The Conversion of Winckelmann and Other Poems By Alfred Austin |
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| THE CONVERSION OF WINCKELMANN |
| I. |
| II. |
| III. |
 | The Conversion of Winckelmann and Other Poems |  |
THE CONVERSION OF WINCKELMANN
I
“Show me some other way, and I'll not do it!
“One sudden, solitary, sterile lie,
With no false brood to follow, haply born
Of feebleness, surprise, forbearing fear
Lest the hard fact should hurt, were base enough;—
Too base for me, who, ever since my tongue
Was fledged with language, straight unto the mark
Sent sharp words flying, careless whom they hit,
If friend or foe, and, least of all, myself.
And now!
“One sudden, solitary, sterile lie,
With no false brood to follow, haply born
Of feebleness, surprise, forbearing fear
Lest the hard fact should hurt, were base enough;—
Too base for me, who, ever since my tongue
Was fledged with language, straight unto the mark
Sent sharp words flying, careless whom they hit,
If friend or foe, and, least of all, myself.
And now!
2
“Nay, if it be the last time to be brave,
And slink a tortuous coward ever more,
Look this colossal lie full in the face!
It is not sudden, solitary, barren,
Feeble, surprised, a gift to tenderness,
But a deliberate, procreative lie,
Teeming with perjured progeny, swarm on swarm
Of profitable falsehood, each fresh fraud
Begetting a new litter: lie on lie,
With lies, and ever yet more lies to follow,
A labyrinth of lying! ... Winckelmann!
Stand you upon the solid earth, or float
Along some vague fantastic atmosphere,
Unbounded, unconditioned, where there rules
Nor truth, nor falsehood, only vaporous dreams
Submissive to the will and the desire?
No! Truth is truth, or here or otherwhere,
And at the Universe's furthest frontier
God still must post his sentinels to challenge
Apostasy of soul! Infinity
Hems in the conscience!
And slink a tortuous coward ever more,
Look this colossal lie full in the face!
It is not sudden, solitary, barren,
Feeble, surprised, a gift to tenderness,
But a deliberate, procreative lie,
Teeming with perjured progeny, swarm on swarm
Of profitable falsehood, each fresh fraud
Begetting a new litter: lie on lie,
With lies, and ever yet more lies to follow,
A labyrinth of lying! ... Winckelmann!
Stand you upon the solid earth, or float
Along some vague fantastic atmosphere,
Unbounded, unconditioned, where there rules
Nor truth, nor falsehood, only vaporous dreams
Submissive to the will and the desire?
No! Truth is truth, or here or otherwhere,
3
God still must post his sentinels to challenge
Apostasy of soul! Infinity
Hems in the conscience!
“Yet the alternative!
“Here to remain, and die! Day after day,
Week after week, year following upon year,
Hopeless of better or of worse, and doomed
With clowns and clods, triflers and dolts, to share
The same reiterated nothingness!
To live as dead, and manacled to the dead,
Who, since not coffined, deem themselves alive!
Oneself to be alive, and yet not live!
Be sensible of freedom, yet a slave!
When but one word, did I but utter it,
Would lift me from this darkness, and transport
To Italy and light!
Week after week, year following upon year,
Hopeless of better or of worse, and doomed
With clowns and clods, triflers and dolts, to share
The same reiterated nothingness!
To live as dead, and manacled to the dead,
Who, since not coffined, deem themselves alive!
Oneself to be alive, and yet not live!
Be sensible of freedom, yet a slave!
4
Would lift me from this darkness, and transport
To Italy and light!
“He waits within,
Ready to take profession of my Faith,
That I believe whatever Rome believes,
Say what Rome says, and do what Rome enjoins.
There's but that door 'twixt me and happiness.
Achinto, suave and smooth, with vowelled voice
Soft as his Southern tongue, all sì and smiles,
And stooping grace, befitting one whose height
Makes bending necessary, natural,
And condescension part of dignity;
From brow to buckle, just the Cardinal.
He waves aside one's scruples with a hand
As white as is a woman's, and a shrug
So definitely doubtful, one can scarce
Say if it pleads for faith or scepticism.
Haply for both, as though he fain would mean,
Without the hazard of the spoken word,
‘Why boggle at one mystery more or less?
Think long enough, and all is mystery,
Think longer still, and everything is doubt.
Why not the sage solution, “I believe,
Because it is impossible,” and thus
Profess your faith, and still retain your doubts?
Will disbelieving solve the mystery
More than believing, think you? Any way,
Believe, and here's your passport straight for Rome,
With ducats for the journey, and a home
In Passionei's Library, then all
The Gods of Greece and Art of Italy,
Your dream arrayed in daylight! Disbelieve,
And here you stagnate until life ebbs out,
The lettered lackey of unlettered lords,
Drudge for mere meat and drink. Rome holds the keys
Of both the Christian and the Pagan world.
Speak! She will open either.’
Ready to take profession of my Faith,
That I believe whatever Rome believes,
Say what Rome says, and do what Rome enjoins.
There's but that door 'twixt me and happiness.
Achinto, suave and smooth, with vowelled voice
Soft as his Southern tongue, all sì and smiles,
And stooping grace, befitting one whose height
Makes bending necessary, natural,
And condescension part of dignity;
From brow to buckle, just the Cardinal.
He waves aside one's scruples with a hand
As white as is a woman's, and a shrug
5
Say if it pleads for faith or scepticism.
Haply for both, as though he fain would mean,
Without the hazard of the spoken word,
‘Why boggle at one mystery more or less?
Think long enough, and all is mystery,
Think longer still, and everything is doubt.
Why not the sage solution, “I believe,
Because it is impossible,” and thus
Profess your faith, and still retain your doubts?
Will disbelieving solve the mystery
More than believing, think you? Any way,
Believe, and here's your passport straight for Rome,
With ducats for the journey, and a home
In Passionei's Library, then all
The Gods of Greece and Art of Italy,
6
And here you stagnate until life ebbs out,
The lettered lackey of unlettered lords,
Drudge for mere meat and drink. Rome holds the keys
Of both the Christian and the Pagan world.
Speak! She will open either.’
“League after league of undulating sand,
With nothing in its furrows, fallow still
Through season after season, save when brimmed
With the unsprouting snow, and in the mist
Some stunted growth huddling round brackish pools,
The landmarks of unloveliness that prop
A leaden sky, the sun's sarcophagus.
If but brute matter were thus blind and dumb!
