Selected Poems and Prose
Page 36
About me … ’tis substantial, heavy, thick,
I cannot pluck it from me, for it glues
20My fingers and my limbs to one another,
And eats into my sinews, and dissolves
My flesh to a pollution, poisoning
The subtle, pure, and inmost spirit of life!
My God! I never knew what the mad felt
25Before; for I am mad beyond all doubt!
(More wildly.) No, I am dead! These putrefying limbs
Shut round and sepulchre the panting soul
Which would burst forth into the wandering air! (A pause.)
What hideous thought was that I had even now?
30’Tis gone; and yet its burthen remains here
O’er these dull eyes … upon this weary heart!
O, world! O, life! O, day! O, misery!
Lucretia. What ails thee, my poor child? She answers not:
Her spirit apprehends the sense of pain,
35But not its cause; suffering has dried away
The source from which it sprung …
Beatrice (franticly). Like Parricide …
Misery has killed its father: yet its father
Never like mine … O, God! What thing am I?
Lucretia. My dearest child, what has your father done?
40 Beatrice (doubtfully). Who art thou, questioner? I have no father.
(Aside.) She is the madhouse nurse who tends on me,
It is a piteous office. [To LUCRETIA, in a slow, subdued voice.
Do you know
I thought I was that wretched Beatrice
Men speak of, whom her father sometimes hales
45From hall to hall by the entangled hair;
At others, pens up naked in damp cells
Where scaly reptiles crawl, and starves her there,
Till she will eat strange flesh. This woful story
So did I overact in my sick dreams,
50That I imagined … no, it cannot be!
Horrible things have been in this wild world,
Prodigious mixtures, and confusions strange
Of good and ill; and worse have been conceived
Than ever there was found a heart to do.
55But never fancy imaged such a deed
As … [Pauses, suddenly recollecting herself.
Who art thou? Swear to me, ere I die
With fearful expectation, that indeed
Thou art not what thou seemest … Mother!
Lucretia. Oh!
My sweet child, know you …
Beatrice. Yet speak it not:
60For then if this be truth, that other too
Must be a truth, a firm enduring truth,
Linked with each lasting circumstance of life,
Never to change, never to pass away.
Why so it is. This is the Cenci Palace;
65Thou art Lucretia; I am Beatrice.
I have talked some wild words, but will no more.
Mother, come near me: from this point of time,
I am … [Her voice dies away faintly.
Lucretia. Alas! What has befallen thee, child?
What has thy father done?
Beatrice. What have I done?
70Am I not innocent? Is it my crime
That one with white hair, and imperious brow,
Who tortured me from my forgotten years,
As parents only dare, should call himself
My father, yet should be!—Oh, what am I?
75What name, what place, what memory shall be mine?
What retrospects, outliving even despair?
Lucretia. He is a violent tyrant, surely, child:
We know that death alone can make us free;
His death or ours. But what can he have done
80Of deadlier outrage or worse injury?
Thou art unlike thyself; thine eyes shoot forth
A wandering and strange spirit. Speak to me,
Unlock those pallid hands whose fingers twine
With one another.
Beatrice. ’Tis the restless life
85Tortured within them. If I try to speak
I shall go mad. Aye, something must be done;
What, yet I know not … something which shall make
The thing that I have suffered but a shadow
In the dread lightning which avenges it;
90Brief, rapid, irreversible, destroying
The consequence of what it cannot cure.
Some such thing is to be endured or done:
When I know what, I shall be still and calm,
And never any thing will move me more.
95But now!—Oh blood, which art my father’s blood,
Circling thro’ these contaminated veins,
If thou, poured forth on the polluted earth,
Could wash away the crime, and punishment
By which I suffer … no, that cannot be!
100Many might doubt there were a God above
Who sees and permits evil, and so die:
That faith no agony shall obscure in me.
Lucretia. It must indeed have been some bitter wrong;
Yet what, I dare not guess. Oh, my lost child,
105Hide not in proud impenetrable grief
Thy sufferings from my fear.
Beatrice. I hide them not.
What are the words which you would have me speak?
I, who can feign no image in my mind
Of that which has transformed me. I, whose thought
110Is like a ghost shrouded and folded up
In its own formless horror. Of all words,
That minister to mortal intercourse,
Which wouldst thou hear? For there is none to tell
My misery: if another ever knew
115Aught like to it, she died as I will die,
And left it, as I must, without a name.
