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 preferenceTo the immediate good, for time is brief,And death ends good and ill and everything!What's got is gained, what's gained soon is gained twice,And—inasmuch as faith gains most—feign faith!"So did we brother-like pass word about:—You, now,—like bloody drunkards but half-drunk,Who fool men yet perceive men find them fools,—Vexed that a titter gains the gravest mouth,—O' the sudden you must needs reintroduceSolemnity, straight sober undue mirthBy a blow dealt me your boon companion here,Who, using the old license, dreamed of harmNo more than snow in harvest: yet it falls!You check the merriment effectuallyBy pushing your abrupt machine i' the midst,Making me Rome's example: blood for wine!The general good needs that you chop and change!I may dislike the hocus-pocus,—Rome,The laughter-loving people, won't they stareChapfallen!—while serious natures sermonize,"The magistrate, he beareth not the swordIn vain; who sins may taste its edge, we see!"Why my sin, drunkards? Where have I abusedLiberty, scandalized you all so much?Who called me, who crooked finger till I came,Fool that I was, to join companionship?I knew my own mind, meant to live my life,Elude your envy, or else make a stand,Take my own part and sell you my life dear.But it was "Fie! No prejudice in the worldTo the proper manly instinct! Cast your lotInto our lap, one genius ruled our births,We'll compass joy by concert; take with usThe regular irregular way i' the wood;You'll miss no game through riding breast by breast,In this preserve, the Church's park and pale,Rather than outside where the world lies waste!"Come, if you said not that, did you say this?Give plain and terrible warning, "Live, enjoy!Such life begins in death and ends in hell!Dare you bid us assist your sins, us priestsWho 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 wordsBut veritable deeds with tongues of flame,That had been fair, that might have struck a man,Silenced the squabble between soul and sense,Compelled him to make mind up, take one courseOr the other, peradventure!—wrong or right,Foolish or wise, you would have been at leastSincere, no question,—forced me choose, indulgeOr else renounce my instincts, still play wolfOr find my way submissive to your fold,Be red-crossed on my fleece, one sheep the more.But you as good as bade me wear sheep's-woolOver wolf's-skin, suck blood and hide the noiseBy mimicry of something like a bleat,—Whence it comes that because, despite my care,Because I smack my tongue too loud for once,Drop baaing, here 's the village up in arms!Have at the wolf's throat, you who hate the breed!Oh, were it only open yet to choose—One little time more—whether I 'd be freeYour foe, or subsidized your friend forsooth!Should not you get a growl through the white fangsIn 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 myselfWhen 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 gameWherein the winner's chance were worth the pains!We 'd try conclusions!—at the worst, what worseThan this Mannaia-machine, each minute's talkHelps push an inch the nearer me? Fool, fool!You understand me and forgive, sweet Sirs?I blame you, tear my hair and tell my woe—All 's but a flourish, figure of rhetoric!One must try each expedient to save life.One makes fools look foolisher fifty-foldBy putting in their place men wise like you,To take the full force of an argumentWould buffet their stolidity in vain.If you should feel aggrieved by the mere windO' the blow that means to miss you and maul them,That 's my success! Is it not folly, now,To say with folk, "A plausible defence—We see through notwithstanding, and reject"?Reject the plausible they do, these fools,Who never even make pretence to showOne point beyond its plausibilityIn favor of the best belief they hold!"Saint Somebody-or-other raised the dead:"Did he? How do you come to know as much?"Know it, what need? The story 's plausible,Avouched for by a martyrologist,And why should good men sup on cheese and leeksOn such a saint's day, if there were no saint?"I praise the wisdom of these fools, and straightTell them my story—"plausible, but false!"False, to be sure! What else can story beThat runs—a young wife tired of an old spouse,Found a priest whom she fled away with,—bothTook their full pleasure in the two-days' flight,Which a gray-headed grayer-hearted pair(Whose best boast was, their life had been a lie)Helped for the love they bore all liars. Oh,Here incredulity begins! Indeed?Allow then, were no one point strictly true,There 's that i' the tale might seem like truth at leastTo the unlucky husband,—jaundiced patch,—Jealousy maddens people, why not him?Say, he was maddened, so forgivable!Humanity pleads that though the wife were true,The priest true, and the pair of liars true,They might seem false to one man in the world!A thousand gnats make up a serpent's sting,And many sly soft stimulants to wrathCompose a formidable wrong at last,That gets called easily by some one nameNot 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 timeAs like the every-day life on all sides,Wherein the husband, mad as a March hare,Suspected all the world contrived his shame.What did the wife? The wife kissed both eyes blind,Explained away ambiguous circumstance,And while she held him captive by the hand,Crowned his head—you know what 's the mockery—By half her body behind the curtain. That 'sNature now! That 's the subject of a pieceI saw in Vallombrosa Convent, madeExpressly to teach men what marriage was!But say, "Just so did I misapprehend,Imagine she deceived me to my face,"And that 's pretence too easily seen through!All those eyes of all husbands in all plays,At stare like one expanded peacock-tail,Are laughed at for pretending to be keenWhile horn-blind: but the moment I step forth—Oh, I must needs o' the sudden prove a lynxAnd 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 beneathSome such an apparitional dread orbAs the eye of God, since such an eye there glares:I fancy it go filling up the voidAbove my mote-self it devours, or whatProves wrath, immensity wreaks on nothingnessJust how I felt once, couching through the dark.Hard by Vittiano; young I was, and gay,And wanting to trap fieldfares: first a sparkTipped a bent, as a mere dew-globule mightAny stiff grass-stalk on the meadow,—thisGrew 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 smearThis 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 particleO' the past? Oh, how I wish some cold wise manWould dig beneath the surface which you scrape,Deal with the depths, pronounce on my desertGroundedly! I want simple sober sense,That asks, before it finishes with a dog,Who taught the dog that trick you hang him for?You both persist to call that act a crime,Which sense would call ... yes, I maintain it, Sirs, ...A blunder! At the worst, I stood in doubtOn cross-road, took one path of many paths:It leads to the red thing, we all see now,But nobody saw at first: one primrose-patchIn bank, one singing-bird in bush, the less,Had warned me from such wayfare: let me prove!Put me back to the cross-road, start afresh!Advise me when I take the first false step!Give me my wife: how should I use my wife,Love her or hate her? Prompt my action now!There she is, there she stands alive and pale,The thirteen-years'-old child, with milk for blood,Pompilia Comparini, as at first,Which first is only four brief years ago!I stand too in the little ground-floor roomO' the father's house at Via Vittoria: see!Her so-called mother—one arm round the waistO' the child to keep her from the toys, let fallAt wonder I can live yet look so grim—Ushers her in, with deprecating waveOf 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, bearAny 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 soulThrough 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 noveltyThat he, men use to motion from their path,Can thus impose, thus terrify in turnA chit whose terror shall be changed apaceTo bliss unbearable when grace and glow,Prowess and pride descend the throne and touchEsther in all that pretty tremble, curedBy the dove o' the sceptre! But myself am old,O' the wane at least, in all things: what do you sayTo 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 strikeDeath-damp into the breast of doughty kingThough 't were French Louis,—soul I understand,—Saying, by gesture of repugnance, just"Sire, you are regal, puissant, and so forth,But—young you have been, are not, nor will be!"In vain the mother nods, winks, bustles up,"Count, girls incline to mature worth like you!As for Pompilia, what 's flesh, fish or fowlTo one who apprehends no difference,And would accept you even were you oldAs you are ... youngish by her father's side?Trim but your beard a little, thin your bushOf eyebrow; and for presence, portliness,And decent gravity, you beat a boy!"Deceive yourself one minute, if you may,In presence of the child that so loves age,Whose neck writhes, cords itself against your kiss,Whose hand you wring stark, rigid with despair!Well, I resent this; I am young in soul,Nor old in body,—thews and sinews here,—Though the vile surface be not smooth as once,—Far beyond that first wheelwork-which went wrongThrough 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 wordThat makes the thing, pricks on the soul to shootNew fire into the half-used cinder, flesh!Therefore 't is she begins with wronging me,Who cannot but begin with hating her.Our marriage follows: there she stands again!Why do I laugh? Why, in the very gripeO' the jaws of death's gigantic skull, do IGrin back his grin, make sport of my own pangs?Why from each clashing of his molars, groundTo make the devil bread from out my grist,Leaps out a spark of mirth, a hellish toy?Take notice we are lovers in a church,Waiting the sacrament to make us oneAnd happy! Just as bid, she bears herself,Comes and kneels, rises, speaks, is silent,—goes:So have I brought my horse, by word and blow,To stand stock-still and front the fire he dreads.How can I other than remember this,Resent the very obedience? Gain thereby?Yes, I do gain my end and have my will,—Thanks to whom? When the mother speaks the word,She obeys it—even to enduring me!There had been compensation in revolt—Revolt 's to quell: but martyrdom rehearsed,But predetermined saintship for the sakeO' 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, endureThe ... 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'-playAnd go on to wise friendship all at once?Those boys and girls kiss themselves cold, you know,Toy themselves tired and slink aside full soonTo friendship, as they name satiety:Thither go you and wait their coming!" Thanks,Considerate advisers,—but, fair play!Had you and I, friends, started fair at first,We, keeping fair, might reach it, neck by neck,This blessed goal, whenever fate so please:But why am I to miss the daisied mileThe course begins with, why obtain the dustOf the end precisely at the starting-point?Why quaff life's cup blown free of all the beads,The bright red froth wherein our beard should steepBefore our mouth essay the black o' the wine?Foolish, the love-fit? Let me prove it suchLike you, before like you I puff things clear!"The best 's to come, no rapture but content!Not love's first glory but a sober glow,Not a spontaneous outburst in pure boon,So much as, gained by patience, care and toil,Proper appreciation and esteem!"Go preach that to your nephews, not to meWho, tired i' the midway of my life, would stopAnd take my first refreshment, pluck a rose:What 's this coarse woolly hip, worn smooth of leaf,You counsel I go plant in garden-plot,Water with tears, manure with sweat and blood,In confidence the seed shall germinateAnd, for its very best, some far-off day,Grow big, and blow me out a dog-rose bell?Why must your nephews begin breathing spiceO' the hundred-petalled Provence prodigy?Nay, more and worse,—would such my root bear rose—Prove really flower and favorite, not the kindThat 's queen, but those three leaves that make one cupAnd hold the hedge-bird's breakfast,—then indeedThe prize though poor would pay the care and toil!Respect we Nature that makes least as most,Marvelous in the minim! But this bud,Bit through and burned black by the tempter's tooth,This bloom whose best grace was the slug outsideAnd the wasp inside its bosom,—call you "rose"?Claim no immunity from a weed's fateFor the horrible present! What you call my wifeI call a nullity in female shape,Vapid disgust, soon to be pungent plague,When mixed with, made confusion and a curseBy two abominable nondescripts,That father and that mother: think you seeThe 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 belchFlame out i' the midst, the serpent writhe her rings,Grafted into the common stock for tail,And name the brute, Chimæra, which I slew!How was there ever more to be—(concedeMy wife's insipid harmless nullity)—Dissociation from that pair of plagues—That mother with her cunning and her cant—The eyes with first their twinkle of conceit,Then, dropped to earth in mock-demureness,—now,The smile self-satisfied from ear to ear,Now, the prim pursed-up mouth's protruded lips,With deferential duck, slow swing of head,Tempting the sudden fist of man too much,—That owl-like screw of lid and rock of ruff!As for the father,—Cardinal, you knowThe kind of idiot!