So went the word forth, so acceptance found,
So century re-echoed century,
Cursed the accursed,—and so, from sire to son,
You Romans cried, ’The offscourings of our race
Corrupt within the depths there: fitly, fiends
Perform a temple-service o’er the dead:
Child, gather garment round thee, pass nor pry!’
So groaned your generations: till the time
Grew ripe, and lightning hath revealed, belike,—
Thro’ crevice peeped into by curious fear,—
Some object even fear could recognise
I’ the place of spectres; on the illumined wall,
To-wit, some nook, tradition talks about,
Narrow and short, a corpse’s length, no more:
And by it, in the due receptacle,
The little rude brown lamp of earthenware,
The cruse, was meant for flowers, but held the blood,
The rough-scratched palm-branch, and the legend left
Pro Christo. Then the mystery lay clear:
The abhorred one was a martyr all the time,
A saint whereof earth was not worthy. What?
Do you continue in the old belief?
Where blackness bides unbroke, must devils be?
Is it so certain, not another cell
O’ the myriad that make up the catacomb,
Contains some saint a second flash would show?
Will you ascend into the light of day
And, having recognised a martyr’s shrine,
Go join the votaries that gape around
Each vulgar god that awes the market-place?”
(iv. 219).
With less impetuosity and a more weightily reasoned argument the Pope confronts the long perplexity and entanglement of circumstances with the fatuous optimism which insists that somehow justice and virtue do rule in the world. Consider all the doings at Arezzo, before and after the consummation of the tragedy. What of the Aretine archbishop, to whom Pompilia cried “Protect me from the fiend!”—
“No, for thy Guido is one heady,
strong,
Dangerous to disquiet; let him bide!
He needs some bone to mumble, help amuse
The darkness of his den with; so, the
fawn
Which limps up bleeding to my foot and
lies,
—Come to me, daughter,—thus
I throw him back!”
Then the monk to whom she went, imploring him to write to Rome:—
“He meets the first cold sprinkle
of the world
And shudders to the marrow, ’Save
this child?
Oh, my superiors, oh, the Archbishop here!
Who was it dared lay hand upon the ark
His betters saw fall nor put finger forth?’”
Worst of all, the Convent of the Convertites, women to whom she was consigned for help,
“They do help; they are prompt to
testify
To her pure life and saintly dying days.
She dies, and lo, who seemed so poor,
proves rich!
What does the body that lives through
helpfulness
To women for Christ’s sake?
The kiss turns bite,
The dove’s note changes to the crow’s