Chapter XIX: Introduction: New Year's Day at Asolo in the Trevisan (1)

_A large mean airy chamber. A girl_, PIPPA, _from the silk-mills, springing out of bed._

DAY!
Faster and more fast,
O'er night's brim, day boils at last:
Boils, pure gold, o'er the cloud-cup's brim
Where spurting and suppressed it lay,
For not a froth-flake touched the rim
Of yonder gap in the solid gray
Of the eastern cloud, an hour away;
But forth one wavelet, then another, curled,
Till the whole sunrise, not to be suppressed,
Rose, reddened, and its seething breast
Flickered in bounds, grew gold, then overflowed the world.

Oh Day, if I squander a wavelet of thee,
A mite of my twelve-hours' treasure,
The least of thy gazes or glances,
(Be they grants thou art bound to or gifts above measure)
One of thy choices or one of thy chances,
(Be they tasks God imposed thee or freaks at thy pleasure)
--My Day, if I squander such labor or leisure,
Then shame fall on Asolo, mischief on me!

Thy long blue solemn hours serenely flowing,
Whence earth, we feel, gets steady help and good--
Thy fitful sunshine-minutes, coming, going,
As if earth turned from work in gamesome mood--
All shall be mine! But thou must treat me not
As prosperous ones are treated, those who live
At hand here, and enjoy the higher lot,
In readiness to take what thou wilt give,
And free to let alone what thou refusest;
For, Day, my holiday, if thou ill-usest
Me, who am only Pippa,--old-year's sorrow,
Cast off last night, will come again to-morrow:
Whereas, if thou prove gentle, I shall borrow
Sufficient strength of thee for new-year's sorrow.
All other men and women that this earth
Belongs to, who all days alike possess,
Make general plenty cure particular dearth,
Get more joy one way, if another, less:
Thou art my single day, God lends to leaven
What were all earth else, with a feel of heaven,--
Sole light that helps me through the year, thy sun's!
Try now! Take Asolo's Four Happiest Ones--
And let thy morning rain on that superb
Great haughty Ottima; can rain disturb
Her Sebald's homage? All the while thy rain
Beats fiercest on her shrub-house window-pane
He will but press the closer, breathe more warm
Against her cheek; how should she mind the storm?
And, morning past, if mid-day shed a gloom
O'er Jules and Phene,--what care bride and groom
Save for their dear selves? 'T is their marriage-day;
And while they leave church and go home their way,
Hand clasping hand, within each breast would be
Sunbeams and pleasant weather spite of thee.
Then, for another trial, obscure thy eve
With mist,--will Luigi and his mother grieve--
The lady and her child, unmatched, forsooth,
She in her age, as Luigi in his youth,
For true content? The cheerful town, warm, close
And safe, the sooner that thou art morose,
Receives them. And yet once again, outbreak
In storm at night on Monsignor, they make
Such stir about,--whom they expect from Rome
To visit Asolo, his brothers' home,
And say here masses proper to release
A soul from pain,--what storm dares hurt his peace?
Calm would he pray, with his own thoughts to ward
Thy thunder off, nor want the angels' guard.
But Pippa--just one such mischance would spoil
Her day that lightens the next twelvemonth's toil
At wearisome silk-winding, coil on coil!
And here I let time slip for naught!
Aha, you foolhardy sunbeam, caught
With a single splash from my ewer!
You that would mock the best pursuer,
Was my basin over-deep?
One splash of water ruins you asleep,
And up, up, fleet your brilliant bits
Wheeling and counterwheeling,
Reeling, broken beyond healing:
Now grow together on the ceiling!
That will task your wits.
Whoever it was quenched fire first, hoped to see
Morsel after morsel flee
As merrily, as giddily ...
Meantime, what lights my sunbeam on,
Where settles by degrees the radiant cripple?
Oh, is it surely blown, my martagon?
New-blown and ruddy as St. Agnes' nipple,
Plump as the flesh-bunch on some Turk bird's poll!
Be sure if corals, branching 'neath the ripple
Of ocean, bud there,--fairies watch unroll
Such turban-flowers; I say, such lamps disperse
Thick red flame through that dusk green universe!
I am queen of thee, floweret!
And each fleshy blossom
Preserve I not--(safer
Than leaves that embower it,
Or shells that embosom)
--From weevil and chafer?
Laugh through my pane then; solicit the bee;
Gibe him, be sure; and, in midst of thy glee,
Love thy queen, worship me!

--Worship whom else? For am I not, this day,
Whate'er I please? What shall I please to-day?
My morn, noon, eve and night--how spend my day?
To-morrow I must be Pippa who winds silk,
The whole year round, to earn just bread and milk:
But, this one day, I have leave to go,
And play out my fancy's fullest games;
I may fancy all day--and it shall be so--
That I taste of the pleasures, am called by the names
Of the Happiest Four in our Asolo!

See! Up the hillside yonder, through the morning,
Some one shall love me, as the world calls love:
I am no less than Ottima, take warning!
The gardens, and the great stone house above,
And other house for shrubs, all glass in front,
Are mine; where Sebald steals, as he is wont,
To court me, while old Luca yet reposes:
And therefore, till the shrub-house door un-closes,
I ... what now?--give abundant cause for prate
About me--Ottima, I mean--of late,
Too bold, too confident she'll still face down
The spitefullest of talkers in our town.
How we talk in the little town below!
But love, love, love--there's better love, I know!
This foolish love was only day's first offer;
I choose my next love to defy the scoffer:
For do not our Bride and Bridegroom sally
Out of Possagno church at noon?
Their house looks over Orcana valley:
Why should not I be the bride as soon
As Ottima? For I saw, beside,
Arrive last night that little bride--
Saw, if you call it seeing her, one flash
Of the pale snow-pure cheek and black bright tresses,
Blacker than all except the black eyelash;
I wonder she contrives those lids no dresses!
--So strict was she, the veil
Should cover close her pale
Pure cheeks--a bride to look at and scarce touch,
Scarce touch, remember, Jules! For are not such
Used to be tended, flower-like, every feature,
As if one's breath would fray the lily of a creature?
A soft and easy life these ladies lead:
Whiteness in us were wonderful indeed.
Oh, save that brow its virgin dimness,
Keep that foot its lady primness,
Let those ankles never swerve
From their exquisite reserve,
Yet have to trip along the streets like me,
All but naked to the knee!
How will she ever grant her Jules a bliss
So startling as her real first infant kiss?
Oh, no--not envy, this!

