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- Herausgeber: DigiCat
- Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
- Sprache: Englisch
Robert Browning's 'The Ring and the Book' is a masterful depiction of a complex legal case that intertwines the themes of love, justice, and moral ambiguity. Structured as a dramatic narrative poem divided into twelve books, Browning employs multiple perspectives to invite readers into the minds of various characters, elevating a seemingly straightforward tale of murder into a profound exploration of human motivation and philosophical discourse. The innovative use of dramatic monologues enhances the emotional depth and psychological realism, allowing each speaker to assert their own version of truth, reflecting Browning's engagement with contemporary debates on ethics, perception, and truth in Victorian society. Browning, a leading figure of the Victorian poetic movement, draws inspiration from historical sources, notably the infamous Roman trial of Francesco del Nero, whose alleged murder of his wife sparked a sensational court case. His experiences with dramatic theatre and his perfecting of the monologue form shaped his ability to render multifaceted characters who grapple with existential uncertainties and societal expectations, resulting in this intricate narrative that marries storytelling with philosophical inquiry. 'The Ring and the Book' is highly recommended for readers interested in the intersections of justice and morality, as well as those who appreciate rich, character-driven narratives. Browning's careful verse and adept handling of complex themes make this work a significant contribution to both poetic literature and psychological exploration, promising a rewarding experience for any scholar or casual reader alike.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
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The Ring and the Book
Table of Content
Introduction
The Ring and the Book, the longest and most important of Browning’s poems, is the product of several years of creative activity during the period of his fullest maturity. The love romance which had enriched his life for fifteen years had come to an end, and his thought was searching more profoundly than ever before the problems of life and death. For twenty years he had been devoting his art to casual subjects in rich succession; Men and Women and Dramatis Personœ lay in the immediate past, and the dramatic monologue had become an easy from for voicing his imaginations; yet he must have craved the fuller joy of expressing through some larger subject and at far greater length his conception of human life and of the Divine in and above the world.
The occasion for this expression came in the chance discovery of the Old Yellow Book in June 1860 on a market barrow in the Piazza di San Lorenzo, Florence, as told by Browning in the poem. This book is the record of a sensational murder trial at Rome, January-February 1698, and gives many of the facts and motives of an ignoble intrigue for certain properties, culminating in a brutal assassination and in the subsequent execution of the criminals. It was a dark page from the criminal annals of Rome, and time had all but effaced the record when it fell into the hands of the poet. The problem of making these dead fragments live again challenged the imagination of Browning, and by the power of his imagination he saw there in Florence that June night how the crime had stirred Rome a century and a half earlier. So interested did he become in the Franceschini story that he frequently told it to his friends in conversation, and is said to have offered it to one of them as the plot of an historical novel. Eventually the inspiration came to him to tell the story through his art of poetry, and what was more, he saw the opportunity of expressing through the incidents of this base crime his own fuller vision of man. The interpretation of the Yellow Book in his poem involved the whole problem of life as the poet saw it.
How then should he unfold his views? His own age had perfected the novel to present at length the activities and motives of man, and Browning learned much of his art from the novel. Yet he was no novelist, and he left unattempted the possible historical novel in the subject. Long years before he had tried the drama, and had been defeated by a half success, nor could a stage drama trace the minute threads of motive in this case. In the narrative poem as such he had little interest, and seldom practised the fascination of the narrator. Browning’s one purpose in the art of poetry was to search the heart deeply for motive. He had by years of practice developed the dramatic monologue to a high point of efficacy in expressing motive. It is accordingly not surprising that he made a “strange art of an art familiar,” and by the repetition of the story in many forms in a series of dramatic monologues, he invented a new type of poem which grew directly out of the material before him, and enabled him to tell the Franceschini story more truly than through any of the established forms of art.
