BOOK THE THIRD

The woods were long austere with snow: at lastThis bubble of fancy.Pink leaflets budded on the beech, and fastLarches, scattered through pine-tree solitudes,Brightened, "as in the slumbrous heart o' the woodsOur buried year, a witch, grew young againTo placid incantations, and that stainAbout were from her caldron, green smoke blentWith those black pines"—so Eglamor gave ventTo a chance fancy. Whence a just rebukeFrom his companion; brother Naddo shookThe solemnest of brows; "Beware," he said,"Of setting up conceits in nature's stead!"Forth wandered our Sordello. Naught so sureAs that to-day's adventure will securePalma, the visioned lady—only passO'er yon damp mound and its exhausted grass,Under that brake where sundawn feeds the stalksOf withered fern with gold, into those walksOf pine and take her! Buoyantly he went.Again his stooping forehead was besprentWith dew-drops from the skirting ferns. Then wideOpened the great morass, shot every sideWith flashing water through and through; a-shine,Thick steaming, all alive. Whose shape divine,Quivered i' the farthest rainbow-vapor, glancedAthwart the flying herons? He advanced,But warily; though Mincio leaped no more,Each footfall burst up in the marish-floorA diamond jet: and if he stopped to pickRose-lichen, or molest the leeches quick,And circling blood-worms, minnow, newt or loach,A sudden pond would silently encroachThis way and that. On Palma passed. The vergeOf a new wood was gained. She will emergeFlushed, now, and panting,—crowds to see,—will ownShe loves him—Boniface to hear, to groan,To leave his suit! One screen of pine-trees stillOpposes: but—the startling spectacle—Mantua, this time! Under the walls—a crowdIndeed, real men and women, gay and loudRound a pavilion. How he stood!In truthWhen greatest and brightest, bursts.No prophecy had come to pass: his youthIn its prime now—and where was homage pouredUpon Sordello?—born to be adored,And suddenly discovered weak, scarce madeTo cope with any, cast into the shadeBy this and this. Yet something seemed to prickAnd tingle in his blood; a sleight—a trick—And much would be explained. It went for naught—The best of their endowments were ill boughtWith his identity: nay, the conceit,That this day's roving led to Palma's feetWas not so vain—list! The word, "Palma!" StealAside, and die, Sordello; this is real,And this—abjure!What next? The curtains seeDividing! She is there; and presentlyHe will be there—the proper You, at length—In your own cherished dress of grace and strength:Most like, the very Boniface!Not so.It was a showy man advanced; but thoughA glad cry welcomed him, then every soundSank and the crowd disposed themselves around,—"This is not he," Sordello felt; while, "PlaceFor the best Troubadour of Boniface!"Hollaed the Jongleurs,—"Eglamor, whose layConcludes his patron's Court of Love to-day!"Obsequious Naddo strung the master's luteWith the new lute-string, "Elys," named to suitAt a Court of Love a minstrel sings.The song: he stealthily at watch, the while,Biting his lip to keep down a great smileOf pride: then up he struck. Sordello's brainSwam; for he knew a sometime deed again;So, could supply each foolish gap and chasmThe minstrel left in his enthusiasm,Mistaking its true version—was the taleNot of Apollo? Only, what availLuring her down, that Elys an he pleased,If the man dared no further? Has he ceased?And, lo, the people's frank applause half done,Sordello was beside him, had begun(Spite of indignant twitchings from his friendThe Trouvere) the true lay with the true end,Taking the other's names and time and placeFor his. On flew the song, a giddy race,Sordello, before Palma, conquers him,After the flying story; word made leapOut word, rhyme—rhyme; the lay could barely keepPace with the action visibly rushing past:Both ended. Back fell Naddo more aghastThan some Egyptian from the harassed bullThat wheeled abrupt and, bellowing, fronted fullHis plague, who spied a scarab 'neath the tongue,And found 't was Apis' flank his hasty prongInsulted. But the people—but the cries,The crowding round, and proffering the prize!—For he had gained some prize. He seemed to shrinkInto a sleepy cloud, just at whose brinkOne sight withheld him. There sat Adelaide,Silent; but at her knees the very maidOf the North Chamber, her red lips as rich,The same pure fleecy hair; one weft of which,Golden and great, quite touched his cheek as o'erShe leant, speaking some six words and no more.He answered something, anything; and sheUnbound a scarf and laid it heavilyUpon him, her neck's warmth and all. AgainMoved the arrested magic; in his brainNoises grew, and a light that turned to glare,And greater glare, until the intense flareEngulfed him, shut the whole scene from his sense.And when he woke 't was many a furlong thence,At home; the sun shining his ruddy wont;The customary birds'-chirp; but his frontReceives the prize, and ruminates.Was crowned—was crowned! Her scented scarf aroundHis neck! Whose gorgeous vesture heaps the ground?A prize? He turned, and peeringly on himBrooded the women-faces, kind and dim,Ready to talk—"The Jongleurs in a troopHad brought him back, Naddo and SquarcialupeAnd Tagliafer; how strange! a childhood spentIn taking, well for him, so brave a bent!Since Eglamor," they heard, "was dead with spite,And Palma chose him for her minstrel."LightSordello rose—to think, now; hithertoHe had perceived. Sure, a discovery grewOut of it all! Best live from first to lastThe transport o'er again. A week he passed,Sucking the sweet out of each circumstance,From the bard's outbreak to the luscious tranceBounding his own achievement. Strange! A manRecounted an adventure, but beganImperfectly; his own task was to fillThe framework up, sing well what he sung ill,Supply the necessary points, set looseAs many incidents of little use—More imbecile the other, not to seeTheir relative importance clear as he!But, for a special pleasure in the actOf singing—had he ever turned, in fact,From Elys, to sing Elys?—from each fitOf rapture to contrive a song of it?True, this snatch or the other seemed to windInto a treasure, helped himself to findA beauty in himself; for, see, he soaredBy means of that mere snatch, to many a hoardOf fancies; as some falling cone hears softThe eye along the fir-tree spire, aloftTo a dove's nest. Then, how divine the causeWhy such performance should exact applauseFrom men, if they had fancies too? Did fateDecree they found a beauty separateIn the poor snatch itself?—"Take Elys, there,—'Her head that's sharp and perfect like a pear,So close and smooth are laid the few fine locksColored like honey oozed from topmost rocksSun-blanched the livelong summer'—if they heardJust those two rhymes, assented at my word,And loved them as I love them who have runThese fingers through those pale locks, let the sunInto the white cool skin—who first could clutch,Then praise—I needs must be a god to such.Or what if some, above themselves, and yetHow had he been superior to Eglamor?Beneath me, like their Eglamor, have setAn impress on our gift? So, men believeAnd worship what they know not, nor receiveDelight from. Have they fancies—slow, perchance,Not at their beck, which indistinctly glanceUntil, by song, each floating part be linkedTo each, and all grow palpable, distinct?"He pondered this.Meanwhile, sounds low and drearStole on him, and a noise of footsteps, nearAnd nearer, while the underwood was pushedAside, the larches grazed, the dead leaves crushedAt the approach of men. The wind seemed laid;Only, the trees shrunk slightly and a shadeCame o'er the sky although 't was mid-day yet:You saw each half-shut downcast floweretFlutter—"a Roman bride, when they 'd dispartHer unbound tresses with the Sabine dart,Holding that famous rape in memory still,Felt creep into her curls the iron chill,And looked thus," Eglamor would say—indeedThis is answered by Eglamor himself:'T is Eglamor, no other, these precedeHome hither in the woods. "'T were surely sweetFar from the scene of one's forlorn defeatTo sleep!" judged Naddo, who in person ledJongleurs and Trouveres, chanting at their head,A scanty company; for, sooth to say,Our beaten Troubadour had seen his day.Old worshippers were something shamed, old friendsNigh weary; still the death proposed amends."Let us but get them safely through my songAnd home again!" quoth Naddo.All along,This man (they rest the bier upon the sand)—This calm corpse with the loose flowers in his hand,Eglamor, lived Sordello's opposite.For him indeed was Naddo's notion right,And verse a temple-worship vague and vast,A ceremony that withdrew the lastOpposing bolt, looped back the lingering veilWhich hid the holy place: should one so frailStand there without such effort? or repineIf much was blank, uncertain at the shrineHe knelt before, till, soothed by many a rite,The power responded, and some sound or sightGrew up, his own forever, to be fixed,In rhyme, the beautiful, forever!—mixedWith his own life, unloosed when he should please,One who belonged to what he loved,Having it safe at hand, ready to easeAll pain, remove all trouble; every timeHe loosed that fancy from its bonds of rhyme,(Like Perseus when he loosed his naked love)Faltering; so distinct and far aboveHimself, these fancies! He, no genius rare,Transfiguring in fire or wave or airAt will, but a poor gnome that, cloistered upIn some rock-chamber with his agate cup,His topaz rod, his seed-pearl, in these fewAnd their arrangement finds enough to doFor his best art. Then, how he loved that art!The calling marking him a man apartFrom men—one not to care, take counsel forCold hearts, comfortless faces—(EglamorWas neediest of his tribe)—since verse, the gift,Was his, and men, the whole of them, must shiftWithout it, e'en content themselves with wealthAnd pomp and power, snatching a life by stealth.So, Eglamor was not without his pride!Loving his art and rewarded by it,The sorriest bat which cowers throughout noontideWhile other birds are jocund, has one timeWhen moon and stars are blinded, and the primeOf earth is his to claim, nor find a peer;And Eglamor was noblest poet here—He well knew, 'mid those April woods, he castConceits upon in plenty as he passed,That Naddo might suppose him not to thinkEntirely on the coming triumph: winkAt the one weakness! 