelude to a day like this. 
 I cried "You call me 'friend' : save my true 
 
 friend ! 
 Save him, or lose me ! " 
 
 ch. But yon never said 
 
 You meant to tell the Provost thus and thus. 
 Luit. Why should I say it ? What else did 
 
 I mean ? 
 Ch. WeU? He persisted? 
 Luit. — " Would so order it 
 
 You should not trouble him too soon again." 
 I saw a meaning in his eye and lip ; 
 I poured my heart's store of indignant words 
 Out on him: then — I know not! He retorted. 
 And I . . . some staff lay there to hand — I 
 
 think 
 He bade his servants thrust me out — I 
 
 struck . . . 
 Ah, they come ! Fly you, save yourselves, yon 
 
 two ! 
 The dead back-weight of the beheading axe ! 
 The glowing trip-hook, thumbscrews and the 
 
 Mu. They do come ! Torches in the Place ! 
 Farewell, 
 Ghiappino ! You can work no good to us — 
 Much to yourself ; believe not, all the world 
 Must needs be cursed henceforth ! 
 
 Ch. And you ? 
 
 Eu. I stay. 
 
 Ch. Ha, ha ! Now, listen ! I am master 
 here! 
 This was my coarse disguise ; this paper shows 
 My path of flight and place of refuge — see — 
 Lugo, Argenta, past San Nieolo, 
 Ferrara, then to Venice and all 's safe ! 
 Put on the cloak ! His people have to fetch 
 A compass round about. "There 's time enough 
 Ere they can reach us, so you straightway make 
 For Lugo . . . nay, he hears not! On with 
 
 it — 
 The cloak, Luitolfo, do you hear me ? See — 
 He obeys he knows not how. Then, if I must — 
 Answer me ! Do you know the Lugo gate V 
 
 £u. The northwest gate, over the bridge ? 
 
 Luit. I know. 
 
 Ch. Well, there — you are not frightened ? 
 all my route 
 Is traced in that : at Venice you escape 
 Their power. Eulalia, I am master here ! 
 [Shouts from without. He pushes out Luitolfo, wha 
 complin mechanioalty. 
 
A SOUL'S TRAGEDY 
 
 293 
 
 In time ! Nay, help me with him — so ! He 's 
 gone. 
 
 Eu. What have you done ? On you, per- 
 chance, all know 
 The Provost's hater, will men's vengeance fall 
 As our accomi>lice. 
 
 CA. Mere accomplice ? See I 
 
 IPultmg on LDrroLPo's vest. 
 Now, lady, am I true to my profession. 
 Or one of these ? 
 
 Eu, You take Luitolfo's pla^e ? 
 
 Ch. Die for him. 
 
 JEu. Well done! 
 
 IShouts increase, 
 
 Ch. How the people tarry ! 
 
 I can't be silent ; I must speak : or sing — 
 How natural to sing now ! 
 
 Eu. Hush and pray ! 
 
 We are to die ; hut even I perceive 
 'T is not a very hard thing so to die. 
 My cousin of the pale-blue tearful eyes. 
 Poor Cesca, sufiPers more from one day's life 
 With the stem husband j Tisbe's heart goes 
 
 forth 
 Each evening after that wild son of hers. 
 To track his thoughtless footstep through the 
 
 streets : 
 How easy for them hotli to die like this ! 
 I am not sure that I could live as they. 
 
 Ch. Here they come, crowds I they pa^s 
 the gate? Yes! — No 1 — 
 One torch is in the courtyard. Here flock all. 
 
 Eu. At least Luitolfo has escaped. What 
 cries! 
 
 Ch. If they would drag one to the market- 
 place, 
 One might speak there ! 
 
 Eu. List, list ! 
 
 Ch. They mount the steps. 
 
 (Enter the Populace.) 
 
 Ch. I killed the Provost ! 
 
 The Populace. [Speaking together.^ 'T was 
 Chiappino, friends ! 
 Our savior ! The best man at last as first ! 
 He who first made us feel what chains we wore, 
 He also strikes the blow that shatters them. 
 He at last saves us — our best citizen ! 
 — Oh, have you only courage to speak now ? 
 My eldest son was christened a year since 
 ** Cino " to keep Chiappino's name in mind — 
 Cino, for shortness merely, you observe ! 
 The city 's in our hands. The guards are fled. 
 Do you, the cause of all, come down — come 
 
 up — 
 Come out to counsel us, our chief, our king, 
 Whate'er rewards you I Choose your own re- 
 ward ! 
 The peril over, its reward begins ! 
 Come and harangue us in the market-place ! 
 
 Eu. Chiappino ? 
 
 Ch. Yes — I understand your eyes ! 
 
 You think I should have promptlier disowned 
 This deed with its strange unforeseen success, 
 In favor of Luitolfo. But the peril, 
 So far from ended, hardly seems begun. 
 To-morrow, rather, when a calm succeeds, 
 We easily shall make him full amends : 
 And meantime — if we save them as they pray. 
 
 And justify the deed by its effects ? 
 
 Eu. You would, for worlds, you had denied 
 at once. 
 
 Ch. I know my own intention, be assured! 
 All 's well. Precede us, fellow-citizens ! 
 
 ACT II 
 
 The Market-plane. Luitolfo in disgndse mingling loiik 
 
 the Populace assembled opposite t/ie Provost's Palujie. 
 
 1st Bystander. [To Luit.] You, a friend of 
 Luitolfo's? Then, your friend is vanished, — 
 in all probability killed on the night that his 
 patron the tyrannical Provost was loyally sup- 
 pressed here, exactly a month ago, by our illus- 
 trious fellow-citizen, thrice-noble savior, and 
 new Provost tha.t is like to be, this very morn- 
 ing, — Chiappino ! 
 
 Jjuit. He the new Provost ? 
 
 2d By. Up those steps will he go, and beneath 
 yonder pillar stand, while Ogniben, the Pope's 
 Legate from Kavenna, reads the new digni- 
 tary's title to the people, according to established 
 custom : for which reason, there is the assem- 
 blage you inquire about. 
 
 Luit. Chiappino — the late Provost's suc- 
 cessor ? Iznpossible ! But tell me of that 
 presently. What I would know first of all is, 
 wherefore Luitolfo must so necessarily have 
 been killed on that memorable night ? 
 
 3d By. You were Luitolfo's friend ? So was 
 I. Never, if you will credit me, did there exist 
 so poor-spirited a milk-sop. He, with all the 
 opportunities in the world, furnished by daily 
 converse with our oppressor, would not stir a 
 finger to help us: and, when Chiappino rose 
 in solitary majesty and . . . how does one go 
 on saying ? . . . dealt the godlike blow, — this 
 Luitolfo, not unreasonably fearing the indigna- 
 tion of an aroused and liberated people, fied 
 precipitately. He may have got trodden to 
 death in the press at the southeast gate, when 
 the Provost's guards fled through it to Ravenna, 
 with their wounded master, — if he did not 
 rather hang himself under some hedge. 
 
 Luit. Or why not simply have lain perdue 
 in some quiet corner, — such as San Cassiano, 
 where his estate was, — receiving daily intelli- 
 gence from some sure friend, meanwhile, as to 
 the turn matters were taking here — how, for 
 instance, the Provost was not dead, after all, 
 only wounded — or, as tonlay's news would 
 seem to prove, how Chiappino was not Brutus 
 the Elder, after all, only the new Provost — and 
 thus Luitolfo be enabled to watch a favorable 
 opportunity for returning ? Might it not have 
 been so ? 
 
 3d By. Why, he may have taken that care of 
 himself, certainly, for he came of a cautious 
 stock. X '11 tell you how his uncle, just such 
 another gingerly treader on tiptoes with finger 
 on lip, — how he met his death in the great 
 plague-year ; dico vobis I Hearing that the 
 seventeenth house in a certain street was in- 
 fected, he calculates to pass it in safety by 
 taking plentiful breath, say, when he shall 
 arrive at the eleventh house ; then scouring by, 
 
294 
 
 A SOUL'S TRAGEDY 
 
 holding- that breath, till he be got so far on the 
 other side as number twenty-three, and thus 
 elude the danger. — And so did he begin ; but, 
 as he arrived at thii'teen, we will say, — thinking 
 to improve on his precaution by putting up a 
 little prayer to Saint Nepomueene of Prague, 
 this exhausted so much of Ids lungs' reserve, 
 that at sixteen it was clean spent, — conse- 
 quently at the fatal seventeen he inhaled with 
 a vigor and persistence enough to suck you any 
 latent venom out of the heart of a stone — Ha, 
 ha! 
 
 Luit. \_Aside.'\ (If I had not lent that man 
 the money he wanted last spring, I should fear 
 this bitterness was attributable to me.) Lui- 
 tolfo is dead then, one may conclude ? 
 
 ^d By. Why, he had a house here, and a wo- 
 man to whom he was aiHanced ; and as they 
 both pass naturally to the new Provost, his 
 friend and heir . . . 
 
 Ziuit. Ah, I suspected you of imposing on 
 me with your pleasantry ! I know Chiappino 
 better. 
 
 1st By. (Our friend has the bile ! After all, I 
 do not dislike finding somebody vary a little 
 this general gape of admiration at Chiappino's 
 glorious quaUties.) Pray, how much may you 
 know of what has taken place in Faenza since 
 that memorable night ? 
 
 Luit. It is most to the purpose, that I know 
 Ohiappino to have been by profession a hater of 
 that very office of Provost, you now charge him 
 with proposing to accept. 
 
 Ist By. Sir, I '11 tell you. That night was in- 
 deed memorable. Up we rose, a mass of us, 
 men, women, children ; out fled the guards with 
 the bod> of the tyrant ; we were to defy the 
 world : but, next gray morning, *' What will 
 Kome say ? " began everj'^body. You know we 
 are governed by Kavenna, which is governed 
 by Rome. And quietly into the town, by the 
 Ravenna road, comes on rauleback a portly 
 personage, Ogniben by name, with the quality 
 of Pontifical Legate ; trots briskly through the 
 streets humming a " Cur fremuere gentes,'''' and 
 makes directly for the Provost's Palace — there 
 it faces you. " One Messer Chiappino is 
 your leader ? I have known three-and-twenty 
 leaders of revolts ! " (laughing gently to him- 
 self) — "Give me the help of your arm from 
 my mule to yonder steps nnder the pillar — So ! 
 And now, my revolters and good friends, what 
 do you want ? The guards burst into Ravenna 
 last night bearing your wounded Provost ; and, 
 having had a little talk with him, I take on 
 myself to come and try appease the disorder- 
 liness, before Rome, hearing of it, resort to 
 another naethod : 't is I come, and not another, 
 from a certain love I confess to, of composing 
 differences. So, do you understand, you are 
 about to experience this unheard-of tyi-anny 
 from me, that there shall be no heading nor 
 hanging, nor confiscation nor exile : I insist 
 on your simply pleasing yourselves. And now, 
 pray, what does please yon ? To live Avithout 
 any government at all ? Or having decided 
 for one, to see its minister murdf^red by the 
 first of your body that chooses to find himself 
 
 wronged, or disposed for reverting to first 
 principles and a justice anterior to aU institu- 
 tions, — and so will you carry matters, that the 
 rest of the world must at length unite and put 
 down such a den of wild beasts ? As for ven- 
 geance on what has just taken place, — once 
 for all, the wounded man assures me he cannot 
 conjecture who struck him ; and this so eai^ 
 nestly, that one maybe sure he knows perfectly 
 well what intimate acquaintance could find 
 admission to speak with him late last evening, 
 I come not for vengeance therefore, but from 
 pure curiosity to hear what you will do next." 
 And thus he ran on, on, easily and volubly, till 
 he seemed to arrive quite naturally at the 
 praise of law, order, and paternal government 
 by somebody from rather a distance. AU our 
 citizens were in the snare, and about to be 
 friends with so congenial an adviser ; but that 
 Chiappino suddenly stood forth, spoke out in- 
 dignantly, and set things right again. 
 
 Luit. Do you see ? I recognize him there ! 
 
 Sd By. Ay, but, mark you, at the end of 
 Chiappino's longest period in praise of a pure 
 republic, — " And by whom do 1 desire such a 
 government should be administered, perhaps, 
 but by one like yourself ? " returns the Legate : 
 thereupon speaking for a quarter of an hour 
 together, on the natural and only legitimate 
 government by the best and wisest. And it 
 should seem there was soon discovered to be no 
 such vast discrepancy at bottom between this 
 and Chiappino's theory, place but each in its 
 proper light. ' ' Oh, are you there ? ' ' quoth 
 Chiappino : "Ay, in that, I agree," returns 
 Chiax>pino : and so on. 
 
 Luit. But did Chiappino cede at once to 
 this ? 
 
 1st By. Why, not altogether at once. For in- 
 stance, he said that the difference between him 
 and all his fellows was, that they seemed all 
 wishing to be kings in one or another way, — 
 "whereas what right," asked he, "has any 
 man to wish to be superior to another?" — 
 whereat, " Ah., sir," answers the Legate, '"' this 
 is the death of me, so often as I expect some- 
 thing is really going to be revealed to us by you 
 clearer - seers, deeper - thinkers — this — that 
 your right-hand (to speak by a figure) should 
 be found taking up the weapon it displayed so 
 ostentatiously, not to destroy any dragon in our 
 path, as was prophesied, but simply to cut off 
 its own fellow left-hand : yourself set about 
 attacking yourself. For see now ! Here are 
 you who, I make sure, glory exceedingly in 
 knowing the noble nature of the soul, its divine 
 impulses, and so forth ; and with such a. know- 
 ledge you stand, as it were, armed to encounter 
 the natural doubts and fears aa to that same 
 inherent nobility, which are apt to waylay us, 
 the weaker ones, in the road of life. And when 
 we look eagerly to see them fall before you, lo, 
 round you wheel, only the left-hand gets the 
 blow ; ons proof of the soul's nobility destroys 
 simply another proof, quite as good, of the 
 same, for you are found deliverintr an opinion 
 like this I Why, what is this perpetual yearn- 
 ing to exceed, to subdue, to be better than, and 
 
A SOUL'S TRAGEDY 
 
 295 
 
 a king: over, one's fellows, — all that you so 
 disclaim, — but the very tendency yooraelf are 
 most proud of, and under anuther form, would 
 opijose to it, — only in a lower stage of manifes- 
 tation ? You don't want to be vulgarly supe- 
 rior to your fellows after their poor fashion — 
 to have me hold solemnly up your g-own's tail, 
 or hand you an express of the last importance 
 from the Pope, with all these bystanders no- 
 ticing' how unconcerned you look the while : 
 but neither does our gaping- friend, the burgess 
 yonder, want the other kind of kingship, that 
 consists in understanding better than his fellows 
 this and similar points of human nature, nor to 
 roll under his tongue this sweeter m.orsel still, 
 
 — the feeling that, through immense philoso- 
 phy, he does not feel, he rather thinks, above 
 you and me ! " And so chatting, they glided 
 off arm-in-arm. 
 
 Luit. And the result is . . . 
 
 1st By. Why that, a month having gone by, 
 the indomitable Chiappino, marrying as he will 
 Luitolfo's love — at all events succeeding to 
 Luitolf o's wealth — becomes the first inhabitant 
 of Faenza, and a proper aspirant to the Provost- 
 ship; which we assemble here to see conferred 
 on him this morning. The Legate's Guard to 
 clear the way ! He will follow presently. 
 
 Luit. [ Withdrawing a little.'] I understand 
 the drift of Eulalia's communications less than 
 ever. Yet she surely said, in so many words, 
 that Chiappino was in urgent danger : where- 
 fore, disregarding her injunction to continue in 
 my retreat and await the result of — what she 
 called, some experiment yet in process — I has- 
 tened here without her leave or knowledge : 
 how could I else ? But if this they say be true 
 
 — if it were for such a purpose, she and Chiap- 
 pino kept me away . . . Oh, no, no ! I must 
 confront him and her before I believe tliis of 
 them. And at the word, see ! 
 
 {Enter Chiappino and Edlama.) 
 
 Eu. We part here, then ? The change in 
 your principles would seem to be complete. 
 
 Gh. Now, why refuse to see that in ray pres- 
 ent course I change no principles, only ra-adapt 
 them and more adroitly? I had despaired of 
 what yoii may call the material instrumentality 
 of life ; of ever being able to rightly operate on 
 mankind through such a deranged machinery 
 as the existing modes of government : but now, 
 if I suddenly discover how to inform these per- 
 verted institutions with fresh purpose, bring 
 the functionary limbs once more into immediate 
 communication with, and subjeeticm to, the soul 
 I am about to bestow on them — do you see ? 
 Why shoxUd one desire to invent, as long as 
 it remains possible to renew and transform V 
 When all further hope of the old organization 
 shall be extinct, then, I grant you, it may be 
 time to try and create another. 
 
 Eu. And there being discoverable some hope 
 yet in the hitherto much-abused old system of 
 absolute government by a Provost here, you 
 mean to take your time about endeavoring to 
 realize those visions of a perfect State we once 
 heard of ? 
 
 Ch. Say, I would fain realize my conception 
 
 of a palace, for instance, and that there is, ab- 
 stractedly, but a single way of erecting one per- 
 fectly. Here, in the market-place is my allotted 
 building-ground ; here I stand without a stone 
 to lay, or a laborer to help me, — stand, too, 
 dui-ing a short day of life, close on which the 
 night comes. On the other hand, circumstances 
 suddenly offer me (turn and see it \) the old 
 jProvost's house to experiment upon — ruinous, 
 if you please, wrongly constructed at the begin- 
 ning, and ready to tumble now. But mateioals 
 abound, a crowd of workmen offer their sei^ 
 vices; here exists yet a Hall of Audience of 
 originally noble proportions, there a Guest- 
 chamber of symmetrical design enough : and I 
 may restore, enlarge, abolish or unite these to 
 heart's content. Ought I not make the best 
 of such an opportunity, rather than continue to 
 gaze disconsolately with folded arms on the flat 
 pavement here, while the sun goes slowly down, 
 never to rise again ? Since you cannot under- 
 stand this nor me, it is better we should part 
 as you desire. 
 
 Eu. So, the love breaks away too ! 
 
 ph. No, rather my soul's capacity for love 
 widens — needs more than one object to content 
 it, — and, being better instructed, will not per- 
 sist in seeing all the component parts of love in 
 what is only a single part, — nor in finding that 
 so many and so various loves are all united in 
 the love of a woman, — manifold uses in one 
 instrument, as the savage has his sword, staff, 
 sceptre and idol, all in one club-stick. Love is 
 a very compound thing. The inteUectual part 
 of my love I shall give to men, the mighty dead 
 or the illustrious living ; and determine to call 
 a mere sensual instinct by as few fine names as 
 possible. What do I lose V 
 
 Eu. Nay, I only think, what do I lose? and, 
 one more word — which shall complete my in- 
 struction — does friendship go too ? What of 
 Luitolfo, the author of your present prosperity ? 
 
 Ch. How the author ? 
 
 Eu. That blow now called yours . . . 
 
 Ch. Struck without principle or purpose, as 
 by a blind natural operation : yet to wbich all 
 my thought and life directly and advisedly 
 tended. I would have struck it, and could not : 
 he would have done his utmost to avoid striking 
 it, yet did so. I dispute his right to that deed 
 of mine — a final action with him, from the first 
 effect of which he fled away, ~ a mere first step 
 with me, on which I base a whole mighty super- 
 structure of good to follow. Could he get good 
 from it ? 
 
 Eu. So we profess, so we perform ! 
 
 {Enter Ogniben. Eulalia stands apart.) 
 
 Ogniben. I have seen three-and-twenty lead- 
 era of revolts. By your leave, sir ! Perform ? 
 What does the lady say of performing ? 
 
 Ch. Only the trite saying, that we must not 
 trust profession, only performance. 
 
 Ogni. She '11 not say that, sir, when she 
 knows you longer ; you 11 instruct her better. 
 Ever judge of men by their professions ! For 
 though the bright moment of promising is but 
 a moment and cannot be prolonged, yet, if sin- 
 cere in its moment's extravagant goodness, why, 
 
296 
 
 A SOUL'S TRAGEDY 
 
 trust it and know the man by it, I say — not by 
 his performance ; which is half the woi'ld's work, 
 interfere as the world needs must, with its acci- 
 dents and circumstances; the profession was 
 purely the man's own. I judge people by what 
 they might be, — not are, nor will be. 
 
 Ch. But have there not been found, too, per- 
 forming natures, not merely promising ? 
 
 Ogm. Plenty. Little Bindo of our town, for 
 instance, promised his friend, great ugly Masa«- 
 cio, once, "I will repay you!" — for a favor 
 done him. So, when his father came to die, 
 and Bindo succeeded to the inheritance, he 
 sends straightway for Masaccio and shares all 
 with him — gives him half the land, half the 
 money, half the kegs of wine in the cellar. 
 " Good,' ' say you : and it is good. But had lit- 
 tle Bindo found himself possessor of all this 
 wealth some five years before — on the happy 
 night when Masaccio procured him that inter- 
 view in the garden with his pretty cousin Lisa 
 — instead of being the beggar he then was, — I 
 am bound to believe that in the warm moment 
 of promise he would have given away all the 
 wine-kegs and all the money and all the land, 
 and only reserved to himself some hut on a hill- 
 top hard by, whence he might spend his life in 
 looking and seeing his friend enjoy himself : he 
 meant fully that much, but the world inter- 
 fered. — To our business ! Did I understand 
 you just now within-doors V You are not going 
 to marry your old friend's love, after all ? 
 
 Ch. I must have a woman that can sympar 
 thize with, and appreciate me, I told you. 
 
 Ogni. Oh, I remember! You, the greater 
 nature, needs must have a lesser one ( — avow- 
 edly lesser — contest with you on that score 
 would never do) — such a nature must compre- 
 hend you, as the phrase is, accompany and 
 testify of your greatness from point to point 
 onward. Why, that were being not merely as 
 great as yourself, but greater considerably ! 
 Meantime, might not the more bounded nature 
 as reasonably count on your appreciation of it, 
 rather ? — on your keeping close by it, so far as 
 you both go together, and then going on by 
 yourself as far as you please ? Thus God 
 serves us. 
 
 Ch. And yet a woman that could imderstand 
 the whole of me, to whom I could reveal alike 
 the strength and the weakness — 
 
 Ogni. Ah, my friend, wish for nothing so 
 foolish ! Worship your love, give her the best 
 of you to see ; be to her like the western lands 
 (they bring us such strange news of) to the 
 Spanish Court ; send her only your lumps of 
 gold, fans of feathers, your spirit-like birds, 
 and fruits and gems ! So shall you, what is 
 unseen of you, be supposed altogether a para- 
 dise by her, — as these western lands by Spain : 
 though I warrant there is filth, red baboons, 
 ugly reptiles and squalor enough, which they 
 bring Spain as few samples of as possible. Do 
 you want your mistress to respect your body 
 
 fenerally ? Oif er her your mouth to kiss ; 
 on't strip off your boot and put your foot to 
 her lips ! You nnderstand my humor by this 
 time ? I help men to carry out their own prin- 
 
 ciples : if they please to say two and two make 
 five, I assent, so they will but go on and say, 
 four and four make ten. 
 
 Ch. But these are my private affairs ; what I 
 desire you to occupy yourself about, is my pub- 
 lic appearance presently : for when the people 
 hear that I am appointed Provost, though you 
 and I may thoroughly discern — and easily, too 
 
 — the right principle at bottom of such a move- 
 ment, and how my republicanism remains 
 thoroughly unaltered, only takes a form of ex- 
 pression hitherto commonly judged (and hereto- 
 fore by myself) incompatible with its existence, 
 
 — when thus I reconcile myself to an old form 
 of government instead of proposing a new one — 
 
 Ogni. Why, you must deal with people 
 broadly. Begin at a distance from this matter 
 and say, — New truths, old truths ! sirs, there 
 is nothing new possible to be revealed to us in 
 the moral world ; we know all we shall ever 
 know : and it is for simply reminding us, by 
 their various respective expedients, how we do 
 know this and the other matter, that men get 
 called prophets, poets and the like. A philoso- 
 
 Eher's life is spent in discovering that, of the 
 alf-dozen truths he knew when a child, such 
 an one is a lie, as the world states it in set 
 terms ; and then, after a weary lapse of years, 
 and plenty of hard thinking, it becomes a truth 
 again after all, as he happens to newly consider 
 it and view it in a different relation with the 
 others : and so he re-states it, to the confusion 
 of somebody else in good time. As for adding 
 to the original stock of truths, — impossible. 
 Thus, you see the expression of them is the 
 
 grand business ; — you nave got a truth in your 
 ead about the right way of governing people, 
 and you took a mode of expressing it which 
 now you confess to be imperfect. But what 
 then V There is truth in falsehood, falsehood 
 in truth. No man ever told one great truth, 
 that I know, without the help of a good dozen 
 of lies at least, generally unconscious ones. 
 And as when a child comes in breathlessly and 
 relates a strange story, you try to conjecture 
 from the very falsities in it what the reality 
 was, — do not conclude that he saw nothing in 
 the sky, because he assuredly did not see a fly- 
 ing horse there as he says, — so, through the 
 contradictory expression, do yon see, men should 
 look painfully for, and trust to arrive eventu- 
 ally at, what yon call the true principle at bot- 
 tom. Ah, what an answer is tliere ! to what 
 will it not prove applicable ? — " Contradic- 
 tions ? Of course there were," say you ! 
 
 Ch. Still, the world at large may call it in- 
 consistency, and what shall I urge in reply ? 
 
 Ogni. Why, look you, when they tax you 
 with tergiversation or duplicity, you may an- 
 swer — you begin to perceive that, when all 's 
 done and said, both great parties in the State, 
 the advocators of change in the present system 
 of things, and the opponents of it, patriot and 
 anti-patriot, are found working together for 
 the common good ; and that in the midst of 
 their efforts for and against its progress, tlio 
 world somehow or other still advances : to v hicli 
 result they contribute in equal proportions. 
 
A SOUL'S TRAGEDY 
 
 297 
 
 those who spend their life in poshing: it onward, 
 as those who give theirs to the business of pull- 
 ing: it back. Now, if you found the world 
 stand still between the opposite forces, and 
 were glad, I should conceive you: but it stead- 
 ily advances, you rejoice to see ! By the side 
 of such a rejoicer, the man who only winks as 
 he keeps cunning' and quiet, and says, ^*^Let 
 yonder hot-headed fellow fig'ht out my battle ! 
 I, for one, shall win in the end by the blows he 
 gives, and which I ought to be giving:," — even 
 he seems graceful in his avowal, when one con- 
 siders that he might say, " I shall win quite as 
 much by the blows our antagonist gives him, 
 blows from which he saves me — I thank the 
 antagonist equally ! " Moreover, you may en- 
 large on the loss of the edge of party-animosity 
 with age and experience . . . 
 
 Ch. And naturally time must wear o£E such 
 asperities : the bitterest adversaries get to dis- 
 cover certain points of similarity between each 
 other, common sympathies — do they not ? 
 
 Ogni. Ay, had the young David but sat first 
 to dine on his cheeses with the Philistine, he 
 had soon discovered an abundance of such com- 
 mon sympathies. He of Gath, it is recorded, 
 was born of a father and mother, had brothers 
 and sisters like another man, — they, no more 
 than the sons of Jesse, were used to eat each 
 other. But, for the sake of one broad antipa- 
 thy that had existed from the beginning, David 
 slung the stone, cut off the giant's head, made 
 a spoil of it, and after ate his cheeses alone, 
 with the better appetite, for all I can learn. 
 My friend, as you, with a quickened eyesight, 
 g^o on discovering much good on the worse side, 
 remember that the same process should propor- 
 tionably magnify and demonstrate to you the 
 much moreg-ood on the better side ! And when I 
 profess no sympathy for the Goliaths of our time, 
 and you object that a large nature should sym- 
 pathize with every. form of intelligence, and see 
 the good in it, however limited, — I answer, 
 *' So I do ; but preserve the proportions of my 
 sympathy, however finelier or widelier I may 
 extend its action." I desire to be able, with a 
 quickened eyesight, to descry beauty in corrup- 
 tion where others see foulness only ; but I hope 
 I shall also continue to see a redoubled beauty 
 in the higher forms of matter, where already 
 everybody sees no foulness at all, I must re- 
 tain, too, my old power of selection, and choice 
 of appropriation, to apply to such new gifts ; 
 else they only dazzle instead of enlightening me. 
 God has his archangels and consorts with them: 
 though he made too, and intimately sees what 
 is good in, the worm. Observe, I speak only as 
 you profess to think and so ought to speak : I 
 do justice to your own principles, that is aU. 
 
 Gh. But you very well know that the two par- 
 ties do, on occasion, assume each other's charac- 
 teristics. What more disgusting, for instance, 
 than to see how promptly the newly emancipated 
 slave will adopt, in his own favor, the very meas- 
 ures of precaution, which pressed soreUest on 
 himself as institutions of the tyranny he has just 
 escaped from ? Do the classes, hitherto without 
 opinion, get leave to express it ? there follows a 
 
 confederacy immediately, from which — exer- 
 cise your individual light and dissent, and woe 
 be to you ! 
 
 Ogni. And a journey over the sea to you ! 
 That is the generous way. Ciy — "'Emanci- 
 pated slaves, the first excess, and off I go ! " 
 The first time a poor devil, who has been bas- 
 tinadoed steadily his whole life long, finds him- 
 self let alone and able to legislate, so, begins 
 pettishly, while he rubs his soles, " Woe be to 
 whoever brings anything in the shape of a stick 
 
 this ^ 
 
 - you, rather than give up the very 
 
 iiuiocent pleasure of carrying one to switch flies 
 with, — you go away, to everybody's sorrow. 
 Yet you were quite reconciled to staying at 
 home while the governors used to pass, every 
 now aud then, some such edict as, "Let no 
 man indulge in owning a stick which is not 
 thick enough to chastise our slaves, if need 
 require ! " Well, there are pre-ordained hier- 
 archies among us, and a profane vulgai* sub- 
 jected to a different law altogether ; yet I am 
 rather sorry you should see it so clearly : for, 
 do you know what is to — all but save you at 
 the Day of Judgment, all you men of genius ? 
 It is this : that, while you generally began by 
 pulling down God, and went on to the end of 
 your life in one effort at setting up your own 
 genius in his place, — still, the last, bitterest 
 concession wrung with the utmost unwillii]^;Tiess 
 from the experience of the very loftiest of you, 
 was invariably — would one think it ? — that the 
 rest of mankind, down to the lowest of the mass, 
 stood not, nor ever could stand, jnst on a level 
 and equality with yourselves. That wiLL be a 
 point in the favor of aU such, I hope and believe. 
 
 Ch. Why, men of genius are usually charged, 
 I think, with doing just the reverse ; and at 
 once acknowledging the natural inequality of 
 mankind, by themselves participatii^ in the 
 universal craving after, and deference to, the 
 civil distinctions which represent it. You 
 wonder they pay such undue respect to titles 
 and badges of superior rank. 
 
 Ogni. Not I (always on your own ground 
 and showing, be it noted!) Who doubts that, 
 with a weapon to brandish, a man is the more 
 formidable ? Titles and badges are exercised 
 as such a weapon, to which you and I look up 
 wistfully. We could pin lions with it moreover, 
 while in ite present owner's kands it hardly 
 prods rats. Nay, better than a mere weapon 
 of easy mastery and obvious use, it is a mysteri- 
 ous divining-rod that may serve us in un- 
 dreamed-of ways. Beauty, strength, intellect 
 — men often have none of these, and yet con- 
 ceive pretty accurately what kind of advantages 
 they would bestow on the possessor. We know 
 at least what it is we make up our mind to 
 forego, and so can apply the fittest substitute in 
 our power. Wanting beauty, we cultivate 
 good-humor ; missing wit, we get riches : but 
 the mystic unimaginable operation of that gold 
 collar and string of Latin names which sud- 
 denly turned poor stupid little peevish Cecco of 
 our town into natural lord of the best of us — 
 a Duke, he is now — there indeed is a virtue to 
 be reverenced ! 
 
298 
 
 A SOUL'S TRAGEDY 
 
 Ch. Ay, by the viilgai' : not by Messere 
 Stiatta the poet, who pays more assiduous 
 court to him than anybody. 
 
 Ogni. What else should Stiatta pay court 
 to ? He has talent, not honor and riches : men 
 naturally covet "what they have not. 
 
 Ch. No ; or Cecco would covet talent, which 
 he has not, whereas he covets more riches, of 
 which he has plenty, already. 
 
 Ogni, Because a pui'se added to a purse 
 makes the holder twice as rich : but just such 
 another talent as Stiatta's, added to what he 
 now possesses, what would that profit him ? 
 Give the talent a purse indeed, to do something- 
 with ! But lo, how we keep the good people 
 waiting ! I only desired to do justice to the 
 noble sentiments which animate you, and 
 which you are too modest to duly enforce. Come, 
 to our main business ; shall we ascend the 
 steps ? I am going to propose you for Provost 
 to the people ; they know your antecedents, 
 and will accept you with a joyful unanimity : 
 whereon I confii-m their choice. Rouse up ! 
 Are you nerving yourself to an effort ? Beware 
 the disaster of Messere IStiatta we were talking 
 of ! who, determining to keep an equal mind 
 and constant face on whatever might be the 
 fortune of his last new poem with our towns- 
 men, heard too plainly hiss, hiss, hiss," in- 
 crease every moment. Till at last the man fell 
 senseless : not perceiving that the portentous 
 sounds had all the while been issuing from be- 
 tween his own nobly clenched teeth, and nostiils 
 narrowed by resolve. 
 
 Ch. Do you begin to throw off the mask ? — 
 to jest with me, having got me effectually into 
 your trap ? 
 
 Ogni. Where is the trap, my friend? You 
 hear what I engage to do, for my part : you, for 
 yours, have only to fulfil your promise made 
 just now within doors, of professing unlimited 
 obedience to Rome's authority in my person. 
 And I shall authorize no more than the simple 
 re-establishment of the Provostship and the 
 conferment of its privileges upon yourself : 
 the only novel stipulation being a birth of the 
 peculiar circumstances of the time. 
 
 Ch. And that stipulation ? 
 
 Ogni. Just the obvious one — that in the 
 event of the discovery of the actual assailant of 
 the late Provost . . . 
 
 Ch. Ha ! 
 
 Ogni. Why, he shall suffer the proper penalty, 
 of course ; what did you expect ? 
 
 Ch. Who heard of this ? 
 
 Ogni. Rather, who needed to hear of this ? 
 
 Ch. Can it be, the popiUar rumor never 
 reached you . . . 
 
 Ogni. Many more such rumors reach me, 
 friend, than I choose to receive : those which 
 wait longest have best chance. Has the present 
 one sufficiently waited? Now is its time for 
 entry with effect. See the good people crowd- 
 ing about yonder palace-steps — which we may 
 not have to ascend, after all ! My good friends ! 
 (nay, two or three of you will answer every 
 purpose) — who was it fell upon and proved 
 nearly the death of your late Provost? His 
 successor desires to hear, that his day of inau- 
 
 guration may be graced by the act of prompt, 
 bare justice we all anticipate. Who dealt the 
 blow that night, does anybody know ? 
 
 Luit. [Coming forward]. I! 
 
 All. Luitolfo! 
 
 Luit. I avow the deed, justify and approve 
 it, and stand forth now, to relieve my friend 
 of an unearned responsibility. Having taken 
 thought, I am grown stronger ; I shall shrink 
 from nothing that awaits me. Nay, Chiappino 
 — we are friends still ; I dare say there is some 
 proof of your superior nature in this starting 
 aside, strange as it seemed at first. So, they 
 tell me, my horse is of the right stock, because 
 a shadow in the path frightens him into a 
 frenzy, makes him dash my brains out. I un- 
 derstand only the dull mule's way of standing 
 stockishly, plodding soberly, suffering on 
 occasion a blow or two with due patience. 
 
 JBw. I was determined to justify mjr choice, 
 Chiappino ; to let Luitolfo's nature vindicate 
 itself. Henceforth we are undivided, whatever 
 be our fortune. 
 
 Ogni. Now, in these last ten minutes of si- 
 lence, what have I been doing, deem you? 
 Putting the finishing stroke to a homily of 
 mine, I have long taken thought to perfect, on 
 the text, " Let whoso thinketh he standeth, 
 take heed lest he fall." To your house, 
 Luitolfo ! Still silent, my patriotic friend ? 
 Well, that is a good sign however. And you 
 will go aside for a time ? That is better still. 
 I understand : it would be easy for you to die 
 of remorse here on the spot and shock us all^ 
 but you mean to live and grow worthy of com- 
 ing back to us one day. There, I will tell 
 everybody ; and you only do right to believe 
 you must get better as you get older. All men 
 do so : they are worst in childhood, improve in 
 manhood, and get ready in old age for another 
 world. Youth, with its beauty and grace, 
 would seem bestowed on us for some such 
 reason as to make us partly endurable till we 
 have time for really becoming so of ourselves, 
 without their aid ; when they leave us. The 
 sweetest child we all smile on for his pleasant 
 want of the whole world to break up, or suck 
 in his mouth, seeing no other good in it^ 
 would be rudely handled by that world's inhab- 
 itants, if he retained those angelic infantine 
 desires when he had grown six feet high, black 
 and bearded. But, little by little, he sees fit 
 to forego claim after claim on the world, puts 
 up with a less and less share of its good as 
 his proper portion ; and when the octogenarian 
 asks barely a sup of gruel and a fire of dry 
 sticks, and thanks you as for his full allowance 
 and right in the common good of life, — hoping 
 nobody may murder him, — he who began by 
 asking and expecting the whole of us to bow 
 down in worship to him, — why, I say he is 
 advanced, far onward, very far, nearly out of 
 sight like our friend Chiappino yonder. And 
 now — (ay, good-by to you ! He turns round 
 the northwest gate : going to Lugo again ? 
 Good-by !) — And now give thanks to God, the 
 keys of the Provost's palace to me, and your- 
 selves to profitable meditation at home ! I have 
 known i^our-and-twenty leaders of revolts. 
 
LURIA 
 
 299 
 
 LURIA 
 A TRAGEDY 
 
 I DEDICATE THIS LAST ATTEMPT FOR THE PRESENT AT DRAMATIC POETRY 
 
 TO A GREAT DRAMATIC POET; 
 
 " WISHING WHAT I WRITE MAY BE READ BY HIS LIGHT : " 
 
 IF A PHRASE ORIGINALLY ADDRESSED, BY NOT THE LEAST WORTHY OF HIS CONTEMPORARIES, 
 
 TO SHAKESPEARE, 
 MAY BE APPLIED HERE, BY ONE WHOSE SOLE PRIVILEGE IS IN A GRATEFUL ADMIRATION, 
 
 To WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 
 London, 1S46. 
 
 PERSONS 
 
 LuBiA, a Moor, Commander of the Florentine Forces. 
 
 HtJSAlH, a Moor, his friend. 
 
 Pdccio, the old Florentine Commander, now Luria's 
 
 Chief Officer. 
 Braccio, Commissary of the Republic of Florence. 
 Jacofo (Lapo), his Secretary. 
 TiBURZio, Commander of the Pisans. 
 Domizia, a noble Florentine Lady. 
 Time, 14—. 
 
 Scene. Luria's Gamp between Florence and Pisa. 
 
 ACT I 
 
 MORNING 
 
 B&ACCio, as dictating to his Secretary ; Pnccio standing 
 by. 
 
 Braccio.[To Pdocio.] Then, you join battle in 
 an hour ? 
 
 Puceio. Not I ; 
 
 Luria, the captain. 
 
 Brae. [TotkeSee.'\ "In an hour, the battle." 
 [To Puc] Sir, let your eye run o'er this loose 
 
 digest, 
 And see if very much of your report 
 Have slipped away throug^h my civilian phrase. 
 Does this instruct the Signory aright 
 How army stands with array ? 
 
 Puc. (Taking the paper,} All seems here : 
 — That Luria, seizing with our city's force 
 The several points of vantage, hill and plain, 
 Shuts Pisa safe from help on every side. 
 And, baffling the Lucchese arrived too late, 
 Must, in the battle he delivers now. 
 Beat her best troops and first of chiefs. 
 
 Brae. So sure ? 
 
 Tiburzio 's a consummate captain too ! 
 
 Pmc. Luria holds Pisa's fortune in his hand. 
 
 Brae. [To the Sec] " The Signory hold Pisa 
 in their hand." 
 your own proved soldiership 's our warrant, sir : 
 So, while ray secretary ends his task. 
 Have out two horsemen, by the open roads, 
 To post with it to Florence ! 
 
 Pvc. [ Beturning the paper.] All seems here ; 
 Unless . . . Ser Braccio, 't is my last report ! 
 Since Pisa's outbreak, and my overthrow, 
 And Luria's hastening at the city's call 
 
 To save her, as he only could, no doubt ; 
 Till now that she is saved or sure to be, — 
 Whatever you tell Florence, I tell you : 
 Each day's note you, her Commissary, make 
 Of Luria's movements, I myself supply. 
 No youngster am I longer, to my cost ; 
 Therefore while Florence gloried in her choice 
 And vaunted Luria, whom but Luria, still. 
 As if zeal, courage, prudence, conduct, faith, 
 Had never met in any man before, 
 1 saw no pressing need to swell the cry. 
 But now, this last report and I have done ; 
 So, ere to-night comes with its roar of praise, 
 'T were not amiss if some one old i' the trade 
 Subscribed with, ' ' True, for once rash counsel 's 
 
 best. 
 This Moor of the bad faith and doubtful race, 
 This boy to whose untried sagacity, 
 Raw valor, Florence trusts without reserve 
 The charge to save her, — justifies her choice ; 
 In no point has this stranger failed his friends. 
 Now praise ! " I say this, and it is not here. 
 
 Brae. [To the Sec] Write, " Puceio, super- 
 seded in the charge, 
 By Luria, bears full witness to his worth. 
 And no reward our Signory can give 
 Their champion but he '11 back it cheerfully." 
 Aught more ? Five minutes hence, both mes- 
 sengers ! [Pcccio goes. 
 
 Brae. [After a pause, and while he slowly tears 
 
 the paper into shreds.] I think . . . (pray 
 
 God, I hold in fit contempt 
 
 This warfare's noble art and ordering, 
 
 And, — once the brace of prizers fairly matched, 
 
 Poleaxe with poleaxe, knife with knife as 
 
 good, — 
 Spit properly at what men term their skill ! — ) 
 Yet here I think our fighter has the odds. 
 With Pisa's strength diminished thus and thus, 
 Such points of vantage in our hands and such, 
 Lucca still off the stage, too, — all 's assured : 
 Luria must win this battle. Write the Court, 
 That Luria's trial end and sentence pass ! 
 
 Secretary. Patron, — 
 
 Brae. Ay, Lapo ? 
 
 Sec. If yon trip, I fall ; 
 
 'T is in seK-interest I speak — 
 
 Brae. Nay, nay. 
 
 You overshoot the mark, raj; Lapo ! Nay ! 
 When did I say pure love 's impossible ? 
 
300 
 
 LURIA 
 
 I make you daily write those red cheeks thin, 
 Load your young brow with what concerns ,it 
 
 least, 
 And, when we visit Florence, let you pace 
 The Piazza by my side as if we talked. 
 Where all your old acquaintances may see : 
 You 'd die for me, I should not be surprised. 
 Now then ! 
 
 Sec. Sir, look about and love yourself ! 
 
 Step after step, the Sigiiory and you 
 Tread gay till this tremendous point 's to pass ; 
 Which pass not, pass not, ere you ask your- 
 self,— 
 Bears the brain steadily such draughts of fire, 
 Or too delicious may not prove the pride 
 Of this long secret trial you dared plan. 
 Dare execute, you solitary here. 
 With the gray-headed toothless fools at home, 
 Who think themselves your lords, such slaves 
 
 are they ? 
 If they pronounce this sentence as you bid. 
 Declare the treason, claim its penalty, — 
 And sudden out of all the blaze of life. 
 On the best minute of his brightest day, 
 From that adoring army at his back, 
 Through Florence' joyous crowds before his 
 
 face. 
 Into the dark you beckon Luria . . . 
 
 Brae. Then — 
 
 Why, Lapo, when the fighting-people vaunt, 
 We of the other craft and mystery, 
 May we not smile demure, the danger past ? 
 Sec. Sir, no, no, no, — the danger, and your 
 spirit 
 At watch and ward ? Where 's danger on your 
 
 part, 
 With that thin flitting instantaneous steel 
 'Gainst the blind bull-front of a brute-force 
 
 world ? 
 If Luria, that 's to perish sure as fate. 
 Should have been really guiltless after all ? 
 lirac. Ah, you have thought that ? 
 Sec. Here I sit, your scribe. 
 
 And in and out goes Luria, days and nights ; 
 This Puccio comes ; the Moor his other friend, 
 Hnsain ; they talk — that 's all feigned easily ; 
 He speaks fl would not hsten if I could). 
 Beads, orders, counsels : — but he rests some- 
 times, — 
 I see him stand and eat, sleep stretched an 
 
 hour 
 On the lynx-skins yonder ; hold his bared black 
 
 arms 
 Into the sun from the tent-opening ; langh 
 When his horse drops the forage from his teeth 
 And neighs to hear him hum his Moorish songs. 
 ■That man believes in Florence, as the saint 
 Tied to the wheel believes in God. 
 
 Brae. How strange ! 
 
 STou too have thought that ! 
 
 Sec. D" but you think too. 
 
 And all is saved ! I onl.v have to write, 
 " The man seemed false awhile, proves true at 
 
 last; 
 Bury it " — so I write the Siguory — 
 " Bury this trial in your breast forever. 
 Blot it from things or done or dreamed about 1 
 So Luria shall receive his meed to-day 
 
 With no suspicion what reverse was near, — 
 As if no meteoric finger hushed 
 The doom- word just on the destroyer's lij>. 
 Motioned him off, and let life's snnfallstraight. 
 
 Brae. [Looks to the wall of the tent.] Did he 
 draw that ? , , , ^ i 
 
 Sec. With charcoal, when the watch 
 
 Made the report at midnight ; Lady Domizia 
 Spoke of the unfinished Duomo, yon remember ; 
 "That is his fancy how a Moorish front 
 Might join to, and complete, the body, — a 
 
 sketch, — ji . 1 
 
 And again where the cloak hangs, yonder in the 
 shadow 
 
 Brae. He loves that woman. 
 
 Sec. She is sent the spy 
 
 Of Florence, —spies on you as you on him: 
 Florence, if only for Domizia's sake. 
 Is surely safe. What shall I write ? 
 
 Brae. . I see — 
 
 A Moorish front, nor of such ill design ! 
 Lapo, there 's one thing plain and positive j 
 Man seeks his own good at the whole world's 
 
 cost. 
 What ? If to lead our troops, stand forth our 
 
 chiefs. 
 And hold our fate, and see us at their beck, 
 Yet render up the charge when peace return. 
 Have ever proved too much for Florentines, 
 Even for the best and bravest of ourselves — 
 If in the struggle when the soldier's sword 
 Should sink its point before the statist's pen. 
 And the calm head replace the violent hand. 
 Virtue on virtue still have fallen away 
 Before ambition with unvarying fate. 
 Till Florence' self at last in bitterness 
 Be forced to own such falls the natural end. 
 And, sparing further to expose her sons 
 To a vain strife and profitless disgrace. 
 Declare, '' The foreigner, one not my child, 
 Shall henceforth lead my troops, reach heighr 
 
 by height 
 The glory, then descend into the shame ; 
 So shall rebellion be less guilt in him. 
 And punishment the easier task for me : " 
 
 — If on the best of us such brand she set, 
 Can I suppose an utter alien here. 
 
 This Luria, our inevitable foe. 
 
 Confessed a mercenary and a Moor, 
 
 Born free from many ties that bind the rest 
 
 Of common faith in Heaven or hope on earth, 
 
 No past with us, no future, — such a spirit 
 
 Shall hold the path from which our stanchesi 
 
 broke. 
 Stand firm where every famed precursor fell ? 
 i My Lapo, I will frankly say, these proofs 
 So duly noted of the man's intent. 
 Are for the doting fools at home, not me. 
 The charges here, they may be true or false : 
 
 — Wl\at is set down ? Errors and oversights, 
 A dallying interchange of courtesies 
 
 With Pisa's General, — all that, hour by hour, 
 Puecio'spale discontent has furnished us. 
 Of petulant speeches, inconsiderate acts. 
 Now overhazard, overcaution now ; 
 Even that he loves this lady who believes 
 She outwits Florence, and whom Florence 
 posted 
 
LURIA 
 
 301 
 
 By my procurement here, to spy on me. 
 Lest I one minute lose her from my sight — 
 tShe who remembering her whole House's faJl, 
 That nest of tiaitoi's strangled in the birth, 
 Now labors to make Luria (poor device 
 As plain) the instrument of her revenge I 
 — That she is ever at his ear to prompt 
 Inordinate conceptions of his worth. 
 Exorbitant belief in worth's reward. 
 And after, when sure disappointment follows, 
 Proportionable rage at such a wrong — 
 Why, all these reasons, while I urge them 
 
 most. 
 Weigh with me less than least ; as nothing 
 
 weigh. 
 Upon that broad man's-heart of his, I go : 
 On what I know must be, yet while I live 
 Shall never be, because I live and know. 
 Brute-force shall not mle Florence ! Intellect 
 May nJe her, bad or good as chance supplies: 
 But intellect it shall be, pure if bad. 
 And intellect's tradition so kept up ! 
 Till the good come — 't was intellect that ruled. 
 Not brute-force bringing from the battlefield 
 The attributes of wisdom, foresight's graces 
 We lent it there to lure its grossness on ; 
 All which it took for earnest and kept safe 
 To show against us in our market-place. 
 Just as the plumes and tags and swordsman's- 
 
 gear 
 (Fetched from the camp where, at their foolish 
 
 best. 
 When all was done they frightened nobody) 
 Perk in our faces in the street, forsooth. 
 With our own warrant and allowance. No ! 
 The whole procedure 's overcharged,^ — its end 
 In too strict keeping with the bad first step. 
 To conquer Pisa was sheer inspiration? 
 Well then, to perish for a single fault. 
 Let that be simple justice ! There, my Lapo ! 
 A Moorish front ill suits our Duorao's body : 
 Blot it out — and bid Luria's sentence come ! 
 (LuaiA., who, unth Domizia., has entered unobserved at 
 the close of the last' phrase, now advances.) 
 Luria. And Luria, Luria, what of Luria 
 
 now ? 
 Brae. Ah, you so close, sir ? Lady Domizia 
 
 too? 
 I said it needs must be a busy moment 
 For one like you ; that you were now i' the 
 
 thick 
 Of your duties, doubtless, while we idlers sat . . . 
 jLur. No — in that paper, — it was in that 
 
 paper 
 What you were saying ! , , , 
 
 Srac. Oh — my day's- despatch ! 
 
 I censure you to Florence : will you see ? 
 Lur. See your despatch, your last, for the 
 
 TTi*^'t ijixn6 
 Well, if I should, now ? For in truth, Domizia, 
 He would be forced to set about another, 
 In hi sly cool way, the true Florentine, 
 To mention that important circumstance. 
 bo, while he wrote I should gain time, such 
 
 time ! 
 00 not send this ! 
 Brae. And wherefore ? 
 
 j^ur These Luechese 
 
 Are not arrived — they never will arrive ! 
 And I must fight to-day^ arrived or not, 
 And I shall beat Tiburzio, that is sure : 
 And then will be arriving his Lucohese, 
 But slowly, oh so slowly, just in time 
 To look upon my battle from the hills. 
 Like a late moon, of use to nobody ! 
 And I must break my battle up, send forth, 
 iSurround on tliis side, hold in check on that. 
 Then comes to-morrow, we negotiate, 
 You make me send for fresh instructions home, 
 — Incompleteness, incompleteness ! 
 
 Brae. Ah, we scribes I 
 
 Why, I had registered that very point, 
 The non-appearance of our foes'^ ally, 
 As a most happy fortune ; both at once 
 Were formidable : singly faced, each falls. 
 
 Lur. So, no great battle for my Florentines I 
 No crowning deed, decisive and complete, 
 For all of them, the simple as the wise. 
 Old, young, alike, that do not understand 
 Our wearisome pedantic art of war, 
 By which we prove retreat may be success, 
 Delay — best speed, — half loss, at times, — 
 
 whole gaiin: 
 They want results : as if it were their fault ! 
 And you, with warmest wish to be my friend, 
 Will not; be able now to- sixnply say 
 " Your servant has performed his task — 
 
 enough I 
 You ordered, he has executed : good ! 
 Now walk the streets in holiday attire, 
 Congi^ulate your friends, till noon striken 
 
 fierce, 
 Then form bright groups beneath the Duomo^s 
 
 shade ! " 
 No, you wiU have to argue and explain. 
 Persuade them, all is not so ill in the end, 
 Teasev tire them out ! Arrive, arrive, Luechese! 
 Domizia. Well, you will triumph for the past 
 enough, 
 Whatever be the present chance ; no service- 
 Falls to the ground with Florence : she awaits 
 Her savior, will receive him fittingly. 
 Lur. Ah, Braccio, you know Florence ! Will 
 she, think you. 
 Receive one . . . what means " fittingly re- 
 ceive '" ? 
 — Receive compatriote, doubtless — I am none: 
 And yet Domizia promises so much ! 
 Brae. Kind women still give meu a woman's 
 prize. 
 I know not o'er which gate most boughs will 
 
 arch. 
 Nor if the Square will wave red fliags or blue. 
 I should have judged, the fullest of rewards 
 Our state gave Luria, when she made him chief 
 Of hex whole force, in her best captain's place. 
 Lur. That, my reward ? Florence on my 
 account 
 Relieved 8er Puecio ? ~ mark yon, my reward I 
 And Puecio 's having all the fight's true joy — 
 Goes here and! there, gets close, may fight, him- 
 self. 
 While I must order, stand aloof, o'ersee. 
 That was my calling, there was ray true place ! 
 I should have felt, in some one over me, 
 Florence impersonate, my visible head. 
 
^02 
 
 LURIA 
 
 As I am over Pueeio, — taking life 
 Directly from her eye ! They give me you : 
 But do you cross me, set me half to work ? 
 I enjoy nothing — though I will, for once ! 
 Decide, shall we join battle ? may I wait ? 
 Brae. Let us compound the matter ; wait 
 
 till noon ; 
 Then, no arrival, — 
 
 Lur. Ah, noon comes too fast ! 
 
 I wonder, do you guess why I delay 
 Involuntarily the nnal blow 
 As long as possible ? Peace follows it ! 
 Florence at peace, and the calm studious heads 
 Come out a^ain, the penetrating eyes ; 
 As if a spell broke, all 's resumed, each art 
 You boast, more vivid that it slept awhile. 
 'Gainst the glad heaven, o'er the white palace- 
 front 
 The interrupted scaffold climbs anew ; 
 The walls are peopled by the painter's brush ; 
 The statue to its niche ascends to dwell. 
 The present noise and trouble have retired 
 And left the eternal past to rule once more ; 
 You speak its speech and read its records plain, 
 Greece lives with you, each Roman breathes 
 
 your fiieud : 
 But Luria — wherewill then be Luria's place ? 
 Dom. Highest in honor, for that past's own 
 
 sake. 
 Of which his actions, sealing up the sum 
 By saving all that went before from wreck, 
 Will range as part, with which be worshipped too. 
 Lur, Then I, may walk and watch you in 
 
 your streets, 
 Lead the smooth life my rough life helps no 
 
 more. 
 So different, so new, so beautiful — 
 Nor fear that you will tire to see parade 
 The club that slew the lion, now that crooks 
 And shepherd-pipes come into use again ? 
 For very lone and silent seems my East 
 In its drear vastness : stUl it spreads, and still 
 No Braccios, no Domizias anywhere — 
 Not ever more ! Well, well, to-day is ours ! 
 Dom. [To Bkac] Should he not have been 
 
 one of us ? 
 liUr. Oh, no ! 
 
 Not one of you, and so escape the thrill 
 Of coining into you, of changing thus, — 
 Feeling a soul grow on me that restricts 
 The boundless unrest of the savage heart ! 
 The sea heaves up, hangs loaded o'er the land. 
 Breaks there and buries its tumultuous 
 
 strength ; 
 Horror, and silence, and a pause awhile : 
 Lo, inland glides the gulf-stream, miles away. 
 In rapture of assent, subdued and still, 
 'Neath those strange banks, those unimagined 
 
 skies. 
 Well, 't is not sure the quiet lasts forever ! 
 Your placid heads still find rough hands new 
 
 work ; 
 Some minute's chance — there comes the need 
 
 of mine : 
 And, all resolved on, I too hear at last. 
 Oh, you must find some use for me, Ser Bracoio 1 
 You hold my strength ; 't were best dispose of 
 
 it: 
 
 What you created, see that you find food for — 
 I shall be dangerous else I 
 Brae. How dangerous, sirr 
 
 Lur. There are so many ways, Domizia 
 warns me. 
 And one with half the power that I possess, 
 — Grows very formidable ! Do you doubt ? 
 Why, first, who holds the army . . . 
 
 Bom. Wliile we talk, 
 
 Morn wears ; we keep you from your proper 
 
 place. 
 The field. 
 
 Lur. Nay, to the field I move no more ; 
 My part is done, and Puccio's may begin : 
 T cannot trench upon his province longer 
 With any face. — You think yourselves so safe ? 
 Why, see — in concert with Tiburzio, now — 
 One could . . . 
 Dom. A trumpet ! 
 
 Lur. My Lucchese at last ! 
 
 Arrived, as sure as Florence stands '-. Your 
 leave ! [Springs out. 
 
 Dom. How plainly is true greatness charac- 
 tered 
 By such unconscious sport as Luria's here. 
 Strength sharing least the secret of itself '. 
 Be it with head that schemes or hand that acts. 
 Such save the world which none but they could 
 
 save, 
 Yet think whate'er they did, that world could 
 do. 
 Brae. Yes : and how worthy note, that these 
 same great ones 
 In hand or head, with such unconsciousness 
 And all its due entailed humility. 
 Should never shrink, so far as I perceive, 
 From taking up whatever tool there be 
 Effects the whole world's safety or inishap. 
 Into their mild hands as a thing of course I 
 The statist finds it natural to lead 
 The mob who might as easily lead him — 
 The captain marshals troops born skilled in 
 
 war — 
 Statist and captain verily believe ! 
 While we poor scribes . . . you catch me think- 
 ing now. 
 That I shall in this very letter write 
 Wliat none of you are able ! To it, Lapo ! 
 
 [Domizia goes. 
 This last worst all-affected childish fit 
 Of Luria's, this be-praised unconsciousness. 
 Convinces me ; the past was no child's play : 
 It was a man beat Pisa, — not a child. 
 All 's mere dissimulation — to remove 
 The fear, he best knows we should entertain. 
 The utmost danger was at hand. Is 't written ? 
 Now make a duplicate, lest this should fail. 
 And speak your fullest on the other side. 
 See. I noticed he was busily repairing 
 My half-effacement of his Duomo sketch, 
 And, while he spoke of Florence, turned to it, 
 As the Mage Negro king to Christ the babe. 
 I judge his childishness the mere relapse 
 To boyhood of a man who has worked lately, 
 And presently will work, so, meantime, plays : 
 Whence, more than ever I believe in him. 
 Brae. [After a pause.] The sword! At best, 
 the soldier, as he says. 
 
LURIA 
 
 303 
 
 Li Florence — the black face, the barbarous 
 
 name, 
 For Italy to boast her show of the age, 
 Her man of men ! — To Florence with each 
 
 letter ! 
 
 ACT II 
 
 NOON 
 
 Dom. Well, Florence, shall I reach thee, 
 
 pierce thy heart 
 Through all its safeguards? Hate is said to 
 
 help — 
 Quicken the eye, invigorate the arm ; 
 And this my hate, made up of many hates, 
 Might stand in scorn of visible instrument. 
 And will thee dead : yet do I trust it not. 
 Nor man's devices nor Heaven's memory 
 Of wickedness forgot on earth so sooii, 
 But thy own nature, — hell and thee I trust, 
 To keep thee constant in that wickedness, 
 Where my revenge may meet thee. Turn aside 
 A single step, for gratitude or shame, — 
 Grace but this Luria, — this wild mass of ra^e 
 I have prepared to launch against thee now, — 
 With other payment than thy noblest found, — 
 Give his desert for once its due reward, — 
 And past thee would my sure destruction roll. 
 But thou, who mad'st oiir House thy sacrifice. 
 It cannot be thou wilt except this Moor 
 From the accustomed fate of zeal and truth : 
 Thou wilt deny his looked-for recompense, 
 And then — I reach thee. Old and trained, my 
 
 sire 
 Could bow down on his quiet broken heart. 
 Die awe-struck and submissive, when at last 
 The strange blow came for the expected -wreath ; 
 And Porzio passed in blind bewilderment 
 To exile, never to return, — they say, 
 Perplexed in his frank simple honest soul, 
 As if some natural law had changed, — how 
 
 else 
 Could Florence, on plain fact pronouncing thus, 
 Judge Porzio's actions worthy such reward ? 
 But Berto, with the ever-passionate pulse, 
 — Oh that long night, its dreadful hour on hour, 
 In which no way of getting his fair fame 
 From their inexplicable charges free. 
 Was found, save pouring forth the impatient 
 
 blood 
 To show its color whether false or no ! 
 My brothers never had a friend like me 
 Close in their need to watch the time, then 
 
 — Burst with a wakening laughter on their 
 
 dream, 
 Cry, " Flor^^nce was all falseness, so, false 
 
 here!" 
 And show them Avhat a simple task remained — 
 To leave dreams, rise, and punish in God's name 
 The city wedded to the wickedness. 
 None stood by them as I by Luria stand. 
 So, when the stranger cheated of his due 
 Turns on thee as his rapid nature bids. 
 Then, Florence, think, a hireling at thy throat 
 For the first outrage, think who bore thy last, 
 Yfit mutely in forlor'n obedience died ! 
 
 He 
 
 Bs — his friend — black faces in the 
 camp 
 Where moved those peerless brows and eyes of 
 old. 
 
 {Enter "LvsiK and Husain.) 
 
 Well, and the movement — is it as you hope ? 
 'T is Lucca? 
 
 J^T. ^ Ah, the Pisan trumpet merely ! 
 
 Tiburzio's envoy, I must needs receive. 
 
 Horn. Whom I withdraw before ; though if 
 I lingered 
 You could not wonder, for my time fleets fast. 
 The overtaking night brings such reward ! 
 And where wul then be room for me ? Yet. 
 
 praised, 
 Remember who was first to promise praise. 
 And envy those who also can perform ! \Goes. 
 
 Jjwr. This trumpet from the Pisans ? — 
 
 Husain. In the camp ; 
 
 A very noble presence — Braccio's visage 
 On Puccio's body — calm and fixed and good ; 
 A. man I seem as I had seen before : 
 Most like, it was some statue had the face. 
 
 Lur. Admit him ! This will prove the last 
 delay. 
 
 Hus. Ay, friend, go on, and die thou going 
 on ! 
 Thou heard'st what the grave woman said but 
 
 now : 
 To-night rewards thee. That is well to hear ; 
 But stop not therefore : hear it, and go on ! 
 
 Lur. Oh, their reward and triumph and the 
 rest 
 They round me in the ears with, all day long ? 
 All that, I never take for earnest, friend ! 
 Well would it suit us, — their triumphal arch 
 Or storied pillar, — thee and me, the Moors ! 
 But gratitude in those Italian eyes — 
 That, we shall get ? 
 
 Hus. It is too cold an air. 
 
 Our sun rose out of yonder mound of mist : 
 Where is he now ? So, I trust none of them.. 
 
 Lur. Truly? 
 
 Hus. I doubt and fear. There stands a wall 
 'Twixt our expansive and explosive race 
 And those absorbing, concentrating men. 
 They use thee. 
 
 Lur. And I feel it, Husain ! yes. 
 
 And care not — yes, an alien force like miine 
 Is only called to play its part outside 
 Their different nature ; where its sole use seems 
 To fight with and keep off an adverse force. 
 As alien, — which repelled, mine too withdraws : 
 Inside, they know not what to do with me. 
 Thus 1 have told them laughingly and oft, 
 But long since am prepared to learn the worst. 
 
 Hus. What is the worst ? 
 
 Lur. I will forestall them, Husain, 
 
 Will speak the destiny they dare not speak — 
 Banish myself before they find the heart, 
 I will be first to say, " The work rewards ! 
 I know, for all your praise, my use is over. 
 So may it prove ! — meanwhile 't is best I go, 
 Go carry safe my memories of you all 
 To other scenes of action, newer lands." — 
 Thus leaving them confirmed in their belief 
 They would not easily have tired of me. 
 You think this hard to say ? 
 
304 
 
 LURIA 
 
 Hus. Say or not say, 
 
 So thou but go, so they but let thee go 1 
 This hating people, that hate each the other, 
 And in one blandness to us Moors unite — 
 Locked each to each like slippery snakes, I say, 
 Which still in all their tangles, hissing tongue 
 And threatening tail, ne'er do each other harm ; 
 While any creature of a better blood. 
 They seem to fight for, while they circle safe 
 And never touch it, — pines without a wound. 
 Withers away beside their eyes and breath. 
 See thou, if Pueoio come not safely out 
 Of Bra^cio's grasp, this Braccio sworn his foe. 
 As Braccio safely from Domizia's toils 
 Who hates him most ! But thou, the friend of 
 aU, 
 . . Come out of them ! 
 
 Tjut. The Pisan trumpet now ! 
 
 Hus. Breathe free — it is an enemy, no 
 friend ! ... [Goes. 
 
 Lur. He keeps his instincts, no new culture 
 mars 
 Their perfect use in him ; just so the brutes 
 Rest not, are anxious without visible cause. 
 When change is in the elements at work. 
 Which man's trained senses fail to apprehend. 
 But here, — he takes the distant chariot-wheel 
 For thunder, festal flame for lightning's flash. 
 The finer traits of cultivated life 
 For treachery and malevolence : I see ! 
 {Enter Tieurzio.) 
 IjUT, Quick, sir, your message ! I but wait 
 your message 
 To sound the charge. You bring no overture 
 For truce ? — I would not, for your General's 
 
 sake, 
 You spoke of truce : a time to fight is come. 
 And, whatsoe'er the fight's event, he keeps 
 His honest soldier's-name to beat rae with. 
 Or leaves me all himself to beat, I trust ! 
 Tiburzio. I am Tiburzio. 
 I/ur. You? 'T is — yes , . . Tiburzio! 
 
 You were the last to keep the ford i' the valley 
 From Puccio, when I threw in succors there ! 
 Why, I was on the heights — through the defile 
 Ten minutes after, when the prey was lost 1 
 You wore an open skull-cap with a twist 
 Of water-reeds — the plume being hewn away ; 
 While I drove down my battle from the heights, 
 I saw with my own eyes ! 
 
 Tib. And you are Luria 
 
 Who sent my cohort, that laid down its arms 
 In error of the battle-signal's sense. 
 Back safely to me at the critical time — 
 One of a hundred deeds. I know you ! There- 
 fore 
 To none but you could I . . . 
 
 Iait. No truce, Tiburzio I 
 
 Tib. Luria, you know the peril imminent 
 On Pisa, — that you have us in the toils, 
 Us her last safeguard, all that intercepts 
 The rage of her iraplacablest of foes 
 From Pisa : if we fall to-day, she falls. 
 Though Lucca will arrive, yet, 't is too late. 
 You have so plainly here the best of it. 
 That you must feel, brave soldier as yon are. 
 How dangprous ve grow in this extreme. 
 How truly formidable by despair. 
 
 Still, probabilities should have their weight : 
 The extreme chance is ours, but, that chance 
 
 failing, r i.- o 
 
 You win this battle. Wherefore say I this ! 
 To be well apprehended when I add. 
 This danger absolutely comes from you. 
 Were you, who threaten thus, a Florentine . . . 
 
 Lur. Sir, I am nearer Florence than her sons. 
 I can, and have perhaps obliged the State, 
 Nor paid a mere son's duty. 
 
 Tib. Even so. 
 
 Were you the son of Florence, yet endued 
 With all your present nobleness of soul. 
 No question, what 1 must communicate 
 Would not detach you from her. 
 
 Lur. Me, detach ? 
 
 Tib. Time urges. Yon will ruin presently 
 Pisa, yon never knew, for Florence' sake 
 You think you know. I have from time to 
 
 time 
 Made prize of certain secret missives sent 
 From Braccio here, the OommissaiT, home : 
 And knowing Florence otherwise, I piece 
 The entire chain out, from these its scattered 
 
 links. 
 Your trial occupies the Signory ; 
 They sit in judgment on your conduct now. 
 When men at home inquire into the acts 
 Which in the field e'en foes appreciate ... 
 Brief, they are Florentines ! You, saving 
 
 them, 
 Seek but the sure destruction saviors find. 
 
 Lur. Tiburzio ! 
 
 Tih. All the wonder is of course. 
 
 I am not here to teach you, nor direct. 
 Only to loyally apprise — scarce that. 
 This is the latest letter, sealed and safe, 
 As it left here an hour ago. One way 
 Of two thought free to Florence, I command. 
 The duplicate is on its road ; but this, — 
 Read it, and then I shall have more to say. 
 
 Lur. Florence ! 
 
 Tib. Now, were yourself a Florentine, 
 
 This letter, let it hold the worst it can. 
 Would be no reason you should fall away. 
 The mother city is the mother still. 
 And recognition of the children's service 
 Her own afl'air ; reward — there 's no reward ! 
 But you are bo'jnd by quite another tie. 
 Nor nature shows, nor reason, why at first 
 A foreigner, born friend to all alike, 
 Should give himself to any special State 
 More than another, stand by Florence' side 
 Rather than Pisa ; 't is as fair a city 
 You war against, as that you fight for — famed 
 As well as she in story, graced no less 
 With noble heads and patriotic hearts : 
 Nor to a stranger's eye would either cause. 
 Stripped of the cumulative loves and hates 
 Which take importance from familiar view, 
 Stand as the right and sole to he upheld. 
 Therefore, should the preponderating gift 
 Of love and trust, Florence was first to throw. 
 Which made you hers, not Pisa's, void the 
 
 Old ties dissolving, thin^ resume their place. 
 And all begins again. Break seal and read ! 
 At least let Pisa offer for you now ! 
 
LURIA 
 
 305 
 
 And I, as a good Pisan, shall rejoice, 
 
 Thoug-h for myself I lose, in graining you, 
 
 This laat fight and its opportunity ; 
 
 The chance it brings of saving Pisa yet. 
 
 Or in the turn of battle dying so 
 
 That shame should want its extreme bitterness. 
 
 Lur. Tiburzio, you that fight for Pisa now 
 As I for Florence . . . say my chance "were 
 
 yours ! 
 You read this letter, and you find . . , no, no ! 
 Too mad ! 
 
 Tib. I read the letter, find they purpose 
 
 When I have crushed their foe, to crush me : 
 
 well? 
 Lur. You, being their captain, what is it you 
 
 do? 
 Tib. Why, as it is, all cities are alike ; 
 As Florence pays you, Pisa will pay me. 
 I shall be as belied, whate'er the event, 
 As you, or more : my weak head, they will say 
 Prompted this last expedient, my faint heart 
 Entailed on them indelible diusgrace, 
 Both which defects ask proper punishment. 
 Another tenure of obedience, mine ! 
 You are no son of Pisa's : break and read ! 
 Lur. And act on what I read? What act 
 
 were fit ? 
 If the firm-fixed foundation of my faith 
 In Florence, who to me stands for mankind, 
 
 — If that break up and, disimprisoning 
 From the abyss . . . Ah friend, it cannot be ! 
 You may be very sag-e, yet — all the world 
 Havmg to fail, or your sagacity. 
 
 You do not wish to find yourself alone ! 
 
 What would the world be worth ? Whose love 
 
 be sure ? 
 The world remains : you are deceived ! 
 
 Tib. Your hand ! 
 
 I lead the vanguard. — If you fall, beside, 
 The better: I am left to speak ! For me, 
 This was my duty, nor would I rejoice 
 If I could help, it misses its effect ; 
 And after all you will look gallantly 
 Found dead here with that letter in your breast. 
 Lur. Tiburzio — I would see these people 
 
 once 
 And test them ere I answer finally ! 
 At your arrival let the trumpet sound : 
 If mine return not then the wonted cry 
 It means that I believe — am Pisa's ! 
 
 Tib. Well ! 
 
 [_Goes. 
 Lur. My heart will have it he speaks true ! 
 
 My blood 
 Beats close to this Tiburzio as a friend. 
 If he had stept into my watch-tent, night 
 And the wild desert full of foes around, 
 I should have broke the bread and given the 
 
 salt 
 Secure, and, when my hour of watch was done, 
 Taken my turn to sleep between his knees 
 Safe in the untroubled brow and honest cheek. 
 Oh world, where all things pass and naught 
 
 abides, 
 Oh life, the long mutation — is it so ? 
 Is it with life as with the body's change ? 
 
 — Where, e'en though better follow, good must 
 
 Nor manhood's strength can mate with boy- 
 hood's grace, 
 Nor a^e's wisdom, in its turn, find strength, 
 But silently the first gift dies away, 
 And though the new stays, never both at once, 
 Life's time of savage instinct o'er with me, 
 It fades and dies away, past trusting more, 
 As if to punish the ingratitude 
 With which I turned to grow in these nev/ 
 
 lights. 
 And learned to look with European eyes. 
 Yet it is better, this cold certain way. 
 Where Braccio's brow tells nothing, Puccio's 
 
 mouth, 
 Domizia's eyes reject the searcher : yes ! 
 For on their calm sag-acity I lean, 
 Their sense of right, deliberate choice of good, 
 Sure, as they know my deeds, they deal with 
 
 me. 
 Yes, that is better — that is best of all ! 
 Such faith stays when mere wild belief would 
 
 go. 
 Yes — when the desert creature's heart, at fault 
 Amid the scattering tempest's pillared sands, 
 Betrays its step into the pathless drift — 
 The calm instructed eye of man holds fast 
 By the sole bearing of the visible star. 
 Sure that when slow the whirling wreck subside, 
 The boundaries, lost now, i^iall be found 
 
 ag'ain, — 
 The palm-trees and the pyramid over all. 
 Yes : I trust Florence : Pisa is deceived. 
 
 {Enter Beaccio, Puccio, and Domizia.) 
 Brae. Noon 'sat an end: no Lucca? Yon 
 
 must fight. 
 Lur. Do you remember ever, gentle friends, 
 I am no Florentine ? 
 
 Dom. It is yourself 
 
 Who still are forcing us, importunately, 
 To bear in mind what else we shotdd forget. 
 Imt. For loss ! — for what I lose in being 
 
 none ! 
 No shrewd man, such as you yourselves respect, 
 But would remind you of the stranger's loss 
 In natural friends and advocates at home, 
 Hereditary loves, even rivalships 
 With precedent for honor and reward. 
 Still, wiere 's a gain, too ! If you take it so, 
 The stranger's lot has special gain as well. 
 Do you forget there was my own far East 
 I might have given away myself to, once, 
 As now to Florence, and for such a gift, 
 Stood there like a descended deity ? 
 There, worship waits us : what is it waits here ? 
 [Shoios the letter. 
 See ! Chance has put into my hand the means 
 Of knowing what I earn, before I work. 
 Should I fight better, should I fight the worse, 
 With payment palpably before me ? See ! 
 Here lies my whole reward ! Best learn it now 
 Or keep it for the end's entire delight? 
 
 Brae. If you serve Florence as the vulgar 
 
 serve, 
 For swordsman 's-pay alone, — break seal and 
 
 read ! 
 In that case, you will find your full desert. 
 Lur. Give me my one last happy moment, 
 
 friends \ 
 
3o6 
 
 LURIA 
 
 You need me now, and all the graciousuess 
 This letter can contain will hardly balance 
 The after-feeling; that you need, no more. 
 This moment . . . oh, the East has use with 
 
 you ! 
 Its sword still flashes — is not flung- aside 
 With the past praise, in a dark corner yet ! 
 How say you ? 'T is not so with Florentines — 
 dptains of yours : for theni, the ended war 
 Is but a first step to the peace begun : 
 He who did well in war, just earas the right 
 Tij begin doing well in peace, you know : 
 And certain my precursors, — would not such 
 Look to themselves in such a chance as mine, 
 Secure the ground they trod upon, perhaps ? 
 For I have heard, by tts, or seemed to hear, 
 Of strange mishap, mistake, ingratitude. 
 Treachery even. tSay that one of you 
 Surmised this letter carried what might turn 
 To harm hereafter, cause him prejudice : 
 What would he do ? 
 
 Dom. [Hastily.] Thank God and take re- 
 venge ! 
 Hurl her own force against the city straight I 
 And, even at the m,oment when the foe 
 Sounded defiance . . . 
 
 (TiBDRZio's trumpet sounds in the distance. 
 
 Lur. Ah, yon Florentines ! 
 
 So would you do ? Wisely for you, no doubt ! 
 My simple Moorish instinct bids me clench 
 The obligation you relieve me from, 
 Still deeper ! [To Puc] Sound our answer, I 
 
 should say, 
 And thus : — [ Tearing the paper.] — The battle ! 
 That solves every doubt. 
 
 ACT in 
 
 AFTERNOON 
 PiTCCio, as making a report to Jacopo. 
 
 Puc, And here, your captain must report 
 the rest ; 
 For, as I say, the main engagement over 
 And Luria's special part in it performed. 
 How could a subaltern like me expect 
 Leisure or leave to occupy the field 
 And glean what dropped from his wide harvest- 
 ing? 
 I thought, when Lucca at the battle's end 
 Came up, just as the Pisan centre broke. 
 That Luria would detach me and prevent 
 The flying Pisans seeking what they found, 
 Friends in the rear, a point to rally by. 
 But no, more honorable proved my post ! 
 I had the august captive to escort 
 Safe to our camp ; some other could pursue, 
 Fight, and be famous ; gentler chance was 
 
 mine — 
 Tiburzio's wounded spirit must be soothed ! 
 He 's in the tent there. 
 
 Jacopo. Is the substance down ? 
 
 I write — "The vanguard beaten and both 
 
 wings 
 In full retreat, Tiburzio prisoner " — 
 And now, — '' That they fell back and formed 
 again 
 
 On Lucca's coming." Why then, after all, 
 
 'T is half a victory, no conclusive one ? 
 Puc. Two operations where a sole had 
 
 served. 
 Jac. And Luria's fault was — ? 
 Puc. Oh, for fault — not much I 
 
 He led the attack, a thought impetuously, 
 
 — There 's commonly more prudence ; now, he 
 seemed 
 
 To hurry measures, otherwise well judged. 
 
 By over-concentrating strength at first 
 
 Against the enemy's van both wings escaped : 
 
 That 's reparable, yet it is a fault. 
 {Enter Bkaccio.) 
 Jac. As good as a full victory to Florence, 
 
 With the ad^ antage of a fault beside — 
 
 What is it, Puceio ? — that by pressing forward 
 
 With too impetuous . . . 
 
 Brae. The report anon ! 
 
 Thanks, sir — you have elsewhere a charge, I 
 know. [Puccio goes. 
 
 There 's nothing done but I would do again ; 
 
 Yet, Lapo, it may be the past proves nothing, 
 
 And Luria has kept faithful to the close. 
 Jac. I was for waiting. 
 Brae. Yes : so was not I. 
 
 He could not choose but tear that letter — true ! 
 
 Still, certain of his tones, I mind, and looks : — 
 
 You saw, too, with a fresher soul than I. 
 
 So, Porzio seem.ed an injured man, they say ! 
 
 Well, I have gone upon the broad, sure ground. 
 {Enter Luria, Puccio, and Domizia.) 
 Lur. [To Puc] Say, at his pleasure I will 
 see Tiburzio ! 
 
 All 's at his pleasure. 
 Dom. [To Lur.] Were I not forewarned 
 
 You would reject, as you do constantly. 
 
 Praise, — I might tell you how you have de- 
 served 
 
 Of Florence by this last and crowning feat : 
 
 But words offend. 
 Lur. Nay, you may praise me now. 
 
 I want instruction every hour, I find. 
 
 On points where once I saw least need of it ; 
 
 And praise, I have been used to slight per- 
 haps. 
 
 Seems scarce so easily dispensed with now. 
 
 After a battle, half one's strength is gone ; 
 
 The glorious passion in us once appeased. 
 
 Our reason's calm cold dreadful voice begins. 
 
 All justice, power and beauty scarce appear 
 
 Monopolized by Florence, as of late. 
 
 To me, the stranger : you, no doubt, may 
 know 
 
 Wliy Pisa needs must bear her rival's yoke. 
 
 And perad venture I grow nearer you. 
 
 For 1, too, want to know and be assured. 
 
 When a cause ceases to reward itself. 
 
 Its friend seeks fresh sustainments ; praise is 
 one. 
 
 And here stand you — you, lady, praise me 
 well. 
 
 But yours — (your pardon) — is unlearned 
 praise. 
 
 To the motive, the endeavor, the heart's self. 
 
 Your quick sense looks : you crown and call 
 aright 
 
 The soul o' the purpose, ere 't is shaped as act. 
 
LURIA 
 
 307 
 
 Takes flesh i' the world, and clothes itself a 
 
 kingr. 
 But when the act comes, stands for what 't is 
 
 worth, 
 
 — Here 's Puccio, the skilled soldier, he '3 my 
 
 judga ! 
 Was all well, Puccio ? 
 
 Puc, All was . . . must be well : 
 
 If we beat Lucca presently, as doubtless . . . 
 
 — !No, there 's no doubt, we must — all was well 
 
 done. 
 Lur. In truth ? Still you are of the trade, 
 
 my Puccio ! 
 You have the fellow-craftsman's sympathy. 
 There 's none cares, like a fellow of the craft, 
 For the all unestimated sum of pains 
 That go to a success the world can see : 
 Th^ praise then, but the best they never know 
 
 — While you know ! So, if envy mix with it, 
 Hate even, still the bottom-praise of all, 
 Whatever be the dregs, that drop 's pure gold ! 
 
 — For nothing 's like it ; nothing else records 
 Those daily, nightly drippings in the dark 
 
 Of the heart's blood, the world lets drop away 
 Forever — so, pure gold that praise must be I 
 And I have yours, my soldier ! yet the best 
 Is still to come. There 's one looks on apart 
 Whom all refers to, failure or success ; 
 What 's done might be our best, our utmost 
 
 work, 
 And yet inadequate to serve his need. 
 Here 's Braccio now, for Florence — here 's our 
 
 service — 
 Well done for us, seems it well done for him ? 
 His chosen engine, tasked to its full strength 
 Answers the end ? Should he have chosen 
 
 higher ? 
 Do we help Florence, now our best is wrought ? 
 Brae. This battle, with the foregone services. 
 Saves Florence. 
 
 Lur. Why then, all is very well ! 
 
 Here am I in the middle of my friends, 
 Who know ra.e and who love me, one and all. 
 And yet ... 't is like . . . this instant while 
 
 I speak 
 Is like the turning-moment of a dream 
 When . . . Ah, you are not foreigners like 
 
 me ! 
 Well then, one always dreams of friends at 
 
 home ; 
 And always comes, I say, the turning-point 
 When something changes in the friendly eyes 
 That love and look on you ... so slight, so 
 
 slight . . . 
 And yet it tells you they are dead and gone, 
 Or changed and enemies, for all their words, 
 And all is mockery and a maddening show. 
 You now, so kind here, all you Florentines, 
 What is it in your eyes . . . those lips, those 
 
 brows . . . 
 Nobody spoke it, yet I know it well ! 
 Come now — this battle saves you, all 's at end, 
 Your use of me is o'er, for good, for ill, — 
 Come now, what 's done against me, while I 
 
 speak, 
 In Florence ? Come ! I feel it in my blood, 
 My eyes, ray hair, a voice is in my ears 
 That spite of all this smiling and soft speech 
 
 You are betraying me I What is it you do ? 
 Have it your way, and think my use is over — 
 Think you are saved and may throw off the 
 
 mask — 
 Have it my way, and think more work remains 
 Which I could do, — so, show you fear me not I 
 Or prudent be, or daring, as you choose, 
 But tell me — tell what I refused to know 
 At noon, lest heart should fail me! Well? 
 
 That letter ? 
 My fate is sealed at Florence ! What is it ? 
 
 Brae. Sir, I shall not deny what you divine. 
 It is no novelty for innocence 
 To be suspected, but a privilege : 
 TTie after certain compensation comes. 
 Charges, I say not whether false or true. 
 Have been preferred against you some time 
 
 since. 
 Which Florence was bound, plainly, to receive. 
 And which are therefore undergoing now 
 The due investigation. That is all. 
 I doubt not but your innocence will prove 
 Apparent and illustrious, as to me, 
 To them this evening, when the trial ends. 
 Lur. My trial ? 
 
 Lorn. Florence, Florence to the end, 
 
 My whole heart thanks th-'t ! 
 
 Puc. [To Brac] What is " trial," sir ? 
 
 It was not for a trial, — surely, no — 
 I furnished you those notes from time to time ? 
 I held myself aggrieved — I am a man — 
 And I might speak, — ay, and speak mere 
 
 truth, too, 
 And yet not mean at bottom of my heart 
 What should assist a — trial, do you say ? 
 You should have told me ! 
 
 Dom. Nay, go on, go on ! 
 
 His sentence ! Do they sentence him ? What 
 
 is it? 
 The block — wheel ? 
 
 Brac. Sentence there is none as yet. 
 
 Nor shall I give my own opinion now 
 Of what it should be, or is like to be. 
 When it is passed, applaud or disapprove ! 
 Up to that point, what is there to impugn ? 
 Lur. They are right, then, to try me ? 
 Brac. I assert. 
 
 Maintain and justify the absohite right 
 Of Florence to do all she can have done 
 In this procedure, — standing on her guard, 
 Receiving even services like yours 
 With utmost fit suspicious wariness. 
 In other matters, keep the mummery np ! 
 Take all the experiences of all the world, 
 Each knowledge that broke through a heart to 
 
 life, 
 Each reasoning which, to reach, burnt out a 
 
 brain, 
 — In other cases, know these, warrant these, 
 And then dispei^e with these — 't is very well ! 
 Let friend trust friend, and love demand love's 
 
 like, 
 And gratitude be claimed for benefits, — 
 There 's grace in that, — and when the fresh 
 
 heart breaks, 
 The new brain proves a ruin, what of them ? 
 Where is the matter of one moth the more 
 Singed in the candle, at a sunmier's end ? 
 
3o8 
 
 LURIA 
 
 But Florence is no simple John or James 
 To have his toy, his fancy, his conceit 
 That he 's the one excepted man by fate. 
 And, when fate shows him he 's mistaken 
 
 there. 
 Die with all good men's praise, and yield his 
 
 place 
 To Paul and George intent to try their chance ! 
 Florence exists because these pass away. 
 She 's a contrivance to supply a type 
 Of man, which men's deficiencies refuse ; 
 She binds so many, that she grows out of 
 
 them — 
 Stands steady o'er their numbers, though they 
 
 change 
 And pass away — there 's always what upholds, 
 Always enough to fashion the great show. 
 As see, yon hanging city, in the sun, 
 Of shapely cloud substantially the same ! 
 A thousand vapors rise and sink again. 
 Are interfused, and live their life and die, — 
 Yet ever hangs the steady show i' the air, 
 Under the sun's straight influence : that is 
 
 ■well. 
 That is worth heaven should hold, and God 
 
 should bless ! 
 And so is Florence, — the unseen sun above. 
 Which draws and holds suspended all of us, 
 Binds transient vapors into a single cloud 
 Differing from each and better than they all. 
 And shall she dare to stake this permanence 
 On any one man's f aiUi ? Man's heart is weak. 
 And its temptations many : let her prove 
 Each servant to the very uttermost 
 Before she grant him her reward, I say ! 
 Dom. And as for hearts she chances to mis- 
 take. 
 Wronged hearts, not destined to receive re- 
 ward. 
 Though they deserve it, did she only know, 
 — What should she do for these ? 
 
 Brae. What does she not ? 
 
 Say, that she gives them but herself to serve ! 
 Here 's Lnria — what had profited his strength, 
 When half an hour of sober fancying 
 Had shown him step by step the uselessness 
 Of strength exerted for strength's proper sake ? 
 But the truth is, she did create that strength. 
 Draw to the end the corresponding means. 
 The world is wide — are we the only men ? 
 Oh, for the time, the social purpose' sake. 
 Use words agreed on, bandy epithets. 
 Call any man the sole great wise and good ! 
 But shall we therefore, standing by ourselves. 
 Insult our souls and God with the same speech ? 
 There, swarm the ignoble thousands under 
 
 him : 
 What marks us from the hundreds and the 
 
 tens? 
 Florence took up, turned all one way the soul 
 Of Luria with its fires, and here he glows 1 
 She takes me out of all the world as him, 
 Fixing my coldness till like ice it checks 
 The fire I So, Braceio, Luria, which is best ? 
 Lur. Ah, brave me ? And is this indeed the 
 way 
 To gain your good word and sincere esteem ? 
 Am I the baited animal that must turn 
 
 And fight his baiters to deserve their praise ? 
 
 Obedience is mistake then ? Be it so ! 
 
 IJo you indeed remember I stand here 
 
 The captain of the conquering army, — mine — 
 
 With all your tokens, praise and promise, ready 
 
 ■io show for what their names meant when you 
 
 irave. 
 Not what you style them now you take away ? 
 If I call in my troops to arbitrate. 
 And dash the first enthusiastic thrill 
 Of victory with this you menace now — 
 Commend to the instinctive popular sense. 
 My story first, your comment afterward, — 
 Will they take, think you, part with you or me ? 
 If I say — I, the laborer they saw work. 
 Ending my work, ask pay, and find my lords 
 Have all this while provided silently 
 Against the day of pay and proving faith. 
 By what you call my sentence that 's to come — 
 Will friends advise I wait complacently ? 
 If I meet Florence half-way at their head, 
 What will you do, my mild antagonist ? 
 
 Brae. I will rise up like fire, proud and 
 
 triumphant 
 That FJorence knew you thoroughly and by 
 
 me. 
 And so was saved. " See, Italy," I 'li say, 
 " The crown of our precautions ! Here 's a 
 
 man 
 Was far advanced, just touched on tlie belief 
 Less subtle cities had accorded long ; 
 But "we were wiser ; at the end conies this ! " 
 And from that minute, where is Luria ? Lost I 
 The very stones of Florence cry against 
 The all-exacting, naught-enduring fool. 
 Who thus resente her first probation, fiouts 
 As if he, only, shone and cast no shade. 
 He, only, walked the earth with privilege 
 Against suspicion, free where angels fear: 
 He, for the first inquisitive mother's-word. 
 Must turn, and stand on his defence, f orsooiih ! 
 Reward ? You will not be worth punishment I 
 Lur. And Florence knew me thus ! Thus I 
 
 have lived, — 
 And thus you, with the clear fine intellect, 
 Braceio, the cold acute instructed mind. 
 Out of the stir, so calm and unconf used. 
 Reported me — how could you otherwise ! 
 Ay ? — and what dropped from you, just now, 
 
 moreover ? 
 Your information, Puccio ? — Did your skill, 
 Your understanding sympathy approve 
 Such a report of me ? Was this the end ? 
 Or is even this the end ? Can I stop here ? 
 You, lady, with the woman's stand apart, 
 The heart to see with, past man's brain and 
 
 eyes, 
 ... I cannot fathom why you should destroy 
 The unoffending one, you call your friend — 
 Still, lessoned by the good examples here 
 Of friendship, 't is but natural I ask — 
 Had you a further aim, in aught you ui^d. 
 Than your friend's profit — in all those in- 
 
 Of perfidy, all Florence wrought of wrong — 
 All I remember now for the first time ? 
 
 Dom. I am a daughter of the Traversari, 
 Sister of Porzio and of Berto both. 
 
LURIA. 
 
 309 
 
 So, hare foreseen all that has come to pass. 
 I knew the Florence that could doubt their 
 
 faith. 
 Must needs mistrust a stranger's — dealing 
 
 them 
 Punishment, would deny him his ri^ward. 
 And I balieved, the shame they bore and died, 
 He would not bear, but live and fisht against — 
 tjeeing he was of other stuff than they. 
 Xur, Hear them ! All these at^ainst one 
 foreigner ! 
 And all this whUe, where is, in the whole world. 
 To his good faith a single witness ? 
 Tib. [ Who has entered unseen during the pre- 
 ceding dialogue.] Here I 
 Thus I bear witness, not in word but deed. 
 I live for Pisa ; she 's not lost to-day 
 By many chances — much prevents from that ! 
 Her army has been beaten, I am here. 
 But Lucca comes at last, one happy chance ! 
 I rather would see Pisa three times lost 
 Than saved by any traitor, even by you ; 
 The example of a traitor's happy fortune 
 ^Quld brmg more evil in the end than good ; — 
 Pisa rejects the traitor, craves yourself I 
 I,. i» her name, resign forthwith to yon 
 My charge, — the highest office, sword and 
 
 shield ! 
 You shall not, by my counsel, turn on Flor- 
 ence 
 Your army, give her cajunuty that ground — 
 Nor bring one 3oldie;i; : be you all we gain ! 
 And all she'll lose, — a head to deck some 
 
 bridge, 
 And save the cost o.' the crown should deck the 
 
 head. 
 Leave her to perish in her perfidy, 
 Plague-stricfce» and stripped naked to all eyes, 
 A proverb and a by-word in all mouths ! 
 Go you to Pisa ! Florence is my place — 
 LeavQ me to teU her of the rectitude, 
 L, j^om the first, told Pisa, knowing it. 
 TcjPisal 
 Dom. Ah my Braccio, are you caught ? 
 lirac. Pucfiio, good soldier and good eitir 
 zen, 
 Whorai I have ever Isept beneath my eye. 
 Ready as fit,, to serve, in this event 
 Florence,, who clear foretold it from the first — 
 Through me, she gives you the comniiand and 
 
 charge 
 She takes, through me, from him who, held it 
 
 late ! 
 A painful trial, very sore, was, yours : 
 All that could draw out, marshal in array 
 The selfish passions 'gainst the public good — 
 Slights, scorns, neglects, were heaped on you to 
 
 bear : 
 And ever you did bear and. bow the head ! 
 It had been: sorry trial, to precede 
 Your feet, hold up the promise, of reward 
 For luring gleam ; your footsteps kept, the 
 
 track 
 Through dark and doubt : take all the light at 
 
 once ! 
 Trial is over, consummation shijies ; 
 Well have you served,, as well henceforth com- 
 mand 1 
 
 Fuc. No, no ... I dare not ! I am grate- 
 ful, p:lad ; 
 But Luna — you shall understand he 's 
 
 wronged ; 
 And he 's my captain — this is not the way 
 We soldiers climb to fortune : think again ! 
 The sentence is not even passed^ beside ! 
 I dare not : where 's the soldier could ? 
 
 Lur. Now, Florence — 
 
 Is it to be ? You will know all the strength 
 0' the savage — to your neck the proof must 
 
 go? 
 You will prove the biute nature ? Ah, I see ! 
 The savage plainly is impassible — 
 He keeps his calm way through insulting words. 
 Sarcastic looks, sharp gestures — one of whicn 
 Would stop you, fatal to your finer sense. 
 But if he stolidly advance, march mute 
 Without a mark upon his callotis,hide. 
 Through the mere brushwoo,d you grow angry 
 
 with. 
 And leave the tatters of your flesh upon, 
 
 — You have, to learn that when the true bar 
 
 eomesv 
 The murk midrforest, the grand obstacle. 
 Which when you reach, you give the laliM>r up. 
 Nor dash on, but lie down composed before, 
 
 — He goes against it, like the brute he is : 
 It falls before him, or he. dies in his course. 
 I kept my course through past ingratitude : 
 I saw — it does seem, now,, as if Isaw, 
 Could not but see, those insults as they fell, 
 
 — Ay, let thg-va glance from off me, very like. 
 Laughing, perhaps, to think the quality 
 You grew so bold on, while you so despised 
 The Moor's dull niute inapppehensive mood. 
 Was saving you : I bore and kept my course. 
 Now real wrong fronts me : see if I succumb ! 
 Florence withstands, me ? I will punish her. 
 
 At night my sentence will arrive, you say. 
 TiJl then I cannot, if I would, rebel 
 
 — Unauthorized to lay my office down. 
 Retaining my full power to will and do : 
 After — it is to, see. Tiburzio, thanks ! 
 
 Go ; you are free : join Lucca ! I suspend 
 All further operations till, to-night. 
 Thank you,, and for the silence most of all! 
 [To Brac] Let my complacent bland accuser 
 
 go, 
 Carry his self -approving head and heart 
 Safe through the army which would trample 
 
 him 
 Dead in a moment at ray word or sign I 
 Go, sir, to Florence ; tell friends what I say — 
 That while I wait my sentence, theirs waits 
 
 them ! 
 [To DoM.] You, lady, — ^you have black 
 
 Italian eyes ! 
 I would be generous, if I might : oh, yes — 
 For 1 remember how so oft you seemed 
 Inclined at heart to break the barrier down 
 Which Florence finds God built between us 
 
 both. 
 AlaSvfor generosity! this hour 
 Asks retribution : bear it as you may, 
 I miBSt,— ' the Moor — the savage, — pardon you ! 
 PuQcio, my trusty soldier, see them forth ! 
 
310 
 
 LURIA 
 
 ACT IV 
 
 EVENING 
 Enter Puccio and Jacopo. 
 
 Puc. What Luria will do ? Ah, 't is yours, 
 
 fair sir. 
 Your and your subtle-witted master's part, 
 To tell me that ; I tell you what he can. 
 Jac. Friend, you mistake my station : I ob- 
 serve 
 The game, watch how my betters play, no 
 
 more. 
 Puc. But mankind are not pieces — there 's 
 
 your fault ! 
 You cannot push them, and, the first move 
 
 made. 
 Lean back and study what the next shall be. 
 In confidence that, when 't is fixed uj^on, 
 You find just where you left them, blacks and 
 
 whites : 
 Men go on moving when your hand 's away. 
 You build, I viotiee, firm on Luria's faith 
 This whole time, — firmlier than I choose to 
 
 build. 
 Who never doubted it — of old, that is — 
 With Luria in bis ordinary mind. 
 But now, oppression makes the wise man mad ; 
 How do I know he will not turn and stand 
 And hold his own against you, as he may ? 
 Suppose he biit withdraw to Pisa — well, — 
 Then, even if all happen to your wish, 
 Which is a chance ... 
 
 Jac. Nay — t was an oversight, 
 
 Not waiting till the proper warrant came : 
 You could not take what was not ours to give. 
 But when at night the sentence really comes. 
 Our city authorizes past dispute 
 Luria's removal and transfers the charge, 
 You will perceive your duty and accept ? 
 Puc. Accept what ? muster-rolls of soldiers' 
 
 names ? 
 An army upon paper ? I want men. 
 The hearts as well as hands — and where 's a 
 
 heart 
 But beats with Luria, in the multitude 
 I come from walking through by Luria's side ? 
 You gave them Luria, set him thus to grow, 
 Head-like, ujion their trunk; one heart feeds 
 
 both, ^ 
 They feel him there, live twice, and well know 
 
 why. 
 — For they do know, if you are ignorant, 
 Who kept his own place and respected theirs. 
 Managed their sweat, yet never spared his blood. 
 All was your act : another might have served — 
 There 's peradventure no such dearth of heads — 
 But you chose Luria : so, they grew one flesh. 
 And now, for nothing they can understand, 
 Luria removed, off is to roll the head ; 
 The body 's mine — much I shall do with it ! 
 Jac. That 's at the worst. 
 Puc. No — at the best, it is ! 
 
 Best, do you hear ? I saw them by his side. 
 Only we two with Luria in the camp 
 Are left that keep the secret ? You think that ? 
 Hear what I know : from rear to van, no heart 
 
 But felt the quiet patient hero there 
 
 Was wronged, nor in the moveless ranks an eye 
 
 But glancing told its fellow the whole story 
 
 Of that convicted silent knot of spies 
 
 Who passed through them to Florence ; they 
 
 might pass — 
 No breast but gladlier beat when free of such .' 
 Our troops will catch up Luria, close him round. 
 Bear him to Florence as their natural lord. 
 Partake his fortune, live or die with him. 
 Jac. And by mistake catch up along with 
 him 
 Puccio, no doubt, compelled in self despite 
 To still continue second in command ! 
 
 Puc. No, sir, no second nor so fortunate ! 
 Your tricks succeed with metoo well for that ! 
 1 am as you have made me, live and die 
 To serve your end — a mere trained fighting- 
 hack. 
 With words, you laugh at while they leave your 
 
 mouth. 
 For my life's rule and ordinance of God ! 
 I have to do my duty, keep my faith. 
 And earn my praise, and guard against my 
 
 blame. 
 As I was trained . I shall accept your charge. 
 And fight against one better than myself. 
 Spite of my heart's conviction of his worth — 
 That, you may count on ! — just as hitherto 
 I have gone on, persuaded I was wronged, 
 Slighted, insulted, terms we learn by rote, — 
 All because Luria superseded me — 
 Because the better nature, fresh-inspired. 
 Mounted above me to its proper place ! 
 What mattered all the kindly graciousness, 
 The cordial brother's-bearing ? This was 
 
 clear — 
 I, once the captain, now was subaltern. 
 And so must keep complaining like a fool ! 
 Go, take the curse of a lost soul, I say ! 
 You neither play your puppets to the end, 
 Nor treat the real man, — for his realness' sake 
 Thrust rudely in their place, — with such re- 
 gard 
 As might console them for their altered rank. 
 Me, the mere steady soldier, you depose 
 For Luria, and here 's all your pet deserves ! 
 Of what account, then, is your laughing-stock ? 
 One word for all : whatever Luria does, 
 
 — If backed by his indignant troops he turn. 
 Revenge himself, and Florence go to ground, — 
 Or, for a signal everlasting shame, 
 
 He pardon you, simply seek better friends. 
 Side with the Fisans and Lucehese for change 
 
 — And if I, pledged to ingrates past belief. 
 Dare fight against a man such fools call false, 
 Who, inasmuch as he was true, fights me, — 
 Whichever way he win, he wins for worth, 
 For every soldier, for all true and good ! 
 
 Sir, chronicling the rest, omit not this ! 
 {As they go, enter Luhia and Husain.) 
 Hus. Saw'st thou ? — For they are gone ! 
 The world lies bare 
 Before thee, to be tasted, felt and seen 
 Like what it is, now Florence goes away ! 
 Thou livest now, with men art man again ! 
 Those Florentines were all to thee of old ; 
 But Braccio, but Domizia, gone is each, 
 
LURIA 
 
 311 
 
 There lie beneath thee thine own multitudes I 
 Saw'st thou ? 
 Lur. I saw. 
 
 Hus. Then, hold thy course, niy king ! 
 
 The years return. Let thy heart have its way : 
 Ah, they would play with thee as with all else, 
 Turn thee to use, and fashion thee anew. 
 Find out God's fault in thee as in the rest ? 
 Oh watch, oh listen only to these fiends 
 Once at their occupation ! Ere we know, 
 The free g-reat heaven is shut, their stifling pall 
 Drops till it frets the very tingling hair, 
 So weighs it on our head, — and, for the earth. 
 Our common earth is tethered up and down. 
 Over and across — "here shalt thou move," 
 
 they cry ! 
 Jjur. Ay, Husain ? 
 
 Hus. 80 have they spoiled all beside ! 
 
 So stands a man girt round with Florentines, 
 Priests, graybeards, Braccios, women, boys and 
 
 spies. 
 All in one tale, all singing the same song, 
 How thou must house, and live at bed and 
 
 hoai'd. 
 Take pledge and give it, go their every way, 
 Breathe to their measure, make thy blood beat 
 
 time 
 With theirs — or, all is nothing — thou art 
 
 lost — 
 A savage, how shouldst thou perceive as they ? 
 Feel glad to stand 'neath God's close naked 
 
 hand! 
 Look up to it ! Why, down they pull thy neck, 
 Lest it crush thee, who feel'st it and wouldst 
 
 kiss. 
 Without their priests that needs must glove it 
 
 first, 
 Lest peradventure flesh offend thy lip. 
 Love woman ! Why, a very beast thou art ! 
 Thou must . . . 
 Lur. Peace, Husain ! 
 
 Hus. Ay, but, spoiling all, 
 
 For all, else true things, substituting false. 
 That they should dare spoil, of aU instincts, 
 
 thine ! 
 Should dare to take thee with thine instincts up. 
 Thy battle-ardors, like a ball of fire, 
 And class them and allow them place and play 
 So far, no farther — unabashed the while ! 
 Thou with the soul that never can take rest — 
 Thou born to do, undo, and do again, 
 And never to be still, — wouldst thou make war ? 
 Oh, that is commendable, just and right ! 
 '*Come over," say they, " have the honor due 
 In living out thy nature ! Fight thy best : 
 It is to be for Florence, not thyself ! 
 For thee, it were a horror and a plague ; 
 For ns, when war is made for Florence, see, 
 How all is changed : the fire that fed on earth 
 Now towers to heaven ! " — 
 
 Lur. And what sealed up so long 
 
 My Husam's mouth ? 
 
 Hus. Oh friend, oh lord — for me, 
 
 What am I ? — I was silent at thy side. 
 Who am a part of thee. It is thy hand. 
 Thy foot that glows when in the heart fresh 
 
 blood 
 Boils up, thou heart of me ! Now, live again, 
 
 Again love as thou likest, hate as free ! 
 Turn to no Braccios nor Domizias now, 
 To ask, before thy very limbs dare move, 
 If Florence' welfare be <!oncemed thereby ! 
 
 Lur. So clear what Florence must expect of 
 me? 
 
 Hus. Both armies against Florence ! Take 
 revenge ! 
 Wide, deep — to live upon, in feeling now, — 
 And, after live, in memory, year by year — 
 And, with the dear conviction, die at last I 
 She lies now at thy pleasure : pleasure have ! 
 Their vaunted intellect that gilds our sense, 
 And blends with life, to show it better by, 
 
 — How think'st thou? — I have turned that 
 
 light on them ! 
 They called our thirst of war a transient thii^ ; 
 " The battle-element must pass away 
 From life," they said, "and leave a tranquil 
 
 world." 
 
 — Master, I took their light and turned it full 
 On that dull turgid vein they said would burst 
 And pass away ; and as I looked on Hfe, 
 Still everywhere I tracked this, though it hid 
 And shifted, lay so silent as it thought. 
 Changed shape and hue yet ever was the same. 
 Why, 't was all fighting, all their nobler life ! 
 All work was fighting, every harm — defeat, 
 And every joy obtained — a victory ! 
 
 Be not their dupe ! 
 
 — Their dupe ? That hour is past ! 
 Here stand'st thou in the glory and the calm : 
 AU is determined. Silence for me now ! 
 
 [Husain goes. 
 Lur. Have I heard all ? 
 Dom. [Advancing from the background.'] No, 
 Luria, I remain ! 
 Not from the motives these have urged on thee, 
 Ignoble, insufficient, incomplete, 
 And pregnant each with sure seeds of decay, 
 As failing of sustainment from thyself, 
 
 — Neither from low revenge, nor selfishness, 
 Nor savage lust of power, nor one, nor all, 
 Shalt thou abolish Florence ! I proclaim 
 The angel in thee, and reject the sprites 
 Which ineffectual crowd about his strength, 
 And mingle with his work and claim a share ! 
 Inconsciously to the augustest end 
 
 Thou hast arisen : second not in rank 
 
 So much as time, to him who first ordained 
 
 That Florence, thou art to destroy, should be. 
 
 Yet him a star, too, guided, who broke first 
 
 The pride of lonely power, the life apart, 
 
 And made the eminences, each to each, 
 
 Lean o'er the level world and let it Ue 
 
 Safe from the thunder henceforth 'neath their 
 
 tops ; 
 So the few famous men of old combined, 
 And let the multitude lise underneath. 
 And reach them and unite — so Florence grew : 
 Braccio speaks true, it was well worth the price. 
 But when the sheltered many grew in pride 
 And grudged the station of the elected ones. 
 Who, greater than their kind, are truly great 
 Only in voluntary servitude — 
 Time was for thee to rise, and thou art here. 
 Such plague possessed this Florence : who can 
 
 teU 
 
3f2 
 
 LURIA 
 
 The mighty girth and greatness at the heart 
 Of those su perfect pillars of the grove 
 She pulled down in her envy ? Who as I, 
 The light weak parasite born but to twine 
 Kound each of them and, measuring them, live ? 
 My light love keeps the matchless circle safe, 
 My slender life proves what has passed away. 
 I lived when they departed ; lived to cling 
 To thee, the mighty stranger ; thou wouldst rise 
 And burst the thraldom, and avenge, I knew, 
 I have done nothing ; all was thy strong bole. 
 But a bird's weight can break the infant tree 
 Which after holds an aery in its arms, 
 And 't was my care that naught should warp 
 
 thy spire 
 From rising to the height j the roof is reached 
 O' the forest, break through, see extend the 
 
 sky! 
 Go on to Florence, Luria ! 'Tis man's cause ! 
 Fail thou, and thine own fall were least to 
 
 dread: 
 Thou keepest Florence in her evil way, 
 Encouragest her sin so much the more — 
 And while the ignoble past is justified. 
 Thou all the surelier warp'st the future growth, 
 The chiefs to come, the Lurias yet unborn, 
 That, greater than thyself, are reached o'er thee 
 Who giv'st the vantage-ground their foes re- 
 quire. 
 As o'er my prostrate House thyself wast 
 
 reached ! 
 Man calls thee, God requites thee ! All is said. 
 The mission of my House fulfilled at last : 
 And the mere woman, speaking for herself. 
 Reserves speech — it is now no woman's time. 
 
 [DouiziA goes. 
 Lur. Thus at the last must figure Luria, 
 then! 
 Doing the various work of all his friends. 
 And answering every purpose save his own. 
 No doubt, 't is well for them to wish ; but him — 
 After the exploit what were left ? Perchance 
 A little pride upon the swarthy brow. 
 At having brought successfully to bear 
 'Gainst Florence' self her own especial arms, — 
 Her craftiness, impelled by fiercer strength 
 From Moorish blood than feeds the northern wit. 
 But after ! — once the easy vengeance willed, 
 Beautiful Florence at a word laid low 
 
 — (Not in her domes and towers and palaces, 
 Not even in a dream, that outrage !) — low. 
 
 As shamed in her own eyes henceforth forever. 
 Low, for the rival cities round to laugh. 
 Conquered and pardoned by a hireling Moor ! 
 
 — For him, who did the irreparable wrong. 
 What would be left, his life's illusion fled, — 
 What hope or trust in the forlorn wide world ? 
 How strange that Florence should mistake me 
 
 so! 
 Whence grew this ? What withdrew her faith 
 
 from me ? 
 Some cause I These fretful-blooded children 
 
 talk 
 Against their mother, — they are wronged, they 
 
 say — 
 Notable wrongs her smile makes up again I 
 So, taking fire at each supposed offence. 
 They may speak rashly, suffer for their speech : 
 
 But what could it have been in word or deed 
 Thus injured me ? Some one word spoken 
 
 more 
 Out of my heart, and all had changed perhaps. 
 My fault, it must have been, — for, what gain 
 
 they? 
 Why risk the danger ? See, what I could do ! 
 And my fault, wherefore visit upon them, 
 My Florentines ? The notable revenge 
 I meditated ! To stay passively. 
 Attend their summons, be as they dispose ! 
 Why, if my very soldiers keep the rank. 
 And if my chieftains acquiesce, what then ? 
 I ruin Florence, teach her friends mistrust, 
 Confli'm her enemies in harsh belief, 
 And when she finds one day, as find she must, 
 The strange mistake, and how my heart was 
 
 hers. 
 Shall it console me, that my Florentines 
 Walk with a sadder step, in graver guise, 
 Who took me with such frankness, praised me 
 
 so, 
 At the glad outset ? Had they loved me lessj 
 They had less feared what seemed a change m 
 
 me. 
 And after aU, who did the harm ? Not they ! 
 How could they interpose with those old fools 
 I' the council ? SuJBBer for those old fools' 
 
 They, who made pictures of me, sang the songs 
 About my battles ? Ah, we Moors get blind 
 Out of our proper world, where we can see ! 
 The sun that guides is closer to us ! There — 
 There, my own orb I He sinks from out the 
 
 sky! 
 Why, there ! a whole day has he blessed the 
 
 land. 
 My land, our Florence all about the hills. 
 The fields and gardens, vineyards, olive- 
 grounds, 
 All have been blest — and yet we Florentines, 
 With souls intent upon our battle here. 
 Found that he rose too soon, or set too late. 
 Gave us no vantage, or gave Pisa much — 
 Therefore we wronged him ! Does he turn in 
 
 ire 
 To burn the earth that cannot understand ? 
 Or drop out quietly, and leave the sky. 
 His task once ended ? Night wipes blame 
 
 away. 
 Another morning from my East shall spring 
 And find all eyes at leisure, all disposed 
 To watch and underatand its work, no doubt. 
 So, praise the new sun, the successor praise, 
 Praise the new Luria and forget the old ! 
 
 ITnkivg a phial from hisbreast. 
 — Strange ! This is all I brought from my own 
 
 land 
 To help me ; Europe would supply the rest. 
 All needs beside, all other helps save one ! 
 I thought of adverse fortune, battle lost, 
 The natural upbraiding of the loser. 
 And then this quiet remedy to seek 
 At end of the disastrous day. [He drinks. 
 
 'Tis sought I 
 Ihis was my happy trmmph-morning : Florence 
 Is saved : I drink this, and ere night, — die 1 
 
 Strange I 
 
.URIA 
 
 313 
 
 ACT V 
 NIGHT 
 
 LuBlA and Puccio 
 
 Lur, I thought to do this, not to talk this : 
 well, 
 Siieli were my projects for the city's good. 
 To help her in attack or by defence. 
 Time, here as elsewhere, soon or late may take 
 Our foresight by surprise through chance and 
 
 change ; 
 But not a little we provide against 
 — If you see clear on every point. 
 
 Puc. Most clear. 
 
 Lur. Then all is said — not much, if you 
 count words, 
 Yet to an understanding ear enough ; 
 And all that ray brief stay pernoits, beside. 
 Nor must you blame me, as I sought to teach 
 My elder in command, or threw a doubt 
 Upon the very skill, it comforts me 
 To know I leave, — your steady soldiership 
 Which never failed me ; yet, because it seemed 
 A stranger's eye might haply note defect 
 That skill, through use and custom, over- 
 looks — 
 I have gone into the old cares once more. 
 As if I had to come and save again 
 Florence — that May — tjhat morning ! 'T is 
 
 night now. 
 Well — I broke off with? .. . 
 
 Puc, Of the past campaign 
 
 You spoke — of measures to be kept in mind 
 For future use. 
 
 Lur. True, so . . . but, time — no time ! 
 
 As well end here : remember this, and me ! 
 Farewell now ! 
 
 Puc, Dare I speak ? 
 
 Lur. South o' the river — 
 
 How is the second stream called . . . no, — the 
 third? 
 
 Puc. Pesa. 
 
 Lur. And a stone's-cast from the f ording- 
 place. 
 To the east, — the little mount's name ? 
 
 Puc. Lupo. 
 
 Lur. Ay ! 
 
 Ay — there the tower, and all that side is safe ! 
 With San Romano, west of Evola, 
 San Miniato, Scala, Empoli, 
 Five towers in all, — forget not ! 
 
 Puc. Fear not me ! 
 
 Lur. — Nor to memorialize the Council now, 
 I' the easy hour, on those battalions' claim. 
 Who forced a pass by Staggia on the hiUs, 
 And kept the Sienese at check ! 
 
 PiK. One word — 
 
 Sir, I roust speak ! That you submit yourself 
 To Florence' bidding, howsoe'er it prove. 
 And give up the command to me — is much, 
 Too much, perhaps : but what you tell me now. 
 Even will affect the other course you choose — 
 Poor as it may be, perils even that ! 
 Refuge you seek at Pisa : yet these plans 
 All militate for Florence, all conclude 
 Your formidable work to make her queen 
 
 O' the country, — which her rivals rose against 
 When you began it, — which to interrupt, 
 Pisa would buy you off at any price ! 
 You cannot mean to sue for Pisa's help, 
 With this made perfect and on record ? 
 
 Lur. I — 
 
 At Pisa, and for refuge, do you say ? 
 
 Puc. Where are you going, then ? You 
 must decide 
 On leaving us, a silent fugitive. 
 Alone, at night — you, stealing through our 
 
 lines. 
 Who were this morning's Luria, — you escape 
 To painfully begin the world once more. 
 With such a past, as it had never been ! 
 Where are you going ? 
 
 Lur. Not so far, my Puccio, 
 
 But that I hope to hear, enjoy and praise 
 (If you mind praise from your old captain yet) 
 Each happy blow you strike for Florence ! 
 
 Puc. Ay, 
 
 But ere you gain your shelter, what may come ? 
 For see — though nothing 's surely known as 
 
 yet, 
 StiU — truth must out — I apprehend the worst. 
 If mere suspicion stood for certainty 
 Before, there 's nothing can an'est the step 
 Of Florence toward your ruin, once on foot. 
 Forgive her fifty times, it matters not ! 
 And having disbelieved your innocence. 
 How can she trust your magnanimity ? 
 You may do harm to her — why then, you will ! 
 And Florence is sagacious in pursuit. 
 Have you a friend to count on ? 
 
 Lur. One sure friend. 
 
 Puc. Potent? 
 
 Lur. All-potent. 
 
 Puc. And he is apprised ? 
 
 Lur. He waits me. 
 
 Puc. So ! — Then I, put In your place. 
 
 Making my profit of all done by you, 
 Calling your labors mine, reaping their fruit. 
 To this, the State's gift, now add yours be- 
 side — 
 That I may take as my peculiar store 
 These your instructions to work Florence good. 
 And if, by putting some few happily 
 In practice, I should both advantage her 
 And draw down honor on myself, — what then ? 
 
 Lur. Do it, my Puccio ! I shall know and 
 praise ! 
 
 Puc. Though so, men say, " mark what we 
 gain by change 
 — A Puccio for a Luria ! " 
 
 Lur. Even so ! 
 
 Puc. Then, not for fifty hundred Florences 
 Would I accept one office save my own. 
 Fill any other than jny rightful post 
 Here at your feet, my captain and my lord ! 
 That such a cloud should break, such trouble 
 
 be. 
 Ere a man settle, soul and body, down 
 Into his true place and take rest forever ! 
 Here were my wise eyes fixed on your right 
 
 hand. 
 And so the bad thoughts came and the worse 
 
 words. 
 And all went wrong and painfully enough, — 
 
314 
 
 LURIA 
 
 No ■wonder, — till, the right spot stumbled on, 
 All the jar stops, and there is pea^e at once ! 
 I am yours now, — a tool your right hand 
 
 ■wields ! 
 God's love, that I should live, the man I am. 
 On orders, lyarrants, patents and the like. 
 As if there ■were no glo^wiiig eye i' the ■world 
 To glance straight inspiration to my brain, 
 No glorious heart to give mine t^wice the beats ! 
 For, see — my doubt, where is it ? — fear ? 't is 
 
 flo^wn ! 
 And Florence and her anger are a tale 
 To scare a child ! Why, half-a-dozen words 
 Will tell her, spoken as I now can speak. 
 Her error, my past folly — and all 's ri^ht. 
 And you are Luria, our great chief again ! 
 Or at the worst — which worst were best of 
 
 all — 
 To exile or to death I follow you ! 
 
 Lur. Thanks, Puccio ! Let me use the 
 
 privilege 
 You grant me : if I still command you, — stay ! 
 Remain here, my vicegerent, it shall be. 
 And not successor : let me, as of old. 
 Still serve the State, my spirit prompting 
 
 yours — 
 Still triumph, one for both. There! Leave 
 
 me now ! 
 You cannot disobey my first command ? 
 Remember what I spoke of Jacopo, 
 And what you promised to concert with him ! 
 Send him to speak with me — nay, no farewell ! 
 You shall be by me when the sentence comes. 
 
 [Puccio ffoes. 
 So, there 's one Florentine returns again ! 
 Out of the genial morning company. 
 One face is left to take into the night. 
 {Enter Jacopo.) 
 Jac. I wait for your command, sir. 
 Lur. What, so soon ? 
 
 I thank your ready presence and fair word. 
 I used to notice you in early days 
 As of the other species, so to speak. 
 Those watchers of the lives of us who act — 
 That weigh our motives, scrutinize our thoughts. 
 So, I propound this to your faculty 
 As you would tell me, were a town to take 
 . . . That is, of old. I am departing hence 
 Under these imputations ; that is naught — 
 I leave no friend on whom they may rebound. 
 Hardly a name behind me in the land, 
 Being a stranger : all the more behooves 
 That I regard how altered were the case 
 With natives of the country, Florentines 
 On whom the like mischance should fall : the 
 
 roots 
 O' the tree survive the ruin of the trunk — 
 No root of mine will throb, you understand. 
 But I had predecessors, Florentines, 
 Accused as I am now, and punished so — 
 The Traversari : you know more than I 
 How stigmatized they are and lost in shame. 
 Now Puccio, who succeeds me in command, 
 Both served them and succeeded, in due time ; 
 He knows the way, holds proper documents, 
 And has the power to lay the simple truth 
 Before an active spirit, as I count yours : 
 And also there 's Tiburzio, my new friend, 
 
 WiU, at a word, confirm such evidence. 
 He being the great ehivalric soul we know. 
 I put it to your tact, sir — were 't not well, 
 
 — A gi-ace, though but for contrast's sake, no 
 
 more, — 
 If you who witness, and have borne a share 
 Involuntarily in my mischance. 
 Should, of your proper motion, set your skill 
 To indicate — that is, investigate 
 The right or wrong of what mischance befell 
 Those famous citizens, your countrymen ? 
 Nay, you shall promise nothing : but reflect, 
 And if your sense of justice prompt you — 
 good! 
 
 Jac. And if, the trial past, their fame stand 
 clear 
 To all men's eyes, as yours, my lord, to mine — 
 Their ghosts may sleep in quiet satisfied ! 
 For me, a straw thro^wn up into the air. 
 My testimony goes for a straw's worth. 
 I used to hold by the instructed brain. 
 And move with Braccio as im^ master-wind ; 
 The heart leads surelier : I must move with 
 
 you — 
 As greatest now, who ever were the best. 
 So, let the last and humblest of your seiTants 
 Accept your charge, as Braccio's heretofore. 
 And tender homage by obeying you ! 
 
 [Jacopo goes. 
 
 Lur. Another ! — Luria goes not poorly forth. 
 If we could wait ! The only fault 's ■\vith time ; 
 All men become good creatures : but so slow ! 
 {Enter Domizia.) 
 
 Lur. Ah, you once more ? 
 
 Dom. Domizia, whom yon knew, 
 
 Performed her task, and died with it. 'T is I, 
 Another woman, you have never known. 
 Let the past sleep now ! 
 
 Lur. I have done with it. 
 
 Dom. How inexhaustibly the spirit grows ! 
 One object, she seemed erewhile born to reach 
 With her whole energies and die content, — 
 So like a wall at the world's edge it stood. 
 With naught beyond to live for, — is that 
 
 reached ? — 
 Already are new undreamed energies 
 Outgrowing under, and extending farther 
 To a new object ; there 's another world. 
 See ! I have told the purpose of my life ; 
 'T is gained ; you are decided, well or ill — 
 You march on Florence, or submit to her — 
 My work is done with you, your brow declares. 
 But — leave you ? — More of you seems yet to 
 
 reach : 
 I stay for what I just begin to see. 
 
 Lur. So tliat you turn not to the past ! 
 
 Dom. You trace 
 
 Nothing but ill in it — my selfish impulse. 
 Which sought its end and disregarded yours ? 
 
 Lur. Speak not against your nature : best, 
 each keep 
 His own — you, yours — most, now that I keep 
 mine, 
 
 — At least, fall by it, having too weakly stood, 
 God's finger marks distinctions, all so fine, 
 We would confound : the lesser has its use. 
 Which, when it apes the greater, is foregone. 
 
 I, born a Moor, lived halt a Florentine ; 
 
LURIA 
 
 315 
 
 But, punished properly, can end, a Moor. 
 Beside, tlieie 's something: makes me undei'stand 
 Your nature : I have seen it. 
 Dom. Aught like mine ? 
 
 Lur. In my own East ... if you would 
 
 stoop and help 
 My barbarous illustration ! It sounds ill ; 
 Yet there 's no wrong at bottom : rather, praise. 
 Dom. Well? 
 LuT. We have creatures there, which if you 
 
 saw 
 The first time, you would doubtless marvel at 
 For their surpassing beauty, craft and strength. 
 And though it were a lively moment's shock 
 When you first found the purpose of forked 
 
 tongues 
 That seem innocuous in their lambent play. 
 Yet, once made know such grace requires such 
 
 guard. 
 Your reason soon would acquiesce, I think. 
 In wisdom which made all things for the best — 
 So, take them, good with ill, contentedly. 
 The prominent beauty with the latent sting.^ 
 I am glad to have seen you wondrous Flor- 
 entines : 
 Yet . . . 
 l>om. I am here to listen. 
 Lur. My own East ! 
 
 How nearer God we were ! He glows above 
 With scarce an intervention, presses close 
 And palpitatingly, his soul o'er ours : 
 We feel him, nor by painful reason know ! 
 The everlasting minute of creation 
 Is felt there ; now it is, as it was then ; 
 All changes at his instantaneous wUl, 
 Not by the operation of a law 
 Whose maker is elsewhere at other work. 
 His hand is still engaged upon his world — 
 Man's praise can forward it, man's prayer 
 
 suspend. 
 For is not God aU-mighty ? To recast 
 The world, erase old things and make them new. 
 What costs it Him ? So, man breathes nobly 
 
 there. 
 And inasmuch as feeling, the East's gift. 
 Is quick and transient — comes, and lo, is 
 
 gone — 
 While Northern thought is slow and durable, 
 Surely a mission was reserved for me, 
 Who, born with a perception of the power 
 And use of the North's thought for us of the 
 
 East, 
 Should have remained, turned knowledge to 
 
 account. 
 Giving thought's character and permanence 
 To the too transitory feeling there — 
 Writing God's message plain in mortal words. 
 Instead of which, I leave my fated field 
 For this where such a task is needed least, 
 Where all are born consummate in the art 
 I just perceive a chance of making mine, — 
 And then, deserting thus my early post, 
 I wonder that the men I come among 
 Mistake me ! There, how aU had understood, 
 StiU brought fresh stuff for me to stamp and 
 
 keep. 
 Fresh instinct to translate them into law I 
 Me, who . . . 
 
 Dom. Who here the greater task achieve, 
 More needful even : who have brought fresh 
 
 stuff 
 For us to mould, interpret and prove right, — 
 New feeling fresh from God, which, could we 
 
 know 
 0' the instant, where had been our need of it ? 
 — Whose life re-teaches us what life should 
 
 be. 
 What faith is, loyalty and simpleness. 
 All, once revealed but taught us so long since 
 That, having mere tradition of the fact, — 
 Truth copied falteringly from copies faint. 
 The early traits all dropped away, — we said 
 On sight of faith like yours, " So looks not 
 
 faith 
 We understand, described and praised before," 
 But still, the feat was dared; and though at 
 
 first 
 It suffered from our haste, yet trace by trace 
 Old memories reappear, old truth returns. 
 Our slow thought does its work, and all 's re- 
 known. 
 Oh noble Luria ! What you have decreed 
 I see not, but no animal revenge. 
 No brute-like punishment of bad by worse — 
 It cannot be, the gross and vulgar way 
 Traced for me by convention and mistake. 
 Has gained that calm approving eye and brow ! 
 Spare Florence, after all ! Let Luria trust 
 To his own soul, he whom I trust with mine ! 
 
 Lur. In time ! 
 
 Dom, How, Luria? 
 
 Lur. It is midnight now. 
 
 And they arrive from Florence with my fate. 
 
 Dom. I hear no step. 
 
 Lur. I feel one, as you say. 
 
 {Enter HusAIN.) 
 
 Hus. The man returned from Florence ! 
 
 Lur. As I knew. 
 
 Hus. He seeks thee. 
 
 Lur. And I only wait for him. 
 
 Aught else ? 
 
 Hus. A movement of the Lucchese troops 
 Southward — 
 
 Lur. Toward Florence? Have out in- 
 stantly . . . 
 Ah, old use clings ! Puceio must care hence- 
 forth. 
 In — quick — 't is nearly midnight ! Bid him 
 come ! 
 {Enter TrouKzio, Bhaccio, find Pnccio.) 
 
 Lur. Tiburzio ? — not at Pisa ? 
 
 Tib. I return 
 
 From Florence : I serve Pisa, and must think 
 By such procedure I have served her best. 
 A people is but the attempt of many 
 To rise to the completer life of one : 
 And those who live as models for the mass 
 Are singly of more value than they all. 
 Such man are you, and such a time is this. 
 That your sole fate concerns a nation more 
 Than much apparent welfare : that to prove 
 Your rectitude, and duly crown the same. 
 Imports us far beyond to-day's event, 
 A battle's loss or gain : man's mass re- 
 mains, — 
 Keep but God's model safe, new men will lise 
 
3i6 
 
 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 
 
 To take its mould, and other days to prove 
 How great a good was Luria's glory. True — 
 I might go try my fortune as you urged, 
 And, joining Lucca, helped by your disgrace, 
 Repair our harm — so were to-day's work done ; 
 But where leave Luria for our sons to see ? 
 No, I look farther. I have testified 
 (Declaring my submission to your arms) 
 Her full success to Florence, making clear 
 Your probity, as none else could : I spoke, 
 And out it shone ! 
 Imt. Ah — until Braccio spoke ! 
 
 Brae. Till Braccio told in just a word the 
 
 whole — 
 His lapse to error, his return to knowledge : 
 Which told . . . Nay, Luria, I should droop 
 
 the head, 
 I whom shame rests with ! Yet 1 dare look 
 
 up, 
 
 Sure of your pardon now I sue for it. 
 Knowing you wholly. Let the midnight end! 
 ' r is mom approaches ! Still you answer 
 
 not? 
 Sunshine succeeds the shadow passed away ; 
 Our faces, which phantasmal grew and false. 
 Are all that felt it: they change round you, 
 
 turn 
 Truly themselves now in its vanishing. 
 Speak, Luria ! Here begins y;our true career : 
 Look up, advance ! AU now is possible. 
 Fact's grandeur, no false dreaming ! Dare and 
 
 do! 
 And e'^ery prophecy shall be fulfilled 
 Save one — (nay, now your word must come at 
 
 last) 
 — That you would punish Florence ! 
 Hus. [Pointing to Lubia's dead body.] That 
 
 is done. 
 
 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 
 
 Florence, 1850 
 
 CHRISTMAS-EVE 
 
 Out of the little chapel I burst 
 Into the fresh night-air again. 
 Five minutes full, I waited first 
 In the doorway, to escape the rain 
 That drove in gusts down the common's centre 
 At the edge of which the chapel stands, 
 Before I plucked up heart to enter. 
 Heaven knows how many sorts of hands 
 Beached past me, groping for the latch 
 Of the inner door that hung on catch 
 More obstinate the more they fumbled, 
 Till, giving way at last with a scold 
 Of the crazy hinge, in squeezed or tumbled 
 One sheep more to the rest in fold. 
 And left me irresolute, standing sentry 
 In the sheepfold's lath-alid-plaeter entry, 
 Six feet long by three feet wide, 
 Palrtitioned off from the vast inside — 
 I blocked up half of it at least. 
 No remedy ; the rain kept driving. 
 They eyed me much as some wild beast, 
 That congregation, still arriving. 
 Some of them by the main road, white 
 A long way past me into the night. 
 Skirting the common, then diverging ; 
 Not a few suddenly emerging 
 From the common's self through the paling- 
 gaps, 
 — They house in the gravel-pits perhaps. 
 Where the road stops short with its safeguard 
 
 border 
 Of lamps, as tired of such disorder ; — 
 But the most turned in yet more abruptly 
 Prom a certain squalid knot of alleys, 
 Where the town's bad blood once slept cor- 
 ruptly, 
 
 Which now the Uttle ckapel rallies 
 
 And leads into day again, — its priestliness 
 
 Lending itself to hide their beastliness 
 
 So cleverly (thanks in part to the mason). 
 
 And putting so Cheery a whitewashed face on 
 
 Those neophytes too much in lack of it. 
 
 That, where you cross the common as I did. 
 
 And meet the party thus presided, 
 
 " Mount Ziou" with Love-lane at the back o£ 
 
 it. 
 They front you as little disconcerted 
 As, bound for the lulls, her fate averted. 
 And her wicked people made to mind him, 
 Lot might have marched with Gomorrah behind 
 
 hun. 
 
 11 
 
 Well, from the road, the lanes or the common, 
 
 In came the flock : the fat weary woman. 
 
 Panting and bewildered, down-clapping 
 
 Her umbrella with a mighty report. 
 
 Grounded it by me, wry and flapping, 
 
 A wreck of whalebones ; then, with a snort. 
 
 Like a startled horse, at the interloper 
 
 (Who humbly knew himself improper. 
 
 But could not shrink up small enough) 
 
 — Round to the door, and in, — the grufip 
 
 Hinge's invariable scold 
 
 Making my very blood run cold. 
 
 Prompt in the wake of her, up-pattered 
 
 On broken clogs, the many-tattered 
 
 Little old-faced peaking sister-turned-mother 
 
 Of the sickly babe she tried to smother 
 
 Somehow up, with its spotted face, 
 
 From the cold, on her breast, the one wami 
 
 place ; 
 She too must stop, wring the poor ends dry 
 Of a draggled shawl, and add thereby 
 Her tribute to the door-mat, sopping 
 Already from my own clothes' dropping, 
 
CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 
 
 317 
 
 Which yet she seemed to grudge I should stand 
 
 on: 
 Then, stooping down to take off her pattens, 
 She bore them defiantly, in each hand one, 
 Planted together before her breast 
 And its babe, as good as a lance in rest. 
 Close on her heels, the dingy satins 
 Of a female something past me flitted, 
 With lips as much too white, as a streak 
 Lay far too red on each hollow cheek ; 
 And it seemed the very door-hinge pitied 
 All that was left of a woman once, 
 Holding at least its tongue for the nonce. 
 Then a tall yellow man, like the Penitent Thief, 
 With his jaw bound up in a handkerchief, 
 And eyelids screwed together tight. 
 Led himself in by some inner light. 
 And, except from him, from each that entered, 
 I got the same interrogation — 
 *' What, you the alien, you have ventured 
 To take with us, the elect, your station ? 
 A carer for none of it, a Gallic ! " — 
 Thus, plain as print, I read the glance 
 At a common prey, in each countenance 
 As of huntsman giving his hounds the tallyho. 
 And, when the door's cry drowned their won- 
 der. 
 The draught, it always sent in shutting. 
 Made the flame of the single tallow candle 
 In the cracked square lantern 1 stood under, 
 bhoot its blue lip at me, rebutting 
 As it were, the luckless cause of scandal ; 
 I verily fancied the zealous light 
 (In the chapel's secret, too !) for spite 
 Would shudder itself clean off the wick, 
 With the aira of a Saint John's Candlestick. 
 There was no standing it much longer. 
 *'Good folks," thought I, as resolve grew 
 
 stronger, 
 *' This way you perform the Grand-Inquisitor 
 When the Weather sends you a chance visitor ? 
 You are the men, and wisdom shall die with 
 
 you, 
 And none of the old Seven Churches vie with 
 
 you! 
 But still, despite the pretty perfection 
 To which you carry your trick of exclusive- 
 
 ness. 
 And, taking God's word under wise protec- 
 tion. 
 Correct its tendency to diffusiveness. 
 And bid one reach it over hot ploughshares, — 
 Still, as I say, though you 've found salvation. 
 If I should choose to cry, as now, * Shares ! ' — 
 See if the best of you bars me my ration ! 
 I prefer, if you please, for my expounder 
 Of the laws of the feast, the feast's own Foim- 
 
 der; 
 Mine 's the same right with your poorest and 
 
 sickliest. 
 Supposing I don the marriage vestiment : 
 So, shut your mouth and open your Testament, 
 And carve me my portion at your quickliest ! " 
 Accordingly, as a shoemaker's lad 
 With wizened face in want of soap. 
 And wet apron wound round his waist like a 
 
 rope, 
 (After stopping outside, for Irs cough was bad. 
 
 To get the fit over, poor gentle creature, 
 And so avoid disturbing the preacher) 
 
 — Passed in, I sent my elbow spikewise 
 At the shutting door, and entered likewise, 
 Received the hinge's aecustomed greeting, 
 And crossed the threshold's magic pentacle. 
 And found myself in full conventicle, 
 
 — To wit, in Zion Chapel Meeting, 
 On the Christmas-Eve of 'Forty-nine, 
 Which, calling its flock to their special clover, 
 Found all assembled and one sheep over, 
 Whose lot, as the weather pleased, was mine. 
 
 I very soon had enough of it. 
 The hot smell and the human noises. 
 And my neighbor's coat, the greasy cuff of it. 
 Were a pebble-stone that a child's hand poises. 
 Compared with the pig-of-lead-like pressure 
 Of the preaching man's inmiense stupidity, 
 As he poured his doctrine forth, full measure, 
 To meet his audience's avidity. 
 You needed not the wit of the Sibyl 
 To guess the cause of it all, in a twinkling : 
 No sooner our friend had got an inkling 
 Of treasure hid in the Holy Bible, 
 {Whene'er 't was the thought first struck him, 
 How death, at unawares, might duck him 
 Deeper than the grave, and quench 
 The gin-shop's light in hell's grim drench) 
 Than he handled it so, in fine irreverence. 
 As to hug the book of books to pieces ; 
 And, a patchwork of chapters and texts in sev- 
 erance. 
 Not improved by the private dog's-ears and 
 
 creases, 
 Having clothed his own soul with, he 'd fain 
 
 see equipt yours, — 
 So tossed you again your Holy Scriptures. 
 And you picked them up, in a sense, no doubt : 
 Nay, had but a single face of my neighbors 
 Appeared to suspect that the preacher's la- 
 bors 
 Were help which the world could be saved with- 
 out, 
 'T is odds but I might have borne in quiet 
 A qualm or two at my spiritual diet. 
 Or (who can tell ?) perclrance even mustered 
 Somewhat to urge in behalf of the sermon : 
 But the flock sat on, divinely flustered. 
 Sniffing, methought, its dew of Hermon 
 With such content in every snuffle. 
 As the devil inside us loves to ruffle. 
 My old fat woman purred with pleasure, 
 And thumb round thumb went twirling faster. 
 While she, to his periods keeping measure. 
 Maternally devoured the pastor. 
 The man with the handkerchief untied it. 
 Showed us a horrible wen inside it. 
 Gave his eyelids yet another screwing. 
 And rocked himself as the woman was doing. 
 The shoemaker's lad, discreetly choking, 
 Kept down his cough. 'T wiK too provoking ! 
 My gorge rose at the nonsense and stuff of it ; 
 So, saying like Eve when she plucked the apple, 
 " I wanted a taste, and now there 's enougli of 
 
 it," 
 I flung out of the little chapel. 
 
3i8 
 
 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 
 
 There was a lull in the rain, a lull 
 
 In the wind too ; the moon was risen, 
 
 And would have shone out pure and full. 
 
 But for the ramparted cloud-prison, 
 
 Block on block built up in the West, 
 
 For what purpose the wind knows best, 
 
 Who changes his mind continually. 
 
 And the empty other half of the sky 
 
 Seemed in its silence as if it knew 
 
 What, any moment, might look through 
 
 A chance gap in that fortress massy : — 
 
 Through its fissures you got hints 
 
 Of the flying moon, by the shifting tints, 
 
 Now, a dull lion-color, now, brassy 
 
 Burning to yellow, and whitest yellow. 
 
 Like furnace-smoke just ere flames bellow, 
 
 All a-simmer with intense strain 
 
 To let her through, — then blank again. 
 
 At the hope of her appearance failing. 
 
 Just by the chapel a break in the raiUng 
 
 Shows a narrow path directly across ; 
 
 'T is ever dry walking there, on the moss — 
 
 Besides, you go gently all the way up-hill. 
 
 I stooped under and soon felt better ; 
 
 My head grew lighter, my limbs more supple. 
 
 As I walked on, glad to have slipt the fetter. 
 
 My mind was full of the scene 1 had left, 
 
 That placid flock, that pastor vociferant, 
 
 — How this outside was pure and different ! 
 
 The sermon, now — what a mingled weft 
 
 Of good and ill ! Were either less, 
 
 Its fellow had colored the whole distinctly ; 
 
 But alas for the excellent earnestness. 
 
 And the truths, quite true if stated succinctly, 
 
 But as surely false, in their quaint presentment, 
 
 However to pastor and flock's contentment ! 
 
 Say rather, such truths looked false to your 
 
 eyes. 
 With his provings and parallels twisted and 
 
 twined. 
 Till how could you know them, grown double 
 
 their size 
 In the natural fog of the good man's mind. 
 Like yonder spots of our roadside lamps. 
 Haloed about with the common's damps ? 
 Truth remains true, the fault 's in the prover ; 
 The zeal was good, and the aspiration ; 
 And yet, and yet, yet, fifty times over, 
 Pharaoh received no demonstration. 
 By his Baker's dream of Baskets Three, 
 Of the doctrine of the Trinity, — 
 Although, as our preacher thus embellished it. 
 Apparently his hearers relished it 
 With so unfeigned a gust — who knows if 
 They did not prefer our friend to Joseph ? 
 But so it is everywhere, one way with all of 
 
 them ! 
 These people have really felt, no doubt, 
 A something, the motion they style the Call of 
 
 them; 
 And this is their method of bringing about, 
 By a mechanism of words and tones, 
 (So many texts in so many gi'oans) 
 A sort of reviving and reproducing. 
 More or less perfectly, (w'ho can tell ?) 
 The mood itself, which strengthens by using ; 
 
 And how that happens, I understand well. 
 A tune was born in my head last week, 
 Out of the thump-thump and shriek-shriek 
 Of the train, as I came by it, up from Manches- 
 ter; 
 And when, next week, I take it back again. 
 My head will sing to the engine's clack again, 
 Wiiile it only makes my neighbor's haunches 
 
 stir, 
 — Finding no dormant musical sprout 
 In him, as in me, to be jolted out. 
 'T is the taught already that profits by teach- 
 ing ; 
 He gets no more from the railway's preaching 
 Than, from this preacher who does the rail's 
 
 office, I : 
 Whom therefore the flock cast a jealous ejre on. 
 StUl, why paint over their door " Mount Zion," 
 To which all flesh shall come, saith the pro- 
 phecy ? 
 
 But wherefore be harsh on a single case ? 
 
 After how many modes, this Cimstmas-Eve, 
 
 Does the self-same weary thing take place ? 
 
 The same endeavor to make you believe. 
 
 And with much the same effect, no more : 
 
 Each method abundantly convincing. 
 
 As I say, to those convinced before, 
 
 But scarce to be swallowed without wincing 
 
 By the not-as-yet-convinced. For me, 
 
 I have my own church equally : 
 
 And in this church my faith sprang first 1 
 
 (I said, as I reached the iTsing ground. 
 
 And the wind began again, with a burst 
 
 Of rain in my face, and a glad rebound 
 
 From the heart beneath, as if, God speeding me, 
 
 I entered his church-door, nature leading me) 
 
 — In youth I looked to these very skies, 
 
 And probing their immensities, 
 
 I found God there, his visible power ; 
 
 Yet felt in my heart, amid all its sense 
 
 Of the power, an equal evidence 
 
 That his love, there too, was the nobler dower. 
 
 For the loving worm within its clod 
 
 Were diviner tban a loveless god 
 
 Amid his worlds, I wiU dare to say. 
 
 You know what I mean : God 's all, man 'e 
 
 naught ; 
 But also, God, whose pleasure brought 
 Man into being, stands away 
 As it were a handbreadth off, to give 
 Room for the newly-made to live. 
 And look at him from a. place apart, 
 And use his gifts of brain and heart. 
 Given, indeed, but to keep forever. 
 Who speaks of man, then, must not sever 
 Man's very elements from man, 
 Saying, " But all is God's " — whose plan 
 Was to create man and then leave him 
 Able, his own word saith, to grieve him. 
 But able to glorify him too, 
 As a mere machine could never do. 
 That prayed or praised, all unaware 
 Of its fitness for aught but praise and prayer, 
 Made perfect as a thing of course. 
 Man, therefore, stands on his own stock 
 Of love and power as a pin-point rock : 
 
CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 
 
 319 
 
 And, looking to God who ordained divorce 
 Of the rock from his boundless continent, 
 Sees, in his power made evident, 
 Only excess by a million-fold 
 0*er the power God gave man in the mould. 
 For, note : man's hand, first fomned to carry 
 A few pounds' v/eig-ht, when taught to marry 
 Its strength with an engine's, lifts a mountain, 
 
 — Advancing in power by one degree ; 
 And why count steps through eternity ? 
 But love is the ever-springing fountain : 
 Man may enlarge or narrow his bed 
 
 For the water's play, but the watei"-head — 
 How can he multiply or reduce it ? 
 As easy create it, as cause it to cease ; 
 He may profit by it, or abuse it. 
 But 't is not a thing to bear increase 
 As power does : be love less or more 
 In the heart of man, he keeps it shut 
 Or opes it wide, as he pleases, but 
 Love's sum remains what it was before. 
 So, gazing up, in my youth, at love 
 Aa seen through power, ever above 
 All modes which make it manifest, 
 My soul brought all to a single test — 
 That he, the Eternal First and Last, 
 Who, in his power, had so surpassed 
 All man conceives of what is might, — 
 Whose wisdom, too, showed infinite, 
 
 — Would prove aa infinitely good ; 
 Would never, (my soul understood,) 
 With power to work all love desires. 
 Bestow e'en less than man requires ; 
 That he who endlessly was teaching, 
 Above my spirit's utmost reaching^ 
 What love can do in the leaf or stone, 
 (So that to master this alone. 
 
 This done in the stone or leaf for me, 
 I must go on learning endlessly) 
 Would never need that I, in turn. 
 Should point him out defect unheeded. 
 And show that God had yet to learn 
 What the meanest human creature needed, 
 
 — Not life, to wit, for a few short years. 
 Tracking his way through doubts and fears. 
 While the stupid earth on which I stay 
 Suffers no change, but passive adds 
 
 Its myriad years to myriads. 
 
 Though I, he gave it to, decay. 
 
 Seeing death come and choose about me, 
 
 And my dearest ones depart without me. 
 
 No : love which, on earth, amid all the shows 
 
 of it, 
 Has ever been seen the sole good of life in it. 
 The love, ever growing there, spite of the strife 
 
 in it. 
 Shall arise, made perfect, from death's repose 
 
 of it. 
 And I shall behold thee, face to face, 
 
 God, and in thy light retrace 
 
 How in all I loved here, still wast thon ! 
 Whom pressing to, then, aa I fain would now, 
 
 1 shall find as able to satiate 
 
 The love, thy gift, aa my spirit's wonder 
 Thou ai-t able to quicken and sublimate, 
 With this sky of thine, that I now walk under 
 And glory in thee for, as I gaze 
 Thus, thus ! Oh, let men keep their ways 
 
 Of seeking thee in a narrow shrine — 
 Be this my way I And this is mine ! 
 
 For lo, what think jrou ? suddenly 
 
 The rain and the wind ceased, anH the sky 
 
 Received at once the full fruition 
 
 Of the moon's consummate apparition. 
 
 The black cloud-barricade was riven. 
 
 Ruined beneath her feet, and driven 
 
 Deep in the West ; while, bare and breathless, 
 
 North and South and East lay ready 
 
 For a glorious thing that, dauntless, deathless, 
 
 Sprang across them and stood steady. 
 
 'T was a moon-rainbow, vast and perfect, 
 
 From heaven to heaven extending, perfect 
 
 As the mother^moon's self, full in face. 
 
 It rose, distinctly at the base 
 
 With its seven proper coloi-s chorded. 
 
 Which still, in the rising, were compressed. 
 
 Until at last they coalesced. 
 
 And supreme the spectral creature lorded 
 
 In a triumph of whitest white, — 
 
 Above which intervened the night. 
 
 But above night too, like only the next, 
 
 The second of a wondrous sequence, 
 
 Reachii^ in rare and rarer frequence. 
 
 Till the heaven of heavens were circumfiexed. 
 
 Another rainbow rose, a mightier, 
 
 Fainter, flushier and flightier, — 
 
 Rapture dying along its verge. 
 
 Oh, whose foot shall I see emerge. 
 
 Whose, from the straining topmost dark. 
 
 On to the keystone of that arc ? 
 
 This sight was shown me, there and then, ~ 
 
 Me, one out of a world of men. 
 
 Singled forth, as the chance might hap 
 
 To another if, in a thunderclap 
 
 Where I heard noise and you saw flame. 
 
 Some one man knew God called his name. 
 
 For me, I think I said, "Appear ! 
 
 Good were it to be ever here. 
 
 If thou wilt, let me build to thee 
 
 Service-tabernacles three. 
 
 Where, forever in thy presence. 
 
 In ecstatic acquiescence, 
 
 Far alike from thriftless learning 
 
 And ignorance's undiscerning, 
 
 I may worship and remain ! " 
 
 Thus at the show above me, gazii^ 
 
 With upturned eyes, I felt my brain 
 
 Glutted with the glory, blazing 
 
 Throughout its whole mass, over and under. 
 
 Until at length it burst asunder 
 
 And out of it bodily there streamed, 
 
 The too-much glory, as it seemed. 
 
 Passing from out me to the ground, 
 
 Then palely serpentining round 
 
 Into the dark with mazy error. 
 
 All at once I looked up with terror. 
 
 He was there. 
 
 He himself with his human air. 
 
 On the narrow pathway, just before. 
 
 I saw the back of him, no more — 
 
320 
 
 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 
 
 He had left the chapel, then, as I. 
 
 I forgot all about the sky. 
 
 No face : only the sight 
 
 Of a sweepy garment, vast and white, 
 
 With a hem that I could recognize. 
 
 I felt terror, no surprise ; 
 
 My mind filled with the cataract 
 
 At one bound of the mighty fact. 
 
 " I remember, he did say 
 
 Doubtless that, to this world's end. 
 
 Where two or three should meet and pray. 
 
 He would be in the midst, their friend ; 
 
 Certainly he was there with them ! " 
 
 And my pulses leaped for joy 
 
 Of the golden thought without alloy. 
 
 That I saw his very vesture's hem. 
 
 Then rushed the blood back, cold and clear, 
 
 With a fresh enhancing shiver of fear ; 
 
 And I hastened, cried out while I pressed 
 
 To the salvation of the vest, 
 
 " But not so. Lord ! It cannot be 
 
 That thou, indeed, art leaving me — 
 
 Me, that have despised thy friends ! 
 
 Did my heart make no amends ? 
 
 Thou art the love of God — above 
 
 His power, didst hear me place his love. 
 
 And that was leaving the world for thee. 
 
 Therefore thou must not turn from me 
 
 As I had chosen the other part ! 
 
 Folly and pride o'ercame my heart. 
 
 Our best is bad, nor bears thy test ; 
 
 Still, it should be our very best. 
 
 I thought it best that thou, the spirit, 
 
 Be worshipped in spirit and in truth, 
 
 And in beauty, as even we require it — 
 
 Not in the forms burlesque, uncouth, 
 
 I left but now, as scarcely fitted 
 
 For thee ; I knew not what I pitied. 
 
 But, all I felt there, right or wrong. 
 
 What is it to thee, who curest sinning ? 
 
 Am I not weak as thou art strong ? 
 
 I have looked to thee from the beginning. 
 
 Straight up to thee through all the world 
 
 Which, like an idle scroll, lay furled 
 
 To nothingness on either side : 
 
 And since the time thou wast descried. 
 
 Spite of the weak heart, so have I 
 
 Lived ever, and so fain would die, 
 
 Living and dying, thee before ! 
 
 But if thou leavest me " — 
 
 Less or more, 
 I suppose that I spoke thus. 
 When, — have mercy. Lord, on us ! 
 The whole face turned upon me full. 
 And I spread myself beneath it. 
 As when the bleacher spreads, to seethe it 
 In the cleansing sun, his wool, — 
 Steeps in the flood of noontide whiteness 
 Some defiled, discolored web — 
 So lay I, saturate with brightness. 
 And when the flood appeared to ebb, 
 Lo, I was walking, light and swift. 
 With my senses settling fast and steadying. 
 But my body caught np in the whirl and drift 
 Of the vesture's amplitude, still eddying 
 On, just before me, still to be followed. 
 
 As it carried me after with its motion : 
 
 What shall I say ? — as a path were hollowed 
 
 And a man went weltering through the ocean, 
 
 Sucked along in the flying wake 
 
 Of the luminous water-snake. 
 
 Darkness and cold were cloven, as through 
 
 I passed, upborne yet walking too. 
 
 And I turned to myself at intervals, — 
 
 " So he said, so it befalls. 
 
 God who registers the cup 
 
 Of mere cold water, for his sake 
 
 To a disciple rendered up. 
 
 Disdains not his own thirst to slake 
 
 At the poorest love was ever offered : 
 
 And because my heart I proffered. 
 
 With true love trembling at the brijn. 
 
 He suffers me to follow him 
 
 Forever, my own way, — dispensed 
 
 From seeking to be influenced 
 
 By all the less immediate ways 
 
 That earth, in worships manifold. 
 
 Adopts to reach, by prayer and praise, 
 
 The garment's hem, which, lo, I hold ! " 
 
 And so we crossed the world and stopped. 
 
 For where am I, in city or plain. 
 
 Since I am 'ware of the world again ? 
 
 And what is this that rises propped 
 
 With pillars of prodigious g^h ? 
 
 Is it really on the earth. 
 
 This miraculous Dome of God ? 
 
 Has the angel's measuring-rod 
 
 Which numbered cubits, gem from gem, 
 
 'Twixt the gates of the New Jerusalem, 
 
 Meted it out, — and what he meted. 
 
 Have the sons of men completed ? 
 
 — Binding, ever as he bade, 
 
 Columns in the colonnade 
 
 With arms wide open to embrace 
 
 The entry of the human race 
 
 To the breast of . . . what is it, yon building. 
 
 Ablaze in front, all paint and gilding. 
 
 With marble for brick, and stones of price 
 
 For garniture of the edifice ? 
 
 Now I see ; it is no dream ; 
 
 It stands there and it does not seem : 
 
 Forever, in pictures, thus it looks. 
 
 And thus I have read of it in books 
 
 Often in England, leagues away. 
 
 And wondered how these fountains play. 
 
 Growing up eternally 
 
 Each to a musical water-tree, 
 
 Whose blossoms drop, a glittering boon. 
 
 Before my eyes, in the light of the moon. 
 
 To the granite la vers underneath. 
 
 Liar and dreamer in your teeth ! 
 
 I, the sinner that speak to you. 
 
 Was in Rome this night, and stood, and knew 
 
 Both this and more. For see. for see, 
 
 The dark is rent, mine eye is free 
 
 To pierce the crust of the outer wall. 
 
 And I view inside, and all there, all. 
 
 As the swarming hollow of a hive. 
 
 The whole Basilica alive ! 
 
 Men in the chancel, body and nave. 
 
 Men on the pillars' architrave. 
 
 Men on the statues, men on the tombs 
 
CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 
 
 321 
 
 With popes and kings in their porphyiy 
 
 ■wombs, 
 All famishing in expectation 
 Of the main altar's consummation. 
 For see, for see, the rapturous moment 
 Approaches, and earth's best endowment 
 Ijlends with heaven's ; the taper-fires 
 Pant up, the winding brazen spires 
 Heave loftier yet the baldachin ; 
 The inoense-gaspings, long kept in, 
 Suspire in clouds j the organ blatant 
 Holds his breath and grovels latent, 
 As if God's hushing finger grazed him, 
 {Like Behemoth when he praised him) 
 At the silver bell's shrill tinkling. 
 Quick cold drops of terror sprinkling 
 On the sudden pavement strewed 
 With faces of the multitude. 
 Earth breaks up, time drops away, 
 In flows heaven, with its new day 
 Of endless life, when He who trod. 
 Very man and veiy God, 
 This earth in weakness, shame and pain, 
 Dying the death whose signs remain 
 Up yonder on the accursed tree, — 
 8hall come again, no more to be 
 Of captivity the thrall, 
 But the one God, All in all. 
 King of kings. Lord of lords. 
 As His servant John received the words, 
 ** I died, and live forevermore ! " 
 
 Yet I was left outside the door. 
 
 *' Why sit I here on the threshold-stone, 
 
 Left till He return, alone 
 
 JSave for the garment's extreme fold 
 
 Abandoned still to bless my hold ? " 
 
 My reason, to my doubt, replied, 
 
 As if a book were opened wide. 
 
 And at a certain page I traced 
 
 JEvery record undefaced. 
 
 Added by successive years, — 
 
 The harvestil^s of truth's stray ears 
 
 Singly gleaned, and in one sheaf 
 
 Bound together for belief. 
 
 Yes, I said — that he will go 
 
 And sit with these in turn, I know. 
 
 Their faith's heart beats, though her head 
 
 swims 
 Too giddily to guide her limbs, 
 Disabled by their palsy-stroke 
 From propping mine. Though Rome's gross 
 
 yoke 
 Drops off, no more to be endured, 
 Her teaching is not so obscured 
 By en-ors and perversities. 
 That no truth shines athwart the lies : 
 And he, whose eye detects a spark 
 Even where, to man's, the whole seems dark, 
 May well see flame where each beholder 
 Acknowledges the embers smoulder. 
 But I, a mere man, fear to quit 
 The clue God gave me as most fit 
 To guide my footsteps through life's maze. 
 Because himself discerns all ways 
 Open to reach him ; I, a man 
 Able to mark where faith began 
 
 To swerve aside, till from its summit 
 Judgment drops her damning plummet. 
 Pronouncing such a fatal space 
 Departed from the founder's base : 
 He will not bid me enter too, 
 But rather sit, as now I do. 
 Awaiting his return outside. 
 
 — 'T was thus my reaaon straight replied 
 And joyously I turned, and pressed 
 The garment's skirt upon my breast. 
 Until, afresh its light suffusing me. 
 
 My heart cried — "What has been abusing 
 
 me 
 That I should wait here lonely and coldly, 
 Instead of rising, entering boldly. 
 Baring truth's fa<se, and letting drift 
 Her veils of lies as they choose to shift ? 
 Do these men praise him ? 1 will raise 
 My voice up to their point of praise ! 
 1 see the error ; but above 
 The scope of error, see the love. — 
 Oh, love of those first Christian days I 
 
 — Fanned so soon into a blaze, 
 
 From the spark preserved by the trampled sect, 
 
 That the antique sovereign Intellect 
 
 Which then sat ruling in the world. 
 
 Like a change in dreams, was hurled 
 
 From the throne he reigned upon : 
 
 You looked up and he was gone. 
 
 Gone, his glory of the pen 1 
 
 — Love, with Greece and Rome in ken, 
 Bade her scribes abhor the trick 
 
 Of poetry and rhetoric. 
 
 And exult with hearts set free. 
 
 In blessed imbecility 
 
 Scrawled, perchance, on some torn sheet 
 
 Leaving iSallust incomplete. 
 
 Gone, his pride of sculptor, painter I 
 
 — Love, while able to acquaint her 
 While the thousand statues yet 
 Fresh from chisel, pictui-es wet 
 From brush, she saw on every side. 
 Chose rather with an infant's pride 
 To frame those portents which impart 
 Such unction to true Christian Art. 
 Gone, music too ! The air was stirred 
 By happy wings : Terpander's bird 
 (That, when the cold came, fled away; 
 Would tarry not the wintry day, — 
 As tnore-enduring sculpture must. 
 Till filthy saints rebuked the gust 
 With which they chanced to get a sight 
 Of some dear naked Aphrodite 
 
 They glanced a thought above the toes of. 
 
 By breaking zealously her nose off. 
 
 Love, surely, from that music's linijering, 
 
 Might have filched her organ-finaering, 
 
 Nor chosen rather to set ])rayings 
 
 To hog-grunts, praises to hoi-se-neighings. 
 
 Love was the startling thing, the new : 
 
 Love was the all-sufficient too ; 
 
 And seeing that, yon see the rest : 
 
 As a babe can find its mother's breast 
 
 As well in darkness as in light. 
 
 Love shut our eyes, and all seemed right. 
 
 True, the world's eyes are open now : 
 
 — Less need for me to disallow 
 
 Some few that keep Love's zone unbuckled^ 
 
322 
 
 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 
 
 Peevish aa ever to be suckled, 
 Lulled by the same old baby-prattle 
 With intermixtui'e ot" the rattle, 
 When she would have them creep, stand steady 
 Upon their feet, or walk already, 
 Not to speak of trying to climb. 
 I will be wise another time, 
 And not desire a wall between us. 
 When next I see a church-rool cover 
 So many species of one genus, 
 AH with foreheads bearing lover 
 Written above the earnest eyes of them ; 
 AH with breasts that beat for beauty. 
 Whether sublimed, to the surprise of them, 
 In noble daring, steadfast duty. 
 The heroic in passion, or in action, — 
 Or, lowered for sense's satisfaction, 
 To the mere outside of human creatures. 
 Mere perfect form and faultless features. 
 What ? with all Rome here, whence to levy 
 Such contributions to their appetite. 
 With women and men in a gorgeous bevy. 
 They take, as it were, a padlock, clap it tight 
 On their southern eyes, restrained from feed- 
 ing 
 On the glories of their ancient reading, 
 On the beauties of their modern singing. 
 On the wonders of the builder's bringing, 
 On the majesties of Art around them, — 
 And, all these loves, late struggling incessant. 
 When faith has at last united and bound them. 
 They oifer up to God for a present ? 
 Why, I will, on the whole, be rather proud of 
 
 it,- 
 And, only taking the act in reference 
 To the other recipients who might have allowed 
 
 it, 
 I will rejoice that God had the preference." 
 
 So I summed up ray new resolves : 
 
 Too much love there can never be. 
 
 And where the intellect devolves 
 
 Its function on love exclusively, 
 
 I, a man who possesses both, 
 
 Will accept the provision, nothing loth, 
 
 — Will feast my love, then depart elsewhere, 
 
 That my intellect may find its share. 
 
 And ponder, soul, the while thou departest, 
 
 And see thou applaud the great heart of the 
 
 artist. 
 Who, examining the capabilities 
 Of the block of marble he has to fashion 
 Into a type of thought or passion, — 
 Not always, using obvious facilities. 
 Shapes it, as any artist can. 
 Into a perfect symmetrical man. 
 Complete from head to foot of the life-size. 
 Such as old Adam stood in his wife's eyes, — 
 But, now and then, bravely aspires to consum- 
 mate 
 A Colossus by no means so easy to come at, 
 And uses the whole of his block for the bust, 
 Leaving the mind of the public to finish it. 
 Since cut it ruefully short he must : 
 On the face alone he expends his devotion, 
 He rather would mar than resolve to diminish 
 it, 
 
 — Saying, " Applaud me for this grand notion 
 Of what a face may be ! As for completing it 
 In breast and body and lunbs, do that, you ! 
 AU hail ! I fancy how, happily meeting it, 
 A trunk and legs would perfect the statue, 
 Could man carve so as to answer volition. 
 And how much nobler than petty cavils. 
 Were a hope to find, in my spirit-travels. 
 Some artist of another ambition, 
 Who having a block to carve, no bigger, 
 Has spent his power on the opposite quest, 
 And believed to begin at the feet was best — 
 For so may I see, ere I die, the whole figure ! 
 
 XIII 
 
 No sooner said than out in the night ! 
 My heart beat lighter and more light : 
 And still, as before, I was walking swift. 
 With my senses settling fast and steadying, 
 But my body caught up in the whirl and drift 
 Of the vesture's amplitude, still eddying 
 On, just before me, still to be followed. 
 As it carried me after with its motion : 
 What shall I say ? — as a path were hollowed, 
 And a man went weltering through the ocean, 
 Sucked along in the flying wake 
 Of the luminous water-snake. 
 
 Alone ! I am left alone once more — 
 
 (Save for the garment's extreme fold 
 
 Abandoned still to bless my hold) 
 
 Alone, beside the entrance-door 
 
 Of a sort of temple — perhaps a college, 
 
 — Like nothing I ever saw before 
 
 At home in England, to my knowledge. 
 
 The tall old quaint irregular town ! 
 
 It may be . . . though which, I can't affirm 
 
 . . . any 
 Of the famous middle-age toviTis of Germany ; 
 And this flight of stairs where I sit down. 
 Is it Halle, Weimar, Cassel, Frankfort, 
 Or Gottingen, I have to thank for 't ? 
 It may be Gottingen, — most likely. 
 Through the open door I catch obliquely 
 Glimpses of a lecture-hall ; 
 And not a bad assembly neither. 
 Ranged decent and symmetrical 
 On benches, waiting what 's to see there ; 
 Which, holding still by the vesture's hem, 
 I also resolve to see with them. 
 Cautious this time how I suffer to slip 
 The chance of joining in fellowship 
 With any that call themselves his friends ; 
 As these folks do, I have a notion. 
 But hist — a buzzing and emotion ! 
 All settle themselves, the while ascends 
 By the creaking rail to the lecture-desk, 
 Step by step, deliberate 
 Because of his cranium's over-freight. 
 Three parts sublime to one gi'otesque. 
 If I have proved an accurate guesser. 
 The hawk-nosed, high-cheekboned Professor. 
 I felt at once as if there ran 
 A shoot of love from ray heart to the man — 
 That sallow virgin-minded studious 
 Martyr to mild enthusiasm. 
 As he uttered a kind of cough-preludious 
 
CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 
 
 323 
 
 That woke my syinpathetie spapsm, 
 
 (Beside some spitting- that made me sony) 
 
 Aud stood:, surveying his auditory 
 
 With a wan pure look, wellnigh celestial, — 
 
 Those blue eyes had survived so much I 
 
 While, under the foot they could not smutch, 
 
 Lay all the fleshly and the bestial. 
 
 Over he bowed, and arranged his notes, 
 
 Till the auditory's clearing of throats 
 
 Was done with, died into a silence ; 
 
 Aud, when each glance was upward sent, 
 
 Each bearded mouth composed intent, 
 
 Aud a pin might be heard drop half a mile 
 
 hence, — 
 He pushed back higher his spectacles, 
 Let the eyes stream out like lamps from cells. 
 And giving his head of hair — a hake 
 Of undressed tow, for color and quantity — 
 One rapid and impatient shake, 
 (As our own young England adjusts a jaunty tie 
 When about to impart, on mature digestion. 
 Some thrilling view of the surplice-question) 
 — The Professor's grave voice, sweet though 
 
 hoarse, 
 Broke into his Christmas-Eve discourse. 
 
 And he began it by observing 
 
 How reason dictated that men 
 
 Should rectify the natural swerving, 
 
 By a reversion, now and then. 
 
 To the well-heads of knowled.ge, few 
 
 And far away, whence rolling grew 
 
 The life-stream wide whereat we drink, 
 
 Commingled, as we needs must think, 
 
 With waters alien to the source ; 
 
 To do which, aimed this eve's discourse ; 
 
 Since, where could be a fitter time 
 
 For tracing backward to its prime, 
 
 This Christianity, this lake, 
 
 This reservoir, whereat we slake, 
 
 From one or other bank, our thirst ? 
 
 So, he proposed inquiring first 
 
 Into the various sources whence 
 
 TJiis Myth of Christ is derivable ; 
 
 Demanding from the evidence, 
 
 (Since plainly no such life was livable) 
 
 How these phenomena should class ? 
 
 Whether 't were best opine Christ was, 
 
 Or never was at all, or whether 
 
 He was and was not, both together— 
 
 It matters little for the name. 
 
 So the idea be left the saine. 
 
 Only, for practical purpose' sake, 
 
 'T was obviously as well to take 
 
 The popular story, — understanding 
 
 How the ineptitude of the time. 
 
 And the penman's prejudice, expanding 
 
 Fact into fable fit for the clime, 
 
 Had, by slow and sure degrees, translated it 
 
 Into this myth, this Individuum, — 
 
 Which when reason had strained and abated it 
 
 Of foreign matter, left, for residuum, 
 
 A Man ! — a right true man, however, 
 
 Whose work was worthy a man's endeavor ; 
 
 Work, that gave warrant almost sufficient 
 
 To his disciples, for rather believing 
 
 He was just omnipotent and omniscient. 
 
 As it gives to us, for as frankly receiving 
 
 His word, their tradition, — which, though it 
 
 meant 
 Something entirely different 
 From all that those who only heard it, 
 In their simplicity thought and averred it, 
 Had yet a meaning quite as respectable : 
 For, among other doctrines delectable, 
 Was he not surely the first to insist on 
 The natural sovereignty of our race ? — 
 Here the lecturer came to a pausing-place. 
 And while his cough, like a droughty piston. 
 Tried to dislodge the husk that grew to him, 
 I seized the occasion of bidding adieu to him, 
 The vesture still within my hand, 
 
 XVI 
 
 I could interpret its command. 
 This time he would not bid me enter 
 The exhausted air-bell of the Critic, 
 Truth's atmosphere may grow mephitic 
 When Papist struggles with Dissenter, 
 Impregnating its pristine clarity, 
 
 — One, by his daily fare's vulgarity. 
 Its gust of broken meat and garlic ; 
 
 — One, by his soul's too-much presuming 
 To turn the frankincense's fuming 
 
 And vapors of the candle starlike 
 Into the cloud her wings she buoys on. 
 Each, that thus sets the pure air seething, 
 May poison it for healthy breathing — 
 But the Critic leaves no air to poison ; 
 Pumps out with ruthless ingenuity 
 Atom by atom, and leaves you — vaeuity- 
 Thus much of Christ does he reject ? 
 And what retain ? His intellect ? 
 What is it I must reverence duly ? 
 Poor intellect for worship, truly, 
 W^hich tells me simply what was told 
 (If mere morality, bereft 
 Of the God in Christ, be all that 's left) 
 Elsewhere by voices manifold ; 
 With this advantage, that the stater 
 Made nowise the important stumble 
 Of adding, he, the sage and humble. 
 Was also one with the Creator. 
 You urge Christ's followers' simplicity : 
 Biit how does shifting blame evade it ? 
 Have wisdom's words no more felicity ? 
 Tlie stumbling-block, his speech — who laid it f 
 How comes it that for one foimd able 
 To sift the truth of it from fable, 
 Millions believe it to the letter ? 
 Christ's goodness, then — does that fare better? 
 Strange goodness, which upon the score 
 Of being goodness, the mere due 
 Of man to fellow-man, much more 
 To God — shoidd take another view 
 Of its possessor's privilege. 
 And bid him rule his race I You pledge 
 Your fealty to such rule ? Wliat, all — 
 From heavenly John and Attic Paul, 
 And that brave weather-battered Peter, 
 Whose stout faith only stood completer 
 For buffets, sinning to be pardoned, 
 As, more his hands hauled nets, they hard- 
 ened, — 
 All, down to you, the man of men, 
 
324 
 
 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 
 
 Professine here at; Gottingen, 
 
 Compose Christ's flock ! They, you and I, 
 
 Are sheep of a good man ! And why ? 
 
 The goodness, — how did he acquire it ? 
 
 Was it selfj^ained, did God inspire it ? 
 
 Choose which ; then tell me, on what ground 
 
 Should its, possessor dare propound 
 
 His claim to rise o'er us an inch ? 
 
 Were goodness all some man's invention, 
 
 Who arbitrarily made mention 
 
 What we should follow, and whence flinch, — 
 
 What qualities might take the style 
 
 Of right and wrong, — and had such guessing 
 
 Met with as general acquiesetog 
 
 As graced the alphabet erewhile. 
 
 When A got leave an Ox to be, 
 
 No Camel (quoth the Jews) like G, — 
 
 For thus inventing thing and title 
 
 Worship were that man's fit requital. 
 
 But if the common conscience must 
 
 Be ultimately judge, adj;iiist 
 
 Its apt name to ea«h quality 
 
 Already known, — I would decree 
 
 Worship for such mere demonstration 
 
 And simple work of nomenclature, 
 
 Only the day I praised, not nature. 
 
 But Harvey, for the circulation. 
 
 I would praise such a Christ, with pride 
 
 And joy, that he, as none beside, 
 
 Had taught us how to keep the mind 
 
 God gave him, as God gave his kind. 
 
 Freer than they from fleshly taint : 
 
 I would call such a Christ our Saint, 
 
 As I declare our Poet, him 
 
 Whose insight makes all others dim : 
 
 A thousand poets pried at life. 
 
 And only one amid the strife 
 
 Bose to be Shakespeare : each shall take 
 
 His crown, I 'd say, for the world's sake — 
 
 Though some objected — " Had we seen 
 
 The heaitt and head of each, what screen 
 
 Was broken there to, give them, light. 
 
 While in oacselves it shuts the. sight, 
 
 We should no more admiie, perehance. 
 
 That these found truth out at a glance. 
 
 Than marvel liow the bat discerns 
 
 Some pitch-dark cavern's: fifty tnrns. 
 
 Led by a. finer tact, a gift 
 
 He boasts, wbach other birds must shift 
 
 Without, and grope as best they can." 
 
 No, freely I would praise the man, — 
 
 Nor one whit more, if he contended 
 
 That gift of his from God descended. 
 
 Ah friend, what gift of man's. doea not? 
 
 No nearer' something, by a jot, 
 
 Rise an infinity of nothings 
 
 Than one : take Euclid for' your teacher : 
 
 Distinguish kinds : do crownings, clothings, 
 
 Make that creator which was creature ? 
 
 Multiply gifts upon man's head, 
 
 And what, when all 's done, shall be said 
 
 But — the more gifted he, I ween ! 
 
 That one 's made Christ, this other, Pilate, 
 
 And tbia might be all that has been, — 
 
 So what is there to frown or smile at ? 
 
 What is left, for us, save, in growth 
 
 Of soul, to rise up, far past both, 
 
 Fi'om the gift looking to the giver. 
 
 And from the cistern to the river, 
 
 And from the finite to infinity, 
 
 And from man's dust to God s divinity ? 
 
 XVII 
 
 Take all in a word : the truth in God's breast 
 
 Lies trace for trace upon ours impressed : 
 
 Though he is so bright and we so dim. 
 
 We are made in his image to witness him : 
 
 And were no eye in us to tell. 
 
 Instructed by no, inner sense, 
 
 The li^ht of heaven from the dark of hell, 
 
 That light WQuld want its evidence, — 
 
 Though justice, good and truth were still 
 
 Divine, if, by some demon's will, 
 
 Hatred, aitd wrong had been proclaimed 
 
 Law through the worlds, and right misnamed. 
 
 No mere exposition of morality 
 
 IVlade or in part or in totality. 
 
 Should win you to give it worship, thevefope^: 
 
 And, if no better proof yon will caire for, 
 
 — Whom do you count the worst man upon 
 
 earth? 
 Be sure, he knows, in his conscience, more 
 Of what right, is, than arrives at birth 
 In the best man s acts that we bow before : 
 This last knows better — true, but my fact is, 
 'T is one thing to know, and another to practice. 
 And thence I conclude that the real God-fun©- 
 
 tion 
 Is to furnish a motive and injunction 
 For practising what we know already. 
 And such an injunction and such a motive 
 As the God in Christ, do you waive, and 
 
 " heady. 
 High-minded," hang your tablet-votive 
 Outside the fane on a finger-post ? 
 Morality to the uttermost, 
 Supreme in Cirist as we all confess. 
 Why need we prove w^uld avail no jot 
 To make him God, if God he were not ? 
 What is the point where himself lays stress ? 
 Does the precept run "Believe in good. 
 In justice, truth, now understood 
 For the firat time" ? — or, " Believe in me. 
 Who lived and died, yet essentially 
 Am Lord of Life " ? Whoever can take 
 The same to his heart and for mere love's sake 
 Conceive of the love, -^-that man ootains 
 A new truth ; no, conviction gains 
 Of an old one only, made intense 
 By a fresh appeal to his faded sense. 
 
 xviii 
 
 Can it be that he stays inside ? 
 
 Is the vesture left me to commune with ? 
 
 Could my sonl find aught to sing in tmie with 
 
 Even at this lecture, if she tried ? 
 
 Oh, let me at lowest sympathize 
 
 With the lurking drop of blood that lies 
 
 In the desiccated brain's wliite roots 
 
 Without throb for Christ's attributes, 
 
 As the lecturer makes his special boast f 
 
 If love 's dead there, it has left a ghost. 
 
 Admire we, how from heart to brain 
 
 (Though to say so strike the doctors dumb) 
 
 One instinct rises and falls again, 
 
 Restoring' the equilibrium. 
 
CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 
 
 325 
 
 And how when the Critic had done his best, 
 
 And the pearl of price, at reason's test, 
 
 Lay dust and ashes levigable 
 
 On the Professor's lecture-table, — 
 
 When we looked for the inference and monition 
 
 That our faith, reduced to such condition. 
 
 Be swept forthwith to its natural dust-hole, — 
 
 He bids ns, when we least expect it, 
 
 Take back our faith, — if it be not just whole, 
 
 Yet a pearl indeed, as his tests affect it. 
 
 Which fact pays damage done rewardingly, 
 
 So, prize we our dust and ashes accordingly ! 
 
 " Go home and venerate the myth 
 
 I thus have experimented with — 
 
 This man, continue to adore him 
 
 Rather than all who went before him, 
 
 And all who ever followed after ! " — 
 
 Surely for this I may praise you, my brother ! 
 
 Will you take the praise in tears or laughter ? 
 
 "That 's one point gained : can I compass another ? 
 
 Unlearned love was safe from spurning — 
 
 Can't we respect your loveless learning ? 
 
 Let us at least give learning honor ! 
 
 What laurels had we showered ui>on her. 
 
 Girding her loins up to perturb 
 
 Our theory of the Middle Verb ; 
 
 Or Turk-like brandishing a scimitar 
 
 O'er anapSBsts in comic-trimeter ; 
 
 Or curing the halt and maimed *^ Iketides," 
 
 While we lounged on at our indebted ease : 
 
 Instead of which, a tricksy demon 
 
 Sets her at Titus or Philemon ! 
 
 When ignorance wags his ears of leather 
 
 And hates God's word, 't is altogether ; 
 
 Nor leaves he his congenial thistles 
 
 To go and browse on Paul's Epistles. 
 
 — And you, the audience, who might ravage 
 The world wide, enviably savage. 
 
 Nor heed the cry of the retriever, 
 
 More than Hen- Heine (before his fever), — 
 
 I do not tell a lie so arrant 
 
 As say my passion's wings are furled up, 
 
 And, without plainest heavenly warrant, 
 
 I were ready and glad to give the world up — 
 
 But still, when you rub brow meticulous, 
 
 And ponder the profit of turning holy 
 
 If not for God's, for your own sake solely, 
 
 — God forbid I should find you ridiculous ! 
 Deduce from this lecture aU that eases you. 
 Nay, call yourselves, if the Calling pleases yon, 
 " Christians," — abhor the deist's pravity, — 
 Go on, you shall no more move my gravity 
 Than, when I see boys ride arcockhorse, 
 
 I find it in my heart to embarrass them 
 By hinting that their stick 's a mock horse. 
 And they really carry what they say carries 
 them. 
 
 So sat I talking with my mind. 
 
 I did not long to leave the door 
 
 And find a new church, as before. 
 
 But rather was quiet and inclined 
 
 To prolong and enjoy the gentle resting 
 
 From further tracking and trying and testing. 
 
 " This tolerance is a genial mood ! " 
 
 (Said I, and a little pause ensued.) 
 
 " One trims the bark 'twixt shoal and shelf, 
 
 And sees, each side, the good effects of it, 
 
 A value for religion's self, 
 
 A carelessness about the sects of it. 
 
 Let me enjoy my own conviction. 
 
 Not watch my neighbor's faith with fretfulness, 
 
 Still spying there some dereliction 
 
 Of truth, perversity, forgetfulness ! 
 
 Better a mild indifferentism. 
 
 Teaching that both our faiths (though dnller 
 
 His shine through a dull spirit's prism) 
 
 Originally had one color ! 
 
 Better pursue a pilgrimage 
 
 Through ancient and through modern times 
 
 To many peoples, various cUmes, 
 
 Where I may see saint, savage, sage 
 
 Fuse their respective creeds in one 
 
 Before the general Father's throne ! " 
 
 XX 
 
 — 'T was the horrible storm began afresh ! 
 The black night caught me in ms mesh. 
 Whirled me up, and flung me prone. 
 
 I was left on the college-step alone. 
 
 I looked, and far there, ever fleeting 
 
 Far, far away, the receding gesture, 
 
 And looming of the lessening vesture ! — 
 
 Swept forward from my stupid hand, 
 
 Whue I watched ray foolish heart expand 
 
 In the lazy glow of benevolfince. 
 
 O'er the various modes of man's belief. 
 
 I sprang up with fear's vehemence. 
 
 Needs must there be one way, our chief 
 
 Best way of worship : let me strive 
 
 To find it, and when found, contrive 
 
 My fellows also take their share ! 
 
 This constitutes my earthly care : 
 
 God's is above it and distinct, 
 
 For I, a man, with men am linked 
 
 And not a brute with brutes ; no gain 
 
 That I experience, must remain 
 
 Unshared : but should my best endeavor 
 
 To share it, fail — subsisteth ever 
 
 God's care above, and I exult 
 
 That God, by God's own ways occult, 
 
 May — doth, I will believe — bring back 
 
 All wanderers to a single track. 
 
 Meantime, I can but testify 
 
 God's care for me — no more, can I — 
 
 It is but for myself I know ; 
 
 The world roUs witnessing aronnd me 
 
 Only to leave me as it found me ; 
 
 Men cry there, but my ear is slow : 
 
 Their races flourish or decay 
 
 — What boots it ; while yon lucid way 
 Loaded with stars divides the vault ? 
 But soon my soul repaii'S its fault 
 When, sharpening sense's hebetude. 
 She turns on my own life ! So viewed. 
 
 No mere mote's-breadth but teems immense 
 
 With witnessiugs of providence : 
 
 And woe to me if when I look 
 
 Upon that record, the sole book 
 
 Unsealed to me, I take no heed 
 
 Of any warning that I read ! 
 
 Have I been sure, this Christmas-Eve, 
 
 God's own hand did the rainbow weave, 
 
 Whereby the truth from heaven slid 
 
 into my soul ? — I cannot bid 
 
326 
 
 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 
 
 The world admit he stooped to heal 
 
 My soul, as if in a thunder-peal 
 
 Where one heard noise, and one saw flame, 
 
 I only knew he named my name : 
 
 But what is the world to me, for sorrow 
 
 Or joy in its censure, when to-morrow 
 
 It drops the remark, with just-turned head, 
 
 Then, on again, " That man is dead " ? 
 
 Yes, but for me — my name called, — drawn 
 
 As a conscript's lot from the lap's black yawn. 
 
 He has dipt into on a battle-dawn : 
 
 Bid out of life by a nod, a glance, — 
 
 Stumbling, mute-mazed, at nature's chance, — 
 
 With a rapid finger circled round. 
 
 Fixed to the first poor inch of ground 
 
 To fight from, where his foot was found ; 
 
 Whose ear but a minute since lay free 
 
 To the wide camp's buzz and gossipiy — 
 
 Summoned, a solitary man, 
 
 To end his life where his life began, 
 
 From the safe gla4 rear, to the dreadful van ! 
 
 Soul of mine, hadst thou caught and held 
 
 By the hem of the vesture ! — 
 
 XXI 
 
 And I caught 
 At the flying robe, and unrepelled 
 Was lapped again in its folds full-fraught 
 With warmth and wonder and delight, 
 God's mercy being infinite. 
 For scarce had the words escaped my tongue, 
 When, at a passionate bound, I sprung 
 Out of the wondering world of rain. 
 Into the little chapel again. 
 
 How else was I found there, bolt upright 
 On my bench, as if I had never left it ? 
 — Never flung out on the common at night. 
 Nor met the storm and wedge-like cleft it, 
 Seen the raree-show of Peter's successor, 
 Or the laboratory of the Professor ! 
 For the Vision, that was true, I wist. 
 True as that heaven and earth exist. 
 There sat my friend, the yellow and tall. 
 With his neck and its wen in the selfsame place ; 
 Yet my nearest neighbor's cheek showed gall. 
 She had slid away a contemptuous space : 
 And the old fat woman, late so placable, 
 Eyed me with symptoms, hardly mistakable. 
 Of her milk of kindness turning rancid. 
 In short, a spectator might have fancied 
 That I had nodded, betrayed by slumber. 
 Yet kept my seat, a warning ghastly. 
 Through the heads of the sermon, nine in num- 
 ber. 
 And woke up now at the tenth and lastly. 
 But again, could such disgrace have happened ? 
 Each friend at my elbow had surely nudged it ; 
 And, as for the sermon, where did my nap end ? 
 Unless I heard it, could f have judged it ? 
 Could I report as I do at the close. 
 First, the preacher speaks through his nose : 
 Second, his gesture is too emphatic ; 
 Thirdly, to waive what 's pedagogic, 
 The subject-matter itself lacks logic : 
 Fourthly, the English is nngramraatic. 
 Great news ! the preacher is found no Pascal, 
 
 Whom, if I pleased, I might to the task caU 
 
 Of making square to a finite eye 
 
 The circle of infinity. 
 
 And find so all-but-just-succeedmg ! 
 
 Great news ! the sermon proves no reading 
 
 Where bee-like in the flowers I bury me, 
 
 Like Taylor's, the immortal Jeremy ! 
 
 And now that I know the very worst of him, 
 
 What was it I thought to obtain at first of him ? 
 
 Ha ! Is God mocked, as he asks ? 
 
 Shall I take on me to change his tasks, 
 
 And dare, dispatched to a river-head 
 
 For a simple draught of the element, 
 
 Neglect the thing for which he sent. 
 
 And return with another thing instead ? — 
 
 Saying, " Because the water found 
 
 Welling up from underground. 
 
 Is mingled with the taints of earth, 
 
 While thou, I know, dost laugh at dearth. 
 
 And couldst, at wink or word, convulse 
 
 The world with the leap of a river-pulse, — 
 
 Therefore 1 turned from the oozings muddy, 
 
 And bring thee a chalice I found, instead : 
 
 See the brave veins in the breccia ruddy ! 
 
 One would suppose that the marble bled. 
 
 What matters the water ? A hope I have 
 
 nursed : 
 The waterless cup will quench my thirst." 
 — Better have knelt at the poorest stream 
 That trickles in pain from the straitest rift 1 
 For the less or the more is all God's gift. 
 Who blocks up or breaks wide the granite-seam. 
 And here, is there water or not, to drink ? 
 I then, in ignorance and weakness. 
 Taking God's help, have attained to think 
 My heart does best to receive in meekness 
 That mode of worship, as most to his mind, 
 Where earthly aids being cast behind, 
 His AU in AU appears serene 
 With the thinnest human veil between, 
 Letting the mystic lamps, the seven. 
 The many motions of liis spirit. 
 Pass, as they list, to earth from heaven. 
 For the preacher's merit or demerit. 
 It were to be wished the flaws were fewer 
 In the eai-then vessel, holding treasure 
 Which lies as safe in a golden ewer ; 
 But the main thing is, does it hold good meas< 
 
 ure? 
 Heaven soon sets right all other matters ! — 
 Ask, else, these ruins of humanity. 
 This flesh worn out to rags and tatters, 
 This soul at struggle with insanity. 
 Who thence take comfort — can I doubt ? — 
 Which an empire gained, were a loss without. 
 May it be mine ! And let us hope 
 That no worse blessing befall the Pope, 
 Turned sick at last of to-day's bufFoonery, 
 Of posturings and petticoatings. 
 Beside his Bourbon bully's gloatlngs 
 In the bloody orgies of drunk poltroonery ! 
 Nor may the Professor forego its peace 
 At Gottingen presently, when, in the dusk 
 Of his life, if his cough, as I fear, should iit 
 
 crease. 
 Prophesied of by that horrible husk — 
 When thicker and thicker the darkness fills 
 The world through his misty spectacles, 
 
CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 
 
 327 
 
 And lie gropes for something more substantial 
 
 Than a table, myth or personification, — 
 
 May Christ do for him what no mere man shall, 
 
 And stand confessed as the God of salvation ! 
 
 Meantime, in the still reciu'ring" fear 
 
 Lest myself, at unawares, be found, 
 
 While attacliing- the choice of my neig'hbors 
 
 round, 
 With none of my own made — I choose here ! 
 The giving- out of the hymn reclaims me ; 
 I have done : and if any blames me. 
 Thinking that merely to touch in brevity 
 The topics I dwell on, were unlawful, — 
 Or worse, that I trench, with undue levity, 
 On the bounds of the holy and tlie awful, — 
 I praise the heart, and pity the head of him, 
 And refer myself to Thee, instead of him, 
 Who head and heart alike discernest, 
 Looking below light speech we utter. 
 When frothy spiime and frequent sputter 
 Prove that the soul's depths boil in earnest I 
 May truth shine out, stand ever before us ! 
 I put up pencil and join chorus 
 To Hepzibah Tune, without further apology, 
 The last five verses of the third section 
 Of the seventeenth hymn of Whitefield's Col- 
 lection, 
 To conclude with the doxology. 
 
 EASTER-DAY 
 
 How very hard it is to be 
 
 A Christian ! Hard for you and me, 
 
 — Not the mere task of making resl 
 That duty up to its ideal, 
 Effecting thus, complete and whole, 
 A purpose of the human soul — 
 Fur that is always hard to do ; 
 
 But hard, I mean, for me and you 
 
 To realize it, more or less. 
 
 With even the moderate success^ 
 
 Which commonly repays our strife 
 
 To carry out the aims of life. 
 
 " This aim is greater," you will say, 
 
 " And so more arduous every way. 
 
 — But the importance of their fruits 
 Still proves to man, in aU pursuits. 
 Proportional encouragement. 
 
 " Then, what if it be God's intent 
 
 That labor to this one result 
 
 Should seem unduly difficult ? " 
 
 Ah, tha,t 's a question in the dark — 
 
 And the sole thing that I remark 
 
 Upon the difficulty, this : 
 
 We do not see it where it is. 
 
 At the beginning of the race : 
 
 As we proceed, it shifts its place. 
 
 And where we looked for crowns to fall. 
 
 We find the tug 's to come, — that 's all. 
 
 II 
 
 At first you say, *' The whole, or chief 
 Of flifJSculties, is belief. 
 Could I believe once thoroughly, 
 The rest were simple. What ? Am I 
 An idiot, do yon think, — a beast ? 
 
 Prove to me, only that the least 
 Command of God is God's indeed. 
 And what injunction shall I need 
 To pay obedience ? Death so nigh. 
 When time must end, eternity 
 Begin, — and cannot I compute, 
 Weigh loss and gain together, suit 
 My actions to the balance drawn, 
 And give my body to be sawn 
 Asunder, hacked in pieces, tied 
 To horses, stoned, burned, crucified, 
 Like any martyr of the list ? 
 How gladly I — if I make acquist. 
 Through the brief minute's fierce annoy, 
 Of God's eternity of joy." 
 
 — And certainly you name the point 
 
 Whereon all tmns : for could you joint 
 
 This flexile finite life once tight 
 
 Into the fixed and infinite, 
 
 You, safe inside, would spurn what 's out, 
 
 With carelessness enough, no doubt — 
 
 Would spurn mere life : but when time brings 
 
 To their next stage your reasonings, 
 
 Your eyes, late wide, begin to wink 
 
 Nor see the path so well, I think. 
 
 You say, "Faith may be, one agrees, 
 
 A touchstone for God's purposes, 
 
 Even as ourselves conceive of them. 
 
 Could he acquit us or condemn 
 
 For holding what no hand can loose, 
 
 Rejecting when we can't but choose ? 
 
 As well award the victor's wreath 
 
 To whosoever should take breath 
 
 Duly each minute while he lived — 
 
 Grant heaven, because a man contrived 
 
 To see its sunlight every day 
 
 He walked forth on the public way. 
 
 You must mix some uncertainty 
 
 With faith, if you would have faith be. 
 
 Why, what but faith, do we abhor 
 
 And idolize each other for — 
 
 Faith in our evil or our good. 
 
 Which is or is not understood 
 
 Aright by those we love or those 
 
 We hate, thence called our friends or foes ? 
 
 Your mistress saw your spirit's grace, 
 
 When, turning from the ugly face, 
 
 I found belief in it too hard ; 
 
 And she and I have our reward. 
 
 — Yet here a doubt peeps : well for us 
 Weak beings, to go using thus 
 
 A touchstone for our little ends, 
 Trying vnth. faith the foes and friends ; 
 
 — But God, bethink you ! I would fain 
 Conceive of the Creator's reign 
 
 As based upon exacter laws 
 Than creatures build by with applause. 
 In all God's acts — (as Plato cries 
 He doth) — he should georaetrize. 
 Whence. I desiderate "... 
 
 I see! 
 You would grow as a natural tree, 
 
328 
 
 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 
 
 Stand as a rock, soar up like fire. 
 The world 's so perfect and entire, 
 Quite above faith, so right and fit ! 
 Go there, walk up and down in it ! 
 No. The creation travails, groans — 
 Contrive your music from its moans. 
 Without or let or hindrance, friend ! 
 That 's an old story, and its end 
 As old — you come hack (be sincere) 
 With every question you put here 
 (Here where there once was. and is still. 
 We think, a living oracle. 
 Whose answers you stand carping at) 
 This time flung back unanswered fiat, — 
 Beside, perhaps, as many more 
 As those that drove you out before. 
 Now added, where was little need. 
 Questions impossible, indeed. 
 To us who sat still, all and each 
 Persuaded that our earth had speech. 
 Of God's, writ down, no matter if 
 In cursive type or hieroglyph, — 
 Which one tenet freed us from the yoke 
 Of guessing why He never spoke. 
 You come back in no better plight 
 Than when you left us, — am I right ? 
 
 So, the old process, 1 conclude. 
 
 Goes on, the reasoning 'spursaed 
 
 Further. You own, ' 'Tis well averred, 
 
 A scientific faith 's absurd, 
 
 — Frustrates the very f.nd 't was meant 
 
 To serve. So, I would rest content 
 
 With a mere probability. 
 
 But, probable ; the chance must lie 
 
 Clear on one side, — lie all in rough, 
 
 So long as there be just enough 
 
 To pin my faith to, though it hap 
 
 Only at points ; from gap to gap 
 
 One hangs up a huge curtain so, 
 
 Grrandly, nor seeks to have it go 
 
 Foldless and flat along the wall. 
 
 What care I if some interval 
 
 Of life less plainly may depend 
 
 (Dn God ? I 'd hang there to the end ; 
 
 And thus I should not find it hard 
 
 To be a Christian and debarred 
 
 From trailing on the earth, till furled 
 
 Away by death. — Renounce the world ! 
 
 Were that a mighty hardship ? Plan 
 
 A pleasant life, and straight some man 
 
 Beside you, with, if he thought fit. 
 
 Abundant means to compass it, 
 
 Shall turn deliberate aside 
 
 To try and live as, if you tried 
 
 You clearly might, yet most despise. 
 
 One friend of mine wears out his eyes. 
 
 Slighting the stupid joys of sense. 
 
 In patient hope that, ten years hence, 
 
 ' Somewhat completer,' he may say, 
 
 * My list of coleoptera! ' 
 
 While just the other who most laughs 
 
 At him, above all epitaphs 
 
 Aspires to have his t-imh describe 
 
 Himself as sole among the tribe 
 
 Of snuffbox-fanciers, who possessed 
 
 A Grrignon with the Regent's crest. 
 
 So that, subduing, as you want. 
 
 Whatever stands predominant 
 
 Among my earthly appetites 
 
 For tastes and smells and sounds and sights, 
 
 I shall be doing that alone. 
 
 To gain a palm-branch and a throne. 
 
 Which fifty people undertake 
 
 To do, and gladly, for the sake 
 
 Of giving a Semitic guess. 
 
 Or playing pawns at blindfold chess.'' 
 
 Good : and the next thing is, — look round 
 
 For evidence enough ! 'T is found. 
 
 No doubt : as is your sort of mind. 
 
 So is your sort of search : you '11 find 
 
 What you desire, and that 's to be 
 
 A Christian. What says history ? 
 
 How comforting a point it were 
 
 To find some mummy-scrap declare 
 
 There lived a Moses ! Better still. 
 
 Prove Jonah's whale translatable 
 
 Into some quicksand of the seas. 
 
 Isle, cavern, rock, or what you please. 
 
 That faith might flap her wings and crow 
 
 From such an eminence ! Or, no — 
 
 The human heart 's best ; you prefer 
 
 Making that prove the minister 
 
 To truth ; you probe its wants and needs. 
 
 And hopes and fears, then try what creeds 
 
 Meet these most aptly, — resolute 
 
 That faith plucks such substantial fruit 
 
 Wherever these two correspond, 
 
 She little needs to look beyond 
 
 And puzzle out who Orpheus was, 
 
 Or Dionysius Zagrias. 
 
 You '11 find sufficient, as I say, 
 
 To satisfy you either way ; 
 
 You wanted to believe ; your pains 
 
 Are crowned — yon do : and what remains ? 
 
 " Renounce the world ! " — Ah, were it done 
 
 By merely cutting one by one 
 
 Your limbs off, with your wise head last, 
 
 How easy were it ! — how soon past, 
 
 If once in the believing mood ! 
 
 " Such is man's usual gratitude. 
 
 Such thanks to God do we return. 
 
 For not exacting that we spurn 
 
 A single gift of Ufe, forego 
 
 One real gain, — only taste them so 
 
 With gravity and temperance. 
 
 That those mild virtues may enhance 
 
 Such pleasures, rather than abstract — 
 
 Last spice of which, will be the fact 
 
 Of love discerned in every gift ; 
 
 While, when the scene of life shall shift, 
 
 And the gay heart be taught to ache, 
 
 As sorx'ows and privations take 
 
 The place of joy, — the thing that seems 
 
 Mere misery, under human schemes, 
 
 Becomes, regarded by the light 
 
 Of love, as very near or quite 
 
 As good a gift as joy before. 
 
 So plain is it that, all the more 
 
 A dispensation 's merciful, 
 
 More pettishly we try and cull 
 
 Briers, thistles, from our private plot, 
 
 To mar God's ground where thorns are not ' ' 
 
CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 
 
 329 
 
 Do you say this, or I ? — Oh, you I 
 
 Then, what, my friend ? — (thus I pursue 
 
 Our parley) — you indeed opine 
 
 That the Eternal and Divine 
 
 Did, eighteen centuries ago, 
 
 In very truth . , . Enough I you know 
 
 The all-stupendous tale, — that Birth, 
 
 That Life, that Death ! And all, the earth 
 
 Shuddered at, — all, the heavens grew black 
 
 Rather than see ; all, nature's rack 
 
 And throe at dissolution's brink 
 
 Attested, — all took place, you think. 
 
 Only to give our joys a zest. 
 
 And prove our sorrows for the best ? 
 
 We differ, then I Were I, still pale 
 
 And heartatruck at the dreadful tale, 
 
 Waiting to hear God's voice declare 
 
 What horror followed for my share. 
 
 As implicated in the deed. 
 
 Apart from other sins, — concede 
 
 That if He blacked out in a blot 
 
 My brief life's pleasantness, 't were not 
 
 So very disproportionate ! 
 
 Or there might be another fate — 
 
 I certainly could understand 
 
 (If fancies were the thing in hand) 
 
 How God might save, at that day's price, 
 
 The impure in their impurities, 
 
 Give license formal and complete 
 
 To choose the fair and pick the sweet. 
 
 But there be certain words, broad, plain, 
 
 Uttered again and yet again, 
 
 Hard to mistake or overgloss — 
 
 Announcing this world's gain for loss, 
 
 And bidding us reject the same : 
 
 The whole world Ueth {they proclaim) 
 
 In wickedness, — come out of it ! 
 
 Turn a deaf ear, if you think fit. 
 
 But I who thrill through every nerve 
 
 At thought of what deaf ears deserve — 
 
 How do you counsel in the case ? 
 
 ** I *d take, by all means, in your place, 
 
 The safe side, since it so appears : 
 
 Deny myself, a few brief years, 
 
 The natural pleasure, leave the fruit 
 
 Or cut the plant up by the root. 
 
 Remember what a martyr said 
 
 On the rude tablet overhead ! 
 
 * I was bom sickly, poor and mean, 
 
 A slave : no misery could screen 
 
 The holders of the pearl of price 
 
 From Caesar's envy ; therefore twice 
 
 I fought with beasts, and three times saw 
 
 My children suffer by his law ; 
 
 At last my own release was earned : 
 
 I was some time in being burned, 
 
 But at the close a Hand came through 
 
 The fire above my head, and drew 
 
 My soul to Christ, whom now I see. 
 
 Sergius, a brother, writes for me 
 
 This testimony on the wall — 
 
 For me, I have forgot it all.' 
 
 You say right ; this were not so hard I 
 
 And since one nowise is debarred 
 
 From this, why not escape some sins 
 By such a method ? " 
 
 X 
 
 Then begins 
 To the old point revulsion new — 
 (For 't is just this I brinpr you to) — 
 If after all we should mistake. 
 And so renounce life for the sake 
 Of death and nothing else ? You hear 
 Each friend we jeered at, send the jeer 
 Back to ourselves with good effect — 
 *' There were my beetles to collect ! 
 My box — a tiifle, I confess, 
 But here I hold it, ne'ertheless ! " 
 Poor idiots, (let us pluck up heart 
 And answer) we, the better part 
 Have chosen, though 't were only hope, — 
 Nor envy moles like you that grope 
 Amid your veritable muck, 
 More than the grasshoppers would truck, 
 For yours, their passionate life away, 
 That spends itself in leaps all day 
 To reach the sun, you want the eyes 
 To see, as they the wings to rise 
 And match the noble hearts of them ! 
 Thus the eontemuer we contemn, — 
 And, when doubt strikes us, thus we ward 
 Its stroke off, caught upon our guard, 
 — Not struck enough to overturn 
 Our faith, but shake it — make us learn 
 What I began with, and, I wis, 
 End, having proved, — how hard it is 
 To be a Christian I 
 
 " Proved, or not, 
 However you wis, small thanks, I wot, 
 You get of mine, for taking pains 
 To make it hard to me. Who gains 
 By that, I wonder ? Here I live 
 In trusting ease ; and here you drive 
 At causing me to lose what most 
 Yourself would mourn for had you lost I " 
 
 But, do you see, my friend, that thus 
 You leave Saint Paul for ^schylus ? 
 — Who made his Titan's arch-device 
 The giving men blind hopes to spice 
 The meal of life with, else devoured 
 In bitter haste, while lo, death loured 
 Before them at the platter's edge ! 
 If faith should be, as I allege, 
 Quite other than a condiment 
 To heighten flavors with, or meant 
 (Like that brave curry of his Grace) 
 To take at need the victuals' place ? 
 If, having dined, you would digest 
 Besides, and turning to your rest 
 Should find instead . . . 
 
 Now, you shall see 
 And judge if a mere foppery 
 Pricks on my speaking ! I resolve 
 To utter — yes, it shaU devolve 
 On you to hear as solemn, strange 
 And dread a thing as in the range 
 
330 
 
 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 
 
 Of facts, — or fancies, if God will — 
 
 E'er happened to our kind ! I still 
 
 Stand in the cloud and, while it wraps 
 
 My face, ought not to speak perhaps ; 
 
 Seeing that if I carry through 
 
 My purpose, if my words in you 
 
 Find a live actual listener, 
 
 My story, reason must aver 
 
 False after all — the happy chance I 
 
 While, if each human countenance 
 
 I meet in London day by day, 
 
 Be what I fear, — my warning fray 
 
 No one, and no one they convert, 
 
 And no one helps me to assert 
 
 How hard it is to really be 
 
 A Christian, and in vacancy 
 
 I pour this story ! 
 
 I commence 
 By trying to inform you, whence 
 It comes that every Easter-night 
 As now, I sit up, watch, till light, 
 Upon those chimney-stacks and roofs. 
 Give, through my window-pane, gray proofs 
 That Easter-Day is breaking slow. 
 On such a night, three years ago, 
 It chanced that I had cause to cross 
 The common, where the chapel was, 
 Oar friend spoke of, the other day — 
 You 've not forgotten, I dare say. 
 I fell to musing of the time 
 So close, the blessed matin-prime 
 All hearts leap up at, in some guise — 
 One could not well do otherwise. 
 Insensibly my thoughts were bent 
 Toward the main point ; I overwent 
 Much the same ground of reasoning 
 As you and I just now. One thing 
 Remained, however — one that tasked 
 My soul to answer ; and I asked. 
 Fairly and frankly, what might be 
 That History, that Faith, to me 
 
 — Me there — not me in some domain 
 Built up and peopled by my brain. 
 Weighing its merits as one weighs 
 Mere theories for blame or praise, 
 
 — The kingcraft of the Lucumons, 
 
 Or Fourier's scheme, its pros and cons, — 
 But my faith there, or none at all. 
 " How were my case, now, did I fall 
 Dead here, this minute — should I lie 
 Faithful or faithless ? '^ Note that I 
 Inclined thus ever ! — little prone 
 For instance, when I lay alone 
 In childhood, to go calm to sleep 
 And leave a closet where might keep 
 His watch perdue some murderer 
 Waiting till twelve o'clock to stir. 
 As good authentic legends tell : 
 " He might : but how improbable ! 
 How little likely to deserve 
 The pains and trial to the nerve 
 Of thrusting head into the dark I '* — 
 Urged my old nurse, and bade me mark 
 Beside, that, should the dreadful scout 
 Really lie hid there, and leap out 
 At first turn of the rusty key, 
 
 Mine were small gain that she could see, 
 
 Killed not in bed but on the floor. 
 
 And losing one night's sleep the more. 
 
 I tell you, I would always burst 
 
 The door ope, know my fate at first. 
 
 This time, indeed, the closet penned 
 
 No such assassin : but a friend 
 
 Rather, peeped out to guard me, fit 
 
 For counsel. Common Sense, to wit, 
 
 Who said a good deal that might pass, — 
 
 Heartening, impartial too, it was. 
 
 Judge else : '' For, soberly now, — who 
 
 Should be a Christian if not you ? " 
 
 (Hear how he smoothed me down.) " One takes 
 
 A whole life, sees what eoui-se it makes 
 
 Mainly, and not by fits and starts — 
 
 In spite of stoppage which imparts 
 
 Fresh value to the general speed. 
 
 A life, with none, would fly indeed : 
 
 Your progressing is slower — right ! 
 
 We deal with progress and not flight. 
 
 Through baffling senses passionate, 
 
 Fancies as restless, — with a freight 
 
 Of knowledge cumbersome enough 
 
 To sink your ship when waves grow rough, 
 
 Though meant for ballast in the hold, — 
 
 I find, 'mid dangers manifold, 
 
 The good bark answers to the helm 
 
 AVhere faith sits, easier to o'erwhelm 
 
 Than some stout peasant's heavenly guide, 
 
 Whose hard head could not, if it tried. 
 
 Conceive a doubt, nor understand 
 
 How senses hornier than his hand 
 
 Should 'tice the Christian off his guard. 
 
 More happy ! But shall we award 
 
 Less honor to the hull which, dogged 
 
 By storms, a mere wreck, waterlogged. 
 
 Masts by the board, her bulwarks gone 
 
 And stanchions going, yet bears on, — 
 
 Than to mere lifeboats, iDuilt to save, 
 
 And triumph o'er the breaking wave ? 
 
 Make perfect your good ship as these. 
 
 And what were her performances ! " 
 
 I added — " Would the ship reach home ! 
 
 I wish indeed ' God's kingdom come ' — 
 
 The day when I shall see appear 
 
 His bidding, as my duty, clear 
 
 From doubt ! And it shall dawn, that day, 
 
 Some future season ; Easter may 
 
 Prove, not impossibly, the time — 
 
 Yes, that were striking — fates would chime 
 
 So aptly ! Easter-moi-n, to bring 
 
 The Judgment ! — deeper in the spring 
 
 Than now, however, when there 's snow 
 
 Capping the hills ; for earth must show 
 
 All signs of meaning to pursue 
 
 Her tasks as she was wont to do 
 
 — The skylark, taken by surprise 
 As we ourselves, shall recognize 
 Sudden the end. For suddenly 
 
 It comes ; the dreadfulness must be 
 In that ; all warrants the belief ~ 
 * At night it cometh like a thief.' 
 I fancy why the trumpet blows ; 
 
 — Plainly, to wake one. From repose 
 We shall start up, at last awake 
 From life, that insane dream we take 
 For waking now, because it seems. 
 
CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 
 
 331 
 
 And as, when now we wake from dreams, 
 
 We lau},'h, whild we recall them, ' Fool, 
 
 To let the chance slip, linger cool 
 
 When such adventure ofi'ered ! Just 
 
 A bridg^e to cross, a dwarf to thrust 
 
 Aside, a wicked mage to stab — 
 
 And, lo ye, I had kissed Queen Mab ! ' 
 
 So shall we marvel why we grudged 
 
 Our labor here, and idly judged 
 
 Of heaven, we might have gained, but lose ! 
 
 Loss ? Talk of loss, and I refuse 
 
 To plead at all ! You speak no worse 
 
 Nor better than my ancient nurse 
 
 When she would tell me in my youth 
 
 I well deserved that shapes uncouth 
 
 Frighted and teased me in my sleep : 
 
 Why could I not in memory keep 
 
 Her precept for the evil's cure ? 
 
 ' Pinch your own arm, boy, and be sure 
 
 You 'U wake forthwith ! ' " 
 
 And as I said 
 This nonsense, throwing back my head 
 With light complacent laugh, I found 
 Suddenly all the midnight round 
 One fire. The doms of heaven had stood 
 As made up of a multitude 
 Of handbreadth cloudlets, one vast rack 
 Of ripples infinite and black. 
 From sky to sky. Sudden there went, 
 Like horror and astonishment, 
 A fierce vindictive scribble of red 
 Quick flame across, as if one said 
 (The angry scribe of Judgment) " There — 
 Burn it ! " And straight I was aware 
 That the whole ribwork round, minute 
 Cloud touching cloud beyond compute, 
 Was tinted, each with its own spot 
 Of burning at the core, till clot 
 Jammed against clot, and spilt its fire 
 Over all heaven, which 'gan suspire 
 As fanned to measure equable, — 
 Just so great conflagrations kill 
 Night overhead, and rise and sink. 
 Reflected. Now the fire would shrink 
 And wither ofB the blasted face 
 Of heaven, and I distinct might trace 
 The sharp black lidgy outlines left 
 Unburned like network — then, each cleft 
 The fire had been sucked back into. 
 Regorged, and out it surging flew 
 Furiously, and night writhed inflamed. 
 Till, tolerating to be tamed 
 No longer, certain rays world-wide 
 Shot downwardly. On every side 
 Caught past escape, the earth was lit ; 
 As if a dragon's nostril split 
 And all his famished ire o'erflowed ; 
 Then, as he winced at his lord's goad, 
 Back he inhaled : whereat I found 
 The clouds into vast pillars bound. 
 Based on the comers of the earth. 
 Propping the skies at top : a dearth 
 Of fire i' the violet intervals, 
 Leavtn-'j exposed the utmost walls 
 Of tim 3, about to tumble in 
 And end the world. 
 
 I felt begin 
 The Judgment-Day : to retrocede 
 Was too late now. ''' In very deed," 
 (I uttered to myself) ■" that Day I " 
 The intuition burned away 
 All darkness from my spirit too : 
 There, stood I, found and fixed, I knew, 
 Choosing the world. The choice was made ; 
 And naked and disguiseless stayed, 
 And unevadable, the fact. 
 My brain held all the same compact 
 Its senses, nor my heart declined 
 Its office ; rather, both combined 
 To help me in this juncture. I 
 Lost not a second, — agony 
 Gave boldness : since my life had end 
 And my choice vrith it — best defend, 
 Applaud both ! I resolved to say, 
 '* So was I framed by thee, such way 
 I put to use thy senses here ! 
 It was so beautiful, so near. 
 Thy world, — what could I then but choose 
 My part there ? Nor did I refuse 
 To look above the transient boon 
 Of time ; but it was hard so soon 
 As in a short life, to give up 
 Such beauty : I could put the cup, 
 Undrained of half its fulness, by ; 
 But, to renounce it utterly, 
 — That was too hard ! Nor did the cry 
 Which bade renounce it, touch my brain 
 Authentically deep and plain 
 Enough to make my lips let go. 
 But thou, who knowest all, dost know 
 Whether I was not, life's brief while, 
 Endeavoring to reconcile 
 Those lips {too tardily, alas !) 
 To letting the dear remnant pass. 
 One day, — some drops of earthly good 
 Untasted ! Is it for this mood. 
 That thou, whose earth delights so welb. 
 Hast made its complement a hell ? " 
 
 A final belch of fire like blood, 
 Overbroke all heaven in one flood 
 Of doom. Then fire was sky, and sky 
 Fire, and both, one brief ecstasy, 
 Then ashes. But I heard no noise 
 (Whatever was) because a voice 
 Beside me spoke thus, " Life is done, 
 Time ends. Eternity 's begun, 
 And thou art judged forevermore." 
 
 I looked up ; all seemed as before ; 
 Of that cloud-Tophet overhead 
 No trace was left : I saw instead 
 The common round me, and the sky 
 Above, stretched drear and emptily 
 Of life. 'T was the last watch of night. 
 Except what brings the morning quite ; 
 When the armed angel, conscience-clear, 
 His task nigh done, leans o'er his spear 
 And gazes on the eai-th he guards. 
 Safe one night more through all its wards, 
 
333 
 
 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 
 
 Till God relieve him at his post. 
 
 " A dream — a waking dream at most ! " 
 
 {I spoke out quick, that I might shake 
 
 The horrid nightmare off, and wake.) ' 
 
 " The world ^one, yet the world is here ? 
 
 Are not all things as they appear ? 
 
 Is Judgment past for me alone ? 
 
 — And where had place the great white 
 
 throne ? 
 The rising of the quick and dead ? 
 Where stood they, small and great ? Who 
 
 read 
 The sentence from the opened hook ? " 
 So, by degi'ees, the blood forsook 
 My heart, and let it beat afresh ; 
 I knew I should break through the mesh 
 Of horror, and breathe presently : 
 When, lo, again, the voice by me ! 
 
 I saw ... brother, 'mid far sanda 
 
 The palm-tree-cinctured city stands, 
 
 Bright-white beneath, as heaven, bright-blue, 
 
 Leans o'er it, while the years pursue 
 
 Their course, unable to abate 
 
 Its paradisal laugh at fate !' 
 
 One mom, — the Arab staggers blind 
 
 O'er a new tract of death, calcined 
 
 To ashes, silence, nothingness, — 
 
 And strives, with dizzy wits, to guess 
 
 Whence fell the blow. What if, 'twixt skies 
 
 And ^prostrate earth, he should surprise- 
 
 The imaged vapor, head to foot. 
 
 Surveying, motionless and mute. 
 
 Its work, ere, in a whirlwind rapt 
 
 It vanish up again ?' -^ So hapt 
 
 My chance. He stood there. Liike the smoke 
 
 Pillared o'er Sodom, when day broke^ — 
 
 I saw him. One raagnifie pall 
 
 Mantled in massive fold and fall 
 
 His head, and coiled in snaky swathes 
 
 About his feet : night's black, that bathes 
 
 AH else, broke, grizzled with despair. 
 
 Against the soul of blackness there. 
 
 A gesture told the mood within — 
 
 That wrapped right hand which based the chin, 
 
 That intense meditation fixed 
 
 On his procedure, -^ pity mixed 
 
 With the fuMlment .-f decree. 
 
 Motionless, thus,, he spoke, to me, 
 
 Who fell before his feet, a mass. 
 
 No man now. 
 
 XX 
 
 " All is come to pass. 
 Such shows are over for each soul 
 They had respect to. In the roU 
 Of iTudgment which convinced mankind 
 Of sin, stood many, bold and blind. 
 Terror must burn the truth into : 
 Their fate for them 1 — thou hadst to do 
 With absolute omnipotence. 
 Able its judgments to. dispense. 
 To the whole race, as every one 
 Were its sole object. Judgement done, 
 God is, thou art, — the rest is hurled 
 To nothingness for thee. This world. 
 This finite life, thou hast preferred, 
 T disbelief of God's plain word. 
 
 To heaven and to infinity. 
 
 .Here the probation was for thee, 
 
 To show thy soul the earthly mixed 
 
 With heavenly, it must choose betwixt. 
 
 'The earthly joys lay palpable, — 
 
 A taint, in each, distinct as well ; 
 
 The heavenly flitted, faint and rare. 
 
 Above them, but as truly were 
 
 Taintless, so, in their nature, best. 
 
 Thy choice was earth : thou didst attest 
 
 'T was fitter spirit should subserve 
 
 The flesh, than Hesh refine to nerve 
 
 Beneath the spirit's play. Advance 
 
 No claim to their inheritance 
 
 Who chose the spirit's fugitive 
 
 Brief gleams, and yearned, ' This were to live 
 
 Indeed, if rays, completely pure 
 
 From flesh that dulk them, could endure, — 
 
 Not shoot in meteor-light athwart 
 
 Our earth, to show how cold and swart 
 
 It lies beneath their fire, but stand 
 
 As stars do, destined to expand. 
 
 Prove veritable worlds, our home ! ' 
 
 Thou saidst, — 'Let spirit star the dome 
 
 Of sky, that flesh may miss no peak, 
 
 No nook of earth, — I shall not seek 
 
 Its service further ! ' Thou art shut 
 
 Out of the heaven of spirit ; glut 
 
 Thy sense upon the world : 't is thine 
 
 Forever — take it I " 
 
 xxi 
 '* How ? Is mine. 
 The world ? " (I cried, while my soul broke 
 Out in a transport.) " Hast thou spoke 
 Plainly in that ? Earth's exquisite. 
 Treasures of wonder and delight 
 For me ? " 
 
 xxit 
 
 The austere voice returned, -~ 
 " So soon made happy ? Hadst thou learned 
 What God acGounteth happiness. 
 Thou wouldst not find it hard to guess 
 What hell may be his punisliment 
 For those who doubt if God invent 
 Better than they. Let such men rest 
 Content with what they judged the best. 
 Let the unjust usurp at wiH : 
 The filthy shall' be filthy still : 
 Miser, there waits the gold for thee ! 
 Hater, indulge thine enmity ! 
 And thon, whose heaven self-ordained 
 Was, to enjoy earth unrestrai.ned. 
 Do it ! Take aU the ancient show ! 
 The woods .shall wave, the rivers flow, 
 And men apparently pursue 
 Their works, as they were wont to do. 
 While living in probation yet. 
 I promise not thou shalt forget 
 The past, now gone to. its account ; 
 But leave thee with the old amount 
 Of faculties, nor less nor more, 
 Unvisited, as heretofore. 
 By God's free spirit, that makes an end. 
 So, once more, take thy world 1 ^pend 
 Eternity upon its. shows 
 Flung thee as freely as one rose 
 Out of a summer's opulence. 
 
CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 
 
 333 
 
 Over tha Edeii-barrier whence 
 
 rhou art excludad. Knock in vain 1 " 
 
 I sat up. All was still again. 
 
 I breathed free : to my heai-t, back fled 
 
 The warmth. " But, all the world ! " — I said. 
 
 1 stooped and picked a leaf of fern, 
 
 And recollected X might learn 
 
 FroTn books, how many myriad sorts 
 
 Of fern exist, to trust reports. 
 
 Each as distinct and beautiful 
 
 As this, the very first I cull. 
 
 Think, from the first leaf to the last ! 
 
 Conceive, then, earth's resources I Vast 
 
 £xhaustless beauty, endless change 
 
 Of wonder ! And this foot shall range 
 
 Alps, Andes, — and this eye devour 
 
 The bee-bird and the aloe-flower ? 
 
 Then the voice : " Welcome so to rate 
 
 The arras-folds that variegate 
 
 The earth, God's antechamber, well ! 
 
 The wise, who waited there, could tell 
 
 By these, what royalties in store 
 
 Lay one step past the entrance-door. 
 
 For whom, was reckoned, not too much, 
 
 This life's munificence ? For such 
 
 As thou, — a race, whereof scarce one 
 
 Was able, in a million. 
 
 To feel that any marvel lay 
 
 In objects round his feet all day ; 
 
 Scarce one, in many millions more. 
 
 Willing, if able, to explore 
 
 The secreter, minuter charm ! 
 
 — Brave souls, a fern-leaf could disarm 
 
 Of power to cope with God's intent, — 
 
 Or scared if the south firmament 
 
 With north-fire did its wings refledge I 
 
 All partial beauty was a pledge 
 
 Of beauty in its plenitude : 
 
 But since the pledOT sufficed thy mood. 
 
 Retain it ! plenitude be theirs 
 
 Who looked above ! " 
 
 Though sharp despsurs 
 Shot through me, I held up, bore on. 
 " What matter though ray trust were gone 
 From natural things ? Henceforth my part 
 Be less with nature than with art ! 
 For art supplants, gives mainly worth 
 To nature ; 'tis man stamps the earth — 
 And I will seek his impress, seek 
 The statuary of the Greek, 
 Italy's painting — there my choice 
 Shall fix I" 
 
 XXVI 
 
 " Obtain it ! " said the voice, 
 " The one form with its single act. 
 Which sculptors labored to abstract. 
 The one face, painters tried to draw, 
 With its one look, from throngs they saw. 
 And that perfection in their soul. 
 These only hinted at ? The whole, 
 They were but parts of ? What each laid 
 
 His claim to glory on ? —afraid 
 
 His fellow-men should give him rank 
 
 By mere tentatives which he shrank 
 
 Smitten at heart from, all the more, 
 
 That gazers pressed in to adore ! 
 
 ' Shalll be judged by only these ? ' 
 
 If such his soul's capacities. 
 
 Even while he trod the earth, — think, now, 
 
 What pomp in Buonarroti's brow, 
 
 With its new paUice-brain where dwells 
 
 Superb the soul, unvexed by cells 
 
 That crumbled with the transient clay I 
 
 What visions will his right hand's sway 
 
 Still turn to forms, as still they burst 
 
 Upon him ? How will he quench thirst, 
 
 Titanically infantine, 
 
 Laid at the breast of the Divine ? 
 
 Does it confound thee, — this first page 
 
 Emblazoning man's heritage ? — 
 
 Can this alone absorb thy sight, 
 
 As pages were not infinite, — 
 
 Like the omnipotence which tasks 
 
 Itself to furnish all that asks 
 
 The soul it means to satiate ? 
 
 What was the world, the stanr state 
 
 Of the broad skies, — what, all displays 
 
 Of power and beauty intermixed. 
 
 Which now thy soul is chained betwixt, — 
 
 What else than needful furniture 
 
 For life's first stage ? God's work, be sure. 
 
 Ko more spreads wasted, than falls scant ! 
 
 He filled, did not exceed, man's want 
 
 Of beauty in this life. But through 
 
 Life pierce, — and what has earth to do. 
 
 Its utmost beauty's appanage. 
 
 With the requirement of next stage 1 
 
 Did God pronounce earth ' very good ' ? 
 
 Needs must it be, while understood 
 
 For man's preparatory state ; 
 
 Naught here to heighten nor abate ; 
 
 Transfer the same completeness here, 
 
 To serve a new state's use, — and drear 
 
 Deficiency gapes every side ! 
 
 The good, tried once, were bad, retried. 
 
 See the enwrapping rocky niche. 
 
 Sufficient for the sleep in which 
 
 The lizard breathes for ages safe : 
 
 Split the mould — and as light would chafe 
 
 The creature's new world-widened sense. 
 
 Dazzled to death at evidence 
 
 Of all the sounds and sights that broke 
 
 Innumerous at the chisel's stroke, — 
 
 So, in God's eye, the earth's first stuff 
 
 Was, neither more nor less, enough 
 
 To house man's soul, man's need fulfil. 
 
 Man reckoned it immeasurable ? 
 
 So thinks the lizard of his vault ! 
 
 Could God be taken in default, 
 
 Short of contrivances, by you, — 
 
 Or reached, ere ready to pursue 
 
 His progress through eternity ? 
 
 That chambered rock, the lizard's world. 
 
 Your easy mallet's blow has hurled 
 
 To nothingness forever ; so. 
 
 Has God abolished at a blow 
 
 This world, wherein his saints were pent, — 
 
 Who, though found grateful and content. 
 
 With the provision there, as thou, 
 
334 
 
 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 
 
 Yet knew he would not disallow 
 
 Their spirit's hunger, felt as well, — 
 
 Unsated, — not nnsatable. 
 
 As {)aradise gives proof. Deride 
 
 Their choice now, thou who sit'st outside ! ' 
 
 I ciied in anguish : " Mind, the mind. 
 
 So miserably, east behind, 
 
 To gain what had been wisely lost ! 
 
 Oh, let me strive to make the most 
 
 Of the poor stinted soul, I nipped 
 
 Of budding wings, else now equipped 
 
 For voyage from summer isle to isle I 
 
 And though she needs must reconcile 
 
 Ambition to the life on ground. 
 
 Still, I can profit by late found 
 
 But precious knowledge. Mind is best — 
 
 1 will seize mind, forego the rest. 
 
 And try how fax my tethered strength 
 
 May crawl in this poor breadth and length. 
 
 Let me, since I can fly no more. 
 
 At least spin dervish-like about 
 
 (Till giddy rapture almost doubt 
 
 I fly) through circling sciences. 
 
 Philosophies and histories ! 
 
 yhould the whirl slacken there, then verse. 
 
 Fining to music, shall aspei-se 
 
 Fresh and fresh fire-dew, till I strain 
 
 Intoxicate, half-break my chain ! 
 
 Not joyless, though more favored feet 
 
 Stand calm, where I want wings to beat 
 
 The floor. At least earth's bond is broke ! ' 
 
 Then (sickening even while I spoke) : 
 " Let me alone ! No answer, pray, 
 To this ! I know what thou wUt say ! 
 All still is earth's, ^ to know, as much 
 As feel its truths, which if we touch 
 With sense, or apprehend in soul. 
 What matter ? I have reached the goal — 
 ' Whereto does knowledge serve ! ' will bum 
 My eyes, too sure, at every turn ! . 
 1 cannot look back now, nor stake 
 Bliss on the race, for running's sake; 
 I'he goal 's a ruin like the rest ! " 
 " And so much worse thy latter quest," 
 (Added the voice,) " that even on earth — 
 Whenever, in man's soul, had birth 
 Those intuitions, grasps of guess, 
 Which pull the more into the less. 
 Making the finite comprehend 
 Infinity, — the bard would spend 
 Such praise alone, upon his craft, 
 As, when wind-lyres obey the waft. 
 Goes to the crafteman who arranged 
 The seven strings, changed them and re- 
 changed — 
 Knowing it was the South that harped. 
 He felt his song, in singing, warped ; 
 Distinguished his aud God's part : whence 
 A world of spirit as of sense 
 Was plain to him, yet not too plain. 
 Which he could traverse, not remain 
 A guest in : — else were permanent 
 Heaven on the earth its gleams were meant 
 To sting with hunger for full light, — 
 
 Made visible in verse, despite 
 
 The veiling weakness, ^ truth by means 
 
 Of fable, showing while it screens, — 
 
 Since highest truth, man e'er supplied, 
 
 Was ever fable on outside. 
 
 Such gleams made bright the earth an age ; 
 
 Now the whole sun's bis heritage ! 
 
 Take up thy world, it is allowed. 
 
 Thou who hast entered in the cloud I " 
 
 Then I — " Behold, my spirit bleeds, 
 
 Catches no more at broken reeds, — 
 
 But lilies flower those reeds above : 
 
 I let the world go, and take love ! 
 
 Love survives in me, albeit those 
 
 I love be henceforth masks and shows. 
 
 Not living men and women : still 
 
 I mind how love repaired all ill. 
 
 Oared wrong, soothed grief, made earth amends 
 
 With parents, brothers, children, friends ! 
 
 Some semblance of a woman yet 
 
 With eyes to help me to forget. 
 
 Shall look on me ; and I will match 
 
 Departed love with love, attach 
 
 Old memories to new dreams, nor scorn 
 
 The poorest of the grains of com 
 
 I save from shipwreck on this isle, 
 
 Trusting its barrenness may smile 
 
 With happy f oodf ul green one day, 
 
 More precious for the pains. I pray, — 
 
 Leave to love, only I '' 
 
 At the word. 
 The form, I looked to have been stirred 
 With pity and approval, rose 
 O'er me, as when the headsman throws 
 Axe over shoulder to make end — 
 I fell prone, letting him expend 
 His wrath, while thus the infilicting voice 
 Smote me. " Is this thy final choice ? 
 Love is the best ? 'T is somewhat late ! 
 And all thou dost enumerate 
 Of power and beauty in the world, 
 The mightiness of love was curled 
 Inextricably round about. 
 Love lay within it and without. 
 To clasp thee, — but in vain ! Thy soul 
 Still shrunk from him who made the whole 
 Still set deliberate aside 
 His love ! — Now take love ! Well betide 
 Thy tardy conscience ! Haste to take 
 The show of love for the name's sake, 
 Remembering every moment who. 
 Beside creating thee unto 
 These ends, and these for thee, was said 
 To undergo death in thy stead 
 In flesh like thine : so ran the tale. 
 What doubt in thee could countervsiil 
 Belief in it ? Upon the ground 
 ' That in the story had been found 
 Too much love ! How could God love so ? 
 He who in all his works below 
 Adapted to the needs of man. 
 Made love the basis of the plan, — 
 Did love, as was demonstrated ; 
 While man, who was so fit instead 
 
'TRANSCENDENTALISM' 
 
 33S 
 
 To hate, as every day gave proof, — 
 Man thought man, for his kind's behoof. 
 Both could and did invent that scheme 
 Of perfect love : 't would well beseem 
 Cain's nature thoa wast wont to praise, 
 Not tally with God's usual ways I " 
 
 And I cowered deprecatingly — 
 
 *' Thou Love of God ! Or let me die. 
 
 Or grant what shall seem heaven almost ! 
 
 Let me not know that all is lost. 
 
 Though lost it be — leave me not tied 
 
 To this despair, this corpse-like biide ! 
 
 Let that old life seem mine — no more — 
 
 With limitation as before. 
 
 With darkness, hunger, toil, distress : 
 
 Be all the earth a wilderness ! 
 
 Only let me go on, go on, 
 
 Still hoping ever and anon 
 
 To reach one eve the Better Land ! " 
 
 Then did the form expand, expand — 
 1 knew him through the dread disguise 
 As the whole God within his eyes 
 Embraced me. 
 
 When I lived again, 
 The day was breaking, — the gray plain 
 I rose from, silvered thick with dew, 
 
 Was this a vision ? False or true ? 
 
 Since then, three varied years are spent, 
 
 And commonly my mind is bent 
 
 To think it was a dream — be sure 
 
 A mere dream and distemperature — 
 
 The last day's watching : then the n^ht, — 
 
 The shock of that strange Northern Light 
 
 Set my head swimming, bred in me 
 
 A dream. And so I live, you see. 
 
 Go through the world, try, prove, reject, 
 
 Prefer, still struggling to effect 
 
 My warfare ; happy that I can 
 
 Be crossed and thwarted as a man. 
 
 Not left in God's contempt apart. 
 
 With ghastly smooth life, dead at heart, 
 
 Tame in earth's paddock as her prize. 
 
 Thank God, she still each method tries 
 
 To catch me, who may yet escape, 
 
 She knows, — the fiend in angel s shape I 
 
 Thank God, no paradise stands barred 
 
 To entry, and I find it hard 
 
 To be a Christian, as I said ! 
 
 Still every now and then my head 
 
 Raised glad, sinks moumf nl — all grows drear 
 
 Spite of the sunshine, while I fear 
 
 And think, " How dreadful to be grudged 
 
 No ease henceforth, as one that 's judged, 
 
 Condemned to earth forever, shut 
 
 From heaven ! " 
 
 But Easter-Day breaks 1 But 
 Christ rises I Mercy every way 
 Is infinite, — and who can say ? 
 
 MEN AND WOMEN 
 London and Florence, 184- 185- 
 
 In making his final distribution of poems 
 Browning gave the above title and dates to the 
 thirteen, poems which follow, but the title was 
 originally given by him to two volumes pub- 
 
 lished in 1855. The other poems are dispersed 
 among the several groups already named, with 
 the exception of In a Balcony, which appeared 
 by itself. 
 
 "TRANSCENDENTALISM: A POEM IN 
 TWELVE' BOOKS " 
 
 Stop playing, poet ! May a brother speak ? 
 'T is you speak, that 's your error. Song 's our 
 
 art : 
 Whereas you please to speak these naked 
 
 thoughts .,, , , 
 
 Instead of draping them in sights and sounds, 
 — True thoughts, good thoughts, thoughts fit 
 
 to'treasure up 1 
 But why such long prolusion and display. 
 Such turning and adjustment .of the harp. 
 And taking it upon your breast, at length. 
 Only to speak dry words across its strings ? 
 Stark-naked thought is in request enough : 
 Speak prose and hollo it till Europe heai's ! 
 
 The six-foot Swiss tube, braced about with 
 
 bark. 
 Which helps the hunter's voice from Alp to 
 
 Alp— . , 
 Exchange our harp for that, — who hinders 
 
 you? 
 
 But here 's your fault ; grown men want 
 
 thought, you think ; 
 Thought 's what they mean by verse, and seek 
 
 i in verse : 
 Boys seek for images and melody. 
 Men must have reason — so, you aim at men. 
 Quite otherwise ! Objects throng our youth, 
 
 'tis true; 
 We see and hear and do not wonder much : 
 If you could. tell us what they mean, indeed 1 
 
336 
 
 MEN AND WOMEN 
 
 As German Boehme never cared for plants 
 Until it happed, a-walking in the fields, 
 He noticed all at once that plants could speak, 
 Nay, turned with loosened tongue to talk with 
 
 him. 
 That day the daisy had an eye indeed — 
 Colloquized with the cowslip on such themes ! 
 We find them extant yet in Jacob's prose. 
 But by the time youth slips a stage or two 
 While reading prose in that tough iDook he 
 
 wrote 
 (Collating and emendating the same 
 And settling on the sense most to our mind), 
 We shut the clasps and find life's summer past. 
 Then, who helps more, pray, to repair our 
 
 loss — 
 Another Boehme with a tougher book 
 And subtler meanings of what roses say, — 
 Or some stout Mage like him of Halberstadt, 
 John, who made things Boehme wrote thoughts 
 
 about ? 
 He with a " look you ! " vents a brace of 
 
 rhymes. 
 And in there breaks the sudden rose herself. 
 Over us, under, round us every side. 
 Nay, in and out the tables and the chairs 
 And musty volumes, Boehme's book and all, — 
 Buries us with a glory, young once more. 
 Pouring heaven into this shut house of life. 
 
 So come, the harp back to your heart again ! 
 You are a poem, though your poem 's naught. 
 The best of all you showed before, believe. 
 Was your own boy-face o'er the finer chords 
 Bent, following the cherub at the top 
 That pomts to God with his paired half-moon 
 wings. 
 
 HOW IT STRIKES A CONTEMPORARY 
 
 I ONLY knew one poet in my life : 
 
 And this, or something like it, was his way. 
 
 You saw go up and down Valladolid, 
 A man of mark, to know next time you saw. 
 His very serviceable suit of black 
 Was courtly once and conscientious still. 
 And many might have worn it, though none 
 
 did; 
 The cloak, that somewhat shone and showed 
 
 the threads. 
 Had purpose, and the rufp, significance. 
 He walked and tapped the pavement with his 
 
 cane. 
 Scenting the world, lookiner it full in face. 
 An old dog, bald and blindish, at his heels. 
 They turned up, now, the alley by the church, 
 That leads nowhither ; now, they breathed 
 
 themselves 
 On the main promenade just at the wrong time ; 
 You 'd come upon his scrutinizing hat. 
 Making a peaked shade blacker than itself 
 Against the sing-le window spared some house 
 Intact yet with its mouldered Moorish work, — 
 Or else surprise the ferrel of his stick 
 Trying the mortar's temper 'tween the chinks 
 Of some new shop a-building, French and fine. 
 
 He stood and watched the cobbler at his trade, 
 The man who slices lemons into drink. 
 The coffee-roaster's brazier, and the boys 
 That volunteer to help him turn its winch. 
 He glanced o'er books on .stalls with half an 
 
 eye. 
 And fly-leaf ballads on the vender's string. 
 And broad-edge bold-print posters by the wall. 
 He took such cognizance of men and things, 
 If any beat a horse, you felt he saw ; 
 If any cursed a woman, he took note ; 
 Yet stared at nobody, — you stared at him, 
 And found, less to your pleasure than surprise, 
 He seemed to know you and expect as much. 
 So, next time that a neighbor's tongue was 
 
 loosed. 
 It marked the shameful and notorious fact, 
 We had among us, not so much a spy. 
 As a recording chief-inquisitor. 
 The town's true master if the town hut knew ! 
 We merely kept a governor for form. 
 While this man walked about and took account 
 Of all thought, said and acted, then went home, 
 And wrote it fully to our Lord the King 
 Who has an itch to know things, he knows why, 
 And reads them in his bedroom of a night. 
 Oh, you might smile ! there wanted not a touch, 
 A tang of , . . well, it was not wholly ease 
 As back into your mind the man's look came. 
 Stricken in years a little, — such a brow 
 His eyes had to live under ! — clear as flint 
 On either side the formidable nose 
 Curved, cut and colored like an eagle's claw. 
 Had he to do with A's surprising fate ? 
 When altogether old B disappeared 
 And young C got his mistress, —was 't our 
 
 friend. 
 His letter to the King, that did it all ? 
 What paid the bloodless man for so much 
 
 pains ? 
 Our Lord the King has favorites manifold. 
 And shifts his ministry some once a month ; 
 Our city gets new governors at whiles, — 
 But never word or sign, that I could hear. 
 Notified to this man about the streets 
 The King's approval of those letters conned 
 The last thing duly at the dead of night. 
 Did the man love his office? Frowned our 
 
 Lord, 
 Exhorting when none heard — "Beseech me 
 
 not! 
 Too far above my people, — beneath me ! 
 I set the watch, — how should the people know ? 
 Forget them, keep me all the more in mind ! " 
 Was some such understanding 'twixt the two ? 
 
 I found no truth in one report at least — 
 That if you tracked him to his home, down 
 
 lanes 
 Beyond the Jewry, and as clean to pace. 
 You found he ate his supper in a room 
 Blazing with lights, four Titians on the wall, 
 And twenty naked girls to change his plate I 
 Poor man, he lived another kind of life 
 In that new stuccoed third house by the bridge, 
 Fresh-painted, rather smart than otherwise ! 
 The whole street might o'erlook him as he sat, 
 Leg crossing leg, one foot on the dog's back, 
 
ARTEMIS PROLOGIZES 
 
 337 
 
 Playing a decent oribbage with his maid 
 (Jacynth, you 're sure her name was) o'er the 
 
 cheese 
 And fruit, three red halves of starved wintei»- 
 
 pears, 
 Or treat of radishes in April. Nine, 
 Ten, stiTick the church clock, straight to bed 
 
 went he. 
 
 My father, like the man of sense he was. 
 Would point him out to me a dozen times j 
 " 'St — ^St," he 'd whisper, " the Corregidor I " 
 I had been used to think that personage 
 Was one with lacquered breeches, lustrous belt, 
 And feathers like a forest in his hat. 
 Who blew a trumpet and proclaimed the news, 
 Announced the bull-fights, gave each church 
 
 its tiuui, 
 Aiid memorized the miracle in vogue ! 
 He had a great observance from us boys ; 
 We were in error ; that was not the man. 
 
 I 'd like now, yet had haply been afraid, 
 To have just looked, when this man came to 
 
 die, 
 And seen who lined the clean gay garret-sides 
 And stood about the neat low truckle-bed. 
 With the heavenly manner of relieving guard. 
 Here had been, mark, the general-in-chief. 
 Through a whole campaign of the world's life 
 
 and death. 
 Doing the King's work all the dim day long, 
 In his old coat and up to knees in mud. 
 Smoked like a herring, dining on a crust, — 
 And, now the day was won, relieved at once ! 
 No further show or need for that old coat. 
 You are sure, for one thing ! Bless us, all the 
 
 while 
 How sprucely we are dressed out, you and I ! 
 A second, and the angels alter that. 
 Well, I could never write a verse, — could you ? 
 Let 's to the Prado and make the most of time. 
 
 ARTEMIS PROLOGIZES 
 
 Upon the first proof of this poem Browning 
 wrote: *' I had better say perhaps that the 
 above is nearly all retained of a tragedy I com- 
 posed much against my endeavor, while in bed 
 with a fever two years ^o — it went farther 
 into the story of Hippolytus and Aricia ; but 
 when I got well, putting only thus much down 
 at once, I soon forgot the remainder." The 
 notes contain an interesting defence by Brown- 
 ing of the form of his Grreek names. 
 
 I AM a goddess of the ambrosial courts. 
 And save by Here, Queen of Pride, surpassed 
 By none whose temples whiten this the world. 
 Through heaven I roll my lucid moon along ; 
 I shed in hell o'er my pale people peace ; 
 On earth I, caring for the creatures, guard 
 Each pregnant yellow wolf and fox-bitch sleek, 
 And every feathered mother's callow brood. 
 And all that love green haunts and loneliness. 
 
 Of men, the chaste adore me, hanging crowns 
 Of poppies red to blackness, bell and stem. 
 Upon my image at Athenai here ; 
 And this dead Youth, Asclepios bends above, 
 Was dearest to me. He, my bnskined step 
 To follow through the wild-wood leafy ways, 
 And chase the panting stag, or swift with darts 
 Stop the swift ounce, or lay the leopard low. 
 Neglected homage to another god : 
 Whence Aphrodite, by no midnight smoke 
 Of tapers lulled, in jealousy dispatched 
 A noisome lust that, as the gadbee stings. 
 Possessed his stepdame Phaidra for himself 
 The son of Theseus her great absent spouse. 
 Hippolutos exclaiming in his rage 
 Against the fury of the Queen, she judged 
 Life insupportable ; and, pricked at heart 
 An Amazonian stranger's race should dare 
 To scorn her, perished by the murderous cord : 
 Yet, ere she perished, blasted in a scroll 
 The fame of him her swerving made not 
 
 swerve. 
 And Theseus, read, returning, and believed, 
 And exiled, in the blindness of his wrath. 
 The man without a crime who, last as first. 
 Loyal, divulged not to his sire the truth. 
 Now Theseus from Poseidon had obtained 
 That of his wishes should be granted three, 
 And one he imprecated straight — " Alive 
 May ne'er Hippolutos reach other lands ! " 
 Poseidon heard, ai ai ! And scarce the prince 
 Had stepped into the fixed boots of the car 
 That give the feet a stay against the strength 
 Of the Henetian horses, and around 
 His body flung the rein, and urged their speed 
 Along the rocks and shingles of the shore. 
 When from the gaping wave a monster flung 
 His obscene body in the coursers' path. 
 These, mad with terror, as the sea-bull sprawled 
 Wallowing about their feet, lost care of him 
 That reared them ; and the master-chariot-pole 
 Snapping beneath their plunges like a reed, 
 Hippolutos, whose feet were trammelled fast, 
 Was yet dragged forward by the circling rein 
 Which either hand directed ; nor they quenched 
 The frenzy of their flight before each trace. 
 Wheel-spoke and splinter of the woeful car. 
 Each boulder-stone, sharp stub and spiny shell. 
 Huge fish-bone wrecked and wreathed amid the 
 
 sands 
 On that detested beach, was bright with blood 
 And morsels of his flesh : then fell the steeds 
 Head-foremost, crashing in their mooned fronts. 
 Shivering with sweat, each white eye horror- 
 fixed. 
 His people, who had witnessed all afar. 
 Bore back the ruins of Hippolutos. 
 But when his sire, too swoln with pride, rejoiced 
 (Indomitable as a man foredoomed) 
 That vast Poseidon had fnlfilled his prayer, 
 I, in a flood of glory visible. 
 Stood o'er my dying votary and, deed 
 By deed, revealed, as all took place, the truth. 
 Then Theseus lay the woefuUest of men. 
 And worthily ; but ere the death-veils hid 
 His face, the murdered prince full pardon 
 
 breathed 
 To his rash sire. Whereat Athenai wails. 
 
338 
 
 MEN AND WOMEN 
 
 So I, who ne'er forsake my votaries, ' 
 
 Lest in the cross-way none the horiey-eake ' ' 
 Should tender, nor pour out the dog's hot life ; 
 Lest at my fane the priests disconsolate 
 Should dress my image with some faded poor 
 Few crowns, made favors of, nor dare object 
 Such slackness to my worshippers who turn 
 Elsewhere the trusting heart and loaded hand. 
 As they had climbed Olimipos to report 
 Of Artemis and nowhere found her throne — 
 I interposed : and, this eventful night, — 
 (While round the funeral pyre the populace 
 Stood with fierce light on their black robes 
 
 which bound 
 Each sobbing head, while yet their hair they 
 
 clipped 
 O'er the dead body of their withered prince. 
 And, in his palace, Theseus prostrated 
 On the cold hearth, his brow cold as the slab 
 'Twas bruised on, groaned away the heavy 
 
 grief — 
 As the pyre fell, and down the cross logs crashed 
 Sending a crowd of sparkles through the night. 
 And the gay fire, elate with mastery, 
 Towered like a serpent o'er the clotted jars 
 Of wine, dissolving oils and frankincense. 
 And splendid gums like gold,) — my potency 
 Conveyed the perished man to my retreat 
 In the thrice-venerable forest here. 
 And this white-bearded sage who squeezes now 
 The berried plant, is Phoibos' son of fame, 
 Asclepios, whom my radiant brother taught 
 The doctrine of each herb and flower and root, 
 To know their secret'st virtue and express 
 The saving soul of all : who so has soothed 
 With lavers the torn brow and murdered cheeks. 
 Composed the hair and brought its gloss again, 
 And called the red bloom to the pale skin back, 
 And laid the strips and jagged ends of flesh 
 Even once more, and slacked the sinew's knot 
 Of every tortured limb — that now he lies 
 As if mere sleep possessed him underneath 
 These interwoven oaks and pines. Oh cheer. 
 Divine presenter of the healing rod, 
 Thy snake, with ardent throat and lulling eye. 
 Twines his lithe spires around ! I say, much 
 
 cheer ! 
 Proceed thou with thy wisest pharmacies ! 
 And ye, white crowd of woodland sister-nymphs. 
 Ply, as the sage directs, these buds and leaves 
 That strew the turf around the twain 1 While I 
 Await, in fitting silence, the event. 
 
 AN EPISTLE 
 
 CONTAINING THE STRANGE MEDICAL EXPERI- 
 ENCE OF KARSHISH, THE ARAB PHYSICIAN 
 
 Kabshish, the pieker-np of learning's crumbs. 
 The not-incurious in God's handiwork 
 (This man's-flesh he hath admirably made, 
 Blown like a bubble, kneaded like a paste. 
 To coop up and keep down on earth a space 
 That puff of vapor from his mouth, man's soul) 
 — To Abib, all-sagacious in our art. 
 Breeder in me of what poor skill I boast. 
 Like me inquisitive how pricks and cracks 
 
 Befall the flesh through too much stress and 
 
 strain, 
 Whereby the wily vapor fain would slip 
 Back and rejoin its source before the term, — 
 And aptest in contrivance (under God) 
 To baffle it by deftly stopping such : — 
 The vagrant Scholar to his Sage at home 
 Sends greeting (health and knowledge, fame 
 
 with peace) 
 Three samples of true snake-stone — rarer still, 
 One of the other sort, the melon-shaped, 
 (But fitter, pounded fine, for charms than drugs) 
 And writeth now the twenty-second time. 
 
 My iourneyings were brought to Jericho : 
 Thus I resume. Who studious in our art 
 Shall count a little labor unrepaid ? 
 I have shed sweat enough, left flesh and bone 
 On many a flinty furlong of this land. 
 Also, the country-side is all on fire 
 With rumors of a marching hitherward ; 
 Some say Vespasian cometh, some, his son. 
 A black lynx snarled and pricked a tufted ear ; 
 Lust of my blood inflamed his yellow balls : 
 I cried and threw my stafE and he was gone. 
 Twice have the robbers stripped and beaten me, 
 And once a town declared me for a spy ; 
 But at the end, I reach Jerusalem, 
 Since this poor covert where I pass the night, 
 This Bethany, lies scarce the distance thence 
 A man with plague-sores at the third degree 
 Knns tUl he drops down dead. Thou laughest 
 
 here! 
 'Sooth, it elates me, thus reposed and safe, 
 To void the stuffing of my travel-scrip 
 And share with thee whatever Jewry yields. 
 A viscid choler is observable 
 In tertians, I was nearly bold to say ; 
 And falling-sickness hath a happier cure 
 Than our school wots of : there 's a spider 
 
 here 
 Weaves no web, watches on the ledge of tombs. 
 Sprinkled with mottles on au ash-gray back ; 
 Take five and drop them . . . but who knows 
 
 his mind. 
 The Syrian runagate I trust this to ? 
 His service payeth me a sublimate 
 Blown up his nose to help the ailing eye. 
 Best wait : I reach Jerusalem at mom. 
 There set in order my experiences, 
 Gather what most deserves, and give thee 
 
 all— 
 Or I might add, Judaea's gum-tragacanth 
 Scales off in purer flakes, shines clearer-grained, 
 Cracks 'twixt the pestle and the porphyry. 
 In fine exceeds our produce. Scalp-disease 
 Confounds me, crossing so with lepi-osy — 
 Thou hadst admired one sort I gained at 
 
 Zoar — 
 But zeal outruns discretion. Here I end. 
 
 Yet stay : my Syrian blinketh gratefully, 
 Protesteth his devotion is my price — 
 Suppose I write what harms not, though he 
 
 steal? 
 I half resolve to tell thee, yet I blush. 
 What set me off a-writing first of all. 
 An itch I had, a sting to wiite, a tang ! 
 
THE STRANGE MEDICAL EXPERIENCE OF KARSHISH 339 
 
 For, be it this town's barrenness — or else 
 The Man had something in the look of him— 
 His case has sti'uck me far more than 't is 
 
 worth. 
 So, pardon if — (lest presently I lose 
 In the great press of novelty at hand 
 The care and pains this somehow stole from 
 
 me) 
 I bid thee take the thin^ while fresh in mind, 
 Almost in sight — for, wilt thou have the truth ? 
 The very man is gone from me but now, 
 Whose ailment is the subject of discourse. 
 Thus then, and let thy better wit help all ! 
 
 'T is but a case of mania — subinduced 
 By epilepsy, at the turning-point 
 Of trance prolonged unduly some three days : 
 When, by the exhibition of some drug 
 Or spell, exorcization, stroke of art 
 Unlmown to me and which 'twere well to 
 
 know. 
 The evil thing out-breaking all at once 
 Left the man whole and sound of body indeed, — 
 But, flinging (so to speak) life's gates too wide, 
 Making a clear house of it too suddenly, 
 The first conceit that entered might inscribe 
 Whatever it was minded on the wall 
 So plainly at that vantage, as it were, 
 (First come, first senred) that nothing subse- 
 quent 
 Attaineth to erase those fancy-scrawls 
 The just-returned and new-established soiil 
 Hath gotten now so thoroughly by heart 
 That henceforth she will read or these or none. 
 And first — the man's own firm conviction rests 
 That he was dead (in fact they buried him) 
 
 — That he was dead and then restored to life 
 By a Nazarene physician of his tribe : 
 
 — 'Sayeth, the same bade '' Rise," and he did 
 
 rise. 
 " Such cases are diurnal," thou wilt cry. 
 Not so this figment ! — not, that such a fume, 
 Instead of giving way to time and health, 
 Should eat itself into the life of life, 
 As saffron tingeth flesh, blood, bones and all I 
 For see, how he takes up the after-life. 
 The man — it is one Lazarus a Jew, 
 Sanguine, proportioned, fifty yeara of age. 
 The body's habit wholly laudable. 
 As much, indeed, beyond the common health 
 Ashe were made and put aside to show. 
 Think, could we penetrate by any drug 
 And bathe the wearied soul and worried flesh, 
 And bring it clear and fair, by three days' 
 
 Whence has the man the balm that brightens 
 
 all? 
 This grown man eyes the world now like a 
 
 child. 
 Some elders of his tribe, I should premise. 
 Led in their friend, obedient as a sheep, 
 To bear my inquisition. While they spoke, 
 Kow sharply, now with sorrow, — told the 
 
 case, — 
 He listened not except I spoke to him. 
 But folded his two hands and let them talk, 
 Watching the flies that buzzed : and yet no 
 
 fool. 
 
 And that 's a sample how his years luust go. 
 Look, if a beggar, in flxed middle-life, 
 Should find a treasure, — can he use the same 
 With straitened habits and with tastes starved 
 
 small. 
 And take at once to his impoverished brain 
 The sudden element that changes things, 
 That sets the undreamed-of rapture at his hand 
 And puts the cheap old joy in the scorned dust ? 
 Is he not such an one as moves to mirth — 
 Warily parsimonious, when no need, 
 Wasteful as drunkenness at undue times ? 
 All prudent counsel as to what befits 
 The golden mean, is lost on such an one : 
 The man's fantastic will is the man's law. 
 So here — we call the treasure knowledge, say. 
 Increased beyond the fleshly faculty — 
 Heaven opened to a soul while yet on earth. 
 Earth forced on a soid's use while seeing hear 
 
 ven ; 
 The man is witless of the size, the sum, 
 The Talue in proportion of all things, 
 Or whether it be little or be much. 
 Discourse to him of prodigious armaments 
 Assembled to besiege his city now. 
 And of the passing of a mule with gourds — 
 'T is one ! Then take it oh the other side, 
 Speak of some trifling fact, — he will gaze rapt 
 With stupor at its veiy littleness, 
 (Far as I see) as if in that indeed 
 He caught prodigious import, whole results ; 
 And so will turn to us the bystanders 
 In ever the same stupor (note this point) 
 That we too see not with his opened eyes. 
 Wonder and doubt come wrongly into play, 
 Preposterously, at cross purposes. 
 Should his child- sicken unto death, — why, look 
 For scarce abatement of his cheerfulness. 
 Or preterinission of the daily craft ! 
 While a word, gesture, glance from that same 
 
 chUd 
 At play or in the school or laid asleep 
 Will startle him to an agony of fear. 
 Exasperation, just as like. Demand 
 The reason why — '' 'tis but a word," object — 
 " A gesture " — he regards thee as our lord 
 Wlio lived there in the pyramid alone. 
 Looked at us (dost thou mind ?) when, being 
 
 young. 
 We both would unadvisedly recite 
 Some charm's beginning, from that book of his, 
 Able to bid the sun throb wide and burst 
 All into stars, as suns grown old are wont. 
 Thou and the child have each a veil alike 
 Thrown o'er your heads, from under which ye 
 
 both 
 Stretch your blind hands and trifle with a 
 
 match 
 Over a mine of Greek fire, did ye know ! 
 He holds on firmly to some thread of life — 
 (It is the life to lead perforcedly) 
 Which runs across some vast distracting orb 
 Of glory on either side that meagre thread. 
 Which, conscious of, he must not enter yet — 
 The spiritual life around the earthly life : 
 The law of that is known to him as this. 
 His heart and brain move there, his feet stay 
 
 here. 
 
340 
 
 MEN AND WOMEN 
 
 So is tlie man pei'plext with impulses 
 Sudden to start on crosswise, not straight on, 
 Proclaiming: what is lisht and wrong across. 
 And not along, tliis black thread through the 
 
 blaze — 
 "It should be" balked by "here it cannot 
 
 be." 
 And oft the man's soul springs into his face 
 As if he saw again and heard again 
 His sage that bade him "Rise" and he did 
 
 rise. 
 Something, a word, a tick o' the blood within 
 Admonishes : then back he sinks at once 
 To ashes, who was very fire before. 
 In sedulous recurrence to his trade 
 Whereby he earneth him the daily bread ; 
 And studiously the humbler for that pride, 
 Professedly the faultier that he knows 
 God's secret, while he holds the thread of life. 
 Indeed the especial marking of the man 
 Is prone submission to the heavenly wUl — 
 Seeing it, what it is, and why it is. 
 'Sayeth, he will wait patient to the last 
 For that same death which must restore his 
 
 beii g 
 To equilibiium, body loosening soul 
 Divorced even now by premature full growth : 
 He will live, nay, it pleaseth him to live 
 So long as God please, and just how God please. 
 He even seeketh not to please God more 
 (Which meaneth, otherwise) than as God please. 
 Hence, I perceive not he affects to preach 
 The doctrine of his sect whate'er it be. 
 Make proselytes as madmen thirst to do : 
 How can he give his neighbor the real ground. 
 His own conviction ? Ardent as he is — 
 Call his great truth a lie, why, still the old 
 " Be it as God please " reassureth him. 
 I probed the sore as thy disciple should : 
 *' How, beast," said I, " this stolid carelessness 
 Sufficeth thee, when Home is on her march 
 To stamp out like a little spark thy town. 
 Thy tribe, thy crazy tale and thee at once ? " 
 He merely looked with his large eyes ou me. 
 The man is apathetic, you deduce ? 
 Contrariwise, he loves both old and young, 
 Able and weak, affects the very brutes 
 And birds — how say I ? flowers of the field — 
 As a wise workman recognizes tools 
 In a master's workshop, loving what they 
 
 make. 
 Thus is the man as harmless as a lamb : 
 Only impatient, let him do his best. 
 At ignorance and carelessness and sin — ■ 
 And indignation which is promptly curbed : 
 As when in certain travel I have feigned 
 To be an ignoramus in our art 
 According to some preconceived design. 
 And happed to hear the land's practitioners. 
 Steeped in conceit sublimed by ignorance, 
 Prattle fantastically on disease, 
 Its cause and cure — and I must hold my peace ! 
 
 Thou wilt object — Why have I not ere this 
 Sought out the sage himself, the Nazarene 
 Who wrought this cure, inquiring at the 
 
 source. 
 Conferring with the frankness that befits ? 
 
 Alas ! it grieveth me, the learned leech 
 Perisned in a tumult many years ago. 
 Accused — our learning's fate — of wizardry, 
 Kebellion, to the setting uj) a rule 
 And creed prodigious as described to me. 
 His death, which happened when the earth- 
 quake fell 
 (Prefiguring, as soon appeared, the loss 
 To occult learning in oui' lord the sage 
 Who lived there in the pyramid alone) 
 Was wrought by the mad people — that 's tlieit 
 
 wont ! 
 On vain recourse, as I conjecture it, 
 To his tried virtue, for miraculous help — 
 How could he stop the earthquake ? That 's 
 
 their way ! 
 The other imputations must be lies ; 
 But take one, though I loathe to give it thee, 
 In mere respect for any good man's fame. 
 (And after all, our patient Lazarus 
 Is stark mad ; should we count on what he 
 
 says? 
 Perhaps not : though in writing to a leech 
 'T is well to keep back nothing of a case.) 
 This man so cured regards the curer, tken, 
 As — God forgive me ! who but God himself, 
 Creator and sustainer of the world. 
 That came and dwelt in flesh on it awhile ! 
 — 'Sayeth that such an one was born and lived. 
 Taught, healed the sick, broke bread at his 
 
 own house. 
 Then died, with Lazarus by, for aught I know. 
 And yet was . . , what I said nor choose re- 
 peat. 
 And must have so avouched himself, in fact, 
 In hearing of this very Lazarus 
 Who saith — but why all this of what he saith ? 
 Why write of trivial matters, things of price 
 Calling at every moment for remark ? 
 I noticed on the margin of a pool 
 Blue-flowering borage, the Aleppo sort, 
 Aboundeth, very nitrons. It is strange ! 
 
 Thy pardon for this long and tedious case. 
 Which, now that I review it. needs must seem 
 Unduly dwelt on, prolixly set forth ! 
 Nor I myself discern in what is writ 
 Good cause for the peculiar interest 
 And awe indeed this man has touched mfe with. 
 Perhaps the journey's end, the weariness 
 Had wrought upon me first. I met him thus : 
 I crossed a ridge of short sharp broken hills 
 Like an old lion's cheek teeth. Out there came 
 A jiwon made like a face with certain spots 
 Multiform, manifold, and menacing : 
 Then a wind rose behind me. So we met 
 In this old sleepy town at unaware. 
 The man and I. I send thee what is writ. 
 Regard it as a chance, a matter risked 
 To this ambi|:uous Syrian — he may lose. 
 Or steal, or give it thee with equal good. 
 Jerusalem's repose shall make amends 
 For time this letter wastes, thy time and mine j 
 Till when, once more thy pardon and fare- 
 weU! 
 
 The very God I think, Abib ; dost thou think ? 
 So. the All-Great, were the All-Loving too — 
 
PICTOR IGNOTUS 
 
 341 
 
 So, through the thunder comes a human voice 
 Saying, " O heart I made, a heart beats here I 
 Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself ! 
 Thou hast no power nor mayst conceive of 
 
 mine, 
 But love I gave thee, with myself to love. 
 And thou must love me who have died for 
 
 thee ! " 
 The madman saith He said so : it is strange. 
 
 JOHANNES AGRICOLA IN MEDITATION 
 
 First published with the signature Z in The 
 Monthly Repository in 1836. A quotation from 
 a Dictionary of all Religions followed the title 
 on the first publication, but is here transferred 
 to the notes. 
 
 Theke 's heaven above, and night by night 
 
 1 look right through its gorgeous roof ; 
 No suns and moons though e^er so bright 
 
 Avail to stop me ; splendor-proof 
 
 I keep the broods of stars aloof : 
 For I intend to get to God, 
 
 For 't is to God 1 speed so fast, 
 For in God's breast, my own abode, 
 
 Those shoals of dazzling glory, passed, 
 
 I lay my spirit down at last. 
 I lie where 1 have always lain, 
 
 God smiles as he has always smiled ; 
 Ere suns and moons could wax and wane, 
 
 Ere stars were thundergirt, or piled 
 
 The heavens, God thought on me his child ; 
 Ordained a life for me, arrayed 
 
 Its circumstances every one 
 To the minutest ; ay, God said 
 
 This head this hand should rest upon 
 
 Thus, ere he fashioned star or sun. 
 And having thus created me. 
 
 Thus rooted me, he bade me grow, 
 Guiltless forever, like a tree 
 
 That buds and blooms, nor seeks to know 
 
 The law by which it prospers so : 
 Bnt sure that thought and word and deed 
 
 All go to swell his love for me. 
 Me, made because that love had need 
 
 Of something iixeversibly 
 
 Pledged solely its content to be. 
 Yes, yes, a tree which must ascend, 
 
 No poison-gourd foredoomed to stoop I 
 I have God's warrant, could I blend 
 
 All hideous sins, as in a cup. 
 
 To drink the mingled venoms up ; 
 Secure my nature will convert 
 
 The draught to blossoming gladness fast : 
 While sweet dews turn to the gourd's hurt. 
 
 And bloat, and while they bloat it, blast. 
 
 As from the first its lot was cast. 
 For as I lie, smiled on, full-fed 
 
 By unexhausted power to bless, 
 I gaze below on hell's fierce bed, 
 
 And those its waves of fiame oppress. 
 
 Swarming in ghastly wretchedness ; 
 Whose life on earth aspired to be 
 
 One altar-smoke, so pure I — to win 
 If not love like God's love for me, 
 
 At least to keep his anger in ; 
 
 And all their striving turned to sin. 
 Priest, doctor, hermit, monk grown white 
 
 With prayer, the broken-hearted nun. 
 The martyr, the wan acolyte, 
 
 The incense-swinging child, — undone 
 
 Before God fashioned star or sun I 
 God, whom I praise ; how could I praise, 
 
 If such as I might understand, 
 Make out and reckon on his ways, 
 
 And bargain for his love, and stand. 
 
 Paying a price, at his right hand ? 
 
 PICTOR IGNOTUS 
 
 FLORENCE, I5 — 
 
 I COULD have painted pictures like that youth's 
 Ye praise so. How my soul springs up 1 No 
 bar 
 Stayed me — ah, thought which saddens while 
 it soothes ! 
 — Never did fate forbid me, star by star, 
 To outburst on your night with all my gift 
 Of fires from God ; nor would my fiesh have 
 shrunk 
 From seconding my soul, with eyes uplift 
 And wide to heaven, or, straight like thuD' 
 der, sunk 
 To the centre, of an instant ; or around 
 Turned calmly and inquisitive, to scan 
 The license and the limit, space and bound. 
 
 Allowed to truth made visible in man. 
 And, like that youth ye praise so, all I saw. 
 
 Over the canvas could my hand have flung. 
 Each face obedient to its passion's law, 
 Each passion clear proclaimed without a 
 tongue ; 
 Whether Hope rose at once in all the blood, 
 
 A-tiptoe for the blessing of embrace, 
 Or Rapture drooped the eyes, as when her brood 
 Pull down the nesting dove's heart to its 
 place; 
 Or Confidence lit swift the forehead up. 
 And locked the mouth fast, like a castle 
 braved, — 
 human faces, hath it spilt, my cup ? 
 
 What did ye give me that I have not saved ? 
 Nor will I say Ihave not dreamed {how well!) 
 Of going — I, in each new picture, — forth. 
 As, making new hearts beat and bosoms swell, 
 To Pope or Kaiser, East, West, South, oi 
 North, 
 Bound for the calmly satisfied great State, 
 
 Or glad aspiring little burgh, it went, 
 Flowers cast upon the car which bore the 
 freight. 
 Through old streets named afresh from the 
 event. 
 Till it reached home, where learned age should 
 greet 
 My face, and youth, the star not yet distinct 
 Above his hair, lie learning at my feet ! — 
 
 Oh, thus to live, I and my picture, linked 
 With love about, and praise, till life should 
 end. 
 And then not go to heaven, but linger here. 
 
342 
 
 MEN AND WOMEN 
 
 Here on my earthy earth's erfery man my 
 friend, — 
 The thought grew frightful, 't was so wildly 
 dear ! 
 But a Yoice changed it. Glimpses of such 
 sights 
 Have scared me, like the rerels through a 
 door 
 Of some strange house of idols at its rites ! 
 This world seemed not the world it was be- 
 fore: 
 Mixed with my loving trusting ones, there 
 trooped 
 . . . Who summoned those cold faces that 
 begun 
 To press on me and judge me ? Though I 
 stooped 
 Shrinking, as from the soldiery a nun, 
 They drew me forth, and spite of me . . . 
 enough ! 
 These buy and sell our pictures, take and 
 give. 
 Count them for garniture and household-stuff, 
 And where they live needs must our pictures 
 live 
 And see their faces, listen to their prate, 
 
 Partakers of their daily pettiness. 
 Discussed of, — " This I love, or this I hate. 
 
 This likes me more, and this affects me less ! " 
 Wherefore I chose my portion. If at whiles 
 
 My hsart sinks, as monotonous I paint 
 These endless cloisters and eternal aisles 
 With the same series. Virgin, Babe and 
 Saint, 
 With the same cold calm beautiful regard, — 
 
 At least no merchant traffics in my heart ; 
 The sanctuary's gloom at least shall ward 
 Vain tongues from where my pictures stand 
 apart ; 
 Only prayer breaks the silence of the shrine 
 
 While, blackening in the daily candle-smoke. 
 They moulder on the damp wall's travertine, 
 'Mid echoes the light footstep never woke. 
 So, die my pictures ! surely, gently die ! 
 youth, men praise so, — holds their praise its 
 worth ? 
 Blown harshly, keeps the trump its golden cry ? 
 Tastes sweet the water with such specks of 
 J . earth ? 
 
 FRA LIPPO LIPPI 
 
 I AM poor brother Lippo, by your leave ! 
 You need not clap your torches to my face. 
 Zooks, what 's to blame ? you think you see a 
 
 monk 1 
 What, 't is past midnight, and you go the 
 
 rounds. 
 And here you catch me at an alley's end 
 Where sportive ladies leave their doors ajar ? 
 The Carmine 's my cloister : hunt it up, 
 ]>o, — harry out, if you must show your zeal. 
 Whatever rat, there, haps on his wrong hole. 
 And nip each softling of a wee white mouse, 
 iVeke, weke, that 's crept to keep him company ! 
 Aha, you know your betters! Then, you'll 
 
 take 
 
 Your hand away that 's fiddling on my throat, 
 And please to know me likewise. Who am I ? 
 Why, one, sir, who is lodging with a friend 
 Three streets off — he 's a certain . . . how d' 
 
 ye call ? 
 Master — a . . . Cosimo of the Medici, 
 I' the house that caps the comer. Boh ! yon 
 
 were best ! 
 Remember and tell me, the day you 're hanged. 
 How you affected such a guUet's-gripe ! 
 But you, sir, it concerns you that your knaves 
 Pick up a manner nor discredit you : 
 Zooks, are we pilchards, that they sweep the 
 
 streets ■ •. ' 
 And count fair prize what comes into their net ? 
 He 's Judas to a tittle, tha.t man is ! 
 Just such a face I Why, sir, you make amends. 
 Lord, I 'm not angry ! Bid your hangdogs go 
 Drink out this quarter-florin to the health 
 Of the munificent House that harbors me 
 (And many more beside, lads ! more beside !) _ 
 And all 's come square again. I 'd like his 
 
 face — 
 His, elbowing on his comrade in the door 
 With the pike and lantern, — for the slave that 
 
 holds 
 John Baptist's head a-dangle by the hair 
 With one hand ("Look you, now," as who 
 
 should say) 
 And his weapon in the other, yet unwiped ! 
 It 's not your chance to have a bit of chalk, 
 A wood-coal or the like ? or you should see ! 
 Yes, I 'm the painter, since you style me so. 
 What, brother Lippo's doings, up and down. 
 Yon know them and they take you? like 
 
 enough ! 
 I saw the proper twinkle in your eye — 
 'Tell you, I liked your looks at very first. 
 Let 's sit and set things straight now, hip to 
 
 haunch. 
 Here 's spring come, and the nights one makes 
 
 up bands 
 To roam the town and sing out carnival, 
 And I 've been three weeks shut within my 
 
 mew, 
 A-painting for the great man, saints and saints 
 And saints again. I could not paint all night — 
 Ouf ! I leaned out of window tor fresh air. 
 There came a hurry of feet and little feet, 
 A sweep of lute-strings, laughs, and whifts of 
 
 song, — 
 Flower o' the broom, 
 
 Take away love, and our earth is a tomb ! 
 Flower o'' the quince, 
 
 I let Lisa go, and what good in life since ? 
 Flower o' the thyme — and so on. Kound they 
 
 went. 
 Scarce had they turned the corner when a tittei 
 Like the skipping of rabbits by moonlight, — 
 
 three slim shapes. 
 And a face that looked up . . . zooks, sir, 
 
 flesh and blood. 
 That 's all I 'm made of ! Into shreds it went. 
 Curtain and counterpane and coverlet. 
 All the bed-furniture — a dozen knots, 
 There was a ladder ! Down I let myself. 
 Hands and feet, scrambling somehow, and sa 
 
 dropped. 
 
FRA LIPPO LIPPI 
 
 343 
 
 And after them. I caniei up with the fun 
 Hard by ISaint Laurence, hail fellow, well 
 
 met, — 
 Flower o' the rose. 
 
 If I 've been merry, what matter who knows ? 
 And so as I was stealing back again 
 To get to bed and have a bit of sleep 
 Ere I rise up to-morrow and go work 
 On Jerome knocking at his poor old breast 
 With his great round stone to subdue the flesh. 
 You snap me of the sudden. Ah, I see ! 
 Though your eye twinkles still, you shake your 
 
 head — 
 Mine 's shaved — a monk, yon say — the sting 's 
 
 iu that ! 
 If Master Cosimo announced himself. 
 Mum's the word naturally ; but a monk ! 
 Gome, what am 1 a beast for ? tell us, now ! 
 I was a baby when ray mother died 
 And father died and left me in the street. 
 I starved there, God knows how, a year or two 
 On fig«kins, melon-parings, rinds and shucks, 
 Refuse and rubbish. One fine frosty day. 
 My stomach being empty as your hat, 
 The wind doubled me up and down 1 went. 
 Old Aunt Lapaccia trussed me with one hand, 
 (Its fellow was a stinger as I knew) 
 And so along the wall, over the bridge. 
 By the straight cut to the convent. Six words 
 
 there. 
 While I stood munching my first bread that 
 
 month : 
 " So, boy, you 're minded," quoth the good fat 
 
 father, 
 Wiping his own mouth, 't was refection-time, — 
 " To quit this very miserable world ? 
 Will you renounce " . . . " the mouthful of 
 
 bread ? " thought I ; 
 By no means ! Brief, they made a monk of 
 
 me ; 
 I did renounce the world, its pride and greed. 
 Palace, farm, villa, shop, and banking-house. 
 Trash, such as these poor devils of Medici 
 Have given their hearts to — all at eight years 
 
 old. 
 Well, sir, I found in time, you may be sure, 
 'T was not for nothing — the good bellyful, 
 The warm serge and the rope that goes all 
 
 round, 
 And day-long blessed idleness beside ! 
 " Let 's see what the urchin 's fit for " — that 
 
 came next. 
 Not overmuch their way, I must confess. 
 Such a to-do ! They tried me with their books ; 
 Lord, they'd have taught me Latin in pui-e 
 
 waste ! 
 Flower o' the clove. 
 
 All the Latin I construe is " aino,^^ Hove I 
 But, nund you, when a boy starves in the streets 
 Eight years together, as my fortune was. 
 Watching folk's faces to know who will fling 
 The bit of half -stripped grape-bunch he desires. 
 And who will curse or kick him for his pains, — 
 Which gentleman processional and fine. 
 Holding a candle to the Sacrament, 
 Will wink and let him lift a plate and catch 
 The droppings of the wax to sell again. 
 Or holla for the Eight and have him wlupped, — 
 
 How say I ? — nay, which dog bites, which lets 
 
 drop 
 His bone from the heap of offal in tlie street, — 
 Why, soul and sense of him grow sharp alike. 
 He learns the look of things, and none the less 
 For admonition from the hunger-pinch. 
 1 had a store of such remarks, be sure. 
 Which, after I found leisure, turned to use. 
 I drew men's faces on my copy-books. 
 Scrawled them within the antiphonary's marge. 
 Joined legs and arms to the long music-notes. 
 Found eyes and nose and chin for A's and B's, 
 And made a sti'ing of pictures of the world 
 Betwixt the ins and outs of verb and noim. 
 On the waU, the bench, the door. The monks 
 
 looked black. 
 " Nay," quoth the Prior, " turn him out, d' y» 
 
 say? 
 In no wise. Lose a crow and catch a lark. 
 What if at last we get our man of parts. 
 We Carmelites, like those Camaldolese 
 And Preaching Friars, to do oar church up fine 
 And put the front on it that ought to be 1 " 
 And hereupon he bade me daub away. 
 Thank you ! my head being crammed, the walls 
 
 a blank. 
 Never was such prompt disemburdening. 
 First, every sort of monk, the black and white, 
 I drew them, fat and lean : then, folk at church. 
 From good old gossips waiting to confess 
 Their cribs of barrel-droppi:^, candle-ends, — 
 To the breathless fellow at the altar-foot. 
 Fresh from his murder, safe and sitting there 
 With the little children round him in a row 
 Of admiration, half for his beard and half 
 For that white anger of his victim's son 
 Shaking a fist, at him with one fierce arm, 
 ^gning himself with the other because of Christ 
 (Whose sad face on the cross sees only this 
 After the passion of a thousand years) 
 Till some poor girl, her apron o'er her head, 
 (Which the intense eyes looked through) came 
 
 at eve 
 On tiptoe, said a word, dropped in a loaf. 
 Her pair of earrings and a bunch of flowers 
 (The brute took growling), prayed, and so was 
 
 gone. 
 I painted all, then cried " 'T is ask and have ; 
 Choose, for more 's ready ! " — laid the ladder 
 
 flat, . 
 And showed my covered bit of cloister-wall. 
 The monks closed in a cii'cle and praised loud 
 Till checked, taught what to see and not to see. 
 Being simple bodies, — " That 's the very maul 
 Look at the boy who stoops to pat the dog ! 
 That woman 's like the Prior's niece who comes 
 To care about his asthma ; it 's the life ! " 
 But there my triumph's straw-fiire flared and 
 
 funked ; 
 Their betters took their turn to see and say : 
 The Prior and the learned pulled a face 
 And stopped all that in no time. "How? 
 
 what 's here ? 
 Quite from the mark of painting, bless us all ! 
 Facesi arms, legs, and bodies like the true 
 As much as pea and pea ! it 's devil's-game I 
 Your business is not to catch men with show, 
 With homage to the perishable clay. 
 
344 
 
 MEN AND WOMEN 
 
 But lift them over it, ignore it all, 
 Make them forget there 's such a thing as flesh. 
 Your business is to paint the souls of men — 
 Man's soul, and it 's a lire, smoke . . . no, it 's 
 
 not ... 
 It 's vapor done up like a new-born babe — 
 (In that shape when you die it leaves your 
 
 mouth) 
 It *s . . . well, what matters talking, it 's the 
 
 soul! 
 Give lis no more of body than shows soul ! 
 Here 's Giotto, with his Saint a-praising God, 
 That sets us praising, — why not stop with him ? 
 Why put all thoup^hts of praise out of our head 
 With wonder at lines, colors, and what not ? 
 Paint the soul, never mind the legs and arms ! 
 Rub all out, try at it a second time. 
 Oh, that white smallish female with the breasts, 
 ohe's just my niece . . . Herodias, I would 
 
 say, — 
 Who went and danced and got men's heads cut 
 
 off! 
 Have it all out ! " Now, is this sense, I ask ? 
 A fine way to paint soul, by painting body 
 ■So ill, the eye can't stop there, must go further 
 And can't fare worse ! Thus, yellow does for 
 
 white 
 When what you put for yellow 's simply black. 
 And any sort of meaning looks intense 
 When £ul beside itself means and looks naught. 
 Why can't a painter lift each foot in tuiii. 
 Left foot and right foot, go a double step. 
 Make his flesh liker and his soul more like. 
 Both in their order ? Take the prettiest face, 
 The Prior's niece , . . patron-saint — is it so 
 
 pretty 
 You can't discover if it means hope, fear, 
 Sorrow or joy ? won't beauty go with these ? 
 Suppose I 've made her eyes all right and blue, 
 Can't I take breath and try to add life's flash. 
 And then add soul and heighten them three- 
 fold ? 
 Or say there 's beauty with no soul at all — 
 'I never saw it — put the case the same — ) 
 If you get simple beauty and naught else. 
 You get about the best thing God invents : 
 ^ That 's somewhat : and you '11 find the soul you 
 
 have missed. 
 Within yourself, when you return him thanks. 
 ■' Rub all out ! " Well, well, there 's my life, 
 
 in short. 
 And so the thing has gone on ever since. 
 I 'm grown a man no doubt, I 've broken 
 
 bounds : 
 You should not take a fellow eight years old 
 And make him swear to never kiss the gii'ls. 
 I 'm my own master, paint now as I please — 
 Having a friend, you see, in the Corner-house ! 
 Lord, it 's fast holding by the rings in front — 
 Those great rings serve more purposes than just 
 To plant a flag in, or tie up a norse ! 
 And yet the old schooling sticks, the old gi'ave 
 
 eyes 
 Are peeping o'er my shoulder as I work. 
 The heads shake still — " It 's art's declme, my 
 
 son! 
 You 're not of the true painters, great and old ; 
 Brother Angelico 's the man, you '11 find ; 
 
 Brother Lorenzo stands his single peer : 
 
 Fag on at flesh, you '11 never make the third ! 
 
 Flower o' the pine, 
 
 You keep your mistr . . . manners, and I U 
 
 stick to mine ! 
 I 'm not the third, then : bless us, they must 
 
 know! 
 Don't you think they 're the likeliest to know, 
 They with their Latin? So, I swallow my 
 
 rage, 
 Clench my teeth, suck my lips in tight, and 
 
 paint 
 To please them — sometimes do and sometimes 
 
 don't ; 
 For, doing most, there 's pretty sure to come 
 A turn, some warm eve finds me at my saints — 
 A laugh, a cry, the business of the world — 
 (Flower o' the peach, 
 
 Death for us all, and his own life for each .') 
 And my whole soul revolves, the cup runs over, 
 The world and life 's too big to pass for a dream, 
 And I do these wild things in sheer despite, ' 
 And play the fooleries you catch me at, 
 In pure rage ! The old mill-hoi'se, out at grass 
 After hard years, throws up his stiff heels so, 
 Although the miller does not preach to him 
 The only good of grass is to make chaff. 
 What would men have ? Do they like grass or 
 
 no — 
 May they or may n't they ? all I want 's the 
 
 thing 
 Settled forever one way. As it is. 
 You tell too many lies and hurt yourself : r 
 You don't like what you only like too much, 
 You do like what, if given you at your word, 
 You find abundantly detestable. 
 For me, 1 think I speak as I was taught ; 
 I always see the garden and God there 
 A-making man's wife : and, my lesson learned. 
 The value and significance of flesh, 
 I can't unlearn ten minutes afterwards. 
 
 You understand me : I 'm a beast, I know. 
 But see, now — why, I see as certainly 
 As that the morning-star 's about to shine. 
 What will hap some day. We 've a youngster 
 
 here 
 Comes to our convent, studies what I do, 
 Slouches and stares and lets no atom drop : 
 His name is Guidi — he '11 not mind the 
 
 monks — 
 They call him Hulking Tom, he lets them 
 
 talk — 
 He picks my practice up — he '11 paint apace, 
 I hope so — though I never live so long, 
 I know what 's sure to follow. You be judge 1 
 You speak no Latin more than I, belike ; 
 However, you 're my man, you 've seen the 
 
 world 
 
 — The beauty and the wonder and the power, 
 The shapes of things, their colors, lights and 
 
 shades. 
 Changes, surprises, — and God made it all I 
 
 — For- what? Do you feel thankful, ay or 
 
 no. 
 For this fair town's face, yonder river's line, 
 The mountain round it and the sky above, 
 Much more the figures of man, woman, child, 
 
FRA LIPPO LIPPI 
 
 345 
 
 These are the frame to ? "What 's it all about ? 
 To be passed over, despised ? or dwelt upon, 
 Wondered at V oh, this last of course ! — j 
 
 say. 
 
 you 
 
 But why not do as well as say, — paint these 
 Just as they are, careless what comes of it ? 
 God's works — paint anyone, and count it crime 
 To let a truth slip. Don't object, " His works 
 Are here already ; nature is complete : 
 Suppose you reproduce her — (which you can't) 
 There 's no advantage ! you must beat her, 
 
 then." 
 For, don't you mark ? we 're made so that we 
 
 love 
 First when we see them painted, things we 
 
 have passed 
 Perhaps a hundred times nor eared to see ; 
 And so they are better, painted — better to us. 
 Which is the same thing. Art was given for 
 
 that ; 
 God uses us to help eaeh other so. 
 Lending our minds out. Have you noticed, 
 
 now. 
 Your cullion's hanging face ? A bit of chalk, 
 And trust me but you should, though ! How 
 
 much more. 
 If I drew higher things with the same truth ! 
 That were to take the Prior's pulpit-place. 
 Interpret God to all of you ! Oh, oh. 
 It makes me mad to see what men shall do 
 And we in our graves ! This world 's no blot 
 
 for us. 
 Nor blank; it means intensely, and means 
 
 good : 
 To find its meaning is my meat and drink, 
 " Ay, but you don't so instigate to prayer I " 
 Strikes in the Prior: '^ when your meaning ^s 
 
 plain 
 It does not say to folk — remember matins. 
 Or, mind you fast next Friday ! " Why, for 
 
 this 
 What need of art at all ? A skuU and bones, 
 Two bits of stick nailed crosswise, or, what 's 
 
 best, 
 A bell to chime the hour with, does aa well»_^ 
 I paj5ted a Saint Laurence six months since 
 At Prato, splashed the fresco in fine style : 
 "How looks my painting, now the scaffold's 
 
 down?" 
 I ask a brother : " Hugely," he returns — 
 " Already not one phiz of your three slaves 
 Who turn the Deacon off his toasted side. 
 But 's scratched and prodded to our heart's eon- 
 tent. 
 The pious people have so eased their own 
 With coming to say prayers there in a rage : 
 We get on fast to see the bricks beneath. 
 Expect another job this time next year. 
 For pity and religion grow i' the crowd — 
 Your painting serves its purpose ! " Hang the 
 
 fools! 
 
 — That is — you '11 not mistake an idle word 
 Spoke in a huff by a poor monk, God wot, 
 Tasting the air this spicy night which turns 
 The unaccustomed head like Chianti wiue 1 
 Oh, the church knows ! don't misreport me, 
 now ! 
 
 It 's natural a poor monk out of bounds 
 Should have his apt word to excuse himself : 
 And hearken how I plot to make amends. 
 I have bethought me : I shall paint a piece 
 . . . There 's for you ! Give me six months, 
 
 then go, see 
 Something in Sant' Ambrogio's ! Bless the 
 
 nuns ! 
 Theywant a cast o' my office. I shall paint 
 God in the midst. Madonna and her babe, 
 Ringed by a bowery, flowery angel-brood. 
 Lilies and vestments and white faces, sweet 
 As puff on puff of grated orris-root 
 When ladies crowd to Church at midsummer. 
 And then i' the front, of course a saint or 
 
 two — 
 Saint John, because he saves the Florentines,' 
 Saint Ambrose, who puts down in black and 
 
 white 
 The convent's friends and gives them a long 
 
 day, 
 And Job, I must have him there past mis- 
 take. 
 The man of Uz (and Us without the z. 
 Painters who need his patience). Well, all 
 
 these 
 Secured at their devotion, up shall come 
 Out of a corner when you least expect. 
 As one by a dark stair into a great light. 
 Music and talking, who but Lippo ! I ! — 
 Mazed, motionless, and moonstruck — I 'm the 
 
 man ! 
 Back I shrink — what is this I see and hear ? 
 I, caught up with my monk's-things by mis- 
 take, 
 My old serge gown and rope that goes all round, 
 I, in this presence, this pure company ! 
 Where's a hole, where 's a corner for escape? 
 Then steps a sweet angelic slip of a thing 
 Forward, puts out a soft palm — "Not so 
 
 fast ! " 
 — Addresses the celestial presence, " nay — 
 He made you and devised you, aftkr all, 
 Though he 's none of you ! Could Saint John 
 
 there draw — 
 His camel-hair make up a painting-brush ? 
 We come to brother Lippo for all that, 
 Iste pafecit opus ! " So, all smile — 
 I shuffle sideways with my blushing face 
 Under the cover of a hundred wings 
 Thrown like a spread of kirtles when you 're 
 . , say 
 
 And play hot cockles, all the doors being shut. 
 Till, wholly unexpected, in there pops 
 The hothead husband ! Thus I scuttle ofE 
 To some safe bench behind, not letting go. 
 The palm of her, the little lily thing 
 That spoke the good word for me in the nick, 
 Like the Prior's niece . . . Saint Lucy, I womd" 
 
 say. 
 And so all 's saved for me, and for the ohureh- 
 A pretty picture gained. Go, six months hence t 
 Your hand, sir, and good-by: no lights, mr 
 
 lights! 
 The street 's hushed, and I know my own way 
 
 back. 
 Don't fear me 1 There 'b the gray beginning. 
 
 Zooks 1 
 
346 
 
 MEN AND WOMEN 
 
 ANDREA DEL SARTO 
 
 CALLED " THE FAULTLESS PAINTER " 
 
 But do not let xis quarrel any more. 
 No, my Lucrezia ; bear with rae for once : 
 Sit down and all shall happen as you wish. 
 You turn your face, but does it bring your 
 
 heart ? 
 I 'U work then for your friend's friend, never 
 
 fear, 
 Treat his own subject after his own way. 
 Fix his own time, accept too his own price. 
 And shut the money into this small hand 
 When next it takes mine. WUl it ? tenderly ? 
 Oh, I '11 content him, — but to-morrow, LoTe ! 
 I often am much wearier than you think. 
 This evening more than usual, and it seems 
 As if — forgive now — should you let me sit 
 Here by the window with your hand in mine 
 And look a half-hour forth on Fiesole, 
 Both of one mind, as married people use. 
 Quietly, quietly the evening through, 
 I might get up to-morrow to my work 
 Cheerful and fresh as ever. Let us try. 
 To-morrow, how you shall be glad for this ! 
 Your soft hand is a woman of itself, 
 And mine the man's bared breast she curls in- 
 side. 
 Don't count the time lost, neither ; you must 
 
 serve 
 For each of the five pictures we require : 
 It saves a model. So I keep looking so — 
 My serpentining beauty, rounds on rounds I 
 — How could you ever prick those perfect ears, 
 Bven to put the pearl there ! oh, so sweet — 
 My face, my moon, my everybody's moon, 
 Wliich everybody looks on and calls his, 
 And, I suppose, is looked on by in turn. 
 While she looks — no one's : very dear, no less. 
 You smile ? why, there 's my picture ready 
 
 made, 
 There 's what we painters call our harmony ! 
 A common grayness silvers everything, — 
 All in a twilight, you and 1 alike 
 ^ You, at the point of your first pride in me 
 (That 's gone you know), — but I, at every 
 
 point ; 
 My youth, my hope, my art, being all toned 
 
 down 
 To yonder sober pleasant Fiesole. 
 There 's the beM clinking from the chapel-top ; 
 That length of convent-wall across the way 
 Holds the trees safer, huddled more inside ; 
 The last monk leaves the garden ; days de- 
 crease. 
 And antunm grows, autumn in everything. 
 Eh ? the whole seems to fall into a shape 
 As if I saw alike my work and self 
 And all that I was bom to be and do, 
 A twilight-piece. Love, we are in God's hand. 
 How strange now looks the life he makes us 
 
 lead; 
 So free we seem, so fettered fast we are I 
 I feel he laid the fetter ; let it lie 1 
 This chamber for example — turn your head — 
 AU that 's behind us 1 Yon don't understand 
 
 Nor care to understand about my art. 
 
 But you can hear at least when people speak : 
 
 And that cartoon, the second fi'ora the door 
 
 — It is the thing. Love ! so such thing should 
 
 be — 
 Behold Madonna ! — I am bold to say. 
 I can do with my pencil what I know, 
 What I see, what at bottom of my heart 
 I wish for, if I ever wish so deep — 
 Do easily, too — when I say, perfectly, 
 I do not boast, perhaps: yourself are judge. 
 Who listened to the Legate's talk last week, 
 Ajid just as much they used to say in France. 
 At any rate 'tis easy, all of it ! 
 No sketches first, no studies, that 's long past: 
 I do what many dream of all their lives, 
 
 — Dream ? strive to do, and agonize to do. 
 And fail in doing. I could count twenty such 
 On twice your fingers, and not leave thii town, 
 Who strive — you don't know how the others 
 
 strive 
 To paint a little thing like that you smeared 
 Carelessly passing with your robes afloat, — 
 Yet do much less, so much less. Someone says, 
 (I know his name, no matter) — so much less ! 
 Well, less is more, Lucrezia : I am judged. 
 There bums a truer light of God in them. 
 In their vexed beating stuffed and stopped-up 
 
 brain. 
 Heart, or wnate'er else, than goes on to prompt 
 This low-pulsed forthright craftsman's hand of 
 
 mine. 
 Their works drop groundward, but themselves, 
 
 I know. 
 Reach many a time a heaven that 's shut to me, 
 Enter and take their place there sure enough. 
 Though they come back and cannot tell the 
 
 world. 
 My works are nearer heaven, but I sit here. 
 The sudden blood of these men ! at a word — 
 Praise them, it boils, or blame them, it boils 
 
 too. 
 I, painting from myself and to myself. 
 Know what I do, am unmoved by men's blame 
 Or their praise either. Somebody remarks 
 Morello's outline there is wrongly traced. 
 His hue mistaken ; what of that ? or else, 
 Rightly traced and well ordered ; what of that? 
 Speak as they please, what does the moiuitais 
 
 care ? 
 Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, 
 Or what 's a heaven for ? All is silver-gray 
 Placid and perfect with my art : the worse ! 
 I know both what I want and what might gain, 
 And yet how profitless to know, to sigh 
 " Had I been two, another and myself, 
 Our head would have o'eriooked the world ! " 
 
 No doubt. 
 Yonder 's a work now, of that famous youth 
 The Urbinate who died five years ago. 
 CT is copied, Geoi^e Vasari sent it me.) 
 Well, I can fancy now he did it all. 
 Pouring his soul, with kings and popes to see. 
 Reaching, that heaven might so replenish him, 
 Above and through his art — for it gives way ; 
 That arm is wrongly put — and there again — 
 A fault to pardon in the drawing's lines. 
 Its body, so to speak : its soul is right, 
 
ANDREA DEL SARTO 
 
 347 
 
 He means right — that, a child may understand. 
 Still, what an arm ! and I conld alter it : 
 But all the play, the insight and the stretch — 
 Out of me, out of me ! And wherefore out ? 
 Had you enjoined them on me, given me soul, 
 We might have lisen to Rafael, I and yon 1 
 Nay, Love, you did give all I asked, I think — 
 More than I meiit, yes, by many times. 
 But had you — oh, with the same perfect brow, 
 And perfect eyes, and more than perfect mouth. 
 And the low voice my soul heat's, as a bird 
 The fowler's pipe, and follows to the snare — 
 Had you, with these the same, but brought a 
 
 mind I 
 Some women do so. Had the mouth there urged 
 " God and the glory ! never care for gain.' 
 The present by the future, what is that ? 
 Live for fame, side by side with Agnolo ! 
 Rafael is waiting : up to God, all three ! " 
 I might have done it for you. So it seems : 
 Perhaps not. All is as God overrules. 
 Beside, incentives come from the souPs self ; 
 The rest avail not. Why do I need you ? 
 What wife had Rafael, or has Agnolo ? 
 Ill this world, who can do a thing, will not ; 
 And who would do it, cannot, I perceive : 
 Yet the will 's somewhat — somewhat, too, the 
 
 power — 
 And thus we half-men struggle. At the end, 
 God, I conclude, compensates, punishes. 
 'T is safer for me, if the award be stiict, 
 That I am sometliing underrated here. 
 Poor this long while, despised, to speak the 
 
 truth. 
 I dared not, do you know, leave home all day. 
 For fear of chancing on the Paris lords. 
 The best is when they pass and look aside ; 
 But they speak sometimes ; I must bear it all. 
 Well may they speak I That Francis, that first 
 
 time. 
 And that long festal year at Fontainebleau I 
 I surely then could sometimes leave the ground, 
 Put on tlie glory, RafaePs daily wear, 
 In that humane great monarch's golden look, — 
 One finger in his beard or twisted curl 
 Over his mouth's good mark that made the 
 
 smile. 
 One arm about my shoulder, round my neck, 
 The jingle of his gold chain in ray ear, 
 I painting proudly with his breath on me. 
 All his court round him, seeing with his eyes, 
 Such frank French eyes, and such a fire of souls 
 Profuse, my hand kept plying by those 
 
 hearts, — 
 And, best of all, this, this, this face beyond, 
 Tliis in the background, waiting on my work, 
 To crown the issue with a last reward ! 
 A good time, was it not, my kingly days ? 
 And had you not grown restless . . . but I 
 
 know — 
 'T is done and past ; 't was right, my instinct 
 
 said ; 
 Too live the life grew, golden and not gray. 
 And I 'm. the weak-eyed bat no sun should 
 
 tempt 
 Out of the grange whose four walls make his 
 
 world. 
 How could it end in any other way ? 
 
 You called me, and I came home to your heart. 
 The triumph was — to reach and stay there ; 
 
 since 
 I readied it ere the triumph, what is lost? 
 Let my hands frame your face in your hair's 
 
 gold. 
 You beautiful Lucrezia that are mine ! 
 ^^ Rafael did this, Andrea painted that ; 
 The Roman's is the better when you pray. 
 But still the other's Virgin was his wife " — 
 Men will excuse me. I am glad to judge 
 Both pictures in your presence ; clearer grows 
 My better fortune, I resolve to think. 
 For, do you know, Lucrezia, as God lives, 
 Said one day Agnolo, his very self, 
 To Rafael ... I have known it all these 
 
 years . . . 
 (When the young man was flaming out Ids 
 
 thoughts 
 Upon a palaee-wall for Rome to see. 
 Too lifted up in heart because of it) 
 " Friend, there 's a certain sori-y little scrub 
 Goes up and down our Florence, none cares how. 
 Who, were he set to plan and execute 
 As you are, pricked on by your popes and kings. 
 Would bring thesweat into that brow of youi-s ! " 
 To Rafael's ! — And indeed the arm is wrong. 
 I hardly dare . . . yet, only you to see. 
 Give the chalk here — quick, thus the line 
 
 . should go ! 
 Ay, but the soul ! he 's Rafael ! rub it out ! 
 Still, all I care for, if he spoke the truth, 
 (What he ? why, who but Michel Agnolo ? 
 Do you forget already words like those ? ) 
 If really there was such a chance, so lost, — 
 Is, whether you 're — not grateful — but more 
 
 Well, let me think so. And you smUe indeed ! 
 This hour has been an hour 1 Another smile ? 
 If you would sit thus by me every night 
 I should work better, do you comiirebend ? 
 I mean that I should earn more, give you more. 
 See, it is settled dusk now ; there 's a star ; 
 Morello 's gone, the watch-lights show the wall. 
 The cue-owls speak the name we call them by. 
 Come from the window, love, — come in, at last. 
 Inside the melancholy little house 
 We built to be so gay with. God is just. 
 King Francis may forgive me : oft at nights 
 When I look up from painting, eyes tired out, 
 The walls become illumined, brick from brick 
 Distinct, instead of mortar, fierce bright gold. 
 That gold of his I did cement them with 1 
 Let us but love each other. Must you go ? 
 That Cousin here again ? he waits outside ? 
 Must see you — you, and not with me ? Those 
 
 loans ? 
 Moi-e gaming debts to pay ? you smiled for that ? 
 Well, let smiles buy me ! have you more to 
 
 spend ? 
 Wliile hand and eye and something of a heart 
 Are left me, work 's my ware, and what 's it 
 
 worth ? 
 I '11 pay my fancy. Only let me sit 
 The gi*ay remainder of the evening out. 
 Idle, you call it, and muse perfeotiy 
 How I could paint, were I but back in France, 
 One piefcnre, just one more — the Virgin's face. 
 
348 
 
 MEN AND WOMEN 
 
 Not yoni'S this time ! I want you at my side 
 
 To liear them — r tliat is, Michel Agnolo — 
 
 Judge all I do and tell you of its worth. 
 
 Will you ? To-morrow, satisfy your friend. 
 
 I take the subjects for his corridor. 
 
 Finish the portrait out of hand — there, there, 
 
 And throw him in another thing or two 
 
 If he demurs ; the whole should prove enough 
 
 To pay for this same Cousin's freak. Beside, 
 
 What 's better and what 's all I care about, 
 
 Get you the thirteen scudi for the ruff ! 
 
 Love, does that please yon ? Ah, but what does 
 
 he. 
 The Cousin 1 what does he to please you more ? 
 
 I am grown peaceful as old age to-night. 
 I regTet little, I would change still less. 
 Since there my past life lies, why alter it ? 
 The very wrong to Francis ! — it is true 
 I took his coin, was tempted and complied. 
 And built this house and sinned, and all is said. 
 My father and my mother died of want. 
 Well, had I riches of my own ? you see 
 How one gets rich ! Let each one bear his lot. 
 They were born poor, lived poor, and poor they 
 
 died: 
 And I have labored somewhat in my time 
 And not been paid profusely. Some good son 
 Paint my two hundred pictures — let him try ! 
 No doubt, there 's something strikes a balance. 
 
 Yes, 
 You loved me quite enough, it seems to-night. 
 This must suffice me here. What would one 
 
 have ? 
 In heaven, perhaps, new chances, one more 
 
 chance — 
 Four great walls in the New Jenisalem, 
 Meted on each side by the angel's reed, 
 For Leonard, Rafael, Agnolo and me 
 To cover — the three first without a wife. 
 While I have mine ! So — still they overcome 
 Because there 's still Lucrezia, — as I choose. 
 
 Again the Cousin's whistle ! Go, my Love. 
 
 THE BISHOP ORDERS HIS TOMB AT 
 SAINT PRAXED'S CHURCH 
 
 ROME, 15 — 
 
 This poem was first published in Hood's 
 Magazine, March, 1845, with the title The Tomb 
 at Saint Praxed's (Rome, 15 — ). 
 
 Vanity, saith the preacher, vanity ! 
 
 Draw round my bed : is Anselm keeiiing back ? 
 
 Nephews — sons mine ... ah God, 1 know not ! 
 
 Well- 
 She, men would have to be your mother once. 
 Old Gandolf envied me, so fair she was ! 
 What 's done is done, and she is dead beside, 
 Dead long ago, and 1 am Bishop since. 
 And as she died so must we die ourselves, 
 A nd thence ye may perceive the world's a dream. 
 Life, how and what is it ? As here I lie 
 In this state-chamber, dying by degrees, 
 
 Hours and long hours in the dead night, I ask 
 " Do I live, am I dead ? " Peace, peace seema 
 
 all. 
 Saint Praxed's ever was the church for peace ; 
 And so, about this tomb of mine. I fought 
 With tooth and nail to save my niche, ye know : 
 
 — Old Gandolf cozened me, despite ray care ; 
 Shrewd was that snatch from out the comer 
 
 South 
 He graced his carrion with, God curse the same ! 
 Yet still my niche is not so cramped but thence 
 One sees the pulpit o' the epistle-side. 
 And somewhat of the choir, those silent seats, 
 And up into the aery dome where live 
 The angels, and a sunbeam 's sure to lurk : 
 And I shall fill my slab of basalt there. 
 And 'neath my tabernacle take my rest. 
 With those nine columns round me, two and two. 
 The odd one at my feet where Anselm stands : 
 Peach-blossom marble all, the rare, the ripe 
 As fresh-poured red wine of a mighty pulse. 
 
 — Old Gandolf with his paltry onion-stone, 
 Put me where I may look at him ! True peach, 
 Rosy and flawless : how I earned the prize ! 
 Draw close : that conflagration of my church 
 
 — What then? So much was saved if aught 
 
 were missed ! 
 My sons, ye would not be my death ? Go dig 
 The white-grape vineyard where the oil-press 
 
 stood. 
 Drop water gently till the surface sink. 
 And if ye find . . . Ah God, I know not, I ! . . . 
 Bedded in store of rotten fig-leaves soft. 
 And corded up in a tight olive-frail. 
 Some lunij), ah God, of lapis lazuli. 
 Big as a Jew's head cut off at the nape. 
 Blue as a vein o'er the Madonna's breast . . . 
 Sons, all have I bequeathed you, villas, all. 
 That brave Frascati villa with its bath, 
 So, let the blue lump poise between my knees. 
 Like God the Father's globe on both his hands 
 Ye worship in the Jesu Church so gay. 
 For Gandolf shall not choose but see and burst ! 
 Swift as a weaver's shuttle fleet our years : 
 Man goeth to the grave, and where is he ? 
 Did Isay basalt for my slab, sons ? Black — 
 'T was ever antique-black I meant ! How else 
 Shall ye contrsist my frieze to come beneath ? 
 Tlie bas-relief in bronze ye promised me. 
 Those Pans and Nymphs ye wot of, and per- 
 chance 
 Some tripod, thyrsus, with a vase or so. 
 The Saviour at his sermon on the mount. 
 Saint Praxed in a glory, and one Pan 
 Ready to twitch the Nymph's last garment off, 
 And Moses with the tables . . . but I know 
 Ye mark me not ! What do they whisper thee. 
 Child of my bowels, Ansehn ? Ah, ye hope 
 To revel down my villas while I gasp 
 Bricked o'er with beggar's mouldy travertine 
 Which Gandolf from his tomb-top chuckles at ! 
 Nay, boys, ye love me — all of jasper, then ! 
 'T is jasper ye stand pledged to, lest I grieve 
 My bath must needs be left behind, alas ! 
 One block, pure green as a pistachio-nut. 
 There 's plenty jasper somewhere in the world — 
 And have I not Saint Praxed's ear to pray 
 Horses for ye, and brown Greek mamiscripts, 
 
BISHOP BLOUGRAM'S APOLOGY 
 
 349 
 
 And mistresses with g^reat smooth marbly limbs ? 
 
 — That 's if ye cai've my epitaph aright, 
 Choice Latin, picked phrase, Tally's every word, 
 No gaudy, ware like Gandolf 's second line — 
 TuUy, my masters ? Ulpian serves his need 1 
 And then how I shall lie through centuries. 
 And hear the blessed mutter oi the mass. 
 And see God made and eaten all day long, 
 And feel the steady candle-flame, and taste 
 Good strong thick stupefying incense-smoke ! 
 For as I lie here, hours of the dead night, 
 Dying in state and by such slow degrees, 
 
 I fold my arms as if they clasped a crook, 
 And stretch my feet forth straight as stone can 
 
 point, 
 And let the bedclothes, for a mortcloth, drop 
 Into great laps and folds of seulptor's-work : 
 And as yon tapers dwindle, and strange thoughts 
 Grow, with a certain humming in my ears, 
 About the life before I lived this life, 
 And this life too, popes, cardinals and priests, 
 Saint Praxed at his sermon on the mount, 
 Your tall pale mother with her talking eyes. 
 And new-found agate urns as fresh as day. 
 And marble's language, Latin pure, discreet, 
 
 — Aha, ELUCBSCEBAT quoth our friend ? 
 No Tully, said I, Ulpian at the best ! 
 Evil and brief hath been my pilgrimage. 
 All lapis, all, sons ! Else I give the Pope 
 My villas ! Will ye ever eat my heart ? 
 Ever your eyes were as a lizard's quick. 
 They glitter like your mother's for my soul, 
 Or ye would heighten my impoverished frieze. 
 Piece out its starved design, and fill my vase 
 With grapes, and add a visor and a Term, 
 And to the tripod ye would tie a lynx 
 
 That in his struggle throws the thyrsus down, 
 
 To comfort me on my entablature 
 
 Whereon I am to lie till I must ask 
 
 "Do I live, am I dead? " There, leave me, 
 
 there ! 
 For ye have stabbed me with ingratitude 
 To death — ye wish it — God, ye wish it ! 
 
 Stone — 
 Gritstone, arcrumble ! Clammy squares which 
 
 sweat 
 As if the corpse they keep were oozing 
 
 through — 
 And no more lapis to delight the world ! 
 Well, go ! I bless ye. Fewer tapere there. 
 But in a row : and, going, turn your backs 
 
 — Ay, like departing altar-ministi'ants, 
 
 And leave me in my church, the church for 
 
 peace. 
 That I may watch at leisure if he leers — 
 Old Gandolf — at me, from his onion-stone. 
 As still he envied me, so fair she was ! 
 
 BISHOP BLOUGRAM'S APOLOGY 
 
 No more wine ? then we 'U push back chairs 
 and talk. 
 A final glass for me, though : cool, i' faith ! 
 We ou^t to have our Abbey back, you see. 
 It 's different, preaching in basilicas. 
 And doing duty in some masterpiece 
 Like this of brother Pugin's, bless his heart ! 
 
 I doubt if they 're half baked, those chalk 
 
 rosettes, 
 Ciphers and stucco-twiddlings everywhere ; 
 It 's just like breathing in a lime-kiln : eh ? 
 These hot long ceremonies of our church 
 Cost us a little — oh, they pay the price, 
 You take me — amply pay it ! Now, we '11 talk. 
 
 So, you despise me, Mr. Gigadibs. 
 No deprecation, — nay, I beg you, sir ! 
 Beside 't is our ei^agement : don't you know, 
 I promised, if you 'd watch a dinner out. 
 We 'd see truth dawn together ? — truth that 
 
 peeps 
 Over the glasses' edge when dinner 's done, 
 And body gets its sop and holds its noise 
 And leaves soul free a little. Now 's the time : 
 Truth's break of day ! You do despise me then. 
 And if I say, "despise me," — neverfearl 
 I know you do not in a cei-tain sense — 
 Not in my arm-chair, for example : here, 
 I well imagine you respect my place 
 (Status^ entourage, worldly circumstance) 
 Quite to its value — very much indeed : 
 
 — Are up to the protesting eyes of you 
 In pride at being seated here for once — 
 You '11 turn it to such capital account ! 
 When somebody, through years and years to 
 
 come, 
 Hints of the bishop, — names me — that 's 
 
 enough : 
 "Blougram? I knew him" — {into it you 
 
 slide) 
 " Dined with him once, a Corpus Christi Day, 
 All alone, we two ; he 's a clever man : 
 And after dinner, — why, the wine you 
 
 know, — 
 Oh, there was wine, and good ! — what with the 
 
 wine . . . 
 'Faith, we began upon all sorts of talk ! 
 He 's no bad fellow, Blougram ; he had seen 
 Something of mine he relished, some review : 
 He 's quite above their humbug in his heart, 
 Half-said as much, indeed — the thing 's his 
 
 trade. 
 I warrant, Blougram 's skeptical at times : 
 How otherwise ? I liked him, I confess ! " 
 Che che, my dear sir, as we say at Rome, 
 Don't you protest now ! It 's fair give and 
 
 take ; 
 You have had your turn and spoken your home- 
 truths : 
 The hand 's mine now, and here you follow suit. 
 
 Thus much conceded, still the first fact 
 stays — 
 You do despise me ; your ideal of life 
 Is not the bishop's ; you would not be L 
 You would like better to be Goethe, now. 
 Or Buonaparte, or, bless me, lower still. 
 Count D'Orsay, — so you did what you pre- 
 ferred, 
 Spoke as you thought, and, as you cannot help, 
 Believed or disbelieved, no matter what. 
 So long as on that point, whate'er it was. 
 You loosed your mind, were whole and sole 
 yourself. 
 
 — That, my ideal never can include, 
 
35° 
 
 MEN AND WOMEN 
 
 Upon that element of truth and worth 
 Never be based ! for say they make me Pope — 
 (They can't — suppose it for our argument !) 
 Why, there I 'm at my tether's endj I 've 
 
 reached 
 My height, and not a heig:ht which pleases you : 
 An unbelieving Pope won't do, you say. 
 It 's like those eerie stories nurses telL 
 Of how some actor on a stage played Death, 
 V/ith pasteboard crown, sham orb and tinselled 
 
 dart, 
 And called himself the monarch of the world ; 
 Then, going in the tire-room afterward, 
 Because the play was done, to shift himself, 
 Got touched upon the sleeve familiarly. 
 The moment he had shut the closet door, 
 By Death himself. Thus God might touch a 
 
 Pope 
 At unawares, ask what his baubles mean. 
 And whose part he presumed to play just now. 
 Best be yourself, imperial, plain and true 1 
 
 So, drawing comfortable breath again. 
 You weigh and find, whatever more or less 
 1 boast of my ideal reaUzed 
 Is nothing in the balance when opposed 
 To your ideal, your grand simple life. 
 Of whicli you will not realize one jot. 
 I am much, you are nothing ; you would be all, 
 I would be merely much ; you beat me there. 
 
 No, friend, you do not beat me ; hearken why ! 
 The common problem, yours, mine, every one s, 
 Is — not to fancy what were fair in life 
 Provided it could be, — but, finding first 
 What may be, then find how to raiake it fair 
 Up to our means : a very different thing ! 
 No abstract intellectual plan of life 
 Quite irrespective of life's plainest laws, 
 But one, a man, who is man and nothing more, 
 May lead within a world which {by your leave) 
 Is Rome or London, not Pool's-paradise. 
 Embelhsh Rome, idealize away, 
 Make paradise of London if you can, 
 You 're welcome, nay, you 're wise, 
 
 A simile ! 
 We mortals cross the ocean of this world 
 Each in his averse cabin of a life ; 
 The best 's not big, the worst yields elbow- 
 room. 
 Now for our six months' voyage — how pre- 
 pare ? 
 You come on shipboard with a landsman's list 
 Of things he calls convenient : so they are ! 
 An India screen is pretty furniture, 
 A piano-forte is a fine resource. 
 All Balzac's novels occupy one shelf. 
 The new edition fifty volumes long ; 
 And little Greek books, with the funny type 
 They get up well at Leipsic, fill the next ; 
 Go on ! slabbed marble, what a bath it makes I 
 And Parma's pride, the Jerome, let us add 1 
 'T were pleasant could Correggio's fleeting glow 
 Hang full in face of one where'er one roams. 
 Since he more than the others brings with him 
 Italy's self, — the marvellous Modenese ! — 
 Yet was not on your list before, perhaps. 
 
 — Alas, friend, here's the agent... . is't the 
 
 name ? 
 The captain, or whoever 's master here — 
 You see him screw his face up ; what 's his 
 
 cry 
 Ere you set foot on shipboard? "Six feet 
 
 square ! " 
 If you won't understand what six feet mean. 
 Compute and purchase stores accordingly — 
 And if, in pique because he overhauls 
 Your Jerome, piano, bath, you come on board 
 Bare — why, you cut a figure at the first 
 While sympathetic landsmen see you off ; 
 Not afterward, when long ere half seas over, 
 You peep up from your utterly naked boards 
 Into some snug and well-appointed berth. 
 Like mine for instance (try the cooler jug — 
 Put back the other, but don't jog the ice I) 
 And mortified you mutter, " Well and good ; 
 He sits enjoying his sea-furniture ; 
 'T is stout and proper, and there 's store of it : 
 Though I 've the better notion, all agree, 
 Of fitting rooms up. Hang the carpenter. 
 Neat ship-shape fixings and contrivances — 
 I would have brought my Jerome, frame and 
 
 all!" _ 
 And meantime you bring nothing: never 
 
 mind — 
 You 've proved your artist-nature : what yon 
 
 don't 
 You might bring, so despise me, as I say. 
 
 Now come, let 's backward to the startii^^ 
 place. 
 
 See my way : we 're two college friends, sup- 
 pose. 
 
 Prepare together for our voyage, then ; 
 
 Each note and check the other in his work, — 
 
 Here 's mine, a bishop's outfit ; criticise ! 
 
 Wlat 's wrong ? why won't you be a bishop 
 too? 
 
 Why first, you don't believe, you don't and 
 can't, 
 (Not statedly, that is, and fixedly 
 And absolutely and exclusively) 
 In any revelation called divine. 
 No dogmas nail your faith ; and what remains 
 But say so, like the honest man you are ? 
 First, therefore, overhaul theology ! 
 Nay, I too, not a fool, you please to think, 
 Must find beUeving every whit as hard : 
 And if I do not frankly say as much. 
 The ugly consequence is clear enough. 
 
 Now wait, my friend : well, I do not believe — 
 If you '11 accept no faith that is not fixed. 
 Absolute and exclusive, as you say. 
 You 're wrong — I mean to prove it in due 
 
 time. 
 Meanwhile, I know where difficulties lie 
 I could not, cannot solve, nor ever shall, 
 So give up hope accordingly to solve — ■ 
 (To you, and over the wine). Our dogmas then 
 With both of us, though in unlike degree. 
 Missing fuE credence — overboard with them I 
 1 mean to meet you on your own premise : 
 Good, there go mine in company with yours ! 
 
BISHOP BLOUGRAM'S APOLOGY 
 
 351 
 
 And now what are we ? unbelievers both, 
 Calm and complete, determinately fixed 
 To-day, to-raorrow, and forerer, pray ? 
 You 'U guarantee me that ? Not so, I think ! 
 In no wise ! all we 'ye gained is, that belief, 
 As unbelief before, shakes us by fits, 
 Confounds us like its predecessor. Where 's 
 The gain ? how can we guard our unbelief. 
 Make it bear fruit to us ? — the problem here. 
 Just when we are safest, there 's a sunset-touch, 
 A fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death, 
 A chorus-ending from Euripides, — 
 And that 's enough for fifty hopes and fears 
 As old and new at once as nature's self. 
 To rap and knock and enter in our soul. 
 Take nands and dance there, a fantastic ring. 
 Hound the ancient idol, on his base again, — 
 The grand Perhaps ! We look on helplessly. 
 There the old misgivings, crooked questions 
 
 are — 
 This good God, — what he could do, if he would. 
 Would, if he could — then must have done long 
 
 since : 
 If so, when, where and how ? some way must 
 
 be, — 
 Once feel about, and soon or late you hit 
 Some sense, in which it mi^t be, after all. 
 Why not, " The Way, the Truth, the Life ? " 
 
 — That way 
 Over the mountain, which who stands upon 
 Is apt to doubt if it be meant for a road ; 
 While, if he views it from the waste itself. 
 Up goes the line there, plain from base to brow. 
 Not vague, mistakable ! what 's a break or two 
 Seen from the unbroken desert either side ? 
 And then (to bring in fresh philosophy) 
 What if the breaks themselves should prove at 
 
 last 
 The most consummate of contrivances 
 To train a man's eye, teach him what is faith ? 
 And so we stumble at truth's very test ! 
 All we have gained then by our unbelief 
 Is a life of doubt diversified by faith. 
 For one of faith diversified by doubt : 
 We called the chess-board white, — we eaU it 
 
 black. 
 
 " Well," you rejoin, " the end 's no worse, at 
 least; 
 We 've reason for both colors on the board : 
 Why not confess then, where I drop the faith 
 And you the doubt, that I 'm as right as you ? " 
 
 Because, friend, in the next place, this being 
 so. 
 And both things even, — faith and unbelief 
 Left to a man's choice, — we '11 proceed a step. 
 Returning to our image, which I like. 
 
 A man's choice, yes — -but a cabin-passen- 
 ger's — 
 The man made for the special life n' the 
 
 world — 
 Do you forget him ? I remember though 1 
 Consult our ship's conditions and yon find 
 One and but one choice suitable to all ; 
 The choice, that you unluckily prefer, 
 
 Turning things topsy-turvy — they or it 
 
 Going to the ground. Belief or unbelief 
 
 Bears upon life, determines its whole course, 
 
 Begins at its beginning. See the world 
 
 Such as it is, — you niade it not, nor I ; 
 
 I mean to take it as it is, — and you. 
 
 Not so you '11 take it, — though you get naught 
 
 else. 
 I know the special kind of life I like. 
 What suits the most my idiosyncrasy. 
 Brings out the best of me and bears me fruit 
 In power, peace, pleasantness and length of 
 
 days. 
 I find that positive belief does this 
 For me, and unbelief, no whit of this. 
 — For you, it does, however ? — that, we '11 try 1 
 'T is clear, I cannot lead my life, at least, 
 Induce the world to let me peaceably. 
 Without declaring at the outset, " Friends, 
 I absolutely and peremptorily 
 Believe ! " — I say, faith is my waking life : 
 One sleeps, indeed, and dreams at intervals. 
 We know, but waking 's the main point with 
 
 us. 
 And my provision 's for life's waking part. 
 Accordingly, I use heart, head and hand 
 All day, I build, scheme, study, and make 
 
 friendsj 
 And when night overtakes me, down I lie. 
 Sleep, dream a little, and g^ don&with it, 
 The sooner the better, to begin afresh. 
 What 's midnight doubt before the dayspring's 
 
 faith? 
 You, the philosopher, that disbelieve. 
 That recognize the night, give dreams their 
 
 weight — 
 To be consistent you should keep your bed. 
 Abstain from healthy acts that prove you man. 
 For fear you drowse perhaps at unawares ! 
 And certainly at night you 'U sleep and dreaim. 
 Live through the day and bustle as you please. 
 And so you live to sleep as I to wake. 
 To unbelieve as I to still believe ? 
 Well, and the common sense o' the world calls 
 
 you 
 Bed-ridden, — and its good things come to me. 
 Its estimation, which is half the fight. 
 That 's the first-cabin comfort I secure : 
 The next . . . but you perceive with half an 
 
 eye! 
 Come, come, it 's best believing, if we may ; 
 You can't but own that ! 
 
 Next, concede again, 
 If once we choose belief, on all accounts 
 We can't be too decisive in our faith. 
 Conclusive and exclusive in its terms. 
 To suit the world which gives us the good 
 
 things. 
 In every man's career are certain points 
 Whereon he dares not be indiilerent ; 
 The world detects him clearly, if he dare. 
 As baffled at the game, and losing life. 
 He may care little or he may care much 
 For riches, honor, pleasure, work, repose. 
 Since various theories of life and life's 
 Success are extant which might easily 
 Comport with either estimate of these ; 
 
352 
 
 MEN AND WOMEN 
 
 Aud whoso chooses wealth or poverty, 
 Labor or quiet, is not judged a tool 
 Because hib fellow would choose otherwise ; 
 We let him choose upon his own account 
 Bo long as he 's consistent with his choice. 
 But certain points, left wholly to himself, 
 When once a man has arbitrated on. 
 We say he must succeed there or go hang. 
 Thus, he should wed the woman he loves most 
 Or needs most, whatsoe'er the love or need — 
 For he can't wed twice. Then, he must avouch, 
 Or follow, at the least, sufficiently, 
 The form of faith his conscience holds the best, 
 Whate'er the process of conviction was : 
 For nothing can compensate his mistake 
 On such a point, the man himself being judge : 
 He cannot wed twice, nor twice lose his soul. 
 
 Well now, there 's one great form of Christian 
 
 faith 
 I happened to be born in — which to teach 
 Was given me as I grew up, on all hands. 
 As best and readiest means of living by ; 
 The same on examination being proved 
 The most pronounced moreover, fixed, precise 
 And absolute form of faith in the whole world — 
 Accordingly, most potent of all forms 
 For working on the world. Observe, my 
 
 friend ! 
 Such as you know me, I am free to say, 
 In these hard latter days which hamper one, 
 ^^^elf — by no immoderate exercise 
 ""TTf intellect and learning, but the tact 
 To let external forces work for me, 
 — Bid the street's stones be bread and they are 
 
 bread ; 
 Bid Peter's creed, or rather, Hildebrand's, 
 Exalt me o'er my fellows in the world 
 And make my life an ease and joy and pride ; 
 It does so, — which for me 's a great point 
 
 gained. 
 Who have a soul and body that exact 
 A comfortable care in many ways. 
 There 's power in me and will to dominate 
 Which I must exercise, they hurt me else : 
 In many ways I need mankind's respect. 
 Obedience, and the love that 's born of fear ; 
 While at the same time, there 's a taste I have, 
 A toy of soul, a titillating thing, 
 Refuses to digest these dainties crude. 
 The naked life is gross till clothed upon : 
 1 must take what men ofPer, with a grace 
 As though I would not, could I help it, take ! 
 An uniform I wear though over-rich — 
 Something imposed on me, no choice of mine ; 
 No fancy-dress worn for pure fancy's sake 
 And despicable therefore ! now folk kneel 
 And kiss my hand — of course the Church's 
 
 hand. 
 Thus I am made, thus life is best for me. 
 And thus that it should be I have procured ; 
 And thus it could not be another way, 
 I venture to imagine. 
 
 You '11 reply, 
 So far my choice, no doubt, is a success ; 
 But were I made of better elements. 
 With nobler instincts, purer tastes, like you, 
 
 I hardly would account the thing success 
 Though it did all for me I say. 
 
 But, friend. 
 We speak of what is ; not of what might be, 
 And how 't were better if 't were otherwise. 
 I am the man you see here plain enough : 
 Grant I 'm a beast, why, beasts must lead 
 
 beasts' lives ! 
 Suppose I own at once to tail and claws ; 
 The tailless man exceeds me : but being tailed 
 I '11 lash out lion fashion, and leave apes 
 To dock their stump and dress their haunches 
 
 up. 
 My business is not to remake myself. 
 But make the absolute best of what God made. 
 Or — our first simile — though you prove me 
 
 doomed 
 To a viler berth still, to the steerage-hole. 
 The sheep-pen or the pig-sty, I should strive 
 To make what use of each were possible ; 
 And as this cabin gets upholstery. 
 That hutch should rustle with sufficient straw. 
 
 But, friend, I don't acknowledge quite so fast 
 I fail of all your manhood's lofty tastes 
 Enumerated so complacently. 
 On the mere ground that you forsooth can find 
 In this particular life I choose to lead 
 No fit provision for them. Can you not ? 
 Say you, my fault is I address myself 
 To grosser estimators than should judge ? 
 And that 's no way of holding up the sonl, 
 Which, nobler, needs men's praise perhaps, yet 
 
 knows 
 One wise man's verdict outweighs all the 
 
 fools' — 
 Would like the two, but, forced to choose, 
 
 takes that. 
 I pine among my million imbeciles 
 (You think) aware some dozen men of sense 
 Eye me and know me, whether I believe 
 In the last winking Virgin, as I vow. 
 And am a fool, or disbelieve in her 
 And am a knave, — approve in neither case, 
 Withhold their voices though I look their way : 
 Like Verdi when, at his worst opera's end 
 (The thing they gave at Florence, — what 's its 
 
 name ?) 
 While the mad houseful's plaudits near out- 
 bang 
 His orchestra of salt-box, tongs, and bones, 
 He looks through all the roaring and the 
 
 wreaths 
 Where sits Rossini patient in his stall. 
 
 Nay, friend, I meet you with an answer 
 
 here — 
 That even your prime men who appraise their 
 
 kind 
 Are men still, catch a wheel within a wheel. 
 See more in a truth than the truth's simple self. 
 Confuse themselves. You see lads walk the 
 
 street 
 Sixty the minute ; what 's to note in that ? 
 You see one lad o'erstride a chimney-stack ; 
 Him yon must watch — he's sure to fall, yet 
 
 stands ! 
 
BISHOP BLOUGRAM'S APOLOGY 
 
 353 
 
 Our interest 's on the dangerous edge of things. 
 
 The honest thief, the tender murderer, 
 
 The superstitious atheist, demirep 
 
 That loves and saves her soul in new French 
 
 books — 
 We watch while these in equilibrium keep 
 The giddy line midway : one step aside, 
 They Ve classed and done with. I, then, keep 
 
 the line 
 Before your sages, — just the men to shrink 
 From the gross weights, coarse scales and 
 
 labels broad 
 You offer their refinement. Fool or knave ? 
 Why needs a bishop be a fool or knave 
 When there 's a thousand diamond weights 
 
 between ? 
 So, I enlist them. Your picked twelve, you '11 
 
 find, 
 Profess themselves indignant, scandalized 
 At thus bein^ held unable to explain 
 How a superior man who disbelieves 
 May HOt believe as well: that's Schellii^'s 
 
 way ! 
 It 's through my coming in the tail of time, 
 Nicking the minute with a happy tact. 
 Had I been bom three hundred years ago 
 They 'd say, " What 's strange ? Blougram of 
 
 course believes ; " 
 And, seventy years since, '* disbelieves of 
 
 course." 
 But now, "He may believe; and yet, and yet 
 How can he ? " All eyes turn with interest. 
 Whereas, step o£F the Hue on either side — 
 You, for example, clever to a fault, 
 The rough and ready man who write apace. 
 Bead somewhat seldomer, think perhaps even 
 
 less — 
 You disbelieve ! Who wonders and who cares ? 
 Lord So-andnSo — his coat bedropped with 
 
 wax. 
 All Peter's chains about his waist, his back 
 Brave with the needlework of Noodledom — 
 Believes ! Again, who wonders and who cares ? 
 But I, the man of sense and learning too, 
 The able to think yet act, the this, the that, 
 I, to believe at this late time of day ! 
 Enough ; you see, I need not fear contempt. 
 
 — Except it 's yours ! Admire me as these 
 
 may, 
 You don't. But whom at least do you admire ? 
 Present your own perfection, your ideal, 
 Your pattern man for a minute — oh, make 
 
 haste! 
 Is it Napoleon you would have us grow ? 
 Concede the means ; allow his head and hand, 
 (A large concession, clever as you are) 
 Good ! In our common primsd element 
 Of unbelief (we can't believe, you know — 
 We 're still at that admission, recollect I) 
 Where do you find — apart from, towering o'er 
 The secondary temporary aims 
 Which satisfy the gross taste you despise — 
 Where do you find his star ? — his crazy trust 
 God knows through what or in what ? it 's alive 
 And shines and leads him, and that 's aU we 
 
 want. 
 Have we aught in our sober night shall point 
 
 Such ends as his were, and direct the means 
 Of working out our purpose straight as his, 
 Nor bring a moment's trouble on success 
 With after-care to justify the same ? 
 — Be a Napoleon, and yet disbelieve — 
 Why, the man 's mad, friend, take his light 
 
 away ! 
 What 's the vague good o' the world, for which 
 
 you dare 
 With comfort to yourself blow millions up ? 
 We neither of us see it ! we do see 
 The blown-up millions — spatter of their brains 
 And writhing of their bowels and so forth, 
 In that bewildering entanglement 
 Of horrible eventualities 
 Past calculation to the end of time ! 
 Can I mistake for some clear word of God 
 (Which were my ample warrant for it all) 
 His puff of haCT" instinct, idle talk, 
 "The State, that's I," quack-nonsense about 
 
 crowns, 
 And (when one beats the man to his last hold) 
 A vague idea of setting things to rights, 
 Policing people eiHeaciously, 
 More to their profit, most of all to his own ; 
 The whole to end that dismallest of ends 
 By an Austrian marriage, cant to us the Church, 
 And resurrection of the old regime ? 
 Would I, who hope to live a dozen years. 
 Fight Austerlitz for reasons such and such ? 
 No : for, concede me but the merest chance 
 Doubt may be wrong — there 's judgment, life 
 
 to come ! 
 With just that chance, I dare not. Doubt 
 
 proves right ? 
 This present life is all ? — you offer me 
 Its dozen noisy years, without a chance 
 That wedding an archduchess, wearing lace, 
 And getting called by divers new-coined names, 
 Will drive off ugly thoughts and let me dine, 
 Sleep, read and chat in quiet as I like ! 
 Therefore I will not. 
 
 Take another case ; 
 Fit up the cabin yet another way. 
 What say you to the poets ? shall we write 
 Hamlet, Othello — make the world our own, 
 Without a risk to run of either sort ? 
 I can't ! — to put the strongest reason first. 
 " But try," you urge, " the trying shall suffice ; 
 The aim, if reached or not, makes great the 
 
 life: 
 Try to be Shakespeare, leave the rest to fate ! " 
 Spare my self-knowledge — there's no fooling 
 
 me! 
 If I prefer remaining my poor self, 
 I say so not in self -dispraise but praise. 
 If I 'm a Shakespeare, let the well alone ; 
 Why should I try to be what now I am ? 
 If I 'm no Shakespeare, as too probable, — 
 His power and consciousness and self-delight 
 And all we want in common, shall I find — 
 Trying forever ? while on points of taste 
 Wherewith, to speak it humbly, he and I 
 Are dowered alike — I '11 ask you, I or he, 
 Which in our two lives realizes most ? 
 Much, he inaagined — somewhat, I possess. 
 He had the imagination ; stick to that ! 
 
354 
 
 MEN AND WOMEN 
 
 Let him say, " In the face of my soul's works 
 Your world is worthless and I touch it not 
 Lest I should wrong them" — I'll withdraw 
 
 my plea. 
 But does he say so ? look upon his life ! 
 Himself, who only can, gives judgment there. 
 He leaves his towers and gorgeous palaces 
 To build the trimmest house in Stratford town ; 
 Saves money, spends it, owns the worth of 
 
 things, 
 Giulio Romano's pictures, Dowland's lute ; 
 Enjoys a show, respects the puppets, too, 
 And none more, had he seen its entry once. 
 Than " Pandulph, of fair Milan cardinal." 
 Why then should I who play that personage. 
 The very Pandulph Shakespeare's fancy made. 
 Be told that had the poet chanced to start 
 From where I stand now (some degree like 
 
 mine 
 Being just the goal he ran his race to reach) 
 He would have run the whole race hack, for- 
 
 soothj 
 And left hemg Pandulph, to begin write plays ? 
 Ah, the earth's best can be but the earth's best I 
 Did Shakespeare live, he could but sit at home 
 And get himself in dreams the Vatican, 
 Greek busts, Venetian paintings, Roman walls. 
 And English books, none equal to his own. 
 Which I read, bound in gold (he never did). 
 — Terni's fall, Naples' bay, and Gothard's 
 
 top — 
 Eh, friend ? I could not fancy one of these ; 
 But, as I pour this claret, there they are ; 
 I 've gained them — crossed Saint Gothard last 
 
 July 
 With ten mules to the carriage and a bed 
 Slung inside ; is my hap the worse for that ? 
 We want the same things, Shakespeare and my- 
 self. 
 And what I want, I have : he, gifted more. 
 Could fancy he too had them when he liked. 
 But not so thoroughly that, if fate allowed, 
 He would not have them also in my sense. 
 We play one game ; I send the ball aloft 
 No less adroitly that of fifty strokes 
 Scarce five go o'er the wall so wide and high 
 Which sends them back to me : I wish and get. 
 He struck balls higher and with better skill. 
 But at a poor fence level with his head, 
 And hit — his Stratford house, a coat of arms, 
 Successful dealings in his grain and wool, — 
 While I receive heaven's incense in my nose 
 And style myself the cousin of Queen Bess. 
 Ask him, if this life 's all, who wins the game ? 
 
 Believe —r and our whole argument breaks up. 
 Enthusiasm 's the best thing, I repeat ; 
 Only, we can't command it ; fire and life 
 Are all, de£id matter 's nothing, we agree ; 
 And be it i mad dream or God's very breath, 
 The fact 's the saine, — belief's fire, once in us. 
 Makes of all else mere stuff to show itself : 
 We penetrate our life with such a glow 
 As fire lends wood and iron — this turns steel. 
 That burns to ash — all 's one, fire nroves its 
 
 power 
 For good or ill, since men call flare success. 
 But paint a fire, it will not therefore burn. 
 
 Light one in me, I '11 find it food enough 1 
 Why, to be Luther — that 's a life to lead, 
 Incomparably better than my own. _ , , 
 He comes, reclaims God's earth for God, he 
 
 says, . 
 
 Sets up God's rule aga,in by simple means. 
 Reopens a shut book, and all is done. 
 He flared out in the flaring of mankind ; 
 Such Luther's luck was : how shall such be 
 
 mine? 
 If he succeeded, nothing 's left to do : 
 And if he did not altogether — well, 
 Strauss is the next advance. All Strauss 
 
 should be 
 I might be also. But to what result ? 
 He looks upon no future : Luther did. 
 What can I gain on the denying side ? 
 Ice makes no conflagration. State the facts. 
 Read the text right, emancipate the "world — 
 The emancipated world enjoys itself 
 With scarce a thank-you : Blougram told it first 
 It could not owe a farthing, — not to him 
 More than Saint Paul ! 't would press its pay. 
 
 you think ? 
 Then add there 's still that plaguy hundredth 
 
 chance 
 Strauss may be wrong. And so a risk is run — 
 For what gain ? not tor Luther's, who secured 
 A real heaven in his heart throughout his life, 
 Supposing death a little altered things. 
 
 "Ay, but since really you lack faith," you 
 
 cry, 
 "You run the same risk really on all sides. 
 In cool indifference as bold unbelief. 
 As well be Strauss as swing 'twixt Paul and 
 
 him. 
 It 's not worth having, such imperfect faith, 
 No more available to do faith's work 
 Than unbelief Uke mine. Whole faith, or 
 
 none I " 
 
 Softly, my friend I I must dispute that 
 point. 
 
 Once own the use of faith, I '11 find you faith. 
 
 We 're back on Christian ground. Yon call for 
 faith : 
 
 I show you doubt, to prove that faith exists. 
 
 The more of doubt, the stronger faith, I say. 
 
 If faith o'ercomes doubt. How I know it does ? 
 
 By life and man's free will, Grod gave for that ! 
 
 To mould life as we choose it, shows our 
 choice : 
 
 That 's our one act, the previous work 's his 
 own. 
 
 You criticise the soul ? it reared this tree — 
 
 This broad life and whatever fruit it bears ! 
 
 What matter though I doubt at every pore, 
 
 Head-doubts, heart-doubts, doubts at my fin- 
 gers' ends. 
 
 Doubts in the trivial work of every day, 
 
 Doubts at the very bases of my soul 
 
 In the grand moments when she probes her' 
 
 If finally I have a life to show. 
 The thing I did, brought out in evidence 
 Against the thing done to me undei'gTonnd 
 By hell and all its brood, for aught I know ? 
 
BISHOP BLOUGRAM'S APOLOGY 
 
 35S 
 
 I say, whence sprang this? shows it faith or 
 
 doubt ? 
 All 's doubt in me ; where 's break of faith in 
 
 this ? 
 It is the idea, the feeling and the loye, 
 God means mankind should strive for and show 
 
 forth 
 Whatever be the process to that end, — 
 And not historic knowledge, logic sound. 
 And metaphysical acumen, sure ! 
 " What think ye of Christ," friend ? when all 's 
 
 done and said, 
 Like you this Christianity or not ? 
 It may be false, but will you wish it true ? 
 Has it your vote to be so if it can ? 
 Trust you an instinct silenced long ago 
 That will break silence and enjoin you love 
 What mortified philosophy is hoarse. 
 And all in vain, with bidding you despise ? 
 If you desire faith — then you 'ye faith enough : 
 What else seeks God — nay, what else seek our- 
 selves ? 
 You form a notion of me, we '11 suppose. 
 On hearsay : it 's a favorable one : 
 "But still' (you add), "there was no such 
 
 good man. 
 Because of contradiction in the facts. 
 One proves, for instance, he was bom in Rome, 
 This Blougram ; yet throughout the tales of him 
 I see he figures as an Englishman." 
 Well, the two things are reconcilable. 
 But would I rather you discovered that. 
 Subjoining — "Still, what matter though they 
 
 be? 
 Bloupam concerns me naught, bom here or 
 
 there." 
 
 Pure faith indeed— ^ you know not what you 
 
 ask! 
 Naked belief in God the Omnipotent, 
 Omniscient^ Omnipresent, sears too much 
 The sense of conscious creatures to be borne. 
 It were the seeing him, no flesh shall dare. 
 Some think. Creation 's meant to show him 
 
 forth: 
 I say it 's meant to hide him all it can. 
 And that 's what all the blessed evil 's for. 
 Its use in Time is to environ us, 
 Our breath, our drop of dew, with shield 
 
 enough 
 Against that sight till we can bear its Stress. 
 Under a vertical sun, the exposed brain 
 And lidless eye and disemprisoned heart 
 Less certainly would wither up at once 
 Than mind, confronted with the truth of him. 
 But time and earth case-harden us to live ; 
 The feeblest sense is trusted most : the child 
 Feels God a moment, ichors o'er the place. 
 Plays on and grows to be a man like us. 
 With me, faith means perpetual unbelief 
 Kppt quiet like the snake 'neath Michael's foot 
 Who stands calm just because he feels it 
 
 writhe. 
 Or, if that 's too ambitious, — here 's my box — 
 I need the excitationof a pinch 
 Threatening the torpor of the inside-nose 
 Nigh on the imminent sneeze that never comes. 
 ' Leave it in peace,'' advise the simple folk : 
 
 Make it aware of peace by itching-fits. 
 Say I — let doubt occasion still more faith I 
 
 You '11 say, once all believed, man, woman, 
 
 child. 
 In that dear iniddle-age these noodles praise. 
 How you 'd exult if I could put you back 
 Six hundred years, blot out cosmogony. 
 Geology, ethnology, what not, 
 (Greek endings, each the little passing-bell 
 That signifies some faith 's about to die]. 
 And set you square with Genesis again, — 
 When such a traveller told you his last news, 
 He saw the ark artop of Ararat 
 But did not climb there since 't was getting 
 
 dusk 
 And robber-bands infest the mountain's foot ! 
 How should you feel, I ask, in such an age, 
 How act ? As other people felt and did ; 
 With soul more blank than this decanter's 
 
 knob. 
 Believe — and yet lie, kill, rob, fornicate, 
 Full in belief's face,' like the beast you 'd be I 
 
 No, when the fight begins within himself, 
 A man 's worth something. God stoops o'er his 
 
 head, 
 Satan looks up between his feet — both tug — 
 He 's left, himself, i' the middle ; the soul 
 
 wakes 
 And grows. Prolong that battle through his 
 
 life! 
 Never leave growing till the- life to come ! 
 Here, we 've got callous to the Virgin's winks 
 That used to puzzle people wholesomely : 
 Men have outgrown the shame of being fools. 
 What are the laws of nature, not to bend 
 If the Church bid them ? — brother Newman 
 
 asks. 
 Up with the Immaculate Conception, then — 
 On to the rack with faith ! — is my advice. 
 Will not that hurry us upon our knees. 
 Knocking our breasts. It can't be — yet it 
 
 shall ! 
 Who am I, the worm, to argue with my Pope ? 
 Low things confound the high things ! " and so 
 
 forth. 
 That 's better than acquitting God with grace 
 As some folk do. He 's tried — no case is 
 
 proved. 
 Philosophy is lenient — he may go ! 
 
 You '11 say, the old system 's not so obsolete 
 But men believe still ; ay, but who and where ? 
 King Bomba's lazzaroni foster yet 
 The sacred flame, so Antonelli writes ; 
 But even of these, what ragamuffin-saint 
 Believes God watches him continually. 
 As he' believes in fire that it will burn. 
 Or rain that it will drench him ? Break fire's 
 
 law. 
 Sin against rain, although the penalty 
 Be .just a singe or soaking ? No," he smiles ; 
 " Those laws are laws that can enforce them- 
 selves." 
 
 The sum of all is — yes, my doubt is great. 
 My faith 's still greater, then my faith 's enough. 
 
356 
 
 MEN AND WOMEN 
 
 I have read much, thought much, experienced 
 
 much, 
 Yet would die rather than avow my fear 
 The Naples' liquefa^jtion may be false. 
 When set to happen by the palace-clock 
 According to the clouds or dinner-time. 
 I hear you recommend, I might at least 
 Eliminate, decrassify my faith 
 Since I adopt it ; keeping what I must 
 And leaving what I can — such points as this. 
 I won't — that is, I can't throw one away. 
 Supposing there 's no truth in what I hold 
 About the need of trial to man's faith, 
 Still, when you hid me puiify the same, 
 To such a process I discern no end. 
 Clearing off one excrescence to see two. 
 There 's ever a next in size, now grown as big. 
 That meets the knife : I cut and cut again ! 
 First cut the Liquefaction, what comes last 
 But Fichte's clever cut at God himself ? 
 Experimentalize on sacred things I 
 I trust nor hand nor eye nor heart nor brain 
 To stop betimes : they all get drunk alike. 
 The first step, 1 am master not to take. 
 
 You 'd find the cutting-process to your taste 
 As much as leaving growths of lies unpruned, 
 Nor see more danger in it, — yon retort. 
 Your taste 's worth mine ; but my taste proves 
 
 more wise 
 When we consider that the steadfast hold 
 On the extreme end of the chain of faith 
 Gives all the advantage, makes the difference 
 With the rough purblind mass we seek to rule : 
 We are their lords, or they are free of us, 
 Just^as ^e tighten or relax our hold. 
 So, other matters equal, we '11 revert 
 To the first problem — which, if solved my way 
 And thrown into the balance, turns the scale — 
 How we may lead a comfortable life, 
 How suit our luggage to the cabin's size. 
 
 Of course you are remarking all this time 
 How narrowly and grossly I view life. 
 Respect the creature-comforts, care to rule 
 The masses, and regard complacently 
 " The cabin," in our old phrase. Well, I do. 
 I act for, talk for, live for this world now. 
 As this world prizes action, life and talk : 
 No prejudice to what next world may prove, 
 Whose new laws and requirements, my best 
 
 pledge 
 To observe then, is that I observe these now. 
 Shall do hereafter what I do meanwhile. 
 Let us concede (gratuitously though) 
 Next life relieves the soul of body, yields 
 Pure spiritual enjoyment ; well, my friend. 
 Why lose this life i' the meantime, since its use 
 May be to make the next life more intense ? 
 
 Do you know, I have often had a dream 
 (Work it up in your next month's article) 
 Of man's poor spirit in its progress, still 
 Losing true life forever and a day 
 Through ever trying to be and ever being — 
 In the evolution of successive spheres — 
 Before its actual sphere and place of life. 
 Halfway into the next, which having reached, 
 
 It shoots with corresponding foolery 
 
 Halfway into the next still, on and off ! 
 
 As when a traveller, bound from North to 
 
 South, 
 Scouts fur in Eussia : what 's its use in France ? 
 In France spurns flannel : where 'a its need in 
 
 Spain ? 
 In Spain drops cloth, too cumbrous for Algiers ! 
 Linen goes next, and last the skin itself, 
 A superfluity at Timbuctoo. 
 When, through his journey, was the fool at 
 
 ease? 
 I'm at ease now, friend ; worldly in this world, 
 I take and like its way of life ; I think 
 My brothers, who administer the means. 
 Live better for my comfort — that 's good too ; 
 And God, if he pronounce upon such life. 
 Approves my service, which is better still. 
 If he keep silence, — why, for you or me 
 Or that brute beast pulled-up in to-day's 
 
 "Times," 
 What odds is 't, save to ourselves, what life we 
 
 lead? 
 
 You meet me at this issue : you declare, — ■ 
 All special-pleading done with — truth is truth, 
 And justifies itself by undreamed ways. 
 You don't fear but it 's better, if we doubt, 
 To say so, act up to our truth perceived 
 However feebly. Do then, — act away ! 
 'T is there I 'm on the watch for you. How 
 
 one acts 
 Is, both of us agree, our chief concern : 
 And how you '11 a«t is what I fain would see 
 If, like the candid person you appear. 
 You dare to make the most of your life's 
 
 scheme 
 As I of mine, live up to its full law 
 Since there 's no higher law that counterchecks. 
 Put natural religion to the test 
 You've just demolished the revealed with — 
 
 quick, 
 Down to the root of all that checks your will, 
 All prohibition to lie, kill and thieve, 
 Or even to be an atheistic priest ! 
 Suppose a pricking to incontinence — 
 Philosophers deduce you chastity 
 Or shame, from just the fact that at the first 
 Whoso embraced a woman in the field, 
 Threw club down and forewent his brains be- 
 side. 
 So, stood a ready victim in the reach 
 Of any brother savage, club in hand ; 
 Hence saw the use of going out of sight 
 In wood or cave to prosecute his loves : 
 I read this in a French book t'other day. 
 Does law so analyzed coerce you much ? 
 Oh, men spin clouds of fnzz where matters end. 
 But you who reach where the first thread be- 
 gins, 
 You '11 soon out that I — which means you can, 
 
 but won't. 
 Through certain instincts, blind, unreasoned- 
 out, 
 You dare not set aside, you can't tell why. 
 But there they are, and so you let them rule. 
 Then, friend, you seem as much a slave as I, 
 A liar, conscious coward and hypocrite, 
 
BISHOP BLOUGRAM'S APOLOGY 
 
 357 
 
 Without the g:ood the slave expects to g^et, 
 In case he has a master after all ! 
 You own your instincts ? why, what else do I, 
 Who want, am made fur, and must have a God 
 Ere I can be aught, do aught ? — no mere name 
 Want, but the true thing with what proves its 
 
 truth. 
 To wit, a relation from that thing to me. 
 Touching from head to foot — which touch I 
 
 feel,^ 
 And with it take the rest, this life of ours ! 
 I live my life here ; yours you dare not live. 
 
 — Not as I state it, who (you please subjoin) 
 Disfigure such a life and call it names. 
 While, to your mind, remains another way 
 For simple men ; knowledge and power have 
 
 rights, 
 But ignorance and weakness have rights too. 
 There needs no crucial effort to find truth 
 If here or there or anywhere about : 
 We ought to turn each side, try hard and see, 
 And if we can't, be glad we 've earned at least 
 The right, by one laborious proof the more, 
 To graze in peace earth's pleasant pasturage. 
 Men are not angels, neither are they brutes : 
 Something we may see, all we cannot see. 
 What need of lying ? I say, I see all. 
 And swear to each detail the most minute 
 In what I think a Pan's face — you, mere cloud : 
 I swear I hear him speak and see him wink, 
 For fear, if once I drop the emphasis. 
 Mankind may doubt there 's any cloud at all. 
 You take the simple life — ready to see. 
 Willing to see (for no cloud 's worth a face) — 
 And leaving quiet what no strength can move, 
 And which, who bids you move ? who has the 
 
 right ? 
 I bid you ; but you are God's sheep, not mine : 
 " Pastor est tui DominusJ''' You find 
 In this the pleasant pasture of our life 
 Much you may eat without the least offence, 
 Much you don't eat because your maw objects. 
 Much you would eat but that your fellow-flock 
 Open great eyes at you and even butt. 
 And thereupon you like your mates so well 
 You cannot please yourself, offending them ; 
 Thoi^h when they seem exorbitantly sheep. 
 You weigh your pleasure with their butts and 
 
 bleats 
 And strike the balance. Sometimes certain 
 
 feai-s 
 Restrain you, real cheeks since you find them 
 
 so ; 
 Sometimes you please yourself and nothing 
 
 checks : 
 And thus you graze through life with not one 
 
 lie, 
 And like it best. 
 
 But do you, in truth's name ? 
 If so, you beat — which means you are not \~r 
 Who needs must make earth mine and feed my 
 
 fiU 
 Not simply unbutted at, unbickered with, 
 But motioned to the velvet of the sward 
 By those obsec[uious wethers' very selves. 
 Look at me, sir ; my a^re is double yours : 
 
 At yours, I knew beforehand, so enjoyed. 
 What now 1 should be — as, permit the word, 
 I pretty well imagine your whole range 
 And stretch of tether twenty years to come. 
 We both have minds and bodies much alike : 
 In truth's name, don't you want my bishopric. 
 My daily bread, my influence, and my state ? 
 You 're young. I 'm old ; you must be old one 
 
 day; 
 Will you find then, as I do hour by hour. 
 Women their lovers kneel to, who cut curls 
 From your fat lap-do^'s ear to grace a brooch — 
 Dukes, who petition just to kiss your ring — 
 With much beside you know or may conceive ? 
 Suppose we die ta-night : well, here am I, 
 Such were my gains, life bore this fruit to 
 
 me, 
 While writing all the same my articles 
 On music, poetry, the fictile vase 
 Found at Albano, chess, Anacreon's Greek. 
 But you — the highest honor in your life. 
 The thing you '11 crown yourself with, all your 
 
 days. 
 Is — dining here and drinking this last glass 
 I pour jou out in sign of amity 
 Before we part forever. Of your power 
 And social influence, worldly worth in short, 
 Judge what 's my estimation by the fact, 
 I do not condescend to enjoin, beseech, 
 Hint secrecy on one of all these words ! 
 You 're shrewd and know that should you pub- 
 lish one 
 The world would brand the lie — my enemies 
 
 first, 
 Who'd sneer — "the bishop's an arch-hypo- 
 crite 
 And knave perhaps, but not so frank a fool." 
 Whereas I should not dare for both my ears 
 Breathe one such syllable, smile one such smUe, 
 Before the chaplain who reflects myself — 
 My shade 's so much more i>otent than your 
 
 flesh. 
 What 's your reward, self-abnegating friend ? 
 Stood jrou confessed of those exceptional 
 And privileged g:reat natures that dwarf mine — 
 A zealot with a mad ideal in reach, 
 A poet just about to print his ode, 
 A statesman with a scheme to stop this war. 
 An artist whose religion is his art — 
 I should have nothing to object : such men 
 Carry the fire, all things grow warm to them, 
 Their drugget 's worth my purple, they beat 
 
 me. 
 But you, — you 're just as little those as I — 
 You, Gigadibs, who, thirty years of age, 
 Write statedly for Blackwood's Magazine, 
 Believe you see two pomts in Hamlet's soul 
 Unseized by the Germans yet — which ^new 
 
 you '11 print — 
 Meantime the best you have to show being still 
 That lively lightsome article we took 
 Almost for the true Dickens, — what 'a its 
 
 name ? 
 " The Shim and Cellar, or Whitechapel life 
 Limned after dark ! " it made me laugh, I know. 
 And i^leased a month, and brought you in ten 
 
 pounds. 
 — Success I recognize and compliment, 
 
3S8 
 
 MEN AND WOMEN 
 
 And therefore give you, if you cliooae, three 
 
 words 
 (The card and pencil-scratch is quite enough) 
 Which whether here, in Dublin or New York, 
 Will get you, prompt as at ray eyebrow's wink, 
 Such terms as never you aspired to get 
 In all our own reviews and some not ours. 
 Go write your lively sketches ! be the first 
 *' Blougrani, or The Eccentric Confidence " — 
 Or better simply say, " The Outward-bound." 
 Why, men as soon would throw it in my teeth 
 As copy and quote the infamy chalked broad 
 About me on the church-door opposite. 
 You will not wait for that experience though, 
 I fancy, howsoever you decide. 
 To discontinue — not detesting, not 
 Defaming, but at least — despising me ! 
 
 Over his wine so smiled and talked his hour 
 Sylvester Blougram, styled in partibus 
 Mpiscopus, nee non — (the deuce knows what 
 It 's changed to by our novel hierarchy) 
 With Gigadibs the literary man. 
 Who played with spoons, explored his plate's 
 
 design. 
 And ranged the olive-stones about its edge. 
 While the great bishop rolled him out a mind 
 Long crumpled, till creased consciousness lay 
 
 smooth. 
 
 For Blougram, he believed, say, half he spoke. 
 The other portion, as he shaped it thus 
 For argumentatory purposes. 
 He felt his foe was foolish to dispute. 
 Some arbitrary accidental thoughts 
 That crossed his mind, amusing because new, 
 He chose to represent as fixtures there. 
 Invariable convictions (such they seemed 
 Beside his interlocutor's loose cards 
 Flung daily down, and uot the same way twice). 
 While certain hell-deep instincts, man's weak 
 
 tongue 
 Is never bold to utter in their truth 
 Because styled hell-deep ('t is an old mistake 
 To place hell at the bottom of the earth). 
 He ignored these, — not having in readiness 
 Their nomenclature and philosophy : 
 He said true things, but called them by wrong 
 
 names. 
 " On the whole," he thought, "I justify myself 
 On every point where cavillers like this 
 Oppugn my life : he tries one kuid of fence, 
 I close, he 's woi-sted, that 's enough for him. 
 He 's on the ground : if ground should break 
 
 away 
 I take my stand on, there 's a firmer yet 
 Beneath it, both of us may sink and reach. 
 His ground was over mine and broke the first : 
 So, let him sit with me this manj' a year ! " 
 
 He did not sit five minutes. Just a week 
 Sufficed his sudden healthy vehemence. 
 Something had struck him in the "Outward- 
 bound " 
 Another way than Blougram's purpose was : 
 And having bought, not cabin-furnitnre 
 
 But settler's-implements (enough for three) 
 And started for Australia — there, I hope. 
 By this time he has tested his first plough, 
 And studied his last chapter of Saint John. 
 
 CLEON 
 
 *' As certain also of your own poets have said " — 
 
 CiiEON the poet (from the sprinkled isles, 
 
 Lily on lily, that o'erlaoe the sea. 
 
 And laugh their pride when the light wave lispa 
 
 "Greece") — 
 To Protus in his Tyranny : much health ! 
 
 They give thy letter to me, even now : 
 I read and seem as if I heard thee speak. 
 The master of thy galley still unlades 
 Gift after gift ; they block my court at last 
 And pile themselves along its portico 
 Royal with sunset, like a thought of thee : 
 And one white she-slave from the group dis- 
 persed 
 Of black and white slaves (like the chequer- 
 work 
 Pavement, at once my nation's work and gift, 
 Now covered with this settle-down of doves). 
 One lyric woman, in her crocus vest 
 Woven of sea-wools, with her two white hands 
 Commends to me the strainer and the cup 
 Thy lip hath bettered ere it blesses mine. 
 
 Well-counselled, king, in thy munificence ! 
 For so shall men remark, in such an act 
 Of love for him whose song gives life its joy, 
 Thy recognition of the use of life ; 
 Nor, call thy spirit barely adequate 
 To help on life in straight ways, broad enough 
 For vulgar'souls, by ruling and the rest. 
 Thou, in the daily building of thy tower, — 
 Whether in fierce and sudden spasms of toil, 
 Or through dim lulls of unapparent growth. 
 Or when the general work 'mid good acclaim 
 Climbed with the eye to cheer the architect, — 
 Didst ne'er engage in work for mere work's 
 
 sake — 
 Hadst ever in thy heart the luring hope 
 Of some eventual rest a-top of it. 
 Whence, all the tumult of the building hushed. 
 Thou first of men mightst look out to the Kast : 
 The vulgar saw thy tower, thou sawest the 
 
 sun. 
 For this, I promise on thy festival 
 To pour libation, looking o'er the sea. 
 Making this slave narrate thy fortunes, speak 
 Thy great words, and describe thy royal face — 
 Wishing thee wholly where Zeus lives the most. 
 Within the eventual element of calm. 
 
 Thy letter's first requirement meets me here. 
 It is as thou hast heard : in one short life 
 I, Cleon, have effected all those things 
 Thou wonderingly dost enumerate. 
 That epos on thy hundred plates of gold 
 Is mine, — and also mine the little chant. 
 So sure to rise from every fishing-bark 
 When, lights at prow, the seamen haul their net 
 
CLEON 
 
 359 
 
 The image of the sun-god on the phare, 
 Men turn from the sun's self to see, is mine ; 
 The Pceeile, o'er-storied its whole length, 
 As thou didst hear, with painting, is mine too. 
 I know the true proportions of a man 
 And woman also, not observed before ; 
 And I have wi'itten three books on the soul, 
 Proving absurd all written hitherto. 
 And putting us to ignorance again. 
 For music, — why, I have combined the moods, 
 Inventing one. In brief, all arts are mine ; 
 Thus much the people know and recognize. 
 Throughout our seventeen islands. Marvel not. 
 We of these latter days, with greater mind 
 Than our forerunners, since more composite, 
 Look not so great, beside their simple way, 
 To a judge who only sees one way at once, 
 One miud-poiut and no other at a time, — 
 Comijares the small part of a man of us 
 With some whole man of the heroic age, 
 Gi'eat in his way — not ours, nor meant for ours. 
 And ours is greater, had we skill to know : 
 For, what we call this life of men on earth. 
 This sequence of the soul's achievements here 
 Being, as I find much reason to conceive, 
 Intended to be viewed eventually 
 As a great whole, not analyzed to parts. 
 But each part having reference to all, — 
 How shall a certain part, pronounced complete, 
 Endure effacement by another pai^t ? 
 Was the thing done ? — then, what 's to do 
 
 again ? 
 See, in the chequered pavement opposite, 
 Suppose the artist made a perfect rhomb. 
 And next a lozenge, then a trapezoid — 
 He did not overlay them, superimpose 
 The new upon the old and blot it out. 
 But laid them on a level in his work, 
 Making at last a picture ; there it lies. 
 So, iirst the perfect sepai-ate forms^ere made. 
 The portions of mankind ; and after, so. 
 Occurred the combination of the same. 
 For where had been a progress, otherwise ? 
 Mankind, made up of all the single men, — 
 In such a synthesis the labor ends. 
 Now mark me 1 those divine men of old time 
 Have reached, thou sayest well, each at one 
 
 point 
 The outside verge that rounds our faculty ; 
 And where they reached, who can do more than 
 
 reach? 
 It takes but little water just to touch 
 At some one point tlie inside of a sphere, 
 And, as we turn the sphere, touch all the rest 
 In due succession : but the finer air 
 Which not so palpably nor obviously. 
 Though no less universally, can touch 
 The whole circumference of that emptied sphere. 
 Fills it more fully than the water did ; 
 Holds thrice the weight of water in itself 
 Resolved into a subtler element. 
 And yet the vidgar call the sphere first full 
 Up to the visible height — and after, void ; 
 Not knowing air's more hidden properties. 
 And thus our soul, misknown, cries out to Zeus 
 To vindicate his purpose in our life : 
 Wliy stay we on the earth unless to gi'ow ? 
 Lung Biv-e, I iiron-ed, wrote the fiction out, 
 
 That he or other god descended here 
 And, once for all, showed simultaneously 
 What, in its nature, never can be shown, 
 Piecemeal or in succession ; — showed, I say, 
 The worth both absolute and relative 
 Of all his children from the birth of time. 
 His instruments for aU appointed work. 
 I now go on to image, — might we hear 
 The judgment which should give the due to 
 
 each. 
 Show where the labor lay and where the ease. 
 And prove Zeus' self, the latent everywhere ! 
 This IS a dream : — but no dream, let us hope. 
 That years and days, the summeis and the 
 
 springs, 
 Follow each other with unwaning powers. 
 The grapes which dye thy wine are richer far. 
 Through culture, than the wild wealth of the 
 
 rock; 
 The suave plum than the savage-tasted drupe ; 
 The pastured honey-bee drops choicer sweet ; 
 The flowers turn double, and the leaves turn 
 
 fiowers ; 
 That young and tender orescent-moon, thy 
 
 slave. 
 Sleeping above her robe as buoyed by clouds, 
 Refines upon the women of my youth. 
 Wliat, and the soul alone deteriorates ? 
 I have not chanted verse like Homer, no — 
 Nor swept string like Terpander, no — nor 
 
 carved 
 And painted men like Phidias and his friend : 
 I am uot great as they are, point by point. 
 But I have entered into sympathy 
 With these four, running these into one soul, 
 Who, separate, ignored each other's art. 
 Say, is it nothing that I know them all ? 
 The wild flower was the larger ; I have dashed 
 Rose-blood upon its petals, pricked its cup's 
 Honey with wine, and driven its seed to fruit, 
 And show a better flower if not so large : 
 I stand myself. Refer this to the gods 
 Whose gift alone it is ! which, shall I dare 
 (All pride apart) upon the absurd pretext 
 That such a gift by chance lay in my hand. 
 Discourse of lightly or depreciate ? 
 It might have fallen to another's hand : what 
 
 then? 
 I pass too surely : let at least truth stay I 
 
 And next, of what thou foUowest on to ask. 
 This being with me as I declare, O king, 
 My works, in all these varicolored kinds. 
 So done by me, accepted so by men — 
 Thou askest, if (my soul thus in men's hearts) 
 I must not be accounted to attain 
 The very crown and proper end of life ? 
 Inquiring thence how, now life closeth up, 
 I face death with success in my right hand : 
 Whether I fear death less than dost thyself 
 The fortunate of men ? " For " (writest thou) 
 " Thou leavest much behind, while I leave 
 
 naught. 
 Thy life stays in the poems men shall sing. 
 The pictures men shall study ; whUe my life. 
 Complete and whole now in ite power and joy. 
 Dies altogether with my brain and arm. 
 Is lost indeed ; smce, what survives myself ? 
 
360 
 
 MEN AND WOMEN 
 
 The brazen statue to o'erlouk my grave, 
 Set on the promontory which I named. 
 And that — some supple courtier of my heir 
 Shall use its robed and sceptred arm, perhaps, 
 To fix the rope to, which best drags it down. 
 I go then : triumj^h thou, who dost not go ! " 
 
 Nay, thou art worthy of healing my whole 
 
 mind. 
 Is this apparent, when thou turn'st to muse 
 Upon the scheme of earth and man in chief. 
 That admiration grows as knowledge grows ? 
 That imperfection means perfection hid, 
 Reserved in part, to grace the after-time ? 
 If, in the morning of philosophy. 
 Ere aught had been recorded, nay perceived, 
 Thou, with the light now in thee, couldst have 
 
 looked 
 On all earth's tenantry, from worm to bird. 
 Ere man, her last, appeared upon the stage — 
 Thou wouldst have seen them perfect, and de- 
 duced 
 The perfectness of others yet unseen. 
 Conceding which, — had Zeus then questioned 
 
 thee, 
 " Shall I go on a step, improve on this, 
 Do more for visible creatures than is done ? " 
 Thou wouldst have answered, "Ay, by making 
 
 each 
 Grow conscious in himself — by that alone. 
 All 's perfect else : the shell sucks fast the rock. 
 The fish stnkes through the sea, the snake both 
 
 swims 
 And slides, forth range the beasts, the birds 
 
 take flight. 
 Till life's mechanics can no further go — 
 And all this joy in natural life is put 
 Like fire from off thy finger into each. 
 So exquisitely perfect is the same. 
 But 't is pure fire, and they mere matter are ; 
 It has them, not they it : and so I choose 
 For man, thy last premeditated work 
 (If I might add a glory to the scheme). 
 That a third thing should stand apart from 
 
 both, 
 A quality arise within his soul. 
 Which, intro-active, made to supervise 
 And feel the force it has, may view itself. 
 And so be happy." Man might live at first 
 The animal life : but is there nothing more ? 
 In due time, let him critically learn 
 How he lives ; and, the more he gets to know 
 Of his own life's adaptabilities, 
 The more joy-giving will his life become. 
 Thus man, who hath this quality, is best. 
 
 But thou, king, hadst more reasonably said : 
 " Let progress end at once, — man make no step 
 Beyond the natural man, the better beast. 
 Using his senses, not the sense of sense." 
 In man there 's failure, only since he left 
 The lower and ineonscious forms of life. 
 We called it an advance, the rendering plain 
 Man's spirit might grow conscious of man's life, 
 And, by new lore so added to the old. 
 Take each step higher over the brute's head. 
 This grew the only life, the pleasure-house. 
 Watch-tower and treasure-fortress of the sonl, 
 
 Which whole surrounding flats of natural life 
 Seemed only fit to yield subsistence to ; 
 A tower that crowns a country. But alas, 
 Tlie soul now climbs it just to perish there ! 
 For thence we have discovered ('t is no dream — 
 We know this, which we had not else perceived) 
 That there 's a world of capability 
 For joy, spread round about us, meant for us, 
 Inviting us ; and still the soul craves all. 
 And still the flesh replies, " Take no jot more 
 Than ere thou clombst the tower to look abroad ! 
 Nay, so much less as that fatigue has brought 
 Deduction to it." We struggle, fain to enlarge 
 Our bounded physical recipiency. 
 Increase our power, supply fresh oil to life, 
 Repair the waste of age and sickness ; no, 
 It skills not ! life 's inadequate to joy, 
 As the soul sees joy, tempting life to take. 
 They praise a fountain in my garden here 
 Wherein a Naiad sends the water-bow 
 Thin from her tube ; she smiles to see it rise. 
 What if I told her, it is just a thread 
 From that great river which the hills shut up, 
 And mock her with my leave to take the same ? 
 The artificer has given her one small tube 
 Past i50wer to widen or exchange — what boots 
 To know she might spout oceans if she could ? 
 She cannot lift beyond her first thin thread : 
 And so a man can use but a man's joy 
 Wliile he sees God's. Is it for Zeus to boast, 
 " See, man, how happy I live, and despair — 
 That I may be still happier — for thy use ! " 
 If this were so, we could not thank our lord. 
 As hearts beat on to doing ; 'tis not so — 
 Malice it is not. Is it carelessness ? 
 Still, no. If care — where is the sign ? I ask. 
 And get no answer, and agree in sum, 
 king, with thy profound discouragement. 
 Who seest the wider but to sigh the more. 
 Most progress is most failure : thou sayest well. 
 
 The last point now: — thou dost except a 
 
 case — 
 Holding joy not impossible to one 
 With artist-gifts — to such a man as I 
 Who leave behind me living works indeed ; 
 For, such a poem, such a painting lives. 
 What ? dost thou verily trip upon a word. 
 Confound the accurate view of what joy is 
 (Caught somewhat clearer by my eyes than 
 
 thine) 
 With feeling joy ? confound the knowing how 
 And showing how to live (my faculty) 
 With actually living ? — Otherwise 
 Where is the artist's vantage o'er the king ? 
 Because in my gieat epos I display 
 How divers men young, strong, fair, wise, can 
 
 act — 
 Is this as though I acted ? if I paint. 
 Carve the young Phcebus, am I therefore young 5 
 Methinks I 'm older that I bowed myself 
 The many years of pain that taught me art ! 
 Indeed, to know is something, and to prove 
 How all this beauty might be enjoyed, is more ; 
 But, knowing naught, to enjoy is something 
 
 too. 
 Yon rower, with the moulded muscles there, 
 Lowering the sail, is nearer it than I. 
 
ONE WORD MORE 
 
 361 
 
 I can write love-odes : thy fair slave 's an ode. 
 I get to sing of love, when grown too gi'ay 
 For heing beloved: she turns to that young 
 
 man, 
 The muscles all ar-ripple on his hack. 
 I know the joy of kingship : well, thou art king ! 
 
 " But," sayest thou — (and I marvel, I repeat, 
 To find thee trip on such a mere word) '* wnat 
 Thou writest, paintest, stays ; that does not 
 
 die: 
 Sappho survives, because we sing her songs. 
 And jSlsehylus, because we read his plays ! " 
 Why, if they live still, let them come and take 
 Thy slave in my despite, drink from thy cup, 
 Speak in my place. Thou diest while I 
 
 survive ? 
 Say rather that my fate is deadlier still, 
 In this, that every day my sense of joy 
 Grows more acute, my soul (intensined 
 By power and insight) more enlarged, more 
 
 keen; 
 While evei*y day my hairs fall more and more, 
 My hand shakes, and the heavy years increase — 
 The horror quickening still from year to year, 
 Tlie consummation coming past escape. 
 When I shall know most, and yet least en- 
 joy- 
 When all my works wherein I prove my worth, 
 Being present still to mock me in men^s mouths, 
 Alive still, in the praise of such as thou, 
 I, I the feeling, thinking, acting man, 
 The man who loved his life so over-much, 
 Sleep in my urn. It is so horrible, 
 I dare at times imagine to my need 
 Some future state revealed to us by Zeus, 
 Unlimited in capability 
 Forjoy, as this is in desire for joy, 
 — To seek which, the joy-hunger forces us : 
 That, stung by straitness of our life, made strait 
 On purpose to make prized the life at large — 
 Freed by the throbbing impulse we call death, 
 We bui-st there as the worm into the fly, 
 Who, while a worm still, wants his wings. But 
 
 no ! 
 Zeus has not yet revealed it ; and alas. 
 He must have done so, were it possible 1 
 
 Live long and happy, and in that thought 
 
 die: 
 Glad for what was ! Farewell. And for the 
 
 rest, 
 I cannot tell thy messenger aright 
 Where to deliver what he bears of thine 
 To one called Paulus ; we have heard his fame 
 Indeed, if Christus be not one with him — 
 I know not, nor am troubled much to know. 
 Thou canst not think a mere barbarian Jew, 
 As Paulus proves to be, one circumcised. 
 Hath access to a secret shut fi*om us ? 
 Thou wrongest our philosophy, king. 
 In stooping to inquire of such an one, 
 As if his answer could impose at all ! 
 He writeth, doth he ? well, and he may write. 
 Oh, the Jew findeth scholars ! certain slaves 
 Who touched on this same isle, preached him 
 
 and Christ ; 
 And (as 1 gathered from a bystander) 
 Their doctrine could be held by no sane man. 
 
 RUDEL TO THE LADY OF TRIPOLI 
 
 Originally published in Bells and Pomegrari' 
 ates as the first of two poems, Cnstina being 
 the other, under the title Queen Worship, 
 
 I KNOW a Mount, the gracious Sun perceives 
 First, when lie visits, last, too, when he leaves 
 The world ; and, vainly favored, it repays 
 The day-long glory of his steadfast gaze 
 By no change of its large calm front of snow. 
 And underneath the Mount, a Flower I know, 
 He cannot have perceived, that changes ever 
 At his approach • and, in the lost endeavor 
 To live his life, has parted, one by one. 
 With all a flower's true graces, for the grace 
 Of being but a foolish mimic sun. 
 With ray-like florets round a disk-like face. 
 Men nobly call by many a name the Mount 
 As over many a Land of theirs its lai^e 
 Calm front of snow like a triumphal targe 
 Is reared, and still with old names, fresh names 
 
 vie, 
 Each to its proper praise and own account : 
 Men call the Flower the Sunflower, sportively. 
 
 Oh, Angel of the East, one, one gold look 
 Across the waters to this twilight nook, 
 — The far sad waters. Angel, to this nook ! 
 
 Dear Pilgrim, art thou for the East indeed ? 
 Go ! — saying ever as thou dost proceed, 
 Tliat L French Rudel, choose for my device 
 A sunflower outspread like a sacrifice 
 Eeforeits idol. See ! These inexpert 
 And hun-ied fingers could not fail to hurt 
 The woven picture ; 't is a woman's skill 
 Indeed ; but nothing bafHed me, so, iU 
 Or well, the work is finished. Say, men feed 
 On songs I sing, and therefore bask the bees 
 On my flower's breast as on a platform broad : 
 But, as the flower's concern is not for these 
 But solely for the sun, so men applaud 
 In vain this Rudel, he not looking here 
 But to the East — the East ! 60, say this, 
 Pilgrim dear 1 
 
 ONE WORD MORE 
 
 TO E. B. E. 
 
 London^ September, 1S53 
 
 Originally appended to the collection of Poems 
 
 called Men and Women, the greater portion of 
 
 which has now been, more correctly, distributed 
 
 under the other titles of this edition. R. B. 
 
 There they are, my fifty men and women 
 Naming me the fifty poems finished ! 
 Take them. Love, the book and me together: 
 Where the heart lies, let the brain lie also 
 
362 
 
 MEN AND WOMEN 
 
 Rafael made a century of sonnets, 
 
 Made and wrote them in a certain volume 
 
 Dinted "with the silver-pointed pencil 
 
 Else he only used to draw Madoimaa : 
 
 These, the world might view — but one, the 
 
 volume. 
 Who that one, you ask ? Your heart instructs 
 
 you. 
 Did she live and love it all her lifetime ? 
 Did she drop, his lady of the sonnets, 
 Die, and let it drop beside her pillow 
 Where it lay in place of Rafael's glory, 
 Rafael's olieek so duteous and so loving — ■ 
 Cheek, the world was wont to hail a painter's, 
 Rafael's cheek, her love had turned a poet's ? 
 
 Ill 
 
 You and I would rather read that volume, 
 (Taken to his beating bosom by it) 
 Lean and list the bosom-beats of Rafael, 
 Would we not ? than wonder at Madonnas — 
 Her, ISan Sisto names, and Her, Foligno, 
 Her, that visits Florence in a vision. 
 Her, that 's left with lilies in the Louvre — 
 Keen by us and aU the world in circle. 
 
 You and I will never read that volume. 
 Guide Reiij, like his own eye's apple 
 Guarded long the treasure-book and loved it. 
 Guido Reni dying, all Bologna 
 Cried, and the world cried too, " Ours, the 
 
 treasure ! " 
 Suddenly, as rare things will, it vanished. 
 
 Dante once prepared to paint an angel : 
 Whom to please ? You whisper " Beatrice." 
 While he mused and traced it and retraced it, 
 (Peradventure with a pen corroded 
 Still by drops of that hot ink he dipped for, 
 When, his left-hand i' the hair o' the wicked. 
 Back he held the brow and pricked its stigma, 
 Bit into the live man's flesh for parchment. 
 Loosed him, laughed to see the writing rankle. 
 Let the wretch go festering through Florence) — 
 Dante, who loved well because he hated, 
 Hated wickedness that hinders loving, 
 Dante standing, studying his angel, — 
 In there broke the folk of his Inferno. 
 Says he — " Certain people of importance " 
 (Such he gave his daily dreadful line to) 
 
 Entered and would seize, forsooth, the poet." 
 Says the poet — "Then I stopped my paint- 
 ing." 
 
 VI 
 
 You and I would rather see that angel. 
 Painted by the tenderness of Dante, 
 Would we not ? — than read a fresh Inferno. 
 
 You and I will never see that picture. 
 While he mused on love and Beatrice, 
 While he softened o'er his outlined angel. 
 In they broke, those " people of importance : 
 We and Bice bear the loss forever. 
 
 What of Rafael's sonnets, Dante's picture ? 
 
 This : no artist lives and loves, that longs not 
 
 Once, and only once, and for one only, 
 
 (Ah, the prize !) to find his love a language 
 
 Fit and fair and simple and sufficient — 
 
 Using nature that's an art to others. 
 
 Not, this one time, art that's turned his na^ 
 
 ture. 
 Ay, of all the artists living, loving. 
 None but would forego his proper dowry, — 
 Does he paint ? he fain would write a poem, — 
 Does he write ? he fain would paint a picture, 
 Put to proof art alien to the artist's, 
 Once, and only once, and for one only. 
 So to be the man and leave the artist. 
 Gain the man's joy, miss the artist's sorrow. 
 
 Wherefore ? Heaven's gift takes earth's abate- 
 ment ! 
 He who smites the rock and spreads the water, 
 Bidding drink and live a crowd beneath him, 
 Even he, the minute makes immortal, 
 Proves, perchance, but mortal in the minute, 
 Desecrates, belike, the deed in doing. 
 While he smites, how can he but remember. 
 So he smote before, in such a peril. 
 When they stood and mocked — " Shall smiting 
 
 help us?" 
 When they drank and sneered — "A stroke is 
 
 easy ! " 
 When they wiped their mouths and went their 
 
 journey. 
 Throwing him for thanks — " But drought was 
 
 pleasant." 
 Thus old memories mar the actual triumph ; 
 Thus the doing savors of disrelish ; 
 Thus achievement lacks a gracious somewhat ; 
 O'er-importuned brows becloud the mandate, 
 Carelessness or consciousness — the gesture. 
 For he bears an ancient wrong about him, 
 Sees and knows again those phalanxed faces, 
 Hears, yet one time more, the 'customed pre- 
 lude — 
 " How shouldst thou, of all men, smite, and 
 
 save us ? " 
 Guesses what is like to prove the sequel — 
 "Egypt's flesh-pots — nay, the drought was 
 better." 
 
 Oh, the crowd must have emphatic warrant ! 
 Theirs, the Sinai-forehead's cloven brilliance, 
 Right-arm's rod-sweep, tongue's imperial fiat. 
 Never dares the man put off the prophet. 
 
 Did he love one face from out the thousands, 
 (Were she Jethro's dalighter, white and wifely, 
 Were she but the Ethiopian bondslave,) 
 He would envy yon dumb patient camel. 
 Keeping a reserve of scanty water 
 Meant to save his own life in the desert ; 
 Ready in the desert to deliver 
 (Kneeling down to let his breast be opened) 
 Hoard and life together for his mistress. 
 
ONE WORD MORE 
 
 363 
 
 I shall never, in the years remaining. 
 Paint you pictures, no, nor carve you statues, 
 Make you music that should all-express me ; 
 So it seems : I stand on my attainment. 
 This of verse alone, one life allows me ; 
 Verse and nothing else have I to give you. 
 Other heights in other lives, God willing : 
 All the gifts from all the heig;hts, your own, 
 Love! 
 
 XIII 
 
 Yet a semblance of resource avails us — 
 Shade so finely touched, love s sense must seize 
 
 'it. 
 Take these lines, look lovingly and nearly, 
 Lines I write the first time and the last time. 
 He who works in fresco, steals a hair-brush, 
 Curbs the liberal hand, subservient proudly. 
 Cramps his spirit, crowds its all in little. 
 Makes a strange art of an art familiar, 
 Fills his lady's missal-raarge with flowerets. 
 He who blows through bronze, may breathe 
 
 through silver. 
 Fitly serenade a slumbrous princess. 
 He who writes, may write for once as I do, 
 
 XIV 
 
 Love, you saw me gather men and women. 
 Live or dead or fashioned by my fancy, 
 Enter each and all, and use their service. 
 Speak from every mouth, — the speech, a poem. 
 Hardly shall I tell my joys and sorrows, 
 Hopes and fears, belief and disbelieving: 
 I am mine and yours — the rest be all men's, 
 Karshish, Cleon, Norbert, and the fifty. 
 Let me speak this once in my true person. 
 Not as Lippo, Roland, or Andrea, 
 Though the frnit of speech be just this sentence : 
 Pray you, look on these my men and women. 
 Take and keep my fifty poems finished ; 
 Where my heart lies, let my brain lie also ! 
 Poor the speech ; be how 1 speak, for all things. 
 
 XV 
 
 Not but that you know me ! Lo, the moon's 
 
 self! 
 Here in London, yonder late in Florence j 
 Still we find her face, the thrice-transfigured. 
 Curving on a sky imbrued with color. 
 Drifted over Fiesole by twilight. 
 Came she, our new crescent of a hair's-breadth. 
 Full she flared it, lamping Samminiato, 
 Rounder 'twixt the cypresses and rounder. 
 Perfect till the nightingales applauded. 
 Now, a piece of her old self, impoverished. 
 Hard to greet, she traverses the house-roofs. 
 Hurries with unhandsome thrift of silver, 
 Goes dispiritedly, glad to finish. 
 
 XVI 
 
 What, there 's nothing in the moon note- 
 worthy ? 
 Nay : for if that moon could love a mortal. 
 
 Use, to charm him (so to fit a fancy). 
 All her magic ('t is the old sweet mythos), 
 She would turn a new side to her mortal, 
 Side unseen of herdsman, huntsman, steers- 
 man^ 
 Blank to Zoroaster on his terrace, 
 Blind to Galileo on his turret. 
 Dumb to Homer, dumb to Keats — him, even 1 
 Think, the wonder of the moonstruck mor- 
 tal— 
 When she turns round, comes again in heaven, 
 Opens out anew for worse or better ! 
 Proves she like some portent of an iceberg 
 Swimming full upon the ship it founders. 
 Hungry with huge teeth of splintered crys- 
 tals ? 
 Proves she as the paved work of a sapphire 
 Seen by Moses when he climbed the moun- 
 tain? 
 Moses, Aaron, Nadab and Abihu 
 Climbed and saw the very God, the Highest, 
 Stand upon the paved work of asapphire. 
 Like the bodiedTheaven in his clearness 
 Shone the stone, the sapphire of that paved 
 
 work. 
 When they ate and drank and saw God also I 
 
 What were seen ? None knows, none ever shall 
 know. 
 
 Only this is sure — the sight were other, 
 
 Not the moon's same side, bom late in Flor- 
 ence, 
 
 Dying now impoverished here in London. 
 
 God be thanked, the meanest of his creatures 
 
 Boasts two soul-sides, one to face the world 
 with. 
 
 One to show a woman when he loves her ! 
 
 This I say of me, but think of you. Love 1 
 This to you — yourself my moon of poets ! 
 Ah, but that 's the world's side, there 's the 
 
 wonder. 
 Thus they see you, praise you, think they know 
 
 you ! 
 There, in turn 1 stand with them and praise 
 
 you — 
 Out of my own self, I dare to phrase it. 
 But the best is when I glide from out them. 
 Cross a step or two of dubious twilight. 
 Come out on the other side- the novel 
 Silent silver lights and darks undreamed of, 
 Where I hush and bless myself with silence. 
 
 Oh, their Rafael of the dear Madonnas, 
 Oh, their Dante of the dread Inferno, 
 Wrote one song — and in my brain I sing it, 
 Drew one angel — borne, see on my bosom I 
 
 R. B. 
 
364 
 
 IN A BALCONY 
 
 IN A BALCONY 
 
 Written in 1853, partly at Bstgni di Lucca, 
 partly at Home. It was included in the 
 
 original series of Men and Women and there 
 divided into three parts. 
 
 PERSONS 
 
 NORBERT. 
 
 Constance. 
 The Queen. 
 
 Constance and Norbert. 
 
 Nnrbert. Now ! 
 
 Constance. Not now! 
 
 Nor. Give me them again, those hands : 
 
 Put them upon my forehead, how it throbs ! 
 Press them before my eyes, the fire comes 
 
 through ! 
 You cruellest, you dearest in the world, 
 Let me ! The Queen must grant whate'er I 
 
 ask — 
 How can I gain you and not ask the Queen ? 
 There she stays waiting lor me, here stand you ; 
 Some time or other this was to be asked ; 
 Now is the one time — what I ask, I gain : 
 Let me ask now, Love ! 
 
 Con. Do, and ruin us ! 
 
 Nor, Let it be now. Love ! All my soul 
 breaks forth. 
 How I do love you ! Give my love its way ! 
 A man can have but one life and one death, 
 One heaven, one hell. Let me fulfil my fate — 
 Grant me my heaven now ! Let me know you 
 
 mine, 
 Prove you mine, write my name upon your 
 
 brow. 
 Hold you and have you, and then die away. 
 If God please, with completion in ray soul ! 
 
 Con. I am not yours then ? How content 
 this man ! 
 I am not his — who change into himself, 
 Have passed into his heart and beat its beats. 
 Who give my hands to him, my eyes, my hair. 
 Give all that was of me away to him — 
 So well, that now, ray spirit turned his own, 
 Takes part with him against the woman here, 
 Bids him not stumble at so mere a straw 
 As caring that the world be cognizant 
 How he loves her and how she worships him. 
 You have this woman, not as yet that world. 
 Go on, I bid, nor stop to care for me 
 By saving what I cease to care about. 
 The courtly name and pride of circumstance — 
 The name you Ul pick up and be cumbered with 
 Just for the poor parade's sake, nothing more ; 
 Just that the world may slip from under you — 
 Just that the world may cry, " So much for 
 
 him — 
 The man predestined to the heap of crowns : 
 There goes his chance of winning one, at laast ! ' ' 
 
 N<yr. The world ! 
 
 Con. You love it ! Love me quite as well. 
 And see if I shall pray for this in vain ! 
 Why must you ponder what it knows or thinks ? 
 
 Nor. You pray for — what, in vain ? 
 
 Con. Oh my heart's heart, 
 
 How I do love you, Norbert ! That is right : 
 But listen, or I take my hands away ! 
 You say, " let it be now : " you would go now 
 And tell the Queen, perhaps six steps from us, 
 You love me — so you do, thank God ! 
 Nor. Thank God ! 
 
 Con. Yes, Norbert, — but you fain would 
 
 tell your love, 
 And, what succeeds the telling, ask of her ^ 
 My hand. Now take this rose and look at it. 
 Listening to me. You are the minister, 
 The Queen's first favorite, nor without a cause. 
 To-night completes your wonderful year's-work 
 (This palace-feast is held to celebrate) 
 Made memorable by her life's success, 
 The junction of two crowns, on her sole head, 
 Her house had only dreamed of anciently : 
 That this mere dream is grown a stable truth. 
 To-night's feast makes authentic, A¥hose the 
 
 praise ? 
 Whose genius, patience, energy, achieved 
 What turned the many heads and broke the 
 
 hearts ? 
 You are the fate, your minute 's in the heaven. 
 Next comes the Queen's turn, *' Name your 
 
 own reward I " 
 With leave to clench the past, chaiii the to- 
 come. 
 Put out an arm and touch and take the sun 
 And fix it ever full-faced on your earth. 
 Possess yourself supremely of her life, — 
 You choose the single thing she will not grant ; 
 Nay, very declaration of which choice 
 Will turn the scale and neutralize your work : 
 At best she will forgive you, if she can. 
 You think I '11 let you choose — her cousin's 
 
 hand? 
 Nor. Wait. First, do you retain your old 
 
 belief 
 The Queen is generous, — nay, is just ? 
 
 Con, There, there I 
 
 So men make women love them, while iiiey 
 
 know 
 No more of women's hearts than . . . look you 
 
 here, 
 Yoii that are just and generous beside. 
 Make it your own case ! For example now, 
 I '11 say — I let you kiss rae, hold ray hands — 
 Why ? do you know why ? I '11 instruct you, 
 
 then — 
 The kiss, because you have a name at court ; 
 This hand and this, that you may shut in eacn 
 A jewel, if yon please to pick up such. 
 That 's horrible ? Apply it to the Queen — 
 Siippose I am the Queen to whom you speak. 
 *' I was a nameless man ; you needed me : 
 Why did I proffer you my aid ? there stood 
 A certain pretty cousin at your side. 
 Why did I make such common cause with you ? 
 Access to her had not been easy else. 
 
IN A BALCONY 
 
 36s 
 
 You rive my labor here abundant praise ? 
 'Faith, labor, which she overlooked, grew 
 
 play. 
 How snail your gratitude discharge itself ? 
 Give me her hand ! " 
 
 Nor. And still I urge the same. 
 
 Is the Queen just ? just — generous or no ! 
 Con. Yes, just. You love a rose : no harm 
 
 in that: 
 But was it for the rose's sake or mine 
 You put it in your bosom ? mine, you said — 
 Then, mine you still must say or else be false. 
 You told the Queen you served her for herself; 
 If so, to serve her was to sei-ve yourself. 
 She thiuks, for all your unbelieving face ! 
 I know her. In the hall, six steps from us. 
 One sees the twenty pictures : there 's a life 
 Better than life, and yet no life at all. 
 Conceive her bom in such a magic dome. 
 Pictures all round her 1 why, she sees the world. 
 Can recognize its given things and facts. 
 The fight of giants or the feast of gods, 
 Sf^es in senate, beauties at the bath, 
 Chases and battles, the whole earth's display. 
 Landscape and searpiece, down to flowers and 
 
 fruit — 
 And who shall question that she knows them all, 
 In betcer semblance than the things outside ? 
 Yet bring into the silent gallery 
 Some live thing to contrast in breath and blood. 
 Some lion, with the painted lion there — 
 You think she '11 understand composedly ? 
 — Say, " that 's his fellow in the hunting-piece 
 Yonder, I've turned to praise a hmidred 
 
 times ? " 
 Not so. Her knowledge of our actual earth. 
 Its hopes and fears, concerns and sympathies. 
 Must be too far, too mediate, too unreal. 
 The real exists for us outside, not her : 
 How should it, with tliat life in these four 
 
 walls. 
 That father and that mother, first to last 
 No f atlier and no mother — friends, a heap, 
 Loveis, no lack — a husband in due time. 
 And every one of them alike a lie ! 
 Things painted by a Rnbens out of naught 
 Into what kindness, friendship, love should be ; 
 All better, all more grandiose than the life. 
 Only no life ; mere cloth and sui'face-paint. 
 You feel, while you admire. How should she 
 
 feel? 
 Yet now that she has stood thus fifty years 
 The sole spectator in that gallery. 
 You think to bring this warm real struggling 
 
 love 
 In to her of a sudden, and suppose 
 She '11 keep her state unti-onbled ? Here 's the 
 
 truth — 
 She 'II apprehend truth's value at a glance. 
 Prefer it to the pictured loyalty ? 
 You only have to say, "So men are made. 
 For this they act ; the thing has many names. 
 But this the right one : and now. Queen, be 
 
 just ! " 
 Your life slips back ; you lose her at the word : 
 You do not even for amends gain me. 
 He will not understand ! oh, Norbert, Norbert, 
 Do you not understand ? 
 
 Nor. The Queen 'a the Queen, 
 
 I am myself — no picture, bnt alive 
 In every nerve and every muscle, here 
 At the palace-window o'er the people's street, 
 As she in the gallery where the pictures glow : 
 The good of life is precious to us both. 
 She cannot love ; what do I want with rule ? 
 When first I saw your face a year ago 
 I knew my life's good, my soul heard one 
 
 voice — 
 " The woman yonder, there 's no use of life 
 But just to obtain her ! heap earth's woes in one 
 And bear them — make a pile of all earth's 
 
 joys 
 And spurn them, as they help or help not this ; 
 Only, obtain her I " How was it to be ? 
 I found you were the cousin of the Queen ; 
 I must then serve the Queen to get to you. 
 No other way. Suppose there had been one. 
 And I, by saying prayers to some white star 
 With promise of my body and my soul. 
 Might gain you, — should I pray the star or no ? 
 Instead, there was the Queen to serve ! I 
 
 served. 
 Helped, did what other servants failed to do. 
 Neither she sought nor I declared my end. 
 Her good is hers, my recompense be mine, — 
 I therefore name you as that recompense. 
 She dreamed that such a thing could never be ? 
 Let her wake now. She thinks there was 
 
 more cause 
 In love of power, high fame, pure loyalty ? 
 Perhaps she fancies men wear out their fives 
 Chasing such shades. Then, I 've a fancy too ; 
 I worked because I want you with my soul : 
 I therefore ask your hand. Let it be now ! 
 Con. Had I not loved you from the very 
 
 first. 
 Were I not yours, could we not steal out thus 
 So wickedly, so wildly, and so well. 
 You might become impatient. What 's con- 
 ceived 
 Of us without here, by the folk within ? 
 Where are you now? immersed in cares of 
 
 state — 
 Where am I now ? intent on festal robes — 
 We two, embracing under death's spread hand I 
 What was this thought for, what that scruple 
 
 of yours 
 Which broke the council up ? — to bring about 
 One minute's meeting in the corridor I 
 And then the sudden sleights, strange secrecies, 
 Complots inscrutable, deep telegraphs. 
 Long-planned chance-meetings, hazai'ds of a 
 
 look, 
 "Does she know? does she not know? saved 
 
 or lost?" 
 A year of this compression's ecstasy 
 All goes for nothing ! you would give this up 
 For the old way, the open way, the world's. 
 His way who beats, and his who sells his wife ! 
 What tempts you ? — their notorious happiness 
 Makes you ashamed of ours ? The best yon '11 
 
 gain 
 Will be — the Queen grants all that you require, 
 Concedes the cousin, rids herself of you 
 And me at once, and gives us ample leave 
 To live like our five hundred happy friends. 
 
366 
 
 IN A BALCONY 
 
 The world will show us with officious hand 
 Our cliamber-entry, and stand sentinel 
 Where we SQ oft have stolen across its traps ! 
 Get the world's warrant, ring the falcons feet, 
 And make it duty to be bold and swift, 
 Which long ago was nature. Have it so ! 
 We never hawked by rights till flung from 
 
 fist? 
 Oh, the man's thought! no woman's such a 
 
 fool. 
 Nor. Yes, the man's thought and my 
 
 thought, which is more — 
 One made to love you, let the world take note ! 
 Have I done worthy work ? be love's the 
 
 praise, 
 Though hampered by restiictions, barred 
 
 against 
 By set forms, blinded by forced secrecies ! 
 Set free my love, and see what love can do 
 Shown in ray life — what work will spring 
 
 from that ! ; 
 The woild is used to have its business done 
 On other grounds, find great effects produced 
 For power's sake, fame s sake, motives in men's 
 
 mouth. 
 So, good : but let my low ground shame their 
 
 high ! 
 Truth is the strong thing. Let man's life be 
 
 true J 
 And love 's the truth of mine. Time prove the 
 
 rest ! 
 I choose to wear you stamped all over me, 
 Your name upon my forehead and my breast. 
 You, from the sword's blade to the ribbon's edge. 
 That men may see, ajl over, you in me — 
 That pale loves mjiy die out of their pretence 
 In face of mine, shames thrown on love fall 
 
 off. ■; 
 
 Permit .tjiis, Constance! Love has been, so 
 
 long 
 Subdued in ,me, eating me through and through, 
 That now 'tis all of me and must have way. 
 Think of my, work, that chaos of intrigues, 
 Those hopes and fears, surprises and delays, 
 That long endeavor, earnest, patient, slow, 
 Trembling at last to its assured result : 
 Then think of this revulsion ! I resume 
 Life after death, (it is no less than life. 
 After such long unlovely laboring days,) 
 And liberate to beauty life's great need 
 0' the beautiful, which, while it prompted work. 
 Suppressed itself erewhile. This eve 's the 
 
 time, 
 Tliis eve intense with yon first trembling star 
 We seem to pant and reach ; scarce auglit be- 
 tween 
 The earth that rises and the heaven that bends ; 
 All nature self-abaudoned, every tree 
 Flunsr as it will, pursuing its own thoughts 
 And fixed so, every flower and every weed. 
 No pride, no shame, no victory, no defeat ; 
 All under God, each measured by itself. 
 These statues round us stand abrupt, distinct, 
 The strong in strength, the weak in weakness 
 
 fixed. 
 The Muse forever wedded to her lyre. 
 Nymph to her fawn, and Silence to her rose ; 
 See God's approval on his universe ! 
 
 Let us do so — aspire to Ave as these 
 
 In harmony with truth, ourselves being true I 
 
 Take the first way, and let the second come ! 
 
 My first is to possess' niyself of you ; 
 
 The music sets the march-step — forward, then ! 
 
 And there 's the Queen, I go to claim you of, 
 
 The world to witness, wonder and applaud. 
 
 Our flower of life breaks open. No delay ! 
 
 Con. And so shall we be ruined, both of us, 
 Norbert, I know her to the skin and bone : 
 You do not know her, were not born to it. 
 To feel what she can see or cannot see. 
 Love, she is generous, — ay, despite youp 
 
 smile. 
 Generous as yon are : for, in that thin frame 
 Pain-twisted, punctured through and through 
 
 with cares, 
 There lived a lavish soul until it starved. 
 Debarred of healthy food. Look to the soul — 
 Pity that, stoop to that, ere you begin 
 (The true man's - way) on justice and your 
 
 rights, 
 Exactions and acquittance of the past ! 
 Begin so — see what justice she will deal! 
 We women hate a debt as men a gift. 
 Suppose her some poor keeper of a school 
 Whose business is to sit through summer 
 
 months 
 And dole out children leave to go and play. 
 Herself superior to such lightness — she 
 In the arm-chair's state and psedagogic pomp — 
 To the life, the laughter, sun and youth out- 
 side: 
 We wonder such a face looks black on us ? 
 I do not bid you wake her tenderness, 
 (That were vain truly — none is left to wake,) 
 But,, let her think her justice is engaged 
 To take the shape of tenderness, and mark 
 If she '11 not coldly pay its warmest debt ! 
 Does she love me, I ask you ? not a whit : 
 Yet, thinking that her justice was engaged 
 To help a kinswoman, she took me ui> — 
 Did more on that bare ground than other loves 
 Would do on greater argument. For me, 
 I have no equivalent of such cold kind 
 To pay her with, but love alone to give 
 If i give anything. I give her love : 
 I feel I ought to help her, and I will. 
 So, for her sake, as yours, I tell you twice 
 That women hate a d«bt as men a gift. 
 If I were you, I conld obtain this grace — 
 Could lay the whole I did to love's account, 
 Nor yet be very false as courtiers go — 
 Declaring my success \^ as recompense ; 
 It would be so, in fact : what v/ere it else ? 
 ^nd then, once loose her generosity, — 
 Oh, how I see it ! then, were I but you 
 To turn it, let it seem to move itself. 
 And make it offer what I really take. 
 Accepting just, in the poor cousin's hand, 
 Her value as the next thing to the Queen's — 
 ISince none love Queens directly, none dare that, 
 And a thing's shadow or a name's mere echo 
 Suffices those who miss the name and thing ! 
 You pick up just a ribbon she has worn, 
 To keep in proof how near her breath you 
 
 canie. 
 Say, I'm so near I seem a piece of lier — 
 
IN A BALCONY 
 
 367 
 
 Ask for me that way — (oh, you understand,) 
 You 'd find the same gift yielded with a grace, 
 Whiehi if you mal^e the least show to ex- 
 tort . . . 
 — You '11 see ! and when yon have ruined both 
 
 of us, 
 Dissertate on the Queen's ingratitude 1 
 Nor, Then, if I turn it that way, yon con- 
 sent? 
 'T is not my way : I have more hope in tnith : 
 Still, if you won t have truth — why, this in- 
 deed, 
 Were scarcely false, as I 'd express the sense. 
 Will you remain here ? 
 
 Con. best heart of mine. 
 
 How I have loved you ! then, you take my way ? 
 Are mine as you have been her minister, 
 Work out my thought, give it effect for me. 
 Paint plain my poor conceit and make it serve ? 
 I owe that withered woman everything — 
 Life, fortune, you, remember! Take my 
 
 part — 
 Help me to pay her ! Stand upon your rights ? 
 You, with my rose, my hands, my heart on 
 
 you ? 
 Your rights are mine — you have uo rights but 
 mine. 
 Nor. Remain here. How you know me ! 
 Con. Ah, but still — 
 
 \_He breaks frovi her ; she remains, Dance^mu^c from 
 within. 
 {Enter the Qqeen.) 
 Queen. Constance ? She is here as he said. 
 Speak quick 1 
 Is it so ? Is it true or false ? One word I 
 Con. True. 
 
 Queen. Mercifullest Mother, thanks to thee ! 
 Con. Madam ? 
 
 Queen, I love you, Constance, from my soul. 
 Now say once more, with any words you will, 
 'T is true, all true, as true as that I speak; 
 Con, Why should you doubt it ? 
 Queen. Ah, why doubt ? why doubt ? 
 
 Dear, make me see it ! Do you see it so ? 
 None see themselves ; another sees them best. 
 You say " why doubt it ? " — you see him and 
 
 me. 
 It is because the Mother has such ^ace 
 That if we had but faith — wherein we fail — 
 Whate'er we yearn for would be granted us ; 
 Yet still we let our whims prescribe despair. 
 Our fancies thwart and cramp our will and 
 
 power. 
 And while accepting life, abjure its use. 
 Constance, I had abjured the hope of love 
 And being loved, as truly as yon palm 
 The hope of seeing Egypt from that plot. 
 Con. Heaven ! 
 
 Queen. But it was so, Constance, it was so 1 
 Men say — or do men say it ? fancies say — 
 "Stop here, your life is set, you are grown 
 
 old. 
 Too late — no love for you, too late for love — 
 Leave love to girls. Be queen : let Constance 
 
 love!" 
 One takes the hint — half meets it like a child, 
 Ashamed at any feelings that oppose. 
 ** Oh love, jrue, never think of love again ! 
 
 1 am a queen : I rule, not love, forsooth." 
 So it goes on ; so a face grows like this. 
 Hair like this hair, poor arms as lean as these. 
 Till, — nay, it does not end so, I thank Grod 1 
 
 Con. I cannot understand — 
 
 Queen. The happier yon I 
 
 Constance, I know not how it is with men : 
 For women (I am a woman now like you) 
 There is no good of life but love — but love I 
 What else looks good, is some shade flung from 
 
 love ; 
 Love gilds it, gives it worth. Be warned by 
 
 me. 
 Never you cheat yourself one instant ! Love, 
 Give love, ask only love, and leave the rest I 
 
 Constance, how I love you ! 
 
 Con. I love you. 
 
 Queen. I do believe that all is come through 
 you. 
 
 1 took you to my heart to keep it warm 
 When the last chance of love seemed dead in 
 
 me; 
 I thought your fresh youth warmed my with- 
 ered heart. 
 Oh, I am very old now, am I not ? 
 Not so ! it is true and it shall be true ! 
 
 Con. Tell it me: let me judge if true or 
 
 false. 
 Queen. Ah, but I fear you ! you will look at 
 me 
 And say, "she's old, she's grown unlovely 
 
 quite 
 Who ne'er was beauteous: men want beauty 
 
 still." 
 Well, so I feared — the curse ! so I felt sure ! 
 Con. Be calm. And now you feel not sure, 
 
 you say ? 
 Queen. Constance, he came, — the coming 
 was not strange — 
 Do not I stand and see men come and go ? 
 I turned a half -look from my pedestal 
 Where I grow marble — "one young man the 
 
 more ! 
 He will love some one ; that is naught to me : 
 What would he with my marble stateliness ? " 
 Yet this seemed somewhat worse than hereto- 
 fore ; 
 The man more gracious, youthful, like a god. 
 And I still older, with less flesh to change — 
 We two those dear extremes that long to touch. 
 It seemed still harder when he first began 
 To labor at those state-affairs, absorbed 
 The old way for the old end — interest. 
 Oh, to live with a thousand beating hearts 
 Around you, swift eyes, serviceable hands. 
 Professing they 've no care but for your cause. 
 Thought but to help you, love but for your- 
 self,— 
 And you the marble statue all the time 
 They praise and point at as preferred to life. 
 Yet leave for the first breathing woman's simle. 
 First dancer's, gypsy's, or street baladine's I 
 Why, how I have ground my teeth to heat 
 
 men's speech 
 Stifled for fear it should alarm my ear, 
 Their gait subdued lest step should startle me. 
 Their eyes declined, such queendom to respect, 
 Their hands alert, such treasure to preserve. 
 
368 
 
 IN A BALCONY 
 
 While not a man of them broke rank and spoke, 
 Wrote me a vulgar letter all of love, 
 Or cauerht my hand and pressed it like a hand ! 
 There have been moments, if the sentinel 
 Lowering his halbert to salnte the queen. 
 Had flung it brutally and clasped my knees, 
 I would have stooped and kissed him with my 
 
 soul. 
 Con. Who could have comprehended ? 
 Queen. Ay, who — who ? 
 
 Why, no one, Constance, but this one who did. 
 Not they, not you, not I. Even now perhaps 
 It conies too late — would you but tell the truth. 
 Con. I wait to tell it. 
 
 Queen. Well, you see, he came, 
 
 Outfaced the others, did a work this year 
 Exceeds in value all was ever done. 
 You know — it is not I who say it — all 
 Say it. And so (a second pang and worse) 
 I grew aware not only of what he did. 
 But why so wondrously. Oh, never work 
 Like his was done for work's ignoble sake — 
 Souls need a flner aim to light and lure ! 
 I felt, I saw, he loved — loved somebody. 
 And Constance, my dear Constance, do you 
 
 know, 
 I did believe this while 't was you he loved. 
 Con. Me, madam ? 
 
 Queen. It did seem to me, your face 
 
 Met him where'er he looked : and whom but 
 
 you 
 Was such a man to love ? It seemed to me. 
 You saw he loved you, and approved his love. 
 And both of you were in inteUigence. 
 You could not loiter in that garden, step 
 Into this balcony, but I straight was stung 
 And forced to understand. It seemed so true. 
 So right, so beautiful, so like you both, 
 That all this work should have been done by 
 
 him 
 Not for the vulgar hope of recompense. 
 But that at last — suppose, some night like 
 
 this — 
 Borne on to claim his dne reward of me. 
 He might say, *' Give her hand and pay me 
 
 so." 
 And I (0 Constance, you shall love me now 1) 
 £ thought, surmounting all the bitterness, 
 — ** And he shall have it, I will make her 
 
 blest. 
 My flower of youth, my woman's self that was. 
 My happiest woman's self that might have been! 
 These two shall have their joy and leave me 
 
 here." 
 Yes — yes ! 
 
 Con. Thanks ! 
 
 Queen. And the word was on my lips 
 
 When he burst in upon me. I looked to hear 
 A mere calm statement of his just desire 
 For payment of his labor. When -~ heaven. 
 How can I tell you V lightning on my eyes 
 And thunder in my ears proved that first word 
 Which told 't was love of me, of me, did all — 
 He loved me — from the first step to the last, 
 Loved me ! 
 
 Con. You hardly saw, scarce heard him 
 
 speak 
 Of love ; what if you should mistake '/ 
 
 Queen. No, no — 
 
 No mistake ! Ha, there shall be no mistake t 
 He had not dared to hint the love he felt — 
 You were my reflex — (how I understood !) 
 He said you were the ribbon I had worn, 
 He kissed my hand, he looked into my eyes, 
 And love, love came at end of every phrase. 
 Love is begun ; this much is come to pass ; 
 The rest is easy. Constance, I am yours ! 
 I will learn, I will place my life on you. 
 Teach me but how to keep what I have won I 
 Am I so old ? This hair was early gray ; 
 But joy ere now has brought hair brown again. 
 And joy will bring the cheek's red back, Ifeel. 
 I could sing once too ; that was in my youth. 
 Still, when men paint me, they declare ine . . . 
 
 yes, 
 Beautfiul -^ for the last French painter did I 
 I know they flatter somewhat ; you are frank — 
 I trust you. How I loved you from the 
 
 first ! 
 Some queens would hardly seek a cousin out 
 And set her by their side to take the eye : 
 I must have felt that good would come from 
 
 you. 
 I am not generous — like him — like you ! 
 But he is not your lover after all : 
 It was not you he looked at. Saw yon him ? 
 You have not been mistaking words or looks ? 
 He said you were the reflex of myself. 
 And yet he is not such a paragon 
 To you, to younger women who may choose 
 Among a thousand Norberts. Speak the 
 
 truth ! 
 You know you never named his name to me : 
 You know, I cannot give him up — ah God, 
 Not up now, even to you I 
 
 Con. Then calm yourself. 
 
 Queen. See, I am old — look here, you happy 
 
 girl! 
 I will not play the fool, deceive — ah, whom ? 
 'T is all gone : put your cheek beside my cheek 
 And what a contrast does the moon behold ! 
 But then I set my life upon one chance. 
 The last chance and the best — am I not left, 
 My soul, myself ? All women love great men 
 If young or old ; it is in all the tales : 
 Young beauties love old poets who can love — 
 Why should not he, the poems in my soul. 
 The passionate faith, the pride of sacrifice. 
 Life-long, death-long? I throw them at his 
 
 feet. 
 Who cares to see the fountain's very shape, 
 Whether it be a Triton's or a Nymph's 
 That pours the foam, makes rainbows all 
 
 around ? 
 You could not praise indeed the empty conch ; 
 But I '11 pour floods of love and hide myself. 
 How I will love him ! Cannot men love love ? 
 Who was a queen and loved a poet once 
 Humpbacked, a dwarf? ah, women can do 
 
 that! 
 Well, but men too ; at least, they tell you so. 
 They love so many women in their youth. 
 And even in age they all love whom they please ; 
 And yet the best of them confide to friends 
 That 't is not beauty makes the lasting love — 
 They spend a day with such and tire the next : 
 
IN A BALCONY 
 
 369 
 
 They like sonl, — well then, they like phantasy, 
 Novelty even. Let us confess the truth, 
 Horrible though it be, that prejudice, 
 Prescription . . . curses ! they will love a queen. 
 They will, they do : and will not, does not — he ? 
 Con, How can he? You are wedded: 'tis 
 
 a name 
 We know, but still a bond. Your rank remains, 
 His rank remains. How can he, nobly souled 
 As you believe and I incline to think, 
 Aspire to be your favorite, shame and all ? 
 Queen. Hear her ! There, there now — could 
 
 she love like me ? 
 What did I say of smooth-cheeked youth and 
 
 grace? 
 See all it does or could do ! so youth loves ! 
 Oh, tell him, Constance, you could never do 
 What I will — you, it was not born in! 1 
 Will drive these difficulties far and fast 
 As yonder mists curdling before the moon. 
 I '11 use my light too, gloriously retrieve 
 My youth from its enforced calamity. 
 Dissolve that hateful marriage, and be his, 
 His own in the eyes alike of God and man. 
 Con, You will do — dare do . . . pause on 
 
 what you say I 
 Queen. Hear her ! I thank you, sweet, for 
 
 that surprise. 
 You have the iair face : for the soul, see mine ! 
 I have the strong soul : let me teach you, here. 
 I think I have borne enough and long enough. 
 And patiently enough, the world remarks. 
 To have my own way now, iinblaraed by all. 
 It does so happen (I rejoice for it) 
 This most uiuioped-for issue outs the knot. 
 There 's not a better way of settling claims 
 Than this ; God sends the accident express : 
 And were it for my sub.iects' good, no more, 
 'T were best thus ordered. I am thankful now. 
 Mute, passive, acquiescent. I receive, 
 And bless God simply, or should almost fear 
 To walk so smootlily to my ends at last. 
 Why, how I baffle obstacles, spurn fate ! 
 How strong I am ! Could Norbert see me now ! 
 Con. Let me consider. It is all too strange. 
 Queen. You, Constance, learn of me ; do you, 
 
 like me ! 
 You are young, beautiful : my own, best girl, 
 You will have many lovers, and love one — 
 Light hair, not hair like Norbert's, to suit 
 
 yours, 
 Taller than he is, since yourself are tall. 
 Love him, like me ! Give all away to him ; 
 Think never of yourself ; throw by your pride, 
 Hope, fear, — your own good as you saw it once. 
 And love him simply for his very self. 
 Remember, I (and what am I to you ?) 
 Would give up all for one, leave throne, lose life. 
 Do all but just unlove him ! He loves me. 
 Con, He shall. 
 
 Queen, You, step inside my inmost heart ! 
 Give me your own heart ; let us have one heart ! 
 I '11 come to you for counsel ; " this he says. 
 This he does ; what should this amount to, 
 
 pray ? 
 Beseech you, change it mto current coin ! 
 Is that worth kisses ? Shall I please him 
 
 there?" 
 
 And then we '11 speak in turn of you — what 
 
 else ? 
 Your love, aecording to your beauty's worth, 
 For you shall have some noble love, all gold : 
 Whom choose you ? we will get him at your 
 
 choice. 
 
 — Constance, I leave you. Just aminute since, 
 I felt as I must die or be alone 
 
 Breathing my soul into an ear like yours : 
 Now, I would face the world with my new life, 
 Wear my new crown. I'U walk around the 
 
 rooms. 
 And then come back and tell you how it feels. 
 How soon a smile of God can change the world 1 
 How we are made for happiness — how work 
 Grows play, adversity a wmning fight ! 
 True, Ihave lost so many years : what then ? 
 Many remain : God has been very good. 
 You, stay here ! 'T is as different from dreams, 
 From the mind's cold calm estimate of bliss. 
 As these stone statues from the flesh and 
 
 blood. 
 The comfort thou hast caused mankind, God's 
 
 moon ! 
 [She goes ouU leaving Constance. Dance-music from 
 iviihin. 
 (NoHBEET enters.) 
 
 Nor. Well ? we have but one minute and one 
 word! 
 
 Con, I am yours, Norbert ! 
 
 Nor, Yes, mine. 
 
 Con, Not till now I 
 
 You were mine. Now I give myself to you. 
 
 Nor, Constance ? 
 
 Con, Your own ! I know the thriftier way 
 Of giving — haply, 't is the vriser way. 
 Meaning to give a treasure, I might dole 
 Coin after coin out (each, as that were all. 
 With a new largess still at each despair) 
 And force you keep in sight the deed, preserve 
 Exhaustless till the end my part and yours, 
 My giving and your taking ; both our joys 
 Dying together. Is it the wiser way ? 
 I choose the simpler ; I give all at once. 
 Know what you have to trust to, trade upon ! 
 Use it, abuse it, — anything but think 
 Hereafter, " Had I known she loved me so. 
 And what my means, I might have thriven with 
 
 it." 
 This is your means. I give you all myself. 
 
 Nor. I take you and thank God. 
 
 Con. Look on through years t 
 
 We cannot kiss, a second day like this ; 
 Else were this earth no earth. 
 
 Nor. With this day's heat 
 
 We shall go on through years of cold. 
 
 Con, So, best ! 
 
 — I try to see those yeara — I think I see. 
 You walk quick and new warmth comes ; you 
 
 look back 
 And lay all to the first glow — not sit down 
 Forever brooding on a day like this 
 While seeing embers whiten and love die. 
 Yes, love lives best in its effect ; and mine, 
 Full in its own life, yearns to live in yours. 
 Nor, Just so. I take and know you all at 
 once. 
 Your soul is disengaged so easily. 
 
370 
 
 IN A BALCONY 
 
 Your face is there, I know you ; give me time, 
 
 Let me be proud and think you shall know me. 
 
 My soul is slower ; in a life I roll 
 
 The minute out whereto you condense yours t- 
 
 The whole slow circle round you I must move, 
 
 To be just you. I look to a long life 
 
 To decompose this minute, prove its worth. 
 
 'T is the sparks' long succession one by one 
 
 Shall show you, in the end, what fire was 
 
 crammed 
 In that mere stone you struck : how could you 
 
 know, 
 If it lay ever unproved in your sight. 
 As now my heart lies ? your own warmth would 
 
 hide 
 Its coldness, were it cold. 
 Con. But how prove, how ? 
 
 Nor. Prove in my life, you ask ? 
 Con. Quick, Norbert — how? 
 
 Nor. That 's easy told. I count life just a 
 
 stuff 
 To try the soul's strength on, educe the man. 
 Who keeps one end in view makes all things 
 
 serve 
 4.S with the body — he who hurls a lance 
 Or heaps up stone on stone, shows strength 
 
 aHke ; 
 So must I seize and task all means to prove 
 And show this soul of mine, you crown as yours. 
 And justify us both. 
 
 Con. Could you write books. 
 
 Paint pictures ! One sits down in poverty 
 And writes or paints, with pity for the rich. 
 Nor. And loves one's painting and one's 
 
 writing, then. 
 And not one s mistress 1 All is best, believe. 
 And we best as no other than we are. 
 We live, and they experiment on life — 
 Those poets, painters, all who stand aloof 
 To overlook the farther. Let us be 
 The thing they look at I I might take your 
 
 face 
 And write of it and paint it — to what end ? 
 For whom ? what pale dictatress in the air 
 Feeds, smiling sadly, her fine ghost-like form 
 With earth's real blood and breath, the beaute- 
 ous life 
 She makes despised forever ? You are mine. 
 Made for me, not for others in the world. 
 Nor yet for that which I should call ray art. 
 The cold calm power to see how fair you look. 
 I come to you ; I leave you not, to write 
 Or paint. You are, I am ; let Rubens there 
 Paint us ! 
 Con. So, best ! 
 
 Nor. I understand your soul. 
 
 You live, and rightly sympathize with life. 
 With action, power, success. This way is 
 
 straight ; 
 And time were short beside, to let me change 
 The craft my childhood learnt : my craft 
 
 shall serve. 
 Men set me here to subjugate, enclose, 
 Manure their barren lives, and force thence 
 
 fruit 
 First for themselves, and afterward for me 
 In the due tithe ; the task of some one soul. 
 Through ways of work appointed by the world. 
 
 I am not bid create — men see no star 
 Transfiguring my brow to warrant that — 
 But find and bind and bring to bear their wills. 
 So I began : to-night sees how I end. 
 What if it see, too, power's first outbreak here 
 Amid the warmth, surprise and sympathy, 
 And instincts of the heart that teach the head ? 
 What if the people have discerned at length 
 The dawn of the next nature, novel brain 
 Whose will they venture in the place of theirs. 
 Whose work, they trust, shall find them as 
 
 novel ways 
 To untried heights which yet he only sees ? 
 I felt it when you kissed me. See this Queen, 
 This people — in our phrase this mass of 
 
 men — 
 See how the mass lies passive to my hand 
 Now that my hand is plastic, with you by 
 To make the muscles iron ! Oh, an end 
 Shall crown this issiie as this crowns the first t 
 My will be on the people ! then, the strain. 
 The grappling of the potter with his clay. 
 The long uncertain struggle, — the success 
 And consummation of the spirit-work. 
 Some vase shape to the curl of the god's lip, 
 While rounded fair for human sense to see 
 The Graces in a dance men recognize 
 With turbulent applause and laughs of heart I 
 So triumph ever shall renew itself ; 
 Ever shall end in efforts higher yet, 
 Ever begin ... 
 
 Con. I ever helping ? 
 
 Nor. Tims ! 
 
 (^As he embraces her, the Queen enters.) 
 Con. Hist, madam! So have I performed 
 
 my part. 
 You see your gratitude's true decency, 
 Norbert? A little slow in seeing it ! 
 Begin, to end the sooner ! What 's a kiss ? 
 Nor. Constance ? 
 
 Con. Why, must I teach it you again ? 
 
 You want a witness to your dulness, sir ? 
 What was I saying these ten minutes long ? 
 Then I repeat — when some young handsome 
 
 man 
 Like you has acted out a part like yours. 
 Is pleased to fall in love with one beyond. 
 So very far beyond him, as he says — 
 So hopelessly in love that but to speak 
 Would prove him mad, — he thinks judiciously. 
 And makes some insignificant good soul. 
 Like me, his friend, adviser, confidant. 
 And very stalking-horse to cover him 
 In following after what he dares not face — 
 When his end "s gained — (sir, do you under- 
 stand ?) 
 When she, he dares not face, has loved him 
 
 first, 
 — May I not say so, madam ? — tops his hope, 
 And overpasses so his wildest dream. 
 With glad consent of all, and most of her 
 The confidant who brought the same about — 
 Why, in the moment when such joy explodes, 
 I do hold that the merest gentleman 
 Will not start rudelyfrom the stalking-horse. 
 Dismiss it with a " There, enough of yon ! " 
 Forget it, show his back unmannerly ; 
 But like a liberal heart will rather turn 
 
IN A BALCONY 
 
 371 
 
 And say, " A tingling time of hope was ours ; 
 Betwixt the fears and falteriugs, we two lived 
 A chanceful time in waiting for the prize : 
 The confidant, the Constance, served not ill. 
 And though I shall forget her in good time, 
 Her use being answered now, as reason bids, 
 Nay as herself bids from her heai>t of hearts, — 
 Still, she lias rights, the first thanks go to her, 
 The first good praise goes to the prosperous 
 
 tool, ■ 
 And the first — which is the last — rewarding 
 kiss." 
 Nor. Constance, it is a. dream — ah, see, 
 
 you smile ! 
 Con. So, now his part being properly per- 
 formed, 
 Madam, I turn to you and finish mine 
 As duly ; I do justice in my turn. 
 Yes, mEidam, he has loved you — long and 
 
 well; 
 He could not hope to tell you so — *t was I 
 Who served to prove your soul accessible, 
 I led his thoughts on, drew them to their place 
 When they had wandered else into despair, 
 And kept love constant toward its natural aim. 
 Enough, my part is played ; you stoop half-way 
 And meet us royally and spare our fears : 
 'T is like youi-self . He thanks you, so do I. 
 Take him — with my full heart ! my work is 
 
 praised 
 By what comes of it. Be you happy, both ! 
 Yourself — the only one on earth who can — 
 Do all for him, much more than a mere heart 
 Which though warm is not useful in its warmth 
 As the silk vesture of a queen ! fold that 
 Around him gently, tenderly. For him — 
 For him, — he knows his own part ! 
 
 Nor, Have you done ? 
 
 I take the jest at last. Should I speak now ? 
 Was yours the wager, Constance, foolish child, 
 Or did you but accept it ? Well — at least 
 You lose by it. 
 
 Con. Nay, madam, 't is your turn ! 
 
 Restrain him still from speech a little more. 
 And make him happier as more confident ! 
 Pity him, madam, he is timid yet I 
 Mark, Norbert ! Do not shrink now ! Here I 
 
 yield 
 Mv whole right in you to the Queen, obsei-ve ! 
 With her go put in practice the great schemes 
 You teem with, follow the career else closed — 
 Be all you cannot be except by her ! 
 Behold her I — Madam, say for pity's sake 
 Anything — frankly say yoti love him ! Else 
 He '11 not believe it : there 's more earnest in 
 His fear than you conceive : I know the man ! 
 Nor. I know the woman somewhat, and 
 confess 
 I thought she had jested better : she begins 
 To overcharge her part. I gravely wait 
 Your pleasure, madam : where is my reward ? 
 Qween. Norbert, this wild girl (whom I 
 recognize 
 Scarce more than you do, in her fancy-fit, 
 Eccentric speech and variable mirth. 
 Not very wise perhaps and somewhat bold. 
 Yet suitable, the whole night's work being 
 strange) 
 
 ~ May still be right : I may do well to speak 
 And make 'authentic what appears a dream 
 To even myself. For, what she says is true : 
 Yes, Norbert ~ what you spoke just now of love, 
 Devotion, stirred no novel sense in me. 
 But justified a warmth felt long before. 
 Yes, from the first — I loved you, I shall say : 
 Strange ! but I do grow stronger, now 't is said. 
 Your courage helps mine : you did well to speak 
 To-night, tlie night that croAvns your twelve- 
 months' toil : 
 But still I had not waited to discern 
 Your heart so loug, believe me ! From the first 
 The source of so much zeal was almost plain, 
 In absence even of your own words just now 
 Which hazarded the truth. 'T is very strange, 
 But takes a happy ending — in your love 
 Which mine meets : be it so ! as you choose me, 
 So I choose you. 
 
 Nor. And worthily you choose. 
 
 I will not be unworthy your esteem, 
 No, madam. I do love you ; I will meet 
 Your nature, now I know it. This was well, 
 I see, — you dare and you are justified : 
 But none had ventured such experiment, 
 Less versed than you in nobleness of heart, 
 Less confident of finding such in me. 
 I joy that thus you test me ere you grant 
 The dearest, richest, beauteousest and best 
 Of women to my arms : 't is like yourself. 
 So — back again into my part's set words — 
 Devotion to the uttermost is yours, 
 But no, you cannot, madam, even you, 
 Create in me the love our Constance does. 
 Or — something truer to the tragic phrase — 
 Not yon magnolia-bell superb with scent 
 Invites a certain insect — that 's myself — 
 But the small eye-flower nearer to the ground. 
 I take this lady. 
 
 Con. Stay — not hers, the trap — 
 
 Stay, Norbert — that mistake were worst of all ! 
 He is too cumiing, madam I It was I, 
 I, Norbert, who . . . 
 
 Nor. You, was it, Constance ? Then, 
 
 But for the grace of this divinest hour 
 Which gives me you, I might not pardon here ! 
 I am the Queen's ; she only knows my brain : 
 She may experiment upon my heart 
 And I instruct her too by the result. 
 But you, Sweet, you who know me, who so long 
 Have told my heartbeats over, held my life 
 In those white hands of yours, — it is not weU I 
 
 Con. Tush ! I have said it, did I not say it 
 aU? 
 The life, for her — the heartbeats, for her sake I 
 
 Nor. Enough ! my cheek grows red, I think. 
 Your test ? 
 There 's not the meanest woman in the world, 
 Not she I least could love in aU the world. 
 Whom, did she love me, had love proved itself, 
 I dare insult as you insult me now. 
 Constance, I could say, if it must be said, 
 " Take back the soul you offer, I keep mine ! " 
 But — " Take the soul still quivering on your 
 
 hand. 
 The soul so offered, which I cannot use. 
 And, please you, give it to some playful friend. 
 For — what 's the tidfle he requites me with ? " 
 
372 
 
 IN A BALCONY 
 
 1, tempt a woman, to amuse a man. 
 
 That two may mock her heart if it succumb ? 
 
 No : fearing God and standing 'neath his 
 
 heaven, 
 I would not dare insult a woman so, 
 Were she the meanest woman in the world, 
 And he, 1 cared to please, ten emperors ! 
 
 Con. Norbert ! 
 
 JVor. I love once as I live but once. 
 
 What case is this to think or talk about ? 
 I love you. Would it mend the case at all 
 If such a step as this killed love in me ? 
 Your pai-t were done : account to God for it ! 
 But mine — could murdered love get up again, 
 And kneel to whom you please to designate, 
 And make you mirth ? It is too horrible. 
 You did not know this, Constance ? now you 
 
 know 
 That body and soul have each one life, but 
 
 one : 
 And here 's my love, here, living, at your feet. 
 
 Con. See the Queen ! Norbert — this one 
 more last word — 
 If thus you have taken jest for earnest — thus 
 Loved me in earnest . . . 
 
 Nor. Ah, no jest holds here ! 
 
 Where is the laughter in which jests break up. 
 And what this horror that grows palpable ? 
 Madam — why grasp you thus the balcony ? 
 Have I done ill ? Have I not spoken trath ? 
 How could I other ? Was it not your test. 
 To try me, what ray love for Constance meant ? 
 Madam, your royal soul itself ai>proves. 
 The first, that I should choose thus ! so one takes 
 A beggar, — asks him, what would buy his 
 
 child? 
 And then aijproves the expected laugh of scorn 
 Returned as something noble from the rags. 
 Speak, Constance, I 'm the beggar ! Ha, 
 
 what 's this ? 
 You two glare each at each like panthers now. 
 Constance, the world fades ; only you stand 
 
 there ! 
 You did not, in to-night's wild whirl of things. 
 Sell me — your soul of souls, for any price ? 
 No — no — 't Is easy to believe in you ! 
 Was it your love's mad trial to o'ertop 
 Mine by this vain self-sacrifice ? well, still — 
 Though I might curse, I love you. I am love 
 And cannot change : love 's self is at your feet ! 
 \_The Queen goes out. 
 
 Con. Feel my heart ; let it die against your 
 own I 
 
 Nor. Against my own. Explain not ; let this 
 be! 
 This is life's height. 
 
 Con. Yours, yours, yours ! 
 
 Nor. Yon and I — 
 
 Why care by what meanders we are here 
 I' the centre of the labyrinth ? Men have died 
 Trying to find this place, which we have found. 
 
 Con. Found, found 1 
 
 Nor. Sweet, never fear what she can do ! 
 We are past harm now. 
 
 Con. On the breast of God. 
 
 I thought of men — as if you were a man. 
 Tempting him with a crown ! 
 
 Nor. This must end here : 
 
 It is too perfect. 
 
 Con. There 's the music stopped. 
 
 What measured heavy tread ? It is one blaze 
 About me and within me. 
 
 Nor. Oh, some death 
 
 Will nin its sudden finger round this spark 
 And sever us from the rest ! 
 
 Con. And so do well. 
 
 Now the doors open. 
 
 Nor. 'T is the guard comes. 
 
 Con. Kiss I 
 
 BEN KARSHOOK'S WISDOM 
 
 The eighth line of the fourteenth section of 
 One Word More reads, 
 
 "EarshlBh, Cleon, Norbert and the iifty." 
 Originally it read, 
 
 " KarBhook, Cleon, Norbert and the fifty." 
 The reference apparently was to the poem writ- 
 ten in April, 1854, and printed in The Keep- 
 sake^ an annual edited by Miss Power, a niece of 
 Lady Blessington, in whom Dickens also took 
 an interest. It may have been Browning's 
 intention to include this poem in Men and Wo- 
 men^ but he never did place it there, and finally 
 dropped Karshook and substituted Karshish, 
 who narrates his medical experience. 
 
 ' Would a man 'scape the rod ? " 
 Rabbi Ben Karshook saith, 
 
 * See that he turn to God 
 
 The day before his death." 
 
 * Ay, could a man inquire 
 
 When it shall come ! " I say. 
 The Rabbi's eye shoots fire — 
 " Then let mm turn to-day I " 
 
 Qnoth a young Saddncee : 
 
 " Reader of many rolls. 
 Is it so certain we 
 
 Have, as they tell us, sonls ? " 
 
 ' Son, there is no reply ! " 
 
 The Rabbi bit his beard : 
 * Certain, a soul have I — 
 
 We may have none," he sneered. 
 
 Thus Karshook, the Hiram's-Hammer, 
 The Right-hand Temple-colnmn, 
 
 Taught babes in grace their grammar. 
 And struck the simple, solemn. 
 
JAMES LEE'S WIFE 
 
 373 
 
 DRAMATIS PERSONS 
 
 The volume bearing the title Dramatis Per- 
 some was published in 1864 and the contents 
 remained unchanged in subsequent editions ex- 
 cept that two short poems were added in the 
 edition of 1868. The first poem was however 
 
 originally entitled James Lee. The first six 
 stanzas of the sixth section of the poem were 
 first printed in 1836 in Mr. Fox's The Monthly 
 Repository, and bore the title merely Lines, 
 with the signature Z. 
 
 JAMES LEE'S WIFE 
 
 JAMES LEE S WIFE SPEAKS AT THE 
 WINDOW 
 
 Ah, Love, but a day 
 And the world has changed ! 
 
 The stm 's away, 
 And the bird estranged ; 
 
 The wind has dropped. 
 And the sky 's deranged : 
 
 Summer has stopped. 
 
 Look in my eyes ! 
 
 Wilt thou change too ? 
 Should I fear surprise ? 
 
 Shall 1 find aught new 
 In the old and dear, 
 
 111 the good and true, 
 With the changing year ? 
 
 Tlion art a man, 
 
 But I am thy love. 
 For the lake, its swan ; 
 
 For the dell its dove ; 
 And for thee — (oh, haste !) 
 
 Me, to bend above. 
 Me, to hold embraced. 
 
 BY THE FIRESIDE 
 
 Is all our fire of shipwreck wood, 
 
 Oak and pine ? 
 Oh, for the ills half-understood. 
 
 The dim dead woe 
 
 Long ago 
 Befallen this bitter coast of France ! 
 Well, poor sailors took their chance ; 
 
 I take mine. 
 
 A ruddy shaft our fire must shoot 
 
 O'er the sea ; 
 Do sailors eye the casement — mute 
 
 Drenched and stark, 
 
 From their bark — 
 And envy, gnash their teeth for hate 
 0' the warm safe house and happy freight 
 
 — Thee and me ? 
 
 God help you, sailors, at yonr need 1 
 
 Spare the curse I 
 For some ships, safe in port indeed, 
 
 Rot and rust. 
 
 Run to dust, 
 AU through worms i' the wood, which crept, 
 Gnawed our hearts out while we slept : 
 
 That is worse. 
 
 Who lived here before us two ? 
 
 Old-world pail's. 
 Did a woman ever — would I knew ! — 
 
 Watch the man 
 
 With whom began 
 Love's voyage full-sail,— (now gnash your teeth !) 
 When planks start, open hell beneath 
 
 Unawares ? 
 
 IN THE DOORWAY 
 
 The swallow has set her six young on the rail. 
 And looks seaward : 
 
 The water 's in strmes like a snake, olive-pale 
 To the leeward, — 
 
 On the weather-side, black, spotted white with 
 the wind, 
 
 " Good fortune departs, and disaster 's be- 
 hind,"— 
 
 Hark, the wind with its wants and its infinite 
 wail! 
 
 Oui- fig-tree, that leaned for the saltness, has 
 furled 
 Her five fingers. 
 Each leaf like a hand opened wide to the world 
 
 Where there lingers 
 No glint of the gold. Summer sent for her sake : 
 How the vines writhe in rows, each impaled on 
 
 its stake ! 
 Aly heart shrivels up and my spirit shrinks 
 curled. 
 
 Yet here are we two ; we have love, house 
 enough, 
 With the field there. 
 
 This house of four rooms, that field red and 
 rough. 
 Though it yield there. 
 
 For the rabbit that robs, scarce a blade or a 
 bent; 
 
 If a magpie alight now, it seems an event ; 
 
 And they both will be gone at November's re- 
 buffi. 
 
 But why must cold spread ? but wherefore bring 
 change 
 To the spirit, 
 
374 
 
 DRAMATIS PERSONS 
 
 God meant should mate his with an infinite 
 
 range, 
 And inherit 
 His power to pat life in the darkness and cold ? 
 Oh, live and love worthily, bear and be bold J 
 Whom Summer made friends of, let Winter 
 
 estrange ! 
 
 ALONG THE BEACH 
 
 I will be qniet and talk with you. 
 
 And reason why you are wrong. 
 You wanted my love — is that much true ? 
 And so I did love, so I do : 
 
 What has come of it all along ? 
 
 I took you — how could I otherwise ? 
 
 For a world to me, and more ; 
 For all, love greatens and glorifies 
 Till God 's aglow, to the loving ey6s. 
 
 In what was mere earth before. 
 
 Yes, earth' — yes, mere ignoble earth ! 
 
 Now do I mis-state, mistake ? 
 Do I wrong your weakness and call it worth ? 
 Expect all harvest, dread no dearth. 
 
 Seal my sense up for your sake ? 
 
 Oh, Love, Love, no, Love ! not so, indeed ! 
 
 You were just weak earth, I knew: 
 With much in you waste, with many a weed, 
 And plenty of passions run to seed, 
 
 But a little good grain too. 
 
 And such as you were, I took you for mine : 
 
 Did not you find me yours, t 
 To watch the olive and wait the vine. 
 And wonder when rivers of oil and wine 
 
 Would flow, as the Book assures ? 
 
 Well, and if none of these good things came, 
 
 What did the failure prove ? 
 The man was my whole world, all the same. 
 With his flowers to praise or his weeds to blame, 
 
 And, either or both, to love. 
 
 Yet this turns now to a fault — there ! there 1 
 
 That I do love, watch too long. 
 And wait too well, and weary and wear,; 
 And 'tis all an old story, and my despair 
 
 Fit subject for some new song : 
 
 " How the light, light love, he has wings to fly 
 
 At suspicion of a bond : 
 My wisdom has bidden your pleasure good^by, 
 Which will turn up next in a laughing eye, 
 
 And why should you look beyond ? " 
 
 ON THE CLIFF 
 
 I leaned on the turf, 
 I looked at a rock 
 Left dry by the surf; 
 
 For the turf, to call it grass were to mock : 
 Dead to the roots, so deep was done 
 The work of the summer sun. 
 
 And the rock lay flat 
 
 As an anvil's face : 
 
 No iron like that ! 
 
 Baked dry ; of a weed, of a shell, no trace : 
 
 Sunshine outside, but ice at the core, 
 
 Peath's altar by the lone shore. 
 
 On the turf, sprang gay 
 
 With his films of blue, 
 
 No cricket, I '11 say. 
 
 But a warhorse, barded and chanfroned too, 
 
 The gift of a quixote-mage to his knight. 
 
 Real fairy, with wings all right. 
 
 On the rock, they scorch 
 
 Like a drop of fire 
 
 From a brandished torch. 
 
 Fall two red fans of a butterfly : 
 
 No turf, no rock : in their ugly stead. 
 
 See, wonderful blue and red ! 
 
 Is it not so 
 
 With the minds of men ? 
 
 The level and low. 
 
 The burnt and bare, in themselves ; but then 
 
 With such a blue and red grace, not theirs, — 
 
 Love settling unawares ! 
 
 READING A BOOK, UNDER THE CLIFF 
 
 "Still ailing, Wind? Wilt be appeased or 
 no? 
 
 Which needs the other's office, thou or I ? 
 Dost want to be disburdened of a woe, 
 
 And can, in truth, my voice untie 
 Its links, and let it go ? 
 
 " Art thou a dumb, wronged thing that would 
 be righted, 
 Entrusting thus thy cause to me ? Forbear ! 
 No tongue can mend such pleadings ; faith, re- 
 quited 
 With falsehood, — love, at last aware 
 Of scorn, — hopes, early blighted, — 
 
 " We have them ; but I know not any tone 
 So fit as thine to falter forth a sorrow : 
 
 Dost think men would go mad without a moan, 
 If they knew any way to borrow 
 
 A pathos like thy own ? 
 
 "Which sigh wouldst mock, of all the sighs? 
 The one 
 
 So long escaping from lips starved and blue, 
 That lasts while on her pallet-bed the mm 
 
 Stretches her length ; her foot comes through 
 The straw she shivers on ; 
 
 "You had not thought she was so tall: and 
 spent. 
 Her shrunk lids open, her lean fingers shut 
 
JAMES LEE'S WIFE 
 
 375 
 
 Close, close, their sharp and livid nails indent 
 
 The clammy palm ; then all is mute : 
 That way, the spirit went. 
 
 " Or wouldst thou rather that I understand 
 Thy will to help me ? — like the dog I found 
 
 Once, pacing sad this solitary strand. 
 Who would not take my food, poor hound. 
 
 But whined and licked my hand." 
 
 All this, and more, comes from some young 
 man's pride 
 
 Of power to see, — in failure and mistake. 
 Relinquishment, disgrace, on every side, — 
 
 Merely examples for his sake. 
 Helps to his path untried : 
 
 Instances he must — simply recognize ? 
 
 Oh, more than so ! — must, with a learner's 
 zeal. 
 Make doubly prominent, twice emphasize. 
 
 By added touches that reveal 
 The god in babe's disguise. 
 
 Oh, he knows what defeat means, and the 
 rest! 
 
 Himself the undefeated that shall be : 
 Failure, disgrace, he flings them you to test, — 
 
 His triumph, in eternity 
 Too plainly manifest ! 
 
 Whence, judge if he learn forthwith what the 
 wind 
 
 Means in its moaning — by the happy prompt 
 Instinctive way of youth, I mean ; for kind 
 
 Calm years, exacting their accompt 
 Of pain, mature the mind ; 
 
 And some midsummer morning, at the lull 
 Just about daybreak, as he looks across 
 
 A sparkling foreign country, wonderful 
 To the sea's edge for gloom and gloss. 
 
 Next minute must annul, — 
 
 Then, when the wind begins among the vines, 
 So low, so low, what shall it say but this ? 
 
 " Here is the change beginning, here the lines 
 Circumscribe beauty, set to bliss 
 
 The limit time assigns." 
 
 Nothing can be as it has been before ; 
 
 Better, so call it, only not the same. 
 To draw one beauty into our hearts' core, 
 
 And keep it changeless ! such our claim ; 
 3o answered, — Nevermore ! 
 
 Simple ? Why this is the old woe o' the world : 
 Tune, to whose rise and fall we live and 
 die. 
 
 Rise with it, then ! Rejoice that man is hurled 
 From change to change unceasingly. 
 
 His soul's wings never furled ! 
 
 That 's a new question ; still replies the fact. 
 Nothing endures : the wind moans, saying 
 
 We moan in acquiescence : there 's life's pact. 
 
 Perhaps probation — do / know ? 
 God does : endure his act ! 
 
 Only, for man, how bitter not to grave 
 On his soul's hands' pahns one fair good wise 
 thing 
 Just as he grasped it I For himself, death's 
 wave ; 
 While time first washes — ah, the sting I — 
 O'er all he 'd sink to save. 
 
 VII 
 
 AMONG THE ROCKS 
 
 Oh, good gigantic smile o' the brown old earth, 
 This autumn morning ! How he sets his 
 bones 
 To bask i' the sun, and thrusts out knees and 
 
 feet 
 For the ripple to run over in its mirth ; 
 Listening the while, where on the heap of 
 stones 
 The white breast of the searlark twitters sweet. 
 
 That is the doctrine, simple, ancient, true ; 
 Such is Jife's trial, as old earth smiles and 
 knows. 
 If you loved only what were worth your love. 
 Love were clear gain, and wholly well for 
 you: 
 Make the low nature better by your throes ! 
 Give earth yourself, go up for gain above ! 
 
 BESIDE THE DRAWIN«-BOARD 
 
 ' As like as a Hand to another Hand ! " 
 
 Whoever said that foolish thing. 
 Could not have studied to understand 
 
 The councils of God in fashioning. 
 Out of the infinite love of his heart. 
 This Hand, whose beauty I praise, ajjart 
 From the world of wonder left to praise, 
 If I tried to learn the other ways 
 Of love in its skilL or love in its power. 
 *' As like as a Hand to another Hand : " 
 Who said that, never took his stand. 
 Found and followed, like me, an hour. 
 The beauty in this, — how free, how fine 
 To fear, almost, — of the limit-line ! 
 As I looked at this, and learned and drew. 
 
 Drew and learned, and looked again. 
 While fast the happy minutes flew. 
 Its beauty mounted into my brain, 
 And a fancy seized me ; I was fain 
 To efface my work, begin anew. 
 Kiss what before I only drew ; 
 Ay, laying the red chalk 'twixt my lips. 
 With soul to help if the mere lips failed, 
 I kissed all right where the drawing ailed. 
 Kissed fast the grace that somehow slips 
 StiU from one's soulless finger-tips. 
 
376 
 
 DRAMATIS PERSONS 
 
 'Tiaa clay east, the perfect thing, 
 
 From Hand live onee, dead long ago : 
 Princess-like it wears the ring 
 
 To fancy's eye, by which we know 
 That here at length a master found 
 
 His match, a proud lone soul its mate. 
 As soaring genius sank to ground. 
 
 And pencil could not emulate 
 The beauty in this, — how free, how fine 
 To fear almost ! — of the limit-line. 
 Long ago the god, like me 
 The worm, learned, each in our degree : 
 Looked and loved, learned and drew. 
 
 Drew and learned and loved again. 
 While fast the happy minutes flew, 
 
 Till beauty mounted into his brain 
 And on the finger which outvied 
 
 His art he placed the ring that 's there, 
 Still by fancy's eye descried. 
 
 In token of a marriage rare : 
 For him on earth, his art's despair. 
 For him in heaven, his soid's fit bride. 
 
 Little girl with the poor coarse hand 
 I turned from to a cold clay east — 
 I have my lesson, understand 
 
 The worth of flesh and blood at last I 
 
 Nothing but beauty in a Hand ? 
 
 Because he could not change the hue. 
 
 Mend the lines and make them true 
 
 To this which met his soul's demand, — 
 
 Would Da Vinci turn from you ? 
 I hear him laugh my woes to scorn — 
 " The fool forsooth is all forlorn 
 Because the beauty, she thinks best. 
 Lived long ago or was never bom, — 
 Because no beauty bears the test 
 In this rough peasant Hand ! Confessed 
 ' Art is null and study void ! ' 
 So sayest thou ? So said not I, 
 Who threw the faulty pencil by. 
 And years instead of hours employed, 
 Learning the veritable use 
 Of flesh and bone and nerve beneath 
 Lines and hue of the outer sheath. 
 If haply I might reproduce 
 One motive of the powers profuse, 
 Flesh and bone and nerve that make 
 The poorest coarsest human hand 
 An object worthy to be scanned 
 A whole life long for their sole sake. 
 Shall earth and the cramped moment-space 
 Yield the heavenly crowning grace ? 
 Now the parts and then the whole ! 
 Who art thou, with stinted soul 
 And stunted body, thus to cry, 
 ' I love, — shall that be life's strait dole ? 
 I must live beloved or die ! ' 
 This peasant hand that spins the wool 
 And bakes the bread, why lives it on. 
 Poor and coarse with beauty gone, — 
 What use survives the beauty ? " Fool ! 
 
 Go, little girl with the poor coarse hand 1 
 I have my lesson, shall understand. 
 
 ON DECK 
 
 There is nothing to remember in me, 
 
 Nothing I ever said with a grace. 
 Nothing I did that you care to see. 
 
 Nothing I was that deserves a place 
 In your mind, now I leave you, set you free. 
 
 Conceded ! In turn, concede to me. 
 Such things have been as a mutual flame. 
 
 Your soul 's locked fast ; but, love for a key. 
 You might let it loose, tiU I grew the same 
 
 In your eyes, as in mine you stand: strange 
 plea! 
 
 For then, then, what would it matter to me 
 That I was the harsh, ill-favored one ? 
 
 We both should be like as pea and pea ; 
 It was ever so since the world begun : 
 
 So, let me proceed with my reverie. 
 
 How strange it were if you had all me, 
 As I have all yoa in my heart and brain. 
 
 You, whose least word brought gloom or glee. 
 Who never lifted the hand in vain — 
 
 Will hold mine yet, from over the sea I 
 
 Strange, if a face, when you thought of me, 
 Kose like your own face present now. 
 
 With eyes as dear in their due degree, 
 Much such a mouth, and as bright a brow. 
 
 Till you saw yourself, while you cried "Tis 
 She 1 " 
 
 Well, you may, you must, set down to me 
 Love that was life, life that was love ; 
 
 A tenure of breath at your lips' decree, 
 A passion to stand as your thoughts approve, 
 
 A rapture to fall where your foot might be. 
 
 But did one touch of such love for me 
 Come in a word or a look of yours, 
 
 Whose words and looks will, circling, flee 
 Round me and round while life endures, — 
 
 Could I fancy " As I feel, thus feels He ; " 
 
 Why, fade you might to a thing like me. 
 And your hair grow these coarse hanks of 
 hair. 
 Your skin, this bark of a gnarled tree, — 
 
 You might turn myself! — should I know or 
 care. 
 When I should be dead of joy, James Lee ? 
 
 GOLD HAIR 
 
 A STORY OF PORNIC 
 
 This poem was issued by itself as well as 
 included later in Dramatis Persona, and si- 
 multaneously with its appearance in Fngland it 
 was printed in The Atlantic Monthly. It was 
 written in Normandy, and in a letter printed in 
 
GOLD HAIR 
 
 377 
 
 Mrs. Orr's Life, II. 395, there is an account of 
 the destruction of the church referred to in the 
 poem. 
 
 Om, the beautiful girl, too white. 
 Who lived at Pornic, down by the sea, 
 
 Just where the sea and the Loire unite ! 
 And a boasted name in Brittany 
 
 She bore, which I will not write. 
 
 Too white, for the flower of life is red : 
 Her flesh was the soft seraphic screen 
 
 Of a soul that is meant (her parents said) 
 To just see earth, and hardly be seen. 
 
 And blossom in heaven instead. 
 
 Yet earth saw one thing, one how fair ! 
 
 One grace that grew to its full on earth : 
 Smiles might be sparse on her cheek so spare, 
 
 And her waist want half a gjirdle's girth, 
 But she had her great gold hair. 
 
 Hair, such a wonder of flix and floss. 
 Freshness and fragrance — floods of it, too ! 
 
 Gold, did I say ? Nay, gold 's mere dross : 
 Here, Life smiled. Thin 
 
 do! ■ 
 
 rhink what I meant to 
 
 And Love sighed, " Fancy my loss ! " 
 
 So, when she died, it was scarce more strange 
 Than that, when delicate evening dies, 
 
 And you follow its spent sun's pallid range, 
 There 's a shoot of color startles the skies 
 
 With sudden, violent change, — 
 
 That, while the breath was nearly to seek. 
 As they put the little cross to her lips. 
 
 She changed ; a spot came out on her cheek, 
 A spark from her eye in mid-eclipse, 
 
 And she broke forth, ^^ I must speak ! " 
 
 " Not my hair ! " made the girl her moan — 
 
 " All the rest is gone or to go ; 
 But the last, last grace, my all, my own. 
 
 Let it stay in the grave, that the ghosts may 
 know ! 
 Leave my poor gold hair alone ! " 
 
 The passion thus vented, dead lay she ; 
 
 Her parents sobbed their worst on that ; 
 All friends joined in, nor observed degree : 
 
 For indeed the hair was to wonder at, 
 As it spread — not flowing free. 
 
 But curled around her brow, like a crown. 
 And coiled beside her cheeks, like a cap, 
 
 And calmed about her neck — ay, down 
 To her breast, pressed flat, without a gap 
 
 I' the gold, it reached her gown. 
 
 All kissed that face, like a silver wedge 
 'Mid the yellow wealth, nor disturbed its hair : 
 
 E'en the priest allowed death's privilege. 
 As he planted the crucifix with care 
 
 On her breast, 'twixt edge and edge. 
 
 And thus was she buried, inviolate 
 Of body and soul, in the very space 
 
 By the altar ; keeping saintly state 
 
 In Pomic church, for her pride of race, 
 Pure life and piteous fate. 
 
 And in after-time would your fresh tear fall, 
 Though your mouth might twitch with a du- 
 bious smile. 
 
 As they told you of gold, both robe and pall. 
 How she prayed them leave it alone awhile, 
 
 So it never was touched at all. 
 
 Years flew ; this legend grew at last 
 The life of the lady j all she had done. 
 
 All been, in the memories fading fast 
 Of lover and friend, was summed in one 
 
 Sentence survivors passed ; 
 
 To wit, she was meant for heaven, not earth ; 
 
 Had turned an angel before the time : 
 Yet, since she was mortal, in such dearth 
 
 Of frailty, all you could count a crime 
 Was — she knew her gold hair's worth. 
 
 At little pleasant Fomic church. 
 It chanced, the pavement wanted repair, 
 
 Was taken to pieces : left in the lurch, 
 A certain sacred space lay bare. 
 
 And the boys began research. 
 
 'T was the space where our sires would lay a 
 saint, 
 
 A benefactor, — a bishop, suppose, 
 A baron with armor-adornments quaint. 
 
 Dame with chased ring and jewelled rose. 
 Things sanctity saves from taint ; 
 
 So we come to find them in after-days 
 When the corpse is presumed to have done 
 with gauds 
 Of use to the living, in many ways : 
 For the boys get pelf, and the town ap- 
 plauds. 
 And the church deserves the praise. 
 
 They grubbed with a will : and at lengrth — O 
 cor 
 Humanum, pectora c<Eca, and the rest ! — 
 They found — no gaud they were prying for. 
 No ring, no rose, but — who woiild have 
 guessed 9 — 
 A double Louis-d'or ! 
 
 Here was a case for the priest : he heard, 
 
 Marked, inwardly digested, laid 
 Finger on nose, smiled, " There 's a bird 
 
 Chirps in my ear ; " then, " Bring a spade. 
 Dig deeper I " — he gave the word. 
 
 And lo, when they came to the coffin-lid. 
 Or rotten planks which composed it once, 
 
 Why, there lay the girl's skull wedged amid 
 A mint of money, it served for the nonce 
 
 To hold in its hair-heaps hid ! 
 
 Hid there ? Why ? Could the girl be wont 
 (She the stainless soul) to treasure up 
 
378 
 
 DRAMATIS PERSONiE 
 
 Money, earth's trash and heayen's afiront ? 
 
 Had a spider f pund put the communion-cup, 
 Was a toad in the christening-font ? 
 
 Truth is truth : tpp true it was. 
 
 Cfpld ! She hparded and hugged it first, 
 Longed for it, -leaned o'er it, loved it — alas — 
 
 Till the humor grew to a head and burst, 
 And she cried, at the final pass, — 
 
 " Talk not of God, my heart is stone ! 
 
 Nor lover nor friend — be gold for both ! 
 Gold I lack ; and, my all, my own. 
 
 It shall hide in my hair. I scarce die loth 
 If they let my hair alone ! " 
 
 Louis-d'or, some six times five. 
 
 And duly double, every piece. 
 Now, do you see ? With the priest to shrive. 
 
 With parents preventing her soul's release 
 By kisses that kept alive, — 
 
 With heaven's gold gates about to ope. 
 With friends' praise, gold-like, lingering still, 
 
 An instinct had bidden the girl's hand grope 
 For gold, the true sort — ' Gold in heaven, if 
 you will ; 
 
 But I keep earth's too, I hope." 
 
 Enough ! The priest took the gi'ave's grim 
 yield ; 
 
 The parents, they eyed that price of sin 
 As if thirty pieces lay revealed 
 
 On the place to bury strangers in, 
 The hideous Potter's Field. 
 
 But the priest bethought him : " ' Milk that 's 
 spilt ' 
 
 — You know the adage ! Watch and pray ! 
 Saints tumble to earth with so slight a tilt ! 
 
 It would build a new altar ; that, we may ! " 
 And the altar therewith was built. 
 
 Why I deliver this horrible verse ? 
 
 As the text of a sermon, which now I preach : 
 Evil or good may be better or worse 
 
 In the human heart, but the mixtiire of each 
 Is a marvel and a curse. 
 
 The candid incline to surmise of late 
 
 That the Christian faith proves false, I find ; 
 
 For our Essays-and-Reviews' debate 
 Begins to tell on the public mind. 
 
 And Colenso's words have weight : 
 
 I still, to suppose it true, for my part. 
 See reasons and reasons ; this, to begin : 
 
 'T is the faith that launched point-blank her dart 
 At the head of a lie — taught Original Sin, 
 
 The Corruption of Man's Heart. 
 
 THE WORST OF IT 
 
 WouiiD it were I had been false, not you ! 
 
 I that am nothing, not you that are all : 
 I, never the worse for a touch or two 
 
 On my speckled hide ; not you, the pride 
 
 Of the, day, my swan, that a first fleck's fall 
 On l^er wonder of white must unswan, undo ! 
 
 I had dipped in life's struggle and, out again. 
 Bore specks of it here, there, easy to see, 
 
 When I found my swan and the cure was plain ; 
 The dull turned bright as I caught your white 
 
 On my bosom ; you saved me — saved in vain 
 If you ruined yourself, and all through me ! 
 
 Yes, all through the speckled beast that I am, 
 Who taught you to stoop ; you gave me your- 
 self. 
 And bound your soul by the vows that damn : 
 Since on better thought you break, as you 
 ought. 
 Vows — words, no angel set down, some elf 
 Mistook, — for an oath, an epigram ! 
 
 Yes, might I judge you, here were my heart. 
 And a hundred its like, to treat as you 
 pleased ! 
 I choose to be yours, for my proper part. 
 
 Yours, leave or take, or mar me or make ; 
 If I acquiesce, why should you be teased 
 With the conscience-prick and the memory- 
 smart ? 
 
 But what will God say ? Oh, my sweet. 
 Think, and be sorry you did this thing ! 
 
 Though earth were unworthy to feel your feet. 
 There's a heaven above may deserve your 
 love ; 
 
 Should you forfeit heaven for a snapt gold ring 
 And a promise broke, were it just or meet ? 
 
 And I to have tempted you ! I, who tried 
 Your soul, no doubt, till it sank ! Unwise, 
 
 I loved, and was lowly, loved and aspired. 
 Loved, grieving or glad, till 1 made you mad, 
 
 And you meant to have hated and despised — 
 Whereas, you deceived me nor mquired ! 
 
 She, ruined ? How ? No heaven for her ? 
 
 Crowns to give, and none for the brow 
 That looked like marble and smelt like myrrh ? 
 
 Shall the robe be worn, and the palm-branch 
 borne, 
 And she go graceless, she graced now 
 
 Beyond all saints, as themselves aver ? 
 
 Hardly ! That must be understood ! 
 
 The earth is your place of penance, then ; 
 And what will it prove ? I desire your good. 
 
 But, plot as I may, I can find no way 
 How a blow should fall, such as falls on men. 
 
 Nor prove too much for your womanhood. 
 
 It will come, I suspect, at the end of life. 
 When you walk alone, and review the past ; 
 
 And I, who so long shall have done with strife. 
 And journeyed my stage and earned my wage 
 
 And retired as was right, — I am called at 
 last 
 When the devil stabs you, to lend the knife. 
 
 He stabs for the minute of trivial wrong, 
 Nor the other hours are able to save, 
 
'DtS ALITER VISUM 
 
 379 
 
 The happy, that lasted my whole life long : 
 For a promise broke, not for first words spoke, 
 
 The true, the only, that turn my grave 
 To a blaze of joy and a crash of song. 
 
 Witness beforehand 1 Off I trip 
 
 On a safe path gay through the flowers you 
 ■ flung: : 
 My very name made great by your lip. 
 
 And my heart aglow with the good I know 
 Of a perfect year when we both were young. 
 
 And I tasted the angels' fellowship. 
 
 Asid witness, moreover . . . Ah, but wait I 
 
 I spy the loop whence an arrow shoots ! 
 It may be for yourself, when you meditate. 
 That you grieve— for slain ruth, murdered 
 truth : 
 "Though falsehood escape in the end, what 
 boots? 
 How truth would have triumphed! " — you 
 sigh too late. 
 
 Ay, who would have triumphed like you, I 
 say I 
 Well, it is lost now ; well, you must bear, 
 Abide and grow fit for a. better day : 
 You should hardly grudge, could I be your 
 judge ! 
 But hush 1 For you, can be no despair : 
 There 's amends : 't is a secret : hope and pray 1 
 
 For I was true at least — oh, true enough ! 
 
 And, Dear, truth is not as good as it seems ! 
 Commend me to conscience ! Idle stuff ! 
 
 Much help is in mine, as I mope and pine. 
 And sludk through day, and scowl in my dreams 
 
 At my swan's obtaining the crow's rebuff. 
 
 Men tell me of truth now — " False ! " I cry : 
 Of beauty — "A mask, friend! Look be- 
 neath ! " 
 
 We take our own method, the devil and I, 
 With pleasant and fair and wise and rare ; 
 
 And the best we Avish to what lives, is — death ; 
 Which even in wishing, perhaps we lie ! 
 
 Far better commit a fault and have done — 
 As you. Dear ! — forever ; and choose the 
 pure. 
 
 And look where the healing waters run. 
 And strive and strain to be good again. 
 
 And a place in the other world ensure. 
 All glass and gold, with God for its sun. 
 
 Misery ! Wliat shall I say or do ? 
 
 I cannot advise, or, at least, persuade : 
 Most like, you are glad you deceived me — 
 rue 
 
 No whit of the wrong : you endured too long, 
 Have done no evil and want no aid. 
 
 Will live the old life out and chance the 
 
 And your sentence is written all thfe same. 
 And I can do nothing, — pray, perhaps : 
 
 But somehow the world pursues its game, — 
 If I pray, if I curse, — for better or worse : 
 
 And my faith is torn to a thousand scraps. 
 And my heart feels ice while my words 
 breathe flame. 
 
 Dear, I look from nay hiding-place. 
 
 Are you still so fair ? Have you still the eyes ? 
 Be happy ! Add but the other grace. 
 
 Be good ! Why want what the angels vaunt ? 
 I knew you once : but in Paradise, 
 
 If we meet, I wUl pass nor turn my face. 
 
 d!s ALITER VISUM; 
 
 OR, LE BYRON DE NOS JOUR.S 
 
 Stop, let me have the truth of that ! 
 
 ]i that all true ? I say, the day 
 Ten years ago when both of us 
 
 Met on a morning, friends — as thus 
 We meet this evening, friends or what ? -^ 
 
 Did you ^because I took your arm 
 And sillily smiled, " A mass of brass 
 
 That sea looks, blazing underneath ! " 
 While up the cliff-road edged with heath, 
 
 We took the turns nor came to harm — 
 
 Did you consider, " Now makes twice 
 That I have seen her, walked and talked 
 
 With this poor pretty thoughtful thing. 
 Whose worth I weigh : she tries to sing ; 
 
 Draws, hopes in time the eye grows nice ; 
 
 " Reads verse and thinks she understands ; 
 
 Loves all, at any rate, that 's great. 
 Good, beautiful ; , but much as we 
 
 Down at the bath-house love the sea, 
 Who breathe its salt and bruise its sands : 
 
 " While ... do but follow the fishing-gull 
 That flaps and floats from wave to cave ! 
 
 There 's the searlover, fair my friend ! 
 What then ? Be patient, mark and mend l 
 
 Had you the making of your skull ? " 
 
 And did yon, when we faced tho church 
 With spire and sad slate roof, aloof 
 
 From human fellowship so far. 
 Where a few graveyard .crosses are, 
 
 And garlands for the swallows' perch, — 
 
 Did you determine, as we stepped 
 O'er the lone stone fence, " Let me get 
 
 Her for myself, and what 's the earth 
 With all its art, verse, music, worth — 
 
 Compared with love, found, gained, and kept ? 
 
 " Schumann 's our music-maker now ; 
 
 Has his march-movement youth and mouth f 
 In^es 's the modem man that paints ; 
 
 Which will lean on me, of his saints ? 
 Heine for songs ; for kisses, how ? " 
 
 And did you, when we entered, reached 
 
 The votive frigate, soft aloft 
 Kiding on air this hundred years. 
 
 Safe-smiling at old hopes and fears, — 
 Did you draw profit while she preached ? 
 
