Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series
Page 138
“In leash of quibbles strung to look like law!
“You’ll soon see, — when I go to pay devoir
“And compliment him on confuting me, —
“If, by a back-swing of the pendulum,
“Grace be not, thick and threefold, consequent!
“‘I must decide as I see proper, Don!
“‘The Pope, I have my inward lights for guide,
“‘Had learning been the matter in dispute,
“‘Could eloquence avail to gainsay fact,
“‘Yours were the victory, be comforted!’
“Cinuzzo will be gainer by it all.
“Quick then with Gomez, hot and hot next case!”
Follows, a letter, takes the other side.
Tall blue-eyed Fisc whose head is capped with cloud,
Doctor Bottini, — to no matter who,
Writes on the Monday two days afterward.
Now shall the honest championship of right,
Crowned with success, enjoy at last, unblamed,
Moderate triumph! Now shall eloquence
Poured forth in fancied floods for virtue’s sake,
(The print is sorrowfully dyked and dammed,
But shows where fain the unbridled force would flow,
Finding a channel) — now shall this refresh
The thirsty donor with a drop or two!
Here has been truth at issue with a lie:
Let who gained truth the day have handsome pride
In his own prowess! Eh? What ails the man?
“Well, it is over, ends as I foresaw:
“Easily proved, Pompilia’s innocence!
“Catch them entrusting Guido’s guilt to me!
“I had, as usual, the plain truth to plead.
“I always knew the clearness of the stream
“Would show the fish so thoroughly, child might prong
“The clumsy monster: with no mud to splash,
“Small credit to lynx-eye and lightning-spear!
“This Guido, — (much sport he contrived to make,
“Who at first twist, preamble of the cord,
“Turned white, told all, like the poltroon he was!) —
“Finished, as you expect, a penitent,
“Fully confessed his crime, and made amends,
“And, edifying Rome last Saturday,
“Died like a saint, poor devil! That’s the man
“The gods still give to my antagonist:
“Imagine how Arcangeli claps wing,
“And crows! ‘Such formidable facts to face,
“‘So naked to attack, my client here,
“‘And yet I kept a month the Fisc at bay,
“‘And in the end had foiled him of the prize
“‘By this arch-stroke, this plea of privilege,
“‘But that the Pope must gratify his whim,
“‘Put in his word, poor old man, — let it pass!’
“ — Such is the cue to which all Rome responds.
“What with the plain truth given me to uphold,
“And, should I let truth slip, the Pope at hand
“To pick up, steady her on legs again,
“My office turns a pleasantry indeed!
“Not that the burly boaster did one jot
“O’ the little was to do — young Spreti’s work!
“But for him, — mannikin and dandiprat,
“Mere candle-end and inch of cleverness
“Stuck on Arcangeli’s save-all, — but for him
“The spruce young Spreti, what is bad were worse!
“I looked that Rome should have the natural gird
“At advocate with case that proves itself;
“I knew Arcangeli would grin and brag:
“But what say you to one impertinence
“Might move a man? That monk, you are to know,
“That barefoot Augustinian whose report
“O’ the dying woman’s words did detriment
“To my best points it took the freshness from,
“ — That meddler preached to purpose yesterday
“At San Lorenzo as a winding-up
“O’ the shows, have proved a treasure to the church.
“Out comes his sermon smoking from the press:
“Its text — ’Let God be true, and every man
“‘A liar’ — and its application, this,
“The longest-winded of the paragraphs,
“I straight unstitch, tear out and treat you with:
“‘Tis piping hot and posts through Rome to-day.
“Remember it, as I engage to do!
“But if you rather be disposed to see
“In the result of the long trial here, —
“This dealing doom to guilt and doling praise
“To innocency, — any proof that truth
“May look for vindication from the world,
“Much will you have misread the signs, I say,
“God, who seems acquiescent in the main
“With those who add ‘So will He ever sleep’ —
“Flutters their foolishness from time to time,
“Puts forth His right-hand recognisably;
“Even as, to fools who deem He needs must right
“Wrong on the instant, as if earth were heaven,
“He wakes remonstrance — ’Passive, Lord, how long?’
“Because Pompilia’s purity prevails,
“Conclude you, all truth triumphs in the end?
“So might those old inhabitants of the ark,
“Witnessing haply their dove’s safe return,
“Pronounce there was no danger all the while
“O’ the deluge, to the creature’s counterparts,
“Aught that beat wing i’ the world, was white or soft, —
“And that the lark, the thrush, the culver too,
“Might equally have traversed air, found earth,
“And brought back olive-branch in unharmed bill.
