Vesalius In Zante Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCDAE FGHIJ KLMNOPQK RSTUTVWNJVNXYJTVZA2B 2 C2AD2XE2F2XG2K H2I2J2K2L2M2N2O2JP2Q 2R2YS2CT2U2V2W2W2MW2 X2I2Y2JOZ2IK A3B3W2C3PD3E3F3G3H3I 3 LJ3K3VL3W2AQIM3W2S2F 2UZN3AW2O3P3Q3 R3S3W2T3U3V3W3W2U2F2 JU2X3W2JMUAJU2U2U2W2 U2W2B3 IW2JW2W2U2U2U2SY3W2Z 3W2U2Y2A4W2B4AB2U2 C4W2IU2K2W2JD4U2W2U2 K2XIU2U2JU2W2W2E4W2 W2OK2F4W2G4H4W2W2W2U 2U2W2W2W2W2I4E3U2U2J 4U2Y2W2K4IW2W2U2W2L4 X2W2W2D4U2W2U2U2K2SU 2W2U2W2U2W2X3B3 U2U2W2B4Set wide the window Let me drink the day | A |
I loved light ever light in eye and brain | B |
No tapers mirrored in long palace floors | C |
Nor dedicated depths of silent aisles | D |
But just the common dusty wind blown day | A |
That roofs earth's millions | E |
- | |
O too long I walked | F |
In that thrice sifted air that princes breathe | G |
Nor felt the heaven wide jostling of the winds | H |
And all the ancient outlawry of earth | I |
Now let me breathe and see | J |
- | |
This pilgrimage | K |
They call a penance let them call it that | L |
I set my face to the East to shrive my soul | M |
Of mortal sin So be it If my blade | N |
Once questioned living flesh if once I tore | O |
The pages of the Book in opening it | P |
See what the torn page yielded ere the light | Q |
Had paled its buried characters and judge | K |
- | |
The girl they brought me pinioned hand and foot | R |
In catalepsy say I should have known | S |
That trance had not yet darkened into death | T |
And held my scalpel Well suppose I knew | U |
Sum up the facts her life against her death | T |
Her life The scum upon the pools of pleasure | V |
Breeds such by thousands And her death Perchance | W |
The obolus to appease the ferrying Shade | N |
And waft her into immortality | J |
Think what she purchased with that one heart flutter | V |
That whispered its deep secret to my blade | N |
For just because her bosom fluttered still | X |
It told me more than many rifled graves | Y |
Because I spoke too soon she answered me | J |
Her vain life ripened to this bud of death | T |
As the whole plant is forced into one flower | V |
All her blank past a scroll on which God wrote | Z |
His word of healing so that the poor flesh | A2 |
Which spread death living died to purchase life | B2 |
- | |
Ah no The sin I sinned was mine not theirs | C2 |
Not that they sent me forth to wash away | A |
None of their tariffed frailties but a deed | D2 |
So far beyond their grasp of good or ill | X |
That set to weigh it in the Church's balance | E2 |
Scarce would they know which scale to cast it in | F2 |
But I I know I sinned against my will | X |
Myself my soul the God within the breast | G2 |
Can any penance wash such sacrilege | K |
- | |
When I was young in Venice years ago | H2 |
I walked the hospice with a Spanish monk | I2 |
A solitary cloistered in high thoughts | J2 |
The great Loyola whom I reckoned then | K2 |
A mere refurbisher of faded creeds | L2 |
Expert to edge anew the arms of faith | M2 |
As who should say a Galenist resolved | N2 |
To hold the walls of dogma against fact | O2 |
Experience insight his own self if need be | J |
Ah how I pitied him mine own eyes set | P2 |
Straight in the level beams of Truth who groped | Q2 |
In error's old deserted catacombs | R2 |
And lit his tapers upon empty graves | Y |
Ay but he held his own the monk more man | S2 |
Than any laurelled cripple of the wars | C |
Charles's spent shafts for what he willed he willed | T2 |
As those do that forerun the wheels of fate | U2 |
Not take their dust that force the virgin hours | V2 |
Hew life into the likeness of themselves | W2 |
And wrest the stars from their concurrences | W2 |
So firm his mould but mine the ductile soul | M |
That wears the livery of circumstance | W2 |
And hangs obsequious on its suzerain's eye | X2 |
