No More Learning

This they had served about a neighbouring fountain,
Screened from the sun by an o'ershadowing mountain.

XXX
This spring was one of those four fountains rare,
Of those in France produced by Merlin's sleight;
Encompassed round about with marble fair,
Shining and polished, and then milk more white.
There in the stone choice figures chisseled were,
By that magician's godlike labour dight;
Save voice was wanting, these you might have thought
Were living and with nerve and spirit fraught.

XXXI
Here, to appearance, from the forest prest
A cruel Beast and hideous to the eye,
With teeth of wolf, an ass's head and crest,
A carcass with long famine lean and dry,
And lion's claws; a fox in all the rest:
Which seemed to ravage France and Italy,
And Spain and England's desolated strands,
Europe and Asia, and in fine all lands.

XXXII
The beast the low and those of proudest port
Had slain or maimed throughout this earthly ball;
Yea, fiercest seemed on those of noble sort,
Sovereign and satrap, prince and peer, to fall;
And made most havoc in the Roman court;
For it had slaughtered Pope and Cardinal:
Had filled St. Peter's beauteous seat with scathe,
And brought foul scandal on the HOLY FAITH.

XXXIII
Whate'er she touches, wall or rampire steep,
Goes to the ground' where'er the monster wends,
Each fortress opens; neither castle-keep,
Nor city from her rage its wealth defends.
Honours divine as well that Beast would reap,
It seems (while the besotted rabble bends)
And claim withal, as to its keeping given,
The sacred keys which open Hell and Heaven.

XXXIV
Approaching next, is seen a cavalier,
His temples circled with imperial bay;
Three youths with him in company appear,
With golden lilies wrought in their array:
A lion seems against that monster drear
To issue, with the same device as they:
The name of these are on the marble read,
Some on their skirt, some written overhead.

XXXV
Of those who so against Beast advance,
One to the hilt has in his life-blood dyed
His faulchion, Francis styled the first of France;
With Austrian Maximilian at his side:
In one, who gores his gullet with the lance,
The emperor Charles the fifth is signified:
Henry the eighth of England is he hight,
Who in the monster's breast a dart has pight.

XXXVI
The TENTH, in writing, on his back displayed
The Lion, who that Beast is seen to hold
By both his ears, and him so well has bayed,
That thither troop assistants manifold.
'Twould seem the world all fear aside has laid;
And, in amendment of their errors old,
Thitherward nobles troop, but these are few;
And so that hideous Beast those hunters slew.

XXXVII
In wonder stood long time that warlike train,
Desirous, as the storied work they traced,
To know by hands of whom that Beast was slain,
Which had so many smiling lands defaced,
The names unknown to them, though figured plain
Upon the marble which that fountain cased:
They one another prayed, if any guessed
That story, he would tell it to the rest.

XXXVIII
Vivian on Malagigi turned his eyes,
Who listening stood this while, yet spake he nought.
"With thee," he cried, "to tell the meaning lies,
Who are they, by whose darts and lances dies
That shouldst by what I see in this be taught:
The hideous monster, that to bay is brought?
"
-- And Malagigi -- "Hitherto their glory
No author has consigned to living story.

XXXIX
"The chiefs whose names are graved upon the stone,
Not yet have moved upon this worldly stage;
But will within seven hundred years be known,
To the great honour of a future age.
What time king Arthur filled the British throne,
This fountain Merlin made, enchanter sage;
Who things to come upon the marble fair
Made sculpture by a cunning artist's care.

XL
"This Beast, when weights and measures first were found,
Came out of nether hell; when on the plain,
Common before, men fixed the landmark's bound,
And fashioned written pacts with jealous pain;
Yet walked not every where, at first, her round:
Unvisited she left yet many a reign:
Through diverse places in our time she wends;
But the vile rabble and the crowd offends.

XLI
"From the beginning even to our day,
Aye has that monster grown, and aye will grow;
And till much time be past will grow alway:
Was never mightier, nor worse cause of woe.
That Python, oft the theme of ancient lay,
So passing wonderful and fierce in show,
Came not by half this loathsome monster nigh,
In all its foulness and deformity.

XLII
"Dread desolation shall it make; nor place
Will unpolluted or untainted be;
And you in the mysterious sculptured trace
But little of its foul iniquity.
The world, when weary of imploring grace,
Those worthy peers (whose names you sculptured see,
And which shall blazing carbuncle outshine),
To succour in its utmost need combine.

XLIII
"No one shall more that cruel beast molest
Than Francis, who the realm of France will steer,
Who justly shall be forward in this quest,
Whom none shall go beyond, whom few shall peer
Since he in splendour, as in all the rest,
Wanting in worth, will many make appear
Who whilom perfect seemed; so fade and yield
All lesser glories to the sun revealed.

XLIV
"In the first year of his successful reign,
The crown yet ill secure upon his front,
He threads the Alps, and makes their labour vain,
Who would against his arms maintain the Mount.
Impelled by generous and by just disdain,
The unavenged as yet is that affront,
Which a French army suffered from their rage,
Who poured from beast-cote, field, and pasturage:

XLV
"And thence shall into the rich Lombard plain
Descend, with all the flower of France, and so
Shall break the Switzer, that henceforth in vain
Would he uplift his horn against the foe.
To the sore scandal of the Church and Spain,
And to the Florentine's much scathe and woe,
By him that famous castle shall be quelled,
Which inexpugnable whilere was held.

XLVI
"In quelling it his honoured faulchion, more
Than other arms, availing shall be found;
Which first that cruel Beast to death will gore,
The foul destroyer of each country round:
Parforce will every standard fly before
That conquering faulchion, or be cast to ground:
Nor, stormed by it, will rampart, fosse, or wall,
Secure the city, they surround, from fall.

XLVII
"Imbued with every generous quality,
Which can in great commander be combined,
-- Prudence like his who won Thrasymenae
And Trebbia's field, with Caesar's daring mind,
And Alexander's fortune, him I see;
Without which all designs are mist and wind;
Withal, so passing liberal, I in none
Mark his example or his parragon. "

XLVIII
So Malagigi to his comrades said,
And moved in them desire some name to hear
Of others, who had laid that monster dead,
Which to slay others had been used whilere.
Among the first Bernardo's name was read,
Much vaunted in the writing of the Seer:
Who said, "Through him as known as Bibbiena
As her own neighbour Florence and Siena.