Death! Death! Our law and our religion call thee
A punishment and a reward … Oh, which
Have I deserved?
Lucretia. The peace of innocence;
120Till in your season you be called to heaven.
Whate’er you may have suffered, you have done
No evil. Death must be the punishment
Of crime, or the reward of trampling down
The thorns which God has strewed upon the path
125Which leads to immortality.
Beatrice. Aye, death …
The punishment of crime. I pray thee, God,
Let me not be bewildered while I judge.
If I must live day after day, and keep
These limbs, the unworthy temple of thy spirit,
130As a foul den from which what thou abhorrest
May mock thee, unavenged … it shall not be!
Self-murder … no, that might be no escape,
For thy decree yawns like a Hell between
Our will and it:—O! In this mortal world
135There is no vindication and no law
Which can adjudge and execute the doom
Of that through which I suffer.
[Enter ORSINO.
(She approaches him solemnly.) Welcome, Friend!
I have to tell you that, since last we met,
I have endured a wrong so great and strange,
140That neither life or death can give me rest.
Ask me not what it is, for there are deeds
Which have no form, sufferings which have no tongue.
Orsino. And what is he who has thus injured you?
Beatrice. The man they call my father: a dread name.
145 Orsino. It cannot be …
Beatrice. What it can be, or not,
Forbear to think. It is, and it has been;
Advise me how it shall not be again.
I thought to die; but a religious awe
Restrains me, and the dread lest death
itself
150Might be no refuge from the consciousness
Of what is yet unexpiated. Oh, speak!
Orsino. Accuse him of the deed, and let the law
Avenge thee.
Beatrice. Oh, ice-hearted counsellor!
If I could find a word that might make known
155The crime of my destroyer; and that done,
My tongue should like a knife tear out the secret
Which cankers my heart’s core; aye, lay all bare
So that my unpolluted fame should be
With vilest gossips a stale mouthed story;
160A mock, a bye-word, an astonishment:—
If this were done, which never shall be done,
Think of the offender’s gold, his dreaded hate,
And the strange horror of the accuser’s tale,
Baffling belief, and overpowering speech;
165Scarce whispered, unimaginable, wrapt
In hideous hints … Oh, most assured redress!
Orsino. You will endure it then?
Beatrice. Endure?—Orsino,
It seems your counsel is small profit.
[Turns from him, and speaks half to herself.
Aye,
All must be suddenly resolved and done.
170What is this undistinguishable mist
Of thoughts, which rise, like shadow after shadow,
Darkening each other?
Orsino. Should the offender live?
Triumph in his misdeed? and make, by use,
His crime, whate’er it is, dreadful no doubt,
175Thine element; until thou mayest become
Utterly lost; subdued even to the hue
Of that which thou permittest?
Beatrice (to herself). Mighty death!
Thou double-visaged shadow! Only judge!
Rightfullest arbiter! [She retires absorbed in thought.
Lucretia. If the lightning
180Of God has e’er descended to avenge …
Orsino. Blaspheme not! His high Providence commits
Its glory on this earth, and their own wrongs
Into the hands of men; if they neglect
To punish crime …
Lucretia. But if one, like this wretch,
185Should mock with gold, opinion, law and power?
If there be no appeal to that which makes
The guiltiest tremble? If because our wrongs,
For that they are unnatural, strange and monstrous,
Exceed all measure of belief? Oh, God!
190If, for the very reasons which should make
Redress most swift and sure, our injurer triumphs?
And we the victims, bear worse punishment
Than that appointed for their torturer?
Orsino. Think not
But that there is redress where there is wrong,
195So we be bold enough to seize it.
Lucretia. How?
If there were any way to make all sure,
I know not … but I think it might be good
To …
Orsino. Why, his late outrage to Beatrice;
For it is such, as I but faintly guess,
200As makes remorse dishonour, and leaves her
Only one duty, how she may avenge:
You, but one refuge from ills ill endured;
Me, but one counsel …
Lucretia. For we cannot hope
That aid, or retribution, or resource
205Will arise thence, where every other one
Might find them with less need. [BEATRICE advances.
Orsino. Then …
Beatrice. Peace, Orsino!
And, honoured Lady, while I speak, I pray,
That you put off, as garments overworn,
Forbearance and respect, remorse and fear,
210And all the fit restraints of daily life,
Which have been borne from childhood, but which now
Would be a mockery to my holier plea.
