Imaginary Conversations and Poems: A Selection
me? Why turn aside? and why go farther off? I will have that hand. It
twists about as if it hated its confinement. Perverse and peevish
creature! you have no more reason to be sorry than I have; and you
have many to the contrary which I have not. Being a man, you are at
liberty to admire a variety, and to make a choice. Is that no comfort
to you?
_Dante._
Bid this bosom cease to grieve?
Bid these eyes fresh objects see?
Where's the comfort to believe
None might once have rivall'd me?
What! my freedom to receive?
Broken hearts, are they the free?
For another can I live
When I may not live for thee?
_Beatrice._ I will never be fond of you again if you are so violent.
We have been together too long, and we may be noticed.
_Dante._ Is this our last meeting? If it is ... and that it is, my
heart has told me ... you will not, surely you will not refuse....
_Beatrice._ Dante! Dante! they make the heart sad after: do not wish
it. But prayers ... oh, how much better are they, how much quieter and
lighter they render it! They carry it up to heaven with them; and
those we love are left behind no longer.
FRA FILIPPO LIPPI AND POPE EUGENIUS THE FOURTH
_Eugenius._ Filippo! I am informed by my son Cosimo de' Medici of many
things relating to thy life and actions, and among the rest, of thy
throwing off the habit of a friar. Speak to me as to a friend. Was
that well done?
_Filippo._ Holy Father! it was done most unadvisedly.
_Eugenius._ Continue to treat me with the same confidence and
ingenuousness; and, beside the remuneration I intend to bestow on thee
for the paintings wherewith thou hast adorned my palace, I will remove
with my own hand the heavy accumulation of thy sins, and ward off the
peril of fresh ones, placing within thy reach every worldly solace and
contentment.
_Filippo._ Infinite thanks, Holy Father! from the innermost heart of
your unworthy servant, whose duty and wishes bind him alike and
equally to a strict compliance with your paternal commands.
_Eugenius._ Was it a love of the world and its vanities that induced
thee to throw aside the frock?
_Filippo._ It was indeed, Holy Father! I never had the courage to
mention it in confession among my manifold offences.
_Eugenius._ Bad! bad! Repentance is of little use to the sinner,
unless he pour it from a full and overflowing heart into the capacious
ear of the confessor. Ye must not go straightforward and bluntly up to
your Maker, startling Him with the horrors of your guilty conscience.
Order, decency, time, place, opportunity, must be observed.
_Filippo._ I have observed the greater part of them: time, place, and
opportunity.
_Eugenius._ That is much. In consideration of it, I hereby absolve
thee.
_Filippo._ I feel quite easy, quite new-born.
_Eugenius._ I am desirous of hearing what sort of feelings thou
experiencest, when thou givest loose to thy intractable and unruly
wishes. Now, this love of the world, what can it mean? A love of
music, of dancing, of riding? What in short is it in thee?
_Filippo._ Holy Father! I was ever of a hot and amorous constitution.
_Eugenius._ Well, well! I can guess, within a trifle, what that leads
unto. I very much disapprove of it, whatever it may be. And then? and
then? Prithee go on: I am inflamed with a miraculous zeal to cleanse
thee.
_Filippo._ I have committed many follies, and some sins.
_Eugenius._ Let me hear the sins; I do not trouble my head about the
follies; the Church has no business with them. The State is founded on
follies, the Church on sins. Come then, unsack them.
_Filippo._ Concupiscence is both a folly and a sin. I felt more and
more of it when I ceased to be a monk, not having (for a time) so
ready means of allaying it.
_Eugenius._ No doubt. Thou shouldst have thought again and again
before thou strippedst off the cowl.
_Filippo._ Ah! Holy Father! I am sore at heart. I thought indeed how
often it had held two heads together under it, and that stripping it
off was double decapitation. But compensation and contentment came,
and we were warm enough without it.
_Eugenius._ I am minded to reprove thee gravely. No wonder it pleased
the Virgin, and the saints about her, to permit that the enemy of our
faith should lead thee captive into Barbary.
_Filippo._ The pleasure was all on their side.
_Eugenius._ I have heard a great many stories both of males and
females who were taken by Tunisians and Algerines: and although there
is a sameness in certain parts of them, my especial benevolence toward
thee, worthy Filippo, would induce me to lend a vacant ear to thy
report. And now, good Filippo, I could sip a small glass of Muscatel
or Orvieto, and turn over a few bleached almonds, or essay a smart
dried apricot at intervals, and listen while thou relatest to me the
manners and customs of that country, and particularly as touching thy
own adversities. First, how wast thou taken?
_Filippo._ I was visiting at Pesaro my worshipful friend the canonico
Andrea Paccone, who delighted in the guitar, played it skilfully, and
was always fond of hearing it well accompanied by the voice. My own
instrument I had brought with me, together with many gay Florentine
songs, some of which were of such a turn and tendency, that the
canonico thought they would sound better on water, and rather far from
shore, than within the walls of the canonicate. He proposed then, one
evening when there was little wind stirring, to exercise three young
abbates[9] on their several parts, a little way out of hearing from
the water's edge.
_Eugenius._ I disapprove of exercising young abbates in that manner.