But here men's souls are sterile as the soil,
Kindred to niggard Nature, stunted, starved,
Monotonous, forgotten of the Gods,
Disdained, and disinherited. And I,
Imprisoned in their narrowness, am paid
A scullion's wage for cataloguing books
Not worth the binding; fantasies of saints
Or genealogies of fools from fools,
A meaningless procession!
With nothing in its furrows, fallow still
Through season after season, save when brimmed
With the unsprouting snow, and in the mist
Some stunted growth huddling round brackish pools,
The landmarks of unloveliness that prop
A leaden sky, the sun's sarcophagus.
If but brute matter were thus blind and dumb!
7
Kindred to niggard Nature, stunted, starved,
Monotonous, forgotten of the Gods,
Disdained, and disinherited. And I,
Imprisoned in their narrowness, am paid
A scullion's wage for cataloguing books
Not worth the binding; fantasies of saints
Or genealogies of fools from fools,
A meaningless procession!
“And to think,
As I sit shivering here, body and soul,
And all around as dismal as my doubts,
Are silvery fountains flashing in the sun
Of Rome's blue spaciousness! tall crystal columns,
Self-buoyed and self-replenished, that upbear
Lightly a wind-webbed water-woven dome,
A fairy fretwork falling unimpaired
Into white marble basins, curved and cool
As the clear wave from chilly Samnite source
That brims and laves them! Thitherward there wend
Majestic matrons with columnar throats,
And brazen pitchers cushioned on the coils
Of ebon tresses; Caryatides
Throbbing and warm, Olympus in their gaze,
Born of the she-wolf and the Sabine rape,
With bosoms moulded by the mother milk,
Lips like the split pomegranate pulp, and teeth
White as the tusks of the Hernician boar
Snarling at huntsman's spear; round, sinewy limbs,
Supple as strong, and flexible alike
To love or hate, and passion-purpled blood
Quick to ferment, and then with thunderous brow
To flash the dagger from their hair and drive
Its point implacable into the heart
Of wayward lust! not like the haggard herds
I daily see around me, cringing, cowed,
With foolish flaxen hair and empty eyes,
Serfs suited to such masters!
As I sit shivering here, body and soul,
And all around as dismal as my doubts,
Are silvery fountains flashing in the sun
Of Rome's blue spaciousness! tall crystal columns,
Self-buoyed and self-replenished, that upbear
Lightly a wind-webbed water-woven dome,
8
Into white marble basins, curved and cool
As the clear wave from chilly Samnite source
That brims and laves them! Thitherward there wend
Majestic matrons with columnar throats,
And brazen pitchers cushioned on the coils
Of ebon tresses; Caryatides
Throbbing and warm, Olympus in their gaze,
Born of the she-wolf and the Sabine rape,
With bosoms moulded by the mother milk,
Lips like the split pomegranate pulp, and teeth
White as the tusks of the Hernician boar
Snarling at huntsman's spear; round, sinewy limbs,
Supple as strong, and flexible alike
To love or hate, and passion-purpled blood
Quick to ferment, and then with thunderous brow
9
Its point implacable into the heart
Of wayward lust! not like the haggard herds
I daily see around me, cringing, cowed,
With foolish flaxen hair and empty eyes,
Serfs suited to such masters!
“Thus, without
Within, in courtly corridors that lead
Onward to halls of pure white spaciousness,
On their pentelic pedestals the Gods,
Throned on imperishable marble, stand,
Abstract of power and passion purified
By dominance of beauty, their aloft
Unwrinkled foreheads rapt in starlike calm,
Rebuking man's perplexity! Pagan gods
Robed in majestic nakedness, adored
By Christian Pontiffs; 'mid remorseful Saints,
Radiant and unrepentant in their joy:
Gods, demigods, and heroes, pliant nymphs
In grasp of sinewy satyrs, goddesses,
Flowered from the brine, or fruited in the brain,
Winsome or wise, for pleasure or for power,
Teeming divinities! all there! there! there!
In universal Rome!
Within, in courtly corridors that lead
Onward to halls of pure white spaciousness,
On their pentelic pedestals the Gods,
Throned on imperishable marble, stand,
Abstract of power and passion purified
By dominance of beauty, their aloft
Unwrinkled foreheads rapt in starlike calm,
Rebuking man's perplexity! Pagan gods
Robed in majestic nakedness, adored
10
Radiant and unrepentant in their joy:
Gods, demigods, and heroes, pliant nymphs
In grasp of sinewy satyrs, goddesses,
Flowered from the brine, or fruited in the brain,
Winsome or wise, for pleasure or for power,
Teeming divinities! all there! there! there!
In universal Rome!
“There, yes! but reft
Of half their godhead by ungodlike man,
Careless, confusing, with disordered mind
Confounding Jove with Bacchus, Faun with Pan,
Antinoüs with Hermes, labelling
Sarcophagus a puteal, at loss,
From lack of proper study, to discern
A bust of days Republican from head
Done in the sunset of the Antonines,
Or Caryatid from Canephora.
Why, think but of that frieze they lately found
In musty wine-shop by the Latin Gate,
Discoloured by long drippings from the vat
It served for prop, and chipped by scullions' feet
Staggering about in search of withied flasks
Bellied with liquor to the very throat.
They say it is Capaneus scaling Thebes,
Full on the topmost ladder lightning-hit,
Shrivelling to fall. 'Tis Agamemnon, plain,
Adulterously murdered in his home,
War-lord in vain for an unworthy wife,
The wanton of Aegistheus. If it were
Capaneus, where the chlamys, helmet, spear,
And forward strain of battle on his face?
This man unarmed is that confiding thing,
A husband unaware. Were I but there,
I could convict them quick, would set aright
Their jumble of Olympus, single out
Original from copy, old from new,
Splendid from spurious,—I, and I alone!
Since, though from actual vision still shut out
Of those self-speaking images, I have
On text and indication bent and pored,
Until their inmost soul from outward garb
I know, as one a tree from bark or leaf,
And name them, never seen. Can one believe,
If I were by, that Cavaceppi should,
As now his wont is, chip a feature off,
Then clap it on again, to make-believe
The head's antique when but the body's so?
They're quick and subtle, these Italians,
But triflers somewhat.
Of half their godhead by ungodlike man,
Careless, confusing, with disordered mind
Confounding Jove with Bacchus, Faun with Pan,
Antinoüs with Hermes, labelling
Sarcophagus a puteal, at loss,
From lack of proper study, to discern
A bust of days Republican from head
11
Or Caryatid from Canephora.
