The thought of Eglamor's least like a thought,
And yet a false one, was, "Man shrinks to nought"If matched with symbols of immensity;"Must quail, forsooth, before a quiet sky"Or sea, too little for their quietude:"And, truly, somewhat in Sordello's
Confirmed its speciousness, while eve slow
Down the near terrace to the farther bank,
And only one spot left from out the
Glimmered upon the river opposite—A breadth of watery heaven like a bay,
A sky-like space of water, ray for ray,
And star for star, one richness where they
As this and that wing of an angel, fixed,
Tumultuary splendours folded
To die.
Nor turned he till Ferrara's din(Say, the monotonous speech from a man's
Who lets some first and eager purpose
In a new fancy's birth—the speech keeps
Though elsewhere its informing soul be gone)—Aroused him, surely offered succour.
Paused with this eve; ere she
Herself,—best put off new strange thoughts awhile,
That voice, those large hands, that portentous smile,—What help to pierce the future as the
Lay in the plaining city? And at
The main discovery and prime concern,
All that just now imported him to learn,
Truth's self, like yonder slow moon to
Heaven, rose again, and, naked at his feet,
Lighted his old life's every shift and change,
Effort with counter-effort; nor the
Of each looked wrong except wherein it checked,
Some other—which of these could he suspect,
Prying into them by the sudden blaze?
The real way seemed made up of all the ways—Mood after mood of the one mind in him;
Tokens of the existence, bright or dim,
Of a transcendent all-embracing
Demanding only outward influence,
A soul, in Palma's phrase, above his soul,
Power to uplift his power,—such moon's
Over such sea-depths,—and their mass had
Onward from the beginning and still
Its course: but years and years the sky
Held none, and so, untasked of any love,
His sensitiveness idled, now amort,
Alive now, and, to sullenness or
Given wholly up, disposed itself
At every passing instigation,
And dwindled at caprice, in foam-showers spilt,
Wedge-like insisting, quivered now a
Shield in the sunshine, now a blinding
Of whitest ripples o'er the reef—found
For much display; not gathered up and,
Right from its heart, encompassing the world.
So had Sordello been, by consequence,
Without a function: others made
To strength not half his own, yet had some
Within, submitted to some moon,
Them still, superior still whate'er their force,—Were able therefore to fulfil a course,
Nor missed life's crown, authentic attribute.
To each who lives must be a certain
Of having lived in his degree,—a stage,
Earlier or later in men's pilgrimage,
To stop at; and to this the spirits
Who, still discovering beauty without end,
Amass the scintillations, make one star—Something unlike them, self-sustained, afar,—And meanwhile nurse the dream of being
By winning it to notice and
Their souls with alien glory, some one
Whene'er the nucleus, gathering shape alway,
Round to the perfect circle—soon or late,
According as themselves are formed to wait;
Whether mere human beauty will suffice—The yellow hair and the luxurious eyes,
Or human intellect seem best, or
Combine in some ideal form past
On earth, or else some shade of these, some aim,
Some love, hate even, take their place, the same,
So to be served—all this they do not lose,
Waiting for death to live, nor idly
What must be Hell—a progress thus
Through all existence, still above the
That 's offered them, still fain to reach
The widened range, in virtue of their
Of sovereignty.
Not that a Palma's Love,
A Salinguerra's Hate, would equal
To swaying all Sordello: but why
Some love meet for such strength, some moon
Would match his sea?—or fear,
Good manifest,
Only the Best breaks faith?—Ah but the
Somehow eludes us ever, still might
And is not!
Crave we gems?
No
Of their material round us!
Pliant
And plastic flame—what balks the mage his birth—Jacinth in balls or lodestone by the block?
Flinders enrich the strand, veins swell the rock;
Nought more!
Seek creatures?
Life 's i' the tempest,
Clothes the keen hill-top, mid-day woods are
With fervours: human forms are well enough!
But we had hoped, encouraged by the
Profuse at nature's pleasure, men
These actual men!—and thus are
In arguing, from Good—the Best, from
Divided—force combined, an ocean's
From this our sea whose mere intestine
Might seem at times sufficient to our wants.
External power!
If none be adequate,
And he stand forth ordained (a prouder fate)Himself a law to his own sphere? "Remove"All incompleteness!" for that law, that love?
