Born fain to serve their country: priests would turn
With prayers and promises and blessings half
The blood therein to death-cold poison.
BERTUCCIO.
Sir,
Did not the imperial Gregory glorify
Rome, when his heel set on the German’s neck
Trampled her sovereign foeman as a snake
Starved in the snows? and might not such a priest
Bless freedom, and the blessing of his breath
Not blast but bid it blossom?
FALIERO.
Son, by Christ,
I doubt a curse were found less like to hurt
And frost less like to wither.
DUCHESS.
Dear my lord,
Have patience, and take heed of words; they fall
Not echoless on silence; these of yours
Affright me; nay, be patient, and give ear,
And pardon me that pray you hearken.
FALIERO.
Ay —
To what word next shall fill our ears with prayer
That fain would sound like thunder? Let them pray.
(Chanting again.)
Nos, ut servi facti servis,
Fracti corde, fracti nervis,
Congregamur in catervis,
Vagabundi, tremuli;
Sed, ô fautor tu sincere,
Judex mitis ac severe,
Miserere, miserere,
Miserere populi!
FALIERO.
Yea, for they need and find not mercy, they
Whose count makes up the people. God, if God
Be pitiful, on these have pity: man
Hath more for beasts he slays in sport, for hounds
That help him, than for women, children, men,
He treads to death and passes; would that I,
Though ruin had earlier fallen on me, and left
Less than I leave of record now, betimes
Had taken thought to comfort these, or make
At least their life more even with equity,
Their days more clear of cloud, their sleep more sure,
Their waking sweeter. Lord and chief was I,
And left them miserable; not vile indeed
As those whom kings may spit on, but abased
Below the royal right of manhood.
DUCHESS.
Nay —
Have you not alway shown them kindness more
Than poor men crave of noble?
FALIERO.
Child, the right
That man of man craves, and requires not, being
Too weak to claim and conquer, what is this
But sign and symbol of so vile a wrong,
So foul and fraud, so fierce a violence, borne
So long and found so shameful, that the prayer
Sounds insolence? I do not pray thee —
Sweet,
Play me not false; thou dost not pray me spare
To smite, revile, misuse thee: man of man
Desiring mercy, justice, leave to live,
Were all as base a suppliant. No, not me
But one more pure of passion, one more strong,
Being gentler and more just, if God be good
And time approve him righteous, God shall give
The grace I merited not, to do men right
And bring men comfort: wrath and fear and hope,
Save such as angels watching earth from heaven,
And filled with fiery pity pure as God’s,
Feel, and are kindled into love, to him
Shall rest unknown for ever: men that hear
His name far off shall yearn at heart, and thank
God that they hear, and live: but they that see,
They that touch hands with heaven and him, that feed
With light from his their eyes, and fill their ears
With godlike speech of lips whereon the smile
Is promise of more perfect manhood, born
Of happier days than his that knew not him,
And equal-hearted with the sun in heaven
From rising even to setting, they shall know
By type and present likeness of a man
What, if truth be, truth is, and what, if God,
God: for by love that casts itself away
And is not moved with passion, but more strong
For sacrifice deliberate and serene
Than passion sevenfold heated for revenge,
Shall all not beastlike born, not serpent-souled,
Not abject from the womb, discern the man
Supreme of spirit, and perfect, and unlike
Me: for the tongue that bids dark death arise,
The hand that takes dead freedom by the hand
And lifts up living, other these must be
Than mine, and other than the world, I think,
Shall bear till men wax worthier.
BERTUCCIO.
Such a man
Shall come not even till God come back on earth.
FALIERO.
Who knows if God shall come not? or if God
Be other — yea, be anything, my son,
If not the spirit incarnate and renewed
In each man born most godlike, and beheld
Most manful and most merciful of all?
(Chanting again.)
Parce, Deus, urbi parce;
Tuque summâ constans arce
Sis adjutor urbi, Marce:
Cor peccatis conditum
Nescit quanta, nescit qualis,
Lex æterna, lex æqualis:
Mors per Christum fit mortalis,
Vita fit per Spiritum.
FALIERO.