--Not envy, sure!--for if you gave me
Leave to take or to refuse,
In earnest, do you think I 'd choose
That sort of new love to enslave me?
Mine should have lapped me round from the beginning;
As little fear of losing it as winning:
Lovers grow cold, men learn to hate their wives,
And only parents' love can last our lives.
At eve the Son and Mother, gentle pair,
Commune inside our turret: what prevents
My being Luigi? While that mossy lair
Of lizards through the winter-time is stirred
With each to each imparting sweet intents
For this new-year, as brooding bird to bird--
(For I observe of late, the evening walk
Of Luigi and his mother, always ends
Inside our ruined turret, where they talk,
Calmer than lovers, yet more kind than friends)
--Let me be cared about, kept out of harm,
And schemed for, safe in love as with a charm;
Let me be Luigi! If I only knew
What was my mother's face--my father, too!
Nay, if you come to that, best love of all
Is God's; then why not have God's love befall
Myself as, in the palace by the Dome,
Monsignor?--who to-night will bless the home
Of his dead brother; and God bless in turn
That heart which beats, those eyes which mildly burn
With love for all men! I, to-night at least,
Would be that holy and beloved priest.

Now wait!--even I already seem to share
In God's love: what does New-year's hymn declare?
What other meaning do these verses bear?

_All service ranks the same with God:
If now, as formerly he trod
Paradise, his presence fills
Our earth, each only as God wills
Can work--God's puppets, best and worst,
Are we; there is no last nor first._

_Say not "a small event!" Why "small"?
Costs it more pain that this, ye call
A "great event," should come to pass,
Than that? Untwine me from the mass
Of deeds which make up life, one deed
Power shall fall short in or exceed!_

And more of it, and more of it!--oh yes--
I will pass each, and see their happiness,
And envy none--being just as great, no doubt,
Useful to men, and dear to God, as they!
A pretty thing to care about
So mightily, this single holiday!
But let the sun shine! Wherefore repine?
--With thee to lead me, O Day of mine,
Down the grass path gray with dew,
Under the pine-wood, blind with boughs,
Where the swallow never flew
Nor yet cicala dared carouse--
No, dared carouse! [_She enters the street._

I. MORNING

_Up the Hillside, inside the Shrub-house._ LUCA'S _Wife_ OTTIMA, _and her Paramour, the German_ SEBALD.

_Sebald._ [_sings._] _Let the watching lids wink!_
_Day's ablaze with eyes, think!_
_Deep into the night, drink!_

_Ottima._ Night? Such may be your Rhine-land nights, perhaps;
But this blood-red beam through the shutter's chink
--We call such light, the morning: let us see!
Mind how you grope your way, though! How these tall
Naked geraniums straggle! Push the lattice
Behind that frame!--Nay, do I bid you?--Sebald,
It shakes the dust down on me! Why, of course
The slide-bolt catches. Well, are you content,
Or must I find you something else to spoil?
Kiss and be friends, my Sebald! Is 't full morning?
Oh, don't speak then!

_Seb._ Ay, thus it used to be!
Ever your house was, I remember, shut
Till mid-day; I observed that, as I strolled
On mornings through the vale here; country girls
Were noisy, washing garments in the brook,
Hinds drove the slow white oxen up the hills:
But no, your house was mute, would ope no eye!
And wisely: you were plotting one thing there,
Nature, another outside. I looked up--
Rough white wood shutters, rusty iron bars,
Silent as death, blind in a flood of light.
Oh, I remember!--and the peasants laughed
And said, "The old man sleeps with the young wife."
This house was his, this chair, this window--his.

_Otti,_ Ah, the clear morning! I can see Saint Mark's;
That black streak is the belfry. Stop: Vicenza
Should lie ... there's Padua, plain enough, that blue!
Look o'er my shoulder, follow my finger!

_Seb._ Morning?
It seems to me a night with a sun added.
Where 's dew, where 's freshness? That bruised plant, I bruised
In getting through the lattice yestereve,
Droops as it did. See, here 's my elbow's mark
I' the dust o' the sill.

_Otti._ Oh, shut the lattice, pray!

_Seb._ Let me lean out. I cannot scent blood here,
Foul as the morn may be.
There, shut the world out!
How do you feel now, Ottima? There, curse
The world and all outside! Let us throw off
This mask: how do you bear yourself? Let 's out
With all of it!

_Otti._ Best never speak of it.

_Seb._ Best speak again and yet again of it,
Till words cease to be more than words. "His blood,"
For instance--let those two words mean, "His blood"
And nothing more. Notice, I 'll say them now,
"His blood."

_Otti._ Assuredly if I repented
The deed--

_Seb._ Repent? Who should repent, or why?
What puts that in your head? Did I once say
That I repented?

_Otti._ No; I said the deed ...

_Seb._ "The deed" and "the event"--just now it was
"Our passion's fruit"--the devil take such cant!
Say, once and always, Luca was a wittol,
I am his cut-throat, you are ...

_Otti._ Here 's the wine;
I brought it when we left the house above,
And glasses too--wine of both sorts. Black? White then?

_Seb._ But am not I his cut-throat? What are you?

_Otti._ There trudges on his business from the Duomo
Benet the Capuchin, with his brown hood
And bare feet; always in one place at church,
Close under the stone wall by the south entry.
I used to take him for a brown cold piece
Of the wall's self, as out of it he rose
To let me pass--at first, I say, I used:
Now, so has that dumb figure fastened on me,
I rather should account the plastered wall
A piece of him, so chilly does it strike.
This, Sebald?