Nay, if all other laws be feints,—truth
Helpfully to weak vision that had
To grasp aught but its special want,—for lure,
Embodied?
Stronger vision could
The unbodied want: no part—the whole of truth!
The People were himself; nor, by the
At their condition, was he less
To alter the discrepancy beheld,
Than if, from the sound whole, a sickly
Subtracted were transformed, decked out with art,
Then palmed on him as alien woe—the
To succour, proud that he forsook himself.
All is himself; all service, therefore,
Alike, nor serving one part,
The rest: but all in time! "That lance of yours"Makes havoc soon with Malek and his Moors,"That buckler 's lined with many a giant's beard"Ere long, our champion, be the lance upreared,"The buckler wielded handsomely as now!"But view your escort, bear in mind your vow,"Count the pale tracts of sand to pass ere that,"And, if you hope we struggle through the flat,"Put lance and buckler by!
Next half-month lacks"Mere sturdy exercise of mace and axe"To cleave this dismal brake of prickly-pear"Which bristling holds Cydippe by the hair,"Lames barefoot Agathon: this felled, we 'll try"The picturesque achievements by and by—"Next life!" Ay, rally, mock,
O People,
Your claims!—for thus he ventured, to the verge,
Push a vain mummery which perchance
Of his fast-slipping resolution
Likewise: accordingly the Crowd—(as
He had unconsciously contrived forgetI' the whole, to dwell o' the points . . . one might
The signal horrors easier than
With a dim vulgar vast unobvious
Not to be fancied off, nor gained
In brilliant fits, cured by a happy quirk,
But by dim vulgar vast unobvious
To correspond . . .) this Crowd then, forth they stood."And now content thy stronger vision, brood"On thy bare want; uncovered, turf by turf,"Study the corpse-face thro' the taint-worms' scurf!"Down sank the People's Then; uprose their Now.
These sad ones render service to!
And
Piteously little must that service prove—Had surely proved in any case! for,
Each other obstacle away, let
Become aware it had surprised a truth'T were service to impart—can truth be seized,
Settled forthwith, and, of the captive eased,
Its captor find fresh prey, since this
So happily, no gesture luring it,
The earnest of a flock to follow?
Vain,
Most vain! a life to spend ere this he
To the poor crowd's complacence: ere the
Pronounce it captured, he descries a
Its kin of twice the plume; which he, in turn,
If he shall live as many lives, may
How to secure: not else.
Then Mantua
Back to his mind how certain bards were thralled—Buds blasted, but of breath more like
Than Naddo's staring nosegay's carrion bloom;
Some insane rose that burnt heart out in sweets,
A spendthrift in the spring, no summer greets;
Some Dularete, drunk with truths and wine,
Grown bestial, dreaming how become divine.
Yet to surmount this obstacle,
With the commencement, merits crowning!
Must truth be casual truth,
In sparks so mean, at intervals
So rarely, that 't is like at no one
Of the world's story has not truth, the
Of truth, the very truth which, loosed, had
The world's course right, been really in the world—Content the while with some mean spark by
Of some chance-blow, the solitary
Of buried fire, which, rip earth's breast, would
Sky-ward! Sordello's miserable
Was looked for at the moment: he would
This badge. and all it brought, to
Taurello thus, perhaps persuade him
The Kaiser from his purpose,—would
His own belief, in any case.
He dashes it however, think once more!
For, were that little, truly service? "Ay,"I' the end, no doubt; but meantime?
Plain you spy"Its ultimate effect, but many flaws"Of vision blur each intervening cause."Were the day's fraction clear as the life's sum"Of service,
Now as filled as teems To-come"With evidence of good—nor too minute"A share to vie with evil!
No dispute,"'T were fitliest maintain the Guelfs in rule:"That makes your life's work: but you have to school"Your day's work on these natures circumstanced"Thus variously, which yet, as each advanced"Or might impede the Guelf rule, must be moved"Now, for the Then's sake,—hating what you loved,"Loving old hatreds!
Nor if one man bore"Brand upon temples while his fellow wore"The aureole, would it task you to decide:"But, portioned duly out, the future vied"Never with the unparcelled present!
Smite"Or spare so much on warrant all so slight?"The present's complete sympathies to break,"Aversions bear with, for a future's sake"So feeble?
