To bear the award of retributive law
Laid on her traitor and your enemy. Sirs,
Is it your will to hear him answer?
SENATORS.
Yea.
BENINTENDE.
Marin Faliero, leave is thine to speak.
FALIERO.
And leave is yours to slay me: yet for both,
Lords councillors, I thank you: most for death,
And somewhat yet for freedom given my speech.
Ye know that being your prince and thrall elect
I have lived not free, who now shall freely die;
By doom indeed of yours, but mine own will
Rejoicingly confirms it. Fourscore years
Have given mine eyesight and my spirit of life
The sun and sea to feed on, and mine heart
This people and this city chosen of God
To love and serve, and this forlorn right hand
Some threescore of those years have given the gift
With furtherance of God’s comfort and my sword’s
To smite your foes and scatter, till today
I am here arraigned as deadliest of them all.
Nor verily ever stood ye, nor shall stand,
In risk so dire, and die not: yea, when death
Hangs hard above your heads as over mine
Here, and the straitened spirit abhors the flesh,
Then hardly shall their mutual severance be
Nearer: for chance or God has brought you forth
From under veriest imminence of death
And shadowing darkness of his hand uplift
And wing made wide above you. No man’s head
Should God have spared, had God been one with me,
Or chance and I like-minded: that ye live,
Praise God, and not my purpose: never man
Bore mind more bent on one thing most desired,
No sinner’s more on sin, no saint’s on God,
Than mine with all its might and weight of will
On trust of your destruction. Hope on earth
Save this, desire of gift save this from heaven,
Had I, since first this fire was lit in me,
None: and now knowing it vain I would not live
One hour beyond your sentence. Whence or how
God kindled it against you, for of God,
I say, of God it came, ye marvel, seeing
No cause as great as my great rage of will
To rouse in me such ravin: yet, my lords,
If thirst or ever hunger gnawed man’s heart,
Mine did they till your death should satiate it,
Your general death and single: yea, had God
Held in one hand forth toward me death for you,
For me perpetual penance, and in one
For you long life and paradise for me,
I had chosen, and given him thanks who gave me choice,
Revenge with hell, not heaven with pardon. Yet
Not my wrong only, not my wrath alone,
Were all that made my spirit a sword and kept
My thought a fire against you: though the wrong
Were monstrous past memorial made of man,
Past memory kept of time alive to mark
Ingratitude most memorable, and the wrath,
How sharp soe’er, not more than proves in God
By fire and fierce apocalypse of doom
Justice: for shame that smites an old man’s cheek
Is as a whetted sword that cleaves his heart,
His hand, strong once, being weaponless: and mine
The shame that spat on was as fire to burn,
And mine the sword that clove was fire, and mine
The weapon that forsook had made it once
Famous. But yet I curse not God for you
That ye denied me, being the men ye were,
Redress: for had ye granted, haply then
I had died content, and never cast by chance
A thought away at hazard on the wrongs
That all men bear who bear your lordship. Now
By light and fire of mine own shame and wrong
I have seen the shames, I have read the wrongs of these
Who, free being born, and free men called by name,
Endure with me your mastery. This ye call
An equal weal, a general good, a thing
Divine and common, mutual and august,
Hailed by the holiest name that hallows right,
One chosen of many kingdoms, kingless — one
Not ranged among but reared above them, one
Found worth a word that whoso hears takes heart
And triumphs in his motherland, of men
Not named as theirs whose heads bow down to man,
Nor kingdom called nor empire, but acclaimed
Republic — this that all men praise as ye,
Ye only, ye dishonour. Nought is this,
To call no man of all that tread on men
King, if men call a man that walks on earth
Master, and bind about a new-born brow
Inheritance of lordship. Hand from hand
Takes, and resigns in vain, the wrongful right,
By reasonless transmission: man by man,
The imperious races, lessening toward their last,
Perish: yet power with even their last is born,
Because his mother bare him. Sirs, this law
Would wake on lips that wist not what were smiles
Laughter: but if the unreason brought not forth
Shame, haply men, the fools of patience, might
Endure it, and eschew, by luck’s good leave,
Scorn: which they shall not surely who forbear
And bear what honour may not. Sirs, take note
That with men’s wrongs and sufferings age on age
This blindworm custom have ye fed and made
A serpent fanged and flying, with eyes and wings,
To ravin on men’s hearts. Pride, shame, sloth, lust,
Are dragons’ teeth: right royally ye err
To deem that these will sting not, or that men,