As I have said, I have endured a wrong,
Which, though it be expressionless, is such
215As asks atonement; both for what is past,
And lest I be reserved, day after day,
To load with crimes an overburthened soul,
And be … what ye can dream not. I have prayed
To God, and I have talked with my own heart,
220And have unravelled my entangled will,
And have at length determined what is right.
Art thou my friend, Orsino? False or true?
Pledge thy salvation ere I speak.
Orsino. I swear
To dedicate my cunning, and my strength,
225My silence, and whatever else is mine,
To thy commands.
Lucretia. You think we should devise
His death?
Beatrice. And execute what is devised,
And suddenly. We must be brief and bold.
Orsino. And yet most cautious.
Lucretia. For the jealous laws
230Would punish us with death and infamy
For that which it became themselves to do.
Beatrice. Be cautious as ye may, but prompt. Orsino,
What are the means?
Orsino. I know two dull, fierce outlaws,
Who think man’s spirit as a worm’s, and they
235Would trample out, for any slight caprice,
The meanest or the noblest life. This mood
Is marketable here in Rome. They sell
What we now want.
Lucretia. To-morrow before dawn,
Cenci will take us to that lonely rock,
240Petrella, in the Apulian Apennines.
If he arrive there …
Beatrice. He must not arrive.
Orsino. Will it be dark before you reach the tower?
Lucretia. The sun will scarce be set.
Beatrice. But I remember
Two miles on this side of the fort, the road
245Crosses a deep ravine; ’tis rough and narrow,
And winds with short turns down the precipice;
And in its depth there is a mighty rock,
Which has, from unimaginable years,
Sustained itself with terror and with toil
250Over a gulph, and with the agony
With which it clings seems slowly coming down;
Even as a wretched soul hour after hour,
Clings to the mass of life; yet clinging, leans;
And leaning, makes more dark the dread abyss
255In which it fears to fall: beneath this crag
Huge as despair, as if in weariness,
The melancholy mountain yawns … below,
You hear but see not an impetuous torrent
Raging among the caverns, and a bridge
260Crosses the chasm; and high above there grow,
With intersecting trunks, from crag to crag,
Cedars, and yews, and pines; whose tangled hair
Is matted in one solid roof of shade
By the dark ivy’s twine. At noonday here
265’Tis twilight, and at sunset blackest night.
Orsino. Before you reach that bridge make some excuse
For spurring on your mules, or loitering
Until …
Beatrice. What sound is that?
Lucretia. Hark! No, it cannot be a servant’s step;
270It must be Cenci, unexpectedly
Returned … Make some excuse for being here.
Beatrice (to ORSINO, as she goes out).
That step we hear approach must never pass
The bridge of which we spoke.
[Exeunt LUCRETIA and BEATRICE.
Orsino. What shall I do?
Cenci must find me here, and I must bear
&nbs
p; 275The imperious inquisition of his looks
As to what brought me hither: let me mask
Mine own in some inane and vacant smile.
[Enter GIACOMO, in a hurried manner.
How! Have you ventured hither? Know you then
That Cenci is from home?
Giacomo. I sought him here;
280And now must wait till he returns.
Orsino. Great God!
Weigh you the danger of this rashness?
Giacomo. Aye!
Does my destroyer know his danger? We
Are now no more, as once, parent and child,
But man to man; the oppressor to the oppressed;
285The slanderer to the slandered; foe to foe:
He has cast Nature off, which was his shield,
And Nature casts him off, who is her shame;
And I spurn both. Is it a father’s throat
Which I will shake, and say, I ask not gold;
290I ask not happy years; nor memories
Of tranquil childhood; nor home-sheltered love;
Though all these hast thou torn from me, and more;
But only my fair fame; only one hoard
Of peace, which I thought hidden from thy hate,
295Under the penury heaped on me by thee,
Or I will … God can understand and pardon,
Why should I speak with man?
Orsino. Be calm, dear friend.
Giacomo. Well, I will calmly tell you what he did.
This old Francesco Cenci, as you know,
300Borrowed the dowry of my wife from me,
And then denied the loan; and left me so
In poverty, the which I sought to mend
By holding a poor office in the state.
It had been promised to me, and already
305I bought new clothing for my ragged babes,
And my wife smiled; and my heart knew repose.
When Cenci’s intercession, as I found,
Conferred this office on a wretch, whom thus
He paid for vilest service. I returned
310With this ill news, and we sate sad together