The Ring And The Book

Do you see this Ring?     Tis Rome-work, made to match     (By Castellanis imitative craft)     Etrurian circlets found, some happy morn,     After a dropping April; found alive     Spark-like mid unearthed slope-side figtree-roots     That roof old tombs at Chiusi: soft, you see,     Yet crisp as jewel-cutting. Theres one trick,     (Craftsmen instruct me) one approved device     And but one, fits such slivers of pure gold     As this was, such mere oozings from the mine,     Virgin as oval tawny pendent tear     At beehive-edge when ripened combs oerflow,     To bear the files tooth and the hammers tap:     Since hammer needs must widen out the round,     And file emboss it fine with lily-flowers,     Ere the stuff grow a ring-thing right to wear.     That trick is, the artificer melts up wax     With honey, so to speak; he mingles gold     With golds alloy, and, duly tempering both,     Effects a manageable mass, then works.     But his work ended, once the thing a ring,     Oh, theres repristination! Just a spirt     O the proper fiery acid oer its face,     And forth the alloy unfastened flies in fume;     While, self-sufficient now, the shape remains,     The rondure brave, the lilied loveliness,     Gold as it was, is, shall be evermore:     Prime nature with an added artistry,     No carat lost, and you have gained a ring.     What of it? Tis a figure, a symbol, say;     A things sign: now for the thing signified.     Do you see this square old yellow Book, I toss     I the air, and catch again, and twirl about     By the crumpled vellum covers, pure crude fact     Secreted from mans life when hearts beat hard,     And brains, high-blooded, ticked two centuries since?     Examine it yourselves! I found this book,     Gave a lira for it, eightpence English just,     (Mark the predestination!) when a Hand,     Always above my shoulder, pushed me once,     One day still fierce mid many a day struck calm,     Across a Square in Florence, crammed with booths,     Buzzing and blaze, noontide and market-time;     Toward Baccios marble, ay, the basement-ledge     O the pedestal where sits and menaces     John of the Black Bands with the upright spear,     Twixt palace and church, Riccardi where they lived,     His race, and San Lorenzo where they lie.     This book, precisely on that palace-step     Which, meant for lounging knaves o the Medici,     Now serves re-venders to display their ware,     Mongst odds and ends of ravage, picture-frames     White through the worn gilt, mirror-sconces chipped,     Bronze angel-heads once knobs attached to chests,     (Handled when ancient dames chose forth brocade)     Modern chalk drawings, studies from the nude,     Samples of stone, jet, breccia, porphyry     Polished and rough, sundry amazing busts     In baked earth (broken, Providence be praised!)     A wreck of tapestry, proudly-purposed web     When reds and blues were indeed red and blue,     Now offered as a mat to save bare feet     (Since carpets constitute a cruel cost)     Treading the chill scagliola bedward: then     A pile of brown-etched prints, two crazie each,     Stopped by a conch a-top from fluttering forth     Sowing the Square with works of one and the same     Master, the imaginative Sienese     Great in the scenic backgrounds, (name and fame     None of you know, nor does he fare the worse:)     From these . . . Oh, with a Lionard going cheap     If it should prove, as promised, that Joconde     Whereof a copy contents the Louvre! these     I picked this book from. Five compeers in flank     Stood left and right of it as tempting more,     A dogs-eared Spicilegium, the fond tale     O the Frail One of the Flower, by young Dumas,     Vulgarised Horace for the use of schools,     The Life, Death, Miracles of Saint Somebody,     Saint Somebody Else, his Miracles, Death and Life,     With this, one glance at the lettered back of which,     And Stall! cried I: a lira made it mine.     Here it is, this I toss and take again;     Small-quarto size, part print part manuscript:     A book in shape but, really, pure crude fact     Secreted from mans life when hearts beat hard,     And brains, high-blooded, ticked two centuries since.     Give it me back! The things restorative     I the touch and sight.     That memorable day     (June was the month, Lorenzo named the Square)     I leaned a little and overlooked my prize     By the low railing round the fountain-source     Close to the statue, where a step descends:     While clinked the cans of copper, as stooped and rose     Thick-ankled girls who brimmed them, and made place     For marketmen glad to pitch basket down,     Dip a broad melon-leaf that holds the wet,     And whisk their faded fresh. And on I read     Presently, though my path grew perilous     Between the outspread straw-work, piles of plait     Soon to be flapping, each oer two black eyes     And swathe of Tuscan hair, on festas fine;     Through fire-irons, tribes of tongs, shovels in sheaves,     Skeleton bedsteads, wardrobe-drawers agape,     Rows of tall slim brass lamps with dangling gear,     And worse, cast clothes a-sweetening in the sun:     None of them took my eye from off my prize.     Still read I on, from written title-page     To written index, on, through street and street,     At the Strozzi, at the Pillar, at the Bridge;     Till, by the time I stood at home again     In Casa Guidi by Felice Church,     Under the doorway where the black begins     With the first stone-slab of the staircase cold,     I had mastered the contents, knew the whole truth     Gathered together, bound up in this book,     Print three-fifths, written supplement the rest.     Romana Homicidiorum, nay,     Better translate, A Roman murder-case:     Position of the entire criminal cause     Of Guido Franceschini, nobleman,     With certain Four the cutthroats in his pay,     Tried, all five, and found guilty and put to death     By heading or hanging as befitted ranks,     At Rome on February Twenty-Two,     Since our salvation Sixteen Ninety Eight:     Wherein it is disputed if, and when,     Husbands may kill adulterous wives, yet scape     The customary forfeit.     Word for word,     So ran the title-page: murder, or else     Legitimate punishment of the other crime,     Accounted murder by mistake, just that     And no more, in a Latin cramp enough     When the law had her eloquence to launch,     But interfilleted with Italian streaks     When testimony stooped to mother-tongue,     That, was this old square yellow book about.     Now, as the ingot, ere the ring was forged,     Lay gold (beseech you, hold that figure fast!)     So, in this book lay absolutely truth,     Fanciless fact, the documents indeed,     Primary lawyer-pleadings for, against,     The aforesaid Five; real summed-up circumstance     Adduced in proof of these on either side,     Put forth and printed, as the practice was,     At Rome, in the Apostolic Chambers type,     And so submitted to the eye o the Court     Presided over by His Reverence     Romes Governor and Criminal Judge, the trial     Itself, to all intents, being then as now     Here in the book and nowise out of it;     Seeing, there properly was no judgment-bar,     No bringing of accuser and accused,     And whoso judged both parties, face to face     Before some court, as we conceive of courts.     There was a Hall of Justice; that came last:     For justice had a chamber by the hall     Where she took evidence first, summed up the same,     Then sent accuser and accused alike,     In person of the advocate of each,     To weigh that evidence worth, arrange, array     The battle. Twas the so-styled Fisc began,     Pleaded (and since he only spoke in print     The printed voice of him lives now as then)     The public Prosecutor, Murders proved;     With five . . . what we call qualities of bad,     Worse, worst, and yet worse still, and still worse yet;     Crest over crest crowning the cockatrice,     That beggar hells regalia to enrich     Count Guido Franceschini: punish him!     