—such are rife in Rome,But they wear velvet commonly; good fools,At the end of life, to furnish forth young folkWho grin and bear with imbecility:Since the stalled ass, the joker, sheds from jawCorn, in the joke, for those who laugh or starve.But what say we to the same solemn beastWagging his ears and wishful of our pat,When turned, with holes in hide and bones laid bare,To forage for himself i' the waste o' the world,Sir Dignity i' the dumps? Pat him? We drubSelf-knowledge, rather, into frowzy pate,Teach Pietro to get trappings or go hang!Fancy this quondam oracle in vogueAt Via Vittoria, this personifiedAuthority when time was,—PantaloonFlaunting his tom-fool tawdry just the sameAs if Ash-Wednesday were mid-Carnival!That 's the extreme and unforgivableOf sins, as I account such. Have you stoopedFor your own ends to bestialize yourselfBy flattery of a fellow of this stamp?The ends obtained or else shown out of reach,He goes on, takes the flattery for pure truth,—"You love, and honor me, of course: what next?"What, but the trifle of the stabbing, friend?—Which taught you how one worships when the shrineHas lost the relic that we bent before.Angry! And how could I be otherwise?'T is plain: this pair of old pretentious foolsMeant to fool me: it happens, I fooled them.Why could not these who sought to buy and sellMe,—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 thingAnd meaning to get wool, dislodges fleeceAnd finds the veritable wolf beneath,(How that stanch image serves at every turn!)Does he, by way of being politic,Pluck the first whisker grimly visible?Or rather grow in a trice all gratitude,Protest this sort-of-what-one-might-name sheepBeats the old other curly-coated kind,And shall share board and bed, if so it deign,With its discoverer, like a royal ram?Ay, thus, with chattering teeth and knocking knees,Would wisdom treat the adventure! these, forsooth,Tried whisker-plucking, and so found what trapThe whisker kept perdue, two rows of teeth—Sharp, as too late the prying fingers felt.What would you have? The fools transgress, the foolsForthwith receive appropriate punishment:They first insult me, I return the blow,There follows noise enough: four hubbub months,Now hue and cry, now whimpering and wail—A perfect goose-yard cackle of complaintBecause I do not gild the geese their oats,—I have enough of noise, ope wicket wide,Sweep out the couple to go whine elsewhere,Frightened a little, hurt in no respect,And am just taking thought to breathe again,Taste the sweet sudden silence all about,When, there they raise it, the old noise I know,At Rome i' the distance! "What, begun once more?Whine on, wail ever, 't is the loser's right!"But eh, what sort of voice grows on the wind?Triumph it sounds and no complaint at all!And triumph it is. My boast was premature:The creatures, I turned forth, clapped wing and crewFighting-cock-fashion,—they had filched a pearlFrom dung-heap, and might boast with cause enough!I was defrauded of all bargained for:You know, the Pope knows, not a soul but knowsMy dowry was derision, my gain—muck,My wife (the Church declared my flesh and blood)The nameless bastard of a common whore:My old name turned henceforth to ... shall I say"He that received the ordure in his face"?And they who planned this wrong, performed this wrong,And then revealed this wrong to the wide world,Rounded myself in the ears with my own wrong,—Why, these were (note hell's lucky malice, now!)These were just they who, they alone, could actAnd 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 strongProud cunning violent oppressor—me!Follow them to their fate and help your best,You Rome, Arezzo, foes called friends of me,They gave the good long laugh to, at my cost!Defray your share o' the cost, since you partookThe 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, findA friend's face at the bottom of each wound,And scratch its smirk a little!Panciatichi!There 's a report at Florence,—is it true?—That when your relative the CardinalBuilt, only the other day, that barrack-bulk,The palace in Via Larga, some one pickedFrom out the street a saucy quip enoughThat fell there from its day's flight through the town,About the flat front and the windows wideAnd bulging heap of cornice,—hitched the jokeInto a sonnet, signed his name thereto,And forthwith pinned on post the pleasantry:For which he 's at the galleys, rowing nowUp to his waist in water,—just becausePanciaticandlymphaticrhymed so pat!I hope, Sir, those who passed this joke on meWere not unduly punished? What say you,Prince of the Church, my patron? Nay, indeed,I shall not dare insult your wits so muchAs think this problem difficult to solve.This Pietro and Violante then, I say,These two ambiguous insects, changing nameAnd 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 faceUntil I stopped the nuisance: there 's my crime!Pity I did not suffer them subsideInto some further shape and final formOf execrable life? My masters, no!I, by one blow, wisely cut short at onceThem and their transformations of disgust,In the snug little Villa out of hand."Grant me confession, give bare time for that!"—Shouted the sinner till his mouth was stopped.His life confessed!—that was enough for me,Who came to see that he did penance. 'S death!Here 's a coil raised, a pother and for what?Because strength, being provoked by weakness, foughtAnd 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 rangeAmong the right and fit and proper things!Ay, but Pompilia,—I await your word,—She unimpeached of crime, unimplicateIn folly, one of alien blood to theseI punish, why extend my claim, exactHer portion of the penalty? Yes, friends,I go too fast: the orator 's at fault:Yes, ere I lay her, with your leave, by themAs she was laid at San Lorenzo late,I ought to step back, lead you by degrees,Recounting at each step some fresh offence,Up to the red bed,—never fear, I will!Gaze at her, where I place her, to begin,Confound me with her gentleness and worth!The horrible pair have fled and left her now,She has her husband for her sole concern:His wife, the woman fashioned for his help,Flesh of his flesh, bone of his bone, the brideTo groom as is the Church and Spouse to Christ:There she stands in his presence: "Thy desireShall be to the husband, o'er thee shall he rule!"—"Pompilia, who declare that you love God,You know who said that: then, desire my love,Yield me contentment and be ruled aright!"She sits up, she lies down, she comes and goes,Kneels at the couch-side, overleans the sillO' the window, cold and pale and mute as stone,Strong as stone also. "Well, are they not fled?Am I not left, am I not one for all?Speak a word, drop a tear, detach a glance,Bless me or curse me of your own accord!Is it the ceiling only wants your soul,Is worth your eyes?" And then the eyes descend,And do look at me. Is it at the meal?"Speak!" she obeys. "Be silent!" she obeys,Counting the minutes till I cry "Depart,"As brood-bird when you saunter past her eggs.Departs she, just the same through door and wallI 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, bidThe 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 childOf those she thought her parents,—that their trickHad tricked me whom she thought solo trickster late,—Why, I suppose she said within herself,"Then, no more struggle for my parents' sake!And, for my own sake, why needs struggle be?"But is there no third party to the pact?What of her husband's relish or dislikeFor this new game of giving up the game,This worst offence of not offending more?I'll not believe but instinct wrought in this,Set her on to conceive and executeThe preferable plague: how sure they probe,—These jades, the sensitivest soft of man!The long black hair was wound now in a wisp,Crowned sorrow better than the wild web late:No more soiled dress, 't is trimness triumphs now,For how should malice go with negligence?The frayed silk looked the fresher for her spite!There was an end to springing out of bed,Praying me, with face buried on my feet,Be hindered of my pastime,—so an endTo my rejoinder, "What, on the ground at last?Vanquished in fight, a supplicant for life?What if I raise you? 'Ware the casting downWhen next you fight me!" Then, she lay there, mine:Now, mine she is if I please wring her neck,—A moment of disquiet, working eyes,Protruding tongue, a long sigh, then no more,—As if one killed the horse one could not ride!Had I enjoined "Cut off the hair!"—why, snapThe scissors, and at once a yard or soHad 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 headTo be an eyesore past dishevelment!Is all done? Then sit still again and stare!I advise—no one think to bear that lookOf 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 launchedAnd the fact fronts me! What, you try the wardsWith the true key and the dead lock flies ope?No, it sticks fast and leaves you fumbling still!You have some fifty servants, Cardinal,—Which of them loves you? Which subordinateBut makes parade of such officiousnessThat—if there 's no love prompts it—love, the sham,Does twice the service done by love, the true.God bless us liars, where 's one touch of truth?In what we tell the world, or world tells us,Of how we love each other? All the same,We calculate on word and deed, nor err,—Bid such a man do such a loving act,Sure of effect and negligent of cause,Just as we bid a horse, with cluck of tongue,Stretch his legs arch-wise, crouch his saddled backTo foot-reach of the stirrup—all for love,And some for memory of the smart of switchOn the inside of the foreleg—what care we?Yet where 's the bond obliges horse to manLike that which binds fast wife to husband? GodLaid down the law: gave man the brawny armAnd ball of fist—woman the beardless cheekAnd 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 aboutLast week while I lay rotting in my straw?The very jailer gossiped in his praise—How,—dressed up like Armida, though a man;And painted to look pretty, though a fright,—He still made love so that the ladies swooned,Being an eunuch. "Ah, Rinaldo mine!But to breathe by thee while Jove slays us both!"All the poor bloodless creature never felt,Si, do, re, mi, fa, squeak and squall—for what?Two gold zecchines the evening. Here 's my slave,Whose body and soul depend upon my nod,Can't falter out the first note in the scaleFor her life! Why blame me if I take the life?All women cannot give men love, forsooth!No, nor all pullets lay the henwife eggs—Whereat she bids them remedy the fault,Brood on a chalk-ball: soon the nest is stocked—Otherwise, to the plucking and the spit!This wife of mine was of another mood—Would not begin the lie that ends with truth,Nor feign the love that brings real love about:Wherefore I judged, sentenced, and punished her.But why particularize, defend the deed?Say that I hated her for no one causeBeyond 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, pairAt top, and arch across the avenueThe 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 endCome of my course—that I fare somehow worseFor 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 interestHave let the whole adventure go untried,This chance by marriage,—or else, trying it,Ought to have turned it to account, some oneO' the hundred otherwises? Ay, my friend,Easy to say, easy to do: step rightNow you 've stepped left and stumbled on the thing,—The red thing! Doubt I any more than youThat practice makes man perfect? Give againThe chance,—same marriage and no other wife,Be sure I 'll edify you! That 's becauseI 'm practised, grown fit guide for Guido's self.You proffered guidance,—I know, none so well,—You laid down law and rolled decorum out,From pulpit-corner on the gospel-side,—Wanted to make your great experience mine,Save me the personal search and pains so: thanks!Take your word on life's use? When I take his—The muzzled ox that treadeth out the corn,Gone blind in padding round and round one path,—As to the taste of green grass in the field!What do you know o' the world that 's trodden flatAnd 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 doOr else leave undone? You preached long and loudOn high-days, "Take our doctrine upon trust!Into the mill-house with you! Grind our corn,Relish our chaff, and let the green grass grow!"I tried chaff, found I famished on such fare,So made this mad rush at the mill-house-door,Buried my head up to the ears in dew,Browsed on the best: for which you brain me, Sirs!Be it so. I conceived of life that way,And still declare—life, without absolute useOf the actual sweet therein, is death, not life.Give me,—pay down,—not promise, which is air,—Something that 's out of life and better still,Make sure reward, make certain punishment,Entice me, scare me,—I 'll forego this life;Otherwise, no!—the less that words, mere wind,Would cheat me of some minutes while they plague,Balk fulness of revenge here,—blame yourselvesFor this eruption of the pent-up soulYou prisoned first and played with afterward!"Deny myself" meant simply pleasure you,The sacred and superior, save the mark!You,—whose stupidity and insolenceI must defer to, soothe at every turn,—Whose swine-like snuffling greed and grunting lustI had to wink at or help gratify,—While the same passions,—dared they perk in me,Me, the immeasurably marked, by God,Master of the whole world of such as you,—I, boast such passions? 'T was, "Suppress them straight!Or stay, we 'll pick and choose before destroy.Here 's wrath in you, a serviceable sword,—Beat it into a ploughshare! What 's this longLance-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-wideBy way of answer, sought its own reliefWith more of fire and brimstone than you wished.All your own doing: preachers, blame yourselves!
