TO J.
ND,
OF
ON.1840.
OK
HE
ST.
Who will, may hear Sordello's story told:
His story?
Who believes me shall
The man, pursue his fortunes to the end,
Like me: for as the friendless-people's
Spied from his hill-top once, despite the
And dust of multitudes,
Named o' the Naked Arm,
I single
Sordello, compassed murkily
With ravage of six long sad hundred years.
Only believe me.
Ye believe?
Verona . . .
Never,—I should warn you first,—Of my own choice had this, if not the
Yet not the best expedient, served to tellA story I could body forth so
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
Abysmal past divide its hateful surge,
Letting of all men this one man
Because it pleased me, yet, that moment past,
I should delight in watching first to
His progress as you watch it, not a
More in the secret than yourselves who
Fresh-chapleted to listen.
But it
Your setters-forth of unexampled themes,
Makers of quite new men, producing them,
Would best chalk broadly on each vesture's
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
Silence or song because she can
Real eyes to glisten more, real hearts to
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
And I have many lovers.
Say; but
Friends fate accords me?
Here they are: now
The host I muster!
Many a lighted
Foul with no vestige of the grave's disgrace;
What else should tempt them back to taste our
Except to see how their successors fare?
My audience! and they sit, each ghostly
Striving to look as living as he can,
Brother by breathing brother; thou art set,
Clear-witted critic, by . . . but I 'll not fretA wondrous soul of them, nor move death's
Who loves not to unlock them.
Friends!
I
The living in good earnest—ye
Chiefly for love—suppose not I
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
Now—not this time desert thy cloudy
To scare me, thus employed, with that pure face!
I need not fear this audience,
I make
With them, but then this is no place for thee!
The thunder-phrase of the Athenian,
Up out of memories of Marathon,
Would echo like his own sword's griding
Braying a Persian shield,—the silver
Of Sidney's self, the starry paladin,
Turn intense as a trumpet sounding
The knights to tilt,—wert thou to hear!
What
Have I to play my puppets, bear my
Before these worthies? Lo, the past is
In twain: up-thrust, out-staggering on the world,
Subsiding into shape, a darkness
Its outline, kindles at the core,
Verona. 'T is six hundred years and
Since an event.
The Second Friedrich
The purple, and the Third Honorius
The holy chair.
That autumn eve was stilled:
A last remains of sunset dimly burnedO'er the far forests, like a torch-flame
By the wind back upon its bearer's
In one long flare of crimson; as a brand,
The woods beneath lay black.
A single
From all Verona cared for the soft sky.
But, gathering in its ancient market-place,
Talked group with restless group; and not a
But wrath made livid, for among them
Death's staunch purveyors, such as have in
To feast him.
Fear had long since taken
In every breast, and now these crushed its fruit,
The ripe hate, like a wine: to note the
It worked while each grew drunk!
Men grave and
Stood, with shut eyelids, rocking to and fro,
Letting the silent luxury trickle
About the hollows where a heart should be;
But the young gulped with a delirious
Some foretaste of their first debauch in
At the fierce news: for, be it understood,
Envoys apprised Verona that her
Count Richard of Saint Boniface, joined sinceA year with Azzo,
Este's Lord, to
Taurello Salinguerra, prime in
With Ecelin Romano, from his
Ferrara,—over zealous in the
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
Of fifteen cities that affect the Pope,
For Azzo, therefore, and his
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,
His sprawling path through letters
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
Saint Peter's proxy leisure to
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
Us longer?—cliffs, an earthquake suffered
In the mid-sea, each domineering
Which nought save such another throe can
From out (conceive) a certain chokeweed
Since o'er the waters, twine and tangle
Too thick, too fast accumulating round,
Too sure to over-riot and
Ere long each brilliant islet with itself,
Unless a second shock save shoal and shelf,
Whirling the sea-drift wide: alas, the
And sullen wreck!
Sunlight to be
For that!—sunlight, 'neath which, a scum at first,
The million fibres of our chokeweed
Dispread themselves, mantling the troubled main,
And, shattered by those rocks, took hold again,
So kindly blazed it—that same blaze to broodO'er every cluster of the
Still hazarding new clasps, ties, filaments,
An emulous exchange of pulses,
Of nature into nature; till some
Unfancied yet, exuberantly clotheA 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
Each fitly by its Representative."Hill-cat"—who called him so?—the
Adventurer, the ambiguous
Of Lombardy (sleek but that ruffling fur,
Those talons to their sheath!) whose velvet
Soothes jealous neighbours when a Saxon scout—Arpo or Yoland, is it?—one withoutA country or a name, presumes to
Beside their noblest; until men
That, of all Houses in the Trevisan,
Conrad descries no fitter, rear or van,
Than Ecelo!
