BOOK THE SIXTH

Is it the same Sordello in the duskAs at the dawn?—merely a perished huskNow, that arose a power fit to buildMankind triumph of a sudden?Up Rome again? The proud conception chilledSo soon? Ay, watch that latest dream of thine—ARome indebted to no Palatine—Drop arch by arch, Sordello! Art possessedOf thy wish now, rewarded for thy questTo-day among Ferrara's squalid sons?Are this and this and this the shining onesMeet for the Shining City? Sooth to say,Your favored tenantry pursue their wayAfter a fashion! This companion slipsOn the smooth causey, t' other blinkard tripsAt his mooned sandal. "Leave to lead the brawlsHere i' the atria?" No, friend! He that sprawlsOn aught but a stibadium ... what his duesWho puts the lustral vase to such an use?Oh, huddle up the day's disasters! March,Ye runagates, and drop thou, arch by arch,Rome!Yet before they quite disband—a whim—Study mere shelter, now, for him, and him,Nay, even the worst,—just house them! Any caveSuffices: throw out earth! A loophole? Brave!They ask to feel the sun shine, see the grassGrow, hear the larks sing? Dead art thou, alas,And I am dead! But here's our son excelsAt hurdle-weaving any Scythian, fellsOak and devises rafters, dreams and shapesHis dream into a door-post, just escapesThe mystery of hinges. Lie we bothPerdue another age. The goodly growthOf brick and stone! Our building-pelt was rough,But that descendant's garb suits well enoughA portico-contriver. Speed the years—Why, the work should be one of ages,What's time to us? At last, a city rearsItself! nay, enter—what's the grave to us?Lo, our forlorn acquaintance carry thusThe head! Successively sewer, forum, cirque—Last age, an aqueduct was counted work,But now they tire the artificer uponBlank alabaster, black obsidion,—Careful, Jove's face be duly fulgurant,And mother Venus' kiss-creased nipples pantBack into pristine pulpiness, ere fixedAbove the baths. What difference betwixtThis Rome and ours—resemblance what, betweenThat scurvy dumb-show and this pageant sheen—These Romans and our rabble? Use thy wit!The work marched: step by step,—a workman fitTook each, nor too fit,—to one task, one time,—No leaping o'er the petty to the prime,If performed equally and thoroughly;When just the substituting osier litheFor brittle bulrush, sound wood for soft withe,To further loam-and-roughcast-work a stage,—Exacts an architect, exacts an age:No tables of the Mauritanian treeFor men whose maple log 's their luxury!That way was Rome built. "Better" (say you) "mergeAt once all workmen in the demiurge,All epochs in a lifetime, every taskIn one!" So should the sudden city baskI' the day—while those we'd feast there, want the knackOf keeping fresh-chalked gowns from speck and brack,Distinguish not rare peacock from vile swan,Nor Mareotic juice from Cæcuban."Enough of Rome! 'T was happy to conceiveRome on a sudden, nor shall fate bereaveMe of that credit: for the rest, her spiteIs an old story—serves my folly rightBy adding yet another to the dullList of abortions—things proved beautifulCould they be done, Sordello cannot do."He sat upon the terrace, plucked and threwThe powdery aloe-cusps away, saw shiftRome's walls, and drop arch after arch, and driftMist-like afar those pillars of all stripe,Mounds of all majesty. "Thou archetype,Last of my dreams and loveliest, depart!"And then a low voice wound into his heart:"Sordello!" (low as some old PythonessConceding to a Lydian King's distressThe cause of his long error—one mistakeOf her past oracle) "Sordello, wake!God has conceded two sights to a man—And a man can do but a man's portion.One, of men's whole work, time's completed plan,The other, of the minute's work, man's firstStep to the plan's completeness: what's dispersedSave hope of that supreme step which, descriedEarliest, was meant still to remain untriedOnly to give you heart to take your ownStep, and there stay—leaving the rest alone?Where is the vanity? Why count as oneThe first step, with the last step? What is goneExcept Rome's aëry magnificence,That last step you'd take first?—an evidenceYou were God: be man now! Let those glances fall!The basis, the beginning step of all,Which proves you just a man—is that gone too?Pity to disconcert one versed as youIn fate's ill-nature! but its full extentEludes Sordello, even: the veil rent,Read the black writing—that collective manOutstrips the individual! Who beganThe last of each series of workmenThe acknowledged greatnesses? Ay, your own artShall serve us: put the poet's mimes apart—Close with the poet's self, and lo, a dimYet too plain form divides itself from him!Alcamo's song enmeshes the lulled Isle,Woven into the echoes left erewhileBy Nina, one soft web of song: no moreTurning his name, then, flower-like o'er and o'er!An elder poet in the younger's place;Nina's the strength, but Alcamo's the grace:Each neutralizes each then! Search your fill;You get no whole and perfect Poet—stillNew Ninas, Alcamos, till time's midnightShrouds all—or better say, the shutting lightOf a forgotten yesterday. DissectEvery ideal workman—(to rejectIn favor of your fearful ignoranceThe thousand phantasms eager to advance,Sums up in himself all predecessors.And point you but to those within your reach)—Were you the first who brought—(in modern speech)The Multitude to be materialized?That loose eternal unrest—who devisedAn apparition i' the midst? The routWas cheeked, a breathless ring was formed aboutThat sudden flower: get round at any riskThe gold-rough pointel, silver-blazing diskO' the lily! Swords across it! Reign thy reignWe just see Charlemagne, Hildebrand,And serve thy frolic service, Charlemagne!—The very child of over-joyousness,Unfeeling thence, strong therefore: Strength by stressOf Strength comes of that forehead confident,Those widened eyes expecting heart's content,A calm as out of just-quelled noise; nor swervesFor doubt, the ample cheek in gracious curvesAbutting on the upthrust nether lip:He wills, how should he doubt then? Ages slip:Was it Sordello pried into the workSo far accomplished, and discovered lurkA company amid the other clans,Only distinct in priests for castellansAnd popes for suzerains (their rule confessedIts rule, their interest its interest,Living for sake of living—there an end,—Wrapt in itself, no energy to spendIn making adversaries or allies),—Dived you into its capabilitiesAnd dared create, out of that sect, a soulShould turn a multitude, already whole,Into its body? Speak plainer! Is 't so sureGod's church lives by a King's investiture?Look to last step! A staggering—a shock—What's mere sand is demolished, while the rockEndures: a column of black fiery dustBlots heaven—that help was prematurely thrustAside, perchance!—but air clears, naught's erasedOf the true outline! Thus much being firm based,The other was a scaffold. See him standButtressed upon his mattock, HildebrandOf the huge brain-mask welded ply o'er plyAs in a forge; it buries either eyeWhite and extinct, that stupid brow; teeth clenched,The neck tight-corded, too, the chin deep-trenched,As if a cloud enveloped him while foughtUnder its shade, grim prizers, thought with thoughtAt dead-lock, agonizing he, untilThe victor thought leap radiant up, and Will,The slave with folded arms and drooping lidsThey fought for, lean forth flame-like as it bids.Call him no flower—a mandrake of the earth,Thwarted and dwarfed and blasted in its birth,Rather,—a fruit of suffering's excess,Thence feeling, therefore stronger: still by stressOf Strength, work Knowledge! Full three hundred yearsHave men to wear away in smiles and tearsBetween the two that nearly seemed to touch,In composite work they end and name.Observe you! quit one workman and you clutchAnother, letting both their trains go by—The actors-out of either's policy,Heinrich, on this hand, Otho, Barbaross,Carry the three Imperial crowns across,Aix' Iron, Milan's Silver, and Rome's Gold—While Alexander, Innocent upholdOn that, each Papal key—but, link on link,Why is it neither chain betrays a chink?How coalesce the small and great? Alack,For one thrust forward, fifty such fall back!Do the popes coupled there help GregoryAlone? Hark—from the hermit Peter's cryAt Claremont, down to the first serf that saysFriedrich 's no liege of his while he delaysGetting the Pope's curse off him! The Crusade—Or trick of breeding Strength by other aidThan Strength, is safe. Hark—from the wild harangueOf Vimmercato, to the carroch's clangYonder! The League—or trick of turning StrengthAgainst Pernicious Strength, is safe at length.Yet hark—from Mantuan Albert making ceaseThe fierce ones, to Saint Francis preaching peaceYonder! God's Truce—or trick to supersedeThe very Use of Strength, is safe. IndeedWe trench upon the future. Who is foundTo take next step, next age—trail o'er the ground—Shall I say, gourd-like?—not the flower's displayNor the root's prowess, but the plenteous wayO' the plant—produced by joy and sorrow, whenceUnfeeling and yet feeling, strongest thence?Knowledge by stress of merely Knowledge? No—E'en were Sordello ready to foregoHis life for this, 't were overleaping workSome one has first to do, howe'er it irk,Nor stray a foot's breadth from the beaten road.Who means to help must still support the loadHildebrand lifted—'why hast Thou,' he groaned,'Imposed on me a burden, Paul had moaned,And Moses dropped beneath?' Much done—and yetDoubtless that grandest task God ever setOn man, left much to do: at his arm's wrench,Charlemagne's scaffold fell; but pillars blenchMerely, start back again—perchance have beenTaken for buttresses: crash every screen,Hammer the tenons better, and engageA gang about your work, for the next ageOr two, of Knowledge, part by Strength and partBy Knowledge! Then, indeed, perchance may startSordello on his race—would time divulgeSuch secrets! If one step's awry, one bulgeCalls for correction by a step we thoughtGot over long since, why, till that is wrought,No progress! And the scaffold in its turnBecomes, its service o'er, a thing to spurn.Meanwhile, if your half-dozen years of lifeIn store dispose you to forego the strife,Who takes exception? Only bear in mind,Ferrara's reached, Goito 's left behind:If associates trouble you, stand off!As you then were, as half yourself, desist!