'Twas a fervid child,That song of his; no brother of the guildHad e'er conceived its like. The rest you know,The exaltation and the overthrow:Our poet lost his purpose, lost his rank,His life—to that it came. Yet envy sankWithin him, as he heard Sordello out,And, for the first time, shouted—tried to shoutLike others, not from any zeal to showPleasure that way: the common sort did so.What else was Eglamor? who, bending downAs they, placed his beneath Sordello's crown,Printed a kiss on his successor's hand,Left one great tear on it, then joined his band—In time; for some were watching at the door:Who knows what envy may effect? "Give o'er,Nor charm his lips, nor craze him!" (here one spiedAnd disengaged the withered crown)—"BesideHis crown? How prompt and clear those verses rangTo answer yours! nay, sing them!" And he sangThem calmly. Home he went; friends used to waitHis coming, zealous to congratulate;But, to a man,—so quickly runs report,—Could do no less than leave him, and escortHis rival. That eve, then, bred many a thought:What must his future life be? was he broughtSo low, who stood so lofty this Spring morn?At length he said, "Best sleep now with my scorn,And by to-morrow I devise some plainExpedient!" So, he slept, nor woke again.Ending with what had possessed him.They found as much, those friends, when they returnedO'erflowing with the marvels they had learnedAbout Sordello's paradise, his rovesAmong the hills and vales and plains and groves,Wherein, no doubt, this lay was roughly cast,Polished by slow degrees, completed lastTo Eglamor's discomfiture and death.Such form the chanters now, and, out of breath,They lay the beaten man in his abode,Naddo reciting that same luckless ode,Doleful to hear. Sordello could exploreBy means of it, however, one step moreIn joy; and, mastering the round at length,Learnt how to live in weakness as in strength,When from his covert forth he stood, addressedEglamor, bade the tender ferns invest,Primæval pines o'ercanopy his couch,And, most of all, his fame—(shall I avouchEglamor heard it, dead though he might look,And laughed as from his brow Sordello tookThe crown, and laid on the bard's breast, and saidIt was a crown, now, fit for poet's head?)—Continue. Nor the prayer quite fruitless fell,A plant they have, yielding a three-leaved bellWhich whitens at the heart ere noon, and ailsTill evening; evening gives it to her galesTo clear away with such forgotten thingsAs are an eyesore to the morn: this bringsHim to their mind, and hears his very name.Eglamor done with, Sordello begins.So much for Eglamor. My own month came;'Twas a sunrise of blossoming and May.Beneath a flowering laurel thicket laySordello; each new sprinkle of white starsThat smell fainter of wine than Massic jarsDug up at Baiæ, when the south wind shedThe ripest, made him happier; filletedAnd robed the same, only a lute besideLay on the turf. Before him far and wideThe country stretched: Goito slept behind—The castle and its covert, which confinedHim with his hopes and fears; so fain of oldTo leave the story of his birth untold.At intervals, 'spite the fantastic glowOf his Apollo-life, a certain lowAnd wretched whisper, winding through the bliss,Admonished, no such fortune could be his,All was quite false and sure to fade one day:The closelier drew he round him his arrayOf brilliance to expel the truth. But whenA reason for his difference from menSurprised him at the grave, he took no restWhile aught of that old life, superbly dressedDown to its meanest incident, remainedA mystery: alas, they soon explainedAway Apollo! and the tale amountsTo this: when at Vicenza both her countsWho he really was, and why at Goito.Banished the Vivaresi kith and kin,Those Maltraversi hung on Ecelin,Reviled him as he followed; he for spiteMust fire their quarter, though that self-same nightAmong the flames young Ecelin was bornOf Adelaide, there too, and barely tornFrom the roused populace hard on the rear,By a poor archer when his chieftain's fearGrew high; into the thick Elcorte leapt,Saved her, and died; no creature left exceptHis child to thank. And when the full escapeWas known—how men impaled from chine to napeUnlucky Prata, all to pieces spurnedBishop Pistore's concubines, and burnedTaurello's entire household, flesh and fell,Missing the sweeter prey—such courage wellMight claim reward. The orphan, ever since,Sordello, had been nurtured by his princeWithin a blind retreat where Adelaide—(For, once this notable discovery made,The past at every point was understood)—Might harbor easily when times were rude,When Azzo schemed for Palma, to retrieveThat pledge of Agnes Este—loth to leaveMantua unguarded with a vigilant eye,While there Taurello bode ambiguously—He who could have no motive now to moilFor his own fortunes since their utter spoil—As it were worth while yet (went the report)To disengage himself from her. In short,Apollo vanished; a mean youth, just namedHis lady's minstrel, was to be proclaimed—How shall I phrase it?—Monarch of the World!He, so little, would fain be so much:For, on the day when that array was furledForever, and in place of one a slaveTo longings, wild indeed, but longings saveIn dreams as wild, suppressed—one daring notAssume the mastery such dreams allot,Until a magical equipment, strength,Grace, wisdom, decked him too,—he chose at length,Content with unproved wits and failing frame,In virtue of his simple will, to claimThat mastery, no less—to do his bestWith means so limited, and let the restGo by,—the seal was set: never againSordello could in his own sight remainLeaves the dream he may be something,One of the many, one with hopes and caresAnd interests nowise distinct from theirs,Only peculiar in a thriveless storeOf fancies, which were fancies and no more;Never again for him and for the crowdA common law was challenged and allowedIf calmly reasoned of, howe'er deniedBy a mad impulse nothing justifiedShort of Apollo's presence. The divorceIs clear: why needs Sordello square his courseBy any known example? Men no moreCompete with him than tree and flower before.Himself, inactive, yet is greater farThan such as act, each stooping to his star,Acquiring thence his function; he has gainedThe same result with meaner mortals trainedTo strength or beauty, moulded to expressEach the idea that rules him; since no lessHe comprehends that function, but can stillEmbrace the others, take of might his fillWith Richard as of grace with Palma, mixTheir qualities, or for a moment fixOn one; abiding free meantime, uncrampedBy any partial organ, never stampedStrong, and to strength turning all energies—Wise, and restricted to becoming wise—That is, he loves not, nor possesses OneIdea that, star-like over, lures him onTo its exclusive purpose. "Fortunate!This flesh of mine ne'er strove to emulateA soul so various—took no casual mouldOf the first fancy and, contracted, cold,Clogged her forever—soul averse to changeAs flesh: whereas flesh leaves soul free to range,Remains itself a blank, east into shade,Encumbers little, if it cannot aid.For the fact that he can do nothing,So, range, free soul!—who, by self-consciousness,The last drop of all beauty dost express—The grace of seeing grace, a quintessenceFor thee: while for the world, that can dispenseWonder on men who, themselves, wonder—makeA shift to love at second-hand, and takeFor idols those who do but idolize,Themselves,—the world that counts men strong or wise,Who, themselves, court strength, wisdom,—it shall bowSurely in unexampled worship now,Discerning me!"—(Dear monarch, I beseech,Notice how lamentably wide a breachIs here: discovering this, discover tooWhat our poor world has possibly to doWith it! As pigmy natures as you please—So much the better for you; take your ease,Look on, and laugh; style yourself God alone;Strangle some day with a cross olive-stone!All that is right enough: but why want usTo know that you yourself know thus and thus?)"The world shall bow to me conceiving allMan's life, who see its blisses, great and small,Afar—not tasting any; no machineTo exercise my utmost will is mine:Be mine mere consciousness! Let men perceiveWhat I could do, a mastery believe,Asserted and established to the throngBy their selected evidence of songWhich now shall prove, whate'er they are, or seekTo be, I am—whose words, not actions speak,Who change no standards of perfection, vexWith no strange forms created to perplex,But just perform their bidding and no more,At their own satiating-point give o'er,While each shall love in me the love that leadsHis soul to power's perfection." Song, not deeds,(For we get tired) was chosen. Fate would brookMankind no other organ; he would lookFor not another channel to dispenseHis own volition by, receive men's senseOf its supremacy—would live content,Obstructed else, with merely verse for vent.Yet is able to imagine everything,Nor should, for instance, strength an outlet seekAnd, striving, be admired; nor grace bespeakWonder, displayed in gracious attitudes;Nor wisdom, poured forth, change unseemly moods:But he would give and take on song's one point.Like some huge throbbing stone that, poised a-joint,Sounds, to affect on its basaltic bed,Must sue in just one accent; tempests shedThunder, and raves the windstorm: only letThat key by any little noise be set—The far benighted hunter's halloo pitchOn that, the hungry curlew chance to scritchOr serpent hiss it, rustling through the rift,However loud, however low—all liftThe groaning monster, stricken to the heart.Lo ye, the world's concernment, for its part,If the world esteem this equivalent.And this, for his, will hardly interfere!Its businesses in blood and blaze this yearBut while the hour away—a pastime slightTill he shall step upon the platform: right!And, now thus much is settled, cast in rough,Proved feasible, be counselled! thought enough,—Slumber, Sordello! any day will serve:Were it a less digested plan! how swerveTo-morrow? Meanwhile eat these sun-dried grapes,And watch the soaring hawk there! Life escapesMerrily thus.He thoroughly read o'erHis truchman Naddo's missive six times more,Praying him visit Mantua and supplyA famished world.The evening star was highWhen he reached Mantua, but his fame arrivedBefore him: friends applauded, foes connived,And Naddo looked an angel, and the restAngels, and all these angels would he blestSupremely by a song—the thrice-renownedGoito-manufacture. Then he found(Casting about to satisfy the crowd)He has loved song's results, not song;That happy vehicle, so late allowed,A sore annoyance; 't was the song's effectHe cared for, scarce the song itself: reflect!In the past life, what might be singing's use?Just to delight his Delians, whose profusePraise, not the toilsome process which procuredThat praise, enticed Apollo: dreams abjured,No overleaping means for ends—take bothFor granted or take neither! I am lothTo say the rhymes at last were Eglamor's;But Naddo, chuckling, bade competitorsGo pine; "the master certes meant to wasteNo effort, cautiously had probed the tasteHe 'd please anon: true bard, in short, disturbHis title if they could; nor spur nor curb,Fancy nor reason, wanting in him; whenceThe staple of his verses, common sense:He built on man's broad nature—gift of gifts,That power to build! The world contented shiftsWith counterfeits enough, a dreary sortOf warriors, statesmen, ere it can extortIts poet-soul—that 's, after all, a freak(The having eyes to see and tongue to speak)With our herd's stupid sterling happinessSo plainly incompatible that—yes—Yes—should a son of his improve the breedAnd turn out poet, he were cursed indeed!""Well, there 's Goito and its woods anon,If the worst happen; best go stoutly onNow!" thought Sordello.So, must effect this to obtain those.Ay, and goes on yet!You pother with your glossaries to getA notion of the Troubadour's intentIn rondel, tenzon, virlai, or sirvent—Much as you study arras how to twirlHis angelot, plaything of page and girlOnce; but you surely reach, at last,—or, no!Never quite reach what struck the people so,As from the welter of their time he drewIts elements successively to view,Followed all actions backward on their course,And catching up, unmingled at the source,Such a strength, such a weakness, added thenA touch or two, and turned them into men.Virtue took form, nor vice refused a shape;Here heaven opened, there was hell agape,As Saint this simpered past in sanctity,Sinner the other flared portentous byA greedy people. Then why stop, surprisedAt his success? The scheme was realizedToo suddenly in one respect: a crowdPraising, eyes quick to see, and lips as loudTo speak, delicious homage to receive,The woman's breath to feel upon his sleeve,Who said, "But Anafest—why asks he lessThan Lucio, in your verses? how confess,It seemed too much but yestereve!"