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 4 
 
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SORDELLO. 
 
SOEDELLO. 
 
 BY ROBERT BROWNING. 
 
 LONDON: 
 EDWARD MOXON, DOVER STREET. 
 
 MDCCCXL. 
 
LONDON : 
 
 BRADBURY AND fiVANS, PRINlfiRS, 
 
 WHrXEFRlARS. 
 
SORDELLO. 
 
 BOOK THE FIRST. 
 
 Who will, may hear Sordello's story told : 
 His story ? Who believes me shall behold 
 The man, pursue his fortunes to the end 
 Like me ; for as the friendless people's friend 
 Spied from his hill-top once, despite the din 
 And dust of multitudes, Pentapolin 
 Named o* the Naked Arm, I single out 
 Sordello, compassed murkily about 
 With ravage of six long sad hundred years : 
 Only believe me. Ye believe ? 
 
 Appears 
 Verona . . . Never, I should warn you first, 
 Of my own choice had this, if not the worst 
 
 B 
 
2 SORDELLO. 
 
 Yet not the best expedient, served to tell 
 A story I could body forth so well 
 By making speak, myself kept out of view, 
 The very man as he was wont to do. 
 And leaving you to say the rest for him : 
 Since, though I might be proud to see the dim 
 Abysmal Past divide its hateful surge, 
 Letting of all men this one man emerge 
 Because it pleased me, yet, that moment past, 
 I should delight in watching first to last 
 His progress as you watch it, not a whit 
 More in the secret than yourselves who sit 
 Fresh-chapleted to listen : but it seems 
 Your setters-forth of unexampled themes. 
 Makers of quite new men, producing them 
 Had best chalk broadly on each vesture's hem 
 The wearer s quality, or take his stand 
 Motley on back and pointing-pole in hand 
 Beside them ; so for once I face ye, friends. 
 Summoned together from the world's four ends, 
 Dropped down from Heaven or cast up from Hell, 
 To hear the story I propose to tell. 
 Confess now, poets know the dragnet's trick, 
 Catching the dead if Fate denies the quick 
 
SORDELLO. 3 
 
 And shaming her ; *tis not for Fate to choose 
 Silence or song because she can refuse 
 Real eyes to glisten more, real hearts to ache 
 Less oft, real brows turn smoother for our sake : 
 I have experienced something of her spite ; 
 But there's a realm wherein she has no right 
 And I have many lovers : say but few 
 Friends Fate accords me ? Here they are; now view 
 The host I muster ! Many a lighted face 
 Foul with no vestige of the grave's disgrace ; 
 What else should tempt them back to taste our air 
 Except to see how their successors fare ? 
 My audience : and they sit, each ghostly man 
 Striving to look as living as he can, 
 Brother by breathing brother ; thou art set, 
 Clear-witted critic, by . . . but I'll not fret 
 A wondrous soul of them, nor move Death's spleen 
 Who loves not to unlock them. Friends ! I mean 
 The living in good earnest — ye elect 
 Chiefly for love — suppose not I reject 
 Judicious praise, who contrary shall peep 
 Some fit occasion forth, for fear ye sleep. 
 To glean your bland approvals. Then, appear, 
 Yerona ! stay — thou, spirit, come not near 
 B 2 
 
4 SORDELLO. 
 
 Now — nor this time desert thy cloudy place 
 
 To scare me, thus employed, with that pure face ! 
 
 I need not fear this audience, I make free 
 
 With them, but then this is no place for thee ! 
 
 The thunder-phrase of the Athenian, grown 
 
 Up out of memories of Marathon, 
 
 Would echo like his own sword's griding screech 
 
 Braying a Persian shield, — the silver speech 
 
 Of Sidney's self, the starry paladin, 
 
 Turn intense as a trumpet sounding in 
 
 The knights to tilt — wert thou to hear ! What hear 
 
 Have I to play my puppets, bear my part 
 
 Before these worthies ? 
 
