II.—NOON
Scene—Over Orcana. The house of Jules, who crosses its threshold with Phene: she is silent, on which Jules begins—
Do not die, Phene! I am yours now, you
Are mine now; let fate reach me how she likes,
If you'll not die: so, never die! Sit here—
My workroom's single seat. I over-lean
This length of hair and lustrous front; they turn5
Like an entire flower upward: eyes, lips, last
Your chin—no, last your throat turns: 'tis their scent
Pulls down my face upon you. Nay, look ever
This one way till I change, grow you—I could
Change into you, beloved!
You by me,10
And I by you; this is your hand in mine,
And side by side we sit: all's true. Thank God!
I have spoken: speak you!
O my life to come!
My Tydeus must be carved that's there in clay;
Yet how be carved, with you about the room?15
Where must I place you? When I think that once
This roomfull of rough block-work seemed my heaven
Without you! Shall I ever work again,
Get fairly into my old ways again,
Bid each conception stand while, trait by trait,20
My hand transfers its lineaments to stone?
Will my mere fancies live near you, their truth—
The live truth, passing and repassing me,
Sitting beside me?
Now speak!
Only first,
See, all your letters! Was't not well contrived?25
Their hiding-place is Psyche's robe; she keeps
Your letters next her skin: which drops out foremost?
Ah—this that swam down like a first moonbeam
Into my world!
Again those eyes complete
Their melancholy survey, sweet and slow,30
Of beauty—to the human archetype.
On me, with pity, yet some wonder too:
As if God bade some spirit plague a world,
And this were the one moment of surprise
And sorrow while she took her station, pausing35
O'er what she sees, finds good, and must destroy!
What gaze you at? Those? Books, I told you of;
Let your first word to me rejoice them, too:
This minion, a Coluthus, writ in red
Bister and azure by Bessarion's scribe—40
Read this line—no, shame—Homer's be the Greek
First breathed me from the lips of my Greek girl!
This Odyssey in coarse black vivid type
With faded yellow blossoms 'twixt page and page,
To mark great places with due gratitude;45
"He said, and on Antinous directed
A bitter shaft"—a flower blots out the rest!
Again upon your search? My statues, then!
—Ah, do not mind that—better that will look
When cast in bronze—an Almaign Kaiser, that,50
Swart-green and gold, with truncheon based on hip.
This, rather, turn to! What, unrecognized?
I thought you would have seen that here you sit
As I imagined you—Hippolyta,
Naked upon her bright Numidian horse.55
Recall you this, then? "Carve in bold relief"—
So you commanded—"carve, against I come,
A Greek, in Athens, as our fashion was,
Feasting, bay-filleted and thunder-free,
Who rises 'neath the lifted myrtle-branch.60
'Praise Those who slew Hipparchus!' cry the guests,
'While o'er thy head the singer's myrtle waves
As erst above our champion: stand up all!'"
See, I have labored to express your thought.
Quite round, a cluster of mere hands and arms,65
(Thrust in all senses, all ways, from all sides,
Only consenting at the branch's end
They strain toward) serves for frame to a sole face,
The Praiser's, in the center: who with eyes
Sightless, so bend they back to light inside70
His brain where visionary forms throng up,
Sings, minding not that palpitating arch
Of hands and arms, nor the quick drip of wine
From the drenched leaves o'erhead, nor crowns cast off,
Violet and parsley crowns to trample on—75
Sings, pausing as the patron-ghosts approve,
Devoutly their unconquerable hymn.
But you must say a "well" to that—say "well!"
Because you gaze—am I fantastic, sweet?
Gaze like my very life's-stuff, marble—marbly80
Even to the silence! Why, before I found
The real flesh Phene, I inured myself
To see, throughout all nature, varied stuff
For better nature's birth by means of art:
With me, each substance tended to one form85
Of beauty—to the human archetype.
On every side occurred suggestive germs
Of that—the tree, the flower—or take the fruit—
Some rosy shape, continuing the peach,
Curved beewise o'er its bough; as rosy limbs,90
Depending, nestled in the leaves; and just
From a cleft rose-peach the whole Dryad sprang.
