And in goes the cold iron at my breast,
Out at my back, and end is made of me.
You stand confessed the adroiter swordsman,—ay,
But on your triumph you increase, it seems,
Want more of me than lying flat on face: (490)
I ought to raise my ruined head, allege
Not simply I pushed worse blade o’ the pair,
But my antagonist dispensed with steel!
There was no passage of arms, you looked me low,
With brow and eye abolished cut-and-thrust
Nor used the vulgar weapon! This chance scratch,
This incidental hurt, this sort of hole
I’ the heart of me? I stumbled, got it so!
Fell on my own sword as a bungler may!
Yourself proscribe such heathen tools, and trust (500)
To the naked virtue: it was virtue stood
Unarmed and awed me,—on my brow there burned
Crime out so plainly, intolerably, red,
That I was fain to cry—“Down to the dust
“With me, and bury there brow, brand and all!”
Law had essayed the adventure,—but what’s Law?
Morality exposed the Gorgon-shield!
Morality and Religion conquer me.
If Law sufficed would you come here, entreat
I supplement law, and confess forsooth? (510)
Did not the Trial show things plain enough?
“Ah, but a word of the man’s very self
“Would somehow put the keystone in its place
“And crown the arch!” Then take the word you want!
All the world made agreement, such and such
Were pleasure- giving profit-bearing acts,
But henceforth extra-legal, nor to be:
You must not kill the man whose death would please
And profit you, unless his life stop yours (520)
Plainly, and need so be put aside:
Get the thing by a public course, by law,
Only no private bloodshed as of old!
All of us, for the good of every one,
Renounced such licence and conformed to law:
Who breaks law, breaks pact, therefore, helps himself
To pleasure and profit over and above the due,
And must pay forfeit,—pain beyond his share:
For pleasure is the sole good in the world,
Any one’s pleasure turns to some one’s pain, (530)
So, let law watch for everyone,—say we,
Who call things wicked that give too much joy,
And nickname the reprisal, envy makes,
Punishment: quite right! thus the world goes round.
I, being well aware such pact there was,
Who in my time have found advantage too
In law’s observance and crime’s penalty,—
Who, but for wholesome fear law bred in friends,
Had doubtless given example long ago,
Furnished forth some friend’s pleasure with my pain, (540)
And, by my death, pieced out his scanty life,—
I could not, for that foolish life of me,
Help risking law’s infringement,—I broke bond,
And needs must pay price,—wherefore, here’s my head,
Flung with a flourish! But, repentance too?
But pure and simple sorrow for law’s breach
Rather than blunderer’s-ineptitude?
Cardinal, no! Abate, scarcely thus!
‘Tis the fault, not that I dared try a fall
With Law and straightway am found undermost, (550)
But that I fail to see, above man’s law,
God’s precept you, the Christians recognise?
Colly my cow! Don’t fidget, Cardinal!
Abate, cross your breast and count your beads
And exorcise the devil, for here he stands
And stiffens in the bristly nape of neck,
Daring you drive him hence! You, Christians both?
I say, if ever was such faith at all
Born in the world, by your community
Suffered to live its little tick of time, (560)
’Tis dead of age now, ludicrously dead;
Honour its ashes, if you be discreet,
In epitaph only! For, concede its death,
Allow extinction, you may boast unchecked
What feats the thing did in a crazy land
At a fabulous epoch,—treat your faith, that way,
Just as you treat your relics: “Here’s a shred
“Of saintly flesh, a scrap of blessed bone,
“Raised King Cophetua, who was dead, to life
“In Mesopotamy twelve centuries since, (570)
“Such was its virtue!”—twangs the Sacristan,
Holding the shrine-box up, with hands like feet
Because of gout in every finger-joint:
Does he bethink him to reduce one knob,
Allay one twinge by touching what he vaunts?
I think he half uncrooks fist to catch fee,
But, for the grace, the quality of cure,—
Cophetua was the man put that to proof!
Not otherwise, your faith is shrined and shown
And shamed at once: you banter while you bow! (580)
Do you dispute this? Come, a monster-laugh,
A madman’s laugh, allowed his Carnival
Later ten days than when all Rome, but he,
Laughed at the candle-contest: mine’s alight,
’Tis just it sputter till the puff o’ the Pope
End it to-morrow and the world turn Ash.
Come, thus I wave a wand and bring to pass
In a moment, in the twinkle of an eye,
What but that—feigning everywhere grows fact,
Professors turn possessors, realise (590)
The faith they play with as a fancy now,
And bid it operate, have full effect
On every circumstance of life, to-day,
In Rome,—faith’s flow set free at fountain- head!
Now, you’ll own, at this present when I speak,
Before I work the wonder, there’s no man
Woman or child in Rome, faith’s fountain-head,
But might, if each were minded, realise
Conversely unbelief, faith’s opposite—
Set it to work on life unflinchingly, (600)
Yet give no symptom of an outward change:
Why should things change because men disbelieve?
What’s incompatible, in the whited tomb,
With bones and rottenness one inch below?
What saintly act is done in Rome to-day
But might be prompted by the devil,—“is”
I say not,—“has been, and again may be,”—
I do say, full i’ the face o’ the crucifix
You try to stop my
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