BOOK THE SECOND

Who will, may hear Sordello's story told:His story? Who believes me shall beholdThe man, pursue his fortunes to the end,Like me: for as the friendless-people's friendA Quixotic attempt.Spied from his hill-top once, despite the dinAnd dust of multitudes, PentapolinNamed o' the Naked Arm, I single outSordello, compassed murkily aboutWith ravage of six long sad hundred years.Only believe me. Ye believe?AppearsVerona ... Never, I should warn you first,Of my own choice had this, if not the worstYet not the best expedient, served to tellA story I could body forth so wellBy 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 dimAbysmal past divide its hateful surge,Letting of all men this one man emergeBecause it pleased me, yet, that moment past,I should delight in watching first to lastHis progress as you watch it, not a whitMore in the secret than yourselves who sitFresh-chapleted to listen. But it seemsYour setters-forth of unexampled themes,Makers of quite new men, producing them,Would best chalk broadly on each vesture's hemThe wearer's quality; or take their stand,Motley on back and pointing-pole in hand,Beside him. So, for once I face ye, friends,Why the Poet himself addresses his audience—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; 'tis not for fate to chooseSilence or song because she can refuseReal eyes to glisten more, real hearts to acheLess oft, real brows turn smoother for our sake:I have experienced something of her spite;But there 's a realm wherein she has no rightAnd I have many lovers. Say, but fewFriends fate accords me? Here they are: now viewThe host I muster! Many a lighted faceFoul with no vestige of the grave's disgrace;What else should tempt them back to taste our airExcept to see how their successors fare?My audience! and they sit, each ghostly manStriving 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 spleenWho loves not to unlock them. Friends! I meanFew living, many dead.The living in good earnest—ye electChiefly for love—suppose not I rejectJudicious praise, who contrary shall peep,Some fit occasion, forth, for fear ye sleep,To glean your bland approvals. Then, appear,Shelley departing, Verona appears.Verona! stay—thou, spirit, come not nearNow—not this time desert thy cloudy placeTo scare me, thus employed, with that pure face!I need not fear this audience, I make freeWith them, but then this is no place for thee!The thunder-phrase of the Athenian, grownUp out of memories of Marathon,Would echo like his own sword's griding screechBraying a Persian shield,—the silver speechOf Sidney's self, the starry paladin,Turn intense as a trumpet sounding inThe knights to tilt,—wert thou to hear! What heartHave I to play my puppets, bear my partBefore these worthies?Lo, the past is hurledIn twain: up-thrust, out-staggering on the world,Subsiding into shape, a darkness rearsIts outline, kindles at the core, appearsVerona. 'Tis six hundred years and moreSince an event. The Second Friedrich woreThe purple, and the Third Honorius filledThe holy chair. That autumn eve was stilled:A last remains of sunset dimly burnedO'er the far forests, like a torch-flame turnedBy the wind back upon its bearer's handIn one long flare of crimson; as a brand,The woods beneath lay black. A single eyeFrom all Verona cared for the soft sky.But, gathering in its ancient market-place,Talked group with restless group; and not a faceBut wrath made livid, for among them wereDeath's stanch purveyors, such as have in careTo feast him. Fear had long since taken rootIn every breast, and now these crushed its fruit.The ripe hate, like a wine: to note the wayIt worked while each grew drunk! Men grave and grayStood, with shut eyelids, rocking to and fro,How her Guelfs are discomfited.Letting the silent luxury trickle slowAbout the hollows where a heart should be;But the young gulped with a delirious gleeSome foretaste of their first debauch in bloodAt the fierce news: for, be it understood,Envoys apprised Verona that her princeCount Richard of Saint Boniface, joined sinceA year with Azzo, Este's Lord, to thrustTaurello Salinguerra, prime in trustWith Ecelin Romano, from his seatFerrara,—over-zealous in the featAnd stumbling on a peril unaware,Was captive, trammelled in his proper snare,They phrase it, taken by his own intrigue.Why they entreat the Lombard League,Immediate succor from the Lombard LeagueOf fifteen cities that affect the Pope,For Azzo, therefore, and his fellow-hopeOf the Guelf cause, a glory overcast!Men's faces, late agape, are now aghast."Prone is the purple pavis; Este makesMirth for the devil when he undertakesTo play the Ecelin; as if it costMerely your pushing-by to gain a postLike his! The patron tells ye, once for all,There be sound reasons that preferment fallOn 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 waneDwelt at Ferrara. Like an osprey fainTo fly but forced the earth his couch to makeFar inland, till his friend the tempest wake,Waits he the Kaiser 's coming; and as yetThat fast friend sleeps, and he too sleeps: but letOnly the billow freshen, and he snuffsThe aroused hurricane ere it enroughsThe sea it means to