But of the stuffs one can be master of,
How I divined their capabilities!
From the soft-rinded smoothening facile chalk95
That yields your outline to the air's embrace,
Half-softened by a halo's pearly gloom;
Down to the crisp imperious steel, so sure
To cut its one confided thought clean out
Of all the world. But marble!—'neath my tools100
More pliable than jelly—as it were
Some clear primordial creature dug from depths
In the earth's heart, where itself breeds itself,
And whence all baser substance may be worked;
Refine it off to air, you may—condense it105
Down to the diamond—is not metal there,
When o'er the sudden speck my chisel trips?
—Not flesh, as flake off flake I scale, approach,
Lay bare those bluish veins of blood asleep?
Lurks flame in no strange windings where, surprised110
By the swift implement sent home at once,
Flushes and glowings radiate and hover
About its track?
Phene? what—why is this?
That whitening cheek, those still dilating eyes!
Ah, you will die—I knew that you would die!115
Phene begins, on his having long remained silent.
Now the end's coming; to be sure, it must
Have ended sometime! Tush, why need I speak
Their foolish speech? I cannot bring to mind
One half of it, beside; and do not care
For old Natalia now, nor any of them.120
Oh, you—what are you?—if I do not try
To say the words Natalia made me learn;
To please your friends—it is to keep myself
Where your voice lifted me, by letting that
Proceed; but can it? Even you, perhaps,125
Cannot take up, now you have once let fall,
The music's life, and me along with that—
No, or you would! We'll stay, then, as we are—
Above the world.
You creature with the eyes!
If I could look forever up to them,130
As now you let me—I believe all sin,
All memory of wrong done, suffering borne,
Would drop down, low and lower, to the earth
Whence all that's low comes, and there touch and stay
—Never to overtake the rest of me,135
All that, unspotted, reaches up to you,
Drawn by those eyes! What rises is myself,
Not me the shame and suffering; but they sink,
Are left, I rise above them. Keep me so,
Above the world!140
But you sink, for your eyes
Are altering—altered! Stay—"I love you, love"—
I could prevent it if I understood:
More of your words to me; was 't in the tone
Or the words, your power?
Or stay—I will repeat
Their speech, if that contents you! Only change145
No more, and I shall find it presently
Far back here, in the brain yourself filled up.
Natalia threatened me that harm should follow
Unless I spoke their lesson to the end,
But harm to me, I thought she meant, not you.150
Your friends—Natalia said they were your friends
And meant you well—because, I doubted it,
Observing (what was very strange to see)
On every face, so different in all else,
The same smile girls like me are used to bear,155
But never men, men cannot stoop so low;
Yet your friends, speaking of you, used that smile,
That hateful smirk of boundless self-conceit
Which seems to take possession of the world
And make of God a tame confederate,160
Purveyor to their appetites—you know!
But still Natalia said they were your friends,
And they assented though they smiled the more,
And all came round me—that thin Englishman
With light lank hair seemed leader of the rest;165
He held a paper—"What we want," said he,
Ending some explanation to his friends,
"Is something slow, involved, and mystical,
To hold Jules long in doubt, yet take his taste
And lure him on until, at innermost170
Where he seeks sweetness' soul, he may find—this!
—As in the apple's core, the noisome fly;
For insects on the rind are seen at once,
And brushed aside as soon, but this is found
Only when on the lips or loathing tongue."175
And so he read what I have got by heart:
I'll speak it—"Do not die, love! I am yours"—
No—is not that, or like that, part of words
Yourself began by speaking? Strange to lose
What cost such pains to learn! Is this more right?180
I am a painter who cannot paint;
In my life, a devil rather than saint;
In my brain, as poor a creature too:
No end to all I cannot do!
Yet do one thing at least I can—185
Love a man or hate a man
Supremely: thus my lore began.