Why, think but of that frieze they lately found
In musty wine-shop by the Latin Gate,
Discoloured by long drippings from the vat
It served for prop, and chipped by scullions' feet
Staggering about in search of withied flasks
Bellied with liquor to the very throat.
They say it is Capaneus scaling Thebes,
Full on the topmost ladder lightning-hit,
Shrivelling to fall. 'Tis Agamemnon, plain,
Adulterously murdered in his home,
War-lord in vain for an unworthy wife,
The wanton of Aegistheus. If it were
Capaneus, where the chlamys, helmet, spear,
And forward strain of battle on his face?
This man unarmed is that confiding thing,
12
I could convict them quick, would set aright
Their jumble of Olympus, single out
Original from copy, old from new,
Splendid from spurious,—I, and I alone!
Since, though from actual vision still shut out
Of those self-speaking images, I have
On text and indication bent and pored,
Until their inmost soul from outward garb
I know, as one a tree from bark or leaf,
And name them, never seen. Can one believe,
If I were by, that Cavaceppi should,
As now his wont is, chip a feature off,
Then clap it on again, to make-believe
The head's antique when but the body's so?
They're quick and subtle, these Italians,
But triflers somewhat.
13
“Yet, if that were all,
'Twere much, but little matched with more and worse:
Statues like Morning, slumbering undisturbed
In mud of Tiber, slime of centuries,
And offal of oblivion; toppled down
From Senate-house and Temple, from the seats
Of their serene supremacy dislodged;
Lowered from their dignity divine, since now
Saviours of Rome no more, and grossly hurled
On head of Vandal, Visigoth, and Hun,
A futile sacrilege! their deathless forms
Buried alive, with none to disinter,
In excrement of ages, breathing still
In subterranean refuges: Rapine, rage
Of multitudinous war, with wave on wave
Of tawny inundation, have entombed
Their monumental effigies, withal
Embalmed in still forgetfulness, and now
Quick to come forth, to slough their sleep, and dawn
Once more upon our sight! I know the spot,—
How often have I crept to it in my sleep!—
Midway the vineyard of the Convent propped
On southern shoulder of the Aventine,
Where, give me shovel and pick, and let me delve,
And I will such a Juno disenshroud,
As, seen, will straight repaganise mankind,
Bring the swoon premature of Pan to end,
Send Hamadryads wantoning through the wood,
And with the wand of her clear loveliness
Rejuvenate Olympus! Now She sleeps
In alabaster stillness, bedded deep
In loamy rubble, rambling olive roots
Knotted about the dimples of her knees.
The newly-feeling fibres of the vine
Fantastically filigree the curve
Of her creased neck, and, thence meandering down
Through the deep valley of her sloping breasts,
Veil the chaste portal of her matron womb.
The iron rust of many-wintered rain
And sodden soil hath brimmed with seeming gold
The fine-drawn furrows of her rippling hair,
And, mindful of her rights, with golden crown
Crested her brow.
'Twere much, but little matched with more and worse:
Statues like Morning, slumbering undisturbed
In mud of Tiber, slime of centuries,
And offal of oblivion; toppled down
From Senate-house and Temple, from the seats
Of their serene supremacy dislodged;
Lowered from their dignity divine, since now
Saviours of Rome no more, and grossly hurled
On head of Vandal, Visigoth, and Hun,
A futile sacrilege! their deathless forms
Buried alive, with none to disinter,
In excrement of ages, breathing still
In subterranean refuges: Rapine, rage
Of multitudinous war, with wave on wave
Of tawny inundation, have entombed
14
Embalmed in still forgetfulness, and now
Quick to come forth, to slough their sleep, and dawn
Once more upon our sight! I know the spot,—
How often have I crept to it in my sleep!—
Midway the vineyard of the Convent propped
On southern shoulder of the Aventine,
Where, give me shovel and pick, and let me delve,
And I will such a Juno disenshroud,
As, seen, will straight repaganise mankind,
Bring the swoon premature of Pan to end,
Send Hamadryads wantoning through the wood,
And with the wand of her clear loveliness
Rejuvenate Olympus! Now She sleeps
In alabaster stillness, bedded deep
In loamy rubble, rambling olive roots
Knotted about the dimples of her knees.
15
Fantastically filigree the curve
Of her creased neck, and, thence meandering down
Through the deep valley of her sloping breasts,
Veil the chaste portal of her matron womb.
The iron rust of many-wintered rain
And sodden soil hath brimmed with seeming gold
The fine-drawn furrows of her rippling hair,
And, mindful of her rights, with golden crown
Crested her brow.
Gods! let me go to her!
Achinto! I am coming!
Achinto! I am coming!
“If He knew,
My austere Sire! How plain I see him now!
His hand and eye intent upon his task,
His heart with God: but Luther's God, not Rome's!
Too straight and simple to do aught but deem
His humble handicraft the highest Art,
If finished faithfully. To cobble shoes,
And be an honest man, or lie, and live
A dainty dilettante, which is best,
Which noblest, worthiest? My dear Mother, too!
What would she say? my Mother with a gaze
Ever as though she just had come from prayer,
Though housewife never blither; and she deemed
That Rome is Antichrist. O, how they drudged,
Day in day out, and far into the night,
That I might be a scholar. Yes—but whose?
Not Jove's, but—‘Mother! anything but that!
I am not fit to preach the word of God.’
So they forbore, and I have laboured on,
Mellowing my mind, but still, still harvestless,
Till now, now, now! when Rome exclaims ‘'Tis ripe,’
And puts the fruitful sickle in my hand.
Both long are dead and resting in their graves,
In dreary Stendhal with its grass-grown ways,
Where everything's forgotten, and the wind
Wails over sand and unremembered bones.
They will not know.
My austere Sire! How plain I see him now!
His hand and eye intent upon his task,
His heart with God: but Luther's God, not Rome's!
16
His humble handicraft the highest Art,
If finished faithfully. To cobble shoes,
And be an honest man, or lie, and live
A dainty dilettante, which is best,
Which noblest, worthiest? My dear Mother, too!
What would she say? my Mother with a gaze
Ever as though she just had come from prayer,
Though housewife never blither; and she deemed
That Rome is Antichrist. O, how they drudged,
Day in day out, and far into the night,
That I might be a scholar. Yes—but whose?
Not Jove's, but—‘Mother! anything but that!
I am not fit to preach the word of God.’