 Lo, the Past is hurled 
 In twain : up thrust, out-staggering on the world. 
 Subsiding into shape, a darkness rears 
 Its outline, kindles at the core, appears 
 Verona. Tis six hundred years and more 
 Since an event. The Second Friedrich wore 
 The purple, and the Third Honorius filled 
 The holy chair. That autumn eve was stilled : 
 A last remains of sunset dimly burned 
 O'er the far forests like a torch-flame turned 
 By the wind back upon its bearer s hand 
 In one long flare of crimson ; as a brand 
 
SORDELLO. 5 
 
 The woods beneath lay black. A single eye 
 From all Yerona cared for the soft sky ; 
 But, gathering in its ancient market-place, 
 Talked group with restless group ; and not a face 
 But wrath made livid, for among them were 
 Death's staunch purveyors, such as have in care 
 To feast him. Fear had long since taken root 
 In every breast, and now these crushed its fruit, 
 The ripe hate, like a wine : to note the way 
 It worked while each grew drunk ! men grave and grey 
 Stood, with shut eyelids, rocking to and fro. 
 Letting the silent luxury trickle slow 
 About the hollows where a heart should be ; 
 But the young gulped with a delirious glee 
 Some foretaste of their first debauch in blood 
 At the fierce news : for, be it understood, 
 Envoys apprised Verona that her prince 
 Count Richard of Saint Boniface, joined since 
 A year with Azzo, Este's Lord, to thrust 
 Taurello Salinguerra, prime in trust 
 With Ecelin Romano, from his seat 
 Ferrara, — over zealous in the feat 
 And stumbling on a peril unaware. 
 Was captive, " trammelled in his proper snare," 
 
5 SORDELLO. 
 
 They phrase it, " taken by his own intrigue :" 
 Immediate succour, from the Lombard League 
 Of fifteen cities that affect the Pope, 
 For Azzo therefore and his fellow — hope 
 Of the Guelf cause, a glory overcast ! 
 Men's faces, late agape, are now aghast : 
 Prone is the purple pavice ; Este makes 
 Mirth for the Devil when he undertakes 
 To play the Ecelin ; as if it cost 
 Merely your pushing-by to gain a post 
 Like his ! The patron tells ye, once for all. 
 There be sound reasons that preferment fall 
 On our beloved . . . 
 
 Duke o' the Rood, why not ? 
 Shouted an Estian, grudge ye such a lot ? 
 The hill-cat boasts some cunning of her own. 
 Some stealthy trick to better beasts unknown 
 That quick with prey enough her hunger blunts 
 And feeds her fat while gaunt the lion hunts. 
 
 Taurello, quoth an envoy, as in wane 
 Dwelt at Ferrara. Like an osprey fain 
 To fly but forced the earth his couch to make 
 Far inland till his friend the tempest wake. 
 Waits he the Kaiser s coming ; and as yet 
 That fast friend sleeps, and he too sleeps ; but let 
 
SORDELLO. 7 
 
 Only the billow freshen, and he snuffs 
 
 The aroused hurricane ere it enroughs 
 
 The sea it means to cross because of him : 
 
 Sinketh the breeze ? His hope-sick eye grows dim ; 
 
 Creep closer on the creature ! Every day 
 
 Strengthens the Pontiff; Ecelin, they say, 
 
 Dozes at Oliero, with dry lips 
 
 Telling upon his perished finger-tips 
 
 How many ancestors are to depose 
 
 Ere he be Satan's Viceroy when the doze 
 
 Deposits him in hell ; so Guelfs rebuilt 
 
 Their houses ; not a drop of blood was spilt 
 
 When Cino Bocchimpane chanced to meet 
 
 Buccio Yirtii ; God's wafer, and the street 
 
 Is narrow ! Tutti Santi, think, a-swarm 
 
 With Ghibellins, and yet he took no harm. 
 
 This could not last. Off Salinguerra went 
 
 To Padua, Podesta, with pure intent. 
 
 Said he, my presence, judged the single bar 
 
 To permanent tranquillity, may jar 
 
 No longer — so ! his back is fairly turned ? 
 