38o 
 
 DRAMATIS PERSONS 
 
 Resolving, " Fools we wise men g:i'ow i 
 
 Yes, I could easily blurt out curt 
 Some question that might find reply 
 
 As prompt in her stopped lips, dropped eye, 
 And rush of red to cheek and brow : 
 
 " Thus were a match made, sure and fast, 
 'Mid the blue weed-flowers round the mound 
 
 Where, issuing, we shall stand and stay 
 For one more look at baths and bay. 
 
 Sands, sea-gulls, and the old church last — 
 
 " A match 'twixt me, bent, wigged aud lamed, 
 Famous, however, for verse and worse. 
 
 Sure of the Fortieth spare Arm-chair 
 When gout and glory seat me there, 
 
 So, one whose love-freaks pass unblamed, — 
 
 " And this young beauty, round and sound 
 As a mountain-apple, youth and truth 
 
 With loves and doves, at all events 
 With money in the Tliree per Cents ; 
 
 Whose choice of me would seem profound : — 
 
 *' She might take me as I take her. 
 
 Perfect the hour would pass, alas ! 
 Climb high, love high, what matter ? Still, 
 
 Feet, feelings, must descend the hill : 
 An hour's perfection can't recur. 
 
 " Then follows Paris and full time 
 For both to reason : ' Thus with us ! ' 
 
 She '11 sigh, ' Thus girls give body and soul 
 At first word, think they gain the goal. 
 
 When 't is the starting-place they climb ! 
 
 " ' My friend makes verse and gets renown ; 
 
 Have they all fifty years, his peers ? 
 He knows the world, firm, quiet and gay ; 
 
 Boys will become as much one day : 
 They 're fools ; he cheats, with beard less 
 brown. 
 
 " ' For boys say, Love me or Idle ! 
 
 He did not say. The truth is^ youth 
 I want, who am old and know too much ; 
 
 I 'd catch youth : lend me sight and touch ! 
 Drop hearVs blood where life's wheels grate dry ! ' 
 
 " While I should make rejoinder " — (then 
 It was no doubt, you ceased that least 
 
 Light pressure of my arm in youi-s) — 
 " ' 1 can conceive of cheaper cures 
 
 For a yawning-fit o'er books and men. 
 
 " ' What ? All I am, was, and might be, 
 All, books taught, art brought, life's whole 
 strife, 
 
 Painful results since precious, just 
 Were fitly exchanged, in wise disgust. 
 
 For two cheeks freshened by youth and sea ? 
 
 " ' All for a nosegay ! — what came first ; 
 
 With fields on flower, untried each side ; 
 I rally, need my books and men, 
 
 And find a nosegay : ' drop it, then, 
 No match yet made for best or worst I " 
 
 That ended me. You judged the porch 
 We left by, Norman ; took our look 
 
 At sea and sky ; wondered so few 
 Find out the place for air and view ; 
 
 Remarked the sun began to scorch ; 
 
 Descended, soon regained the baths. 
 And then, good-by ! Years ten since then : 
 
 Ten years ! We meet : you tell me, now, 
 By a window-seat for that cliff-brow, 
 
 On carpet-stripes for those .sand-paths. 
 
 Now I may speak : you fool, for all 
 Your lore ! Who made things plain in vain ? 
 
 What was the sea for ? What, the gray 
 Sad church, that solitary day, 
 
 Crosses and graves and swallows' call ? 
 
 Was there naught better than to enjoy ? 
 
 No feat which, done, would make time break. 
 And let us pent-up creatures through 
 
 Into eternity, our due ? 
 No forcing earth teach heaven's employ ? 
 
 No wise beginning, here and now. 
 
 What cannot gi'ow complete (earth's feat) 
 
 And heaven must finish, there and then ? 
 No tasting earth's true food for men, 
 
 Its sweet in sad, its sad in sweet ? 
 
 No grasping at love, gaining a share 
 O' the sole spark from God's life at strife 
 
 With death, so, sure of range above 
 The limits here ? For us and love. 
 
 Failure ; but, when God fails, despair. 
 
 This you call wisdom ? Thus you add 
 
 Good unto good again, in vain V 
 You loved, with body worn and weak ; 
 
 I loved, with faculties to seek : 
 Were both loves worthless since ill-clad ? 
 
 Let the mere star-fish in his vault 
 
 Crawl in a wash of weed, indeed, 
 Rose-jacynth to the finger-tips ; 
 
 He, whole in body and sotu, outstrips 
 Man, found with either in default. 
 
 But what 's whole can increase no more. 
 Is dwarfed and dies, since here 's its spliere. 
 
 The devil laughed at you in his sleeve ! 
 You know not ? That I well believe ; 
 
 Or you had saved two souls : nay, four. 
 
 For Stephanie sprained last night her wrist. 
 Ankle or something. " Pooh," cry you ? 
 
 At any rate she danced, all say. 
 Vilely ; her vogue has had its day. 
 
 Here comes my husband from his wliist. 
 
 TOO LATE 
 
 Heke was I with my arm and heart 
 And brain, all yours for a word, a want 
 
 Put into a look — just a look, your part, — 
 While mine, to repay it . . . vainest vaunt, 
 
TOO LATE 
 
 381 
 
 Were the woman, that 'a dead, alive to hear, 
 
 Had her lover, that 's lost, love's proof to 
 show .' 
 But 1 cannot show it ; you cannot speak 
 
 From the churchyard neither, miles removed. 
 Though I feel by a pulse within my cheek, 
 
 Which stabs and stops, that the woman I 
 loved 
 Xeeds help in her grave and finds none near. 
 
 Wants warmth from the heart which sends it 
 
 Did I speak once angrily, all the drear days 
 
 You nved, you woman I loved so well. 
 Who married the other ? Blame or praise. 
 
 Where was the use then ? Time would tell. 
 And the end declare what man for you, 
 
 What woman for me, was the choice of God. 
 But, Edith dead ! no doubting more ! 
 
 I used to sit and look at my life 
 As it rippled and ran till, right before, 
 
 A great stone stopped it : oh, the strife 
 Of waves at the stone some devil threw 
 
 In my life's midcurrent, thwarting God 1 
 
 Bnt either I thought, " They may chum and 
 chide 
 
 Awhile, my waves which came for their joy 
 And found this horrible stone full-tide : 
 
 Yet I see just a thread escape, deploy 
 Through the evening-country, silent and safe. 
 
 And it suffers no more till it finds the sea.' 
 Or else I would think, " Perhaps some night 
 
 When new things happen, a meteor-ball 
 May slip through the sky in a line of light. 
 
 And earth breathe hard, and landmarks fall. 
 And my waves no longer champ nor chafe. 
 
 Since a stone will have rolled from its place ; 
 let be 1 " 
 
 Bnt, dead ! All 's done with : wait who may, 
 
 Watch and wear and wonder who will. 
 Oh, my whole life that ends to-day ! 
 
 Oh, my soul's sentence, sounding still, 
 " The woman is dead that was none of his ; 
 
 And the man that was none of hers may go ! " 
 There 's only the past left : worry that ! 
 
 Wreak, like a bull, on the empty coat, 
 Kaee, its late wearer is laughing at I 
 
 Tear the collar to rags, having missed his 
 throat ; 
 Stpke stupidly on — " This, this and this. 
 
 Where I would that a bosom received the 
 blow ! " 
 
 I ought to have done more : once my speech. 
 
 And once your answer, and there, the end, 
 And Edith was henceforth out of reach ! 
 
 Why, men do more to deserve a friend. 
 Be rid of a foe, get rich, grow wise. 
 
 Nor, folding tneir arms, stare fate in the face. 
 Why, better even have burst like a thief 
 
 And borne you away to a rock for us two. 
 In a moment's horror, bright, bloody and brief. 
 
 Then changed to myself again — " I slew 
 Myself in that moment ; a ruffian lies 
 
 Somewhere : your slave, see, bom in his 
 place ! " 
 
 What did the other do ? You be judge ! 
 
 Look at us, Edith 1 Here are we both ! 
 Give him his six whole years : I grudge 
 
 None of the life with you, nay, loatne 
 Myself that I grudged his start in advance 
 
 Of me who could overtake and pass. 
 Bnt, as if he loved ^ou ! No, not he, 
 
 Nor any one else in the world, 't is plain ; 
 Who ever heard that another, free 
 
 As I, young, prosperous, sound and sane. 
 Poured life out, proffered it — " Half a glance 
 
 Of those eyes of yours and I drop the glass 1 " 
 
 Handsome, were you ? 'T is more than they 
 held. 
 
 More than they said ; I was 'ware and 
 watched : 
 I was the scapegrace, this rat belled 
 
 The cat, this fool got his whiskers scratched : 
 The others ? No head that was turned, no heart 
 
 Broken, my lady, assure yourself I 
 Each soon made his mind up ; so and so 
 
 Married a dancer, such and such 
 Stole his friend's wife, stagnated slow. 
 
 Or maundered, unable to do as much. 
 And muttered of peace where be had no part : 
 
 While, hid in the closet, laid on the shelf, — 
 
 On the whole, you were let alone, I think ! 
 
 So, you looked to the other, who acquiesced ; 
 My rival, the proud man, — prize your pink 
 
 Of poets ! A poet he was I I 've guessed : 
 He rhymed you his rubbish nobody read. 
 
 Loved you and doved you — did not I langh 1 
 There was a prize ! But we both were tried. 
 
 Oh, heart of mine, marked broad with her 
 mark, 
 Tekel^ found wanting, set aside. 
 
 Scorned ! See, I bleed these tears in the dark 
 Till comfort come and the last be bled : 
 
 He ? He is tagging your epitaph. 
 
 If it would only come over again ! 
 
 — Time to be patient with me, and probe 
 This heart till you punctured the proper vein, 
 
 Just to learn what blood is : twitch the robe 
 From that blank lay-figure your fancy draped. 
 
 Prick the leathern heart till the — verses 
 spirt! 
 And late it was easy ; late, you walked 
 
 Where a friend might meet you ; Edith's 
 name 
 Arose to one's lip if one laughed or talked ; 
 
 If I heard good news, you heard the same ; 
 When I woke, I knew that your breath escaped ; 
 
 I could bide my time, keep alive, alert. 
 
 And alive I shall keep and long, you will see I 
 
 I knew a man, was kicked like a dog 
 From gutter to cesspool ; what cared he 
 
 So long as he picked from the filth his prog ? 
 He saw youth, beauty and genius die, 
 
 And jollily lived to his hundredth year. 
 But I will live otherwise : none of such life I 
 
 At once I begin as I mean to end. 
 Go on with the world, get gold in its strife. 
 
 Give your spouse the sUp and betray your 
 friend I 
 
382 
 
 DRAMATIS PERSONS 
 
 There are two who decline, a, woman and I, 
 And enjoy our death in the darkness here. 
 
 I liked that way you had with your earls 
 
 Wound to a ball in a net behind : 
 Your cheek was chaste as a Quaker-girl's, 
 And your mouth — there was never, to my 
 mind. 
 Such a funny mouth, for it would not shut ; 
 And the dented chin too — what a chin ! 
 There were certain ways when you spoke, some 
 
 words 
 . That you know you never could pronounce : 
 You were thin, however ; like a bird's 
 Your hand seemed — some would say, the 
 pounce 
 Of a scaly-footed hawk — all but ! 
 The world was right when it called you thin. 
 
 But I turn my back on the world : I take 
 
 Your hand^and kneel, and lay to my lips. 
 Bid me live, Edith ! Lfet me slake 
 
 Thirst at your presence ! Fear no slips : 
 'Tis your slave shall pay, while his soul en- 
 dures. 
 
 Full due, love's whole debt, summum jus. 
 My queen shall have high observance, planned 
 
 Courtship made perfect, no least line 
 Crossed without warrant. There you stand. 
 
 Warm too, and white too : would this wine 
 Had washed all over that body of yours. 
 
 Ere I drank it, and you down with it, thus ! 
 
 ABT VOGLER 
 
 (AFTER HE HAS BEEN EXTEMPORIZING UPON 
 THE MUSICAL INSTRUMENT OF HIS INVENTION) 
 
 Would that the structure brave, the manifold 
 music I build, 
 Bidding my organ obey, calling its keys to 
 their work, 
 Claiming each slave of the sound, at a touch, as 
 wheii Solomon willed 
 Armies of angels that soar, legions of demons 
 that lurk, 
 Man, brute, reptile, fly, — alien of end and of 
 aim. 
 Adverse, each from the other heaven-high, 
 hell-deep removed, — 
 Should rush into sight at once as he named the 
 ineffable Name, 
 And pile him a palace straight, to pleasure 
 the princess he loved ! 
 
 Would it might tarry like his, the beautiful 
 building of mine, 
 This which my keys in a crowd pressed and 
 importuned to raise ! 
 Ah, one and all, how they helped, would dispart 
 now and now combine. 
 Zealous to hasten the work, heighten their 
 master his piraise 1 _ 
 And one would btiry his brow with a blind 
 plunge down to hell, 
 BuiTOw awhile and build, bl-oad on the roots 
 of things. 
 
 Then up again swim into sight, having based 
 me my palace well, 
 Founded it, fearless of flame, flat on the 
 nether springs. 
 
 And another would mount and march, like the 
 excellent minion he was, 
 Ay, another and yet another, one crowd but 
 with many a crest, 
 Raising my rampired walls of gold as transpar- 
 ent as glass. 
 Eager to do and die, yield each his place to 
 the rest : 
 For higher still and higher (as a runner tips 
 with fire. 
 When a great illumination surprises a festal 
 night — 
 Outlined round and round Rome's dome from 
 space to spire) 
 Up, the pinnacled glory reached, and the 
 pride of my soul was in sight. 
 
 In sight ? Not half ! for it seemed, it was 
 certain, to match man's birth, 
 Nature in turn conceived, obeying an impulse 
 as I; 
 And the emulous heaven yearned down, made 
 effort to reach the earth. 
 As the earth had done her best, in my passion, 
 to scale the sky : 
 Novel splendors burst forth, grew familiar and 
 dwelt with mine, 
 Not a point nor peak but found and fixed ils 
 wandering star ; 
 Meteor-moons, balls of blaze : and they did not 
 pale nor pine. 
 For earth had attained to heaven, there was 
 no more near nor far. 
 
 Nay more ; for there wanted not who walked 
 
 in the glare and glow, 
 Presences plain in the place ; or, fresh from 
 
 the Protoplast, 
 Furnished for ages to come, when a kindlier 
 
 wind should blow. 
 Lured now to begin and live, in a house to 
 
 their liking at last ; 
 Or else the wonderful Dead who have passed 
 
 through the body and gone, 
 But were back once more to breathe in an old 
 
 world worth their new ; 
 What never had been, was now ; what was, as 
 
 it shall be anon : 
 And what is, — shall 1 say, matched both ? for 
 
 I was made perfect too. 
 
 All through my keys that gave their sounds to 
 a wish of my soul, 
 AH through my soul that praised as its wish 
 flowed visibly forth. 
 All through music and me ! For think, had I 
 painted the whole, 
 Wliy, there it had stood, to see, nor the pro- 
 cess so wonder-worth ; 
 Had I written the same, made verse — still, 
 effect proceeds from cause. 
 Ye know why the forms are fair, ye hear how 
 the tale is told ; 
 
RABBI BEN EZRA 
 
 383 
 
 It is all triamphant art, but art iu obedience to 
 laws, 
 Paiuter and poet are proud in the artist-list 
 eiu'olled : — 
 
 But here is the finger of God, a flash of the will 
 that can, 
 Existent behind all laws, that mads tliem 
 and, lo, they are ! 
 And I know not if, save in this, such gift be 
 allowed to man, 
 That out of three sounds he frame, not a 
 fourth sound, but a star. 
 Consider it well : each tone of our scale in itself 
 is naught : 
 It is everywhere in the world — loud, soft, 
 and all is said : 
 Give it to me to use ! I mix it with two in my 
 thought : 
 And there ! Ye have heard and seen : con- 
 sider and bow the head ! 
 
 Well, it is gone at last, the palace of music I 
 reared ; 
 Gone ! and the good tears start, the praises 
 that come too slow ; 
 For one is assured at first, one scarce can say 
 that he feared. 
 That he even gave it a thought, the gone 
 thing was to go. 
 Never to be again ! But many more of the 
 kind 
 As good, nay, better perchance : is this your 
 comfort to me ? 
 To me, who must be saved because I cling with 
 my mind 
 To the same, same self, same love, same God : 
 ay, what was, shall be. 
 
 Therefore to whom turn I but to thee, the 
 ineffable Name ? 
 Builder and maker, thou, of houses not 
 made with hands ! 
 What, have fear of change from thee who art 
 ever the same ? 
 Doubt that thy power can fill the heart that 
 thy power expands ? 
 There shall never be one lost good ! What was, 
 shall live as before ; 
 The evil is null, is naught, is silence implying 
 sound ; 
 What was good shall be good, with, for evil, 
 so much good more ; 
 On the earth the broken arcs ; in the heaven 
 a perfect rotmd. 
 
 All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good 
 shall exist ; 
 Not its semblance, but itself ; no beauty, nor 
 good, nor power 
 Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives 
 for the melodist 
 When eternity affirms the conception of an 
 hour. 
 The high that proved too high, the heroic for 
 earth too hard. 
 The passion that left the ground to lose itself 
 in the sky. 
 
 Are music sent up to God by the lover and the 
 bard: 
 Enough that he heard it once ; we shall hear 
 it by and by. 
 
 And what is our failure here but a triuraijh's 
 evidence 
 For the fulness of the days V Have we with- 
 ered or agonized ? 
 Why else was the pause prolonged but that 
 singing might issue thence ? 
 Why rushed the discords in, but that harmony 
 should be prized ? 
 Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to 
 clear. 
 Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of the 
 weal and woe : 
 But God has a few of us whom he whispers in 
 the ear ; 
 The rest may reason and welcome : 't is we 
 musicians know. 
 
 Well, it is earth with me ; silence resumes her 
 reign : 
 1 will be patient and proud, and soberly 
 acquiesce. 
 Give roe the keys. I feel for the common chord 
 again. 
 Sliding by semitones till I sink to the minor, 
 — yes. 
 And I blunt it into a ninth, and I stand on 
 alien ground, 
 Surveying awhile the heights I rolled from 
 into the deep ; 
 Which, hark, 1 have dared and done, for my 
 resting-place is found. 
 The C Major of this life : so, now I will try 
 to sleep. 
 
 RABBI BEN EZRA 
 
 Grow old along with me ! 
 The best is yet to be. 
 
 The last of life, for which the first was made : 
 Our times are in his hand 
 Who saith, " A whole I planned. 
 Youth shows but half ; trust God : see all, nor 
 be afraid ! " 
 
 Not that, amassing flowers. 
 Youth sighed, " Which rose make ours. 
 Which lily leave and then as best recall? " 
 Not that, admiring stars. 
 It yearned, " Nor Jove, nor Mars ; 
 Mine be some figured flame which blends, tran- 
 scends them all ! " 
 
 Not for such hopes and fears 
 
 Annulling youth's brief years, 
 
 Do I remonstrate : folly wide the mark ! 
 
 Rather I prize the doubt 
 
 Low kind^ exist without. 
 
 Finished and fixdte clods, untroubled by a 
 
 Poor vaunt of life indeed. 
 
 Were man but formed to feed 
 
 On joy, to solely seek and find and feast ; 
 
384 
 
 DRAMATIS PERSONS 
 
 Such feasting ended, then 
 As sure an end to men ; 
 
 Irks ears the crop full bird ? Frets doubt the 
 maw-craiumed beast ? 
 
 Rejoice we are allied 
 To that which doth provide 
 And not partake, efifeot and not receive ! 
 A spark disturbs our elod ; 
 Nearer we hold of God 
 
 Who irives, than of his tribes that take, I must 
 believe. 
 
 Then, welcome each rebuff 
 That turns earth's smoothness rough. 
 Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go ! 
 Be our joys three-parts pain ! 
 Strive, and hold cheap the strain ; 
 Learn, nor account the pang ; dare, never 
 grudge the throe ! 
 
 For thence, — a paradox 
 Which comforts while it mocks, — 
 Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail : 
 What I aspired to be. 
 And was not, comforts me : 
 A brute I might have been, but would not sink 
 i' the scale. 
 
 What is he but a brute 
 
 Whose flesh has soul to suit. 
 
 Whose spirit works lest arms and legs want 
 
 play? 
 To man, propose this test — 
 Thy body at its best. 
 How far can that project thy soul on its lone 
 
 way? 
 
 Yet gifts should prove their iise : 
 I own the Past profuse 
 Of powe*ieach side, perfection every turn : 
 Eyes, ears took in their dole, 
 Brain treasured up the whole ; 
 Should not the heart beat once " How good to 
 live and learn " ? 
 
 Not once beat " Praise be thine ! 
 
 I see the whole design, 
 
 I, who saw power, see now Love perfect 
 
 too; 
 Perfect I call thy plan : 
 Thanks that I was a man ! 
 Maker, remake, complete, — I trust what thou 
 
 shalt do!'' 
 
 For pleasant is this flesh ; 
 Our soul, in its rose-mesh 
 
 Pulled ever to the earth, still yearns for rest : 
 Would we some prize might hold 
 To match those manifold 
 
 Possessions of the brute, — gain most, as we 
 did best ! 
 
 Let us not always say, 
 
 "Spite of this flesh to-day 
 
 I strove, made head, gained ground upon the 
 
 whole ! " 
 As the bird wings and sings, 
 
 Let us cry ," All good thmgs 
 Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than 
 flesh helps soul 1 " 
 
 Therefore I summon age 
 To grant youth's heritage. 
 Life's struggle having so far reached its term; 
 Thence sh^ I pass, approved 
 A man, for aye removed 
 
 From the developed brute ; a. God though in 
 the germ. 
 
 And I shall thereupon 
 
 Take rest, ere I be gone 
 
 Once more on my adventure brave and new : 
 
 Fearless and unperplexed. 
 
 When I wage battle next. 
 
 What weapons to select, what armor to indue. 
 
 Youth ended, I shall try 
 My gain or loss thereby ; 
 Leave the fire ashes, what survives is gold ; 
 And I shall weigh the same. 
 Give life its praise or blame ; 
 Young, all lay in dispute ; I shall know, being 
 old. 
 
 For note, when evening shuts, 
 A certain moment cuts 
 The deed off, calls the glory from the gray : 
 A whisper from the west 
 Shoots — " Add this to the rest. 
 Take it and try its worth : here dies another 
 day." 
 
 So, still within this life. 
 Though lifted o'er its stiife, 
 Let me discern, compare, pronounce at last, 
 " This ra^e was right i' the main, 
 That acquiescence vain : 
 
 The Future I may face now 1 have proved the 
 Past." 
 
 For more is not reserved 
 To man, with soul just nerved 
 To act to-morrow what he learns to-day : 
 Here, work enough to watch 
 The Master work, and catch 
 Hints of the proper craft, tricks of the tool's true 
 play. 
 
 As it was better, youth 
 
 Should strive, through aots uncouth. 
 
 Toward making, than repose on aught found 
 
 made: 
 So, better, age, exempt 
 From strife, should know, than tempt 
 Further. Thou waitedst age : wait death nor 
 
 be afraid ! 
 
 Enough noAv, if the Right 
 
 And Good and Infinite 
 
 Be named here, as thou oallest thy hand 
 
 thine own, 
 With knowledge absolute, 
 Subject to no dispute 
 From fools that crowded youth, nor let thee 
 
 feel alone. 
 
A DEATH IN THE DESERT 
 
 38s 
 
 Be fliere, for once and all, 
 Severed great minds from small, 
 Announced to each his station in the Past I 
 Was I, the world arraigned, 
 Were they, my soul disdained, 
 Eight ? 1-cet age apeak the truth and give us 
 peace at last I 
 
 Now, who shall arbitrate ? 
 Ten men love what I hate. 
 Shun what I follow, slight what I receive ; 
 Ten, who in ears and eyes 
 Match me : we all surmise, 
 They this thing, and I that : whom shall my 
 soul believe ? 
 
 Not on the vulgar mass 
 
 Called " work," must sentence pass, 
 
 Things done, that took the eye and had the 
 
 price ; 
 O'er which, from level stand. 
 The low world laid its hand, 
 Found straightway to its mind, could value in 
 
 a trice ; 
 
 But all, the world's coarse thumb 
 And finger failed to plumb. 
 So passed in making up the main account ; 
 AU instincts immature. 
 All purposes unsure. 
 
 That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the 
 man's amount : 
 
 Thoughts hardly to be packed 
 
 Into a narrow act. 
 
 Fancies that broke through language and 
 
 escaped ; 
 AU I could never be, 
 All, men ignored in me. 
 This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the 
 
 pitcher shaped. 
 
 Ay, note that Potter's wheel. 
 
 That metaphor ! and feel 
 
 Why time spins fast, why passive lies our 
 
 clay, — 
 Thou, to whom fools propound, 
 When the wine makes its round, 
 " Since life fleets, all is change ; the Past gone, 
 
 seize to-day ! " 
 
 Fool I All that is, at all. 
 
 Lasts ever, past recall ; 
 
 Karth changes, but thy soul and God stand 
 
 sure: 
 What entered into thee. 
 That was, is, and shall be : 
 Time's wheel runs back or stops : Potter and 
 
 clay endure. 
 
 He fixed thee 'mid this dance 
 
 Of plastic circumstance, 
 
 This Present, thou, forsooth, would fain ar- 
 rest : 
 
 Machinery just meant 
 
 To give thy soul its bent. 
 
 Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently im- 
 pressed. 
 
 What though the earlier gi'ooves, 
 Which ran the laughing loves 
 Around thy base, no longer pause and press ? 
 What though, about thy rim, 
 SkuU-things in order grim 
 Grow out, in graver mood, obey the sterner 
 stress ? 
 
 Look not thou down but up t 
 
 To uses of a cup. 
 
 The festal board, lamp's flash and trumpet's 
 
 peal. 
 The new wine's foaming flow. 
 The Master's lips aglow ! 
 Thou, heaven's consummate cup, what needst 
 
 thou with earth's wheel ? 
 
 But I need, now as then. 
 Thee, God, who mouldest men ; 
 And since, not even while the whirl was worst, 
 Did I — to the wheel of life 
 With shapes and colors rife. 
 Bound dizzily — mistake my end, to slake thy 
 thirst : 
 
 So, take and use thy work : 
 
 Amend what flaws may lurk. 
 
 What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the 
 
 aim I 
 My times be in thy hand ! 
 Perfect the cup as planned I 
 Let age approve of youth, and death complete 
 
 the same t 
 
 A DEATH IN THE DESERT 
 
 [Supposed of Pamphylax the Antiochene : 
 It is a parchment, of my rolls the fifth. 
 Hath three skins glued together, is all Greek, 
 And goeth from Mpsilon down to Mu : 
 Lies second in the surnamed Chosen Chest, 
 Stained and conserved with juice of terebinth. 
 Covered with cloth of hair, and lettered Xi, 
 From Xanthus, my wife's uncle now at peace : 
 Mu and Epsilon stand for my own name. 
 I may not write it, but I make a cross 
 To snow I wait His coming, with the rest. 
 And leave off here : beginneth Pamphylax.] 
 
 I said, " If one should wet his lips with wine. 
 
 And slip the broadest plantain-leaf we find. 
 
 Or else the lappet of a linen robe. 
 
 Into the water-vessel, lay it right. 
 
 And cool his forehead just above the eyes. 
 
 The while a brother, kneeling either side, 
 
 Should chafe each hand and try to make it 
 
 warm, — 
 He is not so far gone but he might speak." 
 
 This did not happen in the outer cave, 
 Nor in the secret chamber of the rock. 
 Where, sixty days since the decree was out. 
 We had him, bedded on a camel-skin. 
 And waited for his dying all the while ; 
 But in the midmost grotto : since noon's light 
 Reached there a little, and we wonld not lose 
 The last of what might happen on his face. 
 
386 
 
 DRAMATIS PERSON.E 
 
 I at the head, and Xanthas at the {eet, 
 With Valens and the Boy, had lifted him. 
 And brought him from the chamber in the 
 
 depths. 
 And laid him in the light where we might see : 
 For certain smiles began about his mouth, 
 And his lids moved, presageful of the end. 
 
 Beyond, and halfway up tbe mouth o' the cave, 
 The Bactrian convert, having his desire, 
 Kept watch, and made pretence to graze a goat 
 That gave us milk, on rags of various herb, 
 Plantain and quitch, the rocks' shade keeps 
 
 alive : 
 So that if any thief or soldier passed, 
 (Because the persecution was aware,) 
 Yielding the goat up promptly with his life. 
 Such man might pass on, joyful at a prize. 
 Nor care to pry into the cool o' the cave. 
 Outside was all noon and the burning blue. 
 
 " Here is wine," answered Xanthus, — dropped 
 
 a drop ; 
 I stooped and placed the lap of cloth aright, 
 Then chafed his right hand, and the Boy his left; 
 But Valens had bethought hiin, and produced 
 And broke a ball of nard, and made perfume. 
 Only, he did — not so much wake, as — turn 
 And smile a little, as a sleeper does 
 If any dear one call him, touch his face — 
 And smiles and loves, but will not be disturbed. 
 
 Then Xanthus said a prayer, but stUl he slept : 
 
 It is the Xjinthus that escaped to Rome, 
 
 Was burned, and could not write the chronicle. 
 
 Then the Boy sprang up from his knees, and 
 
 ran. 
 Stung by the splendor of a sudden thought, 
 And fetched the seventh plate of graven lead 
 Out of the secret chamber, found a place. 
 Pressing with finger on the deeper dints, 
 And spoke, as 't were his mouth proclaiming 
 
 first, 
 " I am the Resurrection and the Life." 
 
 Whereat he opened his eyes wide at once. 
 And sat up of himself, and looked at us ; 
 And thenceforth nobody pronounced a word ; 
 Only, outside, the Bactrian cried his cry 
 Like the lone desert-bird that wears the ruff, 
 As signal we were safe, from time to time. 
 
 First he said, " If a friend declared to me, 
 This niy son Valena, this my other son. 
 Were James and Peter, — nay, declared as well 
 This lad was very John, ^- 1 could believe I 
 — Could, for a moment, doubtlessly believe : 
 So is myself withdrawn into my depths. 
 The soul retreated from the perished brain 
 Whence it was wont to feel and use the world 
 Through these dull members, done with long 
 
 ago. 
 Yet I myself remain ; I feel myself : 
 And there is nothing lost. Let be, awhile ! " 
 
 [This is the doctrine he was wont to teach. 
 How divers persons witness in each man, 
 
 Three souls which make up one soui : first, to 
 
 wit, 
 A soul of each and all the bodily parts. 
 Seated therein, which works, and is what Does, 
 And has the use of earth, and ends the man 
 Downward : but, tending upwajd for advice, 
 Grows into, and again is grown into 
 By the next soul, which, seated in the brain, 
 Useth the first with its collected use. 
 And feeleth, thinketh, willeth, — is what 
 
 Knows : 
 Which, duly tending upward in its turn. 
 Grows into, and again is grown into 
 By the last soul, that uses both the first. 
 Subsisting whether they assist or no. 
 And, constitutii^ man's self, is what Is — 
 And leans upon the former, makes it play, 
 As that played off the first : and, tending up, 
 Holds, is upheld by, God, and ends the man 
 Upward in that dread point of intercourse. 
 Nor needs a place, for it returns to Him. 
 What Does, what Knows, what Is ; three souls, 
 
 one man. 
 I give the glossa as Theotypas.] 
 
 And then, *' A stick, once fire from end to 
 
 end; 
 Now, ashes save the tip that holds a spark ! 
 Yet, blow the spark, it runs back, spreads it- 
 self 
 A little where the fire was : thus I urge 
 The soul that served me, till it ta.sk once more 
 What ashes of my brain have kept their shape. 
 And these make effort on the last o' the fiesh, 
 Trying to taste again the truth of things " — 
 (He smiled) — "their very superficial truth ; 
 As that ye are my sons, that it is long 
 Since James and Peter had release by death, 
 And I am only he, your brother John, 
 Who saw and heard, and could remember all. 
 Remember all ! It is not much to say. 
 What if the truth broke on me from above 
 As once and ofttimes ? Such might hap again : 
 Doubtlessly He mi^ht stand in presence here. 
 With head wool-white, eyes flame, and feet like 
 
 brass. 
 The sword and the seven stars, as I have seen — 
 I who now shudder only and surmise 
 ' How did your brother bear that sight and 
 Uve?' 
 
 " If I live yet, it is for good, more love 
 Through me to men : be naught but ashes here 
 That keep awhile my semblance, who was 
 
 John, — 
 Still, when they scatter, there is left on earth 
 No one alive who knew (consider this !) 
 — Saw with his eyes and handled with his 
 
 hands 
 That which was from the first, the Word oJ 
 
 Life. 
 How will it be when none more saith ' I saw ' ? 
 
 " Such ever was love's way : to rise, it stoops. 
 Since I, whom Christ's mouth taught, was bid 
 
 den teach, 
 I went, for many years, about the world. 
 Saying ' It was so ; so I heard and saw ,' 
 
A DEATH IN THE DESERT 
 
 387 
 
 Speaking as the case asked: aijd men telieved. 
 Afterward came the message to myself 
 In Fatmos isle ; I was not bidden teach, 
 Bat simply listen, take a book and write, 
 Nor set down pther than the given word. 
 With nothing left to my arbitrament 
 To choose or change : I wrote, and men be- 
 lieved. 
 Then, for my time grew brief, no message 
 
 more, 
 No call to write again, I found a way. 
 And, reasoning from my knowledge, merely 
 
 taught 
 Men should, for love's sake, in love's strsngth 
 
 believe ; 
 Or I would pen a letter to a friend 
 And urge the same as friend, nor less nor 
 
 more : 
 Friends said I reasoned rightly, and believed. 
 But at the last, wny, I seemed left alive 
 Like a sea-jelly weak on Fatmos strand. 
 To tell dry sear-beach gazers how I fared 
 When there was mid-sea, and the mighty 
 
 things ; 
 Left to repeat, ' I saw, I heard, I knew,' 
 And go ail over the old gruimd again, 
 AVith Antichrist already in the world. 
 And many Antichrists, who answered prompt, 
 * Am I not Jasper as thyself ai-t John ? 
 Nay, young, whereas through age thou roayest 
 
 forget : 
 Wherefore, explain, or how shall we believe ? ' 
 I never thought to call down fire on such. 
 Or, as in wonderful and early days. 
 Pick up the scorpion, tread the sei'pent dumb ; 
 But patient stated much of the Lord's life 
 Forgotten or misdelivered, and let it work : 
 Since much that at the first, in deed and word. 
 Lay simply and sufficiently exposed. 
 Had grown (or else my soul was grown to 
 
 match. 
 Fed through such years, familiar with such 
 
 G^^^ded and guided still to see and speak) 
 
 Of new significance and fresh result ; 
 
 What first were guessed as points, I now knew 
 
 stars, 
 And named them in the Gospel I have writ. 
 For men said, ' It is getting long ago : 
 WherC' is the promise of his coming ? ' — asked 
 These young ones in their strength, as loth to 
 
 wait, 
 Of me who, when their sires were bom, was old. 
 I, for I loved them, answered, joyfully. 
 Since I was there, and helpful in ray age ; 
 And, in the main, 1 think such men believed. 
 Finally, thus. endeavoring, I fell sick, 
 Ye brought me here, and I supposed the end. 
 And went to sleep with one thought that, at 
 
 least, 
 Though the whole earth should lie in wicked- 
 ness, 
 We had the truth, might leave the rest to God. 
 Yet now I wake in such decrepitude 
 As I had slidden down and fallen afar. 
 Past even the presence of my former self. 
 Grasping the while for stay at facts which snap. 
 Till I am found away from my own world. 
 
 Feeling for foothold through a blank profound, 
 Along with unborn people in strange lands, 
 Wlio say — I hear said or conceive they say — 
 ' Was John at all, and did he say he saw ? 
 Assure us, ere we ask what he might see ! ' 
 
 " And how shall I assure them ? Can they 
 share 
 
 — They, who have flesh, a veil of youth and 
 
 strength 
 About each spirit, that needs must bide its time. 
 Living and learning still as years assist 
 Which wear the thickness thin, and let man 
 
 see — 
 With me who hardly am withheld at all. 
 But shudderingly, scarce a shred between. 
 Lie bare to the universal prick of light ? 
 Is it for nothing we grow old and weak. 
 We whom God loves ? When pain ends, gain 
 
 ends too. 
 To me, that story — ay, that Life and Death 
 Of which I wrote ' it was ' — to me, it is ; 
 
 — Is, here and now : I appreh^end naught else. 
 Is not God now i' the world his power first 
 
 made ? 
 Is not his love at issue still with sin, 
 Visibly when a wrong is done on earth ? 
 Love, wrong, and pain, what see I else around ? 
 Yea, and the Resurrection and Uprise 
 To the right hand of the throne — what is it 
 
 beside. 
 When such truth, breaking bounds, o'erfloods 
 
 my soul. 
 And, as 1 saw the sin and death, even so 
 See I the need yet transiency of both. 
 The good and glory consummated thence ? 
 I saw the power ; I see the Love, once weak. 
 Resume the Power : and in this word ' I see,' 
 Lo, there is recognized the Spirit of both 
 That moving o'er the spirit pf man, unblinds 
 His eye and bids him look. These are, I see j 
 But ye, the children, his beloved pnes too. 
 Ye need, — as I should use an optic glass 
 I wondered at erewhile, somewhere i' the world. 
 It had been giveii, a crafty smith to make ; 
 A tube, he turned on objects brought too close. 
 Lying confusedly insubordinate 
 For the unassisted eye to master once : 
 Look through his tube, at distance now they lay. 
 Become succiuct, distinct, so small, so clear ! 
 Just thus, ye needs must apprehend what truth 
 I see, reduced to idain historic fact. 
 Diminished into clearness, proved a point 
 And far away : ye would withdraw your sense 
 From out eternity, strain it upon time. 
 Then stand before that fact, that Life and 
 
 Death, 
 Stay there at gaze, till it dispart, dispread. 
 As though a star shoul4 open out, all sides. 
 Grow the world on you, as it is my world. 
 
 " For life, with all it yields of joy and woe, 
 And hope ,and( [ fear, — believe the a^ed 
 
 frie^nd, — 
 Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love, 
 How love might be, hath been indeed, and is ; 
 And that we hold thenceforth to the uttermost 
 Such prize despite the envy of the world. 
 
388 
 
 DRAMATIS PERSONiE 
 
 And, having gained truth, keep truth : that is 
 
 all. 
 But see the double way wherein we are led. 
 How the soul learns diversely from the flesh I 
 With flesh, that hath so little time to stay. 
 And yields mere basement for the soul's em- 
 prise, 
 Expect prompt teaching. Helpful was the light, 
 And warmth was cherishing and food was 
 
 choice 
 To every man's flesh, thousand years ago. 
 As now to yours and mine ; the body sprang 
 At once to the height, and stayed; but the 
 
 soul, — no I 
 Since sages who, this noontide, meditate 
 In Rome or Athens, may descry some point 
 Of the eternal power, hid yestereve ; 
 And, as thereby the power's whole mass ex- 
 tends, 
 So much extends the aether floating o'er- 
 The love that tops the might, the Christ in God. 
 Then, as new lessons shall be learned in these 
 Till earth's work stop and useless time run out, 
 So duly, daily, needs provision be 
 For keeping the soul's prowess possible, 
 Building new barriers as the old decay. 
 Saving us from evasion of life's proof. 
 Putting the question ever, ^ Does God love. 
 And will ye hold that truth against the world ? ' 
 Ye know there needs no second proof with good 
 Gained for our flesh from any earthly source : 
 We might go freezing, ages, — give us fire. 
 Thereafter we judge fire at its full worth. 
 And guard it safe through every chance, ye 
 
 know ! 
 That fable of Prometheus and his theft, 
 How mortals gained Jove's fiery flower, grows 
 
 old 
 (I have been used to hear the pagans own) 
 And out of mind j but fire, howe'er its birth, 
 Here is it, precious to the sophist now 
 Who laughs the myth of jEsehylus to scorn. 
 As precious to those satyrs of his play. 
 Who touched it in gay woiider at the thing. 
 While were it so with the soul, — this gift of 
 
 truth 
 Once grasped, were this our soul's gain safe, and 
 
 sure 
 To prosper as the body's gain is wont, — 
 Why, man's probation would conclude, his 
 
 earth 
 Crumble ; for he both reasons and decides, 
 Weighs first, then chooses ; will he give up fire 
 For gold or purple once he knows its worth ? 
 Could he give Christ up were his worth as 
 
 plain ? 
 Therefore, I say, to test man, the proofs shift. 
 Nor may he grasp that fact like other fact. 
 And straightway in his life acknowledge it, 
 As, say, the indubitable bliss of fire. 
 Sigh ye, ' It had been easier once than now ' ? 
 To give you answer I am left alive ; 
 Look at me who was present fi-om the first I 
 Ye know what things I saw ; then came a test. 
 My first, befittii^ me who so had seen : 
 * Forsake the Christ thou saw est transfigured, 
 
 him 
 Who trod the sea and brought the dead to life ? 
 
 What should wring this from thee ! ' — ye laugh 
 
 and ask. 
 What wrung it ? Even a torchlight ana a 
 
 noise. 
 The sudden Roman faces, violent hands, 
 And fear of what the Jews might do ! Just that, 
 And it is written, ' I forsook and fled : ' 
 There was my trial, and it ended thus. 
 Ay, but my soul had gained its truth, could 
 
 grow: , 
 
 Another year or two, — what little child, 
 What tender woman that had seen no least 
 Of all my sights, but barely heard them told. 
 Who did not clasp the cross with a light laugh. 
 Or wrap the burning robe round, thanking God ? 
 Well, was truth safe forever, then ? Not so. 
 Already had begun the silent work 
 Whereby truth, deadened of its absolute blaze, 
 Might need love's eye to pierce the o'erstretehed 
 
 doubt. 
 Teachers were busy, whispering ' All is true 
 As the aged ones report : but youth can reach 
 Where age gropes dimly, weak with stir and 
 
 strain. 
 And the full doctrine slumbers till to-day.' 
 Thus, what the Roman's lowered spear was 
 
 found, 
 A bar to me who touched and handled truth. 
 Now proved the glozing of some new shrewd 
 
 tongue. 
 This Ebion, this Cerinthus or their mates. 
 Till imminent was the outcry * Save our 
 
 Christ ! ' 
 Whereon I stated much of the Lord's life 
 Forgotten or misdelivered, and let it work. 
 Such work done, as it will be, what comes 
 
 next? 
 What do X hear say, or conceive men say, 
 ' Was John at all, and did he say he saw ? 
 Assure us, ere we ask what he might see I ' 
 
 " Is this indeed a burden for late days, 
 And may I help to bear it with you all. 
 Using my weakness which becomes your 
 
 strength ? 
 For if a babe were bom inside this grot, 
 Grew to a boy here, heard us praise the sun, 
 Yet had but yon sole glimmer in light's place, — 
 One loving him and wishful he should learn. 
 Would much rejoice himself was blinded fiist 
 Month by month here, so made to understand 
 How eyes, born darkling, apprehend amiss : 
 1 think I could explain to such a child 
 There was more glow outside than gleams he 
 
 caught, 
 Ajr, nor need urge ' I saw it, so believe ! ' 
 It is a heavy burden you shall bear 
 In latter days, new lands, or old grown strange. 
 Left without me, which must be very soon. 
 What is the doubt, my brothers ? Quick with 
 
 it I 
 I see you stand conversing, each new face, 
 Either in fields, of yellow summer eves, 
 On islets yet unnamed amid the sea ; 
 Or pace for shelter 'neath a portico 
 Out of the crowd in some enormous town 
 Where now the larks sing in a solitude ; 
 I Of iiiuse upon blank heaps of stone and sand 
 
A DEATH IN THE DESERT 
 
 389 
 
 Idly conjectured to be Ephesus : 
 
 Aud no une asks his felluw any more 
 
 * Where is the promise ot his aoining ? ' but 
 
 ' Was he revealed in any of his lived, 
 
 As Power, as Love, as. Influencing' Cioul? ' 
 
 " Quick, for time presses, tell the whole muid 
 
 out. 
 And let us ask and answer and be saved ! 
 My hook speaks on, because it cannot pass ; 
 One listens quietly, nor scuffs but pleads, 
 ' Here is a tale of things done ages since ; 
 What truth was ever told the second day ? 
 Wonders, that would prove doctrine, go for 
 
 naught. 
 Bemains the doctrine, love ; well, we must love, 
 And what we love most, power and love in one, 
 Let us acknowledge on the record here, 
 Accepting these in Christ : must Christ then be ? 
 Has he been ? Did not we ourselves make him ? 
 Our mind receives but what it holds, no more. 
 ITirst of the love, then ; we acknowledge 
 
 Christ — 
 A proof we comprehend his love, a proof 
 We had such love already in ourselves. 
 Knew first what else we should not recognize. 
 'Tis mere projection from man^s inmost mind, 
 And, what he loves, thus falls reflected back. 
 Becomes accounted somewhat out of him ; 
 He throws it up in air, it drops down eai-th's. 
 With shape, name, story added, man's old way. 
 How prove you Christ came otherwise at least ? 
 Next try the power : he made and rules the 
 
 world : 
 Certes there is a world once made, now ruled. 
 Unless things have been ever as we see. 
 Our sires declared a charioteer's yoked steeds 
 Brought the sun up the east and down the west, 
 Which only of itself now rises, sets. 
 As if a hand impelled it and a will, — 
 Thus they long thought, they who had will and 
 
 hands: 
 But the new question's whisper is distinct. 
 Wherefore must all force needs be like our- 
 selves ? 
 We have the hands, the will ; what made and 
 
 drives 
 The sun is force, is law, is named, not known. 
 While will and love we do know ; marks of 
 
 Eye-witnesses attest, so books declare — 
 
 Aa that, to punish or reward our race. 
 
 The sun at undue times arose or set 
 
 Or else stood stiU : what do not men affirm ? 
 
 But earth requires as urgently reward 
 
 Or punishment to-day as years ago, 
 
 Ajid none expects the sun will interpose : 
 
 Therefore it was mere passion and mistake. 
 
 Or erring zeal for right, which changed the 
 
 truth. 
 60 hack, far, farther, to the birth of things ; 
 Ever the will, the intelligence, the love, 
 Man's! — which he gives, supposing he but 
 
 finds, 
 As late he gave head, body, hands and feet, 
 To help these in what forms he called his gods. 
 First, Jove's brow, Juno's eyes were swept 
 
 But Jove's wrath, Juno's pride continued long; 
 As last, will, power, and love discarded these, 
 So law in turn discards power, love, and will. 
 What proveth God is otherwise at least ? 
 All else, projection from the mind of man ! ' 
 
 *' Nay, do not give me wine, for I am strong. 
 But place my gospel where I put my hands. 
 
 " I say that man was made to grow, not stop ; 
 That help, he needed once, and needs no more, 
 Having grown but an inch by, is withdrawn : 
 For he hath new needs, and new helps to these. 
 This imports solely, man should mount on each 
 New height in view ; the help whereby he 
 
 mounte. 
 The laddei^rung his foot has left, may fall. 
 Since all things suffer change save Orod the 
 
 Truth. 
 Man apprehends him newly at each stage 
 Whereat eai-th's ladder drops, its service done ; 
 And nothing shall prove twice what once was 
 
 proved. 
 You stick a garden-plot with ordered twigs 
 To show inside lie germs of herbs unborn. 
 And check the careless step would spoil their 
 
 birth ; 
 But when herbs wave, the guardian twigs may 
 
 Since should ye doubt of virtues, question kinds. 
 
 It is no longer for old twigs ye look, 
 
 Which proved once underneath lay store of 
 
 seed. 
 But to the herb's self, by what light ye boast. 
 For what fruit's signs are. This book's fruit is 
 
 plain, 
 Nor miracles need prove it any more. 
 Doth the fruit show? Then miracles bade 
 
 'ware 
 At first of root and stem, saved both till now 
 From trampling ox, rough boar and wanton 
 
 goat. 
 What ? Was man made a wheelwork to wind 
 
 up. 
 And be discharged, and straight wound up 
 
 anew? 
 No! — grown, his growth lasts; taught, he 
 
 ne'er forgets : 
 May learn a thousand things, not twice the 
 
 same. 
 
 "This might be pagan teaching: now hear 
 mine. 
 
 *' I say, that as the babe, you feed awhile, 
 Becomes a boy and fit to feed himself. 
 So, minds at first must be spoon-fed with truth : 
 When they can eat, babe's nurture is with- 
 drawn . 
 I fed the babe whether it would or no : 
 I bid the boy or feed himself or starve. 
 I cried once, ' That ye may believe in Chiist, 
 Behold this blind man shall receive his sight ! * 
 I cry now. ' Urgest thou, for I am shrewd 
 Ana smile at stories now John's word could 
 
 cure — 
 Bepeat that miracle and take my faith ? ' 
 I say, that miracle was duly wrought 
 
390 
 
 DRAMATIS PERSONS 
 
 When, save for it, no faith was possible. 
 Whether a chanj^e were wrought i' the shows 
 
 o' the world. 
 Whether the change came from our minds 
 
 which see 
 Of shows o' the world so much as and no more 
 Than God wills for his purpose, — {what do I 
 See now, suppose yon, there where yon see rock 
 Kound us ?) — I know not ; such was the effect. 
 So faith grew, making void more miracles 
 Because too much : they would compel, not 
 
 help. 
 I say, the acknowledgment of God in Christ 
 Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee 
 All questions in the earth and out of it. 
 And has so far advanced thee to be wise. 
 Wouldst thou unprove this to re-prove the 
 
 proved ? 
 In life's mere minute, with power to use that 
 
 proof. 
 Leave knowledge and revert to how it sprung ? 
 Thou hast it ; use it and forthwith, or die ! 
 
 " For I say, this is death and the sole death. 
 When a man's loss comes to him from his 
 
 gain. 
 Darkness from light, from knowledge ignorance, 
 And lack of love from love made manifest^ 
 A lamp's death when, replete with oil, it 
 
 chokes ; 
 A stomach's when, surcharged with food, it 
 
 starves. 
 With ignorance was surety of a cure. 
 When man, appalled at nature, questioned first, 
 ' What if there lurk a might behind this might ? 
 He needed satisfaction God could give. 
 And did give, as ye have the written word : 
 But when he finds might still redoixble might, 
 Yet asks, ' Since all is might, what use of will ? ' 
 — Will, the one source of might, ^ — he being 
 
 man 
 With a man's will and a man's might, to teach 
 In little how the two combine in large, — 
 That man has turned round on himself and 
 
 stands, 
 Which in the course of nature is, to die. 
 
 " And when man questioned, ' What if there 
 
 be love 
 Behind the will and might, as real as they ? ' — 
 He needed satisfaction God could give, 
 And did give, as ye have the vnitten word : 
 But when, beholding that love everywhere, 
 He reasons, ^ Since such love is everywhere. 
 And since oiu'selves can love and would be loved, 
 We ourselves make the love, and Christ was 
 
 not,' — 
 How shall ye help this man who knows him- 
 self. 
 That he must love and would be loved again, 
 Yet, owning his own love that proveth Christ, 
 Bejecteth Christ through very need of him ? 
 The lamp o'erswims with oil, the stomach flags 
 Loaded with nurture, and that man's soul dies. 
 
 " If he rejoin, ' But this was all the while 
 A trick ; the fanlt was, first of all, in theOi 
 Thy story of the \>1aces, names and dates. 
 
 Where, when and how tne ultimate truth had 
 rise, 
 
 — Thy prior truth, at last discovered none. 
 Whence now the second suffers detriment. 
 What good of giving knowledge if, because 
 0' the manner of the gift, its profit fail ? 
 And why refuse what modicum of help 
 Had stopped the after-doubt, impossible 
 
 I' the faoe of truth —truth absolute, uniform ? 
 Why must I hit of this and miss of that, 
 Distinguish just as I be weak or strong. 
 And not ask of thee and have answer prompt. 
 Was this once, was it not once ? — then and 
 
 now 
 And evermore, plain truth from man to man. 
 Is John's procedure just the heathen bard's ? 
 Put question of his famous play again 
 How for the ephemerals' sake, Jove's fire was 
 
 filched. 
 And carried in a cane and brought to earth : 
 The fact is in the fable, cry the wise, 
 Mortcds obtained the boon, so much is fact. 
 Though fire be spirit and produced on earth. 
 As with the Titan's, so now with thy tale : 
 Wiy breed in us perplexity, mistake. 
 Nor tell the whole truth in the proper words ? ' 
 
 " I answer. Have ye yet to argue out 
 The very primal thesis, plainest law, 
 
 — Man is not God but hath God's end to serve, 
 A master to obey, a course to take. 
 Somewhat to cast off, somewhat to become ? 
 Grant this, then man must pass from old to 
 
 new. 
 From vain to real, from mistake to fact. 
 From what once seemed good, to what now 
 
 proves best. 
 How could man have progi'ession otherwise ? 
 Before the point was mooted ' What is God ? ' 
 No savage man inquired ' What am myself ? ' 
 Much less replied, ' First, last, and best of 
 
 things.' 
 Man takes that title now if he believes 
 Might can exist with neither will nor love, 
 In God's case — what he names now Nature's 
 
 Law — 
 While in himself he recognizes love 
 No less than might and will : and rightly takes. 
 Since if man prove the sole existent thing 
 Where these combine, whatever their degree, 
 However weak the might or will or love. 
 So they be found there, put in evidence, — 
 He is as surely higher in the scale 
 Than any might with neither love nor will. 
 As life, apparent in the poorest midge, 
 (When the faint dust-speck flits, ye guess its 
 
 wing,) 
 Is marvellous beyond dead Atlas' self — 
 Given to the nobler midge for resting-place ! 
 Thus, man proves best and highest — God, in 
 
 fine, 
 And thus the victory leads but to defeat. 
 The ^ain to loss, best rise to the worst fall. 
 His life becomes impossible, which is death. 
 
 " But if, appealing thence, he cower, avouch 
 
 He is mere man, and in humility 
 
 Neither may know God nor mistake himself • 
 
A DEATH IN THE DESERT 
 
 391 
 
 1 point to the immediate consequence 
 And say, by such confession straight he falls 
 Into man's place, a thing nor God nor beast, 
 Made to know that he can know and not more : 
 Lower than God who knows all and can all, 
 Higher than beasts which know and can so far 
 As each beast's limit, perfect to an end, 
 Nor conscious that they know, nor craving 
 
 more ; 
 While man knows partly but conceives beside. 
 Creeps ever on from fancies to the fact, 
 And in this striving, this converting air 
 Into a solid he may grasp and use, 
 Findsprogress, man's distinctive mark alone, 
 Not G^d's, and not the beasts' : God is, they 
 
 are, 
 Man partly is and wholly hopes to be. 
 Such progress could no more attend his soul 
 Were all it struggles after found at first 
 And guesses changed to knowledge absolute, 
 Than motion wait his body, were all else 
 Than it the solid earth on every side, 
 Where now through space he moves from rest 
 
 to rest, 
 Man, therefore, thus conditioned, must expect 
 He could not, what he knows now, know at 
 
 first; 
 What he considers that he knows to-day. 
 Come but to-morrow, he will find misknown ; 
 Getting increase of knowledge, since he learns 
 Because he lives, which is to be a man. 
 Set to instruct himself by his past self : 
 First, like the br\it«, obliged by facts to learn, 
 Next, as man may, obliged by his own mind. 
 Bent, habit, nature, knowledge turned to law, 
 God's gift was that man should conceive of 
 
 truth 
 And yearn to gain it, catchii^ at mistake, 
 As midway help till ne reach fact indeed. 
 The statuary ere he mould a shape 
 Boasts a like gift, the shape's idea, and next 
 The aspiration to produce the same ; 
 So, taking clay, he calls his shape thereout. 
 Cries ever ' Now I have the thing I see : ' 
 Yet all the while goes changing what was 
 
 wrought, 
 From falsehood like the truth, to truth itself. 
 How were it had he cried, ' I see no face. 
 No breast, no feet i' the ineffectual clay ' ? 
 Bather commend him that he clapped his hands. 
 And laughed ' It is my shape and lives again ! ' 
 Bnjoyed the falsehood, touched it on to truth, 
 Until yourselves applaud the flesh indeed 
 In what is still flesh-imitating clay. 
 Bight in you, right in him, such way be man's ! 
 God only makes the live shape at a jet. 
 Will ye renounce this pact of creatureship ? 
 The pattern on the Mount subsists no more. 
 Seemed awhile, then returned to nothingness ; 
 But copies, Moses strove to make thereby, 
 Serve still and are replaced as time requires : 
 By these, make newest vessels, reach the type ! 
 If ye demur, this judgment on your head, 
 Never to reach the ultimate, angels' law, 
 Indulging every instinct of the soul 
 There where law, life, joy, impulse are one 
 
 thing! 
 
 "Such is the burden of the latest time, 
 I have survived to hear it with my ears, 
 Answer it with my lips : does this suffice ? 
 For if there be a further woe than such. 
 Wherein my brothers struggling need a hand, 
 So long as any pulse is left in mine. 
 May I be absent even longer yet. 
 Plucking the blind ones back from the abyss. 
 Though I should tarry a new hundred years ! " 
 
 But he was dead : 'twas about noon, the day 
 Somewhat declining : we five buried him 
 That eve, and then, dividing, went five ways, 
 And I, disgiiised, returned to Ephesns, 
 
 By this, the cave's mouth must be filled with 
 
 sand, 
 Valens is lost, I know not of his trace ; 
 The Bactrian was but a wild childish man, 
 And could not write nor speak, but only loved : 
 So, lest the memory of this go quite. 
 Seeing that I to-morrow fight the beasts, 
 I tell the same to Phcebas, whom believe ! 
 For many look again to find that face. 
 Beloved John's to whom I ministered. 
 Somewhere in life about the world ; they err : 
 Either mistaking what was darkly spoke 
 At ending of his book, as he relates, 
 Or misconceiving somewhat of this speech 
 Scattered from mouth to mouth, as I suppose. 
 Believe ye will not see him any more 
 About the world with his divine regard ! 
 For all was as I say, and now the man 
 Lies as he lay once, breast to breast with God. 
 
 [Cerinthus read and mused ; one added this .' 
 
 " If Christ, as thou afBrmest, be of men 
 
 Mere man, the first and best but nothing 
 
 more, — 
 Account him, for reward of what he was, 
 Now and forever, wretchedest of all. 
 For see ; himself conceived of life as love, 
 Conceived of love as what must enter in. 
 Fill up, make one with his each soul he loved : 
 Thus much for man's joy, all men's jo^ for him. 
 Well, he is gone, thou sayest, to fit reward. 
 But by this time are many souls set free, 
 And very many still retained alive : 
 Nay, should his coming be delayed awhile, 
 Say, ten years longer (twelve years, some com- 
 pute), 
 See if, for every finger of thy hands, 
 There be not found, that day the world shall 
 
 end. 
 Hundreds of souls, each holding by Christ's 
 
 word 
 That he will grow incorporate with aU, 
 With me as Pamph^lax, with him as John, 
 Groom for each bride! Can a mere man do 
 
 this? 
 Yet Christ saith, this he lived and died to do. 
 Call Christ, then, the illimitable God, 
 Or lost!" 
 
 But 't was Cerinthus that is lost.] 
 
192 
 
 DRAMATIS PERSONyE 
 
 CALIBAN UPON SETEBOS ; 
 
 OR, NATURAL THEOLOGY IN THE ISLAND 
 
 " Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as 
 thyself." 
 
 ['Will sprawl, now that the heat of day is best, 
 
 Flat on his belly in the pit's much mire, 
 
 With elbows wide, fists clenched to prop his 
 
 chin. 
 And, while he kicks both feet in the cool slush. 
 And feels about his spine small eft-things course. 
 Run in and out each arm, and make him laugh : 
 And while above his head a pompion-plant, 
 Coating the cave-top as a brow its eye. 
 Creeps down to touch and tickle hair and beard, 
 And now a flower drops with a bee inside, 
 And now a fruit to snap at, catch and crunch, — 
 He looks out o'er yon sea which sunbeams cross 
 And recross till they weave a spidei^web, 
 (Meshes of fire, some great fish breaks at times,) 
 And talks to his own self, howe'er he please. 
 Touching that other, whom his dam called God. 
 Because to talk about Him, vexes — ha, 
 Could He but know ! and time to vex is now, 
 When talk is safer than in winter-time. 
 Moreover Prosper and Miranda sleep 
 In confidence he drudges at their task, 
 And it is good to cheat the pair, and gibe. 
 Letting the rank tongue blossom into speech,] 
 
 > Setebos, Setebos, and Setebos ! l"* 
 
 'Thinketh, He dwelleth i' the cold o' the moon. 
 
 'Thinketh He made it, with the sim to match, 
 But not the stars ; the stars came otherwise ; 
 Only made clouds, winds, meteors, such as that : 
 Also this isle, what lives and grows thereon, 
 And snaky sea which rounds and ends the same. 
 
 'Thinketh, it came of being ill at ease :- 
 He hated that He cannot change His cold. 
 Nor cure its ache. 'Hath spied an icy fish 
 That longefl to 'scape the rock-stream where she 
 
 livaa, 
 And thaw herself within the lukewarm brine 
 0' the Jazy sea her stream thrusts far amid, 
 A crystal spike 'twixt two warm walls of wave; 
 Only, she ever sickened, found repulse 
 At the other kind of water, not her life, 
 (Green-dense and dim-deheious, bred o' the sun,) • 
 Flounced back from bliss she was not born to 
 
 breathe. 
 And in her old bounds baried her despair, 
 Hating and loving warmth alike : so He. 
 
 'Thinketh, He made thereat the sun, this isle. 
 Trees and the fowls here, beaat and creeping 
 
 thing. 
 Yon otter, sleek-wet, black, lithe as a leech ; 
 Yon auk, one fire-eye in a ball of foam, 
 That floats and feeds ; a certain badger brown 
 He hath watched hunt with that slant white- 
 wedge eye 
 By moonlight ; and the pie with the long tongue 
 That pricks deep into oakwarts for a worm, 
 And says a plain word when she finds her prize „ 
 
 But will not eat the ants ; the ants themselves 
 That build a wall of seeds and settled stalks 
 About their hole — He made all these and morfl; 
 Made all we see, and us, in spite : how else ? 
 He could not, Himself, make a second self 
 To be His mate ; as well have made Himself : 
 He would not make what He misiikes or slights, 
 An eyesore to Him, or not worth His pains : 
 But did, in envy, listlessness or sport, 
 Make what Himself would fain, in a manner, 
 
 be — 
 Weaker in most points, stronger in a few, 
 Worthy, and yet mere playthings aU the while, 
 Things He admires and mocks too, — that is it. 
 Because, so brave, so better though they be, 
 It nothing skills if He begin to plague. 
 Look now, I melt a gourd-fruit into mash, 
 Add honeycomb and pods, I have perceived, 
 Which bite like finches when they biU and 
 
 kiss, — 
 Then, when froth rises bladdery, drink up all, 
 Quick, quick, till maggots scamper through my 
 
 brain ; 
 Last, throAv me on my back i' the seeded thyme. 
 And wanton, wishing I were bom a bird. 
 Put case, unable to be what I wish, 
 I yet could make a live bird out of clay : 
 Would not I take clay, pinch my Caliban 
 Able to fly ? — for, there, see, he hath wings. 
 And great comb like the hoopoe's to admire, 
 And there, a sting to do his foes offence, 
 There, and I will that he begin to live. 
 Fly to yon rock-top, nip me off the horns 
 Of grigs high up that make the merry din. 
 Saucy through their veined wings, and mind me 
 
 not. 
 In which feat, if his leg snapped, brittle clay. 
 And he lay stupid-like, — why, I should laugh ; 
 And if he, spying me, should fall to weep, 
 Beseech me to be good, repair his wrong. 
 Bid his poor leg smart less or grow again, — 
 Well, as the chance were, this might take or 
 
 else 
 Not take my fancy : I might hear his cry, 
 And give the manikin three sound legs for one, 
 Or pluck the other off, leave him.iike an egg, 
 And lessoned he was mine and merely clay. 
 Were this no pleasure, lying in the thyme. 
 Drinking the mash, with brain become alive, 
 Making and marring clay at will ? So He. 
 
 'Thinketh, such shows nor right nor wrong in 
 
 Him, 
 Nor kind, nor cruel : He is strong and Lord. 
 'Am strong myself compared to yonder crabs 
 That march now from the mountain to the 
 
 sea; 
 'Let twenty pass, and stone the twenty-first, 
 Loving not, hating not, just choosing so. 
 'Say, the first straggler that boasts piirole spots 
 Shall join the file, one pincer twisted off ; 
 'Say, this bruised fellow shall receive a worm, 
 And two worms he whose nippers end in red ; 
 As it likes me each time, I do : so He. 
 
 Well then, 'supposeth He is good i' the main. 
 Placable if His mind and ways were guessed, 
 But rougher than His handiwork, be sure 1 „ ^ 
 
CALIBAN UPON SETEBOS 
 
 393 
 
 Oh, He hath made thiugs worthier than Him- 
 self, 
 
 And envieth that, so helped, such things do 
 more 
 
 Than He who made them ! What consoles but 
 
 this y 
 
 That they, unless through Him, do naught at 
 
 all, 
 And must submit : what other use in things ? 
 'Hath cut a pipe of pithless elder-joint 
 That, blown through, gives exact the scream o' 
 
 the jay 
 When from her wing you twitch the feathers 
 
 blue : 
 Sound this, and little birds that hate the jay 
 Flock within stone's throw, glad their foe is 
 
 hurt : 
 Put case such pipe could prattle and boast for- 
 sooth, 
 " I catch the birds, I am the crafty thing, 
 I make the cry my maker cannot make 
 With his great round mouth ; he must blow 
 
 through mine ! " 
 Would not I smash it with my foot ? So He. 
 
 But wherefore rough, why cold and ill at ease ? ' 
 Aha, that is a question ! Ask, for that. 
 What knows, — the something over Setebos 
 That made Him, or He, may be, found and 
 
 fought, 
 Worsted, drove off and did to nothing, pei'- 
 
 chance. 
 There may be something quiet o'er His head, 
 Out of His reach, that feels nor joy nor grief, 
 Since both derive from weakness in some way. 
 I joy because the quails come ; would not joy 
 Comd I bring quails here when I have a mind : 
 This Quiet, all it hath a mind to, doth. 
 'Esteemeth stars the outposts of its couch, 
 Bat never spends much thought nor care that 
 
 way. 
 It may look up, work up, — the worse for those 
 It works on ! 'Careth but for Setebos 
 The many-handed as a cuttle-fish. 
 Who, making Himself feared through what He 
 
 does. 
 Looks up, first, and perceives he cannot soar 
 To what is quiet and hath happy life ; 
 Next looks down here, and'(uit of very spite 
 Makes this a bauble-world ti^pe yon real. 
 These good things to match those as hips do 
 
 grapes. 
 'Tis solace making baubles, ay, and sport. 
 Himself peeped late, eyed Prosper at his books 
 Careless and lofty, lord now of the isle : 
 Vexed, 'stitched a book of broad leaves, arrow- 
 shaped. 
 Wrote thereon, he knows what, prodigious 
 
 words; 
 Has peeled a wand and called it by a name ; 
 Weareth at whiles for an enchanter's robe 
 The eyed skin of a supple oneelot ; 
 And hath an ounce sleeker than youngling mole, 
 A four-legged serpent he makes cower and 
 
 couch. 
 Now snarl, now hold its breath and mind his 
 
 eye. 
 And saith she is Miranda and my wife : | ^\^ 
 
 'Keeps for his Ariel a tall pouch-bill crane 
 He bids go wade for fish and straight disgorge ; 
 Also a sea-beast, lumpish, which he snared, 
 Blinded the eyes of, and brought somewhat 
 
 tame, 
 And split its toe-webs, and now pens the drudge 
 In a hole o' the rock and calls him Caliban ; 
 A bitter heart that bides its time and bites. 
 'Plays thus at being Prosper in a way, 
 Taketh his mii-th with make-believes : so He, 
 
 His dam held that the Quiet made all things 
 Which Setebos vexed oiily : 'holds not so. 
 Who made them weak, meant weakness He 
 
 might vex. 
 Had He meant other, while His hand was in, 
 Why not make horay eyes no thorn could prick, 
 Or plate my scalp with bone against the snow. 
 Or overseale my flesh 'neath joint and joint, 
 Like an ore's armor ? -A-y, — so spoil His sport ! 
 He is the One now : only He doth all. 
 
 'Saith, He may like, perchance, what profits 
 
 Him. 
 Ay, himself loves what does him good ; but 
 
 why? 
 'Gets good no otherwise. This blinded beast 
 Loves whoso places flesh-meat on his nose. 
 But, had he eyes, would want no help, but hate 
 Or love, just as it liked him : He hath eyes. 
 Also it pleaseth Setebos to work. 
 Use all His hands, and exercise much craft. 
 By no means for the love of what is worked. 
 'Tasteth, himself, no finer good i' the world 
 When all goes right, in this safe summer-time, 
 And he wants little, hungers, aches not much, 
 Than trying what to do with wit and strength.% 
 'Falls to make something; 'piled yon pile of 
 
 turfs, 
 And squared and stuck there squares of soft 
 
 white chalk. 
 And, with a fish-tooth, scratched a moon on 
 
 each. 
 And set up endwise certain spikes of tree. 
 And crowned the whole with a sloth's skull 
 
 a-top. 
 Found dead i' the woods, too hard for one to 
 
 kUl. 
 No use at all i' the work, for work's sole sake ; 
 'Shall some day knock it down again : so He. 
 
 'Saith He is terrible : watch His feats in proof ! 
 One hurricane will spoil six good months' hope. 
 He hath a spite against me, that I know, 
 Just as He favors Prosper, who knows why ? 
 So it is, all the same, as well I find. 
 'Wove wattles half the winter, fenced them firm 
 With stone and stake to stop she-tortoises 
 Crawling to lay their eggs here : well, one wave. 
 Feeling the foot of Him upon its neck. 
 Gaped as a snake does, lolled out its large 
 
 tongue. 
 And licked the whole labor flat : so much for 
 
 spite. 
 
 'Saw a ball flame down late (yonder it lies) 
 WTiere, half an hour before, I slept i' the shade ! 
 Often they scatter sparkles : there is force ! Id^ 
 
394 
 
 DRAMATIS PERSONS 
 
 'Dug up a newt He may have envied once 
 And turned to stone^ shut up inside a stone. 
 Please Him and hinder this ? — What Prosper 
 
 does ? 
 Aha, if He would tell me how I Not He ! 
 There is the sport : discover how or die ! 
 All need not die, for of the things o' the isle 
 Some flee afar, some dive, some run up trees ; 
 Those at His mercy, — why, they please Him 
 
 most 
 When . . . when . . . well, never try the same 
 
 way twice ! 
 Repeat what act has pleased. He may grow 
 
 wroth. 
 You must not know His ways, and play Him off. 
 Sure of the issue. 'Doth the like himself ; 
 'Spareth a squirrel that it nothing fears 
 But steals the nut from underneath my thumb. 
 And when I thi'eat, bites stoutly in defence : 
 'Spareth an urchin that contrariwise. 
 Curls up into a ball, pretending death 
 For fright at my approach : the two ways please. 
 But what would move my choler more than tliis, 
 That either creature counted on its life 
 l^o-morroM' and next day and all. days to come. 
 Saying, forsooth, in the inmost of its heart, 
 " Because he did so yesterday with me, 
 And otherwise with such another brute, 
 So must he do henceforth and always." — Ay? 
 Would teach the reasoning couple what " must " 
 
 means ! 
 'Doth as he likes, or wherefore Lord ? So He. 
 
 Conceiveth all things will continue thus. 
 And we shall have to live in fear of Him 
 So long as He lives, keeps His strength : no 
 
 change. 
 If He have done His best, make no new world 
 To please Him more, so leave off watching 
 
 this, — 
 If He surprise not even the Quiet's self_ 
 Some strange day, — or, suppose, grow into it 
 As grubs grow butterflies : else, here we are. 
 And there is He, and nowhere help at all. 
 
 'Believeth with the life, the pain shall stop. 
 His dam held different, that after death 
 He both plagued enemies and feasted friends : 
 Idly ! He doth His worst in this our life, 
 Giving just respite lest we die through pain, 
 Saving last pain for worst, ^ with which, an 
 
 end. 
 Meanwhile, the best way to escape His ire 
 Is, not to seem too happy. 'Sees,- himself, 
 Yonder two flies, with purple films and pink, 
 Bask on the porapion-bell above : kills both. 
 'Sees two black painful beetles roll their ball 
 On head and tail as if to save their lives : 
 Moves them the stick away they strive to clear. 
 
 Even so, 'would have Him misconceive, suppose 
 This Caliban strives hard and ails no less, 
 And always, above all else, envies Him ; 
 Wherefore he mainly dances on dark nights, 
 Moans in the sun, gets under holes to laugh. 
 And never speaks his mind save housed as now : 
 Outside, 'groans, curses. If He caught me here, 
 
 O'erheard this speech, and asked What 
 
 chuoklest at ? " 
 'Would, to appease Him, out a finger off, 
 Or of my three kid yearlings burn the best. 
 Or let the toothsome apples rot on tree. 
 Or push my tame beast for the ore to taste : 
 While myself lit a fire, and made a song 
 And sung it, " What I hate, be consecrate 
 To celebrate Thee and Thy state, no mate 
 For Thee ; what see for envy in poornie ?" 
 Hoping the while, since evUs sometimes mend, 
 Warts rub away and sores are cured with slime. 
 That some strange day, will either the Quiet 
 
 catch 
 And conquer Setebos, or likelier He 
 Decrepit may doze, doze, as good as die. 
 
 [What, what? A curtain o'er the world at 
 
 once ! 
 Crickets stop hissing ; not a bird — or, yea, 
 There scuds His raven that has told Him all ! 
 It was fool's play, this prattling ! Ha ! The 
 
 wind 
 Shoulders the pillared dust, death's house o' 
 
 the move. 
 And fast invading fires begin ! White blaze — 
 A tree's head snaps — and there, there, there, 
 
 there, there, 
 His thunder follows ! Fool to gibe at Him ! 
 Lo ! 'Lieth flat and lovetli Setebos ! 
 'Maketh his teeth meet through his upper lip. 
 Will let those quails fly, will not eat this month 
 One little mess of whelks, so he may 'scape !] 
 
 CONFESSIONS 
 
 What is he buzzing in my ears ? 
 
 '* Now that I come to die, 
 Do I view the world as a vale of tears ? " 
 
 Ah, reverend sir, not I ! 
 
 What I viewed there once, what I view agaiu 
 
 Where the physic bottles stand 
 On the table's edge, — is a suburb lane, 
 
 With a wall to my bedside hand. 
 
 That lane sloped, much as the bottles do. 
 
 From a house ygji could descry 
 O'er the garden-wall ; is tlie curtain blue 
 
 Or green to a healthy eye ? 
 
 To mine, it serves for the old June weather 
 
 Blue above lane and wall ; 
 And that farthest bottle labelled " Ether " 
 
 Is the house o'ertoppiug all. 
 
 At a teiTace, somewhere near the stopper, 
 
 There watched for me, one June, 
 A girl : I know, sir, it 's improper. 
 
 My poor mind 's out of tune. 
 
 Only, there was a way . . . you crept 
 
 Close by the side, to dodge 
 Eyes in the house, two eyes except : 
 
 They styled their house " The Lodge." 
 
EURYDICE TO ORPHEUS 
 
 395 
 
 What light had a lounger up their lane ? 
 
 Bat, by creeping very close, 
 With the good wall's help, — their eyes might 
 strain 
 
 And stretch themselves to Oes, 
 
 Yet never catch her and me together, 
 
 As she left the attic, there. 
 By tlie rim of the bottle labelled " Ether,'' 
 
 And stole from stair to stair. 
 
 And stood by the rose-wreathed gate. Alas, 
 
 We loved, sir — used to meet : 
 How sad aud bad and mad it was — 
 
 But then, how it was sweet I 
 
 MAY AND DEATH 
 
 Among Browning's companions in boyhood 
 were three bilverthornes, cousins on his mo- 
 ther's side. The name of Charles in the poem 
 stands for the more familiar Jim, and it was in 
 remembrance of him, the eldest and most tal- 
 ented of the three, that this poem was written. 
 First published in The Keepsake, 1857. 
 
 I WISH that when you died last May, 
 Charles, there had died alon^ with you 
 
 Three parts of spring's delightful things ; 
 Ay, and, for me, the fourth part too, 
 
 A foolish thought, and worse, perhaps ! 
 
 There must be many a pair of friends 
 Who, arm in arm, deserve the warm 
 
 Muon-births and the' long evening-ends. 
 
 So, for their sake, be May still May ! 
 
 Let their new time, as mine of old. 
 Do aM it did for me : I bid 
 
 Sweet sights and sounds throng manifold. 
 
 Only, one little sight, one plant. 
 Woods have in May, that starts up green 
 
 Save a sole streak which, so to speak. 
 Is spring's blood, spilt its leaves between, — 
 
 That, they might spare ; a certain wood 
 Might miss the plant ; their loss were small : 
 
 But I, — whene'er the leaf grows there. 
 Its drop comes from my heart, that 's all. 
 
 DEAF AND DUMB 
 
 A GROUP BY WOOLNER 
 
 Only the prism's obstruction shows aright 
 The secret of a sunbeam, breaks its light 
 Into the jewelled bow from blankest white ; 
 
 !So may a glory from defect arise : 
 Only by Deafness may the vexed Love wreak 
 Its insuppressive sense on brow and cheek. 
 Only by Dumbness adequately speak 
 
 As favored mouth could never, through the 
 eyes. 
 
 PKOSPICE 
 
 Written in the autumn following Mrs. Brown- 
 ing's death. The closing lines intensify the asso- 
 ciation. 
 
 Feab death ? — to feel the fog in my throat, 
 
 The mist in my face. 
 When the snows begin, and the blasts denote 
 
 I am nearing the place. 
 The power of the night, the press of the storm, 
 
 The post of the foe ; 
 Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible 
 form. 
 Yet the strong man must go : 
 For the journey is done and the summit at- 
 tained. 
 And the barriers fall. 
 Though a battle 's to fight ere the guerdon he 
 gained. 
 The reward of it all. 
 I was ever a fighter, so — one fight more. 
 
 The best and the last ! 
 I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, anu 
 forbore. 
 And bade me creep past. 
 No ! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my 
 peers 
 The heroes of old. 
 Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's 
 arrears ' 
 Of pain, darkness and cold. 
 For sudden the worst turns the best to the 
 brave. 
 The black minute 's at end. 
 And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that 
 rave, 
 Shall dwindle, shaU blend. 
 Shall change, shall become first a peace out of 
 pain. 
 Then a light, then thy breast, 
 thou soul of my soul ! I shall clasp thee 
 again, 
 Aud with God be the rest ! 
 
 EURYDICE TO ORPHEUS 
 
 A PICtDRE BY LEIGHTON ./ 
 
 First published, without metrical divisions, 'n 
 the Soyal Academy Catalogue, 1864. 
 
 BnT give them me, the mouth, the eyes, the 
 
 brow ! 
 Let them once more absorb me ! One look 
 
 now 
 Will lap me roimd forever, not to pass 
 Out of its light, though darkness lie beyond : 
 Hold me but safe a?ain within the bond 
 
 Of one immortal look ! All woe that was. 
 Forgotten, and all terror that may be. 
 Defied, — no past is mine, no future ; look at 
 
396 
 
 DRAMATIS PERSON.E 
 
 YOUTH AND ART 
 
 It once might have been, onee only : 
 
 We lodged in a street together, 
 You, a sparrow on the housetop lonely, 
 
 I, a lone she-bird of his feather. 
 
 Your trade was with sticks and clay. 
 You thumbed, thrust, patted and polished, 
 
 Then laughed " They will see some day 
 tSmith made, and Gibson demolished." 
 
 My business was song, song, song ; 
 
 1 chirped, cheeped, trilled and twittered, 
 " Kate Brown 's on the boards ere long. 
 
 And Grisi's existence embittered ! " 
 
 I earned no more by a warble 
 
 Than you by a sketch in plaster ; 
 You wanted a piece of marble, 
 
 1 needed a music-master. 
 
 We studied hard in our styles, 
 Chipped each at a crust like Hindoos, 
 
 For air, looked out on the tiles. 
 For fun, watched each other's windows. 
 
 STou lounged, like a boy of the South, 
 Cap and blouse — nay, a bit of beaord too ; 
 
 Or you got it, rubbing your mouth 
 With fingers the clay adhered to. 
 
 And I — soon managed to find 
 Weak uoints in the flower-fence facing. 
 
 Was forced to put up a blind 
 And be safe in my corset-iacing. 
 
 No harm ! It was not my fault 
 
 If you never turned yonr eye's tail up 
 
 As I shook upon E in a/f.. 
 Or ran the chromatic scale up : 
 
 For spring bade the sparrows pair. 
 And the boys and girls gave guesses, 
 
 And stalls in our street looked rare 
 With bulrush and watercresses. 
 
 Why did not you pinch a flower 
 
 In a pellet of clay and fling it ? 
 Why did not I put a power 
 
 Of thanks in a look, or sing it ? 
 
 I did look, sharp as a lynx, 
 
 (And yet the memory rankles,) 
 When models arrived, some minx 
 
 Tripped up-stairs, she and her ankles. 
 
 But I think I gave you as good ! 
 
 " That foreign fellow, — who can know 
 How she pays, in a playful m^ood, 
 
 For his tuning her that piano ? " 
 
 Coiild you say so, and never say, 
 
 " Suppose we join hands and fortunes, 
 
 And I fetch her from over the way. 
 Her, piano, and long tunes and short tunes " ? 
 
 No, no : you would not be rash. 
 Nor I rasher and something over : 
 
 You 've to settle yet Gibson's hash, 
 And Grisi yet lives in clover. 
 
 But you meet the Prince at the Board, 
 
 I 'm queen myself at halsrvari, 
 I 've married a rich old lordT, 
 
 And you 're dubbed knight and anK. A. 
 
 Each life unfulfilled, you see ; 
 
 It hangs still, patchy and scrappy : 
 We have not sighed deep, laughed free, 
 
 Starved, feasted, despaired, — been happy 
 
 And nobody calls you a dunce. 
 
 And people suppose me clever : 
 This could but have happened once. 
 
 And we missed it, lost it forever. 
 
 A FACE 
 
 If one could have that little head of hers 
 Painted upon a background of pale gold. 
 Such as the Tuscan's early art prefers ! 
 No shade encroaching on the matchless mould 
 Of those two lips, which should be opening soft 
 In the pure profile ; not as when she laughs, 
 For that spoils all : but rather as if aloft 
 Yon hyacinth, she loves so, leaned its staff's 
 Burden of honey-colored buds to kiss 
 And capture 'twixt the lips apart for this. 
 Then her lithe neck, three fingers might sur- 
 round. 
 How it should waver on the pale gold ground 
 Up to the fruit-shaped, perfect chin it lifts ! 
 I know, Correggio loves to mass, in rifts 
 Of heaven, his angel faces, orb on orb 
 Breaking its outline, burning shades absorb : 
 But these are only massed there, I should think, 
 Waiting to see some wonder momently 
 Grow out, stand fuU, fade slow against the sky 
 (That 's the pale ground you 'd see this sweet 
 
 face by). 
 All heaven, meanwhile, condensed into one eye 
 Which fears to lose the wonder, should it wiak- 
 
 A LIKENESS 
 
 Some people hang portraits up 
 In a room where they dine or sup : 
 And the wife clinks tea-things under, 
 And her cousin, he stii-s his cup. 
 Asks, " ^Vho was the lady, I wonder ? " 
 " 'T is a daub John bought at a sale," 
 Quoth the wife, — looks black as thunder. 
 " What a shade beneath her nose ! 
 Snuft-taking, I suppose," — 
 Adds the cousin, while John's corns ail. 
 
 Or else, there 's no wife in the case. 
 
 But the portrait 's queen of the place, 
 
 Alone 'mid the other spoils 
 
 Of youth, —; masks, gloves and foils. 
 
 And pipe-sticks, rose, cherry-tree, jasmine. 
 
 And the long whip, the tandem-lasher. 
 
MR. SLUDGE, "THE MEDIUM" 
 
 397 
 
 Aiid the Ciist from a fist (" not, aJaa ! mine. 
 But my niaster'a, the Tipton Slasher "), 
 And the cards where pistol-balls mark ace. 
 And a satin shoe uses for cigar-case. 
 And the ohamois-homa ("shot in the Chab- 
 
 lais"), 
 And prints — Rarey drumming on Cruiser, 
 And Sayers, our champion, the bruiser, 
 And the little edition of Kabelais : 
 Where a friend, with both hands in his pockets, 
 May saunter up close to examine it. 
 And remark a good deal of Jane Lamb in it, 
 " But the eyes are half out of their sockets ; 
 That hair 's not so bad, where the gloss is, 
 But they 've made the girl's nose a proboscis : 
 Jane Lamb, that we danced with at Vichy ! 
 What, is not she Jane ? Then, who is she ? " 
 
 All that I own is a print. 
 
 An etching, a mezzotint ; 
 
 'T is a study, a fancy, a fiction, 
 
 Yet a fact (take my conviction) 
 
 Because it has more than a hint 
 
 Of a certain face, I never 
 
 Saw elsewhere touch or trace of 
 
 In women I 've seen the face of : 
 
 Just an etching, and, so far, clever. 
 
 I keep my prints, an imbroglio. 
 Fifty in one portfolio. 
 When somebody tries my claret, 
 "SVq turn round chairs to the fire. 
 Chirp over days in a garret. 
 Chuckle o'er increase of salary. 
 Taste the good fruits of our leisure. 
 Talk about pencil and lyre, 
 And the National Portrait Gallery : 
 Then I exhibit my treasure. 
 After we ' ve turned over twenty. 
 And the debt of wonder my crony owes 
 Is paid to my Marc Antonios, 
 He stops me — " Festina lente ! 
 What 's that sweet thing there, the etching ? " 
 How my waistcoat-strings want stretching. 
 How my cheeks grow red as tomatoes. 
 How my heart leaps ! But hearts, after leaps, 
 ache. 
 
 " By the by, you must take, for a keepsake. 
 
 That other, you praised, of Volpato's." 
 
 The fool ! would he try a flight further and 
 
 say — 
 He never saw, never before to-day, 
 What was able to take his breath away, 
 A face to lose youth for, to occupy age 
 With the dream of, meet death with, — why, 
 
 I '11 not engage 
 But that, half in a rapture and half in a rage, 
 I should toss him the thing's self — " 'T is only 
 
 a duplicate, 
 A thing of no value ! Take it, I supplicate I " 
 
 MR. SLUDGE, "THE MEDIUM" 
 
 Mr. D. D. Home, an American spiritualist, 
 attracted much attention in the circle in which 
 Mr. and Mrs. Browning Uved in Florence. 
 
 Now, don't, sir ! Don't expose me ! Just this 
 
 once 1 
 This was the first and only time, I '11 swear, — 
 Look at me, — seo, I kneel, — the only time, 
 I sweai-, I ever cheated, — yes, by the soul 
 Of Her who hears — (your sainted mother, sir !) 
 All, except this last accident, was truth — 
 This little kind of slip ! — and even this. 
 It. was your own wine, sir, the good champagne, 
 (I took it for Catawba, you 're so kind,) 
 Which put the folly in my head ! 
 
 "Get up?" 
 You still inflict on me that terrible face ? 
 You show no mercy ? — Not for Her dear sake, 
 The sainted spirit's, whose soft breath even 
 
 now 
 Blows on my cheek — (don't you feel something, 
 
 sir ?J 
 You 'U tell ? 
 
 Go tell, then ! Who the devil cares 
 What such a rowdy chooses t^o . . , 
 
 Aie — aie — aie 1 
 Please, sir ! your thumbs are through my wind- 
 pipe, sir 1 
 Ch— eh! 
 
 Well, sir, I hope yon 've done it now I 
 Oh Lord I I little thought, sir, yesterday. 
 When your departed mother spoke those words 
 Of peace through me, and moved yon, sir, so 
 
 much. 
 You gave me — (very kind it was of you) 
 These shirt-studs — (better take them back 
 
 again. 
 Please, sir) — yes, little did I think so soon 
 A trifle of trick, all through a glass too much 
 Of his own champagne, would change my best 
 
 of friends 
 Into an angry gentleman ! 
 
 Though, 't was wronf. 
 I don't contest the point ; your anger 's just • 
 Whatever put such folly in my head, 
 I know 't was wicked of me. There 's a thick 
 Dusk undeveloped spirit (I 've observed) 
 Owes me a grudge — a negro's, I should say. 
 Or else an Irish emigrant's ; yourself 
 Explained the case so well last Sunday, sir, 
 When we had smnmoned Franklin to clear up 
 A point about those shares i' the telegraph : 
 Ay, and he swore ... or might it be Tom 
 
 Paine? . . . 
 Thumping the table close by where I crouched. 
 He 'd do me soon a mischief : that 's come 
 
 true ! 
 Why, now your face clears I I was sure it 
 
 would ! 
 Then, this one time . . . don't take your hand 
 
 away. 
 Through yours I surely kiss your mother's 
 
 hand . . . 
 You '11 promise to forgive me ? — or, at least. 
 Tell nobody of this ? Consider, sir ! 
 What harm can mercy do ? Would but the 
 
 shade 
 Of the venerable dead-one iust vouchsafe 
 
398 
 
 DRAMATIS PERSONyE 
 
 A rap or tip ! What bit of paper 's here ? 
 Suppose we take a pencU, let her write. 
 Make the least sig:n, she trges on her child 
 Forgireness ? There now! Eh? Oh! 'Twas 
 
 your foot, 
 And not a natural creak, sir ? 
 
 Answer, then ! 
 Once, twice, thrice . . . see, I 'm waiting to 
 
 say " thrice ! " 
 All to no use ? No sort of hope for me ? 
 It 's all to post to Greeley's nev/spaper ? 
 
 What ? If I told you all about the tricks ? 
 Upon my soul ! — the whole truth, and naught 
 
 else. 
 And how there 's been some falsehood — for 
 
 your part. 
 Will you engage to pay my passage out. 
 And hold your tongue until I 'm safe on board ? 
 England 's the place, not Boston — no oif ence ! 
 I see what makes you hesitate : don't fear I 
 I mean to change my trade and cheat no more. 
 Yes, this time really it 's upon my soul ! 
 Be my salvation I — under Heaven, of course. 
 1 'U tell some queer things. Sixty Vs muse do. 
 A trifle, though, to start with ! We 'U refer 
 The question to this table ? 
 
 How you 're changed I 
 Then split the difference ; thirty more, we '11 say. 
 Ay, but you leave my presents I Else I '11 
 
 swear 
 'Twas all through those: you wanted yours 
 
 again. 
 So, picked a quarrel with me, to get them 
 
 back ! 
 Tread on a worm, it turns, sir ! If I turn. 
 Your fault ! 'T is you '11 have forced me ! 
 
 Who 's obliged 
 To give up life yet try no self-defence ? 
 At all events, I '11 run the risk. Eh ? 
 
 Done ! 
 May I sit, sir ? This dear old table, now ! 
 Please, sir, a parting eggnog and cigar ! 
 I 've been so happy with you ! Nice stuffed 
 
 chairs, 
 And sympathetic sideboards ; what an end 
 To all the instructive evenings ! (It 's alight.) 
 Well, nothing lasts, as Bacon came and said. 
 Here goes, — but keep your temper, or I '11 
 
 scream ! 
 
 Fol-lol-the-rido-liddle-iddle-ol! 
 
 You see, sir, it 's your own fault more than 
 
 mine ; 
 It 's all your fault, you curious gentlefolk ! 
 You're prigs, — excuse me, — like to look so 
 
 spry. 
 So clever, while you cling by half a claw 
 To the perch whereon you puff yourselves at 
 
 roost. 
 Such piece of self-conceit as serves for perch 
 Because you chose it, so it must be safe. 
 Oh, otherwise you're sharp enough ! You spy 
 Who slips, who slides, who holds by help of 
 
 Wanting real foothold, — who can't keep np- 
 
 right 
 On the other perch, your neighbor chose, not 
 
 you : 1 . t 
 
 There 's no outwitting you respecting him ! 
 For instance, men love money — that, you 
 
 know — 
 And what men do to gain it : well, suppose 
 A poor lad, say a help's son in your house. 
 Listening at keyholes, hears the company 
 Talk gi-and of dollars, V-notes, and so forth, 
 How hard they are to get, how good to hold, 
 How much they buy, — if, suddenly, in pops 
 
 he — 
 "I've got a. V-note!" — what do you say to 
 
 him ? 
 What 's your first word which follows your last 
 
 kick? 
 " Where did you steal it, rascal ? " That 's be- 
 cause 
 He finds you, fain would fool you, off your 
 
 perch. 
 Not on the special piece of nonsense, sir. 
 Elected your parade-ground : let him try 
 Lies to the end of the Ust, — " He picked it 
 
 up, 
 His cousin died and left it him by will. 
 The President flung it to him, riding by. 
 An actress trucked it for a curl of his hair, 
 He dreamed of luck and found his shoe e»" 
 
 riched. 
 He dug up clay, and out of clay made gold " — 
 How would you treat such possibilities ! 
 Would not you, prompt, investigate the case 
 With cowhide ? " Lies, lies, lies," you 'd shout : 
 
 and why ? 
 Which of the stories might not prove mere 
 
 truth ? 
 This last, perhaps, that clay was turned to 
 
 coin! 
 Let 's see, now, give him me to speak for him I 
 How many of your rare philosophers. 
 In plaguy books I 've had to dip into, 
 Believed gold could be made thus, saw it 
 
 made. 
 And made it ? Oh, with such philosophers 
 You 're on your best behavior 1 While the 
 
 lad — 
 With him, in a trice, yon settle likelihoods. 
 Nor doubt a moment how he got his prize : 
 In his case, you hear, judge and execute. 
 All in a breath : so would most men of sense. 
 
 But let the same lad hear you talk as grand 
 -At the same keyhole, you and company. 
 Of signs and wonders, the invisible world ; 
 How wisdom scouts our vulgar unbelief 
 More than our vulgarest credulity ; 
 How good men have desired to see a ghost. 
 What Johnson used to say, what Wesley did. 
 Mother Goose thought, and fiddle-diddle- 
 
 dee : — 
 If he break in with, " Sir, I saw a ghost ! " 
 Ah, the ways change ! He flnds you perched 
 
 and prim ; 
 It 's a conceit of yours that ghosts may be : 
 There 's no talk now of cowhide. ' ' Tell it out ! 
 Don't fear us ! Take your time and recollect I 
 
MR. SLUDGE, "THE MEDIUM" 
 
 399 
 
 Sit down first : try a glass of wine^ my boy ! 
 And, David, (is not that your Christian name ?) 
 Of all things, should this happen twice — it 
 
 may — 
 Be sure, while fresh in mind, you let us 
 
 know ! " 
 Does the boy blunder, blurt out this, blab that. 
 Break down in the other, as beginners will ? 
 All's candor, all's considerateness — "No 
 
 haste ! 
 Pause and coUect yourself ! We understand ! 
 That 's the bad memory, or the natural shock, 
 Or the unexplained phenomena ! " 
 
 Egad, 
 The boy takes heart of grace ; finds, never 
 
 fear. 
 The readiest way to ope your own heart wide. 
 Show — what I call your peacock-perch, pet 
 
 post 
 To strut, and spread the tail, and squawk 
 
 upon ! 
 "Just as you thought, much as you might 
 
 expect ! 
 There he more things in heaven and earth, 
 
 Horatio," . . . 
 And so on. Shall not David take the hint, 
 Grow bolder, stroke you down at quickened 
 
 rate? 
 If he ruffle a feather, it 's " Gently, patiently ! 
 Manifestations are so weak at first ! 
 Doubting, moreover, kills them, cuts all short. 
 Cures with a vengeance ! " 
 
 There, sir, that 's your style ! 
 You and your boy — such pains bestowed on 
 
 him. 
 Or any headpiece of the average worth. 
 To teach, say, Greek, would perfect him apace, 
 Make him a Person ("Porson?" thank you, 
 
 sir!) 
 Much more, proficient in the art of lies. 
 You never leave the lesson ! Fire alight. 
 Catch you permitting it to die ! You Ve 
 
 friends ; 
 There 's no withholding knowledge, — least from 
 
 those 
 Apt to look elsewhere for their souls' supply : 
 Why should not you parade your lawful prize ? 
 Wlio finds a picture, digs a medal up. 
 Hits on a first edition, — he henceforth 
 Gives it his name, grows notable : how much 
 
 more, 
 Who ferrets out a "medium"? "David's 
 
 yours. 
 You highly-favored man ? Then, pity souls 
 Less privileged ! Allow us share your luck ! " 
 So, David holds the circle, rules the roast. 
 Narrates the vision, peeps in the glass ball, 
 Sets-to the spirit-writing, hears the raps. 
 As the case may be. 
 
 Now mark ! To be precise — 
 Though I say, "lies" all these, at this first 
 
 'T is iust for science' sake : I call such grubs 
 By the name of what they '11 turn to, dr^on- 
 
 Strictly it 's what good people style untruth ; 
 But yet, so far, not quite the full-grown thing : 
 It 's fancying, fable-making, nonsense-work — 
 What never meant to be so very bad — 
 The knack of story-telling, brightening up 
 Each duU old bit of fact that drops its shine. 
 One does see somewhat when one shuts one's 
 
 eyes. 
 If only spots and streaks ; tables do tip 
 In the oddest way of themselves : and pens, 
 
 good Lord, 
 Who knows if you drive them or they drive 
 
 you? 
 'T is but a foot in the water and out again ; 
 Not that duck-under which decides your dive. 
 Note this, for it 's important ; listen why. 
 
 I '11 prove, you push on David till he dives 
 And ends the shivering. Here 's your circle, 
 
 now; 
 Two-thirds of them, with heads like you their 
 
 host. 
 Turn up their eyes, and cry, as you expect, 
 " Lord, who 'd have thought it ! " But there 's 
 
 always one 
 Looks wise, compassionately smiles, submits, 
 " Of your veracity no kind of doubt. 
 But — do you feel so certain of that boy's ? 
 Keally, I wonder ! I confess myself 
 More chary of my faith ! " That 's galling, 
 
 sir! 
 What, he the investigator, he the sage, 
 When all 's done ? Then, you just have shut 
 
 your eyes. 
 Opened your mouth, and gulped down David 
 
 whole. 
 You ! Terrible were such catastrophe ! 
 So, evidence is redoubled, doubled again. 
 And doubled besides ; once more, "He heard, 
 
 we heard. 
 You and they heard, your mother and your 
 
 wife. 
 Your children and the stranger in your gates : 
 Did they or did they not? " So much for 
 
 him. 
 The black sheep, guest without the wedding- 
 garb. 
 The doubting Thomas ! Now 's your turn to 
 
 crow : 
 " He 's kind to think you such a fool : Sludge 
 
 cheats ? 
 Leave you alone to take precautions ! " 
 
 Straight 
 The rest join chorus. Thomas stands abashed, 
 Sips sUent some such beverage as this. 
 Considers if it be harder, shutting eyes 
 Arsd gulping David in good fellowship, 
 i'han going elsewhere, getting, in exchange, 
 With no eggnog to lubricate the food. 
 Some just as tough a morsel. Over the way. 
 Holds Captain Sparks his court : is it better 
 
 there? 
 Have not you hunting-stories, scalping scenes, 
 And Mexican War exploits to swallow plump 
 If you 'd be free o' the stove-side, rocking- 
 chair. 
 And trio of affable daughters ? 
 
400 
 
 DRAMATIS PERSONS 
 
 Doubt succumbs ! 
 Victory ! All your circle 's yours again ! 
 Out of the clubbing of submissive wits, 
 David's performance rounds, each chink gets 
 
 patched, 
 Everj' protrusion of a point 's filed fine. 
 All 's fit to set ar rolling round tht world. 
 And then return to David finally, 
 Lies seven feet thick about his first half-inch. 
 Here 's a choice birth o' the supernatural. 
 Poor David 's pledged to ! Yon 've employed 
 
 no tool 
 That law exclaims at, save the devil's own. 
 Yet screwed him into henceforth gulling you 
 To the top o' your bent, — all out of one half- 
 lie ! 
 
 You hold, if there 's one half or a hundredth 
 
 part 
 Of a lie, that 's his fault, — his be the penalty ! 
 I dare say I You 'd prove firmer in his place ? 
 You 'd find the courage, — that first flurry 
 
 over. 
 That mild bit of romancing-work at end, — 
 To interpose with " It gets serious, this ; 
 Must stop here. Sir, I saw no ghost at all. 
 Inform your friends I made . . . well, fools 
 
 of them. 
 And found you ready made. I 've lived in 
 
 clover 
 These three weeks : take it out in kicks of 
 
 me!" 
 I doubt it. Ask your conscience ! Let me 
 
 know. 
 Twelve months hence, with how few embellish- 
 ments 
 You 've told almighty Boston of this passage 
 Of arms between us, your first taste o' the foil 
 Proms Sludge who could not fence, sirl Sludge, 
 
 your boy ! 
 I lied, sir, — there ! I got up from my gorge 
 On offal in the gutter, and preferred 
 Your canvas-backs ; I took their carver's size. 
 Measured his modicum of intelligence. 
 Tickled him on the cockles of his heart 
 With a raven feather, and next week found 
 
 myself 
 Sweet and clean, dining daintily, dizened 
 
 smart. 
 Set on a stool buttressed by ladies' knees. 
 Every soft smiler calling me her pet. 
 Encouraging my story to uncoil 
 And creep out from its hole, inch after inch, 
 " How last night, I no sooner snug in bed. 
 Tucked up, just as they left me, — than came 
 
 raps ! 
 While a light whisked " . . . " Shaped some- 
 what like a star ? " 
 " Well, like some sort of stars, ma'am." — "So 
 
 we thought ! 
 And any voice ? Not yet ? Try hard, next 
 
 time. 
 If you can't hear a voice ; we think you may : 
 At least, the Pennsylvanian ' mediums ' did." 
 Oh, next time comes the voice 1 " Just as we 
 
 hoped I" 
 Are not the hopers proud now, pleased, profuse 
 0' the natural acknowledgment ? 
 
 Of course ! 
 So, off we push, iUy-oh-yo, trim the boat. 
 On we sweep with a cataract ahead, 
 We 're midway to the Horse-shoe : stop, who 
 
 can. 
 The dance of bubbles gay about our prow ! 
 Experiences become worth waiting for. 
 Spirits now speak up, tell their inmost mind, 
 And compliment the " medium " properly. 
 Concern themselves about his Sunday coat. 
 See rings on his hand with pleasure. Ask 
 
 yourself 
 How you 'd receive a course of treats like these 1 
 Why, take the quietest hack and stall him ujp. 
 Cram him with corn a month, then out with 
 
 him 
 Among his mates on a bright April mom, 
 With the turf to tread ; see if you find or no 
 A caper in him, if he bucks or bolts ! 
 Much more a youth whose fancies sprout as 
 
 rank 
 As toadstool-clump from melon-bed. 'T is 
 
 soon, 
 " Sirrah, you spirit, come, go, fetch and carry, 
 Kead, write, rap, rub-a-dub, and hang your- 
 self ! " 
 I 'm spared all further trouble ; all 's arranged ; 
 Your circle does my business : I may rave 
 Like an epileptic dervish in the books. 
 Foam, fling myself flat, rend my clothes to 
 
 shreds ; 
 No matter ; lovers, friends and countrymen 
 Will lay down spiritual laws, read wrong things 
 
 right 
 By the ride o' reverse. If Francis Verulam 
 Styles himself Bacon, spells the name beside 
 With a y and a k, says he drew breath in York, 
 Gave up the ghost in Wales when Cromwell 
 
 reigned, 
 (As, sir, we somewhat fear he was apt to say. 
 Before 1 found the useful book that knows) — 
 Wly, what harm 's done ? The circle smilea 
 
 apace, 
 "It was not Bacon, after all, you see ! 
 We understand j the trick 's but natural : 
 Such spirits' individuality 
 Is hard to put in evidence : they incline 
 To gibe and jeer, these undeveloped sorts. 
 You see, their world 's much like a jail broke 
 
 loose, 
 WTiile this of ours remains shut, bolted, barred, 
 With a single window to it. Sludge, our friend. 
 Serves as this window, whether thin or thick, 
 Or stained or stainless ; he 's the medium-pane 
 Through which, to see us and be seen, they 
 
 peep : 
 They crowd each other, hustle for a chance. 
 Tread on their neighbor's kibes, play tricks 
 
 enough ! 
 Does Bacon, tired of waiting, swerve aside ? 
 Up in his place jumps Barnum — ' I 'm your 
 
 man, 
 I '11 answer you for Bacon ! ' Try once more 1 " 
 
 Or else it 's — " What 's a ' medium ' ? He 's 
 
 a means, 
 Good, bad, indifferent, still the only means 
 Spirits can speak by ; he may misconceive, 
 
MR. SLUDGE, "THE MEDIUM' 
 
 401 
 
 Stutter and stammer, — he 's their Sludge and 
 
 drudge, 
 Take him or leave him ; they must hold their 
 
 peace. 
 Or else, put up with having knowledge strained 
 To half-expression through his ignorance. 
 Suppose, the spirit Beethoven wants to shed 
 New music he 's brimful of ; why, he turns 
 The handle of this oi^an, giinds with Sludge, 
 And what he poured in at the mouth o' the 
 
 miU 
 As a Thirty-third Sonata, (fancy now !) 
 Gomes from the hopper as bran-new Sludge, 
 
 naught else. 
 The Shakers' Hymn in G, with a natural F, 
 Or the ' Stars and Stripes ' set to consecutive 
 
 fourths." 
 
 Sir, where 's the scrape you did not help me 
 
 through. 
 You that are wise ? And for the fools, the 
 
 folk 
 Who came to see, — the guests, (observe that 
 
 word !) 
 Pray do you find guests criticise your wine. 
 Your furniture, your grammar, or your nose ? 
 Then, why your "medium"? What's the 
 
 difference ? 
 Prove your madeira red-ink and gamboge, — 
 Your Sludge a cheat — then, somebody's a 
 
 For vaunting both as genuine. " Guests ! " 
 
 Don't fear ! 
 They '11 make a wry face, nor too much of 
 
 that. 
 And leave you in your glory. 
 
 " No, sometimes 
 They doubt and say as much ! " Ay, doubt 
 
 they do ! 
 And what's the consequence? "Of course 
 
 they doubt '' — 
 (You triumph) — " that explains the hitch at 
 
 once ! 
 Doubt posed ouv 'medium,' puddled his pure 
 
 mind ; 
 Ke gave them back their rubbish : pitch chaff 
 
 in. 
 Could flour come out o' the honest mill ? " So, 
 
 prompt 
 Applaud the faithful : cases flock in point, 
 " How, when a mocker willed a ' medium ' once 
 Should name a spirit James whose name was 
 
 George, 
 ' James,' cried the ' medium,' — 't was the test 
 
 of truth 1 " 
 In short, a hit proves much, a miss proves more. 
 Does this convince ? The better : does it fail ? 
 Time for the double-shotted broadside, then — 
 The grand means, last resource. Look black 
 
 and big ! 
 "You style us idiots, therefore — why stop 
 
 short? 
 Accomplices in rascality : this we hear 
 In our own house, from our invited guest 
 Found brave enough to outrage a poor boy 
 Exposed by our good faith ! Have you been 
 
 heard ? 
 
 Now, then, hear us ; one man 's not quite worth 
 
 twelve. 
 You see a cheat ? Here 's some twelve see an 
 
 ass : 
 Bxcuse me if I calculate : good day ! " 
 Out slinks the skeptic, all the laughs explode, 
 Sludge waves his hat in triumph ! 
 
 Or — he don't. 
 There 's something in real truth (explain who 
 
 can !) 
 One casts a wistful eye at, like the horse 
 Who mopes beneath stuffed hay-racks and 
 
 won't munch 
 Because he spies a corn-bag: hang that truth, 
 It spoils all dainties proffered in its jJace ! 
 I 've felt at times when, cockered, cosseted 
 And coddled by the aforesaid company. 
 Bidden enjoy their bullying, — never fear. 
 But o'er their shoulders spit at the flying man, — 
 I 've felt a child ; only, a fractious child 
 That, dandled soft by nurse, aunt, grandmother, 
 Who keep him from the kennel, sun and wind. 
 Good fun and wholesome mud, — enjoined be 
 
 sweet. 
 And comely and superior, — eyes askance 
 The ragged sons o' the gutter at their game. 
 Fain would be down with them i' the thick o' 
 
 the filth. 
 Making dirt-pies, laughing free, speaking plain. 
 And calling granny the gray old cat she is. 
 1 've felt a spite, 1 say, at you, at them, 
 Huggings and humbug — gnashed my teeth to 
 
 mark 
 A decent dog pass ! It 's too bad, I say, 
 Kuining a soul so ! 
 
 But what 's " so," what's fixed. 
 Where may one stop ? Nowhere I The cheat- 
 ing 's nursed 
 Out of the lying, softly and surely spun 
 To just your length, sir ! I 'd stop soon enoiigh : 
 But you 're for progress. " Alt old, nothing 
 
 new? 
 Only the usual talking through the mouth. 
 Or writing by the hand ? I own, I thought 
 This would develop, grow demonstrable. 
 Make doubt absurd, give figures we might see. 
 Flowers we might touch. There's no one 
 
 doubts you. Sludge ! 
 You dream the dreams, you see the spiritual 
 
 sights. 
 The speeches come in your head, beyond dis- 
 pute. 
 Still, for the skeptics' sake, to stop all mouths. 
 We want some outward manifestation ! — well. 
 The Pennsylvaniaus gained such : why not 
 
 Sludge ? 
 He may improve with time ! " 
 
 Ay, that he may I 
 He sees his lot : there 's no avoiding fate. 
 'T is a trifle at first. "Eh, David? Did you 
 
 hear? 
 You jogged the table, your foot caused the 
 
 squeak. 
 This time you 're , , , joking, are you not, my 
 
 boy? " 
 
402 
 
 DRAMATIS PERSONS 
 
 "N-n-no ! "— and I'm done for, bought and 
 
 sold henceforth 
 The old good easy jog-trot way, the ... eh ? 
 The . . . not so very false, as falsehood goes, 
 The spinning ont and drawing fine, you know, — 
 Really mere novel-writing of a sort. 
 Acting, or improvising, make-believe, 
 Surely not downright cheatery, — anyhow, 
 'T is done with and ray lot east ; Cheat 's my 
 
 name : 
 The fatal daah of brandy in your tea 
 Has settled what you '11 have the souchong's 
 
 smack : 
 The caddy gives way to the dram-bottle. 
 
 Then, it 's so cruel easy ! Oh, those tricks 
 That can't be tricks, those feats by sleight of 
 
 hand, 
 Cleai'ly no common conjurer's ! — no, indeed ! 
 A conjurer ? Choose me any craft i' the world 
 A man puts hand to ; and with six months' 
 
 pains, 
 I '11 play you twenty tricks miraculous 
 To people untaught the trade : have you seen 
 
 glass blown. 
 Pipes pierced? Why, just this biscuit that I 
 
 chip, 
 Did you ever watch a baker toss one fiat 
 To the oven ? Try and do it ! Take my word. 
 Practice but half as much, while limbs are 
 
 lithe. 
 To turn, shove, tilt a table, crack your joints. 
 Manage your feet, dispose your hands aright, 
 Work wires that twitch the curtains, play the 
 
 glove 
 At end o' your slipper, — then put out the lights 
 And . . . there, there, all you want you '11 get, 
 
 I hope ! 
 I found it slip, easy as an old shoe. 
 
 Now, lights on table again ! I 've done my part. 
 You take my place while I give thanks and 
 
 rest. 
 " Well, Judge Humgruffin, what 's your verdict, 
 
 sir ? 
 You, hardest head in the United States, — 
 Did you detect a cheat here ? Wait ! Let 's 
 
 see ! 
 Just an experiment first, for candor's sake ! 
 I '11 try and cheat you, Judge ! the table tilts : 
 Is it I that move it ? Write ! I '11 press your 
 
 hand: 
 Cry when I push, or guide your pencil. Judge ! " 
 Sludge still triumphant ! " That a rap, indeed ? 
 That, the real writing ? Very like a whale ! 
 Then, if, sir, you — a most distinguished man, 
 And, were the Judge not here, I 'd say, , . . 
 
 no matter ! 
 Well, sir, if you fail, you can't take us in, — 
 There 's little fear that Sludge will ! " 
 
 Won't he, ma'am ? 
 But what if our distinguished host, like Sludge, 
 Bade God bear witness that he played no trick. 
 While you believed that what produced the raps 
 Was just a certain child who died, you know. 
 And whose last breath you thought your lips had 
 felt? 
 
 Eh ? That 's a capital point, ma'am : Sludge 
 
 begins 
 At your entreaty with your dearest dead, 
 The little voice set lisping once again, 
 The tiny hand made feel for yours once more. 
 The poor lost image brought back, plain as 
 
 dreams. 
 Which image, if a word had chanced recall, 
 The customary cloud would cross your eyes. 
 Your heart return the old tick, pay its pang ! 
 A right mood for investigation, this ! 
 One 's at one's ease with Saul and Jonathan, 
 Pompey and Csesar : but one's own lost 
 
 chUd . . . 
 I wonder, when you heard the first clod drop 
 From the spadeful at the grave-side, felt you free 
 To investigate who twitched your funeral scarf 
 Or brushed your flounces ? Tlien, it came of 
 
 course. 
 You should be stunned and stupid ; then (how 
 
 else ?) 
 Your breath stopped with your blood, your 
 
 brain struck work. 
 But now, such causes fail of such efi^ects. 
 All 's changed, — the Uttle voice begins afresh, 
 Yet you, calm, consequent, can test and try 
 And touch the truth. " Tests ? Did n't the 
 
 creature tell 
 Its nurse's name, and say it lived six years. 
 And rode a rocking-horse ? Enough of tests ! 
 Sludge never could learn that ! " 
 
 He could not, eh ? 
 You compliment him. " Could not ? " Speak 
 
 for yourself ! 
 I 'd like to know the man I ever saw 
 Once, — never mind where, how, why, when, — 
 
 once saw. 
 Of whom I do not keep some matter in mind 
 He'd swear I "could not" know, sagacious 
 
 soul ! 
 What? Do you live in this world's blow of 
 
 blacks, 
 Palaver, gossipry, a single hour 
 Nor find one smut has settled on your nose. 
 Of a smut's worth, no more, no less ? — one fact 
 Out of the drift of facts, whereby you learn 
 What some one was, somewhere, somewhen, 
 
 somewhy ? 
 You don't tell f oik — " See what has stuck to 
 
 me ! 
 Judge Humgruffin, our most distinguished man, 
 Your uncle was a tailor, and yotir wife 
 Thought to have married Miggs, missed him, 
 
 hit you ! " — 
 Do yon, sir, though you see him twice a-week ? 
 " No," you reply, " what use retailing it ? 
 Why should I ? " But, you see, one dav you 
 
 should, 
 Because one day there 's much use, — when 
 
 this fact 
 Brings you the Judge upon both goutv knees 
 Before the supernatural ; proves that "Sludge 
 Knows, as you say, a thing he " could not " 
 
 know : 
 Will not Sludge thenceforth keep an out- 
 stretched face. 
 The way the wind drives ? 
 
MR. SLUDGE, "THE MEDIUM" 
 
 403 
 
 " Could not ! " Look yon now, 
 I '11 tell you a story I There 's a whiskered 
 
 chap, 
 A foreigner, that teaches music here 
 And gets his bread, — knowing no better way ; 
 He says, the fellow who informed of him 
 And made him fly his country and fall West, 
 Was a hunchback cobbler, sat, stitched soles 
 
 and sang, 
 In some outlandish place, the city Rome, 
 In a cellar by their Broadway, all day long ; 
 Never asked questions, stopped to listen or look. 
 Nor lifted nose from lapstone ; let the world 
 KoU round his three-legged stool, and news run 
 
 in 
 The ears he hardly seemed to keep pricked up. 
 Well, that man went on Sundays, touched his 
 
 pay, 
 
 And toot his praise from government, you see ; 
 For something like two dollars every week. 
 He 'd engage tell you some one little thing 
 Of some one man, which led to many more, 
 (Because one truth leads right to the world's 
 
 end,) 
 And make you that man's master — when he 
 
 dined 
 And on what dish, where walked to keep his 
 
 health 
 And to what street. His trade was, throwing 
 
 thus 
 His sense out, like an ant-eater's long tongue, 
 Soft, innocent, warm, moist, impassible. 
 And when 't was crusted o'er with creatures — 
 
 slick. 
 Their juice enriched his palate. " Could not 
 
 Sludge ! " 
 
 I '11 go yet a step further, and maintain. 
 Once the imposture plunged its proper depth 
 I' the rotten of your natures, all of you, — 
 (If one 's not mad nor drunk, and hardly then) 
 It 's impossible to cheat — that 's, be found out ! 
 Go tell your brotherhood this first slip of mine, 
 All to-day's tale, how yon detected Sludge, 
 Behaved unpleasantly, till he was fain confess. 
 And so has come to grief ! You '11 find, I think. 
 Why Sludge still snaps his fingers in your face. 
 There now, you 've told them ! What 's their 
 
 prompt reply ? 
 "Sir, did that youth confess he had cheated 
 
 me, 
 I 'd disbelieve him. He may cheat at times ; 
 That 's in the * medium '-nature, thus they 're 
 
 made. 
 Vain and vindictive, cowards, prone to scratch. 
 And so all cats are ; still, a cat 's the beast 
 You coax the strange electric sparks from out. 
 By rubbing back its fur ; not so a dog. 
 Nor lion, nor lamb : 't is the cat's nature, sir ! 
 Why not the dog's ? Ask God, wbo made them 
 
 beasts ! 
 D'^ye think the sound, the nicely-balanced man 
 (Like me " — aside) — " like yon yourself," — 
 
 'aloud) 
 " — He 's stuff to make a ' medium ' ? Bless 
 
 your soul, 
 'T is these hysteric, hybrid half-and-halfs, 
 Kq^ivocal, worthless vermin yield the fire ! 
 
 We take such as we find them, 'ware their 
 
 tricks. 
 Wanting their service. Sir, Sludge took in 
 
 you — 
 How, 1 can't say, not being there to watch : 
 He was tried, was tempted by your easiness, — 
 He did not take in me I " 
 
 Thank you for Sludge ! 
 I 'm to be grateful to such patrons, eh. 
 When what you hear 's my best word ? 'T is a 
 
 challenge, 
 " Snap at all strangers, half-tamed prairie-dog. 
 So you cower duly at your keeper's beck ! 
 Cat, show what claws were made for, mufOing 
 
 them 
 Onljr to me ! Cheat others if you can. 
 Me, if you dare ! " And, my wise sir, I dared — 
 Did cheat you first, made you cheat others next. 
 And had the help o' your vaunted manliness 
 To bully the incredulous. You used me ? 
 Have not I used you, taken full revenge. 
 Persuaded folk they knew not their own name. 
 And straight they 'd own the error ! Who was 
 
 the fool 
 When, to an awe-struck wide-eyed open-mouthed 
 Circle of sages. Sludge would introduce 
 Milton composii^ baby-rhymes, and Locke 
 Reasoning in gibberish. Homer writing (Jreek 
 In naughts and crosses, Asaph setting psalms 
 To crotchet and quaver? I've made a spirit 
 
 squeak 
 In sham voice for a minute, then outbroke 
 Bold in my own, defying the imbeciles — 
 Have copied some ghost's pothooks, half a page. 
 Then ended with my own scrawl undisguised. 
 " AU right ! The ghost was merely using 
 
 Sludge, 
 Suiting itself from his imperfect stock ! " 
 Don't talk of gratitude to me ! For what ? 
 For being treated as a showman's ape. 
 Encouraged to be wicked and make sport. 
 Fret or sulk, grin or whimper, any mood 
 So long as the ape be in it and no man — 
 Because a nut pays every mood alike. 
 Curse your superior, superintending sort. 
 Who, since you hate smoke, send up boys that 
 
 climb 
 To cure your chimney, bid a " medium " lie 
 To sweep you truth down ! Curse your women 
 
 too. 
 Your insolent wives and daughters, that fire up 
 Or faint away if a male hand squeeze theirs. 
 Yet, to encourage Slndge, may play with Sludge 
 As only a " medium," only the kind of thing 
 They must hiunor, fondle . . . oh, to miscon- 
 ceive 
 Were too preposterous ! But I 've paid them 
 
 out! 
 They 've had their wish — called for the naked 
 
 truth. 
 And in she tripped, sat down and bade them 
 
 stare : 
 They had to blush a little and forgive 1 
 " The fact is, children talk so ; in next world 
 All our conventions are reversed, — perhaps 
 Made light of : something like old prints, ray 
 
 dear I 
 
404 
 
 DRAMATIS PERSONS 
 
 The Judfjtj has one, he brought from Italy, 
 A metropolis in the backj^round, — o'er a bridge, 
 A team of trottinj^ roadsters, — cheei'f ul groups 
 Of wayside travellers, peasants at their work. 
 And, full in front, quite unconcerned, why not ? 
 Three nymphs conversing with a cavalier, 
 And never a rag among them : ' fine, ' folk cry ^- 
 And heavenly manners seem not much unlike ! 
 Let Sludge go on ; we '11 fancy it 's in print ! " 
 If such as came for wool, sir, went home shorn. 
 Where is the wrong I did them ? 'T was their 
 
 choice ; 
 They tried the adventure, ran the risk, tossed 
 
 up 
 And lost, as some one 's sure to do in games ; 
 They fancied I was made to lose, — smoked 
 
 glass 
 Useful to spy the sun through, spare their eyes : 
 And had I proved a red-hot iron plate 
 They thought to pierce, and, for their pains, 
 
 grew blind. 
 Whose were the fault but theirs ? While, as 
 
 things go. 
 Their loss amounts to gain, the more 's the 
 
 shame ! 
 They 've had their peep into the spirit-world, 
 And all this world may know it ! They 've fed 
 
 fat 
 Their self-conceit which else had starved : what 
 
 chance 
 Save this, of cackling o'er a golden egg 
 And compassing distinction from the flock. 
 Friends of a feather ? Well, they paid for it, 
 And not prodigiously ; the price o' the play, 
 Not counting certain pleasant interludes, 
 Was scarce a vulgar play's worth. When you 
 
 buy 
 The actor's talent, do you dare propose 
 For his soul beside? Whereas, my soul you 
 
 buy! 
 Sludge acts Macbeth, obliged to be Macbeth, 
 Or you '11 not hear his first word ! Just go 
 
 through 
 That slight formality, swear himself 's the 
 
 Thane, 
 And thenceforth he may strut and fret his hour, 
 Spout, spawl, or spin his target, no one cares ! 
 Why had n't I leave to play tricks. Sludge as 
 
 Sludge ? 
 Enough of it all ! I 've wiped out scores with 
 
 you — 
 Vented your fustian, let myself be streaked 
 Like tom-fool with your ochre and carmine. 
 Worn patchwork your respectable fingers sewed 
 To metamorphose somebody, — yes, I 've earned 
 My wages, swallowed down my bread of shame, 
 And shake the crumbs off — where but in your 
 
 face? 
 
 As for reUgion — ^^Jf I served it, sir ! 
 I '11 stick to that ! With my phenomena 
 I laid the atheist sprawling on his back. 
 Propped up Saint Paul, or, at least, Sweden- 
 
 borg! 
 In fact, it 's just the proper way to balk 
 These troublesome fellows — liars, one and all, 
 Are not these skeptics ? Well, to baffle them, 
 No use in being squeamish : lie yourself I 
 
 Erect your buttress just as wide o' the line. 
 Your side, as they build up the wall on theirs ; 
 Where both meet, midway in a point, is truth. 
 High overhead : so, take your room, pile bnoka, 
 Lie ! Oh, there 's titillation in all shame ! 
 What snow may lose in white, snow gains in 
 
 rose ! 
 Miss Stokes turns — Kahab, — nor a bad ex- 
 change ! 
 Glory be on her, for the good she wrought, 
 Breeding belief anew 'neath ribs of death. 
 Browbeating now the unabashed before. 
 Ridding us of their whole life's gathered straws 
 By a live coal from the altar ! Why, of old. 
 Great men spent years and years in writing 
 
 books 
 To prove we 've souls, and hardly proved it 
 
 then: 
 Miss Stokes with her live coal, for you and me ! 
 Surely, to this good issue, all was fair — 
 Not only fondling Sludge, but, even suppose 
 He let escape some spice of knavery, — well, 
 In wisely being blind to it ! Don't you praise 
 Nelson for setting spy-glass to blind eye 
 And saying . . . what was it — that he could 
 
 not see 
 The signal he was bothered with ? Ay, indeed 1 
 
 I '11 go beyond : there 's a real love of a lie, 
 Liars find ready-made for lies they make. 
 As hand for glove, or tongue for sugar-plum. 
 At best, 't is never pure and full belief ; 
 Those furthest in the quagmire, — don't suppose 
 They strayed there with no warning, got no 
 
 chance 
 Of a filth-speck in their face, which they 
 
 clenched teeth. 
 Bent brow against ! Be sure they had their 
 
 doubts. 
 And fears, and fairest challenges to tiy 
 The fioor o' the seeming solid sand ! But no ! 
 Their faith was pledged, acquaintance too ap- 
 prised, 
 All but the last step ventured, kerchiefs waved, 
 And Sludge called pet : " 't was easier march- 
 ing on 
 To the promised land ; join those who, Thurs- 
 day next, 
 Meant to meet Shakespeare ; better follow 
 
 Sludge — 
 Prudent, oh sure ! — on the alert, how else ? 
 But making for the mid-bog, all the same ! 
 To hear your outcries, one would think I caught 
 Miss Stokes by the scruff o' the neck, and 
 
 pitched her flat, 
 Foolisn-face-foremost ! Hear these simpletons, 
 That 's all I beg, before my work 's begun, 
 Before I 've touched them with my finger-tip ! 
 Thus they await me (do but listen, now ! 
 It 's reasoning, this is, — I can't imitate 
 The baby voice, though), — " In so many tales 
 Must be some truth, truth though a pin-point big. 
 Yet, some : a single man 's deceived, perhaps — 
 Hardly, a thousand : to suppose one cheat 
 Can gull all these, were more miraculous far 
 Than aught we should confess a miracle," — 
 And so on. Then the Judge sums up — (it's 
 rare) 
 
MR. SLUDGE, "THE MEDIUM" 
 
 405 
 
 Bids you respect the authorities that leap 
 
 To the judgment-seat at once, — why don't you 
 
 note 
 The hmpid nature, the unblemished life, 
 The spotless honor, indisputable sense 
 Of the first upstart with his story ? What — 
 Outrage a boy on whom you ne'er till now 
 Set eyes, because he finds raps trouble him ? 
 
 Fools, these are : ay, and how of their opposites 
 Who never did, at bottom of their hearts. 
 Believe for a moment ? — Men emasculate. 
 Blank of belief, who played, as eunuchs use. 
 With superstition safely, — cold of blood. 
 Who saw what made for them i' the mystery. 
 Took their occasion, and snpportea Sludge 
 
 — As proselytes ? No, tliank you, far too 
 
 shrewd 1 
 
 — But promisers of fair play, encouragers 
 
 0' the claimant ; who in candor needs must 
 
 hoist 
 Sludge upon Mars' HUl, get speech out of Sludge 
 To carry off, criticise, and cant about ! 
 Did n't Athens treat Saint Paul so ? — at any 
 
 rate. 
 It 's " a new thing " philosophy fumbles at. 
 Then there 's the other picker-out of pearl 
 From dungheaps, — ■ ay, your literary man. 
 Who draws on his kid gloves to deal with Sludge 
 Daintily and discreetly, — shakes a dust 
 0' the doctrine, flavors thence, he well knows 
 
 how. 
 The narrative or the novel, — half-believes. 
 All for the book's sake, and the public's stai'e. 
 And the cash that 's God's sole solid in this 
 
 world ! 
 Look at him ! Try to be too bold, too gross 
 For the master ! Not you ! He 's the man for 
 
 muck ; 
 Shovel it forth, fnU-splash, he '11 smooth your 
 
 brown 
 Into artistic richness, never fear ! 
 Find him the crude stuff ; when you recognize 
 Your lie again, you '11 doif your hat to it. 
 Dressed out for company ! " For company,'' 
 I say, since there 's the relish of success : 
 Let all pay due respect, call the lie truth, 
 Save the soft silent smirking gentleman 
 Who ushered in the stranger ; you must sigh 
 * ' How melancholy, he, the only one, 
 Fails to perceive the bearing of the truth 
 Himself gave birth to!" — There's the tri- 
 umph's smack ! 
 That man would choose to see the whole world 
 
 roU 
 I' the slime o' the slough, so he might touch the 
 
 tip 
 Of his brush with what I call the best of 
 
 browns — 
 Tint g:host-tales, spirit-stories, past the power 
 Of the outworn umber and bistre ! 
 
 Yet I think 
 Tliere 's a more hateful form of foolery — 
 The social sage's, Solomon of saloons 
 And philosophic diner-out, the fribble 
 Who wants a doctrine for a ehopping^block 
 To try the edge of his faculty upon, 
 
 Prove how much common sense he '11 hack and 
 
 hew 
 I' the critical moment 'twixt the soup and fish ! 
 These were my patrons : these, and the like of 
 
 them 
 Who, rising in my soul now, sicken it, — 
 These I have injured ! Gratitude to these ? 
 The gratitude, forsooth, of a prostitute 
 To the greenhorn and the bully — friends of 
 
 hers. 
 From the wag that wants the queer jokes for 
 
 his club. 
 To the snuffbox-decorator, honest man. 
 Who just was at his wits' end where to find 
 So genial a Fasiphae ! All. and each 
 Pay, compliment, protect from the police : 
 And how she hates them for their pains, li]<e 
 
 me ! 
 So much for my remorse at thanklessness 
 Toward a deserving public I 
 
 But, for God? 
 Ay, that 's a question ! Well, sir, since you 
 
 press — 
 (How you do tease the whole thing out of me ! 
 I don't mean you, you know, when I say 
 
 "them:" 
 Hate you, indeed ! But that Miss Stokes, that 
 
 Judge ! 
 Enough, enough — with sugar: thank you, sir !) 
 Now for it, then ! WiU you believe me, though ? 
 You 've heard what I confess ; I don't uusay 
 A single word : I cheated when I could. 
 Rapped with my toe-joints, set sham hands at 
 
 work. 
 Wrote down names weak in sympathetic ink. 
 Rubbed odic lights with ends of phosphor-match, 
 And all the rest ; believe that : believe this, 
 By the same token, though it seem to set 
 The crooked straight a^ain, unsay the said. 
 Stick up what I 've knocked down ; 1 can't help 
 
 that 
 It 's truth ! I somehow vomit truth to-day. 
 This trade of mine — I don't know, can't be 
 
 sure 
 But there was something in it, tricks and all ! 
 Really, I want to light up my own mind. 
 They were tricks, — true, but what I mean to 
 
 add 
 Is also true. First, — don't it strike you, sir ? 
 Go back to the beginning, — the first fact 
 We 're taught is, there 's a world beside this 
 
 world, 
 With spirits, not mankind, for tenantry ; 
 That much within that world once sojourned 
 
 here. 
 That all upon this world will visit there, 
 And therefore that we, bodily here below. 
 Must have exactly such an interest 
 In learning what may be the ways o' the world 
 Above us, as the disembodied folk 
 Have (by all analogic likelihood) 
 In watching how things go in the old home 
 With us, their sons, successors, and what not. 
 Oh, yes, with added powers probably. 
 Fit for the novel state, — old loves grown pure. 
 Old interests understood aright, — they watch I 
 Eyes to see, ears to hear, and hands to help. 
 
4o6 
 
 DRAMATIS PERSONS 
 
 Proportionate to advancement : they 're ahead, 
 That 's all — do what we do, but noblier done — 
 Use plate, whereas we eat our meals off delf, 
 (To use a figure.) 
 
 Concede that, and I ask 
 Next what may he the mode of intercourse 
 Between us men here, and those once-men 
 
 there ? 
 First comes the Bible's speech ; then, history 
 With the supernatural element, — you know — 
 All that we sucked in with our mothers' milk. 
 Grew up with, got inside of us at last, 
 TUl it 's found bone of bone and flesh of flesh. 
 See now, we start with the miraculous. 
 And know it used to be, at all events : 
 What 's the firat step we take, and can't but 
 
 take. 
 In arguing from the known to the obscure ? 
 Why this : "What was before, may be to-day. 
 JSinee Samuel's ghost appeared to Saul, — of 
 
 course 
 My brother's spirit may appeal' to me." 
 Go tell your teacher that ! What 's his reply ? 
 What brings a shade of doubt for the first time 
 O'er his brow late so luminous with faith ? 
 " Such things have been," says he, " and there 's 
 
 no doubt 
 Such things may be : but I advise mistrust 
 Of eyes, ears, stomach, and, more than all, your 
 
 brain. 
 Unless it be of your great-grandmother. 
 Whenever they propose a ghost to you ! " 
 The end is, there 's a composition struck ; 
 'T is settled, we 've some way of intercourse 
 Just as in Saul's time ; only, different : 
 How, when and where, precisely, — find it out I 
 I want to know, then, what 's so natural 
 As that a person born into this world 
 And seized on by such teaching, should begin 
 With firm expectancy and a frank look-out 
 For his own allotment, his especial share 
 I' the secret, — his particular ghost, in fine ? 
 Imean, a person born to look that way. 
 Since natures differ : take the painter-sort. 
 One man lives fifty years in ignorance 
 Whether grass be green or red, — " No kind of 
 
 eye 
 For color," say you ; while another picks 
 And puts away even pebbles, when a child. 
 Because of bluish spots and pinky veins — 
 " Give him forthwith a paint-box ! " Just the 
 
 same 
 Was I born ..." medium," you won't let me 
 
 say,— 
 Well, seer of the supernatural 
 Everywhen, everyhow, and everywhere, — 
 WiU that do ? 
 
 I and all such boys of course 
 Started with the same stock of Bible-truth ; 
 Only, — what in the rest you style their sense. 
 Instinct, blind reasoning but imperative. 
 This, betimes, taught them the old world had 
 
 one law ^ 
 
 And ours another : " New world, new laws," 
 
 cried they : 
 " None but old laws, seen everywhere at work," 
 
 Cried I, and by their help explained ray life 
 The Jews' way, still a working way to me. 
 Ghosts made the noises, fairies waved the tehts, 
 Or Santa Glaus slid down on New Year's Eve 
 And stuffed with cakes the stocking at ray bed, 
 Changed the worn shoes, rubbed clean the 
 
 fingered slate 
 0' the sum that came to grief the day before. 
 
 This could not last long : soon enough I found 
 Who had worked wonders thus, and to what 
 
 end: 
 But did I find all easy, like my mates ? 
 Henceforth no supernatural any more ? 
 Not a whit : what projects the billiard-balls ? 
 " A cue," you answer. " Yes, a cue," said I ; 
 " But what hand, off the cushion, moved the 
 
 cue? 
 What unseen agency, outside the world, 
 Prompted its puppets to do this and that. 
 Put cakes and shoes and slates into their mind, 
 These mothers and aunts, nay even school- 
 masters ? " 
 Thus high I sprang, and there have settled since. 
 Just so I reason, in sober earnest still. 
 About the greater godsends, what you call 
 The serious gains and losses of my life. 
 What do I know or care about your world 
 Which either is or seems to be ? This snap 
 0' my fingers, sir ! My care is for myself ; 
 Myself am whole and sole reality 
 Inside a raree-show and a raai-ket-mob 
 Gathered about it : that 's the use of things. 
 'T is easy saying they serve vast purposes. 
 Advantage their grand selves: be it true or 
 
 false, 
 Each thing may have two uses. What 's a star ? 
 A world, or a world's sun : does n't it serve 
 As taper also, timepiece, weather-glass. 
 And almanac ? Are stars not set for signs 
 When we should shear our sheep, sow com, 
 
 prune trees ? 
 The Bible says so. 
 
 Well, I add one use 
 To all the acknowledged uses, and declare 
 If I spy Charles's Wain at twelve to-night. 
 It warns me, " Go, nor lose another day, 
 And have your hair cut. Sludge ! " You 
 
 laugh : and why ? 
 Were such a sign too hard for God to give ? 
 No : but Sludge seems too little for such grace : 
 Thank you, sir ! So you think, so does not 
 
 Sludge ! 
 When you and good men gape at Providence, 
 Go into history and bid us mark 
 Not merely powder-plots prevented, crowns 
 Kept on kings' heads by miracle enough. 
 But private mercies — oh, you 've told me, sir. 
 Of such interpositions ! How yourself 
 Once, missing on a memorable day 
 Your handkerchief — just setting out, you 
 
 know, — 
 You must return to fetch it, lost the train. 
 And saved your precious self from what be- 
 
 feU 
 The thirty-three whom Providence foiKot. 
 You teU, and ask me what I think of tkis ? 
 
MR. SLUDGE, "THE MEDIUM' 
 
 407 
 
 Well, sir, I think then, since you needs must 
 
 know. 
 What matter had you and Boston city to hoot 
 Sailed skyward, like burnt onion-peelings ? 
 
 Mach 
 To you, no doubt : for me — undoubtedly 
 The cutting of my hair concerns me more. 
 Because, however sad the truth may seem. 
 Sludge is of all-importance to himself. 
 You set apart that day in every year 
 For special thanksgiving, were a heathen else : 
 Well, I who cannot boast the like escape, 
 Suppose I said, " I don't thank Providence 
 For my part, owing it no gratitude " ? 
 " Nay, but you owe as much,"— you 'd tutor me, 
 *' You, every man alive, for blessings gained 
 In every hour 0' the day, could you but know ! 
 I saw my crownii^ mercy : all have such. 
 Could they but see ! " Well, sir, why don't 
 
 they see ? 
 " Because they won't look, — or perhaps, they 
 
 can't." 
 Then, sir, suppose I can, and will, and do 
 Look, microscopically as is right. 
 Into each hour with its infinitude 
 Of influences at work to profit Sludge ? 
 For that 's the case : I 've sharpened up my 
 
 sight 
 To spy a providence in the fire's going out. 
 The kettle's boiling, the dime's sticking fast 
 Despite the hole i' the pocket. Call such facts 
 Fancies, too petty a work for Providence, 
 And those same thanks which you exact from 
 
 me 
 Prove too prodigious payment: thanks for 
 
 what. 
 If nothing guards and guides us little men ? 
 No, no, sir ! You must put away your pride, 
 Resolve to let Sludge into partnership ! 
 I live by signs and omens : looked at the roof 
 Where the pigeons settle — "If the further 
 
 bird. 
 The white, takes wing first, I '11 confess when 
 
 thrashed ; 
 Not, if the blue does," — so I said to myself 
 Last week, lest you should take me by sur- 
 prise : 
 OfE flapped the white, — and I 'm confessing, 
 
 sir! 
 Perhaps 't is Providence's whim and way 
 With only me, i' the world : how can you tell ? 
 " Because unlikely ! " Was it likelier, now. 
 That this our one out of all worlds beside. 
 The what-d'-you-call-'era millions, should be 
 
 just 
 Precisely chosen to make Adam for. 
 And the rest o' the tale ? Yet the tale 's true, 
 
 you know : 
 Such undeserving clod was graced so once ; 
 Why not graced likewise undeserving Sludge ? 
 Are we merit-mongers, flaunt we filthy rags V 
 AU you can bring against my privilege 
 Is, that another way was taken with you, — 
 Which I don't question. It 's pure grace, my 
 
 luck: 
 I 'm broken to the way of nods and winks. 
 And need no formal summoning. You've a 
 
 help ; 
 
 Holloa his name or whistle, clap your hands. 
 Stamp with your foot or puH the bell: all's 
 
 one. 
 He understands you want him, here he comes. 
 Just so, I come at the knocking ; you, sir, wait 
 The tongue o' the bell, nor stir before you 
 
 catch 
 Reason's clear tingle, nature's clapper brisk, 
 Or that traditiouEU peal was wont to cheer 
 Your mother's face turned heavenward : short 
 
 of these 
 There 's no authentic intimation, eh ? 
 Well, when you hear, you '11 answer them, 
 
 start up 
 And stride into the presence, top of toe. 
 And there find Sludge beforehand. Sludge that 
 
 sprang 
 At noise o' the knuckle on the partition-wall ! 
 I think myself the more religious man. 
 Religion 's all or nothing ; it 's no mere smile 
 0' contentraeat, sigh of aspiration, sir — 
 No quality o' the finelier-tempered clay 
 Like its whiteness or its lightness ; rather, stuff 
 0' the very stuff, life of life, and self of self. 
 I tell you, men won't notice ; when they do, 
 They '11 understand. I notice nothing else : 
 I 'm eyes, ears, mouth of me, one gaze and 
 
 gape, 
 Nothmg eludes me, everything 's a hint. 
 Handle and help. It 's all absurd, and yet 
 There 's something in it all, I know : how 
 
 much? 
 No answer ! What does that prove ? Man 's 
 
 still man, 
 Still meant for a poor blundering piece of work 
 WhenaU "s done ; but, if somewhat 's done, like 
 
 this. 
 Or not done, is the ease the same ? Suppose 
 I blunder in my guess at the true sense 
 0' the knuckle-summons, nine times out of 
 
 ten, — 
 What if the tenth guess happen to be right ? 
 If the tenth shovel-load of powdered quartz 
 Yield me the nugget ? I gather, crush, sift all, 
 Pass o'er the failure, pounce on the success. 
 To give you a notion, now — (let who wins, 
 
 laugh !) 
 When first I see a man, what do I first ? 
 Why, count the letters which make up his 
 
 name. 
 And as their number chances, even or odd. 
 Arrive at my conclusion, trim my course : 
 Hiram H. Horsefall is your honored name. 
 And have n't I found a patron, sir, in you ? 
 "Shall I cheat this stranger ? " I take apple- 
 pips. 
 Stick one in either canthus of my eye. 
 And if the left drops first — (your left, sir, 
 
 stuck) 
 I 'm warned, I let the trick alone this time. 
 You, sir, who smile, superior to such trash, 
 You judge of character by other rules : 
 Don't your rules sometimes fail you? Pray. 
 
 what rule 
 Have you judged Sludge by hitherto ? 
 
 Oh, be sure. 
 You, everybody blunders, just as I, 
 
4o8 
 
 DRAMATIS PERSONS 
 
 In simpler things than these by far ! For see ; 
 I knew two farmers, — one, a wiseacre 
 Who studied seasons, rummaged almanacs, 
 Quoted the dew-point, registered the frost. 
 And then declaied, for outcome of his pains. 
 Next summer must be dampish : 't was a 
 
 (|rought. 
 His neighbor prophesied such drought would 
 
 fall. 
 Saved hay and com, made cent, per cent. 
 
 thereby, 
 And proved a sage indeed : how came his lore ? 
 Because one brindled heifer, late in March, 
 Stiffened her tail of evenings, and somehow 
 He got into his head that drought was meant I 
 I don't expect all men can do as much : 
 Such kissing goes by favor. You must take 
 A certain turn of mind for this, — a twist 
 I' the flesh, as well. Be lazily alive, 
 Open-mouthed, like my friend the ant-eater. 
 Letting all nature's loosely-guarded motes 
 Settle and, slick, be swallowed ! Think your- 
 self 
 The one i' the world, the one for whom the 
 
 world 
 Was made, expect it tickling at your mouth I 
 Then will the swarm of busy buzzing flies. 
 Clouds of coincidence, break egg-shell, thrive. 
 Breed, multiply, and bring you food enough. 
 
 I can't pretend to mind your smiling, sir ! 
 Oh, what you mean is this ! Such intimate way, 
 Close converse, frank exchange of offices. 
 Strict sympathy of the immeasurably great 
 With the infinitely small, betokened here 
 By a course of signs and omens, raps and 
 
 sparks, — 
 How does it suit the dread traditional text 
 0' the "Great and Terrible Name"? Shall 
 
 the Heaven of Heavens 
 Stoop to such child's play ? 
 
 Please, sir, go with me 
 A moment, and I '11 try to answer yon. 
 The " Magnum et terribile " (is that right ?) 
 Well, folk began with this in the early day ; 
 And all the acts they recognized in proof 
 Were thunders, lightnings, earthquakes, whirl- 
 winds, dealt 
 Indisputably on men whose death they caused. 
 There, and there only, folk saw Providence 
 At work, — and seeing it, 't was right enough 
 All heads should tremble, hands wring hands 
 
 amain. 
 And knees knock hard together at the breath 
 0' the Name's first letter ; why, the Jews, I 'm 
 
 told. 
 Won't write it down, no, to this very hour. 
 Nor speak aloud : you know best if 't be so. 
 Each ague-fit of fear at end, they crept 
 (Because somehow people once born must live) 
 Out of the sound, sight, swing and sway o' the 
 
 Name, 
 Into a comer, the dark rest of the world. 
 And safe space where as yet no fear had 
 
 reached ; 
 'T was there they looked about them, breathed 
 again, 
 
 And felt indeed at home, as we might say. 
 The current o' common things, the daily life, 
 This had their due contempt; no Name puiv 
 
 sued 
 Man from the mountain-top where fires abide, 
 To his particular mouse-hole at its foot 
 Where he ate, drank, digested, lived in short: 
 Such was man's vulgar business, far too small 
 To be worth thunder: "small," folk kept on, 
 
 "small," 
 With much complacency in those great days ! 
 A mote of sand, you know, a blade of grass — 
 What was so despicable as mere grass, 
 Except perhaps the life o' the worm or fly 
 Which fed there? These were "small" and 
 
 men were great. 
 Well, sir, the old way's altered somewhat 
 
 since, 
 And the world wears another aspect now : 
 Somebody turns our spyglass round, or else 
 Puts a new lens in it : grass, worm, fly grow 
 
 big: 
 We find great things are made of little things, 
 And little things go lessening till at last 
 Comes God behind them. Talk of mountains 
 
 now ? 
 We talk of mould that heaps the mountain, 
 
 mites 
 That throng the mould, and God that makes 
 
 the mites. 
 The Name comes close behind a stomach-cyst. 
 The simplest of creations, just a sac 
 That 's mouth, heart, legs and belly at once, 
 
 yet lives 
 And feels, and could do neither, we conclude, 
 If simplified still further one degree : 
 The small becomes the dreadful and immense ! 
 Lightning, forsooth? No word more upon 
 
 that ! 
 A tin-foil bottle, a strip of greasy silk. 
 With a bit of wire and knob of brass, and 
 
 there 's 
 Your dollar's-worth of lightning! But the 
 
 cyst — 
 The life of the least of the little things ? 
 
 No, no ! 
 Preachers and teachers try another tack. 
 Come near the truth this time : they put aside 
 Thunder and lightning. "That's mistake," 
 
 they cry ; 
 " Thunderbolts fall for neither fright nor sport, 
 But do appreciable good, like tides. 
 Changes o' the wind, and other natural facts — 
 ' Good ' meaning good to man, his body or sold. 
 Mediate, immediate, all things minister 
 To man, — that 's settled: be our future text 
 ' We are His children ! ' " So, they now har 
 
 rangue 
 About the intention, the contrivance, all 
 That keeps up an incessant play of love, — 
 See the Bridgewater book. 
 
 Amen to it ! 
 Well, sir, I put this question : I 'm a child ? 
 I lose no time, but take you at your word : 
 How shall I act a child's part properly ? 
 Your sainted mother, sir, — used you to live 
 
MR. SLUDGE, "THE MEDIUM" 
 
 409 
 
 With such a thought as this a-worrying you ? 
 " She has it in her power to throttle me, 
 Or stab or poison ; she may turn me out. 
 Or look me in, — nor stop at this to-day. 
 But cut rae off to-morrow from the estate 
 I look for " — (long may you enjoj[ it, sir !) 
 "In brief, she may unchild the child I am," 
 You never had such crotchets i* Nor have I I 
 Who, frank confessing childship from the iirst, 
 Caimot both fear and take my ease at once. 
 So, don't fear, — • know what might be, well 
 
 enough. 
 But know too, child-like, that it will not be, 
 At least in my case, mine, the son and heir 
 0' the kingdom, as yourself proclaim my style. 
 But do you fancy I stop short at this ? 
 Wonder if suit and service, son and heir 
 Needs must expect, I dare pretend to find ? 
 If, looking for signs proper to such an one, 
 I straight perceive them irresistible ? 
 Concede that homage is a son's plain right, 
 And, never mind the nods and raps and winks, 
 'Tis the pure obvious supernatural 
 Steps forward, does its duty : why, of course ! 
 I have presentiments ; my d^reams come true : 
 I fancy a friend stanck whistling all in white 
 Blithe as a boblink, and he 's dead I learn. 
 I take dislike to a dog my favorite long. 
 And sell him J he goes mad next week and 
 
 I gness that stranger will turn up to-day 
 
 I have not seen these three years ; there 's his 
 
 knock, 
 I wager " sixty peaches on that tree ! " — 
 That I pick tip a dollar in my walk. 
 That your wife's brother's cousin's name was 
 
 George — 
 And win on all points. Oh, you wince at 
 
 this? 
 You 'd fain distinguish between gift and gift, 
 Washington's oracle and Sludge's itch 
 0' the elbow when at whist he oudit to trump ? 
 With Sludge it 's too absurd ? Fine, draw the 
 
 line 
 Somewhere, but, sir, your somewhere is not mine ! 
 
 Bless us, I 'm turning poet ! It 's time to end. 
 How you have drawn me out, sir I All I ask 
 Is — am I heir or not heir ? If I 'm he, 
 Then, sir, remember, that same personage 
 (To judge by what we read i' the newspaper) 
 ReqTiires, beside one nobleman in gold 
 To carry up and down his coronet. 
 Another servant, probably a duke. 
 To hold eggnog in readiness : why want 
 Attendance, sir, when helps in his father's 
 
 house 
 Abound, I 'd like to know ? 
 
 Enough of talk ! 
 My fault is that I tell too plain a truth. 
 Why, which of those who say they disbelieve, 
 Your clever people, but has dreamed his 
 
 dream. 
 Caught his coincidence, stumbled on his fact 
 He can't explain, (he '11 teU you smilingly,) 
 Which he 's too much of a philosopher 
 To count as supernatural, mdeed. 
 
 So calls a puzzle and problem, proud of it : 
 Bidding you still be on your guard, you know, 
 Because one fact don't make a system stand, 
 Nor i)rove this an occasional escape 
 Of spirit beneath the matter : that 's the way 1 
 Just so wild Indians picked up, piece by piece, 
 The fact in California, the fine gold 
 That underlay the gravel — hoarded these, 
 But never made a system stand, nor dug ! 
 So wise men hold out in each hollowed palm 
 A handful of experience, sparkling fact 
 They can't explain ; and since their rest of life 
 Is all explainable, what proof in this ? 
 Whereas I take the fact, the grain of gold, 
 And fling away the dirty rest of life, 
 And add this grain to the grain each fool has 
 
 found 
 0] the million other such philosophers, — 
 Till I see gold, all gold and only gold, 
 Truth questionless though unexplainable. 
 And the miraculous proved the commonplace I 
 The other fools believed in mud, no doubt — 
 Failed to know gold they saw : was that so 
 
 strange ? 
 Are all men born to play Bach's fiddle-fugues, 
 " Time " with the foil in carte, jump their own 
 
 height. 
 Cut the mutton with the broadsword, skate a 
 
 five, 
 Make the red hazard with the cue, clip nails 
 While swimming, in five niinutes row a mile, 
 Pull themselves three feet up with the left arm^ 
 Do sums of fifty figures in their head. 
 And so on, by the scores of instances ? 
 The Sludge with luck, who sees the spiritual 
 
 facts. 
 His fellows strive and fail to see, may rank 
 With these, and share the advantage. 
 
 Ay, but share 
 The drawback ! Think it over by yourself ; 
 I have not heart, sir, and the fire 's gone giay. 
 Defect somewhere compensates for success. 
 Every one knows that. Oh, we 're equals, sir I 
 The big-legged fellow has a little arm 
 And a less brain, though big legs win the race : 
 Do you suppose I 'scape the common lot ? 
 Say, I was born with flesh so sensitive, 
 Soul so alert, that, practice helping both, 
 I guess what 's going on outside the veil, 
 Just as a prisoned crane feels pairing-time 
 In the islands where his kind are, so must fall 
 To capering by himself some shiny night. 
 As if your back-yard were a plot of spice — 
 Thus am I 'ware o' the spirit-world : while 
 
 yon. 
 Blind as a beetle that way, — for amends, 
 Why, you can double fist and floor me, sir ! 
 Kide that hot hardmputhed horrid horse of 
 
 yours. 
 Laugh while it lightens, play with the great 
 
 Speak your mind though it vex some friend to 
 
 hear. 
 Never brag, never bluster, never blush, — 
 In short, you ' ve pluck, when I 'm a coward — 
 
 there! 
 I know it, I can't help it, — folly or no, 
 
410 
 
 DRAMATIS PERSONS 
 
 I 'm paralyzed, my hand 's no more a hand, 
 Nor my head a head, in danger : you can smile 
 And change the pipe in your cheek. Your gift 's 
 
 not mine. 
 Would you swap for mine ? No ! but you 'd 
 
 add my gift 
 To yours : I dare say ! I too sigh at times, 
 Wish I "were stouter, could tell truth nor flinch, 
 Kept cool when threatened, did not mind so 
 
 much 
 Being dressed gayly, making strangers stare. 
 Eating nice things ; when 1 'd amuse myself, 
 I shut my eyes and fancy in my brain, 
 I 'm — now the President, now Jenny Lind, 
 Now Emerson, now the Benicia Boy — 
 With all the ciTilized world a-wondering 
 And worshipping. I know it 's folly andf worse ; 
 I feel such tricks sap, honeycomb the soiU, 
 But I can't cure myself, — despond, despair, 
 And then, hey, presto, there 's a turn o' the 
 
 wheel, 
 Under comes uppermost, fate makes full 
 
 amends ; 
 Sludge knows and sees and hears a hundred 
 
 things 
 You all are blind to, — I ' ve my taste of truth. 
 Likewise my touch of falsehood, — vice no 
 
 doubt. 
 But you 've your vices also : I 'm content. 
 
 What, sir? You won't shake hands? "Be- 
 cause I cheat ! " 
 " You 've found me out in cheating ! " That 's 
 
 enough 
 To make an apostle swear! Why, when I 
 
 cheat, 
 Mean to cheat, do cheat, and am caught in the 
 
 act. 
 Are you, or rather, am I sure o' the fact? 
 (There 's verse again, but I 'm inspired some- 
 how.) 
 Well then I 'm not sure ! I may be, perhaps, 
 Free as a babe from cheating : how it began. 
 My gift, — no matter ; what 'tis got to be 
 In the end now, that 's the question ; answer 
 
 that I 
 Had I seen, perhaps, what hand was holding 
 
 mine. 
 Leading me whither, I had died of fright : 
 So, I was made believe I led myself. 
 If 1 should lay a six-inch plank from roof 
 To roof, you would not cross the street, one step. 
 Even at your mother's summons: but, being 
 
 shrewd. 
 If I paste paper on each side the plank 
 And swear 't is solid pavement, why, you '11 
 
 cross 
 Humming a tune the while, in ignorance 
 Beacon Street stretches a hundred feet below : 
 I walked thus, took the papei^cheat for stone. 
 ;Some impulse made me set a thing o' the move 
 "Which, started once, ran really by itself ; 
 ■Beer flows thus, suck the siphon ; toss the kite, 
 jIt takes the wind and floats of its own force. 
 Don't let truth's lump rot stagnant for the lack 
 Of a timely helpful lie to leaven it ! 
 Put a chalk-egg beneath the clucking hen, 
 She '11 lay a real one. laudablv deceived. 
 
 Daily for weeks to come. I 've told my lie. 
 And seen truth follow, marvels none of mine ; 
 All was not cheating, sir, I 'm positive ! 
 I don't know if I move your hand sometimes 
 When the spontaneous writing spreads so far. 
 If my knee lifts the table all that height. 
 Why the inkstand don't fall off the desk a-tilt, 
 Why the accordion plays a prettier waltz 
 Than I can pick out on the pianoforte. 
 Why I speak so much more than I intend, 
 Describe so many things I never saw. 
 I tell you, sir, in one sense, I believe 
 Nothing at all, — that everybody can. 
 Will, and does cheat : but in another sense 
 I 'm ready to believe mjr very self — 
 That every cheat 's inspired, and every lie 
 Quick with a germ of truth. 
 
 You ask perhaps 
 Why I should condescend to trick at all 
 If I know a way without it ? This is why ! 
 There 's a strange secret sweet self-sacrifice 
 In any desecration of one's soul 
 To a worthy end, — is n't it Herodotus 
 (I wish I could read Latin !) who describes 
 The single gift o' the land's virginity, 
 Demanded in those old Egyptian rites, 
 (I 've but a hazy notion — help me, sir !) 
 For one purpose in the world, one day in a life, 
 One hour in a day — thereafter, purity. 
 And a veil thrown o'er the past forevermore ! 
 Well now, they understood a many things 
 Down by Nile city, or wherever it was ! 
 I 've always vowed, after the minute's lie. 
 And the end's gain, — truth should be mine 
 
 henceforth. 
 This goes to the root o' the matter, sir, — this 
 
 plain 
 Plump fact : accept it and unlock with it 
 The wards of many a puzzle ! 
 
 Or, finally, 
 Why should I set so fine a gloss on things ? 
 What need I care ? I cheat in self-defence. 
 And there 's my answer to a world of cheats I 
 Cheat ? To be sure, sii' ! What 's the world 
 
 worth else ? 
 Who takes it as he finds, and thanks his stars ? 
 Don't it want trimming, turning, furbishing up 
 And polishing over? Your so-styled great 
 
 men. 
 Do they accept one truth as truth is found. 
 Or try their skill at tinkering ? What 's your 
 
 world ? 
 Here are you born, who are, I '11 say at once. 
 Of the luckiest kind, whether in head and 
 
 heart. 
 Body and soul, or all that helps them both. 
 Well, now, look back : what faculty of yours 
 Came to its full, had ample justice done 
 By growing when rain feU, biding its time. 
 Solidifying growth when earth was dead. 
 Spiring up, broadening wide, in seasons due ? 
 Never ! You shot up and frost nipped you ofB, 
 Settled to sleep when sunshine bade you sprout ; 
 One faculty thwarted its fellow : at the end, 
 All you boast is, "I had proved a topping tree 
 In other climes," — yet this was the nght clime 
 
MR. SLUDGE, "THE MEDIUM' 
 
 411 
 
 Had you foreknown the seasons. Young, 
 you 've force 
 
 Wasted like well-streams: old, — oh, then in- 
 deed, 
 
 Behold a labyrinth of hydraulic pipes 
 
 Through which you 'd play off wondrous water- 
 work ; 
 
 Only, no water 's left to feed their play. 
 
 Young, — you 've a hope, an aim, a love ; it 's 
 tossed 
 
 And crossed and lost : you struggle on, some 
 
 Shut in your heart against the puffs around. 
 Through cold and pain ; these in due time sub- 
 side. 
 Now then for age's triumph, the hoarded light 
 You mean to loose on the altered face of 
 
 things, — 
 Up with it on the tripod ! It 's extinct. 
 Spend your life's renmant asking, which was 
 
 best. 
 Light smothered up that never peeped forth 
 
 once. 
 Or the cold cresset with full leave to shine ? 
 Well, accept this too, — seek the fruit of it 
 Not in enjoyment, proved a dream on earth. 
 But knowledge, useful for a second chance, 
 Another life, — you've lost this world — you've 
 
 gained 
 Its knowledge for the next. — What knowledge, 
 
 sir, 
 Except that you know nothing? Nay, you 
 
 doubt 
 Whether 't were better have made you man or 
 
 brute, 
 If aught be true, if good and evil clash. 
 No foul, no fair, no inside, no outside, 
 There 's your world ! 
 
 Give it me ! I slap it brisk 
 With harlequin's pasteboard sceptre : what 's it 
 
 now ? 
 Changed like a rock -flat, rough with rusty 
 
 weed. 
 At first wash-over o' the returning wave ! 
 All the dry dead impracticable stuff 
 Starts into life and light again ; this world 
 Pervaded by the influx from the next. 
 I cheat, and what 's the h^py consequence ? 
 You find full justice straightway dealt you out. 
 Each want supplied, each ignorance set at ease. 
 Each folly fooled. No life-long labor now 
 As the price of worse than nothing ! No mere 
 
 film 
 Holding yovi chained in iron, as it seems, 
 Against the outstretch of your very arms 
 And legs i' the sunshine moralists forbid I 
 What would you have ? Just speak and, there, 
 
 you see ! 
 You 're supplemented, made a whole at last. 
 Bacon advises, Shakespeare writes you songs. 
 And Mary Queen of Scots embraces you. 
 Thus it goes on, not quite like life perhaps. 
 But so near, that the very difference piques. 
 Shows that e'en better than this best wUl be — 
 This passing entertainment in a hut 
 Whose bare walls take your taste since, one 
 
 stage more. 
 
 And you arrive at the palace : all half real, 
 And you, to suit it, less than real beside, 
 In a dream, lethargic kind of death in life. 
 That helps the interchange of natures, flesh 
 Transfused by souls, and such souls ! Oh, 't is 
 
 choice ! 
 And if at whiles the bubble, blown too thin, 
 Seem nigh on bursting, — if you nearly see 
 The real world through the false, — what do 
 
 you see ? 
 Is the old so ruined ? You find you 're in a flock 
 O' the youthful, earnest, passionate — genius, 
 
 beauty. 
 Rank and wealth also, if you care for these ; 
 And all depose their natural rights, hail you 
 (That 's me, sir) as their mate and yoke-fellow, 
 Participate in Sludgehood — nay. grow mine, 
 I veritably possess them — banish doubt. 
 And reticence and modesty alike ! 
 Why, here 's the Golden Age, old Paradise 
 Or new Utopia ! Here 's true life indeed. 
 And the world well won now, mine for the first 
 
 time ! 
 
 And all this might be, may be, and with good 
 
 help 
 Of a little lying shall be : so. Sludge lies I 
 Why, he 's at worst your poet who sings how 
 
 Greeks 
 That never were, in Troy which never was. 
 Did this or the other impossible great thing ! 
 He 's Lowell — it 's a world {you smile applause) 
 Of his own invention — wondrous Longfellow, 
 Surprising Hawthorne ! Sludge does more than 
 
 they, 
 And acts the books they write ; the more his 
 
 praise I 
 
 But why do I mount to poets ? Take plain 
 
 prose — 
 Dealers in common sense, set these at work, 
 What can they do without their helpful lies ? 
 Each states the law and fact and face o' the 
 
 thing 
 Just as he 'd have them, finds what he thinks 
 
 fit. 
 Is blind to what missuits him, just records 
 What makes his case out, quite ignores the rest. 
 It 's a History of the World, the Lizard Age, 
 The Early Indians, the Old Country War, 
 Jerome Napoleon, whatsoever you please. 
 All as the author wants it. Such a scribe 
 You pay and praise for putting life in stones. 
 Fire into fog, making the past your world. 
 There 's plenty of " How did you contrive to 
 
 grasp 
 The thread which led you through this laby- 
 rinth? 
 How build such solid fabric out of air ? 
 How on so slight foundation found this tale, 
 Bi(^aphy, narrative ? " or, in other words, 
 " How many lies did it require to make 
 The portly truth you here present us with ? " 
 "Oh," quoth the penman, purring at your 
 
 praise, 
 " 'T is fancy all ; no particle of fact : 
 I was poor and threadbare when I wrote that 
 
 book 
 
412 
 
 DRAMATIS PERSONS 
 
 ' Bliss in the Golden City.' I, at Thebes ? 
 We writers paint out of our heads, you see ! " 
 ^* — All, the more wonderful the girt in you, 
 The more creativeness and godlike craft ! " 
 But I, do I present you with my piece. 
 It's "What, Sludge? When my sainted mo- 
 ther spoke 
 The verses Lady Jane Grey last composed 
 About the rosy bower in the seventh heaven 
 Where she and Queen Elizabeth keep house, — 
 You made the raps? 'Twas your invention 
 
 that? 
 Cur, slave, and devil ! " — eight fingers and two 
 
 thumbs 
 Stuck in my throat ! 
 
 Well, if the marks seem gone, 
 'T is because stiffish cocktail, taken in time, 
 Is better for a bruise than arnica. 
 There, sir ! I bear no malice ; 't isn't in me. 
 I know I acted wrongly : still, I 've tried 
 What I could say in my excuse, — to show 
 The devU 's not all devil ... I don't pretend 
 He 's angel, much less such a gentleman 
 As you, sir ! And I 've lost you, lost myself. 
 Lost all-1-1-1- . . . 
 
 No — are you in earnest, sir ? 
 Oh, yours, sir, is an angel's part ! I know 
 What prejudice prompts, and what 's the com- 
 mon course 
 Men take to soothe their ruffled self-conceit : 
 Only you rise superior to it all I 
 No, sir, it don't hurt much ; it 's speaking 
 
 long 
 That makes me choke a little : the marks will 
 
 go ! 
 What ? Twenty V-notes more, and outfit too. 
 And not a word to Greeley ? One — one kiss 
 0' the hand that saves me ! You 'U not let me 
 
 I well know, and I 've lost the right, too true I 
 But I must say, sir, if She hears (she does) 
 Your sainted . . . Well, sir, — be it so ! That 's, 
 
 I think. 
 My bedroom candle. Good-night ! Bl-1-less 
 
 you, sir ! 
 
 E-r-r, you brute-beast and blackguard I Cow- 
 ardly scamp ! 
 
 I only wish I dared bum down the house 
 
 And spoil your sniggering 1 Oh, what, you 're 
 the man ? 
 
 You 're satisfied at last ? You 've found out 
 Sludge ? 
 
 We '11 see that presently : my turn, sir, next I 
 
 I too can tell my story ; brute, — do you 
 hear ? — 
 
 You throttled your sainted mother, that old 
 
 In just such a fit of passion : no, it was . . . 
 To get this house of hers, and many a note 
 Like these . . . I '11 pocket them, however , . . 
 
 five. 
 Ten, fifteen . . . ay, you gave her throat the 
 
 twist. 
 
 Or else you poisoned her ! Confound the cuss I 
 Where was my head ? I ought to have prophe- 
 
 way. 
 
 sied 
 He '11 die in a year and join her : that 's the 
 
 I don't know where my head is; what had I 
 
 done? 
 How did it all go ? I said he poisoned her. 
 And hoped he 'd have gra<!e given hira to repent, 
 Whereon he picked this quarrel, bullied me 
 And called me cheat : I thrashed him, — who 
 
 could Vielp ? 
 He howled for mercy, prayed me on his knees 
 To cut and run and save him from disgrace : 
 I do so, and once ofP, he slanders me. 
 An end of him! Begin elsewhere anew ! 
 Boston 's a hole, the herring-pond is wide, 
 V-notes are something, liberty still more. 
 Beside, is he the only fool in the world ? 
 
 APPARENT FAILURE 
 
 '* We shall soon lose a celebrated building, " 
 
 Paris Newspaper 
 
 No, for I '11 save it ! Seven years since, 
 
 I passed through Paris, stopped a day 
 To see the baptism of your Prince ; 
 
 Saw, made my bow, and went my way: 
 Walking the heat and headache off, 
 
 I took the Seine-side, you surmise. 
 Thought of the Congress, Gortsohakoff, 
 
 Cavour's appeal and Buol's replies. 
 So sauntered till — what met my eyes ? 
 
 Only the Doric little Morgue ! 
 
 The dead - house where you show your 
 drowned : 
 Petrarch's Vaucluse makes proud the Sorgue, 
 
 Your Morgue has made the Seine renowned. 
 One pays one's debt in such a case ; 
 
 I plucked up heart and entered, — stalked, 
 Keeping a tolerable face 
 
 Compared with some whose cheeks were 
 chalked : 
 Let them ! No Briton 's to be balked 1 
 
 First came the silent gazers ; next, 
 
 A screen of glass, we 're thankful for ; 
 Last, the sight's self, the sermon's text, 
 
 The three men who did most abhor 
 Their life in Paris yesterday. 
 
 So kiUed themselves : and now, enthroned 
 Each on his copper couch, they lay 
 
 Fronting me, waiting to be owned. 
 I thought, and think, their sin 's atoned. 
 
 Poor men, God made, and all for that ! 
 
 The reverence struck me ; o'er each head 
 Religiously was hung its hat. 
 
 Each coat dripped by the owner's bed. 
 Sacred from touch : each had his berth, 
 
 Ilis bounds, his proper place of rest. 
 Who last night tenanted on earth 
 
 Some arch, where twelve such slept 
 abreast, — 
 Unless the plain asphalt seemed best. 
 
EPILOGUE 
 
 413 
 
 How did it happen, my poor boy ? 
 
 You wanted to be Buonaparte 
 And have the Tuileries for toy, 
 
 And could not, so it broke your heart ? 
 You, old one by his side, I judge. 
 
 Were, red as blood, a socialist, 
 A lereller ! Does the Bmpire grudge 
 
 You Ve gained what no Republic missed ? 
 Be quiet, and unclench your fist ! 
 
 And this — why, he was red in vain. 
 
 Or black, — poor fellow that is blue ! 
 What fancy was it, turned your brain ? 
 
 Oh, women were the prize for you ! 
 Money gets women, cards and dice 
 
 Get money, and iU-luok gets just 
 The copper couch and one clear nice 
 
 Cool squirt of water o^er your bust, 
 The right thing to extinguish lust! 
 
 It 's wiser being good than bad ; 
 
 It 's safer being meek than fierce : 
 It 's fitter being sane than mad. 
 
 My own hope is, a sun will pierce 
 The thickest cloud earth ever stretched ; 
 
 That, after Last, returns the First, 
 Though a wide compass round be fetched ; 
 
 That what began best, can't end worst. 
 Nor what God blessed once, prove accurst. 
 
 EPILOGUE 
 First Speaker, as David 
 
 On the first of the Feast of Feasts, 
 
 The Dedication Day, 
 When the Levites joined the Priests 
 
 At the Altar in robed array, 
 Gave signal to sound and say, — 
 
 When the thousands, rear and van, 
 
 Swarming with one accord. 
 Became as a single man 
 
 (Look, gesture, thought and word) 
 In praising and thanking the Lord, — 
 
 When the singers lift up their voice. 
 And the trumpets made endeavor. 
 
 Sounding, " In God rejoice ! " 
 Saying, " In Him rejoice 
 
 Whose mercy endureth forever ! " — 
 
 Then the Temple filled with a cloud, 
 Even the House of the Lord ; 
 
 Porch bent and pillar bowed : 
 For the presence of the Lord, 
 
 In the glory of his cloud, 
 Had filled the House of the Lord. 
 
 Second Speaker, as Renatt 
 
 Oone now ! All gone across the dark so far. 
 Sharpening fast, shuddering ever, shutting 
 still. 
 Dwindling into the distance, dies that star 
 Which came, stood, opened once ! We gazed 
 our fill 
 
 With upturned faces on as real a Face 
 
 That, stooping from grave music and mild 
 fire. 
 Took in our homage, made a visible place 
 Through many a depth of glory, gyre on 
 gyre. 
 For the dim human tribute. Was this true ? 
 Could man indeed avail, mere praise of his, 
 To help by rapture God's own rapture too. 
 Thrill with a heart's red tinge that pure pale 
 bliss? 
 Why did it end? Who failed to beat the 
 
 breast, 
 And shriek, and throw the arms protesting 
 
 wide. 
 When a first shadow showed the star addressed 
 
 Itself to motion, and on either side 
 The rims contracted as the rays retired ; 
 
 The music, like a fountain's sickening pulse, 
 Subsided on itself ; awhile transpired 
 
 Some vestige of a Face no pangs convulse, 
 No prayers retard ; then even this was gone. 
 Lost in the night at last. We, lone and 
 left 
 Silent through centuries, ever and anon 
 
 Venture to probe again the vaidt bereft 
 Of all now save the lesser lights, a mist 
 
 Of multitudinous points, yet suns, men say — ' 
 And this leaps ruby, this lurks amethyst. 
 But where may hide what came and loved 
 our clay ? 
 How shall the sage detect in yon expanse 
 
 The star which chose to stoop and stay for us ? 
 Unroll the records ! Hailed ye such advance 
 
 Indeed, and did your hope evanish thus ? 
 Watchers of twilight, is the worst averred ? 
 We shall not look up, know ourselves are 
 seen. 
 Speak, and be sure that we again are heard. 
 Acting or suffering, have the disk's serene 
 Reflect our life, absorb an earthly flame. 
 Nor doubt that, were mankind inert and 
 numb. 
 Its core had never crimsoned all the same, 
 
 Nor, missing ours, its music fallen dumb ? 
 Oh, dread succession to a dizzy post, 
 Sad sway of sceptre whose mere touch ap- 
 palls. 
 Ghastly dethronement, cursed by those the 
 
 most 
 On whose repugnant brow the crown next falls 1 
 
 Third Speaker 
 
 Witless alike of will and way divine. 
 
 How heaven's high with earth's low should 
 
 intertwine ! 
 Friends, I have seen through your eyes : now 
 
 use mine ! 
 
 Take the least man of all mankind, as I; 
 Look at his head and heart, find how and 
 
 why 
 He differs from his fellows utterly : 
 
 Then, like me, watch when nature by degrees 
 Grows alive round him, as in Arctic seas 
 (They said of old) the instinctive water flees 
 
♦H 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 Toward some elected point of central rock, 
 As though, for its sake only, roamed the 
 
 flock 
 Of waves about the waste : awhile they mock 
 
 With radiance caught for the occasion, — hues 
 Of blackest hell now, now such reds and blues 
 As only heaven could fitly interfuse, — 
 
 The mimic monarch of the whirlpool, king 
 0' the current for a minute : then they wring 
 Up by the roots and oversweep the thing. 
 
 And hasten ofB, to play again elsewhere 
 The same part, choose another peak as bare. 
 They find and flatter, feast and finish there. 
 
 When you see what I tell you, — nature dance 
 
 About each man of us, retire, advance. 
 
 As though the pageant's end were to enhance 
 
 His worth, and — once the life, his product, 
 
 gained — 
 Roll away elsewhere, keep the strife sustamed. 
 And show thus real, a thing the North but 
 
 feigned — 
 
 When you acknowledge that one world could do 
 AH the diverse work, old yet ever new. 
 Divide us, each from other, me from you, — 
 
 Why, where 's the need of Temple, when the 
 
 0' the world are that ? What use of swells and 
 faUs 
 
 From Levites' choir. Priests' cries, and trumpet- 
 calls? 
 
 That one Face, far from vanish, rather grows, 
 
 Or decomposes but to recoinpose, 
 
 Become my universe that feels and knows ! 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 This, the most long sustained of Browning's 
 writings, was published originally in four vol- 
 umes, successively in November, December, 
 1868, January, February, 1869. Mrs. Orr has 
 given so circumstantial an account of the incep- 
 tion of the work, that the main facts are here 
 reproduced from her Hand-Hook. 
 
 " Mr. Browning was strolling one day through 
 a square in Florence, the Piazza San Lorenzo, 
 which is a standing market for old clothes, old 
 furniture, and old curiosities of every kind, 
 when a parchment-covered book attracted his 
 eye, from amidst the artistic or nondescript 
 rubbish of one of the stalls. It- was the record 
 of a murder which had taken place in Rome, 
 and bore inside it an inscription [in Latin] 
 which Mr. Browning transcribes [on p. 415]. 
 
 " The book proved, on examination, to con- 
 tain the whole history of the case, as carried 
 on in writing, after the fashion of those days : 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 Do you see this Ring ? 
 
 'T is Rome-work, made to match 
 (By Castellani's imitative craft) 
 Etrurian circlets found, some happy morn. 
 After a dropping April ; found alive 
 Spark-like 'mid unearthed slope-side figtree- 
 
 roots 
 That roof old tombs at Chiusi : soft, you see. 
 Yet crisp as jewel-cutting. There 's one trick, 
 (Craftsmen instruct me) one approved device 
 And but one, flts such slivers of pure gold 
 
 pleadings and comiter-pleadings, the depositions 
 of defendants and witnesses ; manuscript letters 
 announcing the execution of the murderer, and 
 the ' instrument of the Definitive Sentence ' 
 which established the perfect innocence of the 
 murdered wife : these various documents hav- 
 ing been collected and bound together by some 
 person interested in the trial, possibly the very 
 Cencini, friend of the Franceschini family, to 
 whom the manuscript letters are addressed. 
 Mr. Browning bought the whole for the value 
 of eightpence, and it became the raw mateiial 
 of what appeared four years later as The Ming 
 and the Boole." 
 
 In another place Mrs. Orr states that the sub- 
 ject was conceived about four years before the 
 poet took it actually in hand, and that, before 
 he wrote it himself, he ofllered the theme for 
 prose treatment to Miss Ogle, the author of .4 
 Lost Love. 
 
 As this was, — such mere oozings from the mine. 
 
 Virgin as oval tawny pendent tear 
 
 At beehive-edge when ripened combs o'erflow, — 
 
 To bear the file's tooth and the hammer's tap : 
 
 Since hammer needs must widen out the roimd, 
 
 And file emboss it fine with lily-flowers, 
 
 Ere the stuff grow a ring-thing right to wear. 
 
 That trick is, the artificer mielts up wax 
 
 With honey, so to speak ; he mingles gold 
 
 With gold's alloy, and, duly tempering both, 
 
 Effects a manageable mass, then works : 
 
 But his work ended, once the thing a ring. 
 
 Oh, there 's repristination ! Just a spirt 
 
 0' the proper fiery acid o'er its face. 
 
 And forth the alloy unfastened flies in fume ; 
 
THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 41 S 
 
 While, self-sufficient now, the shape remains, 
 Tlie rondure hrave, the lilied lovehness, 
 Gold as it was, is, shall he eTermore : 
 Piime nature with an added artistry — 
 No carat lost, and you have gained a ring. 
 What of it ? 'T is a figure, a symbol, say ; 
 A thing's sign : now for the thing signified. 
 
 Do you see this square old yellow Book, I 
 
 toss 
 1' the air, and catch again, and twirl about 
 By the crumpled vellum covers, — pure crude 
 
 fact 
 Secreted from man's life when hearts beat hard. 
 And brains, high-blooded, ticked two centuries 
 
 since ? 
 Examine it yourselves ! I found this book. 
 Gave a lira for it, eightpenoe English just, 
 (Mark the predestination !) when a Hand, 
 Always above my shoulder, pushed me once. 
 One day still fierce 'mid many a day struck 
 
 calm, 
 Across a Square in Florence, crammed with 
 
 booths. 
 Buzzing and blaze, noontide and market-time. 
 Toward Baccio's marble, — ay, the basement- 
 ledge 
 0' the pedestal where sits and menaces 
 John of the Black Bands with the upright spear, 
 'Twixt palace and church, — Riccardi where 
 
 they lived, 
 His race, and San Lorenzo where they lie. 
 This book, — precisely on that palace-step 
 Which, meant for lounging knaves o' the Me- 
 dici, 
 Now serves re-venders to display their ware, — 
 'Mongst odds and ends of ravage, picture-frames 
 White through the worn gilt, mirror-sconces 
 
 chipped. 
 Bronze angel-heads once knobs attached to 
 
 chests 
 (Handled when ancient dames chose forth bro- 
 
 Modem chalk drawings, studies from the nude. 
 Samples of stone, jet, breccia, porphyry 
 Polished and rough, sundry amazing busts 
 In baked earth (broken. Providence be praised !) 
 A wreck of tapestry, proudly-purposed web 
 When reds and blues were indeed red and blue, 
 Now offered as a mat to save bare feet 
 (Since carpets constitute a cruel cost) 
 Treading the chill scagliola bedward ; then 
 A pile of brown-etched prints, two crazie each. 
 Stopped by a conch a-top from fluttering forth 
 — Sowing the Square with works of one and 
 
 the same 
 Master, the imaginative Sienese 
 Great in the scenic backgrounds — (name and 
 
 fame 
 None of you know, nor does he fare the worse :) 
 From these . . . Oh, with a Lionard going cheap 
 If it should prove, as promised, that Joconde 
 Whereof a copy contents the Louvre ! — these 
 I picked this book from. Five compeers in 
 
 flank 
 Stood left and right of it as tempting more — 
 A dogs-eared Spicilegium, the fond tele 
 
 0' the Frail One of the Flower, by young Du- 
 mas, 
 Vulgarized Horaee for the use of schools. 
 The Life, Death, Miracles of Saint Somebody, 
 Saint Somebody Else, his Miracles, Death and 
 
 Life, — 
 With this, one glance at the lettered back of 
 
 which, 
 And " Stall ! " cried I : a lira made it mine. 
 
 Here it is, this I toss and take again ; 
 Small-quarto size, part print, part manuscript : 
 A book in shape but, really, pure crude fact 
 Secreted from man's life when hearts beat 
 
 hard. 
 And brains, high-blooded, ticked two centuries 
 
 since. 
 Give it me back ! The thing 's restorative 
 I' the touch and sight. 
 
 That memorable day, 
 (June was the month, Lorenzo named the 
 
 Square), 
 I leaned a little and overlooked my prize 
 By the low railing round the fountain-source 
 Close to the statue, where a step descends : 
 While clinked the cans of copper, as stooped 
 
 and ruse 
 Thick-ankled girls who brimmed them, and 
 
 made place 
 For marketmen glad to pitch basket down. 
 Dip a broad melon-leaf that holds the wet. 
 And whisk their faded fresh. And on I read 
 Presently, though my path grew perilous 
 Between the outspread straw-work, piles of 
 
 plait 
 Soon to be flapping, each o'er two black eyes 
 And swathe of Tuscan hair, on festas fine : 
 Through fire-irons, tribes of tongs, shovels in 
 
 sheaves. 
 Skeleton bedsteads, wardrobe-drawers agape. 
 Rows of tall slim brass lamps with dangling 
 
 gear, — 
 And worse, cast clothes a-sweetening in the 
 
 sun: 
 None of them took my eye from off my prize. 
 Still read I on, from written title-page 
 To written index, on, through street and street, 
 At the Strozzi, at the Pillar, at the Bridge ; 
 Till, by the time I stood at home again 
 In Casa Guidi by Felice Church, 
 Under the doorway where the black begins 
 With the first stone-slab of the staircase cold, 
 I had mastered the contents, knew the whole 
 
 truth 
 Gathered together, bound up in this book. 
 Print three-fifths, written supplement the rest. 
 " Romana HoviicidioTum " — -nay. 
 Better translate — "A Roman murder-case : 
 Position of the entire criminal cause 
 Of Guide Franceschini, nobleman, 
 With certain Four the cutthroats in his pay. 
 Tried, all five, and found guilty and put to 
 
 death 
 By heading or hanging as befitted ranks. 
 At Rome on February Twenty Two, 
 Since our salvation Sixteen Ninety Eight : 
 
4i6 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 Wherein it is disputed if, and when, 
 Husbands may kill adulterous wives, yet 'scape 
 The customary forfeit." 
 
 Word for word, 
 So ran the title-page: murder, or else 
 Legitimate punishment of the other crime, 
 Accounted mm'der by mistake, — just that 
 And no more, in a Latin cramp enough 
 When the law had her eloquence to launch. 
 But interfiUeted with Italian streaks 
 When testimony stooped to mother-tongue, — 
 That, was this old square yellow book about. 
 
 Now, as the ingot, ere the ring was forged. 
 Lay gold, (beseech yon, hold that figure fast !) 
 So, in this book lay absolutely truth, 
 Fanciless fact, the documents indeed. 
 Primary lawyer-pleadings for, against. 
 The aforesaid Five ; real summed-up circum- 
 stance 
 Adduced in proof of these on either side. 
 Put forth and printed, as the practice was. 
 At Rome, in the Apostolic Chamber's type. 
 And so submitted to the eye o' the Court 
 Presided over by His Reverence 
 Rome's Governor and Criminal Judge, — the 
 
 trial 
 Itself, to all intents, being then as now 
 Here in the book and nowise out of it ; 
 Seeing, there properly was no judgment-bar. 
 No bringing of accuser and accused. 
 And whoso judged both parties, face to face 
 Before some court, as we conceive of courts. 
 There was a Hall of Justice ; that came last : 
 For Justice had a chamber by the hall 
 Where she took evidence first, summed up the 
 
 same. 
 Then sent accuser and accused alike. 
 In person of the advocate of each. 
 To weigh its worth, thereby arrange, array 
 The battle. 'T was the so-styled rise began, 
 Pleaded (and since he only spoke in print 
 The printed voice of him lives now as then) 
 The public Prosecutor — " Murder 's proved ; 
 With five . . . what we call qualities of bad. 
 Worse, worst, and yet worse still, and still 
 
 worse yet ; 
 Crest over crest crowning the cockatrice. 
 That beggar hell's regalia to enrich 
 Count Guido Franceschini : punish him ! " 
 Thus was the paper put before the court 
 in the next stage, (no noisy work at all,) 
 To study at ease. In due time like reply 
 Came from the so-styled Patron of the Poor, 
 Official mouthpiece of the five accused 
 Too poor to fee a better, — Guide's luck 
 Or efee his fellows'., — which, I hardly know, — 
 An outbreak as of wonder at the world, 
 A fury-fit of outraged innocence, 
 A passion of betrayed siniplicity : 
 " Punish Count Guido ? For what crime, what 
 
 hint 
 0' the color of a crime, inform us first ! 
 Reward him rather 1 Recognize, we say. 
 In the deed done, a righteous judgment dealt 1 
 All conscience and all courage, — there's our 
 Count 
 
 Charactered in a word i and, what 's more 
 
 strange, 
 He had companionship in privilege. 
 Found four courageous conscientious friends : 
 Absolve, applaud all five, as props of law, 
 Sustainers of society ! — perchance 
 A trifle over-hasty with the hand 
 To hold her tottering ark, had tumbled else ; 
 But that 's a splendid fault whereat we wink, 
 Wishing your cold con'ectness sparkled so ! " 
 'Thus paper second followed paper first. 
 Thus did the two join issue — nay, the four. 
 Each pleader having an adjunct. " True, he 
 
 kiUed 
 — Sotospfak — ina certain sort — his wife, 
 But laudably, since thus it happed ! " quoth 
 
 one : 
 Whereat, more witness and the case postponed. 
 " Thus it happed not, since thus he did the 
 
 deed. 
 And proved himself thereby portentousest 
 Of cutthroats and a prodigy of crime, 
 As the woman that he slaughtered was a 
 
 saint. 
 Martyr and miracle I" quoth the other to 
 
 match: 
 Again, more witness, and the case postponed. 
 '^ A miracle, ay — of lust and impudence ; 
 Hear my new reasons ! " interposed the first : _ 
 " — Coupled with more of mine ! " pursued his 
 
 peer. 
 " Beside, the precedents, the authorities ! " 
 From both at once a cry with an echo, that ! 
 That was a firebrand at each fox's tail 
 Unleashed in a cornfield: soon spread flare 
 
 enough. 
 As hurtled thither and there heaped them- 
 
 From earth's four corners, all authority 
 And precedent for putting wives to death. 
 Or letting wives live, sinful as they seem. 
 How legislated, now, in this respect, 
 Solon and his Athenians ? Quote the code 
 Of Romulus and Rome ! Justinian speak ! 
 Nor modern Baldo, Bartolo be dumb ! 
 The Roman voice was potent, plentiful ; 
 Cornelia de Sicariis hurried to help 
 Pompeia de Parricidiis ; Julia de 
 Something-or-other jostled Lea: this-and-that ; 
 King Solomon confirmed Apostle Paul : 
 That nice decision of Dolabella, eh ? 
 That pregnant instance of Theodoric, oh ! 
 Down to that choice example ./Elian gives 
 (An instance I find much insisted on) 
 Of the elephant who, brute-beast though he 
 
 were. 
 Yet understood and punished on the spot 
 His master's naughty spouse and faitlUess 
 
 friend j 
 A true tale which has edified each child. 
 Much more shall flourish favored by our couvt ! 
 Pages of proof this way, and that way proof. 
 And always — once again the case postponed. 
 
 Tlius wrangled, brangled, jangled tliry a 
 
 month, 
 — Only on paper, pleadings all in print. 
 Nor ever was, except 1' the brains of mpn 
 
THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 417 
 
 More noise by word of mouth than you hear 
 
 now — 
 Till the court cut all short with "Judged, your 
 
 cause. 
 Receive our sentence ! Praise God ! We pro- 
 nounce 
 Count Guido devilish and damnable : 
 His wife Pompilia in thought, word and deed, 
 Was perfect pure, he murdered her for that: 
 As for the Four who helped the One, all Five — 
 Why, let employer and hirelings share alike 
 In guilt and guilt's reward, the death their 
 duel" 
 
 So was the trial at end, do you suppose ? 
 " Guilty you find him, death you doom him to? 
 Ay, were not Guido, more than needs, a priest, 
 Priest and to spare!" — thia was a shot re- 
 served ; 
 I learn this from epistles which begin 
 Here where the print ends, — see the pen and 
 
 ink 
 Of the advocate, the ready at a pinch I — 
 ** My client boasts the clerkly privilege, 
 Has taken minor orders many enough, 
 Shows still sufficient chrism upon his pate 
 To neutralize a blood-stain : presbyter , 
 Primce tonsurce, subdiaconus, 
 Sacerdos, so he slips from underneath 
 Your power, the temporal, slides inside the 
 
 robe 
 Of mother Church : to her we make appeal 
 By the Pope, the Church's head I " 
 
 A parlous plea. 
 Put in with noticeable effect, it seems ; 
 ** Since straight," — resumes the zealous orator, 
 Making a friend acquainted with the facts, — 
 *' Once the word *" clericality ' let fall, 
 Procedure stopped and freer breath was drawn 
 By aU considerate and responsible Rome." 
 Quality took the decent part, of course ; 
 Held by the husband, who was noble too : 
 Or, for the matter of that, a churl would side 
 With too-refined susceptibility. 
 And honor which, tender in the extreme, 
 Stung to the quick, must roughly right itself 
 At all risks, not sit still and whine for law 
 As a Jew would, if you squeezed him to the 
 
 wall, 
 Brwk-trottii^ through the Ghetto. Nay, it 
 
 seems, 
 Even the Emperor's Envoy had his say 
 To say on the subject ; might not see, un- 
 moved. 
 Civility menaced throughout Christendom 
 By too harsh measure dealt her champion here. 
 Lastly, what made all safe, the Pope was kind. 
 From his youth up, reluctant to take life, 
 If mercy might be just and yet show grace ; 
 Much more unlikely then, in extreme age. 
 To take a life the general sense bade spare. 
 'T was plain that Guido would go scatheless yet. 
 
 But human promise, oh, how short of shine ! 
 How topple down the piles of hope we rear ! 
 How history proves . , . nay, read Herodotus ! 
 Suddenly starting from a nap, as it were. 
 
 A dog-sleep with one shut, one open orb. 
 Cried the Pope's great self, — Inuoeent by 
 
 name 
 And nature too, and eighty-six years old, 
 Antonio Pignatelli of Naples, Pope 
 Who had trod many lands, known many deeds. 
 Probed many hearts, beginning with his own, 
 And now was far in readiness for God, — 
 'T was he who fii*st bade leave those souls in 
 
 peace. 
 Those Jansenists, re-nicknamed Molinists, 
 (IGainst whom the cry went, like a frowsy tune. 
 Tickling men's ears — the sect for a quarter of 
 
 an hour 
 I' the teeth of the world which, clown-like, 
 
 loves to chew 
 Be it but a straw 'twixt work and whistling- 
 while, 
 Taste some vituperation, bite away, 
 Whether at marjoram-sprig or garlic -clove, 
 Aught it may sport with, spoU, and then spit 
 
 forth,) 
 "Leave them alone," bade he, "those Moli- 
 nists I 
 Who may have other light than we perceive. 
 Or why is it the whole world hates them thus ? " 
 Also he peeled off that last scandal-rag 
 Of Nepotism ; and so observed the poor 
 That men would merrily say, " Halt, deaf and 
 
 blind. 
 Who feed on fat things, leave the master's self 
 To gather up the fragments of his feast. 
 These be the nephews of Pope Innocent ! — 
 His own meal costs but five carlines a day, 
 Poor-priest's allowance, for he claims no more." 
 
 — He cried of a sudden, this gjreat good old 
 
 Pope, 
 When they appealed in last resort to him, 
 " I have mastered the whole ma1;ter : I nothing 
 
 doubt. 
 Though Guido stood forth prieat from head to 
 
 heel, 
 Instead of, as alleged, a piece of one, — 
 And further, were he, from the tonsured scalp 
 To the sandaled sole of him, my son and 
 
 Christ's, 
 Instead of touching us by finger-tip 
 As you assert, and pressing up so close 
 Only to set a blood-smutch on our robe, — 
 I and Christ would renounce all right in him. 
 Am I not Pope, and presently to me, 
 And busied how to render my account. 
 And shall I wait a day ere I decide 
 On doing or not doing justice here ? 
 Cut off his head to-miorrow by this time, 
 Hang up his four mates, two on either hand, 
 And end one business more ! " 
 
 So said, so done — 
 Rather so writ, for the old Pope bade this, 
 I find, with his particular chirograph. 
 His own no such infirm hand, Friday night ; 
 And next day, February Twenty Two, 
 Since our salvation Sixteen Ninety Eight, 
 
 — Not at the proper head-and-hanging-place 
 On bridge-foot close by Castle Angelo, 
 Where custom somewhat staled the spectacle, 
 ('T was not so well i' the way of Rome, beside. 
 
4i8 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 The noble Rome, the Rome of Guido's rank) 
 But at the city's newer grayer end, — 
 The cavalcading promenading place 
 Beside the gate and opposite the church 
 Under the Pincian gardens green with Spring, 
 'Neath the obelisk 'twixt the fountains in the 
 
 Square, 
 Did Guido and his fellows find their fate, 
 All Rome for witness, and — my writer adds — 
 Remonstrant in its universal grief. 
 Since Guido had the suffrage of all Rome. 
 
 This is the hookful ; thus far take the truth. 
 The untempered gold, the fact untampered 
 
 with, 
 The mere ring-metal ere the ring be made ! 
 And what has hitherto come of it ? Who pre- 
 serves 
 The memory of this Guido, and his wife 
 Pompilia, more than AdenioUo's name. 
 The etcher of those prints, two crazie each, 
 Saved by a stone from snowing broad the 
 
 Square 
 With scenic backgrounds ? Was this truth of 
 
 force ? 
 Able to take its own part as truth should, 
 Sufficient, self-sustaining ? Why, if so — 
 Yonder 's a fire, into it goes my book. 
 As who shall say me nay, and what the loss ? 
 You know the tale already : I may ask. 
 Rather than think to tell you, more thereof, — 
 Ask you not merely who were he and she. 
 Husband and wife, what manner of mankind. 
 But how you hold concerning this and that 
 Other yet-unnamed actor in the piece. 
 The young frank handsome courtly Canon, now. 
 The priest, declared the lover of the wife, 
 He who, no question, did elope with her, 
 For certain bring the tragedy about, 
 Giuseppe Caponsacchi ; — his strange course 
 I' the matter, was it right or wrong or both ? 
 Then the old couple, slaughtered with the wife 
 By the husband as accomplices in crime, 
 Those Comparini, Pietro and his spouse, — 
 What say you to the right or wrong of that, 
 When, at a known name whispered through the 
 
 door 
 Of a lone villa on a Christmas night. 
 It opened that the joyous hearts inside 
 Might welcome as it were an angel-guest 
 Come in Christ's name to knock and enter, sup 
 And satisfy the loving ones he saved ; 
 And so did welcome devils and their death ? 
 I have been silent on that circumstance 
 Although the couple passed for close of kin 
 To wife and husband, were by some accounts 
 Pompilia's very parents ; j^ou know best. 
 Also that infant the great joy was for. 
 That Gaetano, the wife's two-weeks' habe. 
 The husband's first-born child, his son and heir. 
 Whose birth and being turned his night to 
 
 day — 
 Why must the father kill the mother thus 
 Because she bore his son and saved himself ? 
 
 Well, British Public, ye who like me not, 
 (God love you 1 ) and will have your proper 
 laugh 
 
 At the dark question, laugh it I I laugh first. 
 Truth must prevail, the proverb vows; and 
 
 truth 
 — Here is it all i' the hook at last, as first 
 There it was all i' the heads and hearts of 
 
 Rome 
 Gentle and simple, never to fall nor fade 
 Nor be forgotten. Yet, a little while. 
 The passage of a century or so, 
 Decads thrice five, and here 's time paid his 
 
 tax. 
 Oblivion gone home with her harvesting, 
 And all left smooth again as scythe could 
 
 shave. 
 Far from beginning with you London folk, 
 I took my hook to Rome fiist, tried truth's 
 
 power 
 On likely people. "Have you met such 
 
 names ? 
 Is a tradition extant of such facts ? 
 Your law-courts stand, your records frown 
 
 a-row : 
 What if I rove and rummage?" " — Why, 
 
 you '11 waste 
 Your pains and end as wise as you began ! " 
 Every one snickered : " names and facts thus 
 
 old 
 Are newer much than Europe news we find 
 Down in to-day's Diario. Records, quotha ? 
 Why, the French burned them, what else do 
 
 the French ? 
 The rap-and-rending nation ! And it tells 
 Against the Church, no doubt, — another gird 
 At the Temporality, your Trial, of course ? " 
 " — Quite otherwise this time," submitted I ; 
 " Clean for the Church and dead against the 
 
 world. 
 The flesh and the devil, does it tell for once." 
 *' — The rarer and the happier ! All the same, 
 Content you with your treasure of a book, 
 And waive what 's wanting ! Take a friend's 
 
 advice ! 
 It 's not the custom of the country. Mend 
 Your ways indeed and we may stretch a point : 
 Go get you manned by Manning and new- 
 manned 
 By Newman and, mayhap, wise-manned to hoot 
 By Wiseman, and we '11 see or else we won't ! 
 Thanks meantime for the story, long and strong, 
 Apretty piece of narrative enough. 
 Which scarce ought so to drop out, one would 
 
 think. 
 From the more curioiis annals of our kind. 
 Do you tell the story, now, in off-hand style, 
 Straight from the book ? Or simply here and 
 
 there, 
 (The while you vault it through the loose and 
 
 large) 
 Hang to a hint ? Or is there book at all, 
 And don't you deal in poetry, make-believe, 
 And the white lies it sounds like ? " 
 
 Yes and no ! 
 From the book, yes ; thence bit by bit I dug 
 The lingot truth, that memorable day, 
 Assayed and knew my piecemeal gain was 
 
 gold, — 
 Yes ; but from something else surpassing that, 
 
THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 419 
 
 Something of mine which, mixed up with the 
 
 mass, 
 Made it bear hammer and be firm to file. 
 Fancy with fact is inst one fact the more ; 
 To wit, that fancy has informed, transpierced, 
 Thridded and so thrown fast the facts else free, 
 As right through ring and ring runs the djereed 
 And binds the loose, one bar without a break. 
 1 fused my live soul and that inert stuff. 
 Before attempting smithcraft, on the night 
 After the day when — truth thus grasped and 
 
 gained — 
 The book was shut and done with and laid by 
 On the cream-colored massive agate, broad 
 'Neath the twin cherubs in the tarnished frame 
 0' the mirror, tall thence to the ceiling-top. 
 And from tlie reading, and that slab I leant 
 My elbow on, the while I read and read, 
 I turned, to free myself and find the world. 
 And stepped out on the narrow terrace, built 
 Over the street and opposite the church. 
 And paced its lozenge-brickwork sprinkled cool ; 
 Because Felice-chureh-side stretched, aglow 
 Through each square window fringed for fes- 
 tival. 
 Whence came the clear voice of the cloistered 
 
 ones 
 Chanting a chant made for midsummer nights — 
 I know not what particular praise of God, 
 It always came and went with June. Beneath 
 I' the street, quick shown by openings of the 
 
 sky 
 When flame fell silently from cloud to cloud, 
 Richer than that gold snow Jove rained on 
 
 Bhodes, 
 The townsmen walked by twos and threes, and 
 
 talked. 
 Drinking the blackness in default of air — 
 A busy human sense beneath my feet : 
 While in and out the terrace-plants, and round 
 One branch of tall datura, waxed and waned 
 The lamp-fly lured there, wanting the white 
 
 flower. 
 Over the roof o' the lighted church I looked 
 A bowshot to the street's end, north away 
 Out of the Roman gate to the Roman road 
 By the river, till I felt the Apennine. 
 And there would lie Arezzo, the man's town. 
 The woman's trap and cage and torture-place. 
 Also the stage where the priest played his part, 
 A spectacle for angels, — ay, indeed, 
 There lay Arezzo ! Farther then I fared. 
 Feeling my way on through the hot and dense, 
 Romeward, until I found the wayside inn 
 By Castelnuovo's few mean hut-like homes 
 Huddled together on the hill-foot bleak. 
 Bare, broken only by that tree or two 
 Against the sudden bloody splendor poured 
 Cursewise in day's departure by the sun 
 O'er the low house-roof of that squalid inn 
 Where they three, for the first time and the 
 
 last. 
 Husband and wife and priest, met face to face. 
 Whence I went on again, the end was near. 
 Step by step, missing none and marking all. 
 Till Rome itself, the ghastly goal, I reached. 
 Why, all the while, — ^how could it otherwise ? — 
 The life in me abolished the death of things, 
 
 Deep callinjp; imto deep : as then and there 
 
 Acted itself over again once more 
 
 The tragic piece. I saw with my own eyes 
 
 In Florence as I trod the terrace, breathed 
 
 The beauty and the fearfulness of night, 
 
 How it had run, this round from Rome to 
 
 Rome — 
 Because, you are to know, they lived at Rome, 
 Pompilia's parents, as they thought themselves. 
 Two poor ignoble hearts who did their best 
 Part God's way, part the other way than God's, 
 To somehow make a shift and scramble through 
 The world's mud, careless if it splashed and 
 
 spoiled. 
 Provided they might so hold high, keep clean 
 Their child's soul, one soul white enough for 
 
 three. 
 And lift it to whatever star should stoop, 
 What possible sphere of purer life than theirs 
 Should come in aid of whiteness hard to save. 
 I saw the star stoop, that they strained to touch, 
 And did touch and depose their treasure on. 
 As Guido Franceschini took away 
 Pompilia to be his forevermore. 
 While they sang '' Now let us depart in peace. 
 Having beheld thy glory. Guide's wife ! " 
 I saw the star supposed, but fog o' the fen. 
 Gilded star-fashion by a glint from heU ; 
 Having been heaved up, haled on its gross way, 
 By hands unguessed before, invisible help 
 From a dark brotherhood, and specially 
 Two obscure goblin creatures, fox-faced this. 
 Cat-clawed the other, called his next of kiu 
 By Guido the main monster, — cloaked and 
 
 caped. 
 Making as they were priests, to mock God 
 
 more, — 
 Abate Paul, Canon Grirolamo. 
 These who had rolled the starlike pest to Rome 
 And stationed it to suck up and absorb 
 The sweetness of Pompilia, rolled again 
 That bloated bubble, with her soul inside. 
 Back to Arezzo and a palace there — 
 Or say, a fissure in the honest earth 
 Whence long ago had curled the vapor first, 
 Blown big by nether fires to appall day : 
 It touched home, broke, and blasted far and 
 
 wide. 
 I saw the cheated couple find the cheat 
 And guess what foul rite they were captured 
 
 for, — 
 Too fain to follow over hill and dale 
 That child of theirs caught up thus in the cloud 
 And carried by the Prince o' the Power of the 
 
 Air 
 Whither he would, to wilderness or sea. 
 I saw them, in the potency of fear. 
 Break somehow through the satyr-family 
 (For a gray mother with a monkey-mien, 
 Mopping and mowing, was apparent too. 
 As, confident of capture, all took hands 
 And danced about the captives in a ring) 
 — Saw them break through, breathe safe, at 
 
 Rome again. 
 Saved by the selfish instinct, losingso 
 Their loved one left with haters. These 1 saw 
 In recrudescency of baffled hate. 
 Prepare to wring the uttermost revenge 
 
420 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 From body and soul thus left them : all was 
 
 sure, 
 Fire laid and caldron set, the obscene ring 
 
 traced, 
 The victim stripped and prostrate ; what of 
 
 God? 
 The cleavingf of a cloud, a cry, a crash, 
 Quenched lay their caldron, cowered i' the dust 
 
 the crew, 
 As, in a glory of armor like Saint George, 
 Out again sprang the young good beauteous 
 
 priest 
 Bearing away the lady in his arms, 
 Saved for a splendid minute and no more. 
 For, whom i' the path did that priest come 
 
 upon. 
 He and the poor lost lady borne so brave, 
 — Checking tlie song of praise in me, had else 
 Swelled to the f uU for God's will done on earth — 
 Whom but a dusk misf eatured messenger. 
 No other than the angel of this life. 
 Whose care is lest men see too much at once. 
 He made the sign, such God-glimpse must 
 
 suffice. 
 Nor prejudice the Prince o' the Power of the 
 
 Air, 
 Whose ministration piles us overhead 
 What we call, first, earth's roof and, last, 
 
 heaven's floor. 
 Now grate o' the trap, then outlet of the cage : 
 So took the lady, left the priest alone, 
 And once more canopied the world with black. 
 But through the blackness 1 saw Rome again, 
 And where a solitary villa stood 
 In a lone garden-quarter ; it was eve. 
 The second of the year, and oh so cold ! 
 Ever and anon there flittered through the air 
 A snow-flake, and a scanty couch of snow 
 Crusted the gi'ass-walk and the garden-mould. 
 All was grave, silent, sinister, — when, ha ? 
 Glimmeringly did a pack of were-wolves pad 
 The snow, those flames were Guide's eyes in 
 
 front. 
 And all flve found and footed it, the track, 
 To where a threshold-streak of warmth and 
 
 light 
 
 Betrayed the villa-door with life inside. 
 
 While an inch outside were those blood-bright 
 
 eyes. 
 And black lijjs wrinkling o'er the flash of teeth. 
 And tongues that lolled — God that madest 
 
 man! 
 They parleyed in their language. Then one 
 
 whined — 
 That was the policy and master-stroke — 
 Deep in his throat whispered what seemed a 
 
 name — 
 "Open to Caponsacchi ! " Guide cried : 
 " Gabriel ! " cried Lucifer at Eden-gate. 
 Wide as a heart, opened the door at once. 
 Showing the joyous couple, and their child 
 The two-weeks' mother, to the wolves, the 
 
 wolves 
 To them. Close eyes ! And when the corpses 
 
 lay 
 Stark-stretched, and those the wolves, their 
 
 wolf-work done. 
 Were safe-embosomed by the night again, 
 
 I knew a necessary change in things ; 
 
 As when the worst watch of the night gives 
 
 way. 
 And there comes duly, to take cognizance. 
 The scrutinizing eye-point of some star — 
 And who despairs of a new daybreak now ? 
 Lo, the first ray protruded on those five ! 
 It reached them, and each felon writhed trans- 
 fixed. 
 Awhile they palpitated on the spear 
 Motionless over Tophet : stand or fall ? 
 '■ 1 say, the spear should fall — should stand, I 
 
 say ! " 
 Cried the world come to judgment, granting 
 
 grace 
 Or dealing doom according to world's wont. 
 Those world's-bystanders grouped on Rome's 
 
 cross-road 
 At prick and summons of the primal curse 
 Which bids man love as well as make a lie. 
 There prattled they, discoursed the right and 
 
 wrong. 
 Turned wrong to right, proved wolves sheep and 
 
 sheep wolves, 
 So that you scarce distinguished fell from 
 
 fleece ; 
 Till out spoke a great guardian of the fold. 
 Stood up, put forth his hand that held the 
 
 crook. 
 And motioned that the arrested point decline : 
 Horribly off, the wriggling dead-weight reeled. 
 Rushed to the bottom and lay ruined there. 
 Though still at the pit's mouth, despite the 
 
 smoke 
 0' the burning, tarriers turned again to talk 
 And trim the balance, and detect at least 
 A touch of wolf in what showed whitest sheep, 
 A cross of sheep redeeming the whole wolf, — 
 Vex truth a little longer : — less and less, 
 Because years came and went, and more and 
 
 more 
 Brought new lies with them to be loved in turn. 
 Till all at once the memory of the thing, — 
 The fact that, wolves or sheep, such creatures 
 
 were, — 
 Which hitherto, however men supposed. 
 Had somehow plain and pillar-Hke prevailed 
 I' the midst of them, indisput^ibly foct. 
 Granite, time's tooth should grate against, not 
 
 graze, — 
 Why, this proved sandstone, friable, fast to fly 
 And give its grain away at wish o' the wind. 
 Ever and ever more diminutive. 
 Base gone, shaft lost, only entablature, 
 Dwindled into no bigger than a book. 
 Lay of the column ; and that little, left 
 By the roadside 'mid the ordure, shards and 
 
 weeds. 
 Until I haply, wandering that lone way, 
 Kicked it up, turned it over, and recognized, 
 For all the crumblement, this abacus, 
 This square old yellow book, — oovld calculate 
 By this the lost proportions of the style. 
 
 This was it from, my fancy with those facts, 
 I used to tell the tale, turned gay to grave, 
 But lacked a listener seldom ; such alloy. 
 Such substance of me interfused the gold 
 
THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 421 
 
 Which, wroug-ht into a shapely ring- therewith, 
 Hammered and filed, fingrered and favored, last 
 Lay ready for the renovatii^ wash 
 0' the water. *'How much of the tale was 
 
 true ? " 
 I disappeared ; the hook grew all in all ; 
 The lawyers' pleadings swelled back to their 
 
 size, — 
 Doubled in two, the crease upon them yet. 
 For more commodity of carriage, see ! — 
 And these are letters, veritable sheets 
 That brought post-haste the news to Florence, 
 
 writ 
 At Rome the day Count Guido died, we find, 
 To stay the craving of a client there, 
 Who bound the same and so produced my book. 
 Lovers of dead truth, did ye fare the worse ? 
 Lovers of live truth, found ye false my tale ? 
 
 Well, now ; there 's nothing in nor out o* the 
 
 world 
 Good except truth: yet this, the something else. 
 What 's this then, which proves good yet seems 
 
 untrue ? 
 This that I mixed with truth, motions of mine 
 That quickened, made the inertness malleola- 
 
 ble 
 O' the gold was not mine, — what 's your name 
 
 for this ? 
 Are means to the end, themselves in part the 
 
 end? 
 Is fiction which makes fact alive, fact too ? 
 The somehow may be thishow. 
 
 I find first 
 Writ down for very A B C of fact, 
 *'Li the beginning God made heaven and 
 
 earth ; " 
 From which, no matter with what lisp, I speU 
 And speak you out a consequence — that man, 
 Man, — as befits the made, the inferior thing, — 
 Purposed, since made, to g:row, not make in 
 
 turn, 
 Yet forced to try and make, else fail to grow, — 
 Formed to rise, reach at, if not grasp and gain 
 The good beyond him, — which attempt is 
 
 growth, — 
 Repeats God's process in man's due degree, 
 Attaining man s proportionate result, — 
 Creates, no, but resuscitates, perhaps. 
 Inalienable, the arch-prerogative 
 Which turns thought, act — conceives, expresses 
 
 too! 
 No less, man, bounded, yearning to be free, 
 May so project his surplusage of soul 
 In search of body, so add self to self 
 By owning what lay ownerless before, — 
 So find, so fill full, so appropriate forms — 
 That, although nothing which had never life 
 Shall get life from him, be, not having been, 
 Yet, something dead may get to live again, 
 Something with too much life or not enough, 
 Which, either way imperfect, ended once : 
 An end whereat man's impulse intervenes, 
 Makes new beginning, starts the dead alive, 
 Completes the incomplete and saves the thing. 
 Man's breath were vain to light a virgin 
 
 wick, — 
 
 Half-burned-out, all but quitc-queuched wicks 
 
 o' the lamp 
 Stationed for temple-service on this earth. 
 These indeed let him breathe on and relume ! 
 For such man's feat is, in the due degree, 
 
 — Mimic creation, galvanism for life. 
 But still a glory portioned in the scale. 
 
 Why did the mage say — feeling as we are wont 
 For truth, and stopping midway short of truth, 
 And resting on a lie — "I raise a ghost " ? 
 ''^Because," he taught adepts, ^^ man makes 
 
 not man. 
 Yet by a special gift, an art of arts, 
 More insight and more outsight and much more 
 Will to use both of these than boast my mates, 
 I can detach from me, commission forth 
 Half of my soul ; which in its pilgrimage 
 O'er old unwandered waste ways of the world, 
 May chance upon some fragment of a whole, 
 Rag of fiesh, scrap of bone in dim disuse. 
 Smoking flax that fed fire once : prompt therein 
 I enter, spark-like, put old powers to play. 
 Push lines out to the fimit, lead forth last 
 (By a moonrise through a ruin of a crypt) 
 What shall be mistily seen, murmuringly heard. 
 Mistakenly felt: then write my name with 
 
 Faust's ! " 
 Oh, Faust, why Faust? Was not Elisha 
 
 once ? — 
 Who bade them lay his staff on a corpse-face. 
 There was no voice, no hearing : he went in 
 Therefore, and shut the door upon them twain. 
 And prayed unto the Lord : and he went up 
 And lay upon the corpse, dead on the couch, 
 And put his mouth upon its mouth, his eyes 
 Upon its eyes, his hands upon its hands. 
 And stretched him on the fiesh ; the fiesh waxed 
 
 warm : 
 And he returned, walked to and fro the house, 
 And went up, stretched him on the flesh again, 
 And the eyes opened. 'T is a credible feat 
 With the right man and way. 
 
 Enough of me ! 
 The Book ! I turn its medicinable leaves 
 In London now till, as in Florence erst, 
 A spirit laughs and leaps through every limb, 
 And lights my eye, and lifts me by the hair, 
 Letting me have my will a^ain with these 
 
 — How title I the dead alive once more ? 
 
 Count Guido Franceschini the Aretine, 
 Descended of an ancient house, though poor, 
 A beak-nosed bushy-bearded black-haired lor-d, 
 Lean, pallid, low of stature yet robust. 
 Fifty years old, — having four years ag-o 
 Married Pompilia Comparini, young. 
 Good, beautiful, at Rome, where she was bom, 
 And brought her to Arezzo, where they lived 
 Unhappy lives, whatever curse the cause, — 
 This husband, taking four accomplices. 
 Followed this wife to Rome, where she was fled 
 From their Arezzo to find peace a^ain, 
 In convoy, eight months earlier, of a priest, 
 Aretine also, of still nobler birth, 
 Giuse{)pe Caponsacchi, — caught her there 
 Quiet in a villa on a Christmas night, 
 With only Pietro and Violante by. 
 
422 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 Both her putative parents ; killed the three, 
 Aged they, seventy each, and she, seventeen. 
 And, two weeks since, the mother of his hahe 
 First-born and heir to what the style was 
 
 worth 
 0' the Guido who determined, dared and did 
 This dted just as he purposed point by point. 
 Then, bent upon escape, but hotly pressed, 
 And captured with his co-mates that same 
 
 nig-ht, 
 He, brought to trial, stood on this defence — 
 Injury to his honor caused the act ; 
 And since his wife was false, (as manifest 
 By flight from home in such companionship,) 
 Death, punishment deserved of the false wife 
 And faithless parents who abetted her 
 I' the flight aforesaid, wronged nor God nor 
 
 man. 
 '* Nor false she, nor yet faithless they," replied 
 The accuser; "cloaked and masked this 
 
 murder glooms ; 
 True was Pompilia, loyal too the pair ; 
 Out of the man's own heart a monster curled, 
 Which — crime coiled with connivancy at 
 
 crime — 
 His victim's breast, he tells you, hatched and 
 
 reared ; 
 Uncoil we and stretch stark the worm of hell ! " 
 A month the trial swayed this way and that 
 Ere judgment settled down on Guide's guilt ; 
 Then was the Pope, that good Twelfth Innocent, 
 Appealed to : who well weighed what went be- 
 fore, 
 Affirmed the guilt and gave the guilty doom- 
 Let this old woe step on the stage again ! 
 Act itself o'er anew for men to judge, 
 Not by the very sense and sight indeed — 
 (Which take at best imperfect cognizance. 
 Since, how heart moves brain, and how both 
 
 move hand, 
 What mortal ever in entirety saw ?) 
 — No dose of purer truth than man digests, 
 But truth with falsehood, milk that feeds him 
 
 now, 
 Not strong meat he may get to bear some 
 
 . ^^y ~ . 
 To wit, by voices we call evidence. 
 Uproar in the echo, live fact deadened down. 
 Talked over, bruited abroad, whispered away, 
 Yet belpinw' us to all we seem to hear : 
 For how else know we save by worth of word ? 
 
 Here are the voices presently sliall sound 
 In due succession. First, the world's outcry 
 Around the rush and ripple of any fact 
 Fallen stonewise, plumb on the smooth face of 
 
 things ; 
 The world's guess, as it crowds the bank o' the 
 
 pool. 
 At what were figure and substance, by their 
 
 splasli : 
 Then, by vibrations in the general mind, 
 At depth of deed already out of reach. 
 This tlireefold murder of the day before, — 
 ?ay, Half - Rome's feel after the vanished 
 
 truth ; 
 Honest enough, as the way is : all the same, 
 
 Harboring in the centre of its sense 
 
 A hidden germ of failure, shy but sure, 
 
 To neutralize tha*i honesty and leave 
 
 That feel for truth at fault, as the way is too. 
 
 Some prepossession such as starts amiss, 
 
 By but a hair's breadth at the shoulder-blade, 
 
 The arm o' the feeler, dip he ne'er so bold ; 
 
 So leads ann waveringly, lets fall wide 
 
 O' the mark its finger, sent to find and fix 
 
 Truth at the bottom, that deceptive speck. 
 
 With this Half -Rome, — the source of swerving, 
 
 call 
 Over-belief in Guido's right and wrong 
 Rather than in Pompilia's wrong and i-ight : 
 Who shall say how, who shall say why ? 'T is 
 
 there — 
 The instinctive theorizing whence a fact 
 Looks to the eye as the eye likes the look. 
 Gossip in a public place, a sample-speech. 
 Some wortliy, with his previous hint to find 
 A husband's side tlie safer, and no whit 
 Aware he is not ^Eacus the while, — 
 How such an one supposes and states fact 
 To whosoever of a multitude 
 Will listen, and perhaps prolong thereby 
 The not-unpleasant flutter at the breast, 
 Born of a certain spectacle shut in 
 By the church Lorenzo opposite. So, they 
 
 lounge 
 Midway the mouth o' the street, on Corso side, 
 'Twixt palace Fiano and palace Ruspoli, 
 Linger and listen ; keeping clear o' the crowd, 
 Yet wishful one could lend that crowd one's 
 
 eyes, 
 (So universal is its plague of squint) 
 And make heai-ts beat our time that flutter 
 
 false : 
 — All for the truth's sake, mere truth, nothing 
 
 else ! 
 How Half-Rome found for Guido much ex- 
 
 Next, from Rome's other half, the opposite 
 
 feel 
 For truth with a like swerve, like unsuccess, — 
 Or if success, by no skill but more luck. 
 This time, through siding rather with the wife 
 Because a fancy-fit inclined that way. 
 Than with the husband One wears drab, one 
 
 pink ; 
 Who wears pink, ask him "Which shall win 
 
 the race, 
 Of coupled runners like as egg a,nd egg ?" 
 " — Why, if I must choose, he with the pink 
 
 scarf." 
 Doubtless for some such reason choice fell here. 
 A piece of public talk to correspond 
 At the next stage of the story ; just a day 
 Let pass and new day brings the proper change. 
 Another sample-speech i' the market-place 
 0' the Barberini by the Capucins ; 
 Where the old Triton, at his fountain-sport, 
 Beraini's creature plated to the paps. 
 Puffs up steel sleet which breaks to diamond 
 
 dust, 
 A spray of sparkles snorted from his conch, 
 Hign over the caritellas, out o' the way 
 0' the motley merchandising multitude. 
 
THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 423 
 
 Our murder lias been done three days ag-o, 
 The frust is over and gone, the south wind 
 
 laug-hs, 
 And, to the very tiles of each red roof 
 A-smoke i' the sunshine, R*>nie UdS gold and 
 
 glad : 
 So, listen how, to the other half of Rome, 
 Pompilia seemed a saint and martyr both ! 
 
 Then, yet another day let come and go, 
 With pause prelusive still of novelty, 
 Hear a fresh speaker ! — neither this nor that 
 Half-Rome aforesaid ; something bred of both : 
 One and one breed the inevitable three. 
 Such is the personage harangues you next ; 
 The elaborated product, terlium quid : 
 Rome's first commotion in subsidence gives 
 The curd o' the cream, flower o' the wheat, as 
 
 it were, 
 And finer sense o' the city. Is this plain ? 
 You get a reasoned statement of the case, 
 Eventual verdict of the curious few 
 Who care to sift a business to the bran 
 Nor coarsely bolt it like the simpler sort. 
 Here, after ignorance, instruction speaks ; 
 Here, clarity of candor, history's soul. 
 The critical mind, in short : no goasip-giiess. 
 What the superior social section thinks, 
 In person of some man of quality 
 Who — breathing musk from laee-work and 
 
 brocade, 
 His solitaire amid the flow of frill, 
 Powdered peruke on nose, and bag at back, 
 And cane dependent from the ruffled wrist — 
 Harangues in silvery and seleetest phrase 
 'Neath waxlight in a gloidfied saloon 
 Where mirrora multiply the girandole : 
 Courting the approbation of no mob, 
 But Eminence This and All-Illustrious That 
 Who take snuff softly, range in well-bred ring, 
 Card-table-quitters for observance' sake, 
 Around the argument, the rational word — 
 Still, spite its weight and worth, a sample- 
 speech. 
 How Quality dissertated on the ease. 
 
 So much for Rome and rumor ; smoke comes 
 
 first: 
 Once let smoke rise untroubled, we descry 
 Clearlier what tongues of flame may spire and 
 
 spit 
 To eye and ear, each with appropriate tinge 
 According, to its food, or -pure or foul. 
 The actors, no mere rumors of the act. 
 Intervene. First you hear Count Guide's voice, 
 In a small chamber that adjoins the court, 
 Where Governor and Judges, summoned thence, 
 Tommati, Venturini and the rest, 
 Find the accused ripe for declaring truth. 
 Soft-cushioned sits he ; yet shifts seat, shirks 
 
 touch. 
 As, with a twitchy brow and wincing lip 
 And cheek that changes to all kinds of white. 
 He proffers his defence, in tones subdued 
 Near to mock-mildness now, so luoiirnful seems 
 Tlie obtuser sense truth fails bo satisfy ; 
 Now, moved, from pathos at the wrong endured. 
 To passion ; for the natural man is rotted 
 
 At fools who first do wrong, then pour the blame 
 Of their wrong-doing, Satan-like, on Job. 
 Also his tongue at times is hard to curb ; 
 Incisive, nign satiric bites the phrase. 
 Rough-raw, yet somehow claiming privilege 
 
 — It is so hard for shrewdness to a^nit 
 
 Folly means no harm when she calls black 
 white ! 
 
 — Eruption momentary at the most. 
 Modified forthwith by a fall o' the fire. 
 
 Sage acquiescence ; for the world 's the world, 
 And, what it errs in, Juc^es rectify : 
 He feels he has a fist, then folds his arms 
 Crosswise and makes his mind up to be meek. 
 And never once does he detach his eye 
 From those ranged there to slay him or to save. 
 But does his best man's-service for himself. 
 Despite, — what twitches brow and makes lip 
 
 wince, — 
 His limbs' late taste of what was called the 
 
 Cord, 
 Or Vigil-tortiire more facetiously. 
 Even so ; they were wont to tease the truth 
 Out of loth witness {toying, trifling time) 
 By torture : 't was a trick, a vice of the age. 
 Here, there and everywhere, what would you 
 
 have ? 
 Religion used to tell Humanity 
 She gave him warrant or denied him course. 
 And since the course was much to his own mind, 
 Of pinching flesh and pulling bone from bone 
 To unhusk truth arhiding in its hulls. 
 Nor whisper of a warning stopped the way. 
 He, in their joint behalf, the burly slave, 
 BestiiTcd him, mauled and maimed all recusants^ 
 While, prim in place, Religion overlooked ; 
 And so had done till doomsday, never a sign 
 Nor sound of interference from her mouth. 
 But that at last the burly slave wiped brow, 
 Let eye give notice as if soul were there, 
 Muttered '"T is a vile trick, foolish more than 
 
 vile, 
 Should have been counted sin ; I make it so : 
 At any rate no more of it for me — 
 Nay, for I break the torture-engine thus ! " 
 Then did Religion start up, stare amain. 
 Look round for help and see none, smile and 
 
 say 
 "What, broken is the raekT Well done of 
 
 thee! 
 Did I forget to abrogate its use ? 
 Be the mistake in common with us both ! 
 
 — One more fault our blind age shall answer for, 
 Down in my book denounced though it must be 
 Somewhere. Henceforth find truth by milder 
 
 means ! " 
 Ah but, Religion, did we wait for thee 
 To ope the book, that serves to sit upon. 
 And pick such place out, we should wait indeed ! 
 That is all history: and what is not now, 
 Was then, defendants found it to their cost. 
 How Guido, after being tortured, spoke. 
 
 Also hear Caponsacchi who comes next, 
 
 Man and priest — could you comprehend the 
 
 coil ! — 
 In days when that was rife which now is rare. 
 How, mingling each its multifaiious wires. 
 
424 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 Now heaven, now earth, now heaven and earth 
 
 at once. 
 Had plucked at and perplexed their puppet 
 
 here. 
 Played off the young frank personable priest ; 
 Sworn fast and tonsured plain heaven's celibate, 
 And yet earth's clear-accepted servitor, 
 A courtly spiritual Cupid, squire of dames 
 By law of love and mandate of the mode. 
 The Church's own, or why parade her seal, 
 Wherefore that chrism and consecrative work ? 
 Yet verily the world's, or why go badged 
 A prince of sonneteers and lutanists. 
 Show color of each vanity in vogue 
 Borne with decorum due on blameless breast ? 
 All that is changed now, as he tells the court 
 How he had played the part excepted at ; 
 Tells it, moreover, now the second time: 
 Since, for his cause of scandal, his own share 
 1' the flight from home and husband of the wife. 
 He has been censured, punished in a sort 
 By relegation, — exile, we should say, 
 To a short distance for a little time, — 
 Whence he is summoned on a sudden now, 
 Informed that she, he thought to save, is lost, 
 And, in a breath, bidden re-tell his tale, 
 Since the iirst telling somehow missed effect. 
 And then advise in the matter. There stands he, 
 While the same grim black-panelled chamber 
 
 blinks 
 As though rubbed shiny with the sins of Rome 
 Told the same oak for ages — wave-washed wall 
 Against which sets a sea of wickedness. 
 There, where you yesterday heard Guide speak. 
 Speaks Caponsacehi ; and there face him too 
 Toramati, V enturini and the rest 
 Who, eight months earher, scarce repressed the 
 
 smile. 
 Forewent the wink ; waived recognition so 
 Of peccadillos incident to youth, 
 Especially youth high-born ; for youth means 
 
 love. 
 Vows can't change nature, priests are only men, 
 And love likes stratagem and subterfuge ; 
 Which age, that once was youth, should recog- 
 nize. 
 May blame, but needs not press too hard upon. 
 Here sit the old Judges then, but with no grace 
 Of reverend carriage, magisterial port. 
 For why ? The accused of eight months since, 
 
 — the same 
 Who cut tlie conscious figure of a fool, 
 Changed countenance, dropped bashfiil gaze to 
 
 ground. 
 While hesitating for an answer then, — 
 Now is grown judge himself, terrifies now 
 This, now the other culprit called a nudge. 
 Whose turn it is to stammer and look strange, 
 As he speaks rapidly, angrily, speech that 
 
 smites : 
 And they keep silence, bear blow after blow. 
 Because the seeming-solitary man. 
 Speaking for God, may have an audience too. 
 Invisible, no discreet judge provokes. 
 How the priest Caponsacehi said his say. 
 
 Then a soul sighs its lowest and its last 
 
 After the loud ones, — so much breath remains 
 
 Unused by the foui^days'-dying ; for she hved 
 Thus long, miraculously long, 't was thought, 
 Just that Pompiha might defend herself. 
 How, while the hireling and the alien stoop. 
 Comfort, yet question, — since the time is brief, 
 And folk, allowably inquisitive. 
 Encircle the low pallet where she lies 
 In the good house that helps the poor to die, — 
 Pompiha tells the story of her life. 
 For friend and lover, — leech and man of law 
 Do service ; busy helpful ministrants 
 As varied in their calling as their mind. 
 Temper and age : and yet from all of these. 
 About the white bed under the arched roof, 
 Is somehow, as it were, evolved a one, — 
 Small separate sympathies combined and large, 
 Nothings that were, grown something very 
 
 much ; 
 As if the bystanders gave each his straw, 
 All he had, though a trifle in itself, 
 Which, plaited all together, made a Cross 
 Fit to die looking on and praying with. 
 Just as well as if ivory or gold. 
 So, to the common kindliness she speaks. 
 There being scarce more privacy at the last 
 For mind than body : but she is used to bear, 
 And only unused to the brotherly look. 
 How she endeavored to explain her life. 
 
 Then, since a Trial ensued, a touch o' the same 
 To sober us, flustered with frothy talk. 
 And teach our common sense its helplessness. 
 For why deal simply with divining-rod. 
 Scrape where we fancy secret sources flow. 
 And ignore law, the recognized machine, 
 Elaborate display of pipe and wheel 
 Framed to nnchoke, pump up and pour apace 
 Truth tiU a floweiy foam shall wash the world ? 
 The patent truth-extracting process, — ha ? 
 Let us make that grave mystery turn one wheel. 
 Give you a single grind of law at least ! 
 One orator, of two on either side. 
 Shall teach us the puissance of the tongue 
 — That is, o' the pen which simulated tongue 
 On paper and saved all except the sound 
 Which never was. Law's speech beside law's 
 
 thought ? 
 That were too stunning, too immense an odds : 
 That point of vantage law lets nobly pass. 
 One lawyer shall admit us to behold 
 The manner of the making out a case. 
 First fashion of a speech ; the chick in egg, 
 The masterpiece law's bosom incubates. 
 How Don Giacinto of the Arcangeli, 
 Called Procurator of the Poor at Rome, 
 Now advocate for Guido and his mates, — 
 The joUy learned man of middle age. 
 Cheek and jowl all in laps with fat and law. 
 Mirthful as mighty, yet, as great hearts use. 
 Despite the name and fame that tempt our flesh, 
 Constant to that devotion of the hearth, 
 Still captive in those dear domestic ties ! — 
 How he, — having a cause to triumph with. 
 All kind of interests to keep intact. 
 More than one efficacious personage 
 To tranquillize, conciliate and secure, 
 And above all, public anxiety 
 To quiet, show its Guido in good hands, — 
 
THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 425 
 
 Also, as if such burdens were too light, 
 A cei-tain family-feast to claim his care, 
 The birthday-banquet for the only son — 
 Paternity at smiling stiife with law — 
 How he brinys both to buckle in une bond ; 
 And, thick at throat, with waterish under-eye, 
 Turns to his taak and settles in his seat 
 And puts his utmost means in practice now : 
 Wheezes out law-phrase, whiffles Latin foi-th, 
 And, just as though roast lamb would never 
 
 be, 
 Makes logic levigate the big crime small : 
 Bubs palm on palm, rakes foot with itchy foot, 
 Conceives and inchoates the argument, 
 Sprinkling each flower appropriate to the time, 
 — Ovidian quip or Ciceronian crank, 
 A-bubble in the larynx while he laughs. 
 As he had fritters deep down frying there. 
 How he turns, twists, and tries the oily thing 
 Shall be — firat speech for Guido 'gainst the 
 
 Fisc. 
 Then with a skip as it were from heel to head, 
 Leaving yourselves fill uj) the middle bulk 
 0' the Trial, reconstruct its shape august, 
 From such exordium clap we to the close ; 
 Give you, if we dare wing to such a height. 
 The absolute glory in some full-grown speech 
 On the other side, some finished butterfly, 
 Some breathing diamond-flake with leaf-^old 
 
 fans, 
 That takes the air, no trace of worm it was, 
 Or cabbage-bed it had production from. 
 Giovambattista o' the Bottmi, Fiac, 
 PompiHa's patron by the chance of the hour, 
 To-morrow her persecutor, — composite, he, 
 As becomes who mast meet such various calls — 
 Odds of age joined in him with ends of youth. 
 A man of ready smile and facile tear, 
 Improvised hopes, despairs at nod and beck. 
 And language — ah, the gift of eloquence ! 
 Language that goes, goes, easy as a glove. 
 O'er good and evil, smoothens both to one. 
 Rashness helps caution with him, fires the straw, 
 Li free enthusiastic careless fit, 
 On the first proper pinnacle of rock 
 Which offers, as reward for all that zeal, 
 To lure some bark to founder and bring gain : 
 While calm sits Caution, rapt with heavenward 
 
 eye, 
 A true confessor's gaze, amid the glare 
 Beaconing to the breaker, death and hell, 
 "Well done, thou good and faithful ! " she ap- 
 proves : 
 " Hadst thou let slip a fagot to the beach, 
 The crew might surely spy thy precipice 
 And save their boat ; the simple and the slow 
 Might so, forsooth, forestall the wrecker's fee ! 
 Let the next crew be wise and hail in time ! " 
 Just so compounded is the outside man. 
 Blue juvenile pure eye and pippin cheek, 
 And brow all prematurely soiled and seamed 
 With sudden age, bright devastated hair. 
 Ah, but you miss the very tones o' the voice. 
 The scrannel pipe that screams in heights of 
 
 head, 
 As, in his modest studio, all alone. 
 The tall wight stands a-tiptoe, strives and 
 
 strains, 
 
 Both eyes shut, like the cockerel that would 
 
 crow, 
 Tries to his own self amorously o'er 
 What never will be uttered else than so — 
 Siuce to the four walls. Forum and Mars' Hill, 
 Speaks out the poesy which, penned, turns 
 
 prose, 
 Clavecinist debarred his instrument, 
 He yet thrums — shirking neither turn nor trill, 
 With desperate finger on dumb table-edge — 
 The sovereign rondo, shall conclude his Suite, 
 Charm an imaginary audience there, 
 From old CorelU to young Haendel, both 
 1' the flesh at Kome, ere he perforce go print 
 The cold blaclt: score, mere music for the 
 
 mind — 
 The last speech against Guido and his gang, 
 With special end to prove PompUia pure. 
 How the Fisc vindicates Pompilia's fame. 
 
 Then comes the all but end, the ultimate 
 Judgment save yours. Pope Innocent the 
 
 Twelfth, 
 Simple, sagacious, mild yet resolute. 
 With prudence, probity and — what beside 
 From the other world he feels impress at times. 
 Having attained to fourscore years and six, — 
 How, when the court found Guido and the rest 
 Guilty, but law supplied a subterfuge 
 And passed the final sentence to the Pope, 
 He, brii^ng his intelligence to bear 
 This last time on what ball behoves him drop 
 In the um, or white or black, does drop a black. 
 Send five souls more to just precede his own, 
 Stand him in stead and witness, if need were. 
 How he is wont to do God's work on earth. 
 The manner of his sitting out the dim 
 Droop of a sombre February day 
 In the plain closet where he does such work. 
 With, from all Peter's treasuiy, one stool, 
 One table and one lathen crucifix. 
 There sits the Pope, his thoi^hts for company ; 
 Grave but not sad, — nay, something like a 
 
 cheer 
 Leaves the lips free to be benevolent. 
 Which, all day long, did duty firm and fast. 
 A cherishing there is of foot and knee, 
 A chafing loose-skinned large-veined hand with 
 
 hand, — 
 What steward but knows when stewardship 
 
 earns itB wage. 
 May levy praise, anticipate the lord ? 
 He reads, notes, lays the papers down at last, 
 Muses, then takes a turn about the room ; 
 Unclasps a huge tome in an antique guise, 
 Primitive print and tongue half obsolete. 
 That stands him in diurnal stead ; opes page, 
 Finds place where falls the passage to be conned 
 According to an order long in use : 
 And, as he comes upon the evening's chance, 
 Starts somewhat, solemnizes straight his smile. 
 Then reads aloud that portion first to last. 
 And at the end lets flow his own thoughts forth 
 Likewise aloud, for respite and relief. 
 Till by the dreary relics of the west 
 Wan through the half-moon window, all his 
 
 fight, 
 He bows the head while the lips move in prayer^ 
 
426 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 Writes some three brief lines, signs and seals 
 
 the same, 
 Tinkles a hand-bell, bids the obsequious Sir 
 Who puts foot presently o' the eloset-siU 
 He watched outside of, bear as superscribed 
 That mandate to the Governor forthwith : 
 Then heaves abroad his cares in one good sigh. 
 Traverses corridor with no arm's help, 
 And so to sup as a clear conscience should. 
 The manner of the judgment of the Pope. 
 
 Then must speak Guido yet a second time, 
 Satan's old saw being apt here — skin for skin. 
 All a man hath that will he give for life. 
 While life was graspable and gainable. 
 And bird-like buzzed her wings round Guide's 
 
 brow, 
 Not much truth stiffened out the web of words 
 He wove to catch her : when away she flew 
 And death came, death's breath rivelled up the 
 
 lies. 
 Left bare the metal thread, the fibre fine 
 Of truth, i' the spinning : the true words shone 
 
 last. 
 How Guido, to another purpose quite. 
 Speaks and despairs, the last night of his life. 
 In that New Prison by Castle Angelo 
 At the bridge-foot: the same man, another 
 
 voice. 
 On a stone bench in a close fetid cell. 
 Where the hot vapor of an agony. 
 Struck into drops on the cold wall, runs down — 
 Horrible worms made out of sweat and tears — 
 There crouch, wellnigh to the knees in dungeon- 
 straw, 
 Lit by the sole lamp suffered for their sake. 
 Two awe-struck figures, this a Cardinal, 
 That an Abate, both of old styled friends 
 O' the thing part man, part monster in the midst. 
 So changed is Franceschini's gentle blood. 
 The tiger-cat screams now, that whined before. 
 That pried and tried and trod so gingerly, 
 Till in its silkiness the trap-teeth joined ; 
 Then you know how the bristling fury foams. 
 They listen, this wrapped in his folds of red. 
 While his feet fumble for the filth below ; 
 The other, as beseems a stouter heart. 
 Working his best with beads and cross to ban 
 The enemy that comes in like a flood 
 Spite of the standard set up, verily 
 And in no trope at all, against him there : 
 For at the prison-gate, just a few steps 
 Outside, already, in the doubtful dawn. 
 Thither, from this side and from that, slow 
 
 sweep 
 And settle down in silence solidly, 
 Crow-wise, the frightful Brotherhood of Death. 
 Black-hatted and black-hooded huddle they. 
 Black rosaries a-dangling from each waist ; 
 So take they their grim station at the door. 
 Torches lit, skuU-and-crossbones-banner spread, 
 And that gigantic Christ with open arms. 
 Grounded. Nor lacks there aught but that the 
 
 group 
 Break forth, intone the lamentable psalm, 
 " Out of the deeps. Lord, have I cried to 
 
 thee 1 " — 
 When inside, from the true profound, a sign 
 
 Shall bear intelligence that the foe is foiled, 
 Count Guido Franceschini has confessed. 
 And is absolved and reconciled with God. 
 Then they, intoning, may begin their march. 
 Make by the longest way for the People's 
 
 Square, 
 Carry the criminal to his crime's award : 
 A mob to cleave, a scaffolding to reach. 
 Two gallows and Mannaia crowning all. 
 How Guido made defence a second time. 
 
 Finally, even as thus by step and step 
 
 I led you from the level of to-day 
 
 Up to the summit of so long ago, 
 
 H^re, whence I point you the wide prospect 
 
 round — 
 Let me, by like steps, slope you back to smooth, 
 Land you on mother-earth, no whit the worse, 
 To feed o' the fat o' the furrow : free to dwell. 
 Taste our time's better things profusely spread 
 For all who love the level, corn and wine. 
 Much cattle and the many-folded fleece. 
 Shall not my friends go feast again on sward, 
 Though cognizant of country in the clouds 
 Higher than wistful eagle's horny eye 
 Ever unclosed for, 'mid ancestral crags. 
 When morning broke and Spring was back once 
 
 more. 
 And he died, heaven, save by his heart, un- 
 reached ? 
 Yet heaven my fancy lifts to, ladder-like, — 
 As Jack reached, holpen of his beanstalk- 
 rungs ! 
 
 A novel country : I might make it mine 
 By ehosing which one aspect of the year 
 Suited mood best, and putting solely that 
 On panel somewhere in the House of Fame, 
 Landscaping what I saved, not what I saw : 
 — Might fix you, whether frost in goblin-time 
 Startled the moon with his abrupt bright laugh, 
 Or, August's hair afloat in filmy fire. 
 She fell, arms wide, face foremost on the world, 
 Swooned there and so singed out the strength 
 
 of things. 
 Thus were abolished Spring and Autumn both, 
 The land dwarfed to one likeness of the land, 
 Life cramped corpse-fashion. Rather learn 
 
 and love 
 Each facet-flash of the revolving year ! — 
 Red, green and blue that whirl into a white, 
 The variance now, the eventual unity, 
 Which make the miracle. See it for your- 
 selves. 
 This man's act, changeable because alive ! 
 Action now shrouds, nor shows the informing 
 
 thought ; 
 Man, like a glass ball with a spark a-top, 
 Out of the magic fire that lurks inside, 
 Shows one tint at a time to take the eye : 
 Which, let a finger touch the silent sleep. 
 Shifted a hair's-breadth shoots you dark foi 
 
 bright. 
 Suffuses bright with dark, and baffles so 
 Your sentence absolute for shine or shade. 
 Once set such orbs, — white styled, black stig- 
 matized, — 
 A-rolling, see them once on the other side 
 
HALF-ROME 
 
 427 
 
 Your good men and your bad men every one, 
 
 From Guido Franceschini to Guy Faux, 
 
 Oft would you rub your eyes and change your 
 
 Such, British Public, ye who like me not, 
 {God love you I) — whom I yet have labored for. 
 Perchance more careful whoso runs may read 
 Than erst when all, it seemed, could read who 
 
 ran, — 
 Perchance more careless whoso reads may 
 
 praise 
 Than late when he who praised and read and 
 
 wrote 
 Was apt to find himself the selfsame me, — 
 Such labor had such issue, so I wrought 
 This arc, by furtherance of such alloy, 
 And so, by one spirt, take away its trace 
 Till, justifiably golden, rounds my ring, 
 
 A ring without a posy, and that ring mine ? 
 
 lyric Love, half angel and half bird, 
 And all a wonder and a wild desire, — 
 IBoldest of hearts that ever braved the sun, 
 Took sanctuary within the holier blue. 
 And sang a kindred soul out to his face, — 
 Yet human at the red-ripe of the heart — 
 When the first summons from the darkling 
 
 earth 
 Reached thee amid thy chambers, blanched 
 
 their blue, 
 And bared them of the glory — to drop down, 
 To toil for man, to suffer or to die, — 
 This is the same voice : can thy soul know 
 
 change ? 
 Hail then, and hearken from the realms of help ! 
 Never may 1 commence my song, my due 
 To God who best taught song by gift of thee, 
 Except with bent head and beseeching hand — 
 That still, despite the distance and the dark, 
 What was, again may be ; some interchange 
 Of grace, some splendor once thy very thought, 
 Some benediction anciently thy smile : 
 — Never conclude, but raising hand and head 
 Thither where eyes, that cannot reach, yet 
 
 yearn 
 For all hope, all sustainment, all reward, 
 Their utmost up and on, — so blessing back 
 In those thy realms of help, that heaven thy 
 
 home. 
 Some whiteness which, 1 judge, thy face makes 
 
 proud, 
 Some wanness where, I think, thy foot may 
 
 fall! 
 
 II 
 
 HALF-ROME 
 
 What, you, Sir, come too ? (Just the man I 'd 
 
 meet.) 
 Be ruled by me and have a care 0' the crowd : 
 This way, while fresh folk go and get their 
 
 gaze : 
 
 1 '11 tell you like a book and save your shins. 
 Fie, what a roaring day we 've had I Whose 
 
 fault? 
 
 Lorenzo in Lucina, — here 's a church 
 To hold a crowd at need, accommodate 
 AU comers from the Corso ! If this crush 
 Make not its priests ashamed of what they 
 
 show 
 For temple-room, don't prick them to draw 
 
 purse 
 And down with bricks and mortar, eke us out 
 The beggarly transept with itd bit of apse 
 Into a decent space for Christian ease, 
 Why, to-day's lucky pearl is cast to swine. 
 Listen and estimate the luck they 've had ! 
 (The right man, and I hold him. J 
 
 Sir, do you see, 
 They laid both bodies in the church, this mom 
 The first thing, on the chancel two steps up, 
 Behind the little marble balustrade ; 
 Disposed them, Pietro the uld murdered fool 
 To the right of the altar, and his wretched wife 
 On the other side. In trying to count stabs, 
 People supposed Violante showed the most, 
 Till somebody explained us that mistake ; 
 His wounds had been dealt out indifferent 
 
 where, 
 But she took all her stabbings in the face, 
 Since punished thus solely for honor's sake. 
 Honoris causa^ that 's the proper term. 
 A delicacy there is, our gallants hold. 
 When you avenge your honor and only then, 
 That you disfigure the subject, fray the face. 
 Not just take life and end, in clownish guise. 
 It was Violante gave the first offence. 
 Got therefore the conspicuous punishment : 
 While Pietro, who helped merely, his mere 
 
 death 
 Answered the purpose, so his face went free. 
 We fancied even, free as you please, that face 
 Showed itself still intolerably wronged ; 
 Was wrinkled over with resentment yet, 
 Nor calm at all, as murdered faces use. 
 Once the worst ended : an indignant air 
 0' the head there was — 't is said the body 
 
 turned 
 Round and away, rolled from Violante's side 
 Where they had laid it loving-husband-like. 
 If so, if corpses can be sensitive, 
 Why did not he roll right down altar-step. 
 Roll on through nave, roll fairly out of church, 
 Deprive Lorenzo of the spectacle. 
 Pay back thus the succession of affronts 
 Whereto this church had served as theatre ? 
 For see : at that same altar where he lies. 
 To that same inch of step, was brought the babe 
 For blessing after baptism, and there styled 
 Pompilia, and a string of names beside, 
 By his bad wife, some seventeen years ago. 
 Who purchased her simply to palm on him, 
 Flatter his dotage and defraud the heirs. 
 Wait awhile ! Also to th^ very step 
 Did this Violante, twelve years afterward. 
 Bring, the mock-mother, that child-cheat full- 
 grown, 
 Pompdia, in pursuance of her plot, 
 And there brave God and man a second time 
 By linking a new victim to the lie. 
 There, having made a match unknown to him, 
 She, still unknown to Pietro, tied the knot 
 
428 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 Wliich nothing cuts except this kind of knife ; 
 
 Yes, made her daughter, as the girl "was held, 
 
 Marry a man, and honest man beside, 
 
 And man of birth to boot, — clandestinely 
 
 Because of this, because of that, because 
 
 0' the devil's will to work his worst for 
 
 once, — 
 Confident she could top her part at need 
 And, when her husband must be told in turn, 
 Ply the wife's trade, play off the sex's trick 
 And, alternating worry "with quiet qua,lms. 
 Bravado "with subiuissiveness, prettily fool 
 Her Pietro into patience : so it proved. 
 Ay, 'tis four years since man and wife they 
 
 grew, 
 This Guido Franceschini and this same 
 PompUia, foolishly thought, falsely declared 
 A Coraparini and the couple's child : 
 Just at this altar where, benbath the piece 
 Of Master Gruido Eeni, Christ on cross, 
 8econd to nauglit observable in Rome, 
 That couple lie now, murdered yestereve. 
 Even the blind can see a providence here. 
 
 From dawn till now that it is growing dusk, 
 A multitude has flocked and jilled the church. 
 Coming and going, coming back again, 
 Till to count crazed one. Rome was at the 
 
 show. 
 People climbed up the columns, fought for 
 
 0' the chapel-rail to perch themselves upon. 
 Jumped over and so broke the wooden work 
 Painted like porphyry to deceive tne eye ; 
 Serve the priests right ! The organ-loft was 
 
 crammed, 
 Women were fainting, no few fights ensued. 
 In short, it was a show repaid your pains : 
 For, though their room was scant undoubtedly, 
 Yet they did manage matters, to be just, 
 A little at this Lorenzo. Body o' me ! 
 I saw a body exposed once . . . never mind ! 
 Enough that here the bodies had their due. 
 No stinginess in wax, a row all round. 
 And one big taper at each head and foot. 
 
 So, people pushed their way, and took their turn. 
 Saw, threw their eyes up, crossed themselves, 
 
 gave place 
 To pressure from behind, since all the world 
 Knew the old pair, could talk the tragedy 
 Over from first to last : Pompilia too. 
 Those who had known her — what 't was 
 
 worth to them ! 
 Guide's acquaintance was in less request ; 
 The Count had lounged somewhat too long in 
 
 Rome, 
 Made himself cheap ; with him were hand and 
 
 glove 
 Barbers and blear-eyed, as the ancient sings. 
 Also he is alive and like to be : 
 Had he considerately died, — aha ! 
 I jostled Luca Cini on his staff. 
 Mute in the midst, the whole man one amaze, 
 Staring amain and crossing brow and breast. 
 "Hownow?" askedl. " 'T is seventy years," 
 
 quoth he, 
 "Since I first saw, holding my father's hand, 
 
 Bodies set forth : a many have I seen, 
 Yet all was poor to this I live and see. 
 Here the world 's wickedness seals up the sum ; 
 What with Molinos' doctrine and this deed. 
 Antichrist surely comes and doomsday 's near. 
 May I depart in peace, I have seen my see." 
 " Depart then," I advised, " nor block the road 
 For youngsters still behindhand with such 
 
 " Why no," rejoins the venerable sire, 
 "I know it 's horrid, hideous past belief, 
 Burdensome far beyond what eye can bear ; 
 But they do promise, when Pompilia dies 
 I' the course o' the day, — and she can't outlive 
 
 night, — 
 They '11 bring her body also to expose 
 Beside the parents, one, two, three abreast ; 
 That were indeed a sight which, might I see, 
 I trust I should not last to see the like ! " 
 Whereat I bade the senior spare his shanks, 
 Since doctors give her till to-night to live, 
 And tell us how the butchery happened. ' ' Ah, 
 But you can't know I " sighs he, "I '11 not de- 
 spair : 
 Beside I 'ra useful at explaining things — 
 As, how the dagger laid there at the feet, 
 Caused the pecuHar cuts ; 1 mind its make, 
 Triangular i' the blade, a Genoese, 
 Armed with those little hook-teeth on the edge 
 To open in the flesh nor shut again : 
 I like to teach a novice : I shall stay ! " 
 And stay he did, and stay be sure he will. 
 
 A personage came by the private door 
 
 At noon to have his look : I name no names : 
 
 Well then. His Eminence the Cardinal, 
 
 Whose servitor in honorable sort 
 
 Guido was once, the same who made the 
 
 match, 
 (Will you have the truth ?) whereof we see 
 
 effect. 
 No sooner whisper ran he was arrived 
 Than up pops Curate Carlo, a brisk lad. 
 Who never lets a good occasion slip. 
 And volunteers improving the event. 
 We looked he 'd give the history's self some 
 
 help. 
 Treat us to how the wife's confession went 
 (This morning she confessed her crime, we 
 
 know) 
 And, maybe, throw in something of the 
 
 Priest — 
 If he 's not ordered back, punished anew, 
 Tlie gallant, Caponsacchi, Lucifer 
 I' the garden where Pompilia, Eve-like, lured 
 Her Adam Guido to his fault and fall. 
 Think you we got a sprig of speech akin 
 To this from Carlo, with the Cardinal there ? 
 Too wary he was, too widely awake, I trow. 
 He did the murder in a dozen words ; 
 Then said that all such outrages crop forth 
 I' the course of nature, when Molinos' tares 
 Are sown for wheat, flourish and choke the 
 
 Church : 
 So slid on to the abominable sect 
 And the philosophic sin — we 've heard all that, 
 And the Cardinal too, (who book-made on the 
 
 same) 
 
HALF-ROME 
 
 429 
 
 But, for the murder, left it where he found. 
 Oh but he ^s quiok, the Curate, iniuda his 
 
 game ! 
 And, after all, we have the main o' the fact : 
 Case could not well be simpler, — mapped, as it 
 
 were. 
 We follow the murder's maze from source to 
 
 sea. 
 By the red line, past mistake ; one sees indeed 
 Not only how all was and must have been. 
 But cannot other than be to the end of time. 
 Turn out here by the Ruspoli ! Do you hold 
 Guide was so prodigiously to blame ? 
 A certain cousin of yours has told you so ? 
 Exactly I Here 's a friend shall set you right. 
 Let him but have the handsel of your ear. 
 
 These wretched Comparini were once gay 
 And galliard, of the modest middle class : 
 Bom in this quarter seventy years ago, 
 And married young, they lived the accustomed 
 
 life. 
 Citizens as they were of good repute : 
 And, childless, naturally took their ease 
 With only their two selves to care about 
 And use the wealth for : wealthy is the word, 
 Since Pietro was possessed of house and land — 
 And specially one house, when good days 
 
 smiled. 
 In Via Vittoria, the aspectable street 
 Where he lived mainly ; but another house 
 Of less pretension did he buy betimes. 
 The villa, meant for jaunts and joUity, 
 I' the Pauline district, to be private there — 
 Just what puts murder in an enemy's head. 
 Moreover, — here 's the worm i' the core, the 
 
 germ 
 0' the rottenness and ruin which arrived, — 
 He owned some usufruct, had moneys' use 
 Lifelong, but to determine with his life 
 In heii-s' default : so, Pietro craved an heir, 
 (The story always old and always new) 
 bhut his fool's-eyes fast on the visible good 
 And wealth for certain, opened them owl-wide 
 On fortune's sole piece of forgetfulness. 
 The child that should have been and would not 
 
 be. 
 
 Hence, seventeen years ago, conceive his glee 
 When first Violante, 'twixt a smile and blush, 
 With touch of agitation proper too. 
 Announced that, spite of her unpromising age. 
 The miracle would in time be manifest. 
 An heir's birth was to happen : and it did. 
 Somehow or other, — how, all in good time ! 
 By a trick, a sleight of hand you are to hear, — 
 A child was bom, Pompilia, for his joy. 
 Plaything at once and prop, a fairy-gift, 
 A saints' grace or, say, grant of the good 
 
 God,— 
 A fiddle-pin's end ! What imbeciles are we ! 
 Look now : if some one could have prophesied, 
 " For love of yon, for liking to your wife, 
 I undertake to crush a snake I spy 
 Settling itself i' the soft of both your breasts. 
 Give me von babe to strangle painlessly ! 
 She '11 soar to the safe : you '11 have yoi 
 
 in-^- out, 
 
 your cry- 
 
 Then sleep, then wake, then sleep, then end 
 
 your days 
 In peace and plenty, mixed with mild regret. 
 Thirty years hence when Chiistmas takes uld 
 
 folk " - 
 How had old Pietro sprung up, crossed himself. 
 And kicked the conjurer ! Whereas you and I, 
 Being wise with ai'ter-wit, had clapped our 
 
 hands ; 
 Xay, added, in the old fool's interest, 
 "Strangle tne black-eyed babe, so far so good, 
 But on condition you relieve the man 
 O' the wife and throttle him Violante too — 
 She is the mischief ! " 
 
 We had hit the mark. 
 She, whose trick brought the babe into the 
 
 world. 
 She it was, when the babe was grown a girl. 
 Judged a new trick should reinforce the old, 
 Send vigor to the lie now somewhat spent 
 By twelve years' service ; lest Eve's rule de- 
 cline 
 Over this Adam of hers, whose cabbage-plot 
 Throve dubiously since turned fools'-paradise, 
 Spite of a nightingale on every stuntp. 
 Pietro's estate was dwindling day by day. 
 While he, rapt far above such mundane care. 
 Crawled all-fours with his baby pick-a-back, 
 Sat at serene cats'-eradle with his child. 
 Or took the measured tallness, top to toe, 
 Of what was grown a great girl twelve years 
 
 old: 
 Till sudden at the door a tap discreet, 
 A visitor's premonitory cough. 
 And poverty had reached him in her rounds. 
 
 This came when he was past the working-time, 
 Had learned to dandle and forgot to dig. 
 And who must but Violante cast about. 
 Contrive and task that head of hers again ? 
 She who had caught one fish could make that 
 
 catch 
 A bigger still, in angler's policy : 
 So, with an angler's mercy for the bait. 
 Her minnow was set wriggling on its barb 
 And tossed to raid-stream ; which means, this 
 
 grown girl 
 With the great eyes and bounty of black hair 
 And first crisp youth that tempts a jaded taste, 
 Was whisked i' the way of a certain man, who 
 
 snapped. 
 
 Count Guido Francesehini the Aretine 
 Was head of an old noble house enough, 
 Not over-rich, you can't have everything. 
 But such a man as riches rub against. 
 Readily stick to, — one with a right to them 
 Bom in the blood : 't was in liis very brow 
 Always to knit itself against the world. 
 Beforehand so, when that world stinted due 
 Service and suit : the world ducks and defers. 
 As such folks do, he had come up to Rome 
 To better his fortune, and, since many yeai-s, 
 Was friend and follower of a cardinal ; 
 Waiting the rather thus on providence. 
 That a shrewd younger poorer brother yet. 
 The Abate Paolo, a regulaj^ priest, 
 
43° 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 Had long since tried his powers and found he 
 
 swam 
 With the deftest on the Galilean pool : 
 But then he was a web-foot, free o' the wave, 
 And no ambiguous dab-chick hatched to strut, 
 Humbled by any fond attempt to swim 
 When fiercer fowl usurped his dunghill-top — 
 A whole priest, Paolo, no mere piece of one. 
 Like Guido tacked thus to the Church's tail ! 
 Guide moreover, as the head o' the house. 
 Claiming the main prize, not the lesser luck, 
 The centre lily, no mere chickweed fringe. 
 
 He waited and learned waiting, thirty years ; 
 Got promise, missed performance — what would 
 
 you have ? 
 No petty post rewards a nobleman 
 For spending youth in splendid lackey-work, 
 And there 's concurrence for each rarer prize ; 
 When that falls, rougher hand and readier foot 
 Push aside Guido spite of his black looks. 
 The end was, Guido, when the warning showed, 
 The first white hair i' the glass, gave up the 
 
 game. 
 Determined on returning to his town. 
 Making the best of bad incurable, 
 Patching the old palace up and lingering there 
 The customary life out with his kin. 
 Where honor helps to spice the scanty bread. 
 
 Just as he trimmed his lamp and girt his loins 
 To go his journey and be wise at home, 
 In the right mood of disappointed worth, 
 Wlio but Violante sudden spied her prey 
 (Where was I with that angler-simile ?J 
 And threw her bait, Pompilia, where he 
 
 sulked — 
 A gleam i' the gloom ! 
 
 What if he gained thus much. 
 Wrung out this sweet drop from the bitter 
 
 Past, 
 Bore off this rose-bud from the prickly brake 
 To justify such torn clothes and scratched 
 
 hands. 
 And, after all, brought something back from 
 
 Rome? 
 Would not a wife serve at Arezzo well 
 To light the dark house, lend a look of youth 
 To the mother's face grown meagre, left alone 
 And famished with the emptiness of hope. 
 Old Donna Beatrice ? Wife you want 
 Woald you play family-representative, 
 Carry you elder-brotherly, high and right 
 O'er what may prove the natural petulance 
 Of the third brother, younger, greedier still, 
 Girolamo, also a fledgeling priest. 
 Beginning life in turn with callow beak 
 Agape for luck, no luck had stopped and 
 
 stilled. 
 Such were the pinks and grays about the bait 
 Persuaded Guido gulp down hook and all. 
 
 What constituted him so choice a catch. 
 You question ? Past his prime and poor beside ! 
 Ask that of any she who knows the trade. 
 Why first, here was a nobleman with friends, 
 A palace one might run to and be safe 
 
 When presently the threatened fate should fall, 
 A big-browed master to block doorway up. 
 Parky with people bent on pushing hy. 
 And praying the mild Pietro quick clear 
 
 scores : 
 Is bii-th a privilege and power or no ? 
 Also —but judge of the I'esult desired. 
 By the price paid and manner of the sale. 
 Tne Count was made woo, win and wed at 
 
 once ; 
 Asked, and was haled for answer, lest the heat 
 Should cool, to San Lorenzo, one blind eve, 
 And had Pompilia put into his arms 
 C the sly there, by a hasty candle-blink. 
 With sanction of some priest-confederate 
 Properly paid to make short work and sure. 
 
 So did old Pietro's daughter change her style 
 
 For Guido Franceschini's lady-wife 
 
 Ere Guido knew it well ; and why this haste 
 
 And scramble and indecent secrecy ? 
 
 " Lest Pietro, all the while in ignorance. 
 
 Should get to learn, gainsay and break the 
 
 match : 
 His peevishness had promptly put aside 
 Such honor and refused the proffered boon. 
 Pleased to become authoritative once. 
 She remedied the wilful man's mistake — " 
 Did our discreet Violante. Rather say. 
 Thus did she lest the object of her game, 
 Guido the gulled one, give him but a chance, 
 A moment's respite, time for thinking twice, 
 Might count the cost before he sold himself, 
 And try the clink of coin they paid him with. 
 
 But coin paid, bargain struck and business 
 
 done. 
 Once the clandestine marriage over thus. 
 All parties made perforce the best o' the fact ; 
 Pietro could play vast indignation off, 
 Be ignorant and astounded, dupe, poor soul. 
 Please you, of daughter, wife and son-in-law, 
 While Guido found himself in flagrant fault. 
 Must e'en do suit and service, soothe, subdue 
 A father not unreasonably chafed. 
 Bring him to terms by paying son's devoir. 
 Pleasant initiation ! 
 
 The end, this : 
 Guide's broad back was saddled to bear all — 
 Pietro, Violante, and Pompilia too, — 
 Three lots cast confidently in one lap. 
 Three dead-weights with one arm to lift the 
 
 three 
 Out of their limbo up to life again. 
 The Roman household was to strike fresh root 
 In a new soil, graced with a novel name. 
 Gilt with an alien glory, Aretine 
 Henceforth and never Roman any more. 
 By treaty and engagement ; thus it ran : 
 Pompilia's dowry for Pompilia's self 
 As a thing of course, — she paid her own ex- 
 pense ; 
 No loss nor gain there : but the couple, you see, 
 They, for their part, turned over first of all 
 Their fortune in its rags and rottenness 
 To Guido, fusion and confusion, he 
 And his with them and theirs, — whatever rag 
 
HALF-ROME 
 
 431 
 
 With coin residuary fell on floor 
 When Brother Paolo's energetic shake 
 Should do the relics justice : since 't was 
 
 thought, 
 Once vulnerable Pietro out of reach, 
 That, left at Rome as representative. 
 The Abate, backed by a potent patron here, 
 And otherwise with purple flushing him, 
 Might play a good game with the creditor, 
 Make up a moiety which, great or small, 
 fcjhould go to the eommon stock — if anything, 
 Guido's, so far repayment of the cost 
 About to be, — and if, as looked more like, 
 Nothing, — why, all the nobler cost were his 
 Who guaranteed, for better or for worse, 
 To Pietro and Violante, house and home, 
 Kith and kin, with the pick of company 
 And life o' the fat o' the land while life should 
 
 last. 
 How say you to the bargain at first blush ? 
 Why did a middle-aged not-silly man 
 Show himself thus besotted aU. at once ? 
 Quoth Solomon, one black eye does it all. 
 
 They went to Arezzo, — Pietro and his spouse, 
 With just the dusk o* the day of life to spend, 
 Eager to use the twilight, taste a trestt. 
 Enjoy for once with neither stay nor stint 
 The luxury of lord-and-lady-ship. 
 And realize the stuif and nonsense long 
 A-simmer in their noddles ; vent the fume 
 Bom there and bred, the citizen's conceit 
 How fares nobility while crossing earth, 
 What rampart or invisible body-guard 
 Keeps off the taint of common life from such. 
 They had not fed for nothing on the tales 
 Of grandees who give banquets worthy Jove, 
 Spending gold as if Plutus paid a whim, 
 Served with obeisances as when . , . what God ? 
 I 'm at the end of my tether ; 't is enough 
 You understand what they came primed to see : 
 While Guido who should minister the sight. 
 Stay all this qualmish greediness of soul 
 With apples and with flagons — for his part, 
 Was set on life diverse as pole from pole : 
 Lust of the flesh, lust of the eye, — what else 
 Was he just now awake from, sick and sage. 
 After the very debauch they would begin? — 
 Suppose such stuff and nonsense really were. 
 That bubble, they were bent on blowing big, 
 He had blown already till he burst his cheeks, 
 And hence found soapsuds bitter to the tongue. 
 He hoped now to walk softly aU his days 
 In soberness of spirit, if haply so, 
 Pinching and paring he might furnish forth 
 A frugal board, bare sustenance, no more, 
 Tin times, that could not well grow worse, 
 should mend. 
 
 Thus minded then, two parties mean to meet 
 And make each other happy. The first week, 
 And fancy strikes fact and explodes in full. 
 " This," shrieked the Comparini, '* this the 
 
 Count, 
 The palace, the signorial privilege, 
 The pomp and pageantry were promised us ? 
 For this have we exchanged our liberty. 
 Our competence, our darling of a child r 
 
 To house as spectres in a sepulchre 
 Under this black stone heap, the street's dis- 
 grace, 
 Grimmest as that is of the gruesome town, 
 And here pick garbage on a pewter plate, 
 Or cough at verjuice dripped ft?om earthen' 
 
 ware ? 
 Oh Via Vittoria, oh the other place 
 I' the Pauline, did we give you up for this ? 
 WTiere 's the foregone housekeeping good an^ 
 
 ^ay, 
 The neighborline^, the companionship, 
 The treat and feast when holidays came round, 
 The daily feast that seemed no treat at all. 
 Called common by the uncommon fools we 
 
 were ! 
 Even the sun that used to shine at Rome, 
 Where is it ? Robbed and starved and frozen 
 
 too, 
 We will have justice, justice if there be ! " 
 Did not they shout, did not the town resound ! 
 Guido's old lady-mother Beatrice, 
 Who since her husband, Count Tommaso's 
 
 death. 
 Had held sole sway i' the house, — the doited 
 
 crone 
 Slow to acknowledge, curtsey and abdicate, — 
 Was recognized of true novercal type, 
 Dragon and devil. His brother Girolamo 
 Came next in order : priest was he ? The 
 
 worse ! 
 No way of winning him to leave his mumps 
 And help the laugh against old ancestry 
 And formal habits long since out of date. 
 Letting his youth be patterned on the mode 
 Approved 01 where Violante laid down law. 
 Or did he brighten up by way of change, 
 Dispose himself for affability ? 
 The malapert, too complaisant by half 
 To the alarmed young novice of a bride ! 
 Let him go buzz, betake himself elsewhere. 
 Nor singe his fly-wings in the candle-flame I 
 
 Four months' probation of this purgatory, 
 Dog-snap and cat-claw, curse and counterblast. 
 The devil's self were sick of his own din ; 
 And Pietro, after trumpeting huge wrongs 
 At church and market-place, pillar and post, 
 Square's corner, street's end, now the palace- 
 step 
 And now the vrine-house bench — while, on her 
 
 side, 
 Violante up and down was voluble 
 In whatsoever pair of ears would perk 
 From goody, gossip, cater-^jousin and sih, 
 Cuiious to peep at the inside of things 
 And catch in the act pretentious poverty 
 At its wits' end to keep appearance up. 
 Make both ends meet, — nothing the vulgar 
 
 loves 
 Like what this couple pitched them right and 
 
 left. 
 Then, their worst done that way, both struck 
 
 tent, marched 
 — Renounced their share o' the bargain, flung 
 
 what dues 
 Guido was bound to pay, in Guido's face, 
 Left their hearts'-darling, treasure of the twain 
 
432 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 And so forth, the poor inexperienced bride, 
 To her own devices, bade Arezio rot. 
 Cursed life signorial, and sought Rome once 
 more. 
 
 I see the comment ready on your lip, 
 
 " The better fortune, Gruido's — free at least 
 
 By this defection of the foolish pair. 
 
 He coiild begin make profit in some sort 
 
 Of the young bride and the new quietness. 
 
 Lead his own life now, henceforth breathe un- 
 
 plagued." 
 Gould he ? You know the sex like Guido's 
 
 self. 
 Learn the Violante-nature ! 
 
 Once in Rome, 
 By way of helping Guido lead such life, 
 Her first act to inaugurate return 
 Was, she got pricked in conscience : Jubilee 
 Gave her the hint. Our Pope, as kind as just. 
 Attained his eighty years, announced a boon 
 Should make us bless the fact, held Jubilee — 
 Short shrift, prompt pardon for the light 
 
 offence. 
 And no rough dealing with the regular crime 
 So this occasion were not suffered slip — 
 Otherwise, sins commuted as before. 
 Without the least abatement in the price. 
 Now, who had thought it ? All this while, it 
 
 seems. 
 Our sage Violante had a sin of a sort 
 She must compound for now or not at all. 
 Now be the ready riddance ! She confessed 
 Pompilia was a fable, not a fact : 
 She never bore a child in her whole life. 
 Had this child been a changeling, that were 
 
 grace 
 In some degree, exchange is hardly theft ; 
 You take your stand on truth ere leap your 
 
 lie : 
 Here was all lie, no touch of truth at all, 
 AU the lie hers — not even Pietro guessed 
 He was as childless still as twelve years since. 
 The babe had been a find i' the filth-heap, Sir, 
 Catch from the kennel ! There was found at 
 
 Rome, 
 Down in the deepest of our social dregs, 
 A woman who professed the wanton's trade 
 Under the requisite thin coverture. 
 Communis meretrix and washer-wife : 
 The creature thus conditioned found by chance 
 Motherhood like a jewel in the muck. 
 And straightway either trafficked with her 
 
 prize 
 Or listened to the tempter and let be, — 
 Made pact abolishing her place and part 
 In womankind, beast-fellowship indeed. 
 She sold this babe eight months before its birth 
 To our Violante, Pietro's honest spouse. 
 Well-famed and widely-instanced as that crown 
 To the husband, virtue in a woman's shape. 
 She it was, bought, paid for, passed off the 
 
 thing 
 As very flesh and blood and child of her 
 Despite the flagrant fifty years, — and why ? 
 Partly to please old Pietro, fill his cup 
 With wine at the late hour when lees are left. 
 
 And send him from life's feast rejoichigly, — 
 Partly to cheat the rightful heirs, agape, 
 Each uncle's cousin's brother's son of him, 
 For that same principal of the usufruct 
 It vext him he nmst die and leave behind. 
 
 Such was the sin had come to be confessed. 
 Which of the tales, the first or last, was true ? 
 Did she so sin once, or, confessing now. 
 Sin for the first time ? Either way you will. 
 One sees a reason for the cheat : one sees 
 A reason for a cheat in owning cheat 
 Where no cheat had been. What of the revenge ? 
 What prompted the contrition all at once. 
 Made the avowal easy, the shame slight ? 
 Why, prove they but Pompilia not their child, 
 No child, no dowry ! this, supposed their child. 
 Had claimed what this, shown alien to their 
 
 blood. 
 Claimed nowise : Guido's claim was through his 
 
 wife, 
 Null then and void with hers. The biter bit, 
 Do you see ! For such repayment of the past, 
 One might conceive the penitential pair 
 Ready to bring their case before the courts, 
 Publish their infamy to all the world 
 And, arm in arm, go chuckling thence content. 
 
 Is this your view ? 'T was Guido's anyhow, 
 And colorable : he came forward then. 
 Protested in his very bride's behalf 
 Against this lie and all it led to, least 
 Of all the loss o' the dowry ; no ! From her 
 And him alike he would expunge the blot, 
 Erase the brand of such a bestial birth, 
 Participate in no hideous heritage 
 Gathered from the gutter to be garnered up 
 And glorified in a palace. Peter and Paul 1 
 But that who likes may look upon the pair 
 Exposed in yonder church, and show his skill 
 By saying which is eye and which is mouth 
 Through those stabs thick and threefold, — but 
 
 for that — 
 A strong word on the liars and their lie 
 Might crave expression and obtain it. Sir ! 
 — Though prematurely, since there 's more to 
 
 come, 
 More that will shake your confidence in things 
 Your cousin tells you, — may I be so bold ? 
 
 This makes the first act of the farce, — anon 
 The sombre element comes stealing in 
 Till all is black or blood-red in the piece. 
 Guido, thus made a laughing-stock abroad, 
 A proverb for the market-place at home. 
 Left alone with Pompilia now, this graft 
 So reputable on his ancient stock, 
 This plague-seed set to fester his sound flesh. 
 What does the Count ? Revenge him on his 
 
 wife? 
 Unfasten at all risks to rid himself 
 The noisome lazar-badge, fall foul of fate. 
 And, careless whether the poor rag was ware 
 O' the part it played, or helped unwittingly. 
 Bid it go burn and leave his frayed flesh free ? 
 Plainly, did Guido open both doois wide. 
 Spurn thence the cur-cast creature and clear 
 
HALF-ROME 
 
 433 
 
 As man might, tempted in extreme like this ? 
 No, birth and breeding:, and compassion too 
 Saved her such scandal. She was young, he 
 
 thoug"ht, 
 Not privy to the treason, punished most 
 I' the proclamation of it ; why make her 
 A party to the crime she suffered by ? 
 Then tne black eyes were now her very own, 
 Not any more Violante's : let her live, 
 Lose in a new air, under a new sun, 
 The taint of the imputed parentage 
 Truly or falsely, take no more the touch 
 Of Pietro and his partner anyhow ! 
 All might go well yet. 
 
 So she thought, herself. 
 It seems, since what was her first act and deed 
 When news came how these kindly ones at 
 
 Rome 
 Had stripped her naked to amuse the world 
 With spots here, spots there and spots every- 
 where y 
 — For I should teU you that they noised abroad 
 Not merely the main scandal of her birth, 
 But slanders written, printed, published wide, 
 Pamphlets which set forth all the pleasantry 
 Of how the promised glory was a dream, 
 The power a bubble, and the wealth — why, 
 
 dust. 
 There was a picture, painted to the life, 
 Of those rare doings, that superlative 
 Initiation in magnificence 
 Conferred on a poor Roman family 
 By favor of Arezzo and her first 
 And famousest, the Franceschini there. 
 You had the Countship holding head aloft 
 Bravely although bespattered, shifts and straits 
 In keeping out o' the way o' the wheels o' the 
 
 world, 
 The comic of those home-contrirances 
 When the old lady-mother's wit was taxed 
 To find six clamorous mouths in food more 
 
 real 
 Than fruit plucked off the cobwebbed family- 
 tree. 
 Or acorns shed from its gilt mouldered frame — 
 Cold glories served up with stale fame for sauce. 
 What, I ask, — when the drunkenness of hate 
 Hiceuped return for hospitality, 
 Befouled the table they had feasted on. 
 Or say, — God knows I 'U not prejudge the 
 
 case, — 
 Grievances thus distorted, magnified. 
 Colored by quarrel into calumny, — 
 What side did our Pompilia first espouse ? 
 Her first deliberate m.easure was, she wrote. 
 Pricked by some loyal impulse, straight to 
 
 Rome 
 And her husband^s brother the Abate there, 
 Who, having managed to effect the match, 
 Might take men's censure for its ill success. 
 She made a clean breast also in her turn. 
 And qualified the couple properly. 
 Since whose departure, hell, she said, was 
 
 heaven. 
 And the house, late distracted by their peals, 
 Quiet as Carmel where the lilies live. 
 Herself had oftentimes complained : but why ? 
 
 All her complaints had been their prompting, 
 
 tales 
 Trumped up, devices to this very end. 
 Their game had been to thwart her husband's 
 
 love 
 And cross his will, malign his words and ways, 
 To reach this issue, furnish this pretence 
 For impudent withdrawal from their bond, — 
 Theft, indeed murder, since they meant no less 
 Whose last injunction to her simple self 
 Had been — what parents' - precept do yon 
 
 think ? 
 That she should follow after with all speed, 
 Fly from her husband's house clandestinely, 
 Join them at Rome again, but first of all 
 Pick up a fresh companion in her flight, 
 So putting youth and beauty to fit use, — 
 Some gay dare-devil cloak-and-rapier spark 
 Capable of adventure, — helped by whom 
 She, some fine eve when lutes were in the air, 
 Having put poison in the posset^cup. 
 Laid hands on money, jewels and the like. 
 And, to conceal the thing with more effect, 
 By way of parting benediction too. 
 Fired the house, — one would finish famously 
 I' the tumult, slip out, scurry off and away 
 And turn up merrily at home once more. 
 Fact this, and not a dream o' the devil, Sir ! 
 And more than this, a fact none dare dispute, 
 Word for word, such a letter did she write. 
 And such the Abate read, nor simply read 
 But gave all Rome to ruminate upon. 
 In answer to such charges as, I say. 
 The couple sought to be beforehand with. 
 
 The cause thus carried to the courts at Rome, 
 
 Guide away, the Abate had no choice 
 
 But stand forth, take his absent brother's part, 
 
 Defend the honor of himself beside. 
 
 He made what head he might against the pair, 
 
 Maintained Pompilia's birth legitimate 
 
 And all her rights intact — hers, Gnido's now : 
 
 And so far by his policy turned their flank, 
 
 (The enemy being beforehand in the place) 
 
 That, — though the courts allowed the cheat for 
 
 fact. 
 Suffered Violante to parade her shame, 
 Publish her infamy to heart's content, 
 And let the tale o' the feigned birth pass for 
 
 proved, — 
 Yet they stopped there, refused to intervene 
 And dispossess the innocents, befooled 
 By gifts o' the guilty, at guilt's new caprice. 
 They would not take away the dowry now 
 Wrongfully given at first, nor bar at all 
 Succession to the aforesaid usufruct, 
 Established on a fraud, nor play the game 
 Of Pietro's child and now not Pietro's child 
 As it might suit the gamester's purpose. Thus 
 Was justice ever ridiculed in Rome : 
 Such be the double verdicts favored here 
 Which send away both parties to a suit 
 Nor puffed up nor cast down, — for each a 
 
 crumb 
 Of right, for neither of them the whole loaf. 
 Whence, on the Comparini's part, appeal — 
 Counter-appeal on Guide's, — that 's the game ; 
 And so the matter stands, even to this hour. 
 
434 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 Bandied as balls are in a tennis-eourt. 
 
 And so might stand, unless some heart broke 
 
 first, 
 Till doomsday. 
 
 Leave it thus, and now revert 
 To the old Arezzo whence we moved to Borne. 
 We 've had enough o' the parents, false or true, 
 Now for a touch o' the daughter's quality. 
 The start 's fair henceforth, eveiy obstacle 
 Out of the young wife's footpath, she 's alone, 
 Left to walk warily now : how does she walk ? 
 Why, once a dwelling's threshold marked and 
 
 In rubric by the enemy on his rounds 
 As eligible, as fit place of prey. 
 Baffle him henceforth, keep him out who can ! 
 Stop up the door at the first hint of hoof, 
 Presently at the window taps a horn. 
 And Satan 's by your fireside, never fear 1 
 Pompilia, left alone now, found herself ; 
 Found herself young too, sprightly, fair enough. 
 Matched with a husband old beyond his a^e 
 (Though that was something like four times 
 
 her own) 
 Because of cares past, present and to come : 
 Found too the house dull and its inmates dead. 
 So, looked outside for light and life. 
 
 And love 
 Did in a trice turn up with life and light, — 
 The man with the aureole, sympathy made 
 
 flesh. 
 The aE-consoling Caponsacohi, Sir ! 
 A priest — what else should the consoler be ? 
 With goodly shoulder-blade and proper leg, 
 A portly make and a symmetric shape. 
 And curls that clustered to the tonsure quite. 
 This was a bishop in the bud, and now 
 A canon full-blown so far : priest, and priest 
 Nowise exorbitantly overworked. 
 The courtly Christian, not so much Saint Paul 
 As a saint of Caesar's household : there posed he 
 Sending his god-glance after his shot shaft, 
 Apollos turned Apollo, while the snake 
 Pompilia writhed transfixed through all her 
 
 spires. 
 He, not a visitor at Guido's house. 
 Scarce an acquaintance, but in prime request 
 With the magnates of Arezzo, was seen here. 
 Heard there, felt everywhere in Guido's path 
 If Guido's wife's path be her husband's too. 
 Now he threw comfits at the theatre 
 Into her lap, — what harm in Carnival ? 
 Now he pressed close till his foot touched her 
 
 gown. 
 His hand brushed hers, — how help on prom- 
 enade ? 
 And, ever on weighty business, found his steps 
 Incline to a certain haunt of doubtful fame 
 Which fronted Guido's palace by mere chance ; 
 While — how do accidents sometimes com- 
 bine ! — 
 Pompilia chose to cloister up her charms 
 Just in a chamber that o'erlooUed the street. 
 Sat there to pray, or peep thence at mankind. 
 
 This passage of arras and wits amused the town. 
 At last the husband lifted eyebrow, — bent 
 
 On day-book and the study how to wring 
 Half the due vintage from the worn-out vines 
 At the villa, tease a quarter the old rent 
 From the farmstead, tenants swore would 
 
 tumble soon, — , . ■ 
 
 Pricked up his ear a-singing day and night 
 With "ruin, ruin;" — and so surprised at 
 
 last — 
 Why, what else but a titter ? Up he jumps. 
 Back to mind come those scratchings at the 
 
 grange. 
 Prints of the paw about the outhouse ; rife 
 In his head at once again are word and wink, 
 Mum here and budget there, the smell o' the fox. 
 The musk o' the gallant. " Friends, there 's 
 
 falseness here ! " 
 
 The proper help of friends in such a strait 
 
 Is waggery, the world over. Laugh him free 
 
 O' the regular jealous-fit that 's incident 
 
 To all old husbands that wed brisk young wives, 
 
 And he '11 go duly docile all his days. 
 
 " Somebody coiirts your wife. Count ? Where 
 
 and when ? 
 How and why ? Mere horn-madness ; have a 
 
 care ! 
 Your lady loves her own room, sticks to it. 
 Locks herself in for hours, you say yourself. 
 And — what, it 's Caponsacchi means you 
 
 harm ? 
 The Canon ? We caress him, he 's the world's, 
 A man of such acceptance, — never dream, 
 Though he were fifty times the fox you fear. 
 He 'd risk his brush for your particular chick, 
 Wlien the wide town 's his hen-roost ! Fie o' 
 
 thefooll" 
 So they dispensed their comfort of a kind. 
 Guido at last cried, " Something is in the air, 
 Under the earth, some plot against my peace. 
 The trouble of eclipse hangs overhead ; 
 How it should come of that officious orb 
 Your Canon in my system, you must say : 
 I say — that from the pressure of this spring 
 Began the ciiime and interchange of bells. 
 Ever one whisper, and one whisper more. 
 And just one whisper for the silvery last. 
 Till all at once a-row the bronze-throats burst 
 Into a larum both significant 
 And sinister : stop it I must and will- 
 Let Caponsacchi take his hand away 
 From the wire ! — disport himself in other paths 
 Than lead precisely to my palace-gate, — 
 Look where he likes except one window's way 
 Where, cheek on hand, and elbow set on sill, 
 Happens to lean and say her litanies 
 Every day and all day long, just my wife — 
 Or wife and Caponsacchi may fare the worse ! '' 
 
 Admire the man's simplicity. " I '11 do this, 
 I '11 not have that, I '11 punish and prevent ! " — 
 'T is easy saying. But to a fray, you see. 
 Two parties go. The badger shows his teeth : 
 The fox nor lies down sheep-like nor dares fight. 
 Oh, the wife knew the appropriate warfare well, 
 The way to put suspicion to the blush ! 
 At first hint of remonstrance, up and out 
 I' the face of the world, you found her : shs 
 could speak. 
 
HALF-ROME 
 
 455 
 
 State her case, — Franceschini was a name, 
 Guido had his full share of foes and f riendi — 
 Why should not she call these to arbitrate *? 
 She bade the Governor do governance, 
 Cried out on the Archbishop, — why, there 
 
 now. 
 Take him for sample ! Three successive times 
 Had he to reconduct her by main force 
 From where she took her station opposite 
 His shut door, — on the public steps thereto, 
 Wrii^ngr her hands, when he came out to see, 
 And shrieking all her wrongs forth at his foot, — 
 Back to the husband and the house she fled : 
 Judge if that husband wai-med him in the face 
 Of friends or frowned on foes as heretofore 1 
 Judge if he missed the natural ^u of folk. 
 Or lacked the customary compliment 
 Of cap and bells, the luckless husband^s flt I 
 
 So it went on and on till — who was right ? 
 One merry April morning, Guido woke 
 After the cuckoo, so late, near noonday, 
 With an inordinate yawning of the jaws, 
 Ears plugged, eyes gummed together, palate, 
 
 tongue 
 And teeth one mud-paste made of poppy-milk ; 
 And found his wife flown, his scritoire the 
 
 worse 
 For a rummage, — jewelry that was, was not. 
 Some money there had made itself wings too, — 
 The door lay wide and yet the servants slept 
 Sound as the dead, or dozed, which does as well. 
 In short, Pompilia, she who, candid soul. 
 Had not so much as spoken all her life 
 To the Canon, nay, so much as peeped at hira 
 Between her fingers while she prayed in 
 
 church, — 
 This lamb-like innocent of fifteen years 
 (Such she was grown to by this time of day) 
 Had simply put an opiate in the drink 
 Of the whole household overnight, and then 
 Got up and gone about her work secure. 
 Laid hand on this waif and the other stray- 
 Spoiled the Philistine and marched out of doors 
 In company of the Canon, who, Loi-d's love. 
 What with his daily duty at the church, 
 Nightly devoir where ladies congregate. 
 Had something else to mind, assure yourself, 
 Beside Pompilia, paragon though she be, 
 Or notice if her nose were sharp or blunt ! 
 Well, anyhow, albeit impossible. 
 Both of them were together jollily 
 Jaunting it Rome-ward, half-way there by this, 
 While Guido was left go and get undrug^ed. 
 Gather his wits up, groaningly give thanks 
 When neighbors crowded round him to condole. 
 " Ah," quoth a gossip, " well I mind me now. 
 The Count did always say he thought he felt 
 He feared as if this very chance might fall ! 
 And when a man of fifty finds his corns 
 Ache and his joints throb, and foresees a storm, 
 Though neighbors laugh and say the sky is 
 
 clear, 
 Let us henceforth believe him weatherwise ! " 
 Then was the story told, I'll cut you short : 
 Allneighbors knew : no mystery in the world. 
 The lovers left at niditfall — overnight 
 Had Caponsacchi come to carry ofl 
 
 Pompilia, — not alone, a friend of his. 
 
 One Guillichini, the more conversant 
 
 With Guide's housekeeping that he was just 
 
 A cousin of Guide's and might play a prank — 
 
 (Have not you too a cousin that 's a wag ?) 
 
 — Lord and a Canon also, — what would you 
 
 have? 
 Such are the red-clothed milk-swollen poppy- 
 heads 
 That stand and stiffen 'raid the wheat o' the 
 
 Church! — 
 This worthy came to aid, abet his best. 
 And so the house was ransacked, booty bagged, 
 The lady led downstairs and out of doors 
 Guided and guarded till, the city passed, 
 A carriage lay convenient at the gate. 
 Good-by to the friendly Canon ; the loving one 
 Could peradventure do the rest himself. 
 In jumps Pompilia, after her the priest, 
 " Whip, driver ! Money makes the mare to go. 
 And we Ve a bagful. Take the Roman road ! 
 So said the neighbors. This was eight hours 
 
 Guido heard all, swore the befitting oaths, 
 Shook off the relics of his poison-drench. 
 Got horse, was fairly started in pursuit 
 With never a friend to follow, found the track 
 Fast enough, 't was the straight Perugia way, 
 Trod soon upon their very heels, too late 
 By a minute only at Camoseia, reached 
 Chiusi, Foli^o, ever the fugitives 
 Just ahead, jiist out as he galloped in. 
 Getting the good news ever fresh and fresh, 
 Till, lo. at the last stage of all, last post 
 Before Rome, — as we say, in sight of Rome 
 And safety (there 's impunity at Rome 
 For priests you know) at — what 's the little 
 
 place ? — 
 What some call Castelnuovo, some just call 
 The Osteria, because o' the post-house inn, — 
 There, at the journey's all but end, it seems. 
 Triumph deceived them and undid them both, 
 Secure they might foretaste felicity 
 Nor fear surprisal : so, they were sui-prised. 
 There did they halt at early evening, there 
 Did Guido overtake them : 't was daybreak ; 
 He came in time enough, not time too much, 
 Since in the courtyard stood the Canon's self 
 Urging the drowsy stable-grooms to haste 
 Harness the horses, have the journey end, 
 The trifling four - hours' running, so reach 
 
 Rome. 
 And the other runaway, the wife ? Upstairs, 
 Still on the couch where she had spent the 
 
 night, 
 One couch in one room, and one room for both 
 So gained they six hours, so were lost there- 
 
 by. 
 
 Sir, what 's the sequel ? Lover and beloved 
 Fall on their knees? No impudence serves 
 
 here? 
 They beat their breasts and beg for easy death. 
 Confess this, that and the other? — anyhow 
 Confess there wanted not some likelihood 
 To the snoposition so preposterous, 
 That, Pompilia, thy sequestered eyes 
 
436 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 Had nuticed, strayingr o'er the prayer-book's 
 
 edge, 
 More of the Canon than that black his coat, 
 Buckled his shoes were, broad his hat of brim : 
 And that, O Canon, thy religious care 
 Had breathed too soft a benedicite 
 To banish trouble from a lady"s breast 
 So lonely and so lovely, nor so lean ! 
 This you expect ? Indeed, then, much you err. 
 Not to such ordinary end as this 
 Had Caponsacchi flung the cassock far. 
 Doffed the priest, donned the perfect cavalier. 
 The die was cast : over shoes over boots : 
 And just as she, I presently shall show, 
 Pompilia, soon looked Helen to the life, 
 Kecumbent upstairs in her pink and white. 
 So, in the inn-yard, bold as 'twere Troy-town, 
 There strutted Paris in correct costume. 
 Cloak, cap and feather, no appointment 
 
 missed. 
 Even to a wicked-looking sword at side, 
 He seemed to find and feel familiar at. 
 Nor wanted words as ready and as hie 
 As the part he played, the bold abashless one. 
 " I interposed to save your wife from death, 
 Yourself from shame, the true and only shame : 
 Ask your own conscience else ! — or, failing 
 
 that. 
 What I have done I answer, anywhere. 
 Here, if you will ; you see I have a sword : 
 Or, since I have a tonsure as you taunt, 
 At Rome, by all means, — priests to try a, 
 
 priest. 
 Only, speak where your wife's voice can reply ! ' ' 
 And then he fingered at the sword again. 
 So, Guido called, in aid and witness both. 
 The Public Force. The Commissary came, 
 Officers also ; they secured the priest ; 
 Then, for his more confusion, mounted up 
 With him, a guard on either side, the stair 
 To the bedroom where stUl slept or feigned a 
 
 sleep 
 His paramour and Guide's wife ; in burst 
 The company and bade her wake and rise. 
 
 Her defence? This. She woke, saw, sprang 
 
 upright 
 I' the midst and stood as terrible as truth. 
 Sprang to her husband's side, caught at the 
 
 sword 
 That hung there useless, — since they held each 
 
 hand 
 0' the lover, had disarmed him properly, — 
 And in a moment out flew the bright thing 
 Full in the face of Guido : but for help 
 0' the guards, who held her back and pinioned 
 
 her 
 With pains enough, she had finished you my 
 
 tale 
 With a flourish of red all round it, pinked her 
 
 man 
 Prettily ; but she fought them one to six. 
 They stopped that, — but her tongue continued 
 
 free : 
 She spat forth such invective at her spouse, 
 O'erfrothed him with such foam of murderer, 
 Thief, pandar — that the popular tide soon 
 
 turned. 
 
 The favor of the very sbirri, straight 
 Ebbed from the husband, set towards his wife j 
 People ci-ied " Hands off, pay a priest re- 
 spect ! " 
 And "persecuting fiend" and "martyred 
 
 saint" 
 Began to lead a measure from lip to lip. 
 
 But facts are facts and flinch not ; stubborn 
 
 things, 
 And the question "Prithee, friend, how come* 
 
 my pui-se 
 I' the poke of you ? " — admits of no reply. 
 Here was a priest found out in masquerade, 
 A wife caught playing truant if no more ; 
 While the Count, mortified in mien enough, 
 And, nose to face, an added palm in length. 
 Was plain writ " husband " every piece of him! 
 Capture once made, release could hardly be. 
 Beside, the prisoners both made appeal, 
 " Take us to Rome ! " 
 
 Taken to Rome they were ; 
 The husband trooping after, piteously. 
 Tail between legs, no talk of triumph now — 
 No honor set firm on its feet once more 
 On two dead bodies of the guilty, — nay. 
 No dubious salve to honor's broken pate 
 From chance that, after all, the hurt might 
 
 seem 
 A skin-deep matter, scratch that leaves no 
 
 .scar : 
 For Guido's first search, — ferreting, poor soul. 
 Here, there and everywhere in the vile place 
 Abandoned to him when their backs were 
 
 turned. 
 Found — furnishing a last and best regale — 
 All the love-letters bandied 'twixt the pair 
 Since the first timid trembling into life 
 0' the love-star till its stand at fiery full. 
 Mad prose, mad veree, fears, hopes, triumpli, 
 
 despair. 
 Avowal, disclaimer, plans, dates, names, — was 
 
 naught 
 Wanting to prove, if proof consoles at all. 
 That this had been but the fifth act o' the piece 
 Whereof the due proemium, months ago. 
 These playwrights had put forth, and ever 
 
 since 
 Matured the middle, added 'neath his nose. 
 He might go cross himself: the case was 
 
 clear. 
 
 Therefore to Rome with the clear case ; there 
 
 plead 
 Each party its best, and leave law do each 
 
 right, 
 Let law shine forth and show, as God in heaven, 
 Vice prostrate, virtue pedestalled at last. 
 The triumph of truth ! What else shall glad 
 
 our gaze 
 When once authority has knit the brow 
 And set the brain behind it to decide 
 Between the wolf and sheep turned litigants ? 
 " This is indeed a business," law shook head: 
 " A husband charges hard things on a wife. 
 The wife as hard o' the husband : whose fault 
 
 here ? 
 
HALF-ROME 
 
 437 
 
 A wife tliat flies her husband's house, does 
 
 wrong : , 
 The male friend's interference looks amiss, 
 Lends a suspicion : but suppose the wife, 
 On the other hand, be jeopardized at home — 
 Nay, that she simply hold, Ul-groundedly, 
 An apprehension she is jeopardized, — 
 And further, if the friend partake the fear, 
 And, in a commendable charity 
 Which trusteth all, trust her that she mis- 
 trusts, — 
 What do they but obey law — natural law ? 
 Pretence may this be and a cloak for sin. 
 And circumstances that concur i' the close 
 Hint as much,, loudly — yet scarce loud enough 
 To drown the answer * strange may yet , be 
 
 true ' : 
 Innocence often looks like guiltiness. 
 The accused declare that in thought, word and 
 
 deed, 
 Innocent were they both from first to last 
 As male-babe Jiaply laid by female-babe 
 At church on ^dge of the baptismal font 
 Together for a m.inute, perfeet-pure. 
 Difficult to believe, yet possible, 
 As witness Joseph, tibe friend's patron-aaint. 
 The night at the inn — there charity nigh 
 
 chokes 
 Ere swallow what they both asseverate ; 
 Though down the gullet faith may feel it go. 
 When mindful of what flight fatigued the 
 
 flesh 
 Out of its facility and fleshliness, 
 Subdued it to the soul, as saints assure i 
 So long a flight necessitates a fall 
 On the first bed, though in a lion's den, 
 And the first pillow, though the lion's back : 
 Difficult to believe, yet possible. 
 Last come the letters' bundled beastliness — 
 Authority repugns give glance to t- nay, 
 Turns head, and almost lets her whip-lash fall ; 
 Yet here a voice cries ' Respite ! ' from the 
 
 clouds — 
 The accused, both in a tale, protest, disclaim, 
 Abominate the horror : ' Not my hand ' 
 Asserts the friend — *■ Nor mine ' chimes in the 
 
 wife, 
 * Seeing I have no hand, nor write at all.' 
 lUiterate — for she goes on to ask. 
 What if the friend did pen now verse now 
 
 prose, 
 Commend it to her notice now and then ? 
 *T was pearls to swine : she read no more than 
 
 wrote, 
 And kept no more than read, for as they fell 
 She ever brushed the burr-like thii^ps away, 
 Or, better, burned them, quenched the fire in 
 
 smoke. 
 As for this fardel, filth and foolishness, 
 She sees it now the first time : burn it too ! 
 While for his part the friend vows ignorance 
 Alike of what bears his name and bears hers : 
 'Tis forgery, a felon's masterpiece. 
 And, as 'tis said the fox still finds the stench. 
 Home-manufacture and the husband's work. 
 Though he confesses, the ingenuous friend, 
 That certain missives, letters of a sort. 
 Flighty and feeble, which assigned themselves 
 
 To the wife, no le^ have f aUen, far too oft. 
 
 In his path: wherefrom he underatood just 
 
 this — 
 That were they verily the lady's own. 
 Why, she who penned them, since he never saw 
 Save for one minute the mere face of her. 
 Since never had there been the interchange 
 Of word with word between them all their life. 
 Why, she must be the fondest of the frail, 
 And fit, she for the * apage ' he flung, 
 Her letters for the fi^ame they went to feed I 
 But, now he sees her face and hears her speech, 
 Much he repents him if, iu fancy-freak 
 For a moment the minutest measurable. 
 He coupled her with the first flimsy word 
 O' the self-spun fabric some mean spider-soul 
 Furnished foHh : stop his films and stamp on 
 
 him! 
 Never was such a tangled knottiness. 
 But thus authority cuts the Gordian through. 
 And mark how her decision suits the need ! 
 Here 's trouhlesomeness, scandal on both sides, 
 Plenty of fault to find, no absolute crime : 
 Let each side own its fault and make amends ! 
 What does a priest in cavalier's attire 
 Consorting publicly with vagrant wives 
 In quarters close as the confessional. 
 Though innocent of harm ? 'T is harm enough: 
 Let him pay it, — say, be relegate a good 
 Three years, to spend in some place not too far 
 Nor yet too near, midway 'twixt near and far, 
 Rome and Arezzo, — Civita we choose, 
 Where he may lounge away time, live at large. 
 Find out the proper function of a priest. 
 Nowise an exile, — that were punishment, — 
 But one our love thus keeps out of harm's way 
 Not more from the husband's anger than, may- 
 hap, 
 His own . . . say, indiscretion, waywardness, 
 And wanderings when Easter eves grow warm. 
 For the wife, — well, our best step to take with 
 
 her. 
 On her own showing, were to shift her root 
 From the old cold shade and unliappy soil 
 Into a generous ground that fronts the south : 
 Where, since her callow soul, a-shiver late. 
 Craved simply warmth and called mere pass- 
 ers-by 
 To the rescue, she should have her fill of shine. 
 Do house and husband hinder and not help ? 
 Why then, forget both and stay here at peace. 
 Come into our community, enroll 
 Herself along with those good Convertites, 
 Those sinners saved, those Magdalens re-made. 
 Accept their nunistration, well bestow 
 Her body and patiently possess her soul. 
 Until we see what better can be done. 
 Last for the husband : if his tale prove true. 
 Well is he rid of two domestic plagues — 
 Both wife that ailed, do whatsoever he would, 
 And friend of hers that undertook the cure. 
 See. what a double load we lift from breast ! 
 Off he may go, return, resume old life, 
 Laugh at the priest here and Pompilia there 
 In limbo each and punished for their pains, 
 And grateful teU the inquiring neighborhood — 
 In Rome, no wrong but has its remedy." 
 The case was closed. Now, am I fair or no 
 
438 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 In what I utter ? Do I state the facts. 
 Having forechosen a side ? I promised you ! 
 
 The Canon Caponsacchi, then, was sent 
 
 To change his garb, re-trim his tonsure, tie 
 
 The clerkly silk round, every plait correct, 
 
 Make the impressive entry on his place 
 
 Of relegation, thrill his Civita, 
 
 As Ovid, a like sufferer in the cause, 
 
 Planted a primrose-patch by Pontus : where, — 
 
 What with much culture of the sonnet-stave 
 
 And converse with the aborigines, 
 
 Soft savagery of eyes unused to roll, 
 
 And hearts that all awry went pit-a-pat 
 
 And wanted setting right in charity, — 
 
 What were a couple of yeai-s to while away ? 
 
 Pompilia, as enioined, betook herself 
 
 To the aforesaid Convertites, soft sisterhood 
 
 In Via Lungara, where the light ones live, 
 
 Spin, pray, then sing like linnets o'er the flax. 
 
 " Anywhere, anyhow, out of my husband's 
 
 house 
 Is heaven," cried she, — was therefore suited so. 
 But for Count Guido Franoesohini, he — 
 The injured man thus righted — found no hear 
 
 ven 
 I' the house when he returned there, 1 engage. 
 Was welcomed by the city turned upside down 
 In a chorus of inquiry. '' What, back — you ? 
 And no wife ? Left her with the Penitents ? 
 Ah, being young and pretty, 't were a shame 
 To have her whipped in public : leave the job 
 To the priests who understand ! Such priests 
 
 as yours — 
 (Pontifex Maximus whipped Vestals once) 
 Our madcap Caponsacohi : think of him : 
 So, he fired up, showed fight and skUl of fence ? 
 Ay, you drew also, but you did not fight ! 
 The wiser, 't is a word and a blow with him, 
 True Caponsaochi, of old Head-i'-the-Sack 
 That fought at Fiesole ere Florence was : 
 He had done enough, to firk you were too much. 
 And did the little lady menace you. 
 Make at your breast with your own harmless 
 
 sword ? 
 The spitfire ! Well, thank God you 're safe and 
 
 sound. 
 Have kept the sixth commandment whether or 
 
 no 
 The lady broke the seventh : I only wish 
 I were as saint-like, could contain me so. 
 I, the poor sinner, fear I should have left 
 Sir Priest no nose-tip to turn up at me ! " 
 Yon, Sir, who listen but interpose no word. 
 Ask yourself, had you borne a baiting thus ? 
 Was it enough to make a wise man naad ? 
 Oh, but I '11 have your verdict at the end ! 
 
 Well, not enough, it seems : such mere hurt 
 
 fallsj 
 Frets awhile, aches long, then grows less and 
 
 less, 
 And so gets done with. Such was not the 
 
 scheme 
 0' the pleasant Comparini ; on Guide's wound 
 Ever in due succession, drop by drop, 
 Came slow distilment from the alembic here 
 Set on to simmer by Canidian hate. 
 
 Corrosives keeping the man's misery raw. 
 First fire-drop, — when he thought to make the 
 
 best 
 0' the bad, to wring from out the sentence 
 
 Poor, pitiful, absurd although it were, 
 Yet what might eke him out result enough 
 And make it worth while to have had the right 
 And not the wrong i' the matter judged at 
 
 Rome. 
 Inadequate her punishment, no less 
 Punished in some slight sort his wife had been ; 
 Then, punished for adultery, what else ? 
 On such admitted crime he thought to seize, 
 And institute procedure in the courts 
 Which cut corruption of this kind from man. 
 Cast loose a wife proved loose and castaway : 
 He claimed in due foma a divorce at least. 
 
 This claim was met now by a counterclaim : 
 Pompilia sought divorce from bed and board 
 Of Guido, whose outrageous cruelty. 
 Whose mother's malice and whose brother's hate 
 Were just the white o' the charge, such dread- 
 ful depths 
 Blackened its centre, — hints of worse than 
 
 hate. 
 Love from that brother, by that Guide's guile, 
 That mother's prompting. Such reply was 
 
 made. 
 So was the engine loaded, wound up, sprung 
 On Guido, who received bolt full in breast ; 
 But no less bore up, giddily perhaps. 
 He had the Abate Paolo still in Rome, 
 Brother and friend and fighter on his side : 
 They rallied in a measure, met the foe 
 Maidike, joined battle in the public courts. 
 As if to shame supine law from her sloth : 
 And waiting her award, let beat the while 
 Arezzo's banter, Rome's buffoonery. 
 On this ear and on that ear, deaf alike. 
 Safe from worse outrage. Let a scorpion nip. 
 And never mind till he contorts his tail ! 
 But there was sting i' the creature ; thus it 
 
 struck. 
 Guido had thought in his simplicity — 
 That lying declaration of remorse. 
 That story of the child which was no child 
 And motherhood no motherhood at all, 
 — That even this sin might have its sort of good 
 Inasmuch as no question more could be, — 
 Call it false, call the story true, — no claim 
 Of further parentage pretended now : 
 The parents had abjured all right, at least, 
 I' the woman owned his wife; to plead right 
 
 still 
 Were to declare the abjuration false : 
 He was relieved from any fear henceforth 
 Their hands might touch, their breath defile 
 
 again 
 Pompilia with his name upon her yet. 
 Well, no : the next news was, Pompilia's health 
 Demanded change after full three long weeks 
 Spent in devotion with the Sisterhood, — 
 Which rendered sojourn — so the court opined — 
 Too irksome, since the convent's walls were high 
 And windows narrow, nor was air enough 
 Nor light enough, but all looked prison-like. 
 
HALF-ROME 
 
 439 
 
 The last thing which had come in the court's 
 
 head. 
 Propose a new expedient therefore, — this ! 
 She had demanded — had obtained indeed, 
 By intervention of her pitying- friends 
 Or perhaps lovers — (beauty in distress. 
 Beauty whose tale is the town-talk beside, 
 Never lacks friendship's arm about her 
 
 _ neck) — 
 Obtained remission of the penalty, 
 Permitted transfer to some private place 
 Where better air, m,ore light, new food might 
 * soothe — 
 
 Incarcerated (call it, all the same) 
 At some sure friend's house she m.ust keep in- 
 side, 
 Be found in at requirement fast enoi^h, — 
 Domus pro carcere, in Roman style. 
 You keep the house i' the ma.in, as most men 
 
 do, 
 And all good women : but free otherwise, 
 Should friends arrive, to lodge them and what 
 
 not? 
 And such a domum^ such a dwelling-place, 
 Having all Rome to choose from, where chose 
 
 she ? 
 What house obtained Pompilia's preference ? 
 Why, just the Comparini's — just, do you mark, 
 Theirs who renounced all part and lot in her 
 So long as Guido could be robbed thereby, 
 And only fell back on relationship 
 And fomid their daughter safe and sound again 
 When that might surelier stab him : yes, the 
 
 pair 
 Who, as I told you, first had baited hook 
 With this poor gilded fly Poraipilia-thing, 
 Then caught the fish, pulled Guido to the 
 
 shore 
 And gutted him, — now found a further use 
 For the bait, would trail the gauze wings yet 
 
 again 
 1' the way of what new swimmer passed their 
 
 stand. 
 They took Pompilia to their hiding-place — 
 Not in the heart of Rome as formerly, 
 Under observance, subject to control — 
 But out o' the way, — or in the way, who 
 
 knows ? 
 That blind mute villa lurking by the gate 
 At Via Paulina, not so hard to miss 
 By the honest eye, easy enough to find 
 In twilight by marauders : where perchance 
 Some muffled Caponsacchi might repair, 
 Employ odd moments when he too tried change. 
 Found that a friend's abode was pleasanter 
 Than relegation, penance and the rest. 
 
 Come, here's the last drop does its worst to 
 wound. 
 
 Here 's Guido poisoned to the bone, you say. 
 
 Your boasted still's full strain and strength : 
 not so I 
 
 One master-squeeze from screw shall bring to 
 birth 
 
 The hoard i' the heart o' the toad, hell's quint- 
 essence. 
 
 He learned the true convenience of the change, 
 
 And why a convent lacks the cheerful hearts 
 
 And helpful hands which female straits re- 
 quire, 
 When, in the blind mute viUa by the gate, 
 Pompilia — what ? sang, danced, saw com- 
 pany ? 
 — Gave birth, Sir, to a child, his son and heir. 
 Or Guido's heir and Caponsacchi's son. 
 I want your word now : what do you say to 
 
 this ? 
 What would say little Arezzo and ^eat Rome, 
 And what did God say and the devil say. 
 One at each ear o' the man, the husband, now 
 The father ? Why, the overburdened mind 
 Broke down, what was a brain became a blaze. 
 In fury of the moment — (that first news 
 Fell on the Count among his vines, it seems, 
 Doing his farm-work,) — why, he summoned 
 
 steward. 
 Called in the first four hard hands and stout 
 
 hearts 
 From field and furrow, poured forth his appeal, 
 Not to Rome's law and gospel any m.ore. 
 But this clown with a mother or a wife, 
 That clodpole with a sister or a son : 
 And, whereas law and gospel held their peace. 
 What wonder if the sticks and stones cried out ? 
 
 All five soon somehow found themselves at 
 
 Rome, 
 At the villa door : there was the warmth and 
 
 Hght- 
 
 The sense of life so just an inch inside — 
 Some angel must have whispered " One more 
 
 chance ! " 
 
 He gave it : hade the others stand aside : 
 Knocked at the door, — *' Who is it knocks ? " 
 
 cried one. 
 " I will make," surely Guido's ai^el urged, 
 " One final essay, last experiment. 
 Speak the word, name the name from out all 
 
 names. 
 Which, if, — as doubtless strong iUosions are, 
 And strange disguisings whereby truth seems 
 
 false. 
 And, since I am but man, I dare not do 
 God's work until assured I see with God, — 
 If I should bring my lips to breathe that name 
 And they be innocent, — nay, by one mere 
 
 touch 
 Of innocence redeemed from utter guilt, — 
 That name will bar the door and bid fate pass. 
 I will not say * It is a messenger, 
 A neighbor, even a belated man , 
 Much less your husband's friend, your hus- 
 band's self : ' 
 At such appeal the door is bound to ope. 
 But I will say ' ' — here 's rhetoric and to spare ! 
 Why, Sir, the stumbling-block is cui-sed and 
 
 kicked. 
 Block though it be ; the name that brought 
 
 offence 
 Will bring offence : the burnt child dreads the 
 
 fire 
 Although that fire feed on some taper-wick 
 Which never left the altar nor singed a fly : 
 And had a harmless man tripped you by 
 
 chance. 
 
44° 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 How would you wait him, stand or step aside, 
 When next you heard he rolled your way ? 
 Kuough. 
 
 " Giuseppe Caponsacohi ! " Guido cried ; 
 And open flew the door ; enough again. 
 Vengeance, you know, hurst, like a mountain- 
 wave 
 That holds a monster in it, over the house. 
 And wiped its filthy four walls free at last 
 With a wash of heU-fire, — father, mother, 
 
 wife. 
 Killed them all, hathed his name clean in their 
 
 blood, 
 And, reeking so, was caught, his friends and he. 
 Haled hither and imprisoned yesternight 
 O' the day all this was. 
 
 Now, Sir, tale is told. 
 Of how the old couple come to lie in state 
 Though hacked to pieces, — never, the expert 
 
 say. 
 So thorough a study of stabbing — while the 
 
 wife 
 (Viper-like, very difficult to slay) 
 Writhes still through every ring of her, poor 
 
 wretch. 
 At the Hospital hard by — survives, we 'U 
 
 hope. 
 To somewhat purify her putrid soul 
 By full confession, make so much amends 
 While time lasts ; since at day's end die she 
 
 must. 
 
 For Caponsacchi, — why, they '11 have him 
 
 here. 
 As hero of the adventure, who so fit 
 To figure in the coming Carnival ? 
 'T will make the fortune of whate'er saloon 
 Hears him recount, with helpful cheek, and eye 
 Hotly indignant now, now dewy-dimmed. 
 The incidents of flight, pursuit, surprise, 
 Capture, with hints of kisses all between — 
 While Guido, wholly unromantic spouse. 
 No longer fit to laugh at since the blood 
 Gave the broad farce an all too brutal air, 
 Why, he and those four luckless friends of his 
 May tumble in the straw this bitter day — 
 Laid by the heels i' the New Prison, I hear, 
 To hide their trial, since trial, and for the life. 
 Follows if but for form's sake : yes, indeed ! 
 
 But with a certain issue : no dispute, 
 " Try him," bids law : formalities oblige : 
 But as to the issue, — look raie in the face ! — 
 If the law thinks to find them guilty. Sir, 
 Master or men — touch one hair of the five. 
 Then I say in the name of all that 's left 
 Of honor in Rome, civility i' the world 
 Whereof Home boasts herself the central 
 
 source, — 
 There 's an end to all hope of justice more. 
 Astrsea 's gone indeed, let hope go too ! 
 Who is it dares impugn the natural law. 
 Deny God's word the faithless wife shall 
 
 die"? 
 What, are we blind? How can we fail to 
 
 learn 
 This crowd of miseries make the man a mark, 
 
 Accumulate on one devoted head 
 For our example ? — yours and mine who read 
 Its lesson thus — " Henceforward let none dare 
 Stand, like a natural in the public way. 
 Letting the very urchins twitch his beard 
 And tweak his nose, to earn a nickname so, 
 Be styled male-Grrissel or else modem Job ! " 
 Had Guido, in the twinkling of an eye, 
 Summed up the reckoning, promptly paid him- 
 self, 
 That morning when he came up with the pair 
 At the wayside inn, — exacted nis just debt 
 By aid of what first mattock, pitchfork, axe 
 Came to hand in the helpful stable-yard. 
 And with that axe, if providence so pleased, 
 Cloven each head, by some Rolando-stroke, 
 In one clean cut from crown to clavicle, 
 — Slain the priest-gaUant, the wife-paramour, 
 Sticking, for all defence, in each skull's cleft 
 The rhyme and reason of the stroke thus dealt, 
 To wit, those letters and last evidence 
 Of shame, ea«h package in its proper place, — 
 Bidding, who pitied, undistend the skulls, — 
 I say, the world had praised the man. But no ! 
 That were too plain, too straight, too simply 
 
 just ! 
 He hesitates, calls law forsooth to help. 
 And law, distasteful to who calls in law 
 When honor is beforehand and would serve. 
 What wonder if law hesitate in turn. 
 Plead her disuse to calls o' the kind, reply 
 (Smiling a little), *' 'T is yourself assess 
 The worth of what 's lost, sum of damage done. 
 What you touched with so light a finger-tip. 
 You whose concern it was to grasp the thing. 
 Why must law gird herself and grapple with ? 
 Law, alien to the actor whose warm blood 
 Asks heat from law whose veins run lukewarm 
 
 milk, — 
 What you dealt lightly with, shall law make out 
 Heinous forsooth ? " 
 
 Sir, what 's the good of law 
 In a case o' the kind ? None, as she all but says. 
 Call in law when a neighbor breaks your fence, 
 Cribs from your field, tampers with rent or 
 
 lease. 
 Touches the purse or pocket, — but wooes your 
 
 wife? ^ *■ • 
 
 No : take the old way trod when men were 
 
 men ! 
 Guido preferred the new path, — for his pains, 
 Stuck m a quagmire, floundered worse and 
 
 worse 
 Until he managed somehow scramble back 
 Into the safe sure rutted road once more, 
 Revenged his own wrong like a gentleman. 
 Once back 'mid the familiar prints, no doubt 
 He made too rash amends for his first fault. 
 Vaulted too loftily over what barred him late, 
 And lit i' the mire again, — the common 
 
 chance. 
 The natural over-energy : the deed 
 Maladroit yields three deatlw instead of one. 
 And one life left: for where 's the Canon's 
 
 corpse ? 
 All which is the worse for Guido, but, be 
 
 frank — 
 The better for you and me and all the world. 
 
THE OTHER HALF-ROME 
 
 441 
 
 Husbands of wives, especially in Rome. 
 The thing: is put rig;ht, iu the old place, — ay. 
 The rod hangs on its nail behind the door, 
 Fresh from the brine ; a matter I commend 
 To the notice, during Carnival that 's near. 
 Of a certain what 's-his-name and jackanapes 
 Somewhat too civil of eves with lute and song 
 About a house here, where I keep a wife. 
 (You, being his cousin, may go tell him so.) 
 
 Ill 
 
 THE OTHER HALF-ROME 
 
 Another day that finds her living yet. 
 
 Little Pompilia, with the patient brow 
 
 And lamentable sniile on those poor lips. 
 
 And, under the white hospital-array, 
 
 A flower-like body, to frighten at a bruise 
 
 You'd think, yet now, stabbed through and 
 
 through again, 
 Alive i' the ruins. 'T is a miracle. 
 It seems that, when her husband struck her 
 
 first. 
 She prayed Madonna just that she might live 
 So long as to confess and be absolved ; 
 And whether it was that, all her sad life long 
 Never before successful in a prayer. 
 This prayer rose with authority too dread, — 
 Or whether, because eartJi was hell to her, 
 By compensation, when the blackness broke 
 She got one glimpse of quiet and the cool blue. 
 To show her for a moment such things were, — 
 Or else, — as the Auguatinian Brother thinks, 
 The friar who took confession from her lip, — 
 When a probationary soul that moved 
 From nobleness to nobleness, as she, 
 Over the rough way of the world, succumbs. 
 Bloodies its last thorn with unflinching foot. 
 The angels love to do their work betimes, 
 Stanch some wounds here nor leave so much 
 
 for God. 
 Who knows ? However it be, confessed, ab- 
 solved. 
 She lies, with overplus of life beside 
 To speak and right herself from first to last. 
 Bight the friend also, lamb-pure, lion-brave. 
 Care for the boy's concerns, to save the son 
 From the sire, her two-weeks' infant orphaned 
 
 thus. 
 And — with best smile of all reserved for him — 
 Pardon that sire and husband from the heart. 
 A miracle, so tell your Molinists ! 
 
 There she lies in the long white lazar-house. 
 Borne has besieged, these two days, never 
 
 doubt. 
 Saint Anna's where she waits her death, to 
 
 hear 
 Though but the chink o' the bell, turn o' the 
 
 hinge 
 When the reluctant wicket opes at last. 
 Lets in, on now this and now that pretence. 
 Too many by half, — complain the men of 
 
 art, — 
 For a patient in such plight. The lawyers first 
 Paid the due visit — justice must be done ; 
 
 They took her witness, why the murder was. 
 Then the priests followed properly, — a soul 
 To shrive ; 't was Brother Celestine's own 
 
 right. 
 The same who noises thus her gifts abroad. 
 But ma.ny more, who found they were old 
 
 friends, 
 Pushed in to have their stare and take their talk 
 And go forth boasting of it and to boast. 
 Old Monna Baldi chatters like a jay. 
 Swears — but that, prematurely trundled out 
 Just as she felt the benefit begin. 
 The miracle was snapped up by somebody, — 
 Her palsied limb 'gan prick and promise life 
 At touch o' the bedclothes merely, — how much 
 
 more 
 Had she but brushed the body as she tried 1 
 Cavalier Carlo — well, there 's some excuse 
 For him — Maratta who paints Virgins so — 
 He too must fee the porter and slip by 
 With pencil cut and paper squared, and straight 
 There was he figuring away at face : 
 " A lovelier face is not in Rome," cried he, 
 "Shaped like a peacock's egg, the pure aa 
 
 pearl. 
 That hatches you anon a snow-white chick." 
 Then, oh that pair of eyes, that pendent hair. 
 Black this and black the other ! Mighty fine — 
 But nobody cared ask to paint the same. 
 Nor grew a poet over hair and eyes 
 Four Httle years a^o, when, ask and have, 
 The woman who wakes all this rapture leaned 
 Flower-like from out her window long enough, 
 As much uncomplimented as uncropped 
 By comers and goers in Via Vittoria : eh ? 
 'Tis just a flower's fate : past parterre we trip. 
 Till peradventure some one plucks our 
 
 sleeve — 
 "Yon blossom at the brier's end, that's the 
 
 rose 
 Two jealous people fought for yesterday 
 And killed each other: see, there's undis- 
 turbed 
 A pretty pool at the root, of rival red ! " 
 Then cry we, " Ah, the perfect paragon ! " 
 Then crave we, "Just one keepsake-leaf foi 
 
 Truth lies between : there 's anyhow a child 
 Of seventeen years, whether a flower or weed, 
 Ruined : who did it shall account to Christ — 
 Having no pity on the harmless life 
 And gentle face and girlish form he found. 
 And thus flings back. Go practise if yon 
 
 please 
 With men and women : leave a child alone 
 For Christ's particular love's sake ! — so I say. 
 
 Somebody at the bedside said much more. 
 
 Took on him to explain the secret cause 
 
 O' the crime : quoth he, " Such crimes are very 
 
 rife, 
 Explode nor make us wonder nowadays. 
 Seeing that Antichrist disseminates 
 That doctrine of the Philosophic Sin : 
 Molinos' sect will soon make earth too hot ! " 
 "Nay," groaned the Augustinian, "what's 
 
 there new ? 
 
442 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 Crime will not fall to flare up from men's 
 
 hearts 
 While hearts are men's and so born criminal ; 
 Which one fact, always old yet ever new, 
 Accounts for so much crime that, for my part, 
 Molinos may go whistle to the wind 
 That waits outside a certain church, you 
 
 know ! " 
 
 Though really it does seem as it she here, 
 Pompilia, living so and dyino^ thus, 
 Has had undue experience how much crime 
 A heart can hatch. Why was she made to 
 
 learn 
 — Nat you, not I, not even Molinos' self — 
 What Guido Franceschini's heart could hold ? 
 Thus saintship is effected probably ; 
 No sparing saints the process ! — which the more 
 Tends to the reconciling us, no saints, 
 To simiership, immunity and all. 
 
 For see now : Pietro and Violante's life 
 Till seventeen years ago, all Rome might note 
 And quote for happy — see the signs distinct 
 Of happiness as we yon Triton's trump. 
 What could they be but happy ? — balanced so. 
 Nor low i' the social scale nor yet too high, 
 Nor poor nor richer than comports with ease. 
 Nor bright and envied, nor obscure and 
 
 scorned, 
 Nor so young that their pleasures fell too thick. 
 Nor old past catching pleasure when it fell, 
 Nothing above, below the just degree, 
 All at the mean where joy's components mix. 
 iSo again, in the couple's very souls 
 You saw the adequate half with half to match. 
 Each having and each lacking somewhat, both 
 Making a whole that had all and lacked 
 
 naught. 
 The round and sound, in whose composure just 
 The acquiescent and recipient side 
 Was Pietro's, and the stirring striving one 
 Violante's : both in union gave the due 
 Quietude, enterprise, craving and content. 
 Which go to bodily health and peace of mind. 
 But as 't is said a body, rightly mixed. 
 Each element in equipoise, would last 
 Too long and live forever, — accordingly 
 Holds a germ — sand-grain weight too much i' 
 
 the scale — 
 Ordained to get predominance one day 
 And so bring all to ruin and release, — 
 Not otherwise a fatal germ lurked here : 
 " With mortals much must go, but something 
 
 _ stays ; 
 Nothing will stay of our so happy selves." 
 Out of the very ripeness of life's core 
 A worm was bred — "Our life shall leave no 
 
 fruit." 
 Enough of bliss, they thought, co'Ud bliss bear 
 
 seed, 
 Yield its like, propagate a bliss in turn 
 And keep the kind up ; not supplant themselves 
 But put in evidence, record they were, 
 Show them, when done with, i' the shape of a 
 
 child. 
 '^ 'T is in a child, man and wife grow complete. 
 One flesh : God says so : let him do his work ! '' 
 
 Now, one reminder of this gnawing want. 
 One special prick o' the maggot at the core. 
 Always befeU when, as the day came round, 
 A certain yearly sum, — our Pietro being. 
 As the long name runs, an usufructuary. — 
 Dropped in the common bag as interest 
 Of money, his till death, not afterward. 
 Failing an heir : an heir would take and take, 
 A child of theirs be wealthy in their place 
 To nobody's hurt — the stranger else seized all. 
 Prosperity rolled river-like and stopped. 
 Making their mill go; but when wheel wore out, 
 The wave would find a space and sweep on free 
 And, half-a-mile off, grind some neighbor's 
 
 Adam-like, Pietro sighed and said no more : 
 Eve saw the apple was fair and good to taste. 
 So, plucked it, having asked the snake advice. 
 She told her husband God was merciful. 
 And his and her prayer granted at the last : 
 Let the old miU-stone moulder, — wheel un- 
 worn. 
 Quartz from the quarry, shot into the stream 
 Adroitly, as before should go bring grist — 
 Their house continued to them by an heir. 
 Their vacant heart replenished with a child. 
 We have her own confession at full length 
 Made in the first remorse : 't was Jubilee 
 Pealed in the ear o' the conscience and it woke. 
 She found she had offended God no doubt. 
 So much was plain from what had happened 
 
 since. 
 Misfortune on misfortune ; but she harmed 
 No one i' the world, so far as she could see. 
 The act had gladdened Pietro to the height, 
 Her spouse whom God himself must gladden so 
 Or not at all : thus much seems probable 
 From the implicit faith, or rather say 
 Stupid credulity of the foolish man 
 Who swallowed such a tale nor strained a whit 
 Even at his wife's far-over-fifty years 
 Matching his sixty -and -under. Rim she 
 
 blessed ; 
 And as for doing any detriment 
 To the veritable heir, — why, tell her first 
 Who was he ? Which of all the hands held up 
 I' the crowd, one day would gather round their 
 
 gate 
 Did she so wrong by intercepting thus 
 The ducat, spendthrift fortune thought to fling 
 For a scramble just to make the mob breaJi 
 
 shins ? 
 She kept it, saved them kicks and cuffs thereby. 
 While at the least one good work had she 
 
 wrought. 
 Good, clearly and incontestably ! Her cheat — 
 What was it to its subject, the child's self, 
 But charity and religion ? See the girl 1 
 A body most like — a soul too probably — 
 Doomed to death, such a double death as waits 
 The illicit offspring of a common truU, 
 Sure to resent and forthwith rid herself 
 Of a mere interruption to sin's trade, 
 In the efficacious way old Tiber knows. 
 Was not so much proved by the ready sale 
 0' the child, glad transfer of this irksome 
 
 chance ? 
 
THE OTHER HALF-ROME 
 
 443 
 
 Well then, she had caught up this castaway : 
 This fragile egg, some careless wild bird 
 
 dropped. 
 She had picked from where it waited the foot- 
 fall, 
 And put in her own breast till forth broke finch 
 Able to sing God praise on mornings now. 
 What so excessive harm was done ? — she 
 asked. 
 
 To which demand the dreadful answer comes — 
 For that same deed, now at Lorenzo's church, 
 Both agents, conscious and ineonscious, lie ; 
 While she, tlie deed was done to benefit, 
 Lies also, the most lamentable of things, 
 Yonder where curious people count her breaths, 
 Calculate how long yet the little life 
 Uuspilt may serve their turn nor spoil the show, 
 Give them their story, then the church its 
 group. 
 
 Well, having gained Pompilia, the girl grew 
 I' the midst of Pietro here, Violante there, 
 Each, like a semicircle with stretched arms, 
 Joining the other round her preciousness — 
 Two walls that go about a garden-plot 
 Where a chance sliver, branchlet slipt from, bole 
 Of some tongue-leaved eye-figured Eden tree, 
 Filched by two exiles and borne far away, 
 Patiently gloiifies their solitude, — 
 Year by year mounting, grade by grade sur- 
 mount 
 The builded brick-work, yet is compassed still, 
 Still hidden happily and shielded safe, — 
 Else why should miracle have graced the 
 
 ground ? 
 But on the twelfth sun that brought April 
 
 there 
 What meant that laugh ? The coping-stone 
 
 was reached : 
 Nay, above towered a light tuft of bloom 
 To be toyed with by butterfly or bee. 
 Done good to or else harm to from outside : 
 Pompilia's root, stalk and a branch or two 
 Home enclosed still, the rest would be the 
 
 world's. 
 All which was taught our couple though ob- 
 tuse. 
 Since walls have ears, when one day brought a 
 
 priest, 
 Smooth-mannered sof t-speeched sleek-cheeked 
 
 visitor, 
 The notable Abate Paolo — known 
 As younger brother of a Tuscan house 
 Whereof the actual representative, 
 Count Guido, had employed his youth and age 
 In culture of Rome's most productive plant — 
 A cardinal : but years pass and change comes. 
 In token of which, here was our Paolo brought 
 To broach a weighty business. Might he speak ? 
 Yes — to Violante somehow caught alone 
 While Pietro took his after-dinner doze, 
 And the young maiden, busily as befits, 
 Minded her broider-frame three chambers off. 
 
 So — giving now his great flap-hat a gloss 
 With flat o' the liand between- whiles, soothing 
 
 The silk from out its creases o'er the calf, 
 
 Setting the stocking clerical again, 
 
 But never disengaging, once engaged, 
 
 The thin clear gray hold of his eyes on her — 
 
 He dissertated on that Tuscan house. 
 
 Those Franceschini, — very old they were — 
 
 Not rich however — oh, not rich, at, least. 
 
 As per>ple look to be who, low i' the scale 
 
 One way, have reason, rising all they can 
 
 By favor of the money-bag ! 't is fair — 
 
 Do all gifts go together ? But don't suppose 
 
 That being not so rich means all so poor I 
 
 Say rather, well enough — i' the way, indeed, 
 
 Ha, ha, to fortune better than the best : 
 
 Since if his brother's patron-friend kept faith, 
 
 Put into promised play the Cardinalate, 
 
 Their house might wear the red cloth that keeps 
 
 warm. 
 Would but the Count have patience — there 's 
 
 the point I 
 For he was slipping into years apace. 
 And years make men restless — they needs 
 
 must spy 
 Some certainty, some sort of end assured. 
 Some sparkle, though from topmost beacon-tip. 
 That warrants life a harbor through the haze. 
 In short, call him fantastic as you choose, 
 Guido was home-sick, yearned for the old sights 
 And usual faces, — fain would settle himself 
 And have the patron's bounty when it fell 
 Irrigate far rather than deluge near. 
 Go fertilize Arezzo, not flood Rome. 
 Sooth to say, 't was the wiser wish : the Count 
 Proved wanting in ambition, — let us avouch. 
 Since truth is best, — in callousness of heart, 
 And winced at pin-pricks whereby honors hang 
 A ribbon o'er each puncture : his — no soul 
 Ecclesiastic (here the hat was brushed). 
 Humble but self-sustaining, calm and cold, 
 Having, as one who puts his hand to the ploug]^ 
 Renounced the over-vivid family-feel — 
 Poor brother Guido ! All too plain, he pined 
 Amid Rome's pomp and glare for dinginess 
 And that dilapidated palace-shell 
 Vast as a quarry and, very like, as bare — 
 Since to this comes old grandeur nowadays — 
 Or that absurd wild villa in the waste 
 0' the hillside, breezy though, for who likes ail. 
 Vittiano, nor unpleasant with its vines. 
 Outside the city and the summer heals. 
 And now his harping on this one tense chord 
 The villa and the palace, palace this 
 And villa the other, all day and all night 
 Creaked like the implacable cicala's cry 
 And made one's ear-drum ache : naught els© 
 
 would serve 
 But that, to light his mother's visage up 
 With second youth, hope, gayety again. 
 He must find straightway, woo and haply win 
 And bear away triumphant back, some wife. 
 Well now, the man was rational in his way: 
 He, the Abate, — ought he to interpose ? 
 Unless by straining still his tutelage 
 (Priesthood leaps over eldei^brothership) 
 Across this difficulty : then let go, 
 Leave the poor fellow in peace ! Would that 
 
 be wrong ? 
 There was no making Guido great, it seems, 
 
444 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 Spite of himself : then happy be his dole ! 
 
 Indeed, the Abate's little interest 
 
 Was somewhat nearly touched i' the case, they 
 
 saw : 
 Since if his simple kinsman so were bent, 
 Began his rounds in Rome to catch a wife, 
 Full soon would such unworldliness surprise 
 The rare bird, sprinkle salt on phoenix' tail. 
 And so secure the nest a sparrow-hawk. 
 No lack of mothers here in Rome, — no dread 
 Of daughters lured as larks by lookinfir-g^lass ! 
 The first name-pecking credit-scratching fowl 
 Would drop her unfledged cuckoo in our nest 
 To gather grayness there, give voice at length 
 And shame the brood . . . but it was long ago 
 When crusades "were, and we sent eagles forth ! 
 No, that at least the Abate could forestall. 
 He read the thought within his brother's word, 
 Knew what he purposed better than himself. 
 We want no name and fame — having our own ; 
 No worldly aggrandizement — such we fly : 
 But if some wonder of a woman's-heart 
 Were yet untainted on this grimy earth. 
 Tender and true — tradition tells of such — 
 Prepared to pant in time and tune with ours — 
 If some good girl (a girl, since she must take 
 The new bent, live new life, adopt new modes) 
 Not wealthy {Guido for his rank was poor) 
 But with whatever dowry came to hand, — 
 There were the lady-love predestinate ! 
 And somehow the Abate's guardian eye — 
 Scintillant, rutilant, fraternal fii*e, — 
 Roving round every way had seized the prize 
 — The instinct of us, we, the spiritualty 1 
 Come, cards on table ; was it true or false 
 That here — here in this very tenement — 
 Yea, Via Vittoria did a marvel hide, 
 Lily of a maiden, white with intact leaf 
 Guessed through the sheath that saved it from 
 
 the sun ? 
 A daughter with the mother's hands still clasped 
 Over her head for fillet virginal, 
 A wife worth Guide's house and hand and 
 
 heart ? 
 He came to see ; had spoken, he could no less — 
 (A final cherish of the stockinged calf) 
 If harm were, — well, the matter was off his 
 
 mind. 
 
 Then with the gi'eat air did he kiss, devout, 
 Violante's hand, and rise up his whole height 
 (A certain purple gleam about the black) 
 And go forth grandly, — as if the Pope came 
 
 next. 
 And so Violante rubbed her eyes awhile. 
 Got up too, walked to wake her Pietro soon 
 And pour into his ear the mighty news 
 How somebody had somehow somewhere seen 
 Their treetop-tuft of bloom above the wall. 
 And came now to apprise them the tree's self 
 Was no such crab-sort as should go feed swine, 
 But veritable gold, the Hesperian ball 
 Ordained for Hercules to haste and pluck. 
 And bear and give the Gods to banquet with — 
 Hercules standing ready at the door. 
 Whereon did Pietro rub his eyes in turn, 
 Look very wise, a little woeful too. 
 Then, periwig on head, and cane in hard. 
 
 Sally forth dignifiedly into the Square 
 Of Spain across Babbuino the six steps, 
 Toward the Boat-fountain where our idlers 
 
 lounge, — 
 Ask, for form's sake, who Hercules might be, 
 And have congratulation from the world. 
 
 Heartily laughed the world in his fool's-face 
 
 And told him Hercules was just the heir 
 
 To the stubble once a cornfield, and brick-heap 
 
 Where used to be a dwelling-place now bumed. 
 
 Guido and Franoeschini ; a Count, — ay : 
 
 But a cross i' the poke to bless the Countship ? 
 
 No! 
 All gone except sloth, pride, rapacity. 
 Humors of the imposthume incident 
 To rich blood that runs thin, — nursed to a 
 
 head 
 By the rankly-salted soil — a cardinal's court 
 Where, parasite and picker-up of crumbs. 
 He had hmig on long, and now, let go, said 
 
 some. 
 Shaken off, said others, — but in any ease 
 Tired of the trade and something worse for 
 
 wear, 
 Was wanting to change town for country quick. 
 Go home again : let Pietro help him home ! 
 The brother. Abate Paolo, shrewder mouse. 
 Had pricked for comfortable quarters, inched 
 Into the core of Rome, and fattened so ; 
 But Guido, over-burly for rat's hole 
 Suited to clerical slimness, starved outside, 
 Must shift for himself: and so the shift was 
 
 this! 
 What, was the snug retreat of Pietro tracked, 
 The little provision for his old age snuffed ? 
 "Oh, make your girl a lady, an you list, 
 But have more mercy on our wit than vaunt 
 Your bargain as we burgesses who brag ! 
 Why, Goodman Dullard, if a friend must speak, 
 Would the Count, think yon, stoop to you and 
 
 yours 
 Were there the value of one penny-piece 
 To rattle 'twixt his palms — or likelier laugh. 
 Bid your PompUia help you black his shoe ? " 
 
 Home again, shaking oft the puzzled pate. 
 Went Pietro to announce a change indeed. 
 Yet point Violante where some solace lay 
 Of a rueful sort, — the taper, quenched so soon, 
 Had ended merely in a snnff, not stink — 
 Congratulate there was one hope the less. 
 Not misery the more : and so an end. 
 
 The marriage thus impossible, the rest 
 Followed : our spokesman, Paolo, heard his 
 
 fate. 
 Resignedly Count Guido bore the blow : 
 Violante wiped away the transient tear. 
 Renounced the playing Danae to gold dreams, 
 Praised much her Pietro's prompt sagaeious- 
 
 ness. 
 Found neighbors' envy natural, lightly laughed 
 At gossips' malice, fairly wrapped herself 
 In her integrity three folds about. 
 And, letting pass a little day or two, 
 Threw, even over that integrity. 
 Another wrappage, namely one thick veil 
 
THE OTHER HALF-ROME 
 
 That hid her, matron-wise, from head to foot, 
 
 And, by the hand holding a girl veiled too, 
 
 Stood, one dim end of a Uecjraber day, 
 
 In iSaint liorenzo on the altar-step — 
 
 Just where she lies now and that girl will lie — 
 
 Only with fifty candles' company 
 
 Now, in the place of the poor winking one 
 
 Which saw — doors shut and sacristan made 
 
 sure — 
 A priest — perhaps Abate Paolo — wed 
 Guido clandestinely, irrevocably 
 To his Pompilia'aged thirteen years 
 And five months, — witness the church regis- 
 ter, — 
 Pompilia, (thus become Count Guide's wife 
 Clandestinely, irrevocably his,) 
 Who all the while had borne, from first to last. 
 As brisk a part i' the bargain, as yon lamb. 
 Brought forth from basket and set out for 
 
 sale. 
 Bears while they chaffer, wary market-man 
 And voluble housewife, o'er it, — each in turn 
 Patting the curly calm inconscious head. 
 With the shambles ready round the corner 
 
 there. 
 When the talk 's talked out and a bargain 
 struck. 
 
 Transfer complete, why, Pietro was apprised. 
 Violante sobbed the sobs and prayed the 
 
 prayers, 
 And said the serpent tempted so she fell. 
 Till Pietro had to clear his brow apace 
 And make the best of matters : wrath at first, — 
 How else ? pacification presently. 
 Why not ? — could flesh withstand the impur- 
 
 pled one, 
 The very Cardinal, Paolo's patron-friend ? 
 Who, justifiably sumamed a hinge," 
 Knew where the mollifying oil should drop 
 To cure the creak o' the valve, — considerate 
 For frailty, patient in a naughty world. 
 He even volunteered to supervise 
 The rough draught of those marriage-articles 
 Signed in a hurry by Pietro, since revoked : 
 Trust 's politic, suspicion does the harm, 
 There is but one way to browbeat this world. 
 Dumb - founder doubt, and repay scorn in 
 
 kind, — 
 To go on trusting, namely, till faith move 
 Mountains. 
 
 And faith here made the mountains move. 
 Why, friends whose zeal cried "Caution ere 
 
 too late ! " — 
 Bade " Pause ere jump, with both feet joined, 
 
 on slough ! " — 
 Counselled If rashness then, now temper- 
 ance ! " — 
 Heard for their pains that Pietro had closed 
 
 eyes, 
 Jumped and was in the middle of the mire, 
 Money and all, just what should sink a man. 
 By the mere marriage, Guido gained forthwith 
 Dowry, his wife's right ; no rescinding there : 
 But Pietro, why must he needs ratify 
 One gift Violante gave, pay down one doit 
 Promised in first f ool's-fiurry ? Grasp the bag 
 
 44S 
 
 Lest the son's service flag, — is reason and 
 
 rhyme, 
 Above all when the son's a son-in-law. 
 Words to the wind ! The parents cast their 
 
 lot 
 Into the lap o' the daughter : and the son 
 Now with a right to lie there, took what fell, 
 Pietro's whole having and holding, house and 
 
 field, 
 Goods, chattels and effects, his worldly worth 
 Present and in perspective, all renounced 
 In favor of Guido. As for the usufruct — 
 The interest now, the principal anon. 
 Would Guido please to wait, at Pietro's death : 
 Till when, he miist suppoi-t the couple's charge. 
 Bear with them, housemates, pensionaries, 
 
 pawned 
 To an alien for fulfilment of their pact. 
 Guido should at discretion deal them orts, 
 Bread-bounty in Arezzo the strange place, — 
 They who had lived deliciously and rolled 
 Rome's choicest comfit 'neath the tongue before. 
 Into this quag, " jump " bade the Cardinal ! 
 And neck-deep in a minute there flounced they. 
 
 But they touched bottom at Arezzo : there — 
 Four months' experience of how craft and 
 
 greed. 
 Quickened by penury and pretentious hate 
 Of plain truth, brutify and bestialize, — 
 Four months' taste of apportioned insolence, 
 Cruelty graduated, dose by dose 
 Of ruffianism dealt out at bed and board. 
 And lo, the work was done, success clapped 
 
 hands. 
 The starved, stripped, beaten brace of stupid 
 
 dupes 
 Broke at last in their desperation loose, 
 Fled away for their lives, and lucky so ; 
 Found their account in casting coat afar 
 And bearing off a shred of skin at least ; 
 Left Guido lord o' the prey, as the lion is. 
 And, careless what came after, carried their 
 
 wrongs 
 To Rome, — I nothing doubt, with such remorse 
 As folly feels, since pain can make it wise. 
 But crime, past wisdom, which is innocence, 
 Needs not be plagued with till a later day. 
 
 Pietro went back to beg from door to door. 
 In hope that memory not quite extinct 
 Of cheery days and festive nights would move 
 Friends and acquaintance — after the natural 
 
 laugh. 
 And tributary " Just as we foretold — " 
 To show some bowels, give the dregs o' the cup, 
 Scraps of the trencher, to their host that was. 
 Or let him share the mat with the mastiff, he 
 Who lived large and kept open house so long. 
 Not so Violante : ever ahead i' the march, 
 Quick at the by-road and the cut-across. 
 She went first to the best adviser, God — 
 Whose finger unmistakably was felt 
 In all this retribution of the past. 
 Here was the prize of sin, luck of a lie ! 
 But here too was what Holy Year would help. 
 Bound to rid sinners of sin vulgar, sin 
 Abnormal, sin prodigious, up to sin 
 
446 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 Impossible and supposed for Jubilee' sake : 
 To lift the leadenest of lies, let soar 
 The soul unhampered by a feather-weight. 
 *' I will," said she, "go bum out this bad hole 
 That breeds the scorpion, balk the plague at 
 
 least 
 Of hope to further plague by progeny : 
 I will confess my fault, be punished, yes. 
 But pardoned too : Saint Peter pays for all." 
 
 So, with the crowd she mixed, made for the 
 
 dome. 
 Through the great door new-broken for the 
 
 nonce 
 Marched, muffled more than ever matron-wise. 
 Up the left nave to the formidable throne. 
 Fell into file "with this the poisoner 
 And that the parricide, and reached in turn 
 The poor repugnant Penitentiary 
 Set at this gully-hole o' the world's discharge 
 To help the frightf uUest of filth have vent, 
 And then knelt down and whispered in his ear 
 How she had bought Pompilia, palmed the 
 
 babe 
 On Pietro, passed the girl off as their child 
 To Guido, and defrauded of his due 
 This one and that one, — more than she could 
 
 name. 
 Until her solid piece of wickedness 
 Happened to split and spread woe far and wide : 
 Contritely now she brought the ease for cure. 
 
 Replied the throne — " Ere God forgive the 
 
 gnat. 
 Make man some restitution ! Do your part ! 
 The owners of your husband's heritage. 
 Barred thence by this pretended birth and 
 
 heir, — 
 Tell them, the bar came so, is broken so. 
 Theirs be the due reversion as before ! 
 Your husband who, no partner in the guilt. 
 Suffers the penalty, led blindfold thus 
 By love of what he thought his flesh and blood 
 To alienate his all in her behalf, — 
 Tell him too such contract is null and void ! 
 Last, he who personates your son-in-law. 
 Who with sealed eyes and stopped ears, tame 
 
 and mute. 
 Took at your hand that bastard of a whore 
 You called your daughter and he calls his 
 
 wife, — 
 Tell him, and bear the anger which is just ! 
 Then, penance so performed, may pardon be ! " 
 
 Who could gainsay this just and right award ? 
 Nobody in the world : but, out o' the world. 
 Who knows ? — might timid intervention be 
 From any makeshift of an angel-guide. 
 Substitute for celestial guardianship. 
 Pretending to take care of the girl's self : 
 " Woman, confessing crime is healthy work. 
 And telling truth relieves a liar like you. 
 But how of my quite unconsidered charge ? 
 No thought if, while this good befalls yourself. 
 Aught in the way of harm may find out her ? " 
 No least thought, I assure you: truth being 
 
 truth, 
 Tell it and shame the devil 1 
 
 Said and done : 
 Home went Violante, and disbosomed all : 
 And Pietro who, six months before, had borne 
 Word after word of such a jnece of news 
 Like so much cold steel inched through hiE 
 
 breast-blade. 
 Now at its entry gave a leap for joy. 
 As who — what did I say of one in a quag ? — 
 Should catch a hand from heaven and spring 
 
 thereby 
 Out of the mild, on ten toes stand once more. 
 " What ? All that used to be, may be again? 
 My money mine again, my house, my land. 
 My chairs and tables, all mine evermore ? 
 Wliat, the girl's dowry never was the gii-l's, 
 And, unpaid yet, is never now to pay ? 
 Then the girl's self, my pale Pompilia child 
 That used to be my own with her great eyes — 
 He who drove us forth, why should he keep her 
 When proved as very a pauper as himself ? 
 Will she come back, with nothing changed at 
 
 all. 
 And laugh, ' But how you dreamed uneasily ! 
 I saw the great drops stand here on your 
 
 brow — 
 Did I do wrong to wake you with a kiss ? ' 
 No, indeed, dai'ling ! No, for wide awake 
 I see another outburst of surprise : 
 The lout-lord, bully-beggar, brag^^art-sneak. 
 Who, not content with cutting purse, crops 
 
 ear — 
 Assuredly it shall be salve to mine 
 When this great news red-letters him, the 
 
 rogue ! 
 Ay, let him taste the teeth o' the trap, this fox, 
 Give us our lamb back, golden fleece and aJl, 
 Let her creep in and wai-m our breasts again ! 
 Why care for the past ? — we three are our old 
 
 And know now what the outside world is 
 
 worth." 
 And so, he carried case before the courts ; 
 And there Violante, blushing to the bone. 
 Made public declaration of her fault. 
 Renounced her motherhood, and prayed the law 
 To interpose, frustrate of its effect 
 Her folly, and redress the injury done. 
 
 Whereof was the disastrous consequence. 
 That though indisputably clear the case 
 (For thirteen years are not so large a lapse. 
 And still six witnesses survived in Rome 
 To prove the truth o' the tale) — yet, patent 
 
 wrong 
 Seemed Guide's ; the first cheat had chanced 
 
 on him : 
 Here was the pity that, deciding right. 
 Those who began the wrong would gain the 
 
 prize. 
 Guido pronounced the story one long lie 
 Lied to do robbery and take revenge : 
 Or say it were no lie at all but truth, 
 Then, it both robbed the right heirs and shamed 
 
 him 
 Without revenge to humanize the deed : 
 What had he done when first they shamed him 
 
 thus ? 
 But that were too fantastic : losels they. 
 
THE OTHER HALF-ROME 
 
 447 
 
 And leasing this world's-wonder of a lie. 
 They lied to blot him though it brand them- 
 selves. 
 
 So answered Guido through the Abate 's mouth. 
 Wherefore the court, its customary "way. 
 Inclined to the middle course the sage affect. 
 They held the child to be a changeling, — good : 
 But, lest the husband got no good thereby. 
 They wiUed the dowry, though not hers at all. 
 Should yet be his, if not by right then giace — 
 Part-payment for the plain injustice done. 
 As for that other contract, Pietro's work, 
 Renunciation of his own estate. 
 That must be cancelled — give him back his 
 
 gifts. 
 He was no party to the cheat at least ! 
 fcjo ran the judgment : — whence a prompt ap- 
 peal 
 On both sides, seeing right is absolute. 
 Cried Pietro, " Is the child no child of mine ? 
 Why give her a child's dowry?" — "Havel 
 
 right 
 To the dowry, why not to the rest as well ? " 
 Cried Guido, or cried Paolo in his name : 
 Till law said, "Reinvestigate the case ! " 
 And so the matter pends, to this same day. 
 
 Hence new disaster — here no outlet seemed : 
 
 Whatever the fortune of the battlefield. 
 
 No path whereby the fatal man might march 
 
 Victorious, wreath on head and spoils in hand. 
 
 And back turned fuU upon the baffled foe, — 
 
 Nor cranny whence, desperate and disgraced, 
 
 Stripped to the skin, he might be fain to crawl 
 
 Worm-like, and so away with his defeat 
 
 To other fortune and a novel prey. 
 
 No, he was pinned to the place there, left alone 
 
 With his immense hate and, the solitary 
 
 Subject to satisfy that hate, his wife. 
 
 " Cast her off ? Turn her naked out of doors ? 
 
 Easily said ! But still the action pends, 
 
 Still dowry, principal and interest, 
 
 Pietro's possessions, all I bargained for, — 
 
 Any good day, be but my friends alert. 
 
 May give them me if she continue mine . 
 
 Yet, keep her ? Keep the puppet of my foes — 
 
 Her voice that lisps me back their curse — her 
 
 eye 
 They lend their leer of triumph to — her lip 
 I touch and taste their very filth upon ? " 
 
 In short, he also took the middle course 
 Rome taught him — did at last excogitate 
 How he might keep the good and leave the 
 
 bad 
 Twined in revenge, yet extricable, — nay 
 Make the very hate's eruption, very rush 
 Of the unpent sluice of cruelty reUeve 
 His heart first, then go fertilize his field. 
 What if the girl-wife, tortured with due care. 
 Should take, as though spontaneously, the road 
 It were impolitic to thrust her on ? 
 If, goaded, she broke out in full revolt. 
 Followed her parents i' the face o' the world. 
 Branded as runaway, not castaway. 
 Self-sentenced and self-punished in the act ? 
 So should the loathed form and detested face 
 
 Launch themselves into hell and there be lost 
 While he looked o'er the brink with folded 
 
 arms ; 
 So should the heaped-up shames go shuddering 
 
 back 
 0' the head o' the heapers, Pietro and his wife. 
 And bury in the breakage three at once : 
 While Guido, left free, no one right renounced, 
 Gain present, gain prospective, all the gain. 
 None of the wife except her rights absorbed. 
 Should ask law what it was law paused about — 
 If law were dubious still whose word to take, 
 The husband's — dignified and derelict, 
 Or the wife's — the . . . what I tell you. It 
 
 should be. 
 
 Guide's first step was to take pen, indite 
 
 A letter to the Abate, — not his own. 
 
 His wife's, — she should re-write, sign, seal and 
 
 send. 
 She liberally told the household-news, 
 Rejoiced her vile progenitors were gone. 
 Revealed their malice — how they even laid 
 A last injunction on her, when they fled. 
 That she should forthwith find a paramour, 
 Complot with him to gather spoil enough. 
 Then burn the house down, — taking previous 
 
 care 
 To poison all its inmates overnight, — 
 And so companioned, so provisioned too. 
 Follow to Rome and there join fortunes gay. 
 This letter, traced in pencil-characters, 
 Guido as easily got retraced in ink 
 By his wife's pen, guided from end to end, 
 As if it had been just so much Chinese. 
 For why ? That wife could broider, sing per- 
 
 Pray certainly, but no more read than write 
 This letter, " which yet write she must," he 
 
 said, 
 " Being half courtesy and cotnpliment. 
 Half sisterliness : take the thing on trust ! " 
 She had as readily retraced the words 
 Of her own death-warrant, — in some sort 
 
 't wa« so. 
 This letter the Abate in due course 
 Communicated to such curious souls 
 In Rome as needs mnst pry into the cause 
 Of quarrel, why the Comparini fled 
 The Francesohini, whence the grievance grew, 
 What the hubbub meant; Nay, — see the 
 
 wife's own word, 
 Authentic answer I Tell detractors too 
 There 's a plan formed, a programme figured 
 
 here 
 — Pray God no after-practice put to proof. 
 This letter cast no light upon, one day ! " 
 
 So much for what should work in Rome : back 
 
 now 
 To Arezzo, follow up the project there. 
 Forward the next step with as bold afoot. 
 And plague Pompilia to the height, you see ! 
 Accordingly did Guido set himself 
 To worry up and down, across, around, 
 The woman, hemmed in by her household- 
 bars. 
 Chase lier about the coop of daily life. 
 
448 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 Having- first stopped each outlet thence save one 
 Which, like bird with a ferret in her haunt, 
 She needs must seize as sole way of escape 
 Though there was tied and twittering a decoy 
 To seem as if it tempted, — just the plume 
 0' the popinjay, not a real respite there 
 From tooth and claw of something in the 
 
 dark, — 
 Giuseppe Caponsaoohi. 
 
 Now begins 
 The tenebrifio passage of the tale : 
 How hold a light, display the cavern's gorge ? 
 How, in this phase or the affair, show trnfli ? 
 Here is the dying wife who smiles and says, 
 '* So it was, — so it was not, — how it was, 
 I never knew nor ever care to know — " 
 Till they all weep, physican, man of law. 
 Even that poor old bit of battered brass 
 Beaten out of all shape by the world's sins, 
 Common utensil of the lazar-house — 
 Confessor Celestino groans, " 'T is truth, 
 All truth and only truth: there's something; 
 
 here. 
 Some presence in the room beside us all. 
 Something that every lie expires before : 
 No question she was pure from first to last.'' 
 So far is well and helps us to believe : 
 But beyond, she the helpless, simple-sweet 
 Or silly-sooth, unskilled to break one blow 
 At her good fame by putting finger forth, — 
 How can she render service to the truth ? 
 The bird says, " So I fluttered where a springe 
 Caught me : the springe did not contrive itself. 
 That I know : who contrived it, God forgive ! " 
 But we, who hear no voice and have dry eyes. 
 Must ask, — we cannot else, absolving her, — 
 How of the part played by that same decoy 
 I' the catching, caging ? Was himself caught 
 
 first? 
 We deal here with no innocent at least, 
 No witless victim, — he 's a man of the age 
 And priest beside, — persuade the' mocking 
 
 world 
 Mere charity boiled over in this sort ! 
 He whose own safety too, — (the Pope 's ap- 
 prised — . 
 Good-natured with the secular offence. 
 The Pope looks grave on priesthood in a 
 
 scrape) — 
 Onr priest's own safety therefore, maybe life, 
 Hangs on the issue ! You wiU find it hard. 
 Guido is here to meet you with fixed foot. 
 Stiff like a statue — " Leave what went before ! 
 My wife fled i' the company of a priest. 
 Spent two days and two nights alone with him ; 
 Leave what came after ! " He stands hard to 
 
 throw. 
 Moreover priests are merely flesh and blood ; 
 When we get weakness, and no guilt beside, 
 'T is no such great ill-fortune : finding gray, 
 We gladly call that white which might be 
 
 black. 
 Too used to the double-dye. So, if the priest. 
 Moved by Pompilia's youth and beauty, gave 
 Way to the natural weakness . . . Anyhow, 
 Here be facts, chaiaotery ; what they spell 
 Determine, and thence pick what sense you 
 
 may ! 
 
 There was a certain young bold handsome priest 
 
 Popular in the city, far and wide 
 
 Famed, since Arezzo 's but a little place. 
 
 As the best of good companions, gay and grave 
 
 At the decent minute ; settled in his stall, 
 
 Or sidling, lute on lap, by lady's couch. 
 
 Ever the courtly Canon : see in him 
 
 A proper star to climb and culminate. 
 
 Have its due handbreadth of the heaven at 
 
 Rome, 
 Though meanwhile pausing on Arezzo s edge. 
 As modest candle does 'raid mountain fog. 
 To rub off redness and rusticity 
 Ere it sweep chastened, gain the silver-sphere ! 
 Whether through Guide's absence or what else, 
 This Caponsacchi, favorite of the town. 
 Was yet no friend of his nor free o' the house. 
 Though both moved in the regular magnates' 
 
 march : 
 Each must observe the other's tread and halt 
 At church, saloon, theatre, house of play. 
 Who could help noticing the husband's slouchj 
 The black of his brow — or miss the news that 
 
 buzzed ^ ' ' 
 
 Of how the little solitary wife 
 Wept and looked out of window all day long ? 
 What need of minute search into such springs 
 As start men, set o' the move ? — machinery 
 Old as earth, obvious as the noonday sun. 
 Why, take men as they come, — an instance 
 
 now, — 
 Of all those who have simply gone to see 
 Pompilia on her deathbed since four days. 
 Half at the least are, call it how you please, 
 In love with her — I don't except the prieste 
 Nor even the old confessor whose eyes run 
 Over at what he styles his sister's voice 
 Who died so early and weaned him from the 
 
 world. 
 Well, had they viewed her ere the paleness 
 
 pushed 
 The lasto' the red o' the rose away, while yet 
 Some hand, adventurous 'twixt die wind and 
 
 her. 
 Might let shy life run back and raise the flower 
 Rich with reward up to the guardian's face, — 
 Would they have kept that hand employed all 
 
 day 
 At fumbling on with prayer-book pages ? No I 
 Men are men ; why then need I say one word 
 More than that our mere man the Canon here 
 Saw, pitied, loved Pompilia ? 
 
 This is why ; 
 This startling why: that Caponsacchi's self — 
 Whom foes and friends alike avouch, for good 
 Or iU, a man of truth whate'er betide, 
 Intrepid altogether, reckless too 
 How his own fame and fortune, tossed to th© 
 
 winds. 
 Suffer by any turn the adventure take, 
 Nayj more — not thrusting, like a badge to hide, 
 'Twixt shirt and skin a joy which shown is 
 
 shame — 
 But flirting flag-like i' the face o' the world 
 This tell-tale kerchief, this conspicuous love 
 For the lady, — oh, called innocent love, I 
 
 know! 
 
THE OTHER HALF-ROME 
 
 449 
 
 Only, snch scarlet fiery innocence 
 
 As most folk would try muffle up in shade, — 
 
 — 'Tis strange then that this else abashless 
 
 mouth 
 Should yet maintain, for truth's sake which is 
 
 God's, 
 That it was not he made the first advance, 
 That, even ere word had passed between the 
 
 two, 
 Porapilia penned him letters, passionate prayers, 
 If not love, then so simulating love 
 That he, no novice to the taste of thyme. 
 Turned from such over-luscious honey-clot 
 At end o' the flower, and would not lend his lip 
 Till . . . but the tale here frankly outsoars 
 
 faith : 
 There must be falsehood somewhere. For her 
 
 part, 
 Porapilia quietly constantly avers 
 She never penned a letter in her life 
 Nor to the Canon nor any other man, 
 Being incompetent to write and read ; 
 Nor had she ever uttered word to him, nor he 
 To her till that same evening when they met, 
 She on her window-terrace, he beneath 
 I' the public street, as was their fateful chance. 
 And she adjured him in the name of God 
 To find out, bring to pass where, when and how 
 Escape with him to Rome might be contrived. 
 Means were found, plan laid, time fixed, she 
 
 avers. 
 And heart assured to heart in loyalty. 
 All at an impulse ! All extemporized 
 As in romance-books ! Is that credible ? 
 Well, yes ; as she avers this with calm mouth 
 Dying, I do think ' ' Credible ! " you 'd cry — 
 Did not the priest's voice come to break the 
 
 spell. 
 They questioned him apart, aa the custom is. 
 When first the matter made a noise at Rome, 
 And he, calm, constant then as she is now. 
 For truth's sake did assert and reassert 
 Those letters called him to her and he came, 
 — Which damns the story credible otherwise. 
 Why should this man — mad to devote himself, 
 Careless what comes of his own fame, the first — 
 Be studious thus to publish and declare 
 Just what the lightest nature loves to hide. 
 So screening lady from the byword's laugh 
 " First spoke the lady, last the cavalier ! " 
 
 — I say, — why should the man teU truth just 
 
 now 
 When graceful lying meets such ready shrift ? 
 Or is there a first moment for a priest 
 As for a woman, when invaded shame 
 Must have its first and last excuse to show ? 
 Do both contrive love's entry in the mind 
 Shall look, i' the manner of it, a surprise, 
 That after, once the flag o' the fort hauled 
 
 down. 
 Effrontery may sink drawbridge, open gate. 
 Welcome and entertain the conqueror ? 
 Or what do you say to a touch of the devil's 
 
 worst? 
 Can it be that the husband, he who wrote 
 The letter to his brother I told you of, 
 I' the name of her it meant to criminate, — 
 What if he wrote those letters to the priest ? 
 
 Further the priest says, when it first befell. 
 This folly o' the letters, that he checked the 
 
 flow. 
 Put them back lightly ea<;h with its reply. 
 Here again vexes new discrepancy : 
 There never reached her eye a word from him ; 
 He did write but she could not read — could 
 
 just 
 Bum the offence to wifehood, womanhood. 
 So did burn : never bade him come to her. 
 Yet when it proved he must come, let him come. 
 And when he did come though uncalled, — why, 
 
 spoke 
 Prompt by an inspiration : thus it chanced. 
 Will you go somewhat ba«k to understand ? 
 
 When first, pursuant to his plan, there sprang, 
 
 Like an uncaged beast. Guide's cruelty 
 
 On soul and body of his wife, she cried 
 
 To those whom law appoints resource for such. 
 
 The secular guardian, — that 's the Governor, 
 
 And the Archbishop, — that's the spiritual 
 
 guide, 
 And prayed them take the claws from out her 
 
 flesh. 
 Now, this is ever the ill consequence 
 Of being noble, poor and difficult. 
 Ungainly, yet too great to disregard, — 
 This — that born peers and friends hereditary, — 
 Though disinclined to help from their own store 
 The opprobrious wight, put penny in his poke 
 From private purse or leave the door ajar 
 When he goes wistful by at dinner-time, — 
 Yet, if his needs conduct him where they sit 
 Smugly in of&ce, judge this, bishop that. 
 Dispensers of the shine and shade o' the place — 
 And if, friend's door shut and friend's purse 
 
 undrawn, 
 Still potentates may find the office-seat 
 Do as good service at no cost — give help 
 By-the-bye, pay up traditional dues at once 
 Just through a feather-weight too much i' the 
 
 scale. 
 Or finger-tip forgot at the balance-tongue, — 
 Why, only churls refuse, or Molinists. 
 Thus when, in the first roughness of surprise 
 At Guide's wolf-face whence the sheepskin fell. 
 The frightened eonple, all bewilderment. 
 Rushed to the G-ovemor, — who else rights 
 
 wrong ? 
 Told him their tale of wrong and craved re- 
 
 Wliy, then the Governor woke up to the fact 
 That Guido was a friend of old, poor Count ! — 
 So, promptly paid his tribute, promised the pair 
 Wholesome chastisement should soon cure their 
 
 qualms 
 Next time they came, wept, prated and told 
 
 lies : 
 So stopped all prating, sent them dnmb to Rome. 
 Well, now it was Porapilia's turn to try : 
 The troubles pressing on her, as I said. 
 Three times she rushed, maddened by misery. 
 To the other mighty man, sobbed out her prayer 
 At footstool of the Archbishop — fast the friend 
 Of her husband also ! Oh, good friends of yore ! 
 So the Archbishop, not to be outdone 
 By the Governor, break custom more than he. 
 
450 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 Tliriee bade tlie foolish woman stop her tongue, 
 L^nloosed her hands from harassing his gout, 
 Coached her and carried her to the Count again, 
 — His old friend should be master in his house. 
 Rule his wife and correct her faults at need ! 
 Well, driven from post to pillar in this wise. 
 She, as a last resource, betook herself 
 To one, should be no family-friend at least, 
 A simple friar o' the city ; confessed to him, 
 Then told how fierce temptation of release 
 By self-dealt death was busy with her soul, 
 And urged that he put this in words, write plain 
 For one who could not write, set down her prayer 
 That Pietro and Violante, parent-like 
 If somehow not her parents, should for love 
 Come save her, pluck from out the flame the 
 
 brand 
 Themselves had thoughtlessly thrust in so deep 
 To send gay-colored sparkles up and cheer 
 Their seat at the chimney-corner. The good 
 
 friar 
 Promised as much at the moment ; but, alack. 
 Night brings discretion: he was no one's 
 
 friend, 
 Yet presently found he could not turn about 
 Nor take a step i' the ease and fail to tread 
 On some one's toe who either was a friend. 
 Or a friend's friend, or friend's friend thriee- 
 
 removed. 
 And woe to friar by whom offences come ! 
 So, the course being plain, — with a general 
 
 sigh 
 At matrimony the profound mistake, — 
 He threw relnctantly the business up, 
 Having his other penitents to mind. 
 
 If then, all outlets thus secured save one. 
 At last she took to the open, stood and stared 
 With her wan face to see where God might 
 
 wait — 
 And there found Caponsacehi wait as well 
 For' the precious something at perdition's edge, 
 He only was predestinate to save, — 
 And if they recognized in a critical flash 
 From the zenith, each the other, her need of 
 
 him, 
 His need of . . . say, a woman to perish for. 
 The regular way o' the world, yet break no 
 
 vow. 
 Do no harm save to himself, — if this were 
 
 thus V 
 How do you say ? It were improbable ; 
 So is the legend of ray patron-saint. 
 
 Anyhow, whether, as Guido states the ease, 
 Porapilia — like a starving wretch i' the street 
 Who stops and rifles the first passenger 
 In the great right of an excessive wrong — 
 Did somehow call this stranger and he came, — 
 Or whether the strange sudden interview 
 Blazed as when star and star must needs go 
 
 close 
 Till each hurts each and there is loss in 
 
 heaven — 
 Whatever way in this strange world it was, — 
 Pompilia and Caponsacehi met, in fine, 
 She at her window, he i' the street beneath, 
 And understood each other at first look. 
 
 All was determined and performed at once. 
 
 And on a certain April evening, late 
 
 I' the month, this girl of sixteen, bnde and 
 
 wife 
 Three years and over, — she who hitherto 
 Had never taken twenty steps in Rome 
 Beyond the church, pimied to her mothers 
 
 gown. 
 Nor, in Arezzo, knew her way through street 
 Except what led to the Archbishop's door, — 
 Such an one rose up in the dark, laid hand 
 On what came first, clothes and a trinket or 
 
 two. 
 Belongings of her own in the old day, — 
 Stole from the side o' the sleeping spouse — 
 
 who knows ? 
 Sleeping perhaps, silent for certain, — slid 
 Ghost-like from great dark room to great dark 
 
 room. 
 In through the tapestries and out again 
 And onward, unembarrassed as a fate, 
 Descended staircase, gained last door of all, 
 Sent it wide open at first push of palm. 
 And there stood, first time, last and only time, 
 At liberty, alone in the open street, — 
 Unquestioned, unmolested found herself 
 At the city gate, by Caponsacehi's side, 
 Hope there, joy there, life and all good again, 
 The carriage there, the convoy there, light 
 
 there 
 Broadening ever into blaze at Rome 
 And breaking small what long miles lay be- 
 tween ; 
 Up she sprang, in he followed, they were safe. 
 
 The husband quotes this for incredible. 
 All of the story from first word to last : 
 Sees the priest's iiand throughout upholding 
 
 hers. 
 Traces his foot to the alcove, that night, 
 Whither and whence blindfold he knew the 
 
 way. 
 Proficient in all craft and stealthiuess ; 
 And cites for proof a servant, eye that watched 
 And ear that opened to purse secrets up, 
 A woman-spy, — suborned to give and take 
 Letters and tokens, do the work of shame 
 The more adroitly that herself, who helped 
 Communion thus between a tainted pair, 
 Had long since been a leper thick in spot, 
 A common trull o' the town : she -witeessed 
 
 all. 
 Helped many meetings, partings, took her wage 
 And then told Guido the whole matter. Lies ! 
 The woman's life confutes her word, — her 
 
 word 
 Confutes itself : " Thus, thus and thus I lied." 
 " And thus, no question, still you lie," we say. 
 
 " Ay, but at last, e'en have it how you wiU, 
 Whatever the means, whatever the way, ex- 
 plodes 
 The consummation " — the accusers shriek : 
 " Here is the wife avowedly found in flight. 
 And the companion of her flight, a priest : 
 She flies her husband, he the church his 
 
 spouse : 
 What is this ? " 
 
THE OTHER HALF-ROME 
 
 451 
 
 Wife and priest alike reply, 
 " This is the simple thing it claims to be, 
 A course -we took for life and honor's sake. 
 Very strange, veiy justifiable." 
 She says, " God put it in my head to fly. 
 As when the martin migrates : autumn claps 
 Her hands, cries ' Winter 's coming, will be 
 
 here, 
 Off with you ere the white teeth overtake 1 
 Flee ! ' So I fled : this friend was the warm 
 
 day. 
 The south wind and whatever favors flight ; 
 I took the favor, had the help, how else ? 
 And so we did fly rapidly all night, 
 All day, all night — a longer night — again, 
 And then another day, longest of days. 
 And all the while, whether we fled or stopped, 
 I scarce know how or why, one thought filled 
 
 both, 
 ' Fly and arrive ! ' So long as I found strength 
 I talked with my companion, told him much. 
 Knowing that he knew more, knew me, knew 
 
 God 
 And God's disposal of me, — but the sense 
 0' the blessed flight absorbed me in the main, 
 And speech became mere talking through a 
 
 sleep, 
 Till at the end of that last longest night 
 In a red daybreak, when we reached an inn 
 And my companion whispered ' Next stage — 
 
 Rome ! ' 
 Sudden the weak flesh fell like piled-up cards. 
 All the frail fabric at a finger's touch. 
 And prostrate the poor soul too, and 1 said, 
 ' But though Count Guido were a furlong off. 
 Just on me, 1 must stop and rest awhile T ' 
 Then something like a huge white wave o' the 
 
 sea 
 Broke o'er my brain and buried me in sleep 
 Blessedly, till it ebbed and left me loose, 
 And where was I found but on a strange bed 
 In a strange room like hell, roaring with noise. 
 Ruddy with flame, and filled with men, in front 
 Who hut the man you call my husband ? ay — 
 Count Guido once more between heaven and 
 
 me. 
 For there my heaven stood, my salvation, yes — 
 That Caponsacchi all my heaven of help. 
 Helpless himself, held prisoner in the hands 
 Of men who looked up in my husband's face 
 To take the fate thence he should signify, 
 Just as the way was at Arezzo. Then, 
 Not for my sake but his who had helped me — 
 I sprang up, reached him ^^ ith one bound, and 
 
 seized 
 The sword o' the felon, trembling at his side. 
 Fit creature of a coward, unsheathed the thing 
 And would have pinned him through the 
 
 poison-bag 
 To the wall and left him there to palpitate. 
 As you serve scorpions, but men interposed — 
 Disarmed me, gave his life to him asrain 
 That he might take mine and the other lives ; 
 And he has done so. I submit myself ! " 
 
 The priest says — oh, and in the main result 
 The facts asseverate, he truly says. 
 As to the very act and deed of him, 
 
 However you mistrust the mind o' the man — 
 The flight was just for flight's sake, no pretext 
 For aught excejjt to set Pompilia free. 
 He says, "I cite the husband's self's worst 
 
 charge 
 In jproof of my best word for both of us. 
 Be it conceded that so many times 
 We took our pleasure in his palace : then. 
 What need to fly at all ? — or flying no less. 
 What need to outrage the lips sick and white 
 Of a woman, and bring ruin down beside. 
 By halting when Rome lay one stage beyond ? " 
 So does he vindicate Pompilia's fame. 
 Confirm her story in all points but one — 
 This ; that, so fleeing and so breathing forth 
 Her last strength in the prayer to halt a while, 
 She makes confusion of the reddening white 
 Which was the sunset when her strength gave 
 
 way. 
 And the next sunrise and its whitening red 
 Which she revived in when her husband came : 
 She mixes both times, morn and eve, in one, 
 Having lived through a blank of night 'twixt 
 
 each 
 Though dead-asleep, unaware as a corpse. 
 She on the bed above ; her friend below 
 Watched in the doorway of the inn the while. 
 Stood i' the red o' the morn, that she mistakes. 
 In act to rouse and quicken the tardy crew 
 And hurry oiit the horses, have the stage 
 Over, the last league, reach Rome and be safe : 
 When up came Guido. 
 
 Guide's tale begins — 
 How he and his whole household, drunk to 
 
 death 
 By some enchanted potion, poppied drugs 
 Phed by the wife, lay powerless in gross sleep 
 And left the spoilers unimpeded way. 
 Could not shake off their poison and pursue. 
 Till noontide, then made shift to get on horse 
 And did pursue : which means he took his 
 
 time. 
 Pressed on no more than lingered after, step 
 By step, just making sure o' the fugitives, 
 Till at the nick of time, he saw his chance. 
 Seized it, came up with and surprised the pair. 
 How he must needs have gnawn lip and gnashed 
 
 teeth. 
 Taking successively at tower and town. 
 Village and roadside, still the same report : 
 '* Yes, such a pair arrived an hour ago, 
 Pat in the carriage just where now you stand. 
 While we got horses ready, — turned deaf ear 
 To all entreaty they would even alight ; 
 Counted the minutes and resumed their 
 
 course." 
 Would they indeed escape, arrive at Rome, 
 Leave no least loop-hole to let murder through, 
 But foil him of his captured infamy. 
 Prize of guilt proved and perfect ? So it 
 
 seemed : 
 Till, oh the happy chance, at last sta^e, Rome 
 But two short hours off, Castelnuovo reached, 
 The guardian angel gave reluctant place, 
 Satan stepped forward with alacrity, 
 Pompilia's flesh and blood succumbed, perforce 
 A halt was, and her husband had his will. 
 Perdue he couched, counted out hour by hour 
 
452 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 Till he should spy in the east a signal-streak — 
 Night had been, morrow was, triumph would 
 
 be. 
 Do you see the plan delioiously complete ? 
 The rush upon the unsuspecting sleep, 
 The easy execution, the outcry 
 Over the deed, " Take notice all the world ! 
 These two dead bodies, locked still in em- 
 brace, — 
 The man is Caponsacchi and a priest, 
 The woman is my wife : they fled me late. 
 Thus have I found and you behold them thus. 
 And may judge me : do you approve or no ? " 
 
 Success did seem not so improbable. 
 
 But that already Satan's laugh was heard. 
 
 His black back turned on Guido — left i' the 
 
 lurch 
 Or rather, balked of suit and service now. 
 Left to improve on both by one deed more. 
 Bum up the better at no distant day. 
 Body and soul one holocaust to hell. 
 Anyhow, of this natural consequence 
 Did just the last link of the long chain snap : 
 For an eruption was o' the priest, alive 
 And alert, calm, resolute and formidable. 
 Not the least look of fear in that broad brow — 
 One not to be disposed of by surprise, 
 And armed moreover — who had guessed as 
 
 much ? 
 Yes, there stood he in secular costume 
 Complete from head to heel, with sword at 
 
 side. 
 He seemed to know the trick of perfectly. 
 There was no prompt suppression of the man 
 As he said calmly, I have saved your wife 
 From death : there was no other way but this ; 
 Of what do I defraud you except death ? 
 Charge any wrong beyond, I answer it." 
 Guido, the valorous, had met his match. 
 Was forced to demand help instead of flight. 
 Bid the authorities o' the place lend aid 
 And make the best of a broken matter so. 
 They soon obeyed the summons — I suppose. 
 Apprised and ready, or not far to seek — 
 Laid hands on Caponsacchi, found in fault, 
 A priest yet flagrantly accoutred thus, — 
 Then, to make good Count Guide's further 
 
 charge, 
 Proceeded, prisoner made lead the way. 
 In a crowd, upstairs to the chamber-door. 
 Where wax-white, dead asleep, deep beyond 
 
 dream. 
 As the priest laid her, lay Pompilia yet. 
 
 And as he mounted step and step with the 
 
 crowd 
 How I see Guido taking heart again ! 
 He knew his wife so well and the way of her — 
 How at the outbreak she would shroud her 
 
 shame 
 In hell's heart, would it mercifully yawn — 
 How, failing that, her forehead to his foot, 
 She would crouch silent till the gi'eat doom 
 
 fell. 
 Leave him triumphant with the crowd to see 
 Guilt motionless or writhing like a worm ! 
 No ! Second misadventure, this worm turned. 
 
 I told you : would have slain him on the spot 
 With his own weapon, but they seized her 
 
 hands : . n j i. i n 
 
 Leaving her tongue free, as it tolled the knell 
 Of Guido's hope so lively late. The past 
 Took quite another shape now. She who 
 
 shrieked, _ ■, e^ n, 
 
 " At least and forever I am mme and God's, 
 Thanks to his liberating angel Death — 
 Never again degraded to be yours 
 The ignoble noble, the unmanly man. 
 The beast below the beast in brutishness ! " — 
 This was the froward ehUd, " the restif lamb 
 Used to be cherished in his breast," he 
 
 groaned — 
 "Eat from his hand and drink from out his 
 
 cup. 
 The while his fingers pushed their loving way 
 Through curl on curl of that soft coat — 
 
 alas. 
 And she all silverly baa«d gratitude 
 While meditating mischief ! " — and so forth. 
 He must invent another story now ! ' 
 The ins and outs o' the rooms were searched : 
 
 he found 
 Or showed for found the abominable prize — 
 Love-letters from his wife who cannot write. 
 Love-letters in reply o' the priest — thank 
 
 God! — 
 Who can write and confront his character 
 With this, and prove the false thing forged 
 
 throughout : 
 Spitting whereat, he needs must spatter whom 
 But Guido's self ? — that forged and falsified 
 One letter called Pompilia 's, past dispute ; 
 Then why not these to make sure still more 
 
 sure? 
 
 So was the case concluded then and there: 
 Guido preferred his charges in due form. 
 Called ou the law to adjudicate, consigned 
 The accused ones to the Prefect of the place. 
 (Oh mouse-birth of that mountain-like re- 
 venge ! ) 
 And so to his own place betook himself 
 After the spring that failed, — the wildcat's 
 
 way. 
 The captured parties were conveyed to Rome ; 
 Investigation followed here i' the court — 
 Soon to review the fruit of its own work. 
 From then to now being eight months and no 
 
 more. 
 Guido kept out of sight and safe at home : 
 The Abate, brother Paolo, helped most 
 At words when deeds were out of question, 
 
 pushed 
 Nearest the purple, best played deputy. 
 So, pleaded, Guido's representative 
 At the court shall soon try Guido's self, — 
 
 what 's more. 
 The court that also took — I told you. Sir — 
 That stateraient of that couple, how a cheat 
 Had been i' the birth of the babe, no child of 
 
 theirs. 
 That was the prelude ; tliis, the play's first 
 
 act : 
 Whereof we wait what comes, crown, close of 
 
 all. 
 
THE OTHER HALF-ROME 
 
 4S3 
 
 Well, the result was something of a shade 
 On the parties thus accused, — how otherwise ? 
 {Shade, but with shine as unmistakable. 
 £ach had a prompt defence : Pompilia first — 
 "Earth was made hell to me who did no harm : 
 I only could emerge one way from hell 
 By catching at the one hand held me, so 
 I caught at it and thereby stepped to heaven : 
 If that be wrong, do with me what you will I " 
 Then Caponsacchi with a giave grand sweep 
 O' the arm as though his soul warned baseness 
 
 off — 
 " If as a man, then much more as a x>riest 
 I hold me bound to help weak innocence : 
 If so my worldly reputation burst, 
 Being the bubble it is, why, burst it may : 
 Blame I can bear though not blameworthiness. 
 But use your sense first, see if the miscreant 
 
 proved, 
 The man who tortured thus the woman, thus 
 Have not both laid the trap and fixed the lure 
 Over the pit should bury body and soul ! 
 His facts are lies : his letters are the fact — 
 An infiltration flavored with himself ! 
 As for the fancies — whether . . . what is it 
 
 you say ? 
 The lady loves me, whether I love her 
 In the forbidden sense of your surmise, — 
 If, with the midday blaze of truth above, 
 The unlidded eye of God awake, aware. 
 You needs must pry about and trace the birth 
 Of each stray beam of light may traverse night, 
 To the night's sun that 's Lucifer himself. 
 Do so, at other time, in other place. 
 Not now nor here ! Enough that fiist to last 
 I never touched her lip nor she my hand. 
 Nor either of us thought a thought, much less 
 Spoke a word which the Virgin might not 
 
 hear. 
 Be such your question, thus I answer it." 
 
 Then the court had to make its mind up, spoke. 
 " It is a thorny question, yea, a tale 
 Hard to believe, but not impossible : 
 Who can be absolute for either side ? 
 A middle course is happily open yet. 
 Here has a blot surprised the social blank, — 
 Whether through favor, feebleness or fault, 
 No matter, leprosy has touched our robe 
 And we unclean must needs be purified. 
 Here is a wife makes holiday from home, 
 A priest caught playing truant to his church, 
 In masquerade moreover : both allege 
 Enough excuse to stop our lifted scourge 
 Which else would heavily fall. On the other 
 
 hand, 
 Here is a husband, ay and man of mark. 
 Who comes complaining here, demands redress 
 As if he were the pattern of desert — 
 The while those plaguy allegations frown. 
 Forbid we grant him the redress he seeks. 
 To all men be our moderation known ! 
 Eewardine none while compensating each, 
 Hurting all round though harming nobody. 
 Husband, wife, priest, soot-free not one sha,Il 
 
 'scape, 
 Yet priest, wife, husband, boaat the unbroken 
 
 head 
 
 From application of our excellent oil ; 
 So that, whatever be the fact, in fine, 
 We make no miss of justice in a sort. 
 First, let the husband stomach as he may. 
 His wife shall neither be returned him, no — 
 Nor branded, whipped and caged, but just con- 
 signed 
 To a convent and the quietude she craves ; 
 So is he rid of his domestic plague : 
 What better thing can happen to a man ? 
 Next, let the priest retire — unshent, unshamed, 
 Unpunished aa for perpetrating crime. 
 But relegated (not imprisoned. Sirs !) 
 Sent for three years to clarify his youth 
 At Civita, a rest by the way to Rome : 
 There let his life skim off its last of lees 
 Nor keep this dubious color. Judged the 
 
 cause : 
 All parties may retire, content, we hope." 
 That 's Rome's way, the traditional road of law ; 
 Whither it leads is what remains to tell. 
 
 The priest went to his relegation-place. 
 The wife to her convent, brother Paolo 
 To the arms of brother Gruido with the news 
 And this beside — his charge was counter- 
 charged j 
 The Comparim, his old brace of hates. 
 Were breatlied and vigilant and venomous 
 
 now — 
 Had shot a second bolt where the first stuck, 
 And followed up the pending dowry-^uit 
 By a procedure should release the wife 
 From so much of the marriage-bond as barred 
 Escape when Guido turned the screw too much 
 On his wife's flesh and blood, as husband may. 
 No more defence, she turned and made attack, 
 Claimed now divorce from bed and board, in 
 
 short: 
 Pleaded such subtle strokes of cruelty. 
 Such slow sure siege laid to her body and soul, 
 As, proved, — and proofs seemed coming thick 
 
 and fast, — 
 Would gain both freedom and the dowry back 
 Even should the first suit leave them in his 
 
 grasp: 
 So urged the Comparini for the wife. 
 Guido had gained not one of the good things 
 He grasped at by his creditable plan 
 0' the flight and following and the rest : the suit 
 That smouldered late was fanned to fury new, 
 This adjunct came to help with fiercer fire. 
 While he had got himself a quite new plague — 
 Found the world's face an universal grin 
 At this last best of the Hundred Merry Tales 
 Of how a young and spritely clerk devised 
 To carry off a spouse that moped too much, 
 And cured her of the vapors in a trice : 
 And how the husband, playing Vulcan's part, 
 Told by the Sun, started in hot pursuit 
 To catch the lovers, and came halting up. 
 Cast his net, and then called the Gods to see 
 The convicts in their rosy impudence — 
 Whereat said Mercury, " Would that I were 
 
 Mars ! " 
 Oh it was rare, and naughty all the same ! 
 Brief, the wife's courage and cunning, — the 
 
 priest's show 
 
454 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 Of chivalry and adroitness, — last not least. 
 The husband — how he ne'er showed teeth at 
 
 all, 
 Whose bark had promised biting; but just 
 
 sneaked 
 Back to his kennel, tail 'twixt legs, as 't 
 
 ■were, — 
 All this "was hard to gulp down and digest. 
 So pays the devil his liegeman, brass for gold. 
 But this "was at Arezzo : here in Rome 
 Brave Paolo bore up against it all — 
 Battled it oiit, nor "wanting to himself 
 Nor Guido nor the House whose weight he bore 
 Pillar-like, by no force of arm but brain. 
 He knew his Rome, what wheels to set to 
 
 work ; 
 Plied influential folk, pressed to the ear 
 Of the efficacious purple, pushed his way 
 To the old Pope's self, — past decency indeed, — 
 Praying him take the matter in his hands 
 Out of the regular court's incompetence. 
 But times are changed and nephews out of date 
 And favoritism unfashionable : the Pope 
 Said, " Render Csesar what is Csesar's due ! " 
 As for the Comparini's counter-plea, 
 He met that by a connter-plea again. 
 Made Guido claim divorce — with help so far 
 By the trial's issue : for, why punishment 
 However slight unless for guiltiness 
 However slender ? — and a molehill serves 
 Much as a mountain of offence this way. 
 So was he gathering strength on every side 
 And growing more and more to menace — when 
 All of a terrible moment came the blow 
 That beat down Paolo's fence, ended the play 
 0' the foil and brought Mannaia on the stage. 
 
 Five months had passed now since Pompilia's 
 
 flight, 
 Montlis spent in peace among the Convert 
 
 nuns : 
 This, — being, as it seemed, for Guido's sake 
 Solely, what pride might call imprisonment 
 And quote as something gained, to friends at 
 
 home, — 
 This naturally was at Guide's charge : 
 Grudge it he might, but penitential fare. 
 Prayers, preachings, who but he defrayed the 
 
 cost? 
 So, Paolo dropped, as proxy, doit by doit 
 Like heart's blood, till — what 's here ? What 
 
 notice comes ? 
 The convent's self makes application bland 
 That, since Pompilia's health is fast o' the 
 
 wane. 
 She may have leave to go combine her cure 
 Of soul with cure of body, mend her mind 
 Together with her thin arms and sunk eyes 
 That want fresh air outside the convent-wall, 
 Say in a friendly house, — and which so fit 
 As a certain villa, in the Pauline way. 
 That happens to hold Pietro and his wife, 
 The natural guardians? "Oh, and shift the 
 
 care 
 You shift the cost, too ; Pietro pays in turn, 
 And lightens Guido of a load ! And then. 
 Villa or convent, two names for one thing, 
 Always the sojourn means imprisonment, 
 
 Domus pro carcere — nowise we relax, 
 Nothing abate : how answers Paolo ? " 
 
 You, 
 What would you answer ? All so smooth and 
 
 fair. 
 Even Paul's astuteness sniffed no harm i' the 
 
 world. 
 He authorized the transfer, saw it made 
 And, two months after, reaped the fruit of the 
 
 same, 
 Having to sit down, rack his brain and find 
 What phrase should serve him best to notify 
 Our Guido that by happy providence 
 A son and heir, a babe was bom to him 
 I' the viUa. — go tell sympathizing friends ! 
 Yes, s"ch had been Pompilia's privilege : 
 She, when she fled, was one month gone with 
 
 child. 
 Known to herself or unknown, either way 
 Availing to explain (say men of art) 
 The strange and passionate precipitance 
 Of maiden startled into motherhood 
 Which changes body and soul by nature's law. 
 So when the she-dove breeds, strange yearnings 
 
 come 
 For the unknown shelter by undreamed-of 
 
 shores. 
 And there is bom a blood-pulse in her heart 
 To fight if needs be, though with flap of wing. 
 For the wool-flock or the fur-tuft, though a 
 
 hawk 
 Contest the prize, — wherefore, she knows not 
 
 yet. 
 Anyhow, thus to Guido came the news. 
 " I shall have quitted Rome ere j'ou arrive 
 To take the one step left," — wrote Paolo. 
 Then did the winch o' the winepress of aU hate, 
 Vanity, disappointment, grudge and greed, 
 Take the last turn that screws out pure revenge 
 With a bright bubble at the brim beside — 
 By an heir's birth he was assured at once 
 O' the main prize, all the money in dispute : 
 Pompilia's dowry might revert to her 
 Or stay with him as law's caprice should 
 
 point, — 
 But now — now — what was Pietro's shall be 
 
 hers, 
 What was hers shall remain her own. — if hers, 
 Why then, — oh, not her husband's, but — her 
 
 heir's ! 
 That heir being his too, all grew his at last 
 By this road or by that road, since they join. 
 Before, why, push he Pietro out o' the world, — 
 The current of the money stopped, you see, 
 Pompilia being proved no Pietro's child : 
 Or let it be Pompilia's life he quenched. 
 Again the current of the money stopped, — 
 Guido debarred his rights as husband soon, 
 So the new process thi-eatened ; — now, the 
 
 chance. 
 Now, the resplendent minute ! Clear the earth, 
 Cleanse the house, let the three but disappear, 
 A child remains, depositary of all, 
 That Guido may enjoy his own again. 
 Repair all losses by a master-stroke, 
 Wipe out the past, all done all left undone. 
 Swell the good present to best evermore, 
 Die into new life, which let blood baptize ! 
 
THE OTHER HALF-ROME 
 
 455 
 
 So, i' the blue of a sudden sulphur-blaze. 
 Both why there -was one step to take at Rome, 
 And why he should not meet with Paolo there, 
 He saw — the ins and outs to the heart of hell — 
 And took the straight line thither swift and 
 
 sure. 
 He rushed to Vittiano, found four sons o' the 
 
 soil, 
 Brutes of his breeding-, with one spark i' the 
 
 clod 
 That served for a soul, the looking- up to him 
 Or aught called Franeeschini as life, death, 
 Heaven, hell, — lord paramount, assembled 
 
 these, 
 Harangned, equipped, instructed, pressed each 
 
 clod 
 With his will's imprint ; then took horse, plied 
 
 spur, 
 And so arrived, all five of them, at Rome 
 On Christmas-Eve, and forthwith found them- 
 
 Installed i' the vacancy and solitude 
 Left them by Paolo, the considerate man 
 Who, good as his word, had disappeared at once 
 As if to leave the stage free. A whole week 
 Did Guido spend in study of his part. 
 Then played it fearless of a failure. One, 
 Struck the year's clock whereof the hoxirs are 
 
 days, 
 And off was rung o' the little wheels the chime 
 " Good will on earth and peace to man: " but, 
 
 two. 
 Proceeded the same bell, and, evening come, 
 The dreadful five felt finger-wise their way 
 Across the town by blind cuts and black turns 
 To the little lone suburban villa ; knocked — 
 " Who may be outside ? " called a well-known 
 
 voice. 
 '■ A friend of Caponsacchi's bringing friends 
 A letter." 
 
 Tliat 's a test, the excusers say : 
 Ay, and a test conclusive, I return. 
 What ? Had that name brought touch of guilt 
 
 or taste 
 Of fear with it, aught to dash the present joy 
 With m.emory of tlxe sorrow just at end, — 
 She, happy in her parents' arms at length. 
 With the new blessing of the two-weeks' 
 
 babe, — 
 How had that name's announcement moved the 
 
 wife ? 
 Or, as the other slanders circulate. 
 Were Caponsacchi no rare visitant 
 On nights and days whither safe harbor lured, 
 What bait had been i' the name to ope tne 
 
 door? 
 The promise of a letter ? Stealthy guests 
 Have secret watchwords, private entrances : 
 The man's own self might have been found in- 
 side 
 And all the scheme made frustrate by a word. 
 No : but since Guido knew, none knew so well, 
 The man had never since returned to Rome 
 Nor seen the wife's face more than villa's front, 
 So, could not be at hand to warn or save, — • 
 For that, he took this sure way to the end. 
 
 " Come in," bade poor Violante cheerfully, 
 
 Drawing the door-bolt : that death was the first. 
 Stabbed through and through. Pietro, close on 
 
 her heels. 
 Set up a cry — ' Let me confess myself ! 
 Grant but confession!" Cold steel was the 
 
 grant. 
 Then came Pompilia's turn. 
 
 Then they escaped- 
 The noise o' the slaughter roused the neighbor- 
 hood. 
 They had forgotten just the one thing more 
 Which saves i' the circumstance, the ticket, to 
 
 wit. 
 Which puts post-horses at a traveller's use : 
 So, all on foot, desperate through the dark 
 Reeled they like drunkards along open road, 
 Accomplished a prodigious twenty miles 
 Homeward, and gained Baccano very near, 
 Stumbled at last, deaf, dumb, blind through the 
 
 feat, 
 Into a grange and, one dead heap, slept there 
 Till the pursuers hard upon their trace 
 Reached them and took them, red from head to 
 
 heel, 
 And brought them to the prison where they lie. 
 The couple were laid i' the church two days ago. 
 And the wife lives yet by miracle. 
 
 All is told. 
 You hardly need ask what Count Guido says. 
 Since something he must say. " I own the 
 
 deed — " 
 (He cannot choose, — but — ) "I declare the 
 
 same 
 Just and inevitable, — since no way else 
 Was left me, but by this of taking life, 
 To save my honor which is more than life. 
 I exercised a husband's rights. ' ' To which 
 The answer is as prompt — *' There was no fault 
 In any one o' the three to punish thus : 
 Neither i' the wife, who kept all faith to you, 
 Nor in the parents, whom yourself first duped, 
 Robbed and maltreated, then turned out of 
 
 doors. 
 You wronged and they endured wrong ; youi-s 
 
 the fault. 
 Next, had endurance overpassed the mark 
 And turned resentment needing remedy, — 
 Nay, put the £l>bsurd impossible case, for once — 
 You were all blameless of the blame alleged 
 And they blameworthy where you fix all blame, 
 Still, why this violation of the law ? 
 Yourself elected law should take its course. 
 Avenge wrong, or show vengeance not your 
 
 right ; 
 Why, only when the balance in law's hand 
 Trembles against you and inclines the way 
 0' the other party, do you make protest. 
 Renounce arbitrament, flying out of court. 
 And crying ' Honor's hurt the sword must 
 
 cure ' ? 
 Aha, and so i' the middle of each suit 
 Trying i' the courts, — and you had three in 
 
 play 
 With an appeal to the Pope's self beside, — 
 What, you may chop and change and right your 
 
 wrongs. 
 Leaving the law to lag as she thinks fit ? " 
 
456 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 That were too temptingly commodious. Count ! 
 One -would have still a remedy in reserve 
 Should reach the safest oldest sinner, you see ! 
 One's honor forsooth ? Does that take hurt 
 
 alone 
 From the extreme outrage ? I who have no 
 
 wife, 
 Beine yet sensitive in my degree 
 As Guido, — must discover hurt elsewhere 
 Which, half compounded for in days gone hy, 
 May profitably break out now afresh. 
 Need cure from my own expeditious hands. 
 The lie that was, as it were, imputed me 
 When you objected to my contract's clause, — 
 The theft as good as, one may say, alleged, 
 When you, co-heir in a will, excepted. Sir, 
 To my administration of effects, 
 — Aha, do you think law disposed of these ? 
 My honor's touched and shall deal death 
 
 around ! 
 Count, that were too commodious, I repeat ! 
 If any law be imperative on us all. 
 Of aU are you the enemy ; out with ycu 
 From the common light and air and life of man ! 
 
 IV 
 
 TERTIUM QUID 
 
 True, Excellency — as his Highness says. 
 Though she 's not dead yet, she 's as good as 
 
 stretched 
 Symmetrical beside the other two ; 
 Though he 's not judged yet, he 's the same as 
 
 judged. 
 So do the facts abound and superabound : 
 And nothing hinders that we lift the case 
 Out of the shade into the shine, allow 
 Qualified persons to pronounce at last, 
 Nay, edge in an authoritative word 
 Between this rabble's-brabble of dolts and fools 
 Who make up reasonless unreasoning Rome. 
 " Now for the Trial 1 " they roar : " the Trial 
 
 to test 
 The truth, weigh husband and weigh wife alike 
 I' the scales of law, make one scale kick the 
 
 beam ! " 
 Law's a machine from which, to please the 
 
 mob, 
 Truth the divinity must needs descend 
 And clear things at the play's fifth act — aha ! 
 Hammer into their noddles who was who 
 And what was what. I tell the simpletons, 
 " Could law be competent to such a feat 
 'T were done already : what begins next week 
 Is end o' the Trial, laat link of a chain 
 Whereof the first was forged three years ago 
 When law addressed herself to set wrong right, 
 And proved so slow in taking the first step 
 That ever some new grievance, — tort, retort, 
 On one or the other side, — o'ertook i' the 
 
 game. 
 Retarded sentence, till this deed of death 
 Is thrown in, as it were, last bale to boat 
 Crammed to the edge with cargo — or passen- 
 gers ? 
 ' Trecentos inserts: ohe.jam satis est! 
 
 Hue appelle ! ' — passengers, the word must be. 
 Long siuce, the boat was loaded to my eyes. 
 To hear the rabble and brabble, you 'd oaU the 
 
 Fused and confused past human finding out. 
 One calls the square round, t' other the round 
 
 square — 
 And pardonably in that first surprise 
 0' the blood that fell and splashed the dia- 
 gram: 
 But now we 've used our eyes to the violeni 
 
 hue 
 Can't we look through the crimson and trace 
 
 lines ? 
 It makes a man despair of history, 
 Euaebius and the established fact — fig's end ! 
 Oh, give the fools their Trial, rattle away 
 With the leash of lawyers, two on either side — 
 One barks, one bites, — Masters Arcangeli 
 And Spreti, — that 's the husband's ultimate 
 
 hope 
 Against the Fisc and the other kind of Fisc, 
 Bound to do barking for the wife : bow — wow ! 
 Why, Excellency, we and his Highness here 
 Would settle the matter as sufficiently 
 As ever will Advocate This and Fiscal That 
 And Judge the Other, with even — a word and 
 
 a wink — 
 We well know who for ultimate arbiter. 
 Let us beware o' the basset-table — lest 
 We jog the elbow of Her Eminence, 
 Jostle his cards, — he '11 rap you out a . . . st ! 
 By the window-seat ! And here 's the Marquis 
 
 too! 
 Indulge me but a moment ; if I fail 
 — Favored with such an audience, under- 
 stand ! — 
 To set things right, why, class me with the 
 
 mob 
 As understander of the mind of man ! 
 
 The mob, — now, that 's just how the error 
 
 comes ! 
 Bethink you that you have to deal with p/e6s, 
 The commonalty ; this is an episode 
 In burgess-life, — why seek to aggrandize. 
 Idealize, deriaturalize the class ? 
 People talk just as if they had to do 
 With a noble pair that . . . Excellency, your 
 
 ear! 
 Stoop to me. Highness, — listen and look yoiu^ 
 
 selves ! 
 
 This Pietro, this Violante, live their life 
 At Rome in the easy way that 's far from worsi 
 Even for their betters, — themselves love them- 
 selves, 
 Spend their own oil in feeding their own lamp 
 That their own faces may grow bright thereby. 
 They get to fifty and over : how 's the lamp ? 
 Full to the depth o' the wick, — moneys so 
 
 much; 
 And also with a remnant, — so much more 
 Of moneys, — which there 's no consuming now, 
 But, when the wick shall moulder out some day, 
 Failing fresh twist of tow to use up dregs. 
 Will lie a prize for the passer-by, — to wit. 
 Any one that can prove himself the heir, 
 
TERTIUM QUID 
 
 4S7 
 
 Seeingj the couple are wanting in a child : 
 Meantime their wick swims in the sate broad 
 
 bowl 
 0' the middle rank, — not raised a beacon's 
 
 height 
 For wind to ravage, nor dropped till lamp 
 
 graze ground 
 Like cresset, mudlarks poke now here now 
 
 there, 
 Going their rounds to probe the ruts i' the road 
 Or fish the luck o' the puddle. Pietro's soul 
 Was satisfied when crony smirked, '* No wine 
 Like Pietro's, and he drinks it every day ! " 
 His wife's heart swelled her bodice, joyed its 
 
 fiU 
 When neighbors turned heads wistfully at 
 
 church. 
 Sighed at the load of lace that came to pray. 
 Well, having got through fifty years of flare, 
 They burn out so, indulge so their dear selves, 
 That Fietro finds himself in debt at last, 
 As he were any lordling of us all : 
 And, now that dark begins to creep on day. 
 Creditors grow uneasy, talk aside, 
 Take counsel, then importune all at once. 
 For if the good fat rosy careless man. 
 Who has not laid a ducat by, decease — 
 Let the lamp fall, no heir at hand to catch — 
 Why, being childless, there 's a spilth i' the 
 
 street 
 0' the remnant, there 's a scramble for the 
 
 dregs 
 By the stranger : so, they grant him no loi^ 
 
 day 
 But come in a body, clamor to be paid. 
 
 What's his resource? He asks and straight 
 
 obtains 
 The customary largess, dole dealt out 
 To, what we call our "poor dear shamefaced 
 
 ones," 
 In secret once a month to spare the shame 
 O' the slothful and the spendthrift, — pauper- 
 saints 
 The Pope puts meat i' the month of, ravens 
 
 they. 
 And providence he — just what the mob ad- 
 mires ! 
 That is, instead of putting a prompt foot 
 On selfish worthless human slugs whose slime 
 Has failed to lubricate their path in life. 
 Why, the Pope picks the first ripe fruit that 
 
 falls 
 And gracious puts it in the vermin's way. 
 Pietro could never save a dollar ? Straight 
 He must be subsidized at our expense : 
 And for his wife — the harmless household 
 
 sheep 
 One ought not to see harassed in her age — ■ 
 Judge, by the way she bore adversity, 
 O' the patient nature you ask pity for I 
 How long, now, would the roughest market- 
 man. 
 Handling the creatures huddled to the knife, 
 Harass a miitton ere she made a mouth 
 Or menaced biting^? Yet the poor sheep here, 
 Violante, the old innocent burgess-wife. 
 In her first difficulty showed great teeth 
 
 Fit to crunch up and swallow a good round 
 
 crime. 
 She meditates the tenure of the Trust, 
 Fidei commissum is the lawyei'-phrase. 
 These funds that only want an heir to take — 
 Goes o'er the gamut o' the creditor's cry 
 By semitones from whine to snarl high up 
 And growl down low, one scale in sundry 
 
 keys, — 
 Pauses with a little compunction for the faco 
 Of Pietro frustrate of its ancient cheer, — 
 Never a bottle now for friend at need, — 
 Comes to a stop on her own frittered lace 
 And neighborly condolences thereat. 
 Then makes her mind up, sees the thing to do : 
 And so, deliberate, snaps house-book clasp, 
 Posts off to vespers, missal beneath arm, 
 Passes the proper San Lorenzo by, 
 Dives down a little lane to the left, is lost 
 In a labyrinth of dwellings best unnamed. 
 Selects a certain blind one, black at base. 
 Blinking at top, — the sign of we know 
 
 what, — 
 One candle in a casement set to wink 
 Streetward, do service to no shrine inside, — 
 Mounts thither by the filthy flight of stairs. 
 Holding the cord by the wall, to the tip-top, 
 Gropes for the door i' the dark, ajar of course, 
 Kaps, opens, enters in ; up starts a thing 
 Naked as needs be — " What, you rogue, 't is 
 
 you? 
 Back, — how can I have taken a farthing yet ? 
 Mercy on me, poor sinner that I am ! 
 Here 's . . . why, I took you for Madonna's self 
 With all that sudden swirl of silk i' the pla«e I 
 What may your pleasure be, my bonny 
 
 dame?" 
 Your Excellency supplies aught left obscure ? 
 One of those women that abound in Rome, 
 Whose needs oblige them eke out one poor trade 
 By another vile one : her ostensible work 
 Was washing clothes, out in the open air 
 At the cistern by Citorio ; her true trade — 
 Whispering to idlers, when they stopped and 
 
 praised 
 The ankles she let liberally shine 
 In kneeling at the slab by the fountain-side, 
 That there was plenty more to criticise 
 At home, that eve, i' the house where candle 
 
 blinked 
 Decorously above, and all was done 
 I' tlie holy fear of God and cheap beside. 
 Violante, now, had seen this woman wash, 
 Noticed and envied her propitious shape. 
 Tracked her home to her house-top, noted too, 
 And now was come to tempt her and propose 
 A bargain far more shameful than the first 
 Which trafficked her virginity away 
 For a melon and three pauls at twelve years 
 
 old. 
 Five minutes' talk with this poor child of Eve, 
 Struck was the bargain, business at an end — 
 " Then, six months hence, that peraon whom 
 
 ycu trust. 
 Comes, fetches whatsoever babe it be ; 
 I keep the price and secret, you the babe. 
 Paying beside for mass to make all straight : 
 Meantime, I pouch the earnest-raoney-piece." 
 
4S8 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 Down-stairs again goes furablingr by the rope 
 Violante, triumphing in a flourish of fixe 
 From her own brain, self-lit by such success, — 
 Gains church in time for the Magnificat, 
 And gives forth "My reproof is taken away, 
 And blessed shall mankind proclaim me now," 
 So that the oiiiciating priest turns round 
 To see who proffers the obstreperous praise : 
 Then home to Pietro, the enraptured-much 
 But puzzled-more when told the wondrous 
 
 news — 
 How orisons and works of charity, 
 (Beside that pair of pinners and a coif, 
 Birthday surprise last Wednesday was five 
 
 weeks) 
 Had borne fruit in the autumn of liis life, — 
 They, or the Orvieto in a double dose. 
 Anyhow, she must keep house next six months. 
 Lie on the settle, avoid the three-legged stool, 
 And, chiefly, not be crossed in wish or whim. 
 And the result was like to be an heir. 
 
 Accordingly, when time was come about, 
 He found himself the sire indeed of this 
 Francesca Vittoria Pompilia and the rest 
 0' the names whereby he sealed her his, next 
 
 day. 
 A crime complete in its way is here, I hope ? 
 Lies to God, lies to man, every way lies 
 To nature and civility and the mode : 
 Flat robbery of the proper heirs thus foiled 
 O' the due succession, — and, what followed 
 
 thence. 
 Robbery of God, through the confessor's ear 
 Debarred the most noteworthy incident 
 When all else done and undone twelvemonth 
 
 through 
 Was put in evidence at Easter-time. 
 AH other peccadillos ! — but this one 
 To the priest who comes next day to dine with 
 
 us? 
 *T were inexpedient ; decency forbade. 
 
 Is so far clear ? You know Violante now, 
 Compute her capability of crime 
 By this authentic instance ? Black hard cold 
 Crime like a stone you kick up with your foot 
 I' the middle of a field ? 
 
 I thought as much. 
 But now, a question, — how long does it lie, 
 The bad and barren bit of stuff you kick. 
 Before encroached on and encompassed round 
 With minute moss, weed, wild-flower — made 
 
 alive 
 By worm, and fly, and foot of the free bird ? 
 Your Highness, — healthy minds let bygones 
 
 be. 
 Leave old crimes to grow young and virtuous- 
 like 
 I' the sun and air ; so time treats ugly deeds : 
 They take the natural blessing of all change. 
 There was the joy o' the husband silly-sooth. 
 The softening of the wife's old wicked heart, 
 Virtues to right and left, profusely paid 
 If so they might compensate the saved sin. 
 And then the sudden existence, dewy-dear, 
 0' the rose above the dungheap, the pure child 
 
 As good as new created, since withdrawn 
 From the horror of the pre-appointed lot 
 With the unknown father and the mother 
 
 known 
 Too well, — some fourteen years of squalid 
 
 youth. 
 And then libertinage, disease, the grave — 
 Hell in life here, hereafter life in hell: 
 Look at that horror and this soft repose ! 
 Why, moralist, the sin has saved a soul ! 
 Then, even the palpable grievance to the 
 
 heirs — 
 'Faith, this was no frank setting hand to throat 
 And robbing a man, but . . . Excellency, by 
 
 your leave. 
 How did yon get that marvel of a gem. 
 The sapphire with the Graces grand and Greek ? 
 The story is, stooping to pick a stone 
 From the pathway through a vineyard — no- 
 man's-land — 
 To pelt a sparrow with, you chanced on this : 
 Why now, do those five clowns o' the family 
 O' the vinedresser digest their porridge worse 
 That not one keeps it in his goatskin pouch 
 To do flint's-service with the tinder-box ? 
 Don't cheat me, don't cheat you, don't cheat a 
 
 friend I 
 But are you so hard on who jostles just 
 A stranger with no natural sort of claim 
 To the havings and the holdings (here 's the 
 
 point) 
 Unless by misadventure, and defect 
 Of that which ought to be — nay, which there 's 
 
 none 
 Would dare so much as wish to profit by — 
 Since who dares put in just so many words 
 " May Pietro fail to have a child, please God ! 
 So shall his house and goods belong to me. 
 The sooner that his heart will pine betinaes " ? 
 Well then, God does n't please, nor heart shall 
 
 pine! 
 Because he has a child at last, you see. 
 Or selfsame thing as though a child it were, 
 He thinks, whose sole concern it is to think : 
 If he accepts it why should you demur ? 
 
 Moreover, say that certain sin there seem. 
 The proper process of unsinning sin 
 Is to begin well-doing somehow else. 
 Pietro, — remember, with no sin at all 
 I' the substitution, — why, this gift of God 
 Flung in his lap from over Paradise 
 Steadied him in a moment, set him straight 
 On the good path he had been straying irora. 
 Henceforward no more wilfulness and waste. 
 Cuppings, carousings, — these a sponge wiped 
 
 out. 
 All sort of self-denial was easy now 
 For the child's sake, the chatelaine to be. 
 Who must want much and might want who 
 
 knows what ? 
 And so, the debts were paid, habits reformed, 
 Expense curtailed, the dowry set to grow. 
 As for the wife, — I said, hers Ae whole sin : 
 So, hers the exemplary penance. 'T was a text 
 Whereon folk preached and praised, the district 
 
 through : 
 " Oh, make us happy and you make us good 1 
 
TERTIUM QUID 
 
 459 
 
 It all comes of God givin;, her a child : 
 Such giaces follow God's best earthly gift I " 
 
 Here you put by my guard, pass to my heart 
 By the home-thrust — '' There 's a lie at base 
 
 of all.'* 
 Why, thou exact Prince, is it a pearl or no, 
 Yon globe upon the Principessa's neck ? 
 That great round glory of pellucid stuff, 
 A fish secreted round a grain of grit ! 
 Do you call it worthless for the worthless core V 
 (She does n't, who well knows what she changed 
 
 for it.) 
 So, to our brace of burgesses again ! 
 You see so far i' the story, who was right, 
 Who wronff, who neither, don't you ? What, 
 
 you don't V 
 Eh ? Well, adndt there 's somewhat dark i' 
 
 the case, 
 Let 's on — the rest shall clear, I promise you. 
 Leap over a dozen years : you find, these passed, 
 An old good easy creditable sire, 
 A careful housewife's beammg bustling face. 
 Both wrapped up in the love of their ^ne child. 
 The strange tall pale beautiful creature grown 
 Lily-like out o' the cleft i' the sun-smit rock 
 To bow its white miraculous birth of buds 
 I' the way of wandering Joseph and his 
 
 spouse^ — 
 So painters fancy : here it was a fact. 
 And this their lily, — could they but transplant 
 And set in vase to stand by Solomon's porch 
 'Twixt lion and lion ! — this Pompilia of theirs, 
 Could they see worthily married, well bestowed. 
 In house and home ! And why despair of this 
 With Rome to choose from, save the topmost 
 
 rank? 
 Themselves would help the choice with heart 
 
 and soul, 
 Throw their late savings in a comra^on heap 
 To go with the dowry, and be followed in time 
 By the heritage legitimately hers : 
 And when such paragon was found and fixed. 
 Why, they might chant their ^'' Nunc di- 
 
 mittis " straight. 
 
 Indeed the prize was simply full to a fault. 
 Exorbitant for the suitor they should seek, 
 And social class should choose among, these 
 
 cits. 
 Yet there 's a latitude : exceptional white 
 Amid the general brown o' the species, lurks 
 A burgess nearly an aristocrat. 
 Legitimately in reach : look out for him ! 
 What banker, merchant, has seen better days, 
 What second rate painter a-pushing up. 
 Poet arslipping down, shall bid the best 
 For this young beauty with the thumping purse ? 
 Alack, were it but one of such as these 
 So like the real thing that they pass for it, 
 All had gone well ! Unluckily, poor souls. 
 It proved to be the impossible thing itself ; 
 Truth and not sham : hence ruin to them all. 
 
 For, Guido Franceschini was the head 
 Of an old family in Arezzo, old 
 To that degree they could afford be poor 
 Better than most : the case is common too. 
 
 Out of the vast door 'scutcheoned overhead. 
 
 Creeps out a serving-man on Saturdays 
 
 To cater for the week, — turns up anon 
 
 I' the market, chafferii^ for the lamb's least 
 
 ^ , leg, 
 
 Or the quartei^fowl, less entrails, claws and 
 
 comb : 
 Then back again with prize, — a liver begged 
 Into the bargain, gizzard overlooked. 
 He 's mincing these to give the beans a taste. 
 When, at your knock, lie leaves the simmering 
 
 soup. 
 Waits on the curious stranger-visitant, 
 Napkin in half-wiped hand, to show the rooms, 
 Point pictures out have hung their hundred 
 
 yeai-s, 
 " Priceless," he tells you, — puts in his place at 
 
 once 
 The man of money : yes, you 're banker-kuig 
 Or merchant-kaiser, wallow in your wealth 
 While patron, the house-master, can't afford 
 To stop our ceiling-hole that rain so rots : 
 But he 's the man of mark, and there 's his 
 
 shield, 
 And yonder 's the famed Rafael, first in kind, 
 The painter painted for his grandfather, 
 And you have paid to see : ' ' Good morning, 
 
 Sir ! " 
 Such is the law of compensation. Still 
 The poverty was getting nigh acute ; 
 There gaped so many noble mouths to feed, 
 Beans must sufiBce unflavored of the fowl. 
 The mother, — hers would be a spun-out life 
 I' the nature of things; the sisters had done 
 
 well 
 And married men of reasonable rank : 
 But that sort of illumination stops, 
 Throws back no heat upon the parent-hearth. 
 The family instinct felt out for its fire 
 To the Church, — the Church traditionally helps 
 A second son : and such was Paolo, 
 Established here at Rome these thirty years, 
 Who played the regular game, — priest and 
 
 Abate, 
 Made friends, owned house and land, became of 
 
 use 
 To a personage : his course lay clear enough. 
 The youngest caught the sympathetic flame, 
 And, though unfledged wings kept him still i' 
 
 the cage. 
 Yet he shot up to be a Canon, so 
 Clung to the higher perch and crowed in hope. 
 Even our Guido, eldest brother, went 
 As far i' the way o' the Church as safety seem-ed, 
 He being Head o' the House, ordained to wive,^ 
 So, could but dally with an Order or two 
 And testify good-will i' the cause : he clipt 
 His top-hair and thus far affected Christ. 
 But main promotion must fall otherwise. 
 Though still from the side o' the Church : and 
 
 here was he 
 At Rome, since first youth, worn threadbare of 
 
 soul 
 By forty-six years' rubbing on hard life, 
 Getting fast tired o' the game whose word is — 
 
 *'Wait!" 
 When one day, — he too having his Cardinal 
 To serve in some ambiguous sort, a-s serve 
 
460 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 To draw the coach the plumes o' the horses' 
 
 heads, — 
 The Cardinal saw fit to dispense with him, 
 Kide with one plame the less ; and o£E it 
 
 dropped. 
 
 Guido thus left, — with a youth spent in vain 
 And not a penny in purse to show for it, — 
 Advised with Paolo, bent no doubt in chafe 
 The black brows somewhat formidably, growled 
 " Where is the good I came to get at ilome ? 
 Where the repayment of the servitude 
 To a j)urple popinjay, whose feet I kiss, 
 Knowing his father wiped the shoes of mine ? " 
 
 " Patience," pats Paolo the recalcitrant — 
 " You have not had, so far, the proper luck. 
 Nor do my gains suffice to keep us both : 
 A modest competency is mine, not more. 
 You are the Count however, yours the style. 
 Heirdom and state, — you can't expect all good. 
 Had I, now, held your hand of cards . . . well, 
 
 well — 
 Wliat 's yet unplayed, I '11 look at, by your 
 
 leave. 
 Over your shoulder, — I who made my game. 
 Let 's see, if 1 can't help to handle yours. 
 Fie on you, all the Honors in your fist, 
 Countship, Housebeadship, — how have you 
 
 misdealt ! 
 Why, in the first place, these will marry a man ! 
 Notum tonsoribus ! To the Tonsor then ! 
 Come, clear your looks, and choose your fresh- 
 est suit. 
 And, after function 's done with, down we go 
 To the woman-dealer in perukes, a wench 
 I and some others settled in the shop 
 At Place Colonna ; she 's an oracle. Hmm I 
 ' Dear, 't is my brother : brother, 't is my dear. 
 Dear, give us counsel ! Whom do you suggest 
 As properest party in the quarter round 
 For the Count here ? — he is minded to take 
 
 wife. 
 And further tells me he intends to slip 
 Twenty zecehines under the bottom-scalp 
 Of his old wig when he sends it to revive 
 For the wedding : and I add a trifle too. 
 You know what personage I 'm potent with.' " 
 And so plumped out Pompilia's name the first. 
 She told them of the household and its ways, 
 The easy husband and the shrewder wife 
 In Via V ittoria, — how the tall young girl, 
 With hair black as yon patch and eyes as big 
 As yon pomander to make freckles fly, 
 Would have ao much for certain, and so much 
 
 more 
 In likelihood, — why, it suited, slipt as smooth 
 As the Pope's pantoufle does on the Pope's foot. 
 " I 'U to the husband ! " Guido ups and cries. 
 " Ay, so you 'd play your last court-card, no 
 
 doubt ! " 
 Puts Paolo in with a groan — " Only, you see, 
 'T is I, this time, that supervise your lead. 
 Priests play with women, inaids, wives, mothers 
 
 — why? 
 These play with men and take them off our 
 
 hands. 
 Did I come, counsel with some cut-beard gruff 
 
 Or rather this sleek young-old barberess ? 
 Go, brother, stand you rapt in the ante-room 
 Of Her Efficacity my Cardinal _ 
 
 For an hour, — he likes to have lord-smtora 
 
 lounge, — 
 While I betake myself to the gray mare, 
 The better horse, — how wise the people's 
 
 word ! — 
 And wait on Madam Violante.'' 
 
 Said and done. 
 He was at Via Vittoria in three skips : 
 Proposed at once to fill up the one want 
 0' the burgess-family which, wealthy enough. 
 And comfortable to heart's desire, yet crouched 
 Outside a gate to heaven, — locked, bolted, 
 
 barred. 
 Whereof Count Guido had a key he kept 
 Under his pillow, but Pompilia's hand 
 Might slide behind his neck and piUer thence. 
 The key was fairy ; its mere mention made 
 Violante feel the thing shoot one sharp ray 
 That reached the womanly heart : so — ** I as- 
 sent ! 
 Yours be Pompilia, hers and ours that key 
 To all the glories of the greater life ! 
 There 's Pietro to convince : leave that to me ! " 
 
 Then was the matter broached to Pietro ; then 
 Did Pietro make demand and get response 
 That in the Countship was a truth, but in 
 The counting up of the Count's cash, a lie. 
 He thereupon stroked grave his chin, looked 
 
 great. 
 Declined the honor. Then the wife wiped tear, 
 Winked with the other eye turned Paolo-ward, 
 Whispered Pompilia, stole to church at eve, 
 Found Guido there and got the marriage done, 
 And finally begged pardon at the feet 
 Of her dear lord and master. Whereupon 
 Quoth Pietro — " Let us make the best of 
 
 things!" 
 "I knew your love would license us," quoth 
 
 she : 
 Quoth Paolo once more, " Mothers, wives and 
 
 maids. 
 These be the tools wherewith priests manage 
 
 men." 
 
 Now, here take breath and ask, — which bird 
 
 o' the brace 
 Decoyed the other into clapnet ? Who 
 Was fool, who knave ? Neither and both, per- 
 chance. 
 There was a bargain mentally proposed 
 On each side, straight and plain and fair 
 
 enough ; 
 Mind knew its own mind ; but wben mind must 
 
 speak, 
 The bai-gain have expression in plain terms. 
 There came the blunder incident to words. 
 And in the clumsy process, fair turned foul. 
 The straight backbone-thought of the crooked 
 
 speech 
 Were just — " I Guido truck my name and rank 
 For so much money and youth and female 
 
 charms. — 
 We Pietro and Violante give our child 
 
TERTIUM QUID 
 
 461 
 
 And wealth to you for a rise i' the world 
 
 theieby." 
 Such naked truth while chambered in the brain 
 Shocks nowise : wsJk it forth by way of 
 
 tongue, — 
 Out on the cynical unseemliness ! 
 Hence was the need, on either side, of a lie 
 To serve as decent wrappage : so, Uuido gives 
 Money for money, — and they, bride for groom , 
 Having, he, not a doit, they, not a child 
 Honestly theirs, but this poor waif and stray. 
 According to the words, each cheated each j 
 But in the inexpressive barter of thoughts. 
 Each did give and did take the thing designed. 
 The rank on this side and the cash on that — 
 Attained the object of the traffic, so. 
 The way of the world, the daily bargain struck 
 In the first market ! Why sells Jack his ware ? 
 " For the sake of serving an old customer." 
 Why does Jill buy it ? Simply not to break 
 A custom, pass the old stall the first time." 
 Why, you know where the gist is of the ex- 
 change : 
 Each sees a profit, throws the fine words in. 
 Don't be too hard o' the pair I Had each pre- 
 tence 
 Been simultaneously discovered, stript 
 From off the body o' the transaction, just 
 As when a cook (wiU Excellency forgive ?) 
 Strips away those long rough superfluous legs 
 From either side the crayfish, leaving folk 
 A meal all meat henceforth, no gariushry, 
 (With your respect. Prince !) — balance had 
 
 been kept, 
 No party blamed the other, — so, starting fair. 
 All subsequent fence of wrong returned by 
 
 wrong 
 I' the matrimonial thrust and parry, at least 
 Had followed on equal terms. But, as it 
 
 chanced. 
 One party had the advantage, saw the cheat 
 Of the other first and kept its own concealed : 
 And the luck o' the first discovery fell, beside, 
 To the least adroit and self-possessed o' the pair. 
 'T was foolish Pietro and bus wife saw first 
 The nobleman was penniless, and screamed 
 " We are cheated ! " 
 
 Such unprofitable noise 
 Angers at all times : but when those who plague. 
 Do it from inside your own house and home. 
 Gnats which yourself have closed the curtain 
 
 round, 
 Noise goes too near the brain and makes you 
 
 mad. 
 The gnats say, Guido used the candle-flame 
 Unfairly, — worsened that first bad of his, 
 By practising all kinds of cruelty 
 To oust them and suppress the wail and whine, — 
 That speedily he so scared and bulUed them. 
 Fain were they, long before five months had 
 
 To beg him grant, from what was once their 
 
 wealth. 
 Just so much as would help them back to Borne, 
 Where, when they finished paying the last doit 
 0' the dowry, they might beg from door to door. 
 So say the Comoarini — as if it came 
 
 Of pure resentment for this worse than bad, 
 That then Violante, feeling conscience prick, 
 Confessed her substitution of the child 
 Whence all the harm fell, — and that Pietro 
 
 first 
 Bethought him of advantage to himself 
 1' the deed, as part revenge, part remedy 
 For all miscalculation in the pact. 
 
 On the other hand, " Not so ! " Guido retorts — 
 " I am the wronged, solely, from first to last, 
 Who gave the di>^ty I engaged to give, 
 Which was, is, cannot but continue gain. 
 My being poor was a by-circumstance, 
 Miscalculated piece of untowardness. 
 Might end to-morrow did heaven's windows 
 
 ope. 
 Or uncle die and leave me his estate. 
 You should have put up with the minor flaw, 
 Getting the main prize of the jewel. If wealth, 
 Not rank, had been prime object in your 
 
 thoughts, 
 Why not have taken the butcher's son, the boy 
 0' the baker or candlestick-maker ? In all the 
 
 rest, 
 It was yourselves broke compact and played 
 
 false, 
 And made a life in common impossible. 
 Show me the stipulation of our bond 
 That you should make your profit of being in: 
 
 side 
 My house, to hustle and edge me out o' tht> 
 
 same, 
 First make a laughing-stock of mine and me. 
 Then round us in the ears from mom to night 
 (Because we show wry faces at your mirth) 
 That you are robbed, starved, beaten and wha* 
 
 not ! 
 You fled a hell of your own lighting-up, 
 Pay for your own miscalculation too : 
 You thought nobility, gained at any price, 
 Would suit and satisfy, — find the mistake. 
 And now retahate, not on yourselves, but me. 
 And how ? By telling me, i' the face of th» 
 
 world, 
 I it is have been cheated all this while. 
 Abominably and irreparably, — my name 
 Given to a cur-cast mongrel, a drab's brat, 
 A beggar's by-blow, — thus depriving me 
 Of what yourselves allege the whole and sole 
 Aim on my part i' the marriage, — money, ttt 
 
 wit. 
 This thrust I have to parry by a guard 
 Which leaves me open to a counter-thrust 
 On the other side, — no way but there 's a pass 
 Clean through me. If I prove, as I hope to do. 
 There 's not one truth in this your odious tale 
 0' the buying, selling, substituting — prove 
 Your daughter was and is your daughter, — 
 
 well. 
 And her dowry hers and therefore mine, — what 
 
 then ? 
 Why, where 's the appropriate punishment for 
 
 this 
 Enormous lie hatched for mere malice' sake 
 To ruin me ? Is that a wrong or no ? 
 And if I try revenge for remedy. 
 Can I well make it strong and bitter enough ? " 
 
462 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 I anticipate however — only ask, 
 
 Which of the two here sinned most ? A nice 
 
 point ! 
 Which brownness is least black, — decide who 
 
 can, 
 Wager-by-battle-of-cheating ! What do you say. 
 Highness ? Suppose, your Excellency, we leave 
 The question at this stage, proceed to the next, 
 Both parties step out, tight their prize upon, 
 In the eye o' the world 'r 
 
 They hrandish law 'gainst law ; 
 The grinding of such blades, each parry of each, 
 Throws terrible sparks off, over and above the 
 
 thrusts. 
 And makes more sinister the fight, to the eye. 
 Than the very wounds that follow. Beside the 
 
 tale 
 Which the Comparini have to re-assert. 
 They needs must write, print, publish all abroad 
 The straitnesses of Guido's household life — 
 The petty nothings we bear privately 
 But break down under when fools flock to jeer. 
 What is it all to the facts o' the couple's case, 
 How helps it prove Porapilia not their child. 
 If Guido's mother, brother, kith and kin 
 Fare ill, lie hard, lack clothes, lack fire, lack 
 
 food ? 
 That 's one more wrong than needs. 
 
 On the other hand, 
 Guido, — whose cue is to dispute the truth 
 0' the tale, reject the shame it throws on 
 
 him, — 
 He may retaKate, fight his foe in turn 
 And welcome, we allow. Ay, but he can't I 
 He 's at home, only acts by proxy here ; 
 Law may meet law, — but all the gibes and 
 
 jeers. 
 The superfluity of naughtiness. 
 Those libels on his House, — how reach at 
 
 them? 
 Two hateful faces, grinning all aglow. 
 Not only make par^e of spoil they filched. 
 But foiil him from the height of a tower, you 
 
 see. 
 Unluckily temptation is at hand — 
 T'o take revenge on a trifle overlooked, 
 A pet lamb they have left in reach outside. 
 Whose first bleat, when he plucks the wool 
 
 away. 
 Will strike the grinners grave : his wife re- 
 mains, 
 Who, four months earlier, some thirteen years 
 
 old. 
 Never a mile away from mother's house 
 And petted to the height of her desire. 
 Was told one morning that her fate had come. 
 She must be married — just as, a month before. 
 Her mother told her she must comb her hair 
 And twist her curls into one knot behind. 
 These fools forgot their pet lamb, fed with 
 
 flowers. 
 Then 'tieed as usual by the bit of cake. 
 Out of the bower into the butchery. 
 Plague her, he plagues them threefold : but 
 
 how plague ? 
 The world may have its word to say to that : 
 
 You can't do some things with impunity. 
 What remains . . . well, it is an ugly thought . , . 
 But that he drive herself to plague herself — 
 Herself disgrace herself and so disgrace 
 Who seek to disgrace Guido ? 
 
 There 's the clue 
 To what else seems gratuitously vile, 
 If, as is said, from this time forth the rack 
 Was tried upon Pompilia : 't was to wrench 
 Her limbs into exposure that brings shame. 
 The aim o' the cruelty being so crueller still. 
 That cruelty almost grows compassion's self 
 Could one attribute it to mere return 
 0' the parents' outrage, wrong avenging wrong. 
 They see in this a deeper deadlier aim. 
 Not to vex just a body they held dear, 
 But blacken too a soul they boasted white, 
 And show the world their saint in a lover's 
 
 arms. 
 No matter how driven thither, — so they say. 
 
 On the other hand, so much is easily said. 
 And Gnido lacks not an apologist. 
 The pair had nobody but themselves to blame. 
 Being selfish beasts throughout no less, no 
 more : 
 
 — Cared for themselves, their supposed good, 
 
 nought else. 
 And brought about the marriage ; good proved 
 
 bad. 
 As little they cared for her its victim — nay, 
 Meant she should stay behind and take the 
 
 chance, 
 If haply they might wriggle themselves free. 
 They baited their own hook to catch a fish 
 With this poor worm, failed o' the prize, and 
 
 then 
 Sought how to unbait tackle, let worm float 
 Or sink, amuse the monster whUe they 'scaped. 
 Under the best stars Hymen brings above, 
 Had all been honesty on either side, 
 A common sincere effort to good end. 
 Still, this would prove a difficult problem, 
 
 Prince ! 
 
 — Given, a fair wife, aged thirteen years, 
 A husband poor, care-bitten, sorrow-sunk. 
 Little, long - nosed, bush -bearded, lantern- 
 jawed. 
 
 Forty-six years old, — place the two grown one, 
 She, cut off sheer from every natural aid, 
 In a strange town with no familiar face — 
 He, in his own parade-ground or retreat 
 If need were, free from challenge, much less 
 
 check 
 To an irritated, disappointed will — 
 How evolve happiness from such a match ? 
 'T were hard to serve up a congenial dish 
 Out of these ill-agreeing morsels, Duke, 
 By the best exercise of the cook's craft. 
 Best interspersion of spice, salt and sweet ! 
 But let two ghastly souUions concoct mess 
 With brimstone, pitch, vitriol and devil's- 
 
 dung — 
 Throw in abuse o' the man, his bodv and soul, 
 Kith, kin and generation, shake allslab 
 At Rome, Arezzo, for the world to nose. 
 Then end by publishing, for fiend's arch-prank, 
 
TERTIUM QUID 
 
 463 
 
 That, over and above sauce to the meat's self, 
 Why, even the meat, bedevilled thus in dish, 
 Was never a pheasant but a carrion-crow — 
 Prince, what will then the natural loathing 
 
 be? 
 What wonder if this ? — the compound plague 
 
 o' the pair 
 Pricked Guido, — not to take the course they 
 
 hoped, 
 That is, submit him to their statement's truth, 
 Accept its obvious promise of relief. 
 And thrust them out of doors the girl acain 
 Since the girl's dowry would not enter there, 
 — Quit of the one if balked of the other ; no ! 
 Kather did rage and hate so work in him, 
 Their product proved the horrible conceit 
 That he should plot and plan and bring to pass 
 His wife might, of her own free will and deed, 
 Relieve him of ner presence, get her gone, 
 And yet leave all the dowry safe behind. 
 Confirmed his own henceforward past dispute, 
 While blotting out, as by a belch of hell, 
 Their triumph in her misery and death. 
 
 You see, the man was Aretine, had touch 
 0' the subtle air that breeds the subtle wit ; 
 Was noble too, of old blood thrice-refined 
 That slirinks from clownish coarseness in dis- 
 gust: 
 Allow that such an one may take revenge. 
 You don't expect he 'U catch up stone and fling, 
 Or try cross-buttock, or whirl quarter-staff ? 
 Instead of the honest drubbing clowns bestow, 
 When out of temper at the dinner spoilt. 
 On meddling mother - in - law and tiresome 
 
 wife, — 
 Substitute for the clown a nobleman, 
 And you have Guido, practising, 't is said, 
 Immitigahly from the very first. 
 The finer vengeance : this, they say, the fact 
 0' the famous letter ^ows — the writing 
 
 traced 
 At Guido's instance by the timid wife 
 Over the pencilled words himself writ first — 
 Wherein she, who could neither write nor read, 
 Was made unblushingly declare a tale 
 To the brother, the Abate then in Rome, 
 How her putative parents had impressed. 
 On their departure, their enjoinment ; bade 
 " We being safely arrived here, foUow, you ! 
 Poison your husband, rob, set fire to all, 
 And then by means o' the gallant you procure 
 With ease, by helpful eye and ready tongue. 
 Some brave youth ready to dare, do and die, 
 You shall run off and merrily reach Rome 
 Where we may live like flies in honey-j>ot : " — 
 Such being exact the programme of the course 
 Imputed her as carried to effect. 
 
 They also say, — to keep her straight therein. 
 All sort of torture was piled, pain on pain, 
 On either side PorapUia's path of life. 
 Built roimd about and over against by fear, 
 Circumvallated month by month, and week 
 By week, and day by day, and hour by hour. 
 Close, closer and yet closer stUl with pain, 
 No outlet from the encroaching pain save just 
 Where stood one savior like a piece of heaven, 
 
 Hell's arms would strain round but for this 
 
 blue gap. 
 She, they say further, first tried every chink, 
 Every imaginable break i' the fire. 
 As way of escape : ran to the Commissary, 
 Who bade her not malign his friend her spouse ; 
 Flung herself thrice at the Archbishop's feet, 
 Where three times the Archbishop let her lie. 
 Spend her whole sorrow and sob full heait: 
 
 forth. 
 And then took up the slight load from the 
 
 ground 
 And bore it back for husband to chastise, — 
 Mildly of course, — but natural right is right. 
 So went she slipping ever yet catching at help, 
 Missing the high till come to lowest and last. 
 To wit, a certain friar of mean degree. 
 Who heard her story in confession, wept, 
 Crossed himself, showed the man within the 
 
 monk. 
 *' Then, will you save me, you the one i' the 
 
 world ? 
 I cannot even write my woes, nor put 
 My prayer for help in words a friend may 
 
 read, — 
 I no more own a coin than have an hour 
 Free of observance, — I was watched to church, 
 Am watched now, shall be watched back pres- 
 ently, — 
 How buy the skill of scribe i' the market- 
 place ? 
 Pray you, write down and send whatever I say 
 O' the need I have my parents take me hence ! 
 The good man rubbed his eyes and could not 
 
 choose — 
 Let her dictate her letter in such a sense 
 That parents, to save breaking down a wall. 
 Might lift her over : she went back, heaven in 
 
 heart. 
 Then the good man took counsel of his couch. 
 Woke and thought twice, the second thought 
 
 the best ; 
 " Here am I, foolish body that I be. 
 Caught all but pushing, teaching, who but I, 
 My betters their plain duty, — what, I dare 
 Help a case the Archbishop would not help, 
 Mend matters, peradventure, God loves mar ? 
 What hath the married life but strifes and 
 
 For proper dispensation ? So a fool 
 
 Once touched the ark, — poor Uzzah that I 
 
 am ! 
 Oh married ones, much rather should I bid, 
 In patience all of ye possess your souls ! 
 This life is brief and troubles die with it : 
 Where were the prick to soar up homeward 
 
 else?" 
 So saying, he burnt the letter he had writ. 
 Said Ave for her intention, in its place. 
 Took snuff and comfort, and had done with 
 
 aU. 
 Then the grim arms stretched yet a little more 
 And each touched each, all but one streak i' 
 
 the midst, 
 Whereat stood Caponsacchi, who cried, " This 
 
 way. 
 Out by me 1 Hesitate one moment more 
 And the fire shuts out me and shuts in you I 
 
464 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 Here my hand holds you life out! " Where- 
 upon 
 
 She clasped the hand, which closed on hers and 
 drew 
 
 Fompilia out o' the circle now complete. 
 
 Whose fault or shame but Guido's ? — ask her 
 friends. 
 
 But then this is the wife's — Pompilia's tale — 
 Eve's . . . no, not Eve's, since Eve, to speak 
 
 the truth. 
 Was hardly fallen (our candor might pro- 
 nounce) 
 When simply saying in her own defence 
 " The serpent tempted me and I did eat." 
 So much of paradisal nature. Eve's ! 
 Her daughters ever since prefer to urge 
 '^ Adam so starved me I was fain accept 
 The apple any serpent pushed my way." 
 What an elaborate theory have we here, 
 Ingeniously nursed up, pretentiously 
 Brought forth, pushed forward amid trumpet- 
 blast. 
 To account for the thawing of an icicle. 
 Show us there needed jEtna vomit flame 
 Ere run the crystal into dewdrops ! Else, 
 How, unless hell broke loose to cause the step. 
 How could a married lady go astray ? 
 Bless the fools ! And 't is just this way they 
 
 are blessed. 
 And the world wags stiU, — because fools are 
 sure 
 
 — Oh, not of my wife nor your daughter ! No I 
 But of their own : the case is altered quite. 
 Look now, — last week, the lady we all love, — 
 Daughter 0' the couple we aU venerate. 
 
 Wife of the husband we all cap before. 
 Mother o' the babes we all breathe blessings 
 
 on, — 
 Was caught in converse with a negro page. 
 Hell thawed that icicle, else " Why was it — 
 Why ? " asked and echoed the fools. " Be- 
 cause, you fools, — " 
 So did the dame's self answer, she who could. 
 With that fine candor only forthcoming 
 When 't is no odds whether withheld or no — 
 " Because my husband was the saint you say, 
 And, — with that childish goodness, absurd 
 
 faith. 
 Stupid self-satisfaction, you so praise, — 
 Saint to you, insupportable to me. 
 Had he, — instead of calling me fine names, 
 Lucretia and Susanna and so forth. 
 And curtaining Correggio carefully 
 Lest i be tau^t that Leda had two legs, — 
 
 — But once never so little tweaked my nose 
 For peeping through my fan at Carnival, 
 Confessing thereby, ' I have no easy task — 
 I need use all my powers to hold you mine, 
 Andthen, — why 'tis so doubtful if they serve, 
 That — take this, as an earnest of despair ! ' 
 Why, we were quits: I had wiped the harm 
 
 away, 
 Thought, ' The man fears me ! ' and foregone 
 
 revenge." 
 We must not want all this elaborate work 
 To solve the problem why young Fancy-and- 
 
 flesh 
 
 Slips from the dull side of a spouse in years, 
 Betakes it to the breast of Brisk-and-bold 
 Whose love-scrapes furnish talk for all the 
 town ! 
 
 Accordingly, one word on the other side 
 
 Tips over the piled-up fabric of a tale. 
 
 Guido says — that is, always, his friends say — 
 
 It is unlikely, from the wickedness, 
 
 That any man treat any woman so. 
 
 The letter in question was her very own. 
 
 Unprompted and unaided : she could write — 
 
 As able to write as ready to sin, or free. 
 
 When there was danger, to deny both facts. 
 
 He bids you mark, herself from first to last 
 
 Attributes all the so-styled torture just 
 
 To jealousy, — jealousy of whom but just 
 
 This veiy Caponsaochi ! How suits here 
 
 This with the other alleged motive. Prince ? 
 
 Would Guido make a terror of the man 
 
 He meant should tempt the woman, as they 
 
 charge ? 
 Do you fright your hare that you may catch 
 
 your hare ? 
 Consider too, the charge was made and met 
 At the proper time and place where proofs were 
 
 plain — 
 Heard patiently and disposed of thoroughly 
 By the highest powers, possessors of most light, 
 The Governor for the law and the Archbishop 
 For the gospel : which acknowledged primacies, 
 'T is impudently pleaded, he could warp 
 Into a tacit partnership with crime — 
 He being the while, believe their own accoimt. 
 Impotent, penniless and miserable ! 
 He further asks — Duke, note the knotty 
 
 point ! — 
 How he — concede him skill to play such part 
 And drive his wife into a gallant's arms — 
 Could bring the gallant to play his part too 
 And stand with arms so opportunely wide ? 
 How bring this Caponsacchi, — with whom, 
 
 friends 
 And foes alike agree, throughout bis life 
 He never interchanged a civil word 
 Nor lifted courteous cap to — him, how bend 
 To such observancy of beck and call, 
 — To undertake this strange and perilous 
 
 feat 
 For the good of Guido, using, as the lure, 
 Fompilia whom, himseK and she avouch, 
 He had nor spoken with nor seen, indeed. 
 Beyond sight in a public theatre. 
 When she wrote letters (she that could not 
 
 write ! ) 
 The importunate shamelessly-protested love 
 Which brought him, though reluctant, to her 
 
 feet. 
 And forced on him the plunge which, howsoe'er 
 She might swim up i' the whirl, must bury 
 
 him 
 Under abysmal black : a priest contrive 
 No better, no amour to be hushed up. 
 But open flight and noonday infamy ? 
 Try and concoct defence for such revolt ! 
 Take the wife's tale as true, say she was 
 
 wronged, — 
 Pray, in what rubric of the breviary 
 
TERTIUM QUID 
 
 465 
 
 Do you find it registered — the part of a priest 
 Is — that to right wrongs from the church he 
 
 skip, 
 Go journeying with a woman that 's a wife, 
 And be pursued, o 'ertaken and captured . . . 
 
 how? 
 In a lay-dress, playing the kind sentinel 
 Where tlie wife sleeps (says he who best should 
 
 know) 
 And sleeping, sleepless, both have spent the 
 
 night ! 
 Could no one else be found to serve at need — 
 No woman — or if man, no safer sort 
 Than this not well-reputed turbulence ? 
 
 Then, look into his own account o* the case ! 
 He, being the stranger and astonished one. 
 Yet received protestations of her love 
 From lady neither known nor cared about : 
 Lore, so protested, bred in him. disgust 
 After the wonder, — or incredulity, 
 Such impudence seeming impossible. 
 But, soon assured such impudence might be. 
 When he had seen -with his own eyes at last 
 Letters thrown down to him i' the very street 
 From behind lattice where the lady lurked. 
 And read their passionate summons to her 
 
 side — 
 Why then, a thousand thoughts swarmed up 
 
 and in, — 
 How he had seen her once, a moment's space, 
 Observed she was both young and beautiful, 
 Heard everywhere report she suffered much 
 From a jealous husband thrice her age, — in 
 
 short. 
 There flashed the propriety, expediency 
 Of treating, trying might they come to terms, 
 
 — At all events, granting the interview 
 Prayed for, one so adapted to assist 
 Decision as to whether he advance. 
 Stand or retire, in his benevolent mood ! 
 Therefore the interview befell at length ; 
 And at this one and only interview. 
 
 He saw the sole and single course to take — 
 Bade her dispose of him., head, heart and hand, 
 Did her behest and braved the consequence, 
 Not for the natural end, the love of man 
 For woman whether love be virtue or vice, 
 But, please you, altogether for pity's sake — 
 Pity of innocence and helplessness ! 
 And how did he assure himself of both ? 
 Had he been the house-inmate, visitor, 
 Eye-witness of the described martyrdom. 
 So, competent to pronounce its remedy 
 Ere rush on such extreme and desperate 
 
 course — 
 Involving such enormity of harm, 
 Moreover, to the husband judged thus, doomed 
 And damned without a word in his defence ? 
 Not he ! the truth was felt by instinct here, 
 
 — Process which saves a world of trouble and 
 
 time. 
 There 's the priest's story : what do you say 
 
 to it, 
 Trying its truth by your own instinct too. 
 Since that 's to be the expeditious mode ? 
 ''' And now, do hear my version," Gruido cries : 
 ' I accept argument and inference both. 
 
 It would indeed have been mii-aculous 
 Had such a confidency sprung to birth 
 With no more fanning from acquaintanceship 
 Than here avowed by my wife and this priest. 
 Only, it did not : you must substitute 
 The old stale unromantic way of fault, 
 The commonplace adventure, mere intrigue 
 In prose form with the unpoetic tricks, 
 Cheatings and lies : they used the hackney 
 
 chair 
 Satan jaunts forth with, shabby and service- 
 able, 
 No gilded jimcrack-novelty from below, 
 To bowl you aloi^ thither, swift and sure. 
 That same officious go-between, the wench 
 Who gave and took the letters of the two, 
 Now ofPers self and service back to me : 
 Bears testimony to visits night by night 
 When all was safe, the husband far and 
 
 away, — 
 To many a timely slipping out at large 
 By light o' the morning-star, ere he should 
 
 wake. 
 And when the fugitives were found at last, 
 Why, with them were found also, to beUe 
 What protest they might make of innocence, 
 All documents yet wanting, if need were. 
 To establish guilt in them, disgrace in me — 
 The chronicle o' the converse from its rise 
 To culmination in this outrage : read ! 
 Letters from wife to priest, from priest to 
 
 wife, — 
 Here they are, read and say where they chime 
 
 in 
 With the other tale, superlative purity 
 0' the pair of saints 1 I stand or fall by 
 
 these." 
 
 But then on the other side again, — how say 
 The pair of saints ? That not one word is 
 
 theirs — 
 No syllable o' the batch or writ or sent 
 Or yet received by either of the two. 
 *' Found," says the priest, " because he needed 
 
 them, 
 Failing all other proofs, to prove our fault : 
 So. here they are, just as is natural. 
 Oh yes — we had our missives, each of us ! 
 Not these, but to the full as vile, no doubt : 
 Hers as from me, — she could not read, so 
 
 burnt, — 
 Mine as from her, — I burnt because I read. 
 Who forged and found them? Cut profue- 
 
 rint ; " 
 (I take the phrase out of your Highness' 
 
 mouth) 
 "He who would gain by her fault and my 
 
 faU, 
 The trickster, schemer and pretender — he 
 Whose whole career was lie entailing lie 
 Sought to be sealed truth by the worst lie 
 
 last I" 
 
 Guido rejoins —" Did the other end o' the 
 
 tale 
 Match this beginning ! 'T is alleged I prove 
 A murderer at the end, a man of force 
 Prompt, indiscriminate, effectual * good ! 
 
466 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 Then what need all this trifling: womau's-work; 
 Letters and embassies and weak intrigue, 
 When will and power were mine to end at once 
 Safely and surely ? Murder had come first 
 !Not last with such a man, assure yourselves ! 
 The silent acguetta, stilling: at command — 
 A drop a day i' the wine or soup, the dose, — 
 The shattering beam that breaks above the 
 
 bed 
 And beats out brains, with nobody to blame 
 Except the wormy age which eats even oak, — 
 Nay, the stanch steel or trusty cord, — who 
 
 cares 
 1' the blind old palace, a pitfall at each step. 
 With none to see, much more to interpose 
 O' the two, three, creeping-house-dog-servant- 
 things 
 Born mine and bred mine ? Had I willed 
 
 gross death, 
 I had found nearer paths to thrust him prey 
 Than this that goes meandering here and there 
 Through half the world and calls down in its 
 
 course 
 Notice and noise, — hate, vengeance, should it 
 
 fail. 
 Derision and contempt though it succeed ! 
 Moreover, what o' the future son and heir ? 
 The unborn babe about to be called mine, — 
 What end in heaping all this shame on him. 
 Were I indifferent to my own black share ? 
 Would I have tried these crookednesses, say. 
 Willing and able to effect the straight ? " 
 
 *' Ay, would you ! " — one may hear the priest 
 
 retort, 
 ^^ Being as you are, i^ the stock, aman of guile. 
 And ruffianism but an added graft, 
 you, a bom coward, try a coward's arms. 
 Trick and chicane, — and only when these fail 
 Does violence follow, and like fox you bite 
 Caught out in stealing. Also, the disgrace 
 You hardly shrunk at, wholly shrivelled her : 
 You plunged her thin white delicate hand i' 
 
 the flame 
 Along with your coarse horny brutish fist. 
 Held them a second there, then drew out both 
 — Yours roughed a little, hers ruined through 
 
 and through. 
 Your hurt would heal forthwith at ointment's 
 
 touch — 
 Namely, succession to the inheritance 
 Which bolder crime had lost you : let things 
 
 change. 
 The birth o' the boy warrant the bolder crime, 
 Why, murder was determined, dared and done. 
 For me," the priest proceeds with his reply, 
 " The look o' the thing, the chances of mistake. 
 All were against me, — that, I knew the first : 
 But, knowing also what my duty was, 
 I did it : I must look to men more skilled 
 In reading hearts than ever was the world." 
 
 Highness, decide ! Pronounce, Her Excellency 1 
 
 Or . . . even leave this argument in doubt, 
 
 Account it a fit matter, taken up 
 
 With all its faces, manifold enough, 
 
 To ponder on — what fronts us, the next stage, 
 
 Next legal process ? Guido, in pursuit, 
 
 Coming up with the fugitives at the inn. 
 Caused both to be arrested then and there 
 And sent to Rome for judgment on the case ' 
 Thither, with all his armory of proofs. 
 Betook himself : 't is there we '11 meet him now, 
 Waiting the further issue. 
 
 Here you smile: 
 " And never let him henceforth dare to plead — 
 Of all pleas and excuses in the world 
 For any deed hereafter to be done — 
 His irrepressible wrath at honor's wound ! 
 Passion and madness irrepressible ? 
 Why, Count and cavalier, the husband comes 
 And catches foe i' the very act of shame ! 
 There 's man to man, — nature must have her 
 
 way, — 
 We look he should have cleared things on the 
 
 spot. 
 Yes, then, indeed — even though it prove he 
 
 erred — 
 Though the ambiguous first appearance, mount 
 Of solid injury, melt soon to mist, 
 Still, — had he slain the lover and the wife — 
 Or, since she was a woman and his wife. 
 Slain him, but stript her naked to the skin, 
 Or at best left no more of an attire 
 Than patch sufficient to pin paper to. 
 Some one love-letter, infamy and all. 
 As passport to the Paphos £t for such, 
 Safe-conduct to her natural home the stews, — 
 Good ! One had recognized the power o' the 
 
 pulse. 
 But when he stands, the stock-fish, — sticks to 
 
 law — 
 Offers the hole in his heart, all fresh and warm, 
 For scrivener's pen to poke and play about — 
 Can stand, can stare, can tell his beads per- 
 haps. 
 Oh, let us hear no syllable o' the rage ! 
 Such rage were a convenient afterthought 
 For one who would have shown his teeth be- 
 like. 
 Exhibited unbridled rage enough. 
 Had but the priest been found, as was to hope, 
 In serge, not sUk, with crucifix, not sword : 
 Whereas the gray innocuous grub, of yore. 
 Had hatched a hornet, tickle to the touch. 
 The priest was metamorphosed into knight. 
 And even the timid wife, whose cue was — 
 
 shriek. 
 Bury her brow beneath his trampling foot, — 
 She too sprang at him like a pythoness : 
 So, gulp down rage, passion must be postponed, 
 Calm be the word! Well, our word is — we 
 
 brand 
 This part o' the business, howsoever the rest 
 Befall." 
 
 " Nay," interpose as prompt his friends — 
 " This is the world's way ! So you adjudge re- 
 ward 
 To the forbearance and legality 
 Yourselves begin by inculcating — ay. 
 Exacting from us all with knife at throat ! 
 This one wrong more you add to wrong's 
 
 amount, — 
 You publish all, with the kind comment here, 
 ' Its victim was too cowardly for revenge.' " 
 Make it your own ease, — you who stand apart! 
 
TERTIUM QUID 
 
 467 
 
 The husband wakes one morn from heavy 
 
 sleep, 
 With a taste of poppy in his jinouth, — rubs eyes, 
 Finds his wife flown, his strong-box ransacked 
 
 too, 
 Follows as he best can, overtakes i* the end. 
 You bid him use his privileg-e : well, it seems 
 He 's scarce cool-blooded enough for the right 
 
 move — 
 Does not shoot when the game were sure, but 
 
 stands 
 Bewildered at the critical minute, — since 
 He has the first flash of the fact alone 
 To judge from, act with, not the steady lights 
 Of after-knowledge, — yours who stand at ease 
 To try conclusions : he 's in smother and smoke, 
 You outside, with explosion at an end : 
 The sulphur may be lightning or a squib — 
 He 'U know in a minute, but till then, he doubts. 
 Back from what j-ou know to what he knew not ! 
 Hear the priest's lofty *' I am innocent," 
 The wife's as resolute "You are guilty!" 
 
 Come ! 
 Are you not staggered ? — pause, and you lose 
 
 the move ! 
 Naught left you but a low appeal to law, 
 " Coward " tied to your tail for compliment ! 
 Another consideration : have it your way I 
 Admit the worst ; his courage failed the Count, 
 He 's cowardly like the best o' the burgesses 
 He 's grown incorporate witii, — a very cur. 
 Kick him from out your circle by all means ! 
 Why, trundled down this reputable stair, 
 StUl, the church-door lies wide to take him in. 
 And the court-porch also : in he sneaks to 
 
 each, — 
 '* Yes, I have lost my honor and my wife, 
 And, being moreover an ignoble hound, 
 I dare not jeopardize ray Ufe for them ! " 
 Religion and Law lean forward from their 
 
 chairs, 
 " Well done, thou good and faithful servant ! " 
 
 Ay, 
 Not only applaud him that he scorned the world, 
 But punish should he dare do otherwise. 
 J£ the case be clear or turbid, — you must say ! 
 
 Thus, anyhow, it mounted to the stage 
 
 In the law-couxts, — let 's see clearly from, this 
 
 point ! — 
 Where the priest tells his story true or false. 
 And the wife her story, and the husband his. 
 All with result as happy as before. 
 The courts would nor condemn nor yet acquit 
 This, that oi* the other, in so distinct a sense 
 As end the strife to either's absolute loss : 
 Pronounced, in place of something definite, 
 " Each of the parties, whether goat or sheep 
 I* the main, has wool to show and hair to hide. 
 Kach has brought somehow trouble, is somehow 
 
 cause 
 Of pains enough, — even though no worse were 
 
 proved. 
 Here is a husband, cannot rule his wife 
 Without provoking her to scream and scratch 
 And scour the fields, — causelessly, it may be : 
 Here is that wife, — who makes her sex our 
 
 plague, 
 
 Wedlock, our bugbear, — perhaps with cause 
 
 enough : 
 And here is the truant priest o' the trio, worst 
 Or best — each quality being conceivable. 
 Let us impose a little mulct on each. 
 We punish youth in state of pupilage 
 Who talk at hours when youth is bound to 
 
 sleep. 
 Whether the prattle turn upon Saint Rose 
 Or Donna Olimpia of the Vatican : 
 'T is talk, talked wisely or unwwely talked, 
 I' the dormitory where to talk at all 
 Transgresses, and is mulct : as here we mean. 
 For the wife, — let her betake herself, for rest. 
 After her run, to a House of Convertites — 
 Keep there, as good as real imprisonment : 
 Being sick and tired, she will recover so. 
 For ^e priest, spritely strayer out of bounds, 
 Who made Arezzo hot to hold him, — Rome 
 Profits by his withdrawal from the scene. 
 Let him be relegate to Civita, 
 Circumscribed by its boimds till matters mend : 
 There he at least lies out o' the way of harm 
 From foes — perhaps from the too friendly fair. 
 And finally for the husband, whose rash rule 
 Has but itself to blame for this ado, ^ 
 If he be vexed that, in our judgments dealt. 
 He fails obtain what he accounte his right. 
 Let him go comforted with the thought, no less, 
 That, turn each sentence howsoever he may. 
 There 's satisfaction to extract therefrom. 
 For, does he wish his wife proved innocent? 
 Well, she 's not guilty, he may safely urge. 
 Has missed the stripes dishonest wives en- 
 dure — 
 This beii^ a fatherly pat o' the cheek, no more. 
 Does he wish her guilty ? Were she otherwise 
 Would she be locked up, set to say her prayers, 
 Prevented intercourse with the outside world, 
 And that suspected priest in banishment. 
 Whose portion is a further help i' the case ? 
 Oh, ay, you all of you want the other thing. 
 The extreme of law, some verdict neat, com- 
 plete, — 
 Either, the whole 0' the dowry in your poke 
 With full release from the false wife, to boot, 
 And heading, hajiging for the priest, beside — 
 Or, contrary, claim freedom for the wife. 
 Repayment of each penny paid her spouse. 
 Amends for the past, release for the future! 
 
 Such 
 Is wisdom to the children of this world ; 
 But we Ve no mind, we children of the light, 
 To miss the advantage of the golden mean. 
 And push things to the steel point." Thus the 
 coui-ts. 
 
 Is it settled so far ? Settled or disturbed. 
 Console yourselves : 't is like ... an instance, 
 
 now I 
 You've seen the puppets, of Place Navona, 
 
 play, — 
 Punch and his mate, — how threats pass, blows 
 
 are dealt. 
 And a crisis comes : the crowd or clap or hiss 
 Accordingly as disposed for man or wife — 
 When down the actors duck awhile perdue, 
 Donning what novel rag-and-feather trim^ 
 
468 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 Best suits the next adventure, new efEect : 
 And, — by the time the mob is on the move, 
 Witli sumetiiingr like a judgment pro and con, -— 
 There 's a whistle, up agfain the actors pop 
 In t* other tatter with fresh-tinselled staves, 
 To re-engage in one last worst fight more 
 Shall show, what you thought tragedy was farce. 
 Note, that the climax and the crown of things 
 Invariably is, the devil appears himself, 
 Armed and accoutred, horns and hoofs and 
 
 tail ! 
 Jiist so, nor otherwise it proved — you '11 see ; 
 Move to the murder, never mind the rest ! 
 
 Guido, at such a general duck-down, 
 
 I' the breathing-space, — of wife to convent 
 
 here. 
 Priest to his relegation, and himself 
 To Arezzo, — had resigned his part perforce 
 To brother Abate, who bustled, did his best. 
 Retrieved things somewhat, managed the three 
 
 suits — 
 Since, it should seem, there were three suits-at- 
 
 law 
 Behoved him look to, still, lest bad grow worse : 
 First civil suit, — the one the parents brought, 
 Iinjpugning the legitimacy of his wife. 
 Affirming thence the nullity of her rights : 
 This was before the Rota, — Molin^s, 
 That 's judge there, made that notable decree 
 Which partly leaned to Guido, as I said, — 
 But Pietro had appealed against the same 
 To the very court will judge what we judge 
 
 now — 
 Tommati and his fellows, — Suit the first. 
 Next civil suit, — demand on the wife's part 
 Of separation from the husband's bed 
 On plea of cruelty and risk to life — 
 Claims restitution of the dowry paid. 
 Immunity from paying any more : 
 This second, the Vicegerent has to judge. 
 Third and last suit, — this time, a criminal 
 
 one, — 
 Answer to, and protection from, both these, — 
 Guido's complaint of guilt against his wife 
 In the Tribunal of the Governor, 
 Venturini, also judge of the present cause. 
 Three suits of all importance plaguing him 
 Beside a little private enterprise 
 Of Guido's, — essay at a shorter cut. 
 For Paolo, knowing the right way at Ronae, 
 Had, even while superintending these three 
 
 suits 
 I' the regular way, each at its proper court, 
 Ingeniously made interest with the Pope 
 To set such tedious regular forms aside, 
 And, acting the supreme and ultimate judge, 
 Declare for the husband and against the wife. 
 Well, at such crisis and extreme of straits, — 
 The man at bay, buffeted in this wise, — 
 Happened the strangest accident of all. 
 "Then," sigh friends, " the last feather broke 
 
 his back. 
 Made him forget all possible remedies 
 Save one — he rushed to, as the sole relief 
 From horror and the abominable thing." 
 " Or rather," laugh foes, "then did there be- 
 fall 
 
 The luckiest of conceivable events. 
 Most pregnant with impunity for him. 
 Which henceforth turned the flank of aU at- 
 tack. 
 And bade him do his wickedest and worst." 
 
 — The wife's withdrawal from the Convertites, 
 Visit to the viUa where her parents lived. 
 And birth there of his babe. Divergence here I 
 I simply take the facts, ask what they show. 
 
 First comes this thunderclap of a surprise : 
 Then follow all the signs and silences 
 Premonitory of earthquake. Paolo first 
 Vanished, was swept off somewhere, lost to 
 
 Rome ; 
 (Wells dry up, while the sky is sunny and blue.) 
 Then Guido girds himself for enterprise. 
 Hies to Vittiano, counsels with his steward. 
 Comes to terms with four peasants young and 
 
 bold. 
 And starts for Rome the Holy, reaches her 
 At very holiest, for 't is Christmas Eve, 
 And makes straight for the Abate's dried-up 
 
 font. 
 The lodge where Paolo ceased to work the 
 
 pipes. 
 And then, rest taken, observation made 
 And plan completed, all in a grim week. 
 The five proceed in a body, reach the place, 
 
 — Pietro's, at the PaoUna, silent, lone. 
 And stupefied by the propitious snow. 
 