So they forbore, and I have laboured on,
Mellowing my mind, but still, still harvestless,
Till now, now, now! when Rome exclaims ‘'Tis ripe,’
17
Both long are dead and resting in their graves,
In dreary Stendhal with its grass-grown ways,
Where everything's forgotten, and the wind
Wails over sand and unremembered bones.
They will not know.
“But if they should! and if
There be, as they believed, a second life,
A world where cobblers are as wise as kings,
And haply higher seated, whence they scan
Our nether doings with unclouded eyes:
A Heaven, as they conceived it, denizened
Not by lascivious Ganymedes, but thronged
With saints and martyrs? Martyrs!—that's the point.
I was not made for martyrdom; and yet,
I think that I could bear the tight stiff stake,
The sudden blaze, the suffocating smoke,
The fiendish fire, one's entrails all a hell,
And every nerve a demon, but at most
Just for one maddening minute, then no more,
Rather than palter with the truth; but not
This long, slow, sullen, endless martyrdom
Of a whole life, the martyrdom of mind,
Which with the torture grows more sensitive,
Nor perishes of the pain. I cannot bear it!
Meek souls, how should they know? 'Twas kind of Nature
With feignings of the Future thus to lull
The living ache, and cozen them till death
Reveals not the deception! But that I
Should of a doubtful promise be the dupe,
Bide in a prison with an open door!
Out on the thought! One life, if only one,
Thus willed, thus wasted, when no fabled Heaven,
But Rome,—Olympus, Paradise, in one,—
In this clear world awaits me!
There be, as they believed, a second life,
A world where cobblers are as wise as kings,
And haply higher seated, whence they scan
Our nether doings with unclouded eyes:
A Heaven, as they conceived it, denizened
Not by lascivious Ganymedes, but thronged
With saints and martyrs? Martyrs!—that's the point.
I was not made for martyrdom; and yet,
18
The sudden blaze, the suffocating smoke,
The fiendish fire, one's entrails all a hell,
And every nerve a demon, but at most
Just for one maddening minute, then no more,
Rather than palter with the truth; but not
This long, slow, sullen, endless martyrdom
Of a whole life, the martyrdom of mind,
Which with the torture grows more sensitive,
Nor perishes of the pain. I cannot bear it!
Meek souls, how should they know? 'Twas kind of Nature
With feignings of the Future thus to lull
The living ache, and cozen them till death
Reveals not the deception! But that I
Should of a doubtful promise be the dupe,
Bide in a prison with an open door!
19
Thus willed, thus wasted, when no fabled Heaven,
But Rome,—Olympus, Paradise, in one,—
In this clear world awaits me!
“But the price?
I had forgot the price. The Greek sage said,
‘The Gods to men sell all things at a price,’
And the divinities of Papal Rome
Drive a hard bargain. They demand my soul,
Or what they call such, better named my Self,
My conscience, honour, fealty to truth,
The very mark and manhood of my mind.
What an exchange! Will nothing less suffice them?
I must believe the unbelievable,
Or piously asseverate I do.
They, with dissimulation not content,
Claim simulation also.
I had forgot the price. The Greek sage said,
‘The Gods to men sell all things at a price,’
And the divinities of Papal Rome
Drive a hard bargain. They demand my soul,
Or what they call such, better named my Self,
My conscience, honour, fealty to truth,
The very mark and manhood of my mind.
What an exchange! Will nothing less suffice them?
I must believe the unbelievable,
Or piously asseverate I do.
20
Claim simulation also.
“Never to be an honest man again!
To creep to Lauds and Vespers at the heel
Of punctual Monsignori, portly, sleek,
Too princely to be sceptical, then kneel
And keep a sidelong glance lest any watch
To see one does one's praying properly;
To make pretence to pray, to patter psalms,
With face convinced; to swell my throat and join
In canticles by eunuch voices shrilled,
The unmanlier I! to clasp my breviary,
And wend with suitable and solemn gait
To Mass, ‘Impostor!’ hissing in my ears:
Dip finger in the holy-water stoup,
Then cross myself on forehead, breast, and lips,
To show I know the trick; to genuflect
Just at the proper moment, proper place,
And do it very noticeably lest
Any should guess I burn to stand erect;
Make daily mock of the Great Sacrifice,
And feign to deem it re-enacted there;
To bow my head to—nothing! when a bell
Tinkles, and, husht in incense, every sound
A moment is suspended!—Could I do it?
To sleep, wake, walk, sit, kneel, rise, live, a liar!
Kissing cold relics, mumbling litanies
With sacristans and shavelings,—honest, they,
A perjurer, I! Then, the Confessional!
With nothing to confess,—for truly I
Am not adulterer, murderer, backbiter,
And any day as lief eat fish as flesh,—
And so, 'tis plain, with nothing to confess
Save the one sin I never could confess,
The sin of sins that overtops the rest,
And dwarfs them into virtues! Comedy,
With still the mask on! Peter's self could not
Absolve for such transgression.
[An attendant enters, addresses Wincklemann, and retires.]To creep to Lauds and Vespers at the heel
Of punctual Monsignori, portly, sleek,
Too princely to be sceptical, then kneel
And keep a sidelong glance lest any watch
To see one does one's praying properly;
To make pretence to pray, to patter psalms,
With face convinced; to swell my throat and join
In canticles by eunuch voices shrilled,
The unmanlier I! to clasp my breviary,
And wend with suitable and solemn gait
To Mass, ‘Impostor!’ hissing in my ears:
Dip finger in the holy-water stoup,
Then cross myself on forehead, breast, and lips,
21
Just at the proper moment, proper place,
And do it very noticeably lest
Any should guess I burn to stand erect;
Make daily mock of the Great Sacrifice,
And feign to deem it re-enacted there;
To bow my head to—nothing! when a bell
Tinkles, and, husht in incense, every sound
A moment is suspended!—Could I do it?
To sleep, wake, walk, sit, kneel, rise, live, a liar!
Kissing cold relics, mumbling litanies
With sacristans and shavelings,—honest, they,
A perjurer, I! Then, the Confessional!
With nothing to confess,—for truly I
Am not adulterer, murderer, backbiter,
And any day as lief eat fish as flesh,—
And so, 'tis plain, with nothing to confess
22
The sin of sins that overtops the rest,
And dwarfs them into virtues! Comedy,
With still the mask on! Peter's self could not
Absolve for such transgression.
“What did he say?
‘His Eminence grows impatient.’ So do I.
Honour, dishonour, true, false, bitter, base,
Grow to a maddening medley in my brain.