—the youth,Who bade him earnestly, "Avow the truth!You love Bianca, surely, from your song;I knew I was unworthy!"—soft or strong,In poured such tributes ere he had arrangedEthereal ways to take them, sorted, changed,Digested. Courted thus at unawares,In spite of his pretensions and his cares,He caught himself shamefully hankeringAfter the obvious petty joys that springFrom true life, fain relinquish pedestalHe succeeds a little, but fails more;And condescend with pleasures—one and allTo be renounced, no doubt; for, thus to chainHimself to single joys and so refrainFrom tasting their quintessence, frustrates, sure,His prime design; each joy must he abjureEven for love of it.He laughed: what sageBut perishes if from his magic pageHe look because, at the first line, a proof'T was heard salutes him from the cavern roof?"On! Give yourself, excluding aught beside,To the day's task; compel your slave provideIts utmost at the soonest; turn the leafThoroughly conned. These lays of yours, in brief—Cannot men hear, now, something better?—flyA pitch beyond this unreal pageantryOf essences? the period sure has ceasedFor such: present us with ourselves, at least,Not portions of ourselves, mere loves and hatesMade flesh: wait not!"Tries again, is no better satisfied,Awhile the poet waitsHowever. The first trial was enough:He left imagining, to try the stuffThat held the imaged thing, and, let it writheNever so fiercely, scarce allowed a titheTo reach the light—his Language. How he soughtThe cause, conceived a cure, and slow re-wroughtThat Language,—welding words into the crudeMass from the new speech round him, till a rudeArmor was hammered out, in time to beApproved beyond the Roman panoplyMelted to make it,—boots not. This obtainedWith some ado, no obstacle remainedTo using it; accordingly he tookAn action with its actors, quite forsookHimself to live in each, returned anonWith the result—a creature, and, by oneAnd one, proceeded leisurely to equipIts limbs in harness of his workmanship."Accomplished! Listen, Mantuans!" Fond essay!Piece after piece that armor broke away,Because perceptions whole, like that he soughtTo clothe, reject so pure a work of thoughtAs language: thought may take perception's placeBut hardly co-exist in any case,Being its mere presentment—of the wholeBy parts, the simultaneous and the soleBy the successive and the many. LacksThe crowd perception? painfully it tacksThought to thought, which Sordello, needing such,Has rent perception into: it 's to clutchAnd reconstruct—his office to diffuse,Destroy: as hard, then, to obtain a MuseAs to become Apollo. "For the rest,E'en if some wondrous vehicle expressedThe whole dream, what impertinence in meSo to express it, who myself can beThe dream! nor, on the other hand, are thoseI sing to, over-likely to supposeAnd declines from the ideal of song.A higher than the highest I presentNow, which they praise already: be contentBoth parties, rather—they with the old verse,And I with the old praise—far go, fare worse!"A few adhering rivets loosed, upspringsThe angel, sparkles off his mail, which ringsWhirled from each delicatest limb it warps,So might Apollo from the sudden corpseOf Hyacinth have cast his luckless quoits.He set to celebrating the exploitsOf Montfort o'er the Mountaineers.Then cameThe world's revenge: their pleasure, now his aimMerely,—what was it? "Not to play the foolSo much as learn our lesson in your school!"Replied the world. He found that, every timeHe gained applause by any ballad-rhyme,His auditory recognized no jotAs he intended, and, mistaking notHim for his meanest hero, ne'er was dunceSufficient to believe him—all, at once.His will ... conceive it caring for his will!—Mantuans, the main of them, admiring stillHow a mere singer, ugly, stunted, weak,Had Montfort at completely (so to speak)His fingers' ends; while past the praise-tide sweptTo Montfort, either's share distinctly kept:The true meed for true merit!—his abatesWhat is the world's recognition worth?Into a sort he most repudiates,And on them angrily he turns. Who wereThe Mantuans, after all, that he should careAbout their recognition, ay or no?In spite of the convention months ago,(Why blink the truth?) was not he forced to helpThis same ungrateful audience, every whelpOf Naddo's litter, make them pass for peersWith the bright band of old Goito years,As erst he toiled for flower or tree? Why, thereSat Palma! Adelaide's funereal hairEnnobled the next corner. Ay, he strewedA fairy dust upon that multitude,Although he feigned to take them by themselves;His giants dignified those puny elves,Sublime their faint applause. In short, he foundHimself still footing a delusive round,Remote as ever from the self-displayHe meant to compass, hampered every wayBy what he hoped assistance. Wherefore thenContinue, make believe to find in menA use he found not?Weeks, months, years went by,And lo, Sordello vanished utterly,Sundered in twain; each spectral part at strifeWith each; one jarred against another life;How, poet no longer in unity with man,The Poet thwarting hopelessly the Man,Who, fooled no longer, free in fancy ranHere, there,—let slip no opportunitiesAs pitiful, forsooth, beside the prizeTo drop on him some no-time and acquitHis constant faith (the Poet-half's to wit—That waiving any compromise betweenNo joy and all joy kept the hunger keenBeyond most methods)—of incurring scoffFrom the Man-portion—not to be put offWith self-reflectings by the Poet's scheme,Though ne'er so bright. Who sauntered forth in dream,Dressed anyhow, nor waited mystic frames,Immeasurable gifts, astounding claims,But just his sorry self?—who yet might beSorrier for aught he in realityAchieved, so pinioned Man 's the Poet-part,Fondling, in turn of fancy, verse; the ArtDeveloping his soul a thousand ways—Potent, by its assistance, to amazeThe multitude with majesties, convinceEach sort of nature, that the nature's princeAccosted it. Language, the makeshift, grewInto a bravest of expedients, too;Apollo, seemed it now, perverse had thrownQuiver and bow away, the lyre aloneSufficed. While, out of dream, his day's work wentTo tune a crazy tenzon or sirvent—So hampered him the Man-part, thrust to judgeBetween the bard and the bard's audience, grudgeA minute's toil that missed its due reward!But the complete Sordello, Man and Bard,The whole visible Sordello goes wrongJohn's cloud-girt angel, this foot on the land,That on the sea, with, open in his hand,A bitter-sweetling of a book—was gone.Then, if internal straggles to be oneWhich frittered him incessantly piecemeal,Referred, ne'er so obliquely, to the realIntruding Mantuans! ever with some callTo action while he pondered, once for all,Which looked the easier effort—to pursueThis course, still leap o'er paltry joys, yearn throughThe present ill-appreciated stageOf self-revealment, and compel the ageKnow him; or else, forswearing bard-craft, wakeFrom out his lethargy and nobly shakeOff timid habits of denial, mixWith men, enjoy like men. Ere he could fixOn aught, in rushed the Mantuans; much they caredFor his perplexity! Thus unprepared,The obvious if not only shelter layWith those too hard for half of him,In deeds, the dull conventions of his dayPrescribed the like of him: why not be glad'T is settled Palma's minstrel, good or bad,Submits to this and that established rule?Let Vidal change, or any other fool,His murrey-colored robe for filamot,And crop his hair; too skin-deep, is it not,Such vigor? Then, a sorrow to the heart,His talk! Whatever topics they might startHad to be groped for in his consciousnessStraight, and as straight delivered them by guess.Only obliged to ask himself, "What was,"A speedy answer followed; but, alas,One of God's large ones, tardy to condenseItself into a period; answers whenceA tangle of conclusions must be strippedAt any risk ere, trim to pattern clipped,They matched rare specimens the Mantuan flockRegaled him with, each talker from his stockOf sorted-o'er opinions, every stage,Juicy in youth or desiccate with age,Fruits like the fig-tree's, rathe-ripe, rotten-rich,Sweet-sour, all tastes to take: a practice whichHe too had not impossibly attained,Once either of those fancy-flights restrained;(For, at conjecture how might words appearTo others, playing there what happened here,And occupied abroad by what he spurnedAt home, 't was slipped, the occasion he returnedTo seize:) he 'd strike that lyre adroitly—speech,Would but a twenty-cubit plectre reach;A clever hand, consummate instrument,Were both brought close; each excellency wentFor nothing, else. The question Naddo asked,Had just a lifetime moderately taskedTo answer, Naddo's fashion. More disgustOf whom he is also too contemptuous.And more: why move his soul, since move it mustAt minute's notice or as good it failedTo move at all? The end was, he retailedSome ready-made opinion, put to useThis quip, that maxim, ventured reproduceGestures and tones—at any folly caughtServing to finish with, nor too much soughtIf false or true 't was spoken; praise and blameOf what he said grew pretty nigh the same—Meantime awards to meantime acts: his soul,Unequal to the compassing a whole,Saw, in a tenth part, less and less to striveAbout. And as for men in turn ... contriveWho could to take eternal interestIn them, so hate the worst, so love the best!Though, in pursuance of his passive plan,He hailed, decried, the proper way.As ManSo figured he; and how as Poet? VerseCame only not to a stand-still. The worse,That his poor piece of daily work to doWas, not sink under any rivals; whoHe pleases neither himself nor them:Loudly and long enough, without these qualms,Turned, from Bocafoli's stark-naked psalms,To Plara's sonnets spoilt by toying with,"As knops that stud some almug to the pithPrickèd for gum, wry thence, and crinklèd worseThan pursèd eyelids of a river-horseSunning himself o' the slime when whirrs the breeze"—Gad-fly, that is. He might compete with these!But—but—"Observe a pompion-twine afloat;Pluck me one cup from off the castle-moat!Which the best judges account for.Along with cup you raise leaf, stalk and root,The entire surface of the pool to boot.So could I pluck a cup, put in one songA single sight, did not my hand, too strong,Twitch in the least the root-strings of the whole.How should externals satisfy my soul?""Why that 's precise the error Squarcialupe"(Hazarded Naddo) "finds; 'the man can't stoopTo sing us out,' quoth he, 'a mere romance;He 'd fain do better than the best, enhanceThe subjects' rarity, work problems outTherewith.' Now, you 're a bard, a bard past doubt,And no philosopher; why introduceCrotchets like these? fine, surely, but no useIn poetry—which still must be, to strike,Based upon common sense; there 's nothing likeAppealing to our nature! what besideWas your first poetry? No tricks were triedIn that, no hollow thrills, affected throes!'The man,' said we, 'tells his own joys and woes:We 'll trust him.' Would you have your songs endure?Build on the human heart!