Sordello/Book the First

BOOK THE FIRST.

Who will, may hear Sordello's story told: His story? Who believes me shall behold The man, pursue his fortunes to the end, Like me: for as the friendless-people's friend Spied from his hill-top once, despite the din And dust of multitudes, Pentapolin Named o' the Naked Arm, I single out Sordello, compassed murkily about With ravage of six long sad hundred years. Only believe me. Ye believe?

Appears Verona... Never,—I should warn you first,— Of my own choice had this, if not the worst Yet not the best expedient, served to tell A story I could body forth so well By making speak, myself kept out of view, The very man as he was wont to do, And leaving you to say the rest for him. Since, though I might be proud to see the dim Abysmal past divide its hateful surge, Letting of all men this one man emerge Because it pleased me, yet, that moment past, I should delight in watching first to last His progress as you watch it, not a whit More in the secret than yourselves who sit Fresh-chapleted to listen. But it seems Your setters-forth of unexampled themes, Makers of quite new men, producing them, Would best chalk broadly on each vesture's hem The wearer's quality; or take their stand, Motley on back and pointing-pole in hand, Beside him. So, for once I face ye, friends, Summoned together from the world's four ends, Dropped down from heaven or cast up from hell, To hear the story I propose to tell. Confess now, poets know the dragnet's trick, Catching the dead, if fate denies the quick, And shaming her; 't is not for fate to choose Silence or song because she can refuse Real eyes to glisten more, real hearts to ache Less oft, real brows turn smoother for our sake: I have experienced something of her spite; But there 's a realm wherein she has no right And I have many lovers. Say; but few Friends fate accords me? Here they are: now view The host I muster! Many a lighted face Foul with no vestige of the grave's disgrace; What else should tempt them back to taste our air Except to see how their successors fare? My audience! and they sit, each ghostly man Striving to look as living as he can, Brother by breathing brother; thou art set, Clear-witted critic, by... but I 'll not fret A wondrous soul of them, nor move death's spleen Who loves not to unlock them. Friends! I mean The living in good earnest—ye elect Chiefly for love—suppose not I reject Judicious praise, who contrary shall peep, Some fit occasion, forth, for fear ye sleep, To glean your bland approvals. Then, appear, Verona! stay—thou, spirit, come not near Now—not this time desert thy cloudy place To scare me, thus employed, with that pure face! I need not fear this audience, I make free With them, but then this is no place for thee! The thunder-phrase of the Athenian, grown Up out of memories of Marathon, Would echo like his own sword's griding screech Braying a Persian shield,—the silver speech Of Sidney's self, the starry paladin, Turn intense as a trumpet sounding in The knights to tilt,—wert thou to hear! What heart Have I to play my puppets, bear my part Before these worthies?

Lo, the past is hurled In twain: up-thrust, out-staggering on the world, Subsiding into shape, a darkness rears Its outline, kindles at the core, appears Verona. 'T is six hundred years and more Since an event. The Second Friedrich wore The purple, and the Third Honorius filled The holy chair. That autumn eve was stilled: A last remains of sunset dimly burned O'er the far forests, like a torch-flame turned By the wind back upon its bearer's hand In one long flare of crimson; as a brand, The woods beneath lay black. A single eye From all Verona cared for the soft sky. But, gathering in its ancient market-place, Talked group with restless group; and not a face But wrath made livid, for among them were Death's staunch purveyors, such as have in care To feast him. Fear had long since taken root In every breast, and now these crushed its fruit, The ripe hate, like a wine: to note the way It worked while each grew drunk! Men grave and grey Stood, with shut eyelids, rocking to and fro, Letting the silent luxury trickle slow About the hollows where a heart should be; But the young gulped with a delirious glee Some foretaste of their first debauch in blood At the fierce news: for, be it understood, Envoys apprised Verona that her prince Count Richard of Saint Boniface, joined since A year with Azzo, Este's Lord, to thrust Taurello Salinguerra, prime in trust With Ecelin Romano, from his seat Ferrara,—over zealous in the feat And stumbling on a peril unaware, Was captive, trammelled in his proper snare, They phrase it, taken by his own intrigue. Immediate succour from the Lombard League Of fifteen cities that affect the Pope, For Azzo, therefore, and his fellow-hope Of the Guelf cause, a glory overcast! Men's faces, late agape, are now aghast. "Prone is the purple pavis; Este makes "Mirth for the devil when he undertakes "To play the Ecelin; as if it cost "Merely your pushing-by to gain a post "Like his! The patron tells ye, once for all, "There be sound reasons that preferment fall "On our beloved"...

"Duke o' the Rood, why not?" Shouted an Estian, "grudge ye such a lot? "The hill-cat boasts some cunning of her own, "Some stealthy trick to better beasts unknown, "That quick with prey enough her hunger blunts, "And feeds her fat while gaunt the lion hunts."

