1.
Gr-r-r—there go, my heart’s abhorrence!Water your damned flower-pots, do!If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence,God’s blood, would not mine kill you!What? your myrtle-bush wants trimming?Oh, that rose has prior claims—Needs its leaden vase filled brimming?Hell dry you up with its flames!
2.
At the meal we sit together:‘Salve tibi!’ I must hearWise talk of the kind of weather,Sort of season, time of year:‘Not a plenteous cork-crop: scarcelyDare we hope oak-galls, I doubt:What’s the Latin name for “parsley”?’What’s the Greek name for Swine’s Snout?
3.
Whew! We’ll have our platter burnished,Laid with care on our own shelf!With a fire-new spoon we’re furnished,And a goblet for ourself,Rinsed like something sacrificialEre ’tis fit to touch our chaps—Marked with L. for our initial!(He-he! There his lily snaps!)
4.
SAINT, forsooth! While brown DoloresSquats outside the Convent bankWith Sanchicha, telling stories,Steeping tresses in the tank,Blue-black, lustrous, thick like horse-hairs,—Can’t I see his dead eye glow,Bright as ‘twere a Barbary corsair’s?(That is, if he’d let it show!)
5.
When he finishes refection,Knife and fork he never laysCross-wise, to my recollection,As do I, in Jesu’s praise.I the Trinity illustrate,Drinking watered orange-pulp—In three sips the Arian frustrate;While he drains his at one gulp.
— St. 5. the Arian: a follower of Arius (died 336 A.D.), who denied that the Son was co-essential and co-eternal with the Father.
6.
Oh, those melons? If he’s ableWe’re to have a feast! so nice!One goes to the Abbot’s table,All of us get each a slice.How go on your flowers? None double?Not one fruit-sort can you spy?Strange!—And I, too, at such trouble,Keep them close-nipped on the sly!
7.
There’s a great text in Galatians,Once you trip on it, entailsTwenty-nine distinct damnations,One sure, if another fails:If I trip him just a-dying,Sure of heaven as sure can be,Spin him round and send him flyingOff to hell, a Manichee?
— St. 7. text in Galatians: chap. 5, vv. 19–21, where are enumerated “the works of the flesh”. There are seventeen named; he uses twenty-nine indefinitely; it’s common in French to use trente-six (36) for any pretty big number. If I trip him: What if I; and so in next stanza. a Manichee: a follower of Mani, who aimed to unite Parseeism, or Parsism, with Christianity.
8.
Or, my scrofulous French novelOn gray paper with blunt type!Simply glance at it, you grovelHand and foot in Belial’s gripe:If I double down its pagesAt the woful sixteenth print,When he gathers his greengages,Ope a sieve and slip it in’t?
9.
Or, there’s Satan!—one might venturePledge one’s soul to him, yet leaveSuch a flaw in the indentureAs he’d miss till, past retrieve,Blasted lay that rose-acaciaWe’re so proud of! Hy, Zy, Hine…‘St, there’s Vespers! Plena gratiaAve, Virgo! Gr-r-r—you swine!
— St. 9. Hy, Zy, Hine: represent the sound of the vesper bell.
Holy-Cross Day.
On which the Jews were forced to attend an Annual Christian Sermon in Rome.
— * “By a bull of Gregory XIII. in the year 1584, all Jews above the age of twelve years were compelled to listen every week to a sermon from a Christian priest; usually an exposition of some passages of the Old Testament, and especially those relating to the Messiah, from the Christian point of view. This burden is not yet wholly removed from them; and to this day, several times in the course of a year, a Jewish congregation is gathered together in the church of S. Angelo in Pescheria, and constrained to listen to a homily from a Dominican friar, to whom, unless his zeal have eaten up his good feelings and his good taste, the ceremony must be as painful as to his hearers. In the same spirit of vulgar persecution, there is upon the gable of a church, opposite one of the gates of the Ghetto, a fresco painting of the Crucifixion, and, underneath, an inscription in Hebrew and Latin, from the 2d and 3d verses of the 65th chapter of Isaiah— ‘I have spread out my hands all the day unto a rebellious people, which walketh in a way that was not good, after their own thoughts; a people that provoketh me to anger continually to my face.’” —George S. Hillard’s Six Months in Italy. (1853.) —
{“Now was come about Holy-Cross Day, and now must my lord preach his first sermon to the Jews: as it was of old cared for in the merciful bowels of the Church, that, so to speak, a crumb, at least, from her conspicuous table here in Rome, should be, though but once yearly, cast to the famishing dogs, under-trampled and bespitten-upon beneath the feet of the guests. And a moving sight in truth, this, of so many of the besotted blind restif and ready-to-perish Hebrews! now maternally brought —nay (for He saith, ‘Compel them to come in’), haled, as it were, by the head and hair, and against their obstinate hearts, to partake of the heavenly grace. What awakening, what striving with tears, what working of a yeasty conscience! Nor was my lord wanting to himself on so apt an occasion; witness the abundance of conversions which did incontinently reward him: though not to my lord be altogether the glory.”—Diary by the Bishop’s Secretary, 1600.}
What the Jews really said, on thus being driven to church, was rather to this effect:—
1.
Fee, faw, fum! bubble and squeak!Blessedest Thursday’s the fat of the week.Rumble and tumble, sleek and rough,Stinking and savory, smug and gruff,Take the church-road, for the bell’s due chimeGives us the summons—’tis sermon-time!
