Modern Italian Poets; Essays and Versions Part 17

These modern pharisees, upon the cross, Where Christ hung dying once, have nailed mankind,

Arnaldo answers:

He will know how to save that rose and conquered;

And Giordano replies:

Yes, Christ arose; but Freedom cannot break The stone that shuts her ancient sepulcher, For on it stands the altar.

Adrian, when Arnaldo appears before him, bids him fall down and kiss his feet, and speak to him as to G.o.d; he will hear Arnaldo only as a penitent. Arnaldo answers:

The feet Of his disciples did that meek One kiss Whom here thou representest. But I hear Now from thy lips the voice of fiercest pride.

Repent, O Peter, that deniest him, And near the temple art, but far from G.o.d!

The name of the king Is never heard in Rome. And if thou are The vicar of Christ on earth, well should'st thou know That of thorns only was the crown he wore.

_Adrian._ He gave to me the empire of the earth When this great mantly I put on, and took The Church's high seat I was chosen to; The word of G.o.d did erst create the world, And now mine guides it. Would'st thou that the soul Should serve the body? Thou dost dream of freedom, And makest war on him who sole on earth Can shield man from his tyrants. O Arnaldo, Be Wise; believe me, all thy words are vain, Vain sound that perish or disperse themselves Amidst the wilderness of Rome. I only Can speak the words that the whole world repeats.

_Arnaldo_. Thy words were never Freedom's; placed between The people and their tyrants, still the Church With the weak cruel, with the mighty vile, Has been, and crushed in pitiless embraces That emperors and pontiffs have exchanged.

Man has been ever.

Why seek'st thou empire here, and great on earth Art mean in heaven? Ah! vainly in thy prayer Thou criest, "Let the heart be lifted up!"

'T is ever bowed to earth.

Now, then, if thou wilt, Put forth the power that thou dost vaunt; repress The crimes of bishops, make the Church ashamed To be a step-mother to the poor and lowly.

In all the Lombard cities every priest Has grown a despot, in shrewd perfidy Now siding with the Church, now with the Empire.

They have dainty food, magnificent apparel, Lascivious joys, and on their altars cold Gathers the dust, where lies the miter dropt, Forgotten, from the haughty brow that wears The helmet, and no longer bows itself Before G.o.d's face in th' empty sanctuaries; But upon the fields of slaughter, smoking still, Bends o'er the fallen foe, and aims the blows O' th' sacrilegious sword, with cruel triumph Insulting o'er the prayers of dying men.

There the priest rides o'er b.r.e.a.s.t.s of fallen foes, And stains with blood his courser's iron heel.

When comes a brief, false peace, and wearily Amidst the havoc doth the priest sit down, His pleasures are a crime, and after rapine Luxury follows. Like a thief he climbs Into the fold, and that desired by day He dares amid the dark, and violence Is the priest's marriage. Vainly did Rome hope That they had thrown aside the burden vile Of the desires that weigh down other men.

Theirs is the ungrateful l.u.s.t of the wild beast, That doth forget the mother nor knows the child.

... On the altar of Christ, Who is the prince of pardon and of peace, Vows of revenge are registered, and torches That are thrown into hearts of leaguered cities Are lit from tapers burning before G.o.d.

Become thou king of sacrifice; ascend The holy hill of G.o.d; on these perverse Launch thou thy thunderbolts; and feared again And great thou wilt be. Tell me, Adrian, Must thou not bear a burden that were heavy Even for angels? Wherefore wilt thou join Death unto life, and make the word of G.o.d, That says, "My kingdom is not of this world,"

A lie? Oh, follow Christ's example here In Rome; it pleased both G.o.d and her To abase the proud and to uplift the weak.

I'll kiss the foot that treads on kings!

