Why, when a man has gone and hanged himself
Because of what he calls a wicked wife,—
See, if the turpitude, he makes his moan,
Be not mere excellence the fool ignores!
His monster is perfection, Circe, sent
Straight from the sun, with rod the idiot blames (2210)
As not an honest distaff to spin wool!
O thou Lucrezia, is it long to wait
Yonder where all the gloom is in a glow
With thy suspected presence?—virgin yet,
Virtuous again in face of what’s to teach—
Sin unimagined, unimaginable,—
I come to claim my bride,—thy Borgia’s self
Not half the burning bridegroom I shall be!
Cardinal, take away your crucifix!
Abate, leave my lips alone, they bite! (2220)
’Tis vain you try to change, what should not change,
And cannot. I have bared, you bathe my heart—
It grows the stonier for your saving dew!
You steep the substance, you would lubricate,
In waters that but touch to petrify!
Move not a muscle that shows mercy; rave
Another twelve hours, every word were waste!
I thought you would not slay impenitence,—
Teazed first contrition from the man you slew,— (2230)
I thought you had a conscience. Cardinal,
You know I am wronged!—wronged, say, and wronged maintain.
Was this strict inquisition made for blood
When first you showed us scarlet on your back,
Called to the College? That straightforward way
To that legitimate end,—I think it passed
Over a scantling of heads brained, hearts broke,
Lives trodden into dust,—how otherwise?
Such is the way o’ the world, and so you walk:
Does memory haunt your pillow? Not a whit. (2240)
God wills you never pace your garden-path
One appetising hour ere dinner-time
But your intrusion there treads out of life
An universe of happy innocent things:
Feel you remorse about that damsel-fly
Which buzzed so near your mouth and flapped your face,
You blotted it from being at a blow?
It was a fly, you were a man, and more,
Lord of created things, so took your course.
Manliness, mind,—these are things fit to save, (2250)
Fit to brush fly from: why, because I take
My course, must needs the Pope kill me?—kill you!
Because this instrument he throws away
Is strong to serve a master: it were yours
To have and hold and get such good from out!
The Pope who dooms me, needs must die next year;
I’ll tell you how the chances are supposed
For his successor: first the Chamberlain,
Old San Cesario,—Colloredo, next,—
Then, one, two, three, four, I refuse to name, (2260)
After these, comes Altieri; then come you—
Seventh on the list you are, unless … ha, ha,
How can a dead hand give a friend a lift?
Are you the person to despise the help
O’ the head shall drop in pannier presently?
So a child seesaws on or kicks away
The fulcrum-stone that’s all the sage requires
To fit his lever to and move the world.
Cardinal, I adjure you in God’s name,
Save my life, fall at the Pope’s feet, set forth (2270)
Things your own fashion, not in words like these
Made for a sense like yours who apprehend!
Translate into the court-conventional
“Count Guido must not die, is innocent!
“Fair, be assured! But what an he were foul,
“Blood-drenched and murder-crusted head to foot?
“Spare one whose death insults the Emperor,
“And outrages the Louis you so love!
“He has friends who will avenge him; enemies
“Who hate the church now with impunity (2280)
“Missing the old coercive: would you send
“A soul straight to perdition, dying frank
“An atheist?” Go and say this, for God’s sake!
—Why, you don’t think I hope you’ll say one word?
Neither shall I persuade you from your stand
Nor you persuade me from my station: take
Your crucifix away, I tell you twice!
You have prayed: I have gone inside my soul
And shut its door behind me: ’tis your torch (2290)
Makes the place dark,—the darkness let alone
Grows tolerable twilight,—one may grope
And get to guess at length and breadth and depth.
What is this fact I feel persuaded of—
This something like a foothold in the sea,
Although Saint Peter’s bark scuds, billow-borne,
Leaves me to founder where it flung me first?
Spite of your splashing, I am high and dry!
God takes his own part in each thing he made;
Made for a reason, he conserves his work, (2300)
Gives each its proper instinct of defence.
My lamblike wife could neither bark nor bite,
She bleated, bleated, till for pity pure,
The village roused it, ran with pole and prong
To the rescue, and behold the wolf’s at bay!
Shall he try bleating?—or take turn or two,
Since the wolf owns to kinship with the fox,
And failing to escape the foe by these,
Give up attempt, die fighting quietly?
The last bad blow that strikes fire in at eye (2310)
And on to brain, and so out, life and all,
How can it but be cheated of a pang
While, fighting quietly, the jaws enjoy
Their re- embrace in mid back-bone they break,
After their weary work thro’ the foes’ flesh?
That’s the wolf-nature. Don’t mistake my trope!
The Cardinal is qualmish! Eminence,
My fight is figurative, blows i’ the air,
Brain- war with powers and principalities,
Spirit-bravado, no real fisticuffs! (2320)
I shall not presently, when the knock comes,
Cling to this bench nor flee the hangman’s face,
No, trust me! I conceive worse lots than mine.
Whether it be the old contagious fit
And plague o’ the prison have surprised me too,
The appropriate
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