Through the Valley of Love I went,
In the lovingest spot to abide,
And just on the verge where I pitched my tent,190
I found Hate dwelling beside.
(Let the Bridegroom ask what the painter meant,
Of his Bride, of the peerless Bride!)
And further, I traversed Hate's grove,
In the hatefullest nook to dwell;195
But lo, where I flung myself prone, couched Love
Where the shadow threefold fell.
(The meaning—those black bride's-eyes above,
Not a painter's lip should tell!)
"And here," said he, "Jules probably will ask,200
'You have black eyes, Love—you are, sure enough,
My peerless bride—then do you tell indeed
What needs some explanation! What means this?'"
—And I am to go on, without a word—
So I grew wise in Love and Hate,205
From simple that I was of late.
Once when I loved, I would enlace
Breast, eyelids, hands, feet, form, and face
Of her I loved, in one embrace—
As if by mere love I could love immensely!210
Once, when I hated, I would plunge
My sword, and wipe with the first lunge
My foe's whole life out like a sponge—
As if by mere hate I could hate intensely!
But now I am wiser, know better the fashion215
How passion seeks aid from its opposite passion;
And if I see cause to love more, hate more
Than ever man loved, ever hated before—
And seek in the Valley of Love,
The nest, or the nook in Hate's Grove,220
Where my soul may surely reach
The essence, naught less, of each,
The Hate of all Hates, the Love
Of all Loves, in the Valley or Grove—
I find them the very warders225
Each of the other's borders.
When I love most, Love is disguised
In Hate; and when Hate is surprised
In Love, then I hate most: ask
How Love smiles through Hate's iron casque,230
Hate grins through Love's rose-braided mask—
And how, having hated thee,
I sought long and painfully
To reach thy heart, nor prick
The skin but pierce to the quick—235
Ask this, my Jules, and be answered straight
By thy bride—how the painter Lutwyche can hate!
Jules interposes
Lutwyche! Who else? But all of them, no doubt,
Hated me: they at Venice—presently
Their turn, however! You I shall not meet:240
If I dreamed, saying this would wake me.
Keep
What's here, the gold—we cannot meet again,
Consider! and the money was but meant
For two years' travel, which is over now,
All chance or hope or care or need of it.245
This—and what comes from selling these, my casts
And books and medals, except—let them go
Together, so the produce keeps you safe
Out of Natalia's clutches! If by chance
(For all's chance here) I should survive the gang250
At Venice, root out all fifteen of them,
We might meet somewhere, since the world is wide.
[From without is heard the voice of Pippa, singing—
Give her but a least excuse to love me!
When—where—
How—can this arm establish her above me,255
If fortune fixed her as my lady there,
There already, to eternally reprove me?
("Hist!"—said Kate the Queen;
But "Oh!" cried the maiden, binding her tresses,
"'Tis only a page that carols unseen,260
Crumbling your hounds their messes!")
Is she wronged?—To the rescue of her honor,
My heart!
Is she poor?—What costs it to be styled a donor?
Merely an earth to cleave, a sea to part.265
But that fortune should have thrust all this upon her!
("Nay, list!"—bade Kate the Queen;
And still cried the maiden, binding her tresses,
"'Tis only a page that carols unseen
Fitting your hawks their jesses!")270
Jules resumes
What name was that the little girl sang forth?
Kate? The Cornaro, doubtless, who renounced
The crown of Cyprus to be lady here
At Asolo, where still her memory stays,
And peasants sing how once a certain page275
Pined for the grace of her so far above
His power of doing good to, "Kate the Queen—
She never could be wronged, be poor," he sighed,
"Need him to help her!"
Yes, a bitter thing
To see our lady above all need of us;280
Yet so we look ere we will love; not I,
But the world looks so. If whoever loves
Must be, in some sort, god or worshiper,
The blessing or the blest-one, queen or page,
Why should we always choose the page's part?285
Here is a woman with utter need of me—
I find myself queen here, it seems!
How strange!