—The warrior-part of you may, an it list,Finding real falchions difficult to poise,Fling them afar and taste the cream of joysBy wielding such in fancy,—what is bardOf you may spurn the vehicle that marredElys so much, and in free fancy glutHis sense, yet write no verses—you have butTo please yourself for law, and once could pleaseWhat once appeared yourself, by dreaming theseRather than doing these, in days gone by.But all is changed the moment you descryMankind as half yourself,—then, fancy's tradeEnds once and always: how may half evadeThe other half? men are found half of you.Out of a thousand helps, just one or twoCan be accomplished presently: but flinchFrom these (as from the falchion, raised an inch,Elys, described a couplet) and make proofOf fancy,—then, while one half lolls aloofI' the vines, completing Rome to the tip-top—See if, for that, your other half will stopShould the new sympathies allow you.A tear, begin a smile! The rabble's woes,Ludicrous in their patience as they choseTo sit about their town and quietlyBe slaughtered,—the poor reckless soldiery,With their ignoble rhymes on Richard, how'Polt-foot,' sang they, 'was in a pitfall now,'Cheering each other from the engine-mounts,—That crippled sprawling idiot who recountsHow, lopped of limbs, he lay, stupid as stone,Till the pains crept from out him one by one,And wriggles round the archers on his headTo earn a morsel of their chestnut bread,—And Cino, always in the self-same placeWeeping; beside that other wretch's case,Eyepits to ear, one gangrene since he pliedThe engine in his coat of raw sheep's hideA double watch in the noon sun; and seeLucchino, beauty, with the favors free,Trim hacqueton, spruce heard and scented hair,Campaigning it for the first time—cut thereIn two already, boy enough to crawlFor latter orpine round the southern wall,Tomà, where Richard's kept, because that whoreMarfisa, the fool never saw before,Sickened for flowers this wearisomest siege:And Tiso's wife—men liked their pretty liege,Cared for her least of whims once,—Berta, wedA twelvemonth gone, and, now poor Tiso's dead,Delivering herself of his first childOn that chance heap of wet filth, reconciledTo fifty gazers!"—(Here a wind belowMade moody music augural of woeFrom the pine barrier)—"What if, now the sceneDraws to a close, yourself have really beenTime having been lost, choose quick!—You, plucking purples in Goito's mossLike edges of a trabea (not to crossYour consul-humor) or dry aloe-shaftsFor fasces, at Ferrara—he, fate wafts,This very age, her whole inheritanceOf opportunities? Yet you advanceUpon the last! Since talking is your trade,There 's Salinguerra left you to persuade:Fail! then"—"No—no—which latest chance secure!"Leaped up and cried Sordello: "this made sure,The past were yet redeemable; its workWas—help the Guelfs, whom I, howe'er it irk,Thus help!" He shook the foolish aloe-haulmHe takes his first step as a Guelf;Out of his doublet, paused, proceded calmTo the appointed presence. The large headTurned on its socket; "And your spokesman," saidThe large voice, "is Elcorte's happy sprout?Few such"—(so finishing a speech no doubtAddressed to Palma, silent at his side)"—My sober councils have diversified.Elcorte's son! good: forward as you may,Our lady's minstrel with so much to say!"The hesitating sunset floated back,Rosily traversed in the wonted trackThe chamber, from the lattice o'er the girthOf pines, to the huge eagle blacked in earthOpposite,—outlined sudden, spur to crest,That solid Salinguerra, and caressedPalma's contour; 't was day looped back night's pall;Sordello had a chance left spite of all.And much he made of the convincing speechMeant to compensate for the past and reachThrough his youth's daybreak of unprofit, quiteTo his noon's labor, so proceed till nightLeisurely! The great argument to bindTaurello with the Guelf Cause, body and mind,—Came the consummate rhetoric to that?Yet most Sordello's argument dropped flatThrough his accustomed fault of breaking yoke,Disjoining him who felt from him who spoke.Was 't not a touching incident—so promptA rendering the world its just accompt,Once proved its debtor? Who'd suppose, beforeThis proof, that he, Goito's god of yore,At duty's instance could demean himselfSo memorably, dwindle to a Guelf?Be sure, in such delicious flattery steeped,His inmost self at the out-portion peeped,Thus occupied; then stole a glance at thoseAppealed to, curious if her color roseOr his lip moved, while he discreetly urgedThe need of Lombardy becoming purgedAt soonest of her barons; the poor partAbandoned thus, missing the blood at heartAnd spirit in brain, unseasonably offElsewhere! But, though his speech was worthy scoff,Good-humored Salinguerra, famed for tactAnd tongue, who, careless of his phrase, ne'er lackedThe right phrase, and harangued Honorius dumbAt his accession,—looked as all fell plumbTo purpose and himself found interestIn every point his new instructor pressed—Left playing with the rescript's white wax sealTo scrutinize Sordello head and heel.He means to yield assent sure? No, alas!All he replied was, "What, it comes to passThat poesy, sooner than politics,Makes fade young hair?" To think such speech could fixTaurello!Then a flash of bitter truth:So fantasies could break and fritter youthThat he had long ago lost earnestness,Lost will to work, lost power to expressBut to will and to do are different:The need of working! Earth was turned a grave:No more occasions now, though he should craveJust one, in right of superhuman toil,To do what was undone, repair such spoil,Alter the past—nothing would give the chance!Not that he was to die; he saw askanceProtract the ignominious years beyondTo dream in—time to hope and time despond,Remember and forget, be sad, rejoiceAs saved a trouble; he might, at his choice,One way or other, idle life out, dropHe may sleep on the bed he has made.No few smooth verses by the way—for prop,A thyrsus, these sad people, all the same,Should pick up, and set store by,—far from blame,Plant o'er his hearse, convinced his better partSurvived him. "Rather tear men out the heartO' the truth!"—Sordello muttered, and renewedHis propositions for the Multitude.But Salinguerra, who at this attackHad thrown great breast and ruffling corselet backTo hear the better, smilingly resumedHis task; beneath, the carroch's warning boomed;He must decide with Tito; courteouslyHe turned then, even seeming to agreeWith his admonisher—"Assist the Pope,Extend Guelf domination, fill the scopeO' the Church, thus based on All, by All, for All—Change Secular to Evangelical"—Echoing his very sentence: all seemed lost,When suddenly he looked up, laughingly almost,To Palma: "This opinion of your friend's—For instance, would it answer Palma's ends?Best, were it not, turn Guelf, submit our Strength"—(Here he drew out his baldric to its length)—"To the Pope's Knowledge—let our captive slip,Wide to the walls throw ope our gates, equipAzzo with ... what I hold here! Who'll subscribeTo a trite censure of the minstrel tribeHenceforward? or pronounce, as Heinrich used,'Spear-heads for battle, burr-heads for the joust!'—When Constance, for his couplets, would promoteAlcamo, from a parti-colored coat,To holding her lord's stirrup in the wars.Not that I see where couplet-making jarsWith common sense: at Mantua I had borneThis chanted, better than their most forlornOf bull-baits,—that's indisputable!"Brave!Whom vanity nigh slew, contempt shall save!All's at an end: a Troubadour supposeMankind will class him with their friends or foes?Scorn flings cold water in his face,A puny uncouth ailing vassal thinkThe world and him bound in some special link?Abrupt the visionary tether burst.What were rewarded here, or what amercedIf a poor drudge, solicitous to dreamDeservingly, got tangled by his themeSo far as to conceit the knack or giftOr whatsoe'er it be, of verse, might liftThe globe, a lever like the hand and headOf—"Men of Action," as the Jongleurs said,—"The Great Men," in the people's dialect?And not a moment did this scorn affectArouses him at last, to some purpose,Sordello: scorn the poet? They, for once,Asking "what was," obtained a full response.Bid Naddo think at Mantua, he had butTo look into his promptuary, putFinger on a set thought in a set speech:But was Sordello fitted thus for eachConjecture? Nowise; since within his soul,Perception brooded unexpressed and whole.A healthy spirit like a healthy frameCraves aliment in plenty—all the same,Changes, assimilates its aliment.Perceived Sordello, on a truth intent?Next day no formularies more you sawThan figs or olives in a sated maw.'T is Knowledge, whither such perceptions tend;They lose themselves in that, means to an end,The many old producing some one new,A last unlike the first. If lies are true,The Caliph's wheel-work man of brass receivesA meal, munched millet grains and lettuce leavesTogether in his stomach rattle loose;You find them perfect next day to produce:But ne'er expect the man, on strength of that,Can roll an iron camel-collar flatLike Haroun's self! I tell you, what was storedAnd thus gets the utmost out of him.Bit by bit through Sordello's life, outpouredThat eve, was, for that age, a novel thing:And round those three the People formed a ring,Of visionary judges whose awardHe recognized in full—faces that barredHenceforth return to the old careless life,In whose great presence, therefore, his first strifeFor their sake must not be ignobly fought;All these, for once, approved of him, he thought,Suspended their own vengeance, chose awaitThe issue of this strife to reinstateThem in the right of taking it—in factHe must be proved king ere they could exactVengeance for such king's defalcation. Last,A reason why the phrases flowed so fastWas in his quite forgetting for a timeHimself in his amazement that the rhymeDisguised the royalty so much: he there—And Salinguerra yet all unawareWho was the lord, who liegeman!"Thus I layOn thine my spirit and compel obeyHis lord,—my liegeman,—impotent to buildAnother Rome, but hardly so unskilledIn what such builder should have been, as brookOne shame beyond the charge that I forsookHis function! Free me from that shame, I bendA brow before, suppose new years to spend,—Allow each chance, nor fruitlessly, recur—Measure thee with the Minstrel, then, demurHe asserts the poet's rank and right,At any crowd he claims! That I must cedeShamed now, my right to my especial meed—Confess thee fitter help the world than IOrdained its champion from eternity,Is much: but to behold thee scorn the postI quit in thy behalf—to hear thee boastWhat makes my own despair!" And while he rungThe changes on this theme, the roof up-sprung,The sad walls of the presence-chamber diedInto the distance, or embowering viedWith far-away Goito's vine-frontier;And crowds of faces—(only keeping clearThe rose-light in the midst, his vantage-groundTo fight their battle from)—deep clustered roundSordello, with good wishes no mere breath,Kind prayers for him no vapor, since, come death,Come life, he was fresh-sinewed every joint,Each bone new-marrowed as whom gods anointThough mortal to their rescue. Now let sprawlThe snaky volumes hither! Is Typhon allFor Hercules to trample—good reportFrom Salinguerra only to extort?"So was I" (closed he his inculcating,A poet must be earth's essential king)Basing these on their proper ground,"So was I, royal so, and if I fail,'T is not the royalty, ye witness quail,But one deposed who, caring not exertIts proper essence, trifled malapertWith accidents instead—good things assignedAs heralds of a better thing behind—And, worthy through display of these, put