 'T is one i' the evening : knock : a voice, 
 
 " Who 's there ? " 
 " Friends with a letter from the priest your 
 
 friend." 
 At the door, straight smiles old Violante's self. 
 She falls, — her son-in-law stabs through and 
 
 through, 
 Reaches through her at Pietro — "With your 
 
 son 
 This is the way to settle suits, good sire ! " 
 He bellows, " Mercy for heaven, not for earth ! 
 Leave to confess and save my sinful soul. 
 Then do your pleasure on the body of me ! " 
 
 — " Nay, father, soul with body must take its 
 
 chance ! " 
 He presently got his portion and lay still. 
 And last, Pompilia rushes here and there 
 Like a dove among the lightnings in her brake, 
 Falls also : Guido's, this last husband's-act. 
 He lifts her by the long dishevelled hair. 
 Holds her away at arm's length with one hand, 
 While the other tries if life come from the 
 
 mouth — 
 Looks out his whole heart's hate on the shut 
 
 eyes. 
 Draws a deep satisfied breath, "So —dead at 
 
 last!" 
 Throws down the burden on dead Pietro's 
 
 knees. 
 And ends all with " Let us away, my boys ! " 
 
 And, as they left by one door, in at the other 
 Tumbled the neighbors — for the shrieks had 
 
 pierced 
 To the mill and the grange, this cottage and 
 
 that shed. 
 Soon followed the Public Force : pursuit began 
 
TERTIUM QUID 
 
 469 
 
 Thoug^h Guido had the start and chose the 
 
 road ; 
 So, that same night was he, with the other 
 
 four. 
 Overtaken near Baccano, — where they sank 
 By the wayside, in some shelter meant for 
 
 And now lay heaped together, nuzzling swine. 
 Each wrapped in bloody cloak, each grasping 
 
 still 
 His unwiped weapon, sleeping all the same 
 The sleep o' the just, — a journey of twenty 
 
 miles 
 Brought just and unjust to a level, you see. 
 The only one i' the world that suffered aught 
 By the whole night's toil and trouble, flight and 
 
 chase. 
 Was just the officer who took them. Head 
 0' the Public Force, — Patrizj, zealous soul. 
 Who, having but duty to sustain weak flesh, 
 Got heated, caught a fever and so died : 
 A warning to the over-vigilaat, 
 — Virtue in a chafe should change her linen 
 
 quick. 
 Lest pleurisy get start of providence. 
 (That 's for the Cardinal, and told, I tliink !) 
 
 Well, they bring back the company to Rome. 
 Says Guido, " By your leave, 1 fain would ask 
 How you found out 't was I who did the deed ? 
 What put you on my tra«e, a foreigner. 
 Supposed in Arezzo, — and assuredly safe 
 Except for an oversight ; who told you, pray ? " 
 *' Why, naturally your wife ! *' Down Guido 
 
 drops 
 0' the horse he rode, — they have to steady 
 
 and stay 
 At either side the brute that bore him bound. 
 So strange it seemed his wife should live and 
 
 speak ! 
 She had prayed — at least so people tell you 
 
 now — 
 For but one thing to the Virgin for herself. 
 Not simply, as did Pietro 'mid the stabs, — 
 Time to confess and get her own soul saved, — 
 But time to make the truth apparent, truth 
 For God's sake, lest men should believe a lie : 
 Which seems to have been about the single 
 
 prayer 
 She ever put up, that was granted her. 
 With this hope in her head, of telling truth, — 
 Being familiarized with pain, beside, — 
 She bore the stabbing to a certain pitch 
 Without a useless cry, was flung for dead 
 On Pietro's lap, and so attained her point. 
 Her friends subjoin this — have I done with 
 
 them ? — 
 And cite the miracle of continued life 
 (She was not dead when I arrived just now) 
 As attestation to her probity. 
 
 Does it strike youi* Excellency? Why, your 
 
 Highness, 
 The self-command and even the final prayer. 
 Our candor must acknowledge explicable 
 As easily by the consciousness of guilt. 
 So, when they add that her confession runs 
 She was of wifehood one white innocence 
 
 In thought, word, act, from first of her short 
 
 life 
 To last of it ; praying, i' the face of death. 
 That God forgive her other sins — not this. 
 She is charged with and must die for, that she 
 
 failed 
 Anyway to her husband : while thereon 
 Comments the old Religious — "So much good, 
 Patience beneath enormity of ill, 
 I hear to my confusion, woe is me, 
 binner that I stand, shamed in the walk and 
 
 gait 
 I have practised and grown old in, by u 
 
 child ! " - 
 Guido's friends shrug the shoulder, "Just the 
 
 same 
 Prodigious absolute calm in the last hour 
 Confirms us, — being the natural result 
 Of a life which proves consistent to the close. 
 Having braved heaven and deceived earth 
 
 throughout. 
 She braves still and deceives still, gains thereby 
 Two ends, she prizes beyond earth or heaven : 
 First sets her lover free, imperilled sore 
 By the new turn things take : he answers yet 
 For the part he played : they have summoned 
 
 him indeed : 
 The past ripped up, he may be punished still: 
 What better way of saving him than this ? 
 Then, — thus she dies revenged to the utter- 
 most 
 On Guido, drags him with her in the dark. 
 The lower still the better, do you doubt ? 
 Thus, two ways, does she love her love to the 
 
 end. 
 And hate her hate, — death, hell is no such 
 
 price 
 To pay for these, — lovers and haters hold." 
 
 But there 's another parry for the thrust. 
 "Confession," cry folks — "a confession, 
 
 think! 
 Confession of the moribund is true ! " 
 Which of them, my wise friends ? This public 
 
 one. 
 Or the private other we shall never know ? 
 The private may contain — your casuists 
 
 teach — 
 The acknowledgment of, and the penitence for. 
 That other public one, so people say. 
 However it be, — we trench on delicate ground, 
 Her Eminence is peeping o'er the cards, — 
 Can one find nothing in behalf of this 
 Catastrophe ? Deaf folks accuse the dumb I 
 You criticise the drunken reel, fool's-speech, 
 Maniacal gesture of the man, — we grant ! 
 But who poured poison in his cup, we ask ? 
 Recall the list of his excessive wrongs. 
 First cheated in his wife, robbed by her kin. 
 Rendered anon the laughing-stock o' the world 
 By the story, true or false, of his wife's birth, — 
 The last seal publicly apposed to shame 
 By the open flight of wife and priest, — why, 
 
 Sirs, 
 Step out of Rome a furlong, would you know 
 What anotherguess tribunal than ours here, 
 Mere worldly Court without the help of grace. 
 Thinks of just that one incident o' the flight ? 
 
47C 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 Guido preferred the same complaint before 
 The court at Arezzo, bar of the Granduke, — 
 In virtue of it being Tuscany 
 Where the offence had rise and flight began, — 
 Selfsame complaint he made in the sequel here 
 Where the onence grew to the full, the flight 
 Ended ; offence and flight, one fact judged 
 
 twice 
 By two distinct tribunals, — what result ? 
 There was a sentence passed at the same time 
 ByArezzo and confirmed by the Granduke, 
 Which nothing balks of swift and sure effect 
 But absence of the guilty, (flight to Rome 
 Frees them from Tuscan jurisdiction now) 
 — Condemns the wife to the opprobrious doom 
 Of all whom law just lets escape from death. 
 The Stinche, House of Pimishment, for life, — 
 That 's what the wife deserves in Tuscany : : 
 Here, she deserves — remitting with a snule 
 To her father's house, main object of the flight! 
 The thief presented with the thing he steals I 
 
 At this discrepancy of judgments — mad. 
 The man took on himself the office, judged ; 
 And the only argument against the use 
 O' the law he thus took into his own hands 
 Is . . . what, I ask you V — that, revenging 
 
 wrong. 
 He did not revenge sooner, kill at first 
 Whom he killed last ! That is the final charge. 
 Sooner ? What 's soon or late i' the case ? — 
 
 ask we. 
 A wound i' the flesh no doubt wants prompt re- 
 dress ; 
 It smarts a little to-day, well in a week, 
 Forgotten in a month ; or never, or now, re- 
 venge ! 
 But a wound to the soul ? That rankles worse 
 
 and worse. 
 Shall I comfort you, explaining — "Not this 
 
 once 
 But now it may be some five hundred times 
 I called you inxffian, pandar, liar and rogue : 
 The injury must be less by lapse of time ? " 
 The wrong is a wrong, one and immortal too, 
 And that you bore it those five hundred times. 
 Let it rankle unrevenged five hundred years. 
 Is just five hundred wrongs the more and 
 
 worse I 
 Men, plagued this fashion, get to explode this 
 
 ' way, 
 If left no other. 
 
 " But we left this man 
 Many another way, and there 's his fault," 
 'T is answered — ' He himself preferred our 
 
 arm 
 0' the law to fight his battle with. No doubt 
 We did not open him an armory 
 To pick and choose from, use, and then reject. 
 He tries one weapon and fails, — he tries the 
 
 next 
 And next : he flourishes wit and common 
 
 sense. 
 They fail him, — he plies logic doughtily, 
 It fails him too, — thereon, discovers last 
 He has been blind to the combustibles — 
 1 hat all the while he is aglow with ire, 
 
 Boiling with irrepressible rage, and so 
 
 May try explosives and discard cold steel, — 
 
 So hires assassins, plots, plans, executes ! 
 
 Is this the honest seH-f orgetting rage 
 
 We are called to pardon? 0oes the furious 
 
 bull 
 Pick out four help-mates from the grazing herd 
 And journey with them over hill and dale 
 Till he find his enemy ? " 
 
 What rejoinder ? save 
 That friends accept our buU-simiUtude. 
 Bull-like, — the indiscriminate slaughter, rude 
 And reckless aggravation of revenge. 
 Were all i' the way o' the brute who never 
 
 once 
 Ceases, amid all provocation more. 
 To bear in mind the first tormentor, first 
 Griver o' the wound that goaded him to fight : 
 And, though a dozen foUow and reinforce 
 The aggressor, wound in front and wound in 
 
 flank. 
 Continues undisturbedly pursuit. 
 And only after prostrating his prize 
 Turns on the pettier, makes a general prey. 
 So Guido rushed ag:ainst Violante, first 
 Author of all his wrongs, fans et origo 
 Malorum — drops first, delug'e since, — which 
 
 done. 
 He flnished with the rest. Co you blame a 
 
 bull? 
 
 In truth you look as puzzled as ere I preached I 
 How is that ? There are difficulties perhaps 
 On any supposition, and either side. 
 Each party wants too much, claims sympathy 
 For its object of compassion, more than just. 
 Cry the wife's friends, ' ' Oh, the enormous crime 
 Caused by no provocation in the world ! " 
 " Was not the wife a little weak ? " — inquire — 
 " Punished extravagantly, if yon please, 
 But meriting a little punishment ? 
 One treated inconsiderately, say. 
 Rather than one deserving not at all 
 Treatment and discipline o' the harsher sort ? " 
 No, they must have her purity itself. 
 Quite angel, — and her parents angels too 
 (jf an aged sort, immaculate, word and deed : 
 At all events, so seeming, tUl the fiend. 
 Even Guido, by his folly, forced from them 
 The untoward avowal of the trick o' the birth, 
 Which otherwise were safe and secret now. 
 Why, here you have the awfullest of crimes 
 For nothing 1 HeU broke loose on a butterfly I 
 A dragon born of rose-dew and the moon ! 
 Yet here is the monster ! Why he 's a mere 
 
 man — 
 Born, bred and brought up in the usual way, 
 His mother loves him, still his brothers stick 
 To the good fellow of the boyish games ; 
 The Governor of his town knows and approves. 
 The Archbishop of the place knows and assists : 
 Here he has Cardinal This to vouch for the 
 
 past. 
 Cardinal That to trust for the future, — match 
 And marriage were a Cardinal's making, —in 
 
 short. 
 What if a tragedy be acted here 
 
COUNT GUIDO FRANCESCHINI 
 
 471 
 
 Impossible for malice to improTe, 
 
 And innocent Guido with his innocent four 
 
 Be added, all five, to the guilty three. 
 
 That we of these last days be edified 
 
 With one full taste o' the justice of the world ? 
 
 The long and the short is, truth seems what I 
 
 show : — 
 Undoubtedly no pains ought to be spared 
 To give the mob an inkling of our lights. 
 It seems unduly harsh to put the man 
 To the torture, as I hear the court intends, 
 Though readiest way of twisting out the truth ; 
 He is noble, and he may be innocent. 
 On the other hand, if they exempt the man 
 (As it is aUo said they hesitate 
 On the fair ground, presumptive guilt is weak 
 I' the case of nobility and privilege), — 
 What crime that ever was, ever will be. 
 Deserves the torture ? Then abolish it I 
 You see the reduction ad ajbsurdum. Sirs ? 
 
 Her Excellency must pronounce, in fine I 
 What, she prefers going and joining play ? 
 Her Highness finds it late, intends retire ? 
 I am of their mind : only, all this talk talked, 
 'T was not for nothing that we talked, I hope ? 
 Both know as much about it, now, at least. 
 As all Rome : no particular thanks, I beg ! 
 (You '11 see, I have not so advanced myself, 
 After my teaching the two idiots here !) 
 
 COUNT GUIDO FRANCESCHINI 
 
 Thanks, Sir, but, should it please the reverend 
 
 Court, 
 I feel I can stand somehow, half sit down 
 Without help, make shift to even speak, you 
 
 see. 
 Fortified by the sip of . . . why,, 't is wine, 
 Velletri, — and not vinegar and gall. 
 So changed and good the times grow ! Thanks,^ 
 
 kind Sir ! 
 Oh, but one sip 's enough ! I want my head 
 To save my neck, there 's work awaits me still. 
 How cautious and considerate . . . aie, aie, 
 
 aie. 
 Nor your fault, sweet Sir ! Come, you take to 
 
 heart 
 An ordinary matter. Law is law. 
 Noblemen were exempt, the vulgar thought,^ 
 From racking ; but,, since law thinks otherwise, 
 I have been put to the rack ; all 's over now. 
 And neither wrist — what men style, out of 
 
 joint : 
 If any harm be, 'tis the shoulder-blade. 
 The left one, that seems wrong i' the socket, — 
 
 Sirs, 
 Much could not happen, I was quick to faint. 
 Being past ray prime of life, and out of health. 
 In short, I thank yon, — yes, and mean the 
 
 word. 
 Needs must the Court be alow to understand 
 How this quite novel form of taking^ain, 
 This getting tortured merely in the flesh, 
 
 Amounts to almost an agreeable, change 
 In my case, me fastidious, plied too much 
 With opposite treatment, used (forgive the 
 
 joke) 
 To the rasp-tooth toying with this brain of 
 
 mine. 
 And, in and out my heart, the play o' the 
 
 probe. 
 Four years have I been operated on 
 1' the soul, do you see — its tense or tremulous 
 
 part — 
 My self-respect, my care for a good name, 
 Pride in an old one, love of kindred — just 
 A mother, brothers, sisters, and the like. 
 That looked up to my face when days were 
 
 dim. 
 And fancied they found light there — no one 
 
 spot. 
 Foppishly sensitive, but has paid its pang. 
 That, and not this you now oblige me with. 
 That was the Vigil-torment, if you please ! 
 The poor old noble House that drew the rags 
 O' the Franceschini's once superb array 
 Close round her, hoped to slink unchallenged 
 
 Pluck off these ! Turn the drapery inside out 
 And teach the tittering town how scarlet 
 
 wears ! 
 Show men the lucklessness, the improvidence 
 Of the easy-natured Count before this Count, 
 The father I have some slight feeling for. 
 Who let the world slide, nor foresaw that 
 
 friends 
 Then proud to cap and kiss their patron's shoe. 
 Would, when the purse he left held spider- 
 webs. 
 Properly push his child to wall one day I 
 Mimic the tetchy humor, furtive glance. 
 And brow where half was furious, half fa- 
 tigued, 
 O' the same son got to be of middle age, 
 Sour, saturnine, — your humble servant here, — 
 When things grow cross and the young wife, he 
 
 finds 
 Take to the window at a whistle's bid. 
 And. yet demurs thereon, preposterous fool! — 
 Whereat the worthies judge he wants advice 
 Ajid beg to civilly ask what 's evil here. 
 Perhaps remonstrate on the habit they deem 
 He 's given unduly to, of beating her : 
 . . . Oh, sure he beats her — why says John so 
 
 else, 
 Who is cousin to George who is sib to Teda's 
 
 self 
 Who cooks the meal and combs the lady's 
 
 hair? 
 What 1 'T is my wrist you merely dislocate 
 For the future when you mean me martyrdom ? 
 
 — Let the old mother's economy alone. 
 
 How the brocade-strips saved o' the seamy side 
 0' the wedding-gown buy raiment for a year? 
 
 — How she can dress and dish up — lordly dish 
 Fit for a duke, lamb's head and purtenance — 
 With her proud hands, feast household so a 
 
 week ? 
 No word o' the wine rejoicing God and man. 
 The less when three-parts water? Then, I 
 
 say. 
 
472 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 A trifle of torture to the flesh, like yours. 
 While soul is spared such foretaste of hell-fire. 
 Is naught. But I curtail the catalogue 
 Through policy, — a rhetorician's trick, — 
 Because I would reserve some choicer points 
 0' the practice, more exactly parallel 
 (Having an eye to climax) with what gift, 
 Eventual grace the Court may have in store 
 I' the way of plague — what crown of punish- 
 ments. 
 When I am hanged or headed, time enough 
 To prove the tenderness of only that. 
 Mere heading^ hanging, — not their counter- 
 part, 
 Not demonstration public and precise 
 That I, having married the mongrel of a drab, 
 Am bound to grant that mongrel-brat, my 
 
 wife. 
 Her mother's birthright-license as is just, — 
 Let her sleep undisturbed, i' the family style, 
 Her sleep out in the embraces of a priest. 
 Nor disallow their bastard as my heir I 
 Your sole mistake — dare I submit so much 
 To the reverend Court ? — has been in all this 
 
 pains 
 To make a stone roll down hill, — rack and 
 
 wrench 
 And rend a man to pieces, all for what ? 
 Why — make him ope month in his own defence. 
 Show cause for what he has done, the irregular 
 
 deed, 
 (Since that he did it, scarce dispute can be) 
 And clear his fame a little, beside the luck 
 Of stopping even yet, if possible. 
 Discomfort to his flesh from noose or axe — 
 For that, out come the implements of law ! 
 May it content my lords the gracious Court 
 To listen only half so patient-long 
 As I will in that sense profusely speak. 
 And — fie, they shall not call in screws to 
 
 help! 
 I killed Pompilia Franoeschini, Sirs ; 
 Killed too the Comparini, husband, wife. 
 Who called themselves, by a notorious lie, 
 Her father and her mother to ruin me. 
 There 's the irregular deed : you want no more 
 Than right interpretation of the same. 
 And truth so far — am I to understand ? 
 To that then, with convenient speed, — because 
 Now I consider, — yes, despite my boast. 
 There is an ailing in this omoplate 
 May clip my speech all too abruptly short, 
 Whatever the good-will in me. Now for truth ! 
 
 I' the name of the indivisible Trinity ! 
 
 Will my lords, in the plentitude of their light. 
 
 Weigh well that all this trouble has come on 
 
 me 
 Through my persistent treading in the paths 
 Where I was trained to go, — wearing that 
 
 yoke 
 My shoulder was predestined to receive, 
 Bom to the hereditary stoop and crease ? 
 Noble, I recognized my nobler still. 
 The Church, my suzerain ; no mock-mistress, 
 
 she ; 
 The secular owned the spiritual: mates of 
 
 Have thrown their careless hoofs up at her call 
 " Forsake the clover and come drag my wain ! " 
 There they go cropping : I protruded nose 
 To halter, bent my back of docile beast. 
 And now am whealed, one wide wound all of 
 
 me. 
 For being found at the eleventh hour o' the day 
 Padding the miH-track, not neck-deep in grass : 
 
 — My one fault, I am stiffened by my work, 
 
 — My one reward, I help the Court to smile ! 
 
 I am representative of a great line. 
 One of the first of the old families 
 In Arezzo, ancientest of Tuscan towns. 
 When my worst foe is fain to challenge this, 
 His worst exception runs — not first in rank 
 But second, noble in the next degree 
 Only ; not malice' self maligns me more. 
 So, my lord opposite has composed, we know, 
 A marvel of a book, sustains the point 
 That Francis boasts the primacy 'mid saints ; 
 Yet not inaptly hath his argument 
 Obtained response from yon my other lord 
 In thesis published with the world's applause 
 
 — Rather 't is Dominic such post befits : 
 Why, at the worst, Francis stays Francis still, 
 Second in rank to Dominic it may be. 
 
 Still, very saintly, very like our Lord ; 
 
 And I at least descend from Guide once 
 
 Homager to the Empire, naught below — 
 
 Of which account as proof that, none o' the line 
 
 Having a single gift beyond brave blood. 
 
 Or able to do aught but give, give, give 
 
 In blood and brain, in house and land and cash, 
 
 Not get and garner as the vulgar may. 
 
 We became poor as Francis or our Lord. 
 
 Be that as it likes you. Sirs, — whenever it 
 
 chanced 
 Myself grew capable anyway of remark, 
 (Which was soon — penury makes wit pre- 
 mature) 
 This struck me, I was poor who should be rich 
 Or pay that fault to the world which trifles not 
 When lineage lacks the flag yet lifts the pole : 
 On, therefore, I must move forthwith, transfer 
 My stranded self, born fish with gill and fin 
 Fit for the deep sea, now left flap bare-backed 
 In slush and sand, a show to crawlers vile 
 Reared of the low-tide and aright therein. 
 The enviable youth with the old name. 
 Wide chest, stout arms, sound brow and prick- 
 ing veins, 
 A heartful of desire, man's natural load, 
 A brainful of belief, the noble's lot, — 
 All this life, cramped and gasping, high and dry 
 I' the wave's retreat, — the misery, good my 
 
 lords. 
 Which made you merriment at Rome of late, — 
 It made me reason, rather — muse, demand 
 
 — Why our bare dropping palace, in the street 
 Where snch-an-one whose grandfather sold tripe 
 Was adding to his purchased pile a fourth 
 Tall tower, could hardly show a turret sound? 
 Why Countess Beatrice, whose son I am, 
 Cowered in the winter-time as she spun flax, 
 Blew on the earthen basket of live ash. 
 Instead of jaunting forth in coach and six 
 Like such-another widow who ne'er was wed ? 
 
COUNT GUIDO FRANCESCHINI 
 
 473 
 
 I asked iny fellows, how came this abont ? 
 "Why, Jack, the sutler's child, perhaps the 
 
 camp's. 
 Went to the wars, fought sturdily, took a town 
 And got rewarded as was natural. 
 She of the coach and six — excuse me there ! 
 Why, don't you know the story of her friend ? 
 A clown dressed vines on somebody's estate, 
 His boy recoiled from muck, liked Latin more. 
 Stuck to his pen and got to be a priest. 
 Till one day . . . don't you mind that telling 
 
 tract 
 Against Molinos, the old Cardinal wrote ? 
 He penned and dropped it in the patron's desk. 
 Who, deep in thought and absent much of mind, 
 Licensed the thing, allowed it for his own ; 
 Quick came promotion, — suu7n cuique, Count ! 
 Oh, he can pay for coach and six, be sure ! " 
 " — Well, let me go, do likewise: war's the 
 
 word — 
 That way the Franceschini worked at first, 
 I '11 take my turn, try soldiership." — " What, 
 
 you? 
 The eldest son and heir and prop o' the house. 
 So do you see your duty ? Here 's your post. 
 Hard by the hearth and altar. (Roam from 
 
 roof. 
 This youngster, play the gypsy out of doors. 
 And who keeps kith and kin that fall on us ?) 
 Stand fast, stick tight, conserve your gods at 
 
 home ! " 
 " — Well then, the quiet course, the contrary 
 
 trade ! 
 We had a cousin amongst us once was Pope, 
 And minor glories manifold. Try the Church, 
 The tonsure, and, — since heresy 's but half -slain 
 Even by the Cardinal's tract he thought he 
 
 wrote, — 
 Have at Molinos ! " — " Have at a fool's head ! 
 You a priest ? How were marriage possible ? 
 There must be Franceschini till time ends — 
 That 's your vocation. Make your brothers 
 
 priests, 
 Paul shall be porporate, and Girolamo step 
 Red-stockinged in the presence when you choose. 
 But save one Franceschini for the age ! 
 Be not the vine but dig and dung its root, 
 Be not a priest but gird up priesthood's loins, 
 With one foot in Arezzo stride to Rome, 
 Spend yourself there and bring the purchase 
 
 back! 
 Go hence to Rome, be guided ! " 
 
 So I was. 
 I turned alike from the hillside zigzag thread 
 Of way to the table-land a soldier takes. 
 Alike from the low-lying pasture-place 
 Where churchmen graze, recline and ruminate, 
 — Ventured to mount no platform like my lords 
 Who judge the world, bear brain I dare not 
 
 brag— 
 But stationed me, might thus the expression 
 
 serve. 
 As who should fetch and carry, come and go. 
 Meddle and make i' the cause ray lords love 
 
 most — 
 The public weal, which hangs to the law, which 
 
 holds 
 
 By the Church, which happens to be through 
 
 God himself. 
 Humbly I helped the Church till here I stand, — ■ 
 Or would stand but for the omoplate, you see 1 
 Bidden qualify for Rome, I, having a field, 
 Went, sold it, laid the sum at Peter's foot : 
 Which means — I settled home-accounts with 
 
 speed. 
 Set apart just a modicum should suffice 
 To hold the villa's head above the waves 
 Of weed inundating its oil and wine, 
 And prop roof, stanchion wall o' the palace so 
 As to keep breath i' the body, out of heart 
 Amid the advance of neighboring loftiness — 
 (People like building where they used to beg) — 
 Till succored one day, — shared the residue 
 Between my mother and brothers and sisters 
 
 there, 
 Black-eyed babe Donna This and Donna That, 
 As near to starving as might decently be, 
 
 — Left myself journey-charges, change of suit, 
 A purse to put i' the pocket of the Groom 
 
 0' the Chamber of the patron, and a glove 
 With a ring to it for the digits of the niece 
 Sure to be helpful in his household, — then 
 Started for Rome, and led the life prescribed. 
 Close to the Church, though clean of it, I as- 
 sumed 
 Three or four orders of no consequence, 
 
 — They cast out evil spirits and exorcise. 
 For example ; bind a man to nothing more, 
 Give clerical savor to his layman 's-salt. 
 Facilitate his claim to loaf and fish 
 
 Should miracle leave, beyond what feeds the 
 
 flock, 
 Fragments to brim the basket of a friend — 
 WhUe, for the world's sake, I rode, danced and 
 
 gamed. 
 Quitted me like a courtier, measured mine 
 With whatsoever blade had fame in fence, 
 
 — Ready to let the basket go its round 
 
 Even though my turn was come to help myself, 
 
 Should Dives count on me at dinner-time 
 
 As just the understander of a joke 
 
 And not immoderate in repartee. 
 
 Utrique sic paratus. Sirs, I said, 
 
 " Here," (in the fortitude of years fifteen, 
 
 So good a pedagogue is penury) 
 
 " Here wait, do service, — serving and to serve ! 
 
 And, in due time, I nowise doubt at all. 
 
 The recognition of my service comes. 
 
 Next year I 'm only sixteen. I can wait," 
 
 I waited thirty years, may it please the Court r 
 Saw meanwhile many a denizen o' the dung 
 Hop, skip, jump o'er my shoulder, make him 
 
 wings 
 And fly aloft, — succeed, in the usual phrase. 
 Every one soon or late comes round by Rome : 
 Stand still here, you '11 see all in turn succeed- 
 Why, look you, so and so, the physician here„ 
 My father's lacquey's son we sent to school. 
 Doctored and dosed this Eminence and that. 
 Salved the last Pope his certain obstinate sore. 
 Soon bought land as became him, names it now : 
 I grasp bell at his griffin-guarded gate, 
 Tl'averse the half-mile avenue, — a term, 
 A cypress, and a statue, three and three, — 
 
474 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 DeliTer message from my Monsignor, 
 
 With varletry at lounge i' the vestibule 
 
 I 'm barred from, who bear mud upon my shoe. 
 
 My father's chaplain's nephew, Chamberlain, — 
 
 Nothing less, please you ! — courteous all the 
 
 same, 
 — He does not see me though I wait an hour ■ 
 At his staircase-landing 'twixt the brace of 
 
 busts, 
 A noseless iSylla, Marius maimed to match, 
 My father gave him for a hexastich 
 Made on my birthday, — but he sends me down, 
 To make amends, that relic I prize most — ■ 
 The unburnt end o' the very candle. Sirs, 
 Purfled with paint so prettily round and round, 
 He carried in such state last Peter's-day, — 
 In token I, his gentleman and squire, 
 Had held the bridle, walked his managed mule 
 Without a tittup the procession through. 
 Nay, the official, — one you know, sweet 
 
 lords ! — 
 Who drew the warrant for my transfer late 
 To the New Prisons from Tordinona, — he 
 Grraciously had remembrance — '* Francesc . . , 
 
 ha? 
 His sire, now — how a thing shall come 
 
 about ! — 
 Paid me a dozen lloiins above the fee. 
 For drawing deftly up a deed of sale 
 When troubles fell so thick on him, good heart. 
 And 1 was prompt and pushing ! By all means ! 
 At the New Prisons be it his son shall lie, — 
 Anything for an old friend ! " and thereat 
 ISgned name with triple flourish underneath. 
 These were my fellows, such their fortunes now. 
 While I — kept fasts and feasts innumerable, 
 Matins and vespers, functions to no end 
 I' the train of Monsignor and Eminence, 
 As gentleman-squire, and for my zeal's reward 
 Have rarely missed a place at the table-foot 
 Except when some Ambassador, or such like. 
 Brought his own people. Brief, one day I felt 
 The tick of time inside me, turning-point 
 And slight sense there was now enough of this : 
 That I was near my seventh climacteric. 
 Hard upon, if not over, the middle life. 
 And, although fed by the east-wind, fulsome- 
 fine 
 With foretaste of the Land of Promise, still 
 My gorge gave symptom it might play me false ; 
 Better not press it further, — be content 
 With living and dying only a nobleman. 
 Who merely had a father great and rich. 
 Who simply had one greater and richer yet. 
 And so on back and back till first and best 
 Began i' the night : I finish in the day. 
 " The mother must be getting old,'' I said ; 
 " The sisters are weU wedded away, our name 
 Can manage to pass a sister off, at need. 
 And do for dowry : both my brothers thrive — 
 Regular priests they are, nor, bat-like, 'bide 
 'Twixt flesh and fowl with neither privilege. 
 My spare revenue must keep me and mine. 
 I am tired : Arezzo's air is good to breathe ; 
 Vittiano, — one limes flocks of thrushes there ; 
 A leathern coat costs little and lasts long : 
 Let me bid hope good-by, content at home I " 
 Thus, one day, I disbosomed me and bowed. 
 
 Whereat began the little buzz and thrill 
 
 0' the gazers round me ; each face brightened 
 
 up ; 
 As when at your Casino, deep in dawn, 
 A gamester says at last, " I play no more. 
 Forego gain, acquiesce in loss, withdraw 
 Anyhow : " and the watchers of his ways, 
 A trifle struck compunctious at the word. 
 Yet sensible of relief, breathe free once more, 
 Break up the ring, venture polite advice — 
 ' ' How, Sir ? So scant of heart and hope indeed ? 
 Retire with neither cross nor pile from play ? — 
 So incurious, so short-casting? — give your 
 
 chance 
 To a younger, stronger, bolder spirit belike, 
 Just when luck turns and the fine throw sweeps 
 
 all?" 
 Such was the chorus : and its goodwill meant — 
 "See that the loser leave door handsomely ! 
 There 's an ill look, — it 's sinister, spoils sport. 
 When an old bruised and battered year-by-yeai 
 Fighter with fortune, not a penny in poke, 
 Reels down the steps of our establishment 
 And staggers on broad daylight and the world, 
 In shagrag beard and doleful doublet, drops 
 And breaks his heart on the outside : people 
 
 prate 
 ' Such is the profit of a trip upstairs ! ' 
 Contrive he sidle forth, balked of the blow 
 Best dealt by way of moral, bidding down 
 No curse but blessings rather on our heads 
 For some poor prize he bears at tattered breast, 
 Some palpable sort of kind of good to set 
 Over and against the grievance : give him 
 
 quick I " 
 Whereon protested Paul, " Go hang yourselves ! 
 Leave him to me. Count Gnido and brother df 
 
 mine, 
 A word in your ear! Take courage, since 
 
 faint heart 
 Ne'er won . . . aha, fair lady, don't men say ? 
 There 's a sors, there 's a right Vii^lian dip ! 
 Do you see the happiness o' the hint ? At worst, 
 If the Church want no more of you, the Court 
 No more, and the Camp as little, the ingrates, — 
 
 come. 
 Count you are counted : still you ' ve coat to back, 
 Not cloth of gold and tissue, as we hoped, 
 But cloth with sparks and spangles on its fri^e 
 From Camp, Court, Church, enough to make a 
 
 shine, 
 Entitle you to carry home a wife 
 With the proper dowry, let the worst betide I 
 Why, it was just a wife you meant to take ! " 
 
 Now, Paul's advice was weighty : priests should 
 
 know : 
 And Paul apprised me, ere the week was out, 
 That Pietro and Violante, tiie easy pair. 
 The cits enough, with stomach to be more. 
 Had just the daughter and exact the sum 
 To truck for the quality of myself: "She'B 
 
 young. 
 Pretty and rich : you 're noble, classic, choice. 
 Is it to be a match ? " "A match," said I. 
 Done I He proposed all, I accepted all, 
 And we performed all. So I said and did 
 Simply. As simply followed, not at fii'st. 
 
COUNT GUIDO FRANCESCHINI 
 
 475 
 
 But with the outbreak of miafortune, still 
 One oomment on the saying and doi:^ — 
 
 "What? 
 No blush at the avowal you dared buy 
 A girl of age beseems your granddaughter, 
 Like ox or ass ? Are flesh and blood a ware ? 
 Are heart and soul a chattel ? " 
 
 Softly, Sirs ! 
 Will the Court of its charity teach poor me 
 Anxious to learn, of any way i' the world, 
 Allowed by custom and convenience, save 
 This same which, taught from my youth up, I 
 
 trod ? 
 Take me along with you ; where was the wrong 
 
 step? 
 K what I gave in barter, style and state 
 And all that hangs to Franoeschinihood, 
 Were worthless, — why, society goes to ground, 
 Its rules are idiot's - rambling. Honor of 
 
 birth, — 
 If that thing has no value, cannot buy 
 Something with value of another sort. 
 You 've no reward nor punishment to give 
 I' the giving or the taking honor ; straight 
 Your social fabric, pinnacle to base, 
 Comes down a-clatter like a house of cards. 
 Get honor, and keep honor free from flaw. 
 Aim at still higher honor, — gabble o' the 
 
 _ goose ! _ . 
 
 Go bid a second blockhead like myself 
 Spend fifty years in guarding bubbles of breath, 
 Soapsuds with air i' the belly, gilded brave, 
 Guarded and guided, all to break at touch 
 0' the first young girl's hand and first old fool's 
 
 purse 1 
 All my privation and endurance, all 
 Love, loyalty and labor dared and did, 
 Kddle-de-dee 1 — why, doer and darer both, — 
 Count Guide Franceschini had hit the mark 
 Far better, spent his life with more effect. 
 As a dancer or a prizer, trades that pay ! 
 On the other hand, bid this bufEoonery cease. 
 Admit that honor is a privilege. 
 The question follows, privilege worth what ? 
 Why, worth the market-price, — now up, now 
 
 down. 
 Just so with this aa with all other ware : 
 Therefore essay the market, sell your name. 
 Style and condition to who buys them best ! 
 " Does my name purchase," had I dared ih- 
 .,_. quire. 
 Your niece, my lord ? " there would have been 
 
 rebuff 
 Though courtesy, your Lordship cannot else — 
 " Not altogether ! Rank for rank may stand : 
 But I have wealth beside, you — poverty ; 
 Your scale flies up there : bid a second bid. 
 Bank too and wealth too ! " Keasoned like 
 
 yourself ! 
 But was it to you I went with ^oods to sell ? 
 This time 't was my scale quietly kissed the 
 
 ground. 
 Mere rank against mere wealth — some youth 
 
 beside, 
 Some beauty too, thrown into the bargain, , just 
 Aa the buyer likes or lets alone. I thought 
 To deal o' the square: others find favdt, it 
 
 The thing is, those my offer most concerned, 
 Pietro, Violante, cried they fair or foul ? 
 What did they make o' the terms ? Prepos- 
 terous terras? 
 Why then accede so promptly, close with such 
 Nor take a minute to chaffer? Bargain 
 
 struck. 
 They straight grew bilious, wished their money 
 
 back. 
 Repented them, no doubt : why, so did I, 
 So did your Lordship, if town-talk be true, 
 Of paying a full farm's worth for that piece 
 By Pietro of Cortona — probably 
 His scholar Giro Ferri may have retouched — 
 You caring more for color than design — 
 Getting a little tired of cupids too. 
 That 's incident to all the folk who buy I 
 I am charged, I know, with gilding fact by 
 
 fraud ; 
 I falsified and fabricated, wrote 
 Myself down roughly richer than I prove. 
 Rendered a wrong revenue, — grant it all ! 
 Mere grace, mere coquetry such fraud, I say : 
 A flourish round the figures of a sum 
 For fashion's sake, that deceives nobody. 
 The veritable back-bone, understood 
 Essence of this same bargain, blank and bare, 
 Being the exchange of quality for wealth, — 
 What may such fancy-flights be? Flecks of 
 
 oil 
 Flirted by chapmen where plain dealing grates. 
 I may have dripped a drop — " My name I 
 
 sell ; 
 Not but that I too boast my wealth " — as they, 
 " — We bring you riches ; still our ancestor 
 Was hardly the rapscallion, folk saw flogged. 
 But heir to we know who, were rights of force ! " 
 They knew and I knew where the back-bone 
 
 lurked 
 I' the writhings of the bargain, lords, believe I 
 I paid down all engaged for, to a doit, 
 Delivered them just that which, their life long. 
 They hungered in the hearts of them to gain — 
 Incorporation with nobility thus 
 In word and deed: for that they gave me 
 
 wealth. 
 But when they came to try their gain, my 
 
 gift, 
 Quit Rome and qualify for Arezzo, take 
 The tone o' the new sphere that absorbed the 
 
 old. 
 Put away gossip Jack and goody Joan 
 And go become familiar wim the Great, 
 Greatness to touch and taste and handle 
 
 now, — 
 Why, then, — they found that all was vanity. 
 Vexation, and what Solomon describes I 
 The old abundant city-fare was best, 
 The kindly warmth o' the commons, the glad 
 
 clap 
 Of the equal on the shoulder, the frank grin 
 Of the underling at all so many spoons 
 Fire-new at neighborly treat, — best, best and 
 
 best 
 Beyond compare ! — down to the loll itself 
 0' the pot-house settle, — better such a bench 
 Than the stiff crucifixion by my dais 
 Under the piecemeal damask canopv 
 
476 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 With the coroneted ooat-of-arms a-top 1 
 Poverty and privation for pride's sake, 
 All they engaged to easily brave and bear, — 
 With the fit upon them and their brains 
 
 ar-work, — 
 Proved unendurable to the sobered sots. 
 A banished prince, now, will exude a juice 
 And salamandeivlike support the flame : 
 He dines on chestnuts, chucks the husks to 
 
 help 
 The broil o' the brazier, pays the due baioc, 
 Goes off light-hearted : his grimace begins 
 At the funny humors of the christening-feast 
 Of friend the money-lender, — then he's 
 
 touched 
 By the flame and frizzles at the babe to kiss ! 
 Here was the converse trial, opposite mind ; 
 Here did a petty nature split on rock 
 Of vulgar wants predestinate for such — 
 One dish at supper and weak wine to boot ! 
 The prince had grinned and borne : the citizen 
 
 shrieked. 
 Summoned the neighborhood to attest the 
 
 wrong. 
 Made noisy protest he was murdered, — stoned 
 And burned and drowned and hanged, — then 
 
 broke away, 
 He and his wife, to tell their Rome the rest. 
 And this you ELdmire, you men o' the world, 
 
 my lords ? 
 This moves compassion, makes you doubt my 
 
 faith ? 
 Why, I appeal to . . . sun and moon ? Not I ! 
 Rather to Plautus, Terence, Boccaccio's Book, 
 My townsman, frank Ser Franco's merry 
 
 Tales, — 
 To all who strip a vizard from a face, 
 A body from its padding, and a soul 
 From froth and ignorance it styles itself, — 
 If this be other than the daily hap 
 Of purblind greed that dog-like still drops bone, 
 Grrasps shadow, and then howls the case is 
 
 hard! 
 
 So much for them so far : now for myself. 
 My profit or loss i' the matter ; married am I : 
 Text whereon friendly censors burst to preach. 
 Ay, at Rome even, long ere I was left 
 To regulate her life for my young bride 
 Alone at Arezzo, friendliness outbroke 
 (Sifting my future to predict its fault) 
 ^^ Purchase and sale being thus so plain a point, 
 How of a certain soul bound up, maybe, 
 I' the barter with the body and money-bags ? 
 From the bride's soul what is it you expect ? " 
 Why, loyalty and obedience, — wish and will 
 To settle and suit her fresh and plastic mind 
 To the novel, not disadvantageous mould ! 
 Father and mother shall the woman leave, 
 Cleave to the husband, be it for weal or woe : 
 There is the law : what sets this law aside 
 In my particular case ? My friends submit 
 '" Guide, ^ardian, benefactor, — fee, faw, fum, 
 The fact is you are forty-five years old, 
 Nor very comely even for that age : 
 Grirls must have boys." Why, let girls say so 
 
 then, 
 Nor call the boys and men, who say the same, 
 
 Brute this and beast the other as they do ! 
 Come, cards on table ! When you chant ns 
 
 next 
 Epithalamium f uU to overflow 
 With praise and glory of white womanhood. 
 The chaste and pure — troll no such lies o'er 
 
 lip ! 
 Put in their stead a crudity or two. 
 Such short and simple statement of the case 
 As youth chalks on our walls at spring of 
 
 year ! 
 No ! I shall still think nobler of the sex. 
 Believe a woman still may take a man 
 For the short period that his soul wears flesh. 
 And, for the soul's sake, understand the fault 
 
 Of armor frayed by fighting. Tush, it tempts 
 One's tongue too much ! I '11 say — the law 's 
 the law : 
 
 With a wife I look to flnd all wifeliness. 
 As when I buy, timber and twig, a tree — 
 I buy the song o' the nightingale inside. 
 
 Such was the pact : Pompilia from the first 
 Broke it, refused from the beginning day 
 Either in body or soul to cleave to mine. 
 And published it forthwith to all the world. 
 No rupture, — you must join ere you can 
 
 break, — 
 Before we had cohabited a month 
 She found I was a devil and no man, — 
 Made common cause with those who found as 
 
 much, 
 Her parents, Pietro and Violante, — moved 
 Heaven and earth to the rescue of all three. 
 In four months' time, the time o' the parents' 
 
 stay, 
 Arezzo was a-ringing, bells in a blaze. 
 With the unima^nable story rife 
 I' the mouth of man, woman and child — to 
 
 wit 
 My misdemeanor. First the lighter side. 
 Ludicrous face of things, — how very poor 
 The Francesehini had become at last. 
 The meanness and the misery of each shift 
 To save a soldo, stretch and make ends meet. 
 Next, the more hateful aspect, — how myself 
 With cruelty beyond Caligula's 
 Had stripped and beaten, robbed and murdered 
 
 them. 
 The good old couple, I decoyed, abused. 
 Plundered and then cast out, and happily so, 
 Since, — in due course the abominable comes, — 
 Woe worth the poor young wife left lonely here ! 
 Repugnant in my person as my mind, 
 I sought, — was ever heard of such revenge ? 
 — To lure and bind her to so cursed a conch. 
 Such co-embrace with sulphur, snake and toad, 
 That she was fain to rush forth, call the stones 
 O' the common street to save her, not from hate 
 Of mine merely, but . . . must I burn my lijH 
 With the blister of the lie ? . . . the satyr-love 
 Of who but my own brother, the young priest. 
 Too long enforced to leuten fare belike, 
 Now tempted by the morsel tossed him full 
 I' the trencher where lay bread and herbs at 
 
 best. 
 Mark, this yourselves say ! — this, none disal- 
 lows. 
 
COUNT GUIDO KRANCESCHINI 
 
 477 
 
 Was charged to me by the universal voice 
 At tJje iustigation of my four-months' wife ! — 
 And then you ask, " Such charges so preferred, 
 (Truly or fabely, here concerns us not) 
 Pricked you to punish now if not before ? — 
 Did not the harshness double itself, the hate 
 Harden?" I answer, " Have it your way and 
 
 will ! " 
 Say my resentment grew apace: what then? 
 Do you cry out on the marvel ? When I find 
 That pure smooth egg which, laid within my 
 
 nest. 
 Could not but hatch a comfort to us all, 
 Issues a cockatrice for me and mine. 
 Do you stare to see me stamp on it ? Swans 
 
 are soft ; 
 Is it not clear that she you call my wife, 
 That any wife of any husband, caught 
 Whetting a sting like this against ms breast, — 
 Speckled with fragments of the fresh -broke 
 
 _ sheU, 
 Married a month and making outcry thus, — 
 Proves a plague-prodigy to God and man ? 
 She married : what was it she married for. 
 Counted upon and meant to meet thereby ? 
 " Love," suggests some one, " love, a little word 
 Whereof we have not heard one syllable." 
 So, the Pompilia, child, girl, wife, in one, 
 Wanted the beating pulse, the rolling eye, 
 The frantic gesture, the devotion due 
 From Thyrsis to Nesera ! Guide's love — 
 Why not Provengal roses in his shoe, 
 Plume to his cap, and trio of guitars 
 At casement, with a bravo close beside ? 
 Good things all these are, clearly claimable 
 When the fit price is paid the proper way. 
 Had it been some friend's wife, now, threw her 
 
 fan 
 At my foot, with just this pretty scrap attached. 
 "Shame, death, damnation — fall these as they 
 
 may. 
 So I find you, for a minute ! Come this eve ! " 
 — Why, at such sweet self-sacrifice, — who 
 
 knows ? 
 I might have fired up, found me at ray post. 
 Ardent from head to heel, nor feared catch 
 
 cough. 
 Nay, had some other friend's . . . say, daugh- 
 ter, tripped 
 Upstairs and tumbled flat and frank on me. 
 Bareheaded and barefooted, with loose hair 
 And garments all at large, — cried "Take me 
 
 thus! 
 Duke So-and-So, the greatest man in Rome — 
 To escape his hand and heart have I broke 
 
 bounds. 
 Traversed the town and reached you ! " — Then, 
 
 indeed, 
 The lady had not reached a man of ice ! 
 I would have rummaged, ransacked at the word 
 Those old odd comers of an empty heart 
 For remnants of dim love the long disused, 
 And dusty crumblings of romance ! But here, 
 We talk of just a marriage, if you please — 
 The every-day conditions and no more ; 
 Where do these bind me to bestow one drop 
 Of blood shall dye my wife's true-love-knot 
 
 pink? 
 
 Pompilia was no pigeon, Venus' pet. 
 That shuffled from between her pressing paps 
 To sit on my rough shoulder, — but a hawk, 
 I bought at a hawk's price and carried home 
 To do hawk's service — at the Rotunda, say. 
 Where, six o' the callow nestlings in a row, 
 You pick and choose and pay the price for such, 
 I have paid my pound, await my penny's worth. 
 So, hoodwink, starve and properly train my bird, 
 And, should she prove a haggard, — twist her 
 
 neck ! 
 Did I not pay my name and style, my hope 
 And trust, my all? Through spending these 
 
 amiss 
 I am here ! 'T is scarce the gravity of the Court 
 Will blame me that I never piped a tune. 
 Treated my falcon-gentle like my finch. 
 The obligation I incurred was just 
 To practise mastery, prove my mastership : — 
 Porapilia's duty was — submit herself, 
 Afford me pleasure, perhaps cure my bile. 
 Am I to teach my lords what marriage means, 
 What God ordains thereby and man fulfils 
 Who, docile to the dictate, treads the house ? 
 My lords have chosen the happier part with Paul 
 And neither marry nor burn, — yet priestliness 
 Can find a parallel to the marriage-bond 
 In its own blessed special ordinance 
 Whereof indeed was marriage made the type : 
 The Church may show her insubordinate. 
 As marriage her refractory. How of the Monk 
 Who finds the claustral regimen too sharp 
 After the first month's essay ? \Vhat 's the 
 
 mode 
 With the Deacon who supports indifferently 
 The rod o' the Bishop when he tastes its smart 
 FuU four weeks ? Do you straightway slacken 
 
 hold 
 Of the innocents, the all-unwary ones 
 Who, eager to profess, mistook their mind ? — 
 Remit a fast-day's rigor to the Monk 
 Who fancied Francis' manna meant roast 
 
 quails, — 
 Concede the Deacon sweet society. 
 He never thought the Levite-rule renounced, — 
 Or rather prescribe short chain and sharp 
 
 scourge 
 Corrective of such peccant humors ? This — 
 I take to be the Church's mode, and mine. 
 If I was over-harsh, — the worse i' the wife 
 Who did not win from harshness as she ought. 
 Wanted the patience and persuasion, lore 
 Of love, should cure me and console hei-self . 
 Put case that I mishandle, fiurry and fright 
 My hawk through clumsiness in sportsmanship. 
 Twitch out five pens where plucking one would 
 
 serve — 
 What, shall she bite and claw to mend the case ? 
 And, if you find I pluck five more for that. 
 Shall you weep ' How he roughs the turtle 
 
 there " ? 
 
 Such was the starting ; now of the further step. 
 In lieu of taking penance in good part. 
 The Monk, with hue and cry, summons a mob 
 To make a bonfire of the convent, say, — 
 And the Deacon's pretty piece of virtue (save 
 The ears o' the Court 1 I try to save my head) 
 
478 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 Instructed by the ingenuous postulant, 
 Taxes the Bishop with adultery, (mud 
 Needs must pair off Avith mud, and filth with 
 
 filth) — 
 Such being my next experience. Who knows 
 
 not — 
 The couple, father and mother of my wife, 
 Returned to Rome, published before my lords, 
 Put into print, made circulate far and wide 
 That they had cheated me who cheated them ? 
 Pompilia, I supposed their daughter, drew 
 Breath first 'mid Rome's worst rankness, 
 
 through the deed 
 Of a drab and a rogue, was by-blow bastard-babe 
 Of a nameless strumpet, passed off, palmed on 
 
 me 
 As the daughter with the dowry. Daughter? 
 
 Dirt 
 0' the kennel! Dowry? Dust o' the street! 
 
 Naught more 
 Naught less, naught else but — oh — ah — as- 
 suredly 
 A Franceschini and my very wife ! 
 Now take this charge as you will, for false or 
 
 true, — 
 This charge, preferred before your very selves 
 Who judge me now, — I pray you, adjudge 
 
 again. 
 Classing it with the cheats or with the lies. 
 By which category I suffer most ! 
 But of their reckoning, theirs who dealt with me 
 In either fashion, — I reserve my word. 
 Justify that in its place ; I am now to say, 
 Whichever point o' the charge might poison 
 
 most, 
 Pompilia's duty was no doubtful one. 
 You put the protestation in her mouth, 
 *' Henceforward and forevermore, avaunt 
 Ye fiends, who drop disguise and glare revealed 
 In your own shape, no longer father mine 
 Nor mother mine ! Too nakedly you hate 
 Me whom you looked as if you loved once, — me 
 Whom, whether true or false, your tale now 
 
 damns. 
 Divulged thus to my public infamy, 
 Private perdition, absolute overthrow. 
 For, hate my husband to your hearts' content, 
 I, spoil and prey of you from first to last, 
 I who have done you the blind service, lured 
 The lion to your pitfall, — I, thus left 
 To answer for my ignorant bleating there, 
 I should have been remembered and withdrawn 
 From the first o' the natural fury, not flung loose 
 A proverb and a byword men will mouth 
 At the cross-way, in the corner, up and down 
 Rome and Arezzo, — there, full in my face, 
 If my lord, missing: them and finding me. 
 Content himself with casting his reproach 
 To drop i' the street where such impostors die. 
 Ah, but — that husband, what the wonder 
 
 were I — 
 If, far from casting thus away the rag 
 Smeared with the plague, his hand had chanced 
 
 upon. 
 Sewn to his pillow by Loousta's wile,— 
 Far from abolishing, root, stem and branch, 
 The misgrowth of infectious mistletoe 
 Foisted into his stock for honest graft, — 
 
 If he repudiate not, renounce nowise, 
 
 But, guarding, guiding me, maintain my cause 
 
 By making it his own, (what other way ?) 
 
 — To keep my name for me, he caJl it his. 
 Claim it of who would take it by their lie, — 
 To save my wealth for me - or babe of mine 
 Their lie was framed to beggar at the birth — 
 He bid them loose grasp, give our gold again : 
 If he become no partner with the pair 
 
 Even in a game which, played adroitly, gives 
 Its winner life's great wonderful new chance, — 
 Of marrying, to wit, a second time, — 
 Ah, if he did thus, what a friend were he ! 
 Anger he might show, — who can stamp out 
 
 flame 
 Yet spread no black o' the brand ? — yet, rough 
 
 albeit 
 In the act, as whose bare feet feel embers 
 
 scorch. 
 What grace were his, what gratitude were 
 
 mine ! " 
 Such protestation should have been my wife's. 
 Looking for this, do I exact too much ? 
 Why, here 's the — word for word so much, no 
 
 more — 
 Avowal she made, her pure spontaneous speech 
 To my brother the Abate at first blush. 
 Ere the good impulse had begun to fade : 
 So did she make confession for the pair. 
 So pour forth praises in her own behalf. 
 " Ay, the false letter," interpose my lords — 
 " The simulated writing, — 't was a trick : 
 You traced the signs, she merely marked the 
 
 same. 
 The product was not hers but yours." Alack, 
 I want no more impulsion to tell truth 
 iFrom the other trick, the torture inside there 1 
 I confess all — let it be understood — 
 And deny nothing ! If I baiiie you so. 
 Can so fence, in the plentitude of right. 
 That my poor lathen dagger puts aside 
 Each pass o' the Bilboa, beats you all the 
 
 same, — 
 What matters inefficiency of blade ? 
 Mine and not hers the letter, — conceded, lords ! 
 Impute to me that practice ! — take as proved 
 I taught my wife her duty, made her see 
 What it behoved her see and say and do. 
 Feel in her heart and with her tongue declare. 
 And, whether sluggish or recalcitrant, 
 Forced her to take the right step, I myself 
 Was marching in marital rectitude ! 
 Why, who finds fault here, say the tale be true ? 
 Would not my lords commend the priest whose 
 
 zeal 
 Seized on the sick, morose or moribund, 
 By the palsy-smitten finger, made it cross 
 His brow correctly at the critical time ? 
 
 — Or answered for the inarticulate babe 
 At baptism, in its stead declared the faith, 
 And saved what else would perish unprofessed ? 
 True, the incapable hand may rally yet, 
 Renounce the sign with renovated strength, — 
 The babe may grow up man and Molinist, — 
 And so Pompilia, set in the good path 
 
 And left to go alone there, soon might see 
 That too frank-forward, all too simple-straight 
 Her step was, and decline to tread the rough. 
 
COUNT GUIDO FRANCESCHINI 
 
 479 
 
 When here lay, tempting foot, the meadow-side, 
 And there the coppice rang with singing-birds ! 
 Soon she discovered she was young and fair, 
 That many in Arezzo knew as much, — 
 Yes, this next cuiJ of bitterness, my lords. 
 Had to begin go tUling, drop by drop, 
 Its measure up of full disgust for me, 
 Filtered into by every noisome drain — 
 Society's sink toward which all moisture runs. 
 Woidd not you prophesy — " She on whose 
 
 brow is stamped 
 The note of the imputation that we know, — 
 Rightly or wrongly mothered with a whore, — 
 Snch an one, to disprove the frightful charge, 
 What will she but exaggerate chastity. 
 Err in excess of wifehood, as it were, 
 Benounce even levities permitted youth. 
 Though not youth struck to age by a thunder- 
 bolt? 
 Cry ' wolf ' i' the sheepfold, where 's the sheep 
 
 dares bleat, 
 Enowmg the shepherd listens for a growl ? " 
 So you expect. How did the devil decree ? 
 Why, my lords, just the contrary of course ! 
 It was in the house from the window, at the 
 
 church 
 From the hassock, — where the theatre lent its 
 
 lodge. 
 Or staging for the public show left space, — 
 That still Pompilia needs must find herself 
 Launching her looks forth, letting looks reply 
 As arrows to a challenge ; on all sides 
 Ever new contribution to her lap. 
 Till one day, what is it knocks at my clenched 
 
 teeth 
 But the cup full, curse-collected all for me ? 
 And I must needs drink, drink this gallant's 
 
 praise, 
 That minion's prayer, the other fop's reproach. 
 And come at the dregs to — Caponsacchi ! 
 
 Sirs, 
 I,, — chin deep in a marsh of misery. 
 Struggling to extricate my name and fame 
 And fortune from the marsh would drown them 
 
 all, 
 My face the sole unstrangled part of me, — 
 I must have this new gad-fly in that face. 
 Must free me from the attacking lover too ! 
 Men say I battled ungracefully enough — 
 Was harsh, uncouth and ludicrous beyond 
 The proper part o' the husband : have it so 1 
 Your lordships are considerate at least — 
 You order me to speak in my defence 
 Plainly, expect no quavering tuneful trills 
 As when you bid a singer solace you, — 
 Nor look that I shall give it, for a grace, 
 Stans pede in una ; — you remember well 
 In the one case, 't is a plainsong too severe. 
 This sto^ of my wrongs, — and that I ache 
 And need a chair, in the other. Ask you me 
 Why, when I felt this trouble flap my face. 
 Already pricked with every shame could 
 
 perch, — 
 When, with her parents, my wife plagued me 
 
 too, — 
 Why I enforced not exhortation mild 
 To_ leave whore's-tricks and let my brows alone. 
 With mulct of comfits, promise of perfume ? 
 
 "Far from that! No, you took the opposite 
 
 course. 
 Breathed threatenines, rage and slaughter ! " 
 
 What you will ! 
 And the end has come, the doom is verily 
 
 here. 
 Unhindered by the threatening. See fate's 
 
 flare 
 Full on each face of the dead guilty three ! 
 Look at them well, and now, lords, look at 
 
 this! 
 Tell me : if on that day when I found fii-st 
 That Caponsacchi thought the nearest way 
 To his church was some half-mile round by my 
 
 door, 
 And that he so admired, shall I suppose. 
 The manner of the swallows' come-and-go 
 Between the props o' the window overhead, — 
 That window happening to be my wife's, — 
 As to stand gazing by the hour on high, 
 Of May-eves, while she sat and let him smile, — 
 If I, — instead of threatening, talking big. 
 Showing hair-powder, a prodigious pinch. 
 For poison in a bottle, — making believe 
 At desperate doings with a bauble-sword. 
 And other bugaboo-and-baby-work, — 
 Had, with the vulgarest household implement, 
 Calmly and quietly cut off, clean through bone. 
 But one joint of one finger of my ^rife, 
 Saying, " For listening to the serenade. 
 Here ^ your ring-finger shorter a full third : 
 Be certain I will slice away next joint. 
 Next time that anybody underneath 
 Seems somehow to be sauntering as he hoped 
 A flower would eddy out of your hand to his. 
 While you please fidget with the branch above 
 0' the rose-tree in the terrace ! " — had I done 
 
 so, ' 
 
 Why, there had followed a quick sharp scream, 
 
 some pain. 
 Much calling for plaister, damage to the dress, 
 A somewhat sulky countenance next day. 
 Perhaps reproaches, — but reflections too ! 
 I don't hear much of harm that Malchus did 
 After tie incident of the ear, my lords ! 
 Saint Peter took the efficacious way ; 
 Malchus was sore but silenced for his life : 
 He did not hang himself i' the Potter's Field 
 Like Judas, who was trusted with the bag 
 And treated to sops after he proved a thief. 
 So, by this time, my true and obedient wife 
 Might have been telling beads with a gloved 
 
 hand ; 
 Awkward a little at pricking hearts and darts 
 On sampler possibly, but well otherwise : 
 Not where Rome shudders now to see her lie. 
 I give that for the course a wise man takes ; 
 I took the other however, tried the fool's. 
 The lighter remedy, brandished rapier dread 
 With cork-baU at the tip, boxed Malchus' ear 
 Instead of severing the cartilage, 
 Called her a terrible nickname and the like. 
 And thare an end : and what was the end of 
 
 that? 
 What was the good effect o' the gentle course ? 
 Why, one night I went drowsily to bed. 
 Dropped asleep suddenly, not suddenly woke. 
 But did wake with rough Tousing and loud cry, 
 
48o 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 To find noon in my face, a crowd in my room, 
 Fumes in my brain, fire in my throat, my wife 
 Gone God knows -whither, — rifled vesture- 
 chest. 
 And ransacked money-coffer. "What does it 
 
 mean ? " 
 The servants had been drugg:ed too, stared and 
 
 yawned, 
 " It must be that our lady has eloped ! " 
 — " Whither and with whom ? " — " With 
 
 whom but the Canon's self ? 
 One recognizes Caponsacchi there ! " — 
 (By this time the admiring neighborhood 
 Joined chorus round me while I rubbed my 
 
 " 'T is months since their intelligence began, — 
 A comedy the town was privy to, — 
 He wrote and she wrote, she spoke, he re- 
 plied. 
 And going in and out your house last night 
 Was easy work for one ... to be plain with 
 
 you . . . 
 Accustomed to do both, at dusk and dawn 
 When you were absent, — at the villa, you 
 
 know. 
 Where husbandry required the master-mind. 
 Did not you know ? Why, we all knew, you 
 
 see ! " 
 And presently, bit by bit, the full and true 
 Particulars of the tale were volunteered 
 W^ith all the breathless zeal of friendship — 
 
 "Thus 
 Matters were managed : at the seventh hour of 
 night" . . . 
 
 — "Later, at daybreak" . . . "Caponsacchi 
 
 came" . . . 
 
 — " While you and all your household slept like 
 
 death. 
 Drugged as your supper was with drowsy 
 stuff" . . . 
 
 — " And your own cousin Guillichini too — 
 Either or both entered your dwelling-place, 
 Plundered it at their pleasure, made prize of 
 
 aU, 
 Including your wife "... — " Oh, your wife 
 
 led the way, 
 Out of doors, on to the gate "... — " But 
 
 gates are shut, 
 In a decent town, to darkness and such deeds : 
 They climbed the wall — your lady must be 
 
 lithe — 
 At the gap, the broken bit " . . . — "Torrione, 
 
 true ' 
 To escape the questioning guard at the proper 
 
 gate, 
 Clemente, where at the inn, hard by, * the 
 
 Horse,' 
 Just outside, a calash in readiness 
 Took the two principals, all alone at last. 
 To gate San Spirito, which o'erlooks the road. 
 Leads to Perugia, Rome and liberty." 
 Bit by bit thus made-up mosaic-wise. 
 Flat lay my fortune, — tessellated floor, 
 Imperishable tracery devils should foot 
 And frolic it on, around my broken gods. 
 Over my desecrated hearth. 
 
 So much 
 For the terrible effect of threatening, Sirs I 
 
 Well, this way I was shaken wide awakej 
 Doctored and drenched, somewhat unpoisoned 
 
 so. 
 Then, set on horseback and bid seek the lost, 
 I started alone, head of me, heart of me 
 Fire, and each limb as languid . . . ah, sweet 
 
 lords. 
 Bethink you ! —poison-torture, try persuade 
 The next refractory Molinist with that ! . . . 
 Floundered through day and night, another day 
 And yet another night, and so at last, 
 As Lucifer kept falling to find hell. 
 Tumbled into the court-yard of an inn 
 At the end, and fell on whom I thought to 
 
 find. 
 Even Caponsacchi, — what part once was priest, 
 Cast to the vrinds now with the cassock-rags : 
 In cape and sword a cavalier confessed. 
 There stood he chiding dilatory grooms. 
 Chafing that only horseflesh and no team 
 Of eagles would supply the last relay, 
 Whirl him along the league, the one post more 
 Between the couple and Rome and liberty. 
 'T was dawn, the couple were rested in a sort. 
 And though the lady, tired, — the tenderer 
 
 sex, — 
 Still lingered in her chamber, — to adjust 
 The limp hair, look for any blush astray, — 
 She would descend in a twinkling, — "Have 
 
 you out 
 The horses therefore ! " 
 
 So did I find my wife. 
 Is the ease complete ? Do your eyes here see 
 
 with mine ? 
 Even the parties dared deny no one 
 Point out of all these points. 
 
 What follows next ? 
 " Why, that then was the time," you interpose, 
 " Or then or never, while the fact was fresh. 
 To take the natural vengeance : there and thus 
 They and you, — ■ somebody had stuck a sword 
 Beside you while he pushed you on your 
 
 horse, — 
 'T was requisite to slay the couple, Count ! " 
 Just so my friends say — " Kill ! " they ray in 
 
 a breath, 
 Who presently, when matters grow to a head 
 And I do kill the offending ones indeed, — 
 When crime of theirs, only surmised before, 
 Is patent, proved indisputably now, — 
 When remedy for wrong, untried at the time, 
 Which law professes shall not fail a friend. 
 Is thrice tried now, found threefold worse than 
 
 nuU,— 
 When what might turn to transient shade, who 
 
 knows ? 
 Solidifies into a blot which breaks 
 Hell's black off in pale flakes for fear of 
 
 mine, — 
 Then, when I claim and take revenge — "So 
 
 rash y " 
 They cry — "so little reverence for the law ? " 
 
 Listen, my masters, and distinguish here ! 
 At first, I called in law to act and help : 
 Seeing I did so, " Why, 't is clear." they cry, 
 "You shrank from gallant readiness and risk,. 
 Were coward; the thing's inexplicable ebe." 
 
COUNT GUIDO FRANCESCHINI 
 
 481 
 
 Sweet my lords, let the thing be 1 I fall flat, 
 Flay the reed, not the oak, to breath of man. 
 Only, inJEorm my ignorance ! Say 1 stand 
 Convicted of the having been afraid, 
 Proved a poltroon, no fion but a lamb, — 
 Does that deprive me of my right of lamb 
 And give my fleece and flesh to the first wolf ? 
 Are eunuchs, women, children, shieldless quite 
 Against attack their own timidity tempts ? 
 Cowardice were misfortune and no crime ! 
 — Take it that way, since I am fallen so low 
 I scarce dare brush the fly that blows my face. 
 And thank the man who simply spits not 
 
 there, — 
 Unless the Court be generous, comprehend 
 How one brought up at the very feet of law 
 As I, awaits the grave Gamaliel's nod 
 Ere he clench fist at outrage, — much less, 
 
 stab! 
 — How, ready enough to rise at the right time, 
 I still could recognize no time mature 
 Unsanctioned by a move o' the judgment-seat, 
 So, mute in misery, eyed my masters here 
 Motionless till the authoritative word 
 Pronounced amercement. There 's the riddle 
 
 solved : 
 This is just why I slew nor her nor him. 
 But called in law, law's delegate in the place. 
 And bade arrest the guilty couple, Sira ! 
 We had some trouble to do so — you have 
 
 heard 
 They braved me, — he with arrogance and 
 
 soom. 
 She, with a volubility of curse, 
 A conversancy in the skill of tooth 
 And claw to make suspicion seem absurd, 
 Nay, an alacrity to put to proof 
 At my own throat my own sword, teach me so 
 To try conclusions better the next time, — 
 Which did the proper service with the mob. 
 They never tried to put on mask at all : 
 Two avowed lovers forcibly torn apart. 
 Upbraid the tyrant as in a playhouse scene, 
 Ay, and with proper clapping and applause 
 From the audience that enjoys the bold and 
 
 free. 
 I kept still, said to myself, " There 's law ! " 
 
 Anon 
 We searched the chamber where they passed 
 
 the night, 
 Found what confirmed the worst was feared be- 
 fore. 
 However needless confirmation now — 
 The witches' circle intact, charms undisturbed 
 That raised the spirit and succubus, — letters, 
 
 to wit. 
 Love-laden, each the bag o' the bee that bore 
 Honey from lily and rose to Cupid's hive, — 
 Now, poetry in some rank blossom-burst. 
 Now, prose, — " Come here, go there, wait such 
 
 a while. 
 He 's at the villa, now he 's back again : 
 We are saved, we are lost, we are lovers all the 
 
 same I " 
 All in order, all complete, — even to a clue 
 To the drowsiness that happed so opportune — 
 No mystery, when I read. Of all things, find 
 What wine Sir Jealousy decides to driius — 
 
 Ked wine ? Because a sleeping-potion, dust 
 Dropped into white, discolors wine and shows." 
 
 — " Oh, but we did not write a single word ! 
 Somebody forged the letters in our name ! — " 
 Both in a breath protested presently. 
 
 Aha, Sacchetti again 1 — '* Dame," — quoth the 
 
 Duke, 
 " What meaneth this epistle, counsel me, 
 I pick from out thy placket and peruse. 
 Wherein my page aveireth thou art white 
 And warm and wonderful 'twixt pap and 
 
 pap?" 
 "Sir," laughed the Lady, "'tis a counterfeit! 
 Thy page did never stroke but Dian's breast, 
 The pretty hound I nurture for thy sake : 
 To lie were losel, — by my fay, no more ! " 
 And no more say 1 too, and spare the Court. 
 
 Ah, the Court ! yes, I come to the Court's self ; 
 Such the case, so complete in fact and proof, 
 I laid at the feet of law, — there sat my lords, 
 Here sit they now, so may they ever sit 
 In easier attitude than suits my haunch ! 
 In this same chamber did I bare my sores 
 0' the soul and not the body, — shun no shame. 
 Shrink from no probing of the ulcerous part. 
 Since confident in Nature, — which is God, — 
 That she who, for wise ends, concocts a plague. 
 Curbs, at the right time, the plague's virulence 
 
 too: 
 Law renovates even Lazarus, — cures me \ 
 Csesar thou seekest ? To Csesar thou shalt go ! 
 CsBsar 's at Rome ; to Rome accordingly ! 
 
 The case was soon decided : both weights, cast 
 I' the balance, vibrate, neither kicks the beam. 
 Here away, there away, this now and now that. 
 To every one o' my grievances law gave 
 Redress, could purblind eye but see the point. 
 The wife stood a convicted runagate 
 From house and husband, — driven to such a 
 
 course 
 By what she somehow took for cruelty. 
 Oppression and imperilment of life — 
 Not that such things were, but that so they 
 
 seemed : 
 Therefore, the end conceded lawful, (since 
 To save life there 's no risk should stay our 
 
 leap) 
 It follows that all means to the lawful end 
 Are lawful likewise, — poison, theft and flight. 
 As for the priest's part, did he meddle or make, 
 Enough that he too thought life jeopardized ; 
 Concede him then the color charity 
 Casts on a doubtful course, — if blackish white 
 Or whitish black, will charity hesitate ? 
 What did he else but axA the precept out. 
 Leave, like a provident shepherd, his safe flock 
 To follow the single lamb and strayaway ? 
 Best hope so and think so, — that the ticklish 
 
 time 
 I' the carriage, the tempting privacy, the last 
 Somewhat ambiguous accident at the inn, 
 
 — All may bear explanation ; may ? then, 
 
 must! 
 The letters, — do they so incriminate ? 
 But what if the whole prove a prank o' the pen, 
 
482 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 Flight of the fancy, noue of theirs at all, 
 Bred of the vapors of my brain behke. 
 Or at worst mere exercise of scholar's-wit 
 In the courtly Caponsacchi ; verse, convict ? 
 Did not Catullus write less seemly once ? 
 Tet doctus and unblemished he abides. 
 Wherefore so ready to infer the worst ? 
 Still, I did righteously in bringing doubts 
 For the law to solve, — take the solution now ! 
 *^ Seeing that the said associates, wife and 
 
 priest. 
 Bear themselves not without some touch of 
 
 blame 
 
 — Else why the pother, scandal and outcry 
 Which trouble our peace and require chastise- 
 ment? 
 
 We, for complicity in Fompilia's flight 
 
 And deviation, and carnal intercourse 
 
 With the same, do set aside and relegate 
 
 The Canon Caponsacchi for three years 
 
 At Civita in the neighborhood of Kome : 
 
 And we consign Pompilia to the care 
 
 Of a certain Sisterhood of penitents 
 
 I' the city's self, expert to deal with such." 
 
 Word for word, there 's your judgment I Head 
 
 it, lords. 
 Re-utter your deliberate penalty 
 For the crime yourselves establish ! Your 
 
 award — 
 Who chop a man's right-hand off at the wrist 
 For tracing with forefinger words in wine 
 0' the table of a drinking-booth that bear 
 Interpretation as they mocked the Church 1 
 
 — Who brand a woman black between the 
 
 breasts 
 For sinning by connection with a Jew ; 
 While for the Jew's self — pudency be dumb 1 — 
 You mete out punishment such and such, yet so 
 Punish the adultery of wife and priest ! 
 Take note of that, before the Molinists do. 
 And read me right the riddle, since right must 
 
 be ! 
 While I stood rapt away with wonderment. 
 Voices broke in upon my mood and muse. 
 " Do you sleep ? " began the friends at either 
 
 ear, 
 " The case is settled, — you willed it should be 
 
 so — 
 None of our counsel, always recollect ! 
 With law's award, budge ! Back into your 
 
 place ! 
 Your betters shall arrange the rest for you. 
 We '11 enter a new action, claim divorce : 
 Your marriage was a cheat themselves allow : 
 You erred i' the person, — might have married 
 
 thus 
 Your sister or your daughter unaware. 
 We '11 gain you, that way, liberty at least. 
 Sure of so much by law's own showing. Up 
 And off with you and your unluckiness — 
 Leave ns to bury the blunder, sweep things 
 
 smooth! " 
 I was in humble frame of mind, be sure 1 
 I bowed, betook me to my place again. 
 Station by station I retraced the road. 
 Touched at this hostel, passed this post-house by, 
 Where, fresh-remembered yet, the fugitives 
 Had risen to the heroic stature : still — 
 
 "That was the bench they sat on, — there's 
 
 the board 
 They took the meal at, — yonder garden-ground 
 They leaned across the gate of," — ever a word 
 O' the Helen and the Paris, with " Ha 1 you 're 
 
 he. 
 The . . . much-commiserated husband ? " 
 
 Step 
 By step, across the pelting, did I reach 
 Arezzo, imderwent the archway's grin. 
 Traversed the length of sarcasm in the street. 
 Found myself in my horrible house once more, 
 And after a colloquy ... no word assists ! 
 With the mother and the brothers, stiffened me 
 Straight out from head to foot as dead man 
 
 does, 
 And, thus prepared for life as he for hell, 
 Marched to the public Square and met the 
 
 world. 
 Apologize for the pincers, palliate screws ? 
 Ply me with such toy-trifles, I entreat ! 
 Trust who has tried both sulphur and sops-in- 
 
 wine 1 
 
 I played the man as I best might, bade friends 
 Put non-essentials by and face the fact. 
 " What need to hang myself as you advise ? 
 The paramour is banished, — the ocean's width, 
 Or the suburb's length, — to Ultima Thule. say, 
 Or Proxima Civitas, what 's the odds of name 
 And place ? He 's banished, and the fact 's the 
 
 thing. 
 Why should law banish innocence an inch ? 
 Here 's guilt then, what else do I care to know ? 
 The adulteress lies imprisoned, — whether in a 
 
 well 
 With bricks above and a snake for company, 
 Or tied by a garter to a bedpost, — much 
 I mind what's little, — least's enough and to 
 
 spare 
 
 The little fillip on the coward's cheek 
 
 Serves as though crab-tree cudgel broke his 
 
 pate. 
 Law has pronounced there 's punishment, less 
 
 or more : 
 And I take note o' the fact and use it thus — 
 For the first flaw in the original bond, 
 I claim release. My contract was to wed 
 The daughter of Pietro and Violante. Both 
 Protest they never had a child at aJl. 
 Then I have never made a contract : good ! 
 Cancel me quick the thing pretended one. 
 I shall be free. What matter if hurried over 
 The harbor-boom by a great favoring tide. 
 Or the last of a spent ripple that lifts and 
 
 leaves ? 
 The Abate is about it. Laugh who wins ! 
 You shall not laugh me out of faith in law ! 
 I listen, through all your noise, to Rome ! " 
 
 Kome spoke. 
 In three months letters thence admonished me, 
 " Your plan for the divorce is all mistake. 
 It would hold, now, had you, taking thought to 
 
 wed 
 Rachel of the blue eye and golden hair. 
 Found swarth-skinned Leaji cumber couch 
 
 next day : 
 But Rachel, blue-eyed golden-haired aright. 
 
COUNT GUIDO FRANCESCHINI 
 
 483 
 
 Proving to be only Laban's child, not Lot's, 
 Remains yours all the same foreTermore. 
 No whit to the purpose is yonr plea : you err 
 I' the person and the quality — nowise 
 In the itadividual, — that 's the ease in point I 
 You go to the ground, — are met by a cross-suit 
 For separation, of the Rachel here, 
 From bed and board, — she is the injured one, 
 You did the wrong and have to answer it. 
 As for the circumstance of imprisonment 
 And color it lends to this your new attack, 
 Never fear, that point is considered too 1 
 The durance is already at an end ; 
 The convent-quiet preyed upon her health. 
 She is transferred now to her parents' house 
 — No-parents, when that cheats and plunders 
 
 you. 
 But parentage again confessed in full. 
 When such confession pricks and plagues yon 
 
 more — 
 As now — for, this their house is not the house 
 In ViaVittoria wherein neighbors' watch 
 Might incommode the freedom of your wife, 
 But a certain villa smothered up in vines 
 At the town's edge by the gate i' the Pauline 
 
 way, 
 0)it of eye-reach, out of ear-shot, little and lone, 
 Whither a friend, ^ at Civita, we hope, 
 A good half-dozen-hours' ride off, — might, 
 
 some eve. 
 Betake himself, and whence ride back, some 
 
 mom. 
 Nobody the wiser : but be that as it may. 
 Do not afflict your brains with trifles now. 
 You have stiM three suits to manage, all and 
 
 each 
 Ruinous truly should the event play false. 
 It is indeed the likelier so to do. 
 That brother Paul, your single prop and stay, 
 After a vain attempt to bring the Pope 
 To set aside procedures, sit himself 
 And summarily use prerogative, 
 Aiford us the infallible finger's tact 
 To disentwine your tangle of affairs, 
 Paul, — finding it moreover past his strength 
 To stem the irruption, bear Rome's ridicme 
 Of . . . since friends must speak ... to be 
 
 round with you . . . 
 Of the old outwitted husband, wronged and 
 
 wroth, 
 Pitted against a brace of juveniles — 
 A brisk priest who is versed in Ovid's art 
 More than his ^ Summa, ' and a gamesome wife 
 Able to act Corinna without book. 
 Beside the waggish parents who played dupes 
 To dupe the duper — (and truly divers scenes 
 Of the Arezzo palace, tickle rib 
 And tease eye till the tears come, so we laugh ; 
 Nor wants the shock at the inn its comic force. 
 And then the letters and poetry — merum sal ! ) 
 — Paul, finally, in such a state of things. 
 After a brief temptation to ^o jump 
 And join the fishes in the Tiber, drowns 
 Sorrow another and a wiser way : 
 House and goods, he has sold all off, is gone. 
 Leaves Rome, — whether for France or Spain, 
 
 who knows ? 
 Or Britain almost divided from our orb. 
 
 You have lost him anyhow." 
 
 Now, — I see my lords 
 Shift in their seat, — would I could do the 
 
 same i 
 They probably please expect my bile was 
 
 moved 
 To purpose, nor much blame me ; now, they 
 
 judge. 
 The fiery titillation urged my fiesh 
 Break through the bonds. By your p^'don, no, 
 
 sweet Sirs ! 
 I got such missives in the public place ; 
 When I sought home, — with such news, 
 
 mounted stair 
 And sat at last in the sombre gallery, 
 ('T was Autumn, the old mother in bed betimes, 
 Having to bear that cold, the finer frame 
 Of her daughter-in-law had found intolera- 
 ble— 
 The brother, walking misery away 
 0' the mountain-side with dog and gun belike,) 
 As I supped, ate the coarse bread, drank the 
 
 wine 
 Weak once, now acrid with the toad's-head- 
 
 squeeze, 
 My wife's bestowment, — I broke silence thus : 
 '^ Let me, a man, manfully meet the fact. 
 Confront the worst o' the truth, end, and have 
 
 peace ! 
 I am irremediably beaten here, — 
 The gross illiterate vulgar couple, — bah ! 
 Why, they have measured forces, mastered 
 
 mine. 
 Made me their spoil and prey from first to last. 
 They have got my name, — 't is nailed now 
 
 fast to theirs. 
 The child or changeling is anyway my wife ; 
 Point by point as they plan they execute. 
 They gain all, and I lose all — even to the lure 
 That led to loss, — they have the wealth again 
 They hazarded awhile to hook me with. 
 Have caught the fish and find the bait entire : 
 They even have their child or changeling back 
 To trade with^ turn to account a second time. 
 The brother, presumably might tell a tale 
 Or give a warning, — he, too, flies the field. 
 And with him vanish help and hope of help. 
 They have caught me in the cavern where I fell. 
 Covered my loudest cry for human aid 
 With this enormous paving-stone of shame. 
 Well, are we demigods or merely clay ? 
 Is success stiU attendant on desert ? 
 Is this, we live on, heaven and the final state. 
 Or earth which means probation to the end ? 
 Why claim escape from man's prpdestined lot 
 Of being beaten and bafded ? — God's decree. 
 In which I, bowing bruised head, acquiesce. 
 One of us Franceschini fell long since 
 I' the Holy Land, betrayed, tradition runs. 
 To Paynims by the feigning of a girl 
 He rushed to free from ravisher, and found 
 Lay safe enough with friends in ambuscade 
 Who flayed him while she clapped her hands 
 
 and laughed : 
 Let me end, falling by a like device. 
 It wUl not be so hard. I am the last 
 0' my line which will not suffer any more. 
 I have attained to my full fifty years, 
 
484 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 (About the average of us all, 't is said. 
 Though it seems longer to the unlucky man) 
 — Lived through my share of life ; let all end 
 
 here. 
 Me and the house and grief and shame at once. 
 Friends my informants, — I can bear your 
 
 blow ! " 
 And I believe 't was in no unmeet match 
 For the stoic's mood, with something like a 
 
 smile. 
 That, when morose December roused me next, 
 I took into my hand, broke seal to read 
 The new epistle from Rome. " All to no use ! 
 Whatever the turn next injury take," smiled I, 
 " Here 's one has chosen his part and knows 
 
 his cue, 
 I am done with, dead now ; strike away, good 
 
 friends ! 
 Are the three suits decided in a trice ? 
 Against me, — there 's no question ! How does 
 
 it go? 
 Is the parentage of my wife demonstrated 
 Infamous to her wish I Parades she now 
 Loosed of the cincture that so irked the loin ? 
 Is the last penny extracted from my purse 
 To mulct me for demanding the first pound 
 Was promised in return for value paid ? 
 Has the priest, with nobody to court beside, 
 Courted the Muse in exile, hitched my hap 
 Into a rattling ballad-rhyme which, bawled 
 At tavern-doors, wakes rapture everywhere, 
 And helps cheap wine down throat this Christ- 
 mas time, 
 Beating the bagpipes ? Any or all of these ! 
 As well, good friends, you cursed my palace 
 
 here 
 To its old cold stone face, — stuck your cap for 
 
 crest 
 Over the shield that 's extant in the Square, — 
 Or spat on the statue's cheek, the impatient 
 
 world 
 Sees cumber tomb-top in our family church : 
 Let him creep under covert as I shall do, 
 Half below-ground already indeed. Good-by ! 
 My brothers are priests, and childless so ; that 's 
 
 well — 
 And, thank God most for this, no child leave 
 
 None after me to bear till his heart break 
 The being a Franceschini and my son ! " 
 
 "Nay,'' said the letter, "but yon have just 
 
 that ! 
 A babe, your veritable son and heir — 
 Lawful, — 't is only eight months since your 
 
 wife 
 Left you, — so, son and heir, your babe was 
 
 born 
 Last Wednesday in the villa, — you see the 
 
 cause 
 For quitting Convent without beat of drum, 
 Stealing a hurried march to this retreat 
 That 's not so savage as the Sisterhood 
 To slips and stumbles : Pietro's heart is soft, 
 Violante leans to pity's side, -;- the pair 
 Ushered you into life a bouncing boy : 
 And he 's already hidden away and safe 
 From any claim on him you mean to make — 
 
 They need him for themselves, — don't fear, 
 
 they know ,. , ., 
 
 The use o' the bantling, —the nerve thus laid 
 
 To nip at, new and nice, with finger-nail ! " 
 
 Then I rose up like fire, and fire-like roared. 
 What, all is only beginning not ending now ? 
 The worm which wormed its way from skin 
 
 through flesh 
 To the bone and there lay biting, did its best, — 
 What, it goes on to scrape at the bone s self. 
 Will wind to inmost marrow and madden me ? 
 There 's to be yet my representative. 
 Another of the name shall keep displayed 
 The flag with the ordure on it, brandish stiU 
 The broken sword has served to stir a jakes ? 
 Who will he be, how will you call the man ? 
 A Franceschini, — when who out my purse. 
 Filched my name, hemmed me round, hustled 
 
 me hard 
 As rogues at a fair some fool they strip i the 
 
 midst. 
 When these count gains, vaunt pillage pres- 
 ently : — 
 But a Caponsacchi, oh, be very sure ! 
 When what demands its tribute of applause 
 Is the cunning and impudence o' the pair of 
 
 cheats. 
 The lies and lust o' the mother, and the brave 
 Bold carriage of the priest, worthily crowned 
 By a witness to his feat i' the following age, — 
 And how this threefold cord could hook and 
 
 fetch 
 And land leviathan that king of pride ! 
 Or say, by some mad miracle of chance. 
 Is he indeed my flesh and blood, this babe ? 
 Was it because fate forged a link at last 
 Betwixt my wife and me, and both alike 
 Found we had henceforth some one thing to 
 
 love, 
 Was it when she could damn my soul indeed 
 She unlatched door, let all the devils o' the 
 
 dark 
 Dance in on me to cover her escape ? 
 Why then, the surplusage of disgrace, the 
 
 spilth 
 Over and above the measure of infamy, 
 Failing to take effect on my coarse flesh 
 Seasoned with scorn now, saturate with 
 
 shame, — 
 Is saved to instil on and corrode the brow, 
 The baby-softness of my first-born child — 
 The child I had died to see though in a dream, 
 The child I was bid strike out for, beat the 
 
 wave 
 And baffle the tide of troubles where I swam. 
 So I might touch shore, lay down life at last 
 At the feet so dim and distant and divine 
 Of the apparition, as 't were Mary's babe 
 Had held, through night and storm, the torch 
 
 aloft, — 
 Born now in very deed to bear this brand 
 On forehead and curse me who could not save I 
 Rather be the town-talk true. Square's jest, 
 
 street's jeer 
 True, my own inmost heart's confession true. 
 And he the priest's bastard and none of mine 1 
 
COUNT GUIDO FRANCESCHINI 
 
 485 
 
 Ay, there was cause for flight, swift flight and 
 
 sure ! 
 The husband gets unruly, breaks all bounds 
 When he encounters some familiar face, 
 Fashion of feature, brow and eyes and lips 
 Where he least looked to find them, — time to 
 
 .fly' 
 
 This bastard then, a nest for him is made. 
 As the manner is of vermin, in my flesh — 
 Shall 1 let the lilthy pest buzz, flap and sting. 
 Busy at my vitals and, nor hand nor foot 
 Lift, but let be, lie still and rot resigned ? 
 No, 1 appeal to God, — what says himself. 
 How lessons Nature when 1 look to learn ? 
 Why, that 1 am alive, am stUl a man 
 WitJi brain and heart and tongue and right- 
 hand too — 
 Nay, even with friends, in such a cause as this. 
 To right me if I fail to take my right. 
 No more of law ; a voice beyond the law 
 Enters my heart, Quis est pro Domino f 
 
 Myself, in my own Vittiano, told the tale 
 To ray own serving-people summoned there : 
 Told the first half of it, scarce heard to end 
 By judges who got done with judgment quick 
 And clamored to go execute her 'best — 
 Who cried, " Not one of us that dig your soil 
 And dress your vineyard, prune your olive- 
 trees. 
 But would have brained the man debauched 
 
 our wife. 
 And staked the wife whose lust allured the man. 
 And paunched the Duke, had it been possible, 
 Who ruled the land, yet barred us such re- 
 venge ! " 
 I fixed on the first whose eyes caught mine, 
 _ some four 
 
 Kesolute youngsters with the heart still fresh. 
 Filled my purse with the residue o' the coin 
 Uncaught-up by my wife whom haste made 
 
 blind, 
 Donned the first rough and rural garb I found. 
 Took whatsoever weapon came to hand. 
 And out we flung and on we ran or reeled 
 Romeward. I have no memory of our way, 
 Only that, when at intervals the cloud 
 Of horror about me opened to let in life, 
 I listened to some song in the ear, some snatch 
 Of a legend, relic of religion, stray 
 Fragment of record very strong and old 
 Of the first conscience, the anterior right. 
 The GodVgift to mankind, impulse to quench 
 The antagonistic spark of hell and tread 
 Satan and all his malice into dust. 
 Declare to the world the one law, right is right. 
 Then the cloud re-encompassed me, and so 
 I found myself, as on the wings of winds. 
 Arrived : I was at Rome on Christmas Eve. 
 
 Festive bells — everywhere the Feaat o' the 
 
 Babe, 
 Joy upon earth, peace and good vrill to man ! 
 I am baptized. I started and let drop 
 The dagger. "Where is it, his promised 
 
 peace ? " 
 Nine days o' the Birth-Feast did I pause and 
 
 pray 
 
 To enter into no temptation more. 
 
 I bore the hateful house, my brother's once, 
 
 Deserted, — let the ghost of social joy 
 
 Mock and make mouths at me from empty 
 
 room 
 And idle door that missed the master's step, — 
 Bore the frank wonder of incredulous eyes. 
 As my own people watched without a word. 
 Waited, from where they huddled round the 
 
 hearth 
 Black like all else, that nod so slow to come. 
 1 stopped my ears even to the inner call 
 Of the dread duty, only heard the song 
 " Peace upon earth," saw nothing but the face 
 O' the Holy Infant and the halo there 
 Able to cover yet another face 
 Beliind it, Satan's which I else should see. 
 But, day by day, joy waned and withered off : 
 The Babe s face, premature with peak and 
 
 pine. 
 Sank into wrinkled ruinous old age. 
 Suffering and death, then mist-like disap- 
 peared. 
 And showed only the Cross at end of all, 
 Left nothing more to interpose 'twixt me 
 And the dread duty, — for the angels' song, 
 " Pea«e upon earth," louder and louder pealed, 
 " O Lord, how long, how long be unavenged ? " 
 On the ninth day, this grew too much for man. 
 I started up — ' Some end must be!" At 
 
 once, 
 Silence : then, scratching like a death-watch- 
 tick. 
 Slowly within my brain was syllabled, 
 " One more concession, one decisive way 
 And but one, to determine thee the truth, — 
 This way, in fine, I whisper in thy ear ; 
 Now doubt, anon decide, thereupon act ! " 
 
 " That is a way, thou whisperest in my ear ! 
 I doubt, I will decide, then act," said I — 
 Then beckoned my companions ; " Time is 
 come ! " 
 
 And so, all yet uncertain save the will 
 To do right, and the daring aught save leave 
 Right undone, I did find myself at last 
 I' the dark before the villa with my friends, 
 And made the experiment, the final test. 
 Ultimate chance that ever was to be 
 For the wretchedness inside. I knocked — pro- 
 nounced 
 The name, the predetermined touch for truth, 
 "What welcome for the wanderer? Open 
 
 straight — " 
 To the friend, physician, friar upon his rounds. 
 Traveller belated, beggar lame and blind ? 
 No, but — "to Caponsacchi ! " And the door 
 Opened. 
 
 And then, — why, even then, I think, 
 I' the minute that confirmed my worst of 
 
 Surely, — I pray God that I think arieht ! — 
 Had but Pompilia's self, the tender thing 
 Who once was good and pure, was once my 
 
 lamb 
 And lay in my bosom, had the well-kuown 
 
 shape 
 
486 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 Fronted me in the doorway, — stood there faint 
 With the recent pang, perhaps, of giving birth 
 To what might, though by miracle, seem my 
 
 child, — 
 Nay more, 1 will say, had even the aged fool 
 Pietro, the dotard, in whom foUy and age 
 Wrought, more than enmity or malevolence. 
 To practise and conspire against my peace, — 
 Had either of these but opened, I had paused. 
 But it was she the hag, she that brought hell 
 For a dowry with her to her husband's house. 
 She the mock-mother, she that made the 
 
 match 
 And married me to perdition, spring and 
 
 source 
 0' the fire inside me that boiled up from heart 
 To brain and hailed the Fury gave it birth, — 
 Violante Comparini, she it was. 
 With the old grin amid the wrinkles yet. 
 Opened : as if in turning^ from the Cross, 
 With trust to keep the sight and save my soul, 
 I had stumbled, first thing, on the serpent's 
 
 head 
 Coiled with a leer at foot of it. . 
 
 There was the end ! 
 Then was I rapt away by the impulse, one 
 Immeasurable everlasting wave of a need 
 To abolish that detested life. 'T was done : 
 You know the rest and how the folds o' the 
 
 thing. 
 Twisting for help, involved the other two 
 More or less serpent-like : how I was mad. 
 Blind, stamped! on all, the earth-worms with 
 
 the asp. 
 And ended so. 
 
 You came on me that night, 
 Your officers of justice, — caught the crime 
 In the first natural frenzy of remorse ? 
 Twenty miles off, sound sleeping as a child 
 On a cloak i' the straw which promised shelter 
 
 first. 
 With the bloody arras beside me, — was it not 
 
 so? 
 Wherefore not ? Why, how else should I be 
 
 found ? 
 I was my own self, had my sense again. 
 My soul safe from the serpents. I could sleep : 
 Indeed and, dear my lords, I shall sleep now. 
 Spite of my shoulder, in five minutes' space. 
 When you dismiss me, having truth enough ! 
 It is but a few days are passed, I find. 
 Since this adventure. Do you tell me, four ? 
 Then the dead are scarce quiet where they lie, 
 Old Pietro, old Violante, side by side 
 At the church Lorenzo, — oh, they know it 
 
 well! 
 So do I. But my wife is still alive. 
 Has breath enough to tell her story yet, 
 Her way, which is not mine, no doubt at all. 
 And Caponsacchi, you have summoned him, — 
 Was he so far to send for ? Not at hand ? 
 I thought some few o' the stabs were in his 
 
 heart. 
 Or had not been so lavish : less had served. 
 Well, he too tells his story, — florid prose 
 As smooth as mine is rough. You see, my 
 
 lords. 
 There will be a lying intoxicating smoke 
 
 Born of the blood, — confusion probably, — 
 For lies breed lies — but all that rests with 
 
 you ! 
 The trial is no concern of mine ; with me 
 The main of the care is over ; I at least 
 Recognize who took that huge burden off. 
 Let me begin to live again. I did 
 God's bidding and man's duty, so, breathe 
 
 free ; 
 Look you to the rest ! I heard Himself pre- 
 scribe. 
 That great Physician, and dared lance the core 
 Of the bad ulcer ; and the rage abates, 
 I am myself and whole now : I proved cured 
 By the eyes that see, the ears that hear again^ 
 The limbs that have releamed their youthful 
 
 play. 
 The healthy taste of food and feel of clothes 
 And taking to our common life once more, 
 All that now urges my defence from death. 
 The willingness to live, what means it else ? 
 Before, — but let the very action speak ! 
 Judge for yourselves, what life seemed worth 
 
 to me 
 Who, not by proxy but in person, pitched 
 Head-foremost into danger as a fool 
 That never cares if he can swina or no — 
 So he but find the bottom, braves the brook. 
 No man omits precaution, quite neglects 
 Secrecy, safety, schemes not how retreat, 
 Having schemed he might advance. Did I so 
 
 scheme ? 
 Why, with a warrant which 't is ask and have. 
 With horse thereby made mine without a word, 
 I had gained the frontier and slept safe that 
 
 night. 
 Then, my companions, — call them what you 
 
 please, 
 Slave or stipendiary, — what need of one 
 To me whose right-hand did its owner's work ? 
 Hire an assassin yet expose yourself ? 
 As well buy glove and then thrust naked hand 
 I' the thorn-bush. No, the wise man stays at 
 
 home. 
 Sends only agents out, with pay to earn : 
 At home, when they come back, — he straight 
 
 discards 
 Or else disowns. Why use such tools at all 
 When a man's foes are of his house, like mine. 
 Sit at his board, sleep in his bed ? Why noise, 
 When there 's the acquetta and the silent way ? 
 Clearly my life was valueless. 
 
 But now 
 Health is returned, and sanity of soul 
 Nowise indifferent to the body's harm. 
 I find the instinct bids me save my life ; 
 My wits, too, rally round me ; I pick up 
 And use the arms that strewed the ground be- 
 fore. 
 Unnoticed or spurned aside : I take my stand, 
 Make my defence. God shall not lose a life 
 May do him further service, while I speak 
 And you hear, you my judges and last hope ! 
 You are the law ; 't is to the law I look. 
 I began life by hanging to the law 
 To the law it is I hang till life shall end. 
 My brother made appeal to the Pope, 't is true, 
 
COUNT GUIDO FRANCESCHINI 
 
 487 
 
 To stay proceedings, judge my cause himself 
 Nor trouble law, — some fondness of conceit 
 That rectitude, sagacity sufficed 
 The investigator in a case like mine, 
 Dispensed with the machine of law. The Pope 
 Knew better, set aside my brother's plea 
 And put me Jback to law, — referred the cause 
 Adjudices meos^ — doubtlessly did well. 
 Here, then, I clutch my judges, — I claim law — 
 Cry, by the higher law whereof your law 
 0' the land is humbly representative, — 
 Cry^ on what point is it, where either accuse, 
 I fail to furnish you defence ? I stand 
 Acquitted, actually or virtually, 
 By every intermediate kind of court 
 That takes account of right or wrong in man, 
 Each unit in the series that begins 
 With God's throne, ends with the tribunal here. 
 God breathes, not speaks, his verdicts, felt not 
 
 heard, 
 Passed on successively to each court I call 
 Man's conscience, custom, manners, all that 
 
 make . 
 More and more effort to promulgate, mark 
 God's verdict in determinable words. 
 Till last come human jurists — solidify 
 Fluid result, — what 's fixable lies foiled, 
 Statute, — the residue escapes in fume, 
 Tet han°:s aloft, a cloud, as palpable 
 To the finer sense as word the legist welds, 
 Justinian's Pandects only make precise 
 What simply sparkled in men's eyes before, 
 Twitched in their brow or quivered on their 
 
 lip. 
 Waited the speech they called but would not 
 
 come. 
 These courts then, whose decree your own con- 
 firms, — 
 Take my whole life, not this last act alone, 
 Look on it by the light reflected thence ! 
 What has Society to chaise me with ? 
 Come, unreservedly, — favor none nor fear, — 
 I am Guido Franceschini, am I not ? 
 You know the courses I was free to take ? 
 I took just that which let me serve the Church, 
 I p:ave it all ray labor in body and soul 
 Tm these broke down i' the service. "Spe- 
 cify?" 
 WeU, my last patron was a Cardinal. 
 I left him unconvicted of a fault — 
 Was even helped, by way of gratitude, 
 Into the new life that I left him for. 
 This very misery of the marriage, — he 
 Made it, kind soul, so far as in him lay — 
 Signed the deed where you yet may see his 
 
 name. 
 He is gone to his reward, — dead, being my 
 
 friend 
 Who could have helped here also, — that, of 
 
 course ! 
 So far, there 's my acquittal, I suppose. 
 Then comes the marriage itself — no question, 
 
 lords. 
 Of the entire validity of that ! 
 In the extremity of distress, 't is true, 
 For after-reasons, furnished abundantly, 
 I wished the thing invalid, went to you 
 Only some months since, set you duly forth 
 
 My wrong and prayed your remedy, that a cheat 
 Should not have force to cheat my whole life 
 
 long. 
 "Annul a marriage ? 'T is impossible ! 
 Though ring about your neck be brass not gold, 
 Needs must it clasp, gangrene you all the 
 
 same ! ' ' 
 Well, let me have the benefit, just so far, 
 0' the fact announced, — my wife then is my 
 
 wife, 
 I have allowance for a husband's right. 
 I am charged with passing right's due bound, 
 
 — such acis 
 As I thought just, my wife called cruelty. 
 Complained of in due form, — convoked no court 
 Of common gossipry, but took her wrongs — 
 And not once, but so long as patience served — 
 To the town's top, jurisdiction's pride of place. 
 To the Archbishop and the Governor. 
 These heard her charge with my reply, and found 
 That futile, this sufficient : they dismissed 
 The hysteric querulous rebel, and confirra^ed 
 Authority in its wholesome exercise. 
 They, with directest access to the facts. 
 *' — Ay, for it was their friendship favored you, 
 Hereditary alliance ag'ainst a breach 
 I' the social order : prejudice for the name 
 Of Franceschini ! " — So I hear it said : 
 But not here. You, lords, never will you say 
 ** Such is the nullity of grace and truth, 
 Such the corruption of the faith, such lapse 
 Of law, such warrant have the Molinists 
 For daring reprehend us as they do, — 
 That we pronounce it just a common ease. 
 Two dignitaries, each in his degree 
 First, foremost, this the spiritual head, and that 
 The secular arm o' the body politic. 
 Should, for mere wrongs' love and injustice' 
 
 sake. 
 Side with, aid and abet in cruelty 
 This broken beggarly noble, — bribed perhaps 
 By his watered wine and mouldy crust of 
 
 bread — 
 Rather than that sweet tremulous flowe^like 
 
 wife 
 Who kissed their hands and curled about their 
 
 feet 
 Looking the irresistible loveliness 
 In tears that takes man captive, turns "... 
 
 enough ! 
 Do you blast your predecessors ? What for- 
 bids 
 Posterity to trebly blast yourselves 
 Who set the example and instruct their tongue ? 
 You dreaded the crowd, succumbed to the pop- 
 ular cry. 
 Or else, would nowise seem defer thereto 
 And yield to public clamor though i' the right ! 
 You ridded your eye of my unseemliness, 
 The noble whose misfortune wearied you, — 
 Or, what 's more probable, made common cause 
 With the cleric section, punished in myself 
 Maladroit uneoraplaisant laity. 
 Defective in behavior to a priest 
 Who claimed the customary partnership 
 1' the house and the wife. Lords, any lie will 
 
 serve I 
 Look to it, — or allow me freed so far I 
 
THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 Then I proceed a step, come with clean hands 
 Thus far, re-tell the tale told eight months since. 
 The wife, you allow so faj, I have not wronged, 
 Has fled my roof, plundered me and decamped 
 In company with the priest her paramour : 
 And I gave chase, came up with, caught the two 
 At the wayside inn where both had spent the 
 
 night, 
 Found them in flagrant fault, and found as well, 
 By documents with name and plan and date, 
 The fault was furtive then that ^s flagrant now. 
 Their intercourse a long established crime. 
 I did not take the license law's self gives 
 To slay both criminals o' the spot at the time, 
 But held my hand, — preferred play prodigy 
 Of patience which the world calls cowardice, 
 Rather than seem anticipate the law 
 And cast discredit on its organs, — you. 
 So, to your bar I brought both criminals. 
 And made my statement : heard their counter- 
 charge. 
 Nay, — their corroboration of my tale, 
 Nowise disputing its allegements, not 
 I' the main, not more than nature's decency 
 Compels men to keep silence in this kind, — 
 Only contending that the deeds avowed 
 Would take another color and bear excuse. 
 You were to judge between us ; so you did. 
 You disregard the excuse, you breathe away 
 The color of innocence and leave guilt black ; 
 " Guilty " is the decision of the court. 
 And that I stand in consequence untouched. 
 One white integrity from head to heel. 
 Not guilty ? Why then did you punish them ? 
 True, punishment has been inadequate — 
 'T is not I only, not my friends that joke. 
 My foes that jeer, who echo " inadequate " — 
 For, by a chance that comes to help for once. 
 The same case simultaneously was judged 
 At Arezzo, in the province of the Court 
 Where the crime had its beginning but not end. 
 They then, deciding on but half o' the crime, 
 The effraction, robbery, — features of the fault 
 I never cared to dwell upon at Kome, — 
 What was it they adjudged as penalty 
 To Pompilia, — the one criminal o' the pair 
 Amenable to their judgment, not the priest 
 Who is Rome's ? Why, just imprisonment for 
 
 life 
 I' the Stinche. There was Tuscany 's award 
 To a wife that robs her husband: you at 
 
 Rome — 
 Having to deal with adultery in a wife 
 And, in a priest, breach of the priestly vow — 
 Give gentle sequestration for a month 
 In a manageable Convent, then release. 
 You call imprisonment, in the very house 
 0' the very couple, which the aim and end 
 Of the culprits' crime was — just to reach and 
 
 rest 
 And there take solace and defy me : well, — 
 This difference 'twixt their penalty and yours 
 Is immaterial : make your penalty less — 
 Merely that she should henceforth wear black 
 
 gloves 
 And white fan, she who wore the opposite — 
 Why, all the same the fact o' the thing sub- 
 sists. 
 
 Reconcile to your conscience as you may, 
 
 Be it on your own heads, you pronounced but 
 
 half ,., ^ 
 
 0' the penalty for heinousness hke hers 
 And his, that pays a fault at Carnival 
 Of comfit-pelting past discretion's law. 
 Or accident to handkerchief in Lent 
 Which falls perversely as a lady kneels 
 Abruptly, and but half conceals her neck ! 
 I acquiesce for my part : punished, though 
 By a pin-point scratch, means guUty: guilty 
 
 means 
 — What have I been but innocent hitherto ? 
 Anyhow, here the offence, being punished, 
 
 ends. 
 
 Ends ? — for you deemed so, did you not, sweet 
 
 lords ? 
 That was throughout the veritable aim 
 0' the sentence light or heavy, — to redress 
 Recognized wrong ? You righted me, I think ? 
 Well then, — what if I, at this last of all. 
 Demonstrate you, as my whole pleading proves. 
 No particle of wrong received thereby 
 One atom of right ? — that cure grew worse dis- 
 ease ? 
 That in the process you call " justice done " 
 AH along you have nipped away just inch 
 By inch the creeping climbing length of plague 
 Breaking my tree of Hfe from root to branch, 
 And left me, after all and every act 
 Of your interference, • — lightened of what load ? 
 At liberty wherein ? Mere words and wind ! 
 " Now I was saved, now I should feel no more 
 The hot breath, find a respite from fixed eye 
 And vibrant tongue ! " Why, scarce your back 
 
 was turned. 
 There was the reptile, that feigned death at 
 
 first, 
 Renewing its detested spire and spire 
 Around me, rising to such heights of hate 
 That, so far from mere purpose now to crush 
 And coil itself on the remains of me. 
 Body and mind, and there flesh fang content. 
 Its aim is now to evoke life from death. 
 Make me anew, satisfy in my son 
 The hunger I may feed but never sate. 
 Tormented on to perpetuity — 
 My son, whom dead, I shall know, understand, 
 Feel, hear, see, never more escape the sight 
 In heaven that's turned to hell, or hell re- 
 turned 
 (So rather say) to this same earth again, — 
 Moulded into the image and made one. 
 Fashioned of soul as featured like in face. 
 First taught to laugh and lisp and stand and 
 
 go 
 By that thief, poisoner and adulteress 
 I call Pompilia, he calls . . . sacred name. 
 Be unpronounced, be unpolluted here ! 
 And last led up to the glory and prize of hate 
 By his . . . foster-father, Caponsacchi's self, 
 The perjured priest, pink of conspirators. 
 Tricksters and knaves, yet polished, superfine,* 
 Manhood to model adolescence by ! 
 Lords, look on me, declare, — when, what I 
 
 show, 
 Is nothing more nor less than what you deemed 
 
GIUSEPPE CAPONSACCHI 
 
 489 
 
 And doled me out for justice, — what did you 
 
 say ? 
 For reparation, restitution and more, • — 
 Will you not thank, praise, bid me to your 
 
 breasts 
 For having done the thing you thought to do. 
 And thoroughly trampled out sin's life at last ? 
 I have heightened phrase to make your soft 
 
 speech serve. 
 Doubled the blow you but essayed to strike, 
 Carried into effect your mandate here 
 That else had fallen to ground : mere duty 
 
 done. 
 Oversight of the master iuat supplied 
 By zesl i' the servant. I, being used to serve. 
 Have simply . . . what is it they charge me 
 
 with? 
 Blackened again, made legible once more 
 Your own decree, not permanently writ. 
 Rightly conceived but all too faintly traced. 
 It reads efficient, now, comminatory, 
 A terror to the wicked, answers so 
 The mood o' the magistrate, the mind of law. 
 Absolve, then, me, law's mere executant ! 
 Protect your own defender, — save me. Sirs ! 
 Give me my life, give me my liberty. 
 My good name and my civic rights again I 
 It would be too fond, too complacent play 
 Into the hands o' the devil, should we lose 
 The game here, I for God : a soldier-bee 
 That yields his life, exenterate with the stroke 
 0' the sting that saves the hive. X need that 
 
 life. 
 Oh, never fear ! I '11 find life plenty use 
 Though it should last five years more, aches 
 
 and all ! 
 For, first thing, there 's the mother's age to 
 
 help — 
 Let her come break her heart upon my breast, 
 Not on the blank stone of my nameless tomb ! 
 The fugitive brother has to be bidden back 
 To the old routine, repugnant to the tread, 
 Of daily suit and service to the Church, — 
 Through gibe and jest, those stones that Shi- 
 
 mei flung ! 
 Ay, and the spirit-broken youth at home. 
 The awe-struck altar-ministrant, shall make 
 Amends for faith now palsied at the source, 
 Shall see truth yet triumphant, justice yet 
 A victor in the battle of this world ! 
 Give me — for last, best gift — my son again. 
 Whom law makes mine, — I take him at your 
 
 word. 
 Mine be he, by miraculous mercy, lords ! 
 Let me lift up his youth and innocence 
 To purify my palace, room by room 
 Purged of the memories, lend from his bright 
 
 brow 
 Light to the old proud paladin my sire 
 Shrunk now for shame into the darkest shade 
 0' the tapestry, showed him once and shrouds 
 
 him now ! 
 Then raa,y we, — strong from that rekindled 
 
 smile, — 
 Go forward, face new times, the better day. 
 And when, in times made better through your 
 
 brave 
 Decision now, — might but Utopia be ! — 
 
 Rome rife with honest women and strong men, 
 Manners reformed, old habits back once more, 
 Customs that recognize the standard worth, — 
 The wholesome household rule in force again. 
 Husbands once more God's representative. 
 Wives like the typical Spouse once more, and 
 
 Priests 
 No longer men of Belial, with no aim 
 At leading siUy women captive, but 
 Of rising to such duties as youra now, — 
 Then will I set my son at my right-hand 
 And tell his father's story to this point. 
 Adding, " The task seemed superhuman, still 
 I dared and did it, trusting God and law : 
 And they approved of me : give praise to 
 
 both!" 
 And if, for answer, he shall stoop to kiss 
 My hand, and peraidventure start thereat, — 
 I engage to smile, *' That was an accident 
 I' the necessary process, — just a trip 
 0' the torture-irons in their search for truth, — 
 Hardly misfortune, and no fault at all." 
 
 VI 
 
 GIUSEPPE CAPONSACCHI 
 
 Answer you. Sirs ? Do I understand aright ? 
 Have patience ! In this sudden smoke from 
 
 hell — 
 So things disguise themselves, — I cannot see 
 My own hand held thus broad before my face 
 And know it again. Answer you ? Then that 
 
 means 
 TeU over twice what I, the first time, told 
 Six months ago : 't was here, I do believe. 
 Fronting you same three in this very room, 
 I stood and told you : yet now no one laughs, 
 Who then . . . nay, dear my lords, but laugh 
 
 you did. 
 As good as laugh, what in a judge we style 
 Laughter — no levity, nothing indecorous, lords I 
 Only, — I think I apprehend the mood : 
 There was the blameless shrug, permissible 
 
 smirk, 
 The pen's pretence at play with the pursed 
 
 mouth. 
 The titter stifled in the hollow palm 
 Which rubbed the eyebrow and caressed the 
 
 nose. 
 When I first told my tale : they meant, you 
 
 know, 
 *' The sly one, all this we are bound believe ! 
 Well, he can say no other than what he says. 
 We have been young, too, — come, there 's 
 
 greater guilt ! 
 Let him but decently disembroil himself. 
 Scramble from out the scrape nor move the 
 
 mud, — 
 We solid ones may risk a finger-stretch ! " 
 And now you sit as grave, stare as aghast 
 As if I were a phantom : now 'tis — " Friend, 
 Collect yourself! " — no laughing matter more — 
 " Counsel the Court in this extremity, 
 Tell us ag;ain 1 " — tell that, for telling which, 
 I got the jocular piece of punishment. 
 Was sent to lounge a little in the place 
 
490 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 Whence now of a sudden liere you summon me 
 To take the intelligence from just — your Ijpa I 
 You, Judge Tommati, who then tittered most, — 
 That she I helped eight months since to escape 
 Her husband, was retaken by the same. 
 Three days ago, if I have seized your sense, — 
 (I being disallowed to interfere, 
 Meddle or make in a matter none of mine. 
 For you and law were guardians quite enough 
 0' the innocent, without a pert priest's help) — 
 And that he has butchered her accordingly, 
 As she foretold and as myself believed, — 
 And, so foretelling and believing so. 
 We were punished, both of us, the merry way : 
 Therefore, tell once again the tale ! For what ? 
 Ponipilia is only dying while I speak ! 
 Why does the mirth hang fire and miss the 
 
 smile ? 
 My masters, there 's an old book, you should con 
 For strange adventures, applicable yet, 
 'T is stuffed with. Do you know that there was 
 
 once 
 This thing ; a multitude of worthy folk 
 Took recreation, watched a certain group 
 Of soldiery intent upon a game, — 
 How first they wrangled, but soon fell to play. 
 Threw dice, — the best diversion in the world. 
 A word in your ear, — they are now casting lots, 
 Ay, with that gesture quaint and cry uncouth. 
 For the coat of One murdered an hour ago ! 
 I am a priest, — talk of what I have learned. 
 Pompilia is bleeding out her life belike. 
 Gasping away the latest breath of all. 
 This minute, while I talk — not while you 
 
 laugh. 
 
 Yet, being sobered now, what is it you ask 
 By way of explanation ? There 's the fact ! 
 It seems to fill the universe with sight 
 And sound, — from the four comers of this 
 
 earth 
 Tells itself over, to my sense at least. 
 But you may want it lower set i' the scale, — 
 Too vast, too close it clangs in the ear, perhaps ; 
 You 'd stand back just to comprehend it more. 
 Well then, let me, the hollow rock, condense 
 The voice o' the sea and wind, interpret you 
 The mystery of this murder. God above ! 
 It is too paltry, such a transference 
 0' the stoma's roar to the cranny of the stone ! 
 
 This deed, you saw begin — why does its end 
 Surprise you ? Why should the event enforce 
 The lesson, we ourselves learned, she and I, 
 From the first o' the fact, and taught you, all 
 
 in vain ? 
 This Guido from whose throat you took my 
 
 grasp. 
 Was this man to be favored, now, or feared. 
 Let do his will, or have his will restrained. 
 In the relation with Pompilia ? — say I 
 Did any other man need interpose 
 — Oh, though first comer, though as strange at 
 
 the work 
 As fribble must be, coxcomb, fool that 's near 
 To knave as, say, a priest who fears the world — 
 Was he bound brave the peril, save the doomed. 
 Or go on. sing his snatch and pluck his flower. 
 
 Keep the straight path and let the victim die ? 
 
 I held so ; you decided otherwise, 
 
 Saw no such peril, therefore no such need 
 
 To stop song, loosen flower, and leave path. 
 
 Law, 
 Law was aware and watching, would suffice, 
 Wanted no priest's intrusion, palpably 
 Pretence, too manifest a subterfuge ! 
 Whereupon I, priest, coxcomb, fribble and fool, 
 Ensconced me m niy comer, thus rebuked, 
 A kind of culprit, over-zealous hound 
 Kicked for his pains to kennel ; I gave place 
 To you, and let the law reign paramount : 
 I left Pompilia to your watch and ward. 
 And now you point me — there and thus she 
 
 lies! 
 
 Men, for the last time, what do you want with 
 
 me? 
 Is it, — you acknowledge, as it were, a use, 
 A profit in employing me ? — at length 
 I may conceivably help the august law ? 
 I am free to break the blow, next hawk that 
 
 swoops 
 On next dove, nor miss much of good repute ? 
 Or what if this your summons, after all. 
 Be but the form of mere release, no more. 
 Which turns the key and lets the captive go ? 
 I have paid enough in person at Civita, 
 Am free, — what more need I concern me with ? 
 Thank you ! I am rehabilitated then, 
 A very reputable priest. But she — 
 The glory of life, the beauty of the world. 
 The splendor of heaven, . . . well. Sirs, does 
 
 no one move ? 
 Do I speak ambiguously ? The glory, I say. 
 And the beauty, I say, and splendor, still say I, 
 Who, priest and trained to live my whole life 
 
 long 
 On beauty and splendor, solely at their source, 
 God, — have thus recognized my food in her. 
 You tell me, that 's fast dying while we taJk, 
 Pompilia ! How does lenity to me 
 Remit one death-bed pang to her ? Come, 
 
 smile ! 
 The proper wink at the hot-headed youth 
 Who lets his soul show, through transparent 
 
 words. 
 The mundane love that 's sin and scandal too ! 
 You are all struck acquiescent now, it seems : 
 It seems the oldest, gravest signer here. 
 Even the redoubtable Tommati, sits 
 Chopfallen, — understands how law might take 
 Service like mine, of brain and heart and hand. 
 In good part. Better late than never, law 1 
 You understand of a sudden, gospel too 
 Has a claim here, may possibly pronounce 
 Consistent with my priesthood, worthy Christ, 
 That I endeavored to save Pompilia ? 
 
 Then, 
 You were wrong, you see: that's well to see, 
 
 though late ; 
 That 's all we may expect of man, this side 
 The grave : his good is — knowing he is bad : 
 Thus will it be with us when the books ope 
 And we stand at the bar on judgment-day. 
 Well then, I have a mind to speak, see cause 
 
GIUSEPPE CAPONSACCHI 
 
 491 
 
 To relume the quenched flax hy this dreadful 
 
 light, 
 Burn my soul out in showing you the truth. 
 I heard, last time I stood here to be judged. 
 What is priest's-duty, — labor to pluck tares 
 And weed the 00m of Molinism ; let me 
 Make you hear, this time, how, in such a case, 
 Man, be he in the priesthood or at plough. 
 Mindful of Christ or marching step by step 
 With . . . what 's his style, the other potentate 
 Who bids have courage and keep honor safe. 
 Nor let minuter admonition tease ? — 
 How he is bound, better or worse, to act. 
 Earth will not end through this misjudgment, 
 
 no ! 
 For you and the otheis like you sure to come, 
 Fresh work is sure to foEow, — wickedness 
 That wants withstanding. Many a m an of blood. 
 Many a man of guile will clamor yet. 
 Bid you redress his grievance, — as he clutched 
 The prey, forsooth a stranger stepped between. 
 And there 's the good gripe in pure waste I My 
 
 part 
 Is done : i' the doin^ it, I pass away 
 Out of the world. I want no more with earth. 
 Let me, in heaven's name, use the very snuff 
 0' the taper in one last spark shall show truth 
 For a moment, show Pompilia who was true I 
 Not for her sake, but yours : if she is dead. 
 Oh, Sirs, she can be loved by none of you 
 Most or least priestly ! Saints, to do us good. 
 Must be in heaven, 1 seem to understand : 
 We never find them saints before, at least. 
 Be her first prayer then presently for you — 
 She has done the good to me . . . 
 
 What is all this ? 
 There, I was bom, have lived, shall die, a fool ! 
 This is a foolish outset : — might with cause 
 Give color to the very lie o' the man, 
 The murderer, — make as if I loved his wife 
 In the way he called love. He is the fool 
 
 there ! 
 Why, had there been in me the touch of taint, 
 I'had picked up so much of knaves'-policy 
 As hide it, keep one hand pressed on the place 
 Suspected of a spot would damn us both. 
 Or no, not her ! — not even if any of you 
 Darea think that I, i' the face of death, her 
 
 death 
 That 's in my eyes and ears and brain and heart, 
 Lie, — if he does, let him I I mean to say, 
 So he stop there, stay thought from smirching 
 
 her 
 The snow-white soul that angels fear to take 
 Untenderly. But, all the same, I know 
 I too am taintless, and I bare my breast. 
 You can't think, men as you are, all of you. 
 Bit that, to hear thus suddenly such an end 
 Of such a wonderful white soul, that comes 
 Of a man and murderer calling the white black. 
 Must shake me, trouble and disadvantage. 
 
 Sirs, 
 Only seventeen I 
 
 Why, good and wise yon are 1 
 You might at the beginning stop my mouth : 
 So, none would be to speak for her, that knew. 
 ^ talk impertinently, and you bear. 
 
 All the same. This it is to have to do 
 With honest hearts : they easily may err. 
 But in the main they wish well to the truth. 
 You are Christians ; somehow, no one ever 
 
 plucked 
 A rag, even, from the body of the Lord, 
 To wear and mock with, but, despite himself. 
 He looked the greater and was the better. 
 
 Yes, 
 I shall go on now. Does she need or not 
 I keep cahn '! Calm I '11 keep as monk that 
 
 croons 
 Transcribing battle, earthquake, famine, 
 
 plague. 
 From parchment to his cloister's chronicle. 
 Not one word more from the point now 1 
 
 I begin. 
 Yes, I am one of your body and a priest. 
 Also 1 am a younger son o' the Rouse 
 Oldest now, greatest once, in my birth-town 
 Arezzo, I recognize no equal there — 
 (I want all arguments, aU soi-ts of arms 
 That seem to serve, — use this for a reason, 
 
 wait !) 
 Not therefore thrugt into the Church, because 
 0' the piece of bread one gets there. We were 
 
 first 
 Of Fiesole, that rings still with the fame 
 Of Capo-in-Sacco our progenitor : 
 When Florence mined Fiesole, our folk 
 Migrated to the victor-city, and there 
 Flourished, — our palace and our tower attest. 
 In the Old Mercato, — this was years ago. 
 Four hundred, full, — no, it wants fourteen just. 
 Our arms are those of Fiesole itself. 
 The shield quartered with white and red : a 
 
 branch 
 Are the Salviati of us, nothing more. 
 That were good help to the Church ? But 
 
 better still — 
 Not simply for the advantage of my birth 
 1' the way of the world, was I proposed for 
 
 priest ; 
 But because there 's an illustration, late 
 I' the day, that 's loved and looked to as a 
 
 saint 
 Still in Arezzo, he was bishop of. 
 Sixty years since : he spent to the last doit 
 His bishop's-revenue among the poor, 
 And used to tend the needy and the sick. 
 Barefoot, because of his humility. 
 Hfe it was, — when the Granduke Ferdinand 
 Swore he would raze our city, plough the place 
 And sow it with salt, because we Aretines 
 Had tied a rope about the neck, to hale 
 The statue of his father from its base 
 For hate's sake, — he availed by prayers and 
 
 tears 
 To pacify the Duke and save the town. 
 This was my father's father's brother. You see, 
 For his sake, how it was I had a right 
 To the selfsame office, bishop in the egg, 
 So, grew i' the garb and prattled in the school, 
 Was made expect, from infancy almost. 
 The proper mood o' the priest ; till time ran by 
 And brought the day when I must read the 
 
 TOW 
 
492 
 
 Declare the world renounced, and undertake 
 To become priest and leave probation, — leap 
 Over the ledge into the other life, 
 Having gone trippingly hitherto up to the height 
 O'er the wan water. Just a vow to read ! 
 
 I stopped short awe-struck. "How shall holiest 
 
 flesh 
 Engage to keep such vow inviolate. 
 How much less mine ? I know myself too 
 
 weak. 
 Unworthy ! Choose a worthier stronger man ! " 
 And the very Bishop smiled and stopped my 
 
 mouth 
 In its mid-protestation. " Incapable ? 
 Qualmish of conscience ? Thou ingenuous boy ! 
 Clear up the clouds and cast thy scruples far ! 
 I satisfy thee there 's an easier sense 
 Wherein to take such vow than suits the first 
 Rough rigid' reading. Mark what makes all 
 
 smooth. 
 Nay, has been even a solace to myself ! 
 The Jews who needs must, in their synagogue, 
 Utter sometimes the holy name of God, 
 A thing their superstition boggles at, 
 Pronounce aloud the ineffable sacrosanct, — 
 How does theirishrewdness help them ? In this 
 
 wise ; 
 Another set of sounds they substitute. 
 Jumble so consonants and vowels — how 
 Should I know ? — that there grows from out 
 
 the old 
 Quite a new word that means the very same — 
 And o'er the hard place slide they with a smile. 
 Giuseppe Maria Caponsacchi mine. 
 Nobody wants you in these latter days 
 To prop the Church by breaking your back- 
 bone, — 
 As the necessary way was once, we know, 
 When Diocletian flourished and his like. 
 That building of the buttress-work was done 
 By martyrs and confessors : let it bide. 
 Add not a brick, but, where you see a chink, 
 Stick in a sprig of ivy or root a rose 
 Shall make amends and beautify the pile ! 
 We profit as ""ou were the painfullest 
 O' the martyrs, and you prove yourself a match 
 For the cruellest confessor ever was. 
 If you march boldly up and take your stand 
 Where their blood soaks, their bones yet strew 
 
 the soil. 
 And cry ^ Take notice, I the young and free 
 And well-to-do i' the world, thus leave the 
 
 world. 
 Cast in my lot thus with no gay young world 
 But the grand old Church: she tempts me of 
 
 the two! ' 
 Renoimce the world ? Nay, keep and give it us ! 
 Let us have you, and boast of what you bring. 
 We want the pick o' the earth to practise with, 
 Not its offscouring, halt and deaf and blind 
 In soul and body. There 's a rubble-stone 
 Unfit for the front o' the bnilding, stuff to stow 
 In a gap behind and keep us weather-tight; 
 There 's porphyi'y for the prominent place. 
 
 Good lack ! 
 Saint Paul has had enough and to spare, I trow, 
 Of ragged runaway Onesimus : 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 He wants the right-hand with the signet-nng 
 Of King Agrippa, now, to shake and use. 
 I have a heavy scholar cloistered up. 
 Close under lock and key, kept at his task 
 Of letting F^nelon know the fool he is. 
 In a book I promise Christendom next Spring. 
 Why, if he covets so much meat, the clown, 
 As a lark's wing next Friday, or, any day, 
 Diversion beyond catching his own fleas. 
 He shall be properly swinged, I promise him. 
 But you, who are so quite another paste 
 Of a man, — do you obey me ? Cultivate 
 Assiduous that superior gift you have 
 Of making madrigals — (who told me ? Ah !) 
 Get done a Marinesque Adoniad straight 
 With a pulse o' the blood arpricking, here and 
 
 That I may tell the lady, ' And he 's ours ! ' " 
 
 So I became a priest : those terras changed all, 
 I was good enough for that, nor cheated so ; 
 I could live thus and still hold head erect. 
 Now you see why I may have been before 
 A fribble and coxcomb, yet, as priest, break 
 
 word 
 Nowise, to make you disbelieve me now. 
 I need that you should know my truth. Well, 
 
 then. 
 According to prescription did I live, 
 — Conformed myself, both read the breviary 
 And wrote the rhymes, was punctual to my 
 
 dace 
 I' the rieve, and as diligent at my post 
 Where beauty and fashion rule. I throve apace, 
 Sub-deacon, Canon, the authority 
 For delicate play at tarocs, and arbiter 
 O' the ma^:nitude of fan-mounts : all the while 
 Wanting no whit the advantage of a hint 
 Benignant to the promising pupil, — thus : 
 " Enough attention to the Countess now. 
 The yoimg one ; 't is her mother rules the roast. 
 We know where, and puts in a word : go pay 
 Devoir to-morrow morning after mass ! 
 Break that rash promise to preach, Passion- 
 week ! 
 Has it escaped you the Archbishop grunts 
 And snuflies when one grieves to tell his 
 
 Grace 
 No soul dares treat the subject of the day 
 Since his own masterly handling it (ha, ha !) 
 Five years ago, — when somebody could heh> 
 And touch up an odd phrase in time of nee^ 
 (He, he !) — and somebody helps you, my son I 
 Therefore, don't prove so indispensable 
 At the Pieve, sit more loose i' the seat, nor 
 
 grow 
 A fixture by attendance morn and eve ! 
 Arezzo 's just a haven midway Rome — 
 Rome 's the eventual harbor, — make for port. 
 Crowd sail, crack cordage 1 And your cargo 
 
 be 
 A polished presence, a genteel manner, wit 
 At will, and tact at every pore of you ! 
 I sent our lump of learning. Brother Clout, 
 And Father Slouch, our piece of piety. 
 To see Rome and try suit the Caidiiial. 
 Thither they clump-clumped, beads and book 
 
 in hand. 
 
GIUSEPPE CAPONSACCHI 
 
 493 
 
 And ever since 't is meat for mau and maid 
 How both Hopped down, prayed blessing: on 
 
 bent pate 
 Bald many an inch beyond the tonsure's need, 
 Never once dreaming, the two moony dolts, 
 There 's nothing- moves his Eminence so much 
 As — far from aJl this awe at sanctitude — 
 Heads that wag-, eyes that twinkle, modified 
 
 mirth 
 At the closet-lectures on the Latin tong-ue 
 A lady learns so much by, we know where. 
 Why, body o' Bacchus, you should crare his 
 
 rule 
 For pauses in the elegiac couplet, chasms 
 Permissible only to Catullus ! There ! 
 Now go to duty : biisli, break Priseian's head 
 By reading the day's office — there 's no help. 
 You 've Ovid in your poke to plaster that ; 
 Amen 's at the end of all : then sup with me ! " 
 
 Well, after three or four years of this life, 
 
 In prosecrution of my calling, I 
 
 Found myself at the theatre one night 
 
 With a brother Canon, in a mood and mind 
 
 Proper enough for the place, amused or no : 
 
 When I saw enter, stand, and seat herself 
 
 A lady, young, tall, beautiful, strange and sad. 
 
 It was as when, in our cathedral once, 
 
 As I got yawningly through matin-song, 
 
 I saw facckini bear a burden up. 
 
 Base it on the high-altar, break away 
 
 A board or two, and leave the thing inside 
 
 Lofty and lone : and lo, when next 1 looked, 
 
 There was the Rafa:! ! I was still one stare. 
 
 When — " Nay, I '11 make her give you back 
 
 your gaze " — 
 Said Canon Conti ; and at the word he tossed 
 A paper-twist of comfits to her lap, 
 And dodged and in a trice was at my back 
 Nodding from over my shoulder. Tlien she 
 
 turned, 
 Looked our way, smiled the beautiful sad 
 
 strange smile. 
 *'Is not she fair? 'Tis my new cousin,'' said 
 
 he: 
 " The fellow lurking there i' tlie black o' the 
 
 box 
 Is Guido, the old scapegrace : she ^s his wife, 
 Married three years since : how his Countship 
 
 sulks ! 
 He has brought little back from Rome beside, 
 After the bragging, bullying. A fair face, 
 And — they do say — a pocketful of gold 
 When he can worry both her parents dead. 
 I don't go much there, for the chamber 's cold 
 And the coffee pale. I got a turn at first 
 Paying my duty : I observed they crouched 
 — The two old frightened family spectres — 
 
 close 
 In a corner, each on each like mouse on mouse 
 I' the cat's cage : ever since, I stay at home. 
 Hallo, there's Guido, the black, mean and 
 
 small, 
 Bends his brows on us — please to bend your 
 
 own 
 On the shapely nether limbs of Light-skirts 
 
 there 
 By way of a diversion ! I was a fool 
 
 To fling the sweetmeats. Prudence, for God's 
 
 love 1 
 To-morrow I '11 make my peace, e'en tell some 
 
 fib, 
 Try if I can't find means to take you there." 
 
 That night and next day did the gaze endure. 
 Burnt to my brain, as sunbeam through shut 
 
 eyes, 
 And not once changed the beautiful sad strange 
 
 smile. 
 At vespers Conti leaned beside my seat 
 I' the choir, — part said, part sung — "- In ex-cei- 
 
 sis — 
 All 's to no purpose ; I have louted low, 
 Buthesaw you staring — quia sub — don t in- 
 cline 
 To know you nearer ; him we would not hold 
 For Hercules, — the man would lick your shoe 
 If you and certain efficacious friends 
 Managed him warily, — but there 's the wife : 
 Spare her, because he beats her, as it is. 
 She 's breaking her heart quite fast enough — 
 
 jam tu — 
 So, be you rational and make amends 
 With little Light-skirts yonder — in secula 
 Secu-lo~o~o~o-rum. Ah, you rogue ! Every one 
 
 knows 
 What great dame she makes jealous : one 
 
 against one, 
 Play, and win both ! " 
 
 Sire, ere the week was out, 
 I saw and said to myself, " Light-skirts hides 
 
 teeth 
 Would make a dog sick, — the great dame 
 
 shows spite 
 Should drive a cat mad : 't is but poor work 
 
 this — 
 Counting one's fingers till the sonnet 's crowned. 
 I doubb much if Marino really be 
 A better bard than Dante after all. 
 'T is more amusing to go pace at eve 
 I' the Duomo, — watch the day's last gleam 
 
 outside 
 Turn, as into a skirt of God's own robe, 
 Those lancet- windows' jewelled miracle, — 
 Than go eat the Archbishop's ortolans. 
 Digest his jokes. Luckily Lent is near : 
 Who cares to look will find me in my stall 
 At the Pieve, constant to this faith at least — 
 Never to write a canzonet any more." 
 
 So, next week, 't was my patron spoke abrupt, 
 In altered gnise, " Young man, can it be true 
 That after all your promise of sound fruit. 
 You have kept away from Countess young oi 
 
 old 
 And gone play truant in church all day long ? 
 Are you turning Molinist ? " I answered 
 
 quick : 
 " Sir, what if I turned Christian ? It might be. 
 The fact is, I am troubled in my mind. 
 Beset and pressed hard by some novel thoughts. 
 This your Arezzo is a limited world ; 
 There 's a strange Pope, — 't is said, a priest 
 
 who thinks. 
 Rome is the port, you say : to Rome I go. 
 I will live alone, one does so in a crowd. 
 
494 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 And look into my heart a little." " Lent 
 Ended," — I told friends, — "I shall go to 
 Rome." 
 
 One eveningr I was sitting in a muse 
 
 Over the opened "ttumma," darkened round 
 
 By the mid-Mareh twilight, thinking how my 
 
 life 
 Had shaken under me, — broke short indeed 
 And showed the gap 'twixt what is, what 
 
 should be, — 
 And into what abysm the soul may slip, 
 Leave aspiration here, achievement there. 
 Lacking omnipotence to connect extremes — 
 Thinking moreover . . . oh, thinking, if you 
 
 like, 
 How utterly dissociated was I 
 A priest and celibate, from the sad strange 
 
 wife 
 Of Guido, — just as an instance to the point, 
 Naught more, — how I had a whole store of 
 
 strengths 
 Eating into my heart, which craved employ, 
 And she, perhaps, need of a finger's help, — 
 And yet there was no way in the wide world 
 To stretch out mine and so relieve myself, — 
 How when the page o' the " Summa " preached 
 
 its best, 
 Her smile kept glowing out of it, as to mock 
 The silence we could break by no one word, — 
 There came a tap without the chamber-door, 
 And a whisper, when 1 bade who tapped speak 
 
 out. 
 And, in obedience to my summons, last 
 In glided a masked mufded mystery, 
 Laid lightly a letter on the opened book, 
 TliFr. stood with folded arms and foot demure, 
 Pointing as if to mark the minutes' flight. 
 
 I took the letter^ read to the effect 
 That she, I lately flung the comflts to. 
 Had a warm heart to give me in exchange. 
 And gave it, — loved me and confessed it thus. 
 And bade me render thanks by word of mouth. 
 Going that night to such a side o' the house 
 Where the small terrace overhangs a street 
 Blind and deserted, not the street in front : 
 Her husband being away, the surly patch. 
 At his villa of Vittiano. 
 
 " And you ? " — I asked : 
 "What may you be? " " Count Guido 's kind of 
 
 maid — 
 Most of us have two functions in his house. 
 We all hate him, the lady sufFers much, 
 'T is just we show compassion, furnish help. 
 Specially since her choice is fixed so well. 
 What answer may I bring to cheer the sweet 
 PompiUa?" 
 
 Then I took a pen and wrote : 
 " No more of this ! That you are fair, I know : 
 But other thoughts now occupy my mind. 
 I should not thus have played the insensible 
 Once on a time. What made you — may one 
 
 ask — 
 Marry your hideous husband ? 'T was a fault. 
 And now you taste the fruit of it. Farewell.'' 
 
 " There ! " smiled I as she snatched it and wae 
 
 gone — ^ .-I , 
 
 " There, let the jealous miscreant, — Guido'g 
 
 self, , , 
 
 Whose mean soul grins through this transparent 
 
 trick, — 
 Be balked so far, defrauded of his aim I 
 What fund of satisfaction to the knave. 
 Had I kicked this his messenger down stairs, 
 Trussed to the middle of her impudence, 
 And set his heart at ease so ! No, indeed ! 
 There 's the reply which he shall turn and twist 
 At pleasure, snuif at till his brain grow drunk, 
 As me bear does when he finds a scented glove 
 That puzzles him, — a hand and yet no hand. 
 Of other perfume than his own foul paw ! 
 Last month, I had doubtless chosen to play the 
 
 dupe. 
 Accepted the mock-invitation, kept 
 The sham appointment, cudgel beneath cloak, 
 Prepared myself to pull the appointer's self 
 Out of the window from his hi. ling-place 
 Behind the gown of this part-messenger 
 Part-mistress who would personate the wife. 
 Such had seemed once a jest permissible : 
 Now, I am not i' the mood." 
 
 Back next morn brought 
 The messenger, a second letter in hand. 
 " You are cruel, Thyrsis, and Myrtilla moans 
 Neglected but adores you, makes request 
 For mercy : why is it you dare not come ? 
 Such virtue is scarce natural to your age : 
 You must love some one else ; I hear you do, 
 The Baron's daughter or the Advocate's wife, 
 Or both, — all 's one, would you make me the 
 
 third — 
 I take the crumbs from table gratefully 
 Nor grudge who feasts there. 'Faith, I blush 
 
 and blaze 1 
 Yet if I break all bounds, there 's reason sure. 
 Are you determinedly bent on Rome ? 
 I am wretched here, a monster tortures me ; 
 Carry me with you ! Come and say you will ! 
 Concert this very evening ! Do not write ! 
 I am ever at the window of ray room 
 Over the terrace, at the Ave. Come ! " 
 
 I questioned — lifting half the woman's mask 
 To let her smile loose. " So, you gave my 
 
 line 
 To the merry lady?" ''She kissed off the 
 
 wax. 
 And put what paper was not kissed away 
 In her bosom to go burn ; but merry, no ! 
 She wept all night when evening brought no 
 
 friend. 
 Alone, the unkind missive at her breast ; 
 Thus Philomel, the thorn at her breast too. 
 Sings" . . . "Writes this second letter?" 
 
 " Even so ! 
 Then she may peep at vespers forth ? " — 
 
 " What risk 
 Do we run o' the husband ?" — " Ah, — no 
 
 risk at all ! 
 He is more stupid even than jealous. Ah '- 
 Tha,t was the reason ? Why, the man s away! 
 Beside, his bugbear is that friend of yours. 
 Fat little Canon Conti. He fears him, 
 
GIUSEPPE CAPONSACCHI 
 
 495 
 
 How should he dream of you? I told you 
 
 truth : 
 He goes to the villa at Vittiano — 't is 
 The time when Spring-sap rises in the vine — 
 Spends the night there. And then his wife 's a 
 
 ehUd: 
 Does he think a child outwits him ? A mere 
 
 chUd: 
 Yet so full-grown, a dish for any duke. 
 Don't quarrel longer with such cates, but 
 
 come I " 
 
 I wrote, " In vain do you solicit me. 
 I am a priest : and you are wedded wife. 
 Whatever kind of brute your husband prove. 
 1 have scruples, in short. Yet should you 
 
 reaily show 
 Sign at the window . . . but nay, best be 
 
 good ! 
 My thoughts are elsewhere." — " Take her 
 
 that ! " 
 
 — " Again 
 Let the incarnate meanness, cheat and spy. 
 Mean to the marrow of him, make his heart 
 His food, anticipate hell's worm once more I 
 Let him watch shivering at the window ^ ay, 
 And let this hybrid, this his light-of-love 
 And lackey-of-lies, — a sage economy, — 
 Paid with embracings for the rank brass 
 
 coin, — 
 Let her report and make him chuckle o'er 
 The, breakdown of my resolution now, 
 And lour at disappointment in good time ! 
 — So tantalize and so enrage by turns. 
 Until the two fall each on the other like 
 Two famished spiders, as the coveted fly. 
 That toys long, leaves their net and them at 
 
 last ! " 
 
 And so the missives followed thick and fast 
 For a month, say, — I still came at every turn 
 On the soft sly adder, endlong 'neath my tread. 
 I was met i' the street, made sign to in the 
 
 church, 
 A slip was found i' the door-sill, scribbled word 
 'Twixt page and page o' the prayer-book in my 
 
 place. 
 A crumpled thing dropped even before my feet. 
 Pushed through the blind, above the terrace- 
 rail. 
 As I passed, by day, the very window once. 
 And ever from comers would be peering up 
 The messenger, with the selfsame demand, 
 " Obdurate still, no flesh but adamant ? 
 Nothing to cure the wound, assuage the throe 
 0' the sweetest lamb that ever loved a bear ? " 
 And ever my one answer in one tone — 
 " Go your ways, temptress ! Let a priest read, 
 
 pray, 
 Unplagued of vain talk, visions not for him ! 
 In the end, you'll have your will and ruin 
 me!" 
 
 One day, a variation : thus I read : 
 
 " You have gained little by timidity. 
 
 My husband has found out my love at length. 
 
 Sees cousin Conti wae the stalking-horse. 
 
 And you the game he covered, poor fat soul I 
 
 My husband is a formidable foe, 
 WiU stick at nothing to destroy you. Stand 
 Prepared, or better, run till you reach Bome I 
 I bade you visit me, when the last place 
 My tyrant would have turned suspicious at. 
 Or cared to seek you in, was . . . why say, 
 
 where ? 
 But now all 's changed : beside, the season 's 
 
 past 
 At the villa, — wants the master's eye no more. 
 Anyhow, I beseech you, stay away 
 From the window 1 He might well be posted 
 
 there." 
 
 I wrote — ^" You raise my courage, or call up 
 My curiosity, who am but man. 
 Tell him he owns the palace, not the street 
 Under — that 'a hia and yours and mine alike, 
 If it should please me pad the path this eve, 
 Guide will have two troubles, first to get 
 Into a rage and then get out again. 
 Be cautious, though : at the Ave ! " 
 
 You of the court 
 When I stood question here and reached this 
 
 point 
 0' the narrative, — search notes and see and say 
 If some one did not interpose with smile 
 And sneer, " And prithee why so confident 
 That the husband must, of all needs, not the 
 
 wife. 
 Fabricate thus, — what if the lady loved ? 
 What if she wrote the letters ? " 
 
 Learned Sir, 
 I told you there 's a picture in our church. 
 Well, if a low-browed verger sidled up 
 Bringing me, like a blotch, on his prod's point, 
 A transfixed scorpion, let the reptile writhe, 
 And then said, " See a thing that Rafael 
 
 made — 
 This venom issued from Madonna's mouth ! " 
 I should reply, '* Rather, the soul of you 
 Has issued from your body, like from like, 
 By way of the ordure-comer ! " 
 
 But no less, 
 I tired of the same long black teasing lie 
 Obtruded thus at every turn ; the pest 
 Was far too near the picture, anyhow : 
 One does Madonna service, makmg downs 
 Remove their dung-heap from the sacristy. 
 " I will to the window, as he tempts," said I: 
 '' Yes, whom the easy love has failed allure. 
 This new bait of adventure tempts, — think; 
 
 he. 
 Though the imprisoned lady keeps afar, 
 There will they lie in ambush, heads alert. 
 Kith, kin, and Count mustered to bite my heel 
 No mother nor brother viper of the brood 
 Shall scuttle off without the instructive 
 
 bruise ! " 
 
 So I went: crossed street and street: "Thfc 
 
 next street's turn, 
 I stand beneath the terrace, see, above. 
 The black of the ambush-window. Then, in 
 
 place 
 Of hand's throw of soft prelude over lute, 
 And cough that clears way for the ditty 
 
 last." — 
 
496 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 I began to laugh already — " he will have 
 ' Out of the hole you hide in, on to the front, 
 Count Guide Francesehini, show yourself! 
 Hear what a man thinks of a thing like you, 
 Aud after, take this foulness in your face ! ' " 
 
 The words lay living on my lip, I made 
 
 The one turn more — and there at the window 
 
 stood. 
 Framed in its black square length, with lamp 
 
 in hand, 
 Pompilia ; the same great, grave, griefful air 
 As stands i' the dusk, on altar that I know, 
 Left alone with one moonbeam in her cell. 
 Our Lady of all the Sorrows. Ere I knelt — 
 Assured myself that she was flesh and blood — 
 She had looked one look and vanished. 
 
 I thought — " Just so : 
 It was herself, they have set her there to 
 
 watch — 
 Stationed to see some wedding-band go by. 
 On fair pretence that she must bless the bride, 
 Or wait some funeral with friends wind past. 
 And crave peace for the corpse that claims its 
 
 due. 
 She never dreams they used her for a snare. 
 And now withdraw the bait has served its turn. 
 Well done, the Imsband, who shall fai'e the 
 
 worse ! " 
 And on my lip again was — " Out with chee. 
 Guide ! " When all at once she reappeared ; 
 But, this time, on the terrace overhead. 
 So close above me, she could almost touch 
 My head if she bent down ; and she did bend. 
 While I stood still as stone, all eye, all ear. 
 
 She began — " You have sent me letters. Sir : 
 I have read none, I can neither read nor write ; 
 But she you gave them to, a woman here. 
 One of the people in whose power I am. 
 Partly explained their sense, I think, to me 
 Obliged to listen while she inculcates 
 That yon, a priest; can dare love me, a wife. 
 Desire to live or die as I shall bid, 
 (She makes me listen if I will or no) 
 Because yon saw my face a single time. 
 It cannot be she says the thing you mean ; 
 Such wickedness were deadly to us both : 
 But good true love would help me now so 
 
 much — 
 I tell myself, you may mean good and true. 
 You offer me, I seem to understand. 
 Because I am in poverty and starve. 
 Much money, where one piece would save my 
 
 Ufe. 
 The silver cup upon the altar-cloth 
 Is neither yours to give nor mine to take ; 
 But I might take one bit of bread therefrom. 
 Since I am starving, and return the rest. 
 Yet do no harm : this is my very case. 
 I am in that strait, I may not dare abstain 
 From so much of assistance as would bring 
 The guilt of theft on neither you nor me ; 
 But no superfluous particle of aid. 
 I think, if you will let me state my case. 
 Even had you been so fancy-fevered here. 
 Not your sound self, you must grow healthy 
 
 now — 
 
 Care only to bestow what I can take. 
 That it is only you in the wide world, 
 Knowing me nor in thought nor word nor aeed, 
 Who, all unprompted save by your own heart, 
 Come proffering assistance now, —were strange 
 But that my whole life is so strange : as strange 
 It is, my husband whom I have not wronged 
 Should hate and harm me. For his own soul's 
 
 Hinder the harm ! But there is something 
 
 more. 
 And that the strangest : it has got to be 
 Somehow for my sake too, and yet not mine, 
 — This is a riddle — for some kind of sake 
 Not any clearer to myself than you, 
 And yet as certain as that I draw breath, — 
 I would fain live, not die — oh no, not die ! 
 My case is, I was dwelling happUj^ 
 At Bome with those dear Comparini, called 
 Father and mother to me ; when at once 
 I found I had become Count Guide's wife : 
 Who then, not waiting for a moment, changed 
 Into a fury of fire, if once he was 
 Merely a man : his face threw fire at mine. 
 He laid a hand on me that burned all peace, 
 All joy, all hope, and last all fear away. 
 Dipping the bough of life, so pleasant ouoe. 
 In fire which shrivelled leaf and bud alike. 
 Burning not only present life but past, 
 Which you might think was safe beyond his 
 
 reach. 
 He reached it, though, since that beloved pair, 
 My father once, my mother all those years, 
 That loved me so, now say I dreamed a dream 
 And bid me wake, henceforth no child of theirs, 
 Never in all the time their child at all. 
 Do you understand ? I cannot ; yet so it is. 
 Just so I say of you that proffer help : 
 I cannot understand what prompts your soul, 
 I simply needs must see that it is so, 
 Only one strange and wonderful thing more. 
 They came here with me, those two dear ones, 
 
 kept 
 All the old love up, till my husband, till 
 His people here so tortured them, they fled. 
 And now, is it because I gi'ow in flesh 
 And spirit one with him their torturer. 
 That they, renouncing him, must cast off me ? 
 If I were graced by God to have a child, 
 Could I one day deny God graced me so ? 
 Then, since my husband hates me, I shall break 
 No law that reigns in this fell house of hate. 
 By using — letting have effect so much 
 Of hate as hides me from that whole of hate 
 Would take my life which I want and must 
 
 have — 
 Just as I take from your excess of love 
 Enough to save my life with, all I need. 
 The Archbishop said to murder me were sin : 
 My leaving Guido were a kind of death 
 With no sin, — more death, he must answer for. 
 Hear now what death to him and Ufe to you 
 I wish to pay and owe. Take me to Rome ! 
 You go to Rome, the servant makes me hear. 
 Take me as you would take a dog, I think, 
 Masterless left for strangers to maltreat : 
 Take me home like that— leave me in tlie 
 
 house 
 
GIUSEPPK CAPONSACCHI 
 
 497 
 
 Where the father and the mother are ; and soon 
 
 They '11 come to know and call me by my name, 
 
 Their child ouce more, since child I am, for 
 all 
 
 They now forget me, which is the worst o' the 
 dream — 
 
 And the way to end dreams is to break them, 
 stand. 
 
 Walk, go : then help me to stand, walk, and go ! 
 
 The Governor said the strong should help the 
 weak : 
 
 You know how weak the strongest women are. 
 
 How could I find ray way there by myself ? 
 
 I cannot even call out, make them hear — 
 
 Just as in dreams : I have tried and proved the 
 fact. 
 
 I have told this story and more to good great 
 men. 
 
 The Archbishop and the Governor : they smiled. 
 ' Stop your mouth, fair one ! ' — presently they 
 
 frowned, 
 ' Get you gone, disengage you from our feet ! ' 
 I went in my despair to an old priest, 
 Only a friar, no great man like these two. 
 But good, the Augustinian, people name 
 Eomano, — he confessed me two months since : 
 He fears God, why then needs he fear the 
 
 world ? 
 And when he questioned how it came about 
 That I was found in danger of a sin — 
 Despair of any help from providence, — 
 'Since, though your husband outrage you,' said 
 
 he, 
 * That is a case too common, the wives die 
 Or live, but do not sin so deep as this ' — 
 Then I told — what I never will teU you — 
 How, worse than husband's hate, I had to bear 
 The love — soliciting to shame called love — 
 Of his brother, — the young idle priest i' the 
 
 house 
 With only the devil to meet there. ' This is 
 
 grave — 
 Yes, we must interfere : I counsel, — write 
 To, those who used to be your parents once. 
 Of dangers here, bid them convey you hence ! ' 
 ' But,' said I, ' when I neither read nor write ? ' 
 Then he took pity and promised ' I will write.' 
 If he did so, — why, they are dumb or dead : 
 Ether they give no credit to the tale. 
 Or else, wrapped wholly up in their own joy 
 Of such escape, they care not who cries, still 
 I' the clutches. Anyhow, no word arrives. 
 All such extravagance and dreadfulness 
 Seems incident to dreaming, cured one way, — 
 Wake rae ! The letter I received this morn. 
 Said — if the woman spoke your very sense — 
 ' You would die for me : ' I can believe it now : 
 For now the dream gets to involve yourself. 
 First of all, you seemed wicked and not good. 
 In writing me those letters : you came in 
 Like a thief upon me. I this morning said 
 In my extremity, entreat the thief ! 
 Try if he have in him no honest touch ! 
 A thief might save me from a murderer. 
 'T was a thief said the last kind word to Christ : 
 Christ took the kindness and forgave the theft ; 
 And so did I prepare what I now say. 
 But now, that you stand and I see your face, 
 
 Though you have never uttered word yet, — 
 
 well, I know. 
 Here too has been dream-work, delusion too. 
 And that at no time, you with the eyes here. 
 Ever intended to do wrong by me, 
 Nor wrote such letters therefore. It is false. 
 And you are true, have been true, wiU be true. 
 To Rome then, — when is it you take me there ? 
 Each minute lost is mortal. When? — I ask." 
 
 I answered, *' It shall be when it can be. 
 I will go hence and do your pleasure, find 
 The sure and speedy means of travel, then 
 Come back and take you to your friends in 
 
 Bome. 
 There wants a carriage, money and the rest, — 
 A day's work by to-morrow at this time. 
 How shall I see you and assure escape ? " 
 
 She replied, " Pass, to-morrow at this hour. 
 If I am at the open window, well : 
 If I am absent, drop a handkerchief 
 And walk by ! I shall see from where I watch, 
 And know that all is done. Return next eve. 
 And next, and so tiU we canmeet and speak ! " 
 "To-morrow at this hour Ipass," said I. 
 She was withdrawn. 
 
 Here is another point 
 I bid you pause at. When I told thus far. 
 Some one said, subtly, " Here at least was found 
 Your confidence in error, — you perceived 
 The spirit of the letters, in a sort. 
 Had been the lady's, if the body should be 
 Supplied by Guido ; say, he forged them all ! 
 Here was the unf orged fact — she sent for you, 
 Spontaneously elected you to help, 
 — What men call, loved you : Guido read her 
 
 mind. 
 Gave it expression to assure the world 
 The case was just as he foresaw ; he wrote, 
 She spoke." 
 
 Sirs, that first simile serves still, — 
 That falsehood of a scorpion hatched, I say. 
 Nowhere i' the world but in Madonna's mouth. 
 Go on ! Suppose, that falsehood foiled, next 
 
 eve 
 Pictured Madonna raised her painted hand. 
 Fixed the face Rafael bent above the Babe, 
 On my face as I fiung me at her feet ; 
 Such miracle vouchsafed and manifest. 
 Would that prove the first lying tale was true ? 
 Pompilia spoke, and I at once received. 
 Accepted my own fact, my miracle 
 Self -authorized and self -explained, — she chose 
 To summon me and signify her choice. 
 Afterward, — oh ! I gave a passing glance 
 To a certain ugly cloud-shape, goblin-shred 
 Of hell-smoke hurrying past the splendid moon 
 Out now to tolerate no darkness more. 
 And saw right through the thing that tried to 
 
 pass 
 For truth and solid, not an empty lie ; 
 " So, he not only forged the words for her 
 But words for me, made letters he called mine : 
 What I sent, he retained, gave these in place, 
 AH by the mistress-messenger ! As I 
 Recognized her, at potency of truth, 
 So she, by the crystalline soiU, knew me, 
 
498 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 Never mistook the signs. Enough of this — ■ 
 Let the wraith go to nothingness again, 
 Here is the orb, have only thought for her ! " 
 
 " Thought ? " nay, Sirs, what shall foUow was 
 
 not thought : 
 I have thought sometimes, and thought long 
 
 and hard. 
 1 have stood before, gone round a serious thing. 
 Tasked my whole mind to touch and clasp it 
 
 close. 
 As I stretch forth ray ai-rn to touch this bar. 
 God and man, and what duty I owe both, — 
 I dare to say I have confronted these 
 In thought : but no such faculty helped here. 
 I put forth no thought, — powerless, all that 
 
 night 
 I paced the city : it was the first Spring. 
 By the invasion I lay passive to. 
 In rushed new things, the old were rapt away ; 
 Alike abolished — the imprisonment 
 Of the outside air, the inside weight o' the 
 
 world 
 That pulled me down. Death meant, to spurn 
 
 the ground, 
 Soar to the sky, — die well and you do that. 
 The very immolation made the bliss ; 
 Death was the heart of life, and all the harm 
 My foUy had crouched to avoid, now proved a 
 
 veil 
 Hiding all gain ray wisdom strove to grasp : 
 As if the intense centre of the flame 
 Shoidd turn a heaven to that devoted fly 
 Which hitherto, sophist alike and sage. 
 Saint Thomas with his sober gray goose-quill, 
 And sinner Plato by Cephisian reed. 
 Would fain, pretending just the insect's good. 
 Whisk off, drive back, consign to shade again. 
 Into another state, under new rule 
 I knew myself was passing swift and sure ; 
 Whereof the initiatory pang approached. 
 Felicitous annoy, as bitter-sweet 
 As when the virgin-band, the victors chaste, 
 Feel at the end the earthly garments drop. 
 And rise with something of a rosy shame 
 Into immortal nakedness ; so I 
 Lay, and let come the proper throe would thrill 
 Into the ecstasy and outthrob pain. 
 
 I' the gray of dawn it was I found myself 
 Facing the pillared front o' the Pieve — mine. 
 My church : it seemed to say for the first time, 
 " But am not I the Bride, the mystic love 
 O' the Lamb, who took thy plighted troth, my 
 
 priest. 
 To fold thy warm heart on my heart of stone 
 And. freeze thee nor unfasten any more ? 
 This is a fleshly woman, — let the free 
 Bestow their life-blood, thou art pulseless 
 
 now!" 
 See ! Day by day I had risen and left this 
 
 church 
 At the signal waved me by some foolish fan. 
 With half a curse and half a pitying smile 
 For the monk I stumbled over in my haste. 
 Prostrate and corpse-like at the altar-foot 
 Intent on his corona: then the church 
 Was ready with her quip, if word conduced, 
 
 To quicken my pace nor stop for prating— 
 
 " There ! 
 Be thankful you are no such ninny, go 
 Rather to teach a black-eyed novice cards 
 Than gabble Latin and protrude that nose 
 Smooth to a sheep's through no brains and much 
 
 faith ! " 
 That sort of incentive! Now the church 
 
 changed tone — 
 Now, when I found out first that life and 
 
 death 
 Are means to an end, that passion uses both. 
 Indisputably mistress of the man 
 Whose form of worship is self-sacrifice : 
 Now, from the stone lungs sighed the scrannel 
 
 voice, 
 " Leave that live passion, come be dead with 
 
 me!" 
 As if, i' the fabled garden, I had gone 
 On great adventure, plucked in ignorance 
 Hedge-fruit, and feasted to satiety. 
 Laughing at such high fame for hips and haws, 
 And scorned the achievement : then come all at 
 
 once 
 0' the prize o' the place, the thing of perfect 
 
 gold. 
 The apple's self : and, scarce ray eye on that, 
 Was 'ware as well o' the seven-fold dragon's 
 
 watch. 
 
 Sirs, I obeyed. Obedience was too strange, — 
 This new thing that had been struck into me 
 By the look o' the lady, — to dare disobey 
 The first authoritative word. 'T was God's. 
 I had been lifted to the level of her. 
 Could take such sounds into my sense. I said, 
 " We two are cognizant o' the Master now ; 
 She it is bids me bow the head : how true, 
 I am a priest ! I see the function here ; 
 I thought the other way self-sacrifice : 
 This is the true, seals up the perfect sum. 
 I pay it, sit down, silently obey." 
 
 So, I went home. Dawn broke, noon broadened, 
 
 I sat stone-still, let time run over me. 
 The sun slanted into my room, had reached 
 The west. I opened book, — Aquinas blazed 
 With one black name only on the white page. 
 I looked up, saw the sunset : vespers rang : 
 " She counts the minutes till I keep my word 
 And come say all is ready. I am a priest. 
 Duty to God is duty to her : I think 
 God, who created her, will save her too 
 Some new way, by one miracle the more. 
 Without me. Then, prayer may avail perhaps." 
 I went to my own place i' the Pieve, read 
 The office : I was ba«k at home again 
 Sitting i' the dark. "Could she but know — 
 
 but know 
 That, were there good in this distinct from 
 
 God's, 
 Really good as it reached her, though procured 
 By a sin of mine, — I should sin : God forgives. 
 She knows it is no fear withholds me : fear ? 
 Of what ? Suspense here is the terrible thing. 
 If she should, as she counts the minutes, come 
 On the fantastic notion that I fear 
 
GIUSEPPE CAPONSACCHI 
 
 499 
 
 The world now, fear the Archbishop, fear 
 
 perhaps 
 Count Guido, he who, having forged the lies, 
 May wait the work, attend the effect, — I fear 
 The sword of Guido I Let God see to that — 
 Hating lies, let not her believe a lie ! " 
 
 Again the morning found me. " I will work, 
 Tie down niy foolish thoughts. Thank God so 
 
 far! 
 I have saved her from a scandal, stopped the 
 
 tongues 
 Had broken else into a cackle and hiss 
 Around the noble name. Duty is still 
 Wisdom: I have been wise." So the day wore. 
 
 At evening — "But, achieving victory, 
 I must not blink the priest's peculiar part. 
 Nor shrink to counsel, comfort: priest and 
 
 friend — 
 How do we discontinue to be friends ? 
 I will go minister, advise her seek 
 Help at the source, — above all, not despair : 
 There may be other happier help. at hand. 
 I hope it, — wherefore then neglect to say ? " 
 
 There she stood — leaned there, for the second 
 
 time. 
 Over the terrace, looked at me, then spoke : 
 ** Why is it you have suffered me to stay 
 Breaking my heart two days more than was 
 
 need ? 
 Why delay help, your own heart yearns to 
 
 give ? 
 You are again here, in the selfsame mind, 
 I see here, steadfast in the face of you, — 
 You grudge to do no one thing that I ask. 
 Why then is nothing done ? You know my 
 
 need. 
 Still, through God's pity on me, there is time 
 And one day more : shall I be saved or no ? " 
 I answered — "Lady, waste no thought, no 
 
 word 
 Even to forgive me ! Care for what I care — 
 Only ! Now follow me as I were fate ! 
 Leave this house in the dark to-morrow night, 
 Just before daybreak : — there 's new moon 
 
 this eve — 
 It sets, and then begins the solid black. 
 Descend, proceed to the Torrione, step 
 Over the low dilapidated wall. 
 Take San Clemente, there 's no other gate 
 Un^arded at the hour : some paces thence 
 An inn stands ; cross to it ; I shall be there." 
 
 She answered, " If I can but find the way. 
 But I shall find it. Go now ! " 
 
 I did go. 
 Took rapidly the route myself prescribed. 
 Stopped at Torrione, climbed the ruined place, 
 Proved that the gate was practicable, reached 
 The inn, no eye, despite the dark, could miss. 
 Knocked there and entered, made the host se- 
 cure ; 
 " With Caponsacchi it is ask and have ; 
 I know my betters. Are you bound for Borne ? 
 I get swift horse and trusty man," said he. 
 
 Then I retraced my steps, was found once more 
 In my own house for the last time : there lay 
 The broad pale opened " Sumjna." " Shut his 
 
 book, 
 There 's other showing ! 'T was a Thomas too 
 Obtained — ^more favored than his namesake 
 
 here — 
 A gift, tied faith fast, foiled the tug of doubt, — 
 Our Lady's girdle ; down he saw it drop 
 As she ascended into heaven, they say : 
 He kept that safe and bade all doubt adieu. 
 I too have seen a lady and hold a grace." 
 
 I know not how the night passed: morning 
 
 broke. 
 Presently came my servant. " Sir, this eve — 
 Do you forget ? " I started. " How forget ? 
 What is it you know ? " " With due submis- 
 sion, Sir, 
 This being last Monday in the month but one, 
 And a vigil, since to-morrow is Saint George, 
 And feast-day, and moreover day for copes. 
 And Canon Conti now away a mouth. 
 And Canon Crlspi sour because, forsooth. 
 You let him sulk in stall and bear the brunt 
 Of the octave . . . Well, Sir, 't is important ! " 
 
 " True I 
 Hearken, I have to start for Rome this night. 
 No word, lest Crispi overboil and burst ! 
 Provide me with a laic dress 1 Throw dust 
 I' the Canon's eye, stop his tongue's scandal so ! 
 See there 's a sword in ease of accident." 
 I knew the knave, the knave knew me. 
 
 And thus 
 Through each familiar hindrance of the day 
 Did I make steadily for its hour and end, — 
 Felt time's old barrier-growth of right and fit 
 Give way through all its twines, and let me 
 
 go. 
 Use and wont recognized the excepted man, 
 Let speed the special service, — and I sped 
 Till, at the dead between midnight and mom. 
 There was I at the goal, before the gate. 
 With a tune in the ears, low leading up to lond, 
 A light in the eyes, faint that would soon be 
 
 flare, 
 Ever some spiritual witness new and new 
 In faster frequence, crowding solitude 
 To watch the way o' the wai?are, — till, at last, 
 When the ecstatic minute must bring birth. 
 Began a whiteness in the distance, waxed 
 Whiter and whiter, near grew and more near. 
 Till it was she : there did Pompilia come : 
 The white I saw shine through her was her 
 
 soul's, 
 Certainly, for the body was one black, 
 Bla^k from head down to foot. She did not 
 
 speak. 
 Glided into the carriage, — so a cloud 
 Gathers the moon up. By San Spirito, 
 To Kome, as if the road burned underneath I 
 Reach Rome, then hold my head in pledge, I 
 
 pay 
 The run and the risk to heart's content 1 " 
 
 Just that, 
 I said, — then, in another tick of time. 
 Sprang, was beside her, she and I alons. 
 
500 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 So it began, our flight through dusk to clear. 
 Through day and night and day again to night 
 Once more, and to last dreadful dawn of all. 
 Sirs, how should I lie quiet in my grave 
 Unless you suffer me wring, drop by drop. 
 My brain dry, make a riddance of the drench 
 Of minutes with a memory in each, 
 Rtcorded motion, breath or look of hers, 
 Which poured forth would present you one pure 
 
 glass, 
 Mirror you plain — as God's sea, glassed in gold. 
 His saints — the perfect soul PompUia ? Men, 
 You must know that a man gets drunk with 
 
 truth 
 Stagnant inside him ! Oh, they 've killed her, 
 
 Sirs! 
 Can I be calm ? 
 
 Calmly ! Each incident 
 Proves, I maintain, that action of the flight 
 For the true thing it was. The first faint scratch 
 0' the stone will test its nature, teach its worth 
 To idiots who name Parian — coprolite. 
 After all, I shall give no glare — at best 
 Only display you certain scattered lights 
 Lamping the rush and roll of the abyss : 
 Nothing but here and there a fire-point pricks 
 Wavelet from wavelet : well I 
 
 For the first hour 
 We both were silent in the night, I know : 
 Sometimes I did not see nor understand. 
 Blackness engulfed me, — partial stupor, say — 
 Then I would break way, breathe through the 
 
 surprise. 
 And be aware again, and see who sat 
 In the dark vest with the white face and hands. 
 I said to myself — "I have caught it, I con- 
 ceive 
 The mind o' the mystery ; 't is the way they 
 
 wake 
 And wait, two martyrs somewhere in a tomb 
 Each by each as their blessing was to die ; 
 Some signal they are promised and expect, — 
 When to arise before the trumpet scares : 
 So, thi'ongh the whole course of the world they 
 
 wait 
 The last day, but so fearless and so safe ! 
 No otherwise, in safety and not fear, 
 I lie, because she lies too by my side." 
 You know this is not love. Sirs, — it is faith. 
 The feeling that there 's God, he reigns and 
 
 rules 
 Out of this low world : that is all ; no harm 1 
 At times she drew a soft sigh — music seemed 
 Always to hover just above her lips, 
 Not settle, — break a silence music too. 
 
 In the determined morning, I first found 
 Her head erect, her face turned full to me. 
 Her soul intent on mine through two wide eyes. 
 I answered them. '* You are saved hitherto. 
 We have passed Perugia, — gone round by the 
 
 wood. 
 Not through, I seem to think, — and opposite 
 I know Assisi ; this is holy ground." 
 Then she resumed. " How long since we both 
 
 left 
 Arezzo ? " — " Years — and certain hours be- 
 side." 
 
 It was at ... ah, but I forget the names ! 
 'T is a mere post-house and a hovel or two j 
 I left the carriage and got bread and wine 
 And brought it her. — ' ' Does it detain to eat ? " 
 " — They stay perforce, change horses, — there- 
 fore eat ! 
 We lose no minute : we arrive, be sure ! " 
 This was — I know not where — there 'a a great 
 
 hill 
 Close over, and the stream has lost its bridge, 
 One fords it. She began — " I have heard say 
 Of some sick body that my mother knew, 
 'T was no good sign when in a limb diseased 
 All the pain suddenly departs, — as if 
 The guardian angel discontinued pain 
 Because the hope of cure was gone at last : 
 The limb will not again exert itself. 
 It needs be pained no longer; so with me, 
 — My soul whence all the pajn is past at once : 
 All pain must be to work some good in the end. 
 True, this I feel now, this may be that good, 
 Pain was because of, — otherwise, I fear ! " 
 
 She said, — a long while later in the day, 
 When I had let the silence be, — abrupt — 
 "Have you a mother?" "She died, I was 
 
 bom." 
 "A sister then?" " No sister." "Who was 
 
 it — 
 What woman were you used to serve this way, 
 Be kind to, till I eddied you and you came ? 
 I did not like that word. Soon afterward — 
 " Tell me, are men unhappy, in some kind 
 Of mere unhappiness at being men. 
 As women suffer, being womanish ? 
 Have you, now, some unhappiness, I mean. 
 Bom of what may be man's strength overmuch, 
 To match the undue susceptibihty. 
 The sense at every pore when hate is close ? 
 It hurts us if a baby hides its face 
 Or child strikes at us punily, calls names 
 Or makes a mouth, — much more if stranger 
 
 men 
 Laugh or frown, — just as that were much to 
 
 bear ! 
 Yet rocks split, — and the blow-oall does no 
 
 more. 
 Quivers to feathery nothing at a touch ; 
 And strength may have its drawback, weakness 
 
 Once she asked, "What is it that made you 
 
 smile, 
 At the great gate with the eagles and the 
 
 snakes. 
 Where the company entered, 't is a long time 
 
 since ? " 
 " — Forgive — I think you would not under- 
 stand : 
 Ah, but you ask me, —therefore, it was this. 
 That was a certain bishop's villa^ate, 
 I knew it by the eagles, —and at once 
 Remember this same bishop was just he 
 People of old were wont to bid me please 
 If I would catch preferment ; so, I smiled 
 Because an impulse came to me, a whim — 
 What if I prayed the prelate leave to speak, 
 Began upon him in his presence-hall 
 
GIUSEPPE CAPONSACCHI 
 
 SOI 
 
 — ' What, still at work so gray and obsolete ? 
 Still rocheted and mitred more or less ? 
 Don't yon feel all that out of fashion now ? 
 I find out when the day of things is done ! ' " 
 
 At eve we heard the angelus ; she turned — 
 
 " I told yon I can neither read nor write. 
 
 My life stopped with the play-tiiue ; I will 
 
 learn, 
 If I begin to live again : but you — 
 Who are a priest — wherefore do you not read 
 The service at this hour ? Read Gabriel's song, 
 The lesson, and then read the little prayer 
 To Raphael, proper for ns travellers ! " 
 I did not like that, neither, but I read. 
 
 When we stopped at Foligno it was dark. 
 
 The people of the post came out with lights : 
 
 The driver said, " This time to-morrow, may 
 
 Saints only help, relays continue good. 
 
 Nor robbers hinder, we arrive at Rome. 
 
 I urged, — ■' Why tax your strength a second 
 
 night ? 
 Trust me, alight here and take brief repose ! 
 We are out of harm's reach, past pursuit ; go 
 
 sleep 
 If but an hour ! I keep watch, guard the while 
 Here in the doorway." But her whole face 
 
 changed. 
 The misery grew again about her mouth. 
 The eyes burned up from faintness, like the 
 
 fawn's 
 Tired to death in the thicket, when she feels 
 The probine spear o' the huntsman. *' Oh, no 
 
 stay!" 
 She cried, in the fawn's cry, " On to Rome, on, 
 
 on — 
 Unless 't is you who fear, — which cannot 
 
 be!" 
 
 We did go on all night ; but at its close 
 
 She was troubled, restless, moaned low, talked 
 
 at whiles 
 To herself, her brow on quiver with the dream : 
 Once, wide awake, she menaced, at arms' 
 
 length 
 Waved away something — "Never again with 
 
 yon I 
 My soul is mine, my body is my soul's : 
 You and I are divided ever more 
 In soul and body ; get you gone I ' ' Then I — 
 " Why, in my whole life I have never prayed ! 
 Oh, if the God, that only can, wonld help ! 
 Am I his priest with power to cast out fiends ? 
 Let God arise and all his enemies 
 Be scattered ! " By mom, there was peace, no 
 
 sigh 
 Out of the deep sleep. 
 
 When she woke at last, 
 I answered the first look — "Scarce twelve 
 
 hours more. 
 Then, Rome ! There probably was no pursuit. 
 There cannot now be peril : bear up brave ! 
 Just some twelve hours to press through to the 
 
 prize : 
 Then, no more of the terrible journey 1 " 
 
 " Then, 
 
 No more o' the journey ; if it might but last ! 
 
 Always, my life long, thus to journey still ! 
 
 It is the interruption that I dread, — 
 
 With no dread, ever to be here and thus I 
 
 Never to see a face nor hear a voice 1 
 
 Yours is no voice ; you speak when you are 
 
 dumb ; 
 Nor face, I see it in the dark. I want 
 No face nor voice that change and grow 
 
 unkind." 
 That I liked, that was the best thing she said. 
 
 In the broad day, I dared entreat, " Descend ! " 
 
 I told a woman, at the garden-gate 
 
 By the post-house, white and pleasant in the 
 
 sun, 
 " It is my sister, — talk with her apart ! 
 She is married and unhappy, you perceive ; 
 X take her home because her head is hurt ; 
 Comfort her as you women understand I " 
 So, there I left them by the garden- wall. 
 Faced the road, then hade put the horses to. 
 Came back, and there she sat : close to her 
 
 knee, 
 A black-eyed child still held the bowl of milk, 
 Wondered to see how little she coidd drink, 
 And in her arms the woman's infant lay. 
 She smiled at me, " How much good this has 
 
 done ! 
 This is a whole night's rest and how much 
 
 more ! 
 I can proceed now, though I wish to stay. 
 How do you call that tree with the thick top 
 That holds in all its leafy green and gold 
 The sun now like an immense egg of fire ? " 
 (It was a million-leaved mimosa.) " Take 
 The babe away from me and let me go I " 
 And in the carriage, " Still a day, my friend I 
 And perhaps half a night, the woman fears. 
 I pray it finish since it cannot last. 
 There may be more misfortune at the close. 
 And where will you be? God suffice me 
 
 then I " 
 And presently — for there was a roadside- 
 shrine — 
 " When I was taken first to my own church 
 Lorenzo in Lncina, being a girl, 
 And bid confess my faults, I interposed 
 ' But teach me what fault to confess and 
 
 know ! ' 
 So, the priest said — ' You should bethink 
 
 yourself : 
 Each human being needs must have done 
 
 wrong ! ' 
 Now, be you candid and no priest but friend — 
 Were I surprised and killed here on the spot, 
 A runaway from husband and his home. 
 Do you account it were in sin I died ? 
 My husband used to seem to harm me, not . . , 
 Not on pretence he punished sin of mine. 
 Nor for sin's sake and lust of cruelty. 
 But as I heard him bid a farming-man 
 At the villa take a lamb once to the wood 
 And there ill-treat it, meaning that the wolf 
 Should hear its cries, and so come, quick be 
 
 caught. 
 Enticed to the trap : he practised thus with me 
 That so, whatever were his gain thereby. 
 
502 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 Others than I might become prey and spoil. 
 Had it been only between our two selves, — 
 His pleasure and my pain, — why, pleasure him 
 By dying, nor such need, to make a coil ! 
 But this was worth an effort, that my pain 
 Should not become a snare, prove pain three- 
 fold 
 To other people — strangers — or unborn — 
 How should I know ? I sought release from 
 
 that — 
 I think, or else from, — dare I say, some cause 
 iSuch as is put into a tree, which turns 
 Away from the north wind with what nest it 
 
 holds, — 
 The woman said that trees so turn ; now, 
 
 friend. 
 Tell me, because I cannot trust myself I 
 You are a man : what have I done amiss ? " 
 You must conceive my answer, — I forget — 
 Taken up wholly with the thought, perhaps. 
 This time she might have said, — might, did 
 
 not say — 
 " You are a priest." She said, " my friend." 
 
 Day wore. 
 We passed the places, somehow the calm went, 
 Again the restless eyes began to rove 
 In new fear of the foe mine could not see. 
 She wandered in her mind, — addressed me 
 
 once 
 *' Gaetano I " — that is not my name : whose 
 
 name? 
 I grew alarmed, my head seemed turning too. 
 I quickened pace with promise now, now 
 
 threat : 
 Bade drive and drive, nor any stopping more. 
 *' Too de^p i' the thick of the struggle, struggle 
 
 through ! 
 Then drench her in repose though death's self 
 
 pour 
 The plenitude of quiet, — help us, God, 
 Whom the winds carry 1 " 
 
 Suddenly I saw 
 The old tower, and the little white-walled 
 
 clump 
 Of buildings and the cypress-tree or two, — 
 *' Already Castelnuovo — Rome! " I cried, 
 '* As good as Rome, — Rome is the next stage, 
 
 think ! 
 This is where travellers' hearts are wont to 
 
 beat. 
 Say you are saved, sweet lady!" Up she 
 
 woke. 
 The sky was fierce with color from the sun 
 Setting. She screamed out, "No, I must not 
 
 die! 
 Take me no farther, I should die : stay here ! 
 I have more life to save than mine ! " 
 
 She swooned. 
 We seemed safe : what was it foreboded so ? 
 O'lt of the coach into the inn I bore 
 The motionless and breathless pure and pale 
 Pompilia, — bore her through a pitying group 
 And laid her on a couch, still calm and cured 
 By deep sleep of all woes at once. The host 
 Was urgent, " Let her stay an hour or two 1 
 Leave her to us, all will be right by morn ! " 
 Oh, my foreboding 1 But I could not choose. 
 
 I paced the passage, kept watch all mght Imig. 
 I listened, — not one movement, not one sigh. 
 "Fear not: she sleeps so sound! " they said: 
 
 but I „ . 
 
 Feared, all the same, kept feanng more and 
 
 more, 
 Found myself throb with fear from head to foot, 
 FiUed with a sense of such impending woe, 
 That, at first pause of night, pretence of OTay, 
 I ma^e my mind up it was mom. — "Reach 
 
 Rome, 
 Lest hell reach her ! A dozen miles to make, 
 Another long breath, and we emerge ! " 1 stood 
 I' the courtyard, roused the sleepy grooms. 
 
 " Have out 
 Carriage and horse, give haste, take gold ! " 
 
 said I. 
 While they made ready in the doubtful morn, — 
 'T was the last minute, — needs must I ascend 
 And break her sleep ; I turned to go. 
 
 And there 
 Faced me Count Guido, there posed the mean 
 
 man 
 As master, — took the field, encamped his 
 
 rights, 
 Challenged the world : there leered new tri- 
 umph, there 
 Scowled the old malice in the visage bad 
 And black o' the scamp. Soon triumph suppled 
 
 the tongue 
 A little, malice glued to his dry throat, 
 And he part howled, part hissed . . . oh, how 
 
 he kept 
 Well out o the way, at arm's length and to 
 
 spare ! — 
 ' ' My salutation to your priestship ! Wbat ? 
 Matutinal, busy with book so soon 
 Of an April day that 's damp as tears that now 
 Deluge Arezzo at its darling's flight ? — 
 'T is unfair, wrongs feminity at large. 
 To let a single dame monopolize 
 A heart the whole sex claims, should share alike : 
 Therefore I overtake you. Canon ! Come ! 
 The lady, — could you leave her side so soon ? 
 You have not yet experienced at her hands 
 My treatment, you lay down undrugged, I see ! 
 Hence this alertness — hence no dea3i-in-lif e 
 Like what held arms fast when she stole from 
 
 mine. 
 To be sure, you took the solace and repose 
 That first night at Foligno ! — news abound 
 0' the road by this time, — men regaled me 
 
 much. 
 As past them 1 came halting after you, 
 Vulcan pursuing Mars, as poets sing, — 
 StiU at the last here pant I, but arrive, 
 Vulcan — and not without my Cyclops too. 
 The Commissary and the nnpoisoned arm 
 0' the Civil Force, should Mars turn mutineer. 
 Enough of fooling: capture the culprits, friend I 
 Here is the lover in the smart disguise 
 With the sword, — he is a priest, so mine lies 
 
 still. 
 There upstairs hides my wife the runaway. 
 His lemaii : the two plotted, poisoned first. 
 Plundered me after, and eloped thus far 
 Where now you find them. Do your duty 
 
 quick ! 
 
GIUSEPPE CAPONSACCHI 
 
 503 
 
 Arrest and hold him ! That 's done : now catch 
 
 her ! " 
 During this speech of that man, — well, I stood 
 Away, as he managed, — still, I stood as near 
 The throat of him, — with these two hands, my 
 
 own, — 
 As now I stand near yours, Sir, — one quick 
 
 spring. 
 One great good satisfying gripe, and lo ! 
 There had ne lain abolished with his lie. 
 Creation purged o' the misereate, man re- 
 deemed, 
 A spittle wiped off from the face of God 1 
 L in some measure, seek a poor excuse 
 For what I left undone, in just this fa«t 
 That ray first feeling at the speech I quote 
 Was — not of what a blasphemy was dared, 
 Not what a bag of venomed purulence 
 Was split and noisome, — but how splendidly 
 Mirthful, how ludicrous a lie was launched ! 
 Would Molifere's self wish more than hear such 
 
 man 
 Call, claim such woman for his own, his wife, 
 Even though, in due amazement at the boast, 
 He had stammered, she moreover was divine ? 
 She to be his, — were hardly less absurd 
 Than that he took her name into his mouth, 
 Licked, and then let it go again, the beast, 
 Signed with his slaver. Oh, she poisoned him, 
 Plundered him, and the rest ! Well, what I 
 
 wished 
 Was, that he would but go on, say once more 
 So to the world, and get his meed of men. 
 The fist's reply to the filth. And while I mused, 
 The minute, oh the misery, was gone ! 
 On either idle hand of me there stood 
 Keally an officer, nor laughed i' the least : 
 Nay, rendered justice to his reason, laid 
 Logic to heart, as 't were submitted them 
 *' Twice two makes foiir." 
 
 " And now, catch her ! " he cried. 
 That sobered me. " Let myself lead the way — 
 Ere you arrest me, who am somebody. 
 Being, as you hear, a priest and privileged, — 
 To the lady's chamber ! I presume you — men 
 Expert, instructed how to find out truth. 
 Familiar with the guise of guilt. Detect 
 Ghiilt on her face when it meets mine, then jtidge 
 Between us and the mad dog howling there ! " 
 Up we all went together, in they broke 
 0' the chamber late my chapel. There she lay, 
 Composed as when I laid her, that last eve, 
 0' the couch, still breathless, motionless, sleep's 
 
 self, 
 Wax-white, seraphic, saturate with the sun 
 0' the morning that now flooded from the front 
 And filled the window with a light like blood. 
 "Behold the poisoner, the adulteress, 
 — And feigning sleep too ! Seize, bind ! " Guido 
 
 hissed. 
 
 She started up, stood erect, face to face 
 
 With the husband : back he fell, was buttressed 
 
 there 
 By the window all aflame with morning-red, 
 He the black figure, the opprobrious blur 
 Against all peace and joy and light and life. 
 " Away from between me and hell ! ," she cried : 
 
 " Hell for me^ no embracing any more ! 
 
 I am God's, I love God, God — whose knees I 
 
 clasp. 
 Whose utterly most just award I take. 
 But bear no more love-making devils : hence ! " 
 I may have made an effort to reach her side 
 From where I stood i' the doorway, — anyhow 
 I found the arms, I wanted, pinioned fast, 
 Was powerless in the clutch to left and right 
 0' the rabble pouring in, rascality 
 Enlisted, rampant on the side of hearth. 
 Home and the husband, — pay in prospect too 1 
 They heaped themselves upon me. " Ha ! — 
 
 and him 
 Also you outrage ? Him, too, my sole friend, 
 Guardian and savior ? That I balk you of. 
 Since — see how God can help at last and 
 
 worst ! " 
 She sprang at the sword that hung beside him, 
 
 seized. 
 Drew, brandished it, the sunrise burned for joy 
 0' the blade, " Die," cried she, " devil, in 
 
 God's name ! " 
 Ah, but they all closed round her, twelve to one 
 — The unmanly men, no woman-mother made, 
 Spawned somehow ! Dead-white and disarmed 
 
 she lay. 
 No matter for the sword, her word sufficed 
 To spike the coward through and through ; he 
 
 shook, 
 Could only spit between the teeth — " You see ? 
 You hear ? Bear witness, then ! Write down 
 
 . . . but no — 
 Carry these criminals to the prison-house, 
 For first thing ! I begin my search meanwhile 
 After the stolen effects, gold, jewels, plate. 
 Money and clothes, they robbed me of and fled, 
 With no few amorous pieces, verse and prose, 
 I have much reason to expect to find." 
 
 When I saw that — no more than the first mad 
 
 speech. 
 Made out the speaker mad and a laughing-stock, 
 So neither did this next device explode 
 One listener's indignation, — that a scribe 
 Did sit down ; set himself to write indeed. 
 While sundry knaves began to peer and pry 
 In comer and hole, — that Guido, wiping brow 
 And getting him a countenance, was fast 
 Losing his fear, beginning to strut free 
 0' the stage of his exploit, snuff here, sniff 
 
 there, — 
 Then I took truth iui guessed sniificiently 
 The service for the moment. *' What I say, 
 Slight at your peril ! We are aliens here. 
 My adversary and I, called noble both ; 
 I am the nobler, and a name men know. 
 I could refer our cause to our own court 
 In our own country, but prefer appeal 
 To the nearer jurisdiction. Being a priest. 
 Though in a secular garb, — for reasons good 
 I shall adduce in due time to my peers, — 
 I demand that the Church I serve, decide 
 Between us, right the slandered lady there. 
 A Tuscan noble, I might claim the Duke : 
 A priest, I rather choose the Church, — - bid 
 
 Bome 
 Cover the wronged with her inviolate shield." 
 
504 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 There was no refusing this : they bore me off, 
 They bore her off, to separate cells o' the same 
 Ignoble prison, and, separate, thence to Rome. 
 Fompilia's face, then and thus, looked on me 
 The last time in this life : not one sight since, 
 Never another sight to be ! And yet 
 1 thought I had saved her, I appealed to 
 
 Home : 
 It seems 1 simply sent her to her death. 
 You tell me she is dying now, or dead ; 
 I cannot bring myself to quite believe 
 This is a place you torture people in : 
 What if this your intelligence were just 
 A subtlety, an honest wile to work 
 On a man at unawares ? 'T were worthy you. 
 No, Sirs, I cannot have the lady dead ! 
 That erect form, flashing brow, fulgurant eye, 
 That voice immortal (oh, that voice of hers !) 
 That vision in the blood-red daybreak — that 
 Leap to life of the pale electric sword 
 Angels go armed with, — that was not the last 
 0' the lady! Come, I see through it, you find — 
 Know the manceuvre ! Also herself said 
 1 had saved her : do you dare say she spoke 
 
 false? 
 Let me see for myseU if it be so ! 
 Though she were dying, a Priest might be of 
 
 use, 
 The more when he 's a friend too, — she called 
 
 me 
 Far beyond " friend." Come, let me see her — 
 
 indeed 
 It is my duty, being a priest ; I hope 
 I stand confessed, established, proved a priest ? 
 My punishment had motive that, a priest 
 I, in a laic garb, a mundane mode. 
 Did what were harmlessly done otherwise, 
 I never touched her with my finger-tip 
 Except to carry her to the couch, that eve, 
 Against my heart, beneath my head, bowed 
 
 low. 
 As we priests carry the paten : that is why 
 — To get leave and go see her of your grace — 
 I have told you this whole story over again. 
 Do I deserve grace ? For I might lock lips. 
 Laugh at your jurisdiction : what have you 
 To do with me in the matter ? I suppose 
 You hardly think I donned a brave's dress 
 To have a hand in the new crime ; on the old. 
 Judgment's delivered, penalty imposed, 
 I was chained fast at Civita hand and foot — 
 She had only you to trust to, you and Rome, 
 Rome and the Church, and no pert meddling 
 
 priest 
 Two days ago, when Guide, with the right, 
 Hacked her to pieces. One might well be 
 
 wroth ; 
 I have been patient, done my best to help : 
 I come from Civita and punishment 
 As friend of the court — and for pure friend- 
 ship's sake 
 Have told my tale to the end, — nay, not the 
 
 end — 
 For, wait — I 'U end — not leave you that excuse ! 
 
 When we were parted, — shall I go on there ? 
 I was jjresently brought to Rome — yes, here I 
 stood 
 
 Opposite yonder very crucifix — 
 
 And there sat you and you, Sirs, quite the 
 
 same. 
 I heard charge, and bore question, and told tale 
 Noted down in the book there, — turn and see 
 If, by one jot or tittle, I vary now ! 
 I' the color the tale takes, there 's change per- 
 
 'T is natural, since the sky is different. 
 
 Eclipse in the air now ; stUl, the outline stays. 
 
 I showed you how it came to be my part 
 
 To save the lady. Then your clerk produced 
 
 Papers, a pack of stupid and impure 
 
 Banalities called letters about love — 
 
 Love, indeed, — I could teach who styled them 
 
 so, 
 Better, I think, though priest and loveless both ! 
 " — How was it that a wife, young, innocent, _ 
 And stranger to your person, wrote this 
 
 page ? " — 
 " — She wrote it when the Holy Father wrote 
 The bestiality that posts through Rome, 
 Put in his mouth by Pasquin." "Nor per- 
 
 Did you return these answers, verse and prose, 
 Signed, sealed and sent the lady ? There 's 
 
 your hand I " 
 " — This precious piece of verse, I really judge, 
 Is meant to copy my own character, 
 A clumsy mimic ; and this other prose, 
 Not so much even ; both rank forgeir : 
 Verse, quotha ? Bembo's verse ! When Saint 
 
 John wrote 
 The tract ' De Tribus,' I wrote this to match." 
 " — How came it, then, the documents w^e 
 
 found 
 At the inn on your departure ? " — "I opine. 
 Because there were no documents to find 
 In my presence, — you must hide before you 
 
 find. 
 Who forged them hardly practised in my view ; 
 Who found them waited till I turned my 
 
 back." 
 " — And what of the clandestine visits paid, 
 Nocturnal passage in and out the house 
 With its lord absent? 'T is alleged you 
 
 climbed" . . . 
 " — Flew on a broomstick to the man i' the 
 
 moon ! 
 Who witnessed or will testify this trash ? " 
 " — The trusty servant, Margherita's self, 
 Even she who brought you letters, you con- 
 fess. 
 And, you confess, took letters in reply : 
 Forget not we have knowledge of the facts 1 " 
 " — Sirs, who have knowledge of the facts, de- 
 fray 
 The expenditure of wit I waste in vain. 
 Trying to find out just one fact of all ! 
 She who brought letters from who could not 
 
 write. 
 And took back letters to who could not read, — 
 Who was that messenger, of your charity ? " 
 " — Well, so far favors you the circumstance 
 That this same messenger . . . how shall we 
 
 . say? . . . 
 Sub imputatione meretricis 
 Laborat, — which makes accusation null : 
 
GIUSEPPE CAPONSACCHI 
 
 S05 
 
 We waive this woman^s : — naught makes void 
 
 the next, 
 Borsi, called Venerino, he who drove, 
 0' the first night when you fled away, at length 
 Deposes to your hissings in the coach, 
 —Frequent, frenetic" . . . "When deposed 
 
 he so ? " 
 " After some weeks of sharp imprison- 
 ment "... 
 " Granted by friend the Governor. I engage " — 
 " — For his participation in your flight ! 
 At length his obduracy melting made 
 The avowal mentioned " . . . " Was dismissed 
 
 forthwith 
 To liberty, poor knave, for recompense. 
 Sirs, give what credit to the lie you can ! 
 For me, no word in my defence I speak. 
 And God shall argue for the lady 1 " 
 
 So 
 Did I stand question, and make answer, still 
 With the same result of smiling disbelief, 
 Polite impossibility of faith 
 In such affected virtue in a priest ; 
 But a showing fair play, an indulgence, even. 
 To one no worse than others after all — 
 Who had not broi^ht disgrace to the order, 
 
 played 
 Discreetly, ruffled gown nor ripped the cloth 
 In a bungling game at romps ; I have told you. 
 
 Sirs — 
 If I pretended simply to be pure 
 Honest and Christian in the case, — absurd ! 
 As well go boast myself above the needs 
 0' the human nature, careless how meat smells. 
 Wine tastes, — a saint above the smack ! But 
 
 once 
 Abate my crest, own flaws i' the flesh, agree 
 To go with the herd, be hog no more nor less, 
 Why, hogs in common herd have common 
 
 rights: 
 I must not be unduly borne upon, 
 Who just romanced a little, sowed wild oats. 
 But 'scaped without a scandal, flagrant fault. 
 My name helped to a mirthful circumstance : 
 " Joseph " would do well to amend his plea : 
 Undoubtedly — some toying with the wife, 
 But as for ruffian violence and rape, 
 Potiphar pressed too much on the other side ! 
 The intrigue, the elopement, the disguise, — 
 
 well charged ! 
 The letters and verse looked hardly like the 
 
 truth. 
 Your apprehension was — of gxiilt enough 
 To be compatible with innocence. 
 So, punished b:;st a little and not too much. 
 Had I struck Guido Franceschini's face. 
 You had counselled me withdraw for my own 
 
 sake. 
 Balk him of bravo - hiring. Friends came 
 
 round, 
 Congratulated, " Nobody mistakes ! 
 The pettiness o' the forfeiture defines 
 The peccadillo : Guido gets his share : 
 His wife is free of husband and hook-nose. 
 The mouldy viands and the mother-in-law. 
 To Civita with you and amuse the time, 
 Travesty us ' De Maptu Helence J ' 
 A tunny figure must the husband cut 
 
 When the wife makes him skip, — too ticklish, 
 
 eh? 
 Do it in Latin, not the Vulgar, then ! 
 Scazons- we '11 copy and send his Eminence. 
 Mind — one iambus in the final foot ! 
 He '11 rectify it, be your friend for life ! " 
 Oh, Sirs, depend on me for much new light 
 Thrown on the justice and religion here 
 By this proceeding, much fresh food foi 
 
 thought ! 
 
 And I was just set down to study these 
 
 In relep:ation, two short days ago. 
 
 Admiring how you read the rules, when, clap, 
 
 A thunder comes into my solitude — 
 
 I am caught up in a whirlwind and oast here. 
 
 Told of a sudden, in this room where so late 
 
 You dealt out law adroitly, that those scales, 
 
 I meekly bowed to, took ray allotment from, 
 
 Guido has snatched at, broken in your hands, 
 
 Metes to himself the murder of his wife. 
 
 Full measure, pressed down, running over now I 
 
 Can I assist to an explanation ? — Yes, 
 
 I rise in your esteem, sagacious Sirs, 
 
 Stand 1^ a Tenderer of reasons, not 
 
 The officious priest would personate Saint 
 
 George 
 For a mock Princess in undragoned days. 
 What, the blood startles you ? What, after all 
 The priest who needs must carry sword on 
 
 thigh 
 May find imperative use for it? Then, there 
 
 was 
 A Princess, was a dragon belching flame. 
 And should have been a Saint George also? 
 
 Then, 
 There might be worse schemes than to break 
 
 the bonds 
 At Arezzo, lead her by the little hand, 
 Till she reached Rome, and let her try to live ? 
 But you were law and gospel, — would one 
 
 please 
 Stand back, allow your faculty elbow-room ? 
 You blind guides who must needs lead eyes 
 
 that see ! 
 Fools, alike ignorant of man and God ! 
 What was there here should have perplexed 
 
 your wit 
 For a wink of the owl-eyes of you ? How miss, 
 
 then. 
 What's now forced on you by this flare of 
 
 fact — 
 As if Saint Peter failed to recognize 
 Nero as no apostle, John or James, 
 Till some one burned a martyr, made a torch 
 0' the blood and fat to show his features by ! 
 Could you fail read this cartulary aright 
 On head and front of Franceschini there, — 
 Large - lettered like hell's masterpiece of 
 
 print, — 
 That he, from the beginning pricked at heart 
 By some lust, letch of hate against his wife, 
 Plotted to plague her into overt sin 
 And shame, would slay Pompilia body and 
 
 soul, 
 And save his mean self — miserably caught 
 X' the quagmiie of his own tricks, cheats and 
 
 lies? 
 
So6 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 — That himself wrote those papers, — from 
 
 himself 
 To himself, — which, i' the name of me and 
 
 her, 
 His mistress-messenger gave her and me. 
 Touching us with such pustules of the soul 
 That she and I might take the taint, he shown 
 To the world and shuddered over, speckled so ? 
 
 — That the agent put her sense into my words. 
 Made suhstitution of the thing she hoped. 
 
 For the thing she had and held, its opposite, 
 While the hushand in the background hit his 
 
 lips 
 At each fresh failure of his precious plot ? 
 
 — That when at the last we did rush each on 
 
 each. 
 By no chance but because God willed it so — 
 The spark of truth was struck from out our 
 
 souls — 
 Made all of me, descried in the first glance. 
 Seem fair and honest and permissible love 
 O' the good and true — as the first glance told 
 
 me 
 There was no duty patent in the world 
 Like daring try be good and true myself, 
 Leaving the shows of things to the Lord of 
 
 Show 
 And Prince o' the Power of the Air. Our very 
 
 flight. 
 Even to its most ambiguous circumstance, 
 Irrefragably proved how futile, false . . . 
 Why, men — men and not boys — boys and not 
 
 babes — 
 Babes and not beasts — beasts and not stocks 
 
 and stones ! — 
 Had the liar's lie been true one pin - point 
 
 speck, 
 Were 1 the accepted suitor, free o' the place, 
 Disposer of the time, to come at a call 
 And go at a wink as who should say me nay, — 
 What need of flight, what were the gain there- 
 from 
 But just damnation, failure or success ? 
 Damnation pure and simple to her the wife 
 And me the priest — who bartered private bliss 
 For public reprobation, the safe shade 
 For the sunshine which men see to pelt me by : 
 What other advantage — we who led the days 
 And nights alone i' the bouse — was flight to 
 
 find? 
 In our whole journey did we stop an hour. 
 Diverge a foot from strait road till we reached 
 Or would have reached — but for that fate of 
 
 ours — 
 The father and mother, in the eye of Rome, 
 The eye of yourselves we made aware of us 
 At the first fall of misfortune ? And indeed 
 You did so far give sanction to our flight. 
 Confirm its purpose, as lend helping hand. 
 Deliver up Pompilia not to him 
 She fled, but those the flight was ventured for. 
 Why then could you, who stopped short, not 
 
 go on 
 One poor step more, and justify the means. 
 Having allowed the end ? — not see and say, 
 " Here 's the exceptional conduct that should 
 
 claim 
 To be exceptionally judged on rules 
 
 Which, understood, make no exception here — 
 Why play instead into the devil's hands 
 By dealing so ambiguously as gave 
 Guido the power to intervene like nie. 
 Prove one exception more ? I saved his wife 
 Against law : against law he slays her now : 
 Deal with him ! 
 
 I have done with being judged. 
 I stand here guiltless in thought, word and 
 
 deed. 
 To the point that I apprise you, —in contempt 
 For all misapprehending ignorance 
 0' the human heart, much more the mind of 
 
 Christ, — 
 That I assuredly did bow, was blessed 
 By the revelation of Pompilia. There ! 
 Such is the fiinal fact I fling you. Sirs, 
 To mouth and mumble and misinterpret: 
 
 there ! 
 " The priest 's in love," have it the vulgar 
 
 way ! 
 Unpriest me, rend the rags o' the vestment, 
 
 do — 
 Degrade deep, disenfranchise all you dare — 
 Remove me from the midst, no longer priest 
 And fit companion for the like of you — 
 Your gay Abati with the well-turned leg 
 And rose i' the hat-rim. Canons, cross at neck 
 And silk mask in the pocket of the gown, 
 Brisk bishops with the world's musk still nn- 
 
 bmshed 
 From the rochet ; I '11 no more of these good 
 
 things : 
 There 's a crack somewhere, something that 's 
 
 unsound 
 r the rattle ! 
 
 For Pompilia — be advised. 
 Build churches, go pray ! You will find me 
 
 there, 
 I know, if you come, — and you will come, I 
 
 know. 
 Why, there 's a Judge weeping ! Did not I 
 
 say 
 You were good and true at bottom ? You see 
 
 the truth — 
 I am glad I helped you : she helped me just so. 
 
 But for Count Guido, — you must counsel 
 
 there ! 
 I bow my head, bend to the very dust, 
 Break myself up in sliame of faultiness, 
 I had him one whole moment, as I said — 
 As I remember, as will never out 
 O' the thoughts of me, — I had him in arm's 
 
 reach 
 There, — as you stand. Sir, now you cease to 
 
 sit, — 
 I could have killed him ere he killed his wife. 
 And did not : he went off alive and well 
 And then effected this last feat — through me 1 
 Me — not through you — dismiss that fear! 
 
 'T was yon 
 Hindered me staying here to save her, — not 
 From leaving you and going back to him 
 And doing service in Arezzo. Come, 
 Instruct me in procedure ! I conceive — 
 
GIUSEPPE CAPONSACCHI 
 
 507 
 
 In all due self-abasement might I speak — 
 How you will deal with Guido: oh, not 
 
 death ! 
 Death, if it let her life be : otherwise 
 Not death, — your lights will teach you clear- 
 er I I 
 Certainly have an instinct of my own 
 I' the matter : bear with me and weigh its 
 
 worth ! 
 Let us go away — leave Guido all alone 
 Back on the world again that knows him now I 
 I think he will be found (indulge so far 1) 
 Not to die so much as slide out of life, 
 Pushed by the general horror and common hate 
 Low, lower, — left o' the very ledge of things, 
 I seem to see him catch convulsively 
 One by one at all honest forms of life. 
 At reason, order, decency and use — 
 To cramp him and get foothold by at least ; 
 And still they disengage them from his clutch. 
 " What, you are he, then, had Porapilia once 
 And so forwent her ? Take not up with us ! " 
 And thus I see him slowly and surely edged 
 Off all the table-land whence life upsprings 
 Aspiring to be immortality. 
 As the snake, hatched on hill-top by mischance, 
 Despite his wriggling, slips, slides, slidders down 
 Hillside, lies low and prostrate on the smooth 
 Level of the outer place, lapsed in the vale : 
 So I lose Guido in the lonehness. 
 Silence and dusk, till at the doleful end, 
 At the horizontal line, creation's verge. 
 From what just is to absolute nothingness — 
 Whom is it, straining onward still, he meets ? 
 What other man deep further in the fate. 
 Who, turning at the prize of a footfall 
 To flatter him and promise fellowship. 
 Discovers in the act a frightful face — 
 Judas, made monstrous by much solitude I 
 The two are at one now ! Let them love their 
 
 love 
 That bites and claws like bate, or hate their 
 
 hate 
 That mops and mows and makes as it were 
 
 love ! 
 There, let them each tear each in devil's-fun, 
 Or fondle this the other while malice aches — 
 Both teach, both learn detestability ! 
 Kiss him the kiss, Iscariot ! Pay that back. 
 That sraatch o' the slaver blistering on your 
 
 lip, 
 By the better trick, the insult he spared 
 
 Christ — 
 Lure him the lure o' the letters, Aretine ! 
 Lick him o'er slimy-smooth with jelly-filth 
 0' the verse-and-prose pollution in love's guise ! 
 The cockatrice is with the basilisk 1 
 There let them grapple, denizens o' the dark. 
 Foes or friends, but indissolubly bound. 
 In their one spot out of the ken of God 
 Or care of man, forever and evermore ! 
 
 Why, Sirs, what 's this ? Why, this is sori-y 
 
 and strange ! 
 Futility, divagation ; this from me 
 Bound to be rational, justify an act 
 Of sober man ! — whereas, being moved so 
 
 much. 
 
 I give you cause to doubt the lady's mind : 
 A pretty sarcasm for the w orld ! I fear 
 You do her wit injustice, — all through me 1 
 Like my fate all through, — ineffective help I 
 A poor rash advocate I prove myself. 
 You might be angiy with good cause : but sure 
 At the advocate, — only at the undue zeal 
 That spoils the force of his own plea, I think ? 
 My part was just to tell you how things stand, 
 State facts and not be flustered at their fume. 
 But then 't is a priest speaks : as for love, — 
 
 no! 
 If you let buzz a vulgar fly like that 
 About your brains, as if I loved, forsooth. 
 Indeed, Sirs, you do wrong ! We had no 
 
 thought 
 Of such infatuation, she and I ; 
 There are many points that prove it : do be 
 
 just I 
 I told you, — at one little roadside-place 
 1 spent a good half -hour, paced to and fro 
 The garden ; just to leave her free awhile, 
 I plucked a handful of Spring herb and bloom ; 
 1 might have sat beside her on the bench 
 Where the children were : I wish the thing had 
 
 been. 
 Indeed : the event could not be worse, you 
 
 know: 
 One more half-hour of her saved ! She 's dead 
 
 now. Sirs ! 
 While I was running on at such a rate. 
 Friends should have plucked me by the sleeve : 
 
 I went 
 Too much o' the trivial outside of her face 
 And the purity that shone there — plain to me, 
 Not to you, what more natural ? Nor am I 
 Infatuated, — oh, I saw, be sure ! 
 Her brow had not the right line, leaned too 
 
 much. 
 Painters would say ; they like the straight-up 
 
 Greek : 
 This seemed bent somewhat with an invisible 
 
 crown 
 Of martyr and saint, not such as art approves. 
 And how the dark orbs dwelt deep underneath. 
 Looked out of such a sad sweet heaven on me I 
 The lips, compressed a little, came forward too, 
 Careful for a whole world of sin and pain. 
 That was the face, her husband makes his plea, 
 He sought just to disfigure, — no offence 
 Beyond that ! Sirs, let us be rational ! 
 He needs must vindicate his honor, — ay. 
 Yet shirks, the coward, in a clown's disguise, 
 Away from the scene, endeavors to escape. 
 Now, had he done so, slain and left no trace 
 0' the slayer, — what were vindicated, pray ? 
 You had found his wife disfigured or a corpse, 
 For what and by whom ? It is too palpable I 
 Then, here 's another point involving law : 
 I use this argument to show you meant 
 No calumny against us by that title 
 0' the sentence, — liars try to twist it so : 
 What penalty it bore, I had to pay 
 Till further proof should follow of innocence — 
 Probationis ob defectum, — proof ? 
 How could you get proof vrithout trying us ? 
 You went through the preliminary form. 
 Stopped there, contrived this sentence to amuse 
 
?o8 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 The adversary. If the title ran 
 
 For more than fault imputed and not proved, 
 
 That was a simple penman's error, else 
 
 A slip i' the phrase, — as when we say of you 
 
 " Charged with injustice " — which may either 
 
 be 
 Or not be, — 't is a name that sticks mean- 
 while. 
 Another relevant matter : fool that I am ! 
 Not what I wish true, yet a point friends urge : 
 It is not true, — yet, since friends think it 
 
 helps, — 
 She only tried me when some others failed — 
 Began with Conti, whom I told you of. 
 And Guillichini, Guido's kinsfolk both. 
 And when abandoned by them, not before. 
 Turned to me. That 's conclusive why she 
 
 turned. 
 Much good they got by the happy cowardice ! 
 Gonti is dead, poisoned a month ago : 
 Does that much strike you as a sin? Not 
 
 much. 
 After the present murder, — one mark more 
 On the Moor's skin, — what is black by blacker 
 
 stiU? 
 Conti had come here and told truth. And so 
 With Guillichini ; he 's condemned of course 
 To the galleys, as a friend in this affair. 
 Tried and condemned for no one thing i' the 
 
 world, 
 A fortnight since by who but the Governor ? — 
 The just judge, who refused Pompilia help 
 At first blush, being her husband's friend, you 
 
 know. 
 There are two tales to suit the separate courts, 
 Arezzo and Rome : he tells you here, we fled 
 Alone, unhelped, — lays stress on the main 
 
 fault. 
 The spiritual sin, Rome looks to : but elsewhere 
 He likes best we should break in, steal, bear off, 
 Be fit to brand and pillory and flog — 
 That 's the charge goes to the heart of the 
 
 Governor : 
 If these unpriest me, you and I may yet 
 Converse, Vincenzo Marzi-Medici ! 
 Oh, Sirs, there are worse men than you, I say ! 
 More easily duped, I mean ; this stupid lie. 
 Its liar never dared propound in Rome, 
 He gets Arezzo to receive, — nay more. 
 Gets Florence and the Duke to authorize ! 
 This is their Rota's sentence, their Granduke 
 Signs and seals ! Rome for me henceforward 
 
 — Rome, 
 Where better men are, — most of all, that man 
 The Augustinian of the Hospital, 
 Who writes the letter, — he confessed, he says. 
 Many a dying person, never one 
 So sweet and true and pure and beautiful, 
 A good man ! Will you make him Pope one 
 
 day? 
 Not that he is not good too, this we have — 
 But old, — else he would have his word to 
 
 His truth to teach the world ; I tliiret for truth, 
 But shall not drink it till I reach the source. 
 
 Sirs, I am quiet again. You see, we are 
 So very pitiable, she and I, 
 
 Who had conceivably been otherwise. 
 Forget disteraperature and idle heat ! 
 Apart from truth's sake, what's to move se 
 
 much ? 
 Pompilia wiU be presently with God ; 
 I am, on earth, as good as out of it, 
 A relegated priest ; when exile ends, 
 I mean to do my duty and live long. 
 She and I are mere strangers now : but priests 
 Should study passion ; how else cure mankind, 
 Who come for help in passionate extremes ? 
 I do but play with an imagined life 
 Of who, unfettered by a vow, unblessed 
 By the higher call, — since you wUl have it 
 
 so, — 
 Leads it companioned by the woman there. 
 To live, and see her learn, and learn by her. 
 Out of the low obscure and petty \yorld — 
 Or only see one purpose and one will 
 Evolve themselves i' the world, change wrong 
 
 to right : 
 To have to do with nothing but the true, 
 The good, the eternal — and these, not alone 
 In the main current of the general life. 
 But .small experiences of every day. 
 Concerns of the particular hearth and home : 
 To learn not only by a comet's rush 
 But a rose's birth, — not by the grandeur, 
 
 God, - 
 But the comfort, Christ. All this, how far 
 
 away ! 
 Mere delectation, meet for a minute's dream ! — 
 Just as a drudging student trims his lamp, 
 Opens his Plutarch, puts him in the place 
 Of Roman, Grecian ; draws the patched gown 
 
 close, 
 Dreams, " Thus should 1 fight, save or rule the 
 
 world ! " — 
 Then smilingly, contentedly, awakes 
 To the old solitary nothingness. 
 So I, from such communion, pass content , . , 
 
 great, just, good God ! Miserable me ! 
 
 VII 
 
 POMPILIA 
 
 I am just seventeen years and five months old. 
 And, if I lived one day more, three full weeks ; 
 'T is writ so in the church's register, 
 Lorenzo in Lucina, all my names 
 At length, so many names for one poor child, 
 — Francesca Camilla Vittoria Angela 
 Pompilia Comparini, — laughable ! 
 Also 't is writ that I was married there 
 Four years ago : and they will add, I hope. 
 When they insert my death, a word or two, — 
 Omitting all about the mode of death, — 
 This, in its place, this which one cares to know, 
 That I had been a mother of a son 
 Exactly two weeks. It wiU be through grace 
 0' the Curate, not through any claim I have ; 
 Because the boy was born at, so baptized 
 Close to, the ViUa, in the proper church : 
 A pretty church, I say no word against. 
 Yet stranger-like, — while this Lorenzo seems 
 
POMPILIA 
 
 509 
 
 My own particular place, I always say. 
 
 1 used to wonder, when I stood scarce high 
 
 As the bed here, what the marble lion meant, 
 
 With half his body rushinir from the wall, 
 
 Eatiug- the figure of a prostrate man — 
 
 {To the right, it is, of entry by the door) — 
 
 An ominous sign to one baptized like me, 
 
 Married, and to be buried there, 1 hope. 
 
 And they should add, to have my life complete. 
 
 He is a boy and Gaetan by name — 
 
 Gaetano, for a reason, — if the fiiar 
 
 Don Celestine will ask this grace for me 
 
 Of Curate Ottoboni : he it was 
 
 Baptized me : he remembers my whole life 
 
 As I do his gray hair. 
 
 All these few things 
 I know are true, — will you remember them ? 
 Because time flies. The surgeon cared for rae, 
 To count my wounds, — twenty-two dagger- 
 wounds, 
 Five deadly, but I do not suffer much — 
 Or too much pain, — and am, to die to-night. 
 
 Oh how good God is that my babe was born, 
 — Better than born, baptized and hid away 
 Before this happened, safe from being hurt ! 
 That had been sin God could not well forgive: 
 He was too young to smile and save himself. 
 When they took, two days after he was born. 
 My babe away from me to be baptized 
 And hidden awhile, for fear his foe should 
 
 find,— 
 The country-woman, used to nursing babes, 
 Said, " Why take on so ? where is the great loss ? 
 These next three weeks he will but sleep and 
 
 feed, 
 Only begin to smile at the month's end ; 
 He would not know you, if you kept him here, 
 Sooner than that ; so, spend three merry weeks 
 Snug in the Villa, getting strong and stout. 
 And then I bring him back to be your own. 
 And both of you may steal to — we know 
 
 where ! " 
 The month — there wants of it two weeks this 
 
 day ! 
 Still, I half fancied when I heard the knock 
 At the Villa in the dusk, it might prove she — 
 Come to say, " Since he smiles before the time, 
 Why should I cheat you out of one good hour ? 
 Back I have brought him ; speak to him and 
 
 judge ! " 
 Now I shall never see him ; what is worse. 
 When he grows up and gets to be my age, 
 He will seem har^y more than a great boy ; 
 And if he asks, " What was my mother like ? " 
 People may answer, ' ' Like girls of seveu- 
 
 teen ' ' — 
 And how can he but think of this and that, 
 Lucias, Marias, Sofias, who titter or blush 
 When he regards them as such boys may do ? 
 Therefore I wish some one will please to say 
 I looked already old though I was young ; 
 Do I not , . . say, if you are by to speak . . . 
 Look nearer twenty ? No more like, at least. 
 Girls who look arch or redden when boys laugh. 
 Than the poor Virgin that I used to know 
 At our street-comer in a lonely niche, — 
 
 T'he babe, that sat upon her knees, broke off, — 
 Thin white glazed clay, you pitied her the 
 
 more : 
 She, not the gay ones, always got my rose. 
 
 How happy those are who know how to write ! 
 Such could write what their son should read in 
 
 time. 
 Had they a whole day to live out like me. 
 Also my name is not a common name, 
 " Pompilia," and may help to keep apart 
 A little the thing I am from what girls are. 
 But then how far away, how hard to find 
 Will anything about me have become. 
 Even if the boy bethink himself and ask ! 
 No father that ever knew at all, 
 Nor ever had — no, never had, I say ! 
 That is the truth, — nor any mother left. 
 Out of the little two weeks that she lived, 
 Fit for such memory as might assist : 
 As good too as no family, no name. 
 Not even poor old Pietro's name, nor hers, 
 Poor kind unwise Violante, since it seems 
 They must not be my parents any more. 
 That is why something put it in my head 
 To call the boy " Gaetano " — no old name 
 For sorrow's sake ; I looked up to the sky 
 And took a new saint to begin anew. 
 One who has only been made saint — how long ? 
 Twenty-five years : so, carefuller, perhaps. 
 To guard a namesake than those old saints grow, 
 Tired out by this time, — see my own five 
 
 saints ! 
 
 On second thoughts, I hope he will regard 
 
 The history of me as what some one dreamed, 
 
 And get to disbelieve it at the last : 
 
 Since to myself it dwindles fast to that, 
 
 Sheer dreaming and impossibility, — 
 
 Just in four days too ! All the seventeen years, 
 
 Not once did a suspicion visit me 
 
 How very different a lot is mine 
 
 From any other woman's in the world. 
 
 The reason must be, 't was by step and step 
 
 It got to grow so terrible and strange. 
 
 These strange woes stole on tiptoe, as it were, 
 
 Into my neighborhood and privacy. 
 
 Sat down where I sat, laid them where I lay ; 
 
 And I was found familiarized with fear. 
 
 When friends broke in, held up a torch and 
 
 cried, 
 *' Why, you Pompilia in the cavern thus, 
 How comes that arm of yours about a wolf ? 
 And the soft length, — lies in and out your feet 
 And laps you round the knee, — a snake it is ! " 
 And so on. 
 
 Well, and they are right enough. 
 By the torch they hold up now : for first, 
 
 observe, 
 I never had a father, — no, nor yet 
 A mother : my own boy can say at least, 
 '* I had a mother whom I kept two weeks ! " 
 Not I, who little used to doubt . . . I doubt 
 Good Pietro, kind Violante, gave me birth ? 
 They loved me always as I love my babe 
 ( — Nearly so, that is — quite so coidd not 
 
 be—) 
 
510 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 Did for me all I meant to do for him, 
 
 Till one surprising day, three years ag^o. 
 
 They both declared, at Rome, before some 
 
 judge 
 In some court where the people flocked to hear, 
 That really I had never been their child. 
 Was a mere castaway, the careless crime 
 Of an unknown man, the crime and care too 
 
 much 
 Of a woman known too well, — little to these, 
 Therefore, of whom I was the flesh and blood : 
 What then to Pietro and Violante, both 
 No more my relatives than you or you ? 
 Nothing to them ! You know what they de- 
 clared. 
 
 So with my husband, — just such a surprise. 
 Such a mistake, in that relationship ! 
 Every one says that husbands love their wives. 
 Guard them and guide them, give them 
 
 happiness ; 
 'T is duty, law, pleasure, religion : well. 
 You see how much of this comes true in mine ! 
 People indeed would fain have somehow proved 
 He was no husband ; but he did not hear. 
 Or would not wait, and so has killed us all. 
 Then there is . . . only let me name one more ! 
 There is the friend, — men will not ask about, 
 But tell untruths of, and give nicknames to. 
 And think my lover, most surprise of all ! 
 Do only hear, it is the priest they mean, 
 Giuseppe Caponsacchi : a priest — love, 
 And love me ! Well, yet people think he did. 
 I am married, he has taken priestly vows. 
 They know that, and yet go on, say, the same, 
 " Yes, how he loves you ! " " That was love 
 
 — they say. 
 When anything is answered that they ask : 
 Or else " Ko wonder you love him " — they say. 
 Then they shake heads, pity much, scarcely 
 
 blame — 
 As if we neither of us lacked excuse. 
 And anyhow are punished to the full. 
 And downright love atones for everything ! 
 Nay, I heard read out in the public court 
 Before the judge, in presence of my friends. 
 Letters 't was said the priest had sent to me. 
 And other letters sent nira by myself. 
 We being lovers ! 
 
 Listen what this is like ! 
 When I was a mere child, my mother . . , 
 
 that 's 
 Violante, you must let me call her so. 
 Nor waste time, trying to unlearn the word, . . , 
 She brought a neighbor's child of my own age 
 To play with me of rainy afternoons : 
 And, since there hung a tapestry on the wall. 
 We two agreed to find each other oxit 
 Among the figures. " Tisbe, that is you. 
 With half-moon on your hair-knot, spear in 
 
 hand, 
 Flying, but no wings, only the great scarf 
 Blown to a bluish rainbow at your back : 
 Call off your hound and leave the stag 
 
 alone ! " 
 " — And there are you, Pompilia, such green 
 
 leaves 
 
 Flourishing out of your five finge]>ends. 
 And all the rest of you so brown and rough : 
 Why is it you are turned a sort of tree ? '' 
 You know the figures never were ourselves 
 Though we nicknamed them so. Thus, all my 
 
 life, — 
 As well what was, as what, like this, waa 
 
 not, — 
 Looks old, fantastic and impossible : 
 I touch a fairy thing that fades and fades. 
 — Even to my babe ! I thought, when he was 
 
 bom, 
 Something began for once that would not end, 
 Nor change into a laugh at me, but stay 
 Forevermore, eternally quite mine. 
 Well, so he is, — but yet they bore him off. 
 The third day, lest my husband should lay 
 
 traps 
 And catch him, and by means of him catch me. 
 Since they have saved him so, it was well done : 
 Yet thence comes such confusion of what was 
 With what will be, — that late seems long ago. 
 And, what years should bring round, already 
 
 come, 
 TiE even he withdraws into a dream 
 As the rest do : I fancy him grown great. 
 Strong, stern, a tall young man who tutors me, 
 Frowns with the others, "Poor imprudent 
 
 child! 
 Why did you venture out of the safe street ? 
 Why go so far from help to that lone house ? 
 Why open at the whisper and the knock ? " 
 
 Six days ago when it was New Year's day. 
 We bent above the fire and talked of him. 
 What he should do when he was grown and 
 
 great. 
 Violante, Pietro, each had given the arm 
 I leant on, to walk by, from couch to chair 
 And fireside, — laughed, as I lay safe at last, 
 " Pompilia's march from bed to board is made, 
 Pompilia back again and with a babe. 
 Shall one day lend his arm and help her 
 
 walk!" 
 Then we all wished each other more New 
 
 Years. 
 Pietro began to scheme — " Our cause is 
 
 gained ; 
 The law is stronger than a wicked man : 
 Let him henceforth go his way, leave us ours ! 
 We will avoid the city, tempt no more 
 The greedy ones by feasting and parade, — 
 Live at the other villa, we know where. 
 Still farther oft, and we can watch the babe 
 Grow fast in the good air ; and wood is cheap 
 And wine sincere outside the city gate. 
 I still have two or three old friends will grope 
 Their way along the mere half-mile of road. 
 With staff and lantern on a moonless night 
 When one needs talk : they '11 find me, never 
 
 fear. 
 And I '11 find them a flask of the old sort 
 
 yet!" 
 Violante said, " You chatter like a crow : 
 Pompilia tires o' the tattle, and shall to bed : 
 Do not too much the first day, — somewhat 
 
 more 
 To-morrow, and, the next, begin the cape 
 
POMPILIA 
 
 S'l 
 
 And hood and coat ! I have spun wool 
 
 enough." 
 Oh what a happy friendly eve was that ! 
 
 And, next day, about noon, out Pietro went — 
 He was so happy and would talk so much, 
 Until Yiolante pushed and laughed him forth 
 Sight-seeing in the cold, — "So much to see 
 I' the churches ! Swathe your throat three 
 
 times ! " she cried, 
 " And, above all, beware the slippery ways, 
 And bring us all the news by supper-time I " 
 He came back late, laid by cloak, staff and hat. 
 Powdered so thick with snow it made us laugh, 
 KoUed a great log upon the ash o' the hearth. 
 And bade Yiolante treat us to a flask. 
 Because he had obeyed her faithfully. 
 Gone sight-see through the seven, and found no 
 
 church 
 To his mind like San Giovanni — " There 's the 
 
 fold. 
 And all the sheep together, big as cats ! 
 And such a shepherd, half the size of life. 
 Starts up and hears the angel " — when, at the 
 
 door, 
 A tap : we started up : you know the rest. 
 
 Pietro at least had done no harm, 1 know ; 
 
 Nor even Yiolante, so much harm as makes 
 
 Such revenge lawful. Certainly she erred — 
 
 Did wrong, how shall I dare say otherwise ? — 
 
 In telling that first falsehood, buying me 
 
 From my poor faulty mother at a price, 
 
 To pass oir upon Pietro as his child. 
 
 If one should take my babe, give him a name, 
 
 Say he was not Gaetano and my own, 
 
 But that some other woman made his mouth 
 
 And hands and feet, — how very false were that ! 
 
 No ^od could come of that ; and all harm did. 
 
 Yet if a stranger were to represent 
 
 " Needs must you either give your babe to me 
 
 And let me call him mine f orevermore. 
 
 Or let your husband get him " — ah, my God, 
 
 That were a trial I refuse to face I 
 
 Well, just so here : it proved wrong but seemed 
 
 right 
 To poor Yiolante — for there lay, she said, 
 My poor real dying mother in her rags, 
 Wno put me from her with the life and all. 
 Poverty, pain, shame and disease at once. 
 To die the easier by what price I fetched — 
 Also (I hope) because I should be spared 
 Sorrow and sin, — why may not that have 
 
 helped? 
 Mjr father, — he was no one, any one, — 
 The worse, the likelier, — call him, — he who 
 
 came. 
 Was wicked for his pleasure, went his way, 
 And left no trace to track by ; there remained 
 Nothing but me, the unnecessary life. 
 To catch up or let fall, — and yet a thing 
 She could make happy, be made happy with, 
 This poor Yiolante, — who would frown there- 
 at? 
 
 Well, God, you see ! God plants us where we 
 
 grow. 
 It is not that, because a bud is bom 
 
 At a wild brier's end, fuU i' the wild beast's 
 
 way, 
 We ought to pluck and put it out of reach 
 On the oak-tree top, — say, " There the bud 
 
 belongs !" 
 She thought, moreover, real lies were lies told 
 For harm's sake ; whereas this had good at 
 
 heart. 
 Good for my mother, good for me, and good 
 For Pietro who was meant to love a babe. 
 And needed one to make his Ufe of use, 
 Keceive his house and land when he should 
 
 die. 
 Wror^, wrong, and always wrong ! how plainly 
 
 wrong! 
 For see, this fault kept pricking, as faults do. 
 All the same at her heart : this falsehood 
 
 hatched. 
 She could not let it go nor keep it fast. 
 She told me so, — the first time I was found 
 Locked in her arras once more after the pain. 
 When the nuns let me leave them and go 
 
 home. 
 And both of us cried all the cares away, — 
 This it was set her on to make amends. 
 This brought about the marriage — simply 
 
 this! 
 Do let me speak for her you blame so much ! 
 When Paul, my husband's brother, found me 
 
 out. 
 Heard there was wealth for who should marry 
 
 me. 
 So, came and made a speech to ask my hand 
 For Guide, — she, instead of piercing straight 
 Through the pretence to the ignoble truth. 
 Fancied she saw God's very finger point. 
 Designate just the time for planting me 
 (The wild-brier slip she plucked to love and 
 
 wear) 
 In soil where I could strike real root, and grow. 
 And get to be the thing I called myself : 
 For, wife and husband are one fiesh, God says, 
 And I, whose parents seenied such and were 
 
 none. 
 Should in a husband have a husband now. 
 Find nothing, this time, but was what it 
 
 seemed, 
 — All truth and no confusion any more. 
 I know she meant all good to me, all pain 
 To herself, — since how could it be aught but 
 
 pain 
 To give me up, so. from her very breast. 
 The wilding flower-tree-branch that, all those 
 
 years. 
 She had got used to feel for and find fixed ? 
 She meant well : has it been so ill i' the raaiK ? 
 That is but fair to ask : one cannot judge 
 Of what has been the ill or well of life, 
 Tlie day that one is dying, — sorrows change 
 Into not altogether sorrow-like ; 
 I do see strangeness but scarce misery. 
 Now it is over, and no danger more. 
 My child is safe ; there seems not so much pain. 
 It comes, most like, that I am just absolveii, 
 Purged of the past, the foul in me, washed 
 
 fair, — 
 One cannot both have and not have, you 
 
 know, — 
 
512 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 Beings right now, I am happy and color things. 
 Yes, everybody that leaves life sees all 
 Softened and bettered : so with other sights : 
 To me at least was never evening yet 
 But seemed far beautifuller than its day, 
 For past is past. 
 
 There was a fancy came. 
 When somewhere, in the journey with my 
 
 friend. 
 We stepped into a hovel to get food ; 
 And there began a yelp here, a bark there, — 
 Misunderstanding creatures that were wroth 
 And vexed themselves and us till we retired. 
 The hovel is life ; no matter what dogs bit 
 Or cat scratched in the hovel I break from, 
 All outside is lone j&eld, moon and such peace — 
 Flowing in, filling up as with a sea 
 Whereon comes Someone, walks fast on the 
 
 white, 
 Jesus Christ's self, Don Celestine declares, 
 To meet me and calm all things back again. 
 
 Beside, up to my marriage, thirteen years 
 Were, each day, happy as the day was long : 
 This may have made the change too terrible. 
 I know that when Violante told me first 
 The cavalier — she meant to bring next mom. 
 Whom I must also let take, kiss my hand — 
 Would be at San Lorenzo the same eve 
 And marry me, — which over, we should go 
 Home both of us without him as before, 
 And, till she bade speak, 1 must hold my 
 
 tongue, 
 Such being the correct way with girl-brides, 
 From whom one word would make a father 
 
 blush, — 
 I know, I say, that when she told me this, 
 ■ — Well, I no more saw sense in what she said 
 Than a lamb does in people clipping wool ; 
 Only lay down and let myself be clipped. 
 And when next day the cavalier who came — 
 (Tisbe had told me that the slim young man 
 With wings at head, and wings at feet, and 
 
 sword 
 Threatening a monster, in our tapestry, 
 Would eat a girl else, — was a cavalier) — 
 When he proved Guido Franceschini, — old 
 And nothing like so tall as I myself. 
 Hook-nosed and yellow in a bush of beard. 
 Much like a thing I saw on a boy's wrist. 
 He called an owl and used for catching birds, — 
 And when he took my hand and made a smile — 
 Why, the uncomfortableness of it all 
 Seemed hardly more important in the case 
 Than — when one gives you, say, a coin to 
 
 spend — 
 Its newness or its oldness ; if the piece 
 Weigh properly and buy you what you wish. 
 No matter whether you get grime or glare ! 
 Men take the coin, return you grapes and figs. 
 Here, marriage was the coin, a dirty piece 
 Would purchase me the praise of those I loved : 
 About what else should I concern myself ? 
 
 So, hardly knowing what a husband meant, 
 I supposed this or any man would serve. 
 No whit the worse for being so uncouth : 
 
 For I was ill once and a doctor came 
 With a great ugly hat, no plume thereto. 
 Black jerkin and black buckles and black 
 
 sword, /*. . p 
 
 And white sharp beard over the run: m front, 
 And oh so lean, so sour-faced and austere ! — 
 Who felt my pulse, made me put out my tongue, 
 Then oped a phial, dripped a drop or two 
 Of a black bitter something, — I was cured ! 
 What mattered the fierce beard or the grim 
 
 face ? 
 It was the physic beautified the man. 
 Master Malpichi, — never met his match 
 In Kome, they said, — so ugly all the same ! 
 
 However, I was hurried through a storm. 
 Next dark eve of December's deadest day — 
 How it rained ! — through our street and the 
 
 Lion's-mouth 
 And the bit of Corso, — cloaked round, covered 
 
 close, 
 I was like something strange or contraband, — 
 Into blank San Lorenzo, up the aisle. 
 My mother keeping hold of me so tight, 
 I fancied we were come to see a corpse 
 Before the altar which she pulled me toward. 
 There we found waiting an unpleasant priest 
 Who proved the brother, not our parish friend, 
 But one with mischief-making mouth and eye, 
 Paul, whom I know since to my cost. And then 
 I heard the heavy church-door lock out help 
 Behind us : for the customary warmth. 
 Two tapers shivered on the altar. " Quick — 
 Lose no time ! " cried the priest. And straight- 
 way down 
 From . . . what 's behind the altar where he 
 
 hid — 
 Hawk-nose and yellowness and bush and all. 
 Stepped Guido, caught my hand, and there 
 
 was I 
 0' the chancel, and the priest had opened book, 
 Read here and there, made me say that and 
 
 this. 
 And after, told me I was now a wife. 
 Honored indeed, since Christ thus weds the 
 
 Church, 
 And therefore turned he water into wine. 
 To show I should obey my spouse like Christ. 
 Then the two slipped aside and talked apart. 
 And I, silent and scared, got down again 
 And joined my mother, who was weeping now. 
 Nobody seemed to mind us any more. 
 And both of us on tiptoe found our way 
 To the door which was unlocked by this, and 
 
 wide. 
 When we were in the street, the rain had 
 
 stopped. 
 All things looked better. At our own house- 
 door, 
 Violante whispered, " No one syllable 
 To Pietro ! Girl-brides never breathe a word ! " 
 " — Well treated to a wetting, draggle-tails 1 " 
 Laughed Pietro as he opened — " Very near 
 You made me brave the gutter's roaring sea 
 To carry off from roost old dove and young, 
 Trussed up in church, the cote, by me, the kite ! 
 What do these priests mean, prajdng folk to 
 death 
 
POMPILIA 
 
 S'3 
 
 On stormy afternoons, with Christmas close 
 To wash our sins off nor require the rain ? " 
 Violante jjave my hand a timely squeeze, 
 Madoima saved me from immodest speech, 
 I kissed him and was quiet, being a bride. 
 
 When I saw nothing more, the next three weeks, 
 Of Guide— "Nor the Chiu?ch sees Christ" 
 
 thought I : 
 " Nothing is changed however, wine is wine 
 And water only water in our hoiise. 
 Mor did 1 see that ugly doctor since 
 That cure of the illness : just as I was cured, 
 I am married, — neither scarecrow wiU return." 
 
 Three weeks, I chuckled — " How would GriuUa 
 
 stare. 
 And Tecla smile and Tisbe laugh outright. 
 Were it not impudent for brides to talk ! " — 
 Until one morning, as 1 sat and sang 
 At the broidery-frame alone i' the chamber, — 
 
 loud 
 Voices, two, three together, sobbings too. 
 And my name, "Gcuido," "Paolo," flung like 
 
 stones 
 From each to the other ! In I ran to see. 
 There stood the very Guido and the priest 
 With sly face, — formal but nowise afraid, — 
 While Pietro seemed all red and angiy, scarce 
 Able to stutter out his wrath in words ; 
 And this it was that made my mother sob. 
 As he reproached her — " You have murdered 
 
 us. 
 Me and yourself and this our child beside ! " 
 Then Guido interposed, " Murdered or not, 
 Be it enough your child is now my wife ! 
 I claim and come to take her." Paul put in, 
 " Consider — kinsman, dare I term you so ? — 
 What is the good of your sagacity 
 Except to counsel in a strait like this ? 
 Iguarantee the parties man and wife 
 Whether you like or loathe it, bless or ban. 
 May spilt milk be put back within the bowl — 
 The done thing, undone ? You, it is, we look 
 For counsel to, you fitUest will advise ! 
 Since milk, though spilt and spoilt, does marble 
 
 good. 
 Better we down on knees and scrub the floor. 
 Than sigh, ' the waste would make a syllabub ! ' 
 Help us so turn disaster to account. 
 So predispose the groom, he needs shall grace 
 The bride with favor from the very first. 
 Not begin marriage an embittered man ! " 
 He smiled, — the game so wholly in his hands ! 
 While fast and faster sobbed Violante — "Ay, 
 All of us mmdered, past averting now ! 
 
 my sin, my secret ! " and such like. 
 
 Then I began to half surmise the truth ; 
 Something had happened, low, mean, under- 
 hand, 
 False, and my mother was to blame, and I 
 To pity, whom all spoke of, none addressed : 
 
 1 was the chattel that had caused a crime. 
 
 I stood mute, — those who tangled must untie 
 The embroilment. Pietro cried, "Withdraw, 
 
 my child ! 
 She is not helpful to the sacrifice 
 
 At this stage, — do you want the victim by 
 While you discuss the value of her blood ? 
 For her sake, I consent to hear you talk : 
 Go, child, and pray God help the innocent ! " 
 
 I did go and was praying God, when came 
 Violante, with eyes swollen and red enough. 
 But movement on her mouth for make-believe 
 Matters were somehow getting right again. 
 She bade me sit down by her side and hear. 
 " You are too young and cannot understand. 
 Nor did your father understand at first. 
 I wished to benefit all three of us. 
 And when he failed to take my meaning,— 
 
 why, 
 I tried to have ray way at unaware — 
 Obtained him the advantage he refused. 
 As if I put before him wholesome food 
 Instead of broken victual, — he finds change 
 I' the viands, never cares to reason why, 
 But falls to blaming me, would fling the plate 
 From window, scandalize the neighborhood. 
 Even while he smacks his lips, — men's way, 
 
 my child ! 
 But either you have prayed him unperverse 
 Or I have talked him back into his wits : 
 And Paolo was a help in time of need, — 
 Guido, not much — my child, the way of men 1 
 A priest is more a woman tlian a man. 
 And Paul did wonders to persuade. In short, 
 Yes, he was wrong, your father sees and says ; 
 My scheme was worth attempting : and bears 
 
 fruit. 
 Gives you a husband and a noble name, 
 A palace and no end of pleasant things. 
 What do you care about a handsome youth ? 
 They are so volatile, and tease their wives ! 
 This is the kind of man to keep the house. 
 We lose no daughter, — gain a son, that 's all: 
 For 't is arranged we never separate. 
 Nor miss, in our gray time of life, the tints 
 Of you that color eve to match with morn. 
 In good or ill, we share and share alike. 
 And cast our lots into a common lap. 
 And all three die together as we lived ! 
 Only, at Arezzo, — that 's a Tuscan town, 
 Not so large as this noisy Rome, no doubt, 
 But older far and finer much, say folk, — 
 In a great palace where you will be queen, 
 Know the Archbishop and the Governor, 
 And we see homage done you ere we die. 
 Therefore, be good and pardon!" — "Pardon 
 
 what ? 
 You know things, I am very ignorant : 
 All is right if you only will not cry I " 
 
 And so an end ! Because a blank begins 
 From when, at the word, she kissed me hard 
 
 and hot. 
 And took me back to where my father leaned 
 Opposite Guido — who stood eying him. 
 As eyes the butcher the cast panting ox 
 That feels his fate is come, nor struggles 
 
 more, — 
 While Paul looked archly on, pricked brow at 
 
 whiles 
 With the pen-point as to punish triumph. 
 
 there, — 
 
5H 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 And said, " Count Guldo, take your lawfnl 
 
 wife 
 Until death part you ! " 
 
 All since is one blank, 
 Over and ended ; a terrific dream. 
 It is the good of dreams — so soon they go ! 
 Wake in a horror of heart-beats, you may — 
 Cry, "The dread thing will never from my 
 
 thoughts ! " 
 Still, a few daylight doses of plain life, 
 Cook-crow and sparrow-chirp, or bleat and bell 
 Of goats that trot by, tinkling, to be milked ; 
 And when you rub your eyes awake and wide. 
 Where is the harm o' the horror ? Gone ! bo 
 
 here. 
 I know I wake, — but from what ? Blank, I 
 
 say! 
 This is the note of evil : for good lasts. 
 Even when Don Celestine bade " Search and 
 
 find! 
 For your soul's sake, remember what is past. 
 The better to forgive it," — all in vain ! 
 What was fast getting indistinct before, 
 Vanished outright. By special grace perhaps. 
 Between that first c^m and this last, four 
 
 years 
 Vanish, — one quarter of my life, you know. 
 I am held up, amid the nothingness, 
 By one or two truths only — thence I hang. 
 And there I live, — the rest is death or dream. 
 All but those points of my support. I think 
 Of what I saw at Rome once in the Square 
 O' the Spaniards, opposite the Spanish House : 
 There was a foreigner had trained a goat, 
 A shuddering white woman of a beast, 
 To climb up, stand straight on a pile of sticks 
 Put close, which gave the creature room 
 
 enough : 
 When she was settled there, he, one by one. 
 Took away all the sticks, left just the four 
 Whereon the little hoofs did really rest, 
 There she kept firm, all underneath was air. 
 So, what I hold by, are my prayer to God, 
 My hope, that came in answer to the prayer. 
 Some hand would interpose and save me — 
 
 hand 
 Which proved to be my friend's hand : and, — 
 
 blest bliss. — 
 That fancy which began so faint at first. 
 That thrill of dawn's suffusion through my 
 
 dark. 
 Which I perceive was promise of my child, 
 The light his unborn face sent long before, — 
 God's way of breaking the good news to flesh. 
 That is all left now of those four bad years. 
 Don Celestine urged, " But remember more I 
 Other men's faults may help me find your own. 
 I need the cruelty exposed, explained. 
 Or how can I advise you to forgive ? " 
 He thought I could not properly forgive 
 Unless I ceased forgetting, — which is true; 
 For, bringing back reluctantly to mind 
 My husband's treatment of me, — by a light 
 That 's later than my lifetime, I review 
 And comprehend much and imagine more. 
 And have biit little to forgive at last. 
 For now, — be fair and say, — is it not true 
 
 He was Ul-used and cheated of his hope 
 To get enriched by marriafi-e ? Marriage gave 
 Me and no money, broke the compact so : 
 He had a right to ask me on those terms, 
 As Pietro and Violante to declare 
 They would not give me : so the bargain stood : 
 They broke it, and he felt himself aggrieved, 
 Became unkind with me to punish them. 
 They said 't was he began deception first. 
 Nor, in one point whereto he pledged himself. 
 Kept promise : what of that, suppose it were ? 
 Echoes die off, scarcely reverberate 
 Forever, — why should ill keep echoing ill. 
 And never let our ears have done with noise ? 
 Then my poor parents took the violent way 
 To thwart him, — he must needs retaliate, — 
 
 wrong. 
 Wrong, and all wrong, — better say, all blind ! 
 As I myself was, that is sure, who else 
 Had understood the mystery : for his wife 
 Was bound in some sort to help somehow 
 
 there. 
 It seems as if I might have interposed. 
 Blunted the edge of their resentment so, 
 Since he vexed me because they first vexed 
 
 him; 
 "I will entreat them to desist, submit, 
 Give him the money and be poor in peace, — 
 Certainly not go tell the world : perhaps 
 He will grow quiet with his gains." 
 
 Yes, say 
 Something to this effect and you do well ! 
 But then you have to see first : I was blind. 
 That is the fruit of all such wormy ways. 
 The indirect, the unapproved of God : 
 You cannot find their author's end and aim. 
 Not even to substitute your good for bad. 
 Your straight for the irregular ; you stand 
 Stupefied, profitless, as cow or sheep 
 That miss a man's mind ; auger him just twice 
 By trial at repairing the first fault. 
 Thus, when he blamed me, "You are a co- 
 quette, 
 A lure-owl posturing to attract birds, 
 You look love-lures at theatre and church, 
 In walk, at window ! " — that, I knew, was 
 
 false : 
 But why he charged me falsely, whither sought 
 To drive me by such charge, — how could I 
 
 know ? 
 So, unaware, I only made things worse. 
 I tried to soothe him by abjuring walk. 
 Window, church, theatre, for good and all, 
 As if he had been in earnest : that, you know. 
 Was nothiiig like the object of his charge. 
 Yes, when I got my maid to supplicate 
 The priest, whose name she read when she 
 
 would read 
 Those feigned false letters I was forced to hear 
 Though I could read no word of, — he should 
 
 cease 
 Writing, — nay, if he minded prayer of mine, 
 Cease from so much as even pass the street 
 Whereon our house looked, — in my ignorance 
 I was just thwarting Guide's true intent ; , 
 Which was, to bring about a wicked change 
 Of sport to earnest, tempt a thoughtless man 
 To write indeed, and pass the house, and more. 
 
POMPILIA 
 
 51S 
 
 Till both of MS were taken in a, crime. 
 
 He ought not to have wished me thus act lies, 
 
 Simulate folly ; but — wrong or right, the 
 
 wish — 
 I failed to apprehend its drift. How plain 
 It follows, — if I fell into such fault, 
 He also may have overreached the mark, 
 Made mistake, by perversity of brain, 
 I' the whole sad strange plot, the grotesque in- 
 trigue 
 To make me and my friend unself ourselves, 
 Be other man and woman than we were ! 
 Think It out, yon who have the time I for 
 
 me, — 
 I cannot say less ; more I will not say. 
 Leave it to God to cover and undo ! 
 Only, my dulness should not prove too much ! 
 
 — Not prove that in a certain other point 
 Wherein my husband blamed me, — and you 
 
 blame. 
 If I interpret smiles and shakes of head, — 
 I was dull too. Oh, if I dared but speak ! 
 Must I speak ? I am blamed that I forwent 
 A way to make my husband's favor come. 
 That is true : I was firm, withstood, refused . . . 
 
 — Women as you are, how can I find the words ? 
 
 I felt there was just one thing Guido claimed 
 I had no right to give nor he to take ; 
 We being in estrangement, soul from soul : 
 Till, when I sought help, the Archbishop smiled, 
 Inquirii^ into privacies of life, 
 — Said I was blamable — (he stands for God) 
 Nowise entitled to exemption there. 
 Then I obeyed, — as surely had obeyed 
 Were the injimction " Since your husband bids. 
 Swallow the burning coal he proffers you ! " 
 But I did wrong, and he gave wrong advice 
 Though he were thrice Archbishop, — that, I 
 
 know ! — 
 Now I have got to die and see things clear. 
 Remember i was barely twelve years old — ■ 
 A child at marriage: I was let alone 
 For weeks, I told you, lived my child-life still 
 Even at Arezzo, when I woke and found 
 Krst ... but I need not think of that again — 
 Over and ended ! Try and take the sense 
 Of what I signify, if it must be so. 
 After the first, my husband, for hate's sake. 
 Said one eve, when the simpler cruelty 
 Seemed somewhat dull at edge and fit to bear, 
 *' We have been man and wife six months al- 
 most : 
 How long is this your comedy to last ? 
 Go this_ night to my chamber, not your own ! " 
 At which word, I did rush — most true the 
 
 charge — 
 And gain the Archbishop's house — he stands 
 
 for God — ■ 
 And fall upon my knees and clasp his feet. 
 Praying him hinder what ray estranged soul 
 Refused to bear, though patient of the rest ; 
 *' Place me within a convent," I implored — 
 " Let me henceforward lead the virgin life 
 You praise in her you bid me imitate ! " 
 What did he answer ? *' Folly of ignorance ! 
 Know, daughter, circumstances make or mar 
 Virginity, — 't is virtue or 't is vice. 
 
 That which was glory in the Mother of God 
 Had been, for instance, damnable in Eve 
 Created to be mother of mankind. 
 Had Eve, in answer to her Maker's speech 
 ' Be fruitful, multiply, replenish earth ' — 
 Pouted ' But I choose rather to remain 
 Single ' — why, she had spared herself forthwith 
 Further probation by the apple and snake, 
 Been pushed straight out of Paradise ! For 
 
 see — 
 If motherhood be qualified impure, 
 I catch you making God command Eve sin I 
 
 — A blasphemy so like these Molinists', 
 I must suspect you dip into their books." 
 Then he pursued " 'T was in your covenant ! " 
 
 No I There my husband never used deceit. 
 He never did by speech nor act imply 
 " Because of our souls' yearning that we meet 
 And mix in soul through flesh, which yours and 
 
 mine 
 Wear and impress, and make their visible 
 
 selves, 
 
 — All which means, for the love of yon and me, 
 Let us become one ilesh, being one soul ! " 
 
 He only stipulated for the wealth ; 
 Honest so far. But when he spoke as plain — 
 Dreadfully honest also — " Since our souls 
 Stand each from each; a whole world's width 
 
 between. 
 Give me the fleshly vesture I can reach 
 And rend and leave just fit for hell to bum!" — 
 Why, in God's name, for Guide's soul's own sake 
 Imperilled by polluting mine, — I say, 
 I did resist ; would I had overcome ! 
 
 My heart died out at the Archbishop's smile : 
 
 — It seemed so stale and worn a way o' the 
 
 world. 
 As though 't were nature frowning — " Here is 
 
 Spring, 
 The sun shines as he shone at Adam's fall. 
 The earth requires that warmth reach every- 
 where : 
 What, must your patch of snow be saved for- 
 sooth 
 Because you rather fancy snow than flowers ? " 
 Something in this style he began with me. 
 Last he said, savagely for a good man, 
 " This ext>lains why you call your husband 
 
 harsh, 
 Harsh to you, harsh to whom you love. God's 
 
 Bread I 
 The poor Count has to manage a mere child 
 Whose parents leave untaught the simplest 
 
 things 
 Their duty was and privilege to teach, — 
 Goodwives' instruction, gossips' lore : they laugh 
 And leave the Count the task, — or leave it 
 
 me ! " 
 Then I resolved to tell a frightful thing. 
 " I am not ignorant, — know what I say. 
 Declaring this is sought for hate, not love. 
 Sir, you may hear things like almighty God. 
 I tell you that my housemate, yes — the priest 
 My husband's brother. Canon 6ir»lamo — 
 Haa taught me what depraved and misnamed 
 love 
 
Si6 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 Means, and what outward signs denote the sin, 
 
 For he solicits me and says he loves. 
 
 The idle young priest with naught else to do. 
 
 My husband sees this, knows this, and lets be. 
 
 Is it your counsel i bear this beside ? " 
 
 '" — More scandal, and against a priest this 
 
 time ! 
 What, 't is the Canon now ? " — less snap- 
 pishly — 
 * Rise up, my child, for such a child you are, 
 The rod were too advanced a punishment ! 
 Let 's try the honeyed cake. A parable i 
 ' Without a parable spake he not to them.' 
 There was a ripe round long black toothsome 
 
 fruit, 
 Even a flower-fig, the prime boast of May ; 
 And, to the tree, said . . . either the spirit o' 
 
 the fig. 
 Or, if we bring in men, the gardener. 
 Archbishop of the orchard — had I time 
 To try o' the two which fits in best ; indeed 
 It might be the Creator's self, but then 
 The tree should bear an apple, I suppose, — 
 Well, anyhow, one with authority said, 
 ' Ripe fig, burst skin, regale the fig-pecker — 
 The bird whereof thou art a perquisite ! ' 
 ' Nay,' with a flounce, replied the restif fig, 
 ' I much prefer to keep my pulp myself : 
 He may go breakfastless and dimierless, 
 Supperless of one crimson seed, for me ! ' 
 So, back she flopped into her bunch of leaves. 
 He flew off, left her, — did the natural lord, — 
 Aiid lo, three hundred thousand bees and wasps 
 Found her out, feasted on her to the shuck : 
 Such gain the fig's that gave its bird no bite ! 
 The moral, — fools elude their proper lot, 
 Tempt other fools, get ruined all alike. 
 Therefore go home, embrace your husband 
 
 quick ! 
 Which if his Canon brother chance to see, 
 He will the sooner back to book again." 
 
 So, home I did go ; so, the worst befell : 
 
 So, I had proof the Archbishop was just man, 
 
 And hardly that, and certainly no more. 
 
 For, miserable consequence to me. 
 
 My hiisband's hatred waxed nor waned at all. 
 
 His brother's boldness grew effrontery soon. 
 
 And my last stay and comfort in myself 
 
 Was forced from me: henceforth I looked to 
 
 God 
 Only, nor cared my desecrated soul 
 Should have fair walls, gay windows for the 
 
 world. 
 God's glimmer, that came through the ruin-top. 
 Was witness why all lights were quenched in- 
 side: 
 Henceforth I asked God counsel, not mankind. 
 
 So, when I made the effort, freed myself. 
 They said — " No care to save appearance here 1 
 How cynic, — when, how wanton, were 
 
 enough ! " 
 — Adding, it all came of my mother's life — 
 My own real mother, whom I never knew. 
 Who did wBong (if she needs must have done 
 
 wrong) 
 Through being all her life, not my four years. 
 
 At mercy of the hateful : every beast 
 
 0' the field was wont to break that fountam- 
 
 fence. 
 Trample the silver into mud so murk 
 Heaven could not find itself reflected there. 
 Now they cry, " Oat on her, who, plashy pool, 
 Bequeathed turbidity and bitterness 
 To the daughter-stream where Guido dipt and 
 
 drank!" 
 
 Well, since she had to bear this brand — let me I 
 The rather do I understand her now, — 
 From my experience of what hate calls love, — 
 Much love might be in what their love called 
 
 hate. 
 H she sold . . . what they call, sold . . . me, 
 
 her child — 
 I shall believe she hoped in her poor heart 
 That I at least might try be good and pure, 
 Begin to live imtempted, not go doomed 
 And done with ere once found in fault, as she. 
 Oh and, my mother, it all came to this ? 
 Why should I trust those that speak ill of yon. 
 When I mistrust who speaks even well of them ? 
 Why, since all bound to do me good, did harm, 
 May not you, seeming as you harmed me most. 
 Have meant to do most good — and feed your 
 
 child 
 From bramble-bush, whom not one orchard-tree 
 But drew bough back from, nor let one fruit 
 
 fall? 
 This it was for you sacrificed your babe ? 
 Gained just this, giving your heart's hope away 
 As I might give mine, loving it as you. 
 If . . . but that never could be asked of me ! 
 
 There, enough ! I have my support again, 
 Again the knowledge that my babe was, is. 
 Will be mine only. Him, by death, 1 give 
 Outright to God, without a further care, — 
 But not to any parent in the world, — 
 So to be safe : why is it we repine ? 
 What guardianship were safer could we choose ? 
 All human plans and projects come to naught: 
 My life, and what I know of other lives. 
 Prove that : no plan nor project ! God shall 
 care ! 
 
 And now you are not tb-ed ? How patient then 
 All of you, — oh yes, patient this long while 
 Listening, and understanding, I am sure ! 
 Four days ago, when I was sound and well 
 And like to live, no one would understand. 
 People were kind, but smiled, " And what of 
 
 him. 
 Your friend, whose tonsure the rich dark-brown 
 
 hides ? 
 There, there ! — your lover, do we dream he 
 
 was? 
 A priest too — never were such naughtiness ! 
 Still, he thinks many a long think, never fear. 
 After the shy pale lady, — lay so light 
 For a moment in his arms, the lucky one ! " 
 And so on : wherefore should I blame you 
 
 much? 
 So we are made, such difference in minds. 
 Such difference too in eyes that see the minds ! 
 That man, you misinteiTret and misprise — 
 
POMPILIA 
 
 517 
 
 The glory of his nature, I had thought, 
 
 Shot itself out in white li^fht, blazed the truth 
 
 Through every atom of his act with me : 
 
 Yet where I point you, through the crystal 
 
 shrine. 
 Purity in quintessence, one dew-drop. 
 You all descry a spider in the midst. 
 One says, ''' The head of it is plain to see," 
 And one, ''They are the feet by which I judge," 
 All say, "Those films were spun by nothing 
 
 else." 
 
 Then, I must lay my babe away with God, 
 Nor think of him again for gratitude. 
 Yes, my last breath shall wholly spend itself 
 In one attempt more to disperse the stain, 
 The mist from other breath fond mouths have 
 
 made, 
 About a lustrous and pellucid soul : 
 So that, when I am gone but sorrow stays, 
 And people need assurance in their doubt 
 If God yet have a sei-vant, man a friend, 
 The weak a savior, and the vile a foe, — 
 Let him be present, by the name invoked, 
 Giuseppe-Maria Caponsacchi ! 
 
 There, 
 Strength comes already with the utterance ! 
 I will remember once more for his sake 
 The sorrow : for he lives and is belied. 
 Could he be here, how he would speak for me ! 
 
 I had been miserable three drear years 
 In that dread palace and lay passive now. 
 When I first learned there could be such a man. 
 Thus it fell : I was at a public play. 
 In the last days of Carnival last March, 
 Brought there I knew not why, but now know 
 
 well. 
 My husband put me where I sat, in front ; 
 Then crouched down, breathed cold through 
 
 me from behind. 
 Stationed i' the shadow, — none in front could 
 
 see, — 
 I, it was, faced the stranger-throng beneath. 
 The crowd with upturned faces, eyes one stare, 
 Voices one buzz. I looked but to the stagre, 
 Whereon two lovers sang and interchanged 
 " True life is only love, love only bliss : 
 I love thee — thee I love I" then they em- 
 braced. 
 I looked thence to the ceiling and the walls, — 
 Over the crowd, those voices and those eyes, — 
 My thoughts went through the roof and out, to 
 
 Rora.e 
 On wings of music, waft of measured words, — 
 Set me down there, a happy child again. 
 Sure that to-morrow would be festa-day, 
 Hearing ray parents praise past festas more. 
 And seeing they were old if I was young. 
 Yet wondering why they still would end dis- 
 course 
 With " We must soon go, you abide your time, 
 And, — might we haply see the proper friend 
 Throw his arm over you and make you safe ! " 
 
 Sudden I saw him ; into my lap there fell 
 A foolish twist of comfits, broke my dream 
 
 And brought me from the air and laid me low, 
 As ruined as the soaring bee that ^s reached 
 (80 Pietro told me at the Villa once) 
 By the dust-handful. There the comfits lay: 
 I looked to see who flung them, and I faced 
 This Caponsacchi, looking up in turn. 
 Ere I could reason out why, I felt sure. 
 Whoever flung them, his was not the hand, — 
 Up rose the round face and good-natured grin 
 Of one who, in effect, had played the prank. 
 From covert close beside the earnest face, — 
 Fat waggish Conti, friend of all the world. 
 He was my husband's cousin, pri\'ileged 
 To throw the thing : the other, silent, grave, 
 Solemn almost, saw me, as I saw him. 
 
 There is a psalm Don Celestine recites, 
 
 " Had I a dove's wings, how I fain would 
 
 flee ! " 
 The psalm runs not " I hope, I pray for 
 
 wings," — 
 Not ' ' If wings fall from heaven, I fix them 
 
 fast," — 
 Simply "■ How good it were to fly and rest, 
 Have hope now, and one day expect content ! 
 How well to do what I shall never do ! " 
 80 I said, '* Had there been a man like that, 
 To lift me with his strength out of all strife 
 Into the calm, how I could fly and rest ! 
 I have a keeper in the garden here 
 Whose sole employment is to strike me low 
 If ever I, for solace, seek the sun. 
 Life means with me successful feigning death, 
 Lying stone-like, eludii^ notice so. 
 Foregoing here the turf and there the sky. 
 Suppose that man had been instead of this ! " 
 
 Presently Conti laughed into my ear, 
 
 — Had tripped up to the raised place where I 
 
 sat — 
 *' Cousin, I flung them bmtishly and hard ! 
 Because you must be hurt, to look austere 
 As Caponsacchi yonder, my tall friend 
 Amazing now. Ah, Guido, you so close ? 
 Keep on your knees, do ! Beg her to forgive I 
 My cornet battered like a cannon-ball. 
 Good-by, I 'm gone ! " — nor waited the reply. 
 
 That night at supper, out my husband broke, 
 " Why was that throwing, that buffoonery ? 
 Do you think I am your dupe ? What man 
 
 would dare 
 Throw comfits in a stranger lady's lap ? 
 'T was knowledge of you bred such insolence 
 In Caponsacchi ; he dared shoot tlie bolt, 
 Using that Conti for his stalking-horse. 
 How could you see him this once and no more. 
 When he is always haunting hereabout 
 At the street-comer or the palace-side. 
 Publishing my shame and your impudence ? 
 You are a wanton, — la dupe, you think ? 
 Christ, what hinders that I kill her quick ? " 
 Whereat he drew his sword and feigned a 
 
 thrust. 
 
 All this, now, — being not so strange to me, 
 Used to such misconception day by day 
 And broken-in to bear, — I bore, this time. 
 
Si8 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 More quietly than woman should perhaps ; 
 Repeated the mere truth and held my tongue. 
 
 Then he said, " Since you play the ig:norant, 
 I shall instruct you. This amour, — com- 
 menced 
 Or finished or midway in act, all 's one, — 
 'T is the town-talk ; so my revenge shall be. 
 Does he presume because he ia a priest ? 
 I warn him that the sword I wear shall pink 
 His lily-scented cassock through and through, 
 Next time I catch him underneath your eaves ! " 
 But he had threatened with the sword so oft 
 And, after alL not kept his promise. All 
 I said was, " Let God save the innocent ! 
 Moreover, death is far from a bad fate. 
 I shall go pray for you and me, not him ; 
 And then I look to sleep, come death or, worse. 
 Life." So, I slept. 
 
 There may have elapsed a week, 
 When Margherita, — called my waiting-maid. 
 Whom it is said my husband found too fair — 
 Who stood and heard the charge and the reply, 
 Who never once would let the matter rest 
 From that night forward, but rang changes 
 
 still 
 On this the thrust and that the shame, and how 
 Good cause for jealousy cures jealous fools. 
 And what a paragon was this same priest 
 She talked about until I stopped my ears, — 
 She said, "A week is gone; you comb your 
 
 hair, 
 Then go mope in a comer, cheek on palm. 
 Tin night comes round again, — so, waste a 
 
 week 
 As if your husband menaced you in sport. 
 Have not I some acquaintance with his tricks ? 
 Oh no, he did not stab the serving-man 
 Who made and sang the rhymes about me 
 
 once ! 
 For why? They sent him to the wars next 
 
 day. 
 Nor poisoned he the foreigner, my friend, 
 Who wagered on the whiteness of my breast, — 
 The swarth skins of our city in dispute : 
 For, though he paid me proper compliment. 
 The Count well knew he was besotted with 
 Somebody else, a skin as bla«k as ink, 
 (As all the town knew save my foreigner) — 
 He found and wedded presently, — Why need 
 Better revenge?' — the Count asked. But 
 
 what 's here ? 
 A priest that does not fight, and cannot wed. 
 Yet must be dealt with ! If the Count took fire 
 For the poor pastime of a minute, — me — 
 What were the conjftagration for yourself. 
 Countess and lady-wife and all the rest ? 
 The priest will perish ; you will grieve too late : 
 So shall the city-ladies' handsomest 
 Frankest and liberalest gentleman 
 Die for you, to appease a scurvy dog 
 Hanging 's too good for. Is there no escape ? 
 Were it not simple Christian charity 
 To warn the priest be on his guard, — save him 
 Assured death, save yourself from causing it ? 
 I meet him in the street. Give me a glove, 
 A ring to show for token ! Mum 's the word ! " 
 
 I answered, " If you were, as styled, my maid, 
 I would command you : as you are, you say, 
 My husband's intimate, — assist his wife 
 Wno can do nothing but entreat ' Be still ! ' 
 Even if you speak truth and a crime is planned, 
 Leave help to God as I am forced to do ' 
 There is no other help, or we should craze. 
 Seeing such evil with no human cure. 
 Beflect that God, who makes the storm desist. 
 Can make an angry violent heart subside. 
 Why should we venture teach him governance ? 
 Never address me on this subject more ! " 
 
 Next night she said, " But I went, all the same, 
 — Ay, saw your Caponsacchi in his house, 
 And come back stuffed with news I must out- 
 pour. 
 I told him, ' Sir, my mistress is a stone : 
 Why should you harm her for no good you 
 
 get? 
 For you do harm her — prowl about our place 
 With the Count never distant half the street, 
 Lurking at every corner, would you look I 
 'T is certain she has witched you with a spell. 
 Are there not other beauties at your beck ? 
 We all know. Donna This and Monna That 
 Die for a glance of yours, yet here you gaze ! 
 Go make them grateful, leave the stone its 
 
 cold ! ' 
 And he — oh, he turned first white and then 
 
 red, 
 And then — ' To her behest I bow myself, 
 Whom I love with my body and my soul : 
 Only a word i' the bowing ! See, I write 
 One little word, no harm to see or hear ! 
 Then, fear no further ! ' This is what he 
 
 wrote. 
 I know you cannot read, — therefore, let me ! 
 'My idol!'" . . . 
 
 But I took it from her hand 
 And tore it into shreds. " Why, join the rest 
 Who harm me ? Have I ever done you 
 
 wrong ? 
 People have told me 't is you wrong myself : 
 Let it suffice I either feel no wrong 
 Or else forgive it, — yet you turn my foe ! 
 The others hunt me and you throw a noose ! " 
 
 She muttered, " Have your wilful way ! " I 
 slept. 
 
 Whereupon ... no, I leave my husband out 1 
 It is not to do him more hurt, I speak. 
 Let it suffice, when misery was most. 
 One day, I swooned and got a respite so. 
 She stooped as I was slowly coming to, 
 This Margherita, ever on my trace. 
 And whispered — " Caponsacchi ! '' 
 
 _ If I drowned. 
 
 But woke afloat i' the wave with upturned 
 
 eyes. 
 And found their first sight was a star I I 
 
 turned — 
 For the first time, I let her have her will, 
 Heard passively, — " The imposthume at such 
 
 head, 
 
POMPILIA 
 
 S19 
 
 One tonoh, one lancet - puncture would re- 
 lieve, — 
 And still no glance the good physician's way 
 Who rids you of the torment in a trice I 
 Still he writes letters you refuse to hear. 
 He may prevent your husband, kill himself, 
 So desperate and all fordone is he ! 
 Just hear the pretty verse he made to-day ! 
 Asonnet from Mirtillo. '' Peerless fair. , . .' 
 All poetry is difficult to read, 
 — The sense of it is, anyhow, he seeks 
 Leave to contrive you an escape from heU, 
 And for that purpose asks an interview. 
 I can write, I can grant it in your name, 
 Or^ what is better, lead you to his house. 
 Your husband dashes you against the stones ; 
 This man would place each fragment in a 
 
 shrine : 
 You hate him, love your husband ! " 
 
 I returned, 
 " It is not true I love my husband, — no, 
 Nor hate this man. I listen while you speak, 
 — Assured that what you say is false, the 
 
 same: 
 Much as when once, to me a little child, 
 A rough gaunt man in rags, with eyes on fire, 
 A crowd of boys and idlers at his heels. 
 Rushed as I crossed the Square, and held my 
 
 head 
 In his two hands, ' Here 's she will let me 
 
 You little girl, whose eyes do good to mine, 
 I am the Pope, am Sextus, now the Sixth ; 
 And that Twelfth Innocent, proclaimed to-day, 
 Is Lucifer disguised in human flesh ! 
 The angels, met in conclave, crowned me ! ' — 
 
 thus 
 He gibbered and I listened ; but I knew 
 All was delusion, ere folk interposed, 
 ' Unfasten him, the maniac ! ' Thus I know 
 All your report of Caponsacchi false, 
 Folly or dreaming : i have seen so much 
 By that adventure at the spectacle, 
 The face I fronted that one first, last time : 
 He would belie it by such words and thoughts. 
 Therefore while you profess to show him me, 
 I ever see his own face. Get you gone ! " 
 
 " — That will I, nor once open mouth again, — 
 No, by Saint Joseph and the Holy Ghost ! 
 On your head be the damage, so adieu '. " 
 
 And so more days, more deeds I must forget. 
 
 Till . . . what a strange thing now is to de- 
 clare ! 
 
 Since I say anything, say all if true ! 
 
 And how my life seems lengthened as to serve ! 
 
 It may be idle or inopportune. 
 
 But, true? — why, what was all I said but 
 truth. 
 
 Even when I found that such as are untrue 
 
 Could only take the truth in throurfi a lie ? 
 
 Now — I am speaking truth to the Truth's self ; 
 
 God will lend credit to my words this time. 
 
 It had got half through April. I arose 
 One vivid daybreak, — who had gone to bed 
 
 In the old way my wont those last three years. 
 Careless until, the cup drained, I should die. 
 The last sound in my ear, the over-night. 
 Had been a something let drop on the sly 
 In prattle by Margherita, "Soon enough 
 Gayeties end, now Easter 's past : a week, 
 And the Archbishop gets him back to 
 
 Rome, — 
 Every one leaves the town for Rome, this 
 
 Spring, — 
 Even Caponsacchi, out of heart and hope, 
 Resigns himself and follows with the flock." 
 I heard this drop and drop like rain outside 
 Fast-falling through the darkness while she 
 
 spoke : 
 So had I heard with like indifference, 
 " And Michael's pair of wings will arrive first 
 At Rome, to introduce the company. 
 And bear him from our picture where he fights 
 Satan, — expect to have that .dragon loose 
 And never a defender ! " — my sole thought 
 Being still, as night came, "Done, another 
 
 day! 
 How good to sleep and so get nearer death ! " — 
 When, what, first thing at daybreak, pierced 
 
 the sleep 
 With a summons to me ? Up I sprang alive. 
 Light in me, light without me, everywhere 
 Change ! A broad yellow sunbeam was let 
 
 fall 
 From heaven to earth, — a sudden drawbridge 
 
 layi 
 Along which marched a myriad merry motes, 
 MocEng the flies that crossed them and re- 
 crossed 
 In rival dance, companions new-bom too. 
 On the house-eaves, a dripping shag of weed 
 Shook diamonds on each dull gray lattice- 
 square, 
 As first one, then another bird leapt by. 
 And light was off, and lo was back again. 
 Always with one voice, — where are two such 
 
 joys ? — 
 The blessed building - sparrow ! I stepped 
 
 forth, 
 Stood on the terrace, — o'er the roofs, sucl. 
 
 sky! 
 My heart sang, " I too am to go away, 
 I too have something I must care about, 
 Carry away with me to Rome, to Rome I 
 The bird brings hither sticks and hairs and 
 
 wool. 
 And nowhere else i' the world j what fly breaks 
 
 rank. 
 Falls out of the procession that befits, 
 From window here to window there, with all 
 The world to choose, — so well he knows his 
 
 course ? 
 I have my purpose and my motive too. 
 My march to Rome, like any bird or fly ! 
 Had I been dead ! How right to be alive ! 
 Last night I almost prayed for leave to die. 
 Wished Guido all his pleasure with the sword 
 Or the poison, —poison, sword, was but a trick. 
 Harmless, may God forgive him the poor jest ! 
 My life is charmed, will last till I reach Rome 1 
 Yesterday, but for the sin, —ah, nameless be 
 The deed I could have dared against myself I 
 
520 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 Now — see if I will touch an unripe fruit, 
 And risk the health I want to have and use ! 
 Not to live, now, would be the wickedness, — 
 For life means to make haste and go to Rome 
 And leave Arezzo, leave all woes at once ! " 
 
 Now, understand here, by no means mistake ! 
 Long ago had I tried to leave that house 
 When it seemed such procedure would stop 
 
 sin ; 
 And still failed more the more I tried — at 
 
 first 
 The Archbishop, as I told you, — next, our 
 
 lord 
 The Governor, — indeed I found my way, 
 I went to the great palace where he rules. 
 Though I knew well 't was he who, — when I 
 
 gave 
 A jewel or two, themselves had given me. 
 Back to my parents, — since they wanted bread, 
 They who had never let me want a nosegay, — 
 
 he 
 Spoke of the jail for felons, if they kept 
 What was first theirs, then mine, so doubly 
 
 theirs. 
 Though all the while my husband's most of all ! 
 I knew well who had spoke the word wrought 
 
 this : 
 Yet, being in extremity, I fled 
 To the Governor, as I say, — scarce opened 
 
 lip 
 When — the cold cruel snicker close behind — 
 Guido was on my trace, already there. 
 Exchanging nod and wink for shrug and smile, 
 And I — pushed back to him and, for my pains. 
 Paid with . . . but why remember what is 
 
 past? 
 I sought out a poor friar the people call 
 The Roman, and confessed my sin which came 
 Of their sin, — that fact could not be re- 
 pressed, — 
 The f rightfulness of my despair in God ; 
 And feeling, through the grate, his horror 
 
 shake. 
 Implored him, " Write for me who cannot 
 
 write. 
 Apprise my parents, make them rescue me ! 
 You bid me be courageous and trust God : 
 Do you in turn dare somewhat, trust and 
 
 write, 
 ' Dear friends, who used to be my parents once. 
 And now declare you have no part in me. 
 This is some riddle I want wit to solve. 
 Since you must love me with no difference. 
 Even suppose you altered, — there 's your hate, 
 To ask for : hate of you two dearest ones 
 I shall find liker love than love found here. 
 If husbands love their wives. Take me away 
 And hate me as you do the gnats and fleas. 
 Even the scorpions ! How I shall rejoice ! ' 
 Write that and save me I " And he promised 
 
 — wrote 
 Or did not write ; things never changed at all : 
 He was not like the Augustinian here ! 
 Last, in a desperation I appealed 
 To friends, whoever wished me better days, 
 To Guillichini, that's of kin, — " What, I — 
 Travel to Rome with you ? A flying gout 
 
 Bids me deny my heart and mind my leg ! 
 Then I tried Conti, used to brave —laugh back 
 The louring thunder -when his cousin scowled 
 At me protected by his presence : " You — 
 Who weU know what you cannot save me 
 
 from, — 
 Carry me off ! What frightens you, a pnest ? " 
 He shook his head, looked grave — "Above my 
 
 strength ! , , ,. 
 
 Guido has claws that scratch, shows feline 
 
 teeth ; 
 A formidabler foe than I dare fret : 
 Give me a dog to deal with, twice the size ! 
 Of course I am a priest and Canon too, 
 But ... by the bye . . - though both, not 
 
 quite so bold 
 As he, my fellow-Canon, brother-priest. 
 The personage in such ill odor here _ 
 Because of the reports — pure birth n' the 
 
 brain ! 
 Our Caponsacchi, he 's your true Saint George 
 To slay the monster, set the Princess free, 
 And have the whole Hirii- Altar to himself : 
 I always think so when I see that piece 
 I' the Pieve, that 's his church and mine, you 
 
 know : 
 Though you drop eyes at mention of his name ! " 
 
 That name had got to take a half -grotesque 
 Half-ominous, wholly enigmatic sense. 
 Like any by-word, broken bit of song 
 Born with a meaning, changed by mouth and 
 
 mouth 
 That mix it in a sneer or smile, as chance 
 Bids, tin it now means naught but ugliness 
 And perhaps shame. 
 
 — AH this intends to say, 
 That, over-night, the notion of escape 
 Had seemed distemper, dreaming ; and the 
 
 name, — 
 Not the man, but the name of him, thiis made 
 Into a mockery and disgi'ace, — why, she 
 Who uttered it persistently, had laughed, 
 " I name his name, and there you start and 
 
 wince 
 As criminal from the red tongs' touch ! " — yet 
 
 now, 
 Now, as I stood letting morn bathe me bright. 
 Choosing which butterfly should bear my 
 
 news, — 
 The white, the brown one, or that tinier blue, — 
 The Margherita, I detested so. 
 In she came — " The fine day, the good Spring 
 
 time ! 
 What, up and out at window ? That is best. 
 No thought of Caponsacchi ? — who stood 
 
 there 
 All night on one leg, like the sentry crane. 
 Under the pelting of your water-spout — 
 Looked last look at your lattice ere he leave 
 Our city, bury his dead hope at Rome. 
 Ay, go to looking-glass and make you fine, 
 While he may die ere touch one least loose 
 
 hair 
 You drag at with the comb in such a rage ! " 
 
 I turned — " Tell Caponsacchi he may come ! " 
 
POMPILIA 
 
 521 
 
 " Tell him to come ? Ah, but, for charity, 
 A truce to fooling ! Come ? What, — come 
 
 this eve ? 
 Peter and Paul 1 But I see through the trick ! 
 Yes, come, and take a flower-pot on his head. 
 Flung from your terrace I No joke, sincere 
 
 truth ?^' 
 
 How plainly I perceived hell flash and fade 
 0' the face of her, — the doubt that first paled 
 
 joy, 
 Then, final reassurance I indeed 
 Was caught now, never to be free again ! 
 What did I care r — who felt myself of force 
 To play with silk, and spurn the hoisehair- 
 
 springe, 
 
 *'But — do you know that I have bade him 
 
 come, 
 AmS. in your own name ? I presumed so much, 
 Knowing the thing you needed in your heart. 
 But somehow — what had I to show in proof ? 
 He would not come : half -promised, that was 
 
 all, 
 And wrote the letters you refused to read. 
 What is the message that shall move him 
 
 " After the Ave Maria, at firat dark, 
 I will be standing on the terrace, say ! " 
 
 *' I would I had a good long lock of hair 
 Should prove I was not lying ! Never mind ! " 
 
 OfE she went — " May he not refuse, that 's 
 
 aU- 
 Fearing a trick ! " 
 
 I answered, " He will come," 
 And, all day, I sent prayer like incense up 
 To God the strong, God the beneficent, 
 God ever mindful in all strife and strait. 
 Who, for our own good, makes the need ex- 
 treme, 
 Till at the hist he puts forth might and saves. 
 An old rhyme came into my head and rang 
 Of how a virgin, for the faith of God, 
 Hid herself, from, the Paynims that pursued. 
 In a cave's heart ; until a thunderstone. 
 Wrapped in a flame, revealed the couch and 
 
 prey: 
 And they laughed — '* Thanks to lightning, 
 
 ours at last! " 
 And she cried, '* Wrath of God, assert his 
 
 love ! 
 Servant of God, thou fire, befriend his child ! " 
 And lo, tlie fire she grasped at, fixed its flash, 
 Lay in her hand a calm cold dreadful sword 
 She brandished till pursuers strewed the 
 
 ground. 
 So did the souls within them die away. 
 As o'er the prostrate bodies, sworded, safe. 
 She walked forth to the solitudes and Christ : 
 So should I grasp the lightning and be saved ! 
 
 And still, as the day wore, the trouble grew 
 Whereby I guessed there would be born a star, 
 Until at an intense throe of the dusk, 
 
 I started up, was pushed, I dare to say. 
 Out on the terrace, leaned and looked at last 
 Where the deliverer waited ine : the same 
 Silent and solemn face, I first descried 
 At the spectacle, confronted mine once more. 
 
 So was that minute twice vouchsafed me, so 
 The manhood, wasted then, was still at watch 
 To save me yet a second time : no change 
 Here, though all else changed in the changing 
 world ! 
 
 I spoke on the instant, as my duty bade, 
 
 In some such sense as this, whatever the phrase. 
 
 " Friend, foolish words were borne from you to 
 
 me ; 
 Your soul behind them is the pure strong wind, 
 Not dust and feathers which its breath may 
 
 bear : 
 These to the witless seem the wind itself. 
 Since proving thus the first of it they feel. 
 If by mischance you blew offence my way. 
 The straws are dropt, the wind desists no whit, 
 And how such strays were caught up in th« 
 
 street 
 And took a motion from you, why inquire ? 
 I speak to the strong soul, no weak disguise. 
 If it be truth, — why should I doubt it trath ? — 
 You serve God specially, as priests are bound, 
 And care about me, stranger as I am , 
 So far as wish my good, that — miracle 
 I take to imitate he wills yon serve 
 By saving me, — what else can he direct ? 
 Here is the service. Since a long while now, 
 I am in course of being put to death : 
 While death concerned nothing but me, I bowed 
 The head and bade, in heart, my husband 
 
 strike. 
 Now I imperil something more, it seems, 
 Something that 's trulier me than this myself, 
 Something I trust in God and you to save. 
 You go to Rome, they tell me : take me there, 
 Put me back with my people ! ' ' 
 
 He replied — 
 The first word I heard ever from his lips. 
 All himself in it, — an eternity 
 Of speech, to match the immeasurable depth 
 0' the soul that then broke silence — ' I am 
 yours." 
 
 So did the star rise, soon to lead my step. 
 Lead on, nor pause before it should stand still 
 Above the House o' the Babe, — my babe to be, 
 That knew me first and thus made me know 
 
 him, 
 That had his right of life and claim on mine, 
 And would not let me die till he was born. 
 But pricked me at the heart to save us both, 
 Saying, *' Have you the will ? Leave God thfc 
 
 way ! " 
 And the way was Caponsacchi — *' mine," thank 
 
 God! 
 He was mine, he is mine, he will be mine. 
 
 No pause i* the leading and the light ! I know, 
 Next night there was a cloud came, and not he : 
 
522 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 But I prayed thi'uuy;h the darkness till it broke 
 And let him shine. The second night, he came. 
 
 " The plan is rash ; the project desperate : 
 In such a flight needs must 1 risk your life, 
 Give food for falsehood, folly or mistake, 
 Ground for your huslDand's rancor and re- 
 venge " — 
 So he began again, with the same face, 
 I felt that, the same loyalty — one star 
 Turning now red that was so white before — 
 One service apprehended newly : just 
 A word of mine and there the white was back ! 
 
 " No, friend, for you will take me ! 'T is youi'- 
 
 self 
 Risk all, not I, — who let you, for I trust 
 In the compensating great God : enough ! 
 I know you : when is it that you will come ? " 
 
 ' ' To-morrow at the day's dawn. " Then I heard 
 What I should do : how to prepare for flight 
 And where to fly. 
 
 That night my husband bade 
 ' — Yon, whom I loathe, beware you break my 
 
 sleep 
 This whole night ! Couch beside me like the 
 
 corpse 
 I would you were ! " The rest you know, I 
 
 think — 
 How I found Caponsacchi and escaped. 
 
 And this man, men call sinner ? Jesus Christ 1 
 Of whom men said, with mouths Thyself 
 
 mad'st once, 
 " He hath a devil " — say he was Thy saint, 
 My Caponsacchi ! Shield and show — unshrond 
 In Thine own time the glory of the soul 
 If aught obscure, — if ink-spot, from vile pens 
 Scribbling a charge against him — (I was glad 
 Then, for the first time, that I could not 
 
 write) — 
 Flirted his way, have flecked the blaze ! 
 
 For me, 
 'T is otherwise : let men take, sift my thoughts 
 
 — Thoughts I throw like the flax for sun to 
 
 bleach ! 
 I did pray, do pray, in the prayer shall die, 
 " Oh, to have Caponsacchi for my guide ! " 
 Ever the face upturned to mine, the hand 
 Holding my hand across the world, — a sense 
 That reads, as only such can read, the mark 
 God sets on woman, signifying so 
 She should — shall peradventure — be divine ; 
 Yet 'ware, the while, how weakness mars the 
 
 print 
 And makes confusion, leaves the thing men 
 
 see, 
 
 — Not this man sees, — who from his soul, re- 
 
 writes 
 The obliterated charter, — love and strength 
 Mending what's marred. "So kneels a vo- 
 
 tarist. 
 Weeds some poor waste traditionary plot 
 Where shrine once was. where temple yet may 
 
 be. 
 
 Purging the place but worshipping the while, 
 By faith and not by sight, sight clearest so, — 
 Such way the saints work,"— says Don Ce- 
 
 lestine. 
 But I, not privileged to see a samt 
 Of old when such walked earth with crown and 
 
 palm, 
 If I call " saint " what saints call something 
 
 The saints must bear with me, impute the fault 
 To a soul i' the bud, so starved by ignorance, 
 Stinted of warmth, it will not blow this year 
 Nor recognize the orb which Spring - flowers 
 
 know. 
 But if meanwhile some insect with a heart 
 Worth floods of lazy music, spendthrift joy — 
 Some fire-fly renounced Spring for my dwarfed 
 
 cup. 
 Crept close to me, brought lustre for the dark. 
 Comfort against the cold, — what though ex- 
 cess 
 Of comfort should miscall the creature — sun ? 
 What did the sun to hinder while harsh hands 
 Petal by petal, crude and colorless. 
 Tore me? This one heart gave me all the 
 Spring ! 
 
 Is all told ? There 's the journey : and where 's 
 
 time 
 To tell you how that heart burst out in shine ? 
 Yet certain points do press on me too hard. 
 Each place must have a name, though I forget : 
 How strange it was — there where the plain 
 
 begins 
 And the small river mitigates its flow — 
 When eve was fading fast, and my soul sank. 
 And he divined what surge of bitterness, 
 In overtaking me, would float me back 
 Whence I was carried by the striding day — 
 So, — " This gray place was famous once," said 
 
 he — 
 And he began that legend of the place 
 As if in answer to the unspoken fear, 
 And told me all about a brave man dead, 
 Which lifted me and let my soul go on ! 
 How did he know too — at that town's approach 
 By the rock-side — tliat in coming near the 
 
 signs 
 Of life, the house-roofs and the church and 
 
 tower, 
 I saw the old boundary and wall o' the world 
 Rise plain as ever round me, hard and cold, 
 As if the broken circlet joined again. 
 Tightened itself about me with no break, — 
 As if the town would turn Arezzo's self, — 
 The husband there, — the friends my enemies, 
 All ranged against me, not an avenue 
 To try, but would be blocked and drive me 
 
 back 
 On him, — this other, ... oh the heart in that ! 
 Did not he find, bring, put into my arms 
 A new-born babe ? — and I saw faces beam 
 Of the young mother proud to teach me joy. 
 And gossips round expecting my surprise 
 At the sudden hole through earth that lets in 
 
 heaven. 
 I could believe himself by his strong will 
 Had woven around »»e what I thought the world 
 
POMPILIA 
 
 S23 
 
 We went along: in, every circumstance, 
 Towns, flowers and faces, all things lielped so 
 
 weU! 
 For, through the journey, was it natural 
 JSnch comfort should arise from first to last ? 
 As I look back, all is one milky way ; 
 Still bettered more, the more remembered, so 
 Do new stars bud while I but search for old. 
 And fill all gaps i' the glory, and grow him — 
 Him I now see make the shine everywhere. 
 Even at the last when the bewildered flesh, 
 The cloud of weariness about my soul 
 Clofe^ging too heavily, sucked down all sense, — 
 Still its last voice was, "He will watch and 
 
 care ; 
 Let the strength go, I am content : he stays ! " 
 1 doubt not hb did stay and care for all — 
 From that sick minute when the head swam 
 
 round. 
 And the eyes looked their last and died on 
 
 him, 
 As in his arms he caught me, and, you say, 
 Carried me in, that tragical red eve. 
 And laid me where I next returned to life 
 In the other red of morning, two red plates 
 That crushed together, crushed the time be- 
 tween. 
 And are since then a solid fire to me, — 
 When in, my dreadful husband and the world 
 Broke, — and I saw him, master, by hell's right, 
 And saw my angel helplessly held back 
 By guards that helped the malice — the lamb 
 
 prone. 
 The serpent towering and triumphant — then 
 Came all the strength back in a sudden swell, 
 I did for once see right, do right, give tongue 
 The adequate protest : for a worm must turn 
 If it would have its wrong observed by God. 
 1 did spring up. attempt to thrust aside 
 That ice-block 'twixt the sun and me, lay low 
 The neutralizer of all good and truth. 
 If I sinned so, — never obey voice more 
 O' the Just and Terrible, who bids us — 
 
 " Bear ! " 
 Not — " Stand by, bear to see my angels bear I " 
 I am clear it was on impulse to serve God 
 Not save myself, — no nor my child unborn ! 
 Had I else waited patiently till now ? — 
 Who saw my old kind parents, silly-sooth 
 And too much trustful, for their worst of faults, 
 Cheated, browbeaten,. stripped and starved, cast 
 
 out 
 Into the kennel: I remonstrated. 
 Then sank to silence, for, — their woes at end. 
 Themselves gone, — only I was left to plague. 
 If only I was threatened and belied. 
 What matter ? I could bear it and did bear ; 
 It was a comfort, still one lot for all : 
 They were not pet«ecuted for my sake 
 And I, estranged, the single happy one. 
 But when at last, all by myself I stood 
 Obeying the clear voice which bade me rise. 
 Not for my own sake but my babe unborn. 
 And take the angel's hand was sent to help — 
 And found the old adversary athwart the path — 
 Not my hand simply strubk from the angel's, 
 
 but 
 The very angel's self made foul i' the face 
 
 By the fiend who struck there, — that I would 
 
 not bear. 
 That only I resisted ! So, my first 
 And last resistance was invincible. 
 Prayers move God ; threats, and nothing else, 
 
 move men ! 
 I must have prayed a man as he were God 
 When I implored the Governor to right 
 My parents' wrongs : the answer was a smile. 
 The Archbishop, — did I clasp his feet enough. 
 Hide my face hotly on them, while 1 told 
 More than I dared make my own mother know ? 
 The profit was — compassion and a jest. 
 This time, the foolish prayers were done with, 
 
 right 
 Used might, and solemnized the sport at once. 
 AU was against the combat : vantag:e, mine ? 
 The runaway avowed, the accomplice-wife. 
 In company with the plan-contriving priest ? 
 Yet, shame thus rank and patent, 1 struck, 
 
 bare, 
 At foe from head to foot in magic mail, 
 And off it withered, cobweb-armory 
 Against the lightning ! 'T was truth singed the 
 
 lies 
 And saved me, not the vain sword nor weak 
 
 speech ! 
 
 You see, I will not have the service fail ! 
 I say, the angel saved me ; I am safe ! 
 Others may want and wish, 1 wish nor want 
 One point o' the circle plainer, where I stand 
 Traced round about with white to front the 
 
 world. 
 What of the calumny I came across. 
 What o' the way to the end ? — the end crowns 
 
 all. 
 The judges judged aright i' the main, gave me 
 The uttermost of my heart's desire, a truce 
 From torture and Arezzo, balm for hurt. 
 With the quiet nuns, — God recompense the 
 
 good ! 
 Who said and sang away the ugly past. 
 And, when my final fortune was revealed. 
 What safety, while, amid my parents' arms. 
 My babe was given me ! Yes, he saved my 
 
 babe : 
 It would not have peeped forth, the bird-like 
 
 thing. 
 Through that Arezzo noise and trouble : back 
 Had it returned nor ever let me see ! 
 But the sweet peace cured all, and let me live 
 And give my bird the life among the leaves 
 God meant him ! Weeks and months of quie- 
 tude, 
 I could lie in such peace and learn so much — 
 Begin the task, I see how needful now. 
 Of understanding somewhat of my past, — 
 Know life a little, I should leave so soon. 
 Therefore, because this man restored my soul, 
 All has been right ; I have gained my gain, en- 
 joyed 
 As well as suffered, — nay, got foretaste too 
 Of better life beginning where this ends — 
 All through the breathing-while allowed me 
 
 thus. 
 Which let good premonitions reach my soul 
 Unthwarted, and benignant influence flo^n 
 
524 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 And interpenetrate and changie my heart, 
 Uncrossed by what was wicked, — nay, unkind. 
 For, as the weakness of my time drew nigh. 
 Nobody did me one disservice more. 
 Spoke coldly or looked strangely, broke the love 
 I lay in the arms of, till my boy was bom. 
 Born all in love, with naught to spoil the bliss 
 A whole long fortnight ; in a life like mine 
 A fortnight filled with bliss is long and much. 
 All women are not mothers of a boy. 
 Though they live twice the length oi my whole 
 
 life. 
 And, as they fancy, happily all the same. 
 There I lay, then, all my great fortnight long, 
 As if it would continue, broaden out 
 Happily more and more, and lead to heaven : 
 Christmas before me, — was not that a chance ? 
 I never realized God's birth before — 
 How he grew likest God in being born. 
 This time I felt like Maiy, had my babe 
 Lying a little on my breast like hers. 
 So all went on till, just four days ago — 
 The night and the tap. 
 
 Oh, it shall be success 
 To the whole of our poor family ! My friends 
 . . . Nay, father and mother, — give nie back 
 
 my word ! 
 They have been rudely stripped of life, disgraced 
 Like children who must needs go clothed too 
 
 fine, 
 Carry the garb of Carnival in Lent. 
 If they too much affected frippeiy. 
 They have been punished and submit them- 
 selves. 
 Say no word : all is over, they see God 
 Who will not be extreme to mark their fault 
 Or he had granted respite : they are safe. 
 
 For that most woeful man my husband once. 
 Who, needing respite, still draws vital breath, 
 I — pardon him ? So far as lies in me, 
 I give him for his good the life he takes. 
 Praying the world will therefore acquiesce. 
 Let him make God amends, — none, none to 
 
 me 
 Who thank him rather that, whereas strange 
 
 fate 
 Mockingly styled him husband and me wife. 
 Himself this way at least pronounced divorce. 
 Blotted the mamage-bond : this blood of mine 
 Flies forth exultingly at any door, 
 Washes the parchment white, and thanks the 
 
 blow. 
 We shall not meet in this world nor the next, 
 But where will God be absent ? In his face 
 Is light, but in his shadow healing too : 
 Let Guido touch the shadow and be healed I 
 And as my presence was importunate, — 
 My earthly good, temptation and a snare, — 
 Nothing about me but drew somehow down 
 His hate upon me, — somewhat so excused 
 Therefore, since hate was thus the truth of 
 
 him, — 
 May my evanishment forevermore 
 Help further to relieve the heart that cast 
 Such object of its natural loathing forth ! 
 So he was made ; he nowise made himself : 
 
 I could not love him, but his mother did, 
 tlis soul has never Iain beside my soul ; 
 But for the unresisting body, — thanks ! 
 He burned that garment spotted by the flesh. 
 Whatever he touched is rightly ruined : plague 
 It caught, and disinfection it had craved 
 Still but for Guido ; I am saved through him 
 So as by fire ; to him — thanks and farewell ! 
 
 Even for my babe, my boy, there 's safety 
 
 thence — 
 From the sudden death of me, I mean : we poor 
 Weak souls, how we endeavor to be strong! 
 I was already using up my life, — 
 This portion, now, should do him such a good, 
 This other go to keep off such an ill! 
 The great life ; see, a breath and it is gone ! 
 So is detached, so left all by itself 
 The little life, the fact which means so much. 
 Shall not God stoop the kindlier to his work, 
 His marvel of creation, foot would crush, 
 Now that the hand he trusted to receive 
 And hold it, lets the treasure fall perforce ? 
 The better ; he shall have in orphanage 
 His own way all the clearlier : if my babe 
 Outlived the hour — and he has lived two 
 
 weeks — 
 It is through God who knows I am not by. 
 Who is it makes the soft gold hair turn black. 
 And sets the tongue, miglit lie so long at rest, 
 Trying to talk ? Let us leave God alone ! 
 Why should I doubt he will explain in time 
 What I feel now, but fail to find the words ? 
 My babe nor was, nor is, nor yet shall be 
 Count Guido Franceschini's child at all — 
 Only his mother's, bom of love not hate ! 
 Sq shall I have my rights in after-time. 
 It seems absurd, impossible to-day ; 
 So seems so much else, not explained but 
 
 known ! 
 
 Ah I Friends, I thank and bless you every one ! 
 No more now : I withdraw from earth and 
 
 man 
 To my own soul, compose myself for God. 
 
 Well, and there is more ! Yes, my end of 
 
 breath 
 Shall bear away my soul in being true ! 
 He is still here, not outside with the world, 
 Here, here, I have him in his rightful place ! 
 'T is now, when 1 am most upon the move, 
 I feel for what I verily find — again 
 The fa«e, again the eyes, again, through all, 
 The heart and its immeasurable love 
 Of my one friend, my only, all my own. 
 Who put his breast between tlie spears and 
 
 me. 
 Ever with Caponsacchi ! Otherwise 
 Here alone would be failure, loss to me — 
 How much more loss to him, with life debarred 
 From giving life, love locked from love's dis- 
 
 play, 
 
 The day-star stopped its task that makes night 
 
 morn ! 
 lover of my life, soldiei^saint, 
 No work begun shall ever pause for death ! 
 Love will be helpful to me more ajid more 
 
DOMINUS HYACINTHUS DE ARCHANGELIS 
 
 525 
 
 I' the coming course, the new path I must 
 
 tread — 
 My weak hand in thy strong: hand, strong for 
 
 that! 
 Tell liim that if I seem without him now, 
 That 's the world's insight 1 Oh, he under- 
 stands ! 
 He is at Civita — do I once doubt 
 The world again is holding us apart ? 
 He had been here, displayed in my behalf 
 The broad brow that reverberates the truth, 
 And flashed the word God gave him, back to 
 
 man ! 
 I know where the free soul is flown ! My fate 
 Will have been hard for even him to bear : 
 Let it confirm him in the trust of God, 
 Showing how holily he dared the deed ! 
 And, for the rest, — say, from the deed, no 
 
 touch 
 Of harm came, but all good, all h^piness. 
 Not one faint fleck of failure ! Why explain ? 
 What I see, oh, he sees and how much more ! 
 Tell him, — I know not wherefore the true 
 
 word 
 Should fade and fall unuttered at the last — 
 It was the name of him I sprang to meet 
 When came the knock, the summons and the 
 
 end. 
 " My great heart, my strong hand are back 
 
 again ! " 
 I would have sprung to these, beckoning across 
 Miu'der and. hell gigantic and distinct 
 0' the threshold, posted to exclude me heaven : 
 He is ordained to call and I to come ! 
 Do not the dead wear flowers when dressed for 
 
 God? 
 Say, — I am all in flowers from head to foot ! 
 Say, — not one flower of all he said and did, 
 Might seem to flit unnoticed, fade unknown. 
 But dropped a seed, has grown a balsam-tree 
 Whereof the blossoming perfumes the place 
 At this supreme of mora.ents ! He is a priest ; 
 He cannot marry therefore, which is right : 
 I think he would not marry if he could. 
 Marriage on earth seems such a counterfeit. 
 Mere imitation of the inimitable : 
 In heaven we have the real and true and sure. 
 'Tis there they neither marry nor are given 
 In marriage but are as the angels : right. 
 Oh how right that is, how like Jesus Christ 
 To F,ay that ! Marriage-making for the earth. 
 With gold so much, — birth, power, repute so 
 
 much, 
 Or beauty, youth so much, in lack of these ! 
 Be as the angels rather, who, apart, 
 Know themselves into one, are found at length 
 Married, but marry never, no, nor give 
 In marriage ; they are man and wife at once 
 When the true time is : here we have to wait 
 Not so long neither ! Could we by a wish 
 Have what we will and get the future now, 
 Would we wish aught done undone in the past ? 
 So, let him wait God's instant men call years ; 
 Meantime hold hard by truth and his great 
 
 soul, 
 Do out the duty ! Through such souls alone 
 God stooping shows su£B.cient of his light 
 For us i' the dark to rise by. And I rise. 
 
 VIII 
 
 DOMINUS HYACINTHUS DE ARCH- 
 ANGELIS, 
 
 PAUPERUM PROCURATOR 
 
 Ah, my Giacinto, he 's no ruddy rogue, 
 
 Is not Ciuone ? What, to-day we 're eight ? 
 
 JSeven and one 's eight, I hope, old curly-pate 1 
 
 — Branches me out his verb-tree on the slate, 
 Amo -as -avi -atum -are -ans^ 
 
 Up to -aturus^ person, tense, and mood, 
 Qu^'es me cum subjunctivo (I could cryj 
 And chews Corderius with his morning crust ! 
 Look eight years onward, and he 's perched, 
 
 he 's perched 
 Dapper and deft on stool beside this chair, 
 Cinozzo, Cinoncello, who but he ? 
 
 — Trying his milk-teeth on some crusty case 
 Like this, papa ahall triturate full soon 
 
 To smooth Papinianian pulp ! 
 
 It trots 
 Already through my head, though noon be now, 
 Does supper-time and what belongs to eve. 
 Dispose, Don, o' the day, first work then 
 play! 
 
 — The proverb bids. And *'then" means, 
 
 won't we hold 
 Our little yearly lovesome frolic feast, 
 Cinuolo's birth-night, Cinicello's own, 
 That makes gruff January grin perforce ! 
 For too contagious grows the mirth, the warmth 
 Escaping from so many hearts at once — 
 When the good wife, buxom and bonny yet. 
 Jokes the hale grandsire, — such are just the 
 
 sort 
 To go off suddenly, — he who hides the key 
 0' the box beneath his pillow every night, — 
 Which box may hold a parchment (some one 
 
 thinks) 
 Will show a scribbled something like a name 
 *' Cinino, Ciniccino," near the end, 
 " To whom I give and I bequeath my lands. 
 Estates, tenements, hereditaments. 
 When I decease as honest ^andsire ought." 
 Wherefore — yet this one time again perhaps — 
 Sha'n't my Orvieto fuddle his old nose ! 
 Then, uncles, one or the other, well i' the 
 
 world, 
 May — drop in, merely ? — trudge through rain 
 
 and wind, 
 Rather ! The smell-feasts rouse them at the 
 
 hint 
 There 's cookery in a certain dwelling-place ! 
 Gossips, too, each with keepsake in his poke. 
 Will pick the way, tlmd lane by lantern-light, 
 And so find door, put galligaskin off 
 At entry of a decent domicile 
 Cornered in snug Condotti, — all for love, 
 All to crush cup with Cinucciatolo ! 
 
 Well, 
 Let others climb the heights o' the court, the 
 
 camp ! 
 How vain are chambering and wantonness. 
 Revel and rout and pleasures that make mad ! 
 Commend me to home-joy, the family board, 
 Altar and hearth I These, with a brisk career, 
 
526 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 A source of honest profit and good fame, 
 
 Just so much work as keeps the brain from 
 
 rust, , , 
 
 Just so much play as lets the heart expand, 
 Honoring God and serving man, — I say, 
 These are reality, and all else, — fluff. 
 Nutshell and naught, — thank Flaccus for the 
 
 phrase ! 
 Suppose I had been Fiso, yet bachelor ! 
 
 Why, work with a wiU, then ! Wherefore lazy 
 
 now ? 
 Turn up the hour-glass, whence no sand-grain 
 
 slips 
 But should have done>its duty to the saint 
 0' the day, the son and heir that 's eight years 
 
 old! 
 Let law come dimple Cinoncino^s cheek, 
 And Latin dumple Cinarello's chin. 
 The while we spread him fine and toss him flat 
 This pulp that makes the pancake, trim our 
 
 mass 
 Of matter into Argument the First, 
 Pidme Pleading in defence of our accused. 
 Which, onee a-waft on paper wing, shaU soar. 
 Shall signalize before applausive Rome 
 What study, and mayhap some mother-wit. 
 Can do toward making Master fop and Fiso 
 Old bachelor Bottinius bite his thumb. 
 Now, how good God is ! How falls plumb to 
 
 point 
 This murder, gives me Guido to defend 
 Now, of all days i' the year, just when the 
 
 boy 
 Verges on Virgil, reaches the right age 
 For some such illustration from bis sire. 
 Stimulus to himself ! One might wait years 
 And never find the chance which now findi; 
 
 me! 
 The fact is, there *s a blessing on the hearth, 
 A special providence for fatherhood ! 
 Here 's a man, and what 's more, a noble, kills 
 
 — Not sneakingly but almost with parade — 
 Wife's father and wife's mother and wife's self 
 That 's mother's self of son and heir (like 
 
 mine ! } 
 
 — And here stand I, the favored advocate. 
 Who pluck this flower o' the field, no Solomon 
 Was ever clothed in glorious gold to match, 
 And set the same in Cinoncino's cap ! 
 
 I defend Guido and his comrades — I ! 
 
 Pray God, I keep me humble : not to me — 
 
 JVon nobis, .Dojuine, seel, tibi laus ! 
 
 How the fop chuckled when they made him 
 
 Fisc! 
 We '11 beat you, my Bottinius, all for love, 
 All for our tribute to Cinotto's day ! 
 Why, 'sbuddikins, old Innocent himself 
 May rub his eyes at the bustle, — ask " What 's 
 
 this 
 Rolling from out the rostrum, as a gust 
 0' the Pro Milone had been prisoned there. 
 And rattled Ron)e awake ? " Awaken Rome, 
 How can the Pope doze on in decency ? 
 He needs nmst wake up also, speak his word, 
 Have his opinion like the rest of Rome, 
 About this huge, this hurly-burly case : 
 He wants who can excogitate the truth, 
 
 Give the result in speech, plain black and 
 
 white, 
 To mumble in the mouth and make his own 
 
 — A little changed, good man, a little changed 1 
 No matter, so his gratitude be moved. 
 
 By when my Giacintino gets of age. 
 Mindful of who thus helped him at a pmch, 
 Archangelus Procurator Pauperum — 
 And proved Hortensius Bedivivus ! 
 
 Whewl 
 To earn the Est-est, merit the minced herb 
 That mollifies the liver's leathery slice. 
 With here a goose-foot, there a cock's-comb 
 
 stuck. 
 Cemented in an element of cheese ! 
 I doubt if dainties do the grandsire good : 
 Last June he had a sort of strangling . . . bah 1 
 He 's his own master, and his will is made. 
 So, liver fizz, law flit and Latin fly 
 As we rub hands o'er dish by way of grace ! 
 May I lose cause if I vent one word more 
 Except — with fresh-cut qmll we ink the 
 
 white — 
 P^-o-pro Guidone et Sociis. There ! 
 
 Count Guido married — or, in Latin due, 
 
 What ? Duxit in uxorem ? — commonplace 1 ■ 
 
 Tmdasjugales iniit, subiit, — ha ! 
 
 He underwent the matrimonial torch ? 
 
 Connubio stabili sibi junxit, — hum !_ 
 
 In stable bond of marriage bound his own ? 
 
 That 's clear of any modem taint : and yet . . „ 
 
 Virgil is little help to who writes prose. 
 
 He shall attack me Terence with the dawn, 
 
 Shall Cinuceino ! Mum, mind business. Sir ! 
 
 Thus circumstantially evolve we facts, 
 
 Ita se habel ideo series facti : 
 
 He wedded, — ah, with owls for augury ! 
 
 Nupserat, heu sinistris avibus. 
 
 One of the blood Arezzo boasts her best, 
 
 Daminus Guido, nobili genere ortus, 
 
 Pompilice , . . 
 
 But the version afterward I 
 Curb we this ardor ! Notes alone, to-day. 
 The speech to-morrow, and the Latin last ; 
 Such was the rule in Farinacci's time. 
 Indeed I hitched it into verse and good. 
 Unluckily, law quite absorbs a man. 
 Or else I think Itoo had poetized. 
 '' Law is the pork substratum of the fry. 
 Goose-foot and cock's-comb are Latinity," — 
 And in this ease, if circumstance assist. 
 We '11 garnish law with idiom, never fear ! 
 Out-of-the-way events extend our scope : 
 For instance, when Bottini brings his charge, 
 *' That letter which you say Pompilia wrote, > 
 To criminate her parents and herself 
 And disengage her husband from the coil, — 
 That, Guido Franceschini wrote, say we : 
 Because Pompilia could nor read nor write. 
 Therefore he pencilled her such letter first. 
 Then made her trace in ink the same again." 
 
 — Ha, my Bottini, have I thee on hip ? 
 
 How will he tm'n this and break Tujtly's pate f 
 " Existimandum " (don't I hear the dog !) 
 " Quod Guido designaverit elementa 
 
DOMINUS HYACINTHUS DE ARCHANGELIS 
 
 527 
 
 Dictce epistolce, gucefuerint 
 
 (Supermducto ab ea calamo) 
 
 Notata atramento " — there 's a style ! — 
 
 " Quia ipsa scribere nesciebat." Boh ! 
 
 Now, my turn ! Either, Insulse! (I outburst) 
 
 Stupidly put ! Inane is the response, 
 
 Inanis est responsio, or the like — 
 
 To wit, that each of all those characters. 
 
 Quod singula elementa epistolce^ 
 
 Had first of all been traced for her by him, 
 
 Fuerantper eum prius designata. 
 
 And then, the ink applied a-top of that, 
 
 St deinde, superinducto calamo, 
 
 The piece, she says, became her handiwork. 
 
 Per earn, ^ormata, ut ipsa asserit. 
 
 Inane were such response ! (a second time ; ) 
 
 Her husband outlined her the whole, forsooth ? 
 
 Vir ejus lineabat epistolam ? 
 
 What, she confesses that she wrote the thing, 
 
 Fatetur earn scripsisse, (scorn that scathes !) 
 
 That she might pay obedience to her lord ? 
 
 Ut viro obtemperaret, apices 
 
 (Here repeat charge with proper varied phrase) 
 
 Eo designante, ipsamie calamum 
 
 Super inducente ? By such argument, 
 
 Ita pariter, she seeks to show the same, 
 
 (Ay, by Saint Joseph and what saints you 
 
 please) 
 Epistolam ostendit, medius fidius. 
 No voluntary deed but fruit of force I 
 Non voluntarie sed coacte scriptam ! 
 That's the way to write Latin, friend my 
 
 Fisc! 
 Bottini is a beast, one barbarous : 
 Look out for him when he attempts to say 
 " Armed with a pistol, Guido followed her 1 "' 
 Will not I be beforehand with my Fisc, 
 Cut away phrase by phrase from underfoot 1 
 Gvddo Pompiliam — Guido thus his wife 
 Following with igneous engine, shall I have ? 
 Armis munitus igneis perseque-ns — 
 Arma sulphurea gestans, sulphury arms. 
 Or, might one style a pistol — popping-pieee ? 
 Armatus breviori sclopulo ? 
 We '11 let him have been armed so, though it 
 
 make 
 Somewhat against us : I had thought to own — 
 Provided with a simple travelling-sword, 
 Ense solummodo viatorio 
 Instructus : but we 'U grant the pistol here : 
 Better we lost the cause than lacked the gird 
 At the Fisc's Latin, lost the Judge's laugh 1 
 It 's Venturini that decides for style. 
 Tommati rather goes upon the law. 
 So, as to law, — 
 
 Ah, but with law ne'er hope 
 To level the fellow, — don't I know his trick ! 
 How he draws up, ducks under, twists aside I 
 He 's a lean-gutted hectic rascal, fine 
 As ^ale-haired red-eyed ferret which pretends 
 'T IS ermine, pure soft snow from tail to snout. 
 He eludes law by piteous looks aloft. 
 Lets Latin glance o£E as he makes appeal 
 To saint that 's somewhere in the ceiling-top : 
 Do you suppose I don't conceive the beast ? 
 Plague of the ermine-vermin ! For it takes, 
 It takes, and here 's the fellow Fisc, you see. 
 
 And Judge, you '11 not be long in seeing next 1 
 
 Confound the fop — he 's now at work Uke me : 
 
 Enter his study, as I seem to do. 
 
 Hear him read out bis writing to himseK ! 
 
 I know he writes as if he spoke ; I hear 
 
 The hoarse shrill throat, see shut eyes, neck 
 
 shot-forth, 
 — I see him strain on tiptoe, soar and pour 
 Eloquence out, nor stay nor stint at all — 
 Perorate in the air, then quick to press 
 With the product ! What abuse of type and 
 
 sheet ! 
 He '11 keep clear of my cast, my logic-throw, 
 Let argument slide, and then deliver swift 
 Some bowl from quite an unguessed point of 
 
 stand — 
 Having the luck o' the last word, the reply I 
 A plaguy cast, a mortifying stroke ; 
 You face a fellow — cries, *' So, there you 
 
 stand ? 
 But I discourteous jump clean o'er your head ! 
 You take ship-carpentry for pilotage. 
 Stop rat-holes, while a sea sweeps through the 
 
 breach, — 
 Hammer and fortify at puny points ? 
 Do, clamp and tenon, make all tight and safe ! 
 'T is here and here and here you ship a sea. 
 No good of your stopped leaks and Uttleness ! " 
 
 Yet what do I name " little and a leak " ? 
 The main defence o' the murder's used to 
 
 death. 
 By this time, dry bare bones, no scrap we 
 
 fick: 
 worked the new, the unforeseen. 
 The nice by-stroke, the fine and improvised 
 Point that can titillate the brain o' the Bench 
 Torpid with over-teaching, long ago ! 
 As if Tommati (that has heard, reheard 
 And heard again, first this side and then 
 
 that — 
 Guido and Pietro, Pietro and Guido, din 
 And deaden, full three years, at each long ear) 
 Don't want amusement for instruction now. 
 Won't rather feel a flea run o'er his ribs. 
 Than a daw settle heavily on his head 1 
 Oh, I was young and had the trick of fence. 
 Knew subtle pass and push with careless 
 
 right — 
 My left arm ever quiet behind back. 
 With dagger ready : not both hands to blade ! 
 Puff and blow, put the strength out. Blunder- 
 bore! 
 There 's my subordinate, young Spreti, now. 
 Pedant and prig, — he 'U pant away at proof, 
 That 's his way ! 
 
 Now for mine — to rub some life 
 Into one's choppy fingers this cold day ! 
 I trust Cinuzzo ties on tippet, guards 
 The precious throat on which so much depends ! 
 Guido must be all goose-flesh in his hole. 
 Despite the prison-straw : bad Carnival 
 For captives ! no sliced fry for him, poor 
 Count! 
 
 Carnival-time, — another providence ! 
 
 The town £i-swarm with strangers to amuse. 
 
528 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 To edify, to give one's name and fame 
 In charge of, till they find, some future day, 
 Cintino come and claim it, his name too. 
 Pledge of the pleasantness they owe papa — 
 Who else was it cured Rome of her great 
 
 qualms. 
 When she must needs have her own judgment ? 
 
 — ay. 
 When aU her topping wits had set to work, 
 Pronounced already on the case : mere boys, 
 Twice Cineruggiolo's age with half his sense, 
 As good as tell me, when I cross the court, 
 *' Master Arcangeli ! " (plucking at my gown) 
 ' ' We can predict, we comprehend your play, 
 We 'U help you save your client." Tra-lar-la ! 
 I 've travelled ground, from childhood to this 
 
 hour. 
 To have the town anticipate my track ? 
 The old fox takes the plain and velvet path, 
 The young hound's predilection, — prints the 
 
 dew, 
 Don't he, to suit their pulpy pads of paw ? 
 No ! Burying nose deep down i' the briery 
 
 bush. 
 Thus I defend Count Guido. 
 
 Where are we weak ? 
 First, which is foremost in advantage too. 
 Our murder, — we call, killing, — is a fact 
 Confessed, defended, made a boast of : good ! 
 To think the Fise claimed use of torture here, 
 And got thereby avowal plump and plain 
 That gives me just the chance I wanted, — 
 
 scope 
 Not for brute-force but ingenuity. 
 Explaining matters, not denying them ! 
 One may dispute, — as I am bound to do, 
 And shall, — validity of process here : 
 Inasmuch as a noble is exempt 
 From torture which plebeians undergo 
 In such a case : for law is lenient, lax, 
 Remits the torture to a nobleman 
 Unless suspicion he of twice the strength 
 Attaches to a man born vulgarly : 
 We don't card silk with comb that dresses 
 
 wool. 
 Moreover, 't was severity undue 
 In this case, even had the lord been lout. 
 What utters, on this head, our oracle. 
 Our Farinacci, my Gamaliel erst. 
 In those immortal " Questions " ? This I 
 
 quote : 
 " Of all the tools at Law's disposal, sure 
 That named Vigiliarum is the best — 
 That is, the worst — to whoso needs must hear : 
 Lasting, as it may do, from some seven hours 
 To ten ; (beyond ten, we 've no precedent ; 
 Certain have touched their ten but, bah, they 
 
 died !) 
 It does so efficaciously convince. 
 That — speaking by much observation here — 
 Out of each hundred cases, by my count. 
 Never I knew of patients beyond four 
 Withstand its taste, or less than ninety-six 
 End by succumbing ; only martyrs four. 
 Of obstinate silence, guilty or no, — agaiast 
 Ninety-six f uU confessors, innocent 
 Or otherwise, — so shrewd a tool have we ! " 
 No marvel either : in unwarv hands. 
 
 Death on the spot is no rare consequence : 
 As indeed all but happened in this ease 
 To one of ourselves, our young tough peasant- 
 friend 
 The accomplice called Baldeschi: they were 
 
 rough. 
 Dosed him with torture as you drench a horse, 
 Not modify your treatment to a man : 
 Ko, two successive days he famted dead, 
 And only on the third essay, gave up, 
 Confessed like flesh and blood. We could re-^ 
 
 claim, — 
 Blockhead Bottini giving cause enough ! 
 But no, — we 'U take it as spontaneously 
 Confessed : we '11 have the murder beyond 
 
 doubt. 
 Ah, fortunate (the poet's word reversed) 
 Inasmuch as we know our hapinness ! 
 Had the antagonist left dubiety, 
 Here were "we proving mui'der a mere myth. 
 And Guide innocent, ignorant, absent, — ay. 
 Absent ! He was — why, where should Chris- 
 tian be ? — 
 Engaged in visiting his proper church. 
 The duty of us all at Christmas-time, 
 Wlien Caponsacchi, the seducer, stung 
 To madness by his relegation, cast 
 About him and contrived a remedy 
 In murder : since opprobrium broke afresh, 
 By birth o' the babe, on him the imputed sire. 
 He it was quietly sought to smother up 
 His shame and theirs together, — killed the 
 
 three. 
 And fled — (go seek him where you please to 
 
 search) — 
 Just at the time when Guido, touched by 
 
 gra.je. 
 Devotions ended, hastened to the spot. 
 Meaning to pardon his convicted wife, 
 "Neither do I condemn thee, go in peace ! " — 
 And thus arrived i' the nick of time to catch 
 The charge o' the killing, though great- 
 
 heartedly 
 He came but to forgive and bring to life. 
 Doubt ye the force of Christmas on the soul? 
 " Is thine eye evil because mine is good ? " 
 
 So, doubtless, had I needed argue here 
 But for the full confession round and sound ! 
 Thus might you wrong some kingly alchem- 
 ist, — 
 Whose concern should not be with shovring brass 
 Transmuted into gold, but triumphing. 
 Rather, about his gold changed out of brass. 
 Not vulgarly to the mere sight and touch. 
 But in the idea, the spiritual display, 
 The a;^parition buoyed by winged words 
 Hovering above its birthplace in the brain, — 
 Thus would you wrong tliis excellent personage 
 Forced, by the gross need, to gird apron round. 
 Plant forge, light fire, ply bellows, — in a 
 
 word. 
 Demonstrate : when a faulty pipkin's oraek 
 May disconcert you his presumptive truth ! 
 Here were I hanging to the testimony 
 Of one of these poor rustics — fonr^ye gods ! 
 Whom the first taste of friend the Fiscal's cord 
 May drive into undoing my whole speech. 
 
DOMINUS HYACINTHUS DE ARCHANGELIS 
 
 529 
 
 Undoing, on his birthday, — what is worse, — 
 My son and lieir ! 
 
 I wonder, all the same, 
 Not so much at those peasants' lack of heart ; 
 But — Guido Franceschini, nobleman, 
 Bear pain no better ! Kverybody knows 
 It used once, when my father was a boy, 
 To form a proper, nay, important point 
 I' the education of our well-born youth, 
 That they took torture handsomely at need, 
 Without confessing in this clownish guise. 
 Each noble had his rack for private use, 
 And would, for the diversion of a guest. 
 Bid it be set up in the yard of arms, 
 And take thereon his hour of exercise, — 
 Command the varletry stretch, strain their 
 
 best, 
 While friends looked on, admired my lord could 
 
 smile 
 'Mid tugging which had caused an ox to roar. 
 Men are no longer men ! 
 
 — And advocates 
 No longer Farinacci, let us add, 
 If I one more time fly from point proposed 1 
 So, Vindication — here begins the speech ! 
 Sonoris causa ; thus we make our stand : 
 Honor in us had injury, we prove. 
 Or if we fail to prove such injury 
 More than misprision of the fact, — what then ? 
 It is enough, authorities declare, 
 If the result, the deed in question now, 
 Be caused by confidence that injury 
 Is veritable and no figment : since, 
 What, though proved fancy afterward, seemed 
 
 fact 
 At the time, they argue shall excuse result. 
 That which we do, persuaded of good cause 
 For what we do, hold justifiable ! — 
 So casuiste bid : man, bound to do his best. 
 They would not have him leave that best undone 
 And mean to do his worst, — though fuller light 
 Show best was worst and worst would have been 
 
 best. 
 Act by the present light ! — they ask of man. 
 Ultra quod hie non agitur, besides 
 It is not anyway our business here, 
 De probatione adulterii^ 
 
 To prove what we thought crime was crime in- 
 deed. 
 Ad irrogandam pcenam, and require 
 Ita punishment : such nowise do we seek : 
 Sea ad Rectum, but 'tis our concern, 
 Excusandi^ here to simply find excuse, 
 Occisorem, for who did the killing-work, 
 Et ad illius defensionem^ (mark 
 The difference) and defend the man, just that ! 
 Quo casu levior probatio 
 Exuberaret, to which end far lighter proof 
 Suffices than the prior case would claim : 
 It should be always harder to convict, 
 In short, than to establish innocence. 
 Therefore we shall demonstrate first of all 
 That Honor is a gift of God to man 
 Precioiis beyond compare : which natural sense 
 Of human rectitude and purity, — 
 Which white, man's soul is bom with, — brooks 
 no touch : 
 
 Therefore, the sensitivest spot of all. 
 Wounded by any wafture breathed from black, 
 Is — honor within honor, like the eye 
 Centred i' the ball — the honor of our wife. 
 Touch us o' the pupil of our honor, then. 
 Not actually, — since so you slay outright, — 
 But by a gesture simulating touch, 
 Presumable mere menace of such taint, — 
 This were our warrant for eruptive ire 
 " To whose dominion I impose no end." 
 
 rVir^, now, should not be too difficult 
 
 To Cinoncino, — say, the early books. 
 
 Pen, truce to further gambols ! Poscimur I) 
 
 Nor can revenge of injury done here 
 To the honor proved the life and soul of us. 
 Be too excessive, too extravagant : 
 Such wrong seeks and must have complete re- 
 venge. 
 Show we this, first, on the mere natural ground f 
 Begin at the beginning, and proceed 
 Incontrovertibly. Theodoric, 
 In an apt sentence Cassiodorus cites. 
 Propounds for basis of all household law — 
 I hardly recollect it, but it ends, 
 " Bird mates with bird, beast genders with his 
 
 like, 
 And brooks no interference.*' Bird and beast? 
 The very insects ... if they wive or no. 
 How dare I say when Aristotle doubts ? 
 But the presumption is they likewise wive. 
 At least the nobler sorts ■ for take the bee 
 As instance, — copying King Solomon, — 
 Why that displeasure of the bee to aught 
 Which savors of ineontinency, makes 
 The unchaste a very horror to the hive ? 
 Whence comes it bees obtain their epithet 
 Of castce apes, notably " the chaste " ? 
 Because, ingeniously saith Scaliger, 
 (The young sage, — see his book of table-talk) 
 " Such is their hatred of immodest act. 
 They faU upon the offender, sting to death." 
 I mind a passage much confirmative 
 I' the Idyllist (though I read him Latinized) — 
 '* Why," asks a shepherd, *' is this bank unfit 
 For celebration of our vernal loves ? " 
 " Oh swain," returns the instructed shepherdess, 
 " Bees swarm here, and would quick resent our 
 
 warmth ! " 
 Only cold-blooded fish lack instinct here, 
 Nor gain nor guard connubiality : 
 But beasts, quadrupedal, mammiferous. 
 Do credit to their beasthood : witness him 
 That -^lian cites, the noble elephant, 
 {Or if not ^lian, somebody as sage) 
 Who seeing, much offence beneath his nose. 
 His master's friend exceed in courtesy 
 The due allowance to his master's wife. 
 Taught them good manners and killed both at 
 
 once. 
 Making his master and the world admire. 
 Indubitably, then, that master's self. 
 Favored by circumstance, had done the same 
 Or else stood clear rebuked by his own beast. 
 Adeo, ut qui konorem spernit^ thus. 
 Who values his own honor not a straw, — 
 Et non recuverare curat, nor 
 
53° 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 Labors by might and main to salve its wound, 
 Se ulciscendo, by revenging him, 
 Nil differat a belluis, is a brute, 
 Quinimo irrationabilior 
 Ipsismet belluis, nay, contrariwise. 
 Much more irrational than brutes themselves. 
 Should be considered, reputetur ! How ? 
 If a poor animal feel honor smart, 
 Taught by blind instinct nature plants in him, 
 Shall man, — confessed creation's master- 
 stroke, 
 Nay, intellectual glory, nay, a god. 
 Nay, of the nature of my Judges here, — 
 Shall man prove the insensible, the block. 
 The blot o' the earth he crawls on to disgrace ? 
 (Come, that 's both solid and poetic !) Man 
 Derogate, live for the low tastes alone. 
 Mean creeping cares about the animal life ? 
 Absit such homage to vile flesh and blood ! 
 
 (May Grigia have remembered, nothing stings 
 
 Fried liver out of its monotony 
 
 Of richness, like a root of fennel, chopped 
 
 Fine with the parsley : parsley-sprigs, I said — 
 
 Was there need I should say " and fennel too " ? 
 
 But no, she cannot have been so obtuse ! 
 
 To our argument ! The fennel will be chopped.) 
 
 From beast to man next mount we — ay, but, 
 
 mind. 
 Still mere man, not yet Christian, — that, in 
 
 time! 
 Not too fast, mark you ! 'T is on Heathen 
 
 grounds 
 We next defend our act : then, fairly urge — 
 If this were done of old, in a green tree. 
 Allowed in the Spring rawness of our kind. 
 What may be licensed in the Autumn dry 
 And ripe, the latter harvest-tide of man ? 
 If, with his poor and primitive half-lights. 
 The Pagan, whom our devils served for gods, 
 Could stigmatize the breach of marriage-vow 
 As that which blood, blood only might efface, — 
 Absolve the husband, outraged, whose revenge 
 Anticipated law, plied sword himself, — 
 How with the Christian in full blaze of noon ? 
 Shall not he rather double penalty. 
 Multiply vengeance, than, degenerate. 
 Let privilege be minished, droop, decay ? 
 Therefore set forth at large the ancient law ! 
 Superabundant the examples be 
 To pick and choose from. The Athenian Code, 
 Solon's, the name is serviceable, — then, 
 The Laws of the Twelve Tables, that fif- 
 teenth, — 
 *^ Romulus " likewise rolls out round and large. 
 The Julian ; the Cornelian ; Gracchus' Law : 
 So old a chime, the bells ring of themselves 1 
 Spreti can set that going if he please, 
 I point you, for my part, the belfry plain, 
 Intent to rise from dusk, diluculum^ 
 Into the Christian day shall broaden next. 
 
 First, the fit compliment to His Holiness 
 Happily reigning : then sustain the point — 
 All that was long ago declared as law 
 By the natural revelation, stands confirmed 
 By Apostle and Evangelist and Saint, — 
 
 To wit — that Honor is man's supreme good. 
 
 Why should I balk Saint Jerome of his phrase ? 
 
 Ubi honor non est, where no honor is, 
 
 Ibi contemptus est; and where contempt, 
 
 Ibi injuria frequens ; and where that. 
 
 The frequent injury, ihiet indignatio; 
 
 And where the indignation, ibi quies 
 
 Nulla : and where there is no quietude. 
 
 Why, ibi, there, the mind is often cast 
 
 Down from the heights where it proposed to 
 
 dwell. 
 Mens a proposito scepe dejicitur. 
 And naturally the mind is so ciist down. 
 Since harder 't is, quum difficilius sit, 
 Iram cohibere, to coerce one's ■wTath,_ 
 Quam miraculafacere, than work miracles, -^ ' 
 So Gregory smiles in his First Dialogue. 
 Whence we infer, the ingenuous soul, the man 
 Who makes esteem of honor and repute. 
 Whenever honor and repute are touched. 
 Arrives at term of fury and despair. 
 Loses all guidance from the reason-check : 
 As in delirium or a frenzy-fit. 
 Nor fury nor despair he satiates, — no. 
 Not even if he attain the impossible, 
 O'erturn the hinges of the universe 
 To annihilate — not whoso caused the smart 
 Solely, the author simply of his pain, 
 But the place, the memory, vituperii, 
 0' the shame and scorn ; quia, — says Solomon, 
 (The Holy Spirit speaking by his mouth 
 In Proverbs, the sixth chapter near the end) 
 — Because, the zeal and fury of a man^ 
 Zelus et furor viri, wiU not spare, 
 Non parcet, in the day of his revenge. 
 In die vindictcE, nor will acquiesce. 
 Nee acguiescet, through a person's prayers, 
 Cujusdam precibus, — nee suscipiet, 
 Nor yet take, pro redemptione, for 
 Redemption, dona plunum, gifts of friends. 
 Mere money-payment to compound for ache. 
 Who recognizes not my client's case ? 
 Whereto, as strangely consentaneous here. 
 Adduce Saint Bernard in the Epistle writ 
 To Robertulusj his nephew : " Too much grief, 
 Dolor quippe mmiusnon deliberat, 
 Does not excogitate propriety, 
 Non verecundaiur, nor knows shame at all, 
 Non consulit rationem, nor consults 
 Reason, non dignitatis metuit 
 Damnum, nor dreads the loss of dignity ; 
 Modum et ordinem, order and the mode, 
 Ignorat, it ignores : " why, trait for trait. 
 Was ever portrait limned so like the life ? 
 (By Cavalier Maratta, shall I say ? 
 I hear he 's first in reputation now.) 
 Yes, that of Samson in the Sacred Text ; 
 That 's not so much the portrait as the man ! 
 Samson in Gaza was the antetype 
 Of Guide at Rome : observe the Nazarite ! 
 Blinded he was, — an easy thing to bear: 
 Intrepidly he took imprisonment, 
 Gyves, stripes, and daily labor at the mill : 
 But when he found himself, i' the public place, 
 Destined to make the common people sport. 
 Disdain burned up with such an impetus 
 I' the breast of him, that, all the man one fire, 
 Moriatur, roEired he, let my soul's self die. 
 
DOMINUS HYACINTHUS DE ARCHANGELIS 
 
 531 
 
 Anima mea, with the Philistines ! 
 So, puUed down pillai', roof, and death and all, 
 Mtmosque plures interfecit^ ay. 
 And many more he killed thus, moriens. 
 Dying, quam vivus^ than in his whole life, 
 Oceiderat, he ever killed before. 
 Are these things writ for no example. Sirs ? 
 One instance more, and let me see who doubts I 
 Our Lord himself, made all of mansuetude, 
 Sealing the sura of suiferance up, received 
 Opprobrium, contumely and buffeting 
 Without complaint : but when he found him- 
 self 
 Touched in his honor never so little for once, 
 Then outbroke indignation pent before — 
 '* Sonorem meum nemini daho / " " No, 
 My honor I to nobody will give ! " 
 And certainly the example so hath wrought, 
 That whosoever, at the proper worth, 
 Apprises worldly honor and repute. 
 Esteems it nobler to die honored man 
 Beneath Mannaia, than live centuries 
 Disgraced in the eye o' the world. We find 
 
 Saint Paul 
 No recreant to this faith delivered once : 
 " Far worthier were it that I died," cries he, 
 Expedit mihi magis mori, '* than 
 That any one should make my glory void," 
 Quam utgloriam meam quis evacuet ! 
 See, ad C&rintkienses : whereupon 
 Saint Ambrose makes a comment with much 
 
 fruit, 
 Doubtless my Judges long since laid to heart. 
 So I desist from bringing forward here. 
 (I can't quite recollect it.) 
 
 Have I proved 
 Satis superque, both enough and to spare. 
 That Revelation old and new admits 
 The natural man may effervesce in ire, 
 O'erflood earth, o'ertroth heaven with foamy 
 
 rage. 
 At the jfirst puncture to his self-respect ? 
 Then, Sirs, this Christian dogma, this law-bud 
 FuU-blown now, soon to bask the absolute flower 
 Of Papal doctrine in our blaze of day, — 
 Bethink you, shall we miss one promise-streak. 
 One doubtful bii"th of dawn crepuscular. 
 One dew-drop comfort to humanity. 
 Now that the chalice teems with noonday wine ? 
 Yea, argue Molinists who bar revenge — 
 Kef erring just to what makes out our case ! 
 Under old dispensation, argue they, 
 The doom of the adulterous wife was death. 
 Stoning by Moses' law. " Nay, stone her not, 
 Put her away ! " next legislates our Lord ; 
 And last of all, " Nor yet divorce a wife ! ' 
 Ordains the Church, " she typifies ourself, 
 The Bride no fault shall cause to fall from 
 
 Christ." 
 Then, as no jot nor tittle of the Law 
 Has passed away — which who presumes to 
 
 doubt? 
 As not one word of Christ is rendered vain — 
 Which, could it be though heaven and earth 
 
 should pass ? 
 — Where do I find my proper punishment 
 For my adulterous wife, I numbly ask 
 
 Of my infallible Pope, — who now remits 
 Even the divorce allowed by Christ in lieu 
 Of lapidation Moses licensed me ? 
 The Gospel cheeks the Law which throws the 
 
 stone, 
 The Church tears the divorce-bill Gospel grants : 
 Shall wives sin and enjoy impunity ? 
 What profits me the fulness of the days. 
 The final dispensation, I demand. 
 Unless Law, Gospel, and the Church subjoin, 
 "But who hath barred thee primitive revenge. 
 Which, like fire damped and dammed up, bums 
 
 more fierce ? 
 Use thou thy natural privilege of man. 
 Else wert thou found like those old ingrate 
 
 Jews, 
 Despite the manna-banquet on the board, 
 A-longing after melons,cucnmbers. 
 And such like trash of Egypt left behind ! " 
 
 (There was one melon had improved our soup : 
 
 But did not Cinoncino need the rind 
 
 To make a boat with ? So I seem to think.) 
 
 Law, Gospel, and the Church — from these we 
 
 leap 
 To the very last revealment, easy rule 
 Befitting the well-bom and thorough-bred 
 0' the happy day we live in, not the dark 
 0' the early rude and acorn-eating race. 
 " Behold," quoth James, " we bridle in a horse 
 And turn his body as we would thereby ! " 
 Yea, but we change the bit to suit the growth. 
 And rasp our colt's jaw with a rugged spike. 
 We hasten to remit our managed steed 
 Who wheels round at persuasion of a touch. 
 Civilization bows to decency, 
 The acknowledged use and wont ; 't is manners 
 
 — mild 
 But yet imperative law — which make the man. 
 Thus do we pay the proper compliment 
 To rank, and that society of Rome 
 Hath so obliged us by its iDterest, 
 Taken our client's part instinctively. 
 As unaware defending its own cause. 
 What dictum doth Society lay down 
 I' the case of one who hath a faithless wife ? 
 Wherewithal should the husband cleanse his 
 
 way? 
 Be patient and forgive ? Oh, language fails, — 
 Shrinks from depicturing his turpitude ! 
 For if wronged husband raise not hue and cry, 
 Quod si maritus de adulterio non 
 Conquereretur, he 's presumed a — fob ! 
 PresumitUT Una: so, complain he must. 
 But how complain ? At your tribunal, lords ? 
 Far weighter challenge suits your sense, I wot ! 
 You sit not to have gentlemen propose 
 Questions gentility can itself discuss. 
 Did not you prove that to our brother Paul ? 
 The Abate, quumjudicialiter 
 Frosequeretur^ when he tried the law, 
 Ghiidonis causam, in Count Guide's case, 
 Accidit ipsi, this befell himself, 
 Chiod risum moverit et cachinnost that 
 He moved to mirth and cachinnation, all 
 Or nearly iUl,/er« in omnibus 
 Mtiam sensatis et cordatis. men 
 
532 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 Strong^sensed, sound-hearted, nay, the very 
 
 Court, 
 Ipsismet in judicibus, I might add, 
 Non tamen dicam. In a cause like this, 
 So multiplied were reasons pro and con^ 
 Delicate, intertwisted and obscure, 
 That Law refused loan of a finger-tip 
 To unravel, readjust the hopeless twine, 
 Since, half-a-dozen steps outside Law's seat, 
 There stood a foolish trifler with a tool 
 A-dangle to no purpose by his side, 
 Had clearly cut the embroilment in a trice. 
 Asse7-unt enim unanimiter 
 Doctores^ for the Doctors all assert. 
 That husbands, quod mariti, must be held 
 Viles, cornutireputantur, vUe, 
 Fronts branching forth a florid infamy. 
 Si proprhs manibus, if with their own hands, 
 Non su7n.unt, they fail straight to take revenge, 
 Vindictam, but expect the deed be done 
 By the Court — expectant illam fieri 
 Per judices^ qui summopere rident, which 
 Gives an enormous guffaw for reply, 
 Et cachinnantur. For he ran away, 
 Deliquit enim, just that he might 'scape 
 The censure of both counsellors and crowd, 
 Ut mdgi et Doctorum evitaret 
 Censuram, and lest so he superadd 
 To loss of honor ignominy too, 
 Et sic ne islam quoque ignominiam 
 Amisso honori superadderet. 
 My lords, my lords, the inconsiderate step 
 Was — we referred ourselves to Law at all ! 
 Twit me not with, "Law else had punished 
 
 you!" 
 Kach punishment of the extra-legal step. 
 To which the high-bom preferably revert. 
 Is ever for some oversight, some slip 
 I' the taking vengeance, not for vengeance' self. 
 A good thing, done unhandsomely, turns ill ; 
 And never yet lacked ill the law's rebuke. 
 For pregnant instance, let us contemplate 
 The luck of Leonardus, — see at large 
 Of Sicily's Decisions sixty-first. 
 This Leonard finds his wife is false: what 
 
 then ? 
 He makes her own son snare her, and entice 
 Out of the town walls to a private walk, 
 Wherein he slays her with commodity. 
 They find her body half-devoured by dogs : 
 Leonard is tried, convicted, punished, sent 
 To labor in the galleys seven years long : 
 Why ? For the murder ? Nay, but for the 
 
 mode ! 
 Malus modus occidendi, ruled the Court, 
 An ugly mode of killing, nothing more ! 
 Another fructuous sample, — see " De lie 
 Criminali," inMatthseus' divine piece. 
 Another husband, in no better plight, 
 Simulates absence, thereby tempts his wife ; 
 On whom he falls, out of sly ambuscade. 
 Backed by a brother of his, and both of them 
 Armed to the teeth with arms that law had 
 
 blamed. 
 Nimis dolose, overwilily, 
 Fuisse operatum, did they work. 
 Pronounced the law : had all been fairly done 
 Law had not found him worthy, as she did, 
 
 Of four years' exile. Why cite more ? Enough 
 Is good as a feast — (unless a birthday-feast 
 For one's Cinuccio) so, we finish here. 
 My lords, we rather need defend ourselves 
 Inasmuch as, for a twinkling of an eye. 
 We hesitatingly appealed to law, — _ 
 Than need deny that, on mature advice. 
 We blushingly bethought us, bade revenge 
 Back to its simple proper private way 
 Of decent self-dealt gentlemanly death. 
 Judges, here is the law, and here beside. 
 The testimony ! Look to it ! 
 
 Pause and breathe I 
 So far is only too plain ; we must watch : 
 Bottini will scarce hazard an attack 
 Here : best anticipate the fellow's play, 
 And guard the weaker places — waiily ask, 
 What if considerations of a sort. 
 Reasons of a kind, arise from out the strange 
 Peculiar unforeseen new circumstance 
 Of this our {candor owns) abnormal act. 
 To bar the right of us revenging so ? 
 " Impunity were otherwise your meed : 
 Go slay your wife and welcome," — may be 
 
 urged, — 
 " But why the innocent old couple slay, 
 Pietro, Violante ? You may do enough. 
 Not too much, not exceed the golden mean : 
 Neither brute-beast nor Pagan, Gentile, Jew, 
 Nor Christian, no nor votarist of the mode, 
 Is justified to piish revenge so far ! " 
 
 No, indeed ? Why, thou very sciolist ! 
 The actual wrong, PompUia seemed to do, 
 Was virtual wrong done by the parents here — 
 Imposing her upon us as their child — 
 Themselves allow : then, her fault was their 
 
 fault. 
 Her punishment be theirs accordingly ! 
 But wait a little, sneak not off so soon ! 
 Was this cheat solely harm to Guido, pray ? 
 The precious couple you call innocent, — 
 Why, they were felons that Law failed to 
 
 clutch, 
 Qui utfraudarent, who that they might rob. 
 Legitime vocatos, folk law called, 
 Adfidei commissum, true heirs to the Trust, 
 Partum supposuerunt, feigned this birtli, 
 Immemores reosfactos esse, blind 
 To the fact that, guilty, they incurred thereby, 
 Ultimi supplicii, hanging or what 's woi'se. 
 Do you blame us that we turn Law's instru- 
 ments. 
 Not mere self-seekers, — mind the public weal, 
 Nor make the private good our sole concern ? 
 That having — shall I say — secured a thief. 
 Not simply we recover from his pouch 
 The stolen article our property, 
 But also pounce upon our neighbor's purse 
 We opportunely find reposing there, 
 And do him justice while we right ourselves ? 
 He owes us, for our part, a drubbing say. 
 But owes our neighbor just a dance i' the air 
 Under the gallows : so, -we throttle him. 
 That neighbor's Law, that couple are the Thief, 
 We are the over-ready to help Law — 
 Zeal of her house hath eaten us up : for which. 
 Can it be, Law intends to eat up us. 
 
DOMINUS HYACINTHUS DE ARCHANGELIS 
 
 533 
 
 Crudum Priamum, derour poor Priam raw, 
 CTyraB Jupiter's own joke,) with babes to boot, 
 Priamique pisinnos, in Homeric phrase ? 
 Shame ! and so ends my period prettily. 
 
 But even, — prove the pair not culpable, 
 
 Free as unborn babe from connivance at. 
 
 Participation iu, their daughter's fault : 
 
 Ours the mistake. Is that a rare event ? 
 
 Non semel, it is anything but rare. 
 
 In contingentia facti, that by chance, 
 
 Xmpwtes evaserunt, go scot-free. 
 
 Qui, such well-meaning people as ourselves, 
 
 Justo dolore moti, who aggrieved 
 
 With cause, apposuerunt vmnus, lay 
 
 Kough hands, m innocentes, on wrong heads. 
 
 Cite we an illustrative case in point : 
 
 Mulier Smirnea qucedam, good my lords, 
 
 A gentlewoman lived in Smyrna once, 
 
 Virum etfilium ex eo conceptum, who. 
 
 Both husband and her son begot by him. 
 
 Killed, interfecerat, ex quo, because, 
 
 Vir filium suum perdiderat, her spouse 
 
 Had been beforehand with her, killed her son, 
 
 Matrimonii primi, of a previous bed. 
 
 Delude accusata, then accused, 
 
 Apud Dolahellam, before him that sat 
 
 Proconsul, nee duabus ccedibus 
 
 Contaminatam liberare, nor 
 
 To liberate a woman doubly-dyed 
 
 With murder, voluit, made he up his mind. 
 
 Nee condemnare, nor to doom to death, 
 
 Justo dolore impulsam, one impelled 
 
 By just grief ; sed remisit, but sent her up 
 
 Ad Areapagum, to the HiU of Mars, 
 
 Sapientissimorum judicum 
 
 Ccetum, to that assembly of the sage 
 
 Paralleled only by my judges here ; 
 
 Ubi, cognito de causa, where, the cause 
 
 WeU weighed, responsum est, they gave reply, 
 
 Ut ipsa et accusator, that both sides 
 
 0' the suit, redirent, should come ba«k again, 
 
 Post centum annos, after a hundred years. 
 
 For judgment ; et sic, by which sage decree, 
 
 Duplici parricidio rea, one 
 
 Convicted of a double parricide, 
 
 Quamvis etiam innocentem, though in truth 
 
 Out of the pair, one innocent at least 
 
 She, occidisset, plainly had put to death, 
 
 Undequaque, yet she altogether 'scaped, 
 
 Evasit impums. See the case at length 
 
 In Valerius, fittingly styled Maximus, 
 
 That eighth book of his Memorable Facts. 
 
 Nor Cyriaeus cites beside the mark : 
 
 Similiter uxor quoe mandaverat. 
 
 Just sOj a lady who had taken care, 
 
 Homicidium viri, that her lord be killed. 
 
 Ex denegatione debiti. 
 
 For denegation of a certain debt, 
 
 Matrimonialisj he was loth to pay, 
 
 Fuit pecuniaria mulcta, was 
 
 Amerced in a pecuniary mulct, 
 
 Punita, et ad pcenam, and to pains, 
 
 Temporalem, for a certain space of time. 
 
 In monasterio, in a convent. 
 
 In monasterio I He mismanages 
 
 In with the ablative, the accusative ! 
 
 I had hoped to have hitched the villain into verse 
 
 For a gift, this very day, a complete list 
 
 0' the prepositions each with proper case, 
 
 Telling a story, long was in my head. 
 
 What prepositions take the accusative ? 
 
 Ad^ to or at — who saw the cat ? — down to 
 
 06, for, because of, keep her claws qff^! Tush ! 
 
 Law in a man takes the whole liberty : 
 
 The muse is fettered : just as Ovid found !) 
 
 And now, sea widens and the coast is clear. 
 What of the dubious act you bade excuse ? 
 Sureljr things broaden, brighten, till at length 
 Remains — so far from act that needs de- 
 fence — 
 Apology to make for act delayed 
 One minute, let alone eight mortal months 
 Of hesitation ! " Why procrastinate ? " 
 (Out with it, my Bottinius, ease thyself !) 
 Right, promptly done, is twice right: right 
 
 delayed 
 Turns wrong. We grant you should have 
 
 killed your v/ife. 
 But killed o' the moment, at the meeting her 
 In company with the priest: then did the 
 
 tongue 
 O' the Brazen Head give license, * Time is 
 
 now ! ' 
 Wait to make mind up ? ' Time is past ' it 
 
 peals. 
 Friend, you are competent to mastery 
 0' the passions that confessedly explain 
 An outbreak : you allow an interval. 
 And then break out as if timers clock still 
 
 clanged. 
 You have forfeited your chance, and flat you 
 
 faU 
 Into the commonplace category 
 Of men bound to go softly all their days, 
 Obeying law." 
 
 Now, which way make response ? 
 What was the answer Guido gave, himself ? 
 — That so to argue came of ignorance 
 How honor bears a wound: "For, wound," 
 
 said he, 
 " My body, and the smart soon mends and ends : 
 While, wound my soul where honor sits and 
 
 rules. 
 Longer the sufferance, stronger grows the pain. 
 Being ex incontinentia iresh as first." 
 But try another tack, urge common sense 
 By way of contrast : say — Too true, my lords ! 
 We did demur, awhile did hesitate : 
 Since husband sure should let a scruple speak 
 Ere he slay wife, — for his own safety, lords 1 
 Carpers abound in this misjudging world : 
 Moreover, there 's a nicety in law 
 That seems to justify them should they carp. 
 Siippose the source of injury a son, — _ 
 Father may slay such son yet run no risk : 
 Why graced with such a privilege ? Because 
 A father so incensed with his own child. 
 Or must have reason, or believe he has : 
 Quia semper^ seeing that in such event, 
 Presumitur, the law is bound suppose, 
 Quod capiat pater, that the sire must take, 
 
534 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 Bonum consilium projilio, 
 
 The best course as to what hefits his boy, 
 
 Through instinct, ex instinctu, of mere love, 
 
 Amoris, and, paterni, fatherhood ; 
 
 Quam confidentiam^ which confidence, 
 
 Non habet, law declines to entertain, 
 
 J3e virOj of the husband ; where finds he 
 
 An instinct that compels him love his wife ? 
 
 Kather is he presumably her foe. 
 
 So, let him ponder long in this bad world 
 
 Ere do the simplest act of justice. 
 
 But 
 Again — and here we brush Bottini's breast — 
 Object you, " See the danger of delay, 
 Suppose a man murdered my friend last month : 
 Had I come up and killed him for his pains 
 In rage, I had done ri^ht, allows the law ; 
 I meet him now and kill him in cold blood, 
 I do wrong, equally allows the law : 
 Wherein do actions differ, yours and mine ? " 
 In plenitudine intellectus es ? 
 Hast thy wits, Fiso? To take such slayer's 
 
 life, 
 Returns it life to thy slain friend at all ? 
 Had he stolen ring instead of stabbing friend, — 
 To-day, to-morrow, or next century. 
 Meeting the thief, thy ring upon his thumb, 
 Thou justifiably hadst wrung it thence : 
 So, couldst thou wrench thy friend's life back 
 
 again, 
 Though prisoned in the bosom of his foe. 
 Why, law would look complacent on thy 
 
 wrath. 
 Our case is, that the thing we lost, we found : 
 The honor, we were robbed of eight months 
 
 since, 
 Being recoverable at any day 
 By death of the delinquent. Go thy ways ! 
 Ere thou hast learned law, will be much to do. 
 As said the gaby while he shod the goose. 
 
 Nay, if you urge me, interval was none ! 
 From the inn to the villa — blank or else a bar 
 Of adverse and contrarious incident 
 Solid between us and our just revenge ! 
 What vrith the priest who flourishes his blade. 
 The wife who like a fury fiiugs at us. 
 The crowd — and then the capture, the appeal 
 To Rome, the journey there, the jaunting 
 
 thence 
 To shelter at the House of Convertites, 
 The visits to the Villa, and so forth. 
 Where was one minute left up all this while 
 To put in execution that revenge 
 We planned o' the instant ? — as it were, 
 
 plumped down 
 0' the spot, some eight months since, which 
 
 round sound egg, 
 Rome, more propitious than our nest, should 
 
 hatch ! 
 Object not, " You reached Rome on Christmas- 
 eve, 
 And, despite liberty to act at once. 
 Waited a whole and indecorous week ! " 
 Hath so the Molinism, the canker, lords. 
 Eaten to our bone ? Is no religion left ? 
 Ko care for aught held holy by the Church ? 
 
 Whatj would you have us skip and miss those 
 
 ' Feasts 
 C the Natal Time, must we go prosecute 
 Secular business on a sacred day ? 
 Should not the merest charity expect, 
 Setting our poor concerns aside for once. 
 We hurried to the song matutinal 
 I' the Sistine, and pressed forward for the 
 
 The Cardinal that 's Camerlengo chants, 
 Then rushed on to the blessing of the Hat 
 And Rapier, which the Pope sends to what 
 
 pnnce 
 Has done most detriment to the Infidel — 
 And thereby whetted courage if 't were blunt? 
 Meantime, allow we kept the house a week, 
 Suppose not we were idle in our mew ! 
 Picture us raging here and raving there — 
 "'Money?' Ineed none. 'Friends?' The 
 
 word is null. 
 Restore the white was on that shield of mine 
 Borne at " . . . wherever might be shield to 
 
 bear. 
 " I see my grandsire, he who fought so well 
 At" . . . here find out and put in time and 
 
 place. 
 Or else invent the fight his grandsire fought : 
 " I see this ! I see that ! " 
 
 (See nothing else. 
 Or 1 shall scarce see lamb's fry in an hour ! 
 What to the uncle, as I bid advance 
 The smoking dish ? ' ' Fry suits a tender tooth ! 
 Behooves we care a little for our kin — 
 You, Sir, — who care so much for cousinship 
 As come to your poor loving nephew's feast ! " 
 He has the reversion of a long lease yet — 
 Land to bequeath ! He loves lamb's fry, I 
 know !) 
 
 Here fall to be considered those same six 
 Qualities ; what Bottini needs must call 
 So many aggravations of our crime, 
 Parasite-growth upon mere murder's back. 
 We summarily might dispose of such 
 By some off-hand and jaunty fling, some skit — 
 "So, since there's proved no crime to aggra- 
 vate, 
 A fico for your aggravations, Fisc ' " 
 No, — handle mischief rather, — play with 
 
 spells 
 Were meant to raise a spirit, and langh the 
 
 while 
 We show that did he rise we stand his match I 
 Therefore, first aggravation : we made up — 
 Over and above our simple murderous selves — 
 A regular assemblage of armed men, 
 Coaaunatio armatorum^ — ay, 
 Unluckily it was the very judge 
 That sits in judgment on our cause to-day 
 Who passed the law as Governor of Rome : 
 " Four men armed " — though for lawful pur- 
 pose, mark ! 
 Much more for an acknowledged crime — 
 
 "shall die." 
 We five were armed to the teeth, meant murder 
 
 too ? 
 Why, that 's the very point that saves us, Fisc ! 
 
DOMINUS HYACINTHUS DE ARCHANGELIS 
 
 535 
 
 Let me instruct you. Crime nor done nor 
 
 meant, — 
 You punish still who ann and congregate : 
 For wherefore use bad means to a good end ? 
 Crime being meant not done, — you punish still 
 The means to crime, whereon you haply pounce, 
 Though accident have balked them of enect. 
 But crime not only compassed but complete, 
 Meant and done too ? Why, since you have 
 
 the end, 
 Be that your sole concern, nor mind those 
 
 means 
 No longer to the purpose ! Murdered we ? 
 ( — Which, that our luck was in the present 
 
 case. 
 Quod contigisse in prcEsenti casu^ 
 Is psiLpable, manibus palpatum est — ) 
 M^e murder out against us, nothinp: else I 
 Of many crimes committed with a view 
 To one main crime, Law overlooks the less, 
 Intent upon the large. Suppose a man 
 Having in view commission of a theft. 
 Climbs the town-wall : 't is for the theft he 
 
 hangs, 
 In case he stands convicted of such theft : 
 Law remits whipping, due to who clomb wall 
 Through bravery or wantonness alone. 
 Just to dislodge a daw's nest, plant a flag. 
 So I interpret you the manly mind 
 Of Mm about to judge both you and me, — 
 Our Governor, who, being no Fiso, ray Fiso, 
 Cannot have blundered on ineptitude ! 
 Next aggravation, — that the arms themselves 
 Were specially of such forbidden sort 
 Through shape or length or breadth, as, prompt, 
 
 Law plucks 
 From single hand of solitary man. 
 Making him pay the carriage with his life : 
 Delatio armorum^ arms against the rule, 
 Contra formam constitvtionis-, of 
 Pope Alexander's blessed memory. 
 Such are the poniards with the double prong, 
 Horn-like, when tines make bold the antlered 
 
 buck. 
 Each prong of brittle glass — wherewith to stab 
 And break off short and so let fragment stick 
 Fast in the flesh to baifle surgery : 
 Such being the Genoese blade with hooked edge 
 That did us service at the villa here. 
 Sed parcat mihi tarn eximius vir. 
 But, — let so rare a personage forgive, — 
 Fisc, thy objection is a foppery ! 
 Thy chaise runs that we killed three inno- 
 cents: 
 KiUed, dost see ? Then, if killed, what matter 
 
 how ? — 
 By stick or stone, by sword or dagger, tool 
 Long or tool short, round or triangular — 
 Poor slain folk find small comfort in the choice 1 
 Means to an end, means to an end, my Fisc ! 
 Nature cries out, " Take the first arms you 
 
 find ! " 
 Furor ministrat arma : where 's a stone ? 
 TJnde mi Zapa'dem, where darts for me ? 
 TJnde sagittas ? But subdue the bard 
 And rationalize a little. Eight months since. 
 Had we, or had we not, incurred your blame 
 For letting 'scape unpunished this bad pair ? 
 
 I think I proved that in last paragraph ! 
 Why did we so ? Because our courage failed. 
 Wherefore ? Through lack of arms to fight the 
 
 foe : 
 We had no arms or merely lawful ones, 
 An unimportant sword and blunderbuss, 
 Against a foe, pollent in potency. 
 The amasius, and our vixen of a wife. 
 Well then, how culpably do we gird loin 
 And once more undertake the high emprise, 
 Unless we load ourselves this second time 
 With handsome superfluity of arms. 
 Since better is '^ too much " than " not enough," 
 And ^^ plus non vitiat^''^ too much does no harm. 
 Except in mathematics, sages say. 
 Gather instruction from the parable ! 
 At first we are advised — "A lad hath here 
 Seven barley loaves and two small fishes : what 
 Is that among so many ? " Aptly asked : 
 But put that question twice and, quite as apt. 
 The answer is, " Fragments, twelve baskets 
 
 full 1 " 
 
 And, while we speak of superabundance, fling 
 We word by the way to fools who oast theii 
 
 flout 
 On Guido — " Punishment were pardoned him, 
 But here the punishment exceeds offence : 
 He might be just, but he was cruel too ! " 
 Why, grant there seems a kind of cruelty 
 In downright stabbing people he could maim, 
 (Tf so you stigmatize the stern and strict) 
 Still, Guido meant no cruelty — may plead 
 Transgression of his mandate, over-zeal 
 O' the part of his companions ; all he craved 
 Was, they should fray the faces of the folk, 
 Merely disfigure, nowise make them die. 
 Solummodo fassus est, he owns no more, 
 Dedisse mandatum,taa,n that he desired, 
 Ad sfrisiandum, dicam^ that they hack 
 And hew, i' the customary phrase, his wife. 
 Uxorem tarUurn, and no harm beside. 
 If his instructions then be misconceived. 
 Nay, disobeyed, impute you blame to him ? 
 Cite me no PanicoUus to the point. 
 As adverse ! Oh, I quite expect his case — 
 How certain noble youths of Sicily 
 Having good reason to mistrust their wives, 
 Killed them and were absolved in consequence : 
 While others who had gone beyond the need 
 By mutilation of each paramour — 
 As Galba in the Horatian satire grieved 
 — These were condemned to the gaUeys, cast for 
 
 gmlt 
 Exceeding simple murder of a wife. 
 But why ? Because of ugliness, and not 
 Cruelty, in the said revenge, I trow I 
 Mx causa abscissionis partium ; 
 Qui nempe idfacientes reputantur 
 ifaturm inimici, man revolts 
 Against them as the natural enemy. 
 Pray, grant to one who meant to slit the nose 
 And slash the cheek and slur the mouth, at 
 
 most, 
 A somewhat more humane award thaji these ' - 
 Obtained, these natural enemies of man I 
 Objectum funditus corruit, flat yon fall. 
 My Fisc ! I waste no kick on you, but pass. 
 
536 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 Third aggravation : that our act was done — 
 Not in the public street, where safety lies, 
 Not in the by-place, caution may avoid, 
 Wood, cavern, desert, spots contrived for 
 
 crime, — . 
 But in the very house, home, nook and nest, 
 0' the victims, murdered in their dweUing-place, 
 In domo ac habitatione propria, 
 Where all presumably is peace and joy. 
 The spider, crime, pronounce we twice a pest 
 When, creeping from congenial cottage, she 
 Taketh hold with her hands, to horrify 
 His household more, i' the palace of the king. 
 All three were housed and safe and confident. 
 Moreover, the permission that our wife 
 Should have at length domum pro carcere, 
 Her own abode in place of prison — why. 
 We ourselves granted, by our other self 
 And proxy Paolo : did we make such grant, 
 Meaning a lure ? — elude the vigilance 
 0' the jailer, lead her to commodious death. 
 While we ostensibly relented ? 
 
 Ay, 
 Just so did we, nor otherwise, my Fise ! 
 Is vengeance lawful ? We demand our right. 
 But find it will be questioned or refused 
 By jailer, turnkey, hangdog, — what know we ? 
 Pray, how is it we should conduct ourselves ? 
 To gain our private right — break public peace. 
 Do you bid us ? — trouble order with our broils ? 
 Endanger . . . shall I shrink to own . . . our- 
 selves ? — 
 Who want no broken head nor bloody nose 
 (While busied slitting noses, breaking heads) 
 From the first tipstaff that may interfere ! 
 Nam quicquid sit, for howsoever it be. 
 An de consensu nostra, if with leave 
 Or not, a monasterio, from the nuns, 
 Educta esset, she had been led forth, 
 Potuimus id dissimulare, we 
 May well have granted leave in pure pretence, 
 Ut aditum habere, that thereby 
 An entry we might compass, a free move 
 Potuissemus, to her easy death. 
 Ad earn occidendam. Privacy 
 0' the hearth, and sanctitude of home, say you ? 
 Shall we give man's abode more privilege 
 Than God's ? — for in the churches where he 
 
 dwells. 
 In quibus assistit Regum Bex, by means 
 Of his essence, per essentiam, all the same, 
 Et nihilominus, therein, in eis. 
 Ex justa via delinquens, whoso dares 
 To take a liberty on ground enough, 
 Is pardoned, excusatur : that 's our ease — 
 Delinquent through befitting cause. You hold. 
 To punish a false wife in her own house 
 Is graver than, what happens every day. 
 To hale a debtor from his hiding-place 
 In church protected by the Sacrament ? 
 To this conclusion have I brought my Fisc ? 
 Foxes have holes, and fowls o' the air their 
 
 nests ;- 
 Praise you the impiety that follows, Fisc ? 
 Shall false wife yet have where to lay her head ? 
 " Contra Fiscum definitum est ! " He 's done ! 
 " Surge el scribe," make a note of it ! 
 — If I may dally with Aquinas' word. 
 
 Or in the death-throe does he mutter still. 
 Fourth aggravation, that we changed our garb, 
 And rusticized ourselves with uncouth hat. 
 Rough vest and goatskin wrappage ; murdered 
 
 thus 
 Mutatione vestium, in disguise, 
 Whereby mere murder got eomplexed with wile, 
 Turned homicidium ex insidiis ? Fisc, 
 How often must I round thee in the ears — 
 AU means are lawful to a lawful end ? 
 Concede he had the right to kill his wife : 
 The Count indulged in a travesty ; why ? 
 De ilia ut vindictam sumeret. 
 That on her he might lawful vengeance take, 
 Commodius, with more ease, et tutius. 
 And safeUer : wants he warrant for the step ? 
 Read to thy profit how the Apostle once 
 For ease and safety, when Damascus raged, 
 Was let down in a basket by the wall. 
 To 'scape the malice of the governor 
 (Another sort of Governor boasts Rome !) 
 — Many are of opinion, — covered close, 
 Concealed with — what except that very cloak 
 He left behind at Troas afterward ? 
 I shall not add a syllable : Mohnists may ! 
 Well, have we more to manage ? Ay, indeed I 
 Fifth aggravation, that our wife reposed 
 Sub potestate judicis, beneath 
 Protection of the judge, — her house was styled 
 A prison, and his power became its guard 
 In lieu of wall and gate and bolt and bar. 
 This is a tough point, shrewd, redoubtable : 
 Because we have to supplicate that judge 
 Shall overlook wrong done the judgment-seat. 
 Now, I might suffer my own nose be pulled. 
 As man : but then as father ... if the Fisc 
 Touched one hair of my boy who held my hand 
 In confidence he could not come to harm 
 Crossing the Corso, at my own desire. 
 Going to see those bodies in the church — 
 What would you say to that, Don Hyacinth ? 
 This is the sole and single knotty point : 
 For, bid Tommati blink his interest. 
 You laud his magnanimity the while : 
 But balk Tommati's office, — he talks big ! 
 " My predecessors in the place, — those sons 
 O' the prophets that may hope succeed me 
 
 here, — 
 Shall I diminish their prerogative ? 
 Count Gnido Franeeschini's honor ! — well. 
 Has the Governor of Rome none ? " 
 
 You perceive, 
 The cards are all against us. Make a push. 
 Kick over table, as shrewd gamesters do ! 
 We, do you say, encroach upon the rights. 
 Deny the omnipotence o' the Judge forsooth ? 
 We, who have only been from first to last 
 Intending that his purpose should prevail. 
 Nay more, at times, anticipating it 
 At risk of his rebuke ? 
 
 But wait awhile ! 
 Cannot we lump this with the sixth and last 
 Of the aggravations — that the Majesty 
 0' the Sovereign here received a wound ? to 
 
 wit, 
 Iicesa Majestas, since our violence 
 
DOMINUS HYACINTHUS DE ARCHANGELIS 
 
 537 
 
 Was out of envy to the course of law, 
 In odium litis ? We cut short thereby 
 Three pending suits, promoted by ourselves 
 I' the main, — which worsens crime, accedit ad 
 Exasperationem criminis ! 
 
 Yes, here the eruptive wrath with full effect ! 
 
 How, did not Lndig-nation chain my tongue, 
 
 Gould I repel this last, worst charge of all ! 
 
 (There is a porcupine to barbecue ; 
 
 Gigia can jug a rabbit well enough, 
 
 With soui^sweet sauce and pine-pips ; but, good 
 
 Lord, 
 Suppose the devil instigate the wench 
 To stew, not roast him ? Stew my porcupine ? 
 If she does, I know where his quills shall stick I 
 Come, I must go myself and see to things : 
 I cannot stay much longer stewing here.) 
 Our stomach ... I mean, our soul is stirred 
 
 within, 
 And we want words. We wounded Majesty ? 
 Fall under such a censure, we ? — who yearned 
 So much that Majesty dispel the cloud 
 And shine on us with healing on her wings, 
 That we prayed Pope Majestas^ very self 
 To anticipate a little the tardy pack. 
 Bell us forth deep the authoritative bay 
 Should start the beadles into sudden yelp 
 Unisonous, — and, Gospel leading Law, 
 Grant there assemble in our own behoof 
 A Congregation, a particular Court, 
 A few picked friends of quality and place, 
 To hear the several matters in dispute. 
 Causes big, little, and indifferent. 
 Bred of our marriage like a mushroom-^owth, 
 All at once (can one brush off such too soon ?) 
 And so with laudable dispatch decide 
 Whether we, in the main (to sink detail) 
 Were one the Pope should hold fast or let go. 
 " What, take the credit from the Law ? " you 
 
 ask? 
 Indeed, we did ! Law ducks to Gospel here : 
 Why shoidd Law gain the glory and pronounce 
 A judgment shall immiortalize the Pope ? 
 Yes : our self-abnegating policy 
 Was Joab's — we would rouse our David's 
 
 sloth. 
 Bid him encamp against a city, sack 
 A place whereto ourselves had long laid seige, 
 Lest, taking it at last, it take our name 
 Nor be styled Innocentinopolts. 
 But no I The modesty was in alarm, 
 The temperance refused to interfere, 
 Returned us our petition with the word 
 " Ad indices suos," " Leave hira to his 
 
 Judge!" 
 As who should say, " WTiy trouble my repose ? 
 Why consult Peter in a simple case, 
 Peter's wife's sister in her fever-fit 
 Might solve as readily as the Apostle's self ? 
 Are my Tribunals posed by aught so plain ? 
 Hath not my Court a conscience ? It is of age. 
 Ask it!" 
 
 We do ask, — but, inspire reply 
 To the Court thou bidst me ask, as I have 
 
 asked — 
 Oh thou, who vi^lantly dost attend 
 
 To even the few, the ineffectual words 
 Which rise from this our low and mundane 
 
 sphere 
 Up to thy region out of smoke and noise, 
 Seeking corroboration from thy nod 
 Who art all justice — which means mercy too, 
 In a low noisy smoky world like ours 
 Where Adam's sin made peccable his seed ! 
 We venerate the father of the flock, 
 Whose last faint sands of Hfe, the frittered 
 
 gold,, 
 Fall noiselessly, yet all too fast, o' the cone 
 And tapering heap of those collected years : 
 Never have these been hurried in their flow. 
 Though justice fain would jog reluctant arm, 
 In eagerness to take the forfeiture 
 Of guilty life : much less shall mercy sue 
 In vain that thou let innocence survive, 
 Precipitate no minim of the mass 
 0' the aU-so precious moments of thy life, 
 By pushing Guido into death and doom ! 
 
 (Our Cardinal engages to go read 
 
 The Pope raiy speech, and point its beauties 
 
 out. 
 They say, the Pope has one half-hour, in 
 
 twelve, 
 Of something like a moderate return 
 Of the intellectuals, — never much to lose ! — 
 If I adroitly plant this passage there. 
 The Fise will find himself forestalled, I think, 
 Though he stand, beat till the old ear-drum 
 
 break ! 
 — Ah, boy of my own bowels. Hyacinth, 
 Wilt ever catch the knack, requite the pains 
 Of poor papa, become proficient too 
 I' the how and why and when, the tim.e to 
 
 laugh, 
 The time to weep, the time, again, to W^J^ 
 And all the times prescribed by Holy Writ ? 
 Well, well, we fathers can but care, but cast 
 Our bread upon the waters ! ) 
 
 In a word, 
 These secondary charges go to ground, 
 Since secondary, and superfluous, — motes 
 Quite from the main point : we did all and 
 
 some, 
 Little and much, adjunct and principal, 
 Causa honoris. Is there such a cause 
 As the sake of honor ? By that sole test try 
 Our action, nor demand if more or less, 
 Because of the action's mode, we merit blame 
 Or maybe deserve praise ! The Court decides.. 
 Is the end lawful ? It allows the means : 
 What we may do, we may with safety do. 
 And what means " safety " we ourselves must 
 
 judge. 
 Put case a person wrongs me past dispute :, 
 If my legitimate vengeance be a blow. 
 Mistrusting my bare arm can deal that blow, 
 I claim co-operation of a stick ; 
 Doubtful if stick be tough, I crave a sword ; 
 Di£&dent of ability in fence, 
 I fee a friend, a swordsman to assist : 
 Take one — he may be coward, fool or knave * 
 Why not take fifty ? — and if these exceed 
 I' the due degree of drubbing, whom accuse 
 But the first author of the aforesaid wrong 
 
538 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 Who put poor me to such a world of pains ? 
 Surgery would have just excised a wart ; 
 The patient made such pother, struggled so 
 That the sharp instrument sliced nose and all. 
 Taunt us not that our friends performed for 
 
 pay! 
 Ourselves had toiled for simple honor's sake : 
 But country clowns want dirt they comprehend, 
 The piece of gold ! Our reasons, whicn suffice 
 Ourselves, be ours alone ; our piece of gold 
 Be, to the rustic, reason he approves ! 
 We must translate our motives like our speech, 
 Into the lower phrase that suits the sense 
 0' the limitedly apprehensive. Let 
 Kach level have its language ! Heaven speaks 
 
 first 
 To the angel, then the angel tames the word 
 Down to the ear of Tobit ; he, in turn, 
 Diminishes the message to his dog, 
 And finally that dog finds how the flea 
 (Which else, importunate, might check his 
 
 speed) 
 Shall learn its hunger must have holiday, 
 By application of his tongue or paw : 
 So many varied sorts of language here, 
 £)ach following each with pace to match the 
 
 step. 
 Hand passibus mquis 1 
 
 Talking of which flea, 
 Beminds me I must put in special word 
 For the poor humble following, — the four 
 
 friends, 
 Sicarii, our assassins caught and caged. 
 Ourselves are safe in your approval now : 
 Yet must we care for our companions, plead 
 The cause o' the poor, the friends (of old-world 
 
 faith) 
 Who lie in tribulation for our sake. 
 Pauperum Procurator is my style : 
 I stand forth as the poor man's advocate : 
 And when we treat of what concerns the poor, 
 Mt cum agatur de pauperibus^ 
 In bandage, carceratis, for their sake, 
 In eorum causis, natural piety, 
 Pietas^ ever ought to win the day, 
 Triumphare debet, quia ipsi sunt, 
 Because those very paupers constitute. 
 Thesaurus Christi, all the wealth of Christ. 
 Nevertheless I shall not hold you long 
 With multiplicity of proofs, nor burn 
 Candle at noontide, clarify the clear. 
 There beams a case refulgent from our 
 
 books — 
 Castrensis, Butringarius, everywhere 
 I find it burn to dissipate the dark. 
 'T is this : a husband had a friend, which 
 
 friend 
 Seemed to him over-friendly with his wife 
 In thought and purpose, — I pretend no more. 
 To justify suspicion or dispel, 
 He bids his wife make show of giving heed, 
 Semblance of sympathy — propose, in fine, 
 A secret meeting in a private place. 
 Th^ friend, enticed thus, finds an ambuscade, 
 To wit, the husband posted with a pack 
 Of other friends, who fall upon the first 
 And beat his love and life out both at once. 
 
 These friends were brought to question for 
 
 their help ; 
 Law ruled, " The husband being in the right, 
 Who helped him in the right can scarce be 
 
 wrong " — 
 Opinio, an opinion every way, 
 Multum tenenda cordi, heart should hold ! 
 When the inferiors foUow as befits 
 I'he lead o' the principal, they change their 
 
 namCj 
 And, non dicuntur, are no longer called 
 His mandatories, mandatorii. 
 But helpmates, sed auxiliatores ; since 
 To that degree does honor's sake lend aid, 
 Adeo honoris causa est efficax. 
 That not alone, non solum, does it pour 
 Itself out, se diffundat, on mere friends 
 We bring to do our bidding of this sort. 
 In manaatorios simplices, but sucks 
 Along with it in wide and generous whirl, 
 Sed etiam assassinii qualitate 
 Qualijicatos, people qualified 
 By the quality of assassination's self. 
 Dare I make use of such neologism, 
 TJt utar verba. 
 
 Haste we to conclude : 
 Of the other points that favor, leave some few 
 For Spreti ; such as the delinquents' youth. 
 One of them falls short, by some months, of 
 
 age 
 Fit to be managed by the gallows ; two 
 Ma,y plead exemption from our law's award, 
 Being foreigners, subjects of the Granduke — 
 I spare that bone to Spreti, and reserve 
 Myself the juicier breast of ai'gument — 
 Flinging the breast-blade i' the face o' the Fisc, 
 Who furnished me the tidbit : he must needs 
 Play off his privilege and rack the clowns, — 
 And they, at instance of the rack, confess 
 All four unanimously made resolve, — 
 The night o' the murder, in brief minute 
 
 snatched 
 Behind the ba«k of Guido as he fled, — 
 That, since he had not kept his promise, paid 
 The money for the murder on the spot. 
 So, reaching home again, might please ignore 
 The pact or pay them in improper coin, — 
 They one and all resolved, these hopeful 
 
 friends, 
 'T were best inaugurate the morrow's light. 
 Nature recruited with her due repose, 
 By killing Guido as he lay asleep 
 Pillowed on wallet which contained their fee. 
 
 I thank the Fisc for knowledge of this fact : 
 
 What fact could hope to make more manifest 
 
 Their rectitude, Guide's integrity ? 
 
 For who fails recognize the touching truth 
 
 That these poor rustics bore no envy, hate, 
 
 Malice nor yet uncharitableness 
 
 Against the people they had put to death ? 
 
 In them, did such an act reward itself ? 
 
 All done was to deserve tlie simple pay. 
 
 Obtain the bread clowns earn by sweat of 
 
 brow. 
 And missing which, they missed of every- 
 thing— 
 
DOMINUS HYACINTHUS DE ARCHANGELIS 
 
 539 
 
 Hence claimed pay, even at expense of life 
 
 To their own lord, so little warped (admire !) 
 
 By prepossession, such the absolute 
 
 Instmct of equity in rustic souls I 
 
 Whereas our Count, the cultivated mind. 
 
 He, wholly rapt in his serene regard 
 
 Of honor, he contemplating the sun. 
 
 Who hardly marks if taper blink below, 
 
 He, dreaming of no argument for death 
 
 Except a vengeance worthy noble hearts, — 
 
 Dared not so desecrate the deed, forsooth, 
 
 Vulgarize vengeance, as defray its cost 
 
 By money dug from out the dirty earth, 
 
 Irritant mere, in Ovid's phrase, to ill. 
 
 What though he lured base hinds by lucre's 
 
 hope, — 
 The only motive they could masticate, 
 Milk for babes, not strong meat which men re- 
 quire? 
 The deed done, those coarse hands were soiled 
 
 enough. 
 He spared them the pollution of the pay. 
 So much for the aUegement, thine, my Fisc, 
 Quo nil aiisvrdiusi than which naught more 
 
 mad, 
 Exmgilari potest, may be squeezed 
 From out the cogitative brain of thee ! 
 
 And now, thou excellent the Governor I 
 
 OPush to the peroration) ccBterum 
 
 Enixe supptico, I strive in prayer, 
 
 Ut domims meis, that unto the Court, 
 
 Benignafronte^ with a gracious brow, 
 
 Et ocidis serenis, and mild eyes, 
 
 Perpendere placeat, it may please them weigh, 
 
 8uod domimis Guido, that our noble Count, 
 ccidit, did the' killing in dispute, 
 Ut ejus hojior tumulatus, that 
 The honor of him buried fathom-deep 
 In infamy, in infamia, might arise, 
 Itesurqeret, as ghost breaks sepulchre 1 
 Occidit, for he killed, uxorem, wife, 
 
 8uia illifuit, since she was to him, 
 pprohrio, a disgrace and nothing more ! 
 Ei genitores, killed her parents too, 
 Qui, who, postposita verecundia, 
 Having thrown off all sort of decency, 
 Filiam repudiarunt, had renounced 
 Their daughter, atque declarare non 
 Erubuerunt, nor felt blush tinge cheek. 
 Declaring, meretricis genitam 
 Esse, she was the offspring of a drab, 
 Ut ipse dehonestaretur, just 
 That so himself might lose his social rank ! 
 Cujus mentem, and which daughter's heart and 
 
 soul. 
 They, perverterunt, turned from the right 
 
 course, 
 Et ad illicitos amores non 
 Dumtaxat pellexerunt, and to love 
 Not simply did alluringly incite, 
 Sed vi obedientice, but by force 
 0' the duty, filialis, daughters owe, 
 Coegerunt, forced and drove her to the deed : 
 Occidit, I repeat he killed the clan, 
 N^e scilicet amplius in dedecore. 
 Lest peradventure longer life might trail, 
 Viveret, link by link his turpitude 
 
 Invisus consanguineis, hateful so 
 
 To kith and kindred, a nobilibus 
 
 Notatus, shunned by men of quality, 
 
 Helictus ab amicis, left i' the lurch 
 
 By friends, ab omnibus derisus, turned 
 
 A common hack-block to try edge of jokes, 
 
 Occidit, and he killed them here in Bome, 
 
 In Urbe, the Eternal City, Sirs, 
 
 Nempe qius alias spectata est. 
 
 The appropriate theatre which witnessed once, 
 
 Matronam nobilem, Lucretia's self, 
 
 Abluere pudicitioe maculas. 
 
 Wash off the spots of her pudicity, 
 
 Sanguine propria, with her own pure blood ; 
 
 Quce vidit, and which city also saw, 
 
 Patrem, Virginius, undeguaque, quite, 
 
 Impunem, with no sort of punishment, 
 
 Nor, et non illaudatum, lacking praise, 
 
 Sed polluentem parricidio, 
 
 Imbrue his hands with butchery, Jilice, 
 
 Of chaste Virginia, to avoid a rape, 
 
 Ne raperetur ad stupra ; so to heart, 
 
 Tanti illi cordifuit, did he take, 
 
 Suspicio, the mere fancy men might have, 
 
 Honoris amittendi, of fame's loss, 
 
 Ut potius voluerit filia 
 
 Orbari, he preferred to lose his child, 
 
 Quam ilia incederet, rather than she walk 
 
 The ways an, inhonesta, child disgraced, 
 
 Licet non sponte, though against her will. 
 
 Occidit — killed them, I reiterate — 
 
 In propria domo, in their own abode, 
 
 Ut adultera et parentes, that each wretch, 
 
 Conscii agnoscerent, might both see and say, 
 
 Nullum locum, there 's no place, nullumque esse 
 
 Asylum, nor yet refuge of escape, 
 
 Impenarabilem, shall serve as bar, 
 
 Honori Iceso, to the wounded one 
 
 In honor ; neve ibi opprobria 
 
 Continuarentur, killed them on the spot 
 
 Moreover, dreading lest within those walls 
 
 The opprobrium peradventure be proloi^ed, 
 
 Et domus qua testis fuit turpium. 
 
 And that the domicile which witnessed crime, 
 
 Esset et pcence, might watch punishment : 
 
 Occidit, killed, I round you in the ears, 
 
 Quia alio modo, since by other mode, 
 
 Non poterat ejus existimatio. 
 
 There was no possibility his fame,- 
 
 LfBsa, gashed griesly, tarn enormiter, 
 
 Ducere cicatrices, might be healed : 
 
 Occidit ut exemplum proeberet 
 
 Uxoribus, killed her, so to lesson wives 
 
 Jura conjugii, that the roarriage-oath, 
 
 Esse servanda, must be kept henceforth : 
 
 Occidit denique, killed her, in a word, 
 
 Ut pro posse honestus viveret, 
 
 'That he, please God, might creditably live. 
 
 Sin minus, but if fate willed otherwise, 
 
 Proprii honoris, of his outraged fame, 
 
 Offensi, by Mannaia, if you please, 
 
 Commiseranda viclima caderet. 
 
 The pitiable victim he should fall ! 
 
 Done ! I' the rough, i' the rough ! But done ! 
 
 And, lo. 
 Landed and stranded lies my very speech. 
 My miracle, my monster of defence — 
 
54° 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 Leviathan into the nose whereof 
 
 I have put fish-hook, pierced his jaw with 
 
 thorn, 
 And given him to my maidens for a play 1 
 I' the rough : to-morrow I review my piece 
 Tame here and there undue floridity. 
 It 's hard : you have to plead before these 
 
 priests 
 And poke at them with Scripture, or you pass 
 For heathen and, what 's worse, for ignorant 
 0' the quality o' the Court and what it likes 
 By way of illustration of the law. 
 To-morrow stick in this, and throw out that. 
 And, having first ecclesiasticized. 
 Regularize the whole, next emphasize. 
 Then latinize, and lastly Cicero-ize, 
 (Hving my Fisc his finish. There 's my 
 
 speech ! 
 And where 's my fry, and family and friends ? 
 Where 's that huge Hyacinth I mean to hug 
 Tin he cries out, "Jam satis! Let me 
 
 breathe ! " 
 Now, what an evening have I earned to-day I 
 Hail, ye true pleasures, all the rest are false I 
 Oh, the old mother, oh, the fattish wife ! 
 Rogue Hyacinth shall put on paper toque. 
 And wrap himself around with mamma's veil 
 Done up to imitate papa's black robe, 
 (I 'm in the secret of the comedy, — 
 Part of the program leaked out long ago !) 
 And call himself the Advocate o' the Poor, 
 Mimic Don father that defends the Count : 
 And for reward shall have a small full 
 Of manly red rosolio to himself, 
 
 — Always provided that he conjugate 
 Bibo, I drink, correctly — nor be found 
 Make the perfectum, bipsi, as last year ! 
 How the ambitious do so harden heart 
 As lightly hold by these home-sanctitudes, 
 To me is matter of bewilderment — 
 Bewilderment ! Because ambition's range 
 Is nowise tethered by domestic tie : 
 
 Am I refused an outlet from my home 
 
 To the world's stage ? — whereon a man should 
 
 play 
 The man in public, vigilant for law. 
 Zealous for truth, a credit to his kind. 
 Nay, — since, employing talent so, I yield 
 The Lord his own again with usury, — 
 A satisfaction, yea. to God himself ! 
 Well, I have modelled me by Agur's wish, 
 " Remove far from me vanity and lies. 
 Feed me with food convenient forme ! " What 
 I' the world should a wise man require beyond ? 
 (!!an I but coax the good fat Uttle wife 
 To tell her fool of a father the mad prank 
 His scapegrace nephew played this time last 
 
 year 
 At Carnival 1 He could not choose, I think, 
 But modify that inconsiderate gift 
 0' the cup and cover (somewhere in the will 
 Under the pillow, some one seems to guess) 
 
 — Correct that clause in favor of a boy 
 
 The trifle ought to grace, with name engraved, 
 Would look so well, produced in future years 
 To pledge a memory, when poor papa 
 Latin and law are long since laid at rest — 
 Hyacintho dono dedit avus ! Why, 
 
 The wife should get a necklace for her pains, 
 
 The very pearls that made Violante proud. 
 
 And Pietro pawned for half their value once, — 
 
 Redeemable by somebody, ne sit 
 
 Marita quce rotundioribus 
 
 Onusta mammis . . . baccis ambulet : 
 
 Her bosom shall display the big round balls, 
 
 No braver proudly borne by wedded wife ! 
 
 With which Horatian promise I conclude. 
 
 Into the pigeon-hole with thee, my speech ! 
 Off and away, first work, then play, play, play! 
 Bottini, burn thy books, thou blazing ass ! 
 Sing " Trar-la-la, for, lambkins, we must live ! " 
 
 IX 
 
 JURIS DOCTOR JOHANNES -BAPTISTA 
 BOTTINIUS, 
 
 FISCI ET REV. CAM. APOSTOL. ADVOCATUS 
 
 Had I God's leave, how I would alter things ! 
 
 If I might read instead of print ray speech, — 
 
 Ay, and enliven speech with many a flower 
 
 Refuses obstinate to blow iu print. 
 
 As wildings planted in a prim parterre, — 
 
 This scurvy room were turned an immense hall ; 
 
 Opposite, fifty judges in a row ; 
 
 This side and that of me, for audience — Rome : 
 
 And, where yon window is, the Pope should 
 
 hide — 
 Watch, curtained, but peep visibly enough. 
 A buzz of expectation ! Through the crowd. 
 Jingling his chain and stumping with his staff. 
 Up comes an usher, louts him low, " The Court 
 Requires the allocution of the Fisc ! " 
 I rise, I bend, I look about me, pause 
 O'er the hushed multitude : I count — One, 
 
 two 
 
 Have ye seen. Judges, have ye, lights of law, — 
 When it may hap some painter, much in vogue 
 Throughout our city nutritive of arts, 
 Ye summon to a task shall test his worth. 
 To manufacture, as he knows and can, 
 A work may decorate a nalace-wall, 
 Affords my lords their Holy Family, — 
 Hath it escaped the acumen of the Court 
 How such a painter sets himself to pauit ? 
 Suppose that Joseph, Mary and her Babe 
 A-joumeying to Egypt, prove the piece : 
 Why, first he sedulously practiseth, 
 This painter, — girding loin and lighting lamp, — 
 On what may nourish eye, make facile hand ; 
 Getteth him studies (styled by draughtsmen so) 
 From some assistant corpse of Jew or Turk 
 Or, haply, Molinist, he cuts and carves, — 
 This Luca or this Carlo or the like. 
 To him the bones their inmost secret yield. 
 Each notch and nodule signify their use : 
 On him the muscles turn, in triple tier, 
 And pleasantly entreat the entrusted man 
 " Familiarize thee with our play tliat lifts 
 Thus, and thus lowers again, leg, arm and 
 foot I" 
 
JURIS DOCTOR JOHANNES-BAPTISTA BOTTINIUS 
 
 541 
 
 — Ensuring due correctness in the nude. 
 Which done, is all done ? Not a whit, ye know ! 
 He, — to art's surface rising: from her depth, — 
 If some flax-polled soft-bearded sire be found. 
 May simulate a Joseph, (happy chance !) — 
 Limneth exact each wrinkle of the brow, 
 Loseth no involution, cheek or chap. 
 Till lo, in black and white, the senior lives ! 
 Is it a young and comely peasant-nurse 
 That poseth ? (be the phrase accorded me !) 
 Ea«h feminine delig:ht of florid lip. 
 Eyes brimming o'er and brow bowed down 
 
 with love. 
 Marmoreal neck and bosom uberous, — 
 Glad on the paper in a trice they go 
 To help his notion of the Mother-maid : 
 Methinks I see it, chalk a little stumped ! 
 Yea and her babe — that flexure of soft limbs, 
 That budding face imbued with dewy sleep, 
 Contribute each an excellence to Christ. 
 Nay, since he humbly lent companionship, 
 Even the poor ass, unpanniered and elate 
 Stands, perks an ear up, he a model too ; 
 While clouted shoon, staff, scrip and water- 
 gourd, — 
 Aught may betoken travel, heat and haste, — 
 No jot nor tittle of these but in Its turn 
 Ministers to perfection of the piece : 
 Till now, such piece before him, part by 
 
 part, — 
 Such prelude ended, — pause our painter may, 
 Submit his fifty studies one by one. 
 And in some sort boast ^' I have served my 
 lords." 
 
 But what? And hath he painted once this 
 
 while ? 
 Or when ye cry, " Produce the thing required. 
 Show us our picture shall rejoice its niche. 
 Thy Journey through the Desert done in 
 
 oils!" — 
 What, doth he fall to shuffling 'mid his sheets. 
 Fumbling for first this, then the other fact 
 Consigned to paper, — " studies," bear the 
 
 term ! — 
 And stretch a canvas, mix a pot of paste, 
 And fasten here a head and there a tail, 
 (The ass hath one, my Judges !) so dove-tail 
 Or, rather, ass-tail in, piece sorrily out — 
 By bits of reproduction of the life — 
 The picture, the expected Family ? 
 I trow not ! do I miss with my conceit 
 The mark, my lords ? — not so my lords were 
 
 served I 
 Rather your artist turns abrupt from these. 
 And preferably buries him and broods 
 (Quite away from aught vulgar and extern) 
 On the inner spectrum, filtered through the eye. 
 His brain-deposit, bred of many a drop, 
 Eplwibus unum ; and the wiser he I 
 For in that brain, — their fancy sees at work. 
 Could my lords peep indulged, — results alone, 
 Not processes which nourish such results. 
 Would they discover and appreciate, — life 
 Fed by digestion, not raw food itself. 
 No gobbets but smooth comfortable chyme 
 Secreted from each snapped-up crudity, — 
 Less distinct, part by part, but in tha whole 
 
 Truer to the subjectj — the main central truth 
 And soul o' the picture, would my Judges 
 
 spy,— 
 Not those mere fragmentary studied facts 
 Which answer to the outward frame and 
 
 flesh — 
 Not this nose, not that eyebrow, the other fact 
 Of man's staff, woman's stole or infant's clout, 
 But lo, a spirit-birth conceived of flesh, 
 Truth rare and real, not transcripts, fact and 
 
 false. 
 The studies — for his pupils and himself ! 
 The picture be for our eximious Rome 
 And — who knows ? — satisfy its Governor, 
 Whose new wing to the villa he hath bought 
 (God give him joy of it) by Capena, soon 
 ('T is bruited) shall be glowing with the brush 
 Of who hath long surpassed the Florentine, 
 The Urbinate and . . , what if I dared add, 
 Even his master, yea the Cortonese, — 
 I mean the accomplished Ciro Ferri, Sirs ! 
 ( — Did not he die ? I 'U see before I print.) 
 
 End we exordium, Phoebus plucks my ear ! 
 Thus then, just so and no whit otherwise. 
 Have X, — engaged as I were Ciro's self, 
 To paint a parallel, a Family, 
 The patriarch Pietro with his wise old wife 
 To boot (as if one introduced Saint Anne 
 By bold conjecture to complete the group) 
 And juvenile Pompilia with her babe. 
 Who, seeking safety in the wilderness. 
 Were all surprised by Herod, while out- 
 stretched 
 In sleep beneath a palm-tree by a spring, 
 And killed — the very circumstance I paint, 
 Moving the pity and terror of my lords — 
 Exactly so have 1, a month at least. 
 Your Fiscal, made me cognizant of facts. 
 Searched out, pried into, pressed the meaning 
 
 forth 
 Of every piece of evidence in point. 
 How bloody Herod slew these innocents, — 
 Until the glad result is gained, the group 
 Demonstrably presented in detail. 
 Their slumber and his onslaught, — like as life. 
 Yea, and, availing me of help allowed 
 By law, discreet provision lest my lords 
 Be too much troubled by effrontery, — 
 The rack, law plies suspected crime withal — 
 (Law that hath listened while the lyrist sang 
 " Lene t(yrmentum ingenio admoves.^^ 
 Gently thou joggest by a twinge the wit, 
 " Plerumque duro^" else were slow to blab !) 
 Through this concession my full cup runs o'er : 
 The guilty owns his guilt without reserve. 
 Therefore by part and part I dutch my case 
 Which, in entirety now, — momentous task, — 
 My lords demand, so render them I must. 
 Since, one poor pleading more and I have done. 
 But shall 1 ply my papers, play my proofs. 
 Parade my studies, fifty in a row. 
 As though the Court were yet in pupilage, 
 Claimed not the artist's ultimate appeal ? 
 Much rather let me soar the height prescribed 
 And, bowii^ low, proffer my picture's self ! 
 No more of proof, disproof, — such virtue was, 
 Such vice was never in Pompilia, now ! 
 
S42 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 Far better say " Behold Pompilia ! " — for 
 I leave the family as uiimanag;eahle, 
 And stick to just one portrait, but life-size.) 
 Hath calumny imputed to the fair 
 A blemish, mole on cheek or wart on chin, 
 Much more, blind hidden horrors best un- 
 named ? 
 Shall I descend to prove you, point by point, 
 Never was knock-knee known nor splay-foot 
 
 found 
 In Phryne ? (I must let the portrait go, 
 Content me with the model, I believe) — 
 
 — I prove this ? An indignant sweep of hand. 
 Dash at and doing away with drapery. 
 
 And, — use your eyes, Athenians, smooth she 
 
 smiles I 
 Or, — since my client can no longer smile, 
 And more appropriate instances abound, — 
 What is this Tale of Tarquin, how the slave 
 Was caught by him, preferred to CoUatine ? 
 Thou, even from thy corpse-clothes virginal, 
 Look'st the lie dead, Lucretia ! 
 
 Thus at least 
 I, by the guidance of antiquity, 
 (Our one infallible guide,) now operate, 
 Sure that the innocence thus shown is safe ; 
 Sure, too, that, while I plead, the echoes cry 
 (Lend my weak voice thy trump, sonorous 
 
 Fame !) 
 " Monstrosity the Phrynean shape shall mar, 
 Lucretia's soul comport with Tarquin's lie. 
 When thistles grow on vines or thorns yield figs. 
 Or oblique sentence leave this judgment-seat ! " 
 
 A great theme : may my strength be adequate ! 
 For — paint Pompilia, dares my feebleness ? 
 How did I unaware engage so much 
 
 — Find myself undertaking to produce 
 A faultless nature in a flawless form ? 
 
 What 's here ? Oh, turn aside nor dare the 
 
 blaze 
 Of such a crown, such constellation, say, 
 Aa jewels here thy front, Humanity ! 
 First, infancy, pellucid as a pearl ; 
 Then, childhood — stone which, dewdrop at the 
 
 first, 
 (An old conjecture) sucks, by dint of gaze, 
 Blue from the sky and turns to sapphire so : 
 Yet both these gems eclipsed byj last and best. 
 Womanliness and wifehood opaline. 
 Its milk-white pallor, — chastity, — suffused 
 With here and there a tint and hint of flame, — 
 Desire, — the lapidary loves to find. 
 Such jewels bind conspicuously thy brow, 
 Pompilia, infant, child, maid, woman, wife — 
 Crown the ideal in our earth at last ! 
 What should a faculty like mine do here ? 
 Close eyes, or else, the rashlier huiTy hand ! 
 
 Which is to say, — lose no time but begin ! 
 
 Sermocinando ne declamem. Sirs, 
 
 Ukra clepsydram, as our preachers smile. 
 
 Lest I exceed my hour-glass. Whereupon, 
 
 As Flaccns prompts, I dare the epic plunge — 
 
 Begin at once with marriage, up till when 
 
 Little or nothing would arrest your love. 
 
 In the easeful life o' the lady ; lamb and lamb. 
 
 How do they differ ? Know one, you know all 
 
 Manners of maidenhood: mere maiden she. 
 And since all lambs are like in more than fleece. 
 Prepare to find that, lamb-like, she too frisks — 
 0' the weaker sex, my lords, the weaker sex ! 
 To whom, the Teian teaches us, for gift, 
 Not strength, — man's dower, — but beauty, 
 
 nature gave, n , . ,j ,„ 
 
 " Beauty in lieu of spears, m heu of shields I 
 And what is beauty's sure concomitant. 
 Nay, intimate essential character. 
 But melting wiles, deliciousest deceits. 
 The whole redoubted armory of love ? 
 Therefore of vernal pranks, dishevellings 
 O' the hair of youth that dances April in. 
 And easily-imagined Hebe-slips 
 O'er sward which May makes over-smooth for 
 
 foot — 
 These shall we pry into ? — or wiselier wink, 
 Though numerous and dear they may have 
 
 been? 
 
 For lo, advancing Hymen and his pomp ! 
 Discedunt nunc amores, loves, farewell ! 
 Maneat amor, let love, the sole, reniain ! 
 Farewell to dewiness and prime of life ! 
 Bemains the rough determined day : dance 
 
 done. 
 To work, with plough and harrow ! What 
 
 comes next ? 
 'T is Guide henceforth guides Pompilia's step. 
 Cries, " No more friskings o'er the foodful glebe, 
 Else, 'ware the whip! ' Accordingly, — first 
 
 crack 
 0' the thong, — we hear that his young wife 
 
 was barred, 
 Cohibitafuit, from the old free life, 
 Vitam iiberiarem ducere. 
 
 Demur we ? Nowise ; heifer brave the hind ? 
 We seek not there should lapse the natural law. 
 The proper piety to lord and king 
 And husband : let the heifer bear the yoke ! 
 Only, I crave he cast not patience off, 
 This hind ; for deem you she endures the whip, 
 Nor winces at the goad, nay, restive, kicks ? 
 What if the adversary's charge be just, 
 And all untowardly she pursue her way 
 With groan and grunt, though hind strike ne'er 
 
 so hard ? 
 If petulant remonstrance made appeal. 
 Unseasonable, o'erprotracted, — if 
 Importunate challenge taxed the public ear 
 When silence more decorously had served 
 For protestation, — if PompiUan plaint 
 Wrought but to aggravate Guidonion ire, — 
 Why, such mishaps, ungainly though they be. 
 Ever companion change, are incident 
 To altered modes and novelty of life : 
 The philosophic mind expects no less. 
 Smilingly knows and names the crisis, sits 
 Waiting till old things go and new arrive. 
 Therefore, I hold a husband but inept 
 Who turns imjiatient at such transit-time. 
 As if this running from the rod would last ! 
 
 Since, even while I speak, the end is reached : 
 Success awaits the soon-disheartened man. 
 The parents turn their backs and leave the 
 house, 
 
JURIS DOCTOR JOHANNES-BAPTISTA BOTTINIUS 543 
 
 The wife may wail but none shaJl intervene : 
 He hath attained his objeotf groom and bride 
 Partake the nuptial bower no aoui can see, 
 Old things are passed and all again is new, 
 Over and gone the obstacles to peace, 
 Novorujn — tenderly the Mantuan turns 
 The expression, some such purpose in his eye — 
 NascitUT ordo ! Every storm is laid. 
 And forth from plain each pleasant herb may 
 
 peep. 
 Each bloom of wifehood in abeyance late : 
 (Confer a passage in the Canticles.) 
 
 But what if, as 't is wont with plant and wife, 
 Flowers — after a suppression to good end. 
 Still, when they do spring forth — sprout here, 
 
 spread there. 
 Anywhere likelier than beneath the foot 
 0' the lawful good-man gardener of the ground ? 
 He dug and dibbled, sowed and watered, — still 
 'T is a chance wayfarer shall pluck the increase. 
 Just so, respecting persons not too much. 
 The lady, foes allege, put forth each charm 
 And proper floweret 01 feminity 
 To whosoever had a nose to smell 
 Or breast to deck : what if the charge be true ? 
 The fault were graver had she looked with 
 
 choice. 
 Fastidiously appointed who should grasp. 
 Who, in the whole town, go without the prize ! 
 To nobody she destined donative. 
 Bat, first come was first served, the accuser 
 
 saith. 
 Put case her sort of ... in this kind . . . 
 
 Were many and oft and indiscriminate — 
 Impute ye as the action were prepense. 
 The gift particular, arguing malice so ? 
 Which butterfly of the wide air shall brag 
 " I was preferred to Guide " — when 't is clear 
 The cup, he quaffs at, lay with olent breast 
 Open to gnat, midge, bee and moth as well ? 
 One chaHce entertained the company ; 
 And if its peevish lord object the more, 
 Mistake, niisname such bounty in a wife. 
 Haste we to advertise him — charm of clieek, 
 Lustre of eye, allowance of the lip. 
 A l l womanly components in a spouse, 
 These are no household-bread each stranger's 
 
 bite 
 Leaves by so much diminished for the mouth 
 0' the master of the house at suppei^time : 
 But rather like a lump of spice they lie, 
 Morsel of myrrh, which scents the neighborhood 
 Yet greets its lord no lighter by a grain. 
 
 Nay, even so, he shall be satisfied ! 
 
 Concede we there was reason in his wrong. 
 
 Grant we his grievance and content the man ! 
 
 For lo, Pompilia, she submits herself ; 
 
 Ere three revolving years have crowned their 
 
 course. 
 Off and away she puts this same reproach 
 Of lavish bounty, inconsiderate gift 
 O' the sweets of wifehood stored to other ends : 
 No longer shall he blame *' She none excludes," 
 But substitute "She laudably sees all, 
 Searches the best out and selects the same." 
 
 For who is here, long sought and latest found, 
 Waiting his turn unmoved amid the whirl, 
 " Constans in levitate," — Ha, my lords ? 
 Calm in his levity, — indulge the quip ! — 
 Since 'tis a levite bears the beU away. 
 Parades him henceforth as Pompilia's choice. 
 'T is no ignoble object, husband ! Doubt'st ? 
 When here comes tripping Flaccus with his 
 
 phrase, 
 " Trust me, no miscreant singled from the mob, 
 Crede non ilium tibi de scelesta 
 Plehe delectum" but a man of mark, 
 A priest, dost hear? Why then, submit thy- 
 self I 
 Priest, ay, and very phoenix of such fowl. 
 Well-bom, of culture, young and vigorous. 
 Comely too, since precise the precept points — 
 On the selected levite be there found 
 Nor mole nor acar nor blemish, lest the mind 
 Come all uneandid through the thwarting flesh I 
 Was not the son of Jesse ruddy, sleek. 
 Pleasant to look on, pleasant every way ? 
 Since well he smote the harp and sweetly sang, 
 And danced till Abigail came out to see. 
 And seeing smiled and smiling ministered 
 The raisin-cluster and the cake of figs. 
 With ready meal refreshed the gifted youth. 
 Till Nabal, who was absent shearing sheep. 
 Pelt heart sink, took to bed (discreetly done — 
 They might have been beforehand with him else) 
 And died — would Guido have behaved as well ? 
 But ah, the faith of early days is gone. 
 Sen prisca fides ! Nothing died in him 
 Save courtesy, good sense and proper trust. 
 Which, when they ebb from souls they should 
 
 o'erflow. 
 Discover stub, weed, sludge and ugliness. 
 (The Pope, we know, is Neapolitan 
 And relishes a sea^side simile.) 
 Deserted by each charitable wave, 
 Gruido, left high and dry, shows jealous now 1 
 Jealous avouched, paraded : tax the fool 
 With any peccadillo, he responds, 
 " Truly I beat my wife through jealousy. 
 Imprisoned her and punished otherwise. 
 Being jealous : now would threaten, sword in 
 
 hand. 
 Now manage to mix poison in her sight. 
 And so forth : jealously I dealt, in fine." 
 Concede thus much, and what remains to prove ? 
 Have I to teach my masters what effect 
 Hath jealousy, and how, befooling men, 
 It makes false true, abuses eye and ear. 
 Turns mere mist adamantine, loads with sound 
 Silence, and into void and vacancy 
 Crowds a whole phalanx of conspiring foes ? 
 Therefore who owns ** I watched with jealousy 
 My wife," adds " for no reason in the world ! " 
 WTiat need that, thus proved madman, he re- 
 mark 
 " The thin" I thought a serpent proved an 
 
 eel"? — 
 Perchance the right Comacchian, six foot 
 
 length. 
 And not an inch too long for that rare pie 
 ^Master Arcangeli has heard of such) 
 Whose succulence makes fasting bearable ; 
 Meant to regale some moody splenetic 
 
544 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 Who, pleasing to mistake the donor's gift, 
 Spying I know not what Lernsean snake 
 I' the luscious Lenten creature, stamps for- 
 sooth 
 The dainty in the dust. 
 
 Enough ! Prepare, 
 Such Innes announced, for downright lunacy ! 
 Insanit homo, threat succeeds to threat. 
 And blow redoubles blow, — his wife, the 
 
 block. 
 But, if a block, shall not she jar the hand 
 That buffets her ? The in.iurious idle stone 
 Rebounds and hits the head of him who flung. 
 Causeless rage breeds, i' the wife now, rageful 
 
 cause, 
 Tyranny wakes rebellion from its sleep. 
 Rebellion, say I ? — rather, self-defence. 
 Laudable wish to live and see good days, 
 Pricks our Ponipilia now to fly the fool 
 By any means, at any price, — nay, more. 
 Nay, most of all, i' the very interest 
 0' the fool that, baffled of his blind desire 
 At any price, were truliest victor so. 
 Shall he effect his crime and lose his soul ? 
 No, dictates duty to a loving wife ! 
 Far better that the unconsummate blow, 
 Adroitly balked by her, should back a^ain, 
 Correctively admonish his own pate ! 
 
 Crime then, — the Court is with me ? — she 
 
 must crash ; 
 How crush it ? By all efficacious means ; 
 And these, — why, what in woman should they 
 
 be? 
 "With horns the buU, with teeth the lion 
 
 fights ; 
 To woman," quoth the lyrist quoted late, 
 "Nor teeth, nor horns, but beauty, Nature 
 
 gave ! " 
 Pretty i' the Pagan ! Who dares blame the use 
 Of armory thus allowed for natural, — 
 Exclaim against a seeming-dubious play 
 O' the sole permitted weapon, spear and shield 
 Alike, resorted to i' the circumstance 
 By poor Pompilia ? Grant she somewhat plied 
 Arts that allure, the magic nod and wink. 
 The witchery of gesture, spell of word. 
 Whereby the likelier to enlist this friend, 
 Yea stranger, as a champion on her side ? 
 Such man, being but mere man, ('t was all she 
 
 knew,) 
 Must be made sure by beauty's silken bond. 
 The weakness that subdues the strong, and 
 
 bows 
 Wisdom alike and folly. Grant the tale 
 O' the husband, which is false, were proved 
 
 and true 
 To the letter — or the letters, I should say, 
 Abominations he professed to find 
 And fix upon Pompilia and the priest, — 
 Allow them hers — for though she could not 
 
 write, 
 In early days of Eve-like innocence 
 That plucked no apple from the knowledge- 
 tree, 
 Yet, at the Serpent's word. Eve plucks and eats 
 And knows — especially how to read and write : 
 
 And so Pompilia, — as the move o' the maw. 
 Quoth Persius, makes a parrot bid Good 
 
 day!" ^ . 
 
 A crow salute the concave, and a pie 
 Endeavor at proficiency in speech, — 
 So she, through hunger after fellowship, 
 May well have learned, though late, to play the 
 
 scribe : 
 As indeed, there 's one letter on the list 
 Explicitly declares did happen here. 
 " You thought my letters could be none of 
 
 mine," 
 She tells her parents — "mine, who wanted 
 
 skill; 
 But now I have the skill, and write, you see ! " 
 She needed write love-letters, so she learned, 
 ''Neyatas artifex sequi voces " — though 
 This letter nowise 'scapes the common lot, 
 But lies i' the condemnation of the rest. 
 Found by the husband's seK who forged them 
 
 all. 
 Yet, for the sacredness of argument, 
 For this once an exemption shall it plead — 
 Anything, anything to let the wheek 
 Of argument run gUbly to their goal ! 
 Concede she wrote (which were preposterous) 
 This and the other epistle, — what of it ? 
 Where does the figment touch her candid 
 
 fame? 
 Being in peril of her life — " my life. 
 Not an hour's purchase," as the letter runs, — 
 And having but one stay in this extreme. 
 Out of the wide world but a single friend — 
 What could she other than resort to him, 
 And how with any hope resort but thus ? 
 Shall modesty dare bid a stranger brave 
 Danger, disgrace, nay death in her behalf — 
 Think to entice the sternness of the steel 
 Yet spare love's loadstone moving manly 
 
 mind ? 
 — Most of all, when such mind is hampered so 
 By growth of circumstance athwart the life 
 O' the natural man, that decency forbids 
 He stoop and take the common privilege, 
 Say frank " I love," as all the vulgar do. 
 A man is wedded to philosophy, 
 Married to statesmanship ; a man is old ; 
 A man is fettered by the foolishness 
 He took for wisdom and talked ten years 
 
 since ; 
 A man is, like our friend the Canon here, 
 A priest, and wicked if he break his vow : 
 Shall he dare love, who may be Pope one day ? 
 Despite the coil of such encumbrance here, 
 Suppose this man could love, unhappily, 
 And wotild love, dared he only let love show ! 
 In case the woman of his love speaks fii^t, 
 From what embarrassment she sets him free I 
 " 'Tis I who break reserve, begin appeal. 
 Confess that, whether you love me or no, 
 I love you ! ' What an ease to dignity. 
 What help of pride from the hard high-backed 
 
 chair 
 Down to the carpet where the kittens bask. 
 All under the pretence of gratitude ! 
 
 From all which, I deduce — the lady here 
 Was bound to proffer nothing short of love 
 
JURIS DOCTOR JOHANNES-BAPTISTA BOTTINIUS 
 
 545 
 
 To the priest whose service was to save her. 
 
 mat? 
 
 Shall she propose him lucre, dust o' the mine, 
 Rubbish o' the rock, some diamond, muck- 
 worms prize. 
 Some pearl secreted by a sickly fish ? 
 Scarcely ! She caters for a generous taste. 
 'T is love shall beckon, beauty bid to breast. 
 Till all the ISamson sink into the snare ! 
 Because, permit the end — permit therewith 
 Means to the end ! 
 
 How say you, good my lords ? 
 I hope you heard my adversary ring 
 The changes on this precept : now, let me 
 Eeverse the peal ! Quia data licitofine. 
 Ad ilium assequendum ordinata 
 Non sunt damnanda }nedia^ — licit end 
 Enough was found in mere escape from death, 
 To legalize our means illicit else 
 Of feigned love, false allurement, fancied fact. 
 Thus Venus losing Cupid on a day, 
 (See that Idyllium Moschi) seeking help, 
 In the anxiety of motherhood. 
 Allowably promised, '' Who shall bring report 
 Where he is wandered to, my winged babe, 
 I give him for reward a nectared kiss ; 
 But who brings safely back the truant's self. 
 His be a super-sweet makes kiss seem cold ! " 
 Are not these things writ for example-sake ? 
 
 To such permitted motive, then, refer 
 
 All those professions, else were hard explain. 
 
 Of hope, fear, jealousy, and the rest of love ! 
 
 He is Myrtillus, Amaryllis she, 
 
 She burns, he freezes, — all a mere device 
 
 To catch and keep the man, may save her 
 
 Ufe, 
 Whom otherwise nor catches she nor keeps ! 
 Worst, once, turns best now : in all faith, she 
 
 feigns : 
 Feigning, — the liker innocence to guilt. 
 The truer to the life in what she feigns ! 
 How if Ulysses, — when, for public good 
 He sunk particular qualms and pi lyed the spy, 
 Entered TrOy's hostile gate in beggar's garb — 
 How if he first had boggled at this clont. 
 Grown dainty o'er that clack-dish V Grime is 
 
 grace 
 To whoso gropes amid the dung for gold. 
 
 Hence, beyond promises, we praise each proof 
 That promise was not simply made to break. 
 Mere moonshine-structure meant to fade at 
 
 dawn: 
 We praise, as consequent and requisite. 
 What, enemies allege, were more than words. 
 Deeds — meetings at the window, twilight- 
 trysts. 
 Nocturnal entertainments in the dim 
 Old labyrinthine palace ; lies, we know — 
 Inventions we, long since, turned inside out. 
 Must such external semblance of intrigue 
 Demonstrate that intrigue there lurks perdue ? 
 Does every hazel-sheath disclose a nut ? 
 He were a Molinist who dared maintain 
 That midnight meetings in a screened alcove 
 Must argue folly in a matron — since 
 So would he bring a slur on Judith's self. 
 
 Commended beyond women, that she lured 
 
 The lustful to destruction through his lust. 
 
 Pompilia took not Judith's liberty, 
 
 No falchion find you in her hand to smite, 
 
 No damsel to convey in dish the head 
 
 Of Holof ernes, — style the Canon so — 
 
 Or is it the Count ? If I entangle me 
 
 With my similitudes, — if wax wings melt. 
 
 And earthward down I drop, not mine the 
 
 fault : 
 Blame your beneficence, Court, sun. 
 Whereof the beamy smile affects my flight ! 
 What matter, so PompUia's fame revive 
 I' the warmth that proves the bane of Icarus ? 
 
 Yea, we have shown it lawful, necessary 
 Pompilia leave her husband, seek the house 
 O' the parents : and because 'twixt home and 
 
 home 
 Lies a long road with many a danger rife. 
 Lions by the way and serpents in the path. 
 To rob and ravish, — much behooves she keep 
 Each shadow of suspicion from fair fame. 
 For her own sake much, but for his sake more. 
 The ingrate husband's. Evidence shall be. 
 Plain witness to the world how white she walks 
 I' the mire she wanders through ere Rome she 
 
 reach. 
 And who so proper witness as a priest ? 
 Gainsay ye ? Let me hear who dares gainsay ! 
 I hope we still can punish heretics ! 
 " Give me the man," I say with him of Gath, 
 '^ That we may fight together ! " None, I 
 
 think ; 
 The priest is granted me. 
 
 Then, if a priest, 
 One juvenile and potent : else, mayhap, 
 That dragon, our Saint George would slay, slays 
 
 him. 
 And should fair face accompany strong hand. 
 The more complete equipment ; nothing mars 
 Work, else praiseworthy, like a bodily flaw 
 I' the worker : as 't is said Saint Paul himself 
 Deplored the check o' the puny presence, stUl 
 Cheating his fulmination of its nash. 
 Albeit the bolt therein went true to oak. 
 Therefore the agent, as prescribed, she takes, — 
 Both juvenile and potent, handsome too, — 
 In all obedience : good," yon grant again. 
 Do you ? I would you were the husband, lords ! 
 How prompt and facile might departure be ! 
 How boldly would Pompilia and the priest 
 March out of door, spread flag at beat of drum, 
 But that inapprehensive Guido grants 
 Neither premiss nor yet conclusion here. 
 And, purblind, dreads a bear in every bush ' 
 For his own quietude and comfort, then. 
 Means must be found for flight in masquerade 
 At hour when all things sleep — "Save 
 
 jealousy ! " 
 Right, Judges ! Therefore shall the lady's 
 
 wit 
 Supply the boon thwart nature balks him of, 
 And do him service with the potent drug 
 (Helen's nepenthe, as my lords opine) 
 Which respites blessedly each fretted nerve 
 0' the much-endiiring man: accordingly. 
 
546 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 There lies he, duly dosed and sound asleep, 
 Relieved of woes or real or r^ved about. 
 While soft she leaves his side, he shall not 
 
 wake ; 
 Nor stop who steals away to join her friend, 
 Nor do him mischief should he catch that friend 
 Intent on more than friendly ofiice, — nay. 
 Nor get himself raw head and bones laid bare 
 In payment of his apparition ! 
 
 Thus 
 Would I defend the step, — were the thing 
 
 true 
 Which is a fable, — see my former speech, — 
 That Guido slept (who never slept a wink) 
 Through treachery, an opiate from his wife. 
 Who not so much as knew what opiates mean. 
 
 Now she may start : or hist, — a stoppage still ! 
 
 A journey is an enterprise of cost 1 
 
 As in campaigns, we light but others pay, 
 
 ISuis expensis, nemo miiiiat. 
 
 'T is Guido's self we guard from accident. 
 
 Ensuring safety to Pompilia, versed 
 
 Nowise in misadventures by the way, 
 
 Hard riding and lOugh quarters, the rude fare, 
 
 The unready host. What magic mitigates 
 
 Each plague of travel to the unpractised wife ? 
 
 Money, sweet Sirs ! And were the fiction fact 
 
 Khe helped herself thereto with liberal hand 
 
 From out her husband's store, — what fitter 
 
 use 
 Was ever husband's money destined to ? 
 With bag and baggage thus did Dido once 
 Decamp, — for more authority, a queen I 
 
 So is she fairly on her route at last. 
 Prepared for either fortune : nay and if 
 The priest, now all aglow with enterprise. 
 Cool somewhat presently when fades the flush 
 0' the first adventure, clouded o'er belike 
 By doubts, misgivings how the day may die. 
 Though born with such auroral brilliance, — if 
 The brow seem over-pensive and the lip 
 'Gin lag and lose the prattle lightsome late, — 
 Vanquished by tedium of a prolonged jaunt 
 In a close carriage o'er a jolting road. 
 With only one young female substitute 
 For seventeen other Canons of ripe age 
 Were wont to keep him company in church, — 
 Shall not Pompilia haste to dissipate 
 The silent cloud that, gathering, bodes her 
 
 bale? — 
 Prop the irresoluteness may portend 
 Suspension of the project, check the flight. 
 Bring ruin on them both ? Use every means. 
 Since means to the end are lawful ! What i' 
 
 _ the way 
 Of wile should have allowance like a kiss 
 Sagely and sisterly administered, 
 Sororia saltern oscula ? We find 
 Such was the remedy her wit applied 
 To each incipient scruple of the priest. 
 If we believe, — as, while my wit is mine 
 I cannot, — what the driver testifies, 
 Borsi, oaUed Venerino, the mere tool 
 Of Guido and his friend the Governor, — 
 Avowal I proved wrung from out the wretch. 
 
 After long rotting in imprisonment, 
 
 As price of liberty and favor : long 
 
 They tempted, he at last succumbed, and lo 
 
 Counted them out full tale each kiss and more, 
 
 " The journey being one long embrace," quoth 
 
 he. 
 Still, though we should believe the driver's lie, 
 Nor even admit as probable excuse. 
 Right reading of the riddle, — as I urged 
 In my first argument, with fruit perhaps — 
 That what the owl-like eyes (at back of head. 1) 
 0' the driver, drowsed by driving night and 
 
 day, 
 Supposed a vulgar interchange of lips. 
 This was but innocent jog of head 'gainst head. 
 Cheek meeting jowl as apple may touch pear 
 From branch and branch contiguous in the 
 
 wind. 
 When Autumn blusters and the orchard 
 
 rocks : — 
 That rapid run and the rough road were cause 
 0' the casual ambiguity, no harm 
 I' the world to eyes awake and penetrative : — 
 Say, — not to grasp a truth I can release 
 And saf eljf fight without, yet conquer still, — 
 Say, she kissed him, say, he kissed her again ! 
 Such osculation was a potent means, 
 A very efficacious help, no doubt : 
 Such with a third part of her nectar did 
 Venus imbue : why should Pompilia fiing 
 The poet's declaration in his teeth ? — 
 Pause to employ what — since it had success, 
 And kept the priest her servant to the end — 
 We must presume of energy enough. 
 No whit superfluous, so permissible ? 
 
 The goal is gained : day, night, and yet a day 
 Have run their round : a long and devious road 
 Is traversed, — many manners, various men 
 Passed in review, what cities did they see. 
 What hamlets mark, what profitable food 
 For after-meditation cuU and store ! 
 Till Rome, that Rome whereof — this voice 
 Would it might make our Molinists observe. 
 That she is built upon a rock nor shall 
 Their powers prevail against her! — Rome, I 
 
 say. 
 Is all but reached ; one stage more and they 
 
 stop 
 Saved : pluck up heart, ye pair, and forward, 
 
 then ! 
 
 Ah, Nature — baffled she recurs, alas I 
 Nature imperiously exacts her due. 
 Spirit is willing but the flesh is weak : 
 Pompilia needs must acquiesce and swoon, 
 Give hopes alike and fears a breathing-while. 
 The innocent sleep soundly : sound she sleeps, 
 So let her slumber, then, unguarded save 
 By her own chastity, a triple mail, 
 And his good hand whose stalwart arms have 
 
 borne 
 The sweet and senseless birrden like a babe 
 From coach to couch, — the serviceable 
 
 strength ! 
 Nay, what and it he gazed rewardedly 
 On the pale beauty prisoned in embrace. 
 Stooped over, stole a balmy breath perhaps 
 
JURIS DOCTOR JOHANNES-BAPTISTA BOTTINIUS 
 
 S47 
 
 For more assurance sleep was not decease — 
 
 " [ft vidi" " how I saw 1 " succeeded by 
 
 " Ut peril," " how I sudden lost my brains ! " 
 
 — What harm ensued to her unconscious quite ? 
 
 For, curiosity — how natural ! 
 
 Importunateness -^ what a privileg:e 
 
 In the ardent sex ! And why curb ardor here ? 
 
 How can the priest but pity whom he saved ? 
 
 And pity is so near to love, and love 
 
 So neighborly to all unreasonableness ! 
 
 As to love's object, whether love were sage 
 
 Or foolish, could Pompilia know or care, 
 
 Being still sound asleep, as I premised ? 
 
 Thus the philosopher absorbed by thought, 
 
 Even Archimedes, busy o'er a book 
 
 The while besiegers sacked his Syracuse, 
 
 Was ignorant of the imminence o' the point 
 
 0' the sword till it surprised him : let it stab, 
 
 And never knew himself was dead at all. 
 
 So sleep thou on, secure whate'er betide I 
 
 For thou, too, hast thy problem hard to solve — 
 
 How so much beauty is compatible 
 
 With so much innocence ! 
 
 Fit place, methinks, 
 While in this task she rosily is lost, 
 To treat of and repel objection here 
 Which, — frivolous, I grant, — my mind mis- 
 gives. 
 May somehow still have flitted, gadfly-like. 
 And teased the Court at times — as if, all said 
 And done, there seemed, the Court might nearly 
 
 say. 
 In a certain acceptation, somewhat more 
 Of what may pass for insincerity, 
 Falsehood, throughout the course Pompilia 
 
 took, 
 Than befits Christian, Pagans held, we know, 
 Man always ought to aim at good and truth, 
 Not always put one thing in the same words : 
 Non idem semper dicere sed spectare 
 Debemus. But the Pagan yoke was light ; 
 " Lie not at all," the exacter precept bids : 
 Bach least lie breaks the law, — is sin, we 
 
 hold. 
 I humble me, but venture to submit — 
 What prevents sin, itself is sinless, sure : 
 And sin, which hinders sin of deeper dye. 
 Softens itself away by contrast so. 
 Conceive me ! Little sin, by none at all. 
 Were properly condemned for great : but great, 
 By greater, dwindles into small again. 
 Now, what is greatest sin of womanhood ? 
 That which unwomans it, abolishes 
 The nature of the woman, — impudence. 
 Who contradicts me here ? Concede me, then. 
 Whatever friendly fault may interpose 
 To save the sex from self -abolishment 
 Is three-parts on the way to virtue's rank ! 
 And, what is taxed here as duplicity, 
 Feint, wile, and trick, — admitted for the 
 
 nonce, — 
 What worse do one and all than interpose. 
 Hold, as it were, a deprecating hand, 
 Statuesquely, in the Medicean mode, 
 Before some shame which modesty would veil ? 
 Who blames the gesture prettily perverse ? 
 Thus, —lest ye miss a point illustrative, — 
 
 Admit the husband's calumny — allow 
 
 That the wife, having penned the epistle 
 
 fraught 
 With horrors, charge on charge of crime she 
 
 heaped 
 0' the head of Pietro and Violante — (still 
 Presumed her parents) — having dispatched the 
 
 same 
 To their arch-enemy Paolo, through free choice 
 And no sort of compulsion in the world — 
 Put case she next discards simplicity 
 For craft, denies the voluntary act. 
 Declares herself a passive instrument 
 I' the husband's hands; that, duped by knavery, 
 She traced the characters she could not write. 
 And took on trust the unread sense which, read, 
 And recognized were to be spumed at once : 
 Allow this calumny, I reiterate ! 
 Who is so duU as wonder at the pose 
 Of our Pompilia in the circumstance ? 
 Who sees not that the too-ingenuous soul. 
 Repugnant even at a duty dune 
 Which brought beneath too scrutinizing glars 
 The misdemeanors, — buried in the dark, — 
 Of the authors of her being, was believed, — 
 Stung to the quick at her impulsive deed. 
 And willing to repair what harm it worked. 
 She — wise in this beyond what Nero proved, 
 Who, when folk urged the candid juvenile 
 To sign the warrant, doom the guilty dead, 
 " Would I had never learned to write ! " quoth 
 
 he! 
 — Pompilia rose above the Koman, cried, 
 " To read or write I never learned at all ! " 
 splendidly mendacious I 
 
 But time fleets : 
 Let us not linger ; hurry to the end. 
 Since flight does end, and that disastrously. 
 Beware ye blame desert for unsuccess, 
 Disparage each expedient else to praise. 
 Call failure foUy ! Man's best effort fails. 
 After ten years' resistance Troy succumbed : 
 Could valor save a town, Troy still had stood. 
 Pompilia came off halting in no point 
 Of courage, conduct, her long journey through: 
 But nature sank exhausted at the close, 
 And, as I said, she swooned and slept all night. 
 Mom breaks and brings the husband : we assist 
 At the spectacle. Discovery succeeds. 
 Ha, how is this ? What moonstruck rage is 
 
 here? 
 Though we confess to partial frailty now. 
 To error in a woman and a wife. 
 Is 't by the rough way she shall be reclaimed ? 
 Who bursts upon her chambered privacy ? 
 What crowd profanes the chaste cvhiculum ? 
 What outcries and lewd laughter, scurril gibe 
 And ribald jest to scare the ministrant_ 
 Good angels that commerce with souls in sleep? 
 Why, had the worst crowned Guide to his 
 
 wish. 
 Confirmed his most irrational surmise. 
 Yet there be bounds to man's emotion, 
 
 checks 
 To an immoderate astonishment. 
 'T is decent horror, regulated wrath. 
 Befit our dispensation : have we back 
 
548 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 The old Pagan license ? Shall a Vulcan clap 
 
 His net o' the sudden and expose the pair 
 
 To the unquenchable universal mirth ? 
 
 A feat, antiquity saw scandal in 
 
 So clearly, that the nauseous tale thereof — 
 
 Demodocus his nugatory song — 
 
 Hath ever been concluded modern stuff 
 
 Impossible to the mouth of the gi-ave Muse, 
 
 So, foisted into that Eighth Odyssey 
 
 By some impertinent pickthank. thou fool, 
 
 Count Guido Franeeschini, what didst gain 
 
 By publishing thy secret to the world ? 
 
 Were all the precepts of the wise a waste — 
 
 Bred in thee-not one touch of reverence ? 
 
 Admit thy wife — admonish we the fool — 
 
 Were falseness' self, why chronicle thy shame ? 
 
 Much rather should thy teeth bite out thy 
 
 tongue. 
 Dumb lip consort with desecrated brow, 
 iSilence become historiographer. 
 And thou — thine own Cornelius Tacitus ! 
 But virtue, barred, still leaps the barrier, lords ! 
 — Still, moon-like, penetrates the encroaching 
 
 mist 
 And bursts, all broad and bare, on night, ye 
 
 know ! 
 Surprised, then, in the garb of truth, perhaps, 
 PompiHa, thus opposed, breaks obstacle. 
 Springs to her feet, and stands Tlialassian-pure, 
 Confronts the foe, — nay, catches at his sword 
 And tries to kill the intruder, he complains. 
 Why, so she gave her lord his lesson back, 
 Crowned him, this time, the virtuous woman's 
 
 way, 
 With an exact obedience ; he brought sword. 
 She drew the same, since swords are meant to 
 
 draw. 
 Tell not me 't is sharp play with tools on edge ! 
 It was the husband chose the weapon here 
 Why did not he inaugurate the game 
 With some gentility of apophthegm 
 Still pregnant on the phUosophic page. 
 Some captivating cadence still a-lisp 
 0' the poet's lyre? Such spells subdue the 
 
 surge. 
 Make tame the tempest, much more mitigate 
 The passions of the mind, and probably 
 Had moved Pompilia to a smiling blush. 
 No, he must needs prefer the argument 
 0' the blow : and she obeyed, in duty bound. 
 Returned him buffet ratiocinative — 
 Ay, in the reasoner's own interest, 
 For wife must follow whither husband leads, 
 Vindicate honor as himself prescribes. 
 Save him the very way himself bids save ! 
 No question but who jumps into a quag 
 Should stretch forth hand and pray us " PuU 
 
 me out 
 By the hand ! " such were the customary cry : 
 But Guido pleased to bid " Leave hand alone ! 
 Join both feet, rather, jump upon my head : 
 I extricate myself by the rebound ! " 
 And dutifully as enjoined she jumped — 
 Drew his own sword and menaced his own life. 
 Anything to content a wilful spouse. 
 
 And so he was contented — one must do 
 Justice to the expedient which succeeds, 
 
 Strange as it seem : at flourish of the blade, 
 The crowd drew back, stood breathless and 
 
 abashed, 
 
 Then murmured. This should be no wanton 
 
 wife, T. ■) 1. 
 
 No conscience-stricken smner, caught i the 
 
 act. 
 And patiently awaiting our first stone : 
 But a poor hard-pressed all-bewildered thmg, 
 Has rushed so far, misguidedly perhaps. 
 Meaning no more harm than a frightened sheep. 
 She sought for aid ; and if she niade mistake 
 I' the man could aid most, why — so mortals 
 
 do: 
 Even the blessed Magdalen mistook 
 Far less f orgivably : consult the pla<!e — 
 Supposing him to be the gardener, 
 'Sir,' said she, and so following." Why more 
 
 words ? 
 Forthwith the wife is pronounced innocent : 
 What would the husband more than gain his 
 
 cause. 
 And find that honor flash in the world's eye. 
 His apprehension was lest soil had smirched ? 
 
 So, happily the adventure comes to close 
 Whereon my fat opponent grounds his charee ' 
 Preposterous ; at mid-day he groans '* How 
 
 dark ! " 
 Listen to me, thou Arohangelic swine ! 
 Where is the ambiguity to blame. 
 The flaw to find in our Pompilia ? Safe 
 She stands, see ! Does thy comment follow 
 
 quick, 
 "Safe, inasmuch as at the end proposed ; 
 But thither she picked way by devious pat^ — 
 Stands dirtied, no dubiety at all ! 
 I recognize success, yet, aU the same. 
 Importunately will suggestion prompt — 
 Better Pompilia gained the right to boast, 
 ' No devious path, no doubtful patch was mine, 
 I saved my head nor sacrificed my foot ! ' 
 Why, being in a peril, show mistrust 
 Of the angels set to guard the innocent ? 
 Why rather hold by obvious vulgar help 
 Of stratagem and subterfuge, excused 
 Somewhat, but stiU no less a foil, a fault. 
 Since low with high, and good with bad is 
 
 linked? 
 Methinks I view some ancient bas-relief. 
 There stands Hesione thrust out by Troy, 
 Her father's hand has chained her to a crag. 
 Her mother's from the virgin plucked the vest, 
 At a safe distance both distressful watch, 
 While near and nearer comes the snorting ore. 
 I look that, white and perfect to the end. 
 She wait till Jove dispatch some demigod ; 
 Not that, — impatient of celestial club 
 Alcmena's son should brandish at the beast, — 
 She daub, disguise her dainty limbs with pitch. 
 And so elude the purblind monster ! Ay, 
 The trick succeeds, but 't is an ugly trick, 
 Wliere needs have been no trick ! " 
 
 My answer ? Faugh! 
 Nimis incongrue ! Too absurdly put ! 
 Sententiam ego teneo contrariam. 
 Trick, I maintain, had no alternative. 
 
JURIS DOCTOR JOHANNES-BAPTISTA BOTTINIUS 
 
 549 
 
 The heavens were bound with brass, — Jove far 
 
 at feast 
 (No feast like that thou didst not ask me to, 
 Arcangeli, — I heard of thy regale !) 
 With the unblamed -<35thiop, — Hercules spun 
 
 wool 
 V the lap of Omphale, while Virtue shrieked — 
 The brute came paddling all the faster. You 
 Of Troy, who stood at distance, where 's the aid 
 You offered in the extremity ? Most and least, 
 Gentle and siifiple, here the Governor, 
 There the Archbishop, evei'ywhere the friends, 
 Shook heads and waited for a miracle, 
 Or went their way, left Virtue to her fate. 
 Just this one rough and ready man leapt forth ! 
 — Was found, sole anti-Fabius (dare I say) 
 Who restored things, with no delay at all, 
 ^i hand cunctando rem restituit ! He, 
 He only, Caponsacchi 'mid a crowd, 
 Caught Virtue up, carried Pompilia ofP 
 Through gaping impotence of sympathy 
 In ranged Arezzo : what you take for pitch 
 Is nothing worse, belike, than black and blue, 
 Mere evanescent proof that hardy hands 
 Did yeoman's service, cared not where the gripe 
 Was more than duly energetic : bruised. 
 She smarts a little, but her bones are saved 
 A fracture, and her skin will soon show sleek. 
 How it disgusts when weakness, false-refined. 
 Censures the honest rude effective strength, — 
 When sickly dreamers of the impo^ible 
 Decry plain sturdiness which does the feat 
 With eyes wide open ! 
 
 Did occasion serve, 
 I could illustrate, if ray lords allow ; 
 Quid vetat^ what forbids I aptly ask 
 With Horace, that I give my anger vent. 
 While I let breathe, no less, and recreate, 
 The gravity of my Judges, by a tale ? 
 A case in point — what though an apologue 
 Graced by tradition ? — possibly a fact : 
 Tradition must precede all scripture, words 
 Serve as our warrant ere our books can be : 
 So, to tradition back we needs must go 
 For any fact's authority : and this 
 Hath lived so far (like jewel hid in muck) 
 On page of that old lying vanity 
 Called "Sepher Toldoth Yeschu: " Grod be 
 
 I read no Hebrew, — take the thing on trust ; 
 But I believe the writer meant no good 
 (Blind as he was to truth in some respects) 
 To our pestiferous and schismatic . . . well, 
 My lords' conjecture be the touchstone, show 
 The thing for what it is ! The author lacks 
 Discretion, and his zeal exceeds : but zeal, — 
 How rare in our degenerate day ! Enough ! 
 Here is the story : fear not, I shall chop 
 And change a little, else my Jew would press 
 All too unmannerly before the Court. 
 
 It happened once, — begins this foolish Jew, 
 Pretending to write Christian history, — 
 That three, held greatest, best and worst of men, 
 Peter and John and Judas, spent a day 
 In toil and travel through the country-side 
 On some sufficient business — I suspect. 
 
 Suppression of some Molinism i' the bud. 
 Foot-sore and hungry, dropping with fatigue, 
 They reached by nightfall a poor lonely grange, 
 Hostel or inn : so, knocked and entered there. 
 " Your pleasure, great ones ? " — *' Shelter, 
 
 rest and food ! " 
 For shelter, there was one bare room above ; 
 For rest therein, three beds of bundled straw : 
 For food, one wretched starveling fowl, no 
 
 more — 
 Meat for one mouth, but mockery for three. 
 "You have my utmost." How should supper 
 
 serve ? 
 Peter broke silence : '* To the spit with fowl ! 
 And while 't is cooking, sleep ! — since beds 
 
 there be. 
 And, so far, satisfaction of a want. 
 Sleep we an hour, awake at supper-time, 
 Then each of us narrate the dream he had, 
 And he whose dream shall prove the happiest, 
 
 point 
 The clearliest out the dreamer as ordained 
 Beyond his fellows to receive the fowl. 
 Him let our shares be cheerful tribute to. 
 His the entire meal, may it do him good ! " 
 Who could dispute so plain a consec[uence ? 
 So said, so done : each hurried to his straw, 
 Slept his hour's-sleep and dreamed his dream, 
 
 and woke. 
 * ' I, " commenced John, * ' dreamed that I gained 
 
 the prize 
 We all aspire to : the proud place was mine, 
 Throughout the earth and to the end of time 
 I was the Loved Disciple : mine the meal ! ' ' 
 " But I," proceeded Peter, " dreamed, a word 
 Gave me the headship of our company. 
 Made me the Vicar and Vice-Cerent, gave 
 The keys of heaven and heU into my hand. 
 And o'er the earth, dominion : mine the meal ! " 
 " While I," submitted in soft under-tone 
 The Iscariot — sense of his unworthiness 
 Tumii^ each eye up to the inmost white — 
 With long-drawn sigh, yet letting both Hps 
 
 smack, 
 '* I have had just the pitifullest dream 
 That ever proved man meanest of his mates, 
 And born foot-washer and foot-wiper, nay 
 Foot-kisser to each comrade of you all ! 
 I dreamed I dreamed ; and in that mimic dream 
 (Impalpable to dream as dream to fact) 
 Methought I meanly chose to sleep no wink 
 But wait until I heard ray brethren snore ; 
 Then stole from couch, slipped noiseless o'er 
 
 the planks. 
 Slid downstairs, furtively approached the 
 
 hearth, 
 Found the fowl duly brown, both back and 
 
 breast. 
 Hissing in harmony with the cricket's chirp, 
 Grilled to a point : said no grace, but fell to. 
 Nor finished till the skeleton lay bare. 
 In penitence for which ignoble dream, 
 Lo, I renounce ray portion cheerfully ! 
 Fie on the flesh — be mine the ethereal gust. 
 And yours the sublunary sustenance ! 
 See that whate'er be left ye give the poor ! " 
 Down the two scuttled, one on other's heel. 
 Stung by a fell surmise ; and found, alack. 
 
5S° 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 A goodly savor, both the drumstick hones, 
 And that which henceforth took the appropri- 
 ate name 
 0' the Merry-thought, in memory of the fact 
 That to keep wide awake is man's best dream. 
 
 So, — as was said once of Thucydides 
 
 And his sole joke, " The lion, lo, hath 
 
 laughed ! " — 
 Just so, the Governor and all that 's great 
 I' the city never meant that Innocence 
 Should quite starve while Authority sat at 
 
 meat ; 
 They meant to fling a hone at banquet's end : 
 Wished well to our Pompilia — in their dreams, 
 Nor bore the secular sword in vain — asleep. 
 Just so the Archbishop and ail good like him 
 Went to bed meaning to pour oil and vrine 
 I' the wounds of her, next day, — but loE^ ere 
 
 day. 
 They had burned the one and drunk the other, 
 
 while 
 Just so, again, contrariwise, the priest 
 Sustained poor Nature in extremity 
 By stuffing barley-bread into her mouth, 
 Saving Pompilia (grant the parallel) 
 By the plain homely and straightforward way 
 Taught him by common sense. Let others 
 
 shriek 
 " Oh what refined expedients did we dream 
 Proved us the only fit to help the fair ! " 
 He cried, " A carriage waits, jump in with 
 
 me! " 
 
 And now, this application pardoned, lords, — 
 This recreative pause and breathing-whUe, — 
 Back to beseemingness and gravity ! 
 For Law steps in : Guido appeals to Law, 
 Demands she arbitrate, — does well for once. 
 Law, of thee how neatly was it said 
 By that old Sophocles, thou hast thy seat 
 I' the very breast of Jove, no meanlier throned I 
 Here is a piece of work now, hitherto 
 Begun and carried on, concluded near. 
 Without an eye-glance cast thy sceptre's way ; 
 And, lo, the stumbUng and discomfiture ! 
 Well may you call them " lawless " means, 
 
 men take 
 To extricate themselves through mother-wit 
 When tangled haply in the toUs of life ! 
 Guido would try conclusions vrith his foe. 
 Whoe'er the foe was and whate'er the offence ; 
 He would recover certain dowry-dues : 
 Instead of asking Law to lend a hand. 
 What pother of sword drawn and pistol cocked. 
 What peddling with forged letters and paid 
 
 spies. 
 Politic circumvention I — ail to end 
 As it began — by loss of the fool's head. 
 First in a figure, presently in a fact. 
 It is a lesson to mankind at large. 
 How other were the end, would men be sage 
 And bear confidingly each quarrel straight, 
 Law, to thy recipient mother-knees I 
 How would the children light come and prompt 
 
 go. 
 This, with a red-cheeked apple for reward, 
 The other, peradventure red-cheeked too 
 
 I' the rear, by taste of birch for punishment. 
 No foolish brawling murder any more ! 
 Peace for the household, practice for the Fise, 
 And plenty for the exchequer of my lords ! 
 Too much to hope, in this world : in the next, 
 Who knows ? Since, why should sit the Twelve 
 
 enthroned 
 To judge the tribes, unless the tribes be judged ? 
 And 't is impossible but ofl^ences come ; 
 So, all 's one lawsuit, all one long leet-day ! 
 
 Forgive me this digression — that I stand 
 Entranced awhile at Law's first beam, outbreak 
 0' the business, when the Count's good angel 
 
 bade 
 " Put up thy sword, bom enemy to the ear, 
 And let Law listen to thy difirerence ! " 
 And Law does listen and compose the strife, ' 
 Settle the suit, how wisely and how well ! 
 On our Pompilia, faultless to a fault. 
 Law bends a brow maternally severe. 
 Implies the worth of perfect chastity. 
 By fancying the flaw she cannot find. 
 Superfluous sifting snow, nor helps nor harms : 
 'T is safe to censure levity in youth. 
 Tax womanhood with incUscretion, sure ! 
 Since toys, permissible to-day, become 
 Follies to-morrow : prattle shocks in church : 
 And that curt skirt which lets a maiden skip, 
 The matron changes for a trailing robe. 
 Mothers may aim a blow with hEdf-shut eyes 
 Nodding above their spindles by the fire, 
 And chance to hit some hidden fault, else safe. 
 Just so. Law hazarded a punishment — 
 If apphcable to the circumstance. 
 Why, well ! if not so apposite, well too. 
 " Quit the gay range o' the world," I hear her 
 
 crjr, 
 *' Enter, in lieu, the penitential pound : 
 Exchange the gauds of pomp for ashes, dust 1 
 Leave each mollitious haunt of luxury ! 
 The golden-garnished silken-couched alcove, 
 The many-columned terrace that so tempts 
 Feminine soul put foot forth, extend ear 
 To fluttering joy of lover's serenade, — 
 Leave these for cellular seclusion I mask 
 And dance no more, but fast and pray I 
 
 avaunt — 
 Be burned, thy wicked townsman's sonnet- 
 book ! 
 Welcome, mild hynmal by . . . some better 
 
 scribe ! 
 For the warm arms were wont enfold thy flesh. 
 Let wire-shirt plough and whip-cord disci- 
 pline I " 
 Tf such an exhortation proved, perchance. 
 Inapplicable, words bestowed in waste, 
 What harm, since Law has store, can spend nor 
 miss? 
 
 And so, o\w paragon submits herself. 
 Goes at command into the holy house, 
 And, also at command, comes out again ; 
 For, could the effect of such obedience prove 
 Too certain, too immediate ? Being healed, 
 Go blaze abroad the matter, blessed one ! 
 Art thou sound forthwith ? Speedily vacate 
 The step by pool-side, leave Bethesda free 
 
JURIS DOCTOR JOHANNES-BAPTISTA BOTTINIUS 
 
 551 
 
 To patients plentifully posted round, 
 Since the whole need not the physician ! Brief, 
 She may betake her to her parents' place. 
 Welcome her, father, with wide arms once 
 
 more; 
 Motion her, mother, to thy breast again 1 
 For why ? Since Law relinquishes the charg^e. 
 Grants to your dwelling-place a prison's style. 
 Rejoice you with Pompilia ! golden days, 
 RedeMtit Saturnia regna. Six weeks slip. 
 And she is domiciled in house and home 
 As though she thence had never budged at aU. 
 And thither let the husband — joyous, ay, 
 But contrite also — quick betake hiraseu. 
 Proud that his dove which lay among the pots 
 Hath mued those dingy feathers, — moulted 
 
 now, 
 Shows silver bosom clothed with yellow gold ! 
 So shall he tempt her to the perch she fled. 
 Bid to domestic bliss the truant back. 
 
 But let him not delay ! Time fleets how fast. 
 
 And opportunity, the irrevocable. 
 
 Once flown will flout him ! Is the furrow 
 
 traced ? 
 If field with com ye fail preoccupy. 
 Darnel for wheat and thistle-beards for grain, 
 Infelix lolium, carduus horridus, 
 Will grow apace in combination prompt. 
 Defraud the husbandman of his desire. 
 Already — hist — what murmurs 'monish now 
 The laggard ? — doubtful, nay, fantastic bruit 
 Of such an apparition, such return 
 Interdum, to anticipate the spouse, 
 Of Caponsacehi's very self ! 'T is said. 
 When nights are lone and company is rare. 
 His visitations brighten winter up. 
 If so they did — which nowise I believe — 
 (How can I ? — proof abounding that the priest. 
 Once fairly at his relegation-place. 
 Never once left it), still, admit he stole 
 A midnight march, would fain see friend again. 
 Find matter for instruction in the past, 
 Renew the old adventure in such chat 
 As cheers a fireside ! He was lonely too. 
 He, too, must need his recreative hour. 
 Shall it amaze the philosophic mind 
 If he, lon^ wont the empurpled eup to quaff. 
 Have feminine society at will. 
 Being debarred abruptly from all drink 
 Save at the spring which Adam used for wine. 
 Dreads harm to just the health he hoped to 
 
 guard. 
 And, trying abstinence, gains malady ? 
 Ask Tozzi, now physician to the Pope ! 
 " Little by little break " — (I hear he bids 
 Master Arcangeli my antagonist. 
 Who loves good cheer, and may indulge too 
 
 much; 
 So I explain the logic of the plea 
 Wherewith he opened our proceedings late) — 
 " Little by little break a habit, Don, 
 Become necessity to feeble flesh ! " 
 And thus, nocturnal taste of intercourse 
 (Which never happened, — but, suppose it did) 
 May have been used to dishabituate 
 By sip and sip this drainer to the dregs 
 O the draught of conversation, — heady stuff, 
 
 Brewage which, broached, it took two days and 
 
 nights 
 To properly discuss i' the journey. Sirs ! 
 Such power has second-nature, men call use. 
 That undelightful objects get to charm 
 Instead of chafe : the daily colocynth 
 Tickles the palate by repeated dose. 
 Old sores scratch kindly, the ass makes a push 
 Although the mill-yoke-wound be smarting yet, 
 For mill-door bolted on a holiday ; 
 Nor must we marvel here if impulse urge 
 To talk the old story over now and then. 
 The hopes and fears, the stoppage and the 
 
 haste, — 
 Subjects of colloquy to surfeit once. 
 " Here did you bid me twine a rosy wreath I " 
 " And there you paid my lips a compliment I " 
 '^ Here you admired the tower could be so 
 
 tall!" 
 *' And there you likened that of Lebanon 
 To the nose of the beloved ! " Trifles ! still, 
 " Forsan et hcBC olim,^^ — such trifles serve 
 To make the minutes pass in winter-time. 
 
 Husband, return then, I re-counsel thee I 
 For, Anally, of all glad circumstance 
 Should make a prompt return imperative, 
 What in the world awaits thee, dost suppose ? 
 0' the sudden, as good gifts are wont befall. 
 What is the hap of our unconscious Count ? 
 That which lights bonflre and sets cask ar-tilt, 
 Dissolves the stubbom'st heart in jollity. 
 admirable, there is bom a babe, 
 A son, an heir, a Franceschini last 
 And best o' the stock 1 Pompilia, thine the 
 
 palm ! 
 Repaying incredulity with faith. 
 Ungenerous thrift of each marital debt 
 With bounty in profuse expenditure, 
 Pompilia scorns to have the old year end 
 Without a present shall ring in the new — 
 Bestows on her too-parsimonious lord 
 An infant for the apple of his eye, 
 Core of his heart, and crown completing life, 
 'True summum bonum of the earthly lot f 
 " We," saith ingeniously the sage, '* are bom 
 Solely that others may be bom of us." 
 So, father, take thy child, for thine that child, 
 Oh nothing doubt I In wedlock bom, law 
 
 holds 
 Baseness impossible: since ^^Jilius est 
 Quern nupticB demonstrant,^^ twits the text 
 Whoever dares to doubt. 
 
 Yet doubt he dares) 
 faith, where art thou flown from out th^ 
 
 world ? 
 Already on what an age of doubt we fall ! 
 Instead of each disputing for the prize. 
 The babe is bandied here from that to this. 
 Whose the babe ? " Cujum pecus ? " Guido'a 
 
 lamb ? 
 " An Melibcei ? " Nay, but of the priest ! 
 " Non sed ^gonis ! " Some one must be sire : 
 And who shall say, in such a puzzling strait. 
 If there were not vouchsafed some miracle 
 To the wife who had been harassed and abased 
 More than enough by Gnido's family 
 
552 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 For non-production of the promised fruit 
 
 Of marriage ? What if Nature, I demand. 
 
 Touched to the quick by taunts upon her sloth. 
 
 Had roused herself, put forth recondite power, 
 
 Bestowed this birth to vindicate her sway. 
 
 Like the strange favor Maro memorized 
 
 As granted Aristseus when his hive 
 
 Lay empty of the swarm ? not one more bee — 
 
 Not one more babe to Franceschini's house ! 
 
 And lo, a new birth filled the air with joy. 
 
 Sprung from the bowels of the generous steer, 
 
 A novel son and heir rejoiced the Count ! 
 
 Spontaneous generation, need I prove 
 
 Were facile feat to Nature at a pinch ? 
 
 Let whoso doubts, steep horsehair certain 
 
 weeks. 
 In water, there will be produced a snake ; 
 Spontaneous product of the horse, which horse 
 Happens to be the representative — 
 Now that I think on 't — of Arezzo's self. 
 The very city our conception blessed : 
 Is not a prancing horse the City-arms ? 
 What sane eye fails to see coincidence ? 
 Cur ego, boast thou, my Pompilia, then, 
 Desperem H&ri sine conjuge 
 
 Mater — How well the Ovidian distich suits ! — 
 JSt parere intacto dummodo 
 Casta viro ? such miracle was wrought ! 
 Note, further, as to mark the prodigy. 
 The babe in question neither took the name 
 Of Gruido, from the sire presumptive, nor 
 Giuseppe, from the sire potential, but 
 Gaetano — last saint of our hierarchy, 
 And newest namer for a thing so new ! 
 What other motive could have prompted 
 
 choice ? 
 
 Therefore be peace again : exult, ye hills ! 
 
 Ye vales rejoicingly break forth in song ! 
 
 Incipe, parve puer, begin, small boy, 
 
 Sisu cognoscere patrem, with a laugh 
 
 To recognize thy parent ! Nor do thou 
 
 Boggle, O parent, to return the grace ! 
 
 Nee anceps kcere, pater, puero 
 
 Cognoscendo — one may well eke out the 
 
 prayer ! 
 In vain ! The perverse Guido doubts his eyes. 
 Distrusts assurance, lets the devil drive. 
 Because his house is swept and garnished now. 
 He, having summoned seven like himself, 
 Must hurry thither, knock and enter in, 
 And make the last worse than the iirst, in- 
 deed ! 
 Is he content ? We are. No further blame 
 0' the man and murder ! They were stigma^ 
 
 tized 
 Befittingly : the Court heard long ago 
 My mind o' the matter, which, outpouring full. 
 Has long since swept like surge, i' the simile 
 Of Homer, overborne both dyke and dam. 
 And whelmed alike client and advocate : 
 His fate is sealed, his life as good as gone, 
 On him I am not tempted to waste word. 
 Yet though my purpose holds, — which was and 
 
 is 
 And solely shall be to the very end. 
 To draw the true effigies of a saint, 
 Do justice to perfection in the sex, — 
 
 Yet let not some gross pamperer of the flesh 
 
 And niggard in the spirit's nourishment, 
 
 Whose feeding hath obfuscated his wit 
 
 Rather than law, —he never had, to lose — 
 
 Let not such advocate object to me 
 
 I leave my proper function of attack ! 
 
 " What 's this to Bacchus ? " — (in the classic 
 
 phrase. 
 Well used, for once) he hiccups probably. 
 Advocate o' the Poor, thou born to make 
 Their blessing void — beaii pauperes ! 
 By painting saintship I depicture sin : 
 Beside my pearl, I prove how black thy jet. 
 And, through Pompilia's virtue, Guide's crime. 
 
 Back to her, then, — with but one beauty more, 
 End we our argument, — one crowning grace 
 Pre-eminent 'mid agony and death. 
 For to the last Pompilia played her part, 
 Used the right means to the permissible end, 
 And, wily as an eel that stirs the mud 
 Thick overhead, so baffling spearman's thrust, 
 She, while he stabbed her, simulated death, 
 Delayed, for his sake, the catastrophe, 
 Obtained herself a respite, four days' grace. 
 Whereby she told her story to the world. 
 Enabled me to make the present speech. 
 And, by a full confession, saved her soul. 
 
 Yet hold, even here would malice leer its last, 
 Gurgle its choked remonstrance ; snake, hiss 
 
 free ! 
 Oh, that 's the objection ? And to whom ? — 
 
 not her 
 But me, forsooth — as, in the very act 
 Of both confession and (what followed close) 
 Subsequent talk, chatter and gossipry. 
 Babble to sympathizing he and she 
 Whoever chose besiege her dying-bed, — 
 As this were found at variance with my tale. 
 Falsified all I have adduced for truth, 
 Admitted not one peccadillo here. 
 Pretended to perfection, first and last, 
 O' the whole procedure — perfect in the end, 
 Perfect i' the means, perfect in everything, 
 Leaving a lawyer nothing to excuse. 
 Reason away and show his skUl about ! 
 — A flight, impossible to Adamic flesh. 
 Just to be fancied, scarcely to be wished, 
 And, anyhow, unpleadable in court ! 
 "How reconcile," gasps Malice, "that with 
 
 this ? " 
 
 Your " this," friend, is extraneous to the law, 
 Comes of men's outside meddling, the unskUled 
 Interposition of such fools as press 
 Out of their province. Must I speak my 
 
 mind ? 
 Far better had Pompilia died o' the spot 
 Than found a toi^ue to wag and shame the 
 
 law. 
 Shame most of all herself, — could friendship 
 
 fail. 
 And advocacy lie less on the alert : 
 But no, they shall protect her to the end ! 
 Do I credit the alleged narration ? No ! 
 Lied our Pompilia then, to laud herself ? 
 Still, no 1 Clear up what seems discrepancy ? 
 
JURIS DOCTOR JOHANNES-BAPTISTA BOTTINIUS 
 
 553 
 
 The means abound : art 's long, though time iM 
 
 short ; 
 So, keeping me in compass, all I urge 
 Is — since, confession at the point of death, 
 Nam in articulo mortis, with the Church 
 Passes for statement honest and sincere. 
 Nemo presumitur reus esse, — then. 
 If sure that all affirmed would he believed, 
 'T was charity, in her so circumstanced. 
 To spend the last breath in one effort more 
 For universal good of friend and foe : 
 And, — by pretending utter innocence. 
 Nay, freedom from each foible we forgive, — 
 Ke-integrate — not solely her own fame. 
 But do the like kind office for the priest 
 Whom telling the crude truth about might vex. 
 Haply expose to peril, abbreviate 
 Indeed the long career of usefulness 
 Presumably before him : while her lord, 
 Whose fleeting life is forfeit to the law, — 
 What mercy to the culprit if , by just 
 The gift of such a full certificate 
 Of his immitigable guiltiness. 
 She stifled in hjra the absurd conceit 
 Of murder as it were a mere revenge 
 — Stopped confirmation of that jealousy 
 Which, did she but acknowledge the first flaw. 
 The faintest foible, had emboldened him 
 To battle with the charge, balk penitence, 
 Bar preparation for impending fate ! 
 Whereas, persuade him that he slew a saint 
 Who sinned not even where she may have sinned. 
 You urge him all the brisklier to repent 
 Of most and least and aught and everything ! 
 Still, if this view of mine content you not. 
 Lords, nor excuse the genial falsehood here. 
 We come to our Triarii, last resource : 
 We fall back on the inexpugnable, 
 Sulomitting, — she confessed before she talked I 
 The sacrament obliterates the sin : 
 What is not, — was not, therefore, in a sense. 
 Let Molinists distinguish, " Souls washed white 
 But red once, still show pinkish to the eye ! " 
 We say, abolishment is nothingness. 
 And nothingness has neither head nor tail, 
 End nor beginning ! Better estimate 
 Exorbitantly, than disparage aught 
 Of the efficacity of the act, I hope ! 
 
 Solvuntur tabulce ? May we laugh and go ? 
 
 Well, — not before (in filial gratitude 
 
 To Law, who, mighty mother, waves adieu) 
 
 We take on us to vindicate Law's self ! 
 
 For, — yea, Sirs, — curb the start, curtail the 
 
 stare ! — 
 Remains that we apologize for haste 
 I' the Law, our lady who here bristles up, 
 " Blame my procedure ? Could the Court mis- 
 take? 
 (Which were indeed a misery to think) ; 
 Did not my sentence in the former stage 
 0' the business bear a title plain enough ? 
 Decretum " — I translate it word for word — 
 " ' Decreed ; the priest, for his complicity 
 I' the flight and deviation of the dame. 
 As well as for unlawful intercourse, 
 Is banished three years : ' crime and penalty 
 Declared alike, li he be taxed with guilt. 
 
 How can you call Pompilia innocent ? 
 If both be innocent, have 1 been just ? '* 
 
 Gently, mother, judge men — whose mis- 
 take 
 Is in the mere misapprehensiveness ! 
 The Titulus a-top of your decree 
 Was but to ticket there the kind of charge 
 You in good time would arbitrate upon. 
 Title is one thing, — arbitration's self, 
 Probatio, quite another possibly 
 Subsistitj there holds good the old response, 
 Besponsio tradita, we must not stick. 
 Quod non sit attendendus Titulus, 
 To the Title, sed Frobatio, but the Proof, 
 Besultans exprocessu, the result 
 0' the Trial, and the style of punishment, 
 Mtpcma per sententiam imposita. 
 All is tentative, till the sentence come : 
 An indication of what men expect. 
 But nowise an assurance they shall find. 
 Lords, what if we permissibly relax 
 The tense bow, as the law-god Phoebus bids, 
 Relieve our gravity at labor's close ? 
 I traverse Rome, feel thirsty, need a draught, 
 Look for a wine-shop, find it by the bough 
 Projecting as to say " Here wine is sold ! " 
 So much I know, — " sold : " but what sort of 
 
 wine ? 
 Strong, weak, sweet, sour, home-made or foreign 
 
 drink ? 
 That much must I discover by myself. 
 " Wine is sold," quoth the bough, " but good 
 
 or bad. 
 Find, and inform us when you smack your lips ! " 
 Exactly so. Law hangs her title forth. 
 To show she entertains you with such case 
 About such crime. Come in 1 she pours, you 
 
 quaff. 
 You find the Priest good liquor in the main, 
 But heady and provocative of brawls ; 
 Remand the residue to flask once more. 
 Lay it low where it may deposit lees, 
 I' the cellar : thence produce it presently. 
 Three years the brighter and the better ! 
 
 Thus, 
 Law's son, have I bestowed my filial help. 
 And thus I end, tenax proposito ; 
 Point to point as I purposed have I drawn 
 Pompilia, and implied as terribly 
 Guido : so, gazing, let the world crown Law — ■ 
 Able once more, despite my impotence. 
 And helped by the acumen of the Court, 
 To eliminate, display, make triumph truth ! 
 What other prize than truth were worth the 
 pains ? 
 
 There 's my oration — much exceeds in length 
 That famed panegyric of Isocrates, 
 They say it took him fifteen years to pen. 
 But all those ancients could say anything ! 
 He put in just what rushed into his head : 
 While I shall have to prune and pare and print. 
 This comes of being bom in modern times 
 With priests for auditory. StiU, it pays. 
 
SS4 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 THE POPE 
 
 Like to Ahasuerus, that shrewd prince, 
 I will begin, — as is, these seyen years now, 
 My daily wont, — and read a History 
 (Written by one whose deft right hand was dust 
 To the last digit, ages ere my birth; 
 Of all my predecessors, Popes of Rome : 
 For though mine ancient early dropped the pen. 
 Yet others picked it up and wrote it dry, 
 bince of the making books there is no end. 
 And so I have the Papacy complete 
 From Peter first to Alexander last ; 
 Oan question each and take instruction so. 
 Have I to dare ! — I ask, how dared this Pope ? 
 To suffer ? fciuch-an-one, how suffered he ? 
 Being about to judge, as now, I seek 
 How judged once, well or ill, some other Pope ; 
 Study some signal judgment that subsists 
 To blaze on, or else blot, the page which seals 
 The sum up of what gain or loss to God 
 Came of his one more Vicar in the world. 
 So, do I iind example, rule of life ; 
 So, square and set in order the next page, 
 Shall be stretched smooth o'er my own funeral 
 cyst. 
 
 Eight hundred years exact before the year 
 I was made Pope, men made Formosus Pope, 
 Say Sigebert and other chroniclers. 
 Ere I confirm or quash the Trial here 
 Of Guido Franceschini and his friends. 
 Head, — How there was a ghastly Trial once 
 Of a dead man by a live man, and both, Popes : 
 Thus — in the antique pemuan's very phrase. 
 
 " Then Stephen. Pope and seventh of the name. 
 Cried out, in synod as he sat in state. 
 While choler quivered on his brow and beard, 
 ' Come into court, Formosus, thou lost wretch. 
 That claimedst to be late Pope as even I ! ' 
 
 " And at the word, the great door of the church 
 Flew wide, and in they brought Formosus' self. 
 The body of him, dead, even as embalmed 
 And buried duly in the Vatican 
 Eight months before, exhumed thus for the 
 
 nonce. 
 They set it, that dead body of a Pope, 
 Clothed in pontifio vesture now again. 
 Upright on Peter's chair as if alive. 
 
 " And Stephen, springing up, cried furiously, 
 * Bishop of Porto, wherefore didst presume 
 To leave that see and take this Roman see. 
 Exchange the lesser for the greater see, 
 — A thing against the canons of the Church ? ' 
 
 " Then one — (a Deacon who, observing forms. 
 Was placed by Stephen to repel the charge. 
 Be advocate and mouthpiece of the corpse) — 
 Spoke as he dared, set stammeringly forth 
 With white lips and dry tongue, — as but a 
 
 youth. 
 For frightful was the corpse-face to behold, — 
 How nowise lacked there precedent for this. 
 