Look at the woman here with the new soul,
Like my own Psyche—fresh upon her lips
Alit the visionary butterfly,290
Waiting my word to enter and make bright,
Or flutter off and leave all blank as first.
This body had no soul before, but slept
Or stirred, was beauteous or ungainly, free
From taint or foul with stain, as outward things295
Fastened their image on its passiveness;
Now, it will wake, feel, live—or die again!
Shall to produce form out of unshaped stuff
Be Art—and further, to evoke a soul
From form be nothing? This new soul is mine!300
Now, to kill Lutwyche, what would that do?—save
A wretched dauber, men will hoot to death
Without me, from their hooting. Oh, to hear
God's voice plain as I heard it first, before
They broke in with their laughter! I heard them305
Henceforth, not God.
To Ancona—Greece—some isle!
I wanted silence only; there is clay
Everywhere. One may do whate'er one likes
In Art; the only thing is, to make sure
That one does like it—which takes pains to know.310
Scatter all this, my Phene—this mad dream!
Who, what is Lutwyche, what Natalia's friends,
What the whole world except our love—my own,
Own Phene? But I told you, did I not,
Ere night we travel for your land—some isle315
With the sea's silence on it? Stand aside—
I do but break these paltry models up
To begin Art afresh. Meet Lutwyche, I—
And save him from my statue meeting him?
Some unsuspected isle in the far seas!320
Like a god going through his world, there stands
One mountain for a moment in the dusk,
Whole brotherhoods of cedars on its brow;
And you are ever by me while I gaze
—Are in my arms as now—as now—as now!325
Some unsuspected isle in the far seas!
Some unsuspected isle in far-off seas!
Talk by the way, while Pippa is passing from Orcana to the Turret. Two or three of the Austrian Police loitering with Bluphocks, an English vagabond, just in view of the Turret.
Bluphocks. So, that is your Pippa, the little girl who
passed us singing? Well, your Bishop's Intendant's
money shall be honestly earned:—now, don't make me
that sour face because I bring the Bishop's name into the
business; we know he can have nothing to do with such5
horrors; we know that he is a saint and all that a bishop
should be, who is a great man beside. Oh, were but every
worm a maggot, Every fly a grig, Every bough a Christmas
faggot, Every tune a jig! In fact, I have abjured all religions;
but the last I inclined to was the Armenian: for10
I have traveled, do you see, and at Koenigsberg, Prussia
Improper (so styled because there's a sort of bleak hungry
sun there), you might remark over a venerable house-porch
a certain Chaldee inscription; and brief as it is, a
mere glance at it used absolutely to change the mood of15
every bearded passenger. In they turned, one and all; the
young and lightsome, with no irreverent pause, the aged
and decrepit, with a sensible alacrity: 'twas the Grand
Rabbi's abode, in short. Struck with curiosity, I lost no
time in learning Syriac—(these are vowels, you dogs—follow20
my stick's end in the mud—Celarent, Darii, Ferio!)
and one morning presented myself, spelling-book in hand,
a, b, c—I picked it out letter by letter, and what was the
purport of this miraculous posy? Some cherished legend
of the past, you'll say—"How Moses hocus-pocussed25
Egypt's land with fly and locust"—or, "How to Jonah
sounded harshish, Get thee up and go to Tarshish"—or,
"How the angel meeting Balaam, Straight his ass returned
a salaam." In no wise! "Shackabrack—Boach—somebody
or other—Isaach, Re-cei-ver, Pur-cha-ser, and30
Ex-chan-ger of—Stolen Goods!" So, talk to me of the
religion of a bishop! I have renounced all bishops save
Bishop Beveridge—mean to live so—and die—As some
Greek dog-sage, dead and merry, Hellward bound in
Charon's wherry with food for both worlds, under and35
upper, Lupine-seed and Hecate's supper, and never an
obolus. (Though thanks to you, or this Intendant through
you, or this Bishop through his Intendant—I possess a
burning pocketful of zwanzigers) To pay Stygian Ferry!