_Seb._ No, the white wine--the white wine!
Well, Ottima, I promised no new year
Should rise on us the ancient shameful way;
Nor does it rise. Pour on! To your black eyes!
Do you remember last damned New Year's day?

_Otti._ You brought those foreign prints. We looked at them
Over the wine and fruit. I had to scheme
To get him from the fire. Nothing but saying
His own set wants the proof-mark, roused him up
To hunt them out.

_Seb._ 'Faith, he is not alive
To fondle you before my face.

_Otti._ Do you
Fondle me then! Who means to take your life
For that, my Sebald?

_Seb._ Hark you, Ottima!
One thing to guard against. We 'll not make much
One of the other--that is, not make more
Parade of warmth, childish officious coil,
Than yesterday: as if, sweet, I supposed
Proof upon proof were needed now, now first,
To show I love you--yes, still love you--love you
In spite of Luca and what 's come to him
--Sure sign we had him ever in our thoughts,
White sneering old reproachful face and all!
We 'll even quarrel, love, at times, as if
We still could lose each other, were not tied
By this: conceive you?

_Otti._ Love!

_Seb._ Not tied so sure!
Because though I was wrought upon, have struck
His insolence back into him--am I
So surely yours?--therefore forever yours?

_Otti._ Love, to be wise, (one counsel pays another,)
Should we have--months ago, when first we loved,
For instance that May morning we two stole
Under the green ascent of sycamores--
If we had come upon a thing like that
Suddenly ...

_Seb._ "A thing"--there again--"a thing!"

_Otti._ Then, Venus' body, had we come upon
My husband Luca Gaddi's murdered corpse
Within there, at his couch-foot, covered close--
Would you have pored upon it? Why persist
In poring now upon it? For 't is here
As much as there in the deserted house:
You cannot rid your eyes of it. For me,
Now he is dead I hate him worse: I hate ...
Dare you stay here? I would go back and hold
His two dead hands, and say, "I hate you worse,
Luca, than" ...

_Seb._ Off, off--take your hands off mine,
'T is the hot evening--off! oh, morning is it?

_Otti._ There 's one thing must be done; you know what thing.
Come in and help to carry. We may sleep
Anywhere in the whole wide house to-night.

_Seb._ What would come, think you, if we let him lie
Just as he is? Let him lie there until
The angels take him! He is turned by this
Off from his face beside, as you will see.

_Otti._ This dusty pane might serve for looking-glass.
Three, four--four gray hairs! Is it so you said
A plait of hair should wave across my neck?
No--this way.

_Seb._ Ottima, I would give your neck,
Each splendid shoulder, both those breasts of yours,
That this were undone! Killing! Kill the world,
So Luca lives again!--ay, lives to sputter
His fulsome dotage on you--yes, and feign
Surprise that I return at eve to sup,
When all the morning I was loitering here--
Bid me dispatch my business and begone.
I would ...

_Otti._ See!

_Seb._ No, I 'll finish. Do you think
I fear to speak the bare truth once for all?
All we have talked of, is, at bottom, fine
To suffer; there 's a recompense in guilt;
One must be venturous and fortunate:
What is one young for, else? In age we 'll sigh
O'er the wild reckless wicked days flown over;
Still, we have lived: the vice was in its place.
But to have eaten Luca's bread, have worn
His clothes, have felt his money swell my purse--
Do lovers in romances sin that way?
Why, I was starving when I used to call
And teach you music, starving while you plucked me
These flowers to smell!

_Otti._ My poor lost friend!

_Seb._ He gave me
Life, nothing less: what if he did reproach
My perfidy, and threaten, and do more--
Had he no right? What was to wonder at?
He sat by us at table quietly:
Why must you lean across till our cheeks touched?
Could he do less than make pretence to strike?
'T is not the crime's sake--I 'd commit ten crimes
Greater, to have this crime wiped out, undone!
And you--O how feel you? Feel you for me?

_Otti._ Well then, I love you better now than ever,
And best (look at me while I speak to you)--
Best for the crime; nor do I grieve, in truth,
This mask, this simulated ignorance,
This affectation of simplicity,
Falls off our crime; this naked crime of ours
May not now be looked over: look it down!
Great? let it be great; but the joys it brought,
Pay they or no its price? Come: they or it!
Speak not! The past, would you give up the past
Such as it is, pleasure and crime together?
Give up that noon I owned my love for you?
The garden's silence: even the single bee
Persisting in his toil, suddenly stopped,
And where he hid you only could surmise
By some campanula chalice set a-swing.
Who stammered--"Yes, I love you?"

_Seb._ And I drew
Back; put far back your face with both my hands
Lest you should grow too full of me--your face
So seemed athirst for my whole soul and body!

_Otti._ And when I ventured to receive you here,
Made you steal hither in the mornings--

_Seb._ When
I used to look up 'neath the shrub-house here,
Till the red fire on its glazed windows spread
To a yellow haze?

_Otti._ Ah--my sign was, the sun
Inflamed the sere side of yon chestnut-tree
Nipped by the first frost.

_Seb._ You would always laugh
At my wet boots: I had to stride through grass
Over my ankles.

_Otti._ Then our crowning night!

_Seb._ The July night?

_Otti._ The day of it too, Sebald!
When heaven's pillars seemed o'erbowed with heat,
Its black-blue canopy suffered descend
Close on us both, to weigh down each to each,
And smother up all life except our life.
So lay we till the storm came.

_Seb._ How it came!

_Otti._ Buried in woods we lay, you recollect;
Swift ran the searching tempest overhead;
And ever and anon some bright white shaft
Burned through the pine-tree roof, here burned and there,
As if God's messenger through the close wood screen
Plunged and replunged his weapon at a venture,
Feeling for guilty thee and me: then broke
The thunder like a whole sea overhead--

_Seb._ Yes!

_Otti._--While I stretched myself upon you, hands
To hands, my mouth to your hot mouth, and shook
All my locks loose, and covered you with them--
You, Sebald, the same you!

_Seb._ Slower, Ottima!

_Otti._ And as we lay--

_Seb._ Less vehemently! Love me!
Forgive me! Take not words, mere words, to heart!
Your breath is worse than wine. Breathe slow, speak slow!
Do not lean on me!

