“‘The which, more eath it were for mortall wight,
To sell the sands or count the starres on hye;
Or ought more hard, then thinke to reckon right . . .
Which—for my Muse herselfe now tyred has,
Unto another tale I’ll overpas.’”
THE UNFORTUNATE PRIEST
a legend of la via dello scheletro
“Fear and trembling Hope,
Silence and Foresight—Death the Skeleton,
And Time the Shadow.”—Wordsworth.“If God were half so cruel as His priests,
It would go hard, I ween, with all of us.”
I have elsewhere remarked that there is—chiefly about the Duomo—a group of small streets bearing the dismal names of Death, Hell, Purgatory, Limbo, Crucifixion, Our Lady of Coughing (delle Tosse), The (last) Rest of Old Age, Gallows Lane (Via della Forca), The Tombs, The Way of the Discontented, [201] Dire Need, Small Rags, Fag-End or Stump, Bad Payers, and finally, the Via dello Scheletro, or Skeleton Street. To which there belongs, as is appropriate, a melancholy legend.
La Via dello Scheletro.
“There once dwelt in what is now called the Street of the Skeleton a priest attached to the Cathedral, who was in every respect all that a good man of his calling and a true Christian should be, as he was pious, kind-hearted, and charitable, passing his life in seeking out the poor and teaching their children, often bringing cases of need and suffering to the knowledge of wealthier friends—which thing, were it more frequently done by all, would do more to put an end to poverty than anything else.
“‘But he who is in everything most human
May highest rise and yet the lowest fall;
And when a brave kind heart meets with the woman,
Our greatest duties seem extremely small,
And those which were the first became the least:
Even so it happened to this gentle priest.
“‘In the old dwelling where he had his home,
Which otherwise had been most drear and dull
At morn or eve did oft before him come
A girl as sweet as she was beautiful;
Full soon they learned that both in head and heart
Each was to each the very counterpart.
“‘There is in every soul of finer grain
A soul which is in self a soul apart,
Which to itself doth oft deep hid remain,
But leaps to life when Love awakes the heart.
Then as a vapour rises with the sun,
And blends with it, two souls pass into one.
“‘And so it came that he would sometimes kiss
Her lovely face, nor seemed it much to prove
That they in anything had done amiss.
Until, one night, there came the kiss of Love, [202]
Disguised in friendly seeming like the rest—
Alas! he drove an arrow to her breast.