—why, to be sureYours is one sort of heart—but I mean theirs,Ours, every one's, the healthy heart one caresTo build on! Central peace, mother of strength,That 's father of ... nay, go yourself that length,Ask those calm-hearted doers what they doWhen they have got their calm! And is it true,Fire rankles at the heart of every globe?Perhaps. But these are matters one may probeToo deeply for poetic purposes:Rather select a theory that ... yes,Laugh! what does that prove?—stations you midwayAnd saves some little o'er-refining. Nay,That 's rank injustice done me! I restrictThe poet? Don't I hold the poet pickedOut of a host of warriors, statesmen ... didI tell you? Very like! As well you hidThat sense of power, you have! True bards believeAll able to achieve what they achieve—That is, just nothing—in one point abideProfounder simpletons than all beside.Oh, ay! The knowledge that you are a bardMust constitute your prime, nay sole, reward!"So prattled Naddo, busiest of the tribeOf genius-haunters—how shall I describeWhat grubs or nips or rubs or rips—your louseFor love, your flea for hate, magnanimous,Their criticisms give small comfort:Malignant, Pappacoda, Tagliafer,Picking a sustenance from wear and tearBy implements it sedulous employsTo undertake, lay down, mete out, o'er-toiseSordello? Fifty creepers to eludeAt once! They settled stanchly: shame ensued:Behold the monarch of mankind succumbTo the last fool who turned him round his thumb,As Naddo styled it! 'T was not worth opposeThe matter of a moment, gainsay thoseHe aimed at getting rid of; better thinkTheir thoughts and speak their speech, secure to slinkBack expeditiously to his safe place,And chew the cud—what he and what his raceWere really, each of them. Yet even thisConformity was partial. He would missSome point, brought into contact with them ereAssured in what small segment of the sphereOf his existence they attended him;Whence blunders, falsehoods rectified—a grimList—slur it over! How? If dreams were tried,His will swayed sicklily from side to side,Nor merely neutralized his waking actBut tended e'en in fancy to distractThe intermediate will, the choice of means.He lost the art of dreaming: Mantuan scenesSupplied a baron, say, he sang before,Handsomely reckless, full to running o'erOf gallantries; "abjure the soul, contentWith body, therefore!" Scarcely had he bentHimself in dream thus low, when matter fastCried out, he found, for spirit to contrastAnd task it duly; by advances slight,The simple stuff becoming composite,Count Lori grew Apollo—best recallHis fancy! Then would some rough peasant-Paul,Like those old Ecelin confers with, glanceHis gay apparel o'er; that countenanceGathered his shattered fancies into one,And, body clean abolished, soul aloneSufficed the gray Paulieian: by and by,And his own degradation is complete.To balance the ethereality,Passions were needed; foiled he sank again.Meanwhile the world rejoiced ('t is time explain)Because a sudden sickness set it freeFrom Adelaide. Missing the mother-bee,Her mountain-hive Romano swarmed; at onceA rustle-forth of daughters and of sonsBlackened the valley. "I am sick too, old,Half-crazed I think; what good 's the Kaiser's goldTo such an one? God help me! for I catchMy children's greedy sparkling eyes at watch—'He bears that double breastplate on,' they say,'So many minutes less than yesterday!'Beside, Monk Hilary is on his kneesNow, sworn to kneel and pray till God shall pleaseExact a punishment for many thingsYou know, and some you never knew; which bringsTo memory, Azzo's sister BeatrixAnd Richard's Giglia are my Alberic'sAnd Ecelin's betrothed; the Count himselfMust get my Palma: Ghibellin and GuelfMean to embrace each other." So beganAdelaide's death: what happens on it:Romano's missive to his fighting manTaurello—on the Tuscan's death, awayWith Friedrich sworn to sail from Naples' bayNext month for Syria. Never thunder-clapOut of Vesuvius' throat, like this mishapStartled him. "That accursed Vicenza! IAbsent, and she selects this time to die!Ho, fellows, for Vicenza!" Half a scoreOf horses ridden dead, he stood beforeRomano in his reeking spurs: too late—"Boniface urged me, Este could not wait,"The chieftain stammered; "let me die in peace—Forget me! Was it I who craved increaseOf rule? Do you and Friedrich plot your worstAgainst the Father: as you found me firstSo leave me now. Forgive me! Palma, sure,Is at Goito still. Retain that lure—Only be pacified!"The country rungWith such a piece of news: on every tongue,How Ecelin's great servant, congeed off,Had done a long day's service, so, might doffThe green and yellow, and recover breathAt Mantua, whither,—since Retrude's death,(The girlish slip of a Sicilian brideFrom Otho's house, he carried to resideAt Mantua till the Ferrarese should pileA structure worthy her imperial style,The gardens raise, the statues there enshrine,She never lived to see)—although his lineWas ancient in her archives and she tookA pride in him, that city, nor forsookHer child when he forsook himself and spentA prowess on Romano surely meantFor his own growth—whither he ne'er resortsIf wholly satisfied (to trust reports)With Ecelin. So, forward in a triceWere shows to greet him. "Take a friend's advice,"Quoth Naddo to Sordello, "nor be rashBecause your rivals (nothing can abashSome folks) demur that we pronounced you bestTo sound the great man's welcome; 't is a test,Remember! Strojavacca looks asquint,The rough fat sloven; and there 's plenty hintYour pinions have received of late a shock—Outsoar them, cobswan of the silver flock!And a trouble it occasions Sordello.Sing well!" A signal wonder, song 's no whitFacilitated.Fast the minutes flit;Another day, Sordello finds, will bringThe soldier, and he cannot choose but sing;So, a last shift, quits Mantua—slow, alone:Out of that aching brain, a very stone,Song must be struck. What occupies that front?Just how he was more awkward than his wontThe night before, when Naddo, who had seenTaurello on his progress, praised the mienFor dignity no crosses could affect—Such was a joy, and might not he detectA satisfaction if established joysWere proved imposture? Poetry annoysIts utmost: wherefore fret? Verses may comeOr keep away! And thus he wandered, dumbTill evening, when he paused, thoroughly spent,On a blind hill-top: down the gorge he went,Yielding himself up as to an embrace.The moon came out; like features of a face,A querulous fraternity of pines,Sad blackthorn clumps, leafless and grovelling vinesAlso came out, made gradually upThe picture; 't was Goito's mountain-cupAnd castle. He had dropped through one defileHe never dared explore, the Chief erewhileHe chances upon his old environment,Had vanished by. Back rushed the dream, enwrappedHim wholly. 'T was Apollo now they lapped,Those mountains, not a pettish minstrel meantTo wear his soul away in discontent,Brooding on fortune's malice. Heart and brainSwelled; he expanded to himself again,As some thin seedling spice-tree starved and frail,Pushing between cat's head and ibis' tailCrusted into the porphyry pavement smooth,—Suffered remain just as it sprung, to sootheThe Soldan's pining daughter, never yetWell in her chilly green-glazed minaret,—When rooted up, the sunny day she died,And flung into the common court besideIts parent tree. Come home, Sordello! SoonWas he low muttering, beneath the moon,Of sorrow saved, of quiet evermore,—Since from the purpose, he maintained before,Only resulted wailing and hot tears.Sees but failure in all done since,Ah, the slim castle! dwindled of late years,But more mysterious; gone to ruin—trailsOf vine through every loop-hole. Naught availsThe night as, torch in hand, he must exploreThe maple chamber: did I say, its floorWas made of intersecting cedar beams?Worn now with gaps so large, there blew cold streamsOf air quite from the dungeon; lay your earClose and 't is like, one after one, you hearIn the blind darkness water drop. The nestsAnd nooks retain their long ranged vesture-chestsEmpty and smelling of the iris rootThe Tuscan grated o'er them to recruitHer wasted wits. Palma was gone that day,Said the remaining women. Last, he layBeside the Carian group reserved and still.The Body, the Machine for Acting Will,Had been at the commencement proved unfit;That for Demonstrating, Reflecting it,Mankind—no fitter: was the Will ItselfIn fault?His forehead pressed the moonlit shelfBeside the youngest marble maid awhile;Then, raising it, he thought, with a long smile,and resolves to desist from the like."I shall be king again!" as he withdrewThe envied scarf; into the font he threwHis crown.Next day, no poet! "Wherefore?" askedTaurello, when the dance of Jongleurs, maskedAs devils, ended; "don't a song come next?"The master of the pageant looked perplexedTill Naddo's whisper came to his relief."His Highness knew what poets were: in brief,Had not the tetchy race prescriptive rightTo peevishness, caprice? or, call it spite,One must receive their nature in its lengthAnd breadth, expect the weakness with the strength!"—So phrasing, till, his stock of phrases spent,The easy-natured soldier smiled assent,Settled his portly person, smoothed his chin,And nodded that the bull-bait might begin.

