---

• Our Lombard country-girls along the coast
• Wear daggers in their garters; for they know
• That they might hate another girl to death
• Or meet a German lover. Such a knife
• I bought her, with a hilt of horn and pearl.

• Father, you cannot know of all my thoughts
• That day in going to meet her,—that last day
• For the last time, she said;—of all the love
• And all the hopeless hope that she might change
• 10And go back with me. Ah! and everywhere,
• At places we both knew along the road,
• Some fresh shape of herself as once she was
• Grew present at my side; until it seemed—
• So close they gathered round me—they would all
• Be with me when I reached the spot at last,
• To plead my cause with her against herself
• So changed. O Father, if you knew all this
• You cannot know, then you would know too, Father,
  page: 2  
• And only then, if God can pardon me.
• 20What can be told I'll tell, if you will hear.

• I passed a village-fair upon my road,
• And thought, being empty-handed, I would take
• Some little present, which might prove that day
• Either a pledge between us, or (God help me!)
• A parting gift. And there it was I bought
• The knife I spoke of, such as women wear.

• That day, some three hours afterwards, I found
• For certain, it must be a parting gift.
• And, standing silent now at last, I looked
• 30Into her scornful face; and heard the sea
• Still trying hard to din into my ears
• Some speech it knew which still might change her heart
• If only it could make me understand.
• One moment thus. Another, and her face
• Seemed further off than the last line of sea,
• So that I thought, if now she were to speak
• I could not hear her. Then again I knew
• All, as we stood together on the sand
• At Iglio, in the first thin shade o' the hills.

• 40 ‘Take it,’ I said, and held it out to her,
• While the hilt glanced within my trembling hold;
• ‘Take it,‘ I said, ‘and keep it for my sake.’
• Her neck did not unbend, nor drooped her eyes,
• Nor did her foot leave beating of the sand;
• Only she put it by from her and laughed.

• Father, you hear my speech and not her laugh;
• But God was there and heard. Father, will God
• Remember all? He heard her when she laughed.

• It was another laugh than the sweet sound
• 50Which rose from her sweet childish heart, that day
• Eleven years before, when first I found her
• Alone upon the hill-side; and her curls
• Shook down in the warm grass as she looked up
• Out of her curls in my eyes bent to hers.
• She might have served a painter to pourtray
• That heavenly child which in the latter days
• Shall walk between the lion and the lamb.
• I had been for nights in hiding, worn and sick
• And hardly fed; and so her words at first
• 60Seemed fitful like the talking of the trees
• And voices in the air that knew my name.
• And I remember that I sat me down
• Upon the slope with her, and thought the world
• Must be all over or had never been,
• We seemed there so alone. And soon she told me
• Her parents both were gone away from her.
• I thought perhaps she meant that they had died;
• But when I asked her this, she looked again
• Into my face, and said that yestereve
• 70They kissed her long, and wept and made her weep,
• And gave her all the bread they had with them,
• And then had gone together up the hill
• Where we were sitting now, and had walked on
• Into the great red light: ‘and so,’ she said,
  page: 4  
• ‘I have come up here too; and when this evening
• They step out of the light as they stepped in,
• I shall be here to kiss them.’ And she laughed.

• Then I bethought me suddenly of the famine;
• And how the church-steps throughout all the town,
• 80When last I had been there a month ago,
• Swarmed with starved folk; and how the bread was weighed
• By Austrians armed; and women that I knew
• For wives and mothers walked the public street,
• Telling their husbands how, if they still feared
• To snatch the children's food, themselves would stay
• Till they had earned it there. So then this child
• Was piteous to me; for all told me then
• Her parents must have left her to God's chance,
• To man's or to the Church's charity,
• 90Because of the great famine, rather than
• To watch her growing thin between their knees.
• With that, God took my mother's voice and spoke,
• And sights and sounds came back and things long since,
• And all my childhood found me on the hills;
• And so I took her with me.

• I was young,
• Scarce man then, Father; but the cause which gave
• The wounds I die of now had brought me then
• Some wounds already; and I lived alone,
• As any hiding hunted man must live.
• 100It was no easy thing to keep a child
• In safety; for herself it was not safe,
• And doubled my own danger: but I knew
  page: 5  
• That God would help me.

• Yet a little while
• Pardon me, Father, if I pause. I think
• I have been speaking to you of some matters
• There was no need to speak of, have I not?
• You do not know how clearly those things stood
• Within my mind, which I have spoken of,
• Nor how they strove for utterance. Life all past
• 110Is like the sky when the sun sets in it,
• Clearest where furthest off.

• I told you how
• She scorned my parting gift and laughed. And yet
• A woman's laugh's another thing sometimes:
• I think they laugh in Heaven. I know last night
• I dreamed I saw into the garden of God,
• Where women walked whose painted images
• I have seen with candles round them in the church.
• They bent this way and that, one to another,
• Playing: and over the long golden hair
• 120Of each there floated like a ring of fire
• Which when she stooped stooped with her, and when she rose
• Rose with her. Then a breeze flew in among them,
• As if a window had been opened in heaven
• For God to give his blessing from, before
• This world of ours should set; (for in my dream
• I thought our world was setting, and the sun
• Flared, a spent taper;) and beneath that gust
• The rings of light quivered like forest-leaves.
• Then all the blessed maidens who were there
• 130Stood up together, as it were a voice
  page: 6  
• That called them; and they threw their tresses back,
• And smote their palms, and all laughed up at once,
• For the strong heavenly joy they had in them
• To hear God bless the world. Wherewith I woke:
• And looking round, I saw as usual
• That she was standing there with her long locks
• Pressed to her side; and her laugh ended theirs.

• For always when I see her now, she laughs.
• And yet her childish laughter haunts me too,
• 140The life of this dead terror; as in days
• When she, a child, dwelt with me. I must tell
• Something of those days yet before the end.

• I brought her from the city—one such day
• When she was still a merry loving child,—
• The earliest gift I mind my giving her;
• A little image of a flying Love
• Made of our coloured glass-ware, in his hands
• A dart of gilded metal and a torch.
• And him she kissed and me, and fain would know
• 150Why were his poor eyes blindfold, why the wings
• And why the arrow. What I knew I told
• Of Venus and of Cupid,—strange old tales.
• And when she heard that he could rule the loves
• Of men and women, still she shook her head
• And wondered; and, ‘Nay, nay,’ she murmured still,
• ‘So strong, and he a younger child than I!’
• And then she'd have me fix him on the wall
• Fronting her little bed; and then again
  page: 7  
• She needs must fix him there herself, because
• 160I gave him to her and she loved him so,
• And he should make her love me better yet,
• If women loved the more, the more they grew.
• But the fit place upon the wall was high
• For her, and so I held her in my arms:
• And each time that the heavy pruning-hook
• I gave her for a hammer slipped away
• As it would often, still she laughed and laughed
• And kissed and kissed me. But amid her mirth,
• Just as she hung the image on the nail,
• 170It slipped and all its fragments strewed the ground:
• And as it fell she screamed, for in her hand
• The dart had entered deeply and drawn blood.
• And so her laughter turned to tears: and ‘Oh!’
• I said, the while I bandaged the small hand,—
• ‘That I should be the first to make you bleed,
• Who love and love and love you!’—kissing still
• The fingers till I got her safe to bed.
• And still she sobbed,—‘not for the pain at all,’
• She said, ‘but for the Love, the poor good Love
• 180You gave me.’ So she cried herself to sleep.