This tragic course of events had not developed simply and symmetrically. Life seldom does. It was a confused web of disputed fact, with motive and counter-motive, genuine or sham, conventional or personal, further entangled by the professional casuistry of the lawyers, until the right and wrong of the story seemed hopelessly obscured. Such confusion surrounds every deeper crisis which stirs the heart of man, as is illustrated in the journalistic hubbub around every sensational crime and its trial at the bar of justice. Literary art tends to simplify all this by the intensification of the prevailing motives, and by the eradication of whatever distracts from these. Yet in the successive development of the epic, the drama, and the novel as methods of picturing life, there has been a distinct evolution away from this artistic singleness toward the variety and intricacy of life. The novel offers large opportunities to present this human complexity. Browning carries literary development a step farther by using in a new way the multi-monologue form of narrative, in which he tells the story from a series of personal standpoints, each of which modifies fact and motive with iridescent shadings of significance and with the perplexing but thrilling uncertainties which we find in real life. He illustrates by his art also the great principle which he found in life — the apparent relativity of truth —“The truth is this to thee and that to me.” He sees that the perception of truth is one of the most vital functions of personality, and that the kind and degree of our perception of it are invariably restricted by all limitations of personality. In monologue after monologue in his previous art Browning had tinged a thought or a passion or a story by the prejudice of the speaker. When at last he found the Old Yellow Book, it gave him illustration after illustration of such perversion of truth through personal bias. It became inevitable for him, therefore, in his strong sense of the obligation to represent the full truth of the tragedy, that he should tell and retell the story from the various personal standpoints possible until he had turned every phase of it to the reader. His figures of the landscape and the glass ball, book i. II. 1348-1378, illustrate this.
The Franceschini tragedy and the environing life of Rome thus come to live again before the reader in all that essential intricacy which we find in the world outside of books. In fact, the poem gives the impression not of a book, but of throbbing life, confused almost past finding out. We should read the successive monologues not for a chain of incident, nor for the achievement of a final judgment on the merits of the case, but to study the hearts of actors and spectators alike, as they pulsate with passions, noble or ignoble, which surge around that act of murder on January 2, 1698.
What persons then should be chosen as narrators? What personal standpoints were significant and vital to the complete understanding of the tragedy? First and most important were the three principals — the husband, the wife, and the priest Caponsacchi. Then the legal presentation of facts in the Yellow Book suggested the representation of the professional interpreters of law. Was not law the “patent-truth- extracting process” which man had established to ascertain the rights and wrongs of such cases? Hence Browning includes two of the attorneys found in the recorded case, though he cannot suppress his ironic attitude toward them. Above the lawyers stood their ultimate superior, the Pope, through whose final judgment the sentence was executed against the criminals; in him was exhibited judicial deliberation illuminated by an almost prophetic insight into divine truth. Beyond these six monologues, the poet saw the need of other narratives, which would present the story as it appeared to common, outside Rome. None of the actual personages involved, such as Abate Paolo, Canon, Conti, or Violante, could serve this purpose satisfactorily. Hence the poet invented two purely, typical, anonymous personages, “Half-Rome” and “Other Half-Rome,” who represent the two prejudiced camps of opinion which made up “reasonless, unreasoning Rome.” These speakers were doubtless suggested to the poet by the two anonymous Italian narratives of the murder story, which are included in the Yellow Book. Then in a sport of irony and caricature he invented “Tertium Quid”— a third Something — the supercilious, contemptuous opinion of the man who takes pride in his unsympathy, and who plays with judgment trivially, smartly, and sneeringly, even in the face of this violent crime — who found nothing in human life worthy of serious consideration save the etiquette and intrigue of his own polite circle. These three typical personages represent the opinion of Rome at large, but they also afford the poet and opportunity to tell and retell the story until all the details of fact have become familiar to the reader. Consequently when he passes on to the heart of the poem in the monologues of Guido, Caponsacchi, and Pompilia, he need no longer tell a story, but can devote himself entirely to such incidents and passions as bring out most fully and subtly the character of the speakers. The reading of books ii., iii., and iv., is a fundamental preparation of the reader for the complete understanding of the monologues of Guido, Caponsacchi, and Pompilia. When the poet had written these thrice three monologues he evidently felt his poem to be incomplete of final effect if he left the reader in any possible uncertainty as to the true nature of Guido. In book v. the poet had presented the Guido of skilled subterfuge and of supercilious reliance on the privileges of a sham social condition. He would now give us the genuine Guido, fierce, brutal, ignoble, depraved, blasphemous, till we shudder at the abyss of darkness in his heart. These are the ten monologues of the Ring and the Book, not ten repetitions of the same story, but ten glimpses into the human heart as it reacts upon a story which every changes with the personality of the narrator.