"Taurello," quoth an envoy, "as in wane "Dwelt at Ferrara. Like an osprey fain "To fly but forced the earth his couch to make "Far inland, till his friend the tempest wake, "Waits he the Kaiser's coming; and as yet "That fast friend sleeps, and he too sleeps: but let "Only the billow freshen, and he snuffs "The aroused hurricane ere it enroughs "The sea it means to cross because of him. "Sinketh the breeze? His hope-sick eye grows dim; "Creep closer on the creature! Every day "Strengthens the Pontiff; Ecelin, they say, "Dozes now at Oliero, with dry lips "Telling upon his perished finger-tips "How many ancestors are to depose "Ere he be Satan's Viceroy when the doze "Deposits him in hell. So, Guelfs rebuilt "Their houses; not a drop of blood was spilt "When Cino Bocchimpane chanced to meet "Buccio Virtù—God's wafer, and the street "Is narrow! Tutti Santi, think, a-swarm "With Ghibellins, and yet he took no harm! "This could not last. Off Salinguerra went "To Padua, Podestà, 'with pure intent,' "Said he, 'my presence, judged the single bar "'To permanent tranquillity, may jar "'No longer'—so! his back is fairly turned? "The pair of goodly palaces are burned, "The gardens ravaged, and our Guelfs laugh, drunk "A week with joy. The next, their laughter sunk "In sobs of blood, for they found, some strange way, "Old Salinguerra back again—I say, "Old Salinguerra in the town once more "Uprooting, overturning, flame before, "Blood fetlock-high beneath him. Azzo fled; "Who 'scaped the carnage followed; then the dead "Were pushed aside from Salinguerra's throne, "He ruled once more Ferrara, all alone, "Till Azzo, stunned awhile, revived, would pounce "Coupled with Boniface, like lynx and ounce, "On the gorged bird. The burghers ground their teeth "To see troop after troop encamp beneath "I' the standing corn thick o'er the scanty patch "It took so many patient months to snatch "Out of the marsh; while just within their walls "Men fed on men. At length Taurello calls "A parley: 'let the Count wind up the war!' "Richard, light-hearted as a plunging star, "Agrees to enter for the kindest ends "Ferrara, flanked with fifty chosen friends, "No horse-boy more, for fear your timid sort "Should fly Ferrara at the bare report. "Quietly through the town they rode, jog-jog; "'Ten, twenty, thirty,—curse the catalogue "'Of burnt Guelf houses! Strange, Taurello shows "'Not the least sign of life'—whereat arose "A general growl: 'How? With his victors by? "'I and my Veronese? My troops and I? "'Receive us, was your word?' So jogged they on, "Nor laughed their host too openly: once gone "Into the trap!—"

Six hundred years ago! Such the time's aspect and peculiar woe (Yourselves may spell it yet in chronicles, Albeit the worm, our busy brother, drills His sprawling path through letters anciently Made fine and large to suit some abbot's eye) When the new Hohenstauffen dropped the mask, Flung John of Brienne's favour from his casque, Forswore crusading, had no mind to leave Saint Peter's proxy leisure to retrieve Losses to Otho and to Barbaross, Or make the Alps less easy to recross; And, thus confirming Pope Honorius' fear, Was excommunicate that very year. "The triple-bearded Teuton come to life!" Groaned the Great League; and, arming for the strife, Wide Lombardy, on tiptoe to begin, Took up, as it was Guelf or Ghibellin, Its cry: what cry?

"The Emperor to come!" His crowd of feudatories, all and some, That leapt down with a crash of swords, spears, shields, One fighter on his fellow, to our fields, Scattered anon, took station here and there, And carried it, till now, with little care— Cannot but cry for him; how else rebut Us longer?—cliffs, an earthquake suffered jut In the mid-sea, each domineering crest Which nought save such another throe can wrest From out (conceive) a certain chokeweed grown Since o'er the waters, twine and tangle thrown Too thick, too fast accumulating round, Too sure to over-riot and confound Ere long each brilliant islet with itself, Unless a second shock save shoal and shelf, Whirling the sea-drift wide: alas, the bruised And sullen wreck! Sunlight to be diffused For that!—sunlight, 'neath which, a scum at first, The million fibres of our chokeweed nurst Dispread themselves, mantling the troubled main, And, shattered by those rocks, took hold again, So kindly blazed it—that same blaze to brood O'er every cluster of the multitude Still hazarding new clasps, ties, filaments, An emulous exchange of pulses, vents Of nature into nature; till some growth Unfancied yet, exuberantly clothe A surface solid now, continuous, one: "The Pope, for us the People, who begun "The People, carries on the People thus, "To keep that Kaiser off and dwell with us!" See you?

