Venus imbue: why should Pompilia fling
The poet’s declaration in his teeth?—
Pause to employ what,—since it had success,
And kept the priest her servant to the end,—
We must presume of energy enough,
No whit superfluous, so permissible?
Have run their round: a long and devious road
Is traversed,—many manners, various men (720)
Passed in review, what cities did they see,
What hamlets mark, what profitable food
For after-meditation cull and store!
Till Rome, that Rome whereof—this voice,
Would it might make our Molinists observe.
That she is built upon a rock nor shall
Their powers prevail against her!—Rome, I say,
Is all but reached; one stage more and they stop
Saved: pluck up heart, ye pair, and forward, then!
Nature imperiously exacts her due,
Spirit is willing but the flesh is weak,
Pompilia needs must acquiesce and swoon,
Give hopes alike and fears a breathing-while.
The innocent sleep soundly: sound she sleeps.
So let her slumber, then, unguarded save
By her own chastity, a triple mail,
And his good hand whose stalwart arms have borne
The sweet and senseless burthen like a babe
From coach to couch,—the serviceable man! (740)
Nay, what and if he gazed rewardedly
On the pale beauty prisoned in embrace,
Stooped over, stole a balmy breath perhaps
For more assurance sleep was not decease—
“Ut vidi,” “how I saw!” succeeded by
“Ut perii,” “how I sudden lost my brains!”
—What harm ensued to her unconscious quite?
For, curiosity—how natural!
Importunateness—what a privilege
In the ardent sex! And why curb ardour here? (750)
How can the priest but pity whom he saved?
And pity is how near to love, and love
How neighbourly to unreasonableness!
And for love’s object, whether love were sage
Or foolish, could Pompilia know or care,
Being still sound asleep, as I premised?
Thus the philosopher absorbed by thought,
Even Archimedes, busy o’er a book
The while besiegers sacked his Syracuse,
Was ignorant of the imminence o’ the point (760)
O’ the sword till it surprised him: let it stab,
And never knew himself was dead at all.
So sleep thou on, secure whate’er betide!
For thou, too, hast thy problem hard to solve—
How so much beauty is compatible
With so much innocence!
While in this task she rosily is lost,
To treat of and repel objection here
Which,—frivolous, I grant,—but, still misgives (770)
My mind, it may have flitted, gadfly-like,
And teazed the Court at times—as if, all said
And done, there still seemed, one might nearly say,
In a certain acceptation, somewhat more
Of what may pass for insincerity,
Falsehood, throughout the course Pompilia took,
Than befits Christian. Pagans held, we know,
We always ought to aim at good and truth,
Not always put one thing in the same words:
Non idem semper dicere sed spectare (780)
Debemus. But the Pagan yoke was light;
“Lie not at all,” the exacter precept bids:
Each least lie breaks the law,—is sin, ye hold.
I humble me, but venture to submit—
What prevents sin, itself is sinless, sure:
And sin, which hinders sin of deeper dye,
Softens itself away by contrast so.
Conceive me! Little sin, by none at all,
Were properly condemned for great: but great,
By greater, dwindles into small again. (790)
Now, what is greatest sin of womanhood?
That which unwomans it, abolishes
The nature of the woman,—impudence.
Who contradicts me here? Concede me, then,
Whatever friendly fault may interpose
To save the sex from self-abolishment
Is three-parts on the way to virtue’s rank!
Now, what is taxed here as duplicity,
Feint, wile and trick,—admitted for the nonce,—
What worse do one and all than interpose, (800)
Hold, as it were, a deprecating hand,
Statuesquely, in the Medicean mode,
Before some shame which modesty would veil?
Who blames the gesture prettily perverse?
Thus,—lest ye miss a point illustrative,—
Admit the husband’s calumny—allow
That the wife, having penned the epistle fraught
With horrors, charge on charge of crime, she heaped
O’ the head of Pietro and Violante—(still
Presumed her parents)—and despatched the thing (810)
To their arch-enemy Paolo, through free choice
And no sort of compulsion in the world—
Put case that she discards simplicity
For craft, denies the voluntary act,
Declares herself a passive instrument
I’ the hands of Guido; duped by knavery,
She traced the characters, she could not write,
And took on trust the unread sense which, read,
Were recognised but to be spurned at once.
Allow this calumny, I reiterate! (820)
Who is so dull as wonder at the pose
Of our Pompilia in the circumstance?
Who sees not that the too-ingenuous soul,
Repugnant even at a duty done
Which brought beneath too scrutinising glare
The misdemeanours,—buried in the dark,—
Of the authors of her being, she believed,—
Stung to the quick at her impulsive deed,
And willing to repair what harm it worked,
She—wise in this beyond what Nero proved, (830)
Who, when needs were the candid
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