XXV.

THE PEOPLE.

Il popolo e una bestia.

The people is a beast of muddy brain,
    That knows not its own force, and therefore stands
    Loaded with wood and stone; the powerless hands
    Of a mere child guide it with bit and rein: 
One kick would be enough to break the chain;
    But the beast fears, and what the child demands,
    It does; nor its own terror understands,
    Confused and stupefied by bugbears vain. 
Most wonderful! with its own hand it ties
    And gags itself—­gives itself death and war
    For pence doled out by kings from its own store. 
Its own are all things between earth and heaven;
    But this it knows not; and if one arise
    To tell this truth, it kills him unforgiven.

XXVI.

CONSCIENCE.

Seco ogni coif a e doglia.

All crime is its own torment, bearing woe
    To mind or body or decrease of fame;
    If not at once, still step by step our name
    Or blood or friends or fortune it brings low. 
But if our will do not resent the blow,
    We have not sinned.  That penance hath no blame
    Which Magdalen found sweet:  purging our shame,
    Self-punishment is virtue, all men know. 
The consciousness of goodness pure and whole
    Makes a man fully blest; but misery
    Springs from false conscience, blinded in its pride. 
This Simon Peter meant when he replied
    To Simon Magus, that the prescient soul
    Hath her own proof of immortality.

XXVII.

THE BAD PRINCE.

Mentola al comun corpo.

Organ of rut, not reason, is the lord
    Who from the body politic doth drain
    Lust for himself, instead of toil and pain,
    Leaving us lean as crickets on dry sward. 
Well too if he like Love would filch our hoard
    With pleasure to ourselves, sluicing our vein
    And vigour to perpetuate the strain
    Of life by spilth of life within us stored! 
Love’s cheat yields joy and profit.  Kings, less kind,
    Harm those they hoodwink; sow bare rock with seed;
    Nor use our waste to propagate the breed. 
Heaven help that body which a little mind,
    Housed in a head, lacking ears, tongue, and eyes,
    And senseless but for smell, can tyrannise!

XXVIII.

ON ITALY.

La gran Donna.

That Lady who to Caesar came in state
    Upon the Rubicon, what time she feared
    Ruin from those strange races who appeared
    Erewhile to build her empire strong and great,
Now stays with limbs dispersed and lacerate,
    A bondslave, shorn of all her pomp revered: