Then was the Pope, that good Twelfth Innocent,
Appealed to: who well weighed what went before,
Affirmed the guilt and gave the guilty doom.
Act itself o’er anew for men to judge,
Not by the very sense and sight indeed—
(Which take at best imperfect cognisance,
Since, how heart moves brain, and how both move hand,
What mortal ever in entirety saw?)
—No dose of purer truth than man digests, (830)
But truth with falsehood, milk that feeds him now,
Not strong meat he may get to bear some day—
To-wit, by voices we call evidence,
Uproar in the echo, live fact deadened down,
Talked over, bruited abroad, whispered away,
Yet helping us to all we seem to hear:
For how else know we save by worth of word?
In due succession. First, the world’s outcry
Around the rush and ripple of any fact (840)
Fallen stonewise, plumb on the smooth face of things;
The world’s guess, as it crowds the bank o’ the pool,
At what were figure and substance, by their splash:
Then, by vibrations in the general mind,
At depth of deed already out of reach.
This threefold murder of the day before,—
Say, Half-Rome’s feel after the vanished truth;
Honest enough, as the way is: all the same,
Harbouring in the centre of its sense
A hidden germ of failure, shy but sure, (850)
Should neutralise that honesty and leave
That feel for truth at fault, as the way is too.
Some prepossession such as starts amiss,
By but a hair’s-breadth at the shoulder-blade,
The arm o’ the feeler, dip he ne’er so brave;
And so leads waveringly, lets fall wide
O’the mark his finger meant to find, and fix
Truth at the bottom, that deceptive speck.
With this Half-Rome,—the source of swerving, call
Over-belief in Guido’s right and wrong (860)
Rather than in Pompilia’s wrong and right:
Who shall say how, who shall say why? ’Tis there—
The instinctive theorising whence a fact
Looks to the eye as the eye likes the look.
Gossip in a public place, a sample-speech.
Some worthy, with his previous hint to find
A husband’s side the safer, and no whit
Aware he is not Æacus the while,—
How such an one supposes and states fact
To whosoever of a multitude (870)
Will listen, and perhaps prolong thereby
The not-unpleasant flutter at the breast,
Born of a certain spectacle shut in
By the church Lorenzo opposite. So, they lounge
Midway the mouth o’ the street, on Corso side,
’Twixt palace Fiano and palace Ruspoli,
Linger and listen; keeping clear o’ the crowd,
Yet wishful one could lend that crowd one’s eyes,
(So universal is its plague of squint)
And make hearts beat our time that flutter false: (880)
—All for the truth’s sake, mere truth, nothing else!
How Half-Rome found for Guido much excuse.
Or if success, by no more skill but luck:
This time, though rather siding with the wife,
However the fancy-fit inclined that way,
Than with the husband. One wears drab, one, pink;
Who wears pink, ask him “Which shall win the race,
“Of coupled runners like as egg and egg?” (890)
“—Why, if I must choose, he with the pink scarf.”
Doubtless for some such reason choice fell here.
A piece of public talk to correspond
At the next stage of the story; just a day
Let pass and new day bring the proper change.
Another sample-speech i’ the market-place
O’ the Barberini by the Capucins;
Where the old Triton, at his fountain-sport,
Bernini’s creature plated to the paps,
Puffs up steel sleet which breaks to diamond dust, (900)
A spray of sparkles snorted from his conch,
High over the caritellas, out o’ the way
O’ the motley merchandising multitude.
Our murder has been done three days ago,
The frost is over and gone, the south wind laughs,
And, to the very tiles of each red roof
A-smoke i’ the sunshine, Rome lies gold and glad:
So, listen how, to the other half of Rome,
Pompilia seemed a saint and martyr both!
With pause prelusive still of novelty,
Hear a fresh speaker!—neither this nor that
Half-Rome aforesaid; something bred of both:
One and one breed the inevitable three.
Such is the personage harangues you next;
the elaborated product, tertium quid:
Rome’s first commotion in subsidence gives
The curd o’ the cream, flower o’ the wheat, as it were,
And finer sense o’ the city. Is this plain?
You get a reasoned statement of the case, (920)
Eventual verdict of the curious few
Who care to sift a business to the bran
Nor coarsely bolt it like the simpler sort.
Here, after ignorance, instruction speaks;
Here, clarity of candour, history’s soul,
The critical mind, in short; no gossip-guess.
What the superior social section thinks,
In person of some man of quality
Who,—breathing musk from lace-work and brocade,
His solitaire amid the flow of frill, (930)
Powdered peruke on nose, and bag at back,
And cane dependent from the ruffled wrist,—
Harangues in silvery and selectest phrase
’Neath waxlight in a glorified saloon
Where mirrors multiply the girandole:
Courting the approbation of no mob,
But Eminence This and All-Illustrious That
Who take snuff softly, range in well-bred ring,
Card-table-quitters for observance’ sake,
Around the
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