Tito ruined through one speck,"The Legate saved by his sole lightish fleck?"This were work, true, but work performed at cost"Of other work; aught gained here, elsewhere lost."For a new segment spoil an orb half-done?"Rise with the People one step, and sink—one?"Were it but one step, less than the whole face"Of things, your novel duty bids erase!"Harms to abolish!
What, the prophet saith,"The minstrel singeth vainly then?
Old faith,"Old courage, only born because of harms,"Were not, from highest to the lowest, charms?"Flame may persist; but is not glare as staunch?"Where the salt marshes stagnate, crystals branch;"Blood dries to crimson;
Evil 's beautified"In every shape.
Thrust Beauty then aside"And banish Evil!
Wherefore?
After all,"Is Evil a result less natural"Than Good?
For overlook the seasons' strife"With tree and flower,—the hideous animal life,"(Of which who seeks shall find a grinning taunt"For his solution, and endure the vaunt"Of nature's angel, as a child that knows"Himself befooled, unable to propose"Aught better than the fooling)—and but care"For men, for the mere People then and there,—"In these, could you but see that Good and Ill"Claimed you alike!
Whence rose their claim but still"From Ill, as fruit of Ill?
What else could knit"You theirs but Sorrow?
Any free from it"Were also free from you!
Whose happiness"Could be distinguished in this morning's press"Of miseries?—the fool's who passed a gibe"'On thee,' jeered he, `so wedded to thy tribe,"`Thou carriest green and yellow tokens in"'Thy very face that thou art Ghibellin!'"Much hold on you that fool obtained!
Nay mount"Yet higher—and upon men's own account"Must Evil stay: for, what is joy?—to heave"Up one obstruction more, and common leave"What was peculiar, by such act destroy"Itself; a partial death is every joy;"The sensible escape, enfranchisement"Of a sphere's essence: once the vexed—content,"The cramped—at large, the growing circle—round,"All 's to begin again—some novel bound"To break, some new enlargement to entreat;"The sphere though larger is not more complete."Now for Mankind's experience: who alone"Might style the unobstructed world his own?"Whom palled Goito with its perfect things?"Sordello's self: whereas for Mankind springs"Salvation by each hindrance interposed."They climb; life's view is not at once disclosed"To creatures caught up, on the summit left,"Heaven plain above them, yet of wings bereft:"But lower laid, as at the mountain's foot."So, range on range, the girdling forests shoot"'Twixt your plain prospect and the throngs who scale"Height after height, and pierce mists, veil by veil,"Heartened with each discovery; in their soul,"The Whole they seek by Parts—but, found that Whole,"Could they revert, enjoy past gains?
The space"Of time you judge so meagre to embrace"The Parts were more than plenty, once attained"The Whole, to quite exhaust it: nought were gained"But leave to look—not leave to do:
Beneath"Soon sates the looker—look Above, and Death"Tempts ere a tithe of Life be tasted.
Live"First, and die soon enough,
Sordello!
Give"Body and spirit the first right they claim,"And pasture soul on a voluptuous shame"That you, a pageant-city's denizen,"Are neither vilely lodged midst Lombard men—"Can force joy out of sorrow, seem to truck"Bright attributes away for sordid muck,"Yet manage from that very muck educe"Gold; then subject nor scruple, to your cruce"The world's discardings!
Though real ingots pay"Your pains, the clods that yielded them are clay"To all beside,—would clay remain, though quenched"Your purging-fire; who 's robbed then?
Had you wrenched"An ampler treasure forth!—As 't is, they crave"A share that ruins you and will not save"Them.
Why should sympathy command you quit"The course that makes your joy, nor will remit"Their woe?
Would all arrive at joy?
Reverse"The order (time instructs you) nor coerce"Each unit till, some predetermined mode,"The total be emancipate; men's road"Is one, men's times of travel many; thwart"No enterprising soul's precocious start"Before the general march!
If slow or fast"All straggle up to the same point at last,"Why grudge your having gained, a month ago,"The brakes at balm-shed, asphodels in blow,"While they were landlocked?
Speed their Then, but how"This badge would suffer you improve your Now!"His time of action for, against, or
Our world (I labour to extract the
Of this his problem) grew, that even-tide,
Gigantic with its power of joy,
The world's eternity of
To profit though at his whole joy's expense."Make nothing of my day because so brief?"Rather make more: instead of joy, use grief"Before its novelty have time subside!"Wait not for the late savour, leave untried"Virtue, the creaming honey-wine, quick squeeze"Vice like a biting spirit from the lees"Of life!