cross because of him.Sinketh the breeze? His hope-sick eye grows dim;Creep closer on the creature! Every dayStrengthens the Pontiff; Ecelin, they say,Dozes now at Oliero, with dry lipsTelling upon his perished finger-tipsHow many ancestors are to deposeEre he be Satan's Viceroy when the dozeDeposits him in hell. So, Guelfs rebuiltTheir houses; not a drop of blood was spiltWhen Cino Bocchimpane chanced to meetBuccio Virtù—God's wafer, and the streetIs narrow! Tutti Santi, think, a-swarmWith Ghibellins, and yet he took no harm!This could not last. Off Salinguerra wentTo Padua, Podestà, 'with pure intent,'Said he, 'my presence, judged the single barTo permanent tranquillity, may jarNo longer'—so! his back is fairly turned?The pair of goodly palaces are burned,The gardens ravaged, and our Guelfs laugh, drunkA week with joy. The next, their laughter sunkIn sobs of blood, for they found, some strange way,In their changed fortune at Ferrara:Old Salinguerra back again—I say,Old Salinguerra in the town once moreUprooting, overturning, flame before,Blood fetlock-high beneath him. Azzo fled;Who 'scaped the carnage followed; then the deadWere pushed aside from Salinguerra's throne,He ruled once more Ferrara, all alone,Till Azzo, stunned awhile, revived, would pounceCoupled with Boniface, like lynx and ounce,On the gorged bird. The burghers ground their teethTo see troop after troop encamp beneathI' the standing-corn thick o'er the scanty patchIt took so many patient months to snatchOut of the marsh; while just within their wallsMen fed on men. At length Taurello callsA parley: 'let the Count wind up the war!'Richard, light-hearted as a plunging star,Agrees to enter for the kindest endsFerrara, flanked with fifty chosen friends,No horse-boy more, for fear your timid sortShould fly Ferrara at the bare report.Quietly through the town they rode, jog-jog;'Ten, twenty, thirty,—curse the catalogueOf burnt Guelf houses! Strange, Taurello showsNot the least sign of life'—whereat aroseA 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 goneInto 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, drillsHis sprawling path through letters ancientlyMade fine and large to suit some abbot's eye)When the new Hohenstauffen dropped the mask,Flung John of Brienne's favor from his casque,Forswore crusading, had no mind to leaveSaint Peter's proxy leisure to retrieveLosses 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,For the times grow stormy again.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 rebutUs longer? Cliffs, an earthquake suffered jutIn the mid-sea, each domineering crestWhich naught save such another throe can wrestFrom out (conceive) a certain chokeweed grownSince o'er the waters, twine and tangle thrownToo thick, too fast accumulating round,Too sure to over-riot and confoundEre long each brilliant islet with itself,Unless a second shock save shoal and shelf,Whirling the sea-drift wide: alas, the bruisedAnd sullen wreck! Sunlight to be diffusedFor that! Sunlight, 'neath which, a scum at first,The million fibres of our chokeweed nurstDispread 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 multitudeStill hazarding new clasps, ties, filaments,An emulous exchange of pulses, ventsOf nature into nature; till some growthUnfancied yet, exuberantly clotheThe Ghibellins' wish: the Guelfs' wish.A surface solid now, continuous, one:"The Pope, for us the People, who begunThe People, carries on the People thus,To keep that Kaiser off and dwell with us!"See you?Or say, Two Principles that liveEach fitly by its Representative."Hill-cat"—who called him so?—the gracefullestAdventurer, the ambiguous stranger-guestOf Lombardy (sleek but that ruffling fur,Those talons to their sheath!) whose velvet purrSoothes jealous neighbors when a Saxon scout—Arpo or Yoland, is it?—one withoutA country or a name, presumes to couchBeside their noblest; until men avouchThat, of all Houses in the Trevisan,Conrad descries no fitter, rear or van,How Ecelo's house grew head of those,Than Ecelo! They laughed as they enrolledThat 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 bentTo 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 fillsThem all, for Ecelin vouchsafes to stayAmong and care about them; day by dayChoosing 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 endTo boasts how mountain ridge may join with ridgeBy sunken gallery and soaring bridge.He takes, in brief, a figure that beseemsThe griesliest nightmare of the Church's dreams,—A Signory firm-rooted, unestrangedFrom its old interests, and nowise changedBy its new neighborhood: perchance the vauntOf Otho, "my own Este shall supplantYour Este," come to pass. The sire led inA son as cruel; and this EcelinHad sons, in turn, and daughters sly and tallAnd curling and compliant; but for allRomano (so they styled him) throve, that neckOf his so pinched and white, that hungry cheekProved 't was some fiend, not him, the man's-flesh wentTo feed: whereas Romano's instrument,Famous Taurello Salinguerra, soleI' the world, a tree whose boughs were slipt the boleSuccessively, why should not he shed bloodTo further a design? Men understoodLiving was pleasant to him as he woreHis 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, faceOur Azzo, our Guelf-Lion! Why disgraceAs Azzo Lord of Este heads these.