 The pair of goodly palaces are burned, 
 
 The gardens ravaged, and your Guelf is drunk 
 
 A week with joy ; the next, his laughter sunk 
 
8 SORDELLO. 
 
 In sobs of blood, for he found, some strange way, 
 
 Old Salinguerra back again ; I say 
 
 Old Salinguerra in the town once more 
 
 Uprooting, overturning, flame before 
 
 Blood fetlock- high beneath him ; Azzo fled ; 
 
 Who scaped the carnage followed ; then the dead 
 
 Were pushed aside from Salinguerra's throne. 
 
 He ruled once more Ferrara, all alone. 
 
 Till Azzo, stunned awhile, revived, would pounce ; 
 
 Coupled with Boniface, like lynx and ounce. 
 
 On the gorged bird. The burghers ground their teeth 
 
 To see troop after troop encamp beneath 
 
 r the standing corn thick o'er the scanty patch 
 
 It took so many patient months to snatch 
 
 Out of the marsh ; while just within their walls 
 
 Men fed on men. Astute Taurello calls 
 
 A parley : let the Count wind up the war ! 
 
 Richard, light-hearted as a plunging star, 
 
 Agrees to enter for the kindest ends 
 
 Ferrara, flanked with fifty chosen friends, 
 
 No horse-boy more for fear your timid sort 
 
 Should fly Ferrara at the bare report. 
 
 Quietly through the town they rode, jog- jog ; 
 
 Ten, twenty, thirty . . . curse the catalogue 
 
SORDELLO. 9 
 
 Of burnt Guelf houses ! Strange Taurello shows 
 Not the least sign of life — whereat arose 
 A general growl : How ? With his victors by ? 
 I and my Veronese ? My troops and I ? 
 Receive us, was your word ? so jogged they on, 
 Nor laughed their host too openly : once gone 
 Into the trap ... 
 
 Six hundred years ago ! 
 Such the time's aspect and peculiar woe 
 (Yourselves may spell it yet in chronicles, 
 Albeit the worm, our busy brother, drills 
 His sprawling path through letters anciently 
 Made fine and large to suit some abbot's eye) 
 When the new HohenstaufFen dropped the mask, 
 Flung John of Brienne's favor from his casque, 
 Forswore crusading, had no mind to leave 
 Saint Peter s proxy leisure to retrieve 
 Losses to Otho and to Barbaross, 
 Or make the Alps less easy to recross ; 
 And thus confirming Pope Honorius' fear, 
 Was excommunicate that very year. 
 The triple-bearded Teuton come to life ! 
 Groaned the Great League; and, arming for the strife. 
 Wide Lombardy, on tiptoe to begin, 
 Took up, as it was Guelf or Ghibellin, 
 
10 SORDELLO, 
 
 Its cry; what cry ? 
 
 The Emperor to come ! 
 His crowd of feudatories, all and some 
 That leapt down with a crash of swords, spears, shields, 
 One fighter on his fellow, to our fields. 
 Scattered anon, took station here and there, 
 And carried it, till now, with little care — 
 Cannot but cry for him ; how else rebut 
 Us longer ? Cliffs an earthquake suffered jut 
 In the mid-sea, each domineering crest 
 Nothing save such another throe can wrest 
 From out (conceive) a certain chokeweed grown 
 Since o'er the waters, twine and tangle thrown 
 Too thick, too fast accumulating round, 
 Too sure to over-riot and confound 
 Ere long each brilliant islet with itself 
 Unless a second shock save shoal and shelf, 
 Whirling the sea-drift wide : alas, the bruised 
 And sullen wreck ! Sunlight to be diffused 
 For that ! Sunlight, 'neatli which, a scum at first. 
 The million fibres of our chokeweed nurst 
 Dispread themselves, mantling the troubled main. 
 And, shattered by those rocks, took hold again 
 So kindly blazed it — that same blaze to brood 
 O'er every cluster of the multitude 
 
SORDELLO. 11 
 
 Still hazarding new clasps, ties, filaments, 
 An emulous exchange of pulses, vents 
 Of nature into nature ; till some growth 
 Unfancied yet exuberantly clothe 
 A surface solid now, continuous, one : 
 The Pope, for us the People, who begun 
 The People, carries on the People thus. 
 To keep that Kaiser o£f and dwell with us ! 
 See you ? 
 