Together let wrath, hatred, lust,"All tyrannies in every shape, be thrust"Upon this Now, which time may reason out"As mischiefs, far from benefits, no doubt;"But long ere then Sordello will have slipt"Away; you teach him at Goito's crypt,"There 's a blank issue to that fiery thrill."Stirring, the few cope with the many, still:"So much of sand as, quiet, makes a mass"Unable to produce three tufts of grass,"Shall, troubled by the whirlwind, render void"The whole calm glebe's endeavour: be employed!"And e'en though somewhat smart the Crowd for this,"Contribute each his pang to make your bliss,"'T is but one pang—one blood-drop to the bowl"Which brimful tempts the sluggish asp uncowl"At last, stains ruddily the dull red cape,"And, kindling orbs grey as the unripe grape"Before, avails forthwith to disentrance"The portent, soon to lead a mystic dance"Among you!
For, who sits alone in Rome?"Have those great hands indeed hewn out a home,"And set me there to live?
Oh life, life-breath,"Life-blood,—ere sleep, come travail, life ere death!"This life stream on my soul, direct, oblique,"But always streaming!
Hindrances?
They pique:"Helps? such . . . but why repeat, my soul o'ertops"Each height, then every depth profoundlier drops?"Enough that I can live, and would live!
Wait"For some transcendent life reserved by Fate"To follow this?
Oh, never!
Fate,
I trust"The same, my soul to; for, as who flings dust,"Perchance (so facile was the deed) she chequed"The void with these materials to affect"My soul diversely: these consigned anew"To nought by death, what marvel if she threw"A second and superber spectacle"Before me?
What may serve for sun, what still"Wander a moon above me?
What else wind"About me like the pleasures left behind,"And how shall some new flesh that is not flesh"Cling to me?
What 's new laughter?
Soothes the fresh"Sleep like sleep?
Fate 's exhaustless for my sake"In brave resource: but whether bids she slake"My thirst at this first rivulet, or count"No draught worth lip save from some rocky fount"Above i' the clouds, while here she 's provident"Of pure loquacious pearl, the soft tree-tent"Guards, with its face of reate and sedge, nor fail"The silver globules and gold-sparkling grail"At bottom?
Oh, 't were too absurd to slight"For the hereafter the to-day's delight!"Quench thirst at this, then seek next well-spring: wear"Home-lilies ere strange lotus in my hair!"Here is the Crowd, whom I with freest heart"Offer to serve, contented for my part"To give life up in service,—only grant"That I do serve; if otherwise, why want"Aught further of me?
If men cannot choose"But set aside life, why should I refuse"The gift?
I take it—I, for one, engage"Never to falter through my pilgrimage—"Nor end it howling that the stock or stone"Were enviable, truly:
I, for one,"Will praise the world, you style mere anteroom"To palace—be it so! shall I assume"—My foot the courtly gait, my tongue the trope,"My mouth the smirk, before the doors fly ope"One moment?
What? with guarders row on row,"Gay swarms of varletry that come and go,"Pages to dice with, waiting-girls unlace"The plackets of, pert claimants help displace,"Heart-heavy suitors get a rank for,—laugh"At yon sleek parasite, break his own staff"'Cross Beetle-brows the Usher's shoulder,—why"Admitted to the presence by and by,"Should thought of having lost these make me grieve"Among new joys I reach, for joys I leave?"Cool citrine-crystals, fierce pyropus-stone,"Are floor-work there!
But do I let alone"That black-eyed peasant in the vestibule"Once and for ever?—Floor-work?
No such fool!"Rather, were heaven to forestall earth,
I 'd say"I, is it, must be blest?
Then, my own way"Bless me!
Giver firmer arm and fleeter foot,"I 'll thank you: but to no mad wings transmute"These limbs of mine—our greensward was so soft!"Nor camp I on the thunder-cloud aloft:"We feel the bliss distinctlier, having thus"Engines subservient, not mixed up with us."Better move palpably through heaven: nor, freed"Of flesh, forsooth, from space to space proceed"'Mid flying synods of worlds!
No: in heaven's marge"Show Titan still, recumbent o'er his targe"Solid with stars—the Centaur at his game,"Made tremulously out in hoary flame!"Life!