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 preferenceTo the immediate good, for time is brief,And death ends good and ill and everything!What's got is gained, what's gained soon is gained twice,And—inasmuch as faith gains most—feign faith!"So did we brother-like pass word about:—You, now,—like bloody drunkards but half-drunk,Who fool men yet perceive men find them fools,—Vexed that a titter gains the gravest mouth,—O' the sudden you must needs reintroduceSolemnity, straight sober undue mirthBy a blow dealt me your boon companion here,Who, using the old license, dreamed of harmNo more than snow in harvest: yet it falls!You check the merriment effectuallyBy pushing your abrupt machine i' the midst,Making me Rome's example: blood for wine!The general good needs that you chop and change!I may dislike the hocus-pocus,—Rome,The laughter-loving people, won't they stareChapfallen!—while serious natures sermonize,"The magistrate, he beareth not the swordIn vain; who sins may taste its edge, we see!"Why my sin, drunkards? Where have I abusedLiberty, scandalized you all so much?Who called me, who crooked finger till I came,Fool that I was, to join companionship?I knew my own mind, meant to live my life,Elude your envy, or else make a stand,Take my own part and sell you my life dear.But it was "Fie! No prejudice in the worldTo the proper manly instinct! Cast your lotInto our lap, one genius ruled our births,We'll compass joy by concert; take with usThe regular irregular way i' the wood;You'll miss no game through riding breast by breast,In this preserve, the Church's park and pale,Rather than outside where the world lies waste!"Come, if you said not that, did you say this?Give plain and terrible warning, "Live, enjoy!Such life begins in death and ends in hell!Dare you bid us assist your sins, us priestsWho 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 wordsBut veritable deeds with tongues of flame,That had been fair, that might have struck a man,Silenced the squabble between soul and sense,Compelled him to make mind up, take one courseOr the other, peradventure!—wrong or right,Foolish or wise, you would have been at leastSincere, no question,—forced me choose, indulgeOr else renounce my instincts, still play wolfOr find my way submissive to your fold,Be red-crossed on my fleece, one sheep the more.But you as good as bade me wear sheep's-woolOver wolf's-skin, suck blood and hide the noiseBy mimicry of something like a bleat,—Whence it comes that because, despite my care,Because I smack my tongue too loud for once,Drop baaing, here 's the village up in arms!Have at the wolf's throat, you who hate the breed!Oh, were it only open yet to choose—One little time more—whether I 'd be freeYour foe, or subsidized your friend forsooth!Should not you get a growl through the white fangsIn 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 myselfWhen 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 gameWherein the winner's chance were worth the pains!We 'd try conclusions!—at the worst, what worseThan this Mannaia-machine, each minute's talkHelps push an inch the nearer me? Fool, fool!You understand me and forgive, sweet Sirs?I blame you, tear my hair and tell my woe—All 's but a flourish, figure of rhetoric!One must try each expedient to save life.One makes fools look foolisher fifty-foldBy putting in their place men wise like you,To take the full force of an argumentWould buffet their stolidity in vain.If you should feel aggrieved by the mere windO' the blow that means to miss you and maul them,That 's my success! Is it not folly, now,To say with folk, "A plausible defence—We see through notwithstanding, and reject"?Reject the plausible they do, these fools,Who never even make pretence to showOne point beyond its plausibilityIn favor of the best belief they hold!"Saint Somebody-or-other raised the dead:"Did he? How do you come to know as much?"Know it, what need? The story 's plausible,Avouched for by a martyrologist,And why should good men sup on cheese and leeksOn such a saint's day, if there were no saint?"I praise the wisdom of these fools, and straightTell them my story—"plausible, but false!"False, to be sure! What else can story beThat runs—a young wife tired of an old spouse,Found a priest whom she fled away with,—bothTook their full pleasure in the two-days' flight,Which a gray-headed grayer-hearted pair(Whose best boast was, their life had been a lie)Helped for the love they bore all liars. Oh,Here incredulity begins! Indeed?Allow then, were no one point strictly true,There 's that i' the tale might seem like truth at leastTo the unlucky husband,—jaundiced patch,—Jealousy maddens people, why not him?Say, he was maddened, so forgivable!Humanity pleads that though the wife were true,The priest true, and the pair of liars true,They might seem false to one man in the world!A thousand gnats make up a serpent's sting,And many sly soft stimulants to wrathCompose a formidable wrong at last,That gets called easily by some one nameNot 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 timeAs like the every-day life on all sides,Wherein the husband, mad as a March hare,Suspected all the world contrived his shame.What did the wife? The wife kissed both eyes blind,Explained away ambiguous circumstance,And while she held him captive by the hand,Crowned his head—you know what 's the mockery—By half her body behind the curtain. That 'sNature now! That 's the subject of a pieceI saw in Vallombrosa Convent, madeExpressly to teach men what marriage was!But say, "Just so did I misapprehend,Imagine she deceived me to my face,"And that 's pretence too easily seen through!All those eyes of all husbands in all plays,At stare like one expanded peacock-tail,Are laughed at for pretending to be keenWhile horn-blind: but the moment I step forth—Oh, I must needs o' the sudden prove a lynxAnd 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 beneathSome such an apparitional dread orbAs the eye of God, since such an eye there glares:I fancy it go filling up the voidAbove my mote-self it devours, or whatProves wrath, immensity wreaks on nothingnessJust how I felt once, couching through the dark.Hard by Vittiano; young I was, and gay,And wanting to trap fieldfares: first a sparkTipped a bent, as a mere dew-globule mightAny stiff grass-stalk on the meadow,—thisGrew 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 smearThis 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 particleO' the past? Oh, how I wish some cold wise manWould dig beneath the surface which you scrape,Deal with the depths, pronounce on my desertGroundedly! I want simple sober sense,That asks, before it finishes with a dog,Who taught the dog that trick you hang him for?You both persist to call that act a crime,Which sense would call ... yes, I maintain it, Sirs, ...A blunder! At the worst, I stood in doubtOn cross-road, took one path of many paths:It leads to the red thing, we all see now,But nobody saw at first: one primrose-patchIn bank, one singing-bird in bush, the less,Had warned me from such wayfare: let me prove!Put me back to the cross-road, start afresh!Advise me when I take the first false step!Give me my wife: how should I use my wife,Love her or hate her? Prompt my action now!There she is, there she stands alive and pale,The thirteen-years'-old child, with milk for blood,Pompilia Comparini, as at first,Which first is only four brief years ago!I stand too in the little ground-floor roomO' the father's house at Via Vittoria: see!Her so-called mother—one arm round the waistO' the child to keep her from the toys, let fallAt wonder I can live yet look so grim—Ushers her in, with deprecating waveOf 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, bearAny 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 soulThrough 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 noveltyThat he, men use to motion from their path,Can thus impose, thus terrify in turnA chit whose terror shall be changed apaceTo bliss unbearable when grace and glow,Prowess and pride descend the throne and touchEsther in all that pretty tremble, curedBy the dove o' the sceptre! But myself am old,O' the wane at least, in all things: what do you sayTo 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 strikeDeath-damp into the breast of doughty kingThough 't were French Louis,—soul I understand,—Saying, by gesture of repugnance, just"Sire, you are regal, puissant, and so forth,But—young you have been, are not, nor will be!"In vain the mother nods, winks, bustles up,"Count, girls incline to mature worth like you!As for Pompilia, what 's flesh, fish or fowlTo one who apprehends no difference,And would accept you even were you oldAs you are ... youngish by her father's side?Trim but your beard a little, thin your bushOf eyebrow; and for presence, portliness,And decent gravity, you beat a boy!"Deceive yourself one minute, if you may,In presence of the child that so loves age,Whose neck writhes, cords itself against your kiss,Whose hand you wring stark, rigid with despair!Well, I resent this; I am young in soul,Nor old in body,—thews and sinews here,—Though the vile surface be not smooth as once,—Far beyond that first wheelwork-which went wrongThrough 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 wordThat makes the thing, pricks on the soul to shootNew fire into the half-used cinder, flesh!Therefore 't is she begins with wronging me,Who cannot but begin with hating her.Our marriage follows: there she stands again!Why do I laugh? Why, in the very gripeO' the jaws of death's gigantic skull, do IGrin back his grin, make sport of my own pangs?Why from each clashing of his molars, groundTo make the devil bread from out my grist,Leaps out a spark of mirth, a hellish toy?Take notice we are lovers in a church,Waiting the sacrament to make us oneAnd happy! Just as bid, she bears herself,Comes and kneels, rises, speaks, is silent,—goes:So have I brought my horse, by word and blow,To stand stock-still and front the fire he dreads.How can I other than remember this,Resent the very obedience? Gain thereby?Yes, I do gain my end and have my will,—Thanks to whom? When the mother speaks the word,She obeys it—even to enduring me!There had been compensation in revolt—Revolt 's to quell: but martyrdom rehearsed,But predetermined saintship for the sakeO' 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, endureThe ... 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'-playAnd go on to wise friendship all at once?Those boys and girls kiss themselves cold, you know,Toy themselves tired and slink aside full soonTo friendship, as they name satiety:Thither go you and wait their coming!" Thanks,Considerate advisers,—but, fair play!Had you and I, friends, started fair at first,We, keeping fair, might reach it, neck by neck,This blessed goal, whenever fate so please:But why am I to miss the daisied mileThe course begins with, why obtain the dustOf the end precisely at the starting-point?Why quaff life's cup blown free of all the beads,The bright red froth wherein our beard should steepBefore our mouth essay the black o' the wine?Foolish, the love-fit? Let me prove it suchLike you, before like you I puff things clear!"The best 's to come, no rapture but content!Not love's first glory but a sober glow,Not a spontaneous outburst in pure boon,So much as, gained by patience, care and toil,Proper appreciation and esteem!"Go preach that to your nephews, not to meWho, tired i' the midway of my life, would stopAnd take my first refreshment, pluck a rose:What 's this coarse woolly hip, worn smooth of leaf,You counsel I go plant in garden-plot,Water with tears, manure with sweat and blood,In confidence the seed shall germinateAnd, for its very best, some far-off day,Grow big, and blow me out a dog-rose bell?Why must your nephews begin breathing spiceO' the hundred-petalled Provence prodigy?Nay, more and worse,—would such my root bear rose—Prove really flower and favorite, not the kindThat 's queen, but those three leaves that make one cupAnd hold the hedge-bird's breakfast,—then indeedThe prize though poor would pay the care and toil!Respect we Nature that makes least as most,Marvelous in the minim! But this bud,Bit through and burned black by the tempter's tooth,This bloom whose best grace was the slug outsideAnd the wasp inside its bosom,—call you "rose"?Claim no immunity from a weed's fateFor the horrible present! What you call my wifeI call a nullity in female shape,Vapid disgust, soon to be pungent plague,When mixed with, made confusion and a curseBy two abominable nondescripts,That father and that mother: think you seeThe 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 belchFlame out i' the midst, the serpent writhe her rings,Grafted into the common stock for tail,And name the brute, Chimæra, which I slew!How was there ever more to be—(concedeMy wife's insipid harmless nullity)—Dissociation from that pair of plagues—That mother with her cunning and her cant—The eyes with first their twinkle of conceit,Then, dropped to earth in mock-demureness,—now,The smile self-satisfied from ear to ear,Now, the prim pursed-up mouth's protruded lips,With deferential duck, slow swing of head,Tempting the sudden fist of man too much,—That owl-like screw of lid and rock of ruff!As for the father,—Cardinal, you knowThe kind of idiot!—such are rife in Rome,But they wear velvet commonly; good fools,At the end of life, to furnish forth young folkWho grin and bear with imbecility:Since the stalled ass, the joker, sheds from jawCorn, in the joke, for those who laugh or starve.But what say we to the same solemn beastWagging his ears and wishful of our pat,When turned, with holes in hide and bones laid bare,To forage for himself i' the waste o' the world,Sir Dignity i' the dumps? Pat him? We drubSelf-knowledge, rather, into frowzy pate,Teach Pietro to get trappings or go hang!Fancy this quondam oracle in vogueAt Via Vittoria, this personifiedAuthority when time was,—PantaloonFlaunting his tom-fool tawdry just the sameAs if Ash-Wednesday were mid-Carnival!That 's the extreme and unforgivableOf sins, as I account such. Have you stoopedFor your own ends to bestialize yourselfBy flattery of a fellow of this stamp?The ends obtained or else shown out of reach,He goes on, takes the flattery for pure truth,—"You love, and honor me, of course: what next?"What, but the trifle of the stabbing, friend?