The woods were long austere with snow: at last

This bubble of fancy.

Pink leaflets budded on the beech, and fast

Larches, scattered through pine-tree solitudes,

Brightened, "as in the slumbrous heart o' the woods

Our buried year, a witch, grew young again

To placid incantations, and that stain

About were from her caldron, green smoke blent

With those black pines"—so Eglamor gave vent

To a chance fancy. Whence a just rebuke

From his companion; brother Naddo shook

The solemnest of brows; "Beware," he said,

"Of setting up conceits in nature's stead!"

Forth wandered our Sordello. Naught so sure

As that to-day's adventure will secure

Palma, the visioned lady—only pass

O'er yon damp mound and its exhausted grass,

Under that brake where sundawn feeds the stalks

Of withered fern with gold, into those walks

Of pine and take her! Buoyantly he went.

Again his stooping forehead was besprent

With dew-drops from the skirting ferns. Then wide

Opened the great morass, shot every side

With flashing water through and through; a-shine,

Thick steaming, all alive. Whose shape divine,

Quivered i' the farthest rainbow-vapor, glanced

Athwart the flying herons? He advanced,

But warily; though Mincio leaped no more,

Each footfall burst up in the marish-floor

A diamond jet: and if he stopped to pick

Rose-lichen, or molest the leeches quick,

And circling blood-worms, minnow, newt or loach,

A sudden pond would silently encroach

This way and that. On Palma passed. The verge

Of a new wood was gained. She will emerge

Flushed, now, and panting,—crowds to see,—will own

She loves him—Boniface to hear, to groan,

To leave his suit! One screen of pine-trees still

Opposes: but—the startling spectacle—

Mantua, this time! Under the walls—a crowd

Indeed, real men and women, gay and loud

Round a pavilion. How he stood!

In truth

When greatest and brightest, bursts.

No prophecy had come to pass: his youth

In its prime now—and where was homage poured

Upon Sordello?—born to be adored,

And suddenly discovered weak, scarce made

To cope with any, cast into the shade

By this and this. Yet something seemed to prick

And tingle in his blood; a sleight—a trick—

And much would be explained. It went for naught—

The best of their endowments were ill bought

With his identity: nay, the conceit,

That this day's roving led to Palma's feet

Was not so vain—list! The word, "Palma!" Steal

Aside, and die, Sordello; this is real,

And this—abjure!

What next? The curtains see

Dividing! She is there; and presently

He will be there—the proper You, at length—

In your own cherished dress of grace and strength:

Most like, the very Boniface!

Not so.

It was a showy man advanced; but though

A glad cry welcomed him, then every sound

Sank and the crowd disposed themselves around,

—"This is not he," Sordello felt; while, "Place

For the best Troubadour of Boniface!"

Hollaed the Jongleurs,—"Eglamor, whose lay

Concludes his patron's Court of Love to-day!"

Obsequious Naddo strung the master's lute

With the new lute-string, "Elys," named to suit

At a Court of Love a minstrel sings.

The song: he stealthily at watch, the while,

Biting his lip to keep down a great smile

Of pride: then up he struck. Sordello's brain

Swam; for he knew a sometime deed again;

So, could supply each foolish gap and chasm

The minstrel left in his enthusiasm,

Mistaking its true version—was the tale

Not of Apollo? Only, what avail

Luring her down, that Elys an he pleased,

If the man dared no further? Has he ceased?

And, lo, the people's frank applause half done,

Sordello was beside him, had begun

(Spite of indignant twitchings from his friend

The Trouvere) the true lay with the true end,

Taking the other's names and time and place

For his. On flew the song, a giddy race,

Sordello, before Palma, conquers him,

After the flying story; word made leap

Out word, rhyme—rhyme; the lay could barely keep

Pace with the action visibly rushing past:

Both ended. Back fell Naddo more aghast

Than some Egyptian from the harassed bull

That wheeled abrupt and, bellowing, fronted full

His plague, who spied a scarab 'neath the tongue,

And found 't was Apis' flank his hasty prong

Insulted. But the people—but the cries,

The crowding round, and proffering the prize!

—For he had gained some prize. He seemed to shrink

Into a sleepy cloud, just at whose brink

One sight withheld him. There sat Adelaide,

Silent; but at her knees the very maid

Of the North Chamber, her red lips as rich,

The same pure fleecy hair; one weft of which,

Golden and great, quite touched his cheek as o'er

She leant, speaking some six words and no more.

He answered something, anything; and she

Unbound a scarf and laid it heavily

Upon him, her neck's warmth and all. Again

Moved the arrested magic; in his brain

Noises grew, and a light that turned to glare,

And greater glare, until the intense flare

Engulfed him, shut the whole scene from his sense.

And when he woke 't was many a furlong thence,

At home; the sun shining his ruddy wont;

The customary birds'-chirp; but his front

Receives the prize, and ruminates.

Was crowned—was crowned! Her scented scarf around

His neck! Whose gorgeous vesture heaps the ground?

A prize? He turned, and peeringly on him

Brooded the women-faces, kind and dim,

Ready to talk—"The Jongleurs in a troop

Had brought him back, Naddo and Squarcialupe

And Tagliafer; how strange! a childhood spent

In taking, well for him, so brave a bent!

Since Eglamor," they heard, "was dead with spite,

And Palma chose him for her minstrel."

Light

Sordello rose—to think, now; hitherto

He had perceived. Sure, a discovery grew

Out of it all! Best live from first to last

The transport o'er again. A week he passed,

Sucking the sweet out of each circumstance,

From the bard's outbreak to the luscious trance

Bounding his own achievement. Strange! A man

Recounted an adventure, but began

Imperfectly; his own task was to fill

The framework up, sing well what he sung ill,

Supply the necessary points, set loose

As many incidents of little use

—More imbecile the other, not to see

Their relative importance clear as he!

But, for a special pleasure in the act

Of singing—had he ever turned, in fact,

From Elys, to sing Elys?—from each fit

Of rapture to contrive a song of it?

True, this snatch or the other seemed to wind

Into a treasure, helped himself to find

A beauty in himself; for, see, he soared

By means of that mere snatch, to many a hoard

Of fancies; as some falling cone hears soft

The eye along the fir-tree spire, aloft

To a dove's nest. Then, how divine the cause

Why such performance should exact applause

From men, if they had fancies too? Did fate

Decree they found a beauty separate

In the poor snatch itself?—"Take Elys, there,

—'Her head that's sharp and perfect like a pear,

So close and smooth are laid the few fine locks

Colored like honey oozed from topmost rocks

Sun-blanched the livelong summer'—if they heard

Just those two rhymes, assented at my word,

And loved them as I love them who have run

These fingers through those pale locks, let the sun

Into the white cool skin—who first could clutch,

Then praise—I needs must be a god to such.

Or what if some, above themselves, and yet

How had he been superior to Eglamor?

Beneath me, like their Eglamor, have set

An impress on our gift? So, men believe

And worship what they know not, nor receive

Delight from. Have they fancies—slow, perchance,

Not at their beck, which indistinctly glance

Until, by song, each floating part be linked

To each, and all grow palpable, distinct?"

He pondered this.

Meanwhile, sounds low and drear

Stole on him, and a noise of footsteps, near

And nearer, while the underwood was pushed

Aside, the larches grazed, the dead leaves crushed

At the approach of men. The wind seemed laid;

Only, the trees shrunk slightly and a shade

Came o'er the sky although 't was mid-day yet:

You saw each half-shut downcast floweret

Flutter—"a Roman bride, when they 'd dispart

Her unbound tresses with the Sabine dart,

Holding that famous rape in memory still,

Felt creep into her curls the iron chill,

And looked thus," Eglamor would say—indeed

This is answered by Eglamor himself:

'T is Eglamor, no other, these precede

Home hither in the woods. "'T were surely sweet

Far from the scene of one's forlorn defeat

To sleep!" judged Naddo, who in person led

Jongleurs and Trouveres, chanting at their head,

A scanty company; for, sooth to say,

Our beaten Troubadour had seen his day.

Old worshippers were something shamed, old friends

Nigh weary; still the death proposed amends.

"Let us but get them safely through my song

And home again!" quoth Naddo.

All along,

This man (they rest the bier upon the sand)

—This calm corpse with the loose flowers in his hand,

Eglamor, lived Sordello's opposite.

For him indeed was Naddo's notion right,

And verse a temple-worship vague and vast,

A ceremony that withdrew the last

Opposing bolt, looped back the lingering veil

Which hid the holy place: should one so frail

Stand there without such effort? or repine

If much was blank, uncertain at the shrine

He knelt before, till, soothed by many a rite,

The power responded, and some sound or sight

Grew up, his own forever, to be fixed,

In rhyme, the beautiful, forever!—mixed

With his own life, unloosed when he should please,

One who belonged to what he loved,

Having it safe at hand, ready to ease

All pain, remove all trouble; every time

He loosed that fancy from its bonds of rhyme,

(Like Perseus when he loosed his naked love)

Faltering; so distinct and far above

Himself, these fancies! He, no genius rare,

Transfiguring in fire or wave or air

At will, but a poor gnome that, cloistered up

In some rock-chamber with his agate cup,

His topaz rod, his seed-pearl, in these few

And their arrangement finds enough to do

For his best art. Then, how he loved that art!

The calling marking him a man apart

From men—one not to care, take counsel for

Cold hearts, comfortless faces—(Eglamor

Was neediest of his tribe)—since verse, the gift,

Was his, and men, the whole of them, must shift

Without it, e'en content themselves with wealth

And pomp and power, snatching a life by stealth.

So, Eglamor was not without his pride!

Loving his art and rewarded by it,

The sorriest bat which cowers throughout noontide

While other birds are jocund, has one time

When moon and stars are blinded, and the prime

Of earth is his to claim, nor find a peer;

And Eglamor was noblest poet here—

He well knew, 'mid those April woods, he cast

Conceits upon in plenty as he passed,

That Naddo might suppose him not to think

Entirely on the coming triumph: wink

At the one weakness! 'Twas a fervid child,

That song of his; no brother of the guild

Had e'er conceived its like. The rest you know,

The exaltation and the overthrow:

Our poet lost his purpose, lost his rank,

His life—to that it came. Yet envy sank

Within him, as he heard Sordello out,

And, for the first time, shouted—tried to shout

Like others, not from any zeal to show

Pleasure that way: the common sort did so.

What else was Eglamor? who, bending down

As they, placed his beneath Sordello's crown,

Printed a kiss on his successor's hand,

Left one great tear on it, then joined his band

—In time; for some were watching at the door:

Who knows what envy may effect? "Give o'er,

Nor charm his lips, nor craze him!" (here one spied

And disengaged the withered crown)—"Beside

His crown? How prompt and clear those verses rang

To answer yours! nay, sing them!" And he sang

Them calmly. Home he went; friends used to wait

His coming, zealous to congratulate;

But, to a man,—so quickly runs report,—

Could do no less than leave him, and escort

His rival. That eve, then, bred many a thought:

What must his future life be? was he brought

So low, who stood so lofty this Spring morn?