No bondslaves born but citizens as ye,
Being stung, will smile and thank you. Now perchance
Would one make answer, saying I too was born
Not least of all nor less than any of you
Noble, but heir of place as proud as yours,
Of name as high in history, by my sires
None otherwise than yours from yours bequeathed
With attributes and accidents to boot
Of chance hereditary: which truth being truth,
Fierce madness is it in me for sheer despite
To league myself against my kind, and give
My brethren’s throats up to the popular knife
And rage of hands plebeian, all for this,
This recompense of all, to stand myself
Amid the clamorous rout of thralls released
Dumb, disarrayed, disseated, dispossessed,
Degraded and disfigured of the grace
My birth had cast about me: but, my lords,
Not all men alway, though ye know not this,
Yearn toward their own ends only, live and die
Desiring only for themselves and theirs
Honour, with sure-eyed justice; righteousness
That holds the rights up of a noble’s house,
Walks firm and straight on service in his hall,
But halts beyond his threshold; equity
Which is not equal, justice less than just,
And freedom based on bondage: else indeed,
Were all souls nobly born so base by birth,
No tongue most violent or most furious hand
Uplift or loud against nobility
Spake ever yet nor struck unjustly. Men
May bear the blazon wrought of centuries, hold
Their armouries higher than arms imperia
l, yet
Know that the least their countryman, whose hand
Hath done his country service, lives their peer
And peer of all their fathers. Ye, that know
Nor this nor aught that men call manful — ye
That feed upon your fathers’ fame as worms
Fed on their flesh, and leave it rotten — ye
That prate and plume and prank yourselves in pride
Because your grandsires, men that were, begat
Sons yet not all unmanned, and these again
Begat on wombs less loyal than of yore
You — how should ye know this? But I, fair lords,
Born even as you, was nurtured even as they
Whom your fair lordships hold, being humbler born,
Foul: hand in hand with these I fought your fights,
I bore your banner: nor was mine in strife
Reared higher than hands which there kept rank with mine,
And were not noble: whence, from touch of these
And fellowship in fighting, I, whom ye
Call peer of yours, found poor men peers of mine
And you by proof of act and test of truth
Vassals. But some perchance of yours, ye say,
Fought far and fain of fight as we, and bore
As high the lion: sirs, we know it: but this
We know not, that ye bore it higher, or stood
More steadfast in the shock of charging death,
Than poor men born your followers: and on these,
On sons of these ye have laid such laws, and made
Life so by manlike men unbearable,
That by what end soever he that ends
This reign of chance, this heritage of reign,
Must live or die approved of all save you,
Of justice justified, of earth and heaven
In life or death applauded. Nought would I
Nor aught would any say to shame you more:
And now, as ye must live, it seems, let me
Die: God be with you, and content with me.
BENINTENDE.
Lords councillors, declare your sentence.
ALL.
Death.
BENINTENDE.
Then, Marino Faliero, Doge, thus
By me this court speaks judgment on thee, now
Convicted by confession. As today
Thy chief twain fellow-traitors, gagged and gyved,
From the red pillars of the balcony
Swing stark before the sunset, so shalt thou
At noon tomorrow suffer privily
Decapitation; and thy place of death
The landing-place that crowns the Giants’ Stairs
Where first thine oath was taken. For thy corpse,
We grant it burial with thy sires by night
In Zanipolo: but thy portrait’s place
Among our painted princes in the hall
Of our great council void and bare shall stand
In sign of shame for ever, veiled in black,
Where men shall read, writ broad below,
This place
Is Marino Faliero’s, for his crimes
Beheaded.
FALIERO.
Ay? that all men seeing may crave
To know what crime of crimes was his, and hear
The word in answer given that crowns the deed
Wherewith confronted all fair virtues, all
Good works of all good men remembered, seem
Pale as the moon by morning — even the word
That was to Greece as godhead, and to Rome
The sign and seal of sovereign manfulness —
Tyrannicide: thanks be with tyranny
That so by me records it. I shall sleep
Tonight, I think, the gladlier that I know
Where I shall lay my head tomorrow. Sirs,
Farewell, and peace be with you if it may.
I have lost, ye have won this hazard: yet perchance
My loss may shine yet goodlier than your gain
When time and God give judgment. If there be
Truth, true is this, that I desired the right
And ye with hands as red sustain the wrong
As mine had been in triumph. Have your will:
And God send each no bitterer end than mine.
[Exeunt.
Scene II.
— An apartment in the ducal palace.
Enter
Faliero, the
Duchess, and
Bertuccio.