_Otti._ Sebald, as we lay,
Rising and falling only with our pants,
Who said, "Let death come now! 'Tis right to die!
Right to be punished! Naught completes such bliss
But woe!" Who said that?

_Seb._ How did we ever rise?
Was 't that we slept? Why did it end?

_Otti._ I felt you
Taper into a point the ruffled ends
Of my loose locks 'twixt both your humid lips.
My hair is fallen now: knot it again!

_Seb._ I kiss you now, dear Ottima, now and now!
This way? Will you forgive me--be once more
My great queen?

_Otti._ Bind it thrice about my brow;
Crown me your queen, your spirit's arbitress,
Magnificent in sin. Say that!

_Seb._ I crown you
My great white queen, my spirit's arbitress,
Magnificent ...

[_From without is heard the voice of_ PIPPA _singing_--

_The year's at the spring
And day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;
The hillside's dew-pearled;
The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn:
God's in his heaven--
All's right with the world!_ [PIPPA _passes._

_Seb._ God's in his heaven! Do you hear that? Who spoke?
You, you spoke!

_Otti._ Oh--that little ragged girl!
She must have rested on the step: we give them
But this one holiday the whole year round.
Did you ever see our silk-mills--their inside?
There are ten silk-mills now belong to you.
She stoops to pick my double heartsease ... Sh!
She does not hear: call you out louder!

_Seb._ Leave me!
Go, get your clothes on--dress those shoulders!

_Otti._ Sebald?

_Seb._ Wipe off that paint! I hate you.

_Otti._ Miserable!

_Seb._ My God, and she is emptied of it now!
Outright now!--how miraculously gone
All of the grace--had she not strange grace once?
Why, the blank cheek hangs listless as it likes,
No purpose holds the features up together,
Only the cloven brow and puckered chin
Stay in their places: and the very hair,
That seemed to have a sort of life in it,
Drops, a dead web!

_Otti._ Speak to me--not of me!

_Seb._--That round great full-orbed face, where not an angle
Broke the delicious indolence--all broken!

_Otti._ To me--not of me! Ungrateful, perjured cheat!
A coward too: but ingrate's worse than all!
Beggar--my slave--a fawning, cringing lie!
Leave me! Betray me! I can see your drift!
A lie that walks and eats and drinks!

_Seb._ My God!
Those morbid olive faultless shoulder-blades--
I should have known there was no blood beneath!

_Otti._ You hate me then? You hate me then?

_Seb._ To think
She would succeed in her absurd attempt,
And fascinate by sinning, show herself
Superior--guilt from its excess superior
To innocence! That little peasant's voice
Has righted all again. Though I be lost,
I know which is the better, never fear,
Of vice or virtue, purity or lust,
Nature or trick! I see what I have done,
Entirely now! Oh I am proud to feel
Such torments--let the world take credit thence--
I, having done my deed, pay too its price!
I hate, hate--curse you! God's in his heaven!

_Otti._ --Me!
Me! no, no, Sebald, not yourself--kill me!
Mine is the whole crime. Do but kill me--then
Yourself--then--presently--first hear me speak!
I always meant to kill myself--wait, you!
Lean on my breast--not as a breast; don't love me
The more because you lean on me, my own
Heart's Sebald! There, there, both deaths presently!

_Seb._ My brain is drowned now--quite drowned: all I feel
Is ... is, at swift-recurring intervals,
A hurry-down within me, as of waters
Loosened to smother up some ghastly pit:
There they go--whirls from a black fiery sea!

_Otti._ Not me--to him, O God, be merciful!

_Talk by the way, while_ PIPPA _is passing from the hillside to Oreana. Foreign Students of painting and sculpture, from Venice, assembled opposite the house of_ JULES, _a young French statuary, at Passagno._

_1st Student._ Attention! My own post is beneath this window, but the pomegranate clump yonder will hide three or four of you with a little squeezing, and Schramm and his pipe must lie flat in the balcony. Four, five--who's a defaulter? We want everybody, for Jules must not be suffered to hurt his bride when the jest's found out.

_2d Stud._ All here! Only our poet's away--never having much meant to be present, moonstrike him! The airs of that fellow, that Giovacchino! He was in violent love with himself, and had a fair prospect of thriving in his suit, so unmolested was it,--when suddenly a woman falls in love with him, too; and out of pure jealousy he takes himself off to Trieste, immortal poem and all: whereto is this prophetical epitaph appended already, as Bluphocks assures me,--"_Here a mammoth-poem lies, Fouled to death by butterflies._" His own fault, the simpleton! Instead of cramp couplets, each like a knife in your entrails, he should write, says Bluphocks, both classically and intelligibly.--_Æsculapius, an Epic. Catalogue of the drugs: Hebe's plaister--One strip Cools your lip. Phœbus' emulsion--One bottle Clears your throttle. Mercury's bolus--One box Cures ..._

_3d Stud._ Subside, my fine fellow! If the marriage was over by ten o'clock, Jules will certainly be here in a minute with his bride.

_2d Stud._ Good!--only, so should the poet's muse have been universally acceptable, says Bluphocks, _et canibus nostris_ ... and Delia not better known to our literary dogs than the boy Giovacchino!

_1st Stud._ To the point, now. Where's Gottlieb, the new-comer? Oh,--listen, Gottlieb, to what has called down this piece of friendly vengeance on Jules, of which we now assemble to witness the winding-up. We are all agreed, all in a tale, observe, when Jules shall burst out on us in a fury by and by: I am spokesman--the verses that are to undeceive Jules bear my name of Lutwyche--but each professes himself alike insulted by this strutting stone-squarer, who came along from Paris to Munich, and thence with a crowd of us to Venice and Possagno here, but proceeds in a day or two alone again--oh, alone indubitably!--to Rome and Florence. He, forsooth, take up his portion with these dissolute, brutalized, heartless bunglers!--so he was heard to call us all. Now, is Schramm brutalized, I should like to know? Am I heartless?

