Come all uncandid through the thwarting flesh!
Was not the son of Jesse ruddy, sleek,
Pleasant to look on, pleasant every way?
Since well he smote the harp and sweetly sang,
And danced till Abigail came out to see,
And seeing smiled and smiling ministered (360)
The raisin-duster and the cake of figs,
With ready meal refreshed the gifted youth,
Till Nabal, who was absent shearing sheep,
Felt heart sink, took to bed (discreetly done—
They might have been beforehand with him else)
And died—would Guido had behaved as well!
But ah, the faith of early days is gone,
Heu prisca fides! Nothing died in him
Save courtesy, good sense and proper trust,
Which, when they ebb from souls they should o’erflow, (370)
Discover stub, weed, sludge and ugliness.
(The Pope, you know, is Neapolitan
And relishes a sea-side simile.)
Deserted by each charitable wave,
Guido, left high and dry, shows jealous now!
Jealous avouched, paraded: tax the fool
With any peccadillo, he responds
“Truly I beat my wife through jealousy,
“Imprisoned her and punished otherwise,
“Being jealous: now would threaten, sword in hand, (380)
“Now manage to mix poison in her sight,
“And so forth: jealously I dealt, in fine.”
Concede the fact and what remains to prove?
Have I to teach my masters what effect
Hath jealousy and how, befooling men,
It makes false true, abuses eye and ear,
Turns the mist adamantine, loads with sound
Silence, and into void and vacancy
Crowds a whole phalanx of conspiring foes?
Therefore who owns “I watched with jealousy (390)
“My wife” adds “for no reason in the world!”
What need that who says “madman” should remark
“The thing he thought a serpent proved an eel?”—
Perchance the right Comacchian, six foot length,
And not an inch too long for that same pie
(Master Arcangeli has heard of such)
Whose succulence makes fasting bearable;
Meant to regale some moody splenetic
Who pleases to mistake the donor’s gift,
And spies—I know not what Lernæan snake (400)
I’ the luscious Lenten creature, stamps forsooth
The dainty in the dust.
His lunes announced, for downright lunacy!
Insanit homo, threat succeeds to threat,
And blow redoubles blow,—his wife, the block.
But, if a block, shall not she jar the hand
That buffets her? The injurious idle stone
Rebounds and fits the head of him who flung.
Causeless rage breeds, i’ the wife now, rageful cause, (410)
Tyranny wakes rebellion from its sleep.
Rebellion, say I?—rather, self-defence,
Laudable wish to live and see good days,
Pricks our Pompilia on to fly the foe
By any means, at any price,—nay, more,
Nay, most of all, i’ the very interest
Of the foe that, baffled of his blind desire
At any price, is truliest victor so.
Shall he effect his crime and lose his soul?
No, dictates duty to a loving wife. (420)
Far better that the unconsummate blow,
Adroitly baulked by her, should back again,
Correctively admonish his own pate!
How crush it? By all efficacious means;
And these,—why, what is woman should they be?
“With horns the bull, with teeth the lion fights,
“To woman,” quoth the lyrist quoted late,
“Nor teeth, nor horns, but beauty, Nature gave!”
Pretty i’ the Pagan! Who dares blame the use (430)
Of the armoury thus allowed for natural,—
Exclaim against a seeming-dubious play
O’ the sole permitted weapon, spear and shield
Alike, resorted to i’ the circumstance
By poor Pompilia? Grant she somewhat plied
Arts that allure, the magic nod and wink,
The witchery of gesture, spell of word,
Whereby the likelier to enlist this friend,
Yet stranger, as a champion on her side?
Such, being but mere man, (’twas all she knew), (440)
Must be made sure by beauty’s silken bond,
The weakness that subdues the strong, and bows
Wisdom alike and folly. Grant the tale
O’ the husband, which is false, for proved and true
To the letter,—or the letters, I should say,
The abominations he professed to find
And fix upon Pompilia and the priest,—
Allow them hers—for though she could not write,
In early days of Eve-like innocence
That plucked no apple from the knowledge-tree, (450)
Yet, at the Serpent’s word, Eve plucks and eats
And knows—especially how to read and write:
And so Pompilia,—as the move o’ the maw,
Quoth Persius, makes a parrot bid “Good-day!”
A crow salute the concave, and a pie
Endeavour at proficiency in speech,—
So she, through hunger after fellowship,
May well have learned, though late, to play the scribe:
As indeed, there’s one letter on the list
Explicitly declares did happen here. (460)
“You thought my letters could be none of mine,”
She tells her parents—“mine, who wanted skill;
“But now I have the skill, and write, you see!”
She needed write love-letters, so she learned,
“Negatas artifex sequi voces”—though
This letter nowise ’scapes the common lot,
But lies i’ the condemnation of the rest,
Found by the husband’s self who forged them all.
Yet, for the sacredness of argument,
For this once an exemption shall it plead— (470)
Anything, anything to let the wheels
Of argument run glibly to their goal!
Concede she wrote (which were preposterous)
This and the other epistle,—what of it?
Where does the figment touch her candid
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