by Lord Byron
I would have freed both, and have failed in both:
The price of such success would have been glory,
Vengeance, and victory, and such a name 250
As would have made Venetian history
Rival to that of Greece and Syracuse
When they were freed, and flourished ages after,
And mine to Gelon and to Thrasybulus:
Failing, I know the penalty of failure
Is present infamy and death — the future
Will judge, when Venice is no more, or free;
Till then, the truth is in abeyance. Pause not;
I would have shown no mercy, and I seek none;
My life was staked upon a mighty hazard, 260
And being lost, take what I would have taken!
I would have stood alone amidst your tombs:
Now you may flock round mine, and trample on it,
As you have done upon my heart while living.
Ben. You do confess then, and admit the justice
Of our Tribunal?
Doge. I confess to have failed;
Fortune is female: from my youth her favours
Were not withheld, the fault was mine to hope
Her former smiles again at this late hour.
Ben. You do not then in aught arraign our equity? 270
Doge. Noble Venetians! stir me not with questions.
I am resigned to the worst; but in me still
Have something of the blood of brighter days,
And am not over-patient. Pray you, spare me
Further interrogation, which boots nothing,
Except to turn a trial to debate.
I shall but answer that which will offend you,
And please your enemies — a host already;
‘Tis true, these sullen walls should yield no echo:
But walls have ears — nay, more, they have tongues; and if 280
There were no other way for Truth to o’erleap them,
You who condemn me, you who fear and slay me,
Yet could not bear in silence to your graves
What you would hear from me of Good or Evil;
The secret were too mighty for your souls:
Then let it sleep in mine, unless you court
A danger which would double that you escape.
Such my defence would be, had I full scope
To make it famous; for true words are things,
And dying men’s are things which long outlive, 290
And oftentimes avenge them; bury mine,
If ye would fain survive me: take this counsel,
And though too oft ye make me live in wrath,
Let me die calmly; you may grant me this;
I deny nothing — defend nothing — nothing
I ask of you, but silence for myself,
And sentence from the Court!
Ben. This full admission
Spares us the harsh necessity of ordering
The torture to elicit the whole truth.
Doge. The torture! you have put me there already, 300
Daily since I was Doge; but if you will
Add the corporeal rack, you may: these limbs
Will yield with age to crushing iron; but
There’s that within my heart shall strain your engines.
Enter an Officer.
Officer. Noble Venetians! Duchess Faliero
Requests admission to the Giunta’s presence.
Ben. Say, Conscript Fathers, shall she be admitted?
One of the Giunta. She may have revelations of importance
Unto the state, to justify compliance
With her request.
Ben. Is this the general will? 310
All. It is.
Doge. Oh, admirable laws of Venice!
Which would admit the wife, in the full hope
That she might testify against the husband.
What glory to the chaste Venetian dames!
But such blasphemers ‘gainst all Honour, as
Sit here, do well to act in their vocation.
Now, villain Steno! if this woman fail,
I’ll pardon thee thy lie, and thy escape,
And my own violent death, and thy vile life.
The Duchess enters.
Ben. Lady! this just Tribunal has resolved, 320
Though the request be strange, to grant it, and
Whatever be its purport, to accord
A patient hearing with the due respect
Which fits your ancestry, your rank, and virtues:
But you turn pale — ho! there, look to the Lady!
Place a chair instantly.
Ang. A moment’s faintness —
‘Tis past; I pray you pardon me, — I sit not
In presence of my Prince and of my husband,
While he is on his feet.
Ben. Your pleasure, Lady?
Ang. Strange rumours, but most true, if all I hear 330
And see be sooth, have reached me, and I come
To know the worst, even at the worst; forgive
The abruptness of my entrance and my bearing.
Is it — I cannot speak — I cannot shape
The question — but you answer it ere spoken,
With eyes averted, and with gloomy brows —
Oh God! this is the silence of the grave!
Ben. (after a pause). Spare us, and spare thyself the repetition
Of our most awful, but inexorable
Duty to Heaven and man!
Ang. Yet speak; I cannot — 340
I cannot — no — even now believe these things.
Is he condemned?
Ben. Alas!
Ang. And was he guilty?
Ben. Lady! the natural distraction of
Thy thoughts at such a moment makes the question
Merit forgiveness; else a doubt like this
Against a just and paramount tribunal
Were deep offence. But question even the Doge,
And if he can deny the proofs, believe him
Guiltless as thy own bosom.
Ang. Is it so?
My Lord, my Sovereign, my poor father’s friend, 350
The mighty in the field, the sage in Council,
Unsay the words of this man! — thou art silent!