Or say, Two Principles that live Each fitly by its Representative. "Hill-cat"—who called him so?—the gracefullest Adventurer, the ambiguous stranger-guest Of Lombardy (sleek but that ruffling fur, Those talons to their sheath!) whose velvet purr Soothes jealous neighbours when a Saxon scout —Arpo or Yoland, is it?—one without A country or a name, presumes to couch Beside their noblest; until men avouch That, of all Houses in the Trevisan, Conrad descries no fitter, rear or van, Than Ecelo! They laughed as they enrolled That name at Milan on the page of gold, Godego's lord,—Ramon, Marostica, Cartiglion, Bassano, Loria, And every sheep cote on the Suabian's fief! No laughter when his son, "the Lombard Chief" Forsooth, as Barbarossa's path was bent To Italy along the Vale of Trent, Welcomed him at Roncaglia! Sadness now— The hamlets nested on the Tyrol's brow, The Asolan and Euganean hills, The Rhetian and the Julian, sadness fills Them all, for Ecelin vouchsafes to stay Among and care about them; day by day Choosing this pinnacle, the other spot, A castle building to defend a cot, A cot built for a castle to defend, Nothing but castles, castles, nor an end To boasts how mountain ridge may join with ridge By sunken gallery and soaring bridge. He takes, in brief, a figure that beseems The griesliest nightmare of the Church's dreams, —A Signory firm-rooted, unestranged From its old interests, and nowise changed By its new neighbourhood: perchance the vaunt Of Otho, "my own Este shall supplant "Your Este," come to pass. The sire led in A son as cruel; and this Ecelin Had sons, in turn, and daughters sly and tall And curling and compliant; but for all Romano (so they styled him) throve, that neck Of his so pinched and white, that hungry cheek Proved 't was some fiend, not him, the man's-flesh went To feed: whereas Romano's instrument, Famous Taurello Salinguerra, sole I' the world, a tree whose boughs were slipt the bole Successively, why should not he shed blood To further a design? Men understood Living was pleasant to him as he wore His careless surcoat, glanced some missive o'er, Propped on his truncheon in the public way, While his lord lifted writhen hands to pray, Lost at Oliero's convent.

Hill-cats, face Our Azzo, our Guelf Lion! Why disgrace A worthiness conspicuous near and far (Atii at Rome while free and consular, Este at Padua who repulsed the Hun) By trumpeting the Church's princely son? —Styled Patron of Rovigo's Polesine, Ancona's march, Ferrara's... ask, in fine, Our chronicles, commenced when some old monk Found it intolerable to be sunk (Vexed to the quick by his revolting cell) Quite out of summer while alive and well: Ended when by his mat the Prior stood, 'Mid busy promptings of the brotherhood, Striving to coax from his decrepit brains The reason Father Porphyry took pains To blot those ten lines out which used to stand First on their charter drawn by Hildebrand.

The same night wears. Verona's rule of yore Was vested in a certain Twenty-four; And while within his palace these debate Concerning Richard and Ferrara's fate, Glide we by clapping doors, with sudden glare Of cressets vented on the dark, nor care For aught that 's seen or heard until we shut The smother in, the lights, all noises but The carroch's booming: safe at last! Why strange Such a recess should lurk behind a range Of banquet-rooms? Your finger—thus—you push A spring, and the wall opens, would you rush Upon the banqueters, select your prey, Waiting (the slaughter-weapons in the way Strewing this very bench) with sharpened ear A preconcerted signal to appear; Or if you simply crouch with beating heart, Bearing in some voluptuous pageant part To startle them. Nor mutes nor masquers now; Nor any... does that one man sleep whose brow The dying lamp-flame sinks and rises o'er? What woman stood beside him? not the more Is he unfastened from the earnest eyes Because that arras fell between! Her wise And lulling words are yet about the room, Her presence wholly poured upon the gloom Down even to her vesture's creeping stir. And so reclines he, saturate with her, Until an outcry from the square beneath Pierces the charm: he springs up, glad to breathe, Above the cunning element, and shakes The stupor off as (look you) morning breaks On the gay dress, and, near concealed by it, The lean frame like a half-burnt taper, lit Erst at some marriage-feast, then laid away Till the Armenian bridegroom's dying day, In his wool wedding-robe.

For he—for he, Gate-vein of this hearts' blood of Lombardy, (If I should falter now)—for he is thine! Sordello, thy forerunner, Florentine! A herald-star I know thou didst absorb Relentless into the consummate orb That scared it from its right to roll along A sempiternal path with dance and song Fulfilling its allotted period, Serenest of the progeny of God— Who yet resigns it not! His darling stoops With no quenched lights, desponds with no blank troops Of disenfranchised brilliances, for, blent Utterly with thee, its shy element Like thine upburneth prosperous and clear. Still, what if I approach the august sphere Named now with only one name, disentwine That under-current soft and argentine From its fierce mate in the majestic mass Leavened as the sea whose fire was mixt with glass In John's transcendent vision,—launch once more That lustre? Dante, pacer of the shore Where glutted hell disgorgeth filthiest gloom, Unbitten by its whirring sulphur-spume— Or whence the grieved and obscure waters slope Into a darkness quieted by hope; Plucker of amaranths grown beneath God's eye In gracious twilights where his chosen lie,— I would do this! If I should falter now!