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 monkFound 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 brainsThe reason Father Porphyry took painsTo blot those ten lines out which used to standFirst on their charter drawn by Hildebrand.The same night wears. Verona's rule of yoreCount Richard's Palace at Verona.Was vested in a certain Twenty-four;And while within his palace these debateConcerning Richard and Ferrara's fate,Glide we by clapping doors, with sudden glareOf cressets vented on the dark, nor careFor aught that 's seen or heard until we shutThe smother in, the lights, all noises butThe carroch's booming: safe at last! Why strangeSuch a recess should lurk behind a rangeOf banquet-rooms? Your finger—thus—you pushA spring, and the wall opens, would you rushUpon the banqueters, select your prey,Waiting (the slaughter-weapons in the wayStrewing this very bench) with sharpened earA preconcerted signal to appear;Or if you simply crouch with beating heart,Of the couple found therein,Bearing in some voluptuous pageant partTo startle them. Nor mutes nor masquers now;Nor any ... does that one man sleep whose browThe dying lamp-flame sinks and rises o'er?What woman stood beside him? not the moreIs he unfastened from the earnest eyesBecause that arras fell between! Her wiseAnd lulling words are yet about the room,Her presence wholly poured upon the gloomDown even to her vesture's creeping stir.And so reclines he, saturate with her,Until an outcry from the square beneathPierces the charm: he springs up, glad to breathe,Above the cunning element, and shakesThe stupor off as (look you) morning breaksOn the gay dress, and, near concealed by it,The lean frame like a half-burnt taper, litErst at some marriage-feast, then laid awayTill 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 absorbRelentless into the consummate orbThat scared it from its right to roll alongA sempiternal path with dance and songFulfilling its allotted period,Serenest of the progeny of God—Who yet resigns it not! His darling stoopsWith no quenched lights, desponds with no blank troopsOf disenfranchised brilliances, for, blentUtterly with thee, its shy elementLike thine upburneth prosperous and clear.Still, what if I approach the august sphereNamed now with only one name, disentwineThat under-current soft and argentineFrom its fierce mate in the majestic massLeavened as the sea whose fire was mixt with glassIn John's transcendent vision,—launch once moreThat lustre? Dante, pacer of the shoreWhere glutted hell disgorgeth filthiest gloom,Unbitten by its whirring sulphur-spume—Or whence the grieved and obscure waters slopeInto a darkness quieted by hope;Plucker of amaranths grown beneath God's eyeIn gracious twilights where his chosen lie,—I would do this! If I should falter now!One belongs to Dante; his Birthplace.In Mantua territory half is slough,Half pine-tree forest; maples, scarlet oaksBreed o'er the river-beds; even Mincio chokesWith sand the summer through: but 't is morassIn 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 hidTheir main defiles, and rings of vineyard boundThe 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 loveTo 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 seemsFloating about the panel, if there gleamsA sunbeam over it, will turn to goldAnd in light-graven characters unfoldThe Arab's wisdom everywhere; what shadeMarred them a moment, those slim pillars made,Cut like a company of palms to propThe roof, each kissing top entwined with top,Leaning together; in the carver's mindSome knot of bacchanals, flushed cheek combinedWith straining forehead, shoulders purpled, hairDiffused between, who in a goat-skin bearA vintage; graceful sister-palms! But quickTo the main wonder, now. A vault, see; thickA Vault inside the Castle at Goito,Black shade about the ceiling, though fine slitsAcross the buttress suffer light by fitsUpon a marvel in the midst. Nay, stoop—A dullish gray-streaked cumbrous font, a groupRound it,—each side of it, where'er one sees,—Upholds it; shrinking CaryatidesOf just-tinged marble like Eve's lilied fleshBeneath her maker's finger when the freshFirst pulse of life shot brightening the snow.The font's edge burdens every shoulder, soThey muse upon the ground, eyelids half closed;Some, with meek arms behind their backs disposed,Some, crossed above their bosoms, some, to veilTheir eyes, some, propping chin and cheek so pale,Some, hanging slack an utter helpless lengthDead as a buried vestal whose whole strengthGoes when the grate above shuts heavily.So dwell these noiseless girls, patient to see,Like priestesses because of sin impurePenanced forever, who resigned endure,Having that once drunk sweetness to the dregs.And every eve, Sordello's visit begsPardon for them: constant as eve he cameTo sit beside each in her turn, the sameAs one of them, a certain space: and aweAnd what Sordello would see there.Made a great indistinctness till he sawSunset slant cheerful through the buttress-chinks,Gold seven times globed; surely our maiden shrinksAnd a smile stirs her as if one faint grainHer load were lightened, one shade less the stainObscured her forehead, yet one more bead sliptFrom off the rosary whereby the cryptKeeps count of the contritions of its charge?Then with a step more light, a heart more large,He may depart, leave her and every oneTo linger out the penance in mute stone.Ah, but Sordello? 