• Another later thing comes back to me.
• 'Twas in those hardest foulest days of all,
• When still from his shut palace, sitting clean
• Above the splash of blood, old Metternich
• (May his soul die, and never-dying worms
• Feast on its pain for ever!) used to thin
• His year's doomed hundreds daintily, each month
  page: 8  
• Thirties and fifties. This time, as I think,
• Was when his thrift forbad the poor to take
• 190That evil brackish salt which the dry rocks
• Keep all through winter when the sea draws in.
• The first I heard of it was a chance shot
• Here and there in the street, and on the stones
• A stumbling clatter as of horse hemmed round.
• Then, when she saw me hurry out of doors,
• My gun slung at my shoulder and my knife
• Stuck in my girdle, she smoothed down my hair
• And laughed to see me look so brave, and leaped
• Up to my neck and kissed me. She was still
• 200A child; and yet that kiss was on my lips
• So hot all day where the smoke shut us in.

• For now, being always with her, the first love
• I had—the father's, brother's love—was changed,
• I think, in somewise; like a holy thought
• Which is a prayer before one knows of it.
• The first time I perceived this, I remember,
• Was once when after hunting I came home
• Weary, and she brought food and fruit for me,
• And sat down at my feet upon the floor
• 210Leaning against my side. But when I felt
• Her sweet head reach from that low seat of hers
• So high as to be laid upon my heart,
• I turned and looked upon my darling there
• And marked for the first time how tall she was;
• And my heart beat with so much violence
• Under her cheek, I thought she could not choose
  page: 9  
• But wonder at it soon and ask me why;
• And so I bade her rise and eat with me.
• And when, remembering all and counting back
• 220The time, I made out fourteen years for her
• And told her so, she gazed at me with eyes
• As of the sky and sea on a grey day,
• And drew her long hands through her hair, and asked me
• If she was not a woman; and then laughed:
• And as she stooped in laughing, I could see
• Beneath the growing throat the breasts half globed
• Like folded lilies deepset in the stream.

• Yes, let me think of her as then; for so
• Her image, Father, is not like the sights
• 230Which come when you are gone. She had a mouth
• Made to bring death to life,—the underlip
• Sucked in, as if it strove to kiss itself.
• Her face was ever pale, as when one stoops
• Over wan water; and the dark crisped hair
• And the hair's shadow made it paler still:—
• Deep-serried locks, the darkness of the cloud
• Where the moon's gaze is shrined in eddying gloom.
• Her body bore her neck as the tree's stem
• Bears the top branch; and as the branch sustains
• 240Its pride of flower and fruit, her high neck bore
• That face made wonderful with night and day.
• Her voice was swift, yet ever the last words
• Fell lingeringly; and rounded finger-tips
• She had, that clung a little where they touched
• And then were gone o' the instant. Her great eyes,
page: 10  
• That sometimes turned half dizzily beneath
• The passionate lids, as faint, when she would speak,
• Had also in them hidden springs of mirth,
• Which under the dark lashes evermore
• 250Shook to her laugh, as when a bird flies low
• Between the water and the willow-leaves,
• And the shade quivers till he wins the light.

• I was a moody comrade to her then,
• For all the love I bore her. Italy,
• The weeping desolate mother, long has claimed
• Her sons' strong arms to lean on, and their hands
• To lop the poisonous thicket from her path,
• Cleaving her way to light. And from her need
• Had grown the fashion of my whole poor life
• 260Which I was proud to yield her, as my father
• Had yielded his. And this had come to be
• A game to play, a love to clasp, a hate
• To wreak, all things together that a man
• Needs for his blood to ripen: till at times
• All else seemed shadows, and I wondered still
• To see such life pass muster and be deemed
• Time's bodily substance. In those hours, no doubt,
• To the young girl my eyes were like my soul,—
• Dark wells of death-in-life that yearned for day.
• 270And though she ruled me always, I remember
• That once when I was thus and she still kept
• Leaping about the place and laughing, I
• Did almost chide her; whereupon she knelt
• And putting her two hands into my breast
  page: 11  
• Sang me a song. Are these tears in my eyes?
• 'Tis long since I have wept for anything.
• I thought that song forgotten out of mind,
• And now, just as I spoke of it, it came
• All back. It is but a rude thing, ill rhymed,
• 280Such as a blind man chaunts and his dog hears
• Holding the platter, when the children run
• To merrier sport and leave him. Thus it goes:—

   

• La bella donna*
• Piangendo disse:

---

   

• ‘Come son fisse
• Le stelle in cielo!
• Quel fiato anelo
• Dello stanco sole,
• Quanto m'assonna!
• 290E la luna, macchiata
• Come uno specchio
• Logoro e vecchio,—
• Faccia affannata,
• Che cosa vuole?

• ‘Chè stelle, luna, e sole,
• Ciascun m'annoja
• E m'annojano insieme;
• Non me ne preme
• Nè ci prendo gioja.
• 300E veramente,
• Che le spalle sien franche
• E le braccia bianche
• E il seno caldo e tondo,
• Non mi fa niente.
• Chè cosa al mondo
• Posso più far di questi
• Se non piacciono a te, come dicesti?’

• La donna rise
• E riprese ridendo:—
• 310‘Questa mano che prendo
• E dunque mia?
• Tu m'ami dunque?
• Dimmelo ancora,
• Non in modo qualunque,
• Ma le parole
• Belle e precise
• Che dicesti pria.

• ‘ Siccome suole
• La state talora
  page: 13  
• 320(Dicesti) un qualche istante
• Tornare innanzi inverno,
• Così ta fai ch'io scerno
• Le foglie tutte quante,
• Ben ch'io certo tenessi
• Per passato l'autunno.

• ‘Eccolo il mio alunno!
• Io debbo insegnargli
• Quei cari detti istessi
• Ch'ei mi disse una volta!
• 330Oimè! Che cosa dargli,’
• (Ma ridea piano piano
• Dei baci in sulla mano,)
• ‘Ch'ei non m'abbia da lungo tempo tolta?’

• That I should sing upon this bed!—with you
• To listen, and such words still left to say!
• Yet was it I that sang? The voice seemed hers,
• As on the very day she sang to me;
• When, having done, she took out of my hand
• Something that I had played with all the while
• 340And laid it down beyond my reach; and so
• Turning my face round till it fronted hers,—
• ‘Weeping or laughing, which was best?’ she said.

• But these are foolish tales. How should I show
• The heart that glowed then with love's heat, each day
• More and more brightly?—when for long years now
• The very flame that flew about the heart,
• And gave it fiery wings, has come to be
  page: 14  
• The lapping blaze of hell's environment
• Whose tongues all bid the molten heart despair.

