The Complete Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley
In which I walk secure and unbeheld
Towards my purpose.—Would that it were done!
[Exit.
SCENE II.—A Chamber in the Vatican. Enter CAMILLO and GIACOMO, in conversation.
Camillo. There is an obsolete and doubtful law
By which you might obtain a bare provision
Of food and clothing—
Giacomo. Nothing more? Alas!
Bare must be the provision which strict law
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Awards, and agèd, sullen avarice pays.
Why did my father not apprentice me
To some mechanic trade? I should have then
Been trained in no highborn necessities
Which I could meet not by my daily toil.
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The eldest son of a rich nobleman
Is heir to all his incapacities;
He has wide wants, and narrow powers. If you,
Cardinal Camillo, were reduced at once
From thrice-driven beds of down, and delicate food,
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An hundred servants, and six palaces,
To that which nature doth indeed require?—
Camillo. Nay, there is reason in your plea; ’twere hard.
Giacomo. ’Tis hard for a firm man to bear: but I
Have a dear wife, a lady of high birth,
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Whose dowry in ill hour I lent my father
Without a bond or witness to the deed:
And children, who inherit her fine senses,
The fairest creatures in this breathing world;
And she and they reproach me not. Cardinal,
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Do you not think the Pope would interpose
And stretch authority beyond the law?
Camillo. Though your peculiar case is hard, I know
The Pope will not divert the course of law.
After that impious feast the other night
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I spoke with him, and urged him then to check
Your father’s cruel hand; he frowned and said,
‘Children are disobedient, and they sting
Their fathers’ hearts to madness and despair,
Requiting years of care with contumely.
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I pity the Count Cenci from my heart;
His outraged love perhaps awakened hate,
And thus he is exasperated to ill.
In the great war between the old and young
I, who have white hairs and a tottering body,
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Will keep at least blameless neutrality.’
Enter ORSINO.
You, my good Lord Orsino, heard those words
Orsino. What words?
Giacomo. Alas, repeat them not again!
There then is no redress for me, at least
None but that which I may achieve myself,
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Since I am driven to the brink.—But, say,
My innocent sister and my only brother
Are dying underneath my father’s eye.
The memorable torturers of this land,
Galeaz Visconti, Borgia, Ezzelin,
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Never inflicted on the meanest slave
What these endure; shall they have no protection?
Camillo. Why, if they would petition to the Pope
I see not how he could refuse it—yet
He holds it of most dangerous example
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In aught to weaken the paternal power,
Being, as ’twere, the shadow of his own.
I pray you now excuse me. I have business
That will not bear delay.
[Exit CAMILLO.
Giacomo. But you, Orsino,
Have the petition: wherefore not present it?
60
Orsino. I have presented it, and backed it with
My earnest prayers, and urgent interest;
It was returned unanswered. I doubt not
But that the strange and execrable deeds
Alleged in it—in truth they might well baffle
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Any belief—have turned the Pope’s displeasure
Upon the accusers from the criminal:
So I should guess from what Camillo said.
Giacomo. My friend, that palace-walking devil Gold
Has whispered silence to his Holiness:
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And we are left, as scorpions ringed with fire.
What should we do but strike ourselves to death?
For he who is our murderous persecutor
Is shielded by a father’s holy name,
Or I would—
[Stops abruptly.
Orsino. What? Fear not to speak your thought.
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Words are but holy as the deeds they cover:
A priest who has forsworn the God he serves;
A judge who makes Truth weep at his decree;
A friend who should weave counsel, as I now,
But as the mantle of some selfish guile;
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A father who is all a tyrant seems,
Were the profaner for his sacred name.
Giacomo. Ask me not what I think; the unwilling brain
Feigns often what it would not; and we trust
Imagination with such phantasies
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As the tongue dares not fashion into words,
Which have no words, their horror makes them dim
To the mind’s eye.—My heart denies itself
To think what you demand.
Orsino. But a friend’s bosom
Is as the inmost cave of our own mind
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Where we sit shut from the wide gaze of day,
And from the all-communicating air.
You look what I suspected—
Giacomo. Spare me now!
I am as one lost in a midnight wood,
Who dares not ask some harmless passenger
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The path across the wilderness, lest he,
As my thoughts are, should be—a murderer.
