And hold the hedge-bird’s breakfast,—then indeed
The prize though poor would pay the care and toil!
Respect we Nature that makes least as most,
Marvellous in the minim! But this bud,
Bit through and burned black by the tempter’s tooth,
This bloom whose best grace was the slug outside
And the wasp inside its bosom,—call you“rose?”
Claim no immunity from a weed’s fate
For the horrible present! What you call my wife (1110)
I call a nullity in female shape,
Vapid disgust, soon to be pungent plague,
When mixed with, made confusion and a curse
By two abominable nondescripts,
That father and that mother: think you see
The dreadful bronze our boast, we Aretines,
The Etruscan monster, the three-headed thing,
Bellerophon’s foe! How name you the whole beast?
You choose to name the body from one head,
That of the simple kid which droops the eye, (1120)
Hangs the neck and dies tenderly enough:
I rather see the griesly lion belch
Flame out i’ the midst, the serpent writhe her rings,
Grafted into the common stock for tail,
And name the brute, Chimæra, which I slew!
How was there ever more to be—(concede
My wife’s insipid harmless nullity)—
Dissociation from that pair of plagues—
That mother with her cunning and her cant—
The eyes with first their twinkle of conceit, (1130)
Then, dropped to earth in mock-demureness,—now,
The smile self-satisfied from ear to ear
Now, the prim pursed-up mouth’s protruded lips,
With deferential duck, slow swing of head,
Tempting the sudden fist of man too much,—
That owl-like screw of lid and rock of ruff!
As for the father,—Cardinal, you know,
The kind of idiot!—rife are such in Rome,
But they wear velvet commonly, such fools,
At the end of life, can furnish forth young folk (1140)
Who grin and bear with imbecility,
Since the stalled ass, the joker, sheds from jaw
Corn, in the joke, for those who laugh or starve:
But what say we to the same solemn beast
Wagging his ears and wishful of our pat,
When turned, with hide in holes and bones laid bare,
To forage for himself i’ the waste o’ the world,
Sir Dignity i’ the dumps? Pat him? We drub
Self-knowledge, rather, into frowzy pate,
Teach Pietro to get trappings or go hang! (1150)
Fancy this quondam oracle in vogue
At Via Vittoria, this personified
Authority when time was,—Pantaloon
Flaunting his tom-fool tawdry just the same
As if Ash-Wednesday were mid- Carnival!
That’s the extreme and unforgivable
Of sins, as I account such. Have you stooped
For your own ends to bestialise yourself
By flattery of a fellow of this stamp?
The ends obtained, or else shown out of reach, (1160)
He goes on, takes the flattery for pure truth,—
“You love and honour me, of course: what next?”
What, but the trifle of the stabbing, friend?—
Which taught you how one worships when the shrine
Has lost the relic that we bent before.
Angry? And how could I be otherwise?
’Tis plain: this pair of old pretentious fools
Meant to fool me: it happens, I fooled them,
Why could not these who sought to buy and sell
Me,—when they found themselves were bought and sold,
Make up their mind to the proved rule of right, (1171)
Be chattel and not chapman any more?
Miscalculation has its consequence;
But when the shepherd crooks a sheep-like thing
And meaning to get wool, dislodges fleece
And finds the veritable wolf beneath,
(How that staunch image serves at every turn!)
Does he, by way of being politic,
Pluck the first whisker grimly visible?—
Or rather grow in a trice all gratitude, (1180)
Protest this sort-of-what-one-might-name sheep
Beats the old other curly-coated kind,
And shall share board and bed, if so it deign,
With its discoverer, like a royal ram?
Ay, thus, with chattering teeth and knocking knees,
Would wisdom treat the adventure: these, forsooth,
Tried whisker-plucking, and so found what trap
The whisker kept perdue, two rows of teeth—
Sharp, as too late the prying fingers felt.
What would you have? The fools transgress, the fools
Forthwith receive appropriate punishment: (1190)
They first insult me, I return the blow,
There follows noise enough: four hubbub months,
Now hue and cry, now whimpering and wail—
A perfect goose-yard cackle of complaint
Because I do not gild the geese their oats,—
I have enough of noise, ope wicket wide,
Sweep out the couple to go whine elsewhere,
Frightened a little, hurt in no respect,
And am just taking thought to breathe again, (1200)
Taste the sweet sudden silence all about,
When, there they are at it, the old noise I know,
At Rome i’ the distance! “What, begun once more?
“Whine on, wail ever, ’tis the loser’s right!”
But eh, what sort of voice grows on the wind?
Triumph it sounds and no complaint at all!
And triumph it is! My boast was premature:
The creatures, I turned forth, clapped wing and crew
Fighting-cock-fashion,—they had filched a pearl
From dung-heap, and might boast with cause enough! (1210)
I was defrauded of all bargained for,—
You know, the Pope knows, not a soul but knows
My dowry was derision, my gain—muck,
My wife (the Church declared my flesh and blood)
The nameless bastard of a common whore:
My old name turned henceforth to…shall I say
“He that received the ordure in his face?”
And they who planned this wrong, performed this wrong,
And then revealed this wrong to the wide world,
Rounded myself in the ears with my own wrong,— (1220)
Why, these were…note hell’s lucky malice, now!…
These were just they, and they alone, could act
And publish in this wise their infamy,
Secure that men would in a breath believe
Compassionate
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