Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series
Page 85
“Try him,” bids law: formalities oblige:
But as to the issue, — look me in the face! —
If the law thinks to find them guilty, Sir,
Master or men — touch one hair of the five,
Then I say in the name of all that’s left
Of honour in Rome, civility i’ the world
Whereof Rome boasts herself the central source, —
There’s an end to all hope of justice more.
Astræa’s gone indeed, let hope go too!
Who is it dares impugn the natural law?
Deny God’s word “the faithless wife shall die?”
What, are we blind? How can we fail to see,
This crowd of miseries make the man a mark,
Accumulate on one devoted head
For our example, yours and mine who read
Its lesson thus — ”Henceforward let none dare
“Stand, like a natural in the public way,
“Letting the very urchins twitch his beard
“And tweak his nose, to earn a nickname so,
“Of the male-Grissel or the modern Job!”
Had Guido, in the twinkling of an eye,
Summed up the reckoning, promptly paid himself,
That morning when he came up with the pair
At the wayside inn, — exacted his just debt
By aid of what first mattock, pitchfork, axe
Came to hand in the helpful stable-yard,
And with that axe, if providence so pleased,
Cloven each head, by some Rolando-stroke,
In one clean cut from crown to clavicle,
— Slain the priest-gallant, the wife-paramour,
Sticking, for all defence, in each skull’s cleft
The rhyme and reason of the stroke thus dealt,
To-wit, those letters and last evidence
Of shame, each package in its proper place, —
Bidding, who pitied, undistend the skulls, —
I say, the world had praised the man. But no!
That were too plain, too straight, too simply just!
He hesitates, calls law forsooth to help.
And law, distasteful to who calls in law
When honour is beforehand and would serve,
What wonder if law hesitate in turn,
Plead her disuse to calls o’ the kind, reply
Smiling a little “‘Tis yourself assess
“The worth of what’s lost, sum of damage done:
“What you touched with so light a finger-tip,
“You whose concern it was to grasp the thing,
“Why must law gird herself and grapple with?
“Law, alien to the actor whose warm blood
“Asks heat from law whose veins run lukewarm milk, —
“What you dealt lightly with, shall law make out
“Heinous forsooth?”
Sir, what’s the good of law
In a case o’ the kind? None, as she all but says.
Call in law when a neighbour breaks your fence,
Cribs from your field, tampers with rent or lease,
Touches the purse or pocket, — but wooes your wife?
No: take the old way trod when men were men!
Guido preferred the new path, — for his pains,
Stuck in a quagmire, floundered worse and worse
Until he managed somehow scramble back
Into the safe sure rutted road once more,
Revenged his own wrong like a gentleman.
Once back ‘mid the familiar prints, no doubt
He made too rash amends for his first fault,
Vaulted too loftily over what barred him late,
And lit i’ the mire again, — the common chance,
The natural over-energy: the deed
Maladroit yields three deaths instead of one,
And one life left: for where’s the Canon’s corpse?
All which is the worse for Guido, but, be frank —
The better for you and me and all the world,
Husbands of wives, especially in Rome.
The thing is put right, in the old place, — ay,
The rod hangs on its nail behind the door,
Fresh from the brine: a matter I commend
To the notice, during Carnival that’s near,
Of a certain what’s-his-name and jackanapes
Somewhat too civil of eves with lute and song
About a house here, where I keep a wife.
(You, being his cousin, may go tell him so.)
The Other Half-Rome
ANOTHER DAY that finds her living yet,
Little Pompilia, with the patient brow
And lamentable smile on those poor lips,
And, under the white hospital-array,
A flower-like body, to frighten at a bruise
You’d think, yet now, stabbed through and through again,
Alive i’ the ruins. ‘Tis a miracle.
It seems that, when her husband struck her first,
She prayed Madonna just that she might live
So long as to confess and be absolved;
And whether it was that, all her sad life long,
Never before successful in a prayer,
This prayer rose with authority too dread, —
Or whether, because earth was hell to her,
By compensation, when the blackness broke
She got one glimpse of quiet and the cool blue,
To show her for a moment such things were, —
Or else, — as the Augustinian Brother thinks,
The friar who took confession from her lip, —
When a probationary soul that moves
From nobleness to nobleness, as she,
Over the rough way of the world, succumbs,
Bloodies its last thorn with unflinching foot,
The angels love to do their work betimes,
Staunch some wounds here nor leave so much for God.
Who knows? However it be, confessed, absolved,
She lies, with overplus of life beside
To speak and right herself from first to last,
Right the friend also, lamb-pure, lion-brave,
Care for the boy’s concerns, to save the son
From the sire, her two-weeks’ infant orphaned thus,
And — with best smile of all reserved for him —
Pardon that sire and husband from the heart.