To this body of the poem Browning adds his prefatory and concluding books, both of them entirely unconventional in their form, but direct and vitally truthful to the poem as a whole, and to the Old Yellow Book before the poet. The first book is an invaluable preparatory miscellany, including the explanation of the title of the poem, an account of the finding of the Yellow Book, of its contents, of Browning’s immediate interest in it, and of his creative reaction in response to it; then a series of summaries of the monologue situations which follow in the succeeding books of the poem, and finally the invocation and dedication to Mrs.Browning. The concluding book is equally miscellaneous, and its purpose is to complete the story which had been broken by Guido’s shriek in his dungeon, and to lead the reader down from the glaring lights of mid-story into the creeping oblivion which overtook this fact as it overtakes all things human. The device of telling about Guido’s execution through the letters of eye-witnesses was suggested to the poet by the three letters of the Yellow Book, one of which, the letter of Arcangeli, is included in full, lines 239 — 288. From the additional Italian narrative which had fallen to his hands, Browning then fashions the ghastly spectacle of the throngs of Rome pressing curiously and unfeelingly around Guido’s scaffold. Even the final absolution of the memory of Pompilia and the establishment of her innocence takes the form of the court decree included in the Yellow Book. At last the inevitable tide of time surges over all, and the Franceschini tragedy and its stir in Rome are swept into final oblivion.
Through the ten voices of the ten monologues, Browning does not merely tell a story; he pictures the life of Rome and Arezzo in the year 1698, with all their play of professional and social motive. The accounts of the motives of Guido and Caponsacchi for entering the church reveal the great worldly ecclesiastical establishment of which they are a part. In domestic life the sacrament of marriage is pictured as mere barter and sale, not unmingled with fraud.
Marriage making for the earth,
With gold so much — birth, power, repute, so much,
Or beauty, youth so much, in lack of these.
And the law and the law courts, with their countless delays and perversions of justice are seen in a confusion of law. suits, civil and criminal, which surrounded Pompilia’s life. Rome is portrayed in the poem with an art more subtle and penetrating than is usually found in the art of the historical novel.
Yet here, as at all times, Browning is interested in men rather than institutions; in Abate Paolo, Canon Conti, the Confessors Romano and Celestino rather than in the church as such; in Arcangeli and Bottini rather than in the profession of the law. Hence many who were mere names in the Yellow Book become personal and alive in the poem. Violante stands forth in all her meddlesome self-will. Donna Beatrice grows portentously to a true novercal type, amplifying the sketch of the old duchess in the Flight of the Duchess. The worldly Bishop of Arezzo again yields to the Franceschini in bland deference the victim they desire. A score and more of persons have started into life from the old record, and are significant to Browning as a searcher of the heart of man.
But it is in the interpretation of the three chief actors that the creative Browning best found expression. Guido, Caponsacchi, and Pompilia become at last the measure of Browning’s mastery and insight, and are the high-water mark of his creative imagination.
Browning has represented many evil men in his art, but all his other villains pale into insignificance beside the full, passionate, living portrayal of Guido Franceschini. Yet Guido is not a monster, nor an accidentally unfortunate man; he is the hideous outgrowth of a self-seeking, Christless society, in which nobility is no longer a spiritual attribute, but has become a mere merchantable asset and a shield for crouching littlenesses. The Yellow Book makes plain accusation concerning the ruthless greed of Guido, but Browning connects this with the effete nobility and the worldly churchmanship of the day as he saw it. And this theme of greed is made to run through the whole Franceschini family with variations. Guido’s final desperation of hate and of misanthropy expresses itself in his terrible ravings in his prison cell on the night before his execution.
