“Supplied by Guido: say, he forged them all!
“Here was the unforged fact—she sent for you,
“Spontaneously elected you to help,
“—What men call, loved you: Guido read her mind,
“Gave it expression to assure the world
“The case was just as he foresaw: he wrote,
“She spoke.”
That falsehood of a scorpion hatched, I say, (910)
Nowhere i’ the world but in Madonna’s mouth.
Go on! Suppose, that falsehood foiled, next eve
Pictured Madonna raised her painted hand,
Fixed the face Rafael bent above the Babe,
On my face as I flung me at her feet:
Such miracle vouchsafed and manifest,
Would that prove the first lying tale was true?
Pompilia spoke, and I at once received,
Accepted my own fact, my miracle
Self-authorised and self-explained,—she chose (920)
To summon me and signify her choice.
Afterward,—oh! I gave a passing glance
To a certain ugly cloud- shape, goblin-shred
Of hell-smoke hurrying past the splendid moon
Out now to tolerate no darkness more,
And saw right through the thing that tried to pass
For truth and solid, not an empty lie:
“So, he not only forged the words for her
“But word for me, made letters he called mine:
“What I sent, he retained, gave these in place, (930)
“All by the mistress-messenger! As I
“Recognised her, at potency of truth,
“So she, by the crystalline soul, knew me,
“Never mistook the signs. Enough of this—
“Let the wraith go to nothingness again,
“Here is the orb, have only thought for her!”
I have thought sometimes, and thought long and hard.
I have stood before, gone round a serious thing,
Tasked my whole mind to touch and clasp it close, (940)
As I stretch forth my arm to touch this bar.
God and man, and what duty I owe both,—
I dare to say I have confronted these
In thought: but no such faculty helped here.
I put forth no thought,—powerless, all that night
I paced the city: it was the first Spring.
By the invasion I lay passive to,
In rushed new things, the old were rapt away;
Alike abolished—the imprisonment
Of the outside air, the inside weight o’ the world (950)
That pulled me down. Death meant, to spurn the ground,
Soar to the sky,—die well and you do that.
The very immolation made the bliss;
Death was the heart of life, and all the harm
My folly had crouched to avoid, now proved a veil
Hiding all gain my wisdom strove to grasp:
As if the intense centre of the flame
Should turn a heaven to that devoted fly
Which hitherto, sophist alike and sage,
Saint Thomas with his sober grey goose-quill, (960)
And sinner Plato by Cephisian reed,
Would fain, pretending just the insect’s good,
Whisk off, drive back, consign to shade again.
Into another state, under new rule
I knew myself was passing swift and sure;
Whereof the initiatory pang approached,
Felicitous annoy, as bitter- sweet
As when the virgin-band, the victors chaste,
Feel at the end the earthly garments drop,
And rise with something of a rosy shame (970)
Into immortal nakedness: so I
Lay, and let come the proper throe would thrill
Into the ecstacy and outthrob pain.
Facing the pillared front o’ the Pieve—mine,
My church: it seemed to say for the first time
“But am not I the Bride, the mystic love
“O’ the Lamb, who took thy plighted troth, my priest,
“To fold thy warm heart on my heart of stone
“And freeze thee nor unfasten any more? (980)
“This is a fleshly woman,—let the free
“Bestow their life-blood, thou art pulseless now!”
See! Day by day I had risen and left this church
At the signal waved me by some foolish fan,
With half a curse and half a pitying smile
For the monk I stumbled over in my haste,
Prostrate and corpse-like at the altar-foot
Intent on his corona: then the church
Was ready with her quip, if word conduced,
To quicken my pace nor stop for prating—“There! (990)
“Be thankful you are no such ninny, go
“Rather to teach a black-eyed novice cards
“Than gabble Latin and protrude that nose
“Smoothed to a sheep’s through no brains and much faith!”
That sort of incentive! Now the church changed tone—
Now, when I found out first that life and death
Are means to an end, that passion uses both,
Indisputably mistress of the man
Whose form of worship is self-sacrifice—
Now, from the stone lungs sighed the scrannel voice (1000)
“Leave that passion, come be dead with me!”
As if, i’ the fabled garden, I had gone
On great adventure, plucked in ignorance
Hedge-fruit, and feasted to satiety,
Laughing at such high fame for hips and haws,
And scorned the achievement: then come all at once
O’ the prize o’ the place, the thing of perfect gold,
The apple’s self: and, scarce my eye on that,
Was ’ware as well o’ the seven-fold dragon’s watch.
This new thing that had been struck into me
By the look o’ the lady,—to dare disobey
The first authoritative word. ’Twas God’s.
I had been lifted to the level of her,
Could take such sounds into my sense. I said
“We two are cognisant o’ the Master now;
“It
| Previous chapter/page | Back | Home | Email this | Search | Discuss | Bookmark | Next chapter/page |