 " But when, for his last precedent of all, 
 Emboldened by the Spirit, out he blurts, 
 ' And, Holy Father, didst not thou thyself 
 Vacate the lesser for the greater see. 
 Half a year since change Arago for Rome ? 
 '— Ye have the sin's defence now, synod mine 1 
 Shrieks Stephen in a beastly froth of rage : 
 ' Judge now betwixt him dead and me alive ! 
 Hath he intruded, or do I pretend ? 
 Judge, judge ! ' — breaks wavelike one whole 
 foam of wrath. 
 
 " Whereupon they, being friends and followers. 
 Said, ' Ay, thou art Christ's Vicar, and not he I 
 Away with what is frightful to behold 1 
 This act was uncanonic and a fault.' 
 
 "Then, swallowed up in rage, Stephen ex- 
 claimed, 
 ' So, guilty ! So, remains I punish guilt ! 
 He is unpoped, and all he did I da.mn : 
 The Bishop, that ordained him, I degrade : 
 Depose to laics those he raised to priests : 
 What they have wrought is mischief nor shall 
 
 stand. 
 It is confusion, let it vex no more 1 
 Since I revoke, annul and abrogate 
 All his decrees in all kinds : they are void ! 
 In token whereof and warning to the world. 
 Strip me yon miscreant of those robes usurped. 
 And clothe him with vile serge befitting such ! 
 Then hale the carrion to the market-place ; 
 Let the town-hangman chop from his right 
 
 hand 
 Those same three fingers which he blessed 
 
 withal ; 
 Next cut the head off, once was crowned for- 
 sooth : 
 And last go fling them, fingers, head and trunk, 
 To Tiber that my Christian fish may sup ! ' 
 — Either because of IX©Y2 which means Fish 
 And very aptly symbolizes Christ, 
 Or else because the Pope is Fisherman, 
 And seals with Fisher's-signet. 
 
 " Anyway, 
 So said, so done : himself, to see it done. 
 Followed the corpse they trailed from street to 
 
 street 
 Till into Tiber wave they threw the thing. 
 The people, crowded on the banks to see, 
 Were loud or mute, wept or laughed, cursed or 
 
 jeered. 
 According as the deed addressed their sense ; 
 A scandal verily : and out spake a Jew, 
 'Wot ye your Christ had vexed our Herod 
 
 thus ? ' 
 
 " Now when, Formosus being dead a year, 
 His judge Pope Stephen tasted death in turn. 
 Made captive by the mob and strangled straight, 
 Romanus, his successor for a month, 
 Did make protest Formosus was with God, 
 Holy, just, true in thought and word and deed. 
 Next Theodore, who reigned but twenty days. 
 Therein convoked a synod, whose decree 
 Did reinstate, repope the late unpoped. 
 And do away with Stephen as accursed. 
 
THE POPE 
 
 555 
 
 So that when presently certain fisher-folk 
 (As if the queasy liver could not hold 
 Its swallowed Jonas, hut discharged the meal) 
 Produced the timely product of their nets, 
 The mutilated man, Formosus, — saved 
 From putrefaction by the embalmer's spice, 
 Or, as some said, by sanctity of fiesh, — 
 ' Why, lay the body again,' bade Theodore^ 
 ' Among his predecessors, in the church 
 And burial-place of Peter I ' which was done. 
 ' And,* addeth Luitprand, ' many of repute, 
 Pious and still alive, avouch to me 
 That, as they bore the body up the aisle, 
 The saints in imaged row bowed each his head 
 For welcome to a brother-saint come back.' 
 As for Romanus and this Theodore, 
 These two Popes, through the brief reign 
 
 granted each. 
 Could but initiate what John came to close 
 And give the final stamp to : he it was. 
 Ninth of the name, (I follow the best guides) 
 Who, — in full synod at Ravenna held 
 With Bishops seventy-four, and present too 
 Eude King of France with his Archbishopry, — 
 Did condemn Stephen, anathematize 
 The disinterment, and make all blots blank. 
 * For,' argaeth here Auxilius in a place 
 De Ordinationibus, ' precedents 
 Had been, no lack, before Formosus long, 
 Of Bishops so transferred from see to see, — 
 Marinus, for example : ' read the tract. 
 
 *' But, after John, came Serg^us, reaffirmed 
 The right of Stephen, cursed Formosus, nay 
 Cast out, some say, his corpse a second time. 
 And here, — because the matter went to 
 
 ground. 
 Fretted by new griefs, other cares of the ag-e, — 
 Here is the last pronouncing of the Church, 
 Her sentence that subsists unto this day. 
 Yet constantly opinion hath prevailed 
 1' the Church, Formosus was a holy man." 
 
 Which of the judgments was infallible ? 
 Which of my predecessors spoke for God ? 
 And what availed Formosus that this cursed. 
 That blessed, and then this other cursed again ? 
 ■■'Fear ye not those whose power can kill the 
 
 body 
 And not the soul," saith Christ, "but rather 
 
 those 
 Can cast both soul and body into hell ! " 
 
 John iudged thus in Eight Hundred Ninety 
 
 Eight, 
 Exact eight hundred years ago to-day 
 When, sitting in his stead, Vicegerent here, 
 I must give judgment on my own behoof. 
 So worked the predecessor : now, my turn ! 
 
 In God's name ! Once more on this earth of 
 
 God's, 
 While twilight lasts and time wherein to work, 
 I take his staff with my uncertain hand, 
 And stay my six and fourscore years, my due 
 Labor and sorrow, on his judgment-seat, 
 And forthwith think, speak, act, in place of 
 
 him — 
 
 The Pope for Christ. Once more appeal is 
 
 made 
 From man's assize to mine : I sit and see 
 Another poor weak trembling human wretch 
 Pushed by his fellows, who pretend the right, 
 Up to the gulf which, where I gaze, begins 
 From this world to the next, — gives way and 
 
 way, / 
 
 Just on the edge over the awful dark : 
 With nothing to arrest him but my feet. 
 He catches at me with convulsive face, 
 Cries " Leave to live the natural minute more !" 
 While hollowly the avengers echo " Leave ? 
 None ! So has he exceeded man's due share 
 In man's fit license, wrung by Adam's fall. 
 To sin and yet not surely die, — that we- 
 All of us sinful, aU with need of grace, 
 All chary of our life, — the minute more 
 Or minute less of grace which saves a soul, — 
 Bound to make common cause with who craves 
 
 time, 
 — We yet protest against the exorbitance 
 Of sin in this one sinner, and demand 
 That his poor sole remaining piece of time 
 Be plucked from out his clutch : put him to 
 
 death ! 
 Punish him now ! As for the weal or woe 
 Hereafter, God grant mercy ! Man be just. 
 Nor let the felon boast he went scot-free ! " 
 And I am bound, the solitary judge. 
 To weigh the worth, decide upon the plea, 
 And either bold a hand out, or withdraw 
 A foot and let the wretch drift to the fall. 
 Ay, and while thus I dally, dare perchance 
 Put fancies for a comfort 'twixt this calm 
 And yonder passion that I have to bear, — 
 As if reprieve were possible for both 
 Prisoner and Pope, — how easy were reprieve I 
 A touch o' the hand-beU here, a hasty word 
 To those who wait, and wonder they wait loi^, 
 I' the passage there, and I should gain the 
 
 Ufe!- 
 Yea, though I flatter me with fancy thus, 
 I know it is but Nature's craven-trick. 
 The case is over, judgment at an end. 
 And all things done now and irrevocable : 
 A mere dead man is Franceschini here, 
 Even as Formosus centuries ago. 
 I have worn through this sombre wintry day, 
 With winter in my soul beyond the world's, 
 Over these dismalest of documents 
 Which drew night down on me ere eve befell, — 
 Pleadings and counter-pleadings, figure of fact 
 Beside fact's self, these summaries, to wit, — 
 How certain three were slain by certain five : 
 I read here why it was, and how it went. 
 And how the chief o' the five preferred ex- 
 cuse. 
 And how law rather chose defence shotdd lie, — 
 What argument he urged by wary word 
 When free to play ofF wile, start subterfuge. 
 And what the unguarded groan told, torture's 
 
 feat 
 When law grew brutal, outbroke, overbore 
 And glutted hunger on the truth, at last, — 
 No matter for the flesh and blood between. 
 All 's a clear rede and no more riddle now. 
 Truth, nowhere, lies yet everywhere in these — 
 
556 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 Not absolutely in a portion, yet 
 Evolvable from the whole : evolved at last 
 Painfully, held tenaciously by me. 
 Therefore there is not any doubt to clear 
 When I shall write the brief word presently 
 And ehink the hand-bell, which 1 pause to do. 
 Irresolute ? Not I, more than the mound 
 ^^^th the pine-trees on it yonder ! Some sur- 
 mise, 
 Perchance, that since man's wit is fallible. 
 Mine may fail here ? Suppose it so, — what 
 
 then ? 
 Say, — Guido, I count gn^ilty, there 's no babe 
 So guiltless, for I misconceive the man ! 
 What 's in the chance should move me from my 
 
 mind? 
 If, as I walk in a rough country-side. 
 Peasants of mine cry, " Thou art he can help. 
 Lord of the land and counted wise to boot : 
 Look at our brother, strangling in his foam. 
 He fell so where we find him, — prove thy 
 
 worth ! " 
 I may presume, pronounce, " A frenzy-fit, 
 A falling-sickness or a fever-stroke ! 
 Breathe a vein, copiously let blood at once ! " 
 So perishes the patient, and anon 
 I hear my peasants — '* All was error, lore ! 
 Our story, thy prescription : for there crawled 
 In due time from our hapless brother's breast 
 The serpent which haa stung him : bleeding 
 
 slew 
 Whom a prompt cordial had restored to health.'' 
 What other should I say than " God so willed : 
 Mankind is ignorant, a man am I : 
 Call ignorance my sorrow, not my sin ! " 
 So and not otherwise, in aftei^time. 
 If some aeuter wit, fresh probing, sound 
 This multifarious mass of words and deeds 
 Deeper, and reach through guUt to innocence, 
 I shall face Guide's ghost nor blench a jot. 
 *' God who set me to judge thee, meted out 
 So much of judging faculty, no more : 
 Ask him if 1 was slack in use thereof ! " 
 I hold a heavier fault imputable 
 Inasmuch as I changed a chaplain once. 
 For no cause, — no, if I must bare my heart, — 
 Save that he snuffied somewhat saying mass. 
 For I am 'ware it is the seed of act, 
 God holds appraising in his hollow palm, 
 Not act grown great thence on the world be- 
 low. 
 Leafage and branchage, vulgar eyes admire. 
 Therefore I stand on my integrity. 
 Nor fear at all : and if I hesitate. 
 It is because I need to breathe awhile. 
 Rest, as the human right allows, review 
 Intent the little seeds of act, my tree, — 
 The thought, which, clothed in deed, I give the 
 
 world 
 At ehink of bell and push of arrased door. 
 
 pale dejiarture, dim disgrace of day ! 
 Winter 's in wane, his vengeful worst art thou. 
 To dash the boldness of advancing March ! 
 Thy chill persistent rain has purged our streets 
 Of gossipry ; pert tongue and idle ear 
 By this, consort 'neath archway, portico. 
 But wheresoe'er Rome gathers in the gray. 
 
 Two names now snap and flash from mouth to 
 
 mouth — , „ . , , , 
 
 (Sparks, flint and steel strike) — Guido and the 
 
 Pope. , 1, . 
 
 By this same hour to-morrow eve — ana, 
 liow do they call him ? — the sagacious Swede' 
 Who finds by figures how the chances prove, ' 
 Why one comes rather than another thing. 
 As, say, such dots turn up by throw of dice. 
 Or, if we dip in Virgil here and there 
 And prick for such a verse, when such shall 
 
 point. 
 Take this Swede, tell him, hiding name and 
 
 rank, 
 Two men are in our city this dull eve ; 
 One doomed to death, — but hundreds in such 
 
 plight 
 Slip aside, clean escape by leave of law 
 Which leans to mercy in this latter time ; 
 Moreover in the plenitude of life 
 Is he, with strength of limb and brain adroit, 
 Presumably of service here : beside. 
 The man is noble, backed by nobler friends : 
 Nay, they so wish him well, the city's self 
 Makes common cause with who — house-magis- 
 trate, 
 Patron of hearth and home, domestic lord — 
 But ruled his own, let aliens cavil. Die ? 
 He '11 bribe a jailer or break prison first ! 
 Nay, a sedition may be helpful, give 
 Hint to the mob to batter wall, bum gate, 
 And bid the favorite malefactor march. 
 Calculate now these chances of escape ! 
 " It is not probable, but well may be." 
 Again, there is another man, weighed now 
 By twice eight years beyond the seven-times- 
 
 ten. 
 Appointed overweight to break oui' branch. 
 And this man's loaded branch lifts, more than 
 
 snow, 
 All the world's cark and care, though a bird's 
 
 nest 
 Were a superfluous burden : notably 
 Hath he been pressed, as if his age were youth, 
 From to-day's dawn till now that day departs. 
 Trying one question with true sweat of soul, 
 ' ' Shall the said doomed man fitlier die or live ? " 
 When a straw swallowed in his posset, stool 
 Stumbled on where his path lies, any puff 
 That 's incident to such a smoking flax, 
 Hurries the natural end and quenches him ! 
 Now calculate, thou sage, the chances here, 
 Say, which shall die the sooner, this or that ? 
 " That, possibly, this in aR likelihood." 
 I thought so: yet thou tripp'st, my foreign 
 
 friend ! 
 No, it will be quite otherwise, — to-day 
 Is Guide's last : my term is yet to run. 
 
 But say the Swede were right, and I forthwith 
 Acknowledge a prompt summons and lie dead : 
 Why, then I stand already in God's face 
 And hear, "Since by its fruit a tree is judged, 
 Show me thy fruit, the latest act of thine ! 
 For in the last is summed the first and all, — 
 What thy life last put heart and soul into. 
 There sliall I taste thy product." I must plead 
 This condemnation of a man to-day. 
 
THE POPE 
 
 ssr 
 
 Not so ! Expect nor question nor reply 
 At what we ligure as God's judgment-bar I 
 None of th^ vile way by the barren words 
 Which, more than any deed, characterize 
 Man as made subject to a curse : no speech — 
 That still bursts o'er some lie which lurks inside. 
 As the split skin across the coppery snake. 
 And most denotes man ! since, in all beside, 
 In hate or lust or gTiile or unbelief, 
 Out of some core of truth tlie excrescence comes, 
 And, in the last resort, the man may urge 
 '■' So was T made, a weak thing: that g-ave way 
 To truth, to impube only strong; since true, 
 And hated, lusted, used guile, forwent faith." 
 But when man walks the garden of this world 
 For his own solace, and, unchecked by law, 
 Speaks or keeps silence as himself sees fit, 
 Without the least incumbency to lie, 
 
 — Why, can he tell you what a rose is like, 
 Or how the bii'ds fly, and not slip to false 
 Though truth serve better ? Man must tell his 
 
 mate 
 Of you, me and himself, knowing he lies. 
 Knowing his fellow knows the same, — will think 
 "■ He lies, it is the method of a man ! " 
 And yet will speak for answer " It is truth " 
 To him who shall rejoin " Again a lie ! " 
 Therefore these filthy rags of speech, this coil 
 Of statement, comment, query and response, 
 Tatters all too contaminate for use, 
 Have no renewing : He the Truth is, too. 
 The Word. We men, in our degree, may know 
 There, simply, instantaneously, as here 
 After long time and amid many lies. 
 Whatever we dare think we know indeed 
 
 — That I am I, as He is He, — what else ? 
 But be man's m thod for man's life at least ! 
 Wherefore, Antonio Pignatelli, thou 
 
 My ancient self, who wast no Pope so long 
 But studiedst God and man, the many years 
 I' the school, i' the cloister, in the diocese 
 Domestic, legate-rule in foreign lands, — 
 Thou other force in those old busy days 
 Than this gray ultimate decrepitude, — 
 Yet sensible of fires that more and more 
 Visit a soul, in passage to the sky, 
 Left nakeder than when flesh-robe was new — 
 Thou, not Pope but the mere old man o' the 
 
 world, 
 Supposed inquisitive and dispassionate, 
 Wilt thou, the one whose speech I somewhat 
 
 trust, 
 Question the after-me, this self now Pope, 
 Hear his procedure, criticise his work ? 
 Wise in its generation is the world. 
 
 This is why Guido is found reprobate. 
 
 I see hira furnished forth for his career. 
 
 On starting for the life-chance in our world, 
 
 With nearly all we count sufficient help : 
 
 Body and mind in balance, a sound frame, 
 
 A solid intellect : the wit to seek. 
 
 Wisdom to choose, and courage wherewithal 
 
 To deal in whatsoever circumstance 
 
 Should minister to man, make life succeed. 
 
 Oh, and much drawback ! what were earth 
 
 without ? 
 Is this our ultimate stage, or starting-place 
 
 To try man's foot, if it will creep or climb, 
 'Mid obstacles in seeming, points that prove 
 Advantage for who vaults from low to high 
 And makes the stumbling-block a stepping- 
 stone ? 
 So, Guido, bom with appetite, lacks food : 
 Is poor, who yet could deftly play-oft" wealth : 
 Straitened, whose limbs are restless tfll at lai^e. 
 He, as he eyes each outlet of the cirque 
 And narrow penfold for probation, pines 
 After the good things just outside its grate. 
 With less monition, fainter conscience-twiteh. 
 Barer instinctive qualm, at the first feel 
 Of greed unseemly, prompting grasp undue, 
 Than nature furnishes her main mankind, — 
 Making it harder to do wrong than right 
 The first time, careful lest the common ear 
 Break measure, miss the outstep of life's march. 
 Wherein I see a trial fair and fit 
 For one else too unfairly fenced about, 
 Set above sin, beyond his fellows here : 
 Gruarded from the arch-tempter all must fight, 
 By a great birth, traditionary name. 
 Diligent culture, choice companionship. 
 Above all, conversancy with the faith 
 Which puts forth for its base of doctrine just, 
 ** Man is bom nowise to content himself, 
 But please God." He accepted such a rule. 
 Recognized man's obedience ; and the Church, 
 Which simply is such rule's embodiment. 
 He clave to, he held on by, — nay, indeed, 
 Near pushed inside of, deep as layman durst, 
 Professed so much of priesthood as might sue 
 For priest's - exemption where the layman 
 
 sinned, — 
 Go this arm frocked which, bare, the law would 
 
 bruise, 
 Hence, at this moment, what 's his last resource. 
 His extreme stay and utmost stretch of hope 
 But that, — convicted of such crime as law 
 Wipes not away save with a worldling's 
 
 blood, — 
 Guido, the three-parts consecrate, may 'scape ? 
 Nay, the portentous brothers of the man 
 Are veritably priests, protected each 
 May do his murder in the Church's pale, 
 Abate Paul, Canon Girolamo ! 
 This is the man proves irreligiousest 
 Of all mankind, religion's parasite ! 
 This may forsooth plead dinned ear, jaded 
 
 sense. 
 The vice o' the watcher who bides near the bell, 
 Sleeps sound because the clock is vigilant. 
 And cares not whether it be shade or shine. 
 Doling out day and night to all men else ! 
 Why was the choice o' the man to niche him- 
 self 
 Perversely 'neath the tower where Time's own 
 
 tongue 
 Thus undertakes to sermonize the world ? 
 Why, but because the solemn is safe too, 
 The belfry proves a fortress of a sort, 
 Has other uses than to teach the hour : 
 Turns sunscreen, paravent and orabrifuge 
 To whoso seeks a shelter in its pale, 
 — Ay, and attractive to unwary folk 
 Who gaze at storied portal, statued spire. 
 And go home with full head but empty purse. 
 
558 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 Nor dare suspect the sacristau the thief ! , ■ 
 jBhall Judas — hard upon the donor's heel, 
 To fileh the fragments of the basket — plead 
 He was too near the preacher's mouth, nor sat 
 Attent with fifties in a eomijany ? 
 No, — closer to promulgated decree, 
 Clearer the censure of default. Proceed 1 
 
 I find him bound, then, to begin life well ; 
 
 Fortified by propitious circumstance. 
 
 Great birth, good breeding, with the Church for 
 
 guide. 
 How lives he ? Cased thus in a coat of proof. 
 Mailed like a man-at-arms, though all the while 
 A puny starveling, — does the breast pant big. 
 The limb swell to the limit, emptiness 
 Strive to become solidity indeed ? 
 Rather, he shrinks up like the ambiguous fish. 
 Detaches llesh from shell and outside show. 
 And steals by moonlight (I have seen the thing) 
 In and out, now to prey and now to skulk. 
 Armor he boasts when a wave breaks on bea«h, 
 Or bird stoops for the prize : with peril nigh, — 
 The man of rank, the much-befriended man. 
 The man almost afEiUate to the Church, 
 Such is to deal with, let the world beware ! 
 Does the world recognize, pass prudently ? 
 Do tides abate and sea-fowl hunt i' the deep ? 
 Already is the slug from out its mew. 
 Ignobly faring with all loose and free. 
 Sand-fly and slush-worm at their garbage-feast, 
 A naked blotch no better than they all : 
 Guido has dropped nobility, slipped the Church, 
 Plays trickster if not cut-purse, body and soul 
 Prostrate among the filthy feeders — faugh ! 
 And when Law takes him by surprise at last, 
 Catches the foul thing on its carrion-prey. 
 Behold, he points to shell left high and dry. 
 Pleads " But the case out yonder is myself ! " 
 Nay, it is thou. Law prongs amid thy peers. 
 Congenial vermin ; that was none of thee. 
 Thine outside, — give it to the soldier-crab ! 
 
 For I find this black mark impinge the man. 
 
 That he believes in just the vile of life. 
 
 Low instinct, base pretension, are these truth ? 
 
 Then, that aforesaid armor, probity. 
 
 He figures in, is falsehood scale on scale ; 
 
 Honor and faith, — a lie and a disguise. 
 
 Probably for all livers in this world. 
 
 Certainly for liimself ! All say good words 
 
 To who will hear, all do thereby bad deeds 
 
 To who must undergo ; so thrive mankind ! 
 
 See this habitual creed exemplified 
 
 Most in the last deliberate act ; as last. 
 
 So, very sum and substance of the soul 
 
 Of him that planned and leaves one perfect 
 
 piece. 
 The sin brought under jurisdiction now. 
 Even the marriage of the man : this act 
 I sever from his life as sample, show 
 For Guide's self, intend to test him by. 
 As, from a cup filled fairly at the fount. 
 By the components we decide enough 
 Or to let flow as late, or stanch the source. 
 
 He purposes this marriage, I remark. 
 
 On no one motive that should prompt thereto — 
 
 Farthest, by consequence, from ends alleged 
 
 Appropriate to the action : so they were : 
 
 The best, he knew and feigned, the worst he 
 
 took; 
 Not one permissible impulse moves the man, 
 From the mere liking of the eye and ear. 
 To the true longing of the heart that lores, 
 No trace of these : but all to instigate. 
 Is what sinks man past level of the brute, 
 Whose appetite if brutish is a truth. 
 AJl is the lust for money : to get gold, — 
 Why, lie, rob, if it must be, murder ! Make 
 Body and soul wring gold out, lured within 
 The clutch of hate by love, the trap's pretence ! 
 What good else get from bodies and from souls ? 
 'This got, there were some life to lead thereby, 
 — What, where or how, appreciate those who 
 
 tell 
 How the toad lives : it lives, — enough for me ! 
 To get this good — but with a groan or so. 
 Then, silence of the victims — were the feat. 
 He foresaw, made a picture in his mind, — 
 Of father and mother stunned and echoless 
 To the blow, as they lie staring at fate's jaws 
 Their folly danced into, tiU the woe fell ; 
 Edged in a month by strenuous cruelty 
 From even the poor nook whence they watched 
 
 the wolf 
 Feast on their heart, the lamb-like child his 
 
 prey ; 
 Plundered to the last remnant of their wealth, 
 (What daily pittance pleased the plunderer 
 
 dole,) 
 Hunted forth to go hide head, starve and die, 
 And leave the pale awe-stricken wife, past hope 
 Of help i' the world now, mute and motionless, 
 His slave, his chattel, to fiist use, then destroy. 
 All this, he bent mind how to bring about. 
 Put plain in a«t and life, as painted plain. 
 So have success, reach crown of earthly good. 
 In this particular enterprise of man. 
 By marriage — undertaken in God's face 
 With all these lies so opposite God's truth. 
 For end so other than man's end. 
 
 Thus schemes 
 Guido, and thus would carry out his scheme ; 
 But when an obstacle first blocks the path. 
 When he finds none may boast monopoly 
 Of lies and trick i' the tricking lying world, — 
 That sorry timid natures, even this sort 
 O' the Comparini, want nor trick nor lie 
 Proper to the kind, — tliat as the gor-crow 
 
 The bramble-finch so treats the finch the moth, 
 And the great Guido is minutely matched 
 By this same couple, — whether true or false 
 The revelation of Pompilia's birth. 
 Which in a moment brings his scheme ta 
 
 naught, — 
 Then, he is piqued, advances yet a stage. 
 Leaves the low region to the finch and fly. 
 Soars to the zenith whence the fiercer fowl 
 May dare the inimitable swoop. I see. 
 He draws now on the curious crime, the fine 
 Felicity and flower of wickedness ; 
 Determines, by the utmost exercise 
 Of violence, made safe and sure by craft. 
 
THE POPE 
 
 559 
 
 To satiate malice, pluck one last aroh-tong 
 From the parents, else would triumph out of 
 
 reach, 
 By punishing their child, within reach yet, 
 Who, by thought, word or deed, could nowise 
 
 wrong 
 I' the matter that now moves him. So plans he, 
 Always subordinating (note the point !) 
 Kevenge, the manlier sin, to interest 
 The meaner, — would pluck pang forth, but 
 
 unclench 
 No gripe in the act, let fall no money-piece. 
 Hence a plan for so plaguing, body and soul. 
 His wife, so putting, day by iiay, hour by hour, 
 The untried torture to the untouched place, 
 As must precipitate an end foreseen, 
 Goad her into some plain revolt, most like 
 Plunge upon patent suicidal shame. 
 Death to herself, damnation by rebound 
 To those whose hearts he, holding hers, holds 
 
 stai: 
 Such plan as, in its bad completeness, shall 
 Ruin the tlu'ee together and alike, 
 Yet leave himself in luck and liberty. 
 No claim renounced, no right a forfeiture, 
 His person unendangered, his good fame 
 Without a flaw, his pristine worth intact, — 
 While they, with all their claims and rights that 
 
 cling. 
 Shall forthwith crumble oif him every side. 
 Scorched into dust, a plaything for the winds. 
 As when, in our Campagna, there is fired 
 The nest-Hke work that overruns a hut ; 
 And, as the thatch bums here, there, every- 
 where, 
 Even to the ivy and wild vine, that bound 
 And blessed the home where men were happy 
 
 once. 
 There rises gradual, black amid the blaze. 
 Some grim and unscathed nucleus of the 
 
 nest, — 
 Some old malicious tower, some obscene tomb 
 They thought a temple in their ignorance, 
 And clung about and thought to lean upon — 
 There laughs it o'er their ravage, — where are 
 
 they? 
 So did his cruelty bum life about. 
 And lay the ruin bare in dreadfulness. 
 Try the persistency of torment so 
 Upon the wife, that, at extremity. 
 Some crisis brought about by fire and ilame. 
 The patient frenzy-stung must needs break 
 
 Fly anyhow, find refuge anywhere. 
 
 Even in the arms of who should front her first. 
 
 No monster but a man — while nature shrieked 
 
 " Or thus escape, or die ! " The spasm arrived. 
 
 Not the escape by way of sin, — God, 
 
 Who shall pluck sheep thou boldest, from thy 
 
 hand? 
 Therefore she lay resigned to die, — so far 
 The simple cruelty was foiled. Why then, 
 Craft to the rescue, let craft supplement 
 Cruelty and show hell a masterpiece ! 
 Hence this consummate lie, this love-intrigue, 
 Unmanly simulation of a sin. 
 With place and time and circumstance to 
 
 sui*^ — 
 
 These letters false beyond all forgery — 
 Not just handwriting and mere authorship, 
 But false to body and soul they figure forth — 
 As though the man had cut out shape and 
 
 shape 
 From fancies of that other Aretine, 
 To paste below — incorporate the filth 
 With cherub faces on a missal-page I 
 
 Whereby the man so far attains his end 
 That strange temptation is permitted, — see I 
 Pompilia, wife, and Caponsacchi, priest. 
 Are brought together as nor priest nor wife 
 Should stand, and there is passion in the pla^je, 
 Power in the air for evil as for good, 
 Promptings from heaven and hell, as if the 
 
 stars 
 Fought in their courses for a fate to be. 
 Thus stand the wife and priest, a spectacle, 
 I doubt not, to unseen assemblage there. 
 No lamp will mark that window for a shrine, 
 No tablet signalize the terrace, teach 
 New generations which succeed the old. 
 The pavement of the street is holy ground : 
 No bard describe in verse how Christ prevailed 
 And Satan fell like lightning ! Why repine ? 
 What does the world, told truth, but Ke the 
 
 more ? 
 
 A second time the plot is foiled ; nor, now, 
 By corresponding sin for countercheck. 
 No wile and trick that bafBe trick and wile, — 
 The play o' the parents! Here the blot is 
 
 blanched 
 By God's gift of a purity of soul 
 That will not take pollution, ermine-like 
 Armed from dishonor by its own soft snow. 
 Such was this gift of God who showed for once 
 How he would have the world go white: it 
 
 seems 
 As a new attribute were bom of each 
 Champion of truth, the priest and wife I 
 
 praise, — 
 Aa a new safeguard sprang up in defence 
 Of their new noble nature : so a thorn 
 Comes to the aid of and completes the rose — 
 Courage to wit, no woman's gift nor priest's, 
 I' the crisis ; might leaps vindicating right. 
 See how the strong aggressor, bad and bold. 
 With every vantage, preconcerts surprise. 
 Leaps of a sudden at his victim's throat 
 In a byway, — how fares he when face to face 
 With Caponsacchi? Who %hts, who fears 
 
 now ? 
 There quails Count Guido, armed to the chat- 
 tering teeth. 
 Cowers at the steadfast eye and quiet word 
 0' the Canon of the Pieve ! There skulks 
 
 crime 
 Behind law called in to back cowardice ! 
 While out of the poor trampled worm the wife, 
 Springs up a serpent ! 
 
 But anon of these ! 
 Him I judge now, — of him proceed to note. 
 Failing the first, a second chance befriends 
 Gruido, gives pause ere punishment arrive. 
 The law he called, comes, hears, adjudicates, 
 
560 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 Nor does amiss i' the main, — secludes the wife 
 From the husband, respites the oppressed one, 
 
 grants 
 Probation to the oppressor, could he know 
 The mercy of a minute's fiery purge ! 
 The furnace-coals alike of public scorn. 
 Private remorse, heaped glowing on his head, 
 What if — the force and guile, the ore's alloy. 
 Eliminate, his baser soul refined — 
 The lost be saved even yet, so as by fixe ? 
 Let him, rebuked, go softly all his days 
 Andj when no graver musings claim their due. 
 Meditate on a man's immense mistake 
 Who, fashioned to use feet and walk, deigns 
 
 crawl — 
 Takes the unmanly means — ay, though to 
 
 ends 
 Man scarce should make for, would but reach 
 
 through wrong, — 
 May sin, but nowise needs shame manhood so : 
 Since fowlers hawk, shoot, nay and snare the 
 
 game, 
 And yet eschew vile practice, nor find sport 
 In torch-light treachery or the luring owl. 
 
 But how hunts Guide? Why, the fraudful 
 
 trap — 
 Late spurned to ruin by the indignant feet 
 Of fellows in the chase who loved fair play — 
 Here he picks up its fragments to the least, 
 Lades him and hies to the old lurking-place 
 Where haply he may patch again, refit 
 The mischief, file its blunted teeth anew. 
 Make sure, next time, fii'st snap shall break 
 
 the bone. 
 Craft, greed and violence complot revenge : 
 Craft, for its quota, schemes to bring about 
 And seize occasion and be safe withal : 
 Greed craves its act may work both far and 
 
 near. 
 Crush the tree, branch and trunk and root be- 
 side. 
 Whichever twig or leaf arrests a streak 
 Of possible sunshine else would coin itself. 
 And drop down one more gold piece in the 
 
 path : 
 Violence stipulates, " Advantage proved. 
 And safety sure, be pain the overplus ! 
 Murder with jagged knife ! Cut but tear too ! 
 Foiled oft, starved long, glut malice for 
 
 amends ! " 
 And what, craft's scheme ? scheme sorrowful 
 
 and strange 
 As though the elements, whom mercy checked. 
 Had mustered hate for one eruption more, 
 One final deluge to surprise the Ark 
 Cradled and sleeping on its mountain-top : 
 Their outbreak-signal — what but the dove's 
 
 coo. 
 Back with the olive in her bill for news 
 Sorrow was over ? 'T is an infant's birth, 
 Guido's first-born, his son and heir, that gives 
 The occasion : other men cut free their souls 
 From care in such a case, fly up in thanks 
 To God, reach, recognize his love for once : 
 Guido cries, " Soul, at last the mire is thine I 
 Lie there in likeness of a money-bag. 
 My babe's birth so pins down past moving now. 
 
 That I dare cut adrift the lives I late 
 Scrupled to touch lest thou escape with them 1 
 These parents and their child ray wife, — touch 
 
 one, . 
 
 Lose all ! Their rights determmed on a head 
 I could but hate, not harm, since from each 
 
 hair 
 Dangled a hope for me: now — chance and 
 
 change ! 
 No right was in their child but passes plam 
 To that child's child and through such child to 
 
 me. 
 I am a father now, — come what come wiU, 
 I represent my child ; he comes between — 
 Cuts sudden oflE the sunshine of this life 
 From those three : why, the gold is in his curls I 
 Not with old Pietro's, Violante's head. 
 Not his gray horror, her more hideous black — 
 Go these, devoted to the knife ! " 
 
 'T is done: 
 Wherefore should mind misgive, heart hesitate ? 
 He calls to counsel, fashions certain four 
 Colorless natures counted clean till now, 
 — Rustic simplicity, uncorrupted youth. 
 Ignorant virtue ! Here 's the gold o' the prime 
 When Saturn ruled, shall shock our leaden 
 
 day — 
 The clown abash the courtier ! Mark it, bards ! 
 The courtier tries his hand on clownship here. 
 Speaks a word, names a crime, appoints a 
 
 price, — 
 Just breathes on what, suffused with aR himself, 
 Is red-hot henceforth past distinction now 
 I' the common glow of hell. And thus they 
 
 break 
 And blaze on us at Rome, Christ's birthnight- 
 
 eve! 
 Oh angels that sang erst " On the earth, peace 1 
 To man, good will ! " — such peace finds earth 
 
 to-day ! 
 After the seventeen hundred years, so man 
 Wills good to man, so Guido makes complete 
 His murder ! what is it I said ? — cuts loose 
 Three lives that hitherto he suffered cUng, 
 Simply because each served to nail secure. 
 By a comer of the money-bag, his soul, — 
 Therefore, lives sacred till the babe's first 
 
 breath 
 O'erweights them in the balance, — off they fly t 
 
 So is the murder managed, sin conceived 
 
 To the full : and why not crowned with triumph 
 
 too? 
 Why must the sin, conceived thus, bring forth 
 
 death ? 
 I note how, within hair's-breadth of escape, 
 Impunity and the tiling supposed success, 
 Guido is found when the cheek comes, the 
 
 change. 
 The monitory touch o' the tether — felt 
 By few, not mai-ked by many, named by none 
 At the moment, only recognized aright 
 I' the fulness of the days, for God's, lest sin 
 Exceed the service, leap the line : such check— 
 A secret which this life finds hard to keep. 
 And. often guessed, is never quite revealed — 
 Needs must trip Guido on a stumbling-block 
 Too vulgar, too absurdly plain i' the path J 
 
THE POPE 
 
 S6i 
 
 Study this single oversight of care, 
 This hebetude that marred sagacity, 
 Forgetfulness of all the man best knew, — 
 How any stranger having need to fly, 
 Needs but to ask and have the means of flight. 
 Why, the first urchin tells you, to leave Rome, 
 Get horses, you must show the warrant, just 
 The banal scrap, clerk's scribble, a fair word 
 
 buys. 
 Or foul one, if a ducat sweeten word, — 
 And straight authority will back demand, 
 Give you the pick o' the post-house ! — how 
 
 should he, 
 Then, resident at Rome for thirty years, 
 Guido, instruct a stranger ! And himself 
 Foi^ets just this poor paper scrap, wherewith 
 Armed, every door he knocks at opens wide 
 To save him : horsed and manned, with such 
 
 advance 
 0' the hunt behind, why, 't were the easy task 
 Of hours told on the fingers of one hand. 
 To reach the Tuscan frontier, laugh at home, 
 Light-hearted with his fellows of the place, — 
 Prepared by that strange shameful judgment, 
 
 that 
 Satire upon a sentence just pronounced 
 By the Rota and confirmed by the Granduke, — 
 Ready in a circle to receive their peer, 
 Appreciate his good story how, when Rome, 
 The Pope-King and the populace of priests 
 Made common cause with their confederate 
 The other priestling who seduced his wife, 
 He, all unaided, wiped out the affront 
 With decent bloodshed and could face his 
 
 friends, 
 Frolic it in the world's eye. Ay, such tale 
 Missed such applause, and by such oversight I 
 So, tired and footsore, those blood-flustered 
 
 five 
 Went reeling on the rojvd through dark and cold. 
 The few permissible miles, to sink at length, 
 Wallow and sleep in the first wayside straw. 
 As the other herd quenched, i' the wash o' the 
 
 wave, 
 — Each swine, the devil inside him : so slept 
 
 they, 
 And so were caught and caged — all through 
 
 one trip. 
 One touch of fool in Guido the astute ! 
 He curses the omission, I surmise. 
 More than the murder. Why, thou fool and 
 
 bUnd, 
 It is the jnercy-stroke that stops thy fate. 
 Hamstrings and holds thee to thy hurt, — but 
 
 how? 
 On the edge o' the precipice ! One minute more, 
 Thou hadst gone farther and fared worse, my 
 
 son. 
 Fathoms down on the flint and fire beneath ! 
 Thy comrades each and all were of one mind, 
 Thy murder done, to straightway murder thee 
 In turn, because of promised pay withheld. 
 So, to the last, greed found itself at odds 
 With craft in thee, and, proving conqueror. 
 Had sent thee, the same night that crowned thy 
 
 hope. 
 Thither where, this same day, I see thee not, 
 Nor, through God's mercy, need, to-morrow, see. 
 
 Such I find Guido, midmost blotch of black 
 
 Discernible in this group of clustered crimes 
 
 Huddling together in the cave they call 
 
 Their palace, outraged day thus penetrates. 
 
 Around him ranged, now close and now remote, 
 
 Prominent or obscure to meet the needs 
 
 0' the ma^e and master, I detect each shape 
 
 Subsidiary i' the scene nor loathed the less, 
 
 All alike colored, all descried akin 
 
 By one and the same pitchy furnace stirred 
 
 At the centre : see, they lick the master's 
 
 hand, — 
 This fox-faced horrible priest, this brother-brute 
 The Abate, — why, mere wolfishness looks weU, 
 Guido stands honest in the red o' the flame, 
 Beside this yellow that would pass for white, 
 Twice Guido, all craft but no violence, 
 This copier of the mien and gait and garb 
 Of Peter and Paul, that he may go disguised, 
 Rob halt and lame, sick folk i' the temple- 
 porch ! 
 Armed with religion, fortified by law, 
 A man of peace, who trims the midnight lamp 
 And turns the classic page — and aU for craft, 
 All to work harm with, yet incur no scratch I 
 While Guido brings the stru^rgle to a close, 
 Paul steps back the due distance, clear o' the 
 
 trap 
 He builds and baits. Guido I catch and judge ; 
 Paul is past reach in this world and my time : 
 That is a case reserved. Pass to the next, 
 The boy of the brood, the young Girolamo, 
 Priest, Canon, and what more ? nor wolf nor 
 
 fox. 
 But hybrid, neither craft nor violence 
 Wholly, part violence part craft : such cross 
 Tempts speculation — will both blend one day, 
 And prove hell's better product ? Or subside 
 And let the simple quality emei^e. 
 Go on with Satan's service the old way ? 
 Meanwhile, what promise, — what performance 
 
 too ! 
 For there 's a new distinctive touch, I see. 
 Lust — lacking in the two — hell's own blue tint 
 That gives a character and marks the man 
 More than a match for yellow and red. Once 
 
 more, 
 A case reserved : why should I doubt ? Then 
 
 comes 
 The gaunt gray nightmare in the furthest 
 
 smoke, 
 The hag that gave these three abortions birth^ 
 Unraotherly mother and unwomanly 
 Woman, that near turns motherhood to shame, 
 Womanliness to loathing : no one word, 
 No gesture to curb cruelty a whit 
 More than the she-pard thwarts her playsome 
 
 whelps 
 Trying their milk-teeth on the soft o' the throat 
 0' the fijBt fawn, flung, with those beseechii^ 
 
 eyes. 
 Flat in the covert ! How should she but couch, 
 Lick the dry lips, unsheathe the blunted claw, 
 Catch 'twixt her placid eyewinks at what chance 
 Old bloody half-forgotten dream may flit. 
 Bom when herself was novice to the taste. 
 The while she lets youth take its pleasure 
 
562 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 These God-abandoned wretched lumps of life, 
 These four companions, — country-folk this 
 
 time, 
 Not tainted by the unwholesome civic breath. 
 Much less the curse o' the court ! Mere strip- 
 lings too. 
 Fit to do human nature justice still ! 
 Surely when impudence in Guide's shape 
 Shall propose crime and proffer money's-worth 
 To these stout tall rough bright-eyed black- 
 haired boys. 
 The blood shall bound in answer to each cheek 
 Before the indignant outcry break from lip ! 
 Are these i' the mood to murder, hardly loosed 
 From healthy autumn-finish of ploughed glebe, 
 Grapes in the barrel, work at happy end, 
 And winter near with rest and Christmas play ? 
 How greet they Guido with his final task — 
 (As if he but proposed " One vineyard more 
 To dig, ere frost come, then relax indeed 1 ") 
 " Anywhere, anyhow and anywhy, 
 Murder me some three people, old and young, 
 Ye never heard the names of, — and be paid 
 So much!" And the whole four accede at 
 
 once. 
 Demur ? Do cattle bidden march or halt ? 
 Is it some lingering habit, old fond faith 
 I' the lord o' the land, instructs them, — birth- 
 right badge 
 Of feudal tenure claims its slaves again ? 
 Not so at all, thou noble human heart ! 
 All is done purely for the pay, — which, earned. 
 And not forthcoming at the instant, makes 
 Religion heresy, and the lord o' the land 
 Fit subject for a murder in his turn. 
 The patron with cut throat and rifled purse, 
 Deposited i' the roadside-ditch, his due. 
 Naught hinders each good fellow trudging 
 
 home. 
 The heavier by a piece or two in poke. 
 And so with new zest to the common life. 
 Mattock and spade, plough-tail and wagon- 
 shaft, 
 TUl some such other piece of luck betide. 
 Who knows ? Since this is a mere start in life, 
 And none of them exceeds the twentieth year. 
 Nay, more i' the background yet ? Unnoticed 
 
 forms 
 Claim to be classed, subordinately vile ? 
 Complacent lookers - on that laugh, — per- 
 chance 
 Shake head as their friend's horse - play grows 
 
 too rough 
 With the mere child he manages amiss — 
 But tronld not interfere and make bad worse 
 For twice the fractious tears and prayers : thou 
 
 know'st 
 Civility better, Marzi-Medici, 
 Governor for thy kinsman the Granduke ! 
 Fit representative of law, man's lamp 
 I' the magistrate's grasp full-flare, no rnshlight- 
 
 end 
 Sputtering 'twixt thumb and finger of the 
 
 priest ! 
 Whose answer to the couple's cry for help 
 Is a threat, — whose remedy of Pompilia's 
 
 wrong, 
 A shrug o' the shoulder, and facetious word 
 
 Or wink, traditional with Tuscan wits. 
 To Guido in the doorway. Laud to law ! 
 The wife is pushed back to the husband, he 
 Who knows how these home-squabbHngs perse- 
 cute 
 People who have the public good to mind. 
 And work best with a sUence in the court ! 
 
 Ah, but I save my word at least for thee. 
 Archbishop, who art under, i' the Church, 
 As I am under God, — thou, chosen by both 
 To do the shepherd's office, feed the sheep — 
 How of this lamb that panted at thy foot 
 While the wolf pressed on her within crook's 
 
 reach ? 
 Wast thou the hireling thai did turn and flee ? 
 With thee at least anon the little word ! 
 
 Such denizens o' the cave now cluster round 
 And heat the furnace sevenfold: time indeed 
 A bolt from heaven should cleave roof and 
 
 clear place. 
 Transfix and show the world, suspiring flame, 
 The main offender, scar and brand the rest 
 Hurrying, each miscreant to his hole : then flood 
 And purify the scene with outside day — 
 Which yet, in the absolutest drench of dark, 
 Ne'er wants a witness, some stray beauty-beam 
 To the despair of hell. 
 
 First of the first. 
 Such I pronounce Pompilia, then as now 
 Perfect in whiteness: stoop thou down, my 
 
 child. 
 Give one good moment to the poor old Pope 
 Heart-sick at having all his world to blame — 
 Let me look at thee in the flesh as erst. 
 Let me enjoy the old clean linen garb, 
 Not the new splendid vesture ! Armed and 
 
 crowned, 
 Would Michael, yonder, be, nor crowned nor 
 
 armed. 
 The less pre-eminent angel ? Everywhere 
 I see in the world the intellect of man. 
 That sword, the energy his subtle spear. 
 The knowledge which defends mm like a 
 
 shield — 
 Everywhere ; but they make not up, I think, 
 The marvel of a soul like tliine, earth's flower 
 She holds up to the softened gaze of God ! 
 It was not given Pompilia to know much, 
 Speak much, to write a book, to move man- 
 kind, 
 Be memorized by who records my time. 
 Yet if in purity and patience, if 
 In faith held fast despite the plucking fiend, 
 Safe like the signet stone with the new name 
 That saints are known by, — if in right returned 
 For wrong, most pardon for worst injury, 
 If there be any virtue, any praise, — 
 Then will this woman-child have proved — 
 
 who knows ? — 
 Just the one prize vouchsafed unworthy me, 
 Seven years a gardener of the untoward ground 
 I till, — this e^h, my sweat and blood mannie 
 All the long day that barrenly grows dusk : 
 At least one blossom makes me proud at eve 
 Bom 'mid the briers of my enclosure I Still 
 
THE POPE 
 
 563 
 
 (Oh, here as elsewhere, nothingness of man !) 
 Tliose be the plants, imbedded yonder South 
 To mellow in the morning, those made fat 
 By the master's eye, that yield sneh timid leaf, 
 Uncertain bud, as product of his pains ! 
 While — see how this mere chance-sown, cleft- 
 nursed seed. 
 That sprang up by the wayside 'neath the foot 
 Of the enemy, this breaks all into blaze, 
 Spreads itself, one wide glory of desire 
 T^ incorporate the whole great sun it loves 
 From the inch-height whence it looks and 
 
 longs ! My flower. 
 My rose, I gather for the breast of God, 
 This I praise most in thee, where all I praise. 
 That having been obedient to the end 
 According to the light allotted, law 
 Prescribed thy life, still tried, still standing 
 
 test, — 
 Dutiful to the foolish parents first. 
 Submissive next to the bad husband, — nay. 
 Tolerant of those meaner miserable 
 That did his bests, eked out the dole of pain, — ■ 
 Thou, patient thus, couldst rise from law to 
 
 law. 
 The old to the new, promoted at one cry 
 0' the trump of God to the new service, not 
 To longer bear, but henceforth fight, be found 
 Sublime in new impatience with the foe ! 
 Endure man and obey God ; plant firm foot 
 On neck of man, tread man into the hell 
 Meet for him, and obey God all the more ! 
 Oh child that didst despise thy life so much 
 When it seemed only thine to keep or lose. 
 How the fine ear felt fall the first low word 
 '* Value life, and preserve life for My sake ! " 
 Thou didst . . , how shall I say ? . . . receive 
 
 so long 
 The standing ordinance of God on earth. 
 What wonder if the novel claim had clashed 
 With old requirement, seemed to supersede 
 Too much the customary law ? But, brave. 
 Thou at first prompting of what I call God, 
 And fools call Nature, didst hear, comprehend. 
 Accept the obligation laid on thee. 
 Mother elect, to save the unborn child. 
 As brute and bird do, reptUe and the fly, 
 Ay and, I nothing doubt, even tree, shrub, plant 
 And flower o' the field, all in a common pact 
 To worthily defend the trust of trusts. 
 Life from the Ever Living : — didst resist — 
 Anticipate the oJfiBice that is mine — 
 And with his own sword stay the upraised arm, 
 The endeavor of the wicked, and defend 
 Him who — again in my default — was there 
 For visible providence : one less true than thou 
 To touch, i' the past, less practised in the right. 
 Approved less far in all docility 
 To all instruction, — how had such an one 
 Made scruple " Is this motion a decree ? " 
 It was authentic to the experienced ear 
 0* the good and faithful servant. Go past me 
 And get thy praise, — and be not far to seek 
 Presently when I follow if I may ! 
 
 And surely not so very much apart 
 N'eed I place thee, my warrior-priest, — in 
 whom 
 
 What if I gain the other rose, the gold, 
 
 We grave to imitate God's miracle. 
 
 Greet monarchs with, good rose in its degree ? 
 
 Irregular noble scapegrace — son the same I 
 
 Faulty — and peradventure ours the fault 
 
 Who still misteach, mislead, throw hook and 
 
 line. 
 Thinking to land leviathan forsooth. 
 Tame the scaled neck, play with him as a bird. 
 And bind him for our maidens ! Better bear 
 The King of Pride go wantoning awhile, 
 Uuplagued by cord in nose and thorn in jaw, 
 Through deep to deep, followed by all that 
 
 shine. 
 Churning the blackness hoary : He who made 
 The comely terror. He shall make the sword 
 To match that piece of netherstone his heart. 
 Ay, nor miss praise thereby ; who else shut fire 
 I' the stone, to leap from mouth at sword's first 
 
 stroke. 
 In lamps of love and faith, the chivalry 
 That dares the right and disregards alike 
 The yea and nay o' the world? Self-sacri. 
 
 fice, — 
 What if an idol took it ? Ask the Church 
 Why she was wont to turn each Venus here, — 
 Poor Bome perversely lingered round, despite 
 Instruction, for the sake of purblind love, — 
 Into Madonna's shape, and waste no wlut 
 Of aught so rare on earth as gratitude ! 
 All tms sweet savor was not ours but thine, 
 Nard of the rock, a natural wealth we name 
 Incense, and treasure up as food for saints, 
 When flnng to us — whose function was to give 
 Not find the costly perfume. Do I smile ? 
 Nay, Caponsacohi, much I find amiss. 
 Blameworthy, punishable in this freak 
 Of thine, this youth prolonged, though age was 
 
 ripe. 
 This masquerade in sober day, with change 
 Of motley too, — now hypocrite's disguise. 
 Now fool's-oostume : which lie was least like 
 
 truth. 
 Which the ungainlier, more discordant garb. 
 With that symmetric soul inside my son. 
 The churchman's or the worldling's, — let him 
 
 judge, 
 Our adversary who enjoys the task ! 
 I rather chronicle the healthy rage, — 
 When the first moan broke from the martyr- 
 maid 
 At that uncaging of the beasts, • — made bare 
 My athlete on the instant, gave such good 
 Great undisguised leap over post and pale 
 Right into the mid-cirque, free fighting-place. 
 There may have been rash stripping — every 
 
 rag 
 Went to the winds, — infringement manifold 
 Of laws prescribed pudicity, I fear, 
 In this impulsive and prompt self-display I 
 Ever such tax comes of the foolish youth ; 
 Men mulct the wiser manhood, and suspect 
 No veritable star swims out of cloud. 
 Bear thou such imputation, undergo 
 The penalty I nowise dare relax, — 
 Conventional chastisement and rebuke. 
 But for the outcome, the brave starry birth 
 Conciliating earth with all that cloud. 
 
564 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 Thank heaven as I do ! Ay, such champion- 
 ship 
 Of God at first hlush, such prompt cheery thud 
 Of glove on ground that answers ringingly 
 The challenge of the false knight, — watch we 
 
 long, 
 And wait we vainly for its gallant like 
 From those appointed to the service, sworn 
 His body-guard with pay and privilege — 
 White-cinct, because in white walks sanctity, 
 Red-socked, how else proclaim fine scorn of 
 
 flesh, 
 Unchariness of blood when blood faith begs ! 
 Where are the men-at-arms with cross on coat ? 
 Aloof, bewraying their attire : whilst thou 
 In mask and motley, pledged to dance not 
 
 fight, 
 Sprang'st forth the hero ! In thought, word 
 
 and deed. 
 How throughout all thy warfare thou wast 
 
 pure, 
 I find it easy to believe : and if 
 At any f atef ill moment of the strange 
 Adventure, the strong passion of that strait. 
 Fear and surprise, may have revealed too 
 
 much, — 
 As when a thundrous midnight, with bla^k air 
 That burns, raindrops that blister, breaks a 
 
 spell, 
 Draws out the excessive virtue of some 
 
 sheathed 
 Shut unsuspected flower that hoards and hides 
 Immensity of sweetness, — so, perchance. 
 Might the surprise and fear release too much 
 The perfect beauty of the body and soul 
 Thou savedst in thy passion for God's sake. 
 He who is Pity. Was the trial sore ? 
 Temptation sharp ? Thank God a second 
 
 time ! 
 Why comes temptation but for man to meet 
 And master and make crouch beneath his foot, 
 And so be pedestalled in triumph ? Pray 
 " Lead us into no such temptations. Lord! " 
 Yea, but, Thou whose servants are the bold, 
 Lead such temptations by the head and hair. 
 Reluctant dragons, up to who dares fight, 
 That so he may do battle and have praise ! 
 Do I not see the praise ? — that while thy mates 
 Bound to deserve i' the matter, prove at need 
 Unprofitable through the very pains 
 We gave to train them well and start them 
 
 fair, — 
 Are found too stiff, with standing ranked and 
 
 ranged, 
 For onset in good earnest, too obtuse 
 Of ear, through iteration of command. 
 For catching quick the sense of the real cry, — 
 Thon, whose sword-hand was used to strike the 
 
 lute. 
 Whose sentry-station graced some wanton's 
 
 gate, 
 Thou didst push forward and show mettle, 
 
 shame 
 The laggards, and retrieve the day. Well 
 
 done! 
 Be glad thou hast let light into the world. 
 Through that irregular breach 0' the boundary. 
 
 The same upon thy path and march assured, 
 Learning anew the use of soldiership. 
 Self-abnegation, freedom from all fear, 
 Loyalty to the life's end ! Ruminate, 
 Deserve the initiatory spasm, — once more 
 Work, be unhappy but bear life, my son ! 
 
 And troop you, somewhere 'twixt the best and 
 
 worst. 
 Where crowd the indifferent product, all too 
 
 poor 
 Makeshift, starved samples of humanity ! 
 Father and mother, huddle there and hide !_ 
 A gracious eye may find you ! Foul and fair, 
 Sadly mixed natures : self-indulgent, — yet 
 Self-sacrificing too : how the love soars, 
 How the craft, avarice, vanity and spite 
 Sink again ! So they keep the middle course, 
 Slide into siUy crime at unaware. 
 Slip back upon the stupid virtue, stay 
 Nowhere enough for being classed, I hope 
 And fear. Accept the swift and rueful death, 
 Taught, somewhat stemlier than is wont, what 
 
 waits 
 The ambiguous creature, — how the one black 
 
 tuft 
 Steadies the aim of the arrow just as well 
 Ah the wide faultless white on the bird's 
 
 Nay, you were punished in the very part 
 
 That looked most pure of speck, 't was honest 
 
 love 
 Betrayed you, — did love seem most worthy 
 
 pains. 
 Challenge such purging, since ordained survive 
 When all the rest of you was done with ? Go 1 
 Never again elude the choice of tints ! 
 White shall not neutralize the black, nor good 
 Compensate bad in man, absolve him so : 
 Life's business being just the terrible choice. 
 
 So do I see, pronoimce on all and some 
 Grouped for my judgment now, — profess no 
 
 doubt 
 While I pronounce : dark, difficult enough 
 The human sphere, yet eyes grow sharp by use, 
 I find the truth, dispart the shine from shade. 
 As a mere man may, with no special touch 
 O' the lynx-gift in each ordinary orb : 
 Nay, if the popular notion class me right, 
 One of welhiigh decayed intelligenee, — 
 What of that ? Through hard labor and good 
 
 will, 
 And habitude that gives a blind man sight 
 At the ijraetised finger-ends of him, I do 
 Discern, and dare decree in consequence, 
 Whatever prove the peril of mistake. 
 Whence, then, this quite new quick cold thrill, 
 
 — cloud-like. 
 This keen dread creeping from a quarter scarce 
 Suspected in the skies I nightly scan ? 
 What slacks the tense nerve, saps the wound- 
 up spring 
 Of the act that should and shall be, sends the 
 
 mount 
 And mass o' the whole man's-strength, — con- 
 globed so late — 
 Shudderingly into dust, a moment's work ? 
 
THE POPE 
 
 S6S 
 
 While I stand firm, go fearless, in this world, 
 For this life recognize and arbitrate, 
 Touch and let stay, or else remove a thing, 
 Judge " This is right, this object out of place," 
 Candle in hand that helps me and to spare, — 
 What if a voice deride me, ■" ' Perk and pry I 
 Brighten each nook with thine intelligence I 
 Play the good householder, ply man and maid 
 With tasks prolonged into the midnight, test 
 Their work and nowise stint of the due wage 
 Each worthy worker : but with gyves and whip 
 Pay thou misprision of a single point 
 Plain to thy happy self who lift'st the light, 
 Lainent'st the darkling, — bold to all beneath ! 
 What if thyself adventure, now the place 
 Is purged so well ? Leave pavement and mount 
 
 roof, 
 Look round thee for the light of the upper sky, 
 The fire which lit thy fire which finds default 
 In Guido Franceschini to his cost ! 
 What if, above in the domain of light, 
 Thou miss the accustomed signs, remark 
 
 eclipse ? 
 Shalt thou still gaze on ground nor lift a lid, — 
 Steady in thy superb prerogative. 
 Thy inch of inkling, — nor once face the doubt 
 I' the sphere above thee, darkness to be felt ? " 
 
 Yet my poor spark had for its source, the sun ; 
 Thither I sent the great looks which compel 
 Light from its fount : all that I do and am 
 Comes from the truth, or seen or else surmised, 
 Remembered or divined, as mere man may : 
 I know just so, nor otherwise. As I know, 
 I speak, — what should I know, then, and how 
 
 speak 
 Were there a wild mistake of eye or brain 
 As to recorded governance above ? 
 If my own breath, only, blew coal alight 
 I styled celestial and the morning-star ? 
 I, who in this world act resolvedly. 
 Dispose of men, their bodies and their souls, 
 As they acknowledge or gainsay the light 
 I show them, — shall I too lack courage? — 
 
 leave 
 I, too, the post of me, like those I blame ? 
 Refuse, with kindred inconsistency, 
 To grapple danger whereby souls grow strong ? 
 I am near the end ■ but still not at the end ; 
 All to the very end is trial in life : 
 At this stage is the trial of my soul 
 Danger to face, or danger to refuse ? 
 Shall I dare try the doubt now, or not dare V 
 
 Thou, — as represented here to me 
 
 In such conception as my soul allows, — 
 
 Under Thy measureless, my atom width ! — 
 
 Man's mind, what is it bat a convex glass 
 
 Wherein are gathered all the scattered points 
 
 Picked out of the immensity of sky. 
 
 To reunite there, be our heaven for earth, 
 
 Oui" known unknown, our God revealed to 
 
 man? 
 Existent somewhere, somehow, as a whole ; 
 Here, as a whole proportioned to our sense, — 
 There, (which is nowhere, speech must babble 
 
 thus !) 
 In the absolute immensity, the whole 
 
 Appreciable solely by Thyself, — 
 
 Here, by the little mind of man, reduced 
 
 To littleness that suits his faculty, 
 
 In the degree appreciable too • 
 
 Between Thee and ourselves — nay even, 
 
 again. 
 Below us, to the extreme of the minute. 
 Appreciable by how many and what diverse 
 Modes of the fife Thou madest be ! (why live 
 Except for love, — how love unless they know ?) 
 Each of them, only filling to the edge. 
 Insect or angel, his just length and breadth, 
 Due facet of reflection, — full, no less. 
 Angel or insect, as Thou framedst things. 
 I it is who have been appointed here 
 To represent Thee, in my turn, on earth, 
 Just as, if new philosophy know aught. 
 This one earth, out of aU the multitude 
 Of peopled worlds, as stars are now supposed, — 
 Was chosen, and no sun-star of the swarm, 
 For stage and scene of Thy transcendent act 
 Beside which even the creation fades 
 Into a puny exercise of power. 
 Choice of the world, choice of the thing I am, 
 Both emanate alike from Thy dread play 
 Of operation outside this our sphere 
 Where things are classed and counted small or 
 
 great, — 
 Incomprehensibly the choice is Thine ! 
 I therefore bow my head and take Thy place. 
 There is, beside the works, a tale of Thee 
 In the world's mouth, which I find credible : 
 I love it with m.y heart : unsatisfied, 
 I try it with my reason, nor discept 
 From any point I probe and pronounce sound. 
 Mind is not matter nor from matter, but 
 Above, — leave matter then, proceed with 
 
 mind ! 
 Man's be the mind recognized at the height, — 
 Leave the inferior minds and look at man ! 
 Is he the strong, intelligent and good 
 Up to his own conceivable height ? Nowise. 
 Enough o' the low, — soar the conceivable 
 
 height. 
 Find cause to match the effect in evidence. 
 The work i' the world, not man's but God's ; 
 
 leave man ! 
 Conjecture of the worker by the work : 
 Is there strength there ? — enough : intelli- 
 gence ? 
 Ample : but goodness in a like degree ? 
 Not to the human eye in the present state. 
 An isoscele deficient in the base. 
 What lacks, then, of perfection fit for God 
 But just the instance which this tale supplies 
 Of love without a limit ? So is strength, 
 So is intelligence ; let love be so. 
 Unlimited in its self-sacrifice. 
 Then is the tale true and God shows complete . 
 Beyond the tale, I reach into the dark. 
 Feel what I cannot see, and still faith stands ; 
 I can believe this dread machinery 
 Of sin and sorrow, would confound me else, 
 Devised — all pain, at most expenditure 
 Of pain by Who devised pain — to evolve, 
 By new machinery in counterpart, 
 The moral qualities of man — how else ? — 
 To make him love in turn and be beloved, 
 
S66 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 Creative and self-sacrificing too, 
 
 And thus eventually God-like, (ay, 
 
 *' I have said ye are Gods," — shall it be said 
 
 for naught ?) 
 Enable man to wring, froih out all pain, 
 All pleasure for a common heritage 
 To all eternity : this may be surmised, 
 The other is revealed, — whether a fact, 
 Absolute, abstract, independent truth. 
 Historic, not reduced to suit man's mind, — 
 Or only truth reverberate, changed, made pass 
 A spectrum into mind, the narrow eye, — 
 The same and not the same, else unconceived — 
 Though quite conceivable to the next grade 
 Above it in intelligence, — as truth 
 Easy to m:an were blindness to the beast 
 By parity of procedure, — the same truth 
 In a new form, but changed in either case : 
 What matter so intelligence be filled ? 
 To a child, the sea is angry, for it roars : 
 Frost bites, else why the tooth-like fret on 
 
 face ? 
 Man makes acoustics deal with the sea's wrath. 
 Explains the choppy cheek by chymio law, — 
 To man and child remains the same effect 
 On drum of ear and root of nose, change cause 
 Never so thoroughly ; so my heart be strack. 
 What care I, — by God's gloved hand or the 
 
 bare ? 
 Nor do I much perplex me with aught hard. 
 Dubious ki the transmitting of the tale, — 
 No, nor with certain riddles set to solve. 
 This life is training and a passage ; pass, — 
 Still, we march over some flat obstacle 
 We made give way before us ; solid truth 
 In front of it, what motion for the world ? 
 The moral sense grows but by exercise. 
 'T is even as man grew probatively 
 Initiated in Godship, set to make 
 A fairer moral world than this he finds, 
 Guess now what shall be known hereafter. 
 
 Deal 
 Thus with the present problem : as we see, 
 A faultless creature is destroyed, and sin 
 Has had its way i' the world where God should 
 
 rule; 
 Ay, but for this irrelevant circumstance 
 Of inquisition after blood, we see 
 P6mpilia lost and Guide saved : how long ? 
 For his whole Ufe : how much is that whole 
 
 life ? 
 We are not babes, but know the minute's 
 
 worth, 
 And feel that life is large and the world small. 
 So, wait till life have passed from out the 
 
 world. 
 Neither does this astonish at the end. 
 That whereas I can so receive and trust. 
 Other men, made with hearts and souls the 
 
 same, 
 Reject and disbelieve, — subordinate 
 Tlie futiu'e to the present, — sin, nor fear. 
 This I refer still to the foremost fact. 
 Life is probation and the earth no goal 
 But starting-point of man : compel him strive. 
 Which means, in man, as good as reach the 
 
 goal, — 
 Why institute that race, his life, at all ? 
 
 But this does overwhelm me with surprise, 
 Touch me to terror, — not that faith, the 
 
 Should be let lie by fishers wanting food, — 
 Nor, seen and handled by a certain few 
 Critical and contemptuous, straight consigned 
 To shore and shingle for the pebble it proves, — 
 But that, when haply found and known and 
 
 named 
 By the residue made rich forevermore. 
 These, — that these favored ones, should in a 
 
 trice 
 Turui and with double zest go dredge for 
 
 whelks. 
 Mud - worms that make the savory soup ! 
 
 Enough 
 0' the disbelievers, see the faithful few I 
 How do the Christians here deport them, keep 
 Their robes of white unspotted by the world ? 
 What is this Aretine Archbishop, this 
 Man under me as I am under God, 
 This champion of the faith, I armed and 
 
 decked. 
 Pushed forward, put upon a pinnacle. 
 To show the enemy his victor, — see ! 
 What's the best fighting when the couple 
 
 dose ? 
 Pompilia cries, " Protect me from the wolf ! " 
 He — " No, thy Guide is rough, heady, strong, 
 Dangerous to disquiet : let him bide ! 
 He needs some bone to mumble, help amuse 
 The darkness of his den with : so, the fawn 
 Which limps up bleeding to my foot and lies, 
 — Come to me, daughter ! — thus I throw him 
 
 back ! " 
 Have we misjudged here, over - armed our 
 
 knight, 
 Given gold and silk where plain hard steel 
 
 serves best. 
 Enfeebled whom we sought to fortify. 
 Made an archbishop and undone a saint ? 
 Well, then, descend these heights, this pride of 
 
 life, 
 Sit in the ashes with a barefoot monk 
 Who long ago stamped out the worldly sparks. 
 By fasting, watching, stone cell and wire 
 
 scourge, 
 ■ — No such indulgence as unknits the strength — 
 These breed the tight nerve and tough cuticle. 
 And the world's praise or blame runs rillet- 
 
 wise 
 Off the broad back and brawny breast, we 
 
 know ! 
 He meets the first cold sprinkle of the world. 
 And shudders to the marrow. *' Save this child ? 
 Oh, my superiors, oh, the Archbishop's self! 
 Who was it dared lay hand upon the ark 
 His betters saw fall nor put finger forth ? 
 Great ones could help yet help not : why should 
 
 small? 
 I break my promise : let her break her heart ! " 
 These are the Christians not the worldlings, not 
 The sceptics, who thus battle for the faith ! 
 If foolish virgins disobey and sleep, 
 Wbat wonder ? But, this time, the wise that 
 
 watch. 
 Sell lamps and buy lutes, exchange oil for wine. 
 The mystic Spouse betrays the Bridegroom here. 
 
THE POPE 
 
 567 
 
 To our last resource, then 1 Since all flesh is 
 
 wtiak, 
 Bind weaknesses tog:ether, we get strength : 
 The individaal weighed, found wanting, try 
 Some institutionj honest artifice 
 Whereby tiie units grow compact and firm I 
 Each props the other, and so stand is made 
 By onr embodied cowards that grow brave. 
 The Monastery called of Convertites, 
 Meant to help women because these helped 
 
 Christ, — 
 A. thing existent only while it acts. 
 Does as designed, else a nonentity, — 
 For what is an idea unrealized ? — 
 Pompilia is consigned to these for help. 
 They do help : they are prompt to testify 
 To her pure life and saintly dying days. 
 She dies, and lo, who seemed so poor, proves 
 
 rich! 
 What does the body that lives through helpful- 
 ness 
 To women for Christ's sake ? The kiss turns 
 
 bite. 
 The dove's note changes to the crow's cry: 
 
 jndge ! 
 "Seeing that this our Convent claims of right 
 What goods belong to those we succor, be 
 The same proved women of dishonest life, — 
 And seeing that this Trial made appear 
 Pompilia was in such predicament, — 
 The Convent hereupon pretends to said 
 Succession of Pompilia, issues writ, 
 And takes possession by the Fisc's advice," 
 Such is their attestation to the cause 
 Of Christ, who had one saint at lea.st, they 
 
 hoped : 
 But, is a title-deed to filch, a corpse 
 To slander, and an infant-heir to cheat ? 
 Christ must give up his gains then ! They unsay 
 All the fine speeches, — who was saint is whore. 
 Why, scripture yields no parallel for this ! 
 The soldiers only threw dice for Christ's coat ; 
 We want another legend of the Twelve 
 Disputing if it was Christ's coat at all, 
 Claiming as prize the woof of price — for why ? 
 The Master was a thief, purloined the same. 
 Or paid for it out of the common bag ! 
 Can it be this is end and outcome, all 
 I take with me to show as stewardship's fruit. 
 The best yield of the latest time, this year 
 The seventeen-hundredtli since God died for 
 
 man? 
 Is such effect proportionate to cause ? 
 And still the terror keeps on the increase 
 When I perceive . . . how can I blink the fact ? 
 That the fault, the obduracy to good. 
 Lies not with the impracticable stuff 
 Whence man is made, his very nature's fault, 
 As if it were of ice the moon may gild 
 Not melt, or stone 't was meant the sun should 
 
 warm 
 Not make bear flowers, — nor ice nor stone to 
 
 blame : 
 But it can melt, that ice, can bloom, that stone, 
 Impassible to rule of day and night ! 
 This terrifies me, thus compelled perceive, 
 Whatever love and faith we lookedshonld spring 
 At advent of the authoritative star, ' ■ 
 
 Which yet lie sluggish, curdled at the source, — 
 These have leapt forth profusely in old time. 
 These still respond with promptitude to-day. 
 At challenge of — what unacknowledged powers 
 O' the air, what uncommissioned meteors, 
 
 warmth 
 By law, and light by rule should supersede ? 
 For see this priest, this Caponsacchi, stung 
 At the first summons, — " Help for honor's 
 
 Play the man, pity the oppressed ! " — no pause, 
 
 How does he lay about him in the midst. 
 
 Strike any foe, right wrong at any risk, 
 
 All blindness, bravery and obedience ! — blind? 
 
 Ay, as a man would be inside the sun. 
 
 Delirious with the plenitude of light 
 
 Should interfuse him to the finger-ends — 
 
 Let him rush straight, and how shall he go 
 
 wrong ? 
 Where are the Christians in their panoply ? 
 The loins we girt about with truth, the breasts 
 Righteousness plated round, the shield of faith. 
 The helmet of salvation, and that sword 
 0' the Spirit, even the word of God, — where 
 
 these? 
 Slunk into corners ! Oh, I hear at once 
 Hubbub of protestation ! " What, we monks, 
 We friars, of such an order, such a rule. 
 Have not we fought, bled, left our martyr-mark 
 At every point along the boundary-line 
 'Twixt true and false, religion and the world. 
 Where this or the other dogma of our Church 
 Called for defence ? " And I, despite myself, 
 How can I but speak loud what truth speaks 
 
 low, 
 " Or better than the best, or nothing serves ! 
 What boots deed, I can cap and cover straight 
 With such another doughtiness to match. 
 Done at an instinct of the natural man ? " 
 Immolate body, sacrifice soul too, — 
 Do not these publicans the same ? Outstrip ! 
 Or else stop race you boast runs neck and neck. 
 You with the wings, they with the feet, ■ — for 
 
 shame ! 
 Oh, I remark your diligence and zeal ! 
 Five years long, now, rounds faith into my ears, 
 " Help thou, or Christendom is done to death! '* 
 Five years since, in the Province of To-kien, 
 Which is in China as some people know, 
 Maigrot, my Vicar Apostolic there. 
 Having a great qualm, issues a decree. 
 Alack, the converts use as God's name, not 
 Tien~chu but plain Tien or else mere ShaTiff^i, 
 As Jesuits please to fancy politic. 
 While, say Dominicans, it calls down fire, — 
 For Tien means heaven, and Shang-ti, supreme 
 
 prince. 
 While Tien-chu means the lord of heaven : al) 
 
 cry, 
 "There is no business urgent for dispatch 
 As that thou send a legate, specially 
 Cardinal Toumon, straight to Pekin, there 
 To settle and compose the difference ! " 
 So have I seen a potentate all fume 
 For some infringement of his realm's just right. 
 Some menace to a mud-built straw-thatched 
 
 farm 
 0' the frontier ; while inside the mainland lie, 
 
568 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 Quite undisputed-for in solitude, 
 Whole cities plague may waste or famine sap : 
 What it' the sun crumble, the sands encroach. 
 While he looks on sublimely at his ease ? 
 How does their ruin touch the empire's bound ? 
 
 And is this little all that was to be ? 
 
 Where is the gloriously-decisive change. 
 
 Metamorphosis the immeasurable 
 
 Of human clay to divine gold, we looked 
 
 Should, in some poor sort, justify its price ? 
 
 Had an adept of the mere JRosy Cross 
 
 Spent his life to consummate the Great Work, 
 
 Would not we start to see the stuff it touched 
 
 Yield not a grain more than the vulgar got 
 
 By the old smelting-process years ago ? 
 
 If this were sad to see in just the sage 
 
 Wlio should profess so much, perforin no more, 
 
 What is it when suspected in that Power 
 
 Who undertook to make and made the world, 
 
 Devised and did effect man, body and soul, 
 
 Ordained salvation for them both, and yet . . . 
 
 Well, is the thing we see, salvation ? 
 
 Put no such dreadful question to myself, 
 Within whose circle of experience burns 
 The central truth, Power, Wisdom, Good- 
 ness, — God : 
 I must outlive a thing ere know it dead : 
 When I outlive the faith there is a sun. 
 When I lie, ashes to the veiy soul, — 
 Some one, not I, must wail above the heap, 
 " He died in dark whence never mom arose." 
 While I see day succeed the deepest night — 
 How can I speak but as I know ? — my speech 
 Must be, throughout the darkness, " It will 
 
 end: 
 The light that did burn, will burn ! " Clouds 
 
 obscure — 
 But for which obscuration all were bright ? 
 Too hastily concluded ! Sun-suffused, 
 A cloud may soothe the eye made blind by 
 
 blaze, — 
 Better the very clarity of heaven ; 
 The soft streaks are the beautiful and dear. 
 What but the weakness in a faith supplies 
 The incentive to humanity, no strength 
 Absolute, irresistible, comports ? 
 How can man love but what he yearns to help ? 
 And that which men think weakness within 
 
 strength. 
 But angels know for strength and stronger 
 
 yet — 
 What were it else but the first things made new. 
 But repetition of the miracle, 
 The divine instance of self-sacrifice 
 That never ends and aye begins for man ? 
 So, never I miss footing in the maze, 
 No, — I have light nor fear the dark at all. 
 
 But are mankind not real, who pace outside 
 My petty circle, world that 's measured me ? 
 And when they stumble even as I stand. 
 Have I a right to stop ear when they cry. 
 As they were phantoms who took clouds for 
 
 crags. 
 Tripped and fell, where man's march might 
 
 safely move ? 
 
 Beside, the cry is other than a ghost's, 
 
 When out of the old time there pleads some 
 
 bard. 
 Philosopher, or both, and — whispers not. 
 But words it boldly. "The inward work and 
 
 worth 
 Of any mind, what other mind may judge 
 Save God who only knows the thing he made, 
 The veritable service he exacts ? 
 It is the outward product men appraise. 
 Behold, an engine hoists a tower aloft : 
 ' I looked that it should move the mountain 
 
 too!' 
 Or else ' Had just a turret toppled down. 
 Success enough ! ' — may say the Machinist 
 Who knows what less or more result might be : 
 But we, who see that done we cannot do, 
 ' A feat beyond man's force,' we men must say. 
 Regard me and that shake I gave the world ! 
 I was bom, not so long before Christ's birth 
 As Christ's birth haply did precede thy day, — 
 But many a watch before the star of dawn : 
 Therefore I lived, — it is thy creed affirms. 
 Pope Innocent, who art to answer me ! — 
 Under conditions, nowise to escape. 
 Whereby salvation was impossible. 
 Each impulse to achieve the good and fair, 
 Each aspiration to the pure and true, 
 Being without a warrant or an aim. 
 Was just as sterile a felicity 
 As if the insect, born to spend his life 
 Soaring his circles, stopped them to describe 
 (Painfully motionless in the mid-air) 
 Some word of weighty counsel for man's sake. 
 Some ' Know thyself ' or ' Take the golden 
 
 mean ! ' 
 — _ Forwent his happy dance and the glad ray, 
 Died half an houi' the sooner and was dust. 
 I, born to perish like the brutes, or worse. 
 Why not live brutishly, obey brutes' law ? 
 But I, of body as of soul complete, 
 A gymnast at the games, philosopher 
 I' the schools, who painted, and made music, 
 
 — all 
 Glories that met upon the tragic stage 
 When the Third Poet's tread surprised the 
 
 Two, - 
 Whose lot fell in a land where life was great 
 And sense went free and beauty lay profuse, 
 I, untouched by one adverae circumstance, 
 Adopted virtue as my rule of life. 
 Waived all reward, loved but for loving's sake, 
 And, what my heart taught me, I taught the 
 
 world. 
 And have been teaching now two thousand 
 
 years. 
 Witness my work, — plays that should please, 
 
 forsooth ! 
 ' They might please, they may displease, they 
 
 shall teach. 
 For truth's sake,' so I said, and did, and do. 
 Five hundred years ere Paul spoke, Felix 
 
 heard, — 
 How much of temperance and righteousness, 
 Judgment to come, did I find reason for. 
 Corroborate with my strong style that spared 
 No sin, nor swerved the more from branding 
 
 brow 
 
THE POPE 
 
 569 
 
 Because the sinner was called Zeus and God ? 
 
 How nearly did 1 guess at that Paul knew ? 
 
 How closely come, in what I represent 
 
 As duty, to his doctrine yet a hlank ? 
 
 And as that limner not untruly limns 
 
 Who draws an object round or square, which 
 
 square 
 Or round seems to the unassisted eye, 
 Though Galileo's tube display the same 
 Oval or oblong, — so, who controverts 
 I rendered rightly what proves wrongly 
 
 wrought 
 Beside Paul's picture ? Mine was true for me. 
 I saw that there are, first and above all. 
 The hidden forces, blind necessities. 
 Named Nature, but the thing's self uncon- 
 
 ceived : 
 Then follow — how dependent upon these. 
 We know not, how imposed above ourselves. 
 We well know — what I name the gods, a 
 
 power 
 Various or one : for great and strong and good 
 Is there, and little, weak and bad there too, 
 Wisdom and folly : say, these make no God, — 
 What is it else that rules outside man's self ? 
 A fact then, — always, to the naked eye, — 
 And so, the one revealment possible 
 Of what were uuiraa?ined else by man. 
 Therefore, what gods do, man may criticise. 
 Applaud, condemn, — how should he fear the 
 
 truth? — 
 But likewise have in awe because of power. 
 Venerate for the main munificence. 
 And give the doubtful deed its due excuse 
 From the acknowledged creature of a day 
 To the Eternal and Divine. Thus, bold 
 Yot self-mistrusting, should man bear himself. 
 Most assured on what now concerns him most — 
 The law of his own Kfe, the path he prints, — 
 Which law is virtue and not vice, I say, — 
 And least inquisitive where search least skills, 
 I' the nature we best give the clouds to keep. 
 What could I paint beyond a scheme like this 
 Out of the fragmeutaiT truths where light 
 Lay fitful in a tenebrific time V 
 You have the sunrise now, joitis truth to truth, 
 Shoots life and substance into death and void ; 
 Themselves compose the whole we made before : 
 The forces and necessity grow God, — 
 The beings so contrarious that seemed gods, 
 Prove just his operation manifold 
 And multiform, translated, as must be, 
 Into intelligible shape so far 
 As suits our sense and sets us free to feel. 
 What if I let a child think, childhood-Ion^, 
 That lightning, I would have him spare his eye, 
 Is a real arrow shot at naked orb ? 
 The man knows more, but shuts his lids the 
 
 same ; 
 Lightning's cause comprehends nor man nor 
 
 child. 
 Why then, my scheme, your better knowledge 
 
 broke. 
 Presently readjusts itself, the small 
 Proportioned largelier, parts and whole named 
 
 new : 
 So much, no more two thousand years have 
 
 done .' 
 
 Pope, dost thou dare pretend to punish me, 
 For not descrying sunshine at midnight. 
 Me who crept aU-fours, found my way so far — 
 While thou rewardest teachers of the truth. 
 Who miss the plain way in the blaze of noon, — 
 Though just a word from that strong style of 
 
 mine. 
 Grasped honestly in hand as guiding-staff, 
 Had pricked them a sure path across the bog, 
 That mire of cowardice and slush of lies 
 Wherein I find them wallow in wide day ! " 
 
 How should I answer this Euripides ? 
 Paul — 'tis a legend — answered Seneca, 
 But that was in the day-spring ; noon is now, 
 We have got too familiar with the light. 
 Shall I wish back once more that thrill of 
 
 dawn? 
 When the whole truth-touched man burned up, 
 
 one iire ? 
 — Assured the trial, fiery, fierce, but fleet, 
 Would, from his little heap of ashes, lend 
 Wings to that conflagration of the world 
 Which Christ awaits ere he makes all things 
 
 new : 
 So should the frail become the perfect, rapt 
 From glory of pain to glory of joy ; and so. 
 Even in the end, — the act renouncing earth. 
 Lands, houses, husbands, wives and children 
 
 here, — 
 Begin that other act which finds all, lost, 
 Kegained, in this time even, a hundredfold. 
 And, in the next time, feels the finite love 
 Blent and embalmed with the eternal life. 
 So does the sun ghastlily seem to sink 
 In those north parts, lean aU but out of life, 
 Desist a dread mere breathing-stop, then slow 
 Re-assert day, begin the endless rise. 
 Was this too easy for our after-stage ? 
 Was such a lighting-up of faith, in life. 
 Only allowed initiate, set man's step 
 In the true way by help of the great glow ? 
 A way wherein it is ordained he walk. 
 Bearing to see the light from heaven still more 
 And more encroached on by the light of earth, 
 Tentatives earth puts forth to rival heaven. 
 Earthly incitements that mankind serve God 
 For man's sole sake, not God's and therefore 
 
 man's. 
 Tin at last, who distinguishes the sun 
 From a mere Druid fire on a far mount ? 
 More praise to him who with his subtle prism 
 Shall decompose both beams and name the true, 
 In such sense, who is last proves first indeed ; 
 For how could saints and martyrs fail see 
 
 truth 
 Streak the night's blackness ? Who is faithful 
 
 now, 
 Who untwists heaven's white from the yeUow 
 
 flare 
 0' the world's gross torch, without night's foil 
 
 that helped 
 Produce the Christian act so possible 
 When in the way stood Nero's cross and 
 
 stake, — 
 So hard now when the world smiles " Right and 
 
 wise! 
 Faith points the politic, the thrifty way, 
 
57° 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 Will make who plods it in the end returns 
 Beyond mere fooi's-sport and improvidence. 
 We fools dance through the cornfield of this 
 
 life, 
 Pluck ears to left and right and swallow raw, 
 — Nay, tread, at pleasure, a sheaf underfoot, 
 To get the oetter at some poppy-flower, — 
 WeU aware we shall have so much less wheat 
 In the eventual harvest : you meantime 
 Waste not a spike, — the richlier will you reap ! 
 What then ? There will be always garnered 
 
 meal 
 Sufficient for our comfortable loaf. 
 While you enjoy the undiminished sack ! " 
 Is it not this ignoble confidence, 
 Cowardly hardihood, that dulls and damps, 
 Makes the old heroism impossible ? 
 
 Unless . . . what whispers me of times to 
 
 come? 
 What if it be the mission of that age 
 My death will usher into life, to shake 
 This torpor of assurance from our creed, 
 Keintroduce the doubt discarded, bring 
 That formidable danger back, we drove 
 Long ago to the distance and the dark ? 
 No wild beast now prowls round the infant 
 
 camp: 
 We have built wall and sleep in city safe : 
 But if some earthquake try the towers that 
 
 laugh, 
 To think they once saw lions rule outside. 
 And man stand out again, pale, resolute. 
 Prepared to die, — which means, alive at last ? 
 As we broke up that old faith of the world, 
 Have we, next age, to break up this the new — 
 Faith, in the thing, grown faith in the report — 
 Whence need to bravely disbelieve report 
 Through increased faith i' the thing reports be- 
 lie ? 
 Must we deny, — do they, these Molinists, 
 At peril of their body and their soul, — 
 Recognized truths, obedient to some truth 
 Unrecognized yet, but perceptible ? — 
 Correct the portrait by the living face, 
 Man's God, by God's God in the mind of man ? 
 Then, for the few that rise to the new height. 
 The many that must sink to the old depth. 
 The multitude found fall away ! A few. 
 E'en ere new law speak clear, may keep the 
 
 old. 
 Preserve the Christian level, call good good 
 And evil evil, (even though razed and blank 
 The old titles,) helped by custom, habitude, 
 And all else they mistake for finer sense 
 O' the fact that reason warrants, — as before. 
 They hope perhaps, fear not impossibly. 
 At least some one Pompilia left the world 
 Will say " I know the right place by foot's feel, 
 I took it and tread firm there ; wherefore 
 
 change ? " 
 But what a multitude will surely fall 
 Quite through the crumbling truth, late sub- 
 jacent, 
 Sink to the next discoverable base. 
 Rest upon human'nature, settle there 
 On what is firm, the lust and pride of life I 
 A mass of men, whose very souls even now 
 
 Seem to need re-creating, ^- so they slink 
 Worra-Uke into the mud, light now lays 
 
 Whose future we dispose of with shut eyes 
 And whisper— "They are grafted, barren 
 
 twigs. 
 Into the living stock of Christ : may bear 
 One day, till when they lie death-like, not 
 
 dead," — 
 Those who with all the aid of Christ succumb, 
 How, without Christ, shall they, unaided, 
 
 sink? 
 Whither but to this gulf before my eyes ? 
 Do not we end, the century and I ? 
 The impatient antimasque treads close on kibe 
 O' the very masque's self it will mock, — on 
 
 me. 
 Last lingering persona^, the impatient mime 
 Pushes already, — will I block the way ? 
 WiU my slow trail of garments ne'er leave 
 
 space 
 For pantaloon, sock, plume and Castanet ? 
 Here comes the first experimentalist 
 In the new order of things, — he plays a priest ; 
 Does he take inspiration from the Church, 
 Directly make her rule his law of life ? 
 Not he : his own mere impulse guides the 
 
 man — 
 Happily sometimes, since ourselves allow 
 He has danced, in gayety of heart, i' the main 
 The right step through the maze we bade him 
 
 foot. 
 But if his heart had prompted him break loose 
 And mar the measure ? Why, we must sub- 
 mit. 
 And thank the chance that brought him safe so 
 
 far. 
 WiU he repeat the prodigy ? Perhaps. 
 Can he teach others how to quit themselves, 
 Show why this step was right while that were 
 
 wrong ? 
 How should he ? " Ask your hearts as I asked 
 
 mine. 
 And get discreetly through the morriee too ; 
 If your hearts misdirect you, — quit the stage, 
 And make amends, — be there amends to 
 
 make ! " 
 Such is, for the Augustin that was once. 
 This Canon Caponsacchi we see now. 
 " But my heart answers to another tune," 
 Puts in the Abate, second in the suite ; 
 " I have my taste too, and tread no such step I 
 You choose the glorious life, and may, for me I 
 I like the lowest of life's appetites, — 
 So you judge, — but the very truth of joy 
 To my own apprehension which decides. 
 Call me knave and you get yourself called 
 
 fool ! 
 I live for greed, ambition, lust, revenge ; 
 Attain these ends by force, guile : hypocrite. 
 To-day perchance to-morrow recognized 
 The rational man, the type of common sense." 
 There 's Loyola adapted to our time ! 
 Under such guidance Gnido plays his part. 
 He also influencing in the due turn 
 These last clods where I track intelligence 
 By any glimmer, these four at his beck 
 Ready to murder any, and, at their own, 
 
THE POPE 
 
 571 
 
 As ready to murder him, — such make the 
 
 world ! 
 And, first effect of the new cause of things, 
 There they lie also duly, — the old paii' 
 Of the weak head and not so wicked heartj 
 With the one Christian mother, wife and girl, 
 — Which three gifts seem to make an angel 
 
 up,— 
 The world's first foot o' the dance is on their 
 
 heads ! 
 Still, I stand here, not off the stage though 
 
 close 
 On the exit : and my last act, as my first, 
 I owe the scene, and Him who armed me thus 
 With Paul's sword as with Peter's key. I 
 
 smite 
 With my whole strength once more, ere end 
 
 my part. 
 Ending, so far as man may, this offence. 
 And when I raise my arm, who plucks my 
 
 sleeve? 
 Who stops me in the righteous function, — foe 
 Or friend ? Oh, still as ever, friends are they 
 Who, in the interest of outraged truth 
 Deprecate such rough handling of a lie I 
 The facts heing proved and incontestable, 
 What is the last word I must listen to ? 
 Perchance — "Spare yet a term this barren 
 
 stock, 
 We pray thee dig about and dung and dress 
 Till he repent and bring forth fruit even yet ! " 
 Perchance — ""^ So poor and swift a punishment 
 ShaU throw him out of life with all that sin : 
 Let merey rather pile up pain on pain 
 Till the flesh expiate what the soul pays else ! " 
 Nowise ! Kemonstrants on each side com- 
 mence 
 Instructing, there 's a new tribunal now 
 Higher than God's — the educated man's I 
 Nice sense of honor in the hunaan breast 
 Supersedes here the old coarse oracle — 
 Confirming none the less a point or so 
 Wherein blind predecessors worked aright 
 By rule of thumb : as when Christ said, — 
 
 when, where ? 
 Enough, I find it pleaded in a place, — 
 ' ' All other wrongs done, patiently I take : 
 But touch my honor and the case is changed ! 
 I feel the due resentment, — nemini 
 Honorem trado is my quick retort." 
 Right of Him, just as if pronounced to-day ! 
 Still, should the old authority be mute 
 Or doubtful, or in speaking clash with new, 
 The younger takes permission to decide. 
 At last we have the instinct of the world 
 Ruling its household without tutelage ; 
 And while the two laws, human and divine. 
 Have busied finder with this tangled ease. 
 In pushes the brisk junior, cuts the knot. 
 Pronounces for acquittal. How it trips 
 Silverly o'er the tongue I " Remit the death ! 
 Forgive, . . . well, in the old way, if thou please, 
 Decency and the relics of routine 
 Respected, — let the Count go free as air I 
 Since he may plead a priest's immunity, — 
 The minor ordei« help enough for that. 
 With Farinacci's license, — who decides 
 That the mere implication of such man, 
 
 So privileged, in any cause, before 
 Whatever Court except the Spiritual, 
 Straight quashes law-procedure, — quash it, 
 
 then ! 
 Remains a pretty loophole of escape 
 Moreover, that, beside the patent fact 
 O' the law's allowance, there 's involved the 
 
 weal 
 O' the Popedom ; a son's privilege at stake, 
 Thou wilt pretend the Church's interest, 
 Ignore all finer reasons to forgive ! 
 But herein lies the crowning cogency — 
 (Let thy friends teach thee while thou tellest 
 
 beads) 
 That in this case the spirit of culture speaks, 
 Civilization is imperative. 
 To her shall we remand all delicate points 
 Henceforth, nor take irregular advice 
 0' the sly, as heretofore : she used to hint 
 Remonstrances, when law was out of sorts 
 Because a saucy tongue was put to rest, 
 An eye that roved was cured of arrogance : 
 But why be forced to mumble under breath 
 What soon shall be acknowledged as plain fact. 
 Outspoken, say, in thy successor's time ? 
 Methinks we see the golden age return I 
 Civilization and the Emperor 
 Succeed to Christianity and Pope. 
 One Emperor then, as one Pope now : mean- 
 while. 
 Anticipate a little ! We t«ll thee * Take 
 Guide's life, sapped society shall crash, 
 Whereof the main prop was, is, and shall be 
 — Supremacy of husband over wife I ' 
 Does the man rule i' the house, and may his 
 
 mate 
 Because of any plea dispute the same ? 
 Oh, pleas of all sorts shall abound, be sure, 
 One but allowed validity, — for, harsh 
 And savag-e, for, inept and silly-sooth. 
 For, this and that, will the ingenious sex 
 Demonstrate the best master e'er graced slave : 
 And there's but one short way to end the 
 
 coil, — 
 Acknowledge right and reason steadily 
 I' the man and master : then the wife submits 
 To plain truth broadly stated. Does the time 
 Advise we shift — a pillar ? nay, a stake 
 Out of its place i' the social tenement ? 
 One touch may send a shudder through the 
 
 And bring it topplii^ on our children's heads ! 
 Moreover, if ours breed a c[ualm in thee, 
 Give thine own better feehng play for once ! 
 Thou, whose own life winks o'er the socket- 
 edge, 
 WouJdst thou it went out in such ugly snuff 
 As dooming sons dead, e'en though justice 
 
 prompt ? 
 Why, on a certain feast, Barabbas' self 
 Was set free, not to cloud the general cheer : 
 Neither shalt thou pollute thy Sabbath close I 
 Mercy is safe and graceful. How one hears 
 The howl begin, scarce the three little taps 
 0' the silver mallet silent on thy brow, — 
 ' His last act was to sacrifice a Count 
 And thereby screen a scandal of the Church I 
 Guido condemned, the Canon justified 
 
572 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 Of course, — delinquents of his cloth go free ! ' 
 And so the Luthers chuckle, Calvins scowl. 
 So thy hand helps Molinos to the chair 
 Whence he may hold forth till doom's day on 
 
 just 
 These petit-maUre priestlings, — in the choir, 
 Sanctus et Benedictus, with a brush 
 Of soft gnitar-strings that obey the thumb. 
 Touched by the bedside, for accompaniment ! 
 Does this give umbrage to a husband ? Death 
 To the fool, and to the priest impunity ! 
 But no impunity to any friend 
 So simply over-loyal as these four 
 Who made religion of their patron's cause. 
 Believed in him and did his bidding straight. 
 Asked not one question but laid down the lives 
 This Pope took, — all four lives together make 
 Just his own length of days, — so, dead they 
 
 lie, 
 As these were times when loyalty 's a drug. 
 And zeal in a subordinate too cheap 
 And common to be saved when we spend life ! 
 Come, 't is too much good breath we waste in 
 
 words : 
 The pardon. Holy Father ! Spare grimace, 
 Shrugs and reluctance ! Are not we the world. 
 Art not thou Priam ? let soft culture plead 
 Hecuba-like, ' non tali ' (Virgil serves) 
 ' Auxilio,' and the rest ! Enough, it works ! 
 The Pope relaxes, and the Prince is loth. 
 The father's bowels yearn, the man's will 
 
 bends. 
 Reply is apt. Our tears on tremble, hearts 
 Big with a benediction, wait the word 
 Shall circulate through the city in a trice. 
 Set every window flaring, give each roan 
 O' the mob his torch to wave for gratitude. 
 Pronounce then, for our breath and patience 
 
 fail ! " 
 
 I will. Sirs : but a voice other than yours 
 Quickens my spirit. " Quis pro Domino ? 
 Who is upon the Lord's side?" asked the 
 
 Count. 
 I, who write — 
 
 " On receipt of this command, 
 Acquaint Count Guide and his fellows four 
 They die to-morrow : could it be to-night. 
 The better, but the work to do, takes time. 
 Set with all diligence a scaffold up. 
 Not in the customary place, by Bridge 
 Saint Angelo, where die the common sort ; 
 But since the man is noble, and his peers 
 By predilection haunt the People's Square, 
 There let him be beheaded in the midst. 
 And his companions hanged on either side : 
 So shall the quality see, fear, and learn. 
 All which work takes time : till to-morrow, 
 
 then, 
 Let there be prayer incessant for the five ! " 
 
 For the main criminal I have no hope 
 Except in such a suddenness of fate. 
 I stood at Naples once, a night so dark 
 I could have scarce conjectured there was earth 
 Anywhere, sky or sea or world at all : 
 But the night's black was burst through by a 
 blaze — 
 
 Thunder struck blow on blow, earth groaned 
 
 and bore, . . 
 
 Through her whole length of mountain visible : 
 There lay the city thick and plain with spires, 
 And, like a ghost disshrouded, white the sea. 
 So may the truth be flashed out by one blow, 
 And Guido see, one instant, and be saved. 
 Else I avert my face, nor follow him 
 Into that sad obscure sequestered state 
 Where God unmakes but to remake the soul 
 He else made first in vain ; which must not be. 
 Enough, for I may die this very night : 
 And how should I dare die, this man let live ? 
 
 Carry this forthwith to the Governor ! 
 
 XI 
 
 GUIDO 
 
 You are the Cardinal Acciaiuoli, and you. 
 
 Abate Panciatichi — two good Tuscan names : 
 
 Acciaiuoli — ah, your ancestor it was 
 
 Built the huge battlemented convent-block 
 
 Over the Httle forky flashing Greve 
 
 That takes the quick turn at the foot o' iJie 
 
 hill 
 Just as one first sees Florence : oh those days ! 
 'T is Ema, though, the other rivulet. 
 The one-arched brown brick bridge yawns over, 
 
 — yes, 
 Gallop and go five minutes, and you gain 
 The Koman 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 trutii 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 Seep ! 
 You have my last word, — innocent am 1 
 As Innocent my Pope and murderer. 
 Innocent as a babe, as Mary's own. 
 As Mary's self, — I said, say and repeat, — 
 And why, then, should I die twelve hours 
 
 hence ? I — 
 Whom, not twelve hours ago, the jailer bade 
 Turn to my straw-truss, settle and sleep sound 
 That I might wake the sooner, prompther pay 
 His due of meat-and-drink-indulgeuee, 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. 
 
GUIDO 
 
 S73 
 
 Held it with tooth and nail, — these manly men 
 Approved ! I being for Borne, Borne was for 
 
 me. 
 Then, there 's the point reserved, the subter- 
 fuge 
 My lawyers held by, kept for last resource, 
 Firm should all else — the impossible fancy ! — 
 
 fail, 
 And sneaking burgess-spirit win the day. 
 The knaves ! One plea at least would hold, — 
 
 they laughed, — 
 One grappling-iron scratch the bottom-rock 
 Even should the middle mud let anchor go ! 
 I hooked my cause on to the Clergy's, — plea 
 Which, even if law tipped off my hat and plume, 
 Bevealed my priestly tonsure, saved me so. 
 The Pope moreover, this old Innocent, 
 Being so meek and mild and merciful. 
 So fond o' the poor and so fatigued of earth. 
 So . . . iifty thousand devils in deepest hell ! 
 Why nmst 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 ex- 
 tant, — 
 But will my death do credit to his reign, 
 Show he both lived and let live, so was good ? 
 Cannot I live if he but like ? " The Law ! " 
 Why, just the law gives him the very chance, 
 The precise leave to let my life alone. 
 Which the archangelic soul of him (he says) 
 Yearns after ! Here they drop it in his palm. 
 My lawyers, capital o' the cursed kind, — 
 Drop life to take and hold and keep ; but no ! 
 He sighs, shakes head, refuses to shut hand, 
 Motions away the gift they bid him grasp. 
 And of the coyness comes — that ofF I run 
 And down I go, he best knows whither ! mind, 
 He knows, who sets me rolling all the same ! 
 Disinterested Vicar of our Lord, 
 This way he abrogates and disallows. 
 Nullifies and ignores, — reverts in fine 
 To the good and right, in detriment of me ! 
 Talk away ! Will you have the naked truth ? 
 He 's sick of his life's supper, — swallowed lies : 
 So, hobbling bedward, needs must ease his maw 
 Just where I sit o' the dooreill. Sir Abate, 
 Can you do nothing? Friends, we used to 
 
 frisk: 
 What of this sadden slash in a friend's face. 
 This cut across our good companionship 
 That showed its front so gay when both were 
 
 young ? 
 Were not we put into a beaten path. 
 Bid pace the world, we nobles born and bred. 
 We body of friends with each his 'scutcheon 
 
 full 
 Of old achievement and impunity, — 
 Taking the laugh of mom and Sol's salute 
 As forth we fared, pricked on to breathe our 
 
 steeds 
 And take equestrian sport over the green 
 Under the blue, across the crop, — what care ? 
 If we went prancing up hill and down dale, 
 
 In and out of the level and the straight, 
 By the bit of pleasant byway, where was harm ? 
 Still Sol salutes me and the morning laughs : 
 I see my grandsire's 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 I 
 A trot and a trample I Only I lie trapped, 
 Writhe in a certain novel springe just set 
 By the good old Pope ; I 'ra first prize. Warn 
 
 me ? Why ? 
 Apprise me that the law o' the game is 
 
 changed ? 
 Enough that I 'm a warning, as I writhe. 
 To all and each my fellows of the file. 
 And make law plain henceforward past mis- 
 take, 
 " For such a prank, death is the penalty ! " 
 Pope the Five Hundredth (what do I know or 
 
 care ?) 
 Deputes your Emineney and Abateship 
 To announce that, twelve hours from this time, 
 
 he needs 
 I just essay upon my body and soul 
 The virtue of his brand-new engine, prove 
 Represser of the pranksome ! I 'm the first ! 
 Thanks. Do you know what teeth you mean 
 
 to try 
 The sharpness of, on this soft neck and throat ? 
 I know it, — I have seen and hate it, — ay. 
 As you shall, while I teU you ! Let me talk. 
 Or leave me, at your pleasure ! talk I must : 
 What is your visit but my lure to talk ? 
 Nay, you have something to disclose ? — a 
 
 smile. 
 At end of the forced sternness, means to mock 
 The heart-heats 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 th© 
 
 wretch ! 
 Now we shall have the Abate's story ! " 
 
 Life I 
 How I could spin this overplus of mine 
 Among those hoar-haired, shrnnk-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 
 
574 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 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 I 
 Is it not terrible, I entreat you. Sirs ? 
 With manifold and plenitudinous life, 
 Prompt at death's menace to give blow for 
 
 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 I 
 
 Lucidity of soul unlocks the lips : 
 
 I never had the words at wiU 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 ? 
 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 fine axe in a frame, that falls 
 And so cuts oif 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 o£F head from 
 
 trunk. 
 Belonging to a fellow whose poor house 
 The thing must make a point to stand before. 
 Felice Whatsoever-was-tne-name 
 Who stabled bufBaloes 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-he^ht. 
 For fear an officer should tumble thence 
 And sprain his ankle and be lame a month. 
 Through starting when the axe fell and head 
 
 tool 
 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 em- 
 brace, — 
 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 yoijr soul gone ? That, too, 1 
 
 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 skUl-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 I 
 Here it is all again, conserved for use : 
 Twelve hours hence, I may know more, not hate 
 
 worse. 
 
GUIDO 
 
 575 
 
 That young May-moon-month ! Devils of the 
 
 deep 1 
 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 cuUion such a trick 
 As wins the wife i' the pleasant story I 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 Qian virginity in rags — 
 Bouncing Europa on the back o' the bull : 
 Jhey 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 1 — 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 I 
 See me dissect a little, and know your game 1 
 Only anatomy makes a thrust the thing." 
 Oh, Cardinal, those lithe live necks of ours ! 
 Here go the vertebrse, 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 
 
 *' 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 
 Enda 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 practi- 
 tioner- 
 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 hid- 
 eous hole 
 Behind him ! 
 
 And why, why must this needs be ? 
 Oh, if men were but good I 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 1 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 dewf all to be bntcher's-meat ! 
 Think, Sirs, if I have done you any harm, 
 And yon 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 'U 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 aouL then, curse the world ! 
 " No," venerable sire, I hear you smirk. 
 
576 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 " No : for Christ's goepel changes names, not 
 
 things, 
 Eenews 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 back 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 Home 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?" 
 *'Ifind," 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 : 'tis truth j 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 wiU 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 Itell 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 I 
 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 1 
 WiU 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 I " 
 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 your- 
 selves. 
 Civilization and society ! 
 Come, one good grajiple, I with all the world J 
 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 I 
 That 's in your eyes ! You dare no more than 
 
 death. 
 
GUIDO 
 
 577 
 
 And mean no less. I must make up my mind I 
 So Pietro — when I chaaed him here and there, 
 Morsel by morsel out aivay the life 
 I loathed — cried for just respite to confess 
 And save his soul : much respite did 1 grant ! 
 Why grant me respite who deserve my doom ? 
 Me — who engaged to play a prize, fight yon. 
 Knowing your arms, and foil you, trick for 
 
 trick. 
 At rapier-fence, your match and, maybe, more. 
 1 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 ray 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 
 
 aU!" 
 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 
 
 yon 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 kUl 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 life, — 
 I could not, for that foolish hfe 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 ! 
 'T is the fault, not that 1 dared try a fall 
 With Law and straightway am found under- 
 most. 
 But that I failed to see, above man's law, 
 God's precept you, the Christians, recognize ? 
 CoUy 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 
 Bom 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 list 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 J 
 
578 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 Do you dispute this ? Come, a, monster-laugli, 
 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 ware 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 elfect 
 On every circumstance of life, to-day. 
 In Home, — faith's flow set free at fountain- 
 head 1 
 Now, you 'U own, at this present, when I speak, 
 Before I work the wonder, there 's no man. 
 Woman or child in Home, 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 sympton of an outward change : 
 Why should thiiigs change because men dis- 
 believe ? 
 What 's incompatible, in the whited tomb. 
 With bones and rottenness one inch below ? 
 What saintly act is done in Bome 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 cruciflx 
 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 I 
 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, jjantingly 
 Submits the extreme peril of the' case; 
 To the Pope's self, — whom in the world 
 
 beside ? — 
 And the Pope breaks talk with ambassadoT^ 
 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 Molinisra 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 sunnise 
 A powdei>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 f ool's-freak here, naught to soundly 
 
 swinge. 
 Only a man in earnest, you '11 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 a-wry, 
 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 yon ! 
 How do yon all act, promptly or in doubt. 
 When there 's a guest poisoned at suppei>-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 
 
 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 1 — 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 prire ! 
 
GUIDO 
 
 579 
 
 — Despite your tnuster of some fifty monks 
 And nuns a-maundering here and mumping 
 
 there, 
 Who ftould, and on occasion woidd, 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 ? 
 Dd fifty miracle-mougers match the mob 
 That acts on the frank faithless principle, 
 Born-bap tized-and-bred Christian-atheists, each 
 With just as much a right to judge as you, — 
 As many senses in his soul, and nerves 
 1' 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, whatever 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, douhtless : ask yourself. 
 Cardinal, where and how you like a man ! 
 Why, either with your feet upon his head, 
 Confessed your eaudatory, or, at large. 
 The stranger in the crowd who caps to you 
 But keeps his distance, — why should he pre- 
 sume ? 
 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 moneybags 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 I'aves 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 beUy with the husks, we swine 
 Did eat by bom 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 prefer- 
 ence 
 To the immediate good, for time is brief, 
 And death ends good and iU and everything ! 
 What 's got is yarned, 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- 
 
 drnnk, 
 Who fool men yet perceive men find them 
 
 fools, — 
 Vexed that a titter gains the gravest mouthy — 
 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 
 ^j pushing your abrupt machine i' the midst, 
 MTaking 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 I " 
 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 ownpart 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 '11 compass joy by concert ; take with us 
 The regular irregular way i' the wood ; 
 You '11 miss no game through liding breast by 
 
 breast. 
 In this preserve, the Church's park and pale. 
 Rather than outside where the world li^ 
 
 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 heU ! 
 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 fiame. 
 
;8o 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 That had been fair, that might have stmck 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, in- 
 dulge 
 Or else renounce my instincts, stUl play wolf 
 Or find ray way submissive to your fold. 
 Be red-erossed 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 I 
 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 ea«h 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 
 0' the blow that means to miss you and maul 
 
 them. 
 That 's my success 1 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 I 
 " 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 dav, if there were no saint ? " 
 
 I praise the wisdom of these fools, and straight 
 TeH them my story — " plausible, hut false ! " 
 False, to be sure ! What else can story be 
 That runs — a youi^ 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-hearteil pair 
 (Whose best boast was, their life had been a lie) 
 Helped for the love they bore alJ 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 1 
 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 amibiguous circumstance. 
 And, while she held bun 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 1 
 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 fiDing up the void 
 Above my mote-self it devours, or what 
 Proves wrath, immensity wreaks on nothingness 
 Just how I felt once, couching tlirough the dark. 
 Hard by Vittiano ; young I was, and gay, 
 And wanting to trap fieldfares : firat a spark 
 
GUIDO 
 
 581 
 
 Tipped a bent, as a mere dew-globule might 
 Any stiff gi-ass-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 
 0' 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 I want simple sober sense, 
 That asks, before it finishes with a dog, 
 Who taught the dog that trick you haag him 
 
 for? 
 You both persist to call that act a crime. 
 Which sp.nse 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 prim,rose-pateh 
 In bank, one singing-bird in bush, the less. 
 Had warned me from such wayfare : let me 
 
 prove ! 
 Put rae back to the cross-road, start afresh ! 
 Advise me when I take the first false step ! 
 Grive 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 thirte en-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 
 0' the father's house at Via Vittoria : see ! 
 Her so-called mother — one arm round the 
 
 waist 
 0' 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 bluis 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, 
 0' 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 'twere French Louis, — soul I under- 
 stand, — 
 Saying, by gesture of repugnance, just 
 " Sire, you are regal, puissant, and so forth, 
 But — young you have been, are not, nor wall 
 
 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 de- 
 spair I 
 Well, Iresent 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 rae. 
 Who cannot but begin with hating her. 
 Our marriage follows : there she stands again ! 
 Why do I laugh ? Why, in the very gripe 
 0' the jaws of death's gigantic skuU, do I 
 Grin back his grin, make sport of my own 
 
 pangs ? 
 Why from each clashing of his molars, ground 
 To make the devil bres^ from out my grist, 
 Leaps out a spark of mirtli, a hellish toy ? 
 
582 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 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, 
 Kesent 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 
 0' 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 theyname 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 quafE life's cup blown free of all the 
 
 beads, 
 The bright red froth wherein our beard should 
 
 steep 
 Before our month 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 1 
 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 1 " 
 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. 
 Yon 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 
 0' the hundred-petaUed 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 
 
 toU! 
 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 out- 
 side 
 And the wasp inside its bosom, — call yon 
 
 "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, Chimsera, which I slew I 
 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, tlie prim pursed-up mouth's protruded 
 
 lips. 
 With deferential duck, slow swing of bead. 
 Tempting the sudden fist of man too much, — 
 That owl-like screw of lid and rook 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 
 Vyiio 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 0' the world. 
 
GUIDO 
 
 583 
 
 Sir Dignity i' the damps ? Pat Mm ? 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 m.e, 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 staneh image serves at every turn !) 
 Does he, by way of being politic. 
 Pluck the fii'st whisker grimly visible ? 
 Or rather grow in a trice all gratitude. 
 Protest this sort-of-what-one-raight-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 
 
 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 prymsr fingers felt. 
 What would you have ? The fools transgress, 
 
 the fools 
 Forthwith receive appropriate punishment : 
 They firat 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 Kome 1' the distance 1 ^^ 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, 
 Bounded myself in the ears with my own 
 
 wrong, — 
 Why, these were (note hell's lucky malice, 
 
 now I) 
 These were just they who, they alone, could acn 
 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 sti-ong 
 Proud cunning violent oppressor — me I 
 FoUow 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 par- 
 took 
 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, flnd 
 A friend's face at the bottom of each wound, 
 And scratch its smirk a Httle I 
 
 Panciatichi I 
 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 pleasantly : 
 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 sav you, 
 Prince of the Church, my patron? Nay, in- 
 deed, 
 
sH 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 I shall not dare insult your wits so much 
 As think this problem difficult to solve. 
 This Pietro and Violaute 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 ! 
 L by one blow, wisely cut short at once 
 Them and their transformations of disgust, 
 In the snug little ViUa 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 wiU ! 
 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, overleana the sill 
 0' 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 de- 
 
 scsud 
 And do look at me. Is it at the meal ? 
 "Speak!" she obeys. "Be silent!" she 
 
 obeys, 
 Counting the minutes tUl 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 sole 
 
 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 'U 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, 'tis trimness triumphs 
 
 now. 
 For how should malice go with negligence ? 
 The frayed silk looked the fresher for her 
 
 spite I 
 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 : 
 ^Tow, 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 " Out 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 ! 
 
GUIDO 
 
 585 
 
 Is all done ? Then sit still again and staie I 
 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 ! Wlat, 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, — 
 WTiich of them loves yon ? Which subordinate 
 But makes parade of such oMciousness 
 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 ? AU the same, 
 We calculate on word and deed, nor err, — 
 Bid such a man do such a loving a«t. 
 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 — aU 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, Binaldo 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 lite ? 
 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 
 Gome 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 yon 've stepped left and stumbled on tha 
 
 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 '11 edify you ! That 's because 
 I 'm practised, grown fit guide for Guide's self. 
 You proffered guidance, ^I know, none so 
 
 well, — 
 You laid down law and rolled decorum out. 
 From pulpit-comer 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 com. 
 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 raill-house-door. 
 Buried my head up to the ears in dew, 
 
S86 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 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. 
 (Jive 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 '11 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 your- 
 
 For this eruption of the pent-up soul 
 
 You prisoned first and played with afterward I 
 
 " Deny myself " meant simply pleasure you, 
 
 The sacred and superior, save tlie 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 1 
 Or stay, we '11 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. 
 A.11 your own doing: preachers, blame your- 
 
 'Tis 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, 
 Waspolitic, 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 1 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 judge- 
 ment, 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 o£E 
 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 miy 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 foimd 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. 
 
GUIDO 
 
 587 
 
 When did I ever turn adroitly np 
 
 To 3U11 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 shaJl suffice : more is improbable. 
 Now I may knock I " 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 1 So, I had my way, 
 Did my deed : so, unbrokenly lay bare 
 Each taenia 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 ! Hence- 
 forth 
 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 
 
 wdll, - 
 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 snffieed, set free 
 Any one, with his senses at command. 
 From thrice the danger of my flight. But, 
 
 drunk. 
 Redundantly triumphant, — some reverse 
 W'as 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 
 0' 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 0' 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 .isking, 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 
 0' 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 aUowanoe, 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 ! 
 WTiat 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 PompiHa 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, re- 
 hearsed 
 The whole game at Arezzo, nor availed 
 Thereby to move one heart or raise one hand I 
 When destiny intends vou 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 wiU suppose me found at fault 
 
S88 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 With that advantag^e ! " What brings me to 
 
 Koine ? 
 Necessity to claim and take my wife : 
 Better, to claim and take my new-born babe. — 
 Strong- in paternity a fortnight old, 
 ^Vhen 't is at strongest : warily I work, 
 Knowing the machinations of my foe ; 
 1 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 three- 
 fold, slay, 
 Not all — because the coward priest escapes. 
 Last, I escape, in fear of evil tongues. 
 And having had my taste of Koman 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 ! 
 'Tis 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-eord-contrivance late 
 From oiit 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 
 0' 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, 
 0' 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-gram, 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 1 
 
 And finally, after this long-drawn range 
 Of affront and failure, failure and affront, — 
 Th^ 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, — 'tis rather, *'Save your- 
 self!" 
 The. Pope subjoins — "Confess and be ab- 
 solved ! 
 So shall my credit countervail your shame. 
 And the world see I have not lost the knack 
 Of trying all the spirits : yours, niy son. 
 Wants but a fiery washing to emerge 
 In clarity ! Come, cleanse you, ease the ache 
 Of these old bones, refresh onr 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'e^^iomes 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 ! 
 
GUIDO 
 
 589 
 
 I go my old ways and find things grown gray ; 
 You priests leer at me, old friends look as- 
 kance ; 
 The mob 's in love, I 'U 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 Pom^ilia gracing ballad-sheet. 
 Which eyes, uved 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 mana&^ement 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 '3 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 Guide, but half apprehensive how 
 He cumbers earth, crosses the brisk young 
 
 Count, 
 Who civilly would thrust him from the scene. 
 Contrariwise, does the blood-ofEering 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 ray father was. 
 But grant the m^edium measure of a man, 
 The usual compromise 'twixt fool and sa^e, 
 — 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 yoimg precious olive-plants 
 Keared 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 Home : 
 They did my hest 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 stiU : grant but 
 
 leave 
 To live my life out, to the last I 'd live 
 And die conceding a^e 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 Koman-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 no w I 
 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 ^giochus 
 Descried 'mid clouds, lightnii^ and thunder, 
 
 couched 
 On topmost crag of your CapitoHne : 
 'Tis in the Seventh ^neid, — what, the 
 
 Eighth ? 
 Right, — thanks, Abate, — thoT^h the Chris- 
 tian '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 ^ve 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 ^giochus ! 
 Nor do Greek gods, that serve as supplement, 
 Jar with the simpler scheme, if understood. 
 We want such intermediary race 
 
590 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 To make communication possible ; 
 Tlie 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 pat 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 teaiih us : we '11 obey when taught. 
 Why should we do our duty past the need ? 
 When tlie sky darkens, Jove is wroth, — say 
 
 prayer ! ^ 
 
 When the sun shines and JoTe is glad, — ^sing 
 
 psabn ! 
 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 Inmp, 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 starvedi,i 
 Froze, fought with beasts, was beaten and abused 
 And finally ridded of his flesh by iire : 
 He kept life-long unspotted from the world I — 
 Next age, how goes the game, what mortal gives 
 His life and emulates Saint that. Saint this V 
 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, hence- 
 forth ! 
 
 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 some- 
 where ! 
 
 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 usetn's 
 
 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 '11 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 Grod, 
 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, 
 Yon now find, in your haste was slain a fool : 
 Nor Pietro, nor Violante, nor 3'our 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 1 
 So ends mistake, so end mistakers 1 — 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 influvium, 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, — 
 
GUIDO 
 
 59' 
 
 Wallow in what is now a wolfisbness 
 
 Coerced too much by the humanity 
 
 That 's half of me as well I 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, refoi-med, informed, 
 
 conformed I 
 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 I 
 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 1 
 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 su^ered, 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 ray 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 ray own lip of the word ?) 
 Beware rae in what other world may be ! — 
 Porapilia, who have brought me to this pass ! 
 AH 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 malundered, " All is over and at end : 
 I go niy 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 hsid 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 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 chamel : ay, 
 Just such a pencil might depict ray wife ! 
 She, — since she, also, would not change her- 
 self , - 
 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 un- 
 touched. 
 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. 
 Punty, 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 Hve 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 ihe 
 
 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 thon 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 si 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 thena to- 
 day 
 Scarce tasks my gouty feet, and in my prime 
 I doubt not I could stand and spit so tar : 
 But for the furze, boy, fear no lack of that, 
 
592 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 So long as fortune leares 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 ! 
 those OHmpias bold, those Biancas brave, 
 That brought a husband power worth Ormuz' 
 
 wealth ! 
 Cried, " Thou being mine, why, what but thine 
 
 ami? 
 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 i — 
 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 I 
 His monster is perfection, — Circe, sent 
 Straight from the sun, with wand the idiot 
 
 blames 
 As not an honest distafE to spin wool ! 
 
 thou Lncrezia, 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 tea«h — 
 Sin unimagined, unimaginable, — 
 
 1 come to claim my bride, — thy Borgia's self 
 Not half the burning bridegroom I shall be 1 
 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 
 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 yon 
 
 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 3'ou 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 1 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 I 
 The Pope who dooms me needs must die next 
 
 year; 
 I '11 tell you how the chances are supposed 
 For his successor : first the Chamberlain, 
 Old San Gesario, — CoUoredo, next, — 
 Then, one, two, three, four, I refuse to name ; 
 After these, comes Altieri ; then come you — 
 Seventh on the list you come, unless . . . ha, ha, 
 How can a dead hand give a friend a lift ? 
 Are you the person to despise the help 
 0' 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 theae 
 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 '11 say one 
 
 word? 
 
GUIDO 
 
 593 
 
 Neither shall I perauade you from your stand 
 Nor yon persuade me from my station : take 
 Your crucifix away, I tell you twice ! 
 
 Come, I am tired of silence I Pause enough I 
 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 I 
 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 wou-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, yon don't think, Abate, do your best, 
 You 'E live a year more with that lacking cough 
 And blotch of crimson where the cheek 's a pit ? 
 Tozzi has got yon also down in book ! 
 Cardinal, only seventh of seventy near. 
 Is not one caued Albano in the lot ? 
 Go eat your heart, you 'U never be a Pope I 
 Inform me, is it true you left your love, 
 A Pncoi, for promotion in the church ? 
 She 's more than in the church — in the church- 
 yard! 
 FlautiUa 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 1 
 
 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 pnsh 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? 
 La«k-lustre jewelry ! but faith and love 
 With death behind them bidding do or die — 
 Put such a foil at back, the sparkle 's bom ! 
 From out myself how the strange colors come ! 
 Is there a new rule in another world ? 
 Be sure I shall resign myself : as here 
 1 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 b^, some nucleus that 's myself : 
 Accretions did it wrong ? Away with them — 
 You soon shall see the use of fire 1 
 
 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. 
 
S94 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 Drinking hot bull's blood, fit for men like me ? 
 I lived and died a raan, and take man's chance, 
 Honest and bold : rig-ht 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 f oUy — I laughed and 
 
 mocked ! 
 Sirs, my first true word, all truth a.nd no lie. 
 Is — save me notwithstanding ! Life is aU ! 
 I W£is 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, . , . 
 Fompilia, will yon 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. 
 Hushed to the height, and hung at full of fame 
 Over men's upturned faces, ghastly thence, 
 Our glaring Guide : 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 de- 
 scribed, 
 Then talked or, 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 I 
 
 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 Kome, — 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 loiig 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 Kome a/-stare : Pope probably — 
 Though Colloredo has his backers too. 
 And i^an 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-bom, 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 tUl 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 : F^nelon will be condemned : 
 The Cardinal makes a wry face enough. 
 Having a love for the delinquent : stillj - 
 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 aU the other wagers into shade. 
 
 Tell Dandolo I owe him fifty drops 
 
 Of heart's blood in the shape of gold zecchines I 
 
 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, 
 
 Ke-echoing the conviction of all Bome : 
 
 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 crow^, — he suif ers 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 Csesarean 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 ! ' - 
 
THE BOOK AND THE RING 
 
 595 
 
 He will not soon forget the Pope's rebuff, 
 — Feels the alight sensibly, I promise you ! 
 And but for the dissuasion of two eyes i 
 That make with him foul weather or fine day, 
 He had abstained, nor graced the spectacle :. 
 Aj5 it was, barely would he condescend 
 Look forth from the palchetto where he sat 
 Under the Fincian : 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 I 
 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 : 
 Angnisciola, that patron of the arts. 
 Hired one ; our Envoy Contarini too. 
 
 " Now for the thing ; no sooner the decree 
 
 Gone forth, — 't is f our-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 ea<ih 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 Govemo, 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 
 
 rrr , 'l^""' 
 
 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 Quar 
 
 tern! 
 Now did a beggar by Saint Agnes, lame 
 From his youth up, recover use of leg. 
 
 Through prayer of Guide 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, Guide was Uist 
 Here also, as atrociousest in crime. j 
 
 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 Guide 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 Coeli, 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 shewed in shrine to- 
 day. 
 The blessed Umbilicus of our Lord, 
 (A rehc '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 ,ef 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 cos- 
 tume: 
 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 Griacinto Arcangeli, 
 Doctor and Proctor, him I made yon mark 
 Buckle to bu.siness in his study late. 
 The virtuous sire, the valiant for the truth, 
 Acquaints his correspondent, — Florentine, 
 By name Cenoini, advocate as well, 
 Socius and brother-in-the-devil to match, — 
 A friend of Franceschini, anyhow, 
 
596 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 And knit up with the bowels of the case, — 
 Acquaints him (in this paper that 1 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 pai-t 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 stufi, 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 ray 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 comer 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 Peo- 
 ple'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, 
 
 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 
 hotl 
 
 " Religua differamus in crastinum ! 
 
 The impatient estaf ette 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. 
 
 1 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 
 
THE BOOK AND THE RING 
 
 S91 
 
 Ptom trunk — ' So, latinize your thanks ! ' 
 
 quoth I, 
 ' That I prefer, hoc m(Uim,' raps me out 
 The rogue : you notice the subjunctive ? Ah 1 
 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, spdrkishly — 
 ' 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 Caesar (eight years old) 
 And aa 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 nail, 
 And bruise his own, belike, that wags and 
 
 brags. 
 Adverti suppHco humiliter 
 Qi'od, 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 Home 
 A-prancing till bystanders shouted ' 'ware ! ' 
 The other rein's judicious man^ement 
 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 '11 soon see, — when I go to pay devoir 
 And compliment him on confuting me, — 
 H, 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, 
 Gould eloquence avail to gainsay fact, 
 Yours were the victory, be comforted ! ' 
 Cinuzzo will be gainer by it all. 
 Quick then with Gomez, hot and hot next 
 
 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 I Eh? What ails the 
 
 man? 
 
 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. 
 
 *' Well, it is over, end^'as I foresaw: 
 Easily proved, Pompilia's innocence ! 
 Catch them entrusting Guide's guilt to me 
 Who had, as usual, the plain tr'Uth 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 aU 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 
 0' 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 Spieti, 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, yon 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 
 
598 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 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: 
 'Tis piping hot and posts through Kome to- 
 day.- 
 Bemember it, as I engage to do 1 
 
 " But if you rather he disposed to see 
 *ii the result of the long trial here, — 
 This dealing doom to guilt and doling praise 
 To innoeency , — any proof that truth 
 May look for .vindication from the world. 
 Much wUl you have misread the signs, I say. 
 (.rod, 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 ; 
 I^yen 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, 
 Conjolude you, all truth triumphs in the end ? 
 i~o might those old inhabitants of the ark, 
 Witnessing haply their dove's safe return, 
 Pronounce there was no danger, all the while 
 0' 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 de- 
 
 ! .stroyed ! ' . 
 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 I An elder race possessed your land 
 
 Long ago, and a false faith ung;ered 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 bom 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-echaed century, 
 
 Cursed the accursed, — and so, from sire to 
 
 son. 
 You Romans cried, 'The offscourings of our 
 
 race, 
 Corrupt within the deaths 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 iUumined 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 
 0' the myriad that make up the catacomb. 
 Contains some saint a second flash would sho^ ? 
 Will you ascend into the light of day 
 And, having recognized a martyr's shrine. 
 Go loin 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 I 
 Each statue of a god, were fltlier 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, — trans- 
 fixed. 
 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, — 
 
THE BOOK AND THE RING 
 
 599 
 
 Since egg turned snake needs fear no ser- 
 
 peutry, — 
 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 pur- 
 sues. 
 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, 
 KesGue 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 
 Ap proachable 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 leam 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 niirth 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 g:ood : but God tries the heart. 
 
 Still,]! 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 nut say I know 
 
 — Apart from Christ's assurance which de- 
 
 cides — 
 Whether I have not failed to taste much joy. 
 For many a doubt will fain perturb my choice — 
 Many a di'eam 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 tliat help, — how, to grow good and 
 
 great, 
 Rather than simply good, and bring thereby 
 Goodness to breathe and live, nor bom, i' tha 
 
 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 ampoUosity 
 
 Aja 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 Pone 
 Happily reigning — my resriectf? to hira ! " 
 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 ! 
 
 But, for this virulent and rabid monk, — 
 If law be an inadequate machine. 
 And advocacy, froth and impotence. 
 We shall soon see, my blatant brother ! That 's 
 Exactly what I hope to show your sort ! 
 For, by a veritable piece of luck. 
 The providence, you monks round period with. 
 All mav be gloriously retrieved. Perpend I 
 That Monastery of the Convertitea 
 Whereto the Court consigned Pompilia first, 
 — Observe, if convertite, why. sinner then. 
 Or what 's the pertinency of award ? — 
 And whither she was late returned to die, 
 
6oo 
 
 THE RING AND THE BOOK 
 
 — Still in their jurisdiction, mark again ! — 
 
 That thrifty Sisterhood, for perquisite. 
 
 Claims every piece whereof may die possessed 
 
 Each sinner in the circuit of its walls. 
 
 Now, this Pompilia seeing that, hy death 
 
 0' the eoui>le, all their wealth devolved on her, 
 
 Straight utilized the respite ere decease. 
 
 By regular conveyance of the goods 
 
 ishe thought her own, to will and to devise, — 
 
 Gave all to friends, Tighetti and the like, 
 
 In trust for him she held her son and heir, 
 
 Uaetano, — trust which ends with infancy : 
 
 ■So willing and devising, since assured 
 
 The justice of the court would presently 
 
 Confirm her in her rights and exculpate, 
 
 Re-integrate and rehabilitate — 
 
 Place her as, through my pleading, now she 
 
 stands. 
 But here 'a the capital mistake : the Court 
 Found Guide guilty, — but pronounced no word 
 About the innocency of his wife : 
 I grounded charge on broader base, I hope ! 
 No matter whether wife be true or false. 
 The husband must not push aside the law. 
 And punish of a sudden : that 's the point : 
 Gather from out my speech the contrary I 
 It follows that Pompifia, unrelieved 
 By formal sentence from imputed fault. 
 Remains unfit to have and to dispose 
 Of property which law provides shall lapse : 
 Wherefore the Monastery claims its due. 
 And whose, pray, whose the office, but the Fisc's? 
 Who but I institute procedure next 
 Against the person of dishonest life, 
 Pompilia, wliora last week I sainted so ? 
 1 it is teach the monk what scripture means. 
 And that the tongue should prove a two-edged 
 
 sword, 
 Wo axe sharp one side, blunt the other way, 
 Ijike what amused the town at Guido's cost ! 
 A strcea redux ! I ' ve a second chance 
 Before the selfsame Court o' the Governor 
 Who soon shall see volte-face and chop, change 
 
 Accordingly, I charge you on your life, 
 Sr^nd me with all dispatch the judgment late 
 0' the Florence Rota Court, confirmative 
 ( )' the prior judgment at Arezzo, clenched 
 Again by the Grandncal signature. 
 Wherein Pompilia is convicted, doomed. 
 And only destined to escape through flight 
 The proper punishment. Send me the piece, — 
 I '11 work it ! And this foul-mouthed friar 
 
 shall find 
 His Noah's-dove that brought the olive back 
 Turn into quite the other sooty scout, 
 The raven, Noah first put forth the ark, 
 AVhich never came back, but ate carcasses ! 
 No adequate machinery in law ? 
 No power lof life and death i' the learned 
 
 tongue ? 
 Methinks I am already at my speechj 
 •■ tartle the world with " Thou, Pompilia, thus ? 
 How is the fine eold of the Temple dim ! " 
 And so forth. But the courier bids me close. 
 And clip away one joke that runs through 
 
 Rome, 
 Side by side with the sermon which I send. 
 
 How like the heartlessness of the old hunks 
 Arcangeli ! His Count is hardly cold. 
 The cUent whom his blunders sacrificed. 
 When somebody musts needs describe the 
 
 scene — 
 How the procession ended at the church 
 That boasts the famous relic : quoth our brute, 
 " Why, that 's just Martial's phrase for ' make 
 
 an end ' — 
 Ad umbilicam sicperventum est ! " 
 The callous dog, — let who will cut off head, 
 He cuts a joke, and cares no more than so ! 
 I think my speech shall modify his mirth : 
 " How is the fine gold dim I " — but send th* 
 
 piece ! 
 
 Alack, Bottini, what is my next word 
 But death to all that hope ? The Instrument 
 Is plain before me, print that ends my Book 
 With the definitive verdict of the Court, 
 Dated September, six months afterward, 
 (Such trouble and so long the old Pope gave !) 
 " In restitution of the perfect fame 
 Of dead Pompilia, quondam Guide's wife. 
 And warrant to her representative 
 Domenico Tighetti, barred hereby. 
 While doing duty in his guardianship. 
 From all molesting, all disquietude. 
 Each perturbation and vexation brought 
 Or threatened to be brought against the heir 
 By the Most Venerable Convent called 
 Saint Mary Magdalen o' the Convertites 
 I' the Corso." 
 
 Justice done a second time ! 
 Well judged, Marc Antony, Locum-tenens 
 0' the Governor, a Venturini too ! 
 For which I save thy name, — last of the list ! 
 
 Next year but one, completing his nine years 
 Of rule in Rome, died Innocent my Pope 
 — By some account, on his accession-day. 
 If he thought doubt would do the next age 
 
 good, 
 'T is pity he died unapprised what birth 
 His reign may boast of, be remembered by — 
 Terrible Pope, too, of a kind, — Voltaire. 
 
 And so an end of all i' the story. Strain 
 
 Never so much my eyes, I miss the mark 
 
 If lived or died that Gaetano, child 
 
 Of Guide and Pompilia : only find. 
 
 Immediately upon his f ather s death, 
 
 A record, in the annals of the town — 
 
 That Porzia, sister of our Guido, moved 
 
 The Priors of Arezzo and their head 
 
 Its Gonfalonier to give loyally 
 
 A public attestation of the right 
 
 0' the Franceschini to all reverence — 
 
 Apparently because of the incident 
 
 O' the murder, — there 's no mention made o' 
 
 the crime. 
 But what else could have caused such urgency 
 To cure the mob, just then, of greediness 
 For scandal, love of lying vanity, 
 And appetite to swallow crude reports 
 That bring annoyance to their betters ? — bane 
 Which, here, was promptly met by antidote. 
 I like and shall translate the eloquence 
 
HELEN'S TOWER 
 
 60 1 
 
 Of nearly the worst Latin ever writ : 
 
 *^ Since antique time whereof the memory 
 
 Holds the begrinning, to this present hour, 
 
 The Francesehini ever shone, and shine 
 
 Stilli' the primary rank, supreme amid 
 
 The bistres of Arezzo, prond to own 
 
 In this great family, the flag-bearer, 
 
 Guide of her steps and guardian against foe, — 
 
 As in the first beginning, so to-day ! " 
 
 There, would you disbelieve the annalist, 
 
 Go rather by the babble of a bard ? 
 
 I thought, Arezzo, thou hadst fitter souls, 
 
 Petrarch, — nay, Buonarroti at a pinch. 
 
 To do thee credit as vexillifer ! 
 
 Was it mere mirth the Patavinian meant. 
 
 Making thee out, in his veracious page, 
 
 Founded by Janus of the Double Face ? 
 
 Well, proving of such perfect parentage, 
 Our Gaetano, born of love and hate. 
 Did the babe live or die ? I fain would find I 
 What were his fancies if he grew a man ? 
 Was he proud, — a true scion of the stock 
 Which bore the blazon, shall make bright my 
 
 page — 
 Shield, Azure, on a Triple Mountain, Or, 
 A Palm-tree, Proper, whereunto is tied 
 A Greyhound, Rampant, striving in the slips ? 
 Or did he love his mother, the base-born. 
 And fight i' the ranks, unnoticed by the 
 
 world ? 
 
 Such, then, the final state o' the story. So 
 
 Did the Star Wormwood in a blazing fall 
 
 Frighten awhile the waters and lie lost. 
 
 So did this old woe fade from memory : 
 
 Till after, in the fulness of the days, 
 
 1 needs must find an ember yet unquenched, 
 
 And, breathing, blow the spark to flame. It 
 
 lives. 
 If precious be the soul of man to man. 
 
 So, British Public, who may like me yet, 
 (Marry and amen !) learn one lesson hence 
 Of many which whatever lives should teach : 
 This lesson, that our human speech is naught. 
 Our human testimony false, our fame 
 And human estimation words an"d wind. 
 Why take the artistic way to prove so much ? 
 Because, it is the glory and good of Art, 
 That Art remains the one way possible 
 Of speaking truth, to mouths like mine at least. 
 How look a brother in the face and say, 
 " Thy right is wrong, eyes hast thou yet art 
 
 blind ; 
 Thine ears are stuffed and stopped, despite their 
 
 length : 
 And, oh, the foolishness thou countest faith ! " 
 Say this as silverly as tongue can troll — 
 The anger of the man may be endured, 
 
 The shrug, the disappointed eyes of him 
 Are not so bad to bear — but here 's the plague 
 That all this trouble comes of telling truth. 
 Which truth, by when it reaches him, looks 
 
 false, 
 Seems to be just the thing it would supplant, 
 Nor recognizable by whom it left : 
 While falsehood would have done the work of 
 
 truth. 
 But Art, — wherein man nowise speaks to men. 
 Only to mankind, — Art may tell a truth 
 Obliquely, do the thing shall breed the thought, 
 Nor wrong the thought, missing the mediate 
 
 word. 
 So may you paint your picture, twice show 
 
 truth, 
 Beyond mere imagery on the wall, — 
 So, note by note, bring music from your mind, 
 Deeper than ever e'en Beethoven dived, — 
 So write a book shall mean beyond the tacts. 
 Suffice the eye and save the soul beside. 
 
 And save the soul ! If this intent save mine, — 
 If the rough ore be rounded to a ring. 
 Render all duty which good ring should do, 
 And, failing grace, succeed in guardianship, — 
 M^ht mine but lie outside thine. Lyric Love, 
 Thy rare gold ring of verse (the poet praised) 
 Linking our England to his Italy 1 
 
 HELEN'S TOWER 
 
 Written at the request of the Earl of Dufferin 
 and Clandeboye, who had built a tower to the 
 memory of his mother, Helen, Countess of 
 Giffard, on a rock on his estate at Clandeboye, 
 Ireland, and printed in the Pall Mall Gazette of 
 December 28, 1883. 
 
 Who hears of Helen's Tower, may dream per- 
 chance 
 How the Greek Beauty from the Sesean Gate 
 Gazed on old friends unanimous in hate, 
 
 Death-doom'd because of her fair countenance. 
 
 Hearts would leap otherwise, at thy advance. 
 Lady, to whom this Tower is consecrate ! 
 Like hers, thy face once made all eyes elate. 
 
 Yet, unlike hers, was bless'd by every glance.^ 
 
 The Tower of Hate is outworn, far and strange : 
 A transitory shame of long a^o. 
 
 It dies into the sand from which it sprang ; 
 But thine. Love's rock-built Tower, shall fear 
 no change : 
 God's self laid stable earth's foundation so. 
 
 When all the morning-stars together sang. 
 April 26, 1870. 
 
6o2 
 
 BALAUSTION'S ADVENTURE 
 
 BALAUSTION'S ADVENTURE 
 
 INCLUDING 
 
 A TRANSCRIPT FROM EURIPIDES 
 
 '* Our Euripides, the Human, 
 
 With his. droppings of warm tears, 
 And his touches of things common 
 Till they rose to touch the spheres.' 
 
 TO THE COUNTESS COWPER 
 
 If I mention the simple truth, that this poem absolutely owes its existence to you, — 
 who not only suggested, but imposed on me as a task, what has proved the most delight- 
 ful of May-month amusements, — I shall seem honest, indeed, but hardly prudent ; for, 
 how good and beautifiil ought such a poem to be ! 
 
 Euripides might tear little ; but I, also, have an interest in the performance ; and what 
 wonder if I beg you to suffer that it make, in another and far easier sense, its nearest 
 possible approach to those Greek qualities of goodness and beauty, by laying itself grate- 
 fully at your feet ? R. B. 
 
 Lohhoii,; Jviy 23, 1871. 
 
 Afteb the publication of the fourth volume 
 of The Bing and tHe Book in February, 1869, 
 Browning published nothing until March, 1871, 
 when he printed Herv4 Bid in tlie CarnUll 
 Magazine, afterward including it in his first 
 new volume of collected poems. In August of 
 the same year appeared the first of his larger 
 ventures in the field of Greek life. This poem 
 was followed four years later by Aristophanes' 
 
 About that strangest, saddest, sweetest song 
 I, when, a girl, heard in Kameiros once, 
 A)id, after, saved my life' by ? Oh, so glad 
 To tell you the adventure I 
 
 Petals, 
 Pnullis, Charop^, Chrusion ! You must know, 
 T'lis " after " fell in that unhappy time 
 When poor reluctant Nikias, pushed by fate. 
 Went falteringly against Syracuse ; 
 And there shamed Athens, lost her ships and 
 
 men. 
 And gained a grave, or death without a grave. 
 I was at Rhodes — the isle, not Rhodes the 
 
 town. 
 Mine was Kameiros — when the news arrived : 
 O'T people rose in tumult, cried, " No more 
 Duty to Athens, let us join the League 
 And side with Sparta, shivre the spoil, — at 
 
 worst. 
 Abjure a headship that will ruin Greece ! " 
 And so, they sent to Knidos for a fleet 
 To come and help revolters. Ere help came, — 
 Girl as I was, and never out of Rhodes 
 The whole of my first fourteen years of life, 
 But nourished with Ilissian raother's-milk, — 
 I passionately cried to who would hear 
 
 Apology, and it is so intimately connected with 
 Balaustion's Adventure that in this edition it is 
 made to follow it, though the chronological 
 sequence was broken, as will be seen, by the 
 composition and publication of other considera- 
 ble works. The motto at the head of the 
 poem is from Mrs. Browning, and in the last 
 lines of the poem Browning couples her with his 
 friend Sir Frederick Leighton. 
 
 And those who loved me at Kameiros — " No ! 
 
 Never throw Athens off for Sparta's sake — 
 
 Never disloyal to the life and light 
 
 Of the whole world worth callmg world at all I 
 
 Rather go die at Athens, lie outstretched 
 
 For feet to trample on, before the gate 
 
 Of Diomedes or the Hippadai, 
 
 Before the temples and among the tombs, 
 
 Than tolerate the grim felicity 
 
 Of harsh Lakonia I Ours the fasts and feasts, 
 
 Ohoes and Chutroi ; ours the sacred grove, 
 
 Agora, Dikasteria, PoikiM, 
 
 Pnux, Keramikos ; Salamis in sight, 
 
 Psuttalia, Marathon itself, not far I 
 
 Ours the great Dionusiac theatre. 
 
 And tra^c triad of immortal fames, 
 
 Aischulos, Sophokles, Eiiripides t 
 
 To Athens, all of us that have a soul, 
 
 Follow me ! " And I wrought so with mj- 
 
 prayer. 
 That certain of my kinsfolk crossed the str^t 
 And found a ship at Kaunos ; well-disposed 
 Because the Captain — where did he draw 
 
 breath 
 First but within Psuttalia ? Thither fled 
 A few like-minded as ourselves. We turned 
 
BALAUSTION'S ADVENTURE 
 
 603 
 
 The glad prow westward, soon were out at sea, 
 Pushing, brave ship with the vermilion cheek, 
 Proud for our heart's true harbor, ■ But a wind 
 Lay ambushed by Point Malea of bad fame. 
 And leapt out, bent us from our course. Next 
 
 day 
 Broke stormleas, so broke next blue day and 
 
 next. 
 " But whither bouud in this white waste ? " 
 
 we plagued 
 The pilot's old experience : " Cos or Crete ? " 
 Because he promised us the land ahead. 
 While we strained eyes to share in what he saw. 
 The Captain's shout startled us ; round we 
 
 rushed : 
 What hung behind us but a pirate-ship 
 Panting for the good prize I " Row 1 harder 
 
 row ! 
 Row for dear life!" the Captain cried: "'tis 
 
 Crete, 
 Friendly Crete looming large there ! Beat this 
 
 craft 
 That 's but a keles, one-benched pirate-bark, 
 Lokrian, or that bad breed off Thessaly ! 
 Only, so cruel are such water-thieves. 
 No man of you, no woman, child, or slave. 
 But falls their prey, once let them board our 
 
 boat 1 " 
 So, furiously our oarsmen rowed and rowed : 
 And when the oars flagged somewhat, dash and 
 
 dip. 
 As we approached the coast and safety, so 
 That we could hear behind us plain the threats 
 And curses of the pirate panting up 
 In one more throe and passion, of pursuit, — 
 Seeing our oars flag in the rise and fall, 
 1 sprang upon the altar by the mast 
 And sang aloft — some genius prompting me — 
 That song of ours which saved at Salamis : 
 *' sons of Greeks, go, set your country free, 
 Free your wives, free your children, free the 
 
 fanes 
 0' the Gods, your fathers founded, — sep- 
 ulchres 
 They sleep in ! Or save all, or all be lost ! " 
 Then, in a frenzy, so the noble oars 
 Churned the black water white, that well away 
 We drew, soon saw land rise, saw hills grow 
 
 up, 
 Saw spread itself a sea-wide town with towers, 
 Not fifty stadia distant ; and, betwixt 
 A large bay and a small, the islet-bar. 
 Even Ortugia's self — oh, luckless we I 
 For here was Sicily and Syracuse ; 
 We ran imon the lion from the wolf. 
 Ere we drew breath, took counsel, out there 
 
 came 
 A galley, hailed us. " Who asks entry here 
 In war-time? Are you Sparta's friend or 
 
 foe?" 
 "Kaunians," — our Captain judged his best 
 
 reply, 
 " The mainland-seapoit that belongs to Rhodes ; 
 Rhodes that casts in her lot now with the 
 
 League, 
 Forsaking Athens, — yon have heard belike 1 " 
 " Ay, but we heard afl Athens in one, ode 
 Just now ! we heard her in that Aisehulos 1 
 
 You bring a boatful of Athenians here, 
 Kaunians although you be : and prudence bids. 
 For Kaunos' sake, why, carry them nnhnrt 
 To Kaunos, if you will : for Athens' sake, 
 Back must you, though ten pirates blocked the 
 
 bay! 
 We want no colony from Athens here, 
 With memories of Salamis, forsooth, 
 To spirit up our captives, that pale crowd 
 I' the quarry, whom the daily pint of corn 
 Keeps in good order and submissiveness." 
 Then the gray Captain prayed them by the 
 
 Gods, 
 And by their own knees, and their fathers' 
 
 beards. 
 They should not wickedly thrust suppliants 
 
 back, 
 But save the innocent on traffic bound — 
 Or, maybe, some Athenian family 
 Perishing of desire to die at home, — 
 From that vile foe still lying on its oars. 
 Waiting the issue in the distance. Vain ! 
 Words to the wind ! And we were just about 
 To turn and fa«e the foe, as some tired bird 
 Barbarians pelt at, drive with shouts away 
 From shelter in what rocks, however rude, 
 She makes for, to escape the kindled eye, 
 Split beak, crook'd claw o' the creature, cormo- 
 rant 
 Or ossifrage, that, hardly baffled, hangs 
 Afloat i' the foam, to take her If she turn. 
 So were we at destruction's very edge. 
 When those o' the galley, as they had discussed 
 A point, a question raised by somebody, 
 A matter mooted in a moment, — " Wait ! " 
 Cried they (and wait we did, you may be sure). 
 " That song was veritable Aisehulos, 
 Familiar to the mouth of man and boy, 
 Old glory : how about Euripides ? 
 The newer and not yet so famous bard, 
 He that was bom upon the battle-day 
 While that song and the salpinx sounded him 
 Into the world, first sound, at Salamis — 
 Might you know any of his verses too ? " 
 
 Now, some one of the Gods inspired this speech : 
 Since ourselves knew what happened but last 
 
 year — 
 How, when Gulippos gained his victory 
 Over poor Nikias, poor Demosthenes, 
 And Syracuse condemned the conquered force 
 To dig and starve i' the quarry, branded 
 
 them — 
 Freeborn Athenians, brute-like in the front 
 With horse-head brands, — ah, " Region of 
 
 theSteed"!- 
 Of all these men immersed in misery. 
 It was found none had been advantaged so 
 By aught in the past life he used to prize 
 And pride himself concerning, — no rich man 
 By riches, no wise man by wisdom, no 
 Wiser man still (as who loved more the Muse) 
 By storing, at brain's edge and tip of tongue, 
 Old glory, great plays that had long ago 
 Made themselves wings to fly about the 
 
 world, — 
 Not one such man was helped so at his need 
 As certain few that (wisest they of aJl) 
 
6o4 
 
 BALAUSTION'S ADVENTURE 
 
 Had, at first summonB, oped heart, flung door 
 
 -wide 
 At the new knocking of Euripides, 
 Nor drawn the bolt with who cried " Deca- 
 dence ! 
 And, after Sophokles, be nature dumb I " 
 Such, — and I see in it God Bacohos' boon 
 To souls that recognized his latest child, 
 He who himself, born latest of the Gods, 
 Was stoutly held impostor by mankind, — 
 Such were in safety ; any who could speak 
 A chorus to the end, or prologize. 
 Roll out a rhesis, wield some golden length 
 Stiffened by wisdom out into a line. 
 Or thrust and parry in bright monostich. 
 Teaching Euripides to Syracuse — 
 Any such happy man had prompt reward : 
 If he lay bleeding on the battleiield 
 They stanched his wounds and gave him drink 
 
 and food ; 
 If he were slave i' the house, for reverence 
 They rose up, bowed to who proved master 
 
 now. 
 And bade him go free, thank Euripides ! 
 Ay, and such did so: many such, he said. 
 Returning home to Athens, sought him out, 
 The old bard in the solitary house. 
 And thanked him ere they went to sacrifice. 
 I say, we knew that story of last year ! 
 
 Therefore, at mention of Euripides, 
 
 The Captain crowed out, " Euoi, praise the 
 
 God! 
 Oop, boys, bring our owl-shield to the fore ! 
 Out with our Sacred Anchor ! Here she 
 
 stands, 
 Balaustiou ! Strangers, greet the lyric girl ! 
 Euripides 1 Babai ! what a word there 'scaped 
 Your teeth's enclosure, quoth my grandsire's 
 
 song ! 
 ^Vhy, fast as snow in Thrace, the voyage 
 
 through. 
 Has she been falling thick in flakes of him ! 
 Frequent as figs at Kaunos, Kaunians said. 
 Balaustion, stand forth and confirm my speech I 
 Now it was some whole passion of a play ; 
 Now, peradventure, but a honey-drop 
 That slipt its comb i' the chorus. If there rose 
 A star, before I could determine steer 
 Southward or northward — if a cloud surprised 
 Heaven, ere I fairly hollaed ' Furl the sail ! ' — 
 She had at fingers' end both cloud and star ; 
 Some thought that perched there, tame and 
 
 tunable. 
 Fitted with wings ; and stiU, as off it flew, 
 ' So sang Euripides,' she said, ' so sang 
 The meteoric poet of air and sea, 
 Planets and the pale populace of heaven. 
 The mind of man, and all that 's made to soar 1 ' 
 And so, although she has some other name, 
 We onl^ call her Wild-pomegranate-flower, 
 Balaustion ; since, where'er the red bloom bums 
 1' the dull dark verdure of the bounteous tree. 
 Dethroning, in the Rosy Isle, the rose. 
 Yon shall find food, drink, odor, all at once ; 
 '^ool leaves to bind about an aching brow. 
 And, never much away, the nightingale, 
 iidng them a strophe, with the turn-again, 
 
 Down to the verse that ends all, proverb-like, 
 And save us, thou Balaustion, bless the 
 name I " 
 
 But I cried, " Brother Greek 1 better than so, — 
 
 Save us, and I have courage to recite 
 
 The main of a whole play from first to last ; 
 
 That strangest, saddest, sweetest song of his, 
 
 Alkestis ; which was taught, long years ago 
 
 At Athens, in Glaukinos' arehonship. 
 
 But only this year reached our Isle o' the Rose. 
 
 I saw it at Kameiros ; played the same. 
 
 They say, as for the right Lenean feast 
 
 In Athens ; and beside the perfect piece — 
 
 Its beauty and the way it makes you weep, — 
 
 There is much honor done your own loved God 
 
 Herakles, whom you house i' the city here 
 
 Nobly, the Temple wide Greece talks about ! 
 
 I come a suppliant to your Herakles ! 
 
 Take me and put me on his temple-steps. 
 
 To tell you his achievement as I may. 
 
 And, that told, he shall bid you set us free ! " 
 
 Then, because Greeks are Greeks, and hearts 
 
 are hearts. 
 And poetry is power, — they all outbroke 
 In a great joyous laughter with much love : 
 " Thank Herakles for the good holiday ! 
 Make for the harbor ! Row, and let voice 
 
 ring, 
 * In we row, bringing more Euripides ! ' " 
 All the crowd, as they lined the harbor now, 
 " More of Euripides ! " — took up the cry. 
 We landed ; the whole city, soon astir. 
 Came rushing out of gates in common joy 
 To the suburb temple ; there they stationed me 
 O' the topmost step : and plain I told the play. 
 Just as I saw it ; what the actors said. 
 And what I saw, or thought I saw the while, 
 At our Kameiros theatre, clean-scooped 
 Out of a hillside, with the sky above 
 And sea before our seats in marble row : 
 Told it, and, two days more, repeated it, 
 Until they sent us on our way again 
 With good words and great wishes. 
 
 Oh, for me — 
 A wealthy Syraeusan brought a whole 
 Talent and bade me take it for myself : 
 I left it on the tripod in the fane, 
 — For had not Herakles a second time 
 Wrestled with Death and saved devoted ones ? — 
 Thank-offering to the hero. And a band 
 Of captives, whom their lords grew kinder to 
 Because they called the poet countryman. 
 Sent me a crown of wild-pomegranate-flower : 
 So, I shall live and die Balaustion now. 
 But one — one man — one youth, — three days, 
 
 each day, — 
 (If, ere I lifted up my voice to speak, 
 leave a downward glance by acciden t.) 
 Was found at foot o' the temple. When we 
 
 sailed. 
 There, in the ship too, was he found as well, 
 Having a hunger to see Athens too. 
 We reached Peiraieus ; when I landed — lo. 
 He was beside me. Anthesterion-month 
 Is just commencing : when its moon roimds full, 
 We are to marry. O Euripides I 
 
BALAUSTION'S ADVENTURE 
 
 605 
 
 I saw the master : when we found ourseWes 
 
 (Because the jjoung man needs must follow me) 
 
 Firm on Peiraieus, I demanded first 
 
 Whither to go and find him. Would you think ? 
 
 The story how he saved us made some smile : 
 
 They wondered strangers were exorbitant 
 
 In estimation of Euripides. 
 
 He was not Aischulos nor Sophokles : 
 
 — " Then, of our younger bards who boast the 
 
 bay, 
 Had I sought Agathon, or lophon. 
 Or, what now had it been Kephisophon ? 
 A man that never kept good company, 
 The most unsociable of poet-kind, 
 AU beard that was not freckle in his face ! " 
 
 I soon was at the tragic house, and saw 
 The master, held the sacred hand of him 
 And laid it to my lips. Men love him not : 
 How should they ? Nor do they much love his 
 
 friend 
 Sokrates : but those two have fellowship : 
 Sokrates often comes to hear him read, 
 Ajid never misses if he tea^h a piece. 
 Both, being old, will soon have company. 
 Sit with their peers above the talk. Meantime, 
 He lives as should a statue in its niche ; 
 Cold walls enclose him, mostly darkness there. 
 Alone, unless some foreigner uncouth 
 Breaks in, sits, stares an hour, and so dejiarts. 
 Brain-stuffed with something to sustain his life, 
 Dry to the marrow 'mid much merchandise. 
 How should such know and love the man ? 
 
 Why, mark ! 
 Even when I told the play and got the praise. 
 There spoke up a brisk little somebody. 
 Critic and whipijersnapper, in a rage 
 To set things right: The girl departs from 
 
 truth! 
 Pretends she saw what was not to be seen, 
 Making the mask of the actor move, forsooth ! 
 ' Then a fear flitted o'er the wife's white face,' — 
 ' Then frowned the father,' — ' then the husband 
 
 shook,' — 
 ' Then from the festal forehead slipt each spray. 
 And the heroic mouth's gay grace was gone ; ' — 
 As she had seen ea«h naked fleshly face. 
 And not the merely-painted mask it wore ! " 
 Well, is the explanation difficult ? 
 What 's poetry except a power that makes ? 
 And, speaking to one sense, inspires the rest, 
 Pressing them all into its service ; so 
 That who sees painting, seems to hear as well 
 The speech that 's proper for the painted mouth ; 
 And who hears music, feels his solitude 
 Peopled/ at once — for how count heartbeats 
 
 plain 
 Unless a company, with hearts which beat. 
 Come close to the musician, seen or no ? 
 And who receives tme'verse at eye or ear. 
 Takes in (with verse) time, place, and person too. 
 So, links each sense on to its sister-sense, 
 Grace-like : and what if but one sense of three 
 Front you at once ? The sidelong pair conceive 
 Through faintest touch of finest ifinger-tips, — 
 Hear, see and feel, in faith's simplicity. 
 Alike, what one was sole recipient of : 
 Who hears the poem, therefore, sees the play. 
 
 Enough and too much ! Hear the play itself ! 
 Under the grape-vines, by the streamlet-side. 
 Close to Baccheion ; till the cool increase. 
 And other stars steal on the evening-star. 
 And so, we homeward flock i' the dusk, we 
 
 five ! 
 You will expect, no one of all the words 
 0' the play but is grown part now of my soul, 
 Since the adventure. 'Tis the poet speaks : 
 But if I, too, should try and speak at times. 
 Leading your love to where my love, perchance, 
 Climbed earlier, found a nest before you knew — 
 Why, bear with the poor climber, for love's 
 
 sake I 
 Look at Baccheion's beauty opposite. 
 The temple with the pillars at the porch ! 
 See you not something beside masonry ? 
 What if my words wind in and out the stone 
 As yonder ivy, the God's parasite ? 
 Though they leap all the way the pillar leads, 
 Festoon about the marble, foot to frieze. 
 And serpentiningly enrich the roof. 
 Toy with some few bees and a bird or two, — 
 What then? The column holds the cornice 
 
 up! 
 
 There slept a silent palace in the sun. 
 
 With plains adjacent and Thessalian peace — 
 
 Pherai, where King Admetos ruled the land. 
 
 Out from the portico there gleamed a God, 
 Apollon : for the how was in his hand. 
 The quiver at his shoulder, all his shape 
 One dreadful beauty. And he hailed the house, 
 As if he knew it well and loved it much : 
 " Admeteian domes, where I endured. 
 Even the God I am, to drudge awhile. 
 Do righteous penance for a reckless deed. 
 Accepting the slaves' table thankfully ! " 
 Then told how Zeiis had been the cause of all, 
 Baising the wrath in him which took revenge 
 And slew those f oilers of the thunderbolt 
 Wherewith Zeus blazed the life from out the 
 
 breast 
 Of Phoibos' son Asklepios (I surmise. 
 Because he brought the dead to life again). 
 And so, for punishment, must needs go slave, 
 God as he was, with a mere mortal lord : 
 — Told how he came to King Admetos' land. 
 And played the ministrant, was herdsman there, 
 Warding all harm away from him and his 
 Till now ; " For, holy as I am," said he, 
 " The lord I chanced upon was holy too : 
 Whence I deceived the Moirai, drew from death 
 My master, this same son of Pheres, — ay. 
 The Goddesses conceded him escape 
 From Hades, when the fated day should fall. 
 Could -he exchange lives, find some friendly one 
 Ready, for his sake, to content the grave. 
 But trying all in turn, the friendly list. 
 Why, he found no one, none who loved so much, 
 Nor father, nor the aged mother's self 
 That bore him, no, not any save his wife. 
 Willing to die instead of him and watch 
 Never a sunrise nor a sunset more : 
 And she is even now within the house. 
 Upborne by pitying hands, the feeble frame 
 
6o6 
 
 BALAUSTION'S ADVENTURE 
 
 Gasping its last of life ont ; since to-day 
 
 Destiny is accomplished, and she dies, 
 
 And I, lest here pollution light on me. 
 
 Leave, as ye ^vitness, all my wonted joy 
 
 In this dear dwelling. Ay, — for here comes 
 
 Death 
 Close on us of a sudden ! who, pale priest 
 Of the mute people, means to bear his prey' 
 To the house of Hades. The symmetric step ! 
 How he treads true to time and place and thing, 
 Dogging day, hour and minute, for death's- 
 
 due!" 
 
 And we observed another Deity, 
 
 Half in, half out the portal,-^ watch and ward, — 
 
 Eying his fellow : formidably fixed. 
 
 Yet faltering too at who affronted him. 
 
 As somehow disadvantaged, should they strive. 
 
 Like some dread heapy blackness, ruffled wing. 
 
 Convulsed and cowering head that is all eye, 
 
 Which proves a ruined eagle who, too blind 
 
 Swooping in quest o' the quarry, fawn or kid, 
 
 Descried deep down the chasm twixt rock and 
 
 rock. 
 Has wedged and mortised, into either wall 
 0' the mountain, the pent earthquake of his 
 
 power ; 
 So lies, half hurtless yetstill terrible. 
 Just when — who stalks up, who stands front 
 
 to front, 
 But the great lion-guarder of the gorge. 
 Lord of the ground, a stationed glory there ! 
 Yet he too pauses ere he try the worst 
 0' the frightful unfamiliar nature, new 
 To the chasm, indeed, but elsewhere known 
 
 enough. 
 Among the shadows and the silences 
 Above i' the sky : so, each ant."gonist 
 Silently faced his fellow and forbore. 
 Till Death shrilled, hard and quick, in spite 
 
 and fear : 
 
 " Ha, ha, and what mayst thou do at the 
 
 domes, 
 Why hauntest here, thou Phoibos ? Here 
 
 again 
 At the, old injustice, limiting our rights. 
 Balking of honor due us Gods o' the gi'ave ? 
 Was 't not enough for thee to have delayed 
 Death from Admetos, — with thy crafty art 
 Cheating the very Fates, — but thou must arm 
 The bow-hand and take station, press 'twixt 
 
 me 
 And Pelias' daughter, who then saved her 
 
 spouse, — 
 Did just that, now thou comest to undo, — 
 Taking his place to die, Alkestishere ? " 
 
 But the God sighed, " Have courage ! All my 
 
 arms, 
 This time, are simple justice and fair words." 
 
 Then each plied each with rapid interchange : 
 
 " What need of how, were justice arms 
 enough? " 
 
 " Ever it is my wont to bear the bow." 
 
 " Ay, and with bow, not justice, help this 
 house ! " 
 
 " I help it, since a friend's woe weighs me too." 
 
 "And now, — wilt force from me this second 
 corpse ? " 
 
 " By force I took no corpse at first from thee." 
 
 " How then is he above ground, not beneath ? " 
 
 " He gave his wife instead of him, thy prey." 
 
 " And prey, this time at least, I bear below ! " 
 
 " Go take her ! — for I doubt persuading 
 thee ..." 
 
 " To kill the doomed one ? What my function 
 else ? " 
 
 " No ! Rather, to dispatch the true mature." 
 
 " Tmly I take thy meaning, see thy drift ! " 
 
 " Is there a way then she may reach old age ? " 
 
 " No way ! I glad me in my honors too ! " 
 
 "But, young or old, thou tak'st one life, no 
 more ! " 
 
 " Younger they die, greater my praise re- 
 dounds ! " 
 
 " If she die old, — the sumptuous funeral ! " 
 
 " Thou layest down a law the rich would like." 
 
 " How so ? Did wit Inrk there and 'scape thy 
 
 " Who could buy substitutes would die old 
 men." 
 
 " It seems thou wUt not grant me, then, this 
 gra«e ? " 
 
 " This grace I will not grant : thou know'st 
 my ways." 
 
 " Ways harsh to men, hateful to Grods, at 
 least ! " 
 
 " All things thou canst not have : my rights 
 for me ! " 
 
 And then Apollon prophesied, — I think. 
 More to himself than to impatient Death, 
 Who did not hear or would not heed the 
 
 whUe, — 
 For he went on to say, " Yet even so. 
 Cruel above the measure, thou shalt clutch 
 No life here ! Such a man do I perceive 
 Advancing to the house of Pheres now. 
 Sent by Eurustheus to bring out of Thrace, 
 The winter world, a chariot with ita steeds 1 
 
BALAUSTION'S ADVENTURE 
 
 607 
 
 He indeed, when Admetos proves the host, 
 And he the guest, at the house here, — he it is 
 Shall bring: to bear such force, and from thy 
 
 hands 
 Rescue this woman ! Grace no whit to me 
 Will that prove, since thou dost thy deed the 
 
 same, 
 And earnest too my hate, and all for naught ! " 
 
 But how should Death or stay or understand ? 
 Doubtless, he only felt the hour was come. 
 And the sword free ; for he but flung some 
 
 taunt — 
 "Having talked much, thou wilt not gain the 
 
 ' more ! - 
 This woman, then, descends to Hades' haM 
 Now thati rush on her, begin the rites- 
 O' the sword ; for sacred, to us Gods below. 
 That head whose hair this sword shall 
 
 sanctify 1 " 
 
 And, in the fire-flash of the appalling sword. 
 The uprnsh and the outburst, the onslaught 
 Of Death's portentous passage through the door, 
 Apollon stood a pitying luomelit-space : 
 1 caught one last gold gaze upon the night 
 Nearing the world now ; and the God was 
 
 gone. 
 And mortals left to deal with misery, 
 As in came stealing slow, now this, now that 
 Old sojourner throughout the country-side. 
 Servants grown friends to those unhappy here : 
 And, cloudlika in their increase, all these 
 
 griefs 
 Broke and began the over-brimming wail, 
 Out of a common impulse, word by word. 
 
 " What now may mean the silence at the door ? 
 Why is Admetos' mansion stricken dumb ? 
 Not one friend near, to say if we should mourn 
 Our mistress dead, or if AJkestis lives 
 And sees the light still, Pelias' child — to me, 
 To all, conspicuously the best of wives 
 That ever was toward husband in this world ! 
 Hears any one or wail beneath the roof, 
 Or hands that strike each other, or the groan 
 Annouueing all is done and naught to dread ? 
 Still not a servant stationed at the gates ! 
 O Paian, that thou wouldst dispart the wave 
 O' the woe, be present! Yet, had woe o'er- 
 
 whelmed 
 The housemates, they were hardly silent thus : 
 It cannot be, the dead is forth and gone. 
 Whence comes thy gleam of hope ? I dare not 
 
 hope: 
 What is the circumstance that heartens thee ? 
 How could Admetos have dismissed a vrife 
 So worthy, unescorted to the grave ? 
 Before the gates I see no hallowed vase 
 Of fountain-water, sneh as suits death's door ; 
 Nor any dipt locks strew the vestibule. 
 Though surely these drop when we grieve the 
 
 dead, ' 
 
 Nor hand sounds smitten against youthful 
 
 hand'. 
 The women's way. And yet — the alppointed 
 
 time — . . -■ 
 How speak the word ? — this day is even the day 
 
 Ordained her for departing from its light. 
 touch calamitous to heart and soul ! 
 Needs must one, when the good are tortured so, 
 Sorrow, — one reckoned faithful from the 
 
 first." 
 
 Then their souls rose together, and one sigh 
 
 Went up in cadence from the common mouth : 
 
 How " Vainly -^ anywhither in the world 
 
 Directing or land-labor or sea-search — 
 
 To Lukia or the sand-waste, Amnion's seat — 
 
 Might you set free their hapless lady's soul 
 
 From the abrupt Fate's footstep instant now. 
 
 Not a sheep-sacrificer at the hearths 
 
 Of Gods had they to go to : one there was 
 
 Who, if his eyes saw light still, — Phoibos' 
 
 son, -^ 
 Had wrought so, she might leave the shadowy 
 
 place 
 And Hades' portal ; for he propped up Death's 
 Subdued • ones, till the Zeus-flung thunder- 
 flame 
 Struck him ; and now what hope of life were 
 
 hailed 
 With open arms ? For, all the king could do 
 Is done already, — not one God whereof 
 The altar fails to reek with sacrifice : 
 And for assuagement of these evils — naught ! " 
 
 But here they broke off, for a matron moved 
 Forth from the house : and, as her tears flowed 
 
 fast. 
 They gathered round. " What fortune shall we 
 
 hear? 
 For mourning thus, if aught affect thy lord, 
 We pardon thee : but lives the lady yet 
 Or has she perished ? — that we fain would 
 
 know 1 " 
 
 "Call her dead, call her living, each style 
 
 serves," 
 The matron said : " though grave-ward bowed, 
 
 she breathed ; 
 Nor knew her husband what the misery meant 
 Before he felt it : hope of life was none : 
 The appointed day pressed hard ; the funeral 
 
 pomp 
 He had prepared too." 
 
 When the friends broke out, 
 " Let her in dying know herself at least 
 Sole wife, of all the wives 'neath the sun wide, 
 For glory and for goodness ! " — " Ah, how else 
 Than best ? who controverts the claim ? " quoth 
 
 she : 
 " What kind of creature should the woman 
 
 prove 
 That has surpassed Alkestis ? — surelier shown 
 Preference for her husband to herself 
 Than by determinii^ to die for him ? 
 But so much all our city knows indeed: 
 Hear what she did indoors and wonder then ! 
 For, when she felt the crowning day was come, 
 She washed with river-waters her white skin. 
 And, taking from the cedar closets forth 
 Vesture and ornament, bedecked herself 
 Nobly, and stood before the hearth, and prayed : 
 ^ Mistress, because 1 now depart the world. 
 Falling before thee the last time, I ask — 
 
6o8 
 
 BALAUSTION'S ADVENTURE 
 
 Be mother to my orphans ! wed the one 
 To a kind wife, and make the other's mate 
 Some princely peiBon : nor, as I who bore 
 My children perish, suffer that they too 
 Die all untimely, but live, happy pair. 
 Their full glad life out in the fatherland ! ' 
 And every altar through Admetos' house 
 She vLsited and crowned and prayed before. 
 Stripping the myrtle-foliage from the boughs, 
 Without a tear, without a groan, — no change 
 At all to that skin's nature, fair to see. 
 Caused by the imminent evil. But this done, — 
 Reaching her chamber, falling on her bed. 
 There, truly, burst she into tears and spoke : 
 ' bride-bed, where I loosened from my life 
 Virginity for that same husband's sake 
 Because of whom I die now — fare thee well ! 
 Since nowise do I hate thee : me alone 
 Hast thou destroyed ; for, shrinking to betray 
 Thee and my spouse, I die : but thee, bed, 
 Some other woman shall possess as wife — 
 Truer, no ! but of better fortune, say ! ' 
 — So falls on, kisses it till all the couch 
 Is moistened with the eyes' sad overflow. 
 But when of many tears she had her fill. 
 She flings from off the couch, goes headlong 
 
 forth. 
 Yet — forth the chamber — still keeps turning 
 
 back 
 And casts her on the couch again once more. 
 Her children, clinging to their mother's robe, 
 Wept meanwhile: but she took them in her 
 
 arms. 
 And, as a dying woman might, embraced 
 Now one and now the other : 'neath the roof. 
 All of the household servants wept as well. 
 Moved to compassion for their mistress ; she 
 Extended her right hand to all and each. 
 And there was no one of such low degree 
 She spoke not to nor had an answer from. 
 Such are the evils in Admetos' house. 
 Dying, — why, he had died ; but, living, gains 
 Such grief as this he never will forget ! " 
 
 And when they questioned of Admetos, 
 
 "Well — 
 Holding his dear wife in his hands, he weeps ; 
 Entreats her not to give him up, and seeks 
 The impossible, in fine : for there she wastes 
 And withers by disease, abandoned now, 
 A mere dead weight upon her husband's arm. 
 Yet, none the less, although she breathe so 
 
 faint. 
 Her will is to behold the beams o' the sun : 
 Since never more again, but this last once. 
 Shall she see sun, its circlet or its ray. 
 But I will go, announce your presence, — 
 
 friends 
 Indeed ; since 'tis not all so love their lords 
 As seek them in misfortune, kind the same : 
 But you are the old friends 1 recognize." 
 
 And at the word she turned again to go : 
 The while they waited, taking up the plaint 
 To Zeus again: "What passage from this 
 
 strait ? 
 What loosing of the heavy fortune fast 
 About the palace ? Will such help appear, 
 
 Or must we clip the locks and cast around 
 Each form already the black peplos' f old ? 
 Clearly the black robe, clearly ! All the same, 
 Pray to the Gods ! — like Gods' no power so 
 
 great I 
 O thou king Paian, find some way to save ! 
 Reveal it, yea, reveal it ! Since of old 
 Thou found'st a cure, why, now again become 
 Releaser from the bonds of Death, we beg, 
 And give the sanguinary Hades pause ! " 
 So the song dwindled into a mere moan. 
 How dear the wife, and what her husband's 
 
 woe : 
 When suddenly — 
 
 " Behold, behold ! " breaks forth: 
 " Here is she coming from the house indeed ! 
 Her husband comes, too ! Cry aloud, lament, 
 Pheraian land, this best of women, bound — 
 So is she withered by disease away — 
 For realms below and their infernal king ! 
 Never will we affirm there 's more of joy 
 Than grief in marriage ; making estimate 
 Both from old sorrows anciently observed, 
 And this misfortune of the king we see — 
 Admetos who, of bravest spouse bereaved, 
 Will live life's remnant out, no life at all ! " 
 
 So wailed they, while a sad procession wound 
 Slow from the innermost o' the palace, stopped 
 At the extreme vei^e of the platform-front : 
 There opened, and disclosed Alkestis' self, 
 The consecrated lady, borne to look 
 Her last — and let the living look their last — 
 She at the sun, we at Alkestis. 
 
 We! 
 For would yon note a memorable thing ? 
 We grew to see in that severe regard, — 
 Hear in that hard dry pressure to the point, 
 Word slow pursuing word in monotone, — 
 What Death meant when he called her conse- 
 crate 
 Henceforth to Hades. I believe, the sword — 
 Its office was to cut the soul at once 
 From life, — from something in this world 
 
 which hides 
 Truth, and hides falsehood, and so lets us live 
 Somehow. Suppose a rider furls a cloak 
 About a horse's head ; unfrightened, so, 
 Bttween the menace of a flame, between 
 Solicitation of the pasturage, 
 Untempted equally, he goes his gait 
 To journey's end : then pluck the pharos off ! 
 Show what delusions steadied him i' the straight 
 0' the path, made grass seem fire and fire 
 
 seem grass, 
 All through a little bandage o'er the eyes ! 
 As certainly with eyes unbandaged now 
 Alkestis looked upon the action here. 
 Self-immolation for Admetos' sake ; 
 Saw, with a new sense, all her death would do, 
 And which of her survivors had the right. 
 And which the less right, to survive thereby. 
 For, you shall note, she uttered no one word 
 Of love more to her husband, though he wept 
 Plenteously, waxed importunate in prayer — 
 Folly's old fashion when its seed bears fruit. 
 I think she judged that she had bought the 
 
BALAUSTION'S ADVENTURE 
 
 609 
 
 0' the seller at its value, — nor praised him 
 
 Nor blamed herself, but, with indifferent eye. 
 
 Saw him purse money up, prepare to leave 
 
 The buyer with a solitary bale — 
 
 True purple — but in place of all that coin. 
 
 Had made a hundred others happy too, 
 
 If so willed fate or fortunel What remained 
 
 To give away, should rather go to these 
 
 Than one with coin to clink and contemplate. 
 
 Admetos had his share and might depart. 
 
 The rest was for her children and herself. 
 
 (Charop^ makes a face : but wait awhile !) 
 
 She saw things plain as Gods do : by one stroke 
 
 0' the sword that rends the life-long veil away. 
 
 (Also Euripedes saw plain enough : 
 
 But you and I, Charop4 ! — you and I 
 
 Will trust his sight until our own grow clear.) 
 
 ^' Sun, and thou light of day, and heavenly 
 
 dance 
 0' the fleet cloud - figure ! " (so her passion 
 
 paused. 
 While the awe-stricken husband made his moan. 
 Muttered now this now that ineptitude : 
 *' Sun that sees thee and me, a suffering pair. 
 Who did the Gods no wrong whence thou 
 
 shouldst die ! ") 
 Then, as if caught up, carried in their course. 
 Fleeting and free as cloud and sunbeam are. 
 She missed no happiness that lay beneath : 
 *^0 thou wide earth, from these my palace 
 
 roofs. 
 To distant nuptial chambers once my own 
 In that lolkos of my ancestry ! " — 
 There the flight failed her. '^ Raise thee, 
 
 wretched one ! 
 Give us not up ! Pray pity from the Gods ! " 
 
 Vainly Admetos : for " I see it — see 
 The two-oared boat I The ferryer of the dead, 
 Charon, hand hard upon the boatman's-pole. 
 Calls me — even now calls — ' Why delayest 
 
 thou? 
 Quick ! Thou obstructest all made ready here 
 For prompt departure : quick, then ! ' " 
 
 '* Woe is me ! 
 A bitter voyage this to undergo. 
 Even i' the telling ! Adverse Powers above. 
 How do ye plague us ! " 
 
 Then a shiver ran : 
 " He has me — seest not ? — hales me, — who is 
 
 it? — 
 To the hall o' the Dead — ah, who but Hades' 
 
 self. 
 He, with the wings there, glares at me, one gaze 
 All that blue brilliance, under the eyebrow ! 
 What wilt thou do ? Unhand me ! Such a 
 
 way 
 I have to traverse, all unhappy one ! " 
 
 " Way — piteous to thy friends, but, most of all, 
 
 Me and thy children : ours assuredly 
 
 A common partnership in grief like this ! " 
 
 Whereat they closed about her ; but " Let be ! 
 Leave, let me lie now ! Strength forsakes my 
 
 feet. 
 Hades is here, and shadowy on my eyes 
 
 Comes the night creeping. Children — chil- 
 dren, now 
 Indeed, a mother is no more for you ! 
 Farewell, O children, long enjoy the light ! " 
 
 " Ah me, the melancholy word I hear. 
 Oppressive bejfond every kind of death ! 
 No, by the Deities, take heart nor dare 
 To give me up — no, by our children too 
 Made orphans of ! But rise, be resolute. 
 Since, thou departed, I no more remain 1 
 For in thee are we bound up, to exist 
 Or cease to be — so we adore thy love I " 
 
 — Which brought out truth to judgment. At 
 
 this word 
 And protestation, all the truth in her 
 Claimed to assert itself : she waved away 
 The blue-eyed blaek-wing'd phantom, held in 
 
 check 
 The advancing pageantry of Hades there. 
 And, with no change in her own countenance. 
 She fixed her eyes on the protesting man. 
 And let her lips unlock their sentence, — so I 
 
 "Admetos, — how things go with me thou 
 
 seest, — 
 I wish to tell thee, ere I die, what things 
 I will should follow. I — to honor thee, 
 Secure for thee, by my own soul's exchange, 
 Continued lookmg on the daylight here — 
 Die for thee — yet, if so I pleased, might live, 
 Nay, wed what man of Thessaly I would. 
 And dwell i' the dome with pomp and queenli- 
 
 ness. 
 I would not, — would not live bereft of thee, 
 With children orphaned, neither shrank at all, 
 Though having gifts of youth wherein I joyed. 
 Yet, who begot thee and who gave thee birth. 
 Both of these gave thee up ; no less, a term 
 Of life was reached when death became them 
 
 well. 
 Ay, well — to save their child and glorious die : 
 Since thou wast all they had, nor hope re- 
 mained 
 Of having other children in thy place. 
 So, I and thou had lived out our full time, 
 Nor thou, left lonely of thy wife, wouldst groan 
 With children reared in orphanage : but thus 
 Some God disposed things, willed they so should 
 
 be. 
 Be they so ! Now do thou remember this. 
 Do me in turn a favor — favor, since 
 Certainly I shall never claim my due. 
 For nothing is more precious than a life : 
 But a fit favor, as thyself wilt say. 
 Loving our children here no less than I, 
 If heaid and heart be sound in thee at least. 
 Uphold them, make them masters of my house, 
 Nor wed and give a step-dame to the pair. 
 Who, being a worse wife than I, through spite 
 Will raise her hand against both thine and 
 
 mine. 
 Never do this at least, I pray to thee ! 
 For hostile the new-comer, the step-dame. 
 To the old brood — a very viper she 
 For gentleness I Here stand they, boy and 
 
 girl; 
 
6io 
 
 BALAUSTION'S ADVENTURE 
 
 The boy has got a father, a defence 
 Towei*-like, he speaks to and has answer from : 
 But thou, ray girl, how will thy virginhood 
 Conclude itself in marriage fittingly ? 
 Upon what sort of sire-found yoke-feUow 
 Art thou to chance ? with all to apprehend — 
 Lest, casting on thee some unkind report, 
 rihe blast thy nuptials in the bloom of youth. 
 For neither shall thy mother watch thee wed. 
 Nor hearten thee in childbirth, standing by 
 Just when a mother's presence helps the most ! 
 No, for I have to die : and this my ill 
 Comes to me, nor tOTmorrow, no, nor yet 
 The third day of the month, but now, even 
 
 now, 
 I shall be reckoned among those no more. 
 Farewell, be happy ! And to thee, indeed, 
 Husband, the boast remains permissible 
 Thou hadst a wife was worthy ! and to you, 
 Children ; as good a mother gave you birth." 
 
 " Have courage ! " interposed the friends, 
 
 '* For him ; 
 
 I have no scruple to declare — all this 
 Will he perJEorm, except he fail of sense." 
 
 "All this shall be — shall be!" Admetos 
 
 sobbed : 
 " Fear not ! And, since I had thee living, 
 
 dead 
 Alone wilt thou be called my wife : no fear 
 That some Thessalian ever styles herself 
 Bride, hails this man for husband in thy place ! 
 No woman, be she of such lofty line 
 Or such surpassing beauty otherwise ! 
 Enough of children : gaiji from these I have. 
 Such only may the Gods grant 1 since in thee , 
 Absolute is our loss, where all was gain. 
 And I shall bear for thee no year-long grief. 
 But grief that lasts while my own days last, 
 
 love ! 
 Love ! For my hate is she who bore me, now : 
 And him I hate, my father : loving-ones 
 Truly, in word not deed ! But thou didst pay 
 All dearest to thee down, and buy my .life. 
 Saving me so 1 Is there not cause enough 
 That I who part with such companionship 
 In thee, should make my moan P I moan, and 
 
 ,,, more : 
 For I will end the f eastings — social flow ■ 
 0' the wine friends flock for, garlands and the 
 
 Muse 
 That graced my dwelling. Never now for me 
 To touch the lyre, to lift ray soul in song 
 At summons of the Lydian flute ; since thou 
 From out my life hast emptied all the joy 1 
 And this thy body, in thy likeness wrought 
 By some wise hand of the artificers, , 
 Shall lie disposed within my raarriagerbed : 
 This I will fall on, this enfold about. 
 Call by thy name, — my dear wife in my arms 
 Even thoT^h I have not, I shall seem to have — 
 A cold delight, indeed, but all the same 
 So should I lighten of its weight my soul ! 
 And, wandering my way in dreams perchance, s 
 Thyself wilt bless me : for, come. when they 
 
 will. 
 Even by night our loves are sweet to see. 
 
 But were the tongue and tune of Orpheus 
 
 mine, _ , , , 
 
 So that to Kor^ crying, or her lord, 
 In hymns, from Hades I might rescue thee — 
 Down would I go, and neither Plouton's dog 
 Nor Charon, he whose oar sends souls across. 
 Should stay me till again X made thee stand 
 Living, within the light ! But, failing this, 
 There, where thou art, await me when I die. 
 Make ready our abode, my housemate still 1 
 For in the selfsame cedar, me with thee 
 WiU I provide that these our friends shall 
 
 place. 
 My side lay close by thy side ! Never, corpse 
 Although 1 be, would I division bear 
 From thee, my faithful one of all the world I " 
 
 So he stood sobbing : nowise insincere, 
 But somehow child-like, like his children, like 
 Childishness the world over. What was new 
 In this announcement that his wife must die ? 
 What particle of pain beyond the pact 
 He maide, with eyes wide open, long ago — 
 Made and was, if not glad, content to make ? 
 Now that the sorrow, he had called for, came, 
 He sorrowed to the height : none heard him say. 
 However, what would seem so pertinent, 
 " Tofkeep this pact, I find surpass my power: 
 Rescind it, Moirai I Give me back her life, 
 And take the life I kept by base exchange ! 
 Or, failing that, here stands your laughing- 
 stock 
 Fooled by you, worthy just the fate o' the fool 
 Who makes a pother to escape the best 
 And gain the worst you wiser Powers allot ! " 
 No, not one word of this : nor did his wife 
 Despite the sobbing, and the silence soon 
 To follow, judge so much was in his thought — 
 Fancy that, should the Moirai- acti[uiesce. 
 He would relinquish life nor let her die. 
 The man was like some merchant who, in 
 
 . storm. 
 Throws the freight over to redeem the ship : 
 No-question, saving both were .better still. 
 As it was, -^ why, he sorrowed, which sufficed. 
 So, all she seeraed to notice in his speech 
 Was what concerned her children. Children, 
 
 too. 
 Bear the grief and accept the sacrifice- 
 Rightly rules nature : does the blossomed 
 
 bough 
 0' the grape-vine, or the dry grape's self, bleed 
 wine ? ■ ■ 
 
 So, bending to her children all her love, 
 She fastened on their father's only word 
 To purpose now, and followed it with this : 
 " children, now yourselves have heard these 
 
 things — 
 Your father saying he -will never wed 
 Another woraan to be over you, 
 Nor yet dishonor rae ! " 
 
 " And now at least 
 I say it, and I will accomplish too 1 " 
 
 " Then, for such promise of accomplishment, 
 Take from my hand these children ! " 
 
BALAUSTION'S ADVENTURE 
 
 6ii 
 
 "Thus I take- 
 Dear gift from the dear hand ! " 
 
 " Do thou become 
 Mother, now, to these children in my place ! " 
 
 " Great the necessity, I should be so. 
 At least, to these bereaved of thee ! " 
 
 " Child -chUd! 
 Just when I needed most to live, below 
 Am I departing from you both I " 
 
 "Ah me I 
 And what shall I do, then, left lonely, thus ?:" 
 
 "Time will appease thee: who is dead is 
 naught." 
 
 "Take me with thee — take, by the Gods 
 below ! " 
 
 *' We are sufBcient, we who die for thee." 
 
 " O Powers, ye widow me of what a wife ! " 
 
 " And truly the dimmed eye draws earthward 
 now ! " 
 
 " Wife, if thon leav'st me, I am lost indeed ! " 
 
 "She once was — now is nothing, thou mayst 
 
 say." 
 
 "Raise thy face, nor forsake thy children 
 
 thus ! " 
 
 " Ah, willingly indeed I leave them not ! 
 But — fare ye well, my children ! " 
 
 " Look on them — 
 Look!" 
 
 " I am nothingness." 
 
 "What dost thou? Leav'st . . ." 
 
 "FareweU!" 
 
 And in the breath she passed away. 
 *' Undone — me miserable ! " moaned the, king, 
 While friends released the long-suspended sigh. 
 " Gone is she : no wife for Admetos more ! " 
 
 Such was the signal : how the woe broke forth. 
 Why tell? — or how the, children's tears ran 
 
 fast 
 Bidding their father note the eyelids' stare. 
 Hands' droop, each dreadful circumstance of 
 
 death. 
 
 " Ay, she hears not, she sees not : I and you, 
 'T is plain, are stricken hard and have to 
 
 bear ! " 
 Was all Admetos answered ; for, I judge. 
 He only now began to taste the truth : 
 The thing done lay revealed, which undone 
 
 thing, 
 Rehearsed for fact by fancy, at the best. 
 
 Never can equal. He had used himself 
 This long while (as he muttered presently) 
 To practise with the terms, the blow involved 
 By the bargain, sharp to bear, but bearable 
 Because of plain advantage at the end. 
 Now that, in fact not fancy, the blow fell — 
 Needs must he busy him with the surprise. 
 " Alkestis — not to see her nor be seen. 
 Hear nor be heard of by her, any more 
 To-day, to-morrow, to the end of time — 
 Did I mean this should buy my life ? " thought 
 he. 
 
 So, friends came round him, took him by the 
 
 hand. 
 Bade him remember our mortality. 
 Its due, its doom ; how neither was he first. 
 Nor would be last, to thus deplore the loved. 
 
 " I understand," slow the words came at la*t. 
 
 " Nor of a sudden did the evil here 
 
 Fly on me : I have known it long ago. 
 
 Ay, and essayed myself in misery ; 
 
 Nothing is new. You have to stay, you friends, 
 
 Because the next need is to carry forth 
 
 The corpse here : you must stay and do your 
 
 part. 
 Chant proper paean to the God below ; 
 Drink-sacrilEice he likes not. 1 decree 
 That all Thessalians over whom I rule 
 Hold grief in common with me : let them shear 
 Their locks, and be the peplos black they show ! 
 And you who to the chariot yoke your steeds. 
 Or manage steeds one-frontleted,, — I charge. 
 Clip from each neck with steel the mane away I 
 And through my city, nor of flute nor lyre 
 Be there a sound till twelve full moons succeedk 
 For I shall never bury any corpse 
 Dearer than this to. me, nor better friend : 
 One worthy of all honor from me, since 
 Me she has died for, she and she alone." 
 
 With that, he sought the inmost of the house, 
 He and his dead, to get grave's garniture. 
 While the friends sang the paean that should 
 
 peal. 
 " Daughter of Pelias, with farewell from me, 
 I' the house of Hades have thy unsunned home I 
 Let Hades know, the dark-haired deity, — 
 And he who sits to row and steer alike. 
 Old corpse-conductor, let him know he bears 
 Over the Acherontian lake, this time, 
 I' the two-oared boat, the best — oh, best by far 
 Of womankind ! For thee, Alkestis Queen ! 
 Many a time those haunters of the Muse 
 Shall sing thee to the seven-stringed mountain- 
 
 sheU, 
 And glorify in hymns that need no harp. 
 At Sparta when the cycle comes about. 
 And that Kameian month wherein the moon 
 Rises and never sets the whole night through : 
 So too at splendid and magnificent 
 Athenai. Such the spread of thy renown. 
 And such the lay that, dying, thou hast left 
 Singer and sayer. Oh that I availed 
 Of my own might to send thee once again 
 From Hades' hall, Kokutos' stream, by help 
 O' the oar that dips the river, back to-day 1 " 
 
6l2 
 
 BALAUSTION'S ADVENTURE 
 
 So, the song sank to prattle in her praise : 
 " Light, from above thee, lady, fall the earth, 
 Thou only one of womankind to die. 
 Wife for her husband ! If Admetos take 
 Anything to him like a second spouse — 
 Hate from his offspring and from us shall be 
 His portion, let the king assure himself ! 
 No mind his mother had to hide in earth 
 Her body for her son's sake, nor his sire 
 Had heart to save whom he begot, — not they, 
 The white-haired wretches ! only thou it was, 
 I' the bloom of youth, didst save him and so 
 
 die ! 
 Might it be mine to chance on such a mate 
 And partner ! For there 's penury in life 
 Of such allowance : were she mine at least, 
 So wonderful a wife, assuredly 
 She would companion me throughout my days 
 And never once bring sorrow ! " 
 
 A great voice — 
 "My hosts here! " 
 
 Oh, the thrill that ran through us ! 
 Never was aught so good and opportune 
 As that great interrupting voice 1 For see I 
 Here maundered this dispirited old age 
 Before the palace ; whence a something crept 
 Which told us well enough without a word 
 What was ardoing inside, — every touch 
 0' the garland on those temples, tenderest 
 Disposure of ea«h arm along its side. 
 Came putting out what warmth i' the world 
 
 was left. 
 Then, as it happens at a sacrifice 
 When, drop by drop, some lustral bath is 
 
 brimmed : 
 Into the thin and clear and cold, at once 
 They slaughter a whole wine-skin ; Bacchos' 
 
 blood 
 Sets the white water all aflame : even so. 
 Sudden into the midst of sorrow, leapt 
 Along with the gay cheer of that great voice, 
 Hope, joy, salvation : Herakles was here ! 
 Himself, o' the threshold, sent his voice on first 
 To herald all that human and divine 
 I' the weary happy face of him, — half God, 
 Half man, which made the god-part God the 
 
 " Hosts mine," he broke upon the sorrow with, 
 " Inhabitants of this Pheraian soil. 
 Chance I upon Admetos inside here ? " 
 
 The irresistible sound wholesome heart 
 O' the hero, — more than all the mightiness 
 At labor in the limbs that, for man's sake. 
 Labored and meant to labor their life-long, — 
 This drove back, dried up sorrow at its source. 
 How could it brave the happy weary laugh 
 Of who had bantered sorrow, " Sorrow here ? 
 What have you done to keep your friend from 
 
 harm ? 
 Could no one give the life I see he keeps ? 
 Or, say there 's sorrow here past friendly help, 
 Why waste a word or let a tear escape 
 While other sorrows wait you in the world. 
 And want the life of you, though helpless 
 
 here?" 
 Clearly there was no telling such an one 
 
 How, when their monarch tried who loved him 
 
 more 
 Than he loved them, and found they loved, as 
 
 he, 
 Ea«h man, himself, and held, no otherwise, 
 That, of ail evils in the world, the worst 
 Was — being forced to die, whate'er death 
 
 gain: 
 How all this selfishness in him and them 
 Caused certain sorrow which they sang about, — 
 I think that Herakles, who held his Efe 
 Out on his hand, for any man to take — 
 I think his laugh had marred their threnody, 
 
 "He is in the house," they answered. After 
 
 all. 
 They might have told the story, talked their 
 
 best 
 About the inevitable sorrow here, 
 Nor changed nor checked the kindly nature, — 
 
 no ! 
 So long as men were merely weak, not bad, 
 He loved men : were they Gods he used to help ? 
 " Yea, Pheres' son is in-doors, Herakles. 
 But say, what sends thee to Thessalian soil. 
 Brought by what business to this Pherai 
 
 town?" 
 
 " A certain labor that I have to do 
 Furustheus the Tirunthian," laughed the God. 
 
 " And whither wendest — on what wandering 
 Bound now ? " (They had an instinct, guessed 
 
 what meant 
 Wanderings, labors, in the God's light mouth.) 
 
 " After the Thrakian Piomedes' car 
 With the four horses." 
 
 " Ah, but canst thou that ? 
 Art inexperienced in thy host to be ? " 
 
 " All-inexperienced : I have never gone 
 As yet to the land o' the Bistones.' 
 
 " Then, look 
 By no means to be master of the steeds 
 Without a battle ! " 
 
 " Battle there may be : 
 I must refuse no labor, all the same." 
 
 " Certainly, either having slain a foe 
 Wilt thou return to us, or, slain thyself. 
 Stay there ! " ^ 
 
 " And, even if the game be so, 
 The risk in it were not the first I run." 
 
 " But, say thou overpower the lord o' the place, 
 What more advantage dost expect thereby ? " 
 
 " I shall drive off his horses to the king." 
 
 " No easy handling them to bit the jaw 1 " 
 
 " Easy enough ; except, at least, they breathe 
 Fire from their nostrils ! " 
 
 " But they mince up men 
 With those quick jaws I " 
 
BALAUSTION'S ADVENTURE 
 
 613 
 
 " You talk of provender 
 For mountain-beasts, and not mere horses' 
 food ! " 
 
 " Thou mayst behold their mang^ers caked 
 with gore 1" 
 
 " And of what sire does he who bred them boast 
 Himself the son ? " 
 
 " Of Ares, king o' the targe — 
 Thrakian, of gold throughout." 
 
 Another laugh. 
 " Why, just the labor, just the lot for me 
 Dost thou describe in what I recogpize ! 
 Since hard and harder, high and higher yet, 
 Truly this lot of mine is like to go 
 If I must needs join battle with the brood 
 Of Ares : aj^ I fought Lukaon first, 
 And again, Kuknos : now engage in strife 
 This third time, with such horses and such lord. 
 But there is nobody shall ever see 
 Alkmen^'s son shrink foemen's hand before ! " 
 
 — "Or ever hear him say " (the Chorus 
 
 thought) 
 " That death is terrible ; and help us so 
 To chime in — ' terrible beyond a doubt. 
 And, if to thee, why, to ourselves much more : 
 Know what has happened, then, and sympa- 
 thize'!" 
 Therefore they gladly stopped the dialogue. 
 Shifted the burden to new shoulder straight. 
 As, " Look where comes the lord o' the land, 
 
 himself, 
 Admetos, from the palace ! " they outbroke 
 In some surprise, as well as much relief. 
 What had induced the king to waive his right 
 And luxury of woe in loneliness ? 
 
 Out he came quietly ; the hair was dipt. 
 And the garb sable ; else no outward sign 
 Of sorrow as he came and faced his friend. 
 Was truth fast terrifying tears away ? 
 " Hail, child of Zens, and sprung from Perseus 
 
 too ! " 
 The salutation ran without a fault. 
 
 " And thou, Admetos, King of Thessaly ! " 
 
 *' Would, as thou wishest me, the grace might 
 
 fall! 
 But my good-wisher, that thou art, I know." 
 
 " What 's here ? these shorn locks, this sad 
 show of thee? " 
 
 " I must inter a certain corpse to-day." 
 
 '*Now, from thy children God avert mis- 
 chance ! " 
 
 "Theylive, my children; all are in the house ! " 
 
 " Thy father — if 't is he departs indeed. 
 His age was ripe at least." 
 
 " My father lives. 
 And she who bore me lives too, Herakles." 
 
 " It cannot be thy wife Alkestis gone ? " 
 
 " Twofold the tale is, I can tell of her." 
 
 " Dead dost thou speak of her, or living yet ? " 
 
 " She is — and is not : hence the pain to me ! " 
 
 " I learn no whit the more, so dark thy speech ! " 
 
 " Know'st thou not on what fate she needs 
 must fall ? " 
 
 " I know she is resigned to die for thee.'' 
 
 " How lives she still, then, if submitting so ? " 
 
 " Eh, weep her not beforehand ! wait till then I " 
 
 " Who is to die is dead ; doing is done." 
 
 " To be and not to be are thought diverse." 
 
 " Thou judgest this — I, that way, Herakles I " 
 
 " Well, but declare what causes thy complaint ! 
 Who is the man has died from out thy friends ? ' ' 
 
 " No man : I had a woman in my mind." 
 
 " Alien, or some one born akin to thee ? " 
 
 " Alien : but still related to my house." 
 
 " How did it happen then that here she died ? " 
 
 "Her father dying left his orphan here." 
 
 " Alas, Admetos — would we found thee gay, 
 Not grieving ! " 
 
 " What as if about to do 
 Subjoinest thou that comment ? " 
 
 " I shall seek 
 Another hearth, proceed to other hosts." 
 
 " Never, O king, shall that be ! No such ill 
 Betide me ! " 
 
 " Nay, to mourners should there come 
 A guest, he proves importunate ! " 
 
 " The dead — 
 Dead are they : but go thou within my house ! " 
 
 "'Tis base carousing beside friends who 
 mourn." 
 
 " The guest-rooms, whither we shall lead thee, 
 
 lie 
 Apart from ours." 
 
 *' Nay, let me go my way ! 
 Ten-thousandfold the favor I shall thank ! " 
 
 "It may not be then goest to the hearth 
 
 Of any man but me ! " so made an end 
 
 Admetos, softly and decisively. 
 
 Of the altercation. Herakles forbore : 
 
 And the king bade a servant lead the way. 
 
 Open the guest-rooms ranged remote from view 
 
6i4 
 
 BALAUSTION'S ADVENTURE 
 
 0' the main hall, tell the f unctionaiies, next, 
 They had to furnish forth a plenteous feast : 
 And then shut close the doors o' the hall, mid- 
 way, 
 " Because it is not proper friends who feast 
 Should hear a groaning^ or be grieved," quoth 
 he. 
 
 Whereat the hero, who was truth itself. 
 Let out the smile again, repressed awhile 
 Like fountain-brilliance one forbids to play. 
 He did too many grandnesses, to note 
 Much in the meaner things about his path ; 
 And stepping there, with face towards the sun, 
 Stopped seldom to pluck weeds or ask their 
 
 names. 
 Therefore he took Admetos at the word : 
 This trouble must not hinder any more 
 A true heart from good will and pleasant ways. 
 And so, the great arm, which had slain the 
 
 snake. 
 Strained his friend's head a moment in embrace 
 On that broad breast beneath the lion's hide. 
 Till the king's cheek winced at the thick rough 
 
 gold ; 
 And then strode off, with who had care of 
 
 him. 
 To the remote guest-chamber : glad to give 
 Poor flesh and blood their respite and relief 
 In the interval 'twixt fight and fight again — 
 All for the world's sake. Our eyes followed 
 
 him. 
 Be sure, till those mid-doors shut us outside. 
 The king, too, watched great Herakles go off 
 All faith, love, and obedience to a friend. 
 
 And when they questioned him, the simple 
 
 ones, 
 "What dost thou ? Such calamity to face. 
 Lies full before thee — and thou art so bold 
 As play the host. Admetos ? Hast thy wits ? " 
 He replied calmly to ea«h chiding tongue : 
 " But if from house and home I forced away 
 A coming guest, wouldst thou have praised me 
 
 more? 
 No, truly ! since calamity were mine. 
 Nowise diminished : while I showed myself 
 Unhappy and inhospitable too : 
 So adding to my ills this other ill. 
 That mine were styled a strangei>hatlng house. 
 Myself have ever found this man the best 
 Of entertainers when I went his way 
 To parched and thirsty Argos." 
 
 " If so be — 
 Why didst thou hide what destiny was here. 
 When one came that was kindly, as thou 
 
 say'st?" 
 
 " He never would have willed to cross my door 
 Had he known aught of my calamities. 
 And probably to some of you I seem 
 Unwise enough in doing what I do ; 
 Such will scarce praise me : but these halls of 
 
 mine 
 Know not to drive off and dishonor guests." 
 
 And so, the duty done, he turned once more 
 To go and busy him about his dead. 
 
 As for the sympathizers left to muse. 
 
 There was a change, a new light thrown on 
 
 things. 
 Contagion from the magnanimity 
 0' the man whose life lay on his hand so light, 
 As up he stepped, pursuing duty still 
 " Higher and harder," as he laughed and said. 
 Somehow liey found no foUy now in the act 
 They blamed erewhUe : Admetos' private grief 
 Shrank to a somewhat pettier obstacle 
 I' the way o' the world: they saw good days 
 
 had been. 
 And good days, peradventure, still might be, 
 Now that they overlooked the present cloud 
 Heavy upon the palace opposite. 
 And soon the thought took words and music 
 
 thus : — 
 
 " Harbor of many a stranger, free to friend. 
 
 Ever and always, thou house o' the man 
 
 We mourn for 1 Thee, Apollon's very self, 
 
 The lyric Puthian, deigned inhabit once, 
 
 Become a shepherd here in thy domains. 
 
 And pipe, adown the winding hillside paths. 
 
 Pastoral marriage-poems to thy flocks 
 
 At feed : while with them fed in fellowship. 
 
 Through joy i' the music, spot-skin lynxes ; ay. 
 
 And lions too, the bloody company. 
 
 Came, leaving Othrus' dell; and round thy 
 
 lyre, 
 Phoibos, there danced the speckle-coated fawn. 
 Pacing on lightsome fetlock past the pines 
 Tress-topped, the creature's natural boundary 
 Into the open everywhere ; such heart 
 Had she within her, beating joyous beats. 
 At the sweet reassurance of thy song ! 
 Therefore the lot o' the master is, to live 
 In a home multitudinous with herds, 
 Along by the fair-flowing Boibian lake, 
 Limited, that ploughed land and pasture-plain. 
 Only where stand the sun's steeds, stabled west 
 I' the cloud, by that mid-air which makes the 
 
 clime 
 Of those Molossoi : and he rules as well 
 O'er the Aigaian, up to Pelion's shore, — 
 Searstretch without a port ! Such lord have 
 
 we: 
 And here he opens house now, as of old. 
 Takes to the heart of it a guest again : 
 Though moist the eyelid of the master, still 
 Mourning his dear wife's body, dead but 
 
 And they admired : nobility of soul 
 Was self-impelled to reverence, they saw : 
 The best men ever prove the wisest too ; 
 Something instinctive guides them still aright. 
 And on each soul this boldness settled now. 
 That one who reverenced the Gods so much 
 Would prosper yet: (or — I could wish it 
 
 ran — 
 Who venerates the Gods i' the main will still 
 Practise things honest though obscure to 
 
 judge). 
 
 They ended, for Admetos entered now ; 
 Having disposed all duteonsly indoors. 
 He came into the outside world again, 
 
BALAUSTION'S ADVENTURE 
 
 6is 
 
 Quiet as ever : but a quietude 
 
 Bent on pursuing its descent to truth, 
 
 As who must grope until he gain the ground 
 
 0' the dungeon doomed to be his dwelling now. 
 
 Already high o'er head was piled the dusk, 
 
 When something pushed to stay his downward 
 
 step, 
 Pluck back despair just reaching its repose. 
 He would have bidden the kind presence there 
 Observe that, — since the corpse was coming 
 
 out. 
 Oared for in all things that befit the case. 
 Carried aloft, in decency and state. 
 To the last burial-place and burning pile, — 
 'T were proper friends addressed, as custom 
 
 prompts, 
 Alkestis bound on her last journeying. 
 
 " Ay, for we see thy father," they subjoined, 
 " Advancing as the aged foot best may ; 
 His servants, too ; each bringing in his hand 
 Adornments for thy wife, all pomp that 's due 
 To the downward-dwelling people." And in 
 
 truth. 
 By slow procession till they filled the stage. 
 Came Pheres, and his following, and their gifts. 
 You see, the worst of the interruption was. 
 It plucked back, with an over-hasty hand, 
 Admetos from descending to the truth, 
 (I told you) — put hiiu on the brink again, 
 Full i' the noise and glare where late he stood : 
 With no fate fallen and irrevocable. 
 But all things subject ^still to chance and 
 
 change ; 
 And that chance — life, and that change — 
 
 'happiness. 
 And with the low strife came the little mind : 
 He was once more the man might gain so 
 
 much. 
 Life too and wife too, would his friends but 
 
 help ! 
 All he felt now was that there faced him one 
 Supposed the likeliest, in emergency. 
 To help : and help, by mere self-sacrifice 
 So natural, it seemed as if the sire 
 Must needs lie open still to argument. 
 Withdraw the rash decision, not to die 
 But rather live, though death would save his 
 
 son : — 
 Argument like the ignominious grasp 
 0' the drowner whom his fellow grasps as 
 
 fierce. 
 Each marvelling that the other needs must 
 
 hold 
 Head out of water, though friend choke there- 
 by. 
 
 And first the father's salutation fell. 
 Burdened he came, in common with his child. 
 Who lost, none would gainsay, a good chaste 
 
 spouse : 
 Yet such things must be borne, though hard to 
 
 bear. 
 " So, take this tribute of adornment, deep 
 In the earth let it descend along with her I 
 Behooves we treat the body with respect 
 — Of one who died, at leiast, to save thy life, 
 Kept me from being childless, nor allowed 
 
 That I, bereft of thee, should peak and pine 
 
 In melancholy age ! she, for the sex. 
 
 All of her sisters, put in evidence. 
 
 By daring such a feat, that female life 
 
 Might prove more excellent than men suppose. 
 
 thou Alkestis ! " out he burst in fine, 
 
 "Who, while thou, savedst this my son, didst 
 
 raise 
 Also myself from sinking, — hail to thee 1 
 Well be it with thee even in the house 
 Of Hades ! I maintain, if mortals must 
 Marry, this sort of maiTiage is the sole 
 Permitted those among them who are wise I " 
 
 So his oration ended. Like hates like : 
 Accordingly Admetos, — full i' the face 
 Of Pheres, his true father, outward shape 
 And inward fashion, body matching soul, — 
 Saw just hiraseK when years should do their 
 
 work 
 And reinforce the selfishness inside 
 Until it pushed the last disguise away : 
 As when the liquid metal cools i' the mould. 
 Stands forth a statue : bloodless, hard, cold 
 
 bronze. 
 So, in old Pheres, young Admetos showed, 
 Pushed to completion : and a shudder ran. 
 And his repugnance soon had vent in speech : 
 Glad to escape outside, nor, pent within. 
 Find itself there fit food for exercise. 
 
 *' Neither to this interment called by me 
 Comest thou, nor thy presence I account 
 Among the covetable proofs of love. 
 As for thy tribute of adornment, — no ! 
 Ne'er shall she' don it, ne'er in debt to thee 
 Be buried I What is thine, that keep thou 
 
 stiU ! 
 Then it behooved thee to commiserate 
 When I was perishing : but thou — who stood 'st 
 Foot-free o' the snare, wast acquiescent then 
 That I, the young, should die, not thou, the 
 
 old — 
 Wilt thou lament this corpse thyself hast slain ? 
 Thou wast not, then, true father to this fiesh ; 
 Nor she, who makes profession of my birth 
 And styles herself my mother, neither she 
 Bore me : but, come of slave's blood, I was cast 
 Stealthily 'neath the bosom of thy wife ! 
 Thou showedst, put to touch, the thing thou 
 
 art. 
 Nor I esteem myself born child of thee ! 
 Otherwise, thine is the preeminence 
 O'er all the world in cowardice of soul : 
 Who, being the old man thou art, arrived 
 Where life should end, didst neither will nor 
 
 dare 
 Die for thy son, but left the task to her. 
 The alien woman, whom I well might think 
 Own, only mother both and father too ! 
 And yet a fair strife had been thine to strive, 
 — Dying for thy own child ; and brief for thee 
 In any case, the rest of time to live ; 
 While I had lived, and she, our rest of time, 
 Nor I been left to groan in solitude. 
 Yet certainly all things which happy man 
 Ought to experience, thy experience grasped. 
 Thou wast a ruler through the bloom of youth, 
 
6i6 
 
 BALAUSTION'S ADVENTURE 
 
 And I was son to thee, recipient dne 
 
 Of sceptre and demesne, — no need to fear 
 
 That dying thou shouldst leave an orphan 
 
 house 
 For strang:ers to despoil. Nor yet wilt thou 
 Allege that as dishonoring, forsooth. 
 Thy lei^h of days, I gave thee up to die, — 
 I, who have held thee in such reverence ! 
 And in exchange for it, such gratitude 
 Thou, father, — thou award'st me, mother 
 
 mine ! 
 Go, lose no time, then, in hegetting sons 
 Shall cherish thee in age, and, when thou diest. 
 Deck up and lay thee out as corpses claim 1 
 For never 1, at least, with this my hand 
 Will bury thee : it is myself am dead 
 So far as lies in thee. But if I light 
 Upon another savior, and still see 
 The sunbeam, — his, the child I call myself. 
 His, the old age that claims my cherishing. 
 How vainly do these aged pray for death. 
 Abuse the slow drag of senility ! 
 But should death step up, nobody inclines 
 To die, nor age is now the weight it was ! " 
 
 You see what all this poor pretentious talk 
 Tried at, — how weakness strove to hide itself 
 In bluster against weakness, — the loud word 
 To hide the little whisper, not so low 
 Already in that heart beneath those lips ! 
 Ha, could it be, who hated cowardice 
 Stood confessed craven, and who lauded so 
 Self-immolating love, himself had pushed 
 The loved one to the altar in his place ? 
 Friends interposed, would fain stop further play 
 0' the sharp-edged tongue : they felt love's 
 
 champion here 
 Had left an undefended point or two. 
 The antagonist might profit by ; bade " Pause ! 
 Enough the present sorrow ! Nor, son. 
 Whet thus against thyself thy father's soul ! " 
 
 Ay, but old Pheres was the stouter stufB ! 
 
 Admetos, at the flintiest of the heart. 
 
 Had so much soft in him as held a fire : 
 
 The other was all iron, clashed from flint 
 
 Its fire, but shed no spark and showed no 
 
 bruise. 
 Did Pheres crave instruction as to facts ? 
 He came, content, the ignoble word, for him. 
 Should lurk still in the blackness of each 
 
 breast, 
 As sleeps the water-serpent half surmised : 
 Not brought up to the surface at a bound, 
 By one touch of the idly-probing spear. 
 Reed-like against unconquerable scale. 
 He came pacific, rather, as strength should. 
 Bringing the decent praise, the due regret, 
 And eaSi banality prescribed of old. 
 Did he commence " Why let her die for you ? " 
 And rouse the coiled and quiet ugliness, 
 " What is so good to man as man's own life ? " 
 No : but the other did : and, for his pains. 
 Out, full in face of him, the venom leapt. 
 
 " And whom dost thou make hold, son — Lud- 
 
 ian slave. 
 Or Phrugian whether, money made thy ware, 
 
 To drive at with revilings? Know'at thou 
 
 not 
 I, a Thessalian, from Thessalian sire 
 Spring and am bom legitimately free ? 
 Too arrogant art thou ; and, youngster words 
 Casting against me, having had thy fling, 
 Thou goest not ofE as all were ended so ! 
 I gave thee birth indeed and mastership 
 I' the mansion, brought thee up to boot : there 
 
 ends 
 My owing, nor extends to die for thee 1 
 Never did I receive it as a law 
 Hereditary, no, nor Greek at all. 
 That sires in place of sons were bound to die. 
 For, to thy sole and single self wast thou 
 Bom, with whatever fortune, good or bad ; 
 Such things as bear bestowment, those thon 
 
 hast: 
 Already ruling widely, broad lands, too. 
 Doubt not but I shall leave thee in due time : 
 For why ? My father left me them before. 
 Well then, where wrong I thee ? — of what de- 
 fraud? 
 Neither do thou die for this man, myself, 
 Nor let him die for thee ! — is all I beg. 
 Thou joyest seeing daylight : dost suppose 
 Thy father joys not too ? Undoubtedly, 
 Long I account the time to pass below. 
 And brief my span of days ; yet sweet the 
 
 same : 
 Is it otherwise to thee who, impudent. 
 Didst fight off this same death, and livest now 
 Through having sneaked past fate apportioned 
 
 thee. 
 And slain thy wife so ? Ciyest cowardice 
 On me, I wonder, thou — whom, poor poltroon, 
 A very woman worsted, daring death 
 Just for the sake of thee, her handsome spark ? 
 Shrewdly hast thou contrived how not to die 
 Forevermore now : 't is but still persuade 
 The wife, for the time being, to take thy 
 
 place ! 
 What, and thy friends who would not do the 
 
 like. 
 These dost thou carp at, craven thus thyself ? 
 Crouch and be silent, craven ! Comprehend 
 That, if thou lovest so that life of thine. 
 Why, everybody loves his own Ufe too : 
 So, good words, henceforth ! If thou speak us 
 
 ill, 
 Many and true an ill thing shalt thou hear ! " 
 
 There you saw leap the hydra at full length I 
 Only, the old kept glorying the more. 
 The more the portent thus uncoiled itself. 
 Whereas the young man shuddered head to foot. 
 And shrank from kinship with the creature. 
 
 Why 
 Such horror, unless what he hated most. 
 Vaunting itself outside, might fairly claim 
 Acquaintance with the counterpart at home ? 
 I would the Chorus here had plucked up heart. 
 Spoken out boldly and explained the man. 
 If not to men, to Gods. That way, I think, 
 Sophokles would have led their dance and song. 
 Here, they said simply, " Too much evil spoke 
 On both sides ! " As the young before, so now 
 They bade the old man leave abusing thus. 
 
BALAUSTION'S ADVENTURE 
 
 617 
 
 " Let him speak, — I have spoken ! " said the 
 
 youth : 
 And so died out the wrangle by degrees, 
 In wretched bickering. "If thou wince at fact, 
 Behooved thee not prove faulty to myself ! " 
 
 " Had I died for thee I had faulted more ! " 
 
 "All's one, then, for youth's bloom and age to 
 die ? " 
 
 ' ' Our duty is to live one life, not two I " 
 
 "60 then, and outlive Zens, for aught I 
 care 1 " 
 
 " What, curse thy parents with no sort of 
 cause?" 
 
 " Curse, truly I All thou lovest is long life ! " 
 
 " And dost not thou, too, all for love of life. 
 Carry out now, in place of thine, this corpse ? " 
 
 " Monument, rather, of thy cowardice. 
 Thou worst one I " 
 
 " Not for me she died, I hope ! 
 That, thou wilt hardly say ! " 
 
 " No ; simply this : 
 Would, some day, thou mayst come to need 
 myself 1" 
 
 " Meanwhile, woo many wives — the more will 
 die!" 
 
 "And so shame thee who never dared the like ! " 
 
 "Dear is this light o' the sun-god — dear, I 
 say ! " 
 
 " Proper conclusion for a beast to draw ! " 
 
 " One thing is certain : there 's no laughing 
 
 now. 
 As out thou bearest the poor dead old man ! " 
 
 " Die when thou wilt, thou wilt die infamous ! " 
 
 " And once dead, whether famed or infamous, 
 I shall not care !" 
 
 " Alas and yet again ! 
 How full is age of impudency I " 
 
 " True ! 
 Thou couldst not call thy young wife impu- 
 dent : 
 She was found foolish merely," 
 
 " Get thee gone ! 
 And let me bury this my dead ! " 
 
 "I go. 
 Thou buriest her whom thou didst murder 
 
 first ; 
 Whereof there 's some account to render yet 
 Those kinsfolk by the marriage-side ! I think. 
 Brother Akastos may be classed with me, 
 Among the beasts, not men, if he omit 
 Avenging upon thee his sister's blood 1 " 
 
 " Go to perdition, with thjr housemate too! 
 Grow old all childlessly, with child alive, 
 Just as ye merit 1 for to me, at least. 
 Beneath the same roof ne'er do ye return. 
 And did I need by heralds' help renounce 
 The ancestral hearth, I had renounced the 
 
 same! 
 But we — since this woe, lying at our feet 
 I' the path, is to be borae — let us proceed 
 And lay the body on the pyre." 
 
 I think. 
 What, through this wretched wrangle, kept 
 
 the man 
 From seeing clear — beside the cause I gave — 
 Was, that the woe, himself described as full 
 I' the path before him, there did really lie — 
 Not roll into the abyss of dead and gone. 
 How, with Alkestis present, calmly crowned, 
 Was she so irrecoverable yet — 
 The bird, escaped, that 's just on bough above, 
 The flower, let flutter half-way down the 
 
 brink? 
 Not so detached seemed lifelessness from life 
 But — one dear stretch beyond all straining 
 
 yet — 
 And be might have her at his heart once more, 
 When, in the critical minute, up there comes 
 The father and the fact, to trine time ! 
 
 " To the pyre ! " an instinct prompted: pallid 
 
 face, 
 And passive arm and pointed foot, when these 
 No longer shall absorb the sight, O friends, 
 Admetos will begin to see indeed 
 Who the true foe was, where the blows should 
 
 fall I 
 
 So, the old selfish Pheres went his way. 
 
 Case-hardened as he came ; and left the youth, 
 
 (Only half selfish now, since sensitive) 
 
 To go on learning by a light the more. 
 
 As friends moved off, renewing dirge the while : 
 
 " Unhappy in thy daring ! Noble dame. 
 
 Best of the good, farewell! With favoring 
 
 face 
 May Hermes the infernal. Hades too. 
 Receive thee ! And if there, — ay, there, — 
 
 some touch 
 Of further dignity await the good. 
 Sharing with them, mayst thou sit throned by 
 
 her 
 The Bride of Hades, in companionship ! " 
 
 Wherewith, the sad procession wound away. 
 
 Made slowly for the suburb sepulchre. 
 
 And lo, — while still one's heart, in time and 
 
 tune, 
 Paced after that symmetric step of Death 
 Mute-marching, to the mind's eye, at the head 
 C the mourners — one hand pointing out theii 
 
 path 
 With the long pale terrific sword we saw, 
 The other leading, with grim tender grace, 
 Alkestis quieted and consecrate, — 
 Lo, life again knocked laughing at the door ! 
 The world goes on, goes ever, in and through, 
 And out again o' the cloud. We faced about, 
 
6i8 
 
 BALAUSTION'S ADVENTURE 
 
 Fronted thu palace where the mid-hall gate 
 Opened — noc halt', nor half of half, perhaps — 
 Yet Tvide enough to let out light and Ufe, 
 And warmth, and bounty, and hope, and joy, at 
 
 once. 
 Festivity burst wide, fruit rare and ripe 
 Crushed in the mouth of Bacchos, pulpy-prime. 
 All juice and flavor, save one single seed 
 Duly ejected from the God's nice lip. 
 Which lay o' the red edge, blackly visible — 
 To -wit, a certain ancient servitor : 
 On whom the festal jaws o' the palace shut, 
 So, there he stood, a much-bewildered man. 
 Stupid ? Nay, but sagacious in a sort : 
 Learned, life-long, i' the first outside of things, 
 Though bat for blindness to what lies beneath 
 And needs a nail-scratch ere 't is laid you bare. 
 This functionary was the trusted one 
 We saw deputed by Admetos late 
 To lead in Herakles and help him, soul 
 And body, to such snatched repose, snapped- 
 
 up 
 Sustainment, as might do away the dust 
 O' the last encounter, knit each nerve anew 
 For that next onset sure to come at cry 
 0' the creature next assailed, — nay, should it 
 
 prove 
 Only the creature that oarae forward now 
 To play the critic upon Herakles ! 
 
 " Many the guests," — so he soliloquized 
 In musings burdensome to breast before. 
 When it seemed not too prudent tongue should 
 
 wag, — 
 *' Many, and from all quarters of this world, 
 The guests I now have known frequent our 
 
 house. 
 For whom I spread the banquet ; but than this. 
 Never a worse one did I yet receive 
 At the hearth here ! One who seeing, first of 
 
 all. 
 The master's sorrow, entered gate the same. 
 And had the hardihood to house himself. 
 Did things stop there 1 But, modest by no 
 
 . means. 
 He took what entertainment lay to hand. 
 Knowing of our misfortune, — did we fail 
 In aught of the fit service, urged us serve 
 Just as a guest expects ! And in his hands 
 Taking the ivied goblet, drinks and drinks 
 The unmixed product of black mother-earth, 
 Until the blaze o' the wine went round about 
 And warmed him : then he crowns with myrtle 
 
 sprigs 
 His head, and howls discordance — twofold lay 
 Was thereupon for us to listen to — 
 This feUow singing, namely, nor restrained 
 A jot by sympathy with sorrows here — 
 While y/e o' the household mourned our luis- 
 
 tress — mourned. 
 That is to say, in silence — never showed 
 The eyes, which we kept wetting, to the 
 
 guest — 
 For there Admetos was imperative. 
 And so, here am I helping make at home 
 A guest, some fellow ripe for wickedness, 
 Robber or pirate, while she goes her way 
 Out of our nouse : and neither was it mine 
 
 To follow in procession, nor stretch forth 
 Hand, wave my lady dear a last farewell, 
 Lamenting who to me and all of us 
 Domestics was a mother : myriad harms 
 She used to ward away from every one, 
 And mollify her husband's ireful mood. 
 I ask then, do I justly hate or no 
 This guest, this interloper on our grief ? " 
 
 "Hate him and justly!" Here's the proper 
 
 judge 
 Of what is due to the house from Herakles ! 
 This man of much experience saw the first 
 0' the feeble duckings-down at destiny. 
 When King Admetos went his rounds, poor 
 
 soiil. 
 A-begging somebody to be so brave 
 As die for one afraid to die himself — 
 "Thou, friend? Thou, love? Father or 
 
 mother, then ! 
 None of you ? What, Alkestis must Death 
 
 catch ? 
 best of wives, one woman in the world I 
 But nowise droop : our prayers may still assist ; 
 Let us try sacrifice ; if those avail 
 Nothing and Gods avert their countenance. 
 Why, deep and durable our grief will be ! " 
 Whereat the house, this worthy at its head. 
 Re-echoed " deep and durable our grief ! " 
 This sage, who justly hated Herakles, 
 Did he suggest once " Rather I than she ! " 
 Admonish the Turannos — " Be a man ! 
 Bear thine own burden, never think to thrust 
 Thy fate upon another and thy wife ! 
 It were a dubious gain could death be doomed 
 That other, and no passionatest plea 
 Of thine, to die instead, have force with fate ; 
 Seeing thou lov'st Alkestis : what were life 
 Unlighted by the loved one ? But to live — ■ 
 Not merely live unsola<!ed by some thought. 
 Some word so poor — yet solace all the same — 
 As ' Thou i' the sepulchre, Alkestis, say ! 
 Would I, or would not I, to save thy life, 
 Die, and die on, and die f orevermore ? ' 
 No I but to read red-written up and down 
 The world ' This is the sunshine, this the shade, 
 This is some pleasure of earth, sky or sea. 
 Due to that other, dead that thou mayst uvB I ' 
 Such were a covetable gain to thee ? 
 Go die, fool, and be happy whil^ 't is time ! " 
 One word of counsel in this kind, methinks, 
 Had fallen to better purpose than Ai, ai, 
 Pheu, pheu, e, papal, and a pother of praise 
 0' the best, best, best one ! Nothing was to 
 
 hate 
 In King Admetos, Pheres, and the rest 
 0' the household down to his he;rolc self ! . , , . 
 This was the one thing hateful : Herakles 
 Had flung into the presence, frank and free, 
 Out from the labor into the repose, 
 Ere oxit again and over head and ears 
 I' the heart of labor, all for love of men : 
 Making the most o' the minute, that the soul 
 And body, strsinejl to height a minute since, 
 Might lie relaxed in joy, this breathing-space, 
 For man's sake more than ever ; till the Dow, 
 Eestrung o' the sudden, at first cry for help, 
 Should send some unimaginable shaft 
 
BALAUSTION'S ADVENTURE 
 
 619 
 
 Trne to the aim and shatteringly through 
 The plate-mail of a monster, save man so. 
 He slew the pest o' the marish yesterday : 
 To-morrow ae would bit the flame-breathed 
 
 stud 
 That fed on man's-fleah : and this day between — 
 Because he held it natural to die, 
 And fruitless to lament a thing past cure, 
 So, took his fill of food, wine, song and flowers, 
 Till the new labor claimed him soon enough, — 
 " Hate him ajid justly ! " 
 
 Time, Charop^ mine 1 
 The man surmised not Herakles lay hid 
 I' the guest ; or, knowing it, was ignorant 
 That still his lady lived — for Herakles ; 
 Or else judged lightness needs must indicate 
 This or the other caitiff quality : 
 And therefore — had been right if not so wrong I 
 For who expects the sort of him will scratch 
 A nail's depth, scrape the surface just to see 
 What peradventure underlies the same ? 
 
 So, he stood petting up his puny hate. 
 Parent-wise, proud of the iU-favored babe. 
 Not long ! A great hand, careful lest it crush. 
 Startled him on the shoulder : up he stared, 
 And over him, who stood but Herakles ! 
 There smiled the mighty presence, all one smile 
 And no touch more of the world-weary God, 
 Through the brief respite. Just a garland's 
 
 grace 
 About the brow, a song to satisfy 
 Head, heart and breast, and trumpet-lips at 
 
 once, 
 A solemn draught of true religious wine. 
 And — how should I know ? — half a mountain- 
 goat 
 Tom up and swallowed down, — the feast was 
 
 fierce 
 But brief: all cares and pains took wing and 
 
 flew. 
 Leaving the hero ready to begin 
 And help mankind, whatever woe came next. 
 Even though what came next should be naught 
 
 more 
 Than the mean querulous mouth o' the man, re- 
 marked 
 Pursing its grievance up till patience failed 
 And the sage needs must rush out, as we saw. 
 To sulk outside and pet his hate in peace. 
 By no means would the Helper have it so : 
 He who was just about to handle brutes 
 In Thrace, and bit the jaws which breathed the 
 
 flame, — 
 Well, if a good laugh and a jovial word 
 Could bridle age which blew bad humors forth. 
 That were a kind of help, too ! 
 
 ''Thou, there!" hailed 
 This grand benevolence the ungracious one — 
 " Why look'st so solemn and so thought-ab- 
 sorbed ? 
 To guests a servant should not sour-faced be, 
 But do the honors with a mind urbane. 
 While thou, contrariwise, beholding here 
 Arrive thy master's comrade, hast for him 
 A churlish visage, all one beetle-brow — 
 Having regard to grief that 's out-of-door ! 
 Come hither, and so get to grow more wise ! 
 
 Things mortal — know'st the nature that they 
 
 have? 
 No, I imagine ! whence could knowledge spring 1 
 Give ear to me, then ! For all flesh to die, 
 Is Nature's due ; nor is there any one 
 Of mortals with assurance he shall last 
 The coming moiTOw : for, what 's born of chance 
 Invisibly proceeds the way it will, 
 Not to be learned, no fortune-teller's prize. 
 This, therefore, having heard and known 
 
 through me, 
 Gladden thyself I Drink! Count the day-by- 
 day 
 Existence thine, and all the other — chance ! 
 Ay, and pay homage also to by far 
 The sweetest of divinities for man, 
 Kupris ! Benignant Goddess will she _prove ! 
 But as for aught else, leave and let thmgs be ! 
 And trust my counsel, if I seem to speak 
 To purpose — as I do, apparently. 
 Wilt not thou, then, — discarding overmuch 
 Moumfulness, do away with this shut door, 
 Come drink along with me, be-garlauded 
 This fashion ? Do so, and — I well know 
 
 what — 
 From this stem mood, this shrunk-up state of 
 
 mind, 
 The pit-^at fall o' the flagon-juiee down throat, 
 Soon will dislodge thee from bad harborage ! 
 Men being mortal should think mortal-like : 
 Since to your solemn, brow-contracting sort. 
 All of them, — so I lay down law at least, — 
 Life is not truly life but misery." 
 
 Whereto the man with softened surliness : 
 
 '' We know as much : but deal with matters, 
 
 , now. 
 Hardly befitting mirth and revelry.'' 
 
 " No intimate, this woman that is dead : 
 Mourn not too much ! For, those o' the house 
 
 itself. 
 Thy masters live, remember ! " 
 
 " Live indeed ? 
 Ah, thou know'st naught o' the woe within 
 these walls!" 
 
 " I do — unless thy master spoke me false 
 Somehow ! " 
 
 " Ay, ay, too much he loves a guest, 
 Too much, that master mine ! " so muttered he. 
 
 " Was it improper he should treat me well. 
 Because an alien corpse was in the way ? " 
 
 *' No alien, but most intimate indeed ! " 
 
 " Can it be, some woe was, he told me not ? " 
 
 " Farewell and go thy way ! Thy cares for 
 
 thee — 
 To us, our master's sorrow is a care." 
 
 " This word begins no tale of alien woe ! " 
 
 " Had it been other woe than intimate, 
 
 I could have seen thee feast, uor felt amiss.' 
 
620 
 
 BALAUSTION'S ADVENTURE 
 
 "What! have I suffered stemsely from my 
 host?" 
 
 " Thou cam'st not at a fit reception-time : 
 With sorrow here beforehand : and thou aeest 
 Shoiii hair, black robes." 
 
 " But who is it that 's dead ? 
 Some child gone ? or the aged sire perhaps ? " 
 
 " Adraetos' wife, then ! she has perished, 
 
 guest ! " 
 
 " How aayest ? And did ye house me, all the 
 same?" 
 
 " Ay : for he had thee in that reverence 
 
 He dared not turn thee from his door away 1 " 
 
 " hapless, and bereft of what a mate ! " 
 
 "All of us now are dead, not she alone ! " 
 
 " But I divined it ! seeing, as I did. 
 
 His eye that ran with tears, his close-elipt hair. 
 
 His countenance ! Though he persuaded me. 
 
 Saying it was a stranger's funeral 
 
 He went with to the grave : against my wish, 
 
 He f raced on me that I should enter doors. 
 
 Drink in the hall o' the hospitable man 
 
 Circumstanced so ! And do I revel yet 
 
 With wreath on head ? But — thou to hold thy 
 
 peace, 
 Nor tell me what a woe oppressed my friend ! 
 Where is he gone to bury her ? Where am I 
 To go and find her?" 
 
 " By the road that leads 
 Straight to Larissa, thou wilt see the tomb. 
 Out of the suburb, a carved sepulchre." 
 
 So said he, and therewith dismissed himself 
 Inside to his lamenting : somewhat soothed. 
 However, that he had adroitly spoilt 
 The mirth of the great creature : oh, he marked 
 The movement of the mouth, how lip pressed 
 
 lip. 
 And either eye forgot to shine, as, fast. 
 He plucked the chaplet from his forehead, 
 
 dashed 
 The myrtle-sprays down, trod them undei^ 
 
 foot . 
 And all the joy and wonder of the wine 
 Withered away, like fire from off a brand 
 The wind blows over — beacon though it be. 
 Whose merry ardor only meant to make 
 Somebody all the better for its blaze. 
 And save lost people in the dark : quenched 
 
 now! 
 
 Not long quenched ! As the flame, just hurried 
 
 off 
 The brand's edse, suddenly renews its bite, 
 Tasting some richness caked i' the core o' the 
 
 tree, — 
 Pine, with a blood that 's oil, — and triumphs 
 
 up 
 Pillar-wise to the sky and saves the world ; 
 So, in a spasm and splendor of resolve. 
 All at once did the God surmount the man. 
 
 " O much-enduring heart and hand of mine ! 
 Now show what sort of son she bore to Zeus, 
 That daughter of Elektruon, Tiruns' child, 
 Alkmen^ ! for that son must needs save now 
 The just-dead lady : ay, establish here 
 I' the house again Alkestis, bring about 
 Comfort and succor to Admetos so ! 
 I will go lie in wait for Death, black-stoled 
 King of the corpses ! I shall find him, sure, 
 Drinking, beside the tomb, o' the sacrifice : 
 And if 1 lie in ambuscade, and leap 
 Out of my lair, and seize — encircle him 
 Till one hand join the other round about — 
 There lives not who shall pull him out from me, 
 Rib-mauled, before he let the woman go ! 
 But even say I miss the booty, — say. 
 Death comes not to the l)oltered blood, — why 
 
 then, 
 Down go I, to the unstmned dwelling-place 
 Of KoT^ and the king there, ^ make demand. 
 Confident I shall bring Alkestis ba«k. 
 So as to put her in the hands of him 
 My host, that housed me, never drove me off : 
 Though stricken with sore sorrow, hid the 
 
 stroke, 
 Being a noble heart and honoring me ! 
 Who of Thessalians, more than this man, loves 
 The stranger ? Who, that now inhabits Greece? 
 Wherefore he shall not say the man was vile 
 Whom he befriended, — native noble heart ! " 
 
 So, one look upward, as if Zeus might laugh 
 
 Approval of his human progeny, — 
 
 One summons of the whole magnific frame, 
 
 Each sinew to its service, — up he caught, 
 
 And over shoulder cast, the lion-shag. 
 
 Let the club go, — for had he not those hands ? 
 
 And so went striding off, on that straight way 
 
 Leads to Larissa and the suburb tomb. 
 
 Gladness be with thee. Helper of our world I 
 
 I think this is the authentic sign and seal 
 
 Of Godship, that it ever waxes glad. 
 
 And more glad, until gladness blossoms, bursts 
 
 Into a rage to suffer for mankind, 
 
 And recommence at sorrow : drops like seed 
 
 After the blossom, ultimate of all. 
 
 Say, does the seed scorn earth and seek the 
 
 sun? 
 Surely it has no other end and aim 
 Than to drop, once more die into the ground. 
 Taste cold and darkness and oblivion there : 
 And thence rise, tree-like grow through pain to 
 
 .joyi 
 More joy and most joy, — do man good again. 
 
 So. to the struggle off strode Herakles. 
 When silence closed behind the lion-garb. 
 Back came our dull fact settling in its place. 
 Though heartiness and passion half -dispersed 
 The inevitable fate. And presently 
 In came the mourners from the funeral, 
 One after one, until we hoped the last 
 Would be Alkestis and so end our dream. 
 Could they have really left Alkestis lone 
 I' the wayside sepulchre ! Home, all save she ! 
 And when Admetos felt that it was so. 
 By the stand-still : when he lifted head and 
 
BALAUSTION'S ADVENTURE 
 
 52£ 
 
 ?" J"i ? *^° hiding hands and peplos' fold, 
 And looked forth, knew the palace, knew the 
 
 hills, 
 Knew the plains, knew the friendly frequence 
 
 there, 
 And no Alkestis any more again, 
 Why, the whole woe billow-Eke broke on him. 
 
 " hateful entry, hateful oountenanee 
 
 0' the widowed halls ! " — he moaned. " What 
 
 was to be ? 
 Go there ? Stay here ? Speak, not speak ? All 
 
 was now 
 Had and impossible alike ; one way 
 And only one was sane and safe — to die ; 
 Now he was made aware how dear is death. 
 How lovable the dead are, how the heart 
 Yearns in us to go hide where they repose, 
 When we find sunbeams do no g^ood to see. 
 Nor earth rests rightly where our footsteps 
 
 fall. 
 His wife had been to him the very pledge. 
 Sun should be sun, earth — earth ; the pledge 
 
 was robbed. 
 Pact broken, and the world was left no world." 
 He stared at the impossible, mad life : 
 Stood, while they urged " Advance — advance 1 
 
 Go deep 
 Into the utter dark, thy palace-core ! " 
 They tried what they called comfort, " touched 
 
 the quick 
 Of the ulceration in his soul," he said. 
 With memories, — " once thy joy was thus and 
 
 thus ! " 
 True comfort were to let him fling himself 
 Into the hollow grave o' the tomb, and so 
 Let him lie dead along with all he loved. 
 
 One bade him note that his own family 
 Boasted a certain father whose sole son. 
 Worthy bewailment, died : and yet the sire 
 Bore stoutly up against the blow and lived ; 
 For all that he was childless now, and prone 
 Already to gray hairs, far on in life. 
 Could such a good example miss effect ? 
 Why fix foot, stand so, staring at the house. 
 Why not go in, as that wise kinsman would ? 
 
 " Oh that arrangement of the house I know ! 
 How can I enter, how inhabit thee 
 Now that one cast of fortune changes all ? 
 Oh me, for much divides the then from now ! 
 Then — with those pine-tree torches, Pelian 
 
 pomp 
 And marriage-hymns, I entered, holding high 
 The hand of my dear wife ; while many-voiced 
 The revelry that followed me and her 
 That 's dead now, — friends felicitating both. 
 As who were lofty-lineaged, each of us 
 Bom of the best, two wedded and made one ; 
 Now — wail is wedding-chant's antagonist, 
 And, for white peplos, stoles in sable state 
 Herald my way to the deserted couch ! " 
 
 The one word more they ventured was, '* This 
 
 grief 
 Befell thee witless of what sorrow means. 
 Close after prosperous fcwtune : but, reflect ! 
 
 Thou hast saved soul and body. Dead, thy 
 
 wife — 
 Living, the love she left. What 's novel here ? 
 Many the man, from whom Death long ago 
 Loosed the life-partner ! " 
 
 Then Admetos spoke : 
 Turned on the comfort, with no tears, this 
 
 time. 
 He was beginning to be like his wife. 
 I told you of that pressure to the point. 
 Word slow pursuing word in monotone, 
 Alkestis spoke with ; so Admetos, now, 
 Solemnly bore the burden of the truth. 
 And as the voice of him gi'ew, gathered 
 
 strength. 
 And groaned on, and persisted to the end. 
 We felt how deep had been descent in grief. 
 And with what change he came up now to light, 
 And left behind such littleness as tears. 
 
 " Friends, I account the fortune of my wife 
 Happier than mine, though it seem otherwise : 
 For, ner indeed no grief will ever touch, 
 And she from many a labor pauses now. 
 Renowned one ! Whereas I, who ought not live. 
 But do live, by evading destiny. 
 Bad life am I to lead, I learn at last^ 
 For how shall I bear going in-doors here ? 
 Accosting whom ? By whom saluted back. 
 Shall I have joyous entry ? Whither turn ? 
 Inside, the solitude will drive me forth, 
 WTien I behold the empty bed — my wife's — 
 The seat she used to sit upon, the floor 
 Unsprinkled as when dwellers loved the cool, 
 The children that will clasp my knees about. 
 Cry for their mother back : these servants too 
 Moaning for what a guardian they have lost I 
 Inside my house such circumstance awaits. 
 Outside, — Thessalian people's marriage-feasts 
 And gatherings for talk will harass me. 
 With overflow of women everywhere ; 
 It is impossible I look on them — 
 Familiars of my wife and just her age ! 
 And then, whoever is a foe of mine. 
 And lights on me — why, this will be his word — 
 ' See there ! alive ignobly, there he skulks 
 That played the dastard when it came tu die, 
 And, giving her he wedded, in exchanire. 
 Kept himself out of Hades safe and soi.nd. 
 The coward ! Do you call that creature — man ? 
 He hates his parents for declining dea^h. 
 Just as if he himself would gladly die ! ' 
 This sort of reputation shall I have. 
 Beside the other ills enough in store. 
 Ill-famed, ill-faring, — what advantage, friends, 
 Do you perceive I gain by life for death ? " 
 
 That was the truth. Vexed waters sank to 
 
 smooth: 
 'T was only when the last of bubbles broke. 
 The latest circlet widened all away 
 And left a placid level, that up swanx 
 To the surface the drowned truth, in dreadfnl 
 
 change. 
 So, through the quiet and submission, — ay. 
 Spite of some strong words — (for you miss the 
 
 tone) 
 The grief was getting to be infinite — 
 
622 
 
 BALAUSTION'S ADVENTURE 
 
 Grief, fi'ieuds fell back before. Their office 
 
 shrank 
 To that old solace of humanity ! — 
 " Being born mortal, bear grief ! Why born 
 
 else ? " 
 And they could only meditate anew. 
 
 " They, too, upborne by airy help of song, 
 And liaply science, which can find the stars. 
 Had searched the heights : had sounded depths 
 
 as well 
 By catching much at books where logic lurked, 
 Yet nowhere found they aught could overcome 
 Necessity : not any medicine served. 
 Which Thrakian tablets treasure, Orphic voice 
 Wrote itself down upon : nor remedy 
 Which Phoibos gave to the Asklepiadai ; 
 Cutting the roots of many a virtuous herb 
 To solace overburdened mortals. None ! 
 Of this sole goddess, never may we go 
 To altar nor to image : sacrifice 
 She hears not. All to pray for is — ' Approach ! 
 But, oh, no harder on me, awful one. 
 Than heretofore ! L;et lite endure thee still ! 
 Fur, whatsoe'er Zeus' nod decree, that same 
 In concert with thee hath accomplishment. 
 Iron, the very stuff o' the Chaluboi, 
 Thou, by sheer strength, dost conquer and 
 
 subdue ; 
 Nor, of that harsh abrupt resolve of thine. 
 Any relenting is there ! 
 
 '* O my king ! 
 Thee also, in the shackles of those hands. 
 Not to be shunned, the Goddess grasped ! Yet, 
 
 bear! 
 Since never wilt thou lead from imderground 
 The .dead ones, wail thy worst I If mortals 
 
 die, ^ 
 The very children of immortals, too, 
 D»:opped 'raid our darkness, these decay as 
 
 sure ! 
 Dear indeed was she while among us : dear, 
 Now she is dead, must she forever be : 
 Thy portion was to clasp, within thy couch, 
 The noblest of all women as a wife. 
 Nor be the tomb of her supposed some heap 
 That hides mortality : but like the Gods 
 Honored, a veneration to a world 
 Of wanderers ! Oft the wanderer, struck there- 
 by- .. . 
 Who else had sailed past in his merchant-ship, 
 Ay, he shall leave ship, land, long wind his way 
 Up to the niountain-summit, till there break 
 Speech forth, *So, this was she, then, died of 
 
 old 
 To save her husband ! now, a deity 
 She bends above us. Hail, benignant one ! 
 Give good ! ' Such voices so will supplicate. 
 But — can it be ? Alkmen^'s offspring comes, 
 Admetos ! — to thy house advances here 1 " 
 
 I doubt not, they supposed him decently 
 Dead somewhere in that winter world of 
 
 Thrace — 
 Vanquished by one o' the Bistones, or else 
 Victim to some mad steed's voracity — 
 For did not friends prognosticate as much ? 
 It were a new example to the point. 
 
 That "children of immortals, dropped by 
 
 stealth 
 Into our darkness, die as sure as wt ! 
 A case to quote and comfort people with : 
 But, as for lamentation, ai and pheu. 
 Right-minded subjects kept them for their 
 
 lord. 
 
 Ay, he it was advancing ! In he strode. 
 And took his stand before Admetos, — turned 
 Now by despair to such a quietude, 
 He neither raised his face nor spoke, this time, 
 The while his friend surveyed him steadily. 
 That friend looked rough with fighting ; had he 
 
 strained 
 Worst brute to breast was ever strangled yet ? 
 Somehow, a victory — for there stood the 
 
 strength, 
 Happy, as always ; something grave, perhaps 
 The grtat vein-cordage on tlie fret-worked 
 
 front. 
 Black-swollen, beaded yet with battle-dew 
 The yellow hair o' the hero ! — liis big frame 
 A-quiver with each muscle sinking back 
 Into the sleepy smooth it leaped from late. 
 Under the great guard of one arm, there leant 
 A shrouded something, live and woman-like. 
 Propped by the heartbeats 'neath the lion-coat. 
 When he had finished his survey, it seemed. 
 The heavings of the heart began subside, 
 The helpful breath returned, and last the smile 
 Shone out, all Herakles was back again. 
 As the words followed the saluting hand. 
 
 " To friendly man, behooves we freely speak, 
 
 Admetos ! — nor keep buried, deep in breast, 
 
 Blame we leave silent. I assuredly 
 
 Judged myself proper, if I should approach 
 
 By accident calamities of thine. 
 
 To be demonstrably thy friend : but thou 
 
 Told'st me not of the corpse then claiming 
 
 care. 
 That was thy wife's, but didst instal me guest 
 I' the house here, as though busied with a 
 
 grief 
 Indeed, but then, mere grief beyond thy gate : 
 And so, I crowned my head, and to the Gods 
 Poured my libations in thy dwelhng-place. 
 With such misfortune round me. And I 
 
 blame — 
 Certainly blame thee, having suffered thus ! 
 But still I would not pain thee, pained enough : 
 So let it pass ! Wherefore I seek thee now, 
 Having turned back again though onward 
 
 bound. 
 That I will tell thee. Take and keep for me 
 This woman, till I come thy way again, 
 Drivingbefore me, having killed the king 
 0' the Bistones, that drove of Thrakian steeds: 
 In such case, give the woman back to me ! 
 But should I fare, — as fare I fain would not, 
 Seeing I hope to prosper and return, — 
 Then, I bequeath her as thy household slave. 
 She came into my hands with good hard toil ! 
 For, what find I, when started on my course, 
 But certain people, a whole country-side. 
 Holding a wrestling-bout ? as good to me 
 As a new labor : whence I took, and here 
 
BALAUSTION'S ADVENTURE 
 
 6z3 
 
 Coine keeping with me, this, tne victor's prize. 
 For, such as conquered in the easy work, 
 Gained horees which they drove away: and 
 
 such 
 As conquered in the harder, — those who 
 
 boxed 
 And wrestled, — cattle ; and, to crown the 
 
 prize, 
 A woman followed. Chancing as I did, 
 Base were it to forego this fame and gain ! 
 Well, as I said, I trust her to thy care : 
 No woman I have kidnapped, understand ! 
 But good hard toil has done it : here I come ! 
 Some day, who knows ? even thou wilt praise 
 
 the feat ! " 
 
 Admetos raised his face and eyed the pair : 
 Then, hollowly and with submission, spoke, 
 And spoke again, and spoke time after time, 
 When he perceived the silence of his friend 
 Would not be broken by consenting word. 
 As a tired slave goes adding stone to stone 
 Until he stop some current that molests, 
 So poor Admetos piled up argument 
 Vainly against the purpose all too plain 
 In that great brow acquainted with command. 
 
 '* Nowise dishonoring, nor amid my foes 
 Banking thee, did I hide my wife's ill fate ; 
 But it were gi-ief superimposed on grief, 
 Shouldst thou have hastened to another home. 
 My own woe was enough for me to weep ! 
 But, for this woman, — if it so may be, — 
 Bid some Thessalian, — I entreat thee, 
 
 king ! — 
 Keep her, — who has not suffered like myself ! 
 Many of the Pheraioi welcome thee. 
 Be no reminder to me of my ills ! 
 I could not, if I saw her come to live. 
 Restrain the tear ! Inflict on me, diseased. 
 No new disease : woe bends me down enough ! 
 Then, where could she be sheltered in my house. 
 Female and young too ? For that she is young, 
 The vesture and adornment prove. Reflect ! 
 Should such an one inhabit the same roof 
 With men ? And how, mixed up, a girl, with 
 
 youths. 
 Shall she keep pure, in that case ? No light 
 
 task 
 To curb the May-day youngster, Herakles ! 
 I only speak because of care for thee. 
 Or must 1, in avoidance of such harm. 
 Make her to enter, lead her life within 
 The chamber of the dead one, all apart ? 
 How shall 1 introduce this other, couch 
 This where Alkestis lay ? A double blame 
 I apprehend : first, from the citizens — 
 Lest some tongue of them taunt that I betray 
 My benefactress, fall into the snare 
 Of a new fresh face : then, the dead one's self, — 
 Will she not blame me likewise ? Worthy, sure. 
 Of worship from me ! circumspect my ways. 
 And jealous of a fault, are bound to be. 
 But thou, — woman, whosoe'er thou art, — 
 Know, thou hast all the form, art like as Uke 
 Alkestis, in the bodily shape ! Ah me ! 
 Take — by the Gods — this woman from my 
 
 sight, 
 
 Lest thou undo me, the undone before ! 
 Since I seem — seeing her — as if I saw 
 My own wife ! And confusions cloud my 
 
 heart. 
 And from my eyes the springs break forth! 
 
 Ah me 
 Unhappy — how I taste for the first time 
 My misery in all its bitterness ! " 
 
 Whereat the friends conferred : " The chance, 
 
 in truth. 
 Was an untoward one — none said otherwise. 
 Still, what a God comes giving, good or bad. 
 That, one should take and bear with. Take 
 
 her, then! " 
 
 Herakles, — not unfastening his hold 
 
 On that same misery, beyond mistake 
 
 Hoarse in the words, convulsive in the face, — 
 
 *^ I would that 1 had such a power," said he, 
 
 *^ As to lead up into the light again 
 
 Thy very wife, and grant thee such a, grace t " 
 
 " Well do I know thou wouldst : but where the 
 
 hope? 
 There is no bringing back the dead to light." 
 
 " Be not extravagant in grief, no less ! 
 Bear it, by augury of better things ! " 
 
 '"Tis easier to advise 'bear up,' than bear!" 
 
 " But how carve way i' the life that lies be- 
 fore, 
 If bent on groaning ever for the past ? " 
 
 " I myself know that : but a certain love 
 Allures me to the choice I shall not change.'' 
 
 " Ay, but, still loving dead ones, still makes 
 weep.'' 
 
 " And let it be so ! She has ruined me, 
 And still more than I say : that answers all." 
 
 "Oh, thou hast lost a brave wife: who dis- 
 putes?" 
 
 "So brave a one — that he whom thou be- 
 
 hold'st 
 Will never more enjoy his life again ! " 
 
 " Time will assuage ! The evil yet is young ! " 
 
 " Time, thou mayst say, will ; if time mean — 
 to die." 
 
 " A wife — the longing for new marriage-joys 
 Will stop thy sorrow ! " 
 
 " Hush, friend, — hold thy peace ! 
 What hast thou said ! I could not credit ear ! " 
 
 " How then ? Thou wilt not marry, then, but 
 
 keep 
 A widowed couch ? " 
 
 " There is not any one 
 Of womankind shall couch with whom thou 
 
 seest 1 "' 
 
624 
 
 BALAUSTION'S ADVENTURE 
 
 " Dost think to profit thus in any way 
 The dead one?" 
 
 ** Her, wherever she ahide, 
 My duty is to honor." 
 
 "And I praise — 
 Indeed I praise thee ! Still, thou hast to pay 
 The price of it, in being held a fool ! " 
 
 '* Fool call me — only one name call me not I 
 Bridegroom ! " 
 
 " No : it was .praise, I portioned thee, 
 Of being good true husband to thy wife ! " 
 
 " When r betray her, though she is no more. 
 May I die! " 
 
 And the thing he said was true : 
 For out of Herakles a great glow broke. 
 There stood a victor worthy of a prize : 
 The violet-crown that withers on the brow 
 Of the half-hearted claimant. Oh, he knew 
 The signs of battle hard fought and well won, 
 This queller of the monsters ! — knew his friend 
 Planted firm foot, now, on the loathly thing 
 That was Admetos late! "would die, he 
 
 knew, 
 Ere let the reptile raise its crest again. 
 If that was truth, why try the true friend 
 
 more ? 
 
 " Then, since thou canst be faithful to the 
 
 death, 
 Take, deep into thy house, my dame ! " smiled 
 
 he. 
 
 " Not so ! — I pray, by thy Progenitor ! " 
 
 " Thou wilt mistake in disobeying me ! " 
 
 " Obeying thee, I have to break my heart ! " 
 
 " Obey me ! Who knows but the favor done 
 May fall into its place as duty too ? " 
 
 So, he was humble, would decline no more 
 Bearing a burdeu : he just sighed, " Alas ! 
 Would thou had^t never brought this prize 
 from game ! " 
 
 "Yet, when I conquered there, thou con- 
 queredst ! " 
 
 " All excellently urged ! Yet — spite of all, 
 Bear with me ! let the woman go away ! " 
 
 " She shall go, if needs must : but ere she go, 
 See if there is need ! " 
 
 ' ' Need th ere is ! At least, 
 Except I make thee angry with me, so 1 " 
 
 " But I persist^ because I have ray spice 
 Of intuition likewise : take the dame 1 " 
 
 " Be thou the victor, then 1 But certainly 
 Thou dost thy friend no pleasure in the act ! " 
 
 " Oh, time will come when thou shalt praise 
 
 me ! Now — 
 Only obey ! " 
 
 " Then, servants, since my houae 
 Must needs receive this woman, take her 
 there ! " 
 
 " I shall not trust this woman to the care 
 Of servants." 
 
 " Why, conduct her in, thyself, 
 If that seem preferable ! " 
 
 " I prefer. 
 With thy good leave, to place her in thy 
 hands!" 
 
 " I would not touch her ! Entry to the 
 
 house — 
 That, I concede thee." 
 
 " To thy sole right hand 
 I mean to trust her ! " 
 
 " King ! Thou wrenchest this 
 Out of me by main force, if I submit ! " 
 
 " Courage, friend ! Come, stretch hand forth ! 
 
 Good i Now touch 
 The stranger-woman ! " 
 
 " There ! A hand I stretch — 
 As though it meant to cut off Gorgon's head I " 
 
 "Hast hold of her?" 
 
 "Fast hold." 
 
 " Why, then, hold fast 
 And have her ! and, one day, asseverate 
 Thou wilt, I think, thy friend, the son of Zeus, 
 He was the gentle guest to entertain ! 
 Look at her ! See if she, in any way, 
 Present thee with resemblance of thy wife ! " 
 
 Ah, but the tears come, find the words at fault 1 
 
 There is no telling how the hero twitched 
 
 The veil off : and there stood, with such fixed 
 
 eyes 
 And such slow smile, Alkestis' silent self ! 
 It was the crowning grace of that great heart, 
 To keep back joy : procrastinate the truth 
 Until the wife, who had made proof and found 
 The husband wanting, might essay once more, 
 Hear, see, and feel him renovated now — 
 Able to do, now, all herself had done. 
 Risen to the height of her : so, hand in hand, 
 The two might go together, live and die. 
 
 Beside, when he found speech, you guess the 
 
 speech. 
 He could not think he saw his wife again : 
 It was some mocking God that used me bliss 
 To make him mad ! Till Herakles must help: 
 Assure him that no spectre mocked at all ; 
 He was embracing whom he buried once. 
 Still, — did he touch, might he address th>i 
 
 true, — 
 True eye, true body of the true live wife ? 
 
 And Herakles said, smiling, " All was truth. 
 Spectre ? Admetos had not made his guest 
 One who played ghost-invoker, or such cheat ! 
 Oh, he might speak and have response, in time! 
 All heart could wish was gained now — life foi 
 
 death : 
 Only, the rapture must not grow immense : 
 Take care, nor wake the envy of the Gods ! " 
 
BALAUSTION'S ADVENTURE 
 
 625 
 
 **0 thou, o£ greatest Zeus true son," — s 
 
 Adinetus when the closing word must come, 
 " Go ever in a glory of success. 
 And save, that sire, his ofEspring to the end ! 
 For thou hast — only thou — raised me and 
 
 mine 
 Up again to this light and life ! " Then asked 
 Tremblingly, how was trod the perilous path 
 Out of the dark into the light and life ; 
 How it had happened with Alkestis there. 
 
 And Herakles said little, but enough — 
 How he engaged in combat with that king 
 0' the dsemons : how the field of contest lay 
 By the tomb's self : how he sprang from am- 
 buscade, 
 Captured Beathi caught him in that pair of 
 hands. 
 
 But all the time, Alkestis moved not once 
 Out of the set gaze and the silent smile ; 
 And a cold fear ran through Admetos' frame : 
 " Why does she stand and front me, silent 
 
 thus?" 
 
 Herakles solemnly replied, " Not yet 
 
 Is it allowable thou hear the things 
 
 She has to tell thee ; let evanish quite 
 
 That consecration to the lower Gods, 
 
 And on our upper world the third day rise I 
 
 Lead her in, meanwhile ; good and true thou 
 
 art. 
 Good, true, remain thou ! Practise piety 
 To stranger^uests the old way ! Ho, farewell 1 
 Since forth Tfare, fulfil my urgent task 
 Set by the king, the son of Sthenelos." 
 
 Fain would Admetos keep that splendid smile 
 Ever to light him. " Stay with us, thou heart ! 
 Remain our house-friend ! " 
 
 " At some other day ! 
 Now, of necessity, I haste ! " smiled he. 
 
 " But mayst thou prosper, go forth on a foot 
 Sure to return ! Through all the tetrarchy. 
 Command my subjects that they institute 
 Thanksgiving-dances for the glad event. 
 And bid each altar smoke wim sacrifice ! 
 For we are minded to begin a fresh 
 Existence, better than the life before ; 
 Seeing I own myself supremely blest." 
 
 Whereu[)on all the friendly moralists 
 
 Drew this conclusion : chirped, each beard to 
 
 each : 
 "Manifold are thy shapings. Providence I 
 Many a hopeless matter Gods arrange. 
 What we expected never came to pass : 
 What we did not expect Gods brought to bear ; 
 So have things gone, this whole experience 
 
 through I " 
 
 Ah, but if you had seen the play itself ! 
 They say, my poet failed to get the nriM : 
 
 Hophokles got the prize, — great name ! They 
 
 say, 
 Sophokles also means to make a piece, 
 Model a new Admetos, a new wife ; 
 Success to him ! One thing has many sides. 
 The great name I But no good supplants a good, 
 Nor beauty undoes beauty. Sophokles 
 Will carve and carry a fresh cup, brimful 
 Of beauty and good, firm to the altar-foot, 
 And glorify the Dionusiac shrine : 
 Not clash against this crater iu the place 
 Where the God put it when his mouth had 
 
 drained. 
 To the last dregs, libation lifeblood-like, 
 And praised Euripides forevermore — 
 The Human with his droppings of warm tears. 
 
 Still, since one thing may have so many sides, 
 I think I see how, — fair from Sophokles, — 
 You, 1, or any one .might mould a new 
 Admetos, new Alkestis. Ah, that brave 
 Bounty of poets, the one royal race 
 That ever was, or will be, in this world ! 
 They give no gift that bounds itself and ends 
 I' the giving and the taking : theirs so breeds 
 I' the heart and soul o' the taker, so trans- 
 mutes 
 The man who only was a man before, 
 That he grows godlike in his turn, can give — 
 He also : share the poets' privilege. 
 Bring forth new good, new beauty, from the 
 
 old. 
 As though the cup that gave the vrine, gave, 
 
 too. 
 The God's prolific giver of the grape. 
 That vine, was wont to find out, fawn around 
 His footstep, springing still to bless the dearth, 
 At bidding of a Mainad. So with me : 
 For I have drunk this poem, quenched my 
 
 thirst. 
 Satisfied heart and soul — yet more remains 1 
 Could we too make a poem ? Try at least. 
 Inside the head, what shape the rose-mists take ! 
 
 When God Apollon took, for punishment, 
 A mortal form and sold himself a slave 
 To King Admetos till a term should end, — 
 Not only did he make, in servitude, 
 Such music, while he fed the fiocks and herds, 
 As saved the pasturage from wrong or fright. 
 Curing rough creatures of nngentleness,: 
 Much more did that melodious wisdom work 
 Within the heart o' the master : there, ran wild 
 Many a lust and greed that grow to strength 
 By preying on the native pity and care. 
 Would else, all undisturbed, possess the land. 
 
 And these the God so tamed, with golden 
 
 tongue. 
 That, in the plenitude of youth and power, 
 Admetos vowed himself to rule thenceforth 
 In Pherai solely for his people's sake. 
 Subduing to such end each lust and greed 
 That dominates the natural charity. 
 
 And so the struggle ended. Right ruled might : 
 And soft yet brave, and good yet wise, the man 
 Stood up to be a monarch ; having learned 
 
62t 
 
 BALAUSTION'S ADVENTURE 
 
 The worth of life, life's worth would he bestow 
 
 On all whose lot was east, to live or die, 
 
 As he determined for the multitude. 
 
 So stands a statue ; pedestalled sublime, 
 
 Ouly that it may wave the thunder off. 
 
 And ward, from winds that vex, a world below. 
 
 And then, — as if a whisper found its way 
 E'en to the sense o' the marble, — '^ Vain thy 
 
 vow ! 
 The royalty of its resolve, that head 
 Shall hide within the dust ere day be done : 
 That arm, its outstretch of beneficence, 
 Shall have a speedy ending on the earth : 
 Lie patient, prone, while lig-ht some cricket 
 
 And takes possession of the masterpiece, 
 To sit, sing- louder as more near the sun. 
 For why ? A flaw was in the pedestal ; 
 Who knows ? A worm's work ! Sapped, the 
 
 certain fate 
 0' the statue is to fall, and thine to die ! " 
 
 Whereat the monarch, calm, addressed himself 
 
 To die, but bitterly the soul outbroke — 
 
 " prodigality of life, blind waste 
 
 I' the world, of power profuse without the will 
 
 To make life do its work, deserve its day ! 
 
 My ancestors pursued their pleasure, poured 
 
 The blood o' the people out in idle war. 
 
 Or took occasion of some weary peace 
 
 To bid men dig down deep or build up high. 
 
 Spend bone and marrow that the king mig-ht 
 
 feast 
 Entrenched and buttressed from the vulgar 
 
 gaze. 
 Yet they all lived, nay, lingered to old age : 
 As though Zeus loved that they should laugh 
 
 to sconx 
 The vanity of seeking other ends 
 In rule, than just the ruler's pastime. They 
 Lived; I mast die." 
 
 And, as some long last moan 
 Of a minor suddenly is propped beneath 
 By note which, new-struck, turns the wail that 
 
 was 
 Into a wonder and a triumph, so 
 Began Alkestis : " Nay, thou artto live I 
 The glory that, in the disguise of flesh. 
 Was helpful to our house, — he prophesied 
 The coming fate : whereon, I pleaded sore 
 That he, — I guessed a God, who to his couch 
 Amid the clouds must go and come again, 
 While we were darkling, — since he loved us 
 
 both, 
 He should permit thee, at whatever price, 
 To live and carry out to heart's content 
 Soul's purpose, turn each thought to very deed. 
 Nor let Zeus lose the monarch meant in thee. 
 
 " To which ApoUon, with a sunset smile. 
 Sadly — ' And so should mortals arbitrate 1 
 It were unssemly if they aped us Gods, 
 And, mindful of our chain of consequence, 
 Lost care of the immediate earthly link : 
 Forwent the comfort of life's little hour. 
 In prospect of some cold abysmal blank 
 Alien eternity, — unlike the time 
 
 They know, and understand to practise with, — 
 No, — our eternity — no heart's blood, bright 
 And wai-m outpoured in its behoof, would 
 
 tinge 
 NevSr so palely, warm a whit the more : 
 Whereas retained and treasured — left to beat 
 Joyously on, a life's length, in the breast 
 0' the loved and loving — it would throb itself 
 Through, and suffuse the earthly tenement, 
 Transform it, even as your mansion here 
 Is love-trani5formed ipto a temple-home 
 Where I. a God, forget the Olumpian glow, 
 I' the feel of human richness like the rose : 
 Your hopes and fears, so blind and yet so sweet 
 With death about them. Therefore, well in 
 
 thee 
 To look, not on eternity, but time : 
 To apprehend that, should Admetos die. 
 All, we Gods purposed in him, dies as sure : 
 That, life's link snapping, all our chain is lost. 
 And yet a mortal glance might pierce, m»- 
 
 thinks, 
 Deeper into the seeming dark of things, 
 And learn, no fruit, man's life can bear, will 
 
 fade: 
 Learn, if Admetos die now, so much more 
 Will pity for the frailness found in flesh. 
 Will terror at the earthly chance and change 
 Frustrating wisest scheme of noblest soid, 
 W^ill these go wake the seeds of good asleep 
 Throughout the world: as oft a rough wind 
 
 sheds 
 The unripe promise of some field-flower, — 
 
 true! 
 But loosens too the level, and lets breathe 
 A thousand captives for the year to come. 
 Nevertheless, obtain thy prayer, stay fate ! 
 Admetos lives — if thou wilt die for him ! ' 
 
 " So was the pact concluded that I die, 
 And thou live on, live for thyself, for me. 
 For all the world. Embrace and bid me hail. 
 Husband, because I have the victory — 
 Am, heart, soul, head to foot, one happiness \ " 
 
 Whereto Admetos, in a passionate cry : 
 
 '* Never, by that true word Apollon spoke ! 
 
 All the unwise wish is unwished, O wife \ 
 
 Let purposes of Zeus fulfil themselves. 
 
 If not through me, then through some other 
 
 man ! 
 Still, in myself he had a purpose too. 
 Inalienably mine, to end with me : 
 This puiTose — that, throughout my earthly 
 
 life. 
 Mine should be mingled and made up with 
 
 thine, — 
 And we two prove one force and play one part 
 And do one thing. Since death divides the 
 
 pair, 
 'T is well that I depart and thou remain 
 Who wast to me as spirit is to flesh : 
 Let the flesh perish, be perceived no more, 
 So thou, the spirit that informed the flesh, 
 Bend yet awhile, a very flame above 
 The rift I drop into the darkness by, — 
 And bid remember, flesh and spirit once 
 Worked in the world, one body, for man's sake. 
 
BALAUSTION'S ADVENTURE 
 
 627 
 
 Never be that abominable show 
 
 Of passive death without a quickening life — 
 
 Admetos only, no Alkestis now ! " 
 
 Then she : "0 thou Admetos, must the pile 
 Of truth on trutli, which needs but one truth 
 
 more 
 To tower up in completeness, trophy-like. 
 Emprise of man, and triumph of the world, 
 Must it go ever to the ground again 
 Because of some faint heart or faltering hand, 
 Which we, that breathless world about the 
 
 base, 
 Trusted should carry safe to altitude. 
 Superimpose 0' the summit, our supreme 
 Achievement, our victorious coping-stone ? 
 Shall thine. Beloved, prove the hand and heart 
 That fail again, flinch backward at the truth 
 Would cap and crown the structure this last 
 
 time, — 
 Precipitate our monumental hope 
 And strew the earth ignobly yet once more ? 
 tiee how, truth piled on truth, the structure 
 
 wants, 
 Waits justs the crowning truth I claim of thee ! 
 Wouldst thou, for any joy to be enjoyed. 
 For any sorrow that thou mightst escape, 
 Unwill thy will to reign a righteous king ? 
 Nowise ! And were there two lots, death and 
 
 life,-y 
 Life, wherein good resolve should go to air, 
 Death, whereby finest fancy grew plain fact 
 I' the reign of thy survivor, — life or death ? 
 Certainly death, thou choosest. Here stjind I 
 The wedded, the beloved one ; hadst thou 
 
 loved 
 Her who less worthily could estimate 
 Both life and death than thou ? Not so should 
 
 say 
 Admetos, whom Apollon made come court 
 Alkestis in a car, subiUissive brutes 
 Of blood were yoked to, symbolizing soul 
 Must dominate unruly sense in man. 
 Then, shall Admetos and Alkestis see 
 Good alike, and alike choose, each for each, 
 Good, — and yet, each for other, at the last, 
 Choose evil ? What ? thou soundest in my soul 
 To depths below the deepest, reachest good 
 In evil, that makes evil good again, 
 And so allottest to me that i live 
 And not die — letting die, not thee alone, 
 But all true life that lived in both of us ? 
 Look at me once ere thou decree the lot ! " 
 
 Therewith her whole soul entered into his. 
 He looked the look back, and Alkestis died. 
 
 And even while it lay, i' the look of '^im. 
 Dead, the dimmed body, bright Alkestis' soul 
 Had penetrated through the populace 
 Of ghosts, was got to Kor4, — throned and 
 
 crowned ' 
 
 The pensive queen o' the twilight, where she 
 
 dwells 
 Forever in a muse, but half away 
 From flowery earth she lost and hankers for, — 
 And there demanded to become a ghost 
 Before the time. 
 
 Whereat the softened eyes 
 Of the lost maidenhood that lingered still 
 Straying among the flowers in Sicily, 
 Sudden was startled back to Hades' throne 
 By that demand : broke through humanity 
 Into the orbed omniscience of a God, 
 Searched at a glance Alkestis to the soul, 
 And said — while a long slow sigh lost itself 
 I' the hard and hollow passage of a laugh : 
 
 " Hence, thou deceiver ! This is not to die, 
 If, by the very death which mocks me now, 
 The life, that 's left behind and past my power. 
 Is formidably doubled. Say, there fight 
 Two athletes, side by side, each athlete armed 
 With only half the weapons, and no more. 
 Adequate to a contest with their foe : 
 If one of these should fling helm, sword and 
 
 shield 
 To fellow — shieidless, swordless, helmless 
 
 late — 
 And so leap naked o'er the barrier, leave 
 A combatant equipped from head to heel, 
 Yet cry to the other side, ' Receive a friend 
 Who fights no longer ! ' ' Back, friend, to the 
 
 fray ! ' 
 Would be the prompt rebuff j I echo it. 
 Two souls in one were formidable odds : 
 Admetos must not be himself and thou ! " 
 
 And so, before the embrace relaxed a whit, 
 The lost eyes opened, still beneath the look ; 
 And lo, Alkestis was alive again. 
 And of Admetos' rapture who shall speak ? 
 
 So, the two lived together long and well. 
 But never could I learn, by word of scribe 
 Or voice of poet, rumor wafts our way. 
 That — of th^ scheme of rule in righteousness, 
 The bringing back again the Golden Age, 
 Which, rather than renounce, our pair would 
 
 die^ 
 That ever one faint particle came true, 
 With both alive to bring it to effect : 
 Such is the envy Gods still bear mankind I 
 
 So might our version of the story prove, 
 And no Euripidean pathos plague 
 Too much my critic-friend of Syracuse. 
 
 " Besides your poem failed to get the prize : 
 (That is, the first prize : second prize is none.) 
 Sophokles got it ! " Honor the great name ! 
 All cannot love two great names ; yet some do : 
 I know the poetess who graved in gold. 
 Among her glories that shall never fade. 
 This style and title for Euripides, 
 The Hitman with his droppings of warm tears. 
 
 I know, too, a great Kaunian painter, strong 
 As Herakles, though rosy with a robe 
 Of grace that softens down the sinewy strength : 
 And he has made a picture of it all. 
 There lies Alkestis dead, beneath the sun, 
 She longed to look her last upon, beside _ • 
 The sea, which somehow tempts the life in us 
 To come trip over its white waste of waves, 
 And try escape from earth, and fleet as free- 
 
628 
 
 ARISTOPHANES' APOLOGY 
 
 Behind the hody, I suppose there bends 
 Old Pheres in his hoary impotence;. - 
 And women-wailei's in a corner crouch 
 
 — Four, beautiful as you four — yes, indeed 1 — 
 Close, each to other, a^onizin^ aU, 
 
 As fastened, in fear's rhythmic sympathy; 
 To two contending opposite. There strains 
 The might o' the hero 'gainst his more than 
 match, 
 
 — Death, dreadful not in thew and bone, but 
 
 like 
 The envenomed substance that exudes some dew 
 Whereby the merely honest flesh and blood 
 Will fester up and run to ruin straight, 
 £re they can close with, clasp and overcome 
 
 that 
 
 The poisonous impalpability 
 
 That simulates a form beneath the flow 
 
 Of those gray garments; I pronounce 
 
 piece 
 Worthy to set up in our Poikil^ ! 
 
 And all came, — glory of the golden verse. 
 And passion of the picture, and that fine 
 Frank outgush of the human gratitude 
 Which saved our ship and me, in Syracuse, — 
 Ay, and the tear or two which slipt perhaps 
 Away from you, friends, while I told my tale, 
 — It all came of this play that gained no prize i 
 Why crown whom Zeus has crowned in soul 
 before ? 
 
 ARISTOPHANES' APOLOGY 
 
 INCLUDING A TRANSCRIPT FROM EURIPIDES, BEING 
 
 THE LAST ADVENTURE OF BALAUSTION 
 
 ovK cirdid KeveppeC ' oiTOTav Sk dujjc t;, koAci fte* 
 
 " I eat no carrion ; when you sacriiice 
 Some cleanly creature — call me for a slice I " 
 
 Wind, wave, and bark, bear Euthukles and me, 
 Balaustipu, from ^ not sorrow but despair. 
 Not memory but the present and its pang I 
 Athenai, live thou hearted in my heart : 
 Never, while I live, may I see thee more. 
 Never again may these repugnant orbs 
 Ache themselves blind before the hideous 
 
 pomp. 
 The ghastly mirth which mocked thine over- 
 throw 
 — Death's entry, Haides' outrage ! 
 
 Doomed to die, — 
 Fire should have flung a passion of embrace 
 About thee till, resplendently inarmed, 
 (Temple by temple folded to his breast, 
 All thy white wonder fainting out in ash,) 
 Lightly some vaporous sigh of soul escaped 
 And so the Immortals bade Athenai back ! 
 Or earth might sunder and absorb thee, save, 
 Buried below Olumpos and its gods, 
 Akropolis to dominate her realm 
 For Kor^, and console the ghosts ; or, sea, 
 What if thy watery plural vastitude. 
 Boiling unanimous advance, liad rushed. 
 Might upon might, a moment, — stood, one 
 
 stare. 
 Sea-face to oity-faee, thy glaucous wave 
 Glassing that marbled last magnificence, -;;- 
 Till fate's pale tremulous foam-flower tipped 
 
 the gray, 
 And when wave broke and overswarmed, and, 
 sucked 
 
 To bounds back, midtitndjnously ceased, 
 Let land again breathe unconfused with sea, 
 Attik^ was, Athenai was not now I 
 
 Such end I could have borne, for I had shared. 
 But this which, glanced at, aches within my 
 
 orbs 
 To blinding, — bear me thence, bark, wind and 
 
 wave ! 
 Me, Euthukles, and, hearted in each heart, 
 Athenai, undisgraced as Pallas' self. 
 Bear to my birthplace, Helios' island-bride, 
 Zeus' darling: thither speed us, homeward- 
 bound. 
 Wafted already twelve hours' sail away 
 From horror, nearer by one sunset Rhodes ! 
 
 Why should despair be ? Since, distinct above 
 Man's wickedness and folly, flies the wind 
 And floats the doud, free transport for onr 
 
 soul 
 Out of its fleshly durance dim and low, — 
 Since disembodied soul anticipates 
 (Thought-borne as now in rapturous unrestr^nt) 
 Above all crowding, crystal silentness. 
 Above all noise, a silver solitude : — 
 Surely,_ where thought so bears soul, soul in 
 
 time 
 May permanently bide, " assert the wise," 
 There live in peace, there work in hope once 
 
 more — 
 Oh, nothing doubt, Philemon I Greed and strifci 
 
THE LAST ADVENTURE Oy BALAUSTION 
 
 629 
 
 Hatred and cark and care, what place have 
 
 they 
 In yon blue liberality of heaven ? 
 How the sea helps ! Huw rose-snait earth will 
 
 rise 
 Breast-hi^h thence, some bright morning, and 
 
 be Rhodes I 
 Heaven, earth and sea, my warrant — in their 
 
 name, 
 Believe — o'er falsehood,, truth is surely 
 
 sphered. 
 O'er ugliness beams beauty, o'er this world 
 Extends that realm where "as the wise assert," 
 Philemon, thou shalt see Euripides 
 Clearer than mortal sense perceived the man 1 
 
 A sunset nearer Rhodes, by twelve hours' 
 
 sweep 
 Of surge secured from horror ? Rather say, 
 Quieted out of weakness into strength. 
 I dare invite, survey the scene my sense 
 Staggered to apprehend : for, disenvolved 
 From the mere outside anguish and contempt, 
 Slowly a justice centred in a doom 
 Reveals itself. Ay, pride succumbed to pride. 
 Oppression met the oppressor and was matched. 
 Athenai's vaunt braved Sparta's violence 
 Till, in the shock, prone fell Feiraios, low 
 Rampart and bulwark lay, as — timing stroke 
 Of hammer, axe, and beam hoist, poised and 
 
 swung — 
 The very flute-girls blew their laughing best, 
 In dance about the conqueror while he bade 
 Music and merriment help enginery 
 Batter down, break to pieces all the trust 
 Of citizens once, slaves now. See what walls 
 Play substitute for the long double range 
 Themistoklean, heralding a guest 
 From harbor on to citadel I Each side 
 Their senseless walls demolished stone by stone. 
 See, — outer wall as stonelike, heads and 
 
 hearte, — 
 Athenai's terror-stricken populace ! 
 Prattlers, tongue-tied in crouching abjectness, — 
 Braggarts, who wring hands wont to flourish 
 
 swords — 
 Sophist and rhetorician, demagogue, 
 (Argument dumb, authority a jest,) 
 Dikast and heliast, pleader, litigant, 
 Quaok-priest, sham-propheoy-retailer, scout 
 0' the customs, sycophant, whate'er the style, 
 Altar^scrap-snateher, pimp and parasite, — 
 Rivalities at truce now each with each. 
 Stupefied mud-banks, — such an use they serve ! 
 While the one order wliich performs exact 
 To promise, functions faithful last as first, 
 What is it but the city's lyric troop, 
 Chantress and psaltress, flute-»irl, dancing-girl ? 
 Athenai's ha lotry takes laughing care 
 Their patron miss no pipings, late she loved, 
 But deathward tread at least the kordax-step. 
 
 Die then, who pulled such glory on your heads I 
 There let it grind to powder I Perikles ! 
 The Uving are the dead now : death be life I 
 Why should the sunset yonder waste its wealth ? 
 Prove tbee Olnmpian I If my heart supply 
 Inviolate the stracture, — true to type, 
 
 Build me some spirit-place no flesh shall find. 
 As Pheidias may inspire thee ; slab on slab. 
 Renew Athenai, quarry out the cloud. 
 Convert to gold yon west extravagance ! 
 'Neath Propulaia, from Akropolis 
 By vapory grade and grade, gold all the way, 
 Step to thy snow-Pnux, mount thy Bema-cloud, 
 Thunder and lighten thence a Hellas through 
 That shall be better and more beautiful 
 And too august for Sparta's foot to spurn I 
 Chasmed in the crag, again our Theatre 
 Predominates, one purple : Staghunt-month, 
 Brings it not Dionusia ? Hail, the Three 1 
 Aischulos, Sophokles, Euripides 
 Compete, gain prize or lose prize, godlike still. 
 Nay, lest they lack the old god-exercise — 
 Their noble w ant the unworthy, — as of old, 
 (How otherwise should patience crown their 
 
 might ?; 
 What if each find his ape promoted man, 
 His censor raised for antic service still ? 
 Some new Hermippos to pelt Perikles, 
 Kratinos to swear Pheidias robbed a shrine, 
 Eruxis — I suspect, Euripides, 
 No brow will ache because with mop and mow 
 He gibes my poet ! There 's a dog-faced dwarf 
 That gets to godshipsomehow, yet retains 
 His apehood in the Egyptian hierarchy. 
 More decent, indecorous just enough : 
 Why should not dog-ape, graced in due degree. 
 Grow Momos as thou Zeus ? Or didst thou sigh 
 Rightly with thy Makaria ? "Afterlife, 
 Better no sentiency than turbulence : 
 Death cures the low contention." Be it so ! 
 Yet progress means contention, to my mind. 
 
 Euthukles, who, except for love that speaks. 
 
 Art silent by my side while words of mine 
 
 Provoke that foe from which escape is vain 
 
 Henceforward, wake Athenai's fate and fall, — 
 
 Memories asleep as, at the altar-foot. 
 
 Those Furies in the Oresteian song, — 
 
 Do I amiss, who wanting strength use craft, 
 
 Advance upon the foe I cannot fly. 
 
 Nor feign a snake is dormant though it gnaw ? 
 
 That fate and fall, once bedded in our brain. 
 
 Roots itself past upwrenohing ; but coaxed 
 
 forth. 
 Encouraged out to practise fork and fang, — 
 Perhaps, when satiate with prompt sustenance, 
 It may pine, likelier die than if left swell 
 In peace by our pretension to ignore. 
 Or pricked to threefold fury, should our 
 
 stamp 
 Bruise and not brain the pest. 
 
 A middle course I 
 What hinders that we treat this tragic theme 
 As the Three taught when either woke some 
 
 woe, 
 — How Klutaimnestra hated, what the pride 
 Of Ioltast4, why Medeia clove 
 Nature asunder. Small rebuked by large. 
 We felt our puny hates refine to air. 
 Our poor prid^ sink, prevent the humbling 
 
 hand. 
 Our petty passions purify their tide. 
 So, Euthukles, permit the tragedy 
 
630 
 
 ARISTOPHANES' APOLOGY 
 
 To re-enact itself, this voyagre through, 
 I'ill sunsets end and sunrise brighten Rhodes ! 
 Majestic on the stage of memory, 
 Peplosed and kuthorned, let Athenai fall 
 Once more, nay, oft again till life conclude, 
 Lent for the lesson : Choros, I and thou ! 
 What else in life seems piteous any more 
 After such pity, or proves terrible 
 Beside such terror ? 
 
 Still — since Phmnichos 
 Offended, by too premature a touch 
 Of that Milesian smart-place freshly frayed — 
 (Ah, my poor people, whose prompt remedy 
 Was — fine the poet, not reform thyself '.) 
 Beware precipitate approach ! Rehearse 
 Rather the prologue, well a year away. 
 Than the main misery, a sunset old. 
 What else but fitting prologue to the piece 
 Style an adventure, stranger than my first 
 By so much as the issue it enwombed 
 Lurked big beyond Balaustion's littleness ? 
 Second supreme adventure ! that Spring, 
 That eve 1 told the earlier to my friends ! 
 Where are the four now, with each red-ripe 
 
 mouth 
 Crumpled so close, no quickest breath it fetched 
 Could disengage the lip-flower furled to bud 
 For fear Admetos — shivering head and foot. 
 As with sick soul and blind averted face 
 He trusted hand forth to obey his friend — 
 Should find no wife in her cold hand's response, 
 Nor see the disenshrouded statue start 
 Alkestis, live the life and love the love ! 
 I wonder, does the streamlet ripple still. 
 Out-smoothing galingale and watermiut 
 Its mat-floor ? while at brim, 'twixt sedge and 
 
 What bubblings past Baccheion, broadened 
 
 much. 
 Pricked by the reed and fretted by the fly. 
 Oared by the boatman-spider's pair of arms ! 
 Lenaia was a gladsome month ago — 
 Euripides had taught "Andromeda : " 
 Next month, would teach " Kresphontes " — 
 
 which same month 
 Some one from Phokis, who companioned me 
 Since all that happened on those temple-steps. 
 Would marry me and turn Athenian too . 
 Now ! if next year the masters let the slaves 
 Do Bacchic service and restore mankind 
 That tnlogy whereof, 't is noised, one play 
 Presents the Bacehai, — no Euripides 
 Will teach the choros, nor shall we be tinged 
 By any such grand sunset of his soul. 
 Exiles from dead Athenai, — not the live 
 That 's in the cloud there with the new-born 
 
 star ! 
 
 Speak to the infinite intelligence. 
 Sing to the everlasting sympathy ! 
 Winds belly sail, and drench of dancing brine 
 Bufi^et our boat-side, so the prore bound free ! 
 Condense our voyage into one great day 
 Made up of sunset-closes : eve by eve. 
 Resume that memorable night-discourse 
 When — like some meteor-brilliance, fire and 
 filth, 
 
 Or say, his own Amphitheos, deity 
 And dung, who, bound on the gods' embassage, 
 Got men's acknowledgement in kick and cuff — 
 We made acquaintance with a visitor 
 Ominous, appaiitional, who went 
 Strange as he came, but shall not pass away. 
 Let us attempt that memorable talk. 
 Clothe the adventure's every incident 
 With due expression : may not looks be told, 
 Gesture made speak, and speech so amplified 
 That words find blood-warmth which, cold- 
 writ, they lose ? 
 
 Recall the night we heard the news from 
 
 Thrace, 
 One year ago, Athenai stUl herself. 
 
 We two were sitting silent in the house. 
 Yet cheerless hardly. Euthukles, forgive ! 
 1 somehow speak to unseen auditors. 
 Not you, but — Euthukles had entered, grave. 
 Grand, may I say, as who brings laurel-branch 
 And message from the tripod : such it proved. 
 
 He first removed the garland from his brow, 
 Then took my hand and looked into my face. 
 
 " Speak good words I " much misgiving fal- 
 tered I. 
 
 " Good words, the best, Balaustion ! He is 
 
 crowned. 
 Gone with his Attic ivy home to feast, 
 Since Aischulos required companionship. 
 Pour a libation for Euripides 1 " 
 
 When we had sat the heavier silence out — 
 " Dead and triumphant still ! " began reply 
 To my eye's question. "As he willed, he 
 
 worked : 
 And, as he worked, he wanted not, be sure. 
 Triumph his whole life through, submitting 
 
 work 
 To work's right judges, never to the wrong. 
 To competency, not ineptitude. 
 When he had run life's proper race and worked 
 Quite to the stade's end, there remained to try 
 The stade's turn, should strength dare the 
 
 double course. 
 Half the diaulos reached, the hundred plays 
 Accomplished, force in its rebound sufficed 
 To lift along the athlete and ensure 
 A second wreath, proposed by fools for first. 
 The statist's olive as the poet's bay. 
 Wiselier, he suffered not a twofold aim 
 Retard his pace, confuse his sight ; at once 
 Poet and statist ; though the multitude 
 Girded him ever ' All thine aim thine art ? 
 The idle poet only ? No regard 
 For civic duty, public service, here ? 
 We drop our ballot-bean for Sophokles ! 
 Not only could he write " Antigon^," 
 But — cince (we argued) whoso penned that 
 
 piece 
 Might just as well conduct a, squadron, — 
 
 straight 
 Good-naturedly he took on him command, 
 Got laughed at, and went back to making plays, 
 
THE LAST ADVENTURE OF BALAUSTION 
 
 631 
 
 Having allowed us our experiment 
 Respecting the fit use of faculty.' 
 No whit the more did athlete slacken pace. 
 Soon the jeers grew : ' Cold hater of his kind, 
 A sea-cave suits him, not the vulgar hearth ! 
 What need of tongue-talk, with a bookish store 
 Would stock ten cities ? ' Shadow of an ass 1 
 No whit the worse did athlete touch the mark 
 And, at the turning-point, consign his scorn 
 0' the scorners to that final trilogy 
 ' Hupsipule,' ' Phoinissai,' and the Match 
 Of Life Contemplative with Active Life, 
 Zethos against Amphion. Ended so ? 
 Nowise ! — began again ; for heroes rest 
 Di'opping shield's oval o'er the entire man, 
 And lie who thus took Contemplation's prize 
 Turned stade-point but to face Activity. 
 Out of all shadowy hands extending help 
 For life's decline pledged to youth's labor 
 
 still. 
 Whatever renovation flatter age, — 
 Society with pastime, solitude 
 With peace, — he chose the hand that gave the 
 
 heart. 
 Bade Macedonian Archelaos take 
 The leavings of Athenai, ash once flame. 
 For fifty politicians' frosty work. 
 One poet's ash proved ample and to spare ; 
 He propped the state and filled the treasury, 
 Counselled the king as might a meaner soiu. 
 Famished the friend with what shall stand in 
 
 Of crown and sceptre, star his na.ne about 
 When these are d!ust ; for him, Euripides 
 Last the old hand on the old phorminx flung. 
 Clashed thence ' Alkaion,' maddened ' Pen- 
 
 theus ' up ; 
 Then music sighed itself away, one moan 
 Iphigeneia made by Aulis' strand ; 
 With her and music died Euripides. 
 
 " The poet-friend who followed him to Thrace, 
 Agathon, writes thus much : the merchant- 
 ship 
 Moreover brings a message from the king 
 To young Euripides, who went on board 
 This morning at Mounuchia : all is true." 
 
 I said '^ Thank Zeus for the great news and 
 good ! " 
 
 " Nay, the report is running in brief fire 
 Through the town's stubbly furrow," he re- 
 sumed : 
 — " Entertains brightly what their favorite 
 
 styles 
 ' The City of Gapers ' for a week perhaps, 
 Supplants three luminous tales, but yesterday 
 Pronounced sufficient lamps to last the month ; 
 How Glauket^s, outbidding Morsimos, 
 Paid market-price for one Kopaic eel 
 A thousand drachmai, and then cooked his 
 
 prize 
 Not proper conger-fashion but in oil 
 And nettles, as man fries the foam-fish-kind ; 
 How all the captains of the triremes, late 
 Victors at Arginousai, on return 
 Will, for return, be straightway put to death ; 
 
 How Mikon wagered a Thessalian mime 
 Trained him by Lais, looked on as complete. 
 Against Leogoras' blood-mare koppar-marked, 
 Valued six talents, — swore, accomplished so, 
 The girl could swallow at a draught, nor 
 
 breathe, 
 A choinix of unmixed Mendesian wine ; 
 And having lost the match will — dine on 
 
 herbs ! 
 Three stories late aflame, at once extinct, 
 Outblazed by just ^ Euripides is dead ' 1 
 
 " I met the concourse from the Theatre, 
 The audience flocking homewai-d ; victory 
 Again awarded Aristophanes 
 Precisely for his old play chopped and 
 
 changed, 
 ' The Female Celebrators of the Feast ' — 
 That Thesmophoria, tried a second time. 
 ' Never such full success ! ' — assured the folk. 
 Who yet stopped praising to have word of mouth 
 With ' Euthukles, the bard's own intimate, 
 Balaustion's husband, the right man to ask.' 
 
 " ' Dead, yes, but how dead, may acquaintance 
 
 know? 
 You were the couple constant at his cave : 
 Tell us now, is it true that women, moved 
 By reason of his liking Krateros "... 
 
 " I answered ' He was loved by Sokrates.' 
 
 " ' Nay,' said another, ' envy did the work ! 
 For, emulating poets of the place, 
 One Arridaios, one Kratenes, both 
 Established in the royal favor, these ' . . . 
 
 " ' Protagoras instructed him,' said I. 
 
 " ' PAm,' whistled Comic Platon, ' hear the 
 
 fact ! 
 'T was well said of your friend by Sophokles, 
 " He hate our women ? In his verse, belike. 
 But when it comes to prose-work, — ha, ha, 
 
 ha ! " 
 New climes don't change old manners : so, it 
 
 chanced. 
 Pursuing an intrigue one moonless night 
 With Arethousian Nikodikos' wife, 
 (Come now, his years were simply seventy- 
 five,) 
 Crossing the palace-court, what haps he on 
 But Archelaos' pack of hungry hounds ? 
 Who tore him piecemeal ere his cry brought 
 help.' 
 
 " I asked : Did not you write ' The Festivals ' ? 
 You b( st know what dog tore him when alive. 
 You others, who now make a ring to hear. 
 Have not you just enjoyed a second treat. 
 Proclaimed that ne'er was play more worthy 
 
 prize 
 Than this, myself assisted at, last year. 
 And gave its worth to, — spitting on the same ? 
 Appraise no poetry, — price cuttlefish. 
 Or that seaweed-alphestes, scoipion-sort. 
 Much famed for mixing mud with fantasy 
 On midnights ! I interpret no foul dreams." 
 
632 
 
 ARISTOPHANES' APOLOGY 
 
 If so said Euthukles, so could not I, 
 Balaustion, say. After "Lusistrat^" 
 No more for me of " people's privilege," 
 No witnessing: " the Grand old Comedy 
 Coeval with our freedom, which, curtailed. 
 Were freedom's deathblow : relie of the past. 
 When Virtue laughingly told truth to Vice, 
 Uncensured, since the stem mouth, stuffed with 
 
 flowers, 
 Through poetry breathed satire, perfumed blast 
 Which sense snuffed up while searched unto 
 
 the bone ! " 
 I was a stranger : " For first joy," urged 
 
 friends, i 
 
 *' Go hear our Comedy, some patriot piece 
 That plies the selfish advocates 0- war 
 With argument so unevadable 
 That crash fall Kleons whom the finer play 
 Of reason, tickling, deeper wounds no whit 
 Than would a spear-thrust from a savory-stalk ! 
 No : yon hear knave and fool told crime and 
 
 fault. 
 And sea each scoui^ed his quantity of stripes. 
 ' Kongh dealing, awkward language,' whine 
 
 our fops : 
 The world 's too squeamish now to bear plain 
 
 words 
 Concerning deeds it acts with gust enough : 
 But, thanks to wine-lees and democracy, 
 We 've still our stage where truth calls spade a 
 
 spade ! 
 Ashamed ? Phuromachos' decree provides 
 The sex may isit idiscreetly, witness all, 
 Sorted, the good with good, the gay with gay, 
 Themselves unseen, no need to force a blush. 
 A Bhodian. wife and ignorant so long ? 
 Go hear next play ! " 
 
 I heard " Lusistrat^." 
 Waves, said to wash pollution from the world. 
 Take that plague-memory, cure that pustule 
 
 caught 
 As, past escape, I sat and saw the piece 
 By one appalled at Phaidra's fate, — the chaste. 
 Whom, because chaste, the wicked goddess 
 
 chained 
 To that same serpent of unchastity 
 She loathed most, and who, coiled so, died dis- 
 traught 
 Rather than make submission, loose one limb 
 Love-wards, at lambency of honeyed tongue. 
 Or torture of the scales which scraped her snow 
 — I say, the piece by him who charged this piece 
 (Because Euripides shrank not to teach. 
 If gods be strong and wicked, man, though 
 
 weak. 
 May prove their match by willing to be good) 
 With infamies the Scythian's whip should cure — 
 " Such outrage done the public — Phaidra 
 
 named ! 
 Such purpose to corrupt ingenuous youth, 
 Such insult cast on female character ! " — 
 Why, when I saw that bestiality — 
 So beyond all brute-beast imagining. 
 That when, to point the moral at the close. 
 Poor Salabaccho, just to show how fair 
 Was " Reconciliation," stripped her charms. 
 That exhibition simply bade us breathe, 
 
 Seemed something healthy and commendable 
 After obscenity gi-otesqued so much 
 It slunk away revolted at itself. 
 Henceforth I had my answer when our sage 
 Pattern-proposing seniors pleaded grave, 
 " You fail to fathom here the deep design ! 
 All 's acted in the interest of truth. 
 Religion, and those manners old and dear 
 Which made our city great when citizens 
 Like Aristeides and like MUtiades 
 Wore ea«h a golden tettix in his hair." 
 What do they wear now under — Kleophon ? 
 
 Well, for such reasons, — I am out of breath. 
 But loathsomeness we needs must hurry past, — 
 I did not go to see, nor then nor now. 
 The "Thesmophoriazousai." But, since males 
 Choose to brave first, blame afterward, nor 
 
 brand 
 Without fair taste of what thej' stigmaiize, 
 Euthukles had not missed the first display, 
 Original portrait of Euripides 
 By Virtue laughingly reproving Vice : " 
 " virtue," — the author, Aristophanes, 
 Who mixed an image out of his own depths. 
 Ticketed as I tell you. Oh, this time 
 No more pretension to recondite worth ! 
 No joke in aid of Peace, no demagogue 
 Pun-pelleted from Pnux, no kordax-dance 
 Overt helped covertly the Ancient Faith ! 
 All now was muck, home-produce, honestman 
 The author's soul secretedl^to a play 
 Which gained the prize that day we heard the 
 
 death. 
 
 I thought " How thoroughly death alters things ! 
 Where is the wrong now, done our dead and 
 
 great? 
 How natural seems grandeur in relief. 
 Cliff -base with frothy spites against its calm ! " 
 
 Euthukles interposed — he read my thought — 
 
 *' O'er them, too, in a moment came the change. 
 
 The crowd 's enthusiastic, to a man : 
 
 Since, rake as such may please the ordure-heap 
 
 Because of certain sparkles presumed ore, 
 
 At first fiash of true lightning overhead, 
 
 They look up, nor resume their search too soon. 
 
 The insect-scattering sign is evident. 
 
 And nowhere winks a firefly rival now, 
 
 Nor bustles any beetle of the brood 
 
 With trundled dung-ball meant to menace 
 
 heaven. 
 Contrariwise, the cry is ' Honor him ! * 
 ' A statue in the theatre ! ' wants one ; 
 Another ' Bring the poet's body back, 
 Bury him in Peiraios : o'er his tomb 
 Let Alkamenes carve the music-witch, 
 The songstress-siren, meed of melody : 
 Thoukndides invent his epitaph ! ' 
 To-night the whole town pays its tribute thus." 
 
 Our tribute should not be the same, my friend I 
 Statue ? Within our heart he stood, he stands ! 
 As for the vest outgrown now by the form, 
 Low flesh that clothed high soul, — a vesture's 
 fate — 
 
THE LAST ADVENTURE OF BALAUSTION 
 
 633 
 
 VSThy, let it fade, mix with the elements 
 There where it, falling;, freed Euripides ! 
 But for the soul that 's tutelary now 
 Till time end, o'er the world to teach and bless — 
 How better hail its freedom than by first 
 Singfing, we two, its own song: back again. 
 Up to that face from which flowed beauty — face 
 Now abler to see triumph and take love 
 Than when it glorified Athenai once ? 
 
 The sweet and strange Alkestis, which saved 
 
 me, 
 Secured me — you, ends nowise, to my mind, 
 In pardon of Adnietos. Hearts are fain 
 To follow cheerful weary Herakles 
 Striding away from the huge gratitude, 
 Club shouldered, lion-fieece round loin and flank. 
 Bound on the next new labor ' ' height o'er height 
 Ever surmounting, — destiny's decree ! " 
 Thither He helps us : that 's the story's end ; 
 He smiling said so, when 1 told him mine — 
 My great adventure, how Alkestis helped. 
 Afterward, when the time for parting fell. 
 He gave me, with two other precious gifts. 
 This third and best, consummating the grace, 
 " Herakles," writ by his own hand, eaxih line. 
 
 "If it have worth, reward is still to seek. 
 Somebody, I forget who, gained the pri^e 
 And proved arch-poet : time must show ! " he 
 
 smiled : 
 " Take this, and, when the noise tires out, judge 
 
 me — 
 Some day, not slow to dawn, when somebody — 
 Who ? I forget — proves nobody at all ! " 
 
 Is not that day come ? What if you and I 
 Ke-sing the song, inaugurate the fame ? 
 We have not waited to acquaint ourselves 
 With songand subject ; we can prologize 
 How, at Eurustheus' bidding, — hate strained 
 
 hard, — 
 Herakles had departed, one time more. 
 On his last labor, worst of all the twelve ; 
 Descended into Haides, thence to drag 
 The triple-headed hound, which sun should see 
 Spite of the god whose darkness whelped the 
 
 Fear. 
 Down went the hero, "back — how should he 
 
 come ? " 
 So laughed King Lukos, an old enemy, 
 Who judged that absence testified defeat 
 Of the land's loved one, — since he saved the 
 
 land 
 And for that seirvice wedded Megara 
 Daug^hter of Thebai, realm her child should rule. 
 Ambition, greed and malice seized their prey. 
 The Heracleian House, defenceless left, 
 Father and wife and child, to trample out 
 Trace of its hearth-fire : since extreme old age 
 Wakes pity, woman's wrong wins championship, 
 And child may grow up man and take revenge. 
 Hence see we that, from out their palace-home 
 Hunted, for last resource they cluster now 
 Couched on the cold ground, hapless supplicants 
 About their court-yard altar, — Household Zeus 
 It is, the Three in funeral garb beseech, 
 Delaying death so, till deliverance come — 
 
 When did it ever ? — from the deep and dark. 
 And thus breaks silence old Amphitmon's 
 
 voice. . . . 
 Say I not true thus far, my Euthukles ? 
 
 Suddenly, torch-light ! knocking at the door. 
 Loud, quick, " Admittance for the revels'' 
 
 lord!" 
 Some unintelligible Komos-ci^ — 
 Saw^fiesh red, no cap upon his head, 
 Dionusos, Bacchos, Phales, lacchos, 
 In let him reel with the kid-skin at his heel, 
 Where it buries in the spread of the bushy myrtle- 
 bed ! 
 (Our Rhodian Jackdaw-aong was sense to that !) 
 Then laughter, outbursts ruder and more rude, 
 Through which, with silver point, a fluting 
 
 pierced. 
 And ever " Open, ojien, Bacchos bids ! " 
 
 But at last — one authoritative word. 
 One name of an immense significance : 
 For Euthukles rose up, threw wide the door. 
 
 There trooped the Chores of the Comedy 
 Crowned and triumphant; first, those flushed 
 
 Fifteen, 
 Men that wore women's garb, grotesque disguise. 
 Then marched the Three, — who played Mnesi- 
 
 lochos, 
 Who, Toxotes, and who, robed right, masked 
 
 rare, 
 Monkeyed our Great and Dead to heart's content 
 That morning in Athenai. Masks were down 
 And robes dolfed now ; the sole disguise was 
 
 drink. , 
 
 Mixing with these ^- 1 know not what gay crowd, 
 Girl-dancers, flute-boys, and pre-eminent 
 Among them, — doubtless draped with such re- 
 serve 
 As stopped fear of the fifty-drachma fine 
 (Beside one's name on public fig-tree nailed) 
 Which women pay who in the streets walk 
 
 bare,: — 
 Behold Elaphion of the Persic dance ! 
 Who lately nad frisked fawn-foot, and the rest, 
 — All for the Patriot Cause, the Antique Faith, 
 The Conservation of True Poesy — 
 Could I but penetrate the deep design ' 
 Elaphion, more Peiraios-known as " Phaps," 
 Tripped at the head of the whole banquet-band 
 Who came in front now, as the first fell back ; 
 And foremost — the authoritative voice. 
 The revels-leader, he who gained the prize, 
 And got the glory of the Archon's feast — 
 There stood in person Aristophanes. 
 
 And no ignoble presence ! On the bulge 
 
 Of the clear baldness, — all his head one brow, — 
 
 True, the veins swelled, blue network, and 
 
 there surged 
 A red from cheek to temple, — then retired 
 As if the dark-leaved chaplet damped a 
 
 flame, — 
 Was never nursed by temperance or health. 
 But huge the eyeballs roUed back native fire, 
 Imperiously triumphant : nostrils wide 
 
534 
 
 ARISTOPHANES' APOLOGY 
 
 Waited their incense ; whUe the pursed mouth's 
 
 pout 
 A.g^ressive, while the beak supreme above, 
 VVnile the head, face, nay, pillared throat 
 
 thrown back, 
 Beard whitening under like a vinous foam. 
 These made a glory, of such insolence — 
 I thought, — such domineering deity 
 Hepliaistos might have carved to cut the brine 
 For his gay brother's prow, imbrue that path 
 Which, purpling, recognized the conqueror. 
 Impudent and majestic : drunk, perhaps. 
 But that 's religion ; sense too plainly snuffed : 
 Still, sensuality was grown a rite. 
 
 What I had disbelieved most proved most true. 
 
 There was a mind here, mind arwantoning 
 
 At ease of undisputed mastery 
 
 Over the body's brood, those appetites. 
 
 Oh, but he grasped them grandly, as the god 
 
 His either struggling handful, — hurtless snakes 
 
 Held deep down, strained hard off from side 
 
 and side ! 
 Mastery his, theii'S simply servitude. 
 So well could firm fist help intrepid eye. 
 Fawning and fulsome, had they licked and 
 
 hissed ? 
 At mandate of one muscle, order reigned. 
 They had been wreathing much familiar now 
 About him on his entry ; but a squeeze 
 Choked down the pests to place: their lord 
 
 stood free. 
 
 Forward he stepped : I rose and fronted him. 
 
 " Hail, house, the friendly to Euripides ! " 
 
 (So he began) " Hail, each inhabitant ! 
 
 You, lady ? What, the Rhodian ? Form and 
 
 face, 
 Victory's self upsoaring to receive 
 The poet ? Right they named you . . . some 
 
 rich name. 
 Vowel-buds thorned about with consonants, 
 Fragrant, felicitous, rose-glow enriched 
 By the Isle's unguent : some diminished end 
 In {on, Kallistion ? delicater still, 
 Kubelion or Melittion, — or, suppose 
 (Less vidgar love than bee or violet) 
 Phibalion, for the mouth split red-fig-wise, 
 Korakinidion for the coal-black hair, 
 Nettarion, Phabion for the darlingness ? 
 But no, it was some fruit-flower, Rhoidion 
 
 . . . ha. 
 We near the balsam-bloom — Balaustion ! 
 
 Thanks, 
 Rhodes ! Folk have called me Rhodian, do 
 
 you know ? 
 Not fools so far ! Because, if Helios wived. 
 As Pindaros sings somewhere prettily. 
 Here blooms his offspring, earth-flesh with sun- 
 fire, 
 Rhodes' blood and Helios' gold. My phorminx, 
 
 boy ! 
 Why does the boy hang back and balk an ode 
 Tiptoe at spread of wing ? But like enough, 
 Sunshine frays torchlight. Witness whom you 
 
 scare, 
 Superb Balaustion ! Look outside the house ! 
 
 Pho, you have quenched my Komos by first 
 
 frown. 
 Struck dead all joyance : not a fluting puffs 
 From idle cheekband ! Ah, my Chores too ? 
 You 've eaten cuckoo-apple ? Dumb, you 
 
 dogs? 
 So much good Thasian wasted on your throats 
 And out of them not one Threttanelo ? 
 Neblaretai ! Because this earth-and-sun 
 Product looks wormwood and all bitter herbs ? 
 Well, do I blench, though me she hates the most 
 Of mortals ? By the cabbage, off they slink ! 
 You, too, my Chrusomelolonthion-Phaps, 
 Girl-goldling-beetle-beauty ? You, abashed, 
 Who late, supremely unabashable. 
 Propped up my play at that important point 
 When Artamouxia tricks the loxotes ? 
 Ha, ha, — thank Hermes for the lucky 
 
 throw, — 
 We came last comedy of the whole seven. 
 So went all fresh to judgment well-disposed 
 For who should fatly feast them, eye and ear, 
 We two between us ! What, you fail your 
 
 friend ? 
 Away then, free me of your cowardice ! 
 Go, get you the goat's breakfast ! Fare afield, 
 Ye circumcised of Egypt, pigs to sow. 
 Back to the Priest's or forward to the crows, 
 So you but rid me of such company I 
 Once left alone, I can protect myself 
 Prom statuesque Balaustion pedestalled 
 On much disapprobation and mistake ! 
 She dares not beat the sacred brow, beside ! 
 Bacchos' equipment, ivy safeguards well 
 As Phoibos' bay. 
 
 " They take me at my word ! 
 One comfort is, I shall not want them long. 
 The Archon's cry creaks, creaks, ' Curt^l ex- 
 pense ! ' 
 The war wants money, year the twenty-sixth I 
 Cut down our Chores number, clip costume. 
 Save birds' wings, beetles' armor, spend the 
 
 cash 
 In three-crest skull-caps, three days' salt-fish- 
 slice, 
 Three-banked-ships for these sham-ambassa- 
 
 doi's. 
 And what not : any cost but Comedy's ! 
 ' No Choros ' — soon will follow ; what care I ? 
 Arehinos and Agurrhios, scrape your flint. 
 Flay your dead dog, and curry favor so ! 
 Choros in rags, with loss of leather next. 
 We lose the boys' vote, lose the song and dance, 
 Lose my Elaphion ! Still, the actor stays. 
 Save but my acting, and the baldhead bard 
 Kudathenaian and Pandionid, 
 Son of Philippos, Aristophanes 
 Surmounts his rivals now as heretofore. 
 Though stinted to mere sober prosy verse — 
 ' Manners and men,' so squeamish gets the 
 
 world ! 
 No more ' Step forward, strip for anapsests ! ' 
 No calling naughty people by their names. 
 No tickling audience into gratitude 
 With chickpease, barleygroats and nuts and 
 
 plums, 
 No setting Salabaccho " . , 
 
THE LAST ADVENTURE OF BALAUSTION 
 
 63s 
 
 As I turned — 
 
 " True, lady, I am tolerably drunk : 
 
 The proper inspiration ! Otherwise, — 
 
 Phrunichos, Choiiilos ! — had Aischulos 
 
 So foiled you at the goat-song? Drink 's a 
 
 god. 
 How else did that old doating driveller 
 Kratinos foil me, match my masterpiece 
 The ' Clouds ' ? I swallowed oloud-distilment 
 
 — dew 
 Undimnied by any grape-blush, knit my brow 
 And gnawed my style and laughed my leamed- 
 
 est ; 
 While he worked at his ' Willow-wicker-flask,' 
 Swigging at that same flask by which he swore. 
 Till, sing and empty, sing and fill again, 
 Somehow result -was — what it should not be 
 Next time, I promised him and kept my word ! 
 Hence, brimful now of Thasian ... 1 '11 be 
 
 bound, 
 Mendesian, merely : triumph-night, you know, 
 The High Priest entertains the conqueror. 
 And, since war worsens all things, stingily 
 The rascal starves whom he is bound to stuff, 
 Chores and actors and their lord and king 
 The poet : supper, still he needs must spread — 
 And this time all was conscientious fare : 
 He knew his man, his match, his master — 
 
 made 
 Amends, spared neither fish, flesh, fowl nor 
 
 wine : 
 So merriment increased, 1 promise you, 
 Till — something happened." 
 
 Here he strangely paused, 
 
 " After that, — Well, it either was the cup 
 To the Good Genius, our concluding pledge. 
 That wrought me mischief, decently un- 
 mixed, — 
 Or, what if, when that happened, need arose 
 Of new libation ? Did you only know 
 What happened ! Little wonder I am drunk.'' 
 
 Euthukles, o'er the boat-side, quick, what 
 
 change. 
 Watch, in the water ! But a second since. 
 It laughed a ripply spread of sun and sea, 
 Ray fused with wave, to never disunite. 
 Now, sudden all the surface, hard and black. 
 Lies a quenched light, dead motion : What the 
 
 cause ? 
 Look up and lo, the menace of a cloud 
 Has solemnized the sparkling, spoil the sport ! 
 Just so, some overshadow, some new care 
 Stopped all the mirth and mocking on his face 
 And left there only such a dark surmise 
 — No wonder if the revel disappeared. 
 So did his face shed silence every side ! 
 T recognized a new man fronting me. 
 
 " So 1 " he smiled, piercing to my thought at 
 
 once, 
 " You see myself ? Balaustion's fixed regard 
 Can strip the proper Aristophanes 
 Of what our sophists, in their jargon, style 
 His accidents ? My soul sped forth but now 
 
 To meet your hostile survey, — soul unseen. 
 
 Yet veritably cinct for soul-defence 
 
 With satyr sportive quips, cranks, boss and 
 
 spike, 
 Just as my visible body paced the street, 
 Knvironed by a boon companionship 
 Your apparition also puts to flight. 
 Well, what care I, if, unaccoutred twice, 
 I front my foe — no comicality 
 Round soul, and body-guard in banishment ? 
 Thank your eyes' searching, undisguised I 
 
 stand ; 
 The merest female child may question me. 
 Spare not, speak bold, Balaustion ! " 
 
 I did speak : 
 
 "Bold speech be — welcome to this honored 
 
 hearth. 
 Good Genius ! Glory of the poet, glow 
 0' the humorist who- castigates his kind. 
 Suave summer-lightning lambency which plays 
 On stag-horned tree, misshapen crag askew, 
 Then vanishes vrith unvindictive smile 
 After a moment's laying black earth bare. 
 Splendor of wit that springs a thunderball — 
 Satire — to bum and purify the world, 
 True aim, fair purpose : just wit justly strikes 
 Injustice, — right, as rightly quells the wrong. 
 Finds out in knaves', fools', cowards' armory 
 The tricky tinselled place fire flashes through, 
 No damage else, sagacious of true ore ; 
 Wit, learned in the laurel, leaves each wreath 
 O'er lyric shell or tragic barbiton, — 
 Though alien gauds be singed, — undesecrate, 
 The genuine solace of the sacred brow. 
 Ay, and how pulses flame a patriot-star 
 Steadf a.st athwart our country's night of things, 
 To beacon, would she trust no meteor-blaze, 
 Athenai from the rock she steers for straight ! 
 O light, light, light, I hail light everywhere. 
 No matter for the murk that was, — perchance, 
 That will be, — certes, never should have been 
 Such orb's assoinate ! 
 
 " Aristophanes ! 
 ' The merest female child may question you ? ' 
 Once, in my Rhodes, a portent of the wave 
 Appalled our coast : for many a darkened day, 
 Intolerable mystery and fear. 
 Who snatched a furtive glance through crannied 
 
 peak. 
 Could but report of snake-scale, lizard-limb, — 
 So swam what, making whirlpools as it went. 
 Madded the brine with wrath or monstrous 
 
 sport. 
 "T is Tuphon, loose, unmana«led from mount,' 
 Declared the priests, ' no way appeasable 
 Unless perchance by virgin-sacrifice ! ' 
 Thus grew the terror and o'erhung the doom — 
 Until one eve a certain female-child 
 Strayed in safe ignorance to seacoast edge. 
 And there sat down and sang to please herself. 
 WTien all at once, large-looming from his wave. 
 Out leaned, chin hand-propped, pensive on the 
 
 ledge, 
 A sea-worn face, sad as mortality. 
 Divine with yearning after fellowship. 
 
636 
 
 ARISTOPHANES' APOLOGY 
 
 He rose but breast-high. So much god she saw ; 
 So much she sees now, and does reverence ! " 
 
 Ah, but there followed tail-splash, (risk of fin ! 
 Let cloud pass, the sea's ready laugh outbreaks. 
 No very godlike trace retained the mouth 
 Which mocked with — 
 
 " So, He taught you tragedy ! 
 I always asked ' Why may not women act ? ' 
 Nay, wear the comic visor just as well ; 
 Or, better, quite cast off the face-disguise 
 And voice-distortion, simply look and speak, 
 Real women playing women as men — men ! 
 I shall not wonder if things come to that, 
 Some dayiwhen I am distant far enough. 
 Do you conceive the quite new Comedy 
 When laws allow ? laws only let girls dance. 
 Pipe, posture, — above all, Elaphionize, 
 Provided they keep decent — that is, dumb. 
 Ay, and, conceiving, I would execute, 
 Had I but two lives,: one were overworked ! 
 How penetrate encrusted prejudice, 
 Pierce ignorance three generations thick 
 Since first t ousarion crossed our boundary ? 
 He battered with a big Megaric stone ; 
 Chionides felled oak and roiigh-hewed thence 
 This club I wield now, having spent my life 
 In planing knobs and sticking studs to shine ; 
 Somebody else must try mere polished steel ! " 
 
 Emboldened by the sober mood's return, 
 
 " MeanvWle,' said I, "since planed and 
 
 studded club 
 Once more has pashed competitors to dust, 
 And poet proves triumphant with that play 
 Euthukles found last year unfortunate, — 
 Does triumph spring from smoothness still more 
 
 smoothed. 
 Fresh studs sown thick and threefold? In 
 
 plain words, , 
 Have you exchanged brute - blows, — which 
 
 teach the brute 
 Man may surpass him in brutality, — 
 For human fighting, or true god-Uke force 
 Which breathes persuasion nor needs fight at 
 
 all? 
 Have you essayed attacking ignorance, 
 Convicting folly, by their opposites. 
 Knowledge and wisdom ? not by yours for ours. 
 Fresh ignorance and folly, new for old, 
 Greater for less, your crime for our mistake I 
 If so success at last have crowned desert, 
 Bringing surprise (dashed haply by concern 
 At your discovery such wild waste of strength 
 — And what strength 1 — went so long to keep 
 
 in vogue 
 Such warfare — and what warfare! — shamed 
 
 so fast, 
 So soon made obsolete, as fell their foe 
 By the first arrow native to the orb. 
 First onslaught worthy Aristophanes) — 
 Was this conviction's entry that same strange 
 ' Something that happened ' to confound your 
 
 feast 1 " 
 
 " Ah, did he witness then my play that failed. 
 First ' Thesmophoriazousai ' ? W eU and good ! 
 
 But did he also see — your Euthukles — 
 
 My ' Grasshoppers,' which followed and failed 
 
 too. 
 Three months since, at the ' Little-in-the- 
 
 Fields ' ? " 
 
 " To say that he did see that First — should 
 
 say 
 He never oared to see its following." 
 
 " There happens to be reason why I wrote 
 
 First play and second also. Ask the cause ! 
 
 I, warrant you receive,. ere talk be done, 
 
 Fit answer, authorizing either act. 
 
 But here 's the point : as Euthukles made vow 
 
 Never again to taste my quality. 
 
 So I was minded next experiment 
 
 Should tickle palate — yea, of Euthukles 1 
 
 Not by such utter change^ such absolute 
 
 A topsyturvy of stage-habitude 
 
 As you and he want, — Comedy built fresh. 
 
 By novel brick and mortar, base to roof, — 
 
 No, for I stand too near and look too close ! 
 
 Pleasure and pastime yours, spectators brave, 
 
 Should I turn art's fixed fabric upside down ! 
 
 Little you guess how such tough work tasks 
 
 soul ! 
 Not overtasks, though: give fit strength fair 
 
 play. 
 And strength 's a demiourgos ! Art renewed ? 
 Ay, in some closet where strength shuts out — 
 
 first 
 The friendly faces, sympathetic cheer : 
 ^ More of the old provision, none supplies 
 So bounteously as thou, — our love, our pride. 
 Our author of the many a perfect piece ! 
 Stick to that standard, change were deca- 
 dence ! ' 
 Next, the unfriendly : ' This time, strain will 
 
 tire. 
 He 's fresh, Ameipsias thy antagonist ! ' 
 — Or better, in some Salaminian cave 
 Where sky and sea and solitude make earth 
 And man and noise one insignificance, 
 Let strength propose iteelf , — behind the 
 
 world, — 
 Sole prize worth winning, work that satisfies 
 Strength it has dared and done strength's utter- 
 most ! 
 After which, — clap-to closet and quit cave, — 
 Strength may conclude in Archelaos' court. 
 And yet esteem the silken company 
 So much sky-scud, searfroth, earth-thistledown, 
 For aught their praise or blame should joy or 
 
 grieve. 
 Strength amid crowds as late in solitude 
 May lead the still life, ply the wordless task : 
 Then only, when seems need to move or speak, 
 Moving — for due respect, when statesmen pass, 
 (Strength, in the closet, watched how spiders 
 
 spin I) 
 Speaking — when fashion shows intelligence, 
 (Strength, in the cave, oft whistled to the 
 
 guUs I) 
 In short, has learnt first, practised afterwards I 
 Despise the world and reverence yourself, — 
 Why, you may unmake things and remake 
 things, 
 
THE LAST ADVENTURE OF BALAUSTION 
 
 637 
 
 And throw behind yon, unooncerned enoughs 
 What 'a made or marred : ' you teach men^' are 
 
 not taught 1 ' 
 So mardlies oft' the stage Euripides ! 
 
 " No such thin fare feeds flesh and blood like 
 
 mine, 
 No such faint fume of fancy sates my soul, 
 No such seclusion, closet, cave or court, 
 Suits either : give me lostephanos 
 Worth making happy what coarse way she 
 
 will — 
 
 happy-maker, when her cries increase 
 About the favorite ! 'Aristophanes! 
 
 More grist to mill, here 's Kleophon to giihd ! 
 He 's for refusing peace, thoughSpart^ cede 
 Even Dekeleia ! Here 's Kleonumos 
 Declaring — though he threw away his shield. 
 He '11 thrash you till you lay your lyre aside ! 
 Orestes bids mind where you walk of nights — 
 He wants your cloak as you. his cudgelling. 
 Here 's, finally, Melanthios fat with fish, 
 The gorraandizer-spendthrif t><lramatist ! 
 So, bustle ! Pounce on opportunity ! 
 Let fun a-screaming in Parabasis, 
 Find food for folk agape at either end. 
 Mad for amusement ! Times grow better 
 
 too, 
 And should they worsen, why, who laughs, for- 
 gets. 
 In no case, venture boy-experiments ! 
 Old wine 's the wine : new poetry drinks raw ; 
 Two plays a season is your pledge, beside ; 
 So, give us " Wasps " again, grown hornets 
 now ! ' " 
 
 Then he changed. 
 
 " Do you so detect in me — 
 Brow-bald, chin-bearded, me, curved cheek, 
 
 carved lip, 
 Or where soul sits and reigns in either eye — ■ 
 What suits the — stigma, I say, — style say you, 
 Of ' Wine-leeS'poet ' ? Bravest of buffoons, 
 Less blunt than Telekleides, less obscene 
 Than Mnrtilos, Hermippos : quite a match 
 In elegance for Eupolis himself. 
 Yet pungent as Kratinos at his best ? 
 Graced with traditional immunity 
 Ever since, much about my grandsire'a time, 
 Some funny village-man in Megara, 
 Lout-lord and clown-king, used a privilege. 
 As due religious drinking-bouts came round. 
 To daub his phiz, — no, that was afterward, — 
 He merely mounted cart with mates of choice 
 And traversed country, taking house by house. 
 At night, — because of danger in the freak, — 
 Then holhied ' Skin-flint starves his laborers ! 
 Oench-fist stows figs away, cheats government ! 
 Such an one likes to kiss his neighbor's wife. 
 And beat his own ; while such another . . . 
 
 Boh ! ' 
 Soon came the broad day, circumstantial tale. 
 Dancing and verse, and there 's our Comedy, 
 There 's Mnllos, there 's Euetes, there 's the 
 
 stock 
 
 1 shall be proud to graft my powers upon ! 
 Protected ? Ptmisbed quite as certainly 
 
 When Archons pleased to lay down each his 
 
 law, — 
 Your Momcheides-Surakosios sort, — 
 Each season, ' No more naming citizens. 
 Only abuse the vice, the vicious spare ! 
 Observe, henceforth no Areopagite 
 Demean his rank by writing Comedy ! ' 
 (They one and all could write the ' Clouds ' of 
 
 course.) 
 ' Needs must we nick expenditure, allow 
 Comedy half a chores, supper — none, 
 Times being hard, while applicants increase 
 For, what costs cash, the Tragic Trilogy.' 
 Lofty Tragedians ! How they lounge aloof 
 Each with his Triad, three plays to my one. 
 Not counting the contemptuous fourth, the frank 
 Concession to mere mortal levity, 
 Satyric pittance tossed our beggar-world ! 
 Your proud Euripides from first to last 
 Doled out some five such, never deigned us 
 
 more ! 
 And these — what curds and whey for marrowy 
 
 wine ! 
 That same Alkestis you so rave about 
 Passed muster with him for a Satyr-play, 
 The prig ! — why trifle time with toys and skits 
 When he could stuff four ragbags sausage-wise 
 With sophistry, with bookish odds and ends, 
 Sokrates, meteors, moonshine, 'Life's not 
 
 Life,' 
 ' The tongue swore, but unsworn the mind re- 
 mains,' 
 And fifty such concoctions, crabtree;;-frnit 
 Digested while, head low and heels in heaven. 
 He lay, let Comics laugh — for privilege ! 
 Looked puzzled on, or pityingly off. 
 But never dreamed of paying gibe by jeer. 
 Buffet by blow : plenty of proverb-pokes 
 At vice and folly, wicked kings, mad mobs ! 
 No sign of wincing at my Comic lash. 
 No protest against infamous abuse. 
 Malignant censure, — naught to prove I scourged 
 With tougher thong than leek-and-onion-plait I 
 If ever he glanced gloom, aggrieved at all. 
 The aggriever must be — Aischulos perhaps : 
 Or Sophokles he M take exception to. 
 — Do you detect in me — in me, I ask. 
 The man like to accept this measurement 
 Of faculty, contentedly sit classed 
 Mere Comic Poet — since I wrote ' The 
 
 Birds'?" 
 
 I thought there might lurk truth in jest's dis- 
 guise. 
 
 " Thanks ! " he resumed, so quick to construe 
 
 smile ! 
 "I answered — in my mind — these gapers 
 
 thus : 
 Since old wine 's ripe and new verse raw, you 
 
 judge — 
 What if I vary vintage-mode and mix 
 Blossom with must, give nosegay to the brew. 
 Fining, refining, gently, surely, till 
 The educated taste turns unawares 
 From customary dregs to draught divine ? 
 Then answered — with my lips : More ' Wasps 
 
 you want ? 
 
638 
 
 ARISTOPHANES' APOLOGY 
 
 Come next year and I give you ' Grasshoppers ' ! 
 And ' Grasshoppers ' I gave them, — last 
 
 month's play. 
 They formed the Choros. Alkibiades, 
 No longer Triphales but Trilophos, 
 (Whom I called Darling-of-the-Suramertime, 
 Born to he nothing else but beautiful 
 And brave, to eat, drink, love his hfe away) 
 Persuades the Tettix (our Autochthon-brood, 
 That sip the dew and sing on olive-branch 
 Above the ant-and-emmet populace) 
 To summon all who meadow, hill and dale 
 Inhabit — bee, wasp, woodlouse, dragonfly — 
 To band themselves against red nipper-nose 
 Stagbeetle, huge Taiigetan (you guess — 
 Spart^) Athenai needs must battle with. 
 Because her sons are grown effeminate 
 To that degree — so morbifies their flesh 
 The poison-drama of Euripides, 
 'Morals and music — there s no antidote 
 Occurs save warfare which inspirits blood. 
 And brings us back perchance the blessed time 
 When (Choros takes up tale) our commonalty 
 Firm in primeval virtue, antique faith. 
 Ere earwig-sophist plagued or pismire-sage. 
 Cockered no noddle up with A, b, g. 
 Book-learning, logic-chopping, and the moon. 
 But just employed their brains on ^Euppapai, 
 Rovi, boys, munch barley-bread, and take your 
 
 ease — 
 Mindful, however, of the tier beneath ! ' 
 Ah, golden epoch ! while the nobler sort 
 (Such needs must study, no contesting that !) 
 Wore no long curls but used to crop their hair, 
 Gathered the tunic well about the nam, 
 Remembering 'twas soft sand they used for 
 
 seat 
 At school-time, while — mark this — the lesson 
 
 long, 
 No learner ever dared to cross his legs ! 
 Then, if you bade him take the myrtle-bough 
 And sing for supper — 't was some grave ro- 
 
 maunt 
 How man of Mitulene^ wondrous wise. 
 Jumped into hedpe, by mortals quickset called. 
 Ana there, anticipating Oidipous, 
 Scratched out his eyes ana scratched them in 
 
 again. 
 None of your Phaidras, Aug^s, Kanakas, 
 To mincing music, turn, trill, tweedle-trash. 
 Whence comes that Marathon is obsolete ! 
 Next, my Antistroph4 was — praise of Peace : 
 Ah, could our people know what Peace implies ! 
 Home to the farm and furrow ! Grub one's 
 
 vine. 
 Romp with one's Thratta, pretty serving-girl. 
 When wifie 's busy bathing I Eat and drink. 
 And drink and eat, what else is good in life ? 
 Slice hare, toss pancake, gayly gurgle down 
 The Thasian grape in celebration due 
 Of Bacchos ! Welcome, dear domestic rite. 
 When wife and sons and daughters, Thratta 
 
 too. 
 Pour pea-soup as we chant deleotably 
 In Bacchos reels, his tunic at his heels ! 
 Enough, you comprehend, — I do at least ! 
 Then, — be but patient, — the Parabasis ! 
 Pray ! For in that I also pushed reform. 
 
 None of the self-laudation, vulgar brag. 
 
 Vainglorious rivals cultivate so much ! 
 
 No ! If some merest word in Art's defence 
 
 Justice demanded of me, — never fear ! 
 
 Claim was preferred, but dignifiedly. 
 
 A cricket asked a locust (winged, you know) 
 
 What he had seen most rare in foreign parts ? 
 
 'I have flown far,' chirped he, 'North, East, 
 
 South, West, 
 And nowhere heard of poet worth a fig 
 If matched with Bald-head here, Aigina's 
 
 boast. 
 Who in this play bids rivalry despair 
 Past, present, and to come, so marvellous 
 His Tragic, Comic, Lyric excellence ! 
 Whereof the fit reward were (not to speak 
 Of dinner every day at public cost 
 I' the Prutaneion) supper with yourselves, 
 My Public, best dish offered bravest bard ! ' 
 No more ! no sort of sin against good taste ! 
 Then, satire, — Oh, a plain necessity ! 
 But I won't tell you : for — could I dispense 
 With one more gird at old Ariphrades ? 
 How scorpion-like he feeds on human fiesh — 
 Ever finds out some novel infamy 
 Unutterable, inconceivable, 
 Which all the greater need was to describe 
 Minutely, each tail-twist at ink-shed time . . . 
 Now, what 's your gesture caused by ? What 
 
 you loathe. 
 Don't I loathe doubly, else why take such pains 
 To tell it you ? But keep your prejudice ! 
 My audience justified you ! Housebreakers ! 
 This pattern-purity was played and failed 
 Last Rural Dionusia — failed ! for why ? 
 Ameipsias followed with the genuine stuff. 
 He had been mindful to engage the Four — 
 Karkinos and his dwarf-crab-family — 
 Father and sons, they whirled like spinning- 
 tops, 
 Choros gigantically poked his fun, 
 The boys' frank laugh relaxed the seniors' 
 
 brow, 
 The skies re-echoed victory's acclaim, 
 Ameipsias gained his due, I got my dose 
 Of wisdom for the future. Purity ? 
 No more of that next month, Athenai mine ! 
 Contrive new cut of robe who will, — I patch 
 The old exomis, add no purple sleeve ! 
 The Thesmophoriazousai, smartened up 
 With certain plaits, shall please, I promise you 1 
 
 " Yes, I took up the play that failed last year, 
 
 And re-arranged things ; threw adroitly in — 
 
 No Parachoregema — men to match 
 
 My women there already : and when these 
 
 (I had a hit at Aristullos here. 
 
 His plan how womankind should rule the roast) 
 
 Drove men to plough — ' A-field, ye cribbed of 
 
 cape ! ' 
 Men showed themselves exempt from service 
 
 straight 
 Stupendously, till all the boys cried ' Brave ! ' 
 Then for the elders, I bethought me too. 
 Improved upon Mnesilochos' release 
 From the old bowman^board and binding-strap ; 
 I made his son-in-law Euripides 
 Engage to put both shrewish wives away — 
 
THE LAST ADVENTURE OF BALAUSTION 
 
 639 
 
 * Gravity,' one, the other ' Sophist-lore * — 
 Aud mate with the Bald Bard's hetairai 
 
 twain — 
 ' Goodhumor ' and ' Indulgence : ^ on they 
 
 tripped, 
 Miirrhine, Akalaiithis, — * beautiful 
 Their wliole belong-iugs ' — crowd joined choros 
 
 there ! 
 And while the Toxotes wound up his part 
 By shower of nuts and sweetmeats on the m.ob, 
 The woinan-choros celebrated New 
 Kalligeneia, the frank last-day rite. 
 Brief, I was chaired and caressed and crowned 
 And the whole theatre broke out a-roar. 
 Echoed my admonition — choros-eap — 
 Rivals of mine, your hands to your faces! 
 Summon no more the Muses^ the Giaces^ 
 Since here by my side they have chosen their 
 
 places ! 
 And so we all flocked merrily to feast, — 
 I, my choragos, choros, actors, mutes 
 And flutes aforesaid, friends in crowd, no fear, 
 At the Priest's supper ; and hilarity 
 Grew none the less that, early in the piece, 
 Ran a report, from row to row close-packed. 
 Of messenger's arrival at the Port 
 With weighty tidings, ' Of Lusandros' flight,' 
 Opined one ; ' That Euboia penitent 
 Sends the Confederation fifty ships,' 
 Preferred another ; while ' The Great King's 
 
 Eye 
 Has brought a present for Elaphion here. 
 That rarest peacock Kompolakuthes ! ' 
 Such was the supposition of a third. 
 ' No matter what the news, ' friend Strattis 
 
 laughed, 
 'It won't be worse for waiting: while each 
 
 click 
 Of the klepsudra sets a shaking grave 
 Hesentment in our shark's-head, boiled and 
 
 spoiled 
 By this time : dished in Sphettian vinegar, 
 Silphion and honey, served with eocks'-brain- 
 
 sauce ! 
 So, swift to supper. Poet ! No mistake. 
 This play ; nor, like the unflavored Grass- 
 hoppers," 
 Salt without thyme ! ' Kight merrily we 
 
 supped, 
 Till — something happened. 
 
 " Out it shall, at last ! 
 
 *' Mirth drew to ending, for the cup was 
 
 crowned 
 To the Triumphant ! ' Kleonclapper erst. 
 Now, Plier of a scourge Euripides 
 Fairly turns tail from, flying Attik^ 
 For Makedonia's rocks and frosts and bears, 
 Where, furry g^rown, he growls to match the 
 
 Of girl-voiced, crocus-vested Agathon ! 
 
 Ha ha, he he ! ' When suddenly a knock — 
 
 Sharp, solitary, cold, authoritative. 
 
 " ' Bahaiax I Sokrates a-passing by, 
 
 A-peering in, for Aristullos' sake, 
 
 To put a question touching Comic Law ? ' 
 
 " No ! Enters an old pale-swathed majesty, 
 Makes slow mute passage through two ranks aa 
 
 mute, 
 (Strattis stood up with all the rest, the sneak !) 
 Gray brow still bent on ground, upraised at 
 
 length 
 When, our Priest reached, full front the vision 
 
 paused. 
 
 '* ' Priest ! ' — the deep tone succeeded the 
 
 fixed gaze — 
 ' Thou carest that thy god have spectacle 
 Decent and seemly ; wherefore, lannounce 
 That, since Euripides is dead to-day, 
 My Choros, at the Greater Feast, next month, 
 Shall, clothed in black, appear ungarlanded ! ' 
 
 *' Then the gray brow sank low, and Sophokles 
 Ke-swathed him, sweeping doorward : mutely 
 
 'Twixt rows as mute, to mingle possibly 
 With certain gods who convoy age to port ; 
 And night resumed him. ^ 
 
 *' When our stupor broke, 
 Chirpings took courage, and grew audible. 
 
 " ' Dead — so one speaks now of Euripides ! ' 
 
 ' Ungarlanded dance Choros, did he say ? 
 
 I guess the reason : in extreme old age 
 
 No doubt such have the gods for visitants. 
 
 Why did he dedicate to Herakles 
 
 An altar else, but that the god, turned Judge, 
 
 Told him in dream who took the crown of 
 
 gold ? 
 He who restored Akropolis the theft. 
 Himself may feel perhaps a timely twinge 
 At thought of certain other crowns he filched 
 From — • who now visite Herakles the Judge. 
 Instance '' Medeia " ! that play yielded palm 
 To Sophokles ; and he again — to whom ? 
 Euphorion \ Why ? Ask Herakles the 
 
 Judge!' 
 * Ungarlanded, just means — economy ! 
 Suppress robes, chaplets, everything suppress 
 Except the poet's present ! An old tale 
 Put capitally by Trugaios — eh ? 
 News from the world of transformaticm 
 
 strange ! 
 How Sophokles is grown Simonides, 
 And — aged, rotten — all the same, for greed 
 Would venture on a hurdle out to sea ! 
 So jokes Philonides. KaUistratos 
 Retorts, Mistake ! Instead of stinginess — 
 The fact is, in extreme decrepitude. 
 He has discarded poet and turned priest, 
 Priest of Half-Hero Alkon : visited 
 In his own house too by Asklepios' self, 
 So he avers. Meanwhile, his own estate 
 Lies fallow ; lophon 's the manner, — 
 Nay, touches up a play, brings out the same, 
 Asserts true sonship. See to what you sink 
 After your dozen-dozen prodigies I 
 Looking so old — Euripides seems young. 
 Born ten years later.' 
 
 '* ' Just his tricky style I 
 Since, stealing first away, he wins first word 
 
640 
 
 ARISTOPHANES' APOLOGY 
 
 Out of good-natured rival Sophokles, 
 
 Procures himself no bad panegyric. 
 
 Had fate willed otherwise, himself were taxed 
 
 To pay survivor's-tribute, —harder squeezed 
 
 From anybody beaten first to last, 
 
 Than one who, steadily a conqueror. 
 
 Finds that his magnanimity is tasked 
 
 To merely make pretence and — beat itself ! ' 
 
 " So chirped the feasters though suppressedly. 
 
 " But I ^— what else do you suppose ? — had 
 
 pierced 
 Quite through friends' outside-straining, foes' 
 
 mock-praise, 
 And reached conviction hearted under all. 
 Death's rapicl line had closed a life's account, 
 And cut oft,: left unalterably clear 
 The summed-up value of Euripides. 
 
 " Well, it might be the Thasian I Certainly 
 There sang suggestive music in my ears ; 
 And, through — what sophists style — the wall 
 
 of sense 
 My eyes pierced: death seemed life and life 
 
 seemed death, 
 Envisaged that way, now, which I, before, 
 Conceived . was just a moon-struck mood. 
 
 Quite plain 
 There re-insisted, :— ay, each prim stiff phrase 
 Of each old. play, my still-new laughing-stock. 
 Had meaning, well worth poet's pains to state. 
 Should life prove half true life's term, — death, 
 
 the rest. 
 As for the other question, late so large, 
 Novr all at once so little, — he or I, — 
 Which better comprehended playwright 
 
 craft, — 
 There, too, old admonition took fresh point. 
 As clear recurred our last word-interchange 
 Two years since, when I tried with *Ploutos.' 
 
 ' Vain ! ' 
 Saluted me the cold grave-bearded bard — 
 ' Vain, this late trial, Aristophanes ! 
 None balks the genius with impunity ' 
 Yoii know what kind 's the nobler, what makes 
 
 grave 
 Or what makes grin : there 's yet a nobler still. 
 Possibly, — what makes wise, not grave, — and 
 
 glad. 
 Not grinning: whereby laughter joins with 
 
 tears. 
 Tragic and Comic Poet prove one power, 
 And Aristophanes becomes our Fourth — 
 Nay, greatest ! Never needs the Art stand still. 
 But those Art leans on lag, and none like you, 
 Her strongest of supports, whose step aside 
 Undoes the march : defection checks advance 
 'Too late adventured 1 See the "Ploutos" 
 
 here ! 
 This step decides your foot from old to new — 
 Proves you relinquish song and dance and jest. 
 Discard the beast, and, rising: from all-fours. 
 Fain would paint, manlike, actual human life, 
 Make veritable men think, say and do. 
 Here 's the conception : which to execute, 
 Where 's force ? Spent ! Ere the race began, 
 
 was bi'eath 
 
 0' the runner squandered on each friendly 
 
 fool — 
 Wit-fireworks fizzed off while day craved no 
 
 flame : 
 How should the night receive her due of fire 
 Flared out in Wasps and Horses, Clouds and 
 
 Birds, 
 Prodigiously a-craokle ? Best content 1 
 The new adventure for the novel man 
 Born to that next success myself foresee 
 In right of where I reach before I rest. 
 At end of a long course, straight all the way, 
 Well may, there tremble somewhat into ken 
 The untrod, path, clouds veiled from earlier 
 
 gaze i 
 None may live two lives : 1 have lived mine 
 
 through, 
 Die where Ifirst stand still. You retrograde. 
 1 leave my life's work. / compete with you. 
 My last with your last, my " Antiope " — 
 ' ' Phoinissai " — with this ' ' Ploutos " ? No, I 
 
 think I 
 Ever shall great and awful Victory 
 Accompany my life t- in Maketis 
 If not Athenai: Take my farewell, friend ! 
 Friend, — for from no consummate excellence 
 Like yours, whatever fault may countervail. 
 Do I profess estrangement ; murk the marsh. 
 Yet where a solitary marble block 
 Blanches the gloom, there let the eagle perch ! 
 You show — what splinters of Pentelikos, 
 Islanded by what ordure I Eagles fly. 
 Rest on the right place, thence depart as free ; 
 But 'ware man's footstep, would it traverse 
 
 mire 
 Untainted 1 Mire is safe for worms that 
 
 crawl.' 
 
 ^' Balaustion ! Here are very many words, 
 All to portray one moment's rush of thought, — 
 And much they do it ! Still, you understand. 
 The Archon, the Feast-master, read their sum 
 And substance, judged the banquet-glow ex- 
 tinct. 
 So rose, discreetly if abruptly, crowned 
 The parting cup, — ' To the Good Genius, 
 then ! ' 
 
 " Up starts young Strattis for a final flash : 
 ' Ay, the Good Genius ! To the Comic Muse, 
 She who evolves superiority. 
 Triumph and joy from sorrow, unsuccess 
 And all that 's incomplete in human life ; 
 Who proves such actual failure transient wrong, 
 Since out of body uncouth, halt and maimed — 
 Since out of soul grotesqiie, corrupt or blank — 
 Fancy, uplifted by the Muse, can flit 
 To soul and body, reinstate them Man : 
 Beside which perfect man, how clear we see 
 Divergency from type was earth's effect ! 
 Escaping whence by laughter, — Fancy's 
 
 feat, — 
 We right man's wrong, establish true for 
 
 false, — 
 Above misshapen body, uncouth soul. 
 Reach the fine form, the clear intelligence — 
 Above unseemliness, reach decent law, — 
 By laughter : attestation of the Musa 
 
THE LAST ADVENTURE OF BALAUSTION 
 
 641 
 
 That low-aiid-ugsome is not signed and sealed 
 lucontrovertibly nian*s portion liere. 
 Or, if here, — why, still hijjh-and-fair exists 
 In that ethereal realm where laug^hs our soul 
 Lift by the Muse. Hail thou her ministrant I 
 Hail who accepted no deformity 
 In man as normal and remediless, 
 But rather pushed it to such gross extreme 
 That, outraged, we protest by eye's recoil 
 The opposite proves somewhere rule and law ! 
 Hail who implied, by limning Lamachos, 
 Plenty and pastime wait on peace, not war ! 
 Philokleon — better bear a wrong than plead. 
 Play the litigious fool to stuff the mouth 
 Of dikast with the due three-obul fee ! 
 The Paphlagonian — stick to the old sway 
 Of few and wise, not rabble-government ! 
 Trugaios, Pisthetairos, Strepsiades, — 
 Why multiply examples ? Hail, in fine. 
 The hero of each painted monster — so 
 Suggesting the unpictured perfect shape I 
 Pour out ! A laugh to Aristophanes ! 
 
 *' ' Stay, my fine Strattis ' — and I stopped ap- 
 plause — 
 * To the Good Ganius — but the Tragic Muse ! 
 She who instructs her poet, bids man's soul 
 Play man's part merely nor attempt the gods' 
 Ill-guessed of ! Task humanity to height. 
 Put passion to prime use, urge will, unshamed 
 When will's last effort breaks in impotenee ! 
 No power forego, elude : no weakness, — ' plied 
 Fairly by power and will, — renounce, deny ! 
 Acknowledge, in such miscalled weakness, 
 
 strength ■ 
 Latent : and 'substitute thus things for words ! 
 Make man run life's race fairly, — legs and 
 
 feet. 
 Craving no false wings to o'erfiy its length ! 
 Trust on, trust ever, trust to end — in truth ! 
 By truth of extreme passion, utmost will, 
 Shame back all false display of either force — 
 Barrier about such strenuous heat and glow, 
 That cowardice shall shirk contending, — cant, 
 Pretension, shrivel at truth's first approach I 
 Pour to the Tragic Muse's ministrant 
 Who, as he pictured pure Hippolutos, 
 Abolished our earth's blot Ariphrades ; 
 Who, as he drew Bellerophon the bold. 
 Proclaimed Kleonumos incredible ; 
 Who, as his Theseus towered up man once more. 
 Made Alkibiades shrink boy again I 
 A tear — no woman's tribute, weak exchange 
 For action, water spent and heart's-blood 
 
 saved — 
 No man's regret for greatness gone, ungraced 
 Perchance by even that poor meed, man's 
 
 praise — 
 Rut some god's superabundance of desire, 
 Yearning of wiU to 'scape necessity,.^ 
 Love's overbrimming for self-sacrifice, 
 Whence good might be, which never else may be. 
 By power displayed, forbidden this strait 
 
 sphere, — 
 Effort Gscpressible' one only way — 
 Such tear from me fall to Euripides 1 ' 
 
 ' ' The Thasian ! — All, the Thasian, I account I 
 
 " Whereupon outburst the whole company 
 Into applause and —laughter, would you think ? 
 
 " ' The unrivalled one ! How, never at a loss. 
 
 He turns the Tragic on its Comic side 
 
 Else imperceptible ! Here 's death itself — 
 
 Death of a rival, of an enemy, — 
 
 Scarce seen as Comic till the master-touch 
 
 Made it acknowledge Aristophanes ! 
 
 Lo, that Euripideau laurel-tree 
 
 Struck to the heart by lightning 1 Sokrates 
 
 Would question us, with buzz of "how " and 
 
 "why," 
 Wherefore the beiTy's virtue, the bloom's vice, 
 Till we all wished ham quiet with his friend ; 
 Agathon would compose an elegy. 
 Lyric bewailment fit to move a stone, 
 Ajid, stones responsive, we might wince, 't is 
 
 like; 
 Nay, with most cause of all to weep the least, 
 Sophokles ordains mourning for his sake 
 While we confess to a remorseful twinge ; — 
 Suddenly, who but Aristophanes, 
 Prompt to the rescue, puts forth solemn hand, 
 Singles us out the tragic tree's best branch. 
 Persuades it groundward and, at tip, appends, 
 For votive-visor, Faun's goat-grinning face ! 
 Back it files, evermore with jest a-top, 
 And we recover the true mood, and htagh ! ' 
 
 " I felt as when some Nikias, — ninny-like 
 Troubled by sunspot-portent, moon-eclipse, — 
 At fault a Httle, sees no choice but sound 
 Hetreat from foeman ; and his troops mistake 
 The signal, and hail onset in the blast. 
 And at their joyous answer, olaM, 
 Ba^k the old courage brings the scattered wits ; 
 He wonders what lus doubt meant, quick con- 
 firms 
 The happy error, blows the charge amain. 
 So I repaired things. 
 
 " ' Both be praised,' thanked I. 
 ' You who have laughed with Aristophanes, 
 You who wept rather with the Lord of Tears I 
 Priest, do thou, president alike o'er each. 
 Tragic and Comic function of the god. 
 Help with libation to the blended twain ! 
 Either of which who serving, only serves — 
 Proclaims himself disqualified to pour 
 To that Good Genius — complex Poetry, 
 Uniting each god-grace, including both : 
 Which, operant for body as for soul. 
 Masters alike the laughter and the tears. 
 Supreme in lowliest earth, sublimest sky. 
 Who dares disjoin these, — whether he ignores 
 Body or soul, whichever half destroys, — 
 Maims the else perfect manhood, perpetrates 
 Again the inexpiable crime we curse — 
 Hacks at the Hermai, halves each guardian 
 
 shape 
 Combining, nowise vainly, prominence 
 Of august head and enthroned intellect, 
 With homelier symbol of asserted sense, — 
 Nature's prime impulse, earthly appetite. 
 For, when our folly ventures on the freak, 
 Would fain abolish joy and f ruitf ulness. 
 Mutilate nature — what avails the Heafl 
 
642 
 
 ARISTOPHANES' APOLOGY 
 
 Left solitarily predominant, — 
 
 Unbodied sonl, — not Hermes, both in one ? 
 
 I, no more than our City, acquiesce 
 
 In such a desecration, but defend 
 
 Man's di)uble nature — ay, wert thou its foe I 
 
 Could I once more, thou cold Euripides, 
 
 Encounter thee, in naught would I abate 
 
 My warfare, nor subdue my worst attack 
 
 On thee whose life-work preached " liaise soul, 
 
 sink sense ! 
 Evirate Hermes ! " — would avenge the god. 
 And justify myself. Once face to face. 
 Thou, the argute and tricksy, shouldst not wrap, 
 As thine old fashion was, in silent scorn 
 The breast that quickened at the sting of truth. 
 Nor turn from me, as, if the tale be true, 
 From Lais when she met thee in thy walks, 
 And questioned why she had no rights as thou. 
 Not so shouldst thou betake thee, be assured, 
 To book and pencil, deign me no reply ! 
 I would extract an answer from those lips 
 So closed and cold, were mine the garden-chance ! 
 Gone from the world! Does none remain to 
 
 take 
 Thy part and ply me with thy sophist-skill ? 
 No sun makes proof of his whole potency 
 For gold and purple in that orb we view : 
 The apparent orb does little but leave blind 
 The audacious, and confused the worshipping ; 
 But, close on orb's departure, must succeed 
 The serviceable cloud, — must intervene. 
 Induce expenditure of rose and blue, 
 Reveal what lay in him was lost to us. 
 So, friends, what hinders, as we homeward go, 
 If, privileged by triumph gained to-day. 
 We clasp that cloud our sun left saturate, 
 The Khodian rosy with Euripides ? 
 Not of my audience on my triumph-day, 
 She nor her husband ! After the night's news 
 Neither will sleep but watch ; I know the mood. 
 Accompany ! my crown declares my right ! ' 
 
 '"And here you stand with those warm golden 
 
 eyes ! 
 
 " In honest language, I am scarce too sure 
 Whether I really felt, indeed expressed 
 Then, in that presence, things I now repeat : 
 Nor half, nor any one word, — will that do ? 
 Maybe, such eyes must strike conviction, turn 
 One's nature bottom upwards, show the base — 
 The live rock latent under wave and foam : 
 Superimposure these ! Yet solid stuff 
 Will ever and anon, obeying star, 
 (And what star reaches rock-nerve like an eye ?) 
 Swim up to surface, spout or mud or flame, 
 And find no more to do than sink as fast. 
 
 " Anyhow, I have followed happily 
 
 The impulse, pledged n^ Genius with effect. 
 
 Since, come to see you, I am shown — myself ! " 
 
 I answered : 
 
 " One of us declai'ed for both 
 ' Welcome the glory of Aristophanes.' 
 The other adds ; and, — if that glory last. 
 Nor marsh-born vapor creep to veil the same, — 
 
 Once entered; share in our solemnity ! 
 Commemorate, as we, Euripides ! " 
 
 "What?" he looked round, " I darken the 
 
 bright house ? 
 Profane the temple of your deity ? 
 That 's true ! Else wherefore does he stand 
 
 portrayed ? 
 What Khodian paint and pencil saved so much. 
 Beard, freckled face, brow — all but breath, I 
 
 hope I 
 Come, that 's unfair : myself am somebody, 
 Yet my pictorial fame 's just potter's work, — 
 I merely figure on men's driuking-mugs I 
 I and the Flat-nose, Sophroniskos' son. 
 Oft make a pair. But what 's this lies be- 
 low? 
 His table-book and graver, playwright's tool ! 
 And lo, the sweet psE^iterion, strung and screwed, 
 Whereon he tried those le-e-4-4-^s 
 And ke-i-i-i-is and turns and trills. 
 Lovely lark's tirra-lirra, lad's delight ! 
 Aischulos' bronze-throat eagle-bark at blood 
 Has somehow spoiled my taste for twitterings ! 
 With . . . what, and did he leave you ' Her- 
 
 akles ' ? 
 The ' Frenzied Hero,' one unfractured sheet, 
 No pine-wood tablets smeared with treacherous 
 
 wax — 
 Papuros perfect as e'er tempted pen ! 
 This sacred twist of bay-leaves dead and sere 
 Must be that crown the fine work failed to 
 
 catch, — 
 No wonder ! This might crown ' Antiope.' 
 ' Herakles ' triumph ? In your heart perhaps ! 
 But elsewhere ? Come now, I '11 explain the 
 
 case, 
 Show you the main mistake. Give me the 
 
 sheet! " 
 
 I interrupted : 
 
 "Aristophanes! 
 The stranger-woman sues in her abode — 
 ' Be honored as our guest! ' But, call it — 
 
 shrine. 
 Then ' No dishonor to the Daimon ! ' bids 
 The priestess ' or expect dishonor's due ! ' 
 You enter fresh from your worst infamy. 
 Last instance of long outrage ; yet I pause, 
 Withhold the word a-tremble on my lip, 
 Incline me, rather, yearn to reverence, — 
 So you but suffer that I see the blaze 
 And not the bolt, — the splendid fancy-fling, 
 Not the cold iron malice, the launched lie 
 Whence heavenly fire has withered ; impotent, 
 Yet execrable, leave it 'neatli the look 
 Of yon impassive presence ! What he scorned. 
 His life long, need I touch, offend my foot, 
 To prove that malice missed its mark, that lie 
 Cumbers the ground, returns to whence it came I 
 I marvel, I deplore, — the rest be mute ] 
 But, throw off hate's celestiality, — 
 Show me, apart from song-flash and wit-flame, 
 A mere man's hand ignobly clenched against 
 Yon supreme calmness, — and I interpose. 
 Such as you see me ! Silk breaks hghtning'sf 
 
 blow!" 
 
THE LAST ADVENTURE OF BALAUSTION 
 
 643 
 
 He seemed to scarce so much as notiice me, 
 Aught I had spoken, save the final phrase : 
 Arrested there. 
 
 "Euripides grown calm ! 
 Cabuuess supreme means dead and therefore 
 
 safe," 
 He muttered ; then more audibly began — 
 
 " Dead ! Such must die ! Could people com- 
 prehend ! 
 There 's the unfairness of it ! So obtuse 
 Are all : from Solon downward with his saw, 
 ' Let none revile the dead, — no, though the 
 
 son, 
 Nay, far descendant, should revile thyself ! ' — 
 To him who made Elektra, in the act 
 Of wreaking vengeance on her worst of foes, 
 Scruple to blame, since speech that blames 
 
 insults 
 Too much the very villain life-released. 
 Now, J say, only after death, begins 
 That formidable claim, — immunity 
 Of faultiness from fault's due punishment ! 
 The living, who defame me, — why, they live : 
 Fools, — I best prove them foolish by their life, 
 Will they but work on, lay their work by mine, 
 And wait a little, one Olympiad, say ! 
 Then, where 's the vital force, mine froze 
 
 beside ? 
 The sturdy fibre, shamed my brittle stuff ? 
 The school-correctness, sure of wise award 
 When my vagaries cease to tickle taste ? 
 Where !s censure that must sink me, judgment 
 
 Awaiting just the word posterity 
 
 Pants to pronounce '? Time's wave breaks, 
 
 buries — whom. 
 Fools, when myself confronts you four years 
 
 henc^ ? 
 But die, ere next Lenaia, — safely so 
 You 'scape me, slink with all your ignorance, 
 Stupidity and malice, to that hole 
 O'er which survivors croak '' Respect the 
 
 dead ! ' 
 Ay, for I needs must ! But allow me clutch 
 Only a carrion-handful, lend it sense, 
 (Mine, not its own, or could it answer me ?) 
 And question, * You, I pluck from hiding-place, 
 Whosecant was, certain years ago, my " Clouds " 
 Might last until the swallows came with t^pring — 
 Whose chatter, ''' Birds " are unintelligible, 
 Mere psychologic puzzling : poetry ? 
 List, the true lay to rock a cradle with ! 
 O man ofMitulen^, wondrous wise ! ' 
 — Would not I rub each face in its own filth 
 To tune of ' Now that years have come and 
 
 fone, 
 oes the fact stand? What's demon- 
 strable 
 By time, that tries things ? — your own test, 
 
 not mine 
 Who think men are, were, ever will be fools. 
 Though somehow fools conf lite fools, — as these, 
 
 you ! 
 Don't mumble to the sheepish twos and threes 
 You cornered and called " audience ! " face this 
 
 Who know, and can, and — helped by fifty 
 
 years — 
 Do pulverize you pygmies, then as now ! ' 
 
 " Ay, now as then, I pulverize the brood, 
 Balaustion ! Mindful, from the first, where foe 
 Would hide head safe when hand had flung its 
 
 stone, 
 I did not turn cheek and take pleasantry. 
 But flogged while skin could purple and flesh 
 
 start, 
 To teach fools whom they tried conclusions 
 
 with. 
 First face a-splutter at me got such splotch 
 Of prompt slab mud as, fillii^ mouth to maw, 
 Made its concern thenceforward not so much 
 To criticise me as go cleanse itself. 
 The only drawback to which huge delight, — 
 (He saw it, how he saw it, that calm cmd 
 Sagacity you call Euripides !) 
 — Why, h is that, make a muckheap of a man, 
 There, pillaj?ed by your prowess, he remains, 
 Immortally immerded. Not so he ! 
 Men pelted him but got no peUet back. 
 He reasoned, I '11 engage, — ' Acquaint the 
 
 world 
 Certain minuteness butted at my knee ? 
 Dogface Eruxis, the smaU satirist, — 
 What better would the manikin desire 
 Than to strut forth on tiptoe, notable 
 As who so far up fouled me in the flank ? * 
 So dealt he with the dwarfs : we giants, too, 
 Why must we emulate their pin-point play ? 
 Render imperishable — ^ impotence, 
 For mud throw mountains ? Zeus, by mud un- 
 reached, — 
 Well, 't was no dwarf he heaved Olumpos at ! " 
 
 My heart burned up within me to my tongue. 
 
 " And why must men remember, ages hence, 
 Who it was rolled down rocks, but refuse too — 
 Strattis might steal from ! mixture-monument, 
 Recording what ? ' I, Aristophanes, 
 Who boast me much inventive in my art, 
 Against Euripides thus volleyed muck 
 Because, in art, he too extended bounds. 
 I — patriot, loving peace and hating war, — 
 Choosing the rule of few, but wise and good, 
 Rather than mob-dictature, fools and knaves 
 However multiplied their mastery, — 
 Despising most of all the demagogue, 
 (Noisome air-bubble, buoyed up, borne along 
 By kindred breath of knave and fool below, 
 Whose hearts swell proudly as each puffing face 
 Grows big, reflected in that glassy ball, 
 Vacuity, just bellied out to break 
 And righteously bespatter friends the first,) 
 I loathing, — beyond less puissant speech 
 Than my own god-grand language to declare, — 
 The fawning, cozenage and calumny 
 Wherewith such favorite feeds the populace 
 That fan and set him flying for reward : — 
 I who, detecting what vice underlies 
 Thought's superstructure, — fancy's sludge 
 
 and slime 
 'Twixt fact's sound floor and thought's mere 
 
 surface-growth 
 
644 
 
 ARISTOPHANES' APOLOGY 
 
 Of hopes and f e^rs which I'oot no deeplier do^n 
 Than where all such mere fungi breed and 
 
 bloat — , 
 Namely, man's misconception of the God : — 
 I, loving, hating:, wishful from my soul . 
 That truth should triumph, falsehood hare 
 
 defeat, 
 ■ — Why, all my soul's supremacy of power 
 Did I pour out in volley just on him 
 Who, his whole life long, championed every 
 
 cause 
 I called my heart's cause, loving as I loved, 
 Hating my hates, spurned falsehood, championed 
 
 truth, — 
 Championed truth not by flagellating foe 
 With simple rose and lily, gibe and jeer. 
 Sly wink of boon-companion o'er the bowze 
 Who, while he blames the liquor, smacks the 
 
 Up, 
 Blames, doubtless, but leers condonation too, — 
 No, the balled fist broke brow like thunder- 
 bolt. 
 Battered till brain flew ! Seeing which descent, 
 None questioned that was first acquaintance- 
 ship. 
 The avenger's with the vice he crashed through 
 
 bone. 
 Still, he displeased me ; and I turned from foe 
 To fellow-fighter, flung much stone, more 
 
 mud, — 
 But missed him, since he lives aloof, I see.' 
 Pah ! stop more shame, deep-cutting glory 
 
 through. 
 Nor add, this poet, learned, — found no taunt 
 Tell like ' That other poet studies books ! ' 
 Wise, — cried ' At each attempt to move our 
 
 hearts. 
 He uses the mere phrase of daily life ! ' 
 Witty, — ' His mother was a herb-woman ! ' 
 Veracious, honest, loyal, fair and good, — 
 * It was Kephisophon who helped him write ! ' 
 
 " Whence, — oh the tragic end of Comedy ! — 
 
 Balaustion pities Aristophanes. 
 
 For, who believed him ? Those who laughed 
 so lond ? 
 
 They heard him call the sun Sicilian cheese I 
 
 Had he called true cheese — curd, would muscle 
 move? 
 
 What made them laugh but the enormous lie ? 
 
 ' Kephisophon wrote " Herakles " ? ha, ha, 
 
 What can have stirred the wine-dregs, soured 
 the soul. 
 
 And set a-lying Aristophanes ? 
 
 Some accident at which he took offence ! 
 
 The Tragic Master in a moody muse 
 
 Passed him unhailing, and it hurts — it hurts ! 
 
 Beside, there 's license for the Wine-lees- 
 song!'" 
 
 Blood burnt the cheekbone, each black eye 
 flashed fierce. 
 
 " But this exceeds our license ! Stay awhile ^ 
 That 's the solution ! both are foreigners. 
 The fresh-come Rhodian lady, and her spouse 
 The man of Phokis : newly resident. 
 Nowise instructed — that explains it all 1 
 
 No boru and bred Athenian but would smile, 
 Unless frown seemed more fit for ignorance. 
 These strangers have a privilege I 
 
 "You blame" 
 (Presently he resumed with milder mien) 
 ' ' Both theory and practice — Comedy : 
 Blame her from alt tudes the Tragic friend 
 Rose to, and upraised friends along with him, 
 No matter how. Once there, all's cold and 
 
 fine, 
 Passionless, rational ; our world beneath 
 Shows (should you condescend to grace so much 
 As glance at poor Athenai) grimly gross — 
 A population which, mere flesh and blood, 
 Eats, drinks, and kisses, falls to fisticufEs, 
 Then hugs as hugely : speaks too as it acts. 
 Prodigiously talks nonsense, — townsmen needs 
 Must parley in their town's vernacular. 
 Such world has, of two courses, one to choose : 
 Unworld itself, — or else go blackening off 
 To its crow-kindred, leave philosophy 
 Her heights serene, fit perch for owls like you. 
 Now, since the world demurs to either course. 
 Permit me, — in default of boy or girl. 
 So they be reared Athenian, good and true, — 
 To praise what you most blame ! Hear Art's 
 
 defence ! 
 I '11 prove our institution. Comedy, 
 Coeval with the birth of freedom, matched 
 So nice with our Republic, that its growth 
 Measures each greatness, just as its decline 
 Would signalize the downfall of the pair. 
 Our Art began when Bacchos . . . never 
 
 mind ! 
 You and your master don't acknowledge gods : 
 ' They are not, no, they are not I ' well, ~ began 
 When the rude instinct of our race outspoke, 
 Found, ^^ on recurrence of festivity 
 Occasioned by black mothei^earth's good will 
 To children, as they took her vintage-gifts, — 
 Found — not the least of many benefits — 
 That wine unlocked the stiifest lip, and loosed 
 The tongue late dry and reticent of joke. 
 Through custom's gripe which gladness thrusts 
 
 aside. 
 So, emulating liberalities. 
 Heaven joined with earth for that god's day at 
 
 least. 
 Renewed man's privilege, grown obsolete. 
 Of telling truth nor dreading punishment. 
 Whereon the joyous band disguised their forms 
 With skins, beast-fashion, daubed each phiz 
 
 with dregs, 
 Then hollaed ' Neighbor, you are fool, you — 
 
 knave, 
 You — hard to serve, you — • stingy to reward ! ' 
 The guiltless crowed, the guilty sunk their 
 
 crest. 
 And good folk gained thereby, 't was evident. 
 Whence, by degrees, a birth of happier thought. 
 The notion came — not simply this to say. 
 But this to do • — prove, put in evidence. 
 And act the fool, the knave, the harsh, the 
 
 hunks. 
 Who did prate, cheat, shake fist, draw purse- 
 string tight. 
 As crowd might see, which only heard before, 
 
THE LAST ADVENTURE OF BALAUSTION 
 
 64s 
 
 " So played the Poet,' with his man of parts ; 
 
 And all the others, found unqualified 
 
 To mount cart and be persons, made the mob, 
 
 Joined choros, fortified their fellows' fan, 
 
 Anticipated the community, 
 
 Gave judgment which the public ratified. 
 
 Suiting rough weapon doubtless to plain truth. 
 
 They nnng, for word-artillery, why — filth ; 
 
 Still, folks who wiped the unaayoiy salute 
 
 From visage, would prefer the mess, to wit — 
 
 Steel, poked through midriff with a civil 
 
 speech. 
 As now the way is : then, the kindlier mode 
 Was — drub HOt stab, rib-roast not scarify ! 
 So did Sousarion introduce, and so' 
 Did I, acceding, find the Comic Art : 
 Club, — if I call it, — notice what 's implied ! 
 An engine proper for rough chastisement. 
 No downright slaying : with impunity — 
 Provided crabtree, steeped in oilyi joke, 
 Deal only such a bruise as laughter cures. 
 I kept the gained advantage : stickled still 
 For club - law — stout fun and allowanced 
 
 thumps : 
 Knocked iu each knob a crevice to hold joke 
 As fig-leaf holds the fat-fry. 
 
 " Next, whom thrash ? 
 Only the coarse fool and the clownish knave ?' 
 Higher, more artificial, composite 
 Offence should prove my prowess, eye and arm ! 
 Not who robs henroost, tells of untaxed figs. 
 Spends all his substance on stewed ellops-fish, 
 Or gives a pheasant to his neighbor's wife : 
 No ! strike malpractice that a£Eects the State, 
 Tlie common weal — intriguer or poltroon, 
 Venality, corruption, what care T 
 If shrewd or witless merely ? — so the thing 
 Lay sap to aught that made Athenad bright 
 And happy, change her customs, lead astray 
 Youth or age, play the demagogue at Pnux, 
 The sophist in Palaistra, or — what 's worst, 
 As widest mischief, — from the Theatre 
 Preach innovation, bring contempt on oaths, 
 Adorn licentiousness, despise the Cult. 
 Are such to be my game ? Why, then there 
 
 wants 
 Quite other cunning than a cudgel-sweep ! 
 Grasp the old stout stock, but new tip with 
 
 steel 
 Each boss, if I would bray — no callous hide 
 Simply, but Lamachos in coat of proof. 
 Or Kleon cased about with impudence ! 
 Shaft pushed no worse whUe point pierced 
 
 sparkling 90 
 That none smiled ' Sportive, what seems sav- 
 
 agest, 
 — Innocuous anger, spiteless rustic mirth ! ' 
 Yet spiteless in a sort, considered well. 
 Since I pursued my warfare till each wound 
 Went through the mere man, reached the prin- 
 ciple 
 Worth purgins: from Athenai. Lamachos ? 
 No, I attacked war's representative ; 
 Kleon ? No, flattery of the populace j 
 Sokrates ? No, but that pernicious seed 
 Of sophists whereby hopeful youth is taught 
 To jabber argument, chop logic, pore 
 
 On sun and moon, and worshin Whirligig. 
 Oh, your tragedian, with the lofty grace. 
 Aims at no other and eifects as much ? 
 Candidly : what 's a polished period worth, 
 Filed curt sententiousness of loaded line, 
 When he who deals out doctrine, primly steps 
 From just that selfsame moon he maunders of, 
 And, blood-thinned by his pallid nutriment. 
 Proposes to rich earth-blood — purity ? 
 In me, 'twas equal-balanced flesh rebuked 
 Excess alike in stuff -guts Glauketes 
 Or starveling Chairephon ; I challenged both, — 
 Strong under^tander of our common life, 
 1 urged sustainment of humanity. 
 Whereas when your tragedian cries up Peace — 
 He 's silent as to cheese-cakes Peace may chew ; 
 Seeing through rabble-rule, he shuts his eye 
 To what were better done than crowding 
 
 Pnux — 
 That 's dance ' Threttanelo, the Kuklops 
 
 drunk ! ' 
 
 *' My power has hardly need to vaunt itself ! 
 Opposers peep and mutter, or speak plain ; 
 ^ No naming names in Comedy 1 ' votes one, 
 ' Nor vilifying live folk ! ' legislates 
 Another, urge amendment on the dead ! ' 
 ^ Don't throw away hard cash,' supplies a third, 
 ' But crib from actor's dresses, choros-treats t 
 Then Kleon did his best to bully me : 
 Called me before the Law Court : ' Such a play 
 Satirized citizens with strangers there. 
 Such other,' — why, its fault was in myself 1 
 I was, this time, the stranger, privileged 
 To act no play at all, ■— Egyptian, I — 
 Rhodian or Kameirensian, Aiginete, 
 Lindian, or any foreigner he liked — 
 Because I can't write Attic, probably ! 
 Go ask my rivals, — how they roughed my 
 
 fleece. 
 And how, shorn pink themselves, the huddled 
 
 sheep 
 Shiver at distance from the snapping shears ! 
 Why must they needs provoke me ? 
 
 " All the same, 
 No matter for my triumph, I foretell 
 Subsidence of the day-star : quench his beams ? 
 No Aias e'er was equal to the feat 
 By throw of shield, tough-hided seven times 
 
 seven, 
 ^Twixt sky and earth! 'tis dullards soft and 
 
 sure 
 Who breathe gainst his brightest, here a sigh 
 And there a ' So let be, we pardon you ! ' 
 Till the minute mist hangs a block, has tamed 
 Noonblaze to ' twilight mjld and equable,' 
 Vote the old women spinning out of doors. 
 Give me the earth-spasm, when the lion ramped 
 And the bull gendered in the brave gold flare ! 
 Oh, you shall have amusement, — better still. 
 Instruction ! no more horse-play, naming names. 
 Taxing the fancy when plain sense will serve ! 
 Thearion, now, my friend who bakes you bread, 
 What's worthier limning than his household 
 
 life? 
 His whims and ways, his quarrels with the 
 
 spouse. 
 
646 
 
 ARISTOPHANES' APOLOGY 
 
 And how tlie son, inste£ul of learning knead 
 Kilikian loaves, b^in^^s heartbreak on his sire 
 By buying: horsetlesh branded San, each flank. 
 From shrewd Menippos who imports the ware : 
 While pretty daug:liter Kepph^ too much haunts 
 The shop of Sporgilos the barber ! brave ! 
 Out with Thearion's meal-tub politics 
 In lieu of Pisthetairos, Strepsiades ! 
 That 's your exchange f O Muse of Megara ! 
 Advise the fools ' Feed babe on weasel-lap 
 For wild-boards marrow, Cheiron's hero-pap. 
 And rear, for man — Ariphrades, mayhap I ' 
 Yes, ray Balaustion, yes, my Euthukles, 
 That 's your exchange, — who, foreigners in fact 
 And fancy, would impose your squeamishness 
 On sturdy health, and substitute such brat 
 For the right offspring of us Rocky Ones, 
 Because babe kicks the cradle, — crows, not 
 mewls ! 
 
 *' Which brings me to the prime fault, poison- 
 speck 
 Whence all the plague springs — that first feud 
 
 of all 
 'Twixt me and you and your Euripides. 
 * Unworld the world,' frowns he, my opposite. 
 I cry, ' Life ! ' ' Death,' he groans, ' our better 
 
 . Life ! ' 
 Despise what is — the good and graspable, 
 Prefer the out of sight and in at mind, 
 To village-joy, the well-side violet-patch. 
 The jolly club-feast when our field 's in soak. 
 Roast thrushes, hare-soup, pea-soup, deep 
 
 washed down 
 With Peparethian ; the prompt paying off 
 That black-eyed brown-skinned country-fla- 
 vored wench 
 We caught among our brushwood foraging : 
 On these look fig^juice, curdle up life's cream. 
 And fall to magnifying misery ! 
 Or, if you condescend to happiness. 
 Why, talk, talk, talk about the empty name 
 While thing's self lies neglected 'neath your 
 
 nose ! 
 I need particular discourtesy 
 And private insult from Euripides 
 To render contest with him credible ? 
 Say, all of me is outraged ! one stretched sense, 
 I represent the whole Republic, — gods, 
 Heroes, priests, legislators, poets, — prone, 
 A.nd pummelled into insignificance. 
 If will in him were matched with power of 
 
 stroke. 
 For see what he has changed or hoped to 
 
 change ! 
 How few years since, when he began the fight. 
 Did there beat life indeed Athenai through ! 
 Plenty and peace, then ! Hellas tliundersmote 
 The Persian. He himself had birth, you say. 
 That morn salvation broke at Salarais, 
 And heroes still walked earth. Theraistokles — 
 Surely his mere back-stretch of hand could still 
 Find, not so lost in dark, Odusseus ? — he 
 Holding as surely on to Herakles, — 
 Who touched Zeus, link by link, the unrup- 
 tured chain I 
 Were poets absent ? Aischulos might hail — 
 With Pindaros, Theognis, — whom for sire ? 
 
 Homeros' self, departed yesterday ! 
 
 While Hellas, saved and sung to, then and 
 
 thus, — 
 Ah, people, — ah, lost antique liberty ! 
 We lived, ourselves, undoubted lords of earth : 
 Wherever olives flourish, com yields crop 
 To constitute our title — ours such land ! 
 Outside of oil and breadstuff, — barbarism ! 
 What need of conquest ? Let barbarians starve I 
 Devote our whole strength to our sole defence, 
 Content with peerless native products, home, 
 Beauty profuse in earth's mere sights and 
 
 sounds, 
 Such men, such women, and such gods their 
 
 guard! 
 The gods ? he worshipped best who feared 
 
 them most. 
 And left their nature uninquired into, 
 — Nature ? their very names ! pay reverence, 
 Do sacrifice for our part, theirs would be 
 To prove benignantest of playfellows. 
 With kindly humanism they countenanced 
 Our emulation of divine escapes 
 Through sense and soul : soul, sense are made 
 
 to use ; 
 Use each, acknowledging its god the while ! 
 Crush grape, dance, drink, indulge, for Bac- 
 
 chos' sake ! 
 'T is Aphrodite's feast-day — frisk and fling. 
 Provided we observe our oaths, and house 
 Duly the stranger : Zeus takes umbrage else ! 
 Ah, the great time — had I been there to taste ! 
 Perikles, right Olumpian, — occupied 
 As yet with getting an Olumpos reared 
 Marble and gold above Akropolis, — 
 Wisely so spends what thrifty fools amassed 
 For cut-throat projects. Who carves Proma- 
 
 chos? 
 Who writes the Oresteia ? 
 
 " Ah, the time ! 
 For, all at once, a cloud has blanched the blue, 
 A cold wind creeps through the close vineyard- 
 rank. 
 The olive-leaves curl, violets crisp and close 
 Like a nymph's wi'inkling at the bath's first 
 
 splash 
 On breast. (Your pardon !) There '3 a restless 
 
 change. 
 Deterioration. Larks and nightingales 
 Are silenced, here and there a goi"-crow grim 
 Flaps past, as scenting opportunity. 
 Where Kimon passaged to the Boul^ once, 
 A starveling crew, unkempt, unshorn, un- 
 washed. 
 Occupy altar-base and temple-step, 
 Are minded to indoctrinate our youth ! 
 How call these caiTion kill-joys that intrude ? 
 'Wise men,' their nomenclature ! Prodikos — 
 Who scarce could, unassisted, pick his steps 
 From way Theseia to the Tripods' way, — 
 This empty noddle comprehends the sun, — 
 How he 's Aigina's bigness, wheels no whit 
 His way from east to west, nor wants a steed ! 
 And here 's Protagoras sets wrongheads right. 
 Explains what virtue, vice, truth, falseho6 
 
 mean. 
 Makes all we seemed to know prove ignoranV 
 
THE LAST ADVENTURE OF BALAUSTION 
 
 647 
 
 Yet knowledge also, since, on either side 
 Of any question, something is to say. 
 Nothing to 'atablish, all things to disturb ! 
 And shall youth go and play at kottabos, 
 Leaving unsettled whether moon-spots breed ? 
 Or dare keep Choes ere the problem 's solved — 
 Why should I like my wife who dislikes me ? 
 ' But sure the gods permit this, censure that ? ' 
 So tell them ! straight the answer 's in your 
 
 teeth ; 
 ' You relegate these points, then, to the gods ? 
 What and where are they ? ' What my sire 
 
 supposed. 
 And where yon cloud conceals them ! ' Till 
 
 they 'scape. 
 And scramble down to Leda, as a swan, 
 Buropa, as a bull ! why not as — ass 
 To somebody ? Your sire was Zeus perhaps I 
 Either — away with such ineptitude ! 
 Or, wanting energy to break your bonds. 
 Stick to the good old stories, think the rain 
 Is — Zeus distilling pickle through a sieve ! 
 Think thunder 's thrown to break Theoros' 
 
 head 
 For breaking oaths first I Meanwhile let our- 
 selves 
 Instruct your progeny you prate like fools 
 Of father Zeus, who 's but the atmosphere, 
 Brother Poseidon, otherwise called — sea. 
 And son Hephaistos — fire and nothing else ! 
 Over which nothings there *s a something still, 
 "Necessity," that rules the universe 
 And cares as much about your Choes-feast 
 Performed or intermitted, as you care 
 Whether gnats sound their trump from head or 
 
 tail ! ' 
 When, stupefied at such philosophy. 
 We cry, ' Arrest the madmen, governor ! 
 Pound hemlock and pour buU's-blood, Peri- 
 
 kles!' 
 Would you believe ? The Olumpian bends his 
 
 brow. 
 Scarce pauses from his building! 'Say they 
 
 thus? 
 Then, they say wisely. Anaxagoras, 
 I had not known how simple proves eclipse 
 But for thy teaching ! Go, fools, learn like me ! ' 
 
 " Well, Zeus nods : man must reconcile him- 
 self. 
 
 So, let the Charon's-company harangue. 
 
 And Anaxagoras be — as we wish ! 
 
 A comfort is in nature : while grass grows 
 
 And water runs, and sesame pricks tongue, 
 
 And honey from Brilesian hollow melts 
 
 On mouth, aud Bacchis' flavorous lip beats 
 both. 
 
 You will not be untaught life's use, young man ? 
 
 Pho I My young man just proves that pan- 
 niered ass 
 
 Said to have borne Youth strapped on his stout 
 back. 
 
 With whom a serpent bargained, bade him swap 
 
 The priceless boon for — water to quench 
 thirst ! 
 
 What 's youth to my young man ? In love 
 with age. 
 
 He Spartanizes, argues, fasts and frDwns, 
 
 Denies the plainest rules of life, long since 
 Proved sound ; sets all authority aside. 
 Must simply recommence things, learn ere act, 
 And think out thoroughly how youth should 
 
 pass — 
 Just as if youth stops passing, all the same ! 
 
 One last resource is left us — poetry ! 
 ' Vindicate nature, prove Plataian help. 
 Turn out, a thousand strong, all right and 
 
 tight. 
 To save Sense, poet ! Bang the sophist-brood 
 Would cheat man out of wholesome sustenance 
 By swearing wine is water, honey — gall, 
 Saperdion — the Empousa ! Panic-smit, 
 Our juveniles abstain from Sense and starve : 
 Be yours to disenchant them ! Change thinge 
 
 back! 
 Or better, strain a point the other way 
 And handsomely exaggerate wronged truth ! 
 Lend wine a glory never gained from grape. 
 Help honey with a snatch of hiiu we style 
 The Muses' Bee, baybloom-fed Sophokles, 
 And give Saperdion a Kimberie robe ! ' 
 
 " * I, his successor,' gruff the answer grunts, 
 
 ' Incline to poetize philosophy. 
 
 Extend it rather than restrain ; as thus — 
 
 Are heroes men? No more, and scarce as 
 much. 
 
 Shall mine be represented. Are men poor ? 
 
 Behold them ragged, sick, lame, halt and 
 blind ! 
 
 Do they use speech ? Ay, street-terms, market- 
 phrase ! 
 
 Having thus drawn sky earthwards, what 
 comes next 
 
 But dare the opposite, lift earth to sky ? 
 
 Mere puppets once, I now make womankind. 
 
 For thinking, saying, doing, match the male. 
 
 Lift earth ? I drop to, dally with, eartlx's 
 dung! 
 
 — Recognize in the very slave — man's mate. 
 Declare him brave and honest, kind and true, 
 And reasonable as his lord, in brief. 
 
 I paint men as they are — so runs my boast — 
 Not as they should be ; paint — what 's part of 
 man, 
 
 — Women and slaves, — not as, to please your 
 
 pride, 
 They should be, but your equals, as they are. 
 Oh, and the Gods ! Instead of abject mien. 
 Submissive whisper, while my Chores cants, 
 ' ' Zeus, — with thy cubit's length of attributes,^ 
 May I, the ephemeral, ne'er scrutinize 
 Who made the heaven and earth and all things 
 
 there I " 
 Myself shall say . . . Ay, ' Herakles ' may 
 
 help! 
 Give me, — I want the very words, — attend ! " 
 
 He read. Then — " Murder 's out, — ' There 
 
 are no Gods,' 
 Man has no master, owns, by consequence. 
 No right, no wrong, except to please or plague 1 
 His nature ; what man likes be man's sole law 
 Still, since he likes Saperdion, honey, figs, 
 Man may reach freedom by your roundabout I 
 
648 
 
 ARISTOPHANES' APOLOGY 
 
 * Never believe yourselves the freer thence ! 
 There are no gods, but there 's " Necessity," — 
 Duty enjoined you, fact in figment's place, 
 Throned on no mountain, native to the mind I 
 Therefore deny youMelves tsaperdion, figs 
 And honey, for the sake of — what I dream, 
 A-sitting with my legs up ! ' 
 
 " Infamy ! 
 The poet ca^ts iu calm his lot with these 
 Assailants of Apollou ! fcsworn to serve 
 Each Grace, the JFuries call him minister — 
 He, who was born for just that roseate world 
 Renounced so madly, where what's false is 
 
 fact. 
 Where he makes beauty out of ugliness, 
 Where he lives, life itself disguised for him 
 As immortality — so works the spell. 
 The enthusiastic mood which marks a man 
 Muse-mad, dream-drunken, wrapt around by 
 
 verse. 
 Encircled with poetic atmosphere, 
 As lark emballed by its own crystal song. 
 Or rose eumisted by that scent it makes ! 
 No, this were unreality ! the real 
 He wants, not falsehood, — truth alone he 
 
 Truth, for all beauty ! Beauty, in all truth — 
 That 's certain somehow I Must the eagle lilt 
 Lark-like, needs fir-tree blossom rose-like? 
 
 No! 
 Strength and utility charm more than grace. 
 And what 's most ugly proves most beautiful. 
 So much assistance from Euripides ! 
 
 '' Whereupon I betake me, since needs must, 
 To a concluding — ' Go and feed the crows ! 
 Do ! Spoil your art as you renounce your life. 
 Poetize your so precious system, do, 
 Degrade the hero, nullify the god, 
 Exhibit women, slaves and men as peers, — 
 Your castigation follows prompt enough ! 
 When all 's concocted upstairs, heels o'erhead, 
 Down must submissive drop the masterpiece 
 For public praise or blame ; so, praise away. 
 Friend Sokrates, wife's-friend Kiephisophon ! 
 Boast innovations, cramp phrase, uncouth 
 
 song. 
 Hard matter and harsh manner, gods, men, 
 
 slaves 
 And women jumbled to a laughing-stock 
 Which Hellas shall hold sides at lest she split ! 
 Hellas, on these, shall have her word to say ! ' 
 
 "She has it and she says it — there's the 
 
 curse ! — 
 She finds he makes the shag-rag hero-race, 
 The noble slaves, wise women, move as much 
 Pity and terror as true tragic types : 
 Applauds inventiveness — the plot so new. 
 The turn and trick subsidiary so strange ! 
 She relishes that homely phrase of life. 
 That common town-talk, more than trumpet- 
 blasts ; 
 Accords him right to chop and change a myth : 
 What better right had he, who told the tale 
 In the first instance, to embellish fact ? 
 This last may disembellish yet improve 1 
 
 Both find a block : this man carves hack to 
 
 bull 
 What first his predecessor cut to sphinx : 
 Such genuine actual roarer, nature's brute, 
 Intelligible to our time, was sure 
 The old-world artist's purpose, had he worked 
 To mind ; this both means and makes the 
 
 thing ! 
 If, past dispute, the verse slips oily-bathed 
 In nnctuous music — say, effeminate — 
 We also say, like Kuthereia's self, 
 A lulling effluence which enswathes some isle 
 Where hides a nymph, not seen but felt the 
 
 more. 
 That 's Hellas' verdict ! 
 
 " Does Euripides 
 Even so far absolved, remain content ? 
 Nowise ! His task is to refine, refine. 
 Divide, distinguish, subtilize away 
 Whatever seemed a solid planting-place 
 For footfall, — not in that phantasmal sphere 
 Proper to poet, but on vulgar earth 
 Where people used to tread with confidence. 
 There 's left no longer one plain positive 
 Enunciation incontestable 
 Of what is good, right, decent here on earth. 
 Nobody now can say, ' This plot is mine, 
 Though but a plethron square, — my duty ! ' — 
 
 'Yours? 
 Mine, or at least not yours,' snaps somebody ! 
 And, whether the dispute be parent-right 
 Or children's service, husband's privilege 
 Or wife's submission, there 's a snarlii^ straight. 
 Smart passage of opposing ' yea ' and * nay,' 
 * Should,' ' should not,' till, howe'er the contest 
 
 end. 
 Spectators go off sighing ' Clever thrust ! 
 Why was I so much hurried to pay debt. 
 Attend my mother, sacrifice an ox. 
 And set my name down " for a trireme, good " ? 
 Something I might have urged on t' other side ! 
 No doubt, Chresphontes or BeUerophon 
 We don't meet every day ; but Stab-and-stitch 
 The tailor — ere I turn the drachmas o'er 
 I owe him for a chiton, as he thinks, 
 I '11 pose the blockhead with an argument ! ' 
 
 " So h^ he triumphed, your Euripides 1 
 
 Oh, I concede, he rarely gained a prize : 
 
 That 's quite another matter ! cause for that ! 
 
 Still, when 't was got by Ions, lophons. 
 
 Off he would pace confoundedly superb, 
 
 Siipreme, no smile at movement on his mouth 
 
 Till Sokrates winked, whispered : out it broke ! 
 
 And AristuUos jotted down the jest, 
 
 While lophons or Ions, bay on brow. 
 
 Looked queerly, and tie foreigners — like 
 
 you — 
 Asked o'er the border with a puzzled smile, 
 — ' And so, you value Ions, lophons, 
 Euphovions ! How about Euripides ? ' 
 (Eh, brave bard's-ehampion ? Does the angei 
 
 boil ? 
 Keep within bounds a moment, — eye and lip 
 Shall loose their doom on me, their fiery worst !) 
 What strangers ? Archelaos heads the file ! 
 He sympathizes, he concerns himself, 
 
THE LAST ADVENTURE OF BALAUSTION 
 
 649 
 
 He liens epistle, each successless play : 
 
 ' Athenai sinks effete ; there 's yonuger hlood 
 
 In Makedonia. Visit where I rale ! 
 
 Do honor to me and take gratitude ! 
 
 Live the guest's life, or work the poet's way, 
 
 Which also means the statesman's: he who 
 
 wrote 
 *' Erechtheus " may seem rawly politic 
 At home where Kleophon is ripe ; but here 
 My council-board permits him choice of seats.' 
 
 " Now, this was operating, — what should proye 
 A poison-tree, had flowered far on to fruit 
 For many a year, — when I was moved, first 
 
 man. 
 To dare the adventure, down with root and 
 
 branch. 
 So, from its sheath I drew my Comic steel. 
 And dared what I am now to justify. 
 A serious question first, though ! 
 
 " Once again ! 
 Do you believe, when I aspired in youth, 
 I made no estimate of power at all. 
 Nor paused long, nor considered much, what 
 
 class 
 Of fighters I might claim to join, beside 
 That class wherewith, 1 cast in company ? . 
 Say, you — profuse of praise no less than 
 
 blame — 
 Could not I have competed — franker phrase 
 Might trulier eorrespoudto meaning — still. 
 Competed with your Tragic paragon ? 
 Suppose me minded simply to make verse. 
 To fabricate, parade resplendent arms, 
 Flourish and sparkle out a Trilogy, — 
 Where was the hindrance ? But my soul bade 
 
 . ■' Fight ! 
 Leave flourishing for mock-foe, pleasure-time ; 
 Prove arms ei&cient on real hea^ and hearts I 
 How ? With degeneracy sapping fast 
 The Marathonian muscle, nerved of old 
 To maul the Mede, now strung at best to help 
 — How did I fable ? — War and Hubbub mash 
 To mincemeat Fatherland and Brotherhood, 
 Pound in their mortar Hellas, State by State, 
 That greed might gorge, the while frivolity 
 Kubbed hands and smiacked lips o'er the 
 
 dainty dish I 
 Authority, experience — pushed aside 
 By any upstaat who pleads throng and press, 
 0' the people ! ' Think, say, do thus ! ' Where- 
 fore, pray ? 
 ' We are the people : who impugns our right 
 Of choosing Kleon that tans hide so well, 
 Huperbolos that turns out lamps so trim. 
 Hemp-seller Bukrates or Liisikles 
 Sheep-dealer, Kephalos the potter's son, 
 Diitriphes who weaves the willow-work 
 To go roimd bottles, and Nausikudes 
 The meal-man ? Such we choose and more, 
 
 their mates. 
 To think and say and do in our behalf I ' 
 While sophistry wagged tongue, emboldened 
 
 stiU, 
 Found matter to propose, contest, defend, 
 'Stablish, turn topsyturvy, ^- all the same, 
 No matter what nrovided the result 
 
 Were something new in place of something 
 
 old, — 
 Set wagging by pure insolence of soul 
 Which needs must pry into, have warrant for 
 Each right, each privilege good policy 
 Protects from curious eye and prating mouth ! 
 Everywhere lust to shape the world anew. 
 Spurn this Athenai as we find her, build 
 A new impossible Cloudcuokooburg 
 For feather-headed birds, once solid men. 
 Where rules, discarding jolly habitude, 
 Nourished on myrtle-berries and stray ants. 
 King Tereus who, turned Hoopoe Triple-Crest, 
 Shall terrify and bring the gods to terms I 
 
 " Where was I? Oh ! Things ailing thus — I 
 
 ask. 
 What cure ? Cut, thrust, hack, hew at heap-on- 
 heaped 
 Abomination with the exquisite 
 Palaistra-tool of polished Tragedy ? 
 Erechtheus shall harangue Amphiktuon, 
 And incidentally drop word of weight 
 On justice, righteousness, so turn aside 
 The audience from attacking Sicily ! — 
 The more that Choros, after he recounts 
 How Phrixos rode the ram, the far-famed 
 
 Fleece, 
 Shall add — at last fall of grave dancing-foot — 
 * Aggression never yet was helped by Zeus ! ' 
 That helps or hinders Alkibiades 9 
 As well expect, should Pheidias carve Zeus' self 
 And set him up, some half a mile away. 
 His frown would frighten sparrows from your 
 
 field! 
 Eagles may recognize their lord, belike. 
 But as for vulgar sparrows, — change the god, 
 And plant some big Priapos with a pole ! 
 I wield the Comic weapon rather — hate ! 
 Hate ! honest, earnest, and directest hate — 
 Warfare wherein I close with enemy. 
 Call him one name and fifty epithets, 
 Kemind you his great-grandfather sold bran, 
 Describe the new exomion, sleeveless coat 
 He knocked me down last night and robbed 
 
 me of. 
 Protest he voted for a tax on air ! 
 And all this hate — if I write Comedy — 
 Finds tolerance, most like — applause, perhaps 
 True veneration ; for I praise the god 
 Present in persou of his minister. 
 And pay — the wilder my extravagance — 
 The more appropriate worship to the Power 
 Adulterous, night-roaming, and the rest ; 
 Otherwise, — that originative force 
 Of nature, impulse stirring death to life. 
 Which, underlying law, seems lawlessness, 
 Yet is the outbreak which, ere order be, 
 Must thrill creation through, warm stocks and 
 
 stones, 
 Fhales lacchos. 
 
 " Comedy for me ! 
 Why not for you, my Tragic masters ? Sneaks 
 Whose art is mere desertion of a trust 1 
 Such weapons lay to hand, the ready club. 
 The clay- ball, on the ground a stone to 
 snatch, — 
 
,650 
 
 ARISTOPHANES' APOLOGY 
 
 Anns fit to bruise the buar's neck, break the 
 
 chine 
 0' the wolf, — and you must impiously — de- 
 spise ? 
 No, I '11 say, furtiyely let fall that trust 
 Consigrned you ! 'T was not ' take or leave 
 
 alone,' 
 But ' take and, wielding, reoogrnize your god 
 In his prime attributes ! ' And though full soon 
 You sneaked, subsided into poetry. 
 Nor met your due reward, still, - heroize 
 And speechify and sing-song and forego 
 Far as you may your function, — still its pact 
 Endures, one piece of early homage still 
 Exacted of you ; after your three bouts 
 At hoitytoity, great men with long words. 
 And so forth, — at the end, must tack itself 
 The genuine sample, the Satyrie Play, 
 Concession, with its wood-boys' fun and freak, 
 To the true taste of the mere multitude. 
 Yet, there again ! What does your 8till-at-iteh, 
 Always-the-innovator ? Shrugs and shirks ! 
 Out of his fifty Trilogies, some five 
 Are somehow suited : Satyrs dance and sing, 
 Try meiTiment, a grimly prank or two, 
 Sour joke squeezed through pursed lips and 
 
 teeth on edge. 
 Then quick on top of toe to pastoral sport. 
 Goat-tending and sheep-herding, cheese and 
 
 cream. 
 Soft grass and silver rillets, country-fare — 
 When throats were promised Thasian ! Five 
 
 such feats, — 
 Then frankly off he threw the yoke : next 
 
 Droll, 
 Next festive drama, covenanted fun, 
 Decent reversion to indecency. 
 Proved — your ' Alkestis ' ! There 's quite fun 
 
 enough, 
 Herakles drunk ! From out fate's blackening 
 
 wave 
 Calamitous, just zigzags some shot star. 
 Poor promise of faint joy, and turns the laugh 
 On dupes whose fears and tears were all in 
 
 waste ! 
 
 *' For which sufficient reasons, in truth's name, 
 I closed with whom you count the Meaner 
 
 Muse, 
 Classed me with Comic Poets who should weld 
 Dark with bright metal, show their blade may 
 
 keep 
 Its adamantine birthright though ablaze 
 With poetry, the gold, and wit, the gem. 
 And strike mere gold, unstiffened out by steel, 
 Or gem, no iron joints its strength around. 
 From hand of — posturer, not combatant ! 
 
 " Such was my purpose : it succeeds, I say ! 
 
 Have not we beaten Kallikratidas, 
 
 Not humbled Sparta ? Peace awaits our word, 
 
 Spite of Theramenes, and fools his like. 
 
 Since my previsions — warranted too well 
 
 By the long war now waged and worn to end — 
 
 Had spared such heritage of misery. 
 
 My after-counsels scarce need fear repulse. 
 
 Athenai, taught prosperity has wings, 
 
 Cages the glad recapture. Demos, see. 
 
 From folly's premature decrepitude 
 Boiled young again, emerges from the stew 
 Of twenty-five years' trouble, sits and sways. 
 One brilliance and one balsam, —sways and 
 
 sits 
 Monarch of Hellas ! ay, and, sage agam. 
 No longer jeopardizes chieftainship, 
 No longer loves the brutish demagogue 
 Appointed by a bestial multitude. 
 But seeks out sound advisers. Who are they ? 
 Ourselves, of parentage proved wise and good ! 
 To such may hap strains thwarting quality, 
 (As where shall want its flaw mere human 
 
 stuff?) 
 Still, the right grain is proper to right race ; 
 What 's contrary, call curious accident ! 
 Hold by the usual ! Orchard-grafted tree. 
 Not wilding, racehorse-sired, not rouncey-bom, 
 Aristocrat, no sausage-selling snob ! 
 Nay, why not Alkibiades, come back 
 Filled by the Genius, freed of petulance, 
 Frailty, — mere youthf ulness that 's all at 
 
 fault, — 
 Advanced to Perikles and something more ? 
 — Being at least our duly bom and bred, — 
 Curse on what chaunoprockt first gained his 
 
 ear 
 And got his . . . well, once true man in right 
 
 place, 
 Our commonalty soon content themselves 
 With doing just what they are born to do. 
 Eat, drink, make merry, mind their own affairs 
 And leave state-business to the larger brain ! 
 I do not stickle for their punishment ; 
 But certain culprits have a cloak to twitch, 
 A purse to pay the piper ; flog, say I, 
 Your fine fantastics, paragons of parts. 
 Who choose to play the important ! Far from 
 
 side 
 With us, their natural supports, allies, — 
 And, best by brain, help who are best by birth 
 To fortify each weak point in the wall 
 Built broad and wide and deep for permanence 
 Between what's high and low, what's rare 
 
 and vile, — 
 They cast their lot perversely in with low 
 And vile, lay flat the bai-rier, lift the mob 
 To dizzy heights where Privilege stood fiim. 
 And then, simplicity become conceit, — 
 Woman, slave, common soldier, artisan. 
 Crazy with new - found worth, new - fangled 
 
 claims, — 
 These must be taught next how to use their 
 
 heads 
 And hands in driving man's right to mob's 
 
 rule! 
 What fellows thus inflame the multitude ? 
 Your Sokrates, still crying ' Understand ! ' 
 Your AristuUos, — ' Argue ! ' Last and worst, 
 Should, by good fortune, mob still hesitate. 
 Remember there 's degree in heaven and earth, 
 Cry * Aischulos enjoined us fear the gods. 
 And Sophokles advised respect the kings ! ' 
 Why, your Euripides informs them — Gods ? 
 They are not ! Kings ? They are, but . . . 
 
 do not I, 
 In 'Suppliants,' make my Theseus, — yours, 
 
 no more, — 
 
THE LAST ADVENTURE OF BALAUSTION 
 
 6si 
 
 Fire up at insult of who styles him King ? 
 Play oS that Herald, I despise the most, 
 As patronizing kings' prerogative 
 Against a Theseus proud to dare no step 
 Tm lie consult the people ? 
 
 "Such as these — 
 Ah, you expect I am for strangling straight ? 
 Nowise, Balaostion 1 All my roundabout 
 Ends at beginning, with my own defence ! 
 1 dose each culprit just with — Comedy. 
 Let each be doctored in exact the mode 
 Himself prescribes: by words, the word-mon- 
 ger — 
 My words to his words, — my lies, if you like. 
 To his lies. Sokrates I nickname thief, 
 Qua«k, necromancer ; Aristullos, — say, 
 Male Kirk^ who bewitches and bewrays 
 And changes folk to swine ; Euripides, — 
 Well, I acknowledge ! Every word is false, 
 Looked close at ; but stand distant and stare 
 
 through. 
 All 's absolute indubitable truth 
 Behind lies, truth which only lies declare ! 
 For come, concede me truth's in thing not 
 
 word. 
 Meaning not manner ! Love smiles ' rogue ' 
 
 and ■ wretch ' 
 When 'sweet' and 'dear' seem vapid; Hate 
 
 adopts 
 Love's 'sweet' and 'dear,' when 'rogue' and 
 
 ' wretch ' fall flat ; 
 Love, Hate,-- are truths, then, each, in sense 
 
 not sound. 
 Further : if Love, remaining Love, fell back 
 On ' sweet ' and ' dear,' — if Hate, though 
 
 Hate the same. 
 Dropped down to ' rogue ' and ' wretch,' — each 
 
 phrase were false. 
 Good ! and now grant I hate no matter whom 
 With reason : I must therefore fight my foe. 
 Finish the mischief which made enmity. 
 How ? By employing means to most hurt him 
 Who much harmed me. What way did he do 
 harm ? o . t_ 
 
 Through word or deed ? Through word ? with 
 
 word, wa^e war ! 
 Word with myself directly ? As direct 
 Reply shall follow : word to you, the wise, 
 Whence indirectly came the harm to me ? 
 What wisdom I can muster waits on such ! 
 Word to the populace which, misconceived 
 By ignorance and incapacity, 
 Ends in no such effect as follows cause 
 When I, or you the wise, are reasoned with, 
 So damages what I and you hold dear ? 
 In that event, I ply the populate 
 With just such word as leavens their whole 
 
 lump 
 
 They 
 
 To the right ferment for my purpose. 
 
 Arbitrate properly between us both ? 
 
 They weigh my answer with his argument. 
 
 Match quip with quibble, wit with eloquence ? 
 
 All they attain to understand is — blank 1 
 
 Two adversaries differ ; which is right 
 
 And which is wrong, none takes on him to say. 
 
 Since both are unintelligible. Pooh ! 
 
 Swear my foe's mother vended herbs she stole, 
 
 They fall arlaughing ! Add, — his household 
 
 drudge 
 Of all-work justifies that office well, 
 Kisses the wife, composing him the play, — 
 They grin at whom tney gaped in wonderment, 
 And go off — ' Was he such a sorry scrub ? 
 This other seems to know 1 we praised too 
 
 fasti' 
 When then, my lies have done the work of 
 
 truth. 
 Since 'scrub,' improper designation, means 
 Exactly what the proper argument 
 — Had such been comprehensible — proposed 
 To proper audience — were I graced with 
 
 such — 
 Would properly result in ; so your friend 
 Gets an impartial verdict on his verse, 
 ' The tongue swears, but the soul remains un- 
 sworn ! ' 
 
 " There, my Balaustion ! All is summed and 
 
 said. 
 No other cause of quarrel with yourself ! 
 Euripides and Aristophanes 
 Differ : he needs must round our difference 
 Into the mob's ear ; with the mob I plead. 
 You angrily start forward ' This to me ? ' 
 No speck of this on you the thrice refined ! 
 Could parley be restricted to us two. 
 My first of duties were to clear up doubt 
 As to our true divergence each from each. 
 Does my opinion so diverge from yours ? 
 Probably less than little — not at all ! 
 To know a matter, for my very self 
 And intimates — that's one thing : to imply 
 By ' knowledge ' — loosing whatsoe'er I know 
 Among the vulgar who, by mere mistake. 
 May brain themselves and mo in conse- 
 quence, — 
 That 's quite another. ' the daring flight ! 
 This only bard maintains the exalted brow. 
 Nor grovels in the slime nor fears the gods ! ' 
 Did 2 fear — I play superstitious fool. 
 Who, with the due proviso, introduced. 
 Active and passive, their whole company 
 As creatures too absurd for scorn itself f 
 Zeus ? I have styled him — ' slave, mer^, 
 
 thrashing-block ! ' 
 I '11 tell you : in my very next of plays. 
 At Bacchos' feast, in Bacehos' honor, fuU 
 In front of Bacchos' representative. 
 I mean to make main-actor — Bacchos' self ! 
 Forth shall he strut, apparent, first to last, 
 A blockhead, coward, braggart, liar, thief, 
 Demonstrated all these by his own mere 
 Xanthias the man-slave : such man shows sucl 
 
 Shamed to brute-beastship by comparison ! 
 And when ears have their fill of his abuse, 
 And eyes are sated with his pummelling, — 
 My Chores taking care, by, all the while 
 Singing his glory, that men recognize 
 A god in the abused and pummelled beast, — 
 Then, should one ear be stopped of auditor, 
 Should one spectator shut revolted eye, — 
 Why, the Priest's self will first raise outraged 
 
 voice : 
 ' Back, thou barbarian, thou ineptitude ) 
 
6s 2 
 
 ARISTOPHANES' APOLOGY 
 
 Does not most license hallow best our day, 
 And least decorum prove its strictest rite ? 
 kince Bacchos bids his followers ^lay the fool, 
 And there 's no fooling like a majesty 
 Mocked at, — who mocks the god, obeys the 
 
 law — 
 Law which, impute but indiscretion to, 
 And . . . why, the spirit of Euripides 
 Is evidently active in the world ! ' 
 Do I stop here ? No ! feat of flightier force ! 
 See Hermes ! what commotion raged, — re- 
 flect ! — 
 When imaged god alone got injury 
 By drunkards' frolic ! How Athenai stared 
 Aghast, then fell to frenzy, fit on fit, — 
 Ever the last, the longest ! At this hour. 
 The craze abates a little : so, my Play 
 Shall have up Hermes : and a Karion, slave, 
 (Since there 's no getting lower) calls our friend 
 The profitable god, we honor so. 
 Whatever contumely fouls the mouth — 
 Bids him go earn more honest livelihood 
 By washing tripe in well -trough — wash he 
 
 does. 
 Duly obedient ! Have I dared my best ? 
 Asklepios, answer ! — deity in vogue. 
 Who visits Sophokles familiarly. 
 If you believe the old man, — at his age, 
 Living is dreaming, and strange guests haunt 
 
 door 
 Of house, belike, peep through and tap at 
 
 times 
 When a friend yawns there, waiting to be 
 
 fetched, — 
 At any rate, to memorize the fact. 
 He has spent money, set an altar up 
 In the god's temple, now in much repute. 
 That temple-service trust me to describe — 
 Cheaters and choused, the god, his brace of 
 
 girls, 
 Their snake, and how they manage to snap 
 
 gifts 
 ' And consecrate the same into a bag,' 
 For whimsies done away with in the dark I 
 As if, a stone's throw from that theatre 
 Whereon I thus unmask their dupery. 
 The thing were not religious and august I 
 
 " Of Sophokles himself — nor word nor sign 
 Beyond a harmless parody or so ! 
 He founds no anti-school, upsets no faith, 
 But, living, lets live, the good easy soul 
 Who, — if he saves his cash, unpoetlike. 
 Loves wine and — never mind what other 
 
 sport. 
 Boasts for his father just a swordblade-smith, 
 Proves but queer captain when the people 
 
 claim, 
 For one who conquered with ' Antigone,' 
 The right to undertake a squadron's charge, — 
 And needs the son's help now to finish plays. 
 Seeing his dotage calls for governance 
 And lophon to share his property, — 
 Why, of all this, reported true, I breathe 
 Not one word — true or false, I like the man I 
 Sophokles lives and lets live : long live he I 
 Otherwise, — sharp the scourge and hard the 
 
 blow I ' 
 
 "And what's my teaching but — accept the 
 
 old, ^ , 
 
 Contest the strange ! acknowledge work that 's 
 
 done, 
 Misdoubt men who have still their work to do I 
 Keligions. laws and customs, poetries. 
 Are old ? So much achieved victorious truth ' 
 Each work was product of a lifetime, wrung 
 From each man by an adverse world ; for why ? 
 He worked, destroying other older work 
 Which the world loved and so was loth to lose. 
 Whom the world beat in battle — dust and ash I 
 Who beat the world, left work in evidence, 
 And wears its crown till new men live new 
 
 lives. 
 And fight new fights, and triumph in their 
 
 turn. 
 I mean to show you on the stage ! you '11 see 
 My Just Judge only venture to decide 
 Between two suitors, which is god, which man, 
 By thrashing both bf them as flesh can bear. 
 You shall agree, — whichever beUows first, 
 He 's human ; who holds longest out, divine : 
 That is the only equitable test ! 
 Cruelty ? Pray, who pricked them on to court 
 My thong's award? Must they needs domi- 
 nate ? 
 Then I — rebel ! Their instinct grasps the 
 
 new ? 
 Mine bids retain the old : a fight must be. 
 And which is stronger the event will show. 
 Oh, but the pain ! Your proved divinity 
 Still smarts aU reddened ? And the rightlier 
 
 served ! 
 Was not some man's-flesh in him, after all ? 
 Do let us lack no frank acknowledgment 
 There 's nature common to both gods and men ! 
 All of them -^ spirit '/ What so winced was 
 
 clay ! 
 Away pretence to some exclusive sphere 
 Cloud-nourishing a sole selected few 
 Fume-fed with self-superiority ! 
 I stand up for the common coarae-as-clay 
 Existence, — stamp and ramp with heel and 
 
 hoof 
 On solid vulgar life, you fools disown ! 
 Mi^e haste from your unreal eminence. 
 And measure lengths with me upon that ground 
 Whence this mud-pellet sings and summons 
 
 you! 
 I know the soul, too, how the spark ascends 
 And how it drops apace and dies away. 
 I am your poet-peer, man thrice your match ! 
 I too can lead an airy life when dead. 
 Fly like Kinesias when I 'm cloud-ward bound ; 
 But here, no death shall mix with life it mai's ! 
 
 " So, my old enemy who caused the fight, 
 Own I have beaten you, Euripides ! 
 Or, — if yonr advocate would contravene, — 
 Help him, Balanstion ! Use the rosy strength ! 
 I have not done my utmost, — treated you 
 As I might Aristullos, mint-perfumed, — 
 Still, let the whole rage burst in brave attack ( 
 Don't pay the poor ambiguous compliment 
 Of fearing any pearl-white knuckled fist 
 Will damage this broad buttress of a brow ! 
 Fancy yourself my Aristonnmos, 
 
THE LAST ADVENTURE OF BALAUSTION 
 
 653 
 
 Ameipsias or Sannurion ; punch and pound ! 
 Three cuckoos who cry ' cuckoo ' 1 much 
 
 care! 
 They boil a stone ! NMaretai ! Battel ! " 
 
 Cannot your task have end here, Euthukles ? 
 Day by day glides our galley on its path : 
 iStiU sunrise and still sunset, Rhodes half- 
 reached, 
 And still, my patient scribe ! no sunset's peace 
 Descends more punctual than that brow's in- 
 cline 
 O'er tablets which your serviceable hand 
 Prepares to trace. Why treasure up, foi'sooth, 
 These relics of a night that make me rich. 
 But, half-remeinbered merely, leave so poor 
 Each stranger to Athenai and her past ? 
 For — how remembered I As some greedy hind 
 Persuades a honeycomb, beyond the due. 
 To yield its hoarding, — heedless what alloy 
 Of the poor bee's own substance taints the gold 
 Which, unforced, yields few drops, but pur- 
 
 So would you fa,in relieve of load this brain, 
 Though the hived thoughts must bring away, 
 
 with strength. 
 What words and weakness, strength's receptar 
 
 cle — 
 Wax from the store ! Yet, — aching soothed 
 
 away, — 
 Accept the compound ! No suspected scent 
 But proves some rose was riued, though its 
 
 ghost 
 Scarce lingers with what promised musk and 
 
 myrrh. 
 No need of farther squeezing ! What remains 
 Can only be Balaustion, just her speech ! 
 
 Ah, but — because 
 still ! — 
 
 speech serves a purpose 
 
 He ended with that flourish. I replied : 
 
 " Fancy myself your Aristonumos ? 
 Advise me, rather, to remain myself, 
 Balaustion, — mindful what mere mouse con- 
 fronts 
 The f OTKst-monarch Ajistophanes ! 
 I who, a woman, claim no quality 
 Beside the love of all things lovable 
 Created by a pow«r pre-eminent 
 In knowledge, as in love I stand perchance, 
 — You, the consummately-creative ! How 
 Should I, then, dare deny submissive trust 
 To any process aiming at result 
 Such as you say your songs are pregnant with ? 
 Result, all judge : means, let none scrutinize 
 Save those aware how glory best is gained 
 By daring means to end, ashamed of shame, 
 Constant in faith that only good works good, 
 While evil yields no fruit but impotence ! 
 Graced with such plain good, I accept the 
 
 means ! 
 Nay, if result itself in turn become 
 Means, — who shall say ? — to ends still loftier 
 yet, — 
 
 Though still the good prove hard to under- 
 stand. 
 The bad still seemingly predominate, — ■ 
 Never may I forget which order bears 
 The burden, toils to win the great reward, 
 And finds, in failure, the grave punishment. 
 So, meantime, claims of me a faith I yield ! 
 Moreover, a mere woman, I recoil 
 From what may prove man's-work permissi- 
 ble. 
 Imperative. Rough strokes surprise : what 
 
 then? 
 Some lusty armsweep needs must cause the 
 
 crash 
 Of lyhom and bramble, ere those shrubs, those 
 
 flowers. 
 We fain would have earth yield exclusively, 
 Are sown, matured and garlanded for boys 
 And girls, who know not how the growth was 
 
 gained. 
 Finally, am I not a foreigner ? 
 No born and bred Athenian, — isled about, 
 I scarce can drink, like you, at every breath. 
 Just some particular doctrine which may best 
 Explain the strange thing I revolt against — 
 How — by involvement, who may extricate ? — 
 Religion perks up through impiety. 
 Law leers with license, folly wise-like frowns. 
 The seemly lurks inside the abominable. 
 But opposites, — each neutralizes each 
 Haply by mixture ; what should promise death, 
 May haply give the good ingredient force, 
 Disperse in fume the antagonistic ill. 
 This institution, therefore, — Comedy, — 
 By origin, a rite ; by exercise. 
 Proved an achievement tasking poet's power 
 To utmost, eking legislation out 
 Beyond the legislator's faculty. 
 Playing the censor where the moralist 
 Declines his function, far too dignified 
 For dealing with minute absurdities ; 
 By efficacy, — virtue's guard, the scourge 
 Of vice, each folly's fly-flap, arm in aid 
 Of all that 's righteous, customary, sound 
 And wholesome ; sanctioned therefore, — better 
 
 say. 
 Prescribed for fit acceptance of this age 
 By, not alone the long recorded roll 
 Of earlier triumphs, but, success to-day — 
 (The multitude as prompt recipient still 
 Of good gay teaching from that monitor 
 They crowned this morning — Aristophanes — 
 As when Sousarion's car first traversed street) — 
 This product of Athenai — I dispute. 
 Impugn ? There 's just one only circumstance 
 Explains that ! I, poor critic, see, hear, feel ; 
 But eyes, ears, senses prove me — foreigner! 
 Who shall gainsay that the raw new-come guest 
 Blames oft, too sensitive ? On every side 
 Of — larger than your stage — life's spectacle. 
 Convention here permits and there forbids 
 Impulse and action, nor alleges more 
 Than some mysterious ' So do all, and so 
 Does no one : ' which the hasty stranger blames 
 Because, who bends the head unquestioning. 
 Transgresses, turns to wrong what else were 
 
 right. 
 By failure of a reference to law 
 
654 
 
 ARISTOPHANES' APOLOGY 
 
 Beyond convention ; blames unjustly, too — 
 As if, through that defect, all gained were lost 
 And slave-brand set on brow indelibly ; — 
 Blames unobservant or experienceless 
 That men, like trees, if stout and sound and 
 
 sane, 
 Show stem no more affected at the root 
 By bough's exceptional submissive dip 
 Of leaf and bell, light danced at end of spray 
 To windy fitfulness in wayward sport, — 
 No more lie prostrate, — than low files of flower 
 Which, when the blast goes by, unruffled raise 
 Each head again o'er ruder meadow-wreck 
 Of thorn and thistle that refractory 
 Demurred to cower at passing wind's caprice. 
 Why shall not guest extend like charity, 
 Conceive how, — even when astounded most 
 That natives seem to acquiesce in muck 
 Changed by prescription, they affirm, to gold, — 
 Such may still bring to test, still bear away 
 Safely and surely much of good and true 
 Though latent ore, themselves unspecked, un- 
 spoiled ? 
 Fresh bathed i' the icebrook, any hand may pass 
 A placid moment through the lamp's fierce 
 
 fiame : 
 And who has read your * Lemnians,' seen ' The 
 
 Hours,' 
 Heard ' Female-Playhouse-seat-Preoccupants,' 
 May feel no worse effect than, once a year. 
 Those who leave decent vesture, dress in rags 
 And play the mendicant, conform thereby 
 To country's rite, and then, no beggar-taint 
 Retained, don vesture due next morrow-day. 
 What if I share the stranger's weakness then ? 
 Well, could I also show his strength, his sense 
 Untutored, ay ! — but then untampered with ! 
 
 " I fancy, though the world seems old enough, 
 Though Hellas be the sole unbarbarous land. 
 Years may conduct to such extreme of age, 
 And outside Hellas so isles new may lurk. 
 That haply, — when and where remain a 
 
 dream ! — 
 In fresh days when no Hellas fills the world. 
 In novel lands as strange where, all the same. 
 Their men and women yet behold, as we. 
 Blue heaven, black earth, and love, hate, hope 
 
 and fear. 
 Over again, unhelped by Attik^ — 
 Haply some philanthropic god steers bark, 
 Gift-laden, to the lonely ignorance 
 Islanded, say, where mist and snow mass hard 
 To metal — ay, those Kassiterides I 
 Then asks : ' Ye apprehend the human form. 
 What of this statue, made to Pheidias' mind. 
 Phis picture, as it pleased our Zeuxis paint ? 
 Ye too feel truth, love beauty : judge of these ! ' 
 S-ch strangers may judge feebly, stranger-like : 
 ' Each hair too indistinct — for, see our own ! 
 Hands, not skin-eolored as these hands we have. 
 And lo, the want of due decorum here ! 
 A citizen, arrayed in civic garb. 
 Just as he walked your streets apparently. 
 Yet wears no sword by side, adventures ttos. 
 In thronged Athenai ! foolish painter's-freak t 
 While here 's his brother-scnlptor found at fault 
 Still more egregiously, who shames the world. 
 
 Shows wrestler, wrestling at the public games, 
 Atrociously exposed from head to foot 1 
 Sure, the Immortal would impart at once 
 Our slow-stored knowledge, how small truths 
 
 suppressed 
 Conduce to the far greater truth's display, — 
 Would replace simple by instructed sense. 
 And teach them how Athenai first so tamed 
 The natural fierceness that her progeny 
 Discarded arms nor feared the beast in man : 
 Wherefore at games, where earth's wise grati- 
 tude. 
 Proved by responsive culture, claimed the prize 
 For man's mind, body, ea«h in excellence, — 
 W^hen mind had bared itself, came body's turn. 
 And only irreligion grudged the gods 
 One naked glory of their master-work 
 Where all is glorious rightly understood, — 
 The human frame ; enough that man mistakes : 
 Let him not think the gods mistaken too I 
 
 " But, peradventure, if the stranger's eye 
 Detected . . . Ah, too high my fancy-flight 1 
 Pheidias, forgive, and Zeuxis bear with me — 
 How on your faultless should I fasten fault 
 Of my own framing, even ? Only say, — 
 Suppose the impossible were realized. 
 And some as patent incongruity. 
 Unseemliness, — of no more warrant, there 
 And then, than now and here, whate'er the time 
 And place, — I say, the Immoi-tal, — who can 
 
 doubt? — 
 Would never shrink, but own, ' The blot escaped 
 Oui artist : thus he shows humanity ! ' 
 
 '* May stranger tax one peccant part in thee, 
 Poet, three-parts divine ! May I proceed ? 
 
 " ' Comedy is prescription and a rite.' 
 
 Since when ? No growth of the blind antique 
 
 time, 
 ' It rose in Attik^ with liberty ; 
 When freedom falls, it too will fall.' Scarce so ! 
 Your games, — the O'umpian, Zeus gave birth 
 
 to these ; 
 Your Puthian, — these were Phoibos' institute. 
 Isthmian, Nemeian, — Theseus, Herakles 
 Appointed each, the boys and barbers say ! 
 Earth's day is growing late : where 's Comedy ? 
 ' Oh, that commenced an age since, — two, be- 
 like,— 
 In Megara, whence here they brought the thing ! ' 
 Or I misunderstand, or here 's the fact — 
 Your grandsire could recall that rustic song, 
 How such-an-one was thief, and miser such, 
 And how, — immunity from chastisement 
 Once promised to bold singers of the same 
 By daylight on the drunkard's holiday, — 
 The clever fellow of the joyous troop 
 Tried acting what before he sang about. 
 Acted and stole, or hoarded, acting too : 
 While his companions ranged a-row, closed up 
 For Choros, — bade the general rabblement 
 Sit, see, hear, laugh, — not join the dance them- 
 selves. 
 Soon, the same clever fellow found a mate. 
 And these two did the whole stage-mimicking, 
 Still closer in approach to Tragedy, — 
 
THE LAST ADVENTURE OF BALAUSTION 
 
 655 
 
 So led the "way to Aristophanes, 
 
 Whose grandsire saw Sonsarion, and whose 
 
 sire — 
 Chionides ; yourself wrote ' Banqueters ' 
 When Aisohulos had made ' Prometheus,' nay, 
 All of the marvels : Sophokles, — I '11 cite, 
 ' Oidipous ' — and Euripides — I bend 
 The nead — ' Medeia ' henceforth awed the 
 
 world ! 
 ' Banqueters,' ' Bahylonians ' — next come you 1 
 Surely the great days that left Hellas free 
 Happened before such advent of huge help, 
 Eighty-years-late assistance ? Marathon, 
 Plataia, Salamis were fought, 1 think. 
 Before new educators stood reproved, 
 Or foreign legates blushed, excepted to ! 
 Where did the helpful rite pretend its rise ? 
 Did it break forth, as gifts divine are wont, 
 Plainly authentic, incontestably 
 Adequate to the helpful ordinance ? 
 Founts, dowered with virtue, pulse out pure 
 
 from source ; 
 'T is there we taste the god's benign intent : 
 Not when, — fatigued away by journey, foul 
 With brutish trampling, — crystal sinks to slime. 
 And lymph forgets the first salubriousness. 
 Sprang Comedy to light thus crystal-pure ? 
 ' Nowise ! ' yourself protest with vehemence ; 
 ' Gross, bestial, did the clowns' diversion break ; 
 Every successor paddled in the slush ; 
 Nay, my contemporaries one and all 
 Gay played the ruudlark till I joined their game ; 
 Then was I first to change buSoonery 
 For wit, and stupid filth for cleanly sense. 
 Transforming pointless joke to purpose fine. 
 Transfusing rude enforcement of home-law — 
 "Drop knave's-tricks, deal more neighbor-like, 
 
 ye boors ! " — 
 With such new glory of poetic breath 
 As, lifting application far past use 
 0' the present, launched it o'er men's lowly 
 
 heads 
 To future time, when high and low alike 
 Are dead and done with, while my airy power 
 Fhes disengaged, as vapor from what stuff 
 It — say not, dwelt in — fitlier, dallied with 
 To forward work, which done, — deliverance 
 
 brave, — 
 It soars away, and mud subsides to dust. 
 Say then, myself invented Comedy ! ' 
 
 " So mouths full many a famed Parabasis ! 
 Agreed ! No more, then, of prescriptive use, 
 Authorization by antiquity. 
 For what offends our judgment ! 'T is your 
 
 work. 
 Performed your way : not work delivered you 
 Intact, intact producible in turn. 
 Everywhere have you altered old to new — 
 Your will, your warrant : therefore, work must 
 
 stand 
 Or stumble by intrinsic worth. What worth? 
 Its aim and object ! Peace you advocate. 
 And war would fain abolish from the land : 
 Support religion, lash irreverence. 
 Yet laughingly administer rebuke 
 To superstitious folly, — equal fault ! 
 While innovating rashness, lust of change, 
 
 New laws, new habits, manners, men and 
 
 things. 
 Make your main quarry, — ' oldest ' meaning 
 
 'best.' 
 You check the fretful litigation-itch. 
 Withstand mob-rule, expose mob-flattery, 
 Punish mob-favorites ; most of all press hard 
 On sophists who assist the demagogue. 
 And poets their accomplices in crime. 
 Such your main quarry, — by the way, you 
 
 strike 
 Ignobler game, mere miscreants, snob or scamp. 
 Cowardly, gluttonous, effeminate : 
 Still with a bolt to spare when dramatist 
 Proves haply unproflcient in his art. 
 Such aims — alone, no matter for the means — 
 Declare the unexampled excellence 
 Of their first author — Aristophanes ! 
 
 " Whereat — Euripides, oh, not thyself — 
 Augustlier than the need ! — thy century 
 Of subjects dreamed and dared and done, be- 
 fore 
 ' Banqueters ' gave dark earth enlightenment. 
 Or ' Babylonians ' played Prometheus here, — 
 These let me summon to defend thy cause ! 
 Lo, as indignantly took life and shape 
 Labor by labor, all of Herakles, — 
 Palpably fronting some o'erbold pretence 
 'Eurustheus slew the monsters, purged the 
 
 world ! ' 
 So shall each poem pass you and imprint 
 Shame on the strange assurance. You praised 
 
 Peace ? 
 Sing him full-face, Kresphontes ! ' Peace ' the 
 
 theme ? 
 ' Peace, in whom depths of wealth lie, — of the 
 
 blest 
 Immortals beauteousest, — 
 Come ! for the heart within me dies away, 
 So long dost thou delay ! 
 Oh, I have feared lest old age, much annoy. 
 Conquer me, quite outstrip the tardy joy, 
 Thy gracious triumph-season I would see. 
 The song, the dance, the sport, profuse of 
 
 crowns to be. 
 But come ! for my sake, goddess great and dear, 
 Come to the city here ! 
 
 Hateful Sedition drive thou from our homes, 
 With Her who madly roams 
 Rejoicing in the steel against the life 
 That 's whetted — banish Strife ! ' 
 
 " Shall I proceed ? No need of next and next ! 
 That were too easy, play so presses play. 
 Trooping tumultuous, each with instance apt, 
 Each eager to confute the idle boast ! 
 What virtue but stands forth panegyrized, 
 What vice, unbnmed by stigma, in the books 
 Which bettered Hellas, — beyond graven gold 
 Or gem-indenture, sung by Phoibos' self 
 And saved in Kunthia's mountain treasure- 
 house — 
 Ere you, man, moralist, were youth or boy ? 
 — Not praise which, in the proffer, mocks the 
 
 praised 
 By sly admixture of the blameworthy 
 And enforced coupling of base fellowship, — 
 
6s6 
 
 ARISTOPHANES' APOLOGY 
 
 Not Wame which gloats the while it frowning 
 
 laughs, 
 ' Allow one glance on horrors — laughable ! ' — 
 This man's entire of heart and soul, discharged 
 Its love or hate, each unalloyed by each, 
 On objects worthy either ; earnestness, 
 Attribute him, and power ! but novelty ? 
 Nor his nor yours a doctrine — all the world's 1 
 What man of full-grown sense and sanity 
 Holds other than the truth, — wide Hellas 
 
 through, — 
 Though truth he acts discredit truth he holds ? 
 What imbecile has dared to formulate 
 ' Love war, hate peace, become a litigant ! ' — 
 And so preach on, reverse each rule of right 
 Because he quarrels, combats, goes to law ? 
 No, for his comment runs, with smile or sigh 
 According to heart's temper, ' Peace were best, 
 Except occasions when we put aside 
 Peace, and bid all the blessings in her gift 
 Quick join the crows, for sake of Marathon ! ' 
 
 *' ' Nay,' you reply ; for one, whose mind with- 
 stands 
 His heart, and, loving peace, for conscience' 
 
 sake 
 Wants war, — you find a crowd of hypocrites 
 Whose conscience means ambition, grudge and 
 
 greed. 
 On such, reproof, sonorous doctrine, melts 
 Distilled like universal but thin dew 
 Which all too sparsely covers country : dear. 
 No doubt, to universal crop and clown. 
 Still, each bedewed keeps his own head-gear 
 
 dry 
 With upthrust skiadeion, shakes adroit 
 The droppings to his neighbor. No ! collect 
 All of the moisture, leave unhurt the heads 
 Which nowise need a washing, save and store 
 And dash the whole condensed to one fierce 
 
 spout 
 On some one evil-doer, sheltered close, — 
 The fool supposed, — till you beat guard away, 
 And showed your audience, not that war was 
 
 wrong. 
 But Lamachos absurd, — case, crests and all, — 
 Not that democracy was blind of choice. 
 But Kleon and Huperbolos were shams : 
 Not superstition vile, but Nikias crazed, — 
 The concrete for the abstract ; that 's the way ! 
 What matters Chores crying ' Hence, impure ! ' 
 You cried ' Ariphrades does thus and thus ! ' 
 Now, earnestness seems never earnest more 
 Than when it dons for garb — indifference ; 
 So, there 's much laughing : but, compensative. 
 When frowning follows laughter, then indeed 
 Scout innuendo, sarcasm, irony ! — 
 Wit's polished warfare glancing at first graze 
 From off hard headpiece, coarsely-coated brain 
 0' the commonalty — whom, unless you prick 
 To purpose, what avails that finer pates 
 Succumb to simple scratching ? Those — not 
 
 these — 
 'T is Multitude, which, moved, fines Lamachos, 
 Banishes Kleon and burns Sokrates, 
 House over head, or, better, poisons him. 
 Therefore in dealing with King Multitude, 
 Club-drub the callous numskulls 1 In and in 
 
 Beat this essential consequential fact 
 
 That here they have a hater of the three. 
 
 Who hates in word, phrase, nickname, epithet 
 
 And illustration, beyond doubt at all ! 
 
 And similarly, would you win assent 
 
 To — Peace, suppose? You tickle the tough 
 
 hide 
 With good plain pleasure her concomitant — 
 And, past mistake again, exhibit Peace — 
 Peace, vintager and festive, cheesecake-time, 
 Hare-slice-and-peasoup-seaaon, household-joy ; 
 Theoria's beautiful belongings match 
 Opera's lavish condescendings : brief, 
 Smce here the people are to judge, you press 
 Such argument as people understand : 
 If with exaggeration — what care you ? 
 
 " Have I misunderstood you in the main ? 
 No ! then must answer be, such argument. 
 Such policy, no matter what good love 
 Or hate it help, in practice proves absurd, 
 Useless and null : henceforward intercepts 
 Sober effective blow at what you blame, 
 And renders nugatory rightful praise 
 Of thing or person. The coarse brush has 
 
 daubed — 
 What room for the finer limner's pencil-mark ? 
 Blame ? You curse, rather, till who blames 
 
 must blush — 
 Lean to apology or praise, more like ! 
 Does garment, simpered o'er as white, prove 
 
 gray? 
 ' Black, blackerthan Achamian charcoal, black 
 Beyond Kimmerian, Stugian blackness black,' 
 You bawl, till men sigh nearer snowiness ! ' 
 What follows ? What one faint-rewarding fall 
 Of foe belabored ne'er so lustily ? 
 Laugh Lamachos from out the people's heart ? 
 He died, commanding, ' hero,' say yourself ! 
 Gibe Nikias into privacy ? — nay, shaJke 
 Kleon a little from his arrogance 
 By cutting him to shoe-sole-shreds ? I think, 
 He ruled his life long, and, when time was ripe, 
 Died fighting for amusement, — good tongh 
 
 hide ! 
 Sokrates still goes up and down the streets, 
 And AristuUos puts his speech in book. 
 When both should be aboUshed long ago. 
 Nay, wretchedest of rags, Ariphrades — 
 You have been fouling that redoubtable 
 Harp-player, twenty years, with what effect ? 
 Still he stnims on, strums ever cheerily. 
 And earns his wage, — ' Who minds a joke ? ' 
 
 men say. 
 No, friend! The statues stand — mud-stained 
 
 at most — 
 Titan or pygmy : what achieves their fall 
 Win be, long after mud is flung and spent. 
 Some clear thin spirit-thrust of lightning — 
 
 truth 1 
 
 " Your praise, then — honey-smearing helps 
 
 your friend. 
 More than blame's ordure-smirch hurts foe, 
 
 perhaps ? 
 Peace, now, misunderstood, ne'er prized 
 
 enough, 
 You have interpreted to ignorance 
 
THE LAST ADVENTURE OF BALAUSTION 
 
 6s7 
 
 TiU ignorance opes eye, bat-blind before, 
 
 And tjr tiie first time knows Peace means the 
 
 power 
 On maw of pancake, cheese-cake, barley-cake. 
 No stop nor stint to stutHng, While, in camp, 
 Who iiglits chews rancid tunny, onions raw. 
 Peace sits at cosy feast with lamp and fire. 
 Complaisant smooth-sleeked flute-g^irls giggling 
 
 gay. 
 How thick and fast the snow falls, freezing War 
 Who shrugs, campaigns it, and may break a 
 
 shin 
 Or twist an ankle ! come, who hesitates 
 To give Pea^e, over War, the preference ? 
 Ah, friend — had this indubitable fa«t 
 Haply occurred to poor Leonidaa, 
 How had he turned tail on Thermopulai I 
 It cannot be that even his few wits 
 Were addled to the point that, so advised. 
 Preposterous he had answered — ' Cakes are 
 
 prime. 
 Hearth-sides are snug, sleek dancing-girls have 
 
 worth. 
 And yet — for country's sake, to save our gods 
 Their temples, save our ancestors their tombs. 
 Save wife and child and home and liberty, — 
 I would chew sliced salt-fish, bear snow — nay, 
 
 starve, 
 If need were, — and by much prefer the 
 
 choice ! ' 
 Why, friend, your genuine hero, all the while. 
 Has been — who served precisely for your butt — 
 Kleonumos that, wise, cast shield away 
 On battle-ground ; cried ' Cake my buckler be. 
 Embossed with cream-clot 1 peace, not war, I 
 
 choose. 
 Holding with Dikaiopolis I ' Comedy 
 Shall triumph, Dikaiopolis win assent. 
 When Hiltiades shall next shirk Marathon, 
 Themistokles swap Salaniis for — cake, 
 And Kimon grunt ' Peace, grant me daiieing- 
 
 girls! ' 
 But sooner, hardly I twenty-five years since, 
 Tlie war began, — such pleas for Peace have 
 
 reached 
 A reasonable age. The end shows all ! 
 And so with all the rest you advocate ! 
 * Wise folk leave litigation ! 'ware the wasps ! 
 Whoso loves law and lawyers, heliast-like, 
 Wants hemlock ! ' None shows that so funnily. 
 But, once cure madness, how comports himself 
 Your sane exemplar, what 's our gain thereby V 
 Philokleon turns Bdelukleon ! just this change, — 
 New saiuty gets straightway drunk as sow. 
 Cheats baker-wives, brawls, kicks, cuffs, curses 
 
 folk, 
 Parades a shameless flute-girl, bandies filth 
 With his own son who cured his father's cold 
 By making him catch fever — funnily ! 
 But as for curing love of lawsuits — laugh ! 
 
 " And how does new improve upon the old 
 
 — Your boast — in even abusing ? Rough, may 
 
 be — 
 Still, honest was the old mode. ' Call thief — 
 
 thief ! ' 
 But never call thief even — murderer I 
 Much less call fop and fribble, worse one whit 
 
 Than fribble and fop I Spare neither! beat 
 
 your brains 
 For adequate invective, — out the life 
 Clean out each quality, — but load your lash 
 With no least lie, or we pluck scourge from 
 
 hand 1 
 Does poet want a whipping, write bad veree, 
 Inculcate foul deeds ? There 's the fault to 
 
 flog! 
 You vow, ' The rascal cannot read nor write, 
 Spends more in buying fish than Morsimos, 
 Somebody helps his Muse and courts his wife, 
 His uncle deals in crockery, and last — 
 Himself 's a stranger ! ' That 's the cap and 
 
 crown 
 Of stinging-nettle, that 's the master-stroke 1 
 What poet-rival, — after ' housebreaker,' 
 'Fish-gorging,' 'midnight footpad,' and so 
 
 forth, — 
 Proves not, beside, " a stranger ' ? Chased from 
 
 charge 
 To charge, and, lie by lie, laughed out of 
 
 court, — 
 Lo, wit's sure refuge, satire's grand resource — 
 All, from Kratinos downward — ' strangers ' 
 
 they! 
 Pity the trick's too facile ! None so raw 
 Among your playmates but have caught the 
 
 ball 
 And sent it back as briskly to — yourself ! 
 You too, my Attic, are styled ' strainer ' — 
 
 Rhodes, 
 Aigina, Lindos or Kameiros, — nay, 
 'T was Egypt reared (if Eupolis be right) 
 Who wrote the comedy (Kratinos vows) 
 Kratinos helped a little ! Kleon's self 
 Was nigh promoted Comic, when he haled 
 My poet into court, and o'er the coals 
 Hauled and re-hauled ' the stranger, — insolentj 
 Who brought out plays, usurped our privilege ! 
 Why must you Comics one and all take stand 
 On lower ground than truth from first to last ? 
 Why all agree to let folk disbelieve. 
 So laughter but reward a funny lie ? 
 Repel such onslaughts — answer, sad and grave. 
 Your f ancy-fleerings — who would stoop so low T 
 Your own adherents whisper, — when disgust 
 Too menacingly thrills Logeion through 
 At — Perikles invents this present war 
 Because men robbed his mistress of three 
 
 maids — 
 Or — Sokrates wants burning, house o'er 
 
 head, — 
 ' What, so obtuse, not read between the lines ? 
 Our poet means no mischief ! All should 
 
 know — 
 Ribaldry here implies a compliment I 
 He deals with things, not men, — his men arf 
 
 things — 
 Each represents a class, plays figure-head 
 And names the ship : no meaner than the first 
 Would serve ; he styles a trireme " Sokrates "— 
 Fears " Sokrates " may prove unseaworthy, 
 (That 's merely — "Sophists are the bane c( 
 
 boys'') 
 Rat-riddled ("they are capable of theft") 
 Rotten or whatsoe'er shows ship-disease, ^ 
 (" They war with gods and worship whirligig.'' 
 
658 
 
 ARISTOPHANES' APOLOGY 
 
 You never took the joke for earnest ? scarce ' 
 Supposed mere figure-head meant entire ship, 
 And iljokrates — the whole fraternity ? ' 
 
 *' This then is Comedy, our sacred song. 
 Censor of vice, and virtue's guard as sure : 
 Manners-instructing, morals' stop-estray. 
 Which, born a twin with public liberty. 
 Thrives with its welfare, dwindles with its 
 
 wane ! 
 Liberty ? what so exquisitely framed 
 And fitted to suck dry its life of life 
 To last faint fibre ? — since that life is truth. 
 You who profess your indignation swells 
 At sophistry, when specious words confuse 
 Deeds right and wrong, distinct before, you 
 
 say — 
 (Though all that 's done is — dare veracity, 
 Show that the true conception of each deed 
 Afiirmed, in vulgar parlance, ' wrong ' or ' right,' 
 Proves to be neither, as the hasty hold, 
 But, change your side, shoots light, where dark 
 
 alone 
 Was apprehended by the vulgar sense) — 
 You who put sophistry to shame, and shout 
 
 * There 's but a single side to man and thing ; 
 A side so much more big than thing or man 
 Possibly can be, that — believe 't is true ? 
 Such were too marvellous simplicity ! ' — 
 Confess, those sophists whom yourself depict, 
 
 ( — Abide by your own painting !) what tliey 
 
 teach, 
 They wish at least their pupil to believe, 
 And, what believe, to practise ! Did you wish 
 Hellas should haste, as taught, with torch in 
 
 hand. 
 And fire the horrid Speculation-shop ? 
 Straight the shop's master rose and showed the 
 
 mob 
 What man was your so monstrous Sokrates ; 
 Himself received amusement, why not they ? 
 Just as did Kleon first play magistrate 
 And bid you put your birth in evidence — 
 Since no unbadged buffoon is licensed here 
 To shame us all when foreign guests may mock — 
 Then, — birth established, fooling licensed you, — 
 He, duty done, resumed mere auditor. 
 Laughed with the loudest at his Lamia-shape, 
 Kukloboros-roaring, and the camel-rest. 
 Nay, AristuUos, — once your volley spent 
 On the male-Kirk^ and her swinish crew, — 
 Platon, — so others call the youth we love, — 
 Sends your performance to the curious king — 
 
 * Do you desire to know Athenai's knack 
 At turning seriousness to pleasantry ? 
 Bead this ! One AristuUos means myself. 
 The author is indeed a merry grig I ' 
 Nay, it would seem as if yourself were bent 
 On laying down the law, Tell lies I must — 
 Aforethought and of purpose, no mistake ! ' 
 When forth yourself step, tell us from the stage, 
 ' Here you behold the King of Comedy — 
 
 Me, who, the first, have purged my every piece 
 From each and all my predecessors' filth. 
 Abjured those satyr-adjuncts sewn to bid 
 The boys laugh, satyr-jokes whereof not one 
 Least sample but would make my hair turn 
 gray 
 
 Beyond a twelvemonth's ravage ! I renounce 
 Mountebank-claptrap, such as firework-fizz 
 And torohflare, or else nuts and barleycorns 
 Scattered among the crowd, to scramble for 
 And stop their mouths with ; uo such stuff 
 
 shames me ! 
 Who — what 's more serious — know both when 
 
 to strike 
 And when to stay my hand : once dead, my foe, 
 Why, done, my fighting ! I attack a corpse ? 
 I spare the corpse-like even ! punish age ? 
 I pity from nay soul that sad effete 
 Toothless old mumbler called Kratinos ! once 
 My rival, — now, alack, the dotard slinks 
 Ragged and hungry to what hole 's his home ; 
 Ay, slinks through byways where no passenger 
 Flings him a bone to pick. You formerly 
 Adored the Muses' darling : dotard now, 
 Why, he may starve ! mob most mutable ! ' 
 So you harangued in person ; while, — to point 
 Precisely out, these were but lies you 
 
 launched, — 
 Prompt, a play followed primed vnth satyr- 
 frisks. 
 No spice spared of the stomach-turning stew. 
 Full-fraught with torch-display, and barley- 
 throw. 
 And Kleon, dead enough, bedaubed afresh ; 
 While daft Kratinos — home to hole trudged he, 
 Wrung dry his wit to the last vinous dregs. 
 Decanted them to 'Bottle,' — beat, next 
 
 year, — 
 ' Bottle ' and dregs — your best of ' Clouds ' 
 
 and dew ! 
 Where, Comic King, may keenest eye detect 
 Improvement on your predecessors' work 
 Except in lying more audaciously ? 
 
 " Why — genius ! That 's the grandeur, that 's 
 
 the gold — 
 That 's you — superlatively true to touch — 
 Gold, leaf or lump — gold, anyhow the ma.ss 
 Takes manufacture and proves Pallas' casque 
 Or, at your choice, simply a cask to keep 
 Corruption from decay. Your rivals' hoard 
 May ooze forth, lacking such preservative : 
 Yours cannot — gold plays guardian far too 
 
 well ! 
 Genius, I call you : dross, your rivals share ; 
 Ay, share and share alike, too ! says the world, 
 However you pretend supremacy 
 In aught beside that gold, your very own. 
 Satire ? ' Kratinos for our satirist ! ' 
 The world cries. Elegance ? ' Who elegant 
 As Eupolis ? ' resounds as noisily. 
 Artistic fancy ? Choros-creatures quaint ? 
 Magnes invented ' Birds ' and ' Frogs ' enough, 
 Archippos punned, Hegemon parodied, 
 To heart's content, before you stepped on stage. 
 Moral invective ? Eupolis exposed 
 ' That prating beggar, he who stole the cup,' 
 Before your ' Cloxids ' rained gi-ime on Sokrates ; 
 Nay, what beat ' Clouds ' but ' Konnos,' muck 
 
 for mud ? 
 Courage ? How long before, well-masked, you 
 
 poured 
 Abuse on Eukrates and Lusikles, 
 Did Telekleldes and Hermippos pelt 
 
THE LAST ADVENTURE OF BALAUSTION 
 
 659 
 
 Their Perikles and Karaon ? standing forth, 
 Bareheaded, not safe crouched behind a 
 
 name, — 
 Philonides or else Kallistratos, 
 Put forth, when danger threatened, — mask for 
 
 face. 
 To bear the brunt, — if blame fell, take the 
 
 blame, — 
 If praise . . . why, frank laughed Aristoph- 
 anes 
 ' They write such rare stuff ? No, I promise 
 
 you!' 
 Kather, I see all true improvements, made 
 Or making, go against you — tooth and nail 
 Contended with ; 't is still Moruchides, 
 'T is Eiithumenes, Surakosios, nay, 
 Argurrhios and Kinesias, — common sense 
 And public shame, these only cleanse your sty I 
 Coerced, prohibited, — you grin and bear, 
 And, soon as may be, hug to heart agai:!>. 
 The banished nastiness too dear to drop ! 
 Krates could teach and practise festive song 
 Yet scorn scurrility ; as gay and good, 
 Pherekrates could follow. Who loosed hold, 
 Must let fall rose-wreath, stoop to muck once 
 
 more ? 
 Did your particular self advance in aught. 
 Task the sad genius — steady slave the while — 
 To further — say, the patriotic aim ? 
 No, there 's deterioration manifest 
 Year by year, play by play ! survey them all. 
 From that boy's-triumph when * Achames ' 
 
 dawned. 
 To ' Thesmophoriazousai,' — this man's-shame ! 
 There, truly, patriot zeal so prominent 
 Allowed friends' plea perhaps : the baser stuff 
 Was but the nobler spirit's vehicle. 
 Who would imprison, unvolatilize 
 A violet's perfume, blends with fatty oils 
 Essence too fugitive in flower alone ; 
 So, calling tmguent — violet, call the play— 
 Obscenity impregnated with ' Peace ' ! 
 But here 's the boy grown bald, and here 's the 
 
 play 
 With twenty years' experience : where 's one 
 
 spice 
 Of odor in the hogs'-lard ? what pretends 
 To aught except a grease-pot's quality ? 
 Friend, sophist-hating ! know, — worst sophistry 
 Is when man's own soul plays its own self false, 
 Reasons a vice into a virtue, pleads 
 ' I detail sin to shame its author ' — not 
 ' I shame Ariphradas for sin's display ! ' 
 ' I show Opora to commend Sweet Home ' — 
 Not ' I show Bacchis for the striplings' sake ! ' 
 
 " Yet all the same — genius and gold — 
 Had genius ne'er diverted gold from use 
 Worthy the temple, to do copper's work 
 And coat a swine's trough — which abundantly 
 Might furnish Phoibos' tripod, Pallas' throne ! 
 Had you, I dream, discarding all the base, 
 The brutish, spurned alone convention's watch 
 And ward against invading decency 
 Dissiiised as licens?, law in lawlessness, 
 And so, re-ordinating outworn rule, 
 Made Comedy and Tragedy combine, 
 Prove some new Both-yet-neither, all one bard, 
 
 Euripides with Aristophanes 
 Co~operant I this, reproducing Now 
 As that gave Then existence : Life to-day, 
 This, as that other — Life dead long ago ! 
 The mob decrees such feat no crown, perchance. 
 But — why call crowning the reward of quest ? 
 Tell him, my other poet, — where thou walk'st 
 Some rarer world than e'er Ilissos washed ! 
 
 " But dream goes idly in the air. To earth ! 
 Earth's question just amounts to — which suc- 
 ceeds. 
 Which fails of two life-long antagonists ? 
 Suppose my charges all mistake ! assume 
 Your end, despite ambiguous means, the best — 
 The only ! you and he, a patriot-pair. 
 Have striven alike for one result — say. Peace 1 
 You spoke your best straight to the arbiters — 
 Our people : have you made them end this war 
 By dint of laughter and abuse and lies 
 And postures of Opora ? Sadly — No ! 
 This war, despite your twenty-five years' work, 
 May yet endure until Athenai falls, 
 And freedom falls with her. So much for you I 
 Now, the antagonist Euripides — 
 Has he succeeded better ? Who shall say ? 
 He spoke quite o'er the heads of Kleon's crowd 
 To a dim future, and if there he fail. 
 Why, you are fellows in adversity. 
 But that 's unlike the fate of wise words 
 
 launched 
 By music on their voyage. Hail, Depart, 
 Arrive, Glad Welcome ! Not my single wish — 
 Yours also wafts the white sail on its way. 
 Your nature too is kingly. All beside 
 I call pretension, — no true potentate, 
 Whatever intermediary be crowned, 
 Zeus or Poseidon, where the vulgar sky 
 Lacks not TribaUos to complete the group. 
 I recognize — behind such phantom-crew — 
 Necessity, Creation, Poet's Power, 
 Else never had I dared approach, appeal 
 To poetry, power, Aristophanep ! 
 But I trust truth's inherent kingliness, 
 Trust who, by reason of much truth, shall 
 
 reign 
 More or less royally — may prayer but push 
 His sway past limit, purge the false from true I 
 Nor, even so, had boldness nerved my tongue 
 But that the other king stands suddenly, 
 In all the grand investiture of death. 
 Bowing your knee beside my lowly head — 
 Equals one moment ! 
 
 " Now, arise and go ! 
 Both have done homage to Euripides ! " 
 
 Silence pursued the words : till he broke out — 
 
 " Scarce so ! This constitutes, I may believe. 
 Sufficient homage done by who defames 
 Your poet's foe, since you account me such ; 
 But homage-proper, — pay it by defence 
 Of him, direct defence and not obhque, 
 Not by mere mild admonishment of me ! '' 
 
 " Defence ? The best, the only ! " I replied. 
 " A story goes — When Sophokles, last year, 
 
66o 
 
 ARISTOPHANES' APOLOGY 
 
 Cited before tribunal by his son 
 
 (A poet — to complete the parallel), 
 
 Was certified unsound of intellect. 
 
 And claimed as only fit for tutelage, 
 
 Since old and doting: and incompetent 
 
 To carry on this world's work, — the defence 
 
 Consisted just in his reciting (calm 
 
 As the verse borCj which sets our heart arsweU 
 
 And voice a-heaving too tempestuously) 
 
 That ohoros-chant ' The station of the steed, 
 
 Stranger 1 thou eomest to, — Kolonos white ! ' 
 
 Then he looked round and all revolt was dead. 
 
 You know the one adventure of my life — 
 
 What made Euripides Balaustion's friend. 
 
 When I last saw himj as he bade farewell, 
 
 * I sang another " Herakles," ' smiled he ; 
 
 ' It gained no prize : your love be prize I gain ! 
 
 Take it — the tablets also where I traced 
 
 The story first with stulos pendent still — 
 
 Nay, the psalterion may complete the gift. 
 
 So, should you croon the ode bewailing Age, 
 
 Yourself shall modula'te — same notes, same 
 
 strings — 
 With the old friend who loved Balaustion once.' 
 There they lie ! When you broke our solitude. 
 We were about to honor him once more 
 By reading the consummate Tragedy. 
 Night is advanced ; I have small mind to sleep ; 
 May I go on, and read, — so make defence, 
 So test true godship ? You affirm, not I, 
 — Beating the god, affords such test : J hold 
 That when rash hands but touch divinity. 
 The chains drop off, the prison-walls dispart. 
 And — fire — he fronts mad Pentheus ! Dare we 
 
 try?" 
 
 Accordingly I read the perfect piece. 
 
 HERAKLES 
 
 Amphitraon. Zeus' Couchmate, — who of 
 
 mortals knows not me, 
 Argive Amphitruon whom Alkaios sired 
 Of old, as Perseus him, I — Herakles ? 
 My home, this Thebai where the earth-bom 
 
 spike 
 Of Sown -ones burgeoned: Ares saved from 
 
 these 
 A handful of their seed that stocks to-day 
 With children's children Thebai, Kadmos 
 
 built. 
 Of these had Kreon birth, Menoikeus' child, 
 King of the country, — Kreon that became 
 The father of this woman, Megara, 
 Whoin, when time was, Kadmeians one and all 
 Pealed praise to, marriage-songs with fluted 
 
 help. 
 While to my dwelling that grand Herakles 
 Bore her, his bride. But, leaving Thebes — 
 
 where I 
 Abode perforce — this Megara and those 
 Her kinsmnn, the desire possessed my son 
 Kather to dwell in Argos, that walled work, 
 Kuklopian city, which I fly, myself. 
 Because I slew Mektruon, Seeking so 
 To ease away my hardships and once more 
 Inhabit his own land, for my return 
 
 Heavy the price he pays Eurustheus there — 
 The letting in of light on this choked world 1 
 Either he promised, vanquished by the goad 
 Of Her^, or because fate willed it thus. 
 The other labors — why, he toiled them 
 
 through ; 
 But for this last one — down by Tainaros, 
 Its mouii, to Haides' realm descended he 
 To drag into the light the three-shaped hound 
 Of Hell : whence Herakles returns no more._ 
 Now, there s an old-world tale, Kadmeians 
 
 have. 
 How Dirk^'s husband was a Lukos once. 
 Holding the seven-towered city here in sway 
 Before they ruled the land, white - steeded 
 
 pair. 
 The twins Amphion, Zethos, born to Zeus. 
 This Lukos' son, — named like his father too. 
 No born Kadmeian but Euboia's gift, — 
 Comes and kiUs Kreon, lords it o'er the land, 
 Falling upon our town sedition-sick. 
 To us, akin to Kreon, just that bond 
 Becomes the worst of evils, seemingly ; 
 For, since my son in the earth's abysms. 
 This man of valor, Lukos, lord and king. 
 Seeks now to slay these sons of Herakles, 
 And slay his wife as well, — by murder thus 
 Thinking to stamp out murder, — slay too me, 
 (If me 't is fit you count among men still, — 
 Useless old age,) and all for fear lest these. 
 Grown men one day, exact due punishment 
 Of bloodshed and their mother's father's fate. 
 1 therefore, since he leaves me in these domes. 
 The children's household guardian, — left, when 
 
 earth's 
 Dark dread he underwent, that son of mine, — 
 I, with their liiother, lest his boys should die, 
 Sit at this altar of the savior Zeus 
 Which, glory of triumphant spear, he raised 
 Conquering — my nobly-born ! — the Minuai. 
 Here do we guard our station, destitute 
 Of all things, drink, food, raiment, on bare 
 
 ground 
 Couched side by side : sealed out of house and 
 
 home 
 Sit we in a resourcelessness of help. 
 Our friends — why, some are no true friends, I 
 
 see I 
 The rest, that are true, want the means to aid. 
 So operates in man adversity : 
 Whereof may never anybody — no. 
 Though half of him should really wish me 
 
 well, — 
 Happen to taste ! a friend-test faultless, that I 
 Megara. Old man, who erst did raze the Ta- 
 
 phian town. 
 Illustriously, the army-leader, thou. 
 Of speared Kadmeians — how gods play men 
 
 false ! 
 I, now, missed nowise fortune in my sire. 
 Who, for his wealth, was boasted mighty once, 
 Having supreme rule, — for the love of which 
 Leap the long lances forth at favored breasts, — 
 And having children too : and me he gave 
 Thy son, his house with that of Herakles 
 Uniting by the far-famed marriage-bed. 
 And now these things are dead and flown away 
 While thou and I await our death, old man, 
 
HERAKLES 
 
 66i 
 
 These Herakleian boys too, whom — my 
 
 chioks — 
 I save beneath my wings like brooding bird. 
 But one or other falls to questioning. 
 " mother," cries he, " where in all the 
 
 world 
 Is father gone to ? What 's he doing ? when 
 Will he come back ? " At fault through tender 
 
 years. 
 They seek their sire. For me, I put them off, 
 Telling them stories ; at each creak of doors. 
 All wonder " Does he come ? " — and all ar-fbot 
 Make for the fall before the parent knee. 
 Now then, what hope, what method of escape 
 Faoilitatest thou ? — for, thee, old man, 
 I look to, — since we may not leave by stealth 
 The limits of the land, and guards, more strong 
 Than we, are at the outlets : nor in friends 
 Remain to us the hopes of safety more. 
 Therefore, whatever thy decision be. 
 Impart it for the common good of all ! 
 Lest now should prove the proper time to die, 
 Though, being weak, we spin it out and live. 
 Amph. Daughter, it scarce is easy, do one's 
 best. 
 To blurt out counsel, things at such a pass. 
 Meg. You want some sorrow more, or so 
 
 love life ? 
 Amph. I both enjoy life, and love hopes be- 
 side. 
 Meg. And T ; but hope against hope — no, 
 
 old man ! 
 Amph. In these delayings of an ill lurks cure. 
 Meij. But bitter is the meantime, and it 
 
 bites. 
 Amph. Oh, there may be arun before the wind 
 From out these present ills, for me and thee. 
 Daughter, and yet may come my son, thy 
 
 spouse ! 
 But hush ! and from the children take away 
 Their foimts aflow with tears, and talk them 
 
 calm. 
 Steal them by stories — sad theft, all the same ! 
 For, human troubles — they grow weary too ; 
 Neither the wind-blasts always have their 
 
 strength. 
 Nor happy men keep happy to the end : 
 Since all things change — their natures part in 
 
 twain ; 
 And that man 's bravest therefore, who hopes on, 
 Hopes ever : to despair is coward-like. 
 Choros. These domes that overroof , 
 This long-used couch, I come to, having made 
 A staff my prop, that song raay_ put to proof 
 The swan-like power, age-whitened, — poet's 
 
 aid 
 Of sobbed-forth dirges — words that stand 
 
 aloof 
 From action now : such am I — just a shade 
 With night for all its face, a mere night- 
 dream — 
 And words that tremble too: howe'er they 
 
 seem, 
 Devoted words, I deem. 
 
 of a father ye unfathered ones, 
 thou old man, and thou whose groaning 
 stuns — 
 
 Unhappy mother— only us above. 
 
 Nor reaches him below in Haides' realm, thy 
 
 love! 
 — (Faint not too soon, urge forward foot and 
 
 limb 
 Way-weary, nor lose courage — as some horse 
 Yoked to the car whose weight recoUs on him 
 Just at the rock-ridge that concludes his 
 
 course ! 
 Take by the hand, the peplos, any one 
 Whose foothold fails him, printless and foi> 
 
 done ! 
 Aged, assist along me aged too. 
 Who, — mate with thee in toils when life was 
 
 new, 
 And shields and spears first made acquaint- 
 
 Stood by thyself and proved no bastard-slip 
 
 Of fatherland when loftiest glory grew.) — 
 
 See now, how like the sire's 
 
 Each eyeball fiercely fires ! 
 
 What though ill -fortune have not left his 
 race ? 
 
 Neither is gone the grand paternal grace I 
 
 Hellas 1 what — what combatants, de- 
 stroyed 
 
 In these, wilt thou one day seek — seek, and 
 find all void ! 
 
 Pause ! for I see the ruler of this land, 
 Lukos, now passing through the palace-gate. 
 Lukos. The Herakleian couple — father, 
 
 wife — 
 If needs I must, I question : " must " for- 
 sooth ? 
 Being your master — all I please, I ask. 
 To what time do you seek to spin out life ? 
 What hope, what help see, so as not to die ? 
 Is it you trust the sire of these, that 's sunk 
 In Haides, will return ? How past the pitch. 
 Suppose you have to die, you pile the woe — 
 Thou, casting, Hellas through, thy empty 
 
 vaimts 
 As though Zeus helped thee to a god for son ; 
 And thou, that thou wast styled our best man's 
 
 wife ! 
 Where was the awful in his work wound up, 
 If he did quell and quench the marshy snake 
 Or the Nemeian monster whom he snared 
 And — says, by throttlings of his arm, he slew ? 
 With these do you outwrestle me ? Such feats 
 Shall save from death the sons of Herakles 
 Who got praise, being naught, for bravery 
 In wUd-beast-battle, otherwise a blank ? 
 No man to throw on left arm buckler's weight. 
 Not he, nor get in spear's reach ! bow he 
 
 bore — 
 True coward's-weapon : shoot first and then 
 
 fly! 
 No "bow-and-arrow proves a roan is trave. 
 But who keeps rank, — stands, one unwinking 
 
 stare 
 As, ploughing up, the darts come, — brave is 
 
 he. 
 My action has no impudence, old man ! 
 Providence, rather: for I own I slew^ 
 Kreon, this woman's sire, and have his seat. 
 Nowise I wish, then, to leave, these grown up. 
 