Tell him I'm coming. Nuncio! Confessor!
And you, attendant troop of acolytes,
Now hear me make profession of my Faith!
There's nothing under Heaven I won't believe.
I'd sooner be a priest of Cybele,
Than bide imbruted here!
‘His Eminence grows impatient.’ So do I.
Honour, dishonour, true, false, bitter, base,
Grow to a maddening medley in my brain.
Tell him I'm coming. Nuncio! Confessor!
And you, attendant troop of acolytes,
Now hear me make profession of my Faith!
There's nothing under Heaven I won't believe.
I'd sooner be a priest of Cybele,
Than bide imbruted here!
23
II Rome
The Villa Albani
“Had I but known, I might have spared my scruples.The dreaming mind makes nightmares for itself
In broadest daylight, and mine well-nigh choked
Just before waking. What fantastic fears!
Jove on the Capitol is templed still,
Mars on his mount, and Venus everywhere.
Unabdicating Gods, they take their seats
Within the very shrines my fancy filled
With gaze of keen inquisitors to watch
24
This clear-eyed, big-brained, pagan Papacy
Is much too busy contemplating gems,
And turning blurred intaglios to the light,
To spare the time for canonising saints,
Or worrying sinners: just the Rome for me,
And I the very man for such a Rome.
This flowing mantle, this black velvet robe,
These snow-white bands, are pleasant to the limbs,
The eye, the touch, and do, I think, become me.
But if my kith in Stendhal were to deem
That I am an Abate, save my cloak,
They would but show their Northern simpleness.
“In what a goodly company I sit!
There, Jupiter, with Empire on his brow,
But calm in self-held counsel, undisturbed
25
The gusty misdirection of the crowd.
There, Hermes, not yet dwarfed to Mercury,
Winged at the head and sandalled at the heel,
Heaven's messenger alert, whose stolen strings,
Stretched deftly o'er the sluggish tortoise' shell,
Make instant music: Virgin Artemis,
Kept chaste by action and the brisk embrace
Of Morning, bright and chilly as her spear,
Her bare feet diamonded with meadow dew,
And twin-leashed boarhounds baying at her side,
Beating Arcadian covert: all the Gods
Radiant around me! No Madonnas here,
Contorted martyrs, scranny confessors,
To wean composure from the breast of joy.
And not alone the deathless denizens
Of Hades and Olympus drink the light
26
Almost as godlike as the gods themselves
By marble will and majesty of mind,—
The Macedonian with his manly tears
At frontier of ambition; Hannibal
Unvanquished by his victors, 'spite defeat
Foremost of those who tread the ways of war;
The Samian Sage, the vulgar travesty,
Who made himself a garden, and enjoined,
No carnal epicure, the goal of man
Is still felicity, but that the road
Lies along cleanly and imperial ways,
Not swinish by-paths; Homer, with his gaze
Surveying all, and therefore fixed on none,
The Poet outside all things, he alone,
The Reconciler, with his concords twain,
Song and ensuing Silence;—all are here,
27
Their servitor, if faithful then their friend,
Their equal, by their grace and courtesy.
Such will I strive to be, but not to-day,
When, look! upon the fountain's marble rim
Rounding the plashing music, April doves,
Just like to Pliny's in the Capitol,
Sip and glance sideways, flutter, perch again,
And preen their purple feathers in the sun,
Ausonian sun that fills the chalices
Of tulip and anemone with light
Mellower than Montefiascone's wine.
Along the coping of the stuccoed wall
See Juno's pompous sentinels parade
The jewels of their self-supporting train.
Stirred by the very faintest breath that scarce
Would rob the roundness of the thistledown,
28
Silvers the golden sunlight. At the tips
Of the pruned vine-stems glisten drops of dew,
The promise of their shortly dawning shoots.
Hark! 'twas the hoopoe! heralding the bird
Who talks to Spring of nothing but himself,
So likewise half an egoist, as is meet,
Apeing his betters, but imperfectly.
To fig-tree bole the green frog clings and croaks,
And the lithe lizard squats along the wall,
Fagged by its very restlessness, and takes
Siesta in the sunshine, not the shade.
Taught by the almond how to bloom, the peach
Hath bettered now the lesson, and the pear,
Forgoing useless rivalry, arrays
Itself in whiteness. Every ruined wall
Breaks into blossom, every shattered arch
29
To join the Saturnalia of the Spring.
I hear the cask-piled wine-carts creaking slow
O'er the Nomentan Way, hear them, but see not,
Save with the sight responsive to the sound,
In sweet confusion of the senses made
Kindred. There is no iris now in Heaven,
But, finding Earth yet heavenlier, it hath dropped
In coils and jewelled fragments to the ground,
And wavers over the Campagna wide.
Days are there, like to this one, when 'tis well
To lie supine in poppied vacancy,
And, passionlessly passive, to conceive
Those hovering intimations that alight
On the lulled sense, impregnating the brain
With embryonic fancies that mature
In season unto shapeliness and fruit.
30
And my loved Alessandro, a forenoon
Of brooding lethargy,—to bask and purr
Over my fixed felicity.
“All is nought,
All lived and loved elsewhere, when matched with Rome.
I deemed myself a student amply armed
With bookish preparation, and that here
I should but see the treasures I surmised.
The veriest catechumen, I have passed,
With Passionei, Giacomelli, Mengs,
Corsini, and Cantucci, most of all
With Cardinal Albani, step by step,
Into Art's inmost mysteries, and now,
I live their equal, I the cobbler's son,
31
Where all are clowns together. When I wake,
My princely Master—Master, but because
I love to call him so,—doth mount and sit
Familiar in my chamber, to discuss
The missing limbs of torso late unearthed
By some unlettered spade, and bids me choose
To-morrow's excavation, just as though
I were the Cardinal, and he the clerk
To register my wish. What men are these!
He but the first, the rest so like to him
In loveliness and largeness of their lives,
And speculations spacious as the dome
That copes the Roman ether, and as free
From matters' cloudy superfluities.
The titled boors of Brandenburg that scorned
My learning as my lineage, use their gold,
32
Their swine-troughs deeper, grossly surfeiting
Their nether nature. Prince and Cardinal,
Whose veins are channels for the far-off blood
Of Alba or Lanuvium, consume
Their substance, as themselves, in marble Heavens
For Gods to haunt, and all mankind to scan,
Diviner for the seeing. Never here
Is homage to the menial body paid.
