Whose ministration piles us overhead
What we call, first, earth’s roof and, last, heaven’s floor,
Now grate o’ the trap, then outlet of the cage: (600)
So took the lady, left the priest alone,
And once more canopied the world with black.
But through the blackness I saw Rome again,
And where a solitary villa stood
In a lone garden-quarter: it was eve,
The second of the year, and oh so cold!
Ever and anon there flittered through the air
A snow-flake, and a scanty couch of snow
Crusted the grass-walk and the garden- mould.
All was grave, silent, sinister,—when, ha? (610)
Glimmeringly did a pack of were-wolves pad
The snow, those flames were Guido’s eyes in front,
And all five found and footed it, the track,
To where a threshold- streak of warmth and light
Betrayed the villa-door with life inside,
While an inch outside were those blood- bright eyes,
And black lips wrinkling o’er the flash of teeth,
And tongues that lolled—Oh God that madest man!
They parleyed in their language. Then one whined—
That was the policy and master-stroke— (620)
Deep in his throat whispered what seemed a name—
“Open to Caponsacchi!” Guido cried:
“Gabriel!” cried Lucifer at Eden-gate.
Wide as a heart, opened the door at once,
Showing the joyous couple, and their child
The two-weeks’ mother, to the wolves, the wolves
To them. Close eyes! And when the corpses lay
Stark-stretched, and those the wolves, their wolf-work done,
Were safe-embosomed by the night again,
I knew a necessary change in things; (630)
As when the worst watch of the night gives way,
And there comes duly, to take cognisance,
The scrutinising eye-point of some star—
And who despairs of a new daybreak now?
Lo, the first ray protruded on those five!
It reached them, and each felon writhed transfixed.
Awhile they palpitated on the spear
Motionless over Tophet: stand or fall?
“I say, the spear should fall—should stand, I say!”
Cried the world come to judgment, granting grace (640)
Or dealing doom according to world’s wont,
Those world’s-bystanders grouped on Rome’s cross-road
At prick and summons of the primal curse
Which bids man love as well as make a lie.
There prattled they, discoursed the right and wrong,
Turned wrong to right, proved wolves sheep and sheep wolves,
So that you scarce distinguished fell from fleece;
Till out spoke a great guardian of the fold,
Stood up, put forth his hand that held the crook,
And motioned that the arrested point decline: (650)
Horribly off, the wriggling dead-weight reeled,
Rushed to the bottom and lay ruined there.
Though still at the pit’s mouth, despite the smoke
O’ the burning, tarriers turned again to talk
And trim the balance, and detect at least
A touch of wolf in what showed whitest sheep,
A cross of sheep redeeming the whole wolf,—
Vex truth a little longer:—less and less,
Because years came and went, and more and more
Brought new lies with them to be loved in turn. (660)
Till all at once the memory of the thing,—
The fact that, wolves or sheep, such creatures were,—
Which hitherto, however men supposed,
Had somehow plain and pillar-like prevailed
I’ the midst of them, indisputably fact,
Granite, time’s tooth should grate against, not graze,—
Why, this proved standstone, friable, fast to fly
And give its grain away at wish o’ the wind.
Ever and ever more diminutive,
Base gone, shaft lost, only entablature, (670)
Dwindled into no bigger than a book,
Lay of the column; and that little, left
By the roadside ’mid the ordure, shards, and weeds,
Until I haply, wandering that way,
Kicked it up, turned it over, and recognised,
For all the crumblement, this abacus,
This square old yellow book,—could calculate
By this the lost proportions of the style.
I used to tell the tale, turned gay to grave, (680)
But lacked a listener seldom; such alloy,
Such substance of me interfused the gold
Which, wrought into a shapely ring therewith,
Hammered and filed, fingered and favoured, last
Lay ready for the renovating wash
O’ the water. “How much of the tale was true?”
I disappeared; the book grew all in all;
The lawyers’ pleadings swelled back to their size,—
Doubled in two, the crease upon them yet,
For more commodity of carriage, see!— (690)
And these are letters, veritable sheets
That brought posthaste the news to Florence, writ
At Rome the day Count Guido died, we find,
To stay the craving of a client there,
Who bound the same and so produced my book.
Lovers of dead truth, did ye fare the worse?
Lovers of live truth, found ye false my tale?
Good except truth: yet this, the something else,
What’s this then, which proves good yet seems untrue? (700)
This that I mixed with truth, motions of mine
That quickened, made the inertness malleolable
O’ the gold was not mine,—what’s your name for this?
Are
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