Thus was the paper put before the court     In the next stage (no noisy work at all),     To study at ease. In due time like reply     Came from the so-styled Patron of the Poor,     Official mouthpiece of the five accused     Too poor to fee a better, Guidos luck     Or else his fellows, which, I hardly know,     An outbreak as of wonder at the world,     A fury fit of outraged innocence,     A passion of betrayed simplicity:     Punish Count Guido? For what crime, what hint     O the colour of a crime, inform us first!     Reward him rather! Recognise, we say,     In the deed done, a righteous judgment dealt!     All conscience and all courage, theres our Count     Charactered in a word; and, whats more strange,     He had companionship in privilege,     Found four courageous conscientious friends:     Absolve, applaud all five, as props of law,     Sustainers of society! perchance     A trifle over-hasty with the hand     To hold her tottering ark, had tumbled else;     But thats a splendid fault whereat we wink,     Wishing your cold correctness sparkled so!     Thus paper second followed paper first,     Thus did the two join issue nay, the four,     Each pleader having an adjunct. True, he killed     So to speak in a certain sort his wife,     But laudably, since thus it happed! quoth one:     Whereat, more witness and the case postponed,     Thus it happed not, since thus he did the deed,     And proved himself thereby portentousest     Of cutthroats and a prodigy of crime,     As the woman that he slaughtered was a saint,     Martyr and miracle! quoth the other to match:     Again, more witness, and the case postponed.     A miracle, ay of lust and impudence;     Hear my new reasons! interposed the first:     Coupled with more of mine! pursued his peer.     Beside, the precedents, the authorities!     From both at once a cry with an echo, that!     That was a firebrand at each foxs tail     Unleashed in a cornfield: soon spread flare enough,     As hurtled thither and there heaped themselves     From earths four corners, all authority     And precedent for putting wives to death,     Or letting wives live, sinful as they seem.     How legislated, now, in this respect,     Solon and his Athenians? Quote the code     Of Romulus and Rome! Justinian speak!     Nor modern Baldo, Bartolo be dumb!     The Roman voice was potent, plentiful;     Cornelia de Sicariis hurried to help     Pompeia de Parricidiis; Julia de     Something-or-other jostled Lex this-and-that;     King Solomon confirmed Apostle Paul:     That nice decision of Dolabella, eh?     That pregnant instance of Theodoric, oh!     Down to that choice example lian gives     (An instance I find much insisted on)     Of the elephant who, brute-beast though he were,     Yet understood and punished on the spot     His masters naughty spouse and faithless friend;     A true tale which has edified each child,     Much more shall flourish favoured by our court!     Pages of proof this way, and that way proof,     And always once again the case postponed.     Thus wrangled, brangled, jangled they a month,     Only on paper, pleadings all in print,     Nor ever was, except i the brains of men,     More noise by word of mouth than you hear now     Till the court cut all short with Judged, your cause     Receive our sentence! Praise God! We pronounce     Count Guido devilish and damnable:     His wife Pompilia in thought, word, and deed,     Was perfect pure, he murdered her for that:     As for the Four who helped the One, all Five     Why, let employer and hirelings share alike     In guilt and guilts reward, the death their due!     So was the trial at end, do you suppose?     Guilty you find him, death you doom him to?     Ay, were not Guido, more than needs, a priest,     Priest and to spare! this was a shot reserved;     I learn this from epistles which begin     Here where the print ends, see the pen and ink     Of the advocate, the ready at a pinch!     My client boasts the clerkly privilege,     Has taken minor orders many enough,     Shows still sufficient chrism upon his pate     To neutralise a blood-stain: presbyter,     Prim tonsur, subdiaconus,     Sacerdos, so he slips from underneath     Your power, the temporal, slides inside the robe     Of mother Church: to her we make appeal     By the Pope, the Churchs head!     A parlous plea,     Put in with noticeable effect, it seems;     Since straight, resumes the zealous orator,     Making a friend acquainted with the facts,     Once the word clericality let fall,     Procedure stopped and freer breath was drawn     By all considerate and responsible Rome.     Quality took the decent part, of course;     Held by the husband, who was noble too:     Or, for the matter of that, a churl would side     With too-refined susceptibility,     And honour which, tender in the extreme,     Stung to the quick, must roughly right itself     At all risks, not sit still and whine for law     As a Jew would, if you squeezed him to the wall,     Brisk-trotting through the Ghetto. Nay, it seems,     Even the Emperors Envoy had his say     To say on the subject; might not see, unmoved,     Civility menaced throughout Christendom     By too harsh measure dealt her champion here.     Lastly, what made all safe, the Pope was kind,     From his youth up, reluctant to take life,     If mercy might be just and yet show grace;     Much more unlikely then, in extreme age,     To take a life the general sense bade spare.     Twas plain that Guido would go scatheless yet.     But human promise, oh, how short of shine!     How topple down the piles of hope we rear!     How history proves . . . nay, read Herodotus!     Suddenly starting from a nap, as it were,     A dog-sleep with one shut, one open orb,     Cried the Popes great self, Innocent by name     And nature too, and eighty-six years old,     Antonio Pignatelli of Naples, Pope     Who had trod many lands, known many deeds,     Probed many hearts, beginning with his own,     And now was far in readiness for God,     Twas he who first bade leave those souls in peace,     Those Jansenists, re-nicknamed Molinists,     (Gainst whom the cry went, like a frowsy tune,     Tickling mens ears the sect for a quarter of an hour     I the teeth of the world which, clown-like, loves to chew     Be it but a straw twixt work and whistling-while,     Taste some vituperation, bite away,     Whether at marjoram-sprig or garlic-clove,     Aught it may sport with, spoil, and then spit forth)     Leave them alone, bade he, those Molinists!     Who may have other light than we perceive,     Or why is it the whole world hates them thus?     Also he peeled off that last scandal-rag     Of Nepotism; and so observed the poor     That men would merrily say, Halt, deaf, and blind,     Who feed on fat things, leave the masters self     To gather up the fragments of his feast,     These be the nephews of Pope Innocent!     His own meal costs but five carlines a day,     Poor- priests allowance, for he claims no more.      He cried of a sudden, this great good old Pope,     When they appealed in last resort to him,     I have mastered the whole matter: I nothing doubt.     Though Guido stood forth priest from head to heel,     Instead of, as alleged, a piece of one,     And further, were he, from the tonsured scalp     To the sandaled sole of him, my son and Christs,     Instead of touching us by finger-tip     As you assert, and pressing up so close     Only to set a blood-smutch on our robe,     I and Christ would renounce all right in him.     Am I not Pope, and presently to die,     And busied how to render my account,     And shall I wait a day ere I decide     On doing or not doing justice here?     Cut off his head to-morrow by this time,     Hang up his four mates, two on either hand,     And end one business more!     So said, so done     Rather so writ, for the old Pope bade this,     I find, with his particular chirograph,     His own no such infirm hand, Friday night;     And next day, February Twenty-Two,     Since our salvation Sixteen Ninety Eight,     Not at the proper head-and-hanging place     On bridge-foot close by Castle Angelo,     Where custom somewhat staled the spectacle,     (Twas not so well i the way of Rome, beside,     The noble Rome, the Rome of Guidos rank)     But at the citys newer gayer end,     The cavalcading promenading place     Beside the gate and opposite the church     Under the Pincian gardens green with Spring,     Neath the obelisk twixt the fountains in the Square,     Did Guido and his fellows find their fate,     All Rome for witness, and my writer adds     Remonstrant in its universal grief,     Since Guido had the suffrage of all Rome.     