662 
 
 ARISTOPHANES' APOLOGY 
 
 Avengers on me, payment for my deeds. 
 Amph. Ab to the part of Zeus in his own 
 
 child, 
 Let Zeus defend that ! As to mine, 't is me 
 The care concerns to show by argument 
 The f oUy of this fellow, — Herakles, 
 Whom 1 stand up for ! since to hear thee 
 
 styled — 
 Cowardly — that is unendurable. 
 First then, the infamous (for I account 
 Amongst the words denied to human speech, 
 Timidity ascribed thee, Herakles !) 
 This I must put from thee, with gods in proof. 
 Zeus' thunder I appeal to, those four steeds 
 Whereof he also was the charioteer 
 When, having shut down the earth's Giant- 
 growth — 
 (Never shaft flew but found and fitted flank) — 
 Triumph he sang in common with the gods. 
 The Kentaur-race, four-footed insolence — 
 Go ask at Pholo^, vilest thou of kings, 
 Whom they would pick out and pronounce best 
 
 man. 
 If not my son, "the seeming-brave," say'st 
 
 thou ! 
 But Dirphus, thy Abantid mother-town. 
 Question her, and she would not praise, I 
 
 think ! 
 For there 's no spot, where having done some 
 
 good. 
 Thy country thou might'st call to witness 
 
 worth. 
 Now, that allwise invention, areher's-gear, 
 Thou blamest: hear my teaching and grow 
 
 sage ! 
 A man in armor is his armor's slave, 
 And, mixed with rank and file that want to 
 
 run. 
 He dies because his neighbcs have lost heart. 
 Then, should he break his spear, no way 
 
 remains 
 Of warding death off, — gone that body-guard, 
 His one and only ; while, whatever folk 
 Have the true bow-hand, — here 's the one main 
 
 good, — 
 Though he have sent ten thousand shafts 
 
 abroad. 
 Others remain wherewith the archer saves 
 His limbs and Ufe, too, — stands afar and 
 
 wards 
 Away from flesh the foe that vainly stares 
 Hurt by the viewless arrow, while himself 
 Offers no full front to those opposite. 
 But keeps in thorough cover : there 's the 
 
 point 
 That 's capital in combat — damage foe, 
 Tet keep a safe skin — foe not out of reach 
 As you are ! Thus my words contrast with 
 
 thine, 
 And such, in judging facts, our difference. 
 These children, now, why dost thou seek to 
 
 slay? 
 What have they done thee ? In a single point 
 I count thee wise — if, being base thyself. 
 Thou dread'st the progeny of nobleness. 
 Yet this bears hard upon us, all the same. 
 If we must die — because of fear in thee — 
 A death 't were fit thou suffer at our hands, 
 
 Thy betters, did Zeus rightly judge us all. 
 
 If therefore thou art bent on sceptre-sway. 
 
 Thyself, here — suffer us to leave the land, 
 
 Fugitives ! nothing do by violence, 
 
 Or violence thyself shalt undei-go 
 
 When the gods' gale may chance to change for 
 
 thee! 
 Alas, land of Kadmos, — for 't is thee 
 I mean to close with, dealing out the due 
 Revilement, — in such sort dost thou defend 
 Herakles and his children ? Herakles 
 Who, coming, one to all the world, against 
 The Minuai, fought them and left Thebes an 
 
 eye 
 Unblinded henceforth to front freedom with I 
 Neither do I praise Hellas, nor shall brook 
 Ever to keep in silence that I count 
 Towards my son, craven of cravens — her 
 Whom it behooved go bring the young ones 
 
 here 
 Fire, spears, arms — in exchange for seas made 
 
 safe, 
 And cleansings of the land, his labor's price. 
 But fire, spears, arms, — children, neither 
 
 Thebes 
 Nor Hellas has them for you ! 'T is myself, 
 A feeble friend, ye look to : nothing now 
 But a tongue's murmur, for the strength is 
 
 gone 
 We had once, and with age are limbs a-shake 
 And force a-fiicker ! Were I only young. 
 Still with the mastery o'er bone and thew. 
 Grasping first spear that came, the yellow locks 
 Of this insulter would I bloody so — 
 Should send him skipping o'er the Atlantic 
 
 bounds 
 Out of my arm's reach through poltroonery ! 
 Cko. Have not the really good folk starting- 
 points 
 For speech to purpose, ^ though rare talkers 
 
 they? 
 ImTc. Say thou against us words thoutowerest 
 
 with! 
 I, for thy words, will deal thee blows, their 
 
 due. 
 Go, some to Helikon, to Farnasos 
 Some, and the clefts there ! I3id the woodmen 
 
 feU 
 Oak-trunks, and, when the same are brought 
 
 inside 
 The city, pile the altar round with logs. 
 Then fire it, burn the bodies of them all, 
 That they may learn thereby, no dead man 
 
 rules 
 The land here, but 't is I, by acts like these ! 
 As for you, old sirs, who are set against 
 My judgments, you shall groan for — not alone 
 The Herakleian children, but the fate 
 Of your own house beside, when faring ill 
 By any chance : and you shall recollect 
 Slaves are you of a tyranny that 's mine ! 
 Cho. progeny of earth, — whom Ares 
 
 sowed 
 When he laid waste the dragon's greedy jaw — 
 Will ye not lift the staves, right-hand supports, 
 And bloody this man's irreligious head ? 
 Who, being no Kadmeian, rules, — the 
 
 wretch, — 
 
HERAKLES 
 
 663 
 
 Our easy youth : an interloper too I 
 But not of me, at least, shalt thou enjoy 
 Thy lordship ever ; nor my labor's fruit — 
 Hand worked so hard for — have ! A curse 
 
 with thee. 
 Whence thou didst come, there go and tyran- 
 nize! 
 For never while I live shalt thou destroy 
 The Herakleian children : not so deep 
 Hides he below ground, leaving thee their 
 
 lord! 
 But we bear both of you in mind, — that thou, 
 The land's destroyer, dost possess the land. 
 While he who saved it, loses every right. 
 J play the busybody — for I serve 
 My dead friends when they need friends' ser- 
 vice most ? 
 right-hand, how thou yeamest to snatch 
 
 spear 
 And serve indeed ! in weakness dies the wish. 
 Or I had stayed thee calling me a slave. 
 And nobly drawn my breath at home in Thebes 
 Where thou exultest ! — city that 's insane. 
 Sick through sedition and bad government. 
 Else never nad she gained for master — thee ! 
 Meg. Old friends, I praise you: since a 
 righteous wrath 
 For friend's sake well becomes a friend. But no! 
 On our account in anger with your lord. 
 Suffer no injury ! Hear my advice, 
 Amphitruon, if I seem to speak aright. 
 Oh, yes, I love my children ! how not love 
 What I brought forth, what toiled for ? and to 
 
 die — 
 Sad I esteem too ; still, the fated vray 
 Who stiffens him against, that man I count 
 Poor creature ; us, who are of other mood. 
 Since we must die, behooves us meet our death 
 Not burnt to cinders, giving foes the laugh — 
 To me, worse ill than dying, that ! we owe 
 Our houses many a, brave deed, now to pay. 
 Thee, indeed, gloriously men estimate 
 For spear-work, so that unendurable 
 Were it that thou shouldst die a death of 
 
 shame. 
 And for my glorious husband, where wants he 
 A witness that he would not save his boys 
 If touched in their good fame thereby ? since 
 
 birth 
 Bears ill with baseness done for children's 
 
 sake. 
 My husband needs must be my pattern here. 
 See now thy hope — how much I count thereon ! 
 Thon thinkest that thy son will come to light ; 
 And, of the dead, who came from Haides 
 
 back? 
 But we with talk this man might mollify ; 
 Never 1 Of all foes, fly the foolish one ! 
 Wise, well-bred people, make concession to ! 
 Sooner you meet respect by speaking soft. 
 Already it was in ray mind — perchance 
 We might beg off these children's banishment ; 
 But even that is sad, involving them 
 In safety, ay — and piteous poverty ! 
 Since the host's visage for the flying friend 
 Has, only one day, the sweet look, 't is said. 
 Dare with us death, which waits thee, dared or 
 no I 
 
 We call on thine ancestral worth, old man ! 
 For who out-labors what the gods appoint 
 Shows energy, but energy gone mad. 
 Since what must —none e'er makes what must 
 
 not be 1 
 Cho. Had any one, while yet my arms were 
 
 strong, 
 Been scorning thee, he easily had ceased. 
 But we are naught, now ; thine henceforth to 
 
 see — 
 Amphitruon, how to push aside these fates 1 
 Amph. Nor cowardice nor a desire of life 
 Stops me from dying : but I seek to save 
 My son his children. Vain ! I set my heart, 
 It seems, upon impossibility. 
 See, it is ready for the sword, this throat 
 To pierce, divide, dash down from precipice I 
 But one grace p'ant us, king, we supplicate ! 
 Slay me and this unhappy one before 
 The children, lest we see them — impious 
 
 sight ! — 
 Gasping the soul forth, calling all the while 
 On mother and on father's father ! Else, 
 Do as thy heart inclines thee ! No resource 
 Have we from death, and we resign ourselves. 
 Meg. And I too supplicate : add grace to 
 
 gra^e, 
 And, though but one man, doubly serve ns 
 
 both! 
 Let me bestow adornment of the dead 
 Upon these children ! Throw the palace wide ! 
 For now we are shut out. Thence these shall 
 
 share 
 At least so much of wealth was once their 
 
 sire's ! 
 Luk. These things shall be. Withdraw the 
 
 bolts, I hid 
 My servants ! Enter and adorn yourselves ! 
 I grudge no peploi ; but when these ye wind 
 About your bodies, — that adornment done, — 
 Then T shall come and give you to the grave. 
 Meg. children, follow this imhappy foot, 
 Your mother's, into your ancestral home. 
 Where others have the power, are lords in 
 
 truth, 
 Although the empty name is left us yet ! 
 Amph. Zeus, in vain I had thee marriage- 
 mate. 
 In vain I called thee father of my child ! 
 Thou wast less friendly far than thou didst 
 
 seem. 
 I, the mere man, o'ermatch in virtue thee 
 The mighty god : for I have not betrayed 
 The Herakleian children, — whereas thou 
 Hadst wit enough to come clandestinely 
 Into the chamber, take what no man gave, 
 Another's place ; and when it comes to help 
 Thy loved ones, there thou laekest wit indeed I 
 Thou art some stupid god or horn unjust. 
 
 Cho. Even a dirge, can Phoibos suit 
 In song to music jubilant 
 For all its sorrow : making shoot 
 His golden plectron o'er the lute, 
 Melodious ministrant. 
 And I, too, am of mind to raise, 
 Despite the imminence of doom, 
 A song of joy, outpour my praise 
 To him — what is it rumor says ? — 
 
664 
 
 ARISTOPHANES' APOLOGY 
 
 Whether — now buried in the ghostly gloom 
 E elow ground — he was child of Zeus indeed, 
 Or mere Aiuphitruon's mortal seed — 
 To him I weave the wreath of song, his labor's 
 
 meed. 
 For, is my hero perished in the feat ? 
 The virtues of brave toils, in death complete. 
 These save the dead in song, — their glory- 
 garland meet ! 
 
 First, then, he made the wood 
 
 Of Zeus a solitude, 
 
 Slaying its lion-tenant ; and he spread 
 
 The tawniness behind — his yellow head 
 
 Enmuffled by the brute's, backed by that grin 
 
 of dread. 
 ■The mountain-roving savage Kentaur-raoe 
 He strewed with deadly bow about their place, 
 Slaying with winged shafts : Peneios knew, 
 Beauteously-eddying, and the long tracts too 
 Of pasture trampled fruitless, and as well 
 Those desolated haunts Mount Peliou under. 
 And, grassy up to Homol^, each dell 
 Whence, having filled their hands with pine- 
 tree plunder, 
 Horse-like was wont to prance from, and sub- 
 due 
 The land of Thessaly, that bestial crew. 
 The golden-headed spot-back'd stag he slew, 
 That robber of the rustics : glorified 
 Therewith the goddess who in hunter's pride 
 Slaughters the game along Oino^'s side. 
 And, yoked abreast, he brought the chariot- 
 breed 
 To pace submissive to the bit, each steed 
 That in the bloody cribs of Diomede 
 Champed and, unbridled, hurried down that 
 
 gore 
 For grain, exultant the dread feast before — 
 Of man's flesh : hideous feeders they of yore I 
 All as he crossed the Hebros' silver-flow 
 Accomplished he such labor, toiling so 
 For Mukenaian tyrant 5 ay, and more — 
 He crossed the Melian ghore 
 And, by the sources of Amauros, shot 
 To death that strangers'-pest 
 Kuknos, who dwelt in Amphanaia : not 
 Of fame for good to guest 1 
 
 And next, to the melodious maids he came. 
 Inside the Hesperian court-yard : hand must 
 
 aim 
 At plucking gold fruit from the appled leaves, 
 Now he had killed the dragon, backed like 
 
 flame, 
 Who guards the unapproachable he weaves 
 Himself all round, one spire about the same. 
 And into those sea-troughs of ocean dived 
 The hero, and for mortals calm contrived, 
 Whatever oars should follow in his wake. 
 And under heaven's mid-seat his hands thrust 
 
 he, 
 At home with Atlas : and, for valor's sake. 
 Held the gods up their star-faced mansionry. 
 Also, the rider-host of Amazons 
 About Maiotia many-strearaed, he went 
 To conquer through the billowy Euxin once, 
 Having collected what an armament 
 
 Of friends from Hellas, all on conquest bent 
 Of that gold-gamished cloak, dread girdle- 
 chase! 
 So Hellas gained the girl's barbarian pace 
 And at Mukenai saves the trophy still — 
 Go wonder there, who will ! 
 
 And the ten-thousaud-headed hound 
 
 Of many a murder, the Lemaian snake 
 
 He burned out, head by head, and cast around 
 
 His darts a poison thence, — darts soon to 
 
 slake 
 Their rage in that three-bodied herdsman's gore 
 Of Erutheia. Many a running more 
 He made for triumph and felicity, 
 And, last of toUs, to Haides, never dry 
 Of tears, he sailed : and there he, luckless, ends 
 Hia life completely, nor returns again. 
 The house and home are desolate of friends. 
 And where the children's life-path leads them, 
 
 plain 
 I see, — no step retraceable, no god 
 Availii^, and no law to help the lost ! 
 The oar of Charon marks their period, 
 Waits to end all. Thy hands, these roofs ac- 
 cost ! — 
 To thee, though absent, look their uttermost ! 
 
 But if in youth and strength I flourished still, 
 Stm shook the spear in fight, did power match 
 
 will 
 In these Kadmeian co-mates of my age. 
 They would, — and I, — when warfare was to 
 
 wage, 
 Stand by these children ; but I am bereft 
 Of youth now, lone of that good genius left I 
 
 But hist, desist ! for here come these, — 
 Draped as the dead go, under and over, — 
 Children long since — now hard to discover — 
 Of the once so potent Herakles ! 
 And the loved wife dragging, in one tether 
 About her feet, the boys together ; 
 And the hero's aged sire comes last ! 
 Unhappy that I am ! Of tears which rise, — 
 How am I all unable to hold fast. 
 Loiter, the aged fountains of these eyes ! 
 Meg. Be it so ! Who is priest, who butcher 
 here 
 Of these ill-fated ones, or stops the breath 
 Of me, the miserable ? Ready, see. 
 The sacrifice — to lead where Haides lives I 
 children, we are led — no lovely team 
 Of corpses — age, youth, motherhood, all mixed I 
 
 sad rate of myself and these my sons 
 Whom with these eyes I look at, this last time ! 
 I, indeed, bore you : but for enemies 
 
 1 brought you up to be a laughing-stock. 
 Matter for merriment, destruction-stuff ! 
 Woe 's me ! 
 
 Strangely indeed my hopes have struck me down 
 From what I used to hope about you once — 
 The expectation from your father's talk ! 
 For thee, now, thy dead sire dealt Argos to : 
 Thou wast to have Eurustheus' house one day, 
 And rule Pelasgia where the fine fruits grow ; 
 And, for a stole of state, he wrapped about 
 Thy head with that the lion-monster bore. 
 
HERAKLES 
 
 .66s 
 
 That which himself went wearing armor-wise. 
 And thou wast King of Thebes — such chariotB 
 
 there ! 
 Those plains I had for portion — aU for thee, 
 As thou hadst coaxed them out of who gare 
 
 birth 
 To thee, his boy ; and into thy right hand 
 He thrust the guardian-club of Daidalos, — 
 Poor guardian proves the gift that plays thee 
 
 false ! 
 And upon thee he promised to bestow 
 Oiohalia — what, with those far-shooting shafts. 
 He ravaged once j and so, since three you were. 
 With threefold kingdoms did he build you up 
 To very towers, your father, — proud enough, 
 Prognosticating, from youi' manliness 
 In boyhood, what the manhood's self would be. 
 For my part, I was picking out for you 
 Brides, suiting each with his alliance — this 
 From Athens, this from Sparta, this from 
 
 Thebes — 
 Whence, suited — as stern-cables steady ship — 
 You might have hold on life gods bless. All 
 
 gone ! 
 Fortune turns round and gives us — you, the 
 
 Fates 
 Instead of brides — me, tears for nuptial baths. 
 Unhappy in my hoping 1 And the sire 
 Of your sire — he prepares the marriage-feast 
 Befitting Haides who plays father now — 
 Bitter relationship ! Oh me ! which first — 
 Which last of you shall I to bosom fold ? 
 To whom shall I fit close, his mouth to mine ? 
 Of whom shall I lay hold and ne'er let go ? 
 How would I gather, like the brown-winged bee. 
 The groans from all, and, gathered into one. 
 Give them you back again, a crowded tear I 
 Dearest, if any voice be heard of men 
 Dungeoned in Haides, thee — to thee I speak I 
 Here is thy father dying, and thy boys 1 
 And I too perish, famed as fortunate 
 By mortals once, through thee ! Assist them 1 
 
 Come ! 
 But come ! though just a shade, appear to me ! 
 For, coming, thy ghost-grandeur would suffice. 
 Such cowards are they in thy presence, these 
 Who kill thy children now thy back is turned ! 
 Amph. Ay, daughter, bid the powers below 
 
 assist ! 
 But I will rather, raising hand to heaven, 
 Call thee to help, Zeus, if thy intent 
 Be, to these children, helpful anyway. 
 Since soon thou wilt be valueless enough ! 
 And yet thou hast been called and called ; in 
 
 vain 
 I labor : for we needs must die, it seems. 
 Well, aged brothers — life 's a little thing ! 
 Such as it is, then, pass life pleasantly 
 From day to night, nor once grieve all the while ! 
 Since Time concerns him not about our hopes, — 
 To save them, — ■ but his own work done, flies off. 
 Witness myself, looked up to among men. 
 Doing noteworthy deeds : when here comes fate 
 Lifts me away, like feather skyward borne. 
 In one day ! Riches then and glory, — whom 
 These are found constant to, I know not. 
 
 Friends, 
 Farewell ! the man who loved you all so much, 
 
 Now, this last time, my mates, ye look upon ! 
 
 Meg. Ha! 
 father, do I see my dearest ? Speak ! 
 Amph. No more than thou canst, daughter — 
 
 dumb Uke thee ! 
 Meg. Is this he whom we heard was under 
 
 ground? 
 Amph. Unless at least some dream in day we 
 
 see! 
 Meg. What do I say? what dreams insanely 
 view ? 
 This is no other than thy son, old sire ! 
 Here, children ! hang to these paternal robes, 
 Quick, haste, hold hard on him, since here 'a 
 
 your true 
 Zeus that can save — and every whit as well ! 
 Herakles. Oh, haQ, my palace, my hearth's 
 propula, — 
 How glad I see thee as I come to light ! 
 Ha, what means this ? My children I behold 
 Before the house in garments of the grave, 
 Chapleted, and, amid a crowd of men. 
 My very wife — my father weeping too, 
 Whatever the misfortune ! Come, best take 
 My station nearer these and learn it all ! 
 Wife, what new sorrow has approached our 
 home? 
 Meg. dearest ! light flashed on thy father 
 now ! 
 Art thou come ? art thou saved and dost thou 
 
 fall 
 On friends in their' supreme e3±remity ? 
 Her. How say'st thou ? Father ! what 's the 
 
 trouble here ? 
 Meg. Undone are we ! — but thou, old man, 
 forgive. 
 If first I snatch what thou shouldst say to him ! 
 For somehow womanhood wakes pity more. 
 Here are my children killed and I undone ! 
 Her. Apollon, with what preludes speech be- 
 gins ! 
 Meg. Dead are my brothers and old father too. 
 Her. How say'st thou? — doing what?^ — by 
 
 spear-stroke whence ? 
 Meg. Lnkos destroyed them — the land's noble 
 
 king! 
 Her. Met them in arms? or through the 
 
 land's disease ? 
 Meg. Sedition : and he sways seven-gated 
 
 Thebes. 
 Her. Why then came fear on the old man 
 
 and thee ? 
 Meg. He meant to kill thy father, me, our 
 
 boys. 
 Her. How say'st thou? Fearing what from 
 
 orphanage ? 
 Mag. Lest they should some day pay back 
 
 Kreon's death. 
 Her. And why trick out the boys corpse- 
 fashion thus ? 
 Meg. These wraps of death we have abeady 
 
 donned. 
 Her. And you had died through violence? 
 
 Woe 's me 1 
 Meg. Left bare of friends: and thou wast 
 
 dead, we heard. . , 
 
 Her, And whence came on yon this famt- 
 heartedness ? 
 
i%6 
 
 ARISTOPHANES' APOLOGY 
 
 Meg. The heralds of Eurustheus brought the 
 
 news. 
 Her. And why was it you left my house and 
 
 hearth ? 
 Meg. Forced thence : thy father — from his 
 
 very conch ! 
 Her, And no shame at insulting the old 
 
 man? 
 Meg. Shame, truly ! no near neighbors he and 
 
 Shame ! 
 Her. And so much, in my absence, lacked 
 
 I friends ? 
 Meg. Friends, — are there any to a luckless 
 
 man? 
 Her. The Minuai-war I waged, — they spat 
 
 forth these ? 
 Meg. Friendless — again I tell thee — is iU- 
 
 luck. 
 Her. Will not you cast these hell-Tpraps from 
 your hair 
 And look on Ught again, and with your eyes 
 Taste the sweet change from nether dark to 
 
 day? 
 While 1 — for now there needs my handi- 
 work — 
 First I shall go, demolish the abodes 
 Of these new lordships ; next hew off the head 
 Accurst and toss it for the dogs to trail. 
 Then, such of the Kadmeians as I find 
 Were craven though they owed me grati- 
 tude, — 
 Some I intend to handle with this club 
 Renowned for conquest; and with winged 
 
 shafts 
 Scatter the others, fill Ismenos full 
 With bloody corpses, — Dirk^'s flow so white 
 Shall be incarnadined. For, whom, I pray. 
 Behooves me rather help than wife and child 
 And aged father ? Farewell, " Labors " mine ! 
 Vainly I wrought them: my true work lay 
 
 here ! 
 My business is to die defending these, — 
 If for their father's sake they meant to die. 
 Or how shall we call brave the battling it 
 With snake and lion, as Eurustheus bade, 
 If yet I must not labor death away 
 From my own children? "Conquering Her- 
 
 akles " 
 Folk will not call me as they used, I think ! 
 The right thing is for parents to assist 
 Children, old age, the partner of the couch. 
 Amph, True, son ! thy duty is — be friend to 
 friends 
 And foe to foes: yet — no more haste than 
 needs ! 
 Her. Why, father, what is over-hasty here ? 
 Amph. Many a pauper — seeming to be rich, 
 As the word goes — the king calls partisan. 
 Such made a riot, ruined Thebes to rob 
 Their neighbor: for, what good they had at 
 
 home 
 Was spent and gone, — flew off through idle- 
 ness. 
 You came to trouble Thebes, they saw: since 
 
 seen. 
 Beware lest, raising foes, a multitude, 
 You stumble where you apprehend no harm. 
 Her, If all Thebes saw me, not a whit care I. 
 
 But seeing as I did a certain bird 
 Not in the lucky seats, I knew some woe 
 Was fallen upon the house : so, purposely. 
 By stealth I made my way into the land. 
 Amph. And now, advancing, haU the hearth 
 with praise 
 And give the ancestral home thine eye to see 1 
 For he himself wiU come, thy wife and sons 
 The drag-forth — slaughter — slay me too, -^ 
 
 this king ! 
 But, here remaining, all succeeds with thee — 
 Gain lost by no false step. So, this thy town 
 Disturb not, son, ere thou right matters here 1 
 Her. Thus will I do, for thou say'st well ; 
 my home 
 Let me first enter ! Since at the due time 
 Returning from the unsunned depths where 
 
 dwells 
 Haides' wife Kor4, let me not affront 
 Those gods beneath my roof, I first should hail I 
 Amph. For didst thou really visit Haides, 
 
 son? 
 Her. Ay — dragged to light, too, his three- 
 headed beast. 
 Amph. By fight didst conquer — or through 
 
 Kor^'s gift ? 
 Her, Fight : well for me, I saw the Orgies 
 
 first! 
 Amph. And is he in Eurustheus' house, the 
 
 brute ? 
 Her. Chthonia's grove, Hermion's city, holds 
 
 him now. 
 Amph. Does not Eurustheus know thee back 
 
 on earth ? 
 Her. No : I would come first and see mat^ 
 
 ters here. 
 Amph. But how wast thou below groimd such 
 
 a time ? 
 Her. I stopped, from Haides, bringing The- 
 seus up. 
 Amph. And where is he ? — bound o'er the 
 
 plain for home ? 
 Her. Gone glad to Athens — Haides' fugi- 
 tive! 
 But, up, boys ! follow father into house ! 
 There 's a far better going-in for you 
 Truly, than going-out was ! Nay, take heart, 
 And let the eyes no longer run and run ! 
 And thou, wife, my own, collect thy soul 
 Nor tremble now ! Leave grasping, all of 
 
 you, 
 My garments ! 
 friends ! 
 Ah,— 
 
 No letting go for these, who all the more 
 Hang to my garments ! Did you foot indeed 
 The razor's edge ? Why, then I'll carry 
 
 them — 
 Take with my hands these small craft up, and 
 
 tow 
 Just as a ship would. There I don't fear I 
 
 shirk 
 My children's service ! this way, men are men, 
 No difference I best and worst, they love their 
 
 boys 
 After one fashion : wealth they differ in — 
 Some have it, others not ; but each and all 
 Combine to form the children-loving race. 
 
 I 'm not winged, nor fly from 
 
HERAKLES 
 
 667 
 
 Cho. Youth is a pleasant burden to me ; 
 But agfe on my heaid, more heavily 
 Than the crags of Aitna, weighs and weighs, 
 And darkening cloaks the lids and intercepts 
 
 the rays. 
 Never be mine the preference 
 Of an Asian empire's wealth, nor yet 
 Of a house all gold, to youth, to youth 
 That 's beauty, whatever the gods dispense ! 
 Whether in wealth we joy, or fret 
 Paupers, — of all God's gifts most beautiful, in 
 truth ! 
 
 But miserable murderous age I hate I 
 Let it go to wreck, the waves adown, 
 Nor ever by rights plague tower or town 
 Where mortals bide, but still elate 
 With wings, on ether, precipitate, 
 Wander them round — nor wait ! 
 
 But if the gods, to man's degree. 
 
 Had wit and wisdom, they would bring 
 
 Mankind a twofold youth, to be 
 
 Their virtue's sign-mark, all should see, 
 
 In those with whom life's winter thus grew 
 
 spring. 
 For when they died, into the sun once more 
 Would they have traversed twice life's race- 
 course o'er ; 
 While ignobility had simply run 
 Existence through, nor second life begun, 
 And so might we discern both bad and good 
 As surely as the starry multitude 
 Is numbered by the sailors, one and one. 
 But now the gods by no apparent line 
 Limit the worthy and the base define ; 
 Only, a certain period rounds, and so 
 Brings man more wealth, — but youthful vigor, 
 
 Well ! I am not to pause 
 
 Mingling together — wine and wine in cup — 
 
 The Grraces with the Muses up — 
 
 Most dulcet marriage : loosed from music's laws, 
 
 No life for me ! 
 
 But where the wreaths abound, there ever may 
 
 I be! 
 And still, an ^ed bard, I shout Mnemosund — 
 Still chant of Herakles the triumph-chant. 
 Companioned by the seven-stringed tortoise- 
 shell 
 And Libuan flute, and Bromios' self as well, 
 God of the grape, with man participant ! 
 Not yet will we arrest their glad advance — 
 The Muses who so long have led me forth to 
 
 dance ! 
 A paian — hymn the Delian girls indeed. 
 Weaving a beauteous measure in and out 
 His;tem'ple-gates, Latona's goodly seed ; 
 And paians — I too, these thy domes about. 
 From these gray cheeks, my king, will swan- 
 like shout — 
 Old songster ! Ay, in song it starts off brave — 
 '■ Zeus' son is he ! " and yet, such grace of birth 
 Surpassing far, to man his labors gave 
 Existence, one calm flow without a wave, 
 Having destroyed the beasts, the terrors of the 
 earth. 
 
 Luk. From out the house Amphitruon comes 
 — in time ! 
 For 'tis a long whUe now since ye bedecked 
 Your bodies with the dead-folks' finery 
 But quick ! the boys and wife of Herakles — 
 Bid them appear outside this house, keep pact 
 lo die, and need no bidding but your own ! 
 Amph. King ! you press hard on me sore- 
 pressed enough. 
 And give me scorn — beside my dead ones here. 
 Meet m such matters were it, though you reign 
 To temper zeal with moderation. Since 
 You do impose on us the need to die — 
 Needs must we love our lot, obey your will. 
 i«i. Where's Megara, then? Alkmen^'s 
 
 grandsons, where ? 
 Amph. She, I think, — as one figures from 
 
 outside, — 
 Ijuk. WeU, this same thinking, — what af- 
 fords its ground ? 
 Amph. —Sits suppliant on the holy altar- 
 steps, — 
 Luk. Idly indeed a suppliant to save life ! 
 Amph. — And calls on her dead husband, 
 
 vainly too ! 
 I/uk. For he 's not come, nor ever will arrive. 
 Amph. Never — at least, if no god raise him 
 
 up. 
 iMk. Go to her, and conduct her from the 
 
 house ! 
 Amph. I should partake the murder, doing 
 
 that. 
 Luk. We, — since thou hast a scruple in the 
 case, — 
 Outside of fears, we shall march forth these 
 
 lads, 
 Mother and all. Here, follow me, my folk — 
 And gladly so remove what stops our toils ! 
 Amph. Thou — go then ! March where needs 
 must ! What remains — 
 Perhaps concerns another. Doing ill, 
 Expect some ill be done thee ! 
 
 Ha, old friends ! 
 On he strides beautifully ! in the toils 
 0' the net, where swords spring forth, will he 
 
 be fast — 
 Minded to kill his neighbors -^ the aroh-knave ! 
 I go, too — I must see the falling corpse ! 
 For he has sweets to give — a dying man, 
 Your foe, that pays the price of deeds he did. 
 Cho. Troubles are over ! He the great king 
 once, 
 Turns the point, tends for Haides, goal of life ! 
 justice, and the gods' back-flowing fate ! 
 Amph. Thou art come, late indeed, where 
 death pays crime — 
 These insults heaped on better than thyself ! 
 Cho. Joy gives this outburst to my tears I 
 Again 
 Come round those deeds, his doing, which of 
 
 old 
 He never dreamed himself was to endure — 
 King of the country ! But enough, old man ! 
 Indoors, now, let us see how matters stand — 
 If somebody be faring as I wish ! 
 Luk. Ah me — me ! 
 
 Cho. This strikes the keynote — music to 
 my mind, 
 
668 
 
 ARISTOPHANES' APOLOGY 
 
 Merry i' the lionsehold ! Death takes up the 
 
 tune ! 
 The king gives voice, groans murder's prelude 
 
 ■well ! 
 ImIc. all the land of Kadmos! slain hy 
 
 guile ! 
 Cho. Ay, for who slew first ? Paying back thy 
 
 due, 
 Besign thee ! make, for deeds done, mere 
 
 amends ! 
 Who was it grazed the gods through lawless- 
 ness — 
 Mortal himself, threw up his fools'-conceit 
 Agaiiist the blessed heavenly ones — as though 
 Gods had no power ? Old friends, the impious 
 
 man 
 Kxists not any more ! The house is mute. 
 Turn we to song and dance ! For, those I love. 
 Those I wish well to, well fare they, to wish ! 
 
 Dances, dances and banqueting 
 
 To Thebes, the sacred city through. 
 
 Are a care ! for, change and change 
 
 Of tears to laughter, old to new, 
 
 Our lays, glad birth, they bring, they bring ! 
 
 He is gone and past, the mighty king ! 
 
 And the old one reigns, returned — Oh, strange ! 
 
 From the Acherontian harbor too ! 
 
 Advent of hope, beyond thought's widest 
 
 range ! 
 To the gods, the gods, are crimes a care, 
 And they watch our virtue, well aware 
 That gold and that prosperity drive man 
 Out of his mind — those charioteers who hale 
 Might-without-right behind them : face who 
 
 can 
 Fortune's reverse which time prepares, nor 
 
 quail ? 
 — He who evades law and in lawlessness 
 Delights him, — he has broken down his 
 
 trust — 
 The chariot, riches haled — now blackening in 
 
 the dust ! 
 
 Ismenos, go thou garlanded ! 
 Break into dance, ye ways, the polished bed 
 0' the seven-gated city ! Dirk^, thou 
 Fair-flowing, with the Asopiad sisters all. 
 Leave your sire's stream, attend the festival 
 Of Herakles, one choir of nymphs, sing triumph 
 
 now ! 
 woo(hr rock of Puthios and each home 
 O' the Belikonian Muses, ye shall come 
 With joyous shouting to my walls, my town 
 Where saw the light that Spartan race, those 
 
 "Sown," 
 Brazen-shield-bearing chiefs, whereof the band 
 With children's children renovates our land, 
 To Thebes a sacred light ! 
 O combination of the marriage rite — 
 Bed of the mortal-born and Zeus, who couched 
 Beside the nymph of Perseus' progeny ! 
 For credible, past hope, becomes to me 
 That nuptial story long ago avouched, 
 Zeus ! and time has turned the dark to bright, 
 And made one blaze of truth the Herakleidan 
 
 might — 
 His, who emerged from earth's pavilion, left 
 
 Plouton's abode, the nether palace-cleft. 
 Thou wast the lord that nature gave me — not 
 That baseness born and bred — my king, by lot ! 
 — Baseness made plain to all, who now regard 
 The match of sword with sword in fight, — 
 H to the gods the Just and Eight 
 StiU pleasing be, still claim the palm's award. 
 
 Horror ! 
 
 Are we come to the selfsame passion of fear. 
 
 Old friends ? — such a phantasm fronts me here 
 
 Visible over the palace-roof ! 
 
 In fiight, in flight, the laggai-d limb 
 
 Bestir ! and haste aloof 
 
 From that on the roof there — grand and grim ! 
 
 Paian, king ! 
 
 Be thou my safeguard from the woeful thing ! 
 Iris. Courage, old men ! beholding here — 
 
 Night's birth — 
 Madness, and me the handmaid of the gods. 
 Iris : since to your town we come, no plagrue — 
 Wage war against the house of but one man 
 From Zeus and from Alkmen^ sprung, they say. 
 Now, till he made an end of bitter toils, 
 Fate kept him safe, nor did his father Zeus 
 Let ns once hurt him, Her^ nor myself. 
 But, since he has toiled through Enrusthens' 
 
 task, 
 Her^ desires to fix fresh blood on him — • 
 Slaying his children : I desire it too. 
 
 Up then, collecting the unsoftened heart, 
 tJnwedded virgin of black Night ! Drive, dr^ 
 Frenzy upon the man here — whirls of brain 
 Big with child-murder, while his feet leap gay 1 
 Let go the bloody cable its whole length ! 
 So that, — when o'er the Acherousian ford 
 He has sent floating, by self-homicide. 
 His beautiful boy-garland, — he may know 
 First, Herd's anger, what it is to him. 
 And then learn mine. The gods are vile indeed 
 And mortal matters vast, if he 'scape free ! 
 Madness. Certes, from well-bom sire and 
 
 mother too 
 Had I my birth, whose blood is Night's and 
 
 Heaven's ; 
 But here 's my glory, — not to grudge the good I 
 Nor love I raids against the friends of man. 
 
 1 wish, then, to persuade, — before I see 
 
 You stumbling, you and Her^ ! trust my 
 
 words ! 
 This man, the house of whom ye hound me to, 
 Is not unf amed on earth nor gods among ; 
 Since, having quelled waste land and savage 
 
 sea. 
 He alone raised again the falling rights 
 Of gods — gone ruinous through impious men. 
 Desire no mighty mischief, I advise ! 
 Iris. Give thou no thought to Herd's faulty 
 
 schemes ! 
 Mad. Changing her step from faulty to 
 
 fault-free ! 
 Iris. Not to be wise, did Zeus' wife send thee 
 
 here ! 
 Mad. Sun, thee I cite to witness — doing 
 what I loathe to do ! 
 But since indeed to Her4 and thyself I must 
 subserve. 
 
HERAKLES 
 
 669 
 
 And follow you quick, with a whiz, as the 
 
 hounds a-hunt with the huntsman, 
 — Go I will ! and neither the sea, as It groans 
 
 with its waves so furiously, 
 Nor earthquake, no, nor the bolt of thunder 
 
 gasping: out heaven's labor-throe, 
 Shall cover the ground as I, at a bound, rush 
 
 into the bosom of Herakles 1 
 And home I scatter, and house I batter. 
 Having first of all made the children fall, — 
 And he who felled them is never to know 
 He gave birth to each child that received the 
 
 blow, 
 Till the Madness, I am, have let him go ! 
 
 Ha, behold, already he rooks his head — he is 
 off from the starting-place ! 
 
 Not a word, as he rolls his frightful orbs, from 
 their sockets wreuched in the ghastly 
 race ! 
 
 And the breathings of him he tempers and 
 times no more than a bull in act to toss, 
 
 And hideously he bellows invoking the Keres, 
 daughters of Tartaros. 
 
 Ay, and I soon will dance thee madder, and 
 pipe thee quite out of thy mind with fear ! 
 
 So, up with the famous foot, thou Iris, march to 
 Olumpos, leave me here ! 
 
 Me and mine, who now combine, in the dread- 
 ful shape no mortal sees, 
 
 And now are about to pass, from without, inside 
 of the home of Herakles ! 
 Che. Otototoi, — groan ! Away is mown 
 
 Thy flower, Zeus' offspring. City ! 
 
 Unhappy Hellas, who dost cast (the pity !) 
 
 Who worked thee all the good. 
 
 Away from thee, — destroyest in a mood 
 
 Of madness him, to death whom pipings dance! 
 
 There goes she, in her chariot — groans, her 
 brood — 
 
 And gives her team the goad, as though adrift 
 
 For doom. Night's Gorgon, Madness, she whose 
 glance 
 
 Turns man to marble ! with what hissings lift 
 
 Their hundred heads the snakes, her head's in- 
 heritance ! 
 
 Quick has the god changed fortune : through 
 their sire 
 
 Quick will the children, that he saved, ex- 
 pire ! 
 
 miserable me ! Zeus ! thy child — 
 
 Childless himself — soon vengeance, himger- 
 wild. 
 
 Craving for punishment, will lay how low — 
 
 Loaded with many a woe ! 
 
 palace-roofs ! your courts about, 
 
 A measure begins all unrejoiced 
 
 By the tympanies and the thyrsos hoist 
 
 Of the Bromiau revel-rout ! 
 
 ye domes ! and the measure proceeds 
 
 For blood, not such as the cluster bleeds 
 
 Of the Dionusian pouring-out ! 
 
 Break forth, fly, children ! fatal this — 
 Fatal the lay that is piped, I wis ! 
 Ay, for he hunts a children-chase — 
 Never shall Madness lead her revel 
 
 And leave no trace in the dwelling-place I 
 
 Ai ai, because of the evil ! 
 
 Ai ai, the old man — how I groan 
 
 For the father, and not the father alone ! 
 
 She who was nurse of his children, — small 
 
 Her gain that they ever were bom at all 1 
 
 See I See ; 
 
 A whirlwind shakes hither and thither 
 
 The house — the roof falls in together ! 
 
 Ha, ha ! what dost thou, son of Zeus ? 
 
 A trouble of Tartaros broke loose. 
 
 Such as once Pallas on the Titan thundered, 
 
 Thou sendest on thy domes, roof-shattered and 
 
 wall-sundered ! 
 Messenger, bodies white with age ! — 
 Cho. What cry, to me — 
 
 What, dost thou call with ? 
 Mes. There 's a curse indoors I 
 
 Cho. I shall not bring a prophet : you suffice I 
 Mes. Dead are the children ! 
 Cho. Ai ai ! 
 
 Mes. Groan ! for, groans 
 
 Suit well the subject ! Dire the children's 
 
 death, 
 Dire too the parent's hands that dealt the fate. 
 No one could tell worse woe than we have 
 
 borne ! 
 Cho. How dost thou that same curse — 
 
 curse, cause for groan 
 The father's on the chUdren, make appear ? 
 Tell in what matter they were hurled from 
 
 heaven 
 Against the house — these evils ; and recount 
 The children's hapless fate, Messenger ! 
 Mes. The victims were before the hearth of 
 
 Zeus 
 A household-expiation : since the king 
 0' the counti7, Herakles had killed and cast 
 From out the dwelling ; and a beauteous choir 
 Of boys stood by his sire, too, and his wife. 
 And now the basket had been carried round 
 The altar in a circle, and we used 
 The consecrated speech. Alkraen^'s son ^ 
 Just as he was about, in his right hand. 
 To bear the torch, that he might dip into 
 The cleansing-water — came to a stand-still ; 
 And, as their father yet delayed, his boys 
 Had their eyes on him. But he was himself 
 No longer : lost in rollings of the eyes ; 
 Out-thrusting eyes — their very roots — like 
 
 blood ! 
 Froth he dropped down his bushy-bearded 
 
 cheek. 
 And said — together with a madman's laugh — 
 " Father ! why sacrifice, before I slay 
 Eurusthens ? why have twice the lustral fire. 
 And double pains, when 't is permitted me 
 To end, with one good hand-sweep, matters 
 
 here ? 
 Then, — when I hither bring Em-ustheus' 
 
 head, — 
 Then for these just slain, wash hands once for 
 
 aU! 
 Now, — cast drink-offerings forth, throw bas- 
 kets down ! 
 Who gives me bow and arrows, who my club ? 
 I go to that Mukenai 1 One must match 
 
670 
 
 ARISTOPHANES' APOLOGY 
 
 Crowbars and mattocks, so that — those sunk 
 
 stones 
 The Kuklops squared with picks and plumb-line 
 
 red — 
 I, with my bent steel, may o'ertumble town ! " 
 Which said, he goes and — with no car to 
 
 have — 
 Affirms he has one ! mounts the chariot-board. 
 And strikes, as having really goad in hand ! 
 And two ways laughed the servants — laugh 
 
 with awe; 
 And one said, as each met the other's stare, 
 " Playing us boys' tricks ? or is master mad ? " 
 But up he climbs, and down along the roof. 
 And, dropping into the men's place, maintains 
 He 's come to Nisos city, when he 's come 
 Only inside his own house ! then reclines 
 On floor, for couch, and, as arrived indeed. 
 Makes himself supper ; goes through some 
 
 brief stay. 
 Then says he 's traversing the forest-flats 
 Of Isthmos ; thereupon lays body bare 
 Of bucklings, and begins a contest with 
 
 — No one ! and is proclaimed the conqueror — 
 He by himself — having called out to hear 
 
 — Nobody ! Then, if you will take his word. 
 Blaring against Eurustheus horribly. 
 
 He 's at Mukenai. But his father laid 
 
 Hold of the strong hand and addressed him 
 
 thus : 
 " son, what ails thee ? Of what sort is this 
 Extravagance ? Has not some murder-craze. 
 Bred of those corpses thou didst just dispatch, 
 Danced thee drunk ? " But he, — taking him 
 
 to crouch, 
 Eurustheus' sire, that apprehensive touched 
 His hand, a suppliant, — pushes him aside, 
 Gets ready quiver, and bends low against 
 His children — thinking them Eurustheus' boys 
 He means to slay. They, horrified with fear. 
 Rushed here and there, — this child, into the 
 
 robes 
 0' the wretched mother, — this, beneath the 
 
 sliade 
 0' the column, — and this other, like a bird. 
 Cowered at the altar-foot. The mother shrieks, 
 "Parent— what dost thou? — kill thy chil- 
 dren?" So 
 Shriek tlie old sire and crowd of servitors. 
 But he. outwinding him, as round about 
 The column ran the boy, — a horrid whirl 
 O' the lathe his foot described ! — stands op- 
 posite. 
 Strikes through the liver ! and supine the boy 
 Bedews the stone shafts, breathing out his hfe. 
 But " Victory " he shouted ! boasted thus : 
 "Well, this one nestling of Eurustheus — 
 
 dead — 
 Falls by me, pays back the paternal hate 1 " 
 Then bends bow on another who was crouched 
 At base of altar — overlooked, he thought — 
 And now prevents him, falls at father's knee. 
 Throwing up hand to beard and cheek above. 
 " dearest ! " cries he, " father, kill me not ! 
 Yours,_ I am — your boy : not Eurustheus' boy 
 Yoii kill now ! " But lie, rolling the wild eye 
 Of Gorgon, — as the boy stood all too close 
 For deadly bowshot, — mimicry of smith 
 
 Who batters red-hot iron, — hand o'er head 
 Heaving his club, on the boy's yellow hair 
 Hurls it and breaks the bone. This second 
 
 caught, — 
 He goes, would slay the third, one sacrifice 
 He and the couple : but, beforehand here. 
 The miserable mother catches up. 
 Carries him inside house and bars the gate. 
 Then he, as he were at those Kuklops' work. 
 Digs at, heaves doors up, wrenches doorposts 
 
 out. 
 Lays wife and child low with the selfsame 
 
 shaft. 
 And this done, at the old man's death he 
 
 drives ; 
 But there came, as it seemed to us who saw, 
 A statue — Pallas with the crested head, 
 Swinging her spear — and threw a stone which 
 
 smote 
 Herakles' breast and stayed his slaughter-rage. 
 And sent him safe to sleep. He falls to 
 
 ground — 
 Striking against the column with his back — 
 Column which, with the falling of the roof, 
 Broken in two, lay by the altar-base. 
 And we, foot-free now from our several flights, 
 Along with the old man, we fastened bonds 
 Of rope-noose to the column, so that he. 
 Ceasing from sleep, might not go adding deeds 
 To deeds done. And he sleeps a sleep, poor 
 
 wretch. 
 No gift of any god ! since he has slain 
 Children and wife. For me. I do not know 
 What mortal has more misery to bear. 
 
 Cho. A murder there was which Argolis 
 Holds in remembrance, Hellas through, 
 As, at that time, best and famousest ; 
 Of those, the daughters of Danaos slew. 
 A murder indeed was that ! but this 
 Outstrips it, straight to the goal has pressed. 
 I am able to speak of a murder done 
 To the hapless Zeus-bom offspring, too — 
 Proknfe's son, who had but one — 
 Or a sacrifice to the Muses, say 
 Rather, who Itus sing alway, 
 Her single child ! But thou, the sire 
 Of children three — thou consuming fire ! — 
 In one outrageous fate hast made them all 
 
 expire 1 
 And this outrageous fate — 
 What groan, or wail, or deadmen's dirge, 
 Or choric dance of Haides shall I urge 
 The Muse to celebrate ? 
 
 Woe ! woe ! behold ! 
 
 The portalled palace lies unrolled. 
 
 This way and that way, each prodigious fold I 
 
 Alas for me ! these children, see. 
 
 Stretched, hapless group, before their father — 
 
 he 
 The all-unhappy, who lies sleeping out 
 The murder of his sons, a dreadful sleep ! 
 And bonds, see, all about, — 
 Rope-tangle, ties and tether, — these 
 Tightenings around the body of Herakles 
 To the stone columns of the house made fast I 
 
 But — like a bird that grieves 
 
HERAKLES 
 
 671 
 
 For callow nestlings some rude hand bereaves — 
 
 See, here, a bitter journey overpast. 
 
 The old man — all too late — is here at last ! 
 
 Amph. Silently, silently, aged Kadmeians ! 
 Win ye not suffer my son, dffiused 
 Yonder, to slide from his sorrows in sleep ? 
 
 Cho. And thee, old man, do I, groaning, weep, 
 And the children too, and the head there — 
 
 used 
 Of old to the wreaths and paians ! 
 
 Amph. Farther away ! Nor beat the breast. 
 Nor wail aloud, nor rouse from rest 
 The slumberer — asleep, so best ! 
 
 Cho. Ah me — what a slaughter ! 
 
 Amph. Kefrain — refrain! 
 
 Ye will prove my perdition ! 
 
 Cho. Unlike water. 
 
 Bloodshed rises from earth again ! 
 
 Amph. Do I bid you bate your breath, in 
 vain — 
 Ye elders ? Lament in a softer strain ! 
 Lest he rouse himself, burst every chain, 
 And bury the city in ravage — bray 
 Father and house to dust away ! 
 
 Cho. I cannot forbear — I cannot forbear ! 
 
 Amph. Hush ! I will learn his breathings : 
 there ! 
 I will lay my ears close. 
 
 Cho. What, he sleeps ? 
 
 h. Ay, — sleeps! A horror of slumber 
 
 The man who has piled 
 
 On wife and child 
 
 Death and death, as he shot them down 
 
 With clang o' the bow. 
 
 Cho. Wail— 
 
 Amph. Even so ! 
 
 Cho. — The fate of the children — 
 
 Amph. Triple woe! 
 
 Cho. — Old man, the fate of thy son ! 
 
 Amph. Hush, hush ! Have done! 
 He is turning: about ! 
 He is breaking out ! 
 Away ! I steal 
 And my body conceal, 
 Before he arouse. 
 In the depths of the house ! 
 
 Cho. Courage I The Night 
 Maintains her right 
 On the lids of thy son there, sealed from sight ! 
 
 Amph. See, see ! To leave the light 
 And, wretch that I am, bear one last ill, 
 I do not avoid ; but if he kill 
 Me, his own father, and devise 
 Beyond the present miseries 
 A misery more ghastly still — 
 And to haunt him, over and above 
 Those here who, as they used to love, 
 Now hate him, what if he have with these 
 My murder, the worst of Erinues ? 
 
 Cho. Then was the time to die, for thee, 
 When ready to wreak in the full degree 
 Vengeance on those 
 Thy consort's foes 
 
 Who murdered her brothers I glad, life's close, 
 With the Taphioi down. 
 And sacked their town 
 Clustered about with a wash of sea ! 
 
 Amph. To flight — to flight ! 
 Away from the house, troop off, old men 1 
 Save yourselves out of the maniac's sight I 
 He is rousing himself ri^ht up : and then. 
 Murder on murder heaping anew, 
 He will revel in blood your city through ! 
 Cho. Zeus, why hast, with such unmeas- 
 ured hate. 
 Hated thy son, whelmed in this sea of woes ? 
 
 Her. Ha, — 
 In breath indeed I am — see things I ought — ■ 
 ./Ether, and earth, and these the sunbeam- 
 shafts ! 
 But then — some billow and strange whirl of 
 
 sense 
 I have fallen into ! and breathings hot I 
 
 breathe — 
 Smoked upwards, not the steady work from 
 
 lungs. 
 See now ! Why, bound — at moorings like a 
 
 ship, — 
 About my young breast and young arm, to this 
 Stone piece of carved work broke in half, do I 
 Sit, have my rest in corpses' neighborhood ? 
 Strewn on the ground are wingfed darts, and bow 
 Which played my brother-shieldman, held in 
 
 hand, — 
 Guarded my side, and got my guardianship ! 
 I cannot have gone back to Haides — twice 
 Begun Eurustheus' race I ended thence ? 
 But I nor see the Sisupheian stone, 
 Nor Plouton, nor Demeter's sceptred maid ! 
 I am struck witless sure ! Where can I be ? 
 Ho there ! what friend of mine is near or far — 
 Some one to cure me of bewilderment ? 
 For naught familiar do I recognize. 
 Amph. Old friends, shall I go close to these 
 
 my woes ? 
 Cho. Kj, and let me too, — nor desert your 
 
 ills! 
 Her. Father, why weepest thou, and buriest 
 up 
 Thine eyes, aloof so from thy much-loved son ? 
 Amph. child ! — for, faring badly, mine 
 
 thou art ! 
 Her. Do I fare somehow ill, that tears should 
 
 flow? 
 Amph. Ill, — would cause any god who bore 
 
 to groan ! 
 Her. That 's boasting, truly ! still, you state 
 
 no hap. 
 Amph. For, thyself seest — if in thy wits 
 
 again. 
 Her. Heyday ! How riddlingly that hint re- 
 turns! 
 Amph. Well, I am trying — art thou sane and 
 
 sound ! 
 Her, Say if thou lay'st aught strange to my 
 
 life's charge ! 
 Amph. If thou no more art Haides-drunk, — 
 
 I tell! 
 Her. I bring to mind no drunkenness of soul. 
 Amph. Shall I unbind my son, old men, or 
 
 what ? 
 Her. And who was binder, tell ! — not that, 
 
 my deed ! 
 Amph. Mind that much of misfortune — pass 
 the rest ! 
 
674 
 
 ARISTOPHANES' APOLOGY 
 
 Her. Enough ! from silence, I nor learn nor 
 
 wish. 
 Amph. Zeus, dost witness here throned 
 
 Herd's work ? 
 Her. But have I had to bear augrht hostile 
 
 thence ? 
 Amph. Let be the goddess — bury thine own 
 
 guilt! 
 Her. Undone ! What is the sorrow thou wilt 
 
 say? 
 Amph. Look ! See the ruins of thy children 
 
 here ! 
 Her. Ah me ! What sight do wretched I be- 
 hold? 
 Amph. Unfair fight, son, this fight thou fas- 
 tenedst 
 On thine own children ! 
 Her. What fiight ? Who slew these ? 
 
 Amph. Thou and thy bow, and who of gods 
 
 was cause. 
 Her. How say'st ? What did I ? Ill-announ- 
 cing sire ! 
 Amph. — Go mad ! Thou askest a sad olear- 
 
 ine up! 
 Her. And am I also murderer of my wife ? 
 Amph. AU the work here was just one hand's 
 
 work — thine ! 
 Her. Ai ai — for groans encompass me — a 
 
 cloud I 
 Amph. For these deeds' sake do I begroan 
 
 thy fate ! 
 Her. Did I break up my house or dance it 
 
 down? 
 Amph. 1 know just one thing — all 's a woe 
 
 with thee ! 
 Her. But where did the craze catch me, 
 
 where destroy? 
 Amph. When thou didst cleanse hands at the 
 
 altar-flame. 
 Her. Ah me ! why is it then I save my life — 
 Proved murderer of my dearest ones, my boys ? 
 Shall not I rush to the rock-level's leap, 
 Or, darting sword through breast and all, be- 
 come 
 My children's blood-avenger ? or, this flesh 
 Burning away with fire, so thrust away 
 The infamy, which waits me there, from 
 
 life ? 
 Ah, but, — a hindrance to my purposed death, 
 Theseus arrives, my friend and kinsman, here ! 
 Eyes will be on me ! my child-raurder-plague 
 In evidence before friends loved so much ! 
 
 me, what shall I do ? Where, taking wing 
 Or gliding underground, shall I seek out 
 
 A solitariness from misery ? 
 
 1 will pull niifht upon ray muffled head ! 
 
 Let this wretch here content him with his 
 curse 
 
 Of blood : I would pollute no innocents ! 
 
 Theseus. I come, — with others who await be- 
 side 
 
 Asopos' stream, the armed Athenian youth, — 
 
 Bring thy son, old man, spear's fight-fellow- 
 ship! 
 
 For a bruit reached the Erechtheidai's town 
 
 That, having seized the sceptre of this realm, 
 
 Lukos prepares you battle-violence. 
 
 So, paying good back, — Herakles began, 
 
 Saving me down there, — I have come, old man, 
 If aught, of my hand or my friends', you want. 
 What 's here ? Why all these corpses on the 
 
 ground ? 
 Am I perhaps behindhand — come too late 
 For newer ill? Who killed these children 
 
 now ? 
 Whose wife wasshe, this woman I behold ? 
 Boys, at least, take no stand in reach of spear I 
 Some other woe than war, I chance upon ! 
 Amjah. thou, who sway'st the olive-bear- 
 
 ing height ! — 
 Thes. Why hail'st thou me with woeful pre- 
 lude thus ? 
 Amph. Dire sufferings have we suffered from 
 
 the gods. 
 Thes. These boys, — who are they, thou art 
 
 weeping o'er ? 
 AmpL He gave them birth, indeed, my hap- 
 less son ! 
 Begot, but killed them — dared their bloody 
 death, 
 Thes. Speak no such horror ! 
 Amph. Would I might obey 1 
 
 Thes. O teller of dread tidings ! 
 Amph. Lost are we — 
 
 Lost — flown away from life ! 
 
 Thes. What sayest thou ? 
 
 What did he ? 
 
 Amph. Erring through a frenzy-fit, 
 
 He did all, with the arrows dipt in dye 
 Of hundred-headed Hudra. 
 
 Thes. Herd's strife ! 
 
 But who is this among the dead, old man ? 
 Amph. Mine, mine, this progeny — the labor- 
 plagued. 
 Who went with gods once to Phlegruia's plain, 
 And in the giant-slaying war bore shield ! 
 Thes. Woe — woe ! What man was bom mis- 
 chanceful thus ! 
 Amph. Thou couldst not know another mortal 
 man 
 Toil-weary, more outworn by wanderings. 
 Thes. And why i' the peploi hides he his sad 
 
 head ? 
 Amph. Not daring meet thine eye, thy friend- 
 liness 
 And kinship, — nor that children's - blood 
 about ! 
 Thes. But I come to who shared my woe with 
 me ! 
 Uncover him ! 
 
 Amph. O child, put from thine eyes 
 
 The peplos, throw it off, show face to sun ! 
 Woe's weight well matched contends with tears 
 
 in thee. 
 I supplicate thee, falling at thy cheek 
 And knee and hand, and shedding this old 
 tear! 
 
 son, remit the savage lion's mood, 
 Since to a bloody, an unholy race 
 Art thou led forth, if thou be resolute 
 To go on adding ill to Ul, my child ! 
 
 Thes. Let me speak ! Thee, who sittest — 
 seated woe — 
 
 1 call upon to show thy friends thine eye ! 
 For there 's no darkness has a cloud so black 
 May hide thy misery thus absolute. 
 
HERAKLES 
 
 Why, waving hand, dost sign me — murder 's 
 
 done? 
 Lest a pollution strike me, from thy speech ? 
 Naught care I to — with thee, at least — fare Ul : 
 For I had joy once ! Then, — soul rises to, — 
 When thou didst save me from the dead to 
 
 light ! _ 
 Friends gratitude that tastes old age, I loathe. 
 And him who likes to share when things look 
 
 fine. 
 But, sail along with friends in trouble — no ! 
 Arise, unoovor thine unhappy head ! 
 Look on us ! Every man of the right race 
 Bears what, at least, the gods inflict, nor 
 
 shrinks. 
 Her. Theseus, hast seen this match — my 
 
 boys with me ? 
 Thes. 1 heard of, now I see the ills thou 
 
 sign'st. 
 Her. Why then hast thou displayed my head 
 
 to sun ? 
 Thes. Why ? mortals bring no plague on aught 
 
 divine ! 
 Her. Fly, unhappy, this my impious 
 
 plague ! 
 Thes. No plague of vengeance flits to friends 
 
 from friends. 
 Her. I praise thee ! But I helped thee, — 
 
 that is truth. 
 Thes. And I, advantaged then, now pity 
 
 thee. 
 Her. — The pitiable, — my children's mur- 
 derer ! 
 Thes. I mourn for thy sake, in this altered 
 
 lot. 
 Her. Hast thou found others in still greater 
 
 woe? 
 Thes. Thou, from earth, touchest heaven, one 
 
 huge distress ! 
 Her. Accordingly, I am prepared to die. 
 Thes. Think'st thou thy threats at all import 
 
 the gods ? 
 Her. Gods please themselves : to gods I give 
 
 their like. 
 Thes. Shut thy mouth, lest big words bring 
 
 bigger woe ! 
 Her. Iain full fraught withills — no stowing 
 
 more ! 
 Thes. Thou wilt do— what, then? Whither 
 
 moody home ? 
 Her. Dying, I go below earth whence I came. 
 Thes. Thou hast used words of — what man 
 
 turns up flrst ! 
 Her. While thou, being outside sorrow, 
 
 sehoolest me. 
 Thes. The much-enduring Herakles talks 
 
 thus ? — 
 Her. Not the so much-enduring: measure 's 
 
 past ! 
 Thes. — Mainstay to mortals, and their 
 
 mighty friend ? 
 Her. They nowise profit me : but Her4 rules. 
 Thes. HeUas forbids thou shouldst ineptly 
 
 die. 
 Her. But hear, then, how I strive by argu- 
 ments 
 Against thy teachings ! I will ope thee out 
 My life — past, present — as unlivable. 
 
 673 
 
 First, I waa bom of this man, who had slain 
 His mother's aged sire, and, sulhed so, 
 Married Alknien^, she who gave me birth. 
 Now, when the basis of a family 
 Is not laid right, what follows needs must fall ; 
 And Zeus, whoever Zeus is, formed me foe 
 To Her^ (take not thou offence, old man ! 
 Since father, in Zeus' stead, account I thee) 
 And, while I was at suck yet, frightful snakes 
 bhe introduced among my swaddling-clothes, — 
 I hat bedfellow of Zeus ! —to end me so. 
 But when I gained the youthful garb of flesh, 
 Ine labors I endured —what need to tell ? 
 What lions ever, or three-bodied brutes, 
 Tuphons or giants, or the four-legg'd swarms 
 Of Kentaur-battle, did not I end out ? 
 And that hound, headed all about with heads 
 Which cropped up twice, the Hudra, having 
 
 slain — 
 I both went through a myriad other toils 
 In full drove, and arrived among the dead 
 To convoy, as Eurustheus bade, to light 
 Haides' three-headed dog and doorkeeper. 
 But then I, — wretch, — dared this \aat labor 
 
 — see ! 
 Slew my sons, keystone-coped my house with 
 
 ills. 
 To such a strait I come ! nor my dear Thebes 
 Dare I inhabit, — and, suppose I stay ? 
 Into what fane or festival of friends 
 Am I to go ? My curse scarce courts accost ! 
 Shall I seek Argos ? How, if fled from home ? 
 But say, — I hurry to some other town ! 
 And there they eye me, as notorious now, — 
 Kept by sharp tongue-taunts under look and 
 
 key — 
 *' Is not this he, Zeus' son, who murdered once 
 Children and wife ? Let him go rot else- 
 where ! " 
 To any man renowned as happy once. 
 Reverses are a grave thing ; but to whom 
 EvU is old acquaintance, there 's no hurt 
 To speak of, he and misery are twins. 
 To this degree of woe I think to come : 
 For earth will utter voice forbidding me 
 To touch the ground, and sea — to pierce the 
 
 wave. 
 The river-springs — to drink, and I shall play 
 Ixion's part quite out, the chained and wheeled ! 
 And best of all will be, if so I 'scape 
 Sight from one man of those Hellenes, — once 
 I lived among, felicitous and rich ! 
 Why ought Ithen to live ? What gain accrues 
 From good-foivnothing, wicked life I lead ? 
 In fine, let Zeus' brave consort dance and sing, 
 Stamp foot, the Olumpian Zeus' own sandal* 
 
 trick ! 
 What she has willed, that brings her will to 
 
 pass — 
 The foremost man of Hellas pedestalled. 
 Up, over, and down whirling ! Who woulj 
 
 pray 
 To such a goddess ? — that, begrudging Zeus 
 Because he loved a woman, ruins me — 
 Lover of Hellas, faultless of the wrong ! 
 
 Thes. This strife is from no other of the god« 
 Than Zeus' wife ; rightly apprehend, as well. 
 Why, to no death — thou meditatest now — 
 
674 
 
 ARISTOPHANES' APOLOGY 
 
 I would persuade thee, but to bear thy woes ! 
 None, none of mortals boasts a fate unmixed, 
 Nor gods — if poets' teaching be not fake. 
 Have not they joined in wedlock against law 
 With one another ? not, for sake of rule, 
 Branded their sires in bondage ? Yet they 
 
 house, 
 All the same, in Olumpos, carry heads 
 High there, notorious sinners though they be ! 
 What wilt thou say, then, if thou, mortal-born, 
 Bearest outrageously fate gods endure ? 
 Leave Thebes, now, pay obedience to the law. 
 And follow me to Pallas' citadel ! 
 There, when thy hands are purified from stain. 
 House will I give thee, and goods shared alike. 
 What gifts I hold too from the citizens 
 For saving twice seven children, when I slew 
 The Knosian bull, these also give I thee. 
 And everywhere about the land are plots 
 Apportioned me : these, named by thine own 
 
 name. 
 Shall be henceforward styled by all men — 
 
 thine. 
 Thy life-long ; but at death, when Haides- 
 
 bound. 
 All Athens shall uphold the honored one 
 With sacrifices, and huge marble heaps : 
 For that 's a fair crown our Hellenes grant 
 Their people — glory, should they help the 
 
 brave ! 
 And I repay thee back this grace for thine 
 That saved me, now that thou art lorn of 
 
 friends — 
 Since, when the gods give honor, friends may 
 
 flit: 
 For, a god's help suffices, if he please. 
 Her. All me, these words are foreign to my 
 
 woes! 
 I neither fancy gods love lawless beds. 
 Nor, that with chains they bind each other's 
 
 hands, 
 Have I judged worthy faith, at any time ; 
 Nor shall I be persuaded — one is born 
 His fellows' master ! since God stands in 
 
 need — 
 If he is really God — of naught at all. 
 These are the poets' pitiful conceits ! 
 But this it was I pondered, though woe- 
 
 whelraed — 
 " Take heed lest thou be taxed with cowardice 
 Somehow in leaving thus the light of day ! " 
 For whoso cannot make a stand against 
 These same misfortunes, neither could with- 
 stand 
 A mere man's dart, oppose death, strength to 
 
 strength. 
 Therefore unto thy city I will go 
 And have the grace of thy ten thousand gifts. 
 There ! I have tasted of ten thousand toils 
 As truly — never waived a single one. 
 Nor let these runnings drop from out my eyes I 
 Nor ever thought it would have come to this — 
 That I from out my eyes do drop tears ! Well ! 
 At present, as it seems, one bows to fate. 
 So be it ! Old man, thou seest my exile — 
 Seest, too, me — my children's murderer 1 
 These give thou to the tomb, and deck the dead. 
 Doing them honor with thy tears — since me 
 
 Law does not sanction ! Propping on her 
 
 breast. 
 And giving them into their mother's arms, 
 — Eeinstitute the sad community 
 Which I, unhappy, brought to nothingness — 
 Not by my will 1 And, when earth hides the 
 
 dead. 
 Live in this city ! — sad, but, all the same, 
 Force thy soul to bear woe along with me ! 
 children, who begat and gave you birth — 
 Your father — has destroyed you ! naught you 
 
 gain 
 By those fair deeds of mine I laid yon up, 
 As by main-force I labored glory out 
 To give you, — that fine gift of fatherhood ! 
 And thee, too, my poor one, I destroyed. 
 Not rendering like for like, as when thou 
 
 kept'st 
 My marriage-bed inviolate, — those long 
 Household-seclusions draining to the dregs 
 Inside my house ! me, my wife, my boys — 
 And — myself, how, miserably moved. 
 Am I disyoked now from both boys and wife I 
 Oh, bitter those delights of kisses now — 
 And bitter these my weapons' fellowship ! 
 For I am doubtful whether shall I keep 
 Or cast away these arrows which will clang 
 Ever such words out, as they knock my side — 
 *' Us — thou didst murder wife and children 
 
 with! 
 Us — child - destroyers — still thou keenest 
 
 thine ! " 
 Ha, shall I bear them in my arms, then ? What 
 Say for excuse ? Yet, naked of my darts 
 Wherewith I did my bravest, HeUas through, 
 Throwing myself beneath foot to my foes, 
 Shall I die basely ? No I relinquishment 
 Of these must uever be, — companions once, 
 We sorrowfully must observe the pact ! 
 In just one thing, co-operate with me 
 Thy sad friend, "Theseus 1 Go along with him 
 To Ar^os, and in "oncert get arranged 
 The price my due for bringing there the Hound ! 
 land of Kadmos, Theban people aU, 
 Shear off your locks, lament one wide lament, 
 Go to my children's grave and, in one strain, 
 Lament the whole of us — my dead and me — 
 Since all together are f oredone and lost. 
 Smitten by Herd's single stroke of fate ! 
 
 Thes. Eise up now from thy dead ones I 
 
 "Tears enough, 
 Poor friend 1 
 Her. I cannot : for my limbs are fixed. 
 
 Thes. Ay : even these strong men fate over- 
 throws ! 
 Ser. Woe ! 
 Here might I grow a stone, nor mind woes 
 
 more ! 
 Thes. Cease 1 Give thy hand to friendly 
 
 helpmate now I 
 Her. Nay, but I wipe off blood upon thy 
 
 robes I 
 Thes. Squeeze out and spare no drop! I take 
 
 it all! 
 Her. Of sons bereaved, I have thee like my 
 
 son ! 
 Thes. Give to my neck thy hand ! 't is I will 
 
 lead. 
 
HERAKLES 
 
 675 
 
 Her. Yoke - fellows friendly — one heart- 
 broken, though ! 
 father ! such a man we need for friend ! 
 Amph. Certes, the land that bred him boasts 
 
 good sons ! 
 Her. Turn me round, Theseus — to behold my 
 
 boys ! 
 Thes. What ? will the having such a love- 
 
 chaim soothe ? 
 Her. I want it ; and to press my father's 
 
 breast. 
 Amph. See here, O son ! for, what I love 
 
 thou seek'st ! 
 Thes. Strange ! Of thy labors no more 
 
 memory ? 
 Her. All those were less than these, those 
 
 ills I bore ! 
 Thes. Who sees thee grow a woman, — will 
 
 not praise ! 
 Her. I live low to thee? Not so once, I 
 
 thiuk ! 
 Thes. Too low by far 1 "Famed Herakles" 
 
 — Where's he ? 
 Her. Down amid evils, of what kind wast 
 
 thou ? 
 Thes. As far as courage — least of all man- 
 kind ! 
 Her, How say'st, then, I in evils shrink to 
 
 naught ? 
 Thes. Forward ! 
 
 Her. Farewell, old father ! 
 
 Amph. Thou too, son ! 
 
 Her. Bury the boys as I enjoined ! 
 Amph. And me — 
 
 Who will be found to bury now, my child ? 
 Her. Myself! 
 
 Amph. When, coming ? 
 
 Her. When thy task is done. 
 
 Amph. How ? 
 
 Her. I will have thee carried forth from 
 Thebes 
 To Athens. But bear in the children, earth 
 Is burdened by ! Myself, — who with these 
 
 shames 
 Have cast away my house, — a ruined hulk, 
 ' follow — trailed by Theseus — on my way ; 
 .£xnd whoso rather would have wealth and 
 
 strength 
 Than good friends, reasons foolishly therein ! 
 Cho. And we depart, with sorrow at heart. 
 Sobs that increase with tears that start ; 
 The greatest of all our friends of yore 
 We have lost forevermore ! 
 
 When the long silence ended, — " Our best 
 
 friend — 
 Lost, oar best friend ! " he muttered musingly. 
 Then, " Lachares the sculptor " (half aloud) 
 "Sinned he or sinned he not? 'Outrageous 
 
 sin!' 
 Shuddered our elders, ' Pallas should be 
 
 clothed : 
 He carved her naked.' ' But more beautiful ! ' 
 Answers this generation : ' Wisdom formed 
 For love not fear ! ' And there the statue 
 
 stands, 
 Entraps the eye severer art repels. 
 
 Moreover, Pallas wields the thunderbolt, 
 Yet has not struck the artist all this wMle. 
 Pheidias and Aischulos ? Euripides 
 And Lachares ? But youth will have its way ! 
 The ripe man ought to be as old as young — 
 As young as old. I too have youth at need. 
 Much may be said for stripping wisdom bare ! 
 
 " And who 's ' our best friend ' ? You play 
 
 kottabos ; 
 Here 's the last mode of playing. Take a 
 
 sphere 
 With orifices at due interval. 
 Through topmost one of which, a throw adroit 
 Sends wine from cup, clean passage, from out- 
 side 
 To where, in hollow midst, a manikin 
 Suspended ever bobs with head erect 
 Right underneath whatever hole 's a-top 
 When you set orb a-rolling ; pluuLb, he gets 
 Ever this benediction of the splash. 
 An other-fashioned orb presents him fixed : 
 Of all the outlets, he fronts only one. 
 And only when that one — and rare the 
 
 chance — 
 Comes uppermost, does he turn upward too : 
 He can't turn all sides with the turning orb. 
 Inside this sphere of life — all objects, sense 
 And soul perceive — Euripides hangs fixed. 
 Gets knowledge through the single aperture 
 Of High and Sight : with visage fronting these 
 He waits the wine thence ere he operate, 
 Work in the world and write a tragedy. 
 When that hole happens to revolve to point. 
 In drops the knowledge, waiting meets reward. 
 But, diily in rotation. Low and Wroi^ — 
 When these enjoy the moment's altitude. 
 His heels are found just where his head should 
 
 be! 
 No knowledge that way I I am movable, — 
 To slightest shift of orb make prompt response. 
 Face Low and Wrong and Weak and all the rest. 
 And still drink knowledge, wine-drenched every 
 
 turn, — 
 Eqiially favored by their opposites. 
 Little and Bad exist, are natural : 
 Then let me know them, and be twice as great 
 As he who only knows one phase of life ! 
 So doubly shall I prove ' best friend of man,' 
 If I report the whole truth — Vice, perceived 
 While he shut eyes to all but Virtue there. 
 Man 's made of both : and both must be of use 
 To somebody : if not to him, to me. 
 While, as to your imaginary Third, 
 Who, — stationed (by mechanics past my guess) 
 So as to take in every side at once. 
 And not successively, — may reconcile 
 The High and Low in tragicomic verse, — 
 He shall be hailed superior to us both 
 When bom — in the Tin-islands I Meantime, 
 
 here 
 In bright Athenai, 1 contest the claim. 
 Call myself lostephanos' ' best friend,' 
 Who took ray own course, worked as I descried 
 Ordainment, stuck to my first faculty ! 
 
 " For, listen I There 's no failure breaks the 
 heart, 
 
676 
 
 ARISTOPHANES' APOLOGY 
 
 Whate'er be man's endeayor in this world. 
 
 Like the rash poet's when he — nowise fails 
 
 By poetizing badly, — Zeus or makes 
 
 Or mars a man, so — at it, merrily ! 
 
 But when, — made man, — much like myself, 
 
 — equipt 
 For such and such achievement, — rash he turns 
 Out of the straight path, bent on snatch of 
 
 feat 
 From — who 's the appointed fellow bom 
 
 thereto, — 
 Crows take him ! — in your Kassiterides ? 
 Half-doing his work, leaving mine untouched, 
 That were the failure I Here I stand, heart- 
 whole, 
 No Thamuris ! 
 
 " Well thought of, Thamuris ! 
 Has zeal, pray, for ' best friend ' Euripides 
 Allowed you to observe the honor done 
 His elder rival, in our Poikil^ ? 
 You don't know ? Once and only once, trod 
 
 stage. 
 Sang and touched lyre in person, in his youth. 
 Our Sophokles, — youth, beauty, dedicate 
 To Thamuris who named the tragedy. 
 The voice of him was weak ; face, limbs and 
 
 lyre, 
 These were worth saving: Thamuris stands 
 
 yet 
 Perfect as painting helps in such a case. 
 At least you know the story, for ' best friend ' 
 Enriched his ' Rhesos ' from the Blind Bard's 
 
 store ; 
 So haste and see the work, and lay to heart 
 What it was struck me when I eyed the piece ! 
 Here stands a poet punished for rash strife 
 With Powers above his power, who see with 
 
 sight 
 Beyond his vision, sing accordingly 
 A song, which he must needs dare emulate I 
 Poet, remain the man nor ape the Muse ! 
 
 "But — lend me the psalterion ! Nay, for 
 
 once — 
 Once let my hand fall where the other's lay 1 
 I see it, just as I were Sophokles, 
 That sunrise and combustion of the east ! " 
 
 And then he sang — are these unlike the words ? 
 
 Thamuris marching, — lyre and song of 
 
 Thrace — 
 (Perpend the first, the worst of woes that were, 
 Allotted lyre and song, ye poet-race !) 
 
 Thamuris from OichaiUa, feasted there 
 By kingly Eurutos of late, now bound 
 For Dorion at the uprise broad and bare 
 
 Of Mount Pangaios (ore with earth enwound 
 Glittered beneath his footstep) — marching gay 
 And glad, Thessalia through, came, robed and 
 crowned, 
 
 From triumph on to triumph, 'mid a ray 
 
 Of early morn, — came, saw and knew the spot 
 
 Assigned him for his worst of woes, that day. 
 
 Balura — happier while its name was not — 
 Met him, but nowise menaced ; slipt aside, 
 Obsequious river, to pursue its lot 
 
 Of solacing the valley — say, some wide 
 Thick busy human cluster, house and home, 
 Embanked for peace, or thrift that thanks the 
 tide. 
 
 Thamuris, marching, laughed " Each flake of 
 
 foam" 
 (As sparklingly the ripple raced him by) 
 Mocks slower clouds adrift in the blue 
 
 dome ! " 
 
 For Autumn was the season : red the sky 
 
 Held mom's conclusive signet of the sun 
 
 To break the mists up, bid them blaze and die. 
 
 Mom had the mastery as, one by one. 
 
 All pomps produced themselves along the tract 
 
 From earth's far ending to near heaven begun. 
 
 Was there a ravaged tree ? it laughed compact 
 With gold, a leaf-ball crisp, high-brandished 
 
 now. 
 Tempting to onset frost which late attacked. 
 
 Was there a wizened shrub, a starveling bough, 
 
 A fleecy thistle filched from by the wind, 
 
 A weed. Pan's trampling hoof would disallow ? 
 
 Each, with a glory and a rapture twined 
 About it, joined the rush of air and light 
 And force : the world was of one joyous mind. 
 
 Say not the birds flew ! they forehore their 
 
 right — 
 Swam, revelling onward in the roll of things. 
 Say not the beasts' mirth bounded ! that was 
 
 flight — 
 
 How could the creatures leap, no lift of wings ? 
 Such earth's community of purpose, such 
 The ease of earth's fulfilled imaginings, — 
 
 So did the near and far appear to touch 
 I' the moment's transport, — that an inter- 
 change 
 Of function, far with near, seemed scarce too 
 much ; 
 
 And had the rooted plant aspired to range 
 With the snake's license, while the insect 
 
 yearned 
 To glow fixed as the flower it were not 
 
 strange — 
 
 No more than if the fluttery tree-top turned 
 
 To actual music, sang itself aloft ; 
 
 Or if the wind, impassioned chantress, earned 
 
 The right to soar embodied in some soft 
 Fine form all fit for cloud-companionship. 
 And, blissful, once touch beauty chased so oft. 
 
 Thamuris, marching, let no fancy slip 
 Born of the fiery transport ; lyre and song 
 
THE LAST ADVENTURE OF BALAUSTION 
 
 677 
 
 Were his, to smite with hand and launch from 
 lip- 
 
 Peerless recorded, since the list grew long 
 Of poets (saith Homeros) free to stand 
 Pedestalled 'mid the Muses' temple-throng, 
 
 A atatued service, laurelled, lyre in hand, 
 (Ay, for we see them) — Thamuris of Thrace 
 Predominating foremost of the band. 
 
 Therefore the mom-ray that enriched his face, 
 If it gave lambent ohiU, took flame again 
 From flush of pride ; he saw, he knew the 
 place. 
 
 What wind arrived with all the rhythms from 
 
 plain, 
 Hill, dale, and that rough wildwood intei> 
 
 spersed ? 
 Compounding these to one consummate strain, 
 
 It reached him, music : but his own outburst 
 
 Of victory concluded the account, 
 
 And that grew song which was mere music erst. 
 
 " Be my Parnassos, thou Pangaian mount ! 
 And turn thee, river, nameless hitherto ! 
 Famed shalt thou vie with famed Pieria's 
 fount I 
 
 Here I await the end of this ado : 
 Which wins— Earth's poet or the Heavenly 
 Muse." . . . 
 
 But song broke up in laughter. "Tell the 
 
 rest, 
 Who may ! I have not spurned the common 
 
 life. 
 Nor vaunted mine a lyre to match the Muse 
 Who sings for gods, not men 1 Accordingly, 
 I shall not decorate her vestibule — 
 Mute marble, blind the eyes and quenched the 
 
 brain, ,,11 
 
 Loose in the hand a bright, a broken lyre ! 
 —Not Thamuris but Aristophanes ! 
 
 " There ! I have sung content back to myself, 
 And started subject for a play beside. 
 My next performance shall content you both. 
 Did ' Prelude-Battle ' maul ' best friend ' too 
 
 much? . 
 
 Then ' Main-Fight ' be my next song, fairness 
 
 self! 
 Its subject- Contest for the Tragic Crown. 
 Ay, you shall hear none else but Aischulos 
 Lay down the law of Tragedy, and prove 
 ' Best friend ' a stray-away, — no praise denied 
 His manifold deservings, never fear "T 
 Nor word more of the old fun ! Death de- 
 fends ! 
 Sound admonition has its due effect. 
 Oh, you have uttered weighty words, beheve ! 
 Such as shall bear abundant fruit, next year. 
 In judgment, regular, legitimate. 
 Let Bacchos' self preside in person ! Ay — 
 For there 's a buzz about those ' Bacchanals 
 Rumor attributes to your great and dead 
 
 For final effort : oust the prodigy 
 Great dead men leave, to lay survivors low ! 
 — Until we make acquaintance with our tate 
 And find, fate's worst done, we, the same, sur- 
 vive 
 Perchance to honor more the patron-god, 
 Fitlier inaugurate a festal year. 
 Now that the cloud has broken, sky laughs 
 
 blue, 
 Earth blossoms youthfully ! Athenai breathes I 
 After a twenty-six years' wintry blank 
 Struck from her Ufe, — war-madness, one long 
 
 swoon. 
 She wakes up : Arginousai bids good cheer ! 
 We have disposed of KaUikratidas ; 
 Once more will Sparta sue for terms, — who 
 
 knows ? 
 Cede Dekeleia, as the rumor runs : 
 Terms which Athenai, of right mind again. 
 Accepts — she can no other ! Peace declared. 
 Have my long labors home their fruit or no ? 
 Grrinned coarse buffoonery so oft in vain ? 
 Enough — it simply saved you. Saved ones, 
 
 praise 
 Theoria's beauty and Opera's breadth ! 
 Nor, when Peace realizes promised bhss. 
 Forget the Bald Bard, Envy I but go burst 
 As the cup goes rounds and the ca'es abound, 
 Collops of hare, with roast spinks rare 1 
 Confess my pipings, dancings, posings served 
 A purpose : guttlines, guzzlings, had their use ! 
 Say whether light Muse, Rosy-nngeivtips, 
 Or, ' best friend's ' Heavy-hand, Melpomen^, 
 Touched lyre to purpose, played Amphion's 
 
 part. 
 And built Athenai to the skies once more ! 
 Farewell, brave couple ! Next year, welcome 
 me!" 
 
 No doubt, in what he said that night, sincere ! 
 
 One story he referred to, false or fact. 
 
 Was not without adaptability. 
 
 They do say — Lais the Corinthian once 
 
 Chancing to see Euripides (who paced 
 
 Composing in a garden, tablet-book 
 
 In left hand, with appended stales prompt) — 
 
 " Answer me," she began, " O Poet, — this ! 
 
 What didst intend by writing in thy play. 
 
 Go hang, thou, filthy doer ? " Struck on heap, 
 
 Euripides, at the audacious speech — 
 
 "Well now," quoth he, "thyself art just the 
 
 I should imagine fit for deeds of filth ! " 
 She laughingly retorted his own line 
 "What 's filth, — unless who does it, thinks it 
 so?" 
 
 So might he doubtless think. "Farewell," 
 said we. 
 
 And he was gone, lost in the morning-gray, 
 Rose-streaked and gold to eastward. Did we 
 
 dream ? , , , , ■ 
 
 Could the poor twelve-hours hold this argu- 
 ment 
 We render durable from fugitive. 
 As duly at each sunset's droop of sail, 
 
678 
 
 ARISTOPHANES' APOLOGY 
 
 Delay of oar, submission to seamiight, 
 I still remember, you as duly dint 
 Remembrance, with the punctual rapid style, 
 Into — what calm cold page ! 
 
 Thus soul escapes 
 From eloquence made captive : thus mere 
 
 words 
 — Ah, would the lifeless body stay ! But no : 
 Change upon change till, — who may recognize 
 What did soul service, in the dusty heap ? 
 What energy of Aristophanes 
 Inflames tlie wreck Balaustion saves to show ? 
 Ashes be evidence how fire — with smoke — 
 All night went lamping on ! But morn must 
 
 rise. 
 The poet — I shall say — burned up and, blank, 
 Smouldered this ash, now white and cold 
 
 enough. 
 
 Nay, Euthukles ! for best, though mine it be. 
 Comes yet ! Write on, write ever, wrong no 
 word ! 
 
 Add, first, — he gone, if jollity went too. 
 Some of the graver mood, which mixed and 
 
 marred, 
 Departed likewise. Sight of narrow scope 
 Has this meek consolation : neither ills 
 We dread, nor joys we dare anticipate, 
 Perform to promise. Each soul sows a seed — 
 Euripides and Aristophanes ; 
 Seed bears crop, scarce within our little lives ; 
 But germinates — perhaps enough to judge — 
 Next year ? 
 
 Whereas, next year brought harvest-time ! 
 For, next year came, and went not, but is now, 
 StiU now, while you and I are bound for Rhodes 
 That *s all but reached ! — and harvest has it 
 
 brought. 
 Dire as the homicidal dragon-crop ! 
 Sophokles had dismissal ere it dawned, 
 Happy as ever ; though men mournfully 
 Plausive, — when only soul could triumph now. 
 And lophon produced his father's play, — 
 Crowned the consummate song where Oidipous 
 Dared the descent 'mid earthquake-thundering. 
 And hardly Theseus' hands availed to guard 
 Eyes from the horror, as their grove disgorged 
 Its dread ones, while each daughter sank to 
 
 ground. 
 
 Then Aristophanes, on heel of that, 
 Triumphant also, followed with his "Frogs: " 
 Produced at next Lenaia, — three months 
 
 since, — 
 The promised Main-Fight, loyal, license-free ! 
 As if the poet, primed with Thasian juice, 
 fHimself swore — wine that conquers every kind 
 For long abiding in the head) could fix 
 Thenceforward any object in its truth. 
 Through eyeballs bathed by mere Castalian dew. 
 Nor miss the borrowed medium, — vinous drop 
 That colors all to the right crimson pitch 
 When mirth grows mockery, censure takes the 
 
 tinge 
 Of malice 1 
 
 All was Aristophanes : 
 There blazed the glory, there shot black the 
 
 shame ! 
 Ay, Bacchos did stand forth, the Tragic God 
 In person ! and when duly dragged through 
 
 mire, — 
 Having lied, filched, played fool, proved coward, 
 
 flung 
 The boys their dose of fit indecency. 
 And finally got trounced to heart's content. 
 At his own feast, in his own theatre 
 (— Oh, never fear ! 'T was consecrated sport, 
 Exact tradition, warranted no whit 
 Offensive to instructed taste, — indeed, 
 Essential to Athenai's liberty. 
 Could the poor stranger understand !) why, 
 
 then — 
 He was pronounced the rarely-qualified 
 To rate the work, adjust the claims to worth. 
 Of Aischulos (of whom, in other mood. 
 This same appreciative poet pleased 
 To say, *' He 's all one stiff and gluey piece 
 Of back of swine's-neck ! ") — and of Chatter- 
 box 
 Who, "twisting words like wool," usurped his 
 
 seat 
 In Plouton's realm; "the arch-rogue, liar, 
 
 scamp 
 That lives by snatching-up of altar-orts,'' 
 
 — Who failed to recognize Euripides ? 
 
 Then came a contest for supremacy — 
 Crammed full of genius, wit and fun and freak. 
 No spice of undue spite to spoil the dish 
 Of aU sorts, — for the Mystics matched the Frogs 
 In poetry, no Seiren sang so sweet ! — 
 Till, pressed into the service (how dispense 
 With Phaps-Elaphion and free foot-display ?) 
 The Muse of dead Euripides danced frank, 
 Rattled her bits of tile, made all too plain 
 How baby-work like " Herakles " had birth ! 
 Last, Bacchos — candidly disclaiming brains 
 Able to follow finer argument — 
 Confessed himself much moved by three main 
 
 facts : 
 First, — if you stick a " Lost his flask of oil " 
 At pause of period, you perplex the sense, — 
 Were it the Elegy for Marathon ! 
 Next, if you weigh two verses, "car" — the 
 
 word, 
 Will outweigh "dub" — the word, in each 
 
 packed line ! 
 And — last, worst fact of all ! in rivalry 
 The younger poet dared to improvise 
 Laudation less distinct of — Triphales ? 
 (Nay, that served when ourself abused the 
 
 youth !) 
 Pheidippides — (nor that 's appropriate now !) 
 Then, — Alkibiades, our city's hope, 
 Since times change and we Comics should change 
 
 tool 
 These three main facts, well weighed, drew 
 
 judgment down. 
 Conclusively assigned the wretch his fate — 
 " Fate due," admonished the sage Mystic choir, 
 " To sitting, prate-apace, with Bokrates, 
 Neglecting music and each tragic aid ! " 
 
 — All wound-up by a wish " We soon may cease 
 
THE LAST ADVENTURE OF BALAUSTION 
 
 679 
 
 From certain griefs, and warfare, worst of 
 them!" 
 
 — Since, deaf to Comedy's persistent voice. 
 War still rag:ed, still was like to rage. In vain 
 Had Spart^ cried once more, " But grant us 
 
 Peace, 
 We give you Dekeleia back ! " Too shrewd 
 Was Kleophon to let escape, forsooth, 
 The enemy — at final gasp, besides ! 
 
 So, Aristophanes obtained the prize. 
 And so Atnenai felt she had a friend 
 Far better than her "best friend," lost last 
 
 year; 
 And so, such fame had "Frogs" that, when 
 
 came round 
 This presont year, those Frogs croaked gay again 
 At the great Feast, Elaphebolion-month. 
 Only — there happened Aigispotamoi ! 
 
 And, in the midst of the frog-merriment. 
 Plump 0' the sudden, pounces stern King Stork 
 On the light-hearted people of the marsh ! 
 Spartan Lusandros swooped precipitate. 
 Ended Athenai, rowed her sacred bay 
 With oars which brought a hundred triremes 
 
 back 
 Captive ! 
 
 And first word of the conqueror 
 Was " Down with those Long Walls, Peiraios' 
 
 pride ! 
 Destroy, yourselves, your bulwarks ! Peace 
 
 needs none ! " 
 And " We obey ' ' they shuddered in their dream. 
 
 But, at next quick imposure of decree — 
 " No longer democratic government ! 
 Henceforth such oligarchy as ourselves 
 Please to appoint you 1 '' — then the horroiv 
 
 stung 
 Dreamers awake ; they started up a-stare 
 At the half-helot captain and his crew 
 
 — Spartans, "men used to let their hair grow 
 
 long. 
 To fast, be dirty, and just — Sokratize ' ' — 
 Whose word was " Trample on Themistokles ! " 
 
 So, as the way is with much misery, 
 
 The heads swam, hands refused their ofSee, 
 
 hearts 
 Sunk as they stood in stupor. "Wreck the 
 
 Walls? 
 Ruin Peiraios ? — with our Pallas armed 
 For interference ? — Herakles apprised. 
 And Theseus hasting ? Lay the Long Walls 
 
 low ? " 
 
 Three days they stood, stared, — stonier than 
 their walls. 
 
 Whereupon, sleep who might, Lusandros woke : 
 
 Saw the prostration of his enemy. 
 
 Utter and absolute beyond belief. 
 
 Past hope of hatred even. I surmise 
 
 He also probably saw fade in fume 
 
 Certain fears, bred of Bakis-prophecy, 
 
 Nor apprehended any more that gods 
 
 And heroes, — fii-e, must glow forth, guard the 
 
 ground 
 Where prone, by sober day-dawn, corpse-like lay 
 Powerless Athenai, late predominant 
 Lady of Hellas, — Sparta's slave-prize now ! 
 Where should a menace Im-k in those slack 
 
 limbs ? 
 What was to move his circumspection ? Why 
 Demolish just Peiraios ? 
 
 " Stay ! " bade he : 
 ' Already promise-breakers ? True to type, 
 Athenians 1 past, and present, and to come, — 
 The fickle and the false ! No stone dislodged. 
 No implement applied, yet three days' grace 
 Expire ! Forbearance is no longer-lived. 
 By breaking promise, terms of peace you 
 
 break — 
 Too gently framed for falsehood, fickleness 1 
 All must be reconsidered — yours the fault I " 
 
 Wherewith, he called a council of allies. 
 Pent-up resentment used its privilege, — 
 Outburst at ending : this the summed result. 
 
 " Because we would avenge no transient wrong 
 But an eternity of insolence, 
 Aggression, — folly, no disasters mend. 
 Pride, no reverses teach humility, — 
 Because too plainly were all punishment. 
 Such as comports with less obdurate criraie, 
 Evadable by falsehood, fickleness — 
 Experience proves the true Athenian type, — 
 Therefore, 't is need we dig deep down into 
 The root of evil ; lop nor bole nor branch. 
 Look up, look round and see, on every side. 
 What nurtured the rank tree to noisome fruit ! 
 We who live hutted (so they laugh) not housed, 
 Build barns for temples, prize mud-monuments, 
 Nor show the sneering stranger aught but — 
 
 men, ^- 
 Spartans take insult of Athenians just 
 Because they boast Akropolis to mount. 
 And Propulaia to make entry by. 
 Through a mad maze of marble arrogance 
 Such as you see — such as let none see more I 
 Abolish the detested luxury ! 
 Leave not one stone upon another, raze 
 Athenai to the rock ! Let hiU and plain 
 Become a waste, a grassy pasture-ground 
 Where sheep may wander, grazing goats depend 
 From shapeless crags once columns ! so at last 
 ShaJl peace inhabit there, and peace enough." 
 
 Whereon, a shout approved " Such peace be- 
 stow ! " 
 
 Then did a Man of Phokis rise — heart ! 
 Rise — when no bolt of Zeus disparted sky. 
 No omen-bird from Pallas scared the crew. 
 Rise — when mere human argument could 
 
 stem 
 No foam-fringe of the passion surging fierce. 
 Baffle no wrath-wave that o'er barrier broke — 
 Who was the Man of Phokis rose and flung 
 A flower i' the way of that fierce foot's advance, 
 Which — stop for?— nay, had stamped down 
 
 sword's assault ! 
 
68o 
 
 ARISTOPHANES' APOLOGY 
 
 Could it be He stayed Sparta with the snatch — 
 ^' Daughter of Agamemnon, late my liege, 
 Elektra, palaced, once a visitant 
 To thy poor rustic dwelling, now I come ? " 
 
 Ay, facing fury of rcTsnge, and lust 
 Of hate, and malice moaning to appease 
 Hunger on prey presumptuous, prostrate now — 
 Full in the hideous faces — last resource, 
 You flung that chorio flower, my Euthukles ! 
 
 And see, as through some pinhole, should the 
 
 wind 
 Wedgingly pierce but once, in with a rush 
 Hurries the whole wild weather, rends to rags 
 The weak sail stretched against the outside 
 
 storm — 
 So did the power of that triumphant play 
 Pour in, and oversweep the assembled foe ! 
 Triumphant play, wherein our poet first 
 Dared bring the grandeur of the Tragic Two 
 Down to the level of our common lite. 
 Close to the beating of our common heart. 
 Elektra ? 'T was Athenai, Sparta's ice 
 Thawed to, while that sad portraiture ap- 
 pealed — 
 Agamemnonian lady, lost by fault 
 Of her own kindred, cast from house and home. 
 Despoiled of all the brave inheritance. 
 Dowered humbly as befits a herdsman's mate. 
 Partaker of his cottage, clothed in rags. 
 Patient performer of the poorest chares, 
 Yet mindful, all the while, of glory past 
 When she walked darlii^ of Mukenai, dear 
 Beyond 0''estes to the King of Men ! 
 
 So, because Greeks are Grreeks, though Sparta's 
 
 brood. 
 And hearts are hearts, though in Lusandros' 
 
 breast. 
 And poetry is power, and Euthukles 
 Had faith therein to, full-face, fling the same — • 
 Sudden, the ice-thaw ! The assembled foe. 
 Heaving and swaying with strange friendliness. 
 Cried, " Reverence Elektra ! " — cried, *' Ab- 
 stain 
 Like that chaste Herdsman, nor dare violate 
 The sanctity of such reverse ! Let stand 
 Athenai ! " 
 
 Mindful of that story's close. 
 Perchance, and how, — when he, the Herds- 
 man chaste, 
 Needs apprehend no break of tranquil sleep, — 
 All in due time, a stranger, dark, disguised. 
 Knocks at the door : with searching glance, 
 
 notes keen. 
 Knows quick, through mean attire and disre- 
 spect. 
 The ravaged princess ! Ay, right on, the clutch 
 Of guiding retribution has in charge 
 The author of the outrage ! While one hand, 
 Elektra's, pulls the door behind, made fast 
 On fate, — the other strains, prepared to push 
 The victim-queen, should she make frightened 
 
 pause 
 Before that serpentining blood which steals 
 Out of the darkness where, a pace beyond, 
 
 Above the slain Aigisthos, bides his blow 
 Dreadful Orestes ! 
 
 Klutaimnestra, wise 
 This time, forebore ; Elektra held her own ; 
 Saved was Athenai through Euripides, 
 Through Euthukles, through — more than ever 
 
 — ™e, 
 Balaustion, me, who, WUd-pomegranate-flower, 
 Felt my fruit triumph, and fade proudly so ! 
 
 But next day, as ungracious minds are wont. 
 The Spartan, late surprised into a grace. 
 Grew sudden sober at the enormity. 
 And grudged, by daybreak, midnight's easy 
 
 gift; 
 Splenetically must repay its cost 
 By due increase of rigor, doglike snatch 
 At aught still left dog to concede like man. 
 Kough sea, at flow of tide, may lip, perchance, 
 Smoothly the land-line reached as for repose — 
 Lie indolent in all unquestioned sway ; 
 But ebbing, when needs must, all thwart and 
 
 loth, 
 Sea claws at sand relinquished strugglingly. 
 So, harsh Lusandros — pinioned to inidiot 
 The lesser penalty alone — spoke harsh. 
 As minded to embitter scathe by scorn. 
 
 " Athenai's self be saved then, thank the Lyre ! 
 If Tragedy withdraws her presence — quick, 
 If Comedy replace her, — what more just ? 
 Let Comedy do service, frisk away. 
 Dance off stage these indomitable stones. 
 Long Walls, Peiraian bulwarks ! Hew ajid 
 
 heave. 
 Pick at, pound into dust each dear defence I 
 Not to the Kommos — deleleleu 
 With breast bethumped, as Tragic lyre prefers, 
 But Comedy shall sound the flute, and crow 
 At kordax-end — the hearty slapping-dance ! 
 Collect those flute-girls — trash who flattered 
 
 ear 
 With whistlings, and fed eye with caper-ents. 
 While we Lakonians supped black broth or 
 
 crunched 
 Sea-urchin, eonchs and all, unpricked — coarse 
 
 brutes ! 
 Command they lead off step, time steady 
 
 stroke 
 To spade and pickaxe, till demolished lie 
 Athenai's pride in powder ! " 
 
 Done that day — 
 That sixteenth famed day of Mnnuchion-month ! 
 The day when Hellas fought at Salamis, 
 The very day Euripides was born. 
 Those flute-girls — Phaps-Elaphion at their 
 
 head — 
 Did blow their best, did dance their worst, the 
 
 while 
 Sparta pulled down the walls, wrecked wide 
 
 the works. 
 Laid low each merest molehill of defence. 
 And so the Power, Athenai, passed iway ! 
 
 We would not see its passing ! Ere I knew 
 Tlie issue 2i their counsels, — eroxiching low 
 
PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCHWANGAU 
 
 68i 
 
 And shrouded by my peplos, — • I conceived, 
 Despite the shut eyes, the stopped eai-s, — by 
 
 count 
 Only of heart-beats, telling the slow time, — 
 Athenai^s doom was sigiied and signified 
 In that assembly, — ay, but knew there 
 
 watched 
 One who would dare and do, nor bate at all 
 The stranger's licensed duty, — speak the 
 
 word 
 Allowed the Man from PhokisI Naught re- 
 mained 
 But urge departure, flee the sights and sounds, 
 Hideous exultings, wailing worth contempt, 
 And pressed to other earth, new heaven, by sea 
 That somehow ever prompts to 'scape despair. 
 
 Help rose to heart's wish ; at the harbor-side, 
 
 The old gray mariner did reverence 
 
 To who had saved his ship, still weather-tight 
 
 As when with prow gay-garlanded she praised 
 
 The hospitable port and pushed to sea. 
 
 '* Convoy Balaustion back to Rhodes, for sake 
 
 Of her and her Eui'ipides ! " laughed he. 
 
 Rhodes, — shall it not be there, my Euthukles, 
 Till this brief trouble of a lifetime end. 
 That solitude — two make so populous ! — 
 For food finds memories of the past suf&ce. 
 Maybe, anticipations, — hope so swells, — 
 Of some great future we, familiar once 
 With who so taught, should hail and entertain ? 
 He lies now in the little valley, laughed 
 And moaned about by those mysterious 
 
 streams, 
 Boiling and freezing, like the love and hate 
 Which helped or harmed himi through his 
 
 earthly course. 
 
 They mix in Arethousa by his grave. 
 
 The warm spring, traveller, dip thine arms 
 
 into. 
 Brighten thy brow with ! Life detests black 
 
 cold! 
 
 I sent the tablets, the psalteriou, so 
 Rewarded 8icily ; the tyrant there 
 Bestowed them worthily in Phoibos' shrine, 
 A gold-graved writing tells — " I also loved 
 The poet. Free Athenai cheaply prized — 
 King Dionusios, — Archelaos-like ! " 
 
 And see if young Philemon, — sure one day 
 To do good service and be loved himself, — 
 If he too have not made a votive verse ! 
 " Grant, in good sooth, our great dead, all the 
 
 same. 
 Retain their sense, as certain wise men say, 
 I 'd hang myself — to see Euripides ! " 
 Hands off, Philemon ! nowise hang thyself. 
 But pen the priraie plays, labor the right life, 
 And die at good old age as grand men use, — 
 Keeping thee, with that great thought, warm 
 
 the while, — 
 That he does live, Philemon ! Ay, most sure ! 
 *' He lives!" hark, — waves say, winds sing 
 
 out the same, 
 And yonder dares the citied ridge of Rhodes 
 Its headlong plunge from sky to sea, disparts 
 North bay from, south, — each guarded calm, 
 
 that guest 
 May enter gladly, blow what wind there will, — 
 Boued round with breakers, to no other cnr ! 
 All in one choros, — what the master-word 
 They take up ? — hark ! '* There are no gods, 
 
 no gods ! 
 Glory to God — who saves Euripides ! " 
 
 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCHWANGAU 
 SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY 
 
 "YSpav ^ot/Evtraf, fivptoiif T aXAwi* irovav 
 Sirj^dov a.ye\ajs . , • 
 TO AoLiTdtor 5e t6i/S' erktiv TaXas irovov^ 
 , . , ddfia dpi'yKiaaai /caKoT;. 
 
 I slew the Hydra, and from labor pass'd 
 To labor -^ tribes of labors ! Till, at last. 
 Attempting one more labor, in a trice, 
 Alack, with ills I crowned the edifice. 
 
 This poem, written in Scotland in 1871, 
 shortly after the doirofall of Napoleon III., 
 was published in December of the same year. 
 The suggestion of the emperor is transparent, 
 and Browning writing in January, 1872, to Miss 
 Isa Blaeden, says of it : "I am elad you have 
 
 got my little book, and seen for yourself 
 whether I make the best or the worst of the 
 case. I think, in the main, he meant to do 
 what I say, and, but for weakness — grown 
 more apparent in his last years than formerly 
 — would have done what I say he did not. I 
 
682 
 
 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCHWANGAU 
 
 thought hadly of him at tho beginning of his 
 career, et pour cause : better afterward, on the 
 strength of the promises he made, and gaye 
 indications of intending to redeem. I think 
 him very weak in the last miserable year. At 
 his worst I prefer him to Thiers's best. I am 
 told my little thing is succeeding — sold 1400 
 in the first five days, and before any notice 
 appeared." And again, to the same corre- 
 spondent : " I am glad you like what the editor 
 of the Edinburgh calls my eulogium on the 
 second empire — which it is not, any more than 
 
 what another wiseacre affirms it to be, 'a 
 scandalous attack on the old constant friend of 
 England ' — it is just what I imagine the man 
 might, if he pleased, say for himself." Mrs. 
 Browning's well-known enthusiasm for Napo- 
 leon III. as instanced in her poems unques- 
 tionably gave distinctness to Browning's own 
 reflections. The motto is from the Hercules 
 Furens of Euripides, w. 1276-1280, and the 
 translation is presumably by Browning. There 
 is a palace Hohen-Schwangau, built by the 
 Bavarian mad king Ludwig. 
 
 You have seen better days, dear? So have 
 
 And worse too, for they brought no such bud- 
 mouth 
 As yours to lisp " You wish you knew me I " 
 
 Well, 
 Wise men, 'tis said, have sometimes wished 
 
 the same. 
 And wished and had their trouble for their 
 
 pains. 
 Suppose my CEdipus should lurk at last 
 Uader a pork-pie hat and crinoline. 
 And, latish, pounce on Sphinx in Leicester 
 
 Square ? 
 Or likelier, what if Sphinx in wise old age. 
 Grown sick of snapping foolish people's heads, 
 And jealous for her riddle's proper rede, — • 
 Jealous that the good trick which served the 
 
 turn 
 Have justice rendered it, nor class one day 
 With friend Home's stilts and tongs and 
 
 medium-ware, — 
 What if the once redoubted Sphinx, I say, 
 (Because night draws on, and the sands in- 
 crease, 
 And desert-whispers grow a prophecy,) 
 Tell all to Corinth of her own accord. 
 Bright Corinth, not duU Thebes, for Lais' 
 
 sake, 
 Who finds me hardly gray, and likes my nose. 
 And thinks a man of sixty at the prime ? 
 Good I It shall be 1 Revealment of myself I 
 But listen, for we must co-operate ; 
 I don't drink tea : permit me the cigar ! 
 
 First, how to make the matter plain, of 
 
 course — 
 What was the law by which I lived. Let 's 
 
 see; 
 Ay, we must take one instant of my life 
 Spent sitting by your side in this neat room : 
 Watch well the way I use it, and don't laugh I 
 Here 's paper on the table, pen and ink : 
 Give me the soiled bit — not the pretty rose I 
 See I having sat an hour, I 'm rested now. 
 Therefore want work : and spy no better work 
 For eye and hand and mind that guides them 
 
 both, 
 During this instant, than to draw my pen 
 From blot One — thus — up, up to blot Two — 
 
 thus — 
 Which I at last reach, thus, and here 's my line 
 
 Five inches long and tolerably straight : 
 Better to draw than leave undrawn, I think. 
 Fitter to do than let alone, I hold, 
 Though better, fitter, by but one degree. 
 Therefore it was that, rather than sit still 
 Simply, my right-hand dr<iW it while my left 
 Fulled smooth and pinched the moustache to a 
 point. 
 
 Now I permit your plump lips to unpurse : 
 " So far, one possibly may understand 
 Without recourse to witchcraft ! " True, my 
 
 dear. 
 Thus folks begin with Euclid, — finish, how ? 
 Trying to square the circle ! — at any rate, 
 Solving abstruser problems than this first, 
 " How find the nearest way 'twixt point and 
 
 point." 
 Deal but with moral mathematics so — 
 Master one merest moment's work of mine, 
 Even this practising with pen and ink, — 
 Demonstrate why I rather plied the quill 
 Than left the space a blank, — you gain a fact. 
 And God knows what a fact 's worth 1 So pro- 
 ceed 
 By inference from just this moral fact 
 — I don't say, to that plaguy quadrature, 
 " What the whole man meant, whom you wish 
 
 you knew," 
 But, what meant certain things he did of old. 
 Which puzzled Europe, — why, you '11 find 
 
 them plain. 
 This way, not otherwise : I guarantee. 
 Understand one, you comprehend the rest. 
 Eays from all round converge to any point : 
 Study the point then ere you track the rays I 
 The size o the circle 's nothing ; subdivide 
 Earth, and earth's smallest grain of mustard- 
 seed, 
 You count as many parts, small matching large. 
 If you can use the mind's eye : otherwise. 
 Material optics, being gross at best, 
 Prefer the large and leave our mind the small — 
 And pray how many folk have minds can see ? 
 Certainly you — and somebody in Thrace 
 Whose name escapes me at the moment. You — 
 Lend me your mind then 1 Analyze with me 
 This instance of the line 'twixt blot and blot 
 I rather chose to draw than leave a blank. 
 Things else being equal. You are taught 
 
 thereby 
 That 't is my nature, when I am at ease, 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY 
 
 683 
 
 Bather than idle out my life too long, 
 To want to do a thing — to put a thought, 
 Whether a great thought or a little one, 
 Into an act, as nearly as may be. 
 Make what is absolutely new — I can't. 
 Mar what is made already well enough — ■ 
 I won't : but turn to best account the thing 
 That 's half-made — that I can. Two blots, you 
 
 saw 
 I knew how to extend into a line 
 Symmetric on the sheet they blurred before — 
 Such little act sufficed, this time, such thought. 
 
 Now, we '11 extend rays, widen out the verge. 
 Describe a larger circle ; leave this first 
 Clod of an instance we began with, rise 
 To the complete world many clods effect. 
 Only continue patient while I throw, 
 Delver-like, spadeful after spadeful up. 
 Just as truths come, the subsoil of me, mould 
 Whence spring my moods : your object, — just 
 
 to bud. 
 Alike from handlift and from barrow-load, 
 What salts and silts may constitute the earth — 
 If it be proper stuif to blow man glass. 
 Or bake him pottery, bear him oaks or wheat — 
 What '3 bom of me, in brief ; which found, 
 
 all 's known. 
 If it were genius did the digging-job. 
 Logic would speedily sift its product smooth 
 And leave the crude truths bare for poetry ; 
 But I 'm no poet, and am stiff i' the back. 
 What one spread fails to bring, another may. 
 In goes the shovel and out comes scoop — as 
 
 here ! 
 
 I live to please myself. I recognize 
 
 Power passii^ mine, immeasurable, God — 
 
 Above me, whom he made, as heaven beyond 
 
 Earth — to use figures which assist our sense. 
 
 I know that he is there as I am here. 
 
 By the same proof, which seems no proof at all. 
 
 It so exceeds familiar forms of proof. 
 
 Why "there," not "here" ? Because, when 
 
 I say "there " 
 I treat the feeling with distincter shape 
 That space exists between us : I, — not he, — 
 Live, think, do human work here — no machine. 
 His will moves, but a being by myself. 
 His, and not he who made me for a work. 
 Watches my working, judges its effect. 
 But does not interpose. He did so once, 
 And probably will again some time — not now, 
 Life being the minute of mankind, not God's, 
 In a certain sense, like time before and time 
 After man's earthly life, so far as man 
 Needs ax>prehend the matter. Am I clear ? 
 Suppose I bid a courier take to-night — 
 (. . . Once for all, let me talk as if I smoked 
 Yet in the Residenz, a personage : 
 I must still represent the thing I was, 
 Galvanically make dead muscle play. 
 Or how shall I illustrate muscle's use ?) 
 I could then, last July, bid courier take 
 Message itiv me, post-haste, a thousand miles. 
 I bid him, since I have the right to bid. 
 And, my part done so far, his part begins ; 
 He starts with due equipment, will and power, 
 
 Means he may use, misuse, not use at all. 
 At his discretion, at his peiil too. 
 I leave him to himself : but, journey done, 
 I count the minutes, call for the result 
 Ir quickness and the courier quality, 
 Weigh its worth, and then punish or reward 
 According to proved service ; not before. 
 Meantime, he sleeps through noontide, rides till 
 
 dawn. 
 Sticks to the straight road, tries the crooked 
 
 path, 
 Measuies and manages resource, trusts, doubts 
 Advisers by the wayside, does his best 
 At his discretion, lags or launches forth, 
 (He knows and I know) at his peril too. 
 You see ? Exactly thus men stand to God : 
 I with my courier, God with me. Just so 
 I have his bidding to perform ; but mind 
 And body, all of me, though made and meant 
 For that sole service, must consult, concert 
 With my own self and nobody beside. 
 How to effect the same ; God helps not else. 
 'T is I who, with my stock of craft and strength. 
 Choose the directer cut across the hedge. 
 Or keep the foot-track that respects a crop. 
 Lie down and rest, rise up and run, — live spare. 
 Feed free, — all that 's my business : but, ar- 
 rive. 
 Deliver message, bring the answer back. 
 And make my bow, I must : then God will 
 
 Praise me or haply blame as service proves. 
 To other men, to each and every one. 
 Another law ! what likelier ? God, perchance, 
 Grants each new man, by some as new a mode, 
 Intercommunication with himself. 
 Wreaking on finiteness infinitude ; 
 By such a series of effects, gives each 
 Last his owu imprint : old yet ever new 
 The process : 'tis the way of Deity. 
 How it succeeds, he knows : I only know 
 That varied modes of creatureship abound, 
 Implying just as varied intercourse 
 For each with the creator of them all. 
 Each has his own mind and no other's mode. 
 What mode may yours be ? I shall sympathize ! 
 No doubt, you, good young lady that you are. 
 Despite a natural naughtiness or two. 
 Turn eyes up like a Pradier Magdalen 
 And see an outspread providential hand 
 Above the owl's-wing aigrette — guard and 
 
 guide — ■ 
 Visibly o'er your path, about your bed. 
 Through aEyour practisings with London-town. 
 It points, you go ; it stays fixed, and you stop ; 
 You quicken its procedure by a word 
 Spoken, a thought in silence, prayer and praise. 
 Well, I believe that such a hand may stoop. 
 And such appeals to it may stave off harm. 
 Pacify the grim guardian of this Square, 
 And stand you in good stead on quarter-day : 
 Quite possible in your case ; not in mine. 
 " Ah, but I choose to make the difference, 
 Find the emancipation ? " No, I hope ! 
 If I deceive myself, take noon for night, 
 Please to become determinedly blind 
 To the true ordinance of human life. 
 Through mere presumption — that is ray affair. 
 
684 
 
 PRINCE HOHENSTIEI^SCHWANGAU 
 
 And truly a grave one ; but as grave I think 
 Your affair, youre, the specially observed, — 
 Each favored person that perceives his path 
 Pointed him, inch by inch, and looks above 
 For guidance, through the mazes of this world, 
 In what we call its meanest life-career 
 — Not how to manage Europe properly, 
 But how keep open shop, and yet pay rent. 
 Bear household, and make both ends meet, the 
 
 same. 
 1 say, such man is no less tasked than I 
 To duly take the path appointed him 
 By whatsoever sign he recognize. 
 Our insincerity on both our heads ! 
 No matter what the object of a life, 
 Small work or large, — the making thrive a 
 
 shop, 
 Or seeing that an empire take no harm, — 
 There are known fruits to judge obedience by. 
 You 've read a ton's weight, now, of news- 
 paper — 
 Lives of me, gabble about the kind of prince — 
 You know my work i' tile rongh ; I ask you, 
 
 then, 
 Do I appear subordinated less 
 To hand-impulsion, one prime push for all. 
 Than little lives of men, the multitude 
 That cried out, every quarter of an hour. 
 For fresh instructions, did or did not work, 
 And praised in the odd minutes ? 
 
 Eh, my dear ? 
 Such is the reason why I acquiesced 
 In doing what seemed best for me to do. 
 So as to please myself on the great scale. 
 Having regard to immortality 
 No less than life — did that which head and 
 
 heart 
 Prescribed ray hand, in measure with its means 
 Of doing — used my special stock of power — 
 Not from the aforesaid head and heart alone. 
 But every sort of helpful circumstance. 
 Some problematic and some nondescript : 
 All regulated by the single care 
 I' the last resort — that I made thoroughly serve 
 The -when and how, toiled where was need, re- 
 posed 
 As resolutely at the proper point. 
 Braved sorrow, courted joy, to just one end : 
 Namely, that just the creature I was bound 
 To be, I should become, nor thTvart at all 
 God's purpose in creation. I conceive 
 No other duty possible to man, — 
 Highest mind, lowest mind, — no other law 
 By which to judge life failure or success : 
 What folk call being saved or cast away. 
 
 Such was my rule of life ; I worked my best. 
 Subject to ultimate judgment, God's not man's. 
 Well then, this settled, — take your tea, I beg. 
 And meditate the fact, 'twist sip and sip, — 
 This settled — why I pleased myself, you saw. 
 By turning blot and blot into a line, 
 0' the little scale, — we 'U try now (as your 
 
 tongue 
 Tries the concluding sugar-drop) what 's meant 
 To please me most o' the great scale. Why^ 
 
 just now. 
 
 With nothing else to do within my reach, 
 
 Did I prefer making two blots one line 
 
 To making yet another separate 
 
 Third blot, and leaving those I found unlinked ? 
 
 It meant, I like to use the thing I find, 
 
 Kather than strive at unfound novelty : 
 
 I make the best of the old, nor try for new. 
 
 Such win to act, such choice of action's way. 
 
 Constitute — when at work on the great scale. 
 
 Driven to their farthest natural consequence 
 
 By all tie help from all the means — my own 
 
 Particular faculty of serving God, 
 
 Instinct for putting power to exercise 
 
 Upon -some wish and want o' the time, I prove 
 
 Possible to mankind as best I may. 
 
 This constitutes my mission, — grant the 
 
 phrase, — 
 Namely, to rule men — men within my reach, 
 To order, influence and dispose them so 
 As render solid and stabilif y 
 Mankind in particles, the light and loose. 
 For their good and my pleasure in the act. 
 Such good accomplished proves twice good to 
 
 me — 
 Good for its own sake, as the just and right, 
 And, in the efEecting also, good again 
 To me its agent, tasked as suits my taste. 
 
 Is this much easy to be nnderstood 
 
 At first glance ? Now begin the steady gaze t 
 
 My rank — (if I must teU yon simple tmth — 
 Telling were else not worth the whiff o' the 
 
 weed 
 I lose for the tale's sake) — dear, my rank i' 
 
 the world 
 Is hard to know and name precisely : err 
 I may, but scarcely overestimate 
 My style and title. Do I class with men 
 Most useful to their fellows ? Possibly, — 
 Therefore, in some sort, best ; but, greatest 
 
 mind 
 And rarest nature ? Evidently no. 
 A conservator, call me, if you please, 
 Not a creator nor destroyer : one 
 Who keeps the world safe. I profess to trace 
 The broken circle of society. 
 Dim actual order, I can redescribe 
 Not only where some segment silver-true 
 Stays clear, but where the breaks of black 
 
 commence 
 Baffling you all who want the eye to probe — 
 As I make out you problematic thin 
 White paring of your thumb-nail outside there. 
 Above the plaster-monarch on his steed — 
 See an inch, name an ell, and prophesy 
 0' the rest that ought to follow, the round 
 
 moon 
 Now hiding in the night of things : that round, 
 I labor to demonstrate Tnoon enough 
 For the month's purpose, — that society, 
 Render efficient for the age's need ; 
 Preserving you in either case the old. 
 Nor aiming at a new and greater thing, 
 A sun for moon, a future to be made 
 By first abolishiag the present law : 
 No such proud task for ms by any means ! 
 History shows you men whose master-touch 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY 
 
 685 
 
 Not so much modifies as makes anew : 
 Minds that transnmte nor need restore at all. 
 A breath of God made manifest in flesh 
 Subjects the world to change, from time to 
 
 time. 
 Alters the whole conditions of our race 
 Abmptly, not by unperceived degrees 
 Nor play of elements already there, 
 But quite new leaven, leavening- the lump, 
 And liker, so, the natural process. See ! 
 Where winter reigned for ages — by a turn 
 V the time, some star-change, {ask geologists,) 
 The ice-tracts split, clash, splinter and diiperse, 
 And there 's an end of immobility, 
 SUence, and all that tinted pageant, base 
 To pinnacle, one flush from fairy-land 
 Dead-asleep and deserted somewhere, — see I — 
 As a fresh sun, wave, spring and joy outburst. 
 Or else the earth it is, time starts from trance, 
 Her mountains tremble into fire, her plains 
 Heave blinded by confusion : what result ? 
 New teeming growth, surprises of strange life 
 Impossible before, a world broke up 
 And re-made, order gained by law destroyed. 
 Not otherwise, in our society 
 FoUow like portents, all as absolute 
 Regenerations : they haTe birth at rare 
 Uncertain unexpected intervals 
 0' the world, by ministry impossible 
 Before and after fulness of the days : 
 Some dervish desert-spectre, swordsman, saint, 
 Lawgiver, lyrist, — oh, we know the names ! 
 Quite other these than I. Our time requires 
 No such strange potentate, — who else would 
 
 dawn, — 
 No fresh force till the old have spent itself. 
 Such seems the natural economy. 
 To shoot a beam into the dark, assists : 
 To make that beam do fuller service, spread 
 And utilize such bounty to the height, 
 That assists also, — and that work is mine. 
 I recognize, contemplate, and approve 
 The general compact of society, 
 Not simply as I see effected good. 
 But good i' the germ, each chance that 's possi- 
 ble 
 r the plan traced so far : all results, in short, 
 For better or worse of the operation due 
 To those exceptional natures, unlike mine. 
 Who, helping, thwarting, conscious, unaware, 
 Did somehow manage to so far describe 
 This diagram left ready to ray hand, 
 Waiting my turn of trial. I see success. 
 See failure, see what makes or mars through- 
 out. 
 How shall I else bnt help complete this plan 
 Of which I know the purpose and approve. 
 By letting stay therein what seems to stand, 
 And adding good thereto of easier reach 
 To-day than yesterday ? 
 
 So much, no more ! 
 Whereon, "No more than that?" — inquire 
 
 aggrieved 
 Half of my critics : " nothing new at all ? 
 The old plan saved, instead of a sponged slate 
 And fresh-drawn figure ? " — while, So much 
 
 as that ? " 
 
 Object then- fellows of the other faith : 
 Leave nneffaeed the crazy labyrinii 
 Of alteration and amendment, lines 
 Which every dabster felt in duty bound 
 To signalize his power of pen and ink 
 By adding to a plan once plain enough ? 
 Why keep ea«h fool's bequeathmeut, scratch 
 
 ana blur 
 Which overscrawl and underscore the piece — 
 Nay, strengthen them by touches of your 
 
 own? " 
 
 Well, that 's my mission, so I serve the world. 
 Figure as man 0' the moment, — in default 
 Of somebody inspired to strike such change 
 Into society — from round to square, 
 The ellipsis to the rhomboid, how you please. 
 As suits the size and shape o' the world he 
 
 finds. 
 But this I can, — and nobody raiy peer, — 
 Do the best with the least change possible : 
 Carry the incompleteness on, a stage, 
 Make what was crooked straight, and rough- 
 ness smooth. 
 And weakness strong : wherein if I succeed, 
 It will not prove the worst achievement, sure^ 
 In the eyes at least of one man, one I look 
 Nowise to catch in critic company : 
 To wit, the man inspired, the genius' self 
 Destined to come and change things thoroughly. 
 He, at least, finds his business simplified. 
 Distinguishes the done from undone, reads 
 Plainly what meant and did not mean this 
 
 time 
 We live in, and I work on, and transmit 
 To such successor : he will operate 
 On good hard substance, not mere shade and 
 
 shine. 
 Let all my critics, bom to idleness 
 And impotency, get their good, and have 
 Their hooting at the giver : I am deaf — 
 Who find great good in this society. 
 Great gain, the purchase of great labor. Touch 
 The work I ma-y and must, but — reverent 
 In every fall o' the finger-tip, no doubt. 
 Perhaps I find all good there 's warrant foi 
 I' the world as yet : nay, to the end of time, — 
 Since evil never means part company 
 With mankind, only shift side and change 
 
 shape. 
 I find advance i' the main, and notably 
 The Present an improvement on the Past, 
 And projnise for the Future — which shall 
 
 prove 
 Only the Present A/ith its rough made smooth, 
 Its indistinctness emphasized ; I hope 
 No better, nothing newer for mankind, 
 Bnt something equably smoothed everywhere. 
 Good, reconciled with hardly-quite-as-good, 
 Instead of good and bad each jostling each. 
 " And that 's all ? " Ay, and quite enough for 
 
 me ! 
 We have toiled so long to gain what gain I Snd 
 I' the Present, — let us keep it ! We shall toil 
 So long before we gain — if gain God grant — 
 A Future with one touch of difEerence 
 I' the heart of things, and not their outside 
 
 face, — 
 
686 
 
 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCHWANGAU 
 
 Let us not risk the whiff of my cigar 
 
 For Fourier, Gomte, and all that ends in smoke ! 
 
 This I see clearest probably of men 
 
 With power to act and influence, now aliye : 
 
 Juster than they to the true state of things ; 
 
 In consequence, more tolerant that, side 
 
 By side, shall co-exist and thrive alike 
 
 In the age, the various sorts of happiness 
 
 Moral, mark ! — not material — moods o' the 
 
 mind 
 Suited to man and man his opposite : 
 Say, minor modes of movement — hence to 
 
 there, 
 Or thence to here, or simply round about — 
 So long as each toe spares its neighbor's kibe. 
 Nor spoils the major march and main advance. 
 The love of peace, care for the family, 
 Contentment with what 's bad but might be 
 
 worse — 
 Good movements these ! and good, too, dis- 
 content, 
 So long as that spurs good, which might be 
 
 best. 
 Into becoming better, anyhow : 
 Good — pride of country, putting hearth and 
 
 home 
 I' the background, out of undue prominence : 
 Good — yearning after change, strife, victory. 
 And triumph. Each shall have its orbit 
 
 marked. 
 But no more, — none impede the other's path 
 In this wide world, — though each and all 
 
 alike. 
 Save for me, fain would spread itself through 
 
 space 
 And leave its fellow not an inch of way. 
 I rule and regulate the course, excite. 
 Restrain: because the whole machine should 
 
 march 
 Impelled by those diversely-moving parts, 
 Each blind to aught beside its little bent. 
 Out of the turnings round and round inside. 
 Gomes that straightforward world-advance, I 
 
 want, 
 And none of them supposes God wants too 
 And gets through just their hindrance and my 
 
 help. 
 I think that to have held the balance straight 
 For twenty years, say, weighing claim and 
 
 claim 
 And giving each its due, no less no more. 
 This was good service to humanity. 
 Right usage of my power in head and heart. 
 And reasonable piety beside. 
 Keep those three points in mind while judging 
 
 me ! 
 You stand, perhaps, for some one man, not 
 
 men, — 
 Represent this or the other interest. 
 Nor mind the general welfare, — so, impugn 
 My practice and dispute my value : why ? 
 You man of faith, I did not tread the world 
 Into a paste, and thereof make a smooth 
 Uniform mound whereon to plant your flag, 
 The lily-white, above the blood and brains I 
 Nor yet did I, you man of faithlessness, 
 So roll things to the level which you love, 
 
 That you could stand at ease there and survey 
 The universal Nothing undisgraced 
 By pert obtrusion of some old church-spire 
 I' the distance! Neither friend would I con- 
 tent. 
 Nor, as the world were simply meant for him, 
 Thrust out his fellow and mend God's mistake. 
 Why, you two fools, — my dear friends all the 
 
 same, — 
 Is it some change o' the world and nothing else 
 Contents you ? Should whatever w as, not be ? 
 How thanklessly you view things ! There 's 
 
 the root 
 Of the evil, source of the entire mistake : 
 You see no worth i' the world, nature and life, 
 Unless we change what is to what may be. 
 Which means, — may be, i' the brain of one of 
 
 you! 
 " Reject what is ? " — all capabilities — 
 Nay, you may style them chances if you 
 
 choose — 
 All chances, then, of happiness that lie 
 Open to anybody that is bom. 
 Tumbles into this life and out again, — 
 All that may happen, good and evil too, 
 I' the space between, to each adventurer 
 Upon this 'sixty. Anno Domini : 
 A life to live — and such a life ! a world 
 To learn, one's lifetime in, — and such a 
 
 world ! 
 How did the foolish ever pass for wise 
 By calling life a burden, man a fly 
 Or worm or what 's most insignificant ? 
 "0 littleness of man ! " deplores the bard ; 
 And then, for fear the Powers should punish 
 
 him, 
 " grandeur of the visible universe 
 Our human littleness contrasts withal ! 
 
 sun, O moon, ye mountains and thou sea, 
 Thou emblem of immensity, thou this. 
 That and the other, — what impertinence 
 In man to eat and drink and walk about 
 And have his little notions of his own, 
 
 The wliile some wave sheds foam upon the 
 
 shore ! " 
 First of all, 't is a lie some three-times thick : 
 The bard, — this sort of speech being poetry, — 
 The bard puts mankind well outside himself 
 And then begins instructing them : " This way 
 
 1 and my friend the sea conceive of yoii ! 
 What would you give to think such thoughts 
 
 as ours 
 Of you and the sea together ? " Down they go 
 On the humbled knees of them : at once they 
 
 draw 
 Distinction, recognize no mate of theirs 
 In one, despite his mock humility, 
 So plain a match for what he plays with. Next, 
 The turn of the great ocean-playfellow. 
 When the bard, leaving Bond Street very far 
 From ear-shot, cares not to ventriloquize, 
 But tells the sea its home-truths : " You, my 
 
 match ? 
 You, all this terror and immensity 
 And what not ? Shall I teU you what yon are ? 
 Just fit to hitch into a stanza, so 
 Wake up and set in motion who 's asleep 
 0' the other side of you in England, else 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY 
 
 687 
 
 Unaware, as folk pace their Bond Street now, 
 Somebody here despises them so much ! 
 Between us, — they are the ultimate ! to them 
 And their perception go these lordly thoughts : 
 Since what were ocean — mane and tail, to 
 
 boot — 
 Mused 1 not here, how make thoughts think- 
 able ? 
 Start forth ray stanza and astound the world ! 
 Back, billows, to your insigniiicanGe ! 
 Deep, you are done with ! " 
 
 Learn, my gifted friend. 
 There are two things i' the world, still wiser 
 
 folk 
 Accept — intelligence and sympathy. 
 Yon pant about unutterable power 
 I' the ocean, all you feel but cannot speak ? 
 Why, that 's the plainest speech about it all. 
 You did not feel what was not to be felt. 
 Well, then, all else but what man feels is 
 
 naught — 
 The wash o' the liquor that o'erbrims the cup 
 Called man, and runs to waste adown his side, 
 Perhaps to feed a cataract, — who cares ? 
 I ']1 tell you : all the more I know mankind. 
 The more I thank God, like my grandmother. 
 For making me a little lower than 
 The angels, honor-clothed and glory-crowned : 
 This is the honor, — that no thing I know, 
 Feel or conceive, but I can make my own 
 Somehow, by use of hand or head or heart : 
 This is the glory, — that in aU conceived, 
 Or felt or known, I recognize a mind 
 Not mine but like mine, — for the double joy, — 
 Making all things for me and me for Him, 
 There 's folly for you at this time of day ! 
 So think it ! and enjoy your ignorance 
 Of what — no matter for the worthy's name — 
 Wisdom set working in a noble heart. 
 When he, who was earth's best geometer 
 Up to that time of day, consigned his life 
 With its results into one matchless book, 
 The triumph of the human mind so far, 
 All in geometry man yet could do : 
 And then wrote on the dedication-page 
 In place of name the universe applauds, 
 *' But, God, what a geometer art Thou ! " 
 I suppose Heaven is, through Eternity, 
 The equalizing, ever and anon. 
 In momentary rapture, great with small, 
 Omniscience with intelligency, God 
 With man, — the thunder-glow from pole to 
 
 Abolishing, a blissful moment-space. 
 
 Great cloud alike and small cloud, in one fire — 
 
 As sure to ebb as sure again to flow 
 
 When the new receptivity deserves 
 
 The new completion. There 's the Heaven for 
 
 me. 
 And I say, therefore, to live out one's life 
 I' the world here, with the chance, — whether 
 
 by pain 
 Or pleasure be the process, long or short 
 The time, august or mean the circumstance 
 To human eye, — of learning how set foot 
 Decidedly on some one path to Heaven, 
 Touch segment in the circle whence all lines 
 
 Lead to the centre equally, red lines 
 Or black lines, so they but produce them- 
 selves — 
 This, I do say, — and here my sermon ends, — 
 This makes it worth our while to tenderly 
 Handle a state of things which mend we might. 
 Mar we may, but which meanwhile helps so far. 
 Therefore my end is — save society ! 
 
 " And that 's aU ? " twangs the never-failing 
 
 taunt 
 0' the foe — *' No novelty, creativeness, 
 Mark of the master that renews the age ? " 
 '' Nay, all that ? " rather will demur my judge 
 1 look to hear some day, nor friend nor foe — 
 *' Did you attain, then, to perceive that God 
 Knew what he undertook when he made 
 
 things ? " 
 Ay ; that my task was to co-operate 
 Rather than play the i-ival, chop and change 
 The order whence comes all the good we know. 
 With this, — good's last expression to our 
 
 sense, — 
 That there 's a further good conceivable 
 Beyond the utmost earth can realize : 
 And, therefore, that to change the agency, 
 The evil whereby good is brought about — 
 Try to make good do good as evil does — 
 Were just as if a chemist, wanting white, 
 And knowing black ingi'edients bred the dye, 
 Insisted these too should be white forsooth ! 
 Correct the evil, mitigate your best, 
 Blend mild with harsh, and soften black to 
 
 gray 
 If gray may follow with no detriment 
 To the eventual perfect purity ! 
 But as for hazarding the main residt 
 By hoping to anticipate one half 
 In the intermediate process, — no, my friends ! 
 This bad world, I experience and approve ; 
 Your good world, — with no pity, courage, 
 
 hope. 
 Fear, sorrow, joy, — devotedness, in short. 
 Which I account the ultimate of man. 
 Of which there 's not one day nor hour but 
 
 brings. 
 In flower or fruit, some sample of success. 
 Out of this same society I save — 
 None of it for me ! That I might have none, 
 I rapped your tampering knuckles twenty years. 
 Such was the task imposed me, such my end. 
 
 Now for the means thereto. Ah, confidence — 
 
 Keep we together or part company ? 
 
 This is the critical minute ! " Such my end ? " 
 
 Certainly ; how coidd it be otherwise ? 
 
 Can there be question which was the right 
 
 task — 
 To save or to destroy societv ? 
 Why, even prove that, by some miracle. 
 Destruction were the proper work to choose, 
 And that a torch best remedies what 's wrong 
 I' the temple, whence the long procession 
 
 wound 
 Of powers and beauties, earth's achievements 
 
 all. 
 The human strength that strove and over- 
 threw. — 
 
688 
 
 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCHWANGAU 
 
 The human love that, weak itself, crowned 
 
 strength, — 
 The instinct crying, " God is whence I 
 
 came ! " — 
 The reason laying down the law, " And such 
 His will i' the world must be ! " — the leap and 
 
 shout 
 Of genius, " For I hold his very thoughts, 
 The meaning of the mind of him!" — nay, 
 
 more 
 The ingenuities, each active force 
 That turning in a circle on itself 
 Looks neither up nor down but keeps the spot. 
 Mere creature-like and, for religion, works. 
 Works only and works ever, makes and shapes 
 And changes, stiU wrings more of good from 
 
 less, 
 Still stamps some bad out, where was worst 
 
 before. 
 So leaves the handiwork, the act and deed. 
 Were it but house and land and wealth, to show 
 Here was a creature perfect in the kind — 
 Whether as bee, beaver, or behemoth, 
 What 's the importance ? he has done his work 
 For work's sake, worked well, earned a crear 
 
 ture's praise ; — 
 I say, concede that same fane, whence deploys 
 Age after age, all this humanity. 
 Diverse but ever dear, out of the dark 
 Behind the altar into the broad day 
 By the portal — enter, and, concede there 
 
 mocks 
 Each lover of free motion and much space 
 A perplexed length of apse and aisle and 
 
 nave, — 
 Pillared roof and carved screen, and what care 
 
 I?- 
 Which irk the movement and impede the 
 
 march, — 
 Nay, possibly, bring flat upon his nose 
 At some odd breakneck angle, by some freak 
 Of old-world artistry, that personage 
 Who, could he but have kept his skirts from 
 
 grief 
 And catching at the hooks and crooks about. 
 Had stepped out on the daylight of our time 
 Plainly the man of the age, — still, still, I bar 
 Excessive conflagration in the case. 
 " Shake the flame freely ! " shout the multi- 
 tude: 
 The architect approves I stuck my torch 
 Inside a good stout lantern, hung its light 
 Above the hooks and crooks, and ended so. 
 To save society was well : the means 
 Whereby to save it, — there begins the doubt 
 Permitted you, imperative on me ; 
 Were mine the best means ? Did I work 
 
 aright 
 With powers appointed me ? — since powers de- 
 nied 
 Concern me nothing. 
 
 Well, my work reviewed 
 Fairly, leaves more hope than discouragement. 
 First, there 's the deed done : what I found, I 
 
 leave, — 
 What tottered, I kept stable : if it stand 
 One month, without sustainment, still thank me 
 
 The twenty years' sustainer ! Now, observe, 
 
 Sustaining is no brilliant self -display 
 
 Like knocking down or even setting up : 
 
 Much bustle these necessitate ; and still 
 
 To vulgar eye, the mightier of the myth 
 
 Is Hercules, who substitutes his own 
 
 For Atlas' shoulder and supports the globe 
 
 A whole day, — not the passive and obscure 
 
 Atlas who bore, ere Hercules was bom. 
 
 And is to go on bearing that same load 
 
 When Hercules turns ash on (Eta's top. 
 
 'T is the transition-stage, the tug and strain. 
 
 That strike men : standing stiU is stupid-like. 
 
 My pressure was too constant on the whole 
 
 For any part's eruption into space 
 
 'Mid sparkles, crackling, and much praise of 
 
 me. 
 I saw that, in the ordinary life. 
 Many of the little make a mass of men 
 Important beyond greatness here and there ; 
 As certainly as, in life exceptional. 
 When old things terminate and new commence, 
 A solitary great man 's worth the world. 
 God takes the business into his own hands 
 At such time ; who creates the novel flower 
 Contrives to guard and give it breathing-room : 
 I merely tend the cornfield, care for crop. 
 And weed no acre thin to let emerge 
 What prodigy may stiflie there perchance, 
 — No, though my eye have noted where he 
 
 lurks. 
 Oh those mute myriads that spoke loud to me — 
 The eyes that craved to see the light, the 
 
 mouths 
 That sought the daily bread and nothing more. 
 The hands that supplicated exercise. 
 Men that had wives, and women that had babes, 
 And all these making suit to only live ! 
 Was I to turn aside from husbandry. 
 Leave hope of harvest for the com, my care, 
 To play at horticulture, rear some rose 
 Or poppy into perfect leaf and bloom 
 When, 'mid the furrows, up was pleased to 
 
 sprout 
 Some man, cause, system, special interest 
 I ought to study, stop the world meanwhile ? 
 " But I am Liberty, Philanthropy, 
 Enlightenment, or Patriotism, the power 
 Whereby you are to stand or fall ! " cries each: 
 " Mine and mine only be the flag you flaunt ! " 
 And, when I venture to object, " Meantime, 
 What of yon myriads with no flag at all — 
 My crop which, who flaunts flag nmst tread 
 
 across ? " 
 " Now, this it is to have a puny mind ! " 
 Admire my mental prodigies: "down — 
 
 down — 
 Ever at home o' the level and the low. 
 There bides he brooding ! Could he look 
 
 above. 
 With less of the owl and more of the eagle eye. 
 He 'd see there 's no way helps the little cause 
 Like the attainment of the great. Dare first 
 The chief emprise ; dispel yon cloud between 
 The sun and us ; nor fear that, though out 
 
 heads 
 Find earlier warmth and comfort from his ray. 
 What lies about our feet, the multitude 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY 
 
 689 
 
 Will fail of benefsM^tion presently. 
 
 Come now, let each of us awhile cry truce 
 
 To special interests, make common cause 
 
 Against the adversary — or perchance 
 
 Mere dullard to his own plain interest ! 
 
 Which of us will you choose ? — since needs 
 
 must be 
 Some one o' the warring causes yon incline 
 To hold, i' the main, has rig^ht and should pre- 
 vail : 
 Why not adopt and give it prevalence ? 
 Choose strict Faith or lax Incredulity, — 
 King, Caste, and Cultus — or the Bights of 
 
 Man, 
 Sovere^nty of each Proudhon o*er himself, 
 And all that follows in just consequence ! 
 Go free the stranger from a foreign yoke ; 
 Or stay, concentrate energy at home ; 
 Succeed ! — when he deserves, the stranger will. 
 Comply with the Great Nation's impuke, print 
 By force of arms, — since reason pleads in vain, 
 And, 'mid the sweet compiilsion, pity weeps, — 
 Hohenstiel-Schwan^au on the univerae I 
 Snub the Great Nation, cure the impulsive itch 
 With smartest fillip on a restless nose 
 Was ever launched by thumb and finger ! Bid 
 Hohenstiel-Schwangau first repeal the tax 
 On pig-tails and pomatum, and then mind 
 Abstruser matters for next century ! 
 Is your choice made ? Why then, act up to 
 
 choice ! 
 Leave the illogical touch now here now there 
 I' the way of work, the tantalizing help 
 First to this, then the other opposite : 
 The blowing hot and cold, sham policy. 
 Sure ague of the mind and nothing more, 
 Disease of the perception or the will, 
 That fain would hide in a fine name ! Your 
 
 choice. 
 Speak it out and condemm yourself thereby ! " 
 
 Well, Leicester Square is not the Residenz : 
 Instead of shrugging shoulder, turning friend 
 The deaf ear, with a wink to the police — 
 I '11 answer — by a question, wisdom's mode. 
 How many years, o the average, do men 
 Live in this world ? Some score, say computists. 
 Quintuple me that term, and give mankind 
 The likely hundred, and with all my heart 
 I '11 take your task upon rae, work your way. 
 Concentrate energy on some one cause : 
 Since, counseller, I also have my cause. 
 My flag, my faith in its effect, my hope 
 In its eventual triumph for the good 
 0' the world. And once upon a time, when I 
 Was like all you, mere voice and nothing more. 
 Myself took wings, soared sunward, and thence 
 
 sang, 
 '* Look where I live i' the loft, come up to me. 
 Groundlings, nor grovel longer ! gain this 
 
 height. 
 And prove you breathe here better than below ! 
 Why, what emancipation far and wide 
 Will follow in a trice ! They too can soar. 
 Each tenant of the earth's circumference 
 Claiming to elevate humanity. 
 They also must attain such altitude, 
 Live in the luminous circle that surrounds 
 
 The planet, not the leaden orb itself. 
 
 Press out, each point, from surface to yon verge 
 
 Which one has gained and guaranteed your 
 
 realm! " 
 Ay, still my fragments wander, music-fraught. 
 Sighs of the soul, mine once, mine now, and 
 
 mine 
 Forever ! Crumbled arch, crushed aqueduct. 
 Alive with tremors in the shaggy growth 
 Of wild-wood, crevice-sown, that triumphs there 
 Imparting exultation to the hiUs I 
 Sweep of the swathe when only the winds W£dk 
 And waft my words above the grassy sea 
 Under the blinding blue tM,t basks o'er 
 
 Rome, — 
 Hear ye not stiU — "Be Italy again " ? 
 And ye, what strikes the panic to your heart ? 
 Decrepit council-chambers, — where some lamp 
 Drives the unbroken black three paces off 
 From where the graybeards huddle in debate, 
 Dim cowls and capes, and midmost glimmers 
 
 one 
 Like tarnished gold, and what they say is 
 
 doubt. 
 And what they think is fear, and what suspends 
 The breath in them is not the plaster-patch 
 Time disengages from the painted wall 
 Where Rafael moulderingly bids adieu, 
 Nor tick of the insect turning tapestry 
 Which a queen's finger traced of old, to dust ; 
 But some word, resonant, redoubtable. 
 Of who once felt upon his head a hand 
 Whereof the head now apm-ehends his foot. 
 " Light in Rome, Law in Rome, and Liberty 
 0' the soul in Rome — the free Church, the 
 
 free State ! 
 Stamp out the nature that 's best typified 
 By its embodiment in Peter's Dome, 
 The scorpion- body with the greedy pair 
 Of outstretched nippers, either colonnade 
 Agape for the advance of heads and hearts I '' 
 There 's one cause for you ! one and only one. 
 For I am, vocal through the universe, 
 I' the workshop, manufactory, exchange 
 And market-place, seaport and custom-house 
 O' the frontier : listen if the echoes die — 
 " Unfettered commerce ! Power to speak and 
 
 hear. 
 And print and read ! The universal vote ! 
 Its rights for labor ! " This, with much beside, 
 I spoke when I was voice and nothing more, 
 But altogether such an one as you 
 My censors. "Voice, and nothing more, in- 
 deed ! " 
 Re-echoes round me : " that 's the censure, 
 
 there 's 
 Involved the ruin of yon soon or late ! 
 Voice, — when its promise beat the empty air : 
 And nothing more, — when solid earth 's your 
 
 stage, 
 And we desiderate performance, deed 
 For word, the realizing all you dreamed 
 In the old days : now, for deed, we find at door 
 0' the couneil-chanaber posted, mute as mouse, 
 Hohenstiel-Schwangau, sentry and safeguard 
 0' the graybeards all a~chuckle, cowl to cape, 
 Wbo challenge Judas, — that 's endearment's 
 
 style, — 
 
f>5o 
 
 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCHWANGAU 
 
 To stop their mouths or let escape grimace, 
 
 While they keep cursing Italy and him. 
 
 The power to speak, hear, print and read is 
 
 ours? 
 Ay, we learn where and how, when clapped 
 
 inside 
 A convict-transport bound for cool Cayenne ! 
 The universal vote we have : its urn, 
 We also have where votes drop, fing-ered-o'er 
 By the universal Prefect. Bay, Trade 's free 
 And Toil turned master out o' the slave it was : 
 What then ? These feed man's stomach, but 
 
 his soul 
 Craves finer fare, nor lives by bread alone. 
 As somebody says somewhere. Hence you 
 
 stand 
 Proved and recorded either false or weak. 
 Faulty in promise or performance : which ?" 
 Neither, I hope. Once pedestalled on earth. 
 To act not speak, I found earth was not air. 
 I saw that multitude of mine, and not 
 The nakedness and nullity of air 
 Fit only for a voice to float in free. 
 Such eyes I saw that craved the light alone. 
 Such mouths that wanted bread and nothing 
 
 else. 
 Such hands that supplicated handiwork, 
 Men witli the wives, and women with the babes. 
 Yet all these pleading just to live, not die ! 
 Did I believe one whit less in belief, 
 Take truth for falsehood, wish the voice re- 
 voked 
 That told the truth to heaven for earth to hear ? 
 No, this should be, and shall ; but when and 
 
 how? 
 At what expense to these who average 
 Your twenty years of life, my computists ? 
 " Not bread alone," but bread before all else 
 For these : the bodily want serve first, said I ; 
 If earth-space and the lifetime help not here. 
 Where is the good of body having been ? 
 But, helping body, if we somewhat balk 
 The soul of finer fare, such food 's to find 
 Elsewhere and afterward — all indicates. 
 Even this selfsame fact that soul can starve 
 Yet body still exist its twenty years : 
 While, stint the body, there 's an end at once 
 O' the revel in tlie fancy that Rome 's free. 
 And superstition 's fettered, and one prints 
 Whate'er one pleases, and who pleases reads 
 The same, and speaks out and is spoken to. 
 And divers hundred thousand fools may vote 
 A vote untampered with by one wise man, 
 And so elect Barabbas deputy 
 In lieu of his concurrent. 1 who trace 
 The purpose written on the face of things. 
 For my behoof and gviidance — (whoso needs 
 No such sustaiimif nt, sees beneath my signs, 
 Proves, what I take for writing, penmanship. 
 Scribble and flourish with no sense for me 
 O' the sort I solemnly go spelling out, — 
 Let him ! there 's certain work of mine to show 
 Alongside his work : which gives warranty 
 Of shrewder vision in the workman — .iudge !) 
 I who trace Providence without a break 
 I' the plan of things, drop plumb on this plain 
 
 print 
 Of an intention witli a view to good. 
 
 That man is made in sympathy with man 
 
 At outset of existence, so to speak ; 
 
 But in dissociation, more and more, 
 
 Man from his fellow, as their lives advance 
 
 In culture ; still humanity, that 's born 
 
 A mass, keeps flying off, fining away 
 
 Ever into a multitude of points. 
 
 And ends in isolation, each from each : 
 
 Peerless above i' the sky, the pinnacle, — 
 
 Absolute contact, fusion, all below 
 
 At the base of being. How comes this about ? 
 
 This stamp of God characterizing man 
 
 And nothing else but man in the universe — 
 
 That, while he feels with man (to use man's 
 
 speech) 
 I' the little things of life, its fleshly wants 
 Of food and rest and health and happiness. 
 Its simplest spirit-motions, loves and hates, 
 Hopes, fears, soul-cravings on the igno blest scale, 
 O' the feEow - creature, — owns the bond at 
 
 base, — 
 He tends to freedom and divergency 
 In the upward progress, plays the pinnacle 
 When life 's at greatest (grant again the 
 
 phrase ! _ 
 Because there 's neither great nor small in life). 
 " Consult thou for thy kind that have tlie eyes 
 To see, the mouths to eat, the hands to work. 
 Men with the wives, and women with the 
 
 babes ! " 
 Prompts Nature. " Care thou for thyself alone 
 I' the conduct of the mind God made thee with ! 
 Think, as if man had never thought before ! 
 Act, as if all creation hung attent 
 On the acting of such faculty as thine. 
 To take prime pattern from thy masterpiece I " 
 Nature prompts also : neither law obeyed 
 To the uttermost by any heart and soul 
 We know or have in record : both of them 
 Acknowledged blindly by whatever man 
 We ever knew or heard of in this world. 
 "Will you have why and wherefore, and the 
 
 fact 
 Made plain as pikestafl: ? " modern Science asks. 
 *' That mass man sprung from was a jelly-lump 
 Once on a time ; he kept an after-course 
 Through fish and insect, reptile, bird and beast, 
 Till he attained to be an ape at last 
 Or last bnt one. And if this doctrine shock 
 In aught the natural pride "... Friend, ban- 
 ish fear, 
 The natural humility replies. 
 Do you suppose, even I, poor potentate, 
 Hohenstiel - Schwangau, who once ruled the 
 
 roast, — 
 I was bom able at all points to ply 
 My tools ? or did I have to learn my trade. 
 Practise as exile ere perform as prince ? 
 The world knows something of my ups and 
 
 downs : 
 But grant me time, give me the management 
 And manufacture of a model me, 
 Me fifty-fold, a prince without a flaw, — 
 Why, there 's no social grade, the sordidest. 
 My embryo potentate should blink and 'scape. 
 King, all the better he was cobbler once. 
 He should know, sitting on the throne, how 
 
 tastes 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY 
 
 69 [ 
 
 Life to who sweeps th.e doorway. But life 's 
 
 hard, 
 Occasion rare ; you cut probation short. 
 And, bein^ half-instructed, on the stage 
 You shuffle through your part as best you can, 
 And bless your stars, as I do. God takes time. 
 I like the thoug-ht he should have lodged me 
 
 once 
 I' the hole, the cave, the hut, the tenement, 
 The mansion and the palace ; made me learn 
 The feel o' the first, before I found myself 
 Loftier i' the last, not more emancipate ; 
 From fii'st to last of lodging, I was I, 
 And not at all the place that harbored me. 
 Do I refuse to follow farther yet 
 I' the backwardness, repine if tree and flower, 
 Mountain or streamlet were my dwelling-place 
 Before I gained enlargement, grew mollusc ? 
 As well account that way for many a thrill 
 Of kinship, I confess to, with the powers 
 Called Nature : animate, inanimate. 
 In parts or in the whole, there 's something there 
 Man-like that somehow meets the man in me. 
 My pulse goes altogether with the heart 
 0' tne Persian, that old Xerxes, when he stayed 
 His march to conquest of the world, a day 
 I' the desert, for the sake of one superb 
 Plane-tree which queened it there in solitude : 
 Giving her neck its necklace, and each arm 
 Its armlet, suiting soft waist, snowy side. 
 With cincture and apparel. Yes, I lodged 
 In those successive tenem^ents ; perchance 
 Taste yet the straitness of them while I stretch 
 Limb and enjoy new liberty the more. 
 And some abodes are lost or ruinous ; 
 Some, patched-up and pieced-out, and so trans- 
 formed 
 They still accommodate the traveller 
 His day of lifetime. Oh, you count the links, 
 Descry no bar of the unbroken man ? 
 Yes, — and who welds a lump of ore, suppose 
 He likes to make a chain and not a bar, 
 And reach by link on link, link small, link large. 
 Out to the due length — why, there 's fore- 
 thought still 
 Outside 0' the series, forging at one end, 
 \Vliile at the other there 's — no matter what 
 The kind of critical intelligence 
 Believing that last link had last but one 
 For parent, and no link was, first of all. 
 Fitted to anvil, hammered into shape. 
 Else, I accept the doctrine, and deduce 
 This duty, that I recognize mankind. 
 In all its height and depth and length and 
 
 breadth. 
 Mankind i' the main have little wants, not large : 
 I, being of will and power to help, i' the main. 
 Mankind, must help the least wants first. My 
 
 friend. 
 That is, my foe, without such power and will. 
 May plausibly concentrate all he wields. 
 And do his best at helping some large want, 
 Exceptionally noble cause, that 's seen 
 Subordinate enough from where I stand. 
 As he helps. I helped once, when like himself, 
 Unable to help better, work more wide ; 
 And so would work with heart and hand to-day, 
 Did only computists confess a fault. 
 
 And multiply the single score by five. 
 Five only, give man's life its hundred years. 
 Change life, in me shall follow change to match ! 
 Time were then, to work here, there, every- 
 where. 
 By turns and try experiment at ease ! 
 Full time to mend as well as mar : why wait 
 Tlie slow and sober uprise all around 
 0' the building ? Let us run up, right to roof, 
 Some sudden marvel, piece of perfectness. 
 And testify what we intend the whole ! 
 Is the world losing patience ? * ' Wait ! ' ' say we : 
 " There 's time : no generation needs to die 
 Unsolaced ; you 've a century in store ! " 
 But, no : I sadly let the voices wing 
 Their way i' the upper vacancy, nor test 
 Truth on this solid as I promised once. 
 Well, and what is there to be sad about ? 
 The world 's the world, life 's life, and nothing 
 
 else. 
 'Tis part of life, a property to prize. 
 That those o' the higher sort engaged i' the 
 
 world, 
 Should fancy they can change its ill to good, 
 Wroi^ to right, ugliness to beauty : find 
 Enough success in fancy turning fact, 
 To keep the sanguine kind in countenance 
 And justify the hope that busies them : 
 Failure enough, — to who can follow change 
 Beyond their vision, see new good prove ill 
 I' the consequence, see blacks and whites of life 
 Shift square indeed, but leave the checkered face 
 Unchanged i' the main, — failure enough for 
 
 such, 
 To bid ambition keep the whole from change, 
 As their best service. I hope naught beside. 
 No, my brave thinkers, whom I recognize, 
 Gladly, myself the first, as, in a sense, 
 All that our world 's worth, flower and fruit of 
 
 man ! 
 Such minds myself award supremacy 
 Over the common insignificance. 
 When only Mind 's in question, — Body bows 
 To quite another government, you know. 
 Be Kant crowned king o' the castle in the air ! 
 Hans Slouch — his own, and children's mouths 
 
 to feed 
 I' the hovel on the ground — wants meat, nor 
 
 chews 
 " The Critique of Pure Reason '* in exchange. 
 But, now, — suppose I could allow your claims 
 And quite change life to please you, — would it 
 
 please ? 
 Would life comport with change and still be life ? 
 Ask, now, a doctor for a remedy : 
 There 's his prescription. Bid him point you out 
 Which of the five or six ingredients saves 
 The sick man. " Such the efficacity ? 
 Then why not dare and do things in one dose 
 Simple and piire, all virtue, no alloy 
 Of the idle drop and powder ? " What 's his 
 
 word ? 
 The efficacity, neat, were neutralized: 
 It wants dispersing and retarding, — nay. 
 Is put upon its mettle, plays its part 
 Precisely through such hindrance everywhere. 
 Finds some mysterious give and take i' the case, 
 Some gain by opposition, he foregoes 
 
692 
 
 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCHWANGAU 
 
 Should he unfetter the medicament. 
 
 So with this thought of yours that fain would 
 
 work 
 Free in the world : it wants just what it finds — 
 The ignorance, stupidity, the hate, 
 Envy and malice and uncharitableness 
 That bar your passage, break the flow of you 
 Down from those happy heights where many a 
 
 cloud 
 Combined to give you birth and bid you be 
 The royalest of rivers : on you glide 
 Silverly till you reach the summit-edge. 
 Then over, on to all that ignorance. 
 Stupidity, hate, envy, bluffs and blocks, 
 Posted to fret you into foam and noise. 
 What of it ? tip you mount in minute mist. 
 And bridge the chasm that crushed your qui- 
 etude, 
 A spirit-rainbow, earthborn jewelry 
 Outsparkling the insipid firmament 
 Blue above Terni and its orange-trees. 
 Do not mistake me ! You, too, have your rights ! 
 Hans must not burn Kant's house above his head 
 Because he cannot understand Kant's book : 
 And still less must Hans' pastor burn Kant's self 
 Because Kant understands some books too well. 
 But, justice seen to on this little point, 
 Answer me, is it manly, is it sage 
 To stop and struggle with arrangements here 
 It took so many lives, so much of toil, 
 To tinker up into efficiency ? 
 Can't you contrive to operate at once, — 
 Since time is short and art is long, — to show 
 Your quality i' the world, whate'er you boast, 
 Without this fractious call on folks to crush 
 The world together just to set you free, 
 Admire the capers you will cut perchance, 
 Nor mind the mischief to your neighbors ? 
 
 " Age ! 
 Age and experience bring discouragement," 
 You taunt me : I maintain the opposite. 
 Am I discouraged who — perceiving health. 
 Strength, beauty, as they tempt the eye of soul. 
 Are uncombinable with flesh and blood — 
 Resolve to let my body live its best. 
 And leave my soul what better yet may be 
 Or not be, in this life or afterward ? 
 — In either fortune, wiser than who waits 
 Till magic art procure a miracle. 
 In virtue of my very confidence 
 Mankind ought to outgrow its babyhood ; 
 Ipreseribe rocking, deprecate rough hands. 
 While thus the cradle holds it past mistake. 
 Indeed, my task 's the harder — equable 
 Sustainment everywhere, all strain, no push — ■ 
 Whereby friends credit me with indolence, 
 Apathy, hesitation. " Stand stock-still 
 If able to move briskly ? ' All a-strain ' — 
 So must we compliment your passiveness ? 
 Sound asleep, rather I " 
 
 Just the judgment passed 
 Upon a statue, luckless like myself, 
 I saw at Home once ! 'T was some artist's 
 
 whim 
 To cover all the accessories close 
 V the group, and leave you only Laocobn 
 
 With neither sons nor serpents to denote 
 The purpose of his gesture. Then a crowd 
 Was called to try the question, criticise 
 Wherefore such energy of legs and arms. 
 Nay, eyeballs, starting from the socket. One — 
 I give him leave to write my history — 
 Only one said, " I think the gesture strives 
 Against some obstacle we cannot see." 
 AU the rest made their minds up. "'Tisa 
 
 yawn 
 Of sheer fatigue subsiding to repose : 
 The statue 's ' Somnolency ' clear enough ! " 
 
 There, my arch stranger-friend, my audience 
 
 both 
 And arbitress, you have one half your wish. 
 At least : you know the thing I tried to do ! 
 AU, so far, to my praise and glory — all 
 Told as befits the self-apologist, — 
 Who ever promises a candid sweep 
 And clearance of those errors miscalled crimes 
 None knows more, none laments so much as he, 
 And ever rises from confession, proved 
 A god whose fault was — trying to be man. 
 Just so, fair judge, — if I read smile aright — 
 1 condescend to figure in your eyes 
 As biggest heart and best of Europe's friends, 
 And hence my failure. God will estimate 
 Success one day ; and, in the mean time — you ! 
 
 I daresay there 's some fancy of the sort 
 
 Frolicking round this final puff I send 
 
 To die up yonder in the ceiling-rose, — 
 
 Some consolation-stakes, we losers win ! 
 
 A plague of the return to " I — I — I 
 
 Did this, meant that, hoped, feared the other 
 
 thing ! " 
 Autobiography, adieu ! The rest 
 Shall make amends, be pure blame, history 
 And falsehood : not the ineffective truth, 
 But Thiers-and- Victor-Hugo exercise. 
 Hear what I never was, but might have been 
 I' the better world where goes tobacco-smoke ! 
 Here lie the dozen volumes of my life : 
 (Did I say "lie"? the pregnant word will 
 
 serve.) 
 Cut on to the concluding chapter, though ! 
 Because the little hours begin to strike. 
 Hun-y Thiers-Hugo to the labor's end ! 
 
 Something like this the unwritten chaptec 
 reads. 
 
 Exemplify the situation thus ! 
 Hohenstiel-Sohwangau, being, no dispute. 
 Absolute mistress, chose the AssemWy, first. 
 To serve her : chose this man, its President 
 Afterward, to serve also, — specially 
 To see that folk did service one and all. 
 And now the proper term of years was out. 
 When the Head-servant must vacate his place ; 
 And nothing lay so patent to the world 
 As that his fellow-servants one and all 
 Were — mildly to make mention — knaves or 
 
 fools, 
 Each of them with his promise flourished full 
 I' the face of you by word and impudence, 
 Or filtered slyly out by nod and wink 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY 
 
 693 
 
 Aud uudge upon yoiir sympathetic rib — 
 That not one minute more did knave or fool 
 Mean to keep faith and serve as he had sworn 
 Hohenstitil-iSchwangau, once her Head away. 
 Why should such swear except to get the 
 
 chance, 
 When time should ripen and confusion bloom, 
 Of putting Hohenstielers-TSchwangaaese 
 To the true use of human property — 
 Restoring souls and bodies, this to Pope, 
 And that to King, that Ooher to his planned 
 Perfection of a Share-and-share-alike, 
 That other still, to Empire absolute 
 In shape of the Head-servant's very self 
 Transformed to Master whole and sole? each 
 
 scheme 
 Discussible, concede one circumstance — 
 That each scheme's parent were, beside him- 
 self, 
 Hohenstiel-Schwangau, not her servjng-man 
 Sworn to do service in the way she chose 
 Rather than his way : way superlative, 
 Only, — by some infatuation, — his 
 And his and his and every one's but hers 
 Who stuck to just the Assembly and the Head. 
 I make no doubt the Head, too, had his dream 
 Of doing sudden duty swift and sure 
 On all that heap of untrustworthiness — 
 Catching each vaunter of the villany 
 He meant to perpetrate when time was ripe, 
 Once the Head-servant fairly out of doors. — 
 And, camng here a knave and there a fool- 
 Cry, " Mistress of your servants, these and me, 
 Hohenstiel-ychwangau ! I, their trusty Head, 
 Pounce on a pretty scheme concocting here 
 That 's stopped, extinguished by my vigilance. 
 Your property is safe again : but mark ! 
 Safe in these hands, not youi-s, who lavish 
 
 trust 
 Too lightly. Leave my hands their charge 
 
 awhile ! 
 I know your business better than yourself : 
 Let me alone about it ! Some £ne day, 
 Once we are rid of the embarrassmen-^. 
 You shaE look up and see your longings 
 
 crowned ! " 
 Such fancy might have tempted him be false, 
 But this man chose truth and was wiser so. 
 He recognized that for great minds i' the world 
 There is no trial like the appropriate one 
 Of leaving little minds their liberty 
 Of littleness to blunder on through life, 
 Now aiming at right ends by foolish means. 
 Now, at absurd achievement through the aid 
 Of good and wise endeavor — to acquiesce 
 In folly's Hfe-long privilege, though with power 
 To do the little minds the good they need, 
 Despite themselves, by just abolishing 
 Their right to play the part and fill the place 
 X' the scheme of things He schem.ed who made 
 
 alike 
 Great minds and little minds, saw use for each. 
 Could the orb sweep those puny particles 
 It just half-lights at distance, hardly leads 
 r the leash — sweep out each speck of them 
 
 from space 
 They anticise in with their days and nights 
 And whirlings round and dancings off, f'ozsooth. 
 
 And aU that fruitless individual life 
 
 One cannot lend a beam to but they spoil — 
 
 Sweep them into itself and so, one star, 
 
 Preponderate henceforth i' the heritage 
 
 Of heaven ! No ! in less senatorial phrase. 
 
 The man endured to help, not save outiight 
 
 The multitude by substituting him 
 
 For them, his knowledge, wiU and way, for 
 
 God's : 
 Nor change the world, such as it is, and was 
 And wiU be, for some other, suiting all 
 Except the purpose of the maker. No ! 
 He saw that weakness, wickedness will he, 
 And therefore should be : that the perfect man. 
 As we account perfection — at most pure 
 0' the special gold, whate'er the form it takci 
 Head-work or heart-work, fined and thrice- 
 refined 
 1' the crucible of life, whereto the poweis 
 Of the refiner, one and all, are flung 
 To feed the flame, he saw that e'en the block, 
 Such perfect man holds out triumphant, breaks 
 Into some poisonous ore, gold's opposite, 
 At the very purest, so compensating 
 Man's Adversary — what if we beKeve ? 
 For earlier stem exclusion of his stuff. 
 See the sage, with the hunger for the truth. 
 And see Ms system that 's all true, except 
 The one weak place that 's stanchioned by a 
 
 lie! 
 The moralist, who walks with head erect 
 I' the crystal clarity of air so long, 
 Until a stumble, and the man 's one mire ! 
 Philanthropy undoes the social knot 
 With axe-edge, makes love room 'twixt head 
 
 and trunk : 
 Religion — but, enough, the thing 's too clear ! 
 Well, if these sparks break out i' the greenest 
 
 tree. 
 Our topmost of performance, yours and mine, 
 What will be done i' the dry ineptitude 
 Of ordinary mankind, bark and bole. 
 All seems ashamed of but their mothei>^arth ? 
 Therefore throughout Head's term of servitude 
 He did the appointed service, and forebore 
 Extraneous action that were duty else. 
 Done by some other servant, idle now 
 Or mischievous : no matter, each his own — 
 Own task, and, in the end, own praise or blame 1 
 He sufi^ered them stmt, prate, and brag thei" 
 
 best. 
 Squabble at odds on every point save one. 
 And there shake hands, — agree to trifle time. 
 Obstruct advance with, each, his cricket-cry, 
 " Wait tiU the Head be off the shouldera here I 
 Then comes my King, my Pope, ray Autocrat, 
 My Socialist Republic to her own — 
 To-wit, that property of only me, 
 Hohenstiel-Schwangau who conceits herself 
 Free, forsooth, and expects I keep her so ! " 
 — Nay, suffered when, perceiving with dismay 
 Head's silence paid no tribute to their noise, 
 They turned on him. " Dumb menace in that 
 
 mouth, 
 Malice in that nnstridulosity ! 
 He cannot but intend some stroke of state 
 Shall signalize his passage into peace 
 Out of the creaking, — hinder transference 
 
694 
 
 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCHWANGAU 
 
 0' the Hohenstielers-Sohwanirauese to king^, 
 Pope, autocrat, or socialist republic ! That 's 
 Exact the cause his lips unlocked would cry ! 
 Therefore be stirring : brave, beard, bully him ! 
 Dock, by the million, of its friendly joints, 
 The electoral body short at once ! who did. 
 May do again, and undo us beside ; 
 Wrest from his hands the sword for self-de- 
 fence, 
 The right to parry any thrust in play 
 We peradventure please to meditate ! " 
 And so forth ; creak, creak, creak : and ne'er 
 
 a line 
 His locked mouth oped the wider, till at last 
 0' the long degraded and insulting day. 
 Sudden the clock told it was judgment-time. 
 Then he addressed himself to speak indeed 
 To the fools, not knaves ; they saw him walk 
 
 straight down 
 Each step of the eminence, as he first engaged, 
 And stand at last o' the level, — all he swore. 
 " People, and not the people's varletry. 
 This is the task you set myself and these ! 
 Thus I performed my part of it, and thus 
 They thwarted me throughout, here, here and 
 
 here: 
 Study each instance ! yours the loss, not mine. 
 What they intend now is demonstrable 
 As plainly : here 's such man, and here 's such 
 
 mode 
 Of making you some other than the thing 
 You, wisely or unwisely, choose to be. 
 And only set him up to keep you so. 
 Do you approve this ? Yours the loss, not 
 
 mine. 
 Do you condemn it ? There 's a remedy. 
 Take me — who know your mind, and mean 
 
 your good, 
 With clearer brain and stouter arm than they. 
 Or you, or haply anybody else — 
 And make me master for the moment ! Choose 
 What time, what power yon trust me with ; I 
 
 too 
 Will choose as frankly ere I trust myself 
 With time and power : they must be adequate 
 To the end and aim, since mine the loss, with 
 
 yours, 
 If means be wanting ; once their worth ap- 
 proved, 
 Grant them, and I shall forthwith operate — 
 Ponder it well ! — to the extreraest stretch 
 0' the power you trust me : if with unsuccess, 
 God wuls it, and there 's nobody to blame." 
 
 Whereon the people ansv/ered with a shout, 
 " The trusty one ! no tricksters any more ! " 
 How could they other ? He was in his place. 
 
 What followed ? Just what he foresaw, what 
 proved 
 
 The soundness of both judgments, — his, o' the 
 knaves 
 
 And fools, each trickster with his dupe, — and 
 theirs. 
 
 The people's, in what head and arm could help. 
 
 There was uprising, masks dropped, flags un- 
 furled. 
 
 Weapons outflonrished in the wind, my faith 1 
 
 Heavily did he let his fist fall plumb 
 On each perturber of the public peace. 
 No matter whose the wagging head it broke — 
 From bald-pate craft and greed and impudence 
 Of night-hawk at first chance to prowl and prey 
 For glory and a little gain beside. 
 Passing for eagle in the dusk of the age, — 
 To florid head-top, foamy patriotism 
 And tribunitial daring, breast laid bare 
 Through confidence in rectitude, with hand 
 On private pistol in the pocket : these 
 And all the dupes of these, who lent themselves 
 As dust and feather do, to help ofilence 
 0' the wind that whirls them at you, then sub- 
 sides 
 In safety somewhere, leaving filth afloat. 
 Annoyance you may brush from eyes and 
 
 beard, — 
 These he stopped : bade the wind's spite howl 
 
 or whine 
 Its worat outside the building, wind conceives 
 Meant to be pulled together and become 
 Its natural playground so. What foolishness 
 Of dust or feather proved importunate 
 And fell 'twixt thumb and finger, found them 
 
 gripe 
 To detriment of bulk and buoyancy. 
 Then followed silence and submission. Next, 
 The inevitable comment came on work 
 And work's cost : he was censured as profuse 
 Of human life and liberty : too swift 
 And thorough his procedure, who had lagged 
 At the outset, lost the opportunity 
 Through timid scruples as to right and wrong. 
 "There's no such certain mark of a small 
 
 mind " 
 (So did Sagacity explain the fault) 
 "As when it needs must square away and sink 
 To its own small dimensions, private scale 
 Of rig-ht and wrong, — humanity i' the large. 
 The right and wrong of the universe, forsooth ! 
 This man addressed himself to guard and 
 
 guide 
 Hohenstiel-Schwangau. When the case de- 
 mands 
 He frustrate villany in the egg, unhatehed. 
 With easy stamp and minimum of pang 
 E'en to the punished reptile, * There 's my oath 
 Restrains my foot,' objects our guide and 
 
 guard, 
 ' I must leave guardianship and guidance now : 
 Rather than stretch one handbreadth of the 
 
 law, 
 I am bound to see it break from end to end. 
 First show me death i' the body politic : 
 Then prescribe pill and potion, what may 
 
 please 
 Hohenstiel-Schwangau I all is for her sake : 
 'T was she ordained my service should be so. 
 What if the event demonstrate her unwise. 
 If she unwill the thing she willed before ? 
 I hold to the letter and obey the bond 
 And leave her to perdition loyally.' 
 Whence followed thrice the expenditure we 
 
 blame 
 Of human fife and liberty : for want 
 O' the by-blow, came deliberate buteher's- 
 workl" 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY 
 
 "Elsewhere go carry your complaint!" bade 
 
 he. 
 " Least,_ largest, there 's one law for all the 
 
 minds, 
 Here or above : be true at any price I 
 "T is just o' the great scale, that such happy 
 
 stroke 
 Of falsehood would be found a failure. Truth 
 Still stands unshaken at her base by me. 
 Reigns paramount i' the world, for the large 
 
 good 
 0' the long late generations, — I and you 
 Forgotten like this buried foolishness I 
 Not so the good I rooted in its grave." 
 
 This is why he refused to break his oath, 
 Kather appealed to the people, gained the 
 
 power 
 To act as he thought best, then used it, once 
 For all, no matter what the consequence 
 To knaves and fools. As thus began his sway, 
 So, through its twenty yeara, one rule of right 
 Sufficed him : govern for the many first, 
 The poor mean nmltitude, all mouths and eyes : 
 Bid the few, better favored in the brain. 
 Be patient, nor presume on privilege. 
 Help him or else be quiet, — never crave 
 That he help them,, — increase, forsooth, the 
 
 e^ . . . 
 
 Tawning so terribly ^twixt mind and mind 
 
 I' the world here, which his purpose was to 
 
 block 
 At bottom, were it by an inch, and bridge, 
 If by a filament, no more, at top. 
 Equalize things a little ! And the way 
 He took to work that purpose out, was plain 
 Enough to intellect and honesty 
 And — superstition, style it if you please. 
 So long as you allow there was no lack 
 0' the quality imperative in man — 
 Reverence. You see deeper ? thus saw he, 
 And by the light he saw, must walk : how else 
 Was he to do his part ? a man's, with might 
 And main, and not a faintest touch of fear, 
 Sure he was in the hand of God who comes 
 Before and after, with a work to do 
 Which no man helps nor hinders. Thus the 
 
 man, — 
 So timid when the business was to touch 
 The uncertain order of humanity, 
 Imperil, for a problematic cure 
 Of grievance on the surface, any good 
 I' the deep of things, dim yet cHscemible, — 
 This same man, so irresolute before. 
 Show him a true excrescence to cut sheer, 
 A devil's graft on God's foundation-stock. 
 Then — no complaint of indecision m^ore ! 
 He wrenched out the wrhole canker, root and 
 
 branch, 
 Deaf to who cried that earth would tumble in 
 At its four corners if he touched a twig. 
 Witness that lie of lies, arch-infamy. 
 When the Republic, with her life involved 
 In just this law — " Each people rules itself 
 Its own way, not as any stranger please " — 
 Turned, and for first proof she was living, bade 
 Hohenstiel-Schwangau fasten on the throat 
 Of the first neighbor that claimed benefit 
 
 695 
 
 0' the law herself estabHshed : " Hohenstiel 
 For Hohenstielers ! Rome, by parity 
 Of reasoning, for Romans ? That 's a jest 
 Wants proper treatment, — lancet - puncture 
 
 suits 
 The proud flesh: Rome ape Hohenstiel for- 
 sooth ! " 
 And so the siege and slaughter and success 
 Whereof we nothing doubt that Hohenstiel 
 Will have to pay the price, in God's good time, 
 Which does not always fall on Saturday 
 When the world looks for wages. Anyhow, 
 He found this infamy triujnphant. Well : 
 Sagacity suggested, make this speech ! 
 " The work was none of mine : sux^pose wrong 
 
 wait. 
 Stand over for redressing ? Mine for me. 
 My predecessors' work on their own head ! 
 Meantime, there 's plain advantage, should we 
 
 leave 
 Things as we find them. Keep Rome mana- 
 
 cled 
 Hand and foot : no fear of unruliness ! 
 Her foes consent to even seem our friends 
 So long, no longer. Then, there 's glory got 
 By boldness and bravado to the world : 
 The disconcerted world must grin and bear 
 The old saucy writing, — * Grunt thereat who 
 
 may. 
 So shall things be, for such my pleasure is — 
 Hohenstiel-Schwangau's.' How that reads in 
 
 Rome, 
 I' the capitol where Brennus broke his pate. 
 And lends a flourish to our journalists ! " 
 Only, it was nor read nor flourished of. 
 Since, not a moment did such glory stay 
 Excision of the canker ! Out it came. 
 Root and branch, with much roaring, and some 
 
 blood, 
 And plentiful abuse of him from friend 
 And foe. Who cared? Not Nature, who as- 
 suaged 
 The pain and set the patient on his legs 
 Promptly : the better ! had it been the worse, 
 'Tis Nature you must try conclusions with. 
 Not he, since nursing canker kills the sick 
 For certain, while to cut may cure, at least. 
 " Ah," groaned a second time Sagacity, 
 " Again the little mind, precipitate. 
 Rash, rude, when even in the right, as here I 
 The great mind knows the power of gentleness, 
 Only tries force because persuasion fails. 
 Had this man, by prelusive trumpet-blast. 
 Signified, *■ Truth and Justice mean to come. 
 Nay, fast approach your threshold ! Ere they 
 
 knock. 
 See that the house be set in order, swept 
 And garnished, windows shut, and doors 
 
 thrown wide ! 
 The free State comes to visit the free Church : 
 Receive her ! or . . . or , . . never mind what 
 
 else! ' 
 Thus moral suasion heralding brute force. 
 How had he seen the old abuses die. 
 And new life kindle here, there, everywhere. 
 Roused simply by that mild yet potent spell — 
 Beyond or beat of drum or stroke of sword — 
 Public opinion I " 
 
696 
 
 FRINGE HOHENSTIEL-SCHWANGAU 
 
 " How, indeed ? " he asked, 
 " When all to see, after some twenty years, 
 Were your own fool-face waiting for the sight, 
 Faced by as wide a grin from ear to ear 
 0' the knaves who, while the fools were wait- 
 ing, worked — 
 Broke yet another generation's heart — 
 Twenty years' respite helping! Teach your 
 
 nurse 
 ' Compliance with, before you suck, the teat ! ' 
 Find what that means, and meanwhile hold 
 your tongue ! " 
 
 Whereof the war came which he knew must 
 be. 
 
 Now, this had proved the dry-rot of the race 
 He ruled o'er, that, i' the old day, when was 
 
 need 
 They fought for their own liberty and life. 
 Well did they fight, none better : whence, such 
 
 love 
 Of fighting somehow still for fighting's sake 
 Against no matter whose the liberty 
 And life, so long as self-conceit should crow 
 And clap the wing, while justice sheathed her 
 
 claw, — 
 That what had been the glory of the world 
 When thereby came the world's good, grew its 
 
 plague 
 Now that the champion-armor, donned to dare 
 The dragon once, was clattered up and down 
 Highway and by-path of the world at peace. 
 Merely to mask marauding, or for sake 
 0' the shine and rattle that apprised the fields 
 Hohenstiel-Schwangau was a fighter yet. 
 And would be, till the weary world suppressed 
 Her peccant humors out of fashion now. 
 Accordingly the world spoke plain at last. 
 Promised to punish who next played with fire. 
 
 So, at his advent, such discomfiture 
 
 Taking its true shape of beneficence, 
 
 Hohenstiel-Schwangau, half-sad and part-wise, 
 
 Sat : if with wistful eye reverting oft 
 
 To each pet weapon, rusty on its peg. 
 
 Yet, 'with a sigh of satisfaction too 
 
 That, peaoefulness become the law, herself 
 
 Got the due share of godsends in its train, 
 
 Cried shame and took advantage quietly. 
 
 Still, so the dry-rot had been nursed into 
 
 Blood, bones and marrow, that, from worst to 
 
 best, 
 AH, — clearest brains and soundest hearts save 
 
 here, — 
 All had this lie acceptable for law 
 Plain as the sun at noonday — " War is best, 
 Peace is worst ; peace we only tolerate 
 As needful preparation for new war : 
 War may be for whatever end we will — 
 Peace only as the proper help thereto. 
 Such is the law of right and wrong for us 
 Hohenstiel-Schwangau ; for the other world, 
 As naturally, quite another law. 
 Are we content ? The world is satisfied. 
 Discontent? Then the world must give us 
 
 leave 
 To strike right, left, and exercise our arm 
 
 Torpid of late through overmuch repose, 
 And show its strength is still superlative 
 At somebody's expense in life or limb : 
 Which done, — let peace succeed and last a 
 
 year ! " 
 Such devU's-doetrine so was judged God's law. 
 We say, when this man stepped upon the stage, 
 That it had seemed a venial fault at most 
 Had he once more obeyed Sagacity. 
 " You come i' the happy iuterval of peace, 
 The favorable weariness from war : 
 Prolong it ! artfully, as if intent 
 On ending peace as soon as possible. 
 Quietly so increase the sweets of ease 
 And safety, so employ the multitude. 
 Put hod and trowel so in idle hands, 
 So stuff and stop up wagging jaws with bread. 
 That selfishness shall surreptitiously 
 Do wisdom's office, whisper in the ear 
 Of Hohenstiel-Schwangau, there 's a pleasant 
 
 feel 
 In being gently forced down, pinioned fast 
 To the easy arm-chair by the pleading arms 
 0' the world beseeching her to there abide 
 Content with all the harm done hitherto. 
 And let herself be petted in return. 
 Free to re-wage, in speech and prose and verse, 
 The old unjust wars, nay — in verse and prose 
 And speech, — to vaunt new victories, shall 
 
 prove 
 A plague o' the future, — so that words suffice 
 For present comfort, and no deeds denote 
 That — tired of illimitable line on line 
 Of boulevard-building, tired o' the theatre 
 With the tuneful thousand in their thrones 
 
 above. 
 For glory of the male intelligence. 
 And Nakedness in her due niche below. 
 For illustration of the female use — 
 That she, "twixt yawn and sigh, prepares to 
 
 slip 
 Out of the arm-chair, wants fresh blood again 
 From over the boundary, to color-up 
 The sheeny sameness, keep the world aware 
 Hohenstiel-Schwangau's arm needs exercise 
 Despite the petting of the universe ! 
 Come, you 're a city-builder : what 's the way 
 Wisdom takes when time needs that she entice 
 Some fierce tribe, castled on the mountain-peak, 
 Into the quiet and amenity 
 0' the meadow-land below ? By crying ' Done 
 With fight now, down with fortress ' ? Rather 
 
 — 'Dare 
 On, dare ever, not a stone displaced ! ' 
 Cries Wisdom : ' Cradle of our ancestors, 
 Be bulwark, give our children safety still ! 
 Who of our children please may stoop and taste 
 0' the valley-fatness, unafraid, — for why ? 
 At first alarm they have thy mother-ribs 
 To run upon for refuge ; foes forget 
 Scarcely that Terror on her vantage-coign, 
 Couchant supreme among the powers of air. 
 Watches — prepared to pounce — the country 
 
 wide I 
 Meanwhile the encouraged valley holds its own, 
 From the first hut's adventure in descent. 
 Half home, half hiding-place, — to dome and 
 
 spire 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY 
 
 697 
 
 Befitting the assured metropolis ; 
 
 Nor means offence to the fort which caps the 
 
 crag, 
 All undismaiitled of a turret-stone, 
 And bears the banner-pole that creaks at times 
 Embarrassed by the old emblazomiient, 
 When festal days are to ooramemorate ; 
 Otherwise left untenanted, no doubt, 
 Since, never fear, our myriads from below 
 Would rush, if needs were, man the walls again. 
 Renew the exploits of the earlier time 
 At moment's notice I But till notice sound, 
 Inhabit we in ease and opulence 1 ' 
 And so, till one day thus a notice sounds, 
 Not trumpeted, but in a whisper-gust 
 Fitfully playing through mute city streets 
 At midnight weary of day's feast and game — 
 ' Friends, your famed fort 's a ruin past repair ! 
 Its use is — to proclaim it had a use 
 Obsolete long since. Climb and study there 
 How to paint barbican and battlement 
 X' the scenes of our new theatre ! We fight 
 Now — by forbidding neighbors to sell steel 
 Or buy wine, not by blowing out their brains ! 
 Moreover, while we let time sap the strength 
 0' the walls omnipotent in menace once. 
 Neighbors would seem to have prepared sur- 
 prise — 
 Run up defences in a mushroom-growth. 
 For all the world like what we boasted : brief — 
 Hohenstiel-Schwangau's policy is peace ! '" 
 
 Ay, so Sagacity advised him filch 
 
 Folly from fools ; handsomely substitute 
 
 The dagger o' lath, while gay they sang and 
 
 danced. 
 For that long dangerous sword they liked to 
 
 feel, 
 Even at feast-time, clink and make friends 
 
 start. 
 No! he said; "Hear the truth, and bear the 
 
 truth. 
 And bring the truth to bear on all you are 
 And do, assured that only good comes thence 
 Whate'er the shape good take ! While I have 
 
 rule, 
 Understand ! — war for war's sake, war for sake 
 0' the good war gets you as war's sole excuse. 
 Is damnable and damned shall be. You want 
 Glory ? Why so do I, and so does God. 
 Where is it found, — in this paraded shame, — 
 One particle of glory ? Once you warred 
 For liberty against the world, and won : 
 There was the glory. Now, you fain would war 
 Because the neighbor prospers overmuch, — 
 Because there has been silence haH-an-hour, 
 Like Heaven on earth, without a cannon-shot 
 Announcing Hohenstielers-Schwangauese 
 Are minded to disturb the jubilee, — 
 Because the loud tradition echoes faint, 
 And who knows but posterity may doubt 
 If the great deeds were ever done at all, 
 Much less believe, were such to do again. 
 So the event would follow : therefore, prove 
 The old power, at the expense of somebody ! 
 Oh, Glory, — gilded bubble, bard and sage 
 So nickname rightly, — would thy dance endure 
 One moment, would thy vaunting make believe 
 
 Only one eye thy ball was solid gold, 
 Hadst thou less breath to buoy thy vaoancy 
 Than a whole multitude expends in praise. 
 Less range for roaming than from head to head 
 Of a whole people ? Flit, fall, Sy again. 
 Only, fix never where the resolute hand 
 May prick thee, prove the glassy lie thou art ! 
 Give me real intellect to reason with, 
 No multitude, no entity that apes 
 One wise man, being but a million fools 1 
 How and whence wishest gloi-y, thou wise one ? 
 Wouldst get it, — didst thyself guide Provi- 
 dence, — 
 By stinting of his due each neighbor round 
 In strength and knowledge and dexterity 
 So as to have thy littleness grow large 
 By all those somethings once, turned nothings 
 
 now. 
 As children make a molehill mountainous 
 By scooping out a trench around their pile, 
 Arid saving so the mudwork from approach ? 
 Quite otherwise the cheery game of life. 
 True yet mimetic warfare, whereby man 
 Does his best with his utmost, and so ends 
 The victor most of all in fair defeat. 
 Who thinks, — would he have no one think be- 
 side ? 
 Who knows, who does, — save his must learning 
 
 die 
 And action cease ? Why, so our giant proves 
 No better than a dwarf, once rivalry 
 Prostrate around him. Let the whole race stand 
 For him to try conclusions fairly with ! 
 Show me the great man would engage his peer 
 Rather by grinning ' Cheat, thy gold is brass I ' 
 Than granting ' Perfect piece of purest ore ! 
 Still, is it less good mintage, this of mine ? ' 
 Well, and these right and sound results of soul 
 I' the strong and healthy one wise man, — shall 
 
 such 
 Be vainly sought for, scornfully renounced 
 I' the multitude that make the entity — 
 The people ? — to what purpose, if no less, 
 In power and purity of soul, below 
 The reach of the unit than, by multiplied 
 Might of the body, vulgarized the more. 
 Above, in thick and threefold brutishness ? 
 See ! you accept such one wise man, myself : 
 Wiser or less wise, still I operate 
 From my own stock of wisdom, nor exact 
 Of other sort of natures you admire. 
 That whoso rhymes a sonnet pays a tax. 
 Who paints a landscape dips brush at his cost, 
 Who scores a septett true for strings and wind 
 Mulcted must be — else how should I impose 
 Properly, attitudinize aright, 
 Did such conflicting claims as these divert 
 Hohenstiel-^chwangan from observing me ? 
 Therefore, what I find facile, you be sure. 
 With effort or without it, you shall dare — 
 You, I aspire to make my better self 
 And truly the Great Nation. No more war 
 For war's sake, then! and, — seeing, wickedness 
 Springs out of foUy, — no more foolish dread 
 0' the neighbor waxing too inordinate 
 A rival, through his gain of wealth and ease ! 
 What ? — keep me patient. Powers I — the peo- 
 ple here, 
 
698 
 
 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCHWANGAU 
 
 Earth presses to her heart, nor owns a pride 
 
 Above her pride i' the race all flame and air 
 
 And aspiration to the boundless Great, 
 
 The incommensurably Beautiful — 
 
 Whose very falterings groundward come of 
 
 flight 
 Urged by a pinion all too passionate 
 For heaven and what it holds of gloom and 
 
 glow; 
 Bravest of thinkers, bravest of the brave 
 Doers, exalt in iScience, rapturous 
 In Art, the — more than all — magnetic race 
 To fascinate their fellows, mould mankind 
 Hohenstiel-Sehwangau-fashion, — these, what ? 
 
 — these 
 Will have to abdicate their primacy 
 Should such a nation seU them steel untaxed, 
 And such another take itself, on hire 
 For the natural sennight, somebody for lord 
 Unpatronized by me whose back was turned ? 
 Or such another yet would fain build bridge, 
 Lay rail, drive tunnel, busy its poor self 
 With its appropriate fancy ; so there 's — 
 
 flash — 
 Hohenstiel-Kchwangau up in arms at once ! 
 Genius has somewhat of the infantine : 
 But of the childish, not a touch nor taint 
 Except through self-will, which, being foolish- 
 ness. 
 Is certain, soon or late, of punishment. 
 Which Providence avert ! — and that it may 
 Avert what both of us would so deserve, 
 No foolish dread o' the neighbor, I enjoin I 
 By consequence, no wicked war with him, 
 WhQe I rule ! 
 
 "Does that mean — no war at all 
 When just the wickedness I here proscribe 
 Comes, haply, from the neighbor? Does my 
 
 speech 
 Precede the praying that you beat the sword 
 To ploughshare, find the spear to pruning-hook. 
 And sit down henceforth under your own vine 
 And fig-tree through the sleepy summer month. 
 Letting what hurly-burly please explode 
 On the other side the mountain-frontier ? No, 
 Beloved ! I foresee and I announce 
 Necessity of warfare in one case, 
 For one cause ; one way, I bid broach the blood 
 0' the world. For truth and right, and only 
 
 right 
 And truth, — right, truth, on the absolute scale 
 
 of God, 
 No pettiness of man's admeasurement, — 
 In such case only, and for such one cause. 
 Fight your hearts out, whatever fate betide 
 Hands energetic to the uttermost ! 
 Lie not ! Endure no lie which needs your heart 
 And hand to push it out of mankind's path — 
 No lie that lets the natural forces work 
 Too long ere lay it plain and pulverized — 
 Seeing man's life lasts only twenty years ! 
 And such a lie, before both man and God, 
 Proving, at this time present, Austria's rule 
 O'er Italy, — for Austria's sake the first, 
 Italy's next, and our sake last of all. 
 Come with rae and deliver Italy ! 
 Smite hip and thigh until the oppressor leav e 
 
 Free from the Adriatic to the Alps 
 
 The oppressed one ! We were they who laid 
 
 her low 
 In the old bad day when Villany braved Truth 
 And Right, and laughed ' Henceforward, God 
 
 deposed, 
 Satan we set to rule forevermore 
 I' the world ! ' — whereof to stop the conse- 
 quence. 
 And for atonement of false glory there 
 Gaped at and gabbled over by the world, 
 I purpose to get God enthroned again 
 For what the world will gird at as sheer shame 
 I' the cost of blood and treasure. ' AU for 
 
 naught — 
 Not even, say, some patch of province, splice 
 0' the frontier ? — some snug honorarium-fee 
 Shut into glove and pocketed apace ? ' 
 (Questions Sagacity) ' in deference 
 To the natural susceptibility 
 Of folks at home, unwittii^ of that pitch 
 You soar to, and misdoubting if Truth, Right 
 And the other such augustnesses repay 
 Expenditure in coin o' the realm, — but prompt 
 To recognize the cession of Savoy 
 And Nice as marketable value ! ' No, 
 Sagacity, go preach to Mettemich, 
 And, sermon ended, stay where he resides ! 
 Hohenstiel-Schwangau, you and I must march 
 The other road ! war for the hate of war. 
 Not love, this once ! " So Italy was free. 
 
 What else noteworthy and commendable 
 
 I' the man's career ? — that he was resolute — 
 
 No trepidation, much less treachery 
 
 On his part, should imperil from its poise 
 
 The ball o' the world, heaved up at such expense 
 
 Of pains so far, and ready to rebound. 
 
 Let but a finger maladroitly fall, 
 
 Under pretence of making fast and sure 
 
 The inch gained by late volubility. 
 
 And run itself back to the ancient rest 
 
 At foot o' the mountain. Thus he ruled, gave 
 
 proof 
 The world had gained a point, progressive so. 
 By choice, this time, as will and power con- 
 curred, 
 0' the fittest man to rule ; not chance of birth, 
 Or such-like dice-throw. Oft Sagacity 
 Was at his_ear_: " Confirm this clear advance, 
 Support this wise procedure ! You, elect 
 0' the people, mean to justify their choice 
 And out-king all the kingly imbeciles ; 
 But that 's just half the enterprise : remains 
 You find them a successor like yourself. 
 In head and heart and eye and hand and aim, 
 Or all done 's undone ; and whom hope to 
 
 mould 
 So like you as the pupil Nature sends, 
 The son and heir's completeness which you 
 
 lack ? ^ 
 
 Lack it no longer ! Wed the pick o' the world, 
 Where'er you think you find it. Should she be 
 A^ queen, — tell Hohenstielers-Schwangauese, 
 
 So do the old enthroned decrepitudes 
 Acknowledge, in the rotten hearts of them. 
 Their knell is knolled, they hasten to make 
 peace 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY 
 
 699 
 
 With the new order, recognize in me 
 
 Your right to constitute what king you will, 
 
 Cringe therefore crown in hand and bride on 
 
 arm. 
 To both of us : we triumph, I suppose ! ' 
 Is it the other sort of rank ? — bright eye, 
 Soft smile, and so forth, all her queenly boast ? 
 Undaunted the exordium — ' I, the man 
 0' the people, with the people mate myself : 
 So stand, so fall. Kings, keep your crowns and 
 
 hrides ! 
 Our progeny (if Providence agree) 
 Shall live to tread the baubles underfoot 
 And bid the scarecrows consort with their kin. 
 For son, as for his sire, be the free wife 
 In the free state I ' " 
 
 That is. Sagacity 
 Would prop up one more lie, the most of all 
 Pernicious fancy that the son and heir 
 Receives the genius from the sire, himself 
 Transmits as surely, — ask experience else ! 
 Which answers, — never was so plain a truth 
 As that God drops his seed of heavenly £ame 
 Just where he wills on earth : sometimes 
 
 where man 
 Seems to tempt — such the accumulated store 
 Of faculties — one spark to fire the heap ; 
 Sometimes where, fireball-like, it falls upon 
 The naked unprepar^dness of rock. 
 Burns, beaconing the nations through their 
 
 night. 
 Faculties, fuel for the flame ? All helps 
 Come, ought to come, or come not, crossed hy 
 
 chance, 
 From culture and transmission. What 's your 
 
 want 
 I' the son and heir ? Sympathy, aptitude, 
 Teachableness, the fuel for the flame ? 
 You '11 have them for your pains ; but the 
 
 flame's self, 
 The novel thought of God shall light the world ? 
 No, poet, though your offspring rhyme and 
 
 chime 
 I' the cradle, — painter, no, for all your pet 
 Draws his first eye, beats Salvatore's hoy, — ■ 
 And thrice no, statesman, should your progery 
 Tie bib and tucker with no tape but red. 
 And make a foolscap-kite of protocols ! 
 Critic and copyist and bureaucrat 
 To heart's content! The seed 0' the apple- 
 tree 
 Brings forth another tree which hears a crah : 
 'T is the great gardener grafts the excellenoe 
 On wildings where he will. 
 
 " How plain I view. 
 Across those misty years 'twixt me and 
 
 Eorae " — 
 (Such the man's answer to Sagacity) 
 " The little wayside temple, halfway down 
 To a mild river that makes oxen white 
 Miraculously, un-mouse-eolors skin. 
 Or so the Roman country people dream ! 
 I view that sweet small shrub-embedded shrine 
 On the declivity, was sacred once 
 To a transmuting Genius of the land. 
 Could touch and turn its dunnest natures bright. 
 
 — Since Italy means the Land of the Ox, we 
 
 know. 
 WeU, how was it the due succession fell 
 From priest to priest who ministered i' the cool 
 Calm fane o' the Clitumnian god ? The sire 
 Brought forth a son and sacerdotal sprout. 
 Endowed instinctively with good and grace 
 To suit thegliding gentleness below — 
 Did he ? Tradition teUs another tale. 
 Each priest obtained his predecessor's staff, 
 Robe, fillet and insignia, blamelessly. 
 By springing out of ambush, soon or late. 
 And slaying him : the initiative rite 
 Simply was murder, save that murder took, 
 I' the case, another and religious name. 
 So it was once, is now, shall ever be 
 With genius and its priesthood in this world : 
 The new power slays the old — but handsomely. 
 There he lies, not diminished by an inch 
 Of stature that he graced the altar with, 
 Though somebody of other bulk and build 
 Cries, ' Wliat a goodly personage lies here 
 Reddening the water where the bulrush roots ! 
 May I conduct the service in his place. 
 Decently and in order, as did he. 
 And, as he did not, keep a wary watch 
 When meditating 'neath yon wUlow shade ! ' 
 Fir.d out your best man, sure the son of him 
 Will prove best man again, and, better still 
 Somehow than best, the grandson-prodigy ! 
 You think the world would last another day 
 Did we so make us masters of the trick 
 Whereby the works go, we could pre-arrange 
 Their play and reach perfection when we please? 
 Depend on it, the change and the surprise 
 Are part o' the plan : 't is we wish steadiness ; 
 Nature prefers a motion by unrest, 
 Advancement through this force which jostles 
 
 that. 
 And so, since much remains i' the world to 
 
 see. 
 Here 's the world still, affording God the 
 
 sight." 
 Thus did the man refute Sagacity, 
 Ever at this old whisper in his ear : 
 " Here are you picked out, by a miracle, 
 And placed conspicuously enough, folks say 
 And you believe, hy Providence outright 
 Taking a new way — nor without success — 
 To put the world upon its mettle : good ! 
 But Fortune alternates with Providence ; 
 Resource is soon exhausted. Never count 
 On such a happy hit occuri'ing twice ! 
 Try the old method next time ! " 
 
 " Old enough," 
 (At whisper in his ear, the laugh outbroke,) 
 " And mode the most discredited of all. 
 By just the men and women who make boast 
 They are kings and queens thereby ! Mere 
 
 self-defence 
 Should teach them, on one chapter of the law 
 Must be no sort of trifling — chastity : 
 They stand or fall, as their progenitors 
 Were chaste or unchaste. Now, run eye 
 
 around 
 My crowned acquaintance, give each life its 
 
 look 
 
700 
 
 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCHWANGAU 
 
 And no mure, — why, you 'd think each life 
 
 was led 
 Purposely for example of what pains 
 Who leads it took to cure the prejudice, 
 And prove there 's nothing so unprovable 
 As who is who, what son of what a sire. 
 And — inf erentially — how faint the chance 
 That the next generation needs to fear 
 Another fool o' the selfsame type as he 
 Happily regnant now by right divine 
 And luck o' the pillow ! No : select your lord 
 By the direct employment of your brains 
 As best you may, — bad as the blunder prove, 
 A far worse evil stank beneath the sun 
 When some legitimate blockhead managed so 
 Matters that high time was to interfere, 
 Though interference came from hell itself 
 And not the blind mad miserable mob 
 Happily ruled so long by pillow-luck 
 And divine right, — by hes in short, not truth. 
 And meanwhile use the allotted minute ..." 
 
 One,— 
 Two, three, four, five — yes, five the pendule 
 
 warns! 
 Eh? Why, this wild work wanders past all 
 
 bound 
 And bearing 1 Exile, Leicester Square, the life 
 I^ the old gay miserable time, rehearsed, 
 Tried on again like oast clothes, still to serve 
 At a pinch, perhaps? "Who's who?" was 
 
 aptly asked. 
 Since certainly I am not I ! since when ? 
 Where is the bud-mouthed arbitress ? A nod 
 Out-Homering Homer 1 Stay — there flits the 
 
 clue 
 I fain would find the end of ! Yes, — " Mean- 
 while, 
 Use the allotted minute ! " Well, you see, 
 (Veracious and imaginary Thiers, 
 Who map out thus the life I might have led. 
 But did not, — all the worse for earth and 
 
 me, — 
 Doff spectacles, wipe pen, shut book, decamp !) 
 You see 't is easy in heroics ! Plain 
 Pedestrian speech shall help me perorate. 
 Ah, if one had no need to use the tongue ! 
 How obvious and how easy 't is to talk 
 Inside the soul, a ghostly dialogue — 
 Instincts with guesses, — instinct, guess, again 
 With dubious knowledge, half - experience : 
 
 each 
 And all the interlocutors alike 
 Subordinating, — as decorum bids. 
 Oh, never fear ! but still decisively, — 
 Claims from without that take too high a tone, 
 — (" God wills this, man wants that, the dig- 
 nity 
 Prescribed a prince would wish the other 
 
 thing ")- 
 Putting them back to insignificance 
 Beside one intimatest fact — myself 
 Am first to be considered, since I live 
 Twenty years longer and then end, perhaps ! 
 But, where one ceases to soliloquize. 
 Somehow the motives, that did well enough 
 
 I' the darkness, when you bring them into 
 
 light 
 Are found, like those famed cave-fish, to lack 
 
 eye 
 And organ for the upper magnitudes. 
 The other common creatures, of less fine 
 Existence, that acknowledge earth and heaven. 
 Have it theii' own way in the argument. 
 Yes, forced to speak, one stoops to say — one's 
 
 aim 
 Was — what it peradventure should have 
 
 been : 
 To renovate a people, mend or end 
 That bane come of a blessing meant the 
 
 world — 
 Inordinate culture of the sense made quick 
 By sold, — the lust o' the flesh, lust of the eye, 
 And pride of life, — and, consequent on these. 
 The worship of that prince o' the power o' the 
 
 air 
 Who paints the cloud and fills the emptiness 
 And bids his votaries, famishing for truth. 
 Feed on a lie. 
 
 Alack, one lies one's self 
 Even in the stating that one's end was truth, 
 Truth only, if one states as much in words ! 
 Give me the inner chamber of the soul 
 For obvious easy argument ! 't is there 
 One pits the silent truth a^inst a lie — 
 Truth which breaks shell a careless simple bird, 
 Nor wants a gorget nor a beak filed fine. 
 Steel spurs and the whole armory o' the tongue, 
 To equalize the odds. But, do your best. 
 Words have to come: and somehow words 
 
 deflect 
 As the best cannon ever rifled will. 
 
 " Deflect " indeed ! nor merely words from 
 
 thoughts 
 But names from facts : " Clitumnus " did I 
 
 say? 
 As if it had been his ox-whitening wave 
 Whereby folk practised that grim cult of old — 
 The murder of their temple's priest by who 
 Would qualify for his succession. Sure — 
 Nemi was the true lake's style. Dream had 
 
 need 
 Of the ox-whitening peace of prettiness 
 And so confused names, well known once 
 
 awake. 
 
 So, i' the Residenz yet, not Leicester Square, 
 Alone, — no such congenial intercourse ! — 
 My reverie concludes, as dreaming should, 
 With daybreak : nothing done and over yet. 
 Except cigars ! The adventure thus may be. 
 Or never needs to be at all : who knows ? 
 My Cousin-Duke, perhaps, at whose hard head 
 — Is it, now — is this letter to be launched. 
 The sight of whose gray oblong, whose grim 
 
 seal, ^ 
 
 Set all these fancies floating for an hour ? 
 
 Twenty years are good gain, come what come 
 
 will 1 
 Double or quits ! The letter goes ! Or stays 7 
 
FIFINE AT THE FAIR 
 
 701 
 
 FIFINE AT THE FAIR 
 
 Done Elvirh 
 Vous plait-il, don Juan, nous ^claircir ces beaux mystferes? 
 
 Don Juan 
 Madame, k vous dire la vdrit^ . . . 
 
 Done Elvirh 
 Ah ! que vous savez mal vous ddfendre pour un homme de cour, 
 €t qui doit Stre accoutume k ces sortes de choses ! J'ai pitie de vous 
 voir la confusion que vous avez. Que ne vous armez-vous le front 
 d'une noble effronterie ? Que ne me jurez-vous que vous etes 
 toujours dans les mSmes sentimens pour moi, que vous m'aimez 
 toujours avec une ardeur sans ^gale, et que rien n'est capable de 
 vous detacher de moi que la mort ? — (Mouere, £)<m Juan^ Acte i. 
 Sc 3.) 
 
 Donna Elvira 
 Don Juan, might you please to help ore give a guess, 
 Hold up a candle, clear this fine mysteriousness ? 
 
 Don Juan 
 Madam, if needs I must declare the truth, - 
 
 - in short • 
 
 Donna Elvira 
 Fie, for a man of mode, accustomed at the court 
 To such a style of thing, how awkwardly my lord 
 Attempts defence ! You move compassion, that 's the word — 
 Dumb-foundered and chapfallen 1 Why don't you arm your brow 
 With noble impudence ? Why don't you swear and vow 
 No sort of change is come to any sentiment 
 You ever had for me? Affection holds the bent, 
 You love me now as erst, with passion that makes pale 
 All ardor else ; nor aught in nature can avail 
 To separate us two, save what, in stopping breath. 
 May peradventure stop devotion likewise — death I 
 
 PROLOGUE 
 
 AMPHIBIAN 
 
 The fancy I had to-day. 
 Fancy which turned a fear ! 
 
 I swam far out in the bay. 
 Since waves laughed warm and clear. 
 
 I lay and looked at the sun, 
 The noon-sun looked at me : 
 
 Between us two, no one 
 Live creature, that I could see. 
 
 Tes ! There came floating by 
 
 Me, who lay floating too, 
 Such a strange butterfly ! 
 
 Creature as dear as new : 
 
 Because the membraned wings 
 
 So wonderful, so wide, 
 So sun-sufEused, were things 
 
 Ijike soul and naught beside. 
 
 A handbreadth overhead ! 
 
 AH of the sea my own. 
 It owned the sky instead ; 
 
 Both of us were alone. 
 
 I never shall join its flight. 
 For, naught buoys flesh in air. 
 
 If it touch the sea — good night ! 
 Death sure and swift waits there. 
 
 Can the insect feel the better 
 For watching the uncouth play 
 
 Of limbs that slip the fetter. 
 Pretend as they were not clay ? 
 
 Undoubtedly I rejoice 
 That the air comports so well 
 
 With a creature which had the choice 
 Of the land once. Who can tell ? 
 
 What if a certain soul 
 
 Which early slipped its sheath, 
 And has for its home the whole 
 
 Of heaven, thus look beneath, 
 
702 
 
 FIFINE AT THE FAIR 
 
 Thus watch one who, in the world, 
 Both lives and likes life's way, 
 
 Nor wishes the wings unfurled 
 That sleep in the worm, they say ? 
 
 But sometimes when the weather 
 Is blue, and warm waves tempt 
 
 To free one's self of tether, 
 And try a life exempt 
 
 From worldly noise and dust. 
 In the sphere which overbrims 
 
 With passion and thought, — why, just 
 Unable to fly, one swims ! 
 
 By passion and thought upborne. 
 One smiles to one's self — " They fare 
 
 Scarce better, they need not scorn 
 Our sea, who live in the air ! " 
 
 Emancipate through passion 
 And thought, with sea for sky, 
 
 We substitute, in a fashion, 
 For heaven — poetry ; 
 
 Which sea, to all intent. 
 
 Gives flesh such noon-disport 
 
 As a finer element 
 
 Affords the spirit-sort. 
 
 Whatever they are, we seem ; 
 
 Imagine the thing they know ; 
 All deeds they do, we dream ; 
 
 Can heaven be else but so ? 
 
 And meantime, yonder streak 
 
 Meets the horizon's verge ; 
 That is the land, to seek 
 
 If we tire or dread the surge : 
 
 Land the solid and safe — 
 To welcome again (confess !) 
 
 When, high and dry, we chafe 
 The body, and don the dress. 
 
 Does she look, pity, wonder 
 
 At one who mimics flight. 
 Swims — heaven above, sea under. 
 
 Yet always earth in sight ? 
 
 FIFINE AT THE FAIR 
 
 TRIP and skip, Elvire ! Link arm in arm 
 
 with me ! 
 Like husband and like wife, together let us see 
 The tumbling-troop arrayed, the strollers on 
 
 their stage. 
 Drawn up and under arms, and ready to engage. 
 
 Now, who supposed the night would play us 
 
 such a prank ? 
 — That what was raw and brown, rough pole 
 
 and shaven plank. 
 Mere bit of hoarding, half by trestle propped, 
 
 half tub. 
 
 Would flaunt it forth as brisk as butterfly from 
 
 grub? 
 This comes of sun and air, of Autumn afternoon. 
 And Pornic and Saint Gille, whose feast affords 
 
 the boon — 
 This scaftold turned parterre, this flower-bed in 
 
 full blow, 
 Bateleurs, baladines! We shall not miss the 
 
 show! 
 They pace and promenade ; they presently will 
 
 dance : 
 What good were else i' the drum and fife ? O 
 
 pleasant land of France ! 
 
 Who saw them make their entry ? At wink 
 
 of eve, be sure ! 
 They love to steal a march, nor lightly risk the 
 
 lure. 
 They keep their treasure hid, nor stale (impro- 
 vident) 
 Before the time is ripe, ea«h wonder of their 
 
 tent — 
 Yon six-legged sheep, to wit, and he who beats 
 
 a gong, 
 Lifts cap and waves salute, exhilarates the 
 
 throng — 
 Their ape of many years and much adventure, 
 
 grim 
 And gray with pitying fools who find a joke in 
 
 him. 
 Or, best, the human beauty, Mimi, Toinette, 
 
 Fifine, 
 Tricot fines down if fat, padding plumps up if 
 
 lean. 
 Ere, shedding petticoat, modesty, and such toys. 
 They bounce forth, squalid girls transformed 
 
 to gamesome boys. 
 
 No, no, thrice, Pornic, no ! Perpend the 
 authentic tale ! 
 
 'T was not for every Gawain to gaze upon the 
 Grail ! 
 
 But whoso went his rounds, when flew bat, 
 flitted midge. 
 
 Might hear across the dusk, — where both 
 roads join the bridge. 
 
 Hard by the little port, — creak a slow caravan, 
 
 A chimneyed house on wheels ; so shyly- 
 sheathed, began 
 
 To broaden out the bud which, bursting un- 
 aware. 
 
 Now takes away our breath, queen-tulip of the 
 Fair ! 
 
 Yet morning promised much: for, pitched 
 
 and slung and reared 
 On terrace 'neath the tower, 'twixt tree and 
 
 tree appeared 
 An airy structure ; how the pennon from its 
 
 dome. 
 Frenetic to be free, makes one red stretch for 
 
 home ! 
 The home far and away, the distance where 
 
 lives joy. 
 
FIFINE AT THE FAIR 
 
 703 
 
 The cure, at once and ever, of world and 
 
 world's annoy ; 
 Since, what lolls full in front, a furlong from 
 
 the booth, 
 But ocean-idleness, sky-blue and millpond- 
 
 smooth ? 
 
 Frenetic to be free ! And, do you know, 
 
 there beats 
 Something within my breast, as sensitive? — 
 
 repeats 
 The fever of the flag ? My heart makes just 
 
 the same 
 Passionate stretch, fires up for lawlessness, lays 
 
 claim 
 To share the life they lead ; losels, who have 
 
 and use 
 The hour what way they will, — applaud them 
 
 or abuse 
 Society, whereof myself am at the beck. 
 Whose call obey, and stoop to burden stiffest 
 
 neck! 
 
 Why is it that whene'er a faithful few com- 
 bine 
 To oast allegiance off, play truant, nor repine, 
 Agree to bear the worst, forego the best in 
 
 store 
 For us who, left behind, do duty as of yore, — 
 Why is it that, disgraced, they seem to relish 
 life the more ? 
 
 — Seem as they said, "We know a secret 
 
 passing praise 
 
 Or blame of such as you ! Remain ! we go our 
 ways 
 
 With something you o'erlooked, forgot or 
 chose to sweep 
 
 Clean out of door : our pearl picked from your 
 rubbish-heap. 
 
 You care not for your loss, we calculate our 
 gain. 
 
 AU's right. Are you content? Why, so let 
 things remain ! 
 
 To the wood then, to the wild : free life, full 
 liberty ! " 
 
 And when they rendezvous beneath the in- 
 clement sky. 
 
 House by the hedge, reduced to brute-com- 
 panionship, 
 
 — Misguided ones who gave society the slip, 
 And find too late how boon a parent they de- 
 spised, 
 
 What ministration spumed, how sweet and 
 civilized — 
 
 Then, left alone at last with self-sought wretch- 
 edness. 
 
 No interloper else ! — why is it, can we guess ? — 
 
 At somebody's expense, goes up so frank a 
 laugh ? 
 
 As though they held the corn, and left us only 
 chafB 
 
 From garners crammed and closed. And we 
 indeed are clever 
 
 If we get grain as good, by threshii^ straw for- 
 ever! 
 
 Still, truants as they are and purpose yet to 
 
 be. 
 That nowise needs forbid they venture — as 
 
 you see — 
 To cross confine, approach the once familiar 
 
 roof 
 0' the kindly race their flight estranged : stand 
 
 half aloof. 
 Sidle half up, press near, and proffer wares for 
 
 sale 
 — In their phrase, — make in ours, white levy 
 
 of black mail. 
 They, of the wild, require some touch of us the 
 
 tame, 
 Since clothing, meat and drink, mean money 
 
 all the same. 
 
 If hunger, proverbs say, allures the wolf 
 from wood. 
 
 Much more the bird must dare a dash at some- 
 thing good : 
 
 Must snatch up, bear away in beak, the trifle- 
 treasure 
 
 To wood and wild, and then — oh, how enjoy at 
 leisure ! 
 
 Was never tree-built nest, you climbed and 
 took, of bird, 
 
 (Rare city-visitant, talked of, scarce seen or 
 heard,) 
 
 But, when you would dissect the structure, 
 piece by piece. 
 
 You found, enwreathed amid the country- 
 product — fleece 
 
 And feather, thistle-fluffs and bearded windle- 
 straws — 
 
 Some shred of foreign silk, unraveUing of 
 gauze. 
 
 Bit, maybe, of brocade, mid fur and blow-bell- 
 down : 
 
 Filched plainly from mankind, dear tribute 
 paid by town, 
 
 Which proved how oft the bird had plucked up 
 heart of grace, 
 
 Swooped down at waif and stray, made fur- 
 tively our place 
 
 Pay tax and toll, then borne the booty to en- 
 rich 
 
 Her paradise i' the waste ; the how and why of 
 which. 
 
 That is the secret, there the mystery that 
 stings ! 
 
 X 
 
 For, what they traffic in, consists of just the 
 things 
 
 We, — proud ones who so scorn dwellers with- 
 out the pale, 
 
 Bateleurs, baladines, white leviers of black 
 mail, — 
 
 I say, they sell what we most pique us that we 
 keep ! 
 
 How comes it, all we hold so dear they coimt 
 so cheap ? 
 
704 
 
 FIFINE AT THE FAIR 
 
 What price should you impose, for instance, on 
 repute, 
 
 Good fame, your own good fame and family's 
 to boot ? 
 
 Stay start of quick moustache, arrest the ang:ry 
 rise 
 
 Of eyebrow ! All I asked is answered by sur- 
 prise. 
 
 Now tell me : are you worth the cost of a cigar ? 
 
 Go boldly, enter booth, disburse the coin at bar 
 
 Of doorway where presides the master of the 
 troop. 
 
 And forthwith you surrey his Graces in a 
 CTOup, 
 
 Live Picture, picturesque no doubt and close 
 to life : 
 
 His sisters, right and left ; the Grace in front, 
 his wife. 
 
 Next, who is this performs the feat of the Tra- 
 peze ? 
 
 Lo, she is launched, look — fie, the fairy! — 
 how she flees 
 
 O'er aU those heads thrust back, — mouths, 
 eyes, one gape and stare, — 
 
 No scrap of skirt impedes free passage through 
 the air, 
 
 Till, plumb on the other side, she lights and 
 laughs again. 
 
 That fairy-form, whereof eafih muscle, nay, 
 each vein 
 
 The curious may inspect, — his daughter that 
 he sells 
 
 Each rustic for five sous. Desiderate aught 
 else 
 
 O' the vendor ? As you leave his show, why, 
 joke the man ! 
 
 " You cheat : your six-legged sheep, I recollect, 
 began 
 
 Both life and trade, last year, trimmed prop- 
 erly and dipt. 
 
 As the Twin-headed Babe, and Human Nonde- 
 script ! " 
 
 What does he care ? You paid his price, may 
 pass your jest. 
 
 So values he repute, good fame, and all the 
 rest ! 
 
 But try another tack ; say : "I indulge ca- 
 price, 
 
 Who am Don and Duke, and Knight, beside, o' 
 the Golden Fleece, 
 
 And, never mind how rich. Abandon this 
 career ! 
 
 Have hearth and home, nor let your woman- 
 kind appear 
 
 Without as multiplied a coating as protects 
 
 An onion from the eye ! Become, in all respects. 
 
 God-fearing householder, snbsistent by brain- 
 skill, 
 
 Hand-labor ; win your bread whatever way 
 you will. 
 
 So it be honestly, — and, while I have a purse. 
 
 Means shall not lack!" — his thanks will be 
 the roundest curse 
 
 That ever rolled from lip. 
 
 Now, what is it ? — returns 
 
 The question — heartens so this losel that he 
 spurns 
 
 All we so prize ? I want, put down in black 
 and white. 
 
 What compensating joy, unknown and infin- 
 ite. 
 
 Turns lawlessness to law, makes destitution — 
 wealth. 
 
 Vice — virtue, and disease of soul and body — 
 health ? 
 
 Ah, the slow shake of head, the melancholy 
 
 smile. 
 The sigh almost a sob ! What 's wrong, was 
 
 right erewhile? 
 Why are we two at once such ocean-width 
 
 apart? 
 Pale fingers press my arm, and sad eyes probe 
 
 my heart. 
 Why is the wife in trouble ? 
 
 This way, this way, Pifine ! 
 
 Here 's she, shall make my thoughts be surer 
 what they mean ! 
 
 First let me read the signs, portray you past 
 mistake 
 
 The gypsy's foreign self, no swarth our sun 
 could bake. 
 
 Yet where 's a woolly trace degrades the wiry 
 hair ? 
 
 And note the Greek-nymph nose, and — oh, my 
 Hebrew pair 
 
 Of eye and eye — o'erarehed by velvet of the 
 mole — 
 
 That swim as in a sea, that dip and rise and 
 roll. 
 
 Spilling the light around ! While either ear is 
 cut 
 
 Thin as a dusk-leaved rose carved from a 
 cocoanut. 
 
 And then, her neck ! now, grant you had the 
 power to deck, 
 
 Just as your fancy pleased, the bistre-length of 
 neck. 
 
 Could lay, to shine against its shade, a moon- 
 like row 
 
 Of pearls, each round and white as bubble 
 Cupids blow 
 
 Big out of mother's milk, — what pearl-moon 
 would surpass 
 
 That string of moek-tui'quoise, those alman- 
 dines of glass. 
 
 Where girlhood terminates ? for with breasts'- 
 birth commence 
 
 The boy, and page-costume, till pink and im- 
 pudence 
 
 End admirably all : complete the creature 
 trips 
 
 Our way now, brings sunshine upon her span- 
 gled hips, 
 
 As here she fronts us full, with pose half- 
 frank, half-fierce ! 
 
FIFINE AT THE FAIR 
 
 705 
 
 Words urged in vain, Elvire ! You waste 
 your quai-t. and tierce, 
 
 Lunge at a phantom here, try fence in fairy- 
 land. 
 
 For me, I own defeat, ask but to understand 
 
 Tte acknowledged victory of whom I call my 
 queen, 
 
 Sexless and bloodless sprite : though mischiev- 
 ous and mean, 
 
 Yet free and flower-like too, with loveliness 
 for law. 
 
 And self-sustainment made morality. 
 
 A flaw 
 
 Do you account i' the lily, of lands which 
 travellers know. 
 
 That, just as golden gloom supersedes Northern 
 snow 
 
 1' the chalice, so, about each pistil, spice is 
 packed, — 
 
 Deliriously - drugged scent, in lieu of odor 
 lacked. 
 
 With us, by bee and moth, their banquet to en- 
 hance 
 
 At morn and eve, when dew, the chilly suste- 
 nance, 
 
 Needs mixture of some chaste and temperate 
 jjerfume ? 
 
 I ask, is she in fault who guards such golden 
 gloom, 
 
 Such dear and damning scent, by who cares 
 what devices. 
 
 And takes the idle life of insects she entices 
 
 When, drowned to heart's desire, they satiate 
 the inside 
 
 0' the lily, mark her wealth and manifest her 
 pride ? 
 
 XVIII 
 
 But, wiser, we keep ofF, nor tempt the acrid 
 
 juice ; 
 Discreet we peer and praise, put rich things to 
 
 right use. 
 No flavorous venomed bell, — the rose it is, I 
 
 wot. 
 Only the rose, we pluck and place, unwronged 
 
 a jot. 
 No worse for homage done by every devotee, 
 I' the proper loyal throne, on breast where rose 
 
 should be. 
 Or if the simpler sweets we have to choose 
 
 among, 
 Would taste between our teeth, and give its toy 
 
 the tongue, — 
 
 gorgeous poison-plague, on thee no hearts are 
 
 set 1 
 We gather daisy meek, or maiden violet : 
 
 1 think it is Elvire we love, and not Fifine. 
 
 " How does she make my thoughts be sure of 
 
 what they mean ? " 
 Judge and be just ! Suppose, an age and time 
 
 long past 
 Kenew for our behoof one pageant more, the last 
 
 0' the kind, sick Louis liked to see defile be- 
 tween 
 Him and the yawning grave, its passage served 
 
 to screen. 
 With eye as gray as lead, with cheek as brown 
 
 as bronae, 
 Here where we stand, shall sit and sufPer Louis 
 
 Onze : 
 The while from yonder tent parade forth, not 
 
 — oh, no — 
 Bateleurs, baladines ! but range themselves 
 
 a/-row 
 Those well-sung women-worthies whereof loud 
 
 fame still finds 
 Some echo linger faint, less in our hearts than 
 
 minds. 
 
 See, Helen ! pushed in front n' the world's 
 
 worst night and storm. 
 By Lady Venus' hand on shoulder : the sweet 
 
 form 
 Shrinkingly prominent, though mighty, like a 
 
 moon 
 Outbreaking from a cloud, to put harsh things 
 
 in tune, 
 And magically bring mankind to acquiesce 
 In its own ravage, — call no curse upon, but 
 
 bless 
 (Beldame, a moment since) the outbreaking 
 
 beauty, now. 
 That casts o'er all the blood a candor from her 
 
 brow. 
 See, Cleopatra ! bared, the entire and sinuous 
 
 wealth 
 0' the shining shape ; each orb of indolent ripe 
 
 health. 
 Captured, just where it finds a fellow-orb as fine 
 I' the body : traced about by jewels which out- 
 line. 
 Fire-frame, and keep distinct, perfections — lest 
 
 they melt 
 To soft smooth unity ere half their hold be 
 
 felt : 
 Yet, o'er that white and wonder, a soul's pre- 
 dominance 
 I' the head so high and haught — except one 
 
 thievish glance, 
 From back of oblong eye, intent to count the 
 
 slain. 
 Hush, — oh, I know, Elvire ! Be patient, more 
 
 remain ! 
 What say you to Saint 1 . . . Pish ! Whatever 
 
 Saint you please. 
 Cold-pinnacled aloft o' the spire, prays calm the 
 
 seas 
 From Pomic Church, and oft at midnight 
 
 (peasants say) 
 Goes walking out to save from shipwreck: 
 
 well she may ! 
 For think how many a year has she been con- 
 versant 
 With naught but winds and rains, sharp coui^ 
 
 tesy and scant 
 0' the wintry snow that coats the pent-house of 
 
 her shrine, 
 Covers each knee, climbs near, but spares the 
 
 smile benign 
 
7o6 
 
 FIFINE AT THE FAIR 
 
 Which seems to say, " I looked for scarce so 
 
 much from earth ! " 
 She follows, one long thin pure finger in the 
 
 girth 
 O' the girdle — -whence the folds of garment, 
 
 eye and eye, 
 Besprent with fleurs-de-lys, flow down and 
 
 mixltiply 
 Around her feet, — and one, pressed hushingly 
 
 to lip : 
 As if, while thus we made her march, some 
 
 foundering ship 
 Might miss her from her post, nearer to God 
 
 halfway 
 In heaven, and she inquired, " Who that treads 
 
 earth can pray ? 
 t doubt if even she, the unashamed I though, 
 
 sure, 
 ■^he must have stripped herself only to clothe 
 
 the poor." 
 
 This time, enough 's a feast, not one more 
 form, Elvire! 
 
 Provided you allow that, bringing up the rear 
 
 0' the bevy I am loth to — by one bird — cur- 
 tail. 
 
 First note may lead to last, an octave crown the 
 scale. 
 
 And this feminity be followed — do not 
 flout ! — 
 
 By — who concludes the masque with curtsey, 
 smile and pout. 
 
 Submissive-mutinous ? No other than Fifine 
 
 Points toe, imposes haunch, and pleads with 
 tambourine ! 
 
 " Well, what 's the meaning here, what does 
 the masque intend. 
 
 Which, unabridged, we saw file past us, with 
 no end 
 
 Of fair ones, till Fifine came, closed the cata- 
 logue ? " 
 
 Task fancy yet again ! Suppose you cast this 
 clog 
 
 Of flesh away (that weeps, upbraids, with- 
 stands my arm) 
 
 And pass to join your peers, paragon charm with 
 charm. 
 
 As I shall show you may, — prove best of 
 beauty there ! 
 
 Yourself confront yourself ! This, help me to 
 declare 
 
 That yonder-you, who stand beside these, brav- 
 ing each 
 
 And blinking none, beat her who lured to Troy- 
 town beach 
 
 The purple prows of Greece, — nay, beat Fi- 
 fine ; whose face, 
 
 Mark how I will inflame, when seigneur-like I 
 place 
 
 I' the tambourine, to spot the strained and 
 piteous blank 
 
 Of pleading parchment, see, no less than a 
 whole franc I 
 
 Ah, do you mark the brown o' the cloud, 
 made bright with fire 
 
 Through and through ? as, old wiles succeed- 
 ing to desire, 
 
 Quality (you and I) once more compassion- 
 ate 
 
 A hapless infant, doomed (fie on such partial 
 fate!) 
 
 To sink the inborn shame, waive privilege of 
 sex, 
 
 And posture as you see, support the nods and 
 becks 
 
 Of clowns that have their stare, nor always pay 
 its price ; 
 
 An infant born perchance as sensitive and nice 
 
 As any soul of you, proud dames, whom des- 
 tiny 
 
 Keeps uncontaminate from stigma of the sty 
 
 She wallows in ! You draw back skirts from 
 filth like her 
 
 Who, possibly, braves scorn, if, scorned, she 
 minister 
 
 To age, want, and disease of parents one or 
 both ; 
 
 Nay, peradventure, stoops to degradation, loth 
 
 That some just-budding sister, the dew yet on 
 the rose. 
 
 Should have to share in turn the ignoble trade, 
 — who knows ? 
 
 Ay, who indeed ! Myself know nothing, but 
 
 dare guess 
 That off she trips in haste to hand the 
 
 booty . . . yes, 
 'Twixt fold and fold of tent, there looms he, 
 
 dim-discerned, 
 The ogre, lord of all those lavish limbs have 
 
 earned ! 
 — Brute-beast-face, — ravage, scar, scowl and 
 
 malignant, — 
 0' the Strong Man, whom (no doubt, her hus- 
 band) by and by 
 You shall behold do feats : lift up nor quail be- 
 neath 
 A quintal in each hand, a cart-wheel 'twixt his 
 
 teeth. 
 Oh, she prefers sheer strength to ineffective 
 
 grace. 
 Breeding and culture ! seeks the essential in 
 
 the case ! 
 To him has flown my franc ; and welcome, if 
 
 that squint 
 0' the diaboue eye so soften through absinthe. 
 That for once, tambourine, tunic and tricot 
 
 'scape 
 Their customary cm'se " Not half the gain o' 
 
 the ape I " 
 Ay, they go in together ! 
 
 Yet still her phantom stays 
 Opposite, where you stand : as steady 'neath 
 
 our gaze, — 
 The live Elvire's and mine, — though fancy- 
 stuff and mere 
 
FIFINE AT THE FAIR 
 
 Illusion ; to be judged —dream-figures — with- 
 out fear 
 Or favor, tliose the false, by you and me the 
 
 true. 
 
 " What puts it in my head to make yourself 
 
 judge you? " 
 Well, it may be, the name of Helen brought to 
 
 mind 
 A certain myth I mused in years long left be- 
 hind: 
 How she that fled from Greece with Paris whom 
 
 she loved, 
 And came to Troy, and there found shelter, and 
 
 so proved 
 Such cause of the world's woe, — how she, old 
 
 stories call 
 This creature, Helen's self, never saw Troy at 
 
 all. 
 Jove had his fancy-fit, must needs take empty 
 
 air, 
 Fasliion her likeness forth, and set the phan- 
 tom there 
 I' the midst for sport, to try conclusions with 
 
 the blind 
 And blundering race, the game create for Gods, 
 
 mankind : 
 Experiment on these, — establish who would 
 
 yearn 
 To give up life for her, who, other-minded, 
 
 spurn 
 The best her eyes could smile, — make half the 
 
 world sublime. 
 And half absurd, for just a phantom all the 
 
 time ! 
 Meanwhile true Helen's self sat, safe and far 
 
 away, 
 By a great river-side, beneath a purer day, 
 With solitude around, tranquillity within ; 
 Was able to lean forth, look, listen, through 
 
 the din 
 And stir ; could estimiate the worthlessness or 
 
 worth 
 Of Helen who inspired such passion to the 
 
 earth, 
 A phantom all the time ! That put it in my 
 
 head 
 To make yourself judge you — the phantom- 
 wife instead 
 0' the tearful true Elvire I 
 
 I thank the smile at last 
 Which thins away the tear ! Our sky was 
 
 overcast, 
 And something fell ; but day clears up : if 
 
 there chanced rain. 
 The landscape glistens more. I have not vexed 
 
 in vain 
 Elvire : because she knows, now she has stood 
 
 the test. 
 How, this and this being good, herself may still 
 
 be best 
 0' the beauty in review ; because the flesh that 
 
 claimed 
 Unduly my regard, she thought, the taste, she 
 
 blamed 
 
 707 
 
 In me, for things externe, was all mistake, she 
 
 finds, — 
 Or win find, when I prove that bodies show me 
 
 minds, 
 That, through the outward sign, the inward 
 
 grace aUures, 
 And sparks from heaven transpierce earth's 
 
 coarsest covertures. 
 All by demonstrating the value of Fifiue ! 
 
 XXIX 
 
 Partake my confidence ! No creature 's made 
 
 so mean 
 But that, some way, it boasts, could we investi' 
 
 gate. 
 Its supreme worth : fulfils, by ordinance of 
 
 fate. 
 Its momentary task, gets glory all its own. 
 Tastes triumph in the world, pre-eminent, alone. 
 Where is the single grain of sand, 'mid millions 
 
 Confusedly on the beach, but, did we know, has 
 
 leaped 
 Or will leap, would we wait, i' the century, 
 
 some once, 
 To the very throne of things ? — earth's 
 
 brightest for the nonce, 
 When sunshine shall impinge on just that 
 
 grain's facette 
 Which fronts him fullest, first, returns his ray 
 
 with jet 
 Of promptest praise, thanks God best in crea/- 
 
 tion's name I 
 As firm is my belief, quick sense perceives the 
 
 same 
 Self-vindicating flash illustrate every man 
 And woman of our mass, and prove, throughout 
 
 the plan, 
 No detail but, in place allotted it, was prime 
 And perfect. 
 
 Witness her, kept waiting all this time 1 
 What happy angle makes Fifine reverberate 
 Sunshine, least sand-grain, she, of shadiest so- 
 cial state ? 
 No adamantine shield, polished like Helen 
 
 there. 
 Fit to absorb the sun, regorge him. till the glare. 
 Dazing the universe, draw Troy-ward those 
 
 blind beaks 
 Of equal-sided ships rowed by the well-heaved 
 
 Greeks ! 
 No Asian mirror, like yon Ptolemaic witch 
 Able to fix sun fast and tame sun down, en- 
 rich. 
 Not bum the world with beams thus flatter- 
 ingly rolled 
 About her, head to foot, turned slavish snakes 
 
 of gold ! 
 And oh, no tinted pane of oriel sanctity. 
 Does our Fifine afBord, such as permits supply 
 Of lustrous heaven, revealed, far more than 
 
 mundane sight 
 Could master, to thy cell, pure Saint I where, 
 
 else too bright. 
 So suits thy sense the orb, that, what outside 
 was noon, 
 
7o8 
 
 FIFJNE AT THE FAIR 
 
 Pales, through thy lozenged blue, to meek 
 
 benefic moon ! 
 What then ? does that prevent each dunghill, 
 
 ■we may pass 
 Daily, from boasting too its bit of looking-glass, 
 Its sherd which, sun-smit, shines, shoots arrowy 
 
 fire beyond 
 That satin-muffled mope, your sulky diamond ? 
 
 And now, the mingled ray she shoots, I de- 
 compose. 
 
 Her antecedents, take for execrable ! Gloze 
 
 No whit on your premiss : let be, there was no 
 worst 
 
 Of degradation spared Fifine : ordained from 
 lirst 
 
 To last, in body and soul, for one life-long 
 debauch, 
 
 The Pariah of the North, the European Nautch ! 
 
 This, far from seek to hide, she puts in evidence 
 
 Calmly, displays the brand, bids pry without 
 oifence 
 
 Your finger on the place. You comment, 
 " Fancy us 
 
 So operated on, maltreated, mangled thus 1 
 
 Such torture in our ease, had we survived an 
 hour? 
 
 Some other sort of £esh and blood must be, 
 with power 
 
 Appropriate to the vile, nnsensitive, tough- 
 thonged. 
 
 In lieu of our fine nerve 1 Be sure, she was 
 not wronged 
 
 Too much : you must not think she winced at 
 prick as we ! " 
 
 Come, come, that 's what you say, or would, 
 were thoughts but free. 
 
 Well then, thus much confessed, what won- 
 der if there steal 
 
 Unchallenged to my heart the force of one 
 appeal 
 
 She makes, and justice stamp the sole claim 
 she asserts ? 
 
 So absolutely good is truth, truth never hurts 
 
 The teller, whose worst crime gets somehow 
 grace, avowed. . 
 
 To me, that silent pose and prayer proclaimed 
 aloud : 
 
 " Know all of me outside, the rest be emptiness 
 
 For such as you ! I call attention to my dress. 
 
 Coiffure, outlandish features, lithe memorable 
 hmbs. 
 
 Piquant entreaty, all that eye-glance overskims. 
 
 Does this give pleasure ? Then, repay the 
 pleasure, put 
 
 Its price i' the tambourine I Do you seek 
 further ? Tut ! 
 
 I 'm just my instrument, — sound hollow : 
 mere smooth skin 
 
 Stretched o'er gilt framework, I ; rub-dub, 
 naught else within — 
 
 Always, for such as you 1 — if I have use else- 
 where, — 
 
 If certain bells, now mute, can jingle, need you 
 care? 
 
 Be it enough, there 's truth i' the pleading, 
 
 which comports 
 With no word spoken out in cottages or courts. 
 Since all I plead is, ' Pay for just the sight you 
 
 see. 
 And give no credit to another charm in me ! ' 
 Do I say, like your Love ? ' To praise my face 
 
 is well, 
 But, who would know my worth, must search 
 
 my heart to tell ! ' 
 Do I say, like your Wife ? ' Had I passed in 
 
 review 
 The produce of the globe, my man of men were 
 
 — you ! ' 
 Do I say, like your Helen ? ' Yield yourself 
 
 up, obey 
 Implicitly, nor pause to question, to survey 
 Even the worshipful! prostrate you at my 
 
 shrine ! 
 Shall you dare controvert what the world 
 
 counts divine ? 
 Array your private taste, own liking of the 
 
 Own longing of the soul, against the impudence 
 Of history, the blare and bullying of verse ? 
 As if man ever yet saw reason to disburse 
 The amoimt of what sense hked, soul longed 
 
 for, — given, devised 
 As love, forsooth, — until the price was recog- 
 nized 
 As moderate enough by divers fellow-men ! 
 Then, with his warrant safe that these would 
 
 love too, then. 
 Sure that particular gain implies a public loss. 
 And that no smile he buys but proves a slash 
 
 across 
 The face, a stab into the side of somebody — 
 Sure that, along with love's main-purchase, he 
 
 will buy 
 Up the whole stock of earth's uncharitableness^ 
 Envy and hatred, — then, decides he to profess 
 His estimate of one, by love discerned, though 
 
 dim 
 To all the world beside : since what 's the 
 
 world to him ? ' 
 Do I say, like your Queen of Egypt ? ' Who 
 
 foregoes 
 My cup of witchcraft — fault be on the fool I 
 
 He knows 
 Nothing of how I pack my wine-press, turn its 
 
 winch 
 Three-times-three, all the time to song and 
 
 dance, nor fiinch 
 From charming on and on, till at the last I 
 
 squeeze 
 Out the exhaustive drop that leaves behind 
 
 mere lees 
 And dregs, vapidity, thought essence hereto- 
 fore I 
 Sup of my sorcery, old pleasures please no more ! 
 Be great, be good, love, leam, have potency of 
 
 hand 
 Or heart or head, — what boots? You die, nor 
 
 understand 
 What bliss might be in life : you ate the grapes^ 
 
 but knew 
 Never the taste of wine, such vintage aa X. 
 
 brew 1 ' 
 
FIFINE AT THE FAIR 
 
 709 
 
 Do I say, like your Saint ? ' An exquiaitest 
 
 toucli 
 Bides in the birth of things : no after-time can 
 
 much 
 Enhance that fine, that faint, fugitive first of 
 
 aU! 
 What color paints the cup 0' the May-rose, like 
 
 the small 
 Suspicion of a blush which doubtfully begins ? 
 What sound outwarbles brook, wlule, at the 
 
 source, it wins 
 That moss and stone dispart, allow its bub- 
 
 blings breathe ? 
 What taste excels the fruit, just where sharp 
 
 flavors sheathe 
 Their sting, and 'et encroach the honey that 
 
 allays ? 
 And so with oi'ul and sense ; when sanctity 
 
 betrays 
 First fear lest earth below seem real as heaven 
 
 above. 
 And holy worship, late, change soon to sinful 
 
 love — 
 Where is the plenitude of passion which en- 
 dures 
 Comparison with that, I ask of amateurs ? ' 
 Do I say, like Elvire "... 
 
 XXXIII 
 
 (Your husband holds you fast, 
 
 Will have you listen, learn your character at 
 last !) 
 
 "Do I say? — like her mixed unrest and dis- 
 content, 
 
 Eeproachfulness and scorn, with that submis- 
 sion blent 
 
 So strangely, in the face, by sad smiles and gay 
 tears, — 
 
 Quiescence which attacks, rebellion which en- 
 dears, — 
 
 Say ? ' As you loved me once, could you but 
 love me now ! 
 
 Years probably have graved their passage on 
 my brow, 
 
 Lips turn more rarely red, eyes sparkle leas 
 than erst ; 
 
 Such tribute body pays to time ; but, un- 
 amerced, 
 
 The soul retains, nay, boasts old treasure 
 multiplied. 
 
 Though dew-prime flee, — mature at noonday, 
 love defied 
 
 Chance, the wind, change, the rain : love stren- 
 uous all the more 
 
 For storm, struck deeper root and choicer fruit- 
 age bore, 
 
 Despite the rocking world ; yet truth struck 
 root in vain : 
 
 While tenderness bears fruit, you praise, not 
 taste again. 
 
 Why ? They are yours, which once were hardly 
 yours, might go 
 
 To grace another's ground : and then — the 
 hopes we know. 
 
 The fears we keep in mind ! — when, ours to ar- 
 bitrate. 
 
 Your part was to bow neck, bid fall decree of 
 fate. 
 
 Then, the knotty point — white-night's work 
 
 to revolve — 
 What meant that smile, that sigh ? Not Solon's 
 
 self could solve ! 
 Then, the deep surmise what one word might 
 
 express. 
 And if what seemed her "No " may not have 
 
 meant her '^ Yes ! " 
 Then, such annoy, for cause — calm welcome, 
 
 such acquist 
 Of rapture if, refused her arm, hand touched 
 
 her wrist ! 
 Now, what 's a smile to you ? Poor candle 
 
 that lights up 
 The decent household gloom which sends you 
 
 out to sup. 
 A tear? worse! warns that health requires you 
 
 keep aloof 
 From nuptial chamber, since rain penetrates 
 
 the roof ! 
 Soul, body got and gained, inalienably safe 
 Your own, become despised; more worth has 
 
 any waif 
 Or stray from neighbor's pale ; pouch that, — 
 
 't is pleasure, pride, 
 Novelty, property, and larceny beside ! 
 Preposterous thought ! to find no value fixed in 
 
 things, 
 To covet all you see, hear, dream of, till fate 
 
 brings 
 About that, what you want, you gain ; then 
 
 follows change . 
 Give you the sun to keep, forthwith must fancy 
 
 range : 
 A goodly lamp, no doubt, — yet might yow 
 
 catch her hair 
 And capture, as she frisks, the fen-fire dancing 
 
 there ! 
 What do I say ? at least a meteor 's half in 
 
 heaven ; 
 Provided filth but shine, my husband hankers 
 
 even 
 After putridity that 's phosphorescent, cribs 
 The rustic's taUow-msh, makes spoil of urchins' 
 
 squibs. 
 In short, prefers to me — chaste, temperate, 
 
 serene — 
 What sputters green and blue, this fizgig called 
 
 t sp 
 Fi; 
 
 'ifine ! ' " 
 
 So all your sex mistake ! Strange that so 
 
 plain a fact 
 Should raise such dire debate ! Few families 
 
 were racked 
 By torture self-supplied, did Nature grant but 
 
 this — 
 That women comprehend mental analysis 1 
 
 Elvire, do you recall when, years ago, our 
 
 The intimation reached, a certain pride of 
 Kome, 
 
 Authenticated piece, in the third, last and best 
 
 Manner — whatever, fools and connoisseurs con- 
 test, — 
 
 No particle disturbed by rude restorer's touch. 
 
710 
 
 FIFINE AT THE FAIR 
 
 The palaoed picture-pearl, so long eluding 
 clutch 
 
 Of creditor, at last, the Rafael might — could 
 we 
 
 But come to terms — change lord, pass from 
 the Prince to me ? 
 
 I think you recollect my fever of a year ; 
 
 How the Prince would, and how he would not ; 
 now, — too dear 
 
 That promise was, he made his grandsire so 
 long since, 
 
 Rather to boast " I own a Rafael " than " am 
 Prince!" 
 
 And now, the fancy soothed— if really sell he 
 must 
 
 His birthright for a mess of pottage — such a 
 thrust 
 
 I' the vitals of the Prince were mollified by 
 balm, 
 
 Could he prevail upon his stomach to bear 
 qualm. 
 
 And bequeath Liberty (because a purchaser 
 
 Was ready with the sum — a trifle !) yes, trans- 
 fer 
 
 His heart at aU events to that land where, at 
 least. 
 
 Free institutions reign ! And so, its price in- 
 creased 
 
 Fivefold (Americans are such importunates !), 
 
 Soon must his Rafael start for the United 
 States. 
 
 Oh, alternating bursts of hope now, then despair! 
 
 At last, the bargain 's struck, I 'm all but beg- 
 gared, there 
 
 The Rafael faces me, in fine, no dream at all. 
 
 My housemate, evermore to glorify my wall. 
 
 A week must pass, before heart-palpitations 
 sink. 
 
 In gloating o'er my gain, so late I edged the 
 brink 
 
 Of doom ; a fortnight more, I spend in Para- 
 dise : 
 
 " Was outline e'er so true, could coloring entice 
 
 So calm, did harmony and quiet so avail? 
 
 How right, how resolute, the action tells the 
 tale I " _ 
 
 A month, I bid my friends congratulate their 
 best : 
 
 " You happy Don ! " (to me) : " The block- 
 head ! " (to the rest) : 
 
 " No doubt he thinks his daub original, poor 
 dupe ! " 
 
 Then I resume my life : one chamber must not 
 coop 
 
 Man's life in, though it boast a marvel like my 
 prize. 
 
 Next year, I saunter past with unaverted 
 eyes. 
 
 Nay, loll and turn my back : perchance to over- 
 look 
 
 With relish, leaf by leaf, Dora's last picture- 
 book. 
 
 Imagine that a voice reproached me from its 
 frame : 
 ' Here do I hang, and may ! Your Rafael, just 
 the same. 
 
 'T is only you that change ; no ecstasies of 
 
 yore ! 
 No purposed suicide distracts you any more ! " 
 Prompt would my answer meet such frivolous 
 
 attack : 
 " You misappropriate sensations. What men 
 
 lack. 
 And labor to obtain, is hoped and feared about 
 After a fashion ; what they once obtain, makes 
 
 doubt. 
 Expectancy's old fret and fume, henceforward 
 
 void. 
 But do they think to hold such havings im- 
 
 aUoyed 
 By novel hopes and fears, of fashion just as 
 
 new. 
 To correspond i' the scale ? Nowise, I promise 
 
 you ! 
 Mine you are, therefore mine will he, as fit to 
 
 cheer 
 My soul and glad my sense to-day as this-day- 
 
 year. 
 So, any sketch or scrap, poehade, caricature, 
 Made in a moment, meant a moment to endure, 
 I snap at, seize, enjoy, then tire of, throw aside. 
 Find you in your old place. But if a servant 
 
 cried 
 ' Fire in the gallery ! ' — methinks, were I eu- 
 
 In Dor4, elbow-deep, picture-books million- 
 paged 
 
 To the four winds would pack, sped by the 
 heartiest curse 
 
 Was ever launched from lip, to strew the uni- 
 verse. 
 
 Would not I brave the best o' the burning, 
 bear away 
 
 Either my perfect piece in safety, or else stay 
 
 And share its fate, be made its martyr, nor re- 
 pine ? 
 
 Inextricably wed, such ashes mixed with 
 mine! " 
 
 For which I get the eye, the hand, the heart, 
 the whole 
 0' the wondrous wife again ! 
 
 xxxvm 
 
 But no, play out your role 
 
 I' the pageant ! 'T is not fit your phantom 
 leave the stage ; 
 
 I want you, there, to make you, here, confess 
 you wage 
 
 Successful warfare, pique those proud ones, and 
 advance 
 
 Claim to . . . equality? nay but predomi- 
 nance 
 
 In physique o'er them all, where Helen heads 
 the scene 
 
 Closed by its tiniest of tail-tips, pert Fifine. 
 
 How ravishingly pure you stand in pale con- 
 straint ! 
 
 My new-created shape, without or touch or 
 taint. 
 
 Inviolate of life and worldliness and sin — 
 
 Fettered, I hold my flower, her own cup's, 
 weight would win 
 
FIFINE AT THE FAIR 
 
 711 
 
 From off the tall slight stalk a-top of which 
 
 she turns 
 And trembles, makes appeal to one who 
 
 rouglily earns 
 Her thanks instead of blame, (did lily only 
 
 know,) 
 By thus oonstraining: length of lily, letting snow 
 Of cup-crown, that 's her face, look from its 
 
 guardian stake. 
 Superb on all that crawls beneath, and mutely 
 
 make 
 Defiance, with the mouth's white movement of 
 
 disdain, 
 To all that stoops, retires, and hovers round 
 
 again ! 
 How windingly the limbs delay to lead up, 
 
 reach 
 Where, crowned, the head waits calm : as if 
 
 reluctant, each. 
 That eye should traverse quick such lengths 
 
 of loveliness, 
 From feet, which just are found embedded in 
 
 the dress 
 Deep swathed about with folds and Sowings 
 
 virginal. 
 Up to the pleated breasts, rebellious 'neath 
 
 their pall. 
 As if the vesture's snow were moulding sleep 
 
 not death. 
 Must melt and so release ; whereat, from the 
 
 fine sheath. 
 The flower-cup-crown starts free, the face is 
 
 unconcealed, 
 And what shall now divert me, once the sweet 
 
 face revealed, 
 From all I loved so long, so lingeringly left ? 
 
 XXXIX 
 
 Because indeed your face fits into just the 
 cleft 
 
 0' the heart of me, Elvira, makes right and 
 whole once more 
 
 AU that was half itself without you ! As be- 
 fore, 
 
 My truant finds its place ! Doubtlessly sea- 
 shells yearn, 
 
 If plundered by sad chance : would pray their 
 pearls return, 
 
 Let negligently slip away into the wave ! 
 
 Never may eyes desist, those eyes so gray and 
 grave. 
 
 From their slow sure supply of the effluent soul 
 Avithin ! 
 
 And, would you humor me ? I dare to ask, 
 unpin 
 
 The web of that brown hair ! O'erwash o' the 
 sudden, but 
 
 As promptly, too, disclose, on either side, the jut 
 
 Of alabaster brow ! So part rich riUets dyed 
 
 Deep by the woodland leaf, when down they 
 pour, each side 
 
 0' the rock-top, pushed by Spring ! 
 
 " And where i' the world is all 
 This wonder, you detail so trippingly, espied ? 
 My mirror would reflect a tall, thin, pale, deep- 
 eyed 
 
 Personage, pretty once, it may be, doubtless 
 
 stiU 
 Loving, —a certain grace yet lingers, if you 
 
 will, — 
 But all this wonder, where ? " 
 
 Why, where but in the sense 
 And soul of me, Art's judge ? Art is my 
 
 evidence 
 That something was, is, might be ; but no more 
 
 thing itself. 
 Than flame is fuel. Once the verse-book laid 
 
 on shelf, 
 The picture turned to waU, the music fled 
 
 from ear, — 
 Each beauty, born of each, grows clearer and 
 
 more clear. 
 Mine henceforth, ever mine ! 
 
 But if I would retrace 
 Effect, in Art, to cause, — corroborate, erase 
 What 's right or wrong i' the lines, test fancy in 
 
 my brain 
 By fact which gave it birth ? I re-peruse in 
 
 vain 
 The verse, I fail to find that vision of delight 
 I' the Bazzi's lost-proiile, eye-edge so exqui- 
 site. 
 And, music: what? that burst of pillared 
 
 cloud by day 
 And piUared fire by night, was product, must 
 
 we say. 
 Of modulating just, by enharmonic change, — 
 The augmented sixth resolved, — from out the 
 
 straighter range 
 Of D sharp minor ■ — leap of disimprisoned 
 
 thrall — 
 Into thy light and Kfe, D major natural ? 
 
 XLIII 
 
 Elvire, will you partake in what I shall impart ? 
 
 I seem to understand the way heart chooses 
 heart 
 
 By help of the outside form, — a reason for our 
 wild 
 
 Diversity in choice, — why each grows recon- 
 ciled 
 
 To what is absent, what superfluous in the mask 
 
 Of flesh that 's meant to yield, — did nature ply 
 her task 
 
 As artist should, — precise the features of the 
 soul. 
 
 Which, if in any case they found expression, 
 whole 
 
 I' the traits, would give a type, undoubtedly 
 display 
 
 A novel, true, distinct perfection in its way. 
 
 Never shall I believe any two souls were made 
 
 Similar ; granting, then, each soul of every 
 grade 
 
 Was meant to be itself, prove in itself com- 
 plete. 
 
 And, in completion, good, — nay, best o' the 
 kind, — as meet 
 
 Needs must it be that show on the outside cor- 
 respond 
 
712 
 
 FIFINE AT THE FAIR 
 
 With inward substance, — flesh, the dress which 
 soul has donned, 
 
 Exactly reproduce, — were only justice done 
 
 Inside and outside too, — types perfect every 
 one. 
 
 How happens it that here we meet a mystery 
 
 Insoluble to man, a plagruy puzzle ? Why 
 
 Each soul is either made imperfect, and de- 
 serves 
 
 As rude a face to match; or else a bungler 
 swerves. 
 
 And nature, on a soul worth rendering- aright, 
 
 Works ill, or proves perverse, or, in her own 
 despite, 
 
 — Here too much, there too little, — bids each 
 face, more or less. 
 
 Retire from beauty, make approach to ugliness ? 
 
 And yet succeeds the same : since, what is want- 
 ing to success. 
 
 If somehow every face, no matter how deform. 
 
 Evidence, to some one of hearts on earth, that, 
 warm 
 
 Beneath the veriest ash, there hides a spark of 
 soul 
 
 Which, quickened by love's breath, may yet 
 pervade the whole 
 
 0' the gray, and, free again, be fire ? — of 
 worth the same, 
 
 Howe'er produced, for, great or little, flame is 
 flame. 
 
 A mystery, whereof solution is to seek. 
 
 I find it in the fact that eaoh soul, just as weak 
 
 Its own way as its fellow, — departure from de- 
 sign 
 
 As flagrant in the flesh, — goes striving to com- 
 bine 
 
 With what shall right the wrong, the under or 
 above 
 
 The standard : supplement nnloveliness by love. 
 
 — Ask Plato else ! And this corroborates the 
 sage. 
 
 That Art, — which I may style the love of lov- 
 ing, rage 
 
 Of knowing, seeing, feeling the absolute truth 
 of things 
 
 For truth's sake, whole and sole, not any good, 
 truth brings 
 
 The knower, seer, feeler, beside, — instinctive 
 Art 
 
 Must fumble for the whole, once fixing on a part 
 
 However poor, surpass the fragment, and aspire 
 
 To reconstruct thereby the ultimate entire. 
 
 Art, working with a will, discards the super- 
 flux. 
 
 Contributes to defect, toils on tiU, — fiat lux, — 
 
 There 's the restored, the prime, the individual 
 type! 
 
 Look, for example now 1 This piece of broken 
 
 pipe 
 (Some shipman's solace erst) shall act as crayon ; 
 
 and 
 What tablet better serves my purpose than the 
 
 sand" 
 
 — Smooth slab whereon I draw, no matter with 
 
 what skill, 
 A face, and yet another, and yet another stiU. 
 There lie my three prime types of beauty ! 
 
 Laugh your beat ! 
 " Exaggeration and absurdity ? " Confessed ! 
 Yet, what may that face mean, no matter for 
 
 its nose, 
 A yard long, or its chin, a foot short ? 
 
 XLVII 
 
 " You suppose. 
 Horror?" Exactly! What's the odds if, 
 
 more or less 
 By yard or foot, the features do manage to ex- 
 press 
 Such meaning in the main ? Were I of G^- 
 
 r8me's force. 
 Nor feeble as you see, quick should my crayon 
 
 course 
 O'er outline, curb, excite, till, — so completion 
 
 speeds 
 With G^r6me well at work, — observe how 
 
 brow recedes. 
 Head shudders back on spine, as if one haled 
 
 the hair. 
 Would have the full-face front what pin-point 
 
 eye's sharp stare 
 Announces ; mouth agape to drink the flowing 
 
 fate. 
 While chin protrudes to meet the burst o' the 
 
 wave : elate 
 Almost, spurred on to brave necessity, expend 
 All life left, in one flash, as fire does at its end. 
 Retrenchment and addition effect a masterpiece. 
 Not change i' the motive : here diminish, there 
 
 increase — 
 And who wants Horror, has it. 
 
 Who wants some other show 
 Of soul, may seek elsewhere — this second of 
 
 the row ? 
 What does it give for germ, monadic mere in- 
 tent 
 Of mind in face, faint first of meanings ever 
 
 meant ? 
 Why, possibly, a grin, that, strengthened, grows 
 
 a laugh ; 
 That, softened, leaves a smile ; that, tempered, 
 
 bids you quaff 
 At such a magic cup as English Reynolds once 
 Compounded : for the witch pulls out of yon 
 
 response 
 Like Garrick's to Thalia, however due may be 
 Your homage claimed by that stifE-stoled Mel- 
 pomene ! 
 
 And just this one face more ! Pardon the 
 bold pretence ! 
 
 May there not lurk some hint, struggle toward 
 evidence 
 
 In that compressed mouth, those strained nos- 
 trils, steadfast eyes 
 
FIFINE AT THE FAIR 
 
 713 
 
 Of utter passion, absolute self-saerifiee, 
 Which — could 1 but subdue the wild grotesque, 
 
 re&ie 
 That bulge of brow, make blunt that nose's 
 
 aqiulLue, 
 And let, although compressed, a point of pulp 
 
 appear 
 I' the mouth — would give at last the portrait 
 
 of Elvire ? 
 
 Well, and if 30 succeed hand-practice on awry 
 Preposterous art-mistake, shall soul-proficiency 
 Despair, — when exercised on nature, which at 
 
 worst 
 Always implies success, — however crossed and 
 
 curst 
 By failure, — such as art would emulate in vain ? 
 Shall any soul despair of setting free again 
 Trait after trait, until the type as wholly start 
 Forth, visible to sense, as that minutest part, 
 (Whate'er the chance,) which first arresting eye, 
 
 warned soul 
 That, under wrong enough and ravage, lay the 
 
 whole 
 O' the loveliness it " loved " — I take the ac- 
 cepted phrase ? 
 
 So 1 account for tastes : each chooses, none 
 
 gainsays 
 The fancy of his fellow, a paradise for him, 
 A hell for all beside. You can but crown the 
 
 brim 
 O' the cup ; if it be full, what matters less or 
 
 more ? 
 Let each, i' the world, amend his love, as I, o' 
 
 the shore. 
 My sketch, and the result as undisputed be ! 
 Their handiwork to them, and my Elvire to me : 
 — Result more beautiful than beauty's self, 
 
 when lo. 
 What was my Rafael turns my Michelagnolo I 
 
 For, we two boast, beside our pearl, a dia- 
 mond. 
 
 I' the palace-gallery, the corridor beyond. 
 
 Upheaves itself a marble, a magnitude man- 
 shaped 
 
 As snow might be. One hand — the Master's — 
 smoothed and scraped 
 
 That mass, he hammered on and hewed at, till 
 he hurled 
 
 Life out of death, and left a challenge : for the 
 world. 
 
 Death still, — since who shall dare, close to the 
 image, say 
 
 K this be pmijosed Art, or mere mimetic play 
 
 Of Nature ? — wont to deal with crag or cloud, 
 as stuff 
 
 To fashion novel forms, like forms we know, 
 enough 
 
 For recognition, but enough unlike the same. 
 
 To leave no hope ourselves may profit by her 
 game ; 
 
 Death therefore to the world. Step back apace 
 
 And then, who dares dispute the gradual birth 
 
 its due 
 Of breathing life, or breathless immortality, 
 Where out she stands, and yet stops short, half 
 
 bold, half shy. 
 Hesitates on the threshold of things, since 
 
 partly blent 
 With stuff she needs must quit, her native ele- 
 ment 
 I' the mind o' the Master, — what 's the crea» 
 
 ture, dear-divine 
 Yet earthly-awful too, so manly-feminine. 
 Pretends tliis white advance ? What startling 
 
 brain-escape 
 Of Michelagnolo takes elemental shape ? 
 I think he meant the daughter of the old man 
 
 o' the sea. 
 Emerging from her wave, goddess Eidothe4 — 
 She who, in elvish sport, spite with benevolence 
 Mixed Mab-wise up, must needs instruct the 
 
 Hero whence 
 Salvation dawns o'er that mad misery of his 
 
 isle. 
 Yes, she imparts to him, by what a pranksome 
 
 wile 
 He may surprise her sire, asleep beneath a rock, 
 When he has told their tale, amid his webfoot 
 
 flock 
 Of searbeasts, "fine fat seals with bitter 
 
 breath ! " laughs she 
 At whom she likes to save, no less : Eidothe^, 
 Whom you shall never face evolved, in earth, in 
 
 air, 
 In wave ; but, manifest i' the soul's domain, 
 
 why, there 
 She ravishingly moves to meet you, all through 
 
 aid 
 0' the soul ! Bid shine what should, dismiss 
 
 into the shade 
 What should not be, — and there triimiphs the 
 
 paramount 
 Emprise o' the Master 1 But, attempt to make 
 
 account 
 Of whatthe sense, without soul's help perceives? 
 
 I bought 
 That work — (despite plain proof, whose hand 
 
 it was had wrought 
 I' the rough : I think we trace the tool of triple 
 
 tooth. 
 Here, there, and everywhere) — bought dearly 
 
 that uncouth 
 Unwieldy bulk, for just ten dollars — Bulk, 
 
 would fetch — 
 Converted into lime — some five pauls 1 
 
 grinned a wretch. 
 Who, bound on business, paused to hear the 
 
 bargaining. 
 And would have pitied me " but for the fun o' 
 
 the thing! " 
 
 LIU 
 
 Shall such a wretch be — you? Must— 
 while I show Elvire 
 Shaming all other forms, seen as I see her here 
 I' the soul, — this other-you perversely look out- 
 side, , , . , J. 
 And ask me, " Where 1' the world is charm t{> 
 be descried 
 
714 
 
 FIFINE AT THE FAIR 
 
 I' the tall thin personage, with paled eye, pen- 
 sive face. 
 
 Any amount of love, and some remains of 
 grace ? " 
 
 See yourself in my soul ! 
 
 LIV 
 
 And what a world for each 
 
 Must somehow he i' the soul, — accept that 
 mode of speech, — 
 
 Whether an aura gird the soul, wherein it 
 seems 
 
 To float and move, a helt of all the glints and 
 gleams 
 
 It struck from out that world, its weaklier fel- 
 lows found 
 
 So dead and cold ; or whether these not so 
 much surround. 
 
 As pass into the soul itself, add worth to worth. 
 
 As wine enriches blood, and straightway send it 
 forth. 
 
 Conquering and to conquer, through all eter- 
 nity. 
 
 That 's battle without end. 
 
 I search hut cannot see 
 What purpose serves the soul that strives, or 
 
 world it tries 
 Conclusions with, unless the fruit of victories 
 Stay, one and all, stored up and guaranteed its 
 
 own 
 Forever, by some mode whereby shall be made 
 
 known 
 The gain of every life. Death reads the title 
 
 clear — 
 What each soul for itself conquered from out 
 
 things here : 
 Since, in the seeing soul, all worth lies, I 
 
 assert, — 
 And naught i' the world, which, save for soul 
 
 that sees, inert 
 Was, is, and would be ever, — stufE for trans- 
 muting, — null 
 And void until man's breath evoke the beau- 
 tiful — 
 But, touched aright, prompt yields each particle 
 
 its tongue 
 Of elemental flame, — no matter whence flame 
 
 sprung 
 From gums and spice, or else from straw and 
 
 rottenness, 
 So long as soul has power to make them burn, 
 
 express 
 What lights and warms henceforth, leaves only 
 
 ash behind, 
 Howe'er the chance : if soul be privileged to 
 
 find 
 Food so soon that, by first snatch of eye, suck 
 
 of breath, 
 It can absorb pure life; or, rather, meeting 
 
 death 
 V the shape of ugliness, by fortunate recoil 
 So put on its resource, it find therein a foil 
 For a new birth of life, the challenged soul's 
 
 response 
 To ugliness and death, — creation for the 
 
 nonce. 
 
 I gather heart through just such conquests 
 of the soul. 
 
 Through evocation out of that which, on the 
 whole, 
 
 Was rough, ungainly, partial accomplishment, 
 at best. 
 
 And — what, at worst, save failure to spit at 
 and detest ? — 
 
 — Through transference of all, achieved in vis- 
 ible things, 
 
 To where, secured from wrong, rest soul's 
 imaginings — 
 
 Through ardor to bring help just where com- 
 pletion halts, 
 
 Do justice to the purpose, ignore the slips and 
 faults — 
 
 And, last, through waging with deformity a 
 fight 
 
 Which wrings thence, at the end, precise its 
 opposite. 
 
 I praise the loyalty o' the scholar, — stung by 
 taunt 
 
 Of fools, " Does this evince thy Master men so 
 vaunt ? 
 
 Did he then perpetrate the plain abortion 
 here ? " — 
 
 Who cries, "His work ami! full fraught by 
 him, I clear 
 
 His fame from each result of accident and 
 time. 
 
 Myself restore his work to its fresh morning- 
 prime. 
 
 Not daring touch the mass of marble, fools 
 deride. 
 
 But putting my idea in plaster by its side, 
 
 His, since mine ; I, he made, vindicate who 
 made me ! " 
 
 For you must know, I too achieved Eidothe^, 
 In silence and by night — dared justify the 
 
 lines 
 Plain to my soul, although, to sense, that triple- 
 tine's 
 Achievement halt halfway, break down, or 
 
 leave a blank. 
 If she stood forth at last, the Master was to 
 
 thank ! 
 Yet may there not have smiled approval in his 
 
 eyes — 
 That one at least was left who, born to recog^ 
 
 nize 
 Perfection in the piece imperfect, worked, that 
 
 night. 
 In silence, such his faith, until the apposite 
 Design was out of him, truth palpable once 
 
 more ? 
 And then — for at one blow, its fragments 
 
 strewed the floor — 
 Recalled the same to live within his soul as 
 
 heretofore. 
 
 And, even as I hold and have Eidothe^, 
 I say, I cannot thinli that gain, — which would 
 not be 
 
FIFINE AT THE PAIR 
 
 715 
 
 Except a special soul had gained it, — that 
 
 such gain 
 Can ever be estranged, do aught but appertain 
 Immortally, by right firm, indefeasible, 
 To who performed tlie feat, through God's 
 
 grace and man's will ! 
 Gain, never shared by those who practised with 
 
 earth's stuff. 
 And spoiled whate'er they touched, leaving its 
 
 roughness rough. 
 Its blankness bare, and, when the ugliness 
 
 Ether struck work or laughed " He doted or 
 lie dozed ! " 
 
 While, oh, how all the more will love become 
 
 intense 
 Hereafter, when " to love " means yearning to 
 
 dispense, 
 Each soul, its own amount of gain through its 
 
 own mode 
 Of practising with life, upon some soul which 
 
 owed 
 Its treasure, all diverse and yet in worth the 
 
 same. 
 To new work and changed way ! Things fur- 
 nish you rose-flame, 
 Which burn up red, green, blue, nay, yellow 
 
 more than needs. 
 For me, I nowise doubt; why doubt a. time 
 
 succeeds 
 When each one may impart, and each receive, 
 
 both share 
 The ohemie secret, learn, — where 1 lit force, 
 
 why there 
 Ton drew forth lambent pity, — where I found 
 
 only food 
 For self-indulgence, you still blew a spark at 
 
 brood 
 I' the grayest ember, stopped not till self- 
 sacrifice imbued 
 Heaven's face with flame ? What joy, when 
 
 each may supplement 
 The other, changing each, as changed, tiU, 
 
 wholly blent. 
 Our old things shall be new, and, what we both 
 
 ignite, . , . , 
 
 Fuse, lose the varicolor in achromatic white ! 
 Exemplifying law, apparent even now 
 In the eternal progress, — love's law, which I 
 
 avow 
 And thus would formulate : each soul lives, 
 
 longs and works 
 For itself, by itself, because a lodestar lurks. 
 An other than itself, — in whatsoe'er the niche 
 Of mistiest heaven it hide, whoe'er the Glum- 
 
 dalclich 
 May grasp the Gulliver : or it, or he, or she — 
 Theosutos e broteios eper kelcrainene, — 
 (For fun's sake, where the phrase has fastened, 
 
 leave it fixed 1 
 So soft it says, — " God, man, or both together 
 
 mixed ! ") 
 This, guessed at through the flesh, by parts 
 
 which prove the whole. 
 This constitutes the soul discernible by soul 
 — Elvire, by me! 
 
 '' And then '^ — (pray you, permit remain 
 This hand upon my arm ! — your cheek dried, 
 
 if you deign-, 
 Choosing my shoulder) — " then ! " — (Stand 
 
 up for, boldly state 
 The objection in its length and breadth!) 
 
 "You abdicate. 
 With boast yet on your lip, soul's empire, and 
 
 accept 
 The rule of sense ; the Man, from monarch's 
 
 throne has stept — 
 Leapt, rather, at one bound, to base, and there 
 
 lies. Brute. 
 You talk of soul, — how soul, in search of soul 
 
 to suit. 
 Must needs review the sex, the army, rank and 
 
 file 
 Of womankind, report no face nor form so 
 
 vile 
 But that a certain worth, by certain signs, may 
 
 thence 
 Evolve itself and stand confessed — to soul — 
 
 by sense. 
 Sense ? Oh, the loyal bee endeavors for the 
 
 hive I 
 Disinterested hunts the flower-field through, 
 
 alive 
 Not one mean moment, no, — suppose on flower 
 
 he light, — 
 To his peculiar drop, petal-dew perquisite. 
 Matter-of-course snatched snack: unless he 
 
 taste, how try ? 
 This, light on tongue-tip laid, allows him pack 
 
 his thigh. 
 Transport all he counts prize, provision for the 
 
 comb. 
 Food for the future day, — a banquet, but at 
 
 home I 
 Soul ? Ere you reach Fifine's, some flesh may 
 
 be to pass I 
 That bombed brow, that eye, a kindling chrys- 
 
 opras. 
 Beneath its stiff black lash, inquisitive how 
 
 speeds 
 Each functionary limb, how play of foot suc- 
 
 And how yon let escape or duly sympathize 
 
 With gastro-kiiemian grace, — true, your soul 
 tastes and tries. 
 
 And trifles time with these, but, fear not, will 
 arrive 
 
 At essence in the core, bring honey home to 
 hive, 
 
 Brain-stock and heart-stuff both — to strike 
 objectors dumb — 
 
 Since only soul affords the soul fit pabulum ! 
 
 Be frank for charity I Who is it you de- 
 ceive — 
 
 Yourself or me or God, with all this make 
 believe?" 
 
 And frank I will respond as you interrogate. 
 Ah, Music, wouldst thou help ! Words strug- 
 gle with the weight 
 So feebly of the False, thick element between 
 
7i6 
 
 FIFINE AT THE FAIR 
 
 Our soul, the True, and Truth ! which, but 
 
 that intervene 
 False shows of things, were reached as easily 
 
 by thought 
 Reducible to -word, as now by yearnings 
 
 wrought 
 Up with thy fine free force, Music, that 
 
 canst thiid, 
 Electrically win a passage through the lid 
 Of earthly sepulchre, our words may push 
 
 against. 
 Hardly transpierce as thou 1 Not dissipate, 
 
 thou deign'st. 
 So much as tidcksily elude what words attempt 
 To heave away, i' the mass, and let the soul, 
 
 exempt 
 From all that vapory obstruction, view, instead 
 Of glimmer underneath, a glory overhead. 
 Not feebly, like our phrase, against the barrier 
 
 so 
 lu suspirative swell the authentic notes I know. 
 By help whereof, I would our souls were found 
 
 without 
 The pale, above the dense and dim which breeds 
 
 the doubt ! 
 But Music, dumb for you, withdraws her help 
 
 from me ; 
 And, since to weary words recourse again must 
 
 be, 
 At least permit they rest their burden here and 
 
 there. 
 Music-like : cover space ! My answer, — need 
 
 you care 
 If it exceed the bounds, reply to questioning 
 You never meant should plague ? Once fairly 
 
 on the wing, 
 Let me flap far and wide ! 
 
 For this is just the time. 
 The place, the mood in you and me, when all 
 
 things chime. 
 Clash forth life's common chord, whence, list 
 
 how there ascend 
 Harmonics far and faint, till our perception 
 
 end, — 
 Reverberated notes whence we construct the 
 
 scale 
 Embracing what we know and feel and are ! 
 
 How fail 
 To find or, better, lose your question, in this 
 
 quick 
 Reply which nature yields, ample and catholic ? 
 For, arm in arm, we too 'lave reached, nay, 
 
 passed, you see. 
 The village-precinct ; sun sets mild on Sainte- 
 
 Marie — 
 We only catch the spire, and yet I seem to 
 
 know 
 Wliat 's hid i' the turn o' the hill : how all the 
 
 graves must glow 
 Soberly, as each warms its little iron cross, 
 Flourislied about with gold, and graced (it 
 
 private loss 
 Be fresh) with stiff rope-wreath of yellow crbp 
 
 bead-blooms 
 Which tempt down birds to pay their supper, 
 
 'mid the tombs. 
 
 With prattle good as song, amuse the dead 
 
 awhile. 
 If couched they hear beneath the matted camo 
 
 mile! 
 
 Bid them good-by before last friend has 
 
 sung and supped ! 
 Because we pick our path and need our eyes, — 
 
 abrupt 
 Descent enough, — but here 'a the beach, and 
 
 there 's the bay, „ 
 
 And, opposite, the streak of lie NoirmoutieT. 
 Thither the waters tend ; they freshen as they 
 
 haste, 
 At feel o' the night-wind, though, by cliff and 
 
 cliff embraced. 
 This breadth of blue retains its self-possession 
 
 still: 
 As you and I intend to do, who take our fill 
 Of sights and sounds — soft sound, the countless 
 
 hum and skip 
 Of insects we disturb, and that good fellow- 
 ship 
 Of rabbits our footfall sends huddling, each to 
 
 hide 
 He best knows how and where ; and what 
 
 whirred past, wings wide ? 
 That was an owl, their young may justlier 
 
 apprehend ! 
 Though you refuse to speak, your beating heart, 
 
 my friend, 
 I feel against my arm, — though your bent head 
 
 forbids 
 A look into your eyes, yet, on my cheek, their 
 
 lids 
 That ope and shut, soft send a silken thrill the 
 
 same. 
 Well, out of all and each these nothings, conies 
 
 ^ what came 
 Often enough before, the something that would 
 
 aim 
 Once more at the old mark : the impulse to at 
 
 last 
 Succeed where hitherto was failure in the past. 
 And yet again essay the adventure. Clearlier 
 
 sings 
 No bird to its couched corpse, "Into the truth 
 
 of things — 
 Out of their falseness rise, and reach thou, and 
 
 " That rise into the true out of the false — 
 
 explain ? " 
 May an example serve ? In yonder bay I bathed. 
 This sunny morning : swam my best, then hung, 
 
 half swathed 
 With chill, and half with warmth, i' the chan- 
 nel's midmost deep : 
 You know how one — not treads, but stands in 
 
 water ? Keep 
 Body and limbs below, hold head back, uplift 
 
 chin, 
 And, for the rest, leave care ! If brow, eyes, 
 
 mouth, should win 
 Their freedom, — excellent I If they must 
 
 brook the surge, 
 
FIFINE AT THE FAIR 
 
 717 
 
 No matter though they sink, let but the nose 
 emerge. 
 
 So, all of me in brine lay soaking; : did I care 
 
 One jot ? I kept alive by man's due breath of 
 air 
 
 I' the nostrilsj high and dry. At times, o'er 
 these would run 
 
 The ripple, even wash the wavelet, — morning's 
 sun 
 
 Tempted advance, no doubt : and always flash 
 of froth. 
 
 Fish-outbreak, bubbling by, would find me no- 
 thing loth 
 
 To rise and look around ; then all was overs wept 
 
 With dark and death at once. But trust the 
 old adept ! 
 
 Back went again the head, a merest motion 
 made, 
 
 MuTfashion, either hand, and nostril soon con- 
 veyed 
 
 Assurance light and life were still in reach as 
 erst: 
 
 Always the last and — wait and watch — some- 
 times the Sxat. 
 
 Try to ascend breast-high ? wave arms wide 
 free of tether ? 
 
 Be in the air and leave the water altogether ? 
 
 Under went all again, till I resigned myself 
 
 To only breathe the air, that 's footed by an 
 elf. 
 
 And only swim the water, that 's native to a fish. 
 
 But there is no denying that, ere I curbed my 
 wish. 
 
 And schooled my restive arzus, salt entered 
 mouth and eyes 
 
 Often enough — sun, sky, and air so tantalize ! 
 
 Still, the E^ept swims, this accorded, that de- 
 nied ; 
 
 Can always breathe, sometimes see and be sat- 
 isfied ! 
 
 I liken to this play o' the body — fruitless 
 
 strife 
 To slip the sea and hold the heaven — my 
 
 spirit's life 
 'Twixt false, whence it would break, and true, 
 
 where it would bide. ] 
 
 I move in, yet resist, am upborne every side 
 By what I beat against, an element too gross 
 To live in, did not soul duly obtain her dose 
 Of life-breath, and inhale from truth's pure 
 
 plenitude 
 Above her, snatch and gain enough to just illude 
 With hope tihat some brave bound may bafBe 
 
 evermore 
 The obstructing medium, make who swam 
 
 henceforward soar : 
 — Gain scarcely snatched when, foiled by the 
 
 very effort, souse. 
 Underneath ducks the soul, her truthward 
 
 yearnings dowse 
 Beeper in falsehood ! ay, b'lt fitted less and less 
 To bear in nose and mouth old briny bitterness 
 'Proved alien more and more : sinoe each experi- 
 ence proves 
 Air — the essential good not sea, wherein who 
 
 Must thence, in the act, escape, apart from will 
 
 or wish. 
 Move a mere hand to take water-weed, jeUy-fish, 
 Upward you tend ! And yet our business with 
 
 the sea 
 Is not with air, but just o' the water, watery : 
 We must endure the false, no particle of which 
 Do we acquaint us with, but up we mount a pitch 
 Above it, find our head reach truth, while hands 
 
 explore 
 The false below : so much while here we bathe, 
 
 — no more 1 
 
 Now, there is one prime point (hear and be 
 
 edified !) 
 One truth more true for me than any truth 
 
 beside — 
 To-wit, that I am 1, who have the power to 
 
 swim. 
 The skill to understand the law whereby each 
 
 limb 
 May bear to keep immersed, since, in return, 
 
 made sure 
 That its mere movement lifts head clean 
 
 through covei'ture. 
 By practice with the false, I reach the true ? 
 
 Why, thence 
 It follows, that the more I gain self-confidence. 
 Get proof I know the trick, can float, sink , rise, 
 
 at will. 
 The better I submit to what I have the skill 
 To conquer in my turn, even now, and by and by 
 Leave wholly for the land, and there laugh, 
 
 shake me dry 
 To last drop, saturate with noonday — no need 
 
 more 
 Of wet and fret, plagued once : on Pomic's 
 
 placid shore. 
 Abundant air to breathe, sufficient sun to feel ! 
 Meantime I buoy myself : no whit my senses reel 
 When over me there breaks a billow ; nor, elate 
 Too much by some brief taste, I quaff intem- 
 perate 
 The air, o'ertop breast-high the wave-environ- 
 ment. 
 Full well I know the thing I grasp, as if intent 
 To hold, — my wandering wave, — will not be 
 
 grasped at all : 
 The solid-seeming grasped, the handful great 
 
 or small 
 Must go to nothing, glide through fingers fast 
 
 enough: 
 But none the less, to treat liquidity as stuff— ^ 
 Though failure — certainly succeeds beyond its 
 
 aim. 
 Sends head above, past thing that hands miss, 
 
 or the same. 
 
 So with this wash o' the world, wherein hfe- 
 long we drift ; 
 
 We push and paddle through the foam by mak- 
 ing shift 
 
 To breathe above at whiles when, after deepest 
 duck 
 
 Down underneath the show, we put forth hand 
 and pluck 
 
7i8 
 
 FIFINE AT THE FAIR 
 
 At what seems somehow like reality — a soul. 
 I catch at this and that, to capture and con- 
 trol. 
 Presume I hold a prize, discover that my pains 
 Are run to naught : my hands are balked, my 
 
 head regains 
 The surface where I breathe and look about, a, 
 
 space. 
 The soul that helped me mount? Swallowed 
 
 up in the race 
 0' the tide, come who knows whence, gone 
 
 gayly who knows where ! 
 I thought the prize was mine ; I flattered my- 
 self there. 
 It did its duty, though : I felt it, it felt me ; 
 Or, where I look about and breathe, I should 
 
 not be. 
 The main point is — the false fluidity was bound 
 Acknowledge that it frothed o'er substance, 
 
 nowise found 
 Fluid, but firm and true. Man, outcast, 
 
 *' howls," — at rods ? — 
 If "sent in playful spray a-shiyering to his 
 
 gods ! " 
 Childi^est childe, man makes thereby no bad 
 
 exchange. 
 Stay with the flat-fish, thou ! We like the 
 
 upper range 
 Where the " gods " live, perchance the daemons 
 
 also dwell : 
 Where operates a Power, which every throb and 
 
 swell 
 Of human heart invites that human soul ap- 
 proach, 
 " Sent " near and nearer still, however " spray " 
 
 encroach 
 On " shivering " flesh below, to altitudes, which 
 
 gained. 
 Evil proves good, wrong right, obscurity ex- 
 
 ' plained, 
 And " howling " childishness. Whose howl 
 
 have we to thank. 
 If all the dogs 'gan bark and puppies whine, till 
 
 sank 
 Each yelper's tail 'twixt legs ? for Huntsman 
 
 Common-sense 
 Came to the rescue, bade prompt thwack of 
 
 thong dispense 
 Quiet i' the kennel; taught that ocean might 
 
 be blue. 
 And rolling and much more, and yet the soul 
 
 have, too. 
 Its touch of God's own flame, which he may so 
 
 expand, 
 ** Who measured the watei-s i' the hollow of his 
 
 band," 
 That ocean's self shall dry, turn dewdrop in 
 
 respect 
 Of all-triumphant fire, matter with intellect 
 Once fairly matched ; bade him who egged on 
 
 hounds to bay. 
 Go curse, i' the poultry yard, his kind : " there 
 
 let him lay " 
 The swan's one addled egg; which yet shall 
 
 put to use. 
 Rub breast-bone warm against, so many a sterile 
 
 goose I 
 
 No, I want sky not sea, prefer the larks to 
 
 shrimps. 
 And never dive so deep but that I get a glimpse 
 O' the blue above, a breath of the air around. 
 
 Elvire, 
 I seize — by catching at the melted beryl here, 
 The tawny hair that just has trickled off, — 
 
 Fifine ! 
 Did not we two trip forth to just enjoy the scene. 
 The tumbling-tioop arrayed, the strollers on 
 
 their stage. 
 Drawn up and under arms, and ready to en- 
 
 Dabble, and there an end, with foam and froth 
 o'er fa<se. 
 
 Till suddenly Fifine suggested change of place ? 
 
 Now we taste aether, scorn the wave, and inter- 
 change apace 
 
 No ordinary thoughts, but such as evidence 
 
 The cultivated mind in both. On what pretence 
 
 Are you and I to sneer at who lent help to hand, 
 
 And gave the lucky lift ? 
 
 LXIX 
 
 Still sour ? I understand ! 
 One ugly circumstance discredits my fair plan — 
 That Woman does the work : I waive the help 
 
 of Man. 
 "Why should experiment be tried with only 
 
 waves. 
 When solid spars float round? Still some 
 
 Thalassia saves 
 Too pertinaciously, as though no Triton, bluff 
 As e'er blew brine from conch, were free to 
 
 help enough ! 
 Surely, to recognize a man, his mates serve 
 
 best! 
 Why is there not the same or greater interest 
 In the strong spouse as in the pretty partner, 
 
 „ ?'■*'>'' ... 
 
 Were recognition just your object, as you say, 
 
 Amid this element o' the false ? " 
 
 We come to terms. 
 
 I need to be proved true ; and nothing so con- 
 firms 
 
 One's faith in the prime point that one 's alive, 
 not dead. 
 
 In all Descents to Hell whereof I ever read, 
 
 As when a phantom there, male enemy or 
 friend. 
 
 Or merely stranger-shade, is struck, is forced 
 suspend 
 
 His passage : ' ' You that breathe, along with us 
 the ghosts? " 
 
 Here, why must it be stil? a woman that ac- 
 costs? 
 
 Because, one woman 's worth, in that respect, 
 
 such hairy hosts 
 Of the other sex and sort! Men? Say you 
 
 have the power 
 To make them yours, rule men, throughout 
 
 life's little hour. 
 
FIFINE AT THE FAIR 
 
 719 
 
 According to the phrase ; what follows ? Men, 
 you make, 
 
 By ruling them, your own : each man for his 
 own sake 
 
 Accepts you as his guide, avails him of what 
 worth 
 
 He apprehends in you to sublimate his earth 
 
 With fire ; content, if so you convoy him 
 through night. 
 
 That you shall play the sun, and he, the satel- 
 lite. 
 
 Pilfer your light and heat and virtue, starry 
 pelf. 
 
 While, caught up hy your course, he turns upon 
 himself. 
 
 Women rush into you, and there remain ab- 
 sorbed. 
 
 Beside, 't is only men completely formed, full- 
 orbed. 
 
 Are fit to follow track, keep pace, illustrate so 
 
 The leader : any sort of woman may bestow 
 
 Her atom on the star, or clod she counts for 
 such, — 
 
 Each little making less bigger by just that 
 much. 
 
 Women grow you, while men depend on you at 
 best. 
 
 And what dependence I Bring and put him to 
 the test, 
 
 Your specimen disciple, a handbreadth separ 
 rate 
 
 From you, he almost seemed to touch before ! 
 Abate 
 
 Complacency you will, I judge, at what 's di- 
 vulged ! 
 
 Some flabbiness you fixed, some vacancy out- 
 bulged, 
 
 Some — much — nay, all, perhaps, the outward 
 man 's your work : 
 
 But, inside man ? — find him, wherever he may 
 lurk. 
 
 And where 's a touch of you in his true self ? 
 
 LXXII 
 
 I wish 
 
 Some wind would waft this way a glassy bub- 
 ble-fish 
 
 0' the kind the sea inflates, and show you, once 
 detached 
 
 From wave ... or no, the event is better told 
 than watched : 
 
 Still may the thing float free, globose and opal- 
 ine 
 
 All over, save where just the amethysts com- 
 bine 
 
 To blue their best, rim-round the sea-flower 
 with a tinge 
 
 Earth's violet never knew ! Well, 'neath that 
 
 f em-tipped fringe, 
 lurks — of a kind — that acts as stom- 
 ach too ; 
 Then comes the emptiness which out the water 
 
 blew 
 So big and belly-like, but, dry of water drained. 
 Withers away nine-tenths. Ah, but a tenth 
 
 remained ! 
 That was the creature's self : no more akin to 
 
 Poor rudimental head and stomach, you agree. 
 Than sea 's akin to sun who yonder dips his 
 edge. 
 
 But take the rill which ends a race o'er yon- 
 der ledge 
 
 0' the fissured cliff, to find its fate in smoke 
 below ! 
 
 Disengage that, and ask — what news of life, 
 you know 
 
 It led, that long lone way, through pasture, 
 plain and waste ? 
 
 All 's gone to give the sea ! no touch of earth, 
 no taste 
 
 Of air, reserved to tell how rushes used to 
 bring 
 
 The butterfly and bee, and fisher-bird that 's 
 king 
 
 0' the purple kind, about the snow-soft silver- 
 sweet 
 
 Infant of mist and dew; only these atoms fleet, 
 
 Embittered evermore, to make the sea one 
 drop 
 
 More big thereby — if thought keep count 
 where sense must stop. 
 
 LXXIV 
 
 The fiill-blown ingrate, mere recipient of the 
 brine. 
 
 That takes all and gives naught, is Man ; the 
 feminine 
 
 Killet that, taking all and giving naught in 
 turn. 
 
 Goes headlong to her death i' the sea, without 
 concern 
 
 For the old inland life, snow-soft and silver- 
 clear. 
 
 That 's woman — typified from Fifine to Elvrre. 
 
 LXXV 
 
 Then, how diverse the modes prescribed to 
 
 who would deal 
 With either kind of creature ! 'T is Man, you 
 
 seek to seal 
 Your very own? Resolve, for first step, to 
 
 discard 
 Nine-tenths of what you are ! To make, you 
 
 must be marred, — 
 To raise your race, must stoop, — to tea<}h them 
 
 aught, must learn 
 Ignorance, meet halfway what most you hope 
 
 to spurn 
 I' the sequel. Change yourself, dissimulate the 
 
 thought 
 And vulgarize the word, and see the deed be 
 
 brought 
 To look like nothing done with any such intent 
 As teach men — though perchance it teach, by 
 
 accident ! 
 So may you master men : assured that if you 
 
 show 
 One point of mastery, departure from the low 
 And level, — header heart-revolt at long dis- 
 guise, 
 Immurement, stifling soul in mediocrities, — 
 H inadvertently a gesture, much more, word 
 Reveal the hunter no companion for the herd, 
 
720 
 
 FIFINE AT THE FAIR 
 
 His chance of capture 's gone. Success means, 
 they may snuff, i 
 
 Examine, and report, — a brother, sure enough, 
 
 Disports him in brute-guise ; for skin is truly 
 skin. 
 
 Horns, hoofs, are hoofs and horns, and all, out- 
 side and in, 
 
 Is veritable beast, whom fellow-beasts resigned 
 
 May follow, made a prize in honest pride, be- 
 hind 
 
 One of themselves and not creation's upstart 
 lord! 
 
 Well, there 's your prize i' the pound — much 
 joy may it afford 
 
 My Indian ! Make survey and tell me, — was it 
 worth 
 
 You acted part so well, went all-fours upon 
 earth 
 
 The live-long day, brayed, belled, and all to 
 bring to pass 
 
 That stags should deign eat hay when winter 
 stints them grass ? 
 
 LXXVI 
 
 So much for men, and how disguise may make 
 them mind 
 
 Their master. But you have to deal with 
 womankind ? 
 
 Abandon stratagem for strategy ! Cast quite 
 
 The vile disguise away, try truth dean-opposite 
 
 Such creep-and-crawl, stand forth all man and, 
 might it chance. 
 
 Somewhat of angel too ! — whate'er inheritance. 
 
 Actual on earth, in heaven prospective, be your 
 boast, 
 
 Lay claim to ! Your best self revealed at utter- 
 most, — 
 
 That 's the wise way o' the strong ! And e'en 
 should falsehood tempt 
 
 The weaker sort to swerve, — at least the lie 's 
 exempt 
 
 From slur, that 's loathlier still, of aiming to 
 debase 
 
 Kather than elevate its object. Mimic grace. 
 
 Not make deformity your mask ! Be sick by 
 stealth. 
 
 Nor traffic with disease — malingering in 
 health ! 
 
 No more of : " Countrymen, I boast me one 
 like yon — 
 
 My lot, the common strength, the common 
 weakness too ! 
 
 I think the thoughts you think ; and if I have 
 the knack 
 
 Of fitting thoughts to words, you peradventure 
 lack. 
 
 Envy me not the chance, yourselves more for- 
 tunate ! 
 
 Many the loaded ship self-sunk through treas- 
 ure freight. 
 
 Many the pregnant brain brought never child 
 to birth. 
 
 Many the great heart broke beneath its girdle- 
 girth! 
 
 Be mine the privilege to supplement defect. 
 
 Give dumbness voice, and let the laboring in*- 
 tellect 
 
 Find utterance in word, or possibly in deed ! 
 
 What though I seem to go before ? 't is you that 
 lead ! 
 
 I follow what I see so plain — the general mind 
 
 Projected pillar-wise, flame kindled by the 
 kind. 
 
 Which dwarfs the unit — me — to insignifi- 
 cance ! 
 
 Halt you, I stop forthwith, — proceed, I too ad- 
 
 Ay, that 's the way to take with men you 
 
 wish to lead. 
 Instruct and benefit. Small prospect you suc- 
 ceed 
 With women so ! Be all that 's great and good 
 
 and wise, 
 August, sublime — swell out your frog the 
 
 right ox-size — 
 He 's buoyed like a balloon, to soar, not burst, 
 
 you '11 see ! 
 The more you prove yourself, less fear the 
 
 prize will nee 
 The captor. Here you start after no pompous 
 
 stag 
 Who condescends be snared, with toss of horn, 
 
 and brag 
 Of bray, and ramp of hoof ; you have not to 
 
 subdue 
 The foe through letting him imagine he snares 
 
 you ! 
 'T is rather with , . . 
 
 Ah, thanks ! quick — where the dipping disk 
 Shows red against the rise and fall o' the fin ! 
 
 there frisk 
 In shoal the — porpoises ? Dolphins, they shall 
 
 and must 
 Cut through the freshening clear — dolphins, 
 
 my instance just ! 
 'T is fable, therefore truth : who has to do with 
 
 these. 
 Needs never practice trick of going hands and 
 
 knees 
 As beasts require. Art fain the fish to capti- 
 vate ? 
 Gather thy greatness round, Arion ! Stand in 
 
 state. 
 As when the banqueting thriUed conscious — 
 
 like a rose 
 Throughout its hundred leaves at that approach 
 
 it knows 
 Of music in the bird — while Corinth grew one 
 
 breast 
 A-throb for song and thee; nay, Periander 
 
 pressed 
 The Methymnsean hand, and felt a king indeed, 
 
 and guessed 
 How Phoebus' self might give that great mouth 
 
 of the gods 
 Such a ma^ificence of song I The pillar nods. 
 Rocks root, and trembles door, gigantic, post 
 
 and jamb. 
 As harp and voice rend air — the shattering 
 
 dithyramb 1 
 So stand thou, and assxmie the robe that tingles 
 
 yet 
 
FIFINE AT THE FAIR 
 
 721 
 
 With triumph ; strike the harp, whose eyery 
 gulden fret 
 
 Still smoulders with the flame, was late at 
 fingers' end — 
 
 So, standing on the bench o' the ship, let voice 
 expend 
 
 Thy sonl, sing, unalloyed by meaner mode, 
 thine own. 
 
 The Orthian lay ; then leap from music's lofty 
 throne 
 
 Into the lowest surge, make fearlessly thy 
 launch ! 
 
 Whatever storm may threat, some dolphin wUl 
 be stanch ! 
 
 Whatever roughness rage, some exquisite sca- 
 thing 
 
 Will surely rise to save, will bear — palpita- 
 ting- 
 One proud humility of love beneath its load — 
 
 Stem tide, part wave, till both roll on, thy 
 jeweU'd road 
 
 Of triumph, and the grim o' the gulf grow 
 wonder-white 
 
 I' the phosphorescent wake ; and still the ex- 
 quisite 
 
 Sea-thing stems on, saves still, palpitatingly 
 thus. 
 
 Lands safe at length its load of loTeatTsenarus, 
 
 True woman-creature ! 
 
 LXXIX 
 
 Man ? Ah, would you prove what power 
 Marks man, — what fruit his tree may yield, 
 
 beyond the sour 
 And stinted crab, he calls love-apple, which 
 
 remains 
 After you toil and moil your utmost, — all, love 
 
 gains 
 By lavishing manure ? — ■ try quite the other 
 
 plan ! 
 And, to obtain the strong true product of a 
 
 man. 
 Set him to hate a little ! Leave cherishing his 
 
 root. 
 And rather prune his branch, nip off the petti- 
 est shoot 
 Superfluous on his bough ! I promise, you 
 
 , shall learn 
 By what grace came the goat, of all beasts else, 
 
 to earn 
 Such favor with the god o' the grape : 't was 
 
 only he 
 Who, browsing on its tops, flrst stung fertility 
 Into the stock's heart, stayed much growth of 
 
 tendril-twine. 
 Some faintish flower, perhaps, but gained the 
 
 indignant wine, 
 Wrath of the red press I Catch the puniest of 
 
 the kind — 
 Man-animalcule, starved body, stunted mind. 
 And, as you nip the blotch 'twixt thumb and 
 
 finger-nail. 
 Admire how heaven above and earth below 
 
 avail 
 No jot to soothe the mite, sore at God's prime 
 
 oifence 
 In makinsT mites at all, — coax from its impo- 
 tence 
 
 One virile drop of thought, or word, or deed, by 
 strain 
 
 To propagate for once — which nature rendered 
 vain. 
 
 Who lets iirst failure stay, yet cares not to re- 
 cord 
 
 Mistake that seems to cast opprobrium on the 
 Lord ! 
 
 Such were the gain from love's best pains 1 
 But let the eU 
 
 Be touched with hate, because some real man 
 bears himself 
 
 Manlike in body and soul, and, since he lives, 
 must thwart 
 
 And furify and set ar6xz this counterpart 
 
 0' the pismire that's surprised to efferves- 
 cence, if. 
 
 By chance, black bottle come in contact with 
 chalk cliff. 
 
 Acid with alkali ! Then thrice the bulk, out 
 blows 
 
 Our insect, does its kind, and cuckoo-spits some 
 rose I 
 
 No — 't is ungainly work, the ruling men, at 
 
 best! 
 The graceful instinct 's right : 't is women 
 
 stand confessed 
 Auxiliary, the gain that never goes away. 
 Takes nothing; and gives all : Elvire, Fifine, 
 
 't is they 
 Convince, — if little, much, no matter ! — one 
 
 The more, at least, convince unreasonable me 
 That I am, anyhow, a truth, though all else seem 
 And be not: if I dream, at least I know I 
 
 dream. 
 The falsity, beside, is fleeting : I can stand 
 Still, and let truth come back, — your steady- 
 ing touch of hand 
 Assists me to remain self-centred, fixed amid 
 All on the move. Believe in me, at once you 
 
 bid 
 Myself believe that, since one soul has disen- 
 
 Mine from the shows of things, so much is fact : 
 I waged 
 
 No foolish warfare, then, with shades, myself a 
 shade. 
 
 Here in the world — may hope my pains wiU be 
 repaid I 
 
 How false things are, I judge : how change- 
 able, I learn : 
 
 When, where, and how it is I shall see truth 
 return, 
 
 That I expect to know, because Fifine knows 
 me ! — 
 
 How much more, it Elvire ! 
 
 LXXXI 
 
 " And why not, only she ? 
 Since there can be for each, one Best, no more, 
 
 such Best, 
 For body and mind of him, abolishes the rest 
 0' the simply Good and Better. You please 
 
 select Elvire 
 To give you this belief in truth, dispel the fear 
 
722 
 
 FIFINE AT THE FAIR 
 
 Yourself are, after all, as false as what sur- 
 rounds ; 
 
 And why not be content? When we two 
 watched the rounds 
 
 The boatman made, 'twixt shoal and sandbank, 
 yesterday. 
 
 As, at dead slack of tide, he chose to push his 
 way. 
 
 With oar and pole, across the creek, and reach 
 the isle 
 
 After a world of pains — my word provoked 
 your smile. 
 
 Yet none the less deserved reply : ' 'T were 
 wiser wait 
 
 The turn o' the tide, and find conveyance for 
 his freight — 
 
 How easily — within the ship to purpose 
 moored. 
 
 Managed by sails, not oars ! But no, — the 
 man 's allured 
 
 By liking for the new and hard in his exploit ! 
 
 First come shall serve ! He makes — coura- 
 geous and adroit — 
 
 The merest willow-leaf of boat do duty, bear 
 
 His merchandise across : once over, needs he 
 care 
 
 If folk arrive by ship, six hours hence, fresh 
 and gay ? ' 
 
 No : he scorns commonplace, alQfects the un- 
 usual way ; 
 
 And good Elvire is moored, with not a breath 
 to flap 
 
 The yards of her, no lift of ripple to overlap 
 
 Keel, much less, prow. What care ? since 
 here 's a cockle-shell, 
 
 Fifine, that 's taut and crank, and carries just 
 as well 
 
 Such seamanship as yours ! " 
 
 Alack, our life is lent. 
 From first to last, the whole, for this experi- 
 ment 
 Of proving what I say — that we ourselves are 
 
 true ! 
 I would there were one voyage, and then no 
 
 more to do 
 But tread the firm-land, tempt the uncertain 
 
 sea no more 
 I would we might dispense with change of 
 
 shore for shore 
 To evidence our skill, demonstrate — in no 
 
 dream 
 It was, we tided o'er the trouble of the stream. 
 I would the steady voyage, and not the fitful 
 
 trip, — 
 Elvire, and not Fifine, — might test our sea- 
 manship. 
 But why expend one's breath to tell yon, 
 
 change of boat 
 Means change of tactics too? Come see the 
 
 same afloat 
 To-morrow, all the change, new stowage fore 
 
 and aft 
 0' the cargo ; then, to cross requires new 
 
 sailor-craft ! 
 To-day, one step from stern to bow keeps boat 
 
 in trim : 
 
 To-morrow, some big stone — or woe to boat 
 
 and him ! — 
 Must ballast both. That man stands for Mmd, 
 
 paramount 
 Throughout the adventure : ay, howe'er you 
 
 make account, 
 'Tis mind that navigates, — skips over, twists 
 
 between 
 The bales i' the boat, — now gives importance 
 
 to the mean. 
 And now abates the pride of life, accepts all 
 
 fact. 
 Discards all fiction, — steers Fifine, and cries, i' 
 
 the act. 
 " Thou art so bad, and yet so delicate a brown ! 
 Wouldst tell no end of lies : I talk to smUe or 
 
 frown ! 
 Wouldst rob me: do men blame a squirrel, 
 
 lithe and sly. 
 For pilfering the nut she adds to hoard ? Nor 
 
 I." 
 Elvire is true, as truth, honesty's self, alack I 
 The worse ! too safe the ship, the transport 
 
 there and back 
 Too certain! one may loll and lounge and 
 
 leave the helm. 
 Let wind and tide do work : no fear that 
 
 waves o'erwhelm 
 The steady-going bark, as sure to feel her 
 
 way 
 Blindfold across, reach land, next year as yes- 
 terday ! 
 How can I but suspect, the true feat were to 
 
 slip 
 Down side, transfer myself to eoekle-shell from 
 
 ship. 
 And try if, trusting to seartracklessness, I 
 
 class 
 With those around whose breast grew oak and 
 
 triple brass : 
 Who dreaded no degree of death, but, with dry 
 
 eyes. 
 Surveyed the turgid main and its monstrosi- 
 ties — 
 And rendered futile so, the prudent Power's 
 
 decree 
 Of separate earth and disassociating sea ; 
 Since, how is it observed, if impious vessels 
 
 leap 
 Across, and tempt a thing they should not 
 
 touch — -"the deep ? 
 (See Horace to the boat, wherein, for Athens 
 
 bound. 
 When Virgil must embark — Jove keep him 
 
 safe and sound ! — 
 The poet bade his friend start on the watery 
 
 road. 
 Much reassured by this so comfortable ode.) 
 
 LXXXIII 
 
 Then, never grudge my poor Fifine her com- 
 pliment ! 
 
 The rakish craft could slip her moorings in the 
 tent. 
 
 And, hoisting every stitch of spangled canvas, 
 steer 
 
 Through divers rooks and shoals, — in fine, de- 
 posit here 
 
FIFINE AT THE FAIR 
 
 723 
 
 Your Virg:il of a spouse, in Attica : yea, thrid 
 The mob of men, select the special virtue hid 
 In him, forsooth, and say — or rather, smile so 
 
 sweet, 
 " Of all the multitude, you — I prefer to cheat ! 
 Are you for Athens bound ? I can perform the 
 
 trip, 
 Shove little pinnace off, while yon superior 
 
 ship, 
 The Elvire, refits in port ! " So, off we push 
 
 from beach 
 Of Pomie town, and lo, ere eye can wink, we 
 
 reach 
 The Long Walls, and I prove that Athens is no 
 
 dream. 
 For there the temples rise ! they are, they 
 
 nowise seem ! 
 Earth is not all one lie, this truth attests me 
 
 true ! 
 Thanks therefore to Fifine ! Elvire, I 'm back 
 
 with you ! 
 Share in the memories! Embark I trust we 
 
 shall 
 Together some fine day, and so, for good and 
 
 all, 
 Bid Pornic Town adieu, — then, just the strait 
 
 to cross. 
 And we reach harbor, safe, in lostephanos ! 
 
 How quickly night comes ! Lo, already 't is 
 
 the land 
 Turns sear-like ; overorept by gray, the plains 
 
 expand, 
 Assume significance ; while ocean dwindles, 
 
 shrinks 
 Into a pettier bound: its plash and plaint, 
 
 methinks. 
 Six steps away, how both retire, as if their 
 
 part 
 Were played, another force were free to prove 
 
 her art. 
 Protagonist in turn ! Are you unterrified ? 
 All fsJse, aU fleeting too ! And nowhere thii^s 
 
 abide. 
 And everywhere we strain that things should 
 
 stay, — the one 
 Truth, that ourselves are true ! 
 
 LXXXV 
 
 A word, and I have done. 
 Is it not just our hate of falsehood, fleeting- 
 
 ■ ness. 
 And the mere part, things play, that constitutes 
 
 express 
 The inmost charm of this Fifine and all her 
 
 tribe ? 
 Actors ! We also act, but only they inscribe 
 Their style and title so, and preface, only they. 
 Performance with " A lie is all we do or say." 
 Wherein but there can be the attraction. 
 
 Falsehood's bribe, 
 That wins so surely o'er to Fifine and her 
 
 tribe 
 The liking, nay the love of who hate Falsehood 
 
 most. 
 Except that these alone of mankind make their 
 
 bnast 
 
 " Frankly, we simulate ! " To feign, means — 
 
 to nave grace 
 And so get gratitude ! This ruler of the race. 
 Crowned, sceptred, stoled to suit, — 't is not 
 
 that you detect 
 The cobbler in the king, but that he makes 
 
 effect 
 By seeming the reverse of what you know to 
 
 be 
 The man, the mind, whole form, fashion, and 
 
 quality. 
 Mistake his false for true, one minute, — there 's 
 
 an end 
 Of the admiration I Truth, we grieve at or 
 
 rejoice : 
 'T is only falsehood, plain in gesture, look and 
 
 voice, 
 That brings the praise desired, since profit 
 
 comes thereby. 
 The histrionic truth is in the natural lie. 
 Because the man who wept the tears was, all 
 
 the time, 
 Happy enough ; because the other man, ar^me 
 With guilt was, at the least, aa white as I and 
 
 you; 
 Because the timid type of bashful maidhood, 
 
 who 
 Starts at her own pure shade, already numbers 
 
 seven 
 Born babes and, in a month, will turn their 
 
 odd to even ; 
 Because the saucy prince would prove, could 
 
 you unfurl 
 Some yards of wrap, a meek and meritorious 
 
 girl — 
 Precisely aa you see success attained by each 
 0' the mimes, do you approve, not foolishly 
 
 impeach 
 The falsehood! 
 
 LXXXVI 
 
 That 's the first o' the truths found : all 
 
 things, slow 
 Or quick i' the passage, come at last to that, 
 
 you know ! 
 Each has a false outside, whereby a truth is 
 
 forced 
 To issue from within : truth, falsehood, are 
 
 divorced 
 By the excepted eye, at the rare season, for 
 The happy moment. Life means — learning to 
 
 abhor 
 The false, and love the true, truth treasured 
 
 snatch by snatch. 
 Waifs counted at their worth. And when with 
 
 strays they match 
 I' the particoloredworld,— when, under foul, 
 
 shines fair, 
 And truth, displayed i' the point, flashes forth 
 
 everywhere 
 X' the circle, manifest to soul, though hid from 
 
 sense, 
 And no obstruction more affects this confi- 
 dence, — 
 When faith is ripe for sight, — why, reason- 
 ably, then 
 Comes the great clearing-up. Wait threescore 
 
 years and ten ! 
 
724 
 
 FIFINE AT THE FAIR 
 
 Therefore I prize stage -play, the honest 
 
 cheating* ; thence 
 The impnlse pricked, when fife and drum hade 
 
 Fair commence, 
 To hid you trip and skip, link arm in arm -with 
 
 me. 
 Like hushand and like wife, and so together 
 
 see 
 The tumbling-troop arrayed, the strollers on 
 
 their stage 
 Drawn up and under arms, and ready to en- 
 gage. ■ ' 
 And if I started thence upon ahstruser 
 
 themes ... 
 Well, 't was a dream, pricked too ! 
 
 Lxxxvni 
 
 A poet never dreams : 
 We prose-folk always do : we miss the proper 
 
 duct 
 For thoughts on things unseen, which stagnate 
 
 and obstruct 
 The system, therefore ; mind, sound in a body 
 
 sane. 
 Keeps thoughts apart from facts, and to one 
 
 flowing vein 
 Confines its sense of that which is not, but 
 
 might be. 
 And leaves the rest alone. What ghosts do 
 
 poets see ? 
 What demons fear ? what man or thing misap- 
 prehend ? 
 Unchecked, the channel 's flush, the fancy 's 
 
 free to spend 
 Its special self aright in manner, time and 
 
 place. 
 Never believe that who create the busy race 
 O' the brain, bring poetry to birth, such act 
 
 performed. 
 Feel trouble them, the same, such residue as 
 
 warmed 
 My prosy blood, this mom, — intrusive fancies, 
 
 meant 
 For outbreak and escape by quite another 
 
 vent ! 
 Whence follows that, asleep, my dreamings oft 
 
 exceed 
 The bound. But you shall hear. 
 
 LXXXIX 
 
 I smoked. The webs o' the weed. 
 With many a break i' the mesh, were floating 
 
 to re-form 
 Cupola-wise above : chased thither by soft 
 
 warm 
 Inflow of air without ; since I — of mind to 
 
 muse, to clench 
 The gain of soul and body, got by their noon- 
 day drench 
 In sun and sea — had flung both frames n' the 
 
 window wide. 
 To soak my body still and let soul soar beside. 
 In came the country sounds and sights and 
 
 smells — that fine 
 Sharp needle in the nose from our fermenting 
 
 wine ! 
 
 In came a dragon-fly with whir and stir, then 
 
 out. 
 Off and away: in came, — kept coming, rather, 
 
 — pout 
 Succeeding smile, and take-away still close on 
 
 give, — 
 One loose long creeper-branch, tremblingly sen- 
 sitive 
 To risks, which blooms and leaves, — each leaf 
 
 tongue-broad, each bloom 
 Midfinger-deep, — must run by prying in the 
 
 room 
 Of one who loves and grasps and spoils and 
 
 speculates. 
 All so far plain enough to sight and sense : 
 
 but, weights. 
 Measures and numbers, — all, could one apply 
 
 such test 
 To other visitants that came at no request 
 Of who kept open house, — to fancies manifold 
 From this four-cornered world, the memories 
 
 new and old. 
 The antenatal prime experience — what know 
 
 I? — 
 The initiatory love preparing us to die — 
 Siich were a crowd to count, a sight to see, a 
 
 prize 
 To turn to profit, were but fleshly ears and 
 
 eyes 
 Able to cope with those o' the spirit ! 
 
 Therefore, — since 
 Thought hankers after speech, while no speech 
 
 may evince 
 Feeling like music, — mine, o'erburdened with 
 
 each gift 
 From every visitant, at last resolved to shift 
 Its burden to the back of some musician dead 
 And gone, who feeling once what I feel now, 
 
 instead 
 Of words, sought sounds, and saved forever, in 
 
 the same. 
 Truth that escapes prose, — nay, puts poetry to 
 
 shame. 
 I read the note, I strike the key, I bid record 
 The instrument, — thanks greet the veritable 
 
 word! 
 And not in vain I urge : " dead and gone 
 
 away. 
 Assist who struggles yet, thy strength become 
 
 my stay. 
 Thy record serve as well to register — I felt 
 And knew thus much of truth 1 With me, 
 
 must k nowledge melt 
 Into surihise and douBrand "disbelief, unless 
 Thy musicTfeassure -=^ gaveiuo Idle^gaess; 
 But gained a certitude, I yet may hardly keep ! 
 What care ? since round is piled a monumental 
 
 heap 
 Of music that conserves the assurance, thou as 
 
 well 
 Wast certain of the same ! thou, master of the 
 
 spell, 
 Mad'st moonbeams marble, didst record what 
 
 other men 
 Feel only to forget I " Who was it helped me, 
 
 then? 
 
FIFINE AT THE FAIR 
 
 72s 
 
 What master's work first came responsive to 
 
 my call. 
 Found my eye, fixed my choice ? 
 
 Why, Schumann's " Carnival" ! 
 My choice chimed in, you see, exactly with the 
 
 And sights of yestereve, when, going on my 
 
 rounds, 
 Where both roads join the bridge, I heard 
 
 across the dusk 
 Creak a slow caravan, and saw arrive the husk 
 0' the spice-nut, which peeled off this morning, 
 
 and displayed, 
 ^Twixt tree and tree, a tent whence the red 
 
 pennon made 
 Its vivid reach for home and ocean-idleness — 
 And where, my heart surmised, at that same 
 
 moment, — yes, — 
 Tugging her tricot on — yet tenderly, lest stitch 
 Announce the crack of doom, reveal disaster 
 
 which 
 Our Pornic's modest stock of merceries in vain 
 Were ransacked to retrieve, — there, cautiously 
 
 a-strain, 
 (My heart surmised) must crouch in that tent's 
 
 corner, curved 
 Like Spring-month's russet moon, some girl by 
 
 fate reserved 
 To give me once again the electric snap and 
 
 spark 
 Which prove, when finger finds out finger in 
 
 the dark 
 0' the world, there 's fire and life and truth 
 
 there, link but hands 
 And pass the secret on. Lo, link by link, ex- 
 pands 
 The circle^ lengthens out the chain, till one 
 
 embrace 
 Of high with low is found uniting the whole 
 
 race. 
 Not simply you and me and our Fifine, but all 
 The world: the Fair expands into the Carni- 
 val, 
 And Carnival again to . . . ah, but that 's my 
 
 dream ! 
 
 I somehow played the piece : remarked on 
 
 each old theme 
 I' the new dress ; saw how food o' the soul, the 
 
 stuff that 's made 
 To furnish man with thought and feeling, is 
 
 purveyed 
 Substantially the same from age to age, with 
 
 change : ' , 
 
 Of the outside only for successive feasters. 
 
 Range 
 The banquet-room o' the world, from the dim 
 
 farthest head 
 0' the table, to its foot, for you and me be- 
 spread. 
 This merry mom, we find sufficient fare, I trow. 
 But, novel? Scrape away the sauce ; and taste, 
 
 below. 
 The verity o' the viand, — you shall perceive 
 
 there went 
 
 To board-head just the dish which other condi- 
 ment 
 Makes palatable now : guests came, sat down, 
 
 fell-to. 
 Rose up, wiped mouth, went way, — lived, 
 
 died, — and never knew 
 That generations yet should, seeking sustenance, 
 Still find the selfsame fare, with somewhat to 
 
 enhance 
 Its flavor, in the kind of cooking. As with hates 
 And loves and fears and hopes, so with what 
 
 emulates 
 The same, expresses hates, loves, fears, and 
 
 hopes in Art : 
 The forms, the themes — no one without its 
 
 counterpart 
 Ages ago ; no one but, mumbled the due time 
 I' the mouth of the eater, needs be cooked 
 
 again in rhyme. 
 Dished up anew in paint, sauce-smothered fresh 
 
 in sound. 
 To suit the wisdom-tooth, just cut, of the age, 
 
 that 's found 
 With gums obtuse to gust and smack which 
 
 relished so 
 The meat o' the meal folk made some fifty 
 
 years ago. 
 But don't suppose the new was able to efface 
 The old without a struggle, a pang ! The 
 
 commonplace 
 Still clung about his heart, long after aU the rest 
 0' the natural man, at eye and ear, was caught, 
 
 confessed 
 The charm of change, although wry lip and 
 
 wrinkled nose 
 Owned ancient virtue more conducive to repose 
 Than modern nothings roused to somethings by 
 
 some shred 
 Of pungency, perchance garlic in amber's stead. 
 And so on, till one day, another age, by due 
 Rotation, pries, sniffs, smacks, discovers old is 
 
 new. 
 And sauce, our sires pronounced insipid, proves 
 
 again 
 Sole piquant, may resume its titillating reign — 
 With music, most of all the arts, since change is 
 
 there 
 The law, and not the lapse : the precious means 
 
 the rare. 
 And not the absolute in all good save surprise. 
 So I remarked upon our Schumann's victories 
 Over the commonplace, how faded phrase grew 
 
 fine. 
 And palled perfection — piqued, up-startled by 
 
 that brine. 
 His pickle — bit the mouth and burnt the 
 
 tongue aright. 
 Beyond the merely good no longer exquisite^; 
 Then took things as I found, and thanked with- 
 out demur 
 The pretty piece r^ played throi^h that move- 
 ment, you prefer 
 Where dance and shufEle past, — he scolding 
 
 while she pouts. 
 She canting while he calms, — in those eternal 
 
 bouts 
 Of age, the dog — with youth, the cat — by 
 
 rose-festoon 
 
726 
 
 FIFINE AT THE FAIR 
 
 Tied teasingly enough — Columbine, Pantaloon : 
 
 She, toe-tips and staccato, — legato, shakes his 
 poU 
 
 And shambles in pursuit, the senior. Ft la 
 folk ! 
 
 Lie to him ! get his gold and pay its price ! 
 begin 
 
 Your trade betimes, nor wait till you 've wed 
 Harlequin 
 
 And need, at the week's end, to play the du- 
 teous wife, 
 
 And swear you still love slaps and leapings 
 more than life ! 
 
 Pretty ! I say. 
 
 And so, I somehow-nohow played 
 The whole o' the pretty piece ; and then . . . 
 
 whatever weighed 
 My eyes down, furled the films about my wits ? 
 
 suppose. 
 The morning-bath, — the sweet monotony of 
 
 those 
 Three keys, flat, flat and flat, never a sharp at 
 
 all,— _ 
 Or else the brain's fatigue, forced even here to 
 
 faU 
 Into the same old track, and recognize the 
 
 shift 
 From old to new, and back to old again, and, — 
 
 swift 
 Or slow, no matter, — still the certainty of 
 
 change. 
 Conviction we shall find the false, where'er we 
 
 range. 
 In art no less than nature : or what if wrist were 
 
 numb, 
 And over-tense the muscle, abductor of the 
 
 thumb, 
 Taxed by those tenths' and twelfths' uncon- 
 scionable stretch ? 
 Howe'er it came to pass, I soon was far to 
 
 fetch — 
 Gone off in company with Music ! 
 
 Whither bound 
 Except for Venice ? She it was, by instinct 
 
 found 
 Carnival-country proper, who far below the 
 
 perch 
 Where I was pinnacled, showed, opposite, 
 
 Mark's Church, 
 And, underneath, Mark's Square, with those 
 
 two lines of street, 
 Procuratii-siies, each leading to ray feet — 
 Since from above I gazed, however I got there. 
 
 And what I gazed upon was a prodigious Fair, 
 Concourse immense of men and women, crowned 
 
 or casqued, 
 Turbaned or tiar'd, wreathed, plumed, hatted 
 
 or wigged, but masked — 
 Always masked, — only, how ? No face-shape, 
 
 beast or bird. 
 Nay, fish and reptile even, but some one had 
 
 preferred, 
 
 From out its frontispiece, feathered or scaled 
 
 or curled. 
 To make the vizard whence himself should 
 
 view the world, 
 And where the world believed himself was 
 
 manifest. 
 Yet when you came to look, mixed up among 
 
 the rest 
 More funnily by far, were masks to imitate 
 Humanity's mishap : the wrinkled brow, bald 
 
 pate. 
 And rheumy eyes of Age, peak'd chin and 
 
 parchment chap. 
 Were signs of day-work done, and wage-time 
 
 near, — mishap 
 Merely ; but, Age reduced to simple greed and 
 
 guile, 
 Worn apathetic else as some smooth slab, ere- 
 
 while 
 A clear-out man-at-arms i' the pavement, till 
 
 foot's tread 
 Effaced the sculpture, left the stone you saw 
 
 instead, — 
 Was not that terrible beyond the mere un- 
 couth ? 
 Well, and perhaps the next revolting you was 
 
 Youth, 
 Stark ignorance and crude conceit, half smirk, 
 
 half stare 
 On that frank fool-fa«e, gay beneath its head 
 
 of hair 
 Which covers nothing. 
 
 xcvi 
 
 These, you are to understand, 
 Were the mere hard and sharp distinctions. 
 
 On each hand, 
 I soon became aware, flocked the infinitude 
 Of passions, loves and hates, man pampers till 
 
 his mood 
 Becomes himself, the whole sole face we name 
 
 him by, 
 Nor want denotement else, if age or youth 
 
 supply 
 The rest of him : old, young, — classed crea- 
 ture : in the main 
 A love, a hate, a hope, a fear, each soul 
 
 astrain 
 Some one way through the flesh — the face, an 
 
 evidence 
 0' the soul at work inside ; and, all the more 
 
 intense. 
 So much the more grotesque. 
 
 " Why should each soul be tasked 
 Some one way, by one love or else one hate ? " 
 
 I asked. 
 When it occurred to me, from all these sights 
 
 beneath 
 There rose not any sound : a crowd, yet dumb 
 
 as death 1 
 
 XCVIII 
 
 Soon I knew why. (Propose a riddle, and 
 't is solved 
 Forthwith — in dream !) They spoke ; but, 
 since on me devolved 
 
FIFINE AT THE FAIR 
 
 727 
 
 To see, and understand by sight, — the vulgar 
 
 speech 
 Might be dispensed with. " He who cannot 
 
 see, must reach 
 As best he may the truth of men by help of 
 
 ■words 
 They please to speak, must fare at will of who 
 
 affords 
 The banquet," — so I thought. "Who sees 
 
 not, hears and so 
 Gets to believe ; myself it is that, seeing, 
 
 know, 
 And, knowing, can dispense with voice and 
 
 vanity 
 Of speech. What hinders then, that, drawing 
 
 closer, I 
 Put privilege to use, see and know better still 
 These sirmdacra, taste the profit of my skill, 
 Down in the midst ? " 
 
 And plumb I pitched into the square — 
 A groundling like the rest. What think you 
 
 happened there ? 
 Precise the contrary of what one would expect ! 
 For, — whereas, so much more monstrosities 
 
 deflect 
 From nature and the type, as you the more 
 
 approach 
 Their precinct, — here, I found brutality en- 
 croach 
 Less on the human, lie the lightlier as I looked 
 The nearlier on these faces that seemed but 
 
 now so crook'd 
 And clawed away from God's prime purpose. 
 
 They diverged 
 A little from the type, but somehow rather urged 
 To pity than disgust ; the prominent, before. 
 Now dwindled into mere distinctness, nothing 
 
 more. 
 Still, at first sight, stood forth undoubtedly the 
 
 fact 
 Some deviation was ; in no one case there 
 
 lacked 
 The certain sign and mark, say hint, say, trick 
 
 of lip 
 Or twist of nose, that proved a fault in work- 
 manship. 
 Change in the prime design, some hesitancy 
 
 here 
 And there, which checked the man and let 
 
 the beast appear ; 
 But that was aU. 
 
 All ; yet enough to bid each tongue 
 Lie in abeyance still. They talked, themselves 
 
 among, 
 Of themselves, to themselves: I saw the 
 
 mouths at play. 
 The gesture that enforced, the eye that strove 
 
 to say 
 The same thing as the voice, and seldom gamed 
 
 its point 
 — That this was so, I saw ; but aU seemed out 
 
 of joint _ ij J 
 
 I' the vocal medium 'twrxt the world and me. 
 
 I gained 
 
 Knowledge by notice, not by giving ear, — 
 
 attained 
 To truth by what men seemed, not said : to me 
 
 one glance 
 Was worth whole histories of noisy utterance, 
 — At least, to me in dream. 
 
 And presently I found 
 That, just as ugliness had withered, so unwound 
 Itself, and perished off, repugnance to what 
 
 wrong 
 Might linger yet i' the make of man. My will 
 
 was strong 
 I' the matter ; I could pick and choose, project 
 
 my weight ; 
 (Remember how we saw the boatman trim his 
 
 freight !) 
 Determine to observe, or manage to escape, 
 Or make divergency assume another shape 
 By shift of point of sight in me the observer: 
 
 thus 
 Corrected, added to, subtracted from, — dis- 
 cuss 
 Each variant quality, and brute-beast touch 
 
 was turned 
 Into mankind's safeguard I Force, guile, were 
 
 arms which earned 
 My praise, not blame at all : for we must learn 
 
 to live. 
 Case-hardened at all points, not bare and 
 
 sensitive. 
 But plated for defence, nay, furnished for 
 
 attack. 
 With spikes at the due place, that neither front 
 
 nor back 
 May suffer in that squeeze with nature, we find 
 
 — life. 
 Are we not here to learn the good of peace 
 
 through strife. 
 Of love through hate, and reach knowledge by 
 
 ignorance ? 
 Why, those are helps thereto, which late we 
 
 eyed askance, 
 And nicknamed unaware ! Just so, a sword 
 
 we call 
 Superfluous, and cry out against, at festival : 
 Wear it in time of war, its clink and clatter 
 
 grate 
 O' the ear to purpose then I 
 
 CII 
 
 I found, one must abate 
 One's scorn of the soul's casing, distinct from 
 
 the soul's self — 
 Which is the centre-drop : whereas the pride in 
 
 pelf, 
 The lust to seem the thing it cannot be, the 
 
 greed 
 For praise, and all the rest seen outside, — 
 
 these indeed 
 Are the hard polished cold crystal environment 
 Of those strange orbs unearthed i' the Dmid 
 
 temple, meant 
 For divination (so the learned please to think) 
 Wherein you may admire one dewdrop roll and 
 
 wink. 
 All unaffected by — quite alien to — what sealed 
 
728 
 
 FIFINE AT THE FAIR 
 
 And saved it long ago : though how it got eon- 
 
 fealed 
 not give a guess, nor how, by power 
 
 occult, 
 The solid surface-shield was outcome and result 
 Of simple dew at work to save itself amid 
 The unwatery force around ; protected thus, 
 
 dew slid 
 Safe through all opposites, impatient to absorb 
 Its spot of life, and last forever in the orb 
 We, now, from hand to hand pass with impunity. 
 
 And the delight wherewith I watch this 
 
 crowd must be 
 Akin to that which crowns the chemist when he 
 
 winds 
 Thread up and up, till clue be fairly clutched, 
 
 — unbinds 
 The composite, ties fast the simple to its mate, 
 And, tracing each effect back to its cause, elate. 
 Constructs in fancy, from the fewest primitives. 
 The complex and complete, all diverse life, that 
 
 lives 
 Not only in beast, bird, fish, reptile, insect, but 
 The very plants and earths and ores. Just so 
 
 I glut 
 My hunger both to be and know the thing I am. 
 By contrast with the thing I am not ; so, 
 
 through sham 
 And outside, 1 arrive at inmost real, probe 
 And prove how the nude form obtained the 
 
 checkered robe. 
 
 — Experience, I am glad to master soon or 
 
 late. 
 Here, there, and everywhere i' the world, with- 
 
 . out debate ! 
 Only, in Venice why ? What reason for Mark's 
 
 Square 
 Rather than Timbuctoo ? 
 
 And I became aware, 
 Scarcely the word escaped my lips, that swift 
 
 ensued 
 In silence and by stealth; and yet with certitude, 
 A formidable change of the amphitheatre 
 Which held the Carnival ; although the human 
 
 stir 
 Continued just the same amid that shift of 
 
 scene. 
 
 For as on edifice of cloud i' the gray and 
 
 green 
 Of evening, — built about some glory of the 
 
 west, 
 To barricade the sun's departure, — manifest, 
 He plays, pre-eminently gold, gilds vapor, crag 
 
 and crest 
 Which bend in rapt suspense above the act and 
 
 deed 
 They cluster round and keep their very own, 
 
 nor heed 
 Thg world at watch ; while we, breathlessly at 
 
 the base 
 
 0' the castellated bulk, note momently the 
 
 mace 
 Of night fall here, fall there, bring change with 
 
 every blow. 
 Alike to sharpened shaft and broadened portico 
 1' the structure : heights and depths, beneath 
 
 the leaden stress. 
 Crumble and melt and mix together, coalesce, 
 Re-form, but sadder still, subdued yet more and 
 
 more 
 By every fresh defeat, till wearied eyes need 
 
 pore 
 No longer on the dull impoverished decadence 
 Of all that pomp of pile in towering evidence 
 So lately : — 
 
 Even thus nor otherwise, meseemed 
 That if I fixed my gaze awhile on what I 
 
 dreamed 
 Was Venice' Square, Mark's Church, the 
 
 scheme was straight unschemed, 
 A subtle something had its way within the 
 
 heart 
 Of each and every house I watched, with coun- 
 terpart 
 Of tremor through the front and outward face, 
 
 until 
 Mutation was at end ; imipassive and stock-still 
 Stood now the ancient house, grown — new, is 
 
 scarce the phrase. 
 Since older, in a sense, — altered to . . . what 
 
 i' the ways. 
 Ourselves are wont to see, coerced by city, town, 
 Or village, anywhere i' the world, pace up or 
 
 down 
 Europe ! In all the maze, no single tenement 
 I saw, but I could claim acquaintance with. 
 
 CVIII 
 
 There went 
 
 Conviction to my soul, that what I took of late 
 
 For Venice was the world ; its Carnival — the 
 state 
 
 Of mankind, masquerade in life-long permar 
 nence 
 
 For all time, and no one particular feast-day. 
 Whence 
 
 'Twas easy to infer what meant my late dis- 
 gust 
 
 At the brute-pageant, each grotesque of greed 
 and lust 
 
 And idle hate, and love as impotent for good — 
 
 When from my pride of place I passed the in- 
 terlude 
 
 In critical review ; and what, the wonder that 
 ensued 
 
 When, from such pinnacled pre-eminence, I 
 found 
 
 Somehow the proper goal for wisdom was the 
 ground 
 
 And not the sky, — so, slid sagaciously betimes 
 
 Down heaven's balustei^rope, to reach the mob 
 of mimes 
 
 And mummers ; whereby came discovery there 
 was just 
 
 Enough and not too much of hate, love, greed 
 and lust, 
 
FIFINE AT THE FAIR 
 
 729 
 
 Could one diseerningly but hold the balance, 
 shift 
 
 The weight fTOiu scale to scale, do justice to the 
 drift 
 
 Of nature, and explain the glories by the 
 shames 
 
 Mixed up in man, one stuff miscalled by differ- 
 ent names 
 
 According to what stage i' the process turned 
 his rough, 
 
 Even as I gazed, to smooth — only get close 
 enough I 
 
 — What was aJl this except the lesson of a life ? 
 
 And — consequent upon the learning how from 
 strife 
 
 Grew peace — from evil, good — came know- 
 ledge that, to get 
 
 Acquaintance with the way n' the world, we 
 must nor fret 
 
 Nor fume, on altitudes of self-sufficiency. 
 
 But bid a frank farewell to what — we think — 
 should be. 
 
 And, with as good a grace, welcome what is — 
 we find. 
 
 Is — for the hour, observe ! Since something 
 to my mind 
 
 Suggested soon the fancy, nay, certitude that 
 change. 
 
 Never suspending touch, continued to derange 
 
 What architecture, we, walled up within the 
 cirque 
 
 0' the world, consider fixed as fate, not fairy- 
 work. 
 
 For those were temples, sure, which tremblingly 
 grew blank 
 
 From bright, then broke afresh in triumph, — 
 ah, but sank 
 
 As soon, for liquid change through artery and 
 vein 
 
 0' the very marble wound its way ! And first a 
 stain 
 
 Would startle and offend amid the glory ; next, 
 
 Spot swift succeeded spot, but found me less 
 perplexed 
 
 By portents ; then, as 't were, a sleepiness soft 
 stole 
 
 Over the stately fane, and shadow sucked the 
 whole 
 
 Facade into itself, made uniformly earth 
 
 What was a piece of heaven ; till, lo, a second 
 birth, 
 
 And the veil broke away because of something 
 new 
 
 Inside, that pushed to gain an outlet, paused m 
 view 
 
 At last, and proved a growth of stone or brick 
 or wood 
 
 Which, alien to the aim o' the Builder, some- 
 how stood 
 
 The test, could satisfy, if not the early race 
 
 For whom he built, at least our present popu- 
 lace. 
 
 Who must not bear the blame for what, blamed, 
 proves mishap 
 
 Of the Artist : his work gone, another fills the 
 
 gap. 
 Serves the prime purpose so. Undoubtedly 
 
 there spreads 
 Building around, above, which makes men lift 
 
 their heads 
 To look at, or look through, or look — for aught 
 
 I care — 
 Over : if only up, it is, not down, they stare. 
 "Commercing with the skies," and not the 
 
 pavement in the Square. 
 
 But are they only temples that subdivide, eol- 
 
 And tower again, transformed ? Academies, 
 
 Domes where dwells Learning, seats of Science, 
 
 bower and hall 
 Which house Philosophy — do these, too, rise 
 
 and fall. 
 Based though foundations be on steadfast 
 
 mother-earth. 
 With no chimeric claim to supermundane birth. 
 No boast that, dropped from cloud, they did 
 
 not grow from ground ? 
 Why, these fare worst of all 1 these vanish and 
 
 are found 
 Nowhere, by who tasks eye some twice witMn 
 
 his term 
 Of threescore years and ten, for tidings what 
 
 each germ 
 Has burgeoned out into, whereof the promise 
 
 stunned 
 His ear with such acclaim, — praise-payment to 
 
 refund 
 The praisers, never doubt, some twice before 
 
 they die 
 Whose days are long i' the land. 
 
 CXII 
 
 Alack, Philosophy 1 
 
 Despite the chop and change, diminished or in- 
 creased, 
 
 Patched-up and plastered-o'er. Religion stands 
 at least 
 
 r the temple-type. But thou ? Here gape I, 
 all agog 
 
 These thirty yeara, to learn how tadpole turns 
 to frog ; 
 
 And thrice at least have gazed with mild aston- 
 ishment. 
 
 As, skyward up and up, some fire-new fabric 
 sent 
 
 Its challenge to mankind, that, clustered under- 
 neath 
 
 To hear the word, they straight believe, ay, in 
 the teeth 
 
 0' the Past, clap hands, and haU triumphant 
 Truth's outbreak — _ _ 
 
 Tadpole-frog-theory propounded past mistake ! 
 
 In vain ! A something ails the edifice, it bends. 
 
 It bows, it buries . . . Haste ! cry " Heads 
 below " to friends — 
 
 But have no fear they find, when smother shall 
 subside. 
 
 Some substitution perk with unabated pride 
 
 I' the predecessor's place 1 
 
73° 
 
 FIFINE AT THE FAIR 
 
 No, — the one voice which failed 
 Never, the preachment's coign of vantage 
 
 nothing ailed, — 
 That had the luck to lodge i' the house not 
 
 made with hands I 
 And all it preached was this : " Truth builds 
 
 upon the sands. 
 Though stationed on a rock : and so her work 
 
 decays, 
 4.nd so she builds afresh, with like result. 
 
 Naught stays 
 But just the fact that Truth not only is, but 
 
 fain 
 Would have men know she needs must be, by 
 
 each so plain 
 Attempt to visibly inhabit where they dwell." 
 Her works are work, while she is she ; that 
 
 work does well 
 Which lasts mankind their lifetime through, 
 
 and lets believe 
 One generation more, that, though sand run 
 
 through sieve. 
 Yet earth now reached is rock, and what we 
 
 modei'ns find 
 Erected here is Truth, who, 'stablished to her 
 
 mind 
 I' the fulness of the days, will never change in 
 
 show 
 More than in substance erst: men thought 
 
 they knew ; we know ! 
 
 Do you, my generation ? Well, let the blocks 
 
 prove mist 
 I' the main enclosure, — church and college, if 
 
 they list. 
 Be something for a time, and everything anon, 
 And anything awhile, as fit is ofp or on. 
 Till they grow nothing, soon to reappear no 
 
 less 
 As something, — shape reshaped, till out of 
 
 shapelessness 
 Come shape again as sure ! no doubt, or round 
 
 or square 
 Or polygon its front, some building will be 
 
 there. 
 Do duty in that nook o' the wall o' the world 
 
 where once 
 The Architect saw fit precisely to ensconce 
 College or church, and bid such bulwark guard 
 
 the line 
 0' the barrier round about, humanity's confine. 
 
 Leave watching change at work i' the greater 
 scale, on these 
 
 The main supports, and turn to their interstices 
 
 JFUled up by fabrics too, less costly and less 
 rare, 
 
 Yet of impoi'tance, yet essential to the Fair 
 
 ■They help to circumscribe, instruct, and regu- 
 late ! 
 
 vSee, where each booth-front boasts, in letters 
 small or great. 
 
 Its speciality, proclaims its privilege to stop 
 
 A breach, beside the best ! 
 
 Here History keeps shop, 
 Tells how past deeds were done, so and not 
 
 otherwise : 
 " Man ! hold truth evermore ! forget the early 
 
 lies ! " 
 There sits Morality, demure behind her stall, 
 Dealing out life and death : " This is the thing 
 
 to call 
 Right, and this other, wrong ; thus think, thus 
 
 do, thus say, 
 Thus joy, thus suffer ! — not to-day as yester- 
 day- 
 Yesterday's doctrine dead, this only shall en- 
 dure ! 
 Obey its voice and live ! " — enjoins the dame 
 
 demure. 
 While Art gives flag to breeze, bids drum beat, 
 
 trumpet blow. 
 Inviting eye and ear to yonder raree-show. 
 Up goes the canvas, hauled to height of pole, 
 
 1 think. 
 We know the way — long lost, late learned — 
 
 to paint ! A wink 
 Of eye, and lo, the pose ! the statue on its 
 
 plinth ! 
 How could we moderns miss the heart o' the 
 
 labyrinth 
 Perversely all these years, permit the Grreek 
 
 seclude 
 His secret till to-day? And here 's another 
 
 feud 
 Now happily composed: inspect this quartet- 
 score ! 
 Got long past melody, no word has Music more 
 To say to mortal man ! But is the bard to be 
 Behindhand ? Here 's his book, and now per- 
 haps you see 
 At length what poetry can do ! 
 
 Why, that 's stability 
 Itself, that change on change we sorrowfully 
 
 saw 
 Creep o'er the prouder piles ! We acquiesced 
 
 in law 
 When the fine gold grew dim i' the temple, 
 
 when the brass 
 Which pillared that so brave abode where 
 
 Knowledge was. 
 Bowed and resigned the trust; but, bear all 
 
 this caprice. 
 Harlequinade where swift to birth succeeds 
 
 decease 
 Of hue at every turn o' the tinsel-flag which 
 
 flames 
 While Art holds booth in Fair ? Such glories 
 
 chased by shames 
 Like these, distract beyond the solemn and 
 
 august 
 Procedure to decay, evanishment in dust. 
 Of those marmoreal domes, — above vicissi- 
 tude, 
 We used to hope I 
 
 CXVIII 
 
 " So, all is change, in fine," pursued 
 
FIFINE AT THE FAIR 
 
 731 
 
 The preachmeut to a pause. When — " All is 
 
 permanence ! " 
 Returned a voice. Within ? without ? No 
 
 matter whence 
 The explanation came : for, understand, I 
 
 ought 
 To simply say — " I saw," each thing I say " I 
 
 thought." 
 Since ever, as, unrolled, the strange aeene- 
 
 piotnre grew 
 Before me, sight flashed first, though mental 
 
 comment too 
 Would follow in a trice, come hobblingly to 
 
 halt. 
 
 So, what did I see next but, — much as when 
 
 the vault 
 r the west, — wherein we watch the vapory, 
 
 manifold 
 Transfiguration, — tired turns blaze to black, 
 
 — behold. 
 Peak reconciled to base, dark ending feud 
 
 with bright. 
 The multiform subsides, becomes the definite. 
 Contrasting life and strife, where battle they i' 
 
 the blank 
 Severity of peace in death, for which we thank 
 One wind that comes to quell the concourse, 
 
 drive at last 
 Things to a shape which suits the close of things, 
 
 and cast 
 Palpably o'er vexed earth heaven's mantle of 
 
 repose ? 
 
 cxx 
 Just so. in Venice' Square, that things were at 
 
 the close 
 Was signalled to my sense ; for I perceived 
 
 arrest 
 0' the change all round about. As if some im- 
 pulse pressed 
 Each gently into each, what was distinctness, 
 
 late. 
 Grew vague, and, line from line no longer 
 
 separate, 
 No matter what its style, edifice . . . shall I 
 
 say. 
 Died into edifice ? I find no simpler way 
 Of saying how, without or dash or shock or 
 
 trace 
 Of violence, I found unity in the place 
 Of temple, tower, — nay, haU and house and 
 
 hut, — one blank 
 Severity of peace in death ; to which they 
 
 sank 
 Resigned enough, till . . . ah, conjecture, I 
 
 beseech, 
 What special blank did they agree to, aU and 
 
 each ? 
 What common shape was that wherein they 
 
 mutely merged 
 Likes and dislikes of form, so plain before ? 
 
 I urged 
 Your step this way, prolonged our path of en- 
 terprise 
 
 To where we stand at last, in order that your 
 
 eyes 
 Might see the very thing, and save my tongue 
 
 describe 
 The Druid monument which fronts you. Could 
 
 I bribe 
 Nature to come in aid, illustrate what I mean. 
 What wants there she should lend to solemnize 
 
 the scene ? 
 
 How does it strike you, this construction 
 
 gaunt and gray — 
 Sole object, these piled stones, that gleam un- 
 
 gxound-away 
 By twilight's hungry jaw, which champs fine 
 
 all beside 
 I' the solitary waste we grope through ? Oh, 
 
 no guide 
 Need we to grope our way and reach the mon- 
 strous door 
 Of granite ! Take my word, the deeper you ex- 
 plore 
 That caverned passage, filled with fancies to 
 
 the brim. 
 The less will you approve the adventure I such 
 
 a grim 
 Baivsinister soon blocks abrupt your path, and 
 
 ends 
 All with a cold dread shape, — shape whereon 
 
 Learning spends 
 Labor, and leaves the text obscurer for the 
 
 gloss, 
 While Ignorance reads right — recoiling from 
 
 that Cross ! 
 Whence came the mass and mass, strange 
 
 quality of stone 
 Unquarried anywhere i' the region round ? 
 
 Unknown ! 
 Just as unknown, how such enormity could be 
 Conveyed by land, or else transported over sea. 
 And laid in order, so, precisely each on each. 
 As you and I would build a grotto where the 
 
 bea«h 
 Sheds shell — to last an hour: this building 
 
 lasts from age 
 To age the same. But why 1 
 
 Ask Learning ! I engage 
 
 You get a prosy wherefore, shall help you to 
 advance 
 
 In knowledge just as much as helps you Igno- 
 rance 
 
 Surmising, in the mouth of peasant-lad or lass, 
 
 " I heard my father say he understood it was 
 
 A building, people built as soon as earth was 
 made 
 
 Almost, because they might forget (they were 
 afraid) 
 
 Earth did not make itself, but came of Some- 
 body. 
 
 They labored that their work might last, and 
 show thereby 
 
 He stays, while we and earth, and all things 
 come and go. 
 
 Come whence? Go whither.? That, when 
 come anrl gone, we know 
 
732 
 
 FIFINE AT THE FAIR 
 
 Perhaps, but not while earth aud all things 
 need our best 
 
 Attention : we must wait and die to know the 
 rest. 
 
 Ask, if that 's true, what use in setting up the 
 pile ? 
 
 To make one fear and hope ; remind' us, all the 
 while 
 
 We come and go, outside there 's Somebody 
 that stays ; 
 
 A circumstance which ought to make us mind 
 our ways, 
 
 Because, — whatever end we answer by this 
 life, — 
 
 Next time, best chance must be for who, with 
 toil and strife. 
 
 Manages now to live most like what he was 
 meant 
 
 Become ; since who succeeds so far, 't is evi- 
 dent. 
 
 Stands foremost on the file ; who fails, has less 
 ' to hope 
 
 From new promotion. That 's the rule — with 
 even a rope 
 
 Of mushrooms, like this rope I dai^le ! those 
 that grew 
 
 Greatest and roundest, all in life they had to 
 do. 
 
 Gain a reward, a grace they never dreamed, I 
 think ; 
 
 Since, outside white as milk and inside black as 
 ink. 
 
 They go to the Great House to make a dainty 
 dish 
 
 For Don and Donna ; while this basket-load, I 
 wish 
 
 Well off my arm, it breaks, — no starveling of 
 the heap 
 
 But had his share of dew, his proper length of 
 sleep 
 
 I' the sunshine : yet, of all, the outcome is — 
 this queer 
 
 Cribbed quantity of dwarfs which burden bas- 
 ket here 
 
 Till I reach home ; 't is there that, having run 
 their rigs. 
 
 They end their earthly race, are flung as food 
 for pigs. 
 
 Any more use I see ? Well, you must know, 
 there lies 
 
 Something, the Cur4 says, that points to myste- 
 ries 
 
 Above our grasp : a huge stone pillar, once up- 
 right. 
 
 Now laid at length, half-lost — discreetly shun- 
 ning sight 
 
 I' the bush and brier, because of stories in the 
 air — 
 
 Hints what it signified, and why was stationed 
 there. 
 
 Once on a time. In vain the Cur^ tasked his 
 lungs — 
 
 Showed, in a preachment, how, at bottom of the 
 rungs 
 
 0' the ladder, Jacob saw, where heavenly an- 
 gels stept 
 
 Up and down, lay a stone which served him, 
 while he slept, 
 
 For pillow ; when he woke, he set the same up- 
 right . . 
 As pillar, and a-top poured oil : things requ^ite 
 To instruct posterity, there mounts from floor 
 
 to roof, 
 A staircase, earth to heaven ; and also put m 
 
 proof. 
 When we have scaled the sky, we well may let 
 
 alone 
 What raised us from the ground, and — paying 
 
 to the stone 
 Proper respect, of course — take staff and go 
 
 our way. 
 Leaving the Pagan night for Christian break of 
 
 day. 
 ' For,' preached he, ' what they dreamed, these 
 
 Pagans, wide-awake 
 We Christians may behold. How strange, then, 
 
 were mistake 
 Did anybody style the stone, — because of drop 
 Remaining there from oil which Jacob poured 
 
 a-top, • — 
 Itself the Gate of Heaven, itself the end, and not 
 The means thereto ! ' Thus preached the Gvai, 
 
 and no jot 
 The more persuaded people but that, what once 
 
 a thing 
 Meant and had right to mean, it still must 
 
 mean. So cling 
 Folk somehow to the prime authoritative 
 
 speech, 
 And so distrust report, it seems as they could 
 
 reach 
 Far better the arch-word, whereon their fate 
 
 depends. 
 Through rude eharactery, than all the grace it 
 
 lends, 
 That lettering of your scribes ! who flourish 
 
 pen apace 
 And ornament the text, they say — we say, 
 
 efface. 
 Hence, when the earth began its life afresh in 
 
 May, 
 And fruit-trees bloomed, and waves would wan- 
 ton, and the bay 
 Kufile its wealth of weed, and stranger-birds 
 
 arrive. 
 And beasts take each a mate, — folk, too, 
 
 found sensitive. 
 Surmised the old gray stone upright there, 
 
 through such tracts 
 Of solitariness and silence, kept the facts 
 Entrusted it, could deal out doctrine, did it 
 
 please : 
 No fresh and frothy draught, but liquor on the 
 
 lees. 
 Strong, savage, and sincere : first bleedii^ from 
 
 a vine 
 Whereof the product now do Curfe so refine 
 To insipidity, that, when heart sinks, we strive 
 And strike from the old stone the old restora- 
 tive. 
 ' Which is ? ' — why, go and ask our grandames 
 
 how they used 
 To dance around it, till the Cur4 disabused 
 Their ignorance, and bade the parish in a band 
 Lay flat the obtrusive thing that cumbered so 
 
 the land 1 
 
FIFINE AT THE FAIR 
 
 733 
 
 And there, accordingly, in bush and brier it — 
 
 ' bides 
 Its time to rise again ! ' (so somebody derides. 
 That 's pert from Paris,) ' since, yon spire, you 
 
 keep erect 
 Yonder, and pray beneath, is nothing, I suspect, 
 But just the symbol's selt, expressed in slaie 
 
 for rock. 
 Art's smooth for Nature's rough, new chip 
 
 from the old block ! ' 
 There, sir, my say is said ! Thanks, and Saint 
 
 Gille increase 
 The wealth bestowed so well!" — wherewith 
 
 he pockets piece. 
 Doffs cap, and takes the road. I leave in 
 
 Learning's clutch 
 More money for his book, but scarcely gain as 
 
 much. 
 
 cxxiv 
 
 To this it was, this same primeval monument, 
 
 That, in my dream, I saw building with build- 
 ing blent 
 
 Fall : each on each they fast and f ounderingly 
 went 
 
 Confusion-ward ; but thence again subsided fast. 
 
 Became the mound you see. Magniiicently 
 massed 
 
 Indeed, those mammoth-stones, piled by the 
 Protoplast 
 
 Temple-wise in my dream! beyond compare 
 with fanes 
 
 Which, solid-looking late, had left no least re- 
 mains 
 
 I' the bald and blank, now sole usurper of the 
 plains 
 
 Of heaven, diversified and beautiful before. 
 
 And yet simplicity appeared to speak no more 
 
 Nor less to me than spoke the compound. At 
 the core. 
 
 One and no other word, as in the crust of late. 
 
 Whispered, which, audible through the transi- 
 tion-state, 
 
 Was no loud utterance in even the ultimate 
 
 Disposure. For as some imperial chord sub- 
 sists, 
 
 Steadily underlies the accidental mists 
 
 Of music springing thence, that run their mazy 
 race 
 
 Around, and sink, absorbed, back to the triad 
 base, — 
 
 So, out of that one word, each variant rose and 
 fell 
 
 And left the same " All 's change, but perma- 
 nence as well." 
 
 — Grave note whence —list aloft ! — harmonics 
 sound, that mean ; 
 
 " Truth inside, and outside, truth also ; and 
 between 
 
 Each, falsehood that is change, as truth is 
 permanence. 
 
 The individual soul works through the shows 
 of sense 
 
 (Which, ever proving false, still promise to be 
 true) 
 
 Up to an outer soul as individual too ; 
 
 And, through the fleeting, lives to die into the 
 fixed, 
 
 And reach at length ' God, man, or both to- 
 gether mixed,' 
 
 Transparent through the flesh, by parts which 
 prove a whole. 
 
 By hints which make the soul discernible by 
 soul — 
 
 Let only soul look up, not down, not hate but 
 love, 
 
 As truth successively takes shape, one grade 
 above 
 
 Its last presentment, tempts as it were truth 
 indeed 
 
 Revealed this time ; so tempts, till we attain to 
 read 
 
 The signs aright, and learn, by failure, truth is 
 forced 
 
 To manifest itself through falsehood ; whence 
 divorced 
 
 By the excepted eye, at the rare season, for 
 
 The happy moment, truth instructs us to abhor 
 
 The false, and prize the ti-ue, obtainable 
 thereby. 
 
 Then do we understand the value of a lie ; 
 
 Its purpose served, its truth once safe deposited. 
 
 Each lie, superfluous now, leaves, in the silver's 
 stead. 
 
 The indubitable song ; the historic personage 
 
 Put by, leaves prominent the impulse of his ag;e ; 
 
 Truth sets aside speech, act, time, place, in- 
 deed, but brings 
 
 Nakedly forward now the principle of things 
 
 Highest and least." 
 
 cxxv 
 
 Wherevfith change ends. What change to 
 
 dread 
 When, disengaged at last from every veU, in- 
 stead 
 Of type remains the truth ? once — falsehood : 
 
 but anon 
 Theosuton e broteion eper kekramenon. 
 Something as true as soul is true, though veils 
 
 between 
 Prove false and fleet away. As I mean, did he 
 
 mean, 
 The poet whose bird-phrase sits, singing in my 
 
 ear 
 A mystery not unlike? What through the 
 
 dark and drear 
 Brought comfort to the Titan? Emerging 
 
 from the lymph, 
 " God, man, or mixture " proved only to be a 
 
 nymph ; 
 "From whom the clink on clink of metal" 
 
 (money, judged 
 Abundant in my purse) "struck" (bumped at, 
 
 till it budged) 
 " The modesty, her soul's habitual resident 
 (Where late the sisterhood were lively in their 
 
 tent) 
 "As out of wingfed car" (that caravan on 
 
 wheels) 
 "Impulsively she rushed, no slippers to her 
 
 heels,'' 
 And " Fear not, friends we flock ! " soft smiled 
 
 the sea^Fifine — 
 Primitive of the veils (if he meant what 1 
 
 mean) 
 
734 
 
 FIFINE AT THE FAIR 
 
 The poet's- Titan learned to lift, ere "Three- 
 formed Fate, 
 
 Moirai Trimorphoi" stood unmasked the Ulti- 
 mate. 
 
 Enough o' the dream ! You aee how poetry 
 
 turns prose. 
 Announcing wonder-work, I dwindle at the 
 
 close 
 Down to mere commonplace old facts which 
 
 everybody knows. 
 So dreaming disappoints! The fresh and 
 
 strange at first. 
 Soon wears to trite and tame, nor warrants the 
 
 outburst 
 Of heart with which we hail those heights, at 
 
 very brink 
 Of heaven, whereto one least of lifts would lead, 
 
 we think. 
 But wherefrom quick decline conducts our 
 
 step, we find, 
 To homely earth, old facts familiar left behind. 
 Did not this monument, for instance, long 
 
 ago , 
 
 Say all it had to say, show all it had to show. 
 Nor promise to do duty more in dream ? 
 
 CXXVII 
 
 Awaking so, 
 What if we, homeward-bound, all peace and 
 
 some fatigue. 
 Trudge, soberly complete our tramp of near a 
 
 league, 
 Last little mile which makes the circuit just, 
 
 Elvire ? 
 We end where we began : that consequence is 
 
 clear. 
 All peace and some fatigue, wherever we were 
 
 nursed 
 To life, we bosom lis on death, find last is first 
 And thenceforth final too. 
 
 " Why final ? Why the more 
 Worth credence now than when such truth 
 
 proved false before ? " 
 Because a novel point impresses now : eaeh lie 
 Redounded to the praise of man, was victory 
 Man's nature had both right to get, and might 
 
 to gain. 
 And by no means implied submission to the 
 
 reign 
 Of other quite as real a nature, that saw fit 
 To have its way with man, not man his way 
 
 with it. 
 This time, acknowledgment and acquiescence 
 
 quell 
 Their contrary in man ; promotion proves as 
 
 well 
 Defeat ; and Truth, unlike the False with 
 
 Truth's outside. 
 Neither plumes up his wiU nor puffs him out 
 
 with pride. 
 I fancy, there must lurk some cogency i' the 
 
 claim, 
 Han, such abatement made, submits to, all the 
 
 same. 
 
 Soul finds no triumph, here, to register like 
 
 Sense 
 With whom 'tis ask and have, —the want, 
 
 the evidence 
 That the thing wanted, soon or late, will be 
 
 supplied. 
 This indeed plumes up will ; this, sure, puffs 
 
 out with pride. 
 When, reading records right, man's instincts 
 
 still attest 
 Promotion comes to Sense because Sense likes 
 
 it best ; 
 For bodies sprouted le^s, through a desire to run : 
 While hands, when fain to filch, got fingers one 
 
 by one. 
 And nature, that 's ourself, accommodative 
 
 brings 
 To bear that, tired of legs which walk, we now 
 
 bud wings 
 Since of a mind to fly. Such savor in the nose 
 Of Sense would stimulate Soul sweetly, I sup- 
 pose, 
 Soul with its proper itch of instinct, prompting 
 
 clear 
 To recognize soul's self soul's only master here 
 Alike from first to last. But if time's pressure, 
 
 light's 
 Or rather dark's approach, wrest thoroughly 
 
 the rights 
 Of rule away, and bid the soul submissive bear 
 Another soul than it play master everywhere 
 In great and small, — this time, I fancy, none 
 
 disputes 
 There 's something in the fact that such con- 
 clusion suits 
 Nowise the pride of man, nor yet chimes in with 
 
 attributes 
 Conspicuous in the lord of nature. He receives 
 And not demands — not first likes faith and 
 
 then believes. 
 
 cxxix 
 And as with the last essence, so with its first 
 faint type. 
 Inconstancy means raw, 't is faith alone means 
 
 ripe 
 I' the soul which runs its round : no matter how 
 
 it range 
 From Helen to Fifine, Elvire bids back the 
 
 To permanence. Here, too, love ends where 
 
 love began. 
 Such ending looks like law, because the natural 
 
 man 
 Inclines the other way, feels lordlier free than 
 
 bound. 
 Poor pabulum for pride when the first love is 
 
 found 
 Last also ! and, so far from realizing gain. 
 Each step aside just proves divergency in vain. 
 The wanderer brings home no profit from his 
 
 quest 
 Beyond the sad surmise that keeping house 
 
 were best 
 Could life begin anew. His problem posed 
 
 aright 
 Was — " From the given point evolve the in- 
 
 fir.itr ' •' 
 
FIFINE AT THE FAIR 
 
 735 
 
 Not — " Spend thyself in space, endeavoring to 
 
 joint 
 Together, and so make infinite, point and 
 
 point : 
 Fix into one Elvire a Fair-ful of Fifines ! " 
 Fifine, the foam-flake, she : Elvire, the sea's 
 
 self, means 
 Capacity at need to shower how many such ! 
 And yet we left her calm profundity, to clutch 
 Foam-flutter, bell on bell, that, bursting at a 
 
 touch, 
 Blistered us for our pains. But wise, we want 
 
 no more 
 0' the fickle element. Enough of foam and 
 
 roar! 
 Laiid-lockod, we live and die henceforth: for 
 
 here 's the villa door. 
 
 cxxx 
 
 How pallidly you pause o' the threshold I 
 
 Hardly night, 
 Which drapes you, ought to make real flesh 
 
 and blood so white ! 
 Touch me, and so appear alive to all intents ! 
 Will the saint vanish from the sinner that 
 
 repents ? 
 Suppose you are a ghost ! A memory, a hope, 
 A fear, a conscience ! Quick ! Give bsick the 
 
 hand I grope 
 I' the dusk for ! 
 
 That is well. Our double horoscope 
 I oast, while you concur. Discard that simile 
 0' the fickle element ! Elvire is land not sea — 
 The soUd land, the safe. AU these word- 
 bubbles came 
 0' the sea, and bite like salt. The unlucky 
 
 bath 's to blame. 
 This hand of yours on heart of mine, no more 
 
 I beat, nor bask beneath the blue ! In Pomic, 
 say, 
 
 The Mayor shall catalogue me duly domiciled, 
 
 Contributable, good-companion of the guild 
 
 And mystery of marriage. I stickle for the 
 town. 
 
 And not this tower apart ; because, though, 
 halfway down. 
 
 Its muUions wink o'erwebbed with bloomy 
 greenness, yet 
 
 Who mounts to staircase top may tempt the 
 parapet. 
 
 And sudden there 's the sea ! No memories to 
 arouse. 
 
 No fancies to delude ! Our honest civic house 
 
 Of the earth be earthy too ! — or graced per- 
 chance with shell 
 
 Made prize of long ago, picked haply where 
 the swell 
 
 Menaced a little once — or seaweed-branch that 
 yet 
 
 Dampens and softens, notes a freak of wind, a 
 fret 
 
 Of wave : though, why on earth should sea- 
 change mend or mar 
 
 The calm contemplative householders that we 
 are? 
 
 So shall the seasons fleet, while our two selves 
 abide : 
 
 E'en past astonishment how sunrise and springs 
 tide 
 
 Could tempt one forth to swira ; the more if 
 time appoints 
 
 That swimming grow a task for one's rheu- 
 matic joints. 
 
 Such honest civic house, behold, I constitute 
 
 Our villa ! Be but flesh and blood, and smile 
 to boot ! 
 
 Enter for good and all! then fate bolt fast 
 
 do 
 
 the door. 
 
 Shut you and me inside, never to wander 
 more ! 
 
 CXXXII 
 
 Only, — you do not use to apprehend attack ! 
 No doubt, the way I march, one idle arm, 
 
 thrown slack 
 Behind me, leaves the open hand defenceless at 
 
 the ba«k. 
 Should an impertinent on tiptoe steal, and stuff 
 — Whatever can it be ? A letter sure enough, 
 Pushed betwixt palm and glove ! That largess 
 
 of a franc ? 
 Perhaps inconsciously, — to better help the 
 
 blank 
 0' the nest, her tambourine, and, laying egg, 
 
 persuade 
 A family to follow, the nest-egg that I laid 
 May have contained — but just to foil suspicious 
 
 folk — 
 Between two silver whites a yeUow double 
 
 yolk ! 
 Oh, threaten no farewell ! five minutes shall 
 
 suffice 
 To clear the matter up. I go, and in a trice' 
 Return ; five minutes past, expect me ! If in 
 
 vain — 
 Why, slip from flesh and blood, and play the 
 
 ghost again ! 
 
 EPILOGUE 
 
 THE HOUSEHOLDER 
 
 Savage I was sitting in my house, late, lone : 
 
 Dreary, weary with the long Aay's work : 
 Head of me, heart of me, stupid as a stone : 
 TongTie-tied now, now blaspheming like a 
 Turk; 
 When, in a moment, just a knock, call, cry, _ 
 Half a pang and all a rapture, there agam 
 were we ! — ,, i. t 
 
 " What, and is it really you again ? quoth 1 : 
 " I again, what else did you expect ? " quoth 
 She. 
 
 " Never mind, hie away from this old house — 
 Every crumbling brick embrowned with sm 
 
 Quick, in its corners ere certain shapes arouse ! 
 
 Let them— every devil of the night — lay 
 
 claim, , J T I 
 
 Make and mend, or rap and rend, for me I 
 
 Good-by ! 
 
736 
 
 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 God be their guard from disturbance at their 
 
 glee, 
 Till, crash, comes down the carcass in a heap 1 " 
 
 quoth I ; 
 "Nay, but there's a decency required!" 
 
 quoth Khe. 
 
 " Ah, but if you knew how time has dragged, 
 days, nights ! 
 All the neighbor-talk with man and maid — 
 such men ! 
 All the fuss and trouble of street-sounds, 
 window-sights : 
 All the worry of flapping door and ecuoing 
 roof ; and then, 
 AH the fancies . . . Who were they had leave, 
 dared try 
 Darker arts that almost struck despair in 
 me? 
 
 If you knew but how I dwelt down here I " 
 quoth I : 
 " And was I so better off up there ? " quoth 
 She. 
 
 " Help and get it over ! Reunited to Ms wife 
 (How draw up the paper lets the parish- 
 people know ?) 
 Lies M. or N., departed from this life. 
 Day the this or that, month and year the so and 
 so. 
 What i' the way of final flourish? Prose, 
 verse ? Try I 
 Affliction sore long time he bore, or, what is it 
 to be? 
 Till God did please to grant him ease. Do end I ' ' 
 quoth I : 
 "I end with — Love is all, and Death is 
 naught ! " quoth She. 
 
 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 OR 
 TURF AND TOWERS 
 
 TO MISS THACKERAY 
 
 This poem, dated January 23, 1873, was pub- 
 lished in the early summer of the same year. 
 Browning had been staying with his sister at 
 St, Aubin, in Normandy, and there met Miss 
 Thackeray, who was to tell a tale of the White 
 Cotton Night-cap Country, but a tragedy then 
 just coming to a culmination in the courts sup- 
 plied Browning with the more suggestive title 
 which he adopted. Mr. Cooke records ; — - 
 
 " In the poem as written the names of the 
 actors and places were correctly given, biit 
 when the poem was being revised in proofT 
 sheets they were changed from prudential 
 reasons, because the last act in the tragedy 
 occurred only a brief period prior to the writing 
 of the poem. 
 
 " Browning submitted the proof-sheets of the 
 poem to his friend Lord Coleridge, then the 
 English Attorney-General, afterwards Chief 
 Justice, who thought that a case of libel might 
 lie for what was said, however improbable such 
 action might be. He accordingly changed the 
 names to fictitious ones. It was the year follow- 
 ing this, and the publication of the poem, that 
 the appeal against the judgment in favor of the 
 will of Mellerio was dismissed, and the case 
 finally set at rest in harmony with the conclu- 
 sion reached by the poet." 
 
 In the second edition of her Hand-Book Mrs. 
 Orr gives the correct names, as furnished to her 
 by Browning himself. These names will be 
 found in the notes at the end of this volume. 
 
 And so, here happily we meet, fair friend ! 
 Again once more, as if the years rolled back 
 And this our raeeting-pl^ce were just that 
 
 Rome 
 Out in the champaign, say, o'er-rioted 
 By verdure, ravaq:e, and gay winds that war 
 Against strong sunshine settled to his sleep ; 
 Or on the Pans Boulevard, might it prove, 
 You and I came together saunteringly, 
 
 Bound for some shop-front in the Place Ven- 
 
 dome — 
 Goldsraithy and Golconda mine, that makes 
 "The Firm - Miranda " blazed about the 
 
 world — 
 Or, what if it were London, where my toe 
 Trespassed upon your flounce ? " Small 
 
 blame," you smile. 
 Seeing the Staircase Party in the Square 
 Was Small and Early, and you broke no 
 
 rib. 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 
 
 737 
 
 Even as we met where we have iiidt so oilt, 
 Now meet we on this unpretending beach 
 Below the little village ; little, ay ! 
 But pleasant, may ray gratitude subjoin ? 
 Meek, hitherto un-Murrayed bathing-place, 
 Best loved of seacoast-nookful Normandy ! 
 That, just behind yoii, is mine own hired 
 
 house : 
 With right of pathway through the field in 
 
 front, 
 No prejudice to all its growth unaheaved 
 Of emerald luzern bursting into blue. 
 Be sure I keep the path that hugs the wall. 
 Of mornings, as I pad from door to gate I 
 Yon yellow ^ what if not wild -mustard 
 
 flower ? — 
 Of that, my naked sole makes lawful prize, 
 ' Bruising the acrid aromatics out, 
 Till, what they preface, good salt savors sting 
 From, first, the sifted sands, then sands in slab, 
 Smooth save for pipy wreath-work of the 
 
 worm : 
 (Granite and mussel-shell are ground alike 
 To glittering paste, — the live worm troubles 
 
 yet.) 
 Then, dry and moist, the varech limit-line. 
 Burnt einder-blaok, with brown uncrumpled 
 
 swathe 
 Of berried softness, sea-swoln thrice its size j 
 And, lo, the wave protrudes a lip at last. 
 And flecks my foot with froth, nor tempts in 
 vain. 
 
 Such is Saint-Rambert, wilder very much 
 Than Joyeux, that famed Joyous-Gard of 
 
 yours. 
 Some five miles farther down ; much homeher 
 
 too — ji » . I 
 
 Right for me, — right for you the fine and fair ! 
 
 Only, I could endure a transfer— wrought 
 
 By angels famed still, through our country- 
 side. 
 
 For weights they fetched and carried m old 
 time 
 
 When nothing like the need was — transfer, 
 just 
 
 Of Joyeux church, exchanged for yonder png, 
 
 Our brand-new stone cream-colored master- 
 piece. 
 
 Well — and you know, and not since this one 
 
 year. 
 The quiet seaside country ? So do I : 
 Who like it, in a manner, just because 
 Nothing is prominently likable 
 To vulgar eye without a soul behind, 
 Which, breaking surface, brings before the ball 
 Of sight, a beauty buried everywhere. 
 If we have souls, know how to see and use. 
 One place performs, like any other place. 
 The proper service every place on earth 
 Was framed to furnish man with: serves alike 
 To give him note that, through the place he 
 
 sees, 
 A place is signified he never saw, 
 But, if he lack not soul, may learn to know. 
 Earth's ugliest walled and ceiled imprisonment 
 May suffer, throueh its single rent in roof. 
 
 Admittance of a cataract of light 
 Beyond attainment through earth's palace- 
 panes 
 Pinholed athwart their windowed filigree 
 By twinklings sobered from the sun outside. 
 Doubtless the High Street of our village here 
 Imposes hardly as Rome's Corso could : 
 And our projected race for sailing-boats 
 Next Sunday, when we celebrate our Saint, 
 Falls very short of that attractiveness. 
 That artistry in festive spectacle, 
 Paris ensures you when she welcomes back 
 (When shall it be ?) the Assembly from Ver- 
 sailles ; 
 While the best fashion and intelligence 
 CoUeoted at the counter of our Maj^or 
 (Dry-goods he deals in, grocery beside) 
 What time the post-bag brings the news from 
 
 Vire, — 
 I fear me much, it scarce would hold its 
 
 own. 
 That circle, that assorted sense and wit. 
 With Five-o'clock Tea in a house we know. 
 
 StiU, 't is the check that gives the leap its lift. 
 
 The nullity of cultivated souls. 
 
 Even advantaged by their news from Vire, 
 
 Only conduces to enJEorce the truth 
 
 That, thirty paces off, this natural blue 
 
 Broods o'er a b^ of secrets, all unbroached, 
 
 Beneath the bosom of the placid deep. 
 
 Since first the Post Director sealed them safe ; 
 
 And formidable I perceive this fact — 
 
 Little Saint-Rambert touches the great sea. 
 
 From London, Paris, Rome, where men are 
 
 men. 
 Not mice, and mice not Mayors presumably, 
 Thought scarce may leap so fast, alight so far. 
 But this is a pretence, you understand. 
 Disparagement in play, to parry thrust 
 Of possible objector : nullity 
 And ugliness, the taunt be his, not mme 
 Nor yours, — I think we know the world too 
 
 weU! 
 Did you walk hither, jog it by the plam. 
 Or jaunt it by the highway, braving bruise 
 From springless and unenshioned vehicle ? 
 Much, was there not, in place and people both, 
 To lend an eye to ? and what eye like yours — 
 The learned eye is stiU the loving one ! 
 Our land ; its quietude, productiveness, 
 Is length and breadth of grain-crop, meadow- 
 ground. 
 Its orchards in the pasture, farms arfield. 
 And hamlets on the road-edge, naught yon 
 
 missed 
 Of one and all the sweet rusticities ! 
 From stalwart strider by the wagon-side, 
 Brightening the acre with his purple blouse, 
 To those dark-featured comely women-folk, 
 Healthy and tall, at work, and work indeed, 
 On every cottage doorstep, plying brisk 
 Bobbins that bob you ladies out such lace ! 
 Oh, you observed I and how that nimble play 
 Of finger formed the sole exception, bobbed 
 The one disturbance to the peace of tWugs, 
 Where nobody esteems it worth his while, 
 If time upon the clock-face goes asleep, 
 
738 
 
 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 To give the rusted hands a helpful push. 
 Nobody lifts an energetic thumb 
 And index to remove some dead and gone 
 Notice which, posted on the barn, repeats 
 For truth what two years' passage made a lie. 
 Still is for sale, next June, that same ohS- 
 
 teau 
 With all its immobilities, — were sold 
 Duly next June behind the last but last ; 
 And, woe 's me, still placards the Emperor 
 Hia confidence in war he means to wage, 
 God aiding and the rural populace. 
 No : rain and wind must rub the rags away 
 And let the lazy land untroubled snore. 
 
 Ah, in good truth ? and did the drowsihead 
 So suit, so soothe the learned loving eye, 
 That you were minded to confer a crown, 
 (Does not the poppy boast such ?J — call the 
 
 laud 
 By one slow hither-thither stretching, fast 
 Subsiding-into-slumber sort of name. 
 Symbolic of the place and people too, 
 " White Cotton Night-cap Country ?" Excel- 
 lent! 
 For they do, all, dear women young and old, 
 Upon the heads of them bear notably 
 This badge of soul and body iu repose ; 
 Nor its fine thimble fits the acorn-top. 
 Keeps woolly ward above that oval brown, 
 Its placid feature, more than muffler makes 
 A safeguard, circumvents intelligence 
 In — what shall evermore be named and 
 
 famed. 
 If hai)py nomenclature aught avail, 
 "White Cotton Night-cap Country." 
 
 Do I hear — 
 Oh, better, very best of all the news — 
 You mean to catch and cage the wingfed word, 
 And make it breed and multiply at home 
 Till Norman idlesse stock our England too ? 
 Normandy shown minute yet magnified 
 In one of those small books, the truly great, 
 We never know enough, yet know so well ? 
 How I foresee the cursive diamond-dints, — 
 Composite pen that plays the pencil too, — 
 As, touch the page and up the glamour goes. 
 And filmily o'er grain-crop, meadow-ground. 
 O'er orchard in the pasture, farm a-field. 
 And hamlet on the road-edge, floats and forms 
 And falls, at lazy last of all, the Cap 
 That crowns the country ! we, awake outside. 
 Farther than ever from the imminence 
 Of what cool comfort, what close coverture 
 Your magic, deftly weaving, shall surround 
 The unconscious captive with. Be theirs to 
 
 drowse 
 Trammelled, and ours to watch the trammel- 
 trick ! 
 Ours be it, as we con the book of books, 
 To wonder how is winking passible 1 
 
 All hail, " White Cotton Night-cap Country,'' 
 
 then ! 
 And yet, as on the beach you promise book, — 
 On beach, mere razor-edge 'twixt earth and 
 
 I stand at such a distance from the world 
 That 't is the whole world which obtains regard, 
 Rather than any part, though part presiuued 
 A perfect little province in itself, 
 When wayfare made acquaintance first there 
 
 with. 
 So standing, therefore, on this edge of things, 
 What if the backward glance I gave, return 
 Loaded with other spoils of vagrancy 
 Than I dispatched it for, till I propose 
 The question — puzzled by the sudden store 
 Officious fancy plumps beneath my nose — 
 " Which sort of Night-cap.have you glorified ? " 
 
 You would be gracious to my ignorance : 
 What other Night-cap than the normal one ? — 
 Old honest guardian of man's head and hair 
 In its elastic yet continuous, soft. 
 No less persisting, circumambient gripe, — 
 Night's notice, life is respited from day I 
 Its form and fashion vary, suiting so 
 Each seasonable want of youth and age. 
 In infancy, the rosy naked ball 
 Of brain, and that faint golden fluff it bears, 
 Are smothered from disaster, — nurses know 
 By what foam-fabric ; but when youth suc- 
 ceeds. 
 The sterling value of the article 
 Discards adornment, cap is cap henceforth 
 Unfeathered by the futile row on row. 
 Manhood strains hard a sturdy stocking-stuff 
 O'er well-deserving head and ears : the cone 
 Is tassel-tipt, commendably takes pride, 
 Announcing workday done and wages pouched. 
 And liberty obtained to sleep, nay, snore. 
 Unwise, he peradventure shall essay 
 The sweets of independency for once — 
 Waive its advantage on his wedding-night : 
 Fool, only to resume it, night the next, 
 And never part companionship again. 
 Since, with advancing years, night's solace 
 
 soon 
 Intrudes upon the daybreak dubious life 
 Persuades it to appear the thing it is 
 Half - sleep ; and so, encroaching more and 
 
 more. 
 It lingers long past the abstemious meal 
 Of morning, and, as prompt to serve, precedes 
 The supper-summons, gruel grown a feast. 
 Finally, when the last sleep finds the eye 
 So tired it cannot even shut itself. 
 Does not a kind domestic hand unite 
 Friend to friend, lid from lid to part no more, 
 Consigned alike to that receptacle 
 So bleak without, so warm and white within ? 
 
 "Night-caps, night's comfort of the human 
 
 race : 
 Their usage may be growing obsolete. 
 Still, in the main, the institution stays. 
 And though yourself may possibly have lived, 
 And probably will die, undignified — 
 The Never-night-capped — more experienced 
 
 folk 
 Laugh you back answer — What should Night- 
 cap be 
 Save Night-cap pure and simple? Sorts of 
 such? 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 
 
 739 
 
 Take cotton for the medium, cast an eye 
 This side to comfort, lambswool, or the like. 
 That side to frilly cambric costliness, 
 And all between proves Night-cap proper." 
 
 Add 
 "Fiddle ! " and I confess the argument. 
 
 Only, your igrnoramus here again 
 Proceeds as tardily to recognize 
 Distinctions : ask him what a fiddle means, 
 And " ,Tiist a fiddle " seems the apt reply. 
 Yet, is not there, while we two pace the beach. 
 This blessed moment, at your Kensington, 
 A spi'cial FidJle^ihow and rare array 
 Of all the sorts were ever set to cheek, 
 'Stablished on clavicle, sawn bow-hand-wise. 
 Or touched lute-fashion and forefinger-plucked ? 
 I doubt not there be duly catalogued 
 Achievements all and some of Italy, 
 Guarnerius, Straduarius, — old and new, 
 Augustly rude, refined to finicking. 
 This mammoth with his belly full of blare. 
 That mouse of music — inch-long silvery wheeze, 
 And here a specimen has effioresced 
 Into the scroll-head, there subsides supreme. 
 And with the tailpiece satisfies mankind. 
 Why should I speak of woods, grains, stains 
 
 and streaks, 
 The topaz varnish or the ruby gum ? 
 We preferably pause where tickets teach, 
 " Over this sample would Corelli croon, 
 Grieving, by minors, like the cushat-dove. 
 Most dulcet Giga, dreamiest Saraband." 
 " From this did Paganini comb the fierce 
 Electric sparks, or to tenuity 
 PviU forth the inmost wailing of the wire — 
 No cat-gut could swoon out so much of soul ! " 
 
 Three hundred violin-varieties 
 
 Exposed to public view ! And dare I doubt 
 
 Some future enterprise shall give the world 
 
 Quite as remarkable a Night-cai>-show ? 
 
 Methinks, we, arm-in-arm, that festal day. 
 
 Pace the long range of relies shrined aright, 
 
 Framed, glazed, each cushioned curiosity, 
 
 And so begin to smile and to inspect : 
 
 " Pope's sickly head-sustainment, damped with 
 
 dews 
 Wrung from the all-unfair fight : such a frame — 
 Though doctor and the devil helped their 
 
 best — 
 Fought such a world that, waiving doctor's 
 
 help. 
 Had the mean devil at its service too ! 
 Voltaire's imperial velvet ! Hogarth eyed 
 The thumb-nail record of some alley -phiz. 
 Then chucklingly clapped yonder cosiness 
 On pate, and painted with true fiesh and blood ! 
 Poor hectic Cowper's soothing sarsnet-stripe ! " 
 And so we profit by the catalogue. 
 Somehow our smile subsiding more and more, 
 Till we decline into . . . but no ! shut eyes 
 And hurry past the shame uncoffined here. 
 The hangman's toilet ! If we needs must trench. 
 For science' sake which craves completeness 
 
 still. 
 On the sad confine, not the district's self. 
 The object that shall close review may be . . , 
 
 Well, it is French, and here are we in France : 
 
 It is historic, and we live to learn. 
 
 And try to learn by reading story-books. 
 
 It is an incident of 'Ninety-two, 
 
 And, twelve months since, the Commune had 
 
 the sway. 
 Therefore resolve that, after all the Whites 
 Presented you, a solitary Red 
 Shall pain us both, a minute and no more ! 
 Do not you see poor Louis pushed to front 
 Of palace-window, in persuasion's name, 
 A spectacle above the howling mob 
 Who tasted, as it were, with tiger-smack. 
 The outstart, the first spurt of blood on brow, 
 The Phrygian symbol, the new crown of thorns, 
 The Cap of Freedom ? See the feeble mirth 
 At odds with that half-purpose to be strong 
 And merely patient under misery ! 
 And note the ejaculation, ground so hard 
 Between his teeth, that oiuy God could hear, 
 As the lean pale proud insignificance 
 With the sharp-featured liver-worried stare 
 Out of the two prray points that did him stead. 
 And passed their eagle-owner to the front 
 Better than his mob-elbowed undersize, — 
 The Corsican lieutenant commented, 
 " Had I but one good regiment of my own. 
 How soon should volleys to the due amount 
 Lay stiff upon the street-flags this canaille ! 
 As for the droll there, he that plays the king. 
 And screws out smile with a Red night-cap on. 
 He 's done for ! somebody must take his place." 
 White Cotton Night-cap Country : excellent ! 
 Why not Red Cotton Night-cap Country too ? 
 
 '* Why not say swans are black and blackbirds 
 
 white. 
 Because the instances exist ? " you ask. 
 " Enough that white, not red, predominates. 
 Is normal, typical, in cleric phrase 
 Quod semel, semper, et ubique." Here, 
 Applying such a name to such a land, 
 Especially you find inopportune. 
 Impertinent, my scruple whether white 
 Or red describes the local color best. 
 " Let be," (you say,) " the universe at large 
 Supplied us with exceptions to the rule. 
 So manifold, they bore no passing-by, — 
 Little Saint-Ramhert has conserved at least 
 The pure tradition : white from head to heel, 
 Where is a hint of the ungracious hue ? 
 See, we have traversed with hop, step, and 
 
 jump. 
 From heel to head, the main-street in a tnce, 
 Measured the garment (help my metaphor !) 
 Not merely criticised the cap, forsooth ; 
 And were you pricked by that collecting-itch. 
 That pruriency for writing o'er your reds, 
 ' Rare, rarer, rarest, not rare but unique,' — 
 The shelf, Saint-Rambert, of your cabinet, 
 Unlabelled, — virginal, no Rahab-thread 
 For blushing token of the spy's success, — 
 Would taunt with vacancy, 1 undertake ! 
 What, yonder is your best apology, 
 Pretence at most approach to naughtiness, 
 Impiiigement of the ruddy on the blank ? 
 This is the criminal Saint-Rambertese 
 Who smuggled in tobacco, half-a-pound 1 
 
740 
 
 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 The Octroi found it out and fined the "wretch. 
 This other is the culprit who dispatched 
 A hare, lie thought a hedgehog, (clods obstruct,) 
 Unfurnished with Permission for the Chase I 
 As to the womankind — renounce from those 
 The ho^e of getting a companion-tinge, 
 First faint touch promising romantic fault ! " 
 
 Enough : there stands Red Cotton Night-cap 
 
 shelf — 
 A cavern's ostentatious vacancy — 
 My contribution to the show ; while yours — 
 Whites heap your row of pegs from every hedge 
 Outside, and house inside Saint-Rambert here — 
 We soon have come to end of. See, the church 
 With its white steeple gives your challenge 
 
 point, 
 Perks as it were the night-cap of the town, 
 Starchedly warrants all beneath is matched 
 By all above, one snowy innocence ! 
 
 You put me on my mettle. British maid 
 And British man, suppose we have it out 
 Here in the fields, decide the question so ? 
 Then, Britisli fashion, shake hands hard again, 
 Go home together, friends the more confirmed 
 That one of us — assuredly myself — 
 Looks puffy about eye, and pink at nose ? 
 Which " pink " reminds me that the arduous- 
 
 ness 
 We both acknowledge in the enterprise, 
 Claims, counts upon a large and liberal 
 Acceptance of as good as victory 
 In whatsoever just escapes defeat. 
 Yon must be generous, strain point, and call 
 Victory, any the least flush of pink 
 Made prize of, labelled scarlet for the nonce — 
 Faintest pretension to be wrong and red 
 And picturesque, that varies by a splotch 
 The righteous flat of insipidity. 
 
 Quick to the quest, then — forward, the firm 
 
 foot ! 
 Onward, the quarry-overtaking eye ! 
 For, what is this, by way of march-tune, makes 
 The musicalest buzzing at my ear 
 By reassurance of that promise old, 
 Though sins as scarlet they shall be as wool ? 
 Whence — what fantastic hope do I deduce ? 
 I am no Liebig : when the dyer dyes 
 A texture, can the red dye prime the white ? 
 And if we washed well, wrung the texture hard. 
 Would we arrive, here, there and everywhere, 
 At a fierce p;round beneath the surface meek ? 
 
 I take the first chance, rub to threads what rag 
 Shall flutter snowily in sight. For see ! 
 Already these few yards upon the rise. 
 Our back to brave Saint-Rambert, how we 
 
 reach 
 The open, at a dozen steps or strides I 
 Turn round and look about, a breatliing^while 1 
 There lie, outspread at equidistance, thorpes 
 And villages and towns along the coast, 
 Distin^ishable, each and all alike, 
 By white persistent Night-eap, spire on spire. 
 Take the left : yonder town is — what say you 
 If I say " Londres " ? Ay, the mother-mouse 
 
 (Reversing fable, as truth can and will) 
 Whicli gave our mountain of a London birth ! 
 This is the Conqueror's country, bear in mind. 
 And Londres-district blooms with London-pride, 
 Turn round ; La Roche, to right, where oysters 
 
 thrive: 
 Monlieu — the lighthouse is a telegraph ; 
 This, full in front, Saint-Rambert ; then suc- 
 ceeds . 
 ViUeneuve, and Pons the Young with Pons the 
 
 Old, 
 And — ere faith points to Joyeux, out of sight, 
 A little nearer — oh. La Ravissante ! 
 
 There now is something like a Night-cap spire. 
 
 Donned by no ordinary Notre-Dame ! 
 
 For, one of the three safety-guards of France, 
 
 You front now , lady ! Nothing intercepts 
 
 The privilege, by erow-fiight, two miles far. 
 
 She and her sisters Lourdes and La Salette 
 
 Are at this moment hailed the cynosure 
 
 Of poor dear France, such waves have buffeted 
 
 Since she eschewed infallibiUty 
 
 And chose to steer by the vague compass-box. 
 
 This same midsunmier month, a week ago. 
 
 Was not the memorable day observed 
 
 For reinstatement of the misused Three 
 
 In old supremacy forevermore ? 
 
 Did not the faithful flock in pilgrimage 
 
 By railway, diligence, and steamer — nay, 
 
 On foot with staxE and scrip, to see the sights 
 
 Assured them ? And I say best sight was 
 
 here: 
 And nothing justified the rival Two 
 In their pretension to equality ; 
 Our folk laid out their ticket -money best. 
 And wiseliest, if they walked, wore shoe away ; 
 Not who went farther only to fare worse. 
 For, what was seen at Lourdes and La Salette 
 Except a couple of the common cures 
 Svich as all three can boast of, any day ? 
 While here it was, here and by no means there. 
 That the Pope's self sent two great real gold 
 
 crowns 
 As thick with jewelry as thick could stick. 
 His present to the Virgin and her Babe — 
 Provided for — who knows not ? — by that 
 
 fund, 
 Count Alessandro Sforza's legacy. 
 Which goes to crown some A'lrgin every year. 
 But this year, poor Pope was in prison-house, 
 And money had to go tor something else ; 
 And therefore, though their present seemed 
 
 the Pope's, 
 The faithful of our province raised the sum 
 Preached and prayed out of — nowise purse 
 
 alone. 
 OentU and simple paid in kind, not cash. 
 The most part : the great lady gave her brooch. 
 The peasant-girl, her hairpin ; 't was the rough 
 Bluff farmer mainly who, — admonished Well 
 By wife to care lest his new eolewort-orop 
 Stray sorrowfully sparse like last year's seed, — 
 Lugged fi'om reluctant pouch the fifty-franc. 
 And had the Curb's hope that rain would cease. 
 And so, the sum in evidence at length, 
 Next step was to obtain the donative 
 By the spontaneous bouiity of the Pope — 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 
 
 741 
 
 No easy matter, since his Holiness 
 Had turned a deaf ear, lon|; and long ago, 
 To much entreaty on our Bishop's part, 
 Comraeudably we boast. " But no," quoth he, 
 " Image and image needs must take their turn; 
 Here stand a dozen a^ importunate." 
 Well, we were patient ; but the cup ran o'er 
 When — who was it pressed in and took the 
 
 prize 
 But our own offset, set far off indeed 
 To grow by help of our especial name, 
 She of the Ravissante — in Martinique ! 
 " What ! " cried our patience at the boiling- 
 
 poiut, 
 " The daughter crowned, the mother's head 
 
 goes bare ? 
 Bishop of Kaimbaux ! " — that 's our didcese — 
 " Thou hast a summons to repair to Rome, 
 Be efficacious at the Council there : 
 Now is the time or never ! Right our wrong ! 
 Hie thee away, thou valued MoriUon, 
 And have the promise, thou who hast the 
 
 vote ! " 
 So said, so done, so followed in due course 
 (To cut the story short) this festival. 
 This famous Twenty-second, seven days since. 
 
 Oh, but you heard at Joyeux ! Pi^^^mage, 
 Concourse, procession with, to head the host. 
 Cardinal Mirecourt, quenching lesser lights : 
 The leafy street-length through, decked end to 
 
 end 
 With August-strippage, and adorned with flags, 
 That would have waved right well but that it 
 
 rained 
 Just this picked day, by some perversity. 
 And so were placed, on Mother and on Babe, 
 The pair of crowns : the Mother's, yon must 
 
 see I 
 Miranda, the great Paris goldsmith, made 
 The marvel, — he's a neighbor: that's his 
 
 park 
 Before you, tree-topped wall we walk toward. 
 His shop it was tm-ned out the masterpiece. 
 Probably at his own expenditure ; 
 Anyhow, his was the munificence 
 Contributed the central and supreme 
 Splendor that crowns the crown itself, The 
 
 Stone. 
 Not even Paris, ransacked, could supply 
 That gem : he had to forage in New York, 
 This jeweller, and country-gentleman. 
 And most undoubted devotee beside ! 
 Worthily wived, too : since his wife it was 
 Bestowed " with friendly hand " — befitting 
 
 phrase! 
 The laice which trims the coronation-robe — 
 Stiff wear — a mint of wealth on the brocade. 
 Do go and see what I saw yesterday ! 
 And, for that matter, see in fancy still. 
 Since . . . 
 
 There now ! Even for unthankful me, 
 Who stuck to my devotions at high-tide 
 That festal morning, never had a mind 
 To trudge the little league and join the crowd — 
 Even for me is miracle vouchsafed ! 
 How nointless proves the sneer at miracles ! 
 
 As if, contrariwise to all we want 
 
 And reasonably look to find, they graced 
 
 Merely those graced-before, grace helps no 
 
 whit, 
 Unless, made whole, they need physician still. 
 I — sceptical in every inch of me — 
 Did I deserve that, from the liquid name 
 " Miranda," —faceted as lovelily 
 As his own gift, the gem, — a shaft should 
 
 shine. 
 Bear me along, another Abaris, 
 Nor let me light till, lo, the Red is reached. 
 And yonder lies in luminosity ! 
 
 Look, lady 1 'where I bade you glance but now 1 
 Next habitation, though two mUes away, — 
 No tenement for man or beast between, — 
 That,_ park and domicile, is country-seat 
 Of this same good Miranda ! I accept 
 The augury. Or there, or nowhere else. 
 Will I establish that a Night-cap gleams 
 Of visionary Red, not White for ouce ! 
 "Heaven," saith the sage, "is with us, here 
 
 inside 
 Each man:" "Hell also,'' simpleness sub- 
 joins. 
 By White and Red describing human flesh. 
 
 And yet as we continue, quicken pace. 
 
 Approach the object which determines me 
 
 Victorious or defeated, more forlorn 
 
 My chance seems, — that is certainty at least. 
 
 Halt midway, reconnoitre ! Either side 
 
 The path we traverse (turn and see) stretch 
 
 fields 
 Without a he<^e : one level, scallop-striped 
 With bands of beet and turnip and luzern. 
 Limited only by each color's end. 
 Shelves down — we stand upon an eminence — 
 To where the earth-shell scallops out the sea, 
 A sweep of semicircle ; and at edge — 
 Just as the milk-white incrustations stud 
 At intervals some shell-extremity. 
 So do the little growths attract us here. 
 Towns with each name I told you : say, they 
 
 touch 
 The sea, and the sea them, and all is said. 
 So sleeps and sets to slumber that broad blue 1 
 The people are as peaceful as the place. 
 This, that I call " the path " is road, highway ; 
 But has there passed ns by a market-cart, 
 Man, woman, child, or dog; to wag a tail ? 
 True, I saw weeders stooping in a field; 
 But — formidably white the Cap's extent ! 
 
 Round again ! Come, appearance promises ! 
 The boundary, the park-wall, ancient brick, 
 Upholds a second wall of tree-heads high 
 Which overlean its top, a solid green. 
 That surely ought to shut in mysteries ! 
 A jeweller — no unsuggestive craft ! 
 Trade that admits of much romance, indeed. 
 For, whom but goldsmiths used old monarchs 
 
 pledge 
 Regalia to, or seek a ransom from, 
 Or pray to furnish dowry, at a pinch, 
 According to authentic story-books ? 
 Whv. such have revolutionized this land 
 
742 
 
 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 With diamond-necklace-dealing ! not to speak 
 Of families turned upside-down, because 
 The gay wives went and pawned clandestinely 
 Jewels, and figured, till found out, with paste. 
 Or else redeemed them — how, is horrible I 
 Then there are those enormous criminals 
 That love their ware and cannot lose their love. 
 And murder you to get your purchase back. 
 Others go courting after such a stone. 
 Make it their mistress, marry for their wife. 
 And find out, some day, it was false the while, 
 As ever wife or mistress, man too fond 
 Has named his Pilgrim, Hermit, Ace of Hearts. 
 
 Beside — what style of edifice begins 
 
 To grow in sight at last and top the scene ? 
 
 That gray roof, with the range of lucarnes, 
 
 four 
 I count, and that erection in the midst — 
 Clock-house, or chapel-spire, or what, above ? 
 Conventual, that, beyond manorial, sure ! 
 And reason good ; for Clairvaux, such its name. 
 Was built of old to be a Priory, 
 Dependence on that Abbey-for-the-Males 
 Our Conqueror founded in world-famous Caen, 
 And where his body sought the sepulture. 
 It was not to retain : you know the tale. 
 Such Priory was Clairvaux, prosperous 
 Hundreds of years ; but nothing lasts below. 
 And when the Red Cap pushed the Crown aside, 
 The Priory became, like all its peers, 
 A National Domain : which, bought and sold 
 And resold, needs must change, with ownership. 
 Both outside show and inside use ; at length 
 The messuage, three-and-twenty years ago. 
 Became the purchase of rewarded worth 
 Impersonate in Father — I must stoop 
 To French phrase for precision's sake, I fear — 
 Father Miranda, goldsmith of renown : 
 By birth a Madnlene, by domicile 
 And sojourning accepted French at last^ 
 His energy it was which, trade transferred 
 To Paris, throve as with a golden thumb. 
 Established in the Place Vendome. He bought 
 Not building only, but belongings far 
 And wide, at Gonthier there, Monlieu, Ville- 
 
 nenve, 
 A plentiful estate : which, twelve years since. 
 Passed, at the good man's natural demise. 
 To Son and Heir Miranda — Clairvaux here. 
 The Paris shop, the mansion — not to say 
 Palatial residence on Qnai Rousseau, 
 With money, movables, a mine of wealth — 
 And young L^once Miranda got it all. 
 
 Ah, but — whose might the transformation be ? 
 Were you prepared for this, now ? As we 
 
 talked, 
 We walked, we entered the half-privacy. 
 The partly-guarded precinct : passed beside 
 The little paled-off islet, trees and turf. 
 Then found us in the main ash-avenue 
 Under the blessing of its branchage-roof : 
 Till, on emergence, what affronts our gaze ? 
 Priory — Conqueror — Abbey-for-the-Males — 
 Hey, presto, pass, who conjured all away ? 
 Look through the railwork of the gate : a park 
 — Yes, but h I'Anglaise, as they compliment 1 
 
 Grrass like green velvet, gravel-walk.s like gold, 
 Bosses of shrubs, embosomings of flowers, _ 
 Lead you — through sprinkled trees of tmy 
 
 breed 
 Disporting, within reach of coverture. 
 By some habitual acquieseent oak 
 Or elm, that thinks, and lets the youngsters 
 
 laugh — 
 Lead, lift at last your soul that walks the air, 
 Up to the house-front, or its back perhaps — 
 Whether fa9ade or no, one coquetry 
 Of colored brick and carved stone I Stucco ? 
 
 Well, 
 The daintiness is cheery, that I know, 
 And all the sportive floral framework fits 
 The lightsome purpose of the architect. 
 Those lucarnes which 1 called conventual, late, 
 Those are the outlets in the mansard-roof ; 
 And, underneath, what long light elegance 
 Of windows here suggests how brave inside 
 Lurk eyeballed gems they play the eyelids to ! 
 Festive arrangements look through such, be 
 
 sure ! 
 And now the tower a-top, I took for clock's 
 Or bell's abode, turns out a quaint device. 
 Pillared and temple-treated Belvedere — 
 Pavilion safe within its railed-about 
 Sublimity of area — whence what stretch, 
 Of sea and land, throughout the seasons' 
 
 change, 
 Must greet the solitary ! Or suppose, 
 — If what the husband likes, the wife likes 
 
 too, — 
 The happy pair of students cloistered high, 
 Alone in April kiss when Spring arrives ! 
 Or no, he mounts there by himself to meet 
 Winds, welcome wafts of sea-smell, first white 
 
 bird 
 That flaps thus far to taste the land again, 
 And all the promise of the youthful year ; 
 Then he descends, unbosoms straight his store 
 Of blessings in the bud, and both embrace. 
 Husband and wife, since earth is Paradise, 
 And man at peace with God. You see it sdl ? 
 
 Let us complete our survey, go right round 
 The place : for here, it may be, we surprise 
 The Priory, — these solid walls, big barns, 
 Gray orchard-bounds, huge four-square stores 
 
 for stock, 
 Betoken where the Church was busy once. 
 Soon must we come upon the Chapel's self. 
 No doubt next turn will treat us to . . , Aha, 
 Again our expectation proves at fault ! 
 Still the bright graceful modem — not to say 
 Modish adornment, meets us : Pare Anglais^ 
 Tree-sprinkle, shrub-embossment as before. 
 See, the sun splits on yonder bauble world 
 Of silvered glass concentring, every side. 
 All the adjacent wonder, made minute 
 And touched grotesque by ball-convexity 1 
 Just so, a sense that something is amiss, 
 Something is out of sorts in the display, 
 Affects us, past denial, everywhere. 
 The right erection for the Fields, the Wood, 
 (Fields — but El^fsies, wood — but de Boulogne) 
 Is peradventure wrong for wood and fields 
 When Vire, not Paris, plays the Capital. 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 
 
 743 
 
 So may a good man have deficient taste ; 
 
 Since Sou and Heir Miranda, he it was 
 
 Who, six years now elapsed, achieved the work 
 
 And truly made a wilderness to smile. 
 
 Here did their domesticity reside, 
 
 A happy husband and as happy wife, 
 
 Till . . . how can I in conscience longer keep 
 
 My little secret that the man is dead 
 
 I, for artistic purpose, talk about 
 
 As if he lived still ? No, these two years now 
 
 Has he been dead. You ought to sympathize, 
 
 Not mock the sturdy effort to redeem 
 
 My pledge, and wring you out some tragedy 
 
 From even such a perfect commonplace ! 
 
 Suppose I boast the death of such desert 
 
 My tragic bit of Ked ? Who contravenes 
 
 Assertion that a tragedy exists 
 
 In any stoppage of benevolence, 
 
 UtUity, devotion above all ? 
 
 Benevolent ? There never was his like : 
 
 For poverty, he had an open hand 
 
 ... Or stop — I use the wrong expression 
 
 here — 
 An open purse, then, ever at appeal ; 
 So that the unreflecting rather taxed 
 Profusion than penuriousness in alms. 
 One, in his day and generation, deemed 
 Of use to the community ? I trust, 
 Clairvaux thus renovated, regalized, 
 Paris expounded thus to Normandy, 
 Answers that question. Was the man devout V 
 After a life — one mere munificence 
 To Church and all things chnrchly, men or 
 
 mice, — 
 Dying, his last bequeathment gave land, goods. 
 Cash, every stick and stiver, to the Church, 
 And notably to that church yonder, that 
 Beloved of his soul, La Eavissante — 
 Wherefrom, the latest of his gifts, the Stone 
 GrratefuUy bore me as on arrow-flash 
 To Clairvaux, as I told you. 
 
 " Ay, to find 
 Your Red desiderated article. 
 Where every scratch and scrape provokes my 
 
 White 
 To all the more superb a prominence ! 
 Why, 't is the story served up fresh again — 
 How it befell the restive prophet old 
 Who came and tried to curse but blessed the 
 
 land. 
 Come, your last chance ! he disinherited 
 Children : he made his widow mourn too much 
 By this endowment of the other Bride — 
 Nor understood that gold and jewelry 
 Adorn her in a fi^re, not a fact. 
 You make that White I want, so very white, 
 'T is I say now — some trace of Red should be 
 Somewhere in this Miranda-sanctitude ! " 
 
 Not here, at all events, sweet mocking friend ! 
 For he was childless; and what heirs he had 
 Were an uncertain sort of Cousinry 
 Scarce claiming kindred so as to withhold 
 The donor's purpose though fantastical : 
 Heirs, for that matter, wanting no increase 
 Of wealth, since rich already as himself ; 
 Heirs that had taken trouble off his hands. 
 
 Bought that productive goldsmith-business he, 
 With abnegation wise as rare, renounced 
 Precisely at a time of life when youth. 
 Nigh on departure, bids mid-age discard 
 Life's other loves and likings in a pack, 
 To keep, in lucre, comfort worth them all. 
 This Cousinry are they who boast the shop 
 Of "Firm-Miranda, London and New York." 
 Cousins are an unconscionable kind ; 
 But these — pretension surely on their part 
 To share inheritance were too absurd ! 
 
 " Remains then, he dealt wro^ly by his wife, 
 Despoiled her somehow by such testament ? " 
 Farther than ever from the mark, fair friend! 
 The man's love for his wife exceeded bounds 
 Rather than failed the limit. 'T was to live 
 Hers and hers only, to abolish earth 
 Outside — since Paris holds the pick of earth — 
 He turned his back, shut eyes, stopped ears, to 
 
 all 
 Delicious Paris tempts her children with. 
 And fled away to tms far solitude — 
 She peopling solitude sufficiently ! 
 She, partner in each heavenward flight sublune. 
 Was, with each condescension to the ground. 
 Duly associate also : hand in hand, 
 ... Or side by side, I say by preference — 
 On every good work sidlingly they went. 
 Hers was the instigation — none but she 
 WiUed that, if death should summon first her 
 
 lord. 
 Though she, sad relict, must drag residue 
 Of days encumbered by this load of wealth — 
 (Submitted to with something of a grace 
 So long as her surviving vigilance 
 Might worthily administer, convert 
 Wealth to God's glory and the good of man. 
 Give, as in life, so now in death, effect 
 To cherished purpose) — yet she begged and 
 
 prayed 
 That, when no longer she could supervise 
 The House, it should become a Hospital : 
 For the support whereof, lands, goods, and 
 
 cash 
 Alike will go, in happy guardiansliip. 
 To yonder church. La Ravissante ; who debt 
 To God and man undoubtedly will pay. 
 
 "Not of the world, your heroine ! " 
 
 Do you know 
 I saw her yesterday — set eyes upon 
 The veritable personage, no dream ? 
 I in the morning strolled this way, as oft, 
 And stood at entry of the avenue. 
 When, out from that first garden-gate, we gazed 
 tJpon and through, a small procession swept — 
 Madame Miranda with attendants five. 
 First, of herself : she wore a soft and white 
 Engaging dress, with velvet stripes and squares 
 Severely black, yet scarce discouraging : 
 Fresh Paris-manufacture ! (Vire's would do ? 
 I doubt it, but confess my ignorance.) 
 Her figure ? somewhat small and darling-like. 
 Her face ? well, singularly colorless, 
 For first thing: which scarce suits a blonde, 
 you know. 
 
744 
 
 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTR"* 
 
 Pretty you would not call her : though perhaps 
 
 Attaining to the ends of prettiness, 
 
 And somewhat more, suppose enough of soul. 
 
 Then she is forty full : you cannot judge 
 
 What beauty was her portion at eighteen, 
 
 The age she married at. So, colorless 
 
 I stick to, and if featureless I add, 
 
 Your notion grows completer : for, although 
 
 I noticed that her nose was aquiline. 
 
 The *'hole effect amounts with me to — blank 1 
 
 I never saw what I could less describe. 
 
 The eyes, for instance, unforgettable 
 
 Which ought to be, are out of mind as sight. 
 
 Yet is there not conceivably a face, 
 
 A set of wax-like features, blank at first, 
 
 Which, as you bendingly grow warm above. 
 
 Begins to take impressment from your breath ? 
 
 Which, as your will itself were plastic here 
 
 Nor needed exercise of handicraft. 
 
 From formless moulds itself to correspond 
 
 With all you think and feel and are — in fine 
 
 Grows a new revelation of yourself. 
 
 Who know now for the first time what you 
 
 want? 
 Here has been something that could wait awhile, 
 Learn your requirement, nor take shape before, 
 But, by adopting it, make palpable 
 Your right to an importance of your own. 
 Companions somehow were so slow to see ! 
 — Far delicater solace to conceit 
 Than should some absolute and final face, 
 Fit representative of soul inside. 
 Summon you to surrender — in no way 
 Your breath's impressment, nor, in stranger's 
 
 guise. 
 Yourself — or why of force to challenge you ? 
 Why should your soul's reflection rule your 
 
 soul? 
 (" You "means not you, nor me, nor any one 
 Framed, for a reason I shall keep suppressed, 
 To rather want a master than a slave : 
 The slavish still aspires to dominate !) 
 So, all I say is, that the face, to me 
 One blur of blank, might flash significance 
 To who had seen his soul reflected there 
 By that symmetric silvery phantom-like 
 Figure, with other five processional. 
 The first, a black-dressed matron — maybe, 
 
 maid — 
 Mature, and dragonish of aspect, — marched ; 
 Then four came tripping in a joyous flock. 
 Two giant goats and two prodigious sheep 
 Pure as the arctic fox that suits the snow, 
 Tripped, trotted, turned the march to merri- 
 ment, 
 But ambled at their mistress' heel — for why ? 
 A rod of guidance marked the Chatelaine, 
 And ever and anon would sceptre wave. 
 And silky subject leave meandering. 
 Nay, one great naked sheep-face stopped to ask 
 Who was the stranger, snuffed inquisitive 
 My hand that made acquaintance with its nose. 
 Examined why the hand — of man at least — 
 Patted so lightly, warmly, so like life 1 
 Are they such silly natures after all ? 
 And thus accompanied, the paled-offi space, 
 Isleted shrubs and verdure, gained the group ; 
 
 Till, as I gave a furtive glance, and saw 
 Her back-hair was a block of solid gold. 
 The gate shut out my harmless question — 
 
 Hair 
 So young and yellow, crowning sanctity, 
 And claiming solitude . . . can hair be false? 
 
 " Shut in the hair and with it your last hope, 
 
 Yellow might on inspection pass for Red ! — 
 
 Red, Red, where is the tinge of promised Red 
 
 In thisold tale of town and country life, 
 
 This rise and progress of a family ? 
 
 First comes the bustling man of enterprise, 
 
 The fortune-founding father, rightly rough, 
 
 As who must grub and grab, play pioneer. 
 
 Then, with a light and airy step, succeeds 
 
 The son, surveys the fabric of his sire. 
 
 And enters home, unsmirched from top to toe. 
 
 Polish and education qualify 
 
 Their fortunate possessor to confine 
 
 His occupancy to the first-floor suite 
 
 Raither than keep exploring needlessly 
 
 Where dwelt his sire content with cellarage : 
 
 Industry bustles underneath, no doubt. 
 
 And supervisors should not sit too close. 
 
 Next, rooms buUt, there 's the furniture to buy, 
 
 And what adornment like a worthy wife ? 
 
 In comes she like some foreign cabinet, 
 
 Purchased indeed, but purifying quick 
 
 What space receives it from all traffic-taint. 
 
 She tells of other habits, palace-life ; 
 
 Royalty may have pried into those depths 
 
 Of sandal-wooded drawer, and set a-creak 
 
 That pygmy portal pranked with lazuli. 
 
 More fit by far the ignoble we replace 
 
 By objects suited to such visitant, 
 
 Than that we desecrate her dignity 
 
 By neighborhood of vulgar table, chair. 
 
 Which haply helped old age to smoke and doze. 
 
 The end is, an exchange of city stir 
 
 And too intrusive burgess-fellowship. 
 
 For rural isolated elegance. 
 
 Careless simplicity, how preferable ! 
 
 There one may fairly throw behind one's back 
 
 The used-up worn-out Past, we want away, 
 
 And make a fresh beginning of stale life. 
 
 ' In just the place' — does any one object ? — 
 
 ' Where abori^nal gentility 
 
 Will scout the upstart, twit him with eaoh 
 
 trick 
 Of townish trade-mark that stamps word and 
 
 deed. 
 And most of all resent that here town-dross 
 He daubs with money-color to deceive ! ' 
 Rashly objected ! Is there not the Church 
 To intercede and bring benefic truce 
 At outset '/ She it is shall equalize 
 The laborers i' the vineyard, last as first. 
 Pay court to her, she stops impertinence. 
 ' Duke, once your sires crusaded it, we know : 
 Our friend the newcomer observes, no less. 
 Your chapel, rich with their emblazonry. 
 Wants roofing — might he but supply the 
 
 means ! 
 Marquise, yon gave the honor of your name. 
 Titular patronage, abundant will 
 To what should be an Orphan Institute : 
 Gave everything but funds, in brief ; and these. 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 
 
 745 
 
 Our friend, the lady newly resident, 
 Proposes to contribute, by your leave I ' 
 Brothers a-nd sisters lie they in thy lap, 
 Thou none-excluding:, all-collecting Church 1 
 Sure, one has half a foot i' the hierarchy 
 Of birth, when ' Nay, my dear,' laughs out the 
 
 Duke, 
 ' I 'm the crown's cushion-carrier, but the 
 
 crown — 
 
 Who gave its central glory, I or you ? ' 
 
 When Marquise jokes, ' My quest, forsooth ? 
 
 Each doit 
 I scrape together goes for Peter-pence 
 To purvey bread and water in his bonds 
 For Peter's self imprisoned — Lord, how long ? 
 Yours, yours alone the bounty, dear my dame. 
 You plumped the purse, which, poured into the 
 
 plate. 
 Made the Archbishop open brows so broad 1 
 And if you really mean to give that length 
 Of lovely lace to edge the robe ! ' . . . Ah, 
 
 friends. 
 Gem better serves so than by calling crowd, 
 Round shop-front to admire the million's- 
 
 worth ! 
 Lace gets more homage than from lorgnette- 
 stare. 
 And comment coarse to match, (should one 
 
 display 
 One's robe a trifle o'er the baignoire-edge,) 
 ' Well may she line her slippers with the hke, 
 If minded so ! their shop it was produced 
 That wonderful parure^ the other day. 
 Whereof the Baron said, it beggared him.' 
 And so the paired Mirandas built their house, 
 Enjoyed their fortune, sighed for family, 
 Found friends would serve their purpose quite 
 
 as well. 
 And come, at need, from Paris — anyhow, 
 With evident alacrity, from Vire — 
 Endeavor at the chase, at least succeed 
 In smoking, eating, drinking, laughing, and 
 Preferring country, oh so much to town ! 
 Thus lived the husband; though his wife 
 
 would sigh 
 In confidence, when Countesses were kind, 
 ' Cut off from Paris and society ! ' 
 White, White, I once more round you in the 
 
 ears! 
 Though you have marked it, in a corner, yours 
 Henceforth, — Red -lettered 'Failure,' very 
 
 plain, 
 I shall acknowledge, on the snowy hem 
 Of ordinary Night-cap ! Come, enough ! 
 We have gone round its cotton vastitude. 
 Or half-round, for the end 's consistent still, 
 A ctd-de-sac with stoppage at the sea. 
 Here we return upon our steps. One look 
 May bid good-morning — properly good-night — 
 To civic bliss, Miranda and his mate ! 
 Are we to rise and go ? " 
 
 No, sit and stay I 
 Now comes my moment, with the thrilling 
 
 throw 
 Of curtain from each side a shrouded case. 
 Don't the rings shriek an ominous '' Ha 1 ha I 
 So you take Human Nature upon trust " ? 
 
 List but with like trust to an mcident 
 Which speedily shall make quite Bad enough 
 Burn out of yonder spotless napery ! 
 Sit on the little mound here, whence you seize 
 ihe whole of the gay front sun-satisfied, 
 One laugh of color and embellishment ! 
 Because it was there, — past those laurustines. 
 On that smooth gi'avel-sweep 'twixt fiowers 
 
 and sward, — 
 There tragic death befell ; and not one grace 
 Outspread before yon but is registered 
 In that sinistrous coil these last two years 
 Were occupied in winding smooth again. 
 
 " True ? " WeU, at least it was concluded so, 
 oworn to be truth, allowed by Law as such, 
 (With my concurrence, if it matter here,) 
 A month ago : at Vire they tried the case. 
 
 II 
 
 Monsieur L^onee Miranda, then, . . . but 
 
 stay! 
 Permit me a preliminary word, 
 And, after, aU shall go so straight to end ! 
 
 Have you, the travelled lady, found yourself 
 Inside a ruin, fane or bath or cirque, 
 Renowned in story, dear through youthful 
 
 dream? 
 If not, — imagination serves as well. 
 Try fancy-land, go haak a thousand years. 
 Or forward, half the number, and confront 
 Some work of art gnawn hollow by Time's 
 
 tooth, — 
 Hellenic temple, Roman theatre, 
 Gothic cathedral, Gallic Tuileries, 
 But ruined, one and whichsoe'er you like. 
 Obstructions choke what still remains intact, 
 Yet proffer change that 's picturesque in turn ; 
 Since little life begins where great life ends, 
 And vegetation soon amalgamates. 
 Smooths novel shape from out the shapeless old. 
 Till broken column, battered cornice-block. 
 The centre with a bulk half weeds and flowers, 
 Half relics you devoutly recognize. 
 Devoutly recognizing, — hark, a voice 
 Not to be disregarded ! " Man worked here 
 Once on a time ; here needs again to work ; 
 Ruins obstruct, which man must remedy." 
 Would you demur " Let Time fulfil his task. 
 And, tUl the scythe-sweep find no obstacle. 
 Let man be patient " ? 
 
 The reply were prompt : 
 " Glisteningly beneath the May-night moon, 
 Herbage and floral coverture bedeck 
 Yon splintered mass amidst the solitude : 
 Wolves occupy the background, or some snake 
 Glides by at distance : picturesque enough ! 
 Therefore, preserve it? Nay, pour daylight 
 
 in, — 
 The mound proves swarming with humanity. 
 There never was a thorough solitude. 
 Now you look nearer ; mortal busy life 
 First of all brought the orumblings down on 
 
 pate, 
 
746 
 
 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Which trip man's foot still, plague his passage 
 
 much, 
 And prove — what seems to you so picturesque 
 To him is . . . but experiment yourself 
 Ou how conducive to a tiappy home 
 Will be the circumstance, yoiir bed for base 
 Boasts tessellated pavement, — equally 
 Affected by the scorpion for his nest, — 
 While what o'er-roofs bed is an architrave. 
 Marble, and not unlikely to crush man 
 To mummy, should its venerable prop, 
 Some figtree-stump, play traitor underneath. 
 Be wise 1 Decide ! For conservation's sake. 
 Clear the arena forthwith ! lest the tread 
 Of too-much-tried impatience trample out 
 Solid and unsubstantial to one blank 
 Mud-mixture, picturesque to nobody, — 
 And, task done, quarrel with the parts intact 
 Whence came the filtered fine dust, whence 
 
 the crash 
 Bides but its time to follow. Quick conclude 
 Removal, time effects so tardily, 
 Of what is plain obstruction ; rubbish cleared. 
 Let partial-ruin stand while ruin may, 
 And serve world's use, since use is manifold. 
 Repair wreck, stanchion waU to heart's content. 
 But never think of renovation pure 
 And simple, which involves creation too ; 
 Transform and welcome ! Yon tall tower may 
 
 help 
 (Though built to be a belfry and naught else) 
 tiome Fatlier Seechi, to tick Venus off 
 In transit : never bring there bell again, 
 To damage him aloft, brain us below. 
 When new vibrations bury both in brick ! " 
 
 Monsieur L4once Miranda, furnishing 
 The application at his cost, poor soul ! 
 Was instanced how, — because the world lay 
 
 strewn 
 With ravage of opinions in his path. 
 And neither he, nor any friendly wit. 
 Knew and could teach him which was iirm, 
 
 which frail. 
 In his adventure to walk straight through life 
 The partial-ruin, — in such enterprise. 
 He straggled into rubbish, struggled on, 
 And stumbled out again observably. 
 " Yon buttress still can back me up," he 
 
 judged : 
 And at a touch down came both he and it. 
 '' A certain statue, I was warned against. 
 Now, by good fortune, lies well underfoot. 
 And cannot 'tempt to folly any more : " 
 So, lifting eye, aloft since safety lay. 
 What did he light on ? the Idalian shape. 
 The nndeposed, erectly Victrix still ! 
 " These steps ascend the labyrinthine stair 
 Whence, darkling and on all-fours, out I stand 
 Exalt and safe, and bid low earth adieu — 
 For so instructs ' Advice to who would 
 
 climb : '" 
 And all at once the climbing landed him 
 — Where, is my story. 
 
 Take its moral first. 
 Do yon advise a climber ? Have respect 
 To the poor head, with more or less of brains 
 
 To spill, should breakage follow your advice 1 
 Head-break to him will be heart-break to you 
 For having preached " Disturb no ruins here I 
 Are not they crumbling of their own accord ? 
 Meantime, let poets, paintei-s keep a prize ! 
 Beside, a sage pedestrian picks his way." 
 A sage pedestrian — such as you and I ! 
 What if there trip, in merry carelessness, _ 
 And come to grief, a weak and foolish child ? 
 Be cautious how you counsel climbing, then I 
 
 Are you adventurous and climb yourself ? 
 Plant the foot warily, accept a staff. 
 Stamp only where you probe the standing-point, 
 Move forward, well assured that move you may : 
 Where you mistrust advance, stop short, thera 
 
 stick ! 
 This makes advancing slow and difficult ? 
 Hear what comes of the endeavor of brisk youth 
 To foot it fast and easy ! Keep this same 
 Notion of outside mound and inside mash. 
 Towers yet intact round turfy rottenness. 
 Symbolic partial-ravage, — keep in mind ! 
 Here fortune placed ms feet who first of all 
 Found no inonmbrance, till head found . . . 
 
 But hear ! 
 
 This son and heir then of the jeweller. 
 Monsieur L^once Miranda, at his birth. 
 Mixed the Castiliau passionate blind blood 
 With answerable gush, his mother's gift. 
 Of spirit, French and critical and cold. 
 Such mixture makes a battle in the brain, 
 Ending as faith or doubt gets uppermost ; 
 Then will has way a moment, but no more : 
 So nicely balanced are the adverse strengths. 
 That victory entails reverse next time. 
 The tactics of the two are different 
 And equalize the odds : for blood comes first, 
 Surrounding life with undisputed faith. 
 But presently a new antagonist, 
 By scarce-suspected passage iu the dark, 
 Steals spirit, hngers at each crevice found 
 Athwart faith's stronghold, fronts the aston- 
 ished man : 
 "Such pains to keep me far, yet here stand I. 
 Your doubt inside the faith-defence of you ! " 
 
 With faith it was friends bulwarked him about 
 
 From infancy to boyhood ; so, by youth. 
 
 He stood impeuetrably circuited. 
 
 Heaven-high and low as hell : what lacked he 
 thus. 
 
 Guarded against aggression, storm or sap ? 
 
 What foe would dare approach ? Historic 
 Doubt ? 
 
 Ay, were there some half -knowledge to attack ! 
 
 Batter doubt's best, sheer ignorance will beat. 
 
 Acumen metaphysic ? — drills its way 
 
 Through what, 1 wonder ! A thick feather- 
 bed 
 
 Of thoughtlessness, no operating tool — 
 
 Framed to transpierce the flint-stone — fumble! 
 at. 
 
 With chance of finding an impediment ! 
 
 This.Ravissante, now : when be saw the church 
 
 For the first time, and to his dying-day. 
 
 His firm belief was that the name fell fit 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 
 
 747 
 
 From the Delivering Virgin, niched and known; 
 
 As if there wanted records to attest 
 
 The appellation was a pleasantly, 
 
 A plo.is rendering of Rare Vissante, 
 
 Thj proper name which erst our province hore. 
 
 H<j would have told you that Saint Aldabert 
 
 Founded the church, (Heaven early favored 
 
 France,) 
 About the second century from Christ ; 
 Though the true man was Bishop of Raimbaux, 
 Eleventh in succession, Eldobert, 
 Who flourished after some six hundred years. 
 He it was brought the image " from afar," 
 (Made out of stone the place produces still,) 
 " Infantine Art divinely artless," (Art 
 In the decrepitude of Decadence,) 
 And set it up a-working miracles 
 Until the Northmen's fury laid it low. 
 Not long, however : an egregious sheep. 
 Zealous with scratching hoof and routing horn. 
 Unearthed the image in good Mailleville s time, 
 Count of thecountry. " If the tale be false. 
 Why stands it carved above the portal plain ? " 
 Monsieur Ldonce Miranda used to ask. 
 To Londi'es went the prize in solemn pomp. 
 But, liking old abode and loathing new. 
 Was borne — this time, by angels — back again. 
 And, reinaugurated, miracle 
 Succeeded miracle, a lengthy list, 
 Until indeed the culmination came — 
 Archbishop Chaumont prayed a prayer and 
 
 vowed 
 A vow — gained prayer and paid vow prop- 
 erly — 
 For the conversion of Prince Vertgalant. 
 These facts, sucked in along with mother's- 
 
 milk, 
 Monsieur L^once Miranda would dispute 
 As soon as that his hands were flesh and bone. 
 Milk-nourished two-and-twenty years before. 
 So fortified by blind CastUian blood. 
 What say you to the chances of French cold 
 Critical spirit, should Voltaire besiege 
 " Alp, Apennine, and fortified redoubt " ? 
 Ay, would such spirit please to play faith's 
 
 game 
 Faith's way, attack where faith defends so 
 
 well! 
 But then it shifts, tries other strategy. 
 Coldness grows warmth, the critical becomes 
 Unquestioning acceptance. '^ Share and share 
 Alike in facts, to truth add other truth ! 
 Why with old truth needs new truth disagree ? " 
 
 Thus doubt was found invading faith, this 
 
 time. 
 By help of not the spirit but the flesh : 
 Fat Rabelais chuckled, where faith lay in wait 
 For lean Voltaire's grimace — French, either 
 
 foe. 
 Accordingly, while round about our friend 
 Ran faith without a break which learned eye 
 Could find at two-and-twenty years of age. 
 The twenty-two-years-old frank footstep soon 
 Assured itself there spread a standing-space 
 Flowery and comfortable, nowise rock 
 Nor pebble-pavement roughed for champion's 
 
 tread 
 
 Who scorns discomfort, pacing at his post. 
 Tall, long-limbed, shoulder riglit and!^ shoulder 
 
 left. 
 And 'twixt acromia such a latitude, 
 Black heaps of hair on head, and blacker bush 
 O'er-i-ioting chin, cheek and throat and chest, — 
 His brown meridional temperament 
 Told him — or rather pricked into his sense 
 Plainer than language — " Pleasant station here ! 
 Youth, strength, and lustihood can sleep on turf 
 Yet pace the stony platform afterward : 
 First steial of a foe and up they start ! 
 Saint Eldobert, at all such vanity. 
 Nay — sinfulness, had shaken head austere. 
 Had he? But did Prince Vertgalant? And 
 
 yet. 
 After how long a slumber, of what sort. 
 Was it, he stretched octogenary joints. 
 And, nigh on Day-of-Judgment trumpet-blast. 
 Jumped up and manned wall, biisk as any 
 
 bee ? " ' 
 
 Nor Rabelais nor Voltaire, but Sganarelle, 
 You comprehend, was pushing through the 
 
 chink ! 
 That stager in the saint's correct costume. 
 Who ever has his speech in readiness 
 For thick-head juvenility at fault : 
 " Go pace yon platform and play sentinel ! 
 You won't ? The worse ! but still a worse 
 
 might hap. 
 Stay then, provided that you keep in sight 
 The battlement, one bold leap lands you by I 
 Resolve not desperately ' Wall or turf. 
 Choose this, choose that, but no alternative ! ' 
 No ! Earth left once were left for good and 
 
 all : 
 ' With Heaven you may accommodate your- 
 self.' " 
 
 Saint Eldobert — I much approve his mode ; 
 With sinner Vertgalant 1 sympathize ; 
 But histrionic Sganarelle, who prompts 
 While pulling back, refuses yet concedes, — 
 Whether he preach in chair, or print in book. 
 Or whisper due sustainment to weak flesh. 
 Counting his sham beads threaded on a lie — 
 Surely, one should bid pack that mountebank ! 
 Surely, he must have momentary fits 
 Of self-sufficient stage-forgetfulness, 
 Escapings of the actor-lassitude 
 When he allows the grace to show the grin. 
 Which ought to let even thickheads recognize 
 (Through all the busy and bentfic part, — 
 Bridge-building, or rock-riving, or good clean 
 Transport of church and congregation both 
 From this to that place with no harm at all,) 
 The Devil, that old stager, at his trick 
 Of general utility, who leads 
 Downward, perhaps, but fiddles all the way I 
 
 Therefore, no sooner does our candidate 
 For saintship spotlessly emerge soul-cleansed 
 From First Communion to mount guard at post, 
 Paris-proof, top to toe, than up there start 
 The Spirit of the Boulevard — you know 
 
 Who — 
 With jocund " So, a structure fixed as fate, 
 
748 
 
 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Faith's tower joins on to tower, no ring more 
 
 round, 
 Full fifty years at distance, too, from youth ! 
 Once reach that precinct and there fight your 
 
 best, 
 As looking back you wonder what has come 
 Of daisy-dappled turf you danced across ! 
 Few flowers that played with youth shall 
 
 pester age, 
 However age esteem the courtesy ; 
 And Eldobert was something past his prime, 
 Stocked Caen with churches ere he tried hand 
 
 here. 
 Saint -Sauveur, Notre -Dame, Saint - Pierre, 
 
 Saint^Jean 
 Attest his handiwork commenced betimes. 
 He probably would preach that turf is mud. 
 Suppose it mud, through mud one picks a way, 
 And when, clay-dogged, the struggler steps to 
 
 stone. 
 He uncakes shoe, arrives in manlier guise 
 Than carried pick-a-back by Eldobert 
 Big-baby-fashion, lest his leathers leak ! 
 All that parade about Prince Vertgalant 
 Amounts to — your CastUian helps enough — 
 Inveni ovem qu(E perierat. 
 But ask the pretty votive statue-thing 
 What the lost sheep's meantime amusements 
 
 were 
 Till the Archbishop found him ! That stays 
 
 blank : 
 They washed the fieece well and forgot the 
 
 rest. 
 Make haste, since time flies, to determine, 
 
 though ! " 
 
 Thus opportunely took up parable, — 
 Admonishing Miranda just emerged 
 Pure from The Ravissante and Paris-proof, — 
 Saint Sganarelle ; then sUpped aside, changed 
 
 mask. 
 And made re-entry a<5 a gentleman 
 Bom of the Boulevard, with another speech, 
 X spare you. 
 
 So, the year or two revolved, 
 And ever the young man was dutiful 
 To altar and to hearth : had confidence 
 In the whole Ravissantish history. 
 Voltaire ? Who ought to know so much of 
 
 him, — 
 Old sciolist, whom only boys think !^age, — 
 As one whose father's house upon the Quai 
 Neighbored the very house where that Voltaire 
 Died mad and raving, not without a burst 
 Of squibs and crackers too significant ? 
 Father and mother hailed their best of sons. 
 Type of obedience, domesticity. 
 Never such an example inside doors ! 
 Outside, as well not keep too close a watch ; 
 Youth must be left to some discretion there. 
 And what discretion proved, I find deposed 
 At Vire, confirmed by his own words : to wit. 
 How, with the spriteuness of twenty-five^ 
 Five — and not twenty, for he gave their names 
 With laudable precision — were the few 
 Appointed by him unto mistress-ship ; 
 While meritoriously the whole long week 
 
 A votary of commerce only, week 
 
 Ended, "at shut of shop on Saturday, 
 
 Do I, as is my wont, get drunk," he writes 
 
 In airy record to a confidant. 
 
 •' Bragging and lies ! " replies the apologist : 
 
 " And do I lose by that ? " laughed Somebody, 
 
 At the Court-edge ar-tiptoe, 'mid the crowd. 
 
 In his own clothes, a-listening to men's Law. 
 
 Thus while, prospectively a combatant, 
 
 The volunteer bent brows, clenched jaws, and 
 
 fieirce 
 Whistled the march-time " Warrior to the 
 
 waU!" 
 Something like flowery laughters round his feet 
 Tangled him of a sudden with " Sleep first ! " 
 And fairly flat upon the turf sprawled he. 
 And let strange creatures make his mouth their 
 
 home. 
 
 Anyhow, 't is the nature of the soul 
 
 To seek a show of durability. 
 
 Nor, changing, plainly be the slave of change. 
 
 Outside the turf, the towers : but, round the 
 
 turf, 
 A tent may rise, a temporary shroud. 
 Mock-faith to suit a mimic dwelling-place : 
 Tent which, while screening jollity inside 
 From the external circuit — evermore 
 A menace to who lags when he should march — 
 Yet stands a-tremble, ready to collapse 
 At touch of foot : turf is acknowledged grass. 
 And grass, though pillowy, held contemptible 
 Compared with solid rock, the rarapired ridge. 
 To truth a pretty homage thus we pay 
 By testifying — what we dally with. 
 Falsehood, (which, never fear we take for 
 
 truth !) 
 We may enjoy, but then — how we despise ! 
 
 Accordingly, on weighty business bound. 
 Monsieur L^once Miranda stooped to play. 
 But, with experience, soon reduced the game 
 To piinciples, and thenceforth played by rule : 
 Rule, dignifying sport as sport, proclaimed 
 No less that sport was sport, and nothing more. 
 He understood the worth of womankind, — 
 To furnish man — provisionally — .sport : 
 Sport transitive — such earth's amusements 
 
 are : 
 But, seeing that amusements pall by use. 
 Variety therein is requisite. 
 And since the serious work of life were wronged 
 Should we bestow importance on our play. 
 It follows, in such womankind-pursuit. 
 Cheating is lawful chase. We have to spend 
 An hour — they want a lifetime thrown away : 
 We seek to tickle sense — they ask for soul. 
 As if soul had no higher ends to serve ! 
 A stag-hunt gives the royal creature law ; 
 Bat-fowling is all fair with birds at roost. 
 The lantern and the clai>net suit the hedge. 
 Which must explain why, bent on Boulevard 
 
 game, 
 Monsieur L^once Miranda decently 
 Was prudent in his pleasure — passed himself 
 Off on the fragile fair about his path 
 As the gay devil rich in mere good looks. 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 
 
 Youth, hope — what matter though the purse 
 
 be void ? 
 " If I were only young Miranda, now, 
 Instead of a poor clerkly drudge at desk 
 All day, poor artist vainly bruising brush 
 On palette, pojr musician scraping gut 
 With horsehair teased that no harmonics come ! 
 Then would I love with liberality, 
 Then would I pay ! — who now shall be repaid, 
 Bepaid alike for present pain and past. 
 If Mademoiselle permit the coutre-danse. 
 Sing ' Gay in garret youth at twenty lives,' 
 And afterward accept a lemonade I " 
 
 Such sweet facilities of intercourse 
 Afford the Winter-Garden and Mabille ! 
 " Oh, I unite " — runs on the confidence. 
 Poor fellow, that was read in open Court, 
 ■ — *' Amusement with discretion : never fear 
 My escapades cost more than market-price ! 
 No durably-attached Miranda-dupe, 
 Sucked dry of substance by two clinging lips, 
 Promising marriage, and performing it ! 
 Trust me, I know the world, and know myself. 
 And know where duty takes me — in good 
 time!" 
 
 Thus fortified and realistic, then. 
 At all points thus against illusion armed, 
 He wisely did New Year inaugurate 
 By playing truant to the favored five : 
 And sat installed at " The Varieties," — 
 Playhouse appropriately named, — to note 
 (Pryiug amid the turf that 's flowery there) 
 What primrose, firstling of the year, might push 
 The snows aside to deck his buttonhole — 
 Unnoticed by that outline sad, severe, 
 (Though iifty good long years removed from 
 
 youth,) 
 That tow«r and tower, — our image bear in 
 
 mind! 
 
 No sooner was he seated than, behold, 
 
 Out burst a polyanthus ! He was 'ware 
 
 Of a young woman niched in neighborhood ; 
 
 And ere one moment flitted, fast was he 
 
 Found captive to the beauty evermore. 
 
 For life, for death, for heaven, for hell, her own. 
 
 Philosophy, bewail thy fate I Adieu, 
 
 Youth realistic and illusion-proof ! 
 
 Monsieur L^once Miranda, — hero late 
 
 Who " understood the worth of womankind," 
 
 "Who found therein — provisionally — sport," — 
 
 Felt, in the flitting of a moment, fool 
 
 Was he, and folly all that seemed so wise. 
 
 And the best proof of wisdom's birth would be 
 
 That he made all endeavor, body, soul. 
 
 By any means, at any sacrifice 
 
 Of labor, wealth, repute, and ( — well, the time 
 
 For choosing between heaven on earth, and 
 
 heaven 
 In heaven, was not at hand immediately — ) 
 Made all endeavor, without loss incurred 
 Of one least minute, to obtain her love. 
 "Sport transitive ? " " Variety required ? " 
 " In loving were a lifetime thrown away? " 
 How singularly may young men mistake 1 
 The fault must be repaired with energy. 
 
 749 
 
 Monsieur L^once Miranda ate her up 
 
 With eye-devouring ; when the unconscious fair 
 
 Passed from the close-packed haU, he pressed 
 
 behind ; 
 She mounted vehicle, he did the same. 
 Coach stopped, and cab fast followed, at one 
 
 door — - 
 Good house in unexceptionable street. 
 Out stepped the lady, — never think, alone ! 
 A mother was not wanting to the maid. 
 Or, maybe, wife, or widow, might one say ? 
 Out stepped and properly down flung himself 
 Monsieur L^once Miranda at her feet — 
 And never left them after, so to speak, 
 For twenty years, till his last hour of life. 
 When he released them, as precipitate. 
 Love proffered and accepted then and there ! 
 Such potency in word and look has truth. 
 
 Truth I say, truth I mean : this love was true. 
 And the rest happened by due consequence. 
 By which we are to learn that there exists 
 A falsish false, for truth 's inside the same. 
 And truth that 's only half true, falsish truth. 
 The better for both parties ! folks may taunt 
 That half your rock-built wall is rubble-heap : 
 Answer them, half their flowery tui^ is stones I 
 Our friend had hitherto been decking coat 
 If not with stones, with weeds that stones befit. 
 With dandelions — " primrose-buds," smirked 
 
 he; 
 This proved a polyanthus on his breast. 
 Prize-lawful or prize-lawless, flower the same. 
 So with his other instance of mistake : 
 Was Christianity the Ravissante ? 
 
 And what a flower of flowers he chanced on 
 
 now! 
 To primrose, polyanthus I prefer 
 As illustration, from the fancy-fact 
 That out of simple came the composite 
 By culture : that the florist bedded thick 
 His primrose-root in ruddle, bullock's blood, 
 Ochre and devils'-dung, for aught I know, 
 Until the pale and pure grew fiery-fine. 
 Ruby and topaz, rightly named anew. 
 This lady was no product of the plain ; 
 Social manure had raised a rarity. 
 Clara de Millefleurs (note the happy name) 
 Blazed in the full-blown glory of her {Spring. 
 Peerlessly perfect, form and face : for both — 
 " Imagine what, at seventeen, may have proved 
 Miss Pages, the actress : Pages herself, my 
 
 dear! " 
 Noble she was, the name denotes : and rich ? 
 " The apartment in this Coliseum Street, 
 Furnished, my dear, with such an elegance, 
 Testifies wealth, my dear, sufficiently ! 
 What quality, what style and title, eh ? 
 Well now, waive nonsense, you and I are boys 
 No longer : somewhere must a screw be slack I 
 Don't fancy. Duchesses descend at door 
 From carriage - step to stranger prostrate 
 
 stretched. 
 And bid him take heart, and deliver mind, 
 March in and make himself at ease forthwith, — 
 However broad his chest and black his beard. 
 And comely his belongings, — all through love 
 
75° 
 
 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Protested in a world of ways save one — 
 Hinting at marriage! " — marriage which yet 
 
 means 
 Only the obvious method, easiest help 
 To satisfaction of love's first demand, 
 That love endure eternally : '' my dear, 
 Somewhere or other must a screw be slack I " 
 
 Truth is the proper policy : from truth — 
 Whate'er the force wherewith you fling your 
 
 speech, — 
 Be sure that speech will lift you, by rebound, 
 Somewhere above the lowness of a lie ! 
 Monsieur L^once Miranda heard too true 
 A tale — perhaps I may subjoin, too trite ! 
 As the meek martyr takes her statued stand 
 Above our pity, claims our worship just 
 Because of what she puts in evidence. 
 Signal of suffering, badge of torture borne 
 In days gone by, shame then, but glory now. 
 Barb, in the breast, turned aureole for the front ! 
 So, half timidity, composure half, 
 Clara de Millefleurs told her martyrdom. 
 
 Of poor though noble parentage, deprived 
 
 Too early of a father's guardianship. 
 
 What wonder if the prodigality 
 
 Of nature in the girl, whose mental gifts 
 
 Matched her external dowry, form and face — 
 
 If these suggested a too prompt resource 
 
 To the resourceless mother ? " Try the Stage, 
 
 And so escape starvation ! Prejudice 
 
 Defames Mimetic Art : be yours to prove 
 
 That gold and dross may meet and never mix. 
 
 Purity plunge in pitch yet soil no plume ! " 
 
 AU was prepared in London — (you conceive 
 
 The natural shrinking from publicity 
 
 In Paris, where the name excites remark) — 
 
 London was ready for the grand d4but ; 
 
 When some perverse ill-fortune, incident 
 
 To art mimetic, some malicious thrust 
 
 Of Jealousy who sidles 'twixt the scenes. 
 
 Or pops up sudden from the prompter's hole, — 
 
 Somehow the brilliant bubble burst in suds. 
 
 Want followed : in a foreign land, the pair 1 
 
 Oh, hurry over the catastrophe — 
 
 Mother too sorely tempted, daughter tried 
 
 Scarcely so much as circumvented, say ! 
 
 Caged unsuspecting artless innocence ! 
 
 Monsieur L^once Miranda tell the rest ! — 
 
 The rather that he told it in a style 
 
 To puzzle Court Guide students, much more 
 
 me. 
 *' Brief, she became the favorite of Lord N., 
 An aged but illustrious Duke, thereby 
 Breaking the heart of his competitor. 
 The Prince of 0. Behold her palaced straight 
 In splendor, clothed in diamonds," (phrase how 
 
 '* Giving tone to the City by the Thames I 
 
 Lord N., the aged but illustrious Duke, 
 
 Was even on the point of wedding her — 
 
 Giving his name to her " (why not to us ?) 
 
 ^* But that her better angel interposed. 
 
 She fled from such a fate to Paris back. 
 
 A fortnight since : conceive Lord N.'s despair ! 
 
 Duke as he is, there 's no invading France. 
 
 He must restrict pursuit to postal plague 
 
 Of writing letteis daily, duly read 
 
 As darlingly she hands them to myself. 
 
 The privileged supplanter, who therewith 
 
 Light a cigar and see abundant blue " — 
 
 (Either of heaven or else Havana-smoke,) 
 
 " Think ! she, who helped herself to diamonds 
 
 late. 
 In passion of disinterestedness 
 Now — will accept no tribute of my love 
 Beyond a paltry ring, three Louis'-worth ! 
 Little she knows I have the rummaging 
 Of old Papa's shop in the Place Vend8rae ! " 
 So wrote entrancedly to confidant. 
 Monsieur L^once Miranda. Surely now, 
 If Heaven, that see all, understands no less, 
 It finds temptation pardonable here, 
 It mitigates the promised punishment. 
 It recognizes that to tarry just 
 An April hour amid such dainty turf 
 Means no rebellion against task imposed 
 Of journey to the distant wall one day ? 
 Monsieur L^once Miranda puts the case ! 
 Love, he is purposed to renounce, abjure ; . 
 But meanwhile, is the case a common one ? 
 Is it the vulgar sin, none hates as he ? 
 Which question, put directly to "his dear " 
 (His brother — I will tell you in a trice). 
 Was doubtless nieant, by due meandering. 
 To reach, to fall not unobserved before 
 The auditory cavern 'neath the cope 
 Of Her, the placable, the Kavissante. 
 But here 's the drawback, that the image 
 
 smiles, 
 Smiles on, smiles ever, says to supplicant 
 " Ay, ay, ay " — like some kindly weathercock 
 Which, stuck fast at Set Fair, Favonian 
 
 Breeze, 
 Still warrants you from rain, though Auster's 
 
 lead 
 Bring down the sky above your cloakless 
 
 mirth. 
 Had he proposed this question to. nor " dear " 
 Nor Ravissante, but prompt to the Police, 
 The Commissary of his Quarter, now — 
 There had been shaggy eyebrows elevate 
 With twinkling apprehension in each orb 
 Beneath, and when the sudden shut of mouth 
 Relaxed, — lip pressing lip, lest out should 
 
 plump 
 The pride of knowledge in too frank a flow, — 
 Then, fact on fact forthcoming, dose were 
 
 dealt 
 Of truth remedial, in sufficiency 
 To save a chicken threatened with the pip. 
 Head-staggers and a tumble from its perch. 
 
 Alack, it was the lady's self that made 
 
 The revelation, after certain days 
 
 — Nor so unwisely ! As the haschisch-man 
 
 Prepares a novice to receive his drug. 
 
 Adroitly hides the soil with sudden spread 
 
 Of carpet ere he seats his customer : 
 
 Then shows him how to smoke himself about 
 
 With Paradise ; and only when, at puff 
 
 Of pipe, the Houri dances round the brain 
 
 Of dreamer, does he judge no need is now 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 
 
 751 
 
 For circumspeotion and punctiliousness ; 
 
 Me may resume the serviceable scrap 
 
 That made the votary unaware of muck. 
 
 Just thus the lady, when her brewage — love — 
 
 Was well a-fume about the novice-brain, 
 
 Savf she might boldly pluck from underneath 
 
 Her lover the preliminary lie. 
 
 Clara de Millefleurs, of the noble race, 
 Was Lucie iSteiner, child to Dominique 
 And Magdalen Commercy ; bom at Sierok, 
 About the bottom of the Social Couch. 
 The father having come and gone again, 
 The mother and the daughter found their way 
 To Paris, and professed mode-merchandise, 
 Were milliners, we English roughlier say ; 
 And soon a fellow-lodger in the house, 
 Monsieur Ulysse Muhlhausen, young and smart. 
 Tailor by trade, perceived his house-mate's 
 
 youth. 
 Smartness, and beauty over and above. 
 Courtship was brief, and marriage followed 
 
 quick, 
 And quieklier — impecuniosity. 
 The young pair quitted Paris to reside 
 At London : which repaid the compliment 
 But scurvily, since not a whit the more 
 Trade prospered by the Thames than by the 
 
 Seine. 
 Failing aU other, as a last resource, 
 " He would have trafficked in his wife," — she 
 
 said. 
 If for that cause they quarrelled, 't was, I fear. 
 Bather from reclamation of her rights 
 To wifely independence, than as wronged 
 Otherwise by the course of life proposed ; 
 Since, on escape to Paris hack again. 
 From horror and the husband, — ill-exchanged 
 For safe maternal home recovered thus, — 
 1 find her domiciled and dominant 
 In that apartment. Coliseum Street, 
 Where all the splendid magic met and mazed 
 Monsieur L^once Miranda's venturous eye. 
 Only, the same was furnished at the cost 
 Of some one notable in days long since, 
 Carlino Centofanti : he it was. 
 Found entertaining unawares — if not 
 An angel, yet a youth in search of one. 
 
 Why this revealment after reticence ? 
 
 Wherefore, beginning " Millefleurs," end at all 
 
 Steiner, Muhlhausen, and the ngly rest ? 
 
 Because the unsocial purse-controlling wight, 
 
 Carlino Centofanti, made aware 
 
 By misadventure that his bounty, crumbs 
 
 From table, comforted a visitant, 
 
 Took churlish leave, and left, too, debts to 
 
 pay. 
 Loaded with debts, the lady needs must bring 
 Her soul to bear assistance from a friend 
 Beside that paltry ring, three Louis'-worth ; 
 And therefore might the little circumstance 
 That Monsieur L4once had the rummaging 
 Of old Papa's shop in the Place Vendome, 
 Pass, perhaps, not so unobservably. 
 
 Frail shadow of a woman in the flesh, 
 These very eyes of mine saw yesterday, 
 
 Would I re-tell this story of your woes. 
 Would I have heart to do you detriment 
 By pinning aU this shame and sorrow plain 
 To that poor chignon, — staying with me still. 
 Though form and face have well-nigh faded 
 
 now, — 
 But that men read it, rough in brutal print. 
 As two years since some functionary's voice 
 Rattled all this — and more by very much — 
 Into the ear of vulgar Court and crowd ? 
 Whence, by reverberation, rumblings gi-ew 
 To what had proved a week-long roar in France 
 Had not the dreadful cannonry drowned all. 
 Was, now, the answer of your advocate 
 More than just this? "The shame fell long 
 
 ago. 
 The sorrow keeps increasing : God forbid 
 We judge man by the faults of youth in age ! " 
 Pennit me the expression of a hope 
 Your youth proceeded like your avenue. 
 Stepping by bush, and tree, and taller tree, 
 Until, columnar, at the house they end. 
 So might your creeping youth columnar rise 
 And reach, by year and year, symmetrical. 
 To where all shade stops short, shade's service 
 
 done. 
 Bushes on either side, and boughs above. 
 Darken, deform the path else sun would 
 
 streak ; 
 And, cornered halfway somewhere, I suspect 
 Stagnation and a horse-pond : hurry past ! 
 For here 's the house, the happy half-and-half 
 Existence — such as stands for happiness 
 True and entire, howe'er the squeamish talk ! 
 Twenty years long, you may have loved this 
 
 man; 
 He must have loved you ; that 's a pleasant life, 
 Whatever was your right to lead the same. 
 The white domestic pigeon pairs secure, 
 Nay, does mere duty by bestowing egg 
 In authorized compartment, warm and safe. 
 Boarding about, and gilded spire above, _ 
 Hoisted on pole, to dogs' and oats' despair 1 
 But I have spied a veriest trap of twigs 
 On tree-top, every straw a thievery. 
 Where the wild dove — despite the fowler's 
 
 snare. 
 The sportsman's shot, the urchin's stone — 
 
 crooned gay. 
 And solely gave her heart to what she hatched, 
 Nor minded a malignant world below. 
 I throw first stone forsooth ? 'T is mere assault 
 Of playful sugarplum against your cheek. 
 Which, if it makes cheek tingle, wipes off 
 
 rouge ! 
 You, my worst woman? Ah, that touches 
 
 pride. 
 Puts on his mettle the exhibitor 
 Of Night-caps, if you taunt him "This, no 
 
 doubt, — 
 Now we have got to Female-garniture, — 
 Crowns your collection. Reddest of the row ! 
 unimaginative ignorance 
 Of what dye's depth keeps best apart from 
 
 worst 
 In womankind! —how heaven's own pure may 
 
 seem 
 To blush aurorally beside such blanched 
 
752 
 
 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Divineness as the women-wreaths named White : 
 While hell, eruptive and fulig:inaus, 
 Sickens to very pallor as I point 
 Her place to a Red clout called woman too ! 
 Hail, heads that ever had such glory once 
 Touch you a moment, like God's cloven tongues 
 Of fire ! your lambent aureoles lost may leave 
 You marked yet, deaj.' beyond true diadems ! 
 And hold, each foot, nor spurn, to man's disr 
 
 grace, 
 What otlier twist of fetid rag may fall ! 
 Let slink iuto the sewer the cupping-cloth ! 
 
 Lucie, much solaced, I re-finger you. 
 
 The medium article ; if ruddy-marked 
 
 With iron-mould, your cambric, — clean at 
 
 least 
 From poison-speck of rot and purulence ! 
 Lucie Muhlhausen said — " ISuch thing am I : 
 Love me, or love me not ! " Miranda said, 
 ** I do love, mory than ever, most for this." 
 The revelation of the very truth 
 Proved the concluding necessary shake 
 Which bids the tardy mixture crystallize 
 Or else stay ever liquid : shoot up shaft. 
 Durably diamond, or evaporate — 
 Sluggish solution through a minute's slip. 
 Monsieur L^once Miranda took his soul 
 In both his hands, as if it were a vase. 
 To see what came of the convulsion there, 
 And found, amid subsidence, love new-bom 
 So sparkhngly resplendent, old was new. 
 *' Wliatever be my lady's present, past, 
 Or future, this is certain of my soul, 
 I love her ! in despite of all I know. 
 Defiance of the much I have to fear, 
 I venture happiness on what 1 hope. 
 And love her from this day forevermore ! 
 No prejudice to old profound respect 
 For certain Powers ! I trust they bear in mind 
 A most peculiar case, and straighten out 
 What 's crooked there, before we close accounts. 
 Renounce the world for them — some day I 
 
 wiU: 
 Meantime, to me let her become the world I " 
 
 Thus, mutely might our friend soliloquize 
 Over the tradesmen's bills, his Clara's gift — 
 In the apartment, Coliseum Street, 
 Oarlino Centofanti's legacy. 
 Provided rent and taxes were discharged — 
 In face of Steiner now, De Millefleurs once, 
 The tailor's wife and runaway confessed. 
 
 On such a lady if election light, 
 
 (According to a socia] prejudice,) 
 
 if henceforth " all the world " she constitute 
 
 For any lover, — needs must he renounce 
 
 Our world in ordinary, walked about 
 
 By couples loving as its laws prescribe, — 
 
 Renunciation sometimes difficult. 
 
 But, in this instance, time and place and thing 
 
 Combined to simplify experiment. 
 
 And make Miranda, in the current phrase, 
 
 Master the situation passably. 
 
 For first facility, his brother died — 
 
 Who was, I shonld have told you, confidant, 
 
 Adviser, referee, and substitute, 
 All from a distance : but I knew how soon 
 This younger brother, lost in Portugal, 
 Had to depart and leave our friend at large. 
 Cut off abruptly from companionship 
 With brother-soul of bulk about as big, 
 (Obvious PEcipient — by intelligence 
 And sympathy, poor little paii' of souls — 
 Of much affection and some foolishness,) 
 Monsieur L^once Miranda, meant to lean 
 By nature, needs must shift the leaning-place 
 To his love's bosom from his brother's neck, 
 Or fall flat unrelieved of freight sublime. 
 
 Next died the lord of the Aladdin's cave. 
 Master o" the mint, and keeper of the keys 
 Of cheste chokefull with gold and silver changed 
 By Art to forms where wealth forgot itself, 
 And caskets where reposed each pullet-egg 
 Of diamond, slipping fiame from fifty slarits. 
 In short, the father of the family 
 Took his departure also from our scene. 
 Leaving a fat succession to his heir 
 Monsieur L^once Miranda, — " fortunate, 
 If ever man was, in a father's death," 
 (So commented the world, — not he, too kind, 
 Could that be, rather than scarce kind enough) 
 Indisputably fortunate so far, 
 That little of incumbrance in his path. 
 Which money kicks aside, would lie there long. 
 
 And finally, a rough but wholesome shock. 
 
 An accident which comes to kill or cure, 
 
 A jerk which mends a dislocated joint ! 
 
 Such happy chance, at cost of twinge, no doubt, 
 
 Into the socket back again put truth. 
 
 And stopped the hmb from longer dragging 
 
 lie. 
 For love suggested, " Better shamble on. 
 And bear your lameness with what grace you 
 
 may !" 
 And but for this rude wholesome accident, 
 Continuance of disguise and subterfuge, 
 Retention of first falsehood as to name 
 And nature in the lady, might have proved 
 Too necessary for abandonment. 
 Monsieur L^once Miranda probably 
 Had else been loath to cast the mask aside, 
 So politic, so self^reservative. 
 Therefore so pardonable — though so wrong ! 
 For see the bugbear in the background ! 
 
 Breathe 
 But ugly name, and wind is sure to waft 
 The husband news of the wife's whereabout : 
 From where he lies perdue in London town. 
 Forth steps the needy tailor on the stage, 
 Deity-like from dusk machine of fog. 
 And claims his consort, or his consort's worth 
 In rubies which her price is far above. 
 Hard to propitiate, harder to oppose, — 
 Who but the man's self came to banish fear, 
 A pleasant apparition, such as shocks 
 A moment, tells a tale, then goes for good ! 
 
 Monsieur Ulysse Muhlhausen proved no less 
 Nor more than " Gustave," lodging opposite 
 Monsieur L^once Miranda's diamond-cave 
 And ruby-mine, and lacking little thence 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 
 
 7S3 
 
 Save that its gnome would keep the captive safe, 
 
 Never return his Clara to his arms. 
 
 For why ? He was become the man in vogue, 
 
 The indispensable to who went clothed 
 
 Nor cared encounter Paris fashion's blame, — 
 
 Such miracle could London absence work. 
 
 Rolling in riches — so translate " the vogue " — 
 
 Bather his object was to keep oft' claw 
 
 Should grii!tin scent the gold, should wife lay 
 
 claim 
 To lawful portion at a future day. 
 Than tempt his partner from her private spoils. 
 Best forage each for each, nor coupled hunt ! 
 
 Pnrsuantly, one morning, — knock at door 
 With knuckle, dry authoritative cough. 
 And easy stamp of foot, broke startlingly 
 On household slumber. Coliseum Street : 
 "Admittance in the name of Law!" In 
 
 marched 
 The Commissary and subordinate. 
 One glance sufficed them. " A marital pair: 
 We certify, and bid good morning, sir 1 
 Madame, a thousand pardons ! " Whereupon 
 Monsieur Ulysse Muhlhausen, otherwise 
 Called " Gustave " for conveniency of trade, 
 Deposing in due form complaint of wrong. 
 Made his demand of remedy — divorce 
 From bed, board, share of name, and part in 
 
 goods. 
 Monsieur L^once Miranda owned his fault. 
 Protested his pure ignorance, from first 
 To last, of rights infringed in *' Gustave's " 
 
 case : 
 Submitted him to judgment. Law decreed 
 " Body and goods be henceforth separate ! " 
 And thereupon each party took its way, 
 This right, this left, rejoicing, to abide 
 Estranged yet amicable, opposites 
 In life as in respective dwelling-place. 
 Still does one read on his establishment 
 Huge-lettered " Gustave," — gold out-glittering 
 "Miranda, goldsmith," just across the street — 
 ' ' A first-rate hand at riding-habits ' ' — say 
 The instructed — "special cut of chamber- 
 robes," 
 
 Thus by a rude in seeming — rightlier judged 
 
 Beneficent surprise, publicity 
 
 Stopped further fear and trembling, and what 
 
 tale 
 Cowardice thinks a covert : one bold splash 
 Into the mid-shame, and the shiver ends. 
 Though cramp and drowning may begin per- 
 
 Lo cite just one more point which crowned 
 
 success ; 
 Madame, Miranda's mother, most of all 
 An obstacle to his projected life 
 In license, as a daughter of the Church, 
 Duteous, exemplary, severe by right — 
 Moreover one most thoroughly beloved 
 Without a rival till the other sort 
 Possessed her son, — first storm of anger spent. 
 She seemed, though grumblingly and grudg- 
 
 m ™sly, 
 
 To let be what needs must be, acciuiesce. 
 
 With heaven — accommodation possible ! " 
 Saint Sganarelle had preached with such effect, 
 ^he saw now mitigating circumstance. 
 ' The erring one was most unfortunate. 
 No question : but worse Magdalens repent. 
 Were Clara free, did only Law allow. 
 What fitter choice in marriage could have 
 
 made 
 L^once or anybody ?" 'T is alleged 
 And evidenced, I find, by advocate, 
 ' Never did she consider such a tie 
 As baleful, springe to snap whate'er the cost." 
 And when the couple were in safety once 
 At Clairvaux, motherly, considerate. 
 She shrank not from advice. " Since safe you 
 
 be. 
 Safely abide ! for winter, I know well. 
 Is troublesome in a cold country-house. 
 I recommend the south room that we styled. 
 Your sire and I, the winter-chamber." 
 
 Chance 
 Or purpose, — who can read the mystery? — 
 Combined, I say, to bid " Intrench yourself, 
 Monsieur L^once Miranda, on this turf. 
 About this flower, so firmly that, as tent 
 Rises on every side around you both. 
 The question shall become, — Which arrogates 
 Stability, this tent or those far towers ? 
 May not the temporary structure suit 
 The stable circuit, co-exist in peace ? — 
 Always until the proper time, no fear ! 
 ' Lay flat your tent ! ' is easier said than done." 
 
 So, with the best of auspices, betook 
 Themselves L^once Miranda and his bride — 
 Provisionary — to their Clairvaux house, 
 Never to leave it — till the proper time. 
 
 I told you what was Clairvaux-Priory 
 Ere the improper time : an old demesne 
 With memories, — relic half, and ruin 
 
 whole, — 
 The very place, then, to repair the wits 
 Worn out with Paris-traf6c, when its lord, 
 Miranda's father, took his month of ease 
 Purchased by industry. What contrast here ! 
 Repose, and solitude, and healthy ways 1 
 That ticking at the hack of head, he took 
 For motion of an inmate, stopped at once. 
 Proved nothing but the pavement's rattle left 
 Behind at Pans : here was holiday ! 
 Welcome the quaint succeeding to the spruce. 
 The large and lumbersome and — might he 
 
 breathe 
 In whisper to his own ear — dignified 
 And gentry-fashioned old-style haunts of sleep ! 
 Palatial gloomy chambers for parade, 
 And passage-lengths of lost significance, 
 Never constructed as receptacle. 
 At his odd hours, for him their actual lord 
 By dint of diamond-dealing, goldsmithry. 
 Therefore Miranda's father chopped and 
 
 changed 
 Nor roof-tile nor yet floor-brick, undismayed 
 By rains a-top or rats at bottom there. 
 Such contrast is so piquant for a month ! 
 But now arrived quite other occupants 
 
754 
 
 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Whose cry was " Permanency, — life and deatli 
 Here, here, not elsewhere, change is all we 
 
 dread ! " 
 Their dwelling-place must be adapted, then. 
 To inmates, no mere truants from the town, 
 No temporary sojourners, forsooth. 
 At Clairvaux ; change it into Paradise 1 
 
 Fair friend, — who listen and let talk, alas ! — 
 You would, in even such a state of things. 
 Pronounce, — or am I wrong ? — for bidding 
 
 stay 
 The old-world inconvenience, fresh as found. 
 All folk of individuality 
 Prefer to be reminded, now and then. 
 Though at the cost of vulgar cosiness. 
 That the shell-outside only harbors man 
 The vital and progressive, meant to build. 
 When build he may, with quite a difference. 
 Some time, in that far land we dream about. 
 Where every man is liis own architect. 
 But then the couple here in question, each 
 At one in project for a happy life. 
 Were by no acceptation of the word 
 So individual that they must aspire 
 To architecture all-appropriate. 
 And, therefore, in this world impossible ; 
 They needed house to suit the circumstance, 
 Proprietors, not tenants for a term. 
 Despite a certain marking, here and there. 
 Of neeey black or white distinguishment. 
 These vulgar sheep wore the flock's uniform. 
 They love the country, they renounce the town ? 
 They gave a kick, as our Italians say, 
 To Paris ere it turned and kicked themselves I 
 Acquaintances might prove too hard to seek, 
 Or the reverse of hard to find, perchance. 
 Since Monsieur Gustave's apparition there. 
 And let me call remark upon the list 
 Of notabilities invoked, in Court 
 At Vire, to witness, by their phrases culled 
 From correspondence, what was the esteem 
 Of those we pay respect to, for " the pair 
 Whereof they knew the inner life," 't is said. 
 Three, and three only, answered the appeal. 
 First Monsieur Vaillant, music-publisher, 
 '* Begs Madame will accept civilities." 
 Next Alexandre Dumas, — sire, not son, — 
 "Sends compliments to Madame and to yovi." 
 And last — but now prepare for England's 
 
 voice ! 
 I will not mar nor make — here 's word for 
 
 word — 
 " A rich proprietor of Paris, he 
 To whom belonged that beauteous Bagatelle 
 Close to the wood of Boulogne, Hertford hight, 
 Assures of homages and compliments 
 Affectionate " — not now Miranda but 
 " Madame Muhlhausen." (Was this friend, the 
 
 Duke 
 Redoubtable in rivalry before ?) 
 Such was the evidence when evidence 
 Was wanted, then if ever, to the worth 
 Whereat acquaintances in Paris prized 
 Monsieur L^once Miranda's household charm. 
 No wonder, then, his impulse was to live, 
 In Norman solitude, the Paris life : 
 Surround himself with Art transported thence. 
 
 And nature like those famed Elysian Fields : 
 Then, warm up the right color out of both. 
 By Boulevard friendships tempted to come 
 
 taste 
 How Paris lived again in little there. 
 
 Monsieur L4once Miranda practised Art. 
 
 Do let a man for once live as man likes ! 
 
 Politics? Spend your life, to spare the 
 world's : 
 
 Improve each unit by some particle 
 
 Of joy the more, deteriorate the orb 
 
 Entire, your own : poor profit, dismal loss ! 
 
 Write books, paint pictures, or make music — 
 since 
 
 Your nature leans to such life-exercise ! 
 
 Ay, but such exercise begins too soon. 
 
 Concludes too late, demands life whole and 
 sole. 
 