forthNever the inmost all-surpassing worthThat constitutes him king precisely sinceAs yet no other spirit may evinceIts like: the power he took most pride to test,Whereby all forms of life had been professedAt pleasure, forms already on the earth,Was but a means to power beyond, whose birthShould, in its novelty, be kingship's proof.Now, whether he came near or kept aloofThe several forms he longed to imitate,Not there the kingship lay, he sees too late.Those forms, unalterable first as last,Proved him her copier, not the protoplastOf nature: what would come of being free,By action to exhibit tree for tree,Bird, beast, for beast and bird, or prove earth boreOne veritable man or woman more?Means to an end, such proofs are: what the end?Let essence, whatsoe'er it be, extend—Never contract. Already you includeThe multitude; then let the multitudeInclude yourself; and the result were new:Themselves before, the multitude turn you.This were to live and move and have, in them,Your being, and secure a diademYou should transmit (because no cycle yearnsBeyond itself, but on itself returns)When, the full sphere in wane, the world o'erlaidLong since with you, shall have in turn obeyedSome orb still prouder, some displayer, stillMore potent than the last, of human will,Recognizing true dignity in service,And some new king depose the old. Of suchAm I—whom pride of this elates too much?Safe, rather say, 'mid troops of peers again;I, with my words, hailed brother of the trainDeeds once sufficed: for, let the world roll back,Who fails, through deeds howe'er diverse, re-trackMy purpose still, my task? A teeming crust—Air, flame, earth, wave at conflict! Then, needs mustEmerge some Calm embodied, these referThe brawl to—yellow-bearded Jupiter?No! Saturn; some existence like a pactAnd protest against Chaos, some first factI' the faint of time. My deep of life, I know,Is unavailing e'en to poorly show" ...For here the Chief immeasurably yawned)... "Deeds in their due gradation till Song dawned—The fullest effluence of the finest mind,All in degree, no way diverse in kindFrom minds about it, minds which, more or less,Lofty or low, move seeking to impressWhether successively that of epoist,Themselves on somewhat; but one mind has climbedStep after step, by just ascent sublimed.Thought is the soul of act, and, stage by stage,Soul is from body still to disengageAs tending to a freedom which rejectsSuch help and incorporeally affectsThe world, producing deeds but not by deeds,Swaying, in others, frames itself exceeds,Assigning them the simpler tasks it usedTo patiently perform till Song producedActs, by thoughts only, for the mind: divestMind of e'en Thought, and, lo, God's unexpressedWill draws above us! All then is to winSave that. How much for me, then? where beginMy work? About me, faces! and they flock,The earnest faces. What shall I unlockBy song? behold me prompt, whate'er it be,To minister: how much can mortals seeOf Life? No more than so? I take the taskAnd marshal you Life's elemental masque,Show Men, on evil or on good lay stress,Dramatist, or, so to call him, analyst,This light, this shade make prominent, suppressAll ordinary hues that softening blendSuch natures with the level. ApprehendWhich sinner is, which saint, if I allotHell, Purgatory, Heaven, a blaze or blot,To those you doubt concerning! I enwombSome wretched Friedrich with his red-hot tomb;Some dubious spirit, Lombard AgilulphWith the black chastening river I engulf!Some unapproached Matilda I enshrineWith languors of the planet of decline—These, fail to recognize, to arbitrateBetween henceforth, to rightly estimateThus marshalled in the masque! Myself, the while,As one of you, am witness, shrink or smileAt my own showing! Next age—what's to do?The men and women stationed hithertoWill I unstation, good and bad, conductEach nature to its farthest, or obstructAt soonest, in the world: light, thwarted, breaksA limpid purity to rainbow flakes,Or shadow, massed, freezes to gloom: beholdHow such, with fit assistance to unfold,Or obstacles to crush them, disengageTheir forms, love, hate, hope, fear, peace make, war wage,In presence of you all! Myself, impliedSuperior now, as, by the platform's side,I bade them do and suffer,—would last contentThe world ... no—that's too far! I circumventA few, my masque contented, and to theseOffer unveil the last of mysteries—Man's inmost life shall have yet freer play:Once more I cast external things away,And natures composite, so decomposeThat" ... Why, he writesSordello!"How I rose,And how have you advanced! since evermoreYourselves effect what I was fain beforeEffect, what I supplied yourselves suggest,What I leave bare yourselves can now invest.How we attain to talk as brothers talk,In half-words, call things by half-names, no balkFrom discontinuing old aids. To-dayTakes in account the work of Yesterday:Has not the world a Past now, its adeptConsults ere he dispense with or acceptNew aids? a single touch more may enhance,A touch less turned to insignificanceThose structures' symmetry the past has strewedThe world with, once so bare. Leave the mere rudeWho turns in due course synthetist.Explicit details! 't is but brother's speech,We need, speech where an accent's change gives eachThe other's soul—no speech to understandBy former audience: need was then to expand,Expatiate—hardly were we brothers! true—Nor I lament my small remove from you,Nor reconstruct what stands already. EndsAccomplished turn to means: my art intendsNew structure from the ancient: as they changedThe spoils of every clime at Venice, rangedThe horned and snouted Libyan god, uprightAs in his desert, by some simple brightClay cinerary pitcher—Thebes as Rome,Athens as Byzant rifled, till their DomeFrom earth's reputed consummations razedA seal, the all-transmuting Triad blazedAbove. Ah, whose that fortune? Ne'erthelessE'en he must stoop contented to expressNo tithe of what's to say—the vehicleNever sufficient: but his work is stillFor faces like the faces that selectThis for one day: now, serve as Guelf!The single service I am bound effect,—That bid me cast aside such fancies, bowTaurello to the Guelf cause, disallowThe Kaiser's coming—which with heart, soul, strength,I labor for, this eve, who feel at lengthMy past career's outrageous vanity,And would, as it amends, die, even dieNow I first estimate the boon of life,If death might win compliance—sure, this strifeIs right for once—the People my support."My poor Sordello! what may we extortBy this, I wonder? Palma's lighted eyesTurned to Taurello who, long past surprise,Began, "You love him—what you'd say at largeLet me say briefly. First, your father's chargeTo me, his friend, peruse: I guessed indeedYou were no stranger to the course decreed.Salinguerra, dislodged from his post,He bids me leave his children to the saints:As for a certain project, he acquaintsThe Pope with that, and offers him the bestOf your possessions to permit the restGo peaceably—to Ecelin, a stripeOf soil the cursed Vicentines will gripe,—To Alberic, a patch the TrevisanClutches already; extricate, who can,Treville, Villarazzi, Puissolo,Loria and Cartiglione!—all must go,And with them go my hopes. 'T is lost, then! LostThis eve, our crisis, and some pains it costProcuring; thirty years—as good I'd spentLike our admonisher! But each his bentPursues: no question, one might live absurdOne's self this while, by deed as he by wordPersisting to obtrude an influence where'T is made account of, much as ... nay, you fareWith twice the fortune, youngster!—I submit,Happy to parallel my waste of witWith the renowned Sordello's: you decideA course for me. Romano may abideRomano,—Bacchus! After all, what dearthOf Ecelins and Alberies on earth?Say there's a prize in prospect, must disgraceBetide competitors, unless they styleThemselves Romano? Were it worth my whileTo try my own luck! But an obscure placeSuits me—there wants a youth to bustle, stalkAnd attitudinize—some fight, more talk,Most flaunting badges—how, I might make clearSince Friedrich's very purposes lie here—Here, pity they are like to lie! For me,With station fixed unceremoniouslyLong since, small use contesting; I am butThe liegeman—you are born the lieges—shutThat gentle mouth now! or resume your kinIn your sweet self; were Palma EcelinFor me to work with! Could that neck endureThis bauble for a cumbrous garniture,She should ... or might one bear it for her? Stay—I have not been so flattered many a dayAs by your pale friend—Bacchus! The least helpWould lick the hind's fawn to a lion's whelp:His neck is broad enough—a ready tongueBeside—too writhled—but, the main thing, young—I could ... why, look ye!"And the badge was thrownIn moving, opens a door to Sordello,Across Sordello's neck: This badge aloneMakes you Romano's Head—becomes superbOn your bare neck, which would, on mine, disturbThe pauldron," said Taurello. A mad act,Nor even dreamed about before—in fact,Not when his sportive arm rose for the nonce—But he had dallied overmuch, this once,With power: the thing was done, and he, awareThe thing was done, proceeded to declare—(So like a nature made to serve, excelIn serving, only feel by service well!)—That he would make Sordello that and more."As good a scheme as any. What's to poreAt in my face?" he asked—"ponder insteadThis piece of news; you are Romano's Head!One cannot slacken pace so near the goal,Suffer my Azzo to escape heart-wholeThis time! For you there's Palma to espouse—For me, one crowning trouble ere I houseLike my compeer."On which ensued a strangeAnd solemn visitation; there came changeO'er every one of them; each looked on each:Up in the midst a truth grew, without speech.And when the giddiness sank and the hazeSubsided, they were sitting, no amaze,Sordello with the baldric on, his sireWho is declared Salinguerra's son,Silent, though his proportions seemed aspireMomently; and, interpreting the thrillRight at its ebb, Palma was found there stillRelating somewhat Adelaide confessedA year ago, while dying on her breast,—Of a contrivance that Vicenza nightWhen Ecelin had birth. "Their convoy's flight,Cut off a moment, coiled inside the flameThat wallowed like a dragon at his gameThe toppling city through—San Biagio rocks!And wounded lies in her delicious locksRetrude, the frail mother, on her face,None of her wasted, just in one embraceCovering her child: when, as they lifted her,Cleaving the tumult, mighty, mightierAnd mightiest Taurello's cry outbroke,Leapt like a tongue of fire that cleaves the smoke,Midmost to cheer his Mantuans onward—drownHis colleague Ecelin's clamor, up and downThe disarray: failed Adelaide see thenWho was the natural chief, the man of men?Outstripping time, her infant there burst swathe,Stood up with eyes haggard beyond the scatheFrom wandering after his heritageLost once and lost for aye—and why that rage,That deprecating glance? A new shape leantOn a familiar shape—gloatingly bentO'er his discomfiture; 'mid wreaths it wore,Still one outflamed the rest—her child's before'T was Salinguerra's for his child: scorn, hate,Rage now might startle her when all too late!Then was the moment!