This is the bookful; thus far take the truth,     The untempered gold, the fact untampered with,     The mere ring-metal ere the ring be made!     And what has hitherto come of it? Who preserves     The memory of this Guido, and his wife     Pompilia, more than Ademollos name,     The etcher of those prints, two crazie each,     Saved by a stone from snowing broad the Square     With scenic backgrounds? Was this truth of force?     Able to take its own part as truth should,     Sufficient, self-sustaining? Why, if so     Yonders a fire, into it goes my book,     As who shall say me nay, and what the loss?     You know the tale already: I may ask,     Rather than think to tell you, more thereof,     Ask you not merely who were he and she,     Husband and wife, what manner of mankind,     But how you hold concerning this and that     Other yet-unnamed actor in the piece.     The young frank handsome courtly Canon, now,     The priest, declared the lover of the wife,     He who, no question, did elope with her,     For certain bring the tragedy about,     Giuseppe Caponsacchi; his strange course     I the matter, was it right or wrong or both?     Then the old couple, slaughtered with the wife     By the husband as accomplices in crime,     Those Comparini, Pietro and his spouse,     What say you to the right or wrong of that,     When, at a known name whispered through the door     Of a lone villa on a Christmas night,     It opened that the joyous hearts inside     Might welcome as it were an angel-guest     Come in Christs name to knock and enter, sup     And satisfy the loving ones he saved;     And so did welcome devils and their death?     I have been silent on that circumstance     Although the couple passed for close of kin     To wife and husband, were by some accounts     Pompilias very parents: you know best.     Also that infant the great joy was for,     That Gaetano, the wifes two-weeks babe,     The husbands first-born child, his son and heir,     Whose birth and being turned his night to day     Why must the father kill the mother thus     Because she bore his son and saved himself?     Well, British Public, ye who like me not,     (God love you!) and will have your proper laugh     At the dark question, laugh it! I laugh first.     Truth must prevail, the proverb vows; and truth     Here is it all i the book at last, as first     There it was all i the heads and hearts of Rome     Gentle and simple, never to fall nor fade     Nor be forgotten. Yet, a little while,     The passage of a century or so,     Decads thrice five, and heres time paid his tax,     Oblivion gone home with her harvesting,     And left all smooth again as scythe could shave.     Far from beginning with you London folk,     I took my book to Rome first, tried truths power     On likely people. Have you met such names?     Is a tradition extant of such facts?     Your law-courts stand, your records frown a-row:     What if I rove and rummage? Why, youll waste     Your pains and end as wise as you began!     Every one snickered: names and facts thus old     Are newer much than Europe news we find     Down in to-days Diario. Records, quotha?     Why, the French burned them, what else do the French?     The rap-and-rending nation! And it tells     Against the Church, no doubt, another gird     At the Temporality, your Trial, of course?     Quite otherwise this time, submitted I;     Clean for the Church and dead against the world,     The flesh and the devil, does it tell for once.      The rarer and the happier! All the same,     Content you with your treasure of a book,     And waive whats wanting! Take a friends advice!     Its not the custom of the country. Mend     Your ways indeed and we may stretch a point:     Go get you manned by Manning and new-manned     By Newman and, mayhap, wise-manned to boot     By Wiseman, and well see or else we wont!     Thanks meantime for the story, long and strong,     A pretty piece of narrative enough,     Which scarce ought so to drop out, one would think,     From the more curious annals of our kind.     Do you tell the story, now, in off-hand style,     Straight from the book? Or simply here and there,     (The while you vault it through the loose and large)     Hang to a hint? Or is there book at all,     And dont you deal in poetry, make-believe,     And the white lies it sounds like?     Yes and no!     From the book, yes; thence bit by bit I dug     The lingot truth, that memorable day,     Assayed and knew my piecemeal gain was gold,     Yes; but from something else surpassing that,     Something of mine which, mixed up with the mass,     Made it bear hammer and be firm to file.     Fancy with fact is just one fact the more;     To-wit, that fancy has informed, transpierced,     Thridded and so thrown fast the facts else free,     As right through ring and ring runs the djereed     And binds the loose, one bar without a break.     I fused my live soul and that inert stuff,     Before attempting smithcraft, on the night     After the day when, truth thus grasped and gained,     The book was shut and done with and laid by     On the cream-coloured massive agate, broad     Neath the twin cherubs in the tarnished frame     O the mirror, tall thence to the ceiling-top.     And from the reading, and that slab I leant     My elbow on, the while I read and read     I turned, to free myself and find the world,     And stepped out on the narrow terrace, built     Over the street and opposite the church,     And paced its lozenge brickwork sprinkled cool;     Because Felice-church-side-stretched, a-glow     Through each square window fringed for festival,     Whence came the clear voice of the cloistered ones     Chanting a chant made for midsummer nights     I know not what particular praise of God,     It always came and went with June. Beneath     I the street, quick shown by openings of the sky     When flame fell silently from cloud to cloud,     Richer than that gold snow Jove rained on Rhodes,     The townsmen walked by twos and threes, and talked,     Drinking the blackness in default of air     A busy human sense beneath my feet:     While in and out the terrace-plants, and round     One branch of tall datura, waxed and waned     The lamp-fly lured there, wanting the white flower.     Over the roof o the lighted church I looked     A bowshot to the streets end, north away     Out of the Roman gate to the Roman road     By the river, till I felt the Apennine.     And there would lie Arezzo, the mans town,     The womans trap and cage and torture-place,     Also the stage where the priest played his part,     A spectacle for angels, ay, indeed,     There lay Arezzo! Farther then I fared,     Feeling my way on through the hot and dense,     Romeward, until I found the wayside inn     By Castelnuovos few mean hut-like homes     Huddled together on the hill-foot bleak,     Bare, broken only by that tree or two     Against the sudden bloody splendour poured     Cursewise in his departure by the day     On the low house-roof of that squalid inn     Where they three, for the first time and the last,     Husband and wife and priest, met face to face.     Whence I went on again, the end was near,     Step by step, missing none and marking all,     Till Rome itself, the ghastly goal, I reached.     Why, all the while, how could it otherwise?     The life in me abolished the death of things,     Deep calling unto deep: as then and there     Acted itself over again once more     The tragic piece. I saw with my own eyes     In Florence as I trod the terrace, breathed     The beauty and the fearfulness of night,     How it had run, this round from Rome to Rome     Because, you are to know, they lived at Rome,     Pompilias parents, as they thought themselves,     Two poor ignoble hearts who did their best     Part Gods way, part the other way than Gods,     To somehow make a shift and scramble through     The worlds mud, careless if it splashed and spoiled,     Provided they might so hold high, keep clean     Their childs soul, one soul white enough for three,     And lift it to whatever star should stoop,     What possible sphere of purer life than theirs     Should come in aid of whiteness hard to save.     