Perchance thou'lt urge: "Think how thy life did flit;
Nor is it true the jail can teach thee lore,
To fill thy breast and heart with strength of it!"
Nay, for myself I'll ever praise it more:
Yet would I like one law passed—that the man
Whose acts deserve it should not scape this score.
Whoso hath gotten the poor folk in ban,
I'd make him learn those lessons of the jail;
For then he'd know all a good ruler can:
He'd act like men who weigh by reason's scale,
Nor dare to swerve from truth and right aside,
Nor would confusion in the realm prevail.
While I was bound in prison to abide,
Foison of priests, friars, soldiers I could see;
But those who best deserved it least I spied.
Ah! could you know what rage came over me,
When for such rogues the jail relaxed her hold!
This makes one weep that one was born to be!
I'll add no more. Now I'm become fine gold,
Such gold as none flings lightly to the wind,
Fit for the best work eyes shall e'er behold.
Another point hath passed into my mind,
Which I've not told thee, Luca; where I wrote
Was in the book of one our kith and kind.[1]
There down the margins I was wont to note
Each torment grim that crushed me like a vice:
The paste my hurrying thoughts could hardly float.
[ 80 ]
- ↑ Un nostra parente. He says above that he wrote the Capitolo on the leaves of his Bible.
