XVII

Some heights of sorrow. Peter's rock, so named,

      Shall lure no vessel, any more, to drop

Among the breakers. Peter's chair is shamed

      Like any vulgar throne the nations lop

To pieces for their firewood unreclaimed;

      And, when it burns too, we shall see as well

In Italy as elsewhere. Let it burn.

      The cross, accounted still adorable,

Is Christ's cross only!—if the thief's would earn

      Some stealthy genuflexions, we rebel;

And here the impenitent thief's has had its turn,

      As God knows; and the people on their knees

Scoff and toss back the croziers, stretched like yokes

      To press their heads down lower by degrees.

So Italy, by means of these last strokes,

      Escapes the danger which preceded these,

Of leaving captured hands in cloven oaks...

      Of leaving very souls within the buckle

Whence bodies struggled outward... of supposing

      That freemen may like bondsmen kneel and truckle,

And then stand up as usual, without losing

      An inch of stature.

                                                      Those whom she-wolves suckle

Will bite as wolves do, in the grapple-closing

Of adverse interests: this, at last, is known,

(Thank Pius for the lesson) that albeit,

      Among the Popedom's hundred heads of stone

Which blink down on you from the roof's retreat

      In Siena's tiger-striped cathedral, Joan

And Borgia 'mid their fellows you may greet,

      A harlot and a devil, you will see

Not a man, still less angel, grandly set

      With open soul, to render man more free.

The fishers are still thinking of the net,

      And if not thinking of the hook too, we

Are counted somewhat deeply in their debt:

      But that's a rare case-so, by hook and crook

They take the advantage, agonizing Christ

      By rustier nails than those of Cedron's brook,

I' the people's body very cheaply priced;

      Quoting high priesthood out of Holy book,

And buying death-fields with the sacrificed.