—Which taught you how one worships when the shrineHas lost the relic that we bent before.Angry! And how could I be otherwise?'T is plain: this pair of old pretentious foolsMeant to fool me: it happens, I fooled them.Why could not these who sought to buy and sellMe,—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 thingAnd meaning to get wool, dislodges fleeceAnd finds the veritable wolf beneath,(How that stanch image serves at every turn!)Does he, by way of being politic,Pluck the first whisker grimly visible?Or rather grow in a trice all gratitude,Protest this sort-of-what-one-might-name sheepBeats the old other curly-coated kind,And shall share board and bed, if so it deign,With its discoverer, like a royal ram?Ay, thus, with chattering teeth and knocking knees,Would wisdom treat the adventure! these, forsooth,Tried whisker-plucking, and so found what trapThe whisker kept perdue, two rows of teeth—Sharp, as too late the prying fingers felt.What would you have? The fools transgress, the foolsForthwith receive appropriate punishment:They first insult me, I return the blow,There follows noise enough: four hubbub months,Now hue and cry, now whimpering and wail—A perfect goose-yard cackle of complaintBecause I do not gild the geese their oats,—I have enough of noise, ope wicket wide,Sweep out the couple to go whine elsewhere,Frightened a little, hurt in no respect,And am just taking thought to breathe again,Taste the sweet sudden silence all about,When, there they raise it, the old noise I know,At Rome i' the distance! "What, begun once more?Whine on, wail ever, 't is the loser's right!"But eh, what sort of voice grows on the wind?Triumph it sounds and no complaint at all!And triumph it is. My boast was premature:The creatures, I turned forth, clapped wing and crewFighting-cock-fashion,—they had filched a pearlFrom dung-heap, and might boast with cause enough!I was defrauded of all bargained for:You know, the Pope knows, not a soul but knowsMy dowry was derision, my gain—muck,My wife (the Church declared my flesh and blood)The nameless bastard of a common whore:My old name turned henceforth to ... shall I say"He that received the ordure in his face"?And they who planned this wrong, performed this wrong,And then revealed this wrong to the wide world,Rounded myself in the ears with my own wrong,—Why, these were (note hell's lucky malice, now!)These were just they who, they alone, could actAnd 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 strongProud cunning violent oppressor—me!Follow them to their fate and help your best,You Rome, Arezzo, foes called friends of me,They gave the good long laugh to, at my cost!Defray your share o' the cost, since you partookThe 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, findA friend's face at the bottom of each wound,And scratch its smirk a little!Panciatichi!There 's a report at Florence,—is it true?—That when your relative the CardinalBuilt, only the other day, that barrack-bulk,The palace in Via Larga, some one pickedFrom out the street a saucy quip enoughThat fell there from its day's flight through the town,About the flat front and the windows wideAnd bulging heap of cornice,—hitched the jokeInto a sonnet, signed his name thereto,And forthwith pinned on post the pleasantry:For which he 's at the galleys, rowing nowUp to his waist in water,—just becausePanciaticandlymphaticrhymed so pat!I hope, Sir, those who passed this joke on meWere not unduly punished? What say you,Prince of the Church, my patron? Nay, indeed,I shall not dare insult your wits so muchAs think this problem difficult to solve.This Pietro and Violante then, I say,These two ambiguous insects, changing nameAnd 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 faceUntil I stopped the nuisance: there 's my crime!Pity I did not suffer them subsideInto some further shape and final formOf execrable life? My masters, no!I, by one blow, wisely cut short at onceThem and their transformations of disgust,In the snug little Villa out of hand."Grant me confession, give bare time for that!"—Shouted the sinner till his mouth was stopped.His life confessed!—that was enough for me,Who came to see that he did penance. 'S death!Here 's a coil raised, a pother and for what?Because strength, being provoked by weakness, foughtAnd 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 rangeAmong the right and fit and proper things!Ay, but Pompilia,—I await your word,—She unimpeached of crime, unimplicateIn folly, one of alien blood to theseI punish, why extend my claim, exactHer portion of the penalty? Yes, friends,I go too fast: the orator 's at fault:Yes, ere I lay her, with your leave, by themAs she was laid at San Lorenzo late,I ought to step back, lead you by degrees,Recounting at each step some fresh offence,Up to the red bed,—never fear, I will!Gaze at her, where I place her, to begin,Confound me with her gentleness and worth!The horrible pair have fled and left her now,She has her husband for her sole concern:His wife, the woman fashioned for his help,Flesh of his flesh, bone of his bone, the brideTo groom as is the Church and Spouse to Christ:There she stands in his presence: "Thy desireShall be to the husband, o'er thee shall he rule!"—"Pompilia, who declare that you love God,You know who said that: then, desire my love,Yield me contentment and be ruled aright!"She sits up, she lies down, she comes and goes,Kneels at the couch-side, overleans the sillO' the window, cold and pale and mute as stone,Strong as stone also. "Well, are they not fled?Am I not left, am I not one for all?Speak a word, drop a tear, detach a glance,Bless me or curse me of your own accord!Is it the ceiling only wants your soul,Is worth your eyes?" And then the eyes descend,And do look at me. Is it at the meal?"Speak!" she obeys. "Be silent!" she obeys,Counting the minutes till I cry "Depart,"As brood-bird when you saunter past her eggs.Departs she, just the same through door and wallI 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, bidThe 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 childOf those she thought her parents,—that their trickHad tricked me whom she thought solo trickster late,—Why, I suppose she said within herself,"Then, no more struggle for my parents' sake!And, for my own sake, why needs struggle be?"But is there no third party to the pact?What of her husband's relish or dislikeFor this new game of giving up the game,This worst offence of not offending more?I'll not believe but instinct wrought in this,Set her on to conceive and executeThe preferable plague: how sure they probe,—These jades, the sensitivest soft of man!The long black hair was wound now in a wisp,Crowned sorrow better than the wild web late:No more soiled dress, 't is trimness triumphs now,For how should malice go with negligence?The frayed silk looked the fresher for her spite!There was an end to springing out of bed,Praying me, with face buried on my feet,Be hindered of my pastime,—so an endTo my rejoinder, "What, on the ground at last?Vanquished in fight, a supplicant for life?What if I raise you? 'Ware the casting downWhen next you fight me!" Then, she lay there, mine:Now, mine she is if I please wring her neck,—A moment of disquiet, working eyes,Protruding tongue, a long sigh, then no more,—As if one killed the horse one could not ride!Had I enjoined "Cut off the hair!"—why, snapThe scissors, and at once a yard or soHad 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 headTo be an eyesore past dishevelment!Is all done? Then sit still again and stare!I advise—no one think to bear that lookOf 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 launchedAnd the fact fronts me! What, you try the wardsWith the true key and the dead lock flies ope?No, it sticks fast and leaves you fumbling still!You have some fifty servants, Cardinal,—Which of them loves you? Which subordinateBut makes parade of such officiousnessThat—if there 's no love prompts it—love, the sham,Does twice the service done by love, the true.God bless us liars, where 's one touch of truth?In what we tell the world, or world tells us,Of how we love each other? All the same,We calculate on word and deed, nor err,—Bid such a man do such a loving act,Sure of effect and negligent of cause,Just as we bid a horse, with cluck of tongue,Stretch his legs arch-wise, crouch his saddled backTo foot-reach of the stirrup—all for love,And some for memory of the smart of switchOn the inside of the foreleg—what care we?Yet where 's the bond obliges horse to manLike that which binds fast wife to husband? GodLaid down the law: gave man the brawny armAnd ball of fist—woman the beardless cheekAnd 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 aboutLast week while I lay rotting in my straw?The very jailer gossiped in his praise—How,—dressed up like Armida, though a man;And painted to look pretty, though a fright,—He still made love so that the ladies swooned,Being an eunuch. "Ah, Rinaldo mine!But to breathe by thee while Jove slays us both!"All the poor bloodless creature never felt,Si, do, re, mi, fa, squeak and squall—for what?Two gold zecchines the evening. Here 's my slave,Whose body and soul depend upon my nod,Can't falter out the first note in the scaleFor her life! Why blame me if I take the life?All women cannot give men love, forsooth!No, nor all pullets lay the henwife eggs—Whereat she bids them remedy the fault,Brood on a chalk-ball: soon the nest is stocked—Otherwise, to the plucking and the spit!This wife of mine was of another mood—Would not begin the lie that ends with truth,Nor feign the love that brings real love about:Wherefore I judged, sentenced, and punished her.But why particularize, defend the deed?Say that I hated her for no one causeBeyond 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, pairAt top, and arch across the avenueThe 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 endCome of my course—that I fare somehow worseFor 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 interestHave let the whole adventure go untried,This chance by marriage,—or else, trying it,Ought to have turned it to account, some oneO' the hundred otherwises? Ay, my friend,Easy to say, easy to do: step rightNow you 've stepped left and stumbled on the thing,—The red thing! Doubt I any more than youThat practice makes man perfect? Give againThe chance,—same marriage and no other wife,Be sure I 'll edify you! That 's becauseI 'm practised, grown fit guide for Guido's self.You proffered guidance,—I know, none so well,—You laid down law and rolled decorum out,From pulpit-corner on the gospel-side,—Wanted to make your great experience mine,Save me the personal search and pains so: thanks!Take your word on life's use? When I take his—The muzzled ox that treadeth out the corn,Gone blind in padding round and round one path,—As to the taste of green grass in the field!What do you know o' the world that 's trodden flatAnd 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 doOr else leave undone? You preached long and loudOn high-days, "Take our doctrine upon trust!Into the mill-house with you! Grind our corn,Relish our chaff, and let the green grass grow!"I tried chaff, found I famished on such fare,So made this mad rush at the mill-house-door,Buried my head up to the ears in dew,Browsed on the best: for which you brain me, Sirs!Be it so. I conceived of life that way,And still declare—life, without absolute useOf the actual sweet therein, is death, not life.Give me,—pay down,—not promise, which is air,—Something that 's out of life and better still,Make sure reward, make certain punishment,Entice me, scare me,—I 'll forego this life;Otherwise, no!—the less that words, mere wind,Would cheat me of some minutes while they plague,Balk fulness of revenge here,—blame yourselvesFor this eruption of the pent-up soulYou prisoned first and played with afterward!"Deny myself" meant simply pleasure you,The sacred and superior, save the mark!You,—whose stupidity and insolenceI must defer to, soothe at every turn,—Whose swine-like snuffling greed and grunting lustI had to wink at or help gratify,—While the same passions,—dared they perk in me,Me, the immeasurably marked, by God,Master of the whole world of such as you,—I, boast such passions? 'T was, "Suppress them straight!Or stay, we 'll pick and choose before destroy.Here 's wrath in you, a serviceable sword,—Beat it into a ploughshare! What 's this longLance-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-wideBy way of answer, sought its own reliefWith more of fire and brimstone than you wished.All your own doing: preachers, blame yourselves!
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 preferenceTo the immediate good, for time is brief,And death ends good and ill and everything!What's got is gained, what's gained soon is gained twice,And—inasmuch as faith gains most—feign faith!"So did we brother-like pass word about:—You, now,—like bloody drunkards but half-drunk,Who fool men yet perceive men find them fools,—Vexed that a titter gains the gravest mouth,—O' the sudden you must needs reintroduceSolemnity, straight sober undue mirthBy a blow dealt me your boon companion here,Who, using the old license, dreamed of harmNo more than snow in harvest: yet it falls!You check the merriment effectuallyBy pushing your abrupt machine i' the midst,Making me Rome's example: blood for wine!The general good needs that you chop and change!I may dislike the hocus-pocus,—Rome,The laughter-loving people, won't they stareChapfallen!—while serious natures sermonize,"The magistrate, he beareth not the swordIn vain; who sins may taste its edge, we see!"Why my sin, drunkards? Where have I abusedLiberty, scandalized you all so much?Who called me, who crooked finger till I came,Fool that I was, to join companionship?I knew my own mind, meant to live my life,Elude your envy, or else make a stand,Take my own part and sell you my life dear.But it was "Fie! No prejudice in the worldTo the proper manly instinct! Cast your lotInto our lap, one genius ruled our births,We'll compass joy by concert; take with usThe regular irregular way i' the wood;You'll miss no game through riding breast by breast,In this preserve, the Church's park and pale,Rather than outside where the world lies waste!"Come, if you said not that, did you say this?Give plain and terrible warning, "Live, enjoy!Such life begins in death and ends in hell!Dare you bid us assist your sins, us priestsWho 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 wordsBut veritable deeds with tongues of flame,That had been fair, that might have struck a man,Silenced the squabble between soul and sense,Compelled him to make mind up, take one courseOr the other, peradventure!—wrong or right,Foolish or wise, you would have been at leastSincere, no question,—forced me choose, indulgeOr else renounce my instincts, still play wolfOr find my way submissive to your fold,Be red-crossed on my fleece, one sheep the more.But you as good as bade me wear sheep's-woolOver wolf's-skin, suck blood and hide the noiseBy mimicry of something like a bleat,—Whence it comes that because, despite my care,Because I smack my tongue too loud for once,Drop baaing, here 's the village up in arms!Have at the wolf's throat, you who hate the breed!Oh, were it only open yet to choose—One little time more—whether I 'd be freeYour foe, or subsidized your friend forsooth!Should not you get a growl through the white fangsIn 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 myselfWhen 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 gameWherein the winner's chance were worth the pains!We 'd try conclusions!—at the worst, what worseThan this Mannaia-machine, each minute's talkHelps push an inch the nearer me? Fool, fool!
Enough of the hypocrites. But you, Sirs, you—
Who never budged from litter where I lay,
And buried snout i' the draff-box while I fed,
Cried amen to my creed's one article—
"Get pleasure, 'scape pain,—give your preference
To the immediate good, for time is brief,
And death ends good and ill and everything!
What's got is gained, what's gained soon is gained twice,
And—inasmuch as faith gains most—feign faith!"
So did we brother-like pass word about:
—You, now,—like bloody drunkards but half-drunk,
Who fool men yet perceive men find them fools,—
Vexed that a titter gains the gravest mouth,—
O' the sudden you must needs reintroduce
Solemnity, straight sober undue mirth
By a blow dealt me your boon companion here,
Who, using the old license, dreamed of harm
No more than snow in harvest: yet it falls!
You check the merriment effectually
By pushing your abrupt machine i' the midst,
Making me Rome's example: blood for wine!
The general good needs that you chop and change!
I may dislike the hocus-pocus,—Rome,
The laughter-loving people, won't they stare
Chapfallen!—while serious natures sermonize,
"The magistrate, he beareth not the sword
In vain; who sins may taste its edge, we see!"