2.
Boh, here’s Barnabas! Job, that’s you?Up stumps Solomon—bustling too?Shame, man! greedy beyond your yearsTo handsel the bishop’s shaving-shears?Fair play’s a jewel! Leave friends in the lurch?Stand on a line ere you start for the church!
3.
Higgledy piggledy, packed we lie,Rats in a hamper, swine in a sty,Wasps in a bottle, frogs in a sieve,Worms in a carcass, fleas in a sleeve.Hist! square shoulders, settle your thumbsAnd buzz for the bishop—here he comes.
4.
Bow, wow, wow—a bone for the dog!I liken his Grace to an acorned hog.What, a boy at his side, with the bloom of a lass,To help and handle my lord’s hour-glass!Didst ever behold so lithe a chine?His cheek hath laps like a fresh-singed swine.
5.
Aaron’s asleep—shove hip to haunch,Or somebody deal him a dig in the paunch!Look at the purse with the tassel and knob,And the gown with the angel and thingumbob!What’s he at, quotha? reading his text!Now you’ve his curtsey—and what comes next?
6.
See to our converts—you doomed black dozen—No stealing away—nor cog nor cozen!You five, that were thieves, deserve it fairly;You seven, that were beggars, will live less sparely;You took your turn and dipped in the hat,Got fortune—and fortune gets you; mind that!
7.
Give your first groan—compunction’s at work;And soft! from a Jew you mount to a Turk.Lo, Micah,—the selfsame beard on chinHe was four times already converted in!Here’s a knife, clip quick—it’s a sign of grace—Or he ruins us all with his hanging-face.
8.
Whom now is the bishop a-leering at?I know a point where his text falls pat.I’ll tell him to-morrow, a word just nowWent to my heart and made me vowTo meddle no more with the worst of trades:Let somebody else play his serenades!
9.
Groan all together now, whee—hee—hee!It’s a-work, it’s a-work, ah, woe is me!It began, when a herd of us, picked and placed,Were spurred through the Corso, stripped to the waist;Jew brutes, with sweat and blood well spentTo usher in worthily Christian Lent.
10.
It grew, when the hangman entered our bounds,Yelled, pricked us out to his church like hounds:It got to a pitch, when the hand indeedWhich gutted my purse, would throttle my creed:And it overflows, when, to even the odd,Men I helped to their sins, help me to their God.
11.
But now, while the scapegoats leave our flock,And the rest sit silent and count the clock,Since forced to muse the appointed timeOn these precious facts and truths sublime,—Let us fitly employ it, under our breath,In saying Ben Ezra’s Song of Death.
12.
For Rabbi Ben Ezra, the night he died,Called sons and sons’ sons to his side,And spoke, “This world has been harsh and strange;Something is wrong: there needeth a change.But what, or where? at the last or first?In one point only we sinned, at worst.
—St. 12. Rabbi Ben Ezra: see biographical sketch subjoined tothe Argument of the Monologue entitled ‘Rabbi Ben Ezra’.
13.
“The Lord will have mercy on Jacob yet,And again in his border see Israel set.When Judah beholds Jerusalem,The stranger-seed shall be joined to them:To Jacob’s house shall the Gentiles cleave,So the Prophet saith and his sons believe.
14.
“Ay, the children of the chosen raceShall carry and bring them to their place:In the land of the Lord shall lead the same,Bondsmen and handmaids. Who shall blame,When the slaves enslave, the oppressed ones o’erThe oppressor triumph for evermore!
15.
“God spoke, and gave us the word to keep:Bade never fold the hands nor sleep‘Mid a faithless world,—at watch and ward,Till Christ at the end relieve our guard.By his servant Moses the watch was set:Though near upon cock-crow, we keep it yet.
16.
“Thou! if thou wast he, who at mid-watch came,By the starlight, naming a dubious name!And if, too heavy with sleep—too rashWith fear—O thou, if that martyr-gashFell on thee coming to take thine own,And we gave the Cross, when we owed the Throne—
17.
“Thou art the Judge. We are bruised thus.But, the Judgment over, join sides with us!Thine too is the cause! and not more thineThan ours, is the work of these dogs and swine,Whose life laughs through and spits at their creed,Who maintain thee in word, and defy thee in deed!
18.
“We withstood Christ then? Be mindful howAt least we withstand Barabbas now!Was our outrage sore? But the worst we spared,To have called these—Christians, had we dared!Let defiance to them pay mistrust of thee,And Rome make amends for Calvary!
19.
“By the torture, prolonged from age to age,By the infamy, Israel’s heritage,By the Ghetto’s plague, by the garb’s disgrace,By the badge of shame, by the felon’s place,By the branding-tool, the bloody whip,And the summons to Christian fellowship,—
— St. 19. Ghetto: the Jews’ quarter in Rome, Venice, and other cities. The name is supposed to be derived from the Hebrew ‘ghet’, meaning division, separation, divorce.
20.
“We boast our proof that at least the JewWould wrest Christ’s name from the Devil’s crew.Thy face took never so deep a shadeBut we fought them in it, God our aid!A trophy to bear, as we march, thy bandSouth, East, and on to the Pleasant Land!”
{The late Pope abolished this bad business of the sermon.—R. B.}
— The late Pope: Gregory XVI.