• 350 Yet one more thing comes back on me to-night
• Which I may tell you: for it bore my soul
• Dread firstlings of the brood that rend it now.
• It chanced that in our last year's wanderings
• We dwelt at Monza, far away from home,
• If home we had: and in the Duomo there
• I sometimes entered with her when she prayed.
• An image of Our Lady stands there, wrought
• In marble by some great Italian hand
• In the great days when she and Italy
• 360Sat on one throne together: and to her
• And to none else my loved one told her heart.
• She was a woman then; and as she knelt,—
• Her sweet brow in the sweet brow's shadow there,—
• They seemed two kindred forms whereby our land
• (Whose work still serves the world for miracle)
• Made manifest herself in womanhood.
• Father, the day I speak of was the first
• For weeks that I had borne her company
• Into the Duomo; and those weeks had been
• 370Much troubled, for then first the glimpses came
• Of some impenetrable restlessness
• Growing in her to make her changed and cold.
• And as we entered there that day, I bent
• My eyes on the fair Image, and I said
• Within my heart, ‘Oh turn her heart to me!’
  page: 15  
• And so I left her to her prayers, and went
• To gaze upon the pride of Monza's shrine,
• Where in the sacristy the light still falls
• Upon the Iron Crown of Italy,
• 380On whose crowned heads the day has closed, nor yet
• The daybreak gilds another head to crown.
• But coming back, I wondered when I saw
• That the sweet Lady of her prayers now stood
• Alone without her; until further off,
• Before some new Madonna gaily decked,
• Tinselled and gewgawed, a slight German toy,
• I saw her kneel, still praying. At my step
• She rose, and side by side we left the church.
• I was much moved, and sharply questioned her
• 390Of her transferred devotion; but she seemed
• Stubborn and heedless; till she lightly laughed
• And said: ‘The old Madonna? Aye indeed,
• ‘She had my old thoughts,—this one has my new.’
• Then silent to the soul I held my way:
• And from the fountains of the public place
• Unto the pigeon-haunted pinnacles,
• Bright wings and water winnowed the bright air;
• And stately with her laugh's subsiding smile
• She went, with clear-swayed waist and towering neck
• 400And hands held light before her; and the face
• Which long had made a day in my life's night
• Was night in day to me; as all men's eyes
• Turned on her beauty, and she seemed to tread
• Beyond my heart to the world made for her.

• Ah there! my wounds will snatch my sense again:
• The pain comes billowing on like a full cloud
• Of thunder, and the flash that breaks from it
• Leaves my brain burning. That's the wound he gave,
• The Austrian whose white coat I still made match
• 410With his white face, only the two were red
• As suits his trade. The devil makes them wear
• White for a livery, that the blood may show
• Braver that brings them to him. So he looks
• Sheer o'er the field and knows his own at once.

• Give me a draught of water in that cup;
• My voice feels thick; perhaps you do not hear;
• But you must hear. If you mistake my words
• And so absolve me, I am sure the blessing
• Will burn my soul. If you mistake my words
• 420And so absolve me, Father, the great sin
• Is yours, not mine: mark this: your soul shall burn
• With mine for it. I have seen pictures where
• Souls burned with Latin shriekings in their mouths:
• Shall my end be as theirs? Nay, but I know
• 'Tis you shall shriek in Latin. Some bell rings,
• Rings through my brain: it strikes the hour in hell.

• You see I cannot, Father; I have tried,
• But cannot, as you see. These twenty times
• Beginning, I have come to the same point
• 430And stopped. Beyond, there are but broken words
• Which will not let you understand my tale.
  page: 17  
  Sig. C
• It is that then we have her with us here,
• As when she wrung her hair out in my dream
• To-night, till all the darkness reeked of it.
• Her hair is always wet, for she has kept
• Its tresses wrapped about her side for years;
• And when she wrung them round over the floor,
• I heard the blood hiss through her fingers; so
• That I sat straight up in my bed and screamed
• 440Once and again; and once to once, she laughed.
• Look that you turn not now,—she's at your back:
• Gather your robe up, Father, and keep close,
• Or she'll sit down on it and send you mad.

• At Iglio in the first thin shade o' the hills
• The sand is black and red. The black was black
• When what was spilt that day sank into it,
• And the red scarcely darkened. There I stood
• This night with her, and saw the sand the same.

---

• What would you have me tell you? Father, father,
• 450How shall I make you know? You have not known
• The dreadful soul of woman, who one day
• Forgets the old and takes the new to heart,
• Forgets what man remembers, and therewith
• Forgets the man. Nor can I clearly tell
• How the change happened between her and me.
• Her eyes looked on me from an emptied heart
• When most my heart was full of her; and still
  page: 18  
• In every corner of myself I sought
• To find what service failed her; and no less
• 460Than in the good time past, there all was hers.
• What do you love? Your Heaven? Conceive it spread
• For one first year of all eternity
• All round you with all joys and gifts of God;
• And then when most your soul is blent with it
• And all yields song together,—then it stands
• O' the sudden like a pool that once gave back
• Your image, but now drowns it and is clear
• Again,—or like a sun bewitched, that burns
• Your shadow from you, and still shines in sight.
• 470How could you bear it? Would you not cry out,
• Among those eyes grown blind to you, those ears
• That hear no more your voice you hear the same,—
• ‘God! what is left but hell for company,
• But hell, hell, hell?’—until the name so breathed
• Whirled with hot wind and sucked you down in fire?
• Even so I stood the day her empty heart
• Left her place empty in our home, while yet
• I knew not why she went nor where she went
• Nor how to reach her: so I stood the day
• 480When to my prayers at last one sight of her
• Was granted, and I looked on heaven made pale
• With scorn, and heard heaven mock me in that laugh.

• O sweet, long sweet! Was that some ghost of you
• Even as your ghost that haunts me now,—twin shapes
• Of fear and hatred? May I find you yet
  page: 19  
• Mine when death wakes? Ah! be it even in flame,
• We may have sweetness yet, if you but say
• As once in childish sorrow: ‘Not my pain,
• My pain was nothing: oh your poor poor love,
• 490Your broken love!’

• My Father, it is hard
• To tell you the last things of that last day;
• But I must tell you all now. While I stopped
• To buy the dagger at the village fair,
• I saw two cursed rats about the place
• I knew for spies—blood-sellers both. That day
• Was not yet over; for three hours to come
• I prized my life: and so I looked around
• For safety. A poor painted mountebank
• Was playing pranks and shouting in a crowd.
• 500I knew he must have heard my name, so I
• Pushed past and whispered to him who I was,
• And of my danger. Straight he hustled me
• Into his booth, as it were in the trick,
• And brought me out next minute with my face
• All smeared in patches and a zany's gown;
• And there I handed him his cups and balls
• And swung the sand-bags round to clear the ring
• For half an hour. The spies came once and looked;
• And while they stopped, and made all sights and sounds
• 510Sharp to my startled senses, I remember
• A woman laughed above me. I looked up
• And saw her—a brown handsome harlot—leaning
• Half through a tavern window thick with vine.
  page: 20  
• Some man had come behind her in the room
• And caught her by her arms, and she had turned
• With that coarse empty laugh. I saw him there
• Munching her neck with kisses, while the vine
• Crawled in her back.

• And three hours afterwards,
• When she that I had run all risks to meet
• 520Laughed as I told you, my life burned to death
• Within me, for I thought it like the laugh
• Heard at the fair. She had not left me long;
• But all she might have changed to, or might change to,
• (I know nought since—she never speaks a word—)
• Seemed in that laugh. Have I not told you yet,
• Not told you all this time what happened, Father,
• When I had offered her the little knife,
• And bade her keep it for my sake that loved her,
• And she had laughed? Have I not told you yet?