Why my sin, drunkards? Where have I abused
Liberty, scandalized you all so much?
Who called me, who crooked finger till I came,
Fool that I was, to join companionship?
I knew my own mind, meant to live my life,
Elude your envy, or else make a stand,
Take my own part and sell you my life dear.
But it was "Fie! No prejudice in the world
To the proper manly instinct! Cast your lot
Into our lap, one genius ruled our births,
We'll compass joy by concert; take with us
The regular irregular way i' the wood;
You'll miss no game through riding breast by breast,
In this preserve, the Church's park and pale,
Rather than outside where the world lies waste!"
Come, if you said not that, did you say this?
Give plain and terrible warning, "Live, enjoy!
Such life begins in death and ends in hell!
Dare you bid us assist your sins, us priests
Who hurry sin and sinners from the earth?
No such delight for us, why then for you?
Leave earth, seek heaven or find its opposite!"
Had you so warned me, not in lying words
But veritable deeds with tongues of flame,
That had been fair, that might have struck a man,
Silenced the squabble between soul and sense,
Compelled him to make mind up, take one course
Or the other, peradventure!—wrong or right,
Foolish or wise, you would have been at least
Sincere, no question,—forced me choose, indulge
Or else renounce my instincts, still play wolf
Or find my way submissive to your fold,
Be red-crossed on my fleece, one sheep the more.
But you as good as bade me wear sheep's-wool
Over wolf's-skin, suck blood and hide the noise
By mimicry of something like a bleat,—
Whence it comes that because, despite my care,
Because I smack my tongue too loud for once,
Drop baaing, here 's the village up in arms!
Have at the wolf's throat, you who hate the breed!
Oh, were it only open yet to choose—
One little time more—whether I 'd be free
Your foe, or subsidized your friend forsooth!
Should not you get a growl through the white fangs
In answer to your beckoning! Cardinal,
Abate, managers o' the multitude,
I 'd turn your gloved hands to account, be sure!
You should manipulate the coarse rough mob:
'T is you I 'd deal directly with, not them,—
Using your fears: why touch the thing myself
When I could see you hunt, and then cry "Shares!
Quarter the carcass or we quarrel; come,
Here 's the world ready to see justice done!"
Oh, it had been a desperate game, but game
Wherein the winner's chance were worth the pains!
We 'd try conclusions!—at the worst, what worse
Than this Mannaia-machine, each minute's talk
Helps push an inch the nearer me? Fool, fool!
You understand me and forgive, sweet Sirs?I blame you, tear my hair and tell my woe—All 's but a flourish, figure of rhetoric!One must try each expedient to save life.One makes fools look foolisher fifty-foldBy putting in their place men wise like you,To take the full force of an argumentWould buffet their stolidity in vain.If you should feel aggrieved by the mere windO' the blow that means to miss you and maul them,That 's my success! Is it not folly, now,To say with folk, "A plausible defence—We see through notwithstanding, and reject"?Reject the plausible they do, these fools,Who never even make pretence to showOne point beyond its plausibilityIn favor of the best belief they hold!"Saint Somebody-or-other raised the dead:"Did he? How do you come to know as much?"Know it, what need? The story 's plausible,Avouched for by a martyrologist,And why should good men sup on cheese and leeksOn such a saint's day, if there were no saint?"I praise the wisdom of these fools, and straightTell them my story—"plausible, but false!"False, to be sure! What else can story beThat runs—a young wife tired of an old spouse,Found a priest whom she fled away with,—bothTook their full pleasure in the two-days' flight,Which a gray-headed grayer-hearted pair(Whose best boast was, their life had been a lie)Helped for the love they bore all liars. Oh,Here incredulity begins! Indeed?Allow then, were no one point strictly true,There 's that i' the tale might seem like truth at leastTo the unlucky husband,—jaundiced patch,—Jealousy maddens people, why not him?Say, he was maddened, so forgivable!Humanity pleads that though the wife were true,The priest true, and the pair of liars true,They might seem false to one man in the world!A thousand gnats make up a serpent's sting,And many sly soft stimulants to wrathCompose a formidable wrong at last,That gets called easily by some one nameNot 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 timeAs like the every-day life on all sides,Wherein the husband, mad as a March hare,Suspected all the world contrived his shame.What did the wife? The wife kissed both eyes blind,Explained away ambiguous circumstance,And while she held him captive by the hand,Crowned his head—you know what 's the mockery—By half her body behind the curtain. That 'sNature now! That 's the subject of a pieceI saw in Vallombrosa Convent, madeExpressly to teach men what marriage was!But say, "Just so did I misapprehend,Imagine she deceived me to my face,"And that 's pretence too easily seen through!All those eyes of all husbands in all plays,At stare like one expanded peacock-tail,Are laughed at for pretending to be keenWhile horn-blind: but the moment I step forth—Oh, I must needs o' the sudden prove a lynxAnd look the heart, that stone-wall, through and through!Such an eye, God's may be,—not yours nor mine.
You understand me and forgive, sweet Sirs?
I blame you, tear my hair and tell my woe—
All 's but a flourish, figure of rhetoric!
One must try each expedient to save life.
One makes fools look foolisher fifty-fold
By putting in their place men wise like you,
To take the full force of an argument
Would buffet their stolidity in vain.
If you should feel aggrieved by the mere wind
O' the blow that means to miss you and maul them,
That 's my success! Is it not folly, now,
To say with folk, "A plausible defence—
We see through notwithstanding, and reject"?
Reject the plausible they do, these fools,
Who never even make pretence to show
One point beyond its plausibility
In favor of the best belief they hold!
"Saint Somebody-or-other raised the dead:"
Did he? How do you come to know as much?
"Know it, what need? The story 's plausible,
Avouched for by a martyrologist,
And why should good men sup on cheese and leeks
On such a saint's day, if there were no saint?"
I praise the wisdom of these fools, and straight
Tell them my story—"plausible, but false!"
False, to be sure! What else can story be
That runs—a young wife tired of an old spouse,
Found a priest whom she fled away with,—both
Took their full pleasure in the two-days' flight,
Which a gray-headed grayer-hearted pair
(Whose best boast was, their life had been a lie)
Helped for the love they bore all liars. Oh,
Here incredulity begins! Indeed?
Allow then, were no one point strictly true,
There 's that i' the tale might seem like truth at least
To the unlucky husband,—jaundiced patch,—
Jealousy maddens people, why not him?
Say, he was maddened, so forgivable!
Humanity pleads that though the wife were true,
The priest true, and the pair of liars true,
They might seem false to one man in the world!
A thousand gnats make up a serpent's sting,
And many sly soft stimulants to wrath
Compose a formidable wrong at last,
That gets called easily by some one name
Not applicable to the single parts,
And so draws down a general revenge,
Excessive if you take crime, fault by fault.
Jealousy! I have known a score of plays,
Were listened to and laughed at in my time
As like the every-day life on all sides,
Wherein the husband, mad as a March hare,
Suspected all the world contrived his shame.
What did the wife? The wife kissed both eyes blind,
Explained away ambiguous circumstance,
And while she held him captive by the hand,
Crowned his head—you know what 's the mockery—
By half her body behind the curtain. That 's
Nature now! That 's the subject of a piece
I saw in Vallombrosa Convent, made
Expressly to teach men what marriage was!
But say, "Just so did I misapprehend,
Imagine she deceived me to my face,"
And that 's pretence too easily seen through!
All those eyes of all husbands in all plays,
At stare like one expanded peacock-tail,
Are laughed at for pretending to be keen
While horn-blind: but the moment I step forth—
Oh, I must needs o' the sudden prove a lynx
And look the heart, that stone-wall, through and through!
Such an eye, God's may be,—not yours nor mine.
Yes, presently ... what hour is fleeting now?When you cut earth away from under me,I shall be left alone with, pushed beneathSome such an apparitional dread orbAs the eye of God, since such an eye there glares:I fancy it go filling up the voidAbove my mote-self it devours, or whatProves wrath, immensity wreaks on nothingnessJust how I felt once, couching through the dark.Hard by Vittiano; young I was, and gay,And wanting to trap fieldfares: first a sparkTipped a bent, as a mere dew-globule mightAny stiff grass-stalk on the meadow,—thisGrew 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 smearThis 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 particleO' the past? Oh, how I wish some cold wise manWould dig beneath the surface which you scrape,Deal with the depths, pronounce on my desertGroundedly! I want simple sober sense,That asks, before it finishes with a dog,Who taught the dog that trick you hang him for?You both persist to call that act a crime,Which sense would call ... yes, I maintain it, Sirs, ...A blunder! At the worst, I stood in doubtOn cross-road, took one path of many paths:It leads to the red thing, we all see now,But nobody saw at first: one primrose-patchIn bank, one singing-bird in bush, the less,Had warned me from such wayfare: let me prove!Put me back to the cross-road, start afresh!Advise me when I take the first false step!Give me my wife: how should I use my wife,Love her or hate her? Prompt my action now!There she is, there she stands alive and pale,The thirteen-years'-old child, with milk for blood,Pompilia Comparini, as at first,Which first is only four brief years ago!I stand too in the little ground-floor roomO' the father's house at Via Vittoria: see!Her so-called mother—one arm round the waistO' the child to keep her from the toys, let fallAt wonder I can live yet look so grim—Ushers her in, with deprecating waveOf 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, bearAny 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 soulThrough 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 noveltyThat he, men use to motion from their path,Can thus impose, thus terrify in turnA chit whose terror shall be changed apaceTo bliss unbearable when grace and glow,Prowess and pride descend the throne and touchEsther in all that pretty tremble, curedBy the dove o' the sceptre! But myself am old,O' the wane at least, in all things: what do you sayTo 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 strikeDeath-damp into the breast of doughty kingThough 't were French Louis,—soul I understand,—Saying, by gesture of repugnance, just"Sire, you are regal, puissant, and so forth,But—young you have been, are not, nor will be!"In vain the mother nods, winks, bustles up,"Count, girls incline to mature worth like you!As for Pompilia, what 's flesh, fish or fowlTo one who apprehends no difference,And would accept you even were you oldAs you are ... youngish by her father's side?Trim but your beard a little, thin your bushOf eyebrow; and for presence, portliness,And decent gravity, you beat a boy!"Deceive yourself one minute, if you may,In presence of the child that so loves age,Whose neck writhes, cords itself against your kiss,Whose hand you wring stark, rigid with despair!Well, I resent this; I am young in soul,Nor old in body,—thews and sinews here,—Though the vile surface be not smooth as once,—Far beyond that first wheelwork-which went wrongThrough 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 wordThat makes the thing, pricks on the soul to shootNew fire into the half-used cinder, flesh!Therefore 't is she begins with wronging me,Who cannot but begin with hating her.Our marriage follows: there she stands again!Why do I laugh? Why, in the very gripeO' the jaws of death's gigantic skull, do IGrin back his grin, make sport of my own pangs?Why from each clashing of his molars, groundTo make the devil bread from out my grist,Leaps out a spark of mirth, a hellish toy?Take notice we are lovers in a church,Waiting the sacrament to make us oneAnd happy! Just as bid, she bears herself,Comes and kneels, rises, speaks, is silent,—goes:So have I brought my horse, by word and blow,To stand stock-still and front the fire he dreads.How can I other than remember this,Resent the very obedience? Gain thereby?Yes, I do gain my end and have my will,—Thanks to whom? When the mother speaks the word,She obeys it—even to enduring me!There had been compensation in revolt—Revolt 's to quell: but martyrdom rehearsed,But predetermined saintship for the sakeO' 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, endureThe ... 