“Methinks I hear the Patriarch’s warning voice —
“‘Though this one breast, by miracle, return,
“‘No wave rolls by, in all the waste, but bears
“‘Within it some dead dove-like thing as dear,
“‘Beauty made blank and harmlessness destroyed!’
“How many chaste and noble sister-fames
“Wanted the extricating hand, and lie
“Strangled, for one Pompilia proud above
“The welter, plucked from the world’s calumny,
“Stupidity, simplicity, — who cares?
“Romans! An elder race possessed your land
“Long ago, and a false faith lingered still,
“As shades do, though the morning-star be out.
“Doubtless, some pagan of the twilight-day
“Has often pointed to a cavern-mouth,
“Obnoxious to beholders, hard by Rome,
“And said, — nor he a bad man, no, nor fool, —
“Only a man, so, blind like all his mates, —
“‘Here skulk in safety, lurk, defying law,
“‘The devotees to execrable creed,
“‘Adoring — with what culture . . . Jove, avert
“‘Thy vengeance from us worshippers of thee! . . .
“‘What rites obscene — their idol-god, an Ass!’
“So went the word forth, so acceptance found,
“So century re-echoed century,
“Cursed the accursed, — and so, from sire to son,
“You Romans cried ‘The offscourings of our race
“‘Corrupt within the depths there: fitly, fiends
“‘Perform a temple-service o’er the dead:
“‘Child, gather garment round thee, pass nor pry!’
“So groaned your generations: till the time
“Grew ripe, and lightning hath revealed, belike, —
“Thro’ crevice peeped into by curious fear, —
/> “Some object even fear could recognise
“I’ the place of spectres; on the illumined wall,
“To-wit, some nook, tradition talks about,
“Narrow and short, a corpse’s length, no more:
“And by it, in the due receptacle,
“The little rude brown lamp of earthenware,
“The cruse, was meant for flowers, but held the blood,
“The rough-scratched palm-branch, and the legend left
“Pro Christo. Then the mystery lay clear:
“The abhorred one was a martyr all the time,
“A saint whereof earth was not worthy. What?
“Do you continue in the old belief?
“Where blackness bides unbroke, must devils be?
“Is it so certain, not another cell
“O’ the myriad that make up the catacomb,
“Contains some saint a second flash would show?
“Will you ascend into the light of day
“And, having recognised a martyr’s shrine,
“Go join the votaries that gape around
“Each vulgar god that awes the market-place?
“Be these the objects of your praising? See!
“In the outstretched right hand of Apollo, there,
“Is screened a scorpion: housed amid the folds
“Of Juno’s mantle, lo, a cockatrice!
“Each statue of a god was fitlier styled
“Demon and devil. Glorify no brass
“That shines like burnished gold in noonday glare,
“For fools! Be otherwise instructed, you!
“And preferably ponder, ere ye pass,
“Each incident of this strange human play
“Privily acted on a theatre,
“Was deemed secure from every gaze but God’s, —
“Till, of a sudden, earthquake lays wall low
“And lets the world see the wild work inside,
“And how, in petrifaction of surprise,
“The actors stand, — raised arm and planted foot, —
“Mouth as it made, eye as it evidenced,
“Despairing shriek, triumphant hate, — transfixed,
“Both he who takes and she who yields the life.
“As ye become spectators of this scene —
“Watch obscuration of a fame pearl-pure
“In vapoury films, enwoven circumstance,
“ — A soul made weak by its pathetic want
“Of just the first apprenticeship to sin,
“Would thenceforth make the sinning soul secure
“From all foes save itself, that’s truliest foe, —
“For egg turned snake needs fear no serpentry, —
“As ye behold this web of circumstance
“Deepen the more for every thrill and throe,
“Convulsive effort to disperse the films
“And disenmesh the fame o’ the martyr, — mark
“How all those means, the unfriended one pursues,
“To keep the treasure trusted to her breast,
“Each struggle in the flight from death to life,
“How all, by procuration of the powers
“Of darkness, are transformed, — no single ray,
“Shot forth to show and save the inmost star,
“But, passed as through hell’s prism, proceeding black
“To the world that hates white: as ye watch, I say,
“Till dusk and such defacement grow eclipse
“By, — marvellous perversity of man! —
“The inadequacy and inaptitude
“Of that self-same machine, that very law
“Man vaunts, devised to dissipate the gloom,
“Rescue the drowning orb from calumny,
“ — Hear law, appointed to defend the just,
“Submit, for best defence, that wickedness
“Was bred of flesh and innate with the bone
“Borne by Pompilia’s spirit for a space,
“And no mere chance fault, passionate and brief:
“Finally, when ye find, — after this touch
“Of man’s protection which intends to mar
“The last pin-point of light and damn the disc, —
“One wave of the hand of God amid the worlds
“Bid vapour vanish, darkness flee away,
“And leave the vexed star culminate in peace
“Approachable no more by earthly mist —
“What I call God’s hand, — you, perhaps, — this chance
“Of the true instinct of an old good man
“Who happens to hate darkness and love light, —
“In whom too was the eye that saw, not dim,
“The natural force to do the thing he saw,
“Nowise abated, — both by miracle, —
“All this well pondered, — I demand assent
“To the enunciation of my text
“In face of one proof more that ‘God is true
“‘And every man a liar’ — that who trusts
“To human testimony for a fact
“Gets this sole fact — himself is proved a fool;
“Man’s speech being false, if but by consequence
“That only strength is true; while man is weak,
“And, since truth seems reserved for heaven not earth,
“Should learn to love what he may speak one day.