 Or say. Two Principles that live 
 Each fitly by its Representative : 
 Hill-cat . . . who called him so, our gracefidlest 
 Adventurer ? the ambiguous stranger-guest 
 Of Lombardy (sleek but that ruffling fur. 
 Those talons to their sheath !) whose velvet purr 
 Soothes jealous neighbours when a Saxon scout 
 . . . Arpo or Yoland, is it ? one without 
 A country or a name, presumes to couch 
 Beside their noblest ; until men avouch 
 That of all Houses in the Trivisan 
 Conrad descries no fitter, rear or van. 
 Than Ecelo ! They laughed as they enrolled 
 That name at Milan on the page of gold 
 For Godego, Ramon, Marostica, 
 Cartiglion, Bassano, Loria, 
 
12 SORDELLO. 
 
 And every sheep-cote on the Suabian s fief ! 
 
 No laughter when his son, the Lombard Chief 
 
 Forsooth, as Barbarossa's path was bent 
 
 To Italy along the Yale of Trent, 
 
 Welcomed him at Roncaglia ! Sadness now — 
 
 The hamlets nested on the Tyrol's brow. 
 
 The Asolan and Euganean hills, 
 
 The Rhetian and the Julian, sadness fills 
 
 Them all that Ecelin vouchsafes to stay 
 
 Among and care about them ; day by day 
 
 Choosing this pinnacle, the other spot, 
 
 A castle building to defend a cot, 
 
 A cot built for a castle to defend. 
 
 Nothing but castles, castles, nor an end 
 
 To boasts how mountain ridge may join with ridge 
 
 By sunken gallery and soaring bridge — 
 
 He takes, in brief, a figure that beseems 
 
 The griesliest nightmare of the Church's dreams, 
 
 A Signory firm-rooted, unestranged 
 
 From its old interests, and nowise changed 
 
 By its new neighbourhood ; perchance the vaunt 
 
 Of Otho, " my own Este shall supplant 
 
 Your Este,'* come to pass. The sire led in 
 
 A son as cruel ; and this Ecelin 
 
BORDELLO. 13 
 
 Had sons, in turn, and daughters sly and tall. 
 
 And curling and compliant ; but for all 
 
 Romano (so they style him) thrives, that neck 
 
 Of his so pinched and white, that hungry cheek 
 
 Prove 'tis some fiend, not him, men s flesh is meant 
 
 To feed : whereas Romano's instrument. 
 
 Famous Taurello Salinguerra, sole 
 
 I* the world, a tree whose boughs are slipt the bole 
 
 Successively, why shall not he shed blood 
 
 To further a design ? Men understood 
 
 Living was pleasant to him as he wore 
 
 His careless surcoat, glanced some missive o'er, 
 
 Propped on his truncheon in the public way. 
 
 Ecelin lifts two writhen hands to pray 
 
 At Oliero's convent now : so, place 
 
 For Azzo, Lion of the . . . why disgrace 
 
 A worthiness conspicuous near and far 
 
 (Atii at Rome while free and consular, 
 
 Este at Padua to repulse the Hun) 
 
 By trumpeting the Church's princely son 
 
 Styled Patron of Rovigo's Polesine, 
 
 Ancona's March, Ferrara's . . . ask, in fine. 
 
 Your chronicles, commenced when some old monk 
 
 Found it intolerable to be sunk 
 
14 SORDELLO. 
 
 (Vexed to the quick by his revolting cell) 
 Quite out of summer while alive and well : 
 Ended when by his mat the Prior stood, 
 Mid busy promptings of the brotherhood, 
 Striving to coax from his decrepit brains 
 The reason Father Porphyry took pains 
 To blot those ten lines out which used to stand 
 First on their charter drawn by Hildebrand. 
 