• 530 ‘Take it,’ I said to her the second time,
• ‘Take it and keep it.’ And then came a fire
• That burnt my hand; and then the fire was blood,
• And sea and sky were blood and fire, and all
• The day was one red blindness; till it seemed
• Within the whirling brain's entanglement
• That she or I or all things bled to death.
• And then I found her lying at my feet
• And knew that I had stabbed her, and saw still
• The look she gave me when she took the knife
• 540Deep in her heart, even as I bade her then,
page: 21  
• And fell, and her stiff boddice scooped the sand
• Into her bosom.

• And she keeps it, see,
• Do you not see she keeps it?—there, beneath
• Wet fingers and wet tresses, in her heart.
• For look you, when she stirs her hand, it shows
• The little hilt of horn and pearl,—even such
• A dagger as our women of the coast
• Twist in their garters.

• Father, I have done:
• And from her side now she unwinds the thick
• 550Dark hair; all round her side it is wet through,
• But like the sand at Iglio does not change.
• Now you may see the dagger clearly. Father,
• I have told all: tell me at once what hope
• Can reach me still. For now she draws it out
• Slowly, and only smiles as yet: look, Father,
• She scarcely smiles: but I shall hear her laugh
• Soon, when she shows the crimson blade to God.

   

• Lazy laughing languid Jenny,
• Fond of a kiss and fond of a guinea,
• Whose head is on my knee to-night;—
• (Have all our dances left it light
• With their wild tunes?)—Ah, Jenny, queen
• Of kisses which the blush between
• Could hardly make much daintier!— Nay,
• Poor flower left torn since yesterday
• Until to-morrow leave you bare;
• 10Poor handful of bright spring-water
• Flung in the whirlpool's shrieking face!—
• Poor shameful Jenny, full of grace
• Thus with your head upon my knee;—
• Whose person or whose purse may be
• The lodestar of your reverie?

• This room of yours, my Jenny, looks
• A change from mine so full of books,
• Whose serried ranks hold fast, forsooth,
• So many captive hours of youth,—
  page: 24  
• 20The hours they thieve from day and night
• To make one's cherished work come right,
• And leave it wrong for all their theft,
• Even as to-night my work was left:
• Until I vowed that since my brain
• And eyes of dancing seemed so fain,
• My feet should have some dancing too:—
• And thus it was I met with you.
• Well, I suppose 'twas hard to part,
• For here I am. And now, sweetheart,
• 30You seem too tired to get to bed.

• It was a careless life I led
• When rooms like this were scarce so strange
• Not long ago. What breeds the change,—
• The many aims or the few years?
• Because to-night it all appears
• Something I do not know again.

• The cloud's not danced out of my brain,—
• The cloud that made the books so swim
• At every effort's interim.
• 40Why, Jenny, as I watch you there,—
• For all your wealth of loosened hair,
• Your silk ungirdled and unlac'd
• And warm sweets open to the waist,
• All golden in the lamplight's gleam,—
• You know not what a book you seem,
• Half-read by lightning in a dream!
  page: 25  
• How should you know, my Jenny? Nay,
• And I should be ashamed to say:—
• Poor beauty, so well worth a kiss!
• 50But while my thought runs on like this
• With wasteful whims more than enough,
• I wonder what you're thinking of.

• If of myself you think at all,
• What is the thought?—conjectural
• On sorry matters best unsolved?—
• Or inly is each grace revolved
• To fit me with a lure?—or (sad
• To think!) perhaps you're merely glad
• That I'm not drunk or ruffianly
• 60And let you rest upon my knee.

• For sometimes, were the truth confess'd,
• You're thankful for a little rest,—
• Glad from the crush to rest within,
• From the heart-sickness and the din
• Where envy's voice at virtue's pitch
• Mocks you because your gown is rich;
• And from the pale girl's dumb rebuke,
• Whose ill-clad grace and toil-worn look
• Proclaim the strength that keeps her weak
• 70And other nights than yours bespeak;
• And from the wise unchildish elf,
• To schoolmate lesser than himself
• Pointing you out, what thing you are:—
  page: 26  
• Yes, from the daily jeer and jar,
• From shame and shame's outbraving too,
• Is rest not sometimes sweet to you?—
• But most from the hatefulness of man
• Who spares not to end what he began,
• Whose acts are foul and his speech hard,
• 80Who, having used you, afterward
• Thrusts you aside, as when I dine
• I serve the dishes and the wine.

• Well, handsome Jenny mine, sit up,
• I've filled our glasses, let us sup,
• And do not let me think of you,
• Lest shame of yours suffice for two.
• What, still so tired? Well, well then, keep
• Your head there, so you do not sleep;
• But that the weariness may pass
• 90And leave you merry, take this glass.
• Ah! lazy lily hand, more bless'd
• If ne'er in rings it had been dress'd
• Nor ever by a glove conceal'd!

• Behold the lilies of the field,
• They toil not neither do they spin;
• (So doth the ancient text begin,—
• Not of such rest as one of these
• Can share.) Another rest and ease
• Along each summer-sated path
• 100From its new lord the garden hath,
  page: 27  
• Than that whose spring in blessings ran
• Which praised the righteous husbandman,
• Ere yet, in days of hankering breath,
• The lilies sickened unto death.

• What, Jenny, are your lilies dead?
• Aye, and the snow-white leaves are spread
• Like winter on the garden-bed.
• But you had roses left in May,—
• They were not gone too. Jenny, nay,
• 110But must your roses die away?
• Even so; the leaves are curled apart,
• Still red as from the broken heart,
• And here's the naked stem of thorns.

• Nay, nay, mere words. Here nothing warns
• As yet of winter. Sickness here
• Or want alone could waken fear,—
• Nothing but passion wrings a tear.
• Except when there may rise unsought
• Haply at times a passing thought
• 120Of the old days which seem to be
• Much older than any history
• That is written in any book;
• When she would lie in fields and look
• Along the ground through the thick grass,
• And wonder where the city was,
• Far out of sight, whose broil and bale
• They told her then for a child's tale.

• Jenny, you know the city now.
• A child can tell the tale there, how
• 130Some things which are not yet enroll'd
• In market-lists are bought and sold
• Even till the early Sunday light,
• When Saturday night is market-night
• Everywhere, be it dry or wet,
• And market-night in the Haymarket.
• Our learned London children know,
• Poor Jenny, all your mirth and woe;
• Have seen your lifted silken skirt
• Advertize dainties through the dirt;
• 140Have seen your coach-wheels splash rebuke
• On virtue; and have learned your look
• When, wealth and health slipped past, you stare
• Along the streets alone, and there,
• Round the long park, across the bridge,
• The cold lamps at the pavement's edge
• Wind on together and apart,
• A fiery serpent for your heart.

• Let the thoughts pass, an empty cloud!
• Suppose I were to think aloud,—
• 150What if to her all this were said?
• Why, as a volume seldom read
• Being opened halfway shuts again,
• So might the pages of her brain
• Be parted at such words, and thence
• Close back upon the dusty sense.
  page: 29  
• For is there hue or shape defin'd
• In Jenny's desecrated mind,
• Where all contagious currents meet,
• A Lethe of the middle street?
• 160Nay, it reflects not any face,
• Nor sound is in its sluggish pace,
• But as they coil those eddies clot,
• And night and day remember not.

• Why, Jenny, you're asleep at last!—
• Asleep, poor Jenny, hard and fast,—
• So young and soft and tired; so fair,
• With chin thus nestled in your hair,
• Mouth quiet, eyelids almost blue
• As if some sky of dreams shone through!

