Exactly two weeks. It will be through grace
O’ the Curate, not through any claim I have;
Because the boy was born at, so baptised
Close to, the Villa, in the proper church:
A pretty church, I say no word against,
Yet stranger-like, — while this Lorenzo seems
My own particular place, I always say.
I used to wonder, when I stood scarce high
As the bed here, what the marble lion meant,
With half his body rushing from the wall,
Eating the figure of a prostrate man —
(To the right, it is, of entry by the door)
An ominous sign to one baptised like me,
Married, and to be buried there, I hope.
And they should add, to have my life complete,
He is a boy and Gaetan by name —
Gaetano, for a reason, — if the friar
Don Celestine will ask this grace for me
Of Curate Ottoboni: he it was
Baptised me: he remembers my whole life
As I do his grey hair.
All these few things
I know are true, — will you remember them?
Because time flies. The surgeon cared for me,
To count my wounds, — twenty-two dagger-wounds,
Five deadly, but I do not suffer much —
Or too much pain, — and am to die to-night.
Oh how good God is that my babe was born,
— Better than born, baptised and hid away
Before this happened, safe from being hurt!
That had been sin God could not well forgive:
He was too young to smile and save himself.
When they took, two days after he was born,
My babe away from me to be baptised
And hidden awhile, for fear his foe should find, —
The country-woman, used to nursing babes,
Said “Why take on so? where is the great loss?
“These next three weeks he will but sleep and feed,
“Only begin to smile at the month’s end;
“He would not know you, if you kept him here,
“Sooner than that; so, spend three merry weeks
“Snug in the Villa, getting strong and stout,
“And then I bring him back to be your own,
“And both of you may steal to — we know where!”
The month — there wants of it two weeks this day!
Still, I half fancied when I heard the knock
At the Villa in the dusk, it might prove she —
Come to say “Since he smiles before the time,
“Why should I cheat you out of one good hour?
“Back I have brought him; speak to him and judge!”
Now I shall never see him; what is worse,
When he grows up and gets to be my age,
He will seem hardly more than a great boy;
And if he asks “What was my mother like?”
People may answer “Like girls of seventeen” —
And how can he but think of this and that,
Lucias, Marias, Sofias, who titter or blush
When he regards them as such boys may do?
Therefore I wish some one will please to say
I looked already old though I was young;
Do I not . . . say, if you are by to speak . . .
Look nearer twenty? No more like, at least,
Girls who look arch or redden when boys laugh,
Than the poor Virgin that I used to know
At our street-corner in a lonely niche, —
The babe, that sat upon her knees, broke off, —
Thin white glazed clay, you pitied her the more:
She, not the gay ones, always got my rose.
How happy those are who know how to write!
Such could write what their son should read in time,
Had they a whole day to live out like me.
Also my name is not a common name,
“Pompilia,” and may help to keep apart
A little the thing I am from what girls are.
But then how far away, how hard to find
Will anything about me have become,
Even if the boy bethink himself and ask!
No father that he ever knew at all,
Nor ever had — no, never had, I say!
That is the truth, — nor any mother left,
Out of the little two weeks that she lived,
Fit for such memory as might assist:
As good too as no family, no name,
Not even poor old Pietro’s name, nor hers,
Poor kind unwise Violante, since it seems
They must not be my parents any more.
That is why something put it in my head
To call the boy “Gaetano” — no old name
For sorrow’s sake; I looked up to the sky
And took a new saint to begin anew.
One who has only been made saint — how long?
Twenty-five years: so, carefuller, perhaps,
To guard a namesake than those old saints grow,
Tired out by this time, — see my own five saints!
On second thoughts, I hope he will regard
The history of me as what someone dreamed,
And get to disbelieve it at the last:
Since to myself it dwindles fast to that,
Sheer dreaming and impossibility, —
Just in four days too! All the seventeen years,
Not once did a suspicion visit me
How very different a lot is mine
From any other woman’s in the world.
The reason must be, ‘twas by step and step
It got to grow so terrible and strange:
These strange woes stole on tiptoe, as it were,
Into my neighbourhood and privacy,
Sat down where I sat, laid them where I lay;
And I was found familiarised with fear,
When friends broke in, held up a torch and cried
“Why, you Pompilia in the cavern thus,
“How comes that arm of yours about a wolf?
“And the soft length, — lies in and out your feet
“And laps you round the knee, — a snake it is!”
And so on.
