Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/490

 474 CRITICAL STUDIES To-morrow her persecutor, — composite, he, As becomes who must meet such various calls- How the Fisc vindicates Pompilia's fame." Then we have the manner of the judgment of the Pope on the appeal : — " Then must speak Guido yet a second time, Satan's old saw being apt here — skin for skin. All that a man hath will he give for life. While life was graspable and gainable, free To bird-like buzz her wings round Guide's brow. Not much truth stiffened out the web of words He wove to catch her : when away she flew And death came, death's breath rivelled up the lies. Left bare the metal thread, the fibre fine Of truth i' the spinning : the true words come last. How Guido, to another purpose quite. Speaks and despairs, the last night of his life. In that New Prison by Castle Angelo At the bridge-foot : the same man, another voice. The tiger-cat screams now, that whined before, That pried and tried and trod so gingerly. Till in its silkiness the trap-teeth join ; Then you know how the bristling fury foams." The closing section, called "The Book and the Ring," is an epilogue corresponding to the prologue of "The Ring and the Book;" each concluding with an impassioned apostrophe to the poet's Lyric Love, half angel and half bird, buried there in Florence some years before. As I have said already, these iterations and reitera- tions of the same terrible story, told by so many typical and historical personages as beheld from so