His lips could hardly speak,
And--mark you--neither rack, nor cord had touched him.
Out of the Inquisition's five degrees
Of rigor: first, the public threat of torture;
Second, the repetition of the threat
Within the torture-chamber, where we show
The instruments of torture to the accused;
Third, the undressing and the binding; fourth,
Laying him on the rack; then, fifth and last,
Torture, _territio realis_; out of these,
Your Galileo reached the second only,
When, clapping both his hands against his sides,
He whined about a rupture that forbade
These extreme courses. Great heroic soul
Dropped like a cur into a sea of terror,
He sank right under. Then he came up gasping,
Ready to swear, deny, abjure, recant,
Anything, everything! Foolish, weak, old man,
Who had been so proud of his discoveries,
And dared to teach his betters. How we grinned
To see him kneeling there and whispering, thus,
Through his white lips, bending his old grey head:
_"I, Galileo Galilei, born
A Florentine, now seventy years of age,
Kneeling before you, having before mine eyes,
And touching with my hands the Holy Gospels,
Swear that I always have believed, do now,
And always will believe what Holy Church
Has held and preached and taught me to believe;
And now, whereas I rightly am accused,
Of heresy, having falsely held the sun
To be the centre of our Universe,
And also that this earth is not the centre,
But moves;
I most illogically desire
Completely to expunge this dark suspicion,
So reasonably conceived.
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