They laughed as they
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
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
Them all, for Ecelin vouchsafes to
Among and care about them; day by
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
To boasts how mountain ridge may join with
By sunken gallery and soaring bridge.
He takes, in brief, a figure that
The griesliest nightmare of the Church's dreams,—A Signory firm-rooted,
From its old interests, and nowise
By its new neighbourhood: perchance the
Of Otho, "my own Este shall supplant"Your Este," come to pass.
The sire led inA son as cruel; and this
Had sons, in turn, and daughters sly and
And curling and compliant; but for
Romano (so they styled him) throve, that
Of his so pinched and white, that hungry
Proved 't was some fiend, not him, the man's-flesh
To feed: whereas Romano's instrument,
Famous Taurello Salinguerra, soleI' the world, a tree whose boughs were slipt the
Successively, why should not he shed
To further a design?
Men
Living was pleasant to him as he
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,
Our Azzo, our Guelf Lion!
Why disgraceA 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
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
The reason Father Porphyry took
To blot those ten lines out which used to
First on their charter drawn by Hildebrand.
The same night wears.
Verona's rule of
Was vested in a certain Twenty-four;
And while within his palace these
Concerning Richard and Ferrara's fate,
Glide we by clapping doors, with sudden
Of cressets vented on the dark, nor
For aught that 's seen or heard until we
The smother in, the lights, all noises
The carroch's booming: safe at last!
Why
Such a recess should lurk behind a
Of banquet-rooms?
Your finger—thus—you pushA spring, and the wall opens, would you
Upon the banqueters, select your prey,
Waiting (the slaughter-weapons in the
Strewing this very bench) with sharpened earA preconcerted signal to appear;
Or if you simply crouch with beating heart,
Bearing in some voluptuous pageant
To startle them.
Nor mutes nor masquers now;
Nor any . . . does that one man sleep whose
The dying lamp-flame sinks and rises o'er?
What woman stood beside him? not the
Is he unfastened from the earnest
Because that arras fell between!
Her
And lulling words are yet about the room,
Her presence wholly poured upon the
Down even to her vesture's creeping stir.
And so reclines he, saturate with her,
Until an outcry from the square
Pierces the charm: he springs up, glad to breathe,
Above the cunning element, and
The stupor off as (look you) morning
On the gay dress, and, near concealed by it,
The lean frame like a half-burnt taper,
Erst at some marriage-feast, then laid
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
Relentless into the consummate
That scared it from its right to roll alongA sempiternal path with dance and
Fulfilling its allotted period,
Serenest of the progeny of God—Who yet resigns it not!
His darling
With no quenched lights, desponds with no blank
Of disenfranchised brilliances, for,
Utterly with thee, its shy
Like thine upburneth prosperous and clear.
Still, what if I approach the august
Named now with only one name,
That under-current soft and
From its fierce mate in the majestic
Leavened as the sea whose fire was mixt with
In John's transcendent vision,—launch once
That lustre?
Dante, pacer of the
Where glutted hell disgorgeth filthiest gloom,
Unbitten by its whirring sulphur-spume—Or whence the grieved and obscure waters
Into a darkness quieted by hope;
Plucker of amaranths grown beneath God's
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
Breed o'er the river-beds; even Mincio
With sand the summer through: but 't is
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 amidA few low mountains; firs and larches
Their main defiles, and rings of vineyard
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
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 lastA maple-panelled room: that haze which
Floating about the panel, if there gleamsA sunbeam over it, will turn to
And in light-graven characters
The Arab's wisdom everywhere; what
Marred them a moment, those slim pillars made,
Cut like a company of palms to
The roof, each kissing top entwined with top,
Leaning together; in the carver's
Some knot of bacchanals, flushed cheek
With straining forehead, shoulders purpled,
Diffused between, who in a goat-skin bearA vintage; graceful sister-palms!
But
To the main wonder, now.
A vault, see;
Black shade about the ceiling, though fine
Across the buttress suffer light by
Upon a marvel in the midst.
Nay, stoop—A dullish grey-streaked cumbrous font, a
Round it,—each side of it, where'er one sees,—Upholds it; shrinking
Of just-tinged marble like Eve's lilied
Beneath her maker's finger when the
First pulse of life shot brightening the snow.
The font's edge burthens every shoulder,
They muse upon the ground, eyelids half closed;
Some, with meek arms behind their backs disposed,
Some, crossed above their bosoms, some, to
Their eyes, some, propping chin and cheek so pale,
Some, hanging slack an utter helpless
Dead as a buried vestal whose whole
Goes when the grate above shuts heavily.