 Artistry being battle with the ag:e 
 
 It lives in ! Half life, — silence, while you 
 learn 
 
 What has been done ; the other half, — attempt 
 
 At speech, amid world's wail of wonderment — 
 
 "Here's something done was never done be- 
 fore ! " 
 
 To he the very breath that moves the age 
 
 Means not to have breath drive you bubble- 
 like 
 
 Before it — but yourself to blow : that 's 
 strain ; 
 
 Strain's worry through the lifetime, till there 's 
 peace ; 
 
 We know where peace expects the artist-soul. 
 
 Monsieur L^once Miranda knew as much. 
 Therefore in Art he nowise cared to be 
 Creative ; but creation, that had birth 
 In storminess long years before was born 
 Monsieur L^once Miranda, — Art, enjoyed 
 Like fleshly objects of the chase that tempt 
 In cookery, not in capture — these might feast 
 The dilettante, furnish tavern-fare 
 Open to all with purses open too. 
 To sit fi'ee and take tribute seigneur-like — 
 Now, not too lavish of acknowledgment, 
 Now, self -indulgently profuse of pay. 
 Always Art's seigneur, not Art's serving-man, 
 Whate'er the style and title and degree, — 
 That is the quiet life and easy death 
 Monsieur L^once Miranda would approve 
 Wholly — provided (back I go again 
 To the first simile) that while glasses clink. 
 And viands steam, and banqueting laughs high, 
 All that 's outside the temporary tent, 
 The dim gi*im outline of the circuit- wall. 
 Forgets to menace " Soon or late will drop 
 Pavilion, soon or late you needs must march. 
 And l^gards will be sorry they were slack ! 
 Always — unless excuse sound plausible ! " 
 
 Monsieur Ldonce Miranda knew as much : 
 
 Whence his determination just to paint 
 
 So creditably as might help the eye 
 
 To comprehend how painter's eye grew dim 
 
 Ere it produced L]Ingegno's piece of work — 
 
 So to become musician that his ear 
 
 Should judge, by its own tickling and turmoil. 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 
 
 7SS 
 
 Who mado the Solemn Mass might well die 
 
 deaf — 
 So cultivate a literary knack 
 That, by experience how it wiles the time, 
 He might imagine how a poet, rapt 
 In rhyming wholly, grew so poor at last 
 By carelessness about his banker's-book, 
 That the Sieur Boileau (to provoke our smile) 
 Began abruptly, — when he paid devoir 
 To Louis Quatorze as he dined in state, — 
 *' Sire, send a drop of broth to Pierre Corneille 
 Now dying; and iu want of sustenance ! " 
 — I say, these half-hour playings at life's toil, 
 Diversified by billiards, riding, sport — 
 With now and then a visitor — Dumas, 
 Hertford — to check no aspiration's flight — 
 While Clara, like a diam.ond in the dark, 
 Should extract shining from what else were 
 
 shade, 
 And multiply chance rays a million-fold, — 
 How could he doubt that all offence outside, — 
 Wrong to the towers, which, pillowed on the 
 
 turf. 
 He thus shut eyes to, — were as good as gone ? 
 
 So, down went Clairvaux-Priory to dust. 
 And up there rose, in lieu, yon structure gay 
 Above the Norman ghosts: and where the 
 
 stretch 
 Of barren country girdled house about, 
 Behold the Park, the English preference ! 
 Thus made undoubtedly a desert smile 
 Monsieur L^once Miranda. 
 
 Ay, but she ? 
 One should not so merge soul in soul, you 
 
 think ? 
 And I think : only, let us wait, nor want 
 Two things at once — her turn will come in 
 
 time. 
 A cork-float danced upon the tide, Ave saw, 
 This morning, blinding-bright with briny dews : 
 There was no disengaging soaked from sound, 
 Earth-product from the sister-element. 
 But when we tarn, the tide will turn, I think. 
 And bare on beach will lie exposed the buoy : 
 A very proper time to try, with foot 
 And even finger, which was buoying wave. 
 Which merely buoyant substance, — power to 
 
 lift, 
 And power to be sent skyward passively. 
 Meanwhile, no separation of the pair ! 
 
 in 
 
 And so slipt pleasantly away five years 
 Of Paradisiac dream ; till, as there flit 
 Premonitory sym.ptonis, pricks of pain. 
 Because the dreamer has to start awake 
 And find disease dwelt active all the while 
 In head or stomach through his night-long 
 
 sleep, — 
 So happened here disturbance to content. 
 
 Monsieur L^onee Miranda's last of cares, 
 Ere he composed himself, had been to make 
 Provision that, while sleeping safe he lay. 
 
 Somebody else should, dragon-like, let fall 
 Never a lid, coiled round the apple-stem, 
 But watch the precious fruitage. Somebody 
 Kept shop, in short, played Paris substitute. 
 Himself, shrewd, well-trained, early-exercised, 
 Could take in, at an eye-glance, luck or loss — 
 Know commerce throve, though lazily uplift 
 On elbow merelj^ : leave his bed forsooth ? 
 Such active service was the substitute's. 
 
 But one October morning, at first drop 
 Of appled gold, first summons to be grave 
 Because rough Autumn's play turns earnest 
 
 now. 
 Monsieur L^once Miranda was required 
 In Paris to take counsel, face to face, 
 With Madame-mother : and be rated, too, 
 Roundly at certain items of expense 
 Whereat the government provisional, 
 The Paris substitute and shopkeeper. 
 Shook head, and talked of funds inadequate : 
 Oh, in the long run, — not if remedy 
 Occurred betimes ! Else, — tap the generous bole 
 Too near the quick, — it withers to the root — 
 Leafy, prolific, golden apple-tree, 
 *' Miranda," sturdy in the Place Vendome ! 
 
 " What is this reckless life you lead ? " began 
 Her greeting she whom most he feared and 
 
 loved, 
 Madame Miranda. " Luxury, extravagance 
 Sardanapalus' self might emulate, — 
 Did your good father's money go for this ? 
 Where are the fruits of education, where 
 The morals which at first distinguished you, 
 The faith which promised to adorn yoiu: age ? 
 And why such wastefulness outbreaking now. 
 When heretofore you loved economy ? 
 Explain this pulling-down and building-up 
 Poor Clairvaux, which your father bought be- 
 
 cause 
 Clairvaux he found it, and so left to you. 
 Not a gilt-gingerbread big baby-house ! 
 True, we could somehow shake head and shut 
 
 eye 
 To what was past prevention on our part — 
 This reprehensible illicit bond : 
 We, in a manner, winking, watched consort 
 Our modest well-conducted pious son 
 With Delilah : we thought the smoking flax 
 Would smoulder soon away and end in snuff ! 
 Is spark to strengthen, prove consuming fire ? 
 No lawful family calls Clairvaux ' home ' — 
 Why play that fool of Scripture whom the voice 
 Admonished ' Whose to-night shall be those 
 
 things 
 Provided for thy morning jollity ? ' 
 To take one specimen of pure caprice 
 Out of the heap conspicuous in the plan, — 
 Puzzle of change, I call it, — titled big 
 * Clairvaux Restored : ' what means this Bel 
 
 vedere ? 
 This Tower, stuck like » fool's-cap on the 
 
 roof — 
 Do you intend to soar to heaven from thence ? 
 Tower, truly ! Better had you planted turf — 
 More fitly would you dig yourself a hole 
 Beneath it for the final journey's help ! 
 
756 
 
 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 we poor parents — could we prophesy 1 " 
 Lfonoe was found affectionate enough 
 
 To man, to woman, child, bird, beast, alike ; 
 But all affection, all one fire of heart 
 Flaming toward Madame-mother. Had she 
 
 posed 
 The question plainly at Uie outset " Choose 1 
 Cut clean iu half your all-the-world of love. 
 The mother and the mistress : then resolve, 
 Take me or take her, throw away the one ! " — 
 He might have made the choice and marred 
 
 my tale. 
 But, miTch I apprehend, the problem put 
 Was, " Keep both halves, yet do no detriment 
 To either ! Prize each opposite in turn ! " 
 Hence, whUe he prized at worth the Clairvaux- 
 
 life 
 With all its tolerated naughtiness, 
 He, visiting in fancy Quai Rousseau, 
 Saw, cornered in the cosiest nook of all, 
 That range of rooms through number Thirty- 
 three, 
 The lady-mother bent o'er her B^aque 
 While Monsieur Curd This, and bister That, — 
 Superior of no matter what good House — 
 Did duty for Duke Hertford and Dumas, 
 Nay — at his mother's age — for Clara's self. 
 At Quai Rousseau, things comfortable thus, 
 Why should poor Clairvaux prove so trouble- 
 some ? 
 She played at cards, he built a Belvedere. 
 But here 's the difference : she had reached the 
 
 Towers 
 And there took pastime : he was still on Turf — 
 Though fully minded that, when once he 
 
 marched. 
 No sportive fancy should distract him more. 
 
 In brief, the man was angry with himself, 
 With her, with all the world and much beside : 
 And so the unseemly words were interchanged 
 Which crystallize what else evaporates. 
 And make mere misty petulance grow hard 
 And sharp inside each softness, heart and soul. 
 Monsieur Ldonce Miranda flung at last 
 Out of doors, fever-flushed : and there the 
 
 Seine 
 Rolled at his feet, obsequious remedy 
 For fever, in a cold autumnal flow. 
 " Go and be rid of memory in a bath ! " 
 Craftily whispered Who besets the ear 
 On such occasions. 
 
 Done as soon as dreamed. 
 Back shivers poor L4once to bed — where else ? 
 And there he lies a month 'twixt life and death. 
 Raving. "Remorse of conscience!" friends 
 
 opine. 
 " Sirs, it may partly prove so," represents 
 Beaumont — (the family physician, he 
 Whom last year's Commune murdered, do you 
 
 mind ?) 
 Beaumont reports, " There is some active cause, 
 More than mere pungency of quarrel past, — 
 Cause that keeps adding other food to fire. 
 
 1 hear the words and know the signs, I say ! 
 Dear Madame, you have read the Book of 
 
 Saints, 
 
 How Antony was tempted ? As for me. 
 
 Poor heathen, 't is by pictures I am taught. 
 
 I say then, I see standing here, — between 
 
 Me and ray patient, and that crucifix 
 
 You very properly would interpose — 
 
 A certain woman-shape, one white appeal, 
 
 ' Will you leave me, then, me, me, me for her ? ' 
 
 Since cold Seine could not quench this flame, 
 
 since flare 
 Of fever does not redden it away, — 
 Be rational, indulgent, mute — should chance 
 Come to the rescue — Providence, I mean — 
 The while I blister and phlebotomize ! " 
 
 Well, somehow rescued by whatever power, 
 At month's end, back again conveyed himself 
 Monsieur L4once Miranda, worn to rags. 
 Nay, tinder : stuff irreparably spoiled. 
 Though kindly hand should stitch and patch its 
 
 best. 
 Clairvaux in Autumn is restorative. 
 A friend stitched on, patched ever. AH the 
 
 same, 
 Clairvaux looked grayer than a month ago. 
 Unglossed was shrubbery, unglorified 
 Each copse, so wealthy once ; the garden-plots. 
 The orchard-walks, showed dearth and dreari- 
 ness. 
 The sea lay out at distance crammed by cloud 
 Into a leaden wedge ; and sorrowful 
 Sulked field and pasture with persistent rain. 
 Nobody came so far from Paris now : 
 Friends did their duty by an invalid 
 Whose convalescence claimed entire repose. 
 Only a single ministrant was stanch 
 At quiet reparation of the stuff — 
 Monsieur Ldonce Miranda, worn to rags : 
 But she was Clara and the world beside. 
 
 Another month, the year packed up his plagues 
 And sullenly departed, peddlei>-like. 
 As a.pprehensive old-world ware might show 
 To disadvantage when the newcomer. 
 Merchant of novelties, young 'Sixty-eight, 
 With brand-new bargains, whistled o'er the lea. 
 Things brightened somewhat o'er the Christmas 
 
 hearth. 
 As Clara plied assiduously her task. 
 
 " Words are but words and wind. Why let the 
 
 wind 
 Sing in your ear, bite, sounding, to your brain ? 
 Old folk and young folk, still at odcU, of course I 
 Age quarrels because Spring puts forth a leaf 
 While Wmter has a mind that boughs stay bare ; 
 Or rather — worse than quarrel — age descries 
 Proijriety in preaching life to death. 
 ' Enjoy nor youth, nor Clairvaux, nor poor me ? ' 
 Dear Madame^you enjoy your age, 'tis thought! 
 Your number Thirty-three on Quai Rousseau 
 Cost fifty times the price of Clairvaux, tipped 
 Even with our prodigious Belvedere ; 
 You entertain the Curd, — we, Dumas : 
 We play charades, while you prefer Bdzique : 
 Do lead your own life and let ours alone .' 
 Cross Old Year shall have done his worst, my 
 
 friend ! 
 Here comes gay New Year with a gift, no doubt I 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 
 
 in 
 
 Look up and let in light that longs to shine — 
 One flash of light, and where will darkness 
 
 hide? 
 Tour ciild makes me too cold, love ! Keep me 
 
 Whereat L^once Miranda raised hia head 
 From his two white thin hands, and forced a 
 
 smile. 
 And spoke : " 1 do look up, and see your light 
 Above me ! Let New Year contribute warmth — 
 I shall refuse no fuel that may blaze." 
 Nor did hi. Three days after, just a spark 
 From Paris, answered by a snap at Caen 
 Or whither reached the tele^aphic wire : 
 " Quickly to Paris ! On arrival, learn 
 Why you are wanted ! " Curt and critical ! 
 
 Off starts L^once, one fear from head to foot ; 
 Caen, Rouen, Paris, as the railway helps ; 
 Then come the Quai and Number Thirty-three. 
 " What is the matter, concierge ? " — a gri- 
 mace ! 
 He mounts the staircase, makes for the mam 
 
 seat 
 Of dreadful mystery which draws him there — 
 Bursts in upon a bedroom known too well — 
 There lies all left now of the mother once. 
 Tapers define the stretch of rigid white, 
 Nor want therj ghastly velvets of the grave. 
 A blackness sits on either side at watch. 
 Sisters, good souls but frightful all the same, 
 Silent : a priest is spokesman for his corpse. 
 " Dead, through L^onoe Miranda! stricken 
 
 down 
 Without a minute's warning, yesterday ! 
 What did she say to you, and you to her, 
 Two months ago ? This is the consequence ! 
 The doctors liave their name for the disease ; 
 I, you, and God say — heart-break, nothing 
 
 more ! " 
 Monsieur L^once Miranda, like a stone 
 Fell at the bedfoot and found respite so, 
 While the priest went to tell the company. 
 What follows you are free to disbelieve. 
 It may be true or felse that this good priest 
 Had taken his instructions, — who shall 
 
 blame ? — 
 From qaite another quarter than, perchance, 
 Monsieur Ldonce Miranda might suppose 
 Would offer solace in such pressing need. 
 All he remembered bf his kith and kin 
 Was, they were worthily his substitutes 
 In commerce, did their work and drew then- 
 
 But ihty remembered, in addition, this — 
 They fairly might expect inheritance, 
 As nearest kin, called Family by law 
 And gospel both. Now, since Miranda's life 
 Showed nothing like abatement of distaste 
 For conjugality, but preference . 
 
 Continued and confirmed of that smooth chain 
 Which slips and leaves no knot behind, no 
 
 heir — 
 Presumption was, the man, become mature, 
 Would at a calculable day discard , , , ^ 
 His old and outworn . . . what we M^h to 
 
 And make society the just amends \_ 
 Scarce by a new attachment — Heaven for- 
 bid! 
 Still less by lawful marriage ; that 's reserved 
 For those who make a proper choice at first — - 
 Not tiy both courses and would grasp in age 
 The very treasure, youth preferred t,o spurn I 
 No ! putting decently such thought aside. 
 The penitent must rather give hla powers 
 To such a reparation of the past 
 As, edifying kindred, makes them rich. 
 Now, how would it enrich prospectively 
 The Cousins, if he lavished such expense 
 On Clairvaux ? — pretty as a toy, but then 
 As toy, so much productive and no more ! 
 If all the outcome of the goldsmith's shop 
 Went to gild Clairvaux, where remain the 
 
 funds 
 For Cousinry to spread out lap and take ? 
 This must be thought of and provided for. 
 I give it you a mere conjecture, mind ! 
 To help explain the wholesome unannounced 
 Intelligence, the shock that startled guilt, 
 The scenic show, much yellow, black and 
 
 white 
 By taper-shine, che nuns — portentous pair. 
 And, more than all, the priest's admonisb- 
 
 Dient — 
 " No flattery of self ! You murdered her ! 
 The gray lips, silent now, rejirove by mine. 
 You wasted all your living, rioted 
 In harlotry — she warned and I repeat ! 
 No warning had she, for she needed none : 
 If this should be the last yourself receive ? 
 Done for the best, no doubt, though clumsily, — 
 Such, and so startling, the reception here. 
 You hardly wonder 2 down fell at once 
 The tawdry tent, pictorial, musical. 
 Poetical, besprent with hearts and darts ; 
 Its cobweb-work, betinselled stitchery. 
 Lay dust about our sleeper on the turf. 
 And showed the outer towers distinct and 
 dread. 
 
 Senseless he fell, a,nd long he lay, and much 
 Seemed salutary in his punishment 
 To planners and performers of the piece. 
 When pain ends, pardon prompt may operate. 
 There was a good attendance close at hand, 
 Waiting the issue in the great saloon. 
 Cousins with consolation and advice. 
 
 All things thus happily performed to point. 
 No wonder at success commensurate. 
 Once swooning stopped, once anguish subse- 
 quent . .„ J 
 Raved out, — a sudden resolution chiUed 
 His blood and changed his swimming eyes to 
 
 As the poor feUow raised himself upright. 
 Collected strength, looked, once for aU, his 
 
 look, ., 
 
 Then, turning, put officious help aside 
 And passed from out the chamber. J* or at- 
 
 f airs J " , , 
 
 So he announced himself to the saloon : 
 " We owe a duty to the livmg too ! -- 
 I Monsieur L4once Miranda tried to smile. 
 
758 
 
 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 How did the hearts of Cousinry rejoice 
 At their stray sheep returning thus to fold, 
 As, with a dimity, precision, sense. 
 All unsuspected in the man hef ore, 
 Monsieur L4once Miranda made minute 
 Detail of his intended scheme of life 
 Thenceforward and forever. '* Vanity 
 Was ended : its redemption must begin — 
 And, certain, would continue ; but since life 
 Was awfully uncertain — witness here ! — 
 Behooved him lose no moment but discharge 
 Immediate burden of the world's affairs 
 On backs that kindly volunteered to crouch. 
 Cousins, with easier conscience, blamelessly 
 Miifht carry on the goldsmith's trade, in brief, 
 Uninterfersd with by ita lord who late 
 Was used to supervise and take due tithe. 
 A stipend now sufficed his natural need : 
 Themsylyes should fix what sum allows man 
 
 live. 
 But half a dozen words concisely plain 
 Might, first of all, make sure that, on demise. 
 Monsieur L^once Miranda's property 
 Passed by bequeathment, every particle. 
 To the right heirs, the cousins of his heart. 
 As for that woman — they would understand ! 
 This was a step must take her by surprise ! 
 It were too cruel did he snatch awaj' 
 Decent subsistence. She was young, and fair, 
 And . . . and attractive ! Means must be sup- 
 plied 
 To save her from herself, and from the world. 
 And . . . frorai anxieties might haunt him else 
 When he were fain have other thoughts in 
 mind." 
 
 It was a sight to melt a stone, that thaw 
 
 Of rigid disapproval into dew 
 
 Of sympathy, as each extended palm 
 
 Of cousin hasted to enclose those five 
 
 Cold fingers, tendered so mistrustfully. 
 
 Despairingly of condonation now ! 
 
 You would have thought, — at every fervent 
 
 shake, 
 In reassurance of those timid tips, — 
 The penitent had squeezed, considerate. 
 By way of fee into physician's hand 
 For physicking his soul, some diamond knob. 
 
 And now let pass a week. Once more behold 
 The same assemblage in the same saloon. 
 Waiting the entry of protagonist 
 Monsieur L^onoe Miranda. " Just a week 
 Since the death-day, — was ever man trans- 
 formed 
 Like this man ? " questioned cousin of his 
 mate. 
 
 Last seal to the repentance had been set 
 Three days before, at Sceaux in neighborhood 
 Of Paris where they laid with funeral pomp 
 Mother by father. Let me spare the rest : 
 How the poor fellow, in his misery. 
 Buried hot face and bosom, where heaped snow 
 Offered assistance, at the grave's black edge. 
 And there lay, till uprooted by main force 
 From where he prayed to grow and ne'er again 
 Walk earth unworthily as heretofore. 
 
 It is not with impunity priests teach 
 
 The doctrine he was dosed with from hia 
 
 youth — 
 " Pain to the body — profit to the soul ; 
 Corporeal pleasure — so much woe to pay 
 When disembodied spirit gives account." 
 
 However, woe had done its worst, this time. 
 
 Three days allow subsidence of much grief. 
 
 Already, regular and equable. 
 
 Forward went purpose to effect. At once 
 
 The testament was written, signed and sealed. 
 
 Disposer of the commerce — that took time, 
 
 And would not suffer by a week's delay ; 
 
 But the immediate, the imperious need, 
 
 The call demanding of the Cousinry 
 
 Co-operation, what convened them thus. 
 
 Was — how and when should deputation march 
 
 To Coliseum Street, the old abode 
 
 Of wickedness, and there acquaint^ oh, 
 
 shame I 
 Her, its old inmate, who had followed up 
 And lay in wait in the old haunt for prey — 
 That they had rescued, they possessed L4once, 
 Whose loathing at recapture equalled theirs — 
 Upbraid that sinner with her sinfulness. 
 Impart the fellow-sinner's firm resolve 
 Never to set eyes on her face again ; 
 Then, after stipulations strict but j«st. 
 Hand her the first instalment — moderate 
 Enough, no question — of her salary : 
 Admonish for the future, and so end. — 
 All which good purposes, decided on 
 Sufficiently, were waiting full effect 
 When presently the culprit should appear. 
 
 Somehow appearance was delayed too long ; 
 
 Chatting and chirping sunk inconseiously 
 
 To silence, nay, uneasiness, at length 
 
 Alarm, till — anything for certitude ! — 
 
 A peeper was commissioned to explore, 
 
 At keyhole, what the laggard's task might 
 
 be — 
 What caused so palpable a disrespect ! 
 
 Back came the tiptoe cousin from his quest. 
 *' Monsieur L^once was busy," he believed, 
 " Contemplating — those love-letters, perhaps, 
 He always carried, as if precious stones. 
 About with him. He read, one after one. 
 Some sort of letters. But his back was turned. 
 The empty coffer open at his side. 
 He leant on elbow by the mantelpiece 
 Before the hearth-fire ; big and blazing too." 
 
 " Better he shovelled them all in at once. 
 And burned the rubbish!" was a cousin's 
 
 quip, 
 Warming his own hands at the fire the while, 
 I told you, snow had fallen outside, I think. 
 
 When suddenly a cry, a host of cries. 
 Screams, hubbub and confusion thrilled the 
 
 room. 
 All by a common impulse rushed thence, 
 
 reached 
 The late death-chamber, tricked with trappings 
 
 still, 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 
 
 759 
 
 Skulls, crossbonea, and such moral broidery. 
 Madame Muhlhausen might have played the 
 
 witch, 
 Dropped down the chimney and appalled L^- 
 
 once 
 By some proposal, " Parting touch of hand ! " 
 If she but touched his foolish hand, you know ! 
 
 Something had happened quite contrariwise. 
 Monsieur L^onoe Miranda, one by one, 
 Had read the letters and the love they held. 
 And, that task finished, had required his soul 
 To answer frankly what the prospect seemed 
 Of his own love's departure — pledged to part ! 
 Then, answer being unmistakable. 
 He had replaced the letters quietly. 
 Shut coffer, and so, grasping either side 
 By its convenient handle, plunged the whole — 
 Letters and coffer and both hands to boot — 
 Into the burning grate and held them there. 
 " Bum, burn, and purify my past 1 " said he. 
 Calmly, as if he felt no pain at all. 
 
 In vain they pulled him from the torture-place : 
 The strong man, with the soul of tenfold 
 
 strength, 
 Broke from their clutch : and there again 
 
 smiled he. 
 The miserable hands re-bathed in fire — 
 Constant to that ejaculation, " Burn, 
 Burn, purify ! " And when, combining force. 
 They fairly dragged the victim out of reach 
 Of further harm, he had no hands to hurt — 
 Two horrible remains of right and left, 
 " Whereof the bones, phalanges formerly, 
 Carbonized, were stul crackling with the 
 
 flame," 
 Said Beaumont. And he fought them all the 
 
 while : 
 " Why am I hindered when I would be pure ? 
 Why leave the sacrifice still incomplete ? 
 She holds me, I must have more hands to 
 
 burn ! " 
 They were the stronger, though, and bound 
 
 him fast. 
 
 Beaumont was in attendance presently. 
 
 " What did I tell you ? Preachment to the 
 
 deaf! 
 I wish he had been deafer when they preached. 
 Those priests ! But wait till next Republic 
 
 comes ! " 
 
 As for L^once, a single sentiment 
 
 Possessed his soul and occupied his tongue — 
 
 Absolute satisfaction at the deed. 
 
 Never he varied, 't is observable. 
 
 Nor in the stage of agonies (which proved 
 
 Absent without leave, — science seemed to 
 
 think). 
 Nor yet in those three months' febricity 
 Which followed, — never did he vary tale — 
 Remainino; happy beyond utterance. 
 " Ineffable beatitude " — I quote 
 The words, I cannot give the smile — "such 
 
 bliss 
 Abolished pain ! Pain might or might not be : 
 He felt in heaven, where flesh desists to fret. 
 
 Purified now and henceforth, all the past 
 Reduced to ashes with the flesh defiled ! 
 Why all those anxious faces round his bed ? 
 What was to pity in their patient, pray. 
 When doctor came and went, and Cousins 
 
 watched ? 
 — Kindness, but in pure waste ! " he said and 
 
 smiled. 
 And if a trouble would at times disturb 
 The ambrosial mood, it came from other source 
 Than the corporeal transitory pang. 
 " If sacrifice be incomplete ! " cried he — 
 *' If ashes have not sunk reduced to dust. 
 To nullity !_ If atoms coalesce 
 Till something grow, grow, get to be a shape 
 I hate, I hoped to burn away from me ! 
 She is my body, she and 1 are one, 
 Yet, all the same, there, there at bedfoot stands 
 The woman wound about my flesh and blood, 
 There, the arms open, the more wonderful. 
 The whiter for the burning . . . Vanish thou ! 
 Avaunt, fiend's self found in the form I wore ! " 
 
 " Whereat,'' said Beaumont, "since his hands 
 
 were gone. 
 The patient in a frenzy kicked and kicked 
 To keep off some imagined visitant. 
 So will it prove as long as priests may preach 
 Spiritual terrors ! " groaned the evidence 
 Of Beaumont that his patient was stark mad — 
 Produced in time and place : of which anon. 
 " Mad, or why thus insensible to pain ? 
 Body and son! are one thine, with two names 
 For more or less elaboratedstuff." 
 
 Such is the new Religio Medici, 
 
 Though antiquated faith held otherwise. 
 
 Explained that body is not soul, but just 
 
 Soul's servant : that, if soul be satisfied, 
 
 Possess already joy or pain enough. 
 
 It uses to ignore, as master may. 
 
 What increase, joy or pain, its servant brings -^ 
 
 Superfluous contribution : soul, once served, 
 
 Has naught to do with body's service more. 
 
 Each, speculated on exclusively. 
 
 As if its office were the only one. 
 
 Body or soul, either shows service paid 
 
 In joy and pain, that 's blind and objectless — 
 
 A servant's toiling for no master's good — 
 
 Or else shows good received and put to use, 
 
 As if within soul's self grew joy and pain. 
 
 Nor needed body for a ministrant. 
 
 I note these old unscientific ways : 
 
 Poor Beaumont cannot : for the Commune 
 
 ruled 
 Next year, and ere they shot his priests, shot 
 
 him. 
 
 Monsieur L^once Miranda raved himself 
 
 To rest ; lay three long months in bliss or bale, 
 
 Inactive, anyhow : more need that heirs. 
 
 His natural protectors, should assume 
 
 The management, bestir their cousinship. 
 
 And carry out that purjiose of reform 
 
 Such tragic work now made imperative. 
 
 A deputation, with austerity. 
 
 Nay, sternness, bore her sentence to the fiend 
 
 Aforesaid, — she at watch for turn of wheel 
 
76o 
 
 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 And fortune's favor, Street — you know the 
 
 name. 
 A certain roughness seemed appropriate : 
 
 "You — 
 Sterner, Muhlhausen, whatsoe'er your name, 
 Cause whole and sole of this catastrophe ! " — 
 And so forth, introduced the embassage. 
 
 *' Monsieur L^once Miranda was divorced 
 Once and forever from his — ugly word. 
 Himself had gone for good to Portugal ; 
 They came empowered to act and stipulate. 
 Hold ! no discussion ! Terms were settled now : 
 So nrnch of present and prospective pay. 
 But also — good engagement in plain terms 
 She never seek renewal of the past ! " 
 
 This little harmless tale produced effect. 
 Madame Muhlhausen owned her sentence just. 
 Its execution gentle. " Stern their phrase, 
 These kinsfolk with a right she recognized — 
 But kind its import probably, which now 
 Her agitation, her bewilderment. 
 Rendered too hard to understand, perhaps. 
 Let them accord the natural delay. 
 And she would ponder and decide. Meantime, 
 So far was she from wish to follow friend 
 Who fled her, that she would not budge from 
 
 place — 
 Now that her friend was fled to Portugal, — 
 Never ! She leave this Coliseum Street ? 
 No, not a footstep ! " she assured them. 
 
 So — 
 They saw they might have left that tale untold 
 When, after some weeks more were gone to 
 
 waste. 
 Recovery seemed incontestable. 
 And the poor mutilated figure, once 
 The gay and glancing fortunate young spark, 
 Miranda, humble and obedient took 
 The doctor's counsel, issued sad and slow 
 From precincts of the sick-room, tottered down, 
 And out, and into carriage for fresh air. 
 And so drove straight to Coliseum Street, 
 And tottered upstairs, knocked, and in a trice 
 Was clasped in the embrace of whom you 
 
 know — 
 With much asseveration, I omit. 
 Of constancy henceforth till life should end. 
 When all this happened, — " What reward," 
 
 cried she, 
 " For judging her Miranda by herself ! 
 For never having entertained a thought 
 Of breaking promise, leaving home forsooth. 
 To follow who was fled to Portugal ! 
 As if she thought they spoke a word of truth ! 
 She knew what love was, knew that he loved 
 
 her ; 
 The Cousinry knew nothing of the kind." 
 
 I will not scandalize you and recount 
 How matters made the morning pass away. 
 Not one reproach, not one acknowledgment, 
 One explanation : all was understood ! 
 Matters at end, the home-uneasiness 
 Cousins were feeling at this jaunt prolonged 
 Was ended also by the entry of — 
 
 Not simply him whose exit had been made 
 
 By mild command of doctor " Out with you ! 
 
 I warrant we receive another man ! " 
 
 But — would that I could say, the married pair t 
 
 And, quite another man assuredly, 
 
 Monsieur L^once Miranda took on him 
 
 Forthwith to bid the trio, priest and nuns. 
 
 Constant in their attendance all this while, 
 
 Take his thanks and their own departure too ; 
 
 Politely but emphatically. Next, 
 
 The Cousins were dismissed: "No protest, 
 
 pray ! 
 Whatever I engaged to do is done. 
 Or shall be — I but f oUow your advice : 
 Love I abjure : the lady, you behold, 
 Is changed as I myself : her sex is changed : 
 This is my Brother — He will tend me now. 
 Be all my world henceforth as brother should. 
 Gentlemen, of a kinship I revere. 
 Your interest in trade is laudable ; 
 I purpose to indulge it ; manage mine, 
 IV^ goldsmith-business in the Place Vendfime, 
 Wnolly — through purchase at the price ad- 
 judged 
 By experts I shall have assistance from. 
 If, in conformity with sage advice, 
 I leave a busy world of interests 
 I own myself unfit for — yours the care 
 That any world of other aims, wherein 
 I hope to dwell, be easy of access 
 Through ministration of the moneys due, 
 As we determine, with all proper speed. 
 Since I leave Paris to repair my health. 
 Say farewell to our Cousins, Brother mine I " 
 
 And, all submissiveness, as brother might, 
 The lady curtsied gracefully, and dropt 
 More than mere curtsey, a concluding phrase 
 So silver-soft, yet penetrative too. 
 That none of it escaped the favored ears : 
 " Had I but credited one syllable, 
 I should to-day be lying stretched on straw. 
 The produce of your miserable rente ! 
 Whereas, I hold him — do you comprehend ? " 
 Cousin regarded cousin, turned up eye. 
 And took departure, as our Tuscans laugh. 
 Each with his added palm-breadth of long 
 
 nose, — 
 Curtailed but imperceptibly, next week. 
 When transfer was accomplished, and the trade 
 In Paris did indeed become their own. 
 But bought by them and sold by him on terms 
 'Twixt man and man, — might serve 'twixt 
 
 wolf and wolf, 
 Substitute " bit and clawed " for " signed and 
 
 sealed" — 
 Our ordinary business-terms, in short. 
 Another week, and Clairvaux broke in bloom 
 At end of April, to receive again 
 Monsieur L^once Miranda, gentleman. 
 Ex-jeweller and goldsmith : never more — 
 According to the purpose he professed — 
 To quit this paradise, his property. 
 This Clara, his companion ; so it proved. 
 
 The Cousins, each with elongated nose. 
 Discussed their bargain, reconciled them soon 
 To hard necessity, disbursed the cash. 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 
 
 761 
 
 And hastened to subjoin, wherever type 
 Pi'oolaimBd " Miranda " to the public, " Called 
 Now Firm-Miranda." There, a colony, 
 They flourisii underneath the name that still 
 Maintains the old repute, 1 understand. 
 They built their Clairvaux, dream-ChSteau, in 
 
 JSpain, 
 Perhaps — but Place Vendome is waking 
 
 worth : 
 Oh, they lost little I — only, man and man 
 Hardly conclude transactions of the kind 
 As cousin should with cousin, — cousins think. 
 For the rest, all was honorably done, 
 So, ere buds break to blossom, let us breathe 1 
 Never suppose there was one particle 
 Of recrudescence — wound, half-healed before, 
 Set freshly running — sin, repressed as such, 
 New loosened as necessity of life 1 
 In all this revocation and resolve. 
 Far be sin's self-indulgence from your thought ! 
 The man had simply made discovery, 
 By process 1 respect if not admire, 
 That what was, was : — that turf, his feet had 
 
 touched. 
 Felt solid just as much as yonder towers 
 He saw with eyes, but did not stand upon. 
 And could not, if he would, reach in a leap. 
 People had told him flowery turf was false 
 To footstep, tired the traveller soon, beside : 
 That was untrue. They told him " One fair 
 
 stride 
 Plants on safe platform, and secures man rest." 
 That was untrue. Some varied the advice : 
 " Neither was solid, towers no more than 
 
 turf : " 
 Double assertion, therefore twice as false. 
 "I like these amateurs" — our friend had 
 
 laughed. 
 Could he turn what he felt to what he thought. 
 And, that again, to what he put in words : 
 " I like their pretty trial, proof of paste 
 Or precious stone, by delicate approach 
 Of eye askance, fine feel of fii^er-tip. 
 Or touch of tongue inquisitive for cold. 
 I tried my jewels in a crucible : 
 Fierce fire has felt them, licked them, left 
 
 them sound. 
 Don't tell me that my earthly love is sham. 
 My heavenly fear a clever counterfeit ! 
 Each may oppose each, yet be true alike ! " 
 
 To build up, independent of the towers, 
 
 A durable pavilion o'er the turf, 
 
 Had issued in disaster. '' What remained 
 
 Except, by tunnel, oi- else gallery. 
 
 To keep communication 'twixt the two, 
 
 Unite the opposites, both near and far. 
 
 And never try complete abandonment 
 
 Of one or other ? " so he thought, not said. 
 
 And to such engineering feat, I say, 
 
 Monsieur L4onee Miranda saw the means 
 
 Precisely in this revocation prompt 
 
 Of just those benefits of worldly wealth 
 
 Conferred upon his Cousinry — all but ! 
 
 This Clairvaux — you would know, were you 
 
 at top 
 Of yondsr crowning grace, its Belvedere — 
 
 Is situate in one angle-niche of three. 
 
 At equidistance from Saint-Rambert — there 
 
 Behind you, and The Ravissante, beside — 
 
 There : steeple, steeple, and this Clairvaux-top 
 
 (A sort of steeple) constitute a trine. 
 
 With not a tenement to break each side. 
 
 Two miles or so in length, if eye can judge. 
 
 Now this is native land of miracle. 
 Oh, why, why, why, from all recorded time, 
 Was miracle not wrought once, only once. 
 To help whoever wanted help indeed ? 
 If on the day when Spring's green girlishness 
 Grew nubile, and she trembled into May, 
 And our Miranda climbed to clasp the Spring 
 A-tiptoe o'er the sea, those wafts of warmth, 
 Those cloudlets scudding under the bare blue, 
 And all that new sun, that fresh hope about 
 His airy place of observation, — friend. 
 Feel with me that if just then, just for once, 
 Some angel, — such as the authentic pen 
 Yonder records a daily visitant 
 Of ploughman Claude, rheumatic in the joints. 
 And spinster Jeanne, with megrim troubled 
 
 sore, — 
 If such an angel, with naught else to do, 
 Had taken station on the pinnacle 
 And simply said, " L^once, look straight be- 
 fore ! 
 Neither to right hand nor to left : for why ? 
 Being a stupid soul, you want a guide 
 To turn the goodness in you to axjcount 
 And make stupidity submit itself. 
 Go to Saint-Rambert ! Straightway get such 
 
 guide ! 
 There stands a man of men. You, jeweller. 
 Must needs have heard how once ithe biggest 
 
 block 
 Of diamond now in Europe lay exposed 
 'Mid specimens of stone and earth and ore, 
 On huckster's stall, — Navona names the 
 
 Square, 
 And Rome the city for the incident, — 
 Labelled ' quartz-crystal, price one halfpenny.' 
 Haste and secure that ha'p'worth, on your 
 
 Ufe! 
 That man will read you rightly head to foot, 
 Mark the brown face of yon, the bushy beard. 
 The breadth 'twixt shoulderblades, and through 
 
 each black 
 Castilian orbit, see into your soul. 
 Talk to him for five minutes — nonsense, sense, 
 No matter what — describe your horse, your 
 
 hound, — 
 Give your opinion of the policy 
 Of Monsieur Rouher, — will he succor Rome ? 
 Your estimate of what may outcome be 
 From (Ecumenical Assemblage there 1 
 After which samples of intelligence. 
 Rapidly run through those events you call 
 Your past life, tell what once you tried to do. 
 What you intend on doing this next May 1 
 There he stands, reads an English newspaper. 
 Stock-still, and now, again upon the move, 
 Paces the beach to taste the Spring, like you. 
 Since both are human beings in God's eye. 
 He will have understood you, I engage. 
 Endeavor, for your part, to understand 
 
762 
 
 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 He knows more, and loves better, than the 
 
 world 
 That never heard his name, and never may. 
 He will have recognized, ere breath be spent 
 And speech at end, how much that 's good in 
 
 man. 
 And generous, and self-devoting, makes 
 Monsieur L^once Miranda worth his help ; 
 While sounding to the bottom ignorance 
 Historical and philosophical 
 And moral and religious, all one couch 
 Of crassitude, a portent of its kind. 
 Then, just as he would pityingly teach 
 Your body to repair maltreatment, give 
 .idvice that you should make those stumps to 
 
 stir 
 With artificial hands of caoutchouc, 
 So would he soon supply your crippled soul 
 With crutches, from his own intelligence. 
 Able to help you onward in the path 
 Of rectitude whereto your face is set. 
 And counsel justice — to yourself, the first. 
 To your associate, very like a wife 
 Or sora".thing better, — to the world at lai^e. 
 Friends, strangers, horses, hounds, and Cous- 
 inly— 
 All which amount of justice will include 
 Justice to God. Go and consult his voice ! " 
 Since angel would not say this simple truth. 
 What hinders that my heart relieve itself, 
 Milsand, who makest warm my wintry world. 
 And wise my heaven, if there we consort too ? 
 Monsieur L^once Miranda turned, alas, 
 Or was turned, by no angel, t' other way. 
 And got him guidance of The Kavissante. 
 
 Now, into the originals of faith. 
 Yours, mine, Miranda's, no inquiry here ! 
 Of faith, as apprehended by mankind. 
 The causes, were they caught and catalogued'. 
 Would too distract, too desperately foil 
 Inquirer. How may analyst reduce 
 Quantities to exact their opposites. 
 Value to zero, then bring zero back 
 To value of supreme preponderance ? 
 How substitute thing meant for thing ex- 
 pressed ? 
 Detect the wire-thread through that fluffy silk 
 Men call their rope, their real compulsive 
 
 power ? 
 Suppose effected such anatomy. 
 And demonstration made of what belief 
 Has moved believer — were the consequence 
 Reward at all ? would each man straight de- 
 duce. 
 From proved reality of cause, effect 
 Conformable — believe and unbelieve 
 According to your True thus disengaged 
 From all his heap of False called reason first ? 
 
 No : hand once used to hold a soft thick twist. 
 Cannot now grope its way by wire alone : 
 Childhood may catch the knack, scarce Youth, 
 
 not Age I 
 That 's the reply rewards you. Just as well 
 Remonstrate to yon peasant in the blouse 
 That, had he justified the true intent 
 Of Nature who composed him thus and thus. 
 
 Weakly or strongly, here he would not stand 
 Struggling with uncongenial earth and sky, 
 But elsewhere tread the surface of the globe, 
 Since one meridian suits the faulty lungs. 
 Another bids the sluggish liver work. 
 " Here I was born, for better or for worse: 
 I did not choose a climate for myself ; 
 Admit, my life were healthy, led elsewhere," 
 (He answers,) " how am I to migrate, pray ? " 
 
 Therefore the course to take is — spare your 
 
 pains. 
 And trouble uselessly with discontent 
 Nor soul nor body, by parading proof 
 That neither haply had known ailment, placed 
 Precisely where the circumstance forbade 
 Their lot should fall to either of the pair. 
 But try and, what you find wrong, remedy, 
 Accepting the conditions : never ask 
 "How came you to be bom here with those 
 
 That liver ? " But bid asthma smoke a pipe, 
 Stramonium, just as if no Tropics were. 
 And ply with calomel the sluggish duct. 
 Nor taunt "The born Norwegian breeds no 
 
 bile ! " 
 And as with body, so proceed with soul : 
 Nor less discerningly, where faith you found. 
 However foolish and fantastic, grudge 
 To play the doctor and amend mistake. 
 Because a wisdom were conceivable 
 Whence faith had sprung robust above disease. 
 Far beyond human help, that source of things 1 
 Since, in the first stage, so to speak, — mat 
 
 stare 
 Of apprehension at the invisible, — 
 Begins divergency of mind from mind, 
 Superior from inferior : leave this first ! 
 Little you change there ! What comes after- 
 ward — 
 From apprehended thing, each inference 
 With practicality concerning life. 
 This you may test and try, confirm the right 
 Or contravene the wrong which reasons there. 
 The offspring of the sickly faith must prove 
 Sickly act also : stop a monster-birth ! 
 When water 's in the cup, and not the cloud, 
 Then is the proper time for chemic test : 
 Belief permits your skill to operate 
 When, drop by drop condensed from mist; 
 
 heaven, 
 'T is wrung out, lies a bowl-full in the fleece. 
 How dew by spoonfuls came, let Gideon say : 
 What purpose water serves, your word or two 
 May teach him, should he fancy it lights fire. 
 
 Concerning, then, our vaporous Ravissante — 
 How fable first precipitated faith — 
 Silence you get upon such point from me. 
 But when I see come posting to the pair 
 At Clairvaux, for the cure of soul-disease. 
 This Father of the Mission, Parish-priest, 
 This Mother of the Convent, Nun I know — 
 They practise in that second stage of things ; 
 They boast no fresh distillery of faith ; 
 'T is dogma in the bottle, bright and old. 
 They bring ; and I pretend to pharmacy. 
 They undertake the cure witli all my heart 1 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 
 
 763 
 
 He trusts them, and they surely trust them- 
 selves. 
 
 I ask no better. Never mind the cause, 
 
 Fans et origo of the malady : 
 
 Apply the drug with courage ! Here 's our 
 case. 
 
 Monsieur L^once Miranda asks of God, 
 
 —May a man, living in illicit tie. 
 
 Continue, by connivance of the Church, 
 
 No matter what amends he please to make 
 
 Short of forthwith relinquishing the siu ? 
 
 Physicians, what do you propose for cure ? 
 
 Father and Mother of The Ravissante, 
 
 Read your own records, and you find prescribed 
 
 As follows, when a couple out of sorts 
 
 Rather than gravely suffering, sought your 
 
 skill 
 And thereby got their health again. Perpend ! 
 Two and a half good centuries ago, 
 Luc de la Maison Rouge, a nobleman 
 Of Claise, (the river gives this country name,) 
 And, just as noblewoman, Maude his wife, 
 Having been married many happy years 
 Spent in God's honor and man*s service too. 
 Conceived, while yet in flower of youth and 
 
 hope. 
 The project of departing each from ea«h 
 Forever, and dissolving marnag:e-bonds 
 That both might enter a religious life. 
 Needing, before they came to such resolve, 
 Divine illumination, — course was dear, — 
 They visited your church in pilgrimage. 
 On Christmas morn : communicating straight. 
 They heard three Masses proper for the day, 
 " It is incredible with what effect " — 
 Quoth the Cistercian monk I copy from — 
 And, next day, came, again communicants, 
 A.gain heard Masses manifold, but now 
 With added thanks to Christ for special grace 
 And consolation granted ; in the night. 
 Had been divorce from marriage, manifest 
 By signs and tokens. So, they made great 
 
 gifts, 
 Left money for more Masses, and returned 
 Homeward rejoicing — he, to take the rules, 
 As Brother Dionysius, Capucin ! 
 She, to become first postulant, then nun 
 According to the rules of Benedict, 
 Sister Scolastica : so ended they. 
 And so do 1 — not end nor yet commence 
 One note or comment. What was done was 
 
 done. 
 Now, Father of the Mission, here 's your case ! 
 And, Mother of the Convent, here 's its cure ! 
 If separation was permissible, 
 And that decree of Christ " What God hath 
 
 joined 
 Let no man put asunder " nullified 
 Because a couple, blameless in the world, 
 Had the conceit that, still more blamelessly. 
 Out of the world, by breach of marriage-vow, 
 Their life was like to pass, — you oracles 
 Of God, — since holy Paul says such you are, — 
 Hesitate, not one moment, to pronounce 
 When questioned by the pair now needing help, 
 " Each from the other go, you guilty ones, 
 Preliminary to your least approach 
 
 Nearer the Power that thus could strain a 
 
 point 
 In favor of a pair of innocents 
 Who thought their wedded hands not clean 
 
 enough 
 To touch and leave unsullied their souls' snow ! 
 Are not your hands found iilthy by the world. 
 Mere human law and custom ? Not a step 
 Nearer till hands be washed and purified! " 
 
 What they did say is immaterial, since 
 Certainly it was nothing of the kind. 
 There was no washing hands of him (alack, 
 You take me ? — in the figurative sense !) 
 But, somehow, gloves were drawn o'er dirt and 
 
 all. 
 And practice with the Church procured there- 
 by. 
 Seeing that, — all remonstrance proved in vain. 
 Persuasives tried and terrors put to use, 
 I nowise question, — still the guilty pair 
 Only embraced the closelier, obstinate, — 
 Father and Mother went from Clairvaux back 
 Their weary way, with heaviness of heart, 
 I grant you, but each palm well crossed with 
 
 coin. 
 And nothing like a smutch perceptible. 
 Monsieur Lionce Miranda might compomid 
 For sin ? — no, surely ! but by gifts — prepare 
 His soul the better for contrition, say ! 
 
 Gift followed upon gift, at all events. 
 Good counsel was rejected, on one part : 
 Hard money, on the other — may we hope 
 Was unreflectingly consigned to purse ? 
 
 Two years did this experiment engage 
 Monsieur L4once Miranda : how, by gifts 
 To God and to God's poor, a man might stay 
 In sin a/id yet stave off sin's punishment. 
 No salve could be conceived more nicely mixed 
 For this man's nature : generosity, — 
 Susceptibility to human ills, 
 Corporeal, mental, — self-devotedness 
 Made up Miranda — whether strong or weak 
 Elsewhere, may be inquired another time. 
 In mercy he was strong, at all events. 
 Enough ! he could not see a beast in pain. 
 Much less a man, without the will to aid ; 
 And where the will was, oft the raeaiis weri 
 
 too. 
 Since that good bargain with the Cousinry. 
 
 The news flew fast about the countryside 
 That, with the kind man, it was ask and have ; 
 And ask and have they did. To instance 
 
 you : — 
 A mob of beggars at The Ravissante 
 Clung to his skirts one day, and cried "We 
 
 thirst!" 
 Forthwith he bade a cask of wine be broached 
 To satisfy all comers, till, dead-drunk 
 So satisfied, they strewed the holy place. 
 For this was grown religious and a rite : 
 Such slips of judgment, gifts irregular. 
 Showed but as spillings of the golden grist 
 On either side the hopper, through blind zeal ; 
 Steadily the main stream went pouring on 
 
764 
 
 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 From mill to «ioutli of sack — held wide and 
 
 close 
 By Father of the Mission, Parish-priest, 
 And Mother of the Convent, Nun I know. 
 With such effect that, in the sequel, proof 
 Was tendered to the Court at Vire, last month, 
 That in these same two years, expenditure 
 At quiet Clairvaax rose to the amount 
 Of Forty Thousand English Pounds : whereof 
 A trifle went, no inappropriate close 
 Of bounty, to supply the Virgin's crown 
 With that stupendous jewel from New York, 
 Now blaziug as befits the Star of Sea, 
 
 Such signs of grace, outward and visible, 
 
 I rather give you, for your sake and mine. 
 
 Than put in evidence the inward strife, 
 
 Spiritual effort to compound for fault 
 
 By payment of devotion — thank the phrase ! 
 
 That payment was as punctual, do not doubt. 
 
 As its far easier fellow. Yesterday 
 
 I trudged the distance from The Bavissante 
 
 To Clairvaux, with my two feet : but our friend, 
 
 The more to edify the country-folk, 
 
 Was wont to make that journey on both knees. 
 
 '^ Maliciously perverted incident ! " 
 
 Snarled the retort, when this was told at Vire : 
 
 " The man paid mere devotion as he passed, 
 
 Knelt decently at just each wayside shrine ! '^ 
 
 Alas, my lawyer, I trudged yesterday — 
 
 On ray two feet, and with both eyes wide ope, — 
 
 The distance, and could find no shrine at all ! 
 
 According to his lights, I praise the man. 
 
 Enough ! incessant was devotion, say — 
 
 With her, yon know of, praying at his side. 
 
 Still, there be relaxations of the tense ; 
 
 Or life indemnifies itself for strain. 
 
 Or finds its very strain grow feebleness. 
 
 Monsieur L^once Miranda's days were passed 
 
 Much as of old, in simple work and play. 
 
 His first endeavor, on recovery 
 
 From that sad ineffectual sacrifice. 
 
 Had been to set about repairing loss : 
 
 Never admitting, loss was to repair. 
 
 No word at any time escaped his lips 
 
 — Betrayed a lurking presence, in his heart. 
 
 Of sorrow ; no regret for mischief done -^ 
 
 Punishment suffered, he would rather say. 
 
 Crood-tempered schoolboy-fashion, he preferred 
 
 To laugh away his flogging, fair price paid 
 
 For pleasure out of bounds : if needs must be, 
 
 Get pleasure and get flogged a second time ! 
 
 A sullen subject would have nursed the scars 
 
 And made excuse, for throwing grammar by. 
 
 That bench was grown uneasy to the seat. 
 
 No : this poor fellow cheerfully got hands 
 
 Fit for his stumps, and what hands failed to do. 
 
 The other members did in their degree — 
 
 Unwonted service. With his month alone 
 
 He wrote, nay, painted pictures — think of that ! 
 
 He played on a piano pedal-keyed. 
 
 Kicked out — if it was Bach's — good music 
 
 thence. 
 He rode, that 's readily conceivable. 
 But then he shot and never missed his bird, 
 With other feats as dexterous : 1 infer 
 He was not ignorant what hands are worth, 
 When he resolved on mining his own. 
 
 So the two years passed somehow — who shall 
 
 say . ... 
 
 Foolishly, — as one estimates mankmd. 
 The work they do, the play they leave un- 
 done ? — 
 Two whole years spent in that experiment 
 I told you of, at Clairvaux all the time. 
 From April on to April : why that month 
 More than another, notable in life ? 
 Does the awakening of the year arouse 
 Man to new projects, nerve him for fresh feats 
 Of what proves, for the most part of mankind 
 Playing or working, novel folly too ? 
 At any rate, I see no slig:htest sign 
 Of foUy (let me teU you in advance). 
 Nothing but wisdom meets me manifest 
 In the procedure of the Twentieth Day 
 Of April, 'Seventy, —folly's year in Prance. 
 
 It was delightful Spring, and out of doors 
 Temptation to adventure. Walk or ride ? 
 There was a wild young horse to exercise. 
 And teach the way to go, and pace to keep : 
 Monsieur L4once Miranda chose to ride. 
 So, while they clapped soft saddle straight on 
 
 back. 
 And bitted jaw to satisfaction, — since 
 The partner of his days must stay at home. 
 Teased by some trifling legacy of March 
 To tliroat or shoulder, — visit duly paid 
 And '* farewell " given and received again, — 
 As chambei^door considerately closed 
 Behind him, still five minutes were to spend. 
 How better, than by clearing, two and two, 
 The staircase-steps and coming out aloft 
 Upon the platform yonder (raise your eyes !) 
 And tasting, just as those two years before. 
 Spring's bright advance upon the tower a-top. 
 The feature of the front, the Belvedere ? 
 
 Look at it for a moment while I breathe. 
 
 IV 
 
 Ready to hear the rest ? How good yon are ! 
 
 Now for this Twentieth splendid day of Spring, 
 All in a tale, — sun, wind, sky, earth and sea, — 
 To bid man, " Up, be doing ! " Mount the stair. 
 Monsieur L^once Miranda mounts so brisk. 
 And look — ere his elastic foot arrive — 
 Your longest, far and wide, o'er fronting space. 
 Yon white streak — Havre lighthouse ! Name 
 
 and name. 
 How the mind runs from each to each relay, 
 Town after town, till Paris' self be touched. 
 Superlatively big with life and death 
 To all the world, that very day perhaps ! 
 He who stepped out upon the platform here, 
 Pinnacled over the expanse, gave thought 
 Neither to Ronher nor OUivier, Roon 
 Nor Bismarck, Emperor nor King, but just 
 To steeple, church, and shrine. The Ravissante 1 
 
 He saw Her, whom myself saw, but when Spring 
 Was passing into Fall : not robed and crowned 
 As, thanks to him, and her you know about. 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 
 
 76s 
 
 She stands at present ; but She smiled the same. 
 Thither he tamed — to never turn away. 
 
 He thought . . . 
 
 (Suppose I should prefer *' He said " ? 
 Along with every act — and speech is aet — 
 There fo, a multitude impalpable 
 To ordmary human faculty, 
 The thoughts which give the act significance. 
 Who is a poet needs must apprehend 
 Alike both speech and thoughts which prompt 
 
 to spealt. 
 Part these, and thought withdraws to poetry : 
 Speech is reported in the newspaper.) 
 
 He said, then, probably no word at all. 
 
 But thought as follows — in a minute's space — 
 
 One particle of ore beats out such leaf I 
 
 " This Spring-morn I am forty-three years old : 
 
 In prime of life, perfection of estate 
 
 Bodily, mental, nay, material too, — 
 
 My whole of worldly fortunes reach their height. 
 
 Body and soul alike on eminence ; 
 
 It is not probable I ever raise 
 
 Soul above standard by increase of worth, 
 
 Kor reasonably may expect to lift 
 
 Body beyond the present altitude. 
 
 " Behold me. Lady called The Kavissante 1 
 Such as I am, I — gave myself to you 
 So long since, that I cannot say ' I give.' 
 All ray belongings, what is summed in life, 
 I have submitted wholly — as man might. 
 At lea^t, as /might, who am weak, not strong, — 
 Wholly, then, to your rule and governance. 
 So far as I had strength. My weakness was — 
 1 felt a fascination, at each point 
 And pore of me, a Power as absolute. 
 Claiming that soul should recognize her sway. 
 Oh, you were no whit clearlier Queen, I see, 
 Throughout the life that rolls out ribbon-like 
 Its shot-silk length behind me, than the strange 
 Mystery — how shall I denominate 
 The unrobed One ? Kobed you go and crowned 
 
 as well, 
 Named by the nations : she is hard to name. 
 Though you have spelt out certain characters 
 Obscure upon what fillet binds her brow. 
 Lust of the flesh, lust of the eye, life\ pride. 
 * So call her, and contemn the enchantress ! ' — 
 
 ' Crash 
 The despot, and recover liberty 1 ' 
 Cried despot and enchantress at each ear. 
 You were conspicuous and pre-eminent, 
 Authoritative and imperial, — you 
 Spoke first, claimed homage : did I hesitate ? 
 Born for no mastery, but servitude. 
 Men cannot serve two masters, says the Book ; 
 Master should measure strength with master, 
 
 then. 
 Before on servant is imposed a task. 
 You spoke first, promised best, and threatened 
 
 most; 
 The other never threatened, promised, spoke 
 A sii^le word, but, when your part was done, 
 Lifted a finger, and I, prostrate, knew 
 
 Films were about me, though you stood aloof 
 
 bmilmg or frowning * Where is power like mine 
 
 To punish or reward thee ? Kise, thou fool ! 
 
 Will to be free, and, lo, I lift thee loose ! ' 
 
 Did I not wUl, and could I rise a whit ? 
 
 Lay I, at any time, content to lie ? 
 
 'To lie, at all events, brings pleasure : make 
 
 Amends by undemauded pain ! ' I said. 
 
 Did not you prompt me ? ' Purchase now by 
 
 pain 
 Pleasure hereafter in the world to come ! ' 
 I could not pluck my heart out, as you bade : 
 Unbidden, I burned off my hands at least. 
 My soul retained its treasure : but my purse 
 Lightened itself with much alacrity. 
 Well, where is the reward ? what promised 
 
 fruit 
 Of sacrifice in peace, content ? what sense 
 Of added strength to bear or to forbear ? 
 What influx of new light assists me now 
 Even to guess you recognize a gain 
 In what was loss enough to mortal me ? 
 But she, the less authoritative voice. 
 Oh, how distinct enunciating, how 
 Plain dealing ! Gain she gave was gain indeed 1 
 That, you deny : that, you contemptuous call 
 Acorns, swine s food not man's meat 1 * Spurn 
 
 the draff ! ' 
 Ay, but those life-tree apples I prefer. 
 Am I to die of hunger till they drop ? 
 Husks keep flesh from starvation, anyhow. 
 Give those life-apples ! — one, worth woods of 
 
 oak. 
 Worth acorns by the wagon-load, — one shoot 
 Through heart and brain, assurance bright and 
 
 brief 
 That you, my Lady, my own Ravissante, 
 Feel, through my famine, served and satisfied, 
 Own me, your starveling, soldier of a sort ! 
 Your soldier ! do I read my title clear 
 Even to call myself your friend, not foe ? 
 What is the pact between us but a truce ? 
 At best I shall have staved off enmity. 
 Obtained a respite, ransomed me from wrath. 
 I pay, instalment hy instalment, life, 
 Earth's tribute-money, pleasures great and 
 
 small. 
 Whereof should at the last one penny piece 
 Fall short, the whole heap becomes forfeiture. 
 You find in me deficient soldiership : 
 Want the whole life or none, I grudge that 
 
 whole. 
 Because I am not sure of recompense : 
 Because I want faith. Whose the fault? I 
 
 ask. 
 If insufficient faith have done thus much. 
 Contributed thus much of sacrifice. 
 More would move mountains, you are warrant. 
 
 WeU, 
 Grant, you, the grace, I give the gratitude ! 
 And what were easier ? ' Ask and have ' folk 
 
 call 
 Miranda's method : ' Have, nor need to ask ! ' 
 So do they formulate your quality 
 Superlative beyond my human grace. 
 The Kavissante, you ravish men away 
 From puny aches and petty pains, assuaged 
 By man's own art with small expenditure 
 
766 
 
 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Of pill or potion, unless, put to shame. 
 Nature is roused and sets things right herself. 
 Your miracles are grown our commonplace ; 
 No day but pilgrim hobbles his last mile, 
 Kneels down and rises up, flings crutch away, 
 Or else appends it to the reverend heap 
 Beneath you, votive cripple-carpentry. 
 Some few meet failure — oh, they wanted faith, 
 And may betake themselves to La Salette, 
 Or seek Lourdes, so that hence the scandal 
 
 limp ! 
 The many get their grace and go their way 
 Rejoicing, with a tale to tell, — most like, 
 A stalf to borrow, since the crutch is gone, 
 Should the first telling happen at my honse, 
 And teller wet his whistle "with my wine. 
 / tell this to a doctor and he laughs : 
 ' Give me permission to cry — Out of bed. 
 You loth rheumatic sluggard ! Cheat yon chair 
 Of laziness, its gouty occupant ! — 
 You should see miracles performed ! But now, 
 I give advice, and take as fee ten francs. 
 And do as much as does your Ravissante. 
 Send her that case of cancer to be cured 
 I have refused to treat for any fee. 
 Bring back my would-be patient sound and 
 
 whole, 
 And see me laugh on t'other side my mouth ! ' 
 Can he be right, and are yon hampered thus ! 
 Such pettiness restricts a miracle 
 Wrought by the Great Physician, who hears 
 
 prayer. 
 Visibly seated in your mother-lap ! 
 He, out of nothing, made sky, earth, and sea. 
 And all that in them is, man, beast, bird, fish, 
 Down to this insect on my parapet. 
 Look how the mai'vel of a minim crawls ! 
 Were I to kneel among the halt and maimed. 
 And pray ' Who mad'st the insect with ten 
 
 legs. 
 Make me one finger grow where ten were 
 
 once ! ' 
 The very priests would thrust me out of church. 
 * What folly does the madman dare expect ? 
 No faith obtains — in this late age, at least — 
 Such cure as that ! We ease rheumatics, 
 
 though ! ' 
 
 " Ay, bring the early ages back again, 
 
 What prodigy were unattainable ? 
 
 I read your annals. Here came Louis Onze, 
 
 Gave thrice the sum he ever gave before 
 
 At one time, some three hundred crowns, to 
 
 wit — 
 On pilgrimage to pray for — health, he found ? 
 Did he ? I do not read it in Commines. 
 Here sent poor joyous Marie- Antoinette 
 To thank you that a Dauphin dignified 
 Her motherhood — called Duke of Normandy 
 And Martyr of the Temple, much the same 
 As if no robe of hers had dressed you rich ; 
 No silver lamps, she gave, illume your shrine ! 
 Here, following example, fifty years 
 Ago, in gratitude for birth again 
 Of yet another destined King of France, 
 Did not the Duchess fashion with her hands, 
 And frame in gold and crystal, and present 
 A bouquet made of artificial flowers ? 
 
 And was he King of France, and is not he 
 StiU Couni of Chambord ? 
 
 " Such the days of faith, 
 And such their produce to encourage mine ! 
 What now, if I too count without my host ? 
 I too have given money, ornament. 
 And 'artificial flowers '— which, when I 
 
 plucked. 
 Seemed rooting at my heart and real enough : 
 What if I gain thereby nor health of mind. 
 Nor youth renewed which perished in its prime, 
 Bui'nt to a cinder 'twixt the red-hot bars. 
 Nor gain to see my second baby-hope 
 Of managing to live on tenns with both 
 Opposing potentates, the Power and you. 
 Crowned with success ? I dawdle out my days 
 In exile here at Clairvaux, with mock love. 
 That gives, while whispering ' Would I dared 
 
 refuse ! ' — 
 What the loud voice declares my heart's free 
 
 gift! 
 Mock worship, mock superiority 
 O'er those I style the world's benighted ones. 
 That irreligious sort I pity so, 
 Dumas and even Hertford, who is Duke. 
 
 " Impiety ? Not if I know myself ! 
 
 Not if you know the heart and soul I bare, 
 
 I bid you cut, hack, slash, anatomize. 
 
 Till peccant part be found and flung away ! 
 
 Demonstrate where I need more faith! 
 
 Describe 
 What act shall evidence sufficiency 
 Of faith, your warrant for such exercise 
 Of power, in my behalf, as all the world. 
 Except poor praying me, declares profuse ? 
 Poor me ? It is that world, not me alone. 
 That world which prates of fixed laws and the 
 
 like, 
 I fain would save, poor world so ignorant ! 
 And your part were — what easy miracle ? 
 Oh, Lady, could I make your want like mine ! " 
 
 Then liis face grew one luminosity. 
 
 " Simple, sufficient ! Happiness at height ! 
 
 I solve the riddle, I persuade mankind. 
 
 I have been just the simpleton who stands — 
 
 Summoned to claim his patrimonial rights — 
 
 At shilly-shally, may he knock or no 
 
 At his own door in his own house and home 
 
 Whereof he holds the very title-deeds ! 
 
 Here is my title to this property. 
 
 This power you hold for profit of myself 
 
 And all the world at need — which need is 
 
 '* My title — let me hear who controverts ! 
 Count Mailleville built yon church. Why did he 
 
 so ? 
 Because he found your image. How came 
 
 that ? 
 His shepherd told him that a certain sheep 
 Was wont to scratch with hoof and scrape with 
 
 horn 
 At ground where once the Danes had razed a 
 
 church. 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 
 
 767 
 
 Thither he went, and there he dug, and thence 
 He disinterred the image he conveyed 
 In pomp to Londres yonder, his domain. 
 You liked the old place better than the new. 
 The Count might surely have divined as much: 
 He did uot ; some one might have spoke a 
 
 word : 
 No one did. A mere dream had warned enough, 
 That back again in pomp you best were borne : 
 No dream warned, and no need of convoy was ; 
 An angel caught you up and clapped you 
 
 down, — 
 No mighty taslc ; you stand one metre high, 
 And paople carry you about at times. 
 Why, then, did you despise the simple course ? 
 Because you are the Queen of Angels : when 
 You front us in a lecture, there flock they, 
 Angels aroiind you, here and everywhere. 
 
 " Tlierefore, to prove indubitable faith. 
 Those angels that acknowledge you their queen, 
 I summon them to bear me to your feet 
 From Clairvaux through the air, an easy trip ! 
 Faith without flaw ! I trust your potency, 
 Benevolence, your will to save the world — 
 By such a simplest of procedures, too ! 
 Not even by affording angel-help. 
 Unless it please you : there 's a simpler mode : 
 Only suspend the law of gravity, 
 And, while at back, permitted to propel. 
 The air helps onward, let the air in front 
 Cease to oppose my passage through the midst ! 
 
 " Thus I bestride the railing, leg o'er leg, 
 Thus, lo, I stand, a single inch away. 
 At dizzy edge of death, — no touch of fear. 
 As safe on tower above as turf below ! 
 Your smile enswathes me in beatitude. 
 You lift along the votary — who vaults. 
 Who, in the twinkling of an eye, revives, 
 Dropt safely in the space before the church — 
 How crowded, since this mom is market>day ! 
 I shall not need to speak. The news will run 
 Like wild-fire. ' Thousands saw Miranda's 
 
 flight!' 
 'T is telegraphed to Paris in a trice. 
 The Boulevard is one buzz — ' Do you believe ? 
 Well, this time, thousands saw Miranda's 
 
 flight ■. 
 You know him, goldsmith in the Place Ven- 
 
 dSme.' 
 In goes the Empress to the Emperor : 
 * Now — will you hesitate to make disgorge 
 Your wicked King of Italy his gains. 
 Give the Legations to the Pope once more ? ' 
 Which done. — why, grace goes back to oper- 
 ate. 
 They themselves sst a good example first. 
 Resign the empire twenty years usurped. 
 And Henry, the Desired One, reigns o'er 
 
 France ! 
 Regenerated France makes all things new ! 
 My house no longer stands on Quai Rousseau, 
 Bnt Quai rechristened Alacoque : a quai 
 Where Renan burns his book, and VeuiUot 
 
 burns 
 Renan beside, since Veuillot rules the roast, 
 Re-edits now indeed ' The Universe.' 
 
 blessing, superlatively big 
 
 With blessedness beyond all blessing dreamed 
 By man ! for just that promise has effect, 
 ' Old things shall pass away and all be new ! ' 
 Then, for a culminating mercy-feat, 
 Wherefore should I dare dream impossible 
 That X too have ray portion in the change ? 
 My past with all its sorrow, sin and shame. 
 Becomes a blank, a nothing ! There she stands, 
 Clara de Millefleurs, all deodorized. 
 Twenty years' stain wiped off her innocence 1 
 There never was Muhlhausen, nor at all 
 Duke Hertford : naught that was, remains, ex- 
 cept 
 The beauty, — yes, the beauty is imehanged ! 
 Well, and the soul too, that must keep the 
 
 same ! 
 And so the trembling little virgin hand 
 Melts into mine, that 's back again, of course I 
 — Think not I care about ray poor old self ! 
 
 1 only want my hand for that one use. 
 
 To take her hand, and say ' I marry you — 
 Men, women, angels, you behold my wife ! 
 There is no secret, nothing wicked here. 
 Nothing she does not wish the world to know 1 ' 
 None of your married women have the right 
 To mutter ' Yes, indeed, she beats us all 
 In beauty, — ■ but our lives are pure at least ! ' 
 Bear witness, for our marriage is no thing 
 Done in a corner ! 'T is The Ravissante 
 Repairs the wrong of Paris. See, She smiles, 
 She beckons. She bids * Hither, both of you ! ' 
 And may we kneel? And will you bless us 
 
 both ? 
 And may I worship you, and yet love her ? 
 Then ! " - 
 
 A sublime spring from the balustrade 
 About the tower so often talked about, 
 A flash in middle air, and stone-dead lay 
 Monsieur L^once Miranda on the turf. 
 
 A gardener who watched, at work the while 
 Dibbling a flower-bed for geranium-shoots. 
 Saw the catastrophe, and, straightening back. 
 Stood up and shook his brows. " Poor soul, 
 
 poor soul. 
 Just what I prophesied the end would be ! 
 Ugh — the Red Night-cap!" (as he raised the 
 
 head) 
 " This must be what he meant by those strange 
 
 words 
 While I was weeding larkspurs, yesterday, 
 ' Angels would take him ! ' Mad ! " 
 
 No ! sane, I say. 
 Such being the conditions of his life, 
 Such end of lite was not irrational. 
 Hold a belief, you only half-believe. 
 With all-momentous issues either way, — 
 And I advise you imitate this leap. 
 Put faith to proof, be cured or killed at once ! 
 Call you men, killed through cutting cancer 
 
 out. 
 The worse for such an act of bravery ? 
 That 's more than I know. In my estimate. 
 Better lie prostrate on his turf at peace. 
 Than, wistful, eye, from out the tent, the 
 
768 
 
 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 Racked with a doubt, " Will going on bare 
 
 knees 
 All the way to The Ravissante and back, 
 Saying my Ave Mary all the time, 
 Somewhat excuse if I postpone my march ? 
 — Make due amends tor that one kiss I gave 
 In gratitude to her who held me out 
 Superior Fricquot's sermon, hot from press, 
 A-spread with hands so sinful yet so smooth ? " 
 
 And now, sincerely do I pray she stand, 
 Clara, with interposing sweep of robe. 
 Between us and this horror ! Any screen 
 Turns white by contrast with the tragic pall ; 
 And her dubiety distracts at least. 
 As well as snow, from such decided black. 
 With womanhood, at least, we have to do : 
 Ending with Clara — is the word too kind ? 
 
 Let pass the shock ! There 's poignancy enough 
 When what one parted with, a minute since, 
 Alive and happy, is returned a wreck — 
 All that was, all that seemed about to be. 
 Razed out and ruined now f orevermore. 
 Because a straw descended on this scale 
 Rather than that, made death o'erbalance life. 
 But think of cage-mates in captivity, 
 Inured to day-long, night-long vigilance 
 Each of the other's tread and angry turn 
 If behind prison bars the jailer knocked : 
 These whom society shut out, and thus 
 Penned in, to settle down and regulate 
 By the strange law, the solitary life — 
 When death divorces such a fellowship. 
 Theirs may pair off with that prodigious woe 
 Imagined of a ghastly brotherhood — 
 One watcher left in lighthouse out at sea. 
 With leagues of surf between the land and 
 
 him. 
 Alive with his dead partner on the rook ; 
 One galley-slave, whom curse and blow com- 
 pel 
 To labor on, ply oar — beside his chain, 
 Encumbered with a corpse-companion now. 
 Such these: although, no prisoners, self-en- 
 trenched. 
 They kept the world off from their barricade. 
 
 Memory, gratitude, was poignant, sure. 
 Though pride brought consolation of a kind. 
 Twenty years long had Clara been — of whom 
 The rival, nay, the victor, past dispute ? 
 What if in turn The Ravissante at length 
 Proved victor — which was doubtful — any- 
 how. 
 Here lay the inconstant with, conspicuous too, 
 The fruit of his good fortune ! 
 
 " Has he gained 
 By leaving me ? " she might soliloquize : 
 " All love could do, I did for him. I learned 
 By heart his nature, what he loved and loathed. 
 Leaned to with liking, turned from with dis- 
 taste. 
 No matter what his least velleity, 
 I was determined he should want no wish, 
 And in conformity administered 
 To his requirement ; most of joy I mixed 
 
 With least of sorrow in life's daily draught, 
 Twenty years long, life's proper average. 
 And when he got to quarrel with my cup. 
 Would needs out-sweeten honey, and discard 
 That gall-drop we require lest nectar cloy, — 
 I did not call him fool, and vex my friend, 
 But quietly allowed experiment. 
 Encouraged him to spice his drink, and now 
 Grate lignum vitce, now bruise so-called grains 
 Of Paradise, and pour now, for perfume, 
 Distilment rare, the rose of Jericho, 
 Holy-thorn, passion-flower, and what know I ? 
 Till beverage obtained the fancied sma«k. 
 'T was wild-flower-wine that neither helped noi 
 
 harmed 
 Who sipped and held it for restorative — 
 What harm ? But here has he been through 
 
 the hedge 
 Straying in search of simples, while my back 
 Was turned a minute, and he finds a prize. 
 Monkshood and belladonna ! my child. 
 My truant little boy, despite the beard, 
 The body two feet broad and six feet long. 
 And what the calendar counts middle age — 
 You wanted, did you, to enjoy a flight ? 
 Why not have taken into confidence 
 Me, that was mother to you ? — never mind 
 What mock disguise of mistress held you mine I 
 Had you come laughing, crying, with request, 
 ' Make me fly, mother ! ' I had run upstairs 
 And held you tight the while I danced you 
 
 high 
 In air from tower-top, singing ' Off we go 
 (On pilgrimage to Lourdes some day next 
 
 month). 
 And swift we soar (to Rome with Peteivpence), 
 And low we light (at Paris where we pick 
 Another jewel from our store of stones 
 And send it for a present to the Pope) ! ' 
 So, dropt indeed you were, but on my knees. 
 Rolling and crowing, not a whit the worse 
 For journey to your Ravissante and back. 
 Now, no more Clairvaux — which I made you 
 
 build. 
 And think an inspiration of your own — 
 No more fine house, trim garden, pretty park. 
 Nothing I used to busy you about. 
 And make believe you worked for my sur- 
 prise! 
 What weariness to me will work become 
 Now that I need not seem surprised again ! 
 This boudoir, for example, with the doves 
 (My stupid maid has damaged, dusting one) 
 Embossed in stucco o'er the looking-glass 
 Beside the toilet-table ! dear — dear me ! " 
 
 Here she looked up from her absorbing grief, 
 And round her. crow-like grouped, the Cous- 
 
 inry, 
 (She grew aware) sat witnesses at watch. 
 For, two days had elapsed since fate befell 
 The courser in the meadow, stretched so stark. 
 They did not cluster on the tree-tops, close 
 Their sooty ranks, caw and confabulate 
 For nothing : but, like calm determined crows, 
 They came to take possession of their corpse. 
 And who shall blame them ? Had hot they the 
 
 right? 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 
 
 769 
 
 One spoke. " They would be gentle, not aus- 
 tere. 
 They understood, and were compassionate. 
 Madame Mnhlhansen lay too abject now 
 For aught but the sincerest pity ; still, 
 Since plain speech salves the wound it seems to 
 
 make. 
 They must speak plainly — circumstances 
 
 spoke ! 
 Sin had conceiTed and brought forth death in- 
 deed. 
 As the commencement, so the close of things : 
 Just what might be expected all aloni; ! 
 Monsieur L4onoe Miranda launched liis youth 
 Into a cesspool of debauchery, 
 And, if he thence emerged all dripping slime, 
 — Where was the change except from thin to 
 
 thick. 
 One warm rich mud-bath, Madame ? — you, in 
 
 place 
 Of Paris-drainage and distilment, you 
 He never needed budge from, boiled to rags ! 
 True, some good instinct left the natural man. 
 Some touch of that deep dye wherewith imbued 
 By education, in his happier day. 
 The hopeful offspring of high parentage 
 Was fleece-marked moral and religious sheep, — 
 Some ruddle, faint reminder (we admit). 
 Stuck to Miranda, rubbed he ne'er so rude 
 gainst the goatly coarseness : to the last, 
 Moral he styled himself, reli^ous too 1 
 Which means — what ineradicable good 
 You found, you never left till good's self proved 
 Perversion and distortion, nursed to growth 
 So monstrous, that the tree-stock, dead and 
 
 dry. 
 Were seemlier far than such a heap gi'otesqne 
 Of fungous flourishing excrescence. Here, 
 Sap-like affection, meant for family. 
 Stole off to feed one sucker fat — yourself ; 
 While branehage, trained religiously aloft 
 To rear its head in reverence to the sun. 
 Was pulled down earthward, pegged and pick- 
 eted, 
 By topiary contrivance, till the tree 
 Became an arbor where, at vu^ar ease, 
 Sat superstition grinning through the loops. 
 Still, nature is too strong or else too weak 
 For cockney treatment : either, tree springs 
 
 back 
 To pristine shape, or else degraded droops. 
 And turns to touchwood at the heart. So 
 
 here — 
 Body and mind, at last the man gave way. 
 His body — there it lies, what part was left 
 Unmntilated ! for, the strife commenced 
 Two years ago, when, both hands burnt to ash, 
 
 — A branch broke loose, by loss of what choice 
 
 twigs! 
 As for his mind — behold our register 
 Of all its moods, from the incipient mad, 
 Nay, mere erratic, to the stark insane. 
 Absolute idiocy or what is worse ! 
 All have we catalogued — extravagance 
 In worldly matters, luxury absurd, 
 And zeal as crazed in its expenditure 
 Of nonsense called devotion. Don't we know 
 
 — We Cousins, bound in duty to our kin, — 
 
 What mummeries were practised by you two 
 At Clairvanx ? Not a servant got discharge 
 But came and told his grievance, testified 
 To acts which turn religion to a farce. 
 And as the private mock, so patent — see — 
 The public scandal ! Ask the neighborhood — 
 Or rather, since we asked them long ago, 
 Read what they answer, depositions down, 
 signed, sealed and sworn to ! Brief, the man 
 
 was mad. 
 We are his heirs and claim our heritage. 
 Madame Muhlhauseu, — whom good taste for- 
 bids 
 We qualify as do these documents, — 
 Fear not lest justice stitle mercy's prayer ! 
 True, had you lent a willing ear at first. 
 Had you obeyed our call two years ago, 
 Restrained a certain insolence of eye, 
 A volubility of tongue, that time. 
 Your prospects had been none the worse, per- 
 haps. 
 Still, fear not but a decent competence 
 Shall smooth the way for your declining age I 
 What we propose, then "... 
 
 Clara dried her eyes, 
 Sat up, surveyed the consistory, spoke 
 After due pause, with something of a smile. 
 
 " Gentlemen, kinsfolk of my friend defunct, 
 
 In thus addressing me — of all the world ! — 
 
 You much misapprehend what part I play. 
 
 I claim uo property you speak about. 
 
 Yon might as well address the park-keeper. 
 
 Harangue him on some plan advisable 
 
 For covering the park with cottage-plots. 
 
 He is the servant, no proprietor. 
 
 His business is to see the sward kept trim, 
 
 Untrespassed over by the indiscreet : 
 
 Beyond that, he refers you to myself — 
 
 Another servant of another kind — 
 
 Who again — quite as limited in act — 
 
 Refer you, with your projects, — can I else ? 
 
 To who in mastery is ultimate. 
 
 The Church. The Church is sole administrant. 
 
 Since sole possessor of what worldly wealth 
 
 Monsieur L^once Miranda late possessed. 
 
 Often enough has he attempted, nay, 
 
 Forced me, wellnigh, to occupy the post 
 
 You seemingly suppose I fill, — receive 
 
 As gift the wealth intrusted me as grace. 
 
 This — for quite other reasons than appear 
 
 So cogent to your perspicacity — 
 
 This I refused ; and, firm as you could wish, 
 
 Still was my answer, ' We two uiiderstand 
 
 Each one the other. I am intimate 
 
 — As how can be mere fools and knaves — or, 
 
 say. 
 Even your Cousins ? — with your love to me, 
 Devotion to the Church. Would Providence 
 Appoint, and make me certain of the same, 
 That I survive you (which is little like. 
 Seeing you hardly overpass ray age 
 And more than match me in abundant health) 
 In such case, certainly I would accept 
 Your bounty : better I than alien hearts 
 Should execute your planned benevolence 
 To man, your prqpossd largess to the Church, 
 
770 
 
 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 But though I be survivor, — weakly frame, 
 
 With only ivoman's wit to make amends, — 
 
 When I shall die, or "while I am alive, 
 
 Cannot you figure me an easy mark 
 
 For hypocritical rapacity. 
 
 Kith, kin and generation, crouching low, 
 
 Ever on the alert to pounce on prey ? 
 
 Far be it I should say they profited 
 
 By that first frenzy-fit themselves induced, — 
 
 Cold-blooded scenical buffoons at sport 
 
 With horror and damnation o'er a grave : 
 
 That were too shocking — I absolve them 
 
 there ! 
 Nor did they seize the moment of your swoon 
 To ritte pocket, Avring a paper thence. 
 Their Cousinly dictation, and enrich 
 Thereby each mother's son as heart could wish. 
 Had nobody supplied a codicil. 
 But when the pain, poor friend ! had prostrated 
 Your body, though your soul was right once 
 
 more, 
 I fear they turned your weakness to account ! 
 Why else to me, who agonizing watched. 
 Sneak, cap in hand, now bribe me to forsake 
 My maimed L^once, now bully, cap on head. 
 The impudent pretension to assuage 
 Such sorrows as demanded Cousins' care ? — ■ 
 For you rejected, hated, fled me, far 
 In foreign lands you laughed at me ! — they 
 
 judged. 
 And, think you, will the unkind one hesitate 
 To try conclusions with my helplessness, — 
 To pounce on and misuse your derelict. 
 Helped by advantage that bereavement lends 
 Folk, who, while yet you lived, played tricks 
 
 like these ? 
 You only have to die, and they detect. 
 In all you said and did, insanity ! 
 Your faith was fetish-worship, your regard 
 For Christ's prime precept which endows the 
 
 poor 
 And strips the rich, a craze from first to last ! 
 They so would limn your likeness, paint your 
 
 life. 
 That if it ended by some accident, — 
 For instance, if, attempting to arrange 
 The plants below that dangerous Belvedere 
 I cannot warn you from sufficiently. 
 You lost your balance and fell headlong — fine 
 Occasion, such, for crying Suicide I 
 Non compos mentis, naturally next. 
 Hands over Clairvaux to a Cousin-tribe 
 Who nor like me nor love The Ravissante : 
 Therefore be ruled by both ! Life-interest 
 In Clairvaux, — conservation, guardianship 
 Of earthly good for heavenly purpose, — give 
 Such and no other proof of confidence ! 
 Let Clara represent The Ravissante ! ' 
 — To whom accordingly, he then and there 
 Bequeathed each stick and stone, by testament 
 In holograph, mouth managing the quill : 
 Go, see the same in Londres, if you doubt ! " 
 
 Then smile grew laugh, as sudden up she stood 
 And out she spoke : intemperate the speech ! 
 
 " And now, sirs, for your special courtesy, 
 Your candle held up to the character 
 
 Of Lucie Steiner, whom you qualify 
 As coming short of perfect womanhood. 
 Yes, kindly critics, truth for once you tell I 
 True is it that through childhood, poverty. 
 Sloth, pressure of temptation, I succumbed. 
 And, ere I found what honor meant, lost mine. 
 So was the sheep lost, which the Shepherd 
 
 found 
 And never lost again. My friend found me ; 
 Or better say, the Shepherd found us both — 
 Since he, my friend, was much in the same mire 
 When first we made acquaintance. Bach 
 
 helped each, — 
 A twofold extrication from the slough ; 
 And, saving me, he saved himself. Since then, 
 Unsmirched we kept our cleanliness of coat. 
 It is his perfect constancy, you call 
 My friend's main fault — he never left his 
 
 love ! 
 While as for me, I dare your worst, impute 
 One breach of loving bond, these twenty years, 
 To me whom only cobwebs bound, you count 1 
 ' He was religiously disposed in youth ! ' 
 That may be, though we did not meet at 
 
 church. 
 Under my teaching did he, like you scamps, 
 Become Voltairian — fools who mock his 
 
 faith? 
 ' Infirm of body ! ' I am silent there : 
 Even yourselves acknowledge service done, 
 Whatever motive your own souls supply 
 As inspiration. Love made labor Ught." 
 
 Then laugh grew frown, and frown grew terri- 
 ble. 
 Do recollect what sort of person shrieked — 
 '*Sueh was I, saint or sinner, what you please : 
 And who is it casts stone at me but you? 
 By your own showing, sirs, you bought and 
 
 sold, 
 Took what advantage bargain promised bag, 
 Abundantly did business, and with whom ? 
 The man whom you pronounce imbecile, push 
 Indignantly aside if he presume 
 To settle his affairs like other folk ! 
 How is it you have stepped into his shoes. 
 And stand there, bold as brass, ' Miranda, late ; 
 Now, Firm-Miranda ' ? Sane, he signed away 
 That little birthright, did he? Hence to 
 
 trade ! 
 I know and he knew who 't was dipped and 
 
 ducked. 
 Truckled and played the parasite in vain, 
 As now one, now the other, here you cringed. 
 Were feasted, took our presents, you — those 
 
 drops, 
 Just for your wife's adornment ! you — that 
 
 spray 
 Exactly suiting, as most diamonds would. 
 Your daughter on her marriage! No word 
 
 then 
 Of somebody the wanton ! Hence, I say, 
 Subscribers to the 'Sifecle,' every snob — 
 For here the post brings me the ' Univers ' ! 
 Home and make money in the Place VendSme, 
 Sully yourselves no longer by my sight. 
 And, when next Schneider wants a new parure. 
 Be careful lest you stiek there by mischance 
 
OR TURF AND TOWERS 
 
 771 
 
 That atone beyond compare intrusted you 
 To kindle faith with, when, Miranda's gift, 
 Crowning the very crown. The Kavissante 
 Shall claim it! As to Clairyaux — talk to 
 
 Her! 
 She answers by the Chapter of Raimbaux ! " 
 Vituperative, truly ! All this wrath 
 Because the man's relations thought him mad! 
 Whereat, X hope you see the Cousinry 
 Turn each to other, blankly dolorous. 
 Consult a moment, more by shrug and shrug 
 Than m:;re man's language, — finally conclude 
 To leave the reprobate untroubled now 
 In her unholy triumph, till the Law 
 Shall right the injured ones ; for gentlemen 
 Allow the female sex, this sort at least. 
 Its privilege. So, simply " Cockatrice ! " — 
 "Jezebel ! " — " Queen of the Camellias ! " — 
 
 cried 
 Cousin to cousin, as yon hinge a-creak 
 Shut out the party, and the gate returned 
 To custody of Clairvaux. " Pretty place ! 
 What say you, when it proves our property, 
 To trying a concurrence with La Roche, 
 And laying down a rival oyster-bed ? 
 Where the park ends, the sea begins, you 
 
 know." 
 So took they comfort till they came to Vire. 
 
 But I would linger, fain to snatch a look 
 
 At Clara as she stands in pride of place. 
 
 Somewhat more satisfying than my glance 
 
 So furtive, so near futile, yesterday. 
 
 Because one must be courteous. Of the masks 
 
 That figure in this little history. 
 
 She only has a claim to my respect, 
 
 And one-eye.l, in her French phrase, rules the 
 
 blind. 
 Itfiranda hardly did his bast with life : 
 He might have opened eye, exerted brain. 
 Attained conception as to right and law 
 In certain points respecting intercourse 
 Of man with woman — love, one likes to say ; 
 Which knowledge had dealt rudely with the 
 
 claim 
 Of Clara to play representative 
 And from perdition rescue soul, forsooth ! 
 Also, the sense of him should have su£G.ced 
 For building up some better theory 
 Of how God operates in heaven and earth, 
 Than would establish Him participant 
 In doings yonder at The Ravissante. 
 The heart was wise according to its lights 
 And limits ; but the head refused more sun. 
 And shrank into its mew, and craved less 
 
 space. 
 Clara, I hold the happier specimen, — 
 It may be. through that artist-preference 
 For work complete, inferiorly proposed. 
 To incompletion, though it aim aright. 
 Morally, no ! Aspire, break bounds ! I say, 
 Endeavor to be good, and better still, 
 And best ! Success is naught, endeavor 's all. 
 But intellect adjusts the means to ends. 
 Tries the low thing, and leaves it done, at 
 
 least; 
 No prejudice to high thing, intellect 
 Would do and will do, only give the means. 
 
 Miranda, in my picture-gallery. 
 
 Presents a Blake ; be Ckira — Meissounier! 
 
 Merely considered so by artist, mind ! 
 
 For, break through Art and rise to poetry, 
 
 Bring Art to tremble nearer, touch enough 
 
 The verge of vastness to inform our soul 
 
 What orb makes transit through the dark 
 
 above. 
 And there 's the triumph ! — there the incom- 
 plete. 
 More than completion, matches the immense, — 
 Then, Michelagnolo against the world ! 
 With this proviso, let me study her 
 Approvingly, the finished little piece ! 
 Born, bred, with just one instinct, — that of 
 
 growth, — 
 Her quality was, caterpillar-like. 
 To ali-unen-ingly select a leaf 
 And without intermission feed her fill. 
 Become the Painted Peacock, or belike 
 The Brimstone-wing, when time of year should 
 
 suit; 
 And 't is a sign (say entomologists) 
 Of sickness, when the creature stops its meal 
 One minute, either to look up at heaven. 
 Or turn aside for change of aliment. 
 No doubt there was a certain ughness 
 In the beginning, as the grub grew worm : 
 She could not find the proper plant at once. 
 But crawled and fumbled through a whole 
 
 parterre. 
 Husband Muhlhausen served for stuff not loi^; 
 Then came confusion of the slimy track 
 From London, " where she gave the tone 
 
 awhile," 
 To Paris : let the stalks start up again. 
 Now she is off them, all the greener they I 
 But, settled on Miranda, how she sucked, 
 Assimilated juices, took the tint. 
 Mimicked the form and texture of her food 1 
 Was he for pastime ? Who so frolic-fond 
 As Clara ? Had he a devotion-fit ? 
 Clara grew serious with like quahn, be sure ! 
 In health and strength he, — healthy too and 
 
 strong, 
 She danced, rode, drove, took pistol-practice, 
 
 fished. 
 Nay, " managed sea-skiff with consummate 
 
 skill." 
 In pain and weakness, he, — she patient watched 
 And whiled the slow drip-dropping hours away. 
 She bound again the broken self-respect. 
 She picked out the true meaning from mistake. 
 Praised effort in each stumble, laughed " Well- 
 climbed!" 
 When others groaned " None ever grovelled 
 
 so ! " 
 " Rise, you have gained experience ! " was her 
 
 word : 
 " Lie satisfied, the ground is just your place ! " 
 They thought appropriate counsel. " Live, not 
 
 die. 
 And take my full life to eke out your own : 
 That shall repay me and with interest ! 
 Write ! — is your mouth not clever as my 
 
 hand? 
 Paint ! — the last Exposition warrants me, 
 Plenty of people must ply brush with toes. 
 
772 
 
 RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY 
 
 And as for music ■^ look, what folk nickname 
 A lyre, those ancients played to Tavishment, — 
 Over the pendule, see, Apollo grasps 
 A three-stringed gimcrack which no Liszt could 
 
 coax 
 Such music from as jew's-harp makes to-day I 
 Do your endeavor like a man, and leave 
 The rest to ' fortune who assists the bold ' — 
 Learn, you, the Latin which yon taught me 
 
 first, 
 You clever creature — clever, yes, I say ! " 
 
 If he smiled ** Let us love, love's wrong comes 
 
 right. 
 Shows reason last of all ! Necessity 
 Must meanwhile serve for plea — so, mind not 
 
 much 
 Old Fricquot's menace! " — hack she smiled 
 
 "Who minds?" 
 If he sighed " Ah, but She is strict, they say. 
 For aU Her mercy at The Ravissante, 
 She scarce will be put off so ! " — straight a sigh 
 Returned "My lace must go to trim Her gown! " 
 I nowise doubt she inwardly believed 
 Smiling and sighing had the same effect 
 Upon the venerated image. What 
 She did believe in, X as little doubt. 
 Was — Clara's self's own birthright to sustain 
 Existence, grow from grub to butterfly, 
 Upoh unlimited Miranda-leaf ; 
 In'which prime article of faith confirmed. 
 According to capacity, she fed 
 On and on till the leaf was eaten up. 
 That April morning. Even then, 1 praise 
 Her forethought which prevented leafless stalk 
 Bestowing any hoarded succulence 
 On earwig and black-beetle squat beneath ; — 
 Clairvaux, that stalk whereto her hermitage 
 She tacked by golden throw of silk, so fine, 
 So anything but feeble, that her sleep 
 Inside it^ through last winter, two years long, 
 Recked little of the storm and strife without. 
 " But — loved him? " Friend, I do not praise 
 
 her love ! 
 True love works never for the loved one so. 
 Nor spares skin - surface, smoothening truth 
 
 away. 
 Love bids touch truth, endure truth, and em- 
 brace 
 Truths though, embracing truth, love crush 
 
 . itself. 
 " Worship not me, but God ! " the angels urge : 
 That is love's grandeur : still, in pettier love 
 The nice eye can distinguish grade and grade. 
 Shall mine degrade the velvet green and puce 
 Of caterpillar, palmer-worm — ^or what — 
 Ball in and out of ball, each ball with brush 
 Of Venus' eye-fringe round the turquoise egg 
 That nestles soft, — compare such paragon 
 With any scarabsBus of the brood 
 Which, bom to fly, keeps wing in wing-case, 
 
 walks 
 Persistently a-trundling dung on earth ? 
 
 Egypt may venerate su<ih hierophants, 
 Not I — the couple yonder. Father Priest 
 And Mother Nun, who came and went and 
 came, 
 
 Beset this Clairvaux, trundled money-muck 
 To midden and the main heap oft enough, 
 But never bade unshut from sheath the gauze. 
 Nor showed that, who would fly, must let fall 
 
 filth, , , 
 
 And warn " Your jewel, brother, is a blotch : 
 Sister, your lace trails ordure ! Leave your 
 
 sins. 
 And so best gift vrith Crown and grace with 
 
 Robe ! '^ 
 
 The superstition is extinct, you hope ? _ 
 
 It were, with my good will I Suppose it so, 
 
 Bethink you likewise of the latest use 
 
 Whereto a Night-cap is convertible. 
 
 And draw your very thickest, thread and 
 
 thrum, 
 O'er such a decomposing face of things, 
 Once so alive, it seemed immortal too ! 
 
 This happened two years since. The Cousinry 
 Returned to Paris, called in help from Law, 
 And in due form proceeded to dispute 
 Monsieur L^once Miranda's competence. 
 Being insane, to make a valid Will. 
 
 Much testimony volunteered itself ; 
 
 The issue hardly could be doubtful — but 
 
 For that sad 'Seventy which must intervene. 
 
 Provide poor France with other work to mind 
 
 Than settling lawsuits, even for the sake 
 
 Of such a party as The Ravissante. 
 
 It only was this Summer that the case 
 
 Could come and be disposed of, two week$ 
 
 since. 
 At Vire — Tribunal Civil — Chamber First. 
 
 Here, issued with all regularity, 
 I hold the judgment — just, inevitable, 
 Nowise to be contested by what few 
 Can judge the judges; sum and substance, 
 thus: — 
 
 " Inasmuch as we find, the Cousinry, 
 During that very period when they take 
 Monsieur L^onee Miranda for stark mad, 
 Considered him to be quite sane enou|:h 
 For d^ing much important business with -*■ 
 Nor showed suspicion of his competence 
 Until, hy turning of the tables, loss 
 Instead of gain accrued to them thereby, — 
 Plea of incompetence we set aside. 
 
 — " The rather, that the dispositions, sought^ 
 
 To be impugned, are natural and right, 
 
 Nor jar with any reasonable claim 
 
 Of kindred, friendship, or acquaintance here. 
 
 Nobody is despoiled, none overlooked ; 
 
 Since the testator leaves his property 
 
 To just that person wliora, of all the world, 
 
 He counted he was most indebted to. 
 
 In mere discharge, then, of conspicuous debt> 
 
 Madame Muhlhausen has priority. 
 
 Enjoys the usufruct of Clairvaux, 
 
 "Next, 
 Such debt discharged, such life determining. 
 Such earthly interest provided for, 
 
THE INN ALBUM 
 
 773 
 
 Monsieur L^ouoe Miranda may bequeath, 
 In absence of more fit recipient, fund 
 And usufmot together to the Cnurch 
 Whereof he was a special devotee. 
 
 " — Which disposition, being consonant 
 With a long series of such acts and deeds 
 Notorious in his lifetime, needs must stand, 
 Unprejudiced by eccentricity 
 Nowise amounting to distemper : since, 
 In every instance signalized as such. 
 We recognize no overleaping bounds. 
 No straying out of the permissible : 
 Duty to the Religion of the Land, — 
 Neither excessive nor inordinate, 
 
 " The minor accusations are dismissed ; 
 
 They prove mere freak and fancy, boyish mood 
 
 In age mature of simple kindly man. 
 
 fjxuberant in generosities 
 
 To all the world : no fact confirms the fear 
 
 He meditated mischief to himself 
 
 That morning when he met the accident 
 
 Which ended fatally. The case is dosed." 
 
 How otherwise ? So, when I grazed the skirts, 
 And had the glimpse of who made, yesterday, — 
 Woman and retinue of goats and aheep, — 
 The sombre path one whiteness, vision-like, 
 As out of gate, and in at gate again. 
 They wavered, — she was lady there for life : 
 And, after life — I hope, a white success 
 Of some sort, wheresoever life resume 
 School interrupted by vacation — death : 
 Seeing that home she goes with prize in hand, 
 Confirmed the Chatelaine of Clairvaux. 
 
 True, 
 
 Such prize fades soon to insignificance. 
 
 Though she have eaten her Miranda up. 
 
 And spun a cradle-cone through which she 
 
 pricks 
 Her passage, and proves peacock-butterfly. 
 This Autumn — wait a little week of cold ! 
 Peacock and death's-head-moth end much the 
 
 same. 
 And could she still continue spinning, — sure. 
 Cradle would soon crave shroud for substitute. 
 And o'er this life of hers distaste would drop 
 Red-cotton-Nightcap-wise, 
 
 How say you, friend? 
 Have I redeemed my promise ? timile assent 
 Through the dark Winter-gloom between us 
 
 both! 
 Already, months ago and miles away, 
 I just as good as told yuu, in a flash, 
 The while we paced the sands before my house, 
 All this poor stoxy — truth and nothing else. 
 Accept that moment's flashing, amplified. 
 Impalpability reduced to speecn. 
 Conception proved by birth, — no other change 1 
 Can what Saint-Rambert flashed me in a 
 
 thought. 
 Good gloomy London make a poem of ? 
 Such ought to be whatever dares precede. 
 Play ruddy herald-star to your white blaze 
 About to bring us day. How fail imbibe 
 Some foretaste of effulgence ? Sun shall wax. 
 And star shall wane : what matter, so star tell 
 The drowsy world to start awake, rub eyes. 
 And stand all ready for mom's joy a-bliish ? 
 
 THE INN ALBUM 
 
 The story told in this poem was suggesied to 
 Browning, but not followed in all its details, by 
 an adventure of Lord De Ros, a friend of Wel- 
 lington's and mentioned frequently by Greville 
 
 in his Memoirs, The circumstances of De Ros's 
 villainy were much talked of in London at the 
 time of their occurrence, just before the middle 
 of this century. 
 
 I 
 
 " That oblong book 's the Album ; hand it 
 
 here! 
 Exactly ! page on page of gratitude 
 For breakfast, dinner, supper, and the view ! 
 I praise these poets, they leave margin-space ; 
 Each stanza seems to gather skirts around. 
 And primly, trimly, keep the foot's confine. 
 Modest and maidlike ; lubber prose o'ersprawls 
 And straddling stops the path from left to right. 
 Since I want space to do my cipher-work. 
 Which poem spares a corner? What comes 
 
 first? 
 ' Hail, calm acclivity, salubrious spot ! ' 
 (Open the window, we bum daylight, boy !) 
 Or see — snccincter beauty, brief and bold — 
 'If a fellow can dine On rump-steaks and port 
 
 He needs not despair Of dining well here ' — 
 ' Here ! ' I myself could find a better rhyme I 
 That bard 's a Browning ; he neglects the form : 
 But ah, the sense, ye gods, the weighty sense I 
 Still, I prefer this classic. Ay, throw wide I 
 I '11 quench the bits of candle yet unbumt. 
 A minute's fresh air, then to cipher-work ! 
 Three little columns hold the whole account ; 
 Ecarti, after which Blind Hookey, then 
 Cntting-the-Paek, five hundred pounds the cut. 
 'T is easy reckoning : I have lost, I think." 
 
 Two personages occupy this room 
 Shabby-genteel, that 's parlor to the inn 
 Perched on a view-commanding eminence ; 
 — Inn which may be a veritable house 
 Where spmebody once lived and pleased good 
 
 taste 
 Till tourists found bis coigne of vantage out. 
 
774 
 
 THE INN ALBUM 
 
 And fingered blunt the individual mark, 
 And vulgarized things comfortably smooth. 
 On a sprig-pattern-papered wall there brays 
 Complaint to sky Sir Edwin's dripping stag ; 
 His couchant coast-guard creature corresponds ; 
 They face the Huguenot and Light o' the 
 
 World. 
 Grim o'er the mirror on the mantelpiece, 
 Varnished and coffined, Salnio ferox glares, 
 
 — Possibly at the List of Wines which, framed 
 And glazed, hangs somewhat prominent on peg. 
 
 So much describes the stuffy little room — 
 Vulgar fiat smooth respectability : 
 Not so the burst of landscape surging in. 
 Sunrise and all, as he who of the pair 
 Is, plain enough, the younger personage 
 Draws sharp the shrieking curtain, sends aloft 
 The sash, spreads wide and fastens back to wall 
 Shutter and shutter, shows yon England's best. 
 He leans into a living glory-bath 
 Of air and light where seems to fioat and move 
 The wooded watered country, hill and dale 
 And steel-bright thread of stream, a-smoke 
 
 with mist, 
 A-sparkle with May morning, diamond drift 
 0' the sun-touched dew. Except the red-roofed 
 
 patch 
 Of half a dozen dwellings that, crept close 
 For hillside shelter, make the village-clump. 
 This inn is perched above to dominate — 
 Except such sign of human neighborhood, 
 '^ And this surmised rather than sensible " 
 There 's nothing to disturb absolute peace. 
 The reign of English nature — which means art 
 And civilized existence. Wildness' self 
 Is just the cultured triumph. Presently 
 Deep solitude, be sure, reveals a Place 
 That knows the right way to defend itself : 
 Silence hems round a burning spot of life. 
 Now, where a Place burns, must a village brood. 
 And where a village broods, an inn should 
 
 boast — 
 Close and convenient : here you have them both. 
 This inn, the Something-arms — the family's — 
 (Don't trouble Guillim : heralds leave out half !) 
 Is dear to lovers of the picturesque. 
 And epics have been planned here ; but who plan 
 Take holy orders and find work to do. 
 Painters are more productive, stop a week. 
 Declare the prospect quite a Corot, — ay. 
 For tender sentiment, — themselves incline 
 Rather to handsweep large and liberal ; 
 rhen go, but not without success achieved 
 
 — Haply some pencil-drawing, oak or beech, 
 Ferns at the base and ivies up the bole. 
 
 On this a slug, on that a butterfly. 
 Nay, he who hooked the salmo pendent here, 
 Also exhibited, this same May-month, 
 ^''Foxgloves: a study ^^ — so inspires the scene, 
 The air, which now the younger personage 
 Inflates him with till lungs o'erfraught are fain 
 Sigh forth a satisfaction might bestir 
 Even those tufts of tree-tops to the South 
 1' the distance where the green dies off to gray, 
 Which, easj' of conjecture, front the Place ; 
 He eyes them, elbows wide, each hand to 
 cheek. 
 
 His fellow, the much older — either say 
 A youngish-old man or man oldish-young — 
 Sits at the table : wicks are noisome-deep 
 In wax, to detriment of plated ware ; 
 Above — piled, strewn — is store of playing- 
 cards. 
 Counters and all that 's proper for a game. 
 He sets down, rubs out figures in the book, 
 Adds and subtracts, puts back here, carries 
 
 there. 
 Until the summed-up satisfaction stands 
 Apparent, and he pauses o'er the work; 
 Soothes what of brain was busy under brow, 
 By passage of the hard palm, curing so 
 Wrinkle and crowfoot for a second's space i 
 Then lays down book and laughs out. No mis- 
 take, 
 Such the sum-total — ask Colenso else I 
 
 Roused by which laugh, the other turns, laughs 
 
 too — 
 The youth, the good strong fellow, rough per- 
 
 " Well, what's the damage — three, or four, or 
 
 five? 
 How many figures in a row ? Hand here ! 
 Come now, there 's one expense all yours not 
 
 mine — 
 Scribbling the people's Album over, leaf 
 The first and foremost too ! You think, per- 
 haps. 
 They '11 only charge you for a brand-new book 
 Nor estimate the literary loss ? 
 Wait till the small account comes ! ' To one 
 
 night's 
 Lodging, ' for — ' beds ' they can't say, — ' pound 
 
 or so; 
 I'inner, Apollinaris, — what they please. 
 Attendance not included ; ' last looms lai-ge 
 ' Defacement of our Albuin, late enriched 
 With ' — let 's see what ! Here, at the window, 
 
 though ! 
 Ay, breathe the morning and forgive your 
 
 luck ! 
 Fine enough country for a fool like me 
 To own, as next month I suppose I shall ! 
 Eh ? True fool's-fortune ! so console yourself. 
 Let's see, however — hand the book, I say ! 
 Well, you 've improved the classic by romance. 
 Queer reading ! Verse with parenthetic prose — 
 ' Hail, calm acclivity, salubrious spot ! ' 
 (Three-two fives) ' life how profitably spent ' 
 (Five-naught, five-nine fives) ' yonder humble cot,' 
 (More and more naughts and fives) ' in mild 
 
 content ; 
 And did my feelings find the natural vent 
 In friendship and in love, how blest my lot ! ' 
 Then follow the dread figures — five ! ' Con^ 
 
 tent ? ' 
 That 's appetite ! Are you content as he — 
 Simpkin the sonneteer ? Ten thousand pounds 
 Give point to his effusion — hj so much 
 Leave me tlie richer and the poorer you 
 After our night's play ; who 's content the 
 
 most. 
 If, you, or Simpkin ? " 
 
 So the polished snob. 
 
THE INN ALBUM 
 
 775 
 
 The elder man, refinement every inch 
 From brow to boot-end, quietly replies : 
 
 " Simpkin 's no name I know. I had my whim.'' 
 
 " Ay, had you ! And such things make friend- 
 ship thick. 
 Intimates, I may boast we were ; henceforth. 
 Friends — shall it not be ? — who discard re- 
 serve. 
 Use plain words, put each dot upon each i, 
 Till death us twain do part ? The bargain 's 
 
 struck ! 
 Old fellow, if you fancy — (to begin — ) 
 I failed to penetrate your scheme last week, 
 You wrong your poor disciple. Oh, no airs 1 
 Because you happen to be twice my age 
 And twenty times my master, must perforce 
 No blink of daylight struggle through the web 
 There 's no unwinding ? You entoil my legs. 
 And welcome, for I like it : blind me, — no I 
 A very pretty piece of shuttle-work 
 Was that — your mere chance question at the 
 
 club — 
 ' Do you go anywhere this Whitsuntide ? 
 1 'wi off for Paris, therejs the Opera — there 's 
 The Salon, there 'j? a china-sale, — beside 
 ChantiUy; and, for good companionship. 
 There 's Such-and-such and So-and-so. i 
 We start together ? ' ' No such holiday J 
 I told you : ' Paris and the rest be hanged ! 
 Why plague me who am pledged to home-de- 
 lights ? 
 Vm the engaged now ; through whose fault but 
 
 yours ? 
 On duty. As you well know. Don't I drowse 
 The week away down with the Aunt and Niece ? 
 No help: it 's leisure, loneliness, and love. 
 * Wish! could take you ; but fame travels fast, — 
 A man of much newspaper-paragraph. 
 You scare domestic circles ; and beside 
 Would not you like your lot, that second taste 
 Of nature and approval of the grounds ! 
 You might walk early or lie late, so shirk 
 Week-day devotions : but stay Sunday o'er, 
 And morning church is obligatory : 
 No mundane garb permissible, or dread 
 The butler's privileged monition ! No ! 
 Pack off to Paris, nor wipe tear away ! ' 
 Whereon how artlessly the happy flash 
 Followed, by inspiration ! | ' Tell you what — 
 Let 's turn their fiank, try things on t' other side 1 
 Inns for my money ! Liberty 's the life ! 
 We HI lie in hiding : there 's the crow-nest nook, 
 The tourist's joy, the Inn they rave about. 
 Inn that 's oat — out of siaht and out of mind 
 And out of mischief to all four of us — 
 Aunl and niece, you and me. At nighty arrive ; 
 At morn,Jind time for just a Pisgah-view 
 Of my friend's Land of Promise ; then depart. 
 And while I'm whizzing onward by first train.. 
 Bound for our own place (since my Brother sulks 
 And says I shun him like the plague) yourself— 
 Why, you have stepped thence, start from plat- 
 form, gay 
 Despite the sleepless journey, — love lends 
 
 wings, — 
 Hug aunt and niece who, none the wiser, wait 
 
 The faithful advent ! Eh9' ' With all my 
 
 heart,' 
 Said I to you ; said I to mine own self : 
 ' Does he believe I fail to comprehend 
 He wants just one more final friendly snack 
 At friend's exchequer ere friend runs to earth, 
 Marries, renounces yielding friends such sport ? ' 
 And did I spoil sport, pull face grim, — nay, 
 
 grave ? ' 
 Your pupil does you better credit ! No ! 
 I parleyed with my pass-book, — rubbed my 
 
 pair 
 At the big balance in my banker's hands, — 
 Folded a check cigar-case-shape, — just wants 
 FUling and signing, -^ and took train, resolved 
 To execute myself with decency 
 And let you win — if not Ten thousand quite. 
 Something by way of wind-up-farewell burst 
 Of firework-nosegay ! Where 's your fortune 
 
 fled? 
 Or is not fortune constant after all ? 
 You lose ten thousand pounds : had I lost half 
 Or half that, I should bite my lips, I think. 
 You man of marble ! Strut and stretch my best 
 On tiptoe, I shall never reach your height. 
 How does the loss feel ! Just one lesson more ! " 
 
 The more refined man smiles a frown away, 
 
 '* The lesson shall be — only boys like you 
 Put such a question at the present stage, 
 I had a ball lodge in my shoulder once. 
 And, full five minutes, never guessed the fact ; 
 Next day, I felt decidedly : and still, 
 At twelve years' distance, when I lift my arm 
 A twinge reminds me of the surgeon's probe. 
 Ask me, this day month, how I feel my luck ! 
 And meantime please to stop impertinence. 
 For — don't I know its object ? All this chaff 
 Covers the corn, this preface leads to speech, 
 This boy stands forth a hero. ' There, my lord ! 
 Our play was true play, fun not earnest ! I 
 Empty your purse, inside out, while my poke 
 Bulges to bursting ? You can badly spare 
 A doit, confess now, Duke though brother be ! 
 While I'm gold -daubed so thickly, spangles 
 
 drop 
 And show my father's warehouse-apron : pshaw I 
 Enough ! We 've had a palpitating night ! 
 Good morning ! Breakfast and forget our 
 
 dreams ! 
 My mouth 's shut, mind! I tell nor man nor 
 
 mouse.' 
 There, see! He don't deny it ! Thanks, my boy 1 
 Hero and welcome — only, not on me 
 Make trial of your 'prentice-hand ! Enough ! 
 We 've played, I 've lost and owe ten thousand 
 
 pounds. 
 Whereof I muster, at the moment, — well. 
 What 's for the bill here and the back to town. 
 Still, I 've my little character to keep ; 
 You may expect your money at month's end." 
 
 The young man at the window turns round 
 
 quick — 
 A clumsy giant handsome creature ; grasps 
 In his large red the little lean white hand 
 Of the other, looks him in the sallow face. 
 
776 
 
 THE INN ALBUM 
 
 " I say now — is it right to so mistake 
 
 A fellow, force lum in mere self-defence 
 
 To spout like Mister Mild Acclivity 
 
 In album-language ? You know well enough 
 
 Whether I like you — like 's no album-word, 
 
 Anyhow : point me to one soul beside 
 
 In the wide world I care one straw about ! 
 
 I first set eyes on you a year ago ; 
 
 Since when you ' ve done me good -:- 1 '11 stick to 
 
 it — 
 More than I got in the whole twenty-five 
 That make my life up, Oxford yeara and all — 
 Throw in the three I fooled away abroad. 
 Seeing myself and nobody more sage 
 Until I met you, and you made me man 
 Such as the sort is and the fates allow. 
 I do think, since we two kept company, 
 I 've learnt to know a little — aU through you ! 
 It 's nature if I like you. Taunt away I 
 As if I need you teaching me my place — 
 The snob 1 am, the Duke your brother is, 
 When just the good you did was — teaching me 
 My own trade, how a snob and millionaire 
 May lead his life and let the Duke's alone. 
 Clap wings, free jackdaw, on his steeple-perch, 
 Burnish his black to gold in sun and air. 
 Nor pick up stray plumes, strive to match in 
 
 strut 
 Kegular peacocks'who can't fly an inch 
 Over the courtyard-paling. Head and heart 
 (That 's album-style) are older than you know, 
 For all your knowledge : boy, perhaps — ay, boy 
 Had his adventure, just as he were man — 
 His ball-experience in the shouldei^blade, 
 His bit of life-long ache to recognize. 
 Although he bears it cheerily about. 
 Because you came and clapped him on the back. 
 Advised him ' Walk and wear the aching qff! ' 
 Why, I was minded to sit down for life 
 Just in Dalmatia, build a seaside tower 
 High on a rock, and so expend my days 
 Pursuing chemistry or botany 
 Or, very like, astronomy because 
 I noticed stars shone when I passed the place .■ 
 Letting my cash accumulate the while 
 In England — to lay out in lump at last 
 As Ruskin should direct me ! All or some 
 Of which should I have done or tried to do. 
 And preciously repented, one fine day. 
 Had you discovered Timon, climbed his rock 
 And scaled his tower, some ten years thence, 
 
 suppose, 
 And coaxed his story from him ! Don't I see 
 The pair conversing ! It 's a novel writ 
 Already, I '11 be bound, — our dialogue ! 
 ' What ? ' cried the elder and yet youthful man — 
 So did the eye, flash 'neath the lordly front. 
 And the imposing presence swell with scorn. 
 As the haught high-bred bearing and dispose 
 Contrasted with his interlocutor 
 The flabby low-born who, of bulk before. 
 Had steadily increased, one stone per week. 
 Since his abstention from horse-exercise : — 
 ' What f you, as rich as Rothschild, left, you say 
 London the very year you came of age, 
 Because your father manufactured goods — 
 Commission-agent hight of Manchester — 
 Partly, and partly through a baby case 
 
 Of disappointment I 've pumped out at last — 
 And here you spend life's prime in gaining flesh 
 And giving science one more asteroid ? ' 
 Brief, my dear fellow, you instructed me, 
 At Alfred's and not Istria ! proved a snob 
 May turn a million to account although 
 His brotlier be no Duke, and see good days 
 Without the girl he lost and some one gained. 
 The end is, after one year's tutelage. 
 Having, by your help, touched society. 
 Polo, Tent-pegging, Hurllngham, the Rink — 
 I leave ail these delights, by your advice, 
 And marry my young pretty cousin here 
 Whose place, whose oaks ancestral you behold. 
 (Her father was in partnership with mine — 
 Does not liis purchase look a pedigree ?) 
 My million will be tails and tassels smart 
 To this plump-bodied kite, this house and land 
 Which, set a-soaring, pulls me, soft as sleep, 
 Along life's pleasant meadow, — arm left free 
 To lock a friend's in, — whose, but yours, old 
 
 boy? 
 Arm in arm glide we over rough and smooth, 
 While hand, to pocket held, saves cash from 
 
 cards. 
 Kow, if you don't esteem ten thousand pounds 
 ( — Which I shall probably discover snug 
 Hid somewhere in the column-corner capped 
 With ' Credit,' based on ' Balance,' — which, I 
 
 swear. 
 By this time next month I shall quite forget 
 'Whether I lost or won -^ ten thousand pounds, 
 
 Which at this instant I would give 
 
 let's 
 
 For Galopin — nay, for that Gainsborough 
 Sir Richard won't sell, and, if bought by me. 
 Would get my glance and praise some twice a 
 
 year, — ) 
 Well, if you don't esteem that price dirt-cheap 
 For teaching me Dalmatia was mistake — 
 Why then, my last, illusion-bubble breaks. 
 My one discovered phoenix proves a goose. 
 My cleverest of all companions — oh. 
 Was worth nor ten pence nor ten thousand 
 
 pounds ! 
 Come ! Be yourself again ! So endeth here 
 The morning's lesson I Never while life lasts 
 Do I touch card again. To breakfast now 1 
 To bed — 1 can't say, since you needs must 
 
 start 
 For station early — oh, the down-train still. 
 First plan and best plan — townward trip be 
 
 hanged ! 
 You're due at your big brother's — pay tlia<t 
 
 debt, 
 Then owe me not a fartliing ! Order eggs — 
 And who knows but there 's trout obtainable ? " 
 
 The fine man looks wellnigh malignant : then — 
 
 " Sir, please subdue your manner I Debts are 
 
 debts : 
 I pay mine — debts of tliis sort — certainly. 
 ^Vhat do I care how you regard your gains, 
 
 Want them or want them not? The thing i 
 
 want 
 Is — not to have a story circulate 
 B'rom club to club — how, bent on clearing out. 
 
THE INN ALBUM 
 
 777 
 
 Young So-and-so, young So-and-so cleaned me, 
 Then set the empty kennel Hush again, 
 Ignored advantage and forgave his friend — 
 For why ? There was no wringing blood from 
 
 stone I 
 Oh, don't be savage ! You would hold your 
 
 _ tongue, 
 Bite it in two, as man may ; but those small 
 Hours in the smoking-room, when instance apt 
 Bises to tongue's root, tingles on to tip. 
 And the thinned company consists of six 
 
 Capital well-known fellows one may trust I 
 
 ■week, ' 
 
 much. 
 
 one may 
 
 Next -week, it 's in the ' World.' No, thank you 
 
 I owe teu thousand pounds : I '11 pay them ! " 
 
 " Now, — 
 This becomes funny. You've made friends 
 
 with me : 
 I can't help knowing of the ways and means 1 
 Or stay ! they say your brother closets up 
 Correggio's long lost Leda : if he means 
 To give you that, and if you give it me "... 
 
 " I polished snob off to aristocrat ? 
 
 You compliment ms ! father's apron still 
 
 Sticks out from son's court-vesture ; stiU silk 
 
 purse 
 Roughs finger with some bristle sow-ear-bom I 
 Well, neither I nor you mean harm at heart ! 
 I owe you and shall pay you : which premised. 
 Why should what foUows sound like flattery ? 
 The fact is — you do compliment too much 
 Your humble master, as I own I am ; 
 You owe me no such thanks as you protest. 
 The polisher needs precious stone no less 
 Than precious stone needs polisher : believe 
 I struck no tint from out you but I found 
 Snuglying first 'neath surface hairbreadth-deep ! 
 Beside, I liked the exercise : with skill 
 Goes love to show skill for skill's sake. You 
 
 see, 
 I 'm old and understand things : too absurd 
 It were you pitched and tossed away your life. 
 As diamond were Scotch-pebble I all the more, 
 That I myself misused a stone of price. 
 Bom and bred clever — people used to say 
 Clever as most men, if not something more — 
 Yet here I stand a failure, cut awry 
 Or left opaque, — no brilliant named and knovni. 
 Whate'er my inner stuff, my outside 's blank ; 
 I 'm nobody — or rather, look that same — 
 I 'm — who I am — and know it ; but I hold 
 What in my hand out for the world to see ? 
 What ministry, what mission, or what book 
 
 — I '11 say, book even ? Not a sign of these ! 
 I began — laughing — 'All these when I like ! ' 
 
 I end with — well, you ' ve hit it ! — ' This ioy's 
 
 check 
 For Just as many thousands as he HI spare ! ' 
 The first — I could, and would not ; your spare 
 
 cash 
 I would, and could not : have no scruple, pray, 
 But, as I hoped to pocket yours, pouch mine 
 
 — When you are able I " 
 
 " Which is — when to be ? 
 1 've heard, great characters require a fall 
 
 Of fortune to show greatness by nprise : 
 
 Thet/ touch the ground tojollily rebound. 
 
 Add to the Album ! Let a fellow share 
 
 Your secret of superiority ! 
 
 I know, my banker makes the money breed 
 
 Money ; I eat and sleep, he simply takes 
 
 The dividends and cuts the coupons off. 
 
 Sells out, buys in, keeps doubling, ti-ipling cash. 
 
 While I do nothing but receive and spend. 
 
 But you, spontaneous generator, hatch 
 
 A wind-egg ; cluck, and forth struts Capital 
 
 As Interest to me from egg of gold. 
 
 I am grown curious : pay me by all means ! 
 
 How will you make the money ? " 
 
 '* Mind your own — 
 Not my affair. Enough ; or money, or 
 Money's worth, as the case may be, expect 
 Ere month!s end, — keep but patient for a 
 
 month ! 
 Who 's for a stroll to station ? Ten 's the time ; 
 Your man, with my things, follow in the trap ; 
 At stoppage of the down-train, play the arrived 
 On platform, and you '11 show the due fatigue 
 Of the night-journey, — not mnch sleep, — per- 
 haps. 
 Your thoughts were on before you — yes, in- 
 deed. 
 You join them, being happily awake 
 With thought's sole object as she smiling sits 
 At breakfast-table. I shall dodge meantime 
 In and out station-precinct, wile away 
 The hour till up my engine pants and smokes. 
 No doubt, she goes to fetch you. Never fear ! 
 She gets no glance at me, who shame such 
 saints 1 ' 
 
 II 
 
 So, they ring bell, give orders, pay, depart 
 Amid profuse acknowledgment from host 
 Who well knows what may bring the younger 
 
 back. 
 They light cigar, descend in twenty steps 
 The ''calm acclivity,'''' inhale — beyond 
 Tobacco's balm — the better smoke of turf 
 And wood fire, — cottages at cookery 
 I' the morning, — reach the main road straight- 
 ening on 
 'Twixt wood and wood, two black walls full of 
 
 night 
 Slow to disperse, though mists thin fast before 
 The advancing foot, and leave the flint-dust 
 
 fine 
 Each speck with its fire-sparkle. Presently 
 The road's end with the sky's beginning mix 
 In one magnificence of glare, due East, 
 So high the sun rides, — May 's the merry 
 month. 
 
 They slacken pace : the younger stops abrupt. 
 Discards cigar, looks his friend full in face, 
 
 " All right ; the station comes in view at end ; 
 Five minutes from the beech-clump, there yon 
 
 are ! 
 I say : let 's halt, let 's borrow yonder gate 
 Of its two magpies, sit and have a talk 1 
 
778 
 
 THE INN ALBUM 
 
 Do let a fellow speak a moment ! More 
 I think about and less X like the thin^ — 
 No, you must let me ! Now, be good for once ! 
 Ten thousand pounds be done for, dead and 
 
 damned ! 
 We played for love, not hate : yes, hate ! I hate 
 Thinking; you beg or borrow or reduce 
 To strychnine some poor devil of a lord 
 Licked at Unlimited Loo. I had the cash 
 To lose — you knew that ! — lose and none the 
 
 less 
 AVhistle to-morrow : it 'a not every chap 
 Affords to take his punishment so well ! 
 Now, don't be angry with a friend whose fault 
 Is that he thinks — upon my soul, I do — 
 Your head the best head going. Oh, one sees 
 Names in the newspaper — great This, great 
 
 That, 
 Gladstone, Carlyle, the Laureate : — much I 
 
 care! 
 Others have their opinion, I keep mine : 
 Which means — by right you ought to have the 
 
 things 
 I want a head for. Here 's a pretty place, 
 My cousin's place, and presently my place. 
 Not yours ! I '11 tell you how it strikes a man. 
 My cousin 's fond of music and of course 
 Plays the piano (it won't be for long !) 
 A brand-new bore she calls a ' semi-grand ' 
 Rosewood and pearl, that blocks the drawing- 
 room. 
 And cost no end of money. Twice a week 
 Down comes Herr Somebody and seats him- 
 self. 
 Sets to work teaching — with his teeth on 
 
 edge — 
 I 've watched the rascal. ' Does he play first- 
 rate ?' , 
 I ask : ' / rather think so,' answers she — 
 ' He 's What 's-his-Name !' — ' Why give you 
 
 lessons then ? ' — 
 ' I pay three guineas and the train beside.^ — 
 ' This instrument, has he one such at home ? ' — 
 * He ? Has to practise on a table-top, 
 When he can't hire the proper thing.' — ' I see ! 
 You've the piano, he the skill, ana God 
 The distribution of such gifts.' So here : 
 After your teaching, I shall sit and strum 
 Polkas on this piano of a Place 
 You 'd make resound with * Mule Britannia ' !" 
 
 " Thanks ! 
 I don't say but this pretty cousin's place, 
 Appendaged with your million, tempts my 
 
 hand 
 As key-board I might touch with some effect." 
 
 " Then, why not have obtained the like ? 
 
 House, land, 
 Money, are things obtainable, you see. 
 By clever head-work : ask my father else ! 
 You, who teach me, why not have learned, 
 
 yourself ? 
 Played like Herr Somebody with power to 
 
 thump 
 And flourish and the rest, not bend demure 
 Pointing out blunders — ' Sharp, not natural I 
 Permit me — nn the black key use the thumb ! ' 
 
 There 's some fatality, I 'm sure ! You say 
 ' Marry the cousin, that 's your prroper move ! ' 
 And I do use the thumb and hit the sharp : 
 You should have listened to your own head's 
 
 hint. 
 As I to you ! The puzzle 's past my power. 
 How yon have managed — with such stuff, such 
 
 means — 
 Not to be rich nor great nor happy man : 
 Of which three good things where 's a sign at 
 
 all? 
 Just look at Dizzy! Come, — what tripped 
 
 your heels ? 
 Instruct a goose that boasts wings and can't 
 
 fly! 
 I wager I have guessed it ! — never found 
 The old solution of the riddle fail ! 
 ' Who was the woman ? ' I don't ask, but — 
 
 ' Where 
 I' the path of life stood she who tripped you ?' " 
 
 " Goose 
 You truly are ! I own to fifty years. 
 Why don't I interpose and cut out — you ? 
 Compete with five - and - twenty ? Age, my 
 boy ! " 
 
 " Old man, no nonsense ! — even to a boy 
 That 's ripe at least for rationality 
 Rapped into him, as maybe mine was, once I 
 I 've had my small adventure lesson me 
 Over the knuckles ! — likely, I forget 
 The sort of figure yonth cuts now and then. 
 Competing with old shoulders but young head 
 Despite the fifty grizzling years ! " 
 
 "Aha? 
 Then that means — just the bullet in the blade 
 Which brought Dalmatia on the brain, — that, 
 
 too. 
 Came of a fatal creature ? Can't pretend 
 Now for the first time to surmise as much ! 
 Make a clean breast ! Recount I a secret 's 
 
 safe 
 'Twixt you, me, and the gate-post ! " 
 
 " — Can't pretend, 
 Neither, to never have surmised your wish ' 
 It 's no use, — case of unextracted ball — 
 Winces at finger-touching. Let things be ! " 
 
 " Ah, if you love your love stUl ! I hate 
 mine." 
 
 "I can't hate." 
 
 " I won't teach you ; and won't tell 
 Yoij, therefore, what you please to ask of me: 
 As if I, also, may not have my ache ! " 
 
 "My sort of ache? No, no! and yet — per- 
 haps! 
 
 All comes of thinking you superior still. 
 
 But live and learn ! I say ! Time 's up 1 
 Good jump ! 
 
 You old, indeed ! I fancy there 's a cut 
 
 Across the wood, a grass-path : shall we try ? 
 
 It 's venturesome, however I " 
 
THE INN ALBUM 
 
 m 
 
 ** Stop, my boy I 
 Don't think I 'in stingy of experience ! Life 
 — It 's like this wood we leave. IShould you 
 
 and I 
 Go wandering about there, though the gaps 
 We went in and came out by were opposed 
 As the two poles stiU, somehow, all the same 
 By nightfall we should probably have chanced 
 On much the same main points of interest — 
 Both of us measured girth of mossy trunk, 
 Stiipt ivy from its strangled prey, clapped 
 
 hands 
 At squirrel, sent a fir-cone after crow, 
 And so forth, — never mind what time betwixt. 
 So in our lives * allow I entered mine 
 Another way tnan you : 't is possible 
 I ended just by knocking head against 
 That plaguy low-hung branch yourself began 
 By getting bump from ; as at last you too 
 May stumble o'er that stump which first of all 
 Bade me walk circumspectly. Head and feet 
 Are vulnerable both, and I, foot-sure, 
 Forgot that ducking down saves brow from 
 
 bruise. 
 I, early old, played young man four years since 
 And failed confoundedly : so, hate alike 
 Failure and who caused failure, — curse her 
 
 cant ! " 
 
 "Oh, I see! You, though somewhat past the 
 
 prime, 
 Were taken with a rosebud beauty ! Ah — 
 But how should chits distinguish ? She admired 
 Your marvel of a mind, I 'U undertake I 
 But as to body . . . nay, I mean . . . that is. 
 When years have told on face and figure " . . . 
 
 "Thanks, 
 Mister Sufficiently-Instructed ! Such 
 No doubt was bound to be the consequence 
 To suit your self-complacency : she liked 
 My head enough, but loved some heart beneath 
 Some head with plenty of brown hair a-top 
 After ray young friend's fashion I What be- 
 
 cora^es 
 Of that fine speech you made a minute since 
 About the man of middle age you found 
 A formidable peer at twenty-one ? 
 So much for your mock-modesty ! and yet 
 I back your first against this second sprout 
 Of observation, insight, what you please. 
 My middle age, Sir, had too much success ! 
 It 's odd : my case occurred four years ago — 
 I finished just while you commenced that turn 
 I' the wood of life that takes us to the wealth 
 Of honeysuckle, heaped for who can reach. 
 Now, I don't boast : it's bad style, and beside. 
 The feat proves easier than it looks : I plucked 
 Full many a flower unnamed in that bouquet 
 (Mostly of peonies and poppies, though !) 
 Good-nature sticks into my buttonhole. 
 Therefore it was with nose in want of snufP 
 Rather than Ess or.Psidinm, that I chanced 
 On what — so far from ' rosebud beauty ' . . . 
 
 Well — 
 She 's dead : at least you never heard her name ; 
 She was no courtly creature, had nor birth 
 Nor breeding — mere fine-lady-breeding ; but 
 
 Oh, such a wonder of a woman ! Grand 
 As a Greek statue ! Stick fine clothes on that^ 
 Style that a Duchess or a Queen, — you know, 
 Artists would make an outcry : all the more, 
 That she had just a statue's sleepy grace 
 Which broods o'er its own beauty. Nay, her 
 
 fault 
 (Don't laugh !) was just perfection : for suppose 
 Only the little flaw, and I had peeped 
 Inside it, learned what soul inside was like. 
 At Rome some tourist raised the grit beneath 
 A Venus' forehead with his whittling-kiiife — 
 I wish — now — I had played that brute, 
 
 brought blood 
 To surface from the depths I fancied chalk I 
 As it was, her mere face surpiised so much 
 That I stopped short there, struck on heap, as 
 
 stares 
 The cockney stranger at a certain bust 
 With drooped eyes, ~ she 's the thing I have in 
 
 mind, — 
 Down at my Brother's. All sufficient prize — 
 Such outside ! Now, — confound me for a 
 
 prig ! — 
 Who cares ? I '11 make a clean breast once for 
 
 all! 
 Beside, you 've heard the gossip. My life long 
 I 've been a woman-liker, — liking means 
 Loving and so on. There 's a lengrthy list 
 By this time I shall have to answer for — 
 So say the good folk: and they don't guess 
 
 half — 
 For the worst is, let once collecting-itch 
 Possess you, and, with perspicacity. 
 Keeps growing such a gi'eediness that theft 
 Follows at no long distance, — there 's the fact ! 
 I knew that on my Leporello-list 
 Might figure this, that, and the other name 
 Of feminine desirability, 
 But if I happened to desire inscribe, 
 Along with these, the only Beautiful — 
 Here was the unique specimen to snatch 
 Or now or never. ' Beautiful ' I said — 
 ' Beautiful ' say in cold blood. — boiling then 
 To tune of ' Haste, secure whatever the cost 
 This rarity^ die in the act^ be damned. 
 So you complete collection, crown your list! ' 
 It seemed as though the whole world, once 
 
 aroused 
 By the first notice of such wonder's birth, 
 Woidd break bounds to contest my prize with 
 
 me 
 The first discoverer, should she but emerge 
 From that safe den of darkness where she dozed 
 Till I stole in, that country-parsonage 
 Where, country-paraon's daughter, motherless, 
 Brotherless, sisterless, for eighteen years 
 She had been vegetating lily-like. 
 Her father was my brother's tutor, got 
 The living that way : him I chanced to see — 
 Her I saw — her the world would grow one eye 
 To see, I felt no sort of doubt at all ! 
 * Secure her ! ' cried the devil : * afterward 
 Arrange/or the disposal of the prize ! ' 
 The devil's doing ! yet I seem to think — 
 Now, when all's done, —think with 'a head 
 
 reposed ' 
 In French phrase —hope I think I meant to do 
 
78o 
 
 THE INN ALBUM 
 
 All requisite for such a rarity 
 When I should be at leisure, have due time 
 To leai'n requirement. But in evil day — 
 Bless me, at week's end, long as any year, 
 The father must begin, ' Young Somebody^ 
 Much recommended — for I break a rule — 
 Comes here to read, next Long Vacation.^ - 
 
 ' Young ! ' 
 That did it. Had the epithet been " rich,'' 
 'Noble,' ' a genius,' even ' handsome,' — but 
 — ' Young' J" 
 
 " I say — just a word ! I want to know - 
 You are not married ? " 
 
 'I?' 
 
 ' Nor ever were ? ' 
 
 "Never! Why?" 
 
 " Oh, then — never mind ! Go on ! 
 I had a reason for the question." 
 
 " Come, — 
 You could not be the young man ? " 
 
 " No, indeed ! 
 Certainly — if you nev >r married her ! " 
 
 " That 1 did not : and there 's the curse, you '11 
 
 see ! 
 Nay, all of it 's one curse, my life's mistake 
 Which nourished with manure that 's wai> 
 
 ranted 
 To make the plant bear wisdom, blew out full 
 In folly beyond fieldHower-foolishness I 
 The lies I used to tell my womankind ! 
 Knowing they disbelieved me all the time 
 Though they required my lies, their decent 
 
 due, 
 This woman — not so much believed, I 'U say. 
 As just anticipated from my mouth : 
 Since being true, devoted, constant — she 
 Found constancy, devotion, truth, the plain 
 And easy commonplace of character. 
 No mock-heroics but seemed natural 
 To her who underneath the face, I knew 
 Was fairness' self, possessed a heart, I judged 
 Must correspond in folly just as far 
 Beyond the common, — and a mind to match, — 
 Not made to puzzle conjurers like me 
 Who, therein, proved the fool who fronts you. 
 
 Sir, 
 And begs leave to cut short the ugly rest ! 
 ' Trust me ! ' I said : she trusted. ' Marry me ! ' 
 Or rather, ' We are married: when, the rite ? ' 
 That brought on the oolleotor's next-day qualm 
 At counting acquisition's cost. There lay 
 My marvel, there my purse more light by much 
 Because of its late lie-expenditure : 
 Ill-judged such moment to make fresh de- 
 mand — 
 To cage as well as catch my rarity ! 
 So, I began explaining. At first word 
 Outbroke the horror. ' Then, my truths were 
 
 lies ! ' 
 I tell you, such an outbreak, such new strange 
 
 All-unsuspected revelation — soul 
 
 As supematuraUy grand as face 
 
 Was fair beyond example — that at once 
 
 Either I lost — or, if it please you, found 
 
 My senses, — stammered somehow — 'Jest ! ona 
 
 now, 
 Marnest ! Forget all else but — heart has loved. 
 Does love, shall love pou ever ! take the hand !' 
 Not she 1 no marriage for superb disdain, 
 Contempt incarnate ! " 
 
 " Yes, it 's different, — 
 It 's only like in being four years since. 
 I see now ! " 
 
 " Well, what did disdain do next. 
 Think you?" 
 
 " That 's past me : did not marry you 1 — 
 That 's the main thing I care for, I suppose. 
 Turned nun, or what f " 
 
 *' Why, married in a month 
 Some parson, some smug crop-haired smooth- 
 chinned sort 
 Of curate-creature, I suspect, — dived down, 
 Down, deeper still, and came up somewhere 
 
 else — 
 I don't know where — I 've not tried much to 
 
 know, — 
 In short, she 's happy : what the clodpoles caU. 
 ' Countrified ' with a vengeance ! leads the life 
 Kespectable and aJl that drives you mad : 
 Still — where, I don't know, and that 's best 
 for both." 
 
 *' Well, that she did not like you, I conceive. 
 But why should you hate her, I want to 
 know ? " 
 
 "My good young friend, — because or her or 
 
 else 
 Malicious Providence I have to hate. 
 For, what I tell you proved the turning-point 
 Of my whole life and fortune toward success 
 Or failure. If I drown, I lay the fault 
 Much on myself who caught at reed not rope. 
 But more on reed which, with a packthread's 
 
 pith. 
 Had buoyed me tiU the minute's cramp eoul^ 
 
 thaw 
 And I strike out afresh and so be saved. 
 It 's easy saying — I had sunk before. 
 Disqualified myself by idle days 
 And busy nights, long since, from holding hard 
 On cable, even, had fate cast me such ! 
 You boys don't know how many times men fail 
 Perforce o' the little to succeed i' the large, 
 Husband their strength, let slip the petty prey, 
 Collect the whole power for the final pounce ! 
 My fault was the mistaking man's main prize 
 For intermediate hoy's diversion ; clap 
 Of boyish hands here frightened game away 
 Which, once gone, goes forever. Oh, at first 
 I took the anger easily, nor much 
 Minded the anguish — having learned that 
 
 storms 
 Subside, and teapot-tempest* are akin. 
 
THE INN ALBUM 
 
 Time would arrange things, mend whate'er 
 
 might be 
 Somewhat amiss ; precipitation, eh ? 
 Reason and rhyme prompt — reparation! Tiffs 
 End properly in marriage and a dance ! 
 1 said ' We '11 marry, make the past a blank ^ — 
 And never was such damnable mistake I 
 That interview, that laying bare my soul, 
 As it was first, so was it last chance — one 
 And only. Did I write ? Back letter came 
 Unopened as it went. Inexorable 
 She fled, I don't know where, consoled herself 
 With the smug curate - creature : chop and 
 
 change ! 
 Sure am I, when she told her shaveling all 
 His Magdalen's adventure, tears were shed, 
 Forgiveness evangelically shown, 
 * Loose hair and lifted eye,' — as some one says. 
 And now, he 's worshipped for his pains, the 
 
 sneak! " 
 
 " Well, but your turning-point of life, — what 's 
 
 here 
 To hinder you contesting Finsbury 
 With Orton, next election ? I don't see " . . . 
 
 "Not you ! But I see. Slowly, surely, creeps 
 Day by day o'er me the conviction — here 
 Was life's prize grasped at, gained, and then 
 
 let go ! 
 — That with her — maybe, for her — I had felt 
 Ice in me melt, grow steam, drive to effect 
 Any or all the fancies sluggish here 
 I' the li^ad that needs the hand she would not 
 
 take 
 And I shall never lift now, Lo, your wood — 
 Its turnings which I likened life to ! Well, — 
 There she stands, ending every avenue. 
 Her visionary presence on each goal 
 I might have gained had we kept side by side I 
 Still string nerve and strike foot ? Her frown 
 
 forbids : 
 The steam congeals once more : I 'm old 
 
 again ! 
 Therefore I hate myself — but how much 
 
 worse 
 Do not I hate who would not understand. 
 Let me repair things — no, but sent a-slide 
 My foUy falteringly, stumblingly 
 Down, down, and deeper down until I drop 
 Upon — the need of your ten thousand pounds 
 And consequently loss of mine ! I lose 
 Character, cash, nay, common-sense itself 
 Recounting such a lengthy cock-and-bull 
 Adventure, lose my temper in the act "... 
 
 " And lose beside, — if I may supplement 
 The hst of losses, — train and ten-o'clock ! 
 Hark, pant and puff, there travels the swart 
 
 sign ! 
 So much the better ! You 're my captive now ! 
 I 'm glad you trust a fellow : friends grow 
 
 thick 
 This way — that 's twice said ; we were thick- 
 
 ish, though. 
 Even last night, and, ere night comes again, 
 I prophesy good luck to both of us ! 
 For see nowf — back to * balmy eminence ' 
 
 781 
 
 Or ' calm acclivity ' or what 's the word ! 
 Bestow you there an hour, concoct at ease 
 A sonnet for the Album, while I put 
 Bold face on, best foot forward, make for 
 
 house, 
 March in to aunt and niece, and tell the 
 
 truth — 
 (Even white-lying goes against my taste 
 After your little story.) Oh, the niece 
 Is rationality itself ! The aunt — 
 If she 's amenable to reason too — 
 Why, you stopped short to pay her due respect, 
 And let the Duke wait (I'll work well the 
 
 Diike). 
 If she grows gracious, I return for you ; 
 If thunder 's in the air, why — bear your doom. 
 Dine on rump-steaks and port, and shake the 
 
 dust 
 Of aunty from your shoes as off you go 
 By evening-train, nor g'.ve the thing a thought 
 How you shaU pay me — that 's as sure as fate, 
 Old fellow ! Off with you, face left about ! 
 Yonder 's the path I have to pad. You see, 
 I 'm in good spirits, Grod knows why ! Perhaps 
 Because the woman did not marry you 
 — Who look so hard at me, — and have the 
 
 right, 
 One must be fair and own." 
 
 Under an oak. 
 
 The two stand stiU 
 
 " Look here ! " resumes the youth; 
 *' I never quite knew how I came to like 
 You — so much — whom I ought not court at 
 
 aU: 
 Nor how you had a leaning just to me 
 Who am assuredly not worth your pains. 
 For there must needs be plenty such as you 
 Somewhere about, — although I can't say 
 
 where, — 
 Able and willing to teach all you know; 
 While — how can you have missed a score like 
 
 me 
 With money and no wit, precisely each 
 A pupil for your purpose, were it — ease 
 Fool's poke of tutor's AonoraWum-fee ? 
 And yet, howe'er it came about, I felt 
 At once my master : you as prompt descried 
 Your man, I warrant, so was bargain struck. 
 Now, these same lines of liking, loving, run 
 Sometimes so close together they converge — 
 Life's great adventures — you know what I 
 
 mean — 
 In people. Do you know, as you advanced. 
 It got to be uncommonly like fact 
 We two had fallen in with — liked and loved 
 Just the same woman in our different ways ? 
 I began life — poor groundling as I prove — 
 Winged and ambitious to fly high : why not ? 
 There 's something in ' Don Quixote ' to the 
 
 point. 
 My shrewd old father used to quote and 
 
 praise — 
 ' Am 1 born man ? ' asks Sancho ; ' being man. 
 By possibility I may be Pope ! ' 
 So, Pope I meant to make myself, by step 
 And step, whereof the first should be to find 
 
782 
 
 THE INN ALBUM 
 
 A perfect woman j and I tell you this — 
 
 If what I fixed on, in the order due 
 
 Of undertakings, as next step, had first 
 
 Of all disposed itself to suit my tread. 
 
 And I had been, the day I came of age, 
 
 Returned at head of polLfor Westminster 
 
 ■ — Nay, and moreover summoned by the Queen 
 
 At week's end, when my maiden-speech bore 
 
 fruit. 
 To form and head a Tory ministry — 
 It would not have seemed stranger, no, nor 
 
 been 
 More strange to me, as now I estimate. 
 Than what did happen — sober truth, no dream. 
 I saw my wonder of a woman, — laugh, 
 I 'm past that ! — in Commemoration-week. 
 A plenty have I seen since, fair and foul, — 
 With eyes, too, helped by your sagacious wink ; 
 But one to match that marvel — no least trace. 
 Least touch of kinship and community ! 
 The end was — I did somehow state the fact. 
 Did, with no matter what imperfect wordsv ■ 
 One way or other give to understand 
 That woman, soul and body were her slave 
 Would she but take, but try them — any test 
 Of will, and some poor test of power beside : 
 So did the strings within my brain grow tense 
 And capable of . . . hang similitudes ! 
 She answered kindly but beyond appeal. 
 ' No sort of hope for me, who came too late. 
 She was another^s. Love went — mine to her, 
 Hers just as loyally to some one else.' 
 Of course ! I might expect it ! Nature's law — 
 Given the peerless woman, certainly 
 Somewhere shall be the peerless man to match ! 
 I acquiesced at once, submitted me 
 In something of a stupor, went my way. 
 I fancy there had been some talk before 
 Of somebody — her father or the like — 
 To coach nie in the holidays, ^- that 's how 
 I came to get the sight and speech of her, — 
 But I had sense enough to break off sharp, 
 Save both of us the pain." 
 
 " Quite right there 1 " 
 
 "Eh? 
 Quite wrong, it happens ! Now comes worst of 
 
 all! 
 Yes, X did sulk aloof and let alone 
 The lovers — I disturb the angel-mates ? " 
 
 ' Seraph paired off with cherub I " 
 
 "Thank you! While 
 I never plucked up courage to inquire 
 Who he was, even, — certain-sure of this, ' 
 That nobody I knew of had blue wings 
 And wore a star-crown as he needs must do, — 
 Some little lady, — plainish, pock-marked girl, — 
 Finds out my secret in my woeful face. 
 Comes up to me at the Apollo Ball, 
 And pityingly pours her wine and oil 
 This way into the wound : ' Dear f-ffriend, 
 Why waste affection thus on — must I say, 
 A somewhat worthless object f Who 's her choice — 
 Irrevocable as deliberate — 
 Out of the wide world f I shall name no names — 
 
 But there 's a person in society, 
 
 Who, blessed with rank ana talent, has grown 
 
 gray 
 In idleness and sin of every sort 
 Except hypocrisy: he 's thrice her age, 
 A byword for ' successes with the sex ' 
 As the French say — und, as we ought to say. 
 Consummately a liar and a rogue. 
 Since — show me where' s the woman won without 
 The help of this one lie which she believes — 
 2''hat — never mind how things have come to pass. 
 And let who loves have loved a thousand times — 
 All the same he now loves her only, loves 
 Her ever ! if by ' won ' you just mean ' sold,' 
 That 's quite another compact. Well, this scamp. 
 Continuing descent from bad to worse. 
 Must leave his fine and fashionable prey 
 (Who —fathered, brothered, husbanded, — are 
 
 hedged 
 About with thorny danger) and apply 
 His arts to this poor country ignorance 
 Who sees forthwith in the first rag of man 
 Her model hero I Why continue waste 
 On such a woman treasures of a heart 
 Would yet find solace, — yes, myf-f-friend — 
 In some congenial — fiddle-diddle-dee ? ' " 
 
 " Pray, is the pleasant gentleman described 
 Exact the portrait which my ^f-f-friends ' 
 Recognize as so like ? 'T is evident 
 You half surmised the sweet original 
 Could be no other than myself, just now ! 
 Your stop and start were flattering ! " 
 
 " Of courae 
 Caricature 's allowed for in a sketch ! 
 The Ibngish nose becomes a foot in length. 
 The swai'thy cheek gets eopper-colored, — still, 
 Prominent beak and dark-hued skin are facts : 
 And 'parson's daughter' — 'young man coach- 
 able ' — 
 'Elderly party ' — 'four years since ' — were facts 
 To fasten on, a moment! Marriage, though — 
 That made the difference, I hope." 
 
 "All right! 
 I never married : wish I had — and then 
 Unwish it : people kill their wives, sometimes I 
 I hate my mistress, but I 'm murder-free. 
 In your case, where 's the grievance ? You 
 
 came last. 
 The earlier bird picked up the worm. Suppose 
 You, in the glory of your twenty-one. 
 Had happened to precede myself ! 'tis odds 
 But this gigantic juvenility. 
 This offering of a big arm's bony hand — 
 I 'd rather shake than feel shake me, I know — 
 Had moved my dainty mistress to admire 
 An altogether new Ideal — deem 
 Idolatry less due to life's decline 
 Productive of experience, powers mature 
 By dint of us^e, the made man — no boy 
 That 's all to make ! I was the earlier bird — 
 And what I foimd, I let fall ; what you missed, 
 Who is the fool that blames you for ? " 
 
 _, "Myself- 
 
 J< or nothmg, everything! For finding out 
 
THE INN ALBUM 
 
 783 
 
 She, whom I worshipped, was a worshipper 
 In turn of . . , but why stir up settled mud ? 
 She married him — the fifty-years-old rake — 
 How you have teased the talk from me ! At 
 
 last 
 My secret 's told you. I inquired no more. 
 Nay, stopped ears when informants unshut 
 
 mouth ; 
 Enough that she and he live, deuce take where, 
 Married and happy, or else miserable — 
 It 's ' Cut-the-pack ; ' she turned up ace or 
 
 knave. 
 And I left Oxford, England, dug my hole 
 Out in Dalmatia, till you drew me thence 
 Badger-like, — ' Back to London ' was the 
 
 word — 
 ' Do things, a many, there, you fancy hard, 
 IHl undertake are easy ! ' — the advice. 
 I took it, had my twelvemonth's fling with 
 
 you — 
 (Little hand holding large hand pretty tight 
 For all its delicacy — eh, my lord ?) 
 UntU when, t' other day, I got a turn 
 Somehow and gave up tired : and * Rest ! * bade 
 
 you, 
 ' Marry your cousin, double your estate, 
 And take your ease by all means ! ' So, I loll 
 On this the springy sofa, mine next month — 
 Or shoiUd loll, but that you must needs beat 
 
 rough 
 The very down you spread me out so smooth. 
 I wish this confidence were still to make ! 
 Ten thousand pounds ? You owe me twice the 
 
 sum 
 Tor stirring up the bla«k depths I There 's 
 
 repose 
 Or, at least, silence when misfortune seems 
 All that one has to bear ; but folly — yes, 
 Folly, it all was ! Fool to be so meek. 
 So humble, — such a coward rather say ! 
 Fool, to adore the adorer of a fool ! 
 Not to have faced him, tried (a useful hint) 
 My big and bony, here, against the bunch 
 Of lily-colored five with signet-ring. 
 Most like, for little-finger's sole defence — 
 Much as you flaunt the blazon there ! I grind 
 My teeth, that bite my very heart, to think — 
 To know I might have made that woman mine 
 But for the folly of the coward — know — 
 Or what 's the good of my apprenticeship 
 This twelvemonth to a master in the .art ? 
 Mine — had she been mine — just one moment 
 
 mine 
 For honor, for dishonor — anyhow. 
 So that my life, instead of stagnant . . . Well, 
 You 've poked and proved stagnation is not 
 
 ■ sleep — 
 Hang you ! " 
 
 "Hang: you for an ungrateful goose 1 
 All this means — I who since I knew you first > 
 Have helped you to conceit yourself this cock 
 0' the dunghill with all hens to pick and 
 
 choose — 
 Ought to have helped you when shell first was 
 
 chipped 
 By chick th at wanted prompting ' Use the spur I ' 
 While I was elsewhere putting mine to use. 
 
 As well might I blame you who kept aloof. 
 
 Seeing you could not guess I was alive. 
 
 Never advised me ' Do as 1 have done — 
 
 Reverence such a jewel as your luck 
 
 Has scratched up to enrich unworthiness ! ' 
 
 As your behavior was, should mine have been, 
 
 — Faults which we both, too late, are sorry for : 
 
 Opposite ages, each with its mistake ; 
 
 ' If youth but would — if age but could, ' you know. 
 
 Don't let us quarrel I Come, we 're — youug 
 
 and old — 
 Neither so badly off. Go you your way, 
 Cut to the Cousin ! I '11 to Inn, await 
 The issue of diplomacy with Aunt, 
 And wait my hour on * calm acclivity ' 
 In rumination manifold — ^perhaps 
 About ten thousand pounds I have to pay I " 
 
 III 
 
 Now, as the elder lights the fresh cigar 
 Conducive to resource, and saunteringly 
 Betakes him to the left-hand backward, path, — 
 While, much sedate, the younger strides away 
 To right and makes for — islanded in lawn 
 And edged with shrubbery — the brilliant bit 
 Of Barry's building that 's the Place, — a pair 
 Of women, at this nick of time, one young. 
 One very young, are ushered with due pomp 
 Into the same Inn-parlor — " disengaged 
 Entirely now ! " the obsequious landlord smiles, 
 " Since the late occupants — whereof but one 
 Was quite a stranger" — (smile enforced by 
 
 bow) 
 " Left, a full two hours since, to catch the train. 
 Probably for the stranger's sake ! '' (Bow, smile. 
 And backing out from door soft-closed behind.) 
 
 Woman and girl, the two, alone inside. 
 Begin their talk : the girl, with sparkling eyes — 
 " On, I forewent him purposely ! but you. 
 Who joined at — journeyed from the Junction 
 
 here — 
 I wonder how he failed your notice. Few 
 Stop at our station : fellow-passengers 
 Assuredly you were — I saw indeed 
 His servant, therefore he arrived all right. 
 I wanted, you know why, to have you safe 
 Inside here first of all, so dodged about 
 The dark end of the platform ; that 's his 
 
 way — 
 To swing from station straight to avenue 
 And stride the half a mile for exercise. 
 I fancied you might notice the huge boy. 
 He soon gets o'er the distance ; at the house 
 He '11 hear I went to meet him and have 
 
 missed J 
 He '11 wait. No minute of the hour '3 too much 
 Meantime for our preliminary talk : 
 First word of which must be — oh, good beyond 
 Expression of all goodness — you to come I " 
 
 The elder, the superb one, answers slow. 
 
 " There was no helping that. You called for 
 
 me. 
 Cried, rather : and my old heart answered you. 
 
784 
 
 THE INN ALBUM 
 
 Still, thank me ! since the effort breaks a 
 
 vow — 
 At least, a promise to myself." 
 
 '* I know ! 
 How selfish get you happy folk to be ! 
 If 1 should luve my husband, must 1 needs 
 Sacrifice straightway all the world to him. 
 As you do ? Must 1 never dare leave house 
 On this dread Arctic expedition, out 
 And in again, six mortal hours, though you, 
 You even, my own friend forevermore. 
 Adjure me — fast your friend till rude love 
 
 pushed 
 Poor friendship from her vantage — just to 
 
 grant 
 The quarter of a whole day's company 
 And counsel? This makes counsel so much 
 
 more 
 Need and necessity. For here 's my block 
 Of stumbling : in the face of happiness 
 So absolute, fear chills me. If such change 
 In heart be but love's easy con.sequence. 
 Do I love ? If to marry mean — let go 
 All I now live for, should my marriage be ? " 
 
 The other never once has ceased to gaze 
 On the great elm-tree in the open, posed 
 Placidly full in front, smooth bole, broad branch. 
 And leafage, one green plenitude of May, 
 The gathered thought runs into speech at last. 
 
 " you exceeding beauty, bosomful 
 
 Of lights and shades, murmurs and silences, 
 
 Sun-warmth, dew-coolness, — squirrel, bee and 
 
 bird. 
 High, higher, highest, till the blue proclaims 
 ' Leave earth, there 's nothing belter tUl next step 
 Heavenward ! ' — so, off flies what has wings to 
 
 help! " 
 
 And henceforth they alternate. Says the 
 girl — 
 
 " That 's saved then: marriage spares the early 
 taste." 
 
 " Four years now, since my eye took note of 
 tree ! " 
 
 " If I had seen no other tree but this 
 
 My life long, while yourself came straight, you 
 
 said. 
 From tree which overstretched you and was 
 
 just 
 One fairy tent with pitcher-leaves that held 
 Wine, and a flowery wealth of suns and moons. 
 And magic fruits whereon the angels feed — 
 I looking out of window on a tree 
 Like yonder — otherwise well-known, much- 
 liked. 
 Yet just an English ordinary elm — 
 What marvel if you cured me of conceit 
 My elm's bird-bee-and-squirrel tenantry 
 Was quite the proud possession I supposed ? 
 And tnere is evidence you tell me true. 
 The fairy marriage-tree reports itself 
 Good guardian of the perfect face and form. 
 
 Fruits of four years' protection! Married 
 
 friend. 
 You are more beautiful than ever I " 
 
 "Yes: 
 I think that likely, I could well dispense 
 With all thought fair in feature, mine or no, 
 Leave but enough of face to know me by — 
 With all found fresh in youth except such 
 
 strength 
 As lets a life-long labor earn repose 
 Death sells at just that price, they say; and 
 
 so. 
 Possibly, what I care not for, I keep," 
 
 " How you must know he loves you ! Chill, 
 
 before, 
 Fear sinks to freezing. Could I sacrifice — 
 Assured my lover simply loves my soul — 
 One nose-breadth of fair feature ? No, indeed ! 
 Your own love "... 
 
 Don't waste it ! ' 
 
 " The preliminary hour — 
 
 " But I can't begin at once ! 
 The angel's self that comes to hear me speak 
 Drives away all the care about the speech. 
 What an angelic mystery you are — 
 Now — that is certain ! when I knew you first. 
 No break of halo and no bud of wing ! 
 I thought I knew you, saw you, round and 
 
 through. 
 Like a glass ball ; suddenly, four years since. 
 You vanished, how and whither ? Mystery ! 
 Wherefore ? No mystery at all : you loved. 
 Were loved again, and left the world of course : 
 Who would not ? Lapped four years in fairy- 
 land. 
 Out comes, by no less wonderful a chance. 
 The changeling, touched athwart her trellised 
 
 bliss 
 Of blush-rose bower by just the old friend's 
 
 voice 
 That 's now struck dumb at her own potency. 
 I talk of my small fortunes ? Tell me yours 
 Rather ! The fool I ever was — I am. 
 You see that : the true friend you ever had. 
 You have, you also recognize. Perhaps, 
 Giving you all the love of all my heart. 
 Nature, that 's niggard in me, has denied 
 The after-birth of love there 's some one claims, 
 — This huge boy, swinging up the avenue ; 
 And I want counsel : is defect in me, 
 Or him who has no right to raise the love ? 
 My cousin asks my hand : he 's young enough, 
 Handsome, — my maid thinks, — manJy 's more 
 
 the word : 
 He asked my leave to ' drop ' the elm-tree there, 
 Some morning before breakfast. Gentleness 
 Goes with the strength, of course. He 's hon- 
 est too, 
 Limpidly truthful. For ability — 
 AH 's in the rough yet. His first taste of life 
 Seems to have somehow gone against the 
 
 tongue : 
 He travelled, tried things — came back, tried 
 still more — 
 
THE INN ALBUM 
 
 78j 
 
 He says he 's siek of all. He 's fond of me 
 After a certain careless-earnest way 
 I like : the iron 's crude, — no polished steel 
 Somebody forged before me. I am rich — 
 That 's not the reason, he 's far richer : no, 
 Nor is it that he thinks me pretty, — frank 
 Undoubtedly on that point I He saw once 
 The pink of face-perfection — oh, not you — 
 Content yourself, my beauty ! — for she proved 
 So thoroughly a cheat, his charmer . . . nay, 
 He runs into extremes, I '11 say at once, 
 Lest you say ! Well, I understand he wants 
 Some one to serve, something to do : and both 
 Requisites so abound in me and mine 
 That here 's the obstable which stops consent — 
 The smoothness is too smooth, and I mistrust 
 The unseen cat beneath the counterpane. 
 Therefore I thought — ' Would she but judge for 
 
 me. 
 Who, judging for herself, succeeded so ! ' 
 Do I love him, does he love me, do both 
 Mistake for knowledge — easy ignorance ? 
 Appeal to its proficient in eaeh art ! 
 I got rough-smooth through a piano-piece. 
 Battled away last week tUl tutor came, 
 Heard me to end, then grunted ^Ach, mein Gott I 
 Sagen Sie " easy " ? Every note is wrong I 
 All thumped mit wrist — we HI trouble fingers now. 
 The Fraulein willplease roll up Raff again 
 And exercise at Czernyfor one month ! ' 
 Am I to roll up cousin, exercise 
 At Trollope's novels for one month? Pro- 
 
 *' Now, place each in the right position first, 
 Adviser and advised one ! 1 perhaps 
 Am three — nay, four years older ; am, beside, 
 A wife : advantages — to balance which. 
 You have a full fresh joyous sense of life 
 That finds you out life's fit food everywhere. 
 Detects enjoyment where I, slow and dull. 
 Fumble at fault. Already, these four years. 
 Your merest glimpses at the world without 
 Have shown you more than ever met my gaze ; 
 And now, by joyance you inspire joy, — learn 
 While you profess to teach, and teach, although 
 Avowedly a learner. I am dazed 
 Like any owl by sunshine which just sets 
 The sparrow preening plumage ! Here 's to spy 
 — Your cousin ! You have scanned him all 
 
 your life, 
 Little or much ; I never saw his face. 
 You have determined on a marria'^e — used 
 Deliberation therefore — I '11 believe 
 No otherwise, with opportunity 
 For judgment so abounding ! Here stand I — 
 Summoned to give my sentence, for a whim, 
 (Well, at first cloud-neck thrown athwart your 
 
 blue,) 
 Judge what is strangeness' self to me, — say 
 
 ' Wed." 
 Or ' Wed not ! ' whom you promise I shall 
 
 judge . 
 
 Presently, at propitious lunch-time, just 
 While he carves chicken I Sends he leg for 
 
 wing ? 
 That revelation into character 
 And conduct must suffice me ! Quite as well 
 
 Consult with yonder solitary crow 
 That eyes us from your elm-top I " 
 
 " Still the same I 
 Do you remember, at the libraiy 
 We saw together somewhere, those two books 
 Somebody said were notice-worthy ? One 
 Lay wide on table, sprawled its painted leaves 
 For all the world's inspection ; shut on shelf 
 Reclined the other volume, closed, clasped , 
 
 locked — 
 Clear to be let alone. Which page had we 
 Preferred the turning over of ? You were. 
 Are, ever wiU be the locked lady, hold 
 Inside you secrets written, — soul absorbed. 
 My ink upon your blotting-paper. I— 
 What trace of you have I to show in turn ? 
 Delicate secrets ! No one juvenile 
 Ever essayed at croquet and performed 
 Superiorly but I confided you 
 The sort of hat he wore and hair it held. 
 While you ? One day a calm note comes by 
 
 post — 
 ' 1 am just married, you may like to hear.' 
 Most men would hate you, or they ought ; we 
 
 love 
 What we fear, — Z do ! ' Cold ' I shall expect 
 My cousin calls you. I — dislike not him, 
 But (if I comprehend what loving means) 
 Love you immeasurably more — more — more 
 Than even he who, loving you his wife. 
 Would turn up nose at who impertinent, 
 Frivolous, forward — loves that excellence 
 Of all the earth he bows in worship to ! 
 And who 's this paragon of privilege ? 
 Simply a country parson : his the charm 
 That worked the miracle ! Oh, too absurd — 
 But that you stand before me as you stand ! 
 Such beauty does prove soxnething, everything ! 
 Beauty 's the prize-flower which dispenses eye 
 From peering into what has nourished root — 
 Dew or manure: the plant best knows Its 
 
 place. 
 Enough, from teaching youth and tending age 
 And hearing sermons, — haply writing tracts, — 
 From such strange love-besprinkled compost, 
 
 lo. 
 Out blows this triumph ! Therefore love 's the 
 
 soil 
 Plants find or fail of. You, with wit to find. 
 Exercise wit on the old friend's behalf. 
 Keep me from failure ! Scan and scrutinize 
 This cousin ! Surely he 's as worth your pains 
 To study as my elm-tree, crow and all. 
 You still keep staring at. I read your 
 
 thoughts. 
 
 "At last?" 
 
 " At first ! ' Would, tree, a-top of thee 
 I winged were, like crow perched moveless there, 
 And so could straightway soar, escape this bore, 
 Back to my nest where broods whom I love best — 
 Theparson o'er hisparish — garish — rarish,' — 
 Oh, I could bring the rhyme in if I tried : 
 The Album here inspires me ! Quite apart 
 From lyrical expression, have I read^ 
 The stare aright, and sings not soul just so ? " 
 
786 
 
 THE INN ALBUM 
 
 " Or rather so? ' Coot comfortable elm 
 That men make coffins out of, i— none for me 
 At thy expense, so thou permit I glide 
 Under thy ferny feet, and there sleep, sleep. 
 Nor dread awaking though in heaven' itself! ' " 
 
 The yoiinger looks with face struck sudden 
 
 white. 
 The elder answers its inquiry. 
 
 " Dear, 
 You are a guesser, not a ' clairvoyante, 
 I 'II so far open you the locked and shelved 
 Volume, my soul, that you desire to see. 
 As let you profit Ijy the title-page " — 
 
 "Paradise Lost ?" 
 
 " Inferno ! — AU which comes 
 Of tempting me to break my vow. Stop here ! 
 Friend; whom I love the best in the whole 
 
 world, 
 Come at your call, be sure that I will do 
 All your requirement — see and say my mind. 
 It may be that by sad apprenticeship 
 I have a keener sense : I 'U task the same. 
 Only indulge me, — here let sight and speech 
 Happen, — this Inn is neutral ground, you 
 
 know ! 
 I cannot visit the old house and home, 
 Kncounter the old sociality 
 Abjured forever. Peril quite enough 
 In even this first — last, I pray it prove — 
 Kenunciation of my solitude ! 
 Back, you, to house and cousin! Leave me 
 
 here, 
 Who want no entertainment, carry still 
 My occupation with me. While I watch 
 The shadow inching round those ferny feet. 
 Tell him 'A school-friend wants a word with 
 
 me _ . ' 
 
 Tip at the inn: time, tide, and train wonH wait: 
 I mustao see her — on and off' again — 
 You ^U keep me company? ' Ten minutes' 
 
 talk. 
 With you in presence, ten more afterward 
 With who, alone, convoys me station-bound, 
 And I see clearly — and say honestly . 
 To-morrow : pen shall play tongue's' part, you 
 
 know. 
 Go — quick ! for I have made our hand-in- 
 hand 
 Return impossible. So scared you look, — 
 If cousin does not greet you with ' What ghost 
 Has crossed^ your path ? ' I set him down ob- 
 tuse." 
 
 And after one more look, with face still white, 
 The younger does go, while the elder stands 
 Occupied by the ehn at window there. 
 
 IV 
 
 Occupied by the elm ; and, as its shade 
 Has crept clock-hand-wise till it ticks at fern 
 Five inches further to the South, — the door 
 Opens abruptly, some one enters sharp, 
 
 The elder man returned to wait the youth : 
 Never observes the room's new occupant. 
 Throws hat on table, stoops quick, elbow- 
 propped 
 Over the Album wide there, bends down brow 
 A cogitative minute, whistles shrill. 
 Then, — with a cheery-hopeless laugh-and-lose 
 Air of defiance to fate visibly 
 Casting the toils about him — mouths once 
 
 more 
 ' Hail, calm acclivity, salubrious spot ! ' 
 Then clasps-to cover, sends book spinning off 
 T' other side table, looks up, starts erect 
 FuU-f ace with her who — roused from that ab- 
 struse 
 Question ' Will next tick tip the fern ornof-^ 
 Fronts him as fuUy. 
 
 All her languor breaks. 
 Away withers at once the weariness 
 From the black-blooded brow, anger and hate 
 Convulse. Speech follows slowlier, but at 
 last — 
 
 " You here ! I felt, I knew it would befall ! 
 Knew, by some subtle nndivinable 
 Trick of the trickster, I should, silly-sooth, 
 Late or soon, somehow be allured to leave 
 Safe hiding and come take of him arrears, 
 My torment due on four years' respite ! Time 
 To pluck the bird's healed breast of down o'er 
 
 wound ! 
 Have your success ! Be satisfied this sole 
 Seeing you has undone all heaven could do 
 These four years, puts me back to you and 
 
 hell! 
 What will next trick be, next success? No 
 
 doubt 
 When I shall think to glide into the grave. 
 There will you wait disguised as beckoning 
 
 Death, 
 And catch and capture me f orevermore ! 
 But, God, though I am nothing, be thou all! 
 Contest him for me ! Strive, for he is strong ! " 
 
 Already his surprise dies palely out 
 
 In laugh of acquiescing impotence. 
 
 He neither gasps nor hisses : calm and plain — 
 
 " I also felt and knew — but otherwise ! 
 You out of hand and sight and care of me 
 These four years, whom I felt, knew, all the 
 
 while . . . 
 Oh, it 's no superstition ! It 's a gift 
 0' the gamester that he snuffs the unseen 
 
 powers 
 Which help or harm him. Well I knew what 
 
 lurked. 
 Lay perdue paralyzing me. — drugged, drowsed 
 And damnified my soul and body both ! 
 Down and down, see where you have dragged 
 
 me to, 
 You and your malice ! I was, four years 
 
 since, 
 — r Well, a poor creature ! I became a knave. 
 I sjiuandered my own pence : I plnmp my p^ rse 
 With other people's pounds. I practispft pi ••• 
 Because I liked it : play turns labor now 
 
THE INN ALBUM 
 
 787 
 
 Because there 's profit aUo in the sport. 
 I gamed with men of equal age and craft : 
 I steal hare with a boy as green as grass 
 Whom I have tightened hold on slow and sure 
 This long while, just to bring about to-day 
 When the boy beats me hollow, buries me 
 In ruin who was snre to beggar him. 
 Oh, time indeed I should look up and laugh 
 ' Surely she closes on me ! ' Here you stand 1 " 
 
 And stand she does : while volubility, 
 
 With him, keeps on the increase, for his tongue 
 
 After long locking-up is loosed for once. 
 
 " Certain the taunt is happy ! " he resumes : 
 " So, I it was allured you — only I 
 — I, and none other — to this spectacle — 
 Your triumph, my despair — you woman-fisnd 
 That front me 1 Well, I have my wish, then 1 
 
 See 
 The low wide brow oppressed by sweeps of hair 
 Darker and darker as they coil and swathe 
 The crowned corpse-wanness whence the eyes 
 
 burn black. 
 Not asleep now ! not pin-points dwarfed be- 
 neath 
 Either great bridging eyebrow — poor blank 
 
 beads — 
 Babies, I ' ve pleased to pity in my time : 
 How they protrude and ^ow immense with hatel 
 The long triumphant nose attains — retains 
 Just the perfection : and there 's scarlet-skein 
 My ancient enemy, her lip and lip, 
 Sense-free, sense-frighting lips clenched cold 
 
 and bold 
 Because of chin, that based resolve beneath I 
 Then the columnar neck completes the whole 
 Greek-soulpture-baffling body 1 Do I see ? 
 Can I observe ? You wait next word to come ? 
 Well, wait and want ! since no one blight I bid 
 Consume one least perfection. Each and all, 
 As they are rightly shocking now to me. 
 So may they stUl continue 1 Value them ? 
 Ay, as the vendor knows the money-worth 
 Of his Greek statue, fools aspire to buy. 
 And he to see the back of ! Let us laugh ! 
 You have absolved me from my sin at least ! 
 You stand stout, strong, in the rude health of 
 
 hate, 
 No touch of the tame timid nullity 
 My cowardice, forsooth, has practised on ! 
 Ay, while you seemed to hint some fine fifth act 
 Of tragedy should freeze blood, end the farce, 
 I never dpubted all was joke. I kept. 
 Maybe, an eye alert on paragraphs. 
 Newspaper-notice, — let no inquest slip. 
 Accident, disappearance : sound and safe 
 Were you, my victim, not of mind to die ! 
 So, my worst fancy that could spoU the smooth 
 Of pillow, and arrest descent of sleep, 
 Was ' Into what dim hole can she have dived. 
 She and her jm'ongs, her woe that 's wearing flesh 
 And blood away ? ' Whereas, see, sorrow swells ! 
 Or, fattened, fulsome, have you fed on me. 
 Sucked out my substance ? How much gloss, 1 
 
 pray, 
 O'erbloomed those hair- swathes when there 
 
 crept from you 
 
 To me that craze, else unaccountable. 
 Which urged me to contest our county-seat 
 With whom but my own brother's nominee ? 
 Did that mouth's pulp glow ruby from carmine 
 While I misused my moment, pushed, — one 
 
 word, — 
 One hair's-breadth more of gesture, — idiot-like 
 Past passion, floundered on to the grotesque. 
 And lost the heiress in a grin ? At least. 
 You made no such mistake ! You tickled fish, 
 Landed your prize the true artistic way ! 
 How did the smug young curate rise to tune 
 Of ' Friend, a fatal fact divides us. Love 
 Suits me no longer. J have sVtS'ered shame. 
 Betrayal : past is past ; the future — yours — 
 Shall never be contaminate by mine ! 
 I might have spared me this confession, not 
 — Oh, never by some kideousest of lies, 
 Easy, impenetrable ! No ! but say. 
 By Just the quiet answer — "J am cold." 
 Falsehood g,vaunt, each shadow of thee, hence ! 
 Had happier fortune willed . . . but dreams are 
 
 vam. 
 Now, leave me — yes, for pity's sake 1 ' Aha, 
 Who fails to see the curate as his face 
 Reddened and whitened, wanted handkerchief 
 At wrinkling brow and twinkling eye, until 
 Out burst the proper ' Angel, whom the fiend 
 Has thought to smirch, — thy whiteness, at one 
 
 wipe 
 Of holy cambric, shall disgrace the swan ! 
 Mine be the task ' ■ . . and so forth ! Fool ? not 
 
 he! 
 Cunning in flavors, rather ! What but sour 
 Suspected makes the sweetness doubly sweet, 
 And what stings love from faint to flamboyant 
 But the fear-sj)rinkle ? Even horror helps — 
 ' Love's flame in me by such recited wrong 
 Drenched, quenched, indeed ? It burns th 
 
 Her thence ! ' 
 Why, I have known men never love their wives 
 Till somebody — myself, suppose — had 
 
 ' drenched 
 And quenched love,' so the blockheads whined: 
 
 as if 
 The fluid fire that lifts the torpid Hrab 
 Were a wrong done to palsy. But I thrilled 
 No palsied person : half my age, or less, 
 The curate was, I '11 wager : o'er young blood 
 Your beauty triumphed ! Eh, but — was it he f 
 Then, it was he, I heard of ! None beside ! 
 How frank you were about the audacious boy 
 Who fell upon you like a thunderbolt — 
 Passion and protestation ! He it was 
 Reserved in petto ! Ay, and ' rich ' beside — 
 ' Bich' — how supremely did disdain curl nose I 
 All that I heard was — ' wedded to a priest ; ' 
 Informants sunk youth, riches and the rest. 
 And so my lawless love disparted loves. 
 That loves might come together with a rush ! 
 Surely this last achievement sucked me dry : 
 Indeed, that way my wits went. Mistress-queen, 
 Be merciful and letyour subject slink 
 Into dark safety ! He 's a beggar, see — 
 Do not turn back his ship, Australiarbound, 
 And bid her land him right amid some crowd 
 Of creditors, assembled by your curse ! 
 Do:i't cause the very rope to crack (you can !) 
 
788 
 
 THE INN ALBUM 
 
 Whereou he spends his last (friend's) sixpence, 
 
 just 
 The moment when he hoped to hang himself I 
 Be satisfied you beat him ! " 
 
 She replies — 
 
 " Bea,t him ! I do. To all that you confess 
 
 Of abject failure, I extend belief. 
 
 Your very face confirms it : God is just ! 
 
 Let my face — fix your eyes ! — in turn confirm 
 
 What I shall say. AU-abjeot 's but half truth ; 
 
 Add to all-abjeet knave as perfect fool ! 
 
 So is it you probed human nature, so 
 
 Prognosticated of me ? Lay these words 
 
 To heart then, or where God meant heart should 
 
 Inrk! 
 That moment when you first revealed yourself, 
 My simple impulse prompted — end forthwith 
 The ruin of a life uprooted thus 
 To surely perish ! How should such spoiled tree 
 Henceforward balk the wind of its worst sport, 
 Fail to go falling deeper, falling down 
 From sin to sin until some depth were reached 
 Doomed to the weakest by the wickedest 
 Of weak and wicked human-kind ? But when, 
 That self-display made absolute, — behold 
 A new revealment ! — round you pleased to veer. 
 Propose me what should prompt annul the past. 
 Make me ' amends by marriage ' — in your 
 
 phrase. 
 Incorporate me henceforth, body and soul. 
 With soul and body which mere brushing past 
 Brought leprosy upon me — ' marry ' these ! 
 Why, then despair broke, reassurance dawned. 
 Clear-sighted was I that who hurled contempt 
 As I — thank God ! — at the contemptible, 
 Was scarce an utter weakling. Kent away 
 By treason from my rightful pride of place, 
 I was not destined to the shame below. 
 A cleft had caught me : I might perish there. 
 But thence to be dislodged and whirled at last 
 Where the black torrent sweeps the sewage — 
 
 no ! 
 * Bare breast be on hard rock^^ laughed out my 
 
 soul 
 In gratitude, ' howe'er rock's grip may grind ! 
 The plain, rough, wretched holdfast shall suffice 
 This wreck of me ! ' The wind, — I broke in 
 
 bloom 
 At passage of, — which stripped me bole and 
 
 branch, 
 Twisted me up and tossed me here, — turns 
 
 back. 
 And, playful ever, would replant the spoil ? 
 Be satisfied, not one least leaf that 's mine 
 Shall henceforth help wind's sport to exercise ! 
 Rather I give such remnant to the rock 
 Which never dreamed a straw would settle 
 
 there. 
 Rock may not thank me, may not feel my 
 
 breast, 
 Even : enough that / feel, hard and cold. 
 Its safety my salvation. Safe and saved, 
 I lived, five. When the tempter shall persuade 
 His prey to slip down, slide ofP, trust the 
 
 wmd, — 
 Now that I know if God or Satan be 
 
 Prince of the Power of the Air, — then, then, 
 
 indeed. 
 Let my life end and degradation too ! " 
 
 " Good ! " he smiles, " true Lord Byron ! " 
 
 ' Tree and rock : 
 iJocjfc,'— there's advancement! He's at first 
 
 a youth. 
 Rich, worthless therefore ; next he grows a 
 
 priest : 
 Youth, riches prove a notable resource, 
 When to leave me for their possessor gluts 
 Malice abundantly ; and now, last change, 
 The young rich parson represents a rock 
 — Bloodstone, no doubt. He 's Evangelical ? 
 Your Ritualists prefer the Chiirch for spouse 1 " 
 
 She speaks. 
 
 " I have a story to relate. 
 There was a parish-priest, my father knew, 
 Elderly, poor : I used to pity him 
 Before I learned what woes are pity-worth. 
 Elderly was gi'own old now, scanty means 
 Were straitening fast to poverty, beside 
 The ailments which await in such a case. 
 Limited every way, a perfect man 
 Within the bounds built up and up since birth 
 Breast-high about him till the outside world 
 Was blank save o'erhead one blue bit of sky — 
 Faith : he had faith in dogma, small or great. 
 As in the fact that if he clave his skull 
 He 'd find a brain there : who proves such a fact 
 No falsehood by experiment at price 
 Of soul and body ? The one rule of life 
 Delivered him in childhood was ' Obey ! 
 Labtyr ! ' He had obeyed and labored — tame. 
 True to the mill-track blinked on from above. 
 Some scholarship he may have gained in youth : 
 Gone — dropt or flung behind. Some blossom- 
 flake. 
 Spring's boon, descends on every vernal head, 
 I used to think ; but January joins 
 December, as his year had known no May ; 
 Trouble its snow-deposit, — cold and old ! 
 I heard it was his will to take a wife, 
 A helpmate. Duty bade him tend and teach — 
 How ? with experience null, nor sympathy 
 Abundant, — while himself worked dogma 
 
 dead. 
 Who would play ministrant to sickness, age, 
 Womankind, childhood ? These demand a 
 
 wife. 
 Supply the want, then ! theirs the wife ; for 
 
 him — 
 No coarsest sample of the proper sex 
 But would have served, his purpose equally 
 With God's own angel, — ^let but knowledge 
 
 match 
 Her coarseness : zeal does only half the work. 
 I saw this — knew the purblind honest drudge 
 Was wearing out his simple blameless life. 
 And wanted help beneath a burden — borne 
 To treasure-house or dust-heap, what cared I ? 
 Partner he needed : I proposed myself. 
 Nor much surprised him — duty was so clear I 
 Gratitude ? What for ? Gain of Paradise — 
 Escape, perhaps, from the dire penalty 
 
THE INN ALBUM 
 
 789 
 
 Of who hides talent in a napkin ? No : 
 His scruple was — should I be strong enough 
 
 — In body ? since of weakness in the mind, 
 Weariness in the heart — no fear of these ? 
 He took me as tliese Arctic voyagers 
 Take an aspirant to their toil and pain : 
 
 Can he endure them ? — that 's the point, and 
 not 
 
 — Will he ? Who would not, rather ! Where- 
 
 upon, 
 I pleaded far more earnestly for leave 
 To give myself away, than you to gain 
 What yon called priceless till you gained the 
 
 heart 
 And soul and body ! which, as beggars serve 
 Extorted alms, you straightway spat upon. 
 Not so my husband, — for I gained my suit, 
 And had my value put at once to proof. 
 Ask him ! These four years I have died away 
 In village-life. The village? Ugliness 
 At best and iilthiness at worst, inside. 
 Outside, sterility — earth sown with salt 
 Or what keeps even grass from growing fresh. 
 The life ? I teach the poor and learn, myself, 
 That commonplace to such stupidity 
 Is all-recondite. Being brutalized 
 Their true need is brute - language, cheery 
 
 grunts 
 And kindly duckings, no articulate 
 Nonsense that 's elsewhere knowledge. Tend 
 
 the sick. 
 Sickened myself at pig-perversity, 
 Cat-craft, dog-snarling — maybe, snapping " . . . 
 
 " Brief : 
 You eat that root of bitterness called Man 
 
 — Raw ; I prefer it cooked, with social sauce ! 
 So, he was not the rich youth after all ! 
 
 Well, I mistook. But somewhere needs must 
 
 be 
 The compensation. If not young nor rich "... 
 
 " You interrupt ! " 
 
 " Because you 've daubed enough 
 Bistre for background. Play the artist now, 
 Produce your figure well-relieved in front I 
 The contrast — do not X anticipate ? 
 Though neither rich nor young — what then? 
 
 'Tisall 
 Forgotten, all this ignobility, 
 In the dear home, the darling word, the smile, 
 The something sweeter " . . . 
 
 " Yes, you interrupt. 
 I have my purpose and proceed. Who lives 
 With beasts assumes beast-nature, look and 
 
 voice. 
 And, much more, thought, for beasts think. 
 
 Selfishness 
 In us met selfishness in them, deserved 
 Such answer as it gained. My husband, bent 
 On saving his own soul by saving theirs, — 
 They, bent on being saved if saving soul 
 Included body's getting bread and cheese 
 Somehow in life and somehow after death, — 
 Both parties were alike in the same boat, 
 One danger, therefore one equality. 
 
 Safety induces culture : culture seeks 
 
 To institute, extend and multiply 
 
 The difference between safe man and man, 
 
 Able to live alone now ; progress means 
 
 What but abandonment of fellowship ? 
 
 We were in common danger, still stuck close. 
 
 No new books, —were the old ones mastered 
 
 yet? 
 No pictures and no music : these divert 
 — What from ? the staving danger off ! You 
 
 paint 
 The waterapont above, you set to words 
 The roaring of the tempest round you? 
 
 Thanks ! 
 Amusement ? Talk at end of the tired day 
 Of the more tiresome morrow I I transcribed 
 The page on page of sermon - scrawlings — 
 
 stopped 
 Intellect's eye and ear to sense and sound — 
 Vainly : the sound and sense would penetrate 
 To brain and plague there in despite of me 
 Maddened to know more moral good were done 
 Had we two simply sallied forth and preached 
 I' the 'Green' they call their grimy, — I with 
 
 twang 
 Of long-disused guitar, — with cut and slash 
 Of much-misvalued horsewhip he, — to bid 
 The {jeaceable come dance, the peace-breaker 
 Pay in his person I Whereas — Heaven and 
 
 Hell, 
 Excite with that, restrain with this 1 — so dealt 
 His drugs my husband ; as he dosed himself, 
 He drenched his cattle : and, for all my part 
 Was just to dub the mortar, never fear 
 But drugs, hand pestled at, have poisoned 
 
 nose! 
 Heaven he let pass, left wisely undescribed : 
 As applicable therefore to the sleep 
 I want, that knows no waking — as to what 's 
 Conceived of as the proper prize to tempt 
 Souls less world-weary : there, no fault to find I 
 But Hell he made explicit. After death, 
 Life : man created new, ingeniously 
 Perfect for a vindictive purpose now. 
 That man, first fashioned in beneficence. 
 Was proved a failure ; intellect at length 
 Replacing old obtuseness, memory 
 Ma^e mindful of delinquent's bygone deeds 
 Now that remorse was vain, which life-long lay 
 Dormant when lesson might be laid to heart ; 
 New gift of observation up and down 
 And round man's self, new power to apprehend 
 Each necessary consequence of act 
 In man for well or ill — things obsolete — 
 Just granted to supplant the idiocy 
 Man's only guide while act was yet to choose. 
 With ill or well momentously its fruit ; 
 A faculty of immense suffering 
 Conferred on mind and body, — mind, erewhile 
 Unvisited by one compunctious dream 
 During sin's drunken slumber, startled up, 
 Stung through and through by sin's significance 
 Now that the holy was abolished — just 
 As body which, alive, broke down beneath 
 Knowledge, lay helpless in the path to good, 
 Failed to accomplish aught legitimate. 
 Achieve aught worthy, — which grew old in 
 
 youth. 
 
Ty>. 
 
 THE INN ALBUM 
 
 And at its long^est fell a cut-down flower, — 
 
 Dying, this too revived by miracle 
 
 To bear no end of burden now that back 
 
 Supported torture to no use at all. 
 
 And live imperishahly potent — r since 
 
 Life's potency was impotent to ward 
 
 One plague off which made earth a hell before. 
 
 This doctrine, which one healthy view of 
 
 things, 
 One sane sight of the general ordinance — 
 Nature — and its particular object — man, — 
 Which one mere eye-cast at the character 
 Of Who made these and gave man sense to 
 
 boot. 
 Had dissipated once and evermore, — 
 This doctrine I have dosed our flock withal. 
 Why 1 Because none beheved it. Tkey desire 
 Such Heaven and dread such Hell, whom every 
 
 day 
 The alehouse tempts from one, a dog-fight bids 
 Defy the other ? All the harm is done 
 Ourselves — done my good husband who in 
 
 youth ; 
 
 Perhaps read Dickens, done hiyself who still 
 Oould play both Bach and Brahms. Such life 
 
 I lead — 
 Thanks to you, knave 1 You learn its qual- 
 ity- 
 Thanks to me, fool ! " 
 
 But she continues. 
 
 He eyes her earnestly. 
 
 " — Life which j thanks once more 
 To you,, arch-knave as exquisitest fool, 
 I aequiesoingly — I gratefully 
 Tako back again to heart 1 ; and hence this 
 
 speech 
 Which yesterday had spared you. Four years 
 
 long . 
 
 Life — I began to find intolerable. 
 Only this moment. Ere; your entry just. 
 The leap of heart which answered, spite of me, 
 A friend's first summons, first provocative. 
 Authoritative, nay, compulsive call 
 To quit, though for a single day, my house 
 Of bondage — made return seem horrible. 
 I heard again a human lucid laugh 
 All trust, no fear ; again saw earth pursue 
 Its .narrow busy way amid small cares. 
 Smaller contentments, much .weeds, some few 
 
 flowers, — 
 Never suspicious of a thunderbolt 
 Avenging presently each daisy's death. 
 I recognized the beech-tree, knew the thrush 
 Repeated his old music-phrase, — all right. 
 How wrong was I, then I But your entry 
 
 broke 
 Illusion, bade me back to bounds at once. 
 I honestly submit my soul : which sprang 
 At love, and losing love lies signed and sealed 
 ''Failure.^ No love more? then, no beauty 
 
 more 
 Which tends to breed love I Purify my 
 
 powers, 
 EfEortless till some other world procures 
 !Some other chance of prize 1 or, if none be, — 
 Nor second world nor chance, — undesecrate 
 
 Die then this aftergrowth of heart, surmised 
 Where May's precipitation left June blank J 
 Better have failed in the high aim, aa I, 
 Than vulgarly in the low aim succeed 
 As, God be thanked, I do not ! Ugliness 
 Had I called beauty, falsehood — truth, and 
 
 you ^ 
 My lover I No — this earth's unchanged for 
 
 me. 
 By his enchantment whom God made the 
 
 Prince 
 0' the Power o' the Air, into a Heaven : there 
 
 is 
 Heaven, since there is Heaven's simulation — 
 
 earth. 
 I sit possessed in patience : prison-roof 
 Shall break one day and Heaven beam over- 
 head." 
 
 His smile is done with ; he speaks bitterly. 
 
 " Take my congratulations, and permit 
 I wish myself had proved as teachable ! 
 — Or, mo ! until you taught me, could I learn, 
 A lesson from experience ne'er till now 
 Conceded ? Please you listen while I show 
 How thoroughly you estimate my worth 
 And yours — the immeasurably superior ! I 
 Believed at least in one thing, first to last, — 
 Your love to me : I was the vile and you 
 The precious ; I abused you, I betrayed, 
 But doubted — never ! Why else go my way ■ 
 Judas-Uke ploddii^ to this Potters' Field 
 Where fate now finds me ? What has dinned 
 
 my ear 
 And dogged my step ? The spectre with the 
 
 shriek 
 ' Siu:h she was, such were you, whose punishment 
 Is just ! ' And such she was not, all the while ! 
 She never owned a love to outrage, faith 
 .'To pay with falsehood ! For, my heart knows 
 
 this — 
 Love once and you love always. Why, it's 
 
 down 
 Here in the Album : every lover knows 
 Love may use hate but — turn to hate, itself -- 
 Turn even to indifference — no, indeed ! 
 Well, I have been spellbound, deluded like 
 The witless negro by the Obeah-man 
 Who bids him wither : so, his eye grows dim, 
 His arm slack, arrow misses aim and spear 
 Goes wandering wide, — and all the woe be- 
 cause 
 He proved untrue to Fetish, who, he finds. 
 Was just a feathei^phantom ! I wronged love. 
 Am ruined, — and there was no love to 
 wrong ! " 
 
 " No love ? Ah, dead love 1 I invoke thy 
 
 ghost 
 To show the murderer where thy heart poured 
 
 life 
 At summons of the stroke he doubts was dealt 
 On pasteboard and pretence ! Not love, my 
 
 love? 
 I changed for you the very laws of life : 
 Made you the standard of all right, all fair. 
 No genius but you could have been, no sage. 
 
THE INN ALBUM 
 
 791 
 
 No sufferer — which is grandest — for the 
 
 truth! 
 My hero — where the heroic only hid 
 To burst from hiding, brighten earth one day ! 
 Age and decline were man's maturity ; 
 Face, form were nature's type : more grace, 
 
 more strength. 
 What had they been but just superfluous 
 
 gauds. 
 Lawless divergence ? I have danced through 
 
 day 
 On tiptoe at the music of a word. 
 Have wondered where was darkness gone as 
 
 night 
 Burst out in stars at brilliance of a smile I 
 Lonely, 1 placed the chair to help me seat 
 Your fancied presence ; in companionship, 
 I kept my finger constant to your glove 
 Glued to my breast ; then — where was all the 
 
 world ? 
 I schemed — not dreamed — how I might die 
 
 some death 
 Should save your finger aching ! Who creates 
 Destroys, ho only : I had laughed to scorn 
 Whatever angel tried to shake my faith 
 And make yon seem unworthy : yon yourself 
 Only eoTild do that ! With a touch 't was done. 
 ' Give me alt, trust me wholly .' ' At the word, 
 I did give, I did trust — and thereupon 
 The touch did follow. Ah, the quiet smile, 
 The masterfully-folded arm in arm. 
 As trick obtained its triumph one time more ! 
 In turn, my soul too triumphs in defeat : 
 Treason like faith moves mountains : love is 
 
 He paces to and fro, stops, stands quite close 
 And calls her by her name. Then — 
 
 "God forgives: 
 Forgive you, delegate of God, brought near 
 As never priests could bring him to this soul 
 That prays you both — forgive me ! I abase — 
 Know myself mad and monstrous utterly 
 In all I did that moment ; but as God 
 Gives me this knowledge — heart to feel and 
 
 tongue 
 To testify — so be yon gracious too ! 
 Judge no man by the solitary work 
 Of — well, they do say and I can believe — 
 The devil in him : his, the moment, — mine 
 The life— your life!" 
 
 He names her name again. 
 
 " You were just — merciful as just, you were 
 In giving me no respite : punishment 
 Followed offending. Sane and sound once 
 
 more, 
 The patient thanks decision, promptitude. 
 Which flung him prone and fastened him from 
 
 hurt. 
 Haply to others, surely to himself. 
 I wake and would not you had spared one 
 
 pang. 
 All 's well that ends well ! " 
 
 Yet again her name. 
 
 " Had you no fault ? Why must you change, 
 
 forsooth. 
 Parts, why reverse positions, spoil the play ? 
 Why did your nobleness look up to me. 
 Not down on the ignoble thing confessed ? 
 Was it your part to stoop, or lift the low ? 
 Wherefore <ud God exalt you ? Who would 
 
 teach 
 The brute man's tameness and intelligence 
 Must never drop the dominating eye ; 
 Wink — and what wonder if the mad fit break. 
 Followed by stripes and fasting ? Sound and 
 
 sane, 
 My life, chastised now, couches at your foot. 
 Accept, redeem me ! Do your eyes ask * How f * 
 I stand here penniless, a beggar ; talk 
 What idle trash I may, this final blow 
 Of fortune fells me. I disburse, indeed, 
 This boy his winnings? when each bubble- 
 scheme 
 That danced athwart my brain, a minute since. 
 The worse the better, — of repairing straight 
 My misadventure by fresh enterprise. 
 Capture of other boys in foolishness 
 His fellows, — when these fancies fade away 
 At first sight of the lost so long, the found 
 So late, the lady of my life, before 
 Whose presence I, the lost, am also found 
 Incapable of one least touch of mean 
 Expedient, I who teemed with plot and wile — 
 That family of snakes your eye bids flee ! 
 Listen I Our troublesomest dreams die off 
 In daylight : I awake, and dream is — where? 
 I rouse up from the past : one touch dispels 
 England and all here. I secured long since 
 A certain refuge, solitary home 
 To hide in, should the head strike work one 
 
 day. 
 The hand forget its cunnmg, or perhaps 
 Society grow savage, — there to end 
 My life's remainder, which, say what fools will, 
 Is or should be the best of life, — its fruit. 
 All tends to, root and stem and leaf and flower. 
 Come with me, love, loved once, loved only, 
 
 come. 
 Blend loves there 1 Let this parenthetic doubt 
 Of love, in me, have been the trial test 
 Appointed to all flesh at some one stage 
 Or soul's achievement, — when the strong man 
 
 doubts 
 His strength, the good man whether goodness 
 
 be. 
 The artist in the dark seeks,, fails to find 
 Vocation, and the saint forswears his shrine. 
 What if the lover may elude, no more 
 Than these, probative dark, must search the 
 
 sky 
 Vainly for love, his soul's star ? But the orb 
 Breaks from eclipse : I breathe again : I love I 
 Tempted, I fell ; but f aEen r- fallen lie 
 Here at your feet, see ! Leave this poor pre- 
 tence 
 Of union with a nature and its needs 
 Repugnant to your needs and nature ! Nay, 
 Fabe, beyond falsity you reprehend 
 In me, is such mock marriage with such mere 
 Man-mask as — whom you witless wrong, beside, 
 By that expenditure of heart and brain 
 
792 
 
 THE INN ALBUM 
 
 He recks no more of than would yonder tree 
 If watered with your life-blood : rains and dews 
 Answer its ends sufficiently, while me 
 One drop saves — sends to flower and fruit at 
 
 last 
 The lagrg:ard virtue in the soul which else 
 Cumbers the ground ! Quicken me ! Call me 
 
 yours — 
 Yours and the world's — yours and the world's 
 
 and God's ! 
 Yes, for you can, you only ! Think ! Confirm 
 Your instinct ! Say, a minute since, I seemed 
 The castaway you count me, — all the more 
 Apparent shall the angelic potency 
 Lift me from out perdition's deep of deeps 
 To light and life and love! — that's love for 
 
 you — 
 Love that already dares match might with 
 
 yours. 
 You loved one worthy, — in ^our estimate, — 
 When time was; you descried the unworthy 
 
 taint, 
 And where was love then ? No such test could 
 
 e'er 
 Try my love : but you hate me and revile ; 
 Hatred, revilement — had you these to bear, 
 Would you, as I do, nor revile, nor hate. 
 But simply love on, love the more, perchance ? 
 Abide by your own proof! ' Your love was 
 
 .love : 
 Its ghost knows no forgetting ! ' Heart of mine, 
 Would that I dared remember ! Too unwise 
 Were he who lost a treasure, did himself 
 Enlarge upon the sparkling catalogue 
 Of gems to her his queen who trusted late 
 The keeper of her caskets ! Can it be 
 That I, custodian of such relic still 
 As your contempt permits me to retain, 
 All I dare hug to breast is — ' How your glove 
 Hurst and displayed the long thin lily streak ! ' 
 What may have followed — that is forfeit now ! 
 I hope the proud man has grown humble! 
 
 True — 
 One grace of humbleness absents itself — 
 Silence ! yet love lies deeper than all words, 
 And not the spoken but the speechless love 
 Waits answer ere I rise and go my way." 
 
 Whereupon, yet one other time the name. 
 
 To end she looks the large deliberate look, 
 Even prolong it soTnewhat ; then the soul 
 l^ursts forth in a clear laugh that lengthens on, 
 On, till — thinned, softened, silvered, one 
 
 might say 
 The bitter runnel hides itself in sand. 
 Moistens the hard gray grimly comic speech. 
 
 " Ay — give the baffled angler even yet 
 
 His supreme triumph as he hales to shore 
 
 A second time the fish once 'scaped from 
 
 hook — 
 So artfully has new bait hidden old 
 Blood-imbrued iron ! Ay, no barb 's beneath 
 The gilded minnow here ! Yoxi bid break trust, 
 This time, with who trusts me, — not simply 
 
 bid 
 Me trust you, me who ruined but myself, 
 
 In trusting but myself ! Since, thanks to yon, 
 I know the feel of sin and shame, — be sure, 
 I shall obey you and impose them both 
 On one who happens to be ignorant 
 Although my husband — for the lure is love, 
 Your love ! Try other tackle, fisher-friend ! 
 Repentance, expiation, hopes and fears, 
 What you had been, may yet be, would I but 
 Prove helpmate to my hero — one and all 
 These silks and worsteds round the hook seduce 
 Hardly the late torn throat and mangled 
 
 tongue. 
 Pack up, I pray, the whole assortment prompt ! 
 Who wonders at variety of wile 
 In the Arch-cheat ? You are the Adversary ! 
 Your fate is of your choosing : have your 
 
 choice ! 
 Wander the world, — God has some end to 
 
 serve. 
 Ere he suppress you ! He waits : I endure, 
 But interpose no finger-tip, forsooth. 
 To stop your passage to the pit. Enough 
 That lam stable, uninvolved by you 
 In the rush downwards : free I gaze and fixed ; 
 Your smiles, your tears, prayers, curses move 
 
 alike 
 My crowned contempt. You kneel ? Prostrate 
 
 yourself ! 
 To earth, and would the whole world saw you 
 
 there ! " 
 
 Whereupon — " All right ! " carelessly begins 
 Somebody from outside, who mounts the stair, 
 And sends his voice for herald of approach : 
 Half in half out the doorway as the door 
 Gives way to push. 
 
 " Old fellow, all 's no good ! 
 The train 's your portion ! Lay the blame on 
 
 me ! 
 I 'm no diplomatist, and Bismarck's self 
 Had hardly braved the awful Aunt at broach 
 Of proposition — so has world-repute 
 Preceded the illustrious stranger ! Ah ! " — 
 
 Quick the voice changes to astonishment, 
 Then horror, as the youth stops, sees, and knows. 
 
 The man who knelt starts up from kneeling, 
 
 stands 
 Moving no muscle, and confronts the stare. 
 
 One great red outbreak buries — throat and 
 
 brow — 
 The lady's proud pale qneenliness of scorn : 
 Then her great eyes that turned so quick, bs- 
 
 come 
 Intenser : — quail at gaze, not they indeed ! 
 
 It is the young man shatters silence first. 
 
 " Well, my lord — for indeed my lord you are, 
 I little guessed how rightly — this last proof 
 Of lordship-paramount confounds too much 
 My simple headpiece ! Let 's see how we stana 
 
THE INN ALBUM 
 
 793 
 
 Each to the other I how we stood i' the game 
 
 Of life an hour ago, — the magpies, stile. 
 
 And oak-tree witnessed. Truth exchanged for 
 
 truth — 
 My lord confessed his four-yeara-old affair — 
 How he seduced and then forsook the girl 
 Who married somebody and left him sad. 
 My pitiful experience was — I loved 
 A girl whose gown's hem had I dared to touch 
 My finger would have failed me, palsy-fixed. 
 She left me, sad enough, to marry — whom ? 
 A better man, — ^then possibly not you I 
 How does the game stand ? Who is who and 
 
 what 
 Is what, o' the board now, since an hour went 
 
 = by ? 
 My lord's ^ seduced^ forsaken, sacrificed,'' 
 Starts up, my lord's familiar instrument. 
 Associate and accomplice, mistress-slave — 
 Shares his adventure, follows on the sly ! 
 
 — Ay, and since ' bag and baggage ' is a 
 
 phrase — 
 Baggage lay hid in carpet-bag belike, 
 Was but nnpadlocked when occasion came 
 For holding council, since my back was turned. 
 On how invent ten thousand pounds which, 
 
 paid. 
 Would lure the winner to lose twenty more. 
 Beside refunding these ! Why else allow 
 The fool to gain them ? So cUsplays herself 
 The lady whom my heart believed — oh, laugh ! 
 Noble and pure : whom my heart loved at once. 
 And who at once did speak truth when she said 
 ^ I am not mine now but another^ s ' — thus 
 Being that other's ! Devil's-marriage, eh ? 
 ' My lie weds thine till lucre us do part 1 ' 
 But pity me the snobbish simpleton, 
 You two aristocratic tiptop swells 
 At swindling 1 Quits, I cry ! Decamp content 
 With skin I 'm peeled of : do not strip bones 
 
 bare — 
 As that you could, I have no doubt at all ! 
 
 you two rare ones ! Male and female. Sir !■ 
 The male there smirked, this morning, ^ Come, 
 
 ■my boy — 
 Out with it ! You 've been crossed in love, I 
 think : 
 
 1 recognize the lover^s hangdog look ; 
 
 Make a clean breast and match my confidence, 
 For, I HI be frank, I too have had my fling. 
 Am punished for my fault, and smart enough ! 
 Where now the victim hides her head, God 
 
 knows I ' 
 Here loomed her head, life-large, the devil 
 
 knew ! 
 Look out, Salvini ! Here 's your man, your 
 
 match ! 
 He and I sat applauding, stall by stall. 
 Last Monday — ' Here 's Othello ' was our word, 
 ' But where 's lago f ' Where ? Why, there ! 
 
 And now 
 The fellow-artist, female specimen — 
 Oh, lady, you must needs describe yourself ! 
 He 's great in art, but yon — how greater still 
 
 — (If I can rightly, out of all I learned, 
 Apply one bit of Latin that assures 
 
 Art means just art's concealment ') — tower your- 
 self ! 
 
 For he stands plainlj^ visible henceforth — 
 Liar and scamp : while you, in artistry 
 Prove so consummate — or I prove perhaps 
 So absolute an ass — that — either way — 
 You still do seem to me who worshipped you 
 And see you take the homage of this man. 
 Your master, who played slave and knelt, no 
 
 doubt. 
 Before a mistress in his very craft . . , 
 Well, take the fact, I nor believe my eyes. 
 Nor trust my understanding ! Still you seem 
 Noble and pure as when we had the talk 
 Under the tower, beneath the trees, that day. 
 And there 's the key explains the secret : down 
 He knelt to ask your leave to rise a grade 
 I' the mystery of humbug; well he may 1 
 For how you beat him ! Half an hour ago, 
 I held your master for my best of friends ; 
 And now I hate himl Four years since, you 
 
 seemed 
 My heart's one love : well, and you so remain ! 
 What 's he to you in craft ? " 
 
 She looks him through. 
 
 " My friend, 't is just that friendship have its 
 
 turn — 
 Interrogate thus me whom one, of foes 
 The worst, has questioned and is answered by. 
 Take you as frank an answer ! answers both 
 Begin alike so far, divergent soon 
 World-wide — I own superiority 
 Over you, over him. As him I searched. 
 So do you stand seen through and through by me 
 Who, this time, proud, report your crystal 
 
 shrines 
 A dewdrop, plain as amber prisons round 
 A spider in tibe hollow heart his house ! 
 Nowise are you that thing my fancy feared 
 When out you stepped on me, a minute since, 
 — This man's confederate ! no, you step not 
 
 . thus 
 Obsequiously at beck and call to help 
 At need some second scheme, and supplement 
 Guile by force, use my shame to pinion me 
 From struggle and escape ! I fancied that ! 
 Forgive me ! Only by strange chance, — most 
 
 strange 
 In even this strange world, — you enter now. 
 Obtain your knowledge. Me you have not 
 
 wronged 
 Who never wronged you — least of all, my 
 
 friend. 
 That day beneath the College tower and trees, 
 When I refused to say, -^ ' not friend, but love ! ' 
 Had I been found as free as air when first 
 We met, I scarcely could have loved you. No — 
 For where was that in you which claimed return 
 Of love ? My eyes were all too weak to probe. 
 This other's seeming, but that seeming loved 
 The soul in me, and lied -^ I know too late ! 
 While your truth was truth ; and I knew at once- 
 My power was just my beauty — bear the word — 
 As I must bear, of all my qualities. 
 To name the poorest one that serves my soul 
 And simulates myseU ! So much in me 
 You loved, I know : the something that 's be- 
 neath 
 
794 
 
 THE INN ALBUM 
 
 Heard not your call, — uncalled, no answer 
 
 comes I 
 For, since in every love, or soon or late, 
 Soul must awake and seek out soul for soul, 
 Yours, overlooking mine then, would, some day, 
 Take flight to find some other ; 'SO it proved — 
 Missing me, you were ready for this man. 
 I apprehend the whole relation : his — 
 The soul wherein you saw your type of worth 
 At once, true object of your tribute. Well 
 Might I refuse such half -heart's homage 1 Love 
 Divining, had assured you I no more 
 Stand his participant in infanay 
 Than you — I need no love to recognize 
 As simply dupe and nowise fellow-cheat !■ 
 Therefore accept one last friend's-word, — your 
 
 friend's, 
 All men's friend, save a felon's. Ravel out 
 The bad embroilment howsoe'er you may. 
 Distribute as it please you praise or blame 
 To me -^ so you but fling this mockery far — 
 Renounce this rag-and-feather hero-sham, 
 This poodle dipt to pattern, lion-like ! 
 Throw him his thousands back, and lay to heart 
 The lesson I was sent, — if man discerned 
 Ever God's message, — just to teach. I judge — 
 To far another issue than could dream 
 Your cousin, — younger, fairer, as befits — 
 Who summoned me to judgment's exercise. 
 I find you, save in folly, innocent. 
 And in my verdict lies your fate ; at choice 
 Of mine your cousin takes or leaves you. 
 
 ' Take ! ' 
 I bid her — for you tremble back to truth ! 
 She turns the scale, — one touch of the pure 
 
 hand 
 Shall so press down, emprison past relapse 
 Farther vibration 'twixt veracity — • 
 That 's honest solid earth — and falsehood, theft 
 And air, that 's one illusive' emptiness ! 
 That reptile capture you ? I conquered him : 
 You saw him cower before me ! Have no fear 
 He shall offend yoU farther. Spare to spurn — 
 Saife let him slink hence till some subtler Eve 
 Than I, anticipate the snake — bruise head 
 Ere. he bruise heel — or,, warier than the first. 
 Some Adam purge earth's garden of its pest 
 Before the slaver spoil the Tree of Life ! 
 
 " You !' Leave this youth, as he leaves you, as I 
 Leave each I There 's caution surely extant yet 
 Though conscience in you were too vain a claim. 
 Hence quickly ! Keep the cash but leave un- 
 
 soiled' 
 The heart I rescue and would lay to heal 
 Beside another's ! Never let her know 
 How near came taint of your companionship ! " 
 
 " Ah " — draws a long breath with; a new 
 
 strange look 
 The man she interpellates — soul astir 
 Under its covert, as, beneath the dust, 
 A Coppery sparkle all at once denotes 
 "The hid snake has conceived a purpose. 
 
 "Ah— 
 Innocence should be crowned with ignorance ? 
 Desirable indeed, but difficult ! 
 
 As if yourself i now, had not glorified 
 
 Your helpmate by imparting him a hint 
 
 Of how a monster made the victim bleed 
 
 Ere crook and courage saved her — hint, I say, — 
 
 Not the whole horror, — that were needless 
 
 risk, — 
 But just such inkling, fancy of the fact, 
 As should suffice to qualify henceforth 
 The shepherd, when another lamb would stray, 
 For warning ' ' Ware the wolf! ' No doubt at all, 
 Silence is generosity, — keeps wolf 
 Unhunted by flock's warder ! Excellent, 
 Did — generous to me, mean —-just to him I 
 But, screening the deceiver, lamb were f oimd 
 Outraging the deceitless ! So, — he knows ! 
 And yet, unharmed I breathe — perchance, 
 
 repent — 
 Thanks to the mercifully-politic ! " 
 
 " Ignorance is not innocence but sin — 
 Witness yourself ignore what after-pangs 
 Pursue the plague-infected. Merciful 
 Am I ? Perhaps ! the more contempt, the less 
 Hatred ; and who so worthy of contempt 
 As you that rest assured I cooled the spot 
 I could not cure, by poisoning, forsooth, 
 Whose hand I pressed there ? Understand for 
 
 That, sick, of all the pains corroding me 
 
 This burnt the last and nowise least — the need 
 
 Of simulating soundness. I resolved — 
 
 No matter how the struggle tasked weak flesh — 
 
 To hide the truth away as in a grave 
 
 From — most of all — my husband: he nor 
 
 knows 
 Nor ever shall be made to know your part. 
 My part, the devil's part, — I trust, God's part 
 In the foul matter. Saved, I yearn to save 
 And not destroy : and what destruction like 
 The abolishing of faith in him, that 's faith 
 In me as pure and true ? Acquaint some child 
 Who takes yon tree into his confidence. 
 That, where he sleeps now, was a murder done, 
 And that the grass which grows so thick, he 
 
 thinks. 
 Only to pillow him is product just 
 Of what lies festering beneath ! 'T is God 
 Must bear such secrets and disclose them. Man ? 
 The miserable thing I have become 
 By dread acquaintance with my secret — you — 
 That thing had he become by learning me — 
 The miserable, whom his ignorance 
 Would wrongly call the wicked : ignorance 
 Being, I hold, sin ever^ small or great. 
 No, he knows nothing ! " 
 
 " He and I alike 
 Are bound to you for such discreetness, then. 
 What if our talk should terminate awhile ? 
 Here is a gentleman to satisfy. 
 Settle accounts with, pay ten thousand pounds 
 Before we part — as, by his face, I fear, 
 Results fronEi jrour appearance on die scene. 
 Grant me a minute's parley with my friend 
 Which scarce admits of a third peraonage 1 
 The room from which you made your entry first 
 So opportunely — still untenanted — 
 What if you please return there ? Just a word 
 
THE INN ALBUM 
 
 >9S 
 
 To my young friend first — then, a word to you, 
 And you depart to fan away each fly 
 From who, grass-pillowed, sleeps so sound at 
 home ! " 
 
 " So the old truth comes back 1 A wholesome 
 
 change, — 
 At last the altered eye, the rightful tone I 
 But even to the truth that drops disguise 
 And stands forth grinning malice which but now 
 Whined so contritely — I refuse assent 
 Just as to malice. 1, once gone, come back ? 
 No, my lord ! I enjoy the privilege 
 Of being absolutely loosed from you 
 Too much — the knowledge that your power is 
 
 null 
 Which was omnipotence. A word of mouth, 
 A wink of eye would have detained me once, 
 Body and soul your slave ; and now, thank 
 
 God, 
 Your fawningest of prayers, your frightfulest 
 Of curses — neither would avail to turn 
 My footstep for a moment ! " 
 
 " Prayer, then, tries 
 No such adventure. Let us cast about 
 For something novel in expedient : take 
 Command, — what say you ? I profess myself 
 One fertile in resource. Commanding, then, 
 I bid — • not only wait there, but return 
 Here, where I want you ! Disobey and — good I 
 On your own head the perU ! " 
 
 " Come ! " breaks in 
 The boy with his good glowing face. " Shut up I 
 None of this sort of thing while I stand here 
 — Not to stand that ! No bullying, I beg 1 
 I also am to leave you presently 
 And never more set eyes upon your face — 
 You won't mind that much ; but — I tell you 
 
 frank — 
 I do mind having to remember this 
 For your last word and deed ' — my friend who 
 
 were ! 
 Bully a woman you have ruined, eh ? 
 Do you know, — I give credit all at once 
 To all those stories everybody told 
 And nobody but I would disbelieve : 
 They all seem likely now, — nay, certain, sure ! 
 1 daresay you did cheat at cards that night 
 The row was at the Club : ' sauter la coupe ' — 
 That was your ' out,' for which your friends 
 
 ' cut you ; 
 While I, the booby, ' cut ' — acquaintanceship 
 With who so much as laughed when I said 
 
 'luck!' 
 I daresay you had bets against the horse 
 They doctored at the Derby ; little doubt, 
 That fellow with the sister found you shirk 
 His challenge and did kick you like a ball. 
 Just as the story went about ! Enough : 
 It only serves to show how well advised. 
 Madam, you were in bidding such a fool 
 As I, go hang. You see how the mere sight 
 And sound of you suffice to tumble down 
 Conviction topsy-turvy ; no, — that 's false, — 
 There 's no unknowing what one knows ; and 
 yet 
 
 Such is my foay that, in gratitude 
 
 lor . . . well, I 'm stupid ; but you seemed tb 
 
 wish 
 I should know gently what I know, should slip 
 Softly from old to new, not break my neck 
 Between beliefs of what you were and are. 
 Well then, for just the sake of such a wish 
 To cut no worse a figure than needs must 
 In even eyes like mine, I 'd sacrifice 
 Body and soul! But don't think danger— 
 
 pray ! — 
 Menaces either ! He do harm to us ? 
 Let me say ' us ' this one time I You 'd allow 
 I lent perhaps my hand to rid your ear 
 Of some cur's yelping — hand that 's fortified, 
 Into the bargain, with a horsewhip ? Oh, 
 One crack and you shall see how curs decamp ! — 
 My lord, you know your losses and my gains. 
 Pay me my money at the proper time ! 
 If cash be not forthcoming — well, yourself 
 Have taught me, and tried often, I '11 engage, 
 The proper course : I post you at the Club, 
 Pillory the defaulter. Crack, to-day, 
 Shall, slash^ to-morrow, slice through flesh and 
 
 bone ! 
 There, Madam, you need mind no cur, I 
 
 think ! " 
 
 " Ah, what a gain to have an apt no less 
 Than grateful scholar ! Nay, he brings to mind 
 My knowledge till he puts me to the blush. 
 So long has it lain rusty ! Post ray name ! 
 That were indeed a wheal from whipcord I 
 
 Whew 1 
 I wonder now if I could rummage out 
 
 — Just to match weapons — some old soorpion- 
 
 seourge ! 
 Madam, you hear my pupil, may applaud 
 His triumph o'er the master. I — no more 
 Bully, since I 'm forbidden : but entreat — 
 Wait and return — for my sake, no ! but just 
 To save your own defender, should he chance 
 Get thwacked through awkward flourish of 
 
 his thong. 
 And what if — since all waiting 's weary work — 
 I help the time pass 'twixt your exit now 
 And entry then ? for — pastime proper — here 's 
 The very thing, the Album, verse and prose 
 To make the laughing minutes launch away ! 
 Each of us must contribute. I '11 begin — 
 ' Hail, calm acclivity, salubrious spot ! ' 
 I 'm confident I beat the bard, — for why ? 
 My young friend owns me an lago — him 
 Confessed, among the other qnalitdes, 
 A ready rhymer. Oh, he rhymed ! Here goes I 
 
 — Something to end with 'horsewhip!' No, 
 
 that rhyme 
 Beats me ; there 's ' cowslip,' ' boltsprit,' 
 
 nothing else ! 
 So, Tennyson take my benison, — verse for 
 
 bard. 
 Prose suits the gambler's book best I Dared 
 
 and done ! " 
 
 Wherewith he dips pen, writes a line or two, 
 Closes and clasps the cover, gives the book. 
 Bowing the while, to her who hesitates. 
 Turns half away, turns round again, at last 
 
796 
 
 THE INN ALBUM 
 
 Takes it as yon touch carrion, then retires. 
 The door ^uts fast the couple. 
 
 VI 
 
 With a change 
 Of his whole manner, opens out at once 
 The Adversary. 
 
 " Now, my friend, for you ! 
 You who, protected late, aggressive grown, 
 Brandish, it seems, a weapon I must 'ware ! 
 Plain speech in me hecomes respectable 
 Henceforth because courageous ; plainly, then — 
 (Have lash well loose, hold handle tight and 
 
 light !) 
 Throughout my life's experience, you indulged 
 Yourself and friend by passing in review 
 So courteously but now, I vainly search 
 To find one record of a specimen 
 So perfect of the pure and simple fool 
 As this you furnish me. Ingratitude 
 I lump with folly, — all 's one lot, — so — fool ! 
 Did I seek you or j'ou seek me ? Seek ? sneak 
 For service to, and service you would style — 
 And did style — godlike, scarce an hour ago I 
 Fool, there again, yet not precisely there 
 First-rate in folly ; since the hand you kissed 
 Did pick you from the kennel, did plant firm 
 Your footstep on the pathway, did persuade 
 Your awkward shamble to true gait and pace. 
 Fit for the world you walk in. Once a-strut 
 On that firm pavement which your cowardice 
 Was for renouncing as a pitfall, next 
 Came need to clear your brains of their conceit 
 They cleverly could distinguish who was who. 
 Whatever folk might tramp the thoroughfare. 
 Men, now — familiarly you read them off. 
 Each phiz at first sight ! Oh, you had an eye ! 
 Who couched it ? made you disappoint each 
 
 fox 
 Eager to strip my gosling of his fluff 
 Ko golden as he cackled ' Goose trusts lamb ' ? 
 ' Ay, but I saved you — wolf defeated fox — 
 Wanting to pick your bones myself f ' then, wolf 
 Has got the worst of it with goose for once. 
 I, penniless, pay you ten thousand pounds 
 (—No gesture, pray ! I pay ere I depart !) 
 And how you turn advantage to account 
 Here 's the example ! Have I proved so wrong 
 In my peremptory ' debt must be discharged ' ? 
 Oh, you laughed lovelily, were loth to leave 
 The old friend out at elbows, pooh, a thing 
 Not to be thought of I I must keep my cash, 
 And you forget your generosity ! 
 Ha ha ! I took your measure when I laughed 
 My laugh to that ! First quarrel — nay, first 
 
 faint 
 Pretence at taking umbrage — ' Down with debt. 
 Both interest and principal ! — The Club, 
 Exposure and expulsion I — stamp me out ! ' 
 That 's the magnanimous magnificent 
 Renunciation of advantage 1 Well, 
 But whence and why did you take umbrage. 
 
 Sir? 
 Because your master, having made you know 
 Somewhat of men, was minded to advance, 
 
 Expound you women, still a mystery 1 
 My pupil pottered with a cloud on brow, 
 A clod in breast : had loved, and vainly loved : 
 Whence blight and blackness, just for aU the 
 
 world 
 As Byron used to teach us boys. Thought I — 
 ' Quick rid him of that rubbish ! Clear the cloud, 
 And set the heart a-pulsing ! ' — heart, this time : 
 'T was nothing but the head I doctored late 
 For ignorance of Man ; now heart 's to dose. 
 Palsied by ovei^palpitation due 
 To Woman-worship — so, to work at once 
 On first avowal of the patient's ache ! 
 This morning you described your malady, — 
 How you dared love a piece of virtue — lost 
 To reason, as the upshot showed : for scorn 
 Fitly repaid your stupid arrogance ; 
 And, parting, you went two ways, she resumed 
 Her path — perfection, while forlorn you paced 
 The world that 's made for beasts like you and 
 
 me. 
 My remedy was — tell the fool the truth 1 
 Your paragon of purity had plumped 
 Into these arms at their first outspread — 
 
 ^fallen 
 My victim,^ she prefers to turn the phrase — 
 And, in exchange for that frank confidence. 
 Asked for my whole life present and to come — 
 Marriage : a thing uncovenanted for ! 
 Never so much as put in question ! Life — 
 Implied by marriage — throw that trifle in 
 And round the bargain off, no otherwise 
 Than if, when we played cards, because you 
 
 won 
 My money you should also want my head ! 
 That, I demurred to : we but played ^for 
 
 love ' — 
 She won my love ; had she proposed for stakes, 
 'Marriage,' — why, that's for whist, a wiser 
 
 game. 
 Whereat she raved at me, as losers wiU, 
 And went her way. So far the story 's known, 
 The remedy 's applied, no farther — which 
 Here 's the sick man's first honorarium for — 
 Posting his medicine-monger at the Club ! 
 That being, Sir, the whole you mean my fee — 
 In gratitude for such munificence 
 I 'm bound in common honesty to spare 
 No droplet of the draught: so, — pinch your 
 
 nose. 
 Pull no wry faces ! — drain it to the dregs ! 
 I say ' She went <#' — ' went off,' you subjoin, 
 ' Since not to wedded bliss, as 1 supposed. 
 Sure to some convent : solitude and peace 
 Help her to hide the shame from mortal view. 
 With prayer and fasting.' No, my sapient Sir I 
 Far wiselier, straightway she betook herself 
 To a prize-portent from the donkey-show 
 Of leathern long-ears that compete for palm 
 In clerical absurdity : since he. 
 Good ass, nor practises the shaving^trick. 
 The candle-crotchet, nonsense which repays 
 When you've young ladies congregant, — but 
 
 schools 
 The poor, — toils, moils, and grinds the miU, 
 
 nor means 
 To stop and munch one thistle in this life 
 Till next life smother him with roses : just 
 
THE INN ALBUM 
 
 797 
 
 The parson for her purpose t Him she stroked 
 Over the muzzle ; into mouth with bit, 
 And on to back with saddle, — there he stood, 
 The serviceable beast who heard, believed 
 And meekly bowed him to the burden, — 
 
 borne 
 OfF in a canter to seclusion — ay, 
 The lady 's lost ! But had a friend of mine 
 
 — While friend he was — imparted his sad case 
 To sympathizing counsellor, full soon 
 
 One cloud at least had vanished from his brow. 
 ' DonHfear ! ' had followed reassuringly — 
 ' The lost will in due time turn up again, 
 Probably just when, weary of the world. 
 You think of nothing less than settiing-doion 
 To countri/ life and golden days, beside 
 A dearest best and brightest virtuousest 
 Wife : who needs no more hope to hold her own 
 Against the naughty-and^epentant — no. 
 Than water-gruel against Roman punch ! ' 
 And as I prophesied, it proves ! My youth, — 
 Just at the happy moment when, subdued 
 To spooniness, he finds that youth fleets fast. 
 That town-life tires, that men shoiild drop 
 
 boys'-play. 
 That property, position have, no doubt, 
 Their exigency with their privilege. 
 And if the wealthy wed with wealth, how dire 
 The double duty ! — in, behold, there beams 
 Our long-lost lady, form and face complete ! 
 And where 's my moralizing pupil now, 
 Had not his master missed a train by chance ? 
 But, by your side instead of whirled away. 
 How have I spoiled scene, stopped catastrophe. 
 Struck flat the stage-effect I know by heart ! 
 Sudden and strange the meeting — improvised ? 
 Bless you, the last event she hoped or dreamed ! 
 But rude sharp stroke will crush out fire from 
 
 flint — 
 Assuredly from flesh. ' T is you ? ' ' Myself! ' 
 ' Changed ? ' ' Changeless ! ' ' Then, what 's 
 
 earth to me?^ ^ To me 
 What '« heaven ? ' '■ So, — thine .' ' 'And thine ! ' 
 
 ' And likewise mine ! ' 
 Had laughed ' Amen ' the devil, but for me 
 Whose intermeddling hinders this hot haste. 
 And bids you, ere concluding contract, pause — 
 Ponder one lesson more, then sign and seal 
 At leisure and at pleasure, — lesson's price 
 Being, if you have skill to estimate, 
 
 — How say you ? — I 'm discharged my debt in 
 
 full! 
 Since paid you stand, to farthing uttermost. 
 Unless I fare like that black majesty 
 A friend of mine had visit from last Spring. 
 Coasting along the Cape-side, he 's becalmed 
 Off an uncharted bay, a novel town 
 Untouched at by the trader : here 's a chane*5 ! 
 Out paddles straight the king in his canoe, 
 Comes over bulwark, says he means to buy 
 Ship's cargo — being rich and having brought 
 A treasure ample for the purpose. See I 
 Four dragons, stalwart blackies, guard the 
 
 same 
 Wrapped round and round : its hulls, a multi- 
 tude, — 
 Palm-leaf and cocoar-mat and goat's-hair cloth 
 All duly braced about with bark and board, — 
 
 Suggest how brave, 'neath coat, must kernel 
 
 be! 
 At length the peeling is accomplished, plain 
 The casket opens out its core, and lo 
 — A brand-new British silver sixpence — bid 
 That 's ample for the Bank, — thinks majesty 1 
 You are the Captain ; call my sixpence cracked 
 Or copper ; ' what I 've said is calumny ; 
 The lady's spotless!' Then,— I 'U prove mj 
 
 words. 
 Or make you prove them true as truth — your- 
 self. 
 Here, on the instant ! I '11 not mince my 
 
 Things at this issue. When she enters, then. 
 Make love to her ! No talk of marriage now — 
 The point - blank bare proposal ! Pick no 
 
 phrase — 
 Prevent all misconception ! Soon you '11 see 
 How different the tactics when she deals 
 With an instructed man, no longer boy 
 Who blushes like a booby. Woman's wit ! 
 Man, since you have instruction, blush no more ! 
 Such your five minutes' profit by my pains, 
 'T is simply now, — demand and be possessed ! 
 Which means — you may possess — may strip 
 
 the tree 
 Of fruit desirable to make one wise ! 
 More I nor wish nor want ; your act 's your act. 
 My teaching is but — there 's the fruit to pluck 
 Or let alone at pleasure. Next advance 
 In knowledge were beyond you ! Don't expect 
 I bid a novice — pluck, suck, send sky-high 
 Such fruit, once taught that neither crab nor 
 
 sloe 
 Falls readier prey to who but robs a hedge. 
 Than this gold apple to my Hercules. 
 Were you no novice but proficient — then. 
 Then, truly, I might prompt you — Touch and 
 
 taste. 
 Try flavor and be tired as soon as I ! 
 Toss on the prize to greedy mouths agape. 
 Betake yours, sobered as the satiate grow. 
 To wise man's solid meal of house and land, 
 Consols and cousin ! but, my boy, my boy. 
 Such lore 's above you ! 
 
 Here 's the lady back ! 
 So, Madam, you have conned the Album-page 
 And come to thank its last contributor ? 
 How kind and condescending ! I retire 
 A moment, lest I spoil the interview. 
 And mar my own endeavor to make friends — 
 You with Mm, him with you, and both with 
 
 me ! 
 If I succeed — permit me to inquire 
 Five minutes hence ! Friends bid good-by, 
 
 you know." — 
 And out he goes. 
 
 VII 
 
 She, face, form, bearing, one 
 Superb composure — 
 
 " He has told you aU ? 
 Yes, he has told you all, your silence says — 
 
798 
 
 THE INN ALBUM 
 
 What; gives him, as he thinks, the mastery 
 Over ray body and my soul ! — has told 
 That instance, even, of their servitude 
 He now exacts of me ? A silent blush ! 
 That 's well, though better would white igno- 
 rance 
 Beseem your brow, undesecrate before — 
 Ay, when I left you ! I too learn at last 
 
 — Hideously learned as I seemed so late — 
 What sin may swell to. Yes, — I needed 
 
 learn 
 That, when my prophet's rod became the snake 
 I fled from, it would, one day, swallow up 
 
 — Incorporate whatever serpentine_ 
 Falsehood and treason and unmanliness 
 Beslime earth's pavement ; such the power of 
 
 Hell,^ 
 And so beginning, ends no otherwise 
 The Adversary ! I was ignorant. 
 Blameworthy — if you will ; but blame I take 
 Nowise upon me as I ask myself 
 
 — You — how can you, whose soul I seemed to 
 
 read 
 The limpid eyes through, have declined so 
 
 deep. 
 Even with him for consort ? I revolve 
 Much memory, pry into the looks and words 
 Of that day's walk beneath the College wall, 
 And nowhere can distinguish, in what gleams 
 Only pure marble through my dusky past, 
 A dubious cranny where such poison-seed 
 Might harbor, nourish what should yield to-day 
 This dread ingredient for the cup I drink. 
 Do not I recognize and honor truth 
 In seeming ? — take your tnith, and for return. 
 Give you my truth, a no less precious gift ? 
 Tou loved me : I believed you. I replied 
 
 — How could I other ? — '1 was not my own,'' 
 No longer had the eyes to see, the ears 
 
 To hear, the mind to judge, since heart and soul 
 Now were another's. My own right in me. 
 For well or ill, consigned away — my face 
 Fronted the honest path, deflection whence 
 Had shamed me in the furtive backward look 
 At the late bargain — fit such chapman's 
 
 phrase ! — 
 As though — less hasty and more provident — 
 Waiting had brought advantage. Not for me 
 The chapman's chance ! Yet while thus much 
 
 was true, 
 I spared you — as I knew you then — one more 
 Concluding word which, truth no lessj seemed 
 
 best 
 Buried away forever. Take it now. 
 Its power to pain is past! Four years — that 
 
 day — 
 Those limes that make the College avenue ! 
 I would that — friend and foe — by miracle, 
 I had, that moment, seen into the heart 
 Of either, as I now am taught to see ! 
 I do believe I should have straight assumed 
 My proper function, and sustained a soul, 
 
 — Nor aimed at being just sustained myself 
 By some man's soul — the weaker woman's- 
 
 •want ! 
 So had I missed the momentary thrill 
 Of finding me in presence of a god. 
 But gained the god's own feeling when he gives 
 
 Such thrill to what turns life from death be- 
 fore. 
 ' Gods many and Lords many,'' says the Book : 
 You would have yielded up yonr soul to me 
 
 — Not to the false god who has burned its clay 
 In his own image. I had shed my love 
 
 Like Spring dew on the clod all flowery thence, 
 
 Not sent up a wild vapor to the sun 
 
 That drinks and then disperses. Both of us 
 
 Blameworthy, — I first meet my punishment — 
 
 And not so hard to bear. I breathe again ! 
 
 Forth from those arms' enwinding leprosy 
 
 At last I struggle — uncontaminate : 
 
 Why must I leave y(m pressing to the breast 
 
 That 's all one pla^e-spot ? Did you love me 
 
 once? 
 Then take love's last and best return ! I 
 
 think, 
 Womanliness means only motherhood ; 
 All love begins and ends there, — roams 
 
 enough. 
 But, having run the circle, rests at home. 
 Why is your expiation yet to make ? 
 Pull shame with your own hands from your 
 
 own head 
 Now, — never wait the slow envelopment 
 Submitted to by unelastie age ! 
 One fierce throe frees the sapling: flake on 
 
 flake 
 Lull till they leave the oak snow-stupefied. 
 Your heart retains its vital warmth — or why 
 That blushing reassurance? Blush, young 
 
 blood ! 
 Break from beneath this icy premature 
 Captivity of wickedness — 1 warn 
 Back, in God's name ! No fresh encroachment 
 
 here ! 
 This May breaks all to bud — no winter now I 
 Friend, we are both forgiven ! Sin no more ! 
 I am past sin now, so shall you become ! 
 Meanwhile I testify that, lying once. 
 My foe lied ever, most lied last of all. 
 He, waking, whispered to your sense asleep 
 The wicked counsel, — and assent might seem ; 
 But, roused, your healthy indignation breaks 
 The idle dream-pact. You would die — not 
 
 dare 
 Confirm your dream-resolve, — nay, find the 
 
 word 
 That fits the deed to bear the light of day ! 
 Say I have justly judged you 1 then farewell 
 To blushing — nay, it ends in smiles, not tears I 
 Why tears now ? I have justly judged, thank 
 
 God!" 
 
 He does blush boy-like, but the man speaks 
 out, 
 
 — Makes the due effort to surmount himself. 
 
 " I don't know what he wrote — how should I ? 
 
 Nor 
 How he could read my purpose, which, it 
 
 seems. 
 He chose to somehow write — mistakenly 
 Or else for mischief's sake. I scarce believe 
 My purpose put before you fair and plain 
 Would need annoy so much ; but there's my 
 
 luck — 
 
THE INN ALBUM 
 
 799 
 
 From first to last I blunder. Still, one more 
 Turn at the target, try to speak my thought ! 
 Since he could guess my purpose, won't you read 
 Bight what he set down wrong ? He said — 
 
 let 's think I 
 Ay, so ! — he did begin by telling heaps 
 Of tales about you. Now, you see — suppose 
 Any one told me — my own mother died 
 Before I knew her — told me — to his cost ! — 
 Such tales about my own dead mother : why, 
 Yoii would not wonder surely if I knew. 
 By nothing but my own heart's help, he lied. 
 Would you ? No reason 's wanted in the case. 
 So with you ! In they burnt on me, his tales. 
 Much as when madhouse-inmates crowd around, 
 Make captive any visitor and scream 
 All sorts of stories of their keeper — he 's 
 Both dwarf and g^ant, vulture, wolf, dog, cat, 
 Serpent and scorpion, yet man all the same ; 
 Sane people soon see through the gibberish ! 
 I just made out, you somehow lived somewhere 
 A life of shame — I can't distinguish more — 
 Married or single — how, don't matter much : 
 Shame which himself had caused — that point 
 
 was clear. 
 That fact confessed — that thing to hold and 
 
 keep. 
 Oh, and he added some absurdity 
 
 — That you were here to make me — ha, ha, 
 
 ha! — 
 Still. love you, still of mind to die for you. 
 Ha, ha — as if that needed mighty pains ! 
 Now, foolish as . . . but never mind myself ; 
 
 — What I am, what I am not, in the eye 
 
 Of the world, is what I never cared for much. 
 Fool then or no fool, not one single word 
 In the whole string of lies did I believe. 
 But this — this only — if I choke, who 
 
 cares ? — 
 I believe somehow in your purity 
 Perfect aa ever ! Else what use is God ? 
 He is God, and work miracles he can ! 
 Then, what shall I do? Quite as clear, my 
 
 course ! 
 They 've got a thing they call their Labyrinth 
 I' the garden yonder : and my cousin played 
 A pretty trick once, led and lost me deep. 
 Inside the briery maze of hedge round hedge ; 
 And there might I be staying now, stock-still, 
 But that I laughing bade eyes follow nose 
 And so straight pushed my path through let 
 
 and stop 
 And soon was out in the open, face all 
 
 scratched. 
 But well behind my back the prison-bars 
 In sorry plight enough, I promise you ! 
 So here: I won my way to truth through 
 
 lies — 
 Said, as I saw light, — if her shame he shame 
 I '11 rescue and redeem her, — sliame 's no 
 
 shame ? 
 Then, I '11 avenge, protect — redeem myself 
 The stupidest of sinners ! Here I stand I 
 Dear, — let me once dare call you so, — you 
 
 said. 
 Thus ought you to have done, four years ago. 
 Such things and such ! Ay, dear, and what 
 
 ought I ? 
 
 You were revealed to me : where 's gratitude, 
 
 Where 's memory even, where the gain of you 
 
 Discernible in my low after-life 
 
 Of fancied consolation ? why, no horse 
 
 Once fed on com, will, missing corn, go munch 
 
 Mere thistles like a donkey ! I missed you. 
 
 And in your place found — him, made him my 
 
 love. 
 Ay, did I, — by this token, that he taught 
 So much beast-nature that I meant . . . God 
 
 knows 
 Whether I bow me to the dust enough ! . . . 
 To marry — yes, my cousin here ! fhope 
 That was a master-stroke ! Take heart of 
 
 hers. 
 And give her hand of mine with no more heart 
 Than now you see upon this brow I strike 1 
 What atom of a heart do I retain 
 Not all yours ? Dear, you know it ! Easily 
 May she accord me pardon when I place 
 My brow beneath her foot, if foot so deign. 
 Since uttermost indignity is spared — 
 Mere marriage and no love ! And all this time 
 Not one word to the purpose ! Are you free ? 
 Only wait ! only let me serve — deserve 
 Where you appoint and how you see the good 1 
 I have the will — perhaps the power — at least 
 Means that have power against the world. For 
 
 time — 
 Take my whole life for your experiment ! 
 If you are bound — in marriage, say — why, 
 
 still. 
 Still, sure, there 's something for a friend to do, 
 Outside ? A mere well-wisher, understand I 
 I '11 sitj my life long, at your gate, you know. 
 Swing it wide open to let you and him 
 Pass freely, — and you need not look, much less 
 FUng me a ' Thank you — are you there, old 
 
 friend ? ' 
 Don't say that even : I should drop like shot ! 
 So I feel now at least : some day, who knows ? 
 After no end of weeks and months and years 
 You might smile ' I believe you did your best ! ' 
 And that shall make my heart leap — leap such 
 
 leap 
 As lands the feet in Heaven to wait you there ! 
 Ah, there 's just one thing more ! How pale 
 
 you look ! 
 Why ? Are you angry ? If there 's, after all, 
 Worst come to worst — if still there somehow 
 
 be 
 The shame — I said was no shame, — none, I 
 
 swear ! — 
 In that case, if my hand and what it holds, — 
 My name, — might be your safeguard now — 
 
 at once — 
 Why, here 's the hand — you have the heart I 
 
 Of course — 
 No cheat, no binding you, because I 'm bound. 
 To let me off probation by one day. 
 Week, month, year, lifetime ! Prove as you 
 
 propose ! 
 Here 's the hand with the name to take or leave 1 
 That 's all — and no great piece of news, I 
 
 hope ! " 
 
 " Give me the hand, then ! " she cries hastily. 
 " Quick, now ! I hear tus footstep ! " 
 
8oo 
 
 THE INN ALBUM 
 
 Hand in hand 
 The couple face him as he enters, stops 
 tihort, stands surprised a moment, laughs away 
 Surprise, resumes the much-experienced man, 
 
 ' So, you accept him ? " 
 
 " Till us death do part ! " 
 
 " No longer ? Come, that 's right and rational ! 
 I fancied there was power in common sense, 
 But did not know it worked thus promptly. 
 
 WeU- 
 At last each understands the other, then ? 
 Each drops disguise, then ? So, at supper-time 
 These masquerading people doff their gear. 
 Grand Turk his pompous turban, Quakeress 
 Her stiff-starched bib and tucker, — make-be- 
 lieve 
 That only bothers when, ball-business done. 
 Nature demands champagne and mayonnaise. 
 Just so has each of us sage three abjured 
 His and her moral pet particular 
 Pretension to superiority. 
 And, cheek by jowl, we henceforth munch and 
 
 joke ! 
 Go, happy pair, paternally dismissed 
 To live and die together — for a month. 
 Discretion can award no more ! Depart 
 From whatsoever the calm sweet solitude 
 Selected — Paris not improbably — 
 At month's end, when the honeycomb 's left 
 wax, 
 
 — You, daughter, with a pocketful of gold 
 Knough to find your village boys and girls 
 
 In duffel cloaks and hobnailed shoes from May 
 To — what 's the phrase ? — Christmas-corae- 
 
 never-mas ! 
 You, son and heir of mine, shall reappear 
 Ere Spring-time, that 's the ring-time, lose one 
 
 leaf. 
 And — not without regretful smack of lip 
 The while you wipe it free of honey-smear — 
 Marry the cousin, play the magistrate. 
 Stand for the county, prove perfection's pink — 
 Master of hounds, gay-coated dine — nor die 
 Sooner than needs of gout, obesity. 
 And sons at Christ Church ! As for me, — ah 
 
 me, 
 I abdicate — retire on my success. 
 Four years well occupied in teaching youth 
 
 — My son and daughter the exemplary ! 
 Time for me to retire now, having placed 
 Proud on their pedestal the pair : in turn. 
 
 Let them do homage to their master ! You, — 
 Well, your flushed cheek and flashing eye pro- 
 claim 
 Sufficiently your gratitude : you paid 
 The honorarium, the ten thousand pounds 
 To purpose, did you not ? I told you so ! 
 And you, — but, bless me, why so pale — so 
 
 faint 
 At influx of good fortune ? Certainly, 
 No matter how or why or whose the fault, 
 I save your life — save it, nor less nor more ! 
 You blindly were resolved to welcome death 
 In that black boor-and-bumpkin-haunted hole 
 Of his, the prig with all the preachments ! You 
 
 Installed as nurse and matron to the crones 
 And wenches, while there lay a world outside 
 Like Paris (which again I recommend). 
 In company and guidance of — first, this. 
 Then — all in good time — some new friend as 
 
 fit — 
 What if I were to say, some fresh myself. 
 As I once figured ? Each dog has his day, 
 And mine 's at sunset : what should old dog do 
 But eye young litters' frisky puppyhood ? 
 Oh, I shall watch this beauty and this youth 
 Frisk it in brilliance ! But don't fear ! Dis- 
 creet, 
 I shall pretend to no more recognize 
 My quondam pupils than the doctor nods 
 Wnen certain old acquaintances may cross 
 His path in Park, or sit down prim beside 
 His plate at dinner-table : tip nor wink 
 Scares patients he has put, for reason good. 
 Under restriction, — maybe, talked sometimes 
 Of douche or horsewhip to, — for why ? be- 
 cause 
 The gentleman would crazily declare 
 His best friend was — lago ! Ay, and worse — 
 The lady, all at once grown lunatic. 
 In suicidal monomania vowed, 
 To save her soul, she needs must starve herself ! 
 They 're cured now, both, and I tell nobody. 
 Why don't you speak ? Nay, speechless, each 
 
 of you 
 Can spare — ■ without unclasping plighted 
 
 troth — 
 At least one hand to shake ! Left-hands will 
 
 do — 
 Yours first, my daughter! Ah, it guards — it 
 
 gripes 
 The precious Album fast — and prudently ! 
 As well obliterate the record there 
 On page the last : allow me tear the leaf 1 
 Pray, now ! And afterward, to make amends, 
 What if all three of us contribute each 
 A line to that prelusive fragment, — help 
 The embarrassed bard who broke out to break 
 
 down 
 Duraf oundered at such unforeseen success ? 
 ' Hail, calm acclivity, salubrious spot ' 
 You begin — place aux dames! I'll prompt 
 
 you then ! 
 ' Here do I take the good the gods allot ! ' 
 Next you. Sir! What, still sulky? Sing, O 
 
 Muse ! 
 ' Here does my lord in full discharge his shot ! ' 
 Now for the crowning flourish ! mine shall 
 be" . . . 
 
 " Nothing to match your first effusion, mar 
 
 What was, is, shall remain your masterpiece ! 
 
 Authorship has the alteration-itch ! 
 
 No, I protest against erasure. Bead, 
 
 My friend ! " (she gasps out). " Read and 
 
 quickly read 
 ' Bd'ore us death do part,'' what made you mine 
 And made me yours — the marriage-license 
 
 here I 
 Decide if he is like to mend the same ! " 
 
 And so the lady, white to ghastliness, 
 Manages somehow to display the page 
 
THE INN ALBUM 
 
 8oi 
 
 With left-hand only, while the right retains 
 The other hand, the young man's, — dreaming- 
 
 drunk 
 He, with this drench of stupefying stuff, 
 Eyes wide, mouth open, — half the idiot's stare 
 And half the prophet's insight, — holding tight, 
 All the same, by his one fact in the world — 
 The lady's right-hand : he but seems to read — 
 Does not, for certain ; yet, how understand 
 Unless he reads ? 
 
 So, understand he does, 
 For certain. Slowly, word by word, she reads 
 Aloud that license — or that warrant, say. 
 
 " One against two — and two that urge their odds 
 To uttermost — I needs must try resource ! 
 Madam^ I laid me prostrate^ hade you spurn 
 Body and soul : you spurned and safely spurned 
 So you had spared me the superfluous taunt 
 ' Prostration means no power to stand erect, 
 Stand, trampling on who trampled —prostrate 
 
 now ! ' 
 So, with my other fool-foe : I was fain 
 Let the boy touch me with the buttoned foil. 
 And him the infection gains, he too must needs 
 Catch up the butcher'' s cleaver. Be it so ! 
 Since play turns earnest, here 's my serious fence. 
 He loves you ; he demands your love : both know 
 What love means in my language. Love him 
 
 then ! 
 Pursuant to a pact, love pays my debt : 
 Therefore, deliver me from him, thereby 
 Likewise delivering from me yourself! 
 For, hesitate — much more, refuse consent — 
 J tell the_ whole truth to your husband. Flat 
 Cards lie on table, in our gamester-phrase t 
 Consent — you stop my mouth, the only way." 
 
 "I did well, trusting instinct: knew your 
 
 hand 
 Had never joined with his in fellowship 
 Over this pact of infamy. You known — 
 As he was known through every nerve of me. 
 Therefore I ' stopped his mouth the only way ' 
 But my way ! none was left for you, my 
 
 friend — 
 The loyal — near, the loved one ! No — no — no ! 
 Threaten ? Chastise ? The coward would but 
 
 quail. 
 Conquer who can, the cunning of the snake ! 
 Stamp out his slimy strength from tail to head. 
 And still you leave vibration of the tongue. 
 His malice had redoubled — not on me 
 Who, myself, choose my own refining fire — 
 But on poor unsuspicious innocence ; 
 And, — victim, — to turn executioner 
 Also — that feat effected, forky tongue 
 Had done indeed its office! Once snake's 
 
 ' mouth ' 
 Thus ■ open ' — how could mortal 'stop it' ?" 
 
 "So!" 
 
 A tiger-flash — yell, spring, and scream : hal- 
 loo! 
 
 Death 's out and on him, has and holds him — 
 ugh ' 
 
 But ne trucidet coram populo 
 
 Juvenis senem I Bight the Horatian rule 1 
 
 There, see how soon a quiet comes to passl 
 
 VIII 
 
 The youth is somehow by the lady's side. 
 
 His right-hand grasps her right-hand once 
 
 again. 
 Both gaze on the dead body. Hers the word. 
 
 '* And that was good but useless. Had I lived, 
 The danger was to dread : but, dying now — 
 Himself would hardly become talkative. 
 Since talk no more means torture. Fools — 
 
 what fools 
 These wicked men are ! Had I borne four 
 
 years, 
 Four years of weeks and months and days and 
 
 nights. 
 Inured me to the consciousness of life 
 Coiled round by his life, with the tongue to 
 
 ply.— 
 
 But that I bore about me, for prompt use 
 
 At urgent need, the thing that ' stops the mouth ' 
 
 And stays the venom? Since such need was 
 
 now 
 Or never, — how should use not follow need ? 
 Bear witness for me, I withdraw from life 
 By virtue of the license — warrant, say. 
 That blackens yet this Album — white again. 
 Thanks still to my one friend who tears the 
 
 page ! 
 Now, let me write the line of supplement. 
 As counselled by my foe there : 'each a line ! ' " 
 
 And she does falteringly write to end. 
 
 " I die now through the villain who lies dead, 
 Righteously slain. He would have outraged me. 
 So, my defender slew him. God protect 
 The right ! Where wrong lay, I bear witness 
 
 now. 
 Let man believe me, whose last breath is spent 
 In blessing my defender from my soul ! " 
 
 And so ends the Inn Album. 
 
 As she dies. 
 Begins outside a voice that sounds like song. 
 And is indeed half song though meant for 
 
 speech 
 Muttered in time to motion — stir of heart 
 That unsubduably must bubble forth 
 To match the fawn-step as it mounts the stair. 
 
 " All 's ended and all 's over ! Verdict found 
 'Not guilty ' — prisoner forthwith set free, 
 'Mid cheers the Court pretends to disregard 1 
 Now Portia, now for Daniel, late severe. 
 At last appeased, benignant ! ' This young 
 
 man — 
 Hem — has the young man' s foibles but no fault. 
 He 's virgin soil — a friend must cultivate. 
 I think no plant called "love" grows wild— a 
 
 friend 
 
802 
 
 PACCHIAROTTO 
 
 May introduce, and name the bloom, the fruit! ' 
 Here somebody dares wave a 'handkerchief — 
 She '11 want to hide her face with presently ! 
 Good-by then ! ^Cignofedehcignofedel, 
 Addio !' IS ow, was ever such mistake — 
 Ever such foolish ngly omen ? Pshaw 1 
 Wagner, beside ! ''Amo te solo, te 
 Solo amai ! ' That 's worth fifty such ! 
 But, mum, the grave face at the opened door ! " 
 
 And so the good gay girl, with eyes and 
 cheeks 
 
 Diamond and damask, — cheeks so white ere- 
 
 while 
 Because of a vague fancy, idle fear 
 Chased on reflection ! — pausing, taps discreet ; 
 And then, to give herself a countenance, 
 Before she comes upon the pair inside. 
 Loud— the oft-quoted, long -laughed -over 
 
 line — . . 
 
 " ' Hail, calm acclivity, salubrious spot 1 
 Open the door ! " 
 
 Kg : let the curtain fall I 
 
 PACCHIAROTTO 
 
 AND 
 
 HOW HE WORKED IN DISTEMPER 
 
 WITH OTHER POEMS 
 
 PROLOGUE 
 
 Oh, the old wall here ! How I could pass 
 
 Life in a long midsummer day. 
 My feet confined to a plot of grass. 
 
 My eyes from a wall not once away I 
 
 And lush and lithe do the creepers clothe 
 Yon wall I watch, with a wealth of green : 
 
 Its bald red bricks draped, nothing loth. 
 In lappets of tangle, they laugh between. 
 
 Now, what is it makes pulsate the robe ? 
 
 Why tremble the sprays ? What life o'er- 
 brims 
 The body, — the house, no eye can probe, — 
 
 Divined as, beneath a robe, the limbs ? 
 
 And there again ! But my heart may guess 
 Who tripped behind ; and she sang perhaps : 
 
 So, the old waU throbbed, and its life's excess 
 Died out and away in the leafy wraps ! 
 
 Wall upon wall are between us : life 
 And song should away from heart to heart ! 
 
 I — prison-bird, with a ruddy strife 
 At breast, and a lip whence storm-notes 
 
 start — 
 
 Hold on, hope hard in the subtle thing 
 That 's spirit : though cloistered fast, soar 
 free ; 
 
 Account as wood, brick, stone, this ring 
 Of the rueful neighbors, and — forth to thee ! 
 
 OF PACCHIAROTTO, AND HOW HE 
 WORKED IN DISTEMPER 
 
 Query : was ever a quainter 
 Crotchet than this of the painter 
 
 Giacomo Pacchiarotto 
 
 Who took " Reform " for his motto ? 
 
 He, pupil of old Fungaio, 
 Is always confounded Cheigho !) 
 With Pacchia, contemporaneous 
 No question, but how extraneous 
 In the grace of soul, the power 
 Of hand, — undoubted dower 
 Of Pacchia who decked (as we know, 
 My Kirkup !) San Bernardino, 
 Turning the small dark Oratory 
 To Siena's Art-laboratory, 
 As he made its straitness roomy 
 And glorified its gloomy, 
 With Bazzi and Beccafunii. 
 (Another heigho for Bazzi : 
 How people miscall him Razzi !) 
 
 This Painter was of opinion 
 Our earth should be his dominion 
 Whose Art could correct to pattern 
 What Nature had slurred — the slattern 1 
 And since, beneath the heavens. 
 Things lay now at sixes and sevens. 
 Or, as he said, sopra-sotto — 
 Thought the painter Pacchiarotto 
 Things wanted reforming, therefore. 
 '■ Wanted it " — ay, but wherefore ? 
 When earth held one so ready 
 As he to step forth, stand steady 
 In the middle of God's creation 
 And prove to demonstration 
 What the dark is, what the light is. 
 What the wrong is, what the right is, 
 What the ugly, what the beautiful. 
 What the restive, what the dutiful, 
 In Mankind profuse around him ? 
 Man, devil as now he foimd him, 
 Would presently soar up angel 
 
PACCHIAROTTO 
 
 803 
 
 At the summons of such evang^el, 
 And owe — what would Man not owe 
 To the painter Pacchiarotto ? 
 Ay, look to thy laurels, Giotto I 
 
 But Man, he perceived, was stubborn. 
 Grew regnilar brute, once cub born ; 
 And it struck him .as expedient — 
 Ere he tried to make obedient 
 The wolf, fox, bear, and monkey 
 By piping advice in one key, — 
 
 % 
 
 That his pipe should play a prelude 
 
 To something heaven-tinged not hell-hued. 
 
 Something not harsh but docile, 
 
 Man-liquid, not Man-fossil — 
 
 Not fact, in short, but fancy. 
 
 By a laudable necromancy 
 
 He would coujure up ghosts — a circle 
 
 Deprived of the means to work ill 
 
 Should his music prove distasteful 
 
 And pearls to the swine go wasteful. 
 
 To be rent of swine — that was hard I 
 
 With fancy he ran no hazard : 
 
 Fact might knock him o'er the mazaid. 
 
 So, the painter Pacehiarotto 
 Constructed himself a grotto 
 In the quarter of Stalloreggi — 
 As authors of note aUe|;e ye. 
 And on each of the whitewashed sides of it 
 He painted — (none far and wide so fit 
 As he to perform in fresco) — 
 He painted nor cried quiesco 
 Till he peopled its every square foot 
 With Man — from the Beggar barefoot 
 To the Noble in cap and feather ; 
 All sorts and conditions together. 
 The Soldier in breastplate and helmet 
 Stood frowningly — hail fellow well met — 
 By the Priest armed with bell, book, and can- 
 dle. 
 Nor did he omit to handle 
 The Fair Sex, our brave distemperer : 
 Not merely King, Clown, Pope, Emperor — 
 He diversified too his Haides 
 Of ail forms, pinched Labor and paid Ease, 
 With as mixed an assemblage of Ladies. 
 
 Which work done, dry, — he rested him. 
 Cleaned palette, washed brush, divested him 
 Of the apron that suits /rescantt. 
 And, bonnet on ear stuck jaunty. 
 This hand upon hip well planted, 
 That, free to wave as it wanted. 
 He addressed in a choice oration 
 His folk of each name and nation. 
 Taught its duty to every station. 
 The Pope was declared an an-ant 
 Impostor at once, I warrant. 
 The Emperor — truth might tax him 
 With ignorance of the maxim 
 " Shear sheep but nowise .flay them ! 
 And the Vulgar that obey them. 
 The Ruled, well-matched with the Ruling, 
 
 They failed not of wholesome schooling 
 
 On their knavery and their fooling. 
 
 As for Art — where 's decorum ? Pooh-poohed 
 
 it is 
 By Poets that plague us with lewd ditties, 
 And Painters tnat pester with nudities ! 
 
 Now, your rater and debater 
 Is balked by a mere spectator 
 Who simply stares and listens 
 Tongue-tied, while eye nor glistens 
 Nor brow grows hot and twitchy, 
 Nor mouth, for a combat itchy, 
 Quivers with some convincing 
 Reply — that sets him wincing? 
 Nay, rather — reply that furnishes 
 Your debater witn just what burnishes 
 The crest of him, all one triumph. 
 As you see him rise, hear him cry " Humph I 
 Convinced am I ? This confutes me ? 
 Receive the rejoinder that suits me ! 
 Confutation of vassal for prince meet — 
 Wherein all the powers that convince meet, 
 And mash my opponent to mincemeat ! " 
 
 So, off from his head flies the bonnet. 
 His hip loses hand planted on it. 
 While t' other hand, frequent in gesture, 
 Slinks modestly back beneath vesture. 
 As — hop, skip and jump, — he 's along with 
 Those weak ones he late proved so strong 
 
 with! 
 Pope, Emperor, lo, he 's beside them, 
 Friendhr now, who late could not abide them. 
 King, Clown, Soldier, Priest, Noble, Burgess ; 
 Ana his voice, that out-roared Boanerges, 
 How minikin-mildly it urges 
 In accents how gentled and gingered 
 Its word in defence of the injured ! 
 " Oh, call him not culprit, this Pontiff ! 
 Be hard on this Kaiser ye won't if 
 Ye take into con-si-der-ation 
 What dangers attend elevation ! 
 The Priest — who expects him to descant 
 On duty with more zeal and less cant ? 
 He preaches but rubbish he 's reared in. 
 The Soldier, grown deaf (by the mere din 
 Of battle) to mercy, learned tippling 
 And what not of vice while a stripling. 
 The Lawyer — his lies are conventional. 
 And as for the Poor Sort — why mention all 
 Obstructions that leave barred and bolted 
 Access to the brains of each dolt-head ? " 
 
 He ended, you wag:er ? Not half ! A bet ? 
 Precedence to males in the alphabet ! 
 Still, disposed of Man's ABC, there 's X 
 Y Z want assistance, — the Fair Sex ! 
 How much may be said in excuse of 
 Those vanities — males see no use of — 
 From silk shoe on heel to laced poU's-hood : 
 What 's their frailty beside our own falsehood V 
 The boldest, most brazen of . . . trumpets. 
 How kind can they be to their dumb pets ! 
 
8o4 
 
 PACCHIAROTTO 
 
 Of their charms — how are most frank, how few 
 
 venal ! 
 While as for those charges of Juvenal — 
 QucE nemo dixisset in toto 
 Nisi {mdepol) ore illoto — 
 He dismissed every charge with an " Apage ! " 
 
 Then, cocking (in Scotch phrase) his cap 
 a-gee, 
 Right hand disengaged from the doublet 
 — Like landlord, in house he had sublet 
 Resuming of guardianship gestion, 
 To call tenants' conduct in question — 
 Hop, skip, jump, to inside from outside 
 Of chamber, he lords, ladies, louts eyed 
 With such transformation of visage 
 As fitted the censor of this age. 
 No longer an advocate tepid 
 Of frailty, but champion intrepid 
 Of strength, — not of falsehood but verity, — 
 He, one after one, with asperity 
 Stripped bare all the cant-clothed abuses, 
 Disposed of sophistic excuses, 
 Forced folly each shift to abandon. 
 And left vice with no leg to stand on. 
 So crushing the force he exerted. 
 That Man at his foot lay converted ! 
 
 , True — Man bred of paint-pot and mortar ! 
 But why suppose folks of this sort are 
 More likely to hear and be tractable 
 Than folks all alive and, in fact, able 
 To testify promptly by action 
 Their ardor, and make satisfaction 
 For misdeeds non verbis sedfactis ? 
 *' With folks all alive be my practice 
 Henceforward ! mortar, paint-pot O, 
 Farewell to ye ! " cried Pacchiarotto, 
 " Let only occasion interpose ! " 
 
 It did so : for, pat to the purpose 
 Through causes I need not examine. 
 There fell upon Siena a famine. 
 In vain did the magistrates busily 
 Seek succor, fetch grain out of Sicily, 
 Nay, throw mill and bakehouse wide open - 
 Such misery followed as no pen 
 Of mine shall depict ye. Faint, fainter 
 Waxed hope of relief : so, our painter, 
 Emboldened by triumph of recency. 
 How could he do other with decency 
 Than rush in this strait to the rescue. 
 Play schoolmaster, point as with fescue 
 To each and all slips in Man's spelling 
 The law of the land ? — slips now telling 
 With monstrous effect on the city, 
 Whose magistrates moved him to pity 
 As, bound to read law to the letter. 
 They minded their hornbook no better. 
 
 I ought to have told you, at starting, 
 How certain, who \tohed to be carting 
 
 Abuses away clean and thorough 
 From Siena, both province and borough. 
 Had formed themselves into a company 
 Whose swallow could bolt in a lump any 
 Obstruction of scruple, provoking 
 The nicer throat's coughing and choking : 
 Fit Club, by as fit a name dignified 
 Of " Freed Ones " — " Bardotti " — -which sig- 
 nified 
 " Spare-Horses " that walk by the wagon 
 The team has to drudge for and drag on. 
 This notable Club Pacchiarotto 
 Had joined long since, paid scot and lot to, 
 As free and accepted ' Bardotto." 
 The Bailiwick watched with no quiet eye 
 The outrage thus done to society, 
 And noted the advent especially 
 Of Pacchiarotto their fresh ally. 
 
 These Spare-Horses forthwith assembled : 
 Neighed words whereat citizens trembled 
 As oft as the chiefs, in the Square by 
 The Duomo, proposed a way whereby 
 The city were cured of disaster. 
 " Just substitute servant for master. 
 Make Poverty Wealth and Wealth Poverty, 
 Unloose Man from overt and covert tie. 
 And straight out of social confusion 
 True Order would spring ! " Brave illusion — 
 Aims heavenly attained by means earthy I 
 
 Off to these at full speed rushed our wor- 
 thy, — 
 Brain practised and tongue no less tutored. 
 In argument's armor accoutred, — 
 Sprang forth, mounted rostrum, and essayed 
 Proposals like those to which "Yes " said 
 So glibly each personage painted 
 O' the wall-side wherewith you 're acquainted. 
 He harangued on the faults of the Bailiwick : 
 " Red soon were our State-candle's paly wick, 
 If wealth would become but interfluous, 
 Fill voids up with just the superfluous ; 
 If ignorance gave way to knowledge 
 — Not pedantry picked up at college 
 From Doctors, Professors et ccetera — 
 (They say : ' kai ta loipa ' — like better a 
 Long Greek string oi kappas, taus, lambdas, 
 Tacked on to the tail of each damned ass) — 
 No knowledge we want of this quality. 
 But knowledge indeed — practicality 
 Through insight's fine universality ! 
 If you shout ' Bailies, oat on ye ail ! Fie, 
 Thou Chief of our forces, Amcdfi, 
 Who shiddest the rogue and the clotpoll ! ' 
 If you pounce on and poke out, with what 
 
 pole 
 I leave ye to fancy, our Siena's 
 Beast-litter of sloths and hyenas — " 
 (Whoever to scan this is ill able 
 Forgets the town's name 's a dissyllable) — 
 " If, this done, ye did — as ye might — place 
 For once the right man in the right place, 
 If you listened to me "... 
 
PACCHIAROTTO 
 
 805 
 
 At which last "If 
 There flew at his throat like a mastiff 
 One Spare-Horse — another and another I 
 Such outbreak of tumult and pother, 
 Horse-faces a-laugrhing- and fleering, 
 Horse-voices a-mockin<? and jeering, 
 Horse-hands raised to collar the caitiff 
 Whose impudence ventured the late '' If " — 
 That, had not fear sent Pacehiarotto 
 Off tramping, as fast as could trot toe. 
 Away from the scene of discomfiture — 
 Had he stood there stock-stiU in a dumb fit — 
 
 sure 
 Am I he had paid in his person 
 Till his mother might fail to know her son. 
 Though she gazed on him never so wistful, 
 In the figure so tattered and tristful. 
 Each mouth full of curses, each fist full 
 Of cuffings — behold, Pacehiarotto, 
 The pass which thy project has got to. 
 Of trusting, nigh ashes still hot — tow ! 
 ^he paraphrase — which I much need — is 
 From Horace ^^ per ignes incedis.") 
 
 Right and left did he dash helter-skelter 
 In agonized search of a shelter. 
 No purlieu so blocked and no alley 
 So blind as allowed him to rally 
 His spirits and see — nothing hampered 
 His steps if he trudged and not scampered 
 Up here and down there in a city 
 That 's all ups and downs, more the pity 
 For folks who would outrun the constable. 
 At last he stopped short at the one stable 
 And sure place of refuge that 's offered 
 Humanity. Lately was coffered 
 A corpse in its sepulchre, situate 
 By St. John's Observance. *' Habituate 
 Thyself to the strangest of bedfellows. 
 And, kicked by the live, k^s the deadfellows ! " 
 So Misery counselled the craven. 
 At once he crept safely to haven 
 Through a hole left unbricked in the structure. 
 Ay, Misery, in have you tucked your 
 Poor client and left him conterminous 
 With — pah ! — the thing fetid and verminous ! 
 (I gladly woidd spare you the detail, 
 But History writes what I retail.) 
 
 Two days did he groan in his domicile : 
 " Good Saints, set me free and I promise I '11 
 Abjure all ambition of preaching 
 Change, whether to minds touched by teaching 
 
 — The smooth folk of fancy, mere figments 
 Created by plaster and pigments, — 
 
 Or to minds that receive with such rudeness 
 Dissuasion from pride, greed and lewdness, 
 
 — The rough folk of fact, life's true specimens 
 Of mind — * kaud in posse sed esse mens ' 
 
 As it was, is, and shall be forever 
 Despite of my utmost endeavor. 
 live foes I thought to illumine, 
 Henceforth lie untroubled your gloom in ! 
 
 I need my own light, every spark, as 
 
 I couch with this sole friend — a carcase I ' 
 
 Two days thus he maundered and rambled ; 
 Then, starved back to sanity, scrambled 
 From out his receptacle loathsome. 
 '^ A spectre ! " — declared upon oath some 
 Who saw him emerge and (appalling 
 To mention) his garments a-crawling 
 With plagues far beyond tlie Egyptian. 
 He gained, in a state past description, 
 A convent of months, the Observancy. 
 
 Thus far is a fact : I reserve fancy 
 
 For Fancy's more proper employment : 
 
 And now she waves wing with enjoyment, 
 
 To tell ye how preached the Superior, 
 
 When somewhat our painter's exterior 
 
 Was sweetened. He needed (no mincing 
 
 The matter) much soaking and rinsing, 
 
 Nay, rubbing with drugs odoriferous, 
 
 Till, rid of his garments pestiferous, 
 
 And, robed by the help of the Brotherhood 
 
 In odds and ends, — this gown and t'other 
 
 hood, — 
 His empty inside first well-garnished, — 
 He delivered a tale round, unvarnished. 
 
 " Ah, Youth ! " ran the Abbot's admonish- 
 ment, 
 " Thine error scarce moves my astonishment. 
 For — why shall I shrink from asserting ? — 
 Myself have had hopes of converting 
 The foolish to wisdom, till, sober. 
 My life found its May grow October. 
 I talked and I wrote, but, one mornii^. 
 Life's Autumn bore fruit in this warning : 
 ' Let tongue rest, and quiet thy quill he ! 
 Earth is earth and not heaven^ and ne'er will be.* 
 Man's work is to labor and leaven — 
 As best he may — earth here with heaven ; 
 'T is work for work's sake that he 's needing ; 
 Let him work on and on as if speeding 
 Work's end, but not dream of succeeding ! 
 Because if success were intended. 
 Why, heaven would begin ere earth ended. 
 A Spare-Horse ? Be rather a thill-horse. 
 Or — what's the plain truth — just a miU- 
 
 horse ! 
 Earth's a mill wLere we grind and wear 
 
 mufflers : 
 A whip awaits shirkers and shufflers 
 Who slacken their pace, sick of lugging 
 At what don't advance for their tugging. 
 Though round goes the mill, we must still post 
 On and on as if moving the mill-post. 
 So, grind away, mouth-wise and pen-wise. 
 Do all that we can to make men wise ! 
 And if men prefer to be foolish. 
 Ourselves have proved horse-like not mulish : 
 Sent grist, a good sackful, to hopper. 
 And worked as the Master thought proper. 
 Tongue I wag, pen I ply, who am Abbot ; 
 
8o6 
 
 PACCHIAROTTO 
 
 Stick, thou, Son, to daub-bnjsh and dab-pot 1 
 
 But, soft ! I scratch hard, on the scab hot ? 
 
 Thouy;h cured of thy plague, there may linger 
 
 A pimple I fray with rough finger ? 
 
 bo soon could my hom^ transmute 
 
 Thy brass into gold ? Why, the man 'a mute ! " 
 
 "Ay, Father, I 'm niute with admiring 
 How Nature's indulgence untiring 
 Still bids us turn deaf ear to Reason's 
 Best rhetoric — clutch at all seasons 
 And hold fast to what 's proved untenable ! 
 Thy maxim is — Man 's not amenable 
 To argument : whereof by consequence — 
 Thine arguments reach me ; a non-sequence 1 
 Yet blush not discouraged, Father ! 
 I stand unconverted, the rather 
 That nowise I need a conversion. 
 No live man (I cap thy assertion) 
 By argument ever could take hold 
 Of me. 'T was the dead thing, the day-cold, 
 Which grimed ' Art thou so in a hurry 
 That out of warm light thou must scurry 
 And join me down here in the dungeon 
 Because, above, one 's Jack and one — John, 
 One 's swift in the race, one — a hobbler. 
 One 's a crowned king and one — a capped cob- 
 bler. 
 Rich and poor, sage and fool, virtuous, vicious ? 
 Why complain f Art thou so unsuspicious 
 That all 's for an hour of essaying 
 Who ^sfit and who 's unfit for playing 
 Wis part in the after-construction 
 — Heaven's Piece whereof Earth 's the Induction 1 
 Thinc/s rarely go smooth at Rehearsal. 
 Wait patient the change universal. 
 And a£t, and let act, m existence / 
 For, as thou art clapped hence or hissed hence, ' 
 Thou hast thy promotion or otherwise. 
 A nd why must wise thou have thy brother wise 
 Because in rehearsal thy cue be 
 To shine by the side of a booby ? 
 No polishing garnet to ruby ! 
 All 's well iMt ends well — through Art^s magic. 
 Some end, whether comic or tragic. 
 The Artist has purposed, be certain! 
 Explained at the fall of the curtain — 
 In showing thy wisdom at odds with 
 That folly : he tries men and gods with 
 No problem for weak wits to solve meant, 
 But one worth such Author's evolvement. 
 So, back nor disturb inlay's production 
 By giving thy brother instruction 
 To throw up hisfooPs-part allotted J 
 Lest haply thyself prove besotted 
 When stript,for thy pains, of that costume 
 Of sage, which has bred the imposthume 
 I prick to relieve thee of, — Vanity ! ' 
 
 "So, Father, behold me in sanity ! 
 I 'm back to the palette and mahlstick; 
 And as for Man — let each and all stick 
 To what was prescribed them at starting I 
 Once planted as fools — no departing 
 From folly one inch, sceculorum 
 
 In scecula ! Pass me the jorum. 
 And push, me. the platter — my stomach 
 Betains, through its fasting, still some ache — 
 And then, with your kind Benedicite, 
 Good-by 1 " 
 
 I have told with simplicity 
 My tale, dropped those harsh analytics, 
 And tried to content you, my critics, 
 Who greeted my early uprising ! 
 I knew you through all the disguising, 
 DroU dogs, as I jumped up, cried " Heyday J 
 This Monday is — what else but May-day ? 
 And these in the drabs, blues, and yellows, 
 Are surely the privileged fellows. 
 So, saltbox and bones, tongs and bellows ! " 
 (I threw up the window) ' Your pleasure ? " 
 
 Then he who directed the measure — 
 An old friend — put leg forward nimbly, 
 " We critics as sweeps out your ehimbly ! 
 Much soot to remove from your flue, sir ! 
 Who spares coal in kitchen an't you, sir ! 
 And neighbors complain it 's no joke, sir, 
 — You ought to consume your own smoke, sir ! " 
 
 Ah, rogues, but my housemaid snspeets 
 you — 
 Is confident oft she detects you 
 In bringing more filth iuto my house 
 Than ever you found there ! I 'm pious. 
 However : 't was God made you dingy 
 And me — with no need to be stingy 
 Of soap, when 't is sixpence the packet. 
 So, dance away, boys, dust my jacket, 
 Bang dmm and blow fife — ay, and rattle 
 Your brushes, for that 's half the battle ! 
 Don't trample the grass, — hocus-pocus 
 With grime my Spring snowdrop and crocus, — 
 And, what with your rattling and tinkling. 
 Who knows but you give me an inkling 
 How music sounds, thanks to the jangle 
 Of regular drum and triangle ? 
 Whereby, tap-tap, chink-chink, 't is proven 
 I break rule as bad as Beethoven. 
 " That chord now — a groan or a grunt is 't ? 
 Schumann's self was no worse contrapuntist. 
 No ear ! or if ear, so tough-gristled — 
 He thought that he sung while he whistled I " 
 
 So, this time I whistle, not sing at all. 
 My story, the largess I fling at all 
 And every the rough there whose aubade 
 Did its best to amuse me, — nor so bad ! 
 Take my thanks, pick up largess, and scamper 
 Off free, ere your mirth gets a damper ! 
 Yoii 've Monday, your one day, your fun-day. 
 While mine is a year that 's all Sunday. 
 I ' ve seen you, times — who knows how 
 
 many ? — 
 Dance in here, strike up, play the zany, 
 Make mouths at the Tenant, hoot waining 
 
AT THE "MERMAID" 
 
 807 
 
 You '11 find him decamped next May-morning ; 
 Then scuttle away, glad to 'scape hence 
 With — kicks ? no, but laughter and ha'pence ! 
 Mine 's freehold, by grace of the grand Lord 
 Who lets out the ground here, — ray landlord: 
 To him I pay quit-rent — devotion; 
 Nor hence shall I budge, I 've a notionj 
 Nay, here shall my whistling and singmg 
 Set all his street's echoes arringing 
 Long after the last of your number 
 Has ceased my front-court to encumber 
 While, treading down rose and ranunculus, 
 You Tom7ni/-malce-room-for-your-Uncle us ! 
 Troop, all of you — man or homunculus, 
 Quick march ! for Xanthippe, my honsemadd, 
 If once on your pates she a souse made 
 With what, pan or pot, bowl or skoramis, 
 First comes to her hand — things were more 
 
 amiss ! 
 I wonld not for worlds be your place in — 
 Recipient of slops from the basin ! 
 You, Jack-fn-the-Groen,' leaf-and-twiggishness 
 Won't save a dry thread on your priggishness ! 
 While as for Quilp-Hop-o'-my-thumb there, 
 Banjo-Byron that twangs the strum-strnm 
 
 there — 
 He '11 think as the pickle he curses, 
 I 've discharged on bis pate his own verses ! 
 " Dwarfs are saucy," says Dickens : so, sauced 
 
 in 
 Your own sauce,! _ , , 
 
 But, back to my Knight of the Pencil, 
 Dismissed to his fresco and stencil ! 
 Whose story — begun with a chuckle, 
 And throughout timed by raps of the 
 
 knuckle, — 
 To small enough purpose were studied 
 If it ends with crown cracked or nose bloodied. 
 Come, critics, — not shake hands, excuse me ! 
 But — say have you grudged to amuse me 
 This once in the forty-and-over 
 Long years since you trampled my clover 
 And scared from my house-eaves each sparrow 
 I never once harmed by that arrow 
 Of song, karterotaton belos, 
 (Which Pindar declares the true melos,) 
 I was forging and filii^ and finishing, 
 And no whit m;y labors diminishing 
 Because, though high up in a chamber 
 Where none of yonr kidney may clamber. 
 Your hullabaloo would approach nie ? 
 Was it "grammar" wherein you would 
 
 "coach " me — 
 You, — pacing in even that paddock 
 Of language allotted you ad hoc. 
 With a clog at your fetlocks, — you — scomers 
 Of me free of all its four corners ? 
 Was it " clearness of words which convey 
 
 thought " ? 
 Ay, if words never needed enswathe aught 
 But ignorance, impudence, envy 
 And malice — whfit word-swathe would then vie 
 
 ■ No, please ! For 
 
 " Who would be satirical 
 On a thing so very small ? " — Printer's Devil, 
 
 With yours for a clearness crystalline ? 
 But had you to put in one small line 
 8ome thought big and bouncing — as noddle 
 Of goose, bom to cackle and waddle 
 And bite at man's heel as goose-wont is, 
 Never felt plague its puuy os frontis — 
 You 'd know, as you hissed, spat and sput- 
 tered. 
 Clear cackle is easily uttered ! 
 
 Lo, I've laughed out my laugh on this mirth- 
 day ! 
 
 Beside, at week's end, dawns my birthday. 
 
 That hebdome, hieron emar — 
 
 (More things in a day than you deem are 1) 
 
 — Tei gar Apollorta chrusaora 
 
 Egeinato Leto. So, gray or ray 
 
 Betide me, six days hence, I 'm vexed here 
 
 By no sweep, that 's certain, till next year ! 
 
 "Vexed?' — roused from what else were in- 
 sipid ease ! 
 
 Leave snoring abed to Pheidippides ! 
 
 We 'U up and work ! won't we, Euripides ? 
 
 AT THE "MERMAID" 
 
 The figure that thou liere seest . . . Tut ! 
 Was it for gentle Shakespeare put ? 
 
 B. JoNSON. {Adapied,\ 
 
 I — "Next Poet?" No, my hearties, 
 
 I nor am nor fain would be ! 
 Choose your chiefs and pick your parties, 
 
 Not one soul revolt to me ! 
 I, forsooth, sow song-sedition ? 
 
 I, a schism in verse provoke ? 
 I, blown up by bard's ambition. 
 
 Burst — your bubble-kii^ ? You joke. 
 
 Come, be grave I The sherris mantling 
 
 Still about each mouth, mayhap. 
 Breeds you insight — just a scantling — 
 
 Brings me truth out — just a scrap. 
 Look and tell me ! Written, spoken. 
 
 Here 's my life-long work : and where 
 — Where 's your warrant or my token 
 
 I 'm the dead king's son and heir ? 
 
 Here '3 my work : does work discover — 
 
 What was rest from work — my life ? 
 Did I live man's hater, lover 1 
 
 Leave the world at peace, at strife ? 
 Call earth ugliness or beauty ? 
 
 See things there in large or small ? 
 Use to pay its Lord my duty V 
 
 Use to own a lord at all ? 
 
 Blank of such a record, truly. 
 
 Here 's the work I hand, this scroll. 
 Yours to take or leave ; as duly, 
 
 Mine remains the unprofEered soul. 
 So much, no whit more, my debtors — 
 
 How should one like me lay claim 
 To that largess elders, betters 
 
 Sell you cheap their sonls for — fame ? 
 
8d8 
 
 HOUSE 
 
 Which of you did I enable 
 
 Once to slip inside my breast, 
 There to catalog:ne and label 
 
 What I like least, what love best, 
 Hope and fear, believe and doubt or, 
 
 Seek and shun, respect — deride ? 
 Who has right to make a rout of 
 
 Rarities he found inside ? 
 
 Rarities or, as lie 'd rather. 
 
 Rubbish such as stocks his own : 
 Need and greed (oh, strange) the Father 
 
 Fashioned not for him alone ! 
 Whence — the comfort set a-strutting, 
 
 Whence — the outcry " Haste, behold ! 
 Bard's breast open wide, past shutting. 
 
 Shows what brass we took for gold ! " 
 
 Friends, I doubt not he 'd display you 
 
 Brass — myself call oiichalc, — 
 Furnish much amusement ; pray you 
 
 Therefore, be content I bsdk 
 Him and you, and bar my portal ! 
 
 Here 's my work outside : opine 
 What 's inside me mean and mortal \ 
 
 Take your pleasure, leave me mine ! 
 
 Which is — not to buy your laurel 
 
 As last king did, nothing loth. 
 Tale adorned and pointed moral 
 
 Gained him praise and pity both. 
 Out rushed sighs and groans by dozens, 
 
 Forth by scores oaths, curses flew : 
 Proving you were cater-cousins. 
 
 Kith and kindred, king and you 1 
 
 Whereas do I ne'er so little 
 
 (Thanks to sherris), leave ajar 
 Bosom's gate — no jot nor tittle 
 
 Grow we nearer than we are. 
 Sinning, sorrowing, despairing. 
 
 Body-ruined, spirit-wrecked, — 
 Should I give my woes an airing, — 
 
 Where 's one plague that claims respect ? 
 
 Have 3;ou found your life distasteful ? 
 
 My life did and does smack sweet. 
 Was your youth of pleasure wasteful ? 
 
 Mine I saved and hold complete. 
 Do your joys with age diminish ? 
 
 When mine fail me, I '11 complain. 
 Must in death your dayl'ght finish ? 
 
 My sun sets to rise again. 
 
 What, like you, he proved — your Pilgrim — 
 
 This our world a wilderness. 
 Earth still gray and heaven still grim, 
 
 Not a hand there his might press. 
 Not a heart his own might throb to, 
 
 Men all rogues and women — say, 
 Dolls which boys' heads duck and bob to, 
 
 Grown folk drop or throw away ? 
 
 My experience being other. 
 
 How sho'ild I contribute verse 
 Worthy of your king and brother ? 
 
 Balaam-like I bless, not curse. 
 
 I find earth not gray but rosy, 
 Heaven not grim but fair of hue. 
 
 Do I stoop ? I pluck a posy. 
 Do I stand and stare ? All 's blue. 
 
 Doubtless I am pushed and shoved by 
 
 Rogues and fools enough : the more 
 Good luck mine, I love, am loved by 
 
 Some few honest to the core. 
 Scan the near high, scout the far low ! 
 
 " But the low come close : " what then ? 
 Simpletons ? My match is Marlowe ; 
 
 Sciolists ? My mate is Ben. 
 
 Womankind — " the cat-like nature, 
 
 False and fickle, vain and weak " — 
 What of this sad nomenclature 
 
 Suits my tongue, if 1 must speak ? 
 Does the sex invite, repulse so, 
 
 Tempt, betray, by fits and starts ? 
 So becalm but to convulse so, 
 
 Decking heads and breaking hearts ? 
 
 Well may you blaspheme at fortune ! 
 
 I '* threw Venus " (Ben, expound !) 
 Never did I need importune 
 
 Her, of all the Olympian round. 
 Blessings on my benefactress ! 
 
 Cursings suit — for aught I know — 
 Those who twitched her by the back tress, 
 
 Tugged and thought to turn her ^ so ! 
 
 Therefore, since no leg to stand on 
 
 Thus I 'mleft with, — joy or grief 
 Be the issue, — I abandon 
 
 Hope or care you name me Chief ! 
 Chief and king and Lord's anointed, 
 
 I ? — who never once have wished 
 Death before the day appointed : 
 
 Lived and liked, not poohed and pished ! 
 
 " Ah, but so I shall not enter. 
 
 Scroll in hand, the common heart — 
 Stopped at surface : since at centre 
 
 Song should reach Welt-schmerz, world- 
 smart ! " 
 " Enter in the heart ? " Its shelly 
 
 Cuirass guard mine, fore and aft ! 
 Such song " enters in the belly 
 
 And is oast out in the draught." 
 
 Back then to our sherris-brewage ! 
 
 "Kingship " quotha ? I shall wait — 
 Waive the present time ; some new age , . . 
 
 But let fools anticipate ! 
 Meanwhilegreet me — " friend, good fellow. 
 
 Gentle Will," my merry men ! 
 As for making Envy yellow 
 
 With " Next Poet " — (Manners, Ben I) 
 
 HOUSE 
 
 Shall I sonnet-sing you about myself ? 
 
 Do I live in a house you would like to see ? 
 Is it scant of gear, has it store of pelf ? 
 
 " Unlock my heart with a sonnet-key ? " 
 
SHOP 
 
 809 
 
 Invite the world, as my betters have done ? 
 
 ^* Take notice : this building: remains on view, 
 Its suites of reception every one, 
 
 Its private apartment and bedroom too ; 
 
 " For a ticket, apply to the Publisher." 
 No : thanking the public, I must decline. 
 
 A peep through my window, if folk prefer ; 
 But, please you, no foot over threshold of 
 mine 1 
 
 I have mixed with a crowd and heard free talk 
 In a foreign land where an earthquake chanced 
 
 And a house stood gaping, naught to balk 
 Man's eye wherever he gazed or glanced. 
 
 The whole of the frontage shaven sheer, 
 The inside gaped : exposed to day. 
 
 Right and wrong and common and queer. 
 Bare, as the palm of your hand, it lay. 
 
 The owner? Oh, he had been crushed, no 
 doubt ! 
 
 " Odd tables and chairs for a man of wealth 1 
 What a parcel of musty old books about ! 
 
 He smoked, — no wonder he lost his health ! 
 
 " I doubt if he bathed before he dressed. 
 
 A brasier ? — the pagan, he burned perfumes ! 
 You see it is proved, what the neighbors guessed : 
 
 His wife and himself had separate rooms." 
 
 Friends, the goodman of the house at least 
 Kept house to himself till an earthquake came : 
 
 'T is the fall of its frontage permits you feast 
 On the inside arrangement you praise or blame. 
 
 Outside should suffice for evidence : 
 
 And whoso desires to penetrate 
 Deeper, must dive by the spirit-sense — 
 
 No optics like yours, at any rate ! 
 
 " Hoity-toity ! A street to explore, 
 Your house the exception ! ' With this same key 
 
 Shakespeare unlocked his heart, ^ once more ! " 
 Did Shakespeare ? If so, the less Shakespeare 
 he! 
 
 SHOP 
 
 So, friend, your shop was aU your house ! 
 Its front, astonishmg the street. 
 
 Invited view from man and mouse 
 To what diversity of treat 
 Behind its glass — the single sheet ! 
 
 What gimeraeks, genuine Japanese : 
 Gape-jaw and goggle-eye, the frog ; 
 
 Dragons, owls, monkeys, beetles, geese ; 
 Some crush-nosed human-hearted dog : 
 Queer names, too, such a catalogue ! 
 
 I thought "And he who owns the wealth 
 Which blocks the window's vastitude, 
 
 — Ah, could I peep at him by stealth 
 Behind his ware, pass shop, intrude 
 On house itself- what scenes were viewed ! 
 
 " If wide and showy thus the shop. 
 What must the habitation prove ? 
 
 The true house with no name a-top — 
 The mansion, distant one remove. 
 Once get him oil his traffic-groove I 
 
 " Pictures he likes, or books perhaps ; 
 And as for buying most and best. 
 
 Commend me to these city chaps ! 
 Or else he 's social, takes his rest 
 On Sundays, with a Lord for guest. 
 
 " Some suburb-palace, parked about 
 And gated grandly, built last year : 
 
 The four-mile walk to keep off gout ; 
 Or big seat sold by bankrupt peer ; 
 But then he takes the rail, that 's clear. 
 
 " Or, stop ! I wager, taste selects 
 Some out-o'-the-way, some all-unknown 
 
 Retreat : the neighborhood suspects 
 Little that he who rambles lone 
 Makes Rothschild tremble on his throne ! " 
 
 Nowise I Nor Mayf air residence 
 Fit to receive and entertain, — 
 
 Nor Hampstead villa's kind defence 
 From noise and crowd, from dust and drain, — 
 Nor country-box was soul's domain ! 
 
 Nowise ! At back of all that spread 
 Of merchandise, woe 's me, I find 
 
 A hole i' the wall where, heels by head, 
 The owner couched, his ware behind, 
 — In cupboard suited to his mind. 
 
 For why ? He saw no use of life 
 But, while he drove a roaring trade, 
 
 To chuckle " Customers are rife ! " 
 To chafe ^^So much hard cash outlaid, 
 Yet zero in my profits made ! 
 
 " This novelty costs pains, but — takes ? 
 Cumbers my counter ! Stock no more I 
 
 This article, no such great shakes. 
 Fizzes like wildfire ? Underscore 
 The cheap thing — thousands to the fore ! " 
 
 'T was lodging best to live most nigh 
 (Cramp, coffinlike as crib might be) 
 
 Receipt of Custom ; ear and eye 
 Wanted no outworld : " Hear and see 
 The bustle in the shop ! " quoth he. 
 
 My fancy of a merchant-prince 
 
 Was different. Through his wares we groped 
 Our darkling way to — not to mince 
 
 The matter — no black den where moped 
 
 The master if we interloped ! 
 
 Shop was shop only : household-stuff ? 
 
 What did he want with comforts there ? 
 " Walls, ceiling, floor, stay blank and rough, 
 
 So goods on sale show rich and rare ! 
 
 ' Sdl and scud home,'' be shop's affair ! " 
 
 What might he deal in ? Gems, suppose I 
 Since somehow business must be done 
 
8io PISGAH 
 
 -SIGHTS 
 
 At cost of trouble, —see, he throws. 
 
 All 's lend-and-borrow ; 
 
 You choice of jewels, every one, 
 
 Good, see, wants evil, 
 
 Good, better, best, star, moon, and sun ! 
 
 Joy demands sorrow. 
 
 
 Angel weds devU! 
 
 Which lies within your powBr of purse ? 
 
 
 This ruby that would tip aright 
 
 " Which things must -^ why he?" 
 
 Solomon's sceptre ? Oh, your nurse 
 
 Vain our endeavor ! 
 
 Wants simply coral, the, delight 
 
 So shall things aye be 
 
 Of teething baby, — stuff to bite I 
 
 ■ As they were ever. 
 
 
 " Such things should so be I" 
 
 Howe'er your choice fell, straight you took 
 
 Sage our desistence I 
 
 Your purchase, prompt your money rang 
 
 Rough-smooth let globe be. 
 
 On counter, — scarce the man forsook 
 
 Mixed — man's existence ! 
 
 His study of the " Times," just swang 
 Till-ward his hand that stopped the clang, — 
 
 
 Man — wise and foolish, 
 
 
 Lover and scorner. 
 
 Then off made buyer with a prize. 
 
 Docile and mulish — 
 
 Then seller to his " Times " returned ; 
 
 Keep each his comer ! 
 
 And so did day wear, wear, till eyes 
 
 Honey yet gall of it ! 
 
 Brightened apace, for rest was earned ; 
 
 There 's the life lying, 
 
 He locked door long ere candle burned. 
 
 And I see all of it. 
 
 
 Only,,! 'm dying ! 
 
 And whither went he V Ask himself. 
 
 
 Not me ! To change of scene, I think. 
 
 II 
 
 Once sold the ware and pursed the pelf. 
 
 Could I but live again 
 
 Chaffer was scarce his meat and drink, 
 
 Twice my lite over. 
 
 Nor all his music — money-chink. 
 
 Woiild I once strive again f 
 
 
 Would not I cover 
 
 Because a man has shop to mind 
 
 Quietly all of it — 
 
 In time and place, since flesh must lire. 
 
 Greed and ambition — 
 
 Needs spirit lack all life behind. 
 
 So, from the pall of it. 
 
 All stray thoughts, fancies fugitive. 
 
 Pass to fruition ? 
 
 All loves except what trade can give ? 
 
 
 
 " Soft 1 " I 'd say, " Soul mine ! 
 
 I want to know a butcher paints. 
 
 Three-score and ten years, 
 
 A baker rhymes for his pursuit. 
 
 Let the blind mole mine 
 
 Candlestick-maker much acquaints 
 His soul with song, or, haply mute, 
 Blows out his brains upon the flute ! 
 
 Digging out deniers ! 
 
 Let the dazed hawk soar. 
 
 Claim the sun's rights too I 
 
 
 Turf 't is thy walk 's o'er, 
 
 But — shop each day and all day long ! 
 
 Foliage thy flight 's to." 
 
 Friend, your good angel slept, your star 
 
 
 Suffered eclipse, fate did you wrong ! 
 
 Only a learner. 
 
 From where these sorts of treasures are. 
 
 Quick one or slow one. 
 
 There should our hearts be — Christ, how far I 
 
 Just a discemer. 
 
 ' 
 
 I would teach no one. 
 
 
 I am earth's native ; 
 
 PISGAH-SIGHTS 
 
 No rearranging it ! 
 
 
 I be creative. 
 
 When sanctioning a volume of Selectionsiroxa 
 
 Chopping and changing it ? 
 
 his poems. Browning made a third of Pisgah- 
 
 March, men, my fellows I 
 Those who, above me, 
 
 Sights to consist of the Proem to La Saisiaz. 
 
 I 
 
 (Distance so mellows) 
 
 Fancy you love me : 
 
 Over the ball of it. 
 
 Those who, below me. 
 
 Peering and prying. 
 
 (Distance makes great so) 
 
 How I see all of it. 
 
 Free to forego me. 
 
 Life there, outlying I 
 
 Fancy you hate so ! 
 
 Roughness and smoothness, 
 
 
 Shine and defilement, 
 
 Praising, reviling. 
 
 Grace and unoonthness : 
 
 Worst head and best head. 
 
 One reconcilement. 
 
 Past me defiling, 
 
 
 Never arrested. 
 
 Orbed as appointed. 
 
 Wanters, abounders. 
 
 Sister with brother 
 
 March, in gay mixture. 
 
 Joins, ne'er disjointed 
 
 Men, my surrounders ! 
 
 One from the other. 
 
 I am the fixture. 
 
NATURAL MAGIC 
 
 8il 
 
 So shall I fear thee, 
 ' Mightiness yonder ! 
 Mock-sun — more near thee, 
 
 What is to wonder ? 
 So shall I love thee, 
 
 Down in the dark, — lest 
 Glowworm I prove thee. 
 
 Star that now sparkiest I 
 
 FEARS AND SCRUPLES 
 
 In answer to a letter of inquiry, addressed to 
 him by Mr. W. G. Kingsland, Browning wrote 
 the following in regard to the meaning of this 
 poem : "I thiuk that the point I wanted to 
 illustrate was this : Where there is a genuine 
 love of the ' letters ' and ' actions ' of the invis- 
 ible 'friend,' — however these may be disad- 
 vantaged by an inability to meet the objections 
 to their authenticity or historical value urged 
 by ' experts ' who assume the privilege of learn- 
 ing over ignorance, — it would indeed be a 
 wrong to the wisdom and goodness of the 
 ' friend ' if he were supposed capable of over- 
 looking the actual ' love ' and only considering 
 the ' ignorance ' which, failing to in any degree 
 affect ' love,' is really the highest evidence that 
 ' love ' exists. So I meant, whether the result 
 be clear or no." 
 
 Hekf. 's my case. Of old I used to love him, 
 This same unseen friend, before I knew : 
 
 Dream there was none like him, none above 
 him, — ■ 
 Wake to hope apd trust my dream was true. 
 
 Loved I not his letters full of beauty ? 
 
 Not his actions famous far and wide ? 
 Absent, he would know I vowed him duty ; 
 
 Present, he would find me at his side. 
 
 Pleasant fancy ! for I had but letters. 
 
 Only knew of actions by hearsay : 
 He himself was busied with ray betters ; 
 
 What of that ? My turn must come some day. 
 
 "Some day" proving^ — no day! Here's the 
 puzzle. 
 Passed and passed my turn is. Why com- 
 plain ? 
 He 's so busied ! If I could but muzzle 
 People's foolish moutlis that give me pain ! 
 
 " Letters ?" (hear them!) "You a judge of 
 writing ? 
 
 Ask the experts 1 How they shake the head 
 O'er these characters, your friend's inditing — 
 
 Call them forgery from A to Z I 
 
 " Actions ? Where 's your certain proof " (they 
 bother) 
 
 " He, of all you find so great and good. 
 He, he only, claims this, that, the other 
 
 Action — claimed by men, a multitude ? " 
 
 I can simply wish I might refute you, 
 
 Wish my friend would, — by a word, a 
 wink, — 
 Bid me stop that foolish mouth, — you brute 
 you I 
 He keeps absent, — why, I cannot think. 
 
 Never mind ! Though foolishness may flout 
 me. 
 One thing 's sure enough : 't is neither frost, 
 No, nor fire, shall freeze or burn from out me 
 Thanks for truth — though falsehood, gained 
 — though lost. 
 
 All my days, I '11 go the softlier, sadlier. 
 For that dream's sake ! How forget the 
 thriU 
 Through and through me as I thought " The 
 gladlier 
 Lives my friend because I love him still ! " 
 
 Ah, but there 's a menace some one utters ! 
 "What and if your friend at home play 
 tricks ? 
 Peep at hide-and-seek behind the shutters ? 
 Mean your eyes should pierce throi^h solid 
 bricks ? 
 
 " What and if he, frowning, wake you, 
 dreamy ? 
 
 Lay on you the blame that bricks — conceal? 
 Say ' At least I saw who did not see me. 
 
 Does see now, and presently shall feel ' ? " 
 
 "Why, that makes your friend a monster! " 
 
 say you : 
 
 " Had his iouse no window ? At first nod, 
 
 Would yon not have hailed him?" Hush, I 
 
 pray you ! 
 
 What if this friend happened to be — God ? 
 
 NATURAL MAGIC 
 
 All I can say is — I saw it ! 
 
 The room was as bare as your hand. 
 
 I locked in the swarth little lady, — I swear. 
 
 From the head to the foot of her — well, quite 
 as bare ! t ii i • 
 
 " No Nauteh shall cheat me," said I, takmg 
 my stand 
 
 At this bolt which I draw ! " And this bolt — 
 I withdraw it. 
 
 And there laughs the lady, not hare, but em- 
 bowered , J! ■ J 
 
 With — who knows what verdure, o erfrmted, 
 o'erflowered ? 
 
 Impossible 1 Only — I saw it 1 
 
 All I can sing is — I feel it ! 
 
 This life was as blank as that room ; 
 
 I let you pass in here. Precaution, indeed? 
 
 Walls, ceiling and floor, — not a chance for a 
 
 weed ! 
 Wide opens the entrance : where 's cold now, 
 
 where 's gloom ? 
 No May to sow seed here, no June to reveal 
 
 it, 
 
8l2 
 
 MAGICAL NATURE 
 
 Behold you enshrined in these blooms of your 
 
 bringing, 
 These fruits of your bearing — nay, birds of 
 
 your winging ! 
 A fairy-tale ! Only — I feel it ! 
 
 MAGICAL NATURE 
 
 Flower — I never fancied, jewel — I profess 
 you! 
 Bright I see and soft I feel the outside of a 
 flower. 
 Save but glow inside and — jewel, I should 
 guess you. 
 Dim to sight and rough to touch : the glory is 
 the dower. 
 
 You, forsooth, a flower ? Nay, my love, a 
 jewel — 
 Jewel at no mercy of a moment in your 
 prime ! 
 Time may fray the flower-face : kind be time 
 or cruel. 
 Jewel, from each facet, flash your laugh at 
 time ! 
 
 BIFURCATION 
 
 We were two lovers ; let me lie by her. 
 
 My tomb beside her tomb. On hers inscribe — 
 
 *' I loved him ; but my reason bade prefer 
 
 Duty to love, reject the tempter's bribe 
 
 Of rose and lily when each path diverged, ' ' ' 
 
 And either I must pace to life's far end 
 
 As love should lead me, or, as duty urged. 
 
 Plod the worn causeway arm-in-arm with 
 
 friend. 
 So, truth turned falsehood : ' Jiow I loathe a 
 
 flower, 
 How prize the pavement ! ' still caressed his 
 
 ear — 
 The deafish friend's — through life's day, hour 
 
 by hour. 
 As he laughed (coughing) ' Ay, it would ap- 
 pear ! ' 
 But deep within my heart of hearts there hid 
 Ever the confidence, amends for all. 
 That heaven repairs what wrong earth's jouiv 
 
 ney did. 
 When love from life-long exile comes at call. 
 Duty and love, one broad way, were the best — 
 Who doubts ? But one or other was to choose, 
 I chose the darkling half, and wait the rest 
 In that new world where light and darkness 
 
 fuse." 
 
 Inscribe on mine — "I loved her: love's track 
 
 lay 
 O'er sand and pebble, as all travellers know. 
 Duty led through a smiling country, gay 
 With greensward where the rose and lily blow. 
 ' Our roads are diverse : farewell, love ! ' said 
 
 she : 
 '"''T is duty I abide by : homely sward 
 And not the rock-rough picturesque for me ! 
 Above, where both roads join, I wait reward. 
 
 lie you as constant to the path whereon 
 
 I leave you planted ! ' But man needs must 
 
 move, 
 Keep moving — whither, when the star is gone 
 Whereby he steps secure nor strays from love ? 
 No stone but I was tripped by, stumbling-block 
 But brought me to contusion. Where I fell, 
 There I lay flat, if moss disguised the rock. 
 Thence, if flint pierced, I rose and cried ' All 's 
 
 well ! 
 Duty be mine to tread in that high sphere 
 Where love from duty ne'er disparts, I trust, 
 And two halves make that whole, whereof — since 
 
 here 
 One must suffice a man — why, this one must ! ' " 
 
 Inscribe each tomb thus : then, some sage 
 
 acquaint 
 The simple — which holds sinner, which holds 
 
 saint ! 
 
 NUMPHOLEPTOS 
 
 The Browning fciociety became so puzzled 
 over the interpretation of this poem that 
 through Dr. Furnivall it applied to the poet for 
 an explanation and he replied : " Is not the key 
 to the meaning of the poem in its title vu/h^oAijtt- 
 TO! [caught or rapt by a nymph] not yuraun- 
 patrnii [a woman lover] ? An allegory, that is, 
 of an impossible ideal object of love, accepted 
 conventionally as such by a man who, all the 
 while, cannot quite blind himself to the demon- 
 strable fact that the possessor of knowledge 
 and purity obtained without the natural conse- 
 quences of obtaining them by achievement — 
 not inheritance, — such a being is imaginary, 
 not real, a nymph and no woman ; and only 
 such an one would be ignorant of and surprised 
 at the results of a lover's endeavor to emulate 
 the qualities which the beloved is entitled to 
 consider as pre-existent to earthly experience, 
 and independent of its inevitable results. I 
 had no particular woman in my mind ; certainly 
 never intended to personify wisdom, philosophy, 
 or any other abstraction ; and the orb, raying 
 color out of whiteness, was altogether a fancy 
 of my own. The ' seven spirits ' are in the 
 Apocalypse, also in Coleridge and Byron, — a 
 common image." 
 
 Still you stand, still you listen, still you 
 
 smile ! 
 Still melts your moonbeam through me, white 
 
 awhile. 
 Softening, sweetening, till sweet and soft 
 Increase so round this heart of mine, that oft 
 I could believe your moonbeam-smile has past 
 The pallid limit, lies, transformed at last 
 To sunlight and salvation — warms the soul 
 It sweetens, softens! Would you pass that 
 
 goal, 
 
NUMPHOLEPTOS 
 
 Gain love's birth at the limit's happier verge, 
 And, where an iridescence lurks, but urge 
 The hesitating pallor on to prime 
 Of dawn ! — true blood-streaked, sun-warmth, 
 
 action-time. 
 By heart-pulse ripened to a ruddy glow 
 Of gold above my clay — I scarce should know 
 From gold's self, thus suffused ! For gold 
 
 means love. 
 What means the sad slow silver smile above 
 My clay but pity, pardon ? — at the best. 
 But acquiescence that 1 take my rest. 
 Contented to be clay, while in your heaven 
 The sun reserves love for the Spirit-Seven 
 Companioning Grod's throne they lamp before, 
 — Leaves earth a mute waste only wandered 
 
 o'er 
 By that pale soft sweet disempassioned moon 
 Which smiles nie slow forgiveness ! Such, the 
 
 boon 
 I beg ? Nay, dear, submit to this — just this 
 Supreme endeavor ! As my lips now kiss 
 Your feet, my arms convulse your shrouding 
 
 robe. 
 My eyes, acquainted with the dust, dare probe 
 Your eyes above for — what, if bom, would 
 
 blind 
 Mine with redundant bliss, as flash may find 
 The inert nerve, sting awake the palsied limb. 
 Bid with life's ecstasy sense overbrim 
 And suck back death in the resnrging joy — 
 Love, the love whole and sole without alloy ! 
 
 Vainly ! The promise withers ! I employ 
 Lips, arms, eyes, pray the prayer which finds 
 
 the word. 
 Make the appeal which must be felt, not heard, 
 And none the more is changed your calm re- 
 gard : 
 Bather, its sweet and soft grow harsh and 
 
 hard — 
 Forbearance, then repulsion, then disdain. 
 Avert the rest ! I rise, see ! — make, again 
 Once more, the old departure for some track 
 Untried, yet through a world which brings me 
 
 back 
 Ever thus fruitlessly to find your feet. 
 To fix your eyes, to pray the soft and sweet 
 Which smile there — take from his new pilgrim- 
 age 
 Your outcast, once your inmate, and assuage 
 With love — not placid pardon now — his thirst 
 For a mere drop from out the ocean erst 
 He drank at! Well, the quest shall be re- 
 newed. 
 Fear nothing ! Though I linger, unembued 
 With any drop, my lips thus close. I go ! 
 So did I leave you, I have found you so. 
 And doubtlessly, if fated to return. 
 So shall my pleading persevere and earn 
 Pardon — not love — in that same smile, I 
 
 learn. 
 And lose the meaning of, to learn once more, 
 Vainly ! 
 
 What fairy track do I explore ? 
 What magic hall return to, like the gem 
 Centuply-angled o'er a diadem ? 
 
 In 
 You dwell there, hearted ; from your midmost 
 
 home 
 Rays forth — through that fantastic world I 
 
 ruam 
 Ever — from centre to circumference, 
 Shaft upon colored shaft : this crimsons thence, 
 That purples out its precinct through the waste. 
 Surely I had your sanction when I faced, 
 Fared forth upon that untried yellow ray- 
 Whence I retrack my steps ? They end to-day 
 Where they began, before your feet, beneath 
 Your eyes, youi smile : the blade is shut in 
 
 sheath. 
 Fire quenched in flint ; irradiation, late 
 Triumphant through the distance, finds its fate, 
 Merged in your blank pure soul, alike the 
 
 source 
 And tomb of that prismatic glow : divorce 
 Absolute, all-conclusive ! Forth I fared, 
 Treading the lambent flaraelet : little cared 
 If now its flickering took the topaz tint, 
 If now my dull-caked path gave sulphury hint 
 Of subterranean rage — no stay nor stint 
 To yellow, since you sanctioned that I bathe. 
 Burnish me, soul and bo(h^, swim and swathe 
 In yellow license. Here I reek su:Sused 
 With crocus, saffron, orange, as I used 
 With scarlet, purple, every dye o' the bow 
 Born of the storm-cloud. As before, you show 
 Scarce recognition, no approval, some 
 Mistrust, more wonder at a man become 
 Monstrous in garb, nay — flesh disguked as well, 
 Through his adventure. Whatsoe'er befell, 
 I followed, wheresoe'er it wound, that vein 
 You authorized should leave your whiten^s, 
 
 stain 
 Earth's sombre stretch beyond your midmost 
 
 place 
 Of vantage, — trode that tinct whereof the trace 
 On garb and flesh repel you ! Yes, I plead 
 Your own permission — your command, indeed, 
 That who would worthily retain the love 
 Must share the knowledge shrined those eyes 
 
 above. 
 Go boldly on adventure, break through bounds 
 0' the quintessential whiteness that surrounds 
 Your feet, obtain experience of each tinge 
 That bickers forth to broaden out, impinge 
 Plainer his foot its pathway all distinct 
 From every other. Ah, the wonder, linked 
 With fear, as exploration manifests 
 What agency it was first tipped the crests 
 Of unnamed wildflower, soon protruding grew 
 Portentous 'mid the sands, as when his hue 
 Betrays him and the burrowing snake gleams 
 
 through ; 
 Till, last . . . but why parade more shame and 
 
 pain ? 
 Are not the proofs upon me ? Here again 
 I pass into your presence, I receive 
 Your smile of pity, pardon, and I leave . . , 
 No, not this last of times I leave you, mute, 
 Submitted to my penance, so my foot 
 May yet again adventure, tread, from source 
 To issue, one more ray of rays which conrse 
 Each other, at your bidding, from the sphere 
 Silver and sweet, their birthplace, down that 
 
 drear 
 
gi4 
 
 APPEARANCES 
 
 Dark of the world', — you promise shall return 
 Your pilgrim jewelled as with drops o' the urn 
 The raiubow painta from, and no smatch at 
 
 aU 
 Of ghastliness at edge of some cloud-pall 
 Heaven cowers before, as earth awaits the fall 
 O' the bolt and flash of doom. Who trusts your 
 
 word 
 Tries the adventure : and returns — absurd 
 As frightful — in that sulphur-steeped disguise 
 Mocking the priestly cloth-of-gold, sole piize 
 The arch-heretic was wont to bear away 
 Until he reached the burning. No, I say : 
 No fresh adventure ! No more seeking love 
 At end of toil, and finding, calm above 
 My passion, the old statuesque regard, 
 The sad petrific smile I 
 
 you — less hard 
 And hateful than mistaken and obtuse 
 Unreason of a she-intelligence ! 
 You very woman with the pert pretence 
 To match the male achievement ! Like enough ! 
 Ay, you were easy victors, did the rough 
 Straightway efface itself to smooth, the gruff 
 Grind down and grow a whisper, — did man's 
 
 truth 
 Subdue, for sake of chivalry and ruth. 
 Its rapier-edge to suit the bulrush-spear 
 Womanly falsehood fights with ! O that ear 
 All fact pricks rudely, that thrice-superfine 
 Feminity of sense, with right divine 
 To waive all process, take result stain-free 
 From out the very muck wherein . . . 
 
 Ah me ! 
 The true slave's querulous outbreak ! AU the 
 
 rest 
 Be resignation ! Forth at your behest 
 I fare. Who knows but this — the crimson- 
 quest — 
 May deepen to a sunrise, not decay 
 To that cold sad sweet smile ? — which I obey. 
 
 APPEARANCES 
 
 And so you found that poor room dull. 
 Dark, hardly to your taste, my dear? .. 
 
 Its features seemed xmbeautif ul : 
 
 But this I know — 't was there, not here, 
 
 You plighted troth to me, the word 
 
 Which — ask that poor room how it heard. 
 
 And this rich room obtains your praise 
 Unqualified, — so bright, so fair. 
 
 Bo all whereat perfection stays ? 
 Ay, but remember — here, not there. 
 
 The other word was spoken ! — Ask 
 
 This rich room how you dropped the mask I 
 
 ST. MARTIN'S SUMMER 
 
 No protesting, dearest 1 
 Hardly kisses even ! 
 Don't we both know how it ends ? 
 How the greenest leaf turns serest. 
 
 Bluest outbreak —blankest heaven, 
 Lovers — friends ? 
 
 You would build a mansion, 
 I would weave a bower 
 
 — Want the heart for enterprise. 
 Walls admit of no expansion : 
 
 ' TrellLs-woik may haply flower 
 Twice the size. 
 
 What makes glad Life's Winter ? 
 New buds, old blooms after. 
 Sad the sighing " How suspect 
 Beams would ere mid-Autumn splinter, 
 Koofttee scarce support a rafter, 
 Walls lie wrecked ? " 
 
 You are young, my princess ! 
 I am hardly jlder : 
 Yet — I steal a glance behind t 
 Dare I tell yoii what convinces 
 Timid me that you, if bolder, 
 Bold — are blind? 
 
 Where we plan our dwelling 
 Glooms a graveyard surely ! 
 Headstone, footstone moss may drape, — 
 Name, date, violets hide from spelling, — 
 But, though corpses rot obscurely. 
 Ghosts escape. 
 
 Ghosts ! O breathing Beanty, 
 Give my frank word pardon ! 
 
 What if I — somehow, somewhere — 
 Pledged my soul to endless duty 
 Many a time and oft ? Be hard on 
 Love — laid there ? 
 
 Nay, blame grief that 's fickle. 
 Time that proves a traitor. 
 Chance, change, all that purpose warps, — = 
 Death who spares to thrust the sickle 
 Laid Love low, through flowers which later 
 Shroud the corpse ! 
 
 And you, my winsome lady, 
 Whispei' with like frankness ! 
 Lies nothing buried long ago ? 
 Are yon — which shimmer 'mid the shady 
 Where moss and violet run to rankness— ' 
 Tombs or no ? 
 
 Who taxes you with murder ? 
 My hands are clean — or nearly I 
 Love Being mortal needs must pass. 
 Repentance ? Nothing were absurder. 
 Enough : we felt Love's loss severely ; 
 Though now — alas ! 
 
 Love's corpse lies quiet therefore, 
 
 Only Love's ghost plays truant. 
 
 And warns us have in wholesome awe 
 Durable mansionry ; that 's wherefore 
 
 I weave but trellis-work, pursuant 
 
 — Life, to law. 
 
 The solid, not the fragile. 
 Tempts rain and hau and thunder. 
 
HERVE RIEL 
 
 8is 
 
 If bower stand firm at Autumn's close, 
 Beyond my hope, — why, boughs were agile ; 
 If bower fall flat, we scarce need wonder 
 Wreathing — rose I 
 
 So, truce to the protesting, 
 So, muffled be the kisses ! 
 For, would we but avow the truth, 
 Sober is genuine joy. No jesting ! 
 Ask else Penelope, Ulysses — 
 Old in youth ! 
 
 For why shoTild ghosts feel angered ? 
 Let all their interference 
 Be faint march-music in the air I 
 '■ Up ! Join the rear of us the vanguard ! 
 Up, lovers, dead to all appearance. 
 Laggard pair ! " 
 
 The while you clasp me closer. 
 The while I press you deeper, 
 As safe we chuckle, — under breath, 
 Yet all the slyer, the jocoser, — 
 ** So, life can boast its day, like leap-year. 
 Stolen from death ! " 
 
 Ah me — the sudden terror ! 
 Hence quick — avaunt, avoid me, 
 You cheat, the ghostly flesh-disguised ! 
 Nay, all the ghosts in one ! Strange error ! 
 So, 't was Death's self that clipped and 
 coyed me, 
 Loved — aud lied ! 
 
 Ay, dead loves are the potent ! 
 Like any cloud they used you. 
 
 Mere semblance you, but substance they \ 
 Build we no mansion, weave we no tent ! 
 Mere flesh — their spirit interfused you I 
 Hence, I say ! 
 
 All theirs, none yours the glamour ! 
 Theirs each low word that won me, 
 Soft look that foiuid me Love's, and left 
 What else but you — the teal's and clamor 
 That 's all your very own I . Undone me — 
 Ghost-bereft ! 
 
 HERV£ RIEL 
 
 This ballad was printed first in the Cornkill 
 Magazine for March, 1S71. : In a letter to Mr. 
 George Smith, one of the publishers oi the 
 magazine, Browning stated that he intended to 
 devote the proceeds of the poem to the aid of 
 the people of Paris suffering from the Franco- 
 German war. The publisher generously sec- 
 onded his resolve and paid one hundred pounds 
 for the poem. 
 
 On the sea and at the Hogue, sixteen hundred 
 ■ ninety-two. 
 Did the English fight the French, — woe to 
 France ! 
 
 And, the thirty-first of May, helter-skelter 
 
 through the blue. 
 Like a crowd of frightened porpoises a shoal of 
 
 sharks pui-sue. 
 Came crowding ship on ship to Saint MaJo 
 
 on the Ranee, 
 With the English fleet in view. 
 
 'T was the squadron that escaped, with the vic- 
 tor in full chase ; 
 First and foremost of the drove, in his great 
 ship, Damfreville ; 
 Close on him fled, great and small, 
 Twenty-two good ships in all ; 
 And they signalled to the place 
 " Help the winners of a race ! 
 Get us guidance, give us harbor, take us 
 
 quick — or, c[uicker stiU, 
 Here 's the English can and will ! " 
 
 Then the pilots of the place put out brisk and 
 leapt on board ; 
 " Why, what hope or chance have ships like 
 these to pass ? " laughed they : 
 " Rocks to starboard, rocks to port, all the 
 
 passage scarred and scored, 
 Shall the ' Formidable ' here with her twelve 
 and eighty guns 
 Think to make the river-mouth by the single 
 narrow way. 
 Trust to enter where 't is ticklish for a craft of 
 twenty tons, 
 And with flow at full beside ? 
 Now, 't is slackest ebb of tide. 
 Reach the mooring ? Rather say. 
 While rock stands or water runs. 
 Not a ship wiU leave the bay ! " 
 
 Then was caUed a council straight. 
 
 Brief and bitter the debate ; 
 
 '* Here's the English at our heels; would you 
 
 have them take in tow 
 All that 's left us of the fleet, linked together 
 
 stem and bow. 
 For a prize to Plymouth Sound ? 
 Better ran the ships aground \ " 
 
 (Ended Damfreville his speech). 
 " Not a minute more to wait ! 
 Let the Captains all and ea^h 
 Shove ashore, then blow up, bum the vessels 
 on the beach ! 
 France must undergo her fate. 
 
 " Give the word ! " But no such word 
 Was ever spoke or heard ; 
 For up stood, for out stepped, for in struck 
 amid all these 
 — A Captain? A Lieutenant? A Mate — first, 
 second, third? 
 No such man of mark, and meet 
 With his betters to compete ! 
 
Si6 
 
 HERVfe RIEL 
 
 But a simple Breton sailor pressed by 
 Tourville for the fleet, 
 A poor coasting-pilot he, Herv^ Kiel the Croi- 
 
 sickese. 
 
 And "What mockery or malice have we 
 here ? " cries Herv^ Kiel : 
 '* Are you mad, you Malouins ? Are you 
 cowards, fools, or rogues ? 
 Talk to me of rocks and shoals, me who took 
 
 the soundings, tell 
 On my fingers every bank, every shallow, every 
 swell 
 'Twixt the offing here and Grfeve where the 
 river disembogues ? 
 Are you bought by English gold? Is it love 
 the lying 's for ? 
 Morn and eve, night and day, 
 Have I piloted your bay. 
 Entered free and anchored fast at the foot of 
 Solidor. 
 Burn the fleet and ruin France ? That were 
 worse than fifty Hognes ! 
 Sirs, they know 1 speak the truth ! Sirs, 
 believe me there 's a way ! 
 Only let nie lead the line, 
 iHave the biggest ship to steer, 
 Get this ' Formidable ' clear. 
 Make the others follow mine. 
 And I lead them, most and least, by a passage 
 I know well, 
 Right to Solidor past Grfeve, 
 And there lay them safe and sound ; 
 And if one ship misbehave, 
 — Keel so much as grate the ground. 
 Why, I 've nothing but my life, '^here's my 
 head ! " cries Herv4 Kiel. 
 
 Not a minute more to wait. 
 
 " Steer us in, then, small and great ! 
 
 Take the helm, lead the line, save the squa- 
 dron ! " cried its chief. 
 Captains, give the sailor place ! 
 
 He is Admiral, in brief. 
 Still the north-wind, by God's grace ! 
 See the noble fellow's face 
 As the big ship, with a bound. 
 Clears the entry like a hound. 
 Keeps the passage as its inch of way were the 
 wide sea's profound ! 
 
 See, safe through shoal and rock. 
 
 How they follow in a flock. 
 Not a ship that misbehaves, not a keel that 
 grates the ground. 
 
 Not a spar that comes to grief ! 
 The peril, see, is past, 
 All are harbored to the last. 
 And just as Herv4 Riel hollas " Anchor ! " — 
 
 sure as fate. 
 Up the English come — too late I 
 
 So, the storm subsides to calm : 
 They see the green trees wave 
 On the heights o'erlooking Grive. 
 
 Hearts that bled are stanched with balm. 
 " Just our rapture to enhance, 
 
 Let the English rake the hay, 
 Gnash their teeth and glare askance 
 
 As they cannonade away 1 
 'Neath rampired Solidor pleasant riding on the 
 
 Ranee ! " 
 How hope succeeds despair on each Captain's 
 
 countenance ! 
 Out burst all with one accord, 
 ' ' This is Paradise for Hell ! 
 Let France, let France's Kir^ 
 Thank the man that did the thing ! " 
 What a shout, and all one word, 
 
 "Herv^Riel!" 
 As he stepped in front once more, 
 Not a symptom of surprise 
 In the frank blue Breton eyes, 
 Just the same man as before. 
 
 Then said Damfreville, "My friend, 
 I must speak out at the end. 
 
 Though I find the speaking hard. 
 Praise is deeper than the lips : 
 You have saved the King his ships. 
 
 You must name your own reward. 
 'Faith, our sun was near eclipse ! 
 Demand whate'er you will, 
 France remains your debtor still. 
 Ask to heart's content and have ! or my name *3 
 not Damfreville." 
 
 Then a beam of fun outbroke 
 On the bearded mouth that spoke, 
 As the honest heart laughed through 
 Those frank eyes of Breton blue : 
 " Since I needs must say my say. 
 
 Since on board the duty 's done. 
 
 And from Malo Roads to Croisic Point, what 
 is it but a run ? — 
 Since 't is ask and have, I may — 
 
 Since the others go ashore — 
 Come ! A good whole holiday ! 
 
 Leave to go and see my wife, whom I call the 
 Belle Aurore ! " 
 
 That he asked and that he got, — nothing 
 
 Name and deed alike are lost : 
 Not a pillar nor a post 
 
 In his Croisic keeps alive the feat as it befell ', 
 Not a head in white and black 
 On a single fishing-smack, 
 
 In memory of the man but for whom had gone 
 to wrack 
 
 All that France saved from the fight whence 
 England bore the bell. 
 Go to Paris : rank on rank 
 
 Search the heroes flung pell-mell 
 On the Louvre, face and flank ! 
 
 You shall look long enough ere you come to 
 Herv^ Riel. 
 So. for better <ind for worse. 
 
A FORGIVENESS 
 
 8.7 
 
 Herv^ Riel, accept my verse ! 
 In my verse, Herv^ Kiel, do thoii once more 
 Save the squadron, honor France, love thy wife 
 the Belle Aurore ! 
 
 A FORGIViiNESS 
 
 I AM indeed the personage you know. 
 As for my wife, — what happened long ago — 
 You have a right to question me, as I 
 Am bound to answer. 
 
 ("Son, a fit reply!" 
 The monk halt spoke, half ground through his 
 
 clenched teeth. 
 At the confession-grate I knelt heneath.) 
 
 Thus then all happened. Father! Power and 
 
 I had as still I have, I ran life's race. 
 With the whole world to see, as only strains 
 His strength some athlete whose prodigious 
 
 gains 
 Of good appall him : happy to excess, — 
 Work freely done should balance happiness 
 Fully enjoyed ; and, since beneath my roof 
 Housed she who made home heaven, in heaven's 
 
 behoof 
 I went forth every day, and all day long 
 Worked for the world. Look, how the laborer's 
 
 song 
 Cheers him ! Thus sang my soul, at each sharp 
 
 throe 
 Of laboring flesh and blood — " She loves me 
 
 One day, perhaps such song so knit the nerve 
 That work grew play and vanished. " I deserve 
 Haply my heaven an hour before the time ! " 
 I laughed, as silverly the clockhouse-chime 
 Surprised me passing through the postern-gate 
 — Not the main entry where the menials wait 
 And wonder why the world's affairs allow 
 The master sudden leisure. That was how 
 I took the private garden-way for once. 
 
 Forth from the alcove, I saw start, ensconce 
 Himself behind the porphyry vase, a man. 
 
 My fancies in the natural order ran : 
 
 " A spy, — perhaps a foe in ambuscade, — 
 
 A thief, — more like, a sweetheart of some maid 
 
 Who pitched on the alcove for tryst perhaps." 
 
 'Stand there!" Ibid. 
 
 Whereat my man but wraps 
 His faoe the closelier with uplifted arm 
 Whereon the cloak lies, strikes in blind alarm 
 This and that pedestal as,— stretch and stoop,— 
 Now in, now out of sight, he thrids the group 
 Of statues, marble god and goddess ranged 
 Each side the pathway, till the gate 's exchanged 
 For safety: one step thence, the street, you 
 know! 
 
 Thus far I followed with my gaze. Then, slow. 
 Near on admiringly, I breathed again, 
 
 And — back to that last fancy of the train — 
 " A danger risked for hope of just a word 
 With — which of all my nest may be the bird 
 This poacher covets for her plumage, pray ? 
 Carmen ? Juana ? Carmen seems too gay 
 For such adventure, while Juana 's grave 
 — Would scorn the f oUy. I applaud the knave ! 
 He had the eye, could single from my brood 
 His proper fledgeling ! " 
 
 As I turned, there stood 
 In face of me, my wife stone-still stone-white. 
 Whether one bound had brought her, — at first 
 
 sight 
 Of what she judged the encounter, sure to be 
 Next moment, of the venturous man and me, — 
 Brought her to clutch and keep me from my 
 
 prey: 
 Whether impelled because her death no day 
 Could come so absolutely opportune 
 As now at joy's height, like a year in June 
 Stayed at the fall of its first ripened rose ; 
 Or whether hungry for my hate — who 
 
 knows ? — 
 Eager to end an irksome lie, and taste 
 Our tingling true relation, hate embraced 
 By hate one naked moment : — anyhow 
 There stone-still stone-white stood my wife, but 
 
 now 
 The woman who made heaven within ray house. 
 Ay, she who faced me was my very spouse 
 As well as love — you are to recollect ! 
 
 "Stay!" she said. "Keep at least one soul 
 
 With crime, that 's spotless hitherto — your 
 
 own! 
 Kill me who court the blessing, who alone 
 Was, am, and shall be guilty, first to last ! 
 The man lay helpless in the toils I cast 
 About him, helpless as the statue there 
 Against that strangling bell-flower's bondage : 
 
 tear 
 Away and tread to dust the parasite, 
 But do the passive marble no despite ! 
 I love him as I hate you. Kjll me ! Strike 
 At one blow both infinitudes alike 
 Out of existence — hate and love ! Whence love ? 
 That 's safe inside my heart, nor will remove 
 For any searchingof your steel, I think. 
 Whence hate ? The secret lay on lip, at brink 
 Of speech, in one fierce tremble to escape, 
 At every form wherein your love took shape, 
 At each new provocation of your kiss. 
 Kill me!" 
 
 We went in. 
 
 Next day after this, 
 I felt as if the speech might come. I spoke — 
 Easily, after all. 
 
 " The lifted cloak 
 Was screen sufficient : I concern myself 
 Hardly with laying hands on who for pelf — 
 Whate'er the ignoble kind— may prowl and 
 
 brave 
 Cuffing and kicking proper to a knave 
 
8i8 
 
 A FORGIVENESS 
 
 Detected by my household's vigilance; < 
 
 Enough of such ! As tor my love-romance -^ 
 I, like our good Hidalgo,'rubmy eyes 
 And wake and wonder how the film could rise 
 Which changed for me a barbers' basin straight 
 Into — Mambrino's helin ? I hesitate 
 Nowise to say — God's sacramental cupl 
 Why should I blame the brass which, hurnished 
 
 up, 
 Will blaze, to all but me, as good as gold ? 
 To me — a warning I was overbold 
 In judging metals. The Hidalgo waked 
 Only to die, if I remember, '■ — staked ■ 
 His life upon the basin's worth, and lost : 
 While I confess torpidity at most 
 In here and there a limb ; but, lame and halt, 
 Still should I work on, still repair my fault 
 Ere I took rest in death, — no fear at all ! 
 Now, work — no word before the curtain 
 
 faU!" 
 
 The "curtain"? That of death on life, I 
 
 meant : 
 My "word," permissible in death's event, 
 Would be — truth, soul to soul ; for, otherwise, 
 Day by day, three years long, there had to rise 
 And, night by night, to fall upon our stage — 
 Ours, doomed to public play by heritage — 
 Another curtain, when the world, perforce 
 Our critical assembly, in due course 
 Came and went, witnessing, gave praise or 
 
 blame 
 To art-mimetic. It had spoiled the game 
 If j suffered to set foot behind our scene, 
 The world had witnessed how stage-king and 
 
 ' < queen^ 
 Gallant and lady, but a minute since 
 Enarming each the other, would evince 
 No sign of recognition as they took 
 His way and her way to whatever nook 
 Waited them in the darkness either side 
 Of that bright stage where lately groom and 
 
 bride 
 Had fired the audience to a frenzy-fit 
 Of sympathetic rapture — every whit 
 Earned as the curtain fell on her and me, 
 — Actors. Three whole years, nothing was to 
 
 see 
 But calm and concord : where a speech was 
 
 due 
 There came the speech ; when the smiles were 
 
 wanted too. 
 Smiles were as ready. In a place like mine, 
 Where foreign and domestic cares combine. 
 There's audience every day and all day long ; 
 But finally the last of the whole throng 
 Who linger lets one see his back. For her — 
 Why, liberty and liking : I aver, 
 Xiikmg and liberty ! For me — I breathed. 
 Let my face rest from every wrinkle wreathed 
 Smile-like about the mouth, unlearned my task 
 Of personation till next day bade mask. 
 And quietly betook me from that world 
 To the real world, not pageant : there unfurled 
 In work, its wings, my soul, the fretted power. 
 Three years I worked, each minute of each 
 
 hour 
 Kot claimed by acting : — work I may dispense 
 
 With talk about, since work in evidence, 
 Perhaps in history ; who knows or cares ? ' ' 
 
 After three years, this way, aU unawares, 
 
 Our acting ended. She and I, at close 
 
 Of a loud night-feast, led. between two rows 
 
 Of bending male and female loyalty. 
 
 Our lord the king down staircase, while, held 
 
 high 
 At arm's length did the twisted tapers' flare 
 Herald his passage from our palace, where 
 Such visiting left glory evermore. 
 Again the ascent in' public, till at door 
 As we two stood by the saloon — now blank 
 And disencumbered of its guests — there sank 
 A whisper in my ear, so low and yet 
 So unmistakable ! 
 
 " I half forget 
 The chamber you repair to, and I want 
 Occasion for one short word — if you grant 
 That grace — within a certain room you called 
 Our 'Study,' for you wrote there while I 
 
 scrawled 
 Some paper full of faces for my sport. 
 That room I can remember. Just one short 
 Word with you there, for the remembrance' 
 
 sake ! " 
 
 " Follow me thither ! " I replied. 
 
 We break 
 The gloom a little, as with guiding lamp 
 I lead the way, leave warmth and cheer, by 
 
 damp 
 Blind disused serpentining ways afar 
 From where the habitable chambers are, — 
 Ascend, descend stairs tunnelled through the 
 
 stone, — 
 Always in silence, — till I reach the lone 
 Chamber sepulchred for my very own 
 Out of the palace-quarry. When a boy, 
 Here was my fortress, stronghold from annoy, 
 Proof-positive of ownership : in youth 
 I garnered up my gleanings here — uncouth 
 But precious relics of vain hopes, vain fears ; 
 Finally, this became in after-years 
 My closet of entrenchment to withstand 
 Invasion of the foe on every hand — 
 The multifarious herd in bower and hall. 
 State-room, — rooms whatsoe'er the style, 
 
 which call 
 On masters to be mindful that, before 
 Men, they must look like men and something 
 
 more. 
 Here, — when our lord the king's bestowment 
 
 ceased 
 To deck me on the day that, golden-fleeced, 
 I touched ambition's height, — 't was here, 
 
 released 
 From glory (always symbolled by a chain !) 
 No sooner was I privileged to gain 
 My secret domicile than glad f flung 
 That last toy on the table — gazed where hnng 
 On hook my father's gift, the arquebus — 
 And asked myself, " Shall I envisage thus 
 The new prize and the old prize, when I reach 
 Another year's experience ? — own that each 
 
A FORGIVENESS 
 
 819 
 
 Equalled advantage — sportsman's — states- 
 man's tool ? 
 That broughtme down an eagle, this — a fool! " 
 
 Into which room on entry, I set down 
 
 The lamp, and turning: saw whose rustled gown 
 
 Had told me my wife followed, pace for pace. 
 
 Each of us looked the other in the face. 
 
 She spoke. " Since I could die now "... 
 
 (To explain 
 Why that first struck me, know — not once 
 
 again 
 Since the adventure at the porphyry's edge 
 Three years before, which sundered like a 
 
 wedge 
 Her soul from mine, — though daily, Smile to 
 
 smile. 
 We stood before the public, — all the while 
 Not once had I distinguished, in that face 
 I paid observance to, the faintest trace 
 Or feature more than requisite for eyes 
 To do their duty by and recognize : 
 So did I force mine to obey my will 
 And pry no further. There exists such skill, — 
 Those know who need it. What physician 
 
 shrinks 
 From needful contact with a corpse? He 
 
 drinks 
 No plague so long as thirst for knowledge — not 
 An' idler impulse — prompts inquiry. What, 
 And will you disbelieve in power to bid 
 Our spirit back to bounds, as though we chid 
 A child from scrutiny that 's just and right 
 In manhood ? Sense, not soul, accomplished 
 
 sight, 
 Reported daily she it was — not how 
 Nor why a change had come to cheek and 
 
 brow.) 
 
 *' Since I could die now of the truth concealed, 
 Yet dare not, must not die, — so seems revealed 
 The Virgin's mind to me, — for death means 
 
 peace 
 Wherein no lawful part have I, whose lease 
 Of life and punishment the truth avowed 
 May haply lengthen, — let me push the shroud 
 Away, that steals to muffle ere is just 
 My penance-fire in snow ! I dare — I must 
 Live, by avowal of the truth — this truth — 
 Ilofed you I Thanks for the fresh serpent's 
 
 tooth 
 That, by a prompt new pang more exquisite 
 Than aU preceding torture, proves me right ! 
 I loved you yet I lost you ! May I go 
 Bum to the ashes, now my shame you know ? " 
 
 I think there never was such — how express ? — 
 Horror coquetting with voluptuousness. 
 As in those aims of Eastern workmanship — 
 Yataghan, kandjar. things that rend and rip. 
 Gash rough, slash smooth, help hate so many 
 
 ways, 
 Yet ever keep a beauty that betrays 
 Love still at work with the artificer 
 Throughout his quaint devising. Why prefer. 
 Except for love s sake, that a blade should 
 
 writhe 
 
 And bicker like a flame ? — now play the 
 
 scythe 
 As if some broad neck tempted, — bow con- 
 tract 
 And needle off into a fineness lacked 
 For just that puncture which the heart de- 
 mands ? 
 Then, such adornment I Wherefore need our 
 
 hands ■ - 
 Enclose not ivoiy alone, nor gold 
 Roughened for use, but jewels ? Nay, behold I 
 Fancy my favorite — which I seem to grasp 
 While I describe the luxury. No asp 
 Is diapered more delicate round throat 
 Than this below the handle 1 These denote 
 — These mazy lines meandering, to end 
 Only in flesh they open — what intend 
 They else but water-purlings — pale contrast 
 With the life-crimson where they blend at 
 
 last ? 
 And mark the handle's dim pellucid green, 
 Carved, the hard jadestone, as you pinch a 
 
 bean, 
 Into a sort of parrot-bird I He pecks 
 A grape-bunch ; his two eyes are ruby-speeks 
 Pure from the mine ; seen this way, — glassy 
 
 blank, 
 But turn them, — lo, the inmost fire, that 
 
 shrank 
 From sparklii^, sends a red dart right to aim! 
 Why did I choose such toys? Perhaps the 
 
 game 
 Of peaceful men is warlike, just as men 
 War-wearied get amusement from that pen 
 And paper we grow sick of — statesfolk tired 
 Of merely (when such measures are required) 
 Dealing out doom to people by three words, 
 A signature and seal : we play with swords 
 Suggestive of quick process. That is how 
 I came to like the toys described you now, 
 Store of which glittered on the walls and 
 
 strewed 
 The table, even, while my wife pursued 
 Her purpose to its ending. " Now you know 
 This shame, my three years' torture, let me go, 
 Bum to the very ashes ! You — I lost. 
 Yet you— I loved!" 
 
 The thing I pity most 
 In men is — action prompted by surprise 
 Of anger : men ? nay, bulls — whose onset lies 
 At instance of the firework and the goad ! 
 Once the foe prostrate, — trampling once be- 
 
 stowed, — 
 Prompt follows placability, regret, 
 Atonement. Trust me, blood-warmth never 
 
 yet 
 Betokened strong will ! As no leap of pulse 
 Pricked roe, that first time, so did none con- 
 vulse 
 My veins at this occasion for resolve. 
 Had that devolved which did not then devolve 
 Upon me, I had done — what now to do 
 Was quietly apparent. 
 
 " Tell me who 
 The man was, crouching by the porphyry 
 
820 
 
 CENCIAJA 
 
 " No, never 1 All was folly In his case, 
 
 All guilt in mine. I tempted, he complied." 
 
 " And yet you loved me ? " 
 
 " Loved you. Double-dyed 
 In folly and in gfuilt, I thought you gave 
 Your heart and soul away from me to slave 
 At statecraft. Since my right in you seemed 
 
 lost, 
 I stung myself to teach you, to your cost, 
 What you rejected could be prized beyond 
 Life, heaven, by the first fool 1 threw a fond 
 Look on, a fatal word to." 
 
 " And you still 
 Love me ? Do I conjecture well or ill ? " 
 
 " Conjecture — well or ill ! I had three years 
 To spend in learning you." 
 
 " We both are peers 
 In knowledge, therefore : since three years are 
 
 spent 
 liire thus much of yourself I learn — who went 
 Back to the house, that day, and brought my 
 
 mind 
 To bear upon your action, uncomhined 
 Motive from motive, till the dross, deprived 
 Of every purer particle, survived 
 At last in native simple hideousness. 
 Utter conteraptibility, nor less 
 Nor more. Conteraptibility — exempt 
 How could I, from its proper due — contempt ? 
 I have too much despised you to divert 
 My life from its set course by help or hurt 
 Of your all-despicable life — perturb 
 The calm I work in, by — men's mouths to curb. 
 Which at such news were clamorous enough — 
 Men's eyes to shut before my broidered stuff 
 With the huge hole there, my emblazoned wall 
 Blank where a scutcheon hung, — by, worse 
 
 than all. 
 Each day's procession, my paraded life 
 Kobbed and impoverished through the wanting 
 
 wife 
 — Now that my life (which means — my work) 
 
 was grown 
 Riches indeed ! Once, just this worth alone 
 Seemed work to have, that profit gained thereby 
 Of good and praise would — how rewardingly ! — 
 Fall at your feet, — a crown I hoped to cast 
 Before your love, my love should crown at last. 
 No love remaining to cast crown before. 
 My love stopped work now : but contempt the 
 
 more 
 Impelled me task as ever head and hand. 
 Because the very fiends weave ropes of sand 
 Rather than taste pure hell in idleness. 
 Therefore I kept my memory down by stress 
 Of daily work I had no mind to stay 
 For the world's wonder at the wife away. 
 Oh, it was easy all of it, believe. 
 For I de^piied you ! But your words retrieve 
 Importantly the past. No hate assumed 
 The mask of love at any time ! There gloomed 
 A moment when love took hate's semblance, 
 
 urged 
 
 By causes you declare ; but love's self purged 
 
 Away a fancied wrong I did both loves 
 
 — Yours and my own : by no hate's help, it 
 
 proves. 
 Purgation was attempted. Then, you rise 
 High by how many a grade ! I did despise — 
 I do but hate you. Let hate's punishment 
 Replace contempt's ! First step to which as- 
 cent — ■ 
 Write down your own words I re-utter you 1 
 ' I loved my husband and I hated — who 
 Me was, I took up as my first chance, mere 
 Mud-ball tofiing and make love foul with! ' Here 
 Lies paper 1 " 
 
 " Would my blood for ink suffice I " 
 
 " It may : this minion from a land of spice, 
 Silk, feather— every bird of jewelled breast — 
 This poniard's beauty, ne'er so lightly prest 
 Above your heart there '* . . . 
 
 ' Thus ? ' 
 
 ' It flows, I see. 
 
 Dip there the point and write t ' 
 
 " Dictate to me ! 
 Nay, I remember." 
 
 And she wrote the words, 
 I read them. Then — "Since love, in you, 
 
 affords 
 License for hate, in me, to quench (I say) 
 Contempt — why, hate itself has passed away 
 In vengeance — foreign to contempt. Depart 
 Peacefully to that death which Eastern art 
 Imbued this weapon with, if tales be true ! 
 Love will succeed to hate. I pardon you — 
 Dead in our chamber ! " 
 
 True as truth the tale. 
 She died ere morning ; then. I saw how pale 
 Her cheek was ere it wore day's paint-disguise, 
 And what a hollow darkened 'neath her eyes, 
 Now that I used my own. She sleeps, as erst 
 Beloved, in this your church : ay, yours ! 
 
 Immersed 
 In thought so deeply. Father ? Sad, perhaps ? 
 For whose sake, hers or mine or his who wraps 
 — Still plain I seem to see ! — about his head 
 The idle cloak, — about his heart (instead 
 Of cuirass) some fond hope he may elude 
 My vengeance in the cloister's solitude ? 
 Hardly, I think ! As little helped his brow 
 The cloak then. Father — as your grate helps 
 now ! 
 
 CENCIAJA 
 
 Ogni cencio vuol entrare in bucato. — Italian Proverb. 
 
 Mr. Buxton Forraan, the editor of SheUey, 
 upon asking Browning the precise value at- 
 tached to the terminal aja in the title of his 
 poem, received the following answer : — 
 
CENCIAJA 
 
 821 
 
 •' 19 Warwick Cbebcent, W., July 27, '76. 
 
 " Dear Mb. Buxton Forman : There can 
 be no objection to such » simple statement as 
 you have inserted, if it seems worth inserting;, 
 ' Fact,' it is. Next : ' aia ' is generally an 
 accumulative yet depreciative termination : 
 ' Cenciaja ' — a bundle of rags — a trifle. The 
 proverb means ' every poor creature will be 
 pressing into the company of his betters,' and 
 I used it to deprecate the notion that I intended 
 anything of the kind. Is it any contribution to 
 ' all connected with Shelley,' if I mention that 
 my 'Book' {The Ring and the Book) [rather 
 the ■ old square yellow book ' from which the 
 details were taken] has a reference to the reason 
 given by Farinacci, the advocate of the Cenci, 
 of his failure in the defence of Beatrice ? 
 ' Fttisse pimitam Beatricem (he declares) poenS 
 ultimi supplicii, non quia ex intervallo oecidi 
 mandavit insidiantem suo honori, sed quia ejus 
 exceptionem non probavi tibi. Prout^ et idem 
 firmiter sperabatur de sorore Beatrice si proposi- 
 tam excusationem probasset, prout non probavit.^ 
 That is, she expected to avow the main out- 
 rage, and did not : in conformity with her 
 words, ' That which I ought to confess, that 
 will I confess ; that to which I ought to assent, 
 to that I assent ; and that which I ought to deny, 
 that will I deny.' Here is another Cenciaja ! 
 
 " Yours very sincerely, KoBBBT Browning." 
 
 May I print, Shelley, how it came to pass 
 That when your Beatrice seemed — by lapse 
 Of many a long month since her sentence fell — 
 Assured of pardon for the parricide — 
 By intercession of stanch friends, or, say. 
 By certain pricks of conscience in the Pope 
 Conniver at Francesco Cenci's guilt, — 
 Suddenly all things changed and Clement grew 
 "Stem," as you state, "nor to be moved nor 
 
 bent, 
 But said these three words coldly 'She must 
 
 die ; ' 
 Subjoining ' Pardon ? Paolo Santa Croce 
 Murdered his mother also yestereve, 
 And he is fled : she shall not flee at least ! ' " 
 — So, to the letter, sentence was fulfilled ? 
 Shelley, may I condense verbosity 
 That lies before me, into some few words 
 Of English, and illustrate your superb 
 Achievement by a rescued anecdote. 
 No great things, only new and true beside ? 
 As if some mere familiar of a house 
 Should venture to accost the group at gaze 
 Before its Titian, famed the wide world through. 
 And supplement such pictured masterpiece 
 By whisper, " Searching in the archives here, 
 I found the reason of the Lady's fate. 
 And how by accident it came to pass 
 She wears the halo and displays the palm : 
 Who, haply, else had never suffered — no. 
 Nor graced our gallery, by consequence." 
 Who loved the work would like the little news : 
 
 Who lauds your poem lends an ear to me 
 
 Relating how the penalty was paid 
 
 By one Marohese deU' Oriolo, called 
 
 Onofrio Santa Croce otherwise. 
 
 For his complicity in matricide 
 
 With Paolo his own brother, — he whose crime 
 
 And flight induced " those three words —She 
 
 must die." 
 Thus I unroll you then the manuscript. 
 
 " God's justice" — (of the multiplicity 
 Of such communications extant still. 
 Recording, each, injustice done by God 
 In person of his Vicar-upon-earth, 
 Scarce one but leads off to the selfsame tune) — 
 " God's justice, tardy though it prove perchance. 
 Rests never on the track until it reach 
 Delinquency. In proof I cite the case 
 Of Paolo Santa Croce." 
 
 Many times 
 The youngster, — having been importunate 
 That Marchesine Costanza, who remained 
 His widowed mother, should supplant the heir 
 Her elder son, and substitute himself 
 In sole possession of her faciJty, — 
 And meeting just as often with rebuff, — 
 Blinded by so exorbitant a lust 
 Of gold, the youngster straightway tasked his 
 
 wits. 
 Casting about to kill the lady — thus. 
 
 He first, to cover his iniquity, 
 Writes to Onofrio Santa Croce, then 
 Authoritative lord, acquainting him 
 Their mother was contamination — wrought 
 Like hell-fire in the beauty of their House 
 By dissoluteness and abandonment 
 Of soul and body to impure delight. 
 
 Moreover, since sbe suffered from disease. 
 Those symptoms which her death made mani- 
 fest 
 Hydroptio, he affirmed were fruits of sin 
 About to bring confusion and disgrace 
 Upon the ancient lineage and high fame 
 O' the family, when published. Duty bound. 
 He asked his brother — what a son should do? 
 
 Which when Marchese dell' Oriolo heard 
 By letter, being absent at his land 
 Oriolo, he made answer, this, no more : 
 " It must behoove a son, — things haply so, — 
 To act as honor prompts a cavalier 
 And son, perform his duty to all three, 
 Mother and brothers " — here advice broke off. 
 
 By which advice informed and fortified 
 As he professed himself — since bound by birth 
 To hear God's voice in primogeniture — 
 Pa«lo, who kept his mother company 
 In her domain Subiaco, straightway dared 
 His whole enormity of enterprise. 
 And, falling on her, stabbed the lady dead ; 
 Whose death demonstrated her innocence. 
 And happened, —by the way, — since Jesus 
 
 Christ 
 Died to save man, just sixteen hundred years. 
 
S2a 
 
 CENCIAJA 
 
 Costauza was of aspect beautiful 
 Exceedinsfly, and seemed, althoug:h in age 
 fcsixty about, to far surpass her peers 
 The coetaneous dames, in youth and grace. 
 
 Done the misdeed, its author takes to flight, 
 FdiUng thereby the justice of the world : 
 Not God's however, — God, Ibe sure, knows 
 
 well 
 The way to clutch a culprit. Witness here ! 
 The present sinner, when he least expects, 
 Snug-cornered somewhere i' the Basilicate, . 
 Stumbles upon his death by violence. 
 A man of blood assaults a man of blood 
 And slays him somehow. This was afterward : 
 Enough, he promptly met with his deserts. 
 And, ending thus, permits we end with him, 
 And push forthwith to this important point — 
 His matricide fell out, of all the days, ' . 
 Precisely when the law-procedure closed 
 Kespecting Count Francesco Cenci's death 
 Chargeable on his daughter, sons and wiife. 
 " Thus patricide was matched with matricide," 
 A poet not inelegantly rhymed : 
 Nay, fratricide — those Princes Massimi ! — 
 Which so disturbed the spirit of the Pope 
 That all the likelihood Rome entertained ; 
 Of Beatrice's pardon vanished straight. 
 And she endured the piteous death. 
 
 Now see 
 The sequel — what effect commandment had 
 For strict inquiry into this last case, ' 
 
 When Cardinal Aldobrandini (great 
 His efficacy — nephew to the Pope !) 
 WaS bidden crush — ay, though his very hand 
 Got soil i' the act — crime spawning everywhere I 
 Because, when all endeavor had been used 
 To catch the 'aforesaid Paolo, all in vain ^^ 
 ** Make perquisition," quoth our Eminence, 
 " Throughout his now deserted domicile ! 
 Ransack the palace, roof a.nd iloor, t" find 
 If haply any scrap of writing, hid 
 In nook or corner, may convict — who knows ? — 
 Brother Onofrio of intelligence 
 With brother Paolo, as in brotherhood 
 Is but too likely : crime spawns everywhere." 
 
 And, every cranny searched accordingly. 
 There comes to light — lynx-eyed CardinaJi t — 
 Onofrio's unconsidered writing-scrap. 
 The letter in reply to Paolo's prayer, 
 The word of counsel that — things proving so, 
 Paolo should act the proper knightly pait. 
 And do as was incumbent on' a son, 
 A brother — and a man of birth, be sure ! 
 
 Whereat immediately the officers 
 Proceeded to arrest Onofrio — found 
 At football, child's play> unaware of harm, 
 Safe with his friends, the Orsini, at their seat 
 Monte Giordano ; as he left the house 
 He came upon the watch in wait for him 
 Set :by the Barigel, — was caught and caged. 
 
 News of which capture being, that same hour, 
 Conveyed to Rome, forthwith our Eminence 
 Commands Taverna, Governor and Judge, 
 
 To have the process in especial care. 
 
 Be, first to last, not only president , 
 
 In person, but inquisitor as well. 
 
 Nor trust the by-work to a substitute : 
 
 Bids him not, squeamish, keep the bench, hnt 
 
 scrub 
 The floor of Justice, so to speak, — go try 
 His best in prison with the criminal : 
 Promising, as reward for by-work done 
 Fairly on all-fours, that, success obtained 
 And crime avowed, or such connivency 
 With crime as should procure a decent death — 
 Himself will humbly beg— which means, pro- 
 cure — 
 The Hat and Purple from his relative 
 The Pope, and so repa.y a diligence 
 Which, meritorious in the Cenci-case, 
 Mounts plainly here to Purple and the Hat. 
 
 Whereupon did my lord the Governor 
 So masterf ullv exercise the task 
 Enjoined him, that he, day by day, and week 
 By week, and month by month, from first to 
 
 last 
 Toiled for the prize : now, punctual at his pla«e. 
 Played Judge, and now, assiduous at his post. 
 Inquisitor — pressed cushion and scoured plank. 
 Early and late. Noon's fervor and night's 
 
 chill. 
 Naught moved whom morn would, purpling, 
 
 make amends! 
 So that observters laughed as, many a day. 
 He left home, in July when day is flame, 
 Posted to Tordinonar-prison, plunged 
 Into a vault where daylong night is ice. 
 There passed his eight hours on a stretch, con- 
 tent. 
 Examining Onofrio : all the stress 
 Of all examination steadily 
 Converging into one pin-point, — he pushed 
 Tentative now of head and now of heart. 
 As when the mit-hatch taps and tries the nut 
 This side and that side till the kernel sound, — 
 So did he press the sole and single point 
 
 — What was the very meaning of the phrase 
 '' Do as beseems an honored cavalier " ? 
 
 Which one persistent question-torture, — 
 
 plied 
 Day by day, week by week, and month by 
 
 month. 
 Morn, noon and night, — fatigued away a mind 
 Grown imbecile by darkness, solitude. 
 And one vivacious memory gnawing thei-e 
 As when a corpse is coffined with a snake : 
 
 — Fatigued Onofrio into what might seem 
 Admission that perchance his judgment groped 
 So blindly, feeling for an issue — aught 
 
 With semblance of an issue from the toils 
 Cast of a sudden round feet late so free. 
 He possibly might have envisaged, scai'ce 
 Recoiled from — even were the issue death 
 
 — Even her death whose life was death and 
 
 worse ! 
 Always provided that the charge of crime, 
 Each jot and tittle of the charge were true. 
 In such a sense, belike, he might advise 
 His brother to expurgate crime with . . . well, 
 
FILIPPO BALDINUCCI ON THE PRIVILEGE OF BURIAL 823 
 
 With bloud, if blood must follow on ** the course 
 Taken as might beseem a cavalier." 
 
 Whereupon process ended, and report 
 Was made without a minute of delay 
 To Clement, who, because of those two crimes 
 0' the Massimi and Cenci flagrant late, 
 Mast needs impatiently desire result. 
 
 Result obtained, he bade the Governor 
 Summon the Congregation and despatch. 
 Summons made, sentence passed accordingly 
 — Death by beheading. When his death-decree 
 Was intimated to Onofrio, all 
 Man could do — that did he to save himself. 
 'T was much, the having gained for his defence 
 The Advocate o' the Poor, with natural help 
 Of many noble friendly parsons fain 
 To disengage a man of family, 
 So young too, from his grim entanglement : 
 But Cardinal Aldobrandini ruled 
 There must be no diversion of the law. 
 Justice is justice, and the magistrate 
 Bears not the sword in vain. Who sins must 
 die. 
 
 So, the Marehese had his head cut off, 
 With Rome to see, a concourse infinite. 
 In Place Saint Angelo beside the Bridge : 
 Where, demonstrating magnanimity 
 Adequate to his birth and breed, — poor boy ! — 
 He made the people the accustomed speech, 
 Exhorted them to true faith, honest works, 
 And special good behavior as regards 
 A parent of no matter what_the sex. 
 Bidding each son take warning from himself. 
 Truly, it was considered in the boy 
 Stark staring lunacy, no less, to snap 
 So plain a bait, be hooked and hauled ashore 
 By such an angler as the Cardinal 1 
 Why make confession of his privity 
 To Paolo's enterprise ? Mere sealing lips — 
 Or, better, saying " When I counselled hira 
 ' To do as might beseem a cavalier,' 
 What could I mean but ' Hide our parent's 
 
 shame 
 As Christian ought, by aid ofHolu Church! 
 Bury It in a convent — ay, beneath 
 Enough dotation to prevent its ghost 
 From troubling earth !'" Mere saying thus, — 
 
 't is plain, 
 Not only were his life the recompense. 
 But he had manifestly proved himself 
 True Christian, and in lieu of punishment 
 Got praise of all men ! —so the populace. 
 
 Anyhow, when the Pope made promise good 
 (That of Aldobrandini, near and dear) 
 And gave Tavema, who had toiled so much, 
 A Cardinal's equipment, some such word 
 As this from mouth to ear went saucily : 
 " Taverna's cap is dyed In what he drew 
 Prom Santa Croce's veins ! " So joked the 
 world. 
 
 I add : Onofrio left one child behind, 
 A daughter named Valeria, dowered with 
 grace 
 
 Abundantly of soul and body, doomed 
 To life the shorter for her father's fate. 
 By death of her, the Marquisate returned 
 To that Orsini House from whence it came : 
 Oriolo having passed as donative 
 To Santa Croce from their ancestors. 
 
 And no word more ? By all means ! Would 
 
 you know 
 The authoritative answer, when folk urged 
 "What made Aldobrandini, hound-like stanch, 
 Hunt out of life a harmless simpleton ? " 
 The answer was — " Hatred implacable, 
 By reason they were rivals in their love." 
 The Cardinal's desire was to a dame 
 Whose favor was Onofrio's. Pricked with 
 
 pride. 
 The simpleton must ostentatiously 
 Display a ring, the Cardinal's love-gift, 
 Given to Onofrio as the lady's gage ; 
 Which ring on finger, as he put forth hand 
 "To draw a tapestry, the Cardinal 
 Saw and knew, gift and owner, old and yotu^ ; 
 Whereon a fury entered him — the fire 
 He quenched with what could quench fire only 
 
 — blood. 
 Nay, more: "there want not who a£&nu to 
 
 boot, 
 The unwise boy, a certain festal eve, 
 Feigned ignorance of who the wight might be 
 That pressed too closely on him with a crowd. 
 He struck the Cardinal a blow : and then, 
 To put a face upon the incident. 
 Dared next day, smug as ever, go pay court 
 I' tibe. Cardinal's antechamber. Mark and 
 
 mend, 
 Ye youth, by this example how may greed 
 Vainglorious operate in worldly souls 1 " 
 
 So ends the chronicler, beginning with 
 "God's justice, tardy though it prove per- 
 chance. 
 Bests never till it reach delinquency.' 
 I Ay, or how otherwise had come to pass 
 That Victor rules, this present year, in Rome ? 
 
 FILIPPO BALDINUCCI ON THE PRIVI- 
 LEGE OF BURIAL 
 
 A REMINISCENCE OF A. D. 1676 
 
 " No, boy, we must not " — so began 
 
 My Uncle (he 's with God long since), 
 A-petting me, the good old man ! 
 
 "We must not " — and he seemed to vrinee, 
 And lost that laugh whereto had grown 
 
 His chuckle at my piece of news, 
 How cleverly I aimed my stone — 
 
 " I fear we must not pelt the Jews I 
 
 " When I was young indeed, — ah, faith 
 Was young and strong in Florence too ! 
 
 We Christians never dreamed of scathe 
 Because we cursed or kicked the crew. 
 
 But now — well, well ! The olive-crops 
 Weighed double then, and Amo's pranks 
 
 Would always spare religious shops 
 
 I Whenever he o'erflowed his banks ! 
 
824 FILIPPO BAlOINUCCI ON THE PRIVILEGE OF BURIAL 
 
 " I '11 tell you " — and his eye regained 
 
 Its twinkle — " tell you sometmng; choice ! 
 Something may help you keep unstained 
 
 Your honest zeal to stop the voice 
 Of unbelief with stone-throw — ^ spite 
 
 Of laws, which modern fools enact, 
 That we must suffer Jews in sight 
 
 Go wholly unmolested ! Fact ! 
 
 " There was, then, in my youth, and yet 
 
 Is, by our San rrediano, just 
 Below the Blessed Olivet, 
 
 A wayside ground wherein they thrust 
 Their dead, — these Jews, ■ — the more our 
 shame ! 
 
 Except that, so they will but die, 
 Christians perchance incur no blame 
 
 In giving hogs a hoist to sty. 
 
 " There, anyhow, Jews stow away 
 
 Their dead ; and — such their insolence — 
 Slink at odd times to sing and pray 
 
 As Christians do — aU make-pretence ! — 
 Which wickedness they perpetrate 
 
 Because they think no Christians see. 
 They reckoned here, at any rate, 
 
 Without their host : ha, ha ! he, he ! 
 
 '* For, what should join their plot of ground 
 
 But a good Farmer's Christian field ? 
 The Jews had hedged their corner round 
 
 With bramble-bush to keep concealed 
 Their doings : for the public road 
 
 Kan betwixt this their ground and that 
 The Farmer's, where he ploughed and sowed, 
 
 Grew corn for barn and grapes for vat. 
 
 *' So, properly to guard his store 
 
 And gaJl the unbelievers too. 
 He builds a shrine and, what is more, 
 
 Procures a painter whom I knew. 
 One Buti (he 's with God), to paint 
 
 A holy picture there — no less 
 Than Virgin Mary free from taint 
 
 Borne to the sky by angels : yes I 
 
 " Which shrine he fixed, — who says him nay ? — 
 
 A-facing with its picture-side 
 Not, as you 'd think, the public way. 
 
 But just where sought these hounds to hide 
 Their carrion from that very truth 
 
 Of Mary's triumph : not a hound 
 Could act his mummeries uncouth 
 
 But Mary shamed the pack all round ! 
 
 " Now, if it was amusing, judge ! 
 
 — To see the company arrive. 
 Each Jew intent to end his trudge 
 
 And take his pleasure (though alive) 
 With all his Jewish kith and kin 
 
 Below ground, have his venom out, 
 Sharpen his wits for next day's sin. 
 
 Curse Christians, and so home, no doubt I 
 
 " Whereas, each phiz upturned beholds 
 
 Mary, I warrant, soaring brave ! 
 And in a trice, beneath the folds 
 
 Of filthy garb which gowns each knave, 
 
 Down drops it — there to hide grimace, 
 Contortion of the mouth and nose 
 
 At finding Mary in the place 
 They 'd keep for Pilate, I suppose ! 
 
 ■' At last, they will not brook — not they ! — 
 
 Longer such outrage on their tribe : 
 So, in some hole and comer, lay 
 
 Their heads together — how to bribe 
 The meritorious Farmer's self 
 
 To straight undo his work, restore 
 Their chance to meet and muse on pelf — 
 
 Pretending sorrow, as before ! 
 
 " Forthwith, a posse, if you please. 
 
 Of Rabbi This and Rabbi That 
 Almost go down upon their knees 
 
 To get him lay the picture flat. 
 The spokesman, eighty years of age, 
 
 Gray as a badger, with a goat's 
 Not only beard but bleat, 'gins wage 
 
 War with our Mary. Thus he dotes : — 
 
 ^^^ Friends, grant a grace! Sow Hebrews 
 toil 
 
 Through life in Florence — why relate 
 To those who lay the burden, spoil 
 
 Our paths of peace ? We bear our fate. 
 J3ut when with life the long toil ends, 
 
 Why must you — the expression craves 
 Pardon, but truth compels me, friends ! — 
 
 Why must you plague us in our graves ? 
 
 " ' Thoughtlessly plague, I would believe ! 
 
 For how can you — the lords of ease 
 By nurture, birthright — e'en conceive 
 
 Our luxury to lie with trees 
 And turf, — the cricket and the bird 
 
 Left for our last companionship : 
 No harsh deed, no unkindly word. 
 
 No frowning brow nor scornful lip ! 
 
 " ' Death's luxury, we now rehearse 
 
 While, living, through your streets we fare 
 And take your hatred: nothing worse 
 
 Have we, once dead and safe, to bear ! 
 So we refresh our souls, fulfil 
 
 Our works, our daily tasks ; and thus 
 Gather you grain — earth's harvest — still 
 
 The wheat for you, the straw for us. 
 
 " ' What flouting in a face, what harm. 
 
 In just a lady borne from bier 
 By boys' heads, wings for leg and arm ? ' 
 
 You question. Friends, the harm is here — 
 That just when our last sigh is heaved, 
 
 And we would fain thank God and you 
 For labor done and peace achieved. 
 
 Back comes the Past in full review ! 
 
 " ' At sight of just that simple flag. 
 
 Starts the foe-feeling serpent-like 
 From slumber. Leave it lulled, nor drag — 
 
 Though fangless — forth what needs must 
 When stricken sore, though stroke be vain 
 
 Against the mailed oppressor ! Give 
 Play to our fancy that we gain 
 
 Life's rights when once we cease to live ! 
 
FILIPPO BALDINUCCI ON THE PRIVILEGE OF BURIAL 825 
 
 " ' Thus much to courtesy, to kind. 
 
 To conscience ! Now_ to Florence folk ! 
 There 's core beneath this apple-^ina. 
 
 Beneath this white-of-egg there 's yolk ! 
 Beneath this prayer to courtesy, 
 
 Kind, conscience — there 's a sum to pouch ! 
 How many ducats down will buy 
 
 Our shame'' s removal, sirs ? Avouch ! 
 
 " ' Removal, not destruction, sirs ! 
 
 Just turn your picture ! Let it front 
 The public path ! Or memory errs. 
 
 Or that same public path is wont 
 To witness many a chance befall 
 
 Of lust, theft, bloodshed — sins enough. 
 
 in our Hebrew part is i 
 Convert yourselves !' — he cut up rough. 
 
 '* Look you, how soon a service paid 
 
 Religion yields the servant fruit I 
 A prompt reply our Parmer made 
 
 00 following : ' Sirs, to grant your suit 
 Involves much danger ! How ? Transpose 
 
 Our Lady ? Stop the chastisement. 
 All for your good, herself bestows ? 
 
 What wonder if I grudge consent ? 
 
 '^ * — Yet grant it: since, what cash I take 
 ' Is so much saved from wicked use. 
 We know you ! And, for Mary's sake, 
 
 A hundred ducats shall induce 
 Concession to your prayer. One day 
 
 Suffices : Master Buti's brush 
 Turns Mary round the other way. 
 
 And deluges your side with slush. 
 
 " ' Down with the ducats therefore ! ' Dump, 
 
 Dump, dump it falls, each counted piece, 
 Hard gold. Then out of door they stump, 
 
 These dogs, each brisk as with new lease 
 Of life, I warrant, — glad he '11 die 
 
 Henceforward just as he may choose, 
 Be buried and in clover lie ! 
 
 Well said Esaias — ' stiffi-necked Jews ! ' 
 
 " Off posts without a minute's loss 
 
 Our Farmer, once the cash in poke, 
 And summons Buti — ere its gloss 
 
 Have time to fade from off the joke — 
 To chop and change his work, undo 
 
 The done side, make the side, now blank, 
 Recipient of our Lady — who. 
 
 Displaced thus, had these dogs to thank ! 
 
 " Now, boy, you 're hardly to instruct 
 
 In technicalities of Art ! 
 My nephew's childhood sure has sucked 
 
 Along with mother's-milk some part 
 Of painter's-jiractice — learned, at least, 
 
 How expeditiously is plied 
 A work in fresco — never ceased 
 
 When once begun — a day, each side. 
 
 " So, Buti — (he 's with God) — begins : 
 Krst covers up the shrine all round 
 
 With hoarding ; then, as like as twins. 
 Paints, t' other side the burial-ground, 
 
 New Mary, every point the same ; 
 
 Next, sluices over, as agreed, 
 The old ; and last — but, spoil the game 
 
 By telling you ? Not 1, indeed ! 
 
 "Well, ere the week was half at end, 
 
 Out came the object of this zeal, 
 This fine alacrity to spend 
 
 Hard money for mere dead men's weal ! 
 How think you ? That old spokesman Jew 
 
 Was High Priest, and he had a wife 
 As old, and she was dying too. 
 
 And wished to end in peace her life ! 
 
 " And he must humor dying whims. 
 
 And soothe her with the idle hope 
 They 'd say their prayers and sing their hymns 
 
 As if her husband were the Pope ! 
 And she did die — believing just 
 
 This privilege was purchased ! Dead 
 In comfort through her foolish trust ! 
 
 ' Stiff-necked ones,' well Esaias said ! 
 
 *' So, Sabbath morning, out of gate 
 
 And on to way, what sees our arch 
 Good Farmer ? Why, they hoist their freight — 
 
 The corpse — on shoulder, and so, march ! 
 ' Now for it, Buti ! ' In the nick 
 
 Of time 't is pully-hauly, hence 
 With hoarding ! O'er the wayside quick 
 
 There 's Mary plain in evidence ! 
 
 " And here 's the convoy halting : right I 
 
 Oh, they are bent on howling psalms 
 And growling prayers, when opposite ! 
 
 And yet they glance, for all their qualms, 
 Approve that promptitude of his. 
 
 The Farmer 's — duly at his post 
 To take due thanks from every phiz. 
 
 Sour smirk — nay, surly smile almost ! 
 
 " Then earthward drops ea^h brow again ; 
 
 The solemn task 's resumed ; they reach 
 Their holy field — the unholy train : 
 
 Enter its precinct, all and each. 
 Wrapt somehow in their godless rites ; 
 
 TiU, rites at end, ux)-waking, lo. 
 They lift their faces ! What delights 
 
 The mourners as they turn to go ? 
 
 " Ha, ha ! he, he ! On just the side 
 
 They drew their purse-strings to make quit 
 Of Mary, — Christ the Crucified 
 
 Fronted them now — these biters bit ! 
 Never was such a hiss and snort, 
 
 Such screwing nose and shooting lip ! 
 Their purchase — honey in report — ^ 
 
 Proved gaU and verjuice at first sip ! 
 
 *' Out they break, on they bustle, where, 
 
 A-top of wall, the Farmer waits 
 With Buti .; never fun so rare ! 
 
 The Farmer has the best : he rates 
 The rascal, as the old High Priest 
 
 Takes on himself to sermonize — 
 Nay, sneer, ' We Jews supposed, at least. 
 
 Theft was a crime in Christian eyes ! ' 
 
826 FrUPPO BALDINUCCI ON THE PRIVILEGE OF BURIAL 
 
 " ' Theft ? ' cries the Farmer. ' Eat youi- 
 words ! 
 
 Show me what constitutes a breach 
 Of faith in aught was said or heard .' 
 
 I promised you in plainest speech 
 I 'c? take the thing you count disgrace 
 
 And put it here — and here' 't is put ! 
 Did you suppose I V leave the place 
 
 Blank therefore', just your rage to glut ? 
 
 " ' Z guess you dared not stipulate 
 
 For suph a damned impertinence 1 
 So, quick, mygrayb'eard,_out of gate 
 
 And in at Ghetto I Haste you hence / 
 As long as I have house and land. 
 
 To spite you irreligious chaps. 
 Here shall the Crucifixion stand — 
 
 Unless you down with cash, perhaps ! ' 
 
 " So snickered he and Buti both. 
 
 The Jews said nothing, interchanged 
 A glance or two, renewed their oath 
 
 To keep ears stopped and hearts estranged 
 From grace, for all our Church can do ; 
 
 Then ofF they scuttle : sullen jog 
 Homewards, against our Church to brew 
 
 FreSh mischief in their synagogue. 
 
 ' ' But next day — see what happened, boy I 
 
 See why I bid you have a care 
 How you pelt Jews ! The knaves employ 
 
 Such methods of revenge, forbear 
 No outrage on our faith, when free 
 
 To wreak their malice ! Here they took 
 So base a method — plague o' me 
 
 If I record it in my Book I 
 
 '' For, next day, while the Farmer sat 
 
 Laughing with Buti, in his shop, 
 At their successful ioke, — rat-tat, — 
 
 Door opens, and they 're like to drop 
 Down to the floor as in there stalks 
 
 A six-feet-high herculean-built 
 Young he-Jew with a beard that balks 
 
 Description. ' Help ere blood be spilt ! ' 
 
 — "Screamed Buti : for he recognized 
 
 Whom but the son, no less no more. 
 Of that High Priest his work surprised 
 
 So pleasantly the day before ! 
 Son of the mother, then, whereof 
 
 The bier he lent a shoulder to. 
 And made the moans about, dared scoff 
 
 At sober Christian grief — the Jew I 
 
 '' ' Sirs, I salute you '. Never rise ! 
 
 No apprehension '. ' (Buti, white 
 And trembling like a tub of size. 
 
 Had tried to smuggle out of sight 
 The pictiire's self — the thing in oils, 
 
 You know, from which a fresco 's dashed 
 Which courage speeds while caution spoils ) 
 
 ' Stay and be praised, sir, unabashed I 
 
 " ' Praised, — ay, and paid too : for I come 
 
 To buy that very ■Work of yours. 
 My poor abode, which boasts — wdl, some 
 
 Few specimens qf Art, secures, 
 
 Haply, a masterpiece indeed 
 
 If I should , find my humble means 
 Suffice the outlay. So, proceed ! 
 
 Propose -^ ere prudence intervenes ! ' 
 
 " On Buti, cowering like a child, 
 
 These words descended from aloft, 
 In tone So ominously mild, 
 
 With smile terrifically soft 
 To that degree — could Buti dare 
 
 (Poor fellow) use his brains, think twice ? 
 He asked, thustaken unaware. 
 
 No more than just the proper price ! 
 
 *' ' Done I ' cries the monster. ' / disburse 
 
 Forthwith your moderate demand. 
 Count on my custom — if no worse 
 
 Your future 'work he, understand, 
 Than this I carry off! No aid I 
 
 My arm, sir, lacks nor bone nor thews : 
 The burden 's easy, and we ''re made. 
 
 Easy or hard, to bear — we Jews ! ' 
 
 " Crossing himself at such escape, 
 
 Buti by turns the money eyes 
 And, timidly, the stalwart shape 
 
 Now moving doorwards ; but, more wise, 
 The Farmer — who, though dumb, this while 
 
 Had watched advantage — straight conceived 
 A reason for that tone and smile 
 
 So mild and soft I The Jew — believed ! 
 
 " Mary in triumph borne to deck 
 
 A Hebrew household ! Pictured where 
 No one was used to bend the neck 
 
 In praise or bow the knee in prayer ! 
 Borne to that domicile by whom ? 
 
 The son of the High Priest ! Through 
 what? 
 An insult done his mother's tomb ! 
 
 Saul changed to Paul — the case came pat ! 
 
 " ' Stay, dog-Jew , . . gentle sir, that is ! 
 
 Besolve me ! Can it be, she crowned, — 
 Mary, by miracle, — oh bliss ! — 
 
 My present to your burial-ground ? 
 Certain, a ray of light has burst 
 
 Your vale of darkness ! Had you else, 
 Ordyfor Mary^s sake, unpursed 
 
 So much hard money ? Tell — oh, tell 's .' ' 
 
 "Round — like a serpent that we took 
 
 For worm and trod on — turns his bulk 
 About the Jew. First dreadful look 
 
 Sends Buti in a trice to skulk 
 Out of sight somewhere, safe — alack ! 
 
 But our good Farmer faith made bold : 
 And firm (with Florence at his back) 
 
 He stood, while gruff the gutturals rolled — 
 
 " ' Ay, sir, a miracle was worked. 
 
 By quite another power, I trow. 
 Than ever yet in canvas lurked. 
 
 Or you would scarcely face me now ! 
 A certain impulse did suggest 
 
 A certain grasp with this right-hand, 
 Which probably had put to rest 
 
 Our quarrel, — thus your throat once spanned I 
 
EPILOGUE 
 
 827 
 
 " ' But I remembered me, subdued 
 
 That impulse, and you face me still ! 
 And soon a philosophic mood 
 
 Succeeding (hear it, if you will !} 
 Has altogether changed my views 
 
 Concerning Art. Blind prejudice ! 
 Well may you Christians tax us Jews 
 
 With scrupulosity too nice ! 
 
 " ' Far, don't I see, — let 's issue join ! — 
 
 Whenever I'm allowed pollute 
 (I — and my little bag of coin) 
 
 Some Christian palace of repute, — 
 Don't I see stuck up everywhere 
 
 Abundant proof that cultured taste 
 Has Beauty for its only care. 
 
 And upon Truth no thought to waste ? 
 
 " ' 'Jew, since it must be, take in pledge 
 
 Of payment ' — so o Cardinal 
 Has sighed to me as if a wedge 
 
 Entered his heart — ' this best of all 
 My treasures I ' Leda, Ganymede 
 
 Or Antiope : swan, eagle, ape, 
 (Or what 's the beast of what 's the breed,) 
 
 And Jupiter in every shape ! 
 
 *' ' Whereat if I presume to ask 
 
 ' But, Eminence, though Titian's whisk 
 Of brush have well performed its task, 
 
 How comes it these false godships frisk 
 In presence of — what yonder frame 
 
 Pretends to Image ? Surely, odd 
 It seems, you let confront The Name 
 
 Each beast the heathen called his god I ' 
 
 " ' Benignant smiles me pity straight 
 
 The Cardinal. ' 'T is Truth, we prize ! 
 Art 's the sole question in debate ! 
 
 These subjects are so many lies. 
 We treat them with a proper scorn 
 
 When we turn lies — called gods forsooth - 
 To lies' fit use, now Christ is born. 
 
 Drawing and coloring are Truth. 
 
 " ' 'Think you I honor lies so much 
 
 As scruple to parade the charms 
 Of Leda — Titian, every touch — 
 
 Because the thing within her arms 
 Means Jupiter who had the praise 
 
 And prayer of a benighted world ? 
 He would have mine too, if, in days 
 
 Of light, I kept the canvas furled ! ' 
 
 " ' So ending, with some easy gibe. 
 
 What power has logic ! I, at once. 
 Acknowledged error m our tribe 
 
 So squeamish that, when friends ensconce 
 A pretty picture in its niche 
 
 To do us honor, deck our graves. 
 We fret and fume and have an itch 
 
 To strangle folk — ungrateful knaves ! 
 
 " ' No, sir ! Be sure that — what '« its style. 
 Your picture ? — shall possess ungrudged 
 
 A place among my rank and file 
 OfLedas and what not — he judged 
 
 Just as a picture ! and (because 
 I fear me much I scarce have bought 
 
 A Titian) Master Buti's, flaws 
 Found there, will have the laughfiaws ought 1 ' 
 
 " So, with a scowl, it darkens door — 
 
 This bulk — no longer ! Buti makes 
 Prompt glad re-entry ; there 's a score 
 
 Of oaths, as the good Farmer wakes 
 From what must needs have been a trance, 
 
 Or he had struck (he swears) to ground 
 The bold bad mouth that dared advance 
 
 iSuch doctrine the reverse of sound ! 
 
 " Was magic here ? Most like ! For, since, 
 
 Somehow our city's faith grows stiU 
 More and more lukewarm, and our Prince 
 
 Or loses heart or wants the will 
 To check increase of cold. 'T is * Itive 
 
 And let_ live .' Languidly repress 
 The iJissident 1 In short, — contrive 
 
 Christians must bear with Jews : no less 1 ' 
 
 " The end seems, any Israelite 
 
 Wants any picture, — pishes, poohs. 
 Purchases, hangs it full in sight 
 
 In any chamber he may choose ! 
 In Christ's crown, one more thorn we rue ! 
 
 In Mary's bosom, one more sword ! 
 No, boy, you must not pelt a Jew ! 
 
 Lord, how long ? How long, Lord ? " 
 
 EPILOGUE 
 
 lJ.€(TTOl . . . 
 
 ot 8* afi^opijv olvov jlteAai/os audovftiou. ' 
 
 " The poets pour us wine — " 
 
 Said the dearest poet I ever knew, 
 Dearest and greatest and best to me. 
 You clamor athirst for poetry — 
 We pour. '* But when shall a vintage be " — 
 You cry — " strong grape, squeezed gold from 
 screw. 
 Yet sweet juice, flavored flowery-fine ? 
 That were indeed the wine ! " 
 
 One pours your cup — stark strength, 
 
 Meat for a man ; and you eye the pnlp 
 Strained, turbid still, from the viscous blood 
 Of the snaky bough : and yon grumble " Good I 
 For it swells resolve, breeds hardihood j 
 
 Dispatch it, then, in a single gulp ! " 
 So, down, with a wry face, goes at length 
 The liquor : stuff for strength. 
 
 One pours your cup — sheer sweet. 
 
 The fragrant fumes of a year condensed : 
 Suspicion of all that 's ripe or rathe. 
 From the bud on branch to the grass in swathes 
 " We suck mere milk of the seasons," saith 
 A curl of each nostril — " dew, dispensed 
 Nowise for nerving man to feat : 
 Boys sip such honeyed sweet ! " 
 
 And thus who wants wine strong. 
 Waves each sweet smell of the year away ; 
 
828 
 
 EPILOGUE 
 
 Who likes to swoon as the sweets suffuse 
 His brain with a mixture of beams and dews 
 Turned syrupy drink — rough strength eschews : 
 ** Wliat though in our veins your wine-stock 
 stay? 
 The lack of the bloom does our palate wrong. 
 Give us wine sweet, not strong 1 " 
 
 Yet wine is — some affirm — 
 
 Prime wine is found in the world somewhere, 
 Of portable strength with sweet to match. 
 You double your heart its dose, yet catch — 
 As the draught descends — a violet-smateh, 
 
 Softness — however it came there. 
 Through drops expressed by the fire and worm : 
 Strong sweet wine — some affirm. 
 
 Body and bouquet both ? 
 
 'T is easy to ticket a bottle so ; 
 But what was the case in the cask, my friends ? 
 Cask ? Nay, the vat — where the maker 
 
 mends 
 His strong with liis sweet (you suppose) and 
 blends 
 His rough with his smooth, till none can know 
 How it comes you may tipple, nothing loth, 
 Body and bouquet both. 
 
 " You " being just — the world. 
 
 No poets — who turn, themselves, the winch 
 Of the press ; no critics — I '11 even say, 
 (Being flustered and easy of faith, to-day,) 
 Who for love of the work have learned the way 
 Till themselves produce home-made, at a 
 pinch : 
 No ! Yon are the world, and wine ne'er purled 
 Except to please the world ! 
 
 " For, oh the common heart ! 
 
 And, ah the irremissible sin 
 Of poets who please themselves, not us ! 
 Strong wine yet sweet wine pouring thus. 
 How please still — Pindar and ^sehylus I — 
 
 Drink — dipt into by the bearded chin 
 Alike and the bloomy lip — no part 
 Denied the common heart ! 
 
 '■ And might we get such grace. 
 
 And did you moderns but stock our vault 
 With the true half-brandy half-attar-gul. 
 How would seniors indulge at a hearty pull 
 While juniors tossed off their thimbleful ! 
 Our Shakespeare and Milton escaped your 
 fault. 
 So, they reign supreme o'er the weaker race 
 That wants the ancient grace ! " 
 
 If I paid myself with words 
 
 (As the French say well) I were dupe in- 
 deed I 
 I were found in belief that you quaffed and 
 
 bowsed 
 At your Shakespeare the whole day long, 
 
 caroused 
 In your Milton pottle-deep nor drowsed 
 
 A moment of night — toped on, took heed 
 Of nothing like modern cream-and-ourds. 
 Pay me with deeds, not words ! 
 
 For — see yonr cellarage ! 
 There are forty barrels with Shakespeare's 
 brand. 
 Some five or six are abroach : the rest 
 Stand spigoted, fauceted. Try and test 
 What yourselves call best of the very best ! 
 How comes it that still untouched they 
 stand ? 
 Why don't you try tap, advance a stage 
 With the rest in cellerage ? 
 
 For — see your cellarage ! 
 
 There are four big butts of Milton's brew. 
 How comes it yon make old drips and drops 
 Do duty, and there devotion stops ? 
 Leave such an abyss of malt and hops 
 
 Embellied in butts which bungs still glue ? 
 You hate your bard ! A fig for your rage ! 
 Free him from cellarage ! 
 
 'T is said I brew stiff drink. 
 
 But the deuce a flavor of grape is there. 
 Hardly a May-«o-down, 't is just 
 A sort of a gruff Go-down-it-must — 
 No Merry-go-down, no gracious gust 
 
 Commingles the racy with Springtide's rare ! 
 "What wonder," say you, "that we cough, 
 and blink 
 At Autumn's heady drink ? " 
 
 Is it a fancy, friends ? 
 
 Mighty and mellow are never mixed, 
 Though mighty and mellow be bom at once. 
 Sweet for the future, — strong for the nonce ! 
 Stuff you should stow away, ensconce 
 
 in the deep and dark, to be found fast-fixed 
 At the century's close ; such time strength 
 spends 
 A-sweetening for my friends ! 
 
 And then — why, what you quaff 
 
 With a smack of lip and a cluck of tongue, 
 Is leakage and leavings — just what haps 
 From the tun some learned taster taps 
 With a promise " Prepare your watery chaps I 
 
 Here 's properest wine for old and young ! 
 Dispute its perfection — you make us laugh ! 
 Have faith, give thanks, but — quaff ! " 
 
 Leakage, I say , or — worse — 
 
 Leavings suffice pot-valiant souls. 
 Somebody, brimful, loi^ ago, 
 Frothed flagon he drained to the dregs ; and, lo, 
 Down whisker and beard what an overflow ! 
 Lick spilth that has trickled from classic 
 jowls. 
 Sup the single scene, sip the only verse — 
 Old wine, not new and worse ! 
 
 I grant you : worse by much ! 
 
 Renounce that new where you never gained 
 One glow at heart, one gleam at head. 
 And stick to the warrant of age instead ! 
 No dwarfs-lap ! Fatten, by giants fed ! 
 
 You fatten, with oceans of drink nndrained ? 
 You feed — who would ohoke did a cobweb 
 smntch 
 The Age you love so much ? 
 
EPILOGUE 
 
 829 
 
 A mine 's beneath a moor ; 
 
 Acres of moor roof fathoms of mine 
 Which diamonds dot where you please to 
 
 dig; 
 Yet who plies spade for the bright and big ? 
 Your product is — truffles, you hunt with a 
 pig! 
 Since bright-and-big, when :■, man would 
 dine, 
 Sixits badly : and therefore the Koh-i-noor 
 May sleep in mine 'neath moor ! 
 
 Wine, pulse in might from me ! 
 
 It may never emerge in must from vat. 
 Never' fill cask nor furnish can. 
 Never end sweet, which strong began — 
 God's gift to gladden the heart of man ; 
 
 But spirit 's at proof, I promise that I 
 No sparing of juice sijoils what should be 
 Fit brewage — mine for me. 
 
 Man's thoughts and loves and hates ! 
 
 Earth is my vineyard, these grew there : 
 From grape of the ground, I made or marred 
 My vintage ; easy the task or hard. 
 Who set it — his praise be my reward ! 
 Earth's yield ! Who yearn for the Dark 
 Blue Sea's, 
 Let them '' lay, pray, bray " — the addle-pates ! 
 Mine be Man's thoughts, loves, hates ! 
 
 But some one says, " Good Sir ! " 
 
 ('T is a worthy versed in what concerns 
 The making such labor turn out well,) 
 " You don't suppose that the nosegay-smell 
 Needs always come from the grape ? Each 
 beU 
 At your foot, each bud that your culture 
 spurns. 
 The very cowslip would act like myrrh 
 On the stifPest brew — good Sir ! 
 
 " Cowslips, abundant birth 
 
 O'er meadow and hillside, vineyard too, 
 — Like a schoolboy's scrawlings in and out 
 Distasteful lesson-book — all about 
 Greece and Rome, victory and rout — 
 
 Love-verses instead of such vain ado ! 
 So, fancies frolic it o'er the earth 
 
 Where thoughts have rightlier birth, 
 
 " Nay, thoughtlings they themselves : 
 
 Loves, hates — in little and less and least ! 
 Thoughts ? ' What is a man beside a mount ! ' 
 
 Loves ? ' Absent — poor lovers the minutes 
 
 count ! ' 
 Hates? "■ Fie — Pope's letters to Martha 
 Blount ! ' 
 These furnish a wine for a children's-feast : 
 Lisipid to man, they suit the elves 
 
 Like thoughts, loves, hates themselves." 
 
 And, friends, beyond dispute 
 I too have the cowslips dewy and dear. 
 
 Punctual as Springtide forth peep they : 
 
 I leave them to make my meadow gay. 
 
 But I ought to pluck and impound them, eh ? 
 Not let them alone, but deftly shear 
 
 And shred and reduce to — what may suit 
 Children, beyond dispute ? 
 
 And, here 's May-month, all bloom. 
 
 All bounty : what if I sacrifice ? 
 If I out with shears and shear, nor stop 
 Shearing till prostrate, lo, the crop ? 
 And will you prefer it to ginger-pop 
 
 When I 've made you wine of the memories 
 Which leave as bare as a churchyard tomb 
 My meadow, late all bloom ? 
 
 Nay, what ingratitude 
 
 Should I hesitate to amuse the wits 
 That have pulled so long at my fiask, nor 
 
 grudged 
 The headache that paid their pains, nor budged 
 From bunghole before they sighed and judged 
 
 " Too rough for our taste, to-day, befits 
 The racy and right when the years conclude ! " 
 Out on ingratitude ! 
 
 Grateful or ingrate — none. 
 
 No cowslip of all my fairy crew 
 Shall help to concoct what makes you wink. 
 And goes to your head till you think you think ! 
 I like them alive : the printer's ink 
 
 Would sensibly tell on the perfume too. 
 I may use up my nettles, ere I 've done ; 
 But of cowslips — friends get none 1 
 
 Don't nettles make a broth 
 
 Wholesome for blood grown lazy and thick ? 
 Maws out of sorts make mouths out of taste. 
 My Tliirty-f our Port — no need to waste 
 On a tongue that 's fur and a palate — paste ! 
 A magnum for friends who are sound ! the 
 sick — 
 I 'U posset and cosset them, nothing loth, 
 Henceforward with nettle-broth ! 
 
830 
 
 THE AGAMEMNON OF .ESCHYLUS 
 
 THE AGAMEMNON OF ^SCHYLUS 
 
 May I be permitted to chat a little, by way 
 of recreation, at the end of a somewhat toil- 
 some and perhaps fruitless adventure ? 
 
 If, because of the immense fame of the' fol- 
 lowing Tragedy, I wished to acquaint myself 
 with it, and could only do so by the help of a 
 translator, I should require him to be literal at 
 every cost save that of absolute violence to our 
 language. The use of certain allowable con- 
 structions which, happening to be out of daily 
 favor, are all the more appropriate to archaic 
 workmanship, is no violence : but I would be 
 tolerant for once — in the case of so immensely 
 famous an original - — of even a clumsy attempt 
 to furnish me with the very turn of each phrase 
 in as Greek a fashion as English will bear : 
 while, with respect to amplifications and em- 
 bellishments, — anything rather than, with the 
 good farmer, experience that most signal of 
 mortifications, '' to gape for ^schylus and get 
 Theognis." I should especially decline — what 
 may appear to brighten up a passage — the 
 employment of a new word for some old 
 one, — TTovo^, or /^eya?, or Te\o^^ with its conge- 
 nere, recurring four times in three lines : for 
 though such substitution may be in itself, per- 
 fectly justifiable, yet this exercise of ingenuity 
 ought to be within the competence of the un- 
 aided English reader if he likes to show him- 
 self ingenious. Learning Greek teaches Greek, 
 and nothing else : certainly not common sense, 
 if that have failed to precede the teaching. 
 Further, — if I obtained a mere strict bald 
 version of thing by thing, or at least word 
 pregnant with thing, 1 should hardjy look for 
 an impossible transmission of the reputed mag- 
 niloquence and sonority of the Greek ; and this 
 with the less regret, inasmuch as there is 
 abundant musicality elsewhere, but nowhere 
 else than in his poem the ideas of the poet. 
 And lastly, when presented with these ideas, 
 I should expect the result to prove very 
 hard readina: indeed if it were meant to 
 resemble ^^schylus, ^vf^fia^elv ou p<f5ios, *' not 
 easy to understand," in the opinion of his 
 stoutest advocate among the ancients ; while, I 
 suppose, even modern scholarship sympathizes 
 with that early declaration of the redoubtable 
 Salmasins. when, looking about for an example 
 of the truly obscure for the benefit of those 
 who found obscurity in the sacred books, he 
 protested that this particular play leaves them 
 all behind in this respect, with their " He- 
 braisms, Syriasms, Hellenisms, and the whole 
 
 of such bag and baggage." i For, over and above 
 the proposed ambiguity of the Chorus, the text 
 is sadly corrupt, probably interpolated, and 
 certainly mutilated ; and no unlearned person 
 enjoys the scholar's privilege of trying his fancy 
 upon each obstacle whenever he comes to a 
 stoppage, and effectually clearing the way by 
 suppressing what seems to lie in it. 
 
 AU I can say for the present performance is, 
 that I have done as I would be do^e by, if 
 need were. Should anybody, without need, 
 honor my translation by a comparison with 
 the original, I beg him to observe that, follow- 
 ing no editor exclusively, I keep to the earlier 
 readings so long as sense, can be made out of 
 them, but disregard, I hope, little of import- 
 ance in recent criticism so far as I have fallen 
 in with it. Fortunately, the poorest translar 
 tion, provided only it be faithful, — though it 
 reproduce all the artistic confusion of tenses, 
 moods, and persons, with which the original 
 teems, — will not only suffice to display what 
 an eloquent friend maintains to be the all-in-all 
 of poetry — "the action of the piece" — but 
 may help to illustrate his assurance that " the 
 Greeks are the highest models of expression, 
 the unapproached masters of the grand style : 
 their expression is so excellent because it is so 
 admirably kept in its right degree of promi- 
 nence, because it is so simple and so well sub- 
 ordinated, because it draws its force directly 
 from the pregnancy of the matter which it con- 
 veys . . . not a word wasted, not a sentiment 
 capriciously thrown in, stroke on stroke ! " 2 
 So may all happen 1 
 
 Just a word more on the subject of my spell- 
 ing — in a. transcript from the Greek and there 
 exclusively — Greek names and places precisely 
 as does the Greek author. I began this prac- 
 tice, with great innocency of intention, some 
 six-and-thirty ' years ago. Leigh Hunt, I re- 
 member, was accustomed to speak of his 
 gratitude, when ignorant of Greek, to those 
 writers (like Goldsmith) who had obliged him 
 by using English characters, so that he might 
 relish, for instance, the smooth quality of such 
 
 ' " Quie .^scliylum possit afiQrmare Graece nunc 
 Bcienti magis patere explicabilem quam Evangelia aut 
 EpiBtolas Apostolicas ? Onus ejus Agamemnon ob- 
 scuritate superat quantum est librorum aacrorum cum 
 suis Hebraismis et Syriasmis et tota Hellenisticie su- 
 poUectili vel farragine."— Salmastos de Hellenistica, 
 EpiBt. Bedic. 
 
 ' Poms by Matxhsw Arnold, Preface. 
 
THE AGAMEMNON OF .ESCHYLUS 
 
 83 1 
 
 a phrase as " iiapalunetai gal6n4 ; " he said 
 also that Shelley was indignant at " Firenze " 
 having displaced the Dantesque "Fiorenza," 
 and would contemptuously Eng:lish the intruder 
 " Fiience." I supposed I was doing a simple 
 thing enuugh : but there has been tUl lately 
 much astonishment at os and us, at and o^ rep- 
 resenting the same letters in Greek, Of a sud- 
 den, however, whether in translation or out of 
 it» everybody seems committing the offence, 
 although the adoption of u for v still presents 
 such difficulty that it is a wonder how we have 
 hitherto escaped "Eyripides." But there ex- 
 isted a sturdy Briton who, Ben Jonson informs 
 us, wrote " The Life of the Emperor Anthony 
 Pie " — whom we now acquiesce in as An- 
 toninus Pius: for '* with time and patience the 
 mulberry leaf becomes satin." Yet there is on 
 all sides much profession of respect for what 
 Keats called " vowelled Greek " — " conso- 
 nanted," one would expect ; and, in a criticism 
 upon a late admirable translation of something 
 of my own, it was deplored that, in a certain 
 verse corresponding in measure to the four- 
 teenth of the sixth Pythian Ode, " neither 
 Professor Jebb in his Greek, nor Mr. Browning 
 in his English, could emulate that matchlessly 
 musical yovov tfi&y K6.Wt.tnov di'fipuii'.'' Now, 
 undoubtedly, "Seeing her son the fairest of 
 men" has more sense than sound to boast of : 
 but then, would not an Italian roll us out 
 
 "Rimirando il figliuolo beUissimo degU uora- 
 ini 'I " whereat Pindar, no less than Professor 
 Jebb and Mr. Browning, rptoiKT^pos oi^erat -iv-jt^Ctv, 
 It is recorded in the Annals of Art^ that 
 there was once upon a time, practising so far 
 north as Stockholm, a painter and picture- 
 cleaner — sire of a less unhappy son — Old 
 Muytens: and the annalist. Baron de Tess^, 
 has not concealed his profound dissatisfaction 
 at Old Muytens' conceit "to have himself had 
 something to do with the work of whatever 
 master of eminence might pass through his 
 hands." Whence it was — the Baron goes on 
 to deplore — that much detriment was done 
 to that excellent piece " The Recognition of 
 Achilles," by Rubens, throi^h the perversity 
 of Old Muytens, " who must needs take on him 
 to beautify every nymph of the twenty by the 
 bestowment of a widened eye and an enlarged 
 mouth." I, at least, have left eyes and mouths 
 everywhere as I found them, and this conserv- 
 atism is all that claims praise for — what 
 
 is, after all aKcAeua-TOs u^ict^os aoi6a. No, 
 
 neither " uncommanded " nor " unrewarded : " 
 since it was commanded of me by my venerated 
 friend Thomas Carlyle, and rewarded will it 
 indeed become, if I am permitted to dignify it 
 by the prefatory insertion of his dear and noble 
 name. R. B. 
 
 London, October 1, 1877. 
 
 1 Lcttres il unjeune Prince, traduites du Su^dois. 
 
 AGAMEMNON 
 
 PERSONS OF THE DRAMA 
 
 Waedbe, 
 
 Chords of Old Men. 
 Klutaimnestra. 
 Taltuubios, Herald. 
 
 AaAUEUNON. 
 
 AiaiSTHos. 
 KasSandba. 
 
 Warder. The gods I ask deliverance from 
 these labors, 
 Watch of a year's length whereby, slumbering 
 
 through it 
 On the Atreidai's roofs on elbow, — dog-like — 
 I know of nightly star-groups the assemblage. 
 And those that bring to' men winter and sum- 
 mer. 
 Bright dynasts, as they pride them in the iether 
 — Stars, when they wither, and ', the uprisings 
 
 of them. 
 And now on ward I wait'the torch's token, 
 iTie glow of fire, shall bring from Troia mes- 
 sage 
 And word of capture : so prevails audacious 
 The man's -way-planning hoping heart of 
 
 woman. ^ . 
 
 But when I, driven from night-rest, dew- 
 drenched, hold to 
 This couch of piine — not looked upon by 
 
 visions. 
 Since fear instead of sleep still stands beside me, 
 
 So as that fast I fix in sleep no eyelids — 
 And when to sing or chirp a tune I fancy. 
 For slumber such song-remedy infusing, 
 I wail then, for this House s fortune groan- 
 ing. 
 Not, as of old, after the best ways governed. 
 Now, lucky be deliverance from these labors, 
 At good news — the appearing dusky fire ! 
 hail, thou lamp of night, a day-long light- 
 ness 
 Revealing, and of dances the ordainment ! 
 Halloo, halloo ! 
 
 To Agamemnon's wife I show, by shouting. 
 That, from bed starting up at once, i' the 
 
 household 
 Joyous acclaim, good-omened to this torch- 
 blaze. 
 She send aloft if haply Uion's city 
 Be taken, as the beacon boasts announcing. 
 Ay, and, for me, myself will dance a prelude. 
 For, that my masters' dice drop right, I '11 
 
 reckon : > 
 Since thrice-six has it thrown to me, this 
 
 signal. 
 Well, may it hap that, as he comes, the loved 
 
 hand 
 0' the household's lord I may sustain with this 
 
 hand! 
 As for the rest, I 'm mute : on tongue a big 
 ox 
 
832 
 
 THE AGAMEMNON OF ^SCHYLUS 
 
 Has trodden. Yet this House, if voice it take 
 
 should, 
 Most plain would speak. So, willing I myself 
 
 speak 
 To those who know : to who know not — I 'm 
 
 blankness. 
 Choros. The tenth year this, since Priamos' 
 
 great match. 
 King Menelaos, Agamemnon King, 
 
 — The strenuous yoke-pair of the Atreidai's 
 
 honor 
 Two-throned, two-sceptred, whereof Zeus was 
 
 donor — 
 Did from this land the aid, the armament dis- 
 patch. 
 The thousand-sailored force of Argives clamor- 
 ing 
 " Ares " from out the indignant breast, as fling 
 Passion forth vultures which, because of grief 
 Away, — as are their young ones, — with the 
 
 thief, 
 Lofty above their brood-nests wheel in ring. 
 Row round and round with oar of either wing. 
 Lament the bedded chicks, lost labor that was 
 
 love: 
 Which hearing, one above 
 
 — Whether ApoUon, Pan or Zeus — that wail, 
 Sharp-piercing bird-shriek of the guests who 
 
 fare 
 
 Housemates with gods in air — 
 
 Such-an-one sends, against who these assail. 
 
 What, late-sent, shall not fail 
 
 Of punishing — Erinus. Here as there. 
 
 The Guardian of the Guest, Zeus, the excelling 
 one. 
 
 Sends against Alexandres either son 
 
 Of Atreus : for that wife, the many-husbanded. 
 
 Appointing many a tug that tries the limb, 
 
 While the knee plays the prop in dust, while, 
 shred 
 
 To morsels, lies the spear-shaft ; in those 
 grim 
 
 Marriage-prolusions when their Fury wed 
 
 Danaoi and Trees, both alike. All 's said : 
 
 Things are where things are, and, as fate has 
 willed. 
 
 So shall they be fulfilled. 
 
 Not gently-grieving, not just doling out 
 
 The drops of expiation — no, nor tears dis- 
 tilled — 
 
 Shall he we know of bring the hard about 
 
 To soft — that intense ire 
 
 At those mock rites unsanctified by fire. 
 
 But we pay naught here : through our flesh, age- 
 weighed, 
 
 Left out from who gave aid 
 
 In that day, — we remain, 
 
 Staying on staves a strength 
 
 The equal of a child's at length. 
 
 For when young marrow in the breast doth 
 reign. 
 
 That 's the old man's match, — Ares out of 
 place 
 
 In either ; but in oldest age's case. 
 
 Foliage a-f ading, why, he wends his way 
 
 On three feet, and, no stronger than a child, 
 
 Wanders about gone wild, 
 
 A dream in day. 
 
 But thou, Tundareus' daughter, Klutaimnestra 
 
 queen, 
 What need ? What new ? What havmg heard 
 
 or seen, 
 By what announcement's tidings, everywhere 
 Settest thou, round about, the sacrifice aflare ? 
 For, of all gods the city-swaying. 
 Those supernal, those infernal. 
 Those of the fields', those of the mart's 
 
 obeying, — 
 The altars blaze with gifts ; 
 And here and there, heaven-high the torch up- 
 lifts 
 Flame — medicated with persuasions mild, 
 With foul admixture unbeguiled — 
 Of holy unguent, from the clotted chrism 
 Brought from the palace, safe in its abysm. 
 Of these things, speaking what may be in- 
 deed 
 Both possible and lawful to concede. 
 Healer do thou become ! — of this solicitude 
 Which, now, stands plainly forth of evil mood, 
 And, then . . . but from oblations, hope, to- 
 day 
 Gracious appearing, wards away 
 From soul the insatiate care. 
 The sorrow at my breast, devouring there ! 
 
 Empowered am I to smg 
 
 The omens, what their force which, journey- 
 ing, 
 Rejoiced the potentates : 
 (For still, from God, inflates 
 My breast, song-suasion : age. 
 Born to the business, still such war can wage) 
 
 — How the fierce bird against the Teukris laud 
 Dispatched, with spear and executing hand, 
 The Achaian's two-throned empery — o'er 
 
 Hellas' youth 
 Two rulers with one mind : 
 The birds' king to these kings of ships, on high, 
 
 — The black sort, and the sort that 's white 
 
 behind, — 
 Appearing by the palace, on the spear-throw 
 
 side. 
 In right sky-regions, visible far and wide, — 
 Devouring a hare-creature, great with young. 
 Balked of more racings they, as she from whom 
 
 they sprung ! 
 Ah, Linos, say — ah. Linos, song of wail I 
 But may the good prevail ! 
 
 The prudent army-prophet seeing two 
 
 The Atreidai, two their tempers, knew 
 
 Those feasting on the hare 
 
 The armament-conductors were ; 
 
 And thus he spoke, explaining signs in view. 
 
 " In time, this outset takes the town of 
 Priamos : 
 
 But all before its towers, — the people's wealth 
 that was. 
 
 Of flocks and herds, — as sure, shall booty- 
 sharing thence 
 
 Drain to the dregs away, by battle violence. 
 
 Only, have care lest grudge of any god disturb 
 
 With cloud the unsullied shine of that great 
 force, the curb 
 
 Of Troia, struck with damp 
 
THE AGAMEMNON OF yESCHYLUS 
 
 833 
 
 Beforehand in the camp 1 
 
 For euvyingly is 
 
 The virgin Artemis 
 
 Toward — her lather's flying hounds — this 
 
 House — 
 The saciificers of the piteous 
 And cowering beast. 
 Brood and all, ere the birth : she hates the 
 
 eagles' feast. 
 Ah, Linos, say — ah. Linos, song of wail ! 
 But may the good prevail ! 
 
 " Thus ready is the beauteous one with help 
 To those small dewdrop things fierce lions 
 
 whelp. 
 And udder-loving litter of each brute 
 That roams the mead ; and therefore makes 
 
 she suit. 
 The fair one, for fulfilment to the end 
 Of things these signs portend — 
 Which partly smile, indeed, but partly scowl — 
 The phantasms of the fowl. 
 I call leiios Paian to avert 
 yhe work the Danaoi hurt 
 By any thwarting waftures, long and fast 
 Holdings from sail of ships : 
 And sacrifice, another than the last, 
 She lor herself precipitate — 
 Something unlawful, feast for no man's lips. 
 Builder of quarrels, with the House cognate — 
 Having in awe no husband ; for remains 
 A frightful, backward-darting in the path. 
 Wily house-keeping chronicler of wrath. 
 That has to punish that old children's fate 1 " 
 Such things did Kalchas, — with abundant 
 
 gains 
 As well, — vociferate. 
 Predictions from the tiirds, in journeying, 
 Above the abode of either king. 
 With these, symphonions, sing — 
 Ah, Linos, say — ah. Linos, song of wail I 
 But may the good prevail ! 
 
 Zeus, whosoe'er he be, — if that express 
 
 Aught dear to him on whom 1 call — 
 
 So do I him address. 
 
 I cannot liken out, by all 
 
 Admeasurement of powers. 
 
 Any but Zens for refuge at such hours, 
 
 If veritably needs I must 
 
 From off my soul its vague care-burden thrust. 
 
 Not — whosoever was the great of yore. 
 
 Bursting to bloom with bravery all round — 
 
 Is in our mouths : he was, but is no more. 
 
 And who it was that after came to be, 
 
 Met the thrice-throwing wrestler, — he 
 
 Is also gone to ground. 
 
 Bat " Zeus " — if any, heart and soul, that 
 
 name — 
 Shouting the triumph-praise — proclaim. 
 Complete in judgment shall that man be found- 
 Zeus, who leads onward mortals to be wise. 
 Appoints that suifering masterfully teach. 
 In sleep, before the heart of each, 
 A woe-remembering travail sheds in dew 
 Discretion, — ay, and melts the unwilling too 
 By what, perchance, may be a graciousness 
 
 Of gods, enforced no less, — 
 
 As they, commanders of the crew, 
 
 Assume the awful seat. 
 
 And then the old leader of the Achaian fleet, 
 
 Disparaging no seer — 
 
 With bated breath to suit misfortune's inrush 
 
 here 
 — (What time it labored, that Achaian host. 
 By stay from sailing, — every pulse at length 
 Emptied of vital strength, — 
 Hard over Kalchis shore-bound, current-crost 
 In Aulis station, — while the winds which post 
 From Strumon, ill-delayers, famine-fraught, 
 Tempters of man to sail where harborage is 
 
 naught. 
 Spendthrifts of ships and cables, turning time 
 To twice the length, — these carded, by delay, 
 To less and less away 
 The Argeians' flowery prime : 
 And when a remedy more grave and grand 
 Than aught before — yea, for the storm and 
 
 dearth — 
 The prophet to the foremost in command 
 Shrieked forth, as cause of this 
 Adducing Artemis, 
 
 So that the Atreidai striking staves on earth 
 Could not withhold the tear) — 
 Then did the king, the elder, speak this clear. 
 
 " Heavy the fate, indeed — to disobey ! 
 
 Yet heavy if my child I slay. 
 
 The adornment of my household: with the 
 tide 
 
 Of virgin-slaughter, at the altar-side, 
 
 A father's hands deflling : which the way 
 
 Without its evils, say ? 
 
 How shall I turn fleet-fugitive, 
 
 Failing of duty to allies ? 
 
 Since for a wind-abating sacrifice 
 
 And virgin blood, — 't is right they strive, 
 
 Nay, madden with desire. 
 
 Well may it work them — this that they re- 
 quire ' " 
 
 But when he underwent necessity's 
 Yoke-trace, — from soul blowing unhallowed 
 
 change 
 Unclean, abominable, — thence — another 
 
 man — 
 The audacious mind of him began 
 Its wildest range. 
 
 For this it is gives mortals hardihood — 
 Some vice-devising miserable mood 
 Of madness, and first woe of all the brood. 
 The sacrificer of his daughter — strange ! — 
 He dared become, to expedite 
 Woman-avenging warfare, — anchors weighea 
 With such prelusive rite ! 
 
 Prayings and callings " Father " — naught 
 
 they made 
 Of these, and of the virgin-age, — 
 Captains heart-set on war to wage ! 
 His ministrants, vows done, the father bade — 
 Kid-like, above the altar, swathed in pall. 
 Take her — lift high, and have no fear at all. 
 Head-downward, and the fair mouth's guard 
 
834 
 
 THE AGAMEMNON OF .CSCHYLtTS 
 
 And frontage hold, — press hard 
 
 From utterance a curse against the House 
 
 By dint of bit — violence bridling speech. 
 
 And as to ground her saftron-vest she shed, 
 
 8he smote the sacrilicers all and each 
 
 With arrow sweet and piteous. 
 
 From the eye only sped, — 
 
 Significant of will to use a word, 
 
 Just as in pictures : since, full many a time, -^ 
 
 In her sire's guest-hall, by the well-heaped 
 
 board i 
 
 Had she made music, — lovingly with chime 
 Of her chaste voice, that unpolluted thing. 
 Honored the third libation, — paian that should 
 
 bring 
 Good fortune to the sire she loved so well. 
 
 What followed — those things I nor saw nor 
 
 tell. 
 But Kalchas^ arts — whate'er they indicate — 
 Miss of fulfilment never : it is fate. 
 True, justice makes, in sufferers, a desire 
 To know the future woe preponderate. 
 But — hear before is need 1, 
 To that, farewell and welcome ! 't is the same, 
 
 indeed. 
 As grief beforehand : clearly, part for part, 
 Conformably to Kalchas' art, 
 Shall come the event. 
 
 But be they as they may, things subsequent, — 
 What is to do, prosperity betide 
 E'en as we wish it !,— we, the next allied. 
 Sole guarding barrier of the Apian land. 
 
 I am come, reverencing power in thee, 
 
 Klutaimn^stra ! For t is just we bow 
 
 To the ruler's wife, — the male-seat man-be- 
 reaved. 
 
 But if thou, having heard good news, — or 
 none, — 
 
 For good news' hope dost sacrifice thus wide, 
 
 1 would hear gladly : art thou mute, — no 
 
 grudge ! 
 Klutaimnestra. Good-news-announcer, may — 
 
 as is the by-word — 
 Morn become, truly, — news from Night his 
 
 mother ! 
 But thou shalt learn joy past all hope of hear- 
 . r . ing. 
 Priamos' city have the Argeioi taken. 
 
 Cho. How sayest ? The word, from want of 
 
 faith, escaped me. 
 Klu. Troia the Achaioi hold: do I speak 
 
 plainly?,. 
 Cho. Joy overcreeps me, calling forth the 
 
 tear-drop. 
 Klu. Right ! for, that glad thou art, thine 
 
 eye convicts thee. 
 Cho. For — what to thee, of all this, trusty 
 
 token ? 
 Klu. Wha,t 's hiere ! how else? unless the 
 
 god have cheated. 
 Cho. Haply thou flattering shows of dreams 
 
 respectest ? 
 Klu. Nq, fancy would I take of soul sleep- 
 burdened. 
 Cho. But has there puffed thee up some un- 
 
 winered omen ? 
 
 Klu. As a young tiuaid's my mind thoU 
 
 mockest grossly. 
 Cho. Well, at what time was — even sacked, 
 
 the city ? , . 
 Klu. Of this same mother Night — the_ dawn, 
 
 I tell thee. 
 Cho. And who of messengers could reach this 
 
 swiftness V. 
 Klu. Hephaistos — sending a bright blaze 
 from Id4- 
 Beacon did beacon send, from fire the poster, 
 Hitherward : Id4 to the rock Hermaian 
 Of Lemnos : and a third great torch o' the 
 
 island 
 Zeus' seat received in turn, the Athoan sum- 
 mit. 
 And, — so upsoaring as to stride sea over. 
 The strong lamp-voyager, and all for joyance — 
 Did the goldrglorious splendor, any sun like, 
 Pass on — the pine-tree — to Makistos' watch- 
 place ; 
 Who did not, — tardy, — caught, no wits about 
 
 him. 
 By sleep, — decline his portion of the missive. 
 And fan the beacon's light,, on stream Euri- 
 
 pos 
 Arriving, made aware Messapios' warders. 
 And up they lit in turn, played herald on- 
 wards. 
 Kindling with flame a heap of gray old 
 
 heather. 
 And, strengthening still, the lamp, decaying 
 
 nowise. 
 Springing o'er Plain Asopos, — fullmoon- 
 
 , fashion 
 Effulgent, — toward the crag of Mount Kitha- 
 
 iron. 
 Roused a new> rendering-up of fire the escort — 
 And light, far escort, lacked no recognition 
 0' the guard — as burning more than burnings 
 
 told you. 
 And over Lake Goi^opis light went leaping, 
 And, at Mount Aigiplanktos safe arriving. 
 Enforced the law — "to never stint the fire- 
 stuff.". , , !_i, ,■ 
 And they send, lighting up with ungrudged 
 
 vigor. 
 Of flame a huge beard, ay, the very foreland 
 So as to strike above, in burning onward. 
 The look-out which commands the Strmt 
 
 Saronic, 
 Then did it dart until it reached the outpost 
 Monnt Arachnaioa here, the city's ne^hbor ; 
 And then darts to this roof of the Atreidai 
 This light of Id^'s fire not unforeffithered! 
 Such are the rules prescribed the flambeau- 
 bearers : 
 He beats that 's first and also last in running. 
 Such is the proof and token I declare thee. 
 My husband having sent me news from Troia. 
 Cho. The gods, indeed, anon will I pray, 
 woman ! 
 But now, these lyords: to hear, and sate my 
 
 wonder 
 Thoroughly, I am fain — if twice thou tell 
 them. 
 Klu. Troia do the Achaioi hold, this same 
 day. 
 
THE AGAMEMNON QF ASCHYLUS 
 
 83s 
 
 I think a noise ^ no mixture — reigns i' the 
 
 city. 
 Sour wine and unguent pour thou in one 
 
 vessel — 
 Standers-apart, not lovers, would'st thou style 
 
 them : 
 And so, of captives and of conquerors, partwise 
 The voices are to hear, of fortune diverse. 
 For those; indeed, upon the bodies prostrate 
 Of husbands, brothers^ children upon parents 
 — The old men, from a throat that 's free no 
 
 longer, 
 Shriekingly wail the death-doom of their dear- 
 est: ' '"■"■ 
 While these — the after-battle hungry labor. 
 Which prompts night-f afing, marshals them to 
 
 breakfast 
 On the town's store, according to no billet 
 Of sharing, but as each dr8\* lot of fortune. 
 In' the spear-captured Troic habitations 
 House they already : from the frosts upsethral 
 And dews delivered, will they, luckless crea- 
 tures, ■.,11. 
 Without a watch to keep, slumber all night 
 
 through. 
 And if they fear the gods, the oity-guarderSi 
 And if the gods' structures of the conquered 
 
 country, i ' 
 
 They may not — capturera — soon in turn be 
 
 captive. 
 But see no prior lust befall the army 
 To sack things sacred — by gkift-cravings van- 
 quished ! 
 For there needs homeward the return's sal- 
 vation. 
 To round the' new limb back o' the double race- 
 course. 
 And guilty to the gods if came the army. 
 Awakened up tlie sorrow of those slaughtered 
 Might be — should no putbursting evils happen. 
 But may ■ good beat — no turn to see i 'the 
 
 balance ! 
 For, many benefits I want the gain of. 
 
 Cho. Woman, like prudent man thou kindly 
 speakest. 
 And I, thus havingheard thy trusty tokens, 
 The gods to rightly hail forthwith prepare 
 
 me ; 
 For, grace that must be paid has crowned our 
 labors. 
 
 Zeus the king, and friendly Night 
 
 Of these brave boons bestower — 
 
 Thou who didst fling on Troia's every tower 
 
 The o'er-roofing snare, that neither great thing 
 
 might. 
 Nor any of the young ones, overpass 
 Captivity's great sweep-net — one and all 
 Of At4 held in thrall ! 
 Ay, Zeus I fear — the guest's friend great — 
 
 who was 
 The doer of this, and long since bent 
 The bow on Alexandros with intent 
 That neither wide o' the white , , ,. , 
 
 Nor o'er the stars the foolish dart should light. 
 The stroke of Zeus— they have it, as men say ! 
 This, at least, from 'the source track forth we 
 
 may! 
 
 As he ordained, so has he done. 
 
 " No" — said some one — 
 
 " The gods thhik fit to care 
 
 Nowise for mortals, such 
 
 As those by whom the good and fair 
 
 Of things denied their touch 
 
 Is trampled ! " but he was profane. 
 
 That they do care, has been made plain 
 
 To offspring of the over-bold, 
 
 Outbreathing " Ares "greater than is just — 
 
 Houses that spill with more than they can hold. 
 
 More than is best for man. Be man's what 
 
 must 
 Keep harm off, so that in himself he find 
 Sufficiency — the well-endowed of mind I 
 For there 's no bulwark in man's wealth to him 
 Who, through a surfeit, kicks — into the dim 
 And disappearing — Right's great altar. 
 
 Yes- 
 It urges him, the sad persuasiveness, 
 At4's insufferable child that schemes 
 Treason beforehand : and all cm'e is vain. 
 It is not hidden : out it glares again, 
 A light dread-lamping-misohief , just as gleams 
 The badness of the bronze ; 
 Through rubbing, puttings to the touch. 
 Black-clotted is he, judged at once. 
 He seeks — the boy — a flying bird to clutch. 
 The insufferable brand 
 Setting upon the city of his land 
 Whereof not any god hears prayer ; 
 While him who brought about such evils there. 
 That unjust man, the god in grapple throws. 
 Such an one, Paris goes 
 Within the Atreidai's house — 
 Shamed the guest's board by robbery of the 
 spouse. ' 
 
 And, leaving to her townsmen throngs a-spread 
 
 With shields, and spear-thrusts of sea-arma- 
 ment. 
 
 And bringing Ilion, in a dowry's stead. 
 
 Destruction — swiftly throug'h the gates she 
 went. 
 
 Daring the undareable. But many a groan out- 
 broke 
 
 From prophets of the House as thus they 
 spoke. 
 
 " Woe, woe the House, the House and Rulers, 
 — woe 
 
 The marriage-bed and dints 
 
 A husband's love imprints ! 
 
 There she ■ stands silent 1 meets no honor — 
 no 
 
 Shame — sweetest still to see of things gone long 
 ago ! 
 
 And, through desire of one across the mam, 
 
 A ghost will seem within the house to reign : 
 
 And hateful to the husband is the grace 
 
 Of well-shaped statues : from — in place of 
 eyes, 
 
 Those blanks — all Aphrodite dies. 
 
 *' But dream-appearing mournful fantasies ~ 
 There they stand, bringing grace that ' s vain. 
 For vain ''t is, when brave things one seems to 
 
836 
 
 THE AGAMEMNON OF ^SCHYLUS 
 
 The fantasy has floated off, hands through ; 
 Gone, that appearance, — nowise left to creep, — 
 On wings, the servants in the paths of sleep ! " 
 Woes, then, in household and on hearth, are 
 
 such 
 As these — and woes surpassing these by much. 
 But not these only : everywhere — 
 For those who from the land 
 Of Hellas issued in a band. 
 Sorrow, the heart must bear, 
 Sits in the home of each, conspicuous there. 
 Many a circumstance, at least. 
 Touches the very breast. 
 For those 
 
 Whom any sent away, — he knows : 
 And in the live man's stead. 
 Armor and ashes reach 
 The house of each. 
 
 For Ares, gold-exchanger for the dead. 
 And balance-holder in the light o' the spear, 
 Due-weight from Ilion sends — 
 What moves the tear on tear — 
 A charred scrap to the friends : 
 Filling with well-packed ashes every urn. 
 For man — that was — the sole return. 
 And they groan — praising much, the while. 
 Now this man as experienced in the strife. 
 Now that, fallen nobly on a slaughtered pile. 
 Because of — not his own — another's wife. 
 But things there be, one barks, 
 When no man harks : 
 A surreptitious grief that 's grudge 
 Against the Atreidai who firet sought the judge. 
 But some there, round the rampart, have 
 In Ilian earth, each one his grave : 
 All fair-formed as at birth. 
 It hid them — what they have and hold — the 
 hostile earth. 
 
 And big with anger goes the city's word. 
 And pays a debt by public curse incurred. 
 And ever with me — as about to hear 
 A something night-involved — remains my 
 
 fear : 
 Since of the many-slayers — not 
 Unwatching are the gods. 
 The black Erinues, at due periods — 
 Whoever gains the lot 
 Of fortune with no right — 
 Him, by life's strain and stress 
 Back-again-beaten from success. 
 They strike blind : and among the out-of-sight 
 For who has got to be, avails no might. 
 The being praised outrageously 
 Is grave, for at the eyes of such an one 
 Is launched, from Zeus, the thunder-stone. 
 Therefore do I decide 
 For so much and no more prosperity 
 Than of his envy passes unespied. 
 Neither a city-sacker would I be. 
 Nor life, myself by others captive, see. 
 
 A swift report has gone our city through, 
 Fi'om fire, the good-news messenger: if true. 
 Who knows ? Or is it not a god-sent lie ? 
 Who is so childish and deprived of sense 
 That, having, at announcements of the fiame 
 
 Thus novel, felt his own heart fired thereby, 
 He then shall, at a change of evidence. 
 Be worsted just the same ? 
 It is conspicuous in a woman's nature. 
 Before its view to take a grace for granted : 
 Too trustful, — on her boundary, usurpature 
 Is swiftly made ; 
 But swiftly, too, decayed. 
 The glory perishes by woman vaunted. 
 Elu. Soon shall we know — of these light- 
 bearing torches. 
 And beacons and exchanges, fire with fire_ — 
 If they are true, indeed, or if, dream-fashion. 
 This gladsome light came and deceived our 
 
 judgment. 
 Yon herald from the shore I see, o'ersUadowed 
 With boughs of olive: dust, mud's thirsty 
 
 brother, 
 Close neighbors on his garb, thus testify me 
 That neither voiceless, nor yet kindling for thee 
 Mountaiii-wood-flame, shall he explain by fire- 
 smoke : 
 But either tell out more the joyance, speak- 
 ing .. . 
 Word contrary to which, I ought but love it ! 
 For may good be — to good that's known — 
 appendage ! 
 Cho. Whoever prays for aught else to this 
 city 
 — May he himself reap fruit of his mind's 
 error/ 
 Herald. Ha, my forefathers' soil of earth Ar- 
 geian ! 
 Thee, in this year's tenth light, am I returned 
 
 to — 
 Of many broken hopes, on one hope chancing ; 
 For never prayed I, in this earth Argeian 
 Dying, to share my part in tomb the dearest. 
 Now, hail thou earth, and hail thou aJso, sun- 
 light. 
 And Zeus, the country's lord, and king the Pu- 
 
 thian 
 From bow no longer ui^ng at us arrows ! 
 Enough, beside iikamandjos, cam'st thou ad- 
 verse: 
 Now, contrary, be savioiu" thou and healer, 
 king Apollon ! And gods conquest-granting, 
 All — I invoke too. and my tutelary 
 Hermes, dear herald, heralds' veneration, — 
 And Heroes our forthsenders, — friendly, once 
 
 more 
 The army to receive, the war-spear's leavings 1 
 Ha, mansions of my monarchs, roofs beloved. 
 And awful seats, and deities sun-fronting — 
 Receive with pomp your monarch, long time 
 
 absent ! 
 For he comes bringing light in night-time to you. 
 In common with all these — king Agamemnon. 
 But kindly greet liim — for clear shows your 
 
 duty — 
 Who has dug under Troia with the mattock 
 Of Zeus the Avenger, whereby plains are out- 
 ploughed. 
 Altars unrecognizable, and god's shrines. 
 And the whole land's seed thoroughly has per- 
 ished. 
 And such a yoke-strap having cast round Troia, 
 The elder kmg Atreides, happy man — he 
 
THE AGAMEMNON OF iESCHYLUS 
 
 837 
 
 Gomes to be honored, worthiest of what mortals 
 Now are. Nor Paris nor the accomplice-city 
 Outvaunts their deed as more than they are 
 
 done-by : 
 For, in a suit i'or rape and theft found guilty, 
 He missed of pliiuder and, in one destruction, 
 Fatherland, liouse and home has mowed to 
 
 atoms ; 
 Debts the Priamidai have paid twice over. 
 Cho, Hail, herald from the army of Aehai- 
 
 ans ! 
 Her* I hail : — to die, will gainsay gods no 
 
 long-er 1 
 Cho. Love of this fatherland did exercise 
 
 thee ? 
 Her. So that 1 weep, at least, with joy, my 
 
 eyes fuU. 
 Cho, What, of this gracious sickness were ye 
 
 gainers ? 
 Her. How now? instructed, 1 this speech 
 
 shall master. 
 Cho. For those who loved you back, with 
 
 longing stricken. 
 Her. ThiE* land yearned for the yearning 
 
 army, aay'st thou ? 
 Cho. So as to set me oft, from dark mind, 
 
 groaning. 
 Her. Whence came this ill mind — hatred to 
 
 the army ? 
 Cho. Of old, 1 use, for mischief's physic, si- 
 lence. 
 Her. And how, the chiefs away, did you fear 
 
 any? 
 Cho. So that now — late thy word — much 
 
 joy were — dying ! 
 Her. For well have things been worked out : 
 these, — in much time, 
 Some of them, one might say, had luck in fall- 
 ing, 
 While some were faulty: since who, gods ex- 
 cepted, 
 Goes, through the whole time of his life, un- 
 
 grieving ? 
 For labors should I tell of, and bad lodgments. 
 Narrow deckways ill-strewn, too, — what the 
 
 day's woe 
 We did not groan at getting for our portion ? 
 As for land-things, again, on went more hatred I 
 Since beds were ours hard by the foemen's ram- 
 parts, 
 And, out of heaven and from the earth, the 
 
 meadow 
 Dews kept a-sprinkle, an abiding damage 
 Of vestures, making hair a wild-beast matting. 
 Winter, too, if one told of it — bird-slaying — 
 Such as, unbearable, Idaian snow brought — 
 Or heat, when waveless, on its noontide couches 
 Without a wind, the sea would slumber falling 
 — Why must one mourn these ? O'er and gone 
 
 is labor : 
 O'er and gone is it, even to those dead ones, 
 So that no more again they mind uprising. 
 Why must we tell in numbers those deprived 
 
 ones. 
 And the live man be vexed with fate's fresh 
 
 outbreak ? 
 Rather, I bid full farewell to misfortunes ! 
 For us. the left from out the Argeian army, 
 
 The gam beats, nor does sorrow counterbalanee^ 
 So that 't is fitly boasted of, this sunlight, 
 By us, o'er sea and land the aery flyers, 
 '' Troia at last taking, the band of Argives 
 Hang up such trophies to the gods of Hellas 
 Within their domes — new glory to grow an- 
 cient ! " 
 Such things men having heard mast praise the 
 
 city 
 And army -leaders: and the grace which 
 
 wrought them — 
 Of Zeus, shall honored be. Thou hast my whole 
 
 word. 
 Cho. O'ercome by words, their sense I do not 
 
 gainsay. 
 For, aye this breeds youth in the old — "to 
 
 learn well." 
 But these things most the house and Klutaim- 
 
 nestra 
 Concern, 't is likely : while they make me rich^ 
 
 too. 
 Klu. I shouted long ago, indeed, for joyance. 
 When came that first night-messenger of fire 
 Proclaiming Ilion's capture and dispersion. 
 And some one, girding me, said, " Throi^h 
 
 fire-bearers 
 Persuaded — Troia to be sacked now, thinkest ? 
 Truly, the woman's way, — high to lift heart 
 
 up! " 
 By such words I was made seem wit-bewildered: 
 Yet still I sacrificed ; and, — female-song 
 
 with, — 
 A shout one man and other, through the city. 
 Set up, congratulating in the gods' seats. 
 Soothing tiae incense-eating fiame right frap 
 
 grant. 
 And now, what 's more, indeed, why need'st 
 
 thou tell me ? 
 I of the king himself shall learn the whole 
 
 word ; 
 And, — as may best be, — I my revered hua* 
 
 band 
 Shall hasten, as he comes back, to receive : for — 
 What 's to a wife sweeter to see than this light 
 (Her husband, by the god saved, back from 
 
 warfare) 
 So as to open gates ? This tell my husband — 
 To come at soonest to his loving city. 
 A faithful wife at hom.e may he find, coming ! 
 Such an one as he left — the dog o' the house- 
 hold- 
 Trusty to him, adverse to the ill-minded, 
 And, in all else, the same : no signet-impress 
 Having done harm to, in that time's duration. 
 I know nor pleasure, nor blameworthy conr 
 
 verse 
 With any other man more than — bronze-di^ 
 
 pings ! 
 Her. Such boast as this — brimful of the 
 
 veracious — 
 Is for a high-bom dame not bad to send forl^ j 
 Cho. Ay, she spoke thus to thee — that hast 
 
 a knowledge 
 From clear interpreters — a speech most seemly ! 
 But speak, thou, herald 1 Menelaos I ask of: 
 If he, returning, back in safety also 
 Will come with you ~ this land's beloved chia£- 
 
 tair? 
 
838 
 
 THE AGAMEMNON OF ^SCHYLUS 
 
 Her. There's no way I might say things 
 
 false and pleasant 
 For friends to reap the fruits of through a long 
 
 time. 
 Cho. How then, if, speaking good, things true 
 
 thou chance on ? 
 Her. For not well-hidden things become they, 
 
 pimdered. 
 The man has vanished from the Achaic army. 
 He and his ship too. I announce no falsehood. 
 Cho. Whether forth - putting openly from 
 
 llion, 
 Or did storm — wide woe — snatch him from 
 
 the army? 
 Her. Like topping bowman, thou hast touched 
 
 the target. 
 And a long sorrow hast succinctly spoken. 
 Cho. Whether, then, of him, as a live or dead 
 
 man 
 Was the report by other sailors bruited ? 
 
 Her. Nobody knows so as to tell out clearly 
 Excepting Helios who sustains earth's nature. 
 Cho. How say'st thou then, did storm the 
 
 naval army 
 Attack and end, by the celestials' anger ? 
 
 Her. It suits not to defile a day auspicious 
 With ill-announcing speech : distinct each god's 
 
 due: 
 And when a messenger with gloomy visage 
 To a city bears a fall'n host's woes — God ward 
 
 oft!- 
 One popular wound that happens to the city. 
 And many sacrificed from many households — 
 Men, scourged by that tvro-thonged whip Ares 
 
 loves so. 
 Double spear-headed curse, bloody yoke-cou- 
 ple, — 
 Of woes like these, doubtless, whoe'er comes 
 
 weighted. 
 Him does it suit to sing the Erinues' paian. 
 But who, of matters saved a glad-news-bringer. 
 Comes to a city in good estate rejoicing. . . . 
 How shall I mix good things with evil, telling 
 Of storm against the Acha'oi, urged by gods' 
 
 wrath ? 
 For they swore league, being arch-foes before 
 
 that. 
 Fire and the sea : and plighted troth approved 
 
 they. 
 Destroying the unhappy Argeian army. 
 At night began the ba>d-wave-outbreak evils ; 
 For, ships against each other Threkian breezes 
 Shattered : and these, butted at in a fury 
 By storm and typhoon, with surge rain-resound- 
 ing, — _ 
 Off they went, vanished, tlirough a bad herd's 
 
 whirling. 
 And, when returned the brilliant light of 
 
 Helios, 
 We view the Aigaian sea on flower with corpses 
 Of men Achaian and with naval ravage. 
 But us indeed, and ship, unhurt i' the hull too, 
 Either some one outstole us or ontprayed us — 
 Some god — no man it was the tiller touching. 
 And Fortune, savior, willing on our ship sat. 
 tSo as it neither had in harbor wave-surge 
 Nor ran aground against a shore all rocky. 
 And then, the water-Haides having fled from 
 
 In the white day, not trusting to our fortune, 
 We chewed the cud in thoughts — this novel 
 
 sori'ow 
 0' the army laboring and badly pounded. 
 And now — if any one of them is breathing — 
 They talk of us as having perished : why not ? 
 And we —that they the same fate have, imar 
 
 gine. 
 May it be for the best ! Meneleos, then. 
 Foremost and specially to come, expect thou ! 
 If (that is) any ray o' the sun reports him 
 Living and seeing too — by Zeus' contrivings, 
 Not yet disposed to quite destroy the lineage — 
 Some hope is he shall come again to household. 
 Having heard such things, know, thou truth art 
 
 hearing ! 
 Cho. Who may he have been that named 
 
 thus wholly with exactitude — 
 (Was he some one whom we see not, by f orecast- 
 
 ings of the future 
 Guiding tongue in happy mood ?) 
 — Her with battle for a bridegroom, on all 
 
 sides contention-wooed, 
 Helena ? Since — mark the suture ! — 
 Ship's-Hell,, Man's-HeU, City's-Hell, 
 From the delicately - pompous cui^ains that 
 
 pavilion well. 
 Forth, by favor of the gale 
 Of earth-bom Zephuros did she sail. 
 Many shield-bearers, leaders of the pack, 
 Sailed too upon their track. 
 Theirs who had directed oar. 
 Then visible no more. 
 To Simois' leaf-luxuriant shore — 
 For sake of strife all gore ! 
 
 To llion Wrath, fulfilling her intent, 
 
 This marriage-care — the rightly named so — 
 
 sent : 
 In after-time, for the tables' abuse 
 And that of the hearth-partaker Zeus, 
 Bringing to punishment 
 Those who honored with noisy throat 
 The honor of the bride, the hymenseal note 
 Which did the kinsfolk then to singing urge. 
 But, learning a new hymn for that which was» 
 The ancient city of Priamos 
 Groans probably a great and general dirge, 
 Denominating Paris 
 " The man that miserably marries : " — 
 She who, all the while before, 
 A life, that was a general dirge 
 For citizens' unhappy slaughter, bore. 
 
 And thus a man, by no milk's help. 
 
 Within his household reared a lion's whelp 
 
 That loved the teat 
 
 In life's first festal stage : 
 
 Gentle as yet, 
 
 A true child-lover, and, to men of age, 
 
 A thing whereat pride warms ; 
 
 And oft he had it in his arms 
 
 Like any new-born babe, bright-faced to hand 
 
 Wagging its tail, at belly's strict command. 
 
 But in due time upgrown. 
 
 The custom of progenitors was shown : 
 
 For — thanks for sustenance repaying 
 
THE AGAMEMNON OF ^SCHYLUS 
 
 839 
 
 With ravage of sheep slaughtered — 
 
 It made unbidden feast ; 
 
 With blood the house was watered, 
 
 To household came a woe there was no staying : 
 
 Great mischief many-slaying; 1 
 
 From God it was — some priest 
 
 Of At^, in the house, by nurture thus increased. 
 
 At first, then, to the city of Ilion went 
 A soul, as I might say, of windless calm — 
 Wealth's quiet ornament. 
 An eyes'-clart beariiig balm, 
 Love s spirit-biting flower. 
 But — from the true course bending — 
 She brought about, of marriage, bitter ending : 
 Ill-resident, ill-mate, in power 
 Passing to the Priaraidai — by sending 
 Of Hospitable Zeus — 
 
 Erinus;for a bride,; — to make brides mourn, 
 her dower. 
 
 Spoken long ago 
 
 Was the ancient saying 
 
 Still among mortals staying : 
 
 '* Man's great prosperity at height of rise 
 
 Engenders offspring nor unchilded dies ; 
 
 And, from good fortune, to such families. 
 
 Buds forth insatiate woe." 
 
 Whereas, distinct from any. 
 
 Of my own mind I am : 
 
 For 't is the unholy deed begets the many, 
 
 Kesembling each its dam. 
 
 Of households that correctly estimate. 
 
 Ever a beauteous child is born of Fate. 
 
 But ancient Arrogance delights to genejJate 
 
 Arrogance, young and strong 'raid mortals' 
 
 SOITOW, 
 
 Or now, or then, when comes the appointed 
 
 morrow. 
 And she bears young Satiety : 
 And, fiend with whom nor fight nor war can 
 
 be, 
 Unholy Darin" — twin black Curses 
 Within the household, children like their 
 
 But Justice shines in smoke-grimed habita- 
 tions. 
 And honors the well-omened life ; 
 While, — galdrbesprinkled stations 
 Where the hands' filth is rife. 
 With backward-turning eyes 
 Leaving, — to holy seats she hies, 
 Not worshipping me power of wealth 
 Stamped with applause by stealth : 
 And to its end directs each thing begun. 
 
 Approach then, my monarch, of Troia the 
 sacker, of Atrena the son! 
 
 How ought I address thee, how ought I revere 
 thee, — nor yet overhitting 
 
 Nor yet underbending the grace that is fitting ? 
 
 Many of mortals hasten to honor the seeming- 
 to-be — 
 
 Passing by justice : and, with the ill-faring, to 
 groan as he groans all are free. 
 
 But no bite of the sorrow their liver has reached 
 to: 
 
 They say with the joyful, — one outside on 
 
 each, too. 
 As they force to a smile smileless faces. 
 But whoever is good at distinguishing races 
 In sheep of his fiock — it is not for the eyes 
 Of a man to escape such a shepherd's surprise, 
 As they seem, from a well-wishing mind, 
 In watery friendship to fawn and be kind. 
 Thou to me, then, indeed, sending an army for 
 
 Helena's sake, 
 (I will not conceal it,) wast — oh, by no help of 
 
 the Muses ! — depicted 
 Not well of thy midrifE the rudder directing, — 
 
 convicted 
 Of bringing a boldness they did not desire to 
 
 the men with existence at stake. 
 But now — from no outside of mind, nor un- 
 
 lovingly — gracious thou art 
 To those who have ended the labor, fulfilling 
 
 their part ; 
 And in time shalt thou know, by inquiry in- 
 structed. 
 Who of citizens justly, and who not to purpose, 
 the city conducted. 
 Agamemnon. First, indeed, Argos, and the 
 gods, the local, 
 'Tis right addressing — those with me the 
 
 partners 
 In this return and right things done the city 
 Of Priamos: gods who, from no tongue hear- 
 ing 
 The rights o' the cause, for Ilion's fate man- 
 
 slaught'rous 
 Into the bloody vase, not oscillating, 
 Put the vote-pebbles, while, o' the rival vessel, 
 Hope rose up to the lip-edge : filled it was not. 
 By smoke the captured city is still conspicuous : 
 At4's burnt-offerings live : and, dying with 
 
 them, 
 The ash sends forth the fulsome blasts of 
 
 riches. 
 Of these things, to the gods grace many-mind- 
 ful 
 'T is right I render, since both nets outrageous 
 We built them round with, and, for sake of 
 
 woman. 
 It did the city to dust — the Argeian monster. 
 The horse's nestling, the shield-bearing people 
 That made a leap, at setting of the Pleiads, 
 And, vaulting o'er the tower, the raw-flesh- 
 feeding 
 Lion licked up his fill of blood tyrannic. 
 I to the gods indeed prolonged this preface ; 
 But— as for thy thought, I remember hear- 
 ing — 
 I say the same, and thou co-pleader hast me. 
 Since few of men this faculty is born with 
 To honor, without grudge, their friend success- 
 ful. 
 For moody, on the heart, a poison seated 
 Its burden doubles to who gained the sickness 
 By his own griefs he is himself made heavy, 
 And out-of-door prosperity seeing groans at. 
 Knowing, I 'd call (for well have I experi- 
 enced) 
 " Fellowship's mirror," "' phantom of a 
 
 shadow," 
 Those seeming to be mighty gracious to me : 
 
840 
 
 THE AGAMEMNON OF .ESCHYLUS 
 
 While just Odusseus — he who sailed not will- 
 ing— 
 When joined on, was to me the ready trace- 
 horse. 
 This of liim, whether dead or whether living, 
 I say. For other city - and - gods' concern- 
 ment — 
 Appointing common courts, in full assenihlage 
 We will consult. And as for what holds 
 
 seemly 
 How it may lasting stay well, must be coun- 
 selled : 
 While what has need of medicines Paionian 
 We, either burning or else cutting kindly. 
 Will make endeavor to turn pain from sickness. 
 And now into the domes and homes by altar 
 Going, I to the gods first raise the right-hand — 
 They who, far sending, back again have 
 
 brought me. 
 And Victory, since she followed, fixed remain 
 she ! 
 Klu. Men, citizens, Argeians here, my wor- 
 
 I shall not shame me, consort-loving manners 
 To tell before you : for in time there dies off 
 The diffidence from people. Not from others 
 Learning, I of myself will tell the hard life 
 I bore so long as this man was 'neath Ilion. 
 First : for a woman, from the male divided. 
 To sit at home alone, is monstrous evil — 
 Hearing the many rumors back-revenging : 
 And for now This to come, now That bring 
 
 after 
 Woe, and still worse woe, bawling in the house- 
 hold! 
 And truly, if so many wounds had chanced on 
 My husband here, as homeward used to dribble 
 Report, he 's pierced more than a net to speak 
 
 of! 
 While, were he dying (as the words abounded) 
 A triple-bodied Gernon the Second, 
 Plenty above — for loads below I count not — 
 Of earth a three-share cloak he 'd boast of 
 
 taking, 
 Once only dying in each several figure ! 
 Because of such-like rumors back-revenging. 
 Many the halters from my neck, above head. 
 Others than I loosed — loosed from neck by 
 
 main force ! 
 From this cause, siire, the boy stands not 
 
 beside me — 
 Possessor of our troth-plights, thine and mine 
 
 too — 
 As ought Orestes : be not thou astonished ! 
 For, him brings up our well-disposed guest- 
 captive 
 Strophios the Phokian — ills that told on both 
 
 sides 
 To me predicting — both of thee 'neath Ilion 
 The danger, and if anarchy's mob-uproar 
 Should overthrow thy council ; since 't is born 
 
 with 
 Mortals, — whoe'er has fallen, the more to kick 
 
 him. 
 Such an excuse, I think, no cunning carries I 
 As for myself — why, of my wails the rushing 
 Fountains are dried up : not in them a drop 
 more ! 
 
 And in my late-to-bed eyes I have damage 
 Bewailing what concerned thee, those torch- 
 holdings 
 Forever unattended to. In dreams — why, 
 Beneath the light wing-beats o' the gnat, I 
 
 woke up 
 As he went buzzing — sorrows that concerned 
 
 Seeing, that filled more than their fellow-sleep- 
 time. 
 
 Now, all this having suffered, from soul gnef- 
 free 
 
 I would style this man here the dog o' the 
 stables. 
 
 The savior forestay of the ship, the high roof 's 
 
 Grround-prop, son sole-begotten to his father, 
 
 — Ay, land appearing to the sailors past hope, 
 Loveliest'day to see after a tempest. 
 
 To the wdyf aring-one athirst a well-spring, 
 
 — The joy, in short, of 'scaping all that's — 
 
 fatal! 
 I judge him worth addresses such as these are 
 
 — Envy stand off ! — for many those old evils 
 We underwent. And now, to me — dear head- 
 ship ! — 
 
 Dismount thou from this car, not earthward 
 
 setting 
 The foot of thine, king, that 's Dion's spoiler I 
 Slave-maids, why tarry ? — whose the task 
 
 allotted 
 To strew the soil o' the road with carpet-spread- 
 
 ings. 
 Immediately be purple-strewn the pathway, 
 So that to home unhoped may lead him — 
 
 Justice ! 
 As for the rest, care shall — by no sleep con- 
 quered — 
 Dispose things — justly (gods to aid !) appointed. 
 Aga. Offspring of Leda, of my household 
 
 warder. 
 Suitably to my absence hast thou spoken. 
 For long the speech thou didst outstretch ! But 
 
 aptly 
 To praise — from others ought to go this favor. 
 And for the rest, — not me, in woman's fashion. 
 Mollify, nor — as mode of barbarous man is — 
 To me gape forth a groiuidward-f ailing clamor ! 
 Nor, strewing it with garments, make my pas- 
 sage 
 Envied ! Gods, sure, v^th these behooves we 
 
 honor : 
 But, for a mortal on these varied beauties 
 To walk — to me, indeed, is nowise f eai>free. 
 I say — as man, not god, to me do homage ! 
 Apart from foot-mats both and varied vestures, 
 Renown is loud, and — not to lose one's senses, 
 God's greatest gift. Behooves we him call 
 
 happy 
 Who has brought life to end in loved wellbeing. 
 If all things I might manage thus — brave 
 
 man, I ! 
 Klu. Come now, this say, nor feign a feeling 
 
 to me ! 
 Aga. With feeling, know indeed, I do not 
 
 tamper ! 
 Klu. Vowed'st thou to the gods, in fear, to 
 
 act thus ? 
 Aga. If any, I well knew resolve I outspoke. 
 
THE AGAMEMNON OF ^SCHYLUS 
 
 841 
 
 Klu. What think'st thou Priamos had done, 
 
 thus victor ? 
 Aga. On varied vests — I do think — he had 
 
 Klu. Then, do not, struck with awe at human 
 
 censure. . . . 
 Aga. Well, popular mob-outcry much avails 
 
 too ! 
 Klu. Ay, but the unenvied is not the much 
 
 valued. 
 Aga. Sure, 't is no woman's part to long for 
 
 battle ! 
 Klu, Why, to the prosperous, even suits a 
 
 beating I 
 Aga. What ? thou this beating us in war dost 
 
 prize too ? 
 Klu. Persuade thee ! power, for once, grant 
 
 me — and willing f 
 Aga. But if this seem so to thee — shoes, let 
 some one 
 
 Loose under, quick — foot's serviceable car- 
 riage ! 
 
 And me, on these sea-products walking, may no 
 
 Grudge from a distance, from the god's eye, 
 strike at 1 
 
 For great shame were my strewment-spoiling — 
 riches ! 
 
 Spoiling with feet, and silver-purchased tex- 
 tures ! 
 
 Of these things, thus then. But this female- 
 stranger 
 
 Tenderly take inside ! Who conquers mildly 
 
 God, from afar, benignantly regardeth. 
 
 For, willing, no one wears a yoke that 's ser- 
 vile : 
 
 And she, of many valuables, outpicked 
 
 The flower, the army's gift, myself has fol- 
 lowed. 
 
 So — since to hear thee, I am brought about 
 thus, — 
 
 I go into the palafle — purples treading. 
 Klu. There is the sea — and what man shall 
 exhaust it? — 
 
 Feeding much purple's worth-its-weight-in- 
 silver 
 
 Dye, ever fresh and fresh, our garments' tinc- 
 ture; 
 
 At home, such wealth, king, we begin — by 
 gods' help — 
 
 With having, and to lack, the household knows 
 not. 
 
 Of many garments had I vowed a treading 
 
 (In oracles if fore-enjoined the household) 
 
 Of this dear soul the safe-return-price scheming ! 
 
 For, root existing, foliage goes up houses, 
 
 O'erspreading shadow against Seirios dog-star ; 
 
 And, thou returning to the hearth domestic. 
 
 Warmth, yea, in winter dost thou show return- 
 ing. 
 
 And when, too, Zeus works, from the green- 
 grape acrid. 
 
 Wine — then, already, cool in houses cometh — 
 
 The perfect man his home perambulating ! 
 
 Zeus, Zeus Perfecter, these my prayers perfect 
 thou ! 
 
 Thy care be — yea — of things thou mayst make 
 perfect ! 
 Cho. Wherefore to me, this fear — 
 
 Groundedly stationed here 
 
 Fronting my heart, the portent-watcher — flits 
 
 she? 
 Wherefore should prophet-play 
 The uncalled and unpaid lay. 
 Nor — having spat forth fear, like bad dreams 
 
 — sits she 
 On the mind's throne beloved — well-suasive 
 
 Boldness ? 
 For time, since, by a throw of all the hands. 
 The boat's stern-cables touched the sands. 
 Has passed from youth to oldness, — 
 When imder Ilion rushed the ship-borne bands. 
 
 And from my eyes I learn — 
 
 Being myself my witness — their return. 
 
 Yet, all the same, without a lyre, my soul, 
 
 Itself its teacher too, chants from within 
 
 Erinus' dirge, not having now the whole 
 
 Of Hope's dear boldness ; nor my inwards sin — 
 
 The heai-t that 's rolled in whirls against the 
 
 mind 
 Justly presageful of a fate behind. 
 But I pray — things false, from my hope, may 
 
 fall 
 Into the fate that 's not-fulfilled-at-all 1 
 
 Especially at least, of health that 's great 
 
 The term 's insatiable : for, its weight 
 
 — A neighbor, with a common wall between — 
 
 Ever will sickness lean ; 
 
 And destiny, her course pursuing straight. 
 
 Has struck man's ship against a reef unseen. 
 
 Now, when a portion, rather than the treasure. 
 
 Fear casts from sling, with peril in right measure, 
 
 It has not sunk — the universal freight, 
 
 (With misery freighted over-full,) 
 
 Nor has fear whelmed the hull. 
 
 Then too the gift of Zeus, 
 
 Two-handedly profuse, 
 
 Even from the furrows' yield for yearly use 
 
 Has done away with famine, the disease ; 
 
 But blood of man to earth once falling, — deadly, 
 
 bla«k, — 
 In times ere these, — 
 Who may, by singing spells, call back ? 
 Zeus had not else stopped one who rightly knew 
 The way to bring the dead again. 
 But, did not an appointed Fate constrain 
 The Fate from gods, to bear no more than due. 
 My heart, outstripping what tongue utters, 
 Would have all out : which now, in darkness, 
 
 mutters 
 Moodily grieved, nor ever hopes to find 
 How she a word in season may unwind 
 From out the enkindling mind. 
 Klu. Take thyself in, thou too — I say, Kas- 
 
 sandra ! 
 Since Zeus — not angrily — in household placed 
 
 thee 
 Partaker of hand-sprinklings, with the many 
 Slaves stationed, his the Owner's altar close to. 
 Descend from out this car, nor be high-minded ! 
 And truly they do say Alkmene's child once 
 Bore being sold, slaves' barleyrbread his living. 
 If, then, necessity of this lot o'erbalance. 
 Much is the favor of old-wealthy masters .- 
 For those who, never hoping, made fine harvest 
 
842 
 
 THE AGAMEMNON OF ^SCHYLUS 
 
 Are harsh to slaves in all things, beyond meas- 
 ure. 
 Thou hast — with us — such usage as law war- 
 rants. 
 Cho. To thee it was, she paused plain speech 
 from speaking. 
 Being inside the fatal nets — obeying. 
 Thou mayst obey : but thou mayst disobey too 1 
 Klu, Why, if she is not, in the swallow's 
 fashion, 
 Possessed of voice that 's unknown and barbaric, 
 I, with speech — speaking in mind's scope — 
 persuade her. 
 Cho. Follow ! The best — as things now stand 
 — she speaks of. 
 Obey thou, leaving this thy car-enthronement ! 
 Klu. Well, with this thing at door, for me no 
 leisure 
 To waste time : as concerns the hearth mid- 
 
 I. navelled. 
 Already stand the sheep for fireside slaying 
 By those who never hoped to have such favor. 
 If thou, then, aught of this wilt do, delay not ! 
 But if thou, being witless, tak'st no word in, 
 Speak thou, instead of voice, with hand as Kars 
 do ! 
 Cho. She seems a plain interpreter in need of, 
 The stranger ! and her way — a beast's new- 
 captured ! 
 Klu. Why, she is mad, sure, — hears her own 
 bad senses, — 
 Who, while she comes, leaving a town new- 
 captured. 
 Yet knows not how to bear the bit o' the bridle 
 Before she has out-frothed her bloody fierceness. 
 Not I — throwing away more words — will 
 shamed be ! 
 Cho. But I, — for I compassionate, — will 
 chafe not. 
 Come, unhappy one, this car vacating. 
 Yielding to this necessity, prove yoke's use I 
 
 Kassandra. Otototoi, Gods, Earth — 
 Apollon, Apollon ! 
 
 Cho. Why didst thou "ototoi" concerning 
 Loxias ? 
 Since he is none such as to suit a mourner. 
 
 Kas. Otototoi, Gods, Earth, — 
 Apollon, Apollon ! 
 
 Cho. Ill-boding here again the god invokes she 
 — Nowise empowered in woes to stand by help- 
 ful. 
 Kas. Apollon, Apollon, 
 Guard of the ways, my destroyer I 
 For thou hast quite, this second time, destroyed 
 me. 
 Cho. To prophesy she seems of her own evils :• 
 Bemains the god-gift to the slave-soul present. 
 
 Kas. Apollon, Apollon, 
 Guard of the ways, my destrover ! 
 Ha, whither hast thou led me ? to what roof 
 now ? 
 Cho. To the Atreidai's roof: if this thou 
 know'st not, 
 I tell it thee, nor this wilt thou call falsehood. 
 
 Kas. How ! how ! 
 God-hated, then ! Of many a crime it knew — 
 Self-slaying evils, halters too : 
 Man's-shambles, blood-besprinkler of the ground I 
 
 Cho. She seems to be good-nosed, the stranger : 
 
 dog-like, 
 She snuffs indeed the victims she will find there. 
 
 Kas. How ! how ! 
 By the witnesses here I am certain now ! 
 These children bewailing their slaughters — 
 
 flesh dressed in the fire 
 And devoured by their sire ! 
 . Cho. Ay, we have heard of thy soothsaying 
 
 glory. 
 Doubtless : but prophets none are we m scent 
 
 of! 
 Kas. Ah, gods, what ever does she meditate ? 
 What this new anguish great ? 
 Great in the house here she meditates iU 
 Such as friends cannot bear, cannot cure it: 
 
 and stiU 
 Off stands all Resistance 
 Afar in the distance ! 
 
 Cho. Of these I witless am— these prophe- 
 
 syings. 
 But those I knew : for the whole city bruits 
 
 them. 
 Kas. Ah, unhappy one, this thou eonsum- 
 
 matest ? 
 Thy husband, thy bed's common guest. 
 In the bath having brightened. . . . How shall 
 
 I declare 
 Consummation ? It soon will be there : 
 For hand after hand she outstretches. 
 At life as she reaches ! 
 
 Choi Nor yet I 've gone with thee ! for — 
 
 after riddles — 
 Now, in blind oracles, I feel resonrceless, 
 
 Kas. Eh, eh, papai, papai. 
 What this, I espy ? 
 Some net of Haides undoubtedly ! 
 Nay, rather, the snare 
 Is she who has' share 
 
 In his bed, who takes part in the murder there I 
 But may a revolt — 
 Unceasing assault— 
 On the Race, raise a shout 
 Sacrificial, about 
 A victim — by stoning — 
 For murder atoning ! 
 Cho. What this Erinus which i' the house 
 
 thou callest 
 To raise her cry ? Not me thy word enlightens I 
 To my heart has run 
 A drop of the crocus-dye : 
 Which makes for those 
 On earth by the spear that lie, 
 A common close 
 With life's descending sun. 
 Swift is the curse begun I 
 
 Kas, How ! how ! 
 See — see quick ! 
 Keep the bull from the cow I 
 In the vesture she catching him, strikes him 
 
 now 
 With the black-homed trick. 
 And he falls into the watery vase ! 
 Of the craft-killing caldron I tell thee the case ! 
 Cho. I would not boast to be a topping critic 
 Of oracles : but to some sort of evil 
 I liken these. From oracles, what good speech 
 To mortals, beside, is sent ? 
 
THE AGAMEMNON OF .ESCHYLUS 
 
 843 
 
 It comes of their evils : these arts word-abound- 
 ing that sing the event 
 Bring the fear H is their oifice to teach. 
 
 Kas. Ah me, ah me — 
 Of me unhappy, evii-destined fortunes ! 
 For I bewail my proper woe 
 As, mine with his, all into one I throw. 
 Why hast thou hither me unhappj brought ? 
 — Unless that I should die with him — for 
 
 naught 1 
 What else was sought ? 
 CAo. Xhon art some mind-mazed creature, 
 
 god-possessed : 
 And all about thyself dost wail 
 A lay — no lay ! 
 Xiike some brown nightingale 
 Insatiahle of noise, who — well away ! — 
 From her unhappy breast 
 Keeps moaning Itus, Itns, and his life 
 With evils, flourishing on each side, rife. 
 
 Kas. Ah me, ah me. 
 The fate o' the nightingale, the clear resounder ! 
 For a body wing^-borne have the gods cast 
 
 round her. 
 And sweet existence, from misfortunes free : 
 But for myself remains a sundering 
 With spear, the two-edged thing 1 
 
 Cho. Whence hast thou this on-rushing god- 
 involving pain 
 And spasms in vain ? 
 For, things that terrify. 
 With changing uninteUigible cry 
 Thou strikest up in tune, yet all the while 
 After that Orthian style ! 
 Whence hast thou limits to the oracular road. 
 That evils bode ? 
 Kas. Ah me, the nuptials, the nuptials of 
 
 Paris, the deadly to friendis ! 
 Ah rae, of Skamandros the draught 
 Paternal! There once, to these ends. 
 On thy banks was I brought. 
 The unhappy ! And now, by Kokutos and 
 
 Acheron's shore 
 I shall soon be, it seems, these my oracles 
 
 singing once more ! 
 Cho. Why this word, plain too mnoh. 
 Hast thou uttered ? A babe might learn of 
 
 such ! 
 I am struck with a bloody bite — here under — 
 At the fate woe-wreaking 
 Of thee shrill-shrieking : 
 To me who hear — a wonder ! 
 Kas. Ah me, the toils — the toils of the 
 
 city 
 The wholly destroyed : ah, pity. 
 Of the sacrificings ray father made 
 In the ramparts' aid — 
 Much slaughter of grass-fed flocks — that 
 
 afforded no cure 
 That the city should not, as it does now, the 
 
 burthen endure 1 
 But I, with the soul on fire, 
 Soon to the earth shaU cast me and expire ! 
 
 Cho. To things, on the former consequent, 
 Again hast thou given vent : 
 And 't is some evil-meauing fiend doth move 
 
 thee, 
 Heavily falling from above thee. 
 
 To melodize thy sorrows — else, in singing. 
 Calamitous, death-bringing ! 
 And of all this the end 
 I am without resource to apprehend. 
 Kas. Well then, the oracle from veils no 
 
 longer 
 Shall be outlooking, like a bride new-married ; 
 But bright it seems, against the sun's uprisings 
 Breathmg, to penetrate thee : so as, wave-like. 
 To wash against the rays a woe much greater 
 Than this. I will no longer teach by riddles. 
 And witness, running with me, that of evils 
 Done long ago, I nosing track the footstep ! 
 For, this same roof here — never quits a Choros 
 One-voiced, not well-tuned since no " well " it 
 
 uttei's : 
 And truly having drunk, to get more courage, 
 Man's blood — the Komos keeps within the 
 
 household 
 
 — Hard to be sent outside — of sister Furies : 
 They hymn their hymn — within the ' house 
 
 close sitting — 
 
 The first beginning curse : in turn spit forth at 
 
 The Brother's bed, to him who spurned it 
 hostile. 
 
 Have I missed aught, or hit I like a bowman ? 
 
 False prophet am I, — knock at doors, a bab- 
 bler ? 
 
 Henceforward witness, swearing now, I know 
 not 
 
 By other's word the old sins of this boiisehold I 
 Cho. And how should oath, bond honorably 
 binding. 
 
 Become thy cure ? No less I wonder at thee 
 
 — That thou, beyond sea reared, a strange- 
 
 tongued city 
 Shouldst hit in speaking, just as if thou stood'st 
 
 by! 
 
 Kas. Prophet ApoUon put me in this office. 
 Cho. What, even though a god, with longing 
 
 smitten ? 
 Kas. At first, indeed, shame was to me to 
 
 say this. 
 Cho. For, more relaxed grows every one who 
 
 fares well. 
 Kas. But he was athlete to me — huge grace 
 
 breathing ! 
 Cho. Well, to the work of children, went ye 
 
 law's way ? 
 Kas. Having consented, I played false to 
 
 Loxias. 
 Cho. Already when the wits inspired pos- 
 sessed of ? 
 Kas. Already townsmen all theirwoes I fore- 
 told. 
 Cho. How wast thou then unhurt by Loxias 
 
 anger ? 
 Kas. I no one aught persuaded, when I 
 
 sinned thus. 
 Gho. To us, at least, now sooth to say thou 
 
 seeraest, 
 Kas. Halloo, haUoo, ah, evils ! 
 Again, straightforward foresight's fearful labor 
 Whirls ihe, distracting with prehisive last-lays ! 
 Behold ye those there, in the household 
 
 seated, — . 
 
