Artemis to Actaeon and Other Verses | Page 7

myself to death upon their lips,?That on one pyre we perished in the end--?A grimmer bonfire than the Church e'er lit!?Yet all was well--or seemed so--till I heard?That younger voice, an echo of my own,?And, like a wanderer turning to his home,?Who finds another on the hearth, and learns,?Half-dazed, that other is his actual self?In name and claim, as the whole parish swears,?So strangely, suddenly, stood dispossessed?Of that same self I had sold all to keep,?A baffled ghost that none would see or hear!?"Vesalius? Who's Vesalius? This Fallopius?It is who dragged the Galen-idol down,?Who rent the veil of flesh and forced a way?Into the secret fortalice of life"--?Yet it was I that bore the brunt of it!
Well, better so! Better awake and live?My last brief moment as the man I was,?Than lapse from life's long lethargy to death?Without one conscious interval. At least?I repossess my past, am once again?No courtier med'cining the whims of kings?In muffled palace-chambers, but the free?Friendless Vesalius, with his back to the wall?And all the world against him. O, for that?Best gift of all, Fallopius, take my thanks--?That, and much more. At first, when Padua wrote:?"Master, Fallopius dead, resume again?The chair even he could not completely fill,?And see what usury age shall take of youth?In honours forfeited"--why, just at first,?I was quite simply credulously glad?To think the old life stood ajar for me,?Like a fond woman's unforgetting heart.?But now that death waylays me--now I know?This isle is the circumference of my days,?And I shall die here in a little while--?So also best, Fallopius!
For I see?The gods may give anew, but not restore;?And though I think that, in my chair again,?I might have argued my supplanters wrong?In this or that--this Cesalpinus, say,?With all his hot-foot blundering in the dark,?Fabricius, with his over-cautious clutch?On Galen (systole and diastole?Of Truth's mysterious heart!)--yet, other ways,?It may be that this dying serves the cause.?For Truth stays not to build her monument?For this or that co-operating hand,?But props it with her servants' failures--nay,?Cements its courses with their blood and brains,?A living substance that shall clinch her walls?Against the assaults of time. Already, see,?Her scaffold rises on my hidden toil,?I but the accepted premiss whence must spring?The airy structure of her argument;?Nor could the bricks it rests on serve to build?The crowning finials. I abide her law:?A different substance for a different end--?Content to know I hold the building up;?Though men, agape at dome and pinnacles,?Guess not, the whole must crumble like a dream?But for that buried labour underneath.?Yet, Padua, I had still my word to say!?Let others say it!--Ah, but will they guess?Just the one word--? Nay, Truth is many-tongued.?What one man failed to speak, another finds?Another word for. May not all converge?In some vast utterance, of which you and I,?Fallopius, were but halting syllables??So knowledge come, no matter how it comes!?No matter whence the light falls, so it fall!?Truth's way, not mine--that I, whose service failed?In action, yet may make amends in praise.?Fabricius, Cesalpinus, say your word,?Not yours, or mine, but Truth's, as you receive it!?You miss a point I saw? See others, then!?Misread my meaning? Yet expound your own!?Obscure one space I cleared? The sky is wide,?And you may yet uncover other stars.?For thus I read the meaning of this end:?There are two ways of spreading light: to be?The candle or the mirror that reflects it.?I let my wick burn out--there yet remains?To spread an answering surface to the flame?That others kindle.
Turn me in my bed.?The window darkens as the hours swing round;?But yonder, look, the other casement glows!?Let me face westward as my sun goes down.
MARGARET OF CORTONA
FRA PAOLO, since they say the end is near,?And you of all men have the gentlest eyes,?Most like our father Francis; since you know?How I have toiled and prayed and scourged and striven,?Mothered the orphan, waked beside the sick,?Gone empty that mine enemy might eat,?Given bread for stones in famine years, and channelled?With vigilant knees the pavement of this cell,?Till I constrained the Christ upon the wall?To bend His thorn-crowned Head in mute forgiveness . . .?Three times He bowed it . . . (but the whole stands writ,?Sealed with the Bishop's signet, as you know),?Once for each person of the Blessed Three--?A miracle that the whole town attests,?The very babes thrust forward for my blessing,?And either parish plotting for my bones--?Since this you know: sit near and bear with me.
I have lain here, these many empty days?I thought to pack with Credos and Hail Marys?So close that not a fear should force the door--?But still, between the blessed syllables?That taper up like blazing angel heads,?Praise over praise, to the Unutterable,?Strange questions clutch me, thrusting fiery arms,?As though, athwart the close-meshed litanies,?My dead should pluck at me from hell, with eyes?Alive in their obliterated faces! . . .?I have tried the saints'