In Mantua territory half is slough, Half pine-tree forest; maples, scarlet oaks Breed o'er the river-beds; even Mincio chokes With sand the summer through: but 't is morass In winter up to Mantua walls. There was, Some thirty years before this evening's coil, One spot reclaimed from the surrounding spoil, Goito; just a castle built amid A few low mountains; firs and larches hid Their main defiles, and rings of vineyard bound The rest. Some captured creature in a pound, Whose artless wonder quite precludes distress, Secure beside in its own loveliness, So peered with airy head, below, above, The castle at its toils, the lapwings love To glean among at grape-time. Pass within. A maze of corridors contrived for sin, Dusk winding-stairs, dim galleries got past, You gain the inmost chambers, gain at last A maple-panelled room: that haze which seems Floating about the panel, if there gleams A sunbeam over it, will turn to gold And in light-graven characters unfold The Arab's wisdom everywhere; what shade Marred them a moment, those slim pillars made, Cut like a company of palms to prop The roof, each kissing top entwined with top, Leaning together; in the carver's mind Some knot of bacchanals, flushed cheek combined With straining forehead, shoulders purpled, hair Diffused between, who in a goat-skin bear A vintage; graceful sister-palms! But quick To the main wonder, now. A vault, see; thick Black shade about the ceiling, though fine slits Across the buttress suffer light by fits Upon a marvel in the midst. Nay, stoop— A dullish grey-streaked cumbrous font, a group Round it,—each side of it, where'er one sees,— Upholds it; shrinking Caryatides Of just-tinged marble like Eve's lilied flesh Beneath her maker's finger when the fresh First pulse of life shot brightening the snow. The font's edge burthens every shoulder, so They muse upon the ground, eyelids half closed; Some, with meek arms behind their backs disposed, Some, crossed above their bosoms, some, to veil Their eyes, some, propping chin and cheek so pale, Some, hanging slack an utter helpless length Dead as a buried vestal whose whole strength Goes when the grate above shuts heavily. So dwell these noiseless girls, patient to see, Like priestesses because of sin impure Penanced for ever, who resigned endure, Having that once drunk sweetness to the dregs. And every eve, Sordello's visit begs Pardon for them: constant as eve he came To sit beside each in her turn, the same As one of them, a certain space: and awe Made a great indistinctness till he saw Sunset slant cheerful through the buttress-chinks, Gold seven times globed; surely our maiden shrinks And a smile stirs her as if one faint grain Her load were lightened, one shade less the stain Obscured her forehead, yet one more bead slipt From off the rosary whereby the crypt Keeps count of the contritions of its charge? Then with a step more light, a heart more large, He may depart, leave her and every one To linger out the penance in mute stone. Ah, but Sordello? 'T is the tale I mean To tell you.

In this castle may be seen, On the hill tops, or underneath the vines, Or eastward by the mound of firs and pines That shuts out Mantua, still in loneliness, A slender boy in a loose page's dress, Sordello: do but look on him awhile Watching ('t is autumn) with an earnest smile The noisy flock of thievish birds at work Among the yellowing vineyards; see him lurk ('T is winter with its sullenest of storms) Beside that arras-length of broidered forms, On tiptoe, lifting in both hands a light Which makes yon warrior's visage flutter bright —Ecelo, dismal father of the brood, And Ecelin, close to the girl he wooed, Auria, and their Child, with all his wives From Agnes to the Tuscan that survives, Lady of the castle, Adelaide. His face —Look, now he turns away! Yourselves shall trace (The delicate nostril swerving wide and fine, A sharp and restless lip, so well combine With that calm brow) a soul fit to receive Delight at every sense; you can believe Sordello foremost in the regal class Nature has broadly severed from her mass Of men, and framed for pleasure, as she frames Some happy lands, that have luxurious names, For loose fertility; a footfall there Suffices to upturn to the warm air Half-germinating spices; mere decay Produces richer life; and day by day New pollen on the lily-petal grows, And still more labyrinthine buds the rose. You recognise at once the finer dress Of flesh that amply lets in loveliness At eye and ear, while round the rest is furled (As though she would not trust them with her world) A veil that shows a sky not near so blue, And lets but half the sun look fervid through. How can such love?—like souls on each full-fraught Discovery brooding, blind at first to aught Beyond its beauty, till exceeding love Becomes an aching weight; and, to remove A curse that haunts such natures—to preclude Their finding out themselves can work no good To what they love nor make it very blest By their endeavour,—they are fain invest The lifeless thing with life from their own soul, Availing it to purpose, to control, To dwell distinct and have peculiar joy And separate interests that may employ That beauty fitly, for its proper sake. Nor rest they here; fresh births of beauty wake Fresh homage, every grade of love is past, With every mode of loveliness: then cast Inferior idols off their borrowed crown Before a coming glory. Up and down Runs arrowy fire, while earthly forms combine To throb the secret forth; a touch divine— And the scaled eyeball owns the mystic rod; Visibly through his garden walketh God.