Ben. He hath already owned to his own guilt,
Nor, as thou see’st, doth he deny it now.
Ang. Aye, but he must not die! Spare his few years,
Which Grief and Shame will soon cut down to days!
One day of baffled crime must not efface
Near sixteen lustres crowned with brave acts.
Ben. His doom must be fulfilled without remission
Of time or penalty — ’tis a decree. 360
Ang. He hath been guilty, but there may be mercy.
Ben. Not in this case with justice.
Ang. Alas! Signor,
He who is only just is cruel; who
Upon the earth would live were all judged justly?
Ben. His punishment is safety to the State.
Ang. He was a subject, and hath served the State;
He was your General, and hath saved the State;
He is your Sovereign, and hath ruled the State.
One of the Council. He is a traitor, and betrayed the State.
Ang. And, but for him, there now had been no State 370
To save or to destroy; and you, who sit
There to pronounce the death of your deliverer,
Had now been groaning at a Moslem oar,
Or digging in the Hunnish mines in fetters!
One of the Council. No, Lady, there are others who would die
Rather than breathe in slavery!
Ang. If there are so
Within these walls, thou art not of the number:
The truly brave
are generous to the fallen! —
Is there no hope?
Ben. Lady, it cannot be.
Ang. (turning to the Doge).
Then die, Faliero! since it must be so; 380
But with the spirit of my father’s friend.
Thou hast been guilty of a great offence,
Half cancelled by the harshness of these men.
I would have sued to them, have prayed to them.
Have begged as famished mendicants for bread,
Have wept as they will cry unto their God
For mercy, and be answered as they answer, —
Had it been fitting for thy name or mine,
And if the cruelty in their cold eyes
Had not announced the heartless wrath within. 390
Then, as a Prince, address thee to thy doom!
Doge. I have lived too long not to know how to die!
Thy suing to these men were but the bleating
Of the lamb to the butcher, or the cry
Of seamen to the surge: I would not take
A life eternal, granted at the hands
Of wretches, from whose monstrous villanies
I sought to free the groaning nations!
Michel Steno. Doge,
A word with thee, and with this noble lady,
Whom I have grievously offended. Would 400
Sorrow, or shame, or penance on my part,
Could cancel the inexorable past!
But since that cannot be, as Christians let us
Say farewell, and in peace: with full contrition
I crave, not pardon, but compassion from you,
And give, however weak, my prayers for both.
Ang. Sage Benintende, now chief Judge of Venice,
I speak to thee in answer to yon Signor.
Inform the ribald Steno, that his words
Ne’er weighed in mind with Loredano’s daughter, 410
Further than to create a moment’s pity
For such as he is: would that others had
Despised him as I pity! I prefer
My honour to a thousand lives, could such
Be multiplied in mine, but would not have
A single life of others lost for that
Which nothing human can impugn — the sense
Of Virtue, looking not to what is called
A good name for reward, but to itself.
To me the scorner’s words were as the wind 420
Unto the rock: but as there are — alas!
Spirits more sensitive, on which such things
Light as the Whirlwind on the waters; souls
To whom Dishonour’s shadow is a substance
More terrible than Death, here and hereafter;
Men whose vice is to start at Vice’s scoffing,
And who, though proof against all blandishments
Of pleasure, and all pangs of Pain, are feeble
When the proud name on which they pinnacled
Their hopes is breathed on, jealous as the eagle 430
Of her high aiery; let what we now
Behold, and feel, and suffer, be a lesson
To wretches how they tamper in their spleen
With beings of a higher order. Insects
Have made the lion mad ere now; a shaft
I’ the heel o’erthrew the bravest of the brave;
A wife’s Dishonour was the bane of Troy;
A wife’s Dishonour unkinged Rome for ever;
An injured husband brought the Gauls to Clusium,
And thence to Rome, which perished for a time; 440
An obscene gesture cost Caligula
His life, while Earth yet bore his cruelties;
A virgin’s wrong made Spain a Moorish province;
And Steno’s lie, couched in two worthless lines,
Hath decimated Venice, put in peril
A Senate which hath stood eight hundred years,
Discrowned a Prince, cut off his crownless head,
And forged new fetters for a groaning people!
Let the poor wretch, like to the courtesan
Who fired Persepolis, be proud of this, 450
If it so please him — ’twere a pride fit for him!
But let him not insult the last hours of
Him, who, whate’er he now is, was a Hero,
By the intrusion of his very prayers;
Nothing of good can come from such a source,
Nor would we aught with him, nor now, nor ever:
We leave him to himself, that lowest depth
Of human baseness. Pardon is for men,
And not for reptiles — we have none for Steno,
And no resentment: things like him must sting, 460
And higher beings suffer; ‘tis the charter
Of Life. The man who dies by the adder’s fang
May have the crawler crushed, but feels no anger:
‘Twas the worm’s nature; and some men are worms
In soul, more than the living things of tombs.