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'-playAnd go on to wise friendship all at once?Those boys and girls kiss themselves cold, you know,Toy themselves tired and slink aside full soonTo friendship, as they name satiety:Thither go you and wait their coming!" Thanks,Considerate advisers,—but, fair play!Had you and I, friends, started fair at first,We, keeping fair, might reach it, neck by neck,This blessed goal, whenever fate so please:But why am I to miss the daisied mileThe course begins with, why obtain the dustOf the end precisely at the starting-point?Why quaff life's cup blown free of all the beads,The bright red froth wherein our beard should steepBefore our mouth essay the black o' the wine?Foolish, the love-fit? Let me prove it suchLike you, before like you I puff things clear!"The best 's to come, no rapture but content!Not love's first glory but a sober glow,Not a spontaneous outburst in pure boon,So much as, gained by patience, care and toil,Proper appreciation and esteem!"Go preach that to your nephews, not to meWho, tired i' the midway of my life, would stopAnd take my first refreshment, pluck a rose:What 's this coarse woolly hip, worn smooth of leaf,You counsel I go plant in garden-plot,Water with tears, manure with sweat and blood,In confidence the seed shall germinateAnd, for its very best, some far-off day,Grow big, and blow me out a dog-rose bell?Why must your nephews begin breathing spiceO' the hundred-petalled Provence prodigy?Nay, more and worse,—would such my root bear rose—Prove really flower and favorite, not the kindThat 's queen, but those three leaves that make one cupAnd hold the hedge-bird's breakfast,—then indeedThe prize though poor would pay the care and toil!Respect we Nature that makes least as most,Marvelous in the minim! But this bud,Bit through and burned black by the tempter's tooth,This bloom whose best grace was the slug outsideAnd the wasp inside its bosom,—call you "rose"?Claim no immunity from a weed's fateFor the horrible present! What you call my wifeI call a nullity in female shape,Vapid disgust, soon to be pungent plague,When mixed with, made confusion and a curseBy two abominable nondescripts,That father and that mother: think you seeThe 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 belchFlame out i' the midst, the serpent writhe her rings,Grafted into the common stock for tail,And name the brute, Chimæra, which I slew!How was there ever more to be—(concedeMy wife's insipid harmless nullity)—Dissociation from that pair of plagues—That mother with her cunning and her cant—The eyes with first their twinkle of conceit,Then, dropped to earth in mock-demureness,—now,The smile self-satisfied from ear to ear,Now, the prim pursed-up mouth's protruded lips,With deferential duck, slow swing of head,Tempting the sudden fist of man too much,—That owl-like screw of lid and rock of ruff!As for the father,—Cardinal, you knowThe kind of idiot!—such are rife in Rome,But they wear velvet commonly; good fools,At the end of life, to furnish forth young folkWho grin and bear with imbecility:Since the stalled ass, the joker, sheds from jawCorn, in the joke, for those who laugh or starve.But what say we to the same solemn beastWagging his ears and wishful of our pat,When turned, with holes in hide and bones laid bare,To forage for himself i' the waste o' the world,Sir Dignity i' the dumps? Pat him? We drubSelf-knowledge, rather, into frowzy pate,Teach Pietro to get trappings or go hang!Fancy this quondam oracle in vogueAt Via Vittoria, this personifiedAuthority when time was,—PantaloonFlaunting his tom-fool tawdry just the sameAs if Ash-Wednesday were mid-Carnival!That 's the extreme and unforgivableOf sins, as I account such. Have you stoopedFor your own ends to bestialize yourselfBy flattery of a fellow of this stamp?The ends obtained or else shown out of reach,He goes on, takes the flattery for pure truth,—"You love, and honor me, of course: what next?"What, but the trifle of the stabbing, friend?—Which taught you how one worships when the shrineHas lost the relic that we bent before.Angry! And how could I be otherwise?'T is plain: this pair of old pretentious foolsMeant to fool me: it happens, I fooled them.Why could not these who sought to buy and sellMe,—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 thingAnd meaning to get wool, dislodges fleeceAnd finds the veritable wolf beneath,(How that stanch image serves at every turn!)Does he, by way of being politic,Pluck the first whisker grimly visible?Or rather grow in a trice all gratitude,Protest this sort-of-what-one-might-name sheepBeats the old other curly-coated kind,And shall share board and bed, if so it deign,With its discoverer, like a royal ram?Ay, thus, with chattering teeth and knocking knees,Would wisdom treat the adventure! these, forsooth,Tried whisker-plucking, and so found what trapThe whisker kept perdue, two rows of teeth—Sharp, as too late the prying fingers felt.What would you have? The fools transgress, the foolsForthwith receive appropriate punishment:They first insult me, I return the blow,There follows noise enough: four hubbub months,Now hue and cry, now whimpering and wail—A perfect goose-yard cackle of complaintBecause I do not gild the geese their oats,—I have enough of noise, ope wicket wide,Sweep out the couple to go whine elsewhere,Frightened a little, hurt in no respect,And am just taking thought to breathe again,Taste the sweet sudden silence all about,When, there they raise it, the old noise I know,At Rome i' the distance! "What, begun once more?Whine on, wail ever, 't is the loser's right!"But eh, what sort of voice grows on the wind?Triumph it sounds and no complaint at all!And triumph it is. My boast was premature:The creatures, I turned forth, clapped wing and crewFighting-cock-fashion,—they had filched a pearlFrom dung-heap, and might boast with cause enough!I was defrauded of all bargained for:You know, the Pope knows, not a soul but knowsMy dowry was derision, my gain—muck,My wife (the Church declared my flesh and blood)The nameless bastard of a common whore:My old name turned henceforth to ... shall I say"He that received the ordure in his face"?And they who planned this wrong, performed this wrong,And then revealed this wrong to the wide world,Rounded myself in the ears with my own wrong,—Why, these were (note hell's lucky malice, now!)These were just they who, they alone, could actAnd 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 strongProud cunning violent oppressor—me!Follow them to their fate and help your best,You Rome, Arezzo, foes called friends of me,They gave the good long laugh to, at my cost!Defray your share o' the cost, since you partookThe 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, findA friend's face at the bottom of each wound,And scratch its smirk a little!Panciatichi!There 's a report at Florence,—is it true?—That when your relative the CardinalBuilt, only the other day, that barrack-bulk,The palace in Via Larga, some one pickedFrom out the street a saucy quip enoughThat fell there from its day's flight through the town,About the flat front and the windows wideAnd bulging heap of cornice,—hitched the jokeInto a sonnet, signed his name thereto,And forthwith pinned on post the pleasantry:For which he 's at the galleys, rowing nowUp to his waist in water,—just becausePanciaticandlymphaticrhymed so pat!I hope, Sir, those who passed this joke on meWere not unduly punished? What say you,Prince of the Church, my patron? Nay, indeed,I shall not dare insult your wits so muchAs think this problem difficult to solve.This Pietro and Violante then, I say,These two ambiguous insects, changing nameAnd 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 faceUntil I stopped the nuisance: there 's my crime!Pity I did not suffer them subsideInto some further shape and final formOf execrable life? My masters, no!I, by one blow, wisely cut short at onceThem and their transformations of disgust,In the snug little Villa out of hand."Grant me confession, give bare time for that!"—Shouted the sinner till his mouth was stopped.His life confessed!—that was enough for me,Who came to see that he did penance. 'S death!Here 's a coil raised, a pother and for what?Because strength, being provoked by weakness, foughtAnd 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 rangeAmong the right and fit and proper things!
Yes, presently ... what hour is fleeting now?
When you cut earth away from under me,
I shall be left alone with, pushed beneath
Some such an apparitional dread orb
As the eye of God, since such an eye there glares:
I fancy it go filling up the void
Above my mote-self it devours, or what
Proves wrath, immensity wreaks on nothingness
Just how I felt once, couching through the dark.
Hard by Vittiano; young I was, and gay,
And wanting to trap fieldfares: first a spark
Tipped a bent, as a mere dew-globule might
Any stiff grass-stalk on the meadow,—this
Grew fiercer, flamed out full, and proved the sun.
What do I want with proverbs, precepts here?
Away with man! What shall I say to God?
This, if I find the tongue and keep the mind—
"Do Thou wipe out the being of me, and smear
This soul from off Thy white of things, I blot!
I am one huge and sheer mistake,—whose fault?
Not mine at least, who did not make myself!"
Some one declares my wife excused me so!
Perhaps she knew what argument to use.
Grind your teeth, Cardinal, Abate, writhe!
What else am I to cry out in my rage,
Unable to repent one particle
O' the past? Oh, how I wish some cold wise man
Would dig beneath the surface which you scrape,
Deal with the depths, pronounce on my desert
Groundedly! I want simple sober sense,
That asks, before it finishes with a dog,
Who taught the dog that trick you hang him for?
You both persist to call that act a crime,
Which sense would call ... yes, I maintain it, Sirs, ...
A blunder! At the worst, I stood in doubt
On cross-road, took one path of many paths:
It leads to the red thing, we all see now,
But nobody saw at first: one primrose-patch
In bank, one singing-bird in bush, the less,
Had warned me from such wayfare: let me prove!
Put me back to the cross-road, start afresh!
Advise me when I take the first false step!
Give me my wife: how should I use my wife,
Love her or hate her? Prompt my action now!
There she is, there she stands alive and pale,
The thirteen-years'-old child, with milk for blood,
Pompilia Comparini, as at first,
Which first is only four brief years ago!
I stand too in the little ground-floor room
O' the father's house at Via Vittoria: see!
Her so-called mother—one arm round the waist
O' the child to keep her from the toys, let fall
At wonder I can live yet look so grim—
Ushers her in, with deprecating wave
Of the other,—and she fronts me loose at last,
Held only by the mother's finger-tip.
Struck dumb, for she was white enough before!
She eyes me with those frightened balls of black,
As heifer—the old simile comes pat—
Eyes tremblingly the altar and the priest.
The amazed look, all one insuppressive prayer,—
Might she but breathe, set free as heretofore,
Have this cup leave her lips unblistered, bear
Any cross anywhither anyhow,
So but alone, so but apart from me!
You are touched? So am I, quite otherwise,
If 't is with pity. I resent my wrong,
Being a man: I only show man's soul
Through man's flesh: she sees mine, it strikes her thus!
Is that attractive? To a youth perhaps—
Calf-creature, one-part boy to three-parts girl,
To whom it is a flattering novelty
That he, men use to motion from their path,
Can thus impose, thus terrify in turn
A chit whose terror shall be changed apace
To bliss unbearable when grace and glow,
Prowess and pride descend the throne and touch
Esther in all that pretty tremble, cured
By the dove o' the sceptre! But myself am old,
O' the wane at least, in all things: what do you say
To her who frankly thus confirms my doubt?
I am past the prime, I scare the woman-world,
Done-with that way: you like this piece of news?
A little saucy rose-bud minx can strike
Death-damp into the breast of doughty king
Though 't were French Louis,—soul I understand,—
Saying, by gesture of repugnance, just
"Sire, you are regal, puissant, and so forth,
But—young you have been, are not, nor will be!"
In vain the mother nods, winks, bustles up,
"Count, girls incline to mature worth like you!
As for Pompilia, what 's flesh, fish or fowl
To one who apprehends no difference,
And would accept you even were you old
As you are ... youngish by her father's side?
Trim but your beard a little, thin your bush
Of eyebrow; and for presence, portliness,
And decent gravity, you beat a boy!"
Deceive yourself one minute, if you may,
In presence of the child that so loves age,
Whose neck writhes, cords itself against your kiss,
Whose hand you wring stark, rigid with despair!
Well, I resent this; I am young in soul,
Nor old in body,—thews and sinews here,—
Though the vile surface be not smooth as once,—
Far beyond that first wheelwork-which went wrong
Through the untempered iron ere 't was proof:
I am the rock man worth ten times the crude,—
Would woman see what this declines to see,
Declines to say "I see,"—the officious word
That makes the thing, pricks on the soul to shoot
New fire into the half-used cinder, flesh!
Therefore 't is she begins with wronging me,
Who cannot but begin with hating her.
Our marriage follows: there she stands again!
Why do I laugh? Why, in the very gripe
O' the jaws of death's gigantic skull, do I
Grin back his grin, make sport of my own pangs?
Why from each clashing of his molars, ground
To make the devil bread from out my grist,
Leaps out a spark of mirth, a hellish toy?
Take notice we are lovers in a church,
Waiting the sacrament to make us one
And happy! Just as bid, she bears herself,
Comes and kneels, rises, speaks, is silent,—goes:
So have I brought my horse, by word and blow,
To stand stock-still and front the fire he dreads.
How can I other than remember this,
Resent the very obedience? Gain thereby?
Yes, I do gain my end and have my will,—
Thanks to whom? When the mother speaks the word,
She obeys it—even to enduring me!
There had been compensation in revolt—
Revolt 's to quell: but martyrdom rehearsed,
But predetermined saintship for the sake
O' the mother?—"Go!" thought I, "we meet again!"
Pass the next weeks of dumb contented death,
She lives,—wakes up, installed in house and home,
Is mine, mine all day-long, all night-long mine.
Good folk begin at me with open mouth:
"Now, at least, reconcile the child to life!
Study and make her love ... that is, endure
The ... hem! the ... all of you though somewhat old,
Till it amount to something, in her eye,
As good as love, better a thousand times,—
Since nature helps the woman in such strait,
Makes passiveness her pleasure: failing which,
What if you give up boy-and-girl-fools'-play
And go on to wise friendship all at once?
Those boys and girls kiss themselves cold, you know,
Toy themselves tired and slink aside full soon
To friendship, as they name satiety:
Thither go you and wait their coming!" Thanks,
Considerate advisers,—but, fair play!