'T is the tale I meanTo tell you.In this castle may be seen,On the hill-tops, or underneath the vines,Or eastward by the mound of firs and pinesThat shuts out Mantua, still in loneliness,A slender boy in a loose page's dress,Sordello: do but look on him awhileWatching ('t is autumn) with an earnest smileThe noisy flock of thievish birds at workAmong the yellowing vineyards; see him lurkHis boyhood in the domain of Ecelin.('T is winter with its sullenest of storms)Beside that arras-length of broidered forms,On tiptoe, lifting in both hands a lightWhich 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 wivesFrom 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 combineWith that calm brow) a soul fit to receiveDelight at every sense; you can believeSordello foremost in the regal classNature has broadly severed from her massOf men, and framed for pleasure, as she framesSome happy lands, that have luxurious names,For loose fertility; a footfall thereSuffices to upturn to the warm airHalf-germinating spices; mere decayProduces richer life; and day by dayNew pollen on the lily-petal grows,And still more labyrinthine buds the rose.You recognize at once the finer dressOf flesh that amply lets in lovelinessAt 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 a poet's soul comes into play.How can such love?—like souls on each full-fraughtDiscovery brooding, blind at first to aughtBeyond its beauty, till exceeding loveBecomes an aching weight; and, to removeA curse that haunts such natures—to precludeTheir finding out themselves can work no goodTo what they love nor make it very blestBy their endeavor,—they are fain investThe lifeless thing with life from their own soul,Availing it to purpose, to control,To dwell distinct and have peculiar joyAnd separate interests that may employThat beauty fitly, for its proper sake.Nor rest they here; fresh births of beauty wakeFresh homage, every grade of love is past,With every mode of loveliness: then castInferior idols off their borrowed crownBefore a coming glory. Up and downRuns arrowy fire, while earthly forms combineTo throb the secret forth; a touch divine—And the sealed eyeball owns the mystic rod;Visibly through his garden walketh God.What denotes such a soul's progress.So fare they. Now revert. One characterDenotes 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 belongTo what they worship—stronger and more strongThus prodigally fed—which gathers shapeAnd feature, soon imprisons past escapeThe votary framed to love and to submitNor 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 strownHither and thither, foundering and blind:When into each of them rushed light—to findItself 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 twinWith a distinctest consciousness within,Referring still the quality, now firstRevealed, to their own soul—its instinct nursedIn silence, now remembered better, shownMore thoroughly, but not the less their own;A dream come true; the special exerciseHow poets class at length—Of any special function that impliesThe being fair, or good, or wise, or strong,Dormant within their nature all along—Whose fault? So, homage, other souls directWithout, turns inward. "How should this dejectThee, soul?" they murmur; "wherefore strength be quelledBecause, 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 stamptWith individuality—uncramptBy living its faint elemental life,Dost soar to heaven's complexest essence, rifeWith grandeurs, unaffronted to the last,For honor,Equal to being all!"In truth? Thou hastLife, then—wilt challenge life for us: our raceIs vindicated so, obtains its placeIn thy ascent, the first of us; whom weOr shame—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 solitudeThus reached, nor, stooping, task for mankind's goodIts nature just as life and time accord"—Too narrow an arena to rewardEmprise—the world's occasion worthless sinceNot absolutely fitted to evinceIts mastery!" Or if yet worse befall,And a desire possess it to put allThat nature forth, forcing our straitened sphereContain it,—to display completely hereThe mastery another life should learn,Thrusting in time eternity's concern,—So that Sordello ...Which may the Gods avertFool, who spied the markOf leprosy upon him, violet-darkAlready as he loiters? Born just now,With the new century, beside the glowAnd efflorescence out of barbarism;Witness a Greek or two from the abysmThat 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 beMatured ere Saint Eufemia's sacristyOr transept gather fruits of one great gazeAt the moon: look you! The same orange haze,—The same blue stripe round that—and, in the midst,Thy spectral whiteness, Mother-maid, who didstPursue the dizzy