1st Policeman. There is the girl, then; go and deserve40
them the moment you have pointed out to us Signor
Luigi and his mother. [To the rest.] I have been
noticing a house yonder, this long while—not a shutter
unclosed since morning!
2nd Policeman. Old Luca Gaddi's, that owns the silk-mills45
here: he dozes by the hour, wakes up, sighs deeply,
says he should like to be Prince Metternich, and then
dozes again, after having bidden young Sebald, the
foreigner, set his wife to playing draughts. Never
molest such a household; they mean well.50
Bluphocks. Only, cannot you tell me something of
this little Pippa I must have to do with? One could
make something of that name. Pippa—that is, short for
Felippa—rhyming to Panurge consults Hertrippa—Believest
thou, King Agrippa? Something might be done55
with that name.
2nd Policeman. Put into rhyme that your head and a
ripe muskmelon would not be dear at half a zwanziger!
Leave this fooling, and look out; the afternoon 's over
or nearly so.60
3rd Policeman. Where in this passport of Signor
Luigi does our Principal instruct you to watch him so
narrowly? There? What's there beside a simple signature?
(That English fool's busy watching.)
2nd Policeman. Flourish all round—"Put all possible65
obstacles in his way"; oblong dot at the end—"Detain
him till further advices reach you"; scratch at bottom—"Send
him back on pretense of some informality in the
above"; ink-spirt on right-hand side (which is the case
here)—"Arrest him at once." Why and wherefore, I70
don't concern myself, but my instructions amount to
this: if Signor Luigi leaves home tonight for Vienna—well
and good, the passport deposed with us for our
visa is really for his own use, they have misinformed the
Office, and he means well; but let him stay over tonight—there75
has been the pretense we suspect, the accounts of
his corresponding and holding intelligence with the Carbonari
are correct, we arrest him at once, tomorrow
comes Venice, and presently Spielberg. Bluphocks
makes the signal, sure enough! That is he, entering the80
turret with his mother, no doubt.
III.—EVENING
Scene.—Inside the Turret on the Hill above Asolo. Luigi and his Mother entering.
Mother. If there blew wind, you'd hear a long sigh, easing
The utmost heaviness of music's heart.
Luigi.Here in the archway?
Mother.Oh, no, no—in farther,
Where the echo is made, on the ridge.
Luigi.Here surely, then.
How plain the tap of my heel as I leaped up!5
Hark—"Lucius Junius!" The very ghost of a voice
Whose body is caught and kept by—what are those?
Mere withered wall flowers, waving overhead?
They seem an elvish group with thin bleached hair
That lean out of their topmost fortress—look10
And listen, mountain men, to what we say,
Hand under chin of each grave earthy face.
Up and show faces all of you!—"All of you!"
That's the king dwarf with the scarlet comb; old Franz,
Come down and meet your fate? Hark—"Meet your fate!"15
Mother. Let him not meet it, my Luigi—do not
Go to his City! Putting crime aside,
Half of these ills of Italy are feigned:
Your Pellicos and writers for effect,
Write for effect.20
Luigi.Hush! Say A writes, and B.
Mother. These A's and B's write for effect, I say.
Then, evil is in its nature loud, while good
Is silent; you hear each petty injury,
None of his virtues; he is old beside,
Quiet and kind, and densely stupid. Why25
Do A and B not kill him themselves?
Luigi.They teach
Others to kill him—me—and, if I fail,
Others to succeed; now, if A tried and failed,
I could not teach that: mine's the lesser task.
Mother, they visit night by night—
Mother.—You, Luigi?30
Ah, will you let me tell you what you are?
Luigi. Why not? Oh, the one thing you fear to hint,
You may assure yourself I say and say
Ever to myself! At times—nay, even as now
We sit—I think my mind is touched, suspect35
All is not sound; but is not knowing that
What constitutes one sane or otherwise?
I know I am thus—so, all is right again.
I laugh at myself as through the town I walk,
And see men merry as if no Italy40
Were suffering; then I ponder—"I am rich,
Young, healthy; why should this fact trouble me,
More than it troubles these?" But it does trouble.