So dwell these noiseless girls, patient to see,
Like priestesses because of sin
Penanced for ever, who resigned endure,
Having that once drunk sweetness to the dregs.
And every eve,
Sordello's visit
Pardon for them: constant as eve he
To sit beside each in her turn, the
As one of them, a certain space: and
Made a great indistinctness till he
Sunset slant cheerful through the buttress-chinks,
Gold seven times globed; surely our maiden
And a smile stirs her as if one faint
Her load were lightened, one shade less the
Obscured her forehead, yet one more bead
From off the rosary whereby the
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
To linger out the penance in mute stone.
Ah, but Sordello? 'T is the tale I
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
That shuts out Mantua, still in loneliness,
A slender boy in a loose page's dress,
Sordello: do but look on him
Watching ('t is autumn) with an earnest
The noisy flock of thievish birds at
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
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
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
With that calm brow) a soul fit to
Delight at every sense; you can
Sordello foremost in the regal
Nature has broadly severed from her
Of men, and framed for pleasure, as she
Some happy lands, that have luxurious names,
For loose fertility; a footfall
Suffices to upturn to the warm
Half-germinating spices; mere
Produces richer life; and day by
New pollen on the lily-petal grows,
And still more labyrinthine buds the rose.
You recognise at once the finer
Of flesh that amply lets in
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
Discovery brooding, blind at first to
Beyond its beauty, till exceeding
Becomes an aching weight; and, to removeA curse that haunts such natures—to
Their finding out themselves can work no
To what they love nor make it very
By their endeavour,—they are fain
The lifeless thing with life from their own soul,
Availing it to purpose, to control,
To dwell distinct and have peculiar
And separate interests that may
That beauty fitly, for its proper sake.
Nor rest they here; fresh births of beauty
Fresh homage, every grade of love is past,
With every mode of loveliness: then
Inferior idols off their borrowed
Before a coming glory.
Up and
Runs arrowy fire, while earthly forms
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
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
To what they worship—stronger and more
Thus prodigally fed—which gathers
And feature, soon imprisons past
The votary framed to love and to
Nor ask, as passionate he kneels to it,
Whence grew the idol's empery.
So runsA legend; light had birth ere moons and suns,
Flowing through space a river and alone,
Till chaos burst and blank the spheres were
Hither and thither, foundering and blind:
When into each of them rushed light—to
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
With a distinctest consciousness within,
Referring still the quality, now
Revealed, to their own soul—its instinct
In silence, now remembered better,
More thoroughly, but not the less their own;
A dream come true; the special
Of any special function that
The being fair, or good, or wise, or strong,
Dormant within their nature all along—Whose fault?
So, homage, other souls
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
Life, then—wilt challenge life for us: our
Is vindicated so, obtains its
In thy ascent, the first of us; whom
May follow, to the meanest, finally,
With our more bounded wills? Ah, but to findA certain mood enervate such a mind,
Counsel it slumber in the
Thus reached nor, stooping, task for mankind's
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
That nature forth, forcing our straitened
Contain it,—to display completely
The mastery another life should learn,
Thrusting in time eternity's concern,—So that Sordello. . . . Fool, who spied the
Of leprosy upon him,
Already as he loiters?
Born just now,
With the new century, beside the
And efflorescence out of barbarism;
Witness a Greek or two from the
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
Matured ere Saint Eufemia's
Or transept gather fruits of one great
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
Pursue the dizzy painter! Woe, then,
Any officious babble letting
The leprosy confirmed and
To spirit lodged in a contracted house!
Go back to the beginning, rather;
It gently with Sordello's life; the
Is piteous, you may see, but much
Pleasant enough.
Meantime, some pyx to
The full-grown pest, some lid to shut
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
Opened it greedily; and out there
Just such another plague, for half the
Was stung.
Crawl in then, hag, and couch asquat,
Keeping that blotchy bosom thick in
Until your time is ripe!
The
Is fastened, and the coffer safely
Under the Loxian's choicest gifts of gold.
Who will may hear Sordello's story told,
And how he never could remember
He dwelt not at Goito.
Calmly, then,
About this secret lodge of
Glided his youth away; beyond the
On the fir-forest border, and the
Of the low range of mountain, was for
No other world: but this appeared his
To wander through at pleasure and alone.
The castle too seemed empty; far and
Might he disport; only the northern
Lay under a mysterious interdict—Slight, just enough remembered to
His roaming to the corridors, the
Where those font-bearers expiate their fault,
The maple-chamber, and the little
And nests, and breezy parapet that
Over the woods to Mantua: there he strolled.