At length he said, "Best sleep now with my scorn,

And by to-morrow I devise some plain

Expedient!" So, he slept, nor woke again.

Ending with what had possessed him.

They found as much, those friends, when they returned

O'erflowing with the marvels they had learned

About Sordello's paradise, his roves

Among the hills and vales and plains and groves,

Wherein, no doubt, this lay was roughly cast,

Polished by slow degrees, completed last

To Eglamor's discomfiture and death.

Such form the chanters now, and, out of breath,

They lay the beaten man in his abode,

Naddo reciting that same luckless ode,

Doleful to hear. Sordello could explore

By means of it, however, one step more

In joy; and, mastering the round at length,

Learnt how to live in weakness as in strength,

When from his covert forth he stood, addressed

Eglamor, bade the tender ferns invest,

Primæval pines o'ercanopy his couch,

And, most of all, his fame—(shall I avouch

Eglamor heard it, dead though he might look,

And laughed as from his brow Sordello took

The crown, and laid on the bard's breast, and said

It was a crown, now, fit for poet's head?)

—Continue. Nor the prayer quite fruitless fell,

A plant they have, yielding a three-leaved bell

Which whitens at the heart ere noon, and ails

Till evening; evening gives it to her gales

To clear away with such forgotten things

As are an eyesore to the morn: this brings

Him to their mind, and hears his very name.

Eglamor done with, Sordello begins.

So much for Eglamor. My own month came;

'Twas a sunrise of blossoming and May.

Beneath a flowering laurel thicket lay

Sordello; each new sprinkle of white stars

That smell fainter of wine than Massic jars

Dug up at Baiæ, when the south wind shed

The ripest, made him happier; filleted

And robed the same, only a lute beside

Lay on the turf. Before him far and wide

The country stretched: Goito slept behind

—The castle and its covert, which confined

Him with his hopes and fears; so fain of old

To leave the story of his birth untold.

At intervals, 'spite the fantastic glow

Of his Apollo-life, a certain low

And wretched whisper, winding through the bliss,

Admonished, no such fortune could be his,

All was quite false and sure to fade one day:

The closelier drew he round him his array

Of brilliance to expel the truth. But when

A reason for his difference from men

Surprised him at the grave, he took no rest

While aught of that old life, superbly dressed

Down to its meanest incident, remained

A mystery: alas, they soon explained

Away Apollo! and the tale amounts

To this: when at Vicenza both her counts

Who he really was, and why at Goito.

Banished the Vivaresi kith and kin,

Those Maltraversi hung on Ecelin,

Reviled him as he followed; he for spite

Must fire their quarter, though that self-same night

Among the flames young Ecelin was born

Of Adelaide, there too, and barely torn

From the roused populace hard on the rear,

By a poor archer when his chieftain's fear

Grew high; into the thick Elcorte leapt,

Saved her, and died; no creature left except

His child to thank. And when the full escape

Was known—how men impaled from chine to nape

Unlucky Prata, all to pieces spurned

Bishop Pistore's concubines, and burned

Taurello's entire household, flesh and fell,

Missing the sweeter prey—such courage well

Might claim reward. The orphan, ever since,

Sordello, had been nurtured by his prince

Within a blind retreat where Adelaide—

(For, once this notable discovery made,

The past at every point was understood)

—Might harbor easily when times were rude,

When Azzo schemed for Palma, to retrieve

That pledge of Agnes Este—loth to leave

Mantua unguarded with a vigilant eye,

While there Taurello bode ambiguously—

He who could have no motive now to moil

For his own fortunes since their utter spoil—

As it were worth while yet (went the report)

To disengage himself from her. In short,

Apollo vanished; a mean youth, just named

His lady's minstrel, was to be proclaimed

—How shall I phrase it?—Monarch of the World!

He, so little, would fain be so much:

For, on the day when that array was furled

Forever, and in place of one a slave

To longings, wild indeed, but longings save

In dreams as wild, suppressed—one daring not

Assume the mastery such dreams allot,

Until a magical equipment, strength,

Grace, wisdom, decked him too,—he chose at length,

Content with unproved wits and failing frame,

In virtue of his simple will, to claim

That mastery, no less—to do his best

With means so limited, and let the rest

Go by,—the seal was set: never again

Sordello could in his own sight remain

Leaves the dream he may be something,

One of the many, one with hopes and cares

And interests nowise distinct from theirs,

Only peculiar in a thriveless store

Of fancies, which were fancies and no more;

Never again for him and for the crowd

A common law was challenged and allowed

If calmly reasoned of, howe'er denied

By a mad impulse nothing justified

Short of Apollo's presence. The divorce

Is clear: why needs Sordello square his course

By any known example? Men no more

Compete with him than tree and flower before.

Himself, inactive, yet is greater far

Than such as act, each stooping to his star,

Acquiring thence his function; he has gained

The same result with meaner mortals trained

To strength or beauty, moulded to express

Each the idea that rules him; since no less

He comprehends that function, but can still

Embrace the others, take of might his fill

With Richard as of grace with Palma, mix

Their qualities, or for a moment fix

On one; abiding free meantime, uncramped

By any partial organ, never stamped

Strong, and to strength turning all energies—

Wise, and restricted to becoming wise—

That is, he loves not, nor possesses One

Idea that, star-like over, lures him on

To its exclusive purpose. "Fortunate!

This flesh of mine ne'er strove to emulate

A soul so various—took no casual mould

Of the first fancy and, contracted, cold,

Clogged her forever—soul averse to change

As flesh: whereas flesh leaves soul free to range,

Remains itself a blank, east into shade,

Encumbers little, if it cannot aid.

For the fact that he can do nothing,

So, range, free soul!—who, by self-consciousness,

The last drop of all beauty dost express—

The grace of seeing grace, a quintessence

For thee: while for the world, that can dispense

Wonder on men who, themselves, wonder—make

A shift to love at second-hand, and take

For idols those who do but idolize,

Themselves,—the world that counts men strong or wise,

Who, themselves, court strength, wisdom,—it shall bow

Surely in unexampled worship now,

Discerning me!"—

(Dear monarch, I beseech,

Notice how lamentably wide a breach

Is here: discovering this, discover too

What our poor world has possibly to do

With it! As pigmy natures as you please—

So much the better for you; take your ease,

Look on, and laugh; style yourself God alone;

Strangle some day with a cross olive-stone!

All that is right enough: but why want us

To know that you yourself know thus and thus?)

"The world shall bow to me conceiving all

Man's life, who see its blisses, great and small,

Afar—not tasting any; no machine

To exercise my utmost will is mine:

Be mine mere consciousness! Let men perceive

What I could do, a mastery believe,

Asserted and established to the throng

By their selected evidence of song

Which now shall prove, whate'er they are, or seek

To be, I am—whose words, not actions speak,

Who change no standards of perfection, vex

With no strange forms created to perplex,

But just perform their bidding and no more,

At their own satiating-point give o'er,

While each shall love in me the love that leads

His soul to power's perfection." Song, not deeds,

(For we get tired) was chosen. Fate would brook

Mankind no other organ; he would look

For not another channel to dispense

His own volition by, receive men's sense

Of its supremacy—would live content,

Obstructed else, with merely verse for vent.

Yet is able to imagine everything,

Nor should, for instance, strength an outlet seek

And, striving, be admired; nor grace bespeak

Wonder, displayed in gracious attitudes;

Nor wisdom, poured forth, change unseemly moods:

But he would give and take on song's one point.

Like some huge throbbing stone that, poised a-joint,

Sounds, to affect on its basaltic bed,

Must sue in just one accent; tempests shed

Thunder, and raves the windstorm: only let

That key by any little noise be set—

The far benighted hunter's halloo pitch

On that, the hungry curlew chance to scritch

Or serpent hiss it, rustling through the rift,

However loud, however low—all lift

The groaning monster, stricken to the heart.

Lo ye, the world's concernment, for its part,

If the world esteem this equivalent.

And this, for his, will hardly interfere!

Its businesses in blood and blaze this year

But while the hour away—a pastime slight

Till he shall step upon the platform: right!

And, now thus much is settled, cast in rough,

Proved feasible, be counselled! thought enough,—

Slumber, Sordello! any day will serve:

Were it a less digested plan! how swerve

To-morrow? Meanwhile eat these sun-dried grapes,

And watch the soaring hawk there! Life escapes

Merrily thus.

He thoroughly read o'er

His truchman Naddo's missive six times more,

Praying him visit Mantua and supply

A famished world.

The evening star was high

When he reached Mantua, but his fame arrived

Before him: friends applauded, foes connived,

And Naddo looked an angel, and the rest

Angels, and all these angels would he blest

Supremely by a song—the thrice-renowned

Goito-manufacture. Then he found

(Casting about to satisfy the crowd)

He has loved song's results, not song;

That happy vehicle, so late allowed,

A sore annoyance; 't was the song's effect

He cared for, scarce the song itself: reflect!

In the past life, what might be singing's use?

Just to delight his Delians, whose profuse

Praise, not the toilsome process which procured

That praise, enticed Apollo: dreams abjured,

No overleaping means for ends—take both

For granted or take neither! I am loth

To say the rhymes at last were Eglamor's;

But Naddo, chuckling, bade competitors

Go pine; "the master certes meant to waste

No effort, cautiously had probed the taste

He 'd please anon: true bard, in short, disturb

His title if they could; nor spur nor curb,

Fancy nor reason, wanting in him; whence

The staple of his verses, common sense:

He built on man's broad nature—gift of gifts,

That power to build! The world contented shifts

With counterfeits enough, a dreary sort

Of warriors, statesmen, ere it can extort

Its poet-soul—that 's, after all, a freak

(The having eyes to see and tongue to speak)

With our herd's stupid sterling happiness

So plainly incompatible that—yes—

Yes—should a son of his improve the breed

And turn out poet, he were cursed indeed!"

"Well, there 's Goito and its woods anon,

If the worst happen; best go stoutly on

Now!" thought Sordello.

So, must effect this to obtain those.

Ay, and goes on yet!

You pother with your glossaries to get

A notion of the Troubadour's intent

In rondel, tenzon, virlai, or sirvent—

Much as you study arras how to twirl

His angelot, plaything of page and girl

Once; but you surely reach, at last,—or, no!