I saw the star stoop, that they strained to touch,     And did touch and depose their treasure on,     As Guido Franceschini took away     Pompilia to be his for evermore,     While they sang Now let us depart in peace,     Having beheld thy glory, Guidos wife!     I saw the star supposed, but fog o the fen,     Gilded star-fashion by a glint from hell;     Having been heaved up, haled on its gross way,     By hands unguessed before, invisible help     From a dark brotherhood, and specially     Two obscure goblin creatures, fox-faced this,     Cat-clawed the other, called his next of kin     By Guido the main monster, cloaked and caped,     Making as they were priests, to mock God more,     Abate Paul, Canon Girolamo.     These who had rolled the starlike pest to Rome     And stationed it to suck up and absorb     The sweetness of Pompilia, rolled again     That bloated bubble, with her soul inside,     Back to Arezzo and a palace there     Or say, a fissure in the honest earth     Whence long ago had curled the vapour first,     Blown big by nether fires to appal day:     It touched home, broke, and blasted far and wide.     I saw the cheated couple find the cheat     And guess what foul rite they were captured for,     Too fain to follow over hill and dale     That child of theirs caught up thus in the cloud     And carried by the Prince o the Power of the Air     Whither he would, to wilderness or sea.     I saw them, in the potency of fear,     Break somehow through the satyr-family     (For a grey mother with a monkey-mien,     Mopping and mowing, was apparent too,     As, confident of capture, all took hands     And danced about the captives in a ring)     Saw them break through, breathe safe, at Rome again,     Saved by the selfish instinct, losing so     Their loved one left with haters. These I saw,     In recrudescency of baffled hate,     Prepare to wring the uttermost revenge     From body and soul thus left them: all was sure,     Fire laid and cauldron set, the obscene ring traced,     The victim stripped and prostrate: what of God?     The cleaving of a cloud, a cry, a crash,     Quenched lay their cauldron, cowered i the dust the crew,     As, in a glory of armour like Saint George,     Out again sprang the young good beauteous priest     Bearing away the lady in his arms,     Saved for a splendid minute and no more.     For, whom i the path did that priest come upon,     He and the poor lost lady borne so brave,     Checking the song of praise in me, had else     Swelled to the full for Gods will done on earth     Whom but a dusk misfeatured messenger,     No other than the angel of this life,     Whose care is lest men see too much at once.     He made the sign, such God-glimpse must suffice,     Nor prejudice the Prince o the Power of the Air,     Whose ministration piles us overhead     What we call, first, earths roof and, last, heavens floor,     Now grate o the trap, then outlet of the cage:     So took the lady, left the priest alone,     And once more canopied the world with black.     But through the blackness I saw Rome again,     And where a solitary villa stood     In a lone garden-quarter: it was eve,     The second of the year, and oh so cold!     Ever and anon there flittered through the air     A snow-flake, and a scanty couch of snow     Crusted the grass-walk and the garden-mould.     All was grave, silent, sinister, when, ha?     Glimmeringly did a pack of were-wolves pad     The snow, those flames were Guidos eyes in front,     And all five found and footed it, the track,     To where a threshold-streak of warmth and light     Betrayed the villa-door with life inside,     While an inch outside were those blood-bright eyes,     And black lips wrinkling oer the flash of teeth,     And tongues that lolled Oh God that madest man!     They parleyed in their language. Then one whined     That was the policy and master-stroke     Deep in his throat whispered what seemed a name     Open to Caponsacchi! Guido cried:     Gabriel! cried Lucifer at Eden-gate.     Wide as a heart, opened the door at once,     Showing the joyous couple, and their child     The two-weeks mother, to the wolves, the wolves     To them. Close eyes! And when the corpses lay     Stark-stretched, and those the wolves, their wolf-work done,     Were safe-embosomed by the night again,     I knew a necessary change in things;     As when the worst watch of the night gives way,     And there comes duly, to take cognisance,     The scrutinising eye-point of some star     And who despairs of a new daybreak now?     Lo, the first ray protruded on those five!     It reached them, and each felon writhed transfixed.     Awhile they palpitated on the spear     Motionless over Tophet: stand or fall?     I say, the spear should fall should stand, I say!     Cried the world come to judgment, granting grace     Or dealing doom according to worlds wont,     Those worlds-bystanders grouped on Romes cross-road     At prick and summons of the primal curse     Which bids man love as well as make a lie.     There prattled they, discoursed the right and wrong,     Turned wrong to right, proved wolves sheep and sheep wolves,     So that you scarce distinguished fell from fleece;     Till out spoke a great guardian of the fold,     Stood up, put forth his hand that held the crook,     And motioned that the arrested point decline:     Horribly off, the wriggling dead-weight reeled,     Rushed to the bottom and lay ruined there.     Though still at the pits mouth, despite the smoke     O the burning, tarriers turned again to talk     And trim the balance, and detect at least     A touch of wolf in what showed whitest sheep,     A cross of sheep redeeming the whole wolf,     Vex truth a little longer: less and less,     Because years came and went, and more and more     Brought new lies with them to be loved in turn.     Till all at once the memory of the thing,     The fact that, wolves or sheep, such creatures were,     Which hitherto, however men supposed,     Had somehow plain and pillar-like prevailed     I the midst of them, indisputably fact,     Granite, times tooth should grate against, not graze,     Why, this proved standstone, friable, fast to fly     And give its grain away at wish o the wind.     Ever and ever more diminutive,     Base gone, shaft lost, only entablature,     Dwindled into no bigger than a book,     Lay of the column; and that little, left     By the roadside mid the ordure, shards, and weeds,     Until I haply, wandering that way,     Kicked it up, turned it over, and recognised,     For all the crumblement, this abacus,     This square old yellow book, could calculate     By this the lost proportions of the style.     This was it from, my fancy with those facts,     I used to tell the tale, turned gay to grave,     But lacked a listener seldom; such alloy,     Such substance of me interfused the gold     Which, wrought into a shapely ring therewith,     Hammered and filed, fingered and favoured, last     Lay ready for the renovating wash     O the water. How much of the tale was true?     I disappeared; the book grew all in all;     The lawyers pleadings swelled back to their size,     Doubled in two, the crease upon them yet,     For more commodity of carriage, see!     And these are letters, veritable sheets     That brought posthaste the news to Florence, writ     At Rome the day Count Guido died, we find,     To stay the craving of a client there,     Who bound the same and so produced my book.     Lovers of dead truth, did ye fare the worse?     Lovers of live truth, found ye false my tale?     Well, now; theres nothing in nor out o the world     Good except truth: yet this, the something else,     Whats this then, which proves good yet seems untrue?     This that I mixed with truth, motions of mine     That quickened, made the inertness mallealable     O the gold was not mine, whats your name for this?     Are means to the end, themselves in part the end?     Is fiction which makes fact alive, fact too?     The somehow may be thishow.     