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