For who rules now The twilight flitting monk | I2 |
Or I that took the morning like an Alp | Y2 |
He held his own I let mine slip from me | J |
The birthright that no sovereign can restore | O |
And so ironic Time beholds us now | Z2 |
Master and slave he lord of half the earth | I |
I ousted from my narrow heritage | K |
- | |
For there's the sting My kingdom knows me not | A3 |
Reach me that folio my usurper's title | B3 |
Fallopius reigning vice nay not so | W2 |
Successor not usurper I am dead | C3 |
My throne stood empty he was heir to it | P |
Ay but who hewed his kingdom from the waste | D3 |
Cleared inch by inch the acres for his sowing | E3 |
Won back for man that ancient fief o' the Church | F3 |
His body Who flung Galen from his seat | G3 |
And founded the great dynasty of truth | H3 |
In error's central kingdom | I3 |
- | |
Ask men that | L |
And see their answer just a wondering stare | J3 |
To learn things were not always as they are | K3 |
The very fight forgotten with the fighter | V |
Already grows the moss upon my grave | L3 |
Ay and so meet hold fast to that Vesalius | W2 |
They only who re conquer day by day | A |
The inch of ground they camped on over night | Q |
Have right of foothold on this crowded earth | I |
I left mine own he seized it with it went | M3 |
My name my fame my very self it seems | W2 |
Till I am but the symbol of a man | S2 |
The sign board creaking o'er an empty inn | F2 |
He names me true Oh give the door its due | U |
I entered by Only I pray you note | Z |
Had door been none a shoulder thrust of mine | N3 |
Had breached the crazy wall he seems to say | A |
So meet and yet a word of thanks of praise | W2 |
Of recognition that the clue was found | O3 |
Seized followed clung to by some hand now dust | P3 |
Had this obscured his quartering of my shield | Q3 |
- | |
How the one weakness stirs again I thought | R3 |
I had done with that old thirst for gratitude | S3 |
That lured me to the desert years ago | W2 |
I did my work and was not that enough | T3 |
No but because the idlers sneered and shrugged | U3 |
The envious whispered the traducers lied | V3 |
And friendship doubted where it should have cheered | W3 |
I flung aside the unfinished task sought praise | W2 |
Outside my soul's esteem and learned too late | U2 |
That victory like God's kingdom is within | F2 |
Nay let the folio rest upon my knee | J |
I do not feel its weight Ingratitude | U2 |
The hurrying traveller does not ask the name | X3 |
Of him who points him on his way and this | W2 |
Fallopius sits in the mid heart of me | J |
Because he keeps his eye upon the goal | M |
Cuts a straight furrow to the end in view | U |
Cares not who oped the fountain by the way | A |
But drinks to draw fresh courage for his journey | J |
That was the lesson that Ignatius taught | U2 |
The one I might have learned from him but would not | U2 |
That we are but stray atoms on the wind | U2 |
A dancing transiency of summer eves | W2 |
Till we become one with our purpose merged | U2 |
In that vast effort of the race which makes | W2 |
Mortality immortal | B3 |
- | |
He that loseth | I |
His life shall find it so the Scripture runs | W2 |
But I so hugged the fleeting self in me | J |
So loved the lovely perishable hours | W2 |
So kissed myself to death upon their lips | W2 |
That on one pyre we perished in the end | U2 |
A grimmer bonfire than the Church e'er lit | U2 |
Yet all was well or seemed so till I heard | U2 |
That younger voice an echo of my own | S |
And like a wanderer turning to his home | Y3 |
Who finds another on the hearth and learns | W2 |
Half dazed that other is his actual self | Z3 |
In name and claim as the whole parish swears | W2 |
So strangely suddenly stood dispossessed | U2 |
Of that same self I had sold all to keep | Y2 |
A baffled ghost that none would see or hear | A4 |