The mind alone is guest. No cushioned comfort
Distracts from limbs of beauty, brows of thought,
Nor is the ostentatious banquet spread,
Circean. 'Tis the soul alone that feasts;
Unclouded by the cup.
“But let none think
The nimble spirit's sportiveness is numbed
33
Hither my splendid Cardinal convenes
All the renown and jewelled grace of Rome
To glisten through his Villa. Nymph and Faun,
Persistent types, in modern modes disguised,
Consort with their progenitors embalmed
In unvoluptuous marble cold and calm.
They dance before our gravity, and wit
Sparkles like alabaster. Clement's self
Hath with his presence sanctified the scene,
Retiring scandalised, or seeming so
To save his holiness, nor stayed to hear
Battoni's lovely daughters, voice with voice,
Like two waves wantoning to be one, awhile
Eluding each the other, near, apart,
Till merged at length in one smooth melody.
34
What, 'twixt the noon and evening Angelus,
We quarried in a vineyard near the Arch
Of Gallienus. No cold copy, that!
But so authentic from Hellenic hands,
That Phidias' self, or sure some touch like his,
Ere Attic genius strained beyond the point
Of absolute perfection, and so lost
Its even balance, might have chiselled it.
See! the young Knight this very moment hath
Sprung from his steed, that, lightened of the load,
And biassed by the bridle leftways clutched,
Rears foaming into air with incurved hoofs,
Nostrils dilated, terror-shaken mane,
Ruffling the marble. Gazing from the ground
35
Entangled in his chlamys, lifts his arm,
Shield insufficient 'gainst the upward blade,
Flashing to fall. And with what slight effects
The chisel tells its tale! The tightened lips
Bespeak the victor's purpose, and the mouth,
Half open with the coming cry of fear,
The victim's fate. How little! yet enough.
Bernini, Buonarroti's bastard son,
Might learn his trade, if copyists e'er could learn,
By gazing on its simpleness. Pure Greek,
No Roman replica. Behind the head
Of the astonished steed, the background, see,
Is deeply hollowed out, that we may feel
The fulness of its terror, yet no line
Project beyond the marble's proper plane.
Where shall we find it fitting company?
36
Antinoüs crested with the lotus-flower,
And the bronze statue by Praxiteles,
The lizard-slaying Musagete. No hand
Must maim its splendour, mending it. The mind,
And not manipulation, can supply
What Time hath taken. Let it keep its loss,
Like yon divine sarcophagus that weds
Peleus with Thetis, the fair Seasons four
Tricked in their emblematic imagery,
Hephaestus proffering the well-tempered sword,
Pallas her spear, and tender Hesperus
With sloping torch leading the way to love,
That falters on the threshold of its joy.
“O for one morning on the Acropolis!
With Salamis afront me, and, around,
The steeds of Hyperion, and the dark
Unplunging coursers of deliberate Night
Pacing the marble pediment unheard;
Recalcitrant Centaurs bridled by their manes
By Lapithae implacable, and Fate
With granite gaze watching the things foretold.
And then the long procession, gods and men,
Panathenaic, toward the Temple reared
By the imperishable race that chose
Wisdom for their Divinity, and, thus
Initiated, found in faultless form,
Or wrought or sung from mundane formlessness,
The secret of serenity. Virile Rome,
Intent on warfare till the world was won,
Gave ageing Hellas hospitality,
Guest not ungrateful. But the hasty hours
I spent at Paestum and Parthenope,
Have made me live so that I must not die
Till I have seen the violet sunset fade
Along the friezes of the Parthenon.
37
The steeds of Hyperion, and the dark
Unplunging coursers of deliberate Night
Pacing the marble pediment unheard;
Recalcitrant Centaurs bridled by their manes
By Lapithae implacable, and Fate
With granite gaze watching the things foretold.
And then the long procession, gods and men,
Panathenaic, toward the Temple reared
By the imperishable race that chose
Wisdom for their Divinity, and, thus
Initiated, found in faultless form,
Or wrought or sung from mundane formlessness,
The secret of serenity. Virile Rome,
Intent on warfare till the world was won,
Gave ageing Hellas hospitality,
Guest not ungrateful. But the hasty hours
38
Have made me live so that I must not die
Till I have seen the violet sunset fade
Along the friezes of the Parthenon.
“Let me be just to Rome, even the Rome
Of the Tiara and the Fisher's Ring,
Tonsured and surpliced. The Hellenic mind
Moulded to its conception matter and spirit,
Marble and even thought, discarding all
That clouds consummate harmony, aware
Art is rejection. Comprehensive Rome
Shaped concord from all discords, and, when worlds
Fell to its sword, made Roman citizens
Of their strange gods. And so it is to-day,
Here where imperial piety confounds
Venus with Virgin, Saturn with Saint John,
Persephone with Agnes, and adores
Jove in Jehovah! Though I can but kneel
To the unnamed Divinity that haunts
No human shrine, but hovers in the air
With wings unseen, a vision not a voice,
Rome hath rebuked my northern narrowness:
And now with sympathetic gaze I watch
The brown-skinned peasant fingering her beads
Before the oil-lit shrine; the hurrying nun
Deep-cloistered in her wimple; mobile maid,
Her face alight with undefined desire,
Of patron Saint enamoured till he send
An earthly lover; aye, and sandalled monks
Mumbling their Aves, so they do but love
What they recite; flowers, candles, incense, all
That brings to lowly and laborious hearts
Comfort and tenderness. Rome understands.
At Seehaus I in church one day was shamed,
A Homer being my Hymn-Book. Rightly read,
Rome's Ritual is a poem, so I need
No missal more humane; and hence it lasts.
Withal, at times, my fingers fondly turn
The pages of the Lutheran Book fo prayer
My mother gave me; for the parent Past,
Of all things the most potent, still enfolds
Its far-off children.
Of the Tiara and the Fisher's Ring,
Tonsured and surpliced. The Hellenic mind
Moulded to its conception matter and spirit,
Marble and even thought, discarding all
That clouds consummate harmony, aware
Art is rejection. Comprehensive Rome
Shaped concord from all discords, and, when worlds
Fell to its sword, made Roman citizens
Of their strange gods. And so it is to-day,
Here where imperial piety confounds
Venus with Virgin, Saturn with Saint John,
39
Jove in Jehovah! Though I can but kneel
To the unnamed Divinity that haunts
No human shrine, but hovers in the air
With wings unseen, a vision not a voice,
Rome hath rebuked my northern narrowness:
And now with sympathetic gaze I watch
The brown-skinned peasant fingering her beads
Before the oil-lit shrine; the hurrying nun
Deep-cloistered in her wimple; mobile maid,
Her face alight with undefined desire,
Of patron Saint enamoured till he send
An earthly lover; aye, and sandalled monks
Mumbling their Aves, so they do but love
What they recite; flowers, candles, incense, all
That brings to lowly and laborious hearts
Comfort and tenderness. Rome understands.