Some foreign women-servants, very old,
Tended and crept about him—all his
To the world's business and embroiled
Distant a dozen hill-tops at the most.
And first a simple sense of life
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
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,
Luxuriantly the fancies
His admiration, bent on making
Its novel friend at any risk, would
In gay profusion forth: a ficklest king,
Confessed those minions!—eager to
So much from his own stock of thought and
As might enable each to stand
And serve him for a fellow; with his own,
Joining the qualities that just
Had graced some older favourite.
Thus they woreA fluctuating halo,
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
Of fancies, like a single night's hoar-frost,
Gave to familiar things a face grotesque;
Only, preserving through the mad burlesqueA grave regard.
Conceive! the orpine
Blossoming earliest on the log-house
The day those archers wound along the vines—Related to the Chief that left their
To climb with clinking step the northern
Up to the solitary chambers
Sordello never came.
Thus thrall reached thrall;
He o'er-festooning every interval,
As the adventurous spider, making
Of distance, shoots her threads from depth to height,
From barbican to battlement: so
Fantasies forth and in their centre
Our architect,—the breezy morning
Above, and merry,—all his waving
Laughing with lucid dew-drops rainbow-edged.
This world of ours by tacit pact is
To laying such a spangled fabric
Whether by gradual brush or gallant blow.
But its abundant will was baulked here:
Rose tardily in one so fenced
From most that nurtures judgment,—care and pain:
Judgment, that dull expedient we are fain,
Less favoured, to adopt betimes and
Stead us, diverted from our natural
Of joys—contrive some yet amid the dearth,
Vary and render them, it may be,
Most we forego.
Suppose Sordello
Selfish enough, without a moral
However feeble; what informed the
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
Warm in the brake—could these undo the
Lapping Sordello?
Not a
That makes for you, friend Naddo!
Eat
And peer beside us and report
If (your word) "genius" dawned with throes and
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:
Of its good offices,
Sordello,
To study his companions, managed
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
Partook the poppy's red
Till Autumn spoiled their fleering quite with rain,
And, turbanless, a coarse brown rattling
Lay bare.
That 's gone: yet why renounce, for that,
His disenchanted
Perhaps, but scarce so utterly forlorn,
Their simple presence might not well be
Whose parley was a transport once:
The poppy's gifts, it flaunts you, after all,
A poppy:—why distrust the
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,"
Judgment) "some special office!" Nought
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
And true; if sure of nought beside, most
Of its own truth at least; nor may endureA crowd to see its face, that cannot
How hot the pulses throb its heart below.
While its own helplessness and utter
Of means to worthily be
To what it worships, do but fan the
Its flame, exalt the idol far
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
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 contriveA crowd, now?
From these women just alive,
That archer-troop?
Forth glided—not
Each painted warrior, every girl of stone,
Nor Adelaide (bent double o'er a scroll,
One maiden at her knees, that eve, his
Shook as he stumbled through the arras'd
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,
And snatches, song and story, dreams perhaps,
Conceited the world's offices, and
Had hitherto transferred to flower or tree,
Not counted a befitting
Each, of its own right, singly to
Some man, no other,—such now dared to
Alone.
Strength, wisdom, grace on every
Soon disengaged themselves, and he discernedA sort of human life: at least, was turnedA stream of lifelike figures through his brain.
Lord, liegeman, valvassor and suzerain,
Ere he could choose, surrounded him; a
To work his pleasure on; there, sure enough:
But as for gazing, what shall fix that gaze?
Are they to simply testify the
He who convoked them sends his soul
With the cloud's thunder or a dove's brood-song?—While they live each his life, boast each his
Peculiar dower of bliss, stand each
In some one point where something dearest
Is easiest gained—far worthier to be
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
By this, the sudden company—loves
By those who are to prize his own
Of loves.
Once care because such make account,
Allow that foreign recognitions
The current value, and his crowd shall
Him counterfeits enough; and so their
Be on the piece, 't is gold, attests the mint,
And "good," pronounce they whom his new
Is made to: if their casual print conceal—This arbitrary good of theirs
What he has lived without, nor felt the loss—Qualities strange, ungainly, wearisome,—What matter?
So must speech expand the
Part-sigh, part-smile with which Sordello,
Whom no poor woodland-sights could satiate,
Betakes himself to study
Just what the puppets his crude
Supposes notablest,—popes, kings, priests, knights,—May please to promulgate for appetites;
Accepting all their artificial
Not as he views them, but as he
Each shape to estimate the other's
Of attributes, whereon—a marshalled
Of authorized enjoyments—he may
Himself, be men, now, as he used to
With tree and flower—nay more entirely, else'T were mockery: for instance, "How excels"My life that chieftain's?" (who apprised the
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?"