Well, and they are right enough,
By the torch they hold up now: for first, observe,
I never had a father, — no, nor yet
A mother: my own boy can say at least
“I had a mother whom I kept two weeks!”
Not I, who little used to doubt . . . I
Good Pietro, kind Violante, gave me birth?
They loved me always as I love my babe
( — Nearly so, that is — quite so could not be — )
Did for me all I meant to do for him,
Till one surprising day, three years ago,
They both declared, at Rome, before some judge
In some court where the people flocked to hear,
That really I had never been their child,
Was a mere castaway, the careless crime
Of an unknown man, the crime and care too much
Of a woman known too well, — little to these,
Therefore, of whom I was the flesh and blood:
What then to Pietro and Violante, both
No more my relatives than you or you?
Nothing to them! You know what they declared.
So with my husband, — just such a surprise,
Such a mistake, in that relationship!
Everyone says that husbands love their wives,
Guard them and guide them, give them happiness;
‘Tis duty, law, pleasure, religion: well,
You see how much of this comes true in mine!
People indeed would fain have somehow proved
He was no husband: but he did not hear,
Or would not wait and so has killed
us all.
Then there is . . . only let me name one more!
There is the friend, — men will not ask about,
But tell untruths of, and give nicknames to,
And think my lover, most surprise of all!
Do only hear, it is the priest they mean,
Giuseppe Caponsacchi: a priest — love,
And love me! Well, yet people think he did.
I am married, he has taken priestly vows,
They know that, and yet go on, say, the same,
“Yes, how he loves you!” “That was love” — they say,
When anything is answered that they ask:
Or else “No wonder you love him” — they say.
Then they shake heads, pity much, scarcely blame —
As if we neither of us lacked excuse,
And anyhow are punished to the full,
And downright love atones for everything!
Nay, I heard read-out in the public court
Before the judge, in presence of my friends,
Letters ‘twas said the priest had sent to me,
And other letters sent him by myself,
We being lovers!
Listen what this is like!
When I was a mere child, my mother . . . that’s
Violante, you must let me call her so
Nor waste time, trying to unlearn the word, . . .
She brought a neighbour’s child of my own age
To play with me of rainy afternoons;
And, since there hung a tapestry on the wall,
We two agreed to find each other out
Among the figures. “Tisbe, that is you,
“With half-moon on your hair-knot, spear in hand,
“Flying, but no wings, only the great scarf
“Blown to a bluish rainbow at your back:
“Call off your hound and leave the stag alone!”
“ — And there are you, Pompilia, such green leaves
“Flourishing out of your five finger-ends,
“And all the rest of you are turned a sort of tree?”
“Why is it you are turned a sort of tree?”
You know the figures never were ourselves
Though we nicknamed them so. Thus, all my life, —
As well what was, as what, like this, was not, —
Looks old, fantastic and impossible:
I touch a fairy thing that fades and fades.
— Even to my babe! I thought, when he was born,
Something began for once that would not end,
Nor change into a laugh at me, but stay
For evermore, eternally quite mine.
Well, so he is, — but yet they bore him off,
The third day, lest my husband should lay traps
And catch him, and by means of him catch me.
Since they have saved him so, it was well done:
Yet thence comes such confusion of what was
With what will be, — that late seems long ago,
And, what years should bring round, already come,
Till even he withdraws into a dream
As the rest do: I fancy him grown great,
Strong, stern, a tall young man who tutors me,
Frowns with the others “Poor imprudent child!
“Why did you venture out of the safe street?
“Why go so far from help to that lone house?
“Why open at the whisper and the knock?”
Six days ago when it was New Year’s-day,
We bent above the fire and talked of him,
What he should do when he was grown and great.
Violante, Pietro, each had given the arm
I leant on, to walk by, from couch to chair
And fireside, — laughed, as I lay safe at last,
“Pompilia’s march from bed to board is made,
“Pompilia back again and with a babe,
“Shall one day lend his arm and help her walk!”
Then we all wished each other more New Years.
Pietro began to scheme — ”Our cause is gained;
“The law is stronger than a wicked man:
“Let him henceforth go his way, leave us ours!
“We will avoid the city, tempt no more
“The greedy ones by feasting and parade, —
“Live at the other villa, we know where,
“Still farther off, and we can watch the babe
“Grow fast in the good air; and wood is cheap
“And wine sincere outside the city gate.
