A SOUL'S TRAGEDY.

A SOUL'S TRAGEDY.

PART FIRST, BEING WHAT WAS CALLED THE POETRY OF CHIAPPINO'S LIFE: AND PART SECOND, ITS PROSE.

PART I

Inside LUITOLFO's house at Faenza. CHIAPPINO, EULALIA.

Eu. What is it keeps Luitolfo? Night's fast falling, And 'twas scarce sunset . . . had the Ave-bell

Sounded before he sought the Provost's House?

I think not all he had to say would take
Few minutes, such a very few, to say!
How do you think, Chiappino? If our lord
The Provost were less friendly to your friend
Than everybody here professes him,
I should begin to tremble-should not you ?
Why are you silent when so many times
I turn and speak to you?

Ch.

Eu.

That's good!

You laugh?

Ch. Yes. I had fancied nothing that bears price

In the whole world was left to call my own,

And, may be, felt a little pride thereat:

Up to a single man's or woman's love,

Down to the right in my own flesh and blood,
There's nothing mine, I fancied,-till you spoke !
-Counting, you see, as "nothing" the permission
To study this peculiar lot of mine

In silence: well, go silence with the rest

Of the world's good! What can I say, shall serve?

Eu. This, lest you, even more than needs, imbitter Our parting: say your wrongs have cast, for once, A cloud across your spirit!

Ch.

How a cloud?

Eu. No man nor woman loves you, did you say?
Ch. My God, were't not for thee!

Eu.

Even did Men forsake you.

Ch.

Ay, God remains,

Oh, not so!

Were't not for God, I mean, what hope of truth—
Speaking truth, hearing truth, would stay with Man?
I, now the homeless, friendless, penniless,
Proscribed and exiled wretch who speak to you,
Ought to speak truth, yet could not, for my death,
(The thing that tempts me most) help speaking lies
About your friendship, and Luitolfo's courage,
And all our townsfolk's equanimity,—

Through sheer incompetence to rid myself
Of the old miserable lying trick

Caught from the liars I have lived with,—God,
Did I not turn to thee! it is thy prompting
I dare to be ashamed of, and thy counsel
Would die along my coward lip, I know—

But I do turn to thee! This craven tongue,
These features which refuse the soul its way,

Reclaim Thou! Give me truth-truth, power to speak -And after be sole present to approve

The spoken truth!—or, stay, that spoken truth,

Who knows but you, too, might approve?

Eu.

Keep silence, then, Chiappino!

Ch.

Ah, well

You would hear,

And shall now,-why the thing we're pleased to style

My gratitude to you and all your friends

For service done me, is just gratitude

So much as yours was service—and no more.
I was born here, so was Luitolfo,—both

At one time, much with the same circumstance
Of rank and wealth; and both; up to this night
Of parting company, have side by side.

Still fared, he in the sunshine-I, the shadow :
"Why?" asks the world: "Because," replies the world
To its complacent self, "these playfellows,
Who took at church the holy-water drop

One from the other's finger, and so forth,-
Were of two moods: Luitolfo was the proper
Friend-making, everywhere friend-finding soul,
Fit for the sunshine, so it followed him ;
A happy-tempered bringer of the best

Out of the worst; who bears with what's past cure,
And puts so good a face on't-wisely passive

Where action's fruitless, while he remedies