_Adrian._ Arnaldo, I parley not, I rule; and I, become On earth as G.o.d in heaven, am judge of all, And none of me; I watch, and I dispense Terrors and hopes, rewards and punishments, To peoples and to kings; fountain and source Of life am I, who make the Church of G.o.d One and all-powerful. Many thrones and peoples She has seen tost upon the madding waves Of time, and broken on the immovable rock Whereon she sits; and since one errless spirit Rules in her evermore, she doth not rave For changeful doctrine, but she keeps eternal The grandeur of her will and purposes.

... Arnaldo, Thou movest me to pity. In vain thou seek'st To warm thy heart over these ruins, groping Among the sepulchers of Rome. Thou'lt find No bones to which thou canst say, "Rise!" Ah, here Remaineth not one hero's dust. Thou thinkest That with old names old virtues shall return?

And thou desirest tribunes, senators, Equestrian orders, Rome! A greater glory Thy sovereign pontiff is who doth not guard The rights uncertain of a crazy rabble; But tribune of the world he sits in Rome, And "I forbid," to kings and peoples cries.

I tell thee a greater than the impious power That thou in vain endeavorest to renew Here built the dying fisherman of Judea.

Out of his blood he made a fatherland For all the nations, and this place, that once A city was, became a world; the borders That did divide the nations, by Christ's law Are ta'en away, and this the kingdom is For which he asked his Father in his prayer.

The Church has sons in every race; I rule, An unseen king, and Rome is everywhere!

_Arnaldo_. Thou errest, Adrian. Rome's thunderbolts Wake little terror now, and reason shakes The bonds that thou fain would'st were everlasting.

... Christ calls to her As of old to the sick man, "Rise and walk."

She 'll tread on you if you go not before.

The world has other truth besides the altar's.

It will not have a temple that hides heaven.

Thou wast a shepherd: be a father. The race Of man is weary of being called a flock.

Adrian's final reply is, that if Arnaldo will renounce his false doctrine and leave Rome, the Pope will, through him, give the Lombard cities a liberty that shall not offend the Church. Arnaldo refuses, and quits Adrian's presence. It is quite needless to note the bold character of the thought here, or the n.o.bility of the poetry, which Niccolini puts as well into the mouth of the Pope whom he hates as the monk whom he loves.

Following this scene is one of greater dramatic force, in which the Cardinal Guido, sent to the Campidoglio by the Pope to disperse the popular a.s.sembly, is stoned by the people and killed. He dies full of faith in the Church and the righteousness of his cause, and his body, taken up by the priests, is carried into the square before St.

Peter's. A throng, including many women, has followed; and now Niccolini introduces a phase of the great Italian struggle which was perhaps the most perplexing of all. The subjection of the women to the priests is what has always greatly contributed to defeat Italian efforts for reform; it now helps to unnerve the Roman mult.i.tude; and the poet finally makes it the weakness through which Arnaldo is dealt his death. With a few strokes in the scene that follows the death of Guido, he indicates the remorse and dismay of the people when the Pope repels them from the church door and proclaims the interdict; and then follow some splendid lyrical pa.s.sages, in which the Pope commands the pictures and images to be veiled and the relics to be concealed, and curses the enemies of the Church. I shall but poorly render this curse by a rhymeless translation, and yet I am tempted to give it:

_The Pope._ To-day let the perfidious Learn at thy name to tremble, Nor triumph o'er the ruinous Place of thy vanished altars.

Oh, brief be their days and uncertain; In the desert their wandering footsteps, Every tremulous leaflet affright them!

_The Cardinals._ Anathema, anathema, anathema!

_Pope._ May their widows sit down 'mid the ashes On the hearths of their desolate houses, With their little ones wailing around them.

_Cardinals._ Anathema, anathema, anathema!

_Pope._ May he who was born to the fury Of heaven, afar from his country Be lost in his ultimate anguish.

_Cardinals._ Anathema, anathema, anathema!

_Pope._ May he fly to the house of the alien oppressor That is filled with the spoil of his brothers, with women Destroyed by the pitiless hands that defiled them; There in accents unknown and derided, abase him At portals ne'er opened in mercy, imploring A morsel of bread.

