Fraser's Magazine for Town and Country

I do but play with an imagined life
Of who, unfettered with a vow, unblessed
By the higher call,-since you will have it so,——
Leads it companioned by the woman there.
To live, and see her learn, and learn by her,
Out of the low obscure and petty world-
To only see one purpose and one will

Evolve themselves if the world, change wrong to right:
To have to do with nothing but the true,

The good, the eternal-and these, not alone
In the main current of the general life,
But small experiences of every day,

Concerns of the particular hearth and home:
To learn not only by a comet's rush

But a rose's birth,-not by the grandeur, God--
But the comfort, Christ. All this, how far away!
Mere delectation, meet for a minute's dream!--
Just as a drudging student trims his lamp,
Opens his Plutarch, puts him in the place

Of Roman, Grecian; draws the patched gown close,
Dreams, Thus should I fight, save or rule the world!'-
Then smilingly, contentedly, awakes

To the old solitary nothingness.

So I, from such communion, pass content . . .
O great, just, good God! Miserable me!

Pompilia follows:

Then a soul sighs its lowest and its last
After the loud ones.

The Pompilia poem is lovely throughout, and the gradual rise

from the simple child-like life and associations to the sad solemn serenity of the last hour, when the light of death breaks upon her face, is highly pathetic:

One cannot judge

Of what has been the ill or well of life,
The day that one is dying,-sorrows change
Into not altogether sorrow-like;

I do see strangeness but scarce misery,
Now it is over, and no danger more.

My child is safe; there seems not so much pain.
It comes, most like, that I am just absolved,
Purged of the past, the foul in me washed fair,-
One cannot both have and not have, you know,-
Being right now, I am happy and colour things.
Yes, everybody that leaves life sees all
Softened and bettered: so with other sights:
To me at least was never evening yet
But seemed far beautifuller than its day,
For past is past.

Then she addresses herself to her husband,

For that most woeful man my husband once,
Who, needing respite, still draws vital breath,
I pardon him! So far as lies in me,
I give him for his good the life he takes,
Praying the world will therefore acquiesce.
Let him make God amends,-none, none to me
Who thank him rather that, whereas strange fate
Mockingly styled him husband and me wife,
Himself this way at least pronounced divorce,
Blotted the marriage-bond: this blood of mine
Flies forth exultingly at any door,

Washes the parchment white, and thanks the blow.
We shall not meet in this world nor the next,
But where will God be absent? In His face
Is light, but in His shadow healing too:
Let Guido touch the shadow and be healed!
And as my presence was importunate-
My earthly good, temptation and a snare-
Nothing about me but drew somehow down
His hate upon me,-somewhat so excused.
Therefore, since hate was thus the truth of him,-
May my evanishment for evermore
Help further to relieve the heart that cast
Such object of its natural loathing forth!
So he was made; he nowise made himself:
I could not love him, but his mother did.
His soul has never lain beside my soul;
But for the unresisting body,-thanks!
He burned that garment spotted by the flesh!
Whatever he touched is rightly ruined: plague
It caught, and disinfection it had craved
Still but for Guido; I am saved through him
So as by fire; to him-thanks and farewell!

Then to her two-weeks' old boy :

Even for my babe, my boy, there's safety thence--
From the sudden death of me, I mean: we poor
Weak souls, how we endeavour to be strong!

I was already using up my life,—

This portion, now, should do him such a good,
This other go to keep off such an ill!

The great life; see, a breath and it is gone!

So is detached, so left all by itself
The little life, the fact which means so much.
Shall not God stoop the kindlier to His work,
His marvel of creation, foot would crush,
Now that the hand He trusted to receive
And hold it, lets the treasure fall perforce?
The better: He shall have in orphanage
His own way all the clearlier: if my babe
Outlive the hour-and he has lived two weeks-
It is through God who knows I am not by.
Who is it makes the soft gold hair turn black.
And sets the tongue, might lie so long at rest,
Trying to talk? Let us leave God alone!
Why should I doubt He will explain in time
What I feel now, but fail to find the words?
My babe nor was, nor is, nor yet shall be
Count Guido Franceschini's child at all—
Only his mother's, born of love not hate!
So shall I have my rights in after-time.
It seems absurd, impossible to-day;

So seems so much else not explained but known.

