THE CARDINAL’S GARDEN
Villa Albani
Witter Bynner
Here in this place which I myself did plan,
With poplars, oaks and fountains,—and with sculpture,
The rounded body of the soul of beauty—
Here in this garden, by my own command
I sit alone under the freshening twilight.
Not to my eyes shall be made visible
Ever again morning or noon or twilight,—
Not to my eyes—which are my servants now
No longer, save as servants in the grave.
But to my forehead and my finger-tips
The days give touch of bud and opening
And of their bloom and of their hovering fall.
The morrow shall be born with sighs and rain,
But this is peace, this twilight, this is pause
Between the sunny and the rainy day,
Pause for the elements, and pause for me,
As though it were a silver brook that ran
Between a blinded day and blinded night,—
Between the dust of life and the dust of death.
Why shall I sit here? Why are colonnades
And paths and pagan statuaries more
Adroitly dear to my unseeing eyes
Than all the beaded letters of the Books
And colorings of all the bended Saints?
Because I hear the stealing feet of peace
Among these marbles more than anywhere,
Than in that cell itself where I have been
True Christian and exemplar of the Creed
To my own heart. There, not a Cardinal
In a red pageantry of holiness
Before all comers, but a penitent
In humble nakedness before my God,
I found the potency of Jesus Christ….
And yet it is not there but here that I
Find peace. Sometimes I think that Hell hath set
An outer court for me within my garden,
That it may mock me better in its own!
But whether Hell or rank mortality,
This garden which I builded for my body
Is the one garden now wherein my soul
Finds comfort, benediction of the twilight.
There in my cell, drawn on the walls, arise
Old memories of craft and violence,
Of lust for carven images of beauty:
How in the night I sent my men to take
That obelisk which I had offered twice
Its value for and been refused,—to bring
That obelisk and set it in my garden.
The Prince of Palestrina never dared
(Such has my might been) to recover it!
Still I can see him gaping at the trick
And wishing he might strangle me, the trickster!
And though these eyes that cannot see would make
Me now no quick report if that same obelisk
Should be abstracted on a newer night,
Yet how these fingers and this heart would know!
Why shall my tears fall, as I sit among
My oaks and poplars, fountains and my sculptures,
Before my cypresses and Sabine hills?
Have I not seen them all a thousand times?
Are they not vanity? Would I behold
Them more? Life, to an aged Cardinal,
Blind and enfeebled, should but celebrate
The Sacrifice of Jesus Christ who died.
Time should grow short for prayer and preparation.
Why is it then that life has seemed to pace
More than enough its little path of vigil,
But not to know the endless path of beauty
Beyond the entrance and the mere beginning!
Pray for us sinners now and at the hour
Of death!… And, even while thou prayest, I,
Who should incessantly be praying also,
I who am Cardinal and might be Pope,
Sit with my blind eyes full of Pagan glory!—
Sappho, Apollo and Antinous,
And Orpheus parting from Eurydice!
First falls the breath before the drop of rain.
Before the rain shall follow, I have strength,
Praise God, still to support myself among
These marble temples, columns and museums,
These deities of beauty and of time.
Hail, Mary full of grace, the Lord is with Thee!
The obelisk is here. It has not been
Retaken. Pray for us now and at the hour
Of death! And I shall enter at my door
And seek the chimney-piece and stand before
My young Antinous from Tivoli,
With lotos in his hair and hands, who once
Belonged to Hadrian. And I shall touch
Again the garment of Eurydice,—
And wonder—when that final mortal touch
Summons Eurydice, summons my soul,
And when she turns and enters and is dark—
If Christ shall follow her and sing to her.