Caponsacchi, on the other hand, is Browning’s highest conception of heroic manhood, not an unreal, and vainly ideal dream, but a passionate, earnest, and great-hearted man, with a lovable impetuosity and rashness at times. He is a modern St. George, saving a woman in desperate plight by a reckless display of courage. Called suddenly from the narrow, uneventful life of an idle, fashionable canon, not by a great, shining duty, but by a low cry of pain from the roadside, he threw prudence and self-seeking to the wind that he might worship God in saving this woman. Though he is summoned by pity, he is detained by passion — not a debasing, physical passion, but passion controlled by the consecrating power of reverential love, as of the divine. He worships Pompilia with no merely conventional worship of love-sick poetising, but he bows, is blest by the revelation of Pompilia, who seems to him to be an embodiment of the virtues of the Madonna, whom he as a priest had been taught to revere. Into this portrait of his “soldier-saint” Browning put much that was noblest in his own high type of manhood.
In Pompilia, Browning has achieved his master picture of woman. Probably the character of the real Pompilia as it shone from the affidavit of Fra Celestino in the Old Yellow Book fixed the poet’s attention on this story. She is represented there as saint and martyr in simple loveliness of character. He further endowed her with the highest spiritual graces which may glorify woman, the passion of maternity, the devoted love for the man who embodies her ideal of manly nobility, and her unquestioning faith in God “held fast despite the plucking fiend.” These are greater and more essential to the highest womanhood than the intellectuality of Balaustion, or the social charm and grace of Colombe. Pompilia of the Yellow Book has been glorified at last with all that Browning had found most divine in that woman whom he reverenced primarily as a woman of these same spiritual graces, and only secondarily as a woman of genius.
The Pope might be added to the noble portraits of this great poem of humanity. As Caponsacchi may be said to represent the passionate and noble-worldly side of Browning’s nature, so the Pope represents his graver, more other worldly character. Browning has given us an unfading portrait of the great, wise, grave Pope, facing a sad duty, and turning from it to confront the darkest problems which may assail the human heart. But he creates the Pope less as a portrait than as a mouthpiece. Through this wise, earnest personality he would speak what he himself felt most deeply in the tragedy. No historic Pope could have spoken as Browning makes Pope Innocent speak. It may be pointed out that Browning uses his other great old men of this period in the same way, as mouthpieces of his own vision of truth: for such undoubtedly is his use of Rabbi Ben Ezra, of the Apostle John, and of the Russian village pope in Ivan Ivanovitch. Through the Pope, therefore, Browning gives his own mature verdict in the case, and gives it weight by the impressive personality of the Pope as he presents him.
The slow toil of years had at last carried out the plan which came suddenly to the poet as he was thinking of the materials in the Yellow Book, yet it was not the “gold” of fact but the “alloy” of personality, the richly endowed nature of Robert Browning that raised the poem to greatness. It is at last the one poem which seems to employ every power of his mastership, and to utter his deepest convictions concerning the life of man.
Charles W. Hodell.
Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.A.January 27, 1911.
The Ring and The Book
Do you see this Ring?
’Tis Rome-work, made to match (By Castellani’s imitative craft)
Etrurian circlets found, some happy morn, After a dropping April; found alive Spark-like ’mid unearthed slope-side figtree-roots That roof old tombs at Chiusi: soft, you see, Yet crisp as jewel-cutting. There’s one trick, (Craftsmen instruct me) one approved device
10
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 o’erflow — To bear the file’s tooth and the hammer’s 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
20
With gold’s alloy, and, duly tempering both, Effects a manageable mass, then works.
But his work ended, once the thing a ring, Oh, there’s repristination! Just a spirt O’ the proper fiery acid o’er 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 —
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No carat lost, and you have gained a ring.
What of it? ’Tis a figure, a symbol, say; A thing’s 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 man’s life when hearts beat hard, And brains, high-blooded, ticked two centuries since?
Examine it yourselves! I found this book, Gave a lira for it, eightpence English just,
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(Mark the predestination!) when a Hand, Always above my shoulder, pushed me once, One day still fierce ’mid many a day struck calm, Across a Square in Florence, crammed with booths, Buzzing and blaze, noontide and market-time; Toward Baccio’s marble — ay, the basement-ledge 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.
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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
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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
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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 dog’s-eared Spicilegium, the fond tale O’ the Frail One of the Flower, by young Dumas, Vulgarised Horace for the use of schools,
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The Life, Death, Miracles of Saint Somebody, Saint Somebody Else, his Miracles, Death and Life — With this, one glance at the lettered back of which, And “Stall!” cried I: a lira made it mine.