I find first     Writ down for very A B C of fact,     In the beginning God made heaven and earth;     From which, no matter with what lisp, I spell     And speak out a consequence that man,     Man, as befits the made, the inferior thing,     Purposed, since made, to grow, not make in turn,     Yet forced to try and make, else fail to grow,     Formed to rise, reach at, if not grasp and gain     The good beyond him, which attempt is growth,     Repeats Gods process in mans due degree,     Attaining mans proportionate result,     Creates, no, but resuscitates, perhaps.     Inalienable, the arch-prerogative     Which turns thought, act conceives, expresses too!     No less, man, bounded, yearning to be free,     May so project his surplusage of soul     In search of body, so add self to self     By owning what lay ownerless before,     So, find so fill full, so appropriate forms     That, although nothing which had never life     Shall get life from him, be, not having been,     Yet, something dead may get to live again,     Something with too much life or not enough,     Which, either way imperfect, ended once:     An end whereat mans impulse intervenes,     Makes new beginning, starts the dead alive,     Completes the incomplete and saves the thing.     Mans breath were vain to light a virgin wick,     Half-burned-out, all but quite-quenched wicks o the lamp     Stationed for temple-service on this earth,     These indeed let him breathe on and relume!     For such mans feat is, in the due degree,     Mimic creation, galvanism for life,     But still a glory portioned in the scale.     Why did the mage say, feeling as we are wont     For truth, and stopping midway short of truth,     And resting on a lie, I raise a ghost?     Because, he taught adepts, man makes not man.     Yet by a special gift, an art of arts,     More insight and more outsight and much more     Will to use both of these than boast my mates,     I can detach from me, commission forth     Half of my soul; which in its pilgrimage     Oer old unwandered waste ways of the world,     May chance upon some fragment of a whole,     Rag of flesh, scrap of bone in dim disuse,     Smoking flax that fed fire once: prompt therein     I enter, spark-like, put old powers to play,     Push lines out to the limit, lead forth last     (By a moonrise through a ruin of a crypt)     What shall be mistily seen, murmuringly heard,     Mistakenly felt: then write my name with Fausts!     Oh, Faust, why Faust? Was not Elisha once?     Who bade them lay his staff on a corpse-face.     There was no voice, no hearing: he went in     Therefore, and shut the door upon them twain,     And prayed unto the Lord: and he went up     And lay upon the corpse, dead on the couch,     And put his mouth upon its mouth, his eyes     Upon its eyes, his hands upon its hands,     And stretched him on the flesh; the flesh waxed warm:     And he returned, walked to and fro the house,     And went up, stretched him on the flesh again,     And the eyes opened. Tis a credible feat     With the right man and way.     Enough of me!     The Book! I turn its medicinable leaves     In London now till, as in Florence erst,     A spirit laughs and leaps through every limb,     And lights my eye, and lifts me by the hair,     Letting me have my will again with these      How title I the dead alive once more?     Count Guido Franceschini the Aretine,     Descended of an ancient house, though poor,     A beak-nosed bushy-bearded black-haired lord,     Lean, pallid, low of stature yet robust,     Fifty years old, having four years ago     Married Pompilia Comparini, young,     Good, beautiful, at Rome, where she was born,     And brought her to Arezzo, where they lived     Unhappy lives, whatever curse the cause,     This husband, taking four accomplices,     Followed this wife to Rome, where she was fled     From their Arezzo to find peace again,     In convoy, eight months earlier, of a priest,     Aretine also, of still nobler birth,     Giuseppe Caponsacchi, and caught her there     Quiet in a villa on a Christmas night,     With only Pietro and Violante by,     Both her putative parents; killed the three,     Aged, they, seventy each, and she, seventeen,     And, two weeks since, the mother of his babe     First-born and heir to what the style was worth     O the Guido who determined, dared and did     This deed just as he purposed point by point.     Then, bent upon escape, but hotly pressed,     And captured with his co-mates that same night,     He, brought to trial, stood on this defence     Injury to his honour caused the act;     That since his wife was false (as manifest     By flight from home in such companionship),     Death, punishment deserved of the false wife     And faithless parents who abetted her     I the flight aforesaid, wronged nor God nor man.     Nor false she, nor yet faithless they, replied     The accuser; cloaked and masked this murder glooms;     True was Pompilia, loyal too the pair;     Out of the mans own heart this monster curled,     This crime coiled with connivancy at crime,     His victims breast, he tells you, hatched and reared;     Uncoil we and stretch stark the worm of hell!     A month the trial swayed this way and that     Ere judgment settled down on Guidos guilt;     Then was the Pope, that good Twelfth Innocent,     Appealed to: who well weighed what went before,     Affirmed the guilt and gave the guilty doom.     Let this old woe step on the stage again!     Act itself oer anew for men to judge,     Not by the very sense and sight indeed     (Which take at best imperfect cognisance,     Since, how heart moves brain, and how both move hand,     What mortal ever in entirety saw?)     No dose of purer truth than man digests,     But truth with falsehood, milk that feeds him now,     Not strong meat he may get to bear some day     To-wit, by voices we call evidence,     Uproar in the echo, live fact deadened down,     Talked over, bruited abroad, whispered away,     Yet helping us to all we seem to hear:     For how else know we save by worth of word?     Here are the voices presently shall sound     In due succession. First, the worlds outcry     Around the rush and ripple of any fact     Fallen stonewise, plumb on the smooth face of things;     The worlds guess, as it crowds the bank o the pool,     At what were figure and substance, by their splash:     Then, by vibrations in the general mind,     At depth of deed already out of reach.     This threefold murder of the day before,     Say, Half-Romes feel after the vanished truth;     Honest enough, as the way is: all the same,     Harbouring in the centre of its sense     A hidden germ of failure, shy but sure,     Should neutralise that honesty and leave     That feel for truth at fault, as the way is too.     Some prepossession such as starts amiss,     By but a hairs-breadth at the shoulder-blade,     The arm o the feeler, dip he neer so brave;     And so leads waveringly, lets fall wide     Othe mark his finger meant to find, and fix     Truth at the bottom, that deceptive speck.     With this Half-Rome, the source of swerving, call     Over-belief in Guidos right and wrong     Rather than in Pompilias wrong and right:     Who shall say how, who shall say why? Tis there     The instinctive theorising whence a fact     Looks to the eye as the eye likes the look.     Gossip in a public place, a sample-speech.     Some worthy, with his previous hint to find     A husbands side the safer, and no whit     Aware he is not acus the while,     How such an one supposes and states fact     To whosoever of a multitude     Will listen, and perhaps prolong thereby     The not-unpleasant flutter at the breast,     Born of a certain spectacle shut in     By the church Lorenzo opposite. So, they lounge     Midway the mouth o the street, on Corso side,     Twixt palace Fiano and palace Ruspoli,     Linger and listen; keeping clear o the crowd,     Yet wishful one could lend that crowd ones eyes,     (So universal is its plague of squint)     And make hearts beat our time that flutter false:      All for the truths sake, mere truth, nothing else!     How Half-Rome found for Guido much excuse.     