When two fair ships that in one road are moored
The wave uplifts, their dipping hulls incline
This way and that together: then restored
To calm, together sleep above the brine.
Their play, their peace alike would make it seem
That the same suns upon their course must shine
But presently one seeks the ocean stream,
At anchor still the other's governance:
Or both sail diverse in an hour supreme.
So they who meet by friendship's sacred chance
Would join their courses, and together speed,
Finding no cause of sudden severance:
But Fate's deep kedge lies in life's watery breade,
Life's bellying sail is spread to destiny,
From one another those paired barks recede
Gerbert with Mano held society,
And loved him much, and seemed to hold him fast,
Making him main to all his counsels high.
Greater the marvel therefore, when he cast
On pretext false his helper from his side,
And struck him without justice at the last.
But Mano, being demanded, still replied
That Gerbert wrought by politic intent,
Which weighed with him above all things beside:
That therefore was the sentence banishment,
(To rid him thence,) and not such penalty
By which, if he had erred, he might repent:
Whence, being no more in trust, to magnify
The matter, and engrieve by words, were vain,
And better to depart indifferently
But I, against him arguing, would maintain
That Gerbert in this deed was worse to see
Than his renown, of low and captious strain.
For sometimes men that are of high degree
Carry not gentle thought in lordly vest;
And, in their office, of offence are free
Such men, perchance, from whom they have oppressed
Receiving some strong lesson, presently
Become of mien more courteous toward the rest.
But still the original baseness deep doth lie
within them: and their false conclusion is,
That since to all they now use courtesy,
And with one man alone have fallen from this,
Therefore the right has been with them alway:
The fault, before and in the strife, was his
I thought that Gerbert thus had gone astray
In Mano, and would not again repeat
For others what he sought to do and say:
But that he ne'er would from that wrong retreat,
Being puffed and swollen beyond all charity,
Though cautious grown, upon his lofty seat
But in that argument unsound was I:
For Gerbert was no churl of vulgar mind
Upraised by fortune's wheel to prelacy
Yet something was there in him that inclined
The balance against Mano in that day,
As they who end this history shall find:
For ere from Normandy he took his way,
He had secretly freed Mano from the vow
Which bound him service to the Church to pay.
Wherefore perchance less unregardful now,
When he repelled his friend so utterly
To all men's seeming, was in truth the blow
Well might he deem that he to Normandy
Would thence return: and there Joanna lay,
His loving friend, in dreary nunnery
This quittance Mano knew not, when his stay
Broke in the waters whither it was cast,
And life's new breeze blew through his anchorage bay:
But whispers rose, which o'er the trembling vast
Invited him, and caused him not to mourn
While his brave vessel clothed her rocking mast
Unto past cheer his busy mind gan turn:
Spent fires must die: new fuel verily
Wakes an old fire in other wise to burn.
But if those two had still kept company,
Neither so short had been Sylvester's date,
Nor to such end reached the knight's tragedy
But other drafts were in the book of fate.