“For me, the weary and the worn, who prompt
“To mirth or pity, as I move the mood, —
“A friar who glide unnoticed to the grave,
“Bare feet, coarse robe and rope-grit waist of mine, —
“I have long since renounced your world, ye know:
“Yet weigh the worth of worldly prize foregone,
“Disinterestedly judge this and that
“Good ye account good: but God tries the heart.
“Still, if you question me of my content
“At having put each human pleasure by,
“I answer, at the urgency of truth,
“As this world seems, I dare not say I know
“ — Apart from Christ’s assurance which decides —
“Whether I have not failed to taste some joy.
“For many a dream would fain perturb my choice —
“How love, in those the varied shapes, might show
“As glory, or as rapture, or as grace:
“How conversancy with the books that teach,
“The arts that help, — how, to grow great, in fine,
“Rather than simply good, and bring thereby
“Goodness to breathe and live, nor, born i’ the brain,
“Die there, — how these and many another gift
“May well be precious though abjured by me.
“But, for one prize, best meed of mightiest man,
“Arch-object of ambition, — earthly praise,
“Repute o’ the world, the flourish of loud trump,
“The softer social fluting, — Oh, for these,
“ — No, my friends! Fame, — that bubble which, world-wide
“Each blows and bids his neighbour lend a breath,
“That so he haply may behold thereon
“One more enlarged distorted false fool’s-face,
“Until some glassy nothing grown as big
“Send by a touch the imperishable to suds, —
“No, in renouncing fame, the loss was light,
“Choosing obscurity, the chance was well!”
Didst ever touch such ampollosity
As the man’s own bubble, let alone its spite?
What’s his speech for, but just the fame he flouts —
How he dares reprehend both high and low?
Else had he turned the sentence “God is true
“And every man a liar — save the Pope
“Happily reigning — my respects to him!”
— So, rounded off the period. Molinism
&
nbsp; Simple and pure! To what pitch get we next?
I find that, for first pleasant consequence,
Gomez, who had intended to appeal
From the absurd decision of the Court,
Declines, though plain enough his privilege,
To call on help from lawyers any more —
Resolves the liars may possess the world,
Till God have had sufficiency of both:
So may I whistle for my job and fee!
But, for this virulent and rabid monk, —
If law be an inadequate machine,
And advocacy, so much impotence,
We shall soon see, my blatant brother! That’s
Exactly what I hope to show your sort!
For, by a veritable piece of luck,
True providence, you monks round period with,
All may be gloriously retrieved. Perpend!
That Monastery of the Convertites
Whereto the Court consigned Pompilia first,
— Observe, if convertite, why, sinner then,
Or where the pertinency of award? —
And whither she was late returned to die,
— Still in their jurisdiction, mark again! —
That thrifty Sisterhood, for perquisite,
Claims every paul where of may die possessed
Each sinner in the circuit of its walls.
Now, this Pompilia, seeing that by death
O’ the couple, all their wealth devolved on her,
Straight utilised the respite ere decease
By regular conveyance of the goods
She thought her own, to will and to devise, —
Gave all to friends, Tighetti and the like,
In trust for him she held her son and heir,
Gaetano, — trust to end with infancy:
So willing and devising, since assured
The justice of the Court would presently
Confirm her in her rights and exculpate,
Re-integrate and rehabilitate —
Station as, through my pleading, now she stands.
But here’s the capital mistake: the Court
Found Guido guilty, — but pronounced no word
About the innocency of his wife:
I grounded charge on broader base, I hope!
No matter whether wife be true or false,
The husband must not push aside the law,
And punish of a sudden: that’s the point!
Gather from out my speech the contrary!
It follows that Pompilia, unrelieved
By formal sentence from imputed fault,
Remains unfit to have and to dispose
Of property, which law provides shall lapse:
Wherefore the Monastery claims its due.
And whose, pray, whose the office, but the Fisc’s?
Who but I institute procedure next
Against the person of dishonest life,