So fare they. Now revert. One character Denotes them through the progress and the stir,— A need to blend with each external charm, Bury themselves, the whole heart wide and warm,— In something not themselves; they would belong To what they worship—stronger and more strong Thus prodigally fed—which gathers shape And feature, soon imprisons past escape The votary framed to love and to submit Nor ask, as passionate he kneels to it, Whence grew the idol's empery. So runs A legend; light had birth ere moons and suns, Flowing through space a river and alone, Till chaos burst and blank the spheres were strown Hither and thither, foundering and blind: When into each of them rushed light—to find Itself no place, foiled of its radiant chance. Let such forego their just inheritance! For there 's a class that eagerly looks, too, On beauty, but, unlike the gentler crew, Proclaims each new revealment born a twin With a distinctest consciousness within, Referring still the quality, now first Revealed, to their own soul—its instinct nursed In silence, now remembered better, shown More thoroughly, but not the less their own; A dream come true; the special exercise Of any special function that implies The being fair, or good, or wise, or strong, Dormant within their nature all along— Whose fault? So, homage, other souls direct Without, turns inward. "How should this deject "Thee, soul?" they murmur; "wherefore strength be quelled "Because, its trivial accidents withheld, "Organs are missed that clog the world, inert, "Wanting a will, to quicken and exert, "Like thine—existence cannot satiate, "Cannot surprise? Laugh thou at envious fate, "Who, from earth's simplest combination stampt "With individuality—uncrampt "By living its faint elemental life, "Dost soar to heaven's complexest essence, rife "With grandeurs, unaffronted to the last, "Equal to being all!"

In truth? Thou hast Life, then—wilt challenge life for us: our race Is vindicated so, obtains its place In thy ascent, the first of us; whom we May follow, to the meanest, finally, With our more bounded wills?

Ah, but to find A certain mood enervate such a mind, Counsel it slumber in the solitude Thus reached nor, stooping, task for mankind's good Its nature just as life and time accord "—Too narrow an arena to reward "Emprize—the world's occasion worthless since "Not absolutely fitted to evince "Its mastery!" Or if yet worse befall, And a desire possess it to put all That nature forth, forcing our straitened sphere Contain it,—to display completely here The mastery another life should learn, Thrusting in time eternity's concern,— So that Sordello....

Fool, who spied the mark Of leprosy upon him, violet-dark Already as he loiters? Born just now, With the new century, beside the glow And efflorescence out of barbarism; Witness a Greek or two from the abysm That stray through Florence-town with studious air, Calming the chisel of that Pisan pair: If Nicolo should carve a Christus yet! While at Siena is Guidone set, Forehead on hand; a painful birth must be Matured ere Saint Eufemia's sacristy Or transept gather fruits of one great gaze At the moon: look you! The same orange haze,— The same blue stripe round that—and, in the midst, Thy spectral whiteness, Mother-maid, who didst Pursue the dizzy painter!

Woe, then, worth Any officious babble letting forth The leprosy confirmed and ruinous To spirit lodged in a contracted house! Go back to the beginning, rather; blend It gently with Sordello's life; the end Is piteous, you may see, but much between Pleasant enough. Meantime, some pyx to screen The full-grown pest, some lid to shut upon The goblin! So they found at Babylon, (Colleagues, mad Lucius and sage Antonine) Sacking the city, by Apollo's shrine, In rummaging among the rarities, A certain coffer; he who made the prize Opened it greedily; and out there curled Just such another plague, for half the world Was stung. Crawl in then, hag, and couch asquat, Keeping that blotchy bosom thick in spot Until your time is ripe! The coffer-lid Is fastened, and the coffer safely hid Under the Loxian's choicest gifts of gold.