I know you are my friend, and all I dare
Speak to my soul that will I trust with thee.
But now my heart is heavy, and would take
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Lone counsel from a night of sleepless care.
Pardon me, that I say farewell—farewell!
I would that to my own suspected self
I could address a word so full of peace.
Orsino. Farewell!—Be your thoughts better or more bold.
[Exit GIACOMO.
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I had disposed the Cardinal Camillo
To feed his hope with cold encouragement:
It fortunately serves my close designs
That ’tis a trick of this same family
To analyse their own and other minds.
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Such self-anatomy shall teach the will
Dangerous secrets: for it tempts our powers,
Knowing what must be thought, and may be done,
Into the depth of darkest purposes:
So Cenci fell into the pit; even I,
115
Since Beatrice unveiled me to myself,
And made me shrink from what I cannot shun,
Show a poor figure to my own esteem,
To which I grow half reconciled. I’ll do
As little mischief as I can; that thought
Shall fee the accuser conscience.
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(After a pause.) Now what harm
If Cenci should be murdered?—Yet, if murdered,
Wherefore by me? And what if I could take
The profit, yet omit the sin and peril
In such an action? Of all earthly things
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I fear a man whose blows outspeed his words;
And such is Cenci: and while Cenci lives
His daughter’s dowry were a secret grave
I
f a priest wins her.—Oh, fair Beatrice!
Would that I loved thee not, or loving thee
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Could but despise danger and gold and all
That frowns between my wish and its effect,
Or smiles beyond it! There is no escape …
Her bright form kneels beside me at the altar,
And follows me to the resort of men,
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And fills my slumber with tumultuous dreams,
So when I wake my blood seems liquid fire;
And if I strike my damp and dizzy head
My hot palm scorches it: her very name,
But spoken by a stranger, makes my heart
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Sicken and pant; and thus unprofitably
I clasp the phantom of unfelt delights
Till weak imagination half possesses
The self-created shadow. Yet much longer
Will I not nurse this life of feverous hours:
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From the unravelled hopes of Giacomo
I must work out my own dear purposes.
I see, as from a tower, the end of all:
Her father dead; her brother bound to me
By a dark secret, surer than the grave;
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Her mother scared and unexpostulating
From the dread manner of her wish achieved:
And she!—Once more take courage, my faint heart;
What dares a friendless maiden matched with thee?
I have such foresight as assures success:
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Some unbeheld divinity doth ever,
When dread events are near, stir up men’s minds
To black suggestions; and he prospers best,
Not who becomes the instrument of ill,
But who can flatter the dark spirit, that makes
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Its empire and its prey of other hearts
Till it became his slave … as I will do.
[Exit.
END OF THE SECOND ACT.
ACT III
SCENE I.—An Apartment in the Cenci Palace. LUCRETIA, to her enter BEATRICE.
Beatrice. (She enters staggering, and speaks wildly.) Reach me that handkerchief!—My brain is hurt;
My eyes are full of blood; just wipe them for me …
I see but indistinctly …
Lucretia. My sweet child,
You have no wound; ’tis only a cold dew
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That starts from your dear brow … Alas! Alas!
What has befallen?
Beatrice. How comes this hair undone?
Its wandering strings must be what blind me so,
And yet I tied it fast.—O, horrible!
The pavement sinks under my feet! The walls
10
Spin round! I see a woman weeping there,
And standing calm and motionless, whilst I
Slide giddily as the world reels.… My God!
The beautiful blue heaven is flecked with blood!
The sunshine on the floor is black! The air
15
Is changed to vapours such as the dead breathe
In charnel pits! pah! I am choked! There creeps
A clinging, black, contaminating mist
About me … ’tis substantial, heavy, thick,
I cannot pluck it from me, for it glues
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My fingers and my limbs to one another,
And eats into my sinews, and dissolves
My flesh to a pollution, poisoning
The subtle, pure, and inmost spirit of life!
My God! I never knew what the mad felt
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Before; for I am mad beyond all doubt!
(More wildly.) No, I am dead! These putrefying limbs
Shut round and sepulchre the panting soul
Which would burst forth into the wandering air!
(A pause.)
What hideous thought was that I had even now?