No, trouble's a bad word; for as I walk
There's springing and melody and giddiness,45
And old quaint turns and passages of my youth,
Dreams long forgotten, little in themselves,
Return to me—whatever may amuse me,
And earth seems in a truce with me, and heaven
Accords with me, all things suspend their strife,50
The very cicala laughs, "There goes he, and there!
Feast him, the time is short; he is on his way
For the world's sake: feast him this once, our friend!"
And in return for all this, I can trip
Cheerfully up the scaffold-steps. I go55
This evening, mother!
Mother.But mistrust yourself—
Mistrust the judgment you pronounce on him!
Luigi. Oh, there I feel—am sure that I am right!
Mother. Mistrust your judgment, then, of the mere means
To this wild enterprise. Say you are right—60
How should one in your state e'er bring to pass
What would require a cool head, a cold heart,
And a calm hand? You never will escape.
Luigi. Escape? To even wish that would spoil all.
The dying is best part of it. Too much65
Have I enjoyed these fifteen years of mine,
To leave myself excuse for longer life:
Was not life pressed down, running o'er with joy,
That I might finish with it ere my fellows
Who, sparelier feasted, make a longer stay?70
I was put at the board-head, helped to all
At first; I rise up happy and content.
God must be glad one loves his world so much.
I can give news of earth to all the dead
Who ask me:—last year's sunsets, and great stars75
Which had a right to come first and see ebb
The crimson wave that drifts the sun away—
Those crescent moons with notched and burning rims
That strengthened into sharp fire, and there stood,
Impatient of the azure—and that day80
In March, a double rainbow stopped the storm—
May's warm, slow, yellow moonlit summer nights—
Gone are they, but I have them in my soul!
Mother. (He will not go!)
Luigi.You smile at me? 'Tis true—
Voluptuousness, grotesqueness, ghastliness,85
Environ my devotedness as quaintly
As round about some antique altar wreathe
The rose festoons, goats' horns, and oxen's skulls.
Mother. See now: you reach the city, you must cross
His threshold—how?
Luigi.Oh, that's if we conspired!90
Then would come pains in plenty, as you guess—
But guess not how the qualities most fit
For such an office, qualities I have,
Would little stead me, otherwise employed,
Yet prove of rarest merit only here.95
Everyone knows for what his excellence
Will serve, but no one ever will consider
For what his worst defect might serve; and yet
Have you not seen me range our coppice yonder
In search of a distorted ash?—I find100
The wry spoilt branch a natural perfect bow.
Fancy the thrice-sage, thrice-precautioned man
Arriving at the palace on my errand!
No, no! I have a handsome dress packed up—
White satin here, to set off my black hair;105
In I shall march—for you may watch your life out
Behind thick walls, make friends there to betray you;
More than one man spoils everything. March straight—
Only, no clumsy knife to fumble for.
Take the great gate, and walk (not saunter) on110
Through guards and guards—I have rehearsed it all
Inside the turret here a hundred times
Don't ask the way of whom you meet, observe!
But where they cluster thickliest is the door
Of doors; they'll let you pass—they'll never blab115
Each to the other, he knows not the favorite,
Whence he is bound and what's his business now.
Walk in—straight up to him; you have no knife:
Be prompt, how should he scream? Then, out with you!
Italy, Italy, my Italy!120
You're free, you're free! Oh, mother, I could dream
They got about me—Andrea from his exile,
Pier from his dungeon, Gualtier from his grave!
Mother. Well, you shall go. Yet seems this patriotism
The easiest virtue for a selfish man125
To acquire: he loves himself—and next, the world—
If he must love beyond—but naught between:
As a short-sighted man sees naught midway
His body and the sun above. But you
Are my adored Luigi, ever obedient130
To my least wish, and running o'er with love;
I could not call you cruel or unkind.
Once more, your ground for killing him!—then go!
Luigi. Now do you try me, or make sport of me?