40
A Homer being my Hymn-Book. Rightly read,
Rome's Ritual is a poem, so I need
No missal more humane; and hence it lasts.
Withal, at times, my fingers fondly turn
The pages of the Lutheran Book fo prayer
My mother gave me; for the parent Past,
Of all things the most potent, still enfolds
Its far-off children.
“Sometimes I wonder if these Cardinals,
These Monsignori with minds full as free,
Heaven save the mark! as mine, are anchored fast
To their deep dogmas. Giacomelli spits
The Anti-Jansenists on pious pen,
And then unto his pagan library,—
No better Hellenist than he,—and shakes
His cassock, reading Aristophanes;
While Passionei with Voltaire corresponds,
And gives his poems to Pope Benedict.
His library he calls his wife, and laughs,
‘Behold no jealous husband! Take, enjoy,
And then return!’ Among the Alban hills,
Now in a flowery dressing-gown, and now
Booted and spurred, he stalks about his grounds,
All things discussing, and with strident voice
Outscreams the peacocks, with a hat more like
A contadino's than a Cardinal's.
From under dear Albani's purple peeps
The Colonel of Pontifical Dragoons;
A soldier yet at heart, real soldier once
Before his Uncle, Clement, grasped the keys,
And then, of course, his Eminence; but still
Prepared to die,—for what? For Art? Or, 'chance,
For Countess Cheroffini:—best of men,
Most loving and most lavish; yet at prayer,
Mass, Matins, Vespers, Lauds, punctilious
As mid-day cannon of Sant' Angelo;
And did you doubt the difference between
Contrition and Attrition, would be shocked
At such a lack of breeding.
These Monsignori with minds full as free,
Heaven save the mark! as mine, are anchored fast
To their deep dogmas. Giacomelli spits
The Anti-Jansenists on pious pen,
And then unto his pagan library,—
No better Hellenist than he,—and shakes
41
While Passionei with Voltaire corresponds,
And gives his poems to Pope Benedict.
His library he calls his wife, and laughs,
‘Behold no jealous husband! Take, enjoy,
And then return!’ Among the Alban hills,
Now in a flowery dressing-gown, and now
Booted and spurred, he stalks about his grounds,
All things discussing, and with strident voice
Outscreams the peacocks, with a hat more like
A contadino's than a Cardinal's.
From under dear Albani's purple peeps
The Colonel of Pontifical Dragoons;
A soldier yet at heart, real soldier once
Before his Uncle, Clement, grasped the keys,
And then, of course, his Eminence; but still
Prepared to die,—for what? For Art? Or, 'chance,
42
Most loving and most lavish; yet at prayer,
Mass, Matins, Vespers, Lauds, punctilious
As mid-day cannon of Sant' Angelo;
And did you doubt the difference between
Contrition and Attrition, would be shocked
At such a lack of breeding.
“Every day,
One hour before along the city sounds
Ave Maria from the Capitol,
I in his coach escort my Cardinal
To the fair Countess: fair by courtesy,
Since fair she was, uncertain years ago,
When Alessandro in his virile prime
Clanked sword and spur, and every breast in Rome
Heaved at his coming! Chuckling gossips add,
‘One daughter is his double.’ On that theme
The babbler, love, is as discreet as death,
The cradle reticent as is the grave;
So whether friend or lover, Chi lo sà?
Believe which way you will. Who is it, says,
‘Short-memoried lust and long-remembering love’?
And he remembers: honour him for that.
He never empty-handed climbs her stair,
But either gem, antique intaglio,
Etruscan lamp or tazza, to her feet—
Belike it minds him of the bygone years
When he was not sole giver, and consoles
For grizzled embers,—tenders gallantly,
And she rejects not; for the Countess hath
That foible of the facile, graceful greed,
And thus the villa slowly strips of much
My faithfulness begrudges. True, to give
Is proof of nobleness, and only churls
Feel richer by refusing. But he gives,
She grasps, too heedlessly; and so, when asked
How to repair his gaping treasury,
I answered laughingly, ‘Your Eminence,
But burn the Cheroffini Palace down
And all within it, or alive or dead,
You shall be rich as Sallust.’
One hour before along the city sounds
Ave Maria from the Capitol,
I in his coach escort my Cardinal
To the fair Countess: fair by courtesy,
Since fair she was, uncertain years ago,
When Alessandro in his virile prime
Clanked sword and spur, and every breast in Rome
Heaved at his coming! Chuckling gossips add,
43
The babbler, love, is as discreet as death,
The cradle reticent as is the grave;
So whether friend or lover, Chi lo sà?
Believe which way you will. Who is it, says,
‘Short-memoried lust and long-remembering love’?
And he remembers: honour him for that.
He never empty-handed climbs her stair,
But either gem, antique intaglio,
Etruscan lamp or tazza, to her feet—
Belike it minds him of the bygone years
When he was not sole giver, and consoles
For grizzled embers,—tenders gallantly,
And she rejects not; for the Countess hath
That foible of the facile, graceful greed,
And thus the villa slowly strips of much
My faithfulness begrudges. True, to give
44
Feel richer by refusing. But he gives,
She grasps, too heedlessly; and so, when asked
How to repair his gaping treasury,
I answered laughingly, ‘Your Eminence,
But burn the Cheroffini Palace down
And all within it, or alive or dead,
You shall be rich as Sallust.’
“Truly strange,
This fetter of the flesh, that maketh bond
Pontiff and bumpkin, clown and Emperor.
Love,—yes of father, mother, country, friend,
And most, of Art,—that I can understand.
But when they merrymake o'er Mengs's wife,—
He first descrying her, wise man, exclaimed,
‘Behold the very model that I want
For my Madonnas!’—and reproach me, ‘See!
How Margherita smiles upon you!’ Pheugh!
How little do they know me! Love, like Art,
Should live established in serenity;
A classic love, immortal because calm,
Not like the riotous imaginings
Of our Romantics, sprawling shapelessly
In perishable passion. Let me live
With fleshless forms voluptuously cold
In unexacting marble. But, to Greece!