Had you and I, friends, started fair at first,
We, keeping fair, might reach it, neck by neck,
This blessed goal, whenever fate so please:
But why am I to miss the daisied mile
The course begins with, why obtain the dust
Of the end precisely at the starting-point?
Why quaff life's cup blown free of all the beads,
The bright red froth wherein our beard should steep
Before our mouth essay the black o' the wine?
Foolish, the love-fit? Let me prove it such
Like you, before like you I puff things clear!
"The best 's to come, no rapture but content!
Not love's first glory but a sober glow,
Not a spontaneous outburst in pure boon,
So much as, gained by patience, care and toil,
Proper appreciation and esteem!"
Go preach that to your nephews, not to me
Who, tired i' the midway of my life, would stop
And take my first refreshment, pluck a rose:
What 's this coarse woolly hip, worn smooth of leaf,
You counsel I go plant in garden-plot,
Water with tears, manure with sweat and blood,
In confidence the seed shall germinate
And, for its very best, some far-off day,
Grow big, and blow me out a dog-rose bell?
Why must your nephews begin breathing spice
O' the hundred-petalled Provence prodigy?
Nay, more and worse,—would such my root bear rose—
Prove really flower and favorite, not the kind
That 's queen, but those three leaves that make one cup
And hold the hedge-bird's breakfast,—then indeed
The prize though poor would pay the care and toil!
Respect we Nature that makes least as most,
Marvelous in the minim! But this bud,
Bit through and burned black by the tempter's tooth,
This bloom whose best grace was the slug outside
And the wasp inside its bosom,—call you "rose"?
Claim no immunity from a weed's fate
For the horrible present! What you call my wife
I call a nullity in female shape,
Vapid disgust, soon to be pungent plague,
When mixed with, made confusion and a curse
By two abominable nondescripts,
That father and that mother: think you see
The dreadful bronze our boast, we Aretines,
The Etruscan monster, the three-headed thing,
Bellerophon's foe! How name you the whole beast?
You choose to name the body from one head,
That of the simple kid which droops the eye,
Hangs the neck and dies tenderly enough:
I rather see the griesly lion belch
Flame out i' the midst, the serpent writhe her rings,
Grafted into the common stock for tail,
And name the brute, Chimæra, which I slew!
How was there ever more to be—(concede
My wife's insipid harmless nullity)—
Dissociation from that pair of plagues—
That mother with her cunning and her cant—
The eyes with first their twinkle of conceit,
Then, dropped to earth in mock-demureness,—now,
The smile self-satisfied from ear to ear,
Now, the prim pursed-up mouth's protruded lips,
With deferential duck, slow swing of head,
Tempting the sudden fist of man too much,—
That owl-like screw of lid and rock of ruff!
As for the father,—Cardinal, you know
The kind of idiot!—such are rife in Rome,
But they wear velvet commonly; good fools,
At the end of life, to furnish forth young folk
Who grin and bear with imbecility:
Since the stalled ass, the joker, sheds from jaw
Corn, in the joke, for those who laugh or starve.
But what say we to the same solemn beast
Wagging his ears and wishful of our pat,
When turned, with holes in hide and bones laid bare,
To forage for himself i' the waste o' the world,
Sir Dignity i' the dumps? Pat him? We drub
Self-knowledge, rather, into frowzy pate,
Teach Pietro to get trappings or go hang!
Fancy this quondam oracle in vogue
At Via Vittoria, this personified
Authority when time was,—Pantaloon
Flaunting his tom-fool tawdry just the same
As if Ash-Wednesday were mid-Carnival!
That 's the extreme and unforgivable
Of sins, as I account such. Have you stooped
For your own ends to bestialize yourself
By flattery of a fellow of this stamp?
The ends obtained or else shown out of reach,
He goes on, takes the flattery for pure truth,—
"You love, and honor me, of course: what next?"
What, but the trifle of the stabbing, friend?—
Which taught you how one worships when the shrine
Has lost the relic that we bent before.
Angry! And how could I be otherwise?
'T is plain: this pair of old pretentious fools
Meant to fool me: it happens, I fooled them.
Why could not these who sought to buy and sell
Me,—when they found themselves were bought and sold,
Make up their mind to the proved rule of right,
Be chattel and not chapman any more?
Miscalculation has its consequence;
But when the shepherd crooks a sheep-like thing
And meaning to get wool, dislodges fleece
And finds the veritable wolf beneath,
(How that stanch image serves at every turn!)
Does he, by way of being politic,
Pluck the first whisker grimly visible?
Or rather grow in a trice all gratitude,
Protest this sort-of-what-one-might-name sheep
Beats the old other curly-coated kind,
And shall share board and bed, if so it deign,
With its discoverer, like a royal ram?
Ay, thus, with chattering teeth and knocking knees,
Would wisdom treat the adventure! these, forsooth,
Tried whisker-plucking, and so found what trap
The whisker kept perdue, two rows of teeth—
Sharp, as too late the prying fingers felt.
What would you have? The fools transgress, the fools
Forthwith receive appropriate punishment:
They first insult me, I return the blow,
There follows noise enough: four hubbub months,
Now hue and cry, now whimpering and wail—
A perfect goose-yard cackle of complaint
Because I do not gild the geese their oats,—
I have enough of noise, ope wicket wide,
Sweep out the couple to go whine elsewhere,
Frightened a little, hurt in no respect,
And am just taking thought to breathe again,
Taste the sweet sudden silence all about,
When, there they raise it, the old noise I know,
At Rome i' the distance! "What, begun once more?
Whine on, wail ever, 't is the loser's right!"
But eh, what sort of voice grows on the wind?
Triumph it sounds and no complaint at all!
And triumph it is. My boast was premature:
The creatures, I turned forth, clapped wing and crew
Fighting-cock-fashion,—they had filched a pearl
From dung-heap, and might boast with cause enough!
I was defrauded of all bargained for:
You know, the Pope knows, not a soul but knows
My dowry was derision, my gain—muck,
My wife (the Church declared my flesh and blood)
The nameless bastard of a common whore:
My old name turned henceforth to ... shall I say
"He that received the ordure in his face"?
And they who planned this wrong, performed this wrong,
And then revealed this wrong to the wide world,
Rounded myself in the ears with my own wrong,—
Why, these were (note hell's lucky malice, now!)
These were just they who, they alone, could act
And publish and proclaim their infamy,
Secure that men would in a breath believe,
Compassionate and pardon them,—for why?
They plainly were too stupid to invent,
Too simple to distinguish wrong from right,—
Inconscious agents they, the silly-sooth,
Of heaven's retributive justice on the strong
Proud cunning violent oppressor—me!
Follow them to their fate and help your best,
You Rome, Arezzo, foes called friends of me,
They gave the good long laugh to, at my cost!
Defray your share o' the cost, since you partook
The entertainment! Do!—assured the while,
That not one stab, I dealt to right and left,
But went the deeper for a fancy—this—
That each might do me twofold service, find
A friend's face at the bottom of each wound,
And scratch its smirk a little!
Panciatichi!
There 's a report at Florence,—is it true?—
That when your relative the Cardinal
Built, only the other day, that barrack-bulk,
The palace in Via Larga, some one picked
From out the street a saucy quip enough
That fell there from its day's flight through the town,
About the flat front and the windows wide
And bulging heap of cornice,—hitched the joke
Into a sonnet, signed his name thereto,
And forthwith pinned on post the pleasantry:
For which he 's at the galleys, rowing now
Up to his waist in water,—just because
Panciaticandlymphaticrhymed so pat!
I hope, Sir, those who passed this joke on me
Were not unduly punished? What say you,
Prince of the Church, my patron? Nay, indeed,
I shall not dare insult your wits so much
As think this problem difficult to solve.
This Pietro and Violante then, I say,
These two ambiguous insects, changing name
And nature with the season's warmth or chill,—
Now, grovelled, grubbing toiling moiling ants,
A very synonym of thrift and peace,—
Anon, with lusty June to prick their heart,
Soared i' the air, winged flies for more offence,
Circled me, buzzed me deaf and stung me blind,
And stunk me dead with fetor in the face
Until I stopped the nuisance: there 's my crime!
Pity I did not suffer them subside
Into some further shape and final form
Of execrable life? My masters, no!
I, by one blow, wisely cut short at once
Them and their transformations of disgust,
In the snug little Villa out of hand.
"Grant me confession, give bare time for that!"—
Shouted the sinner till his mouth was stopped.
His life confessed!—that was enough for me,
Who came to see that he did penance. 'S death!
Here 's a coil raised, a pother and for what?
Because strength, being provoked by weakness, fought
And conquered,—the world never heard the like!
Pah, how I spend my breath on them, as if
'T was their fate troubled me, too hard to range
Among the right and fit and proper things!
Ay, but Pompilia,—I await your word,—She unimpeached of crime, unimplicateIn folly, one of alien blood to theseI punish, why extend my claim, exactHer portion of the penalty? Yes, friends,I go too fast: the orator 's at fault:Yes, ere I lay her, with your leave, by themAs she was laid at San Lorenzo late,I ought to step back, lead you by degrees,Recounting at each step some fresh offence,Up to the red bed,—never fear, I will!Gaze at her, where I place her, to begin,Confound me with her gentleness and worth!The horrible pair have fled and left her now,She has her husband for her sole concern:His wife, the woman fashioned for his help,Flesh of his flesh, bone of his bone, the brideTo groom as is the Church and Spouse to Christ:There she stands in his presence: "Thy desireShall be to the husband, o'er thee shall he rule!"—"Pompilia, who declare that you love God,You know who said that: then, desire my love,Yield me contentment and be ruled aright!"She sits up, she lies down, she comes and goes,Kneels at the couch-side, overleans the sillO' the window, cold and pale and mute as stone,Strong as stone also. "Well, are they not fled?Am I not left, am I not one for all?Speak a word, drop a tear, detach a glance,Bless me or curse me of your own accord!Is it the ceiling only wants your soul,Is worth your eyes?" And then the eyes descend,And do look at me. Is it at the meal?"Speak!" she obeys. "Be silent!" she obeys,Counting the minutes till I cry "Depart,"As brood-bird when you saunter past her eggs.Departs she, just the same through door and wallI 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, bidThe 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 childOf those she thought her parents,—that their trickHad tricked me whom she thought solo trickster late,—Why, I suppose she said within herself,"Then, no more struggle for my parents' sake!And, for my own sake, why needs struggle be?"But is there no third party to the pact?What of her husband's relish or dislikeFor this new game of giving up the game,This worst offence of not offending more?I'll not believe but instinct wrought in this,Set her on to conceive and executeThe preferable plague: how sure they probe,—These jades, the sensitivest soft of man!The long black hair was wound now in a wisp,Crowned sorrow better than the wild web late:No more soiled dress, 't is trimness triumphs now,For how should malice go with negligence?The frayed silk looked the fresher for her spite!There was an end to springing out of bed,Praying me, with face buried on my feet,Be hindered of my pastime,—so an endTo my rejoinder, "What, on the ground at last?Vanquished in fight, a supplicant for life?What if I raise you? 'Ware the casting downWhen next you fight me!" Then, she lay there, mine:Now, mine she is if I please wring her neck,—A moment of disquiet, working eyes,Protruding tongue, a long sigh, then no more,—As if one killed the horse one could not ride!Had I enjoined "Cut off the hair!"—why, snapThe scissors, and at once a yard or soHad 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 headTo be an eyesore past dishevelment!Is all done? Then sit still again and stare!I advise—no one think to bear that lookOf 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 launchedAnd the fact fronts me! What, you try the wardsWith the true key and the dead lock flies ope?No, it sticks fast and leaves you fumbling still!You have some fifty servants, Cardinal,—Which of them loves you? Which subordinateBut makes parade of such officiousnessThat—if there 's no love prompts it—love, the sham,Does twice the service done by love, the true.God bless us liars, where 's one touch of truth?In what we tell the world, or world tells us,Of how we love each other? All the same,We calculate on word and deed, nor err,—Bid such a man do such a loving act,Sure of effect and negligent of cause,Just as we bid a horse, with cluck of tongue,Stretch his legs arch-wise, crouch his saddled backTo foot-reach of the stirrup—all for love,And some for memory of the smart of switchOn the inside of the foreleg—what care we?Yet where 's the bond obliges horse to manLike that which binds fast wife to husband? GodLaid down the law: gave man the brawny armAnd ball of fist—woman the beardless cheekAnd 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 aboutLast week while I lay rotting in my straw?The very jailer gossiped in his praise—How,—dressed up like Armida, though a man;And painted to look pretty, though a fright,—He still made love so that the ladies swooned,Being an eunuch. "Ah, Rinaldo mine!But to breathe by thee while Jove slays us both!"All the poor bloodless creature never felt,Si, do, re, mi, fa, squeak and squall—for what?Two gold zecchines the evening. Here 's my slave,Whose body and soul depend upon my nod,Can't falter out the first note in the scaleFor her life! Why blame me if I take the life?All women cannot give men love, forsooth!No, nor all pullets lay the henwife eggs—Whereat she bids them remedy the fault,Brood on a chalk-ball: soon the nest is stocked—Otherwise, to the plucking and the spit!This wife of mine was of another mood—Would not begin the lie that ends with truth,Nor feign the love that brings real love about:Wherefore I judged, sentenced, and punished her.But why particularize, defend the deed?Say that I hated her for no one causeBeyond 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, pairAt top, and arch across the avenueThe 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 endCome of my course—that I fare somehow worseFor 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 interestHave let the whole adventure go untried,This chance by marriage,—or else, trying it,Ought to have turned it to account, some oneO' the hundred otherwises? Ay, my friend,Easy to say, easy to do: step rightNow you 've stepped left and stumbled on the thing,—The red thing! Doubt I any more than youThat practice makes man perfect? Give againThe chance,—same marriage and no other wife,Be sure I 'll edify you! That 's becauseI 'm practised, grown fit guide for Guido's self.You proffered guidance,—I know, none so well,—You laid down law and rolled decorum out,From pulpit-corner on the gospel-side,—Wanted to make your great experience mine,Save me the personal search and pains so: thanks!Take your word on life's use? When I take his—The muzzled ox that treadeth out the corn,Gone blind in padding round and round one path,—As to the taste of green grass in the field!What do you know o' the world that 's trodden flatAnd 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 doOr else leave undone? You preached long and loudOn high-days, "Take our doctrine upon trust!Into the mill-house with you! Grind our corn,Relish our chaff, and let the green grass grow!"I tried chaff, found I famished on such fare,So made this mad rush at the mill-house-door,Buried my head up to the ears in dew,Browsed on the best: for which you brain me, Sirs!Be it so. I conceived of life that way,And still declare—life, without absolute useOf the actual sweet therein, is death, not life.Give me,—pay down,—not promise, which is air,—Something that 's out of life and better still,Make sure reward, make certain punishment,Entice me, scare me,—I 'll forego this life;Otherwise, no!—the less that words, mere wind,Would cheat me of some minutes while they plague,Balk fulness of revenge here,—blame yourselvesFor this eruption of the pent-up soulYou prisoned first and played with afterward!"Deny myself" meant simply pleasure you,The sacred and superior, save the mark!You,—whose stupidity and insolenceI must defer to, soothe at every turn,—Whose swine-like snuffling greed and grunting lustI had to wink at or help gratify,—While the same passions,—dared they perk in me,Me, the immeasurably marked, by God,Master of the whole world of such as you,—I, boast such passions? 'T was, "Suppress them straight!Or stay, we 'll pick and choose before destroy.Here 's wrath in you, a serviceable sword,—Beat it into a ploughshare! What 's this longLance-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-wideBy way of answer, sought its own reliefWith more of fire and brimstone than you wished.All your own doing: preachers, blame yourselves!