Next, from Romes other half, the opposite feel     For truth with a like swerve, like unsuccess,     Or if success, by no more skill but luck:     This time, though rather siding with the wife,     However the fancy-fit inclined that way,     Than with the husband. One wears drab, one, pink;     Who wears pink, ask him Which shall win the race,     Of coupled runners like as egg and egg?     Why, if I must choose, he with the pink scarf.     Doubtless for some such reason choice fell here.     A piece of public talk to correspond     At the next stage of the story; just a day     Let pass and new day bring the proper change.     Another sample-speech i the market-place     O the Barberini by the Capucins;     Where the old Triton, at his fountain-sport,     Berninis creature plated to the paps,     Puffs up steel sleet which breaks to diamond dust,     A spray of sparkles snorted from his conch,     High over the caritellas, out o the way     O the motley merchandising multitude.     Our murder has been done three days ago,     The frost is over and gone, the south wind laughs,     And, to the very tiles of each red roof     A-smoke i the sunshine, Rome lies gold and glad:     So, listen how, to the other half of Rome,     Pompilia seemed a saint and martyr both!     Then, yet another day let come and go,     With pause prelusive still of novelty,     Hear a fresh speaker! neither this nor that     Half-Rome aforesaid; something bred of both:     One and one breed the inevitable three.     Such is the personage harangues you next;     The elaborated product, tertium quid:     Romes first commotion in subsidence gives     The curd o the cream, flower o the wheat, as it were,     And finer sense o the city. Is this plain?     You get a reasoned statement of the case,     Eventual verdict of the curious few     Who care to sift a business to the bran     Nor coarsely bolt it like the simpler sort.     Here, after ignorance, instruction speaks;     Here, clarity of candour, historys soul,     The critical mind, in short; no gossip-guess.     What the superior social section thinks,     In person of some man of quality     Who, breathing musk from lace-work and brocade,     His solitaire amid the flow of frill,     Powdered peruke on nose, and bag at back,     And cane dependent from the ruffled wrist,     Harangues in silvery and selectest phrase     Neath waxlight in a glorified saloon     Where mirrors multiply the girandole:     Courting the approbation of no mob,     But Eminence This and All-Illustrious That     Who take snuff softly, range in well-bred ring,     Card-table-quitters for observance sake,     Around the argument, the rational word     Still, spite its weight and worth, a sample-speech.     How quality dissertated on the case.     So much for Rome and rumour; smoke comes first:     Once the smoke risen untroubled, we descry     Clearlier what tongues of flame may spire and spit     To eye and ear, each with appropriate tinge     According to its food, pure or impure.     The actors, no mere rumours of the act,     Intervene. First you hear Count Guidos voice,     In a small chamber that adjoins the court,     Where Governor and Judges, summoned thence,     Tommati, Venturini and the rest,     Find the accused ripe for declaring truth.     Soft-cushioned sits he; yet shifts seat, shirks touch,     As, with a twitchy brow and wincing lip     And cheek that changes to all kinds of white,     He proffers his defence, in tones subdued     Near to mock-mildness, now, so mournful seems     The obtuser sense truth fails to satisfy;     Now, moved, from pathos at the wrong endured,     To passion; for the natural man is roused     At fools who first do wrong, then pour the blame     Of their wrong-doing, Satan-like, on Job.     Also his tongue at times is hard to curb;     Incisive, nigh satiric bites the phrase,     Rough-raw, yet somehow claiming privilege     It is so hard for shrewdness to admit     Folly means no harm when she calls black white!     Eruption momentary at the most,     Modified forthwith by a fall othe fire,     Sage acquiescence; for the worlds the world,     And, what it errs in, Judges rectify:     He feels he has a fist, then folds his arms     Crosswise and makes his mind up to be meek.     And never once does he detach his eye     From those ranged there to slay him or to save,     But does his best mans-service for himself,     Despite, what twitches brow and makes lip wince,     His limbs late taste of what was called the Cord,     Or Vigil-torture more facetiously.     Even so; they were wont to tease the truth     Out of loath witness (toying, trifling time)     By torture: twas a trick, a vice of the age,     Here, there, and everywhere, what would you have?     Religion used to tell Humanity     She gave him warrant or denied him course.     And since the course was much to his own mind,     Of pinching flesh and pulling bone from bone     To unhusk truth a-hiding in its hulls,     Nor whisper of a warning stopped the way,     He, in their joint behalf, the burly slave,     Bestirred him, mauled and maimed all recusants,     While, prim in place, Religion overlooked;     And so had done till doomsday, never a sign     Nor sound of interference from her mouth,     But that at last the burly slave wiped brow,     Let eye give notice as if soul were there,     Muttered Tis a vile trick, foolish more than vile,     Should have been counted sin; I make it so:     At any rate no more of it for me     Nay, for I break the torture-engine thus!     Then did Religion start up, stare amain,     Look round for help and see none, smile and say     What, broken is the rack? Well done of thee!     Did I forget to abrogate its use?     Be the mistake in common with us both!      One more fault our blind age shall answer for,     Down in my book denounced though it must be     Somewhere. Henceforth find truth by milder means!     Ah but, Religion, did we wait for thee     To ope the book, that serves to sit upon,     And pick such place out, we should wait indeed!     That is all history: and what is not now,     Was then, defendants found it to their cost.     How Guido, after being tortured, spoke.     Also hear Caponsacchi who comes next,     Man and priest could you comprehend the coil!     In days when that was rife which now is rare.     How, mingling each its multifarious wires,     Now heaven, now earth, now heaven and earth at once,     Had plucked at and perplexed their puppet here,     Played off the young frank personable priest;     Sworn fast and tonsured plain heavens celibate,     And yet earths clear-accepted servitor,     A courtly spiritual Cupid, squire of dames     By law of love and mandate of the mode.     The Churchs own, or why parade her seal,     Wherefore that chrism and consecrative work?     Yet verily the worlds, or why go badged     A prince of sonneteers and lutanists,     Show colour of each vanity in vogue     Borne with decorum due on blameless breast?     All that is changed now, as he tells the court     How he had played the part excepted at;     Tells it, moreover, now the second time:     Since, for his cause of scandal, his own share     I the flight from home and husband of the wife,     He has been censured, punished in a sort     By relegation, exile, we should say,     To a short distance for a little time,     Whence he is summoned on a sudden now,     Informed that she, he thought to save, is lost,     And, in a breath, bidden re-tell his tale,     Since the first telling somehow missed effect,     And then advise in the matter. There stands he,     While the same grim black-panelled chamber blinks     As though rubbed shiny with the sins of Rome     Told the same oak for ages wave-washed wall     Whereto has set a sea of wickedness.     There, where you yesterday heard Guido speak,     Speaks Caponsacchi; and there face him too     Tommati, Venturini, and the rest     Who, eight months earlier, scarce repressed the smile,     Forewent the wink; waived recognition so     Of peccadillos incident to youth,     Especially youth high-born; for youth means love,     Vows cant change nature, priests are only men,     And love needs stratagem and subterfuge:     Which age, that once was youth, should recognise,     May blame, but needs not press too hard against.     Here sit the old Judges then, but with no grace     Of reverend carriage, magisterial port.     