Behind law called in to back cowardice!
While out of the poor trampled worm the wife,
Springs up a serpent!
Him I judge now,—of him proceed to note,
Failing the first, a second chance befriends
Guido, gives pause ere punishment arrive.
The law he called, comes, hears, adjudicates,
Nor does amiss i’ the main,—secludes the wife
From the husband, respites the oppressed one, grants
Probation to the oppressor, could he know
The mercy of a minute’s fiery purge!
The furnace-coals alike of public scorn,
Private remorse, heaped glowing on his head, (710)
What if,—the force and guile, the ore’s alloy,
Eliminate, his baser soul refined—
The lost be saved even yet, so as by fire?
Let him, rebuked, go softly all his days
And, when no graver musings claim their due,
Meditate on a man’s immense mistake
Who, fashioned to use feet and walk, deigns crawl—
Takes the unmanly means—ay, though to end
Man scarce should make for, would but reach thro’ wrong,—
May sin, but must not needs shame manhood so: (720)
Since fowlers hawk, shoot, nay and snare the game,
And yet eschew vile practice, nor find sport
In torch-light treachery or the luring owl.
Late spurned to ruin by the indignant feet
Of fellows in the chase who loved fair play—
Here he picks up the fragments to the least,
Lades him and hies to the old lurking-place
Where haply he may patch again, refit
The mischief, file its blunted teeth anew, (730)
Make sure, next time, a snap shall break the bone.
Craft, greed and violence complot revenge:
Craft, for its quota, schemes to bring about
And seize occasion and be safe withal:
Greed craves its act may work both far and near,
Crush the tree, branch and trunk and root beside,
Whichever twig or leaf arrests a streak
Of possible sunshine else would coin itself,
And drop down one more gold piece in the path.
Violence stipulates “Advantage proved, (740)
“And safety sure, be pain the overplus!
“Murder with jagged knife! Cut but tear too!
“Foiled oft, starved long, glut malice for amends!”
And, last, craft schemes,—scheme sorrowful and strange
As though the elements, whom mercy checked,
Had mustered hate for one eruption more,
One final deluge to surprise the Ark
Cradled and sleeping on its mountain-top:
The outbreak-signal—what but the dove’s coos
Back with the olive in her bill for news (750)
Sorrow was over? ’Tis an infant’s birth,
Guido’s first born, his son and heir, that gives
The occasion: other men cut free their souls
From care in such a case, fly up in thanks
To God, reach, recognise His love for once:
Guido cries “Soul, at last the mire is thine!
“Lie there in likeness of a money-bag,
“This babe’s birth so pins down past moving now,
“That I dare cut adrift the lives I late
“Scrupled to touch lest thou escape with them! (760)
“These parents and their child my wife,—touch one
“Lose all! Their rights determined on a head
“I could but hate, not harm, since from each hair
“Dangled a hope for me: now—chance and change!
“No right was in their child but passes now
“To that child’s child and through such child to me.
“I am the father now,—come what, come will,
“I represent my child; he comes between—
“Cuts sudden off the sunshine of this life
“From those three: why, the gold is in his curls! (770)
“Not with old Pietro’s, Violante’s head,
“Not his grey horror, her more hideous black—
“Go these, devoted to the knife!”
Wherefore should mind misgive, heart hesitate?
He calls to counsel, fashions certain four
Colourless natures counted clean till now,
—Rustic simplicity, uncorrupted youth,
Ignorant virtue! Here’s the gold o’ the prime
When Saturn ruled, shall shock our leaden day— (780)
The clown abash the courtier! Mark it, bards!
The courtier tries his hand on clownship here,
Speaks a word, names a crime, appoints a price,—
Just breathes on what, suffused with all himself,
Is red-hot henceforth past distinction now
I’ the common glow of hell. And thus they break
And blaze on us at Rome, Christ’s Birthnight-eve!
Oh angels that sang erst “On the earth, peace!
“To man, good will!”—such peace finds earth to-day!
After the seventeen hundred years, so man (790)
Wills good to man, so Guido makes complete
His murder! what is it I said?—cuts loose
Three lives that hitherto he suffered cling,
Simply because each served to nail secure,
By a corner of the money-bag, his soul,—
Therefore, lives sacred till the babe’s first breath
O’erweights them in the balance,—off they fly!
To the full: and why not crowned with triumph too?
Why must the sin, conceived thus, bring forth death? (800)
I note how, within hair’s-breadth of escape,
Impunity and the thing supposed success,
Guido is found when the check comes, the change,
The monitory touch o’ the tether—felt
By few, not marked by many, named by none
At the moment, only recognised aright
I’
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