With a wife, I look to find all wifeliness,
As when I buy, timber and twig, a tree—
I buy the song o’ the nightingale inside.
Broke it, refused from the beginning day
Either in body or soul to cleave to mine,
And published it forthwith to all the world. (610)
No rupture,—you must join ere you can break,—
Before we had cohabited a month
She found I was a devil and no man,—
Made common cause with those who found as much,
Her parents, Pietro and Violante,—moved
Heaven and earth to the rescue of all three.
In four months’ time, the time o’ the parents’ stay,
Arezzo was a-ringing, bells in a blaze,
With the unimaginable story rife
I’ the mouth of man, woman, and child—to wit (620)
My misdemeanour. First the lighter side,
Ludicrous face of things,—how very poor
The Franceschini had become at last,
The meanness and the misery of each shift
To save a soldo, stretch and make ends meet.
Next, the more hateful aspect,—how myself
With cruelty beyond Caligula’s
Had stripped and beaten, robbed and murdered them.
The good old couple, I decoyed, abused,
Plundered and then cast out, and happily so, (630)
Since,—in due course the abominable comes,—
Woe worth the poor young wife left lonely here!
Repugnant in my person as my mind,
I sought,—was ever heard of such revenge?
—To lure and bind her to so cursed a couch,
Such co-embrace with sulphur, snake and toad,
That she was fain to rush forth, call the stones
O’ the common street to save her, not from hate
Of mine merely, but … must I burn my lips
With the blister of the lie? … the satyr-love (640)
Of who but my own brother, the young priest,
Too long enforced to lenten fare belike,
Now tempted by the morsel tossed him full
I’ the trencher where lay bread and herbs at best.
Mark, this yourselves say!—this, none disallows,
Was charged to me by the universal voice
At the instigation of my four-months’ wife!—
And then you ask “Such charges so preferred,
“(Truly or falsely, here concerns us not)
“Pricked you to punish now if not before?— (650)
“Did not the harshness double itself, the hate
“Harden?” I answer “Have it your way and will!”
Say my resentment grew apace: what then?
Do you cry out on the marvel? When I find
That pure smooth egg which, laid within my nest,
Could not but hatch a comfort to us all,
Issues a cockatrice for me and mine,
Do you stare to see me stamp on it? Swans are soft:
Is it not clear that she you call my wife,
That any wife of any husband, caught (660)
Whetting a sting like this against his breast,—
Speckled with fragments of the fresh-broke shell,
Married a month and making outcry thus,—
Proves a plague-prodigy to God and man?
She married: what was it she married for,
Counted upon and meant to meet thereby?
“Love” suggests some one, “love, a little word
“Whereof we have not heard one syllable.”
So, the Pompilia, child, girl, wife, in one,
Wanted the beating pulse, the rolling eye, (670)
The frantic gesture, the devotion due
From Thyrsis to Neæra! Guido’s love—
Why not provençal roses in his shoe,
Plume to his cap, and trio of guitars
At casement, with a bravo close beside?
Good things all these are, clearly claimable
When the fit price is paid the proper way.
Had it been some friend’s wife, now, threw her fan
At my foot, with just this pretty scrap attached,
“Shame, death, damnation—fall these as they may, (680)
“So I find you, for a minute! Come this eve!”
—Why, at such sweet self-sacrifice,—who knows?
I might have fired up, found me at my post,
Ardent from head to heel, nor feared catch cough.
Nay, had some other friend’s … say, daughter, tripped
Upstairs and tumbled flat and frank on me,
Bareheaded and barefooted, with loose hair
And garments all at large,—cried “Take me thus!
“Duke So-and-So, the greatest man in Rome—
“To escape his hand and heart have I broke bounds, (690)
“Traversed the town and reached you!”—Then, indeed,
The lady had not reached a man of ice!
I would have rummaged, ransacked at the word
Those old odd corners of an empty heart
For remnants of dim love the long disused,
And dusty crumblings of romance! But here,
We talk of just a marriage, if you please—
The every-day conditions and no more;
Where do these bind me to bestow one drop
Of blood shall dye my wife’s true-love-knot pink? (700)
Pompilia was no pigeon, Venus’ pet,
That shuffled from between her pressing paps
To sit on my rough shoulder,—but a hawk,
I bought at a hawk’s price and carried home
To do hawk’s service—at the Rotunda, say,
Where, six o’ the callow nestlings in a row,
You pick and choose and pay the price for such.
I have paid my pound, await my penny’s worth,
So, hoodwink, starve, and properly train my bird,
And, should she prove a haggard,—twist her neck! (710)
Did I not pay my name and style, my hope
And trust, my all? Through spending these amiss
I am here! ’Tis scarce the gravity of the Court
Will blame me that I never piped a tune,
Treated my falcon-gentle like my finch.
The obligation I incurred was just
To practise mastery, prove my mastership:—
Pompilia’s duty was—submit herself,
Afford me pleasure, perhaps cure my bile.
Am I to teach my lords what marriage means, (720)
What God ordains thereby and man fulfils
Who, docile to the dictate, treads the house?
My lords have chosen the happier part with
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