Yet the very cup whose extreme dull"Dregs, even,
I would quaff, was dashed, at full,"Aside so oft; the death I fly, revealed"So oft a better life this life concealed,"And which sage, champion, martyr, through each path"Have hunted fearlessly—the horrid bath,"The crippling-irons and the fiery chair."'T was well for them; let me become aware"As they, and I relinquish life, too!
Let"What masters life disclose itself!
Forget"Vain ordinances,
I have one appeal—"I feel, am what I feel, know what I feel;"So much is truth to me.
What Is, then?
Since"One object, viewed diversely, may evince"Beauty and ugliness—this way attract,"That way repel,—why gloze upon the fact?"Why must a single of the sides be right?"What bids choose this and leave the opposite?"Where 's abstract Right for me?—in youth endued"With Right still present, still to be pursued,"Thro' all the interchange of circles, rife"Each with its proper law and mode of life,"Each to be dwelt at ease in: where, to sway"Absolute with the Kaiser, or obey"Implicit with his serf of fluttering heart,"Or, like a sudden thought of God's, to start"Up,
Brutus in the presence, then go shout"That some should pick the unstrung jewels out—"Each, well!" And, as in moments when the
Gave partially enfranchisement, he
Himself quite through mere secondary
Of his soul's essence, little loves and hates,
Into the mid deep yearnings
By these; as who should pierce hill, plain, grove, glade,
And on into the very nucleus
That first determined there exist a globe.
As that were easiest, half the globe dissolved,
So seemed Sordello's closing-truth
By his flesh-half's break-up; the sudden
Of his expanding soul showed Ill and Well,
Sorrow and Joy,
Beauty and Ugliness,
Virtue and Vice, the Larger and the Less,
All qualities, in fine, recorded here,
Might be but modes of Time and this one sphere,
Urgent on these, but not of force to
Eternity, as Time—as Matter—Mind,
If Mind,
Eternity, should choose
Their attributes within a Life: thus
With circumstance, next change beholds them
Quite otherwise—with Good and Ill distinct,
Joys, sorrows, tending to a like result—Contrived to render easy, difficult,
This or the other course of . . . what new
In place of flesh may stop their flight
Its new sphere, as that course does harm or
To its arrangements.
Once this understood,
As suddenly he felt himself alone,
Quite out of Time and this world: all was known.
What made the secret of his past despair?—Most imminent when he seemed most
Of his own self-sufficiency: made
By craving to expand the power he had,
And not new power to be
This made it;
Soul on Matter being thrust,
Joy comes when so much Soul is wreaked in
On Matter: let the Soul's attempt
Matter beyond the scheme and so
By more or less that deed's accomplishment,
And Sorrow follows:
Sorrow how avoid?
Let the employer match the thing employed,
Fit to the finite his infinity,
And thus proceed for ever, in
Changed but in kind the same, still
To the appointed circumstance and
To all beyond.
A sphere is but a sphere;
Small,
Great, are merely terms we bandy here;
Since to the spirit's absoluteness
Are like.
Now, of the present sphere we
Life, are conditions; take but this
Many; the body was to be so
Youthful, no longer: but, since no
Tied to that body's purposes his soul,
She chose to understand the body's
More than the body's self—had fain
Her boundless to the body's bounded lot.
Hence, the soul permanent, the body not,—Scarcely its minute for enjoying here,—The soul must needs instruct her weak compeer,
Run o'er its capabilities and wringA joy thence, she held worth experiencing:
Which, far from half discovered even,—lo,
The minute gone, the body's power let
Apportioned to that joy's acquirement!
Morning o'er earth, he yearned for all it woke—From the volcano's vapour-flag, winds
Black o'er the spread of sea,—down to the
Dale's silken barley-spikes sullied with rain,
Swayed earthwards, heavily to rise again—The Small, a sphere as perfect as the
To the soul's absoluteness.
Too long on such a morning's
And the whole music it was framed afford,—The chord's might half discovered, what should
One string, his finger, was found palsy-struck.
And then no marvel if the spirit, shownA saddest sight—the body lost
Through her officious proffered help,
Of this and that enjoyment Fate contrived,—Virtue,
Good,
Beauty, each allowed slip hence,—Vain-gloriously were fain, for recompense,
To stem the ruin even yet,
The body's term, supply the power it
From her infinity, compel it
These qualities were only Time's concern,
And body may, with spirit helping, barred—Advance the same, vanquished—obtain reward,
Reap joy where sorrow was intended grow,
Of Wrong make Right, and turn Ill Good below.