Never quite reach what struck the people so,

As from the welter of their time he drew

Its elements successively to view,

Followed all actions backward on their course,

And catching up, unmingled at the source,

Such a strength, such a weakness, added then

A touch or two, and turned them into men.

Virtue took form, nor vice refused a shape;

Here heaven opened, there was hell agape,

As Saint this simpered past in sanctity,

Sinner the other flared portentous by

A greedy people. Then why stop, surprised

At his success? The scheme was realized

Too suddenly in one respect: a crowd

Praising, eyes quick to see, and lips as loud

To speak, delicious homage to receive,

The woman's breath to feel upon his sleeve,

Who said, "But Anafest—why asks he less

Than Lucio, in your verses? how confess,

It seemed too much but yestereve!"—the youth,

Who bade him earnestly, "Avow the truth!

You love Bianca, surely, from your song;

I knew I was unworthy!"—soft or strong,

In poured such tributes ere he had arranged

Ethereal ways to take them, sorted, changed,

Digested. Courted thus at unawares,

In spite of his pretensions and his cares,

He caught himself shamefully hankering

After the obvious petty joys that spring

From true life, fain relinquish pedestal

He succeeds a little, but fails more;

And condescend with pleasures—one and all

To be renounced, no doubt; for, thus to chain

Himself to single joys and so refrain

From tasting their quintessence, frustrates, sure,

His prime design; each joy must he abjure

Even for love of it.

He laughed: what sage

But perishes if from his magic page

He look because, at the first line, a proof

'T was heard salutes him from the cavern roof?

"On! Give yourself, excluding aught beside,

To the day's task; compel your slave provide

Its utmost at the soonest; turn the leaf

Thoroughly conned. These lays of yours, in brief—

Cannot men hear, now, something better?—fly

A pitch beyond this unreal pageantry

Of essences? the period sure has ceased

For such: present us with ourselves, at least,

Not portions of ourselves, mere loves and hates

Made flesh: wait not!"

Tries again, is no better satisfied,

Awhile the poet waits

However. The first trial was enough:

He left imagining, to try the stuff

That held the imaged thing, and, let it writhe

Never so fiercely, scarce allowed a tithe

To reach the light—his Language. How he sought

The cause, conceived a cure, and slow re-wrought

That Language,—welding words into the crude

Mass from the new speech round him, till a rude

Armor was hammered out, in time to be

Approved beyond the Roman panoply

Melted to make it,—boots not. This obtained

With some ado, no obstacle remained

To using it; accordingly he took

An action with its actors, quite forsook

Himself to live in each, returned anon

With the result—a creature, and, by one

And one, proceeded leisurely to equip

Its limbs in harness of his workmanship.

"Accomplished! Listen, Mantuans!" Fond essay!

Piece after piece that armor broke away,

Because perceptions whole, like that he sought

To clothe, reject so pure a work of thought

As language: thought may take perception's place

But hardly co-exist in any case,

Being its mere presentment—of the whole

By parts, the simultaneous and the sole

By the successive and the many. Lacks

The crowd perception? painfully it tacks

Thought to thought, which Sordello, needing such,

Has rent perception into: it 's to clutch

And reconstruct—his office to diffuse,

Destroy: as hard, then, to obtain a Muse

As to become Apollo. "For the rest,

E'en if some wondrous vehicle expressed

The whole dream, what impertinence in me

So to express it, who myself can be

The dream! nor, on the other hand, are those

I sing to, over-likely to suppose

And declines from the ideal of song.

A higher than the highest I present

Now, which they praise already: be content

Both parties, rather—they with the old verse,

And I with the old praise—far go, fare worse!"

A few adhering rivets loosed, upsprings

The angel, sparkles off his mail, which rings

Whirled from each delicatest limb it warps,

So might Apollo from the sudden corpse

Of Hyacinth have cast his luckless quoits.

He set to celebrating the exploits

Of Montfort o'er the Mountaineers.

Then came

The world's revenge: their pleasure, now his aim

Merely,—what was it? "Not to play the fool

So much as learn our lesson in your school!"

Replied the world. He found that, every time

He gained applause by any ballad-rhyme,

His auditory recognized no jot

As he intended, and, mistaking not

Him for his meanest hero, ne'er was dunce

Sufficient to believe him—all, at once.

His will ... conceive it caring for his will!

—Mantuans, the main of them, admiring still

How a mere singer, ugly, stunted, weak,

Had Montfort at completely (so to speak)

His fingers' ends; while past the praise-tide swept

To Montfort, either's share distinctly kept:

The true meed for true merit!—his abates

What is the world's recognition worth?

Into a sort he most repudiates,

And on them angrily he turns. Who were

The Mantuans, after all, that he should care

About their recognition, ay or no?

In spite of the convention months ago,

(Why blink the truth?) was not he forced to help

This same ungrateful audience, every whelp

Of Naddo's litter, make them pass for peers

With the bright band of old Goito years,

As erst he toiled for flower or tree? Why, there

Sat Palma! Adelaide's funereal hair

Ennobled the next corner. Ay, he strewed

A fairy dust upon that multitude,

Although he feigned to take them by themselves;

His giants dignified those puny elves,

Sublime their faint applause. In short, he found

Himself still footing a delusive round,

Remote as ever from the self-display

He meant to compass, hampered every way

By what he hoped assistance. Wherefore then

Continue, make believe to find in men

A use he found not?

Weeks, months, years went by,

And lo, Sordello vanished utterly,

Sundered in twain; each spectral part at strife

With each; one jarred against another life;

How, poet no longer in unity with man,

The Poet thwarting hopelessly the Man,

Who, fooled no longer, free in fancy ran

Here, there,—let slip no opportunities

As pitiful, forsooth, beside the prize

To drop on him some no-time and acquit

His constant faith (the Poet-half's to wit—

That waiving any compromise between

No joy and all joy kept the hunger keen

Beyond most methods)—of incurring scoff

From the Man-portion—not to be put off

With self-reflectings by the Poet's scheme,

Though ne'er so bright. Who sauntered forth in dream,

Dressed anyhow, nor waited mystic frames,

Immeasurable gifts, astounding claims,

But just his sorry self?—who yet might be

Sorrier for aught he in reality

Achieved, so pinioned Man 's the Poet-part,

Fondling, in turn of fancy, verse; the Art

Developing his soul a thousand ways—

Potent, by its assistance, to amaze

The multitude with majesties, convince

Each sort of nature, that the nature's prince

Accosted it. Language, the makeshift, grew

Into a bravest of expedients, too;

Apollo, seemed it now, perverse had thrown

Quiver and bow away, the lyre alone

Sufficed. While, out of dream, his day's work went

To tune a crazy tenzon or sirvent—

So hampered him the Man-part, thrust to judge

Between the bard and the bard's audience, grudge

A minute's toil that missed its due reward!

But the complete Sordello, Man and Bard,

The whole visible Sordello goes wrong

John's cloud-girt angel, this foot on the land,

That on the sea, with, open in his hand,

A bitter-sweetling of a book—was gone.

Then, if internal straggles to be one

Which frittered him incessantly piecemeal,

Referred, ne'er so obliquely, to the real

Intruding Mantuans! ever with some call

To action while he pondered, once for all,

Which looked the easier effort—to pursue

This course, still leap o'er paltry joys, yearn through

The present ill-appreciated stage

Of self-revealment, and compel the age

Know him; or else, forswearing bard-craft, wake

From out his lethargy and nobly shake

Off timid habits of denial, mix

With men, enjoy like men. Ere he could fix

On aught, in rushed the Mantuans; much they cared

For his perplexity! Thus unprepared,

The obvious if not only shelter lay

With those too hard for half of him,

In deeds, the dull conventions of his day

Prescribed the like of him: why not be glad

'T is settled Palma's minstrel, good or bad,

Submits to this and that established rule?

Let Vidal change, or any other fool,

His murrey-colored robe for filamot,

And crop his hair; too skin-deep, is it not,

Such vigor? Then, a sorrow to the heart,

His talk! Whatever topics they might start

Had to be groped for in his consciousness

Straight, and as straight delivered them by guess.

Only obliged to ask himself, "What was,"

A speedy answer followed; but, alas,

One of God's large ones, tardy to condense

Itself into a period; answers whence

A tangle of conclusions must be stripped

At any risk ere, trim to pattern clipped,

They matched rare specimens the Mantuan flock

Regaled him with, each talker from his stock

Of sorted-o'er opinions, every stage,

Juicy in youth or desiccate with age,

Fruits like the fig-tree's, rathe-ripe, rotten-rich,

Sweet-sour, all tastes to take: a practice which

He too had not impossibly attained,

Once either of those fancy-flights restrained;

(For, at conjecture how might words appear

To others, playing there what happened here,

And occupied abroad by what he spurned

At home, 't was slipped, the occasion he returned

To seize:) he 'd strike that lyre adroitly—speech,

Would but a twenty-cubit plectre reach;

A clever hand, consummate instrument,

Were both brought close; each excellency went

For nothing, else. The question Naddo asked,

Had just a lifetime moderately tasked

To answer, Naddo's fashion. More disgust

Of whom he is also too contemptuous.

And more: why move his soul, since move it must

At minute's notice or as good it failed

To move at all? The end was, he retailed

Some ready-made opinion, put to use

This quip, that maxim, ventured reproduce

Gestures and tones—at any folly caught

Serving to finish with, nor too much sought

If false or true 't was spoken; praise and blame

Of what he said grew pretty nigh the same

—Meantime awards to meantime acts: his soul,

Unequal to the compassing a whole,

Saw, in a tenth part, less and less to strive

About. And as for men in turn ... contrive

Who could to take eternal interest

In them, so hate the worst, so love the best!

Though, in pursuance of his passive plan,

He hailed, decried, the proper way.

As Man

So figured he; and how as Poet? Verse

Came only not to a stand-still. The worse,

That his poor piece of daily work to do

Was, not sink under any rivals; who

He pleases neither himself nor them:

Loudly and long enough, without these qualms,

Turned, from Bocafoli's stark-naked psalms,

To Plara's sonnets spoilt by toying with,

"As knops that stud some almug to the pith

Prickèd for gum, wry thence, and crinklèd worse

Than pursèd eyelids of a river-horse

Sunning himself o' the slime when whirrs the breeze"—

Gad-fly, that is. He might compete with these!