• 170Just as another woman sleeps!
• Enough to throw one's thoughts in heaps
• Of doubt and horror,—what to say
• Or think,—this awful secret sway,
• The potter's power over the clay!
• Of the same lump (it has been said)
• For honour and dishonour made,
• Two sister vessels. Here is one.

• My cousin Nell is fond of fun,
• And fond of dress, and change, and praise,
• 180So mere a woman in her ways:
• And if her sweet eyes rich in youth
• Are like her lips that tell the truth,
  page: 30  
• My cousin Nell is fond of love.
• And she's the girl I'm proudest of.
• Who does not prize her, guard her well?
• The love of change, in cousin Nell,
• Shall find the best and hold it dear:
• The unconquered mirth turn quieter
• Not through her own, through others' woe:
• 190The conscious pride of beauty glow
• Beside another's pride in her,
• One little part of all they share.
• For Love himself shall ripen these
• In a kind soil to just increase
• Through years of fertilizing peace.

• Of the same lump (as it is said)
• For honour and dishonour made,
• Two sister vessels. Here is one.

• It makes a goblin of the sun.

• 200So pure, so fall'n! How dare to think
• Of the first common kindred link?
• Yet, Jenny, till the world shall burn
• It seems that all things take their turn;
• And who shall say but this fair tree
• May need, in changes that may be,
• Your children's children's charity?
• Scorned then, no doubt, as you are scorn'd!
• Shall no man hold his pride forewarn'd
• Till in the end, the Day of Days,
page: 31  
• 210At Judgment, one of his own race,
• As frail and lost as you, shall rise,
• His daughter, with his mother's eyes?

• Each of such curdled lives alike
• A life for which my twelve hours strike
• And time must be and time must end.
• Hard to keep sight of! What might tend
• To give the thought clear presence? Well,
• Remember it is possible,
• Whether I please or do not please,
• 220That in the making each of these
• A separate man has lost his soul.

• Fair shines the gilded aureole
• In which our highest painters place
• Some living woman's simple face.
• And the stilled features thus descried
• As Jenny's long throat droops aside,—
• The loving underlip drawn in,
• The shadows where the cheeks are thin,
• And pure wide curve from ear to chin,—
• 230With Raffael's or Da Vinci's hand
• To show them to men's souls, might stand,
• Whole ages long, the whole world through,
• For preachings of what God can do.
• What has man done here? How atone,
• Great God, for this which man has done?
• And for the body and soul which by
  page: 32  
• Man's pitiless doom must now comply
• With lifelong hell, what lullaby
• Of sweet forgetful second birth
• 240Remains? All dark. No sign on earth
• What measure of God's rest endows
• The many mansions of his house.

• If but a woman's heart might see
• Such erring heart unerringly
• For once! But that can never be.

• Like a rose shut in a book
• In which pure women may not look,
• For its base pages claim control
• To crush the flower within the soul;
• 250Where through each dead rose-leaf that clings,
• Pale as transparent psyche-wings,
• To the vile text, are traced such things
• As might make lady's cheek indeed
• More than a living rose to read;
• So nought save foolish foulness may
• Watch with hard eyes the sure decay;
• And so the life-blood of this rose,
• Puddled with shameful knowledge, flows
• Through leaves no chaste hand may unclose:
• 260Yet still it keeps such faded show
• Of when 'twas gathered long ago,
• That the crushed petals' lovely grain,
• The sweetness of the sanguine stain,
  page: 33  
  Sig. D
• Seen of a woman's eyes, must make
• Her pitiful heart, so prone to ache,
• Love roses better for its sake:—
• Only that this can never be:—
• Even so unto her sex is she.

• Yet, Jenny, looking long at you,
• 270The woman almost fades from view.
• A cypher of man's changeless sum
• Of lust, past, present, and to come,
• Is left. A riddle that one shrinks
• To challenge from the scornful sphinx.

• Like a toad within a stone
• Seated while Time crumbles on;
• Which sits there since the earth was curs'd
• For Man's transgression at the first;
• Which, living through all centuries,
• 280Not once has seen the sun arise;
• Whose life, to its cold circle charmed,
• The earth's whole summers have not warmed;
• Which always—whitherso the stone
• Be cast—sits there, deaf, blind, alone;—
• Aye, and shall not be driven out
• Till that which shuts him round about
• Break at the very Master's stroke,
• And the dust thereof vanish as smoke,
• And the seed of Man vanish as dust:—
• 290Even so within this world is Lust.

• Come, come, what use in thoughts like this?
• Poor little Jenny, good to kiss,—
• You'd not believe by what strange roads
• Thought travels, when your beauty goads
• A man to-night to think of toads!
• Jenny, wake up. . . . Why, there's the dawn!

• And there's an early waggon drawn
• To market, and some sheep that jog
• Bleating before a barking dog;
• 300And the old streets come peering through
• Another night that London knew;
• And all as ghostlike as the lamps.

• So on the wings of day decamps
• My last night's frolic. Glooms begin
• To shiver off as lights creep in
• Past the gauze curtains half drawn-to,
• And the lamp's doubled shade grows blue,—
• Your lamp, my Jenny, kept alight,
• Like a wise virgin's, all one night!
• 310And in the alcove coolly spread
• Glimmers with dawn your empty bed;
• And yonder your fair face I see
• Reflected lying on my knee,
• Where teems with first foreshadowings
• Your pier-glass scrawled with diamond rings.

• And somehow in myself the dawn
  page: 35  
• Among stirred clouds and veils withdrawn
• Strikes greyly on her. Let her sleep.
• But will it wake her if I heap
• 320These cushions thus beneath her head
• Where my knee was? No,—there's your bed,
• My Jenny, while you dream. And there
• I lay among your golden hair
• Perhaps the subject of your dreams,
• These golden coins.

• For still one deems
• That Jenny's flattering sleep confers
• New magic on the magic purse,—
• Grim web, how clogged with shrivelled flies!
• Between the threads fine fumes arise
• 330And shape their pictures in the brain.
• There roll no streets in glare and rain,
• Nor flagrant man-swine whets his tusk;
• But delicately sighs in musk
• The homage of the dim boudoir;
• Or like a palpitating star
• Thrilled into song, the opera-night
• Breathes faint in the quick pulse of light;
• Or at the carriage-window shine
• Rich wares for choice; or, free to dine,
• 340Whirls through its hour of health (divine
• For her) the concourse of the Park.
• And though in the discounted dark
• Her functions there and here are one,
• Beneath the lamps and in the sun
page: 36  
• There reigns at least the acknowledged belle
• Apparelled beyond parallel.
• Ah Jenny, yes, we know your dreams.

• For even the Paphian Venus seems
• A goddess o'er the realms of love,
• 350When silver-shrined in shadowy grove:
• Aye, or let offerings nicely placed
• But hide Priapus to the waist,
• And whoso looks on him shall see
• An eligible deity.

• Why, Jenny, waking here alone
• May help you to remember one!
• I think I see you when you wake,
• And rub your eyes for me, and shake
• My gold, in rising, from your hair,
• 360A Danaë for a moment there.

• Jenny, my love rang true! for still
• Love at first sight is vague, until
• That tinkling makes him audible.