_Gottlieb._ Why, somewhat heartless; for, suppose Jules a coxcomb as much as you choose, still, for this mere coxcombry, you will have brushed off--what do folks style it?--the bloom of his life. Is it too late to alter? These love-letters now, you call his--I can't laugh at them.

_4th Stud._ Because you never read the sham letters of our inditing which drew forth these.

_Gott._ His discovery of the truth will be frightful.

_4th Stud._ That's the joke. But you should have joined us at the beginning: there's no doubt he loves the girl--loves a model he might hire by the hour!

_Gott._ See here! "He has been accustomed," he writes, "to have Canova's women about him, in stone, and the world's women beside him, in flesh; these being as much below, as those above, his soul's aspiration: but now he is to have the reality." There you laugh again! I say, you wipe off the very dew of his youth.

_1st Stud._ Schramm! (Take the pipe out of his mouth, somebody!) Will Jules lose the bloom of his youth?

_Schramm._ Nothing worth keeping is ever lost in this world: look at a blossom--it drops presently, having done its service and lasted its time; but fruits succeed, and where would be the blossom's place could it continue? As well affirm that your eye is no longer in your body, because its earliest favorite, whatever it may have first loved to look on, is dead and done with--as that any affection is lost to the soul when its first object, whatever happened first to satisfy it, is superseded in due course. Keep but ever looking, whether with the body's eye or the mind's, and you will soon find something to look on! Has a man done wondering at women?--there follow men, dead and alive, to wonder at. Has he done wondering at men?--there's God to wonder at: and the faculty of wonder may be, at the same time, old and tired enough with respect to its first object, and yet young and fresh sufficiently, so far as concerns its novel one. Thus ...

_1st Stud._ Put Schramm's pipe into his mouth again! There, you see! Well, this Jules ... a wretched fribble--oh, I watched his disportings at Possagno, the other day! Canova's gallery--you know: there he marches first resolvedly past great works by the dozen without vouchsafing an eye: all at once he stops full at the _Psiche-fanciulla_--cannot pass that old acquaintance without a nod of encouragement--"In your new place, beauty? Then behave yourself as well here as at Munich--I see you!" Next he posts himself deliberately before the unfinished _Pietà_ for half an hour without moving, till up he starts of a sudden, and thrusts his very nose into--I say, into--the group; by which gesture you are informed that precisely the sole point he had not fully mastered in Canova's practice was a certain method of using the drill in the articulation of the knee-joint--and that, likewise, has he mastered at length! Good-by, therefore, to poor Canova--whose gallery no longer needs detain his successor Jules, the predestinated novel thinker in marble!

_5th Stud._ Tell him about the women: go on to the women!

_1st Stud._ Why, on that matter he could never be supercilious enough. How should we be other (he said) than the poor devils you see, with those debasing habits we cherish? He was not to wallow in that mire, at least: he would wait, and love only at the proper time, and meanwhile put up with the _Psiche-fanciulla_. Now, I happened to hear of a young Greek--real Greek girl at Malamocco; a true Islander, do you see, with Alciphron's "hair like sea-moss"--Schramm knows!--white and quiet as an apparition, and fourteen years old at farthest,--a daughter of Natalia, so she swears--that hag Natalia, who helps us to models at three _lire_ an hour. We selected this girl for the heroine of our jest. So first, Jules received a scented letter--somebody had seen his Tydeus at the Academy, and my picture was nothing to it: a profound admirer bade him persevere--would make herself known to him ere long. (Paolina, my little friend of the _Fenice_, transcribes divinely.) And in due time, the mysterious correspondent gave certain hints of her peculiar charms--the pale cheeks, the black hair--whatever, in short, had struck us in our Malamocco model: we retained her name, too--Phene, which is, by interpretation, sea-eagle. Now, think of Jules finding himself distinguished from the herd of us by such a creature! In his very first answer he proposed marrying his monitress: and fancy us over these letters, two, three times a day, to receive and dispatch! I concocted the main of it: relations were in the way--secrecy must be observed--in fine, would he wed her on trust, and only speak to her when they were indissolubly united? St--st--Here they come!

_6th Stud._ Both of them! Heaven's love, speak softly, speak within yourselves!

_5th Stud._ Look at the bridegroom! Half his hair in storm and half in calm,--patted down over the left temple,--like a frothy cup one blows on to cool it: and the same old blouse that he murders the marble in.

_2d Stud._ Not a rich vest like yours, Hannibal Scratchy!--rich, that your face may the better set it off.

_6th Stud._ And the bride! Yes, sure enough, our Phene! Should you have known her in her clothes? How magnificently pale!

_Gott._ She does not also take it for earnest, I hope?

_1st Stud._ Oh, Natalia's concern, that is! We settle with Natalia.

_6th Stud._ She does not speak--has evidently let out no word. The only thing is, will she equally remember the rest of her lesson, and repeat correctly all those verses which are to break the secret to Jules?

_Gott._ How he gazes on her! Pity--pity!

_1st Stud._ They go in: now, silence! You three,--not nearer the window, mind, than that pomegranate: just where the little girl, who a few minutes ago passed us singing, is seated!

II. NOON

_Over Orcana. The house of_ JULES, _who crosses its threshold with_ PHENE: _she is silent, on which_ JULES _begins_--

Do not die, Phene! I am yours now, you
Are mine now; let fate reach me how she likes,
If you 'll not die: so, never die! Sit here--
My work-room's single seat. I over-lean
This length of hair and lustrous front; they turn
Like an entire flower upward: eyes, lips, last
Your chin--no, last your throat turns: 't is their scent
Pulls down my face upon you. Nay, look ever
This one way till I change, grow you--I could
Change into you, beloved!

