Yonder where curious people count her breaths,
Calculate how long yet the little life
Unspilt may serve their turn nor spoil the show,
Give them their story, then the church its group.
I’ the midst of Pietro here, Violante there, (230)
Each, like a semicircle with stretched arms,
Joining the other round her preciousness—
Two walls that go about a garden-plot
Where a chance sliver, branchlet slipt from bole
Of some tongue-leaved eye-figured Eden tree,
Filched by two exiles and borne far away,
Patiently glorifies their solitude,—
Year by year mounting, grade by grade surmounts
The builded brick-work, yet is compassed still,
Still hidden happily and shielded safe,— (240)
Else why should miracle have graced the ground?
But on the twelfth sun that brought April there
What meant that laugh? The coping-stone was reached;
Nay, a light tuft of bloom towered above
To be toyed with by butterfly or bee,
Done good to or else harm to from outside:
Pompilia’s root, stem, and a branch or two
Home enclosed still, the rest would be the world’s.
All which was taught our couple though obtuse,
Since walls have ears, when one day brought a priest, (250)
Smooth-mannered soft-speeched sleek-cheeked visitor,
The notable Abate Paolo—known
As younger brother of a Tuscan house
Whereof the actual representative,
Count Guido, had employd his youth and age
In culture of Rome’s most productive plant—
A cardinal: but years pass and change comes,
In token of which, here was our Paolo brought
To broach a weighty business. Might he speak?
Yes—to Violante somehow caught alone (260)
While Pietro took his after-dinner doze,
And the young maiden, busily as befits,
Minded her broider-frame three chambers off.
With flat o’ the hand between-whiles, soothing now
The silk from out its creases o’er the calf,
Setting the stocking clerical again,
But never disengaging, once engaged,
The thin clear grey hold of his eyes on her—
He dissertated on that Tuscan house, (270)
Those Franceschini,—very old they were—
Not rich however—oh, not rich, at least,
As people look to be who, low i’ the scale
One way, have reason, rising all they can
By favour of the money-bag: ’tis fair—
Do all gifts go together? But don’t suppose
That being not so rich means all so poor!
Say rather, well enough—i’ the way, indeed,
Ha, ha, to better fortune than the best,
Since if his brother’s patron-friend kept faith, (280)
Put into promised play the Cardinalate,
Their house might wear the red cloth that keeps warm,
Would but the Count have patience—there’s the point!
For he was slipping into years apace,
And years make men restless—they needs must see
Some certainty, some sort of end assured,
Sparkle, tho’ from the topmost beacon-tip
That warrants life a harbour through the haze.
In short, call him fantastic as you choose,
Guido was home-sick, yearned for the old sights (290)
And usual faces,—fain would settle himself
And have the patron’s bounty when it fell
Irrigate far rather than deluge near,
Go fertilise Arezzo, not flood Rome.
Sooth to say, ’twas the wiser wish: the Count
Proved wanting in ambition,—let us avouch,
Since truth is best,—in callousness of heart,
Winced at those pin-pricks whereby honours hang
A ribbon o’er each puncture: his—no soul
Ecclesiastic (here the hat was brushed) (300)
Humble but self-sustaining, calm and cold,
Having, as one who puts his hand to the plough,
Renounced the over-vivid family-feel—
Poor brother Guido! All too plain, he pined
Amid Rome’s pomp and glare for dinginess
And that dilapidated palace-shell
Vast as a quarry and, very like, as bare—
Since to this comes old grandeur now-a-days—
Or that absurd wild villa in the waste
O’ the hill side, breezy though, for who likes air, (310)
Vittiano, nor unpleasant with its vines,
Outside the city and the summer heats.
And now his harping on this one tense chord
The villa and the palace, palace this
And villa the other, all day and all night
Creaked like the implacable cicala’s cry
And made one’s ear- drum ache: nought else would serve
But that, to light his mother’s visage up
With second youth, hope, gaiety again,
He must find straightway, woo and haply win (320)
And bear away triumphant back, some wife.
Well now, the man was rational in his way—
He, the Abate,—ought he to interpose?
Unless by straining still his tutelage
(Priesthood leaps over elder-brothership)
Across this difficulty: then let go,
Leave the poor fellow in peace! Would that be wrong?
There was no making Guido great, it seems,
Spite of himself: then happy be his dole!
Indeed, the Abate’s little interest (330)
Was somewhat nearly touched i’ the case, they saw:
Since if his simple kinsman so were bent,
Began his rounds in Rome to catch a wife,
Full soon would such unworldliness surprise
The rare bird, sprinkle salt on phœnix’ tail,
And so secure the nest a sparrow- hawk.
No lack of mothers here in Rome,—no dread
Of daughters lured as larks by looking-glass!
The first name-pecking credit-scratching fowl
Would drop her unfledged cuckoo in our nest (340)
To gather greyness there, give voice at length
And shame the brood .. but it was long ago
When crusades were, and we sent eagles forth!
No, that at least the Abate could forestall.
He read the thought within his brother’s
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