_Filippo._ Inadvertently, O Holy Father! I have made the affair seem
worse than it really was. In fact, there were only two genuine
abbates; the third was Donna Lisetta, the good canonico's pretty
niece, who looks so archly at your Holiness when you bend your knees
before her at bedtime.
_Eugenius._ How? Where?
_Filippo._ She is the angel on the right-hand side of the Holy Family,
with a tip of amethyst-coloured wing over a basket of figs and
pomegranates. I painted her from memory: she was then only fifteen,
and worthy to be the niece of an archbishop. Alas! she never will be:
she plays and sings among the infidels, and perhaps would eat a
landrail on a Friday as unreluctantly as she would a roach.
_Eugenius._ Poor soul! So this is the angel with the amethyst-coloured
wing? I thought she looked wanton: we must pray for her release ...
from the bondage of sin. What followed in your excursion?
_Filippo._ Singing, playing, fresh air, and plashing water, stimulated
our appetites. We had brought no eatable with us but fruit and thin
_marzopane_, of which the sugar and rose-water were inadequate to ward
off hunger; and the sight of a fishing-vessel between us and Ancona,
raised our host immoderately. 'Yonder smack,' said he, 'is sailing at
this moment just over the best sole-bank in the Adriatic. If she
continues her course and we run toward her, we may be supplied, I
trust in God, with the finest fish in Christendom. Methinks I see
already the bellies of those magnificent sole bestar the deck, and
emulate the glories of the orient sky.' He gave his orders with such a
majestic air, that he looked rather like an admiral than a priest.
_Eugenius._ How now, rogue! Why should not the churchman look
majestically and courageously? I myself have found occasion for it,
and exerted it.
_Filippo._ The world knows the prowess of your Holiness.
_Eugenius._ Not mine, not mine, Filippo! but His who gave me the sword
and the keys, and the will and the discretion to use them. I trust the
canonico did not misapply his station and power, by taking the fish at
any unreasonably low price; and that he gave his blessing to the
remainder, and to the poor fishermen and to their nets.
_Filippo._ He was angry at observing that the vessel, while he thought
it was within hail, stood out again to sea.
_Eugenius._ He ought to have borne more manfully so slight a vexation.
_Filippo._ On the contrary, he swore bitterly he would have the
master's ear between his thumb and forefinger in another half-hour,
and regretted that he had cut his nails in the morning lest they
should grate on his guitar. 'They may fish well,' cried he, 'but they
can neither sail nor row; and, when I am in the middle of that tub of
theirs, I will teach them more than they look for.' Sure enough he was
in the middle of it at the time he fixed: but it was by aid of a rope
about his arms and the end of another laid lustily on his back and
shoulders. 'Mount, lazy long-chined turnspit, as thou valuest thy
life,' cried Abdul the corsair, 'and away for Tunis.' If silence is
consent, he had it. The captain, in the Sicilian dialect, told us we
might talk freely, for he had taken his siesta. 'Whose guitars are
those?' said he. As the canonico raised his eyes to heaven and
answered nothing, I replied, 'Sir, one is mine: the other is my worthy
friend's there.' Next he asked the canonico to what market he was
taking those young slaves, pointing to the abbates. The canonico
sobbed and could not utter one word. I related the whole story; at
which he laughed. He then took up the music, and commanded my reverend
guest to sing an air peculiarly tender, invoking the compassion of a
nymph, and calling her cold as ice. Never did so many or such profound
sighs accompany it. When it ended, he sang one himself in his own
language, on a lady whose eyes were exactly like the scimitars of
Damascus, and whose eyebrows met in the middle like the cudgels of
prize-fighters. On the whole she resembled both sun and moon, with the
simple difference that she never allowed herself to be seen, lest all
the nations of the earth should go to war for her, and not a man to be
left to breathe out his soul before her. This poem had obtained the
prize at the University of Fez, had been translated into the Arabic,
the Persian, and the Turkish languages, and was the favourite lay of
the corsair. He invited me lastly to try my talent. I played the same
air on the guitar, and apologized for omitting the words, from my
utter ignorance of the Moorish. Abdul was much pleased, and took the
trouble to convince me that the poetry they conveyed, which he
translated literally, was incomparably better than ours. 'Cold as
ice!' he repeated, scoffing: 'anybody might say that who had seen
Atlas: but a genuine poet would rather say, "Cold as a lizard or a
lobster."' There is no controverting a critic who has twenty stout
rowers, and twenty well-knotted rope-ends. Added to which, he seemed
to know as much of the matter as the generality of those who talked
about it. He was gratified by my attention and edification, and thus
continued: 'I have remarked in the songs I have heard, that these wild
woodland creatures of the west, these nymphs, are a strange
fantastical race. But are your poets not ashamed to complain of their
inconstancy? whose fault is that? If ever it should be my fortune to
take one, I would try whether I could not bring her down to the level
of her sex; and if her inconstancy caused any complaints, by Allah!
they should be louder and shriller than ever rose from the throat of
Abdul.' I still thought it better to be a disciple than a commentator.
_Eugenius._ If we could convert this barbarian and detain him awhile
at Rome, he would learn that women and nymphs (and inconstancy also)
are one and the same. These cruel men have no lenity, no suavity. They
who do not as they would be done by, are done by very much as they do.
Women will glide away from them like water; they can better bear two
masters than half one; and a new metal must be discovered before any