“Something I trust in God and you to save. (1440)
“You go to Rome, they tell me: take me there,
“Put me back with my people!”
The first word I heard ever from his lips,
All himself in it,—an eternity
Of speech, to match the immeasurable depths
O’ the soul that then broke silence—“I am yours.”
Lead on, nor pause before it should stand still
Above the House o’ the Babe,—my babe to be, (1450)
That knew me first and thus made me know him,
That had his right of life and claim on mine,
And would not let me die till he was born,
But pricked me at the heart to save us both,
Saying “Have you the will? Leave God the way!”
And the way was Caponsacchi—“mine,” thank God!
He was mine, he is mine, he will be mine.
Next night there was a cloud came, and not he:
But I prayed through the darkness till it broke (1460)
And let him shine. The second night, he came.
“In such a flight needs must I risk your life,
“Give food for falsehood, folly or mistake,
“Ground for your husband’s rancour and revenge”—
So he began again, with the same face.
I felt that, the same loyalty—one star
Turning now red that was so white before—
One service apprehended newly: just
A word of mine and there the white was back! (1470)
“Risk all, not I,—who let you, for I trust
“In the compensating great God: enough!
“I know you: when is it that you will come?”
“To-morrow at the day’s dawn.” Then I heard
What I should do: how to prepare for flight
And where to fly.
“—You, whom I loathe, beware you break my sleep
“This whole night! Couch beside me like the corpse (1480)
“I would you were!” The rest you know, I think—
How I found Caponsacchi and escaped.
Of whom men said, with mouths Thyself mad’st once,
“He hath a devil”—say he was Thy saint,
My Caponsacchi! Shield and show—unshroud
In Thine own time the glory of the soul
If aught obscure,—if ink-spot, from vile pens
Scribbling a charge against him—(I was glad
Then, for the first time, that I could not write)— (1490)
Flirted his way, have flecked the blaze!
’Tis otherwise: let men take, sift my thoughts
—Thoughts I throw like the flax for sun to bleach!
I did think, do think, in the thought shall die,
That to have Caponsacchi for my guide,
Ever the face upturned to mine, the hand
Holding my hand across the world,—a sense
That reads, as only such can read, the mark
God sets on women, signifying so (1500)
She should—shall peradventure—be divine;
Yet ’ware, the while, how weakness mars the print
And makes confusion, leaves the thing men see,
—Not this man,—who from his own soul, re-writes
The obliterated charter,—love and strength
Mending what’s marred: “So kneels a votarist,
“Weeds some poor waste traditionary plot
“Where shrine once was, where temple yet may be,
“Purging the place but worshipping the while,
“By faith and not by sight, sight clearest so,— (1510)
“Such way the saints work,”—says Don Celestine.
But I, not privileged to see a saint
Of old when such walked earth with crown and palm,
If I call “saint” what saints call something else—
The saints must bear with me, impute the fault
To a soul i’ the bud, so starved by ignorance,
Stinted of warmth, it will not blow this year
Nor recognise the orb which Spring-flowers know.
But if meanwhile some insect with a heart
Worth floods of lazy music, spendthrift joy— (1520)
Some fire-fly renounced Spring for my dwarfed cup,
Crept close to me with lustre for the dark,
Comfort against the cold,—what though excess
Of comfort should miscall the creature—sun?
What did the sun to hinder while harsh hands
Petal by petal, crude and colourless,
Tore me? This one heart brought me all the Spring!
To tell you how that heart burst out in shine?
Yet certain points do press on me too hard. (1530)
Each place must have a name, though I forget:
How strange it was—there where the plain begins
And the small river mitigates its flow—
When eve was fading fast, and my soul sank,
And he divined what surge of bitterness,
In overtaking me, would float me back
Whence I was carried by the striding day—
So,—“This grey place was famous once,” said he—
And he began
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