How first the Austrians got these provinces—135
(If that is all, I'll satisfy you soon)
—Never by conquest but by cunning, for
That treaty whereby—
Mother.Well?
Luigi.(Sure, he's arrived,
The telltale cuckoo; spring's his confidant,
And he lets out her April purposes!)140
Or—better go at once to modern time,
He has—they have—in fact, I understand
But can't restate the matter; that's my boast:
Others could reason it out to you, and prove
Things they have made me feel.
Mother.Why go tonight?145
Morn's for adventure. Jupiter is now
A morning-star. I cannot hear you, Luigi!
Luigi. "I am the bright and morning-star," saith God—
And, "to such an one I give the morning-star."
The gift of the morning-star! Have I God's gift150
Of the morning-star?
Mother.Chiara will love to see
That Jupiter an evening-star next June.
Luigi. True, mother. Well for those who live through June!
Great noontides, thunder-storms, all glaring pomps
That triumph at the heels of June the god155
Leading his revel through our leafy world.
Yes, Chiara will be here.
Mother.In June: remember,
Yourself appointed that month for her coming.
Luigi. Was that low noise the echo?
Mother.The night-wind.
She must be grown—with her blue eyes upturned160
As if life were one long and sweet surprise:
In June she comes.
Luigi.We were to see together
The Titian at Treviso. There, again!
[From without is heard the voice of Pippa, singing—
A king lived long ago,
In the morning of the world,165
When earth was nigher heaven than now.
And the king's locks curled,
Disparting o'er a forehead full
As the milk-white space 'twixt horn and horn
Of some sacrificial bull—170
Only calm as a babe new-born:
For he was got to a sleepy mood,
So safe from all decrepitude,
Age with its bane, so sure gone by,
(The gods so loved him while he dreamed)175
That, having lived thus long, there seemed
No need the king should ever die.
Luigi. No need that sort of king should ever die!
Among the rocks his city was:
Before his palace, in the sun,180
He sat to see his people pass,
And judge them every one
From its threshold of smooth stone.
They haled him many a valley-thief
Caught in the sheep-pens, robber-chief185
Swarthy and shameless, beggar-cheat,
Spy-prowler, or rough pirate found
On the sea-sand left aground;
And sometimes clung about his feet,
With bleeding lid and burning cheek,190
A woman, bitterest wrong to speak
Of one with sullen thickset brows:
And sometimes from the prison-house
The angry priests a pale wretch brought,
Who through some chink had pushed and pressed195
On knees and elbows, belly and breast,
Worm-like into the temple—caught
He was by the very god,
Whoever in the darkness strode
Backward and forward, keeping watch200
O'er his brazen bowls, such rogues to catch!
These, all and everyone,
The king judged, sitting in the sun.
Luigi. That king should still judge sitting in the sun!
His councilors, on left and right,205
Looked anxious up—but no surprise
Disturbed the king's old smiling eyes,
Where the very blue had turned to white.
'Tis said, a Python scared one day
The breathless city, till he came,210
With forky tongue and eyes on flame,
Where the old king sat to judge alway;
But when he saw the sweepy hair
Girt with a crown of berries rare
Which the god will hardly give to wear215
To the maiden who singeth, dancing bare
In the altar-smoke by the pine-torch lights,
At his wondrous forest rites—
Seeing this, he did not dare
Approach that threshold in the sun,220
Assault the old king smiling there.
Such grace had kings when the world begun!
Luigi. And such grace have they, now that the world ends!
The Python at the city, on the throne,
And brave men, God would crown for slaying him,225
Lurk in by-corners lest they fall his prey.
Are crowns yet to be won in this late time,
Which weakness makes me hesitate to reach?
Tis God's voice calls; how could I stay? Farewell!
Talk by the way, while Pippa is passing from the Turret to the Bishop's Brother's House, close to the Duomo S. Maria. Poor Girls sitting on the steps.
1st Girl. There goes a swallow to Venice—the stout seafarer!
Seeing those birds fly makes one wish for wings.
Let us all wish; you wish first!
2nd Girl.I? This sunset
To finish.