Ay, with the breath of God between her lips
From Christlike lips breathed through them, she that lay
Dead in the dark may stand alive again,
And strike death dead: yea, death may turn to life
By grace of that live spirit invulnerable
We call the breath or ghost of God most high,
The very God that comes to comfort men,
That falls and flies abroad in tongues of fire
From soul to soul enkindled. Mark nor Christ
Wrought miracle ever more than this divine
Nor so by slaves and fools incredible
As this should be, to raise not one man up,
Not one man four days dead, as Lazarus once,
But all a people many a century dead,
And damned, men deemed, to death eternal. This
The heart of man, buried as dead in sins,
May feel not nor conceive, and having felt
Continue in corruption: this alone
Shall stand a sign on earth from heaven, whose light
Makes manifest the righteousness of God
In mortal godhead proven immortal, shown
Firm by full test of mere infirmity
And very God by manhood. Otherwhere
Might no man hold this possible, but here
May no man hold this doubtful. Are we not
Italians, made of our diviner earth
And fostered of her far more sovereign sun,
That we should doubt, and not be counted mad,
What no man born to less inheritance
And reared on records less august than ours
Would not be mad to dream that he believed
And would not sin to seek it? Have not we
Borne men to witness for the world, and made
Grey time our servant and our secretary
To register what none may read and say
That ours is not the lordship, ours the law,
And ours the love that lightens and that leads
High manhood by the heart as mothers lead
Children, and history leads us by the hand
From glory forth to glory through the gloom
That bids not hope die, nor bring forth despair,
Th
ough faith alone keep heart to comfort us?
What though five hundred years pass — what, were these
A thousand, if the sepulchres at last
Be rent, and let forth Venice — and let rise
Rome? Yea, my city, what though time and shame,
Though change and chance defile thee? Servitude
Shall fall from off thee as the shadow of night
Falls from the front of morning: thou shalt see
By life re-risen above the tombs revived
Death stricken dead, and time transfigured. We
Fight, fall, and sleep, and shadows shewn in song
And phantoms painted of us overlive
Our substance and our memory: men that hear
A name that was a clarion once will cry,
What means it? eyes that see on storied walls
Our likeness carven or coloured may perchance
Wax wide with wonder why to dead men’s eyes
Our fame seemed worth memorial: but to none
Shall not our country seem divine, and heaven
The likeness of our country. Die we may
From record of remembrance: but, being sons
Whose death or life, whose presence or whose dust,
Whose flesh or spirit is part of Italy,
What mean these fools to threaten us with death?
DUCHESS.
My lord, your heart is nobly bent on earth,
But earthward ever: soon by doom of man
Must your strong spirit of life and pride pass forth
And dwell where all of earth it loved is found
Nothing; for you — if love may speak, that speaks
For faith’s and fear’s sake now presumptuously —
Meseems for you this hour should keep in sight
Not Italy, but paradise: alas,
I cannot tell what I should say to please
God, and to do you service: yet I would
Say somewhat, might it serve.
FALIERO.
Thou sayest enough
With so sweet eyes. Content thee: death is not
Fearful, nor aught in death or life but fear.
(Chanting again.)
Pestis quâ dolore cincta
Gemit vita fletu tincta,
Suis ipsa vinclis vincta,
Cadit rectrix rerum fors:
Portentosa, maledicta,
Suo dente serpens icta,
Jacet mundi victrix victa,
Jacet mortem passa mors.
FALIERO.
Lo now, the folk who live and thrive by death,
Who feed on all men’s fear of it, deride
The fear they foster: be not priestlier thou
Than very priests are. Child, if God be just,
Let God do justice: if he be not, then
Man’s righteousness rebukes him: and the man
That loves not more himself than other men
Is held not all unrighteous. Death, I think,
Of all my sins shall shrive me: say this were
Sin, which had yet shed less of innocent blood
Than any blameless battle spills, and earns
For all who fought men’s praises, yet I give
My life for lives I took not, and I give
Less grudgingly than gladly. Not for me
Need any — nay, not ye — weep, as myself,
Were tears to me less hard and strange, might weep
For some that die with me and some that live.
I am sorry for my seamen: Calendaro
Was no faint heart in fight, but swift of hand
As fire that strikes: if one that bears his name
Crave ever help at need or grace of thee,
Forget not me nor him, but what thou canst,
If any grace be left thee, son, to shew,
Do gladly for my sake: he served me well:
And now the wind swings and the ravens rend
What was a soldier. Not to mine or me
Has this the fairest palace built with hands
Been fortunate or favourable: the day
Last year that led me hither led me not
With prosperous presage toward the natural shore
That should have given me welcome.
DUCHESS.
No, my lord.
The sign was fearful to us.
FALIERO.