A miracle, so tell your Molinists!
There she lies in the long white lazar-house.
Rome has besieged, these two days, never doubt,
Saint Anna’s where she waits her death, to hear
Though but the chink o’ the bell, turn o’ the hinge
When the reluctant wicket opes at last,
Lets in, on now this and now that pretence,
Too many by half, — complain the men of art, —
For a patient in such plight. The lawyers first
Paid the due visit — justice must be done;
They took her witness, why the murder was;
Then the priests followed properly, — a soul
To shrive; ‘twas Brother Celestine’s own right,
The same who noises thus her gifts abroad:
But many more, who found they were old friends,
Pushed in to have their stare and take their talk
And go forth boasting of it and to boast.
Old Monna Baldi chatters like a jay,
Swears — but that, prematurely trundled out
Just as she felt the benefit begin,
The miracle was snapped up by somebody, —
Her palsied limb ‘gan prick and promise life
At touch o’ the bedclothes merely, — how much more
Had she but brushed the body as she tried!
Cavalier Carlo — well, there’s some excuse
For him — Maratta who paints Virgins so —
He too must fee the porter an
d slip by
With pencil cut and paper squared, and straight
There was he figuring away at face —
“A lovelier face is not in Rome,” cried he,
“Shaped like a peacock’s egg, the pure as pearl,
“That hatches you anon a snow-white chick.”
Then, oh that pair of eyes, that pendent hair,
Black this, and black the other! Mighty fine —
But nobody cared ask to paint the same,
Nor grew a poet over hair and eyes
Four little years ago when, ask and have,
The woman who wakes all this rapture leaned
Flower-like from out her window long enough,
As much uncomplimented as uncropped
By comers and goers in Via Vittoria: eh?
‘Tis just a flower’s fate: past parterre we trip,
Till peradventure some one plucks our sleeve —
“Yon blossom at the briar’s end, that’s the rose
“Two jealous people fought for yesterday
“And killed each other: see, there’s undisturbed
“A pretty pool at the root, of rival red!”
Then cry we, “Ah, the perfect paragon!”
Then crave we, “Just one keepsake-leaf for us!”
Truth lies between: there’s anyhow a child
Of seventeen years, whether a flower or weed,
Ruined: who did it shall account to Christ —
Having no pity on the harmless life
And gentle face and girlish form he found,
And thus flings back: go practise if you please
With men and women: leave a child alone
For Christ’s particular love’s sake! — so I say.
Somebody, at the bedside, said much more,
Took on him to explain the secret cause
O’ the crime: quoth he, “Such crimes are very rife,
“Explode nor make us wonder now-a-days,
“Seeing that Antichrist disseminates
“That doctrine of the Philosophic Sin:
“Molinos’ sect will soon make earth too hot!”
“Nay,” groaned the Augustinian, “what’s there new?
“Crime will not fail to flare up from men’s hearts
“While hearts are men’s and so born criminal
“Which one fact, always old yet ever new,
“Accounts for so much crime that, for my part,
“Molinos may go whistle to the wind
“That waits outside a certain church, you know!”
Though really it does seem as if she here,
Pompilia, living so and dying thus,
Has undue experience how much crime
A heart can hatch. Why was she made to learn
— Not you, not I, not even Molinos’ self —
What Guido Franceschini’s heart could hold?
Thus saintship is effected probably;
No sparing saints the process! — which the more
Tends to the reconciling us, no saints,
To sinnership, immunity and all.
For see now: Pietro and Violante’s life
Till seventeen years ago, all Rome might note
And quote for happy — see the signs distinct
Of happiness as we yon Triton’s trump.
What could they be but happy? — balanced so,
Nor low i’ the social scale nor yet too high,
Nor poor nor richer than comports with ease,
Nor bright and envied, nor obscure and scorned,
Nor so young that their pleasures fell too thick,
Nor old past catching pleasure when it fell,
Nothing above, below the just degree,
All at the mean where joy’s components mix.
So again, in the couple’s very souls
You saw the adequate half with half to match,
Each having and each lacking somewhat, both
Making a whole that had all and lacked nought;
The round and sound, in whose composure just
The acquiescent and recipient side
Was Pietro’s, and the stirring striving one
Violante’s: both in union gave the due
Quietude, enterprise, craving and content,
Which go to bodily health and peace of mind.