 Youi/g ones, — of dreams approaching to the 
 
 figures ? 
 
844 
 
 THE AGAMEMNON OF ^SCHYLUS 
 
 Children, as if they died by their beloveds — 
 Hands they have filled with flesh, the meal do- 
 mestic — 
 Kiitrails and vitals both, most piteous burthen. 
 Plain they are holding! — which their father 
 
 tasted ! 
 For this, I say, plans punishment a certain 
 Lion ignoble, on the bed that wallows, 
 House-guard (ah, me !) to the returning mas- 
 ter 
 — Mine, since to bear the slavish yoke behooves 
 
 me ! 
 The ships' commander, lUon's desolator. 
 Knows not what things the tongue of the lewd 
 
 she-dog 
 Speaking, outspreading, shiny-souled, in fashion 
 Of At4 hid, will reach to, by ill fortune ! 
 Such things she dares — the female, the male's 
 
 slayer ! 
 She is . . . how calling her the hateful bite- 
 beast 
 May I hit the mark ? Some amphisbaina — 
 
 Skulla 
 Housing in rocks, of mariners the mischief, 
 Bevelling Haides' mother, — curse, no truce 
 
 with. 
 Breathing at friends ! How piously she 
 
 shouted. 
 The all-courageous, as at turn of battle ! 
 She seems to joy at the back-bringing safety ! 
 Of this, too, if I naught persuade, all's one! 
 
 Why? 
 What is to be will come ! And soon thoa, 
 
 present, 
 " True prophet ail too much " wilt pitying 
 
 style me ! 
 Cho. Thuestes' feast, indeed, on flesh of 
 
 children, 
 I went with, and I shuddered. Fear too holds 
 
 me 
 Listing what 's true as life, nowise out-imaged ! 
 Kas. I say, thou Agamemnon's fate shalt 
 
 look on ! 
 Cho. Speak good words, unhappy I Set 
 
 mouth sleeping ! 
 Kas. But Paian stands in no stead to the 
 
 speech here. 
 Cho. Nay, if the thing be near : but never be 
 
 it! 
 Kas. Thou, indeed, prayest : they to kill are 
 
 busy ! 
 Cho. Of what man is it ministered, this sor- 
 row? 
 Kas. There again, wide thou look'st of my 
 
 foretellings. 
 Cho. For, the fulfiller's scheme I have not 
 
 gone with. 
 Kas. And yet too well 1 know the speech 
 
 Hellenic. 
 Cho. For Puthian oracles, thy speech, and 
 
 hard too ! 
 Kas. Papai : what fire this ! and it comes 
 
 upon me ! 
 Ototoi, Lukeion Apollon, ah me — me ! 
 She, the two-footed lioness that sleeps with 
 The wolf, in absence of the generous lion. 
 Kills me the unhappy one : and as a poison 
 Brewing, to put my price too in the anger, 
 
 She vows, against her mate this weapon whet- 
 ting 
 
 To pay him ba^k the bringing me, with 
 slaughter. 
 
 Why keep I then these things to make me 
 laughed at. 
 
 Both wands and, round my neck, oracular fil- 
 lets? 
 
 Thee, at least, ere my own fate wiU I ruin : 
 
 Go, to perdition falling! Boons exchange 
 we — 
 
 Some other At^ in my stead make wealthy ! 
 
 See there — himself, Apollon stripping from me 
 
 The oracular garment .' having looked upon me 
 
 — Even in these adornments, laughed by friends 
 at. 
 
 As good as foes, i' the balance weighed : and 
 vainly — 
 
 For, called crazed stroller, — as I had been 
 
 gypsy, 
 
 Btiggar, unhappy, starved to death, — I bore it. 
 And now the Prophet — prophet me undoing. 
 Has led away to these so deadly fortunes ! 
 Instead of ray sire's altar, waits the hack-block 
 She struck with first warm bloody sacrificing ! 
 Yet nowise unavenged of gods will death be : 
 For there shall come another, our avenger. 
 The mother-slaying scion, father's doomsman : 
 Fugitive, wanderer, from this land an exile, 
 Back shall he come, — for friends, eopestone 
 
 these cui*ses ! 
 For there is sworn a great oath from the gods 
 
 that 
 Him shall bring hither his fallen sire's prostrar 
 
 tion. 
 Why make I then, like an indweller, moaning ? 
 Since at the first I foresaw Ilion's city 
 Suffering as it has suffered : and who took it, 
 Thus by the judgment of the gods are faring. 
 I go, will suffer, will submit to dying ! 
 But, Haides' gates — these same I oaJI, I speak 
 
 to. 
 And pray that on an opportune blow chancing. 
 Without a struggle, — blood the calm deaSi 
 
 bringing 
 In easy outflow, — I this eye may close up ! 
 Cho. much unhappy, but, again, much 
 
 learned 
 Woman, long hast thou outstretched ! But if 
 
 truly 
 Thou knowest thine own fate, how comes that, 
 
 like to 
 A god-led steer, to altar bold thou treadest ? 
 Kas. There 's no avoidance, — strangers, no ! 
 
 Some time more ' 
 Cho. He last is, anyhow, by time advantaged. 
 Kas. It comes, the day : I shall by flight 
 
 gain little. 
 Cho. But know thou patient art from thy 
 
 brave spirit I 
 Kas. Such things hears no one of the happy- 
 fortuned. 
 Cho. But gloriously to die — for man is 
 
 grace, sure ! 
 Kas. Ah, sire, for thee and for thy noble 
 
 children ! 
 Cho. But what thing is it ? What fear turns 
 
 thee backwards ? 
 
THE AGAMEMNON OF ^ESCHYLUS 
 
 845 
 
 Kas. Alas, alas ! 
 
 Cho. Why this "alas"? if 't is no spirit's 
 
 loathing . . . 
 Kas. Slaughter blood -dripping does the 
 
 household smell of ! 
 Cho. How else ? This scent is of hearth- 
 
 sacrifioes. 
 Kas. Such kind of steam as from a tomb is 
 
 proper I 
 Cho. No Surian honor to the House thou 
 
 speak'st of ! 
 Kas. But I will go, — even in the household 
 wailing 
 My fate and Agamemnon's: Life suffice me ! 
 Ah, strangers ! 
 I cry not "ah" — as bird at bush — through 
 
 terror 
 Idly ! to me, the dead thus much bear witness : 
 When, for me — woman, there shall die a wo- 
 man. 
 And, for a man ill-wived, a man shall perish ! 
 This hospitality I ask as dying. 
 Cho. sufferer, thee — thy foretold fate I 
 
 pity. 
 Kas. Yet once for all, to speak a speech, I 
 f ain ani : 
 No dirge, mine for myself I The sun 1 pray 
 
 to, 
 Fronting his last light ! — to my own avengers — 
 That from my hateful slayers they exact too 
 Pay for the dead slave — easy-managed hand's 
 work ! 
 Cho. Alas for mortal matters ! Happy-for- 
 tuned, — 
 Why, any shade would turn them : if unhappy. 
 By throws the wetting sponge has spoiled the 
 
 picture !■ 
 And more by much in mortals this I pity. 
 The being well-to-do — 
 Insatiate a desire of this 
 Bom with all mortals is. 
 Nor any is there who 
 Well-being forces off, aroints 
 From roofs whereat a finger points, 
 " No more come in 1 " exclaiming. This man, 
 
 too. 
 To take the city of Priamos did the celestials 
 
 give. 
 And, honored by the god, he homeward comes ; 
 But now if, of the former, he shall pay 
 The blood back, and, for those who ceased to 
 
 live. 
 Dying, for deaths in turn new punishment he 
 
 dooms — 
 Who, being mortal, would not pray 
 With an unmischievous 
 
 Daimon to have been born — who would not, 
 hearing thus ? 
 Aga. Ah me I I am struck — a right-aimed 
 
 stroke within me ! 
 Cho. Silence I Who is it shouts " stroke " — 
 
 " right-aimedly," a wounded one ? 
 Aga. Ah me ! indeed again, — a second, 
 
 struck by ! 
 Cho. This work seems to me completed by 
 this " Ah me " of the king's ; 
 But we somehow may together share in solid 
 counsellings. 
 
 Cho. 1. I, in the first place, my opinion tell 
 you: 
 
 — To cite the townsmen, by help-cry, to house 
 here. 
 Cho. 2. To me, it seems we ought to faU 
 upon them 
 
 At quickest — prove the fact by sword fresh- 
 flowing I 
 Cho. 3. And I, of such opinion the partaker. 
 
 Vote — to do something : not to wait — the 
 main point ! 
 Cho. i. 'T is plain to see : for they prelude 
 as though of 
 
 A fafranny the signs they gave the city. 
 Cho. 5. For we waste time ; while they, — 
 this waiting's glory 
 
 Treading to ground, — allow the hand no slum- 
 ber. 
 Cho. (). I know not — chancing on some plan 
 — to tell it: 
 
 'T is for the doer to plan of the deed also. 
 Cho. 7. And I am such another : since I 'm 
 schemeless 
 
 How to raise up again by words — a dead man ! 
 Cho. 8. What, and, protracting life, shall we 
 give way thus 
 
 To the disgracers of our home, these rulers ? 
 Cho. 9. Why, 't is unbearable : but to die is 
 better : 
 
 For death than tyranny is the riper finish ! 
 Cho. 10. What, by the testifying " Ah me " 
 of him. 
 
 Shall we prognosticate the man as perished ? 
 Cho. 11. We must quite know ere speak these 
 things concerning : 
 
 For to conjecture and " quite know " are two 
 things. 
 Cho. 12. This same to praise I from all sides 
 abound in — 
 
 Clearly to know, Atreides, what he 's doing ! 
 Klu. Much having been before to purpose 
 spoken, 
 
 The opposite to say I shall not shamed be : 
 
 For how should one, to enemies, — in sem- 
 blance. 
 
 Friends, — enmity proposing, — sorrow's net- 
 frame 
 
 Enclose, a height superior to outleaping ? 
 
 To me, indeed, this struggle of old — not 
 mindless 
 
 Of an old victory — came : with time, I grant 
 you! 
 
 I stand where I have struck, things once ac- 
 complished : 
 
 And so have done, — and this deny I shall 
 not, — 
 
 As that his fate was nor to fly nor ward off. 
 
 A wrap-round with no outlet, as for fishes, 
 
 I fence about him — the rich woe of the gar- 
 ment: 
 
 I strike him twice, and in a double "Ah- 
 me!" 
 
 He let his limbs go — there ! And to him, 
 fallen, 
 
 The third blow add I, giving— of Below- 
 ground 
 
 Zens, guardian of the dead — the votive favor. 
 
 Thus in the mind of him he rages, falling, 
 
THE AGAMEMNON OF .ESCHYLU.S 
 
 And blowing forth a brisk blood-spatter, strikes 
 me 
 
 With the dark drop of slaughterous dew, — re- 
 joicing 
 
 No less than, at the god-given dewy-comfort. 
 
 The sown-stuff in its birth-throes from the 
 calyx. 
 
 Since so these things are, — Argives, my re- 
 vered here, — 
 
 Ye may rejoice — if ye rejoice : but I — boast I 
 
 If it were fit on corpse to pour libation. 
 
 That would be ■ right — right over and above, 
 too ! 
 
 The cup of evils in the house he, having 
 
 Filled with such curses, himself coming drinks 
 of. 
 Cko. We wonder at thy tongue : since bold- 
 mouthed truly 
 
 Is she who in such speech boasts o'er her hus- 
 band ! 
 Klu. Ye test me as I were a witless woman : 
 
 But I — with heart intrepid — to you knowers 
 
 Say (and thou — if thou wilt or praise or blame 
 me. 
 
 Comes to the same) — this man is Agamem- 
 non, 
 
 My husband, dead, the work of the right hand 
 here. 
 
 Ay, of a just artificer : so things are. 
 Cho: What evil, woman, food or drink, 
 earth-bred 
 
 Or sent from the flowing sea, 
 
 Of such having fee 
 
 Didst thou set on thee 
 
 This sacrifice 
 
 And, popular cries 
 
 Of a curse on thy head ? 
 
 OfP thou hast thrown him, off hast cut 
 
 The man from the city : but 
 
 Off from the city thyself shalt be 
 
 Cut — to the citizens 
 
 A hate immense ! 
 Kla. Now, indeed, thou adjudgest exile to 
 . me. 
 
 And citizens' hate, and to have popular curses ; 
 
 Nothing of this against the man here bringing, 
 
 Who, no more awe-cheeked than as 't were a 
 beast's fate, — 
 
 With sheep^abundant in the well-fleeced graze- 
 flocks, — 
 
 Sacrificed his child, — dearest fruit of travail 
 
 To me, — as song-spell against Threkian blow- 
 ings. 
 
 Not him did it behoove thee hence to banish 
 
 — Pollution's penalty ? But hearing my deeds 
 
 Justicer rough thou art ! Now, this I tell thee ; 
 
 To threaten thus — me, one prepared to have 
 thee 
 
 (On like conditions, thy hand conquering) o'er 
 me 
 
 Rule : but if God the opposite ordain us. 
 
 Thou shalt learn — late taught, certes — to be 
 modest. 
 Cho. Greatly-intending thou art : 
 
 Much-mindful, too, hast thou cried 
 
 (Since thy mind, with its slaughter-outpouring 
 part. 
 
 Is frantic) that over the eyes, a patch 
 
 Of blood — with blood to match 
 
 Is plain for a pride ! 
 
 Yet still, bereft of friends, thy fate 
 
 Is — blow with blow to expiate ! 
 Klu. And this thou hearest — of my oaths, 
 just warrant ! 
 
 By who fulfilled things for my daughter, Jus- 
 tice, 
 
 At^, Erinns, — by whose help I slew him, — 
 
 Not mine the -fancy — Fear will tread my 
 palace 
 
 So long as on my hearth there burns a fire, 
 
 Aigisthos as before well-caring for me ; 
 
 Since he to me is shield, no small, of boldness. 
 
 Here does he lie — outrager of this female, 
 
 Dainiy of all the Chruseids under Ilion ; 
 
 And she — the captive, the soothsayer also 
 
 And couchmate of this man, oracle-speaker; i 
 
 Faithful bedfellow, — ay, the sailors' benches 
 
 They wore in common, nor unpunished did so, 
 
 Since he is — thus ! While, as for her, — swan- 
 fashion. 
 
 Her latest having chanted, — dying wailing 
 
 She lies, — to him, a sweetheart : me she 
 brought to 
 
 My bed's by-nioety, the whet of dalliance. 
 Cho. Alas, that some 
 
 Fate would come 
 
 Upon us in quickness — 
 
 Neither much sickness 
 
 Neither bed-keepii^ — 
 
 And bear unended sleeping. 
 
 Now that subdued 
 
 Is our keeper, the kindest of mood ! 
 
 Having borne, for a woman's sake, much 
 strife — 
 
 By a woman he withered from life ! 
 
 Ah me ! 
 
 Law-breaking Helena who, one. 
 
 Hast many, so many souls undone 
 
 'Neath Troia ! and now the consummated 
 
 Much-memorable curse 
 
 Hast thou made flower-forth, red 
 
 With the blood no rains disperse. 
 
 That which was then in the House — 
 
 Strife all-subduing, the woe of a spouse. 
 
 . . Klu. Nowise, of death the fate — 
 
 Burdened by these things — supplicate ! 
 
 Nor on Helena turn thy wrath 
 
 As the man-destroyer, as "she who hath. 
 
 Being but one, 
 
 Many and many a soul undone 
 
 Of the men, the Danaoi " — 
 
 And wrought immense annoy ! 
 Cho. Daimon, who fallest 
 
 Upon this household and the double-raced 
 
 Tantalidai, a rule, minded like theirs displaced. 
 
 Thou rulest me with, now. 
 
 Whose heart thou gallest ! 
 
 And on the body, like a hateful crow. 
 
 Stationed, all out of tune, his chant to chant 
 
 Doth Something vaunt ! 
 
 __ffi«. Now, of a truth, hast thou set upright 
 
 Ihy mouth's opinion, — 
 
 Naming the Sprite, 
 
 The triply-gross, , ,. 
 
 O'er the race that has dominion: 
 
 For through him it is that Eros 
 
THE AGAMEMNON OF yESCHYLUS 
 
 847 
 
 The eainage-licker 
 
 In the belly is bred : ere ended quite 
 
 Is the elder throe — new ichor ! 
 
 Gho. Certainly, great of might 
 And heavy of wrath, the Sprite 
 Thou teUest of, in the palace 
 (Woe, woe I) 
 
 — An evil tale of a fate 
 By At^'s malice 
 Rendered insatiate ! 
 Oh, oh, — 
 
 King, king, how shall I beweep thee ? 
 
 From friendly soul what ever say ? 
 
 Thou liest where webs of the spider o'ersweep 
 
 thee 
 In impious death, life breathing away, 
 me — me ! 
 This couch, not free ' 
 By a slavish death subdued thou art. 
 From the hand, by the two-edged dart. 
 
 Klu. Thou boastest this deed to be mine; 
 But leave off styling me 
 " The Agamemnonian wife ! " 
 For, showing himself in sign 
 Of the spouse of the corpse thou dost see. 
 Did the ancient bitter avenging-ghost 
 Of Atrens, savage host, 
 Pay the man here as price — 
 A full-grown for the young one's sa<srifice. 
 Gho. That no cause, indeed, of this killing 
 
 art thou. 
 Who shall be witness-bearer ? 
 How shall he bear it — how ? 
 But the sire's avenging-ghost might be in the 
 
 deed a sharer. 
 He is forced on and on 
 By the kin-bom flowing of blood, 
 
 — Black Ares ; to where, having gone. 
 He shall leave off, flowing done. 
 
 At the frozen-child's-flesh food. 
 
 King, king, how shall I beweep thee ! 
 
 From friendly soul what ever say ? 
 
 Thou liest where webs of the spider o'ersweep 
 
 thee, 
 In impious death, life breathing away. 
 Oh, me — me ! 
 This couch not free ! 
 By a slavish death subdued thou art. 
 From the hand, by the two-edged dart. 
 
 Klu. No death unfit for the free " 
 Bo I think this man's to be : 
 For did not himself a slavish curse 
 To his household decree ? 
 But the scion of hira, myself did nurse — 
 That much-bewailed Iphigeneia, he 
 Having done well by, — and as well, .nor worse. 
 Been done to, — let him not in Haides loudly 
 Bear himself proudly [ ■ 
 Being by sword-destroying death amerced 
 For that sword's punishment himself inflicted 
 first. 
 
 Gho, I at a loss am left — 
 Of a feasible scheme of mind bereft — 
 Where I may turn : for the house is falling : 
 I fear the bloody crash of the rain 
 That ruins the roof as it bursts amain : 
 The warning-drop 
 Has come to a stop. 
 
 Destiny doth Justice whet 
 
 For other deed of hurt, on other whetstones yet. 
 
 Woe, earth, earth — would thou hadst taken me 
 
 i^re I saw the man I see. 
 
 On the pallet-bed 
 
 Of the silver-sided bath-vase, dead I 
 
 Who is it shall bury him, who 
 
 Sing his dirge ? Can it be true 
 
 That thou wilt dare this same to do — 
 
 Having slain thy husband, thine own, 
 
 To make his funeral moan : 
 
 And for the soul of him, in place 
 
 Of his mighty deeds, a graceless grace 
 
 To wickedly institute ? By whom 
 
 Shall the tale of praise o'er the tomb 
 
 At the god-like man be sent — 
 
 From the truth of his mind as he toils intent ? 
 
 Klu. It belongs not to thee to declare 
 This object of care ! 
 By us did he fall — down there ! 
 Did he die — down there ! and down, no less, 
 We will bury him there, and not beneath 
 The wails of the household over his death ; 
 But Iphigeneia, — with kindliness, — 
 His daughter, — as the case requires. 
 Facing him full, at the rapid-flowing 
 Passage of Groans shall — both hands throwing 
 Around him — kiss that kindest of sires ! 
 
 Gho. This blame conLes in the place of blame : 
 Hard battle it is to judge each diaim. 
 " He is borne away who bears away: 
 And the killer has all to pay." 
 And this remains while Zens is remaining, 
 " The doer shall suffer in time " — for, such his 
 
 ordaining. 
 Who may cast out of the House its cursed 
 
 brood ? 
 The race is to At4 glued ! 
 
 Klu. Thou hast gone into this oracle 
 With a true result. For me, then, — I will 
 — To the Dalmon of the Pleisthenidai 
 Making an oath — with all these things comply 
 Hard as they are to bear. For the rest — 
 Going from out this House, a guest, 
 May he wear some other famify 
 To naught, with the deaths of kin by kin I 
 And — keeping a little part of my goods — 
 Wholly am I contented in 
 Having expelled from the royal House 
 These frenzied moods 
 The nmtually-murderous. 
 Aigisthos. light propitious of day justice- 
 bringing I 
 I may say truly, now, that men's avengers. 
 The gods from high, of earth behold the sor- 
 rows — 
 Seeing, as I have, i' the spun robes of the Eri- 
 
 nues. 
 This man here lying, — sight to me how 
 
 pleasant ! — 
 His father's hands' contrivances repaying. 
 For Atrens, this land's lord, of this man father, 
 Thuestes, my own father — to speak clearly — 
 His brother too, — being i' the rule contested, — 
 Drove forth to exile from both town and house- 
 hold : 
 And, coming back, to the hearth turned, a sup- 
 pliant, 
 
THE AGAMEMNON OF /ESCHYLUS 
 
 Wretched Thuestes found the fate assured him 
 — Not to die, bloodying his paternal threshold 
 Just there: but host-wise this man's impious 
 
 father 
 Atreus, soul-keenly more than kindly, — seem- 
 ing 
 To joyous hold a flesh-day, — to my father 
 Served up a meal, the flesh of his own chil- 
 dren. 
 The feet indeed and the hands' top divisions 
 He hid, high up and isolated sitting : 
 But, their unshowing parts in ignorance taking, 
 He forthwith eats food — as thou seest — per- 
 dition 
 To the race : and then, 'ware of the deed ill- 
 omened. 
 He shrieked O ! — f alk back, vomiting, from 
 
 the carnage, 
 And fate on the Pelopidai past bearing 
 He prays down — putting in his curse together 
 The kicking down o' the feast — that so might 
 
 perish 
 The race of Fleisthenes entire ; and thence is 
 That it is given thee to see this man prostrate. 
 And I was rightly of tliis slaughter stitch- 
 man; 
 Since me, — being third from ten, — with my 
 
 poor father 
 He drives out — being then a babe in swathe- 
 bands : 
 But, grown up, back again has justice brought 
 
 me ; 
 And of this man I got hold — being without- 
 
 doors — 
 Fitting together the whole scheme of ill-will. 
 So, sweet, in fine, even to die were to me. 
 Seeing as I have, this man i' the toils of 
 justice ! 
 Cho. Aigisthos, arrogance in ills I love not. 
 Dost thou say — willing, thou didst kill the 
 
 man here, 
 And, alone, plot this lamentable slaughter 1 
 I say — thy head in justice will escape not 
 The people's throwing — know that ! — stones 
 and curses ! 
 Aig, Thou such things soundest — seated at 
 the lower 
 Oarage to those who rule at the ship's mid- 
 bench ? 
 Thou shalt know, being old, how heavy is 
 
 teaching 
 To one of the like age — bidden be modest ! 
 But chains and old age and the pangs of fasting 
 Stand out before all else in teaching, — pro- 
 phets 
 At souls'-cure ! Dost not, seeing aught, see 
 
 this too ? 
 Against goads kick not, lest tript-up thou suf- 
 fer ! 
 Cho, Woman, thou, — of him coming new 
 from battle 
 Houseguard — thy husband's bed the while 
 
 disgracing, — 
 For the Army-leader didst thou plan this fate 
 too? 
 Aig. These words too are of groans the 
 prime-begetters ! 
 Truly a tongue opposed to Orpheus hast thou : 
 
 For he led all things by his voice's grace-charm, 
 
 But thou, upstirring them by these wild yelp- 
 ings, 
 
 WUt lead them ! Forced, thou wilt appear the 
 tamer ! 
 Cho. So — thou shalt be my king then of 
 the Argeians — 
 
 Who, not when for this man his fate thou 
 plannedst, 
 
 Daredst to do this deed — thyself the slayer 1 
 Aig. For, to deceive him was the wife's part, 
 certes : 
 
 I was looked after — foe, ay, old-begotten ! 
 
 But out of this man's wealth will I endeavor 
 
 To rule the citizens : and the no-man-minder 
 
 — Him will I heavily yoke — by no means 
 
 trace-horse, 
 A comed-up colt ! but that bad friend in dark- 
 ness. 
 Famine its housemate, shall behold him gentle, 
 Cho. Why then, this man here, from a 
 
 coward spirit. 
 Didst not thou slay thyself? But, — helped, 
 
 — a woman. 
 The country 's pest, and that of gods o' the 
 
 country. 
 Killed him ! Orestes, where may he see light 
 
 now ? 
 That coming hither hack, with gracious for- 
 tune. 
 Of both these he may be the all-conquering 
 
 slayer? 
 Aig. But since this to do thou thinkest — 
 
 and not talk — thou soon shalt know ! 
 Up then, comrades dear ! the proper thing to 
 
 do — not distant this ! 
 Cho. Up then ! hilt in hold, his sword let 
 
 every one aright dispose ! 
 Aig. Ay, but I myself too, hilt in hold, do 
 
 not refuse to die ! 
 Cho. Thou wilt die, thou say'st, to who 
 
 accept it. We the chance demand ! 
 Klu. Nowise, belovedest of men, may we 
 
 do other ills ! 
 To have reaped away these, even, is a harvest 
 
 much to me ! 
 Go, both thou and these the old men, to the 
 
 homes appointed each. 
 Ere ye suffer ! It behooved one do these things 
 
 just as we did : 
 And if of these troubles, there should he 
 
 enough — we may assent 
 
 — By the Daimon's heavy heel unfortunately 
 
 stricken ones ! 
 So a woman's counsel hath it — if one judge it 
 learning-worth. 
 Aig. But to think that these at me the idle 
 tongue should thus o'erbloom. 
 And throw out such words — the Daimon's 
 
 power experimenting on — 
 And, of modest knowledge missing, — me, the 
 ruler, . . . 
 Cho. Ne'er may this befall Argeians — 
 
 wicked man to fawn before ! 
 Aig. Anyhow, in after-days, will I, yes, I, 
 
 be at thee yet ! 
 Cho. Not if hither should the Daimon make 
 Orestes straightway come ! 
 
LA SAISIAZ 
 
 849 
 
 Aig. Oh, 1 know, myself, that fugitives on 
 hopes are pasture-fed ! 
 
 Cho. l3o thy deed, get fat, defiling justice, 
 since the power is thine ! 
 
 Aig. Know that thou shalt give me satisfac- 
 tion for this folly's sake! 
 
 Cho. Boast on, hearing thee audacious, like a 
 
 cock his females by ! 
 Klu. Have not thou respect for these same 
 
 idle yelpings ! I and thou 
 Will arrange it, o'er this household ruling 
 
 excellently well. 
 
 LA SAISIAZ 
 
 DEDICATED TO MRS. SUTHERLAND ORR 
 
 Miss A. Egbrton-Smith was, at the time 
 of her death, one of Browning's oldest women 
 friends. " He first met her," says Mrs. Suther- 
 land Orr, " as a young woman in Florence when 
 she was visiting there ; and the love for and 
 proficiency in music soon asserted itself as a 
 bond of sympathy between them. They did 
 not, however, see much of each other till he 
 had finally left Italy, and she also had made 
 her home in London. . . . Mr. Browning was 
 one of the very few persons whose society she 
 
 Good, to forgive ; 
 
 Best, to forget ! 
 
 Living, we tret ; 
 Dying, we live. 
 Fretless and free, 
 
 Soul, clap thy pinion ! 
 
 Earth have dominion, 
 Body, o'er thee ! 
 
 Wander at will. 
 
 Day after day, — 
 
 Wander away. 
 Wandering still — 
 Soul that canst soar ! 
 
 Body may slumber : 
 
 Body shall cumber 
 Soul-flight no more. 
 
 Waft of soul's wing ! 
 
 What lies above ? 
 
 Sunshine and Love, 
 Skyblue and Spring ! 
 Body hides — where ? 
 
 Ferns of all feather. 
 
 Mosses and heather. 
 Yours be the care ! 
 
 LA SAISIAZ 
 A. E. S. September 14, 1877. 
 
 Dabed and done: at last I stand upon the 
 
 summit, Dear and True I 
 Singly dared and done ; the climbing both of us 
 
 were bound to do. 
 Petty feat and yet prodigious: every side my 
 
 glance was bent 
 
 cared to cultivate : and for many years the com- 
 mon musical interest took the practical, and for 
 both of them convenient, form, of their going 
 to concerts together." Browning was at La 
 Saisiaz, under the Salftve, when Miss Egerton- 
 Smith, who was also domiciled there, died sud- 
 denly in the autumn of 1877, and it was after 
 the shock of her loss that he composed the 
 poem to which he gave the title of their sum- 
 mer resort. The poem is dated November 9, 
 1877. 
 
 O'er the grandeur and the beauty lavished 
 
 through the whole ascent. 
 Ledge by ledge, out broke new marvels, now 
 
 minute and now immense : 
 Earth's most exquisite disclosure, heaven's own 
 
 God in evidence ! 
 And no berry in its hiding, no blue spa«e in its 
 
 outspread. 
 Pleaded to escape my footstep, challenged my 
 
 emerging head, 
 (As I climbed or paused from climbing, now 
 
 o'erbranc/ied by shrub and tree, 
 Now built round by rock and boulder, now at 
 
 just a turn set free. 
 Stationed face to face with — Nature? rather 
 
 with Infinitude,) 
 
 — No revealment of them all, as singly I my 
 
 path pursued. 
 But a bitter touched its sweetness, for the 
 
 thought stung " Even so 
 Both of us had loved and wondered just the 
 
 same, five days ago ! " 
 Five short days, sufficient hardly to entice, 
 
 from out its den 
 Splintered in the slab, this pink perfection of 
 
 the cyclamen ; 
 Scarce enough to heal and coat with amber gum 
 
 the sloe-tree's gash. 
 Bronze the clustered wilding apple, redden ripe 
 
 the mountain-ash : 
 Yet of might to place between us — Oh the bar- 
 rier I Yon Profound 
 Shrinks beside it, proves a pin-point: barrier 
 
 this, without a bound ! 
 Boundless though it be, I reach you : somehow 
 
 seem to have you here 
 
 — Who are there. Yes, there you dwell now, 
 
 plain the four low walls appear ; 
 Those are vineyards, they enclose from ; and 
 the little spire which points 
 
8so 
 
 LA SAISIAZ 
 
 — That 's Collonge, henceforth your dwelling^. 
 
 All the same, howe'er diBJoints 
 Past from present, no less certain you are here, 
 
 not there : have dared, 
 Done the feat of mountain-climbing, — five 
 
 days since, "we both prepared 
 Daring, doing, arm in aim, if other help should 
 
 haply fail. 
 For you asked, as forth we sallied to see sunset 
 
 from the vale, 
 " Why not try for once the mountain, — take a 
 
 foretaste, snatch by stealth 
 Sight and sound, some unconsidered fragment 
 
 of the hoarded wealth ? 
 Six weeks at its base, yet never once have we 
 
 together won. 
 Sight or sound by honest climbing :. let us two 
 
 have dared and done 
 Just so much of twilight journey as may prove 
 
 to-morrow's jaunt 
 Not the only mode of wayfare — wheeled to 
 
 reach the eagle's haunt ! " 
 So, we turned from the low grass-path you were 
 
 pleased to call "your own," 
 Set our faces to the rose-bloom o'er the sum- 
 mit's front of stone 
 Where Salfeve obtains, from Jura and the sunken 
 
 sun she hides, 
 Due return of blushing " Grood Night," rosy as 
 
 a home-off bride's. 
 For his masculine '^ Good Morrow " when, with 
 
 sunrise still in hold, 
 Gay he hails her, and, magnific, thrilled her 
 
 black length burns to gold. 
 Up and np we went, how careless — - nay, how 
 
 joyous ! All was new. 
 All was strange. '^ Call progress toilsome ? 
 
 that were just insulting you ! 
 How the trees must temper noontide ! Ah, the 
 
 thicket's sudden break 1 
 What will be the morning glory, when at dusk 
 
 thus gleams the lake ? 
 Light by light puts forth Geneva : what a land 
 
 — and, of the land, 
 Can there be a lovelier station than this spot 
 
 where now we stand ? 
 Is it late, and wrong to linger ? True, to-moi> 
 
 row makes amends. 
 Toilsome progress ? child's play, call it — 
 
 specially when one descends ! 
 There, the dread descent is over — hardly our 
 
 adventure, though ! 
 Take the vale where late we left it, pace the 
 
 grass-path, 'mine,' you know ! 
 Proud completion of achievement ! " And we 
 
 paced it, praising still 
 That soft tread on velvet verdure as it wound 
 
 through hill and hill ; 
 And at very end there met us, coming from 
 
 Collonge, the pair 
 
 — All our people of the Chalet — two, enough 
 
 and none to spare. 
 
 So, we made for home together, and we reached 
 it as the stars 
 
 One by one came lamping — chiefly that pre- 
 potency of Mars — 
 
 And your last word was " I owe you this enjoy- 
 ment I " — met with " Nay : 
 
 With yourself it rests to have a month of mor- 
 rows like toniay ! " 
 
 Then the meal, with talk and laughter, and the 
 news of that rare nook 
 
 Yet untroubled by the tourist, touched on by 
 no travel-book, 
 
 All the same — though latent — patent, hybrid 
 birth of land and sea. 
 
 And (our travelled friend assured yon) — if 
 such miracle might be — 
 
 Comparable for completeness of both blessings 
 
 — all around 
 
 Nature, and, indde her circle, safety from 
 
 world's sight and sound — 
 Comparable to our Saisiaz. "Hold it fast and 
 
 guard it well ! 
 Go and see and vouch for certain, then come 
 
 back and never tell 
 Living soul but us ; and haply, prove our sky 
 
 from cloud as clear. 
 There may we four meet, praise fortune just as 
 
 now, another year ! ' 
 
 Thus you charged him on departure : not with- 
 out the final charge, 
 
 " Mind to-morrow's early meeting ! We must 
 leave our journey marge 
 
 Ample for the wayside wonders : there 's the 
 stoppage at the inn 
 
 Three-parts up the mountain, where the hard- 
 ships of the track begin ; 
 
 There 's the convent worth a visit ; but, the 
 triumph crowning all — 
 
 There 's Sal^ve's own platform facing glory 
 which strikes greatness small, 
 
 — Blanc, supreme above his earth-brood, nee- 
 dles red and white and green. 
 
 Horns of silver, fangs of crystal set on edge in 
 his demesne. 
 
 So, some three weeks since, we saw them : so, 
 to-morrow we intend 
 
 You shall see them likewise ; therefore Good 
 Night till to-morrow, friend ! " 
 
 Last, the nothings that extinguish embers of a 
 vivid day : 
 
 " What might be the Marshal's next move, 
 what Gambetta's counter-play ? " 
 
 Till the landing on the staircase saw escape 
 the latest spark : 
 
 " Sleep you well ! " " Sleep but as well, you ! " 
 
 — lazy love quenched, all was dark. 
 
 Nothing dark next day at sundawn ! Up I 
 
 rose and forth 1 fared : 
 Took my plunge within the bath-pool, pacified 
 
 the watch-dog scared. 
 Saw proceed the transmutation — Jura's black 
 
 to one gold glow. 
 Trod your level path that let me drink the 
 
 morning deep and slow. 
 Reached the little quarry — ravage recom- 
 pensed by shrub and fern — 
 Till the overflowing ardors told me time was 
 
 for return. 
 So, return I did, and gayly. But, for once, 
 
 from no far mound 
 Waved salute a tall white figure. " Has her 
 
 sleep been so profound ? 
 
1.A SAISIAZ 
 
 851 
 
 Foresight, rather, prudent saving strength for 
 
 day's expenditure ! 
 Ay, the chamber-window 's open : out and on 
 
 the terrace, sure ! " 
 
 No, the terrace showed no figure, tall, white, 
 
 '■ leaning through the wreaths. 
 Tangle-twine of leaf and bloom that intercept 
 
 the air one breathes. 
 Interpose between one's love and Nature's 
 
 loving, hill and dale 
 Down to where the blue lake's wrinkle marks 
 
 the river's inrush pale 
 
 — Mazy Arve : whereon no vessel but goes 
 
 hiding white and plain. 
 Not a steamboat pants from harbor but one 
 
 hears pulsate amain. 
 Past the city's congregated peace of homes 
 
 and pomp of spires 
 
 — Man's mild protest that there's something 
 
 more than Nature, man requires. 
 
 And that, useful as is Nature to attract the 
 tourist's foot. 
 
 Quiet slow sure money-making proves the 
 matter's very root, — 
 
 Need for body, — while the spirit also needs a 
 comfort reached 
 
 By no help of lake or mountain, but the texts 
 whence Calvin preached. 
 
 " Here 's the veil withdrawn from landscape: 
 up to Jura and beyond, 
 
 All awaits us ranged and ready ; yet she vio- 
 lates the bond. 
 
 Neither leans nor looks nor listens : why is 
 this ? " A turn of eye 
 
 Took the whole sole answer, gave the undis- 
 puted reason " why " ! 
 
 This dread way you had your summons ! No 
 
 premonitory touch. 
 As you talked and laughed {'t is told me) scarce 
 
 a minute ere the clutch 
 Captured you in cold forever. Cold ? nay, 
 
 warm you were as life 
 When I raised you, while the others used, in 
 
 passionate poorstrife, 
 All the means that seemed to promise any aid, 
 
 and all in vain. 
 Gone you were, and I shall never see that 
 
 earnest face again 
 Grow transparent, grow transfigured with the 
 
 sudden light that leapt 
 At the first word's provocation, from the 
 
 heart-deeps where it slept. 
 
 Therefore, paying piteous duty, what seemed 
 You have we consigned 
 
 Peacefully to — what I think were, of all earth- 
 beds, to your mind 
 
 Most the choice for quiet, yonder : low walls 
 stop the vines' approach. 
 
 Lovingly Sal^ve protects you ; vill^e-sports 
 . will ne'er encroach 
 
 On the stranger lady's silence, whom friends 
 bore so kind and well 
 
 Thither "just for love's sake" — such their 
 own word was : and who can tell ? 
 
 ifou supposed that few or none had known and 
 
 loved you in the world : 
 Maybe ! flower that 's fuU-blown tempts the 
 
 butterfly, not flower that 's furled. 
 But more learned sense unlocked you, loosed 
 
 the sheath and let expand 
 Bud to bell and outspread flower-shape at the 
 
 least warm touch of band 
 
 — Maybe, throb of heart, beneath which — 
 
 quickening farther than it knew — 
 Treasure oft was disembosomed, scent all 
 
 strange and unguessed hue. 
 Disembosomed, re-embosomed, — must one 
 
 memory suffice, 
 Prove I knew an Alpine-rose which all beside 
 
 named Edelweiss ? 
 
 Rare thing, red or white, you rest now ; two 
 days slumbered through ; and since 
 
 One day more will see me rid of this same scene 
 whereat I wince. 
 
 Tetchy at all sights and sounds and pettish at 
 each idle charm 
 
 Proffered me who pace now singly where we 
 two went arm in arm, — 
 
 I have turned upon my weakness : asked, " And 
 what, forsooth, prevents 
 
 That, this latest day allowed me, I fulfil of 
 her intents 
 
 One she had the most at heart — that we should 
 thus again survey 
 
 From Sal^ve Mont Blanc together? " There- 
 fore, — dared and done to-day 
 
 Climbing, — here I stand : but you — where ? 
 
 If a spirit of the place 
 Broke the silence, bade me question, promised 
 
 answer, — what disgrace 
 Did I stipulate " Provided answer suit my 
 
 hopes, not fears ! " 
 Would I shrink to learn my lifetime's limit — 
 
 days, weeks, months or years ? 
 Would I shirk assurance on each point whereat 
 
 I can but guess — 
 " Does the soul survive the body ? Is there 
 
 God's self, no or yes ? " 
 If I know my mood, 't were constant — come 
 
 in whatsoe'er uncouth 
 Shape It should, nay, formidable — so the 
 
 answer were but truth. 
 
 Well, and wherefore shall it daunt me, when 
 
 'tis I myself am tasked. 
 When, by weakness weakness questioned, 
 
 weakly answers — weakly asked ? 
 Weakness never needs be falseness : truth is 
 
 truth in each degree 
 
 — Thunder-pealed by Grod to Nature, whis- 
 
 pered by my soul to me. 
 
 Nay, the weakness turns to strength and tri- 
 umphs in a truth beyond : 
 
 " Mine is but man's truest answer — how were 
 it did God respond ? " 
 
 I shall no more dare to mimic such response in 
 futile speech. 
 
 Pass off human lisp as echo of the sphere-soi j 
 out of reach, 
 
8S2 
 
 LA SAISIAZ 
 
 Than, — because it well may happen yonder, 
 
 where the far snows blanch 
 Mute Mont Blanc, that who stands near them 
 
 sees and hears an avalanche, — 
 I shall pick a clod and throw, — cry, "Such 
 
 the sight and such the sound I 
 What though I nor see nor hear them ? Others 
 
 do, the proofs abound ! " 
 Can I make my eye an eagle's, sharpen ear to 
 
 recognize 
 Sound o'er league and league of silence ? Can 
 
 I know, who but surmise ? 
 If I dared no self-deception when, a week 
 
 since, I and you 
 Walked and talked along the grass-path, pass- 
 ing lightly in review 
 What seemed hits and what seemed misses in a 
 
 certain fence-play, — strife 
 Sundry minds of mark engaged in " On the 
 
 Soul and Future Life," — 
 If I ventured estimating what was come of par- 
 ried thrust, 
 Subtle stroke, and, rightly, wrongly, estimat- 
 ing could be just 
 — Just, though life so seemed abundant in the 
 
 form which moved by mine, 
 I might well have played at feigning, fooling, 
 
 — laughed " What need opine 
 Pleasure must succeed to pleasure, else past 
 
 pleasure turns to pain. 
 And this jirst life claims a second, else I count 
 
 its good no gain ? " — 
 Much less have 1 heart to palter when the 
 
 matter to decide 
 Now becomes " Was ending ending once and 
 
 always, when you died ? " 
 Did the face, the form I lifted as it lay, reveal 
 
 the loss 
 Not alone of life but soul ? A tribute to yon 
 
 ilowers and moss. 
 What of you remains beside ? A memory ! 
 
 Easy to attest 
 " Certainly from out the world that one be- 
 lieves who knew her best 
 Such was good in her, such fair, which fair 
 
 and good were great perchance 
 Had but fortune favored, bidden each shy 
 
 faculty advance ; 
 After all — who knows another ? Only as I 
 
 know, I speak." 
 So much of you lives within me while I live 
 
 my year or week. 
 Then my fellow takes the tale up, not unwilling 
 
 to aver 
 Duly in his turn, ' ' I knew him best of all, as he 
 
 knew her: 
 Such he was, and such he was not, and such 
 
 other might have been 
 But that somehow every actor, somewhere in 
 
 this earthly scene, 
 Fails." And so both memories dwindle, yours 
 
 and mine together linked, 
 Till there is but left for comfort, when the 
 
 last spark proves extinct. 
 This — that somewhere new existence led by 
 
 men and women new 
 Possibly attains perfection coveted by me and 
 
 you; 
 
 While ourselves, the only witness to what work 
 
 our life evolved. 
 Only to ourselves proposing problems proper to 
 
 be solved 
 By ourselves alone, — who working ne'er shall 
 
 know if work bear fruit 
 Others reap and garner, heedless how produced 
 
 by stalk and root, — 
 We who, darkling, timed the day's birth, — 
 
 struggling, testified to peace, — 
 Earned, by dint of failure, triumph, — we, cre- 
 ative thought, must cease 
 In created word, thought's echo, due to impulse 
 
 long since sped ! 
 Why repine ? There 's ever some one lives 
 
 although ourselves be dead ! 
 
 Well, what signifies repugnance ? Truth is 
 truth howe'er it strike. 
 
 Fair or foul the lot apportioned life on earth, we 
 bear alike. 
 
 Stalwart body idly yoked to stunted spirit, 
 powers, that fain 
 
 Else would soar, condemned to grovel, ground- 
 lings through the fieshly chain, — 
 
 Help that hinders, hindrance proved but help 
 disguised when all too late, — 
 
 Hindrance is the fact acknowledged, howsoe'er 
 explained as Fate, 
 
 Fortune, Providence : we bear, own life a bur- 
 den more or less. 
 
 Life thus owned unhappy, is there supplemental 
 happiness 
 
 Possible and probable in life to come ? or must 
 we count 
 
 Life a curse and not a blessing, summed-up in 
 its whole amount. 
 
 Help and hindrance, joy and sorrow ? 
 
 Why should I want courage here ? 
 
 I will ask and have an answer, — with no favor, 
 with no fear, — 
 
 From myself. How much, how little, do I in- 
 wardly believe 
 
 True that controverted doctrine ? Is it fact to 
 which I cleave. 
 
 Is it fancy I but cherish, when I take upon my 
 lips 
 
 Phrase the solemn Tuscan fashioned, and de- 
 clare the soul's eclipse 
 
 Not the soul's extinction? take his "I believe 
 and I declare — 
 
 Certain am I — from this life I pass into a bet- 
 ter, there 
 
 Where that lady lives of whom enamored was 
 my soul ' ' — where this 
 
 Other lady, my companion dear and true, she 
 also is? 
 
 I have questioned and am answered. Ques- 
 tion, answer presuppose 
 
 Two points : that the thin^ itself which ques- 
 tions, answers, — is, it knows ; 
 
 As it also knows the thing perceived outside it- 
 self, — a force 
 
 Actual ere its own beginning, operative 
 through its course, 
 
 UnafBeoted by its end, —that this thing like- 
 wise needs must be ; 
 
LA SAISIAZ 
 
 8S3 
 
 Call this 7- God, then, call that — soul, and 
 
 toth — the only facts for me. 
 Pi^ove them facts ? that they o'erpass my power 
 
 of proving, proves them such : 
 Fact it is 1 know 1 know not something which 
 
 is fact as much. 
 What hefore caused all the causes, what effect 
 
 of all effects 
 Haply follows, — these are fancy. Ask the 
 
 rush if it suspects 
 Whence and how the stream which floats it had 
 
 a rise, and where and how 
 falls or flows on still ! What answer makes the 
 
 rush except that now 
 Certainly it floats and is, and, no less certain 
 
 than itself. 
 Is the everyway ejcternal stream that now 
 
 through shoal and shelf 
 Floats it onward, leaves it — maybe — wrecked 
 
 at last, or lands on shore 
 There to root again and grow and flourish sta- 
 ble evermore. 
 — Maybe 1 mere surmise not knowledge : much 
 
 conjecture styled belief. 
 What the rush conceives the stream means 
 
 through the voyage blind and brief. 
 Why, because I doubtless am, shall I as doubt- 
 less be ? ^* Because 
 God seems good and wise." Yet under this our 
 
 life's apparent laws 
 Beigns a wrong which, righted once, would give 
 
 quite other laws to life. 
 " He seems potent." Potent here, then : why 
 
 are right and wrong at strife ? 
 Has in life the wrong the better? Happily life 
 
 ends so soon ! 
 Kight predominates in life? Then why two 
 
 lives and double boon ? 
 "Anyhow, we want it: wherefore want?" 
 
 Because, without the want, 
 Life, now human, would be brutish : just that 
 
 hope, however scant. 
 Makes the actual life worth leading ; take the 
 
 hope therein away, 
 All we have to do is surely not endure another 
 
 day. 
 This life has its hopes for this life, hopes that 
 
 promise joy : life done — 
 Out of all the hopes, how many had complete 
 
 fulfilment? None. 
 " But the soul is not the body : " and the breath 
 
 is not the flute ; 
 Both together make the music : either marred 
 
 and all is mute. 
 Truce to such old sad contention whence, ac- 
 cording as we shape 
 Most of hope or most of fear, we issue in a half- 
 escape : 
 " We believe " is sighed. I take the cup of 
 
 comfort proffered thus, 
 Taste and try each soft ingredient, sweet mfu- 
 
 sion, and discuss 
 What their blending may accomplish for the 
 
 cure of doubt, till — slow, 
 Sorrowful, but how decided ! needs must I o'er- 
 
 turn it — -so! 
 Cause before, effect behind me — blanks 1 fhe 
 
 midway point I am. 
 
 Caused, itself — itself efflcient : in that narrow 
 
 space must cram 
 All experience — out of which there crowds con- 
 jecture manifold. 
 But, as knowledge, this comes only — things 
 
 may be as 1 behold, 
 Or may not. be, but, without me and above me, 
 
 things there are ; 
 I myself am what I know not — ignorance which 
 
 proves no bar 
 To the knowledge that I am, and, since I am, 
 
 can recognize 
 What to me is pain and pleasure : this is sure, 
 
 the rest — surmise. 
 If my fellows are or are not, what may please 
 
 them and what pain, — 
 Mere sui-mise : my own experience — that is 
 
 knowledge, once again ] 
 
 I have lived, then^ done and suffered, loved and 
 hated, learnt and taught 
 
 This — there is no reconcihng wisdom with a 
 world distraught. 
 
 Goodness with triumphant evil, power with fail- 
 ure in the aim. 
 
 If — (to my own sense, remember ! though none 
 other feel the same !) 
 
 If you bar me from assuming earth to be a pu- 
 pil's place. 
 
 And life, time — with all their chances, changes 
 — just probation-space. 
 
 Mine, for me. But those apparent other mor- 
 tals — theirs, for them ? 
 
 Knowledge stands on my experience : all ontside 
 its narrow hem, 
 
 Free surmise may sport and welcome ! Pleas- 
 ures, pains affect mankind 
 
 Just as they affect myself ? Why, here 's my 
 neighbor color-blind. 
 
 Eyes like mine to all appearance : " green as 
 grass " do I affirm ? 
 
 "Bed as grass "he contradicts me; — which 
 employs the proper term ? 
 
 Were we two the earth's sole tenants, with no 
 third for referee. 
 
 How should I distinguish ? Just so, God must 
 judge 'twixt man and me. 
 
 To each mortal peradventure earth becomes a 
 new machine, 
 
 Pain and pleasure no more tally in our sense 
 than red and green ; 
 
 Still, without what seems such mortal's plea- 
 sure, pain, my life were lost 
 
 — Life, my whole sole chance to prove — al- 
 though at man's apparent cost — 
 
 What is beauteous and -vrtiat ugly, right to strive 
 for, right to shun. 
 
 Fit to help and fit to hinder, —prove my forces 
 every one. 
 
 Good and evil, — learn life's lesson, hate of evil, 
 love of good. 
 
 As 't is set me, understand so much as may be 
 understood — 
 
 Solve the problem : " From thine apprehended 
 scheme of things, deduce 
 
 Praise or blame of its contriver, shown a niggard 
 or profuse 
 
8S4 
 
 LA SAISIAZ 
 
 In ' each g:ood or evil issue! Dor miscalculate 
 
 alike 
 Counting one the other in the final halance, 
 
 which to strike, 
 boul was bom and life allotted : ay, the show 
 
 of things unfurled 
 For thy summing-up and judgmenti — thine, 
 
 no other mortars world I ■ 
 
 What though fancy scarce may grapple with the 
 
 complex and immense 
 — " His own world for every mortal ? " Postu- 
 late omnipotence ! 
 Limit power, and simple grows the complex; 
 
 shrunk to atom size. 
 That which loomed immense to fancy low before 
 
 my reason lies, — 
 I survey it and pronounce it work like other 
 
 work ; success 
 Here and there, the workman's glory, — here 
 
 and there, his shame no less. 
 Failure as conspicuous^ Taunt not *^ Human 
 
 work ape work divine ? " 
 As the power, expect performance ! God's be 
 
 God's as mine is mine ! 
 God whose power made man and made man's 
 
 wants, and made, to meet those wants. 
 Heaven and earth which, through the body, 
 
 prove the spirit's ministrants, 
 F-xoellently all, — did he lack power or was the 
 
 will in fault 
 When he let blue heaven be shrouded o'er by 
 
 vapors of the vault. 
 Gay earth drop her garlands shrivelled at the 
 
 first infecting breath ; ■ 
 Of the serpent pains which herald, swarming 
 
 in, the dragon death ? 
 What, no way but this that man may learn and 
 
 lay to heart how rife 
 Life were with delights would- only death allow 
 
 their taste to life ? 
 Must the rose sigh " Pluck — I perish ! " must 
 
 the eve weep " Gaze- — I fade ! " 
 ^T-. Every . Sweet warn "'Ware my bitter!" 
 
 every shine bid " Wait myshade " ? 
 Can we love but on condition, that the thing we 
 
 love must die ? 
 Needs there groan a world in anguish just to 
 
 teach us sympathy — 
 Mnltitudinously wretched that we^ wretched 
 
 too, may guess 
 What a preferable state were universal hap- 
 piness ? 
 Hardly do I so conceive the outcome of that 
 
 power which went 
 To the making, of the worm there in yon clod 
 
 its tenement, 
 Any more than I distinguish aught of that 
 
 which, wise and good, 
 Framed the leaf, ita plain of pasture, dropped 
 
 the dew, its fineless food. 
 Nay, were fancy fact, were earth and all it 
 
 holds illusion mere. 
 Only a machine for teaching love and hate and 
 
 hope and fear 
 To myself, the sole existence, single truth 'mid 
 
 falsehood, — well ! 
 
 If the harsh ttroes of the prelude die not off 
 
 into the swell 
 Of that perfect piece they sting me to become 
 
 a-strain for, — if 
 Eonghness of the long rock-clamber lead not to 
 
 the last of cliff. 
 First of level country where is sward my 
 
 pilgrim-foot can prize, — 
 Plainlier I if this life's conception new life fail 
 
 to realize, — 
 Though earth burst and proved a bubble glass- 
 ing hues of hell, one huge 
 Reflex of the devil's doings — God's work by 
 
 no subterfuge — 
 (So death's kindly touch informed me as it 
 
 broke the glamour, gave 
 Soul and body both release from life's long 
 
 nightmare in the grave) — 
 StiU, — with no more Nature, no more Man as 
 
 riddle to be read, 
 Only my own joys and sorrows now to reckon 
 
 real instead, — 
 I must say — or choke in silence — " Howsoever 
 
 came my fate. 
 Sorrow did and joy did nowise — life well 
 
 weighed — preponderate." 
 By necessity ordained thus ? I shall bear as 
 
 best I can ; 
 By a cause all-good, all-wise, all-potent ? No, 
 
 as I am man ! 
 Such were God : and was it goodness that the 
 
 good within my range 
 Or had evil in admixture or grew evil's self by 
 
 change ? 
 Wisdom — that becoming wise meant making 
 
 slow and sure advance 
 From a knowledge proved in error to acknow- 
 ledged ipnorance ? 
 Power! 't is ]ust the main assumption reason 
 
 most revolts at ! power 
 Unavailing for bestowment on its creature of 
 
 an hour, 
 Man, of so much proper action rightly aimed 
 
 and reaching aim. 
 So much passion, — no defect there, no excess, 
 
 but still the same, — 
 As what constitutes existence, pure perfection 
 
 bright as brief 
 For yon worm, man's fellow-creature, on yon 
 
 happier world — its leaf ! 
 No, as I am man, I mourn the poverty I must 
 
 impute : 
 Goodness, wisdom, power, all bounded, each a 
 
 human attribute ! 
 
 But, world outspread beneath me ! only for 
 
 myself I speak. 
 Nowise dare to play the spokesman for my 
 
 brothers strong and weak. 
 Full and empty, wise and foolish, good and 
 
 bad, in every age. 
 Every clime, I turn my eyes from, as in one or 
 
 other stage 
 Of a torture writhe they. Job-like couched on 
 
 dung and crazed with blains 
 — Wherefore ? whereto ? ask the whirlwind 
 " what the dread voice thence explains ! 
 
LA SAISIAZ 
 
 8SS 
 
 1 shall ** vindicate no 'way of God's to man," 
 
 nor stand apart, 
 " Laugh, be candid," while I watch it traversing: 
 
 the human heart ! 
 Traversed heart must tell its story uncommented 
 
 on : no less 
 Mine results in, " Only grant a second life ; I 
 
 acquiesce 
 In this present life as failure, count misfortune's 
 
 worst assaults 
 Triumph, not defeat, assured that loss so much 
 
 the more exalts 
 Gain about to be. For at what moment did I 
 
 so advance 
 Near to knowledge aa when frustrate of escape 
 
 from ignorance ? 
 Did not beauty prove most preciotis when its 
 
 opposite obtained 
 Rule, and truth seem more than ever potent 
 
 because falsehood reigned ? 
 While for love — Oh how but, losing love, does 
 
 whoso loves succeed 
 By the death-pang to the birth-throe — learning 
 
 what is love indeed ? 
 Only grant my soul may carry high through 
 
 death her cup unspilled, 
 Brimming though it be with knowledge, life's 
 
 loss drop by drop distilled, 
 I shall boast it mine — the balsam, bless each 
 
 kindly wrench that wrung 
 From life's tree its inmost virtue, tapped the 
 
 root whence pleasure sprung. 
 Barked the bole, and broke the bough, and 
 
 bruised the berry, left all grace 
 Ashes in death's stern alembic, loosed elixir in 
 
 its place !" 
 
 Witness, Dear and True, how little I was 'ware 
 
 of — not your worth 
 — That I knew, my heart assures me — but of 
 
 what a shade on earth 
 Would the passage from my presence of the 
 
 tali' white' figure throw 
 O'er the ways we walked together ! Somewhat 
 
 narrow, somewhat slow, 
 Used to seem the ways, the walking: narrow 
 
 ways are well to tread 
 When there 's moss beneath the footatep, 
 
 honeysuckle overhead : 
 Walking slow to beating bosom surest solace 
 
 soonest gives. 
 Liberates the brain o'erloaded — best of all 
 
 restoratives. 
 Nay, do I forget the open vast where soon or 
 
 late converged 
 Ways though winding ? — world-wide heaven- 
 high sea where music slept or surged 
 As the angel had ascendant, and Beethoven'^ 
 
 ■ Titan mace 
 Smote the immense to storm, Mozart would by 
 
 a finger's lifting chase ? 
 Yes, I knew — but not with knowledge such as 
 
 thrills me whil6 I view 
 Yonder precinct which henceforward holds and 
 
 hides the Dear and True. 
 Grant me (once again) assurance we shall each 
 
 meet each some day. 
 
 Walk — but with how bold a footstep! on a 
 
 way — but what a way ! 
 — ' Worst were best, defeat were triumph, utter 
 
 loss were utmost gain. 
 Can it be, and must, and will it ? 
 
 ' Silence ! Out of fact's domain, 
 Just surmise prepared to mutter hope, and also 
 
 fear — dispute 
 Fact's inexorable ruling, ** Outside fact, surmise 
 
 be mute ! " 
 Well! 
 Ay, well and best, if fact's self I may force 
 
 the answer from ! 
 'T is surmise I stop the mouth of ! Not above 
 
 in yonder dome 
 All a rapture with its rose-glow, — not around, 
 
 where pile and peak 
 Strainingly await the sun's fall, — not beneath, 
 
 where crickets creak. 
 Birds assemble for their bedtime, soft the tree- 
 top swell subsides, — 
 No, nor yet within my deepest sentient self the 
 
 knowledge hides. 
 Aspiration, Tcminiscence, plausibilities of trust 
 — Now the ready "Man were wronged else,'^ 
 
 now the rash " and God unjust " — 
 None of these I need. Take thou, my soul, thy 
 
 solitary stand, 
 Umpire to the champions Fancy, Keason, as oa 
 
 either hand 
 Amicable war they wage and play the foe in thy 
 
 behoof 1 
 Fancy thrust and Reason parry! Thine the 
 
 prize who stand aloof ! 
 
 I concede the thing refused : henceforth no 
 
 certainty more plain 
 Than this mere surmise that after body dies 
 
 soul lives again. 
 Two, the only facts acknowledged late, are now 
 
 increased to three — 
 God is, and the soul is, and, as certain, after 
 
 death shall be. 
 Put this third to use in life, the time for using 
 
 feicti 
 
 REASON 
 
 I do: 
 
 Find it promises advantage, coupled with the 
 
 other two. 
 Life to come will be improvement on the life 
 
 ' that 's now ; destroy 
 Body's thwartiugs, there 's no longer screen 
 
 betwixt soul and soul's joy. 
 Why should we expect new hindrance, novel 
 
 tether ? In this first 
 Life, I see the good of evil, why our world 
 
 began at worst : 
 Since time means amelioration, tardily enough 
 
 displayed, . 
 
 Yet a mainly onward moving, never wnolly 
 
 retrograde. 
 We know more though we know little, we grow 
 
 stronger though still weak, 
 
8s6 
 
 LA SAISIAZ 
 
 Partly see though all too pmrhlind, stammer 
 though we cannot spe£^. 
 
 There is no such grudge m God as scared the 
 ancient Greet, no fresh 
 
 Substitute of trap for drag-net, once a break- 
 age in the mesh. 
 
 Dragons were, and serpents are, and blindworms 
 will be : ne'er emerged 
 
 Any new-created python for man's plague since 
 earth was purged. 
 
 Failing proof, then, of invented trouble to re- 
 place the old. 
 
 O'er this life the next presents advantage 
 much and manifold : 
 
 Which advantage — in the absence of a fourth 
 and farther fact 
 
 Now conceivably surmised, of harm to follow 
 from the act — 
 
 I pronounce for man's obtaining at this mo- 
 ment. Why delay ? 
 
 Is he happy? happiness will change : antici- 
 pate the day ! 
 
 Is he sad ? there 's ready refuge : of all sadness 
 death 's prompt cure ! 
 
 Is he both, in mingled measure ? cease a bur- 
 den to endure ! 
 
 Pains with sorry compensations, pleasures 
 stinted in the dole. 
 
 Power that sinks and pettiness that soars, all 
 halved and nothing whole. 
 
 Idle hopes that lure man onward, forced back 
 by as idle fears — 
 
 What a load he stumbles under through his 
 glad sad seventy years, 
 
 ^Vhen a touch sets right the turmoil, lifts his 
 spirit where, flesh-freed, 
 
 Knowledge shall be rightly named so, all that 
 seems be truth indeed ! 
 
 Grant his forces no accession, nay, no faculty's 
 increase. 
 
 Only let what now exists continue, let him 
 prove in peace 
 
 Power whereof the interrupted unperfected 
 play enticed 
 
 Man through darkness, which to lighten any 
 spark of hope sufficed, — 
 
 What shall then deter his dying out of darkness 
 into light ? 
 
 Death itself perchance, brief pain that 's pang, 
 condensed and infinite ? 
 
 But at worst, he needs must brave it one day, 
 while, at best, he laughs — 
 
 Drops a drop within his chalice, sleep not 
 death his science quaffs ! 
 
 Any moment claims more courage, when, by 
 crossing cold and gloom. 
 
 Manfully man quits discomfort, makes for the 
 provided room 
 
 Where the old friends want their fellow, where 
 the new acquaintance wait. 
 
 Probably for talk assembled, possibly to sup in 
 state ! 
 
 I affirm and reaffirm it therefore : only make 
 as plain 
 
 As that man now lives, that, after dying, man 
 will live again, — 
 
 Make as plain the absence, also, of a law to con- 
 travene 
 
 Voluntary passage from this life to that by 
 
 change of scene, — 
 And I bid him — at suspicion of first clond 
 
 athwart his sky, 
 Flower's departure, frost's arrival — never 
 
 hesitate, but die ! 
 
 FANCY 
 
 Then I double my concession : grant, along 
 
 with new life sure 
 This same law found lacking now : ordain that, 
 
 whether rich or poor 
 Present life is judged in aught man counts 
 
 advantage — be it hope, 
 Be it fear that brightens, blackens most or 
 
 least his horoseopej — 
 He, by absolute compulsion such as made him 
 
 live at all. 
 Go on living to the fated end of life whate'er 
 
 befall. 
 What though, as on earth he darkling grovels, 
 
 man descry the sphere. 
 Next life's — call it, heaven of freedom, close 
 
 above and crystal-clear ? 
 He shall find — say, hell to punish who in aught 
 
 curtails the term. 
 Fain would act the butterfly before he has 
 
 played out the worm ! 
 God, sold, earth, heaven, hell, — five facts 
 
 now : what is to desiderate ? 
 
 Nothing ! Henceforth man's existence bows to 
 
 the monition " Wait ! 
 Take the joys and bear the sorrows — neither 
 
 with extreme concern ! 
 Living here means nescience simply : 't is next 
 
 life that helps to learn. 
 Shut those eyes, next life will open, — stop 
 
 those ears, next life will teach 
 Hearing's office, — close those lips, next life 
 
 will give the power of speech ! 
 Or, if action more amuse thee than the passive 
 
 attitude, 
 Bravely bustle through thy being, busy thee 
 
 for ill or good, 
 Beap this life's success or failure ! Soon shall 
 
 things be unperplexed 
 And the right and wrong, now tangled, lie un- 
 ravelled in the next." 
 
 FANCY 
 
 Not so fast ! Still more concession ! not alone 
 
 do I declare 
 Life must needs be borne, — I also will that 
 
 man become aware 
 Life has worth incalculable, every moment 
 
 that he spends 
 So much gain or loss for that next life which on 
 
 this life depends. 
 Good, done here, be there rewarded, — evil, 
 
 worked here, there amerced ! 
 Six facts now, and all established, plain to man 
 
 the last as first. 
 
 There was good and evil, then, defined to man 
 by this decree ? 
 
LA SAISIAZ 
 
 857 
 
 Was — for at its promulgation both alike have 
 
 ceased to be. 
 Prior to this last announcement, " Certainly as 
 
 God exists. 
 As He made man's soul, as soul is quenchless 
 
 by the deathly mists. 
 Yet is, all the same, forbidden premature 
 
 escape from time 
 To eternity's provided purer air and brighter 
 
 clime, — 
 Just so certainly depends it on the use to which 
 
 man turns 
 Earth, the good or evil done there, whether 
 
 after death he earns 
 Life eternal, — heaven, the phrase be, or eter- 
 nal death, — say, hell. 
 As his deeds, so proves his portion, doing ill or 
 
 doing well ! " 
 — Prior to this last announcement, earth was 
 
 man's probation-place : 
 Liberty of doing evil gave his doing good a 
 
 grace ; 
 Once lay down the law, with Nature's simple 
 
 " Such effects succeed 
 Causes such, and heaven or hell depends upon 
 
 man's earthly deed 
 Just as surely as depends the straight or else 
 
 the crooked line 
 On his making point meet point or with or else 
 
 without incline," — 
 Thenceforth neither good nor evil does man, 
 
 doing what he must. 
 Lay but down that law as stringent " Wouldst 
 
 thou live again, be just ! " 
 As this other " Wouldst thou live now, regu- 
 larly draw thy breath ! 
 For, suspend the operation, straight law's 
 
 breach results in death " — 
 And (provided always, man, addressed this 
 
 mode, be sound and sane) 
 Prompt and absolute obedience, never doubt, 
 
 will law obtain ! 
 Tell not me " Look round us ! nothing each 
 
 side but acknowledged law, 
 Now styled God's — now. Nature's edict ! " 
 
 Where 's obedience without flaw 
 Paid to either? What's the adage rife in 
 
 man's mouth ? Why, " The best 
 I both see and praise, the worst I follow " — 
 
 which, despite professed 
 Seeing, praising, all the same he follows, since 
 
 he disbelieves 
 In the heart of him that edict which for truth 
 
 his head receives. 
 There 's evading and persuading and much mak- 
 ing law amends 
 Somehow, there 's the nice distinction 'twixt 
 
 fast foes and faulty friends, 
 — Any consequence except inevitable death 
 
 when, "Die, 
 Whoso breaks our law ! " they publish, dod 
 
 and Nature equally. 
 Law that 's kept or broken — subject to man s 
 
 will and pleasure ! Whence ? 
 How comes law to bear eluding? Not be- 
 cause of impotence : 
 Certain laws exist already whieh to hear means 
 to obey ; 
 
 Therefore not without a purpose these man 
 
 must, while those man may 
 Keep and, for the keeping, haply gain approval 
 
 and reward. 
 Break through this last superstructure, all is 
 
 empty air — no sward 
 Firm like my first fact to stand on, " God there 
 
 is, and soul there is," 
 And soul's earthly life-allotment : wherein, by 
 
 hypothesis. 
 Soul is bound to pass probation, prove its 
 
 powers, and exercise 
 Sense and thought on fact, and then, from fact 
 
 educing fit surmise. 
 Ask itself, and of itself have solely answer, 
 
 " Does the scope 
 Earth affords of fact to judge by warrant fu- 
 ture fear or hope ? ' 
 
 Thus have we come back full circle : fancy's 
 
 footsteps one by one 
 Go their round conducting reason to the point 
 
 where they begun. 
 Left where we were left so lately. Dear and 
 
 True ! When, half a week 
 Since, we walked and talked and thus I told 
 
 you, how suffused a cheek 
 You had turned me had I sudden brought the 
 
 blush into the smile 
 By some word like " Idly argued 1 you know 
 
 better all the while ! " 
 Now, from me — Oh not a blush, but, how much 
 
 more, a joyous glow. 
 Laugh triumphant, would- it strike did your 
 
 " Yes, better I do know " 
 Break, my warrant for assurance ! which assur- 
 ance may not be 
 If, supplanting hope, assurance needs must 
 
 change this life to me. 
 So, I hope — no more than hope, but hope — no 
 
 less than hope, because 
 I can fathom, by no plumb-line sunk in life's 
 
 apparent laws, 
 How I may in any instance fix where change 
 
 should meetly fall 
 Nor involve, by one revisal, abrogation of them 
 
 all: , . vx 
 
 — Which again involves as utter change m bie 
 
 thus law-released, . , , 
 
 Whence the good of goodness vanished when 
 
 the ill of evil ceased. 
 Whereas, life and laws apparent reinstated, — 
 
 all we know, 
 AU we know not, — o'er our heaven agam cloud' 
 
 closes, until, lo,-^ 
 Hope the arrowy, just, as constant, comes to 
 
 pierce its gloom, compelled 
 By a power and by a purpose which, if no one, 
 
 else beheld, 
 I behold in life, so — hope ! 
 
 Sad summing-up of all to say ! 
 
 Athanasius contra mundtim, why should he hope 
 more than they ? 
 
 So are men made notwithstanding, such mag- 
 netic virtue darts 
 
 From each head their fancy haloes to their un- 
 resisting hearts 1 
 
858 
 
 LA SAISIAZ 
 
 Here I stand, methinks a stone's throw from 
 yon village I this mom 
 
 Traversed for the sake of looking one last look 
 at its forlorn 
 
 Tenement's ignoble fortune : through a crev- 
 ice, plain its floor 
 
 Piled with provender for cattle, while a dung- 
 heap blocked the door. 
 
 In that squalid Bossex, under that obscene red 
 roof, arose. 
 
 Like a fiery flying serpent from its egg, a soul 
 — Bonsseau's. 
 
 Turn thence ! Is it Diodati joins the glimmer 
 of the lake ? 
 
 There I plticked a le^f , one week since, — ivy, 
 plucked for Byron's sake. 
 
 Famed unfortunates ! And yet, because of that 
 phosphoric fame 
 
 Swatmng blackness' self with brightness till 
 putridity looked flame, 
 
 AH the world was witched: and wherefore? 
 what could lie beneath, allure 
 
 Heart of man to let corruption serve man's head 
 as cynosure ? 
 
 Was the magic in the dictum " All that 's good 
 is gone and past; 
 
 Bad and worse still grows the present, and the 
 worst of all comes last : 
 
 Which believe — for I believe it " ? So 
 preached one his gospetnews ; 
 
 \Vliile melodious moaned the other, '* dying 
 day with dolphin-hues ! 
 
 Storm, for loveliness and darkness like a wo- 
 man's «ye ! Ye mounts 
 
 Where I cUmb to 'scape my fellow, and thou sea 
 wherein he counts 
 
 Not one inch of vile dominion ! What were 
 your especial worth 
 
 Failed ye to enforce the maxim ' Of all objects 
 found on earth 
 
 Man is meanest, nmeh too honored when com- 
 pared with — what by odds 
 
 Beats him — any dog : so, let him go a-howling 
 to his gods ! ' 
 
 Which believe — for I believe it ! " Such the 
 comfort man received 
 
 Sadly since perforce he must : for why ? the 
 famous bard believed ! 
 
 Fame ! Then, give me fame, a moment ! As 
 I gather at a glance 
 
 Human glory after glory vivifying yon ex- 
 panse. 
 
 Let me grasp them altogether, hold on high and 
 brandish well 
 
 Beacon-like above the rapt world ready, whether 
 heaven or hell 
 
 Send tile dazzling summons earthward, to sub- 
 mit itself the same, 
 
 Take on trust the hope or else despair flashed 
 full on face by — Fame I 
 
 Thanks, thou pine-tree of Makistos, wide thy 
 giant torch I wave ! 
 
 Know ye whence I plucked the pillar, late with 
 sky for a/rehitrave ? 
 
 This the trunk, the central solid Knowledge, 
 kindled core, began 
 
 Tugging earth-deeps, trying heaven-heights^ 
 
 rooted yonder at Lausanne. • 
 This which flits and spits, the aspic, — sparkles 
 
 in and out the boughs 
 Now, and now condensed, the python, coiling 
 
 round and round allows 
 Scarce the bole its due effulgence, dulled by 
 
 flake on flake of Wit — 
 Laughter so bejewels Learning, — what but 
 
 Femey nourished it ? 
 Nay, nor fear — since every resin feeds the 
 
 fl^me — that I dispense 
 With yon Bossex terebinth-tree's all-explosrve 
 
 Eloquence ; 
 No, be sure ! nor, any more than thy resplen- 
 dency, Jean-Jacques, 
 Dare I want thine, Diodati! What though 
 
 monkeys and macaques 
 Gibber " Byron " ? Byron's ivy rears a branch 
 
 beyond the Crew, 
 Green forever, no deciduous- trash macaques 
 
 and monkeys chew ! 
 As EousseaiUi then, eloquent, as Byron prime 
 
 in poet's power, — 
 Detonations, fulgurations, smiles — the rain- 
 bow, tears — the shower, — 
 Lo, I lift the coruscating marvel — Fame ! and, 
 
 famed, declare 
 — Learned for the nonce as Gibbon, witty as 
 
 wit's self Voltaire . . . 
 Oh, the sorriest of conclusions to whatever man 
 
 of sense 
 'Mid the millions stands the uniti takes no flare 
 
 for evidence ! 
 Yet the millions have their portion, live their 
 
 calm or troublous day. 
 Find signfficauce in fireworks : so, by help of 
 
 mine, they may 
 Confidently lay to heart and lock in head their 
 
 life long — this : 
 " He there with the brand flamboyant, broad 
 
 o'er night's forlorn abyss, 
 Crowned by prose and verse ; and wielding, 
 
 with Wit's bauble. Learning's rod "... 
 Well ? Why, he at least believed in Soul, was 
 
 very sure of God I 
 
 So the poor smile played, that evening ; pallid 
 
 smile long since extinct 
 Here in London's mid - November I Not so 
 
 loosely thoughts were linked. 
 Six weeks since as I, descending in the sunset 
 
 from Sal^ve, 
 Found the chain, I seemed to forge there, flaw- 
 less till it reached your grave, — 
 Not so filmy was the texture, but I bore it in 
 
 my breast 
 Safe thus far. And since I found a something 
 
 in me would not rest 
 Till I, link by link, unravelled any tangle of 
 
 the chain, 
 — Here it lies, for much or little ! I have lived 
 
 all o'er again 
 That last pregnant hour : I saved it, just as I 
 
 could save a root 
 Disinterred for reinlennent when the time best 
 
 helps to shoot. 
 
THE TWO POETS OF CROISIC 
 
 8S9 
 
 Life ifi stocked with germs of torpid life ; but 
 
 may I never wake 
 Those of mine whose resurrection could not be 
 
 without earthquake ! 
 
 Best all such, unraised forever ! Be this, sad 
 
 yet sweet, the sole 
 Memory evoked from slumber! Least part 
 
 this : then what the whole ? 
 
 THE TWO POETS OF CROISIC 
 
 Written immediately after La Saisiaz, being dated January 15, 1878. 
 
 Such a starved bank of moss 
 
 Till, that May-mom, 
 Blue ran the flash across : 
 
 Violets were bom I 
 
 Sky — what a scowl of cloud 
 
 Till, near and far, 
 Ray on ray split the shroud : 
 
 Splendid, a star ! 
 
 World — how it walled about 
 
 Life with disgrace 
 Till God's own smile came out : 
 
 That was thy face ! 
 
 " Fame ! " Yes, I said it and you read it. 
 First, 
 Praise the good log^-fire I Winter howls with- 
 out. 
 Crowd closer, let us ! Ha, the secret nursed 
 
 Inside yon hollow, crusted roundabout 
 With copper where the clamp was, — how the 
 burst 
 Vindicates flame the stealthy feeder ! Spout 
 Thy splendidest — a minute and no more ? 
 So soon again all sobered as before ? 
 
 Nay, for I need to see your face ! One stroke 
 
 Adroitly dealt, and lo, the pomp revealed ! 
 Fire in his pandemonium, heart of oak 
 
 Palatial, where he wrought the works con- 
 
 , ,, cealed , . 
 
 Beneath the solid-seeming roof I broke. 
 
 As redly up and out and oflP they reeled 
 Like disconcerted inips, those thousand sparks 
 From flre's slow tunnelling of vaults and arcs ! 
 
 Ill 
 
 Up, out, and off, see ! Were you never used, — 
 I on now, in childish days or rather nights, — 
 
 As I was, to watch sparks fly ? not amused 
 By that old nurse-taught game which gave 
 the sprites 
 
 Each one his title and career, — confused 
 Belief 't was all long over with the flights 
 
 From earth to heaven of hero, sage, and bard. 
 
 And bade them once more strive for Fame's 
 award ? 
 
 New long bright life ! and happy chance be- 
 
 long 
 fell 
 
 That I know — when some prematurely lost 
 
 Child of disaster bore away the bell 
 From some too-pampered son of fortune , 
 crossed 
 Never before my chimney broke the spell ! 
 
 Octogenarian Keats gave up the ghost. 
 While — never mind Who was it cumbered 
 
 earth — 
 Sank stifled, span-long brightness, in the birth. 
 
 Well, try a variation of the game ! 
 
 Our log is old ship-titnber, broken bulk. 
 There 's sea-brine spirits up the brimstone 
 flame. 
 
 That crimson-curly spiral proves the hulk 
 Was saturate with — ask the chloride's name 
 
 From somebody who knows ! 1 shall not sulk 
 If yonder greenish tonguelet licked from brass 
 Its life, I thought was fed on copperas. 
 
 Amfhow, there they flutter ! What may be 
 The style and prowess of that purple one ? 
 Who is the hero other eyes shall see 
 
 Than yours and mine ? That yellow, deep to 
 dun — 
 Conjecture bow the sage glowsi whom not we 
 But those unborn are to get warmth by ! 
 Son 
 0' the coal, ■ — as Job and Hebrew name a. 
 
 spark, — 
 What bard, in thy red soaring, scares the dark? 
 
 Oh and the lesser lights, the dearer still 
 
 That they elude a vulgar eye, give ours 
 The glimpse repaying astronomic skill 
 Which searched sky deeper, passed those 
 patent powers 
 Constellate proudly, — swords, scrolls, harps, 
 that fill 
 The vulgar eye to surfeit, — found best 
 flowers 
 Hid deepest in the dark, — named unplucked 
 
 grace 
 Of soul, ungathered beauty, form or face ! 
 
 Up with thee, mouldering ash men never knew, 
 But I know 1 flash thou forth, and figure 
 
 Calm and columnar as yon flame I view I 
 Oh and I bid thee, — to whom fortune doled 
 
 Scantly all other gifts out — bicker blue. 
 Beauty for all to see, zinc's raicontrolled 
 
86o 
 
 THE TWO POETS OF CROISIC 
 
 Flakesibrilliance I Not my fault if these were 
 
 shown, 
 Grandeur and beauty both, to me alone. 
 
 JX 
 
 No! as the first was boy's play, this proves 
 mere 
 Stripling's amusement : manhood's sport be 
 grave ! 
 Choose rather sparkles quenched in mid career, 
 Their boldness and their brightness could not 
 save 
 (In some old night of time on some lone drear 
 
 Sea-coast, monopolized by crag or cave) 
 — Save from ignoble exit into smoke, 
 Silence, oblivion, all death-damps that choke 1 
 
 Launched by our ship-wood, float we, once 
 adrift 
 In fancy to that land-strip waters wash. 
 We both know well! Where imcouth tribes 
 made shift 
 Long since to just keep life in, billows dash 
 Nigh over folk who shudder at each lift 
 
 Of the old tyrant tempest's whirlwind-lash 
 Though they have built the serviceable town 
 Tempests but tease now, billows drench, not 
 drown. 
 
 Croisic, the spit of sandy rock which juts 
 Spitefully northward, bears nor tree nor 
 shrub 
 To tempt the ocean, show what Gu^rande shuts 
 Behind her, past wild Batz whose Saxons grub 
 The ground for crystals grown where ocean 
 gluts 
 Their promontory's breadth with salt: all 
 stub 
 Of rock and stretch of sand, the land's last 
 
 strife 
 To rescue a poor remnant for dear life. 
 
 And what life ! Here was, from the world to 
 choose, 
 The Druids' chosen chief of homes : they 
 reared 
 — Only their women, — 'mid the slush and 
 ooze 
 Of yon low islet, — to their sun, revered 
 In strange stone guise, — a temple. May-dawn 
 dews 
 Saw the old structure levelled ; when there 
 peered 
 May's earliest eve-star, high and wide once 
 
 more 
 Up towered the new pile perfect as before : 
 
 Seeing that priestesses — and all were such — 
 Unbuilt and then rebuilt it every May, 
 
 Each alike helping — well, if not too much ! 
 For, 'mid their eagerness to outstrip day 
 
 And get work done, if any loosed her clutch 
 And let a single stone drop, straight a prey 
 
 Herself fell, torn to pieces, limb from limb. 
 By sisters in full chorus glad and grim. 
 
 And still so much remains of that gray cult. 
 That even now, of nights, do women steal 
 
 To the sole Menhir standing, and insult 
 The antagonistic church-spire by appeal 
 
 To power discrowned in vain, since each adult 
 Believes the gruesome thing she clasps may 
 heal 
 
 Whatever plague no priestly help can cure : 
 
 Kiss but the cold stone, the event is sure ! 
 
 Nay more : on May-moms, that primeval rite 
 
 Of temple-building, with its pimisbment 
 For rash precipitation, lingers, spite 
 
 Of all remonstrance ; vainly are they shent, 
 Those girls who form a ring and, dressed in 
 white, 
 Dance round it, till some sister's strength be 
 spent : 
 Touch but the Menhir, straight the rest turn 
 
 roughs 
 From gentles, faU on her with fisticuffs. 
 
 Oh and, for their part, boys from door to door 
 
 Sing unintelligible words to tunes 
 As obsolete : " scraps of Dmidic lore," 
 
 Sigh scholars, as each pale man importunes 
 Vainly the mumbling to speak plain once more. 
 
 Enough of this old worship, rounds and 
 runes ! 
 They serve my purpose, which is but to show 
 Croisic to-day and Croisic long ago. 
 
 What have we sailed to see, then, wafted there 
 By fancy from the log that ends its days 
 
 Of much adventure 'neath skies foul or fair. 
 On waters rough or smooth, in this good 
 blaze 
 
 We two crouch round so closely, bidding care 
 Keep outside with the snow-storm ? Some- 
 thing says 
 
 " Fit time for stoiy-telling ! " I begin — 
 
 Why not at Croisic, port we first put in ? 
 
 Anywhere serves : for point me out the place 
 Wherever man has made himself a home, 
 
 And there I find the story of our race 
 In little, just at Croisic as at Home. 
 
 What matters the degree ? the kind I trace. 
 Druids their temple, Chi'istians have their 
 dome : 
 
 So with mankind ; and Croisic, I '11 engage. 
 
 With Rome yields sort for sort, in age for age. 
 
 No doubt, men vastly differ : and we need 
 Some strange exceptional benevolence 
 
 Of nature's sunshine to develop seed 
 So well, in the less-favored clime, that thence 
 
THE TWO POETS OF CROISIC 
 
 86l 
 
 We:niay discern how shrub means tree indeed 
 Thougfh dwarfed till scarcely shrub in evi- 
 dence . 
 Man in the ice-house or the hot-house ranks 
 With beasts or gods : stove-f oreed, give warmth 
 the thanks ! 
 
 While, is there any ice-checked ? Such shall 
 learn 
 
 I am thankworthy, who propose to slake 
 His thirst for tasting how it feels to turn 
 
 Cedar from hyssop-on-the-wall. I wake 
 No memories of what is harsh and stern 
 
 In ancient Croisic-nature, much less rake 
 The ashes of her last warmth till out leaps 
 Live Herv^ Kiel, the single spark she keeps. 
 
 Take these two, see, each outbreak, — spirt 
 and spirt 
 Of fire from our brave billet's either edge 
 Which — call maternal Croisic ocean-girt ! 
 These two shall thoroughly redeem my 
 pledge. 
 One names fierce gules, its feebler rival — 
 vert, 
 Heralds would tell you : heroes, I allege. 
 They both were :, soldiers, sailors, statesmen, 
 
 priests. 
 Lawyers, physicians — guess what gods or 
 beasts I 
 
 None of them all, but — poets, if you please ! 
 
 " What, even there, endowed with kna«k of 
 rhyme. 
 Did two among the aborigines 
 
 Of that rough region pass the ungracious 
 time 
 Suiting, to rumble-tumble of the sea's. 
 
 The songs forbidden a serener clime ? 
 Or had they imiversal audience — that 's 
 To say, the folk of Croisic, ay, and Batz ? " 
 
 Open your cat's ! Each poet in his day 
 Had such a mighty moment of success 
 
 Aspinnacled him straight, in full display. 
 For the whole world to worship — nothing 
 less! 
 
 Was not the whole polite world Paris, pray ? 
 And did not Paris, for one moment — yes. 
 
 Worship these poet-flames, our red and green, 
 
 One at a time, a century between ? 
 
 And yet you never heard their names ! Assist, 
 Clio, Historic Muse, while I record 
 
 Great deeds ! Let fact, not fancy, break the 
 mist 
 And bid each sun emerge, in turn play lord 
 
 Of day, one moment ! Hear the annalist 
 Tell a strange story, true to the least word ! 
 
 At Croisic, sixteen hundred years and ten 
 
 Since Christ, forth flamed, yon liquid ruby, 
 then. 
 
 Know him henceforth as Ueni Gentilhomme 
 — Appropriate appellation ! noble birth 
 
 And knightly blazon, the device wherefrom 
 Was " Better do than say " ! In Croisic's 
 dearth 
 
 Why prison his career while Christendom 
 Lay open to reward acknowledged worth ? 
 
 He therefore left it at the proper age 
 
 And got to be the Prince of Condi's page. 
 
 Which Prince of Cond^, whom men called 
 "The Duke," 
 — Failing the kmg, his cousin, of an heir, 
 (As one might hold hap, would, without rebuke, 
 Since Anne of Austria, all the world was 
 ware. 
 Twenty-three years long sterile, scarce could 
 look 
 For issue) — failing Louis of so rare 
 A godsend, it was natural the Prince 
 Should hear men call him "Next King " too, 
 nor wince. 
 
 Now, as this reasonable hope, by growth 
 
 Of years, nay, tens of years, looked plump 
 almost 
 To bursting, — would the brothers, childless 
 both, 
 Louis and Gaston, give but up the ghost — 
 Cond^, called "Duke" and "Next King," 
 nothing loth 
 Awaited his appointment to the post. 
 And wiled away the time, as best he might. 
 Till Providence should settle things aright. 
 
 So, at a certain pleasure-house, withdrawn 
 From cities where a whisper breeds offence, 
 
 He sat him down to watch the streak of dawn 
 Testify to first stir of Providence ; 
 
 And, since dull country life makes courtiers 
 yawn. 
 There wanted not a poet to dispense 
 
 Song's remedy for spleen-fits aU and some, 
 
 Which poet was Page Ren4 Gentilhomme. 
 
 A poet bom and bred, his very sire 
 
 A poet also, author of a piece 
 Printed and published, " Ladies — their attire : ' 
 
 Therefore the son, just bom at his decease, 
 Was bound to keep alive the sacred fire. 
 
 And kept it, yielding moderate increase 
 Of songs and sonnets, madrigals, and much 
 Rhyming thought poetry and praised as such. 
 
 Kubbish unutterable (bear in mind !) 
 
 Rubbish not wholly without value, though, 
 
 Being to compliment the Diike designed 
 And bring the complimenter credit so, — 
 
 Pleasure with profit happily combined. 
 Thus Ren4 Gentilhomme rhymed, rhymed 
 till — lo, 
 
862 
 
 THE TWO POETS OF CROISIC 
 
 Thia happened, as he sat in an. alcove 
 Elaborating rhyme for "love " ^not " dove." 
 
 He was alone : silence and solitude 
 Befit the votary of the Muse, Around, 
 
 Nature — not our new picturesque and rude. 
 But trim tree-cinctured stately garden- 
 ground — 
 
 Breathed polish and politeness. AU-imhued 
 With these, he sat absorbed in one profound 
 
 Excogitation, " Were it best to hint 
 
 Or boldly boast ' She loves me — Araminte ' ? " 
 
 When suddenly flashed lightning, searing sight 
 Ahnost, so close to eyes ; then, quick on flash. 
 Followed the thunder, splitting earth down- 
 right 
 Where Ren^ sat a^rhyming : with huge crash 
 Of marble into atoms infinite — 
 Marble which, stately, dared the world to 
 dash 
 The stone-thing proud, high-pillared, from its 
 
 place ; 
 One flash, and dust was all that lay at base. 
 
 So, when the horrible confusion loosed 
 Its wrappage round his senses, and, with 
 breath, 
 
 Seeing and hearing by degrees induced 
 
 Conviction what he felt was life, not death — 
 
 His fluttered faculties came back to roost 
 One after one, as fowls do : ay, beneath. 
 
 About his very feet there, lay in dust 
 
 Earthly presumption paid by heaven's disgust. 
 
 For, what might be the thunder-smitten thing 
 But, pillared high and proud, in marble guise, 
 A ducal crown — which meant "Now Duke: 
 Next, King " ? 
 Since such the Prince was, not in his own 
 eyes 
 Alone, but all the world's. Pebble from sling 
 
 Prostrates a giant ; so can pulverize 
 Marble pretension — how much more, make 
 
 moult 
 A peacock-prince his plume — God's thunder- 
 bolt! 
 
 That was enough for Ren^, that first fact 
 Thus flashed into him. Up he looked : all 
 blue 
 
 And bright the sky above ; earth firm, compact 
 Beneath his footing, lay apparent too ; 
 
 Opposite stood the pillar : nothing lacked 
 There, but the Duke's crown : see, its frag- 
 ments strew 
 
 The earth, — about his feet lie atoms fine 
 
 Where he sat nursing late his fourteenth line 1 
 
 So, for the moment, all the universe 
 Being abolished, all 'twixt God and him, - 
 
 Earth's praise or blame, its blessing or its curse, 
 
 rOf one and the same value, — to the brim 
 Flooded with truth for better or for worse, — 
 
 He pounces on the writing-paper, prim' 
 Keeping its place on table : not a dint 
 Nor speck had damaged " Ode to Araminte." 
 
 XXXVII 
 
 And over the neat crowquill calligraph 
 His pen goes blotting, blurring, as an ox 
 
 Tramples a flower-bed in a garden, — laugh _ 
 You may! — so does not he, whose quick 
 heart knocks 
 
 Audibly at his breast : an epitaph 
 
 On earth's break-up, amid the falling rocks, 
 
 He might be penning in a wild dismay, 
 
 Caught with his work half-done on Judgment 
 Day. 
 
 And what is it so terribly he pens. 
 Ruining " Cupid, Venus, wile and smile, 
 
 Hearts, darts," and all his day's divinior mens 
 Judged necessary to a perfect style ? 
 
 Little recks Ren^, with a breast to cleanse, _ 
 Of Rhadamanthine law that reigned ere while : 
 
 Brimful of truth, truth's outburst wUl con- 
 vince 
 
 (Style or no style) who bears truth's bnmt — the 
 Prince. 
 
 " Cond4, called ' Duke,' be called just ' Duke,' 
 not moi*e, 
 
 To life's end! 'Next King' then forsooth 
 wilt be? 
 Ay, when this bauble, as it decked before 
 
 Thy pillar, shall again^ for France to see. 
 Take its proud station there ! Let France adore 
 
 No longer an illusive mock-sun — thee — 
 But keep her homage for Sol's self , about 
 To rise and put pretenders to the rout ! 
 
 "What? France so God-abandoned that her 
 root 
 Regal, though many a Spring it gave no sign. 
 Lacks power to make the bole, now branchless, 
 shoot 
 Greenly as ever ? Nature, though benign. 
 Thwarts ever the ambitious and astute. 
 
 In store for such is punishment condign : 
 Sure as thy Duke's crown to the ea^th was 
 
 hurled. 
 So sure, next year, a Dauphin glads the world ! " 
 
 Which penned — some forty lines to this effect — 
 Our Ren4 folds his paper, marches brave 
 
 Back to the mansion, luminous, erect. 
 Triumphant, an emancipated slave. 
 
 There stands the Prince. " How now ? My 
 Duke'a-crown wrecked ? 
 What may this mean ? " 'The answer RenS 
 gave 
 
 Was — handing him the verses, with the due 
 
 Incline of body : " Sir, God's word to you ! " 
 
THE TWO POETS OF CROISIC 
 
 863 
 
 The Prince read, paled, was ailent ; all around, 
 The courtier-company, to "whom he passed 
 
 The paper, read, in equal silence bound. 
 Ren^ grew also by degrees aghast 
 
 At his own fit of courage — palely found 
 Way of retreat from that pale presence : 
 classed 
 
 Once more among the cony-kind. " Oh, son, 
 
 It is a feeble folk ! " saith iSolomon. 
 
 Vainly he apprehended evil : since. 
 When, at the year's end, even as foretold. 
 
 Forth came the Dauphin who discrowned the 
 Prince 
 , Of that long^craved mere visionary gold, 
 
 'T was no fit tiine for envy to evince 
 Malice, be sure ! The timidest grew bold : 
 
 Of all that courtier-company not one 
 
 But left the setnblance for the actual sun. 
 
 And all sorts and conditions that stood by 
 At Rent's burning moment, bright escape 
 
 Of soul, bore witness to the prophecy. 
 Which witness took the customary shape 
 
 Of verse ; a score of poets in full cry 
 Hailed the inspired one. Nantes and Tours 
 agape. 
 
 Soon Paris caught the infection; gaining strength, 
 
 How could it ftiil to reach the Court at length ? 
 
 " poet ! " smiled King Louis, " and besides, 
 prophet 1 Sure, by miracle announced, 
 
 My babe will prove a prodigy. Who chides 
 Henceforth the nnchilded monarch shall be 
 trounced 
 
 For irreligion : since the fool derides 
 Plain miracle by which this prophet pounced 
 
 Exactly on the moment I should lift 
 
 Like Simeon, in my arms, a babe, ' God's gift ! ' 
 
 " So call the boy ! and call this bard and seer 
 By a new title ! him I raise to rank 
 
 Of ' Royal Poet : ' poet without peer ! 
 Whose fellows only have themselves to thank 
 
 If humbly they must follow in the rear 
 My Ren4. He 's the master : they must clank 
 
 Their chains of song, confessed his slaves ; for 
 why? 
 
 They poetize, while he can prophesy 1 " 
 
 So said, so done j our Ren^ rose august, 
 " The Royal Poet j !' straightway put in type 
 
 His poem-prophecy, and (fair and just 
 Procedure) added, — now that time was ripe 
 
 For proving friends did well his word to^ trust, — 
 Those attestations, tuned to lyre or pipe, 
 
 ](rhich friends broke out with when he dared 
 foretell 
 
 The Dauphin's birth : friends trusted, and did 
 well. 
 
 Moreover he got painted by Du Fii, 
 Engraved by Daret also ; and prefixed 
 
 The portrait to his book : a crown of bay 
 Circled his brows with rose and myrtle mixed ; 
 
 And Latin verses, lovely in their way. 
 Described him as " the biforked hill betwixt: 
 
 Since he hath scaled Parnassus at one jump. 
 
 Joining the Delphic qmU and Getic trump.'' 
 
 Whereof came . . . What, it lasts, our spirt, 
 thus long 
 
 — The red fire ? That 's the reaaon must 
 excuse 
 My letting flicker Rent's prophet-song 
 
 No Icnger ; for its pertinacious hues 
 Must fade before its fellow joins the throng 
 
 Of sparks departed up the chimney, dues 
 To dark oblivion. At the word, it winks. 
 Rallies, relapses, dwindles, deathward sinks. 
 
 So does our poet. All this burst of fame. 
 
 Fury of favor. Royal Poetship, 
 Prophetship, book, verse, picture — thereof 
 came 
 
 — Nothing ! That 's why I would not let 
 outstrip 
 Red his green rival flamelet : just the same 
 
 Ending in smoke waits both ! In vain we rip 
 The past, no further faintest trace remains 
 Of Ren4 to reward our pious pains. 
 
 Somebody saw a portrait framed and glazed ■ 
 At Croisic. " Who may be this glorified 
 
 Mortal unheard-of hitherto ? " amazed 
 That person asked the owner by his side. 
 
 Who proved as ignorant. The question raised. 
 Provoked inquiry ; key by key was tried 
 
 On Croisic's portrait-puzzle, till back flew 
 
 The wards at one key's touch, which key was 
 — Who? 
 
 The other famous poet ! Wait thy turn, 
 Thou green, our red's competitor ! Enough 
 
 Just now to note 't was he that itched to learn 
 (A hundred years ago) how fate could pufF 
 
 Heaven-high (a hundred years before), then 
 spurn 
 To suds so big a bubble in some huff : 
 
 Since green too found red's portrait, — having 
 heard 
 
 Hitherto of red's rare self not one word. 
 
 And he vrith zeal addressed him to the task 
 
 Of hunting out, by aU and any means, 
 — Who might the brilliant bard be, bom to 
 bask 
 Butterfly-like in shine which kings and 
 queens 
 And baby-dauphins shed ? Much need to ask I 
 Is fame so fickle that what perks and preens 
 
864 
 
 THE TWO POETS OF CROISIC 
 
 The eyed wing, one imperial minute, dips 
 Next sudden moment into blind eclipse ? 
 
 After a vast expenditure of pains. 
 
 Our second poet found the prize he sought : 
 Urged in his search by something that re- 
 strains 
 From undue triumph famed ones who haye 
 fought. 
 Or simply, poetizing, taxed their brains : 
 Something that tells such — dear is triumph 
 bought 
 If it means only basking in the midst 
 Of fame's brief sunshine, as thou, Ben^, didst. 
 
 For, what did searching find at last but this ? 
 
 Quoth somebody, " 1 somehow somewhere 
 seem 
 To think I heard one old De Chevaye is 
 
 Or was possessed of Rent's works 1 " which 
 gleam 
 Of light from out the dark pro'ved not amiss 
 
 To track, by correspondence on the theme ; 
 And soon the twilight broadened into day, 
 For thus to question answered De Chevaye. 
 
 " True it is, I did once possess the works 
 You want account of — works — to call them 
 so, — 
 
 Comprised in one small book : the volume lurks 
 (Some fifty leaves in duodecimo) 
 
 'Neath certain ashes which my soul it irks 
 Still to remember, because long ago 
 
 That and my other rare shelf-occupants 
 
 Perished by burning of my house at Nantes. 
 
 " Yet of that book one strange particular 
 Still stays in mind with me " — and there- 
 upon 
 
 Followed the story. " Few the poems are ; 
 The book was two-thirds filled up with this 
 one. 
 
 And sundry witnesses from near and far 
 That here at least was prophesying done 
 
 By prophet, so as to preclude all doubt, 
 
 Before the thing he prophesied about." 
 
 That 's all he knew, and all the poet learned, 
 And all that you and I are like to hear 
 
 Of Ren^ ; since not only book is burned 
 But memory extinguished, — nay, I fear. 
 
 Portrait is gone too : nowhere I discerned 
 A trapse of it at Croisic. *'Mustatear 
 
 Needs fall for that ? " you smile. " How 
 fortune fares 
 
 With such a mediocrity, who cares ? " 
 
 Well, I care — intimately care to have 
 Experience how a human creature felt 
 
 In after-life, who bore the burden grave 
 Of certainly believing God had dealt 
 
 For once directly with him : did not rave 
 
 — A maniac, did not find his reason nielt 
 — An idiot, but went on, in peace or strife, 
 The world's way, lived an ordinary life. 
 
 How many problems that one fact would solve I 
 
 An ordinary soul, no more, no less. 
 About whose life earth's common sights re- 
 volve, 
 On whom is brought to bear, by thunder- 
 stress. 
 This fact — God tasks him, and will not ab- 
 solve 
 Task's negligent performer ! Can you guess 
 How such a soul — the task performed to 
 
 point — 
 Goes back to life nor finds things out of joint ? 
 
 Does he stand stock-like henceforth ? or pro- 
 ceed 
 Dizzily, yet with course straightforward still, 
 Down-trampling vulgar hindrance? — as the 
 reed 
 Is crushed beneath its tramp when that blind 
 wiU 
 Hatched in some old-world beast's brain bids 
 it speed 
 Where the sun wants brute-presence to fulfil 
 Life's purpose in a new far zone, ere ice 
 Enwomb the pasture-tract its fortalice. 
 
 I think no such direct plain truth consists 
 With actual sense and thought and what 
 they take 
 To be the solid walls of life : mere mists — 
 How such would, at that truth's first pier- 
 cing, break 
 Into the nullity they are ! — slight lists 
 Wherein the puppet-champions wage, for 
 sake 
 Of some mock-mistress, mimic war : laid low 
 At trumpet-blast, there 's shown the world, one 
 foe ! 
 
 LXIII 
 
 No^we must play the pageant out, observe 
 
 The tourney-regulations, and regard 
 Success — to meet the blunted spear nor 
 swerve, 
 Failure — to break no bones yet fall on 
 sward ; 
 Must prove we have — not courage ? well then 
 — nerve I 
 And, at the day's end, boast the crown's 
 award — 
 Be warranted as promising to wield 
 Weapons, no sham, in a true battlefield. 
 
 LXIV 
 
 Meantime, our simulated thunderclaps 
 Which tell us counterfeited trutlis — these 
 same 
 Are — sound, when music storms the soul, per- 
 haps ? 
 — Sight, beauty, every dart of every aim 
 
THE TWO POETS OF CROISIC 
 
 86s 
 
 That touches just, then seems, by strange re- 
 lapse. 
 To fall effectless from the soul it came 
 As if to fix its own, but simply smote 
 And startled to vague beauty more remote ? 
 
 So do we gain enough — yet not too much — 
 Acquaintance with that outer element 
 
 Wherein there 's operation (call it such !) 
 Quite of another kind than we the pent 
 
 On earth are proper to receive. Our hutch 
 Lights up at the least chink : let roof be 
 rent — 
 
 How inmates huddle, blinded at first spasm, 
 
 Cogni'imnt of the sun s self through the chasm ! 
 
 Therefore, who knows if this our Bend's quick 
 Subsidence from as sudden noise and glare 
 
 Into oblivion was impolitic ? 
 No doubt his soul became at once aware 
 
 That, after prophecy, the rhyming-trick 
 Is poor employment : human praises scare 
 
 Rather than soothe ears all a-tingle yet 
 
 With tones few hear and live, but none forget. 
 
 There 's our first famous poet ! Step thou 
 forth 
 
 Second consummate songster ! See, the tongue 
 Of fire that typifies thee, owns thy worth 
 
 In yellow, purple mixed its green among, 
 No pure and simple resin from the North, 
 
 But composite with virtues that belong 
 To Southern culture ! Love not more than 
 
 hate 
 Helped to a blaze . . . But I anticipate. 
 
 Prepare to witness a combustion rich 
 Ajid riotously splendid, far beyond 
 
 Poor Rent's lambent little streamer which 
 Only played candle to a Court grown fond 
 
 By baby-birth : this soared to such a pitch, 
 Alternately such colors doffed and donned. 
 
 That when Isay it dazzled Paris — please 
 
 Know that it brought Voltaire upon his knees I 
 
 Who did it, was a dapper gentleman, 
 Paul Desforges MaiUard, Croisickese by 
 birth. 
 
 Whose birth that century ended which began 
 By similar bestowment on our earth 
 
 Of the aforesaid Ren^. Cease to scan 
 The ways of Providence 1 See Croisic's 
 dearth — 
 
 Not Paris in its plenitude — suffice 
 
 To furnish France with her best poet twice 1 
 
 Till he was thirty years of age, the vein 
 Poetic yielded rhyme by drops and spirts : 
 
 Li verses of society had lain 
 His talent chiefly ; but the Muse asserts 
 
 Privilege most by treating with disdain 
 Epics the bard months out, or odes he blurts 
 
 Spasmodically forth. Have people time 
 
 And patience nowadays for thought in rhyme f 
 
 LXXI 
 
 So, his achievements were the quatrain's inch 
 Of homage, or at most the sonnet's ell 
 
 Of admiration : welded lines with clinch 
 Of ending word and word, to every belle 
 
 In Croisic's bounds ; these, brisk as any finch. 
 He twittered tUl his fame had reached as 
 well 
 
 Gu^rande as Batz ; but there fame stopped, f o» 
 — curse 
 
 On fortune — outside lay the universe ! 
 
 LXXII 
 
 That 's Paris. Well, — why not break bounds, 
 and send 
 
 Song onward till it echo at the gates 
 Of Paris whither all ambitions tend, 
 
 And end too, seeing that success there sates 
 The soul which hungers most for fame ? Why 
 spend 
 
 A minute in deciding, while, by Fate's 
 Decree, there happens to be just the prize 
 Proposed there, suiting souls that poetize ? 
 
 A prize indeed, the Academy's own self 
 Proposes to what bard shall best indite 
 
 A piece describing how, through shoal and shelf, 
 The Ajrt of Navigation, steered aright. 
 
 Has, in our last kill's reign, — the lucky elf, — 
 Beached, one may say. Perfection's haven 
 quite, 
 
 And there cast anchor. At a glance one sees 
 
 The subject's crowd of capabilities ! 
 
 LXXIV 
 
 Neptune and Amphitrit^ ! Thetis, who 
 Is either Tethys or as good — both tag 1 
 
 Triton can shove along a vessel too : 
 It 's Virgil 1 Then the winds that blow or 
 lag, — 
 
 De Maille, Vendfime, Vermandois! Toulouse 
 blew 
 Longest, we reckon : he must puff the flag 
 
 To fullest outflare ; while our lacking nymph 
 
 Be Anne of Austria, Regent o'er the lymph ! 
 
 LXXV 
 
 Promised, performed ! Since irritabilis gens 
 Holds of the feverish impotence that strives 
 
 To stay an itch by prompt resource to pen's 
 Scratching itself on paper ; placid lives, 
 
 Leisurely works mark the divinior mens: 
 Bees brood above the honey in their hives ; 
 
 Gnats are the busy bustlers. Splash and 
 scrawl, — T. 1 1 
 
 Completed lay thy piece, swift penman Paul ! 
 
 LXXVI 
 
 To Paris with the product ! This dispatched. 
 One had to wait the Forty's slow and sure 
 
 Verdict, as best one might. Our penman 
 scratched 
 Away perforce the itch that knows no cure 
 
 But daily papei>-friction : more than matched 
 
866 
 
 THE TWO POETS OF CROISIC 
 
 His first feat by a second — tribute pure 
 And beartf elt to the Forty when their voiois 
 IShould peal with one accord ^' Be Paul our 
 choice ! " 
 
 Scratch, scratoh went much laudation of that 
 sane 
 
 And sound Tribunal, delegates august 
 Of Phoebus and the Muses' sacred train — 
 
 Whom every poetaster tries to thrust 
 From where, high-throned, they dominate the 
 Seine : 
 
 Fruitless endeavor, — fail it shall and must ! 
 Whereof in witness have not one and all 
 The Forty voices pealed " Our choice be Paul ' ' ? 
 
 Thus Paul discounted his applause. Alack 
 For human expectation ! Scarcely ink 
 
 Was dry when, lo, the perfect piece came 
 back 
 Rejected, shamed ! Some other poet's clink 
 
 " Thetis and Tethys " had seduced the pack 
 Of pedants to declare perfection's pink 
 
 A singularly poor production. " Whew I 
 
 The Forty are stark fools, I always knew ! " 
 
 First fury over (for Paul's race — to wit, 
 Brain»vibrios — wriggle clear of protoplasm 
 
 Into minute life that 's one fury-fit), 
 
 ^' These fools shall find a bard's enthusiasm 
 
 Comports with what should counterbalance it — 
 Some knowledge of the world ! No doubt, 
 orgasm 
 
 Effects the birth of verse which, born, demands 
 
 Prosaic ministration, swaddling-bands ! 
 
 " Verse must be cared for at this early stage. 
 Handled, nay dandled even. I should play 
 
 Their game indeed if, till it grew of age, 
 I meekly let these dotards frown away 
 
 My bd.ntling from the rightful heritage 
 Of smiles and kisses ! Let the public say 
 
 If it be worthy praises or rebukes, 
 
 My poem, from these Forty old perukes ! " 
 
 So, by a friend, who boasts himself in graxie 
 With no less than the Chevalier La Roque, - 
 
 Eminent in those days for pride of place, 
 Seeing he had it in his power to block 
 
 The way or smooth the road to all the race 
 Of literators trudging up to knock 
 
 At Fame's exalted temple-door — for why ? 
 
 He edited the Paris " Mercury : " — 
 
 By this friend's help the Chevalier receives 
 Paul's poem, prefaced by the due appeal 
 
 To OsBsar from the Jews. As duly heaves 
 A sigh the Chevalier, about to deal 
 
 With case so customary — turns the leaves. 
 Finds nothing there to borrow, beg, or steal — 
 
 Then brightens up the critic's brow deep-lined. 
 
 " The thing may be so cleverly declined I '' 
 
 Down to desk, out with paper, up with quill, 
 Dip and indite ! *^ Sir, gratitude immense 
 
 For this true draught from the Pierian rill I 
 Our Academic clodpoles must be dense 
 
 Indeed to stand unirrigated still. 
 No less, we critics dare not give offence 
 
 To grandees like the Forty : while we mocli. 
 
 We grin and bear. So, here 's your piece I La 
 Roque." 
 
 LXXXIV 
 
 " There now ! " cries Paul : " the fellow can't 
 avoid 
 
 Confessing that my piece deserves the palm ; 
 And yet he dares not grant me space enjoyed 
 
 By every scribbler he permits embalm 
 His crambo in the Journal's corner ! Cloyed 
 
 With stuff like theirs, no wonder if a qualm' 
 Be caused by verse like mine : though that 's 
 
 no cause 
 For his defrauding me of just applause. 
 
 " Aha, he fears the Forty, this poltroon ? 
 First let him fear me I Change smooth speech 
 to rough ! 
 I '11 speak my mind out, show the fellow soon 
 
 Who is the foe to dread : insist enough 
 On my own merits tiB, as clear as noon, 
 
 ■ He sees I am no man to take rebuff 
 As patiently as scribblers may and must I 
 Quick to the onslaught, out sword, cut and 
 thrust!" 
 
 And thereupon a fierce epistle flings 
 Its challenge in the critic's face. Alack] 
 
 Our bard mistakes his man ! The gauntlet rings 
 On brazen visor proof against attack. 
 
 Prompt from his editorial throne up springs 
 The insulted magnate, and his mace falls, 
 thwack. 
 
 On Paul's devoted brainpan, — quite away 
 
 From common courtesies of f encing^play I 
 
 LXXXVII 
 
 "Sir, will you have the truth ? This piece of 
 yours 
 Is simply execrable past belief. 
 I shrank from saying so ; but, since naught 
 cures - 
 Conceit but truth, truth 's at your service 1 
 Brief, 
 Just so long as ' The Mercury ' endures. 
 So long are you excluded by its Chief 
 From corner, nay, from cranny ! Play the cock 
 0' the roost, henceforth, at Croisic ! " wrote 
 La Roque. 
 
 Lxxxvm 
 Paul yellowed, whitened, as his wrath from red 
 Waxed incandescent. Now, this man of 
 rhyme 
 Was merely foolish, faulty in the head 
 
 Not heart of him : conceit 's a venial crime. 
 " Oh by no means malicious ! " cousins said ; 
 Fussily feeble, — harmless all the time. 
 
THE TWO POETS OF CROISIC 
 
 867 
 
 PiddliiK at so-called satire — well-advised, 
 He held in most awe whom he satirized. 
 
 Accordingly his kith and kin — removed 
 
 Froin emulation of the poet's gift 
 By povver and will — these rather liked, nay, 
 loved 
 
 The man who gave his family a lift 
 Out of the Croisic level ; disapproved 
 
 Satire so trenchant." Thus our poet snifEed 
 Home-incense, though too churlish to unlock 
 "The Mercury's" box of ointment was La 
 Roque. 
 
 xc 
 But when Paul's visage grew from red to 
 white, 
 And from his lips a sort of mumbling fell 
 Of who was to be kicked, — " And serve him 
 i-ightl" 
 A gay voice interposed, " Did kicking well 
 Answer the purpose ! Only — if I might 
 
 Suggest as much — a far more potent spell 
 Lies in another kind of treatment. Oh, 
 Women are ready at resource, you know I 
 
 xci 
 " Talent should minister to genius ! good. : 
 
 The proper and superior smile returns. 
 Hear me with patience ! Have you understood 
 
 The only method whereby genius earns 
 Fit guerdon nowadays ? In knightly mood 
 
 You entered lists with visor up; one learns 
 Too late that, had you mounted Koland's crest, 
 ' Room ! ' they had roared — La Roque with all 
 the rest 1 
 
 " Why did yon first of aM transmit your piece 
 To those same priggish Forty imprepared 
 
 Whether to rank you with the swans or geese 
 By friendly intervention ? If they dared 
 
 Count you a cackler, — wonders never cease ! 
 I think it stiU more wondrous that you bared 
 
 Your brow (my earlier image) as if praise 
 
 Were gained by simple fighting nowadays ! 
 
 XCIII 
 
 " Your next step showed a touch of the true 
 means 
 Whereby desert is crowned : not force but 
 
 Came to the rescue. ' Get behind the scenes ! ' 
 Your friend i^dvised : he writes, sets forth 
 your style 
 And title, to such purpose intervenes 
 
 That you get velvet-compliment three-pile ; 
 And, though ' The Mercury ' said ' nay,' nor 
 
 stock 
 Nor stone did his refusal prove La Koque. 
 
 xciv 
 " Why must yon needs revert to the high hand, 
 
 Imperative procedure — what you call 
 'Taking on merit your exclusive stand ? 
 Stand, with a vengeance 1 Soon you went to 
 wall. 
 
 Yon and your merit ! Only fools command 
 
 When folks are free to disobey them, Paul I 
 Yon 've learnt your lesson, found out what 's 
 
 o'clock. 
 By this uncivil answer of La Boque. 
 
 " Now let me counsel ! Lay this piece on shelf 
 — Masterpiece though it be ! From out your 
 desk 
 
 Hand me some lighter sample, verse the elf 
 Cupid inspired you with, no god grotesque 
 
 Presiding o er the Navy ! I myself 
 Hand-write what 's legible yet picturesque ; 
 
 I '11 copy fair and femininely frock 
 
 Your poem masculine that courts La Boque ! 
 
 xcvi 
 " Deidamia he — Achilles thou 1 
 
 Ha, ha, these ancient stories come so apt I 
 My sex, my youth, my rank I next avow 
 
 In a neat prayer for kind perusal. Sapped 
 1 see the walls which stand so stoutly now ! 
 
 I see the toils about the game entrapped 
 By honest cunning ! Chains of lady's-smock. 
 Not thorn and th^tle, tether fast La Roque ! " 
 
 xcvii 
 Now, who might be the speaker sweet and arch 
 That laughed above Paul's shoulder as it 
 heaved ~ 
 With the indignant heart ? — bade steal n, 
 march 
 And not continue charging ? Who conceived 
 This plan which set our Paul, like pea you 
 parch 
 On fire-shovel, skipping, of a load relieved, 
 From arm-chair moodiness to escritoire 
 Sacred to Phoebus and the tuneful choir ? 
 
 XCVIII 
 
 Who but Paul's sister 1 named of course like 
 him 
 " Desforges ;" but, mark you, in those days 
 a queer 
 Custom obtained, — who knows whence grew 
 the whim? — 
 That people could not read their title clear 
 To reverence till their own true names, made 
 dim 
 By daily mouthing, pleased to disappear. 
 Replaced by brand-new bright ones : Arouet, 
 For instance, grew Voltaire ; Desforges— Mal- 
 
 XCIX 
 
 " Demoiselle Malcrais de la Vigne " — because 
 
 The family possessed at Brederac 
 A vineyard, — few grapes, many hips-and- 
 
 Still a nice Breton name. As breast and 
 
 Of this vivacious beauty gleamed through 
 
 gauze. 
 So did her sprightly nature nowise lack 
 Lustre when draped, the fashionable way. 
 In "Malcrais de la Vigne," — more short, 
 
 "Malcrais," 
 
868 
 
 THE TWO POETS OF CROISIC 
 
 Out from Paul's escritoire behold escape 
 The hoarded treasure ! verse falls thick and 
 fast, 
 
 Sonnets and songs of every size and shape. 
 The lady ponders on her prize ; at last 
 
 Selects one which — angel and yet ape ! — 
 Her malice thinks is probably surpassed 
 
 In badness by no fellow of the flock, 
 
 Copies it fair, and " Now for my La Eoque ! " 
 
 So, to him goes, with the neat manuscript, 
 The soft petitionary letter. " Grant 
 
 A fledgeling novice that with wing unclipt 
 She soar her little circuit, habitant 
 
 Of an old manor ; buried in which crypt. 
 How can the youthful chatelaine but pant 
 
 For disemprisonment by one ad hoc 
 
 Appointed ' Mercury's ' Editor, La Eoque ? " 
 
 'T was an epistle that might move the Turk 1 
 More certainly it moved our middle-aged 
 
 Pen-driver drudging at his weary work. 
 Baked the old ashes up and d^engaged 
 
 The sparks of gallantry which always lurk 
 Somehow in literary breasts, assuaged 
 
 In no degree by compliments on style ; 
 
 Are Forty wagging beards worth one girl's 
 smile ? 
 
 In trips the lady's poem, takes its place 
 
 Of honor in the gratified Gazette, 
 With due acknowledgment of power and 
 grace ; 
 
 Prognostication, too, that higher yet 
 The Breton Muse will soar : fresh youth, high 
 race. 
 
 Beauty and wealth have amicably met 
 That Demoiselle Malcrais may fill the chair 
 Left vacant by the loss of Deshouliferes. 
 
 " There I " cried the lively lady. " Who was 
 right — 
 
 You in the dumps, or I the merry maid 
 Who know a trick or two can bafile spite 
 
 Tenfold the force of this old fool's ? Afraid 
 Of Editor La Roque ? But come ! next flight 
 
 Shall outsoar — Deshouliftres alone ? My 
 blade, 
 Sappho herself shall you confess outstript ! 
 Quick, Paul, another dose of manuscript ! " 
 
 And so, once well a-f oot, advanced the game : 
 More and more verses, corresponding gush 
 
 On gush of praise, till everywhere acclaim 
 Rose to the pitch of uproar. "Sappho? 
 Tush! 
 
 Sure ' Malcrais on her Parrot' puts to shame 
 Deshouliftres' pastorals, clay not worth a rush 
 
 Beside this find of treasure, gold in crook. 
 
 Unearthed in Brittany, — nay, ask La Roque ! " 
 
 Such was the Paris tribute. "Yes," you sneer, 
 "Ninnies stock Noodledom, but folk more 
 sage 
 Resist contagious folly, never fear I " 
 
 Do they ? Permit me to detach one page 
 From the huge Album which from far and 
 near 
 Poetic praises blackened in a rage 
 Of rapture I and that page shall be — who 
 
 stares 
 Confounded now, I ask you ? — just Voltaire's ! 
 
 Ay, sharpest shrewdest steel that ever stabbed 
 To death Imposture through the armor- 
 joints ! 
 
 How. did it happen that gross Humbug grabbed 
 TKy weapons, gouged thine eyes out ? Fate 
 appoints 
 
 That pride shall have a fall, or I had blabbed 
 Hardly that Humbug, whom thy soul aroints, 
 
 Could thus cross-buttock thee caught unawares, 
 
 And dismalest of tumbles proved — Voltaire's I 
 
 See his epistle extant yet, wherewith 
 
 " Henri " inverse and " Charles " in prose he 
 sent 
 To do her suit and service ! Here 's the pith 
 Of half a dozen stanzas — stones which went 
 
 To build that simulated monolith — 
 Sham love in due degree with homage blent 
 As sham — which in the vast of volumes scares 
 The traveller still: "That stucco-heap — Vol- 
 taire's?" 
 
 " thou, whose clarion-voice has overflown 
 The wilds to startle Paris that 's one ear ! 
 
 Thou who such strange capacity hast shown 
 For joining all that 's grand with all that'a 
 dear, 
 
 Knowledge with power to please — Deshou< 
 litres grown 
 Learned as Daeier in thy person ! mere 
 
 Weak fruit of idle hours, these crabs of mine 
 
 I dare lay at thy feet, Muse divine 1 
 
 " Charles was my task-work only j Henri trod 
 My hero erst, and now, my heroine — she 
 
 Shall be thyself ! Tme — is it true, great God 1 
 Certainly love henceforward must not be ! 
 
 Yet all the crowd of Fine Arts fail — how 
 odd!- 
 Tried turn by turn, to fill a void in me ! 
 
 There 's no replacing love with these, alas ! 
 
 Yet all I can I do to prove no ass. 
 
 " I labor to amuse my freedom ; but 
 Should any sweet young creature slavery 
 preach. 
 And- — borrowing thy vivacious charm, the 
 slut ! — 
 Make me, in thy engaging \rords, a speech. 
 Soon should I see myself in prison shut 
 
THE TWO POETS OF CROISIC 
 
 869 
 
 With all imaginable pleasure." Reach 
 The washhand-basin for admirers ! There 's 
 A atomaoh-moving tribute — and Voltaire's I 
 
 Suppose it a fantastic billet-doux, 
 
 Adulatory flourish, not worth frown ! 
 
 What say you to the Fathers of Tr^voux ? 
 These in their Dictionary have her down 
 
 Under the heading " Author ; " " Malorais, too. 
 Is ' Author ' of much verse that claims re- 
 nown." 
 
 While Jean-Baptiste Rousseau . , . but why 
 
 Sroceed ? 
 „ of this — something too much, indeed ! 
 
 At last La Roque, unwilling to be left 
 Behindhand in the rivalry, broke bounds 
 
 Of figurative passion hilt and heft. 
 Plunged his huge downright love through 
 what surrounds 
 
 The literary female bosom ; reft 
 Away its veil of coy reserve with " Zounds 1 
 
 I love thee, Breton Beauty 1 All 's no use ! 
 
 Body and soul I love, — the big word 's loose I " 
 
 He 's greatest now and to de-struc-ti-on 
 Nearest, Attend the solemn word I quote, 
 
 Paul ! There 's no pause at per-fec-ti-on. 
 Thus knolls thy knell the Doctor's bronz&d 
 throat ! 
 
 Greatness a period hath^ no sta~ti-on ! 
 Better and truer verse none ever wrote 
 
 (Despite the antique outstretched a-i-on) 
 
 Than thou, revered and magisterial Donne I 
 
 Flat on his face. La Roque, and — pressed to 
 heart 
 His dexter hand — Voltaire with bended 
 knee ! 
 Paul sat and sucked-in triumph ; Just apart 
 Leaned over him his sister. "Well?" 
 smirks he. 
 And "Well? "she answers, smiling — ^ woman's 
 art 
 To let a man's own mouth, not hers, decree 
 What shall be next move which decides the 
 
 game : 
 Success? She said so. Failure? His the 
 blame. 
 
 " Well ! " this time forth affirmatively comes 
 With smack of lip, arid long-drawn sigh 
 through teeth 
 
 Close clenched o'er satisfaction, as the gums 
 Were tickled by a sweetmeat teased beneath 
 
 Palate by lubricating tongue : " Well ! crumbs 
 Of comfort these, undoubtedly ! no death 
 
 Likely from famine at Fame's feast ! 'tis clear 
 
 I ihay put Claim in for my pittance. Dear ! 
 
 cxvii 
 " La Rpque, Voltaire, my lovers ? Then dis- 
 guise 
 
 Has served its turn, grows idle ; let it drop I 
 I shall to Paris, flaunt there in men's eyes 
 
 My proper manly garb and mount a-top 
 The pedestal that waits me, take the prize 
 
 Awarded Hprcules. He threw a sop 
 To Cerberus who let him pass, you know, 
 Then, following, licked his heels : exactly so I 
 
 CXVIII 
 
 " I like the prospect — their astonishment, 
 
 Confusion : wounded vanity, no doubt. 
 
 Mixed motives ; how I see the brows quick 
 
 bent ! 
 'What, sir, yourself, none other, brought 
 
 about 
 This change of estimation ? Phcebus sent 
 His shafts as from Diana ? ' Critic pout 
 Turns courtier smile : ' Lo, him we took for 
 
 her 1 
 Pleasant mistake 1 You bear no malice, sir ? ' 
 
 " Eh, my Diana? " But Diana kept 
 Smilingly .silent with fixed needle-sharp 
 
 Much-meaning eyes that seemed to intercept 
 Paul's very thoughts ere they had time to 
 warp 
 
 From earnest into sport the words they leapt 
 To life with — changed as when maltreated 
 harp 
 
 Renders in tinkle what some player-prig 
 
 Means for a grave tune though it proves a jig. 
 
 "What, Paul, and are my pains thus thrown 
 away. 
 
 My lessons end in loss ? " at length fall slow 
 The pitying syllables, her lips allay 
 
 The satire of by keeping in full flow. 
 Above their coral reef, bright smiles at play : 
 
 " Can it be, Paul thus fails to rightly know 
 And altogether estimate applause 
 As just so many asinine hee-haws ? 
 
 "I thought to show you" . . . "Show me," 
 Paul inbroke, 
 " My poetry is rubbish, and the world 
 That rings with my renown a sorry joke I 
 What fairer test of worth than that, form 
 furled, 
 I entered the arena ? Yet you croak 
 
 Just as if Phceb^ and not Phoebus hurled 
 The dart and struck the Python 1 What, he 
 
 crawls 
 Humbly in dust before your feet, not Paul's ? 
 
 *' Nay, 't is no laughing matter though absurd 
 If there 's an end of honesty on earth ! 
 
 La Roque sends letters, lying every word ! 
 Voltaire makes verse, and of himself makes 
 mirth 
 
 To the remotest age ! Rousseau 's the third 
 Who, driven to despair amid such dearth 
 
 Of people that want praising, finds no one 
 
 More fit to praise than Paul the simpleton I 
 
870 
 
 THE TWO POETS OF CROISIC 
 
 " Somebody says — if a man writes at all 
 It is to show the writer's kith ;and kin 
 
 He was unjustly thought a natural ; 
 And truly, sistfer, I have yet to win 
 
 Your favorable word, it seems, for Paul 
 Whose poetry you count not worth a pin 
 
 Though well enough esteemed by these Vol- 
 taires, 
 
 Kousseaus and such-like : let them quack^ who 
 cares?" 
 
 " — To Paris with you, Paul 1 Not one word's 
 waste 
 
 Further : my scrupulosity was vain ! 
 Go triumph ! Be my foolish fears effaced 
 
 From memory's record ! Go, to come again 
 With glory crowned, — by sister re-embraced, 
 
 Cured of that strange delusion of her brain 
 Which led her to suspect that Paris gloats 
 On male limbs mostly when in petticoats ! " 
 
 So laughed her last word, with the little touch 
 Of malice proper to the outraged pride 
 
 Of any artist in a work too much 
 Shorn of its merits. " By all means, be tried 
 
 The opposite procedure ! Cast your crutch 
 Away, no longer crippled, nor divide 
 
 The credit of your march to the World's Fair 
 
 With sister Cherry-cheeks who helped you 
 there ! " 
 
 CXXVI 
 
 Crippled, forsooth ! What courser sprightlier 
 pranced 
 Paris-ward than did Paul? Nay, dreams 
 lent wings : 
 He flew, or seemed to fly, by dreams en- 
 tranced. 
 Dreams ? wide-awake realities : no things 
 Dreamed merely were the missives that ad- 
 vanced 
 The claim of Malcrais to consort with kings 
 Crowned by Apollo — not to say with queens 
 Cinctured by Venus for Idalian scenes. 
 
 cxxvii 
 Soon he arrives, forthwith is found before 
 
 The outer gate of glory. Bold tic-toe 
 Announces there 's a giant at the door. 
 
 "Ay, sir, here dwells the Chevalier La 
 Koque." 
 " Lackey ! Malcrais — mind, no word less nor 
 more ! — 
 Desires his presence. I 've unearthed the 
 brock : 
 Now, to transfix him 1 " There stands Paul 
 
 erect. 
 Inched out his uttermost, for more effect. 
 
 cxxviii 
 A bustling entrance : " Idol of my flame 1 
 
 Can it be that my heart attains at last 
 Its longing ? that you stand, the very same 
 As in my visions ? . . . Ha 1 hey, how ? " 
 aghast 
 
 Stops short the rapture. " Oh, my boy 's to 
 blame ! 
 You merely are the messenger ! Too fast 
 My fancy rushed to a conclusion. Pooh ! 
 Well, sir, the lady's substitute is — who ? " 
 
 Then Paul's smirK grows inordinate. " Shake 
 hands ! 
 Friendship not love awaits you, master mine, 
 Though nor Malcrais nor any mistress stands 
 To meet your ardor ! So, you don't divine 
 Who wrote the verses wherewith ring the 
 land's 
 Whole length and breadth ? Just he where- 
 of no line 
 Had ever leave to blot your Journal — eh ? 
 Paul DesforgesMaiUard — otherwise Malcrmsl " 
 
 cxxx 
 And there the two stood, stare confronting 
 smirk, 
 A while uncertain which should yield the 
 pas. 
 In vain the Chevalier beat brain for quirk 
 To help in this conjuncture ; at length, 
 "Bah! 
 Boh ! Since I 've made myself a fool, why 
 shirk 
 The punishment of folly ? Ha, hn, ha. 
 Let me return your handshake ! " Comic sock 
 For tragic buskin prompt thus changed La 
 Boque. 
 
 " I 'm nobody — a wren-like joumaJist; 
 
 You 've flown at higher game and winged 
 your bird. 
 The golden eagle ! That 's the grand acquist I 
 
 Voltaire's sly Muse, the tiger-cat, has purred 
 Prettily round your feet ; but if she missed 
 
 Priority of stroking, soon were stirred 
 The dormant spitfire. To Voltaire ! away, 
 Paul Desforges Maillard, otherwise Malcrais I " 
 
 Whereupon, arm in arm, and head in air. 
 The two begin their journey. Need I say, 
 
 La Roque had felt the talon of Voltaire, 
 Had a long-standing little debt to pay. 
 
 And pounced, you may depend, on such a rare 
 Occasion for its due discharge ? So, gay 
 
 And grenadieivlike, marching to assault. 
 
 They reach the enemy's abode, there halt. 
 
 CXXXIII 
 
 " I '11 be announcer I " quoth La Hoque : " I 
 know. 
 Better than you, perhaps, my Breton bard. 
 How to procure an audience ! He 's not slow 
 To smell a rat, this scamp Voltairei I Dis- 
 card 
 The petticoats too soon, — you '11 never show 
 Your haut-de-chausses and all they 've made 
 or marred 
 In your true person. Here 's his servant. 
 
 Pray, 
 WiU the great man see Demoiselle Malcrais ? " 
 
THE TWO POETS OF CROISIC 
 
 871 
 
 Now, the great man was also, no whit less. 
 The man of self-respect, — more great man 
 he ! 
 
 And bowed to social usage, dressed the dress, 
 And decorated to the lit degree 
 
 His person ; 't was enough to bear the stress 
 Or battle in the field, without, when free 
 
 From outside foes, invitii^ friends' attack 
 
 By — sword in hand? No, —ill-made coat on 
 back. 
 
 cxxxv 
 
 And, since the announcement of his visitor 
 
 Surprised him at his toilet, — never glass 
 Had such solicitation ! " Black, now — or 
 
 Brown be the killing wig to wear ? Alas, 
 Where 's the rouge gone, this cheek were better 
 ior 
 
 A tender touch of ? Melted to a mass. 
 All my pomatum ! There 's at all events 
 A devil — for he 's got among my scents ! " 
 
 cxxxvi 
 So, " barbered ten times o'er," as Antony 
 
 Paced to his Cleopatra, did at last 
 Voltaire proceed to the fair presence : high 
 
 In color, proud in port, as if a blast 
 Of trumpet bade the world " Take note 1 draws 
 nigh 
 
 To Beauty, Power ! Behold the Iconoclast, 
 The Poet, the Philosopher, the Rod 
 Of iron for imposture ! Ah my God I " 
 
 cxxxvii 
 For there stands smirking Paul, and — what 
 lisfhts fierce 
 The situation as with sulphur flash — 
 There grinning stands La Boque '! No carte- 
 and-tierce 
 Observes the grinning fencer, but, full dash 
 From breast to shoulder-blade, the thrusts 
 transpierce 
 That armor against which so idly clash 
 The swords of priests and pedants ! Victors 
 
 there. 
 Two smirk and grin who have befooled — Vol- 
 taire ! 
 
 CXX XVIII 
 
 A moment's horror ; then quick turn-about 
 On high-heeled shoe, — flurry of ruffles, 
 flounce 
 
 Of wig-ties and of coat-tails, — and so out 
 Of door banged wrathfully behind, goes — 
 
 ■ ■ bounce — 
 
 Voltaire in tragic exit ! vows, no doubt. 
 Vengeance upon the couple. Did he trounce 
 
 Either, in point of fsict ? His anger's flash 
 
 Subsided if a culprit craved his cash. 
 
 CXXXIX 
 
 As for La Roque, he having laughed his laugh 
 To heart's content, — the joke defunct at 
 once, 
 Dead in the birth, you see, : — its epitaph 
 Was sober earnest. " Well, sir, for the 
 nonce. 
 
 You 've gained the laurel ; never hope to graffi 
 A second sprig of triumph there ! Ensconce 
 Yourself again at Croisio : let it be 
 Enough you mastered both Voltaire and — me I 
 
 CXL 
 
 " Don't linger here in Paris to parade 
 Your victory, and have the very boys 
 
 Point at you ! ' There 's the little mouse 
 which made 
 Believe those two big lions that its noise. 
 
 Nibbling away behind the hedge, conveyed 
 Intelligence that — portent which destroys 
 
 All courage in the lion's heart, with horn 
 
 That 's fable r— there lay couched the unicorn ! ' 
 
 CXLI 
 
 " Beware us, now we 've found who fooled us ! 
 Quick 
 To cover ! ' In proportion to men's frightj 
 Expect their fright's revenge I ' quoth politic 
 
 Old MacchiaveUi. As for me, — all 's right : 
 I 'm but a journalist. But no pin's prick 
 The tooth leaves when Voltaire is roused to 
 bite ! 
 So, keep your counsel, I advise ! Adieu ! 
 Good journey 1 Ha, ha, ha, Malorais was — 
 you!'' 
 
 CXLII 
 
 " — Yes, I 'm Malcrais, and somebody beside, 
 You snickering inonkey ! '' thus winds up 
 the tale 
 Our hero, safe at home, to that black-eyed 
 Cherry-cheeked sister, as she soothes the 
 pale 
 Mortihed poet. " Let their worst be tried, 
 I'm their match henceforth — very man and 
 male! 
 Don't talk to me of knocking-under ! man 
 And male must end what petticoats began I 
 
 CXLIII 
 
 " How woman-like it is to apprehend 
 The world will eat its words ! why, words 
 ^ transfixed 
 To stone, they stare at you in print, — at end, 
 Each writer's style and title ! Choose be- 
 twixt 
 Fool and knave for his name, who should intend 
 
 To perpetrate a baseness so unmixed 
 With prospect of advantage ! What is writ 
 Is writ : they 've praised me, there 's an end of 
 it! 
 
 CXLIV 
 
 " No, Dear, allow me ! I shall print these 
 same 
 
 Pieces, with no omitted line, as Paul's. 
 Malcrais no longer, let me see folk blame 
 
 WTiat they — praised simply ? — placed on 
 
 Ea«h piece a statue in the House of Fame ! 
 Fast will they stand there, though their 
 
 presence galls 
 The envious crew : such show their teeth, 
 
 perhaps, . 
 And snarl, but never bite ! I know the chaps ! " 
 
872 
 
 THE TWO POETS OF CROISIC 
 
 O PanI, oh, piteously deluded ! Pace 
 
 Thy sad sterility of Croisic flats, 
 Waton, from their southern edge, the foamy 
 race 
 
 Of high-tide as it heaves the drownin|: mats 
 Of yellow-berried web-growth from their place, 
 
 The rock-ridge, when, rolling as far as Eatz, 
 One broadside crashes on it, and the crags, 
 That needle under, stream with weedy rags ! 
 
 Or, if thou wilt, at inland Bergerac, 
 Rude heritage but recognized domain, 
 
 Do as two here are doing : make hearth crack 
 With logs until thy chimney roar again 
 
 Jolly with fire-glow ! Let its angle l^k 
 No grace of Cheny-cheeks thy sister, fain 
 
 To do a sister^s oiEce and laugh smooth 
 
 Thy corrugated brow — that scowls forsooth I 
 
 CXLVII 
 
 Wherefore? Who does not know how these 
 La Roques, 
 Voltaires, can say and unsay, praise and 
 blame. 
 Prove bla.ck white, white black, play at para^ 
 dox 
 And, when they seem to lose it, win the 
 game ? 
 Care not thou what this badger, and that fox, 
 
 His fellow in rascality, call " fame ! *' 
 Fiddlepin's end ! Thou hadst it, — quack, 
 
 quack, quack I 
 Have quietude from geese at Bergerac ! 
 
 Quietude I For, be very sure of this ! 
 
 A twelvemonth hence, and men shall know 
 or care 
 As much for what to-day tbey clap or hiss 
 
 As for the fashion of the wigs they wear. 
 Then wonder at. There 's fame which, bale or 
 bliss, — 
 
 Got by no gracious word of great Voltaire 
 Or not-so-great La Roque, — is taken back 
 By neither, any more than Bergerac ! 
 
 Too true I or rather, true as ought to be ! 
 
 No more of Paul the man, Malcrais the maid, 
 Thenceforth forever ! One or two, I see, 
 
 Stuck by their poet : who the longest stayed 
 Was Jean-Baptiste Rousseau, and even he 
 
 Seemingly saddened as perforce he paid 
 A rhyming tribute : *' After death, survive — 
 He hoped he should : and died while yet 
 alive ! " 
 
 No, he hoped nothing of the kind, or held 
 His peace and died in silent good old age. 
 
 Him it was, curiosity impelled 
 To seek if there were extant still some page 
 
 Of his great predecessor, rat who belled 
 The cat once, and would never deign engage 
 
 In after-combat with mere mice, — saved from 
 
 More sonneteering, — Ren^ Gentilhomme. 
 
 Paul's story furnished forth that famous play 
 Of Piron's " M^tromanie : " there you 'U 
 find 
 
 He 's Franoaleu, while Demoiselle Malcrais 
 Is Demoiselle No-end-of-names-behind 1 
 
 As for Voltaire, he 's Damis. Good and gay 
 The plot and dialogue, and all 's designed 
 
 To spite Voltaire: at "Something" such the 
 
 Of simply " Nothing ! " (see his epitaph). 
 
 CLII 
 
 But truth, truth, that 's the gold ! and all the 
 good 
 I find in fancy is, it serves to set 
 Gold's inmost glint free, gold which comes up 
 ' rude 
 And rayless from the mine. All fume and 
 fret' 
 Of artistry beyond this point pursued 
 
 Brings out another sort of burnish : yet 
 Always the ingot has its very own 
 Value, a sparkle struck from truth alone. 
 
 Now, take this sparkle and the other spirt 
 Of fitful flame, — twin births of our gray 
 brand 
 
 That 's sinking fast to ashes ! I assert, 
 As sparkles want but fuel to expand 
 
 Into a conflagration no mere squirt 
 Will quench too quickly, so might Croisio 
 strand. 
 
 Had Fortune pleased posterity to chowse, 
 
 Boast of her brace or beacons luminous. 
 
 Did earlier Agamemnons lack their bard ? 
 But later bards lacked Agamemnon too 1 
 How often frustrate they of fame's award 
 Just because Fortune, as she listed, blew 
 Some slight bark's sails to bellying, mauled 
 and marred 
 And forced to put about the First-rate! 
 True, 
 Such tacks but for a time : still — small-craft 
 
 ride 
 At anchor, rot while Beddoes breasts the tide I 
 
 Dear, shall I tell you ? There 's a simple test 
 Would serve, when people take on them to 
 weigh 
 The worth of poets. " Who was better, best, 
 This, that, the other bard?" (Bards none 
 gainsay 
 As good, observe ! no matter for the rest.) 
 
 *' What quality preponderating may 
 Turn the scale as it trembles ? " End the 
 
 strife 
 By asking " Which one led a happy life ? " 
 
 If one did, over his antagonist 
 That yelled or shrieked or sobbed or wept or 
 wailed 
 Or simply had the dumps, — dispute who list, -• 
 
THE TWO POETS OF CROISIC 
 
 873 
 
 I count him victor. Where his fellow failed, 
 Mastered by his own means of might, — acquist 
 
 Of necessary sorrows, — he prevailed, 
 A strong since joyful man who stood distinct 
 Above slave-sorrows to his chariot linked. 
 
 Was not his lot to feel more? What meant 
 "feel" 
 Unless to suffer ! Not, to see more ? 
 Sight — 
 What helped it bnt to watch the drunken reel 
 Of vice and folly round him, left and right. 
 One dance of rogues and idiots ! Not, to deal 
 More with things lovely ? What provoked 
 the spite 
 Of filth incarnate, like the poet's need 
 Of other nutriment than strife and greed 1 
 
 Who knows most, doubts most ; entertaining 
 hope. 
 Means recognizing fear ; the keener sense 
 Of all comprised within our actual scope 
 Kecoils from aught beyond earth's dim and 
 dense. 
 Who, grown familiar with the sky, will grope 
 Henceforward among groundlings ? That 's 
 offence 
 Just as indubitably : stars abound 
 O'erhead, but then — what flowers make glad 
 the ground ! 
 
 So, force is sorrow, and each sorrow, force ; 
 What then ? since Swiftness gives the char- 
 ioteer 
 The palm, his hope be in the vivid horse 
 Whose neck God clothed with thunder, not 
 the steer 
 Sluggish and safe ! Yoke Hatred, Crime, Ke- 
 morse. 
 Despair : but ever 'mid the whirling fear. 
 Let, through the tumult, break the poet's face 
 Radiant, assured his wild slaves win the race ! 
 
 Therefore I say ... no, shall not say, but 
 think. 
 And save my breath for better purpose. 
 White 
 From gray our log has burned to : just one 
 blink 
 That quivers, loth to leave it, as a sprite 
 The outworn body. Ere your eyelids' wink 
 Punish who sealed so deep into the night 
 Your mouth up, for two poets dead so long, — 
 Here pleads a live pretender: right your 
 wrong ! 
 
 What a pretty tale you told me 
 
 Once upon a time 
 — Said you found it somewhere (scold me I) 
 
 Was it prose or was it rhyme, 
 Greek or Latin ? Greek, you said. 
 While your shoulder propped my head. 
 
 Anyhow there 's no forgetting 
 
 This much if uo more. 
 That a poet (pray, no petting !) 
 
 Yes, a bard, sir, famed of yore. 
 Went where suchlike used to go, 
 Singing for a prize, you know. 
 
 Well, he had to sing, nor merely 
 
 Sing but play the lyre ; 
 Playing was important clearly 
 
 Quite as singing ; I desire. 
 Sir, you keep the fact in mind 
 For a purpose that 's behind. 
 
 There stood he, while deep attention 
 Held the judges round, 
 
 — Judges able, I should mention. 
 To detect the slightest sound 
 
 Sung or played amiss : such ears 
 Had old judges, it appears ! 
 
 None the less he sang out boldly, 
 
 Played in time and tune, 
 Till the judges, weighing coldly 
 
 £a£h note's worth, seemed, late or soon, 
 Sure to smile " In vain one tries 
 Picking faults out : take the prize ! " 
 
 When, a mischief ! Were they seven 
 
 Strings the lyre possessed ? 
 Oh, and afterwards eleven, 
 
 Thank you ! Well, sir, — who had guessed 
 Such ill luck in store ? — it happed 
 One of those same seven strings snapped. 
 
 All was lost, then ! No ! a cricket 
 (What " cicada " ? Pooh ! ) 
 
 — Some mad thing that left its thicket 
 For mere love of music — flew 
 
 With its little heart on fire, 
 Lighted on the crippled lyre. 
 
 So that when (Ah, joy !) our singer 
 
 For his truant string 
 Feels with disconcerted finger. 
 
 What does cricket else but fling 
 Fiery heart forth, sound the note 
 Wanted by the throbbing throat ? 
 
 Ay and, ever to the ending. 
 
 Cricket chirps at need. 
 Executes the hand's intending. 
 
 Promptly, perfectly, — indeed 
 Saves the singer from defeat 
 With her chirrup low and sweet. 
 
 Till, at ending, all the judges 
 
 Cry with one assent 
 " Take the prize — a prize who grudges 
 
 Such a voice and instrument ? 
 Why, we took your lyre for harp. 
 So it thrilled us forth F sharp ! 
 
 Did the conqueror spurn the creature. 
 
 Once its service done ? 
 That 's no such uncommon feature 
 
 In the case when Music's son 
 
874 
 
 OH LOVE! LOVE 
 
 Finds his Lotte's power too spent 
 For aiding sonl-deTelopment. 
 
 No ! This other, on returning 
 
 Homeward, prize in hand, 
 Satisfied his bosom's yearning : ■ 
 
 (Sir, I hope you understand !) 
 — Said '' Some record there must be 
 Of this cricket's help to me ! " 
 
 So, he made himself a statue : 
 
 Marble stood, life-size ; 
 On the lyre, he pointed at you. 
 
 Perched his partner in the prize ; 
 Never more apart you found 
 Her, he throned, from him, she crowned. 
 
 That 's the tale : its application ? 
 
 Somebody I know 
 Hopes one day for reputation 
 
 Through his poetry that 's — Oh, 
 All so learned and so wise 
 And deserving of a prize ! 
 
 If he gains one, will some ticket, 
 
 When his statue 's built. 
 Tell the gazer " 'T was a cricket 
 
 Helped my crippled lyre, whose lilt 
 Sweet and low, when strength usurped 
 Softness' place i' the scale, she chirped ? 
 
 '* For as victory was nighest. 
 While I sang and played, — 
 With my lyre at lowest, highest, 
 
 liight alike, — one string that made 
 ' Love ' sound soft was snapt in twain, 
 Never to be heard again, — 
 
 ' Had not a kind cricket fluttered, 
 
 Perched upon the place 
 Vacant left, and duly uttered 
 
 ' Love, Love, Love,' whene'er the bass 
 Asked the treble to atone 
 For its somewhat sombre drone." 
 
 But you don't know music 1 Wherefore 
 Keep on casting pearls 
 
 To a ^ poet ? All I care for 
 
 Is — to tell him that a girl's 
 ' Love" comes aptly in when gruff 
 Grows his singing. (There, enough !) 
 
 OH LOVE I LOVE 
 
 Translation of a lyric in the Syppolytus of 
 Euripides, and printed by J. P. Mahaffy in his 
 Euripides, 1879. Mr. Mahaffy writes : " Mr. 
 Browning has honored me with the following 
 translation of these stanzas, so that the general 
 reader may not miss the meaning or the spirit 
 of the ode. The English metre, though not a 
 strict reproduction, gives an excellent idea of 
 the original." 
 
 Oh Love ! Love, thou that from the eyes dif- 
 
 fusest 
 Yearning, and on the soul sweet grace indu- 
 
 cest — 
 Souls against whom thy hostile march is made — 
 Never to me be manifest in ire. 
 Nor, out of time and tune, my peace invade ! 
 Since neither from the fire — 
 No, nor from 'the stars — is launched a, bolt 
 
 more mighty 
 Than that of Aphrodite 
 Hurled from the hands of Love, the boy with 
 
 Zeus for sire. 
 
 Idly, how idly, by the Alpheian river 
 
 And in the Pythian shrines of Phoebus, quiver 
 
 Blood-offerings from the bull, which Hellas 
 
 heaps : 
 While Love we worship not — the Lord of men I 
 Worship not him, the very key who keeps 
 Of Aphjodit^, when 
 
 She closes up her dearest chamber-portals : 
 — Love, when he comes to mortals. 
 Wide-wasting, through those deeps of woes be- 
 yond the deep! 
 
MARTIN RELPH 
 
 875 
 
 DRAMATIC IDYLS 
 
 FIRST SERIES 
 
 The Dramatic Idyls, a group of poems which 
 indicated a return to Browning's earlier manner, 
 furnished the title for two successive volumes, 
 the first series published in 1879, the second the 
 year following. The poems in the first series 
 were composed while Browning and his sister 
 
 MARTIN RELPH 
 
 My grandfather says he remembers he saw, when 
 a youngster long ago. 
 
 On a bright May. day, a strange old man, with a 
 beard as white as snow. 
 
 Stand on the hill outside our town like a monu- 
 ment of woe. 
 
 And, striking his bare bald head the while, sob out 
 the reason — so ! 
 
 If I last as long as Methuselah I shall never foi^ 
 
 give myself: 
 But — God forgive me, that I pray, unhappy 
 
 Martin Relph, 
 As coward, coward I call him ^- him, yes, him I 
 
 Away from me ! 
 Get you behind the man I am now, you man 
 
 that I used to be ! 
 
 What can have sewed ray mouth up, set me 
 
 a-stare, all eyes, no tongue ? 
 People have urged, " You visit a scare too hard 
 
 on a lad so young ! 
 You were taken aback, poor boy," they urge, 
 
 " no time to regain your wits : 
 Besides it had maybe cost your life." Ay, there 
 
 is the cap which fits ! 
 
 So, cap me, the coward, — thus ! No fear ! , A 
 
 ciifF on the brow does good : 
 The feel of it hinders a worm inside whicKbores 
 
 at the brain for food. 
 See now, there certainly seems excuse: for a 
 
 moment, I trust, dear friends, 
 The fault was but folly, no fault of mine, or if 
 
 mine, I have made amends ! 
 
 For, every day that is first of May, on the hill- 
 top, here stand I, 
 
 Martin Relph, and I strike my brow, and pub- 
 lish the reason why. 
 
 When there gathers a crowd to mock the fool. 
 No fool, friends, since the bite 
 
 Of a worm inside is worse to bear : pray God I 
 have balked him quite ! 
 
 I '11 tell you. Certainly much excuse ! It came 
 of the way they cooped , 
 
 Us peasantry up in a ring jnst here, close hud- 
 dling because tight-hobp"d 
 
 By the red-coats round us villagers all : they 
 meant we should see the sight 
 
 were sojourning in a mountain hotel near the 
 summit of the Spliigen Pass in the summer of 
 1878. So stimulated was Browning by the moun- 
 tain air that he composed with extraordinary 
 rapidity, even for him, bringing down upon him- 
 self his sister's determined caution. 
 
 And take the example,— pee, not speak, for 
 speech was the Captain's right. 
 
 " You clowns on the slope, beware ! " cried he : 
 " This woman about to die 
 
 Gives by her fate fair yarning to such acquaint- 
 ance as play the. spy. 
 
 Henceforth who meddle with matters of state 
 above them perhaps will learn 
 
 That peasants should stick to their plough- 
 tail, leave to the ^ng the King's con- 
 cern. 
 
 ' ' Here 's a quarrel that sets the land on fire, be- 
 tween Ejng George and his f oes : 
 
 What caE has a man of your kind — much less, 
 a woman — to interpose ? 
 
 Yet you needs must be meddling, folk like you, 
 . not' foes ^so much the worse ! 
 
 The many and loyal should keep themselves 
 unmixed with the few perverse. 
 
 " Is the counsel hard to follow ? I gave it you 
 
 plainly a month ago. 
 And where was the good? The rebels have 
 
 learned just all that they need to know. 
 Not a month since in we quietly marched: a 
 
 week, and they had the news. 
 From a list complete of our rank and file to a 
 
 note of our caps and shoes. 
 
 " All about all we did and all we were doing 
 
 and like to do ! 
 Only, I catch a letter by luck, and capture who 
 
 wrote it, too. 
 Some of you men look black enough, but the 
 
 milk-white face demure 
 Betokens the finger foul with ink : 't is a woman 
 
 who writes,, be sure ! 
 
 " Is it ' Dearie, how much I miss your mouth I ' 
 
 — good natural stuff', she pens ? 
 Some sprinkle of that, for a blind, of course : 
 
 with talk about cocks and hens, 
 How * robin has built on the apple-tree, and our 
 
 creeper which came to grief 
 Through the frost, we feared, is twining afresh 
 
 round casement in famous leaf.' 
 
 " But all for a blind ! She soon glides frank 
 into ' Horrid the place is grown 
 
 With Officers here and Privates there, no nook 
 we may call our own : 
 
876 
 
 DRAMATIC IDYLS 
 
 And Farmer Giles has a tribe to house, and 
 
 lodging will be to seek 
 For the second Company sure to come ('tis 
 
 whispered) on Monday week.' 
 
 ** And so to the end of the chapter I There ! 
 
 The murder, you see, was out : 
 Easy to guess how the change of mind in the 
 
 rebels was brought about ! 
 Safe in the trap would they now lie snug, had 
 
 treachery made no sign : 
 But treachery meets a just reward, no matter 
 
 if fools malign ! 
 
 *' That traitors had playpd us false, was proved 
 
 — sent news which fell so pat : 
 And the murder was out — this letter of love, 
 
 the sender of this sent that ! 
 'T is an ugly job, though, all the same — a 
 
 hateful, to have to deal 
 With a case of the kind, when a woman 's 
 
 in fault : we soldiers need nerves of 
 
 steel ! 
 
 ** So, I gave her a chance, despatched post-haste 
 
 a message to Vincent Parkes 
 Whom she wrote to ; easy to find he was, since 
 
 one of the King's own clerks. 
 Ay, kept by the JCing's own gold in the town 
 
 close by where the rebels camp : 
 A sort of a lawyer, just the man to betray our 
 
 sort — the scamp ! 
 
 " ' If her writing is simple and honest and only 
 
 ' the lover-Eke stuff it looks. 
 And if you yourself are a loyalist, nor down in 
 
 the rebels' books, 
 Come quick,' said I, ' and in person prove you 
 
 are each of you clear of crime, 
 Or martial law must take its course : this day 
 
 next week 's the time ! ' 
 
 '* Next week is now : does he come ? Not he ! 
 
 Clean gone, our clerk, in a trice ! 
 He has left his sweetheart here in the lurch : 
 
 no need of a warning twice ! 
 His own neck free, but his partner's fast in the 
 
 noose still, here she stands 
 To pay for her fault. 'T is an ugly job : but 
 
 soldiers obey commands. 
 
 •'And hearken wherefore I make a speech! 
 
 Should any acquaintance share 
 The folly that led to the fault that is now to be 
 
 punished, let fools beware ! 
 Look black, if you please, but keep hands 
 
 white : and, above all else, keep wives — 
 Or sweethearts or what they may be — from 
 
 ink ! Not a word now, on your lives ! " 
 
 Black ? but the Pit's own pitch was white to 
 the Captain's face — the brute 
 
 With the bloated cheeks and the bulgy nose 
 and the bloodshot eyes to suit ! 
 
 He was muddled with wine, they say : more 
 like, he was out of his wits with fear ; 
 
 He had but a handful of men, that 's true, — a 
 riot might cost him dear. 
 
 And all that time stood Rosamund Page, with 
 
 pinioned arms and face 
 Bandaged about, on the turf marked out for 
 
 the party's firing-place. 
 I hope she was wholly with Grod : I hope 't was 
 
 his angel stretched a hand 
 To steady her so, like the shape of stone you 
 
 see in our church-aisle stand. 
 
 I h.ope there was no, vain fancy pierced the 
 bandage to vex her eyes, 
 
 No face within which she missed without, no 
 questions and no replies — 
 
 "Why did you leave me to die?" — "Be- 
 cause "... Oh, fiends, too soon you 
 grin 
 
 At merely a moment of hell, like that — such 
 heaven as hell ended in ! 
 
 Let mine end too I He gave the word, up went 
 
 the guns in a line. 
 Those heaped on the hill were blind as dumb, 
 
 — for, of all eyes, only mine 
 Looked over the heads of the foremost rank. 
 
 Some fell on their knees in prayer, 
 Some sank to the earth, but all shut eyes, "with 
 
 a sole exception there. 
 
 That was myself, who had stolen up last, had 
 
 sidled behind the group : 
 I am highest of all on the hill-top, there stand 
 
 fixed while the others stoop ! 
 From head to foot in a serpent's twine am I 
 
 tightened : I touch ground ? 
 No more than a gibbet's rigid corpse which the 
 
 fetters rust around ! 
 
 Can I speak, can I breathe, can I hurst — aught 
 
 else but see, see, only see ? 
 And see I do — for there comes in sight — a 
 
 man, it sure must be ! — 
 Who staggeringly, stumblingly rises, falls, rises, 
 
 at random flings his weight 
 On and on, anyhow onward — a man that 'a 
 
 mad he arrives too late ! 
 
 Else why does he wave a something white high- 
 
 flouiished above his head ? 
 Why does not he call, cry, — curse the fool I — 
 
 why throw up his arms instead ? 
 O take this fist in your own face, fool ! Why 
 
 does not yourself shout ' ' Stay ! 
 Here 's a man comes rushing, might and main, 
 
 with something he 's mad to say " ? 
 
 And a minute, only a moment, to have hell-fire 
 
 boil up in your brain. 
 And ere you can judge things right, choose 
 
 heaven, — time 's over, repentance vain ! 
 They level : a volley, a smoke and the clearing 
 
 of smoke : I see no more 
 Of the man smoke hid, nor his frantic arms, noT 
 
 the something white he bore. 
 
PHEIDIPPIDES 
 
 877 
 
 But stretclied on the field, some half-mile off, 
 
 is an object. Surely dumb, 
 Deaf, blind were we struck, that nobody heard, 
 
 not one of us saw him come ! 
 Has he fainted through fright ? One may well 
 
 believe ! What is it he holds so fast ? 
 Turn him over, examine the face ! Heyday I 
 
 What, Vincent Farkes at last ? 
 
 Dead ! dead as she, by the selfsame shot : one 
 
 bullet has ended both, 
 Her in the body and him in the soul. They 
 
 laugh at our plighted troth. 
 •♦Till death us do part?" Till death us do 
 
 join past parting — that sounds like 
 Betrothal indeed ! Vincent Parkes, what 
 
 need has ray fist to strike ? 
 
 I helped you : thus were you dead and wed : 
 
 one bound, and your soul reached hecs 1 
 There is clenched in your hand the thing, signed, 
 
 sealed, the paper which plain avers 
 She is innocent, innocent, plain as print, with 
 
 the King's Arms broad engraved : 
 No one can hear, but if any one high on the hill 
 
 can see, she 's saved I 
 
 And torn his garib and bloody his lips with 
 
 heart-break — plain it grew 
 How the week's delay had been brought about : 
 
 each guess at the end proved true. 
 It was hard to get at the folk in power : such 
 
 waste of time ! and then 
 Such pleading and prayins. with, all the while, 
 
 his lamb in the lions' den ! 
 
 And at length when he wrung their pardon out, 
 
 no end to the stupid forms — 
 The license and leave: I make no doubt — 
 
 what wonder if passion warms 
 The pulse in a man if you play with his heart ? 
 
 — he was something hasty in speech ; 
 Anyhow, none would quicken the work: he 
 
 had to beseech, beseech ! 
 
 And the thing once signed, sealed, safe in his 
 
 grasp, — what f ouowed but fresh delays ? 
 For the floods were out, he was forced to take 
 
 such a roundabout of ways ! 
 And 't was *' Halt there 1 " at every turn of 
 
 the road, since he had to cross the thick 
 Of the red-coats : what did they care for him 
 
 and his " Quick, for God's sake, quick ! " 
 
 Horse ? but he had one : had it how long ? till 
 
 the first knave smirked " You brag 
 Yourself a friend of the King's ? then lend to a 
 
 King's friend here your nag ! " 
 Money to buy another ? Why, piece by piece 
 
 they plundered him still. 
 With their "Wait you must, — no help: if 
 
 aught can help you, a guinea will ! " 
 
 And a borough there was — I forget the name 
 ^- whose Mayor must have the bench 
 
 Of Justices ranged to clear a doubt : for 
 "Vincent,'' thinks he, sounds French ! 
 
 It well may have driven him daft, God knows ! 
 
 all man can certainly know 
 Is — rusMng and falling and rising, at last he 
 
 arrived in a horror — so ! 
 
 When a word, cry, gasp, would have rescued 
 
 both ! Ay, bite me 1 The worm begins 
 
 At his work once more. Had cowardice proved 
 
 — that only — my sin of sins 1 
 Friends, look you here I JSuppose . . . suppose 
 
 . . . But mad I am, needs must be I . 
 Judas the Damned would never have dared 
 such a sin as I dream ! For, see ! 
 
 Suppose I had sneakingly loved her myseU, my 
 
 wretched self, and dreamed 
 In the heart of me " She were better dead than 
 
 happy and his ! " — while gleamed 
 A light from hell as I spied the pair in a per- 
 
 fectest enabra^e. 
 He the savior and she the saved, — bliss bom 
 
 of the very murder-place 1 
 
 No ! Say 1 was scared, friends ! Call me fool 
 and coward, bat nothing worse ! 
 
 Jeer at the fool and gibe at the coward ! 'T was 
 ever the cowam's curse 
 
 That fear breeds fancies in such: such take 
 their shadow for substance stiU, 
 
 — A fiend at their back. I liked poor Parkes, 
 
 — loved Vincent, if you will ! 
 
 And her — why, I said " Good morrow " to her, 
 
 " Good even," and nothing more; 
 The neighborly way I She was just to me as 
 
 fifty had been before. 
 So, coward it is and coward shall be ! There 's 
 
 a friend, now ! Thanks ! A drink 
 Of water I wanted : and now I can walk, gat 
 
 home by myself, I think. 
 
 PHEIDIPPIDES 
 Xoipere, ftKu^ev. 
 
 First I salnte this soil of the blessed, river and 
 
 rock ! 
 Gods of my birthplace, dsemons and heroes, 
 
 honor t.o all ! 
 Then I name thee, claim thee for our patron, 
 
 co-equal in praise 
 — Ay, with Zeus the Defender, with Her of 
 
 the aegis and spear ! 
 Also, ye of the bow and the buskin, praised be 
 
 your peer. 
 Now, henceforth and forever, — latest to 
 
 whom I upraise 
 Hand and heart and voice ! For Athens, leave 
 
 pasture and flock ! 
 Present to help, potent to save, Pan — patron 
 
 I call I 
 
 Archons of Athens, topped by the tettix, see, I 
 
 return I ' \ 
 See, 't is myself here standing ahve, no spectre 
 
 that speaks ! 
 
87S 
 
 DRAMATIC IDYLS 
 
 Crowned with the myrtle, did you command 
 
 me, Athens and you, 
 " Run, Pheidippides, run and race, reach Sparta 
 
 for aid ! 
 Persia has come, we are here, where is She ? " 
 
 Your command I oheyed. 
 Ran and raced : like stubble, some field which 
 
 a fire runs through. 
 Was the space between city and city: two 
 
 days, two nights did I bum 
 Orer the hills, under the dales, down pits and 
 
 up peaks. 
 
 Into their midst I broke : breath served but for 
 
 " Persia has come ! 
 Persia bids Athens proffer slaves '-tribute, water 
 
 and earth ; 
 Razed to the ground is Eretria — but Athens, 
 
 shall Athens sink. 
 Drop into dust and die — the flower of Hellas 
 
 utterly die. 
 Die, with the wide world spitting at Sparta, 
 
 the stupid, the stander-by ? 
 Answer me quick, what help, what hand do 
 
 you stretch o'er destruction's brink ? 
 How, — when ? No care for my limbs ! — 
 
 there 's lightning in all and some — 
 Fresh and fit your message to bear, once lips 
 
 give it birth ! " 
 
 my Athens — Sparta love thee ? Did Sparta 
 
 respond ? 
 Every face of her leered in a furrow of envy, 
 
 mistrust. 
 Malice, — each eye of her gave me its gUtter 
 
 of gratified hate ! 
 Gravely they turned to take counsel, to cast for 
 
 excuses. I stood 
 Quivering, — the limbs of me fretting as fire 
 
 frets, an inch from dry wood : 
 '* Persia has come, Athens asks aid, and still 
 
 they debate ? 
 Thunder, thou Zeus ! Athene, are Spartans a 
 
 quarry beyond 
 Swing of thy spear? Phoibos and Artemis, 
 
 clang them ' Ye must ' ! " 
 
 No bolt launched from Olumpos! Lo, their 
 answer at last ! 
 
 " Has Persia come, — does Athens ask aid, — 
 may Sparta befriend ? 
 
 Nowise precipitate judgment — too weighty 
 the issue at stake ! 
 
 Count we no time lost time which lags through 
 respect to the gods ! 
 
 Ponder that precept of old, ' No warfare, what- 
 ever the odds 
 
 In your favor, so long as the moon, half-orbed, 
 is unable to take 
 
 Full-circle her state in the sky ! ' Already she 
 rounds to it fast : 
 
 Athens must wait, patient as we — who judg- 
 ment suspend." 
 
 Athens, — except for that sparkle, — thy name, 
 
 I had mouldered to ash I 
 That sent a blaze through my blood; off, off 
 
 and away was I back, 
 
 — Not one word to waste, one look to lose on 
 the false and the vile I 
 
 Yet " gods of my land ! " I cried, as each 
 hillock and plain, 
 
 Wood and stream, I knew, I named, rushing 
 past them again, 
 
 " Have ye kept faith, proved mindful of honors 
 we paid you erewhile ? 
 
 Vain was the filleted victim, the fulsome liba- 
 tion ! Too rash 
 
 Love in its choice, paid you so largely service 
 so slack ! 
 
 " Oak and olive and bay, — I bid you cease to 
 
 enwreathe 
 Brows made bold by your leaf ! Fade at the 
 
 Persian's foot. 
 You that, our patrons were pledged, should 
 
 never adorn a slave ! 
 Rather I hail thee. Fames, — trust to thy wild 
 
 waste tract ! 
 Treeless, herbless, lifeless mountain ! What 
 
 matter if slacked 
 My speed may hardly be, for homage to crag 
 
 and to cave 
 No deity deigns to drape with verdure ? at 
 
 least I can breathe. 
 Fear in thee no fraud, from the blind, no lie 
 
 from the mute ! " 
 
 Such my cry as, rapid, I ran over 
 
 ridge ; 
 Gully and gap I clambered and cleared till, 
 
 sudden, a bar 
 Jutted, a stoppage of stone against me, block- 
 ing the way. 
 Right ! for I minded the hollow to traverse, 
 
 the fissure across : 
 " Where I could enter, there I depart by I 
 
 Night in the fosse ? 
 Out of the day dive^ into the day as bravely 
 
 arise ! No bridge 
 Better ! " — when — ha ! what was it I came on, 
 
 of wonders that are ? 
 
 There, in the cool of a cleft, sat he — maj'estical 
 
 Pan! 
 Ivy drooped wanton, kissed his head, moss 
 
 cushioned his hoof : 
 All the great god was good in the eyes grave- 
 kindly — the curl 
 Carved on the bearded cheek, amused at a 
 
 mortal's awe. 
 As, under the human trunk, the goat-thighs 
 
 grand I saw. 
 " Halt, Pheidippides ! " — halt I did, my brain 
 
 of a whirl : 
 " Hither to me ! Why pale in my presence ? " 
 
 he gracious began : 
 " How is it, — Athens, only in HeUas, holds me 
 
 aloof ? 
 
 " Athens, she only, rears me no fane, makes 
 
 me no feast ! 
 Wherefore ? Than I what _ godship to Atliens 
 
 jfiiore helpful of old ? ' 
 Ay, and still, and forever her friend ! Test 
 
 Pan, trust me ! 
 
HALBERT AND HOB 
 
 879 
 
 Qo, bid Athens take heart, laugh Persia to 
 
 scorn, have faith 
 In the temples and tombs ! Go, say to Athens, 
 
 ' The Goat-God saith : 
 When Persia — so much as strews not the soil 
 
 — is cast in the sea. 
 Then praise Pan who fought in the ranks with 
 
 your most and least. 
 Goat-thigh to greaved-thigh, made one cause 
 
 with the free and the bold !' 
 
 " Say Pan saith : ' Let this, foreshowing the 
 
 place, be the pledge ! ' " 
 (Gay, the liberal hand held out this herbage I 
 
 bear 
 — Fennel — I grasped it a-tremble with dew — 
 
 whatever it bode) 
 "While, as for thee" ... But enough! He 
 
 was gone. If I ran hitherto — 
 Be sure that, the rest of my journey, I ran no 
 
 longer, but flew. 
 Parnes to Athens — earth no more, the air was 
 
 my road : 
 Here am I back. Praise Pan, we stand no 
 
 more on the razor's edge ! 
 Pan for Athens, Pan for me ! I too have a 
 
 guerdon rare ! 
 
 Then spoke Miltiades. " And thee, best run- 
 ner of Greece, 
 Whose limbs did duty indeed, — what gift is 
 
 promised thyself ? 
 Tell it us straightway, — Athens the mother 
 
 demands of her son ! " 
 Kosily blushed the youth : he paused: but, 
 
 lifting at length 
 His eyes from the ground, it seemed as he 
 
 gathered the rest of his strength 
 Into the utterance — " Pan spoke thus : ' For 
 
 what thou hast done 
 Count on a worthy reward ! Henceforth be 
 
 allowed thee release 
 From the racer's toil, no vulgar reward in 
 
 praise or in pelf ! ' 
 
 " I am bold to believe. Pan means reward the 
 
 most to my mind ! 
 Fight I shall, with our foremost, wherever this 
 
 fennel may §row, — 
 Found — Pan helping us — Persia to dust, and, 
 
 under the deep, 
 Whelm her away forever; and then, — no 
 
 Athens to save, — 
 Marry a certain maid, I know keeps faith to 
 
 the brave, — 
 Hie to my house and home : and, when my 
 
 children shall creep 
 Close to my knees, — recount how the God was 
 
 awful yet kind. 
 Promised their sire reward to the full — re- 
 warding him — so ! " 
 
 Unforeseeing one ! Yes, he fought on the Mara- 
 
 So when Persia was dust, all cried " To Akro- 
 polis ! 
 
 Run, Pheidippides, one race more ! the meed is 
 
 thy due ! 
 ' Athens is saved, thank Pan,' go shout ! " He 
 
 flung down his shield. 
 Ran like tire once more : and the space 'twixt 
 
 the Fennel-field 
 And Athens was stubble again, a field which a 
 
 fire runs through, 
 Till in he broke : Rejoice, we conquer ! " 
 
 Like wine through clay, 
 Joy in his blood bursting his heart, he died — 
 
 the bliss ! 
 
 So, to this day, when friend meets friend, the 
 
 word of salute 
 Is stiU " Rejoice ! " — his word which brought 
 
 rejoicing indeed. 
 So is Pheidippides happy forever, — the noble 
 
 strong man 
 Who could race like a god, bear the face of a 
 
 god, whom a god loved so well ; 
 He saw the land saved he had helped to save, 
 
 and was suffered to tell 
 Such tidings, yet never decline, but, gloriously 
 
 as he began. 
 So to end gloriously — once to shout, thereafter 
 
 be mute : 
 " Athens is saved 1 " — Pheidippides dies in the 
 
 shout for his meed. 
 
 HALBERT AND HOB 
 
 Here is a thing that happened. Like wild 
 
 beasts whelped, for den. 
 In a wild part of North England, there lived 
 
 once two wild men 
 Inhabiting one homestead, neither a hovel nor 
 
 hut. 
 Time out of mind their birthright : father and 
 
 son, these — but — 
 Such a son, such a father ! Most wHdness by 
 
 Softens away : yet, last of their line, the wild- 
 est and worst were these. 
 
 Criminals, then ? Why, no : they did not mur- 
 der and rob ; 
 
 But, give them a word, they returned a blow — 
 old Halbert as young Hob : 
 
 Harsh and fierce of word, rough and savage of 
 deed, 
 
 Hated or feared the more — who knows? —thB 
 genuine wild-beast breed. 
 
 Thus were they found by the few sparse folk of 
 
 the countryside ; 
 But how fared each with other? E'en beasts 
 
 couch, hide by hide, 
 In a growling, grudged agreement : so, father 
 
 and son aye curled , . . r 
 
 The closelier up in their den because the last ot 
 
 their kind in the world. 
 
 Still, beast irks beast on occasion. One Christ- 
 mas night of snow. 
 
 Came father and son to words — such words I 
 more cruel because the blow 
 
88o 
 
 DRAMATIC IDYLS 
 
 To crown each word was wanting, while taunt 
 
 matched gibe, and curse 
 Competed with oath in wager, like pastime in 
 
 hell, — nay, worse : 
 For pastime turned to earnest, as up there 
 
 sprang at last 
 The son at the throat of the father, seized him 
 
 and held him fast. 
 
 '* Out of this house you go ! " (there followed a 
 
 hideous oath) — 
 "This oven where now we bake, too hot to 
 
 hold us both ! 
 If there *s snow outside, there 's coolness : out 
 
 with you, bide a spell 
 In the drift and save the sexton the charge of a 
 
 parish shell ! " 
 
 Now, the old trunk was tough, was solid as 
 
 stump of oak 
 Untouched at the core by a thousand years : 
 
 much less had its seventy broke 
 One whipcord nerve in the muscly mass from 
 
 neck to shoulder-blade 
 Of the mountainous man, whereon his child's 
 
 rash hand like a feather weighed. 
 
 Nevertheless at once did the mammoth shut his 
 
 eyes, 
 Drop chin to breast, drop hands to sides, stand 
 
 stiffened — arms and thighs 
 All of a piece — struck mute, much as a sentry 
 
 stands. 
 Patient to take the enemy's fire : his captain so 
 
 commands. 
 
 Whereat the son's wrath flew to fury at such 
 sheer scorn 
 
 Of his puny strength by the giant eld thus act- 
 ing the babe new-born : 
 
 And " Neither will this turn serve ! " yelled he. 
 " Out with you ! Trundle, log ! 
 
 If you cannot tramp and trudge like a man, try 
 all-fours like a dog ! " 
 
 Still the old man stood mute. So, logwise, — 
 
 down to floor 
 FuUad from his fireside place, dragged on from 
 
 hearth to door, — 
 Was he pushed, a very log, staircase along, 
 
 until 
 A certain turn in the steps was reached, a yard 
 
 from the house-door-sill. 
 
 Then the father opened eyes — each spark of 
 their rage extinct, — 
 
 Temples, late black, dead-blanched, — right- 
 hand with left-hand linked, — 
 
 He faced his son submissive ; when slow the 
 accents came. 
 
 They were strangely mild though his son's rash 
 hand on his neck lay all the same. 
 
 " Hob, on just such a night of a Christmas long 
 
 ago. 
 For such a cause, with such a gesture, did I 
 
 drag — so — 
 
 My father down thus far : bat, softening here, 
 
 I heard 
 A voice in my heart, and stopped : you wait for 
 
 an outer word, 
 
 " For your own sake, not mine, soften you too I 
 
 Untrod 
 Leave this last step we reach, nor brave the 
 
 finger of God ! 
 I dared not pass its lifting: I did well. I nor 
 
 blame 
 Nor praise you. I stopped here : and, Hob, do 
 
 you the same !" 
 
 Straightway the son relaxed his hold of the 
 father's throat. 
 
 They mounted, side by side, to the room again : 
 no note 
 
 Took either of each, no sign made each to 
 either: last 
 
 As first, in absolute silence, their Christmas- 
 night they passed. 
 
 At dawn, the father sate on, dead, in the self- 
 same place. 
 
 With an outburst blackening still the old bad 
 fighting-face : 
 
 But the son crouched all a-tremble like any 
 lamb new-yeaned. 
 
 When he went to the burial, some one's staff he 
 borrowed, — tottered and leaned. 
 
 But his lips were loose, not locked, — kept mut- 
 tering, mumbling. " There ! 
 
 At his cursing and swearing ! " the youngsters 
 cried: but the elders thought "In 
 prayer." 
 
 A boy threw stones : he picked them up and 
 stored them in his vest. 
 
 So tottered, muttered, mumbled he, till he 
 
 died, perhaps found rest. 
 " Is there a reason in nature for these hard 
 
 hearts ? " O Lear, 
 That a reason out of nature must turn them 
 
 soft, seems clear ! 
 
 IVAN IVANOVITCH 
 
 " They tell me, your carpenters," quoth I to 
 
 my friend the Russ, 
 " Make a simple hatchet serve as a tool-box 
 
 serves with us. 
 Arm but each man with his axe, 'tis a hammer 
 
 and saw and plane 
 And chisel, and — what know I else ? We 
 
 should imitate in vain 
 The mastery wherewithal, by a flourish of just 
 
 the adze, 
 He cleaves, clamps, dovetails in, — no need of 
 
 our nails and brads, — 
 The manageable pine : 't is said he could shave 
 
 himself 
 With the axe, — so all adroit, now a giant and 
 
 now an elf, 
 Does he work and play at once ! " 
 
IVAN IVANOVITCH 
 
 881 
 
 Quoth my friend the Russ to me, 
 " Ay, that and more beside on occasion 1 It 
 
 scarce may be 
 You never heard tell a tale told children, time 
 
 out of mind, 
 By father and mother and nurse, for a moral 
 
 that 's behind. 
 Which children quickly seize. If the incident 
 
 happened at all, 
 We place it in Peter's time when hearts were 
 
 great not small, 
 Germanized, Frenchined* I wager 't is old to 
 
 you 
 As the story of Adam and Eve, and possibly 
 
 quite as true." 
 
 In the deep of our land, 't is said, a village 
 
 from out the woods 
 Emerged on the great main-road 'twixt two 
 
 great solitudes. 
 Through forestry right and left, black verst 
 
 and verst of pine. 
 From village to village runs the road's long 
 
 wide bare line. 
 Clearance and clearance break the else-uncon- 
 
 quered growth 
 Of pine and all that breeds and broods there, 
 
 leaving loth 
 Man's inch of masterdom, ■ — spot of life, spirt 
 
 of fire, — 
 To star the dark and dread, lest right and rule 
 
 expire 
 Throughout the monstrous wild, anhungered to 
 
 resume 
 Its ancient sway, suck hack the world into its 
 
 womb: 
 Defrauded by man's craft which clove from 
 
 North to South 
 This highway broad and straight e'en from the 
 
 Neva's mouth 
 To Moscow's gates of gold. So, spot of life 
 
 and spirt 
 Of fire aforesaid, bum, each village death- 
 begirt 
 By wall and wall of pine — unprohed un- 
 dreamed abyss. 
 
 Early one winter mom, in such a village as 
 
 this, 
 Snow-whitened everywhere except the middle 
 
 road 
 Ice-roughed by track of sledge, there worked 
 
 by his abode 
 Iv^n IvJinovitch, the carpenter, employed 
 On a huge shipmast trunk ; his axe now 
 
 trimmed and toyed 
 With branch and twig, and now some chop 
 
 athwart the bole 
 Changed bole to billets, bared at once the sap 
 
 and soul. 
 About him, watched the work his neighhors 
 
 sheepskin-clad ; 
 Each bearded mouth puffed steam, each gray 
 
 eye twinkled glad 
 To see the sturdy arm which, never stopping 
 
 play. 
 
 Proved strong man's blood still boils, freeze 
 
 winter as he may. 
 Sudden, a burst of beUs. Out of the road, on 
 
 edge 
 Of the hamlet — horse's hoofs galloping. 
 
 "How, a sledge? 
 What's here?" cried all as— in, up to the 
 
 open space, 
 Workyard and market-ground, folk's common 
 
 meeting-place, — 
 Stumbled on, till he fell, in one last bound for 
 
 Ufe, 
 A horse : and, at his heels, a sledge held -^ 
 
 " Dmitri's wife ! 
 Back without Dmitri too ! and children-' 
 
 where are they ? 
 Only a, frozen corpse ! " 
 
 then — " Nay, 
 Gone hence a 
 
 -alone through 
 -Droug, old 
 
 ay 
 
 Not dead, though like to die I 
 
 month ago : 
 Home again, this rough jaunt 
 
 night and snow — 
 What can the cause he? Hark 
 
 horse, how he groans ; 
 His day 's done 1 Chafe away, keep chafing, 
 
 for she moans ; 
 She 's coming to ! Give here : see, motherkin, 
 
 your friends I 
 Cheer up, all safe at home ! Warm inside 
 
 makes amends 
 For outside cold, — sup quick ! Don't look as 
 
 we were bears ! 
 What is it startles you? What strange ad- 
 venture stares 
 Up at us in your face ? You know friends — 
 
 which is which ? 
 I 'm V^sili, he 's Sergei, Iv^n Ivknovitch " — 
 
 At the word, the woman's eyes, slow-wander- 
 ing till they neared 
 The blue eyes o'er the bush of honey-colored 
 
 beard. 
 Took in full light and sense and — torn to rags, 
 
 some dream 
 Which hid the naked truth — loud and long 
 
 the scream 
 She gave, as if all power of voice within her 
 
 throat 
 Poured itself wild away to waste in one dread 
 
 note ! 
 Then followed gasps and sobs, and then the 
 
 steady flow 
 Of kindly tears : the brain was saved, a man 
 
 might know. 
 Down fell her face upon the good friend's 
 
 propping knee ; 
 His broad hands smoothed her head, as fain to 
 
 brush it free 
 From fancies, swarms that stung like bees 
 
 unhived. He soothed — 
 " Loukferia, Loiischa ! " — still he, fondling, 
 
 smoothed and smoothed. 
 At last her lips formed speech. 
 
 " Iv^n, dear — you indeed 1 
 You, just the same dear you 1 While I . . . Oh. 
 intercede. 
 
882 
 
 DRAMATIC IDYLS 
 
 Sweet Mother, with thy Son Almighty — let his 
 
 might 
 Bring yesterday once more, undo all done last 
 
 night ! 
 But this time yesterday, Ir^n, I sat like yon, 
 A child on either knee, and, dearer than the 
 
 two, 
 A habe inside my arms, close to my heart — 
 
 that 's lost 
 In morsels o'er the snow ! Father, Son, Holy 
 
 Ghost, 
 Cannot you bring again my blessed yesterday V " 
 
 When no more tears would flow, she told her 
 tale : this way. 
 
 be, a month ago, — was it not ? — news 
 
 came here. 
 They wanted, deeper down, good workmen fit 
 
 to rear 
 A church and roof it in. ' We '11 go,' my 
 
 husband said : 
 ' None undei-stands like me to melt and mould 
 
 their lead.' 
 So, friends here helped us off — Iv&n, dear, 
 
 you the first ! 
 How gay we jingled forth, all fire — (my heart 
 
 will burst) — 
 While Dmitri shook the reins, urged Droug 
 
 upon his track I 
 
 " Well, soon the month ran out, we just were 
 
 coming back, 
 When yesterday — behold, the village was on 
 
 fire ! 
 Fire ran from house to house. What help, as, 
 
 nigh and nigher, 
 The fiames came furious? 'Haste,' cried 
 
 Dmitri, ' men must do 
 The little good man may : to sledge and in with 
 
 you. 
 You and our three ! We check the fire by 
 
 laying flat 
 Each building in its path, — I needs must stay 
 
 for that, — 
 But you ... no time for talk ! Wrap round 
 
 you every mg. 
 Cover the couple close, — you '11 have the babe 
 
 to hug. 
 No care to guide old Droug, he knows his way, 
 
 by guess, 
 Once start him on the road : but chirrup, none 
 
 the less 1 
 The snow lies glib as glass and hard as steel, 
 
 and soon 
 You '11 have rise, fine and full, a marvel of a 
 
 moon. 
 Hold straight up, all the same, this lighted 
 
 twist of pitch ! 
 Once home and with our friend IvJin IvJmovitch, 
 An 's safe : I have my pay in pouch, all 's right 
 
 with me. 
 So I but find as safe you and our precious 
 
 three ! 
 Off, Droug ! ' — because the flames had reached 
 
 us, and the men 
 Shouted ' But lend a hand, Dmitri — as good 
 
 as ten 1 ' 
 
 "So, in we bundled — I, and those God gave 
 me once ; 
 
 Old Droug, that 's stiff at first, seemed youth- 
 ful for the nonce : 
 
 He understood the case, galloping straight 
 ahead. 
 
 Out came the moon : my twist soon dwindled, 
 feebly red 
 
 In that unnatural day — yes, daylight, bred 
 between 
 
 Moonlight and snow-light, lamped those grotto- 
 depths which screen 
 
 Such devils from God's eye. Ah, pines, how 
 straight you grow. 
 
 Nor bend one pitying branch, true breed of 
 brutal snow ! 
 
 Some undergrowth had served to keep the 
 devils blind 
 
 While we escaped outside their border I 
 
 " Was that — wind? 
 Anyhow, Droug starts, stops, back go his ears, 
 
 he snuffs. 
 Snorts, — never such a snort ! then plunges, 
 
 knows the sough 's 
 Only the wind : yet, no — our breath goes up 
 
 too straight ! 
 Still the low sound, — less low, loud, louder, at 
 
 a rate 
 There 's no mistaking more ! Shall I lean out 
 
 — look — learn 
 
 The truth whatever it be ? Pad, pad ! At 
 last, I turn — 
 
 " 'T is the regular pad of the wolves in pursuit 
 of the life in the sledge ! 
 
 An army they are : close-packed they press like 
 the thrust of a wedge : 
 
 They increase as they hunt : for I see, through 
 the pine-trunks ranged each side. 
 
 Slip forth new fiend and fiend, make wider and 
 still more wide 
 
 The four-footed steady advance. The fore- 
 most — none may pass ; 
 
 They are elders and lead the line, eye and eye 
 
 — green-glowing brass ! 
 
 But a long way distant still. Droug, save us I 
 
 He does his best : 
 Yet they gain on us, gain, tUl they reach, — 
 
 one reaches . . . How utter the rest ? 
 
 that Satan-faced first of the band ! How he 
 
 lolls out the length of his tongue. 
 How he laughs and lets gleam his white teeth ! 
 
 He is on me, his paws pry among 
 The wraps and the rugs ! my pair, my twin- 
 pigeons, lie still and seem dead ! 
 Step^n, he shall never have you for a meal, 
 
 here 's your mother instead ! 
 No, he wiU not be counselled — must cry, poor 
 
 Stiftpka, so foolish 1 though first 
 Of my boy-brood, he was not the best : nay, 
 
 neighbors have called him the worst : 
 He was puny, an undersized slip, — a darling to 
 
 me, all the same ! 
 But little there was to be praised in the boy, 
 
 and a plenty to blame. 
 
 1 loved him with heart and soul, yes — but, 
 
 deal him a blow for a fault, 
 
IVAN IVANOVITCH 
 
 883 
 
 He would sulk for whole days. ' Foolish boy ! 
 
 lie still or the villain will vault. 
 Will snatch you from over my bead ! ' No use ! 
 
 he cries, screams, — who can bold 
 Fast a boy in a frenzy of fear ! It follows — as 
 
 I foretold ! 
 The Satan-face snatched and snapped : I 
 
 tugged, I tore — and then 
 His brother too needs must shriek 1 If one 
 
 must go, 'tis men 
 The Tsar needs, so we hear, not ailing boys ! 
 
 Perhaps 
 My hands relaxed their grasp, got tangled in 
 
 the wraps : 
 God, he was gone ! I looked : there tumbled 
 
 the cursed crew. 
 Each fightii^ for a share : too busy to pursue ! 
 That 's so far gain at least : Droug, gallop an- 
 other verst 
 Or two, or three — God sends we beat them, 
 
 arrive the first ! 
 A mother who boasts two boys was ever ac- 
 counted rich : 
 Some have not a boy : some have, but lose him, 
 
 — God knows which 
 Is worse: how pitiful to see your weakling 
 
 pine 
 And pale and pass away ! Strong brats, this 
 
 pair of mine ! 
 
 "0 misery! for while I settle to what near 
 
 seems 
 Content, I am 'ware again of the tramp, and 
 
 again there gleams — 
 Point and point — the line, eyes, levelled 
 
 green brassy fire ! 
 So soon is resumed your chase ? Will nothing 
 
 appease, naught tire 
 rhe furies? And yet I think — I am certain 
 
 the race is slack. 
 And the numbers are nothing like. Not a quar- 
 ter of the pack ! 
 Feasters and those full-fed are staying behind 
 
 ... Ah, why ? 
 We '11 sorrow for that too soon ! Now, — gallop, 
 
 reach home, and die. 
 Nor ever again leave house, to trust our life m 
 
 the trap 
 For life — we call a sledge ! Teri6scha, m my 
 
 lap ! 
 Yes, I '11 lie down upon you, tight-tie you with 
 
 the strings 
 Here — of my heart ! No fear, this time, your 
 
 mother flings ... , . , , 
 
 Flings? I flung? Never! But think ! — a 
 
 woman, after all, 
 Contending with a wolf ! Save you I must and 
 
 shall, 
 Terentil ! .„ , , ,, 
 
 " How now ? What, you still head the race, 
 Your eyes and tongue and teeth crave fresh 
 
 food, Satan-face ? 
 There and there ! Plain I struck green fire 
 
 out ! Flash again ? 
 An a poor fist can do to damage eyes proves 
 
 Tain! , , „ TT . 
 
 My fist why not crunch that ? He is wanton 
 
 for ... God, 
 
 Why give this wolf his taste ? Common wolves 
 
 scrape and prod 
 The earth till out they scratch some corpse — 
 
 mere putrid flesh ! 
 Why must this glutton leave the faded, choose 
 
 the fresh ? 
 Terentil — God, feel ! — his neck keeps fast 
 
 thy bag 
 Of holy things, saints' bones, this Satan-face 
 
 win dra^ 
 Forth, and devour along with him, our Pope 
 
 declared 
 The relics were to save from danger ! 
 
 '* Spumed, not spared I 
 'T was through iny arms, crossed arms, he — 
 
 nuzzling now with snout. 
 Now ripping, tooth and claw — plucked, pulled 
 
 Terentil out, 
 A prize indeed ! I saw — how could I else but 
 
 see? — 
 My precious one — I bit to hold back — pidled 
 
 from me ! 
 Up came the others, fell to dancing — did the 
 
 imps ! — 
 Skipped as they scampered round. There 'p 
 
 one is gray, and limps : 
 knows but old bad Mh 
 owed me spite 
 
 Who knows but old bad M&rpha — she always 
 
 And envied me my births — skulks out of 
 doors at night 
 
 And turns into a wolf, and joins the sisterhood, 
 
 And laps the youthful life, then slinks from 
 out the wood. 
 
 Squats down at door by dawn, spins there de- 
 mure as erst 
 
 — No strength, old crone, — not she! — to 
 crawl forth half a verst ! 
 
 "Well, I escaped with one: 'twixt one and 
 
 none there lies 
 The space 'twixt heaven and hell. And see, a 
 
 rose-light dyes 
 The endmost snow: 'tis dawn, 't is day, 'tis 
 
 safe at home ! 
 We have outwitted you ! Ay, monsters, snarl 
 
 and foam. 
 Fight each the other fiend, disputing for a 
 
 share, — 
 Forgetful, in your greed, our finest off we bear. 
 Tough Droug and I, — my babe, my boy that 
 
 shall be man. 
 My man that shall be more, do all a hunter can 
 To trace and foUow and find and catch and 
 
 crucify , a i_ j 
 
 Wolves, wolfkins, all your crew ! A thousand 
 
 deaths shall die 
 The whimperingest cub that ever squeezed the 
 
 teat ! 
 ' Take that ! ' we '11 stab you with, — the ten' 
 
 demess we met 
 When, wretches, you danced round, — not this, 
 
 thank God — not this ! 
 Hellhounds, we balk you ! ' 
 
 " But — Ah, God above ! 
 Not the band, no ! And yet- 
 knows him ! One — 
 
 - Bliss, bliss, — 
 -yes, for Droug 
 
DRAMATIC IDYLS 
 
 This only of them all has said 'She sayes a 
 
 son ! ' 
 His fellows disbelieve such luck : hut he be- 
 lieves, 
 He lets them pick the bones, laugh at him in 
 
 their sleeves : 
 He 's off and after us, — one speck, one spot, 
 
 one ball 
 Grows bigger, bound on bound, — one wolf as 
 
 good as all I 
 Oh, but 1 know the trick I Have at the snaky 
 
 tongue ! 
 That 's the right way with wolves ! Go, tell 
 
 your mates I wrung 
 The panting morsel out, left you to howl your 
 
 worst ! 
 Now for it — now ! Ah me I I know him — 
 
 thrice-accurst 
 Satan-fa«e, — him to the end my foe ! 
 
 " All fight 's in vain : 
 This time the green brass points pierce to my 
 
 very brain, 
 I fall — fall as I ought — quite on the babe I 
 
 guard : 
 I overapread with flesh the whole of him. Too 
 
 hard 
 To die this way, torn piecemeal ? Move hence ? 
 
 Not I — one inch ! 
 Gnaw through me, through and through : flat 
 
 thus I lie nor flinch ! 
 
 Grod, the feel of the fang furrowing my 
 
 shoulder ! — see ! 
 It grinds — it grates the bone. Kirill under 
 
 me, 
 Could I do more ? Besides he knew wolf's way 
 
 to win : 
 
 1 clung, closed round like wax: yet in he 
 
 wedged and in. 
 Past my neck, past my breasts, my heart, until 
 
 . . . how feels 
 The onion-bulb your knife parts, pushing 
 
 through its peels. 
 Till out you scoop its clove wherein lie stalk 
 
 and leaf 
 And bloom and seed unborn ? 
 
 ** That slew me : yes, in brief, 
 I died then, dead I lay doubtlessly tiU Droug 
 
 stopped 
 Here, I suppose. I come to life, I find me 
 
 propped 
 Thus, — how or when or why — I know not. 
 
 Tell me, friends. 
 All was a dream : laugh quick and say the 
 
 nightmare ends ! 
 Soon I shall find my house : 't is over there : in 
 
 proof. 
 Save for that chimney heaped with snow, 
 
 you 'd see the roof 
 Which holds my three — my two — my one — 
 
 not one ? 
 
 " Life 's mixed 
 With misery, yet we live — must live. The 
 
 Satan fixed 
 His face on mine so fast, I took its print as 
 
 pitch 
 
 Takes what it cools beneath. Ivkn Iv^novitch, 
 "T is you unharden me, you thaw, disperse the 
 
 thing ! 
 Only keep looking kind, the horror will not 
 
 cling. 
 Your face smooths fast away each print of 
 
 Satan. Tears 
 — What good they do I Life 's sweet, and all 
 
 its after-years, 
 Ivkn Ivinovitch, I owe yon ! Yours am I ! 
 May God reward you, dear ! " 
 
 Down she sank. Solemnly 
 Ivkn rose, raised his axe, — for fitly, as she 
 
 knelt. 
 Her head lay : well-apart, each side, her arms 
 
 hung, — dealt 
 Lightning-swift thunder-strong one blow — no 
 
 need of more ! 
 Headless she knelt on still : that pine was 
 
 sound at core 
 (Neighbors were used to say) — cast-iron-ker- 
 
 neUed — which 
 Taxed for a second stroke Ivkn Ivknovitoh. 
 
 The man was scant of words as strokes. *' It 
 had to be : 
 
 I could no other : God it was, bade ' Act for 
 me ! '" 
 
 Then stooping, peering round — what is it now 
 he lacks ? 
 
 A proper strip of bark wherewith to wdpe his 
 axe. 
 
 Which done, he turns, goes in, closes the door 
 behind. 
 
 The others mute remain, watching the blood- 
 snake wind 
 
 Into a hiding-place among the splinter-heaps. 
 
 At length, still mute, all move: one lifts — 
 
 from where it steeps 
 Redder each ruddy rag of pine — the head: 
 
 two more 
 Take up the dripping body : then, mute still 
 
 as before, 
 Move in a sort of march, march on till march- 
 ing ends 
 Opposite to the church ; where halting, — who 
 
 suspends. 
 By its long hair, the thing, deposits in its place 
 The piteous head : once more the body shows 
 
 no trace 
 Of harm done : there lies whole the Loilscha, 
 
 maid and wife 
 And mother, loved until this latest of her life. 
 Then all sit on the bank of snow which bounds 
 
 a space 
 Kept free before the porch of judgment : just 
 
 the place I 
 
 Presently all the souls, man, woman, child, 
 
 which make 
 The village up, are found assembling for the 
 
 sake 
 Of what is to be done. The very Jews are 
 
 there : 
 A Gypsy-troop, though boimd with horses for 
 
 the Fair, 
 
IVAN IVANOVITCH 
 
 885 
 
 Squats with the rest. Each heart with its con- 
 ception seethes 
 
 And simmers, but no tongue speaks : one may 
 say, — none breathes. 
 
 Anon from out the church totters the Pope — 
 
 the priest — 
 Hardly alive, so old, a hundred years at least. 
 With him, the Commune's head, a hoary senior 
 
 too, 
 SUlrosta, that 's his style, — like Equity Judge 
 
 with you, — 
 Natural Jurisconsult : then, fenced about with 
 
 furs, 
 Fomeschik, — Lord of the Land, who wields — 
 
 and none demurs — 
 A power of life and death. They stoop, survey 
 
 the corpse. 
 
 Then, straightened on his staff, the St^rosta — 
 die thorpe's 
 
 Sagaciousest old man — hears what you just 
 have heard. 
 
 From Droug's first inrush, all, up to Iv&n's 
 last word — 
 
 " God bade me act for him : I dared not dis- 
 obey 1 " 
 
 Silence — the Pomeschik broke with "A wild 
 
 wrong way 
 Of righting wrong — if wrong there were, such 
 
 wrath to rouse ! 
 Why was not law observed ? What article 
 
 allows 
 Whoso may please to play the judge, and, judg- 
 ment dealt. 
 Play executioner, as promptly as we pelt 
 To death, without appeal, the vermin whose 
 
 sole fault 
 Has been —it dared to leave the darkness of its 
 
 vault. 
 Intrude upon our day ! Too sudden and too 
 
 rash ! 
 What was this woman's crime ? Suppose the 
 
 church should crash 
 Down where I stand, your lord : bound are my 
 
 Their utmost that I 'scape: yet, if the crashing 
 
 scare 
 My children — as you are, — if sons fly, one and 
 
 all. , ^ t. 
 
 Leave father to his fate, — poor cowards though 
 
 I call ^ . ,., 
 
 The runaways, I pause before I claim their life 
 Because they priaed it more than mine. I would 
 
 Died for her husband's sake, each son to save 
 
 his sire : 
 'Tis glory, I applaud — scarce duty, I require. 
 IvJin Ivilnovitoh has done a deed that 's named 
 Murder by law and me: who doubts, may 
 
 speak unblamed ! " 
 
 All turned to the old Pope. " Ay, children, I 
 
 am old — 
 How old, myself have got to know no longer. 
 
 Rolled 
 Quite round, my orb of life, from infancy to age, 
 
 Seems passing back again to youth. A certain 
 
 stage 
 At least I reach, or dream I reach, where I dis- 
 cern 
 Truer truths, laws behold more lawlike than we 
 
 learn 
 When first we set our foot to tread the course I 
 
 trod 
 With man to guide my steps : who leads me 
 
 now is God. 
 ' Your young men shall see visions : ' and in my 
 
 youth I saw 
 And paid obedience to man's visionary law : 
 ^ Your old men shall dream dreams : ' and, in 
 
 my age, a hand 
 Conducts me through the cloud round law to 
 
 where 1 stand 
 Firm on its base, — know cause, who, before, 
 
 knew effect. 
 
 "The world lies under me : and nowhere I detect 
 So great a gift as this — God's own -^ of human 
 
 life. 
 'Shall the dead praise thee?' No! 'The 
 
 whole live world is rife, 
 God, with thy glory,' rather 1 Life then, God's 
 
 best of gifts. 
 For what shall man exchange ? For life — when 
 
 so he shifts 
 The weight and turns the scale, lets life for life 
 
 restore 
 God's balance, sacrifice the less to gain the 
 
 more, 
 Substitute — for low life, another's or his own — 
 Life large and liker God's who gave it : thus 
 
 alone 
 May life extinguish life that life may trnher be ( 
 How low this law descends on earth, is not for 
 
 me .... 
 
 To trace : complexed becomes the simple, intn- 
 
 The plain, when I pursue law's winding. T is 
 
 the straight 
 Outflow of law I know and name: to law, the 
 
 fount 
 Fresh from God 's footstool, friends, follow -while 
 
 I remount. 
 
 " A mother bears a child: perfection is com- 
 plete 
 So far in such a birth. Enabled to repeat _ 
 The miracle of life, —herself was bom so just 
 A type of womankind, that Grod sees fit to trust 
 Her with the holy task of giving life in turn. 
 Crowned by this crowning pride, how say you, 
 
 should she spurn . 
 
 Regality — discrowned, unchilded, by her choice 
 Of barrenness exchanged for fruit which made 
 
 rejoice ... 
 
 Creation, though life's self were lost m giving 
 
 To life more fresh and fit to glorify God's earth? 
 How say you, should the hand God trusted with 
 
 life's torch 
 Kindled to light the world— aware of sparks 
 
 that scorch, ^ . c 
 
 Let fall the same ? Forsooth, her flesh a hre- 
 
 flake stings : 
 
886 
 
 DRAMATIC IDYLS 
 
 The mother drops the child ! Among what 
 monstrous things 
 
 Shall she be classed ? Because of motherhood, 
 each male 
 
 Yields to his partner place, sinks proudly in the 
 scale ; 
 
 His strength owned weakness, wit — folly, and 
 courage — fear. 
 
 Beside the female proved male's mistress — 
 only here. 
 
 The fox-dam, hunger-pined, wiU slay the felon 
 sire 
 
 Who dares assault her whelp: the heaver, 
 stretched on fire. 
 
 Will die without a groan : no pang avails to 
 wrest 
 
 Her young from where they hide — her sanctu- 
 ' ^ry breast. 
 
 What 's here then ? Answer me, thou dead one, 
 as, I trow. 
 
 Standing at God's own bar, he bids thee answer 
 ■ now! 
 
 Thrice crowned wast thou — each crown of 
 pride, a child — thy charge ! 
 
 Where are they ? Lost ? 'Enough': no need 
 that thou enlarge 
 
 On how or why the loss : life left to utter ' lost ' 
 
 Condemns itself beyond appeal. The soldier's 
 post 
 
 Guard's from the foe's attack the camp he senti- 
 nels: 
 
 That he no traitor proved, this and this only 
 tells — 
 
 Over the corpse of him trod foe to foe's success. 
 
 Yet -^ one by one thy crowns torn from thee — 
 thou no less 
 
 To scare the world; shame God, — livedst ! I 
 hold he saw 
 
 The unexampled sin, ordained the novel law. 
 
 Whereof first instrument was first intelligence 
 
 Found loyal here. I hold that, failing human 
 sense. 
 
 The very earth had oped, sky fallen, to efEace 
 
 Humanity's new wrong, motherhood's first dis- 
 grace. 
 
 Earth oped not, neither fell the sky, for prompt 
 was found 
 
 A man and man enough, head-sober and heart- 
 sound, 
 
 Ready to hear God's voice, resolute to obey. 
 
 Ivin Iv^novitch, I hold, has done, this day. 
 
 No otherwise than did, in ages long ago, 
 
 Moses when he made known the purport of that 
 flow 
 
 Of fire athwart the law's twain-tables ! I pro- 
 claim 
 
 Ivin Iv^novitoh God's servant ! " 
 
 At which name 
 Uprose that creepy whisper from out the crowd, 
 
 is wont. 
 To swell and surge and sink when fellow-men 
 
 confront 
 A punishment that falls on fellow flesh and 
 
 blood. 
 Appallingly beheld — shudderingly understood. 
 No less, to be the right, the just, the merciful. 
 " God's servant I " hissed the crowd. 
 
 When the Amen grew dull 
 And died away and left acquittal plain ad- 
 
 "Amen!" last sighed the lord. "There's 
 
 none shall say I grudged 
 Escape from punishment in such a novel case. 
 Deferring to old age and holy life, — be grace 
 Granted ! say I. No less, scruples might shake 
 
 a sense 
 Firmer than I boast mine. Law 's law, and 
 ' evidence ^ ■■' 
 
 Of breach therein lies plain, — blood-red-bright, 
 
 — all may see I 
 Yet all absolve the deed: absolved the deed 
 
 must be ! 
 
 "And next — as mercy rules the hour— me- 
 thinks 't were well 
 
 You signify forthwith its sentence, and dispel 
 
 The doubts and fears, I judge, which busy now 
 the head 
 
 Law puts a halter round — a halo — you, in- 
 stead ! 
 
 Ivkn Iv&novitch — what think you he expects 
 
 Will follow from his feat ? Go, tell him — law 
 protects 
 
 Murder, for once : no need he longer keep be- 
 hind 
 
 The Sacred Pictures — where skulks Innocence 
 enshrined. 
 
 Or I missay ! Go, some ! You others, haste 
 and lude 
 
 The dismal object there : get done, whate'er 
 betide ! " 
 
 So, while the youngers raised the corpse, the 
 
 elders trooped 
 Silently to the house : where halting, some one 
 
 stooped, 
 Listened beside the door ; all there was silent 
 
 too. 
 Then they held counsel ; then pushed door 
 
 and, passing through. 
 Stood in the murderer's presence. 
 
 Iv^n Iv^novitch 
 Knelt, building on the floor that Kremlin rare 
 
 and rich 
 He deftly cut and carved on lazy ■winter nights. 
 Some five young faces watched, breathlessly, as, 
 
 to rights, 
 Piece upon piece, he reared the fabric nigh 
 
 complete. 
 St^scha, Ivan's old mother, sat spinning by the 
 
 heat 
 Of the oven where his wife K^tia stood baking 
 
 bread. 
 IvJin's self, as he turned his honey-colored head. 
 Was just in act to drop, 'twixt fir-cones, —each 
 
 a dome, — 
 The scooped-out yellow gourd presumably the 
 
 home 
 Of Kolokol the Big : the bell, therein to hitch, 
 — An acorn-cup — was ready : Iv^n IvJinovitch 
 Turned -with it in his mouth. 
 
 They told him he was free 
 As air to walk abroad. " How other-wise ? " 
 asked he. 
 
NED BRATTS 
 
 887 
 
 TRAY 
 
 This poem describes an actual incident wit- 
 nessed in Paris by a friend of Browning's, and 
 with accuracy of detail. The poem was written 
 as a protest against vivisection, which the poet 
 called "an uifamous practice." He was early 
 associated with Miss Frances Power Cobbe in 
 her efforts to prevent vivisection ; and he was 
 a vice-president of the " Victoria Street So- 
 ciety foB the Protection of Animals." Dr. 
 Berdoe says, " He always expressed the utmost 
 abhorrence of the practices which it opposes." 
 To Miss Cobbe he wrote in 1874 : " You have 
 heard, ' I take an equal interest with yourself 
 in the effort to suppress vivisection.* I dare not 
 so honor my mere wishes and prayers as to put 
 them for a moment beside your noble acts ; but 
 this I know, I would rather submit to the worst 
 of deaths, so far as pain goes, than have a single 
 dog or cat tortured on the pretence of sparing 
 me a twinge or two." He goes even so far as 
 to say that the person not willing to sign the 
 petition against vivisection certainly could not 
 be numbered among his friends. To Miss Staok- 
 poole he wrote in April, 1883 : *' I despise and 
 abhor the ijleas on behalf of that infamous prac- 
 tice, vivisection." 6. W. Cooke. 
 
 Sing me a hero ! Quench my thirst 
 Of soul, ye bards ! 
 
 Quoth Bard the first : 
 " Sir Olaf , the good knight, did don 
 His helm and eke his habergeon "... 
 Sir Olaf and his bard ! 
 
 " That sin-scathed brow " (quoth Bard the sec- 
 ond), 
 
 " That eye wide ope as though Fate beck- 
 oned 
 
 My hero to some steep, beneath 
 
 Wiieh precipice smiled tempting death "... 
 
 You too without your host have reckoned ! 
 
 "A beggar-child " (let 's hear this third !) 
 " Sat on a quay's edge : like a bird 
 Sang to herself at careless plajr. 
 And fell into the stream. ' Dismay ! 
 Help, you the standers-by ! ' None stirred. 
 
 " Bystanders reason, think of wives 
 And children ere they risk their lives. 
 Over the balustrade has bounced 
 A mere instinctive dog, and pounced 
 Plumb on the prize. How well he dives I 
 
 " ' Up he comes with the child, see, tight 
 In mouth, alive too, clutched from quite 
 A depth of ten feet — twelve, I bet ! 
 Good dog ! What, off again ? There 's yet 
 Another child to save ? All right I 
 
 " How strange we saw no other fall ! 
 It 's instinct in the animal. 
 Good dog ! But he 's a long while under : 
 If he got drowned I should not wonder — 
 Strong current, that against the wall I 
 
 " ' Here he comes, holds in mouth this time 
 — What may the thing be? Well, that 's 
 
 Srime f 
 id you ever ? Reason reigns 
 In man alone, since all Tray's pains 
 Have fished — the child's doll from the slime ! ' 
 
 ^^ And so, amid the laughter gay, 
 Trotted my hero off, — old Tray, — 
 Till somebody, prerogatived 
 With reason, reasoned : ' Why he dived, 
 His brain would show us, I should say. 
 
 " ' John, go and catch — or, if needs be, 
 
 Purchase — that animal for me ! 
 
 By vivisection, at expense 
 
 Of half-an-hour and eighteenpence. 
 
 How brain secretes dog's soul, we '11 see 1 ' " 
 
 NED BRATTS 
 
 Written from memory of Bunyan's story of 
 old Tod in The Life and Death of Mr. Badman. 
 
 'TwAS Bedford Special Assize, one daft Mid- 
 summer's Day : 
 A broiling blasting June, — was never its like, 
 
 men say. 
 Com stood sheaf-ripe already, and trees looked 
 
 yellow as that ; 
 Ponds drained dust-dry, the cattle lay foaming 
 
 around each flat. 
 Inside town, dogs went mad, and folk kept 
 
 bibbing beer. 
 While the parsons prayed for rain. 'T was 
 
 horrible, yes — but queer : 
 Queer — for the sun laughed gay, yet nobody 
 
 moved a hand 
 To work one stroke at his trade: as ^ven to 
 
 understand 
 That all was come to a stop, work and such 
 
 worldly ways. 
 And the world's old self about to end in a merry 
 
 Midsummer's day moreover was the first of 
 Bedford Fab; , , ^ ., 
 
 With Bedford Town's tag-rag and bobtail 
 a-bowsing there. 
 
 But the Court House, Quality crammed : 
 through doors ope, windows wide. 
 
 High on the Bench you saw sit Lordships side 
 Ijy side. 
 
 There frowned Chief Justice Jukes, fumed 
 learned Brother Small, 
 
 And fretted their feUow Judge : like threshers, 
 one and all. 
 
 Of a reek with laying down the law m a furnace. 
 Why? 
 
 Because their lungs breathed flame —the regu- 
 lar crowd forbye — 
 
888 
 
 DRAMATIC IDYLS 
 
 From gentry pouring in — quite a nosegay, to be 
 sure ! 
 
 How else eould they pass the time, six mortal 
 hours endure 
 
 Till night should extinguish day, when matters 
 might haply mend ? 
 
 Meanwhile no bad resource was — watching be- 
 gin and end 
 
 Some trial for life and death, in a brisk five 
 minutes' space, 
 
 And betting which knave would 'scape, which 
 bang, from his sort of face. 
 
 So, their Lordships toiled and moiled, and a, 
 
 deal of work was done 
 (I warrant) to justify the mirth of the crazy sun. 
 As this and t' other lout, struck dumb at the 
 
 sudden show 
 Of red robes and white wigs, boggled nor 
 
 answered " Boh ! " 
 When asked why he, Tom Styles, should not — 
 
 because Jack Nokes 
 Had stolen the horse — be hanged : for Judges 
 
 must have their jokes. 
 And louts must make allowance — let 's say, 
 
 for some blue fly 
 Which punctured a dewy scalp where the 
 
 frizzles stuck awry — 
 Else Tom had fleered scot-free, so nearly over 
 
 and done 
 Was the main of the job. Full-mieasure, the 
 
 gentles enjoyed their fun. 
 As a twenty-five were tried, rank puritans 
 
 caught at prayer 
 In a cow-house and laid by the heels, — have at 
 
 'em, devil may care ! — 
 And ten were prescribed the "whip, and ten a 
 
 brand on the cheek. 
 And five a slit of the nose — just leaving enough 
 
 to tweak. 
 
 Well, things at jolly high-tide, amusement 
 
 steeped in fire. 
 While noon smote fierce the roof's red tiles to 
 
 heart's desire. 
 The Court a-simmer with smoke, one ferment 
 
 of oozy fiesh. 
 One spirituous bumming musk mount-mounting 
 
 until its mesh 
 Entoiled all heads in a fluster, and Serjeant 
 
 Postlethwayte 
 — Dashing the wig oblique as he mopped his 
 
 oily pate — 
 Cried '* Silence, or I grow grease ! No loophole 
 
 lets in air ? 
 Jurymen, — Guilty, Death ! Gainsay me if 
 
 you dare ! " 
 ^-Things at this pitch, I say, — what hubbub 
 
 without the doors ? 
 What laughs, shrieks, hoots and yells, what 
 
 rudest of uproars ? 
 
 Bounce through the barrier throng a bulk comes 
 
 roUins; vast ! 
 Thumps, kicks, — no manner of use I — spite of 
 
 them rolls at last 
 Into the midst a ball, which, bursting, brings 
 
 to view 
 
 Publican Black Ned Bratts and Tabby his big 
 
 wife too : 
 Both in a muck-sweat, both . . . were never 
 
 such eyes uplift 
 At the sight of yawning hell, such nostrils — 
 
 snouts that sniffed 
 Sulphur, such mouths agape ready to swallow 
 
 flame! 
 Horrified, hideous, frank fiend-faces ! yet, all 
 
 the same. 
 Mixed with a certain . . . eh ? how shall I dare 
 
 style — mirth 
 The desperate grin of the guess that, could they 
 
 break from earth. 
 Heaven was above, and hell might rage in 
 
 impotence 
 Below the saved, the saved ! 
 
 '* Confound you ! (no offence !) 
 
 Out of our way, — push, wife ! Yonder their 
 Worships be ! " 
 
 Ned Bratts has reached the bar, and "Hey, 
 my Lords," roais he, 
 
 " A Jury of life and death. Judges the prime 
 of the land. 
 
 Constables, javelineers, — all met, if I under- 
 stand. 
 
 To decide so knotty a point as whether 't was 
 Jack or Joan 
 
 Robbed the henroost, pinched the pig, hit the 
 King's Arms with a stone. 
 
 Dropped the baby down the well, left the 
 tithesman in the lurch. 
 
 Or, three whole Sundays running, not once 
 attended church ! 
 
 What a pother — do these deserve the parish- 
 stocks or whip. 
 
 More or less brow to brand, much or little nose 
 to snip, — 
 
 When, in our Public, plain stand we — that 's 
 we stand here 
 
 I and my Tab, brass-bold, brick-built of beef 
 and beer, 
 
 — Do not we, slut ? Step forth and show your 
 
 beauty, jade ! 
 Wife of my bosom — that 's the word now! 
 
 What a trade 
 We drove ! None said us nay : nobody loved 
 
 his life 
 So little as wag a tongue against us, — did they, 
 
 wife ? 
 Yet they knew us all the while, in their hearts, 
 
 for what we are 
 
 — Woi-st couple, rogue and quean, unhanged — 
 
 search near and far ! 
 Eh, Tab ? The peddler, now — o'er his noggin 
 
 — who warned a mate 
 To cut and run, uor risk his pack where its loss 
 
 of weight 
 Was the least to dread, — aha, how we two 
 
 laughed *-good 
 As, stealing round the midden, he came on 
 
 where I stood 
 With billet poised and raised, — you, ready vrith 
 
 the rope, — 
 Ah, but that 's past, that 's sin repented of, wo 
 
 hope! 
 
NED BRATTS 
 
 Men knew us for that same, yet safe and sound 
 
 stood we I 
 The lily-livered knaves knew too (I 've balked 
 
 ad ) 
 
 Our keeping the ' Pied Bull ' was just a mere 
 
 pretence : 
 Too slow the pounds make food, driuk, lodging, 
 
 from out the pence ! 
 There 's not a stoppage to travel has chanced, 
 
 this ten long year. 
 No break into haU or grange, no lifting of nag 
 
 or steer, 
 Not a single roguery, from the clipping of a 
 
 purse 
 To the cutting of a throat, but paid us toll. 
 
 Od's curse ! 
 When Gypsy Smouch made bold to cheat us of 
 
 our due, 
 — ^Eh, Tab ? the Squire's strong-box we helped 
 
 the rascal to — 
 I think he pulled a face, next Sessions' swinging- 
 time ! 
 He danced the jig that needs no floor, — and, 
 
 here 's the prime, 
 'Twas Scroggs that houghed the mare ! Ay, 
 
 those were busy days I 
 
 " Well, there we flourished brave, like scrip- 
 ture-trees called bays, 
 
 Faring high, drinking hard, in money up to head 
 
 — Not to say, boots and shoes, when . . . 
 Zounds, I nearly said — 
 
 Lord, to unlearn one s language ! How shall 
 we labor, wife ? 
 
 Have you, fast hold, the Book ? Grasp, grip it, 
 for your life ! 
 
 See, sirs, here 's life, salvation I Here 's — 
 hold but out my breath -^ 
 
 When did I speak so long without once swear- 
 
 ^ns'- 
 
 Sdeath, 
 
 No, nor nnhelped by ale since man and boy I 
 
 And yet 
 All yesterday I had to keep my whistle wet 
 Wliile reading Tab this Book : book ? don't 
 
 say ' book ' — they 're plays. 
 Songs, ballads, and the like : here 's no such 
 
 strawy blaze. 
 But sky wide ope, sun, moon, and seven stars 
 
 out full-flare ! 
 Tab, help and tell ! I 'm hoarse. A mug ! or 
 
 — no, a prayer ! 
 Dip for one out of the Book ! Who wrote it in 
 
 the Jail 
 — He plied his pen unhelped by beer, sirs, I '11 
 
 be bail ! 
 
 " I 've got my second wind. In trundles she — 
 
 that 's Tab. 
 ' Why, Gammer, what 's come now, that — 
 
 bobbing like a crab 
 On Yule-tide bowl — your head 's a-work and 
 
 both your eyes 
 Break loose? Afeard, you fool? As if the 
 
 dead can rise ! 
 Say — Bagman Dick was found last May with 
 
 fuddling-oap 
 Stuffed in his mouth : to choke 'a a natural 
 
 mishap ! ' 
 
 ^ 889 
 
 ' Gaffer, be — blessed,' cries she, ' and Bagman 
 
 Dick as weL ! 
 I, you, and he are damned : this Public is our 
 
 We live in fire : live coals don't feel 1 — once 
 
 quenched, they learn — 
 Cinders do, to what dust they moulder wMle 
 
 they burn ! ' 
 
 " ' If you don't speak straight out, ' says I — 
 
 belike I swore — 
 ' A knobstick, well you know the taste of, shall, 
 
 once more. 
 Teach you to talk, my maid ! ' She ups with 
 
 such a face. 
 Heart sunk inside me. ' Well, pad on, my 
 
 prate-apace ! ' 
 
 *' ' I 've been about those laces we need for , , , 
 
 never mind I 
 If henceforth they tie hands, 't is mine they '11 
 
 have to bind. 
 You know who makes them best — the Tinker 
 
 in our cage, 
 Pulled-up for gospelling, twelve years ago : no 
 
 age 
 To try another trade, — yet, so he scorned to 
 
 take 
 Money he did not earn, he taught himself the 
 
 make 
 Of laces, tagged and tough — Dick Bagman 
 
 found them so ! 
 Good customers were we 1 Well, last week, 
 
 you must know. 
 His girl, — the blind young chit, who hawks 
 
 about his wares, — 
 She takes it in her neEid to come no more — 
 
 such airs 
 These hussies have ! Yet, since we need •>. 
 
 stoutish lace, — 
 " I '11 to the jail-bird father, abuse her to his 
 
 face ! " 
 So, first I filled a jug to give me heart, and then, 
 Primed to the proper pitch, I posted to their 
 
 den — 
 Patmore, they style their prison ! I tip the 
 
 turnkey, catch 
 My heart up, fix my face, and fearless lift the 
 
 latch — 
 Both arms akimbo, in bounce with a good 
 
 round oath 
 Ready for rapping out : no " Lawks " nor " By 
 
 my troth ! " 
 
 " ' There sat my man, the father. He looked 
 
 up : what one feels 
 When heart that leapt to mouth drops down 
 
 again to heels ! 
 He raised his hand . . . Hast seen, when 
 
 drinking out the night, 
 And in, the day, earth grow another something 
 
 quite 
 Under the sun's first stare ? I stood a very stone. 
 
 (a fiery tear he put in every 
 
 How should my child frequent your house 
 where lust is sport, 
 
 " ' " Woman ! 
 tone), 
 
890 
 
 DRAMATIC IDYLS 
 
 Violence — trade ? Too true ! I trust no vague 
 
 report. 
 Her angel's hand, which stops the sight of sin, 
 
 leaves clear 
 The other gate of sense, lets outrage through 
 
 the ear. 
 What has she heard ! — which, heard shall 
 
 never be again. 
 Better lack food than feast, a Dives in the — 
 
 wain 
 Or reign or train — of Charles ! " (His language 
 
 was not ours : 
 'T is my belief, God spoke : no tinker has such 
 
 powei-s.) 
 " Bread, only bread they bring — my laces: if 
 
 we broke 
 Your lump of leavened sin, the loaf's first 
 
 crumb would choke ! " 
 
 " ' Down on my marrow-bones ! Then all at 
 
 once rose he : 
 His brown hair burst a-spread, his eyes were 
 
 suns to see : 
 Up went his hands : " Through flesh, I reach, 
 
 1 read thy soul ! 
 So may some stricken tree look blasted, bough 
 
 and bole, 
 Champed by the fire-tooth, charred without, 
 
 and yet, thrice-bound 
 With dreriment about, within may life be found, 
 A prisoned power to branch and blossom as be- 
 fore. 
 Could but the gardener cleave the cloister, 
 
 reach the core. 
 Loosen the vital sap : yet where shall help be 
 
 found ? 
 Who says ' How save it ? ' — nor ' Why cumbers 
 
 it the ground ? ' 
 Woman, that tree art thou ! All sloughed 
 
 about with scurf. 
 Thy stag-horns fright the sky, thy snake-roots 
 
 sting the turf ! 
 Drunkenness, wantonness, theft, murder gnash 
 
 and gnarl 
 Thine outward, case thy soul with coating like 
 
 the marie 
 Batan stamps flat upon each head beneath his 
 
 hoof ! 
 And how deliver such ? The strong men keep 
 
 aloof. 
 Lover and friend stand far, the mocking ones 
 
 pass by, 
 Tophet gapes wide for prey : lost soul, despair 
 
 and die ! 
 What then ? ' Look unto me and be ye saved ! ' 
 
 saith God ; 
 ' I strike the rock, outstreats the life-stream at 
 
 my rod ! ^ 
 Be your sins scarlet, wool shall they seem like, 
 
 _ — althongh 
 As crimson red, yet turn white as the driven 
 
 ^ ' There, there, there ! All I seem to some- 
 how understand 
 
 * They did not eat 
 "His flesli, nor suck those oils which thence outstreat, 
 Donne's Progress of the Soul^ line 344. 
 
 Is — that, if I reached home, 't was through the 
 
 guiding hand 
 Of his blind girl which led and led me through 
 
 the streets .^^ 
 
 And out of town and up to door again. What 
 
 greets , 
 
 First thing my eye, as limbs recover from theip 
 
 swoon ? 
 A book — this Book she gave at parting. 
 
 "Father's boon — 
 The Book he wrote : it reads as if he spoke 
 
 himself : 
 He cannot preach in bonds, so, — take it down 
 
 from shelf 
 When you want counsel, — think you hear his 
 
 very voice ! 
 
 " ' Wicked dear Husband, first despair and 
 then rejoice ! 
 
 Dear wicked Husband, waste no tick of moment 
 more. 
 
 Be saved like me, bald trunk ! There 's green- 
 ness yet at core. 
 
 Sap under slough ! Read, read ! ' 
 
 " Let me take breath, my lords ! 
 I 'd like to know, are these — hers, mine, or 
 
 Bunyan's words ? 
 I 'm 'wildered — scarce with drink, — nowise 
 
 with drink alone ! 
 You '11 say, with heat : but heat 's no stuff to 
 
 split a stone 
 Like this black bonlder — this flint heart of 
 
 mine ; the Book — 
 That dealt the crashing blow ! Sirs, here 's 
 
 the fist that shook 
 His beard till Wrestler Jem howled like a just- 
 lugged bear ! 
 You had brained me with a feather : at once I 
 
 grew aware 
 Christmas was meant for me. A burden at 
 
 your back. 
 Good Master Christmas ? Nay, — yours was 
 
 that Joseph's sack, 
 — Or whose it was, — which held the cup, — 
 
 compared with mine ! 
 Robbery loads my loins, perjury cracks my chine. 
 Adultery . . . nay. Tab, you pitched me as I 
 
 flung! 
 One word, I '11 np with fist . . . No, sweet 
 
 spouse, hold your tongue ! 
 
 "I 'm hasting to the end. The Book, sirs — 
 
 take and read ! 
 You have my history in a nutshell, — ay, indeed 1 
 It must off, my burden! See, — slack straps 
 
 and into pit. 
 Roll, reach the bottom, rest, rot there — a 
 
 plague on it ! 
 For a mountain 's sure to fall and bury Bedford 
 
 Town, 
 ' Destruction ' — that 's the name, and fire shall 
 
 burn it down ! 
 Oh, 'scape the wrath in time ! Time 's now, if 
 
 not too late. 
 How can I pilgrimage up to the wicket-gate ? 
 Next comes Despond the slough: not that I 
 
 fear to pull 
 
NED BRATTS 
 
 891 
 
 Thrpugfh mud, and dry my clothes at brave 
 
 House iieautiful — 
 But it 's late in the day, I reckon : had I left 
 
 yeai-s ago 
 Town, wife, and children dear . . . Well, 
 
 Christmas did, you know ! — 
 Soon I had met in the valley and tried my cud- 
 gel's strength 
 On the enemy horned and winged, a-straddle 
 
 across its length ! 
 Have at his horns, thwiok — thwack : they 
 
 snap, see ! Hoof and hoof — 
 Bang, break the fetlock-bones ! For love's 
 
 sake, keep aloof 
 Angels I I 'm man and match, — this cudgel 
 
 for my flail, — 
 To thresh him, hoofs and horns, bat's wing and 
 
 serpent's tail ! 
 A chance gone by ! But then, what else does 
 
 Hopeful ding 
 Into the deafest ear except — hope, hope 's the 
 
 thing? 
 Too late i' the day for me to thrid the wind- 
 ings: but 
 There 's still a way to win the race by death's 
 
 short cut ! 
 Did Master Faithful need climb the Delightful 
 
 Mounts ? 
 No, straight to Vanity Fair, — a fair, by all ac- 
 counts. 
 Such as is held outside, — lords, ladies, grand 
 
 and gay, — 
 Says he in the face of them, just what you hear 
 
 me say. 
 And the Judges brought him in guilty, and 
 
 brought him out 
 To die in the market-place — St. Peter's Green 's 
 
 about 
 The same thing : there they flogged, flayed, 
 
 buffeted, lanced with knives. 
 Pricked him with swords, — I '11 swear, he 'd 
 
 full a cat's nine lives, — 
 So to his end at last came Faithful, — ha, ha, he ! 
 Who holds the highest card ? for there stands 
 
 hid, you see. 
 Behind the rabble-rout, a chariot, pair and all : 
 He 's in, he 's off, he 's up, through clouds, at 
 
 trumpet-call. 
 Carried the nearest way to Heaven-gate ! Odds 
 
 my life — 
 Has nobody a sword to spare ? not even a knife ? 
 Then hang me, draw and quarter! Tab — do 
 
 the same by her ! 
 Master Worldly-Wiseman . . . that 's Master 
 
 Interpreter, 
 Take the will, not the deed ! Our gibbet 's 
 
 handy, close ; 
 Forestall Last Jndgment-Day ! Be kindly, not 
 
 morose ! 
 There wants no earthly judge-and-jurying : here 
 
 we stand — 
 Sentence our guilty selves : so, hang us out of 
 
 hand ! 
 Make haste for pity's sake ! A single moment's 
 
 loss 
 Means — Satan 's lord once more : his whisper 
 
 shoots across 
 All singing in my heart, all praying in my brain, 
 
 ' It comes of heat and beer ! ' — hark how he 
 
 guffaws plain I 
 ' To-morrow you '11 wake bright, and, in a safe 
 
 skin, hug 
 Your sound selves, Tab and you, over a foain- 
 
 ing jug ! 
 You 've had such qualms before, time out of 
 
 mind ! ' He *s right ! 
 Did not we kick and cuff and curse away, that 
 
 night 
 When home we blindly reeled, and left poor 
 
 humpback Joe 
 I' the lurch to pay for what . . . somebody 
 
 did, you know I 
 Both of us maundered then, * Lame humpback, 
 
 — never more 
 Will he come limping, drain his tankard at our 
 
 door ! 
 He 'U swing, while — somebody ' . . . Says Tab, 
 
 ' No, for I '11 peach ! ' 
 ' I 'm for you. Tab,' cries I, ' there 's rope 
 
 enough for each ! ' 
 So blubbered we, and bussed, and went to bed 
 
 upon 
 The grace of Tab's good thought : by morning, 
 
 all was gone ! 
 We laughed — ' What 's life to him, a cripple 
 
 of no account ? ' 
 Oh, waves increase around — I feel them mount 
 
 and mount ! 
 Hang us ! To-morrow brings Tom Bearward 
 
 with his bears : 
 One new black-muzzled brute beats Sackerson, 
 
 he swears : 
 (Sackerson, for my money !) And, baiting o'er, 
 
 the Brawl 
 They lead on Turner's Patch, — lads, lasses, up 
 
 tails all, — 
 I 'm i' the thick o' the throng ! That means 
 
 the Iron Cage, 
 — Means the Lost Man inside ! Where 's hope 
 
 for such as wage 
 War against light ? Light '3 left, light 's here, 
 
 I hold light still. 
 So does Tab — make but haste to hang us both ! 
 
 You will?" 
 
 I promise, when he stopped you might have 
 
 heard a mouse 
 Squeak, such a death-like hush sealed up the 
 
 old Mote House. 
 But when the mass of man sank meek upon his 
 
 knees, 
 While Tab, alongside, wheezed a hoarse " Do 
 
 hang us, please ! " 
 Why, then the waters rose, no eye but ran with 
 
 tears. 
 Hearts heaved, heads thnmped, until, paying 
 
 all past arrears 
 Of pity and sorrow, at last a regular scream 
 
 outbroke 
 Of triumph, joy, and praise. 
 
 My Lord Chief Justice spoke, 
 First mopping brow and cheek, where still, for 
 
 one that budged. 
 Another bead broke fresh : " What Judge, that 
 
 ever judged 
 
892 
 
 DRAMATIC IDYLS 
 
 Since first the world began, judged such a case 
 as this ? 
 
 Why, Master Bratis, long since, folks smelt 
 you out, I wis ! 
 
 I had my doubts, i' faith, each time you played 
 the fox 
 
 Convicting, geese of crime' in yonder witness- 
 box — 
 
 Yea, much did I misdoubt, the thief that stole 
 her eggs 
 
 Was hardly goosey's self at Beynard's game, i' 
 
 Yet thus much was to praise — you spoke to 
 
 point, direct — 
 Swore you heard, saw the theft : no jury could 
 
 suspect — 
 Dared to suspect, — I 'U say, — a spot in white 
 
 so clear : 
 Goosey was throttled, true : but thereof godly 
 
 fear 
 Came -of example set, much as our laws in- 
 tend ; 
 And, though a fox confessed, you proved the 
 
 Judge's friend. 
 What if I had my doubts? Suppose I gave 
 
 them breath. 
 Brought you to bar: what work to do, ere 
 
 'Guilty, Death' 
 Had paid our pains ! What heaps of witnesses 
 
 to drag 
 From holes and comers, paid from out the 
 
 County's bag ! 
 Trial three dog-days longl Amicus Curice — 
 
 that 's 
 Your title, no dispute — truth-telling Master 
 
 Bratts I 
 Thank you, too, Mistress Tab ! Why doubt 
 
 one word you say ? 
 Hanging you both deserve, hanged both shall 
 
 be this day ! 
 The tinker needs must be a proper man. I 've 
 
 heard 
 
 He lies in Jail long since: if Quality's good 
 
 word 
 Warrants me letting loose, — some householder, 
 
 I mean — 
 Freeholder, better still, — I don't say but — 
 
 Now and next Sessions . . . WeU I Consider 
 
 of his case, 
 I promise to, at least: we owe him so much 
 
 grace. 
 Not that — no, God forbid ! — I lean to think, 
 
 as you. 
 The grace that such repent is any jail-bird's due : 
 I rather see the fruit of twelve years' pious 
 
 reign — 
 Astraea Bedux, Charles restored his rights 
 
 again I 
 — Of which, another time ! I somehow feel a 
 
 peace 
 Stealing across the world. May deeds like 
 
 tnis< increase 1 
 So, Master Sheriff, stay that sentence I pro- 
 nounced 
 On those two dozen odd : deserving to be 
 
 trounced 
 Soundly, and yet . . . well, well, at all events 
 
 dispatch 
 This pair of — shall I say, sinner-saints ? — ere 
 
 we catch 
 Their jail-distemper too. Stop tears, or I '11 in- 
 dite 
 All weeping Bedfordshire for turning Bunyan- 
 
 itel'^ 
 
 So, forms were galloped through. If Justice, 
 
 on the spur. 
 Proved somewhat expeditious, would QuaUty 
 
 demur? 
 And happily hanged were they, — why lengthen 
 
 out my tale ? — 
 Where Bunyan's Statue stands facing where 
 
 stood his Jail. 
 
 SECOND SERIES 
 
 " You are sick, that 's sure," — they say} 
 
 " Sick of what ? '' — they disagree. 
 " 'T is the brain," —thinks Doctor A; 
 " 'T is the heart," — holds Doctor B i 
 " The liver — my life I 'd lay ! " 
 " The lungs ! '' " The lights ! " 
 
 Ah mel 
 So ignorant of man's whole 
 Of bodily organs plain to see — 
 So sage and certam, frank and free, 
 About what 's under lock and key — 
 Man's soul I 
 
 ECHETLOS 
 
 Hebe is a story, shall stir you ! Stand up, 
 Greeks dead and gone. 
 
 Who breasted, beat Barbarians, stemmed Per- 
 sia rolling on, 
 
 Did the deed and saved the world, for the day 
 wa** Marathon ^ 
 
 No man but did his manliest, kept rank and 
 fought away 
 
 In his tribe and file: up, back, out, down— 
 was the spear-arm play : 
 
 Like a wind-whipt branchy wood, all spear- 
 arms arswing that day I 
 
CLIVE 
 
 But one man kept no rank, and his sole arm 
 
 plied no spear, 
 As a flashing: came and went, and a form i' the 
 
 van, the rear. 
 Brightened the battle np, for he blazed now 
 
 there, now here. 
 
 Nor helmed nor shielded, he ! but, a goat-skin 
 
 all his wear. 
 Like a tiller of the soil, with a clown's limbs 
 
 broad and bare. 
 Went he ploughing on and on : he pushed with 
 
 a ploughman's share. 
 
 Did the weak mid-line give way, as tunnies on 
 
 whom the shark 
 Precipitates his bulk ? Did the right-wing 
 
 halt when, stark 
 On his heap of slain lay stretched Kallimachoa 
 
 Polemarch ? 
 
 Did the steady phalanx falter ? To the rescue, 
 
 at the need. 
 The down was ploughing Persia, clearing 
 
 Greek earth of weed. 
 As he routed through the Sakian and rooted np 
 
 the Mede. 
 
 But the deed done, battle won, — nowhere to 
 
 be descried 
 On the meadow, by the stream, at the marsh, 
 
 — look far and wide 
 From the foot of the mountain, no, to the last 
 
 blood-plashed sea-side, — 
 
 Not anywhere on view blazed the large limbs 
 
 thonged and brown, 
 Shearing and clearing still with the share 
 
 before which — down 
 To the dust went Persia's pomp, as he ploughed 
 
 for Greece, that clown ! 
 
 How spake the Oracle ? " Care for no name 
 
 at all ! 
 Say but just this : ' We praise one helpful 
 
 whom we call 
 The Holder of the Ploughshare.' The great 
 
 deed ne'er grows small," 
 
 Not the great name ! Sing 
 
 great name Miltiad^s 
 And its end at Paros isle I 
 
 tokles 
 
 a Sardis court t Name not the 
 
 clown like these ! 
 
 woe for the 
 Woe for Themis- 
 
 CLIVE 
 
 Browning had this story from Mrs, Jameson 
 as early as 1846, she in turn having just heard 
 Macaulay tell it. Browning's own narrative 
 preceded Olive's death by a week only, 
 
 I AND Clive were friends — and why not ? 
 Friends I I think yon Uingh, my lad. 
 
 893 
 
 Clive it was gave England India, while your 
 
 father gives — egad, 
 England nothing but the graceless boy who 
 
 lures him on to ameak — 
 " Well, Sir, you and Clive were comrades — " 
 
 with a tongue thrust in your cheek I 
 Very true : in my eyes, your eyes, all the 
 
 world's eyes, Clive was man, 
 I waa, am, and ever shall be — mouse, nay, 
 
 mouse of all its clan 
 Sorriest sample, if you take the kitchen's esti- 
 mate for fame ; 
 While the man Clive — he fought Plassy, 
 
 spoiled the clever foreign game. 
 Conquered and annexed and Englished ! 
 
 Never mind ! As o'er my punch 
 (You away) I sit of evenings, — silence, save for 
 
 biscuit crunch. 
 Black, unbroken, — thought grows busy, thrids 
 
 each pathway of old years. 
 Notes this forthright, that meander, till the 
 
 long-past life appears 
 Like an outspread map of country plodded 
 
 through, each mile and rood, 
 Once, and well remembered still, — I 'm star- 
 tled in my solitude 
 Ever and anon by — what 's the sudden mock' 
 
 ing light that breaks 
 On me as I slap the table till no rummer-glass 
 
 but shakes 
 While I ask— aloud, I do believe, God help 
 
 me! — "Was it thus? 
 Can it be that so I faltered, stopped when just 
 
 one step for us — " 
 (Us, —you were not bom, I grant, but surely 
 
 some day bom would be) 
 " — One bold step had gained a province'' 
 
 (figurative talk, you see) 
 "Got no end of wealth and honor, — yet I 
 
 stood stock-still no less ? " 
 — " For I was not Clive," you comment : but it 
 
 needs no Olive to guess 
 Wealth were handy, honor ticklish, did no 
 
 writing on the wall 
 Warn me " Trespasser, 'ware man-traps 1 " 
 
 Him who braves that notice — call 
 Hero ! none of such heroics suit myself who 
 
 read plain words. 
 Doff my hat, and leap no barrier. Scripture 
 
 says, the land 's the Lord's : 
 Louts then — what avail the thousand, noisy 
 
 in a smock-frocked ring. 
 All-agog to have me trespass, clear the fence, 
 
 be Clive their king ? 
 Higher warrant must you show me ere I set one 
 
 foot before 
 T' other in that dark direction, though I stand 
 
 forevermore 
 Poor as Job and meek as Moses. Evermore ? 
 
 No 1 By and by 
 Job grows rich and Moses valiant, Clive turns 
 
 out less wise than I. 
 Don't object "Why call him friend, then?" 
 
 Power is power, my boy, and still 
 Marks a man, — God's gift magnific, exercised 
 
 for good or ill. 
 
DRAMATIC IDYLS 
 
 Yon 've your boot now on my hearth-rug, 
 
 tread what was a tiger's skin ; 
 Rarely such a royal monster as I lodged the 
 
 bullet in ! 
 True, he murdered half a village, so his own 
 
 death came to pass ; 
 Still, for size and beauty, cunning, courage — 
 
 ah, the brute he was ! 
 Why, that Clive, — that youth, that greenhorn, 
 
 that quiU-driving clerk, in fine, — 
 He sustained a siege in Arcot . . . But the 
 
 world knows ! Pass the wine. 
 
 Where did I break off at ? How bring Clive 
 in ? Oh, you mentioned " fear " ! 
 
 Just so : and, said I, that minds me of a story 
 you shall hear. 
 
 We were friends then, Clive and I : so, when 
 the clouds, about the orb 
 
 Late supreme, encroaching slowly, surely, 
 threatened to absorb 
 
 Ray by ray its noontide brilliance, — friendship 
 might, with steadier eye 
 
 Drawing near, bear what had burned else, now 
 no blaze — all majesty. 
 
 Too much bee's-wing floats my figure ? Well, 
 suppose a castle 's new : 
 
 None presume to climb its ramparts, none find 
 foothold sure for shoe 
 
 'Twixt those squares and squares of granite 
 plating the impervious pile 
 
 As his scale-mail's warty iron cuirasses a croco- 
 dile. 
 
 Reels that castle thimder-smitten, storm-dis- 
 mantled ? From without 
 
 Scrambling up by crack and crevice, every 
 cockney prates about 
 
 Towers — the heap he kicks now ! turrets — 
 just the measure of his cane ! 
 
 Will that do ? Observe moreover — (same si- 
 militude again) — 
 
 Such a castle seldom crumbles by sheer stress 
 of cannonade : 
 
 'T is when foes are foiled and fighting 's fin- 
 ished that vile rains invade. 
 
 Grass o'ergrows, o'ergrows till night-birds con- 
 gregating find no holes 
 
 Fit to build in like the topmost sockets made 
 for banner-poles. 
 
 So Clive crumbled slow in London, crashed at 
 last. 
 
 A week before, 
 Dining with him, — after trying churchyard 
 
 chat of days of yore, — 
 Both of us stopped, tired as tombstones, head- 
 piece, foot-piece, when they lean 
 Each to other, drowsed in fog-smoke, o'er a 
 
 coffined Past between. 
 As I saw his head sink heavy, guessed the soul's 
 
 extinguishment 
 By the glazing eyeball, noticed how the furtive 
 
 fingers went 
 Where a drug-box skulked behind the honest 
 
 liquor, — " One more throw 
 Try for Clive ! " thought I : " Let 's venture 
 
 some good rattling question I " So — 
 
 "Come Clive, tell us"— out I blurted — 
 " what to tell in turn, years hence. 
 
 When my boy — suppose I have one — asks me 
 on what evidence 
 
 I maintain my friend of Plassy proved a war- 
 rior every whit 
 
 Worth your Alexanders, Caesars, Marlboroughs 
 and — what said Pitt ? — 
 
 Frederick the Fierce himseU ! Clive told me 
 once " — I want to say — 
 
 ' ■ Which feat out of all those famous doings bore 
 the bell away 
 
 — In his own calm estimation, mark you, not 
 the mob's rough guess — 
 
 Which stood foremost as evincing what Clive 
 called courageousness ! 
 
 Come ! what moment of the minute, what 
 speck-centre in the wide 
 
 Circle of the action saw your mortal fairly dei- 
 fied? 
 
 (Let alone that filthy sleep-stuff, swallow bold 
 this wholesome Port !) 
 
 If a friend has leave to question, — when were 
 you most brave, in short? " 
 
 Up he arched his brows o' the instant- — for- 
 midably Clive again. 
 
 " When was I most brave ? I 'd answer, were 
 the instance half as plain 
 
 As another instance that 's a brain-lodged crys- 
 tal — curse it ! — here 
 
 Freezing when my memory touches — ugh! — 
 the time I felt most fear. 
 
 Ugh ! I cannot say for certain if I showed fear 
 — anyhow. 
 
 Fear I felt, and, very likely, shuddered, since 
 I shiver now." 
 
 " Fear ! " smiled I. " Well, that 's the rarer : 
 
 that 's a specimen to seek. 
 Ticket up in one's museum, Mind-Freaks, Lord 
 
 Clivers Fear, Unigue ! " 
 
 Down his brows dropped. On the table pain- 
 fully he pored as though 
 
 Tracing, in the stains and streaks there, 
 thoughts encrusted long ago. 
 
 When he spoke 't was like a lawyer reading 
 word by word some will. 
 
 Some blind jungle of a statement, — beating on 
 and on until 
 
 Out there leaps fierce life to fight with. 
 
 " This fell in my factor-days. 
 Desk-drudge, slaving at Saint David's, one 
 
 must game, or drink, or craze. 
 I chose gaming : and, — because your high- 
 flown gamesters hardly take 
 Umbrage at a factor's elbow if the factor pays 
 
 his stake, — 
 I was winked at in a circle where the company 
 
 was choice. 
 Captain This and Major That, men high of 
 
 color, loud of voice. 
 Yet indulgent, condescending to the modest 
 
 juvenile 
 Who not merely risked but lost his hard-earned 
 
 guineas with a smile. 
 
CLIVE 
 
 895 
 
 " Down I sat to cards, one evening, — had for 
 
 my antagonist 
 Somebody whose name 's a secret — you '11 know 
 
 why — so, if you list. 
 Call him Cook o' the Walk, my scarlet son of 
 
 Mars from head to heel ! 
 Play commenced : and, whether Cocky fancied 
 
 that a clerk must feel 
 Quite sufficient honor came of bending over one 
 
 green baize, 
 I the scribe with him the warrior, guessed no 
 
 penman dared to raise 
 Shadow of objection should the honor stay but 
 
 playing end 
 More or less abruptly, — whether disinclined he 
 
 grew to spend 
 Practice strictly scientific on a booby bom to 
 
 stare 
 At — not ask of — la«e-and-ruffles if the hand 
 
 they hide plays fair, — 
 Anyhow, I marked a movement when he bade 
 
 me ' Out ! ' 
 
 " I rose. 
 'Such the new manoBuvre, Captain? I'm a 
 
 novice : knowledge grows. 
 What, you force a card, you cheat. Sir ? ' 
 
 " Never did a thunder-clap 
 Cause emotion, startle Thyrsis looked with 
 
 Chloe in his lap. 
 As my word and gesture (down I flung my 
 
 cards to join the pack) 
 Fired the man of arms, whose visage, simply 
 
 red before, turned black. 
 
 When he found his voice, he stammered ' That 
 expression once again ! ' 
 
 " ' Well, you forced a card and cheated ! ' 
 
 " ' Possibly a factor's brain. 
 Busied with his all-important balance of ac- 
 counts, may deem 
 Weighing words superfluous trouble ; cheat to 
 
 clerkly ears may seem 
 Just the joke for friends to venture : but we 
 
 are not friends, you see ! 
 When a gentleman is joked with, — if he's 
 
 good at repartee. 
 He rejoins, as do I — Sirrah, on your knees, 
 
 withdraw in full ! 
 Beg my pardon, or be sure a, kindly bullet 
 
 through your skull , 
 
 Lets in light and teaches manner to what bram 
 
 it feids ! Choose quick — 
 Have your life snuffed out or, kneeling, pray 
 
 me trim yon candle-wick ! ' 
 
 " ' Well, you cheated ! ' „ ^ x_! j 
 
 " Then outbroke a howl from all the tnends 
 
 around. 
 To his feet sprang each in fury, fists were 
 
 clenched and teeth were ground. 
 'End it! no time like the present! Captam, 
 
 yours were our disgrace 1 
 No delay, begin and finish I Stand back, leave 
 
 the pair a space I 
 
 Let civilians be instructed: henceforth simply 
 
 ply the pen. 
 Fly the sword ! This clerk 's no swordsman ? 
 
 Suit him with a pistol, then ! 
 Even odds ! A dozen paces 'twixt the most 
 
 and least expert 
 Make a dwarf a giant's equal : nay, the dwarf, 
 
 if he 's alert. 
 Likelier hits the broader target I ' 
 
 " Up we stood accordingly. 
 As they handed me the weapon, such was my 
 
 soul's thirst to try 
 Then and there conclusions with this bully, 
 
 tread on and stamp out 
 Every spark of his existence, that, — crept 
 
 close to, curled about 
 By that toying tempting teasing fool-forefinger's 
 
 middle joint, — 
 Don't you guess ? — the trigger yielded. Gone 
 
 my chance ! and at the pomt 
 Of such prime success moreover : scarce an 
 
 inch above his head 
 Went my ball to hit the wainscot. He was 
 
 living, 1 was dead. 
 
 "Up he marched in flaming triumph — 'twas 
 
 his right, mind I — up, within 
 Just an arm's length. 'Now, my clerkling,' 
 
 chuckled Cocky with a grin 
 As the levelled piece quite touched me, ' Now, 
 
 Sir Counting-House, repeat 
 That expression which I told you proved bad 
 
 manners ! Did I cheat ? ' 
 
 " ' Cheat you did, you knew you cheated, and, 
 
 this moment, know as well. 
 As for me, ray homely breeding bids you — 
 
 fixe and go to Hell ! ' 
 
 " Twice the muzzle touched my forehead. 
 
 Heavy bairel, flurried wrist, 
 Either spoils a steady lifting. Thrice: then, 
 
 ' Laugh at Hell who list, 
 I can't! God's no fable either. Did this 
 
 boy's eye wink once ? No I 
 There 's no standing him and HeU and God all 
 
 three against me, — so, 
 I did cheat ! ' 
 
 " And down he threw the pistol, out rushed 
 — by the door 
 
 Possibly, but, as for knowledge if by chimney, 
 roof or floor, 
 
 He effected disappearance — I 'U engage no 
 glance was sent 
 
 That way by a single starer, such a blank aston- 
 ishment 
 
 Swallowed up their senses : as for speaking — 
 mute they stood as mice. 
 
 " Mute not long, though ! Such reaction, such 
 a hubbub in a trice ! , ^ .^ » 
 
 ' Rogue and rascal ! Who 'd have thought it I 
 What 's to be expected next, 
 
 When His Majesty's Commission serves a 
 sharper as pretext 
 
896 
 
 DRAMATIC IDYLS 
 
 For . . . But where 's the need of wasting 
 time now ? Naught requires delay : 
 
 Punishment the Service cries for : let disgrace 
 be wiped away 
 
 Publicly, in good broad daylight ! Resigna- 
 tion ? No, indeed ! 
 
 Drum and fife must play the Rogue's-March, 
 rank and file be free to speed 
 
 Tardy marching on the rogue's part by appli- 
 ance in the rear 
 
 — Kicks administered shall right this wronged 
 
 civilian, — never fear. 
 Mister Clive, for — though a clerk — you bore 
 
 yourself — suppose we say — 
 Just as would beseem a soldier ? 
 
 " ' Gentlemen, attention — pray 1 
 First, one word ! ' 
 
 " I passed each speaker severally in review. 
 When I had precise their number, names and 
 
 styles, and fully knew 
 Over whom my supervision thenceforth must 
 
 extend, — why, then — 
 
 " ' Some five minutes since, my life lay — as you 
 
 all saw. gentlemen — 
 At the mercy of your friend there. Not a 
 
 single voice was raised 
 In arrest of judgment, not one tongue — before 
 
 my powder blazed — 
 Ventured ' ' Can it be the youngster blundered, 
 
 really seemed to mark 
 Some irregular proceeding ? We conjecture in 
 
 the dark, 
 Guess at random, — still, for sake of fair play 
 
 — what if for a freak, 
 In a fit of absence, — such things have been ! — 
 
 if our friend proved weak 
 
 — What '5 the phrase ? — corrected fortune ! 
 
 Look into the case, at least ! " 
 Who dared interpose between the altar's victim 
 
 and the priest ? 
 Yet he spared me ! You eleven ! Whosoever, 
 
 all or each. 
 To the disadvantage of the man who spared 
 
 me, utters speech 
 
 — To his face, behind his back, — that speaker 
 
 has to do with me : 
 
 Me who promise, if positions change and mine 
 the chance should be. 
 
 Not to imitate your friend and waive ad- 
 vantage I ' 
 
 " Twenty-five 
 
 Years ago this matter happened : and 't is 
 certain," added Clive, 
 
 " Never, to my knowledge, did Sir Cocky have 
 a single breath 
 
 Breathed against him : lips were closed through- 
 out his life, or since his death. 
 
 For if he be dead or living I can tell no more 
 than you. 
 
 All I know is — Cooky had one chance more ; 
 how he used it, — grew 
 
 Out of such unlucky habits, or relapsed, and 
 back again 
 
 Brought the late-ejected devil with a score 
 
 more in his train, — 
 That 's for you to judge. Reprieval I procured, 
 
 at any rate. 
 Ugh — the memory of that minute's fear makes 
 
 gooseflesh rise! Why prate 
 Longer ? You 've my story, there 's your 
 
 instance : fear I did, you see ! " 
 
 " Well " — I hardly kept from laughing — " if 
 
 I see it, thanks must be 
 Wholly to your Lordship's candor. Not that 
 
 — in a common case — 
 
 When a bully caught at cheating thrusts a 
 
 pistol in one's face, 
 I should under-rate, believe me, snch a trial to 
 
 the nerve ! 
 'T is no joke, at one-and-twenty, for a youth to 
 
 stand nor swerve. 
 Fear I naturally look for — unless, of all men 
 
 alive, 
 I am forced to make exception when I come to 
 
 Robert Clive. 
 Since at Arcot, Plassy, elsewhere, he and death 
 
 — the whole world knows — 
 Came to somewhat closer quarters." 
 
 Quarters ? Had we come to blows, 
 
 Clive and I, you had not wondered — up he 
 sprang so, out he rapped 
 
 Such a round of oaths — no matter ! I '11 en- 
 deavor to adapt 
 
 To our modern usage words he — well, 'twas 
 friendly license — flung 
 
 At me like so many fire-balls, fast as he could 
 wag his tongue. 
 
 "You — a soldier? You — at Plassy ? Yours 
 
 the faculty to nick 
 Instantaneously occasion when your foe, if 
 
 lightning-quick, ■ 
 
 — At his mercy, at his malice, — has you, 
 
 through some stupid inch 
 Undefended in your bulwark ? Thus laid open, 
 
 — not to flinch 
 
 — That needs courage, you '11 concede me. 
 
 Then, look here ! Suppose the man. 
 
 Cheeking his advance, his weapon still ex- 
 tended, not a span 
 
 Distant from my temple. — curse him ! — quiet- 
 ly had bade me, ' There ! 
 
 Keep your life, calumniator ! — worthless life I 
 freely spare ; 
 
 Mine you freely would have taken — murdered 
 me and my good fame 
 
 Both at once — and all the better! Go, and 
 thank your own bad aim 
 
 Which permits me to forgive you ! ' What if, 
 with such words as these, 
 
 He had cast away his weapon ? How should 
 I have borne me, please ? 
 
 Nay, I 'U spare you pains and tell yon. This, 
 and only this, remained — 
 
 Pick his weapon up and use it on myself. If 
 so had gained 
 
 Sleep the earlier, leaving England probably to 
 pay on still 
 
MULfiYKEH 
 
 Bent and taxes for half India, tenant at the 
 Frenchman's will." 
 
 "Such the turn," said I, "the matter takes 
 with you ? Then I abate 
 
 — No, by not one jot nor tittle, — of your act 
 
 my estimate. 
 Fear — 1 wish I could detect there: courage 
 
 fronts me, plain enough — 
 Call it desperation, madness — never mind 1 
 
 for here 's in rough 
 Why, had mine been such a trial, fear had 
 
 overcome disgrace. 
 True, disgrace were hard to bear : but such a 
 
 rush against God's face 
 
 — None of that for me. Lord Plassy, since I go 
 
 to church at times. 
 Say the creed my mother taught me I Many 
 
 years in foreign climes 
 Rub some marks away — not all, though ! We 
 
 poor sinners reach life's brink. 
 Overlook what rolls beneath it, recklessly 
 
 enough, but think 
 There 's advantage in what 's left us — ground 
 
 to staud on, time to call 
 ' Lord, have mercy 1 ' ere we topple over — do 
 
 not leap, that 's all I " 
 
 Oh, he made no answer, re-absorbed into his 
 
 cloud. I caught 
 Something like " Yes — courage : only fools 
 
 wiilcall it fca.-." 
 
 If aught 
 Comfort you, my great unhappy hero Clive, in 
 
 that I heard. 
 Next week, how your own hand dealt you 
 
 doom, and uttered just the word 
 "Fearfully courageous ! " — this, be sure, and 
 
 nothing else I groaned. 
 I 'm no Clive, nor parson either : Olive's 
 
 worst deed — we '11 hope condoned. 
 
 MULEYKEH 
 
 If a stranger passed the tent of H<5seyn, he 
 
 cried " A churl's ! " 
 Or haply " God help the man who has neither 
 
 salt nor bread ! " 
 
 — " Nay," would a friend exclaim, " he needs 
 
 nor pity nor scorn 
 More than who spends small thought on the 
 shore-sand, picking pearls, 
 
 — Holds but in light esteem the seed-^ort, 
 
 bears instead 
 On his breast a moon-like prize, some orb 
 which of night makes mom. 
 
 " What if no flocks and herds enrich the son of 
 Sinin? 
 
 They went when his tribe was mulct, ten thou- 
 sand camels the due, 
 
 Blood-value paid perforce for a murder done of 
 old. 
 
 ' God gave them, let them go 1 But never since 
 time began, 
 
 897 
 
 Mul^ykeh, peerless mare, owned master the 
 
 match of you. 
 And you are my prize, my Pearl: I laugh at 
 
 men's land and gold 1 ' 
 
 "So in the pride of his soul laughs HiSseyn — 
 and right, I say. 
 
 Do the ten steeds run a race of glory ? Out- 
 stripping all. 
 
 Ever Mul^ykeh stands first steed at the victor's 
 staff. 
 
 Who started, the owner's hope, gets shamed 
 and named, that day. 
 
 'Silence,' or, last but one, is 'The Cuffed,' aa 
 we use to call 
 
 Whom the paddock's lord thrusts forth. 
 Eight, H6seyn, I say, to laugh ! " 
 
 " Boasts he Mul4ykeh the Pearl ? " the 
 
 _ stranger replies : " Be sure 
 On him I waste nor scorn nor pity, but lavish 
 
 both 
 On Dnhl the son of SheybAn, who withers 
 
 away in heart 
 For envy of Hiiseyn's luck. Such sickness 
 
 admits no cure. 
 A certain poet has sung, and sealed the same 
 
 with an oath, 
 ' For the vulgar — flocks and herds 1 The 
 
 Pearl is a prize apart.' " 
 
 Lo, Duhl the son of Sheyban comes riding to 
 Hos^yn's tent. 
 
 And he casts his saJddle down, and enters and 
 " Peace 1" bids he. 
 
 "You are poor, I know the cause ; my plenty 
 shall mend the wrong. 
 
 'Tis said of your Pearl — the price of a hun- 
 dred camels spent 
 
 In her purchase were scarce ill paid : such pru- 
 dence is far from me 
 
 Who proffer a thousand. Speak I Long 
 parley may last too long." 
 
 Said H6seyn, " You feed young beasts a many, 
 
 of famous breed. 
 Slit-eared, unblemished, fat, true offspring of 
 
 Mtlzennem : 
 There stumbles no weak-eyed she in the line 
 
 as it climbs the hill. 
 But I love Mul^ykeh's face : her forefront 
 
 whitens indeed 
 Like a yellowish wave's cream-crest. Your 
 
 camels — go gaze on them ! 
 Her fetlock is foam-splashed too. Myself am 
 
 the richer still." 
 
 A year goes by : lo, back to the tent again 
 
 rides Duhl. 
 " You are open-hearted, ay — moist-handed, a 
 
 very prince. 
 Why should I speak of sale? Be the male 
 
 your simple gift I 
 ■ edti 
 
 my 
 
 My son is pined to death for her beauty: 
 
 wife prompts ' Fool, 
 Beg for his sake the Pearl! Be God fas 
 
 rewarder. since 
 
898 
 
 DRAMATIC IDYLS 
 
 God pays debts seTen for one : 
 on Him shows thrift.' " 
 
 who squanders 
 
 Said HcSseyn, " God gives each man one life, 
 
 like a lamp, then gives 
 That lamp due measure of oil ; lamp lighted — 
 
 hold high, wave wide 
 Its comfort for others to share ! once quench 
 
 it, what help is left ? 
 The oil of your lamp is your son : I shine while 
 
 Mullykeh lives. 
 Would I heg your son to cheer my dark if 
 
 MuUykeh died ? 
 It is life against life : what good avails to the 
 
 Ufe-bereft ? " 
 
 Another year, and — hist! What craft is it 
 
 Duhl designs ? 
 He alights not at the door of the tent as he did 
 
 last time. 
 But, creeping behind, he gropes his stealthy 
 
 way by the trench 
 Half-round till he finds the flap in the folding, 
 
 for night combines 
 With the robber — and such is he : Duhl, 
 
 covetous up to crime. 
 Must wring from Hdseyn's grasp the Pearl, by 
 
 whatever the wrench. 
 
 " He was hunger-bitten, I heard : I tempted 
 
 with half my store, 
 And a gibe was all my thanks. Is he generous 
 
 like Spring dew ? 
 Account the fault to me who chaffered with 
 
 such an one ! 
 He has killed, to feast chance comers, the 
 
 creature he rode : nay, more — 
 For a couple of singing-girls his robe has he 
 
 torn in two : 
 1 will beg ! Yet I nowise gained by the tale of 
 
 my wife and son. 
 
 "I swear by the Holy House, my head will 
 
 I never wash 
 Till I filch his Pearl away. Fair dealing I 
 
 tried, then guile. 
 And now I resort to force. He said we must 
 
 live or die : 
 Let him die, then, — let me live ! Be bold — 
 
 but not too rash ! 
 I have found me a peeping-place : breast, bury 
 
 your breathing while 
 I explore for myself ! Now, breathe ! He 
 
 deceived me not, the spy ! 
 
 *'As he said — there lies in pea^e Hdseyn — 
 
 how happy ! Beside 
 Stands tethered the Pearl : thrice winds her 
 
 headstall about his wrist : 
 'T is therefore he sleeps so sound — the moon 
 
 through the roof reveals. 
 And, loose on his left, stands too that other, 
 
 known far and wide, 
 Buh^yseh, her sister born : fleet is she yet ever 
 
 missed 
 The winning tail's fire-flash arstream past the 
 
 thunderous heels. 
 
 " No less she stands saddled and bridled, this 
 
 second, in case some thief 
 Should enter and seize and fly with the first, as 
 
 I mean to do. 
 What then? The Pearl is the Pearl: once 
 
 mount her we both escape." 
 Through the skirt-fold in glides Duhl,— so a 
 
 serpent disturbs no leaf 
 In a bush as he parts the twigs entwining a nest : 
 
 clean through. 
 He is noiselessly at his work ; as he planned, he 
 
 performs the rape. 
 
 He has set the tent-door wide, has buckled the 
 
 girth, has clipped 
 The headstall away from the wrist he leaves 
 
 thrice bound as before. 
 He springs on the Pearl, is launched on the 
 
 desert like bolt from bow. 
 Up starts our plundered ma.n : from his breast 
 
 though the heart be ripped. 
 Yet his mmd has the mastery: behold, in a 
 
 minute more. 
 He is out and off and away on Buhdyseh, whose 
 
 worth we know ! 
 
 And H(5seyn — his blood turns flame, he has 
 learned long since to ride. 
 
 And Buh^yseh does her part, — they gain — 
 they are gaining fast 
 
 On the fugitive pair, and Duhl has Ed-Ddrraj 
 to cross and quit, 
 
 And to reach the ridge £1-Sabdn, — no safety 
 till that be spied ! 
 
 And Buh^yseh is, bound by bound, but a horse- 
 length off at last. 
 
 For the Pearl has missed the tap of the heel, 
 the touch of the bit. 
 
 She shortens her stride, she chafes at her rider 
 
 the strange and queer : 
 Buh^yseh is mad with hope — beat sister she 
 
 shall and must. 
 Though Duhl, of the hand and heel so clumsy, 
 
 she has to thank. 
 She is near now, nose by tail — they are neck 
 
 by croup — joy ! fear ! 
 What folly makes H6seyn shout " Dog Duhl, 
 
 Damned son of the Dust, 
 Touch the right ear and press with your foot 
 
 my Pearl's left flank ! " 
 
 And Duhl was wise at the word, and Mul^ykeh 
 as prompt perceived 
 
 Who was urging redoubled pace, and to hear 
 him was to obey. 
 
 And a leap indeed gave she, and evanished 
 forevermore. 
 
 And H6seyn looked one long last look as who, 
 all bereaved, 
 
 Looks, fain to follow the dead so far as the liv- 
 ing may : 
 
 Then he turned Buh^yseh's neck slow home- 
 ward, weeping sore. 
 
 And, lo, in the sunrise, still sat HiSseyn upon 
 the ground 
 
PIETRO OF ABANO 
 
 899 
 
 Weeping : and neig:hboTS came, the tribesmen 
 of B^nu-Asdd 
 
 In the vale of green Er-Rass, and they ques- 
 tioned him of his grief ; 
 
 And he told from first to last how, serpent-like, 
 Duhl had wound 
 
 His way to the nest, and how Duhl rode like an 
 ape, so bad ! 
 
 And how Buh4yseh did wonders, yet Pearl re- 
 mained with the thief. 
 
 And they jeered him, one and all : " Poor 
 
 Hdseyn is crazed past hope ! 
 How else had he wrought himself his rnin, in 
 
 fortune's spite ? 
 To have simply held the tongue were a task for 
 
 boy or girl. 
 And here were Mul^ykeh again, the eyed like 
 
 an antelope, 
 The child of his heart by day, the wife of his 
 
 breast by night ! " — 
 " And the beaten in speed ! " wept Hdseyn. 
 
 " You never have loved my Pearl." 
 
 PIETRO OF ABANO 
 
 Petrus Aponensis — there was a magician ! 
 
 When that strange adventure happened, which 
 I mean to tell my hearers. 
 
 Nearly had he tried aU trades — beside physi- 
 cian. 
 
 Architect, astronomer, astrologer, — or worse : 
 
 How else, as the old books warranty was he able. 
 
 All at once, through all the world, to prove the 
 promptest of appearers 
 
 Where was prince to cure, tower to build as 
 high as Babel, 
 
 Star to name or sky-sign read, — yet pouch, for 
 pains, a curse ? 
 
 — Curse : for when a. vagrant, — foot-sore, 
 
 travel-tattered. 
 Now a young man, now an old man, Turk or 
 
 Arab, Jew or Gypsy, — 
 Proffered folk in passing — Oh, for pay, what 
 
 mattered ? — 
 "I'll be doctor, I 'U play builder, star I'll 
 
 name — sign read ! " 
 Soon as prince was cured, tower built, and fate 
 
 predicted, 
 "Who may you be?" came the question; 
 
 when he answered " Petrus ipse" 
 "Just as we divined!" cried folk — "A 
 
 wretch convicted 
 Long ago of dealing with the devil — you in- 
 deed 1 " 
 
 So, they cursed him roundly, all his labor's pay- 
 ment. 
 
 Motioned him — the convalescent prince wotdd 
 — to vacate the presence : 
 
 Babylonians plucked his beard and tore his rai- 
 ment. 
 
 Drove him from that tower he built : while, 
 had he peered at stars, 
 
 Town howled " Stone the quack who styles our 
 Dog-star — Sirius I " 
 
 Country yelled " Aroint the churl who prophe- 
 sies we take no pleasance 
 
 Under vine and fig-tree, since the year 's deliri- 
 ous. 
 
 Bears no crop of any kind, — all through the 
 planet Mars ! " 
 
 Straightway would the whilom youngster grow 
 
 a giisard. 
 Or, as case might hap, the hoary eld drop off 
 
 and show a stripling. 
 Town and country groaned — indebted to a 
 
 wizard ! 
 "Curse — nay, kick and cuff him — fit requital 
 
 of his pains ! 
 Gratitude in word or deed were wasted truly 1 
 Rather make the Church amends by crying out 
 
 on, cramping, crippling 
 One who, on pretence of serving man, serves 
 
 duly 
 Man's arch foe ; not ours, be sure, but Satan's 
 
 — his the gains ! " 
 
 Peter grinned and bore it, such disgracefiil 
 usage : 
 
 Somehow, cuffs and kicks and curses seem or- 
 dained his like to suffer : 
 
 Prophet's pay with Christians, now as in the 
 Jews' age. 
 
 Still is — stoning ; so, he meekly took his wage 
 and went, 
 
 — Safe again was found ensconced in those old 
 
 quarters, 
 
 Padua's blackest blindest by-street, — none the 
 worse, nay, somewhat tougher : 
 
 " Calculating," quoth he, " soon I join the mar- 
 tyrs. 
 
 Since, who magnify my lore on burning me are 
 bent." 1 
 
 Therefore, on a certain evening, to his alley 
 Peter slunk, all bruised and broken, sore in 
 
 body, sick in spirit, 
 Just escaped from Cairo where he launched a. 
 
 galley 
 Needing neither sails nor oars nor help of wind 
 
 or tide, 
 
 — Needing but the fume of fire to set a-flying 
 Wheels like mad which whirled you quick — 
 
 North, South, where'er you pleased re- 
 quire it, — 
 
 That is — would have done so had not priests 
 come prying. 
 
 Broke his engine up and bastinadoed him be- 
 side. 
 
 As he reached his lodging, stopped there unmo- 
 lested, 
 
 (Neighbors feared him, urchins fled him, few 
 were bold enough to follow) 
 
 While his fumbling fingers tried the lock and 
 tested 
 
 Once again the queer key's virtue, oped the sul- 
 len door, — 
 
 Some one plucked his sleeve, cried. Master, 
 pray your pardon 1 
 
 1 See note at end of volume. 
 
900 
 
 DRAMATIC IDYLS 
 
 Grant a word to me who patient wait you in 
 
 your archway's hollow ! 
 Hard on you men's hearts are : be not your 
 
 lieait hard on 
 Me who kiss your garment's hem, Lord of 
 
 magic lore ! 
 
 " Mage — say I, who no less, scorning tittle-tat- 
 tle, 
 
 To the vulgar give no credence when they 
 prate of Peter's magic, 
 
 Deem his art brews tempest, hurts the crops 
 and cattle, 
 
 Hinders fowls from laying eggs and worms from 
 spinning silk, 
 
 Rides upon a he-goat, mounts at need a broom- 
 stick : 
 
 While the price he pays for this (so turns to 
 comic what was tragic) 
 
 Is — he may not drink — dreads like the Day 
 of Doom's tick — 
 
 One poor drop of sustenance ordained mere men 
 
 — that 's milk ! 
 
 " Tell such tales to Padua ! Think me no such 
 
 dullard ! 
 Not from these benighted parts did I derive my 
 
 breath and being I 
 I am from a land whose cloudless skies are 
 
 colored 
 Livelier, suns orb largelier, airs seem incense, 
 
 — while, on earth — 
 
 What, instead of grass, our fingers and our 
 
 thumbs cull. 
 Proves true moly ! sounds and sights there 
 
 help the body's hearing, seeing. 
 Till the soul grows godlike : brief, — you front 
 
 no numskull 
 Shaming by ineptitude the Greece that gave 
 
 him birth ! 
 
 "Mark within my eye its iris mystic-let- 
 tered — 
 
 That 's my name ! and note my ear — its swan- 
 shaped cavity, my emblem ! 
 
 Mine 's the swan-like nature born to fly unfet- 
 tered 
 
 Over land and sea in search of knowledge — 
 food for song. 
 
 Art denied the vulgar! Geese grow fat on 
 barley. 
 
 Swans require ethereal provend, undesirous to 
 resemble 'em — 
 
 Soar to seek Apollo — favored with a parley 
 
 Such as. Master, you grant me — who will not 
 hold you long. 
 
 "Leave to learn to sing — for that your swan 
 
 petitions : 
 Master, who possess the secret, say not nay to 
 
 such a suitor ! 
 All I ask is — bless mine, purest of ambitions ! 
 Grant me leave to make my kind wise, free, 
 
 and happy I How ? 
 Just by making me — as you are mine — their 
 
 model ! 
 Oeese have goose-thoughts : make a swan their 
 
 teacher first, then coadjutor, — 
 
 Let him introduce swan-notions to each nod- 
 dle,— 
 
 Geese will soon grow swans, and men beeome 
 what I am now ! 
 
 "That's the only magic — had but fools dis- 
 cernment, 
 
 Could they probe and pass into the solid through 
 the soft and seeming ! 
 
 Teach me such true magic — now, and no ad- 
 journment I 
 
 Teach your art of making fools subserve the 
 man of mind 1 
 
 Magic is the power we men of mind should 
 practice. 
 
 Draw fools to become our drudges — docile 
 henceforth, never dreaming — 
 
 While they do our bests for fancied gain — the 
 fact is 
 
 What they toil and moil to get proves false- 
 hood : truth 's behind ! 
 
 " See now ! you conceive some fabric — say, a 
 mansion 
 
 Meet for monarch's pride and pleeisure : this is 
 truth — a thought has fired you. 
 
 Made you fain to give some cramped concept 
 expansion. 
 
 Put your faculty to proof, fulfil your nature's 
 task. 
 
 First you fascinate the monarch's self : he fan- 
 cies 
 
 He it was devised the scheme yon execute as he 
 inspired you ; 
 
 He in turn sets slaving insignificances 
 
 Toiling, moiling till your structure stands there 
 
 — all you ask 
 
 " Soon the monarch 's known for what he wa» 
 
 — a ninny : 
 Soon the rabble-rout leave labor, take their 
 
 work-day wage and vanish-: 
 Soon the late puffed bladder, pricked, shows 
 
 lank and skinny — 
 ' Who was its inflator ? ' ask we, ' whose the 
 
 _ giant lungs ' 
 Petri en pulmones ! What though men prove 
 
 ingrates ? 
 Let them — so they stop at crucifixion — buffet, 
 
 ban and banish ! 
 Peter's power 's apparent : human praise — its 
 
 din grates 
 Harsh as blame on ear unused to aught save 
 
 angels' tongues. 
 
 " Ay, there have been always, since our world 
 
 existed. 
 Mages who possessed the secret — needed but to 
 
 stand still, fix eye 
 On the foolish mortal : straight was he enlisted 
 Soldier, scholar, servant, slave — no matter for 
 
 the style 1 
 Only through illusion ; ever what seemed 
 
 profit — 
 Loveorlucre — justified obedience to the Ipse 
 
 dixi : 
 Work done — palace reared from pavement up 
 
 to soffit — 
 
PIETRO OF ABANO 
 
 901 
 
 Was it strange if builders smelt out cheating: 
 all the while ? 
 
 " Let them pelt and pound, hmise, hray you in 
 
 a mortar ! 
 What 's the odds to you who seek reward of 
 
 quite another nature ? 
 You 've enrolled your name where sages of 
 
 your sort are, 
 — Michael of Constantinople, Hans of Halher- 
 
 stadt ! 
 Nay and were you nameless, still you Ve your 
 
 conviction 
 You it was and only you — what sigrdfies the 
 
 nomenclature r — 
 Ruled the world in fact, though how you ruled 
 
 he fiction 
 Fit for fools: true wisdom's magic you — if 
 
 e'er man — had 't 1 
 
 '* But perhaps you ask me, ' Since each igno- 
 ramus 
 T^'hile he profits by such magic persecutes the 
 
 benefactor. 
 What should I expect but — once I render 
 
 famous 
 You as Micli.i ;1, Hans, and Peter — just one 
 
 ingrate more ? 
 If the vulgar prove thus, whatsoe'er the pelf 
 
 be. 
 Pouched through my beneficence — and doont 
 
 me dungeoned, chained, or racked, or 
 Fairly burned outright — how grateful will 
 
 yourself be 
 When, his secret gained, you match your — 
 
 master just before ? ' 
 
 " That 's where I await you ! Please, revert a 
 
 little ! 
 What do folk report about yon if not this — 
 
 which, though chimeric, 
 Still, as figurative, suits you to a tittle — 
 That, — although the elements obey your nod 
 
 aud wink. 
 Fades or flowers the herb you chance to smile 
 
 or sigh at. 
 While your frown bids earth quake palled by 
 
 obscuration atmospheric, — 
 Brief, although through nature naught resists 
 
 your^ai, 
 There 's yet one poor substance mocks you — 
 
 milk you ma.y not drink 1 
 
 " Figurative language I Take my explanation ! 
 Fame with fear, and hate with homage, these 
 
 your art procures in plenty. 
 All 's but daily dry bread : what makes moist 
 
 the ration ? 
 Love, the milk that sweetens man his meal — 
 
 alas, you lack : 
 1 am he who, since he fears you not, can love 
 
 you. 
 Love is bom of heart not mind, de corde natus 
 
 haud de mente ; 
 Touch my heart and love 's yours, sure as shines 
 
 above you 
 Sun by day and star by night though earth 
 
 should go to wrack ! 
 
 "Stage by stage you lift me— kiss by kiss I 
 
 hallow 
 Whose but your dear hand my helper, punctual 
 
 as at each new impulse 
 I approach my aim ? Shell chipped, the eaglet 
 
 callow 
 Needs a parent's pinion-push to quit the eyrie's 
 
 edge: 
 But once fairly launched forth, denizen of ether. 
 While each effort sunward bids the blood more 
 
 freely through each limb pulse, 
 Sui'e the parent feels, as gay they soar together, 
 Fully are all pains repaid when love redeems 
 
 its pledge ! " 
 
 Then did Peter's tristful visage lighten some- 
 what, 
 
 Vent a water> smile as though inveterate mis- 
 trust were thawing. 
 
 " Well, who knows ? " he slow broke silence, 
 " Mortals — come what 
 
 Come there may — are stUl the dupes of hope 
 there 's luck in store. 
 
 Many scholars seek me, promise mounts and 
 marvels : 
 
 Here stand I to vntness how they step 'twixt 
 me and clapper-clawing ! 
 
 Dry bread, — that I 've gained me : truly I 
 should starve else : 
 
 But of milk, no drop was mine I Well, shnfBe 
 cards once more ! " 
 
 At the word of promise thus implied, our 
 
 stranger — 
 What can he but cast his arms, in rapture of 
 
 embrace, round Peter ? 
 " Hold! I choke ! " the mage grunts. " Shall 
 
 I in the manger 
 Any longer play the dog ? Approach, my calf, 
 
 and feed ! 
 Bene . . . won't yon wait for grace ? " But 
 
 sudden incense 
 Wool-white, serpent-solid, curled up — perfume 
 
 growing sweet and sweeter 
 Till it reached the young man's nose and seemed 
 
 to win sense 
 Soul and all from out his brain through nostril: 
 
 yes, indeed ! 
 
 Presently the young man rubbed his eyes. 
 
 " Where am I ? 
 Too much bother over hooks ! Some reverie 
 
 has proved amusing. 
 What did Peter prate of ? 'Faith, my brow is 
 
 clammy ! 
 How my head throbs, how my heart thumps ! 
 
 Can it be I swooned ? 
 Oh, I spoke my speech out — cribbed from 
 
 Plato's tractate. 
 Dosed him with ' the Fair and Good,' swore — 
 
 Dog of Egypt — I was choosing 
 Plato's way to serve men ! What 's the hour f 
 
 Exact eight ! 
 Home now, and to-morrow never mind how 
 
 Plato mooned ! 
 
 'Peter has the secret! 
 products 
 
 Fair and Good are 
 
902 
 
 DRAMATIC IDYLS 
 
 (So he said) of Foul and Evil : one must bring 
 
 to pass the other. 
 Just as poisons grow drugs, steal through 
 
 sundry odd ducts 
 Doctors name, and ultimately issue safe and 
 
 changed. 
 You 'd abolish poisons, treat disease with 
 
 dainties 
 Such as suit the sound and sane? With all 
 
 such kickshaws vain you pother ! 
 Arsenic 's the stufE puts force into the faint 
 
 eyes. 
 Opium sets the brain to rights — by cark and 
 
 care deranged. 
 
 " What, he 's safe within door ? — would escape 
 
 — no question — 
 
 Thanks, since thanks and more I owe, and 
 
 mean to pay in time befitting. 
 What most presses now is — 5ter night's 
 
 digestion, 
 Peter, of thy precepts ! — promptest practice of 
 
 the same. 
 Let me see ! The wise man, first of all, scorns 
 
 riches : 
 But to scorn them must obtain them: none 
 
 believes in his permitting 
 Gold to lie ungathered: who picks up, then 
 
 pitches 
 Gold away — philosophizes : none disputes his 
 
 claim. 
 
 " So with worldly honors : 't is by abdicating, 
 
 Incontestably he proves he could have kept the 
 crown discarded. 
 
 Sulla cuts a figure, leaving off dictating : 
 
 Simpletons laud private life ? ' The grapes are 
 sour,' laugh we. 
 
 So, again — but why continue ? All 's tumultu- 
 ous 
 
 Here : my head 's a-whirl with knowledge. 
 Speedily shall be rewarded 
 
 He who taught me ! Greeks prove ingrates ? 
 So insult you us ? 
 
 When your teaching bears its first-fruits, Peter 
 
 — wait and see ! " 
 
 As the word, the deed proved; ere a brief 
 year's passage, 
 
 Fop — that fool he made the jokes on — now he 
 made the jokes for, gratis : 
 
 Hunks — that hoarder, long left lonely in his 
 crass age — 
 
 Foimd now one appreciative deferential friend : 
 
 Powder-paiut-and-patch, Hag Jezebel — recov- 
 ered. 
 
 Strange to say, the power to please, got court- 
 ship till she cried Jam satis ! 
 
 Fop be-flattered. Hunks be-friended. Hag be- 
 lovered — 
 
 Nobody o'erlooked, save God — he soon attained 
 his end. 
 
 As he lounged at ease one morning in his villa, 
 (Hag's the dowry) estimated (Hunks' bequest) 
 
 his coin in coffer. 
 Mused on how a fool's good word (Fop's word) 
 
 could fill a 
 
 Social circle with his praise, promote him man 
 of mark, — 
 
 All at once — " An old friend fain would see 
 your Highness ! " 
 
 There stood Peter, skeleton and scarecrow, 
 plain writ Fhi-lo-so-pher 
 
 In the woe-worn face — for yellowness and dry- 
 ness, 
 
 Parchment — with a pair of eyes — one hope 
 their feeble spark. 
 
 " Did I counsel rightly ? Have you, in ac- 
 cordance. 
 Prospered greatly, dear my pupil ? Sure, at 
 
 just the stage I find you. 
 When your hand may draw me forth from the 
 
 mad war-dance 
 Savages are leading round your master — down, 
 
 not dead. 
 Padua wants to bum me : balk them, let me 
 
 linger 
 Life out — rueful though its remnant — hid in 
 
 some safe hold behind you ! 
 Prostrate here I lie : quick, help with but a 
 
 finger 
 Lest I house in safety's self — a tombstone o'er 
 
 my head ! 
 
 *' Lodging, bite and sup, with — now and then — 
 a copper 
 
 — Alms for any poorer still, if such there be, — ■ 
 
 is all my asking. 
 
 Take me for your bedesman, — nay, if you think 
 proper. 
 
 Menial merely, — such my perfect passion for 
 repose ! 
 
 Yes, from out your plenty Peter craves a pit- 
 tance 
 
 — Leave to thaw his frozen hands before the 
 
 fire whereat you 're basking ! 
 Double though your debt were, grant this boon 
 
 — remittance 
 He proclaims of obligation : 't is himself that 
 
 owes ! " 
 
 " Venerated Master — can it be, such treatment 
 Learning meets with, magic fails to guard you 
 
 from, by all appearance ? 
 Strange ! for, as you entered, — what the 
 
 famous feat meant, 
 I was full of, — why you reared that fabric, 
 
 Padua's boast. 
 Nowise for man's pride, man's pleasure, did 
 
 you slyly 
 Raise it, but man's seat of rule whereby the 
 
 world should soon have clearance 
 (Happy world) from such a rout as now so vilely 
 Handles you — and hampers me, for which I 
 
 grieve the most. 
 
 " Since if it got wind you now were my familiar. 
 How could I protect you — nay, defend myself 
 
 against the rabble ? 
 Wait until the mob, now masters, willy-nilly 
 
 are 
 Servants as they should be : then has gratitude 
 
 full play ! 
 Surely this experience shows how unbefitting 
 
PIETRO OF ABANO 
 
 903 
 
 'T is that minds like mine should rot in ease 
 and plenty. Geese may grabble, 
 
 Gorge, and keep the ground: but swans are 
 soon for quitting 
 
 Earthly fare — as fain would I, your swan, if 
 taught the way. 
 
 " Teach me, then, to rule men, have them at 
 
 my pleasure 1 
 Solely for their good, of course, — impart a 
 
 secret worth rewarding. 
 Since the proper life's - prize 1 Tantalus's 
 
 treasure 
 Aught beside proves, vanishes, and leaves no 
 
 trace at all. 
 Wait awhile, nor press for payment prema- 
 turely ! 
 Over-haste defrauds you. Thanks ! since, — 
 
 even while I speak, — discarding 
 Sloth and vain delights, I learn how — swiftly, 
 
 surely — 
 Magic sways the sceptre, wears the crown and 
 
 wields the ball ! 
 
 " Gone again — what, is he ? 'Faith, he 's soon 
 
 disposed of ! 
 Peter's precepts work already, put within my 
 
 lump their leaven ! 
 Ay, we needs must don glove would we pluck 
 
 the rose — doif 
 Silken garment would we climb the tree and 
 
 take its fruit. 
 Why sharp thorn, rough rind ? To keep un- 
 
 violated 
 Either prize ! We garland us, we mount from 
 
 earth to feast in heaven. 
 Just because exist what once we estimated 
 Hindrances which, better taught, as helps we 
 
 now compute. 
 
 " Foolishly I turned disgusted from my fel- 
 lows ! 
 
 Pits of ignorance — to fill, and heaps of preju- 
 dice — to level — 
 
 Multitudes in motley, whites and blacks and 
 yellows — . 
 
 What a hopeless task it seemed to disciplme 
 the host ! 
 
 Now I see my error. Vices act like virtues 
 
 — Not alone because they guard —sharp thorns 
 
 — the rose we first dishevel. 
 
 Not because they scrape, scratch— rough nnd 
 
 — through the dirt-shoes 
 
 Bare feet cling to bole with, while the half- 
 mooned boot we boast. 
 
 " No, my aim is nobler, more disinterested ! 
 Man shall keep what seemed to thwart him, 
 
 since it proves his true assistance. 
 Leads to ascertaining which head is the best 
 
 head, . 
 
 Would he crovm his body, rule its members — 
 
 lawless else. 
 loTiorant the horse stares, by deficient vision 
 ■fakes a man to be a monster, lets him mount, 
 
 then, twice the distance 
 Horse could trot nnridden, gallops — dream 
 
 Elysian ! — 
 
 Dreaming that his dwarfish guide 's a giant, — 
 jockeys teU 's." 
 
 Brief, so worked the spell, he promptly had a 
 
 riddance : 
 Heart and brain no longer felt the pricks which 
 
 passed for conscience-scruples : 
 Free henceforth his feet, ■ — Per Bacco, how 
 
 they did dance 
 Merrily through lets and checks that stopped 
 
 the way before ! 
 Politics the prize now, — such adroit adviser. 
 Opportune suggester, with the tact that triples 
 
 and quadruples 
 Merit in each measure, — never did the Kaiser 
 Boast as subject such a statesman, friend, and 
 
 something more ! 
 
 Ashe, up and down, one noonday, paced his closet 
 — Council o'er, each spark (his hint) blown 
 
 flame, by colleagues' breath applauded. 
 Strokes of statecraft hailed with '* Scdomo si 
 
 (His the nostrum) — every throw for luck come 
 
 double-six, — 
 As he, pacing, hugged himself in satisfaction. 
 Thump — the door went. " What, the Kaiser ? 
 
 By none else were I defrauded 
 Thus of well-earned solace. Since 'tis fate's 
 
 exaction, — 
 Enter, Liege my Lord ! Ha, Peter, you here ? 
 
 Teneor vix ! " 
 
 "Ah, Sir, none the less, contain you, nor wax 
 
 irate 1 
 You so lofty, I so lowly, — vast the space which 
 
 yawns between us ! 
 StiU, methinks, you — more than ever — at a 
 
 high rate 
 Needs must prize poor Peter's secret since it 
 
 hfts you thus. 
 Grant me now the boon whereat before you 
 
 boggled ! 
 Ten long years your march has moved — one 
 
 triumph — (though e 's short) — hactenus. 
 While I down and down disastrously have 
 
 joggled 
 TiU I pitch against Death's door, the true Nee 
 
 Ultra Plus. 
 
 "Years ago — some ten 'tis — since I sought 
 
 for shelter. 
 Craved in your whole house a closet, out of all 
 
 your means a comfort. 
 Now you soar above these : as is gold to spelter 
 So is power — you urged with reason — para- 
 mount to wealth. 
 Power you boast in plenty: let it grant me 
 
 refuge ! • ^ j 4: 
 
 House-room now is out of question: find tor 
 
 me some stronghold — some fort — 
 Privacy wherein, immured, shall this blind 
 
 deaf huge 
 Monster of a mob let stay the soul I 'd save by 
 
 stealth ! 
 
 " Ay, for all too much with magic have I tam- 
 pered \ 
 
904 
 
 DRAMATIC IDYLS 
 
 — Lost the world, and gained, I fear, a, certain 
 
 place I 'ni to describe loth ! 
 Still, if prayer and fasting tame the pride long 
 
 pampered, 
 Mercy may be mine : amendment never comes 
 
 too late. 
 How can I amend beset by cursers, kickers ? 
 Pluck this brand from out the burning I Once 
 
 away, I take my Bible-oath, 
 Never more — so long as life's weak lamp-flame 
 
 flickers — 
 No, not once I '11 tease you, but in silence bear 
 
 my fate ! " 
 
 " Gently, good my Genius, Oracle unerring ! 
 Strange now ! can you guess on what — as in 
 
 you peeped — it was I pondered ? 
 You and I are both of one mind in preferring 
 Power to wealth, but — here 's the point — 
 
 what sort of power, I ask ? 
 Ruling men is vulgar, easy, and ignoble : 
 Kid yourself of conscience, quick you have at 
 
 beck and call the fond herd. 
 But who wields the crozier, down may fling the 
 
 crow-bill : 
 That 's the power I covet now ; soul's sway o'er 
 
 souls — my task ! 
 
 " ' Well but,' you object, ' you have it, who by 
 
 glamour 
 Press up lies to look like truths, mask folly in 
 
 the garb of reason : 
 Your soul acts on theirs, sure, when the people 
 
 clamor. 
 Hold their peace, now fight now fondle, — ear- 
 
 wigged through the brains.' 
 Possibly ! but still the operation 's mundane^ 
 Grosser than a taste demands which — craving 
 
 manna — kecks at peason — 
 Power o'er men by wants material : why should 
 
 one deign 
 Rule by sordid hopes and fears — a grunt for 
 
 all one's pains ? 
 
 ■' No, if men must praise me, let them praise to 
 
 purpose ! 
 Would we move the world, not earth but 
 
 heaven must be our fulcrum — pou slo ! 
 Thus I seek to move it : Master, why interpose — 
 Balk my climbing close on what 's the ladder's 
 
 topmost round ? 
 Statecraft 't is I step from : when by priest- 
 craft hoisted 
 Up to where my foot may touch the highest 
 
 rung which fate allows toe, 
 Then indeed ask favor. On you shall be 
 
 foisted 
 No excuse: I'll pay my debt, each penny of 
 
 the pound ! 
 
 " Ho, my knaves without there ! Lead this 
 
 worthy downstairs I 
 No farewell, good Paul — nay, Peter — what 's 
 
 your name remembered rightly ? 
 Come, he 's humble : out another would have 
 
 flounced — airs 
 Suitors often give themselves when our sort 
 
 bow them forth. 
 
 Did I touch his rags ? He surely kept his dis- 
 tance: 
 
 Yet, there somehow passed to me from him — 
 where'er the virtue might lie — 
 
 Something that inspires my soul — Oh, by aa- 
 
 Doubtlessly of Peter ! — still, he 's worth just 
 what he 's worth ! 
 
 " 'T is my own soul soars now : soaring — how ? 
 
 By crawling ! 
 I '11 to Rome, before Rome's feet the temporal- 
 supreme lay prostrate ! 
 ' Hands ' (I '11 say) ' proficient once in pulling, 
 
 hauling 
 This and that way men as I was minded — feet 
 
 now clasp I ' 
 Ay, the Kaiser's self has wrung them in his 
 
 fervor ! 
 Now — they only sue to slave for Rome, nor at 
 
 one doit the cost rate. 
 Rome's adopted child — no bone, no muscle, 
 
 nerve or 
 Sinew of me but I '11 strain, though out my life 
 
 I gasp I" 
 
 As he stood one evening proudly — (he had 
 
 traversed 
 Rome on horseback — peerless pageant! — 
 
 claimed the Lateran as new Pope) — -^^ 
 Thinking " All 's attained now ! Pontiff ! Who 
 
 could have erst 
 Dreamed of my advance so far when, some ten 
 
 years ago, 
 I embraced devotion, grew from priest to 
 
 bishop. 
 Gained the Purple, bribed the Conclave, got 
 
 the Two-thirds, saw my coop ope, 
 Came out — what Rome hails me ! O were 
 
 there a wish-shop. 
 Not one wish more would I purchase — lord of 
 
 all below ! 
 
 ' ' Ha — whodaresintrudenow — puts aside the 
 
 arras ? 
 What, old Peter, here again, at such a time, in 
 
 such a presence ? 
 Satan sends this plague back merely to em- 
 barrass 
 Me who enter on my office — little needing 
 
 you! 
 'Faith, I 'm touched myself by age, but you 
 
 lookTithon! 
 Were it vain to seek of you the sole prize left — 
 
 rejuvenescence ? 
 Well, since flesh is grass which time must lay 
 
 his scythe on. 
 Say your say and so depart and make no more 
 
 ado ! " 
 
 Peter faltered — coughing first by way of pro- 
 logue — 
 
 "Holiness, your help comes late: a death at 
 ninety little matters. 
 
 Padua, build poor Peter's pyre now, on log roll 
 log, 
 
 Bum away — I 've lived my day 1 Yet here 's 
 the stins in death — 
 
PIETRO OF ABANO 
 
 90s 
 
 I Ve an author's pride : I want my Book's sur- 
 vival : 
 
 See, I 've hid it in mj breast to warm me 'mid 
 the TShgs and tatters ! 
 
 Save it — tell next age your Master had no rival ! 
 
 Scholar's debt discharged in full, be ' Thanks ' 
 my latest breath ! " 
 
 " Faugh, the frowsy bundle — soribblings har- 
 um-scarum 
 Scattered o'er a dozen sheepsldns ! What 's the 
 
 name of this farrago ? 
 Ha — ' Conciliator Differentiarum ' — 
 Man and book may burn together, cause the 
 
 world no loss. 1 
 Stop — what else ? A tractate — eh, ' De Spe- 
 
 ciebus 
 Ceremonialis Ma-gi-ce 1 ' I dream sure 1 Hence, 
 
 away, go. 
 Wizard, — quick avoid me ! Vain you clasp my 
 
 knee, buss 
 Hand that bears the Fisher's ring or foot that 
 
 boasts the Cross ! 
 
 " Help ! The old magician clings like an octo- 
 pus! 
 
 Ah, you rise now — fuming, fretting, frowning, 
 if 1 read your features ! 
 
 Frown, who cares ? We 're Pope — once Pope, 
 you can't unpope us ! 
 
 Good — you muster up a smile : that 's better ! 
 StiU so brisk? 
 
 AU at once grown youthful ? But the case is 
 plain ! Ass — 
 
 Here I dally with the fiend, yet know the Word 
 
 — compels all creatures 
 
 Earthly, heavenly, hellish. Apape, Sathanas 
 Dicam verbum Salomonis — " dicite ! " When 
 
 — whisk ! — 
 
 What was changed ? The stranger gave his eyes 
 
 a rubbing ; 
 There smiled Peter's face turned back a moment 
 
 at him o'er the shoulder. 
 As the black-door shut, bang ! " So he 'scapes 
 
 a drubbing ! " 
 (Quoth a boy who, unespied, had stopped to hear 
 
 the talk.) 
 " That 's the way to thank these wizards when 
 
 they bid men 
 Benedicite ! What ails you ? You, a man, and 
 
 yet no bolder ? 
 Foreign Sir, you look but foolish ! " " Idmen, 
 
 idmen ! " 
 Groaned the Greek. " Peter, cheese at last 
 
 I know from chalk ! " 
 
 Peter lived his life out, menaced yet no martyr. 
 Knew himself the mighty man he was — such 
 
 knowledge all his guerdon. 
 Left the world a big book — people but in part 
 
 err 
 When they style a true Scientice Com-pen-di-um : 
 " Admirationem incutit " they sourly 
 Smile, as fast they shut the folio which myself 
 
 was somehow spurred on 
 Chice to ope : but love^— life's milk which daily, 
 
 hourly. 
 
 Blockheads lap — Peter, still thy taste of 
 love 's to come ! 
 
 Greek, was your ambition likewise doomed to 
 
 failure ? 
 True, I find no record you wore purple, walked 
 
 with axe and fasces. 
 Played some antipope's part: still, friend, don't 
 
 turn tail, you 're 
 Certain, with but these two gifts, to gain earth's 
 
 prize in time ! 
 Cleverness uncurbed by conscience — if you ran- 
 sacked 
 Peter's book you 'd find no potent spell like 
 
 these to rule the masses ; 
 Nor should want example, had I not to transact 
 Other business. Go your ways, you '11 thrive ! 
 
 So ends my rhyme. 
 
 When these parts Tiberius — not yet Caesar — 
 
 travelled, 
 Passing Padua, he consulted Padua's Oracle of 
 
 Geryon 
 (God three-headed, thrice wise) just to get un- 
 ravelled 
 Certain tangles of his future. " Fling at Abano 
 Golden dice," it answered : " dropt within the 
 
 fount there. 
 Note what sum the pips present ! " And still 
 
 we see each die, the very one. 
 Turn up, through the crystal, — read the whole 
 
 account there 
 Where 't is told by Suetonius, — each its highest 
 
 throw. 
 
 Scarce the sportive fancy-dice 1 fling show 
 
 " Venus : " 
 Still — for love of that dear land which I so oft 
 
 in dreams revisit — 
 I have — oh, not sung I hut lilted (as — between 
 
 Grows my lazy custom) this its legend, 
 the lilt? 
 
 What 
 
 ii 
 
 ^^^^E^0^. 
 
 ^ p p- 
 
 i 
 
 pff 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 # 
 
9o6 
 
 DRAMATIC IDYLS 
 
 DOCTOR 
 
 A Rabbi told me : On the day allowed 
 ISatan for carping at God's rule, he came, 
 Fresh from our earth, to brave the angel- 
 crowd. 
 
 " What is the fault now ? " " This I find to 
 
 blame ; 
 Many and various are the tongues below, 
 Yet all agree in one speech, all proclaim 
 
 " ' Hell has no might to match what earth can 
 
 show: 
 Death is the strongest-bom of Hell, and yet 
 Stronger than Death is a Bad Wife, we know.' 
 
 " Is it a wonder if I fume and fret — 
 
 Robbed of ray rights, since Death am I, and 
 
 mine 
 The style of Strongest? Men pay Nature's 
 
 debt 
 
 " Because they must at my demand ; decline 
 To pay it henceforth surely men will please, 
 Provided hasbands with bad wives combine 
 
 " To baffle Death. Judge between me and 
 
 these!" 
 " Thyself shalt judge. Descend to earth in 
 
 Of mortal, marry, drain from froth to lees 
 
 " The bitter draught, then see if thou escape 
 Concluding, with men sorrowful and sage, 
 A Bad Wife's strength Death's self in vain 
 would ape ! " 
 
 How Satan entered on his pilgrimage. 
 Conformed himself to earthly ordinance. 
 Wived and played husband well from youth to 
 age 
 
 Intrepidly — I leave untold, advance 
 Through many a married year until I reach 
 A day when — of his father's countenance 
 
 The very image, like himi too in speech 
 
 As well as thought and deed, — the union's 
 
 fruit 
 Attained maturity. " I needs must teach 
 
 " My son a trade : but trade, such son to suit, 
 Needs seeking after. He a man of war ? 
 Too cowardly ! A lawyer wins repute — 
 
 " Having to toil and moil, though — both which 
 
 are 
 Beyond this sluggard. There 's Divinity : 
 No, that 's my own bread-winner — that be 
 
 far 
 
 " From my poor offspring ! Physic? Ha, we '11 
 
 try 
 If this be practicable. Where 's my wit ? 
 Asleep? — since, now I come to think . . . Ay, 
 
 ayl 
 
 " Hither, my son ! Exactly have I hit 
 On a profession for thee. Medicus — 
 Behold, thou art appointed ! Yea, I spit 
 
 " Upon thine eyes, bestow a virtue thus 
 That henceforth not this human form I weai 
 Shalt thou perceive alone, but — one of us 
 
 " By privilege — thy fleshly sight shall bear 
 
 Me in my spirit-person as I walk 
 
 The world and take my prey appointed there. 
 
 "Doctor once dubbed — what ignorance shall 
 
 balk 
 Thy march triumphant ? Diagnose the gout 
 As colic, and prescribe it cheese for chalk — 
 
 " No matter ! All 's one : cure shall come 
 
 about 
 And win thee wealth — fees paid with such a 
 
 roar 
 Of thanks and praise alike from lord and lout 
 
 " As never stunned man's ears on earth before. 
 ' How may this be ? ' Why, that 's my skeptic ! 
 
 Soon 
 Truth will corrupt thee, soon thou doubt'st no 
 
 more I 
 
 " Why is it I bestow on thee the boon 
 Of recognizing me the while I go 
 Invisibly among men, morning, noon, 
 
 " And night, from house to house, and — quick 
 
 or slow — 
 Take my appointed prey ? They summon thee 
 For help, suppose : obey the summons ! so 1 
 
 " Enter, look round ! Where 's Death ? Know 
 
 — I am he, 
 Satan who work all evil : I who bring 
 Pain to the patient in whate'er degree. 
 
 " I, then, am there : first glance thine eye shall 
 
 Will find me — whether distant or at hand, 
 As I am free to do my spiriting. 
 
 "At such mere first glance thou shalt under- 
 stand 
 Wherefore I reach no higher up the room 
 Than door or window, when my form is 
 scanned. 
 
 " Howe'er friends' faces please to gather gloom, 
 Bent o'er the sick, — howe'er himself de- 
 sponds, — 
 In such case Death is not the sufferer's doom. 
 
 " Contrariwise, do friends rejoice my bonds 
 Are broken, does the captive in his turn 
 Crow ' Life shall conquer ' ? Nip these foolish 
 fronds 
 
 " Of hope a-sprout, if haply thou discern 
 Me at the head — my victim's head, be sure ! 
 Forth now ! This taught thee, little else to 
 learn ! " 
 
DOCTOR 
 
 907 
 
 And forth he went. Folk heard him aak de- 
 mure, 
 
 " How do you style this ailment ? (There he 
 peeps, 
 
 My father through the arras !) Sirs, the cure 
 
 " Is plain as A B C ! Experience steeps 
 
 Blossoms of pennyroyal half an hour 
 
 In sherris. Sumat ! — Lo, how sound he 
 
 " The subject you presumed was past the power 
 Of Galen to relieve ! " Or else, ' How '3 this ? 
 Why call for help so tardily ? Clouds lour 
 
 " Portentously indeed, Sirs ! (Naught 's 
 
 amiss ; 
 He 's at the bed-foot merely.) Still, the storm 
 May pass averted — not by quacks, I wis, 
 
 " Like you, my masters ! You, forsooth, per- 
 form 
 
 A miracle ? Stand, sciolists, aside ! 
 
 Blood, ne'er so cold, at ig:norance grows 
 warm ! " 
 
 Which boasting by result was justified. 
 
 Big as might words be : whether drugged or 
 
 left 
 Dragless, the patient always lived, not died. 
 
 Great the heir's gratitude, so nigh bereft 
 
 Of all he prized in this world : sweet the smile 
 
 Of disconcerted rivals : " Cure 'I — say, theft 
 
 " From Nature in despite of Art — so style 
 This oif-hand kill-or-cure work ! You did 
 
 much, 
 I had done more : folk cannot wait awhile ! " 
 
 But did the case change ? was it 
 such 
 
 ' Scarcely 
 
 The symptoms as to warrant our recourse 
 
 To your skill. Doctor ! Yet since just a touch 
 
 " Of pulse, a taste of breath, has all the force 
 With you of long investigation claimed 
 By others, — tracks an ailment to its source 
 
 " Intuitively, — may we ask unblamed 
 What from tbis pimple you prognosticate ? " 
 ■' Death ! " was the answer, as he saw and 
 named 
 
 The coucher by the sick man's head. " Too 
 
 late 
 You send for my assistance. I am bold 
 Only by Nature's leave, and bow to Fate I 
 
 " Besides, yon have my rivals ; lavish gold ! 
 How comfortably quick shall life depart 
 Cosseted by attentions manifold ! 
 
 " One day, one hour ago, perchance my art 
 Had done someservice. Since you have your- 
 selves 
 Chosen — before the horse — ^ to put the cart, 
 
 "Why, Sirs, the sooner that the sexton delves 
 Your patient's grave the better! How you 
 
 stare 
 — Shallow, for all the deep books on your 
 
 shelves I 
 
 " Fare you well, fumblers I " Do I need de- 
 clare 
 What name and fame, what riches recompensed 
 The Doctor's practice ? Never anywhere 
 
 Such an adept as daily evidenced 
 Each new vaticination ! Oh, not he 
 Like dolts who dallied with their scruples, 
 fenced 
 
 With subterfuge, nor ^ve out frank and free 
 
 Something decisive ! If he said " I save 
 
 The patient," saved he was : if " Death will be 
 
 " His portion,'' you might count him dead. 
 
 Thus brave. 
 Behold our worthy, sans competitor 
 Throughout the country, on the architrave 
 
 Of Glory's temple golden-lettered for 
 Machaon rediviims ! So, it fell 
 That, of a sudden, when the Emperor 
 
 Was smit by sore disease, I need not tell 
 If any other Doctor's aid was sought 
 To come and forthwith make the sick Prince 
 well. 
 
 " He will reward thee as a monarch ought. 
 Not much imports the malady ; but then. 
 He clings to life and cries like one distraught 
 
 *' For thee — who, from a simple citizen, 
 Mayst look to rise in rank, — nay, haply wear 
 A medal with his portrait, — always when 
 
 " Recovery is quite accomplished. There ! 
 Pass to the presence ! " Hardly has he crossed 
 The chamber's threshold when he halts, aware 
 
 Of who stands sentry by the head. All 's lost. 
 " Sire, naught avails my art : you near the goal, 
 And end the race by giving up the ghost." 
 
 "How?" cried the monarch: "Names upon 
 
 your roll 
 Of hall my subjects rescued by your skill — 
 Old and young, rich and poor — crowd cheek by 
 
 jowl 
 
 " And yet no room for mine ? Be saved I will ! 
 Why else am I earth's foremost potentate ? 
 Add me to these and take as fee your fill 
 
 " Of gold — that point admits of no debate 
 Between us : save me, as you can and must, — 
 Gold, till your gown's pouch cracks beneath the 
 weight ! " 
 
 This touched the Doctor, 
 thrust, 
 
 "Truly a home- 
 
9o8 
 
 DRAMATIC IDYLS 
 
 Parent, you will not parry ! Have I dared 
 Entreat that you forego the meal of dust 
 
 " — Man that is snake's meat — when I saw 
 
 prepared 
 Your daily portion ? Never ! Just this once, 
 Go from his head, then, — let his life be 
 
 spared ! " 
 
 Whisper met whisper in the graS response ; 
 " Fool, I must have my prey : no inch I budge 
 From where thou see'st me thus myself en- 
 sconce." 
 
 " Ah," moaned the sufferer, " by thy look I 
 
 judge 
 Wealth fails to tempt thee: what if honors 
 
 prove 
 More efficacious ? Kaught to him I grudge 
 
 " Who saves me. Only keep my head above 
 The cloud that 's creeping round it — I 'U 
 
 divide 
 My empire with thee ! No ? What 's left but 
 
 — love? 
 
 "Does love allure thee? Well then, take as 
 
 bride 
 My only daughter, fair beyond belief I 
 Save me — to-morrow shall the knot be tied ! " 
 
 " Father, you hear him ! Respite ne'er so 
 
 brief 
 Is all I beg : go now and come again 
 Next day, for aught I care : respect the grief 
 
 " Mine will be if thy first-born sues in vain ! " 
 "Fool, I must have my prey!" was all he 
 
 got 
 In answer. But a fancy crossed his brain. 
 
 " I have it ! Sire, methinks a meteor shot 
 Just now across the heavens and neutralized 
 Jove's salutary influence : 'neath the blot 
 
 " Plumb are you placed now : well that I sur- 
 mised 
 
 The cause of failure I Knaves, reverse the 
 bed ! " 
 
 " Stay ! " groaned the monarch, " I shall be 
 capsized — 
 
 "Jolt — jolt — my heels uplift where late my 
 
 head 
 Was lying — sure I 'm turned right round at 
 
 last! 
 What do you say now. Doctor ? " Naught hie 
 
 said. 
 
 For why ? With one brisk leap the Antic 
 
 From couch-foot back to pillow, — as before, 
 Lord of the situation. Long aghast 
 
 The Doctor gazed, then " Yet one trial more 
 Is left me " inwardly he uttered. "Shame 
 Upon thy flinty heart ! Do I implore 
 
 " This trifling favor in the idle name 
 Of mercy to the moribund ? I plead 
 The cause of all thou dost affect : my aim 
 
 " Befits my author ! Why would I succeed ? 
 Simply that by success I may promote 
 The growth of thy pet virtues — pride and 
 greed. 
 
 " But keep thy favors ! — curse thee ! I devote 
 Henceforth my service to the other side. 
 No time to lose : the rattle 's in his throat. 
 
 " So, — not to leave one last resource untried, — 
 Bun to my house with all haste, somebody ! 
 Bring me that knobstick thence, so often plied 
 
 " With profit by the astrologer — shall I 
 Disdain its help, the mystic Jacob's-Staff ? 
 Sire, do but have the courage not to die 
 
 ' ' Till this arri ve ! Let none of you dare laugh I 
 
 Though rugged its exterior, I have seen 
 
 That implement work wonders, send the chaff 
 
 " Quick and thick flying from the wheat — I 
 
 mean, 
 By metaphor, a human sheaf it threshed 
 Flail-like. Go fetch it ! Or — a word between 
 
 Just you and me, friend ! — go bid, unabashed, 
 My mother, whom you '11 find there, bring the 
 
 stick 
 Herself — herself, mindl" Out the lackey 
 
 dashed 
 
 Zealous upon the errand. Craft and trick 
 Are meat and drink to Satan : and he grinned 
 
 — How else ? — at an excuse so politic 
 
 For failure : scarce would Jacob's-Staff rescind 
 Fate's firm decree ! And ever as he neared 
 The agonizing one, his breath like wind 
 
 Froze to the marrow, while his eye-flash seared 
 Sense in the brain up : closelierand more close 
 Pressing his prey, when at the door appeared 
 
 — Who but his Wife the Bad ? Whereof one 
 
 dose, 
 One grain, one mite of the medicament. 
 Sufficed him. Up he sprang. One word, too 
 
 gross 
 
 To soil my lips with, — and through ceiling went: 
 Somehow the Husband. " That a storm 's 
 
 dispersed 
 We know for certain by the sulphury scent ! 
 
 " Hail to the Doctor ! Who but one so versed! 
 In all Dame Nature's secrets had prescribed 
 The staff thus opportunely ? Style him first 
 
 " And foremost of physicians 1 " " I've imbibed 
 Elixir surely," smiled the prince, — " have 
 
 gained 
 New lease of life. Dear Doctor, how yon 
 
 bribed 
 
PAN AND LUNA 
 
 "Death to forego me, boots uot: you've ob- 
 tained 
 My dauphter and her dowry. Death, I 've heard, 
 Was still on earth the sti'ongest power that 
 reigned, 
 
 " Except a Bad Wife I " Whereunto demurred 
 Nowise the Doctor, so refused the fee 
 — No dowry, no bad wife ! 
 
 " Yon think absurd 
 This tale?" — the Rabbi added: " True, our 
 
 Talmud 
 Boasts sundry such: yet — have our elders 
 
 erred 
 In thinking there 's some water there, not all 
 
 mud ? " 
 I tell it, as the Rabbi told it me. 
 
 PAN AND LUNA 
 
 Si credere dignum est. — Georffic, III. 390. 
 
 Oh, worthy of belief I hold it was, 
 Virgil, your legend in those strange three lines ! 
 No question, that adventure came to pass 
 One black night in Arcadia : yes, the pines. 
 Mountains and valleys mingling made one mass 
 Of black with void black heaven : the earth's 
 
 confines. 
 The sky's embrace, — below, above, around. 
 All hardened into black without a bound. 
 
 Fill up a swart stone chalice to the brim 
 With fresh-squeezed yet fast-thickening poppy- 
 juice : 
 See how the sluggish jelly, late a^swim. 
 Turns marble to the touch of who would loose 
 The solid smooth, grown jet from rim to rim, 
 By turning round the bowl ! So night can fuse 
 -Earth with her all-comprising sky. No less. 
 Light, the least spark, shows air and emptiness. 
 
 And thus it proved when — diving into space, 
 Stript of all vapor, from each web of mist 
 Utterly film-free — entered on her race 
 The naked Moon, full-orbed antagonist 
 Of night and dark, night's dowry : peak to base. 
 Upstarted mountains, and each valley, kissed 
 To sudden life, lay silver-bright : in air 
 Flew she revealed, Maid-Moou with limbs all 
 bare. 
 
 Still as she fled, each depth — where refuge 
 
 seemed — 
 Opening a lone pale chamber, left distinct 
 Those Umbs: 'mid still-retreating blue, she 
 
 teemed 
 Herself with whiteness, — virginal, uncinct 
 By any halo save what finely gleamed 
 To outline not disguise her : heaven was linked 
 In one accord with earth to quaff the joy, 
 Drain beauty to the dregs without alloy. 
 
 Whereof she grew aware. What help ? When, 
 
 lo, , J . 
 
 A sucoorable cloud with sleep lay dense : 
 
 909 
 
 Some pinetree-top had caught it sailing slow, 
 And tethered for a prize : in evidence 
 Captive lay fleece on fleece of piled-up snow 
 Drowsily patient: flake-heaped how or whence. 
 The structure of that succorable cloud. 
 What matter? Shamed she plunged into its 
 shroud. 
 
 Orbed — so the woman-figure poets call 
 Because of rounds on rounds — that apple- 
 
 Head which its hair binds close into a ball 
 Each side the curving ears — that pure undraped 
 Pout of the sister paps — that . . . Once for 
 
 all. 
 Say — -her consummate circle thus escaped 
 With its innumerous circlets, sank absorbed. 
 Safe in the cloud — naked Moon full-orbed 1 
 
 But what means this? The downy swathes 
 
 combine, 
 Conglobe, the smotheir coy-caressing stuff 
 Curdles about her ! Vain each twist and twine 
 Those lithe limbs try, encroached on by a fluff 
 Fitting as close as fits the dented spine 
 Its flexible ivory outside-fiesh : enough ! 
 The plumy drifts contract, condense, constringe. 
 Till she is swallowed by the feathery springe. 
 
 As when a pearl slips lost in the thin foam 
 Churned on a sea-shore, and, o'er-frothed, con- 
 ceits 
 Herself safe-housed in Amphitrite's dome, — 
 If, through the bladdery wave-worked yeast, 
 
 she meets 
 What most she loathes and leaps from, — elf 
 
 from gnome 
 No gladlier, — finds that safest of retreats 
 Bubble about a treacherous hand wide ope 
 To grasp her — (divers who pick pearls so 
 grope) — 
 
 So lay this Maid-Moon clasped around and 
 
 caught 
 By rough red Pan, the god of all that tract : 
 He it was schemed the snare thus subtly wrought 
 With simulated earth - breath, — wool - tufts 
 
 packed 
 Into a billowy wrappage. Sheep far-sought 
 For spotless shearings yield such : take the fact 
 As learned Virgil gives it, — how the breed 
 Whitens itself forever : yes, indeed ! 
 
 If one forefather ram, though pure as chalk 
 From tinge on fieece, should still display a. 
 
 tongue 
 Black 'neath the beast's moist palate, prompt 
 
 men balk 
 The propagating plague : he gets no young : 
 They rather slay him, — sell his hide to calk 
 Ships with, first steeped in pitch, — nor hands 
 
 are wrung 
 In sorrow for his fate : protected thus. 
 The purity we love is gained for us. 
 
 So did Girl-Moon, by just her attribute 
 
 Of unmatched modesty betrayed, lie trapped. 
 
 Bruised to the breast of Pan , half god half brute. 
 
gio 
 
 THE BLIND MAN" TO THE MAIDE?i 
 
 Raked by his bristly boar-sward while he lapped 
 — Never say, kissed her ! that were to pollute 
 Love's language — which moreover proves un- 
 apt 
 To tell how she recoiled — as who finds thorns 
 Where she sought flowers — when, feeling, she 
 touched — horns ! 
 
 Then — does the legend say ? — first moon- 
 eclipse 
 Happened, first swooning-fit which puzzled sore 
 The early sages ? Is that why she dips 
 Into the dark, a minute and no more, 
 Only so long as serves her while she rips 
 The cloud's womb through and, faultless as 
 
 ■ before. 
 Pursues her way ? No lesson for a maid 
 Left she, a maid herself thus trapped, betrayed ? 
 
 Hai, Virgil? Tell the rest, you ! "To the deep 
 Of his domain the wildwood, Pan forthwith 
 Called her, and so she followed " — in her sleep, 
 Surely ? — " by no means spurning him." The 
 
 myth 
 Explain who may ! Let all else go, I keep 
 — As of a ruin just a monolith — 
 Thus much, one verse of five words, each a boon : 
 Arcadia, night, a cloiid, pan, and the moon. 
 
 The first ten lines that follow were printed as 
 epilogue to the second series of Dramatic Idyls ; 
 the second ten were added to them ;by Brown- 
 ing in the album of a young American girl in 
 Venice, October, 1880. See The Century for 
 November, 1882. 
 
 " Touch him ne'er so lightly, into song he broke '.' ■ 
 Soil 80 quick-receptive, — not one feather-seed. 
 Not one flower-dust fell but straight its fall awoke 
 Vitalizing virtue ; song would song succeed 
 Sudden as spontaneous — prove a poet-soul I " 
 
 Indeed? 
 Bock 's the song-soil rather, surface hard and bare : 
 Sun and dew their mildness, storm and frost their rage 
 Vainly both expend, — few flowers awaken there : 
 Quiet in its cleft broods ^- what the after-age 
 Knows and names a pine, a nation's heritage. 
 
 Thus! wrote in London, musing on my betters,. 
 Poets dead and gone ; and lo< the critics cried, 
 " Out on such a boast !" as if I dreamed that fetters 
 Binding Dante bind up — me ! as if true pride 
 Were not also humble ! 
 
 So I smiled and sighed ■ 
 As I oped your book in Venice this bright morning. 
 Sweet new friend of mine ! and felt the clay or sand. 
 Whatsoe'er my soil be, break — for praise or scorning - 
 Out in grateful fancies — weeds ; but weeds expand 
 Almost into flowers, held by such it kindly hand. 
 
 THE BLIND MAN TO THE MAIDEN 
 
 Browning translated the following from a 
 German poem in Wilhelmine von Hillern's 
 novel The Hour Will Come at the request of 
 Mrs. Clara Bell, the translator of the novel. 
 It there appeared as the work of an anonymous 
 friend, but was reprinted as Browning's in The 
 Whitehall Review for March 1, 1883. 
 
 Thi: blind man to the maiden said, 
 
 " O thou of hearts the truest, 
 Thy countenance is hid from me j 
 Let not my question anger thee ! 
 
 Speak, though in words the fewest. 
 
 " Tell me, what kind of eyes are thine ? 
 
 Dark eyes, or light ones rather ? " 
 "My eyes are a decided brown — 
 So much, at least, by looking down. 
 From the brook's glass I gather." 
 
 " And is it red — thy little mouth ? 
 
 That too the blind must care for." 
 " Ah ! I would tell it soon to thee. 
 Only — none yet has told it me. 
 
 I cannot answer, therefore. 
 
 '* But dost thou ask what heart I have — 
 
 There hesitate I never. 
 
 In thine own breast 't is borne, and so 
 
 'T is thine in weal, and thine in woe, 
 
 For life, for death — thine ever ! " 
 
 GOLDONI 
 
 The following sonnet was written by Brown- 
 ing for the album of the Committee of the 
 Goldoni monument, erected in Venice in 1883. 
 
 GoLDONI — good, gay, sunniest of sonls, — 
 
 Glassing half Venice in that verse of thine, — 
 
 What though it just reflect the shade and shine 
 Of common life, nor render, as it rolls. 
 Grandeur and gloom ? Sufficient for thy shoals 
 
 Was Carnival ; Parini's depths enshrine 
 
 Secrets unsuited to that opaline 
 Surface of things which laughs along thy scrolls. 
 There throng the people : how they come and go, 
 
 Lisp the soft language, flaunt the bright 
 garb, — see, — 
 On Piazza, Calle, under Portico 
 
 And over Bridge ! Dear king of Comedy, 
 Be honored ! thou that didst love Venice so, 
 
 Venice, and we who love her, all love thee I 
 
 Vekice, November 27, 1883. 
 
DONALD 
 
 9U 
 
 JOCOSERIA 
 
 This collection of poems was published in 
 1883. The title of the volume is mentioned in 
 a foot-note to the Note at the end of Paracel- 
 sus^ where the poet speaks of *^such rubbish as 
 Melander's Jocoseria." In a letter, accompa- 
 nying a copy of the volume, sent to a friend, 
 Browning wrote : " The title is taken from the 
 work of Melander (Schwartzmann), reviewed, 
 
 by a curious coincidence, in the Blackwood of 
 this month [February, 1883] . I referred to it in 
 a note to Paracelsus. The two Hebrew quota/- 
 tions [in the note to Jochanan Hakkadosh] 
 (put in to give a grave look to what is mere fun 
 and invention) being translated amount to (1) 
 ' A Collection of Lies ' ; and (2), an old saying, 
 ' From Moses to Moses arose none like Moses.' " 
 
 WANTING IS — WHAT? 
 
 This is in the nature of a prelude to the entire 
 group of poems. 
 
 Wanting is — what ? 
 
 Summer redundant, 
 
 Blueness abundant, 
 
 — Where is the blot? 
 Beamy the world, yet a blank all the same, 
 — Framework which waits for a picture to 
 
 frame : 
 What of the leafage, what of the flower ? 
 Roses embowering with naught they embower ! 
 Come then, complete incompletion, comer. 
 Pant through the blueness, perfect the sum- 
 mer ! 
 
 Breathe but one breath 
 
 Kose-beauty above. 
 
 And all that was death 
 
 Grows life, grows love. 
 
 Grows love ! 
 
 DONALD 
 
 This story which Browning had from the lips 
 of the hero has also been told in prose by Sir 
 Walter Scott. 
 
 " Will you hear my story also, 
 
 — iiuge Sport, brave adventure in plenty ? " 
 The boys were a band from Oxford, 
 The oldest of whom was twenty. 
 
 The bothy we held carouse in 
 Was bright with fire and candle ; 
 
 Tale followed tale like a merry-go-round 
 Whereof Sport turned the handle. 
 
 In our eyes and noses — turf -smoke : 
 In our ears a tune from the trivet. 
 
 Whence " Boiling, boiling," the kettle sang, 
 "And ready for fresh Glenlivet." 
 
 So, feat capped feat, with a vengeance : 
 Truths, though, — the lads were loyal : 
 " Grouse, five-score brace to the bag ! 
 Deer, ten hours' stalk of the Royal ! " 
 
 Of boasting, not one bit, boys ! 
 
 Only there seemed to settle 
 Somehow above your curly heads, 
 
 — Plain through the singing kettle. 
 
 Palpable through the cloud, 
 
 As each new-puffed Havana 
 Rewarded the teller's well-told tale, — 
 
 This vaunt " To Sport — Hosanna ! 
 
 " Hunt, fish, shoot. 
 
 Would a man fulfil life's duty 1 
 Not to the bodily frame alone 
 Does Sport give strength and beauty, 
 
 "But character gains in — courage? 
 Ay, Sir, and much beside it I 
 You don't sport, more 's the pitjr ; 
 You soon would find, if yon tried it, 
 
 " Good sportsman means good fellow, 
 Sound-hearted he, to the centre ; 
 Your mealy-mouthed mild milksops 
 
 — There 's where the rot can enter I 
 
 " There 's where the dirt will breed. 
 The shabbiness Sport would banish ! 
 Oh no. Sir, no ! In your honored case 
 All such objections vanish. 
 
 " 'T is known how hard you studied : 
 A Double-First — what, the jigger ! 
 Give me but half yoiir Latin and Greek, 
 I '11 never again touch trigger I 
 
 " Still, tastes are tastes, allow me I 
 Allow, too, where there 's keenness 
 For Sport, there 's little likelihood 
 Of a man's displaying meanness ! " 
 
 So, put on my mettle, I interposed. 
 "Will you hear my story ? " quoth I. 
 " Never mind how long since it happed, 
 I sat, as we sit, in a bothy ; 
 
 " With as merry a band of mates, too, 
 Undergrads all on a level : 
 (One 's a Bishop, one 's gone to the Bench, 
 And one 's gone — well, to the Devil.) 
 
912 
 
 JOCOSERIA 
 
 " When, lo, a scratching and tapping I 
 
 In hobbled a ghastly visitor. 
 Listen to just what he told us himself 
 
 — No need of our playing inquisitor ! " 
 
 Doyou happen to know in Ross-shire 
 Mount Ben . . . but the name scarce mat- 
 ters: 
 Of the naked fact I am sure enough. 
 Though I clothe it in rags and tatters. 
 
 You may recognize Ben by description ; 
 
 Behind him — a moor's immenseness : 
 Up goes the middle mount of a range. 
 
 Fringed with its firs in denseness. 
 
 Rimming the edge, its fir-fringe, mind ! 
 
 For an edge there is, though narrow ; 
 From end to end of the range, a strip 
 
 Of path runs straight as an arrow. 
 
 And the mountaineer who takes that path 
 
 Saves himself miles of journey 
 He has to plod if he crosses the moor 
 
 Through heather, peat, and bnrnie. 
 
 But a mountaineer he needs must be. 
 For, look you, right in the middle 
 
 Projects bluff Ben — with an end in ich — 
 Why planted there, is a riddle : 
 
 Since aR Ben's brothers little and big 
 Keep rank, set shoulder to shoulder, 
 
 And only this burliest out must bulge 
 Till it seems — to the beholder 
 
 From down in the gully, — as if Ben's breast, 
 
 To a sudden spike diminished, 
 Would signify to the boldest foot 
 
 " All further passage finished ! " 
 
 Yet the mountaineer who sidles on 
 
 And on to the very bending. 
 Discovers, if heart and brain be proof, 
 
 No necessary ending. 
 
 Foot up, foot down, to the turn abrupt 
 
 Having trod, he, there arriving. 
 Finds — what he took for a point was breadth, 
 
 A mercy of Natm'e's contriving. 
 
 So, he rounds what, when 't is reached, proves 
 straight. 
 
 From one side gains the other : 
 The wee path widens — resume the march. 
 
 And he foils you, Ben my brother ! 
 
 But Donald — (that name, I hope, will do) — 
 
 I wrong him if I call " foiling " 
 The tramp of the callant, whistling the while 
 
 As blithe as our kettle 's boiling. 
 
 He had dared the danger from boyhood up, 
 And now, — when perchance was waiting 
 
 A lass at the brig below, — 'twixt monnt 
 And moor would he stand debating ? 
 
 Moreover this Donald was twenty-five, 
 
 A glory of bone and muscle : 
 Did a fiend dispute the right of way, 
 
 Donald would try a tussle. 
 
 Lightsomely marched he out of the broad 
 
 On to the narrow and narrow ; 
 A step more, rounding the angular rock, 
 
 Reached the front straight as an arrow. 
 
 He stepped it, safe on the ledge he stood, 
 When — whom found he full-facing '! 
 
 What fellow in courage and wariness too, 
 Had scouted ignoble pacing, 
 
 And left low safety to timid mates, 
 
 And made for the dread dear danger, 
 And gained the height where — who could 
 
 He would meet with a rival ranger ? 
 
 'T was a gold-red stag that stood and stared, 
 
 Gigantic and magnific. 
 By the wonder — ay, and the peril — struck 
 
 Intelligent and pacific : 
 
 For a red deer is no fallow deer 
 Grown cowardly through park-feeding ; 
 
 He batters you like a thunderbolt 
 If you brave his haunts unheeding. 
 
 I doubt he could hardly perform volte-face 
 
 Had valor advised discretion : 
 You may walk on a rope, but to turn on a rope 
 
 No Blondin makes profession. 
 
 Yet Donald must turn, would pride permit. 
 
 Though pride ill brooks retiring : 
 Each eyed each — mute man, motionless beast — 
 
 Less fearing than admiring. 
 
 These are the moments when quite new sense. 
 
 To meet some need as novel. 
 Springs up in the brain : it inspired resource : 
 
 — Nor advance nor retreat but — grovel 1 " 
 
 And slowly, surely, never a whit 
 
 Relaxing the steady tension 
 Of eye-stare which binds man to beast, — 
 
 By an inch and inch declension, 
 
 Sank Donald sidewise down and down : 
 
 Till flat, breast upwards, lying 
 At his six-foot length, no corpse more still, 
 
 — "If he cross me ! The trick 's worth try- 
 
 ing." 
 
 Minutes were an eternity ; 
 
 But a new sense was created 
 In the stag's brain too ; he resolves ! Slow, 
 sure, 
 
 With eye-stare unabated, 
 
 Feelingly he extends a foot 
 Which tastes the way ere it touches 
 
 Earth's solid and just escapes man's soft, 
 Nor hold of the same unclutches 
 
SOLOMON AND BALKIS 
 
 Till its fellow foot, light as a feather whisk, 
 
 Lands itself no less iinely ; 
 So a mother removes a fly from the face 
 
 Of her babe asleep supinely. 
 
 And now 't is the haunch and hind-foot's turn 
 — That's hard: can the beast quite raise 
 
 Yes, traversing half the prostrate length, 
 His hoof-tip does not graze it. 
 
 Just one more Uft ! But Donald, you see, 
 
 Was sportsman first, man after : 
 A fancy lightened his caution through, 
 
 — He wellnigh broke into laughter : 
 
 " It were nothing short of a miracle ! 
 
 Unrivalled, unexampled — 
 All sporting feats with this feat matched 
 
 Were down and dead and trampled ! " 
 
 The last of the legs as tenderly 
 
 Follows the rest ; or never 
 Or now is the time ! His knife in reach. 
 
 And his right-hand loose — how clever 1 
 
 For this can stab up the stomach's soft. 
 While the left-hand grasps the pastern. 
 
 A rise on the elbow, and — now 's the time 
 Or never : this turn 's the last turn ! 
 
 I shall dare to place myself by God 
 Who scanned — for he does — each feature 
 
 Of the face thrown up in appeal to him 
 By the agonizing creature. 
 
 Nay, I hear plain words : " Thy gift brings 
 this ! " 
 Up he sprang, back he staggered. 
 Over he fell, and with him our friend 
 
 — At following game no laggard. 
 
 Yet he was not dead when they picked next 
 day 
 
 From the gully's depth the wreck of him ; 
 His fall had been stayed by the stag beneath 
 
 Who cushioned and saved the neck of him. 
 
 But the rest of his body — why, doctors said. 
 Whatever could break was broken ; 
 
 Legs, arms, ribs, all of him looked like a toast 
 In a tumbler of port-wihe soaken. 
 
 " That your life is left you, thank the stag ! " 
 Said they when — the slow cure ended — 
 
 They opened the hospital-door, and thence 
 — Strapped, spliced, main fractures mended. 
 
 And minor damage left wisely alone, — 
 Like an old shoe clouted and cobbled. 
 
 Out — what went in a Goliath wellnigh, — 
 Some half of a David hobbled. 
 
 " You must ask an alms from house to house : 
 
 Sell the stag's head for a bracket. 
 With its grand twelvfe tines — I 'd buy it my- 
 self - 
 
 And use the skin for a jacket ! " 
 
 913 
 
 Hewas wiser, made both head and hide 
 His win-penny : hands and knees on. 
 
 Would manage to crawl— poor crab — by the 
 roads 
 In the misty stalkiug-seaaon. 
 
 And if he discovered a bothy like this. 
 Why, harvest was sure : folk listened. 
 
 He told his tale to the lovers of Sport : 
 Lips twitched, cheeks glowed, eyes glistened. 
 
 And when he had come to the close, and spread 
 
 His spoils for the gazers' wonder 
 With " Gentlemen, here 's the skull of the stag 
 
 I was over, thank God, not under ! " — 
 
 The company broke out in applause ; 
 
 " By Jingo, a lucky cripple ! 
 Have a munch of grouse and a hunk of bread, 
 
 And a tug, besides, at our tipple 1 " 
 
 And " There 's my pay for your pluck ! " cried 
 This, 
 *' And mine for your jolly story ! " 
 Cried That, while T' other — but he was 
 drunk — 
 Hiccupped " A trump, a Tory ! " 
 
 I hope I gave twice as much as the rest ; 
 
 For, as Homer would say, " within grate 
 Though teeth kept tongue," my whole soul 
 growled, 
 
 " Rightly rewarded, ^ Ingrate ! " 
 
 SOLOMON AND BALKIS 
 
 Solomon King of the Jews and the Queen of 
 Sheba, Balkis, 
 
 Talk on the ivory throne, and we well may con- 
 jecture their talk is 
 
 Solely of things sublime : why else has she 
 sought Mount Zion, 
 
 Climbed the six golden steps, and sat betwixt 
 lion and lion ? 
 
 She proves him with hard questions : before 
 
 she has reached the middle 
 He smiling supplies the end, straight solves 
 
 them riddle by riddle ; 
 Until, dead-beaten at last, there is left no spirit 
 
 in her. 
 And thus would she close the game whereof she 
 
 was first beginner : 
 
 " wisest thou of the wise, world's marvel and 
 
 wellnigh monster. 
 One crabbed question more to construe or vulgo 
 
 conster 1 
 Who are those, of all mankind, a monarch of 
 
 perfect wisdom 
 Should open to, when they knock at spheteron do 
 
 — that 's, his dome ? " 
 
 The King makes tart reply : " Whom else but 
 
 the wise his equals 
 Should he welcome with heart and voice ? — 
 
 since, king though he be. such weak walls 
 
9'4 
 
 JOCOSERIA 
 
 Of circumstance — power and poiup — divide 
 
 souls each from other 
 That whoso proves kingly in craft I needs must 
 
 acknowledg:e my brother. 
 
 " Come poet, come painter, come sculptor, 
 come builder — whate'er his condition. 
 
 Is he prime in his art ? We are peers ! My 
 insight has pierced the partition 
 
 And hails — for the poem, the picture, the 
 statue, the building — my fellow ! 
 
 Gold 's gold though dim in the dust : court- 
 polish soon turns it yellow. 
 
 " But tell me in turn, O thou to thy weakling 
 
 sex superior, 
 That for knowledge hast travelled so far yet 
 
 seemest nowhit the wearier, — 
 Who are those, of all mankind, a queen like 
 
 thyself, consummate 
 In wisdom, should call to her side with an 
 
 affable ' Up hither, come, mate ' ? " 
 
 " The Good are my mates — how else ? Why 
 
 doubt it ? " the Queen upbridled : 
 " Sure even above the Wise, — or in travel my 
 
 eyes have idled, — 
 I see the Good stand plain : be they rich, poor, 
 
 shrewd, or simple. 
 If Good they only are. . . . Permit me to drop 
 
 my wimple! " 
 
 And, in that bashful jerk of her body, she — 
 peace, thou scoifer ! — 
 
 Jostled the King's right-hand stretched court- 
 ously help to proffer. 
 
 And so disclosed a portent : all unaware the 
 Prince eyed 
 
 The King which bore the Name — turned out- 
 side now from inside ! 
 
 The truth-compelling Xame ! — and at once, 
 
 "I greet the Wise — oh, 
 Certainly welcome such to my court — with 
 
 this proviso : 
 The buildmg must be my temple, my person 
 
 stand forth the statue. 
 The picture my portrait prove, and the poem 
 
 my praise — you cat, you ! '' 
 
 But Solomon nonplussed ? Nay! " Be truth- 
 ful in turn ! " so bade he ; 
 
 "See the Name, obey its best ! " And at once 
 subjoins the lady, 
 
 — " Provided the Good are the young, men 
 strong and tall and proper. 
 
 Such servants I straightway enlist, — which 
 means "... But the blushes stop her. 
 
 "Ah, Soul," the Monarch sighed, "that 
 
 wouldst soar yet ever crawlest. 
 How comes it thou canst discern the greatest 
 
 yet choose the smallest. 
 Unless because heaven is far, where wings find 
 
 fit expansion. 
 While creeping on all-fours suits, suffices the 
 
 earthly mansion ? 
 
 " Aspire to the Best ! But which ? There are 
 
 Bests and Bests so many, 
 With a habitat each for each, earth's Best as 
 
 much Best as any ! 
 On Lebanon roots the cedar — soil lofty, yet 
 
 stony and sandy — 
 While hyssop, of worth in its way, on the wall 
 
 grows low but handy. 
 
 " Above may the Soul spread wing, spurn body 
 
 and sense beneath her ; 
 Below she must condescend to plodding un- 
 
 buoyed by ether. 
 In heaven I yearn for knowledge, account all 
 
 else inanity ; 
 On earth I confess an itch for the praise of fools 
 
 ^ that 's Vanity. 
 
 " It is naught, it will go, it can never presume 
 above to trouble me ; 
 
 But here, — why, it toys and tickles and teases, 
 howe'er I redouble me 
 
 In a doggedest of endeavors to play the indif- 
 ferent. Therefore, 
 
 Suppose we resume discourse ? Thou hast 
 travelled thus far : but wherefore ? 
 
 " Solely for Solomon's sake, to see whom earth 
 
 styles Sagest ? " 
 Through her blushes laughed the Queen. 
 For the sake of a Sage ? The gay 
 
 jest! 
 On high, be communion vrith Mind — there, 
 
 Body concerns not Balkis : 
 Down here, — do I make too bold ? 
 
 Solomon, — one fool's small kiss ! " 
 
 CRISTINA AND MONALDESCHI 
 
 Ah, but how each loved each. Marquis 1 
 
 Here 's the gallery they trod 
 
 Both together, he her god. 
 
 She his idol, — lend your rod. 
 Chamberlain ! — ay, there they are — " Quts 
 , . Separabit ? " — plain those two 
 
 Touching words come into view. 
 
 Apposite for me and you ; 
 
 Since they witness to incessant 
 Love like ours : King Francis, he — ■ 
 Diane the adored one, she — 
 Prototypes of you and me. 
 
 Everywhere is carved her Crescent 
 With his Salamander-sign — 
 Flame-fed creature : fiame benign 
 To itself or, if malign. 
 
 Only to the meddling curious, 
 
 — So, be warned, Sir ! Where *s my hea^ f 
 
 How it wanders ! What I said 
 
 Merely meant — the creature, fed 
 Thus on flame, was scarce injurious 
 
 Save to fools who woke its ire, 
 
 Thinking fit to play with fire. 
 
 'T is the Crescent you admire ? 
 
CRISTINA AND MONALDESCHI 
 
 91s 
 
 Then, be Diane ! I '11 be Francis. 
 Cresuenta change, — true ! — wax and wane, 
 Woraan-like : male hearts retain 
 Heat nor, once warm, cool again. 
 
 So, we figure — such our chance is — 
 I as man and you as . . . What ? 
 Take offence ? My Love forgot 
 He plays woman, Ido not? 
 
 I — the woman ? See my habit, 
 
 Ask my people ! Anyhow, 
 
 Be we what we may, one vow 
 
 Binds us, male or female. Now, — 
 Stand, Sir ! Read ! " Quis separabit 1 " 
 
 Half a mile of pictured way 
 
 Fast these palace-walls to-day 
 
 Traversed, this I came to say. 
 
 Tou must needs begin to love me ; 
 
 First I hated, then, at best, 
 
 — Have it so ! — I acquiesced ; 
 
 Pure compassion did the rest. 
 From below thus raised above me. 
 
 Would you, step by step, descend. 
 
 Pity me, become my friend. 
 
 Like me, like less, loathe at end ? 
 
 That 's the ladder's round you rose by ! 
 That — my own foot kicked away. 
 Having raised you : let it st^, 
 Serve you for retreating ? Nay. 
 
 Close to me you climbed : as close by. 
 Keep your station, though the peak 
 Beached proves somewhat bare and bleak ! 
 Woman 's strong if man is weak. 
 
 Keep here, loving me forever ! 
 Love's look, gesture, speech, I claim : 
 Act love, lie love, all the same — 
 Play as earnest were our game ! 
 
 Lonely I stood long : 't was clever 
 When you climbed, before men's eyes. 
 Spumed the earth and scaled the skies, 
 Grained my peak and grasped your prize. 
 
 Here you stood, then, to men's wonder ; 
 Here you tire of standing ? Kneel ! 
 Cure what giddiness you feel, 
 'This way ! Doyour senses reel ? 
 
 Not unlikely ! What rolls under ? 
 Yawning death in yon abyss 
 Where the waters whirl and hiss 
 Bound more frightful peaks than this. 
 
 Should my buffet dash you thither . . . 
 But be sage ! No watery grave 
 Needs await you : seeming brave 
 Kneel on safe, dear timid slave ! 
 
 You surmised, when you climbed hither. 
 Just as easy were retreat 
 Should you tire, conceive unmeet 
 Longer patience at my feet ? 
 
 Me as standing, you as stooping, — 
 Who arranged for each the pose ? 
 Lest men think us friends turned foes. 
 Keep the attitude you chose ! 
 
 Men are used to this same grouping — 
 I and you like statues seen. 
 You and I, no third between. 
 Kneel and stand ! That makes the scene. 
 
 Mar it — and one buffet . . . Pardon ! 
 
 Needless warmth — wise words in waste ! 
 
 'T was prostration that replaced 
 
 Kneeling, then ? A proof of taste. 
 Crouch, not kneel, while I moimt guard on 
 
 Prostrate love — become no waif. 
 
 No estray to waves that chafe 
 
 Disappointed — love 's so safe ! 
 
 Waves that chafe ? The idlest fancy ! 
 Peaks that scare ? I think we know 
 Walls enclose our sculpture ; so 
 Grrouped, we pose in Fontainebleau, 
 
 Up now ! Wherefore hesitancy ? 
 Arm in arm and cheek by cheek, 
 Laugh with me at waves and peak I 
 Silent still ? Why, pictures speak. 
 
 See, where Juno strikes Ixion, 
 Primatice speaks plainly ! Pooh — 
 Rather, Florentine Le Roux ! 
 I 've lost head for who is who — 
 
 So it swims and wanders ! Fie on 
 What still proves me female ! Here, 
 By the staircase ! — for we near 
 That dark " GaUery of the Deer." 
 
 Look me in the eyes once ! Steady I 
 Are you faithful now as erst 
 On that eve when we two first 
 Vowed at Avon, blessed and cursed 
 
 Faith and falsehood ? Pale already ? 
 Forward ! Must my hand compel 
 Entrance — this way ? Exit — well, 
 Somehow, somewhere. Who can tell? 
 
 What if to the selfsame place in 
 Rustic Avon, at the door 
 Of the vUlage church once more. 
 Where a tombstone paves the floor 
 
 By that holy-water basin 
 You appealed to — " As, below. 
 This stone hides its corpse, e'en so 
 I your secrets hide " ? What ho ! 
 
 Friends, my four ! You, Priest, confess him I 
 
 I have judged the culprit there : 
 
 Execute my sentence ! Care 
 
 For no mail such cowards wear ! 
 Done, Priest ? Then, absolve and bless him I 
 
 Now — you three, stab thick and fast. 
 
 Deep and deeper ! Dead at last ? 
 
 Thanks, friends —Father, thanks ! Aghast? 
 
 What one word of his confession 
 Would you tell me, though I lured 
 With that royal crown abjured 
 Just because its bars immured 
 
 Love too much ? Love burst compression. 
 Fled free, finally confessed 
 All its secrets to that breast 
 Wlence ... let Avon tell the rest ! 
 
9i6 
 
 JOCOSERIA 
 
 MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT AND FUSELI 
 
 Oh but is it not hard, Dear ? 
 
 Mine are the nerves to quake at a mouse : 
 If a spider drops I shrink with fear : 
 
 I should die outright in a haunted house ; 
 While for you — did the danger dared bring 
 
 help — 
 From a lion's den I could steal his whelp. 
 With a serpent round me, stand stock-still, 
 Go sleep in a churchyard, — so would will 
 Give me the power to dare and do 
 Valiantly — just for you ! 
 
 Much amiss in the head, Dear, 
 
 I toil at a languag-e, tax my brain 
 Attempting to draw — the scratches here 1 
 
 I play, play, practise, and all in vain : 
 But for you ^ if my triumph brought you pride, 
 I would grapple with Greek Plays till I died. 
 Paint a portrait of you — who can tell ? ' 
 Work my fingers off for your " Pretty well : " 
 Language and painting and music too, 
 £asily done — for you ! 
 
 Strong and fierce in the heart, Dear, 
 
 With — more than a will — what seems a 
 power 
 To pounce on my prey, love outbroke here 
 
 In flame deTounng and to devour. 
 Such love has labored its best and worst 
 To win me a lover ; yet, last as first, 
 I have not quickened his pulse one beat. 
 Fixed a moment's fancy, bitteror sweet: 
 Tet the strong fierce heart's love's labor's due, 
 Utterly lost, was — you! 
 
 ADAM, LILITH, AND EVE 
 
 One day, it thundered and lightened. 
 
 Two women, fairly frightened. 
 
 Sank to their knees, transformed, transfixed, 
 
 At the feet of the man who sat betwixt ; 
 
 And " Mercy ! " cried each — " if I tell the truth 
 
 Of a passage in my youth ! " 
 
 Said This : " Do you mind the morning 
 
 I met your love with scorning ? 
 
 As the worst of the venom left my lips, 
 
 I thought, ' If, despite this lie, he strips 
 
 The mask from my soul with a kiss — I crawl 
 
 His slave, — soul, body, and all ! ' " 
 
 Said That : " We stood to be married ; 
 
 The priest, or some one, tarried ; 
 
 ' If Paradise-door prove locked ? ' smiled you. 
 
 I thought, as I nodded, smiling too, 
 
 ' Did one, that 's away, arrive — nor late 
 
 Nor soon should unlock Hell's gate ! ' " 
 
 It ceased to lighten and thunder. 
 
 Up started both in wonder. 
 
 Looked round and saw that the sky was clear. 
 
 Then laughed ' ' Confess you believed us, Dear 1 " 
 
 " I saw through the joke ! " the man replied 
 
 They re-seated themselves beside. 
 
 IXION 
 
 High in the dome, suspended, of Hell, sad tri- 
 umph, behold us ! 
 Here the revenge of a God, there the amends 
 of a Man. 
 Whirling forever in torment, flesh once mortal, 
 immortal 
 Made — for a purpose of hate — able to die 
 and revive. 
 Pays to the uttermost pang, then, newly for 
 payment replenished. 
 Doles out — old yet young — agonies ever 
 afresh ; 
 Whence the result above me ; torment is bridged 
 by a rainbow, — 
 Tears, sweat, blood, — each spasm, ghastly 
 once, glorified now. 
 Wrung, by tiie rush of the wheel ordained my 
 place of reposing, 
 Off in a sparklike spray, — flesh become vapor 
 through pain, — 
 Flies the bestowment of Zeus, soul's vaunted 
 bodily vesture. 
 Made that his feats observed gain the approval 
 of Man, — 
 Flesh that he fashioned with sense of the earth 
 and the sky and the ocean. 
 Framed should pierce to the star, fitted to 
 pore on the plant, — 
 All, for a purpose of hate, re-framed, re-fash- 
 ioned, re-fitted. 
 Till, consummate at length, — lo, the employ- 
 ment of sense ! 
 Pain's mere minister now to the soul, once 
 pledged to her pleasure — 
 Soul, if untrammelled by flesh, unapprehen- 
 sive of pain I 
 Body, professed soul's slave, which serving be- 
 guiled and betrayed her. 
 Made things false seem true, cheated through 
 eye and through ear. 
 Lured thus heart and brain to believe in the 
 lying reported, — 
 Spurn hut the trait'rous slave, uttermost 
 atom, away. 
 What should ol^truct soul's rush on the real, 
 the only apparent ? 
 Say I have erred, — how else ? Was I Ixion 
 or Zeus ? 
 Foiled by my senses I dreamed ; I doubtless 
 awaken in wonder : 
 This proves shine, that — shade? Good was 
 the evil that seemed ? 
 Shall I, with sight thus gained, by torture be 
 taught I was blind once ? 
 Sisuphos, teaches thy stone — Tantalos, 
 teaches thy thirst 
 Aught which unaided sense, purged pure, less 
 plainly demonstrates ? 
 No, for the past was dream : now that the 
 dreamers awake, 
 Sisuphos scouts low fraud, and to Tantalos 
 treason is folly. 
 Ask of myself, whose form melts on the 
 murderous wheel. 
 
IXION 
 
 917 
 
 What is the sin which throe and throe prove 
 sin to the sinner I 
 Say the false charg^e was true, — thus do I 
 expiate, say, 
 Arrogant thought, word, deed, — mere man 
 who conceited me godlike. 
 Sat beside Zeus, my friend — knelt before 
 Her4, my love ! 
 What were the need but of pitying power to 
 touch and disperse it. 
 Film-work — eye's and ear's — all the dis- 
 traction of sense.? 
 How should the soul not see, not hear, — per- 
 ceive and as plainly 
 Render, in thought, word, deed, back again 
 truth — not a lie ? 
 " Ay, but the pain is to punish thee ! " Zens, 
 once more for a pastime. 
 Play the familiar, the frank ! Speak and 
 have speech in return ! 
 I was of Thessaly king, there ruled and a peo- 
 ple obeyed me : 
 Mine to establish the law, theirs to obey it or 
 die : 
 Wherefore ? Because of the good to the peo- 
 ple, because of the honor 
 Thence accruing to me, king, the king's law 
 was supreme. 
 What of the weakling, the ignorant criminal ? 
 Not who, excuseless, 
 Breaking ray law braved death, knowing his 
 deed and its due — 
 Nay, but the feeble and foolish, the poor trans- 
 gressor, of purpose 
 No whit more than a tree, bom to ereotness of 
 bole. 
 Palm or plane or pine, we laud if lofty, colum- 
 nar — 
 Loathe if athwart, askew, — leave to the axe 
 and the flame ! 
 Where is the vision may penetrate earth and 
 beholding acknowledge 
 Just one pebble at root ruined the straight- 
 
 I16SS Ol stCTH . 
 
 Whose fine vigilance follows the sapling, ac- 
 counts for the failure, 
 — Here blew wind, so it bent : there the snow 
 lodged, so it broke ? 
 Also the tooth of the beast, bird's bill, mere bite 
 of the insect 
 Grnawed, gnarled, warped their worst : passive 
 it lay to ofBence. 
 King — I was man, no more : what I recognized 
 faulty I punished, 
 Laying it prone : be sure, more than a man 
 had I proved, . . 
 
 Watch and ward o*er the sapling at birthtime 
 had saved it, nor simply 
 Owned the distortion's excuse,— hindered it 
 wholly : nay, more — j - j 
 
 Even a man, as Isat in my place to do judg- 
 ment, and paUid 
 Criminals passing to doom shuddered away at 
 my foot. 
 Could I have probed through the face to the 
 heart, read plsun a repentance. 
 Crime confessed f oiola' play, virtue' ascribed to 
 the wise, 
 
 Had I not stayed the consignment to doom, not 
 dealt the renewed ones 
 Life to retraverse the past, light to retrieve 
 the misdeed ? 
 Thus had I done, and thus to have done much 
 more it behooves thee, 
 Zeus who madest man — flawless or faulty, 
 thy work ! 
 What if the charge were true, as thou mouthest, 
 — Ixion the cherished 
 Minion of Zeus grew vain, vied with the god- 
 ships and fell. 
 Forfeit through arrogance ? Stranger ! 1 
 clothed, with the grace of our hu- 
 man, 
 Inhumanity — gods, natures I likened to ours. 
 Man among men I had borne me till gods for- 
 sooth must regard me 
 — Nay, must approve, applaud, claim as a 
 comrade at last. 
 Summoned to enter their circle, I sat — their 
 equal, how other ? 
 Love should be absolute love, faith is in fnl- 
 ness or naught. 
 " I am thy friend, be mine ! " smiledZens : " If 
 Her^ attract thee," 
 Blushed the imperial cheek, " them — as thy 
 heart may suggest 1 " 
 Faith in me sprang to the faith, my love hailed 
 love as its fellow, 
 " Zeus, we are friends — how fast ! Her4, my 
 heart for thy heart ! " 
 Then broke smile into fury of frown, and the 
 thunder of " Hence, fool ! " 
 Then through the kiss laughed scorn " Limbs 
 or a cloud was to clasp ? " 
 Then from Olumpos to Erebos, then from the 
 rapture to torment. 
 Then from the fellow of gods — misery's 
 mate, to the man ! 
 — Man henceforth and forever, who lent from 
 the glow of his nature 
 Warmth to the cold, with light colored the 
 black and the blank. 
 So did a man conceive of your passion, you pas- 
 sion-protesters ! 
 So did he trust, so love — being the truth of 
 your lie ! 
 You to aspire to be Man ! Man made you who 
 vainly would ape him : 
 You are the hollowness, he — filling you, fal- 
 sifies void. 
 Even as — witness the emblem, Hell's sad tri- 
 umph suspended. 
 Born of my tears, sweat, blood — bursting to 
 vapor above — 
 Arching my torment, an iris ghostlike startles 
 the darkness. 
 Cold white — jewelry quenched — justifies, 
 glorifies pain. 
 Strive, mankind, though strife endure through 
 endless obstruction. 
 Stage after stage, each rise marred by as cer- 
 tain a fall ! , m , , , 
 Baffled forever — yet never so baffled but, e en 
 in the baffling. 
 When Man's strength proves weak, checked 
 in the body or soul. 
 
9r8 
 
 JOCOSERIA 
 
 Whatsoever the medium, flesh or essence, — 
 Ixion 's 
 Made for a purpose of hate, — clothing the 
 entity Thou, 
 — Medium whence that entity striyes for the 
 Not-Thou beyond it. 
 Fire elemental, free, frame unencumbered, 
 the All, - 
 Never so baffled but — when, on the verge of 
 an alien existence, 
 Heartened to press, by pangs burst to the in- 
 finite Pure, 
 Nothing is reached but the ancient weakness 
 still that arrests strength, 
 Circumambient still, still the poor human ar- 
 ray. 
 Pride and revenge and hate and cruelty — all it 
 has burst through. 
 Thought ' to «acape, — fresh formed, found in 
 the fashion it fled. 
 Never so baffled but — when Man pays the price 
 of endeavor, 
 Thunderstruck, downthrust,Tartaros-doomed 
 to the wheelj — 
 Then, ay, then^ from the tears and sweat and 
 blood of his torment. 
 E'en from the triumph of Hell, up let him 
 look and rejoice ! 
 What is the influence, high o'er Hell, that 
 turns to a rapture 
 Pain — and despair's murk mist blends in a 
 rainbow of hope ? 
 What is beyond the obstruction, stage by stage 
 though it baffle ? 
 Back must I fall, confess " Ever the weakness 
 I fled"? 
 No, for beyond, far, fax is a Purity all-unob- 
 structed ! 
 Zeus was Zeus — not Man : wrecked by his 
 weakness, I whirl. 
 Out of the wreck I rise — past Zeus to the Po- 
 tency o'er him ! 
 I — to have hailed him my friend I I — to 
 have clasped her — my love ! 
 Pallid birth of my pain, —where light, where 
 light is, aspiring 
 Thither I rise, whilst thou — Zeus, keep the 
 godship and sink ! 
 
 JOCHANAN HAKKADOSH 
 
 '* This now, this other story makes amends 
 And justifies our Mishna," quoth the Jew 
 Aforesaid. " Tell it, leamedest of friends ! " 
 
 A certain morn broke beautiful and blue 
 O'er Schiphaz city, bringing joy and mirth, ' 
 — So had ye deemed ; while the reverse was true, 
 
 Since one small house there gave a sorrow birth 
 In such black sort that, to each faithful eye, 
 Midnight, not morning settled on the earth. 
 
 How else, when it grew certain thou wouldst die, 
 Our much-enlightened master, Israel's prop,' 
 Eximious Jochanan Ben Sabbathai ? 
 
 Old, yea, but, undiminished of a drop. 
 
 The vital essence pulsed through heart and 
 
 brain ; 
 Time left unsickled yet the plenteous crop 
 
 On poll and chin and cheek, whereof a skein 
 Handmaids might weave — hairs silk-soft, sil- 
 ver-white. 
 Such as the wool-plant's ; none the less in vain 
 
 Had Physic striven her best against the spite 
 Of fell disease : the Rabbi must succumb ; 
 And, round the couch whereon in piteous plight 
 
 He lay a-dying, scholars, — awe-struck, dumb 
 Throughout the night-watch, — roused them- 
 selves and spoke 
 One to the other : " Ere death's touch benumb 
 
 "His active sense, — while yet 'neath Keason's 
 
 yoke 
 Obedient toils his tongue, — befits we claim 
 The fruit of long experience, bid this oak 
 
 "Shed us an acom which may, all the same. 
 Grow to a temple-pillar, — dear that day ! — 
 When Israel's scattered seed finds place and 
 
 " Among the envious nations. Lamp us, pray. 
 Thou the Enlightener 1 Partest hence in peace ? 
 Hailest without regret — much less, dismay — 
 
 " The hour of thine approximate release 
 From fleshly bondage soul hath found obstruct ? 
 Calmly envisagest the sure increase 
 
 " Of knowledge ? Eden's tree must hold un- 
 
 plucked 
 Some ap^le, sure, has never tried thy tooth. 
 Juicy with sapience thou hast sought, not 
 
 sucked ? 
 
 " Say, does age acquiesce in vanished youth ? 
 Still towers thy purity above — as erst — 
 Our pleasant follies ? Be thy last word — 
 truth ! " 
 
 The Rabbi groaned ; then, grimly, " Last as first 
 The truth speak I — in boyhood who began 
 Striving to live an angel, and, amerced 
 
 " For such presumption, die now hardly man. 
 What have I proved of life ? To live, indeed, 
 That much I learned : but here lies Jochanan 
 
 " More luckless than stood David when, to speed 
 His fighting with the Philistine, they brou^t 
 Saul's harness forth : whereat, ' Alack, I need 
 
 " ' Armor to arm me, but have never fought 
 With sword and spear, nor tried to manage 
 
 shield. 
 Proving arms' use, as wall-trained warriorought. 
 
 " ' Only a sling and pebbles can I wield I ' 
 So he : while I, contrariwise, ' No trick 
 Of weapon helpful on the battlefield 
 
JOCHANAN HAKKADOSH 
 
 " ' Gomes unfamiliar to my theoric : 
 But, bid me put in practice what I know, 
 Give me a sword — it stings like Moses' stick, 
 
 " ' A serpent I let drop apace.' E'en so, 
 I, — able to comport me at each stage 
 Of human life as never here below 
 
 "Man played his part, — since mine the heri- 
 tage 
 Of wisdom carried to that perfect pitch. 
 Ye rightly praise, —I, therefore, who, thus 
 sage, 
 
 " Could sure act man triumphantly, enrich 
 Life's annals, with example how I played 
 Lover, Bard, Soldier, Statist, — (all of which 
 
 " Parts in presentment failing, cries invade 
 The world's ear — ' Ah, the Past, the pearl- 
 gift thrown 
 To hogs, time's opportunity we made 
 
 " ' So light of, only recognized when flown ! 
 Had we been wise ]') — in fine, I — wise 
 
 enough, — 
 What profit brings me wisdom never shown 
 
 " Just when its showing would from each re- 
 buff 
 Shelter weak virtue, threaten back to bounds 
 Encroaching vice, tread smooth each track too 
 rough 
 
 "For youth's unsteady footstep, climb the 
 
 rounds 
 Of life's long ladder, one by slippery one, 
 Yet make no stumble ? Me hard fate con- 
 founds 
 
 " With that same crowd of wallers I outrun 
 
 By promising to teach another cry 
 
 Of more hilarious mood than theirs, the sun 
 
 " I look my last at is insulted by. 
 
 What cry, — ye ask ? Give ear on every side ! 
 
 Witness yon Lover ! ' How entrapped am I ! 
 
 " ' Methought, because a virgin's rose-lip vied 
 With ripe Khubbezleh's, needs must beauty 
 
 mate 
 With meekness and discretion in a bride : 
 
 "'Bride she became to me who waU — too 
 
 late — 
 Unwise I loved ! ' That 's one cry. ' Mind 's 
 
 my gift : 
 I might have loaded me with lore, full weight 
 
 " ' Pressed down and running over at each rift 
 0' the brain-bag where the famished clung and 
 
 fed. 
 I filled it with what rubbish ! — would not sift 
 
 " ' The wheat from chaff, sound grain from 
 
 musty — shed 
 Poison abroad as oft as nutriment — 
 And sighing say but as my fellows said- 
 
 919 
 
 Unwise I learned!' That's two. 'In 
 dwarf 's-play spent 
 Was giant's prowess : warrior all unversed 
 In wars right wagmg, I struck brand, was 
 lent 
 
 'For steel's fit service, on mere stone — and 
 cursed 
 Alike the shocked limb and the shivered steel. 
 Seeing too late the blade's true use which erst 
 
 " How was I blind to ! My cry swells the 
 peal — 
 
 Unwise I fought I ' That 's three. But where- 
 fore waste 
 
 Breath on the wailings longer ? Why reveal 
 
 " A root of bitterness whereof the taste 
 
 Is noisome to Humanity at large ? 
 
 First we get Power, but Power absurdly placed 
 
 " In Folly's keeping, who resigns her charge 
 To Wisdom when all Power grows nothing 
 
 worth : 
 Bones marrowless are mocked with helm and 
 
 targe 
 
 "When, like your Master's, soon below the 
 earth 
 
 With worms shall warfare only be. Fare- 
 well, 
 
 Children! I die a failure since my birth I " 
 
 " Not so ! " arose a protest, as, pell-mell, 
 They pattered from his chamber to the street, 
 Bent on a last resource. Our Targums teli 
 
 That such resource there is. Put case, there 
 
 meet 
 The Nine Points of Perfection — rarest 
 
 chance — 
 Within some saintly teacher whom the fleet 
 
 Years, in their blind implacable advance, 
 O'ertake before fit teaching bom of these 
 Have magnified his scholars' countenance, — 
 
 If haply folk compassionating please 
 To render up — according to ms store, 
 Fach one — a portion of the life he sees 
 
 Hardly worth saving when 'tis set before 
 Earth's benefit should the Saint, Hakkadosh, 
 Favored thereby, attain to full fourscore — 
 
 If such contribute (Scoffer, spare thy " Bosh ! ") 
 A year, a month, a day, an hour — to eke 
 Life out, — in him away the gift shall wash 
 
 That much of ill-spent time recorded, streak 
 
 The twilight of the so-assisted sage 
 
 With a new sunrise : truth, though strange to 
 
 Quick to the doorway, then, where youth and 
 
 age. 
 All Israel, thronging, waited for the last 
 News of the loved one. " 'T is the final stage : 
 
920 
 
 JOCOSERIA ' 
 
 " Art's utmost done, the Kabbi's feet tread fast 
 The way of all flesh ! " So announced that apt 
 Olire-branoh Tsaddik : " Yet, Brethren, oast 
 
 "No eye to earthward! Look where heaven 
 
 has clapped 
 Morning's extinguisher — yon ray-shot robe 
 Of sun-threads — on the constellation mapped 
 
 "And mentioned by our Elders, — yea, from 
 
 Job 
 Down to Satam, — as figuring forth — what ? 
 Perpend a mystery ! Ye call it Dob, 
 
 " ' The Bear ' : I trow, a wiser name than 
 that 
 
 Were Aish — ' The Bier ' ' a corpse those four 
 stars hold, 
 
 Which — are not those Three Daughters weep- 
 ing at 
 
 " Banoth ? I judge so : list while I unfold 
 The reason. As in twice twelve hours this 
 
 Bier 
 Ooes and returns, about the east-cone rolled^ 
 
 *' So may a setting luminary here 
 
 Be rescued from extinction, rolled anew 
 
 Upon its track of labor, strong and clear, 
 
 " About the Pole — that Salem, eyery Jew 
 Helps to build up when thus he saves some 
 
 Saint 
 Ordained its architect. Ye grasp the clue 
 
 "To all ye seek ? The Rabbi's lamp-flame faint 
 Sinks : would ye raise it ? Lend then lite from 
 
 yours. 
 Spare ea«h his oil-drop ! Do I need acquaint 
 
 " The Chosen how self-sacrifice ensures 
 
 Tenfold requital ? — urge ye emulate 
 
 The fame of those Old just Ones death procures 
 
 *' Such praise for, that 't is now men's sole de- 
 bate 
 Which of the Ten, who volunteered at Rome 
 To die for glory to our Race, was great 
 
 ** Beyond his fellows ? Was it thou — the comb 
 Of iron carded, flesh from bone, away. 
 While thy lips sputtered through their bloody 
 foam 
 
 " Without a stoppage (0 brave Akiba !) 
 * Hear, Israel, our Lord God is One ' ? Or thou, 
 Jischab ? — who smiledst, burning, since there 
 lay, 
 
 " Burning along with thee, our Law ! I trow, 
 Such martyrdom might tax flesh to afford : 
 While that for which I make petition now, 
 
 " To what amounts it ? Youngster, wilt thou 
 
 hoard 
 Each minute of long years then look'st to spend 
 In dalliance with thy spouse? Hast thou so 
 
 soared. 
 
 " Singer of songs, all out of sight of friend 
 And teacher, warbling like a woodland bird. 
 There 's left no Selah, 'twixt two psalms, to 
 lend 
 
 " Our late-so-tuneful qnirist ? Thou, averred 
 The fighter born to plant our lion-flag 
 Once more on Zion's mount, — doth all-un- 
 heard, 
 
 "My pleading fail to move thee? Toss some 
 
 rag 
 Shall stanch our wound, some mmute never 
 
 missed 
 From swordsman's Instihood like thine I Wilt 
 
 lag 
 
 " In liberal bestowment, show close fist 
 When open palm we look for, — thou, wide- 
 known 
 For statecraft? whom, 'tis said, and if thou 
 
 list, 
 
 " The Shah himself would seat beside his 
 
 lihrone. 
 So valued were advice from thee "... But 
 
 here 
 He stopped short : such a hubbub ! Not alone 
 
 From those addressed, but far as well as near 
 The crowd brought into clamor : " Mine, mine, 
 
 mine — 
 Lop from my life the excrescence, never fear ! 
 
 " At me thou lookedst, markedst me ! As- 
 sign 
 To me that privilege of granting life — 
 Mine, mine!" Then he: "Be patient! I 
 combine 
 
 " The needful portions only, wage no strife 
 With Nature's law nor seek to lengthen out 
 The Rabbi's day unduly. 'T is the knife 
 
 "I stop, — wotdd out its thread too short. 
 
 About 
 As much as helps life last the proper term, 
 • ■ F( • ' 
 
 scout 
 
 The appointed Fourscore. 
 
 the prope: 
 —that I 
 
 crave, and 
 
 " A too-prolonged existence. Let the worm 
 Change at fit season to the butterfly ! 
 And here a story strikes me, to confirm 
 
 " This judgment. Of our worthies, none ranks 
 
 high 
 As Perida who kept the famous school : 
 None rivalled him in patience : none ! For 
 
 why? 
 
 " In lecturing it was his constant rule. 
 
 Whatever he expounded, to repeat 
 
 — Ay, and keep on repeating, lest some fool 
 
 " Should fail to understand him fully — (feat 
 Unparalleled, Uzzean I ) — do ye mark ? — 
 Five hundred times I So might he entrance 
 beat 
 
JOCHANAN HAKKADOSH 
 
 921 
 
 " For knowledge into howsoever dark 
 
 And dense the brain-pan. Yet it happed, at 
 
 close 
 Of one especial lecture, not one spark 
 
 "Of light was found to have illumed the rows 
 Of pupils round their pedagogue. ' What, still 
 Impenetrable to me ? Then — here goes ! ' 
 
 " And for a second time he sets the rill 
 
 Of knowledge running, and five himdred times 
 
 More re-repeats the matter — and gains nil. 
 
 " Out broke a voice from heaven : ' Thy patience 
 
 dimbs 
 Even thus high. Choose I Wilt thou, rather, 
 
 quick 
 Ascend to bliss — or, since thy zeal sublimes 
 
 " ' Such drudgery, will thy back still bear its 
 
 crick. 
 Bent o'er thy class, — thy voice drone spite of 
 
 drouth, — 
 Five hundred years more at thy desk wilt 
 
 stick ? ' 
 
 " ' To heaven with me ! ' was in the good man's 
 
 mouth, 
 When all his scholars — cruel-kind were they! — 
 Stopped utterance, from East, West, North and 
 
 South, 
 
 " Rending the welkin with their shout of 
 
 'Nay — 
 No heaven as yet for our instructor ! Grant 
 Five hundred years on earth for Perida ! ' 
 
 " And so long did he keep instructing ! Want 
 Our Master no such misery ! I but take 
 Three months of life marital. Ministrant 
 
 " Be thou of so much. Poet ! Bold I make, 
 Swordsman, with thy frank offer ! — and con- 
 clude. 
 Statist, with thine ! One year, — ye will not 
 shake 
 
 " My purpose to accept no more. So rude ? 
 The very boys and girls, forsooth, must press 
 And proffer their addition ? Thanks ! The 
 mood 
 
 " Is laudable, but I reject, no less. 
 
 One month, week, day of life more. Leave my 
 
 gown, 
 Ye overbold ones ! Your life's gift, you guess, 
 
 " Were good as any ? Rudesby , get thee down ! 
 Set my feet free, or fear my staff ! Farewell, 
 Seniors and saviors, sharers of renown 
 
 *'With .Jochanan henceforward!" Straight- 
 way fell 
 Sleep on the sufferer; who awoke in health. 
 Hale everyway, so potent was the spell. 
 
 the rare Spring-time I Who is he by stealth 
 Approaches Jochanan ? — embowered that sits 
 Under his vine and figtree 'mid the wealth 
 
 Of garden-sights and soimds, since intermits 
 Never the turtle's coo, nor stays nor stints 
 The rose her smell. In homage that befits 
 
 The musing Master, Tsaddik, see, imprints 
 A kiss on the extended foot, low bends 
 Forehead to earth, then, aU-obsequious, hints 
 
 " What if it should be time ? A period ends — 
 That of the Lover's gift — his quarter-year 
 Of lustihood : 't is just thou make amends, 
 
 " Return that loan with usury : so, here 
 
 Come I, uf thy Disciples delegate. 
 
 Claiming our lesson from thee. Make appear 
 
 " Thy profit from experience ! Plainly state 
 How men should Love ! " Thus he ; and to 
 
 him thus 
 The Rabbi : " Love, ye call it ? — rather. Hate ! 
 
 " What wouldst thou ? Is it needful I discuss 
 Wherefore new sweet wine, poured in bottles 
 
 caked 
 With old strong wine's deposit, offers us 
 
 " Spoilt liquor we recoil from, thirst-unslaked ? 
 Like earth-smoke from a crevice, out there 
 
 wound — 
 Languors and yearnings : not a sense but ached 
 
 " Weighed on by fancied form and feature, 
 
 sound 
 Of silver word and sight of sunny smile : 
 No beckoning of a flower-branch, no profound 
 
 " Purple of noon-oppression, no light wile 
 
 0' the West wind, but transformed itself till — 
 
 . brief — 
 Before me stood the phantasy ye style 
 
 " Youth's love, the joy that shall not come to 
 
 grief, 
 Bom to endure, eternal, unimpaired 
 By custom the accloyter, time the thief. 
 
 " Had Age's hard cold knowledge only spared 
 That ignorance of Youth ! But now the dream. 
 Fresh as from Paradise, alighting fared 
 
 " As fares the pigeon, finding what may seem 
 Her nest's safe hollow holds a snake inside 
 Coiled to enclasp her. See, Eve stands supreme 
 
 " In youth and beauty ! Take her for thy 
 
 bride ! 
 What Youth deemed crystal. Age finds out was 
 
 dew . 1 J . J 
 
 Mom set a-sparkle, but which noon quick dried 
 
 " While Youth bent gazing at its red and blue 
 Supposed perennial, — never dreamed the sun 
 Wliich kindled the display would quench it too. 
 
922 
 
 JOCOSERIA 
 
 *' Graces of shape and color — every one 
 With its appointed period of decay 
 When ripe to purpose ! ' Still, these dead and 
 done, 
 
 " ' Survives the woman-nature — the soft sway 
 Of undefinable omnipotence 
 O'er our strong male-stuff, we of Adam's 
 clay.' 
 
 " Ay, if my physics taught not why and whence 
 The attraction ! Am I like the simple steer 
 Who, from his pasture lured inside the fence, 
 
 " Where yoke and goad await him, holds that 
 
 mere 
 Kindliness prompts extension of the hand 
 Hollowed for barley, which drew near and 
 
 " His nose — in proof that, of the horned band. 
 The farmer best affected him ? Beside, 
 Steer, since his calfhood, got to understand 
 
 " Farmers a many in the world so wide 
 
 Were ready with a handful just as choice 
 
 Or choicer — maize and cummin, treats untried, 
 
 " Shall I wed wife, and all my days rejoice 
 
 I gained the peacock ? 'Las me, round I look. 
 
 And lo — ' With me thou wonldst have blamed 
 
 " ' Like hers that daily deafens like a rook : 
 I am the phoenix ! ' — I, the lark, the dove, 
 — The owl,' for aught knows he who blindly 
 took 
 
 " Peacock for partner, while the vale, the 
 
 grove, 
 The plain held bird-mates in abundance. 
 
 There ! 
 Youth, try fresh capture ! Age has found out 
 
 Love 
 
 "Long ago. War seems better worth man's 
 
 care. 
 But leave me ! Disappointment iinds a balm 
 Haply in slumber." "This first step o' the 
 
 stair 
 
 "To knowledge fails me, but the victor's palm 
 
 Lies on the next to tempt him overleap 
 
 A stumbling-block. Experienced, gather calm, 
 
 " Thou excellence of Judah, cured by sleep 
 Which ushers in the Warrior, to replace 
 The Lover ! At due season I shall reap 
 
 " Fruit of my planting ! " So, with length- 
 ened face. 
 
 Departed Tsaddik : and three moons more 
 waxed 
 
 And waned, and not until the summer-space 
 
 Waned likewise, any second visit taxed 
 
 The Rabbi's patience. But at three months' end 
 
 Behold, supine beneath a rock, relaxed 
 
 The sage lay musing till the noon should spend 
 Its ardor. Up comes Tsaddik, who but he. 
 With " Master, may I warn thee, nor offend, 
 
 " That time comes round again ? We look to 
 see 
 
 Sprout from the old branch — not the young- 
 ling twig — 
 
 But fruit of sycamine : deliver me, 
 
 " To share among my fellows, some plump fig, 
 Juicy as seedy ! That same man of war. 
 Who, with a scantling of his store, made big 
 
 " Thy starveling nature, caused thee, safe from 
 
 scar, 
 To share his gains by long acquaintanceship 
 With bump and bruise and all the knocks that 
 
 are 
 
 " Of battle dowry, — he bids loose thy lip, 
 Explain the good of battle ! Since thou know'st, 
 Let us know likewise I Fast the moments slip, 
 
 " More need that we improve them ! " — " Ay, 
 
 we boast. 
 We warriors in our youth, that with the sword 
 Man goes the swif thest to the uttermost — 
 
 " Takes the straight way through lands yet un- 
 explored 
 To absolute Bight and Good, — may so obtain 
 God's glory and man's weal too long ignored, 
 
 "Too late attained by preachments all in 
 
 vain — 
 The passive process. Knots get tangled worse 
 By toying with : does cut cord close again ? 
 
 " Moreover there is blessing in the curse 
 Peace-praisers call war. What so sure evolves 
 All the capacities of soul, proves nurse 
 
 " Of that self-sacrifice in men which solves 
 The riddle — Wherein differs Man from beast? 
 Foxes boast cleverness and courage wolves : 
 
 " Nowhere but in mankind is found the least 
 Touch of an impulse ' To our fellows — good 
 I' the highest ! — not diminished but increased 
 
 " ' By the condition plainly understood 
 — Such good shall be attained at price of hurt 
 I' the highest to ourselves ! ' Fine sparks, 
 that brood 
 
 " Confusedly in Man, "t is war bids spurt 
 Forth into flame : as fares the meteor-mass. 
 Whereof no particle but holds inert 
 
 " Some seed of light and heat, however crass 
 The enclosure, yet avails not to discharge 
 Its radiant birth before there come to pass 
 
 " Some push external, —strong to set at large 
 Those dormant fire-seeds, whirl them in a trice 
 Through heaven, and light up earth from 
 marge to marge : 
 
JOCHANAN HAKKADOSH 
 
 923 
 
 " Since force by motion makes — what erst was 
 
 ice — 
 Crash into fervency and so expire. 
 Because some Djinn has hit on a device 
 
 " For proving the full prettiness of fire ! 
 
 Ay, thus we prattle — young : but old — why, 
 
 first, 
 Where 's that same Right and Good — (the wise 
 
 inquire) — 
 
 " So absolute, it warrants the outburst 
 Of blood, tears, all war's woeful consequence. 
 That comes of the fine flaring ? Which plague 
 cursed 
 
 " The more your benefited Han — offence. 
 
 Or what suppressed the offender ? Say it did — 
 
 Show us the evil cured by violence, 
 
 *^ Submission cures not also ! Lift the lid 
 Prom the maturing crucible, we find 
 Its slow sure coaxing-out of virtue, hid 
 
 " In that same meteor-mass, hath nncombined 
 Those particles and, yielding for result 
 Gold, not mere flame, by so much leaves be- 
 hind 
 
 " The heroic product. E'en the simple cult 
 Of Edora's children wisely bids them turn 
 Cheek to the smiter with * Sic Jesus uuZi.' 
 
 " Say there 's a tyrant by whose death we earn 
 Freedom, and justify a war to wage : 
 Good ! — were we only able to discern 
 
 " Exactly how to reach and catch and cage 
 
 Him only and no innocent beside ! 
 
 Whereas the folk whereon war wreaks its rage 
 
 " — How shared they his ill-doing ? Far and 
 
 wide 
 The victims of our warfare strew the plain. 
 Ten thousand dead, whereof not one but died 
 
 " tn faith that vassals owed their suzerain 
 Life : therefore each paid tribute — honest 
 
 soul — 
 To that same Right and Good ourselves are 
 
 fain 
 
 " To call exclusively our end. From bole 
 (Since ye accept in me a sycamine) 
 Pluck, eat, digest a fable — yea, the sole 
 
 "Fig I afford you! 'Dost thou dwarf my 
 
 vine?' 
 ^o did a certain husbandman address 
 The tree which faced his field.) ' Receive con- 
 dign 
 
 " * Punishment, prompt removal by the stress 
 Of axe I forthwith lay unto thy- root ! ' 
 Long did he hack and hew, the root no less 
 
 *' As long defied him, for its tough strings 
 shoot 
 
 As deep down as the boughs above aspire : 
 All that he did was — shake to the tree's foot 
 
 " Leafage and fruitage, things we most require 
 For shadow and refreshment ; which good deed 
 Thoroughly done, behold the axe-haft tires 
 
 " His hand, and he desisting leaves unfreed 
 The vine he hacked and hewed for. Comes a 
 
 frost. 
 One natural night's work, and there's little 
 
 need 
 
 " Of hacking, hewing ; lo, the tree 's a ghost ! 
 Perished it starves, black death from topmost 
 
 bough 
 To farthest-reaching fibre 1 Shall I boast 
 
 "My rough work — warfare — helped more? 
 
 Loving, now — 
 That, by comparison, seems wiser, since 
 The loving fool was able to avow 
 
 " He could effect his purpose, just evince 
 Love's willingness, — once 'ware of what she 
 
 lacked. 
 His loved one, — to go work for that, nor wince 
 
 " At self -expenditure : he neither hacked 
 Nor hewed, but when the lady of his field 
 Required defence because the sun attacked, 
 
 " He, failing to obtain a fitter shield. 
 Would interpose his body, and so blaze. 
 Blest in the burning. Ah, were mine to wield 
 
 " The inteUectual weapon — poet-lays, — 
 
 How preferably had I sung one song 
 
 Which . . , but my sadness sinks me : go your 
 
 " I sleep out disappointment," " Come along. 
 Never lose heart ! There 's still as much again 
 Of our bestowment left to right the wrong 
 
 " Done by its earlier moiety — explain 
 Wherefore, who may ! The Poet'smood comes 
 
 next. 
 Was he not wishful the poetic vein 
 
 " Should pulse within him ? Jochanan, thou 
 
 reck'st 
 Little of what a generous flood shall soon 
 Float thy clogged spirit free and unperplexed 
 
 " Above dry dubitation ! Song 's the boon 
 Shall make amends for my untoward mistake 
 That Joshua-like thou oouldst bid sun and 
 
 " Fighter and Lover, — which for most men 
 make 
 
 All they descry in heaven, — stand both stock- 
 still 
 
 And lend assistance. Poet shalt thou wake ! 
 
 Autumn brings Tsaddik. " Ay, there speeds 
 the rill 
 
924 
 
 JOCOSERIA 
 
 Loaded with leaves : a scowling sky, beside : 
 The wind makes olive-trees up yonder hill 
 
 ' ' Whiten and shudder — symptoms far and wide 
 Of gleauiug-time's approach ; and glean good 
 
 store 
 May I presume to trust we shall, thou tried 
 
 " And ripe experimenter ! Three months more 
 Have ministered to growth of Song : that graft 
 Into thy sterile stock has found at core 
 
 " Moisture, I warrant, hitherto unquaffed 
 
 By boughs, however florid, wanting sap 
 
 Of prose-experience which provides the draught 
 
 ** Which song-sprouts, wanting, wither: vain 
 
 we tap 
 A youngling stem all green and immature ; 
 Experience must secrete the stuff, our hap 
 
 " Will be to quench Man's thirst with, glad and 
 
 sure 
 That fancy wells up through corrective fact : 
 Missing which test of truth, though flowers 
 
 allure 
 
 *' The goodman's eye with promise, soon the 
 
 pact 
 Is broken, and 't is flowers — mere words — he 
 
 finds 
 When things — that 's fruit — he looked for. 
 
 Well, once cracked . 
 
 " The nut, how glad my tooth the kernel grinds ! 
 Song may henceforth boast substance ! There- 
 fore, hail 
 Proser and poet, perfect in both kinds ! 
 
 " Thou from whose eye hath dropped the en- 
 vious scale 
 Which hides the truth of things and substitutes 
 Deceptive show, unaided optics fail 
 
 " To transpierce, — hast entrusted to the lute's 
 Soft but sure guardianship some unrevealed 
 Secret shall lift mankind above the brutes 
 
 " As only knowledge can ? " "A fount un- 
 sealed " 
 
 (Sighed Jochanan) ^* should seek the heaven in 
 leaps 
 
 To die in dew-gems — not find death, congealed 
 
 " By contact with the cavern's nether deeps. 
 Earth's secretest foundation where, enswathed 
 In dark and fear, primeval mystery sleeps — 
 
 "Petrific fount wherein my fancies bathed 
 And straight turned ice. My dreams of good 
 
 and fair 
 In soaring upwards had dissolved, unscathed 
 
 " By any influence of the kindly air. 
 
 Singing, as each took flight, ' The Future — 
 
 that 's 
 Our destination, mists turn rainbows there, 
 
 " ' Which sink to fog, confounded in the flats 
 0' the Present 1 Day 's the song-time for the 
 
 lark. 
 Night for her music boasts but owls and bats. 
 
 " ' And what 's the Past but night — the deep 
 
 and dark 
 Ice-spring I speak of, corpse-thicked with its 
 
 drowned 
 Dead fancies which no sooner touched the 
 
 mark 
 
 " ' They aimed at — fact — than all at once 
 
 they found 
 Their film-wingp freeze, henceforth unfit to 
 
 reach 
 And roll in ether, revel — robed and crowned 
 
 " ' As truths confirmed by falsehood all and 
 each — 
 
 Sovereign and absolute and ultimate ! 
 
 Up with them, skyward. Youth, ere Age im- 
 peach 
 
 " ' Thy least of promises to reinstate 
 
 Adam in Eden ! ' Sing on, ever sing. 
 
 Chirp till thou burst ! — the fool cicada's fate, 
 
 " Who holds that after Summer next comes 
 
 Spring, 
 Than Summer's self sun-warmed, spice-scented 
 
 more. 
 Fighting was better ! There, no fancy-fling 
 
 "Pitches you past the point was reached of 
 
 yore 
 By Samsons, Abners, Joabs, Judases, 
 The mighty men of valor who, before 
 
 " Our little day, did wonders none profess 
 To doubt were fable and not fact, so trust 
 By fancy-flights to emulate much less. 
 
 " Were I a Statesman, now ! Why, that were 
 
 just 
 To pinnacle my soul, mankind above, 
 A-top the universe : no vu^ar lust 
 
 " To gratify — fame, greed, at this remove 
 Looked down upon so far — or overlooked 
 So largely, rather — that mine eye should rove 
 
 *' World-wide and rummage earth, the many- 
 
 nooked. 
 Yet find no unit of the human flock 
 Caught straying but straight comes back 
 
 hooked and crooked 
 
 "By the strong shepherd who, from out his 
 
 stock 
 Of aids proceeds to treat each ailing fleece. 
 Here stimulate to growth, curtail and dock 
 
 " There, baldness or excrescence, — that, with 
 
 grease. 
 This, with up-grubbing of the bristly patch 
 Born of the tick-bite. How supreme a peace 
 
JOCHANAN HAKKADOSH 
 
 925 
 
 *' Steals o*er the Statist, — while, in wit, a 
 
 match 
 For shrewd Ahithophel, in wisdom , . . well. 
 His name escapes me — somehody, at watch 
 
 " And ward, the fellow of Ahithophel 
 
 In guidance of the Chosen ! " — at which word 
 
 Eyes closed and fast asleep the Bahbi fell. 
 
 "Cold weather!" shivered Tsaddik. "Yet 
 
 the hoard 
 Of the sagacious ant shows garnered grain. 
 Ever abundant most when fields aSord 
 
 " Least pasture, and alike disgrace the plain 
 Tall tree and lowly shrub. 'T is so with us 
 Mortals : our age stores wealth ye seek in vain 
 
 " While busy youth culU just what we discuss 
 At leisure in the last days : and the last 
 Truly are these for Jochanan, whom thus 
 
 " I make one more appeal to ! Thine amassed 
 Experience, now or never, let escape 
 Some portion of ! For I perceive aghast 
 
 *' The end approaches, while they jeer and 
 
 jape. 
 These sons of Shimei : ' Justify your boast ! 
 What have ye gained from Death by twelve 
 
 months' rape ? 
 
 *' Statesman, what cure hast thou for — least 
 
 and most — 
 Pomilar grievances ? What nostrum, say, 
 Will make the Rich and Poor, expertly dosed, 
 
 " Forget disparity, bid each go gay. 
 
 That, vrith his bauble, — with his burden, this ? 
 
 Propose an alkahest shall melt away 
 
 " Men's lacquer, show by prompt analysis 
 Which is the metal, which the make-believe. 
 So that no longer brass shall find, gold miss 
 
 " Coinage and currency ? Make haste, retrieve 
 The precious moments, Master ! |' Whereunto 
 There snarls an " Ever laughing in thy sleeve, 
 
 " Pert Tsaddik ? Youth indeed sees plain a 
 
 clue 
 To guide man where life's wood is intricate : 
 How shall he fail to thrid its thickest through 
 
 " When every oak-trunk takes the eye ? Elate 
 He goes from hole to brushwood, plunging 
 
 finds — 
 Smothered in briers — that the small 's the 
 
 great ! 
 
 *' All men are men : I would all minds were 
 
 minds 1 
 Whereas 't is just the many's mindless mass 
 ■That most needs helping : laborers and hinds 
 
 " We legislate for — not the cultured class 
 Which law-makes for itself nor needs the whip 
 And bridle, — proper help for mule and ass. 
 
 "Did the brutes know! In vain our states- 
 manship 
 Strives at contenting the rough multitude : 
 Still the ox cries ' 'T is me thou shouldst e 
 
 equip 
 
 ' ' With equine trappings ! ' or, in humbler 
 
 mood, 
 Cribful of com for me I and, as for work — 
 Adequate rumination o'er my food ! ' 
 
 " Better remain a Poet ! Needs it irk 
 Such an one if Ught, kindled in his sphere. 
 Fail to transfuse the Mizraim cold and murk 
 
 " Round about Goshen? Though Ught disap- 
 pear. 
 Shut inside, — temporary ignorance 
 Got outside of, lo, light emerging clear 
 
 " Shows eaoh astonished starer the expanse 
 Of heaven made bright with knowledge I 
 
 That 's the way. 
 The only way — I see it at a glance — 
 
 " To legislate for earth ! As poet . . . Stay I 
 What is ... I would that . . . were it ... I 
 had been ... 
 
 sudden change, as if my arid clay 
 
 " Burst into bloom !"..." A change indeed, 
 
 I ween, 
 And change the last ! " sighed Tsaddik as he 
 
 kissed 
 The closing eyelids. "Just as those serene 
 
 " Princes of Night apprised me ! Our acquist 
 
 Of life is spent, since corners only four 
 
 Hath Aisch, and each in turn was made desist 
 
 " In passage round the Pole (O Mishna's lore — 
 
 Little it profits here !) by strenuous tug 
 
 Of friends who eked out thus to full fourscore 
 
 "The Rabbi's years. I see each shoulder shrug ! 
 What have we gained ? Away the Bier may 
 
 roU! 
 To-morrow, when the Master's grave is dug, 
 
 " In with his body I may pitch the scroll 
 
 1 hoped to glorify with, text and gloss. 
 
 My Science of Man's Life : one blank 's the 
 whole ! 
 
 " Love, war, song, statesmanship — no gain, all 
 
 loss. 
 The stars' bestowment 1 We on our return 
 To-morrow merely find — not gold but dross, 
 
 " The body not the soul. Come, friends, we 
 
 learn 
 At least thus much by our experiment — 
 That— that . . . well, find what, whom it may 
 
 concern ! " 
 
 But next day through the city rumors went 
 Of a new persecution ; so, they fled 
 All Israel, each man, —this time, — from ms 
 tent, 
 
926 
 
 JOCOSERIA 
 
 Tsaddik among the foremost. When, the dread 
 
 Subsiding, Israel Yentured back again 
 
 Some three months after, to the care they sped 
 
 Where lay the Sage, — a reverential train ! 
 Tsaddik first enters. " What is this I view ? 
 The Rabbi still alive ? No stars remain 
 
 " Of Aisoh to stop within their courses. True, 
 I mind me, certain gamesome boys must urge 
 Their offerings on me : can it be — one threw 
 
 " Life at him and it stuck ? There needs the 
 
 scourge 
 To teach that urchin manners ! Prithee, grant 
 Forgiveness if we pretermit thy dirge 
 
 ' ' Just to explain no friend was ministrant. 
 This time, of life to thee ! Some jackanapes, 
 I gather, has presumed to foist his scant 
 
 '* Scurvy unripe existence — wilding grapes 
 Grass-green and sorrel-sour — on that grand 
 
 wine. 
 Mighty as mellow, which, so fancy shapes 
 
 " May fitly image forth this life of thine 
 
 Fed on the last low fattening lees — condensed 
 
 Elixir, no milk-mildness of the vine ! 
 
 " Rightly with Tsaddik wert thou now incensed 
 Had he been witting of the mischief wrought 
 When, for elixir, verjuice he dispensed ! " 
 
 And slowly woke, — like Shushan's flower be- 
 sought 
 By over-curious handling to unloose 
 The curtained secrecy wherein she thought 
 
 Her captive bee, 'mid store of sweets to choose. 
 Would loll, in gold pavilioned lie unteased,. 
 Sucking on, sated never, — whose, whose 
 
 Might seem that countenance, uplift, all eased 
 Of old distraction and bewilderment. 
 Absurdly happy ? " How ye have appeased 
 
 " The strife within me, bred this whole con- 
 tent. 
 This utter acquiescence in my past. 
 Present and future life, — by whom was lent 
 
 " The power to work this miracle at last, — 
 Exceeds my guess. Though — ignorance con- 
 firmed 
 Sy knowledge sounds like paradox, I cast 
 
 " Vainly about to tell you — fitlier termed — 
 Of calm struck by encountering opposites. 
 Each nullifying either ! Henceforth wormed 
 
 " From out my heart is every snake that bites 
 The dove that else would brood there : doubt, 
 
 which kills 
 With hiss of ' What if sorrows end delights ? ' 
 
 " Fear which stings ease with ' Work the Master 
 wills ! ' 
 
 Experience which coils round and strangles 
 
 quick 
 Each hope with ' Ask the Past if hoping skills 
 
 " ' To work accomplishment, or proves a trick 
 Wiling thee to endeavor ! Strive, fool, stop ^ 
 Nowise, so live, so die — that 's law ! why kick 
 
 '"Against the pricks?' All out- wormed! 
 
 Slumber, drop 
 Thy films once more and veil the bliss within 1 
 Experience strangle hope ? Hope waves a-top 
 
 "Her wings triumphant! Come what will, I 
 
 win. 
 Whoever loses ! Every dream 's assured 
 Of soberest fulfilment. Where 's a sin 
 
 " Except in doubting that the light, which 
 
 lured 
 The unwary into darkness, meant no wrong 
 Had I but marched on bold, nor paused immured 
 
 "By mists I should have pressed through, 
 
 passed along 
 My way henceforth rejoicing ? Not the boy's 
 Passionate impulse he conceits so strong, 
 
 " Which, at first touch, truth, bubble-like, de- 
 stroys, — 
 Not the man's slow conviction ' Vanity 
 Of vanities — alike my griefs and joys ! ' 
 
 " Ice ! — thawed (look up) each bird, each insect 
 
 by — 
 (Look round) by all the plants that break in 
 
 bloom, 
 (Look down) by every dead friend's memory 
 
 " That smiles ' Am I the dust within my 
 
 tomb ? ' 
 Not either, but both these — amalgam rare — 
 Mix in a product, not from Nature's womb, 
 
 "But stuff which He the Operant — who shall 
 
 dare 
 Describe His operation ? — strikes alive 
 And thaumatUFgic. I nor know nor care 
 
 " How from this tohu-bohu — hopes which dive, 
 And fears which soar — faith, ruined through 
 
 and through 
 By doubt, and doubt, faith treads to dust — 
 
 revive 
 
 " In some surprising sort, — as see, they do ! — 
 Not merely foes no longer but fast friends. 
 What does it mean unless — strange and 
 new 
 
 "Discovery! — this life proves a wine-press^ 
 
 blends 
 Evil and good, both fruits of Paradise, 
 Into a novel drink which — who intends 
 
 " To quaff, must bear a brain for ecstasies 
 Attempered, not this aU-inadequate 
 Organ which, quivering within me, dies 
 
JOCHANAN HAKKADOSH 
 
 " — Nay, lives I — what, how, —too soon, or 
 
 else too late — 
 I was - i am " . . . (" He babbleth ! " Tsad- 
 
 dik mused) 
 " Thou Almighty, who canst reinstate 
 
 *■ Truths in their primal clarity, confused 
 
 By man's perception, which is man's and made 
 
 To suit his service, — how, once disabused 
 
 "Of reason which sees light half shine half 
 
 shade. 
 Because of flesh, the medium that adjusts 
 Purity to his visuals, both an aid 
 
 " And hindrance, — how to eyes earth's air en- 
 
 ci-uste, 
 When purged and perfect to receive truth's 
 
 beam 
 Pouring itself on the new sense it trusts 
 
 " With all its plenitude of power, — how seem 
 The intricacies now, of shade and shine, 
 Oppugnant natures — Right and Wrong, we 
 deem 
 
 " Irreconcilable 1 eyes of mine. 
 
 Freed now of imperfection, ye avail 
 
 To see the whole sight, nor may uncombine 
 
 " Henceforth what, erst divided, caused you 
 
 quail — 
 So huge the chasm between the false and true. 
 The dream and the reality ! All hail, 
 
 " Day of my sonl's deliverance — day the new, 
 The never-ending 1 What though every shape 
 Whereon I wreaked my yearning to pursue 
 
 ** Even to success each semblance of escape 
 From my own bounded self to some all-fair 
 All-wise external fancy, proved a rape 
 
 " Like that old giant's, feigned of fools — on air. 
 Not solid flesh ? How otherwise ? To love — 
 That lesson was to learn not here — but there — 
 
 " On earth, not here ! 'T is there we learn, — 
 
 there prove 
 Our parts upon the stuff we needs must spoil. 
 Striving at mastery, there bend above 
 
 " The spoiled clay potsherds, many a year of toil 
 Attests the potter tried his hand upon. 
 Till sudden he arose, wiped free from soil 
 
 " His hand, cried ' So much for attempt — anon 
 Performance ! Taught to mould the living vase. 
 What matter the cracked pitchers dead and 
 gone ? ' 
 
 " Could I impart and could thy mind embrace 
 The secret, Tsaddik ! " *' Secret none to me ! " 
 Quoth Tsaddik, as the glory on the face 
 
 Of Jochanan was quenched. " The truth I see 
 Of what that excellence of Judali wrote. 
 Doughty Halaphta. This a case must be 
 
 927 
 
 " Wherein, though the last breath have passed 
 
 the throat. 
 So that ' The man is dead ' we may pronounce, 
 1 et IS the Buach — (thus do we denote 
 
 " The imparted Spirit) — in no haste to bounce 
 r rom its entrusted Body, — some three days 
 Lingers ere it relinquish to the pounce 
 
 " Of hawk-clawed Death his victim. Further 
 
 says 
 Halaphta, ' Instances have been, and yet 
 Again may be, when saints, whose earthly ways 
 
 Tend to perfection, very nearly get 
 To heaven while still on earth : and, as a fine 
 Interval shows where waters pure have met 
 
 Waves brackish, in a mixture, sweet with 
 brine. 
 That 's neither sea nor river but a taste 
 Of both — so meet the earthly and divine 
 
 " ' And each is either.' Thus I hold him 
 
 graced — 
 Dying on earth, half inside and half out. 
 Wholly in heaven, who knows ? My mind em- 
 braced 
 
 " Thy secret, Jochanan, how dare I doubt ? 
 
 Follow thy Ruach, let earth, all it can. 
 
 Keep of the leavings ! " Thus was brought abont 
 
 The sepulture of Rabbi Jochanan : 
 Thou hast him, — sinner-saint, live-dead, boy- 
 man, — 
 Schiphaz, on Bendimir, in Farzistan I 
 
 Note. —This story can have no better authority than 
 that of the treatise, existing dispersedly in fragments 
 of Rabbinical writing, C^i;^ C*D"1 VtZ7 "^ttJTS 
 from which I might have helped myself more liberally! 
 Thus, instead of the simple reference to " Moses' stick,'* 
 — but what if I malce amends by attempting three illiu- 
 trations, when some thirty might be composed on tha 
 same subject, equally justifying that pithy proverb 
 
 nu7a3 cp sb hdd ir ntoaa- 
 
 Moses the Meek was thirty cubits high. 
 
 The staff he strode with — thirty cubits long ; 
 
 And when he leapt, so muscular and strong 
 Was Moses that his leaping neared the sky 
 By thirty cubits more : we learn thereby 
 
 He reached full ninety cubits — ami wrong ? _ 
 
 When, in a fight slurred o'er by sacred song, 
 With staff outstretched he took a leap to try 
 The just dimensions of the giant Og. 
 
 And yet he barely touched — this marvel lacked 
 Posterity to crown earth's catalogue 
 
 Of marvels — barely touched — to be exact — 
 The giant's ankle-bone, remained a frog 
 
 That fain would match an ox in stature : fact I 
 
 And this same fact has met with unbelief I 
 How saith a certain traveller ? " Young, 1 chanced 
 To come upon an object — if thou canst. 
 
928 
 
 JOCOSERIA 
 
 Gueae.me its liame and nature ! 'T waa, in brief, 
 White, hard, round, hollow, of Buch length, in chief, 
 
 — And tliia is what especially enhanced 
 
 My wonder — that it seemed, as I advanced. 
 Never to end. Bind up within thy slieaf 
 Of marvels, this — Posterity ! I walked 
 
 From end to end, — four hours walked I, who go 
 A goodly pace, — and found — I have not balked 
 
 Thine expectation. Stranger ? Ay or No ? — 
 *T was but Og's thighbone, all the while, I stalked 
 
 Alongside of : respect to Moses, though 1 
 
 Og'a thighbone — if ye deem its measure strange. 
 
 Myself can witness to much length of shank 
 
 Even in birds. Upon a water's bank 
 Once halting, I was minded to exchange 
 Noon heat for cool. Quoth I, " On many a grange 
 
 1 have seen storks perch — legs both long and lank : 
 
 Ton stork's must touch the bottom of this tank, 
 Since on its top doth wet no plume derange 
 Of the smooth breast. 1 '11 bathe there ! " " Do not 
 so ! " 
 
 Warned me a voice from heaven. " A man let drop 
 His axe into that shallow rivulet — 
 
 As thou accountest — seventy years ago : 
 It fell and fell and still without a stop 
 
 Keeps falling, nor has reached the bottom yet." 
 
 NEVER THE TIME AND THE PLACE 
 
 Never the time and the place 
 And the loved one all together I 
 
 This path — how soft to pace ! 
 This May — what magic weather ! 
 
 Where is the loved one's face ? 
 
 In a dream that loved one's face meets mine, 
 But the house is narrow, the place is bleak 
 
 Where, outside, rain and wind combine 
 With a furtive ear, if I strive to speak, 
 With a hostile eye at my flushing cheek. 
 
 With a malice that marks each word, each sign ! 
 
 O enemy sly and serpentine. 
 Uncoil thee from the waking man I 
 Do I hold the Past 
 Thus firm and fast 
 Yet doubt if the Future hold I can ? 
 This path so soft to pace shall lead 
 Through the magic of May to herself indeed ! 
 Or narrow if needs the house must be. 
 Outside are the storms and strangers : we — 
 Oh, close, safe, warm sleep 1 and she, 
 — I and she ! 
 
 PAMBO 
 
 Suppose that we part (work done, comes play) 
 
 With a grave iale told in crambo 
 — As onr hearty sires were wont to say — 
 
 Whereof the hero is Pambo ? 
 
 Do you happen to know who Pambo was ? 
 Nor I — but this much have heard of him : 
 
 He entered one day a coUege-claas, 
 And asked — was it so absurd of him ? — 
 
 " May Pambo learn wisdom ere practise it ? 
 
 In wisdom I fain would ground me : 
 Since wisdom is centred in Holy Writi 
 
 Some psalm to the purpose expound me ! " 
 
 " That psalm," the Professor smiled, "shall be 
 Untroubled by doubt which dirtieth 
 
 Pellucid streams when an aas like thee 
 Would drink there — the Nme-and-thirtieth. 
 
 " Verse First : I said I will look to my ways 
 
 That I with my tongue offend not. 
 How now ? Why stare ? Art struck in amaze ? 
 
 Stop, stay ! The smooth line hath an end knot ! 
 
 " He 's gone ! — disgusted my text should prove 
 
 Too easy to need explaining ? 
 Had he waited, the blockhead might find I move 
 
 To matter that pays remaining ! " 
 
 Long years went by, when — " Ha, who 's this ? 
 
 Do I come on the restive scholar 
 I had driven to Wisdom's goal, I wis, 
 
 But that he slipped the collar ? 
 
 "What? Arms crossed, brow bent, thought- 
 immersed ? 
 
 A student indeed ! Why scruple 
 To own that the lesson proposed him first 
 
 Scarce suited so apt a pupil ? 
 
 "Comeback! From the beggarly elements 
 
 To a more recondite issue 
 We pass till we reach, at all events. 
 
 Some point that may puzzle . . . Why ' pish ' 
 you ? " 
 
 From the ground looked piteous up the head : 
 
 " Daily and nightly, Master, 
 Your pupil plods through that text you read. 
 
 Yet gets on never the faster. 
 
 " At the selfsame stand, — now old, then young 1 
 I will look to my ways — were doing 
 
 As easy as saying ! — that I with my tongue 
 Offend not — and 'scape pooh-poohing 
 
 " From sage and simple, doctor and dunce ? 
 
 Ah, nowise ! Still doubts so muddy 
 The stream I would drink at once, — but once S 
 
 That — thus I resume my study ! " 
 
 Brother, brother, I share the blame. 
 
 Arcades sumus amho I 
 Darkling, I keep my sunrise-aim, 
 
 Lack not the critic's flambeau. 
 And look to my ways, yet, much the same. 
 
 Offend with my tongue — like Pambo ! 
 
THE EAGLE 
 
 929 
 
 FERISHTAH'S FANCIES 
 
 His genius was jocular, but, when disposed, he could be very 
 serious. —Article " Shakespear," Jeremy Collier's Histori- 
 cal etc^ Dictionary, 2d edition, 1701. 
 
 You, Sir, I entertain you for one of my Hundred ; only, I do 
 not like the fashion of your garments : you will say they are 
 Persian : but let them be changed. — King Lear, Act III. So. 6. 
 
 Theke is a loose connection between this 
 group of poems and certain forms of Oriental 
 literature, notably The Fables ofBidpai or Pil- 
 pay, Firdausi's Shdk-Ndmek, and the Sook of 
 Jobi specific instances may easily be noted ; but 
 Browning himself said in a letter to a friend, 
 written soon after the publication of Ferishtah's 
 Fancies : " I hope and believe that one or two 
 careful readings of the Poem will make its 
 sense clear enough. Above all, pray allow for 
 
 the Poet's inventiveness in any case, and da 
 not suppose there is more than a thin disguise 
 of a few Persian names and allusions. There 
 was no such person as Ferishtah — the stories 
 are all inventions. . . . The Hebrew quotations 
 are put in for a purpose, as a direct acknowledg- 
 ment that certain doctrines may be found in 
 the Old Book, which the Concoctors of Novel 
 Schemes of Morality put forth as discoveries of 
 their own." 
 
 PROLOGUE 
 
 Prat, Reader, have you eaten ortolans 
 
 Ever in Italy ? 
 Kecall how cooks there cook them: for my 
 plan 's 
 To — Lyre with Spit ally. 
 They pluck the birds, — some dozen luscious 
 lumps. 
 Or more or fewer, — 
 Then roast them, heads by heads and rumps by 
 rumps. 
 Stuck on a skewer. 
 But first, — and here 's the point I fain would 
 press, — 
 Don't think I 'm tattling ! — 
 They interpose, to curb its lusciousness, 
 
 — What, 'twixt each fatling ? 
 First comes plain bread, crisp, brown, a toasted 
 square : 
 Then, a strong sa^e-leaf : 
 (So we find books with flowers dried here and 
 there 
 Lest leaf engage leaf.) 
 First, food — then, piquancy — and last of all 
 
 Follows the thirdling : 
 Through wholesome hard, sharp soft, your tooth 
 must bite 
 Ere reach the birdling. 
 Now, were there only crust to crunch, you'd 
 wince : 
 Unpalatable ! 
 Sage-leaf is bitter-pungent — so 's a quince : 
 
 Eat ea«h who s able ! 
 But through all three bite boldly — lo, the gust ! 
 
 Flavor — no fixture — 
 Flies permeating flesh and leaf and crust 
 
 In fine admixture. 
 So with your meal, my poem : masticate 
 Sense, sight, and song there ! 
 
 Digest these, and I praise your peptics' state. 
 
 Nothing found wrong there. 
 Whence springs my illustration who can tell ? 
 
 — The more surprising 
 That here eggs, milk, cheese, fruit suffice so 
 well 
 
 For gormandizing. 
 A fancy-freak by contrast born of thee. 
 
 Delightful Gressoney ! 
 Who laughest " Take what is, trust what may 
 be I" 
 
 That 's Life's true lesson, — eh ? 
 
 Maison Delapiebre, 
 Gressoney St. Jean, Val d'Aosta, 
 September 12, '83. 
 
 I. THE EAGLE 
 
 This poem is drawn quite closely from The 
 Fables ofBidpai. 
 
 Dervish — (though yet un-dervished, call him 
 
 so 
 No less beforehand : while he drudged our way, 
 Other his worldly name was : when he wrote 
 Those versicles we Persians praise him for, 
 
 — True fairy-work —Ferishtah grew his style) — 
 Dervish Ferishtah walked the woods one eve, 
 And noted on a bough a raven's nest 
 Whereof each youngling gaped with callow beak 
 Widened by want ; for why ? beneath the tree 
 Dead lay the mother-bird. " A piteous chance I 
 How shall they 'scape destruction ? ' ' sighed the 
 
 sage 
 
 — Or sage about to be, though simple still. 
 Responsive to which doubt, sudden there 
 
 swooped 
 An eagle downward, and behold he bore 
 ((Jreat-hearted) in his talons flesh wherewith 
 
930 
 
 FERISHTAH'S FANCIES 
 
 He stayed their craving, then resought the sky. 
 "Ah, foolish, faithless me I " the observer 
 
 smiled, 
 '* Who toil and moil to eke out life, when, lo, 
 Providence cares for every hungry mouth ! " 
 To profit by which lesson, home went he. 
 And certain days sat musing, — neither meat 
 Nor drink would purchase by his handiwork. 
 Then — for his head swam and his limbs grew 
 
 faint — 
 Sleep overtook the unwise one, whom in dream 
 God thus admonished: "Hast thou marked 
 
 my deed ? 
 Which part assigned by providence dost judge 
 Was meant for man's example? Should he 
 ^ play 
 
 The helpless weakling, or the helpful strength 
 That captures prey and saves the perishing ? 
 Sluggard, arise : work, eat, then feed who 
 
 lack I" 
 
 Waking, " I hare arisen, work I will, 
 
 Bat, and so following. Which lacks food the 
 
 more. 
 Body or soul in me ? 1 starve in soul : 
 So may mankind : and since men congregate 
 In towns, not woods, — to Ispahan forthwith 1" 
 
 Bound ufi the wild creatures, overhead the trees, 
 Underfoot the moss-tracks, — life and love with these I 
 I to wear a fawn-skin, thou to dress in flowers : 
 All the long lone summer-day, that greenwood life of 
 ours I 
 
 Rich-pavilioned, rather, — still the world without, — 
 Inside — gold-roofed silk-walled silence round about I 
 Queen it thou on purple, — I, at watch, and ward 
 Couched beneath the columns, gaze, thy slave, love's 
 guard! 
 
 So, for us no world ? Let throngs press thee to me ! 
 Up and down amid men, heart by heart fare we ! 
 Welcome squalid vesture, harsh voice, hateful face ! 
 God is soul, souls I and thou : with souls should souls 
 have place. 
 
 II. THE MELON-SELLER 
 
 Going his rounds one day in Ispahan, — 
 Halfway on Dervishhood, not wholly there, — 
 Ferishtah, as he crossed a certain bridge. 
 Came startled on a well-remembered face. 
 "Can it be? What, turned melon-seller — 
 
 thou? 
 Clad in such sordid garb, thy seat yon step 
 Where dogs brush by thee and express con- 
 tempt ? 
 Methinks, thy head-gear is some scooped-out 
 
 gourd ! 
 Nay, sunk to slicing up, for readier sale. 
 One fruit whereof the whole scarce feeds a 
 
 swine ? 
 Wast thou the Shah's Prime Minister, men saw 
 Ride on his right-hand while a trumpet blew 
 And Persia hailed the Favorite ? Yea, twelve 
 
 years 
 Are past, I judge, since that transcendanoy. 
 And thou didst peculate and art abased : 
 
 No less, twelve years since, thou didst hold in 
 
 hand 
 Persia, oouldst halve and quarter, mince its 
 
 pulp 
 As pleased thee, and distribute — melon-like — 
 Portions to whoso played the parasite. 
 Or suck — thyself — each juicy morse] . How 
 Enormous thy abjection, — hell from heaven. 
 Made tenfold hell by contrast 1 Whisper me ! 
 Dost thou curse God for granting twelve years' 
 
 bliss 
 Only to prove this day 's the direr lot ? " 
 
 Whereon the beggar raised a brow, once more 
 Luminous and imperial, from the rags. 
 " Fool, does thy folly think my foolishness 
 Dwells rather on the fact that God appoints 
 A day of woe to the unworthy one. 
 Than that the unworthy one, by God's award, 
 Tasted joy twelve years long ? Or buy a slice, 
 Or go to school ! " 
 
 To school Ferishtah went ; 
 And, schooling ended, passed from Ispahan 
 To Nishapur, that Elburz looks above 
 — Where they dig turquoise : there kept school 
 
 himself. 
 The melon-seller's speech, his stock in trade. 
 Some say a certain Jew adduced the word 
 Out of their book, it sounds so much the same. 
 
 DNibsn nsj3 bap: 2iton-ns 
 
 ! b3p3 Sb 5J~in"nMT in Persian phrase, 
 " Shall we receive good at the hand of God 
 And evil not receive ? " But great wits jump. 
 
 "Wish no word unspoken, want no look away ! 
 What if words were bub mistake, and looks — too sud- 
 den, say ! 
 Be unjust for once. Love ! Bear it — well I may ! 
 
 Do me justice always ? Bid my heart — their shrine — 
 Bender back its store of gifts, old looks and words o£ 
 
 thine 
 — Oh, so all unjust — the less deserved, the more di- 
 vine? 
 
 III. SHAH ABBAS 
 
 Anyhow, once full Dervish, youngsters came 
 To gather up his own words, 'neath a rock 
 Or else a palm, by pleasant Nishapur. 
 
 Said some one, as Ferishtah paused abrupt, 
 Reading a certain passage from the roll 
 Wherein is treated of Lord All's life : 
 " Master, explain this incongruity ! 
 When I dared question ' It is beautiful. 
 But is it true ? ' — thy answer was ' In truth 
 Lives beauty.' I persisting — ' Beauty — yes, 
 In thy mind and in my mind, every mind 
 That apprehends : but outside — so to speak — 
 Did beauty live in deed as well as word. 
 Was this life lived, was this death died — not 
 
 dreamed ? ' 
 ' Many attested it for fact,' saidst thou. 
 ' Many ! ' but mark, Sir ! Half as long ago 
 As such things were, — supposing that they 
 
SHAH ABBAS 
 
 931 
 
 Reigned gieat Shuh Abbas: he too lived and 
 
 died 
 — How say they ? Why, so strong of arm, of foot 
 So swift, ha stayed a lion in his leap 
 On a stag's haunch, — with one hand grasped 
 
 the stag, 
 With one struck down the lion : yet, no less. 
 Himself, that same day, feasting after sport. 
 Perceived a spider drop into his wine, 
 Let fall the flagon, died of simple fear. 
 So all say, — so dost thou say ? " 
 
 " Wherefore not ? " 
 Ferishtah smiled: " though strange, the story 
 
 stands 
 Clear-chronicled : none tells it otherwise : 
 The fact's eye-witness bore the cup, beside." 
 
 " And dost thou credit one cup-bearer's tale. 
 
 False, very like, and futile certainly. 
 
 Yet hesitate to trust what many tongues 
 
 Combine to testify was beautiful 
 
 In deed as well as word ? No fool's report. 
 
 Of lion, stag and spider, but immense 
 
 With meaning for mankind, thy race,thyseU ? 
 
 Whereto the Dervish : " First amend, my son, 
 Thy faulty nomenclature, call belief 
 Belief indeed, nor grace with such a name 
 The easy acquiescence of mankind 
 In matters nowise worth dispute, since lite 
 Lasts merely the allotted moment. Lo — 
 That Uon-stag-and-spider tale leaves fixed 
 The fact for us that somewhen Abbas reigned, 
 Died, somehow slain, — a useful reg^try, — ■ 
 Which therefore we — ' believe ' ? Stand for- 
 ward, thou. 
 My Yakub, son of Yusuf , son of Z^ ! 
 I advertise thee that our liege, the Shah 
 Happily regnant, hath become assured. 
 By opportune discovery, that thy sires. 
 Son by the father upwards, track their line 
 To — whom but that same bearer of the cup 
 Whose inadvertency was chargeable 
 With what therefrom ensued, disgust and 
 
 death 
 To Abbas Shah, the over-nice of soul^ 
 Whence he appoints thee, — such his clem- 
 ency, — . , , , . 
 Not death, thy due, but just a double tax 
 To pay, on thy particular bed of reeds 
 Which flower into the brush that makes a broom 
 Fit to sweep ceilings clear of vermin, bure. 
 Thou dost believe the story nor dispute 
 That punishment should signahze its truth I 
 Down therefore with some twelve dmars 1 
 
 Why start, , ,. . , 
 
 — The stag's way with the lion hard on 
 
 haunch ? , 3 ^i. 
 
 ' Bdieve the story 1 ' —how thy words throng 
 
 fast ' — 
 ' Who saw this, heard this, said this, wrote 
 
 down this. 
 That and the other circumstance to prove 
 So great a prodigy surprised the world ? 
 Needs must thou prove me fable can be fact 
 n- oTB thou coax one piece from out my 
 pouch 1 
 
 " There we agree. Sir : neither of us knows, 
 Neither accepts that tale on evidence 
 Worthy to warrant the large word — belief. 
 Now I get near thee 1 Why didst pause ab- 
 rupt. 
 Disabled by emotion at a tale 
 Might match — be frank ! — for credibility 
 The ^ment of the spider and the cup ? 
 — To wit, thy roll 's concerning All's life, 
 Unevidenced — thine own word ! Little boots 
 Our sympathy with fiction ! When I read 
 The annals and consider of Tahmasp 
 And that sweet sun-surpassing star his love, 
 I weep like a cut vine-twig, though aware 
 Zurah's sad fate is fiction, since the snake 
 He saw devour her, — how could such exist. 
 Having nine heads ? No snake boasts more 
 
 than three! 
 I weep, then laugh — both actions right ahke. 
 But thou, Ferishtah, sapiency confessed. 
 When at the Day of Judgment God shall ask 
 ' Didst thou believe ? ' — what wUt thou plead 1 
 
 Thy tears ? 
 (Nay, they fell fast and stain the parchment 
 
 still.) ^ , , . 
 
 What if thy tears meant love ? Love lacking 
 
 ground 
 — Belief, — avails thee as it would avail 
 My own pretence to favor since, forsooth, 
 I loved the lady — I who needs must laugh 
 To hear a snake boasts nine heads : they have 
 three ! " 
 
 "Thanks for the well-timed help that 's born, 
 
 behold, , ,. J, J , I 
 
 Out of thy words, my son, — behef and love I 
 Hast heard of Ishak son of Absal ? Ay, 
 The very same we heard of, ten years since. 
 Slain in the wars : he comes back safe and 
 
 sound, — 
 Though twenty soldiers saw him die at 
 
 Yezdt,— 
 Just as a single mule-and-baggage boy 
 Dechired 't was like he some day would, —tor 
 
 why? 
 The twenty soldiers lied, he saw him stout. 
 Cured of all wounds at once by smear of salve, 
 A Mubid's manufacture : such the tale. _ 
 Now, when his pair of sons were dins apprised 
 Effect was twofold on them. 'Haill crowed 
 
 ' Dearer the news than dayspring after night I 
 The cure-reporting youngster -warrants me 
 Our father shall make glad our eyes once more, 
 For whom, had outpoured hfe of mme suaced 
 To bring him back, free broached were every 
 
 vein ! ' 
 ' Avaunt, delusive tale-concocter, news 
 Cruel as meteor simulating dawn t 
 Whimpered the other: ' Who beheves this boy, 
 Must disbelieve his twenty seniors : no. 
 Return our father shall not I M'Sht my death 
 Purchase hU hfe, how OTomptly would the dole 
 Be paid as duel' Well, ten years pass,- 
 
 Ishak is Arching home^fdj-doubts^ot he. 
 Are dead and done with! So, our townsfolk 
 straight 
 
932 
 
 FERISHTAH'S FANCIES 
 
 Must take on them to counsel. ^ Go thou gay, 
 Welcome thy father, thou of ready faith 1 
 Hide thee, contrariwise, thou faithless one. 
 Expect paternal frowning, blame and blows I ' 
 So do our townsfolk counsel : dost demur ? " 
 
 " FerisJUtah like those simpletons — at loss 
 
 In what is plain as pikestaff ? Pish ! Suppose 
 
 The trustful sou had sighed 'So much the 
 
 worse! 
 Returning means — retaking heritage 
 Enjoyed these ten years, who should say me 
 
 nay? ' 
 How would such trust reward him ? Trnstless- 
 
 ness 
 — 0' the other hand — were what procured 
 
 most praise 
 To him who judged return impossible. 
 Yet hated heritage procured thereby. 
 A fool were Ishak if he failed to prize 
 Mere head's work less than heart's work: no 
 
 fool he I" 
 
 " Is God less wise ? Resume the roll I " They 
 did. 
 
 Tou groped your way across my room i* tiie drear dark 
 
 dead of night ; 
 At each fresh step a stumble was : but, once your lamp 
 
 alight. 
 Easy and plain you walked again: so Boon all wrong 
 
 grew right I 
 
 What lay on floor to trip your foot ? Each object, late 
 
 awry, 
 Looked fitly placed, nor proved offence to footing free 
 
 — for why? 
 The lamp showed all, discordant late, grown aimple 
 
 symmetry. 
 
 Be love your light and trust your guide, with these 
 
 explore my heart I 
 No obstacle to trip you then, strike hands and souls 
 
 apart ! 
 Since rooms and hearts are f umlBfaed so, — light shows 
 
 you, — needs love start? 
 
 IV. THE FAMILY 
 
 A CERTAIN neighbor lying sick to death, 
 Ferishtah grieved beneath a {lahu-tree, whence 
 He rose at peace ; whereat objected one 
 " Gudarz our friend gasps in extremity. 
 Sure, thou art ignorant now close at hand 
 Deajth presses, or the cloud, which fouled so 
 
 late 
 Thy face, had deepened down not lightened 
 
 off." 
 
 " I judge there will be respite, for I prayed." 
 
 " Sir, let me understand, of charity ! 
 Testereve, what was thine admonishment ? 
 ' AU-wise, aU-?good, aU-mighty — God is such I ' 
 How then should man, the aU-unworthy, dare 
 Propose to set aside a thing ordained ? 
 To pray means — substitute man's will for 
 
 God's: 
 Two best wills cannot be : by consequence. 
 
 What is man bound to but ^ assent, say I ? 
 Rather to rapture of thanksgiving ; since 
 That which seems worst to man to God is best. 
 So, because God ordains it, best to man. 
 Yet man — the foolish, weak, and wicked — 
 
 prays 
 
 Urges ' My best were better, didst Thou 
 know ' 1 " 
 
 ' • List to a tale. A worthy householder 
 Of Shiraz had three sons, beside a spouse 
 Whom, cutting gourds, a serpent bit, whereon 
 The offended limb swelled black from foot to 
 
 fork. 
 The husband called in aid a leech renowned 
 World-wide, confessed the lord of surgery, 
 And bade him dictate — who forthwith de- 
 clared 
 ' Sole remedy is amputation.' Straight 
 The husband sighed ' Thou knowest : be it so ! ' 
 His three sons neard their mother sentenced: 
 
 ' Pause ! ' 
 Outbroke the elder : ' Be precipitate 
 Nowise, I pray thee I Take some gentler way. 
 Thou sage of much resource ! I will not doubt 
 But science still may save foot, leg, and thigh ! ' 
 The next in age snapped jietulant : ' Too rash I 
 No reason for this maiming ! What, Sir 
 
 Leech, 
 Our parent limps henceforward while we leap ? 
 Shame on thee ! Save the limb thou must and 
 
 Shalt!' 
 ' Shame on yourselves, ye bold ones ! ' followed 
 
 np 
 The brisk third brother, youngest, pertest too : 
 ' The leech knows all things, we are ignorant ; 
 What he proposes, gratefully accept ! 
 For me, had I some unguent bound to heal 
 Hurts in a twinkling, hardly would I dare 
 Essay its virtue and so cross the sage 
 By cure his skill pronounces folly. Quick ! 
 No waiting longer ! There the patient lies : 
 Out then with implements and operate ! ' " 
 
 " Ah, the young devil ! " 
 
 " Why, his reason chimed 
 Right with the Hakim's." 
 
 " Hakim's, ay — but chit's? 
 How ? what the skilled eye saw and judged of 
 
 weight 
 To overbear a heavy consequence. 
 That — shall a sciolist affect to see ? 
 All he saw — that is, all such oaf should see, 
 Was just the mLOther's suffering." 
 
 " In my tale. 
 Be God the Hakim : in the husband's case. 
 Call ready acquiescence — aptitude 
 Angelic, understanding swift and sure : 
 Call the first son — a wise humanity. 
 Slow to conceive but duteous to adopt : 
 See in the second son — humanity, 
 Wrong-headed yet right-he.irted, rash but kind 
 Last comes the cackler of the brood, our ofait 
 Who, aping wisdom aU beyond his years. 
 Thinks to discard humanity itself : 
 
THE. SUN 
 
 933 
 
 fares like the beast which should affect to fly 
 Because a bird with wings may spurn the 
 
 ground, 
 So, missing heaven and losing earth — drops 
 
 how 
 But hell-ward ? No, be man and nothing 
 
 more — 
 Man who, as man conceiving, hopes and fears, 
 And craves and deprecates, and loves, and 
 
 loathes, 
 And bids God help him, till death touch his 
 
 eyes 
 And show God granted most, denying all." 
 
 Man I am and man would be, Love — merest man and 
 
 nothing more. 
 Bid me seem no other ! Eagles boast of pinions — let 
 
 them soar I 
 1 may put forth angel's plumage, once unmanned, but 
 
 not before. 
 
 Now on earth, to stand suffices, — nay, if kneeling 
 
 serves, to kneel : 
 Here you front me, here I find the all of heaven that 
 
 earth can feel : 
 Sense looks straight, — not over, under, — perfect sees 
 
 beyond appeal. 
 
 Good you are and wise, full circle ; what to me were 
 
 more outeide ? 
 Wiser wisdom, better goodness ? Ah, such want the 
 
 angel's wide 
 Sense to take and hold and keep them ! Mine at least 
 
 has never tried. 
 
 V. THE SUN 
 
 " And what might that bold man's announce- 
 ment be " — 
 
 Ferishtah questioned — " which so moved thine 
 ire 
 
 That thou didst curse, nay, cuff and kick — in 
 short. 
 
 Confute the announcer ? Wipe those drops 
 away 
 
 Which start afresh upon thy face at mere 
 
 Mention of such enormity : now, speak ! " 
 
 " He scrupled not to say — (thou warrantest, 
 
 patient Hit, that I unblamed repeat 
 Abominable words which blister tongue ?) 
 God once assumed on earth a human shape : 
 (Lo, I have spitten !) Dared I ask the grace, 
 Fain would I hear, of thy subtUity, 
 
 From out what hole in man's corrupted heart 
 Creeps such a maggot : fancies verminous 
 Breed in the clots there, but a monster bom 
 Of pride and folly like this pest — thyself 
 Only canst trapse to egg-shell it hath chipped." 
 
 The sun rode high. ' ' During our ignorance ' ' — 
 Began Ferishtah — " folk esteemed as God 
 Yon orb : for argument, suppose him so, — 
 Be it the symbol, not the symbolized, 
 
 1 and thou safelier take upon our lips. 
 Accordingly, yon orb that we adore 
 
 — What is he ? Author of all light and life : 
 Such one must needs be somewhere : this is he. 
 Like what ? If I may trust my human eyes, 
 
 ■*■ wu oo'pposed of spirit-fire, whence springs 
 — What, irom this ball, my arms could circle 
 
 round ? 
 All I enjoy on earth. By consequence. 
 Inspiring me with — what? Why, love and 
 
 praise. 
 I eat a palatable fig — there 's love 
 In little ; who first planted what I pluck. 
 Obtains my little praise, too : more of both 
 Keeps due proportion with more cause for each: 
 So, more and ever more, till most of all 
 Coinpletes experience, and the orb, descried 
 Ultimate giver of all good, perforce 
 Gathers unto himself all love, all praise, 
 Is worshipped — which means loved and praised 
 
 at height. 
 Back to the first good : 't was the gardener gave 
 Occasion to my palate's pleasure : grace. 
 Plain on his part, demanded thanks on mine. 
 Goup above this giver, — step by step. 
 Gain a conception of what — (now and why, 
 Matters not now) — occasioned him to give. 
 Appointed him the gardener of the ground, ^ 
 I mount by just progression slow and sure 
 To some prime giver — here assumed yon orb — 
 Who takes my worship. Whom have I in 
 
 mind. 
 Thus worshipping, unless a man, my like 
 Howe'er above me ? Man, I say — how else, 
 I being man who worship ? Here 's my hand 
 Lifts first a mustard-seed, then weight on 
 
 weight 
 Greater and ever greater, till at last 
 It lifts a melon, I suppose, then stops — 
 Hand-strength expended wholly : so, my love 
 First lauds the gardener for the fig his gift. 
 Then, looking higher, loves and lauds siSl more, 
 Who hires the ground, who owns the ground, 
 
 Sheikh, Shah, 
 On and away, away and ever on. 
 Till, at the last, it loves and lauds the orb 
 Ultimate cause of aU to laud and love. 
 Where is the break, the change of quality 
 la hand's power, soul's impulsion? Gift was 
 
 grace. 
 The greatest as the smallest. Had I stopped 
 Anywhere in the scale, stayed love and praise 
 As so far only fit to follow gift. 
 Saying, ' I thanked the gardener for his fig. 
 But now that, lo, the Shah has filled my purse 
 With tomans wliich avail to purchase me 
 A fig-tree forest, shall I pay the same 
 With love and praise, the gardener's proper 
 
 fee?' 
 Justly woiJd whoso bears a bTa.in object, 
 ' Giving is giving, gift claims gift's return. 
 Do thou thine own part, therefore : let the Shah 
 Ask more from one has more to pay.' Per- 
 chance 
 He gave me from his treasure less by much 
 Than the soil's servant : let that be ! My part 
 Is plain — to meet and match the gift and gift 
 With love and love, with praise and praise, till 
 
 both 
 Cry ' AU of us is thine, we can no more ! ' 
 So shall I do man's utmost — man to man : 
 For as our liege the Shah's sublime estate 
 Merely enhaloes, leaves liim man the same. 
 
934 
 
 FERISHTAH'S FANCIES 
 
 So must I count that orb I call a fire 
 (Keep to the language of our ignorance) 
 Something that ^s fire and more beside : mere 
 
 fire 
 — Is it a force "which, giving, knows it gives, 
 And wherefore, so may look for love and praise 
 From me, fire's like so far, however less 
 In all beside ? Prime cause this fire shall be. 
 Uncaused, all-causing : hence begin the gifts, 
 Thither must go my love and praise — to what ? 
 Fire ? Symbol fitly serves the symbolized 
 Herein, — that this same object of my thanks. 
 While to my mind nowise conceivable 
 Except as mind no less than fire, refutes 
 Next moment mind's conception : fire is fire — 
 While what I needs must thank, must needs in- 
 clude 
 Purpose with power, — humanity like mine, 
 Imagined, for the dear necessity. 
 One moment in an object which the next 
 Confesses unimaginable. Po^er ! 
 
 — What need of will, then? Naught opposes 
 
 power : 
 Why, purpose ? any change must be for worse : 
 And what occasion for beneficence 
 When all that is, so is and so must be ? 
 Best being best now, change were for the 
 
 worse. 
 Accordingly discard these qualities 
 Proper to imperfection, take for type 
 Mere fire, eject the man, retain the orb, — 
 The perfect and, so, inconceivable, — 
 And what remains to love and praise? A 
 
 stone 
 Fair-colored proves a solace to my eye. 
 Rolled by my tongue brings moisture curing 
 
 drouth, 
 And struck by steel emits a useful spark : 
 Shall I return it thanks, the insentient thing ? 
 No, — man once, man forever — man in soul 
 As man in body : just as this can use 
 Its proper senses only, see and hear. 
 Taste, like or loathe according to its law 
 And not another creature 's^ — even so 
 Man's soul is moved by what, if it in turn 
 Must move, is kindred soul : receiving good 
 
 — Man's way — must make man's due acknow- 
 
 ledgment. 
 No other, even while he reasons out 
 Plainly enough that, were the man unmanned, 
 Made angel of, angelic every way. 
 The love and praise that rightly seek and find 
 Their man-like object now, — instructed more. 
 Would go forth idly, air to emptiness. 
 Our human fiower, sun-ripened. profFers scent 
 Though reason prove the sun lacks nose to feed 
 On what himself made grateful: flower and 
 
 man. 
 Let each assume that scent and love alike 
 Being once born, must needs have use 1 Man's 
 
 part 
 Is plain — to send love forth, — astray, perhaps : 
 No matter, he has done his part." 
 
 " Wherefrom 
 What is to follow — if I take thy sense — 
 But that the sun — the inconceivable 
 Confessed by man — comprises, all the same, 
 
 Man's every-day conception of himself — 
 No less remaining unconceived ! " 
 
 " Agreed ! " 
 
 " Yet thou, insisting on the right of man 
 To feel as man, not otherwise, — man, bound 
 By man's conditions neither less nor more, 
 Obliged to estimate as fair or foul. 
 Right, wrong, good, evil, what man's faculty 
 Adjudges such, — now canst thou, — plainly 
 
 bound 
 To take man's truth for truth and only truth, — 
 Dare to accept, in just one case, as truth 
 Falsehood confessed ? Flesh simulating fire — 
 Our fellow-man whom we his fellows know 
 For dust — instinct with fire unknowable ! 
 Where 's thy man-needed truth — its proof, nay 
 
 print 
 Of faintest passage on the tablets traced 
 By man, termed knowledge ? 'T is conceded 
 
 thee. 
 We lack such fancied union — fire with fiesh : 
 But even so, to lack is not to gain 
 Our lack's suppliance ; where 's the trace of 
 
 such 
 Recorded ? " 
 
 " What if such a tracing were ? 
 If some strange story stood, — whate'er its 
 
 worth, — 
 That the immensely yeamed-for, once befell, 
 — The sun was flesh once ? — (keep the fig- 
 ure!)" 
 
 " How ? 
 An union inconceivable was fact ? " 
 
 " Son, if the stranger have convinced himself 
 Fancy is fact — the sun, besides a fixe. 
 Holds earthly substance somehow fire pervades 
 And yet consumes not, — earth, he understands, 
 With essence he remains a stranger to, — 
 Fitlier thou saidst ' I stand ax>palled before 
 Conception unattainable by me 
 Who need it most ' — than this — ' What ? 
 
 boast he holds 
 Conviction where I see conviction's need, 
 Alas, — and nothing else ? then what remains 
 But that I straightway curse, cuff, kick the 
 
 fool ! ' " 
 
 Fire is in the flint : true, once a spark escapes, 
 Fire forgets the kinsliip, soars till fancy shapes 
 Some befitting cradle where the babe had birth — 
 Wholly heaven 's the product, unailied to earth. 
 Splendors recognized as perfect in the star ! — 
 In our flint their home was, housed as now they are. 
 
 VI. MIHRAB SHAH 
 
 Quoth an inquirer, " Praise tlie Merciful ! 
 My thumb which yesterday a scorpion nipped — 
 (It swelled and blackened) — lo, is sound again ? 
 By application of a virtuous root 
 The burning has abated : that is well. 
 But now methinks I have a mind to ask, — 
 
MIHRAB SHAH 
 
 Since this disoomfort came of culling herbs 
 Nor meaning harm, — why needs a scorpion be ? 
 YTea, there began, from when my thumb last 
 
 throbbed, 
 Advance in question-framin'^, till I asked 
 Wherefore should any evil hap to man — 
 From ache of flesh to agony of soul — 
 Since God's AU-meroy mates All-potency ? 
 Nay, why permits he evil to himself — 
 Man's sin, accounted such ? Suppose a world 
 Purged of all pain, with fit inhabitant — 
 Man pure of evil in thought, word, and deed — 
 Were it not well ? Then, wherefore otherwise ? 
 Too good result ? But he is wholly good ! 
 Hard to effect ? Ay, were he impotent ! 
 Teach me, Ferishtah 1 " 
 
 Said the Dervish : " Friend, 
 My chance, escaped to-day, was worse than 
 
 thine : 
 I, as I woke this morning, raised my head. 
 Which never tumbled but stuck fast on neck. 
 Was not I glad and thankful ! " 
 
 " How could head 
 Tumble from neck, unchopped — inform me 
 
 first ! 
 Unless we take Firdausi's tale for truth. 
 Who ever heard the like ? " 
 
 " The like might hap 
 By natural law : I let my staff fall thus — 
 It goes to ground, I know not why. Suppose, 
 Whene'er my hold was loosed, it skyward 
 
 sprang 
 As certainly, and all experience proved 
 That, just as staves when unsupported sink, 
 So, unconfined, they soar? " 
 
 " Let such be law — 
 Why, a new chapter of sad accidents 
 Were added to humanity's mischance. 
 No doubt at all, and as a man's false step 
 Now lays him prone on earth, contrariwise. 
 Removal from his shoulder of a weight 
 Might start him upwards to perdition. Ay ! 
 But, since such law exists in just thy brain, 
 I shall not hesitate to doff my cap 
 For fear my head take flight." 
 
 " Nor feel relief 
 Finding it firm on shoulder. Tell me, now ! 
 What were the bond 'twixt man and man, 
 
 dost judge. 
 Pain once abolished ? Come, be true ! Our 
 
 Shah — 
 How stands he in thy favor ? Why that 
 
 shrug ? 
 Is not he lord and ruler ? " 
 
 " EasUy ! 
 His mother bore him, first of those four wives 
 Provided by his father, such his luck : 
 Since when his business simply was to breathe 
 And take each day's new bounty. There he 
 
 stands — 
 Where else had I stood, were his birth-star 
 
 mine ? 
 
 935 
 
 No, to respect men's power, I needs must see 
 Men s bare hands seek, find, grasp and wield 
 
 the sword 
 Nobody else can brandish ! Bless his heart, 
 1 IS said, he scarcely counte his fingers right ! " 
 
 "Well, then— his princely doles! from every 
 
 feast 
 Off go the feasted with the dish they ate 
 AndT cup they drank from, — nay. a change 
 
 besides 
 Of garments "... 
 
 " Sir, put case, for service done, — 
 Or best, for love's sake, — such and such a slave 
 Sold his allowance of sour lentil-soup 
 To herewith purchase me a pipe-stick, — nay. 
 If he, by but one hour, cut short his sleep 
 To clout my shoe, — that were a sacrifice ! " 
 
 '* All praise his gracious bearing.'' 
 
 . ■■ All praise mine — 
 
 Or would praise did they never make approach 
 Except on all-fours, crawling till I bade, 
 ' Now that with eyelids thou hast touched the 
 
 earth. 
 Come close and have no fear, poor nothingness I ' 
 What wonder that the lady-rose I woo 
 And palisade about from every wind, 
 Holds herself handsomely ? The wilding, now. 
 Ruffled outside at pleasure of the blast. 
 That still lifts up with something of a smile 
 Its poor attempt at bloom "... 
 
 " A blameless life, 
 Wliere wrong might revel with impunity — 
 Remember that ! " 
 
 " The falcon on his fist — 
 Reclaimed and trained and belled and beautified 
 TiU she believes herself the Simorgh's match — 
 She only deigns destroy the antelope. 
 Stoops at no carrion-crow : thou marvellest ? 
 
 " So be it, then ! He wakes no love in thee 
 For any one of divers attributes 
 Commonly deemed love-worthy. All the same, 
 I would he were not wasting, slow but sure. 
 With that internal ulcer" . . . 
 
 " Say'st thou so? 
 How should I guess ? Alack, poor soul ! But 
 
 stay — 
 Sure in the reach of art some remedy 
 Must lie to hand : or if it lurk, — that leech 
 Of fame in Tebriz, why not seek his aid ? 
 Couldst not thou, Dervish, counsel in the 
 
 case ? " 
 
 " My counsel might be — what imports a pang 
 The more or less, which puts an end to one 
 Odious in spite of every attribute 
 Commonly deemed love-worthy ? " 
 
 " Attributes ? 
 Faugh ! — nay, Ferishtah, — 't is an idcer, 
 think I 
 
936 
 
 FERISHTAH'S FANCIES 
 
 Attributes, quotha? Here's poor flesh and 
 
 blood, 
 Like thine and mine and every man's, a prey 
 To hell-fire ! Hast thou lost thy wits for 
 
 once?" 
 
 " Friend, here they are io find and profit by ! 
 Put pain from out the world, what room were 
 
 left 
 For thanks to God, for love to Man ? Why 
 
 thanks, — 
 Except for some escape, whate'er the style. 
 From pain that might be, name it as thou 
 
 mayst ? 
 Why love, — when all thy kind, save me, sup- 
 pose, 
 Thy father, and thy son, and . . . well, thy 
 
 dog. 
 To eke the decent number out — we few 
 Who happen — like a handful of chance stars 
 From the unnumbered host — to shine o'erhead 
 And lend thee light, — our twinkle all thy 
 
 store, — 
 We only take thy love ! Mankind, forsooth ? 
 Who sympathizes with their general joy 
 Foolish as undeserved ? But pain — see God's 
 Wisdom at work ! — man's heart h made to 
 
 judge 
 Pain deserved nowhere by the common flesh 
 Our birthright, — bad and good deserve alike 
 'No pain, to human apprehension ! Lust, 
 Greed, cruelty, injustice crave (we hold) 
 Due punishment from somebody, no doubt : 
 But ulcer in the midriff t that brings flesh 
 Triumphant from the bar whereto arraigned 
 Soul quakes with reason. In the eye of God 
 Pain may have purpose and be justified : 
 Man's sense avails to only see, in pain, 
 A hateful chance no man but would avert 
 Or, failing, needs must pity. Thanks to God 
 And love to man, — from man take these away, 
 And what is man worth ? Therefore, Mihrab 
 
 Shah, 
 Tax me my bread and salt twice over, claim 
 Laila my daughter for thy sport, — go on I 
 Slay my son's self, maintain thy poetry 
 Beats mine, — thou meritest a dozen deaths ! 
 But — ulcer in the stomach, — ah, poor soul. 
 Try a fig-plaster : may it ease thy pangs !" 
 
 So, the head aches and the limbs are faint ! 
 
 Flesh is a burden — even to you ! ' 
 Can I force a smile with a fancy quaint ? 
 
 Why are my ailments none or few? 
 
 In the soul of me sits slug^shness : 
 Body so strong and will so weak : 
 
 The slave stands fit for the labor — yes. 
 But the master's mandate is still to seek. 
 
 Ton, row — what if the outside clay 
 Helped, not hindered the inside flame ? 
 
 My dim to-morrow — your plain to-day. 
 Yours the achievement, mine the aim ? 
 
 So were it rightly, so shall it be I 
 Only, while earth we pace together 
 
 For the purpose apportioned you and me, 
 Closer we tread for a common tether. 
 
 You shall sigh, " Wait for his sluggish soul I 
 Shame he should lag, not lamed as I ! " 
 
 May not I smile, " Uugained her goal : 
 Body may reach her — by and by " ? 
 
 VII. A CAMEL-DRIVER 
 
 " How of his fate, the Pilgrims' soldieivguide 
 Condemned" (Ferishtah questioned), " for he 
 
 slew 
 The merchant whom he convoyed with his 
 
 bales 
 — A special treachery ? " 
 
 "Sir, the proofs were plain: 
 Justice was satisfied : between two boards 
 The rogue was sawn asunder, rightly served." 
 
 "With all wise men's approval — mine at 
 least." 
 
 " Himself, indeed, confessed as much. ' I die 
 Justly ' (groaned he ) ' through ovei>greediness 
 Which tempted me to rob : but grieve the most 
 That he who quickened sin at slumber, — ay, 
 Prompted and pestered me till thought grew 
 
 deed, — 
 The same is fled to Syria and is safe. 
 Laughing at me thus left to pay for both. 
 My comfort is that God reserves for him 
 Hell's hottest ' " ... 
 
 " Idle words." 
 
 " Enlighten me ! 
 Wherefore so idle ? Punishment by man 
 Has thy assent, — the word is on thy lips. 
 By parity of reason, punishment 
 By God should likelier win thy thanks and 
 praise." 
 
 " Man acts as man must : God, as God beseems. 
 A camel-driver, when his beast will bite, 
 Thumps her athwart the nnuzzle ; why ? " 
 
 *' How else 
 - mouths should munch 
 
 Instruct the creature - 
 not bite ? " 
 
 " True, he is man, 
 teach. 
 
 knows but man's trick to 
 
 Suppose some plain word, told her first of all. 
 Had hindered any biting ? " 
 
 " Find him such 
 And fit the beast with understanding first ! 
 No understanding animals like Rakhsh 
 Nowadays, Master ! TiU they breed on earth. 
 For teaching — blows must serve." 
 
 . " Who deals the blow — 
 
 What if by some rare method, — magic, say, — 
 He saw into the biter's very soul. 
 And knew the faiilt was so repented of 
 It could not happen twice ? " 
 
 " That 's something : still, 
 I hear, methinks, the driver say, ' No less 
 
THE TWO CAMELS 
 
 937 
 
 Take thy fault's due ! Those long-neeked 
 
 sisters, see, 
 Lean all a-stretch to know if biting meets 
 Punishment or enjoys impunity. 
 For their sakes — thwack ! ' " 
 
 " The journey home at end, 
 The solitary heast safe-stabled now, 
 In eomes the driver to avenge a wrong 
 Suffered from six months since, — apparently 
 With patience, nay, approval : when the jaws 
 Met i' the small o' the arm. ' Ha, Ladykin, 
 Still at thy frolics, girl of gold ? ' laughed he : 
 ' Eat flesh ? Rye-gijiss content thee rather with. 
 Whereof accept a bundle 1 ' Now, — what 
 
 change ! 
 Laughter by no means ! Now 't is, *" Fiend, thy 
 
 frisk 
 Was fit to find thee provender, didst judge ? 
 Behold this red-hot twy-prong, thus I stick 
 To hiss i' the soft of thee ! ' " 
 
 " Behold ? behold 
 A crazy noddle, rather ! Sure the brute 
 Might wellnigh have plain speech coaxed out of 
 
 tongue. 
 And grow as voluble as Rakhsh himself 
 At such mad outrage. ' Could I take thy mind. 
 Guess thy desire ? If biting was offence, 
 Wherefore the rye-gi'ass bundle, why each 
 
 day's 
 Patting and petting, but to intimate 
 My playsomeness had pleased thee ? Thou en- 
 dowed 
 With reason, truly ! ' " 
 
 *^ Reason aims to raise 
 Some makeshift scaffold-vantage midway, 
 
 whence 
 Man dares, for life's brief moment, peer below : 
 But ape omniscience ? Nay ! The ladder lent 
 To climb by, step and step, until we reach 
 The little foothold-rise allowed mankind 
 To mount on and thence guess the sun's sur- 
 vey — 
 Shall this avail to show us world-wide truth 
 Stretched for the sun's descrying? Reason 
 
 bids, 
 ' Teach, Man, thy beast his duty first of all 
 Or last of all, with blows if blows must be,— 
 How else accomplish teaching ? ' Reason adds, 
 ' Before man's First, and after man's poor Last, 
 God operated and will operate.' 
 — Process of which man merely knows this 
 
 much, — 
 That nowise it resembles man's at all. 
 Teaching or punishing." 
 
 "It follows, then, 
 That any malefactor I would smite 
 With God's allowance, God himself will spare 
 Presumably. No scapegrace ? Then, rejoice 
 Thou snatch-grace safe in Syria ! " 
 
 *' Friend, such view 
 Is but man's wonderful and wide mistake.^ 
 Man lumps his kind i' the mass : God singles 
 thence 
 
 Unit by unit. Thou and God exist — 
 
 So think!— for certain: think the mass — 
 
 mankind — 
 Disparts, disperses, leaves thyself alone ! 
 Ask thy lone soul what laws are plain to thee, — 
 Thee and no other, — stand or fall by them ! 
 That is the part for thee : regard all else 
 For what it may be — Time's illusion. This 
 Be sure of — ignorance that sins, is safe. 
 No punishment like knowledge ! Instance, 
 
 now ! 
 My father's choicest treasure was a hook 
 Wherein he, day by day and year by year. 
 Recorded gains of wisdom for my sake 
 When I should grow to mauhuod. While a 
 
 child, 
 Coming upon the casket where it lay 
 Unguarded, — what did I but toss the thing 
 Into a fire to make more flame therewith. 
 Meaning no harm ? So acts man three-years- 
 old ! 
 I grieve now at my loss by witlessness. 
 But guilt was none to punish. Man mature — 
 Each word of his I lightly held, each look 
 I turned from — wish that wished in vain — 
 
 nay, will 
 That willed and yet went all to waste — 't is these 
 Rankle like fire. Forgiveness ? rather grant 
 Forgetfulness ! The past is past and lost. 
 However near I stand in his regard. 
 So much the nearer had I stood by steps 
 Offered the feet which rashly spurned their 
 
 help 
 That I call Hell ; why further punishment ? " 
 
 When I vexed you and you chid me, 
 And I owned my fault and turned 
 
 My cheek the way you bid me. 
 And confessed the blow well earned, — 
 
 My comfort all the while was 
 
 — Fault was faulty — near, not quite ! 
 Do you wonder why the smile was ? 
 
 O'erpunished wi'ong grew right. 
 
 But faults, you ne'er suspected. 
 Nay, praised, no faults at all, — 
 
 Tliose would you had detected — 
 Crushed eggs whence snakes could crawl I 
 
 VIII. TWO CAMELS 
 
 Quoth one ; " Sir, solve a scruple ! No true 
 
 sage 
 I hear of, but instructs his scholar thus : 
 ' Wouldst thou be wise ? Then mortify thy- 
 self ! 
 Balk of its craving every bestial sense ! 
 Say, " If I relish melons — so do swine ! 
 Horse, ass, and mule consume their provender 
 Nor leave a pea-pod : fasting feeds the soul." ' 
 Thus they admonish : while thyself, I note, 
 Eatest thy ration with an appetite. 
 Nor f allest foul of whoso licks his lips 
 And sighs — ' Well-saffroned was that barley- 
 soup ! ' , .„ 
 Can wisdom coexist with — gorge-and-swiU. 
 I say not, — simply sensual preference 
 
938 
 
 FERISHTAH'S FANCIES 
 
 For this or that fantastic meat and drink ? 
 Moreover, wind blows sharper than its wont 
 This morning, and thou hast already donned 
 Thy sheepskin over-garment : sure the sage 
 Is busied with conceits that soar above 
 A petty change of season and its chance 
 Of causing ordinary flesh to sneeze ? 
 I always thought. Sir "... 
 
 "Son," Ferishtah said, 
 " Truth ought to seem as never thought before. 
 How if I give it birth in parable ? 
 A neighbor owns two camels, beasts of price 
 And promise, destined each to go, next week, 
 Swiftly and surely with his merchandise 
 From Nishapur to Sebzevar, no truce 
 To tramp, but travel, spite of sands and drouth. 
 In days so many, lest they miss the Fair. 
 Each falls to meditation o'er his crib 
 Piled high with provender before the start. 
 Quoth this : ' My soul is set on winning praise 
 From goodman lord and master, — hump to hoof, 
 I dedicate me to his service. How ? 
 Grass, purslane, lupines, and I know not what. 
 Crammed in my manger ? Ha, I see — I see ! 
 No, master, spare thy money ! I shall trudge 
 The distance and yet cost thee not a doit 
 Beyond ray supper on this mouldy bran.* 
 ' Be magnified, master, for the meal 
 So opportunely liberal ! ' quoth that. 
 * What use of strength in me but to surmount 
 Sands and simooms, and bend beneath thy bales 
 No knee until I reach the glad bazaar ? 
 Thus I do justice to thy fare : no sprig 
 Of toothsome chervil must I leave unchewed ! 
 Too bitterly should I reproach myself 
 Did I sink down in sight of Sebzevar, 
 Remembering how the merest mouthful more 
 Had heartened me to manage yet a mile ! ' 
 And so it proved : the too-abstemious brute 
 Midway broke down, his pack rejoiced the 
 
 thieves. 
 His carcass fed the vultures ; not so he 
 The wisely thankful, who, good markst-drudge, 
 Let down his lading in the market-place. 
 No damage to a single pack. Which beast. 
 Think ye, had praise and patting and a brand 
 Of good-and-faithf ul-servant fixed on flank ? 
 So, with thy squeamish scruple. What imports 
 Fasting or feasting ? Do thy day's work, dare 
 Refuse no help thereto, since help refused 
 Is hindrance sought and found. Win but the 
 
 race — 
 Who shall object ' He tossed three wine-cups off. 
 And, just at starting, Lilith kissed his lips ' ? 
 
 " More soberly, — consider this, my Son ! 
 Put case I never have myself enjoyed. 
 Known by experience what enjoyment means. 
 How shall I — share enjoyment ? — no, in- 
 deed ! — 
 Supply it to my fellows, — ignorant. 
 As 80 I should be of the thing they crave. 
 How it affects them, works for good or ill. 
 Style my enjoyment self-indulgence — sin — 
 Why should I labor to infect my kind 
 With sin's occasion, bid them too enjoy, 
 Who else might neither catch nor give again 
 
 Joy's plague, but live in righteous misery ? 
 Just as I cannot, tiU myself convinced. 
 Impart conviction, so, to deal forth joy 
 Adroitly, needs must I know joy myself. 
 Renounce joy for my fellows' sake ? That 's joy 
 Beyond joy : but renounced for mine, not theirs ? 
 Wfiy, the physician called to help the sick. 
 Cries ' Let me, first of all, discard my health ! ' 
 No, Son : the richness hearted in such joy 
 Is in the knowing what are gifts we give. 
 Not in a vain endeavor not to know ! 
 Therefore, desire joy and thank God for it ! 
 The Adversary said, — a Jew reports, — 
 
 ; cabs ars si nr-ri 
 
 In Persian phrase, ' Does Job fear God for 
 
 naught ? ' . . 
 Job's creatureship is not abjured, thou fool ! 
 He nowise isolates himself and plays 
 The independent equal, owns no more 
 Than himself gave himself, so why thank God ? 
 A proper speech were this n^nvSD 
 ' Equals we are, Job, labor for thyself, 
 Nor bid me help thee : bear, as best flesh may, 
 Pains I inflict not nor avail to cure : 
 Beg of me nothing thou thyself mayst win 
 By work, or waive with magnanimity. 
 Since we are peers acknowledged, — scarcely 
 
 peers. 
 Had I implanted any want of thine 
 Only my power could meet and gratify.' 
 No : rather hear, at man's indifference — 
 ' Wherefore did I contrive for thee that ear 
 Hungry for music, and direct thine eye 
 To where I hold a seven-stringed instrument. 
 Unless I meant thee to beseech me play ? "' 
 
 Once I saw a chemist take a pinch of powder 
 
 — Simple dust it seemed — and half-unstop a phial ; 
 
 — Out dropped harmless dew. " Mixed nothings make " 
 
 (quoth he) 
 *' Something ! " So they did : a thunderclap, but 
 
 louder — 
 Lightning-ilash, but fiercer — put spectators' nerves to 
 
 trial : 
 Sure enough, we learned what was, imagined what 
 
 might be. 
 
 Had I no experience how a lip's mere tremble. 
 Look's half hesitatioii, cheek's just cliauge of color, 
 These effect a heartquake, — how should I conceive 
 What a heaven there may be ? Let it but resemble 
 Earth myself have known ! No bliss that 'a finer, fuller, 
 Only — bliss that lasts, they say, and fain would I be- 
 lieve. 
 
 IX. CHERRIES 
 
 " What, I disturb thee at thy morning-meal : 
 Cherries so ripe already ? Eat apace ! 
 I recollect thy lesson yesterday. 
 Yet — thanks. Sir, for thy leave to inter- 
 rupt" . . . 
 
 " Friend, I have finished my repast, thank 
 God!" 
 
 " There now, thy thanks for breaking fast on 
 fruit I — 
 
PLOT-CULTURE 
 
 939 
 
 Thanks being praise, or tantamount thereto, 
 rnthee consider, have not things degree, 
 Lofty and low ? Are things not great and small, 
 Thenee claiming praise and wbncfer more or less ? 
 Shall we confuse theiri, with thy warrant too, 
 Whose doctrine otherwise begins and ends 
 With just tills precept, ' Never faith enough 
 In roan as weakness, God as potency ' ? 
 When I would pay soul's tribute to that same. 
 Why not look up in wonder, bid the stars 
 Attest my praise of the All-mighty One ? 
 What are man's puny members and as mean 
 Requirements weighed with Star-King Mush- 
 
 tari ? 
 There is the marvel ! " 
 
 " Not to man — that 's me. 
 List to what happened late, in fact or dream. 
 A certain stranger, bound from far away. 
 Still the Shah's subject, found himself before 
 Ispahan palace-gate. As duty bade, 
 He enters in the courts, will, if he may, 
 See so much glory as befits a slave 
 Who only comes, of mind to testify 
 How great and good is shown our lord the Shah. 
 In he walks, round he casts his eye about, 
 Looks up and down, admires to heart's content. 
 Ascends the gallery, tries door and door, 
 None says his reverence nay : peeps in at each, 
 Wonders at all the unimagined use. 
 Gold here and jewels there, — so vast, that hall — 
 So perfect yon pavilion ! — lamps above 
 Bidding look up from luxuries below, — 
 Evermore wonder topping wonder, — last — 
 Sudden he comes upon a cosy nook, 
 A nest-like little chamber, with his name, 
 His own, yea, his and no mistake at all. 
 Plain o'er the entry, — what, and he descries 
 Just those arrangements inside, — oh, the 
 
 care ! — 
 Suited to soul and body both, — so snug 
 The cushion ^- nay, the pipe-stand furnished so I 
 Whereat he cries aloud, — what think 'st thou, 
 
 Friend ? 
 'That these my slippers should be just my 
 
 choice, 
 Even to the color that I most affect. 
 Is nothing : ah, that lamp, the central sun. 
 What must it light within its minaret 
 I scarce dare guess the good of ! Who lives 
 
 there ? 
 That let me wonder at, — no slijiper toys 
 Meant for the foot, forsooth, which kicks them 
 
 — thus!' 
 
 " Never enough faith in omnipotence, — 
 Never too much, by parity, of faith 
 In impuissance, man's — which turns to strength 
 When once acknowledged weakness every way. 
 How ? Hear the teaching of another tale. 
 
 " Two men once owed the Shah a mighty sum. 
 Beggars they both were: this one crossed his 
 
 arms 
 And bowed his head, — ' whereof,' sighed he, 
 
 'each hair 
 Proved it a jewel, how the host's amount 
 Were idly strewn for payment at thy feet I ' 
 
 'Lord, here they lie, my havings poor and 
 
 scant ! 
 All of the berries on my currant-bush, 
 What roots of garlic have escaped the mice. 
 And some five pippins from the seedling tree, — 
 Would they were half-ar^iozen ! Anyhov/, 
 Accept my all, poor beggar that I am ! ' 
 'Received in f uU of all demands ! ' smiled back 
 The apportioner of every lot of ground 
 From inch to acre. Littleness of love 
 Befits the littleness of loving thing. 
 What if he boasted ' Seeing I am great. 
 Great must my corresponding tribute be ' ? 
 Mushtari, — well, suppose him seven timts seven 
 The sun's superior, proved so by Some sage : 
 Am I that sage ? To me his twinkle blue 
 Is all I know of him and thank hira for. 
 And therefore I have put the same m vei*se — ■ 
 ' Like yon blue twinkle, twinks thine eye, my 
 
 Love 1 ' 
 
 Neither shalt thon be troubled overmuch 
 Because thy offering — littleness itself — 
 Is lessened by admixture sad and strange 
 Of mere man's motives, — praise with fear, and 
 
 love 
 With looking after that same love's reward. 
 Alas, Friend, what was free from this alloy, — 
 Some smatcli thereof, ^ in best and purest love 
 Proffered thy earthly father ? Dust thou art, 
 Dust shalt be to the end. Thy father took 
 The dust, and kindly called the handful — gold. 
 Nor cared to count what sparkled here and 
 
 there 
 Sagely unanalytie. Thank, praise, love 
 (Sum up thus) for the lowest favors fit^t. 
 The commonest of comforts ! aught beside 
 Very omnipotence had overlooked 
 Such needs, arranging for thy little life. 
 Nor waste thy power of love in wonderment 
 At' what thou wiselier I'ettest shine unsoiled 
 By breath of word. That this last cherry soothes 
 A roughness of my palate, that I know : 
 His Maker knows why Mushtari was made." 
 