• And must I mock you to the last,
• Ashamed of my own shame, aghast
• Because some thoughts not born amiss
• Rose at a poor fair face like this?
• Well, of such thoughts so much I know:
  page: 37  
• In my life, as in hers, they show,
• 370By a far gleam which I may near,
• A dark path I can strive to clear.

• Only one kiss. Goodbye, my dear.

   

• This is her picture as she was:
• It seems a thing to wonder on,
• As though mine image in the glass
• Should tarry when myself am gone.
• I gaze until she seems to stir,
• Until mine eyes almost aver
• That now, even now, the sweet lips part
• To breathe the words of the sweet heart:—
• And yet the earth is over her.

• 10In painting her I shrined her face
• Mid mystic trees, where light falls in
• Hardly at all; a covert place
• Where you might think to find a din
• Of doubtful talk, and a live flame
• Wandering, and many a shape whose name
• Not itself knoweth, and old dew,
• And your own footsteps meeting you,
• And all things going as they came.

• A deep dim wood; and there she stands
• 20 As in that wood that day. At least,
• Thus was the movement of her hands
• And thus the carriage of her waist.
• And passing fair the type must seem,
• Unknown the presence and the dream.
• 'Tis she: though of herself, alas!
• Less than her shadow on the grass
• Or than her image in the stream.

• That day we met there, I and she
• One with the other all alone;
• 30And we were blithe; yet memory
• Saddens those hours, as when the moon
• Looks upon daylight. And with her
• I stooped to drink the spring-water,
• Athirst where other waters sprang;
• And where the echo is, she sang,—
• My soul another echo there.

• Last night at last I could have slept,
• And yet delayed my sleep till dawn,
• Still wandering. Then it was I wept:
• 40 For unawares I came upon
• Those glades where then she walked with me:
• And as I stood there suddenly,
• All wan with traversing the night,
• Upon the desolate verge of light
• Yearned loud the iron-bosomed sea.

• Even so, where Heaven holds breath and hears
• The beating heart of Love's own breast,
• Where round the secret of all spheres
• All angels lay their wings to rest,
• 50How shall my soul stand rapt and awed,
• When, by the new birth borne abroad
• Throughout the music of the suns,
• It enters in her soul at once
• And knows the silence there for God!

• Here with her face doth memory sit
• Meanwhile, and wait the day's decline,
• Till other eyes shall look from it,
• Eyes of the spirit's Palestine,
• Even than the old gaze tenderer:
• 60While hopes and aims long lost with her
• Stand round her image side by side,
• Like tombs of pilgrims that have died
• About the Holy Sepulchre.

   

• Consider the sea's listless chime:
• Time's self it is, made audible,—
• The murmur of the earth's own shell.
• Secret continuance sublime
• Is the sea's end: our sight may pass
• No furlong further. Since time was,
• This sound hath told the lapse of time.

• No quiet, which is death's,—it hath
• The mournfulness of ancient life,
• 10 Enduring always at dull strife.
• As the world's heart of rest and wrath,
• Its painful pulse is in the sands.
• Last utterly, the whole sky stands,
• Grey and not known, along its path.

• Listen alone beside the sea,
• Listen alone among the woods;
• Those voices of twin solitudes
• Shall have one sound alike to thee:
• Hark where the murmurs of thronged men
  page: 44  
• 20 Surge and sink back and surge again,—
• Still the one voice of wave and tree.

• Gather a shell from the strown beach
• And listen at its lips: they sigh
• The same desire and mystery,
• The echo of the whole sea's speech.
• And all mankind is thus at heart
• Not anything but what thou art:
• And Earth, Sea, Man, are all in each.

   

• Give honour unto Luke Evangelist;
• For he it was (the aged legends say)
• Who first taught Art to fold her hands and pray.
• Scarcely at once she dared to read the mist
• Of devious symbols: but soon having wist
• How sky-breadth and field-silence and this day
• Are symbols also in some deeper way,
• She looked through these to God and was God's priest.

• And if, past noon, her toil began to irk,
• 10And she sought talismans, and turned in vain
• To soulless self-reflections of man's skill,—
• Yet now, in this the twilight, she might still
• Kneel in the latter grass to pray again,
• Ere the night cometh and she may not work.

   

• Of Florence and of Beatrice
• Servant and singer from of old,
• O'er Dante's heart in youth had toll'd
• The knell that gave his Lady peace;
• And now in manhood flew the dart
• Wherewith his City pierced his heart.

• Yet if his Lady's home above
• Was heaven, on earth she filled his soul;
• And if his City held control
• 10To cast the body forth to rove,
• The soul could soar from earth's vain throng
• And Heaven and Hell fulfil the song.

• Follow his feet's appointed way;—
• But little light we find that clears
• The darkness of the exiled years.
• Follow his spirit's journey:—nay,
  page: 48  
• What fires are blent, what winds are blown
• On paths his feet may tread alone?

• Yet of the two-fold life he led
• 20 In chainless thought and fettered will
• Some glimpses reach us,—somewhat still
• Of the steep stairs and bitter bread,—
• Of the soul's quest whose stern avow
• For years had made him haggard now.

• Alas! the Sacred Song whereto
• Both heaven and earth had set their hand
• Not only at Fame's gate did stand
• Knocking to claim the passage through,
• But toiled to ope that heavier door
• 30 Which Florence shut for evermore.

• Shall not his birth's baptismal Town
• One last high presage yet fulfil,
• And at that font in Florence still
• His forehead take the laurel-crown?
• O God! or shall dead souls deny
• The undying soul its prophecy?

• Aye, 'tis their hour. Not yet forgot
• The bitter words he spoke that day
• When for some great charge far away
• 40Her rulers his acceptance sought.
• ‘And if I go, who stays?’—so rose
• His scorn:—‘and if I stay, who goes?’

• ‘Lo! thou art gone now, and we stay:’
• (The curled lips mutter): ‘and no star
• Is from the mortal path so far
• As streets were childhood knew the way.
• To Heaven and Hell thy feet may win,
• But thine own house they come not in.’

• Therefore, the loftier rose the song
• To touch the secret things of God,
• The deeper pierced the hate that trod
• 10On base men's track who wrought the wrong;
• Till the soul's effluence came to be
• Its own exceeding agony.

• Even such was Dante's mood, when now,
• Mocked for long years with Fortune's sport,
• He dwelt at yet another court,
• There where Verona's knee did bow
• And her voice hailed with proud acclaim
• Can Grande della Scala's name.

• As that lord's kingly guest awhile
• 20 His life we follow; through the days
• Which walked in exile's barren ways,—
• The nights which still beneath one smile
• Heard through all spheres one song increase,—
• ‘Even I, even I am Beatrice.’

• At Can La Scala's court, no doubt,
• Due reverence did his steps attend;
• The ushers on his path would bend
• At ingoing as at going out;
• The penmen waited on his call
• 30 At council-board, the grooms in hall.

• And pages hushed their laughter down,
• And squires would still the merry stir,
• When he passed up the dais-chamber
• With set brows lordlier than a frown;
• And tire-maids hidden among these
• Drew close their loosened boddices.

• Perhaps the priests, fed there to ban
• Or bless on bidding, if at whiles
• They found him wandering in their aisles,
• 40 Grudged ghostly greeting to the man
• By whom, though not of ghostly guild,
• With Heaven and Hell men's hearts were fill'd.