No rescue!
Poppy he is none, but
To Ecelin, assuredly: his hand,
Fashioned no otherwise, should wield a
With Ecelin's success—try, now!
He
Was satisfied, returned as to the
From earth; left each abortive
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
And resignation, show the hope steal
With which he let sink from an aching
The rough-hewn ash-bow?
Straight, a gold shaft
Into the Syrian air, struck Malek
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
Shall have prepared in turn real men whose
Startle, real places of enormous fames,
Este abroad and Ecelin at
To worship him,—Mantua,
Verona,
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
Accordingly; from rank to rank, like
His spirit passed to winnow and divide;
Back fell the simpler phantasms; every
The strong clave to the wise; with either
The beauteous; so, till two or three
Mankind's beseemingnesses, and
Themselves eventually,—graces loosed,
Strengths lavished,—all to heighten up One
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
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
To keep in mind his sluggish
Of Canaan:—Friedrich's, all the pomp and
Demeanour!
But harsh sounds and sights
So rarely the serene cloud where he
Whose looks enjoin, whose lightest words are
On the obdurate!
That right arm
Has thunder for its slave; but where 's the
Of thunder if the stricken
Hearkens, arrested in its angriest mood,
While songs go up exulting, then dispread,
Dispart, disperse, lingering
Like an escape of angels? 'T is the tune,
Nor much unlike the words his women
Smilingly, colourless and
Each, as a worn-out queen's face some
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
By those ambrosial glances, dulcet tones;
And these a gracious hand advanced to
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
Me rag by rag expose how patchwork
The youth—what thefts of every clime and
Contributed to purfle the
He climbed with (June at deep) some close
Mid clatter of its million pebbles sheen,
Over which, singing soft, the runnel
Elate with rains: into whose streamlet
He foot, yet trod, you thought, with unwet sock—Though really on the stubs of living
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
Mighty descents of forest;
Tuft on tuft, here, the frolic myrtle-trees,
There gendered the grave maple stocks at ease.
And, proud of its observer, straight the
Tried old surprises on him; black it stoodA sudden barrier ('twas a cloud passed o'er)So dead and dense, the tiniest brute no
Must pass; yet presently (the cloud dispatched)Each clump, behold, was glistering detachedA shrub, oak-boles shrunk into ilex-stems!
Yet could not he denounce the
He saw thro', till, hours thence, aloft would
White summer-lightnings; as it sank and
To measure, that whole palpitating
Of heaven, 't was Apollo, nature
At eve to worship. Time stole: by
The Pythons perish off; his
Sink to respectful distance; songs
Their pains, but briefer; their dismissals
Emphatic; only girls are very
To disappear—his Delians!
Some that glowO' the instant, more with earlier loves to
Away, reserves to quell, disdains to quench;
Alike in one material circumstance—All soon or late adore Apollo!
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
Ecelin, years before this
Wedded and turned him wicked: "but the maid"Rejects his suit," those sleepy women boast.
She, scorning all beside, deserves the
Sordello: so, conspicuous in his
Of dreams sat Palma.
How the tresses
Into a sumptuous swell of gold and
About her like a glory! even the
Was bright as with spilt sunbeams; breathe not,
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
The languid blood lies heavily; yet
On her slight prop, each flat and outspread palm,
As but suspended in the act to
By consciousness of beauty, whence her
Turn with so frank a triumph, for she
Apollo's gaze in the pine glooms. Time fleets:
That 's worst!
Because the pre-appointed
Approaches.
Fate is tardy with the
And crowd she promised.
Lean he grows and pale,
Though restlessly at rest.
Hardly
Fancies to soothe him.
Time steals, yet
He tarries here!
The earnest smile is gone.
How long this might continue matters not;—For ever, possibly; since to the
None come: our lingering Taurello
Mantua at last, and light our lady
Back to her place disburthened of a care.
Strange—to be constant here if he is there!
Is it distrust?
Oh, never! for they
Goad Ecelin alike,
Romano's
Is daily manifest, with Azzo
And Richard wavering: let but Friedrich come,
Find matter for the minstrelsy's report—Lured from the Isle and its young Kaiser's
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
The other!
What a method to
Neighbours of births, espousals, obsequies,
Which in their very tongue the
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
Over the country—as Taurello aimed,
Who introduced, although the rest adopt,
The novelty.
Such games, her absence stopped,
Begin afresh now Adelaide,
No longer, in the light of day
Her plans at Mantua: whence an
Which, breaking on Sordello's mixed
Opened, like any flash that cures the blind,
The veritable business of mankind.
