Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry. 1904.
Poems of Tragedy: V. ItalyThe Trial of Beatrice
Percy Bysshe Shelley (17921822)
F
I ask you, are you innocent, or guilty?
I demand who were the participators
In your offence? Speak truth and the whole truth.
M
Olimpio sold the robe to me from which
You would infer my guilt.
S
F
Speak false? Is it so soft a questioner,
That you would bandy lovers’ talk with it
Till it wind out your life and soul? Away!
M
F
M
F
M
Orsino sent me to Petrella; there
The ladies Beatrice and Lucretia
Tempted me with a thousand crowns, and I
And my companion forthwith murdered him.
Now let me die.
F
Lead forth the prisoner!
When did you see him last?
B
M
B
M
Whom you did urge with menaces and bribes
To kill your father. When the thing was done
You clothed me in a robe of woven gold
And bade me thrive: how I have thriven, you see.
You, my Lord Giacomo, Lady Lucretia,
You know that what I speak is true.
The terrible resentment of those eyes
On the dead earth! Turn them away from me!
They wound: ’t was torture forced the truth. My Lords,
Having said this let me be led to death.
B
C
B
You have a good repute for gentleness
And wisdom: can it be that you sit here
To countenance a wicked farce like this?
When some obscure and trembling slave is dragged
From sufferings which might shake the sternest heart
And bade to answer, not as he believes,
But as those may suspect or do desire
Whose questions thence suggest their own reply:
And that in peril of such hideous torments
As merciful God spares even the damned. Speak now
The thing you surely know, which is that you,
If your fine frame were stretched upon that wheel,
And you were told: “Confess that you did poison
Your little nephew; that fair blue-eyed child
Who was the lodestar of your life:”—and tho’
All see, since his most swift and piteous death,
That day and night, and heaven and earth, and time
And all the things hoped for or done therein
Are changed to you, thro’ your exceeding grief,
Yet you would say, “I confess anything:”
And beg from your tormentors, like that slave,
The refuge of dishonorable death.
I pray thee, Cardinal, that thou assert
My innocence.
C
Shame on these tears! I thought the heart was frozen
Which is their fountain. I would pledge my soul
That she is guiltless.
J
C
(If he now lived he would be just her age;
His hair, too, was her color, and his eyes
Like hers in shape, but blue and not so deep)
As that most perfect image of God’s love
That ever came sorrowing upon the earth.
She is as pure as speechless infancy!
J
If you forbid the rack. His Holiness
Enjoined us to pursue this monstrous crime
By the severest forms of law; nay even
To stretch a point against the criminals.
The prisoners stand accused of parricide
Upon such evidence as justifies
Torture.
B
J
B
Out of the multitude of living men
To kill the innocent?
M
Thy father’s vassal.
B
Answer to what I ask.
His countenance: unlike bold calumny
Which sometimes dares not speak the thing it looks,
He dares not look the thing he speaks, but bends
His gaze on the blind earth.
(To M
That I did murder my own father?
M
Spare me! My brain swims round … I cannot speak …
It was that horrid torture forced the truth.
Take me away! Let her not look on me!
I am a guilty miserable wretch;
I have said all I know; now, let me die!
B
So stern, as to have planned the crime alleged,
Which your suspicions dictate to this slave,
And the rack makes him utter, do you think
I should have left this two-edged instrument
Of my misdeed; this man, this bloody knife
With my own name engraven on the heft,
Lying unsheathed amid a world of foes,
For my own death? That with such horrible need
For deepest silence, I should have neglected
So trivial a precaution, as the making
His tomb the keeper of a secret written
On a thief’s memory? What is his poor life?
What are a thousand lives? A parricide
Had trampled them like dust; and, see, he lives!
(Turning to M
M
That stern yet piteous look, those solemn tones,
Wound worse than torture.
(To the J
For pity’s sake lead me away to death.
C
He shrinks from her regard like autumn’s leaf
From the keen breath of the serenest north.
B
Of life and death, pause ere thou answerest me;
So mayst thou answer God with less dismay:
What evil have we done thee? I, alas!
Have lived but on this earth a few sad years
And so my lot was ordered, that a father
First turned the moments of awakening life
To drops, each poisoning youth’s sweet hope; and then
Stabbed with one blow my everlasting soul;
And my untainted fame; and even that peace
Which sleeps within the core of the heart’s heart;
But the wound was not mortal; so my hate
Became the only worship I could lift
To our great Father, who in pity and love,
Armed thee, as thou dost say, to cut him off;
And thus his wrong becomes my accusation;
And art thou the accuser? If thou hopest
Mercy in heaven, show justice upon earth:
Worse than a bloody hand is a hard heart.
If thou hast done murders, made thy life’s path
Over the trampled laws of God and man,
Rush not before thy Judge, and say: “My maker,
I have done this and more; for there was one
Who was most pure and innocent on earth;
And because she endured what never any
Guilty or innocent endured before:
Because her wrongs could not be told, not thought;
Because thy hand at length did rescue her;
I with my words killed her and all her kin.”
Think, I adjure you, what it is to slay
The reverence living in the minds of men
Towards our ancient house, and stainless fame!
Think what it is to strangle infant pity,
Cradled in the belief of guileless looks,
Till it become a crime to suffer. Think
What ’t is to blot with infamy and blood
All that which shows like innocence, and is,
Hear me, great God! I swear, most innocent,
So that the world lose all discrimination
Between the sly, fierce, wild regard of guilt,
And that which now compels thee to reply
To what I ask: Am I, or am I not
A parricide?
M
J
M
Are innocent. ’T is I alone am guilty.
J
Subtle and long drawn out, to tear the folds
Of the heart’s inmost cell. Unbind him not
Till he confess.
M
A keener pain has wrung a higher truth
From my last breath. She is most innocent!
Bloodhounds, not men, glut yourselves well with me;
I will not give you that fine piece of nature
To rend and ruin.
J
As snow thrice sifted by the frozen wind.
C
J
B
As my accuser? Ha! wilt thou be he,
Who art my judge? Accuser, witness, judge,
What, all in one? Here is Orsino’s name;
Where is Orsino? Let his eye meet mine.
What means this scrawl? Alas! ye know not what,
And therefore on the chance that it may be
Some evil, will ye kill us?
J
Officer.—Nothing. As soon as we
Had bound him on the wheel, he smiled on us,
As one who baffles a deep adversary;
And holding his breath, died.
J
But to apply the question to those prisoners,
Who yet remain stubborn.
C
Further proceedings, and in the behalf
Of these most innocent and noble persons
Will use my interest with the Holy Father.
J
Conduct these culprits each to separate cells;
And be the engines ready: for this night
If the Pope’s resolution be as grave,
Pious, and just as once, I ’ll wring the truth
Out of those nerves and sinews, groan by groan.