And the result is, the poor body
Sinks under what was meant a wondrous boon,
Leaving its bright accomplice all aghast.
So much was plain then, proper in the past;
To be complete for, satisfy the
Series of spheres—Eternity, his
Needs must exceed, prove incomplete for,
Single sphere—Time.
But does our knowledge
No farther?
Is the cloud of hindrance
But by the failing of the fleshly yoke,
Its loves and hates, as now when death lets
Sordello, self-sufficient as before,
Though during the mere space that shall elapse'Twixt his enthralment in new bonds perhaps?
Must life be ever just escaped, which
Have been enjoyed?—nay, might have been and would,
Each purpose ordered right—the soul 's no
Beyond the body's purpose under it.
Like yonder breadth of watery heaven, a bay,
And that sky-space of water, ray for
And star for star, one richness where they
As this and that wing of an angel, fixed,
Tumultuary splendours folded
To die—would soul, proportioned thus,
Exciting discontent, or surelier
The body if, aspiring, it rebel?
But how so order life?
Still
The soul, the sad world's way, with muffled
To all that was before, all that shall
After this sphere—all and each
Save some sole and immutable Great,
And Beauteous whither fate has loosed its
To follow?
Never may some soul see All—The Great Before and After, and the
Now, yet be saved by this the simplest lore,
And take the single course prescribed before,
As the king-bird with ages on his
Travels to die in his ancestral glooms?
But where descry the Love that shall
That course?
Here is a soul whom, to affect,
Nature has plied with all her means, from
And flowers e'en to the Multitude!—and these,
Decides he save or no?
One word to end!
Ah my Sordello,
I this once
And speak for you.
Of a Power above you
Which, utterly incomprehensible,
Is out of rivalry, which thus you
Love, tho' unloving all conceived by man—What need!
And of—none the minutest
To that out-nature, nought that would
And so let rivalry begin to live—But of a Power its
Who, being for authority the same,
Communication different, should claimA course, the first chose but this last revealed—This Human clear, as that Divine concealed—What utter need! What has Sordello found?
Or can his spirit go the mighty round,
End where poor Eglamor begun?
So,
Old fable, the two eagles went two
About the world: where, in the midst, they met,
Though on a shifting waste of sand, men
Jove's temple.
Quick, what has Sordello found?
For they approach—approach—that foot's
Palma?
No,
Salinguerra though in mail;
They mount, have reached the threshold, dash the
Aside—and you divine who sat there dead,
Under his foot the badge: still,
Palma said,
A triumph lingering in the wide eyes,
Wider than some spent swimmer's if he
Help from above in his extreme despair,
And, head far back on shoulder thrust, turns
With short quick passionate cry: as Palma
In one great kiss, her lips upon his breast,
It beat. By this, the hermit-bee has
His day's toil at Goito: the
Dead vine-leaf answers, now 't is eve, he bit,
Twirled so, and filed all day: the mansion 's fit,
God counselled for.
As easy guess the
That passed betwixt them, and become the
To the soft small unfrighted bee, as
Him with one fault—so, no remembrance
Of the stone maidens and the font of
He, creeping through the crevice, leaves alone.
Alas, my friend, alas Sordello,
Anon they laid within that old font-tomb,
And, yet again, alas! And now is 't
Our while bring back to mind, much less set
How Salinguerra extricates
Without Sordello?
Ghibellin and
May fight their fiercest out?
If Richard
In durance or the Marquis paid his mulct,
Who cares,
Sordello gone?
The upshot, sure,
Was peace; our chief made some frank
That prospered; compliment fell thick and
On its disposer, and Taurello
With foe and friend for an outstripping soul,
Nine days at least.