painter!Woe, then, worthAny officious babble letting forthThe leprosy confirmed and ruinousTo spirit lodged in a contracted house!Go back to the beginning, rather; blendIt gently with Sordello's life; the endIs piteous, you may see, but much betweenPleasant enough. Meantime, some pyx to screenThe full-grown pest, some lid to shut uponThe 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 prizeOpened it greedily; and out there curledJust such another plague, for half the worldWas stung. Crawl in then, hag, and couch asquat,Keeping that blotchy bosom thick in spotUntil your time is ripe! The coffer-lidIs fastened, and the coffer safely hidUnder the Loxian's choicest gifts of gold.Who will may hear Sordello's story told,And now he never could remember whenHe dwelt not at Goito. Calmly, then,From Sordello, now in childhood.About this secret lodge of Adelaide'sGlided his youth away; beyond the gladesOn the fir-forest border, and the rimOf the low range of mountain, was for himNo other world: but this appeared his ownTo wander through at pleasure and alone.The castle too seemed empty; far and wideMight he disport; only the northern sideLay under a mysterious interdict—Slight, just enough remembered to restrictHis roaming to the corridors, the vaultWhere those font-bearers expiate their fault,The maple-chamber, and the little nooksAnd nests, and breezy parapet that looksOver the woods to Mantua: there he strolled.Some foreign women-servants, very old,Tended and crept about him—all his clueTo the world's business and embroiled adoDistant a dozen hill-tops at the most.The delights of his childish fancy,And first a simple sense of life engrossedSordello 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 easeLike 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, wreathedLuxuriantly the fancies infantineHis admiration, bent on making fineIts novel friend at any risk, would flingIn gay profusion forth; a ficklest king,Confessed those minions!—eager to dispenseSo much from his own stock of thought and senseAs might enable each to stand aloneAnd serve him for a fellow; with his own,Joining the qualities that just beforeHad graced some older favorite. Thus they woreA fluctuating halo, yesterdaySet 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 hostOf fancies, like a single night's hoar-frost,Which could blow out a great bubble,Gave to familiar things a face grotesque;Only, preserving through the mad burlesqueA grave regard. Conceive! the orpine patchBlossoming earliest on the log-house thatchThe day those archers wound along the vines—Related to the Chief that left their linesTo climb with clinking step the northern stairUp to the solitary chambers whereSordello never came. Thus thrall reached thrall;He o'er-festooning every interval,As the adventurous spider, making lightOf distance, shoots her threads from depth to height,From barbican to battlement: so flungFantasies forth and in their centre swungOur architect,—the breezy morning freshAbove, and merry,—all his waving meshLaughing with lucid dew-drops rainbow-edged.This world of ours by tacit pact is pledgedTo laying such a spangled fabric lowWhether by gradual brush or gallant blow.But its abundant will was balked here: doubtBeing secure awhile from intrusion.Rose tardily in one so fenced aboutFrom most that nurtures judgment, care and pain:Judgment, that dull expedient we are fain,Less favored, to adopt betimes and forceStead us, diverted from our natural courseOf joys—contrive some yet amid the dearth,Vary and render them, it may be, worthMost we forego. Suppose Sordello henceSelfish enough, without a moral senseHowever feeble; what informed the boyOthers 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 eyesWarm in the brake—could these undo the tranceLapping Sordello? Not a circumstanceThat makes for you, friend Naddo! Eat fern-seedAnd peer beside us and report indeedIf (your word) "genius" dawned with throes and stingsAnd 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: bereftOf its good offices, Sordello, leftTo study his companions, managed ripTheir 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 hePartook the poppy's red effronteryTill Autumn spoiled their fleering quite with rain,And, turbanless, a coarse brown rattling craneLay bare. That 's gone: yet why renounce, for that,His disenchanted tributaries—flatPerhaps, but scarce so utterly forlorn,Their simple presence might not well be borneWhose parley was a transport once: recallThe poppy's gifts, it flaunts you, after all,A poppy:—why distrust the evidenceOf each soon satisfied and healthy sense?But it comes; and new-born judgmentThe new-born judgment answered, "little bootsBeholding other creatures' attributesAnd having none!" or, say that it sufficed,"Yet, could one but possess, one's self," (enticedJudgment) "some special office!" Naught besideServes you? "Well then, be somehow justifiedFor this ignoble wish to circumscribeAnd concentrate, rather than swell, the tribeOf actual pleasures: what, now, from withoutEffects it?