Their sepulchres are there, and, at a stroke,
Ready to rend their cerements!
This fetter of the flesh, that maketh bond
Pontiff and bumpkin, clown and Emperor.
Love,—yes of father, mother, country, friend,
And most, of Art,—that I can understand.
But when they merrymake o'er Mengs's wife,—
He first descrying her, wise man, exclaimed,
‘Behold the very model that I want
45
How Margherita smiles upon you!’ Pheugh!
How little do they know me! Love, like Art,
Should live established in serenity;
A classic love, immortal because calm,
Not like the riotous imaginings
Of our Romantics, sprawling shapelessly
In perishable passion. Let me live
With fleshless forms voluptuously cold
In unexacting marble. But, to Greece!
Their sepulchres are there, and, at a stroke,
Ready to rend their cerements!
“At last! the Camerlengo doth accept
Visconti for my vicar while I sail
For Sunium, and along the unfathomed soil
Of Elis, Phocis, Attica, I sound
For submerged treasures. If not sooner, blame
The inconsiderate gods, who send us here
So ill-provided! First, to Brandenburg.
Homesickness drives me thither, for the heart
Is biassed in the womb, and yearneth back
Toward the mother-land, grown greater now
That Frederick steals what others stole before,
Tracing his kingdom's boundary with his sword,
And, not unmindful of that wider realm
All sceptres can annex, would have me share,
If scantily, his thalers, so I bide
A minion at his Court. Impossible.
But half the offer and all my liberty
Haply I shall secure. Vienna too,
Where the male Empress and Prince Kaunitz scan
A gem as shrewdly as a protocol,
Perchance will plump my purse:—Then, then, to Greece!
But Romeward still returning. After Rome,
Florence itself were exile!
Visconti for my vicar while I sail
For Sunium, and along the unfathomed soil
46
For submerged treasures. If not sooner, blame
The inconsiderate gods, who send us here
So ill-provided! First, to Brandenburg.
Homesickness drives me thither, for the heart
Is biassed in the womb, and yearneth back
Toward the mother-land, grown greater now
That Frederick steals what others stole before,
Tracing his kingdom's boundary with his sword,
And, not unmindful of that wider realm
All sceptres can annex, would have me share,
If scantily, his thalers, so I bide
A minion at his Court. Impossible.
But half the offer and all my liberty
Haply I shall secure. Vienna too,
Where the male Empress and Prince Kaunitz scan
47
Perchance will plump my purse:—Then, then, to Greece!
But Romeward still returning. After Rome,
Florence itself were exile!
“Ere I go,
Let me once more, untended, wander where
'Mid prostrate columns, splintered capitals,
The buffaloes in Sabine wine-carts crouch,
Dreamily blinking, while their shaggy guides
Drowse by the shafts, imperial pedestal
The mid-day pillow of their peasant sleep.
Where Caesar strode to triumph, bearded goats
Browse on the myrtle of the Palatine,
And all the sepulchred centuries lie around,
Tumbled in tombs, without an epitaph!
What was Evander's, Caesar's then, is now
Evander's yet once more; and if again
Aeneas left the Latian shore to search
For crib of future Rule, he still would find
The white sow's farrow nosing fallen mast,
The Tiber tawnily twisting past the sedge,
Straw-wattled walls and wolfish wilderness.
It is the Past that, from its crumbling tomb
Unswathing lethal bandages, hath stretched
Its shadowy sceptre o'er the vanished sway
Of Tribune and Triumvirate, and crowned
The seven-hilled desolation with the spell
Of its own quietude. The Past is peace.
Elsewhere let that confused amalgam, Man,
Battle and wrangle; here he broods and prays,
Ready to go where Rome hath gone before,
Down to the dust of ages.
Let me once more, untended, wander where
'Mid prostrate columns, splintered capitals,
The buffaloes in Sabine wine-carts crouch,
Dreamily blinking, while their shaggy guides
Drowse by the shafts, imperial pedestal
The mid-day pillow of their peasant sleep.
Where Caesar strode to triumph, bearded goats
Browse on the myrtle of the Palatine,
And all the sepulchred centuries lie around,
Tumbled in tombs, without an epitaph!
48
Evander's yet once more; and if again
Aeneas left the Latian shore to search
For crib of future Rule, he still would find
The white sow's farrow nosing fallen mast,
The Tiber tawnily twisting past the sedge,
Straw-wattled walls and wolfish wilderness.
It is the Past that, from its crumbling tomb
Unswathing lethal bandages, hath stretched
Its shadowy sceptre o'er the vanished sway
Of Tribune and Triumvirate, and crowned
The seven-hilled desolation with the spell
Of its own quietude. The Past is peace.
Elsewhere let that confused amalgam, Man,
Battle and wrangle; here he broods and prays,
Ready to go where Rome hath gone before,
Down to the dust of ages.
49
“It is well
I hence should go awhile. Achinto tripped
In hurrying up Saint Peter's stair, and passed
Was by Rezzonico, whereby I missed
A Pope for patron. Though Albani buys
As ardently as ever, buys and builds,
The brightest torch burns itself out at last,
And, if that light were once extinguishëd,
What darkness would be mine! How great he is
Who knows, till death shall focus him aright?
In life he is too near. But worst of all
Is Mengs's treachery. Yes, Art is well;
But how about the artist? There it stands,
Writ plainly in my History; and now,
The Ganymede embraced by Jupiter
I lauded as antique, is Mengs's own!
Out on these painted canvasses wherethrough
Deception filters! Marble doth not lie:
You cannot forge the Gods. Olympia!
Athens! and Delphi! In your fallen fanes,
They bide untravestied!
I hence should go awhile. Achinto tripped
In hurrying up Saint Peter's stair, and passed
Was by Rezzonico, whereby I missed
A Pope for patron. Though Albani buys
As ardently as ever, buys and builds,
The brightest torch burns itself out at last,
And, if that light were once extinguishëd,
What darkness would be mine! How great he is
Who knows, till death shall focus him aright?
In life he is too near. But worst of all
Is Mengs's treachery. Yes, Art is well;
But how about the artist? There it stands,
Writ plainly in my History; and now,
The Ganymede embraced by Jupiter
I lauded as antique, is Mengs's own!
Out on these painted canvasses wherethrough
50
You cannot forge the Gods. Olympia!
Athens! and Delphi! In your fallen fanes,
They bide untravestied!
51
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,
52
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.
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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:
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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
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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,—
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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
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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!
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