Then,—fairly reached the goal,—He, by one effort, blotted the great
Out of his mind, nor further tried to
With Este, that mad evening's style, but
Away the Legate and the League,
No blame at least the brothers had incurred,—Dispatched a message to the Monk, he
Patiently first to last, scarce shivered at,
Then curled his limbs up on his wolfskin
And ne'er spoke more,—informed the
He but retained their rule so long as
Lingered in pupilage,—and last, no
Apparent else of keeping safe the
From Germany direct to
For Friedrich,—none, that is, to
The faith and promptitude of who should
Obtain Sofia's dowry,—sore perplexed—(Sofia being youngest of the
Of daughters,
Ecelin was wont to
The envious magnates with—nor, since he
Henry of Egna this fair child, had
Once failed the Kaiser's purposes—"we lost"Egna last year, and who takes Egna's post—"Opens the Lombard gate if Friedrich knock?")Himself espoused the Lady of the
In pure necessity, and, so
His slender last of chances, quite made
Old prophecy, and spite of all the
Overt and covert, youth's deeds, age's dreams,
Was sucked into Romano.
And so
He up this evening's work that, when 't was
Somehow against by a blind
Which, chronicling whatever woe
Ferrara, noted this the obscure
Of "Salinguerra's sole son Giacomo"Deceased, fatuous and doting, ere his sire,"The townsfolk rubbed their eyes, could but
Which of Sofia's five was meant. The
Of earth's dead hope were tardy to collapse,
Obliterated not the
Distinctive features at a crash: but
And duller these, next year, as Guelfs
Each to his stronghold.
Then (securely
Ecelin at Campese slept; close by,
Who likes may see him in Solagna lie,
With cushioned head and gloved hand to
The cavalier he was)—then his heart
Young Ecelin at last; long since adult.
And, save Vicenza's business, what
In blood and blaze? (So hard to
Sordello till his plain withdrawal!)
Then its new lord on Lombardy.
I' the
Of time when Ecelin and
Closed with Taurello, come precisely
That in Verona half the souls
Allegiance to the Marquis and the Count—Have cast them from a throne they bid him mount,
Their Podestà, thro' his ancestral worth.
Ecelin flew there, and the town
Was wholly his—Taurello sinking
From temporary station to a
That suited.
News received of this acquist,
Friedrich did come to Lombardy: who
Taurello then?
Another year: they
Vicenza, left the Marquis scarce a
For refuge, and, when hundreds two or
Of Guelfs conspired to call themselves "The Free,"Opposing Alberic,—vile Bassanese,—(Without Sordello!)—Ecelin at
Slaughtered them so observably, that oftA little Salinguerra looked with
Blue eyes up, asked his sire the proper
To get appointed his proud uncle's page.
More years passed, and that sire had dwindled
To a mere showy turbulent soldier,
Better through age, his parts still in repute,
Subtle—how else?—but hardly so
As his contemporaneous friends professed;
Undoubtedly a brawler: for the rest,
Known by each neighbour, and allowed for,
Keep his incorrigible ways, nor
Men who would miss their boyhood's bugbear: "trap"The ostrich, suffer our bald osprey flap"A battered pinion!"—was the word.
In fine,
One flap too much and Venice's
Was meddled with; no overlooking that!
She captured him in his Ferrara,
And florid at a banquet, more by
Than force, to speak the truth; there 's slender
Ascribed you for assisting eighty
To pull his death on such a man; fate
The life-cord prompt enough whose last fine
You fritter: so, presiding his board-head,
The old smile, your assurance all went
With Friedrich (as if he were like to tell!)In rushed (a plan contrived before) our friends,
Made some pretence at fighting, some
For the shame done his eighty
The principle, none found it in his
To be much angry with
Their galleys with the prize, and what
But carry him to Venice for a show?—Set him, as 't were, down gently—free to
His gait, inspect our square, pretend
The swallows soaring their eternal curve'Twixt Theodore and Mark, if
Gathered importunately, fives and tens,
To point their children the Magnifico,
All but a monarch once in firm-land,
His gait among them now—"it took, indeed,"Fully this Ecelin to supersede"That man," remarked the seniors.
Singular!
Sordello's inability to
Rivals the stage, that evening, mainly
About by his strange disbelief that
Was ever to be done,—this thrust the
Under Taurello's tutelage,—whom,
And heart and hand, he forthwith in one
Indissolubly bound to baffle
Who loves the world—and thus allowed the
Grey wizened dwarfish devil Ecelin,
And massy-muscled big-boned Alberic(Mere man, alas!) to put his problem
To demonstration—prove wherever's
To do, there's plenty to be done, or
Or good.
Anointed, then, to rend and rip—Kings of the gag and flesh-hook, screw and whip,
They plagued the world: a touch of Hildebrand(So far from obsolete!) made Lombards
Together, cross their coats as for Christ's cause,
And saving Milan win the world's applause.