Who will may hear Sordello's story told, And how he never could remember when He dwelt not at Goito. Calmly, then, About this secret lodge of Adelaide's Glided his youth away; beyond the glades On the fir-forest border, and the rim Of the low range of mountain, was for him No other world: but this appeared his own To wander through at pleasure and alone. The castle too seemed empty; far and wide Might he disport; only the northern side Lay under a mysterious interdict— Slight, just enough remembered to restrict His roaming to the corridors, the vault Where those font-bearers expiate their fault, The maple-chamber, and the little nooks And nests, and breezy parapet that looks Over the woods to Mantua: there he strolled. Some foreign women-servants, very old, Tended and crept about him—all his clue To the world's business and embroiled ado Distant a dozen hill-tops at the most. And first a simple sense of life engrossed Sordello in his drowsy Paradise; The day's adventures for the day suffice— Its constant tribute of perceptions strange, With sleep and stir in healthy interchange, Suffice, and leave him for the next at ease Like the great palmer-worm that strips the trees, Eats the life out of every luscious plant, And, when September finds them sere or scant, Puts forth two wondrous winglets, alters quite, And hies him after unforeseen delight. So fed Sordello, not a shard dissheathed; As ever, round each new discovery, wreathed Luxuriantly the fancies infantine His admiration, bent on making fine Its novel friend at any risk, would fling In gay profusion forth: a ficklest king, Confessed those minions!—eager to dispense So much from his own stock of thought and sense As might enable each to stand alone And serve him for a fellow; with his own, Joining the qualities that just before Had graced some older favourite. Thus they wore A fluctuating halo, yesterday Set flicker and to-morrow filched away,— Those upland objects each of separate name, Each with an aspect never twice the same, Waxing and waning as the new-born host Of fancies, like a single night's hoar-frost, Gave to familiar things a face grotesque; Only, preserving through the mad burlesque A grave regard. Conceive! the orpine patch Blossoming earliest on the log-house thatch The day those archers wound along the vines— Related to the Chief that left their lines To climb with clinking step the northern stair Up to the solitary chambers where Sordello never came. Thus thrall reached thrall; He o'er-festooning every interval, As the adventurous spider, making light Of distance, shoots her threads from depth to height, From barbican to battlement: so flung Fantasies forth and in their centre swung Our architect,—the breezy morning fresh Above, and merry,—all his waving mesh Laughing with lucid dew-drops rainbow-edged.

This world of ours by tacit pact is pledged To laying such a spangled fabric low Whether by gradual brush or gallant blow. But its abundant will was baulked here: doubt Rose tardily in one so fenced about From most that nurtures judgment,—care and pain: Judgment, that dull expedient we are fain, Less favoured, to adopt betimes and force Stead us, diverted from our natural course Of joys—contrive some yet amid the dearth, Vary and render them, it may be, worth Most we forego. Suppose Sordello hence Selfish enough, without a moral sense However feeble; what informed the boy Others desired a portion in his joy? Or say a ruthful chance broke woof and warp— A heron's nest beat down by March winds sharp, A fawn breathless beneath the precipice, A bird with unsoiled breast and unfilmed eyes Warm in the brake—could these undo the trance Lapping Sordello? Not a circumstance That makes for you, friend Naddo! Eat fern-seed And peer beside us and report indeed If (your word) "genius" dawned with throes and stings And the whole fiery catalogue, while springs, Summers, and winters quietly came and went.

Time put at length that period to content, By right the world should have imposed: bereft Of its good offices, Sordello, left To study his companions, managed rip Their fringe off, learn the true relationship, Core with its crust, their nature with his own: Amid his wild-wood sights he lived alone. As if the poppy felt with him! Though he Partook the poppy's red effrontery Till Autumn spoiled their fleering quite with rain, And, turbanless, a coarse brown rattling crane Lay bare. That 's gone: yet why renounce, for that, His disenchanted tributaries—flat Perhaps, but scarce so utterly forlorn, Their simple presence might not well be borne Whose parley was a transport once: recall The poppy's gifts, it flaunts you, after all, A poppy:—why distrust the evidence Of each soon satisfied and healthy sense? The new-born judgment answered, "little boots "Beholding other creatures' attributes "And having none!" or, say that it sufficed, "Yet, could one but possess, oneself," (enticed Judgment) "some special office!" Nought beside Serves you? "Well then, be somehow justified "For this ignoble wish to circumscribe "And concentrate, rather than swell, the tribe "Of actual pleasures: what, now, from without "Effects it?—proves, despite a lurking doubt, "Mere sympathy sufficient, trouble spared? "That, tasting joys by proxy thus, you fared "The better for them?" Thus much craved his soul, Alas, from the beginning love is whole And true; if sure of nought beside, most sure Of its own truth at least; nor may endure A crowd to see its face, that cannot know How hot the pulses throb its heart below. While its own helplessness and utter want Of means to worthily be ministrant To what it worships, do but fan the more Its flame, exalt the idol far before Itself as it would have it ever be. Souls like Sordello, on the contrary, Coerced and put to shame, retaining will, Care little, take mysterious comfort still, But look forth tremblingly to ascertain If others judge their claims not urged in vain, And say for them their stifled thoughts aloud. So, they must ever live before a crowd: —"Vanity," Naddo tells you.