—rival's foot had spurnedHidden hitherto by Adelaide's policy.Never that House to earth else! Sense returned—The act conceived, adventured and complete,They bore away to an obscure retreatMother and child—Retrude's self not slain"(Nor even here Taurello moved) "though painWas fled: and what assured them most 't was fled,All pain, was, if they raised the pale hushed head'T would turn this way and that, waver awhile,And only settle into its old smile—(Graceful as the disquieted water-flagSteadying itself, remarked they, in the quagOn either side their path)—when suffered lookDown on her child. They marched: no sign once shookThe company's close litter of crossed spearsTill, as they reached Goito, a few tearsSlipped in the sunset from her long black lash,And she was gone. So far the action rash;No crime. They laid Retrude in the font,Taurello's very gift, her child was wontTo sit beneath—constant as eve he cameTo sit by its attendant girls the sameAs one of them. For Palma, she would blendWith this magnific spirit to the end,That ruled her first; but scarcely had she daredTo disobey the Adelaide who scaredHer into vowing never to discloseA secret to her husband, which so frozeHis blood at half-recital, she contrivedTo hide from him Taurello's infant lived,Lest, by revealing that, himself should marRomano's fortunes. And, a crime so far,Palma received that action: she was toldOf Salinguerra's nature, of his coldCalm acquiescence in his lot! But freeTo impart the secret to Romano, sheHow the discovery moves Salinguerra,Engaged to repossess Sordello ofHis heritage, and hers, and that way doffThe mask, but after years, long years: while now,Was not Romano's sign-mark on that brow?"Across Taurello's heart his arms were locked:And when he did speak 'twas as if he mockedThe minstrel, "who had not to move," he said,"Nor stir—should fate defraud him of a shredOf his son's infancy? much less his youth!"(Laughingly all this)—"which to aid, in truth,Himself, reserved on purpose, had not grownOld, not too old—'twas best they kept aloneTill now, and never idly met till now;"—Then, in the same breath, told Sordello howAll intimations of this eve's eventWere lies, for Friedrich must advance to Trent,Thence to Verona, then to Rome, there stop,Tumble the Church down, institute a-topThe Alps a Prefecture of Lombardy:—"That's now!—no prophesying what may beAnon, with a new monarch of the clime,Native of Gesi, passing his youth's primeAt Naples. Tito bids my choice decideOn whom" ..."Embrace him, madman!" Palma cried,Who through the laugh saw sweat-drops burst apace,And his lips blanching: he did not embraceSordello, but he laid Sordello's handOn his own eyes, mouth, forehead.Understand,This while Sordello was becoming flushedAnd Sordello the finally-determined,Out of his whiteness; thoughts rushed, fancies rushed;He pressed his hand upon his head and signedBoth should forbear him. "Nay, the best's behind!"Taurello laughed—not quite with the same laugh:"The truth is, thus we scatter, ay, like chaffThese Guelfs, a despicable monk recoilsFrom: nor expect a fickle Kaiser spoilsOur triumph!—Friedrich? Think you, I intendFriedrich shall reap the fruits of blood I spendAnd brain I waste? Think you, the people clapTheir hands at my out-hewing this wild gapFor any Friedrich to fill up? 'Tis mine—That's yours: I tell you, towards some such designHave I worked blindly, yes, and idly, yes,And for another, yes—but worked no lessWith instinct at my heart; I else had swerved,While now—look round! My cunning has preservedSamminiato—that's a central placeSecures us Florence, boy,—in Pisa's case,By land as she by sea; with Pisa ours,And Florence, and Pistoia, one devoursThe land at leisure! Gloriously dispersed—Brescia, observe, Milan, Piacenza firstThat flanked us (ah, you know not!) in the March;On these we pile, as keystone of our arch,Romagna and Bologna, whose first spanCovered the Trentine and the Valsugan;Sofia's Egna by Bolgiano's sure!" ...So he proceeded: half of all this, pureThe devil putting forth his potency:Delusion, doubtless, nor the rest too true,But what was undone he felt sure to do,As ring by ring he wrung off, flung awayThe pauldron-rings to give his sword-arm play—Need of the sword now! That would soon adjustAught wrong at present; to the sword intrustSordello's whiteness, undersize: 'twas plainHe hardly rendered right to his own brain—Like a brave hound, men educate to prideHimself on speed or scent nor aught beside,As though he could not, gift by gift, match men!Since Sordello, who began by rhyming,Palma had listened patiently: but when'Twas time expostulate, attempt withdrawTaurello from his child, she, without aweTook off his iron arms from, one by one,Sordello's shrinking shoulders, and, that done,Made him avert his visage and relieveSordello (you might see his corselet heaveThe while) who, loose, rose—tried to speak, then sank:They left him in the chamber. All was blank.And even reeling down the narrow stairTaurello kept up, as though unawarePalma was by to guide him, the old device—Something of Milan—"how we muster thriceThe Torriani's strength there; all alongOur own Visconti cowed them"—thus the songContinued even while she bade him stoop,Thrid somehow, by some glimpse of arrow-loop,The turnings to the gallery below,Where he stopped short as Palma let him go.When he had sat in silence long enoughSplintering the stone bench, braving a rebuffShe stopped the truncheon; only to commenceOne of Sordello's poems, a pretenceFor speaking, some poor rhyme of "Elys' hairAnd head that's sharp and perfect like a pear,So smooth and close are laid the few fine locksMay, even from the depths of failureStained like pale honey oozed from topmost rocksSun-blanched the livelong summer"—from his worstPerformance, the Goito, as his first:And that at end, conceiving from the browAnd open mouth no silence would serve now,Went on to say the whole world loved that manAnd, for that matter, thought his face, though wan,Eclipsed the Count's—he sucking in each phraseAs if an angel spoke. The foolish praiseEnded, he drew her on his mailed knees, madeHer face a framework with his hands, a shade,A crown, an aureole: there must she remain(Her little mouth compressed with smiling painAs in his gloves she felt her tresses twitch)To get the best look at, in fittest nicheDispose his saint. That done, he kissed her brow,—"Lauded her father for his treason now,"He told her, "only, how could one suspectThe wit in him?—whose clansman, recollect,Was ever Salinguerra—she, the same,Romano and his lady—so, might claimTo know all, as she should"—and thus begunSchemes with a vengeance, schemes on schemes, "not oneFit to be told that foolish boy," he said,"But only let Sordello Palma wed,—Then!"'T was a dim long narrow place at best:Yet spring to the summit of success,Midway a sole grate showed the fiery West,As shows its corpse the world's end some split tomb—A gloom, a rift of fire, another gloom,Faced Palma—but at length Taurello setHer free; the grating held one ragged jetOf fierce gold fire: he lifted her withinThe hollow underneath—how else beginFate's second marvellous cycle, else renewThe ages than with Palma plain in view?Then paced the passage, hands clenched, head erect,Pursuing his discourse; a grand uncheckedMonotony made out from his quick talkAnd the recurring noises of his walk;—Somewhat too much like the o'ercharged assentOf two resolved friends in one danger blent,Who hearten each the other against heart;Boasting there 's naught to care for, when, apartThe boaster, all 's to care for. He, besideSome shape not visible, in power and prideApproached, out of the dark, ginglingly near,Nearer, passed close in the broad light, his earCrimson, eyeballs suffused, temples full-fraught,Just a snatch of the rapid speech you caught,And on he strode into the opposite dark,Till presently the harsh heel's turn, a sparkI' the stone, and whirl of some loose embossed thongThat crashed against the angle aye so longAfter the last, punctual to an amountOf mailed great paces you could not but count,—Prepared you for the pacing back again.And by the snatches you might ascertainThat, Friedrich's Prefecture surmounted, leftBy this alone in Italy, they cleftAsunder, crushed together, at commandOf none, were free to break up Hildebrand,If he consent to oppress the world.Rebuild, he and Sordello, Charlemagne—But garnished, Strength with Knowledge, "if we deignAccept that compromise and stoop to giveRome law, the Cæsar's Representative."Enough, that the illimitable floodOf triumphs after triumphs, understoodIn its faint reflux (you shall hear) sufficedYoung Ecelin for appanage, enticedHim on till, these long quiet in their graves,He found 't was looked for that a whole life's bravesShould somehow be made good; so, weak and worn,Must stagger up at Milan, one gray mornOf the to-come, and fight his latest fight.But, Salinguerra's prophecy at height—Just this decided, as it now may be,He voluble with a raised arm and stiff,A blaring voice, a blazing eye, as ifHe had our very Italy to keepOr cast away, or gather in a heapTo garrison the better—ay, his wordWas, "run the cucumber into a gourd,Drive Trent upon Apulia"—at their pitchWho spied the continents and islands whichGrew mulberry-leaves and sickles, in the map—(Strange that three such confessions so should hapTo Palma, Dante spoke with in the clearAmorous silence of the Swooning-sphere,—Cunizza, as he called her! Never askOf Palma more! She sat, knowing her taskWas done, the labor of it,—for, successConcerned not Palma, passion's votaress)Triumph at height, and thus Sordello crowned—Above the passage suddenly a soundStops speech, stops walk: back shrinks Taurello, bidsWith large involuntary asking lids,Palma interpret. "'T is his own foot-stamp—Your hand! His summons! Nay, this idle dampBefits not!" Out they two reeled dizzily."Visconti 's strong at Milan," resumed he,In the old, somewhat insignificant way—(Was Palma wont, years afterward, to say)As though the spirit's flight, sustained thus far,Dropped at that very instant.Gone they are—Palma, Taurello; Eglamor anon,Ecelin,—only Naddo 's never gone!—Labors, this moonrise, what the Master meant—"Is Squarcialupo speckled?—purulent,I 'd say, but when was Providence put out?He carries somehow handily aboutHis spite nor fouls himself!" Goito's vinesStand like a cheat detected—stark rough lines,The moon breaks through, a gray mean scale againstThe vault where, this eve's Maiden, thou remain'stLike some fresh martyr, eyes fixed—who can tell?As Heaven, now all 's at end, did not so well,And we have done.Spite of the faith and victory, to leaveIts virgin quite to death in the lone eve.While the persisting hermit-bee ... ha! waitNo longer: these in compass, forward fate!

