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I.
IT WAS roses, roses, all the way,With myrtle mixed in my path like mad: The house-roofs seemed to heave and sway, The church-spires flamed, such flags they had, A year ago on this very day.
II.
The air broke into a mist with bells,The old walls rocked with the crowd and cries. Had I said, “Good folk, mere noise repels— But give me your sun from yonder skies!” They had answered, “And afterward, what else?”
III.
Alack, it was I who leaped at the sunTo give it my loving friends to keep. Nought man could do, have I left undone: And you see my harvest, what I reap This very day, now a year is run.
IV.
There’s nobody on the house-tops now—Just a palsied few at the windows set— For the best of the sight is, all allow, At the Shambles’ Gate—or, better yet, By the very scaffold’s foot, I trow.
V.
I go in the rain, and, more than needs,A rope cuts both my wrists behind; And I think, by the feel, my forehead bleeds, For they fling, whoever has a mind, Stones at me for my year’s misdeeds.
VI.
Thus I entered Brescia, and thus I go!In such triumphs, people have dropped down dead. “Paid by the World,—what dost thou owe Me?”—God might question: but now instead, ’Tis God shall requite! I am safer so. |