For why? The accused of eight months since, same     Who cut the conscious figure of a fool,     Changed countenance, dropped bashful gaze to ground,     While hesitating for an answer then     Now is grown judge himself, terrifies now     This, now the other culprit called a judge,     Whose turn it is to stammer and look strange,     As he speaks rapidly, angrily, speech that smites:     And they keep silence, bear blow after blow,     Because the seeming-solitary man,     Speaking for God, may have an audience too,     Invisible, no discreet judge provokes.     How the priest Caponsacchi said his say.     Then a soul sights its lowest and its last     After the loud ones, so much breath remains     Unused by the four-days-dying; for she lived     Thus long, miraculously long, twas thought,     Just that Pompilia might defend herself.     How, while the hireling and the alien stoop,     Comfort, yet question, since the time is brief,     And folk, allowably inquisitive,     Encircle the low pallet where she lies     In the good house that helps the poor to die,     Pompilia tells the story of her life.     For friend and lover, leech and man of law     Do service; busy helpful ministrants     As varied in their calling as their mind,     Temper and age: and yet from all of these     About the white bed under the arched roof,     Is somehow, as it were, evolved a one,     Small separate sympathies combined and large,     Nothings that were, grown something very much:     As if the bystanders gave each his straw,     All he had, though a trifle in itself,     Which, plaited all together, made a Cross     Fit to die looking on and praying with,     Just as well as ivory or gold.     So, to the common kindliness she speaks,     There being scarce more privacy at the last     For mind than body: but she is used to bear,     And only unused to the brotherly look,     How she endeavoured to explain her life.     Then, since a Trial ensued, a touch o the same     To sober us, flustered with frothy talk,     And teach our common sense its helplessness.     For why deal simply with divining-rod,     Scrape where we fancy secret sources flow,     And ignore law, the recognised machine,     Elaborate display of pipe and wheel     Framed to unchoak, pump up and pour apace     Truth in a flowery foam shall wash the world?     The patent truth-extracting process, ha?     Let us make all that mystery turn one wheel,     Give you a single grind of law at least!     One orator, of two on either side,     Shall teach us the puissance of the tongue     That is, o the pen which simulated tongue     On paper and saved all except the sound     Which ever was. Laws speech beside laws thought?     That were too stunning, too immense an odds:     That point of vantage, law let nobly pass.     One lawyer shall admit us to behold     The manner of the making out a case,     First fashion of a speech; the chick in egg,     And masterpiece laws bosom incubates,     How Don Giacinto of the Arcangeli,     Called Procurator of the Poor at Rome,     Now advocate for Guido and his mates,     The jolly learned man of middle age,     Cheek and jowl all in laps with fat and law,     Mirthful as mighty, yet, as great hearts use,     Despite the name and fame that tempt our flesh,     Constant to that devotion of the hearth,     Still captive in those dear domestic ties!     How he, having a cause to triumph with,     All kind of interests to keep intact,     More than one efficacious personage     To tranquillise, conciliate, and secure,     And above all, public anxiety     To quiet, show its Guido in good hands,     Also, as if such burdens were too light,     A certain family-feast to claim his care,     The birthday-banquet for the only son     Paternity at smiling strife with law     How he brings both to buckle in one bond;     And, thick at throat, with waterish under-eye,     Turns to his task and settles in his seat     And puts his utmost means to practice now:     Wheezes out law and whiffles Latin forth,     And, just as though roast lamb would never be,     Makes logic levigate the big crime small:     Rubs palm on palm, rakes foot with itchy foot,     Conceives and inchoates the argument,     Sprinkling each flower appropriate to the time,     Ovidian quip or Ciceronian crank,     A-bubble in the larynx while he laughs,     As he had fritters deep down frying there.     How he turns, twists, and tries the oily thing     Shall be first speech for Guido gainst the Fisc,     Then with a skip as it were from heel to head,     Leaving yourselves fill up the middle bulk     O the Trial, reconstruct its shape august,     From such exordium clap we to the close;     Give you, if we dare wing to such a height,     The absolute glory in some full-grown speech     On the other side, some finished butterfly,     Some breathing diamond-flake with leaf-gold fans,     That takes the air, no trace of worm it was,     Or cabbage-bed it had production from.     Giovambattista o the Bottini, Fisc,     Pompilias patron by the chance of the hour,     To-morrow her persecutor, composite, he,     As becomes who must meet such various calls     Odds of age joined in him with ends of youth.     A man of ready smile and facile tear,     Improvised hopes, despairs at nod and beck,     And language ah, the gift of eloquence!     Language that goes as easy as a glove     Oer good and evil, smoothens both to one.     Rashness helps caution with him, fires the straw,     In free enthusiastic careless fit,     On the first proper pinnacle of rock     Which happens, as reward for all that zeal,     To lure some bark to founder and bring gain:     While calm sits Caution, rapt with heavenward eye,     A true confessors gaze amid the glare,     Beaconing to the breaker, death and hell.     Well done, thou good and faithful! she approves.     Hadst thou let slip a faggot to the beach,     The crew had surely spied thy precipice     And saved their boat; the simple and the slow,     Who should have prompt forestalled the wreckers fee:     Let the next crew be wise and hail in time!     Just so compounded is the outside man,     Blue juvenile, pure eye, and pippin cheek,     And brow all prematurely soiled and seamed     With sudden age, bright devastated hair.     Ah, but you miss the very tones o the voice,     The scrannel pipe that screams in heights of head,     As, in his modest studio, all alone,     The tall wight stands a-tiptoe, strives and strains,     Both eyes shut, like the cockerel that would crow,     Tries to his own self amorously oer     What never will be uttered else than so     To the four walls, for Forum and Mars Hill,     Speaks out the poesy which, penned, turns prose.     Clavecinist debarred his instrument,     He yet thrums shirking neither turn nor trill,     With desperate finger on dumb table-edge     The sovereign rondo, shall conclude his Suite,     Charm an imaginary audience there,     From old Corelli to young Haendel, both     I the flesh at Rome, ere he perforce go print     The cold black score, mere music for the mind     The last speech against Guido and his gang,     With special end to prove Pompilia pure.     How the Fisc vindicates Pompilias fame.     Then comes the all but end, the ultimate     Judgment save yours. Pope Innocent the Twelfth,     Simple, sagacious, mild yet resolute,     With prudence, probity and what beside     From the other world he feels impress at times,     Having attained to fourscore years and six,     How, when the court found Guido and the rest     Guilty, but law supplied a subterfuge     And passed the final sentence to the Pope,     He, bringing his intelligence to bear     This last time on what ball behoves him drop     In the urn, or white or black, does drop a black,     Send five souls more to just precede his own,     Stand him in stead and witness, if need were,     How he is wont to do Gods work on earth     The manner of his sitting out the dim     Droop of a sombre February day     In the plain closet where he does such work,     With, from all Peters treasury, one stool,     One table, and one lathen crucifix.     There sits the Pope, his thoughts for company;     Grave but not sad, nay, something like a cheer     Leaves the lips free to be benevolent,     Which, all day long, did duty firm and fast.     