3rd Girl. That old—somebody I know,
Grayer and older than my grandfather,5
To give me the same treat he gave last week—
Feeding me on his knee with fig-peckers,
Lampreys and red Breganze-wine, and mumbling
The while some folly about how well I fare,
Let sit and eat my supper quietly:10
Since had he not himself been late this morning,
Detained at—never mind where—had he not—
"Eh, baggage, had I not!"—
2nd Girl.How she can lie!
3rd Girl. Look there—by the nails!
2nd Girl.What makes your fingers red?
3rd Girl. Dipping them into wine to write bad words with15
On the bright table: how he laughed!
1st Girl.My turn.
Spring's come and summer's coming. I would wear
A long loose gown, down to the feet and hands,
With plaits here, close about the throat, all day;
And all night lie, the cool long nights, in bed;20
And have new milk to drink, apples to eat,
Deuzans and junetings, leather-coats—ah, I should say,
This is away in the fields—miles!
3rd Girl.Say at once
You'd be at home—she'd always be at home!
Now comes the story of the farm among25
The cherry orchards, and how April snowed
White blossoms on her as she ran. Why, fool,
They've rubbed the chalk-mark out, how tall you were,
Twisted your starling's neck, broken his cage,
Made a dunghill of your garden!
1st Girl.They destroy30
My garden since I left them? Well—perhaps
I would have done so—so I hope they have!
A fig-tree curled out of our cottage wall;
They called it mine, I have forgotten why,
It must have been there long ere I was born:35
Cric—cric—I think I hear the wasps o'erhead
Pricking the papers strung to flutter there
And keep off birds in fruit-time—coarse long papers,
And the wasps eat them, prick them through and through.
3rd Girl. How her mouth twitches! Where was I?—before40
She broke in with her wishes and long gowns
And wasps—would I be such a fool!—Oh, here!
This is my way: I answer everyone
Who asks me why I make so much of him—
(If you say, "you love him"—straight "he'll not be gulled!")45
"He that seduced me when I was a girl
Thus high—had eyes like yours, or hair like yours,
Brown, red, white"—as the case may be; that pleases!
See how that beetle burnishes in the path!
There sparkles he along the dust; and, there—50
Your journey to that maize-tuft spoiled at least!
1st Girl. When I was young, they said if you killed one
Of those sunshiny beetles, that his friend
Up there would shine no more that day nor next.
2nd Girl. When you were young? Nor are you young, that's true.55
How your plump arms, that were, have dropped away!
Why, I can span them. Cecco beats you still?
No matter, so you keep your curious hair.
I wish they'd find a way to dye our hair
Your color—any lighter tint, indeed,60
Than black—the men say they are sick of black,
Black eyes, black hair!
4th Girl.Sick of yours, like enough.
Do you pretend you ever tasted lampreys
And ortolans? Giovita, of the palace,
Engaged (but there 's no trusting him) to slice me65
Polenta with a knife that had cut up
An ortolan.
2nd Girl. Why, there! Is not that Pippa
We are to talk to, under the window—quick!—
Where the lights are?
1st Girl.That she? No, or she would sing,
For the Intendant said—
3rd Girl.Oh, you sing first!70
Then, if she listens and comes close—I'll tell you—
Sing that song the young English noble made,
Who took you for the purest of the pure,
And meant to leave the world for you—what fun!
2nd Girl [sings].
You'll love me yet!—and I can tarry75
Your love's protracted growing:
June reared that bunch of flowers you carry,
From seeds of April's sowing.
I plant a heartful now: some seed
At least is sure to strike80
And yield—what you'll not pluck indeed,
Not love, but, may be, like.
You'll look at least on love's remains,
A grave's one violet:
Your look?—that pays a thousand pains.85
What's death? You'll love me yet!
3rd Girl [to Pippa, who approaches.] Oh, you may
come closer—we shall not eat you! Why, you seem the
very person that the great rich handsome Englishman has
fallen so violently in love with. I'll tell you all about it.90