• And the court-poets (he, forsooth,
• A whole world's poet strayed to court!)
• Had for his scorn their hate's retort.
• He'd meet them flushed with easy youth,
• Hot on their errands. Like noon-flies
• They vexed him in the ears and eyes.

• But at this court, peace still must wrench
• 50 Her chaplet from the teeth of war:
• By day they held high watch afar,
• At night they cried across the trench;
• And still, in Dante's path, the fierce
• Gaunt soldiers wrangled o'er their spears.

• But vain seemed all the strength to him,
• As golden convoys sunk at sea
• Whose wealth might root out penury:
• Because it was not, limb with limb,
• Knit like his heart-strings round the wall
• 60 Of Florence, that her foes might fall.

• Yet in the tiltyard, when the dust
• Cleared from the sundered press of knights
• Ere yet again it swoops and smites,
• He almost deemed his longing must
• Find force to wield that multitude
• And hurl that strength the way he would.

• How should he move them,—fame and gain
• On all hands calling them at strife?
• He still might find but his one life
• 70To give, by Florence counted vain;
• One heart the false hearts made her doubt;
• One voice she heard once and cast out.

• Oh! if his Florence could but come,
• A lily-sceptered damsel fair,
• As her own Giotto painted her
• On many shields and gates at home,—
• A lady crowned, at her soft pace
• Riding the lists round to the dais:

• Till where Can Grande rules the lists,
• 80 As young as Truth, as calm as Farce,
• She draws her rein now, while her horse
• Bows at the turn of the white wrists;
• And when each knight within his stall
• Gives ear, she speaks and tells them all:

• All the foul tale,—truth sworn untrue,
• And falsehood's triumph. All the tale?
• Great God! and must she not prevail
• To fire them ere they heard it through,—
• And hand achieve ere heart could rest
• 90 That high adventure of her guest?

• How would his Florence lead them forth,
• Her bridle ringing as she went;
• And at the last within her tent,
• 'Neath golden lilies worship-worth,
• How queenly would she bend the while
• And thank the victors with her smile!

• Peace, Dante, peace! The task is long,
• The time wears short to compass it.
• Within thine heart such hopes may flit
• 100 And find a voice in deathless song:
• But lo! as children of man's earth,
• These hopes are dead before their birth.

• Fame tells us that Verona's court
• Was a fair place. The feet might still
• Wander for ever at their will
• In many ways of sweet resort;
• And still in many a heart around
• The Poet's name due honour found.

• Watch we his steps. He comes upon
• 110 The women at their palm-playing.
• The conduits round the gardens sing
• And meet in scoops of milk-white stone,
• Where wearied damsels rest and hold
• Their hands in the wet spurt of gold.

• One of whom, knowing well that he,
• By some found stern, was mild with them,
• Would run and pluck his garment's hem,
• Saying, ‘Messer Dante, pardon me,’—
• Praying that they might hear the song
• 120 Which first of all he made, when young.

• ‘Donne che avete’* ...... thereunto
• Thus would he murmur, having first
• Drawn near the fountain, while she nurs'd
• His hand against her side: a few
• Sweet words, and scarcely those, half said:
• Then turned, and changed, and bowed his head.

• For then the voice said in his heart,
• ‘Even I, even I am Beatrice;’
• And his whole life would yearn to cease:
• 130Till having reached his room, apart
• Beyond vast lengths of palace-floor,
• He drew the arras round his door.

• At such times, Dante, thou hast set
• Thy forehead to the painted pane
• Full oft, I know; and if the rain
• Smote it outside, her fingers met
• Thy brow; and if the sun fell there,
• Her breath was on thy face and hair.

• Then, weeping, I think certainly
• 140 Thou hast beheld, past sight of eyne,—
• Within another room of thine
• Where now thy body may not be
• But where in thought thou still remain'st,—
• A window often wept against:

• The window thou, a youth, hast sought,
• Flushed in the limpid eventime,
• Ending with daylight the day's rhyme
• Of her; where oftenwhiles her thought
• Held thee—the lamp untrimmed to write—
• 150 In joy through the blue lapse of night.

• At Can La Scala's court, no doubt,
• Guests seldom wept. It was brave sport,
• No doubt, at Can La Scala's court,
• Within the palace and without;
• Where music, set to madrigals,
• Loitered all day through groves and halls.

• Because Can Grande of his life
• Had not had six-and-twenty years
• As yet. And when the chroniclers
• 160Tell you of that Vicenza strife
• And of strifes elsewhere,—you must not
• Conceive for church—sooth he had got.

• Just nothing in his wits but war:
• Though certes 'twas the young man's joy
• (Grown with his growth from a mere boy,)
• To mark his ‘Viva Cane!’ scare
• The foe's shut front, till it would reel
• All blind with shaken points of steel.

• But there were places—held too sweet
• 170 For eyes that had not the due veil
• Of lashes and clear lids—as well
• In favour as in saddle-seat:
• Breath of low speech he scorned not there
• Nor light cool fingers in his hair.

• Yet if the child whom the sire's plan
• Made free of a deep treasure-chest
• Scoffed it with ill-conditioned jest,—
• We may be sure too that the man
• Was not mere thews, nor all content
• 180 With lewdness swathed in sentiment.

• So you may read and marvel not
• That such a man as Dante—one
• Who, while Can Grande's deeds were done,
• Had drawn his robe round him and thought—
• Now at the same guest-table far'd
• Where keen Uguccio wiped his beard.*

• Through leaves and trellis-work the sun
• Left the wine cool within the glass,—
• They feasting where no sun could pass:
• 190And when the women, all as one,
• Rose up with brightened cheeks to go,
• It was a comely thing, we know.

• But Dante recked not of the wine,
• Whether the women stayed or went,
• His visage held one stern intent:
• And when the music had its sign
• To breathe upon them for more ease,
• Sometimes he turned and bade it cease.

• And if some envoy from afar
• 200 Sailed to Verona's sovereign port
• For aid or peace, and all the court
• Fawned on its lord, ‘the Mars of war,
• Sole arbiter of life and death,’—
• Be sure that Dante saved his breath.

• And Can La Scala marked askance
• These things, accepting them for shame
• And scorn, till Dante's guestship came
• To be a peevish sufferance:
• His host sought ways to make his days
• 210 Hateful; and such have many ways.

• There was a Jester, a foul lout
• Whom the court loved for graceless arts;
• Sworn scholiast of the bestial parts
• Of speech; a ribald mouth to shout
• In Folly's horny tympanum
• Such things as make the wise man dumb.

• Much loved, him Dante loathed. And so,
• One day when Dante felt perplex'd
• If any day that could come next
• 220Were worth the waiting for or no,
• Till now his scanty speech quite ceas'd,—
• Can Grande summoned in this beast.

• Rank words, with such, are wit's best wealth.
• Lords mouthed approval; ladies kept
• Twittering with clustered heads, except
• Some few that took their trains by stealth
• And went. Can Grande shook his hair
• And smote his thighs and laughed i' the air.

• Then, facing on his guest, he cried,—
• 230 ‘Say, Messer Dante, how it is
• I get out of a clown like this
• More than your wisdom can provide?’
• And Dante: ‘'Tis man's ancient whim
• That still his like seems good to him’—

• But wherefore should we turn the grout
• In a drained cup, or be at strife
• From the worn garment of a life
• To rip the twisted ravel out?
• Good needs expounding; but of all
• 240 Each hath enough to guess his fill.