Here it is, this I toss and take again; Small-quarto size, part print part manuscript: A book in shape but, really, pure crude fact Secreted from man’s life when hearts beat hard, And brains, high-blooded, ticked two centuries since.
Give it me back! The thing’s restorative
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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,
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And whisk their faded fresh. And on I read Presently, though my path grew perilous Between the outspread straw-work, piles of plait Soon to be flapping, each o’er two black eyes And swathe of Tuscan hair, on festas fine; Through fire-irons, tribes of tongs, shovels in sheaves, Skeleton bedsteads, wardrobe-drawers agape, Rows of tall slim brass lamps with dangling gear — And worse, cast clothes a-sweetening in the sun: None of them took my eye from off my prize.
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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.
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“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,
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“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 —
140
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 Chamber’s type,
150
And so submitted to the eye o’ the Court Presided over by His Reverence
Rome’s Governor and Criminal Judge — the trial Itself, to all intents, being then as now Here in the book and nowise out of it; Seeing, there properly was no judgment-bar, No bringing of accuser and accused, And whoso judged both parties, face to face Before some court, as we conceive of courts.
There was a Hall of Justice; that came last:
160
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 —“Murder’s proved; “With five… what we call qualities of bad, “Worse, worst, and yet worse still, and still worse yet;
170
“Crest over crest crowning the cockatrice, “That beggar hell’s regalia to enrich “Count Guido Franceschini: punish him!”
Thus was the paper put before the court In the next stage (no noisy work at all), To study at ease. In due time like reply Came from the so-styled Patron of the Poor, Official mouthpiece of the five accused Too poor to fee a better — Guido’s luck
180
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 — there’s our Count “Charactered in a word; and, what’s more strange,
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“He had companionship in privilege, “Found four courageous conscientious friends: “Absolve, applaud all five, as props of law, “Sustainers of society! — perchance “A trifle over-hasty with the hand “To hold her tottering ark, had tumbled else; “But that’s a splendid fault whereat we wink, “Wishing your cold correctness sparkled so!”
Thus paper second followed paper first, Thus did the two join issue — nay, the four,
200
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.
210
“A miracle, ay — of lust and impudence; “Hear my new reasons!” interposed the first: “— Coupled with more of mine!” pursued his peer.
“Beside, the precedents, the authorities!”
From both at once a cry with an echo, that!
That was a firebrand at each fox’s tail Unleashed in a cornfield: soon spread flare enough, As hurtled thither and there heaped themselves From earth’s four corners, all authority And precedent for putting wives to death,
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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:
230
That nice decision of Dolabella, eh?
That pregnant instance of Theodoric, oh!
Down to that choice example Ælian gives (An instance I find much insisted on) Of the elephant who, brute-beast though he were, Yet understood and punished on the spot His master’s naughty spouse and 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,
240
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:
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“As for the Four who helped the One, all Five — “Why, let employer and hirelings share alike “In guilt and guilt’s reward, the death their 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! —
260
“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, “Primœ tonsurœ, subdiaconus, “Sacerdos, so he slips from underneath “Your power, the temporal, slides inside the robe “Of mother Church: to her we make appeal “By the Pope, the Church’s head!”
A parlous plea,
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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,
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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 Emperor’s 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,
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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,
300
Cried the Pope’s 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 men’s ears — the sect for a quarter of an hour
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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
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That men would merrily say, “Halt, deaf, and blind, Who feed on fat things, leave the master’s self “To gather up the fragments of his feast, “These be the nephews of Pope Innocent! — “His own meal costs but five carlines a day, “Poor-priest’s allowance, for he claims no more.”
— He cried of a sudden, this 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,
330
“Instead of, as alleged, a piece of one — “And further, were he, from the tonsured scalp “To the sandaled sole of him, my son and Christ’s, “Instead of touching us by finger-tip “As you assert, and pressing up so close “Only to set a blood-smutch on our robe — “I and Christ would renounce all right in him.