Ay, but Pompilia,—I await your word,—
She unimpeached of crime, unimplicate
In folly, one of alien blood to these
I punish, why extend my claim, exact
Her portion of the penalty? Yes, friends,
I go too fast: the orator 's at fault:
Yes, ere I lay her, with your leave, by them
As she was laid at San Lorenzo late,
I ought to step back, lead you by degrees,
Recounting at each step some fresh offence,
Up to the red bed,—never fear, I will!
Gaze at her, where I place her, to begin,
Confound me with her gentleness and worth!
The horrible pair have fled and left her now,
She has her husband for her sole concern:
His wife, the woman fashioned for his help,
Flesh of his flesh, bone of his bone, the bride
To groom as is the Church and Spouse to Christ:
There she stands in his presence: "Thy desire
Shall be to the husband, o'er thee shall he rule!"
—"Pompilia, who declare that you love God,
You know who said that: then, desire my love,
Yield me contentment and be ruled aright!"
She sits up, she lies down, she comes and goes,
Kneels at the couch-side, overleans the sill
O' the window, cold and pale and mute as stone,
Strong as stone also. "Well, are they not fled?
Am I not left, am I not one for all?
Speak a word, drop a tear, detach a glance,
Bless me or curse me of your own accord!
Is it the ceiling only wants your soul,
Is worth your eyes?" And then the eyes descend,
And do look at me. Is it at the meal?
"Speak!" she obeys. "Be silent!" she obeys,
Counting the minutes till I cry "Depart,"
As brood-bird when you saunter past her eggs.
Departs she, just the same through door and wall
I see the same stone strength of white despair,
And all this will be never otherwise!
Before, the parents' presence lent her life:
She could play off her sex's armory,
Entreat, reproach, be female to my male,
Try all the shrieking doubles of the hare,
Go clamor to the Commissary, bid
The Archbishop hold my hands and stop my tongue,
And yield fair sport so: but the tactics change,
The hare stands stock-still to enrage the hound!
Since that day when she learned she was no child
Of those she thought her parents,—that their trick
Had tricked me whom she thought solo trickster late,—
Why, I suppose she said within herself,
"Then, no more struggle for my parents' sake!
And, for my own sake, why needs struggle be?"
But is there no third party to the pact?
What of her husband's relish or dislike
For this new game of giving up the game,
This worst offence of not offending more?
I'll not believe but instinct wrought in this,
Set her on to conceive and execute
The preferable plague: how sure they probe,—
These jades, the sensitivest soft of man!
The long black hair was wound now in a wisp,
Crowned sorrow better than the wild web late:
No more soiled dress, 't is trimness triumphs now,
For how should malice go with negligence?
The frayed silk looked the fresher for her spite!
There was an end to springing out of bed,
Praying me, with face buried on my feet,
Be hindered of my pastime,—so an end
To my rejoinder, "What, on the ground at last?
Vanquished in fight, a supplicant for life?
What if I raise you? 'Ware the casting down
When next you fight me!" Then, she lay there, mine:
Now, mine she is if I please wring her neck,—
A moment of disquiet, working eyes,
Protruding tongue, a long sigh, then no more,—
As if one killed the horse one could not ride!
Had I enjoined "Cut off the hair!"—why, snap
The scissors, and at once a yard or so
Had fluttered in black serpents to the floor:
But till I did enjoin it, how she combs,
Uncurls and draws out to the complete length,
Plaits, places the insulting rope on head
To be an eyesore past dishevelment!
Is all done? Then sit still again and stare!
I advise—no one think to bear that look
Of steady wrong, endured as steadily
—Through what sustainment of deluding hope?
Who is the friend i' the background that notes all?
Who may come presently and close accounts?
This self-possession to the uttermost,
How does it differ in aught, save degree,
From the terrible patience of God?
"All which just means,
She did not love you!" Again the word is launched
And the fact fronts me! What, you try the wards
With the true key and the dead lock flies ope?
No, it sticks fast and leaves you fumbling still!
You have some fifty servants, Cardinal,—
Which of them loves you? Which subordinate
But makes parade of such officiousness
That—if there 's no love prompts it—love, the sham,
Does twice the service done by love, the true.
God bless us liars, where 's one touch of truth?
In what we tell the world, or world tells us,
Of how we love each other? All the same,
We calculate on word and deed, nor err,—
Bid such a man do such a loving act,
Sure of effect and negligent of cause,
Just as we bid a horse, with cluck of tongue,
Stretch his legs arch-wise, crouch his saddled back
To foot-reach of the stirrup—all for love,
And some for memory of the smart of switch
On the inside of the foreleg—what care we?
Yet where 's the bond obliges horse to man
Like that which binds fast wife to husband? God
Laid down the law: gave man the brawny arm
And ball of fist—woman the beardless cheek
And proper place to suffer in the side:
Since it is he can strike, let her obey!
Can she feel no love? Let her show the more,
Sham the worse, damn herself praiseworthily!
Who 's that soprano, Rome went mad about
Last week while I lay rotting in my straw?
The very jailer gossiped in his praise—
How,—dressed up like Armida, though a man;
And painted to look pretty, though a fright,—
He still made love so that the ladies swooned,
Being an eunuch. "Ah, Rinaldo mine!
But to breathe by thee while Jove slays us both!"
All the poor bloodless creature never felt,
Si, do, re, mi, fa, squeak and squall—for what?
Two gold zecchines the evening. Here 's my slave,
Whose body and soul depend upon my nod,
Can't falter out the first note in the scale
For her life! Why blame me if I take the life?
All women cannot give men love, forsooth!
No, nor all pullets lay the henwife eggs—
Whereat she bids them remedy the fault,
Brood on a chalk-ball: soon the nest is stocked—
Otherwise, to the plucking and the spit!
This wife of mine was of another mood—
Would not begin the lie that ends with truth,
Nor feign the love that brings real love about:
Wherefore I judged, sentenced, and punished her.
But why particularize, defend the deed?
Say that I hated her for no one cause
Beyond my pleasure so to do,—what then?
Just on as much incitement acts the world,
All of you! Look and like! You favor one,
Browbeat another, leave alone a third,—
Why should you master natural caprice?
Pure nature! Try: plant elm by ash in file;
Both unexceptionable trees enough,
They ought to overlean each other, pair
At top, and arch across the avenue
The whole path to the pleasaunce: do they so—
Or loathe, lie off abhorrent each from each?
Lay the fault elsewhere: since we must have faults,
Mine shall have been—seeing there 's ill in the end
Come of my course—that I fare somehow worse
For the way I took: my fault ... as God 's my judge,
I see not where my fault lies, that 's the truth!
I ought ... oh, ought in my own interest
Have let the whole adventure go untried,
This chance by marriage,—or else, trying it,
Ought to have turned it to account, some one
O' the hundred otherwises? Ay, my friend,
Easy to say, easy to do: step right
Now you 've stepped left and stumbled on the thing,
—The red thing! Doubt I any more than you
That practice makes man perfect? Give again
The chance,—same marriage and no other wife,
Be sure I 'll edify you! That 's because
I 'm practised, grown fit guide for Guido's self.
You proffered guidance,—I know, none so well,—
You laid down law and rolled decorum out,
From pulpit-corner on the gospel-side,—
Wanted to make your great experience mine,
Save me the personal search and pains so: thanks!
Take your word on life's use? When I take his—
The muzzled ox that treadeth out the corn,
Gone blind in padding round and round one path,—
As to the taste of green grass in the field!
What do you know o' the world that 's trodden flat
And salted sterile with your daily dung,
Leavened into a lump of loathsomeness?
Take your opinion of the modes of life,
The aims of life, life's triumph or defeat,
How to feel, how to scheme, and how to do
Or else leave undone? You preached long and loud
On high-days, "Take our doctrine upon trust!
Into the mill-house with you! Grind our corn,
Relish our chaff, and let the green grass grow!"
I tried chaff, found I famished on such fare,
So made this mad rush at the mill-house-door,
Buried my head up to the ears in dew,
Browsed on the best: for which you brain me, Sirs!
Be it so. I conceived of life that way,
And still declare—life, without absolute use
Of the actual sweet therein, is death, not life.
Give me,—pay down,—not promise, which is air,—
Something that 's out of life and better still,
Make sure reward, make certain punishment,
Entice me, scare me,—I 'll forego this life;
Otherwise, no!—the less that words, mere wind,
Would cheat me of some minutes while they plague,
Balk fulness of revenge here,—blame yourselves
For this eruption of the pent-up soul
You prisoned first and played with afterward!
"Deny myself" meant simply pleasure you,
The sacred and superior, save the mark!
You,—whose stupidity and insolence
I must defer to, soothe at every turn,—
Whose swine-like snuffling greed and grunting lust
I had to wink at or help gratify,—
While the same passions,—dared they perk in me,
Me, the immeasurably marked, by God,
Master of the whole world of such as you,—
I, boast such passions? 'T was, "Suppress them straight!
Or stay, we 'll pick and choose before destroy.
Here 's wrath in you, a serviceable sword,—
Beat it into a ploughshare! What 's this long
Lance-like ambition? Forge a pruning-hook,
May be of service when our vines grow tall!
But—sword used swordwise, spear thrust out as spear?
Anathema! Suppression is the word!"
My nature, when the outrage was too gross,
Widened itself an outlet over-wide
By way of answer, sought its own relief
With more of fire and brimstone than you wished.
All your own doing: preachers, blame yourselves!