The truth his eyes have seen.
You know my father,
You know me, too. You never will believe
That he and I are enemies of the faith.
Could I, who put away all earthly love,
Deny the Cross to which I nailed this flesh?
Could he, who, on the night when all those heavens
Opened above us, with their circling worlds,
Knelt with me, crushed beneath that weight of glory,
Forget the Maker of that glory now?
You'll not believe it. Neither would the Church,
Had not his enemies poisoned all the springs
And fountain-heads of truth. It is not Rome
That summons him, but Magini, Sizy, Scheiner,
Lorini, all the blind, pedantic crew
That envy him his fame, and hate his works
For dwarfing theirs.
Must such things always be
When truth is born?
Only five nights ago we walked together,
My father and I, here in the Convent garden;
And, as the dusk turned everything to dreams,
We dreamed together of his work well done
And happiness to be. We did not dream
That even then, muttering above his book,
His enemies, those enemies whom the truth
Stings into hate, were plotting to destroy him.
Yet something shadowed him. I recall his words--
"The grapes are ripening. See, Celeste, how black
And heavy. We shall have good wine this year,"--