“Am I not Pope, and presently to die, “And busied how to render my account, “And shall I wait a day ere I decide
340
“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,
350
— 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 Guido’s rank) But at the city’s 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,
360
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 Ademollo’s name,
370
The etcher of those prints, two crazie each, Saved by a stone from snowing broad the Square With scenic backgrounds? Was this truth of force?
Able to take its own part as truth should, Sufficient, self-sustaining? Why, if so — Yonder’s a fire, into it goes my book, As who shall say me nay, and what the loss?
You know the tale already: I may ask, Rather than think to tell you, more thereof — Ask you not merely who were he and she,
380
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
390
By the husband as accomplices in crime, Those Comparini, Pietro and his spouse — What say you to the right or wrong of that, When, at a known name whispered through the door Of a lone villa on a Christmas night, It opened that the joyous hearts inside Might welcome as it were an angel-guest Come in Christ’s name to knock and enter, sup And satisfy the loving ones he saved; And so did welcome devils and their death?
400
I have been silent on that circumstance Although the couple passed for close of kin To wife and husband, were by some accounts Pompilia’s very parents: you know best.
Also that infant the great joy was for, That Gaetano, the wife’s two-weeks’ babe, The husband’s first-born child, his son and heir, Whose birth and being turned his night to day — Why must the father kill the mother thus Because she bore his son and saved himself?
410
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 here’s time paid his tax,
420
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 truth’s power On likely people. “Have you met such names?
“Is a tradition extant of such facts?
“Your law-courts stand, your records frown a-row: “What if I rove and rummage?” “— Why, you’ll waste “Your pains and end as wise as you began!”
Every one snickered: “names and facts thus old
430
“Are newer much than Europe news we find “Down in to-day’s Diario. Records, quotha?
“Why, the French burned them, what else do the French?
“The rap-and-rending nation! And it tells “Against the Church, no doubt — another gird “At the Temporality, your Trial, of course?”
“— Quite otherwise this time,” submitted I; “Clean for the Church and dead against the world, “The flesh and the devil, does it tell for once.”
“— The rarer and the happier! All the same,
440
“Content you with your treasure of a book, “And waive what’s wanting! Take a friend’s advice!
“It’s not the custom of the country. Mend “Your ways indeed and we may stretch a point: “Go get you manned by Manning and new-manned “By Newman and, mayhap, wise-manned to boot “By Wiseman, and we’ll see or else we won’t!
“Thanks meantime for the story, long and strong, “A pretty piece of narrative enough, “Which scarce ought so to drop out, one would think,
450
“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 don’t you deal in.poetry, make-believe, “And the white lies it sounds like?”
Yes and no!
From the book, yes; thence bit by bit I dug The lingot truth, that memorable day,
460
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,
470
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
480
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,
490
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 street’s end, north away Out of the Roman gate to the Roman road
500
By the river, till I felt the Apennine.
And there would lie Arezzo, the man’s town, The woman’s trap and cage and torture-place, Also the stage where the priest played his part, A spectacle for angels — ay, indeed, There lay Arezzo! Farther then I fared, Feeling my way on through the hot and dense, Romeward, until I found the wayside inn By Castelnuovo’s few mean hut-like homes Huddled together on the hill-foot bleak, Bare, broken only by that tree or two
510
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? —
520
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, Pompilia’s parents, as they thought themselves, Two poor ignoble hearts who did their best
530
Part God’s way, part the other way than God’s, To somehow make a shift and scramble through The world’s mud, careless if it splashed and spoiled, Provided they might so hold high, keep clean Their child’s soul, one soul white enough for three, And lift it to whatever star should stoop, What possible sphere of purer life than theirs Should come in aid of whiteness hard to save.
I saw the star stoop, that they strained to touch, And did touch and depose their treasure on,
540
As Guido Franceschini took away
Pompilia to be his for evermore,
While they sang “Now let us depart in peace, “Having beheld thy glory, Guido’s 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,
550
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
560
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,
570
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
580
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,
590
He and the poor lost lady borne so brave, — Checking the song of praise in me, had else Swelled to the full for God’s 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, earth’s roof and, last, heaven’s floor,
600
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.
610
All was grave, silent, sinister — when, ha?
Glimmeringly did a pack of were-wolves pad The snow, those flames were Guido’s 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 o’er the flash of teeth, And tongues that lolled — Oh God that madest man!