Doge (to Ben.).
Signor! complete that which you deem your duty.
Ben. Before we can proceed upon that duty,
We would request the Princess to withdraw;
‘Twill move her too much to be witness to it.
Ang. I know it will, and yet I must endure it, 470
For ‘tis a part of mine — I will not quit,
Except by force, my husband’s side — Proceed!
Nay, fear not either shriek, or sigh, or tear;
Though my heart burst, it shall be silent. — Speak!
I have that within which shall o’ermaster all.
Ben. Marino Faliero, Doge of Venice,
Count of Val di Marino, Senator,
And some time General of the Fleet and Army,
Noble Venetian, many times and oft
Intrusted by the state with high employments, 480
Even to the highest, listen to the sentence.
Convict by many witnesses and proofs,
And by thine own confession, of the guilt
Of Treachery and Treason, yet unheard of
Until this trial — the decree is Death —
Thy goods are confiscate unto the State,
Thy name is razed from out her records, save
Upon a public day of thanksgiving
For this our most miraculous deliverance,
When thou art noted in our calendars 490
With earthquakes, pestilence, and foreign foes,
And the great Enemy of man, as subject
Of grateful masses for Heaven’s grace in snatching
Our lives and country from thy wickedness.
The place wherein as Doge thou shouldst be painted
With thine illustrious predecessors, is
To be left vacant, with a death-black veil
Flung over these dim words engraved beneath, —
“This place is of Marino Faliero,
Decapitated for his crimes.”
Doge. ”His crimes!” 500
But let it be so: — it will be in vain.
The veil which blackens o’er this blighted name,
And hides, or seems to hide, these lineaments,
Shall draw more gazers than the thousand portraits
Which glitter round it in their pictured trappings —
Your delegated slaves — the people’s tyrants!
“Decapitated for his crimes!” — What crimes?
Were it not better to record the facts,
So that the contemplator might approve,
Or at the least learn whence the crimes arose? 510
When the beholder knows a Doge conspired,
Let him be told the cause — it is your history.
Ben. Time must reply to that; our sons will judge
Their fathers’ judgment, which I now pronounce
.
As Doge, clad in the ducal robes and Cap,
Thou shalt be led hence to the Giants’ Staircase,
Where thou and all our Princes are invested;
And there, the Ducal Crown being first resumed
Upon the spot where it was first assumed,
Thy head shall be struck off; and Heaven have mercy 520
Upon thy soul!
Doge. Is this the Giunta’s sentence?
Ben. It is.
Doge. I can endure it. — And the time?
Ben. Must be immediate. — Make thy peace with God:
Within an hour thou must be in His presence.
Doge. I am already; and my blood will rise
To Heaven before the souls of those who shed it.
Are all my lands confiscated?
Ben. They are;
And goods, and jewels, and all kind of treasure,
Except two thousand ducats — these dispose of.
Doge. That’s harsh. — I would have fain reserved the lands 530
Near to Treviso, which I hold by investment
From Laurence the Count-bishop of Ceneda,
In fief perpetual to myself and heirs,
To portion them (leaving my city spoil,
My palace and my treasures, to your forfeit)
Between my consort and my kinsmen.
Ben. These
Lie under the state’s ban — their Chief, thy nephew,
In peril of his own life; but the Council
Postpones his trial for the present. If
Thou will’st a state unto thy widowed Princess, 540
Fear not, for we will do her justice.
Ang. Signors,
I share not in your spoil! From henceforth, know
I am devoted unto God alone,
And take my refuge in the cloister.
Doge. Come!
The hour may be a hard one, but ‘twill end.
Have I aught else to undergo save Death?
Ben. You have nought to do, except confess and die.
The priest is robed, the scimitar is bare,
And both await without. — But, above all,
Think not to speak unto the people; they 550
Are now by thousands swarming at the gates,
But these are closed: the Ten, the Avogadori,
The Giunta, and the chief men of the Forty,
Alone will be beholders of thy doom,
And they are ready to attend the Doge.
Doge. The Doge!
Ben. Yes, Doge, thou hast lived and thou shalt die
A Sovereign; till the moment which precedes
The separation of that head and trunk,
That ducal crown and head shall be united.
Thou hast forgot thy dignity in deigning 560
To plot with petty traitors; not so we,
Who in the very punishment acknowledge
The Prince. Thy vile accomplices have died