—proves, despite a lurking doubt,Mere sympathy sufficient, trouble spared?That, tasting joys by proxy thus, you faredDecides that he needs sympathizers.The better for them?" Thus much craved his soul.Alas, from the beginning love is wholeAnd true; if sure of naught beside, most sureOf its own truth at least; nor may endureA crowd to see its face, that cannot knowHow hot the pulses throb its heart below.While its own helplessness and utter wantOf means to worthily be ministrantTo what it worships, do but fan the moreIts flame, exalt the idol far beforeItself 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 ascertainIf 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 aloneEach painted warrior, every girl of stone,Nor Adelaide (bent double o'er a scroll,One maiden at her knees, that eve, his soulShook as he stumbled through the arras'd gloomsOn 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, scrapsAnd snatches, song and story, dreams perhaps,Conceited the world's offices, and heHad hitherto transferred to flower or tree,Not counted a befitting heritageEach, of its own right, singly to engageSome man, no other,—such now dared to standAlone. Strength, wisdom, grace on every handSoon disengaged themselves, and he discernedA sort of human life: at least, was turnedHe therefore creates such a company;A stream of lifelike figures through his brain.Lord, liegeman, valvassor and suzerain,Ere he could choose, surrounded him; a stuffTo work his pleasure on; there, sure enough:But as for gazing, what shall fix that gaze?Are they to simply testify the waysHe who convoked them sends his soul alongWith the cloud's thunder or a dove's brood-song?—While they live each his life, boast each his ownEach of which, leading its own life,Peculiar dower of bliss, stand each aloneIn some one point where something dearest lovedIs easiest gained—far worthier to be provedThan 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 recognizedBy this, the sudden company—loves prizedBy those who are to prize his own amountOf loves. Once care because such make account,Allow that foreign recognitions stampThe current value, and his crowd shall vampHim counterfeits enough; and so their printBe on the piece, 'tis gold, attests the mint.And "good," pronounce they whom his new appealIs made to: if their casual print conceal—This arbitrary good of theirs o'erglossWhat he has lived without, nor felt the loss—Qualities strange, ungainly, wearisome,—What matter? So must speech expand the dumbPart-sigh, part-smile with which Sordello, lateWhom no poor woodland-sights could satiate,Betakes himself to study hungrilyJust what the puppets his crude fantasySupposes notablest,—popes, kings, priests, knights,—May please to promulgate for appetites;Accepting all their artificial joysNot as he views them, but as he employsEach shape to estimate the other's stockOf attributes, whereon—a marshalled flockOf authorized enjoyments—he may spendHimself, be men, now, as he used to blendWith tree and flower—nay more entirely, else'T were mockery: for instance, "How excelsMy life that chieftain's?" (who apprised the youthEcelin, here, becomes this month, in truth,Imperial Vicar?) "Turns he in his tentRemissly? Be it so—my head is bentDeliciously amid my girls to sleep.What if he stalks the Trentine-pass? Yon steepI climbed an hour ago with little toil:We are alike there. But can I, too, foilThe Guelf's paid stabber, carelessly affordSaint Mark's a spectacle, the sleight o' the swordBaffling the treason in a moment?" HereNo rescue! Poppy he is none, but peerTo Ecelin, assuredly: his hand,Fashioned no otherwise, should wield a brandWith Ecelin's success—try, now! He soonWas satisfied, returned as to the moonFrom earth: left each abortive boy's attemptHas qualities impossible to a boy,For feats, from failure happily exempt,In fancy at his beck. "One day I willAccomplish it! Are they not older still—Not grown up men and women? 'T is besideOnly a dream; and though I must abideWith dreams now, I may find a thorough ventFor all myself, acquire an instrumentFor acting what these people act; my soulHunting a body out may gain its wholeDesire some day!" How else express chagrinAnd resignation, show the hope steal inWith which he let sink from an aching wristThe rough-hewn ash-bow? Straight, a gold shaft hissedInto the Syrian air, struck Malek downSuperbly! "Crosses to the breach! God's TownIs 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 fateShall have prepared in turn real men whose namesStartle, real places of enormous fames,Este abroad and Ecelin at homeTo worship him,—Mantua, Verona, RomeTo 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,So, only to be appropriated in fancy,And grasp the whole at once!The pageant thinnedAccordingly; from rank to rank, like windHis spirit passed to winnow and divide;Back fell the simpler phantasms; every sideThe strong clave to the wise; with either classedThe beauteous; so, till two or three amassedMankind's beseemingnesses, and reducedThemselves eventually, graces loosed,Strengths lavished, all to heighten up One ShapeWhose potency no creature should escape.Can it be Friedrich of the bowmen's talk?Surely that grape-juice, bubbling at the stalk,Is some gray scorching Sarasenic wineThe 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 armamentOf Canaan:—Friedrich's, all the pomp and fierceDemeanor! But harsh sounds and sights transpierceSo rarely the serene cloud where he dwells,And practised on till the real come.Whose looks enjoin, whose lightest words are spellsOn the obdurate! That right arm indeedHas thunder for its slave; but where 's the needOf thunder if the stricken multitudeHearkens, arrested in its angriest mood,While songs go up exulting, then dispread,Dispart, disperse, lingering overheadLike an escape of angels? 