Explore "Cenciaja" by Robert Browning on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Ogni cencio vuol entrare in bucato. -- _Italian Proverb._
May I print, Shelley, how it came to pass / That when your Beatrice seemed -- by lapse / Of many a long month since her sentence fell -- / Assured of pardon for the parricide -- / By intercession of stanch friends, or, say, / By certain pricks of conscience in the Pope / Conniver at Francesco Cenci's guilt, -- / Suddenly all things changed and Clement grew / "Stern," as you state, "nor to be moved nor bent, / But said these three words coldly '_She must die; _' / Subjoining '_Pardon? Paolo Santa Croce_ / _Murdered his mother also yestereve._ / _And he is fled: she shall not flee at least! _" / -- So, to the letter, sentence was fulfilled? / Shelley, may I condense verbosity / That lies before me, into some few words / Of English, and illustrate your superb / Achievement by a rescued anecdote, / No great things, only new and true beside? / As if some mere familiar of a house / Should venture to accost the group at gaze / Before its Titian, famed the wide world through, / And supplement such pictured masterpiece / By whisper, "Searching in the archives here, / I found the reason of the Lady's fate, / And how by accident it came to pass / She wears the halo and displays the palm: / Who, haply, else had never suffered -- no, / Nor graced our gallery, by consequence. " / Who loved the work would like the little news: / Who lauds your poem lends an ear to me / Relating how the penalty was paid / By one Marchese dell' Oriolo, called / Onofrio Santa Croce otherwise, / For his complicity in matricide / With Paolo his own brother, -- he whose crime / And flight induced "those three words -- She must die. " / Thus I unroll you then the manuscript.