Is it the same Sordello in the dusk

As at the dawn?—merely a perished husk

Now, that arose a power fit to build

Mankind triumph of a sudden?

Up Rome again? The proud conception chilled

So soon? Ay, watch that latest dream of thine—A

Rome indebted to no Palatine—

Drop arch by arch, Sordello! Art possessed

Of thy wish now, rewarded for thy quest

To-day among Ferrara's squalid sons?

Are this and this and this the shining ones

Meet for the Shining City? Sooth to say,

Your favored tenantry pursue their way

After a fashion! This companion slips

On the smooth causey, t' other blinkard trips

At his mooned sandal. "Leave to lead the brawls

Here i' the atria?" No, friend! He that sprawls

On aught but a stibadium ... what his dues

Who puts the lustral vase to such an use?

Oh, huddle up the day's disasters! March,

Ye runagates, and drop thou, arch by arch,

Rome!

Yet before they quite disband—a whim—

Study mere shelter, now, for him, and him,

Nay, even the worst,—just house them! Any cave

Suffices: throw out earth! A loophole? Brave!

They ask to feel the sun shine, see the grass

Grow, hear the larks sing? Dead art thou, alas,

And I am dead! But here's our son excels

At hurdle-weaving any Scythian, fells

Oak and devises rafters, dreams and shapes

His dream into a door-post, just escapes

The mystery of hinges. Lie we both

Perdue another age. The goodly growth

Of brick and stone! Our building-pelt was rough,

But that descendant's garb suits well enough

A portico-contriver. Speed the years—

Why, the work should be one of ages,

What's time to us? At last, a city rears

Itself! nay, enter—what's the grave to us?

Lo, our forlorn acquaintance carry thus

The head! Successively sewer, forum, cirque—

Last age, an aqueduct was counted work,

But now they tire the artificer upon

Blank alabaster, black obsidion,

—Careful, Jove's face be duly fulgurant,

And mother Venus' kiss-creased nipples pant

Back into pristine pulpiness, ere fixed

Above the baths. What difference betwixt

This Rome and ours—resemblance what, between

That scurvy dumb-show and this pageant sheen—

These Romans and our rabble? Use thy wit!

The work marched: step by step,—a workman fit

Took each, nor too fit,—to one task, one time,—

No leaping o'er the petty to the prime,

If performed equally and thoroughly;

When just the substituting osier lithe

For brittle bulrush, sound wood for soft withe,

To further loam-and-roughcast-work a stage,—

Exacts an architect, exacts an age:

No tables of the Mauritanian tree

For men whose maple log 's their luxury!

That way was Rome built. "Better" (say you) "merge

At once all workmen in the demiurge,

All epochs in a lifetime, every task

In one!" So should the sudden city bask

I' the day—while those we'd feast there, want the knack

Of keeping fresh-chalked gowns from speck and brack,

Distinguish not rare peacock from vile swan,

Nor Mareotic juice from Cæcuban.

"Enough of Rome! 'T was happy to conceive

Rome on a sudden, nor shall fate bereave

Me of that credit: for the rest, her spite

Is an old story—serves my folly right

By adding yet another to the dull

List of abortions—things proved beautiful

Could they be done, Sordello cannot do."

He sat upon the terrace, plucked and threw

The powdery aloe-cusps away, saw shift

Rome's walls, and drop arch after arch, and drift

Mist-like afar those pillars of all stripe,

Mounds of all majesty. "Thou archetype,

Last of my dreams and loveliest, depart!"

And then a low voice wound into his heart:

"Sordello!" (low as some old Pythoness

Conceding to a Lydian King's distress

The cause of his long error—one mistake

Of her past oracle) "Sordello, wake!

God has conceded two sights to a man—

And a man can do but a man's portion.

One, of men's whole work, time's completed plan,

The other, of the minute's work, man's first

Step to the plan's completeness: what's dispersed

Save hope of that supreme step which, descried

Earliest, was meant still to remain untried

Only to give you heart to take your own

Step, and there stay—leaving the rest alone?

Where is the vanity? Why count as one

The first step, with the last step? What is gone

Except Rome's aëry magnificence,

That last step you'd take first?—an evidence

You were God: be man now! Let those glances fall!

The basis, the beginning step of all,

Which proves you just a man—is that gone too?

Pity to disconcert one versed as you

In fate's ill-nature! but its full extent

Eludes Sordello, even: the veil rent,

Read the black writing—that collective man

Outstrips the individual! Who began

The last of each series of workmen

The acknowledged greatnesses? Ay, your own art

Shall serve us: put the poet's mimes apart—

Close with the poet's self, and lo, a dim

Yet too plain form divides itself from him!

Alcamo's song enmeshes the lulled Isle,

Woven into the echoes left erewhile

By Nina, one soft web of song: no more

Turning his name, then, flower-like o'er and o'er!

An elder poet in the younger's place;

Nina's the strength, but Alcamo's the grace:

Each neutralizes each then! Search your fill;

You get no whole and perfect Poet—still

New Ninas, Alcamos, till time's midnight

Shrouds all—or better say, the shutting light

Of a forgotten yesterday. Dissect

Every ideal workman—(to reject

In favor of your fearful ignorance

The thousand phantasms eager to advance,

Sums up in himself all predecessors.

And point you but to those within your reach)—

Were you the first who brought—(in modern speech)

The Multitude to be materialized?

That loose eternal unrest—who devised

An apparition i' the midst? The rout

Was cheeked, a breathless ring was formed about

That sudden flower: get round at any risk

The gold-rough pointel, silver-blazing disk

O' the lily! Swords across it! Reign thy reign

We just see Charlemagne, Hildebrand,

And serve thy frolic service, Charlemagne!

—The very child of over-joyousness,

Unfeeling thence, strong therefore: Strength by stress

Of Strength comes of that forehead confident,

Those widened eyes expecting heart's content,

A calm as out of just-quelled noise; nor swerves

For doubt, the ample cheek in gracious curves

Abutting on the upthrust nether lip:

He wills, how should he doubt then? Ages slip:

Was it Sordello pried into the work

So far accomplished, and discovered lurk

A company amid the other clans,

Only distinct in priests for castellans

And popes for suzerains (their rule confessed

Its rule, their interest its interest,

Living for sake of living—there an end,—

Wrapt in itself, no energy to spend

In making adversaries or allies),—

Dived you into its capabilities

And dared create, out of that sect, a soul

Should turn a multitude, already whole,

Into its body? Speak plainer! Is 't so sure

God's church lives by a King's investiture?

Look to last step! A staggering—a shock—

What's mere sand is demolished, while the rock

Endures: a column of black fiery dust

Blots heaven—that help was prematurely thrust

Aside, perchance!—but air clears, naught's erased

Of the true outline! Thus much being firm based,

The other was a scaffold. See him stand

Buttressed upon his mattock, Hildebrand

Of the huge brain-mask welded ply o'er ply

As in a forge; it buries either eye

White and extinct, that stupid brow; teeth clenched,

The neck tight-corded, too, the chin deep-trenched,

As if a cloud enveloped him while fought

Under its shade, grim prizers, thought with thought

At dead-lock, agonizing he, until

The victor thought leap radiant up, and Will,

The slave with folded arms and drooping lids

They fought for, lean forth flame-like as it bids.

Call him no flower—a mandrake of the earth,

Thwarted and dwarfed and blasted in its birth,

Rather,—a fruit of suffering's excess,

Thence feeling, therefore stronger: still by stress

Of Strength, work Knowledge! Full three hundred years

Have men to wear away in smiles and tears

Between the two that nearly seemed to touch,

In composite work they end and name.

Observe you! quit one workman and you clutch

Another, letting both their trains go by—

The actors-out of either's policy,

Heinrich, on this hand, Otho, Barbaross,

Carry the three Imperial crowns across,

Aix' Iron, Milan's Silver, and Rome's Gold—

While Alexander, Innocent uphold

On that, each Papal key—but, link on link,

Why is it neither chain betrays a chink?

How coalesce the small and great? Alack,

For one thrust forward, fifty such fall back!

Do the popes coupled there help Gregory

Alone? Hark—from the hermit Peter's cry

At Claremont, down to the first serf that says

Friedrich 's no liege of his while he delays

Getting the Pope's curse off him! The Crusade—

Or trick of breeding Strength by other aid

Than Strength, is safe. Hark—from the wild harangue

Of Vimmercato, to the carroch's clang

Yonder! The League—or trick of turning Strength

Against Pernicious Strength, is safe at length.

Yet hark—from Mantuan Albert making cease

The fierce ones, to Saint Francis preaching peace

Yonder! God's Truce—or trick to supersede

The very Use of Strength, is safe. Indeed

We trench upon the future. Who is found

To take next step, next age—trail o'er the ground—

Shall I say, gourd-like?—not the flower's display

Nor the root's prowess, but the plenteous way

O' the plant—produced by joy and sorrow, whence

Unfeeling and yet feeling, strongest thence?

Knowledge by stress of merely Knowledge? No—

E'en were Sordello ready to forego

His life for this, 't were overleaping work

Some one has first to do, howe'er it irk,

Nor stray a foot's breadth from the beaten road.

Who means to help must still support the load

Hildebrand lifted—'why hast Thou,' he groaned,

'Imposed on me a burden, Paul had moaned,

And Moses dropped beneath?' Much done—and yet

Doubtless that grandest task God ever set

On man, left much to do: at his arm's wrench,

Charlemagne's scaffold fell; but pillars blench

Merely, start back again—perchance have been

Taken for buttresses: crash every screen,

Hammer the tenons better, and engage

A gang about your work, for the next age

Or two, of Knowledge, part by Strength and part

By Knowledge! Then, indeed, perchance may start

Sordello on his race—would time divulge

Such secrets! If one step's awry, one bulge

Calls for correction by a step we thought

Got over long since, why, till that is wrought,

No progress! And the scaffold in its turn

Becomes, its service o'er, a thing to spurn.

Meanwhile, if your half-dozen years of life

In store dispose you to forego the strife,

Who takes exception? Only bear in mind,

Ferrara's reached, Goito 's left behind:

If associates trouble you, stand off!

As you then were, as half yourself, desist!

—The warrior-part of you may, an it list,

Finding real falchions difficult to poise,

Fling them afar and taste the cream of joys

By wielding such in fancy,—what is bard

Of you may spurn the vehicle that marred

Elys so much, and in free fancy glut

His sense, yet write no verses—you have but

To please yourself for law, and once could please

What once appeared yourself, by dreaming these

Rather than doing these, in days gone by.

But all is changed the moment you descry

Mankind as half yourself,—then, fancy's trade

Ends once and always: how may half evade

The other half? men are found half of you.

Out of a thousand helps, just one or two

Can be accomplished presently: but flinch

From these (as from the falchion, raised an inch,

Elys, described a couplet) and make proof

Of fancy,—then, while one half lolls aloof

I' the vines, completing Rome to the tip-top—

See if, for that, your other half will stop

Should the new sympathies allow you.

