By putting in their place the wise like you
To take the full force of an argument
Would buffet their stolidity in vain.
If you should feel aggrieved by the mere wind
O’ the blow that means to miss you and maul them,
That’s my success! Is it not folly, now,
To say with folks, “A plausible defence— (860)
“We see through notwithstanding, and reject?”
Reject the plausible they do, these fools,
Who never even make pretence to show
One point beyond its plausibility
In favour of the best belief they hold!
“Saint Somebody- or-other raised the dead:”
Did he? How do you come to know as much?
“Know it, what need? The story’s plausible,
“Avouched for by a martyrologist,
“And why should good men sup on cheese and leeks (870)
“On such a saint’s day, if there were no saint?”
I praise the wisdom of these fools, and straight
Tell them my story—“plausible, but false!”
False, to be sure! What else can story be
That runs—a young wife tired of an old spouse,
Found a priest whom she fled away with,—both
Took their full pleasure in the two-days’ flight,
Which a grey-headed greyer-hearted pair,
(Whose best boast was, their life had been a lie)
Helped for the love they bore all liars. Oh, (880)
Here incredulity begins! Indeed?
Allow then, were no one point strictly true,
There’s that i’ the tale might seem like truth at least
To the unlucky husband,—jaundiced patch,—
Jealousy maddens people, why not him?
Say, he was maddened, so, forgivable!
Humanity pleads that though the wife were true,
The priest true, and the pair of liars true,
They might seem false to one man in the world!
A thousand gnats make up a serpent’s sting, (890)
And many sly soft stimulants to wrath
Compose a formidable wrong at last,
That gets called easily by some one name
Not applicable to the single parts,
And so draws down a general revenge,
Excessive if you take crime, fault by fault.
Jealousy! I have known a score of plays,
Were listened to and laughed at in my time
As like the everyday-life on all sides,
Wherein the husband, mad as a March hare, (900)
Suspected all the world contrived his shame;
What did the wife? The wife kissed both eyes blind,
Explained away ambiguous circumstance,
And while she held him captive by the hand,
Crowned his head,—you know what’s the mockery,—
By half her body behind the curtain. That’s
Nature now! That’s the subject of a piece
I saw in Vallombrosa Convent, made
Expressly to teach men what marriage was!
But say “Just so did I misapprehend!” (910)
Or “Just so she deceived me to my face!”
And that’s pretence too easily seen through!
All those eyes of all husbands in all plays,
At stare like one expanded peacock-tail,
Are laughed at for pretending to be keen
While horn-blind: but the moment I step forth—
Oh, I must needs o’ the sudden prove a lynx
And look the heart, that stone-wall, through and through!
Such an eye, God’s may be,—not yours nor mine.
When you cut earth away from under me,
I shall be left alone with, pushed beneath
Some such an apparitional dread orb;
I fancy it go filling up the void
Above my mote-self it devours, or what
Immensity please wreak on nothingness.
Just so I felt once, couching through the dark,
Hard by Vittiano; young I was, and gay,
And wanting to trap fieldfares: first a spark
Tipped a bent, as a mere dew-globule might (930)
Any stiff grass-stalk on the meadow,—this
Grew fiercer, flamed out full, and proved the sun.
What do I want with proverbs, precepts here?
Away with man! What shall I say to God?
This, if I find the tongue and keep the mind—
“Do Thou wipe out the being of me, and smear
“This soul from off Thy white of things, I blot!
“I am one huge and sheer mistake,—whose fault?
“Not mine at least, who did not make myself!”
Someone declares my wife excused me so! (940)
Perhaps she knew what argument to use.
Grind your teeth, Cardinal, Abate, writhe!
What else am I to cry out in my rage,
Unable to repent one particle
O’ the past? Oh, how I wish some cold wise man
Would dig beneath the surface which you scrape,
Deal with the depths, pronounce on my desert
Groundedly! I want simple sober sense,
That asks, before it finishes with a dog,
Who taught the dog that trick you hang him for? (950)
You both persist to call that act a crime,
Sense would call…yes, I do assure you, Sirs,…
A blunder! At the worst, I stood in doubt
On cross-road, took one path of many paths:
It leads to the red thing, we all see now,
But nobody at first saw one primrose
In bank, one singing-bird in bush, the less,
To warn from wayfare: let me prove you that!
Put me back to the cross-road, start afresh!
Advise me when I take the first false step! (960)
Give me my wife: how should I use my wife,
Love her or hate her? Prompt my action now!
There she stands, there she is alive and pale,
The thirteen-years’-old child, with milk for blood,
Pompilia Comparini, as at first,
Which first is only four brief years ago!
I stand too in the little ground- floor room
O’ the father’s house at Via Vittoria: see!
Her so-called mother,—one arm round the waist
O’ the child to keep her from the toys—let fall, (970)
At wonder I can live yet look so grim,—
Ushers her in, with deprecating wave
Of the other,—there she fronts me loose, at large,
Held only by her mother’s finger-tip—
Struck dumb, for she was white enough before!
She eyes me with those frightened balls of
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