'T is the tune,Nor much unlike the words his women croonSmilingly, colorless and faint-designedEach, as a worn-out queen's face some remindOf her extreme youth's love-tales. "EglamorMade that!" Half minstrel and half emperor,What but ill objects vexed him? Such he slew.The kinder sort were easy to subdueBy those ambrosial glances, dulcet tones;And these a gracious hand advanced to thronesBeneath him. Wherefore twist and torture this,Striving to name afresh the antique bliss,Instead of saying, neither less nor more,He means to be perfect—say, Apollo;He had discovered, as our world before,Apollo? That shall be the name; nor bidMe rag by rag expose how patchwork hidThe youth—what thefts of every clime and dayContributed to purfle the arrayHe climbed with (June at deep) some close ravine'Mid clatter of its million pebbles sheen,Over which, singing soft, the runnel slippedElate with rains: into whose streamlet dippedHe foot, yet trod, you thought, with unwet sock—Though really on the stubs of living rockAges 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 spiedMighty descents of forest; multipliedTuft on tuft, here, the frolic myrtle-trees,There gendered the grave maple stocks at ease,And, proud of its observer, straight the woodTried old surprises on him; black it stoodA sudden barrier ('t was a cloud passed o'er)So dead and dense, the tiniest brute no moreMust pass; yet presently (the cloud dispatched)Each clump, behold, was glistening detachedA shrub, oak-boles shrunk into ilex-stems!Yet could not he denounce the stratagemsHe saw thro', till, hours thence, aloft would hangWhite summer-lightnings; as it sank and sprangTo measure, that whole palpitating breastOf heaven, 't was Apollo, nature prestAt eve to worship.Time stole: by degreesThe Pythons perish off; his votariesSink to respectful distance; songs redeemTheir pains, but briefer; their dismissals seemEmphatic; only girls are very slowTo disappear—his Delians! Some that glowO' the instant, more with earlier loves to wrenchAway, reserves to quell, disdains to quench;Alike in one material circumstance—All soon or late adore Apollo! GlanceThe bevy through, divine Apollo's choice,And Apollo must one day find Daphne.His Daphne! "We secure Count Richard's voiceIn Este's counsels, good for Este's endsAs our Taurello," say his faded friends,"By granting him our Palma!"—the sole child,They mean, of Agnes Este who beguiledEcelin, years before this AdelaideWedded and turned him wicked: "but the maidRejects his suit," those sleepy women boast.She, scorning all beside, deserves the mostSordello: so, conspicuous in his worldOf dreams sat Palma. How the tresses curledInto a sumptuous swell of gold and woundAbout her like a glory! even the groundWas bright as with spilt sunbeams; breathe not, breatheNot!—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 whereThe languid blood lies heavily; yet calmOn her slight prop, each flat and outspread palm,As but suspended in the act to riseBy consciousness of beauty, whence her eyesBut when will this dream turn truth?Turn with so frank a triumph, for she meetsApollo's gaze in the pine glooms.Time fleets:That 's worst! Because the pre-appointed ageApproaches. Fate is tardy with the stageAnd crowd she promised. Lean he grows and pale,Though restlessly at rest. Hardly availFancies to soothe him. Time steals, yet aloneHe tarries here! The earnest smile is gone.How long this might continue matters not;For the time is ripe, and he ready.—Forever, possibly; since to the spotNone come: our lingering Taurello quitsMantua at last, and light our lady flitsBack to her place disburdened of a care.Strange—to be constant here if he is there!Is it distrust? Oh, never! for they bothGoad Ecelin alike, Romano's growthIs daily manifest, with Azzo dumbAnd Richard wavering: let but Friedrich come,Find matter for the minstrelsy's report!—Lured from the Isle and its young Kaiser's courtTo 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 southThe other. What a method to appriseNeighbors of births, espousals, obsequies!Which in their very tongue the TroubadourRecords; and his performance makes a tour,For Trouveres bear the miracle about,Explain its cunning to the vulgar rout,Until the Formidable House is famedOver the country—as Taurello aimed,Who introduced, although the rest adopt,The novelty. Such games, her absence stopped,Begin afresh now Adelaide, recluseNo longer, in the light of day pursuesHer plans at Mantua: whence an accidentWhich, breaking on Sordello's mixed content,Opened, like any flash that cures the blind,The veritable business of mankind.