A cherishing there is of foot and knee,     A chafing loose-skinned large-veined hand with hand,     What steward but knows when stewardship earns its wage,     May levy praise, anticipate the lord?     He reads, notes, lays the papers down at last,     Muses, then takes a turn about the room;     Unclasps a huge tome in an antique guise,     Primitive print and tongue half obsolete,     That stands him in diurnal stead; opes page,     Finds place where falls the passage to be conned     According to an order long in use:     And, as he comes upon the evenings chance,     Starts somewhat, solemnises straight his smile,     Then reads aloud that portion first to last,     And at the end lets flow his own thoughts forth     Likewise aloud, for respite and relief,     Till by the dreary relics of the west     Wan through the half-moon window, all his light,     He bows the head while the lips move in prayer,     Writes some three brief lines, signs and seals the same,     Tinkles a hand-bell, bids the obsequious Sir     Who puts foot presently o the closet-sill     He watched outside of, bear as superscribed     That mandate to the Governor forthwith:     Then heaves abroad his cares in one good sigh,     Traverses corridor with no mans help,     And so to sup as a clear conscience should.     The manner of the judgment of the Pope.     Then must speak Guido yet a second time,     Satans old saw being apt here skin for skin,     All a man hath that will he give for life.     While life was graspable and gainable, free     To bird-like buzz her wings round Guidos brow,     Not much truth stiffened out the web of words     He wove to catch her: when away she flew     And death came, deaths breath rivelled up the lies,     Left bare the metal thread, the fibre fine     Of truth, i the spinning: the true words come last.     How Guido, to another purpose quite,     Speaks and despairs, the last night of his life,     In that New Prison by Castle Angelo     At the bridge-foot: the same man, another voice.     On a stone bench in a close fetid cell,     Where the hot vapour of an agony,     Struck into drops on the cold wall, runs down     Horrible worms made out of sweat and tears     There crouch, well nigh to the knees in dungeon-straw,     Lit by the sole lamp suffered for their sake,     Two awe-struck figures, this a Cardinal,     That an Abate, both of old styled friends     Of the part-man part-monster in the midst,     So changed is Franceschinis gentle blood.     The tiger-cat screams now, that whined before,     That pried and tried and trod so gingerly,     Till in its silkiness the trap-teeth join;     Then you know how the bristling fury foams.     They listen, this wrapped in his folds of red,     While his feet fumble for the filth below;     The other, as beseems a stouter heart,     Working his best with beads and cross to ban     The enemy that comes in like a flood     Spite of the standard set up, verily     And in no trope at all, against him there:     For at the prison-gate, just a few steps     Outside, already, in the doubtful dawn,     Thither, from this side and from that, slow sweep     And settle down in silence solidly,     Crow-wise, the frightful Brotherhood of Death.     Black-hatted and black-hooded huddle they,     Black rosaries a-dangling from each waist;     So take they their grim station at the door,     Torches alight and cross-bones-banner spread,     And that gigantic Christ with open arms,     Grounded. Nor lacks there aught but that the group     Break forth, intone the lamentable psalm,     Out of the deeps, Lord, have I cried to thee!     When inside, from the true profound, a sign     Shall bear intelligence that the foe is foiled,     Count Guido Franceschini has confessed,     And is absolved and reconciled with God.     Then they, intoning, may begin their march,     Make by the longest way for the Peoples Square,     Carry the criminal to his crimes reward:     A mob to cleave, a scaffolding to reach,     Two gallows and Mannaia crowning all.     Now Guido made defence a second time.     Finally, even as thus by step and step     I led you from the level of to-day     Up to the summit of so long ago,     Here, whence I point you the wide prospect round     Let me, by like steps, slope you back to smooth,     Land you on mother-earth, no whit the worse,     To feed o the fat o the furrow: free to dwell,     Taste our times better things profusely spread     For all who love the level, corn and wine,     Much cattle and the many-folded fleece.     Shall not my friends go feast again on sward,     Though cognisant of country in the clouds     Higher than wistful eagles horny eye     Ever unclosed for, mid ancestral crags,     When morning broke and Spring was back once more,     And he died, heaven, save by his heart, unreached?     Yet heaven my fancy lifts to, ladder-like,     As Jack reached, holpen of his beanstalk-rungs!     A novel country: I might make it mine     By choosing which one aspect of the year     Suited mood best, and putting solely that     On panel somewhere in the House of Fame,     Landscaping what I saved, not what I saw:     Might fix you, whether frost in goblin-time     Startled the moon with his abrupt bright laugh,     Or, Augusts hair afloat in filmy fire,     She fell, arms wide, face foremost on the world,     Swooned there and so singed out the strength of things.     Thus were abolished Spring and Autumn both,     The land dwarfed to one likeness of the land,     Life cramped corpse-fashion. Rather learn and love     Each facet-flash of the revolving year!     Red, green, and blue that whirl into a white,     The variance now, the eventual unity,     Which make the miracle. See it for yourselves,     This mans act, changeable because alive!     Action now shrouds, now shows the informing thought;     Man, like a glass ball with a spark a-top,     Out of the magic fire that lurks inside,     Shows one tint at a time to take the eye:     Which, let a finger touch the silent sleep,     Shifted a hairs-breadth shoots you dark for bright,     Suffuses bright with dark, and baffles so     Your sentence absolute for shine or shade.     Once set such orbs, white styled, black stigmatised,     A-rolling, see them once on the other side     Your good men and your bad men every one,     From Guido Franceschini to Guy Faux,     Oft would you rub your eyes and change your names.     Such, British Public, ye who like me not,     (God love you!) whom I yet have laboured for,     Perchance more careful whoso runs may read     Than erst when all, it seemed, could read who ran,     Perchance more careless whoso reads may praise     Than late when he who praised and read and wrote     Was apt to find himself the self-same me,     Such labour had such issue, so I wrought     This arc, by furtherance of such alloy,     And so, by one spirt, take away its trace     Till, justifiably golden, rounds my ring.     A ring without a posy, and that ring mine?     O lyric Love, half-angel and half-bird     And all a wonder and a wild desire,     Boldest of hearts that ever braved the sun,     Took sanctuary within the holier blue.     And sang a kindred soul out to his face,     Yet human at the red-ripe of the heart     When the first summons from the darkling earth     Reached thee amid thy chambers, blanched their blue,     And bared them of the glory to drop down,     To toil for man, to suffer or to die,     This is the same voice: can thy soul know change?     Hail then, and hearken from the realms of help!     Never may I commence my song, my due     To God who best taught song by gift of thee,     Except with bent head and beseeching hand     That still, despite the distance and the dark,     What was, again may be; some interchange     Of grace, some splendour once thy very thought,     Some benediction anciently thy smile:     Never conclude, but raising hand and head     Thither where eyes, that cannot reach, yet yearn     For all hope, all sustainment, all reward,     Their utmost up and on, so blessing back     In those thy realms of help, that heaven thy home,     Some whiteness which, I judge, thy face makes proud,     Some wanness where, I think, thy foot may fall!