Creep on my sense, the work o’ the wine and myrrh,—
I know not,—I begin to taste my strength,
Careless, gay even: what’s the worth of life?
The Pope is dead, my murderous old man, (2330)
For Tozzi told me so: and you, forsooth—
Why, you don’t think, Abate, do your best,
You’ll live a year more with that hacking cough
And blotch of crimson where the cheek’s a pit?
Tozzi has got you also down in book.
Cardinal, only seventh of seventy near,
Is not one called Albano in the lot?
Go eat your heart, you’ll never be a Pope!
Inform me, is it true you left your love,
A Pucci, for promotion in the church? (2340)
She’s more than in the church,—in the churchyard!
Plautilla Pucci, your affianced bride,
Has dust now in the eyes that held the love,—
And Martinez, suppose they make you Pope,
Stops that with veto,—so, enjoy yourself!
I see you all reel to the rock, you waves—
Some forthright, some describe a sinuous track,
Some crested, brilliantly with heads above,
Some in a strangled swirl sunk who knows how,
But all bound whither the main-current sets, (2350)
Rockward, an end in foam for all of you!
What if I am o’ertaken, pushed to the front
By all you crowding smoother souls behind,
And reach, a minute sooner than was meant,
The boundary, whereon I break to mist?
Go to! the smoothest safest of you all,
Most perfect and compact wave in my train,
Spite of the blue tranquillity above,
Spite of the breadth before of lapsing peace
Where broods the halcyon and the fish leaps free, (2360)
Will presently begin to feel the prick
At lazy heart, the push at torpid brain,
Will rock vertiginously in turn, and reel,
And, emulative, rush to death like me:
Later or sooner by a minute then,
So much for the untimeliness of death,—
And, as regards the manner that offends,
The rude and rough, I count the same for gain—
Be the act harsh and quick! Undoubtedly
The soul’s condensed and, twice itself, expands (2370)
To burst thro’ life, in alternation due,
Into the other state whate’er it prove.
You never know what life means till you die:
Even throughout life, ’tis death that makes life live,
Gives it whatever the significance.
For see, on your own ground and argument,
Suppose life had no death to fear, how find
A possibility of nobleness
In man, prevented daring any more?
What’s love, what’s faith without a worst to dread? (2380)
Lack-lustre jewelry; but faith and love
With death behind them bidding do or die—
Put such a foil at back, the sparkle’s born!
From out myself how the strange colours come!
Is there a new rule in another world?
Be sure I shall resign myself: as here
I recognised no law I could not see,
There, what I see, I shall acknowledge too:
On earth I never took the Pope for God,
In heaven I shall scarce take God for the Pope. (2390)
Unmanned, remade: I hold it probable—
With something changeless at the heart of me
To know me by, some nucleus that’s myself:
Accretions did it wrong? Away with them—
You soon shall see the use of fire!
All that was, is; and must for ever be.
Nor is it in me to unhate my hates,—
I use up my last strength to strike once more
Old Pietro in the wine-house-gossip-face, (2400)
To trample underfoot the whine and wile
Of that Violante,—and I grow one gorge
To loathingly reject Pompilia’s pale
Poison my hasty hunger took for food.
A strong tree wants no wreaths about its trunk,
No cloying cups, no sickly sweet of scent,
But sustenance at root, a bucketful.
How else lived that Athenian who died so,
Drinking hot bull’s-blood, fit for men like me?
I lived and died a man, and take man’s chance, (2410)
Honest and bold: right will be done to such.
Who are these you have let descend my stair?
Ha, their accursed psalm! Lights at the sill!
Is it “Open” they dare bid you? Treachery!
Sirs, have I spoken one word all this while
Out of the world of words I had to say?
Not one word! All was folly—I laughed and mocked!
Sirs, my first true word all truth and no lie,
Is—save me notwithstanding! Life is all!
I was just stark mad,—let the madman live (2420)
Pressed by as many chains as you please pile!
Don’t open! Hold me from them! I am yours,
I am the Granduke’s—no, I am the Pope’s!
Abate,—Cardinal,—Christ,—Maria,—God, …
Pompilia, will you let them murder me?
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