Vesalius Who's Vesalius This Fallopius | W2 |
It is who dragged the Galen idol down | B4 |
Who rent the veil of flesh and forced a way | A |
Into the secret fortalice of life | B2 |
Yet it was I that bore the brunt of it | U2 |
- | |
Well better so Better awake and live | C4 |
My last brief moment as the man I was | W2 |
Than lapse from life's long lethargy to death | I |
Without one conscious interval At least | U2 |
I repossess my past am once again | K2 |
No courtier med'cining the whims of kings | W2 |
In muffled palace chambers but the free | J |
Friendless Vesalius with his back to the wall | D4 |
And all the world against him O for that | U2 |
Best gift of all Fallopius take my thanks | W2 |
That and much more At first when Padua wrote | U2 |
Master Fallopius dead resume again | K2 |
The chair even he could not completely fill | X |
And see what usury age shall take of youth | I |
In honours forfeited why just at first | U2 |
I was quite simply credulously glad | U2 |
To think the old life stood ajar for me | J |
Like a fond woman's unforgetting heart | U2 |
But now that death waylays me now I know | W2 |
This isle is the circumference of my days | W2 |
And I shall die here in a little while | E4 |
So also best Fallopius | W2 |
- | |
For I see | W2 |
The gods may give anew but not restore | O |
And though I think that in my chair again | K2 |
I might have argued my supplanters wrong | F4 |
In this or that this Cesalpinus say | W2 |
With all his hot foot blundering in the dark | G4 |
Fabricius with his over cautious clutch | H4 |
On Galen systole and diastole | W2 |
Of Truth's mysterious heart yet other ways | W2 |
It may be that this dying serves the cause | W2 |
For Truth stays not to build her monument | U2 |
For this or that co operating hand | U2 |
But props it with her servants' failures nay | W2 |
Cements its courses with their blood and brains | W2 |
A living substance that shall clinch her walls | W2 |
Against the assaults of time Already see | W2 |
Her scaffold rises on my hidden toil | I4 |
I but the accepted premiss whence must spring | E3 |
The airy structure of her argument | U2 |
Nor could the bricks it rests on serve to build | U2 |
The crowning finials I abide her law | J4 |
A different substance for a different end | U2 |
Content to know I hold the building up | Y2 |
Though men agape at dome and pinnacles | W2 |
Guess not the whole must crumble like a dream | K4 |
But for that buried labour underneath | I |
Yet Padua I had still my word to say | W2 |
Let others say it Ah but will they guess | W2 |
Just the one word Nay Truth is many tongued | U2 |
What one man failed to speak another finds | W2 |
Another word for May not all converge | L4 |
In some vast utterance of which you and I | X2 |
Fallopius were but halting syllables | W2 |
So knowledge come no matter how it comes | W2 |
No matter whence the light falls so it fall | D4 |
Truth's way not mine that I whose service failed | U2 |
In action yet may make amends in praise | W2 |
Fabricius Cesalpinus say your word | U2 |
Not yours or mine but Truth's as you receive it | U2 |
You miss a point I saw See others then | K2 |
Misread my meaning Yet expound your own | S |
Obscure one space I cleared The sky is wide | U2 |
And you may yet uncover other stars | W2 |
For thus I read the meaning of this end | U2 |
There are two ways of spreading light to be | W2 |
The candle or the mirror that reflects it | U2 |
I let my wick burn out there yet remains | W2 |
To spread an answering surface to the flame | X3 |
That others kindle | B3 |
- | |
Turn me in my bed | U2 |
The window darkens as the hours swing round | U2 |
But yonder look the other casement glows | W2 |
Let me face westward as my sun goes down | B4 |
Edith Wharton
(1)
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