Epigraph
XVI
One is incisive, corrosive;
Two retorts, nettled, curt, crepitant;
Three makes rejoinder, expansive, explosive;
Four overbears them all, strident and strepitant:
Five... O Danaides, O Sieve!
XVII
Now, they ply axes and crowbars;
Now, they prick pins at a tissue
Fine as a skein of the casuist Escobar’s
Worked on the bone of a lie. To what issue?
Where is our gain at the Two-bars?
XVIII
Est fuga, volvitur rota.
On we drift: where looms the dim port?
One, Two, Three, Four, Five, contribute their quota;
Something is gained, if one caught but the import—
Show it us, Hughes of Saxe-Gotha!
R. Browning, Master Hughes of Saxe-Gotha