But, as ‘tis said a body, rightly mixed,
Each element in equipoise, would last
Too long and live for ever, — accordingly
Holds a germ — sand-grain weight too much i’ the scale —
Ordained to get predominance one day
And so bring all to ruin and release, —
Not otherwise a fatal germ lurked here:
“With mortals much must go, but something stays;
“Nothing will stay of our so happy selves.”
Out of the very ripeness of life’s core
A worm was bred — ”Our life shall leave no fruit.”
Enough of bliss, they thought, could bliss bear seed,
Yield its like, propagate a bliss in turn
And keep the kind up; not supplant themselves
But put in evidence, record they were,
Show them, when done with, i’ the shape of a child.
“‘Tis in a child, man and wife grow complete,
“One flesh: God says so: let him do his work!”
Now, one reminder of this gnawing want,
One special prick o’ the maggot at the core,
Always befell when, as the day came round,
A certain yearly sum, — our Pietro being,
As the long name runs, an usufructuary, —
Dropped in the common bag as interest
Of money, his till death, not afterward,
Failing an heir: an heir would take and take,
A child of theirs be wealthy in their place
To nobody’s hurt — the stranger else seized all.
Prosperity rolled river-like and stopped,
Making their mill go; but when wheel wore out,
The wave would find a space and sweep on free
And, half-a-mile off, grind some neighbour’s corn.
Adam-like, Pietro sighed and said no more:
Eve saw the apple was fair and good to taste,
So, plucked it, having asked the snake advice.
She told her husband God was merciful,
And his and her prayer granted at the last:
Let the old mill-stone moulder, — wheel unworn,
Quartz from the quarry, shot into the stream
Adroitly, should go bring grist as before —
Their house continued to them by an heir,
Their vacant heart replenished with a child.
We have her own confession at full length
Made in the first remorse: ‘twas Jubilee
Pealed in the ear o’ the conscience and it woke.
She found she had offended God no doubt,
So much was plain from what had happened since,
Misfortune on misfortune; but she harmed
No one i’ the world, so far as she could see.
The act had gladdened Pietro to the height,
Her husband — God himself must gladden so
Or not at all — (thus much seems probable
From the implicit faith, or rather say
Stupid credulity of the foolish man
Who swallowed such a tale nor strained a whit
Even at his wife’s far-over-fifty years
Matching his sixty-and-under.) Him she blessed,
And as for doing any detriment,
To the veritable heir, — why, tell her first
Who was he? Which of all the hands held up
I’ the crowd, would one day gather round their gate,
Did she so wrong by intercepting thus
The ducat, spendthrift fortune thought to fling
For a scramble just to make the mob break shins?
She ke
pt it, saved them kicks and cuffs thereby.
While at the least one good work had she wrought,
Good, clearly and incontestably! Her cheat —
What was it to its subject, the child’s self,
But charity and religion? See the girl!
A body most like — a soul too probably —
Doomed to death, such a double death as waits
The illicit offspring of a common trull,
Sure to resent and forthwith rid herself
Of a mere interruption to sin’s trade,
In the efficacious way old Tiber knows.
Was not so much proved by the ready sale
O’ the child, glad transfer of this irksome chance?
Well then, she had caught up this castaway:
This fragile egg, some careless wild bird dropped,
She had picked from where it waited the foot-fall,
And put in her own breast till forth broke finch
Able to sing God praise on mornings now.
What so excessive harm was done? — she asked.
To which demand the dreadful answer comes —
For that same deed, now at Lorenzo’s church,
Both agents, conscious and inconscious, lie;
While she, the deed was done to benefit,
Lies also, the most lamentable of things,
Yonder where curious people count her breaths,
Calculate how long yet the little life
Unspilt may serve their turn nor spoil the show,
Give them their story, then the church its group.
Well, having gained Pompilia, the girl grew
I’ the midst of Pietro here, Violante there,
Each, like a semicircle with stretched arms,
Joining the other round her preciousness —
Two walls that go about a garden-plot
Where a chance sliver, branchlet slipt from bole
Of some tongue-leaved eye-figured Eden tree,
Filched by two exiles and borne far away,
Patiently glorifies their solitude, —
Year by year mounting, grade by grade surmounts
The builded brick-work, yet is compassed still,
Still hidden happily and shielded safe, —
Else why should miracle have graced the ground?
But on the twelfth sun that brought April there
What meant that laugh? The coping-stone was reached;
Nay, a light tuft of bloom towered above
To be toyed with by butterfly or bee,
Done good to or else harm to from outside:
Pompilia’s root, stem, and a branch or two
Home enclosed still, the rest would be the world’s.
All which was taught our couple though obtuse,
Since walls have ears, when one day brought a priest,
Smooth-mannered soft-speeched sleek-cheeked visitor,
The notable Abate Paolo — known