| |
| VANITY, saith the preacher, vanity! | |
| Draw round my bed: is Anselm keeping back? | |
| Nephews—sons mine … ah God, I know not! Well— | |
| She, men would have to be your mother once, | |
| Old Gandolf envied me, so fair she was! | 5 |
| What’s done is done, and she is dead beside, | |
| Dead long ago, and I am Bishop since, | |
| And as she died so must we die ourselves, | |
| And thence ye may perceive the world’s a dream. | |
| Life, how and what is it? As here I lie | 10 |
| In this state-chamber, dying by degrees, | |
| Hours and long hours in the dead night, I ask | |
| “Do I live, am I dead?” Peace, peace seems all. | |
| Saint Praxed’s ever was the church for peace; | |
| And so, about this tomb of mine. I fought | 15 |
| With tooth and nail to save my niche, ye know: | |
| —Old Gandolf cozened me, despite my care; | |
| Shrewd was that snatch from out the corner South | |
| He graced his carrion with, God curse the same! | |
| Yet still my niche is not so cramped but thence | 20 |
| One sees the pulpit o’ the epistle-side, | |
| And somewhat of the choir, those silent seats, | |
| And up into the very dome where live | |
| The angels, and a sunbeam’s sure to lurk: | |
| And I shall fill my slab of basalt there, | 25 |
| And ’neath my tabernacle take my rest, | |
| With those nine columns round me, two and two, | |
| The odd one at my feet where Anselm stands: | |
| Peach-blossom marble all, the rare, the ripe | |
| As fresh poured red wine of a mighty pulse | 30 |
| —Old Gandolf with his paltry onion-stone, | |
| Put me where I may look at him! True peach, | |
| Rosy and flawless: how I earned the prize! | |
| Draw close: that conflagration of my church | |
| —What then? So much was saved if aught were missed! | 35 |
| My sons, ye would not be my death? Go dig | |
| The white-grape vineyard where the oil-press stood, | |
| Drop water gently till the surface sink, | |
| And if ye find … Ah God, I know not, I! … | |
| Bedded in store of rotten fig-leaves soft, | 40 |
| And corded up in a tight olive-frail, | |
| Some lump, ah God, of lapis lazuli, | |
| Big as a Jew’s head cut off at the nape, | |
| Blue as a vein o’er the Madonna’s breast | |
| Sons, all have I bequeathed you, villas, all, | 45 |
| That brave Frascati villa with its bath, | |
| So, let the blue lump poise between my knees, | |
| Like God the Father’s globe on both his hands | |
| Ye worship in the Jesu Church so gay, | |
| For Gandolf shall not choose but see and burst! | 50 |
| Swift as a weaver’s shuttle fleet our years: | |
| Man goeth to the grave, and where is he? | |
| Did I say basalt for my slab, sons? Black— | |
| ’Twas ever antique-black I meant! How else | |
| Shall ye contrast my frieze to come beneath? | 55 |
| The bas-relief in bronze ye promised me. | |
| Those Pans and Nymphs ye wot of, and perchance | |
| Some tripod, thyrsus, with a vase or so, | |
| The Saviour at his sermon on the mount, | |
| Saint Praxed in a glory, and one Pan | 60 |
| Ready to twitch the Nymph’s last garment off, | |
| And Moses with the tables … but I know | |
| Ye mark me not! What do they whisper thee, | |
| Child of my bowels, Anselm? Ah, ye hope | |
| To revel down my villas while I gasp | 65 |
| Bricked o’er with beggar’s mouldy travertine | |
| Which Gandolf from his tomb-top chuckles at! | |
| Nay, boys, ye love me—all of jasper, then! | |
| ’Tis jasper ye stand pledged to, lest I grieve. | |
| My bath must needs be left behind, alas! | 70 |
| One block, pure green as a pistachio-nut, | |
| There’s plenty jasper somewhere in the world— | |
| And have I not Saint Praxed’s ear to pray | |
| Horses for ye, and brown Greek manuscripts, | |
| And mistresses with great smooth marbly limbs? | 75 |
| —That’s if ye carve my epitaph aright, | |
| Choice Latin, picked phrase, Tully’s every word, | |
| No gaudy ware like Gandolf’s second line— | |
| Tully, my masters? Ulpian serves his need! | |
| And then how I shall lie through centuries, | 80 |
| And hear the blessed mutter of the mass, | |
| And see God made and eaten all day long, | |
| And feel the steady candle-flame, and taste | |
| Good strong thick stupefying incense-smoke! | |
| For as I lie here, hours of the dead night, | 85 |
| Dying in state and by such slow degrees, | |
| I fold my arms as if they clasped a crook, | |
| And stretch my feet forth straight as stone can point, | |
| And let the bedclothes, for a mortcloth, drop | |
| Into great laps and folds of sculptor’s work: | 90 |
| And as yon tapers dwindle, and strange thoughts | |
| Grow, with a certain humming in my ears, | |
| About the life before I lived this life, | |
| And this life too, popes, cardinals and priests, | |
| Saint Praxed at his sermon on the mount, | 95 |
| Your tall pale mother with her talking eyes, | |
| And new-found agate urns as fresh as day, | |
| And marble’s language, Latin pure, discreet, | |
| —Aha, ELUCESCEBAT quoth our friend? | |
| No Tully, said I, Ulpian at the best! | 100 |
| Evil and brief hath been my pilgrimage. | |
| All lapis, all, sons! Else I give the Pope | |
| My villas! Will ye ever eat my heart? | |
| Ever your eyes were as a lizard’s quick, | |
| They glitter like your mother’s for my soul, | 105 |
| Or ye would heighten my impoverished frieze, | |
| Piece out its starved design, and fill my vase | |
| With grapes, and add a visor and a Term, | |
| And to the tripod ye would tie a lynx | |
| That in his struggle throws the thyrsus down, | 110 |
| To comfort me on my entablature | |
| Whereon I am to lie till I must ask | |
| “Do I live, am I dead?” There, leave me, there! | |
| For ye have stabbed me with ingratitude | |
| To death—ye wish it—God, ye wish it! Stone— | 115 |
| Gritstone, a crumble! Clammy squares which sweat | |
| As if the corpse they keep were oozing through— | |
| And no more lapis to delight the world! | |
| Well, go! I bless ye. Fewer tapers there, | |
| But in a row: and, going, turn your backs | 120 |
| —Ay, like departing altar-ministrants, | |
| And leave me in my church, the church for peace, | |
| That I may watch at leisure if he leers— | |
| Old Gandolf—at me, from his onion-stone, | |
| As still he envied me, so fair she was! | 125 |
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