A tear, begin a smile! The rabble's woes,

Ludicrous in their patience as they chose

To sit about their town and quietly

Be slaughtered,—the poor reckless soldiery,

With their ignoble rhymes on Richard, how

'Polt-foot,' sang they, 'was in a pitfall now,'

Cheering each other from the engine-mounts,—

That crippled sprawling idiot who recounts

How, lopped of limbs, he lay, stupid as stone,

Till the pains crept from out him one by one,

And wriggles round the archers on his head

To earn a morsel of their chestnut bread,—

And Cino, always in the self-same place

Weeping; beside that other wretch's case,

Eyepits to ear, one gangrene since he plied

The engine in his coat of raw sheep's hide

A double watch in the noon sun; and see

Lucchino, beauty, with the favors free,

Trim hacqueton, spruce heard and scented hair,

Campaigning it for the first time—cut there

In two already, boy enough to crawl

For latter orpine round the southern wall,

Tomà, where Richard's kept, because that whore

Marfisa, the fool never saw before,

Sickened for flowers this wearisomest siege:

And Tiso's wife—men liked their pretty liege,

Cared for her least of whims once,—Berta, wed

A twelvemonth gone, and, now poor Tiso's dead,

Delivering herself of his first child

On that chance heap of wet filth, reconciled

To fifty gazers!"—(Here a wind below

Made moody music augural of woe

From the pine barrier)—"What if, now the scene

Draws to a close, yourself have really been

Time having been lost, choose quick!

—You, plucking purples in Goito's moss

Like edges of a trabea (not to cross

Your consul-humor) or dry aloe-shafts

For fasces, at Ferrara—he, fate wafts,

This very age, her whole inheritance

Of opportunities? Yet you advance

Upon the last! Since talking is your trade,

There 's Salinguerra left you to persuade:

Fail! then"—

"No—no—which latest chance secure!"

Leaped up and cried Sordello: "this made sure,

The past were yet redeemable; its work

Was—help the Guelfs, whom I, howe'er it irk,

Thus help!" He shook the foolish aloe-haulm

He takes his first step as a Guelf;

Out of his doublet, paused, proceded calm

To the appointed presence. The large head

Turned on its socket; "And your spokesman," said

The large voice, "is Elcorte's happy sprout?

Few such"—(so finishing a speech no doubt

Addressed to Palma, silent at his side)

"—My sober councils have diversified.

Elcorte's son! good: forward as you may,

Our lady's minstrel with so much to say!"

The hesitating sunset floated back,

Rosily traversed in the wonted track

The chamber, from the lattice o'er the girth

Of pines, to the huge eagle blacked in earth

Opposite,—outlined sudden, spur to crest,

That solid Salinguerra, and caressed

Palma's contour; 't was day looped back night's pall;

Sordello had a chance left spite of all.

And much he made of the convincing speech

Meant to compensate for the past and reach

Through his youth's daybreak of unprofit, quite

To his noon's labor, so proceed till night

Leisurely! The great argument to bind

Taurello with the Guelf Cause, body and mind,

—Came the consummate rhetoric to that?

Yet most Sordello's argument dropped flat

Through his accustomed fault of breaking yoke,

Disjoining him who felt from him who spoke.

Was 't not a touching incident—so prompt

A rendering the world its just accompt,

Once proved its debtor? Who'd suppose, before

This proof, that he, Goito's god of yore,

At duty's instance could demean himself

So memorably, dwindle to a Guelf?

Be sure, in such delicious flattery steeped,

His inmost self at the out-portion peeped,

Thus occupied; then stole a glance at those

Appealed to, curious if her color rose

Or his lip moved, while he discreetly urged

The need of Lombardy becoming purged

At soonest of her barons; the poor part

Abandoned thus, missing the blood at heart

And spirit in brain, unseasonably off

Elsewhere! But, though his speech was worthy scoff,

Good-humored Salinguerra, famed for tact

And tongue, who, careless of his phrase, ne'er lacked

The right phrase, and harangued Honorius dumb

At his accession,—looked as all fell plumb

To purpose and himself found interest

In every point his new instructor pressed

—Left playing with the rescript's white wax seal

To scrutinize Sordello head and heel.

He means to yield assent sure? No, alas!

All he replied was, "What, it comes to pass

That poesy, sooner than politics,

Makes fade young hair?" To think such speech could fix

Taurello!

Then a flash of bitter truth:

So fantasies could break and fritter youth

That he had long ago lost earnestness,

Lost will to work, lost power to express

But to will and to do are different:

The need of working! Earth was turned a grave:

No more occasions now, though he should crave

Just one, in right of superhuman toil,

To do what was undone, repair such spoil,

Alter the past—nothing would give the chance!

Not that he was to die; he saw askance

Protract the ignominious years beyond

To dream in—time to hope and time despond,

Remember and forget, be sad, rejoice

As saved a trouble; he might, at his choice,

One way or other, idle life out, drop

He may sleep on the bed he has made.

No few smooth verses by the way—for prop,

A thyrsus, these sad people, all the same,

Should pick up, and set store by,—far from blame,

Plant o'er his hearse, convinced his better part

Survived him. "Rather tear men out the heart

O' the truth!"—Sordello muttered, and renewed

His propositions for the Multitude.

But Salinguerra, who at this attack

Had thrown great breast and ruffling corselet back

To hear the better, smilingly resumed

His task; beneath, the carroch's warning boomed;

He must decide with Tito; courteously

He turned then, even seeming to agree

With his admonisher—"Assist the Pope,

Extend Guelf domination, fill the scope

O' the Church, thus based on All, by All, for All—

Change Secular to Evangelical"—

Echoing his very sentence: all seemed lost,

When suddenly he looked up, laughingly almost,

To Palma: "This opinion of your friend's—

For instance, would it answer Palma's ends?

Best, were it not, turn Guelf, submit our Strength"—

(Here he drew out his baldric to its length)

—"To the Pope's Knowledge—let our captive slip,

Wide to the walls throw ope our gates, equip

Azzo with ... what I hold here! Who'll subscribe

To a trite censure of the minstrel tribe

Henceforward? or pronounce, as Heinrich used,

'Spear-heads for battle, burr-heads for the joust!'

—When Constance, for his couplets, would promote

Alcamo, from a parti-colored coat,

To holding her lord's stirrup in the wars.

Not that I see where couplet-making jars

With common sense: at Mantua I had borne

This chanted, better than their most forlorn

Of bull-baits,—that's indisputable!"

Brave!

Whom vanity nigh slew, contempt shall save!

All's at an end: a Troubadour suppose

Mankind will class him with their friends or foes?

Scorn flings cold water in his face,

A puny uncouth ailing vassal think

The world and him bound in some special link?

Abrupt the visionary tether burst.

What were rewarded here, or what amerced

If a poor drudge, solicitous to dream

Deservingly, got tangled by his theme

So far as to conceit the knack or gift

Or whatsoe'er it be, of verse, might lift

The globe, a lever like the hand and head

Of—"Men of Action," as the Jongleurs said,

—"The Great Men," in the people's dialect?

And not a moment did this scorn affect

Arouses him at last, to some purpose,

Sordello: scorn the poet? They, for once,

Asking "what was," obtained a full response.

Bid Naddo think at Mantua, he had but

To look into his promptuary, put

Finger on a set thought in a set speech:

But was Sordello fitted thus for each

Conjecture? Nowise; since within his soul,

Perception brooded unexpressed and whole.

A healthy spirit like a healthy frame

Craves aliment in plenty—all the same,

Changes, assimilates its aliment.

Perceived Sordello, on a truth intent?

Next day no formularies more you saw

Than figs or olives in a sated maw.

'T is Knowledge, whither such perceptions tend;

They lose themselves in that, means to an end,

The many old producing some one new,

A last unlike the first. If lies are true,

The Caliph's wheel-work man of brass receives

A meal, munched millet grains and lettuce leaves

Together in his stomach rattle loose;

You find them perfect next day to produce:

But ne'er expect the man, on strength of that,

Can roll an iron camel-collar flat

Like Haroun's self! I tell you, what was stored

And thus gets the utmost out of him.

Bit by bit through Sordello's life, outpoured

That eve, was, for that age, a novel thing:

And round those three the People formed a ring,

Of visionary judges whose award

He recognized in full—faces that barred

Henceforth return to the old careless life,

In whose great presence, therefore, his first strife

For their sake must not be ignobly fought;

All these, for once, approved of him, he thought,

Suspended their own vengeance, chose await

The issue of this strife to reinstate

Them in the right of taking it—in fact

He must be proved king ere they could exact

Vengeance for such king's defalcation. Last,

A reason why the phrases flowed so fast

Was in his quite forgetting for a time

Himself in his amazement that the rhyme

Disguised the royalty so much: he there—

And Salinguerra yet all unaware

Who was the lord, who liegeman!

"Thus I lay

On thine my spirit and compel obey

His lord,—my liegeman,—impotent to build

Another Rome, but hardly so unskilled

In what such builder should have been, as brook

One shame beyond the charge that I forsook

His function! Free me from that shame, I bend

A brow before, suppose new years to spend,—

Allow each chance, nor fruitlessly, recur—

Measure thee with the Minstrel, then, demur

He asserts the poet's rank and right,

At any crowd he claims! That I must cede

Shamed now, my right to my especial meed—

Confess thee fitter help the world than I

Ordained its champion from eternity,

Is much: but to behold thee scorn the post

I quit in thy behalf—to hear thee boast

What makes my own despair!" And while he rung

The changes on this theme, the roof up-sprung,

The sad walls of the presence-chamber died

Into the distance, or embowering vied

With far-away Goito's vine-frontier;

And crowds of faces—(only keeping clear

The rose-light in the midst, his vantage-ground

To fight their battle from)—deep clustered round

Sordello, with good wishes no mere breath,

Kind prayers for him no vapor, since, come death,

Come life, he was fresh-sinewed every joint,

Each bone new-marrowed as whom gods anoint

Though mortal to their rescue. Now let sprawl

The snaky volumes hither! Is Typhon all

For Hercules to trample—good report

From Salinguerra only to extort?

"So was I" (closed he his inculcating,

A poet must be earth's essential king)

Basing these on their proper ground,

"So was I, royal so, and if I fail,

'T is not the royalty, ye witness quail,

But one deposed who, caring not exert

Its proper essence, trifled malapert

With accidents instead—good things assigned

As heralds of a better thing behind—

And, worthy through display of these, put forth

Never the inmost all-surpassing worth

That constitutes him king precisely since

As yet no other spirit may evince

Its like: the power he took most pride to test,

Whereby all forms of life had been professed

At pleasure, forms already on the earth,

Was but a means to power beyond, whose birth

Should, in its novelty, be kingship's proof.