_Cardinals._ Be that morsel denied him!

_Pope._ I hear the wicked cry: I from the Lord Will fly away with swift and tireless feet; His anger follows me upon the sea; I'll seek the desert; who will give me wings?

In cloudy horror, who shall lead my steps?

The eye of G.o.d maketh the night as day.

O brothers, fulfill then The terrible duty; Throw down from the altars The dim-burning tapers; And be all joy, and be the love of G.o.d In thankless hearts that know not Peter, quenched, As is the little flame that falls and dies, Here in these tapers trampled under foot.

In the first scene of the third act, which is a desolate place in the Campagna, near the sea, Arnaldo appears. He has been expelled from Rome by the people, eager for the opening of their churches, and he soliloquizes upon his fate in language that subtly hints all his pa.s.sing moods, and paints the struggle of his soul. It appears to me that it is a wise thing to make him almost regret the cloister in the midst of his hatred of it, and then shrink from that regret with horror; and there is also a fine sense of night and loneliness in the scene:

Like this sand Is life itself, and evermore each path Is traced in suffering, and one footprint still Obliterates another; and we are all Vain shadows here that seem a little while, And suffer, and pa.s.s. Let me not fight in vain, O Son of G.o.d, with thine immortal word, Yon tyrant of eternity and time, Who doth usurp thy place on earth, whose feet Are in the depths, whose head is in the clouds, Who thunders all abroad, _The world is mine!_ Laws, virtues, liberty I have attempted To give thee, Rome. Ah! only where death is Abides thy glory. Here the laurel only Flourishes on the ruins and the tombs.

I will repose upon this fallen column My weary limbs. Ah, lower than this ye lie, You Latin souls, and to your ancient height Who shall uplift you? I am all weighed down By the great trouble of the lofty hopes Of Italy still deluded, and I find Within my soul a drearer desert far Than this, where the air already darkens round, And the soft notes of distant convent bells Announce the coming night.... I cannot hear them Without a trembling wish that in my heart Wakens a memory that becomes remorse....

Ah, Reason, soon thou languishest in us, Accustomed to such outrage all our lives.

Thou know'st the cloister; thou a youth didst enter That sepulcher of the living where is war,-- Remember it and shudder! The damp wind Stirs this gray hair. I'm near the sea.

Thy silence is no more; sweet on the ear Cometh the far-off murmur of the floods In the vast desert; now no more the darkness Imprisons wholly; now less gloomily Lowers the sky that lately threatened storm.

Less thick the air is, and the trembling light O' the stars among the breaking clouds appears.

Praise to the Lord! The eternal harmony Of all his work I feel. Though these vague beams Reveal to me here only fens and tombs, My soul is not so heavily weighed down By burdens that oppressed it....

I rise to grander purposes: man's tents Are here below, his city is in heaven.

I doubt no more; the terror of the cloister No longer a.s.sails me.

Presently Giordano comes to join Arnaldo in this desolate place, and, in the sad colloquy which follows, tells him of the events of Rome, and the hopelessness of their cause, unless they have the aid and countenance of the Emperor. He implores Arnaldo to accompany the emba.s.sy which he is about to send to Frederick; but Arnaldo, with a melancholy disdain, refuses. He asks where are the Swiss who accompanied him to Rome, and he is answered by one of the Swiss captains, who at that moment appears. The Emperor has ordered them to return home, under penalty of the ban of the empire. He begs Arnaldo to return with them, but Arnaldo will not; and Giordano sends him under a strong escort to the castle of Ostasio. Arnaldo departs with much misgiving, for the wife of Ostasio is Adelasia, a bigoted papist, who has. .h.i.therto resisted the teaching to which her husband has been converted.

As the escort departs, the returning Swiss are seen. One of their leaders expresses the fear that moves them, when he says that the Germans will desolate their homes if they do not return to them.

Moreover, the Italian sun, which destroys even those born under it, drains their life, and man and nature are leagued against them there.