They parleyed in their language. Then one whined —
620
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,
630
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!”
640
Cried the world come to judgment, granting grace Or dealing doom according to world’s wont, Those world’s-bystanders grouped on Rome’s cross-road At prick and summons of the primal curse Which bids man love as well as make a lie.
There prattled they, discoursed the right and wrong, Turned wrong to right, proved wolves sheep and sheep wolves, So that you scarce distinguished fell from fleece; Till out spoke a great guardian of the fold, Stood up, put forth his hand that held the crook,
650
And motioned that the arrested point decline: Horribly off, the wriggling dead-weight reeled, Rushed to the bottom and lay ruined there.
Though still at the pit’s mouth, despite the smoke 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
660
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, time’s 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,
670
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,
680
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,
690
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; there’s nothing in nor out o’ the world Good except truth: yet this, the something else,
700
What’s this then, which proves good yet seems untrue?
This that I mixed with truth, motions of mine That quickened, made the inertness malleolable O’ the gold was not mine — what’s your name for this?
Are means to the end, themselves in part the end?
Is fiction which makes fact alive, fact too?
The somehow may be thishow.
I find first
Writ down for very A B C of fact,
“In the beginning God made heaven and earth;”
710
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 God’s process in man’s due degree, Attaining man’s proportionate result — Creates, no, but resuscitates, perhaps.
720
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,
730
Something with too much life or not enough, Which, either way imperfect, ended once: An end whereat man’s impulse intervenes, Makes new beginning, starts the dead alive, Completes the incomplete and saves the thing.
Man’s breath were vain to light a virgin wick — Half-burned-out, all but quite-quenched wicks o’ the lamp Stationed for temple-service on this earth, These indeed let him breathe on and relume!
For such man’s feat is, in the due degree,
740
— 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
750
“Half of my soul; which in its pilgrimage “O’er old unwandered waste ways of the world, “May chance upon some fragment of a whole, “Rag of 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 Faust’s!”
760
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,
770
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?
780
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,
790
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
800
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
810
And faithless parents who abetted her I’ the flight aforesaid, wronged nor God nor man.
“Nor false she, nor yet faithless they,” replied The accuser; “cloaked and masked this murder glooms; “True was Pompilia, loyal too the pair; “Out of the man’s own heart this monster curled, “This crime coiled with connivancy at crime, “His victim’s breast, he tells you, hatched and reared; “Uncoil we and stretch stark the worm of hell!”
A month the trial swayed this way and that
820
Ere judgment settled down on Guido’s 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 o’er 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?)
830
— 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 world’s outcry
840
Around the rush and ripple of any fact Fallen stonewise, plumb on the smooth face of things; The world’s guess, as it crowds the bank o’ the pool, At what were figure and substance, by their 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-Rome’s feel after the vanished truth; Honest enough, as the way is: all the same, Harbouring in the centre of its sense
850
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 hair’s-breadth at the shoulder-blade, The arm o’ the feeler, dip he ne’er so brave; And so leads waveringly, lets fall wide O’the mark his finger meant to find, and fix Truth at the bottom, that deceptive speck.
With this Half-Rome — the source of swerving, call
860
Over-belief in Guido’s right and wrong Rather than in Pompilia’s 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 husband’s side the safer, and no whit Aware he is not Æacus the while — How such an one supposes and states fact
870
To whosoever of a multitude
Will listen, and perhaps prolong thereby The not-unpleasant flutter at the breast, Born of a certain spectacle shut in By the church Lorenzo opposite. So, they lounge Midway the mouth o’ the street, on Corso side, ’Twixt palace Fiano and palace Ruspoli, Linger and listen; keeping clear o’ the crowd, Yet wishful one could lend that crowd one’s eyes, (So universal is its plague of squint)
880
And make hearts beat our time that flutter false: — All for the truth’s sake, mere truth, nothing else!
How Half-Rome found for Guido much excuse.
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,
890
“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, Bernini’s creature plated to the paps,
900
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!
910
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: Rome’s first commotion in subsidence gives The curd o’ the cream, flower o’ the wheat, as it were, And finer sense o’ the city. Is this plain?
920
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.