“I still have two or three old friends will grope
“Their way along the mere half-mile of road,
“With staff and lantern on a moonless night
“When one needs talk: they’ll find me, never fear,
“And I’ll find them a flask of the old sort yet!”
Violante said “You chatter like a crow:
“Pompilia tires o’ the tattle, and shall to-bed:
“Do not too much the first day, — somewhat more
“To-morrow, and, the next, begin the cape
“And hood and coat! I have spun wool enough.”
Oh what a happy friendly eve was that!
And, next day, about noon, out Pietro went —
He was so happy and would talk so much,
Until Violante pushed and laughed him forth
Sight-seeing in the cold, — ”So much to see
“I’ the churches! Swathe your throat three times!” she cried,
“And, above all, beware the slippery ways,
“And bring us all the news by supper-time!”
He came back late, laid by cloak, staff and hat,
Powdered so thick with snow it made us laugh,
Rolled a great log upon the ash o’ the hearth,
And bade Violante treat us to a flask,
Because he had obeyed her faithfully,
Gone sight-see through the seven, and found no church
To his mind like San Giovanni — ”There’s the fold,
“And all the sheep together, big as cats!
“And such a shepherd, half the size of life,
“Starts up and hears the angel” — when, at the door,
A tap: we started up: you know the rest.
Pietro at least had done no harm, I know;
Nor even Violante, so much harm as makes
Such revenge lawful. Certainly she erred —
Did wrong, how shall I dare say otherwise? —
In telling that first falsehood, buying me
From my poor faulty mother at a price,
To pass off upon Pietro as his child:
If one should take my babe, give him a name,
Say he was not Gaetano and my own,
But that some other woman made his mouth
And hands and feet, — how very false were that!
No good could come of that; and all harm did.
Yet if a stranger were to represent
“Needs must you either give your babe to me
“And let me call him mine for ever more,
“Or let your husband get him” — ah, my God,
That were a trial I refuse to face!
Well, just so here: it proved wrong but seemed right
To poor Violante — for there lay, she said,
My poor real dying mother in her rags,
Who put me from her with the life and all,
Poverty, pain, shame and disease at once,
To die the easier by what price I fetched —
Also (I hope) because I should be spared
Sorrow and sin, — why may not that have helped?
My father, — he was no one, any one, —
The worse, the likelier, — call him, — he who came,
Was wicked for his pleasure, went his way,
And left no trace to track by; there remained
Nothing but me, the unnecessary life,
To catch up or let fall, — and y
et a thing
She could make happy, be made happy with,
This poor Violante, — who would frown thereat?
Well, God, you see! God plants us where we grow.
It is not that, because a bud is born
At a wild briar’s end, full i’ the wild beast’s way,
We ought to pluck and put it out of reach
On the oak-tree top, — say, “There the bud belongs!”
She thought, moreover, real lies were — lies told
For harm’s sake; whereas this had good at heart,
Good for my mother, good for me, and good
For Pietro who was meant to love a babe,
And needed one to make his life of use,
Receive his house and land when he should die.
Wrong, wrong and always wrong! how plainly wrong!
For see; this fault kept pricking, as faults do,
All the same at her heart, — this falsehood hatched,
She could not let it go nor keep it fast.
She told me so, — the first time I was found
Locked in her arms once more after the pain,
When the nuns let me leave them and go home,
And both of us cried all the cares away, —
This it was set her on to make amends,
This brought about the marriage — simply this!
Do let me speak for her you blame so much!
When Paul, my husband’s brother, found me out,
Heard there was wealth for who should marry me,
So, came and made a speech to ask my hand
For Guido, — she, instead of piercing straight
Through the pretence to the ignoble truth,
Fancied she saw God’s very finger point,
Designate just the time for planting me,
(The wild briar-slip she plucked to love and wear)
In soil where I could strike real root, and grow,
And get to be the thing I called myself:
For, wife and husband are one flesh, God says,
And I, whose parents seemed such and were none,
Should in a husband have a husband now,
Find nothing, this time, but was what it seemed,
— All truth and no confusion any more.
I know she meant all good to me, all pain
To herself, — since how could it be aught but pain,
To give me up, so, from her very breast,
The wilding flower-tree-branch that, all those years,
She had got used to feel for and find fixed?
She meant well: has it been so ill i’ the main?
That is but fair to ask: one cannot judge
Of what has been the ill or well of life,
The day that one is dying — sorrows change
Into not altogether sorrow-like;
I do see strangeness but scarce misery,
Now it is over, and no danger more.
Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series Page 108