But—but—

"Observe a pompion-twine afloat;

Pluck me one cup from off the castle-moat!

Which the best judges account for.

Along with cup you raise leaf, stalk and root,

The entire surface of the pool to boot.

So could I pluck a cup, put in one song

A single sight, did not my hand, too strong,

Twitch in the least the root-strings of the whole.

How should externals satisfy my soul?"

"Why that 's precise the error Squarcialupe"

(Hazarded Naddo) "finds; 'the man can't stoop

To sing us out,' quoth he, 'a mere romance;

He 'd fain do better than the best, enhance

The subjects' rarity, work problems out

Therewith.' Now, you 're a bard, a bard past doubt,

And no philosopher; why introduce

Crotchets like these? fine, surely, but no use

In poetry—which still must be, to strike,

Based upon common sense; there 's nothing like

Appealing to our nature! what beside

Was your first poetry? No tricks were tried

In that, no hollow thrills, affected throes!

'The man,' said we, 'tells his own joys and woes:

We 'll trust him.' Would you have your songs endure?

Build on the human heart!—why, to be sure

Yours is one sort of heart—but I mean theirs,

Ours, every one's, the healthy heart one cares

To build on! Central peace, mother of strength,

That 's father of ... nay, go yourself that length,

Ask those calm-hearted doers what they do

When they have got their calm! And is it true,

Fire rankles at the heart of every globe?

Perhaps. But these are matters one may probe

Too deeply for poetic purposes:

Rather select a theory that ... yes,

Laugh! what does that prove?—stations you midway

And saves some little o'er-refining. Nay,

That 's rank injustice done me! I restrict

The poet? Don't I hold the poet picked

Out of a host of warriors, statesmen ... did

I tell you? Very like! As well you hid

That sense of power, you have! True bards believe

All able to achieve what they achieve—

That is, just nothing—in one point abide

Profounder simpletons than all beside.

Oh, ay! The knowledge that you are a bard

Must constitute your prime, nay sole, reward!"

So prattled Naddo, busiest of the tribe

Of genius-haunters—how shall I describe

What grubs or nips or rubs or rips—your louse

For love, your flea for hate, magnanimous,

Their criticisms give small comfort:

Malignant, Pappacoda, Tagliafer,

Picking a sustenance from wear and tear

By implements it sedulous employs

To undertake, lay down, mete out, o'er-toise

Sordello? Fifty creepers to elude

At once! They settled stanchly: shame ensued:

Behold the monarch of mankind succumb

To the last fool who turned him round his thumb,

As Naddo styled it! 'T was not worth oppose

The matter of a moment, gainsay those

He aimed at getting rid of; better think

Their thoughts and speak their speech, secure to slink

Back expeditiously to his safe place,

And chew the cud—what he and what his race

Were really, each of them. Yet even this

Conformity was partial. He would miss

Some point, brought into contact with them ere

Assured in what small segment of the sphere

Of his existence they attended him;

Whence blunders, falsehoods rectified—a grim

List—slur it over! How? If dreams were tried,

His will swayed sicklily from side to side,

Nor merely neutralized his waking act

But tended e'en in fancy to distract

The intermediate will, the choice of means.

He lost the art of dreaming: Mantuan scenes

Supplied a baron, say, he sang before,

Handsomely reckless, full to running o'er

Of gallantries; "abjure the soul, content

With body, therefore!" Scarcely had he bent

Himself in dream thus low, when matter fast

Cried out, he found, for spirit to contrast

And task it duly; by advances slight,

The simple stuff becoming composite,

Count Lori grew Apollo—best recall

His fancy! Then would some rough peasant-Paul,

Like those old Ecelin confers with, glance

His gay apparel o'er; that countenance

Gathered his shattered fancies into one,

And, body clean abolished, soul alone

Sufficed the gray Paulieian: by and by,

And his own degradation is complete.

To balance the ethereality,

Passions were needed; foiled he sank again.

Meanwhile the world rejoiced ('t is time explain)

Because a sudden sickness set it free

From Adelaide. Missing the mother-bee,

Her mountain-hive Romano swarmed; at once

A rustle-forth of daughters and of sons

Blackened the valley. "I am sick too, old,

Half-crazed I think; what good 's the Kaiser's gold

To such an one? God help me! for I catch

My children's greedy sparkling eyes at watch—

'He bears that double breastplate on,' they say,

'So many minutes less than yesterday!'

Beside, Monk Hilary is on his knees

Now, sworn to kneel and pray till God shall please

Exact a punishment for many things

You know, and some you never knew; which brings

To memory, Azzo's sister Beatrix

And Richard's Giglia are my Alberic's

And Ecelin's betrothed; the Count himself

Must get my Palma: Ghibellin and Guelf

Mean to embrace each other." So began

Adelaide's death: what happens on it:

Romano's missive to his fighting man

Taurello—on the Tuscan's death, away

With Friedrich sworn to sail from Naples' bay

Next month for Syria. Never thunder-clap

Out of Vesuvius' throat, like this mishap

Startled him. "That accursed Vicenza! I

Absent, and she selects this time to die!

Ho, fellows, for Vicenza!" Half a score

Of horses ridden dead, he stood before

Romano in his reeking spurs: too late—

"Boniface urged me, Este could not wait,"

The chieftain stammered; "let me die in peace—

Forget me! Was it I who craved increase

Of rule? Do you and Friedrich plot your worst

Against the Father: as you found me first

So leave me now. Forgive me! Palma, sure,

Is at Goito still. Retain that lure—

Only be pacified!"

The country rung

With such a piece of news: on every tongue,

How Ecelin's great servant, congeed off,

Had done a long day's service, so, might doff

The green and yellow, and recover breath

At Mantua, whither,—since Retrude's death,

(The girlish slip of a Sicilian bride

From Otho's house, he carried to reside

At Mantua till the Ferrarese should pile

A structure worthy her imperial style,

The gardens raise, the statues there enshrine,

She never lived to see)—although his line

Was ancient in her archives and she took

A pride in him, that city, nor forsook

Her child when he forsook himself and spent

A prowess on Romano surely meant

For his own growth—whither he ne'er resorts

If wholly satisfied (to trust reports)

With Ecelin. So, forward in a trice

Were shows to greet him. "Take a friend's advice,"

Quoth Naddo to Sordello, "nor be rash

Because your rivals (nothing can abash

Some folks) demur that we pronounced you best

To sound the great man's welcome; 't is a test,

Remember! Strojavacca looks asquint,

The rough fat sloven; and there 's plenty hint

Your pinions have received of late a shock—

Outsoar them, cobswan of the silver flock!

And a trouble it occasions Sordello.

Sing well!" A signal wonder, song 's no whit

Facilitated.

Fast the minutes flit;

Another day, Sordello finds, will bring

The soldier, and he cannot choose but sing;

So, a last shift, quits Mantua—slow, alone:

Out of that aching brain, a very stone,

Song must be struck. What occupies that front?

Just how he was more awkward than his wont

The night before, when Naddo, who had seen

Taurello on his progress, praised the mien

For dignity no crosses could affect—

Such was a joy, and might not he detect

A satisfaction if established joys

Were proved imposture? Poetry annoys

Its utmost: wherefore fret? Verses may come

Or keep away! And thus he wandered, dumb

Till evening, when he paused, thoroughly spent,

On a blind hill-top: down the gorge he went,

Yielding himself up as to an embrace.

The moon came out; like features of a face,

A querulous fraternity of pines,

Sad blackthorn clumps, leafless and grovelling vines

Also came out, made gradually up

The picture; 't was Goito's mountain-cup

And castle. He had dropped through one defile

He never dared explore, the Chief erewhile

He chances upon his old environment,

Had vanished by. Back rushed the dream, enwrapped

Him wholly. 'T was Apollo now they lapped,

Those mountains, not a pettish minstrel meant

To wear his soul away in discontent,

Brooding on fortune's malice. Heart and brain

Swelled; he expanded to himself again,

As some thin seedling spice-tree starved and frail,

Pushing between cat's head and ibis' tail

Crusted into the porphyry pavement smooth,

—Suffered remain just as it sprung, to soothe

The Soldan's pining daughter, never yet

Well in her chilly green-glazed minaret,—

When rooted up, the sunny day she died,

And flung into the common court beside

Its parent tree. Come home, Sordello! Soon

Was he low muttering, beneath the moon,

Of sorrow saved, of quiet evermore,—

Since from the purpose, he maintained before,

Only resulted wailing and hot tears.

Sees but failure in all done since,

Ah, the slim castle! dwindled of late years,

But more mysterious; gone to ruin—trails

Of vine through every loop-hole. Naught avails

The night as, torch in hand, he must explore

The maple chamber: did I say, its floor

Was made of intersecting cedar beams?

Worn now with gaps so large, there blew cold streams

Of air quite from the dungeon; lay your ear

Close and 't is like, one after one, you hear

In the blind darkness water drop. The nests

And nooks retain their long ranged vesture-chests

Empty and smelling of the iris root

The Tuscan grated o'er them to recruit

Her wasted wits. Palma was gone that day,

Said the remaining women. Last, he lay

Beside the Carian group reserved and still.

The Body, the Machine for Acting Will,

Had been at the commencement proved unfit;

That for Demonstrating, Reflecting it,

Mankind—no fitter: was the Will Itself

In fault?

His forehead pressed the moonlit shelf

Beside the youngest marble maid awhile;

Then, raising it, he thought, with a long smile,

and resolves to desist from the like.

"I shall be king again!" as he withdrew

The envied scarf; into the font he threw

His crown.

Next day, no poet! "Wherefore?" asked

Taurello, when the dance of Jongleurs, masked

As devils, ended; "don't a song come next?"

The master of the pageant looked perplexed

Till Naddo's whisper came to his relief.

"His Highness knew what poets were: in brief,

Had not the tetchy race prescriptive right

To peevishness, caprice? or, call it spite,

One must receive their nature in its length

And breadth, expect the weakness with the strength!"

—So phrasing, till, his stock of phrases spent,

The easy-natured soldier smiled assent,

Settled his portly person, smoothed his chin,

And nodded that the bull-bait might begin.

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