Now, whether he came near or kept aloof

The several forms he longed to imitate,

Not there the kingship lay, he sees too late.

Those forms, unalterable first as last,

Proved him her copier, not the protoplast

Of nature: what would come of being free,

By action to exhibit tree for tree,

Bird, beast, for beast and bird, or prove earth bore

One veritable man or woman more?

Means to an end, such proofs are: what the end?

Let essence, whatsoe'er it be, extend—

Never contract. Already you include

The multitude; then let the multitude

Include yourself; and the result were new:

Themselves before, the multitude turn you.

This were to live and move and have, in them,

Your being, and secure a diadem

You should transmit (because no cycle yearns

Beyond itself, but on itself returns)

When, the full sphere in wane, the world o'erlaid

Long since with you, shall have in turn obeyed

Some orb still prouder, some displayer, still

More potent than the last, of human will,

Recognizing true dignity in service,

And some new king depose the old. Of such

Am I—whom pride of this elates too much?

Safe, rather say, 'mid troops of peers again;

I, with my words, hailed brother of the train

Deeds once sufficed: for, let the world roll back,

Who fails, through deeds howe'er diverse, re-track

My purpose still, my task? A teeming crust—

Air, flame, earth, wave at conflict! Then, needs must

Emerge some Calm embodied, these refer

The brawl to—yellow-bearded Jupiter?

No! Saturn; some existence like a pact

And protest against Chaos, some first fact

I' the faint of time. My deep of life, I know,

Is unavailing e'en to poorly show" ...

For here the Chief immeasurably yawned)

... "Deeds in their due gradation till Song dawned—

The fullest effluence of the finest mind,

All in degree, no way diverse in kind

From minds about it, minds which, more or less,

Lofty or low, move seeking to impress

Whether successively that of epoist,

Themselves on somewhat; but one mind has climbed

Step after step, by just ascent sublimed.

Thought is the soul of act, and, stage by stage,

Soul is from body still to disengage

As tending to a freedom which rejects

Such help and incorporeally affects

The world, producing deeds but not by deeds,

Swaying, in others, frames itself exceeds,

Assigning them the simpler tasks it used

To patiently perform till Song produced

Acts, by thoughts only, for the mind: divest

Mind of e'en Thought, and, lo, God's unexpressed

Will draws above us! All then is to win

Save that. How much for me, then? where begin

My work? About me, faces! and they flock,

The earnest faces. What shall I unlock

By song? behold me prompt, whate'er it be,

To minister: how much can mortals see

Of Life? No more than so? I take the task

And marshal you Life's elemental masque,

Show Men, on evil or on good lay stress,

Dramatist, or, so to call him, analyst,

This light, this shade make prominent, suppress

All ordinary hues that softening blend

Such natures with the level. Apprehend

Which sinner is, which saint, if I allot

Hell, Purgatory, Heaven, a blaze or blot,

To those you doubt concerning! I enwomb

Some wretched Friedrich with his red-hot tomb;

Some dubious spirit, Lombard Agilulph

With the black chastening river I engulf!

Some unapproached Matilda I enshrine

With languors of the planet of decline—

These, fail to recognize, to arbitrate

Between henceforth, to rightly estimate

Thus marshalled in the masque! Myself, the while,

As one of you, am witness, shrink or smile

At my own showing! Next age—what's to do?

The men and women stationed hitherto

Will I unstation, good and bad, conduct

Each nature to its farthest, or obstruct

At soonest, in the world: light, thwarted, breaks

A limpid purity to rainbow flakes,

Or shadow, massed, freezes to gloom: behold

How such, with fit assistance to unfold,

Or obstacles to crush them, disengage

Their forms, love, hate, hope, fear, peace make, war wage,

In presence of you all! Myself, implied

Superior now, as, by the platform's side,

I bade them do and suffer,—would last content

The world ... no—that's too far! I circumvent

A few, my masque contented, and to these

Offer unveil the last of mysteries—

Man's inmost life shall have yet freer play:

Once more I cast external things away,

And natures composite, so decompose

That" ... Why, he writesSordello!

"How I rose,

And how have you advanced! since evermore

Yourselves effect what I was fain before

Effect, what I supplied yourselves suggest,

What I leave bare yourselves can now invest.

How we attain to talk as brothers talk,

In half-words, call things by half-names, no balk

From discontinuing old aids. To-day

Takes in account the work of Yesterday:

Has not the world a Past now, its adept

Consults ere he dispense with or accept

New aids? a single touch more may enhance,

A touch less turned to insignificance

Those structures' symmetry the past has strewed

The world with, once so bare. Leave the mere rude

Who turns in due course synthetist.

Explicit details! 't is but brother's speech,

We need, speech where an accent's change gives each

The other's soul—no speech to understand

By former audience: need was then to expand,

Expatiate—hardly were we brothers! true—

Nor I lament my small remove from you,

Nor reconstruct what stands already. Ends

Accomplished turn to means: my art intends

New structure from the ancient: as they changed

The spoils of every clime at Venice, ranged

The horned and snouted Libyan god, upright

As in his desert, by some simple bright

Clay cinerary pitcher—Thebes as Rome,

Athens as Byzant rifled, till their Dome

From earth's reputed consummations razed

A seal, the all-transmuting Triad blazed

Above. Ah, whose that fortune? Ne'ertheless

E'en he must stoop contented to express

No tithe of what's to say—the vehicle

Never sufficient: but his work is still

For faces like the faces that select

This for one day: now, serve as Guelf!

The single service I am bound effect,—

That bid me cast aside such fancies, bow

Taurello to the Guelf cause, disallow

The Kaiser's coming—which with heart, soul, strength,

I labor for, this eve, who feel at length

My past career's outrageous vanity,

And would, as it amends, die, even die

Now I first estimate the boon of life,

If death might win compliance—sure, this strife

Is right for once—the People my support."

My poor Sordello! what may we extort

By this, I wonder? Palma's lighted eyes

Turned to Taurello who, long past surprise,

Began, "You love him—what you'd say at large

Let me say briefly. First, your father's charge

To me, his friend, peruse: I guessed indeed

You were no stranger to the course decreed.

Salinguerra, dislodged from his post,

He bids me leave his children to the saints:

As for a certain project, he acquaints

The Pope with that, and offers him the best

Of your possessions to permit the rest

Go peaceably—to Ecelin, a stripe

Of soil the cursed Vicentines will gripe,

—To Alberic, a patch the Trevisan

Clutches already; extricate, who can,

Treville, Villarazzi, Puissolo,

Loria and Cartiglione!—all must go,

And with them go my hopes. 'T is lost, then! Lost

This eve, our crisis, and some pains it cost

Procuring; thirty years—as good I'd spent

Like our admonisher! But each his bent

Pursues: no question, one might live absurd

One's self this while, by deed as he by word

Persisting to obtrude an influence where

'T is made account of, much as ... nay, you fare

With twice the fortune, youngster!—I submit,

Happy to parallel my waste of wit

With the renowned Sordello's: you decide

A course for me. Romano may abide

Romano,—Bacchus! After all, what dearth

Of Ecelins and Alberies on earth?

Say there's a prize in prospect, must disgrace

Betide competitors, unless they style

Themselves Romano? Were it worth my while

To try my own luck! But an obscure place

Suits me—there wants a youth to bustle, stalk

And attitudinize—some fight, more talk,

Most flaunting badges—how, I might make clear

Since Friedrich's very purposes lie here

—Here, pity they are like to lie! For me,

With station fixed unceremoniously

Long since, small use contesting; I am but

The liegeman—you are born the lieges—shut

That gentle mouth now! or resume your kin

In your sweet self; were Palma Ecelin

For me to work with! Could that neck endure

This bauble for a cumbrous garniture,

She should ... or might one bear it for her? Stay—

I have not been so flattered many a day

As by your pale friend—Bacchus! The least help

Would lick the hind's fawn to a lion's whelp:

His neck is broad enough—a ready tongue

Beside—too writhled—but, the main thing, young—

I could ... why, look ye!"

And the badge was thrown

In moving, opens a door to Sordello,

Across Sordello's neck: This badge alone

Makes you Romano's Head—becomes superb

On your bare neck, which would, on mine, disturb

The pauldron," said Taurello. A mad act,

Nor even dreamed about before—in fact,

Not when his sportive arm rose for the nonce—

But he had dallied overmuch, this once,

With power: the thing was done, and he, aware

The thing was done, proceeded to declare—

(So like a nature made to serve, excel

In serving, only feel by service well!)

—That he would make Sordello that and more.

"As good a scheme as any. What's to pore

At in my face?" he asked—"ponder instead

This piece of news; you are Romano's Head!

One cannot slacken pace so near the goal,

Suffer my Azzo to escape heart-whole

This time! For you there's Palma to espouse—

For me, one crowning trouble ere I house

Like my compeer."

On which ensued a strange

And solemn visitation; there came change

O'er every one of them; each looked on each:

Up in the midst a truth grew, without speech.

And when the giddiness sank and the haze

Subsided, they were sitting, no amaze,

Sordello with the baldric on, his sire

Who is declared Salinguerra's son,

Silent, though his proportions seemed aspire

Momently; and, interpreting the thrill

Right at its ebb, Palma was found there still

Relating somewhat Adelaide confessed

A year ago, while dying on her breast,—

Of a contrivance that Vicenza night

When Ecelin had birth. "Their convoy's flight,

Cut off a moment, coiled inside the flame

That wallowed like a dragon at his game

The toppling city through—San Biagio rocks!

And wounded lies in her delicious locks

Retrude, the frail mother, on her face,

None of her wasted, just in one embrace

Covering her child: when, as they lifted her,

Cleaving the tumult, mighty, mightier

And mightiest Taurello's cry outbroke,

Leapt like a tongue of fire that cleaves the smoke,

Midmost to cheer his Mantuans onward—drown

His colleague Ecelin's clamor, up and down

The disarray: failed Adelaide see then

Who was the natural chief, the man of men?

Outstripping time, her infant there burst swathe,

Stood up with eyes haggard beyond the scathe

From wandering after his heritage

Lost once and lost for aye—and why that rage,

That deprecating glance? A new shape leant

On a familiar shape—gloatingly bent

O'er his discomfiture; 'mid wreaths it wore,

Still one outflamed the rest—her child's before

'T was Salinguerra's for his child: scorn, hate,

Rage now might startle her when all too late!

Then was the moment!—rival's foot had spurned

Hidden hitherto by Adelaide's policy.