Whence contrive A crowd, now? From these women just alive, That archer-troop? Forth glided—not alone Each painted warrior, every girl of stone, Nor Adelaide (bent double o'er a scroll, One maiden at her knees, that eve, his soul Shook as he stumbled through the arras'd glooms On them, for, 'mid quaint robes and weird perfumes, Started the meagre Tuscan up,—her eyes, The maiden's, also, bluer with surprise) —But the entire out-world: whatever, scraps And snatches, song and story, dreams perhaps, Conceited the world's offices, and he Had hitherto transferred to flower or tree, Not counted a befitting heritage Each, of its own right, singly to engage Some man, no other,—such now dared to stand Alone. Strength, wisdom, grace on every hand Soon disengaged themselves, and he discerned A sort of human life: at least, was turned A stream of lifelike figures through his brain. Lord, liegeman, valvassor and suzerain, Ere he could choose, surrounded him; a stuff To work his pleasure on; there, sure enough: But as for gazing, what shall fix that gaze? Are they to simply testify the ways He who convoked them sends his soul along With the cloud's thunder or a dove's brood-song? —While they live each his life, boast each his own Peculiar dower of bliss, stand each alone In some one point where something dearest loved Is easiest gained—far worthier to be proved Than aught he envies in the forest-wights! No simple and self-evident delights, But mixed desires of unimagined range, Contrasts or combinations, new and strange, Irksome perhaps, yet plainly recognized By this, the sudden company—loves prized By those who are to prize his own amount Of loves. Once care because such make account, Allow that foreign recognitions stamp The current value, and his crowd shall vamp Him counterfeits enough; and so their print Be on the piece, 't is gold, attests the mint, And "good," pronounce they whom his new appeal Is made to: if their casual print conceal— This arbitrary good of theirs o'ergloss What he has lived without, nor felt the loss— Qualities strange, ungainly, wearisome, —What matter? So must speech expand the dumb Part-sigh, part-smile with which Sordello, late Whom no poor woodland-sights could satiate, Betakes himself to study hungrily Just what the puppets his crude phantasy Supposes notablest,—popes, kings, priests, knights,— May please to promulgate for appetites; Accepting all their artificial joys Not as he views them, but as he employs Each shape to estimate the other's stock Of attributes, whereon—a marshalled flock Of authorized enjoyments—he may spend Himself, be men, now, as he used to blend With tree and flower—nay more entirely, else 'T were mockery: for instance, "How excels "My life that chieftain's?" (who apprised the youth Ecelin, here, becomes this month, in truth, Imperial Vicar?) "Turns he in his tent "Remissly? Be it so—my head is bent "Deliciously amid my girls to sleep. "What if he stalks the Trentine-pass? Yon steep "I climbed an hour ago with little toil: "We are alike there. But can I, too, foil "The Guelf's paid stabber, carelessly afford "Saint Mark's a spectacle, the sleight o' the sword "Baffling the treason in a moment?" Here No rescue! Poppy he is none, but peer To Ecelin, assuredly: his hand, Fashioned no otherwise, should wield a brand With Ecelin's success—try, now! He soon Was satisfied, returned as to the moon From earth; left each abortive boy's-attempt For feats, from failure happily exempt, In fancy at his beck. "One day I will "Accomplish it! Are they not older still "—Not grown-up men and women? 'T is beside "Only a dream; and though I must abide "With dreams now, I may find a thorough vent "For all myself, acquire an instrument "For acting what these people act; my soul "Hunting a body out may gain its whole "Desire some day!" How else express chagrin And resignation, show the hope steal in With which he let sink from an aching wrist The rough-hewn ash-bow? Straight, a gold shaft hissed Into the Syrian air, struck Malek down Superbly! "Crosses to the breach! God's Town "Is gained him back!" Why bend rough ash-bows more?

Thus lives he: if not careless as before, Comforted: for one may anticipate, Rehearse the future, be prepared when fate Shall have prepared in turn real men whose names Startle, real places of enormous fames, Este abroad and Ecelin at home To worship him,—Mantua, Verona, Rome To witness it. Who grudges time so spent? Rather test qualities to heart's content— Summon them, thrice selected, near and far— Compress the starriest into one star, And grasp the whole at once!