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’Tis gone; and yet its burthen remains here
O’er these dull eyes … upon this weary heart!
O, world! O, life! O, day! O, misery!
Lucretia. What ails thee, my poor child? She answers not:
Her spirit apprehends the sense of pain,
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But not its cause; suffering has dried away
The source from which it sprung …
Beatrice (franticly). Like Parricide …
Misery has killed its father: yet its father
Never like mine … O, God! What thing am I?
Lucretia. My dearest child, what has your father done?
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Beatrice (doubtfully). Who art thou, questioner? I have no father.
(Aside.) She is the madhouse nurse who tends on me,
It is a piteous office.
[To LUCRETIA, in a slow, subdued voice.
Do you know
I thought I was that wretched Beatrice
Men speak of, whom her father sometimes hales
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From hall to hall by the entangled hair;
At others, pens up naked in damp cells
Where scaly reptiles crawl, and starves her there,
Till she will eat strange flesh. This woful story
So did I overact in my sick dreams,
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That I imagined … no, it cannot be!
Horrible things have been in this wide world,
Prodigious mixtures, and confusions strange
Of good and ill; and worse have been conceived
Than ever there was found a heart to do.
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But never fancy imaged such a deed
As …
[Pauses, suddenly recollecting herself.
Who art thou? Swear to me, ere I die
With fearful expectation, that indeed
Thou art not what thou seemest … Mother!
Lucretia. Oh!
My sweet child, know you …
Beatrice. Yet speak it not:
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For then if this be truth, that other too
Must be a truth, a firm enduring truth,
Linked with each lasting circumstance of life,
Never to change, never to pass away.
Why so it is. This is the Cenci Palace;
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Thou art Lucretia; I am Beatrice,
I have talked some wild words, but will no more.
Mother, come near me: from this point of time,
I am …
[Her voice dies away faintly.
Lucretia. Alas! What has befallen thee, child?
What has thy father done?
Beatrice. What have I done?
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Am I not innocent? Is it my crime
That one with white hair, and imperious brow,
Who tortured me from my forgotten years,
As parents only dare, should call himself
My father, yet should be!—Oh, what am I?
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What name, what place, what memory shall be mine?
What retrospects, outliving even despair?
Lucretia. He is a violent tyrant, surely, child:
We know that death alone can make us free;
His death or ours. But what can he have done
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Of deadlier outrage or worse injury?
Thou art unlike thyself; thine eyes shoot forth
A wandering and strange spirit. Speak to me,
Unlock those pallid hands whose fingers twine
With one another.
Beatrice. ’Tis the restless life
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Tortured within them. If I try to speak
I shall go mad. Ay, something must be done;
What, yet I know not … something which shall make
The thing that I have suffered but a shadow
In the dread lightning which avenges it;
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Brief, rapi
d, irreversible, destroying
The consequence of what it cannot cure.
Some such thing is to be endured or done:
When I know what, I shall be still and calm,
And never anything will move me more.
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But now!—O blood, which art my father’s blood,
Circling through these contaminated veins,
If thou, poured forth on the polluted earth,
Could wash away the crime, and punishment
By which I suffer … no, that cannot be!
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Many might doubt there were a God above
Who sees and permits evil, and so die:
That faith no agony shall obscure in me.
Lucretia. It must indeed have been some bitter wrong;
Yet what, I dare not guess. Oh, my lost child,
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Hide not in proud impenetrable grief
Thy sufferings from my fear.
Beatrice. I hide them not.
What are the words which you would have me speak?
I, who can feign no image in my mind
Of that which has transformed me: I, whose thought
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Is like a ghost shrouded and folded up
In its own formless horror: of all words,
That minister to mortal intercourse,
Which wouldst thou hear? For there is none to tell
My misery: if another ever knew
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Aught like to it, she died as I will die,
And left it, as I must, without a name.
Death! Death! Our law and our religion call thee
A punishment and a reward … Oh, which
Have I deserved?
Lucretia, The peace of innocence;
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Till in your season you be called to heaven.
Whate’er you may have suffered, you have done
No evil. Death must be the punishment
Of crime, or the reward of trampling down
The thorns which God has strewed upon the path
Which leads to immortality.
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Beatrice. Ay, death …
The punishment of crime. I pray thee, God,