Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry. 1904.

Poems of Tragedy: V. Italy

The Trial of Beatrice

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)

From “The Cenci,” Act V. Sc. 2.

A Hall of Justice. CAMILLO, JUDGES, etc., are discovered seated; MARZIO is led in.

FIRST JUDGE.—Accused, do you persist in your denial?

I ask you, are you innocent, or guilty?

I demand who were the participators

In your offence? Speak truth and the whole truth.

MARZIO.—My God! I did not kill him; I know nothing;

Olimpio sold the robe to me from which

You would infer my guilt.

SECOND JUDGE.—Away with him!

FIRST JUDGE.—Dare you, with lips yet white from the rack’s kiss

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!

MARZIO.—Spare me! O, spare! I will confess.

FIRST JUDGE.—Then speak.

MARZIO.—I strangled him in his sleep.

FIRST JUDGE.—Who urged you to it?

MARZIO.—-His own son, Giacomo, and the young prelate

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.

FIRST JUDGE.—This sounds as bad as truth. Guards, there,

Lead forth the prisoner!

Look upon this man;

When did you see him last?

BEATRICE.—We never saw him.

MARZIO.—You know me too well, Lady Beatrice.

BEATRICE.—I know thee! How? where? when?

MARZIO.—You know ’t was I

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.

O, dart

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.

BEATRICE.—Poor wretch, I pity thee: yet stay awhile.

CAMILLO.—Guards, lead him not away.

BEATRICE.—Cardinal Camillo,

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.

CAMILLO(much moved).—What shall we think, my Lords?

Shame on these tears! I thought the heart was frozen

Which is their fountain. I would pledge my soul

That she is guiltless.

JUDGE.—Yet she must be tortured.

CAMILLO.—I would as soon have tortured mine own nephew

(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!

JUDGE.—Well, be her purity on your head, my Lord,

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.

BEATRICE.—What evidence? This man’s?

JUDGE.—Even so.

BEATRICE(to MARZIO).—Come near. And who art thou thus chosen forth

Out of the multitude of living men

To kill the innocent?

MARZIO.—I am Marzio,

Thy father’s vassal.

BEATRICE.—Fix thine eyes on mine;

Answer to what I ask.

I prithee mark

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 MARZIO.)What! wilt thou say

That I did murder my own father?

MARZIO.—Oh!

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!

BEATRICE.—My Lords, if by my nature I had been

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 MARZIO.)And thou …

MARZIO.—Oh, spare me! Speak to me no more!

That stern yet piteous look, those solemn tones,

Wound worse than torture.

(To the JUDGES.)I have told it all;

For pity’s sake lead me away to death.

CAMILLO.—Guards, lead him nearer the Lady Beatrice;

He shrinks from her regard like autumn’s leaf

From the keen breath of the serenest north.

BEATRICE.—O thou who tremblest on the giddy verge

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?

MARZIO.—Thou art not!

JUDGE.—What is this?

MARZIO.—I here declare those whom I did accuse

Are innocent. ’T is I alone am guilty.

JUDGE.—Drag him away to torments; let them be

Subtle and long drawn out, to tear the folds

Of the heart’s inmost cell. Unbind him not

Till he confess.

MARZIO.—Torture me as ye will:

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.

CAMILLO.—What say ye now, my Lords?

JUDGE.—Let tortures strain the truth till it be white

As snow thrice sifted by the frozen wind.

CAMILLO.—Yet stained with blood.

JUDGE(to BEATRICE).—Know you this paper, Lady?

BEATRICE.—Entrap me not with questions. Who stands here

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?

OFFICER.—Marzio’s dead.

JUDGE.—What did he say?

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.

JUDGE.—There remains nothing

But to apply the question to those prisoners,

Who yet remain stubborn.

CAMILLO.—I overrule

Further proceedings, and in the behalf

Of these most innocent and noble persons

Will use my interest with the Holy Father.

JUDGE.—Let the Pope’s pleasure then be done. Meanwhile

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.