• They named him Justicer-at-Law:
• Each month to bear the tale in mind
• Of hues a wench might wear unfin'd
• And of the load an ox might draw;
• To cavil in the weight of bread
• And to see purse-thieves gibbeted.

• And when his spirit wove the spell
• (From under even to over noon
• In converse with itself alone,)
• 250As high as Heaven, as low as Hell,—
• He would be summoned and must go:
• For had not Gian stabbed Giacomo?

• Therefore the bread he had to eat
• Seemed brackish, less like corn than tares;
• And the rush-strown accustomed stairs
• Each day were steeper to his feet;
• And when the night-vigil was done,
• His brows would ache to feel the sun.

• Nevertheless, when through his kin
• 260 There came the tidings how at last
• In Florence a decree was pass'd
• Whereby all banished folk might win
• Free pardon so a fine were paid
• And act of public penance made,—

• This Dante writ in answer thus,
• Words such as these: ‘That clearly they
• In Florence must not have to say,—
• The man abode aloof from us
• Nigh fifteen years, yet lastly skulk'd
• 270 Hither to candleshrift or mulct.

• ‘That he was one the Heavens forbid
• To traffic in God's justice sold
• By market-weight of earthly gold,
• Or to bow down over the lid
• Of steaming censers, and so be
• Made clean of manhood's obloquy.

• ‘That since no gate led, by God's will,
• To Florence, but the one whereat
• The priests and money-changers sat,
• 280He still would wander; for that still,
• Even through the body's prison-bars,
• His soul possessed the sun and stars.’

• Such were his words. It is indeed
• For ever well our singers should
• Utter good words and know them good
• Not through song merely; with close heed
• Lest, having spent for the work's sake
• Six days, the man be left to make.

• Months o'er Verona, till the feast
• 290 Was come for Florence the Free Town:
• And at the shrine of Baptist John
• The exiles, girt with many a priest
• And carrying candles as they went,
• Were held to mercy of the saint.

• On the high seats in sober state,—
• Gold neck-chains range o'er range below
• Gold screen-work where the lilies grow,—
• The Heads of the Republic sate,
• Marking the humbled face go by
• 300 Each one of his house-enemy.

• And as each proscript rose and stood
• From kneeling in the ashen dust
• On the shrine-steps, some magnate thrust
• A beard into the velvet hood
• Of his front colleague's gown, to see
• The cinders stuck in the bare knee.

• Tosinghi passed, Manelli passed,
• Rinucci passed, each in his place;
• But not an Alighieris' face
• 310Went by that day from first to last
• In the Republic's triumph; nor
• A foot came home to Dante's door.

• ( Respublica—a public thing:
• A shameful shameless prostitute,
• Whose lust with one lord may not suit,
• So takes by turns its revelling
• A night with each, till he at morn
• Is stripped and beaten forth forlorn,

• And leaves her, cursing her. If she,
• 320 Indeed, have not some spice-draught, hid
• In scent under a silver lid,
• To drench his open throat with—he
• Once hard asleep; and thrust him not
• At dawn beneath the boards to rot.)

• Years filled out their twelve moons, and ceased
• One in another; and alway
• There were the whole twelve hours each day
• And each night as the years increased;
• And rising moon and setting sun
• 330 Beheld that Dante's work was done.

• What of his work for Florence? Well
• It was, he knew, and well must be.
• Yet evermore her hate's decree
• Dwelt in his thought intolerable:—
• His body to be burned,*—his soul
• To beat its wings at hope's vain goal.

• What of his work for Beatrice?
• Now well-nigh was the third song writ,—
• The stars a third time scaling it
• 340With sudden music of pure peace:
• For echoing thrice the threefold song,
• The unnumbered stars the tone prolong.*

• Each hour, as then the Vision pass'd,
• He heard the utter harmony
• Of the nine trembling spheres, till she
• Bowed her eyes towards him in the last,
• So that all ended with her eyes,
• Hell, Purgatory, Paradise.

• ‘It is my trust, as the years fall,
• 350 To write more worthily of her
• Who now, being made God's minister,
• Looks on His visage and knows all.’
• Such was the hope that he dared send
• Forth solemnly, to make an end

• Of the ‘New Life,’ his youth's dear book.
• Adding thereunto: ‘In such trust
• I labour, and believe I must
• Accomplish this which my soul took
• In charge, if God, my Lord and hers,
• 360 Leave my life with me a few years.’

• The trust which he had borne in youth
• Was all at length accomplished. He
• At length had written worthily—
• Yea even of her; no rhymes uncouth
• 'Twixt tongue and tongue; but by God's aid
• The first words Italy had said.

• Ah! haply now the heavenly guide
• Was not the last form seen by him:
• But there that Beatrice stood slim
• 370And bowed in passing at his side,
• For whom in youth his heart made moan
• Then when the city sat alone.

• Clearly herself; the same whom he
• Met, not past girlhood, in the street,
• Low-bosomed and with hidden feet;
• And then as woman perfectly,
• In years that followed, more than once,—
• And now at last among the suns,

• In that high vision. But indeed
• 380 It may be that his mind could fall
• Back soonest to the first of all,—
• The child his boyhood bore in heed
• Nine years. At length the voice brought peace,—
• ‘Even I, even I am Beatrice.’

• All this, being there, we had not seen.
• Seen only was the shadow wrought
• On the strong features bound in thought;
• The vagueness gairing gait and mien;
• The white streaks gathering clear to view
• 390 In the burnt beard the women knew.

• For a tale tells that on his track,
• As through Verona's streets he went,
• This saying certain women sent:—
• ‘Lo, he that strolls to Hell and back
• At will! Behold him, how Hell's reek
• Has crisped his beard and singed his cheek.’

• ‘Whereat’ (Boccaccio's words) ‘he smil'd
• For pride in fame.’ It might be so:
• Nevertheless we cannot know
• 400If then his thought were not beguil'd
• To mirth, for that he scarce could tell
• If he indeed were back from Hell.

• So the day came, after a space,
• When Dante felt assured that there
• The sunshine must lie sicklier
• Even than in any other place,
• Save only Florence. When that day
• Had come, he rose and went his way.

• He went and turned not. From his shoes
• 410 It may be that he shook the dust,
• As every righteous dealer must
• Not less than once ere life can close;
• And unaccomplished destiny
• Struck cold his forehead, it may be.

• No book keeps record how the Prince
• Sunned himself out of Dante's reach,
• Nor how the Jester stank in speech;
• While courtiers, used to smile and wince,
• Poets and harlots, all the throng,
• 420 Let loose their slaver and their song.

• No book keeps record if the seat
• Which Dante had at his host's board
• Were sat in next by clerk or lord,—
• If leman lolled with dainty feet
• At ease, or hostage brooded there,
• Or priest lacked silence for his prayer.

• Eat and wash hands, Can Grande;—scarce
• We know their deeds now: hands which fed
• Our Dante with that bitter bread;
• 430And thou the watch-dog of those stairs
• Whereon the weary footsteps fell,
• That knew the paths of Heaven and Hell.

• Now do Thou let thy servant, Lord,—
• Who now hath suffered all the heart
• And the soul can on earth,—depart
• In peace according to thy word?
• His eyes (are not the lids still wet?)
• Beheld not thy salvation yet.