Ay — there to alight
Where men that die by law, thou knowest, are slain
Was no such token as uplifts men’s hearts
And swells their hopes with promise. Dost thou mind
How deadly lowered that noon whose haze beguiled
Our blindfold bark of state to the evil goal
Whereon my life now shatters? Thou didst think
A sign it was from Godward. Let it be.
No sign can help or hurt us that foreshows
What must be: God might spare his dim display
Of half portended purpose, and appear
No less august, less wise or terrible,
Than threats that scare or scare not hearts like ours
With doom incognizable of doubtful death
Proclaim him and proclaim not. Now from mine
The shadow of doubt has passed away, and left
The shadow of death behind it, which to me
Seems less discomfortable and dark: for this
I ever held worse than all certitude,
To know not what the worst ahead might be
As now, being near the rocks, I see it, and die.
(Chanting again.)
Contemplamini, quot estis,
Ex infernâ quàm cœlestis
Illa nobis olim pestis
Salus exit hominum:
Mors in vitam transformata
Mutat mundos, mutat fata,
Fulget per stellarum prata
Lumen ipsa luminum.
FALIERO.
If by man’s hope or very grace of God
Dark death be so transfigured, I, that yet
Know not, desire not knowledge, being content
To prove the transformation: thou, if this
Please thee, believe and hold for actual truth
That which gives heart at least to heartless fear
And fire to faith and power to confidence
More strong than steel to strike with. Sure it is
That only dread of death is veriest death
And fear of hell blows hellfire seven times hot
For souls whose thought foretastes it: and for all
That fear not fate or aught inevitable,
Seeing nought wherein change breeds not may be changed
By force of fear or vehemence even of hope,
Intolerable is there nothing. Seven years since
Mine old good friend Petrarca should have died,
He thought, for utter heartbreak, and he lives,
And fills men’s ears and souls with sweeter song
Than sprang of sweeter seasons: yet is grief
Surely less bearable than death, which comes
As sure as sleep on all. We deem that man
Of men most miserably tormented, who,
Being fain to sleep, can sleep not: tyrants find
No torture in their torturous armoury
So merciless in masterdom as this,
To hold men’s lids aye waking: and on mine
What now shall fall but slumber? Yet once more,
If God or man would grant me this, which yet,
Perchance, is but a boy’s wish, fain I would
Set sail, and die at sea; for half an hour,
If so much length of life be left me, breathe
The wind that breathes the wave’s breath, and rejoice
Less even in blithe remembrance of the blast
That blew my sail to battle, and that sang
Triumph when conquest lit me home like fire —
Yea, less in very victory, could it shine
/> Again about me — less than in the pride,
The freedom, and the sovereign sense of joy,
Given of the sea’s pure presence. Mine she was
By threescore years and ten of strenuous love
Or ever man’s will wedded us: and hers
Am I now dying not so divine a death
As Istria might have given me, had the stars
Shone less oblique that marred and made my doom
Most adverse in prosperity. That day
Rang trumpet-like in presage and in praise
Of proud work done and prouder yet to do
By hands and hearts Venetian: then to die
With so great sound and splendour on the sea
Shed broad from battle rolling round us — there
To put life off triumphantly, like one
That lies down lordlier than he rose, and wears
Rest like a robe of triumph, woven more bright
Than gold that clothed him waking — this had been
High fortune for the highest of happier men
Than fate had made Faliero. But for him
Reserved was this, to reap for harvest thence
Praise, acclamation, thanksgiving, and sway,
Which all were worth not any mean man’s wage
Who serves and is not scoffed at: and from these,
Reaped once, to grind the bitter bread of shame,
And taste it salt as tears are. This white head,
Which swords had spared that should not, being set high,
Hath borne a buffet for a crown, and felt
The strokes of base men bruise it: eyes and tongues
More vile than earth have mocked at me, and live,
And hiss and glare me to my grave, cast out
From high funereal fellowship of fame
And daylight honour shewn the dead that pass
Unshamed among their fathers. Let it be.
Albeit no place among them all were mine,
Time haply might bring back my dust, and chance
Mix all our tombs together: but such hope
Should move not much the lightest soul alive
That death draws near to enfranchise, and to bring
Far out of reach of death and chance and time.
(Chanting again.)
Spes incertas facit certas,
Mentes implet inexpertas,
Lux in animo libertas,
Fides in superna dux:
Ut æternam per æstatem,
Per supernam civitatem,
Fiat lux per libertatem,
Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne (Illustrated) (Delphi Poets Series) Page 271
