University of Virginia Library

III Trieste

[Lying on a couch, mortally wounded.]
“Not broken on the wheel! For what? Why, then,
Where is the rack for me? He did no worse
Than I have done these twenty years, and I
Have had those years: he's empty-handed still.
Give him the gem: no, not the gem; that must
Go to Albani, but with strict command,
A dying man's, he do not part with it
To Countess Cheroffini. Not the gem.
Give him my gold, with Clement's head on it,
Mere modern dross, that yet will carry him
To Grecian shores, where there lies rusted gold
Richer than rubies. He hath an eye, 'tis sure,
For hand of Hellas, otherwise he ne'er
Had plunged his knife so deep into my breast
When I withheld the gem. I clung to it
As though salvation hung upon my grasp,
And so I die a martyr,—after all!
But to which Heaven? Olympus? Paradise?
That now seems not so clear as once it did.
In lengthening days of Lent, a hirsute monk,
Who fasted all the year, would come from out
His frozen cell on topmost Apennine,
To drag us Christian Sybarites along
The Stations of the Cross that sanctify
The Flavian Amphitheatre, and fright
Our sunny souls with talk of mists of Death.
There is no mist upon Death's mirror now,
Wherein I see my life reflected clear,
Blurred and refracted hitherto. By what?
By love of Beauty? That can hardly be;
For Beauty is the soul of all things good.
Which Beauty, though? Is there, then, more than one?
I know my father was an honest man.
He would not call me so; and honesty
Is Beauty after all. I grow confused.
But do not put Arcangeli on the wheel.
Had he for lucre roped me by the neck,
You should have broken him on a thousand racks.
But 'twas the carven wonder made him ply
The murderous noose. I almost think he might,
With study, wax to be a connoisseur
Expert as I; and few there are who could:
And there are herma, meta, puteal,
By hundreds, waiting their interpreter.
Whose deed was darker, think you, his or mine,
If dark be either? Instantaneous,—
The artist's native impulse, the strong hands,
Lured by the fascination of the gem,—
Was his quick act. Mine was deliberate,
Cold, calculated, the reward assured
And long enjoyed,—to be enjoyed no more!
It now had been all one had I remained
Still torpid in my drear integrity,
And never basked in the insidious South,
That undermines the conscience, where one learns
Art for Art's sake, and finds scant room for Virtue.
[A Capuchin Friar, with an Attendant, enters.
How well I know that habit! Am I, then,
In Rome once more? Could you not carry me
Under the colonnade that I may see
Alban and Sabine mountains yet again,
Fold after fold of smoothly sloping hill,
Dimpled with dingles flashing to the sea;
Bare-headed Monte Cavo's learnëd brow,
Rocca di Papa black above the woods
Where I have gathered snowdrops in the Spring,
And philosophic Tusculum? I think
That I should be more happy in my grave,
If Roman sunshine-shadow stretched athwart it.
What said you? He has come to shrive my sins.
Is then a Roman passport needed there,
Whither I travel? Oft have I confessed,
But never told the dark confessional
My sole transgression. Can you guess it, now?
What! Margherita Guazzi? Foolish Mengs,
And may-be foolish wife! But well I know,—
What I have never made men understand,—
To apprehend the glory and disdain
Of that Pure Form which dwells within the mind,
We should, like swallows, only skim the ground,
Then soar into the ether. I have loved
Chaste marble in cool corridors. If that
Be sin, it is my only one, and I
Can scarce repent of it. And now 'tis plain
I never shall commit that sin again.
If so there be another, even now
I cannot tell it you! You are very kind,
And so is the Madonna, and the Saints.
But if you'll read to me from out the book
My mother gave me when I was a boy
In the Old Mark, I think I should prefer it.
They are wrong, tell dear Albani, when they deem
'Tis Aegeus showing unto Aethra where
In Troizene are hid the shoes and sword
For Theseus to unearth, when his limp thews
Are strained to manhood. It is Theseus' self,
The huge rock rolled away; and thus he takes
Leave of his mother, bound for Attica.
When am I going thither? Ganymede!
Lift me aloft, that I may banquet where
They chant the music of Cecilia!
Beauty is everywhere!”
[He dies.
Attendant
How still he looks!

Capuchin
The homing soul goes quiet on the wing
Unto its nest in Heaven!