Vesalius In Zante Poem Rhyme Scheme

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Edith Wharton

Vesalius In Zante Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis

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Set 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