You by me,
And I by you; this is your hand in mine,
And side by side we sit: all 's true. Thank God!
I have spoken: speak you!
O my life to come!
My Tydeus must be carved that 's there in clay;
Yet how be carved, with you about the room?
Where must I place you? When I think that once
This room-full of rough block-work seemed my heaven
Without you! Shall I ever work again,
Get fairly into my old ways again,
Bid each conception stand while, trait by trait,
My hand transfers its lineaments to stone?
Will my mere fancies live near you, their truth--
The live truth, passing and repassing me,
Sitting beside me?
Now speak!
Only first,
See, all your letters! Was 't not well contrived?
Their hiding-place is Psyche's robe; she keeps
Your letters next her skin: which drops out foremost?
Ah,--this that swam down like a first moonbeam
Into my world!
Again those eyes complete
Their melancholy survey, sweet and slow,
Of all my room holds; to return and rest
On me, with pity, yet some wonder too:
As if God bade some spirit plague a world,
And this were the one moment of surprise
And sorrow while she took her station, pausing
O'er what she sees, finds good, and must destroy!
What gaze you at? Those? Books, I told you of;
Let your first word to me rejoice them, too:
This minion, a Coluthus, writ in red,
Bistre and azure by Bessarion's scribe--
Read this line ... no, shame--Homer's be the Greek
First breathed me from the lips of my Greek girl!
This Odyssey in coarse black vivid type
With faded yellow blossoms 'twixt page and page,
To mark great places with due gratitude;
"_He said, and on Antinous directed
A bitter shaft_" ... a flower blots out the rest!
Again upon your search? My statues, then!
--Ah, do not mind that--better that will look
When cast in bronze--an Almaign Kaiser, that,
Swart-green and gold, with truncheon based on hip.
This, rather, turn to! What, unrecognized?
I thought you would have seen that here you sit
As I imagined you,--Hippolyta,
Naked upon her bright Numidian horse.
Recall you this then? "Carve in bold relief"--
So you commanded--"carve, against I come,
A Greek, in Athens, as our fashion was,
Feasting, bay-filleted and thunder-free,
Who rises 'neath the lifted myrtle-branch.
'Praise those who slew Hipparchus!' cry the guests,
'While o'er thy head the singer's myrtle waves
As erst above our champion: stand up, all!'"
See, I have labored to express your thought.
Quite round, a cluster of mere hands and arms
(Thrust in all senses, all ways, from all sides,
Only consenting at the branch's end
They strain toward) serves for frame to a sole face,
The Praiser's, in the centre: who with eyes
Sightless, so bend they back to light inside
His brain where visionary forms throng up,
Sings, minding not that palpitating arch
Of hands and arms, nor the quick drip of wine
From the drenched leaves o'erhead, nor crowns cast off,
Violet and parsley crowns to trample on--
Sings, pausing as the patron-ghosts approve,
Devoutly their unconquerable hymn.
But you must say a "well" to that--say "well!"
Because you gaze--am I fantastic, sweet?
Gaze like my very life's-stuff, marble--marbly
Even to the silence! Why, before I found
The real flesh Phene, I inured myself
To see, throughout all nature, varied stuff
For better nature's birth by means of art:
With me, each substance tended to one form
Of beauty--to the human archetype.
On every side occurred suggestive germs
Of that--the tree, the flower--or take the fruit,--
Some rosy shape, continuing the peach,
Curved beewise o'er its bough; as rosy limbs,
Depending, nestled in the leaves; and just
From a cleft rose-peach the whole Dryad sprang.
But of the stuffs one can be master of,
How I divined their capabilities!
From the soft-rinded smoothening facile chalk
That yields your outline to the air's embrace,
Half-softened by a halo's pearly gloom;
Down to the crisp imperious steel, so sure
To cut its one confided thought clean out
Of all the world. But marble!--'neath my tools
More pliable than jelly--as it were
Some clear primordial creature dug from depths
In the earth's heart, where itself breeds itself,
And whence all baser substance may be worked;
Refine it off to air, you may,--condense it
Down to the diamond;--is not metal there,
When o'er the sudden speck my chisel trips?
--Not flesh, as flake off flake I scale, approach,
Lay bare those bluish veins of blood asleep?
Lurks flame in no strange windings where, surprised
By the swift implement sent home at once,
Flushes and glowings radiate and hover
About its track?
Phene? what--why is this?
That whitening cheek, those still dilating eyes!
Ah, you will die--I knew that you would die!

PHENE _begins, on his having long remained silent._

Now the end's coming; to be sure, it must
Have ended sometime! Tush, why need I speak
Their foolish speech? I cannot bring to mind
One half of it, beside; and do not care
For old Natalia now, nor any of them.
Oh, you--what are you?--if I do not try
To say the words Natalia made me learn,
To please your friends,--it is to keep myself
Where your voice lifted me, by letting that
Proceed: but can it? Even you, perhaps,
Cannot take up, now you have once let fall,
The music's life, and me along with that--
No, or you would! We'll stay, then, as we are:
Above the world.
You creature with the eyes!
If I could look forever up to them,
As now you let me,--I believe, all sin,
All memory of wrong done, suffering borne,
Would drop down, low and lower, to the earth
Whence all that's low comes, and there touch and stay
--Never to overtake the rest of me,
All that, unspotted, reaches up to you,
Drawn by those eyes! What rises is myself,
Not me the shame and suffering; but they sink,
Are left, I rise above them. Keep me so,
Above the world!
But you sink, for your eyes
Are altering--altered! Stay--"I love you, love" ...
I could prevent it if I understood:
More of your words to me: was 't in the tone
Or the words, your power?
Or stay--I will repeat
Their speech, if that contents you! Only change
No more, and I shall find it presently
Far back here, in the brain yourself filled up.
Natalia threatened me that harm should follow
Unless I spoke their lesson to the end,
But harm to me, I thought she meant, not you.
Your friends,--Natalia said they were your friends
And meant you well,--because, I doubted it,
Observing (what was very strange to see)
On every face, so different in all else,
The same smile girls like me are used to bear,
But never men, men cannot stoop so low;
Yet your friends, speaking of you, used that smile,
That hateful smirk of boundless self-conceit
Which seems to take possession of the world
And make of God a tame confederate,
Purveyor to their appetites ... you know!
But still Natalia said they were your friends,
And they assented though they smiled the more,
And all came round me,--that thin Englishman
With light lank hair seemed leader of the rest;
He held a paper--"What we want," said he,
Ending some explanation to his friends--
"Is something slow, involved and mystical,
To hold Jules long in doubt, yet take his taste
And lure him on until, at innermost
Where he seeks sweetness' soul, he may find--this!
--As in the apple's core, the noisome fly:
For insects on the rind are seen at once,
And brushed aside as soon, but this is found
Only when on the lips or loathing tongue."
And so he read what I have got by heart:
I'll speak it,--"Do not die, love! I am yours" ...
No--is not that, or like that, part of words
Yourself began by speaking? Strange to lose
What cost such pains to learn! Is this more right?