 The same night wears. Yerona's rule of yore 
 Was vested in a certain Twenty-four ; 
 And while within his palace these debate 
 Concerning Richard and Ferrara's fate. 
 Glide we by clapping doors, with sudden glare 
 Of cressets vented on the dark, nor care 
 For aught that 's seen or heard until we shut 
 The smother in, the lights, all noises but 
 The carroch's booming ; safe at last ! Why strange 
 Such a recess should lurk behind a range 
 Of banquet-rooms ? Your finger — thus — you push 
 A spring, and the wall opens, would you rush 
 Upon the banqueters, select your prey, 
 Waiting, the slaughter- weapons in the way 
 Strewing this very bench, with sharpened ear 
 A preconcerted signal to appear ; 
 
SORDELLO. 15 
 
 Or if you simply crouch with beating heart 
 Bearing in some voluptuous pageant part 
 To startle them. Nor mutes nor masquers now ; 
 Nor any . . . does that one man sleep whose brow 
 The dying lamp-flame sinks and rises o'er ? 
 What woman stood beside him ? not the more 
 Is he unfastened from the earnest eyes 
 Because that arras fell between ! Her wise 
 And lulling words are yet about the room, 
 Her presence wholly poured upon the gloom 
 Down even to her vesture's creeping stir : 
 And so reclines he, saturate with her. 
 Until an outcry from the square beneath 
 Pierces the charm : he springs up, glad to breathe 
 Above the cunning element, and shakes 
 The stupor off" as (look you) morning breaks 
 On the gay dress, and, near concealed by it, 
 The lean frame like a half-burnt taper, lit 
 Erst at some marriage-feast, then laid away 
 Till the Armenian bridegroom's dying-day. 
 In his wool wedding-robe ; for he — for he — 
 " Gate- vein of this hearts' blood of Lombardy" 
 (If I should falter now) — for he is Thine ! 
 Sordello, thy forerunner, Florentine ! 
 
16 SORDELLO. 
 
 A herald-star I know thou didst absorb 
 Relentless into the consummate orb 
 That scared it from its right to roll along 
 ^ A sempiternal path with dance and song 
 Fulfilling its allotted period 
 Serenest of the progeny of God 
 Who yet resigns it not ; his darling stoops 
 With no quenched lights, desponds with no blank troops 
 Of disenfranchised brilliances, for, blent 
 Utterly with thee, its shy element 
 Like thine upburneth prosperous and clear : 
 Still, what if I approach the august sphere 
 Named now with only one name, disentwine 
 That under current soft and argentine 
 From its fierce mate in the majestic mass 
 Leavened as the sea w^hose fire was mixt with glass 
 In John s transcendent vision, launch once more 
 That lustre ? Dante, pacer of the shore 
 Where glutted Hell disgorgeth filthiest gloom, 
 Unbitten by its whirring sulphur -spume — 
 Or whence the grieved and obscure waters slope 
 Into a darkness quieted by hope — 
 Plucker of amaranths grown beneath God's eye 
 In gracious twilights where his Chosen lie, 
 
SORDELLO. ] 7 
 
 I would do this ! if I should falter now — 
 
 In Mantua- territory half is slough 
 Half pine-tree forest ; maples, scarlet-oaks 
 Breed o'er the river-beds ; even Mincio chokes 
 With sand the summer through ; but 'tis morass 
 In winter up to Mantua walls. There was 
 (Some thirty years before this evening's coil) 
 One spot reclaimed from the surrounding spoil, 
 Goito ; just a castle built amid 
 A few low mountains ; firs and larches hid 
 Their main defiles and rings of vineyard bound 
 The rest : some captured creature in a pound, 
 Whose artless wonder quite precludes distress, 
 Secure beside in its own loveliness, 
 So peered with airy head, below, above, 
 The castle at its toils the lapwings love 
 To glean among at grape-time. Pass within : 
 A maze of corridors contrived for sin. 
 Dusk winding- stairs, dim galleries got past, 
 You gain the inmost chambers, gain at last 
 A maple-panelled room : that haze which seems 
 Floating about the panel, if there gleams 
 A sunbeam over it will turn to gold 
 And in light-graven characters unfold 
 c 
 
