There was a father who had children twain; The younger son began to speak and pray That he might take his share, for he was fain, Furnished therewith, from home to wend his way: The father gently urged him to remain, But at the last was bounden to obey: Far, far away he roamed, and spent his all, Sad wretch, on carnal joys and prodigal.
But when he came to want, repenting sore, Unto his father, all ashamed, he knelt; His father clothed him with new robes, and bore Even more tender love than first he felt: So doth high God, who lives for evermore, Unto the souls that with repentance melt; Let them but seek his love with contrite will, He is most merciful, and pardons still.
Soul, thou hast wounded many hearts, I wis, Dwelling in delicate and vain delight; With many a lover thou wouldst toy and kiss And art o'erfull of evil appetite; Thy heart is big with strifes and jealousies: Turn unto me; I wait to wash thee white; That with the rest thy talent thou mayst double, And dwell with them in heaven secure from trouble.
After the blessing of Jesus, Magdalen, weeping, and with her head covered, can have no rest for the great confusion that she felt; and all the people wept, and in great astonishment were waiting agaze to see what should ensue.
_O alma peccatrice, che farai?_--Christ's voice with its recurrences of gravely sweet persuasion melts Magdalen's heart. She may not speak one word, until her sister has led her home and comforted her a space. Then she answers:
Deh, priega Iddio che m'allumini il core!
After this, left alone with her own soul, awakened to the purer consciousness that Christ has stirred, she takes the box of ointment, and, despoiled of all her goodly raiment, with her hair disheveled, goes to the house of the Pharisee. There at last, with the breaking of the alabaster, she dissolves in tears, and her heart finds peace. In these scenes, if anywhere, we have the stuff from which the drama might have been evolved. Magdalen is a living woman, such as Palma might have painted; and Christ is a real man gifted with power to penetrate the soul.
The _Figliuol Prodigo_ illustrates the same effort on the poet's part to steep an old-world story in the vivid colors of to-day.[427] In the Prodigal himself we find a coarse-hearted villain, like Hogarth's Idle Apprentice--vain, silly, lustful, gluttonous, careless of the honor and love that belong to him in his father's home. The scenes with the innkeeper, the gamblers, and the ruffians, among whom he runs to ruin, portray the vulgar dissipations of Florence, and justify the common identification of taverns with places of ill-fame.[428] There is a touch of true pathos at the end of the play in the grief of the father who has lost his son. The conflict of feelings in the heart of the elder brother, vexed at first with the prodigal's reception, but melting into love and pity at the fervor of his penitence, is also not without dramatic spirit. At the very end "a boy with the lyre" enters and "speaks the moral of the parable."[429]