FALIERO.
Nay, children, be not over childlike, ye
That see what men who love not truth will call
The natural doom ensuing which marks as mad
And damns to death inevitable as just
And old man’s furious childishness: be you
Wiser: let me not need bid you be wise,
Who am found of all men foolishest, and yet
Were this last chance before me laid again
Would do not other than I did. Take heart:
What mean ye so to mourn upon me?
BERTUCCIO.
Sir,
Am I not found unworthy?
FALIERO.
No, my boy:
They do not ill, being lords of ours, to slay
Me; nay, they could not spare: but thee to slay,
To spill thy strong young life for truth to me,
In all men’s eyes would mark them monstrous: thou
Must live, and serve my slayers, and serving them
Sustain my memory by the proof — if God
Shall give thee grace to prove it — that thy name,
Thy father’s name and mine, in true men’s ears
Rings truth, and means not treason. Though they be
Ill rulers of this household, be not thou
Too swift to strike ere time be ripe to strike,
Nor then by darkling stroke, against them: I
Have erred, who thought by wrong to vanquish wrong,
To smite by violence violence, and by night
Put out the power of darkness: time shall bring
A better way than mine, if God’s will be —
As how should God’s will be not? — to redeem
Venice. I was not worthy — nor may man,
Till one as Christ shall come again, be found
Worthy to think, speak, strike, foresee, foretell,
The thought, the word, the stroke, the dawn, the day,
That verily and indeed shall bid the dead
Live, and this old dear land of all men’s love
Arise and shine for ever: but if Christ
Came, haply such an one may come, and do
With hands and heart as pure as his a work
That priests themselves may mar not. God forbid
That: if not they, then death shall touch it not,
Nor time lay hand thereon, nor wrath to come
Of God or man prevail against it, though
Men’s tongues be mad against him till he die.
( Voices
chanting from below.)
Quis es tantus, quis es talis,
Cui non ira triumphalis,
Ira fulvis ardens alis,
Metu mentem comprimit?
Ira Dei, nobis dira,
Manet immortalis ira,
Sensu sæva, visu mira,
Mitis quæ non fletu fit.
FALIERO.
Again my psalmists answer me? who bade
These voices hither outside the sanctuary
To sound below there now? Nay, this can be
But chance of sacred service, or goodwill
To usward in our darkening hour, or scorn
Wherewith being moved we should but stand abased
Too low for base men’s mockery. What, my child,
Does their fierce music hurt thee?
DUCHESS.
Nay, not more,
My lord, than all things heard o
r seen that say
I shall not see nor hear much longer you
Whom, though I loved you ever, now meseems
I have never loved as now; God knows how well,
None knows but I how bitterly: but this
I should not say, to vex your kind last thoughts
With more than even your natural care of me.
FALIERO.
Sweet, wouldst thou think to vex me? nay, then, weep:
Else canst thou not. This very wrath of God
Wherewith the threats of priestly throats would shake
Mountains, and scourge the sea to madness, what
Can this do, being by tears intractable,
Implacable to moan of men, if men,
Being threatened, moan or weep not? Fear and shame,
The right and left hand of a base man’s faith,
Can lay not hold on hearts found higher: and how,
Were God no higher of heart than men most base,
But wayward, fierce, unrighteous, merciless,
As these who praise proclaim him, how should he
Have power on any save a base man’s heart?
His wings of wrath were narrower than the soul’s
That soar and seek toward justice, though the wind
Break them, and lightning burn the blind bright eyes
That even for love would look on God and live,
But find for light fire, and for comfort fear.
(Chanting again.)
Nigris involutum pennis
Te circumdat nox perennis;
Non quinquennis, non decennis
Implicabit umbra te;
Sed antiqua, sed æterna,
Dum sit lux in cœlo verna,
Nox profunda, nox hiberna,
Christus unde salvet me.
FALIERO.
And Christ keep all who love him clean of you
Who turn their love to loathing. Why, these priests
Would make the sunshine hellfire, thence to light
The piles whereon they burn with live men’s limbs
The heart and hope of manhood. Light save this
They know not, nor desire it: light and night
To them are other than to men that see
Light laugh in heaven and hurt not, night come down
To comfort men from heaven: sweet spring to them
Is winter, and their souls of the iron ice
That Alighieri found at hell’s hard heart
Take winter’s core for springtide. Woe were thine,
Venice, and woe were Italy’s, if these
Held ever in their hand all hearts of men
Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne (Illustrated) (Delphi Poets Series) Page 270