_I am a painter who cannot paint;
In my life, a devil rather than saint;
In my brain, as poor a creature too:
No end to all I cannot do!
Yet do one thing at least I can--
Love a man or hate a man
Supremely: thus my lore began.
Through the Valley of Love I went,
In the lovingest spot to abide,
And just on the verge where I pitched my tent,
I found Hate dwelling beside.
(Let the Bridegroom ask what the painter meant,
Of his Bride, of the peerless Bride!)
And further, I traversed Hate's grove,
In the hatefullest nook to dwell;
But lo, where I flung myself prone, couched Love
Where the shadow threefold fell.
(The meaning--those black bride's-eyes above,
Not a painter's lip should tell!)_

"And here," said he, "Jules probably will ask,
'You have black eyes, Love,--you are, sure enough,
My peerless bride,--then do you tell indeed
What needs some explanation! What means this?'"
--And I am to go on, "without a word--

_So, I grew wise in Love and Hate,
From simple that I was of late.
Once, when I loved, I would enlace
Breast, eyelids, hands, feet, form and face
Of her I loved, in one embrace--
As if by mere love I could love immensely!
Once, when I hated, I would plunge
My sword, and wipe with the first lunge
My foe's whole life out like a sponge--
As if by mere hate I could hate intensely!
But now I am wiser, know better the fashion
How passion seeks aid from its opposite passion:
And if I see cause to love more, hate more
Than ever man loved, ever hated before--
And seek in the Valley of Love
The nest, or the nook in Hate's Grove
Where my soul may surely reach
The essence, naught less, of each,
The Hate of all Hates, the Love
Of all Loves, in the Valley or Grove,--
I find them the very warders
Each of the other's borders.
When I love most, Love is disguised
In Hate; and when Hate is surprised
In Love, then I hate most: ask
How Love smiles through Hate's iron casque,
Hate grins through Love's rose-braided mask,--
And how, having hated thee,
I sought long and painfully
To reach thy heart, nor prick
The skin but pierce to the quick--
Ask this, my Jules, and be answered straight
By thy bride--how the painter Lutwyche can hate!_

JULES _interposes._

Lutwyche! Who else? But all of them, no doubt,
Hated me: they at Venice--presently
Their turn, however! You I shall not meet:
If I dreamed, saying this would wake me.
Keep
What's here, the gold--we cannot meet again,
Consider! and the money was but meant
For two years' travel, which is over now,
All chance or hope or care or need of it.
This--and what comes from selling these, my casts
And books and medals, except ... let them go
Together, so the produce keeps you safe
Out of Natalia's clutches! If by chance
(For all's chance here) I should survive the gang
At Venice, root out all fifteen of them,
We might meet somewhere, since the world is wide.

[_From without is heard the voice of_ PIPPA, _singing--_

_Give her but a least excuse to love me!
When--where--
How--can this arm establish her above me,
If fortune fixed her as my lady there,
There already, to eternally reprove me?
("Hist!"--said Kate the Queen;
But "Oh!" cried the maiden, binding her tresses,
"'T is only a page that carols unseen,
Crumbling your hounds their messes!")_

_Is she wronged?--To the rescue of her honor,
My heart!
Is she poor?--What costs it to be styled a donor?
Merely an earth to cleave, a sea to part.
But that fortune should have thrust all this upon her!
("Nay, list!"--bade Kate the Queen;
And still cried the maiden, binding her tresses,
"'T is only a page that carols unseen,
Fitting your hawks their jesses!")_ [PIPPA _passes._

JULES _resumes._

What name was that the little girl sang forth?
Kate? The Cornaro, doubtless, who renounced
The crown of Cyprus to be lady here
At Asolo, where still her memory stays,
And peasants sing how once a certain page
Pined for the grace of her so far above
His power of doing good to, "Kate the Queen--
She never could be wronged, be poor," he sighed,
"Need him to help her!"
Yes, a bitter thing
To see our lady above all need of us;
Yet so we look ere we will love; not I,
But the world looks so. If whoever loves
Must be, in some sort, god or worshipper,
The blessing or the blest one, queen or page,
Why should we always choose the page's part?
Here is a woman with utter need of me,--
I find myself queen here, it seems!
How strange!
Look at the woman here with the new soul,
Like my own Psyche,--fresh upon her lips
Alit, the visionary butterfly,
Waiting my word to enter and make bright,
Or flutter off and leave all blank as first.
This body had no soul before, but slept
Or stirred, was beauteous or ungainly, free
From taint or foul with stain, as outward things
Fastened their image on its passiveness:
Now, it will wake, feel, live--or die again!
Shall to produce form out of unshaped stuff
Be Art--and further, to evoke a soul
From form be nothing? This new soul is mine!

Now, to kill Lutwyche, what would that do?--save
A wretched dauber, men will hoot to death
Without me, from their hooting. Oh, to hear
God's voice plain as I heard it first, before
They broke in with their laughter! I heard them
Henceforth, not God.
To Ancona--Greece--some isle!
I wanted silence only; there is clay
Everywhere. One may do whate'er one likes
In Art: the only thing is, to make sure
That one does like it--which takes pains to know.
Scatter all this, my Phene--this mad dream!
Who, what is Lutwyche, what Natalia's friends,
What the whole world except our love--my own,
Own Phene? But I told you, did I not,
Ere night we travel for your land--some isle
With the sea's silence on it? Stand aside--
I do but break these paltry models up
To begin Art afresh. Meet Lutwyche, I--
And save him from my statue meeting him?
Some unsuspected isle in the far seas!
Like a god going through his world, there stands
One mountain for a moment in the dusk,
Whole brotherhoods of cedars on its brow:
And you are ever by me while I gaze
--Are in my arms as now--as now--as now!
Some unsuspected isle in the far seas!
Some unsuspected isle in far-off seas!