The pageant thinned Accordingly; from rank to rank, like wind His spirit passed to winnow and divide; Back fell the simpler phantasms; every side The strong clave to the wise; with either classed The beauteous; so, till two or three amassed Mankind's beseemingnesses, and reduced Themselves eventually,—graces loosed, Strengths lavished,—all to heighten up One Shape Whose potency no creature should escape. Can it be Friedrich of the bowmen's talk? Surely that grape-juice, bubbling at the stalk, Is some grey scorching Saracenic wine The Kaiser quaffs with the Miramoline— Those swarthy hazel-clusters, seamed and chapped, Or filberts russet-sheathed and velvet-capped, Are dates plucked from the bough John Brienne sent To keep in mind his sluggish armament Of Canaan:—Friedrich's, all the pomp and fierce Demeanour! But harsh sounds and sights transpierce So rarely the serene cloud where he dwells Whose looks enjoin, whose lightest words are spells On the obdurate! That right arm indeed Has thunder for its slave; but where 's the need Of thunder if the stricken multitude Hearkens, arrested in its angriest mood, While songs go up exulting, then dispread, Dispart, disperse, lingering overhead Like an escape of angels? 'T is the tune, Nor much unlike the words his women croon Smilingly, colourless and faint-designed Each, as a worn-out queen's face some remind Of her extreme youth's love-tales. "Eglamor "Made that!" Half minstrel and half emperor, What but ill objects vexed him? Such he slew. The kinder sort were easy to subdue By those ambrosial glances, dulcet tones; And these a gracious hand advanced to thrones Beneath him. Wherefore twist and torture this, Striving to name afresh the antique bliss, Instead of saying, neither less nor more, He had discovered, as our world before, Apollo? That shall be the name; nor bid Me rag by rag expose how patchwork hid The youth—what thefts of every clime and day Contributed to purfle the array He climbed with (June at deep) some close ravine Mid clatter of its million pebbles sheen, Over which, singing soft, the runnel slipped Elate with rains: into whose streamlet dipped He foot, yet trod, you thought, with unwet sock— Though really on the stubs of living rock Ages ago it crenelled; vines for roof, Lindens for wall; before him, aye aloof, Flittered in the cool some azure damsel-fly, Born of the simmering quiet, there to die. Emerging whence, Apollo still, he spied Mighty descents of forest; multiplied Tuft on tuft, here, the frolic myrtle-trees, There gendered the grave maple stocks at ease. And, proud of its observer, straight the wood Tried old surprises on him; black it stood A sudden barrier ('twas a cloud passed o'er) So dead and dense, the tiniest brute no more Must pass; yet presently (the cloud dispatched) Each clump, behold, was glistering detached A shrub, oak-boles shrunk into ilex-stems! Yet could not he denounce the stratagems He saw thro', till, hours thence, aloft would hang White summer-lightnings; as it sank and sprang To measure, that whole palpitating breast Of heaven, 't was Apollo, nature prest At eve to worship.

Time stole: by degrees The Pythons perish off; his votaries Sink to respectful distance; songs redeem Their pains, but briefer; their dismissals seem Emphatic; only girls are very slow To disappear—his Delians! Some that glow O' the instant, more with earlier loves to wrench Away, reserves to quell, disdains to quench; Alike in one material circumstance— All soon or late adore Apollo! Glance The bevy through, divine Apollo's choice, His Daphne! "We secure Count Richard's voice "In Este's counsels, good for Este's ends "As our Taurello," say his faded friends, "By granting him our Palma!"—the sole child, They mean, of Agnes Este who beguiled Ecelin, years before this Adelaide Wedded and turned him wicked: "but the maid "Rejects his suit," those sleepy women boast. She, scorning all beside, deserves the most Sordello: so, conspicuous in his world Of dreams sat Palma. How the tresses curled Into a sumptuous swell of gold and wound About her like a glory! even the ground Was bright as with spilt sunbeams; breathe not, breathe Not!—poised, see, one leg doubled underneath, Its small foot buried in the dimpling snow, Rests, but the other, listlessly below, O'er the couch-side swings feeling for cool air, The vein-streaks swollen a richer violet where The languid blood lies heavily; yet calm On her slight prop, each flat and outspread palm, As but suspended in the act to rise By consciousness of beauty, whence her eyes Turn with so frank a triumph, for she meets Apollo's gaze in the pine glooms.

Time fleets: That 's worst! Because the pre-appointed age Approaches. Fate is tardy with the stage And crowd she promised. Lean he grows and pale, Though restlessly at rest. Hardly avail Fancies to soothe him. Time steals, yet alone He tarries here! The earnest smile is gone. How long this might continue matters not; —For ever, possibly; since to the spot None come: our lingering Taurello quits Mantua at last, and light our lady flits Back to her place disburthened of a care. Strange—to be constant here if he is there! Is it distrust? Oh, never! for they both Goad Ecelin alike, Romano's growth Is daily manifest, with Azzo dumb And Richard wavering: let but Friedrich come, Find matter for the minstrelsy's report —Lured from the Isle and its young Kaiser's court To sing us a Messina morning up, And, double rillet of a drinking cup, Sparkle along to ease the land of drouth, Northward to Provence that, and thus far south The other! What a method to apprise Neighbours of births, espousals, obsequies, Which in their very tongue the Troubadour Records! and his performance makes a tour, For Trouveres bear the miracle about, Explain its cunning to the vulgar rout, Until the Formidable House is famed Over the country—as Taurello aimed, Who introduced, although the rest adopt, The novelty. Such games, her absence stopped, Begin afresh now Adelaide, recluse No longer, in the light of day pursues Her plans at Mantua: whence an accident Which, breaking on Sordello's mixed content Opened, like any flash that cures the blind, The veritable business of mankind.