Never that House to earth else! Sense returned—

The act conceived, adventured and complete,

They bore away to an obscure retreat

Mother and child—Retrude's self not slain"

(Nor even here Taurello moved) "though pain

Was fled: and what assured them most 't was fled,

All pain, was, if they raised the pale hushed head

'T would turn this way and that, waver awhile,

And only settle into its old smile—

(Graceful as the disquieted water-flag

Steadying itself, remarked they, in the quag

On either side their path)—when suffered look

Down on her child. They marched: no sign once shook

The company's close litter of crossed spears

Till, as they reached Goito, a few tears

Slipped in the sunset from her long black lash,

And she was gone. So far the action rash;

No crime. They laid Retrude in the font,

Taurello's very gift, her child was wont

To sit beneath—constant as eve he came

To sit by its attendant girls the same

As one of them. For Palma, she would blend

With this magnific spirit to the end,

That ruled her first; but scarcely had she dared

To disobey the Adelaide who scared

Her into vowing never to disclose

A secret to her husband, which so froze

His blood at half-recital, she contrived

To hide from him Taurello's infant lived,

Lest, by revealing that, himself should mar

Romano's fortunes. And, a crime so far,

Palma received that action: she was told

Of Salinguerra's nature, of his cold

Calm acquiescence in his lot! But free

To impart the secret to Romano, she

How the discovery moves Salinguerra,

Engaged to repossess Sordello of

His heritage, and hers, and that way doff

The mask, but after years, long years: while now,

Was not Romano's sign-mark on that brow?"

Across Taurello's heart his arms were locked:

And when he did speak 'twas as if he mocked

The minstrel, "who had not to move," he said,

"Nor stir—should fate defraud him of a shred

Of his son's infancy? much less his youth!"

(Laughingly all this)—"which to aid, in truth,

Himself, reserved on purpose, had not grown

Old, not too old—'twas best they kept alone

Till now, and never idly met till now;"

—Then, in the same breath, told Sordello how

All intimations of this eve's event

Were lies, for Friedrich must advance to Trent,

Thence to Verona, then to Rome, there stop,

Tumble the Church down, institute a-top

The Alps a Prefecture of Lombardy:

—"That's now!—no prophesying what may be

Anon, with a new monarch of the clime,

Native of Gesi, passing his youth's prime

At Naples. Tito bids my choice decide

On whom" ...

"Embrace him, madman!" Palma cried,

Who through the laugh saw sweat-drops burst apace,

And his lips blanching: he did not embrace

Sordello, but he laid Sordello's hand

On his own eyes, mouth, forehead.

Understand,

This while Sordello was becoming flushed

And Sordello the finally-determined,

Out of his whiteness; thoughts rushed, fancies rushed;

He pressed his hand upon his head and signed

Both should forbear him. "Nay, the best's behind!"

Taurello laughed—not quite with the same laugh:

"The truth is, thus we scatter, ay, like chaff

These Guelfs, a despicable monk recoils

From: nor expect a fickle Kaiser spoils

Our triumph!—Friedrich? Think you, I intend

Friedrich shall reap the fruits of blood I spend

And brain I waste? Think you, the people clap

Their hands at my out-hewing this wild gap

For any Friedrich to fill up? 'Tis mine—

That's yours: I tell you, towards some such design

Have I worked blindly, yes, and idly, yes,

And for another, yes—but worked no less

With instinct at my heart; I else had swerved,

While now—look round! My cunning has preserved

Samminiato—that's a central place

Secures us Florence, boy,—in Pisa's case,

By land as she by sea; with Pisa ours,

And Florence, and Pistoia, one devours

The land at leisure! Gloriously dispersed—

Brescia, observe, Milan, Piacenza first

That flanked us (ah, you know not!) in the March;

On these we pile, as keystone of our arch,

Romagna and Bologna, whose first span

Covered the Trentine and the Valsugan;

Sofia's Egna by Bolgiano's sure!" ...

So he proceeded: half of all this, pure

The devil putting forth his potency:

Delusion, doubtless, nor the rest too true,

But what was undone he felt sure to do,

As ring by ring he wrung off, flung away

The pauldron-rings to give his sword-arm play—

Need of the sword now! That would soon adjust

Aught wrong at present; to the sword intrust

Sordello's whiteness, undersize: 'twas plain

He hardly rendered right to his own brain—

Like a brave hound, men educate to pride

Himself on speed or scent nor aught beside,

As though he could not, gift by gift, match men!

Since Sordello, who began by rhyming,

Palma had listened patiently: but when

'Twas time expostulate, attempt withdraw

Taurello from his child, she, without awe

Took off his iron arms from, one by one,

Sordello's shrinking shoulders, and, that done,

Made him avert his visage and relieve

Sordello (you might see his corselet heave

The while) who, loose, rose—tried to speak, then sank:

They left him in the chamber. All was blank.

And even reeling down the narrow stair

Taurello kept up, as though unaware

Palma was by to guide him, the old device

—Something of Milan—"how we muster thrice

The Torriani's strength there; all along

Our own Visconti cowed them"—thus the song

Continued even while she bade him stoop,

Thrid somehow, by some glimpse of arrow-loop,

The turnings to the gallery below,

Where he stopped short as Palma let him go.

When he had sat in silence long enough

Splintering the stone bench, braving a rebuff

She stopped the truncheon; only to commence

One of Sordello's poems, a pretence

For speaking, some poor rhyme of "Elys' hair

And head that's sharp and perfect like a pear,

So smooth and close are laid the few fine locks

May, even from the depths of failure

Stained like pale honey oozed from topmost rocks

Sun-blanched the livelong summer"—from his worst

Performance, the Goito, as his first:

And that at end, conceiving from the brow

And open mouth no silence would serve now,

Went on to say the whole world loved that man

And, for that matter, thought his face, though wan,

Eclipsed the Count's—he sucking in each phrase

As if an angel spoke. The foolish praise

Ended, he drew her on his mailed knees, made

Her face a framework with his hands, a shade,

A crown, an aureole: there must she remain

(Her little mouth compressed with smiling pain

As in his gloves she felt her tresses twitch)

To get the best look at, in fittest niche

Dispose his saint. That done, he kissed her brow,

—"Lauded her father for his treason now,"

He told her, "only, how could one suspect

The wit in him?—whose clansman, recollect,

Was ever Salinguerra—she, the same,

Romano and his lady—so, might claim

To know all, as she should"—and thus begun

Schemes with a vengeance, schemes on schemes, "not one

Fit to be told that foolish boy," he said,

"But only let Sordello Palma wed,

—Then!"

'T was a dim long narrow place at best:

Yet spring to the summit of success,

Midway a sole grate showed the fiery West,

As shows its corpse the world's end some split tomb—

A gloom, a rift of fire, another gloom,

Faced Palma—but at length Taurello set

Her free; the grating held one ragged jet

Of fierce gold fire: he lifted her within

The hollow underneath—how else begin

Fate's second marvellous cycle, else renew

The ages than with Palma plain in view?

Then paced the passage, hands clenched, head erect,

Pursuing his discourse; a grand unchecked

Monotony made out from his quick talk

And the recurring noises of his walk;

—Somewhat too much like the o'ercharged assent

Of two resolved friends in one danger blent,

Who hearten each the other against heart;

Boasting there 's naught to care for, when, apart

The boaster, all 's to care for. He, beside

Some shape not visible, in power and pride

Approached, out of the dark, ginglingly near,

Nearer, passed close in the broad light, his ear

Crimson, eyeballs suffused, temples full-fraught,

Just a snatch of the rapid speech you caught,

And on he strode into the opposite dark,

Till presently the harsh heel's turn, a spark

I' the stone, and whirl of some loose embossed thong

That crashed against the angle aye so long

After the last, punctual to an amount

Of mailed great paces you could not but count,—

Prepared you for the pacing back again.

And by the snatches you might ascertain

That, Friedrich's Prefecture surmounted, left

By this alone in Italy, they cleft

Asunder, crushed together, at command

Of none, were free to break up Hildebrand,

If he consent to oppress the world.

Rebuild, he and Sordello, Charlemagne—

But garnished, Strength with Knowledge, "if we deign

Accept that compromise and stoop to give

Rome law, the Cæsar's Representative."

Enough, that the illimitable flood

Of triumphs after triumphs, understood

In its faint reflux (you shall hear) sufficed

Young Ecelin for appanage, enticed

Him on till, these long quiet in their graves,

He found 't was looked for that a whole life's braves

Should somehow be made good; so, weak and worn,

Must stagger up at Milan, one gray morn

Of the to-come, and fight his latest fight.

But, Salinguerra's prophecy at height—

Just this decided, as it now may be,

He voluble with a raised arm and stiff,

A blaring voice, a blazing eye, as if

He had our very Italy to keep

Or cast away, or gather in a heap

To garrison the better—ay, his word

Was, "run the cucumber into a gourd,

Drive Trent upon Apulia"—at their pitch

Who spied the continents and islands which

Grew mulberry-leaves and sickles, in the map—

(Strange that three such confessions so should hap

To Palma, Dante spoke with in the clear

Amorous silence of the Swooning-sphere,—

Cunizza, as he called her! Never ask

Of Palma more! She sat, knowing her task

Was done, the labor of it,—for, success

Concerned not Palma, passion's votaress)

Triumph at height, and thus Sordello crowned—

Above the passage suddenly a sound

Stops speech, stops walk: back shrinks Taurello, bids

With large involuntary asking lids,

Palma interpret. "'T is his own foot-stamp—

Your hand! His summons! Nay, this idle damp

Befits not!" Out they two reeled dizzily.

"Visconti 's strong at Milan," resumed he,

In the old, somewhat insignificant way—

(Was Palma wont, years afterward, to say)

As though the spirit's flight, sustained thus far,

Dropped at that very instant.

Gone they are—

Palma, Taurello; Eglamor anon,

Ecelin,—only Naddo 's never gone!

—Labors, this moonrise, what the Master meant—

"Is Squarcialupo speckled?—purulent,

I 'd say, but when was Providence put out?

He carries somehow handily about

His spite nor fouls himself!" Goito's vines

Stand like a cheat detected—stark rough lines,

The moon breaks through, a gray mean scale against

The vault where, this eve's Maiden, thou remain'st

Like some fresh martyr, eyes fixed—who can tell?

As Heaven, now all 's at end, did not so well,

And we have done.

Spite of the faith and victory, to leave

Its virgin quite to death in the lone eve.

While the persisting hermit-bee ... ha! wait

No longer: these in compass, forward fate!

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