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

A Quixotic attempt.

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,

Why the Poet himself addresses his audience—

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; 'tis 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

Few living, many dead.

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,

Shelley departing, Verona appears.

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. 'Tis 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 stanch 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 gray

Stood, with shut eyelids, rocking to and fro,

How her Guelfs are discomfited.

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.

Why they entreat the Lombard League,

Immediate succor 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,

In their changed fortune at Ferrara:

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 favor 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,

For the times grow stormy again.

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 naught 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

The Ghibellins' wish: the Guelfs' wish.

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 neighbors 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,

How Ecelo's house grew head of those,

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 neighborhood: 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

As Azzo Lord of Este heads these.

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

Count Richard's Palace at Verona.

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,

Of the couple found therein,

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!

One belongs to Dante; his Birthplace.

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

A Vault inside the Castle at Goito,

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 gray-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 burdens 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 forever, 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

And what Sordello would see there.

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

His boyhood in the domain of Ecelin.

('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 recognize 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 a poet's soul comes into play.

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 endeavor,—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 sealed eyeball owns the mystic rod;

Visibly through his garden walketh God.

What denotes such a soul's progress.

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

How poets class at length—

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,

For honor,

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

Or shame—

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

Emprise—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 ...

Which may the Gods avert

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 now he never could remember when

He dwelt not at Goito. Calmly, then,

From Sordello, now in childhood.

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.

The delights of his childish fancy,

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 favorite. 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,

Which could blow out a great bubble,

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 balked here: doubt

Being secure awhile from intrusion.

Rose tardily in one so fenced about

From most that nurtures judgment, care and pain:

Judgment, that dull expedient we are fain,

Less favored, 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?

But it comes; and new-born judgment

The new-born judgment answered, "little boots

Beholding other creatures' attributes

And having none!" or, say that it sufficed,

"Yet, could one but possess, one's self," (enticed

Judgment) "some special office!" Naught 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

Decides that he needs sympathizers.

The better for them?" Thus much craved his soul.

Alas, from the beginning love is whole

And true; if sure of naught 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

He therefore creates such a company;

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

Each of which, leading its own life,

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, 'tis 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 fantasy

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

Has qualities impossible to a boy,

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,

So, only to be appropriated in fancy,

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 gray scorching Sarasenic 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

Demeanor! But harsh sounds and sights transpierce

So rarely the serene cloud where he dwells,

And practised on till the real come.

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, colorless 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 means to be perfect—say, Apollo;

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 ('t was 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 glistening 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,

And Apollo must one day find Daphne.

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

But when will this dream turn truth?

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 the time is ripe, and he ready.

—Forever, possibly; since to the spot

None come: our lingering Taurello quits

Mantua at last, and light our lady flits

Back to her place disburdened 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

Neighbors 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.

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