_Talk by the way, while_ PIPPA _is passing from Orcana to the Turret. Two or three of the Austrian Police loitering with_ BLUPHOCKS, _an English vagabond, just in view of the Turret._

_Bluphocks._[3] So, that is your Pippa, the little girl who passed us singing? Well, your Bishop's Intendant's money shall be honestly earned:--now, don't make me that sour face because I bring the Bishop's name into the business; we know he can have nothing to do with such horrors: we know that he is a saint and all that a bishop should be, who is a great man beside. _Oh were but every worm a maggot, Every fly a grig, Every bough a Christmas fagot, Every tune a jig!_ In fact, I have abjured all religions; but the last I inclined to was the Armenian: for I have travelled, do you see, and at Koenigsberg, Prussia Improper (so styled because there's a sort of bleak hungry sun there), you might remark, over a venerable house-porch, a certain Chaldee inscription; and brief as it is, a mere glance at it used absolutely to change the mood of every bearded passenger. In they turned, one and all; the young and lightsome, with no irreverent pause, the aged and decrepit, with a sensible alacrity: 't was the Grand Rabbi's abode, in short. Struck with curiosity, I lost no time in learning Syriac--(these are vowels, you dogs,--follow my stick's end in the mud--_Celarent, Darii, Ferio!_) and one morning presented myself, spelling-book in hand, a, b, c,--I picked it out letter by letter, and what was the purport of this miraculous posy? Some cherished legend of the past, you'll say--"_How Moses hocus-pocussed Egypt's land with fly and locust,_"--or, "_How to Jonah sounded harshish, Get thee up and go to Tarshish_,"--or "_How the angel meeting Balaam, Straight his ass returned a salaam_." In no wise! "_Shackabrack--Boach--somebody or other--Isaach, Re-cei-ver, Pur-cha-ser and Ex-chan-ger of--Stolen Goods!_" So, talk to me of the religion of a bishop! I have renounced all bishops save Bishop Beveridge!--mean to live so--and die--_As some Greek dog-sage, dead and merry, Hellward bound in Charon's wherry, With food for both worlds, under and upper, Lupine-seed and Hecate's supper, And never an obolus_ ... (though thanks to you, or this Intendant through you, or this Bishop through his Intendant--I possess a burning pocket-full of _zwanzigers_) ... _To pay the Stygian Ferry!_

_1st Policeman._ There is the girl, then; go and deserve them the moment you have pointed out to us Signor Luigi and his mother. [_To the rest._] I have been noticing a house yonder, this long while: not a shutter unclosed since morning!

_2d Pol._ Old Luca Gaddi's, that owns the silk-mills here: he dozes by the hour, wakes up, sighs deeply, says he should like to be Prince Metternich, and then dozes again, after having bidden young Sebald, the foreigner, set his wife to playing draughts. Never molest such a household, they mean well.

_Blup._ Only, cannot you tell me something of this little Pippa, I must have to do with? One could make something of that name. Pippa--that is, short for Felippa--rhyming to _Panurge consults Hertrippa--Believest thou, King Agrippa?_ Something might be done with that name.

_2d Pol._ Put into rhyme that your head and a ripe muskmelon would not be dear at half a _zwanziger!_ Leave this fooling, and look out; the afternoon's over or nearly so.

_3d Pol._ Where in this passport of Signor Luigi does our Principal instruct you to watch him so narrowly? There? What's there beside a simple signature? (That English fool's busy watching.)

_2d Pol._ Flourish all round--"Put all possible obstacles in his way;" oblong dot at the end--"Detain him till further advices reach you;" scratch at bottom--"Send him back on pretence of some informality in the above;" ink-spirt on righthand side (which is the case here)--"Arrest him at once." Why and wherefore, I don't concern myself, but my instructions amount to this: if Signor Luigi leaves home to-night for Vienna--well and good, the passport deposed with us for our _visa_ is really for his own use, they have misinformed the Office, and he means well; but let him stay over to-night--there has been the pretence we suspect, the accounts of his corresponding and holding intelligence with the Carbonari are correct, we arrest him at once, to-morrow comes Venice, and presently Spielberg. Bluphocks makes the signal, sure enough! That is he, entering the turret with his mother, no doubt.

FOOTNOTE:

[Footnote 3: "He maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust."]

III. EVENING

_Inside the Turret on the Hill above Asolo._ LUIGI _and his_ MOTHER _entering_.

_Mother._ If there blew wind, you'd hear a long sigh, easing
The utmost heaviness of music's heart.

_Luigi._ Here in the archway?

_Mother._ Oh no, no--in farther,
Where the echo is made, on the ridge.

_Luigi._ Here surely, then.
How plain the tap of my heel as I leaped up!
Hark--"Lucius Junius!" The very ghost of a voice
Whose body is caught and kept by ... what are those?
Mere withered wallflowers, waving overhead?
They seem an elvish group with thin bleached hair
That lean out of their topmost fortress--look
And listen, mountain men, to what we say,
Hand under chin of each grave earthy face.
Up and show faces all of you!--"All of you!"
That 's the king dwarf with the scarlet comb; old Franz,
Come down and meet your fate? Hark--"Meet your fate!"

_Mother._ Let him not meet it, my Luigi--do not
Go to his City! Putting crime aside,
Half of these ills of Italy are feigned:
Your Pellicos and writers for effect,
Write for effect.

_Luigi._ Hush! Say A writes, and B.

_Mother._ These A's and B's write for effect, I say.
Then, evil is in its nature loud, while good
Is silent; you hear each petty injury,
None of his virtues; he is old beside,
Quiet and kind, and densely stupid. Why
Do A and B kill not him themselves?