Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/478

462 Husbands may kill adulterous wives, yet 'scape The customary forfeit.'

Word for word, So ran the title-page: murder, or else Legitimate punishment of the other crime, Accounted murder by mistake,—just that And no more, in a Latin cramp enough When the law had her eloquence to launch. But interfilleted with Italian streaks When testimony stooped to mother-tongue,— That, was this old square yellow book about."

Having secured his prize, the poet at once began reading it, and read on, though his path grew perilous among the piles of straw-work, the multitudinous upholstery and cast clothes of the square:—

Still I read on, from written title-page To written index, on, through street and street, At the Strozzi, at the Pillar, at the Bridge; Till, by the time I stood at home again In Casa Guidi, by Felice Church, Under the doorway where the black begins With the first stone slab of the staircase cold, I had mastered the contents, knew the whole truth Gathered together, bound up in this book."

This was swift mastery, but swifter follows:—

I fused my live soul and that inert stuff, Before attempting smithcraft, on the night After the day when—truth thus grasped and gained— The book was shut and done with and laid by."

He stepped out on the narrow terrace (to live in fame with Casa Guidi Windows—one house with a double immortality!) built over the street and opposite Felice Church, lighted for festival and filled with clear