Ecelin perished: and I think grass
Never so pleasant as in Valley RùBy San Zenon where Alberic in
Saw his exasperated captors
Seven children and their mother; then,
So far, tied on to a wild horse, was
To death through raunce and bramble-bush.
I
God's part and testify that 'mid the
Wild o'er his castle on the pleasant knoll,
You hear its one tower left, a belfry, toll—The earthquake spared it last year, laying
The modern church beneath,—no harm in that!
Chirrups the contumacious grasshopper,
Rustles the lizard and the cushats
Above the ravage: there, at deep of dayA week since, heard I the old Canon
He saw with his own eyes a barrow
And Alberic's huge skeleton
Only five years ago.
He added, "June 's"The month for carding off our first cocoons"The silkworms fabricate"—a double news,
Nor he nor I could tell the worthier.
Choose!
And Naddo gone, all's gone; not Eglamor!
Believe,
I knew the face I waited for,
A guest my spirit of the golden courts!
Oh strange to see how, despite ill-reports,
Disuse, some wear of years, that face
Its joyous look of love!
Suns waxed and waned,
And still my spirit held an upward flight,
Spiral on spiral, gyres of life and
More and more gorgeous—ever that face
The last admitted! crossed, too, with some
As perfect triumph were not sure for all,
But, on a few, enduring damp must fall,—A transient struggle, haply a painful
Of the inferior nature's
Slight starting tears easily wiped away,
Fine jealousies soon stifled in the
Of irrepressible
Aspiring, all considered, to their
Who ever, just as they prepare
Spiral on spiral, wish thee well,
Thy frank delight at their exclusive track,
That upturned fervid face and hair put back!
Is there no more to say?
He of the rhymes—Many a tale, of this retreat betimes,
Was born:
Sordello die at once for men?
The Chroniclers of Mantua tired their
Telling how Sordello Prince Visconti
Mantua, and elsewhere notably behaved—Who thus, by fortune ordering events,
Passed with posterity, to all intents,
For just the god he never could become.
As Knight,
Bard,
Gallant, men were never
In praise of him: while what he should have been,
Could be, and was not—the one step too
For him to take,—we suffer at this
Because of:
Ecelin had pushed
Its chance ere Dante could arrive and
That step Sordello spurned, for the world's sake:
He did much—but Sordello's chance was gone.
Thus, had Sordello dared that step alone,
Apollo had been compassed: 't was a
He wished should go to him, not he to it—As one content to merely be
Singing or fighting elsewhere, while he
Really at home—one who was chiefly
To have achieved the few real deeds he had,
Because that way assured they were not
Doing, so spared from doing them henceforth—A tree that covets fruitage and yet
Never itself, itself.
Had he
Their cause then, men had plucked Hesperian
And, praising that, just thrown him in to
All he was anxious to appear, but
Solicitous to be.
A sorry
Such life is, after all!
Cannot I
He lived for some one better thing? this way.—Lo, on a heathy brown and nameless
By sparkling Asolo, in mist and chill,
Morning just up, higher and higher runsA child barefoot and rosy.
See! the
On the square castle's inner-court's low
Like the chine of some extinct
Half turned to earth and flowers; and through the haze(Save where some slender patches of grey
Are to be overleaped) that boy has
The whole hill-side of dew and
Matting the balm and mountain camomile.
Up and up goes he, singing all the
Some unintelligible words to
The lark,
God's poet, swooning at his feet,
So worsted is he at "the few fine locks"Stained like pale honey oozed from topmost rocks"Sun-blanched the livelong summer,"—all that's
Of the Goito lay!
And thus bereft,
Sleep and forget,
Sordello!
In
He sleeps, the feverish poet—I
Not utterly companionless; but, friends,
Wake up!
The ghost's gone, and the story endsI'd fain hope, sweetly; seeing, peri or ghoul,
That spirits are conjectured fair or foul,
Evil or good, judicious authors think,
According as they vanish in a
Or in a perfume.
Friends, be frank! ye
Civet,
I warrant.
Really?
Like enough!
Merely the savour's rareness; any
May ravage with impunity a rose:
Rifle a musk-pod and 't will ache like yours!
I'd tell you that same pungency
An after-gust, but that were overbold.
Who would has heard Sordello's story told.