་

And last of all to Caponsacchi:

'Tis now, when I am most upon the move,
I feel for what I verily find-again
The face, again the eyes, again through all,
The heart and its immeasurable love
Of my one friend, my only, all my own,
Who put his breast between the spears and me.
Ever with Caponsacchi! Otherwise

Here alone would be failure, loss to me-

How much more loss to him, with life debarred
From giving life, love locked from love's display,

The day-star stopped its task that makes night morn!
O lover of my life, O soldier-saint,

No work begun shall ever pause for death!
Love will be helpful to me more and more

I' the coming course, the new path I must tread,

My weak hand in thy strong hand, strong for that!
Tell him that if I seem without him now,

That's the world's insight! Oh he understands!
He is at Civita-do I once doubt

The world again is holding us apart?

He had been here, displayed in my behalf

The broad brow that reverberates the truth,

And flashed the word God gave him, back to man!

So, let him wait God's instant men call years; Meantime hold hard by truth and his great soul, Do out the duty! Through such souls alone God stooping shows sufficient of His light For us i' the dark to rise by. And I rise. We may dispute about what is or is not poetry, but there can be no dispute that these last words of Pompilia are as noble, as pathetic, as clearly and simply beautiful as any words-not actually spoken by martyr, or hero, or saint; for the unrecorded words (or thoughts at least) of such men, may in the supreme moment of trial reach a sublime height, a heavenly intensity of conviction, such as no written word can render, but-that any writer, old or new, inspired or uninspired, ever gave to the world.

I must pass almost without comment the exquisite comedy of the two advocates, Dominus Hyacinthus de Archangelis, and JurisDoctor Johannes-Baptista Bottinius which follows, noting here only the utter wordiness of both, the want of any close hold on real life, the absence of any essential insight into the truth even on the part of him who is retained to speak for the truth. I have heard it said that an approach to farce at this point-im

mediately after the beautiful words last quoted-must be out of place. I do not feel it to be so. Shakespeare I think would have seen that it was eminently fitting that a criminal trial should take the usual course through the courts, should fall into the hands of Dominus Hyacinthus de Archangelis, and his learned brother, and in doing so should reflect the very remarkable idiosyncrasies of these Roman Chancery lawyers.

Behind the lawyers comes the Pope-a man bland, gentle, garrulous, yet firm as adamant, who brings the ripe experience of eighty years to bear upon the difficult issue submitted to his judgment. He still appears to dally with the verdict, though he has in truth quite made up his mind that Guido must die. The prolonged self-communion of this gracious old man (in the course of which, all the problems forced upon the mind of any thoughtful priest of God, are one by one passed in review), is very interest

ing. The deliberate argument is a marvel of quiet strength and dig. nity (of course he entirely exonerates the pure soul who cannot take pollution

Ermine like

Armed from dishonour by its own soft snow)
-the closing passage, indeed, being
one of the most striking in the
book:

For the main criminal I have no hope
Except in such a suddenness of fate.
I stood at Naples once, a night so dark
I could have scarce conjectured there was earth
Anywhere, sky or sea or world at all;

But the night's black was burst through by a blaze-
Thunder struck, blow on blow, earth groaned and bore,
Through her whole length of mountain visible:
There lay the city thick and plain with spires,
And, like a ghost-disshrouded, white the sea.
So may the truth be flashed out by one blow,
And Guido see, one instant, and be saved.
Else I avert my face, nor follow him
Into that sad obscure sequestered state
Where God unmakes but to remake the soul
He else made first in vain; which must not be.
Enough, for I may die this very night;
And how should I dare die, this man let live?
Carry this forthwith to the Governor!

The revelation of Guido's soul in the
last part is lurid with light from the
pit. I know of no such tremendous
out-turning of an abject, loathsome,
cowardly, cruel human creature, as
on this last piece. After all his
bull-like bravado and diabolic frank-

ness, the essential cowardice of the
brute's nature, which is, indeed, the
key to his character, breaks out at
last in the terror-stricken moment
when he hears 'the accursed psalm,
and realises that the scaffold and
the angry crowd wait for him,—

Who are these you have let descend my stair?
Ha, their accursed psalm! Lights at the sill!
Is it 'open' they dare bid you? Treachery!
Sirs, have I spoken one word all this while
Out of the world of words I had to say?

Not one word! All was folly-I laughed and mocked!
Sirs, my first true word; all truth and no lie,
Is-save me notwithstanding! Life is all!
I was just stark mad-let the madman live,
Pressed by as many chains as you please pile!
Don't open! Hold me from them! I am yours,
I am the Grand Duke's-No, I am the Pope's
Abate, Cardinal,-Christ,-Maria,-God .
Pompilia, will you let them murder me?

So the play ends, a dramatic poem in twelve acts, which might be effectively reduced to the five of the legitimate drama, and we bid farewell to Mr. Browning. We

have been in contact with a great work, and leave it with the impress which a great work makes upon the mind, still touched by a certain awe and sense of spiritual force.

SHIRLEY.