 Verse-making was least of my virtues : 1 viewed with 
 despair 
 
 Wealth that never yet was but might be — all that verse- 
 making were 
 
 If the life would but lengthen to wish, let the mind be 
 laid bare. 
 
 So I said " To do little is bad, to do nothing is worse " — 
 And made verse. 
 
 Love-making, — how simple a matter! No depths to 
 explore, 
 
 No heights in a life to ascend ! No disheartening Before, 
 
 No affrighting Hereafter, — love now will be love ever- 
 more. 
 
 So I felt " To keep silence were folly : " — all language 
 above, 
 
 I made love. 
 
 X. PLOT-CULTURE 
 
 " At, but, Ferishtah," — a disciple smirked, — 
 " That verse of thine ' How twinks thine eye, 
 
 my Love, 
 Blue as yon star-beam ! ' much arrides myself 
 
94<J 
 
 ferisktah's fancies 
 
 Who haply may obtain a kiss therewith 
 
 This eve from Laila where the pahns abound — 
 
 My youth, my warrant — so the palms be close ! 
 
 Suppose when thou art earnest in discourse 
 
 Concerning high and holy things, — abrupt 
 
 I out with — ' Laila's Up, how honey-sweet ! ' — 
 
 What say'st thou, were it scandalous or no 1 
 
 I feel thy shoe sent flying at my mouth 
 
 For daring — prodigy of impudence — 
 
 Publish what, secret, were permissible. 
 
 Well, — one slide further in the imagined 
 
 slough, — 
 Knee-deep therein, (respect thy reverence I) — 
 Suppose me well aware thy very self 
 Stooped prying through the palm-screen, while 
 
 I dared 
 Solace me with caressings all the same ? 
 Unutterable, nay — unthinkable, 
 Undreamable a deed of shame ! Alack, 
 How will it fare shouldst thou impress on me 
 That certainly an Eye is over all 
 And each, to mark the minute's deed, word, 
 
 thought, 
 As worthy of reward or punishment ? 
 Shall I permit my sense an Eye-viewed shame. 
 Broad daylight perpetration, — so to speak, — 
 I had not dared to breathe within the Ear, 
 With black night's help about me ? Yet I stand 
 A man, no monster, made of flesh not cloud : 
 Why made so, if my making prove ofEence 
 To Maker's eye and ear ? " 
 
 " Thou wouldst not stand 
 Distinctly Man," — Ferishtah made reply, 
 " Not the mere creature, — did no limit-line 
 Round thee about, apportion thee thy place 
 Clean-cut from out and off the illimitable, — 
 Minuteness severed from immensity. 
 All of thee for the Maker, — for thyself. 
 Workings inside the circle that evolve 
 Thine all, — the product of thy cultured plot. 
 So much of grain the ground's lord bids thee 
 
 yield: 
 Bring sacks to granary in Autumn ! spare 
 Daily intelligence of this manure, 
 That compost, how they tend to feed the soil : 
 There thou art master sole and absolute 
 — Only, remember doomsday ! Twit'st thou me 
 Because I turn away my outraged nose 
 Shouldst thou obtrude thereon a shovelful 
 Of fertilizing kisses ? Since thy sire 
 Wills and obtains thy m.arriage with thS maid, 
 Enough ! Be reticent, I counsel thee, 
 Nor venture to acquaint him, point by point, 
 What he procures thee. Is he so obtuse ? 
 Keep thy instruction to thyself ! My ass — 
 Only from him expect acknowledgment. 
 The while he champs my gift, a thistle-bunch, 
 How much he loves the largess ; of his love 
 I only tolerate so much as tells 
 By wrinkling nose and inarticulate grunt. 
 The meal, that heartens him to do my work, 
 Tickles his palate as I meant it should." 
 
 Kot with my Soul, Love ! —bid do bouI like mine 
 Lap thee around nor leave the pooi Senae room I 
 
 Soul, — travel-worn, toil-weary, — would confine 
 Along with Soul, Soul's gains from glow and gloom. 
 
 Captures from soariugB high and divings deep. 
 
 Spoil-laden Soul, how should such memories sleep? 
 Take Senae, too — let me love entire and whole — 
 Not with my Soul ! 
 
 Eyes shall meet eyes aud find no eyes between, 
 
 Lips feed on lips, no other Upa to fear ! 
 No past, no future — so thine arms but screen 
 
 The present from surprise I not there, 't is here — 
 Not theu, 't is now : — back, memories tliat intrude \ 
 Make, Love, the universe our solitude, 
 
 And, over all the rest, oblivion roll — 
 Sense quenehing Soul 1 
 
 XI. A PILLAR AT SEBZEVAR 
 
 " Knowledge deposed, then ! " — groaned 
 
 whom that most grieved 
 As foolishest of all the company. 
 " What, knowledge, man's distinctive attribute. 
 He doffs that crown to emulate an ass 
 Because the unkuowii^ long-ears loves at least 
 Husked lupines, and belike the feeder's self 
 
 — Whose purpose in the dole what ass divines ? " 
 
 " Friend," quoth Ferishtah, " all I seem to know 
 Is — 1 know nothing save that love I can 
 Boundlessly, endlessly. My curls were crowned 
 In youth with knowledge, — off, alas, crown 
 
 slipped 
 Neoct moment, pushed by better knowled^ still 
 Which nowise proved more constant: gain, to- 
 day. 
 Was toppling loss to-morrow, lay at last 
 
 — Knowledge, the golden? — lacquered igno- 
 
 rance ! 
 As gain — mistrust it ! Not as means to gain : 
 Lacquer we learn by : cast in flning-pot. 
 We learn, when what seemed ore assayed proves 
 
 dross, — 
 Surelier true gold's worth, guess how purity 
 I' the lode were precious coiild one light on ore 
 Clarified up to test of crucible. 
 The prize is in the process : knowledge means 
 Ever-renewed assurance by defeat 
 That victory is somehow still to reach. 
 But love is victory, the prize itself : 
 Love — trust to ! Be rewarded for the trust 
 In trust's mere act. In love success is sure, 
 Attainment — no delusion, whatsoe'er 
 The prize be : apprehended as a prize, 
 A prize it is. Thy child as surely grasps 
 An orange as he ra.ils to grasp the sun 
 Assumed his capture. What if soon he finds 
 The foolish fruit unworthy grasping ? Joy 
 In shape and color, — that was joy as true — 
 Worthy in its degree of love — as grasp 
 Of sun were, which had singed his hand beside. 
 What if he said the orange held no juice 
 Since it was not that sun he hoped to suck ? 
 This constitutes the curse that spoils our life 
 And sets man maundering of his misery. 
 That there 's no meanest atom he obtains 
 Of what he counts for knowledge but he cries 
 ' Hold here, — I have the whole thing, — know, 
 
 this time. 
 Nor need search farther I ' Whereas, strew his 
 
 path 
 
A PILLAR AT SEBZEVAR 
 
 941 
 
 With pleasures, and he scorns them while he 
 
 stoops : 
 ' This fitly call'st thou pleasure, pick up this 
 And praise it, truly ? I reserve my thanks 
 For something more substantial.' Fool not thus 
 In practising with life and its delights I 
 Enjoy the present gift, nor wait to know 
 The unknowable, Knough to say ' I feel 
 Love's sure effect, and, being loved, must love 
 The love its cause behind, — I can and do ! ' 
 Nor turn to try thy brain-power on the fact, 
 (Apart from as it strikes thee, here and now — 
 Its how and why, i' the future and elsewhere) 
 Except to — yet once more, and ever again. 
 Confirm thee in thy utter ignorance : 
 Assured that, whatsoe'er the quality 
 Of love's cause, save that love was caused 
 
 thereby, 
 This — nigh upon revealment as it seemed 
 A minute since — defies thy longing looks. 
 Withdrawn into the unknowable once more. 
 Wholly distrust thy knowledge, then, and trust 
 As wholly love allied to ignorance ! 
 There lies thy truth and safety. Lore is praise, 
 And praise is love ! Refine the same, contrive 
 An intellectual tribute — ignorance 
 Appreciating ere approbative 
 Of knowledge that is infinite ? With us. 
 The small, who use the knowledge of our 
 
 kind 
 Greater than we, more wisely ignorance 
 Restricts its apprehension, sees and knows 
 No more than brain accepts in faith of sight. 
 Takes first what comes first, only sure so far. 
 By Sebzevar a certain pillar stands 
 So aptly that its gnomon tells the hour ; 
 What if the townsmen said ' Before we thank 
 Who placed it, for his serviceable craft. 
 And go to dinner since its shade tells noon. 
 Needs must we have the craftsman's purpose 
 
 clear 
 On half a hundred more recondite points 
 Than a mere summons to a vulgar meal ! ' 
 Better they say ' How opportune the help ! 
 Be loved and praised, thou kindly-hearted sage 
 Whom Hudhud taught, — the gracious spirit- 
 bird, — 
 How to construct the pillar, teach the time ! ' 
 So let us say — not ' Since we know, we love,' 
 But rather ' Since we love, we know enough.' 
 Perhaps the pillar by a spell controlled 
 Mnshtari in his courses ? Added grace 
 Surely I count it that the sage devised. 
 Beside celestial service, ministry 
 To all the land, by one sharp shade at noon 
 Falling as folk foresee. Once more, then, 
 
 Friend — 
 (What ever in those careless ears of thine 
 Withal I needs must round thee) — knowledge 
 
 doubt 
 Even wherein it seems demonstrable ! 
 Love, — in the claim for love, that 's gratitude 
 For apprehended pleasure, nowise doubt ! 
 Pay its due tribute, — sure that pleasure is. 
 While knowledge may be, at the most. See, 
 
 now • 
 Eating my breakfast, I thanked God. — ' For 
 
 I0V8 
 
 Shown in the cherries' flavor ? Consecrate 
 So petty an example ? ' There 's the fault ! 
 We circumscribe omnipotence. Search sand 
 To unearth water : if first handful scooped 
 Yields thee a draught, what need of digging 
 
 down 
 Full fifty fathoms deep to find a spring 
 Whereof the pulse might deluge half the land ? 
 Drain the sufficient drop, and praise what 
 
 checks 
 The drouth that glues thy tongue, — what more 
 
 would help 
 A brimful cistern ? Ask the cistern's boon 
 When thou wouldst solace camels ; in thy case, 
 Relish the drop and love the lovable ! " 
 
 " And what may be unlovable ? " 
 
 " Why, h&te ! 
 If out of sand comes sand and naught but sand, 
 Aifect not to be c^uaffiug at mirage. 
 Nor nickname pain as pleasure. That, belike. 
 Constitutes just the trial of thy wit 
 And worthiness to gain promotion, — hence. 
 Proves the true purpose of thine actual life. 
 Thy soul's environment of things perceived, 
 Thmgs visible and things invisible, 
 Fact, fancy — all was purposed to evolve 
 This and this only — was thy wit of worth 
 To recognize the drop's use, love the same. 
 And loyally declare against mirage 
 Though all the world asseverated dust 
 Was good to drink ? Say, ' what made moist 
 
 my lip. 
 That I acknowledged moisture : ' thou art 
 
 saved ! 
 
 For why ? The creature and creator stand 
 Rightly related so. Consider well ! 
 Were knowledge all thy faculty, then God 
 Must be ignored ; love gains him by first leap. 
 Frankly accept the oreatureship : ask good 
 To love for : press bold to the tether's end 
 Allotted to this life's intelligence ! 
 ' So we offend ? ' Will it offend thyself 
 If — impuissance praying potency — 
 Thy child beseech that thou command the sun 
 Rise bright to-morrow — thou, he thinks su- 
 preme 
 In power and goodness, why shouldst thou 
 
 refuse ? 
 Afterward, when the child matures, perchance 
 The fault were greater if, with wit full-grown, 
 The stripling dared to ask for a dinar. 
 Than that the boy cried ' Pluck Sitara down 
 And give her me to play with ! ' 'T is for him 
 To have no bounds to his belief in thee : 
 For thee it also is to let her shine 
 Lustrous and lonely, so best serving him ! 
 
 Ask not one least word of praise ! 
 
 Words declare your eyes are bright? 
 What then meant tlmt summer day's 
 Silence spent in one long gaze ? 
 
 Was my silence wrong or right ? 
 
 Words of praise were all to seek ! 
 Face of you and form of you, 
 
942 
 
 FERISHTAH'S FANCIES 
 
 Did ,tliey find the praise so weak 
 "When Hjy lips just touched your cheek — 
 Touch which let my soul come through ? 
 
 XII. A BEAN-STRIPE: ALSO APPLE- 
 EATING 
 
 " Look, I strew beans " . . . 
 
 (Ferishtah, we premise, 
 Strove this way with a scholar's cavilmenf 
 Who put the peevish question : " Sir, be frank ! 
 A good thing or a bad thing '^- Life is which ? 
 Shine and shade, liappiness and misery 
 Battle it out there : which force beats, I 
 
 ask? 
 If I pick beans from out a bushelf ul — 
 This one, this other, — then demand of thee 
 5Phat color names each justly in the main, — 
 ' Black ' I expect, and ' White ' ensues reply : 
 No hesitation for what speck, spot, splash 
 Of either color's opposite, intrudes 
 To modify thy judgment. Well, for beans 
 Substitute days, — show, ranged in order, Life^ — 
 Then, tell me its true color ! ■ Time is short. 
 Life's days compose a span, — as brief be 
 
 speech ! 
 Black I pronounce for, like the Indian Sage, — 
 Black — present, past, and future, interspersed 
 With blanks, no doubt, which simple folk style 
 
 Good 
 Because not Evil : no, indeed ? Forsooth, 
 Black's shade on White is White too ! What's 
 
 the worst 
 Of Evil but that, past, it overshades 
 The else-exempted present ? — memory. 
 We call the plague ! * Nay, but our memory 
 
 fades 
 And leaves the past unsullied ! ' Does it so ? 
 Why, straight the purpose of such breathing- 
 space. 
 Such respite from past ills, grows plain enough ! 
 What follows on remembrance of the past ? 
 Fear of the future I Life, from birth to death. 
 Means — either looking back on harm escaped. 
 Or looking forward to that harm's return 
 With tenfold power of harming. Black, not 
 
 White, 
 Never the whole consummate quietude 
 Life should be, troubled by no fear ! — nor 
 
 hope — 
 I '11 say, since lamplight dies in noontide, hope 
 Loses itself in certainty. Such lot 
 Man's might have been: I leave the conse- 
 quence 
 To bolder critics or the Primal Cause ; 
 Such am not I : but, man — as man I speak : 
 Black is the bean- throw : evil is the Life ! ") 
 
 " Look, I strew beans," — resumed Ferishtah, 
 
 — " beans 
 Blackish and whitish ; what they figure forth 
 Shall be man's sum of moments, bad and 
 
 good. 
 That make up Life, — each moment when he 
 
 feels 
 Pleasure or pain, his poorest fact of sense, 
 Consciousness anyhow : there 's stand the first ; 
 
 Whence next advance shall be from points to 
 
 line. 
 Singulars to a series, parts to whole. 
 And moments t-. the Life. How look they now, 
 Viewed, in the large, those little joys and griefs 
 Banged duly all a-row at last, like beans 
 
 — These which I strew ? This bean was white, 
 
 this — black. 
 Set by itself, — but see if good and bad 
 Each following either in companionship. 
 Black have not grown less black and white less 
 
 white. 
 Tin blackish seems but dun, and whitish — 
 
 gray. 
 And the whole line turns — well, or black to 
 
 thee 
 Or white belike to me — no matter which : 
 The main result is — both are modified 
 According to our eye's scope, power of range 
 Before and after. Black dost call this bean ? 
 What, with a whiteness in its wake, which — 
 
 see — 
 Suffuses half its neighbor ? — and, in turn, 
 Lowers its pearliness late absolute. 
 Frowned upon by the jet which follows hard — 
 Else wholly white my bean were. Choose a, 
 
 joy! 
 Bettered it was by sorrow gone before, 
 And sobered somewhat by the shadowy sense 
 Of sorrow which came after or might come. 
 Joy, sorrow, — by precedence, subsequence — 
 Either on each, make fusion, mix in Life 
 Thati's both and neither wholly : gray or dun ? 
 Dun thou decidest ? gray prevails, say I : 
 Wherefore ? Because my view is wide enough, 
 Reaches from first to last nor winks at all : 
 Motion achieves it: stop short — fast we 
 
 stitek, — 
 Probably at the bean that 's blackest. 
 
 "Since — 
 Son, trust me, — this I know and only this — 
 I am in motion, and all things beside 
 That circle round my passage through their 
 
 midst, — 
 Motionless, these are, as regarding me : 
 
 — Which means, myself I solely recognize. 
 They too may recognize themselves, not me. 
 For aught I know or care : but plain they serve 
 This, if no other purpose — stuff to try 
 
 And test my power upon of rayiiig light 
 And lending hue to all things as I go 
 Moonlike through vapor. Mark the flying orb ! 
 Think'st thou the halo, painted still afresh 
 At each new cloud-fleece pierced and passaged 
 
 through. 
 This was and is and will be evermore 
 Colored in permanence ? The glory swims 
 Grirdling the glory-giver, swallowed straight 
 By night's abysmal gloom, unglorified 
 Behind as erst before the advancer : gloom ? 
 Faced by the onward-faring, see, succeeds 
 From the abandoned heaven a next surprise. 
 And where 's the gloom now ? — silver-smitten 
 
 straight. 
 One glow and variegation ! So with me, 
 Who move and make —myself — the black, the 
 
 white, 
 
A BEAN-STRIPE: ALSO APPLE-EATING 
 
 943 
 
 The good, the bad, of life's environment. 
 Stand still ! black stays black : start again 1 
 
 there 's white 
 Asserts supremacy : the motion 's all 
 That colors me my moment : seen as joy ? — 
 I have escaped from sorrow, or that was 
 Or might have been : as sorrow ? — thence shall 
 
 Escape as certain : white preceded black. 
 Black shall give way to white as duly, — so, 
 Deepest in black means white most imminent, 
 Stand still, — have no before, no after ! — life 
 Proves death, existence grows impossible 
 To man like me. ' What else is blessed sleep 
 But death, then ? ' Why, a rapture of release 
 From toil, — that 's sleep's approach : as cer- 
 tainly. 
 The end of sleep means, toil is triumphed o'er : 
 These round the blank inconsciousness between 
 Brightness and brightness, either pushed to 
 
 blaze 
 Just through that blank's interposition. Hence 
 The use of things external : man — that 'si — 
 Practise thereon my power of casting light. 
 And calling substance, — when the Ught I cast 
 Breaks into color, — by its proper name 
 — A truth and yet a falsity : black, white. 
 Names each bean taken from what lay so close 
 And threw such tint : pain might mean pain 
 
 indeed 
 Seen in the passage past it, — pleasure prove 
 No mere delusion while I pause to look, — 
 Though what an idle fancy was that fear 
 Which overhung and hindered pleasure's hue ! 
 While how, again, pain's shade enhanced the 
 
 ( shine ' 
 
 Of pleasure, else no pleasure ! Such effects 
 Came of such causes. Passage at an end, — 
 Past, present, future pains :and pleasures fused 
 So that one glance may gather blacks and 
 
 whites 
 Into a lifetime, — like my bean-streak there. 
 Why, white they whirl into, not black — for 
 me ! " 
 
 " Ay, but for me ? The indubitable blacks, 
 
 Inmieasurable miseries, here, there 
 
 And everywhere i' the world — world outside 
 
 . - . rthine 
 
 Paled off so opportunely, — body's plague. 
 
 Torment of soul, —where 's found thy fellow- 
 ship 
 
 With wide humanity all round about 
 
 Keeling beneath its burden ? What 's despair ? 
 
 Behold that man, that woman, child — nay, 
 brute ! 
 
 Will any speck of white unblaoken life 
 
 Splashed, splotched, dyed heU-deep now from 
 end to end 
 
 For him or her or it — who knows ? Not I ! " 
 
 " Nor I, Son ! ' It ' shall stand for bird, beast, 
 
 fish, 
 Reptile, and insect even : take the last ! 
 There 's the palm-aphis, minute miracle 
 As wondrous every whit as thou or I : 
 Well, and his world's the palm-frond, there 
 
 he 's born. 
 
 Lives, breeds, and dies in that circumference. 
 An inch of green for cradle, pasture-grotmd, 
 Purlieu and grave : the palm's use. ask of him 1 
 ' To furnish these,' replies his wit : ask thine — 
 Who see the heaven above, the earth below, 
 Creation everywhere, — these, each and all 
 Claim certain recognition from the tree 
 For special service rendered branch and bole, 
 Top-tuft and tajj-root : — for thyself, thus seen, 
 Palms furnish dates to eat, and leaves to shade, 
 — Maybe, thatch huts with, — have another use 
 Than strikes the aphis. So with me, my Son I 
 I know my own appointed patch i' the world. 
 What pleasures me or pains there: all out- 
 side — 
 How he, she, it, and even thou. Son, live. 
 Are pleased or pained, is past conjecture, once 
 I pry beneath the semblance, — all that 's fit. 
 To practise with, — reach where the fact may 
 
 lie 
 Fathom-deep lower. There 's the first and last 
 Of my philosophy. Blacks blur thy white ? 
 Not mine ! The aphis feeds, nor finds his leaf 
 Untenable, because a lance-thrust, nay. 
 Lightning strikes sere a moss-patch close be- 
 side. 
 Where certain other aphids live and love. 
 Restriction to his single inch of white, 
 That 's law for him, the aphis ; but for me. 
 The man, the larger-souled, beside my stretch 
 Of blacks and whites, I see a world of woe 
 All round about me : one such burst of black 
 Intolerable o'er the life I count 
 White in the main, and, yea — white's faintest 
 
 trace 
 Were clean abolished once and evermore. 
 Thus fare my fellows, swallowed up in gloom 
 So far as I discern : how far is that ? 
 God's care be God's ! 'T is mine — to boast no 
 
 joy 
 Unsobered by such sorrows of my kind 
 As sully with their shade my life that shines." 
 
 " Reflected possibilities of pain. 
 Forsooth, just chasten pleasure ! Pain itself, — 
 Fact and not fancy, does not this affect 
 The general color ? " 
 
 " Here and there a touch 
 Taught me, betimes, the artifice of things — 
 That all about, external to myself. 
 Was meant to be suspected, — not revealed 
 Demonstrably a cheat, — but half seen through. 
 Lest white should rule unchecked along the 
 
 line 
 Therefore white may not triumph. All the 
 
 same. 
 Of absolute and irretrievable 
 And all-subduing black, — black's soul of black 
 Beyond white's power to disintensify, — 
 Of that I saw no sample : such may wreck 
 My life and ruin my philosophy 
 To-morrow, doubtless : hence the constant 
 
 shade 
 Cast on life's shine, — the tremor that intrudes 
 When firmest seems my faith in white. Dost 
 
 ask 
 ' Who is Ferishtah, hitherto exempt 
 
944 
 
 FERISHTAH'S FANCIES 
 
 From black experience ? Why, if God be just, 
 Were sundry fellow-mortals singled out 
 To undergo experience for his sake, 
 Just that the gift of pain, bestowed on them. 
 In him might temper to the due degree ' 
 
 Joy's else-excessive largess V ' Why, indeed ! 
 Back are we brought thus to the starting- 
 point — 
 Man's impotency, God's omnipotence. 
 These stop my answer. Aphis that I am. 
 How leave my inch-allotment, pass at will 
 Into my fellow's liberty of range, 
 Enter into his sense of black and white. 
 As either, seen by me from outside, seems 
 Predominatingly the color ? Life, 
 Lived by my fellow, shall I pass into 
 And myself live there V No — no more than 
 
 pass 
 From Persia, where in sun since birth I bask 
 Daily, to some ungracious land afar. 
 Told of by travellers, where the night of snow 
 Smothers up day, and fluids lose themselves 
 Frozen to marble. How I bear the sun. 
 Beat though he may unduly, that I know : 
 How blood once curdled ever creeps again, 
 Baffles conjecture : yet since people live 
 Somehow, resist a clime would conquer me. 
 Somehow provided for their sake must dawn 
 Compensative resource. ' No sun, no grapes, — 
 Then, no subsistence ! ' — were it wisely said ? 
 Or this well-reasoned — ' Do I dare feel warmth 
 And please my palate here with Persia's vine, 
 Though, over- mounts, — to trust the travel- 
 ler, — 
 Snow, feather-thick, is falling while I feast ? 
 What if the cruel winter force his way 
 Here also ? ' Son, the wise reply were this : 
 When cold from over-mounts spikes through 
 
 and through 
 Blood, bone and marrow of Ferishtah, — then. 
 Time to look out for shelter — time, at least. 
 To wring the hands and cry * No shelter serves ! ' 
 Shelter, of some sort, no experienced chill 
 Warrants that I despair to find." 
 
 " No less, 
 Doctors have differed here ; thou say'st thy 
 
 say; 
 Another man's experience masters thine. 
 Flat controverted by the sourly-Sage, 
 The Indian witness who, with faculty 
 Fine as Ferishtah's, found no white at all 
 Chequer the world's predominating black, 
 No good oust evil from supremacy. 
 So that Life's best was that it led to death. 
 How of his testimony ? " 
 
 " Son, suppose 
 My camel told me : ' Threescore days and ten 
 I traversed hill and dale, yet never found 
 Food to stop hunger, drink to stay my drouth ; 
 Yet, here I stand alive, which take in proof 
 That to survive was found impossible ! ' 
 *Nay, rather take thou, non-surviving beast,' 
 (Reply were prompt,) ' on flank this thwack of 
 
 staff 
 Nowise affecting flesh that 's dead and dry I 
 Thou wincest P Take correction twice, amend 
 
 Next time thy nomenclature ! Call white — 
 
 white ! ' 
 The sourly-Sage, for whom life's best was death, 
 Lived out his seventy years, looked hale, 
 
 laughed loud, 
 Liked — above all — his dinner, — lied, in 
 
 short." 
 
 " Lied is a rough phrase: say he fell from 
 
 truth 
 In climbing towards it ! — sure less faulty so 
 Than had he sat him down and stayed content 
 With thy safe orthodoxy, ' White, all white, 
 White everywhere for certain I should see 
 Did I but understand how white is black. 
 As clearer sense than mine would.' Clearer 
 
 sense, — 
 Whose may that be? Mere human eyes I 
 
 boast, 
 And such distinguish colors in the main, 
 However any tongue, that 's human too. 
 Please to report the matter. Dost thou blame 
 A soul that strives but to see plain, speak true, 
 Truth at all hazards ? Oh, this false for real, 
 This emptiness which feigns solidity, — 
 Ever some gray that 's white and dun that 's 
 
 black, — 
 When shall we rest upon the thing itself 
 Not on its semblance ? — Soul — too weak, for^ 
 
 sooth. 
 To cope with fact- — wants fiction everywhere ! 
 Mine tires of falsehood : truth at any cost 1 " 
 
 " Take one and try conclusions — this, sup- 
 pose ! 
 God is all-good, all-wise, all-powerful : truth ? 
 Take it and rest there. What is man? Not 
 
 God: 
 None of these absolutes therefore, — yet him- 
 self, 
 A creature with a creature's qualities. 
 Make them agree, these two conceptions t 
 
 Each 
 Abolishes the other. Is man weak, 
 Foolish and bad ? He must be Ahriman, 
 Co-equal with an Ormuzd, Bad with Good, 
 Or else a thing made at the Prime Sole Will, 
 Doing a maker's pleasure — with results 
 Which — call, the wide world over, ' what must 
 
 be' — 
 But, from man's point of view, and only point 
 Possible to his powers, call — evidence 
 Of goodness, wisdom, strength ? we m^ock our- 
 selves 
 In all that 's best of us, — man 's blind but 
 
 sure 
 Craving for these in very deed not word. 
 Reality and not illusions. Well, — 
 Since these nowhere exist — nor there where 
 
 cause 
 Must have effect, nor here where craving means 
 Craving unfollowed by fit consequence 
 And full supply, aye sought for, never found — 
 These — what are they but man's own rule of 
 
 right ? 
 A scheme of goodness recognized by man. 
 Although by man unrealizable, — 
 Not God's with whom to will were to perform : 
 
A BEAN-STRIPE: ALSO APPLE-EATING 
 
 94S 
 
 Nowise performed here, therefore never willed. 
 What follows biit that God, who could the 
 
 best, 
 Has willed the worst, — while man, with power 
 
 to match 
 Will with performance, were deservedly 
 Hailed the supreme — provided . . . here 's the 
 
 toucli 
 That breaks the bubble , . , this concept of 
 
 man's 
 Were man's own work, his birth of heart and 
 
 brain, 
 His native grace, no alien gift at all. 
 The bubble breaks here. Will of man create ? 
 No more than this my hand which strewed the 
 
 beans 
 Produced them also from its finger-tips. 
 Back goes creation to its source, source prime 
 And ultimate, the single and the sole." 
 
 " How reconcile discordancy, — unite 
 Notion and notion — God that only can 
 Yet does not, — man that would indeed 
 But just as surely cannot, — both in one ? 
 What help occurs to thy intelligence ? " 
 
 " Ah, the beans, — or, — example better yet, — 
 A carpet-web I saw once leave the loom 
 And lie at gorgeous length in Ispahan ! 
 The weaver pfied his work with lengths of silk 
 Dyed each to match some jewel as it might. 
 And wove them, this by that. ' How comes it, 
 
 friend,' — 
 (Quoth I) — ' that while, apart, this fiery hue. 
 That watery dimness, either shocks the eye. 
 So blinding bright, or else offends again, 
 By dulness, — yet the two, set each by each, 
 Somehow produce a color born of both, 
 A medium profitable to the sight ? ' 
 ' Such medium is the end whereat I aim,' — 
 Answered my craftsman : ' there 's no single 
 
 tinct 
 Would satisfy the eye's desire to taste 
 The secret of the diamond : join extremes 
 Results a serviceable medium-ghost. 
 The diamond's simulation. Even so 
 I needs must blend the quality of man 
 With quality of God, and so assist 
 Mere human sight to understand my Life, 
 What is, what should be, — understand thereby 
 Wherefore I hate the first and love the last, — 
 Understand why things so present themselves 
 To me, placed here to prove I understand. 
 Thus, from beginning runs the chain to end, 
 And binds me plain enough. By consequence, 
 I bade thee tolerate, — not kick and cuff 
 The man who held that natures did in fact 
 Blend so, since so thyself must have them blend 
 In fancy, if it take a flight so far." 
 
 " A power, confessed past knowledge, nay, 
 
 past thought, 
 — Thus thought thus known ! " 
 
 " To know of, think about — 
 Is all man's sum of faculty effects 
 When exercised on earth's least atom, Son ! 
 What was, what is, what may such atom be ? 
 
 No answer ! Still, what seems it to man's 
 
 sense ? 
 An atom with some certain properties 
 Known about, thought of as occasion needs, 
 — Man's — but occasions of the universe ? 
 Unthinkable, unknowable to man. 
 Yet, since to think and know fire through and 
 
 through 
 Exceeds man, is the warmth of fire unknown, 
 Its uses — are they so unthinkable ? 
 Pass from such obvious power to powers un- 
 seen, 
 Undreamed of save in their sure consequence : 
 Take that, we spoke of late, which draws to 
 
 ground 
 The staff my hand lets fall ; it draws, at least — 
 Thus much man thinks and knows, if nothing 
 
 ** Ay, but man puts no mind into such power ! 
 He neither thanks it, when an apple drops, 
 Nor prays it spare his pate while underneath. 
 Does he thank Summer though it plumped the 
 
 rind? 
 Why thank the other force — whate'er its 
 
 name — 
 Which gave him teeth to bite and tongue to 
 
 taste 
 And throat to let the pulp pass ? Force and 
 
 force. 
 No end of forces 1 Have they mind like man ? 
 
 *' Suppose thou visit our lord Shalim-Shah, 
 Brining thy tribute as appointed. ' Here 
 Come I to pay my due ! ' Whereat one slave 
 Obsequious spreads a carpet for thy foot. 
 His fellow offers sweetmeats, while a third 
 Prepares a pipe : what thanks or praise have 
 
 they ? 
 Such as befit prompt service. Grratitnde 
 Goes past them to the Shah whose gracious nod 
 Set all the sweet civility at work ; 
 But for his ordinance, I much suspect, 
 My scholar had been left to cool his heels 
 Unoarpeted, or warm them — likelier still — 
 With bastinado for intrusion. Slaves 
 Needs must obey their master: 'force and 
 
 force. 
 No end of forces,' act as bids some force 
 Supreme o'er all and each : where find that 
 
 one? 
 How recognize him ? Simply as thou didst 
 The Shah — by reasoning ' Since I feel a debt, 
 Behooves me pay the same to one aware 
 I have my duty, he his privilege.' 
 Didst thou expect the slave who charged thy 
 
 pipe 
 Would serve as well to take thy tribute-bag 
 And save thee further trouble ? " 
 
 " Be it so ! 
 The sense within me that I owe a debt 
 Assures me — somewhere must be somebody 
 Keady to take his due. All comes to this — 
 Where due is, there acceptance follows : hnd 
 Him who accepts the due ! and why look tar i" 
 Behold thy kindred compass thee about ! 
 Ere thou wast bom and after thou shalt die. 
 
946 
 
 FERISHTAH'S FANCIES 
 
 Heroic man stands forth as Shahan-Shah. 
 Kustem and Gew, Gudarz and all the rest, 
 How come they short of lordship that 's to 
 
 seek ? 
 Dead worthies ! but men live undoubtedly 
 Gifted as Sindokht, sage Sulayman's match, 
 Valiant like Kawah : ay, and while earth lasts 
 Such heroes shall abound there — all for thee 
 Who profitest by all the present, past. 
 And future operation of thy race. 
 Why, then, o'erhurdened with a debt of thanks. 
 Look wistful for some hand from out the clouds 
 To take it, when, all round, a multitude 
 Would ease thee in a trice ? " 
 
 " Such tendered thanks 
 Would tumble back to who craved riddance. 
 Son ! 
 
 — Who but my sorry self ? See ! stars are 
 
 out — 
 Stars which, unconscious of thy gaze beneath, 
 Go glorifying, and glorify thee too 
 
 — Those Seven Thrones, Zurah's beauty, weird 
 
 Parwin ! 
 Whether shall love and praise to stars be paid 
 Or — say — some Mubid who, for good to thee 
 Blind at thy birth, by magic all his own 
 Opened thine eyes, and gave the sightless sight, 
 Let the stars' glory enter ? Say his charm 
 Worked while thyself lay sleeping : as he went 
 Thou wakedst : ' What a novel sense have I ! 
 Whom shall I love and praise ? ' ' The stars, 
 
 each orb 
 Thou standest rapt beneath,' proposes one : 
 ' Do not they live their life, and please them- 
 selves. 
 And so please thee ? What more is requisite ? ' 
 Make thou this answer : * I£ indeed no mage 
 Opened my eyes and worked a mira'cle. 
 Then let the stars thank me who apprehend 
 That such an one is white, such other blue ! 
 But for my apprehension both were blank. 
 Cannot I close my eyes and bid my brain 
 Make whites and blues, conceive without stars' 
 
 help, 
 New qualities of color ? were my sight 
 Lost or misleading, would yon red — I judge 
 A ruby's benefaction — stand for aught 
 But green from vulgar glass ? Myself appraise 
 Lustre and lustre : should I overlook 
 Fomalhaut and declare some fen-fire king, 
 Who shall correct me, lend me eyes he trusts 
 No more than I trust mine ? My mage for me I 
 I never saw him : if he never was, 
 I am the arbitrator ! ' No, my Son ! 
 Let us sink down to thy similitude : 
 I eat my apple, relish what is ripe — 
 The sunny side, admire its rarity 
 Since half the tribe is wrinkled, and the rest 
 Hide commonly a maggot in the core, — 
 And down Zerdusht goes with due smack of 
 
 lips : 
 But — thank an apple ? He who made my 
 
 mouth 
 To masticate, my palate to approve. 
 My maw to further the concoction — Him 
 I thank, — but for whose work, the orchard's 
 
 wealth 
 
 Might prove so many gall-nuts -^ stocks or 
 
 stones 
 For aught that I should think, or know, or 
 
 care." 
 
 *'Why from the world," Ferishtah smiled, "should 
 thanks 
 Go to this work of mme ? If worthy praise. 
 
 Praised let it be and welcome : as verse ranks. 
 So rate my verse :. if good therein outweighs 
 Aught faulty judged, judge justly ! Justice says : 
 
 Be just to fact, or blaming or approving : 
 
 But — generous? No, nor loving ! 
 
 " Loving ! what claim to love has work of mine ? 
 Concede my life were emptied of its gains 
 
 To furnish forth and fill work's strict confine, 
 Who works so for the world's sake — he complains 
 With cause when hate, not love, rewards his pains. 
 
 I looked beyond the world for truth and beauty : 
 
 Sought, found, and did my duty." 
 
 EPILOGUE 
 
 Oh, Love — no. Love ! All the noise below, 
 Love, 
 Groanings all and meanings — none of Life I 
 lose 1 
 All of Life 's a cry just of weariness and woe, 
 Love — 
 " Hear at least, thou happy one ! " How can 
 I, Love, but choose ? 
 
 Only, when I do hear, sudden circle round 
 me 
 — Much as when the moon's might frees a 
 space from cloud — 
 Iridescent splendors : gloom — would else eon- 
 found me — 
 Barriered off and banished far — bright- 
 edged the blackest shroud ! 
 
 Thronging through the cloud-rift, whose are 
 they, the faces 
 Faint revealed yet sure divined, the famous 
 ones of old ? 
 "What" — they smile — "our names, our 
 deeds so soon erases 
 Time upon his tablet where Life's glory lies 
 enrolled ? 
 
 "Was it for mere fool's-play, make-believe 
 and mumming. 
 So we battled it like men, not boylike sulked 
 or whined ? 
 Each of us heard clang God's ' Come ! ' and 
 each was coming : 
 Soldiers all, to forward-face, not sneaks to 
 lag behind I 
 
 " How of the field's fortune ? That concerned 
 our Leader ! 
 Led, we struck our stroke nor cared for do- 
 ings left and right : 
 Each as on his sole head, failer or succeeder. 
 Lay the blame or lit the praise : no care for 
 cowards : fight ! " 
 
THE NAMES 
 
 947 
 
 Then the cloud-rift broadens, spanning earth 
 that 's under, 
 Wide our world displays its worth, man's 
 strife and strife's success ; 
 All the good and beauty, wonder crowning 
 wonder. 
 Till my heart and soul applaud perfection, 
 nothing less. 
 
 Only, at heart's utmost joy and triumph, terror 
 Sudden turns the blood to ice : a chill wind 
 disencharma 
 All the late enchantment ! What if all be 
 error — 
 If the halo irised round my head were. Love, 
 thine arms ? 
 Palazzo 6iu»tlnian-Recanati, Venice ; 
 December 1, 1S83. 
 
 RAWDON BROWN 
 
 *' Tiitti ga i so gusti, e mi go i mii." 
 
 {■yenetiajt saying.") 
 
 Mr. Rawdon Brown was an Englishman who 
 went to Venice on some temporary errand, and 
 lived there for forty years, dying in that city in 
 the summer of 1883. He had an enthusiastic 
 love for Venice, and is mentioned in books of 
 travel as one who Itnew the city thoroughly. 
 The Venetian saying means that " everybody 
 follows his taste as I follow mine." Toni was 
 the gondolier and attendant of Brown. The in- 
 scription on Brown's tomb is given in the third 
 and fourth lines. G. W. CoOKE. 
 
 Sighed Rawdon Brown : " Yes, I 'm departing, 
 Toni ! 
 I needs must, just this once before I die, 
 Revisit England : Anglus Brown am I, 
 Although my heart 's Venetian. Yes, old 
 
 crony — 
 Venice and London — London 's ' Death the 
 bony' 
 Compared with Life — that 'a Venice ! What 
 
 a sky, 
 A sea, this morning ! One last look ! Good-by, 
 C^ Pesaro 1 No, lion — I 'm a coney 
 To weep ! I 'm dazzled ; 't is that sun I view 
 Rippling the . . . the . . . Cospetto, Toni! 
 Down 
 With carpet-bag, and off with valise-straps ! 
 BeUa Venezia, non ti lascio piii ! " 
 
 Nor did BrovTO ever leave her : well, per- 
 haps 
 Browning, next week, may find himself quite 
 
 Brown ! 
 November 28, 1883. 
 
 THE FOUNDER OF THE FEAST 
 
 Inscribed in an Album presented to Mr. 
 Arthur Chappell, of the Saint James Hall 
 Saturday and Monday popular concerts. 
 
 " Eni'EK my palace," if a prince should say — 
 " Feast with the Painters ! See, in bounteous 
 
 row. 
 They range from Titian up to Angelo I " 
 
 Could we be silent at the ricn survey ? 
 
 A host so kindly, in as great a way 
 Invites to banquet, substitutes for show 
 Sound that 's diviner still, and bids us know 
 
 Bach like Beethoven ; are we thankless, pray ? 
 
 Thanks, then, to Ajthur Chappell, — thanks 
 to him 
 Whose every guest henceforth not idly vaunts 
 " Sense has received the utmost Nature 
 grants. 
 My cup was fiUed with rapture to the brim. 
 When, night by night, — ah, memory, how it 
 
 haunts ! — 
 Music was poured by perfect ministrants, 
 By Halle, Schumann, Piatti, Joachim. 
 April 6, 1884. 
 
 THE NAMES 
 
 At Dr. F, J. Fumivall's suggestion. Brown- 
 ing was, asked to contribute a sonnet to the 
 Shakesperean Show-Book of the '' Shakesperean 
 Show " held in Albert Hall, London, on May 
 29-31, 1884, to pay off the debt on the Hospital 
 for Women, in Fulham Road. The poet sent 
 to the committee a sonnet on the names of Je- 
 hovah and Shakespeare. 
 
 Shakespeare ! — to such name's : sounding, 
 what succeeds 
 Fitly as silence ? Falter forth the spell, — 
 Act follows word, the speaker knows full 
 well. 
 Nor tampers with its magic more than needs. 
 Two names there are ; That which the Hebrew 
 reads 
 With his soiil only : if from lips it fell. 
 Echo, back thundered by earth, heaven and 
 hell, 
 Would own " Thou didst create us ! " Nai^ht 
 
 impedes 
 We voice the other name, man's most of might, 
 
 Awesomely, lovingly : let awe and love 
 Mutely await their working, leave to sight 
 All of the issue as — below — above — 
 Shakespeare's creation rises : one remove, 
 Though dread — this finite from that infinite. 
 March 12, 1884. 
 
 EPITAPH 
 
 ON LEVI LINCOLN THAXTEE 
 
 Bom in Watertown, Massachusetts, February i, 1824. 
 Died May 31, 1884. 
 
 Mr. Thaxter was early a student of Browning's 
 genius and in his later years gave readings from 
 his poems, which were singularly interpretative. 
 The boulder over his grave bears these lines. 
 
948 
 
 PARLEYINGS WITH CERTAIN PEOPLE 
 
 Thou, whom these eyes saw never ! Say friends 
 
 true 
 Who say my soul, nelped onward by my song, 
 Though all unwittingly, has helped thee too ? 
 I gave of but the little that I knew : 
 How were the gift requited, while along 
 Life's path I pace, couldst thou make weak- 
 ness strong I 
 Help me with knowledge — for Life 's Old — 
 Death 's New ! 
 B. B. to L. L. T., April, 1885. 
 
 WHY I AM A LIBERAL 
 
 Contributed to a volume edited by Andrew 
 Reid, in which a number of leaders of English 
 thought answered the question, "Why I am a 
 Liberal ? " 
 
 " Why ? " Because all I haply can and do, 
 AH that I am now, all I hope to be, — 
 Whence comes it save from fortune setting 
 free 
 
 Body and soul the purpose to pursue, 
 
 God traced for both ? If fetters, not a few, 
 Of prejudice, convention, fall from me, 
 These shall I bid men — each in his de- 
 gree 
 
 Also God-guided — bear, and gayly, too ? 
 
 But little do or can the best of us : 
 That little is achieved through Liberty. 
 
 Who, then, dares hold, emancipated thus. 
 His fellow shall continue bound ? Not I, 
 
 Who live, love, labor freely, nor discuss 
 A brother's right to freedom. That is 
 "Why." 
 
 PARLEYINGS WITH CERTAIN PEOPLE OF IMPORTANCE 
 IN THEIR DAY 
 
 IN MEMORIAM J. MILSAND, OBIIT IV. SEPTEMBER, MDCCCLXXXVI. 
 A bsens A bsenteTiz A uditque Videtque. 
 
 APOLLO AND THE FATES 
 
 A PROLOGUE 
 
 (Hymn in Mercurium, v. 559. Eumenides, vv. 693-4, 
 697-8, Alcestis, vv. 12, 33.) 
 
 Apollo, {From above.) Flame at my footfall, 
 
 Parnassus ! Apollo, 
 Breaking ablaze on thy topmost peak, 
 Bums thence, down to the depths — dread 
 hollow — 
 Haunt of the Dire Ones. Haste! They 
 wreak 
 Wrath on Admetus whose respite I seek. 
 
 The Fates. (Below. Darkness.) Dragonwise 
 
 couched in the womb of our Mother, 
 Coiled at thy nourishing heart's core. 
 Night ! 
 Dominant Dreads, we, one by the other. 
 
 Deal to each mortal his dole of light 
 On earth — the upper, the glad, the bright. 
 
 Clotho. Even so : thus from my loaded spin- 
 dle 
 
 Plucking a pinch of the fleece, lo, " Birth" 
 Brays from my bronze Up ; life J kindle : 
 
 Look, 't is a man ! go, measure on earth 
 The minute thy portion, whatever its worth ! 
 
 Lachesis. Woe-purfled, weal-prankt, — if it 
 
 speed, if it linger, — 
 Life's substance and show are determined by 
 
 me, 
 Who, meting out, mixing with sure thumb and 
 
 finger. 
 
 Lead life the due length : is all smoothness 
 and glee. 
 All tangle and grief ? Take the lot, my decree ! 
 
 Atropos. — Which I make an end of: the 
 
 smooth as the tangled 
 My shears cut asunder : each snap shrieks 
 " One more 
 Mortal makes sport for us Moirai who dangled 
 The puppet grotesquely till earth's solid floor 
 Proved film he fell through, lost in Naught as 
 before." 
 
 Clo. I spin thee a thread. Live, Admetus ! 
 
 Produce him ! 
 Lac. Go, — brave, wise, good, happy ! Now 
 
 chequer the thread ! 
 He is slaved for, yet loved by a god. I unloose 
 
 him 
 A goddess-sent plague. He has conquered, 
 
 is wed, 
 Men crown him, he stands at the height, — 
 Atr. He is . . . 
 
 Apollo. (Entering : Light.) "Dead?" 
 
 Nay, swart spinsters ! So I surprise yoii 
 Making and marring the fortunes of Man ? 
 
 Huddling — no marvel, your enemy eyes yon — 
 Head by head bat-like, blots under the ban 
 
 Of daylight earth's blessing since time began ! 
 
 The Fates. Ba«k to thy blest earth, prying 
 
 Apollo ! 
 Shaft upon shaft transpierce with thy beams 
 Earth to the centre, — spare but this hollow 
 Hewn out of Night's heart, where oui 
 
 mystery seems 
 
APOLLO AND THE FATES 
 
 Mewed from day's malice : wake earth from 
 her dreams ! 
 
 Apol. Crones, 't is your dusk selves I startle 
 
 from slumher : 
 Day's god deposes you — queens Night- 
 crowned ! 
 — Plying your trade in a world ye encumber, 
 
 Fashioning Man's web of life — spun, wound, 
 Left the length ye allot till a clip strews the 
 ground ! 
 
 Behold I bid truce to your doleful amuse- 
 ment — 
 
 Annulled by a sunbeam I 
 
 The Fates. Boy, are not we peers ? 
 
 Apol. You with the spindle grant birth: 
 whose inducement 
 
 But yours — with the niggardly digits — en- 
 dears 
 To mankind chance and change, good and evil 1 
 Your shears . . . 
 
 Atr. Ay, mine end the conflict : so much is 
 
 no fable. 
 We spin, draw to length, cut asunder : what 
 
 then ? 
 So it was, and so is, and so shall be : art able 
 To alter life's law for ephemeral men ? 
 Apol. Nor able nor willing. To threescore 
 
 and ten 
 
 Extend but the years of Admetus ! Disaster 
 O'ertook me, and, banished by Zeus, I be- 
 came 
 A servant to one who forbore me though mas- 
 ter: 
 True lovers were we. Discontinue your 
 game, 
 Let him live whom I loved, then hate on, all 
 the same ! 
 
 The Fates. And what if we granted — law- 
 
 flouter, use-trampler — 
 His life at the suit of an upstart ? Judge, 
 thou — 
 Of joy were it fuller, of span because ampler ? 
 For love's sake, not hate's, end Admetus — 
 ay, now — 
 Not a gray hair on head, nor a wrinkle on 
 brow ! 
 
 For, boy, 't is illusion: from thee comes a glim- 
 mer 
 Transforming to beauty life blank at the 
 best. 
 
 Withdraw — and how looks life at worst, when 
 to shimmer 
 Succeeds the sure shade, and Man's lot 
 frowns — confessed 
 
 Mere blackness chance-brightened ? Whereof 
 shall attest 
 
 The truth this same mortal, the darling thou 
 
 stylest. 
 Whom love would advantage, — eke out, 
 
 day by day, 
 A life which 't is solely thyself reconcilest 
 
 949 
 
 Thy friend to endure, — life with hope : take 
 away 
 Hope's gleam from Admetus, he spurns it. 
 For, say — 
 
 What 's infancy ? Ignorance, idleness, mis- 
 chief : 
 Youth ripens to arrogance, foolishness, greed: 
 Age — impotence, churlishness, rancor : calltAis 
 chief 
 Of boons for thy loved one 1 Much rather 
 bid speed 
 Our function, let live whom thou hatest indeed ! 
 
 Persuade thee, bright boy-thing ! Our eld be 
 instructive ! 
 Apol. And certes youth owns the experience 
 of age. 
 Ye hold then, grave seniors, my beams are 
 productive 
 — They solely — of good that's mere sem- 
 blance, engage 
 Man's eye— gilding evil, Man's true heritage ? 
 
 The Fates. So, even so ! From without, — at 
 
 due distance 
 If viewed, — set a-sparkle, reflecting thy 
 rays, — 
 Life mimics the sun : but withdraw such 
 assistance, 
 The counterfeit goes, the reality stays — 
 An ice-ball disguised as a fire-orb. 
 Apol. What craze 
 
 Possesses the fool then whose fancy conceits 
 him 
 As happy ? 
 
 The Fates. Man happy ? 
 Apol. If otherwise — solve 
 
 This doubt which besets me ! What friend 
 ever greets him 
 Except with " Live long as the seasons re- 
 volve," 
 Not " Death to thee straightway " ? Your 
 doctrines absolve 
 
 Such hailing from hatred : yet Man should 
 know best. 
 He talks it, and glibly, as life were a load 
 Man fain would be rid of : when put to the test, 
 He whines " Let it lie, leave ine trudging the 
 road 
 That IS rugged so far, but methinks "... 
 The Fates. Ay, 't is owed 
 
 To that glamour of thine, he bethinks him 
 *' Once past 
 The stony, some patch, nay, a smoothness of 
 swarth 
 Awaits my tired foot : life turns easy at last " — 
 Thy largess so lures him, he looks for reward 
 Of the labor and sorrow. 
 Apol. It seems, then — debarred 
 
 Of illusion — (I needs must acknowledge the 
 plea) 
 Man desponds and despairs. Yet, — still 
 further to draw 
 
950 
 
 PARLEYINGS WITH CERTAIN PEOPLE 
 
 Due profit from counsel, — suppose there should 
 be 
 Some power in himself, some compensative 
 law 
 By virtue of which, independently . . . 
 
 The Fates. 
 Strength hid in the weakling ! 
 
 Faugh ! 
 
 What bowl-shape hast there. 
 Thus laughingly proffered? A gift to our 
 ' ■ shrine ? ■ 
 
 Thanks — worsted in argument ! Not so? De- 
 clare ' ■ . ■ , . . : , t ' . 
 Its purpose ! 
 
 Apot. I proffer earth's product, not mine. 
 Taste, try, and approve Man's invention of — 
 Wine ! 
 
 The Fates. We feeding suck honeycombs. 
 Apol. Sustenance meagre ! 
 
 tjuch fare breeds the fumes that show all 
 
 things amiss. 
 Quaff wine, ^ how the spirits rise nimble and 
 
 eager, 
 Unscale the dim eyes ! To Man's cup grant 
 
 one kiss 
 Of your lip, then a;llow — no enchantment like 
 
 this! 
 
 Clo. Unhook wings, unhood brows ! Dost 
 hearken ? 
 
 Lack. I listen : 
 
 I see — smell the food these fond mortals 
 prefer 
 To our feast, the bee's bounty ! 
 
 Atr. The thing leaps ! But' — ^glisten 
 
 Its best, I withstand it — unless all concur 
 In adventure so novel. 
 
 Apol. '■ ' Ye drink? 
 
 The Fates. We demur. 
 
 Apol, Sweet Trine, be indu^ent nor scout 
 
 the contrivance 
 Of Man — Bacchus-prompted ! The juice, I 
 uphold, 
 Illuminates gloom without sunny connivance. 
 Turns fear into hope ^nd makes cowardice 
 bold, - 
 Touching all that is leadlike in life turns it 
 gold! 
 
 The Fates. Faith foolish as false ! 
 
 Apol. Biit essay it, soft sisters ! 
 
 Then mock as ye may. Lift the chalice to lip ! 
 Good : thou next — and thou ! Seems the web, 
 to you twisters 
 
 Of life's yarn, so worthless ? 
 
 Clo. Who guessed that one sip 
 
 Would impart such a lightness of limb ? 
 
 Lack. I could skip 
 
 In a, trice from the pied to the plain in my 
 woof ! 
 What parts each from either? A hair's 
 ' breadth, no inch. 
 Once learn the right method of stepping aloof. 
 Though on black next foot falls, firm I fix it, 
 nor flinch, 
 
 ^- Such my trust white succeeds ! 
 Atr. One could live — at a pinch ! 
 
 Apol. What, beldames? Earth's yield, by 
 
 Man's skill, can effect 
 Such a cure of sick sense that ye spy the re- 
 lation 
 Of evil to good ? But drink deeper, correct 
 Blear sight more convincingly still ! Take 
 your station 
 Beside me, drain dregs ! Now for edification ! 
 
 Whose gift have ye gulped? Thank not me 
 but my brother, 
 Blithe Bacchus, our youngest of godships. 
 'T was he 
 Found all boons to all men, by one god or other 
 
 Already conceded, so judged there must be 
 New guerdon to grace the new advent, you 
 
 Else how would a claim to Man's homage arise ? 
 The plan lay arranged of his mixed woe and 
 weal. 
 So disposed — such Zeus' will — with design to 
 make wise 
 The witless — that false things were mingled 
 with real. 
 Good with bad: such the lot whereto law set 
 the seal. 
 
 Now, human of instinct — since Semele's son. 
 
 Yet minded divinely — since fathered by Zeus, 
 With naught Bacchus tampered, undid not 
 things done. 
 Owned wisdom anterior, would spare wont 
 and use. 
 Yet change — without shock to old rule — in- 
 troduce. 
 
 Regard how your cavern from crag-tip to base 
 Frowns sheer, height and depth adamantine, 
 one death ! - 
 I rouse with a beam the whole rampart, displace 
 No splinter — yet see how my flambeau, be- 
 neath 
 And above, bids this gem wink, that crystal 
 unsheathe ! 
 
 Withdraw beam — disclosure once more Night 
 forbids you 
 Of spangle and sparkle — Day's chance-gift, 
 surmised 
 
 Rock's permanent birthright : my potency rids 
 you 
 No longer of darkness, yet light — recog- 
 nized — 
 
 Proves darkness a mask : day lives on though 
 disguised. 
 
 If Bacchus by wine's aid avail so to fluster 
 Your sense, that life's fact grows from adverse 
 and thwart 
 To helpful and kindly by means of a cluster —. 
 Mere hand-squeeze, earth's nature sublimed 
 by Man's art — 
 Shall Bacchus claim thanks wherein Zeus has 
 no part ? 
 
APOLLO AND THE FATES 
 
 9SI 
 
 Zeus — wisdom anterior? No, maids, be ad- 
 monished ! 
 If morn's touch at base worked such wonders, 
 much more 
 Had noontide in absolute glory astonished 
 
 Your den, filled a-top to o'erflowing. 1 pour 
 No such mad confusion. 'T is Man's to explore 
 
 Up and down, inch by inch, with the taper his 
 reason : 
 No torch, it suffices — held deftly and straight- 
 Eyes, purblind at first, feel their way in due 
 season. 
 Accept good with bad, till unseemly debate 
 Turns concord — despair, acquiescence in fate. 
 
 Who works this but Zeus ? Are not instinct 
 
 and impulse. 
 Not concept and incept his work through 
 
 Man's soul 
 On Man's sense ? Just as wine ere it reach 
 
 brain must brim pulse, 
 Zeus' flash stings the mind that speeds body 
 
 to goal. 
 Bids pause at no part but press on, reach the 
 
 whole. 
 
 Forpetty and poor is the part ye envisage 
 When — (quaff away, cummers !) — ye view, 
 last and first. 
 
 As evil Man's earthly existence. Come ! Is age. 
 Is infancy — manhood — so uninterspersed 
 
 With good — some faint sprinkle ? 
 
 do. I 'd speak if I durst. 
 
 Apol. Draughts dregward loose tongue-tie. 
 
 Lack. I'd see, did no web 
 
 Set eyes somehow winking. 
 
 Ami. Drains-deep lies their purge 
 
 — True collyrium ! 
 
 Air. Words, surging at high-tide, soon ebb 
 
 From starved ears. 
 
 Apol. Drink but down to the source, they re- 
 surge. _ 
 Join hands ! Yours and yours too I A dance 
 or a dirge ? 
 
 Cho. Quashed be our quarrel I Sourly and 
 smilingly. 
 
 Bare and gowned, bleached limbs and browned, 
 Drive we a dance, three and one, reconcilingly. 
 
 Thanks to the cupwhere dissension is drowned, 
 Defeat proves triumphant and slavery crowned. 
 
 Infancy ? What if the rose-streak of morning 
 Pale and depart in a passion of tears ? 
 
 Once to have hoped is no matter for scormng ! 
 Love once — e'en love's disappointment en- 
 dears ! 
 
 A minute's success pays the failure of years. 
 
 Manhood — the actual ? Nay, praise the poten- 
 tial ! . 
 (Bound upon bound, foot it around !; 
 What is? No, what may be — sing ! that 's 
 Man's essential I 
 (Ramp, tramp, stamp and compound 
 Fancy with fact — the lost secret is found I) 
 
 Age ? Whyj fear ends there : the contest con- 
 cluded, I 
 Man did live his life, did escape from the 
 fray: 
 
 Not scratchless but unscathed, he somehow 
 eluded 
 Each blow fortune dealt him, and conquers 
 to-day : 
 
 To-morrow — new chance and fresh strength, — 
 might we say ? 
 
 Laud then Man's life — no defeat but a triumph ! 
 [Explosion from the earth? s centre^ 
 Clo. Ha, loose hands ! 
 Lack, I reel in a swound. 
 
 Atro. Horror yawns under me, while from on 
 
 hig;h — humph! 
 Lightnings astound, thunders resound, 
 Vault-roof reverberates, groans the ground ! 
 
 [Silence, 
 Apol. I acknowledge. 
 
 Tfle Fates. Hence, trickster ! Straight so- 
 bered are we ! 
 The portent assures 'twas our tongue spoke 
 the truth. 
 Not thine. While the vapor encompassed us 
 three 
 We conceived and bore knowledge — a bant- 
 ling uncouth. 
 Old brains shudder back from ; so — take it, 
 rash youth I 
 
 Lick the lump into shape till a cry comes ! 
 Apol. 1 hear. 
 
 The Fates. Dumb music, dead eloquence ! 
 Say it, or sing ! 
 What was quickened in us and thee also ? 
 Apol. I fear. 
 
 The Fates. Half female, half male — go, am- 
 biguous thing I 
 While we speak — perchance sputter — pick up 
 what we fling ! 
 
 Known yet ignored, nor divined nor unguessed. 
 Such is Man's law of life. Do we strive to 
 declare 
 What is ill, what is good in our spinning? 
 Worst, best. 
 Change hues of a sudden : now here and now 
 there 
 Flita the sign which decides : all about yet no- 
 wherel! 
 
 'T is willed so, — that Man's life be lived, first 
 to last. 
 Up and down, through and through — not in 
 portions, forsooth. 
 To pick and to choose from. Our shuttles fly 
 fast. 
 Weave living, not life sole and whole : as age 
 — youth, ... 
 
 So death completes living, shows life in its truth. 
 
 Man leamingly lives : till death helps him — no 
 ■ lore I 
 
 It is doom and must be. Dost submit ? 
 
 Apol. I assent — 
 
 Concede but Admetus ! So much if no more 
 
952 
 
 PARLEYINGS WITH CERTAIN PEOPLE 
 
 Of my prayer grant as peace-pledge I Be gra- 
 cious, though, blent, 
 Good and ill, lore and hate streak your life-gift ! 
 The Fates. Content I 
 
 Such boon we accord in due measure. Life's 
 
 terra 
 We lengthen should any be moved for love's 
 
 sake 
 To forego life's fulfilment, renounce in the 
 
 germ 
 Fruit mature — bliss or woe — either infinite. 
 
 Take 
 Or leave thy friend's lot : on his head be the 
 
 stake ! 
 
 Apol. On mine, griesly gammers 1 Admetus, 
 
 I know thee ! 
 Thou ^rizest the right these unwittingly give 
 Thy subjects to rush, pay obedience they owe 
 thee ! 
 Importunate one with another they strive 
 For the glory to die that their king may survive. 
 
 Friends rush : and who first in all Pherse ap- 
 pears 
 
 But thy father to serve as thy substitute ? 
 
 Clo. Bah ! 
 
 Apol. Ye wince ? Then his mother, well 
 stricken in years, 
 
 Advances her claim — or his wife — 
 
 Lack. Tra-la-la ! 
 
 Apol. But he spurns the exchange, rather 
 dies ! 
 
 Atro. Ha, ha, ha ! 
 
 lApoUo ascends. Darkness. 
 
 WITH BERNARD DE MANDEVILLE 
 
 At, this same midnight, by this chair of mine, 
 Come and review thy counsels : art thou still 
 citanch to their teaching ? — not as fools opine 
 Its purport might be, but as subtler skill 
 Could, through turbidity, the loaded line 
 Of logic casting, sound deep, deeper, till 
 It touched a quietude and reached a shrine 
 And recognized harmoniously combine 
 Evil with good, and hailed truth's triumph — 
 
 thine, 
 Sage dead long since, Bernard de Mandeville 1 
 
 Only, 't is no fresh knowledge that I crave, 
 Fuller truth yet, new gainings from the grave ; 
 Here we alive must needs deal fairly, turn 
 To what account Man may Man's portion, learn 
 Man's proper play with truth in part, before 
 Entrusted with the whole. I ask no more 
 Than smiliujp: witness that I do my best 
 With doubtful doctrine : afterwards the rest I 
 So, silent face me while I think and speak 1 
 A full disclosure ? Such would outrage law. 
 Law deals the same with soul and body ; seek 
 Full truth my soul may, when some babe, I saw 
 A new-born weakling, starts up strong — not 
 weak— - 
 
 Man every whit, absolved from earning awe, 
 Pride, rapture, if the soul attains to wreak 
 Its will on flesh, at last can thrust, lift, draw, 
 As mind bids muscle — mind which long has 
 
 striven. 
 Painfully urging body's impotence 
 To effort whereby — once law's barrier riven, 
 Life's rule abolished — body might dispense 
 With infancy's probation, straight be given 
 — Not by foiled darings, fond attempts back- 
 driven. 
 Fine faults of growth, brave sins which saint 
 
 when shriven — 
 To stand f ull-statured in magnificence. 
 
 No : as with body so deals law with soul 
 That's stung to strength through weakness, 
 
 strives for good 
 Through evil, — earth its race-ground, heaven 
 
 its goal, 
 Presumably : so far I understood 
 Thy teaching long ago. But what means this 
 — Objected by a mouth which yesterday 
 Was magisterial in antithesis 
 To half the truths we hold, or trust we may, 
 Though tremblingly the while? "No sign" 
 
 — groaned he — 
 " No stirring of God's finger to denote 
 He wills that right should have supremacy 
 On earth, not wrong ! How helpful could we 
 
 quote 
 But one poor instance when he interposed 
 Promptly and surely and beyond mistake 
 Between oppression and its victim, closed 
 Accounts with sin for once, and bade us wake 
 From our long dream that justice bears no 
 
 sword. 
 Or else forgets whereto its sharpness serves ! 
 So might we safely mock at what unnerves 
 Faith now, be spared the sapping fear's increase 
 That haply evil's strife with good shall cease 
 Never on earth. Nay, after earth, comes peace 
 Born out of life-long battle ? Man's lip curves 
 With scorn : there, also, what if justice swerves 
 From dealing doom, sets free by no swift stroke 
 Kight fettered here by wrong, but leaves life's 
 
 yoke — 
 Death should loose man from — fresh Uiid, past 
 
 release ? " 
 
 Bernard de Mandeville, confute for me 
 This parlous friend who captured or set free 
 Thunderbolts at his pleasure, yet would draw 
 Back, panic-stricken by some puny straw 
 Thy gold -rimmed amber -headed cane had 
 
 whisked 
 Out of his pathway if the object risked 
 Encounter, 'scaped thy kick from buckled shoe ! 
 As when folk heard thee in old days pooh-pooh 
 Addison's tye-wig preachment, grant this 
 
 friend — 
 (Whose groan I hear, with guffaw at the end 
 Dispreing of mock-melancholy) — grant 
 His bilious mood one potion, ministrant 
 Of homely wisdom, healthy wit ! For, hear I 
 " With power and will, let preference appear 
 
WITH BERNARD DE MANDEVILLE 
 
 953 
 
 By intervention ever and aye, help good 
 When evil's mastery is understood 
 In some plain outrage, and triumphant wrong 
 Tramples weak right to nothingness : nay, long 
 Ere ■such sad consummation brings despair 
 To right's adherents, ah, what help it were 
 If wrong lay strangled in the birth — each head 
 Of the hatched monster promptly crushed, 
 
 instead 
 Of spared to gather venom ! We require 
 No great experience that the inch-long worm. 
 Free of our neel, would grow to vomit fire. 
 And one day plague the world in dragon form. 
 So should wrong merely peep abroad to meet 
 Wrong's due quietus, leave our world's way 
 
 safe 
 For honest walking." 
 
 Sage, once more repeat 
 Instruction ! 'T is a sore to soothe not chafe. 
 Ah, Fabulist, what luck, could I contrive 
 To coax from thee another '' Grrumbline- 
 
 Hive"! 
 My friend himself wrote fables short and sweet : 
 Ask him — "Suppose the Gardener of Man's 
 
 ground 
 Plants for a purpose, side by side with good. 
 Evil — (and that he does so — look around ! 
 What does the field show ? ) — were it under- 
 stood 
 That purposely the noxious plant was found 
 Vexing the virtuous, poison close to food, 
 If, at first stealing-f orth of life in stalk 
 And leaflet-promise, quick his spud should 
 
 balk 
 Evil from budding foliage, bearing fruit ? 
 Such timely treatment of the offending root 
 Might strike the simple as wise husbandry. 
 But swift sure extirpation would scarce suit 
 Shrewder observers. Seed once sown thrives: 
 
 why 
 Frustrate its product, miss the quality 
 Which sower binds himself to count upon ? 
 Had seed fulfilled the destined purpose, gone 
 Unhindered up to harvest — what know I 
 But proof were gained that every growth of 
 
 good 
 Sprang consequent on evil's neighborhood ? " 
 So said your shrewdness : true — so did not 
 
 say 
 That other sort of theorists who held 
 Mere unintelligence prepared the way 
 For either seed's upsprouting : you repelled 
 Their notion that both kinds could sow them- 
 selves. 
 True ! but admit 't is understanding delves 
 And drops each germ, what else but foUy 
 
 thwarts 
 The doer's settled purpose ? Let the sage 
 Concede a use to evil, though there starts 
 Full many a burgeon thencCj to disengage 
 With thumb and finger lest it spoil the yield 
 Too much of good's main tribute ! But our 
 
 main 
 Tough - tendoned mandrake - monster — purge 
 
 the field 
 Of him for once and all ? It follows plain 
 
 Who set him there to grow beholds repealed 
 His primal law : his ordinance proves vain : 
 And what beseems a king who cannot reign. 
 But to drop sceptre valid ai-m should wield ? 
 
 VI 
 
 II Still there 's a parable " — retorts my friend — 
 
 Shows agriculture with a difference ! 
 What of the crop and weeds which solely blend 
 Because, once planted, none may pluck them 
 
 thence ? 
 The Gardener contrived thus ? Vain pretence ! 
 An_ enemy it was who unawares 
 Ruined the wheat by interspersing tares. 
 Where's our desiderated forethought? 
 
 Where 's 
 Knowledge, where power and will in evidence ? 
 'T is Man's-play merely ! Craft foils rectitude, 
 Malignity defeats beneficence. 
 And grant, at very last of all, the fend 
 'Twixt good and evil ends, strange thoughts in- 
 trude 
 Though good be garnered safely, and good's foe 
 Bundled for burning. Thoughts steal : ' Even 
 
 so — 
 Why grant tares leave to thus o'ertop, o'ertower 
 Their field-mate, boast the stalk and flaunt 
 
 the flower. 
 Triumph one sunny minute? Knowledge, 
 
 power. 
 And will thus worked ? ' Man's fancy makes 
 
 the fault ! 
 Man, with the narrow mind, must cram inside 
 His finite God's infinitude, — earth's vault 
 He bids comprise the heavenly far and wide, 
 Since Man may claim a right to understand 
 What passes understandiiig. So, succinct 
 And trimly set in order, to be scanned 
 And scrutinized, lo — the divine lies linked 
 Fast to the human, free to move as moves 
 Its proper match : awhile they keep the grooves. 
 Discreetly side by side together pace. 
 Till sudden comes a stumble incident 
 Likely enough to Man's weak-footed ra«e. 
 And he discovers — wings in rudiment, 
 Such as he boasts, which full-grown, free- 
 distent 
 Would lift him skyward, fail of flight while 
 
 pent 
 Within humanity's restricted space. 
 Abjure each fond attempt to represent 
 The formless, the illimitable ! Trace 
 No outline, try no hint of human face 
 Or form or hand ! " 
 
 Friend, here 's a tracing meant 
 To help a guess at truth you never knew. 
 Bend but diose eyes now, using mind's eye too, ■ 
 And note — sufficient for all purposes — 
 The ground-plan — map yon long have yearned^ 
 
 for — yes, 
 Make out in markings — more what artist 
 
 can? — 
 Goethe's Estate in Weimar, — just a plan ! 
 A is the House, and JB the Garden-gate, 
 And C the Grass-plot — you 've the whole 
 
 estate 
 
954 
 
 PARLEYINGS WITH CERTAIN PEOPLE 
 
 Letter by letter, down to Y the Pond, 
 And Z the Pigsty. Do you look beyond 
 The algebraic signs, and captious say 
 " Is A the House ? But where 's the Roof to 
 
 A, 
 Where 's Door, where 's Window ? Needs 
 
 must House have such I " 
 Ay, that were foUy. Why so very much 
 More foolish than our mortal purblind way 
 Of seeking in the symbol no' mere point 
 To guide our gaze through what were else inane, 
 But things — their solid selves? "Is, joint 
 
 by joint, 
 Orion man-like, -^ as these dots explain 
 His constellation? Flesh composed of suns — 
 How can such be ? " exclaim the simple ones. 
 Look through the sign to the thing signified — 
 Shown nowise, point by point at best descried, 
 Each an orb's topmost sparkle : all beside 
 Its shine is shadow : turn the orb one jot — 
 Up^es the new flash to reveal 'twas not 
 The whole sphere late flamboyant in your ken ! 
 
 " What need of symbolizing ? Fitlier men 
 Would take on tongue mere facts — few, faint 
 
 and far. 
 Still facts not fancies : quite enough they are, 
 That Power, that Knowledge, and that Will, 
 
 — add then 
 Immensity, Eternity : these jar 
 Nowise with our permitted thought and 
 
 speech. 
 Why human attributes ? " 
 
 A myth may teach : 
 Only, who better would expound it thus 
 Must be Euripides, not .^schylus. 
 
 Boundingly up through Night's wall dense and 
 
 dark. 
 Embattled crags and clouds, outbroke the Sun 
 Above the conscious earth, and on« by one 
 Her heights and depths absorbed to the last 
 
 spark 
 His fluid glory, from the far fine ridge 
 Of moimtain-granite which, transformed to 
 
 gold. 
 Laughed first the thanks back, to the vale's 
 
 dusk fold 
 On fold of vapor-swathing, like a bridge 
 Shattered beneath some giant's stamp. Night 
 
 wist 
 Her work done and betook herself in mist 
 To marsh and hollow, there to bide her time 
 B'Undly in acquiescence. Everywhere 
 Did earth acknowledge Snn's embrace sublime, 
 Thrilling her to the heart of things ; since 
 
 there 
 No ore ran liquid, no spar branched anew, 
 Nq arrowy crystal gleamed, but straightway 
 
 grew 
 01^ through the inrush — glad nor more nor 
 
 less 
 Than, 'neath his gaze^ forest and wilderness. 
 Bill, dale, land, sea, the whole vast stretch and 
 
 spread. 
 
 The universal world of creatures bred 
 By Sun's munificence, alike gave praise — 
 All creatures but one only : gaze for gaze, 
 Joyless and thankless, who — all scowhng 
 
 can — . 
 
 Protests against the mnumerons praises ;" 
 
 Man, 
 Sullen and silent. 
 
 Stand thou forth then, state 
 Thy wrong, thou sole aggrieved — disconso- 
 late — ' 
 While every beast, bird, reptile, insect, gay 
 And glad acknowledges the bounteous day ! 
 
 Man speaks now: "WTiat avails Sun's earth- 
 felt thrill 
 To me ? Sun penetrates the ore, the plant — 
 They feel and grow : perchance with subtler 
 
 skiU 
 He interfuses fly, worm, brute, until 
 Each favored object pays life's ministrant 
 By pressing, in obedience to his will. 
 Up to completion of the task prescribed. 
 So stands and stays a type. Myself imbibed 
 Such influence also, stood and stand complete — 
 The perfect Man, — head, body, hands and 
 
 feet. 
 True to the pattern : but does that suffice ? 
 How of my superadded mind which needs 
 
 — Not to be, simply, but to do, and pleads 
 For — more than knowledge that by some 
 
 device 
 Sun quickens matter : mind is nobly fain 
 To realize the marvel, make—- for sense 
 As miiid — the unseen visible, condense 
 
 — Myself — Sun's all-pervading influence 
 So as to serve the needs of mind, explain 
 What now pei'plexes. Let the oak increase 
 His corrugated strength on strength, the palm 
 Lift joint by joint her fan-fruit, ball and balm, — 
 Let the coiled serpent bask in bloated peace, — 
 The eagle, like some skyey derelict, 
 
 Drift in the blue, suspended, glorying, — 
 
 The lion lord it by the desert-spring, — 
 
 What know or care they of the power which 
 
 pricked 
 Nothingness to perfection ? I, instead, 
 When all-developed still am found a thing 
 All-incomplete : for what though flesh had 
 
 force 
 Transcending theirs — hands able to unring 
 The tightened snake's coil, eyes that could out- 
 course 
 The eagle's soaring, voice whereat the king 
 Of carnage couched discrowned ? Mind seeks 
 
 to see. 
 Touch, understand, by mind inside of me. 
 The outside mind — whose quickening I attain 
 To recognize — I only. All in vain 
 Would mind address itself to render plain 
 The nature of the essence. Drag what lurks 
 Behind the operation — that which works - 
 Latently everywhere by outward proof — 
 Drag that mind forth to face mine ? No ! aloot 
 I solely crave that one of all the beams 
 Which do Sun's work in darkness, at my will 
 
WITH DANIEL BARTOLI 
 
 955 
 
 Should operate — myself for once have skill 
 To realize the energy which streams 
 Flooding the universe. Ahove, around, 
 Beneath — why mocks that mind my own thus 
 
 found 
 Simply of service, when the world grows dark. 
 To half -surmise — were Sun's use understood, 
 I might demonstrate him supplying food, 
 Warmth, life, no less the while ? To grant 
 
 one spark 
 Myself may deal with — make it thaw my 
 
 blood 
 And prompt my steps, were truer to the mark 
 Of mind's requirement than a half-surmise 
 That somehow secretly is operant, 
 A power all matter feels, mind Only tries ■ ■ 
 To comprehend ! Once more — no idle vaunt 
 ' Man comprehends the Sun's self ! ' Myste- 
 ries 
 At source why probe into ? Enough: display, 
 Make demonstrable, how, by night as day. 
 Earth's centre and sky's outspan, aU 's informed 
 Equally by Sun's efflux I — source from whence 
 If just one spark I drew, full evidence 
 Were mine of fire ineffably enthroned — ■■ 
 Sun's self made palpable to Man ! " 
 
 Thus moaned 
 Man till Prometheus helped him, — as we 
 
 learn, — 
 Offered an artifice whereby he drew 
 Sun's rays into a focus, — plain and true, 
 ■The very Sun in little : made fire burn 
 And henceforth do Man service — glass -con- 
 globed 
 Though to a pin-point circle — all the same 
 Comprising the Sun's self, but Sun disrobed 
 Of that else-unconceived essential flame 
 Borne by no naked sight. Shall mind's eye 
 
 . strive 
 Aehingly to companion as it may 
 The supersubtle effluence, and contrive 
 To follow beam and beam upon their way 
 Hand-breadth by hand-breadth, till sense faint — 
 
 confessed 
 Frustrate, eluded by unknown unguessed 
 Infinitude of action? Idle quest! 
 Rather ask aid from optics. Sense, descry 
 Tbe spectrum — mind, infer immensity ! 
 Little ? In little, light, warmth, life are 
 
 blessed — 
 Which, in the large, who sees to bless ? Not I 
 More than yourself : so, good my friend, keep 
 
 still 
 Trustful with — me ? with thee, sage Mande- 
 viUe! 
 
 WITH DANIEL BARTOLI 
 I 
 
 Don, the divinest women that have walked 
 Our world were scarce those saints of whom we 
 
 talked. 
 My saint, for instance — worship if you will ! 
 'T is pity poets need historians' skill : 
 What legendary 's worth a chronicle ? 
 
 Come, now ! A great lord once upon a time 
 
 Visited — oh a king, of kings the prime, 
 
 To sign a treaty such as never was : 
 
 For the king's minister had brought to pass 
 
 That this same duke — so style him — must 
 
 engage 
 Two of his dukedoms as an heritai;e 
 After his death to this exorbitant ■ 
 Graver of kingship. " Let who lacks go scant. 
 Who owns much, give the more to ! " Why 
 
 rebuke ? 
 So bids the devil, so obeys the duke. 
 
 Now, as it happened, at his sister's house 
 -^ Duchess herself — indeed the very spouse 
 Of the king's uncle, — while the deed of gift 
 Whereby our duke should cut his rights adrift 
 Was drawing, getting ripe to sign and seal^ — 
 What does the frozen heart but uncongeal 
 And, shaming his transcendent kin and kith. 
 Whom do the duke's eyes make acquaintance 
 
 with? 
 A girl. " What, sister, may this wonder be ? " 
 " Nobody ! Good as beautiful is she. 
 With gifts that match her goodness, no faint 
 
 flaw 
 I' the white : she were the pearl you think you 
 
 saw. 
 But that she is — what corresponds to white ? 
 Some other stone, the true pearl's opposite. 
 As cheap as pearls are costly. She's — now, 
 
 ' guess 
 Herparentage! Once — twice — thrice? Foiled, 
 
 confess ! 
 Drugs, duke, her father deals in — faugh, the 
 
 Manna and senna — such medicamients 
 
 For payment he compounds you. Stay — stay 
 
 — stay ! ; ' 
 I '11 have no rude speech wrong her ! Whither 
 
 The hot-head ? Ah, the scapegrace ! She de- 
 serves 
 
 Respect — compassion, rather ! right it serves 
 
 My folly, trusting secrets to a fool ! 
 
 Already at it, is he ? She keeps cool — 
 
 Helped by her fan's spread. Well, our state 
 atones 
 
 For thus much license, and words break no 
 bones ! " 
 
 (Hearts, though, sometimes.) 
 
 Next mom 't was " Reason, rate. 
 Rave, sister, on till doomsday ! Sure as fate, 
 I wed that woman — what a woman is 
 Now that I know, who never knew till this ! " 
 So swore the duke. " I wed her : once again — 
 Rave, rate, and reason — Spend your breath in 
 
 At once was made a contract firm and fast. 
 Published the banns were, only marriage, last. 
 Required completion when the Church's rite 
 
956 
 
 PARLEYINGS WITH CERTAIN PEOPLE 
 
 Should bless and bid depart, make happy quite 
 The coupled man and wife forevermore : 
 Whi(di rite "was soon to follow. Just before — 
 AH things at all but end — the folk o' the bride 
 Flocked to a summons. Pomp the duke defied : 
 " Of ceremony — so much as empowers, 
 Naught that exceeds, suits best a tie like 
 
 ours " — 
 He smiled — "all else were mere futility. 
 We TOW, God hears us : God and you and I — 
 Let the world keep at distance ! This is why 
 We choose the simplest forms that serve to 
 
 bind 
 Lover and lover of the human kind. 
 No care of what degree — of kings or clowns — 
 Come blood and breeding. Courtly smiles and 
 
 frowns 
 Miss of their mark, would idly soothe or strike 
 My style and yours — in one style merged 
 
 alike — 
 God's man and woman merely. Long ago 
 'T was rounded in my ears * Duke, wherefore 
 
 slow 
 To use a privilege ? Needs must one who 
 
 reigns 
 Pay reigning's due : since statecraft so or- 
 dains — 
 Wed for the commonweal's sake ! law pre- 
 scribes 
 One wife ; but to submission license bribes 
 Unruly nature : mistresses accept 
 — Well, at discretion ! ' Prove I so inept 
 A scholar, thus instructed ? Dearest, be 
 Wife and all mistresses in one to me. 
 Now, henceforth, and forever ! " So smiled he. 
 
 Good : but the minister, the crafty one, 
 (rot ear of what was doing — all but done — 
 Not sooner, though, than the king's very self. 
 Warned by the sister on how sheer a shelf 
 Royalty's ship was like to split. " I bar 
 The abomination ! Mix with muck my star ? 
 Shall earth behold prodigiously enorbed 
 An upstart marsh-bom meteor sun-absorbed ? 
 Nuptial me no such nuptials ! " " Past dis- 
 pute, 
 Majesty speaks with wisdom absolute," 
 Admired the minister : " yet, all the same, 
 I would we may not — while we play his game. 
 The ducal meteor's — also lose our own. 
 The solar monarch's : we relieve yoiir throne 
 Of an ungracious presence, like enough : 
 Balked of his project he departs in huff, 
 And so cute short — dare I remind the king ? — 
 Our not so unsuccessful bargaining. 
 The contract for eventual heritage 
 Happens to pari passu reach the stage 
 Attained by just this other contract, — each 
 Unfixed by signature though fast in speech. 
 Off goes the duke in dudgeon — off withal 
 Go with him his two dukedoms past recall. 
 You save a fool from tasting folly's fruit. 
 Obtain small thanks thereby, and lose to boot 
 Sagacity's reward. The jest is grim : 
 The man will mulct you — for amercing him ? 
 Nay, for . . . permit a poor similitude ! 
 A witless wight in some fantastic mood 
 
 Would drown himself: you plunge into the 
 
 wave, 
 Pluck forth the undeserving: he, you save, 
 Pulls you clean under also for your pains. 
 Sire, little need that I should tax my brains 
 To help your inspiration ! " " Let him sink I 
 Always contriving " — hints the royal wink — 
 "To keep ourselves dry while we claim his 
 
 clothes." 
 
 Next day, the appointed day for plighting 
 
 troths 
 At eve, — so little time to lose, you see. 
 Before the Church should weld indissolubly 
 Bond into bond, wed these who, side by side. 
 Sit each by other, bold groom, blushing bride, — 
 At the preliminary banquet, graced 
 By all flie lady's kinsfolk come in haste 
 To share her triumph, — lo, a thunderclap ! 
 " Who importunes now ? " " Such is my mis- 
 hap — 
 In the king's name ! No need that any stir 
 Except this lady ! " bids the minister : 
 " With her I claim a word apart, no more : 
 For who gainsays — a guard is at the door. 
 Hold, duke ! Submit you, lady, as I bow 
 To him whose mouthpiece speaks his pleasure 
 
 now I 
 It well may happen I no whit arrest 
 Your marriage : be it so, — we hope the best ! 
 By your leave, gentles ! Lady, pray you, 
 
 hence ! 
 Duke, with my soul and body's deference ! " 
 
 Doors shut, mouth opens and persuasion flows 
 Copiously forth. "What flesh shall dare op- 
 pose 
 The king's command ? The matter in debate 
 — How plain it is ! Yourself shall arbitrate, 
 Determine. Since the duke affecte to rate 
 His prize in yon beyond all goods of earth. 
 Accounts as naught old gains of rank and birth, 
 Ancestral obligation, recent fame, 
 (We know his feate) — nay, ventures to dis- 
 claim 
 Our will and pleasure almost — by report — 
 Waives in your favor dukeUness, in short, — 
 We — {'t is the king speaks) — who might forth- 
 with stay 
 Such suicidal purpose, brush away 
 A bad example shame would else record, — 
 Lean to indulgence rather. At his word 
 We take the duke : allow him to complete 
 The cession of his dukedoms, leave our feet 
 Their footstool when his own head, safe in 
 
 vault. 
 Sleeps sound. Nay, would the duke repair his 
 
 fault 
 Handsomely, and our forfeited esteem 
 Recover, — what if wisely he redeem 
 The past, — in earnest of good faith, at once 
 Give us such jurisdiction for the nonce 
 As may suffice — prevent occasion slip — 
 And constitute our actual ownership ? 
 Concede this — straightway be the marriage 
 blessed 
 
WITH DANIEL BARTOLI 
 
 957 
 
 By warrant of this paper I Things at rest, 
 This paper duly sig:ned, down drops the bar, 
 To-morrow you become — from what you are, 
 The druggist's daughter — not the duke's mere 
 
 spouse. 
 But the king's own adopted : heart and house 
 Open to you — the idol of a court 
 ' Which heaven might copy ' — sing our poet- 
 sort. 
 In this emergency, on yon depends 
 The issue : plead what bliss the king intends ! 
 Should the duke frown, should arguments and 
 
 prayers, 
 Nay, tears if need be, prove in vain, — who 
 
 cares ? 
 We leave the duke to his obduracy, 
 Companionless, — you, madam, follow me 
 Without, where divers of the body-guard 
 Wait signal to enforce the king's award 
 Of strict seclusion : over you at least 
 Vibratingly the sceptre threats increased 
 Precipitation ! How avert its crash ? " 
 
 " Ke-enter, sir ! A hand that 's calm, not rash. 
 Averts it ! " quietly the lady said. 
 " Yourself shall witness." 
 
 At the table's head 
 Where, mid the hushed guests, still the duke 
 
 sat glued 
 In blank bewilderment, his spouse pursued 
 Her speech to end — syllabled quietude. 
 
 *' Duke, I, your duchess of a day, could take 
 The hand you proffered me for love's sole sake. 
 Conscious my love matched yours ; as you, my- 
 self 
 Would waive, when need were, all but love — 
 
 from pelf 
 To potency. What fortune brings about 
 Haply in some far future, finds me out. 
 Paces me on a sudden here and now. 
 The better ! Read — if beating heart allow — 
 Bead this, and bid me rend to rags the shame ! 
 I and your conscience — hear and grant our 
 
 claim ! 
 Never dare alienate God's gift you hold 
 Simply in trust for him! Choose muck for 
 
 gold ? 
 Could you so stumble in your choice, cajoled 
 By what I count my least of worthiness 
 — The youth, the beauty, — you renounce 
 
 them — yes. 
 With all that 's most too : love as well you lose, 
 Slain by what slays in you the honor ! Choose ! 
 Dear — yet my husband — dare I love you 
 yet ? " 
 
 XI 
 
 How the duke's wrath o'erboUed, — words, 
 
 words, and yet 
 More words, — I spare you such fool's fever- 
 fret. 
 They were not of one sort at all, one size. 
 As souls go — he and she. 'T is said, the eyes 
 Of all the lookers-on let tears fall fast. 
 The minister was moUiJied at last : 
 
 "Take a day, — two days even, ere through 
 pride 
 
 You perish, — two days' counsel— then de- 
 cide ! " 
 
 " If I shall save his honor and my soul ? 
 Husband, — this one last time, — you tear the 
 
 scroll ? 
 Farewell, duke ! Sir, I follow in your train ! " 
 
 So she went forth : they never met again. 
 The duke and she. The world paid compli- 
 ment 
 (Is it worth noting ?) when, next day, she sent 
 Certain gifts baok — " jewelry fit to deck 
 Whom you call wife." I know not round what 
 
 neck 
 They took to sparkling, in good time — weeks 
 thence. 
 
 Of all which was the pleasant consequence. 
 So much and no more — that a fervid youth. 
 Big-hearted boy, — but ten years old, in 
 
 truth — 
 Laid this to heart and loved, as boyhood can, 
 The unduchessed lady : boy and lad grew man : 
 He loved as man perchance may: did mean- 
 while 
 Good soldier-service, managed to beguile 
 The years, no few, until he found a chance : 
 Then, as at trumpet-summons to advance. 
 Outbroke the love that stood at arras so long. 
 Brooked no withstanding longer. They were 
 
 wed. 
 Whereon from camp and court alike he fled, 
 Renounced the sun-king, dropped off into night, 
 Evermore lost, a mined satellite : 
 And, oh, the exquisite deliciousness 
 That lapped him in obscurity ! You guess 
 Such joy is fugitive : she died full soon. 
 He did his best to die — as sun, so moon 
 Left him, turned dusk to darkness absolute. 
 Failing of death — why, saintship seemed to 
 
 suit : 
 Yes, your sort, Don ! He trembled on the 
 
 verge 
 Of monkhood : trick of cowl and taste of 
 
 scourge 
 He tried : then, kicked not at the pricks per- 
 verse, 
 But took again, for better or for worse. 
 The old way in the world, and, much the same 
 Man o' the outside, fairly played life's game. 
 
 " Now, Saint Scholastica, what time she fared 
 
 In Paynimrie, behold, a lion glared 
 
 Right in her path ! Her waist she promptly 
 
 strips 
 Of girdle, binds his teeth within his lips. 
 And, leashed all lamblike, to the Soldan'g 
 
 court 
 Leads him." Ay, many a legend of the sort 
 Do you praiseworthily authenticate : 
 Spare me the rest. This much of no debate 
 
958 
 
 PARLEYINGS WITH CERTAIN PEOPLE 
 
 Admits : my lady flourished in grand days 
 When to be duchess was to dance the hays 
 Up, down, across the heaven amid its host : 
 While to be hailed the sun's own self almost — 
 So close the kinship — was — was — 
 
 Saint, for this. 
 Be yours the feet I stoop to — knbel and 
 
 kiss ! 
 So human ? Then the month too, if you will ! 
 Thanks to no legend but a chronicle. 
 
 One leans to like the duke, too : up we '11 patch 
 Some sort of saiutship for him — not to match 
 Hers — but man's best and woman's worst 
 
 amount 
 So nearly to the same thing, that we count 
 In man a miracle of faithfulness 
 If, while unfaithful somewhat, he lay stress 
 On the main fact that love, when love indeed. 
 Is wholly solely love from first to last — 
 Truth — all the rest a lie. Too likely, fast 
 Enough that necklace went to grace the throat 
 — Let''s say, of such a dancer as makes doat 
 The senses when the soiil is satisfied — 
 Trogalia, say the Greeks — a sweetmeat tried 
 Approvingly by sated tongue and teeth. 
 Once body's proper meal consigned beneath 
 Such unconsidered munching. 
 
 Fancy's flight 
 Makes me a listener when, some sleepless night. 
 The duke reviewed his memories, and aghast 
 Found that the Present intercepts the Past 
 With such eifect as when a cloud enwraps 
 The moon and, moon-suffused, plays moon per- 
 haps 
 To who walks under, till comes, late or soon, 
 A stumble : up he looks, and lo, the moon 
 Calm, clear, convincingly herself once more ! 
 How could he 'scape the- cloud that thrust be- 
 tween 
 Him and effulgence ? Speak, fool — duke, I 
 mean ! 
 
 " Wlio bade you come, brisk-marching bold 
 she-shape, 
 A terror with those black-balled worlds of 
 eyes, 
 That black hair bristling solid-built from nape 
 To crown its coils about ? dread surmise ! 
 Take, tread on, trample under past escape 
 Your capture, spoil and trophy ! Do — de- 
 vise 
 Insults for one who, fallen once, ne'er shall 
 rise I 
 
 "Mock on, triumphant o'er the prostrate 
 shame ! 
 Laugh ' Here lies he among the false to 
 Love — 
 Love's loyal liegeman once : the very same 
 Who, scorning his weak fellows, towered 
 above 
 Inconstancy ; yet why hia faith defame ? 
 
 Our eagle?s victor was at least no dove, 
 No dwarfish knight picked up our giant's 
 glove — 
 
 '"When, putting prowess to the proof, faith 
 urged 
 Her champion to the challenge : had it 
 chanced 
 That merely virtue, wisdom, beauty — merged 
 
 All in one woman — merely these advanced 
 Their claim to conquest, — hardly had he purged 
 
 His mind of memories, deamesses enhanced 
 Bather than harmed by death, nor, disen- 
 traneed, 
 
 " ' Promptly had he abjured the old pretence 
 To prove his kind's superior — first to last 
 
 Display erect on his heart's eminence 
 An altar to the never-dying Past. 
 
 For such feat faith might boast fit play of 
 fence 
 And easily disarm the iconoclast 
 
 Called virtue, wisdom, beauty : impudence 
 
 " ' Fought in their stead, and how could faith 
 but fall? 
 There came a bold she-shape brisk-marching, 
 bent 
 No inch of her imperious stature, tall 
 
 As some war-engine from whose top was sent 
 One shattering volley out of eye's black ball, 
 And prone lay faith's defender ! ' Mockery 
 spent ? 
 Malice discharged in f uU ? In that event, 
 
 " My queenly impudence, I cover close, 
 
 I wrap me round with love of your black hair, 
 Black eyes, black every wicked inch of those 
 Limbs' war-tower taUness: so much truth 
 lives there 
 'Neath the dead heap of lies. And yet — who 
 knows ? 
 What if such things are? No less, such 
 things were. 
 Then was the man your match whom now you 
 dare 
 
 " Treat as existent still. A second truth ! 
 They held — this heap of lies you rightly 
 scorn — 
 A man who had approved himself in youth 
 More than a match for — you ? for sea-foam- 
 born 
 Venus herself : you conquer him forsooth ? 
 
 'T is me his ghost : he died since left and lorn, 
 As needs must Samson when his hair is shorn. 
 
 "Some day, and soon, be sure himself wUI rise, 
 
 Called into life by her who long ago 
 Left his soul whiling time in flesh-disguise. 
 Ghosts tired of waiting can play tricks, you 
 know ! 
 Tread, trample me — such sport we ghosts de- 
 vise, 
 Waiting the mom - star's reappearance — 
 though 
 You think we vanish scared by the cock's 
 crow." 
 
WITH CHRISTOPHER SMART 
 
 9S9 
 
 WITH CHRISTOPHER SMART 
 
 It seems as if ... or did the actual chance 
 Startle me and perplex ? Let truth be said ! 
 How might this happen ? Dreaming, blindfold 
 
 led 
 By visionary hand, did soul's advance 
 Precede my body's, gain inheritance 
 Of fact by fancy — so that when I read 
 At length with waking eyes your Song, instead 
 Of mere bewilderment, with me first glance 
 Was but full recognition that in trance 
 Or merely thought's adventure some old day 
 Of dim and done-with boyishness, or — well. 
 Why might it not have been, the miracle 
 Broke on me as I took my sober way 
 Through veritable regions of our earth 
 And made discovery, many a wondrous one ? 
 
 Anyhow, fact or fancy, such its birth ; 
 I was exploring some huge house, had gone 
 Through room and room complacently, no 
 
 dearth 
 Anywhere of the signs of decent taste, 
 Adequate culture : wealth had run to waste 
 Nowise, nor penury was proved by stint : 
 All showed the Golden Mean without a hint 
 Of brave extravagance that breaks the rule. 
 The master of the mansion was no fool 
 Assuredly, no genius just as sure ! 
 Safe mediocrity had scorned the liire 
 Of now too much and now too little cost. 
 And satisfied me sight was never lost 
 Of moderate design's accomplishment 
 In calm completeness. On and on I went 
 With no more hope than fear of what came 
 
 next. 
 Till lo, I push a door, sudden uplift 
 A hanging, enter, chance upon a shift 
 Indeed of scene ! So — thus it is thou deck'st 
 High heaven, our low earth's brick-and-mortar 
 
 work ? 
 
 It was the Chapel. That a star, from murk 
 Which hid, should flashingly emerge at last. 
 Were small surprise : but from broad day I 
 
 Into a presence that turned shine to shade. 
 There fronted me the Rafael Mother-Maid, 
 Never to whom knelt votarist in shrine 
 By Nature's bounty helped, by Art's divine 
 More varied — beauty with magnificence — 
 Than this : from floor to roof one evidence 
 Of how far earth may rival heaven. No niche 
 Where glory was not prisoned to enrich 
 Man's gaze with gold and gems, no space but 
 
 glowed 
 With color, gleamed with carving — hues which 
 
 owed 
 Their outburst to a brush the painter fed 
 With rainbow-substance — rare shapes never 
 
 To actual flesh and blood, which, brain-bom 
 once, 
 
 Became the sculptor's dowry. Art's response 
 To earth's despair. And all seemed old yet 
 
 new : 
 Youth, — in the marble's curve, the canvas' 
 
 hue. 
 Apparent, — wanted not the crowning thrill 
 Of age the consecrator. Hands long still 
 Had worked here —could it be, what lent them 
 
 skill 
 Retained a power to supervise, protect, 
 Enforce new lessons with the old, connect 
 Our life with theirs ? No merely modem touch 
 Told me that here the artist, doing much, 
 Elsewhere did more, perchance does better, 
 
 lives — 
 So needs must learn. 
 
 Well, these provocatives 
 Having fulfilled their office, forth I went 
 Big with anticipation^ — well-nigh fear — 
 Of what next room and next for startled eyes 
 Might have in store, surprise beyond surprise. 
 Next room and next and next — what followed 
 
 here? 
 Why, nothing ! not one object to arrest 
 My passage — everywhere too manifest 
 The previous decent null and void of best 
 And worst, mere ordinary right and fit. 
 Calm commonplace which neither missed, nor 
 
 hit 
 Inch-high, inch-low, the placid mark proposed. 
 
 Armed with this instance, have I diagnosed 
 Your case, my Christopher ? The man was 
 
 sound 
 And sane at starting : aU at once the ground , 
 Gave way beneath his step, a certain smoke ' 
 Curled up and caught him, or perhaps down 
 
 broke 
 A fireball wrappingflesh and spirit both 
 In conflagration. Then — as heaven were loth 
 To linger — let earth understand too well 
 How heaven at need can operate — off fell 
 The flame-robe, and the untransfigored man 
 Resumed sobriety, — as he began. 
 So did he end nor alter pace, not he 1 
 
 Now, what I fain would know is — could it be 
 That he — whoe'er he was that furnished forth 
 The Chapel, making thus, from South to 
 
 North, 
 Rafael touch Leighton, Michelagnolo 
 Join Watts, was found but once combining so 
 The elder and the younger, taking stand 
 On Art's supreme, — or that yourself who sang 
 A Song where flute-breath silvers trumpet- 
 clang. 
 And stations you for once on either hand 
 With Milton and with Keats, empowered to 
 
 claim 
 Affinity on just one point — (or blame 
 Or praise my judgment, thus it fronts you 
 
 full) - 
 How came it you resume the void and null, 
 Subside to insignificance, — live, die 
 
960 
 
 PARLEYINGS \VITH CERTAIN PEOPLE 
 
 — Proved plainly two mere mortals who drew 
 
 nigh 
 One moment — that, to Art's best hierarchy, 
 This, to the supbriiuinan poet-pair J* 
 What if, in one point only, then and there 
 The otherwise all-nnapproachable 
 Allowed impingement ? Does the sphere pre- 
 tend 
 To span the cube's breadth, cover end to end 
 Thfc plane with its embrace? No, surely 1 
 
 StiU, 
 Contact is contact, sphere's touch no whit less 
 Than cube's superiniposure. Such success 
 Befell Smart only out of throngs between 
 Milton and Keats that donned the singing- 
 dress — 
 Smart, solely of such songmen, pierced the 
 
 screen 
 'Twixt thing and word, lit language straight 
 
 from soul, — 
 Left no fine film-flake on the naked coal 
 Live from the censer — shapely or uncouth, 
 Fire-suffused through and through, one blaze 
 
 of truth 
 Undeadened by a lie, — (you have my mind) — 
 For, think 1 this blaze outleapt with black be- 
 hind 
 And blank before, when Hayley and the 
 
 rest . . . 
 But let the dead successors worst and best 
 Bury their dead : with life be my concern — 
 Yours with the fire-flame : what I fain would 
 
 learn 
 Is just — (suppose me haply ignorant 
 Down to the common knowledge, doctoi-s 
 
 vaunt) 
 Just this — why only once the fire-flame was : 
 No matter if the marvel came to pass 
 The way folk judged — if power too long sup- 
 pressed 
 Broke loose and maddened, as the vulgar 
 
 Or simply brain-disorder (doctors said), 
 A turmoil of the particles disturbed. 
 Brain's workaday performance in your head. 
 Spurred spirit to wild action health had curbed. 
 And so verse issued in a cataract 
 Whence prose, before and after, unperturbed 
 Was wont to wend its way. Concede the fact 
 That here a poet was who always could — 
 Never before did — never after would — 
 Achieve the feat : how were such fact ex- 
 plained ? 
 
 Was it that when, by rarest chance, there 
 
 fell 
 Disguise from Nature, so that Truth remained 
 Naked, and whoso saw for once could tell 
 Us others of her majesty and might 
 In large, her lovelinesses infinite 
 In little, — straight you used the power where- 
 with 
 Sense, penetrating as through rind to pith 
 Each object, thoroughly revealed might view 
 And comprehend the old things thus made new. 
 So that while eye saw, soul to tongue could 
 trust 
 
 Thing which struck word out, and once more 
 
 adjust 
 Real vision to right language, tiU heavens 
 
 vault 
 Pompous with sunset, storm-stirred sea s as- 
 sault 
 On the swilled rock-ridge, earth's embosomed 
 
 brood 
 Of tree and flower and weed, with all the life 
 That flies or swims or crawls, in peace or strife, 
 Above, below, — each had its note and name 
 For Man to know by, — Man who, now — the 
 
 same 
 As erst in Eden, needs that all he sees 
 Be named him ere he note by what degrees 
 Of strength and beauty to its end Design 
 Ever thus operates — (your thought and mine, 
 No matter for the many dissident) — 
 So did you sing your Song, so truth found vent 
 In words for once vrith you ? 
 
 Then — back was furled 
 The robe thus thrown aside, and straight the 
 
 world 
 Darkened into the old oft-catalogued 
 Repository of things that sky, wave, land. 
 Or show or hide, clear late, accretion-dogged 
 Now, just as long ago, by tellings and 
 Re-tellings to satiety, which strike 
 Muffled upon the eai''s drum. Very like 
 None was so startled as yourself when friends 
 Came, hailed your fast -returning wits : 
 
 " Health mends 
 Importantly, for — to be plain with you — 
 This scribble on the wall was done — in lieu 
 Of pen and paper — with — ha, ha ! — your key 
 Denting it on the wainscot ! Do you see 
 How wise our caution was ? Thus much we 
 
 stopped 
 Of babble that had else grown print : and 
 
 lopped 
 From your trim bay-tree this unsightly bough — 
 Smart's who translated Horace ! Write ns 
 
 now" . . . 
 Why, what Smart did write — never afterward 
 One line to show that he, who paced the sward, 
 Had reached the zenith from his madhouse cell. 
 
 Was it because you judged (I know full well 
 You never had the fancy) — judged — as some — 
 That who makes poetry must reproduce 
 Thus ever and thus only, as they come, 
 Each strength, each beauty, everywhere diffuse 
 Throughout creation, so that eye and ear. 
 Seeing and hearing, straight shall recognize. 
 At touch of just a trait, the strength appear, — 
 Suggested by a line's lapse see arise 
 All evident the beauty, — fresh surprise 
 Startling at fresh achievement ? So, indeed, 
 Wallows the whale's bulk in the waste of brine. 
 Nor otherwise its feather-tufts make fine 
 Wild Virgin's Bower when stars faint off to 
 
 seed!" 
 (My prose — your poetry I dare not give, 
 Purpling too much my mere gray argument.) 
 — Was it because you judged — when fugitive 
 
WITH GEORGE BUBB DODINGTON 
 
 Was glory found, and wholly gone and spent 
 bucli power of startling up deaf ear, blind eye 
 At truth s appearance, — that you humWy bent 
 Ihe head and, bidding vivid work good-by. 
 Doffed lyne dress and trod the world once more 
 A drab-clothed decent proseman as before ? 
 Strengths, beauties, by one word's flash thus 
 
 laid bare 
 — That was effectual service : made aware 
 Of strengths and beauties, Man but hears the 
 
 text, 
 Awaits your teaching. Nature ? What comes 
 
 next? 
 Why all the strength and beauty ? — to be 
 
 shown 
 Thus in one word's flash, thenceforth let alone 
 By Man who needs must deal with aught that 's 
 
 known 
 Never so lately and so little ? Friend, 
 First give us knowledge, then appoint its use ! 
 Strength, beauty are the means: ignore their 
 
 end ? 
 As well you stopped at proving how profuse 
 Stones, sticks, nay stubble lie to left and right 
 Ready to help the builder, — careless quite 
 If he should take, or leave the same to strew 
 Earth idly, — as by word's flash bring in view 
 Strength, beauty, then bid who beholds the 
 
 same 
 Go on beholding. Why gains unemployed ? 
 Nature was made to be by Man enjoyed 
 First ; followed duly by enjoyment's fruit. 
 Instruction — haply leaving joy behind : 
 And you, the instructor, would you slack pursuit 
 Of the main prize, as poet help mankind 
 Just to enjoy, there leave them ? Play the fool, 
 Abjuring a superior privilege ? 
 Please simply when your function is to rule — 
 By thought incite to deed ? From edge to edge 
 Of earth's round, strength and beauty every- 
 where 
 Pullulate — and must you particularize 
 AH, each and every apparition ? Spare 
 Yourself and us the trouble ! Ears and eyes 
 Want so much strength and beauty, and no less 
 Nor more, to learn life's lesson by. Oh, yes — 
 The other method 's favored in our day ! 
 The end ere the beginning ; as you may 
 Master the heavens before you study earth, 
 Make you familiar with the meteor's birth 
 Ere you descend to scrutinize the rose ! 
 1 say, o'erstep no least one of the rows 
 That lead man from the bottom where he plants 
 Foot first of all, to life's last ladder-top : 
 Arrived there, vain enough will seem the vaunts 
 Of those who say — " We scale the skies, then 
 
 drop 
 To earth — to find, how all things there are loth 
 To answer heavenly law : we understand 
 The meteor's course, and-lo, the rose's growth — 
 How other than should be by law's command ! ' ' 
 Would not you tell such — " Friends, beware 
 
 lest fume 
 Offuscate sense : learn earth first ere presume 
 To teach heaven legislation. Law must be 
 Active in earth or nowhere : earth you see, — 
 Or there or not at all, Will, Power and Love 
 Admit discovery, — as below, above 
 
 961 
 
 Seek next law's confirmation ! But reverse 
 ihe order, where 's the wonder things grow 
 
 worse 
 Than, by the law your fancy formulates, 
 wu-^Lxl"'^ ^ ? *^«^« *™™ anger at the fates 
 Which thwart themselves so madly. Live and 
 
 learn. 
 Not first learn and then live, is our concern. 
 
 WITH GEORGE BUBB DODINGTON 
 
 I 
 
 Ah, George Bnbb Dodington Lord Melcombe, 
 
 — no. 
 Yours was the wrong way ! — always under- 
 stand. 
 Supposing that permissibly you planned 
 How statesmanship — your trade — in outward 
 
 show 
 Might figure as inspired by simple zeal 
 For serving country, king and commonweal, 
 (Though service tire to death the body, tease 
 The soul from out an o'ertasked patriot-drudge) 
 And yet should prove zeal's outward show agrees 
 In all respects — right reason being judge — 
 With inward care that, while the statesman 
 
 spends 
 Body and soul thus freely for the sake 
 Of public good, his private welfare take 
 No harm by such devotedness. Intends 
 Scripture aught else — let captious folk in- 
 quire — 
 Which teaches " Laborers deserve their hire. 
 And who neglects his household bears the bell 
 Away of sinning from an infidel" ? 
 Wiselier would fools that carp bestow a thought 
 How birds build nests ; at outside, roughly 
 
 wrought. 
 Twig knots with twig, loam plasters up each 
 
 chink. 
 Leaving the inmate rudely lodged — you think ? 
 Peep but inside 1 That specious rude-and- 
 
 rough 
 Covers a domicile where downy fluff 
 Embeds the ease-deserving architect. 
 Who toiled and moiled not merely to effect 
 'Twixt sprig and spray a stoi)-gap in the teeth 
 Of wind and weather, guard what swung be- 
 neath 
 From upset only, but contrived himself 
 A snug interior, warm and soft and sleek. 
 Of what material ? Oh, for that, you seek 
 How nature prompts each volatile ! Thus — pelf 
 Smoothens the human mudlark's lodging, power 
 Demands some hardier wrappage to embrace 
 Robuster heart-beats : rock, not tree nor tower, 
 Contents the building eagle : rook shoves close 
 To brother rook on branch, while crow morose 
 Apart keeps balance perched on topmost bough. 
 No sort of bird but suits his taste somehow : 
 Nay, Darwin tells of such as love the bower — 
 His bower-birds opportunely yield us yet 
 The lacking instance when at loss to get 
 A feathered parallel to what we find 
 The secret motor of some mighty mind 
 That worked such wonders — all for vanity ! 
 Worked them to haply figure in the eye 
 
962 
 
 PARLEYINGS WITH CERTAIN PEOPLE 
 
 Of intimates as first of— doers' kind ? 
 Actors', that work in earnest sportively, ,, 
 Paid by a sourish smile. How says the Sage ? 
 Birds born to, strut prepare a platf orm-sta^e 
 With sparkling stones and speckled shells, all 
 
 sorts 
 Of slimy rubbish, odds and ends and orts. 
 Whereon to pose and posture and engage 
 The priceless female simper. 
 
 II 
 
 I have gone 
 Thus into detail, George Bubb Dodington, 
 Lest, when I take you presently to task 
 For the wrong way of working, you should ask 
 *' What fool conjectures that profession means 
 Performance ? that who goes behind the scenes 
 Finds, — acting over, — still the soot -stuff 
 
 screens 
 Othello's visage, still the self-same cloak's 
 Bugle-bright-blackness half reveals half chokes 
 Hamlet's emotion, as ten minutes since ? " 
 No, each resumes his garb, stands — Moor or 
 
 prince — 
 Decently draped : just so with statesmanship 1 
 All outside show, in short, is sham — why 
 
 , wince ? 
 Concede me — while our parley lasts ! You trip 
 Afterwards — lay but this to heart ! (there 
 
 lurks 
 Somewhere in all of us a lump which irks 
 Spmewhat the spriteliest-scheming brain that 's 
 
 bent 
 On brR.ve adventure, would but heart consent !) 
 -t Here trip you, that — your aim allowed as 
 
 right — 
 Your means thereto were wrong. Oome, we, 
 
 , , this night, ^ ; , 
 
 Profess one purpose, hold one principle, 
 Are at odds only as to — not the will 
 But way of winning solace for ourselves , 
 — No matter if the ore for which zeal delves 
 Be gold or coprolite, while zeal's pretence 
 Is — we do good to men at — whose expense 
 But ours ? who tire the body, tease the soul. 
 Simply that, running, we may reach fame's goal 
 And wreathe at last oiir brows with bay — tlie 
 
 State's 
 Disinterested slaves, nay — please the Fates — . 
 Saviors and nothing less : such lot has been ! 
 Statesmanship triumphs pedestalled, serene, — 
 happy consummation ,! — brought about 
 By managing with skill the rabole-rout 
 For which we labor (never mind the name — 
 People or populace, for praise or blame) 
 Making them understand — their heaven, their 
 
 hell, , 
 Their every hope and fear is ours as. well. 
 Man's cause — what other can we have at heart ? 
 Whence follows that, the necessary part . 
 High o'er Man's head we play, — and freelier 
 
 breathe 
 Just that the multitude which gasps beneath 
 May reach the level where unstifled stand 
 Ourselves at vantage to put forth a hand, 
 Assist the prostrate public. 'T is by right 
 Merely of such pretence, we reach the height 
 
 Where storms abound, to brave — nay, court 
 
 their stress. 
 Though all too well aware — of pomp the less, 
 Of peace the more ! But who are we, to spurn 
 For peace' sake, duty's pointing ? Up, then — 
 
 earn 
 Albeit no prize we may but martyrdom ! 
 Now, such fit height to launch salvation from. 
 How get and gain ? Since help must needs be 
 
 craved ' 
 
 By would-be saviours of the else-unsaved, 
 H!ow coax them to co-operate, lend a lift, 
 Kneel down and let us mount ? 
 
 You say, " Make shift 
 By sham— the harsh word: preach and teach, 
 
 persuade 
 Somehow the Public — not despising aid 
 Of salutary artifice — we seek 
 Solely their good : our strength would raise the 
 
 weak. 
 Our cultivated knowledge supplement 
 Their rudeness, rawness : why to us were lent 
 Ability except to come in use ? 
 Who loves his kind must by all means induce 
 That kind to let his love play freely, press 
 Li Man's behalf to full performance ! " 
 
 Yes— 
 Yes, George, we know 1 — whereat they hear, 
 
 believe. 
 And bend the knee, and on the neck receive 
 Who fawned and cringed to purpose ? Not so, 
 
 , George ! , , 
 Try simple falsehood on shrewd folk who forge 
 Lies of superior fashion day by day 
 And hour by hour ? With craftsmen: versed as 
 
 they 
 What chance of competition when the tools 
 Only a novice wields ? Are knaves such fools ? 
 Disinterested patriots, spare your tongue 
 The tones thrice-silvery, cheek save smiles it 
 
 flung 
 Pearl-like profuse to swine — a herd, whereof 
 No unit needs be taught, his neighbor's trough 
 Scarce holds for who but grunts and whines the 
 
 Due to a wrinkled snout that shows sharp tusks. 
 No animal — ranch less our lordly Man — 
 Obeys its like : with strength all rule began. 
 The stoutest awes the pasture. Soon succeeds 
 Discrimination, — nicer power Man needs 
 To rule him than is bred of bone and thew : 
 Intelligence must move strength's self. This 
 
 too 
 Lasts but its time : the multitude at length 
 Looks inside for intelligence and strengui 
 And finds them here and there to pick and 
 
 "All at your service, mine, see!" Ay, but 
 
 who 's 
 My George, at this late day, to make his boast 
 " In strength, intelligence, I rule the roast. 
 Beat, all and some, the ungraced who crowd 
 
 your ranks ? " 
 
WITH GEORGE BUBB DODINGTON 
 
 " Oh, but I love, would lead you, gain your 
 
 thanks 
 By unexampled yearning' for Man's sake — 
 Fusion that solely waits your help to take 
 Effect in action ! " George, which one of us 
 But holds with his own heart communion thus : 
 
 I am, if not of men the first and best. 
 Still — to receive enjoyment — properest : 
 Which since by force I cannot, nor by wit 
 Most likelj; — craft must serve in place of it. 
 Flatter, cajole I If so I bring within 
 My net the gains which wit and force should 
 
 win. 
 What hinders ? " 'T is a trick we know of old : 
 Try, George, some other of tricks manifold ! 
 The multitude means mass and mixture — right I 
 Are mixtures simple, pray, or composite ? 
 Dive into Man, your medley : see the waste I 
 Sloth-stifled genius, energy disgraced 
 By ignorance, high aims with sorry skill. 
 Will without means and means in want of will 
 
 — Sure we might fish, from out the mothers' sons 
 That welter thus, a dozen Dodingtons ! 
 
 Why call up Dodington, and none beside, 
 To take his seat upon our ba^ks and ride 
 A.S statesman conquering and to conquer ? Well, 
 The last expedient, which must needs excel 
 Those old ones — this it is, — at any rate 
 To-day's conception thus I formulate : 
 As simple force has been replaced, just so 
 Must simple wit be ; men have got to know 
 Such wit as what you boast is nowise held 
 The wonder once it was, but, paralleled 
 Too plentifully, counts not, — puts to shame 
 Modest possessors like yourself who claim. 
 By virtue of it merely^ power and place 
 
 — Which means the sweets of office. Since our 
 
 race 
 Teems with the like of you, some special gift, 
 Your very own, must coax our hands to lift, 
 4.nd backs to bear you : is it just and right 
 To privilege your nature ? 
 
 " State things quite 
 Other than so " — make answer ! "I pretend 
 No such community with men. Perpend 
 My key to domination ! Who would use 
 Man for his pleasure needs raiist introduce 
 The element that awes Man. Once for all. 
 His nature owns a Supernatural 
 In fact as well as phrase — which found must be 
 '— Where, in this doubting age ? Old mystery 
 Has served its turn — seen through and sent 
 
 adrift 
 To nothingness : new wizard-craft makes shift 
 Nowadays shorn of help by robe and book, — 
 Otherwise, elsewhere, for success must look 
 Than chalked-ring, incantation-gibberish. 
 Somebody comes to conjure : that 's he ? Pish ! 
 He 's like the roomful of rapt gazers, — there 's 
 No sort of difference in the garb he wears 
 From ordinary dressing, — gesture, speech, 
 Deportment, just like those of all and each 
 That eye their master of the minute. Stay ! 
 What of the something — call it how you may — 
 Uncanny in the — quack ? That 's easy said I 
 Notice how the Professor turns no head 
 
 963 
 
 And yet takes cognizance of who accepts. 
 Denies, is puzzled as to the adept's 
 Supremacy, yields up or lies in wait 
 To trap the trickster I Doubtless, out of date 
 Are dealings with the devil : yet, the stir 
 Of mouth, its smile half smug half sinister. 
 Mock-modest boldness masked in diffidence, — 
 What if the man have — who knows how or 
 
 whence ? — 
 Confederate potency unguessed by us — 
 Prove no such cheat as he pretends f " 
 
 _. Ay, thus 
 
 Had but my George played statesmanship's 
 
 new card 
 That carries all! "Since we"— avers the 
 
 Bard — 
 "' All of us have one human heart " — as good 
 As say — by all of us is understood 
 Bight and wrong, true and false — in rough, at 
 
 least, 
 We own a common conscience. God, man, 
 
 beast — ■ 
 How should we qualify the statesman-shape 
 I fancy standing with our world agape ? 
 Disguise, flee, fight against with tooth and nail 
 The outrageous designation I " Quack " men 
 
 quail 
 Before ? You see, a little year ago 
 They heard him thunder at the thing which, lo, 
 To-day he vaunts for unscathed, while what erst 
 Heaven-high he lauded, lies hell-low, accursed ! 
 And yet where 's change ? Who, awe-struck, 
 
 cares to point 
 Critical finger at a dubious joint 
 In armor, true ms triplex, breast and back 
 Binding about, defiant of attack. 
 An imperturbability that 's — well. 
 Or innocence or impudence — how tell 
 One from the other? Could ourselves broach 
 
 lies. 
 Yet brave mankind with those unaltered eyes, 
 Those lips that keep the quietude of truth ? 
 Dare we attempt the like ? What quick uncouth 
 Disturbance of thy smug economy, 
 coward visage ! Straight would all descry 
 Back on the man's brow the boy's blush once 
 
 more! 
 No : he goes deeper — - could our sense explore — 
 Finds conscience beneath conscience such as 
 
 ours. 
 Genius is not so rare, — prodigious powers — 
 Well, others boast such, — but a power like thia 
 Mendacious intrepidity — quid vis ? 
 Besides, imposture plays another game. 
 Admits of no diversion from its aim 
 Of captivating hearts, sets zeal afiare 
 In every shape at every turn, — nowhere 
 Allows subsidence into ash. By stress 
 Of what does guile succeed but earnestness. 
 Earnest word, look and gesture ? Touched 
 
 with aught 
 But earnestness, the levity were fraught 
 With ruin to guile's filin-work. Grave is 
 
 guile ; 
 Here no act wants its qualifyin|f smile. 
 Its covert pleasantry to neutralize 
 
964 
 
 PARLEYINGS WITH CERTAIN PEOPLE 
 
 The outward ardor. Can our chief despise 
 
 Even while most he seems to adulate ? 
 
 As who should say "What though it be my 
 
 fate 
 To deal with fools ? Among the crowd must 
 
 lurk 
 Some few with faculty to judge my work 
 Spite of its way w^lich suits, they understand, 
 The crass majority ; — the Sacred Band, 
 No duping them forsooth I " So tells a touch 
 Of subintelligential nod and wink — 
 Turning foes friends. Coarse flattery moves 
 
 the gorge : 
 Mine were the mode to awe the many, George 1 
 They guess you half despise them while most 
 
 bent 
 On demonstrating that your sole intent 
 Strives for their service. Sneer at them ? 
 
 Yourself 
 'T is you disparage, — tricksy as an elf. 
 Scorning what most you strain to bring to pass. 
 Laughingly careless, — triply cased in brass, — 
 While pushing strenuous to the end in view. 
 What follows ? Why, you formulate within 
 The vulgar headpiece this conception : " Win 
 A master-mind to serve us needs we must, 
 One who, from moti' 3S we but take on trust, 
 Acts strangelier — haply wiselier than we 
 
 know 
 Stronglier, for certain. Did he say ' I throw 
 Aside my good for yours, in all I do 
 Care nothing for myself and all for you ' — 
 We should both understand and disbelieve : 
 Said he, ' Your good I laugh at in my sleeve. 
 My own it is I solely labor at. 
 Pretending yours the while ' — that, even that. 
 We, understanding well, ^ve credence to, 
 And so will none of it. But here 't is through 
 Our recognition of his service, wage 
 Well earned by work, he mounts to such a stage 
 Above competitors as all save Bnbb 
 Would agonize to keep. Yet — here 's the 
 
 rub — 
 So slightly does he hold by our esteem 
 Which solely fixed him fast there, that we seem 
 Mocked every minute to our face, by gibe 
 And jest — scorn insuppressive : what ascribe 
 The rashness to? Our pay and praise to 
 
 boot — 
 Do these avail him to tread under foot 
 Something inside us all and each, that stands 
 Somehow instead of somewhat which com- 
 mands 
 ' Lie not ' ? Folk fear to jeopardize their soul, 
 Stumble at times, walk straight upon the 
 
 whole, — 
 That 's nature's simple instinct : what may be 
 The portent here, the influence such as we 
 Are strangers to ? " — 
 
 Exact the thing I call 
 Man's despot, just the Supernatural 
 Which, George, was wholly out of — far be- 
 yond 
 Your theory and practice. You had conned 
 But to reject the precept *' To succeed 
 In gratifying selfishness and greed, 
 
 Asseverate such qualities exist 
 Nowise within yourself ! then make acquist 
 By all means, with no sort of fear I " Alack, 
 That well-worn lie is obsolete ! Fall back 
 On still a working pretext — " Hearth and 
 
 Home, 
 The Altar, love of England, hate of Rome " — 
 That 's serviceable lying — that perchance 
 Had screened you decently : but 'ware ad- 
 vance 
 By one step more in perspicacity 
 Of these our dupes ! At length they get to see 
 As through the earlier, this the latter plea— 
 And find the greed and selfishness at source ! 
 Verdum est adtriarios : last resource 
 Should be to what but — exquisite disguise 
 Disguise-abjuring, truth that looks like lies. 
 Frankness so sure to meet with unbelief ? 
 Say — you hold in contempt — not them in 
 
 ehi^f — 
 But first and foremost your own self ! No use 
 In men but to make sport for you, induce 
 The puppets now to dance, now stand stock- 
 still, 
 Now knock their heads together, at your will 
 For will's sake only — while each plays his 
 
 part 
 Submissive : why ? through terror at the 
 
 heart: 
 " Can it be — this bold man, whose hand we saw 
 Openly pull the wires, obeys some law 
 Quite above Man's — nay, God's ? " On face 
 
 fall they. 
 This was the secret missed, again I say. 
 Out of your power to grasp conception of. 
 Much less employ to purpose. Hence the scoff 
 That greets your very name ; folk see but one 
 Fool more, as well as knave, in Dodington. 
 
 WITH FRANCIS FURINI 
 
 Nay, thatf Furini, never I at least 
 
 Mean to believe ! What man you were I 
 
 know. 
 While you walked Tuscan earth, a painter- 
 priest. 
 Something about two hundred years ago. 
 Priest — you did duty punctual as the sun 
 That rose and set above Saint Sano's church, 
 Blessing Mugello : of your flock not one 
 But showed a whiter fleece because of smirch, 
 Your kind hands wiped it clear from : were 
 
 they poor ? 
 Bounty broke bread apace, — did marriage lag 
 For just the want of moneys that ensure 
 Fit hearth-and-home provision ? — straight your 
 
 bag 
 Unplumped itself, — reached hearts by way of 
 
 palms 
 Goodwill's shake had but tickled. All about 
 Mugello valley, felt some parish qualms 
 At worship offered in bare walls without 
 The comfort of a picture ? — prompt such need 
 Our painter would supply, and throngs to see 
 Witnessed that goodness — no unholy greed 
 Of gain — had coaxed from Don Furini — he 
 
WITH FRANCIS FURINI 
 
 96s 
 
 Whom princes might in vain implore to toil 
 For worldly profit — such a masterpiece. 
 Brief — priest, you poured profuse God's wine 
 
 and oil 
 Praiseworthily, I know : shall prabing; cease 
 When, priestly vesture put aside, mere man, 
 You stand for judgment ? Rather — what ac- 
 claim 
 — ** Good son, good brother, friend in whom we 
 
 scan 
 No fault nor flaw " — salutes Furini's name, 
 The loving as the liberal ! Enough : 
 Only to ope a lily, though for sake 
 Of setting free its scent, disturbs the rough 
 Loose gold about its anther. I shall take 
 No blame in one more blazon, last of all — 
 Good painter were you ; if in very deed 
 I styled you great — what modern art dares 
 
 call 
 My word in question ? Let who will take heed 
 Of what he seeks and misses in your brain 
 To balance that precision of the brush 
 Your hand could ply so deftly : all in vain 
 Strives poet's power for outlet when the push 
 Is lost upon a barred and bolted gate 
 Of painter's impotency. Agnolo — 
 Thme were alike the head and hand, by fate 
 Doubly endowed ! Who boasts head only — woe 
 To hand's presumption should brush emulate 
 Fancy's free passage by the pen, and show 
 Thought wrecked and ruined where the inex- 
 pert 
 Foolhardy fingers half grasped, half let go 
 FUm -wings the poet's pen arrests unhurt ! 
 No — painter such as that miraculous 
 Michael, who deems you ? But the ample gift 
 Of gracing walls else blank of this our house 
 Of life with imagery, one bright drift 
 Poured forth by pencil, — man and woman 
 
 mere. 
 Glorified till half owned for gods, — the dear 
 Fleshly perfection of the human shape, — 
 This was apportioned you whereby to praise 
 Heaven and bless earth. Who clumsily essays, 
 By slighting painter's craft, to prove the ape 
 Of poet's pen-creation, just betrays 
 Twofold ineptitude. 
 
 By such sure ways 
 Do I return, Furini, to my first 
 And central confidence — that he I proved 
 Good priest, good man, good pamter, and re- 
 Praise upon praise to show — not simply loved 
 For virtue, but for wisdom honored too 
 Needs must Furini be, — it follows — who 
 Shall undertake to breed in me belief 
 That, on his death-bed, weakness played the 
 
 thief . „ 
 
 With wisdom, folly ousted reason quite t 
 List to the chronicler ! With main and might — 
 So fame runs — did the poor soul beg his 
 
 To buy and bum his hand-work, make amends 
 For having reproduced therein — (Ah me ! 
 Sighs fame — that 's friend Filippo) — nudity ! 
 Yes I assure you : he would paint — not men 
 
 Merely — a pardonable fault — but when 
 He haid to deal with — oh, not mother Eve 
 Alone, permissibly in Paradise 
 Naked and unashamed, — but dared achieve 
 Dreadful distinction, at soul-safety's price. 
 By also painting women — (why the need ?) 
 Just as God made them : there, you have the 
 
 truth ! 
 Yes, rosed from top to toe in flush of youth. 
 One foot upon the moss-fringe, would some 
 
 Nymph 
 Try, with its venturous fellow, if the lymph 
 Were chillier than the slab-stepped fountain- 
 
 The while a-heap her garments on its ledge 
 Of boulder lay within hand's easy reach, 
 
 — No one least kid-skin cast around her 1 
 
 Speech 
 Shrinks from enumerating case and case 
 Of — were it but Diana at the chase. 
 With tunic tucked discreetly hunting-high ! 
 No, some Queen Venus set our necks awry. 
 Turned faces from the painter's all-too-frank 
 Triumph pf flesh 1 For — whom had he to 
 
 thank 
 
 — This self-appointed nature-student? Whence 
 Picked he up practice ? By what evidence 
 Did he unhandsomely become adept 
 
 In simulating bodies ? How except 
 
 By actual sight of such ? Himself confessed 
 
 The enormity : quoth Philip, " When I pressed 
 
 The painter to acknowledge his abuse 
 
 Of artistry else potent— what excuse 
 
 Made the infatuated man ? I give 
 
 His very words : ' Did you but know, as I, 
 
 — scruple-splitting sickly-sensitive 
 Mild-moral-monger, what the agony 
 Of Art is ere Art satisfy herself 
 
 In imitating Nature — (Man, poor elf , _ 
 Striving to match the finger-mark of Him 
 The immeasurably matchless) — gay or grim, 
 Pray, would your smile be ? Leave mere fools 
 
 to tax 
 Art's high-strung brain's intentness as so lax 
 That, in its mid-throe, idle fancy sees 
 The moment for sidmittance ! ' Pleadings 
 
 Specious, I grant." So adds, and seems to wince 
 Somewhat, our censor — but shall truth con- 
 vince 
 Blockheads like Baldinucci ? 
 
 I resume 
 My incredulity : your other kind 
 Of soul, Furini, never was so blind. 
 Even through death-mist, as to grope in gloom 
 For cheer beside a bonfire piled to turn 
 Ash s and dust all that your noble lite 
 Did homage to life's Lord by, -bid them bum 
 — These Baldinucci blockheads — pictures nle 
 With record, in each rendered loveliness. 
 That one appreciative creature s debt 
 Of thanks to the Creator, more or less. 
 Was paid according as heart's-wiU had met 
 Hand's-power in Art's endeavor to express 
 Heaven's most consummate of achievements, 
 bless 
 
966 
 
 PARLEYINGS WITH CERTAIN PEOPLE 
 
 Earth by a semblance of the seal God set 
 On woman his supremest work. I trust 
 Rather, Furini, dying breath had vent 
 In some fine fervor of thanksgiving jnst 
 For this — that soul and body's power you 
 
 spent — 
 Agonized to adumbrate, trace in dust 
 That marvel which we dream the firmament 
 Copies in star-device when fancies stray 
 Outlining, orb by orb, Andromeda — 
 God's best of beauteous and magnificent 
 Revealed to earth — the naked female form. 
 Nay, I mistake not : wrath that 's but luke- 
 warm 
 Would boil indeed were such a critic styled 
 Himself an artist : artist ! Ossa piled 
 Topping Olympus — the absurd which crowns 
 The extravagant — whereat one laughs, not 
 
 frowns.. 
 Paints he ? One bids the poor pretender take 
 His sorry self, a trouble and disgrace,' 
 From out the sacred presence, void the place 
 Artists claim only. What — not merely wake 
 Our pity that suppressed concupiscence '^- 
 A satyr masked as matron — makes pretence 
 To the coarse blue-fly's instinct — can perceive 
 No better reason why she should exist — 
 
 — God's lily - linibed and blushrose - bosomed 
 
 Eve — 
 Than as a hot-bed for the sensualist 
 To fly-blow with his fancies, make pure stuff 
 Breed him back filth — this were not crime 
 
 enough ? 
 But further — fly to style itself — nay, more — 
 To steal among the sacred ones, crouch down 
 Though but to where their garments > sweep the 
 
 floor — 
 
 — Still catching some faint sparkle from the 
 
 crown 
 Crowning transcendent Michael, Leonard, 
 Rafael, — to sit beside the feet of such, 
 Unspumed because unnoticed, then reward 
 Their toleration — mercy overmuch — 
 By stealing from the throne-step to the fools 
 Curious outside the gateway, all-agape 
 To learn by what procedure, in the schools 
 Of Art, a merest man in outward shape 
 May learn to be Correggio ! Old and young, 
 These learners got their lesson : Art was just 
 A safety - screen — (Art, which Correggio's 
 
 tongue 
 Calls " Virtue ") — for a skulking vice: mere 
 
 lust 
 Inspired the artist when his Night and Mom 
 Slept and awoke in marble on that edge , 
 Of heaven above our awe-struck earth : lust- 
 born 
 His Eve low bending took the privilege 
 Of life from what our eyes saw — God's own 
 
 palm 
 That put the flame forth — to the love and 
 
 thanks 
 Of all creation save this recreant ! 
 
 Calm 
 Our phrase, Furini ! Not the artist-ranks 
 Claim riddance of an interloper : no — 
 
 This Baldinuoci did but grunt and sniff 
 Outside Art's pale — ay, grubbed, where pme- 
 
 trees grow, 
 For pignuts only. 
 
 V 
 
 You the Sacred ! If 
 Indeed on you has been bestowed the dower 
 Of Art in fulness, graced -with head and hand, 
 Head — to look up not downwards, hand — of 
 
 power 
 To make head's gain the portion of a world 
 Where else the uninstructed ones too sure 
 Would take all outside beauty — film that 's 
 
 furled 
 About a star — for the star's self, endure 
 No guidance to the central glory, — nay, 
 (Sadder) might apprehend the film was fog. 
 Or (worst) wish all but vapor well away. 
 And sky's pure product thickened from earth's 
 
 bog — 
 Since so, nor seldom, have your worthiest 
 
 failed 
 To trust their own soul's insight — why ? except 
 For warning that the head of the adept 
 May too much prize the hand, work unassailed 
 By scruple of the better sense that finds 
 An orb within each halo, bids gross fiesh 
 Free the fine spirit-pattern, nor enmesh 
 More than is meet a marvel, custom blinds 
 Only the vulgar eye to. Now, less fear 
 That you, the foremost of Art's fellowship, 
 Will oft — will ever so offend ! But — hip 
 And thigh — smite the PhiKstine ! You — 
 
 slunk here — 
 Connived at, by too easy tolerance, 
 Not to scrape palette simply or squeeze brush, 
 But dub your very self an Artist ? Tush — 
 You, of the daubings, is it, dare advance 
 This doctrine that the Artist-mind must needs 
 Own to affinity with yotirs — confess 
 Provocative acquaintance, more or less. 
 With each impurely-peevish worm that breeds 
 Inside your brain's receptacle ? 
 
 Enough. 
 Who owns " I dare not look on diadems 
 Without an itch to pick out, purloin gems 
 Others contentedly leave sparkling " — gnrff 
 Answers the guard of the regalia : " Why — 
 Consciously kleptomaniac — thrust yourself 
 Where your illicit craving after pelf 
 Is tempted most — in the King's treasury ? 
 Go elsewhere ! Sort with thieves, if thus you 
 
 feel — 
 When folk clean-handed simply recognize 
 Treasure whereof the mere sight satisfies — 
 But straight your fingers are on itch to steal ! 
 Hence with you ! " 
 
 Pray, Furini ! 
 
 " Bounteous God, 
 Deviser and dispenser of all gifts 
 To soul through sense, — in Art the soul uplifts 
 Man's best of thanks 1 What but thy measur- 
 ing-rod 
 
WITH FRANCIS FURINI 
 
 967 
 
 Meted forth heaven and earth ? more intimate, 
 Thy very ha,nds were busied with the task 
 Of making, in this human shape, .a mask — 
 A match lor that divine. IShall love abate 
 Man's wonder ? Nowise ! True — true — all 
 
 too true — 
 No gift bnt, in the very, plenitude 
 Of its perfection, goes maimed, misconstrued 
 By wickedness or weakness : still, some few 
 Huve grace to see thy purpose, strength to mar 
 Thy work by no admixture of their own, 
 — Limn truth not falsehood, hid us love alone 
 The type untampered with, the naked star 1 " 
 
 And, prayer done, painter — what if you should 
 
 preach ? 
 Not as of old when playing pulpiteer 
 To simple-witted country folk, but here 
 In actual London try your powers of speech 
 On us the cultured, therefore skeptical — 
 What would you? For, suppose he has his 
 
 word 
 In faith's behalf, no matter how absurd, 
 This painter-theologian ? One and all 
 We lend an ear — nay. Science takes thereto — 
 Encourages the meanest who has racked 
 Nature until he gains from her some fact, 
 To state what truth is from his point of view, 
 Mere pin-point though it be : since many such 
 Conduce to make a whole) she bids our friend 
 Come forward unabashed and haply lend 
 His little life-experience to our much 
 Of modern knowledge. Since she so insiste, 
 Up stands Furini. 
 
 IX 
 
 " Evolutionists ! 
 At truth I glimpse from depths, you glance from 
 
 heights, 
 Our stations for discovery opposites, — 
 How should ensue agreement ? I explam : 
 'T is the tip-top of things to which you strain 
 Your vision, until atoms, protoplasm. 
 And what and whence and how may be the 
 
 spasm 
 Which sets all going, stop you : down pertorce 
 Needs must your observation take its course. 
 Since there 's no moving upwards : hnk by Imk 
 You drop to where the atoms somehow thmk. 
 Feel, know themselves to be: the world s 
 
 began, . . „ j 
 
 Such as we recognize it. Have you done 
 Descending? Here's ourself , — Man, known 
 
 to-day. 
 Duly evolved at last, — so far, yon say, 
 The sum and seal of being's progress. Crood I 
 Thus much at least is clearly understood — 
 Of power does Man possess no particle ; 
 Of knowledge — just so much as shows that 
 
 still 
 It ends in ignorance on every side : 
 But righteousness — ah, Man is deified 
 Thereby, for compensation ! Make survey 
 Of Man's snrronndings, try creation — nay. 
 Try emulation of the minimized 
 Minuteness fancy may conceive I Surprised 
 Beason becomes by two defeats for one — 
 
 Not only power at each phenomenon 
 BaMed, but knowledge also in default — 
 Asking what is minuteness — yonder vault 
 Speckled with suns, or this the niilliunth — 
 
 thing, 
 How shall I call ? — that on some insect's wing 
 Helps to make out in dyes the mimic star ? 
 Weak, ignorant, accordingly we are ; 
 What then ? The worse for Nature ! Where 
 
 began 
 Righteousness, moral sense except in Man ? 
 True, he makes nothing, understands no whit : 
 Had the initiatoi'-spasm seen fit 
 Thus doubly to endow him, none the worse 
 And much the better were the univei-se. 
 What does Man see or feel or apprehend 
 Here, there, and evei-ywhere, but faults to 
 
 mend. 
 Omissions to supply, — one wide disease 
 Of things that are, which Man at once would 
 
 ease 
 Had wiU but power and knowledge ? failing 
 
 both — 
 Things must take will for deed — Man, nowise 
 
 loth. 
 Accepts pre-emineney : mere blind force — 
 Mere knowledge undirected in its course 
 By any care for what is made or marred 
 In cither's operation — these award 
 The crown to ? Rather let it deck thy brows, 
 Man, whom alone a righteousness endows ^^ 
 Would cure the wide world's ailing! Who 
 
 disputes 
 Thy claim thereto ? Had Spasm more attributes 
 Than power and knowledge in its gift, before 
 Man came to pass ? The higher that we soar, 
 The less of moral sense like Man's we find : 
 No sign of such before, — what comes behind. 
 Who guesses ! But until there crown our sight 
 The quite new — not the old mere infinite 
 Of changings, — some fresh kind of sun and 
 
 moon, — 
 Then, not before, shall I expect a boon 
 Of intuition just as strange, which turns 
 Evil to good, and wrong to right, unlearns 
 All Man's experience learned since Man was he. 
 Accept in Man, advanced to this degree. 
 The Prime Mind, therefore ! neither wise nor 
 
 strong — 
 Whose fault ? but were he both, then right, not 
 
 wrong , , , 
 
 As now, throughout the world were paramount 
 According to his will, — which I account 
 The qualifying faculty. He stands 
 Confessed supreme — the monarch whose com- 
 mands ,j , 
 Could he enforce, how bettered were the world ! 
 He 's at the height this moment — to be hurled 
 Next moment to the bottom by rebound 
 Of his own peal of laughter. AU around 
 Ignorance wraps him, — whence and how and 
 
 Things are, — yet oloud breaks and lets blink 
 
 tliG skv 
 Just overhead, not elsewhere ! What assures 
 His optics that the very blue which lures 
 Comes not of black outside it, doubly dense ? 
 Ignorance overwraps his moral sense, 
 
968 
 
 PARLEYINGS WITH CERTAIN PEOPLE 
 
 Winds him about, relaxing, as it wraps. 
 
 So much and no more than lets through perhaps 
 
 The murmured knowledge — ' Ignorance exists.' 
 
 " I at the bottom, Evolutionista, 
 Advise beginning, rather. I profess 
 To know just one fact — my self-conscious- 
 ness, — 
 'Twixt ignorance and ignorance enisled, — 
 Knowledge : before me was my Cause — that 's 
 
 styled _ 
 God : after, in due course succeeds the rest, — 
 All that my knowledge comprehends — at 
 
 best — 
 At worst, conceives about in mild despair. 
 Light needs must touch on either darkness : 
 
 where ? 
 Knowledge so far impinges on the Cause 
 Before me, that I know — by certain laws 
 Wholly unknown, whate'er 1 apprehend 
 Within, without me, had its rise : thus blend 
 I, and all things perceived, in one Effect. 
 How far can knowledge any ray project 
 On what comes after me — the universe ? 
 Well, my attempt to make the cloud disperse 
 Begins — not from above but underneath : 
 I climb, you soar, — who soars soon loses breath 
 And sinks, who climbs keeps one foot firm on 
 
 fact 
 Ere hazarding the next step ; soul's first act 
 (Call consciousness the soul — some name we 
 
 need) 
 Getting itself aware, through stuff decreed 
 Thereto (so call the body) — who has stept 
 So far, there let him stand, become adept 
 In body ere he shift his station thence 
 One single hair's breadth. Do I make pretence 
 To teach, myself unskilled in learning ? Lo, 
 My life's work ! Let my pictures prove I know 
 Somewhat of what this fleshly frame of ours 
 Or is or should be, how the soul empowers 
 The body to reveal its every mood 
 Of love and hate, pour forth its plenitude 
 Of passion. If my hand attained to give 
 Thus permanence to truth else fugitive. 
 Did not I also fix each fleeting grace 
 Of form and feature — save the beauteous 
 
 face — 
 Arrest decay in transitory might 
 Of bone and muscle — cause the world to bless 
 Forever each transcendent nakedness 
 Of man and woman ? Were such feats 
 
 achieved 
 By sloth, or strenuous labor unrelieved, 
 ■^ Yet lavished vainly ? Ask that underground 
 (So may I speak) of all on surface found 
 Of flesh-perfection ! Depths on depths to probe 
 Of all-inventive artifice, disrobe 
 Marvel at hiding under marvel, pluck 
 Veil after veil from Nature — were the luck 
 Ours to surprise the secret men so name, 
 That still eludes the searcher — all the same. 
 Repays his search with still fresh proof — ' Ex- 
 
 terne, 
 Not inmost, is the Cause, fool! Look and 
 
 learn ! ' 
 Thus teach my hundred pictures : firm and fast 
 
 There did I plant my first foot. And the 
 
 next ? 
 Nowhere ! 'T was put forth and withdrawn, 
 
 perplexed 
 At touch of what seemed stable and proved 
 
 stuff 
 Such as the colored clouds are : plain enough 
 There lay the outside universe : try Man — 
 My most immediate ! and the dip began 
 From safe and solid into that profound 
 Of ignorance I tell you surges round 
 My rock-spit of self-knowledge. Well and ill. 
 Evil and good irreconcilable 
 Above, beneath, about my every side, — 
 How did this wild confusion far and wide 
 Tally with my experience when my stamp — 
 So far from stirring — struck out, each a lamp, 
 Spark after spark of truth from where I 
 
 stood — 
 Pedestalled triumph ? Evil there was good, 
 Want was the promise of supply, defect 
 Ensured completion, — where and when and 
 
 how? 
 Leave that to the First Cause ! Enough that 
 
 now, 
 Here where I stand, this moment's me and 
 
 mine. 
 Shows me what is, permits me to divine 
 What shall be. Wherefore ? Nay, how other- 
 wise? 
 Look at my pictures ! What so glorifies 
 The body that the permeating soul 
 Finds there no particle elude control 
 Direct, or fail of duty, — most obscure 
 When most subservient ? Did that Cause en- 
 sure 
 The soul such raptures as its fancy stings 
 Body to fm-nish when, uplift by wings 
 Of passion, here and now, it leaves the earth, 
 Loses itself above, where bliss has birth — 
 (Heaven, be the phrase) — did that same Cause 
 
 contrive 
 Such solace for the body, soul must dive 
 At drop of fancy's pinion, condescend 
 To bury both alike on earth, our friend 
 And fellow, where minutely exquisite 
 Low lie the pleasures, now and here — no herb 
 But hides it« marvel, peace no doubts perturb 
 In each small mystery of insect life — 
 — Shall the soul's (jause thus gift the soul, yet 
 
 strife 
 Continue still of fears with hopes, — for why ? 
 What if the Cause, whereof we now descry 
 So far the wonder-working, lack at last 
 Will, power, benevolence — a protoplast. 
 No oonsummator, sealing up the sum 
 Of all things, — past and present and to 
 
 come — 
 Perfection ? No, I have no doubt at all ! 
 There 's my amount of knowledge — gi'eat or 
 
 small. 
 Sufficient for my needs : for see I advance 
 Its light now on that depth of ignorance 
 I shrank before from — yonder where the 
 
 world 
 Lies wreck-strewn, — evil towering, prone good 
 
 — hurled 
 From pride of place, on every side. For me 
 
WITH FRANCIS FURINI 
 
 969 
 
 Patience, baaeech you !) knowledge can but be 
 Of good by knowledge of good's opposite — 
 EvU, — since, to distinguish wrong from right. 
 Both must be known in each extreme, beside — 
 (Or what means knowledge — to aspire or b.de 
 Content with half -attaining ? Hardly so !) 
 Made to know on, know ever, I must know 
 All to be known at any halting-stage 
 Of my souFs progress, such as earth, where 
 
 wage 
 War, just for soul's instruction, pain with joy. 
 Folly with wisdom, all that works annoy 
 With all that quiets and contents, — in brief, 
 Good strives with evil. 
 
 " Now then for relief, 
 Friends, of your patience kindly curbed so long. 
 ' What ? ' snarl you, ' is the fool's conceit thus 
 
 strong — 
 Must the whole outside world in soul and sense 
 Suffer, that he grow sage at its exijense ? ' 
 By no means ! 'T is by merest touch of toe 
 I try — not trench on — ignorance, just know — 
 And so keep steady footing : how you fare. 
 Caught in the whirlpool — that's the Cause's 
 
 care, 
 Strong, wise, good, — this I know at any rate 
 In my own sell, — but how may operate 
 With you — strength, wisdom, goodness — no 
 
 least blink 
 Of knowledge breaks the darkness round me. 
 
 Think ! 
 Could I see plain, be somehow certified 
 All was illusion, — evil far and wide 
 Was good disguised, — why, out with one huge 
 
 wipe 
 Goes knowledge from me. Type needs anti- 
 type: 
 As night needs day, as shine needs shade, so 
 
 good 
 Needs evil : how were pity understood 
 Unless by pain ? Make evident that pain 
 Permissibly masks pleasure — you abstain 
 From outstretch of the finger-tip that saves 
 A drowning fly. Who proffers help of hand 
 To weak Andromeda exposed on strand 
 At mercy of the monster ? Were all true. 
 Help were not wanting: ' But 'tis false,' cry 
 
 you, 
 ' Mere faney-work of paint and brush 1 ' No 
 
 Were mine the skill, the magie, to impress 
 
 Beholders with a confidence they saw 
 
 Life, — veritable flesh and blood in awe 
 
 Of just as true a sea-beast, — would they stare 
 
 Simply as now, or cry out, curse and swear, 
 
 Or call the gods to help, or catch up stick 
 
 And stone, according as their hearts were 
 
 quick 
 Or sluggish ? Well, some old artificer 
 Could do as much, — at least, so books aver, — 
 Able to make believe, while I, poor wight. 
 Make fancy, nothing more. Though wrong 
 
 were right, 
 Could we but know — still wrong must needs 
 
 seem wrong 
 To do right's service, prove men weak or 
 
 strong, 
 
 Choosers of evil or of good. ' No such 
 Illusion possible ! ' Ah, friends, you touch 
 Just here my solid standing-place amid 
 The wash and welter, whence all doubts are 
 
 bid 
 Back to the ledge they break against in foam. 
 Futility : my soul, and my soul's home 
 This body, — how each operates on each. 
 And how things outside, fact or feigning, teach 
 What good is and what evil, — just the same, 
 Be feigning or be fact the teacher, — blame 
 DifBdence nowise if, from this 1 judge 
 My point of vant^e, not an inch I budge. 
 All — for myself — seems ordered wise and 
 
 well 
 Inside it, — what reigns outside, who can tell ? 
 Contrariwise, who needs be told ' The space 
 Which yields thee knowledge, — do its bounds 
 
 embra<!e 
 Well-willing and wise-working, each at height ? 
 Enough : beyond thee lies the infinite — 
 Back to thy circimisciiption ! ' 
 
 " Back indeed ! 
 Ending where I began — thus : retrocede. 
 Who will, — what comes first, take first, I ad- 
 vise ! 
 Acquaint you with the body ere your eyes 
 Look upward : this Andromeda of mine — 
 Gaze on the beauty. Art hangs out for sign 
 There 's finer entertainment underneath. 
 Learn how they ministrate to life and death — 
 Those incommensurably marvellous 
 Contrivances which furnish forth the house 
 Where soul has sway ! Though Master keep 
 
 aloof. 
 Signs of his presence niultiply from roof 
 To basement of the building. Look around. 
 Learn thoroughly, — no fear that you confound 
 Master with messuage ! He 's away, no doubt, 
 But what if, all at once, you come upon 
 A startling proof — not that the Master gone 
 Was present lately — but that something — 
 
 whence 
 Light comes — has pushed him into residence ? 
 Was such the symbol's meaning, — old, un- 
 couth — 
 That circle of the serpent, tail in mouth ? 
 Only by looking low, ere looking high. 
 Comes penetration of the mystery." 
 
 XI 
 
 Thanks ! After sermonizing, psalmody ! 
 Now praise with pencil. Painter ! Foob attamt 
 Your fame, forsooth, because its power inclines 
 To livelier colors, more attractive lines 
 Than suit some orthodox sad sickly saint 
 — Gray male emaciation, haply streaked 
 Carmine by scourgings — or they want, far 
 
 worse — 
 Some self-acathed woman, framed to bless not 
 
 Nature that loved the form whereon hate 
 
 The wrongs you see. No. rather paint some fuU 
 Benignancy, the first and foremost boon 
 Of youth, health, strength, — show beauty 3 
 May, ere June 
 
970 
 
 PARLEYINGS WITH CERTAIN PEOPLE 
 
 Undo the bud's blush, leave a rose to cull 
 — No poppy, neither ! yet less perfect-pure, 
 Divinely-precious with life's dew besprent, 
 bhow saintliness that 's simply innocent 
 Of guessing siuuership exists to cure 
 All in good time ! In time let age advance 
 And teach that knowledge helps — not igno- 
 rance — 
 The healing of the nations. Let nay spark 
 Quicken your tinder ! Bum with — Joan of 
 
 Arc ! 
 Not at the end, nor midway when there grew 
 The brave delusions, when rare fancies flew 
 Before the eyes,. and in the ears of her 
 Strange voices woke imperiously astir : 
 No, — paint the peasant girl all peasant-like, 
 Spirit and flesh — the hour about to strike 
 When this should be transfigured, that in- 
 flamed. 
 By heart's admonishing " Thy coimtry shamed, 
 Thy king shut out of all his realm except 
 One sorry corner ! " and to life forth leapt 
 The indubitable lightning " Can there he 
 Country and king's salvation — all through 
 
 me?" 
 Memorize that burst's moment, Francis ! 
 
 Tush- 
 None of the nonsense-writing ! Fitlier brush 
 Shall clear off fancy's film-work and let show 
 Not what the foolish feign but the wise know — 
 Ask Sainte-Beuve else ! — or better, Quicherat, 
 The downright-digger into truth that 's — Bah, 
 Bettered by fiction ? Well, of fact thus much 
 Concerns you, that " of prudishness no touch 
 From first to last defaced the maid ; anon. 
 Camp-use compelling " — what says D'Alen- 
 
 50n 
 Her fast friend ? — " though I saw while she 
 
 undressed 
 How fair she was — especially her breast — 
 Never had I a wild thought ! " — as indeed 
 I nowise doubt. Much less would she take 
 
 heed — 
 When eve came, and the lake, the hills around 
 Were all one solitude and- silence, — found 
 Barriered impenetrably safe about, — 
 Take heed of interloping eyes shut out. 
 But quietly permit the air imbibe 
 Her naked beauty till . . . but hear the 
 
 scribe ! 
 Now as she fain would bathe, one even-tide, 
 God^s maid, this Joan, from the pooVs edge she 
 
 spied 
 The fair blue bird clowns call the Fisher-king: 
 And.^^ ^Las, sighed she, my Liege is such a *.hing 
 As thou, lord but of one poor lonely place 
 Out of his whole wide France : were mine the 
 
 grace 
 To set my Dauphin free as thou, blue bird ! " 
 Properly Martin-fisher — that 's the word. 
 Not yonrs nor mine : folk said the rustic 
 
 oath 
 In common use with her was — "By my 
 
 troth"? 
 No, — " By my Martin " ! Paint this 1 Only, 
 
 turn 
 Her face away — that face about to burn 
 Into an angel s when the time is ripel 
 
 That task 's beyond you. Finished, Francis ? 
 
 Wipe 
 Pencil, scrape palette,, and retire content! 
 " Omnia non omnibus " —no harm is meant ! 
 
 WITH GERARD DE LAIRESSE 
 
 The Art of Painting by Gerard le Lairesse; 
 translated by J. F. Fritsch, was the "tome " to 
 which Browning refers as having interested him 
 when he was a boy and so given rise to this 
 poem. The song at the end of the poem was 
 first printed in a small volume called The New 
 Amphion, published for the Edinburgh Dni- 
 veisity Union Fancy Fair in 1886. 
 
 Ah, but — because you were struck blind, 
 
 could bless 
 Your sense no longer with the actual view 
 Of man and woman, those fair forms you drew 
 In happier days so duteously and true, — 
 Must 1 account my Gerard de Lairesse 
 All sorrow-smitten ? He was hindered too 
 — Was this no hardship?— from producing, 
 
 plain 
 To us who still have eyes, the pageantry 
 Which passed and passed before his busy brain 
 And, captured on his canvas, showed our sky 
 Traversed by flying, shapes, earth stocked with 
 
 brood 
 Of monsters, ■ — centaurs bestial, satyrs lewd, — 
 Not without much Olympian glory, shapes 
 Of god and goddess in their gay escapes 
 From the severe serene : or haply paced 
 The antique ways, god-coiinselled, nymph-em- 
 braced. 
 Some early human kingly personage. 
 Such wonders of the teeming poet s-age 
 Were still to be : nay, these indeed began — 
 Are not the pictures extant ? — tUl the ban 
 Of blindness struck both paleitte from his 
 
 thumb 
 And pencil from his finger. 
 
 Blind — not dumb. 
 Else, Gerard, were my inmost bowels stirred 
 With pity beyond pity : no,; the word 
 Was left upon your unmolested lips : 
 Your moutn unsealed, despite of eyes' eclipse, 
 Talked all brain's yearning into birth. I lack 
 Somehow the heart to wish your practice back 
 Which boasted hand's achievement in a score 
 Of veritable pictures, less or more. 
 Still to be seen ; myself have seen them, — 
 
 moved 
 To pay due homage to the man I loved 
 Because of that prodigious book he wrote 
 Oj) Artistry's Ideal, by taldng note, , . 
 
 Making acquaintance with his artist-work. 
 So my youth's piety obtained success 
 Of all too dubious sort : for, though it irk 
 To tell the issue, few or none would guess . 
 From extant lines and colors, De Lairesse. 
 
WITH GERARD DE LAIRESSE 
 
 971 
 
 Your faculty, although each deftly-grouped 
 And aptly-ordered figure-piece was judged 
 Worthy a prince's purchase in its day. 
 Bearded experience bears not to be duped 
 Like boyish fancy : "t was a boy that budged 
 No foot s breath from your viaioned steps away 
 The while that memorable " Walk " he trudged 
 In your companionship, — the Book must say 
 Where, when and whither, — " Walk," come 
 
 what come may, 
 No measurer of steps on this our globe 
 Shall ever match for marvels. Fanstus' robe, 
 And Fortunatus' cap were gifts of price : 
 Bjit — oh, your piece of sober sound advice 
 That artists should descry abundant worth 
 In trivial commonplace, nor groan at dearth 
 If fortune bade the painter's craft be plied 
 In vulgar town and country ! Wily despond 
 Because hemmed round by Dutch canals? 
 
 Beyond 
 The ugly actual, lo, on every side 
 Imagination's limitless domain 
 Displayed a wealth of wondrous sounds and 
 
 sights 
 Eipe to be realized by poet's brain 
 Acting on painter's brush 1 "Ye doubt? 
 
 Poor wights. 
 What if I set example, go before. 
 While you come after, and we both explore 
 Holland turned Dreamland, taking care to note 
 Objects whereto my pupils may devote 
 Attention with advantage ? " 
 
 III 
 
 So commenced 
 That "Walk" amid true wonders — none to 
 
 But huge to us ignobly common-sensed. 
 Purblind, while plain could proper optics view 
 In that old sepulchre by lightning split. 
 Whereof the lid bore carven, —any dolt 
 Imagines why, — Jove's very thunderbolt : 
 You who could straight perceive, by glance at 
 
 This tomb must needs be Phaeton's! In a 
 
 Confirming that conjecture, close on hand. 
 Behold, half out, half in the ploughed;up sand, 
 A chariot-wheel explained its bolt-device : 
 What other than the Chariot of the Sun 
 Ever let drop the like ? Consult the tome — 
 I bid inglorious tarriers-at-horae — „ 
 
 For greater still surprise the while that W alk 
 Went on and on, to end as it begun, 
 Chokefnll of chances, changes, eveiy one 
 No whit less wondrous. What was there to balk 
 Ua, who had eyes, from seeing ? Yon with none 
 Missed not a marvel : wherefore 1 Let us talk. 
 
 IV 
 
 Say am I right? Your sealed sense moved 
 
 your mind, 
 Free from obstruction, to compassionate 
 Art's power left powerless, and supply the blind 
 With fancies worth all facts denied by fate. 
 Mind could invent things, add to — take away. 
 At pleasure, leaveout trift* mean and base 
 Which vex the sight thai cannot say them nay 
 
 But, where mind plays the master, have no place. 
 And bent on banishing was mind, be sure. 
 All except beauty from its mustered tribe 
 Of objects apparitional which lure 
 Painter to show and poet to describe — 
 That imagery of the anticme song 
 Truer than truth's self. Fancy's rainbow-birth 
 Conceived 'mid clouds in Greece, could glance 
 
 along 
 Your passage o'er Dutch veritable earth, 
 As with ourselves, who see, familiar throng 
 About our pacings men and women worth 
 Nowise a glance — so poets apprehend — 
 Since naught avails portraying them in verse : 
 While painters turn upon the heel, intend 
 To spare their work the critic's ready curse 
 HvA to the daily and nudignified. 
 
 I who myself contentedly abide 
 
 Awake, nor want the wings of dream, — who 
 
 tramp 
 Earth's common surface, rough, smooth, dry or 
 
 damp, 
 — I understand alternatives, no less 
 Conceive your soul's leap, Gerard de Lairesse ! 
 How were it could I mingle false with true. 
 Boast, with the sights I see, your vision too ? 
 Advantage would it prove or detriment 
 If I saw double ? Could I gaze intent 
 On Dryope plucking the blossoms red. 
 As you, whereat her lote-tree writhed and bled, 
 Yet lose no gain, no hard fast wide-awake 
 Having and holding nature for the sake 
 Of nature only — nymph and lote-tree thus 
 Gained by the loss of fruit not fabulous, 
 Apple of English homesteads, where I see 
 Nor seek more than crisp buds a struggling bee 
 Uncrumples, caught by sweet he clambers 
 
 through ? 
 Truly, a moot point : make it plain to me. 
 Who, bee-like, sate sense with the simply true, 
 Nor seek to heighten tliat sufficiency 
 By help of feignings proper to the page — 
 Earth's surface-blank whereon the elder age 
 Put color, poetizing — poured rich life 
 On what were else a dead ground — nothings 
 
 ness — 
 Until the solitary world grew rife 
 With Joves and junos, nymphs and satyrs. Yes, 
 The reaso" was, fancy composed the strife 
 'Twixt sense and soul : for sense, my De Lai- 
 resse, 
 Cannot content itself with outward things. 
 Mere beauty: soul must needs know whence 
 
 there springs — 
 How, when and why — what sense but loves, 
 
 nor lists 
 To know at all. 
 
 Not one of man's acquists 
 Ought he resignedly to lose, methinks : 
 So, point me out which was it of the links 
 Snapt first, from out the cham which used to 
 bind . , ,. J 
 
 Our earth to heaven, and yet for you, since blind, 
 Subsisted still efficient and intact ? 
 
972 
 
 PARLEYINGS WITH CERTAIN PEOPLE 
 
 Oh, we can fancy too ! but somehow fact 
 Has got to — say, not so much push aside 
 Fancy, as to declare its place supplied 
 By fact unseen but no less fact the same, 
 Which mind bids sense accept. Is mind to 
 
 blame. 
 Or sense, — does that usurp, this abdicate ? 
 First of all, as you "walked " — were it too late 
 For us to walk, if so we willed ? Confess 
 We have the sober feet still, De Lairesse ! 
 Why not the freakish brain too, that must needs 
 Supplement nature — not see flowers and weeds 
 Simply as such, but link with each and all 
 The ultimate perfection — what we call 
 Rightly enough the human shape divine ? 
 The rose ? No rose unless it disentwine 
 From Venus' wreath the while she bends to kiss 
 Her deathly love ? 
 
 Plain retrogression, this ! 
 No, no : we poets go not back at all ; 
 What you did we could do — from great to small 
 Sinking assuredly : if this world last 
 One moment longer when Man finds its Past 
 Exceed its Present — hlame the Protoplast ! 
 If we no longer see as you of old, 
 'T is we see deeper. Progress for the bold ! 
 You saw the hody, 't is the sonl we see. 
 Try now ! Bear witness while you walk with me, 
 I see as you : if we loose arms, stop pace, 
 'T is that you stand still, I conclude the race 
 Without your company. Come, walk once more 
 The " Walk : " if I to-day as you of yore 
 Seeiust like you the bliud -- then sight shall cry 
 — The whole long day quite gone through — 
 victory ! 
 
 Thunders on thunders, doubling and redoubling 
 Doom o'er the mountain, while a sharp white 
 
 fire 
 Now shone, now sheared its rusty herbage, 
 
 troubling 
 Hardly the fir-boles, now discharged its ire 
 Full where some pine-tree's solitary spire 
 Crashed down, defiant to the last : till — lo, 
 The motive of the malice ! — all aglow. 
 Circled with flame there yawned a sudden rift 
 I' the rock-face, and I saw a form erect 
 Front and defy the outrage, while — as checked, 
 Chidden, beside him dauntless in the drift — 
 Cowered a heaped creature, wing and wing out- 
 spread 
 In deprecation o'er the crouching head 
 Still hungry for the feast foregone awhile. 
 thou, of scorn's unconquerable smile. 
 Was it when this — Jove's feathered fury — 
 
 slipped 
 Gore-glutted from the heart's core whence he 
 
 ripped — 
 This eagle -hound — neither reproach nor 
 
 prayer — 
 Baffled, in one more fierce attempt to tear 
 Fate's secret from thy safeguard, — was it then 
 That all these thunders rent earth, ruined air 
 To reach thee, pay thjr patronage of men ? 
 He thundered, — to withdraw, as beast to lair, 
 
 Before the triumph on thy pallid brow. 
 Gather the night again about thee now. 
 Hate on, loVe ever ! Morn is breaking there — 
 The granite ridge pricks through the mist, 
 
 turns gold 
 As wrong turns right. laughters manifold 
 Of ocean's ripple at dull earth's despair ! 
 
 But morning's laugh sets all the crags alight 
 Above the bafSed tempest : tree and tree 
 Stir themselves from the stupor of the night. 
 And every strangled branch resumes its right 
 To breathe, shakes loose dark's clinging dregs, 
 
 waves free 
 In dripping glory. Prone the runnels plunge. 
 While earth, distent with moisture like a sponge, 
 Smokes up, and leaves each plant itf gem to see, 
 Each giass-blade's glory-glitter. Had I known 
 The torrent now turned river ? — masterful 
 Making its rush o'er tumbled ravage — stone 
 And stub which barred the froths and foams : 
 
 no bull 
 Ever broke bounds in formidable sport 
 More overwhelmingly, till lo, the spasm 
 Sets him to dare that last mad leap : report 
 Who may — his fortunes in the deathly chasm 
 That swallows him in silence ! Rather turn 
 Whither, upon the upland, pedestalled 
 Into the broad day-splendor, whom discern 
 These eyes but thee, supreme one, rightly called 
 Moon-maid in heaven above and, here below, 
 Earth's huntress-queen ? I note the garb suc- 
 cinct 
 Saving from smirch that purity of snow 
 From breast to knee — snow's self with just the 
 
 tinct 
 Of the apple-blossom's heart-blush. Ah, the 
 
 bow 
 Slack-strung her fingers grasp, where, ivory- 
 linked 
 Horn curving blends with horn, a moonlike pair 
 Which mimic the brow's crescent sparkling so — 
 As if a star's live restless fragment winked 
 Proud yet repugnant, captive in such hair ! 
 What hope along the hillside, what far bliss 
 Lets the crisp hair-plaits fall so low they kiss 
 Those lucid shoulders ? Must a morn so blithe 
 Needs have its sorrow when the twang and hiss 
 Tell that from out thy sheaf one shaft makes 
 
 writhe 
 Its victim, thou unerring Artemis ? 
 Why did the chamois stand so fair a mark 
 Arrested by the novel shape he dreamed 
 Was bred of liquid marble in the dark 
 Depths of the mountain's womb which ever 
 
 teemed 
 With novel births of wonder ? Not one spark 
 Of pity in that steel-gray glance which gleamed 
 At the poor hoof's protesting as it stamped 
 Idly the granite ? Xet me glide unseen 
 From thy proud presence : well mayst thou be 
 
 queen 
 Of all those strange and sudden deaths which 
 
 damped 
 So oft Love's torch and Hymen's taper lit 
 For happy marriagd-'till the maidens paled 
 And perished on the teinple-step, assailed 
 
WITH GERARD DE LAIRESSE 
 
 973 
 
 By — what except to envy must man's wit 
 Impute that sure implacable release 
 Of life from warmth and joy? But death 
 means neacR. 
 
 means peace. 
 
 Noon is the conqueror, — not a spray, nor leaf, 
 Nor herb, nor blossom but has rendered up 
 Its morning dew : the valley seemed one cup 
 Of cloud-smoke, but the vapor's reign was brief ; 
 Sun-smitten, see, it hangs — the filmy haze — 
 Gray-garmenting the herbless mountain-side. 
 To soothe the day's sharp glare : while far and 
 
 wide 
 Above unclouded burns the sky, one blaze 
 With fierce immitigable blue, no bird 
 Ventures to spot by passage. E'en of peaks 
 Which still presume there, plain ea«h pale point 
 
 In wan transparency of waste incurred 
 By over-daring : far from me be such ! 
 Deep in the hollow, rather, where combine 
 Tree, shrub and brier to roof with shade and 
 
 cool 
 The remnant of some lily-strangled pool, 
 Edged round with mossy fringing soft and fine. 
 Smooth lie the bottom slabs, and overhead 
 Watch elder, bramble, rose, and service-tree 
 And one beneficent rich barberry 
 Jewelled all over with fruit-pendants red. 
 What have I seen ! Satyr, well I know 
 How sad thy case, and what a world of woe 
 Was hid by the brown visage furry-framed 
 Only for mirth : who otherwise could think — 
 Marking thy mouth gape still on laughter's 
 
 brink, 
 Thine eyes a-swim with merriment unnamed 
 But haply guessed at by their furtive wink ? 
 And all the while a heart was panting sick 
 Behind that shaggy bulwark of thy breast — 
 Passion it was that made those breath-bursts 
 
 thick 
 I took for mirth subsiding into rest. 
 So, it was Lyda — she of all the train 
 Of forest-thridding nymphs, — 't was only she 
 Turned from thy rustic homage in disdain. 
 Saw but that poor uncouth outside of thee. 
 And, from her circling sisters, mocked a pain 
 Echo had pitied — whom Pan loved in vain — 
 For she was wishful to partake thy glee, 
 Mimic thy mirth — who loved her not again. 
 Savage for Lyda's sake. She crouches there — 
 Thy cruel beauty, slumberoualy laid 
 Supine on heaped-up beast-skins, unaware 
 Thy steps have traced her to the briery glade, 
 Thy greedy hands disclose the cradling lair, 
 Thy hot eyes reach and revel on the maid ! 
 
 XI 
 
 Now, what should this be for? The sun's de- 
 cline 
 Seems as he lingered lest he lose some act 
 Dread and decisive, some prodigious fact 
 Like thunder from the safe sky's sapphirine 
 About to alter earth's conditions, packed 
 With fate for nature's self that waits, aware 
 What mischief unsuspected in the air 
 Menaces momently a cataract. 
 
 Therefore it is that yonder space extends 
 
 Untrenched upon by any vagrant tree. 
 
 Shrub, weed well-nigh ; they keep their bounds, 
 
 leave free 
 The platform for what actors ? Foes or friends. 
 Here come they trooping silent : heaven sus- 
 pends 
 Purpose the while they range themselves. I see I 
 Bent on a battle, two vast powers agree 
 This present and no after-contest ends 
 One or the other's grasp at rule in reach 
 Over the race of man — host fronting host, 
 As statue statue fronts — wrath-molten each. 
 Solidified by hate, — earth halved almost. 
 To close once more in chaos. Yet two shapes 
 Show prominent, each from the universe 
 Of minions round about him, that disperse 
 Like cloud-obstruction when a bolt escapes. 
 Who flames first ? Macedonian, is it thou ? 
 Ay, and who fronts thee. King Darius, drapes 
 His form with purple, fillet-folds his brow. 
 
 What, then the long day dies at last ? Abrupt 
 The sun that seemed, in stooping, sure to melt 
 Our mountain-ridge, is mastered : black the 
 
 belt 
 Of westward crags, his gold could not corrupt. 
 Barriers again the valley, lets the flow 
 Of lavish glory waste itself away 
 — Whither ? For new climes, fresh eyes breaks 
 
 the day ! 
 Night was not to be bafBed. If the glow 
 Were aU that 's gone from us ! Did clouds, 
 
 afloat 
 So filmily but now, discard no rose. 
 Sombre throughout the fleeciness that grows 
 A sullen uniformity. I note 
 Rather displeasure, — in the overspread 
 Change from the swim of gold to one pale lead 
 Oppressive to malevolence, — than late 
 Those amorous yearnings when the aggregate 
 Of cloudlets pressed that each and all might sate 
 Its passion and partake in relics red 
 Of day's bequeathment : now, a frown instead 
 Estranges, and affrights who needs must fare 
 On and on till his journey ends : but where ? 
 Caucasus ? Lost now in the night. Away 
 And far enough lies that Arcadia. 
 The human heroes tread the world's dark way 
 No longer. Yet I dimly see almost — 
 Yes, for my last adventure 1 'T is a ghost. 
 So drops away the beauty ! There he stands 
 Voiceless, scarce strives with deprecating 
 
 hands . . ■ 
 
 XIII 
 
 Enough ! Stop further fooling, De Lairesse ! 
 My fault, not yours ! Some fitter way express 
 Heart's satisfaction that the Past indeed 
 Is past, gives way before Life's best and last, 
 The all-including Future ! What were life 
 Did soul stand still therein, forego her strife 
 Through the ambiguous Present to the goal 
 Of some all-reconciling Future ? Soul, 
 Nothing has been which shall not bettered be 
 Hereafter, — leave the root, by law's decree 
 Whence springs the ultimate and perfect tree ! 
 
974 
 
 PARLEYINGS V/ITH CERTAIN PEOPLE 
 
 Busy thee with unearthing- root ? Nayj climb — 
 Quit ti'unk, branch, leaf and flower — reach, 
 
 rest sublime 
 Where fruitage ripens in the blaze of day ! 
 Overlook, despise^ forget, throw flower away, 
 Intent on progress ? No wliit more than stop 
 Ascent therewith to dally, screen the top 
 iSufficiency of yield by interposed 
 Twistwork bold foot gets free from. Wherefore 
 
 glozed 
 The poets — " Dream afresh old godlike shapes. 
 Recapture ancient fable that escapes, 
 Push back reality, repeople earth 
 With vanished falseness, recognize no worth 
 In fact new-born unless 't is rendered back 
 Pallid by fancy, as the western rack 
 Of fading, cloud bequeaths the lake some gleam 
 Of its gone glory ! " 
 
 Let things be — not seem, 
 I counsel rather, — do, and nowise dream I 
 Earth^s young significance is all to learn ; 
 The deaJd Greek lore lies bmied in the urn 
 Where who seeks fire finds ashes. Ghost, for- 
 sooth ! . ! ■ . ' 
 
 What was the best Greece babbled of as truth ? 
 "A shade, a wretched nothing, -^ sad, thin, 
 
 drear, ' 
 
 Gold, dark, it holds oil to the lost loves here', 
 Ifi hand have haply sprinkled o'er the dead 
 Three charitable dust-heaps, made mouth red 
 One moment by the sip of sacrifice : 
 Just so much comfort thaws the stubborn ice 
 yiow-thickening upward till it choke at length 
 The last faint mitteraraving — not for strength, 
 Not beauty, not the riches and the rule 
 O'er men that made life life indeed."' Sad 
 
 school 
 Was Hades! Gladly, — might the- dead but 
 
 slink 
 To life back, — to the dregs once more would 
 
 drink 
 Each interloper, drain the humblest cup 
 Fate mixes for humanity. 
 
 Cheer up, — 
 Be death with me, as with Achilles erst. 
 Of Mail's- calamities the last and worst ; 
 Take it so ! By proved potency that still 
 Makes perfect, be assured, come what come will, 
 Wha;fe once -lives never dies — -what here attains 
 To^ a beginning, has no end, still gains 
 And never loses aught : when, wherei, and how — 
 Lies in Law's lap. What 's death then ? Even 
 
 now 
 With so much knowledge is it hard to bear 
 Brief interposing ignorance ? Is care i 
 For a crea/tion found at fault iust there — 
 There where the heart breaks bond and out- 
 runs time. 
 To reach not follow what shall be ? 
 
 Such as one makes now, 
 repeats 
 
 Here 's rhyme 
 -say, when Spring 
 
 That miracle the Gteek Bard sadly greets : 
 " Spring for the tree and herb — no Spring for 
 
 ■ us!" 
 Let Spring come: why, a man salutes her 
 thus: 
 
 Dance, yellows and whites and reds, — ' ' 
 Lead your gay orgy, leaves, stalks, heads 
 Astir with the -wind in the tulip-beds I 
 
 There 's sunshine ; scarcely a wind at all 
 Disturbs starved grass and daisies small 
 On a cei-tain mound by a churchyard wall. 
 
 Daisies and grass be my heart's bedfellows 
 On the mound wind spares and sunshine mel- 
 lows : 
 Dance you, reds and whites and yellows ! 
 
 WITH CHARLES AVISON 
 
 The manuscript of the Grand March written 
 by Avison was in the possession of Browning's 
 father, and a copy is given at the end of the 
 poem. The Relfe who is two or three times 
 mentioned was Browning's teacher of music, 
 who was a learned contrapuntist. 
 
 How strange ! — but, first of all, the little fact 
 Which led my fancy forth. This bitter mom 
 Showed me no object in the stretch forlorn 
 Of garden-ground beneath my window, backed 
 By yon worn wall wherefrom the creeper, 
 
 tacked 
 To clothe its brickwork, hangs now, rent and 
 
 racked 
 By five months' cruel winter, — showed no torn 
 And tattered ravage worse for eyes to see 
 Than just one ugly space of clearance, left 
 Bare even of the bones which used to be 
 Warm wrappage, safe embracement : this one 
 
 cleft — 
 — Oh, what a life and beauty filled it up 
 Startlingly, when methought the rude clay cup 
 Ran over with poured bright wine ! 'T was a 
 
 bird 
 Breast-deep there, tugging at his prize, de- 
 terred 
 No whit by the fast-falling snow-flake : gain 
 Such prize my blackcap must by might and 
 
 main — 
 The cloth-shred, still arflutter from its nail 
 That fixed a spray once. Now, what told the 
 
 tale 
 To thee, — no townsman but born orchard- 
 thief, — 
 That here — surpassing moss-tuft, beard from 
 
 sheaf 
 Of sun-scorched barley, horsehairs long and 
 
 stout. 
 All proper country-pillage — here, no doubt. 
 Was just the scrap to steal should line thy nest 
 Superbly? Off he flew, his bill possessed 
 The booty sure to set his wife's each wiag 
 Greenly a-quiver. How they climb and ding. 
 
WITH CHARLES AVISON 
 
 97S 
 
 Hang parrc.t-wise to bough, these blackcaps 1 
 
 fetrang^e 
 Seemad to a city-dweller that the finch 
 Should stray so far to forage : at a pinch, 
 Was not the fine wool's self within his range 
 — Filohings on every fence? But no: the 
 
 need 
 Was of this rag of manufacture, spoiled 
 By art, and yet by nature near unsoiled, 
 New-suited to what scheming finch would 
 
 breed 
 In comfort, this uncomfortable March. 
 
 Yet — by the first pink blossom on the 
 
 larch 1 — 
 This was scarce stranger than that memory, — 
 In want of what should cheer the stay-at-home, 
 My soul, —must straight clap pinion, well-nigh 
 
 roam 
 A century back, nor once close plume, descry 
 The appropriate rag to plunder, till she 
 
 pounced — 
 Pray, on what relic of a brain long still ? 
 What old-world work proved forage for the 
 
 biU 
 Of memory the far-flyer? "March" an- 
 nounced, 
 I verily believe, the dead and gone 
 Name of a music-maker : one of such 
 In England as did little or did much. 
 But, doing, had their day once. Avison ! 
 Singly and solely for an air of thine. 
 Bold-stepping "March," foot stept to ere my 
 
 hand 
 Could stretch an octave, I o'erlooked the band 
 Of majesties familiar, to decline 
 On thee — not too conspicuous on the list 
 Of worthies who by help of pipe or wire 
 Expressed in sound rough rage or soft desire — 
 Thou, whilom of Newcastle organist ! 
 
 So much could one — well, thinnish air effect 1 
 Am I ungrateful ? for, your March, styled 
 
 "Grand," 
 Did veritably seem to grow,^^and,' ' 
 And greaten up to title as, unchecked. 
 Dream-marchers marched, kept marching, slow 
 
 and sure. 
 In time, to tune, unchangeably the same. 
 From nowhere into nowhere, — out they came. 
 Onward they passed, and in they went. No 
 
 lure 
 Of novel modulation pricked the flat 
 Forthright persisting melody, — no hint 
 That discord, sound asleep beneath the flint. 
 Struck — might spring spark-like, claim due 
 
 tit-for-tat. 
 Quenched in a concord. No! Yet, such the 
 
 might 
 Of quietude's immutability. 
 That somehow coldness gathered warmth, well- 
 nigh 
 Quickened — which could not be I — grew 
 
 burning-bright 
 With fife-shriek, cymbal-clash and trumpet- 
 blare. 
 
 To drum-accentnation : pacing turned 
 Striding, and striding grew gigantic, spumed 
 At lastithe narrow space 'twixt earth and air, 
 So shook me back into ray sober self. 
 
 And where woke I ? The March had set me 
 
 down 
 There whence I jtlucked the measure, as his 
 
 brown 
 Frayed flannel-bit my blackcap. Great John 
 
 Relfe, 
 Master of mine, learned, redoubtable. 
 It little needed thy consummate skill 
 To fitly figure such a bass ! The key 
 Was — should not memory play me false — 
 
 well, C. 
 Ay, with the Greater Third, in Triple Time, 
 Three crochets to a bar : no change, I grant. 
 Except from Tonic down to Dominant. 
 And yet — and yet — if I could put in rhyme 
 The manner of that marching I — which had 
 
 stopped 
 — I wonder, where ? — but that my weak self 
 
 dropped 
 From out the ranks, to rub eyes disentranced 
 And feel that, after all the way advanced. 
 Back must I foot it, I and my compeers. 
 Only to reach, across a hundred years. 
 The bandsman Avison whose little book 
 And large tune thus had led me the long way 
 (As late a rag my blackcap) from to-day 
 And to-day's music-manufacture, — Brahms, 
 Wagner, Dvorak, LLszt, — to where — trumpets, 
 
 shawms. 
 Show yourselves joyful ! — Handel reigns — 
 
 supreme ? 
 By no means ! Bnononcini's work is theme 
 For fit laudation of the impartial few ; 
 (We stand in England, mind you !) Fashion too 
 Favors Geminiani — of those choice 
 Concertos : nor there wants a certain voice 
 Raised in thy favor likewise, famed Pepusch 
 Dear to our great-grandfathers ! In a bush 
 Of Doctor's wig, they prized thee timing beats 
 While Greenway triUed "Alexis." Such were 
 
 feats 
 Of music in thy day — dispute who list — 
 Avison, of Newcastle organist ! 
 
 And here 's your music all alive once more -^ 
 As once it was alive, at least : just so 
 The figured worthies of a waxwork-show 
 Attest — such people, years and years ago. 
 Looked thus when outside death had life be- 
 low, 
 
 — Could say "Weare now " not " We were of 
 
 yore," 
 
 — " Feel how our pulses leap ! " and not Ex- 
 
 plore — 
 Explain why quietude has settled o'er 
 Surface once aUawork! " Ay, such a " Suite" 
 Boused heart to rapture, such a "Fugue' 
 
 would catch 
 Soul heavenwards up, when time was : why 
 
 attach 
 Blame to exhausted faultlessness, no match 
 
976 
 
 PARLEYINGS WITH CERTAIN PEOPLE 
 
 For fresh achievement ? Feat once — ever 
 
 feat ! 
 How can completion grow still more complete ? 
 Hear Avison ! He tenders evidence 
 That music in his day as much absorbed 
 Heart and soul then as Wagner's music now, 
 Perfect from centre to circumference — 
 Orbed to the full can be but fully orbed : 
 And yet — and yet — whence comes it that 
 
 " O Thou " — 
 Sighed by the soul at eve to Hesperus — 
 Will not again take wing and Ry away 
 (Since fatal Wagner fixed it fast for us) 
 In some unmodulated minor ? Nay, 
 Even by Handel's help ! 
 
 I state it thus : 
 There is no truer truth obtainable 
 By Man than comes of music. " Soul " — 
 
 (accept 
 A word which vaguely names what no adept 
 In word-use fits and fixes so that still 
 Thing shall not slip word's fetter and remain 
 Innominate as first, yet, free again. 
 Is no less recognized the absolute 
 Fact underlying that same other fact 
 Concerning Avliich no cavil can dispute 
 Our nomenclature when we call it " Mind " — 
 Something not Matter) — " Soul," who seeks 
 
 shall find 
 Distinct beneath that something. You exact 
 An illustrative image ? This may suit. 
 
 We see a work : the worker works behind. 
 Invisible himself. Suppose his act 
 Be to o'erarch a gulf : he digs, transports. 
 Shapes and, through enginery — all sizes, 
 
 sorts, 
 Lays stone by stone until a floor compact 
 Proves our bridged causeway. So works Mind 
 
 -^ by stress 
 Of faculty, with loose facts, more or less. 
 Builds up our solid knowledge ; all the same. 
 Underneath rolls what Mind may hide not 
 
 tame. 
 An element which works beyond our guess. 
 Soul, the unsounded sea — whose lift of surge. 
 Spite of all superstructure, lets emerge. 
 In fiower and foam, Feeling from out the deeps 
 Mind arrogates no mastery upon — 
 Distinct indisputably. Has there gone 
 To dig up, drag forth, render smooth from 
 
 rough 
 Mind's flooring, — operosity enough ? 
 Still the successive labor of ea«h inch. 
 Who lists may learn : from the last turn of 
 
 winch 
 That let the polished slab-stone find its place. 
 To the first prod of pickaxe at the base 
 Of the unquarried mountain, — what was all 
 Mind's varied process except natural, 
 Nay, easy even, to descry, describe. 
 After our fashion? "So worked Mind: its 
 
 tribe 
 Of senses ministrant above, below. 
 Far, near, or now or haply long ago 
 
 Brought to pass knowledge." But Soul's sea, 
 
 — drawn whence. 
 Fed how, forced whither, — by what evidence 
 Of ebb and flow, that 's felt beneath the tread, 
 Soul has its course 'neath Mind's work over- 
 head, — 
 Who tells of, tracks to source the founts of 
 
 Soul? 
 Yet wherefore heaving sway and restless roll 
 This side and that, except to emulate 
 Stability above ? To match and mate 
 Feeling with knowledge, — make as manifest 
 Soul's work as Mind's work, turbulence as rest, 
 Hates, loves, joys, woes, hopes, fears, that rise 
 
 and sink 
 Ceaselessly, passion's transient flit and wink, 
 A ripple's tinting or a spume-sheet's spread 
 Whitening the wave, — to strike all this life 
 
 dead, 
 Kun mercury into a mould like lead. 
 And henceforth have the plain result to show — 
 How we Feel, hard and fast as what we Know — 
 This were the prize and is the puzzle ! — which 
 Music essays to solve : and here 's the hitch 
 That balks her of full triumph else to boast. 
 
 All Arts endeavor this, and she the most 
 Attains thereto, yet fails of touching: why? 
 Does Mind get Knowledge from Art's miu- 
 
 istry ? 
 What 's known once is known ever : Arts 
 
 arrange. 
 Dissociate, re-distribute, interchange 
 Part with part, lengthen, broaden, high or 
 
 Construct their bravest, — still such pains 
 
 produce 
 Change, not creation : simply what lay loose 
 At first lies firmly after, what design 
 Was faintly traced in hesitating line 
 Once on a time, grows firmly resolute 
 Henceforth and evermore. Now, could we 
 
 shoot 
 Liquidity into a mould, — some way 
 Arrest Soul's evanescent moods, and keep 
 Unalterably still the forms that leap 
 To life for once by help of Art ! — which yearns 
 To save its capture : Poetry discerns. 
 Painting is 'ware of passion's rise and fall. 
 Bursting, subsidence, intermixture — all 
 A-seethe within the gulf. Each Art a-strain 
 Would stay the apparition, — nor in vain : 
 The Poet s word-mesh. Painter's sure and 
 
 swift 
 Color-and-line-throw — proud the prize tliey 
 
 lift ! 
 Thus felt Man and thus looked Man, - — passions 
 
 caught 
 I' the midway swim of sea, — not much, if 
 
 aught. 
 Of nether-brooding loves, hates, hopes and 
 
 fears, 
 Enwombed past Art's disclosure. Fleet the 
 
 years. 
 And still the Poet's page holds Helena 
 At gaze from topmost Troy — " But where are 
 
 they, 
 
WITH CHARLES AVISON 
 
 977 
 
 My brothers, in the armament I name 
 Hero by hero ? Can it be that shame 
 Dor their lost sister holds them from the war? " 
 — Knowing not they already slept afar 
 Each of them in his own dear native land. 
 Still on the Painter's fresco, from the hand 
 Of God takes Eve the life-spark whereunto 
 She trembles up from nothingness. Outdo 
 Both of them, Music ! Dredging deeper yet, 
 Drag into day, — by sound, thy master-net, — 
 The abysmal bottom-growth, ambiguous thing 
 Unbroken of a branch, palpitating 
 With limbs' play and life's semblance ! There 
 
 it lies. 
 Marvel and mystery, of mysteries 
 And marvels, most to love and laud thee for ! 
 Save it from chance and change we most ab- 
 hor ! 
 Give momentary feeling permanence. 
 So that thy capture hold, a century hence, 
 Truth's very heart of truth as, safe to-day, 
 The Painter's Eve, the Poet's Helena 
 Still rapturously bend, afar still throw 
 The wistful gaze ! Thanks, Homer, Angelo ! 
 Could Music rescue thus from Soul's profound, 
 Give feeling immortality by sound, 
 Then were she queenliest of Arts ! Alas — 
 As well expect the rainbow not to pass ! 
 " Praise ' Radamisto ' — love attains therein 
 To perfect utterance ! Pity — what shall win 
 Thy secret like ' Rinaldo ' ? " — so men said : 
 Once all was perfume — now, the flower is 
 
 dead — 
 They spied tints, sparks have left the spar! 
 
 Love, hate, 
 Joy, fear, survive, — alike importunate 
 As ever to go walk the world again, 
 Nor ghost-like pant for outlet all in vain 
 Till Music loose them, fit each filmily 
 With form enough to know and name it by 
 For any recognizer sure of ken 
 And sharp of ear, no grosser denizen 
 Of earth than needs be. Nor to such appeal 
 Is Music long obdurate : off they steal — 
 How gently, dawn-doomed phantoms ! back 
 
 come they 
 Full-blooded with new crimson of broad day — 
 Passion made palpable once more. Ye look 
 Your last on Handel? Gaze your first on 
 
 Gluck ! 
 Why wistful search, waning ones, the chart 
 Of stars for you while Haydn, while Mozart 
 Occupies heaven ? These also, fanned to fire. 
 Flamboyant wholly, — so perfections tire, — 
 Whiten to wanness, till ... let others note 
 The ever-new invasion ! 
 
 I devote 
 Rather my modicum of parts to use 
 What power may yet avail to re-infuse 
 (In fancy, please you !) sleep that looks like 
 
 death 
 With momentary liveliness, lend breath 
 To make the torpor half inhale. Relfe, 
 An all-nnworthy pupil, from the shelf 
 Of thy laboratory, dares unstop 
 Bottle, ope box, extract thence pinch and drop 
 
 Of dusts and dews a many thou didst shrine 
 Each in its right receptacle, assign 
 To each its proper ofhce, letter large 
 Label and label, then with solemn charge. 
 Reviewing learnedly the list complete 
 Of chemical reactives, from thy feet 
 Push down the same to me, attent below. 
 Power in abundance : armed wherewith I go 
 To play the enlivener. Bring good antique 
 
 stuff ! 
 Was it alight once ? Still lives apark enough 
 For breath to quicken, run the smouldering 
 
 ash 
 Red right-through. What, " stone-dead " were 
 
 fools so rash 
 As style my Avison, because he lacked 
 Modem appliance, spread out phrase unracked 
 By modulations fit to make each hair 
 Stiffen upon his wig ? See there — and there ! 
 I sprinkle my reactives, pitch broadcast 
 Discords and resolutions, turn aghast 
 Melody's easy-going, jostle law 
 With license, modulate (no Bach in awe) 
 Change enharmonically (Hudl to thank) 
 And lo, upstart the flamelets, — what was 
 
 blank 
 Turns scarlet, purple, crimson ! Straightway 
 
 scanned 
 By eyes that like new lustre — Love once more 
 ifeams through the Largo, Hatred as before 
 Rages in the Rubato : e'en thy March, 
 My Avison, which, sooth to say — (ne'er arch 
 Eyebrows in anger ! ) — timed, in Georgian 
 
 years 
 The step precise of British Grenadiers 
 To such a nicety, — if score I crowd. 
 If rhythm I break, if beats I vary, — tap 
 At bar's off-starting turns true thunder-clap, 
 Ever the pace augmented tiU — what 's here ? 
 Titanic striding toward Olympus I 
 
 Fear 
 No such irreverent innovation ! Still 
 Glide on, go rolling, water-like, at will — 
 Nay, were thy melody in monotone. 
 The due three-parts dispensed with ! 
 
 This alone 
 Comes of my tiresome talking : Music's throne 
 Seats somebody whom somebody unseats. 
 And whom in turn — by who knows what new 
 
 feats 
 Of strength — shall somebody as sure push 
 
 down. 
 Consign him dispossessed of sceptre, crown. 
 And orb imperial — whereto ? Never dream 
 That what once lived shall ever die ! They 
 
 seem 
 Dead — do they V lapsed things lost in limbo ? 
 
 Bring 
 Our life to kindle theirs, and straight each 
 
 king 
 Starts, you shall see, stands up, from head to 
 
 foot 
 No inch that is not Purcell ! Wherefore ? (Suit 
 Measure to subject, first — no marching on 
 
978 
 
 PARLEYINGS WITH CERTAIN PEOPLE 
 
 Yet in tliy bold C major, Avison, 
 As suited step a minute since :■ no : wait — 
 Into the minor key first modulate — 
 Gently with A, now — in the Lesser Third !) 
 
 Of all the lamentable debts incurred 
 
 By Man throngh buying knowledge, this were 
 
 worst: 
 That he should find his last gain prove his 
 
 first 
 Was futile — merely nescience absolute, 
 Not knowledge in the bud which holds a fruit 
 Haply undreamed of in the soul's Spring-tidej 
 Pursed in the petals Summer opens wide. 
 And Autumn, withering, rounds to perfect 
 
 ripe, — 
 Not this, — but ignorance, a blur to wipe 
 J'rom human records, late it graced so much. 
 *' Truth — this attainment ? Ah, but such and 
 
 such 
 Beliefs of yore seemed inexpugnable 
 When we attained them ! E'en as they, so 
 
 will 
 This their successor have the due morn, noon. 
 Evening and night — just as an old-world 
 
 tune 
 Wears out and drops away, until who hears 
 Smilingly questions — 'This it was brought 
 
 tears 
 Once to all eyes, — this roused heart's rapture 
 
 once ? ' 
 So will it be with truth that, for the nonce, 
 Styles itself truth perennial : 'ware its wile ! 
 Knowledge turns nescience, — foremost on the 
 
 file. 
 Simply proves first of our delusions." 
 
 Now — 
 Blare it forth, bold C major 1 Lift thy brow, 
 Man, the immortal, that wast never fooled 
 With gifts no gifts at all, nor ridiculed — 
 Man knowing — he who nothing knew ! As 
 
 Hope, 
 Fear, Joy, and Grief, — though ampler stretch 
 
 and scope 
 They seek and find in novel rhythm, fresh 
 
 phrase, — 
 Were equally existent in far days 
 Of Music's dim beginning ^- even so. 
 Truth was at fall within thee long ago. 
 Alive as now it takes what latest shape 
 May startle thee by strangeness. Truths es- 
 cape 
 Time's insufilcient garniture : they fade. 
 They fall — those sheathings now grown sere, 
 
 whose aid 
 Was infinite to truth they wrapped, saved fine 
 And free through March frost : May dews 
 
 crystalline 
 Nourish truth merely, — does June boast the 
 
 fruit 
 As — not new vesture merely but, to boot. 
 Novel creation ? Soon shall fade and fall 
 Myth after myth — the husk-'ike lies I call 
 New truth's coroUa-sateguard : Autumn comes, 
 So much the better .' 
 
 Therefore — bang the drums. 
 Blow the trumpets, Avison ! March-motive ? 
 
 that's 
 Truth which endures resetting. Sharps and flats, 
 Lavish at need, shall dance athwart thy score 
 When ophicleide and bombardon's uproar 
 Mate the approaching trample, even now 
 Big in the distance — or my ears deceive — 
 Of federated England, fitly weave 
 March-music for the Future ! 
 
 Or suppose 
 Back, and not forward, transformation goes ? 
 Once more some sable-stoled procession — say, 
 From Little-ease to Tyburn — wends its way, 
 Out of the dungeon to the gallows-tree 
 Where heading, hacking, hanging is to be 
 Of half-a-dozen recusants — this day 
 Three hundred years ago ! How duly drones 
 Elizabethan plain-song — dim antique 
 Grown olaiion-elear the while I humbly wreak 
 A classic vengeance on thy March ! It 
 
 moans — 
 Larges and Longs and Breves displacing quite 
 Crotchet-and-quaver pertness — brushing bai-s 
 Aside and filling vacant sky with stars 
 Hidden till now that day return to night. 
 
 Nor night nor day : one purpose move us both. 
 Be thy mood mine ! As thou wast minded, 
 
 Man 's 
 The cause our music champions : I were loth 
 To think we cheered our troop to Preston Pans 
 Ignobly : back to times of England's best ! 
 Parliament stands for privilege — life and lim.b 
 Guards HoUis, Haselrig, Strode, Hampden, 
 
 Pym, 
 The famous Five. There 's rumor of arrest. 
 Bring up the Train Bands, Southwark ! They 
 
 protest : 
 Shall we not all join chorus ? Hark the hynm, 
 — Rough, rude, robustious — homely heart a- 
 
 throb. 
 Harsh voice a-hallo, as beseems the mob ! 
 How good is noise I what 's silence but de- 
 spair 
 Of making sound match gladness never there ? 
 Give me some great glad " subject," glorious 
 
 Bach, 
 Where cannon-roar not organ-peal we lack I 
 Join in, give voice robustious rude and rough, — 
 Avison helps — so heart lend noise enough ! 
 
 Fife, trump, drum, sound ! and singers then 
 
 Marching say " Pyra, the man of men ! " 
 
 Up, heads, your proudest, — out throats, your 
 
 loudest — 
 " Somerset's Pym I " 
 
 Strafford from the block, Eliot from the den. 
 Foes, friends, shout '* Pym, our citizen ! " 
 Wail, the foes he quelled, — hail, the friends 
 
 he held, 
 " Tavistock's Pym ! " 
 
FUST AND HIS FRIENDS 
 
 979 
 
 iP^^'ts prompt heads, hands that ply Hxe pen 
 
 leach babes unborn the where and when. 
 
 — Tyrants, he braved them,— patriots, he 
 
 saved thenl — 
 " Westminster's Pym ! " 
 
 Lustily. 
 
 a^ 
 
 e 
 
 ^ 
 
 m 
 
 
 ■I J — •- 
 
 -f2- 
 
 SEE 
 
 pz^itz 
 
 i 
 
 W- 
 
 t 
 
 -Si-r- 
 
 fi^0-a-m-^ 
 
 -^: 
 
 i^^J^lg 
 
 
 is^t^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 :t^-! 
 
 -^a- 
 
 -fc 
 
 9^ 
 
 
 
 i:^ 
 
 * 
 
 -<&-^ 
 
 -•-^ 
 
 i 
 
 •— !«^ 
 
 SEN 
 
 9^^ 
 
 =^^ 
 
 _• -,?-• 
 
 ^*eEeF 
 
 P^i: 
 
 ^^ 
 
 ^— !^ 
 
 i 
 
 w 
 
 ^ 
 
 9^ 
 
 =3= 
 
 FUST AND HIS FRIENDS 
 
 AN EPILOGUE 
 
 {Inside the House of Fust, Mayence, 1457.) 
 
 First Friend. Up, up, up — next step of the 
 
 staircase 
 Lands us, lo, at the chamber of dread ! 
 Second Friend. Locked and barred ? 
 Third Friend. Door open — the rare case \ 
 Fourth Friend. Ay, there he leans — lost 
 
 ■wretch ! 
 Fifth Friends His head 
 
 Sunk on his desk 'twixt his arms outspread ! 
 
 Sixth Friend. Hallo, — wake, man, ere God 
 
 thunderstrike Mayence 
 •^ Mulct for thy sake who art Satan's, John 
 Fust ! 
 Satan installed here, God's rule in abeyance, 
 
 Mayence some morning may crumble to djust. 
 Answer our questions thou shalt and thou must ! 
 
 Seventh Friend. Softly and fairly ! Wherefore 
 
 a-gloom ? ■ ^ 
 Greet us, thy grosaipry. cousin and sib ! 
 Raise the forlorn brow. Fust ! Make room — 
 Let daylight tlirough arms which, extfolding 
 thee, crib 
 From those clenched lids the comfort of sun- 
 shine ! 
 First Friend. So glib 
 
 Thy tongue slides to " comfort " already ? 
 Not mine ! 
 Behoove us deal roundly ; the wretch is dis- 
 traught 
 
 — Too well I guess wherefore ! Behooves a 
 Divine 
 — Such as I, by grace, boast me — to threaten 
 one caught 
 
 In the enemy's toils, — setting " comfort " at 
 naiight. 
 
98o 
 
 PARLEYINGS WITH CERTAIN PEOPLE 
 
 Second Friend. Nay, Brother, so hasty? I 
 heard — nor long since — 
 
 Of a certain Black Art'sman who, — help- 
 lessly bound 
 By rash pact with Satan, — through paying — 
 why mince 
 
 The matter ? — fit price to the Church, — 
 safe and sound 
 Full a year after death in his graTe-clothes was 
 found. 
 
 Whereas H> is notorious the Fiend claims his 
 due 
 During lifetime, — comes clawing, with talons 
 aflame. 
 The soul from the flesh-rags left smoking and 
 blue : 
 So it happed with John Faust ; lest John 
 Fust fare the same, — 
 Look up, I adjure thee by God's holy name ! 
 
 For neighbors and friends — no foul hell-brood 
 flock we ! 
 Saith Solomon " Words of the wise are as 
 goads: " 
 Ours prick but to startle from torpor, set free 
 Soul and sense from death's drowse ! 
 First Friend. And soul, wakened, unloads 
 Much sin by confession : no mere palinodes ! 
 
 — "I was youthful and wanton, am old yet no 
 
 sage : 
 When angry I cursed, struck and slew : did I 
 want ? 
 Right and left did I rob : though no war I 
 dared wage 
 With the Church (God forbid 1) — harm her 
 least ministrant — 
 Still I outraged all else. Now that strength is 
 grown scant, 
 
 "I am probity's self" — no such bleatings as 
 these ! 
 But avowal of guilt so enormous, it balks 
 Tongue's telling. Yet penitence prompt may 
 appease 
 God's wrath at thy bond with the Devil who 
 stalks 
 
 — Strides hither to strangle thee ! 
 
 Fust. Childhood so talks. — 
 
 Not rare wit nor ripe age — ye boast them, my 
 neighbors ! — 
 Should lay such a charge on your townsman, 
 this Fust 
 Who, known for a life spent in pleasures and 
 liabors 
 If freakish yet venial, could scarce be induced 
 To traffic with fiends. 
 First Friend. So, ray words have unloosed 
 
 A plie from those pale lips corrugate but now ? 
 Fust. Lost count me, yet not as ye lean to 
 
 surmise. 
 First Friend. To surmise ? to establish ! 
 
 Unbury that brow I 
 Look up. that thy judge may read clear in 
 
 thine eyes ! 
 
 Second Friend. By your leave. Brother 
 Barnabite ! Mine to advise ! 
 
 — Who arraign thee, John Fust ! What was 
 
 bruited erewhile 
 Now bellows through Mayence. All cry — 
 
 thou hast trucked 
 Salvation away for lust's solace ! Tliy smile 
 Takes its hue from hell's smoulder ! 
 Fust. Too certain ! I sucked 
 
 — Got drunk at the nipple of sense. 
 
 Second Friend, Thou hast ducked — 
 
 Art drowned there, say rather ! Faugh — 
 fleshly disport ! 
 
 How else but by help of Sir Belial didst win 
 That Venus-like lady, no drudge of thy sort 
 
 Could lure to become his accomplice in sin ? 
 Folk nicknamed her Helen of Troy ! 
 
 First Friend. Best begin 
 
 At the very beginning. Thy father, — all knew, 
 A mere goldsmith . . . 
 
 Fust. Who knew him, perchance may know 
 this — 
 He dying left much gold and jewels no few : 
 Whom these help to court with, but seldom 
 sliall miss 
 The love of a leman : true witchcraft, I wis ! 
 
 First Friend. Dost flout me? 'T is said, in 
 
 debauchery's guild 
 Admitted prime guttler and guzzler — 
 swine ! — 
 To honor thy headship, those tosspots so swilled 
 That out of their table there sprouted a vine 
 Whence each claimed a cluster, awaiting thy 
 sign 
 
 To out knife, off mouthful : when — who could 
 suppose 
 Such malice in magic ? — each sot woke and 
 found 
 Cold steel but an inch from the neighbor's red 
 nose 
 He took for a grape-bunch ! 
 Fust. Does that so astound 
 
 Sagacity such as ye boast, — who surround 
 
 Your mate with eyes staring, hairs standing 
 erect 
 At his magical feats ? Are good burghers 
 unversed 
 In the humors of toping ? Full oft, I suspect, 
 Ye, counting your fingers, call thumbkin their 
 first. 
 And reckon a groat every guilder disbursed. 
 
 What marvel if wags, while the skinker fast 
 brimmed 
 Their glass with rare tipple's enticement, 
 should gloat 
 
 — Befooled and beflustered — through optics 
 
 drink -dimmed — 
 On this draught and that, till each found in 
 his throat 
 Our Rhenish smack rightly as Raphal ? For, 
 note — 
 
FUST AND HIS FRIENDS 
 
 They fancied — their fuddling deceived them so 
 grossly — 
 That liquor sprang out of the table itself 
 Through gimlet-holes drilled there, — nor 
 noticed how closely 
 The skiuker kept plying my guests, from the 
 shelf 
 O'er their heads, with the potable madness. 
 No elf 
 
 Had need to persuade them a vine rose umbra- 
 geous. 
 Fruit-bearing, thirst-quenching ! Enough ! 
 1 confess 
 To many such fool-pranks, but none so out- 
 rageous 
 That Satan was called in to help me: ex- 
 cess 
 I own to, I grieve at — no more and no less. 
 
 Second Friend. Strange honors were heaped 
 
 on thee — medal for breast, 
 Chain for neck, sword for thigh : not a lord 
 
 of the land 
 But acknowledged thee peer ! What ambition 
 
 A goldsmith by trade, with craft's grime on 
 his hand. 
 To seek such associates ? 
 Fust. Spare taunts! Understand — 
 
 I submit me ! Of vanities under the sun. 
 Pride seized me at last as concupiscence 
 first, 
 Crapulosity ever : true Fiends, every one, 
 Ibled this way and that my poor soul : thus 
 amerced — 
 Forgive and forget me ! 
 IHrst Friend. Had flesh sinned the worst, 
 
 Yet help were in counsel: the Church could 
 absolve : 
 
 But say not men truly thou barredst escape 
 By signingand sealing ... 
 
 Second Friend. On me must devolve 
 
 The task of extracting ... 
 
 First Friend. Shall Barnabites ape 
 
 Us Dominican experts ? 
 
 Seventh Friend. Nay, Masters, — agape 
 
 When Hell yawns for a soul, 't is myself claim 
 
 Of extracting, by just one plain question, 
 
 God's truth! „ ^ 
 
 Where 's Peter Genesheim thy partner / i 
 
 Why, cloistered up still in thy room, the pale 
 youth 
 Slaves tongue-tied — thy trade brooks no tat- 
 tling forsooth ! 
 
 No less he, t}ij famulus, suffers entrapping. 
 Succumbs to good fellowship : barrel arbroach 
 
 Buns freely nor needs any subsequent tapping : 
 Quoth Peter, " That room, none but I dare 
 apnroach. 
 
 Holds secrets will help me to ride mmy coach. 
 
 He prattles, we profit : in brief, he assures 
 Thou hast taught him to speak so that all 
 men may hear 
 — Each alike, wide world over, Jews, Pagans, 
 Turks, Moors, 
 The same as we Christians — speech heard 
 far and near 
 At one and the same magic moment ! 
 Fust. That 's clear ! 
 
 Said he — how ? 
 Seventh Friend. Is it like he was licensed to 
 
 learn ? 
 Who doubts but thou dost this by aid of the 
 Fiend? 
 Is it so ? So it is, for thou smilest ! Go, bum 
 To ashes, since such proves thy portion, un- 
 screened 
 By bell, book and candle ! Yet lately I 
 weened 
 
 Balm yet was in Gilead, — some healing in 
 store 
 For the friend of my bosom. Men said thou 
 wast sunk 
 In a sudden despondency : not, as before. 
 
 Fust gallant and gay with his pottle and punk. 
 But sober, sad, sick as one yesterday drunk 1 
 
 Fust. Spare Fust, then, thus contrite ! — who, 
 
 youthful and healthy. 
 Equipped for life's struggle with culture of 
 mind, 
 Sound flesh and sane soul in coherence, bom 
 wealthy. 
 Nay, wise — how he wasted endowment de- 
 signed 
 For the glory of God and the good of mankind ! 
 
 That much were misused such occasions of 
 grace 
 Ye well may upbraid him, who bows to the 
 rod. 
 
 But this should bid anger to pity give glace — 
 has turned f] 
 path to plod. 
 
 He has turned from the wrong, 
 
 »ive pli 
 , in th( 
 
 fi right 
 
 Makes amends to mankind and craves pardon 
 of God. 
 
 "Yea, friends, even now from my lips the 
 Heureka — 
 Soul saved!" was nigh bursting — unduly 
 
 Have I brought Man advantage, or hatched — 
 so to speak — a m l- t j 
 
 Strange serpent, no cygnet ? T is this I de- 
 bate , . 
 
 Within me. Forbear, and leave Fust to his 
 fate! 
 
 First Friend. So abject, late lofty? Me- 
 
 thinks I spy respite. 
 Make clean breast, discover what mysteries 
 
 hide 
 In thy room there ! . , i i r, 
 
 Second Friend. Ay, out with them! Uo 
 
 Satan despite I 
 
PARLEYINGS WITH CERTAIN PEOPLE 
 
 Remember what caused his undoing was pride ! 
 First Friend. Dumb devil ! Remains one re- 
 source to be tried ! 
 
 Second Friend. Exorcise ! 
 
 Seventh Friend. Nay, first — is there any re- 
 members 
 
 In substance that potent "JTe puhis" — a 
 psalm 
 Whereof some live spark haply lurks 'mid the 
 embers 
 
 Which choke in my brain. Talk of " Gilead 
 and balm " ? 
 I mind me, sung half through, this gave such a 
 qualm 
 
 To Asmodeus inside of a Hussite, that, queaSy, 
 He broke forth in brimstone with curses, 
 
 I 'm strong 
 In — at least the commencement : the rest 
 
 should go easy. 
 Friends helping. ^^ Ne pulvis et ignis " . . . 
 Sixth Friend. All wrong ! 
 
 Fifth Friend. I 've conned till I captured the 
 
 whole. 
 Seventh Friend. Get along I 
 
 " Ne pulvis et cinis superbe tegeras, 
 
 Namfulmina" . . . 
 
 Sixth Friend. Fiddlestick I Peace, dolts and 
 dorrs ! 
 Thus runs it " Ne Nuntinis^fulminaferas " — 
 
 Then *' Hominis perfidi justa sunt sors 
 Fulmen et grando et horrida mors." 
 
 SeweniA ynenrf. You blunder . . . "Iratine." 
 Sixth Friend. Mind your own business ! 
 
 Fifth Friend. 1 do not so badly, who gained 
 
 the monk's leave 
 To study an hour his choice parchment. A 
 
 dizziness 
 May well have surprised me. No Christian 
 
 dares thieve. 
 Or I scarce had returned him his treasure. 
 
 Tiiese cleave : 
 
 " Nos pulvis et cinis, trementes, gementes, 
 
 Venimus " — some such word — *^ ad ie. Do- 
 mine ! 
 Da luToen, juvamen; ut sancta segucrdes 
 Cor . . . corda "... Plague take it ! 
 Seventh Friend. — " erecta sint spe : " 
 
 Right text, ringing rhyme, and ripe Latin for 
 me ! 
 
 .' Sixth Friend. A Canon's self wrote it me 
 fair : I was tempted 
 To part with the sheepskin. 
 Seventh Friend. Didst grasp and let go 
 
 Such a godsend, thou Judas? My purse had 
 been emptied 
 Ere part with the prize ! 
 Fast. Do I dream ? Say ye so ? 
 
 Clouds break, then ! Move, world 1 I have 
 gained my " Pou sto " .' 
 
 I am saved : Archimedes, salute me 1 
 Omnes. Assistance ! 
 
 Help, Angels! He summons . . . Aroint 
 thee ! — by name, 
 His familiar ! 
 Fust. Approach ! 
 
 Omnes. Devil, keep thy due distance ! 
 
 Fust, Be tranquillized, townsmen ! The 
 knowledge ye claim 
 Behold, I prepare to impart. Praise or 
 blame, — 
 
 Your blessing or banning, whatever betide me, 
 
 At last I accept. The slow travail of years. 
 The long-teeming brain's birth — applaud me, 
 deride me, — 
 
 At last claims revealment. Wait ! 
 
 Seventh Friend. Wait till appears 
 
 Uncaged Archimedies cooped-up there ? 
 
 Second Friend. Who fears ? 
 
 Here 's have at thee ! 
 Seventh Friend. Correctly now ! " Pulvis et 
 
 cinis "... 
 Fust. The verse ye so value, it happens I hold 
 In my memory safe from initium to Jinis. 
 Word for Word, I produce you the whole, 
 plain enrolled, 
 Black letters, white paper — no scribe's red and 
 gold! 
 
 Omnes. Arrant thee 1 
 
 Fust. I go and return. 
 
 (ffe enters the inner room.) 
 First Friend. Ay, 't is " ibis " 
 
 No doubt : but as boldly " redibis " — who '11 
 say? 
 I rather conjecture " m Oreo peribis ! " 
 Seventh Friend. Come, neighbors ! 
 Sixth Friend. I'm with you! Show cour- 
 age and stay 
 Hell's outbreak? Sirs, cowardice here wins 
 the day ! 
 
 Fifth Friend. What luck had that student of 
 
 Bamberg who ventured 
 To peep in the cell where a wizard of note 
 Was busy m getting some black deed deben- 
 tured 
 By Satan ? In dog's guise there sprang at 
 his throat 
 A flame-breathing fury. Fust favors, I note, 
 
 An ugly huge lurcher ! 
 Seventh Friend. ■ If I placed reliance 
 
 As thou, on the beads thou art telling so 
 fast, 
 I 'd risk iust a peep through the keyhole. 
 Sixth Friend. Appliance 
 
 Of ear might be safer. Five minutes are 
 
 past. 
 Omnes. Saints, save us ! The door is thrown 
 open at last ! 
 
 Fust (re-enters, the door closing behind him). 
 As I promised, behold I perform ! Apprehend 
 you 
 The object I offer is poison or pest ? 
 Receive without harm from the hand I extend 
 you 
 
FUST AND HIS FRIENDS 
 
 983 
 
 A. gift that shall set every scruple at rest ! 
 hhrmk back from mere paper-strips ? Try 
 them and test ! 
 
 StUl hesitate ? Myk, -was it thou who lament- 
 edst 
 Thy five wits clean failed thee to render 
 aright 
 A poem read once and no more ? — who re- 
 pentedst 
 Vile pelf had induced thee to banish from 
 sight 
 The characters none but our clerics indite ? 
 
 Take and keep ! 
 First Friend. Blessed Mary and all Saints 
 
 about her ! 
 Second Friend. What imps deal so deftly, — 
 five minutes suffice 
 To play thus the penman ? 
 Third Friend. By Thomas the Doubter, 
 
 Five minutes, no more ! 
 Fourth Friend. Out on arts that entice 
 
 Such scribes to do homage ! 
 Fifth Friend. Stay I Once — and now 
 twice — 
 
 Tea, a third time, my sharp eye completes the 
 inspection 
 Of line after line, the whole series, and 
 finds 
 Each letter join each — not a fault for detec- 
 tion! 
 Such upstrokes, such downstrokes, such 
 strokes of all kinds 
 In the criss-cross, all perfect I 
 Si.xth Friend. There 's nobody minds 
 
 His quill-craft with more of a conscience, o'er- 
 scratches 
 A sheepskin more nimbly and surely with 
 ink, 
 Than Paul the Sub-Prior: here's paper that 
 matches 
 His parchment with letter on letter, no link 
 Overleapt — underlost ! 
 Seventh Friend. No erasure, I think — 
 
 No blot, I am certain ! 
 Fust. Accept the new treasure ! 
 
 Sixth Friend. I remembered fuU half ! 
 Seventh Friend. But who other than I 
 
 (Bear witness, bystanders !) when he broke the 
 measure 
 Repaired fault with "fulmen " ? 
 Fust. . Put bickerings by ! 
 
 Here 's for thee — thee — and thee, too : at 
 need a supply 
 
 (Distributing Proof'.) 
 
 For Mayence, though seventy times seven 
 should muster ! 
 How now? All so feeble of faith that no 
 face 
 Which fronts me but whitens — or yellows, 
 werejuster? 
 Speak out lest I summon my Spirits ! 
 Omnes. Grace — grace ! 
 
 Call none of thy —helpmates I We '11 answer 
 apace ! 
 
 My paper — and mine— and mine also —they 
 vary 
 In nowise — agree in each tittle and jot ! 
 Fust, how — why was this ? 
 Fust. Shall such " Cur " miss a '■ guare " ? 
 Within, there! Throw doors wide I Be- 
 hold who complot 
 To abolish the scribe's work — blur, bluiider 
 and blot ! 
 
 {The doors open, and the Press is discovered in oper- 
 ation.) 
 
 Brave fiill-bodied birth of this brain that con- 
 ceived thee 
 In splendor and music, — sustained the slow 
 drag 
 
 Of the days stretched to years dim with doubt, 
 — yet believed thee, 
 Had faith in thy first leap of life ! Pulse 
 rawht flag — 
 
 — Mine fluttered how faintly ! — Arch-moment 
 might lag 
 
 Its longest — I bided, made light of endurance. 
 Held hard by the hope of an advent which ^ 
 dreamed. 
 Is done now : night yields to the dawn's reas- 
 ' surance ; 
 I have thee — I hold thee — ray fancy that 
 seemed. 
 My fact that proves palpable I Ay, Sirs, I 
 schemed 
 
 Completion that 's fact : see this Engine — be 
 witness 
 Yourselves of its working ! Nay, handle my 
 Types! 
 Each block bears a Letter : in order and fltness 
 I range them. Turn, Peter, the winch! 
 See, it gripes 
 What 's under ! Let loose — draw ! In regu- 
 lar stripes 
 
 Lies plain, at one pressure, your poem — 
 touched, tinted. 
 Turned out to perfection ! The sheet, late a 
 blank, 
 Filled — ready for reading, — not written but 
 Printed ! 
 Omniscient omnipotent God, thee I thank. 
 Thee ever, thee only ! — thy creature that 
 shrank 
 
 From no task thou. Creator, imposedst ! 
 Creation 
 Revealed me no object, from insect to Man, 
 But bore thy hand's impress : earth glowed 
 \vith salvation : 
 " Hast sinned? Be thou saved, Fust ! Con- 
 tinue my plan. 
 Who spake and earth was : with my word 
 things began. 
 
 " As sound so went forth, to the sight be ex- 
 tended 
 
984 
 
 PARLEYINGS WITH CERTAIN PEOPLE 
 
 Word's mission henceforward I The task I 
 assign, 
 Embrace — tliy allegiance to evil is ended ! 
 Have cheer, soul impregnate with purpose I 
 Combine 
 Soul and body, give birth to my concept — 
 called thine ! 
 
 "Far and wide, North and South, East and 
 West, have dominion 
 O'er thought, wingfed wonder, Word ! 
 Traverse world 
 
 In sun-flash and sphere-song ! Each beat of 
 thy pinion 
 Bursts night, beckons day : once Truth's ban- 
 ner unfurled, 
 
 Where 's Falsehood ? Sun-smitten, to nothing- 
 ness hurled ! " 
 
 More humbly — so, friends, did my fault find 
 redemption. 
 I sinned, soul-entoiled by the tether of sense : 
 My captor reigned master : I plead no exemp- 
 tion, 
 From Satan's award to his servant : defence 
 From the fiery and final assault would be — 
 whence ? 
 
 By making — as man might — to truth restitu- 
 tion! 
 Truth is God : trample lies and lies' father, 
 God's foe ! 
 Fix fact fast: truths change by an hour's 
 revolution : 
 What deed's very doer, unaided, can show 
 How 't was done a year — month — week — 
 day — minute ago ? 
 
 At best, he relates it — another reports it — 
 A third — nay, a thousandth records it : and 
 still 
 Narration, tradition, no step but distorts it, 
 As down from truth's height it goes sliding 
 until 
 At the low level lie-mark it stops — whence no 
 skill 
 
 Of the scribe, intervening too tardily, rescues 
 — Once fallen — lost fact from lie's fate 
 there. What scribe 
 — Eyes homy with poring, hands crippled with 
 desk-use. 
 Brains fretted by fancies — the volatile tribe 
 That tease weary watchers — can boast that no 
 bribe 
 
 Shuts eye and frees hand and remits brain 
 from toiling ? 
 Truth gained — can we stay, at whatever the 
 stage, 
 
 Truth a-slide, — save her snow from its ulti- 
 mate soiling 
 In mire, — by some process, stamp promptly 
 on page 
 
 Fact spoiled by pen's plodding, make truth 
 heritage 
 
 Not merely of clerics, but poured out, full 
 measure, , 
 
 On clowns — every mortal endowed with a 
 mind? 
 Kead, gentle and simple ! Let labor win leis- 
 ure 
 At last to bid truth do all duty assigned. 
 Not pause at the noble but pass to the hind I 
 
 How bring to effect such swift sure simultane- 
 ous 
 Unlimited multiplication ? How spread 
 By an arm-sweep a hand-throw — no helping 
 extraneous — 
 Truth broadcast o'er Europe ? " The gold- 
 smith," I said, 
 " Graves limning on gold: why not letters on 
 lead?" 
 
 So, Tuscan artificer, grudge not thy pardon 
 To me who played false, made a furtive 
 descent. 
 Found the sly secret workshop, — thy genius 
 kept guard on 
 Too slackly for once, — and surprised thee 
 low-bent 
 O'er thy labor — some chalice thy tool would 
 indent 
 
 With a certain free scroll-work framed round 
 by a border 
 Of foliage and fruitage : no scratching so fine. 
 No shading so shy but, in ordered disorder. 
 Each flourish came clear, — unbewildered by 
 shine. 
 On the gold, irretrievably right, lay each line. 
 
 How jud^e if thy hand worked thy will ? By 
 reviewing. 
 Revising again and again, piece by piece. 
 Tool's performance, — this way, as I watched. 
 'T was through glueing 
 A paper-like film-stuff — thin, smooth, void 
 of crease. 
 On each cut of the graver : press hard ! at re- 
 
 No mark on the plate but the paper showed 
 
 double : 
 His work might proceed: as he judged — 
 
 space or speck 
 Up he filled, forth he flung — was relieved thus 
 
 from trouble 
 Lest wrong — once — were right never more : 
 
 what could check 
 Advancement, completion? Thus lay at my 
 
 beck — 
 
 At my call — triumph likewise ! " For,'' cried 
 I, *' what hinders 
 That graving turns Printing? Stamp one 
 word — not one 
 But fifty such, phcsnix-like, spring from death's 
 cinders, — 
 Since death is word's doom, clerics hide from 
 the sun 
 
FUST AND HIS FRIENDS 
 
 985 
 
 As some churl closets up this rare chalice." 
 Go, ruu 
 
 Thy race now, Fast's child ! High, Printing, 
 and holy 
 Thy nnission ! These types, see, I chop and 
 1 change 
 Till the words, every letter, a pageful, not slowly 
 
 Yet surely lies fixed : last of all, I arrange 
 A paper beneath, stamp it, loosen it ! 
 First Friend. Strange ! 
 
 Second Friend. How simple exceedingly ! 
 Fust. Bustle, my Schoeffer 1 
 
 Set type, — quick, Genesheim! Turn screw 
 
 now ! 
 Third Friend. Just that ! 
 
 Fourth Friend. And no such vast miracle ! 
 Fust. " Plough with my heifer. 
 
 Ye find out my riddle," quoth Samson, and pat 
 He speaks to the purpose. Grapes squeezed in 
 
 the vat 
 
 Yield to sight and to taste what is simple — a 
 liquid 
 Mere urchins may sip : but give time, let fer- 
 ment — 
 You 've wine, manhood's master ! Well, "rec- 
 tius si quid 
 Novistis im-per-ti-te ! " Wait the event. 
 Then weigh the result! But, whate'er Thy 
 intent, 
 
 Thou, the one force in the whole variation 
 Of visible nature, — at work — do I doubt ? — 
 
 From Thy first to our last, in perpetual crea- 
 tion — 
 A film hides us from Thee — 'twixt inside 
 and out, 
 
 A film, on this earth where Thou bringest about 
 
 New marvels, new forms of the glorious, the 
 gracious. 
 We bow to, we bless for : no star bursts 
 heaven's dome 
 
 But Thy finger impels it, no weed peeps auda- 
 cious 
 Earth's clay-floor from out, but Thy finger 
 makes room . 
 
 For one world's-want the more m Thy Cosmos : 
 presume 
 
 Shall Man, Microoosmos, to claim the concep- 
 tion 
 Of grandeur, of beauty, m thought, word or 
 deed? 
 
 1 toiled, but Thy light on my dubiousest step 
 
 shone : . » ■ j 
 
 If I reach the glad goal, is it I who succeed 
 Who stumbled at starting tripped up by a reed. 
 
 Or Thou ? Knowledge only and absolute, glory 
 
 As utter be Thine who concedest a spark 
 Of Thy spheric perfection to earth's transitory 
 Existences 1 Nothing that lives, but Thy 
 mark 
 Gives law to — life's light : what is doomed to 
 the dark ? 
 
 Where 's ignorance ? Answer, creation ! What 
 height, 
 What depth has escaped Thy commandment 
 — to Know? 
 What birth in the ore-bed but answers aright 
 Thy sting at its heart which impels — bids 
 " E'en so. 
 Not otherwise move or be motionless, — grow, 
 
 " Decline, disappear ! " Is the plant in default 
 " ■ ^ ■ ■ 3I1 ■ ■ — 
 
 bird and the beast 
 
 How to bud, when to branch forth? The 
 
 — Do they doubt if their safety be found in 
 
 assault 
 Or escape ? Worm or fly. of what atoms the 
 
 least 
 But follows light's guidance, — will famish, not 
 
 feast? 
 
 In such various degree, fly and worm, ore and 
 plant. 
 All know, none is witless: around each, a 
 wall 
 Encloses the portion, or ample or scant, 
 
 Of Knowledge : beyond which one hair's 
 breadth, for all 
 Ijies blank — not so much as a blackness — a pall 
 
 Some sense unimagined must penetrate : plain 
 Is only old license to stand, walk or sit. 
 
 Move so far and so wide in the narrow domain 
 Allotted each nature for life's use : past it 
 
 How immensity spreads does he guess ? Not a 
 whit. 
 
 Does he care ? Just as little. Without ? No, 
 within 
 Concerns him ? he Knows. Man Ignores — 
 thanks to Thee 
 Who madest him know, but — in knowing — 
 begin 
 To know stiU new vastness of knowledge 
 must be 
 Outside him — to enter, to traverse, in fee 
 
 Have and hold ! " Oh, Man's ignorance ! " hear 
 the fool whine ! 
 How were it, for better or worse, didst thou 
 grunt 
 Contented with sapience — the lot of the swme 
 Who knows he was bom for just truffles to 
 hunt?— . . ,„ 
 
 Monks' Paradise — " Semper sint res uti sunt ! 
 
 No, Man's the prerogative — knowledge once 
 gained — 
 To ignore,— find new knowledge to press tor, 
 to swerve . , 
 
 In pursuit of, no, not for a moment : attained — 
 Why, oiiward through ignorance ! Dare and 
 deserve ! , ,, ^, 
 
 As StiU to its asymptote speedeth the curve. 
 
 So approximates Man — Thee, who, reachable 
 
 Hast formed him to yearningly follow Thy 
 whole 
 Sole and single omniscience ! 
 
986 
 
 ASOLAN'DO 
 
 Stich, friends, is my lot : 
 I am back with the world : one more step to 
 the goal 
 Thanks for reaching I render — Fust's help to 
 Man's soul ! 
 
 Mere mechanical help ? So the hand gives a toss 
 To the falcon, — aloft once, spread pinions 
 and fly, 
 Beat air far and wide, up and down and across ! 
 My Press strains a^tremble : whose masterful 
 eye 
 Will be first, in new regions, new truth to 
 descry ? 
 
 Give chase, soul ! Be sure each new capture 
 consigned 
 To my Types will go forth to the world, like 
 God's bread 
 ^- Miraculous food not for body but mind. 
 Truth's manna ! How say you ? Put case 
 that, instead 
 Of old leasing and lies, we superiorly fed 
 
 These Heretics, Hussites . . . 
 
 First Friend. First answer my query ! 
 
 If saved, art thou happy ? _, 
 
 Fust. I was and I am. 
 
 First Friendi Thy visage confii'ius it : how 
 comes, then, that — weary 
 
 And woe-begone late — was it show, was it 
 sham ? — 
 We found thee sunk thiswise ? 
 
 Second Friend. — In need of the dram 
 
 From the flask which a provident neighbor 
 
 might carry ! 
 Fust. Ah, friends, the fresh triumph soon 
 
 flickers, fast fades ! 
 I hailed Word's dispersion : could heartleaps 
 
 but tarry ! 
 Through me does Print furnish Truth wings ? 
 
 The same aids 
 Cause Falsehood to range just as widely. What 
 
 raids 
 
 On a region undreamed of does Printing en- 
 able 
 Truth's foe to effect ! Printed leasing and lies 
 May speed to the world's farthest comer — 
 gross fable 
 No less than pure fact — to impede, neutralize. 
 Abolish God's gift and Man's gain ! 
 First Friend. Dost surmise 
 
 What struck me at first blush ? Our Begharda, 
 Waldenses, 
 Jeronimites, Hussites — does one show hiB 
 head, 
 Spout heresy now ? Not a priest in his senses 
 Deigns answer mere speech, but piles fagots 
 instead, 
 Refines as by fire, and, him silenced, all 's said. 
 
 Whereas if in future I pen an opuscule 
 
 Defying retort, as of old when rash tongues 
 Were easy to tame, — straight some knave of 
 the Huss-School 
 Prints answer forsooth ! Stop invisible lungs ? 
 The barrel of blasphemy bfoached once, who 
 bungs ? 
 
 Second Friend. Does my sermon, next Easter, 
 
 meet fitting acceptance ? 
 Eaeh captious disputative boy has his quirk 
 " An cuique credendum sit ? " Well, the Church 
 kept ** ans " 
 In order till Fust set his engine at work ! 
 What trash will come flying from Jew, Moor, 
 and Turk 
 
 When, goosequiUj thy reign o'er the world is 
 abolished ! 
 Goose — ominous name ! With a goose woe 
 began : 
 Quoth Hnss — which means "goose" in his 
 idiom unpolished — 
 " Ye bum now a Goose : there succeeds me a 
 Swan 
 Ye shall find quench your fire ! " 
 Fust. I foresee such a man. 
 
 ASOLANDO 
 
 TO MRS. ARTHUR BRONSON 
 
 To whom but you, dear Friend, should I dedicate verses — some few written, all of 
 them supervised, in the comfort of your presence, and with yet another experience of the 
 ^fracious hospitality now bestowed oh me since so many a year, — adding a charm even to 
 my residences at Venice, and leaviug nie little regret for the surprise and delight at my 
 visits to Asolo in bygone days ? 
 
 I unite, you will see, the disconnected poems by a title-name popularly ascribed to the 
 inventiveness of the ancient secretary of Queen Cornaro whose palace-tower still overlooks 
 us : Asolare — "to disport in the open air, amuse one's self at random." The objection 
 that such a word nowhere occurs in the works of the Cardinal is hardly important — 
 Bemho was too thorough a purist to conserve in print a terra which in talk he might possi- 
 bly toy with : but the word is more likely derived from a Spanish source. I use it for 
 
DUBIETY 
 
 987 
 
 love of the place, and in requital of your pleasant assurance that an early poem of mine 
 first attracted you thithet — where and elsewhere, at La Mura as Ch Alvisi, may all happi- 
 ness attend you 1 Gratefully and affectionately yours, 
 
 Asoio: Ocloberli, 1889. R. B. 
 
 The greater part of Asolando was written in 
 1888-89, though in one instance at least an early 
 poem was included in the collection. The title 
 
 of the volume is explained in the dedication. 
 The book, by a strange coincidence, was pub- 
 lished on the day of Browning's death. 
 
 PROLOGUE 
 
 " The Poet's age is sad ; for why ? 
 
 In youth, the natural world could show 
 No common object but his eye 
 
 At once involved with alien glow — 
 His own soul's iris-bow. 
 
 " And now a flower is just a flower : 
 Man, bird, beast are but beast, bird, man — 
 
 Simply themselves, uncinct by dower 
 Of dyes which, when life's day began, 
 
 Round each in glory ran." , 
 
 Friend, did you need an optic glass. 
 Which were your choice ? A lens to drape 
 
 In ruby, emerald, chrysopras, 
 . Each object — or reveal its shape 
 
 Clear outlined, past escape, 
 
 The naked very thing ? — so clear 
 That, when you had the chance to gaze, 
 
 You found its inmost self appear 
 Through outer seeming — truth ablaze. 
 
 Not falsehood's fancy-haze ? 
 
 How many a year, my Asolo, 
 
 Since — one step just from sea to land — 
 I found you, loved yet feared yon so — 
 
 For natural objects seemed to stand 
 Palpably fire-clothed ! No — 
 
 No mastery of mine o'er these I 
 Terror with beauty, like the Bush 
 
 Burning but unoonsumed. Bend knees, 
 Drop eyes to earthward ! Language ? Tush ! 
 
 Silence 't is awe decrees. 
 
 And now ? The lambent flame is — where ? 
 
 Lost from the naked world; earth, sky, 
 Hill, vale, tree, flower, — Italia's rare 
 
 O'er-running beauty crowds the eye — 
 But flame ? The Bush is bare. 
 
 Hill, vale, tree, flower — they stand distinct. 
 Nature to know and name. What then ? 
 
 A Voice spoke thence which straight unlinked 
 Fancy from fact : see, all 's in ken : 
 
 Has once my eyelid winked ? 
 
 No, for the purged ear apprehends 
 Earth's import, not the eye late dazed . 
 
 The Voice said, " Call my works thy friends ! 
 At Nature dost thou shrink amazed ? 
 
 God is It who transcends." 
 Asolo ; Sf:i>tember 6, ISSa 
 
 ROSNY 
 
 Woe, he went galloping into the war, 
 
 Clara, Clara ! 
 Let us two dream : shall he 'scape with a 
 scar ? 
 Scarcely disf^:urementj rather a grace 
 Making for manhood which nowise we mar ; 
 See, while I kiss it, the flush on his face — 
 Rosny, Rosny ! 
 
 Light does he laugh : " With your love in my 
 soul " — 
 
 (Clara, Clara !) 
 "How could I other than — sound, safe, and 
 whole — 
 Cleave who opposed me asunder, yet stand 
 Scatheless beside you,, as, touching love's goal. 
 Who won the race kneels, craves reward at 
 your hand — 
 
 Rosny, Rosny ? " 
 
 Ay, but if certain who envied should see I 
 
 Clara, Clara, 
 Certain who simper : " The hero for me 
 
 Hardly of life were so chatry as miss 
 Death — death and fame — that's love's guer- 
 don when She 
 Boasts, proud bereaved one, her choice fell on 
 this 
 
 Rosny, Rosny ! " 
 
 So, — go on dreaming, — he lies mid a heap 
 
 (Clara, Clara,) 
 Of the slain by his hand: what is death but a 
 sleep? 
 Dead, with my portrait displayed on his 
 breast : 
 Love wrought his undoing : "No prudence 
 could keep 
 The love-maddened wretch from his fate. 
 That is best, 
 
 Bosny, Rosny ! 
 
 DUBIETY 
 
 I wiM. be happy if but for once : 
 Only help me, Autumn weather. 
 
 Me and my cares to screen, ensconce 
 In luxury's sofarlap of leather ! 
 
 Sleep? Nay, comfort— with just a cloud 
 Suflnsing day too clear and bright: 
 
 Eve's essence, the single drop allowed 
 T<» sully, like milk. Noon's watei^white. 
 
988 
 
 ASOLANDO 
 
 Let gauziness shade, not shroud, — adjust. 
 Dim and not deaden, — somehow sheathe 
 
 Aught sharp in the rough world's busy thrust, 
 If it reach me through dreaming's vapor- 
 wreath. 
 
 Be life so, all things eyer the same ! 
 
 For, what has disarmed the world? Out- 
 side, 
 Quiet and peace : inside, nor blame 
 
 Nor want, nor wish whate'er betide. 
 
 What is it like that has happened before ? 
 
 A dream ? No dream, more real by much. 
 A vision ? But fanciful days of yore 
 
 Brought many : mere musing seems not 
 such. 
 
 Perhaps but a memory, after all ! 
 
 — Of what came once when a woman leant 
 To feel for my brow where her kiss might 
 fall. 
 
 Truth ever, truth only the excellent ! 
 
 NOW 
 
 Out of your whole life give but a moment 1 
 All of your life that has gone before. 
 All to come after it, — so you ignore. 
 So you make perfect the present, — condense. 
 In a rapture of rage, for perfection's endow- 
 ment, 
 Thought and feeling and soul and sense — 
 Merged in a moment which gives me at 
 
 last 
 You around me for once, you beneath me, 
 
 above me — 
 Measure that despite of time future, time 
 
 past, — 
 This tick of our life-time's one moment you 
 
 love me ! 
 How long such suspension may linger ? Ah, 
 
 Sweet — 
 The moment eternal — just that and no more — 
 When ecstasy's utmost we clutch at the core 
 While cheeks burn, arms open, eyes shut and 
 
 lips meet ! 
 
 HUMILITY 
 
 What girl but, having gathered flowers, 
 Stript the beds and spoilt the bowers. 
 From the lapful light she carries 
 Drops a careless bud ? — nor tarries 
 To regain the waif and stray : 
 "Store enough for home " — she '11 say. 
 
 So say I too : give your lover 
 
 Heaps of loving — under, over, 
 
 Whelm him — make the one the wealthy 1 
 
 Am I all so poor who — stealthy 
 
 Work it was ! — picked up what fell : 
 
 Not the worst bud — who can tell ? 
 
 POETICS 
 
 "So say the foolish!" Say the foolish so. 
 Love ? 
 "Flower she is, my rose'' — or else, "My 
 very swan is she " — 
 Or perhaps, "Yon maid-moon, blessing earth 
 below, Love, 
 That art thou ! " — to them, belike : no such 
 vain words from me. 
 
 " Hush, rose, blush ! no balm like breath,'' I 
 chide it : 
 "Bend thy neck its best, swan, — hers the 
 whiter curve ! " 
 Be the moon the moon : my Love I place be- 
 side it : 
 What is she ? Her human self, — no lower 
 word will serve. 
 
 SUMMUM BONUM 
 
 All the breath and the bloom of the year in 
 the bag of one bee : 
 All the wonder and wealth of the mine in the 
 heart of one gem : 
 In the core of one pearl all the shade and the 
 shine of the sea : 
 Breath and bloom, shade and shine, — won- 
 der, wealth, and — how far above them — 
 Truth, that 's brighter than gem. 
 Trust, that 's purer than pearl, — 
 Brightest truth, purest trust in the imiverse — 
 all were for me 
 
 In the kiss of one girl. 
 
 A PEARL, A GIRL 
 
 A SIMPLE ring with a single stone, 
 To the vulgar eye no stone of price : 
 
 Whisper the right word, that alone — 
 Forth starts a sprite, like fire from ice. 
 
 And lo, you are lord (says an Eastern scroll) 
 
 Of heaven and earth, lord whole and sole 
 Through the power in a pearl. 
 
 A woman ('t is I this time that say) 
 With little the world counts worthy praise : 
 
 Utter the true word — out and away 
 Escapes her soul : I am wrapt in blaze. 
 
 Creation's lord, of heaven and earth 
 
 Lord whole and sole — by a minute's birth — 
 Through the love in a girl ! 
 
 SPECULATIVE 
 
 Others may need new life in Heaven — 
 Man, Nature, Art — made new, assume ! 
 
 Man with new mind old sense to leaven, 
 Nature, — new light to clear old gloom. 
 
 Art that breaks bounds, gets soaring-room. 
 
 I shall pray : " Fugitive as precious — 
 Minutes which passed. — return, remain ! 
 
BAD DREAMS 
 
 Let earth's old life once more enmesh us. 
 You with old pleasure, me — old pain, 
 So we but meet nor part again ! " 
 
 WHITE WITCHCRAFT 
 
 When a boy Browning had a humble friend 
 in the person of a toad. " He visited it daily 
 where it burrowed under a white rosetree, an- 
 nouncing himself by a pinch of gravel dropped 
 into its hole ; and the creature would crawl 
 forth, allow its head to be gently tickled, and 
 reward the act with a loving glance of its soft 
 full eyes." Mrs. Obb. 
 
 It you and I could change to beasts, what 
 
 beast should either be ? 
 Shall you and I play Jove for once ? Turn fox 
 
 then, I decree ! 
 Shy wild sweet stealer of the grapes ! Now do 
 
 your worst on me ! 
 
 And thus you think to spite your friend — 
 turned loathsome ? What, a toad ? 
 
 So, all men shrink and shun me ! Dear men, 
 pursue your road ! 
 
 Leave but my crevice in the stone, a reptile's fit 
 abode ! 
 
 Now say your worst, Canidia! " He 's loath- 
 some, I allow : 
 
 There may or may not lurk a pearl beneath his 
 puckered brow : 
 
 But see his eyes that follow mine — love lasts 
 there, anyhow." 
 
 BAD DREAMS 
 I 
 
 Last night I saw you in my sleep : 
 And how your charm of face was changed ! 
 
 I asked, " Some love, some faith you keep ? " 
 You answered, " Faith gone, love estranged." 
 
 Whereat I woke — a twofold bliss : 
 Waking was one, but next there came 
 
 This other : " Though I felt, for this, 
 My heart break, I loved on the same." 
 
 BAD DREAMS 
 II 
 
 You in the flesh and here — 
 
 Your very self ! Now, wait ! 
 One word ! May I hope or fear ? 
 
 Must I speak in love or hate ? 
 Stay while 1 ruminate ! 
 
 The fact and each circumstance 
 Dare you disown ? Not you ! 
 
 That vast dome, that huge dance. 
 And the gloom which overgrew 
 
 _A_ — possibly festive crew i 
 
 989 
 
 For why should men dance at all — 
 Why women — a crowd of both — 
 
 Unless they are gay ? Strange ball — 
 Hands and feet plighting troth, 
 
 Yet partners enforced and loth ! 
 
 Of who danced there, no shape 
 Did I recognize : thwart, perverse, 
 
 Each grasped each, past escape 
 In a whirl or weary or worse : 
 
 Man's sneer met woman's curse. 
 
 While he and she toiled as if 
 Their guardian set galley-slaves 
 
 To supple chained limbs grown stiff : 
 Unmanacled trulls and knaves — 
 
 The lash for who misbehaves ! 
 
 And a gloom was, all the while. 
 
 Deeper and deeper yet 
 O'ergrowing the rank and file 
 
 Of that army of haters — set 
 To mimic love s fever-fret. 
 
 By the wall-side close I crept, 
 
 Avoiding the livid maze, 
 And, safely so far, outstepped 
 
 On a chamber — a chapel, says 
 My memory or betrays — 
 
 Closet-like, kept aloof 
 
 From unseemly witnessing 
 What sport made floor and roof 
 
 Of the Devil's palace ring 
 While his Damned amused their king. 
 
 Ay, for a low lamp burned, 
 
 And a silence lay about 
 What I, in the midst, discerned 
 
 Though dimly till, past doubt, 
 'T was a sort of throne stood out — • 
 
 High seat with steps, at least ; 
 
 And the topmost step was filled 
 By — whom ? What vestured priest ? 
 
 A stranger to me, — his guild. 
 His cult, unreconciled 
 
 To my knowledge how guild and cult 
 Are clothed in this world of ours : 
 
 I pondered, but no result 
 Came to — unless that Giaours 
 
 So worship the Lower Powers. 
 
 When suddenly who entered ? 
 
 Who knelt — did you guess I saw ? 
 Who — raising that face were centred 
 
 Allegiance to love and law 
 So lately — off-casting awe, 
 
 Down-treading reserve, away 
 Thrusting respect . . . but mine 
 
 Stands firm — firm still shall stay ! 
 Ask Satan ! for I decline 
 
 To tell— what I saw, in fine ! 
 
 Yet here in the flesh you come — 
 Vo-r same self, form and face, — 
 
99° 
 
 ASOLANDO 
 
 In the eyes, mirth still at home i 
 On the lips, that commonplace 
 Perfection of honest g:race I 
 
 Yet your errand is ^ needs must be — 
 
 To palliate — well, explain, 
 Expurgate in some degree 
 
 rour soul of its ugly stain. 
 Oh, you — the good in grain — 
 
 How was it your white took tinge ? 
 
 " A mere dream " — never object ! 
 Sleep leaves a door on hinge 
 
 Whence soul, ere our flesh suspect. 
 Is off and away ; detect 
 
 Her vagaries when loose, who can ! 
 
 Be she pranksome, be she prude. 
 Disguise with the day began: 
 
 With the night — ah, what ensued 
 From draughts of a drink hell-brewed ? 
 
 Then She : " What a queer wild dream ! 
 
 And perhaps the best fun is — 
 Myself had its fellow — I seem 
 
 Scarce awake from yet, 'T was this — 
 Shall I tell you ? First, a kiss ! 
 
 *' For the fault was just your own, — 
 
 'T is myself expect apology : 
 You warned me to let alone 
 
 (Since our studies were mere philology) 
 That ticklish (you said) Anthology. 
 
 ** So I dreamed that I passed exam 
 Till a question posed me sore ; 
 
 ' Who translated this epigram 
 By — an author we best ignore ? * 
 
 And I answered, * Hannah More ' I " 
 
 BAD DREAMS 
 
 This was my dream : I saw a Forest 
 
 Old as the earth, no track nor t'-ace 
 Of unmade man. Thou, Soul, explorest — 
 
 Though in a trembling rapture — space 
 Immeasurable ! Shrubs, turned trees. 
 Trees that touch heaven, support its freize 
 Studded with sun and moon and star ; 
 While — oh, the enormous growths that bar 
 Mine eye from penetrating past 
 
 Their tangled twine where lurks — nay, lives 
 Koyally lone, some brute-type cast 
 
 I' the rough, time cancels, man forgives. 
 
 On. Soul ! I saw a lucid City 
 
 Of architectural device 
 Every way perfect. Pause for pity, 
 
 Lightning 1 nor leave a cicatrice 
 On those bright marbles, dome and spire, 
 Structures palatial, — streets which mire 
 Dares not defile, paved all too fine 
 For human footstep's smirch, not thine — 
 Proud solitary traverser. 
 
 My Soul, of silent lengths of way — 
 With what ecstatic dread, aver. 
 
 jjesc nte start sanauoned by ihY stay t 
 
 Ah, but the last si^t was the hideous 1 
 
 A City, yes, — a Forest, true, — 
 But each devouring each. Perfidious 
 
 Snake-plants had strangled what I knew 
 Was a pavilion once : each oak 
 Held on his horns some spoil he broke 
 By surreptitiously beneath 
 Upthrnsting : pavements, as with teeth, 
 Griped huge weed widening crack and split 
 
 In squares and circles stone-work erst. 
 Oh, Nature — good ! Ob, Art — no whit 
 Less worthy I Both in one — accurst 1 
 
 BAD DREAMS 
 
 It happehed thus : my slab, though new, 
 Was getting weather-stained, — beside, 
 
 Herbage, balm, peppermint o'ergrew 
 Letter and letter; till you tried 
 
 Somewhat, the Name was scarce descried. 
 
 That strong stem man my lover came : 
 — Was he my lover ? Call him, pray, 
 
 My life's cold critic bent on blame 
 Of all poor I could do or say 
 
 To make me worth his love one day — 
 
 One far day when, by diligent 
 
 And dutiful amending faults, 
 Foi bles, all weaknesses which went 
 
 To challenge and excuse assaults 
 Of culture wronged by taste that halts — 
 
 Discrepancies should mar no plan 
 
 Symmetric of the qualities 
 Claiming respect from — say — a man 
 
 That 's strong and stem. '* Once more he pries 
 Into me with those critic eyes ! " 
 
 No question ! so — " Conclude, condemn 
 
 Each failure my poor self avows ! 
 Leave to its fate all yon contemn ! 
 
 There 's Solomon's selected spouse : 
 Earth needs must hold such maids — choose 
 them I " 
 
 Why, he was weeping ! Surely gone 
 
 Sternness and strength : with eyes to ground 
 
 And voice a broken monotone — 
 " Only be as you were ! Abound 
 
 In foibles, faults, — laugh, robed and crowned 
 
 "As Folly's veriest queen, — care I 
 One feather-fluff ? Look pity. Love, 
 
 On prostrate me — your foot shall try 
 This forehead's use — mount thence above. 
 
 And reach what Heaven you dignify ! " 
 
 Now, what could bring such change about ? 
 
 The thought perplexed : till, foUowing 
 His gaze npon the ground, — why, out 
 
 Came all the secret ! So, a thing 
 Thus simple has deposed my king ! 
 
 For. spite of weeds that strove to spoil 
 FUin reading on the lettered £la.ti. 
 
THE CARDINAL AND THE DOG 
 
 991 
 
 ^S^™* was clear enough — no aoil 
 Jiiffaced the date when one chance atah 
 Of soom ... if only ghosts might blab ! 
 
 INAPPREHENSIVENESS 
 
 We two stood simply friend-like side by side, 
 Viewing a twilight country far and wide, 
 Till she at length broke silence. "How it towers 
 Yonder, the ruin o'er this vale of ours I 
 The West's faint flare behind it so relieves 
 Its rugged outline — sight perhaps deceives, 
 Or I could almost fancy that I see 
 A branch wave plain — belike some wind-sown 
 
 tree 
 Chance-rooted where a missing turret was. 
 What would I give for the perspective glass 
 At home, to make out if 't is really so I 
 Has Ruskin noticed here at Asolo 
 That certain weed-growths on the ravaged wall 
 Seem "... something that I could not say at all, 
 My thought being rather — as absorbed she 
 
 sent 
 Look onward after look from eyes distent 
 With longing to reach Heaven's gate left ajar — 
 *^ Qh, fancies that might be, oh, facts that are ! 
 What of a wilding ? By you stands, and may 
 So stand unnoticed till the Judgment Day, 
 One who, if once aware that your regard 
 Claimed what his heart holds, — woke, as from 
 
 its sward 
 The flower, the dormant passion, so to speak — 
 Then what a rush of life would startling wreak 
 fievenge on your inapprehensive stare 
 While, from the ruin and the West's faint flare. 
 You let your eyes meet mine, touch what you 
 
 term 
 Quietude — that 's an universe in germ — 
 "rhe dormant passion needing but a look 
 To burst into immense life ! 
 
 " No, the book 
 Which noticed how the wall-growths wave," 
 
 SAlQ. &h.6 
 
 " Was not by Ruskin." 
 
 I said, " Vernon Lee." 
 
 WHICH? 
 
 So, the three Court-ladies began 
 Their trial of who judgSd best 
 In esteeming the love of a man : 
 Who preferred with most reason was thereby 
 confessed 
 Boy-Cupid's exemplary catcher and eager ; 
 All Abb4 crossed legs to decide on the wager. 
 
 ' First the Duchesse: " Mine for me — 
 Who were it but God's for Him, 
 And the King's for — who but he ? 
 Both faithful and loyal, one grace more shall 
 brim 
 His Clip with perfection : a lady's tmfe lover. 
 He horns — save his God and his king — none 
 above her." 
 
 " I re<(ilire " — outspoke the Marquise — 
 " Pure thoughts, ay, but also fine deeds : 
 
 Play the paladin must he, to please 
 My whim, and — to prove my knight's service 
 exceeds 
 Your saint's and your loyalist's praying and 
 
 kneehug — 
 Show wounds, each wide mouth to my mercy 
 appealing." 
 
 Then the Comtesse: "My choice be a 
 wretch. 
 Mere losel in body and soul, 
 Thrice accurst ! What care I, so he stretch 
 Arms to me his sole savior, love's ultimate 
 goal. 
 Out of earth and men's noise — names of ' in- 
 fidel,' ' traitor,' 
 Cast up at him ? Crown me, crown's adiudi- 
 cator ! " 
 
 And the Abb^ uncrossed his legs, 
 Took snuff, a reflective pinch. 
 Broke silence : " The question begs 
 Much pondering ere I pronounce. Shall I 
 flinch? 
 The love which to one and one only has refer- 
 ence 
 Seems terribly like what perhaps gains God's 
 preference." 
 
 THE CARDINAL AND THE DOG 
 
 This poem was written in May, 1842, at the 
 same time as the Pied Piper, both having been 
 written at the request of Macready's little son, 
 who was confined lo the house by illness and 
 wanted Browning to write him some poems f ©r 
 which he could make pictures. 
 
 Ckescenzio, the Pope's Legate at the High 
 
 Council, Trent, 
 — Year Fifteen hundred twenty-two, March 
 
 Twenty-five — intent 
 On writing letters to the Pope till late into the 
 
 night. 
 Rose, weary, to refresh himself, and saw a 
 
 monstrous sight : 
 (I give mine Author's very words ; he penned, 
 
 I reindite.) 
 
 A black Dog of vast bigness, eyes flaming, ears 
 that hung 
 
 Down to the very ground almost, into the 
 chamber sprung 
 
 And made directly for him, and laid himself 
 right under 
 
 The table where Crescenzio wrote — who called 
 in fear and wonder 
 
 His servants in the ante-room, commanded 
 every one 
 
 To look for and find out the beast : but, look- 
 ing, they found none. 
 
 The Cardinal fell melancholy, then sick, soon 
 
 after died : 
 And at Verona, as he lay on his death-bed, he 
 
 cried 
 
992 
 
 ASOLANDO 
 
 Aloud to drive away the Dog that leapt on hia 
 
 bedside. 
 Heaven keep us Protestants from harm : the 
 
 rest ... no ill betide ! 
 
 THE POPE AND THE NET 
 
 What, he on whom our voices unanimously ran, 
 Made Pope at our last Conclave ? Full low his 
 
 life began : 
 His father earned the daily bread as just a 
 
 fisherman. 
 
 So much the more his boy minds book, gives 
 
 proof of mother-wit. 
 Becomes first Deacon, and then Priest, then 
 
 Bishop : see him sit 
 No less than Cardinal erelong, while no one 
 
 cries "Unfit!" 
 
 But some one smirks, some other smiles, jogs 
 
 elbow and nods head : 
 Each winks at each : " I*-faith, a rise ! Saint 
 
 Peter's net, instead 
 Of sword and keys, is come in vogue ! " You 
 
 think he blushes red ? 
 
 Not he, of humble holy heart ! " Unworthy 
 
 me ! " he sighs : 
 *' From fisher's drudge to Church's prince — it 
 
 is indeed a rise : 
 So, here 's my way to keep the fact forever in 
 
 ray eyes! " 
 
 And straightway in his palace-hall, where 
 
 commonly is set 
 Some ooat-of-arms, some portraiture ancestral, 
 
 lo, we met 
 His mean estate's reminder in his fisher-father's 
 
 net! 
 
 Which step conciliates all and some, stops cavil 
 in a trice : 
 
 " The humble holy heart that holds of new- 
 born pride no spice ! 
 
 He 's just the saint to choose for Pope ! " 
 Each adds, " 'T is my advice." 
 
 So, Pope he was : and when we fiocked — its 
 
 sacred slipper on — 
 To kiss his foot, we lifted eyes, alack, the thing 
 
 was gone — 
 That guarantee of lowlihead, —eclipsed that 
 
 star which shone I 
 
 Each eyed his fellow, one and all kept silence. 
 
 I cried, "Pish ! 
 I 'II make me spokesman for the rest, express 
 
 the common wish. 
 Why, Father, is the net removed?" "Son, it 
 
 hath caught the fish." 
 
 THE BEAN-FEAST 
 
 He was the man — Pope Sixtus, that Fifth, 
 that swineherd's ac3 
 
 He knew the right thing, did it, and thanked 
 God when 't was done : 
 
 But of all he had to thank for, my fancy some- 
 how leans 
 
 To thinking, what most moved him was a cer- 
 tain meal on beans. 
 
 For one day, as his wont was, in just enough 
 
 disguise 
 As he went exploring wickedness, — to see with 
 
 his own eyes 
 If law had due observance in the city's entrail 
 
 dark 
 As well as where, i' the open, crime stood an 
 
 obvious mark, — 
 
 He chanced, in a blind alley, on a tumble-down 
 once house 
 
 Now hovel, vilest structure in Rome the ruinous : 
 
 And, as his tact impelled him, Sixtus adven- 
 tured bold, 
 
 To learn how lowliest subjects bore hunger, 
 toil, and cold. 
 
 There sat they at high-supper — man and wife, 
 lad and lass. 
 
 Poor as you please, but cleanly all and care- 
 free ; pain that was 
 
 — Forgotten, pain as sure to be let bide aloof 
 its time, — 
 
 Mightily munched the brave ones — what 
 mattered gloom or grime ? 
 
 Said Sixtus, " Feast, my children 1 who works 
 
 hard needs eat well. 
 I 'm just a supervisor, would hear what you 
 
 can tell. 
 Do any wrongs want righting? The Father 
 
 tries his best. 
 But, since he 's only mortal, sends such as I to 
 
 test 
 The truth of all that's told him — how folk 
 
 like you may fare : 
 Come ! — only don't stop eating — when month 
 
 has words to spare — 
 
 "You" — smiled he — "play the spokesman, 
 bell-wether of the flock I 
 
 Are times good, masters gentle ? Your griev- 
 ances unlock ! 
 
 How of your work and wages ? — pleasures, if 
 such may be — 
 
 Pains, as such are for certain." Thus smiling 
 questioned he. 
 
 But somehow, spite of smiling, awe stole upon 
 
 the group — 
 An inexpressible surmise : why should a priest 
 
 thus stoop — 
 Pry into what concerned folk ? Each visage 
 
 fell. Aware, 
 Cries Sixtus interposing : " Nay, children, have 
 
 no care ! 
 
 " Fear nothing ! Who employs me requires 
 
 the plain truth. Pelf 
 Beguiles who should inform me : so, I inform 
 
 r"-vselt 
 
THE LADY AND THE PAINTER 
 
 993 
 
 See ! " And he drew hia hood back, let the 
 
 close vesture ope, 
 Showed face, and where on tippet the cross 
 
 lay : 't was the Pope. 
 
 Imagine the joyful wonder ! " How shall the 
 
 like of us — 
 Poor souls — requite such blessing of our rude 
 
 bean-feast?" "Thus — 
 Thus amply I " laughed Pope Sixtus. " I early 
 
 rise, sleep late : 
 Who works may eat: they tempt me, your 
 
 beans there ; spare a plate ! '' 
 
 Down sat he on the door-step : 't was they this 
 
 time said grace : 
 He ate up the last mouthful, wiped lips, and 
 
 then, with face 
 Turned heavenward, broke forth thankful : 
 
 " Not now, that earth obeys 
 Thy word in mine, that through me the peoples 
 
 know Thy ways — 
 
 " But that Thy care extendeth to Nature's 
 
 homely wants, 
 And, while man's mind is strengthened, Thy 
 
 goodness nowise scants 
 Man's body of its comfort, — that I whom kings 
 
 and queens 
 Crouch to, pick crumbs from off my table, 
 
 relish beans ! 
 The thunders I but seem to launch, there plain 
 
 Thy hand all see ; 
 That I have appetite, digest, and thrive — that 
 
 boon 's for me." 
 
 MUCKLE-MOUTH MEG 
 
 Fbottned the Laird on the Lord : "So, red- 
 handed I catch thee ? 
 Death-doomed by our Law of the Border ! 
 We 've a gallows outside and a chiel to dispatch 
 thee : 
 Who trespasses — hangs : all 's in order." 
 
 He met frown with smile, did the young English 
 gallant : 
 Then the Laird's dame : " Nay, Husband, I 
 beg! 
 He '» comely : be merciful ! Grace for the 
 callant 
 — It he marries our Muckle-month Meg ! 
 
 " No mile-wide-mouthed monster of yours do I 
 marry : 
 Grant rather the gallows ! " laughed he. 
 " Foul fare kith and kin of you — why do you 
 tany?" 
 " To tame your fierce temper ! " quoth she. 
 
 " Shove him quick in the Hole, shut him fast 
 for a week : 
 Cold, darkness, and hunger work wonders: 
 
 Who lion-like roars now, mouse-fashion will 
 squeak. 
 
 And ' it rains ' soon succeed to ' it thun- 
 ders.' " 
 
 *1? 4 " ^'"^^ '" ^^^ *°1^ ^n"! tte dark 
 T ~ Not hunger : for duly at morning 
 In flitted a lass, and a voice like a lark 
 
 Chirped, "Muckle-mouth Meg still ye 're 
 scorning ? 
 
 " Go hang, but here 's parriteh to hearten ye 
 
 first ! " 
 
 "Did Meg's muckle-mouth boast within some 
 
 Such music as yours, mine should match it or 
 
 burst: 
 
 No frog-jaws I So tell folk, my Winsome ! " 
 
 Soon week came to end, and, from Hole's door 
 set wide. 
 Out he marched, and there waited the lassie : 
 " Yon gallows, or Muckle-mouth Meg toe a 
 bride ! 
 Consider ! Sky 's blue and turf 's grassy : 
 
 " Life 's sweet : shall I say ye wed Muckle- 
 mouth Meg?" 
 " Not I," quoth the stout heart: " too eerie 
 The mouth that can swallow a bubblyjock's 
 
 Shall Ilet it munch mine ? Never, Dearie ! 
 
 " Not Muckle-mouth Meg ? Wow, the obstinate 
 man ! 
 Perhaps he would rather wed me ! " 
 "Ay, would he — with just for a dowry your 
 can ! " 
 "I'm Muckle-mouth Meg," chirruped she. 
 
 " Then so — so — so — so — ''as he kissed her 
 apace — 
 " Will I widen thee out tUl thou turnest 
 From Margaret Minnikin - mou', by God's 
 grace. 
 To Muckle-mouth Meg in good earnest ! " 
 
 ARCADES AMBO 
 
 A, You blame me that I ran away ? 
 
 Why, Sir, the enemy advanced : 
 Baits flew about, and — who can say 
 
 But one, if I stood firm, had glanced 
 In my direction ? Cowardice ? 
 I only know we don't live twice. 
 Therefore — shun death, is my advice. 
 
 B. Shun death at all risks ? Well, at some I 
 
 True, I myself, Sir, though I scold 
 The cowardly, by no means come 
 
 Under reproof as overbold 
 — I, who would have no end of brutes 
 Cut up alive to guess what suits 
 My case and saves my toe from shoots. 
 
 THE LADY AND THE PAINTER 
 
 She. Yet womanhood you reverence. 
 
 So you profess ! 
 He. With heart and soul 
 
 She. Of which fact this is evidence ! 
 
 To help Art-studv, — for some dole 
 
994 
 
 ASOLANDO 
 
 Of certain wretched ahjlUngs, — you 
 luduce a woman — virgin too — 
 To strip and stand staik-naked ? 
 
 He. True. 
 
 She. Nor feel you so degrade her ? 
 
 He. ^ What 
 
 — (Excuse the interruption) — clings 
 Half-sayage-like around your hat ? 
 
 She. Ah, do they please you? WUd-bird- 
 wingsl 
 Next season, — Paris-prints assert, — 
 We must go feathered to the skirt : 
 My modiste keeps on the alert. 
 
 Owls, hawks, jays — swallows most ap- 
 prove. 
 He. Dare I speak plainly ? 
 She. Oh, I trust I 
 
 He. Then, Lady Blanche, it less would more 
 In heart and soul of me disgust 
 Did you strip off those spoils you wear, 
 And stand — for thanks, not shillings — 
 
 bare 
 To help Art like my Model there. 
 She well knew what absolved her — 
 praise 
 In me for God's surpassing good. 
 Who granted to my reverent gaze 
 
 A type of purest womanhood. 
 You — clothed with murder of his best 
 Of harmless beings — stand the test 1 
 What is it you know ? 
 She. That you jest ! 
 
 PONTE DELL' ANGELO, VENICE 
 
 Stop rowing ! This one of our bye-eanals 
 O'er a certain bridge you have to cross 
 That 's named, " Of the Angel : " listen why ! 
 The name " Of the Devil " too much appalls 
 Venetian acquaintance, so — his the loss. 
 While the gain goes . . . look on high ! 
 
 An angel visibly guards yon house ; 
 Above each scutcheon — a pair — st^ds he, 
 Enfolds them with droop of either wing : 
 The family's fortune were perilous 
 Did he thence depart — you will soon agree. 
 If I hitch into verse the thing. 
 
 For, once on a time, this house belonged 
 To a lawyer of note, with law and to spare. 
 But also with overmuch lust of gain : 
 In the matter of law you were nowise wronged, 
 But alas for the lucre ! He picked you bare 
 To the bone. Did folk complain ? 
 
 " I exact," growled he, '' work's rightful due: 
 T is folk seek me, not I seek them. 
 Advice at its price ! They succeed or fail, 
 Get law in each case — ajid a lesson too : 
 Keep clear of the Courts — is advice ad rem : 
 They '11 remember, I '11 be bail 1 " 
 
 So, he pocketed fee without a qualmi. 
 
 What reason for squeamishness ? Labor done, 
 
 To play h« betook him with lightened heart. 
 
 Ate, dranki: -aad made merry with song or 
 
 psalm. 
 Since the yoke iof the Church is an easy one — 
 Fits neck nor causes smart. 
 
 Brief : never iwas such an extortionate 
 Rascal — the word has escaped my teeth ! 
 And yet ^^ (all 's down in a book uo ass 
 Indited, believe me !) — this reprobate 
 Was punctual at prayer-time : gold lurked be' 
 
 neath 
 Alloy of the rankest brass. 
 
 For, play the extortioner as he might. 
 Fleece folk each day and all day long, 
 There was this redeeming circumstance : 
 He never lay down to sleep at night 
 But he put up a prayer first, brief yet strong, 
 " Our Lady avert mischance ! " 
 
 Now it happened at close of a frnctnons week 
 " I must ask," quoth he, " some Saint to dine 
 I want that widow well out of my ears 
 With her ailing and wailing. Who bade her 
 
 seek 
 Bedress at my hands? 'She was wronged!' 
 
 Folk whine 
 If to Law wrong right appears. 
 
 " Matteo da Basoio — he 's my man ! 
 No less than Chief of the Capucins : 
 His presence will surely suffumigate 
 My house — fools think lies under a ban' 
 If somebody loses what somebody wins. 
 Hark, there he knocks at the grate I 
 
 " Come in, thou blessed of Mother Church ! 
 
 I go and prepare — to bid, that is. 
 
 My trusty and diligent servitor 
 
 Get all things in readiness. Vain the search 
 
 Through Venice for one to compare with this 
 
 My model of ministrants ; for — 
 
 " For — once again, nay, three times over, 
 
 My helpmate 'a an ape ! so intelligent, 
 
 I train him to drudge at household work : 
 
 He toils and he rnoOs, I live in clover ; 
 
 Oh, you shall see ! There 's a goodly scent — 
 
 From his cooking, or I 'm a Turk ! 
 
 "Scarce need to descend and supervise : 
 I '11 do it, however ; wait here awhile ! " 
 So, down to the kitchen gayly scuttles 
 Our host, nor notes the alarmed surmise 
 Of the holy man. ** O depth of guile ! 
 He blindly guzzles and guttles, 
 
 ' ' While — who is it dresses the food and poure 
 The liquor ? Some fiend — I make no doubt — 
 In likeness of — which of the loathly brutes ? 
 An ape ! Where hides he ? No bull that gores, 
 No bear that hugs ^ — 't is the mock and flout 
 Of an ape, fiend's face that suits. 
 
 " So -^ out with thee, creature, wherever thou 
 
 hidest I 
 I charge thee, by virtue of . . . right do I 
 
 judge I 
 
PONTE DELL' ANGELO, VENICE 
 
 There skulks he perdue, crouching under the 
 bed. 
 
 Well done I What, forsooth, in beast's shape 
 thou oonfidest ? , 
 
 I know and -would name thee but that I be- 
 grudge 
 
 Breath spent on such carrion. Instead — 
 
 " I adjure thee by - 
 
 " "Stay!" laughed 
 
 the portent that rose 
 From floor up to ceiling : "No need to adjure I 
 See Satan in person, late ape by command 
 Of Him thou adjurest in vain. A saint's nose 
 Scents brimstone though incense be burned for 
 
 a lure. 
 Yet, hence ! for I 'm safe, understand I 
 
 " 'T is my charge to convey to fit punishment's 
 
 place 
 This lawyer, my liegeman, for cruelty wrought 
 On his clients, the widow and orphan, poor souls 
 He hsfai plagued by exactions which proved 
 
 law's' disgrace. 
 Made equity void and to nothingness brought 
 God's pity. Fiends, on with fresh coals ! " 
 
 " Stay ! " nowise confounded, withstands Hell 
 
 its match : 
 " How comes it, were truth in this story of 
 
 thine, 
 God's punishment suffered a minute's delay ? 
 Weeks, months have elapsed since thou squat- 
 
 tedst at watch 
 For. a spring on thy victim : what caused thee 
 
 decline 
 Advantage till challenged to-day ? " 
 
 "That challenge I meet with contempt j" quoth 
 
 the fiend. 
 *^Thus much 1 acknowledge; the man's 
 
 armed in mail : 
 I wait till a joint 's loose, then quick ply my 
 
 claws. 
 Thy friend's one good custom — he knows not 
 
 — has screened 
 His flesh hitherto from what else would assail : 
 At ^ Save me. Madonna ! ' 1 pause. 
 
 " That prayer did the losel but once pretermit, 
 My pounce were upon him. I keep me attent: 
 He 'a in safety but till he 's caught napping. 
 
 Enough ! " 
 "Ay, enough!" smiles the Saint — "for the 
 
 biter is bit. 
 The spy caught in sonmolence. Vanish ! I 'm 
 
 sent 
 To smooth up what fiends do in rough." 
 
 " I vanish ? Through wall or through roof ? " 
 
 the ripost 
 Grinned gayly. " My orders were — ' Leave 
 
 not unharmed 
 The abode of this lawyer ! Do damage to prove 
 'T was for something thou quittedst the land 
 
 of the lost — 
 To add to their number this unit I ' Though 
 
 charmed 
 From descent there . on earth that 's above 
 
 995 
 
 " So do, and be- 
 
 " I may haply amerce him 
 
 gone, 
 I command thee! For, look! Though there 's 
 
 doorway behind 
 And window before thee, go straight through 
 
 the wall,. 
 Leave a breach in the brickwork, a gap in the 
 
 stone 
 For who passes to stare at ! 
 
 I 'm resigned : 
 Here goes ! " roared the goblin, as all — 
 
 Wide bab-wings, spread arms and legs, tail out 
 
 a-stream. 
 Crash obstacles went, right and left, as he 
 
 soared 
 Or else sank, was clean gone through the hole 
 
 anyhow. 
 The Saint returned thanks : then a satisfied 
 
 gleam 
 On the bald polished pate showed that tritunph 
 
 was scored. 
 " To dinner with appetite now ! " 
 
 Down he trips. " In good time ! " smirks the 
 
 host. " Didst thou scent 
 Rich savor of roast meat ? Where hides he, 
 
 my ape? 
 Look alive, be alert ! He 's away to wash 
 
 Sit down, Saint ! What 's here ? Dost exam- 
 ine a rent 
 
 In the napkin thou twistest and twirlest ? 
 Agape . . . 
 
 Ha, blood is it drips nor abates 
 
 "From thy wringing a cloth, late was laven- 
 
 dered fair ? 
 What means such a marvel ? " " Just this does 
 
 it mean : 
 I convince and convict thee of sin!" answers 
 
 straight 
 The Saint, wringing on, wringing ever — oh, 
 
 rare ! — 
 filood — blood from a napery snow not more 
 
 clean, 
 " A miracle shows thee thy state ! 
 
 " See — blood thy extortions have wnmg from 
 
 . the flesh 
 Of thy clients who, sheep-like, arrived to be 
 
 shorn. 
 And left thee — or fleeced to the quick or so 
 
 flayed 
 That, behold, their blood gurgles and grumbles 
 
 afresh 
 To accuse thee ! Ay, down on thy knees, get 
 
 up sworn 
 To restore ! Restitution once made, 
 
 " Sin no more ! Dost thou promise ? Absolved, 
 then, arise ! 
 
 Upstairs follow me ! Art amazed at yon 
 breach ? 
 
 Who battered and shattered and scattered, es- 
 cape 
 
 From thy purlieus obtaining ? That Father of 
 Lies 
 
996 
 
 ASOLANDO 
 
 Thou wast wont to extol for his feats, all and 
 
 each 
 The Devil 'b disguised as thine ape ! " 
 
 Be sure that our lawyer was torn hy remorse, 
 
 Shed tears in a flood, Towed and swore so to 
 alter 
 
 His ways that how else could our Saint but de- 
 clare 
 
 He was cleansed of past sin ? " For sin future 
 — fare worse 
 
 Thou undoubtedly wilt," warned the Saint, 
 '* shouldst thou falter 
 
 One whit ! " " Oh, for that have no care ! 
 
 " I am firm in my purposed amendment. But, 
 
 prithee. 
 Must ever affront and affright me yon gap ? 
 Who made it for exit may find it of use 
 For entrance as easy. If, down in his smithy 
 He forges me fetters — when heated, mayhap. 
 He '11 up with an armful ! Broke loose — 
 
 "How bar him out henceforth?" "Judi- 
 ciously urged ! " 
 Was the good man's reply. " How to balk 
 
 him is plain. 
 There 's nothing the Devil objects to so much, 
 So speedily flies from, as one of those purged 
 Of his presence, the angels who erst formed his 
 
 train — 
 His, their emperor. Choose one of such ! 
 
 " Get fashioned his likeness and set him on 
 
 high 
 At back of the breach thus adroitly filled up : 
 Display him as guard of two scutcheons, thy 
 
 arms : 
 I warrant no devil attempts to get by 
 And disturb thee so guarded. Eat, drink, dine, 
 
 and sup. 
 In thy rectitude, safe from alarms ! " 
 
 So said and so done. See, the angel has place 
 Where the Devil has passage ! All 's down in 
 
 a book. 
 Gainsay me ? Consult it ! Still faithless ? 
 
 Trust me f 
 Trust Father Boverio who gave me the case 
 In his Annals — gets of it, by hook or by crook, 
 Two confirmative witnesses : three 
 
 Are surely enough to establish an act : 
 
 And thereby we learn — would we ascertain 
 
 truth — 
 To trust wise tradition which took, at the time. 
 Note that served till slow history ventured on 
 
 fact, 
 Though folk have their fling at tradition for- 
 sooth ! 
 Row, boys, fore and aft, rhyme and chime ! 
 
 BEATRICE SIGNORINI 
 
 This strange thing happened to a painter once : 
 Viterbo boasts the man among her sons 
 Of note, I seem to think : his ready tool 
 
 Picked up its precepts in Cortnna's school — 
 That 's Pietro Berretini, whom they call 
 Cortona, these Italians : greatish-sraall. 
 Our painter was his pupil, by repute 
 His match if not his master absolute. 
 Though whether he spoiled fresco more or less, 
 And what's its fortune, scarce repays your 
 
 Still, for one circumstance, I save his name 
 
 — Francesco Eomanelli : do the same ! 
 
 He went to Rome and painted : there he knew 
 
 A wonder of a woman painting too — 
 
 For she, at least, was no Cortona's drudge : 
 
 Witness that ardent fancy-shape — I judge _ 
 
 A semblance of her soul — she called, " Desire " 
 
 With starry front for guide, where sits the fire 
 
 She left to brighten Buonarroti's house. 
 
 If you see Florence, pay that piece yotu- vows. 
 
 Though blockhead Baldinucci's mind, imbued 
 
 With monkish morals, bade .folk " Drape the 
 
 nnde 
 And stop the scandal! " ijuoth the record prim 
 I borrow this of : hang his book and him ! 
 At Rome, then, where these fated ones met 
 
 flrst, 
 The blossom of his life had hardly burst 
 While hers was blooming at full beauty's 
 
 stand : 
 No less Francesco — when half -ripe he scanned 
 Consummate Artemisia — grew one want 
 To have her his and make her ministrant 
 With every gift of body and of soul 
 To him. In vain. Her sphery self was whole — 
 Might only touch his orb at Art's sole point. 
 Suppose he could persuade her to enjoint 
 Her life — past, present, future — all in his 
 At Art's sole point by some explosive kiss 
 Of love through lips, would love's success de- 
 feat 
 Artistry's haunting curse — the Incomplete ? 
 Artists no doubt they both were, — what beside 
 Was she ? who long had felt heart, soul spread 
 
 wide 
 Her life out, knowing much and loving well. 
 On either side Art's narrow space where fell 
 Reflection from his own speck : but the germ 
 Of individual genius — what we term 
 The very self, the God-gift whence had grown 
 Heart's life and soul's life — how make that 
 
 his own ? 
 Vainly his Art, reflected, smiled in small 
 On Art's one facet of her ampler ball ; 
 The rest, touch-free, took in, gave back 
 
 heaven, earth. 
 All where he was not. Hope, well-nigh ere 
 
 birth 
 Came to Desire, died off all-unfulfilled. 
 " What though in Art I stand the abler- 
 skilled," 
 (So he conceited : mediocrity 
 Turns on itself the self-transforming eye) 
 " If only Art were suing, mine would plead 
 To purpose : man — by nature I exceed 
 Woman the bounded : but how much beside 
 She boasts, would sue in turn and be denied ! 
 Love her ? My own wife loves me in a sort 
 That suits us both : she takes the world's report 
 Of what my work is worth, and, for the rest, 
 
BEATRICE SIGNORINI 
 
 997 
 
 Concedes that, while hia consort keeps her 
 
 nest. 
 The eagle soars a licensed vagrant, lives 
 A wide free life which she at least forgives — 
 Good Beatrice Siguorini ! Well 
 And wisely did I choose her. But the spell 
 To subjugate this Artemisia — where ? 
 She passionless ? — she resolute to care 
 Nowise beyond the plain sufficiency 
 Of fact that she is she and I am I 
 — 'Acknowledged arbitrator for us both 
 In her life as in mine which she were loth 
 Even to learn the laws of ? No, and no. 
 Twenty times over ! Ay, it must be so : 
 I for myself, alas ! " 
 
 Whereon, instead 
 Of the cheeked lover's-utterance — why, he said 
 
 — Leaning over her easel : " Flesh is red " 
 (Or some such just remark) — "by no means 
 
 white 
 As Guidons pr.ictice teaches : you are right.'' 
 Then came the better impulse : " What if 
 
 pride 
 Were wisely trampled on, whate'er betide ? 
 If I grow hers, not mine — join lives, confuse 
 Bodies and spirits, gain her not but lose 
 Myself to Artemisia ? That were love ! 
 Of two souls — one must bend, one rule above : 
 If I crouch under proudly, lord turned slave. 
 Were it not worthier both than if she gave 
 Herself — in treason to herself — to me ? " 
 
 And, all the while, he felt it could not be. 
 Such love was true love : love that way who 
 
 can ! 
 Some one that 'a bom half woman, not whole 
 
 man : 
 For man, prescribed man better or man worse. 
 Why, whether microcosm or universe. 
 What law prevails alike through great and 
 
 small. 
 The world and man — world's miniature we 
 
 caU? 
 Male is the master. " That way " smiled and 
 
 sighed 
 Our true male estimator — " puts her pride 
 My wife in making me the outlet whence 
 She learns all Heaven allows : 't is my pretence 
 To paint: her lord should do what else but 
 
 paint ? 
 Do I break brushes, cloister me turned saint ? 
 Then, best of all suits sanctity her spouse 
 Who acts for Heaven, allows and disallows 
 At pleasure, past appeal, the right, the wrong 
 In all things. That 's my wife's way. But this 
 
 strong 
 Confident Artemisia — an adept 
 In Art does she conceit herself ? ' Except 
 In just this instance,' tell her, ' no one draws 
 More rigidly observant of the laws 
 Of right design : yet here, — permit me hint, — 
 If the acromion had a deeper dint, 
 That shoulder were perfection.' What surprise 
 
 — Nay scorn, shoots black fire from those 
 
 startled eyes ! 
 She to be lessoned in design forsooth ! 
 I 'm doomed and done for, since I spoke the 
 
 truth. 
 
 Make my own work the subject of dispute — 
 Fails it of justperfection absolute 
 Somewhere ? Those motors, flexors, — don't I 
 
 know 
 Ser Santi, styled ' Tirititototo 
 The pencil-prig, ' might blame them ? Yet my 
 
 wife — 
 Were he and his nicknamer brought to life, 
 Tito and Titian, to pronounce again — 
 Ask her who knows more — I or the great 
 
 Twain, 
 Our colorist and draughtsman ! 
 
 "I help her, 
 Not she helps me ; and neither shall demur 
 Because my portion is " — he chose to think — 
 *' Quite other than a woman's : I may drink 
 At many waters, must repose by none — 
 Rather arise and fare forth, having done 
 Duty to one new excellence the more. 
 Abler thereby, though impotent before 
 So much was gained of knowledge. Best de- 
 part. 
 From this last lady I have learned by heart I " 
 
 Thus he concluded of himself — resigned 
 
 To play the man and master: ^'Man boasts 
 
 mind : 
 Woman, man's sport calls mistress, to the same 
 Does body's S'lit and service. Would she claim 
 — My placid Beatric4-wif e — pretence 
 Even to blame her lord if, going hence, 
 He wistfully regards one whom — did fate 
 Concede — he might accept queen, abdicate 
 Kingship because of ? — one of no meek sort 
 But masterful as he : man's match in short ? 
 Oh, there 's no secret I were best conceal ! 
 Bic^ shall know ; and should a stray tear steal 
 From out the blue eye, stain the rose cheek — 
 
 bah! 
 A smile, a word's gay reassurance — ah. 
 With kissing interspersed, — shall make amends. 
 Turn pain to pleasure." 
 
 " What, in truth so ends 
 Abruptly, do you say, our intercourse ? " 
 Next day, asked Artemisia : " I '11 divorce 
 Husband and wife no longer. Go your ways, 
 Leave Rome ! Viterbo owns no equal, says 
 The by-word, for fair women : you, no doubt. 
 May boast a paragon all specks without. 
 Using the painter's privilege to choose 
 Among what 's rarest. Will your wife refuse 
 Acceptance from — no rival — of a gift ? 
 You paint the human figure I make shift 
 Humbly to reproduce : but, in my hours 
 Of idlesse, what I fain would paint is —flowers. 
 Look now ! " 
 
 She twitched aside a veiling cloth. 
 "Here is my keepsake — frame and picture 
 
 both: 
 For see, the frame is all of flowers festooned 
 About an empty space, — left thus, to wound 
 No natural susceptibility : 
 How can I guess ? 'T is you must fill, not 1, 
 The central space with — her whom you like 
 
 best! 
 That is your business, mine has been the rest. 
 Butiuc^e!" „ . „ 
 
 How judge them ? Each of us, in flowers. 
 
998 
 
 ASOLANDO 
 
 Chooses his love, allies it with past hours, 
 
 Old meetings, vanished forms and faces : no — 
 
 Here let each favorite unmolested blow 
 
 For one heart's homage, no tongue's banal praise, 
 
 Whether the rose appealingly bade " Gaze 
 
 Your fill on me, sultana who dethrone 
 
 The gaudy tulip ! " or 't was "Me alone 
 
 Rather do homage to, who lily am. 
 
 No unabashed rose ! " " Do I vainly cram 
 
 My cup with sweets, your jonquil?" "Why 
 
 forget 
 Vernal endearments with the violet ? " 
 So they contested yet concerted, all 
 As one, to circle round about, enthral 
 Yet, self-forgetting, push to prominence 
 The midmost wonder, gained no matter whence. 
 
 There 's a tale extant, in a book I conned 
 Long years ago, which treats of things beyond 
 The common, antique times and countries queer 
 And customs strange to match. "'Tis said, 
 
 last year," 
 (Recounts my anchor) " that the King had mind 
 To view his kingdom — guessed at from behind 
 A palace-window hitherto. Announced 
 No sooner was such purpose than 't was pounced 
 Upon by all the ladies of the land — 
 Loyal but light of life : they formed a band 
 Of loveliest ones but lithest also, since 
 Proudly they all combined to bear their prince. 
 Backs joined to breasts, — arms, legs, ^- nay, 
 
 ankles, wrists. 
 Hands, feet, 1 know not by what turns and 
 
 twists, 
 So interwoven lay that you believed 
 'T was one sole beast of burden which received 
 The monarch on its back, of breadth not scant. 
 Since fifty girls. made one white elephant." 
 So with the fifty flowers which shapes and hues 
 Blent, as 1 tell, and made one fast yet loose 
 Mixture of beauties, composite, distinct 
 No less in each combining flower that linked 
 With flower to form a fit environment 
 For — whom might be the painter's heart's in- 
 tent 
 Thus, in the midst enhaloed, to enshrine ? 
 
 *' This glory-guarded middle space — is mine ? 
 For me to fill ? " 
 
 " For you, my Friend ! We part. 
 Never perchance to meet again. Your Art — 
 What if I mean it — so to speak — shall wed 
 My own, be witness of the fife we led 
 When sometimes it has seemed our souls near 
 
 found 
 Each one the other as its mate — unbound 
 Had yours been haply from the better choice 
 — Beantiful Bie^ : 't is the common vo'ce. 
 The crowning verdict. Make whom you like best 
 Queen of the central space, and manifest 
 Your predilection for what flower beyond 
 All flowers finds favor with you. I am fond 
 Of — say — yon rose's rich predominance. 
 While you — what wonder ? — more affect the 
 
 glance 
 The gentler violet from its leafy screen 
 Ventures ; so — choose your flower and paint 
 
 your queen 1 " 
 
 Oh, but the man was ready, head as hand, _ 
 Instructed and adroit. " Just as you stand, 
 Stay and be made — would Nature but relent — 
 By Art immortal ! " 
 
 Every implement 
 In tempting reach — a palette primed, each 
 
 squeeze 
 Of oil-paint in its proper patch — with these, 
 Brushes, a veritable sheaf to grasp ! 
 He worked as he had never dared. 
 
 " Unclasp 
 My Art from yours who can ! " — he cried at 
 
 length. 
 As down he threw the pencil — 'Grace from 
 
 Strength 
 Dissociate, from your flowery fringe detach 
 My face of whom it frames, — the feat will 
 
 match 
 With that of Time siiould Time from me extract 
 Your memory, Artemisia ! " And in fact, — 
 What with the pricking impulse, sudden glow 
 Of soul — head, hand cooperated so 
 That face was worthy of its frame, 'tis said — 
 Perfect, suppose ! 
 
 They parted. Sooninstexd 
 Of Rome was home, — of Artemisia — well, 
 The plajjid-perfect wife. And it befell 
 That after the first incontestably 
 Blessedest of all blisses ( — wherefore try 
 Your patience with embracings and the rest 
 Due from Calypso's aU-unwilfing guest 
 To his Penelope ?) — there somehow came 
 The coolness which as duly foUows flame. 
 So, one day, " What if we inspect the gifts 
 My Art has gained us ? " 
 
 Now the wife uplifts 
 A casket-lid, now tries a medal's chain 
 Round her own lithe neck, fits a ring in vain 
 — ■ Too loose on the fine finger, — vows and 
 
 swears 
 The jewel with two pendent pearls like pears 
 Betters a lady's bosom — witness else ! 
 And so forth, while Ulysses smiles. 
 
 " Such spells 
 Subdue such natures — sex must worship toys 
 — Trinkets and trash : yet, ah, quite other joys 
 Must stir from sleep the passionate abyss 
 Of — such an one as her I know — not this 
 My gentle consort with the milk for blood ! 
 Why, did it chance that in a careless mood 
 (In those old days, gone — never to return — 
 When we talked — she to teach and I to learn) 
 I dropped a word, a hint which might imply 
 Consorts exist — how quick flashed fire from 
 
 eye, 
 Brow blackened, lip was pinched by furious lip I 
 I needed no reminder of my slip : 
 One warning taught me wisdom. Whereas 
 
 here . . . 
 Aha, a sportive fancy ! Eh, what fear 
 Of harm to follow ? Just a whim indulged ! 
 
 " My Beatrice, there 's an undivulged 
 Surprise in store for you : the moment 's fit 
 For letting loose a secret ; out with it ! 
 Tributes to worth, you rightly estimate 
 These gifts of Prince and Bishop, Church and 
 State : 
 
FLUTE-MUSIC, WITH AN ACCOMPANIMENT 
 
 999 
 
 Yet, may I tell you ? Tastes so disagfree ! 
 There 's one gift, preeiousest of all to me, 
 I doubt if you would value as well worth 
 The obvious sparkling gauds that men unearth 
 For toy-oult mainly of you womankind ; 
 iSueh make you marvel, I concede : while blind 
 The sex proves to the greater marvel here 
 I veil to balk its envy. Be sincere I 
 Say, should you search creation far and wide, 
 Was ever face like this ? " 
 
 He drew aside 
 The veil, displayed the flower-framed portrait 
 
 kept 
 For private delectation. 
 
 No adept 
 In florist's lore more accurately natlied 
 And praised or, as appropriately; blamed 
 Specimen after specimen of skill. 
 Than Bic^. " Rightly placed the daffodil — 
 Scarcely so right flie blue germander. Gray 
 Good mouse-ear ! Hardly your auricula 
 Is powdered white enough. It seems to me 
 Scarlet not crimson, that anemone : 
 But there 's amends in the pink saxifrage, 
 darling dear ones, let me diseng^e 
 You innocents from what your harmlessness 
 Clasps lovingly ! Out thou from their caress. 
 Serpent ! " 
 
 Whereat forth-flashing from her coils 
 On coils of hair, the spilla in its toils 
 Of yellow wealth, the dagger-plaything kept 
 To pin its plaits together, life-like leapt 
 And — woe to all inside the coronal ! 
 Stab followed stab, — cut, slash, she ruined all 
 The masterpiece. Alack for eyes and month 
 And dimples and endearment — North and 
 
 South, 
 East, West, the tatters in a fury flew : 
 There yawned the circlet. What remained to 
 
 do? 
 She flung the weapon, and, with folded arms 
 And mien defiant of such low alarms 
 As death and doom beyond death, Bic^ stood 
 Passively statuesque, in quietude 
 Awaiting judgment. 
 
 And out judgment burst 
 With frank unloading of love's laughter, first 
 Freed from its unsuspected source. Some 
 
 throe 
 Must needs unlock love's prison-bars, let flow 
 The joyance. 
 
 " Then you ever were, still are. 
 And henceforth shall be — no occulted star 
 But ray resplendent Bic^, sun-revealed. 
 Full-rondure I Woman-glory unconcealed. 
 So front me, find ana claim and take your 
 
 own — 
 My soul and body yours and yours alone, 
 As you are mine, mine wholly ! Heart's love, 
 
 take — 
 Use your possession — stab or stay at will 
 Here — hating, saving — woman with the skill 
 To make man beast or god ! " 
 
 And so it proved : 
 For, as beseemed new godship, thus he loved. 
 Past power to change, until his dying-day, — 
 Good fellow I And I fain would hope — some say 
 
 Meed for certain — that our painter's toils 
 At fresco-splashing, finer stroke in oils, 
 Were not so mediocre after all ; 
 Perhaps the work appears unduly small 
 From having loomed too large in old esteem, 
 Patronized by late Papacy. I seem 
 Myself to have cast eyes on certain work 
 In sundry galleries, no judge needs shirk 
 rrom moderately praising. He designed 
 Correctly, nor in color lagged behind 
 His age : but both in Florence and in Rome 
 The elder race so make themselves at home 
 That scarce we give a glance to ceilingfuls 
 Of such like as Francesco. Still, one cuUs 
 From out the heaped laudations of the time 
 The pretty incident I put in rhyme. 
 
 FLUTE-MUSIC, WITH AN ACCOMPANI- 
 MENT 
 
 He. Ah, the bird-like fluting 
 
 Through the ash-tops yonder - 
 BuUfinch-bubblings, soft sounds suiting 
 
 What sweet thoughts, I wonder ? 
 Fine-pearled notes that surely 
 
 Gather, dewdrop-fashion. 
 Deep-down in some heart which purely 
 
 Secretes globided passion — 
 Passion insnppressive — 
 
 Such is piped, for certain ; 
 Love, no doubt, nay, love excessive 
 
 'T is, your ash-tops curtain. 
 
 Would your ash-tops open 
 
 We might spy the player — 
 Seek and find some sense which no pen 
 
 Yet from singer, sayer. 
 Ever has extracted : 
 
 Never, to my knowledge. 
 Yet has pedantry enacted 
 
 That, in Cupid's College, 
 Just this variation 
 
 Of the old, old yearning 
 Should by plain speech have salvation. 
 
 Yield new men new learning. 
 
 " Love ! " but what love, nicely 
 
 New from old disparted, 
 Would the player teach precisely ? 
 
 First of all, he started 
 In my brain Assurance — 
 
 Trust — entire Contentment — 
 Passion proved by much endurance ; 
 
 Then came — not resentment. 
 No, but simply Sorrow : 
 
 What was seen had vanished : 
 Yesterday so blue ! To-morrow 
 
 Blank, all sunshine banished. 
 
 Hark ! 'T is Hope resurges, 
 
 Struggling through obstruction — 
 Forces a poor smile which verges 
 
 On Joy's introduction. 
 Now, perhaps, mere Musing : 
 
 " Holds earth such a wonder ? 
 Fairy-mortal, soul-sense-fusing 
 
 Past thought's power to sunder ! 
 
ASOLANDO 
 
 What ? calm Acquiescence ? 
 
 Bit of passionate imploring — 
 
 " Daisied turf gives room to 
 
 Me for Juliet : who knows ? 
 
 Trefoil, plucked once in her presence — 
 
 
 Growing: by her tomb too ! " 
 
 No ! as you explain things. 
 
 
 All 's mere repetition. 
 
 She All 's your fancy-spinning ! 
 
 Practise-pother : of all vain things 
 
 Here 's the fact : a neighbor 
 
 Why waste pooh or pish on 
 
 Never-ending, stiU begimiing, 
 Recreates his labor : 
 
 Toilsome effort — never 
 
 Ending, still beginning 
 
 Deep o'er desk he drudges, 
 
 After what should pay endeavor 
 
 Adds, divides, subtracts and 
 
 — Right-performance ? winning 
 
 Multiplies, until he judges 
 
 Weariness from you who. 
 
 Noonday-hour's exact sand 
 
 Ready to admire some 
 
 Shows the hour-glass emptied : 
 
 Owl's fresh hooting— Tu-whit, tu-who— 
 Find stale thrush-songs tiresome. 
 
 Then comes lawful leisure. 
 
 Minutes rare from toil exempted, 
 
 
 Fit to spend in pleasure. 
 
 She. Songs, Spring thought perfection, 
 
 
 Summer criticises : 
 
 Out then with — what treatise ? 
 
 What in May escaped detection. 
 
 Youth^s Complete Instructor 
 
 August, past surprises. 
 
 How to play the Flute. Quid petis f 
 
 Notes, and names each blunder. 
 
 Follow Youth's conductor 
 
 You, the just-initiate. 
 
 On and on, through Easy, 
 Up to Harder, Hardest 
 
 Praise to heart's content (what wonder ?) 
 
 Tootings I hear vitiate 
 
 Flute-piece, till thou, flautist wheezy, 
 
 Romeo's serenading — 
 
 Possibly disoardest 
 
 I who, times full twenty, 
 
 Tootlings hoarse and husky, 
 
 Turned to ice — no ash-tops aiding — 
 
 Mayst expend with courage 
 
 At his caldamente. 
 
 Breath — on±unes once bright, now dusky — 
 
 
 Meant to cool thy porridge. 
 
 So. 't was distance altered 
 
 
 Sharps to flats ? The missing 
 
 That 'b an air of Tnlou's 
 
 Bar when syncopation faltered 
 
 He maltreats persistent. 
 
 (You thought — paused for kissing!) 
 Ash-tops too felonious 
 
 Till as lief I 'd hear some Zulu's 
 
 Bone-piped bag, breath-distent. 
 
 Intercepted ? Rather 
 
 Madden native dances. 
 
 Say — they well-nigh made euphonious 
 Discord, helped to gather 
 
 I 'm the man's familiar : 
 
 Unexpectedness enhances 
 
 Phrase, by phrase, turn patches 
 
 What your ear's auxiliar 
 
 Into simulated 
 
 — Fancy — finds suggestive. 
 Listen I That 's legato 
 
 Unity which botching matches, — 
 
 Scraps redintegrated. 
 
 Rightly played, his fingers restive 
 Touch as if staccato. 
 
 
 He. Sweet, are yon suggestive 
 
 
 Of an old suspicion 
 
 He. Ah, you trick-betrayer ! 
 
 Which has alwaj;s found me restive 
 
 TeUing tales, unwise one ? 
 
 To its admonition 
 
 So the secret of the player 
 
 When it ventured whisper 
 
 Was — he could surprise one 
 
 " Fool, the strifes and stn^les 
 Of your trembler — blusher — lisper 
 Were so many juggles. 
 
 Well-nigh into trusting 
 
 Here was a musician 
 
 Skilled consummately, yet lusting 
 
 Tricks tried — oh, so often ! — 
 
 Through no vile ambition 
 
 Which once more do duty. 
 
 After making captive 
 
 Find again a heart to soften, 
 
 All the world, — rewarded 
 
 Soul to snare with beauty." 
 
 Amply by one stranger's rapture, 
 
 
 Common praise discarded. 
 
 Birth-blush of the briajvrose. 
 
 
 Mist-bloom of the hedge-sloe. 
 
 So, without assistance 
 
 Some one gains the prize : admire rose 
 
 Such as music rightly 
 
 Wovld he, when noon's wedge — slow — ' 
 
 Needs and claims, — defying distance. 
 
 Sure, has pushed, expanded 
 
 Overleaping lightly 
 
 Rathe pink to raw redness ? 
 
 Obstacles which hinder, 
 
 Would he covet sloe when sanded 
 
 He, for my approval. 
 
 By road-dnst to deadness ? 
 
 All the same and all the kinder 
 
 So — restore their value ! 
 
 Made mine what might move all 
 
 Ply a water-sprinkle 1 
 
 Earth to kneel adoring : 
 
 Then guess sloe is fingered, shall yon ? 
 Find in rose a wrinkle ? 
 
 Took — while he piped Gounod's 
 
'IMPERANTE AUGUSTO NATUS EST— " 
 
 looi 
 
 Here what played Aquarius ? 
 
 Distance — ash-tops aiding, 
 ReooKC led scraps else coutrarious, 
 
 Brightened stuff last fading. 
 Distance — call your shyness : 
 
 Was the fair one peevish ? 
 Coyness softened out of slyness. 
 
 Was she cunning, thievish, 
 All-but-proved impostor ? 
 
 Bear but one day's exile. 
 Ugly traits were wholly lost or 
 
 Screened by fancies flexile — 
 
 Ash-tops these, you take me ? 
 
 Fancies' interference 
 Changed . . . 
 
 But since I sleep, don't wake me I 
 
 What if all 's appearance ? 
 Is not outside seeming 
 
 Real as substance inside ? 
 Both are facts, so leave me dreaming : 
 
 If who loses wins I 'd 
 Ever lose, — conjecture. 
 
 From one phrase trilled deftly. 
 All the piece. So, end your lecture, 
 
 Let who lied be left fie ! 
 
 " IMPERANTE AUGUSTO NATUS 
 EST—" 
 
 What it was struck the terror into me ? 
 Tnis, Publius : closer ! while we wait our turn 
 I '11 tell you. Water's warm (they ring inside) 
 At the eighth hour, till when no use to bathe. 
 
 Here in the vestibule where now we sit, 
 One scarce stood yesterday, the throng was such 
 Of loyal gapers, folk all eye and ear 
 While Lucius Varius Rufus in their'niidst 
 Read out that long -planned late - completed 
 
 piece, 
 His Panegyric on the Emperor. 
 " Nobody like him," little Flaccus laughed, 
 *' At leading forth an Epos with due pomp I 
 Only, when godlike Caesar swells the theme. 
 How should mere mortals hope to praise aright ? 
 Tell me, thou offshoot of Etruscan kings I " 
 Whereat Maecenas smiling sighed assent. 
 
 I paid my quadrans, left the Thermse's roar 
 
 Of rapture as the poet asked, " What place 
 
 Among the godships Jove, for Caesar's sake. 
 
 Would bid its actual occupant vacate 
 
 In favor of the new divinity ? " 
 
 And got the expected answer, "Yield thine 
 
 own!" — 
 Jove thus dethroned, I somehow wanted air. 
 And found myself a-pacing street and street, 
 Letting the sunset, rosy over Rome, 
 Clear my head dizzy with the hubbub — say. 
 As if thought's dance therein had kicked up 
 
 dust 
 By trampling on all else ; the world lay prone, 
 As — poet-propped, in brave hexameters — 
 Their subject triumphed up from man to God. 
 Caius Octavius Caesar the August — 
 Where was escape from his prepotency ? 
 
 I judge I may have passed — how many pdes 
 Uf structure dropt like doles from his free hand 
 To Rome on every side ? Why, right and left, 
 ^or temples you Ve the Thundering Jupiter, 
 Avenging Mars, Apollo PaUtiue : 
 How count Piazza, Forum — there 's a third 
 All but completed. You 've the Theatre 
 Named of Marcellus — all his work, such 
 
 work ! — 
 One thought still ending, dominating all — 
 With warrant Varius sang, "Be Caesar God! " 
 By what a hold arrests he Fortune's wheel, 
 Obtaining and retaining heaven and earth 
 Through Fortune, if yon like, but favor — no ! 
 For the great deeds flashed by me, fast and 
 
 thick 
 As stars which storm the sky on autumn 
 
 nights — 
 Those conquests ! but peace crowned them, — 
 
 so, of peace 
 Count up his titles only —these, in few — 
 Ten years Triumvir, Consul thirteen times. 
 Emperor, nay — the glory topping all — 
 Hailed Father of his Country, last and best 
 Of titles, by himself accepted so : 
 And why not? See but feats achieved ia 
 
 Rome — 
 Not to s.jy, Italy — he planted there 
 Some thirty colonies — but Rome itself 
 All new-built, "marble now, brick once," he 
 
 This Portico, that Circus. Would you sail ? 
 He has drained Tiber for you : would you walk ? 
 He straightened out the long Flaminian Way. 
 Poor ? Profit by his score of donatives ! 
 Rich — that is, mirthful ? Half-a^hundred 
 
 games 
 Challenge your choice ! There 's Rome — for 
 
 yon and me 
 Only ? The centre of the world besides ! 
 For, look the wide world over, where ends 
 
 Rome? 
 To sunrise ? There 's Euphrates — all between ! 
 To sunset ? Ocean and immensity : 
 North, stare till Danube stops you : South, see 
 
 Nile, 
 The Desert and the earth-upholding Mount. 
 Well may the poet-people each with each 
 Vie in his praise, our company of swans, 
 Virgil and Horace, singers — in their way — 
 Nearly as good as Varius, though less famed : 
 Well may they cry, " No mortal, plainly God ! " 
 
 Thus to myself myself said, while I walked : 
 Or would have said, could thought attain to 
 
 speech, 
 Clean bafHed by enormity of bliss 
 The while I strove to scale its heights and 
 
 sound 
 Its depths — this masterdom o'er all the world 
 Of one who was but bom — like you, like me, 
 Like all the world he owns — of flesh and blood. 
 But he — how grasp, how gauge his own conceit 
 Of bliss to me near inconceivable ? 
 Or, since such flight too much makes reel the 
 
 brain. 
 Let's sink — and so take refuge, as it were, 
 From life's excessive altitude — to life's 
 
ASOLANDO 
 
 Breathable wayside shelter at its base I 
 
 If looms thus lar^e this Csesar to myself 
 
 — Of senatorial rank and somebody — 
 
 How must he strike the vulgfar nameless crowd, 
 
 Innumerous swarm that 's nobody at all ? 
 
 Why, — for an instance, — much as yon gold 
 
 shape 
 Crowned, sceptred, on the temple opposite — 
 Fulgurant Jupiter — must daze the sense 
 Of — say, yon outcast begging from its step ! 
 " What, Anti-Caesar, monarch in the mud, 
 A.S he is pinnacled above thy pate ? 
 A.y, beg away 1 thy lot contrasts full well 
 With his whose bounty yields thee this sup- 
 port^ 
 Our Holy and Inviolable One, 
 Csesar, whose bounty built the fane above ! 
 Dost read my thought ? Thy garb, alack, dis- 
 plays 
 yore usage truly in each rent and stain — 
 Faugh ! Wash though in Suburra ! 'Ware 
 
 the dogs 
 Who may not so disdain a meal on thee ! 
 What, stretchest forth a palm to catch my 
 
 alms? 
 Aha, why yes : I must appear — who knows ? — 
 I, in my toga, to thy rags and thee — 
 Quaestor — nay, ^dile, Censor — Pol! perhaps 
 The vei-y City-Prsetor's noble self ! 
 As to me Csesar, so to thee am I ? 
 Good : nor in vain shall prove thy quest, poor 
 
 rogue ! 
 Hither — hold palm out — take this quarter- 
 as!" 
 
 And who did take it ? As he raised his head, 
 (My gesture was a trifle — well — abrupt,; 
 Back fell the broad flap of the peasant's-hat. 
 The homespun cloak that muffled half his 
 
 cheek 
 Dropped somewhat, and I had a glimpse — 
 
 just one ! 
 One was enough. Whose — whose might be 
 
 the face ? 
 That unkempt careless hair — brown, yellow- 
 ish — 
 Those sparkling eyes beneath their eyebrows' 
 
 ridge 
 (Each meets each, and the hawk-nose rules 
 
 between)' 
 — That was enough, no glimpse was needed 
 
 more I 
 And terrifyingly into my mind 
 Came that quick-hushed report was whispered 
 
 us, 
 " They do say, once a year in sordid garb 
 He plays the mendicant, sits all day long. 
 Asking and taking alms of who may pass. 
 And so averting, if submission help. 
 Fate's envy, the dread chance and change of 
 
 things 
 When Fortune — for a word, a look, a 
 
 naught — 
 Turns spiteful and — the petted lioness — 
 Strikes with her sudden paw, and prone falls 
 
 each 
 Who patted late her neck superiorly. 
 
 Or trifled with those claw -tips velvet- 
 sheathed." 
 
 "He's God!" shouts Lucius Varius Rufus: 
 " Man 
 
 And worms'-meat any moment ! " mutters low 
 
 Some Power, admonishing the mortal-born. 
 
 Ay, do you mind ? There 's meaning in the 
 
 fact 
 That whoso conquers, triumphs, enters Bome, 
 Climbing the Capitolian, soaring thus 
 To glory's summit, — Publius, do you mark — 
 Ever the same attendant who, behind. 
 Above the Conqueror's head supports the crown 
 All-too-demonstrative for human wear, 
 — One hand's employment — all the while re- 
 serves 
 Its fellow, backward flung, to point how, close 
 Appended from the car, beneatji the foot 
 Of the np-bome exulting Conqueror, 
 Frown — half -descried — the instruments of 
 
 shame. 
 The malefactor's due. Crown, now — Cross, 
 when? 
 
 Who stands secure ? Are even Gods so safe ? 
 Jupiter that just now is dominant — 
 Are not there ancient dismal tales how once 
 A predecessor reigned ere Saturn came. 
 And who can say if Jupiter be last ? 
 Was it for nothing the gray Sibyl wrote 
 " Csesar Augustus legnant, shall be bom 
 In blind Judaea " — one to master him. 
 Him and the universe ? An old-wife's tale ? 
 
 Bath-drudge ! Here, slave ! No cheating I 
 
 Our turn next. 
 No loitering, or be sure you taste the lash I 
 Two strigils, two oil-drippers, each a sponge I 
 
 DEVELOPMENT 
 
 My Father was a scholar and knew Greek. 
 When I was five years old, I asked him once 
 " What do you read about ? " ,, 
 
 " The siege of Troy." 
 " What is a siege, and what is Troy ? " 
 
 WTiereat 
 He piled up chairs and tables for a town. 
 Set me a-top for Priam, called our cat 
 
 — Helen, enticed away from home (he said) 
 By wicked Paris, who couched somewhere 
 
 close 
 Under the footstool, being cowardly. 
 But whom — since she was worth the pains, 
 
 poor puss — 
 Towzer and Tray, — our dogs, the Atreidai, — 
 
 sought 
 By taking Troy to get possession of 
 
 — Always when great AchiUes ceased to sulk, 
 (My pony in the stable) — forth would prance 
 And put to flight Hector — our page-boy's self. 
 Tliis taught me who was who and wjfiat was 
 
 what : 
 So far I rightly understood the case 
 At five years old ; a huge delight it proved 
 
DEVELOPMENT 
 
 1003 
 
 And still proves — thanks to that instructor 
 
 sage . , 
 
 My Father, who knew better than turn straight 
 Ijearmng s full flare on weak-eyed ignorance, 
 Or, worse yet, leave weak eyes to grow sand- 
 blind. 
 Content with darkness and vacuity. 
 
 It happened, two or three years afterward, 
 That —I and playmates playing at Troy's 
 
 Siege — 
 My Father came upon our make-believe. 
 " How would you like to read yourself die tale 
 Properly told, of which I gave you first 
 Merely such notion as a boy could bear ? 
 Pope, now, would give yon the precise account 
 Of what, some day, by dint of scholarship. 
 You'll hear — who knows? — from Homer's 
 
 very mouth. 
 Learn Greek by all means, read the ' Blind Old 
 
 Man, 
 Sweetest of Singers' — luphlos which means 
 
 ' blind,' 
 Hedistos which means " sweetest.' Time 
 
 enough ! 
 Try, anyhow, to master him some day ; 
 Until when, take what serves for suhstitute, 
 Read Pope, by all means ! " 
 
 So I ran through Pope, 
 Enjoyed the tale — what history so true ? 
 Also attacked my Primer, duly drudged),' 
 Grew %ter thus for what was promised next — 
 The very thing itself, the actual words. 
 When I could turn — say, Buttmann to account. 
 
 Time passed, 1 ripened somewhat : one fine 
 
 day, 
 " Quite ready for the Iliad, nothing less ? 
 There '9 Heinej where the big books block the 
 
 sheH: 
 Don't skip a woiv^, thumb well the Lexicon ! " 
 
 I thumbed well and skipped nowise till I 
 
 learned 
 Who was who, what was what, from Homer's 
 
 tongue. 
 And there an end of learning. Had you asked 
 The all-accomplished scholar, twelve years old, 
 "Who was it wrote the Iliad?" — what a 
 
 lau^h ! 
 ** Why, Homer, all the world knows : of his 
 
 life 
 Doubtless some facts exist : it 's everywhere : 
 We have not settled, though, his place of birth : 
 He begged, for certain, and was blind beside : 
 Seven cities claimed him — Scio, with best 
 
 right. 
 Thinks Byron. What he wrote ? Those 
 
 Hymns we have. 
 Then there 's the ' Battle of the Frogs and 
 
 Mice,' 
 That 's fill — unless they dig ' Margites ' up 
 (I 'd like that) nothing more remains to know." 
 
 Thus did youth spend a comfortable time ; 
 Until — " What 's this the Germans say in fact 
 That Wolf found out first? It's unpleasant 
 work 
 
 Their chop and change, unsettling one's be- 
 
 Uef : 
 AU the same, where we live, we learn, that 'a 
 
 sure." 
 So, I bent brow o'er Prolegomena. 
 And after Wolf, a dozen of his like 
 Proved there was never any Troy at all, 
 Neither Besiegers nor Besieged, — nay, 
 
 worse, — 
 No actual Homer, no authentic text, 
 No warrant for the fiction I, as fact. 
 Had treasured in my heart and soul so long — 
 Ay, mark you 1 and as fact held still, still 
 
 hold. 
 Spite of new knowledge, in ray heart of hearts 
 And soul of souls, fact's essence freed and 
 
 fixed 
 From accidental fancy's guardian sheath. 
 Assuredly thenceforward — thank my stars ! — 
 However it got there, deprive who could — 
 Wring from the shrine my precious tenantry, 
 Helen, Ulysses, Hector and his Spouse, 
 Achilles and his Friend ? — though Wolf — ah. 
 
 Wolf I 
 Why must he needs come doubting, spoil <t 
 
 dream ? 
 
 But then, "No dream's worth waking"^ 
 
 Browning says : 
 And here 's the reason why I tell thus much. 
 I, now mature man, you anticipate, 
 May blame my Father justifiably 
 For letting me dream out my nonage thus. 
 And only by such slow and sure degrees 
 Permitting me to sift the grain from chaff. 
 Get truth and falsehood known and named as 
 
 such. 
 Why did he ever let me dream at all. 
 Not bid me taste the story in its strength ? 
 Suppose my childhood was scarce quahfied 
 To rightly understand mythology. 
 Silence at least was in his power to keep : 
 I might have — somehow — correspondingly — 
 Well, who knows by what method, gained my 
 
 gains 
 Been taught, by forthrights not meanderings. 
 My aim should be to loathe, like Peleus' son, 
 A lie as Hell's Gate, love my wedded wife. 
 Like Hector, i,nd so on with all the rest. 
 Could not I have excogitated this 
 Without believing such man really were ? 
 That is — he might have pnt into my hand 
 The " Ethics " ? In translation, if yon please, 
 Exact, no pretty lying that improves, 
 To suit the modem taste : no more, no less — 
 The "' Ethics : " 't is a treatise I find hard 
 To read aright now that my hair is gray. 
 And I can manage the original. 
 At five years old — how ill had fared its leaves I 
 Now, growing double o'er the Stagirite, 
 At least I soil no page with bread and milk. 
 Nor orample, dogs-ear and deface — boys' way. 
 
 REPHAN 
 
 Suggested by a very early recollection of a 
 prose itory by the noble woman and imagina- 
 
1004 
 
 ASOLANDO 
 
 tive writer, Jane Taylor, of Norwich, [more 
 correctly, of Ongar]. R. B. 
 
 How I lived, ere my human life began 
 In this world of yours, — like you, made man, — 
 When my home was the Star of my God Ee- 
 phan? 
 
 Come then around me, close about. 
 World-weary earth-born ones ! Darkest doubt 
 Or deepest despondency keeps you out ? 
 
 Nowise ! Before a word I speak. 
 
 Let my circle embrace your worn, your weak, 
 
 Brow-furrowed old age, youth's hollow cheek — 
 
 Diseased in the body, sick in soul. 
 
 Pinched poverty, satiate wealth, — your whole 
 
 Array of despairs ! Have I read the roll ? 
 
 All here ? Attend, perpend ! Star 
 Of my God Rephan, what wonders are 
 In thy brilliance fugitive, faint and far ! 
 
 Far from me, native to thy i*ealm. 
 
 Who shared its perfections which o'erwhelm 
 
 Mind to conceive. Let drift the helm. 
 
 Let drive the sail, dare unconfined 
 Embark for the vastitude, Mind, 
 Of an absolute bliss ! Leave earth behind ! 
 
 Here, by extremes, at a mean you guess : 
 There, all 's at most — not more, not less ; 
 Nowhere deficiency nor excess. 
 
 No want — whatever should be, is now : 
 
 No growth — that 's change, and change comes 
 
 — how 
 To royalty born with crown on brow ? 
 
 Nothing begins — so needs to end : 
 Where fell it short at first ? Extend 
 Only the same, no change can mend ! 
 
 I use your language : mine — no word 
 
 Of its wealth would help who spoke, who heard, 
 
 To a gleam of intelligence. None prefeiTcd, 
 
 None felt distaste when better and worse 
 Were uncontrastable : bless or curse 
 What — in that uniform universe ? 
 
 Can your world's phrase, your sense of things 
 Forth-figure the Star of my God ? No springs. 
 No winters throughout its space. Time brings 
 
 No hope, no fear : as to-day, shall be 
 To-morrow ; advance or retreat need we 
 At our stand-still through eternity ? 
 
 All happy ; needs must we so have been, 
 Since who could be otherwise ? All serene : 
 What dark was to banish, what light to screen ? 
 
 Earth's rose is a bud that 's cheeked or grows 
 As beams may encourage or blasts oppose : 
 Our lives leapt forth, each a full-orbed rose — 
 
 Each rose sole rose in a sphere that spread 
 Above and below and around — rose-red : 
 No fellowship, each for itself instead. 
 
 One better than I — would prove I lacked 
 Somewhat : one worse were a janing fact 
 Disturbing my faultlessly exact. 
 
 How did it come to pass there lurked 
 Somehow a seed of change that worked 
 Obscure in my heart till perfection irked ? — 
 
 Till out of its peace at length grew strife — 
 Hopes, fears, loves, hates, — obscurely rife, — 
 My life grown a-tremble to turn your life ? 
 
 Was it Thou, above all lights that are. 
 Prime Potency, did Thy hand unbar 
 The prison-gate of Rephan my Star ? 
 
 In me did such potency wake a pulse 
 Could trouble tranquillity that lulls 
 Not lashes inertion till throes convulse 
 
 Soul's quietude into discontent ? 
 
 As when the completed rose bursts, rent 
 
 By ardors till forth from its orb are sent 
 
 New petals that mar — unmake the disk — 
 Spoil rondure : what in it ran brave risk. 
 Changed apathy's calm to strife, bright, brisk, 
 
 Pushed simple to compound, sprang and spread 
 
 Till, fresh-formed, faceted, floreted. 
 
 The flower that slept woke a star instead ? 
 
 No mimic of Star Rephan ! How long 
 I stagnated there where weak and strong, 
 The wise and the foolish, right and wrong. 
 
 Are merged alike in a neutral Best, 
 
 Can I tell ? No more than at whose behest 
 
 The passion arose in my passive breast, 
 
 And I yearned for no sameness but difference 
 In thing and thing, that should shock my sense 
 With a want of worth in them all, and thence 
 
 Startle me up, by an Infinite 
 Discovered above and below me — height 
 And depth alike to attract my flight. 
 
 Repel my descent : by hate taught love. 
 Oh, gain were indeed to see above 
 Supremacy ever — to move, remove. 
 
 Not reach — aspire yet never attain 
 
 To the object aimed at ! Scarce in vain, — 
 
 As each stage I left nor touched again. 
 
 To siiiFer, did pangs bring the loved one bliss. 
 Wring knowledge from ignorance, — just for 
 
 this — 
 To add one drop to a love-abyss ! 
 
 Enough : for you doubt, you hope, men. 
 You fear, you agonize, die : what then ? 
 Is an end to your life's work out of ken ? 
 
REVERIE 
 
 1005 
 
 Have you no assurance that, earth at end, 
 Wrong will prove right? Who made shall mend 
 In the higher sphere to which yearnings tend ? 
 
 Why should I speak ? You divine the test. 
 When the trouble grew in ray pregnant breaat 
 A voice said, " So wouldst thou strive, not rest ? 
 
 *' Bum and not smoulder, win by worth, 
 
 Not rest content with a wealtli that 's dearth? 
 
 Thou art past Rephan, thy place be Eartb ! " 
 
 REVERIE 
 
 I KNOW there shall dawn a day 
 — Is it here on jhomely earth? 
 
 Is it yonder, worlds away. 
 Where the strange and new have birth. 
 
 That Power comes full in j^y ? 
 
 Is it here, with gra^ about, 
 
 Under befriending trees. 
 When shy buds venture out. 
 
 And the air by radld degrees 
 Puts winter's death past doubt ? 
 
 Is it up amid whirl and roar 
 
 Of the ^emental flame 
 Which star-fleokis heaven's dark floor. 
 
 That, new yet still the same. 
 Full iu play comes Power once more ? 
 
 Somewhere, below, above. 
 
 Shall a day dawn— this I know — 
 
 When Power, whidh vainly strove 
 My weakness to o'ienthrow. 
 
 Shall triumph. I breathe, I move, 
 
 I truly am, at last 1 
 
 For a veil is rent between 
 Me and the truth which passed 
 
 Fitful, half-guessed, half-seen, 
 Grrasped at — uot gained, held fast. 
 
 I for my race and me 
 
 Shall apprehend life's law : 
 In the legend of man ishall see 
 
 Writ large what small 1 saw 
 In my life's ; tale both agree. 
 
 As the record from youth to age 
 Of my own, the single soul — 
 
 So the world's wide book : one page 
 Deciphered explains the whole 
 
 Of our common heritage. 
 
 How but from near to far 
 
 Should knowledge proceed, increase ? 
 Try the clod ere test the star! 
 
 Bring our inside strife to peace 
 Ere we wage, on the outside, war I 
 
 So, my annals thus begin : 
 
 With body, to life awoke 
 Soul, -tiiB immortal twin 
 
 Of body which bore soul's yoke 
 Since mortal and not akin. 
 
 Bv means of the flesh, grown fit. 
 
 Mind, in surview of things, 
 Now soared, anon alit 
 
 To treasure its gatherings 
 From the ranged expanse — to-wit, 
 
 Nature, — earth's, heaven's wide show 
 Which taught all hope, aill fear : 
 
 Acquainted with joy -and woe, 
 I could say, " Thus much is clear. 
 
 Doubt aunulled thus much : I know. 
 
 *^ All is effect of cause : 
 
 As it would, has willed and done 
 Power : and my mind's applause 
 
 Goes, passing laws each one. 
 To Omnipotence, lord of laws." 
 
 Head praises, but heart refrains 
 From loving's acknowledgment. 
 
 Whole losses outweigh half-gains : 
 Earth's good is with evil blent : 
 
 Good struggles but -evil reigns. 
 
 Yet since Earth's good proved good — 
 
 IneontrovertibV 
 Worth loving — I nnderstood 
 
 How evU — did mind descry 
 Power's object to end pursued — 
 
 Were haply as cloud across 
 
 Good's orb, no orb itself : 
 Mere mind — were it found at loss 
 
 Did it play the tricksy elf 
 And from life's gold purge the dross ? 
 
 Power is known infinite : 
 Good stru^les to be — at best ^ 
 
 Seems — scanned by the human s^t. 
 Tried by the senses' test — 
 
 Good palpably : but with right 
 
 Therefore to mind's award 
 
 Of loving, as power claims praise ? 
 
 Power — which finds naught too hard. 
 Fulfilling itself all ways 
 
 Unchecked, unchanged : whiln barred, 
 
 BafBed, what good began 
 
 Ends evil en every rade. 
 To Power submissive man 
 
 Breathes, " E'en as Thou art, abide I ' 
 While to good " Late-found, long^ought 
 
 " Would Power to a plenitude 
 -But liberate, but enlarge 
 Good's strait confine, —renewed 
 Were ever the heart's discharge 
 Of loving ! " Else doubts intrude. 
 
 For you dominate, stars all ! 
 
 For a sense informs you — brute, 
 Bird, worm, fly, great and small. 
 
 Each with your attribute 
 Or low or majestical 1 
 
 Thou earth that emboscme^t 
 Offspring of land and sea — 
 
ioo6 
 
 ASOLANDO 
 
 How thy hills fii'st sank to rest, 
 
 How thy vales bred herb and tree 
 Which dizen thy mother-breast — 
 
 Do I ask ? "Be ignorant 
 
 Ever ! " the answer clangs: 
 Whereas if I plead world's want, 
 
 Soul's sorrows and body's pangs, 
 Play the human applicant, — 
 
 Is a remedy far to seek ? 
 
 I question and find response : 
 X — all men, strong or weak. 
 
 Conceive and declare at once 
 For each want its cure. " Power, speak ! 
 
 "Stop change, avert decay 
 
 Fix life fast, banish death. 
 Eclipse from the star bid stay, 
 
 Abridge of no moment's breath 
 One creature ! Hence, Night, hail. Day ! " 
 
 What need to confess again 
 
 No problem this to solve 
 By impotence ? Power, once plain 
 
 Proved Power — let on Power devolve 
 Good's right to co-equal reign I 
 
 Past mind's conception ^- Power ! 
 
 Do 1 seek how star, earth, beast, 
 Bird, worm, fly, gain their dower 
 
 For life's use, most and least ? 
 Back from the search I cower. 
 
 Do I seek what heals all harm. 
 
 Nay, hinders the harm at first. 
 Saves earth ? Speak, Power, the charm I 
 
 Keep the life there unamerced 
 By chance, change, death's alarm t 
 
 As promptly as mind conceives, 
 
 Let Power in its turn declare 
 Some law which wrong retrieves. 
 
 Abolishes everywhere 
 What thwarts, what irks, what grieves ! 
 
 Never to be ! and yet 
 
 How easy it seems — to sense 
 Like man's — if somehow met 
 
 Power with its match — immense 
 Love, limitless, luibeset 
 
 By hindrance on every side ! 
 
 Conjectured, nowise known, 
 Such may be : could man confide 
 
 Such would match — were Love but shown 
 Stript of the veils that hide — 
 
 Power's self now manifest ! 
 
 So reads my record : thine, 
 world, how runs it ? Guessed 
 
 Were the purport of that prime line, 
 Prophetic of all the rest 1 
 
 " In a beginning God 
 
 Made heaven and earth." Forth flashed 
 Knowledge : from star to clod 
 
 Man knew things : doubt abashed 
 Closed its long period. 
 
 Knowledge obtained Power praise. 
 
 Had Good been manifest. 
 Broke out in cloudless blaze, 
 
 Unchequered as unrepressed, 
 In all things Good at best — 
 
 Then praise — all praise, no blame — 
 
 Had hailed the perfection. No I 
 As Power's display, the same 
 
 Be Good's — praise forth shall flow 
 Unisonous in acclaim ! 
 
 Even as the world its life. 
 
 So have I- lived ray own — 
 Power seen with Love at strife, 
 
 That sure,' this dimly shown, 
 — Good rare and evil rife. 
 
 Whereof the effect be — faith 
 
 That, some far day, were found 
 Ripeness in things now rathe. 
 
 Wrong righted, each chain unbound, 
 Renewal bom out of scathe. 
 
 Why faith — but to lift the load. 
 
 To leaven the lump, where lies 
 Mind prostrate through knowledge owed 
 
 To the loveless Power it tries 
 To withstand, how vain ! In flowed 
 
 Ever resistless fact : 
 
 No more than the passive clay 
 Disputes the potter's act. 
 
 Could the whelmed mind disobey 
 Knowledge the cataract. 
 
 But, perfect in every part, ■ 
 
 Has the potter's moulded shape, 
 Leap of man's quickened heart. 
 
 Throe of his thought's escape, 
 Stings of his soul which dart 
 
 Through the barrier of flesh, till keen 
 She climbs from the calm and clear. 
 
 Through turbidity all between. 
 From the known to the unknown here, 
 
 Heaven's "Shall be," from Earth's " Haf 
 been " ? 
 
 Then life is — to wake not sleep. 
 
 Rise and not rest, but press 
 From earth's level where blindly creep 
 
 Things perfected, more or less. 
 To the heaven's height, far and steep, 
 
 Where, amid what strifes and storms 
 
 May wait the adventurous quest. 
 Power is Love — transports, transforms 
 
 Who aspired from worst to best. 
 Sought the soul's world, spurned the worms'. 
 
 I have faith such end shall be : 
 
 From the first. Power was — I knew. 
 Life has made clear to me 
 
EPILOGUE 
 
 1007 
 
 That, strive but for closer view, 
 Love were as plain to see. 
 
 When see ? When there dawns a da> , 
 
 If not on the homely earth, 
 Then yonder, worlds away. 
 
 Where the strange and new have birth, 
 And Power comes full in play. 
 
 EPILOGUE 
 
 In legatd. to the third ver.se of this poem the 
 Pall Mall Gazette of February 1, 1890, related 
 this incident: "One evening, just before his 
 death-illness, the poet was reading this from a 
 proof to his daughter-in-law and sister. He 
 said ; ' It almost looks like bragging to say this, 
 and as if I ought to cancel it ; but it 's the sim- 
 ple truth ; and as it 's true, it shall stand.' " 
 
 At the midnight in the silence of the sleep-time, 
 
 When you set your fancies free. 
 Will they pass to where — by death, fools think, 
 imprisoned — 
 
 Low he lies who once so loved you, whom you 
 loved so, 
 
 — Pity me ? 
 
 Oh to love 80, be so loved, yet so mistaken ! 
 
 What had I on earth to do 
 With the slothful, with the mawkish, the un- 
 manly ? 
 Like the aimless, helpless, hopeless, did I drivel 
 
 — Being — who ? 
 
 One who never turned his back but marched 
 breast forward. 
 Never doubted clouds would break, 
 Never dreamed, though right were worsted, 
 
 wrong would triumph. 
 Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, 
 Sleep to wake. 
 
 No, at noonday in the bustle of man's work-time 
 
 Greet the unseen with a cheer ! 
 Bid him forward, breast and back as either 
 
 should be, 
 "Strive and thrive!" cry "Speed, — fight on, 
 fare ever 
 
 There as here 1 " 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 I. AN ESSAY ON SHELLEY 
 
 : Shelley's influence on Browning is so fre- 
 quently referred to, that it seems best, inas- 
 much as this Essay is the only distinct piece of 
 prose in Browning's writings, to print it here in 
 the Appendix to his Complete Poetic and Dra- 
 matic Writings. The paper was written in 
 J.' 52 at the request of Mr. Moxon, the pub- 
 lisher, under the circumstances named in the 
 fii-st paragraph of the Essay. Before the book 
 was actually published, it was discovered to be 
 a fabrication and was immediately suppressed. 
 A very few copies only escaped the publish- 
 er's hands ; apparently, those only which went 
 to the depositories of copyright matter. The 
 present copy is taken from the one issued in 
 1888 by the Shelley Society, London, under the 
 editorship of W. Tyas Harden. 
 
 An opportunity having presented itself for 
 the acquisition of a series of unedited letters by 
 Shelley, all more or less directly^ supplementary 
 to and illustrative of the collection already pub- 
 lished by Mr. Moxon, that gentleman has de- 
 cided on securing them. They will prove an 
 acceptable addition to a body of correspond- 
 ence, the value of which, towards a light un- 
 derstanding of its author's purpose and work, 
 may be said to exceed that of any similar con- 
 tiibution exhibiting the worldly relations of a 
 poet whose genius has operated by a different 
 law. 
 
 Doubtless we accept gladly the biography of 
 an objective poet, as the phrase now goes ; one 
 whose endeavor has been to reproduce things 
 external (whether the phenomena of the scenic 
 universe, or the manifested action of the human 
 heart and brain), with an immediate reference, 
 in every case, to the common eye and appre- 
 hension of his fellow-men, assumed capable of 
 receiving and profiting by this reproduction. It 
 has been obtained through the poet's double 
 faculty of seeing external objects more clearly, 
 widely, and deeply than is possible to the 
 average mind, at the same time that he is so 
 acquainted and in sympathy with its narrower 
 comprehension as to be careful to supply it 
 with no other materials than it can combine 
 into an intelligible whole. The auditory of 
 such a poet will include, not only the intelli- 
 
 fences which, save for such assistance, would 
 ave missed the deeper meaning and enjoyment 
 of the original objects, but also the spirits of a 
 like endowment with his own, who, by means 
 of his abstract, can forthwith pass to the reality 
 
 looS 
 
 it was made from, and either corroborate their 
 impressions of things known already, or supply 
 themselves with new from whatever shows in 
 the inexhaustible variety of existence may have 
 hitherto escaped their knowledge. Such a poet 
 is properly the jroiijTiJ!, the fashioner ; and the 
 thing fashioned, his poetry, will of necessity be 
 substantive, projected from himself and dis- 
 tinct. We are ignorant what the inventor of 
 Othello conceived of that fact as he beheld it 
 in completeness, how he accounted for it, un- 
 der what known law he registered its nature, 
 or to what unknown law he traced its coinci- 
 dence. We learn only what he intended we 
 should learn by that particular exercise of his 
 power, — the fact itself, — which, with its in- 
 finite significances, each of us receives for the 
 first time as a creation, and is hereafter left 
 to deal with, as, in proportion to his own intel- 
 ligence, he best may. We are ignorant, and 
 would fain be otherwise. 
 
 Doubtless, with respect to such a poet, we 
 covet his biography. We desire to look back 
 upon the process of gathering together in a life- 
 time the materials of the work we behold en- 
 tire ; of elaborating, perhaps under difficulty 
 and with hindrance, all that is familiar to our 
 admiration in the apparent facility of success. 
 And the inner impulse of this effort and opera- 
 tion, what induced it ? Did a soul's delight in 
 its own extended sphere of vision set it, for the 
 gratification of an insuppressible power, on 
 labor, as other men are set on rest ? Or did a 
 sense of duty or of love lead it to communicate 
 its own sensations to mankind ? Did an irresisti- 
 ble sympathy with men compel it to bring down 
 and suit its own provision of knowledge and 
 beauty to their narrow scope ? Did the person- 
 ality of such an one stand like an open watch- 
 tower in the midst of the -territory it is erected 
 to gaze on, and were the storms and calms, the 
 stars and meteors, its watchman was wont to 
 report of, the habitual variegation of his every- 
 day life, as they glanced across its open door or 
 lay reflected on its four-square parapet? Or 
 did some sunken and darkened chamber of im- 
 agery witness, in the artificial illumination of 
 every storied compai'tment we are permitted to 
 contemplate, how rare and precious were the 
 outlooks through here and there an embrasure 
 upon a world beyond, and how blankly would 
 have pressed on the artificer the boundary of 
 his daily life, except for the amorous diligence 
 with which he had rendered permanent by art 
 whatever came to diversify the gloom ? Still, 
 fraught with instruction and interest as such 
 
AN ESSAY ON SHELLEY 
 
 1009 
 
 details undoubtedly are, we can, if needs be, 
 dispense with them. The man passes, the work 
 remains. The work speaks for itself, as we 
 say ; and the biography of the worker is no 
 more necessary to an understanding or enjoy- 
 ment of it than is a model or anatomy of some 
 tropical tree to the right tasting of the fruit we 
 are f amiliaj' with on the market-stall, — or a 
 geologist's map and stratification to the prompt 
 recognition of the hill-top, our landmark of 
 every day. 
 
 We turn with stronger needs to the genius 
 of an opposite tendency, — the subjective poet of 
 modern classification. He, gifted like the ob- 
 jective poet with the fuller perception of nature 
 and man, is impelled to embody the thing he 
 perceives, not so much with reference to the 
 many below as to the one above him, the su- 
 preme Intelligence which apprehends all things 
 in their absolute truth, — an ultimate view 
 ever aspired to, if but partially attained, by the 
 poet's own soul. Not what man sees, but what 
 God sees, — the Ideas of Plato^eeds of creation 
 lying burningly on the Divine Hand, — it is to- 
 ward these that he struggles. Not with the 
 combination of humanity in action, but with 
 the primal elements of humanity, he has to do ; 
 and he digs where he stands, — preferring to 
 seek them in his own soul as the nearest I'eflex 
 of that absolute Mind, according to the intui- 
 tions of which he desires to perceive and speak. 
 Such a poet does not deal nabitnally with the 
 picturesque groupings and tempestuous tossings 
 of the rarest trees, but with their roots and 
 fibres naked to the chalk and stone. He does 
 not paint pictures and hang them on the walls, 
 but rather carries them on the retina of his own 
 eyes : we must look deep into his human eyes 
 to see those pictures on them. He is rather a 
 seer, accordingly, than a fashioner, and what 
 he produces will be less a work than an efflu- 
 ence. That effluence cannot be easily con- 
 sidered in abstraction from his personality, — 
 being indeed the very radiance and aroma of 
 his personality, projected from it but not sepa- 
 rated. Therefore, in our approach to the poetry, 
 we necessarily approach the personality of the 
 poet ; in apprehending it we apprehend him, 
 and certainly we cannot love it without loving 
 him. Both for love's and for understanding's 
 sake we desire to know him, and, as readers 
 of his poetry, must be readers of his biography 
 also. 
 
 I shall observe, in passing, that it seems not 
 so much from any essential distinction in the 
 faculty of the two poets, or in the nature of the 
 objects contemplated by either, as in .the more 
 immediate adaptability of these objects to the 
 distinct purpose of each, that the objective poet, 
 'ji his appeal to the aggregate human mind, 
 chooses to deal with the doings of men (the re- 
 sult of which dealing, in its pure form, when 
 even description, as suggesting a describer, is 
 dispensed with, is what we call dramatic po- 
 etry) ; while the subjective poet, whose study 
 has been himself, appealing through himself to 
 the absolute Divine mind, prefers to dwell upon 
 those external scenic appearances which strike 
 
 out most abundantly and uninterruptedly his 
 inner light and power, selects that silence of 
 the earth and sea in which he can best hear the 
 beating of his individual heait, and leaves the 
 noisy, complex, yet imperfect exhibitions of 
 nature in the manifold experience of man 
 around him, which serve only to distract and 
 suppress the working of his brain. These 
 opposite tendencies of genius will be more 
 readily descried in their artistic efFect than in 
 their moral spring and cause. Pushed to an 
 extreme and manifested as a deformity, they 
 will be seen jilainest of all in the fault of either 
 artist when, subsidiarily to the human interest 
 of his work, his occasional illustrations from 
 scenic nature are introduced as in the earlier 
 works of the originative painters, — men and 
 women filling the foreground with consummate 
 mastery, while mountain, grove, and rivulet 
 show like an anticipatory revenge on that 
 succeeding race of landscape-painters, whose 
 "figures " disturb the perfection of their earth 
 and sky. It would be idle to inquire, of these 
 two kinds of poetic faculty in operation, which 
 is the higher or even rarer endowment. If the 
 subjective might seem to be the ultimate re- 
 quirement of every age, the objective, in the 
 strictest state, must still retain its original 
 value. For it is with this world, as start- 
 ing point and basis alike, that we shall always 
 have to concern ourselves : the world is not to 
 be learned and thrown aside, but reverted^to 
 and releamed. The spiritual comprehension 
 may be infinitely subtilized, but the raw ma- 
 terial it operates upon must remain. There 
 may be no end of the poets who communicate 
 to us what they see in an object with reference 
 to their own individuality : what it was before 
 they saw it, in reference to the aggregate 
 human mind, will be as desirable to know as 
 ever. Nor is there any reason why these two 
 modes of poetic faculty may not issue hereafter 
 from the same poet in successive perfect works, 
 examples of which, according to what are now 
 considered the ex^encies of art, we have hith- 
 erto possessed in distinct individuals only. A 
 mere running in of the one faculty upon the 
 other is, of course, the ordinary circnmstanoe. 
 Far more rarely it happens that either is found 
 so decidedly prominent and superior as to be 
 pronounced comparatively pure ; while of the 
 perfect shield, with the gold and the silver side 
 set up for all comers to challenge, there has yet 
 been no instance. Either faculty in its eminent 
 state is doubtless conceded by Providence as a 
 best gift to men, according to their especial 
 want. There is a time when the general eye 
 has, so to speak, absorbed its fill of the pheno- 
 mena around it, whether spiritual or maten^, 
 and desires rather to learn the exacter signifi- 
 cance of what it possesses than to receive any 
 augmentation of what is possessed. Then is 
 the opportunity for the poet of loftier vision to 
 lift his fellows, with their half-apprehensions, 
 up to his own sphere, by intensifying the im- 
 port of details and rounding the universal mean- 
 ing. The influence of such an achievement 
 will not soon die out. A tribe of successors 
 
loio 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 (Homerides), working more or less in the same 
 spirit, dwell on his discoveries and reinforce 
 his doctrine ; till, at unawares, the world is 
 found to be subsisting wholly on the shadow of 
 a reality, on sentiments diluted from passions, 
 on the tradition of a fact, the convention of a 
 moral, the straw of last year's harvest. Then 
 is the imperative call for the appearance of an- 
 other sort of poet, who shall at once replace 
 this intellectual rumination of food swallowed 
 long ago, by a supply of the fresh and living 
 swathe ; getting at new substance by breaking 
 up the assumed wholes into parts of iudepenct 
 ent and unclassed value, careless of the un- 
 known laws for recombining them (it will be 
 the business of yet another poet to suggest those 
 hereafter), prodigal of objects for men's outer 
 and not inner sight ; shaping for their uses a 
 new and different creation from the last, which 
 it displaces by the right of life over death, — 
 to endure iintil, in the inevitable process,' its 
 very sufficiency to itself shall require at length 
 an exposition of its affinity to something higher, 
 when the positive yet conflicting facts shall 
 again precipitate themselves under a harmoniz- 
 ing law, and one more degree will be apparent 
 for a poet to climb in that mighty ladder, of 
 which, however' cloud-involved and undelined 
 may glimmer the topmost step, the world dares 
 no longer doubt that its gradations ascend. 
 
 Such being the two kinds of artists, it is nat- 
 urally, as I have shown, with the biography of 
 the subjective poet that we have the deeper con- 
 cern. Apart' from his recorded life altogether, 
 we might fail to determine with satisfactory 
 precision to what class his productions belong, 
 and what amount oi praise is assignable to the 
 producer. Certainly, in the fact of any con- 
 spicuous achievement of genius, philosophy no 
 less than sympathetic instinct warrants our be- 
 lief in a great moral purpose having mainly 
 inspired even where it does not visibly look 
 out of the same. Greatness in a work suggests 
 an adequate instrumentality ; and none of the 
 lower incitements, however they may avail to 
 initiate or even effect many considerable dis- 
 plays of power, simulating the nobler inspira- 
 tion to which they are mistakenly referred, 
 have been found able, under the ordinary con- 
 ditions of humanity, to task themselves to the 
 end of so exacting a performance as a poet's 
 complete work. As soon will the galvanism, 
 that provokes to violent action the muscles of a 
 corpse, induce it to cross the chamber steadily : 
 sooner. The love of displaying power for the 
 display's sake ; the love of riches, of distinc- 
 tion, of notoriety ; the desire of a triumph 
 over rivals, and the vanity in the applause of 
 friends, — each and all of such whetted appe- 
 tites grow intenser by exercise, and increasingly 
 sagacious as to the best and readiest means of 
 self-appeasement : while for any of their ends, 
 whether the money or the pointed linger of the 
 crowd, or the flattery and hate to heart's con- 
 tent, there are cheaper prices to pay, they will 
 all find soon enough, than the bestowment of 
 a life upon a labor hard, slow, and not sure. 
 Also, assuming the proper moral aim to have 
 
 produced a work, there are many and various 
 states of an aim : it may be more intense than 
 clear-sighted, or too easily satisfied withalower 
 field of activity than a steadier Eispiration would 
 reach. AU the bad poetry in the world (ac- 
 counted poetry, that is, by its affinities) wiU be 
 found to result from some one of the infinite 
 degi'ees of discrepancy between the attributes 
 of the poet's soul, occasioning a want of corre- 
 spondency between his work and the verities of 
 nature, — issuing in poetry, false under "what- 
 ever form, which shows a thing, not as it is to 
 mankind generally, nor as it is to the particu- 
 lar describer, but as it is supposed to be for 
 some unreal neutral mood, midway between 
 both and of value to neither, and living its brief 
 minute simply through the indolence of whoever 
 accepts it or his incapacity to denounce a cheat; 
 Although of such depths of failure there can 
 be no question: here, we must in every case be- 
 take ourselves to the review of a poet's life ere 
 we determine some of the nicer questions con- 
 cerning his poetry, — more especially if the per- 
 formance we seek to estimate aright has been 
 obstructed and cut short of completion by cir- 
 cumstances, — a disastrous youth or a prema- 
 ture death. We may learn from the biography 
 whether his spirit invariably saw and spoke 
 from the last height to which it had attained. 
 An absolute vision is not for this 'world, but we 
 are permitted a continual approximation to it, 
 every degree of which in the individual, pro- 
 "vided it exceed the attainment of the masses, 
 must procure him a clear advantage. Did the 
 poet ever attain to a,' higher platform than 
 where he rested and exhibited a result ? Did 
 he know more than he spoke of ? 
 
 I concede, however, in respect to this subject 
 of our study as well as some few other illustri- 
 ous examples, that the unmistakable quality of 
 the verse would be evidence enough, under usual 
 circumstances, not only of the kind and degree 
 of the intellectual but of the moral constitution 
 of Shelley ; the whole personality of the poet 
 shining forward from the poems, without much 
 need of going further to seek it. The " Re- 
 mains" — produced within a period of ten 
 years, and at a season of life when other men 
 of at all comparable genius have hardly done 
 more than prepare the eye for future sight and 
 the tongue for speech — present us with the 
 complete enginery of a poet, as signal in the ex- 
 cellence of its several aptitudes as transcendent 
 in the combination of effects. — examples, in 
 fact, of the whole poet's function of beholding 
 with an understanding keenness the universe, 
 nature and man, in their actual state of perfec- 
 tion in imperfection ; of the whole poet's vir- 
 tue of being untempted, by the manifold partial 
 developments of beauty and good on every side, 
 into leaving them the ultimates he found them, 
 — induced by the facility of the gratification of 
 his own sense of those qualities, or by the pleas- 
 ure of acquiescence in the shortcomings of his 
 predecessors in art, and the pain of disturbing 
 their conventionalisms, — the whole poet's vii^ 
 tue, I repeat, of looking higher than any mani- 
 festation yet made of both beauty and good, 
 
AN ESSAY ON SHELLEY 
 
 in order to suggest from the utmost realization 
 of the one a correspoDding: capability in the 
 other, and out of the calm, purity, and enerey 
 of nature to reconstitute and store up, for the 
 forthcoming stage of man's being, a gift in re- 
 payment of that former gift in -which man's 
 own thought and passion had been lavished by 
 the poet on the else-incompleted magnificence 
 of the sunrise, the else-uninterpreted mystery 
 of the lake, — so drawing out, lifting up, and 
 assimilating this ideal of a future man, thus 
 descried as possible, to the present reality of 
 the poet's soul already arrived at the higher 
 state of development, and still aspirant to ele- 
 vate and extend itself in conformity with its 
 still - improving" perceptions of, no longer the 
 eventual Human, but the actual Divine. In 
 conjunction with which noble and rare powers 
 came the subordinate power of delivering these 
 attained results to the world in an embodiment 
 of verse more closely answering to and indi- 
 cative of the process of the informing spirit, 
 (failing, as it occasionally does, in art, only to 
 succeed in highest art), — with a diction more 
 adequate to the task in its natural and acquired 
 richness, its material color and spiritual trans- 
 parency, — the whole being moved by and suf- 
 fused with a music at once of the soul and the 
 sense, expressive both of an external might of 
 sincere passion and an internal fitness and con- 
 sonancy, — than can be attributed to any other 
 writer whose record is among us. Such was 
 the spheric poetical faculty of Shelley, as its 
 own self-sacrificing central light, radiating 
 equally through immaturity and accomplish- 
 ment, through many fragments and occasional 
 completion, reveals it to a competent judg- 
 ment. , , , , 
 
 But the acceptance of this truth by the pub- 
 lic has been retarded by certain objections 
 which cast us hack on the evidence of biogra- 
 phy, even with Shelley's poetry in our hands. 
 Except for the particular character of these ob- 
 jections, indeed, the non-appreciation of his 
 contemporaries would simply oli^s, now that 
 it is over, with a series of experiences which 
 have necessarily happened, and needlessly been 
 wondered at, ever since the world began, and 
 concerning which any present anger may well 
 be moderated, no less in justice to our forerun- 
 ners than in policy to ourselves. For the mis- 
 apprehensiveness of his age is exactly what a 
 poet is sent to remedy ; and the interval be- 
 tween his operation and the generally percepti- 
 ble effect of it is no greater, less indeed, than 
 in many other departments of gn^eat human 
 ijfEort. The " E pur si muove " of the astrono- 
 mer was as bitter a word as any uttered before 
 or since by a poet over his rejected living work, 
 in that depth of conviction which is so like de- 
 spair. . „ 
 But in this respect was the experience ot 
 Shelley peculiarly unfortunate, — that the dis- 
 belief in him as a man even preceded the disbe- 
 lief in him as a writer ; the misconstruction of 
 his moral nature preparing the way for the mis- 
 appreciation of his intellectual labors. There 
 existed from the begimiing — simultaneous 
 
 with, indeed anterior to, his earliest noticeable 
 works, and not brought forward to counteract 
 any impression they had succeeded in making 
 — certain charges against his private character 
 and life, which, if substantiated to their whole 
 breadth, would materially disturb, 1 do not at- 
 tempt to deny, our reception and enjoyment of 
 his works, however wonderful the artistic qual- 
 ities of these. For we are not sufficiently sup- 
 plied with instances of genius of his order to 
 be able to pronounce certainly how many of its 
 constituent parts have been tasked and strained 
 to the production of a given lie, and how high 
 and pure a mood of the creative mind may be 
 dramatically simulated as the poet's habitual 
 and exclusive one. The doubts, therefore, aris- 
 ing from such a question, required to be set at 
 rest, as they were efEeotually, by those early 
 authentic notices of Shelley's career and the 
 corroborative accompaniment of his letters, in 
 which not only the main tenor and principal 
 result of his life, but the purity and beauty of 
 many of the processes which had conduced to 
 them, were made apparent enough for the gen- 
 eral reader's purpose, — whoever lightly con- 
 demned SheUey first, on the evidence of reviews 
 and gossip, as lightly acquitting him now, on 
 that of memoirs and correspondence. StiH, it 
 is advisable to lose no opportunity of stren^h- 
 ening and completing the chain of biographical 
 testimony ; much more, of course, for the sake 
 of the poet's original lovers, whose volunteered 
 sacrifice of particular principle in favor of ab- 
 sorbing sympathy we might desire to dispense 
 with, than for the sake of his foolish haters, 
 who have long since diverted upon other objects 
 their obtuseness or malignancy. A full life of 
 Shelley should be written at once, while the 
 materials for it continue in reach ; not to min- 
 ister to the curiosity of the public, hut to oblit- 
 erate the last stain of that false life which was 
 forced on the public's attention before it had 
 any curiosity on the matter, — a biography 
 composed in harmony with the present general 
 disposition to have faith in him, yet not shrink- 
 ing from a candid statement of all ambiguous 
 passages, through a reasonable confidence that 
 the most doubtful of them wiU be found consist- 
 ent with a belief in the eventual perfection of 
 his character, according to the poor limits of 
 our humanity. Nor will men persist in con- 
 founding, any more than God confounds, with 
 genuine infidelity and atheism of the heart 
 those passionate, impatient struggles of a boy 
 towards distant truth and love, made in the 
 dark, and ended by one sweep of the natural 
 seas before the full moral sunrise could shine 
 out on him. Crude convictions of boyhood, 
 conveyed in imperfect and inapt forms of 
 speech,— for such things all boys have been 
 pardoned. There are growing-pams, accompa^ 
 nied by temporary distortion, of the soul also. 
 And it would be hard indeed upon this young 
 Titan of genius, murmuring in divme music his 
 human ignorances through his very thirst tor 
 knowledge, and his rebellion in mere aspiration 
 to law, if the melody itself substantiated the 
 error, and the tragic cutting short of life per- 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 petnaied into sins sncli faults as, under happier 
 circumstances, would have been left behind by 
 the consent of the most arrogant moralist, for- 
 gotten on the lowest steps of youth. 
 
 The responsibility of presenting to the public 
 a biography of Shelley does not, however, lie 
 with me : I have only to make it a little easier 
 by arranging these few supplementary letters, 
 with a recognition of the value of the whole col- 
 lection. This value I take to consist in a most 
 truthful conformity of the CoiTCspondence, in 
 its limited degree, with the moral and intellec- 
 tual character of the writer as displayed in the 
 highest manifestations of his genius. Letters 
 and poems are obviously an act of the same 
 mind, produced by the same law, only differ- 
 ing in the application to the individual or collec- 
 tive understanding. Letters and poems may be 
 used indifferently as the basement of our opin- 
 ion upon the writer's character ; the finished 
 expression of a sentiment in the poems giving 
 Hght and significance to the rudiments of the 
 same in the letters, and these again, m their 
 iucipiency and unripeness, authenticating the 
 exalted mood and reattaching it to the person- 
 ality of the writer. The musician speaks on 
 the note be sings with ; there is no change in 
 the scale as he diminishes the volume into far 
 miliar intercourse. There is nothing of that 
 jarring between the man and the author, which 
 has been found so amusing or so melancholy ; 
 no dropping of the tragic mask as the crowd 
 melts away ; no mean discovery of the real mo- 
 tives of a life's achievement, often in other 
 lives laid bare as pitifully as when, at the close 
 of a holiday, we catch siglit of the internal 
 lead-pipes and wood-valves to which^and not 
 to the ostensible conch and dominant Triton of 
 the fountain, we have owed our admired water- 
 work. No breaking out, in household privacy, 
 of hatred, anger, and scorn, incongruous with 
 the higher mood, and suppressed artistically in 
 the book ; no brutal return to self -delighting, 
 when the audience of philanthropic schemes is 
 out of hearing ; no indecent stripping off the 
 grander feeling and rule of life as too costly and 
 cumbrous for every-day wear. Whatever Shel- 
 ley was, he was with an admirable sincerity. 
 It was not always truth that he thought and 
 spoke ; but in the purity of truth he spoke and 
 thought always. Everywhere is apparent his 
 belief in the existence of Good, to which £vil 
 is an accident ; his faithful holding by what he 
 assumed to be the former going everywhere in 
 company with the tenderest pity for those acting 
 or suffering on the opposite hypothesis. For he 
 was tender, though tenderness is not always the 
 characteiistic of very sincere natures ; he was 
 eminently both tender and sincere. And not 
 only do the same affection and yearning after 
 the well-being of his kind appear in the letters 
 as in the poems, but they express themselves by 
 the same theories and plans, however crude and 
 unsound. There is no reservation of a subtler, 
 less costly, more serviceable remedy for his own 
 ill than he has proposed for the general one; 
 nor does he ever contemplate an object on his 
 own account from a less elevation than he uses 
 
 in exhibiting it to the world. How shall -wa 
 help believing Shelley to have been, in his ulti- 
 mate attainment, the splendid spirit of his 
 own best poetirv, when we find even his carnal 
 speech to agree faithfully, at faintest as at 
 strongest, with the tone and rhythm of his most 
 oracular utterances ? 
 
 For the rest, these new letters are not offered 
 as presenting any new feature of the poet's 
 character. Regarded in themselves, and as the 
 substantive productions of a man, their impor- 
 tance would be slight. But they possess inter- 
 est beyond their limits, in confirming the evi- 
 dence just dwelt on, of the poetical mood of 
 Shelley being only the intensification of his 
 habitual mood ; the same tongue only speaking, 
 for want of the special excitement to sing. The 
 very first letter, as one instance for all, strikes 
 the key-note of the predominating sentiment of 
 Shelley throughout his whole life — his sym- 
 pathy with the oppressed. And when we see 
 him at so early an age, casting out, under the 
 influence of such a sympathy, letters and 
 pamphlets on every side, we accept it as the 
 simple exemplification of the sincerity, with 
 which, at the close of his life, he spoke of him- 
 self, as — 
 
 " One whose heart a stranger's tear might wear 
 As water-drops the sandy fountain stone ; 
 Who loved and pitied all things, and could moan 
 For woes which others hear not, and could see 
 The absent with the glass of phantasy. 
 And near the poor and trampled sit and weep, 
 Following the captive to hia dmigeon deep — 
 One who was as a nerve o'er which do creep 
 The else-imfelt oppressions of this earth." 
 
 Such sympathy with bis kind was evidently 
 developed in him to an extraordinary and even 
 morbid degree, at a period when the general 
 intellectual powers it was impatient to put in 
 motion were immature or deficient. 
 
 I conjecture, from a review of the various 
 publications of Shelley's youth, that one of the 
 causes of his failure at the outset was the pecu- 
 liar practicalness erf his mind, which was not 
 withont a determinate effect on his progress in 
 theorizing. An ordinary youth, who turns his 
 attention to similar subjects, discovers falsities, 
 incongruities, and various points for amend- 
 ment, and, in the natural advance of the purely 
 critical spirit unchecked by considerations of 
 remedy, keeps up before his young eyes so 
 many instances ot the same error and wrong, 
 that he finds himself unawares arrived at the 
 startling conclusion, that all must be changed — 
 or nothing : in the face of which plainly impos- 
 sible achievement, he is apt (looking perhaps a 
 little more serious by the time he touches at the 
 decisive issue) to feel, either carelessly or con- 
 siderately, that his own attempting a single 
 piece of service would be worse than useless 
 even, and to refer the whole task to another 
 age and person — safe in proportion to Ills inca- 
 pacity. Wanting words to speak, he has never 
 made a fool of himself by speaking. But, in 
 Shelley's case, the early fervor and power to 
 s'e was accompanied by as precocious a fertil- 
 ity to contrive : he endeavored to realize as he 
 
AN ESSAY ON SHELLEY 
 
 1013 
 
 Fi 
 
 ^ent on idealizing; every -wrong had mmul- 
 taneously its remedy, and, out of the strength 
 of his hatred for the former, 'he took the 
 strength of his confidenee in the latter — till 
 suddenl;^ he stood pledged to the defence of a 
 set of miserable little expedients, just as if they 
 represented great principles, and to an attack 
 upon various great principles, really so, without 
 leaving himself time to examine whether be- 
 cause they were antagonistical to the remedy 
 he had suggested, they must therefore be iden- 
 tical or even essentially connected with the 
 -wrong he sought to cure, — playing with blind 
 passion into the hands of his enemies, and dash- 
 ing at whatever red cloak was held forth to 
 him, as the cause of the fireball he had last 
 been stung with — mistaking Churchdom for 
 Christianity, and for marriage, ** the sale of 
 love " and the law of sexual oppression. 
 
 Gradually, however, he was leaving behind 
 him Uiis low practical dexterity, nnable to keep 
 up with his widening intellectusd perception ; 
 and, in exact proportion as he did so, his true 
 power strengthened and proved itself. Gradu- 
 ally he was raised above the contemplation of 
 spots and the attempt at effacing them, to the 
 great Abstract Li^ht, and through the discre- 
 lancy of the creation, to the sumciency of the 
 Jirst Canse. Gradually he was learning that 
 the best way of removing abuses is to stand fast 
 by truth. Truth is one, as they axe manifold : 
 and innumerable negative effects are produced 
 by the upholding of one positive principle. I 
 shall say what I think, — had Shelley lived he 
 would have finally ranged himself with the 
 Christians; his very instinct for helping the 
 weaker side (if numbers make strength), his 
 very "hate of hate," which at first mistrans- 
 lated itself into delirious Queen Mab notes and 
 the like, would have got clear-sighted by exei^ 
 oise. The preliminary step to following Christ, 
 is the leaving the dead to bury their dead -- 
 not clamoring on his doctrine for an especial 
 solution of difficulties which are referable to 
 the general problem of the universe. Already 
 he had attaiiied to a profession of " a worship 
 to the Spirit of good within, which requires 
 (before it sends that inspiration forth, which 
 impresses its likeness upon all it creates) de- 
 voted and disinterested homage," as Coleridge 
 says, — and Paul likewise. And we find in one 
 of his last exquisite fragments, avowedly a 
 record of one of his own mornings and its ex- 
 perience, as it dawned on him at his soul and 
 body's best in his boat on the Serchio— that as 
 snrely as 
 
 " The stars burnt out in the pale blue air, 
 And the thin white moon lay withering there — 
 Day had kindled the dewy woods, 
 And the rocks above, and the stream below, 
 And the vapors in their multitudes, 
 And the Apomiine's shrond of summer snow — 
 Day had awakened all things that be ; ' 
 
 inst so surely, he tells us (stepping forward 
 from this delicious danoe-music, ohoragus-hke, 
 into the grander measure befittmg the tnal 
 enunciation)f 
 
 " All, rose to do the ta^ He set to each, 
 Who shaped us to His ends and not our own ; 
 The million rose to learn, and One to teach 
 What none yet ever knew or can be known." 
 
 No more difference than this, from David's 
 pregnant conclusion so long ago ! 
 
 Meantime, as I call Shelley a moral man, be- 
 cause he was true, simple-hearted, and brave, 
 and because what he acted corresponded to 
 what he knew, so I call him a man of religious 
 mind, because every audacious negative cast up 
 b:r him against the Divine was interpenetrated 
 with a mood of reverence and adoration, — and 
 because I find him everywhere taking for 
 granted some of the capital dogmas of Chris- 
 tianity, while most vehemently denying their 
 historical basement. There is such a t^ing as 
 an efficacious knowledge of and belief in the 
 politics of Junius, or the poetry of Rowley, 
 though a man should at the same time dispute 
 the title of Chatterton to the one, and consider 
 the author of the other, as Byron wittily did, 
 " really, truly, nobody at all." ' 
 
 There is even such a thing, we come to learn 
 wonderingly in these very letters, as a profound 
 sensibility and adaptitude for art, while the 
 science of the percipient is so little advanced^ as 
 to admit of his stronger admiration for Guido 
 (and Carlo Dolce I) tlian for Michael Angelo. A 
 Divine Being has Himself said, that a word 
 against the Son of man shall be forgiven to a 
 man," while "a word against the Spirit of 
 God " (implying a general deliberate preferenco 
 of perceived evil to perceived good) "shall not 
 be forgiven to a man." Also, in religion, one 
 earnest and nnextorted assertion of belief 
 should outweigh, as a matter of testimony, 
 many assertions of unbelief. ^ The fact that 
 there is a gold-region is established by finding 
 one lump, though you miss the vein never so 
 often. , , T , . 
 
 He died before his youth ended. In taking 
 the measure of him as a man, he must be con- 
 sidered on the whole and at his ultimate spiri- 
 tual stature, and not to be judged of at the im- 
 maturity and by the mistakes of ten ye^ 
 before: that,. indeed, would be to judge of the 
 author of "Julian and Maddalo" by "Zas- 
 trozri." Let the whole truth be told of his 
 worst mistake. I believe, for my own part, 
 that if anything could now shame or gneve 
 Shelley, it would be an attempt to vindicate 
 him at the expense of another. 
 
 In forming a judgment, I would, however, 
 
 1 Or, to take our illustrations from the writings o( 
 Bhelley himself, there is such a thing as admirably 
 appreciating a work by Andrea Verochio,— and fan- 
 cifuily characterizing the Pisan Torre Guelfa by the 
 PonteaMare, black against the sunsets, — and con- 
 summately painting the islet of San Clemente with its 
 penitentiary for rebellious priests, to the west between 
 Venice and the Lido — while you beheve the first to 
 be a fragment of an antique sarcophagus, —the second, 
 Ugolino's Tower of Famine (the vestiges of which 
 should be sought for in the Piazza de' Cavalien) — and 
 the third (as I convinced myself last summer at 
 Venice), San Scrvolo with its mad-house— which, t»t 
 from being " windowleas," is as full ol windows as a 
 barrack. 
 
ioi4 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 press on the reader the simple justice of con- 
 sidering^ tenderly his constitution of body as 
 well as mind, and how unfavorable it was to 
 the steady symmetries of conyentional life ; the 
 body, in the torture of incurable disease, re- 
 fusing to give repose to the bewildered soul, 
 tossing in its hot fever of the fancy, — and 
 the laudanum - bottle making but a perilous 
 knd pitiful truce between these two. He was 
 constantly subject to " that state of mind " 
 (I quote his own note to Hellas) "in which 
 ideas may be supposed to assume the force of 
 sensation, through the confusion of thought, 
 with the objects of thought, and excess of 
 passion animating the creations of the imaginar 
 tion : " in other words, he was liable to remark- 
 able delusions and hallucinations. The noctur- 
 iial attack in Wales, for instance, was assuredly 
 a delusion ; arid I venture to express my own 
 conviction, derived from a little attention to 
 the circumstances of either story, that the idea 
 of the enamored lady following him to Naples, 
 and of the " man in the cloak " who struck him 
 at the Fisan post-of&ce, were equally illusory, 
 — the mere projection, in fact, from himself, of 
 the image of his own love and hate. 
 ] "To thirst and find no fill — to wail and wander 
 
 With short unsteady step — to pause and ponder — 
 To feel the blood run through the veins and tingle 
 When busy thought and blind sensation mingle, — 
 To nurse the image of unfelt caresses 
 Till dim imagination just possesses 
 , ,, The half -created shadow" — 
 
 of unfelt caresses, — and of unfelt blows as 
 well : to such conditions was his genius subject. 
 It was not at Rome only (where he heard a 
 mystic voice exclaiming, " Cenci, Cenci," in 
 reference to the tragic theme which occupied 
 him at the time), — it was not at Home only 
 that he mistook the cry of "old rags." The 
 habit of somnambulism is said to have extended 
 to the very last days of his life. 
 
 Let me conclude with a thought of Shelley 
 as a poet. In the hierarchy of creative minds, 
 it is the presence of the highest faculty that 
 ■gives first rank, in virtue of its kind, not de- 
 'gree ; no pretension of a lower nature, whatever 
 the completeness of development of, variety of 
 ■effect, impeding the precedency of the rarer en- 
 dowment though only in the germ. The con- 
 trary is sometimes maintained ; it is attempted 
 to make the lower gifts (which are potentially 
 included in the higher faculty) of independent 
 value, and equal to some exercise of the special 
 function. For instance, should not a poet pos- 
 sess common sense ? Then, the possession of 
 abundant common sense implies a step towards 
 becoming a poet. Yes ; such a step as the lapi- 
 dary's, when, strong in the fact of carbon en- 
 tering largely into the composition of the dia- 
 mond, he heaps up a sack of charcoal in order 
 to compete with the Koh-i-noor, 1 pass at once, 
 therefore, from Shelley's minor excellences to 
 his noblest and predominating characteristic. 
 
 This I call his simultaneous perception of 
 Power and Loye in the absolute, and of Beauty 
 and Good in the concrete, whil« he throws, 
 from his poet's station between both, swifter, ' 
 
 subtler, and more numerous films for the con- 
 nection of each with each, than have been 
 thrown by any modern artificer of whom I have 
 knowledge ; proving how, as he says, 
 " The spirit of the worm within the sod 
 In love and worship blends itself with God," 
 
 I would rather consider Shelley's poetry as a 
 sublime fragmentary essay towards a present- 
 ment of the correspondency of the universe to 
 Deity, of the natural to the spiritual, and of 
 the actual to the ideal, than I would isolate 
 and separately appraise the worth of many de- 
 tachable portions which might be acknowledged 
 as utterly perfect in a lower moral point of 
 view, under the mere conditions of art. It 
 would be easy to take my stand on successful 
 instances of objectivity in Shelley ; there is the 
 unrivalled Gend ; there is the Julian and Mad- 
 dalo too ; there is the magnificent Ode to 
 Naples : why not regard, it may be said, the 
 less organized matter as the radiant elemental 
 foam and solution, out of which would have 
 been evolved, eventually, creations as perfect 
 even as those ? But I prefer to look for the 
 highest attainment, not simply the high, — and, 
 seeing it, I hold by it. There is surely enough 
 of the work "Shelley" to be known enduringly 
 among men, and, I believe, to be accepted of 
 God, as human work may ; and around the 
 imperfect proportions of such, the most elabo- 
 rated productions of ordinary art must arrange 
 themselves as inferior illustrations. 
 
 It is because I have long held these opinions 
 in assurance and gratitude, that I catch at the 
 opportunity offered to me of expressing them 
 here ; knowing that the alacrity to fulfil an 
 humble office conveys more love than the ac- 
 ceptance of the honor of a higher one, and that 
 better, therefore, than the signal service it was 
 the dream of my boyhood to render to his fame 
 and memory, may be the saying of a few inade- 
 quate words upon these scarcely more import- 
 ant supplementary letters of Shelley. 
 
 II. NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Page 2. Pauline. A translation of the pas- 
 sage from Cornelius Agrippa may be found in 
 Cooke, p. 285. 
 
 V. A. XX. i. e., Vixi annos viginti. I was 
 twenty years old. 
 
 Page 3. 
 Had not the glow I felt at his award 
 
 Sun-treader, life and tight be thine forever. 
 
 The whole passage refers to Shelley. Many 
 annotations to the poem are given in Poet-Lore, 
 January and February, 1889. 
 
 Page 9. O God, where does this tend — these 
 struggling aims f 
 
 Browning appends the following note, a trans- 
 lation of which may be found in Cooke, p. 332. 
 
 "_Je crains bien que mon pauvre ami ne soit pas 
 tonjours parfaitement compris dans ce qui reste 
 k lire de cet 6tta.nge fragment, mais il est moins 
 propre que tout autre h ^claireir ce qui de sa ••"- 
 ture ne pent jamais Stre que songe et confns'oti 
 
NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 1015 
 
 ?; 
 
 D'ailleurs je lie sais trop si en oherehant h mieux 
 co-ordonner eertaines parties I'oii iie courrait pas 
 le risque de imiie au seiil m4rite auquel une pro- 
 duction si singulifere pent pr^tendre, celui , de 
 donner une id^e assez precise du- genre qu'elle 
 n'a fait qu' ^baucher. Ce d^but sans preten- 
 tion, ce remuement des passions qui va d*abord 
 en accroissant et puis s'appaise par degr^s, ces 
 elans deTame, ce retour soudain sur soini@xne, 
 et par-dessus tout, la tournure d'esprit tout par- 
 ticuli^re de mon ami, rendent les changemens 
 presqne impossibles. Les raisons qu'il fait va- 
 ioir ailleurs, et d^autres encore plus puissantes, 
 ont fait trouver gr^ce k mes yeux pour cet ^crit 
 [u'autrement je lui eusse conseilie de jeter au 
 'eu. Je n^en crois pas moiiis au grand principe 
 de toute composition — k ce principe de Shake- 
 speare, de Kafaelle, de Beethoven, d'oii il suit 
 que la concentration des id^es est dfte bien pins 
 k leur conception qu'k leur mise en execution : 
 j'ai tout lieu de craindre que la premiere de ces 
 qualit^s ne soit encore ^trangere k mon ami, et 
 je donte fort qu'un redoublement de travail lui 
 fasse acquerir la seconde. Le mleux serait de 
 brfller ceci ; mais que faire ? 1 
 
 "Je crois que dans ce qui suit il fait allusion k 
 un certain examen qu'il tit autrefois de I'Sme on 
 plutot de son ^me, pour decouvrir la suite des 
 objets auxqnels il lui serait possible d'attendre, 
 et dont chacun une fois obtenu devait former 
 uneespice de plateau d'oii I'on pouvaitaperQe- 
 voir d'autres buts, d'autres projets, d'autres 
 jouissances qui, k leur tour, devaient ©tre sur- 
 inontes. II en resultait que I'oubli et le sommeil 
 devaient tout terminer. Cette id^e, que je ne 
 saisis pas parfaitement, lui est pentgtre aussi 
 inintelligible qu'& moi." Paulinb. 
 
 Page 12. PABACFXS0S. The following histori- 
 cal note and comment was provided by Brown- 
 ing to accompany the poem. The notes indi- 
 cated by the superior numbers in the text will 
 be found at the end of the article. 
 
 The liberties I have taken with my subject 
 are very trifling ; and the reader may slip the 
 foregoing scenes between the leaves of any me- 
 moir of Paracelsus he pleases, by way of com- 
 mentary. To prove this, I subjoin a popular 
 account, translated from the Biographie XJni- 
 verselle, Paris, 1H22, which I select, not as the 
 loest, certainly, but as being at hand, and suffi- 
 ciently concise for my purpose. I also append 
 afew notes, in order to correct those parts which 
 do not bear out my ovra view of the character 
 of Paracelsus ; and have incorporated with them 
 a notice or two, illustrative of the poem itself. 
 
 "Paracelsus (Philippus Aureolus Theo- 
 phrastns Bombastus ab Hohenheira) was bom 
 in 1493 at Einsiedeln,! a little town in the canton 
 of Schwyz, some leases distant from Zunch. 
 His father, who exercised the profession of med- 
 icine at Villach in Carinthia, was nearly related 
 
 * 1 shall disguise M. Benauldin'snext sentence alittle. 
 ** Hie (Erastua sc.) Paracelsum trimum a milite quodam, 
 alii a sue exectum ferunt : constat imberbem ilium, 
 mulierumque osorem fuisse." A staodiug High-Dutch 
 joke in those daya at the expense of a number of learned 
 men as may be seen by referring to such rubbish as 
 Melander's Jocoseria, etc. In the prints from hia por- 
 
 to George Bombast de Hohenheim, who became 
 afterward Grand Prior of the Order of Malta : 
 consequently Paracelsus could not spring from 
 the dregs of the people, as Thomas Erastus, Us 
 sworn enemy, pretends.* It appears that his ele- 
 mentary education was much neglected, and 
 that he spent part of his youth in pursuing the 
 life common to the travelling literati of the age ; 
 that is to say, in wandering from country to 
 country, predicting the future by astrology and 
 cheiromancy, evoking apparitions, and practis- 
 ing the ^different operations of magic and al- 
 chemy, in which he had been initiated whether 
 by his father or by various ecclesiastics, among 
 the number of whom he particularizes the Abbot 
 Trithcim,^ and many German bishops. 
 
 " As Paracelsus displays everywhere an igno- 
 rance of the rudiments of the most ordinary 
 knowledge, it is not probable that he ever stud- 
 ied seriously in the schools : he contented him- 
 self with visiting the universities of Germany, 
 France, and Italy ; and in spite of his boasting 
 himself to have been the ornament of those in- 
 stitutions, there is no proof of his having legally 
 acquired the title of Doctor, which he assumes. 
 It is only known that he applied himself long, 
 under the direction of the wealthy Sigismond 
 Fugger of Schwatz, to the discovery of the Mag- 
 num Opus. 
 
 "' Paracelsus travelled among the mountains 
 of Bohemia, in the east, and in Sweden, in 
 order to inspect the labors of the miners, to be 
 initiated in the mysteries of the oriental adepts, 
 and to observe the secrets of nature and the 
 famous mountain of loadstone.* He professes 
 also to have visited Spain, Portugal, Fmssia, 
 Poland, and Transylvania; everywhere commu- 
 nicating freely, not merely with the physicians, 
 but the old women, charlatans, and conjurers of 
 these several lands. It is even believed that he 
 extended his joumeyings as far as Egypt and 
 Tartary, and that he accompanied the son of 
 the Khan of the Tartars to Constantinople, for 
 the purpose of obtaining the secret of the tinc- 
 ture of Trismegistus from a Greek who inhabited 
 that capital. 
 
 " The period of his return to Germany is un- 
 known : it is only certain that, at about the age 
 of thirty-three, many astonishing cures which 
 he wrought on eminent personages procured 
 him such a celebrity, that he was called in 1526, 
 on the recommendation of (Ecolampadius,* to 
 fill a chair of physic and surgery at the Univer- 
 sity of Basle. There Paracelsus began by burn- 
 ing publicly in the amphitheatre the works of 
 Avicenna and Galen, assuring his auditors that 
 the latchets of his shoes were more instructed 
 than those two physicians ; that all universities, 
 all writers put together, were less gifted than 
 the hairs of his beard and of the crown of his 
 head ; and that, in a word, he was to be re- 
 trait by Tintoretto, painted a year before his death, 
 Paracelsus is barbalulut, at all events. But Erastus 
 was never without a good reason for his faith— e. g., 
 " Helvetium fuisse (Paracelsum) vix credo, yix emra 
 ea regie tale monstrum ediderit." (Be Meduma 
 If ova.) 
 
ioi6 
 
 . APPENDIX 
 
 garded as the legitimate monarch of medidine; 
 You shall follow me,' cried he, ' you, Avicenna, 
 Galen, Bhasis, Montagnana, Mesues, you, gen- 
 tlemen of Paris, MontpeUier, Germany, Cologne, 
 Vienna,* and whomsoever tJie Rhine and Dan- 
 nhe nourish; you who inhabit the isles of the 
 sea; yon, likewise, Dalmatians, Athenians : 
 thou, Arab ; thou, Greek ; thou, Jew .: all shall 
 follow me, and the monarchy shall be mine.' t 
 
 '.' But at Basle it: was speedily perceived 
 that the new Professor was no better than an 
 egregious quack. Scarcely a year elapsed be- 
 fore his lectures had fairly driven away an audi- 
 ence incapable of comprehending their emphatic 
 jargon. That which above all contributed to 
 sully his reputation was the debauched life he 
 led. According to the testimony of Oporiuns, 
 whO' lived two years in his intimacy, Paracelsus 
 scarcely ever ascended the lecture-desk unless 
 half drunk, and only dictated to his secretaries 
 when in a state of intoxication : if summoned 
 to attend the sick, he rarely proceeded thither 
 without previously drenching himself with wine. 
 He was accustomed to retire to bed without 
 changing his clothes ; sometimes he spent the 
 night in potrhduses with peasants, and in the 
 morning knew no longer what he was about ; 
 and, nevertheless, up to the a^e of twenty-five 
 his only drink had been water." 
 
 "At length, fearful of being punished for a 
 serious outrage on a magistTate,*> he fled from 
 Basle towards the end of the year 1527, and took 
 refuge in Alsatia, whither he caused Opoiinus 
 to follow with his chemical apparatus. 
 
 " He then entered once more upon the career 
 of ambulatory theosophist.j: Accordingly we 
 find him at Oolmar in 1528 ; at Nuremberg in 
 1529 ; at St. Gall in 1531 ; at Pf offers in 1535 ; 
 and at Augsburg in 1536 : he next made some 
 stay in Moravia, where he still further com- 
 promised his reputation by the loss of many dis- 
 tinguished patients, which compelled him to be- 
 take himself to Vienna ; from thence he passed 
 into Hungary; and in 1538 was at Villach, 
 where he dedicated his Chronicle to the States 
 of Carinthia, in gratitude for the many kind- 
 nesses with which they had honored his father. 
 Finally, from Mindelheim, which he visited in 
 1540,, Paracelsus proceeded to Salzburg, where 
 he died in the hospital of St. Stephen {Sebastian 
 is meant), Sept. 24, 1541."— (Here follows a 
 criticism on his writings, which I omit.) 
 
 I Paracelsus would seem to be a fantastic ver- 
 sion of Von Hohenlteim ; Einsiedeln is the Lat- 
 
 * Eraatus, who relates this,, here .oddly remarks, 
 ** mirum quod non et Garamanfcos, Indos et Anglos ad- 
 iunxit." Not 80 wonderful neither, if we believe what 
 another adversary " had heard somewhere," — that all 
 Pftracelsua' system came of his pillaging '^Anglum 
 qaendam, Rogerium Bacchonem." . 
 
 t See his works, passim. I mnst give one specimen; 
 — Somebody had been styling him "Luther alter." 
 *' And why not? " (he asks, as- he well might.) ' " Lu- 
 ther is abundantly learned, therefore you hate him and 
 me ; but we are at least a match for you. — Nam et 
 iiontra vos et vestros universos principes Avicennam, 
 Galenum, Aristotelem, etc. me satis superque munitum 
 esse uovi. Et vertex iste mens oalvus ac depilis multo 
 
 inized Eremus, whence Paracelsus is sometimes 
 called, as in the correspondence of Erasmus, 
 Eremita. Bombast, his proper name, probably 
 acquired, from the characteristic phraseology 
 of his lectures, that uidueky signification which 
 it has ever since retained. 
 
 2 Then Bishop of Spanheim, and residing at 
 Wiirzburg in Franoonia ; a town situated in a 
 grassy fertile country, whence its name, Herbi- 
 polis. He was much visited there by learned 
 men, as may be seen by his Mpistolm Familiares, 
 Hag. 1536 : among others, by his stanch friend 
 Cornelius Agrippa, to whom he dates thence, 
 in 1510, a letter in answer to the dedicatory epis- 
 tle prefixed to the treatise De Occult. Philosoph, 
 which last contains the following ominous allw^ 
 sion to Agrippa's sojourn: " Quum nuper te- 
 cum, K. P. in ccenobia tuo apud Herbipolim ali- 
 quamdiu conversatus, multa de ohymicis, multa 
 de magicis, multa de cabalisticis, caeterisque 
 quse adhuc in occulto delitescunt, arcanis scien- 
 tiis atque artibuauna contiilissemus," etc. 
 
 s " Inexplebilis ilia aviditas naturaB perscm- 
 tandi secreta et reconditarum supellectile scien- 
 tiarnm animum loeupletandi, uno eodemque 
 loco din persistere non patiebatur, sed Mereuiii 
 instar, omnes terras, nationes et urbes perlus- 
 trandl ignioulossupponebat, ut cum viris natura 
 scrutatoribus, chymicis prsesertim, ore tenns 
 conf eiret, et quae diurtnmis laboribus noeturnis- 
 quevigiliis invenerantunavel altera communica- 
 tione obtineret." (Bitisktos in Pra/aJ.) "Pa- 
 tris auxilio primum, deinde propria industtia 
 doctissimos viros in Germania, Italia, Gallia, 
 Hispania, aliisque Europse regionibua, nactus 
 est prsBceptores ; quorum liberali doctrina, et 
 potissimum propria inquisitione ut qui esset in^ 
 genio acutissimo acfere divino, tantum profecit, 
 ut multi testati sint, in universa philosophiaf 
 tam ardua, tam arcana et abdita eruisse mor- 
 talium neminem." (Melch. Adam, in Vit. 
 Germ. Medic.) " Paracelsus ^ui in intima uar 
 tuTse viscera sic penitus introierit, metallorum 
 stirpiumque vires et facnltates tam incredibili 
 ingenii acumine exploraverit ac perviderit, ad 
 morbos omnes vel desperatos et opinione homt- 
 num insanabiles percurandum ; ut cum Theo- 
 phrasto nata primum medicina perfeotaque 
 videtur." (P£TBi Rami, Orat. de Basilea.) His 
 passion for wandering is best described in his 
 own words: "Ecce amatorem adolescentem 
 difficillimi itineris hand piget, ut venustam sal- 
 tem puellam vel foeminam aspiciat: quanto 
 
 plura et aubliiniora novit quam vester vel Avicemia vel 
 uniyersee academis. Prodite, et signum date, qui viri 
 eitis, quid robpris habeatis? quid autem sitis? Dots 
 tores et m'agistri, pediculos pectentes et f ricautes podi- 
 oem." {Frag. Med.) 
 
 t *' So migratory a life could afford Paracelsus but 
 little leisure for application to books, and accordingly 
 he informs us that for the space of ten years he never 
 opened a single volume, and that his whole medical 
 library was not composed of six sheets: in effect, thcitin- 
 Tentory drawn up after his death states that the only 
 books which he left were the Bible, the New Testament, 
 the Gommentaries of St. Jerome on the Gospels, a 
 priAted volume on Medicine, and seven manuscripts." 
 
NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 1017 
 
 luinus nobilissimaruiu artium amore lalioris ac 
 cujuslibet tsedii pigebit ? " etc, (D^ensiones 
 Septem adversus (emulos suos. 1573. Def. 4ta 
 " Ue peregrinationibus et exilic") 
 
 * The reader may remember that it was in 
 conjunction with (Dcolampadius, then Divinity 
 Professor at Basle, that Zuingliua published in 
 loiiK an answer to Luther's Confession of Faith ; 
 and that both proceeded in company to the sub- 
 sequent conference with Luther and Melancthon 
 at Marburg, Their letters fill a large volume. 
 — 1), 1). Johannis (Ecolampadii et Huldrichi 
 Zuinglii Kpistolarum lib. quatuor. Baa. 1536. 
 It must be also observed that ZuingUus began 
 to preach in 151H, and at Zurich in 1519, and 
 that in 1525 the Mass was abolished in the can- 
 tons. The tenets of CEcolampadius were sup- 
 posed to be more evangelical than those up to 
 that period maintained by the glorious German, 
 and our brave Bishop Fisher attacked them as 
 the fouler heresy : — About this time arose out 
 of Luther's school one CEcolampadius, like a 
 mighty and fierce giant ; who, as his master 
 had gone beyond the Church, went beyond his 
 master (or else it had been impossible he could 
 have been reputed the better scholar), who de- 
 nied the real presence ; him, this worthy cham- 
 pion (the Bishop) sets upon, and with five books 
 (like so many smooth stones taken out of the 
 river that doth always run with living water) 
 slays the Philistine ; which five books were 
 written in the year ot our Lord 1526, at which 
 time he had governed the See of Kochester 
 twenty years." {.Life of Bishop Fisher, 1655.) 
 Now, there is no doubt of the Protestantism of 
 Paracelsus, Erasmus, Agrippa, etc., but the 
 nonconformity of Paracelsus was always scan- 
 dalous. L. Crasso {ElogJ. d'HuominiLetterati. 
 Ven. 1666) informs us that his books were ex- 
 communicated by the Church. Quenatedt (de 
 Patr. Doct.) affirms " uec tantum novae medi- 
 cinse, verura etiam novse theologisB autor est. 
 Delrio, in his Disquisit Magicar., dasses him 
 among those "partira atheos, partim hsereti- 
 cos " (lib. I. cap. 3). " Omnino tamen multa 
 theologica in ejusdem scriptis plane atheismum 
 olent, ac duriuscule sonant in auribus vere Chns- 
 tiani." (D. Gabkielis Clauderi Schediasma, 
 de Tinct. Univ. Norimb. 1736.) I shall anly 
 add one more authority : — " Oporinus dicit se 
 (Paracelsum) aliquando Lutherum et Papam, 
 non minus quam nunc Galenum et Hippooratem 
 redacturum in ordinem minabatur, neque enim 
 eorura qui hactenus in soripturam saeram scnp- 
 sissent, sive veteres, sive recentiores, quenquam 
 scripturse nucleum recte eruisse, sed circa cor- 
 ticem et quasi membranam tantum "f r^je. 
 (Th. Ekastus, Disputant, de Med. Nova.) Ihese 
 and similar notions had their due effecton Upoi- 
 inus, who, says Zuingerus, in his Theatrum, 
 "longum vale dixit ei (Paracelso), ne oh prse- 
 
 * The premature death of Paracelsus casts no "an- 
 ner of doubt on the fact of his having possessed the 
 TOixir Vibe : the alchemists have abundant reasons to 
 adduce, from which I select the following, as eiplana- 
 torv of a property of the Tincture not calculated on by 
 its votaries : - " Objectionem illam, quod Paracelsus 
 
 ceptoris, alioqui amicissimi, horrendas blasphe- 
 mias, ipse quoque aliquando poenas Deo Opt. 
 Max. lueret." 
 
 ^ His defenders allow the drunkenness. Take 
 a sample of their excuses: *' Geutis hoc, non 
 viri vitiolum est, a Taciti seculo ad nostrum 
 usque non interrupto filo devolutum, sinceri- 
 tati forte Germanae coaevum, et nescio an aliquo 
 consanguinitatas vinculo junctnm." (Bitiskius.; 
 The other charges were chiefly trumped up by 
 Oporinus : " Domi, quod Oporinus amanuensis 
 ejus ssepe narravit, nunquam nisi potus ad ex- 
 plicanda sua accessit, atque in medio conclavi 
 ad columnam TCTU^w^evof adsistens, apprehenso 
 manibus capulo ensis, cu^us sotAufia hospitium 
 prsebuit, utaiunt, spiritui familiar!, imagina- 
 tiones aut coneepta sua protnlit : — alii illud 
 
 Suod in capulo habuit, ab ipso Azoth appel- 
 itum, medicinam fuisse prsestantissimam 
 aut lapidem PhUosophicum putant." (MBiiCH. 
 Adam.) This famous sword was no laughing- 
 matter in those days, and it is now a material 
 feature in the popular idea of Paracelsus. I 
 recollect a couple of allusions to it in our own 
 literature, at the moment. 
 
 Ne had been known the Danish Gonswart, 
 Or Paracelsus with his long sword. 
 
 Votpone, Act ii. Sc. 2. 
 
 Bumbastus kept a devil's bird 
 Shut in the pummel of his sword. 
 That taught him all the cunning pranks 
 Of past and future mountebanks. 
 
 Hudibras, Part iL Cant. 3. 
 
 This Azoth was simply " laudanum suam." 
 But in his time he was^ commonly believed to 
 possess the double tincture — the power of cur- 
 ing diseases and transmuting metals. Oporinus 
 often witnessed, as he declares, both these ef- 
 fects, as did also Franciscus, the servant of 
 Paracelsus, who describes, in a letter to Nean- 
 der, a successful projection at which he was 
 present, and the results of which, good golden 
 ingots, were confided to his keeping. For the 
 other quality, let the following notice vouch 
 among many others : — " Degebat Theophras- 
 tus Norimbergae procitusamedentibus illius ur- 
 bis, et vaniloquus deceptorque proclamatus, qui, 
 ut laboranti f amae subveniat, viros quosdam 
 authoritatis summae in Republica ilia adit, et 
 infamiae amoliendae, artique suae asserendae, 
 specimen ejus pollioetur editurum, nullo stipen- 
 dio vel accepto pretio, horum faciles prasben- 
 tium aures jussu elephantiacos aliquot, a ooni- 
 munione hominum caeterorum segregates, et in 
 valetudinarium detrusos, alieno arbitrio eUgun- 
 tur, quos virtute singulari remediorum suoruni 
 Theophrastus a fceda Graecorum lepra mundat, 
 
 Eristinaeque sanitati restitnit ; conservat illnstre 
 arum curationum urbs in archivis suis testi- 
 monium." (BiTiSKius.)* It is to be remarked 
 that Oporinus afterwards repented of his treach- 
 
 non fuerit longaevus, non nulli quoque solvunt per ra- 
 tiones physicas : vita nimiarum abbreviationem f ortasse 
 talibus accidere posse, ab Tincturam frequentiore jc 
 largiore dosi sumtam, dum a summe efficaci et penetra- 
 bili hujuB virtute calor innatus quasi suffocatur." (Ga- 
 
 ERIBLIS CLAUDBRI SCHBDIASHA.) 
 
ioi8 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 ery : " Sed resipuit tandem, et quem vivum con- 
 vitiis insectatus fuerat defunctuiu veneratione 
 prosequutus, inf ames f amae prajceptoris morsus 
 in remorsus conscientise conversi pcenitentia, heu 
 nitnis tarda, vulnera clausere exanimi qu£e spi- 
 rant! inflixerant." For these " bites " of Opori- 
 nus, see Disputat. Erasti, and Andrese Jooisoi 
 Oratio de Vit. ob Opw^; for the " remorse," 
 Mic. Toxita in pref. Testamenti, and Conring^ins 
 (otherwise an enemy of Paracelsus), who says it 
 was contained in a letter from Oporinus to Doc- 
 tor Yegerus.* 
 
 Whatever the moderns may think of these 
 marvellous attributes, the title of Paracelsus to 
 be considered the father of modem chemistry 
 is indisputable. Gerardus Vossius, De Philos" 
 et Philos""' sectis, thus prefaces the ninth section 
 of cap. 9, De Cnymia — " Nobilem hanc medi- 
 cinse partem, diu sepultam avorum setate, quasi 
 ab orco revocavit Th. Paracelsus." I suppose 
 many hints lie scattered in his neglected books, 
 which clever appropriators have since developed 
 with applause. Thus, it appears from his treat- 
 ise De Phlebotomia, and elsewhere, that he had 
 discovered the circulation of the blood and the 
 sanguinification of the heart ; as did after him 
 Realdo Colombo, and still more perfectly An- 
 drea Cesalpino of Arezzo, as Bayle and Bartoli 
 observe. Even Lavater quotes a passage from 
 his workDe Natura Berum, on practical Physi- 
 ognomy, in which the definitions and axioms are 
 precise enough : he adds, "though an astrologi- 
 cal enthusiast, a man of prodigious genius." 
 See Holcroft's Translation, vol. iii. p. 179 — 
 " The Eyes." While on the subject of the 
 writings of Paracelsus, I may explain a passage 
 in the third part of the Poem. He was, as I 
 have said, unwilling to publish his works, but 
 in effect did publish a vast number. Yalen- 
 tius (in Prcefat inParamyr.) declares " quod ad 
 librorura Paracelsi copiam attinet, audio, a Ger- 
 manis prope trecentos recenseri." *' foecun- 
 ditas iagenii ! " adds he, appositely. Many of 
 these were, however, spurious ; and Fred, Bitis- 
 kius gives his good edition (3 vols. fol. Gen. 
 1658) "rejectis suppositis solo ipsius nomine 
 superbientibus quorum ingens circumfertur Hu- 
 merus. " The rest were " charissimum et pre- 
 tiosissimum authoris pignus, extorsum potius ab 
 illq quam obtentum." "Jam minime eo vo- 
 lente atque jubente hsec ipsius scripta in lueem 
 prodisse videntur ; quippe quae muro inclusa 
 ipso absente, servi cujusdam indicio, furto sur- 
 repta atque sublata sunt," says Valentius. 
 These have been the study of a host of com- 
 mentators, amongst whose labors are most nota- 
 ble, Petri Severini, Idea Medicince Philosophies, 
 Bas. 1371: Mic. Toxetis, Onomastica, Arg. 1.'574 ; 
 Dornei, Diet. Parae. Franc. 1584; and ^» Phil- 
 os' Compendium cum scholiis auctore Leone 
 JSuavio. Paris. (This last, a good book. ) 
 
 * A disgraceful affair. One Liechtenfels, a 
 (canon, having been rescued in extremis by the 
 
 " laudanum ' ' of Paracelsus, refused the stip- 
 
 * For a good defence of Paracelsus I refer the reader 
 • to Olaus Borrichius' treatise — Hermetis etc. Sapientia 
 \.vindi£ata, 1674. Or, if he is no more learned than my- 
 
 ulatedfee, and was supported in his meanness 
 by the authorities, whose interference Paracel- 
 sus would not brook. His own liberality was 
 allowed by his bitterest foes, who found a ready 
 solution of his indifference to profit in the afore- 
 said sword-handle and its guest. His freedom 
 from the besetting sin of a profession he ab- 
 horred— (as he curiously says somewhere, " Quis 
 quKso deinceps honorem def erat professione tali, 
 quae a tam facinorosis nebulonibus obitur et ad- 
 ministratur ?") — is recorded in his epitaph, 
 which affirms — " Bona sua in pauperes distri- 
 buenda coUocandaque erogavit," honoravit, or 
 ordinavit "— for accounts differ. 
 
 Page 52. Act I. so. 2. Lady Carlisle and 
 Wbntworth. 
 
 Lady Carlisle, whose part was taken by Helen 
 Fauoit, afterward Lady Martin, was in histo^ 
 daughter to the ninth Earl of Northumberland. 
 In 1639 she had been for three years a widow. 
 
 Page 71. 
 
 . . . Consign 
 
 To the low ground once more the ignoble Term, 
 
 And raise the Genius on his orb again. 
 
 The term was a statue representing the Ro- 
 man term, the god who presides over boundaries. 
 The genius was the image that represented the 
 guardian spirit. Mr. Browning commenting on 
 this passage has said : " Suppose the enemies of 
 a man to have thrown down the image and re- 
 placed it by a mere Term, and you have what 
 I put into Strafford's head." "Putting the 
 Genius on the pedestal usurped by the Term 
 means — or tries to mean — substituting eventu- 
 ally the true notion of Strafford's endeavor and 
 performance in the world for what he conceives 
 to be the ignoble and distorted conception of 
 these by his contemporary judge." 
 
 Page 90. BocAFOLi and Plaka. 
 
 "Purely supposititious poets. Browning 
 chooses to invent them as types of two opposite 
 poetic defects ; BocafoU as the writer of stark- 
 naked or totally jejune and inartistic psalms : 
 Plara as the writer of petted and over-finikin 
 sonnets." [W. M. RosSETTI.] 
 
 Page 101. Patron-friend. Walter Savage 
 Landor. 
 
 Page 101. Eyebright. 
 
 "Stands for 'Euphrasia,' its Greek equiva- 
 lent; and refers to one of Mr. Browning's old- 
 est friends," Miss Euphrasia Fanny Haworth. 
 [Mrs. Orr.] 
 
 Page 129. Asolo. 
 
 It is interesting to note the choice of scene for 
 Pippa Passes in view of the dedicatory letter 
 of Browning's latest volume Asolando. In a 
 letter written on Kis first journey to Italy he 
 speaks of " delicious Asolo." 
 
 Page 137. 
 
 Kate ? The Cornaro doubtless, who renounced 
 The crown of Cyprus to be lady here 
 At Asolo. 
 
 Caterina Cornaro, the daughter of a wealthy 
 and noble citizen of Venice, was born in 1454. 
 self in such matters, I mention simply that Paracelsus 
 introduced the use of Mercury and Laudanum. 
 
NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 1019 
 
 In 1471 she raarried the king of Cyprus. He 
 died the next year and for seven years Caterina 
 was nominal queen, but Venice compelled her at 
 the end of that time to resign, and gave her for 
 residence Castle Asolo. 
 
 Page 138. Bluphockb. 
 
 The curious Biblical scholia on this character 
 is Brovfning's own. It is said that the name was 
 simply another way of spelling Blue Fox, a 
 slang-phrase for the Edinburgh Review. 
 
 Page 168. The Labobatory. 
 
 Which is the poison to poison her, prithee ? 
 
 D. G. Rossetti's first water-color was an illus- 
 tration of this poem, and bore beneath it this line. 
 
 Page 169. Ckistina. 
 
 The Cristina of this poem is fashioned after 
 Cristina Maria, daughter of Francis I., King 
 of the Two Sicilies. She was born in 1806 ; was 
 married in 1829 to Ferdinand VII. King of 
 Spain ; became Regent in 1833, on the death of 
 the king ; and in 1843 her daughter ascended the 
 throne as Isabel II. Her life was given to in- 
 trigue, and to the use of tyrannical power. She 
 w£is hated by those she ruled, and despised by 
 them because of her personal character. 
 
 Page 175. A Toccata op Galuppi's. 
 
 Baldassere Galuppi was born near Venice in 
 1706, and died in Venice in 1785. He was in 
 London for three or four years, and was a most 
 prolific composer. 
 
 Page 176. You 're wroth — can you slay your 
 snake like Apollo ? 
 
 In a volume of selections from his poem, re- 
 vised by Browning himself, occurs the following 
 note on this line, by the poet. 
 
 " A word on the line about Apollo the snake- 
 slayer, which my friend Professor Colvin con- 
 demns, believing that the god of the Belvedere 
 grasps no bow, but the segis, as described in the 
 15th Iliad. Surely the text represents that por- 
 tentous object (Sovptv, Seivjjv, ainl)LSaa-€iav, ApmpeTvs 
 
 — ij-npixapinv) as ' shaken violently ' or ' held im- 
 movably ' by both hands, not a single one, and 
 that the left hand : — 
 
 aAAa <rv v' €V xtipeatri, Aa)3' atyi^a 6vtrav6eaiTiiv 
 TTji/ ftdA' eTTtcro-etW tpo^eeLV ijpittai 'Axaiouy. 
 
 and so on, tt?i/ ap* & -y* ^v xeipeirtTii' l^wv — x^P'^^ ^X 
 
 arpefia, k.t.k. Moreover, while he shook it he 
 
 * shouted enormously,' <rela\ iirlS^ aurbsauo-eyiaAa 
 
 liiyn, whicih the statue does not. Presently when 
 Teukros, on the other side, plies the bow, it is 
 To^ov exoiv ev x^^P^ jraKivTovoy- Besidcs, by the act 
 of discharging an arrow, the right arm and hand 
 are thrown back as we see, — a quite gratuitous 
 and theatrical display in the case supposed. 
 The conjecture of Flaxman that the statue was 
 suggested by the bronze Apollo Alexikakos of 
 Kalamis, mentioned by Pausanias, remains prob- 
 able ■ though the ' hardness ' which Cicero con- 
 siders to distinguish the artist's workmanship 
 from that of Muron is not by any means appar- 
 ent in our marble copy, if it be one. — Feb. 16, 
 1880." 
 
 The last four lines of the ninth section of Saul 
 which ended the first part in Bells and Pome- 
 firanates, were as follows, 1845 : — 
 
 " On one head the joy and the pride, even rage like the 
 
 throe 
 That opes the rock, helps its glad labor, and lets the 
 
 gold go — 
 And ambition that sees a man lead It — oh, all of these 
 
 — all 
 Combine to unite in one creature — Saul I " 
 
 Page 191. Respectability. 
 
 *' These two unconventional Bohemian lov- 
 ers," says Professor Corson, " strolling together 
 at night, at their own sweet will, see down the 
 court along which they are strolling, three lam- 
 pions flare, which indicate some big place or 
 other where the respectables do congregate ; and 
 the woman says to the companion, with a humo- 
 rous sarcasm, Put forward your best foot 1 that 
 is, we must be very correct passing along here 
 in this brilliant light. By the lovers are evi- 
 dently meant George Sand (the speaker) and 
 Jules Sandeau, with whom she lived in Paris, 
 after she left her husband, M. Dndevant. They 
 took just such unconventional night-strolls to- 
 gether, in the streets of Paris." 
 
 Page 194. The Guakdian Angei.. 
 
 The picture which Browning describes, called 
 i' Angelo Custode, is in the church of St. Augus- 
 tine at Fano ; and it '^ represents an angel stand- 
 ing with outstretched wings by a little child. 
 The child is half -kneeling on a kind of pedestal, 
 while the angel joins its hands in prayer ; its 
 gaze is directed upwards towards the sky, from 
 which cherubs are looking down." It is not re- 
 garded as one of his chief pictures, but it inter- 
 ested Browning because of the subject, and its 
 simple pathos. 
 
 Page 194. Alfred, dear.friend. 
 
 Alfred Domett, the hero of Waring, an early 
 friend of Browning, and at the time living in 
 New Zealand. Mrs. Orr writes : " When he read 
 the apostrophe to ' Alfred, dear friend,' he had 
 reached the last line before it occurred to him- 
 that the person invoked could be he." 
 
 Page 254. Instans Tykankcs. 
 
 The title of this poem was suggested by 
 Horace's ode. III. iii. 1. beginning 
 
 Justuni et tenacem propositi virum, 
 Non civium ardor prava jubentium 
 Non vultus instantis tyramii. 
 
 Page 264. Waring. 
 
 Alfred Domett, son of Nathaniel Domett, 
 was bom at Camberwell Grove, Surrey, May 
 20, 1811. His father was a seaman under Nel- 
 son, and a gallant sailor. Alfred entered St. 
 John's College, Cambridge, in 1829 ; but aftet 
 a residence of three years he left without grad- 
 uation. His attention was early turned to lit- 
 erature, and in 1832 he published a volume of 
 poems. He also contributed to Blackwood^s 
 Magazine -vsaious lyrics which attracted atten- 
 tion to him as a rising poet. One of these was 
 A Christmas Hymn, which is the best known of 
 all his poems, and has been highly praised. It 
 may be found in severalpoetical collections, and 
 among them Festival Poems. In 1839, in tho 
 same magazine, he published a poem on Venice. 
 
 Domett was called to the bar in 1841, and 
 lived in the Middle Temple with Joseph Ar- 
 nold, who became Chief Justice of Bombay. 
 
1020 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 He was handsome and attractive, well received 
 in society, and a favorite with his literary 
 friends. Before this, however, he had spent two 
 years in travelling in America, including a win- 
 ter in the backwoods of Canada ; and then two 
 years more in Switzerland, Italy, and other 
 Continental countries. In 1842 he was per- 
 suaded to go to New Zealand by his cousin, 
 William Young, whose father was a large land 
 owner there, in connection with the New Zea- 
 land Company. In May, 1842, he went out to 
 that colony among the earliest settlers. It was 
 immediately after his departure that Browning 
 wrote his Waring, which describes his friend 
 veiy accurately, and the circumstances of his 
 sudden absence from London. On arriving in 
 New Zealand, Domett found that his cousin had 
 just been drowned. He settled in the county 
 of Wairoa, on the North Island. In The Guar- 
 dian Angel Browning addressed him : — 
 
 '* Where are you, dear old friend ? 
 How rolls the Wairoa at your world's far end ? " 
 
 Soon after his arrival Domett was made a 
 magistrate with a salary of £700 a year. Be- 
 fore leaving England Domett was permanently 
 lamed by an accident to one of his legs, which 
 saved his life soon after he reached the colony, 
 for it prevented his accepting the invitation of 
 some treacherous native chiefs to a banquet at 
 which all the English guests were killed. In 
 his Narrative of the Wairou Massacre, 1843, he 
 described this event. 
 
 In 1848 he was made the Colonial Secretary 
 fur the southern part of the North Island ; and 
 in 1851 he was also appointed the Civil Secre- 
 tary for the whole of New Zealand, holding 
 both offices until the introduction of the new 
 constitution, in 1853. Having resigned these 
 offices, he accepted one of more work and less 
 remuneration, as Commissioner of Crown Lands, 
 and Resident Magistrate at Hawke's Bay ; and 
 of this district he had virtually the sole official 
 management. In 1859 he represented the town 
 of Nelson in the House of Representatives, and 
 lie was reelected the following year. 
 
 In 1862, at a critical moment in the afEairs of 
 New Zealand, Domett was called upon to form 
 a new government, which he successfully ac- 
 complished, becoming the Prime Minister. 
 
 In 1871, Domett returned to London, and took 
 up his residence at PhiUimore Terrace, Kensing- 
 ton; and afterwards at St. Charles's Square, 
 North Kensington. He had married a nand- 
 some English lady while yet a resident in New 
 Zealand. He saw much of Browning ; he be- 
 came an interested member of the Browning 
 Society, and one of its vice-presidents. " His 
 grand white head," says Mr. F. J. Furnivall, 
 
 was to be seen at all the Society's perform- 
 ances and at several of its meetings. He natu- 
 rally preferred Mr. Browning's early works to 
 the later ones. He could not be persuaded to 
 write any account of his early London days. 
 Mr. Domett produced with pride his sea-stained 
 copy of Browning's Bells and Pomegranates. A 
 sterling, manly, independent nature was Alfred 
 Domett's. He impressed every one with whom 
 
 he came in contact, and is deeply regretted by 
 his remaining friends." 
 
 In 1872 Domett published in London his 
 Banolf and Amokia, a Sovih-Sea Day Dream, 
 a poem descriptive of New Zealand, its scenery, 
 and the legends and habits of the Maori inhabi- 
 tants. This poem was afterwards revised, en- 
 larged, and published in two volumes. In 1877 
 appeared a volume of his short poems, includ- 
 ing those published before he went to New Zea- 
 land, under the title of Flotsam and Jetsam, 
 Rhymes Old and New. [G. W. Cooke.] 
 
 Page 280. 
 
 He settled Hoti's business — let it be ! 
 
 Properly based Oun — 
 
 Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic De. 
 
 — Hoti is the Greek particle 8ti, that, etc. — 
 Oun is the Greek particle oiv, then, now then, 
 etc. — The enclitic De is the Greek 4e, which 
 Browning refers to in a letter to the London 
 Daily News of Nov. 21, 1874 : " To the Editor: 
 Sir, — In a clever article this morning you 
 speak of ' the doctrine of enclitic De ' — ' which, 
 with all deference to Mr. Browning, in point of 
 fact does not exist.' No, not to Mr. Browning : 
 but pray defer to Herr Buttraann, whose fifth 
 list of ' enclitics ' ends with ' the inseparable 
 De ' — or to Curtius, whose fifth list ends also 
 with ' De (meaning " towards " and as a demon- 
 strative appendage).' That this is not to be 
 confounded with the accentuated ' De, meaning 
 but ' was the ■'' doctrine ' which the Grammarian 
 bequeathed to those capable of receiving it. — I 
 am, sir, yours obedientiy, R. B." 
 
 Page 287. Childe Roland to the Dabk 
 Tower came. 
 
 In an article describing a visit to the poet. 
 Rev. John W. Chadwick speaks of this tapestry 
 and Mr. Browning's comments on the poem : — 
 
 " Upon the lengthwise wall of the room, above 
 the Italian furniture, sombre and richly carved, 
 was a long, wide band of tapestry, on which 1 
 thought I recognized the miserable horse of 
 Childe Roland's pUgrimage : — 
 
 " '• One stiff blind horse, his every bone a^atare. 
 Stood stupefied, however he came there : 
 
 Thrust out past service from the devil's stud I ' 
 
 I asked Mr. Browning if the beast of the tapes- 
 try was the beast of the poem ; and he said yes, 
 and descanted somewhat on his lean monstros- 
 ity. But only a Browning could have evolved 
 the stanzas of the poem from the woven image. 
 I further asked him if he had said that he only 
 wrote Childe Roland for its realistic imagery, 
 without any moral purpose, — a notion to which 
 Mrs. Sutherland Orr has riven currency; and 
 he protested that he never had. When 1 asked 
 him if constancy to an ideal — ' He that endur- 
 eth to the end shall be saved ' — was not a suffi- 
 cient understanding of the central purpose of 
 the poem, he said. Yes, just about that.' " 
 
 Page .'537. Artemis Prologizes. 
 
 Mrs. Orr prints in her Handbook a note from 
 Browning with reference to the attacks upon 
 him for the form he adopted in the printing of 
 Greek names. It is in reply to an article in the 
 
NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 I02I 
 
 Nineteenth Century, for Januai?, i»MJ, writttin 
 by Mr. Fiederick Harriaon. " 1 have jnat 
 noidoed," wrote Browning, *' in this month's 
 NiTieteenth Century that it is inquiired by a hu- 
 morous objector to the practice of spellings (un- 
 der exceptional conditions) Greek proper names 
 as they are spelled in Greek literature, why the 
 same principle should not be adopted by Egyp- 
 tologists, Hebraists, iSanscrittists, Accadians, 
 Moabites, Hittites, and Cuneiformists ? Adopt 
 it by all means whenever the particular lan- 
 guage enjoyed by any fortunate possessor of 
 these shall, like Greek, have been for about 
 three hundired years insisted upon in England, 
 as an accpisition of paaramount importance at 
 school and college, for every aspirant to distinc- 
 tion in' learning, even at the cost of six or seven 
 years' study — a sacrifice considered well worth 
 making for even an imperfect acquaintance with 
 the most perfect language in the world. Fur- 
 theri it will be adopted whenever the letters 
 substituted for those in- ordinary English use 
 shali do no more than represent to the. unschol- 
 arly what the scuolar accepts without scruple, 
 wnen, for the hundredth time, he reads tiie 
 word which, for' once, he has occasion to wriie 
 in English, and which he concludes must be as 
 euphonic as the rest of a language' renowned for 
 euphony. And finally, tihei practice will be 
 adopted whenever- the substituted letters effect 
 no sort of organic change', so- as to jostle the 
 word from its pride of place in English verse or 
 prose. ' Themistokles ' fits in quietlj every- 
 where,, -with or without the ' k j' but in a cei^ 
 tain poetical translation X remember by a yonu^ 
 friend, of the Anabasis, beginning thus felici- 
 tously, ' Cyrus the Great and Artaxerxes ( Wkose 
 temper bloodier than a Turk's is) Were children 
 both of the mild, pious. And happy monarch 
 King Darius ; who fails to see that,, although a 
 correct ' Kuraush ' may pass, yet ' Darayavash ' 
 disturbs the metre as weE as the rhyme ? It 
 seems, however, that ' Themistokles ' may be 
 winked at ; not so the ' harsh and subversive 
 ""Kirke." ' But let the objector ask somebody 
 ■with no knowledge to subvert, how he supposes 
 'Circe ' isspeUed in Greek, and the answer will 
 be, ' With a soft c' Inform him that no such 
 letter existe, and he guesses, ' Then with s, if 
 there be anything like it." Tell hira that to eye 
 and ear equally, his own k answers the jjurpose, 
 and you have at all events taught him that 
 much, if little enough — and why does he live 
 unless to learn a little ! " This note is signed 
 "KB." Its date is January 4, 1886, 
 
 Page 341. Johannes Agbicola in Medi- 
 tation. 
 
 " ' Antinomians, so denominated for rejecting 
 the Law as a thing of no use under the Gospel 
 dispensation : they say, that good works do not 
 further, nor evil works hinder salvation ; that 
 the child of God cannot sin, that God never 
 chastiseth him, that murder, drunkenness, etc., 
 are sins in the wicked but not in him, that the 
 chUd of grace being once assured of salvation, 
 afterwards never doubteth, . . . that God doth 
 not love ajiy man for his hohnera, that sanc- 
 tifieation is no evidence of justifacation, etc. 
 
 Ir'ontanus, in his Catalogue of Heresies, says 
 John Agricola was the author of this sect, A. D. 
 1535.' Dictionary of all Religions, 1704." 
 
 *' Browning," says Mr. Cooke, " does not coin 
 rectly represent the teachings of Agricola, 
 th'ough his poem is correct so far as many An- 
 tinomians are concerned. Agricola held that 
 the Law and the Gospel are incompatible, that 
 the Law is only for the Jew, and that the sNirit 
 of Christ abolishes it for the Christian. The 
 moral obligations, however, he held were for 
 the Christian as much as for any other person. 
 In the New Testament he found all the princi- 
 pleB>and motives necessary to give true impulse 
 and guidance to the Christian. It was the use 
 made- of his teachings by fanatics which cast an 
 odium on the name of Antinomians ; and. it is 
 this fanatical and sentimental religion which 
 Browning has interpreted correctly in his poem. 
 Many of the Antinomians taught what is attrib- 
 uted to them in the Dictionary of all Religions, 
 from which Browning quoted when his poem 
 was first published." 
 
 Page 348. The Bishop ordebs his Tojub. 
 
 " I know no other piece of modern English, 
 prose or poetry, in which there is so much told, 
 as in these lines, of the Benaissance spirit, — its 
 worldliness, inconsistency, pride, hypocrisy, ig- 
 norance of itself, love of art, of luxury, and of 
 good Latin. It is nearly all that I said of the 
 central Benaissance in thirty pages of the Stones 
 of Venice, put into as many liiies: Browning's 
 being also the antecedent work. The worat of 
 it is that this kind of concentrated writing needs 
 so much solution before the reader can fairly 
 get the good of it, that people's patience fails 
 them, and thejr give the thing up as insoluble : 
 though, truly, it ought to be to the current of 
 common thought like Saladin's talisman, dipped 
 in clear water, not soluble altogether, but 
 making the element medicinal." [John Rub- 
 kin.] 
 
 Page 387. 7s not his love at issue still with 
 
 S2R. 
 
 Ini the first edition there followed this line : 
 Closed with and cast and conquered, crucified. 
 
 Page 602. Baladstion's Adventubb. 
 
 Mr. Richard G. Moulton, in the Transac- 
 tions of the Browning Society, 1890-1891, offers 
 a detailed criticism of Browning's poem as a re- 
 production of the- thought of Euripides, espe- 
 cially in regard to the character of Admetns. 
 The chief points will be found in Berdoe's 
 The Browning Cyclopaedia. 
 
 Page 699. Prince Hohenstiel-Schwan- 
 
 GAU. 
 
 Of the description of the succession of Roman 
 high priests, Mrs. Orr says : " Mr. Browning 
 desires me to say that he has been wrong in 
 associating this custom -with the little teinple 
 by the river Clitumnus, which he describes 
 from personal knowledge. That to which the 
 tradition refers stood by the lake of Nerai." 
 
 Page 736. Red Cotton Night -Cap 
 
 COUNTBT. 
 
 The equivalents in point of fact of names are 
 as follows. 
 The Firm Miranda = Mellerio Brothers. 
 
1022 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 St. Rambert=St. Aubin. Joyeux, Joyons- 
 Gard=Lion, Lionesse. 
 
 Vire = Caen. 
 
 St. Rambertese=St. Aubinese. 
 
 Londres^^ Douvres. 
 
 London = Dover. La Koche = Couroelle. 
 Monlien =Berni4res. Villenenve = Langrune. 
 Pons = Lue. La Ravisaante = La D^livrande. 
 
 Raimbaux = Bayeux. Morillon = Hugonin. 
 Mireeourt = Bonneehose. 
 
 New York = Madrid. 
 
 Clairvaux =Tailleville. Gonthier ~ B^ny. 
 Ronsseau = Voltaire. L^once = Antoine. 
 
 Of " Firm Miranda, London and New York " 
 = "Mellerio Brothers ; " Meller, people say. 
 
 Rare Vissante = Dell Yvrande. Aldabert = 
 Regnobert. Eldobert = Ragnobert. Mailleville 
 = Beaudoin. Chaumont=Quelen. Vertga- 
 lant = Talleyrand. 
 
 Ravissantish = D^livrandish. 
 
 Clara de Millefleurs = Anna de Beaupr^. 
 Coliseum Street = Miroraesnil Street. 
 
 Steiner= Mayer. Commerey = Larocy. Sierok 
 = Metz. 
 
 Muhlhausen = Debaoker. Carlino Centof anti 
 = Miranda di Mongino. 
 
 Portugal = Italy. 
 
 Vaillant = Muriel. 
 
 Thirty-three — Twenty-five. 
 
 Beaumont = Pasquier. 
 
 The "guide " recommended to Miranda was 
 M. Joseph Milsand, who was always at St. 
 Aubin during the bathing season, and who was 
 an old friend of Browning's. 
 
 Luc de la Maison Rouge = Jean de la Becque- 
 ti^re. Claise — Vire. Maude = Anne. 
 
 Dionysius = Eliezer. Scholastica = Elizabeth. 
 
 Twentieth — Thirteenth. 
 
 Prioquot = Picot. 
 
 Page 802. My Kirkup. 
 
 Baron Kirkup, a connoisseur in literature 
 and art, who was numbered among -Browning's 
 Florentine friends. He was ennobled by the 
 King of Italy, because of his literary and pa- 
 triotic services to his country. He discovered 
 a portrait of Dante in the Bargello at Florence. 
 
 Page 827. Epilogue. 
 
 The poet referred to is Mrs. Browning in 
 Wine of Cyprus. 
 ^ Page 880. Ivan IvInovitch. 
 
 Mr. Nathan Haskell Dole, the author of a 
 History of Russia, and the translator of Tolstoi 
 and other Russian authors, furnishes for Mr. 
 Cooke's Browning Guide Book the following 
 notes : — 
 
 " A verst is about .fi6 of a mile (3500 feet). — 
 I take^it the highway broad and straight from the 
 Neva's mouth to Moscow's gates of gold must 
 refer to the legend that when the first railroad 
 was built from one city to the other, the Em- 
 peror Nicholas ordered that it should run abso- 
 lutely straight, himself marking it with a ruler 
 on the map. I do not think the old highway ran 
 straight. — Ivdn Ivhnovitch is equivalent to 
 John Johnson, or more correctly Jack Jackson, 
 Iviln being the familiar of lohnn, John. The 
 
 ending vitch, however, is not exactly an equiva- 
 lent to son ; it really means father. — Droug, 
 more correctly spelt druk (pronounced drook), 
 means friend. — Browning's motherkin corre- 
 sponds to the Russian mtUushka, and is an en- 
 dearing diminutive of Tnat^ mother ; it is _ al- 
 ways applied to any old peasant woman; it is a 
 familiar form of address, often applied to any 
 woman or even girl. — Vissili (accented by 
 Browning incorrectly on the first syllable) should 
 be spelt VasUi : it is our Basil. — Lukeria is a 
 colloquial form of Glikeria, Glyeera ; the proper 
 diminutive is Lusha and also Lushka. — Brown- 
 ing makes one odd mistake in the poem ; it would 
 be impossible for the breath to go up straight 
 when the people were riding fast in a Russian 
 sledge. — He speaks of twin pigeons; the most 
 fanmiar term of endearment in Russian isgolUb- 
 chik, which is the diminutive of the word for 
 pigeon. — Stibpka is the proper diminutive of 
 StepUn, Stephen ; the io merely represents the 
 sound of the e (as in yelk) with which it is writ- 
 ten in Russian, — Pope should not be with a 
 capital ; it simply means priest. — Marpha 
 should be spelt Marfa; it is our Martha, but 
 the Russians cannot pronounce th ; they repre- 
 sent it by/. — Pomeschik should be pomyescnik ; 
 it means merely a landed proprietor. — Sthrosta 
 is correctly accented ; it is the bailiff of a vil- 
 lage, also overseer, inspector ; it merely means 
 old man (from stdrost, old age, star, old.) — 
 Kremlin is better Icreml ; it is any fortress, but 
 especially the fortress of Moscow. — Khtia is 
 the diminutive of Yekaterina, Katherine. — 
 Kblokol is pronounced as though it were two 
 syllables, accent on the first. — I am not certain 
 about the correctness of TeribscAa. It should 
 have no c : nor should Stescha," 
 Page 899. Pietro op Abano. 
 
 " Studiando le mie cifre col compasso, 
 
 Rilevo che 8ar6 presto sotterra, 
 Perch^ del mio saper si fa gran chiasso, 
 
 E gl' ignorant! m' hanno mosso guerra." 
 
 Said to have been found in a well at Abano in 
 the last century. They were extemporaneously 
 Englished thus :. not as Father Prout chose to 
 prefer them : — 
 
 Studying my ciphers with the compass, 
 I reckon — I soon shall be below-ground ; 
 
 Because, of my lore folk make great rumpus, 
 And war on myself makes each dull rogue round. 
 
 R. B. 
 
 Page 914. Ckistina and Monaudeschi. 
 
 The subjects of this poem are Queen Chris- 
 tina of Sweden, daughter of Gnstavus Adol- 
 phus, and her master of horse. 
 
 Page 955. With Daniel Bartoli. 
 
 A learned and ingenious writer. " Fu Ge- 
 suita e Storioo della Compagnia ; onde scrisse 
 lurighissime storie, le quali sarebbero lette se 
 non fossero ripiene traboccanti di tutte le 
 superstizioni. . . . Egli yi ha ficoati denti'o 
 tanti miracoloni, che diviene una noia insop- 
 portabile a ehiunque voglia leggere -quelle 
 storie : e anche a me, non mi bast6 1'amimo di 
 proseguire molto avanti. ' ' — Ahgelo Cbbutti. 
 
A LIST OF MR. BROWNING'S POEMS AND DRAMAS 1023 
 
 III. A LIST OF MR. BROWNING'S 
 POEMS AND DRAMAS 
 
 ARRANGED IN THE ORDER OF FIRST PUBLICA- 
 TION IN BOOK FORM 
 
 The following list is drawn from the careful 
 Bibliography, prepared by Mr. Thomas J. 
 Wise, and published in The Athenaeum for Au- 
 gust 11, 25, September 29, October 27, 1894. 
 
 1833. Pauline ; A Fragment of a Confession. 
 
 1835. Paracelsus. 
 
 183T. Strafford: An Historical Tragedy. 
 
 1840. Sordello. 
 
 1841. Bells and Pomegranates. No. I. Pippa 
 
 1842, Bells and Pomegranates. No. II. King 
 
 Victor and King Charles, 
 
 1843. Bells and Pomegranates. No. III. Dra- 
 
 matic Lyrics. 
 
 Contents 
 Cavalier Tunes : 
 
 (1) Marching Along. 
 
 (2) Give a Kouse. 
 
 (3) My Wife Gertrude. 
 Italy and France. 
 Camp and Cloister. 
 
 In a Gondola. 
 Artemis Prologizes. 
 Waring. 
 Queen-Worship. 
 
 (1) Rudel and the Lady of Tripoli. 
 
 (2) Cristina. 
 Madhouse Cells. 
 
 Through the Metidja to Abd-el-Kadr. 
 1842. 
 
 The Pied Piper of Hamehn. 
 1843. Bells and Pomegranates. No. PV. The 
 Ketam of the Druses. A Tragedy in 
 five Acts. XT TT A 
 
 1843, Bells and Pomegranates. No. V. A 
 
 Blot in the 'Scutcheon. A Tragedy in 
 three Acts. 
 
 1844, Bells and Pomegranates. No. VI. Oo- 
 
 lombe's Birthday. A Play in five Acts. 
 
 1845, Bells and Pomegranates. No. VII. Dra- 
 
 matic Romances and Lyncs. 
 
 Contents 
 "How they brought the Good News 
 
 from Ghent to Aix." 
 Pictor Ignotus. 
 Italy in England. 
 England in Italy. 
 The Lost Leader. 
 The Lost Mistress. 
 Home Thoi^hts from Abroad. 
 The Tomb at St. Praxed s. 
 Garden Fancies : 
 
 (1) The Flower's Name. 
 
 (2) Sibrandus Sohafnaburgensis. 
 France and Spain : 
 
 (1) The Laboratory. 
 
 (2) The Confessional. 
 The Flight of the Duchess. 
 Earth's Immortalities. 
 
 Song: "Nay but you, who do not love 
 her." 
 
 The Boy and the Angel. 
 
 Night and Morning, 
 
 Claret and Tokay, 
 
 Saul, 
 
 Time's Revenges. 
 
 The Glove. 
 1846. Bells and Pomegranates. No.VHI. and 
 last. Luria ;' and: A Soul's Tragedy. 
 1850. Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day. 
 1855. Cleon. 
 
 1855. The Statue and the Bust, 
 1855, Men and Women. In two volumes. 
 
 Contents. I. 
 
 Love among the Ruins. 
 
 A Lovers' Quarrel. 
 
 Evelyn Hmoe. 
 
 Up at a Villa— down in the City. (As 
 distinguished by an Italian Person of 
 Quality.) 
 
 A Woman's Last Word. 
 
 Fra Lippo Lippi. 
 
 A Toccata of Galuppi's, 
 
 By the Fireside. 
 
 Any Wife to Any Husband. 
 
 An Epistle containing the Strange Medi- 
 cal Experience of Karshish, the Arab 
 Physician, 
 
 Mesmerism. 
 
 A Serenade at the Villa. 
 
 My Star. 
 
 Instans Tyrannus. 
 
 A Pretty Woman. 
 
 " Childe Roland to the Dark Tower 
 came." 
 
 Respectability. 
 
 A Light Woman. 
 
 The Statue and the Bust, 
 
 Love in a Life, 
 
 Life in a Love. 
 
 How it strikes a Contemporary. 
 
 The Last Ride Together, 
 
 The Patriot — An Old Story, 
 
 Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha. 
 
 Bishop Blougram's Apology, 
 
 Memorabilia. 
 
 Contents. H. 
 
 Andrea del Sarto. (Called " The Fault- 
 less Painter.") 
 
 Before. 
 
 After. 
 
 In Three Days. 
 
 In a year. 
 
 Old Pictures in Florence. 
 
 In a Balcony. — First Part. 
 
 In a Balcony. — Second Part. 
 
 In a Balcony. — Third Part. 
 
 Saul. 
 
 "DeGustibus — " 
 
 Women and Roses. 
 
 Protus. 
 
 Holy-Cross Day. (On which the Jews 
 were forced to attend an Annual 
 Christian Sermon in Rome.) 
 
1024 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 The Guardian- Angel : A Picture at Fano. 
 
 Cleon. 
 
 The Tivina. 
 
 Popularity. 
 
 The Heretic's Tragedy, A Middle- Age 
 
 Interlude. 
 Two in the Canxpagna. 
 A Grammarian's Funeral. 
 Qne Way of Love. 
 Another Way of Lore. 
 " Transcendentalism : " A Poem in 
 
 Twelve Books. 
 Misconceptions. 
 One Word More. To E. B. B. 
 1864. Gold Hair : A Legend of Pomio. 
 Dramatis Personse. 
 
 Contents 
 
 James Lee. 
 
 Gold Hair : A Legend of Pomic. 
 
 The Worst of it. 
 
 Dis Aliter Visum ; or, Le Byron de Nos 
 Jours. 
 
 Too Late. 
 
 Abt Vogler. 
 
 Rabbi Ben Ezra. 
 
 A Death in the Desert. 
 
 Caliban upon Setebos ; or Natural Theo- 
 logy in the Island. 
 
 Confessions. 
 
 May and Death. 
 
 Prospice. 
 
 Youth and Art. 
 
 A Face. 
 
 A Likeness. 
 
 Mr. Sludge, " The Medium." 
 
 Apparent Failure. 
 
 Epilogue. 
 1868. The Ring and the Book. 
 1871. Balaustion's Adventure : Including a 
 Transcript from Euripides. 
 
 1871. Prince Hohenstiel-Sohwangau, Saviour 
 
 of Society. 
 
 1872. Fifine at the Fair. 
 
 1873. Red Cotton Night-oap Country, or Turf 
 
 and Towers. 
 1875. Aristophanes' Apology : Including a 
 Transcript from Euripides, Being the 
 Last Adventure of Balaustion. 
 
 1875. The Inn Album. 
 
 1876. Pacchiarotto, and How he Worked in 
 
 Distemper : with other Poems. 
 
 Contents 
 Prologue. 
 Of Pacchiarotto, and How he Worked in 
 
 Distemper. 
 At the " Mermaid." 
 House. 
 Shop. 
 
 Pisgah-Sights. (1). 
 Pisgah-Sights. (2). 
 Fears and Scruples. 
 Natural Magic. 
 Magical Nature. 
 Bifurcation. 
 Numpholeptos. 
 
 Appearances. 
 
 St. Martin's Summer. 
 
 Herv^ Riel. 
 
 A Forpveness. 
 
 Cenciaja. , „ . ., . 
 
 Filippo Baldinucci on the Privilege oi 
 
 Burial. 
 Epilogue. 
 
 1877. The Agamemnon of .^schylns. 
 
 1878. La Saisiaz. 
 
 The Two Poets of Croisic. 
 
 1879. Dramatic Idyls. 
 
 Contents 
 
 Martin Relph. 
 
 Pheidippides. 
 
 Halbert and Hob. 
 
 Iv^n Iv&novitch. 
 
 Tray. 
 
 Ned Bratts. 
 
 1880. Dramatic Idyls ; Second Series. 
 
 Contents 
 Echetlos. 
 Clive. 
 Mul^ykeh, 
 Hetro of Abano. 
 
 Doctor . 
 
 Pan and Luna. 
 
 1883. Jocoseria. 
 
 Contents 
 
 Wanting is — What? 
 
 Donald. 
 
 Solomon and Balkis. 
 
 Cristina and Monaldeschi. 
 
 Mary WoUstonecraft and Faseli. 
 
 Adam, Lilith, and Eve. 
 
 Ixion. 
 
 Jochanan Hakkadosh. 
 
 Never the Time and the Place. 
 
 Pambo. 
 
 1884. Ferishtah's Fancies. 
 
 Contents 
 
 Prologue. 
 
 The Eagle. 
 
 The Melon-Seller. 
 
 Shah Abbas. 
 
 The Family. 
 
 The Sun. 
 
 Mihrab Shah. 
 
 A Camel-Driver. 
 
 Two Camels. 
 
 Cherries. 
 
 Plot Culture. 
 
 A Pillar at Sebzevar. 
 
 A Bean-Stripe : also Apple-Eating, 
 
 Epilogue. 
 1887. Parleyings with certain People of import- 
 ance in their day : To wit : Bernard 
 de Mandeville, Daniel Bartoli, Christo- 
 
 fher Smart, Georee Bubb Dodington, 
 'rancis Furini, Gerard de Lairesse, 
 and Charles Avison. Introduced by 
 A Dialogue between Apollo and the 
 
A LIST OF MR. BROWNING'S POEMS AND DRAMAS 1025 
 
 Fates ; concluded by another between 
 John Fust and his Friends. 
 1890. Asolando : Fancies and Facts. 
 
 Contents 
 Prologue. 
 Rosny. 
 Dubiety. 
 Now. 
 Humility. 
 Poetics. 
 
 Summum Bonum. 
 A Pearl, A Girl. 
 SpeenlatJTe. 
 White Witchcraft. 
 Bad Dreams : I. 
 " II. 
 
 " " in. 
 
 Bad Dreams : IV. 
 Inapprehensiveness. 
 WBch? 
 
 The Cardinal and the Dog. 
 The Pope and the Net. 
 The Bean-Feast. 
 Muckle-mouth Meg. 
 Arcades Ambo. 
 The Lady and the Painter. 
 Ponte dell' Ang:elo, Venice. 
 Beatrice Signorini. 
 
 Flute-Music, with an Accompaniment. 
 " Imperante Augusto natus est — " 
 Development. 
 Bephan. 
 Reverie- 
 Epilogue. 
 
INDEX OF FIRST LINES OF POEMS 
 
 About that strangest, saddest, sweetest sonsr, 
 602. ^' 
 
 A certain neighbor lying sick to death, 932. 
 
 Ah, but — because you were struck blind, could 
 bless, 970. 
 
 Ah, but how each loved each. Marquis ! 914. 
 
 Ah, djd you once sse Shelley plain, 195. 
 
 Ah, George Bubb Dodington Lord Melcombe, 
 
 — no, 961. 
 
 Ah, Love, bnt a day, 373. 
 
 Ah, the bird-lika fluting, 999. 
 
 A king lived long ago, 140. 
 
 All I believed is true, 255. 
 
 All I can say is — 1 saw it ! 811. 
 
 All June I bound the rose in sheaves, 190. 
 
 All service ranks the same with God, 145. 
 
 All 's over then : does truth sound bitter, 170. , 
 
 All that I know, 1S5. 
 
 All the breath and the bloom of the year in the 
 bag of one bee, 988. 
 
 Among these latter busts we count by scores, 283. 
 
 And so, here happily we meet, fair friend,; 736. 
 
 And so you found that poor, room dull, 814. 
 
 ^' And what might that bold man's announce- 
 ment be," 93!. 
 
 Anyhow, once full Dervish, youngsters came, 
 930. 
 
 A Rabbi told me : On the day allowed, 906. 
 
 A simple ring with a single stone, 988. 
 
 As I ride, as I ride, 165. 
 
 Ask not one least word of praise ! 941. 
 
 " As like as a Hand to another Hand ! " 375. 
 
 At the midnight in the silence of the sleep-time, 
 1007. 
 
 "Ay, but, Ferishtah," — a disciple smirked, 
 939. 
 
 Ay, this same midnight, by this chair of mine, 
 952. 
 
 Beautiful Evelyn Hope is dead ! 171. 
 Boot, saddle, to horse, and away ! 163. 
 But do not let us quarrel any more, 346. 
 But give them me, the mouth, the eyes, the 
 brow ! 395. 
 
 Christ God, who savest man, save most, 252. 
 Cleon the poet, from the sprinkled isles, 358. 
 Come close to me, dear friends j still closer ; 
 
 thus ! 12. ^ TT- ,. 
 
 Crescenzio, the Pope s Legate at the High 
 
 Council, Trent, 991. 
 
 Dared and done : at last I stand upon the sum- 
 mit. Dear and True I 849. 
 
 Dear and great Angel, would 'st thou only leave, 
 194. 
 
 Dear, had the world in its capnoe, 191. 
 
 Dervish — though yet un-dervished, call him 
 
 so, 929. 
 Don, the divinest women that have walked, 955. 
 
 " Enter my palace," If a prince should say, 947. 
 Escape me ? 191. 
 
 Eyes, calm beside thee (Lady, couldst thou 
 know !) 11. 
 
 ' ' Fame ! ' ' Yes, I said it and you read it. First, 
 
 859. 
 Fear death ? — to feel the fog in my throat, 395. 
 Fee, faw, fum I bubble and squeak ! 281. 
 Fire is in the flint : true, once a spark escapes, 
 
 934. 
 First 1 salute this soil of the blessed, river and 
 
 rock, 877. 
 Flame at my footfall, Parnassus ! Apollo, 948. 
 Flower — I never fancied, jewel — I profess 
 
 you I 812. 
 Flower o' the broom, 342. 
 Forti, Fortii, my beloved one, 260. 
 Frowned the Laird on the Lord : So, red-handed 
 
 1 catch thee ? 993. 
 
 Give her but a least excuse to love me, 137. 
 
 Going his rounds one day in Ispahan, 920. 
 
 Goldoni — good, gay, sunniest of souls, 910, 
 
 Good, to forgive, 849. 
 
 Grand rough old Martin Luther, 266. 
 
 Grow old along with me ! 383. 
 
 Gr-i>-r — there go, my heart's abhorrence ! 167. 
 
 Had I but plenty of money, money enough and 
 
 to spare, 174. 
 HameUn Town 's in Brunswick, 268. 
 Heai> cassia, sandal-buds and stripes, .36. 
 " Heigho," yawned one day King Francis, 256. 
 Here is a story, shall stir yon ! Stand up, Greeks 
 
 dead and gone, 892. . 
 Here is a thing that happened. Like wild 
 
 beasts whelped, for den, 879. 
 Here 's my case. Of old I used to love hiir 
 
 811. 
 Here 's the garden she walked across, 166, 
 Here 's to Nelson's memory! 166. 
 Here was I with my arm and heart, 380. 
 He was the man — Pope Sixtus, that Fifth, that 
 
 swineherd's son, 992. 
 High in the dome, suspended, of Hell, sad 
 
 triumph, behold us, 916. 
 Hist, but a word, fair and soft ! 195. 
 How I lived, ere ray human life began, 1004. 
 How of his fate, the Pilgrims' soldier-guide, 
 
 936. 
 How strange ! — but, first of all, the little fact 
 
 974. 
 
 X027 
 
1028 
 
 INDEX OF FIRST LINES OF POEMS 
 
 How very hard it is to be, 327. 
 
 How well I know what I mean to do, 185. 
 
 I am a goddess of the ambrosial courts, 337. 
 I am a painter who cannot paint, 137. 
 I am indeed the personage you know, 817. 
 I am poor brother Lippo, by your leare ! 342. 
 I and Clive were friends — and why not ? 893. 
 I could have painted pictures like that youth's, 
 
 341. 
 I dream of a red-rose tree, 193. 
 If a stranger passed the tent of H<5seyn, he 
 
 cried ',' A churl's ! " 897. 
 If one could have that little head of hers, 396. 
 If you and I could change to beasts, what 
 
 beast should either be ? 989. 
 I hear a voice, perchance I heard, 22. 
 I know a Mount, the gracious 8un perceives, 
 
 361. 
 I know there shall dawn a day, 1C05. 
 I leaned on the turf, 374. 
 I — " Next Poet ? " No, my hearties, 807. 
 I only knew one poet in my life, 336. 
 I said — Then, dearest, since 't is so, 267. 
 Is all our fire of shipwreck wood, 373. 
 I send my heart up to thee, all my heart, 262. 
 I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he, 164. 
 It happened thus : my slab, though new, 990. 
 It is a lie — their Priests, their Pope, 169. 
 It once might have been, once only, 396. 
 It seems as if ... or did the actual chance, 959. 
 It was roses, roses, all the way, 251. 
 I 've a Friend, over the sea, 258. 
 I will be happy if but for once, 987. 
 I will be quiet and talk with you, 374. 
 I wish that when yon died last May, 395. 
 I wonder do you feel to-day, 189. 
 
 John, Master of the Temple of God, 280. 
 
 June was not over, 190. 
 
 Just for a handful of silver he left us, 164. 
 
 Karshish, the picker-up of learning's crumbs, 
 
 338. 
 Kentish Sir Byng stood for his King, 163. 
 King Charles, and who '11 do him right now ? 
 
 163. 
 " Knowledge deposed, then ! " — groaned whom 
 
 that most grieved, 940. 
 
 Last night I saw you in my sleep, 989. 
 
 Let 's contend no more. Love, 171. 
 
 Let them fight it out, friend ! things have gone 
 
 too far, 193. 
 Let the watching lids wink ! 130. 
 Let us begin and carry up this corpse, 279. 
 " Look, I strew beans," 942. 
 
 Man I am and man would be. Love — merest 
 
 man and nothing more, 933. 
 May I print, Shelley, how it came to pass, 821. 
 Morning, evening, noon and night, 253. 
 Moses the Meek was thirty cubits high, 927. 
 My father was a scholar and knew Greek, 1002. 
 My first thought was, he lied in every word, 
 
 287. 
 My grandfather says he remembers he saw, 
 
 when a youngster long ago, 875. 
 
 My heart sank with our Claret-flask, 166. 
 My love, this is the bitterest, that thou, 187. 
 
 Nay but you, who do not love her, 170. 
 
 Nay, that, Furini, never I at least, 964. 
 
 Never any more, 192. 
 
 Never the time and the place, 928. 
 
 Nobly, nobly Cape Saint Vincent to the North- 
 west died away, 179. 
 
 " No, boy, we must not ' — so began, 823. 
 
 No, for I '11 save it ! Seven years since, 412. 
 
 No more wine ? then we '11 push back chairs, 
 and talk, 349. 
 
 No protesting, dearest ! 814. 
 
 Not with my Soul, Love! — bid no soul like 
 mine, 940. 
 
 Now, don't, sir I Don't expose me ! Just this 
 once! 397. 
 
 Now that I, tying thy glass mask tightly, 168. 
 
 bell' andare, 70. 
 
 Of the million or two, more or less, 254. 
 
 Oh, but is it not hard, Dear ? 916. 
 
 Oh Galuppi, Baldassare, this is very sad to 
 
 find ! 175. 
 Oh, good gigantic snule o' the brown old earth, 
 
 375. 
 Oh Love I Love, thou that from the eyes diffus- 
 
 est, 874. 
 Oh, Love — no, Love 1 All the noise below. 
 
 Love, 946. 
 Oh, the beautiful girl, too white, 377. 
 Oh, to be in England, 179. 
 Oh, what a dawn of day I 172. 
 Oh worthy of belief I hold it was, 909. 
 Once I saw a chemist take a pinch of powder, 
 
 938. 
 One day,, it thundered and lightened, 916. 
 Only the prism's obstruction shows aright, 395. 
 On the first of the Feast of Feasts, 413. 
 On the sea and at the Hogue, sixteen hundred 
 
 ninety-two, 815. 
 O the old wall here ! How I could pass, 802. 
 Others may need new life in Heaven, 98J8. 
 O trip and skip, Elvire 1 Link arm in arm with 
 
 me ! 702. 
 Out of the little chapel I burst, 316. 
 Out of your whole life give but a moment ! 988. 
 Overhead the treetops meet, 144. 
 Over the ball of it, 810. 
 Over the sea our galleys went, 38. 
 
 Past we glide, and past, and past I 262. 
 Pauline, mine own, bend o er me — thy soft 
 
 breast, 2. 
 Petrus Aponensis — there was a magician ! 899. 
 Plague take all' your pedants, say II 167. 
 Pray, Header, have you eaten ortolans, 929. 
 
 Query : was ever a quainter, 802. 
 Quoth an inquirer. Praise the Merciful ! 934. 
 Quoth one : Sir, solve a scruple I No true sage, 
 937. 
 
 Room after room, 191. 
 
 Round the cape of a sudden came the sea, 170. 
 Round us the wild creatures, overhead the 
 trees, 930. ' 
 
INDEX OF FIRST LINES OF POEMS 
 
 1029 
 
 Said Abner, " At last thou art come 1 Ere I 
 
 tell, ere thou speak, 17a. 
 Savage I was sitting in my house, late, lone, 
 
 735. 
 See, as the prettiest graves will do in time, 170. 
 Shakespeare 1 — to such name's sounding, what 
 
 succeeds, 947. 
 Shall I sonnet-sing you about myself ? 808. 
 She should never liave looked at me, 169. 
 Sighed Rawdon Brown : Yes, I 'm departing, 
 
 Toni! 947. 
 Sing me a hero ! Quench my thirst, 887. 
 So far as our story approaches the end, 267. 
 So, friend, your shop was all your house ! 809. 
 So, I shall see her in three days, 192. 
 Solomon King of the Jews and the Queen of 
 
 Sheba, Balkis, 913. 
 Some people hang portraits up, 396. 
 " So say the foolish 1 " Say the foolish so. 
 
 Love ? 988. 
 So, the head aches and the limbs are faint ! 936. 
 So, the three Court-ladies began, 991. 
 So, the year 's done with ! 170. 
 Stand still, true poet that you are ! 195. 
 Still ailing, Wind ? Wilt be appeased or no ? 
 
 3T4. 
 Still you stand, still you listen, still you smile ! 
 
 812. 
 Stop, let me have the truth of that ! 379. 
 Stop playing, poet 1 May a brother speak ? 
 
 335. 
 Stop rowing ! This one of our bye-canals, 994. 
 Such a starved bank of moss, 859. 
 Supposed of Pamphylax the Antiochene, 3S5. 
 Suppose that we part (work done, comes play). 
 
 Take the cloak from his face, and at first, 194. 
 That fawn-skin-dappled hair of hers, 190. 
 That oblong book s the Album ; hand it here ! 
 
 773. 
 That second time they hunted me, 258. 
 That 's my last Duchess painted on the wall, 252. 
 That was I, you heard last night, 189. 
 The bee with his comb, 144. 
 The blind man to the maiden said, 910. 
 The fancy I had to-day, 701. 
 The gods 1 ask deliverance from these labors, 
 
 831. 
 The gray sea and the long black land, 170. 
 The Lord, we look to once for all, 280. 
 The mom when first it thunders in March, 176. 
 The moth's kiss, first ! 262. 
 The Poet's age is sad : for why ? 987. 
 " The poets pour us wine — " 827. 
 The rain set early in to-night, 286. 
 There is nothing to remember in me, 376. 
 There 's a palace in Florence, the world knows 
 
 well, 283. 
 There 's a woman like a dew-drop, she 's so 
 
 purer than the purest, 220. 
 There 's heaven above, and night by night, 341. 
 There they are, ray fifty men and women, 361. 
 The swallow has set her six young on the rail, 
 
 373. 
 The year '3 at the spring, 133. 
 "They tell me, your carpenters," quoth I to 
 
 my friend the Buss, 880. 
 
 This is a spray the Bird clung to, 189. 
 
 This now, this other story makes amends, 918. 
 
 This strange thing happened to a painter once, 
 996. 
 
 This was my dream j I saw a Forest, 990. 
 
 Thou, whom these eyes saw never ! Say friends 
 true, 948. 
 
 Thus I wrote in London, musing on my betters, 
 910. 
 
 Touch him ne 'er so lightly, into song he broke, 
 910. 
 
 'T was Bedford Special Assize, one daft Mid- 
 summer's Day, 887. 
 
 Up jumped Tokay on our table, 166- 
 
 Up, up, up — next step of the staircase, 979. 
 
 Vanity, saith the preacher, vanity 1 348. 
 Verse-making was least of ray virtues: I 
 viewed with despair, 939. 
 
 Wanting is — what ? 911. 
 
 We two stood simply friend-like side by sittt, 
 
 991. 
 We were two lovers ; let me lie by her, 812. 
 What are we two? 263. 
 
 What girl but, having gathered flowers, 988. 
 What, he on whom our voices unanimously ran, 
 
 992. 
 What, I disturb thee at thy morning meal, 938. 
 What is he buzzing in my ears ? 394. 
 What it was struck the terror into me ? 1001. 
 What 's become of Waring, 264. 
 When I vexed you and you chid me, 937. 
 Where the quiet-colored end of evening smiles, 
 
 171. 
 Who hears of Helen's Tower, may dream per- 
 chance, 601. 
 Who will, may hear Bordello's story told, 75. 
 "Why?" Because all I haply can and do, 
 
 948. 
 Why from the world, Ferishtah smiled, should 
 
 thanks, 946. 
 Will sprawl, now that the heat of day is best, 
 
 392. 
 Will yon hear my story also, 911. 
 Wind, wave, and bark, bear Enthukles and 
 
 me, 628. 
 Wish no word unspoken, want no look away, 
 
 930. 
 Woe, he went galloping into the war, 987. 
 Would a man 'scape the rod ? 372. 
 Would it were I had been false, not yon ! 378. 
 Would that the structure brave, the manifold 
 
 music 1 build, 382. 
 
 Yet womanhood you reverence, 993. 
 
 " You are sick, that 's sure," — they say, 892, 
 
 You blame me that I ran away ? 993. 
 
 You groped your wajr across my room i' the 
 
 drear &rk dead of night, 932. 
 You have seen better days, dear ? So have I, 
 
 682. 
 You in the flesh and here, 989. 
 You know, we French stormed Ratisbon, 2.51. 
 You '11 love me yet ! — and I can tarry, 142. 
 You 're my friend, 271. 
 Your ghost will walk, you lover of trees. 178. 
 
,.!> i I lit ■ 
 
GENERAL INDEX OF TITLES 
 
 [The titles of major works and general divisions are set in 6IVIA1.L capitals.] 
 
 Abt Vogler, (after he ha;s been Extemporizing 
 upon the Musical Instrument of his Inven- 
 tion), 3H2. 
 
 Adam, Lilith, and Eye, 916, 
 
 After, 194. 
 
 Agamemnon of iEscHYLUs, Thb, 830. 
 
 Andrea del Sarto, 34B. 
 
 Another Way of Love, 190. 
 
 Any Wife to Any Husband, 187. 
 
 Apollo and the Fates, 948. 
 
 Apparent Failure, 41'2. 
 
 Appearances, 814. 
 
 Arcades Ambo, 993. 
 
 Aristophanes' Apology, 628. 
 
 Artemis Prologizes, 337. 
 
 ASOLANDO, SI86. 
 
 At the "Mermaid," 807. 
 
 Bad Dreams, 989. 
 
 Balaustion's Adventdbe, 602. 
 
 Bean-Feast, The, 99z. 
 
 Bean-Stripe, A : also Apple-Eatmg, 942. 
 
 Beatrice Signorini, 996. 
 
 Before, 193. 
 
 Ben Karshook's Wisdom, 372. 
 
 Bernard de Mandeville, Parleyin£S with, 952. 
 
 Bifurcation, 812. 
 
 Bishop Blougrara's Apology, 349. 
 
 Bishop, The, orders his Tomb at Saint Praxed's 
 
 Church, 348. 
 Blind Man to the Maiden, The, 910. 
 Blot in the 'Scutcheon, A, 216. 
 Boot and Saddle, 163. 
 Boy and the Angel, The, 253. 
 By the Fireside, 185. 
 
 Caliban upon Setebos, 392. 
 
 Camel-Driver, A, 936. 
 
 Cardinal and the Dog, The, 991. 
 
 Cavalier Tunes, 163. 
 
 Cenciaja, 820. . , „„, 
 
 Charles Avison, Prjleymgs -with, 974. 
 
 Cherries 938. 
 
 " ChildeRoland to the Dark Tower came," 287. 
 
 Christmas-Eve and Easteb-Dat, 316. 
 
 Christopher Smart, Parleyings with, 959. 
 
 Cleon, .358. 
 
 CUve, 893. 
 
 Colombe's Birthday, 230. 
 
 Confessional, The, 169. 
 
 Confessions, 394. 
 
 Count Gismond, 252. 
 
 Cristina, 169. 
 
 Cristina and Monaldeschi, 914. 
 
 Daniel Bartoli, Parleyings with, 955. 
 Deaf and Dumb, 395. 
 Death in the Desert, A, 385. 
 " De Gustibus," 178. 
 Development, 1002. 
 Dis Aliter Visum, 379. 
 
 Doctor ,906. 
 
 Donald, 911. 
 DiiAMATio Idyls, 875. 
 Dramatic Lybics, 163. 
 Dramatic Romances, 251. 
 Dramatis Persons, 373. 
 Dubiety, 987. 
 
 Eagle, The, 929. 
 
 Earth's Immortalities, 170. 
 
 Easter-Day, 327. 
 
 Echetlos, 892. 
 
 Englishman in Italy, The, 260. 
 
 Epilogue (to Asolando), 1007. 
 
 Epilogue (to Dramatis Personse), 413. 
 
 Epilogue (to Ferishtah's Fancies), 946. 
 
 Epilogue (to Fifine at the Fair), 735. 
 
 Epilogue (to Pacehiarotto), 827. 
 
 Epistle, An, containing the Strange Medical 
 
 Experience of Karshish, the Arab Physician, 
 
 338. 
 Epitaph on Levi Lincoln Thaxter, 947. 
 Eurydice to Orpheus, 395. 
 Evelyn Hope, 171. 
 
 Fa«e, A, 396. 
 Fame, 170. 
 Family, The, 922. 
 Fears and Scruples, 811. 
 Ferishtah's Fancies, 929. 
 
 FlEINE AT THE FAIR, 701. 
 
 Filippo Baldinucci on the Privilege of Burial, 
 
 823. 
 Flight of the Duchess, The, 271. 
 Flower's Name, The, 166. 
 Flute-Music, with an Accompaniment, 999. 
 Forgiveness, A, 817. 
 Foimder of the Feast, The, 947. 
 Era Lippo Lippi, 342. 
 Francis Furini, Parleyings with, 964. 
 Fust and his Friends, 979. 
 
 Garden Fancies, IfiC. 
 
 George Bubb Dodington, Parleyings with, 961. 
 
 Gerard de Lairesse, Parleyings with, 970. 
 
 Give a Rouse, 163. 
 
 Glove, The, 2r,6. 
 
 Gold Hair, 376. 
 
1032 
 
 GENERAL INDEX OF TITLES 
 
 Goldoni, 910. 
 
 Mul^ykeh, 897. 
 
 Grammarian's Fnnetal, A, 279. 
 
 My Last Duchess, 252. 
 
 Guardian Angel, The, 194. 
 
 My Star, 184. 
 
 Halbert and Hob, 879. 
 
 Names, The, 947._ 
 
 Helen's Tower, (JOl. 
 
 Nationality in Drinks, 166. 
 Natural Magic, 811. 
 
 Herakles, 660. 
 
 Heretic's Tragedy, The, 280. 
 
 Ned Bratts, 887. 
 
 Never the Time and the Place, 928. 
 
 Herv^ Riel, 815. 
 
 Holy-Cross Day, 281. 
 
 Now, 988. 
 
 Home-Thonghts, from Abroad, 179. 
 
 Numpholeptos, 812. 
 
 Home-Thoughts, from the Sea, 179. 
 
 
 House, 808. 
 
 Oh Love 1 Lovej874. 
 
 Old Pictures in Florence, 176. 
 
 How it strikes a Contemporary, 336. 
 
 " How they brought the uooa News from Ghent 
 
 One Way of Love, 190. 
 
 toAix,"164. 
 
 One Word More, 361. 
 
 Humility, 988. 
 
 
 
 Pacchiarotto, Of, and how hb worked in 
 
 " Imperante Augusto Natus Est — " 1001. 
 
 Distemper, 802. 
 
 In a Balcony, 364. 
 
 Pambo, 928. 
 
 In a Gondola, 262. 
 
 Pan and Luna, 909. 
 
 Inapprehensiveness, 991. 
 In a Year, 192. 
 
 Paracelsus, 12. 
 
 Pakletings with Certain People op Im- 
 
 Incident of the French Camp, 251. 
 
 portance IN THEIR Day, 948. 
 
 Inn At.bum, The, 773. 
 
 Parting at Morning, 170. 
 
 Instans Tyrannus, 254. 
 In Three Days, 192. 
 
 Patriot, The, 251. 
 
 Pauline, 1. 
 
 Italian in England, The, 258. 
 
 Pearl, a Girl, A, 988. 
 
 Pheidippides, 877. 
 
 Pictor Ignotus, 341. 
 
 Pied Piper of Hamelin, The, 268. 
 
 IvJin IvinoTitch, 880. 
 
 Ixion, 916. 
 
 
 James Lee's Wife, 373. 
 
 Pietro of Abano, 899. 
 
 Jochanan Hakkadosh, 918. 
 
 Pillajp at Sebzevar, A, 940. 
 
 JOCOBEKIA, 911. 
 
 PippA Passes, 128. 
 
 Johannes Agricola in Meditation, 341, 
 
 Pisgah-Sights, 810. 
 
 
 Plot-Culture, 739. 
 
 King Victoe and King Chables, 145. 
 
 Poetics, 988. 
 
 
 Ponte DeU' Angelo^enice, 994. 
 Pope and the Net, The, 992. 
 
 Laboratory, The, 168. 
 
 Lady and the Painter, The, 993. 
 
 LaSaisiaz, 849. 
 
 Last Ride Together, The, 267. 
 
 Popularity, 195. 
 
 Porphyria's Lover, 286. 
 
 Pretty Woman, A, 190. 
 
 Life in a Love, 191. 
 
 Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Saviour 
 
 Light Woman, A, 267. 
 
 of Society, 681. 
 
 Likeness, A, 396. 
 
 Prologue (to Asolando), 987. 
 
 Lost Leader, The, 164. 
 
 Prologue (to Ferishtah's Fancies), 929. 
 
 Lost Mistress, The, 170. 
 
 Prologue (to Fifine at the Fair), 701. 
 
 Love, 170. 
 
 Prologue {to Pacchiarotto), 802. 
 
 Love among the Ruins, 171. 
 
 Prospice, 395. 
 
 Love in a Life, 191. 
 
 Protus, 283. 
 
 Lovers' Quarrel, A, 172. 
 
 
 Luria, 299. 
 
 Rabbi Ben Ezra, 383. 
 
 
 Rawdon Brown, 947. 
 
 Magical Nature, 812. 
 
 Red Cotton Night-Cap Country ; or Turf 
 
 Marching Along, 163. 
 
 AND Towers, 726. 
 
 Martin Relph, 875. 
 
 Rephan, 1003. 
 
 Mary Wollstonecraft and Fuseli, 916. 
 
 Respectability, 191. 
 
 Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha, 195. 
 
 Return of the Druses, The, 197. 
 
 May and Death, 395. 
 
 Reverie, 1005. 
 
 Meeting at Night, 170. 
 Melon-Seller, The, 930. 
 
 Ring and the Book, The, 414. 
 
 Rosny, 987. 
 
 Memorabilia, 195. 
 
 Rudel to the Lady of TripoU, 361. 
 
 Men and Women, 336. 
 
 
 Mesmerism, 255. 
 
 St. Martin's Summer, 814. 
 
 Misconceptions, 189. 
 Mihrab Shah, 934. 
 
 Saul, 179. 
 
 Serenade at the ViUa, A, 189. 
 
 Mr.Slud!?e, ''the Medium," 397. 
 
 Shah Abbas, 930. 
 
 Muckle-Mouth Meg, 993. 
 
 Shop, 809. 
 
GENERAL INDEX OF TITLES 
 
 1033 
 
 Sibrandus Schafnaburgenaisj 167. 
 Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister, 167. 
 Solomon and Balkis, 913. 
 
 Song: "N^hut you, who do not love her," 170. 
 Sonnet : " Eyes, calm beside thee (Lady, couldst 
 thou know I)," 11. 
 
 SORDELLO, 74. 
 
 Soul's Tragedy, A, 289. 
 
 Speculative, 988. 
 
 Statue and the Bust, The, 283. 
 
 Strafford, 49. 
 
 Summum Bonum, 988. 
 
 Sun, The, 933. 
 
 Thaxter, Levi Lincoln, Epitaph on, 947. 
 
 Through the Metidja to Abd-el-Kadr, 165. 
 
 Time's Revenges, 258. 
 
 Toccata of Galuppi's, A, 175. 
 
 Too Late, 380. 
 
 ■' Touch him ne'er so lightly," 910. 
 
 " Transcendentalism : A Poem in Twelve 
 
 Books," 335. 
 Tray, 887. 
 Twins, The, 266. 
 Two Camels, 937. 
 Two in the Campagna, 189. 
 Two Poets of Croisic, The, 859. 
 
 Up at a VUla— Down in the City, 174. 
 
 Wanting is — What ? 911. 
 Waring, 264. 
 Which 1 991. 
 White Witchcraft, 989. 
 Why I am a Liberal, 948. 
 Woman's Last Word, A, 171. 
 Women and Roses, 193. 
 Worst of It, The, 378. 
 
 Youth and Alt, 396.