18 SORDELLO. 
 
 The Arab's wisdom everywhere ; what shade 
 
 Marred them a moment, those slim pillars made, 
 
 Cut like a company of palms to prop 
 
 The roof, each kissing top entwined with top, 
 
 Leaning together ; in the carver s mind 
 
 Some knot of bacchanals, flushed cheek combined 
 
 With straining forehead, shoulders purpled, hair 
 
 DiiBfused between, who in a goat-skin bear 
 
 A vintage ; graceful sister-palms : but quick 
 
 To the main wonder now. A vault, see ; thick 
 
 Black shade about the ceiling, though fine slits 
 
 Across the buttress suffer light by fits 
 
 Upon a marvel in the midst : nay, stoop — 
 
 A dullish grey-streaked cumbrous font, a group 
 
 Round it, each side of it, where'er one sees. 
 
 Upholds it — shrinking Caryatides 
 
 Of just-tinged marble like Eve's lilied flesh 
 
 Beneath her Maker's finger when the fresh 
 
 First pulse of life shot brightening the snow : 
 
 The font's edge burthens every shoulder, so 
 
 They muse upon the ground, eyelids half closed. 
 
 Some, with meek arms behind their backs disposed. 
 
 Some, crossed above their bosoms, sdme, to veil 
 
 Their eyes, some, propping chin and cheek so pale, 
 
I 
 
 SORDELLO. 19 
 
 Some, hanging slack an utter helpless length 
 
 Dead as a buried vestal whose whole strength 
 
 Goes when the grate above shuts heavily ; 
 
 So dwell these noiseless girls, patient to see. 
 
 Like priestesses because of sin impure 
 
 Penanced for ever, who resigned endure, 
 
 Having that once drunk sweetness to the dregs ; 
 
 And every eve Sordello's visit begs 
 
 Pardon for them : constant as eve he came 
 
 To sit beside each in her turn, the same 
 
 As one of them, a certain space : and awe 
 
 Made a great indistinctness till he saw 
 
 Sunset slant cheerful through the buttress chinks. 
 
 Gold seven times globed ; surely our maiden shrinks 
 
 And a smile stirs her as if one faint grain 
 
 V 
 
 Her load were lightened, one shade less the stain 
 Obscured her forehead, yet one more bead slipt 
 From off the rosary whereby the crypt 
 Keeps count of the contritions of its charge ? 
 Then with a step more light, a heart more large, 
 He may depart, leave her and every one 
 To linger out the penance in mute stone. 
 Ah, but Sordello ? Tis the tale I mean 
 To tell you. In this castle may be seen, 
 c 2 
 
20 SORDELLO. 
 
 On the hill tops, or underneath the vines, 
 
 Or southward by the mound of firs and pines 
 
 That shuts out Mantua, still in loneliness, 
 
 A slender boy in a loose page's dress, 
 
 Sordello : do but look on him awhile 
 
 Watching ('tis autumn) with an earnest smile 
 
 The noisy flock of thievish birds at work 
 
 Among the yellowing vineyards ; see him lurk 
 
 ('Tis winter with its sullenest of storms) 
 
 Beside that arras-length of broidered forms. 
 
 On tiptoe, lifting in both hands a light 
 
 Which makes yon warrior s visage flutter bright 
 
 — Ecelo, dismal father of the brood, 
 
 And Ecelin, close to the girl he wooed 
 
 — Auria, and their Child, with all his wives 
 
 From Agnes to the Tuscan that survives. 
 
 Lady of the castle, Adelaide : his face 
 
 — Look, now he turns away ! Yourselves shall trace 
 
 (The delicate nostril swerving wide and fine, 
 
 A sharp and restless lip, so well combine 
 
 With that calm brow) a soul fit to receive 
 
 Delight at every sense ; you can believe 
 
 Sordello foremost in the regal class 
 
 Nature has broadly severed from her mass 
 
SORDELLO. 21 
 
 Of men and framed for pleasure as she frames 
 
 Some happy lands that have luxurious names 
 
 For loose fertility ; a footfall there 
 
 Suffices to upturn to the warm air 
 
 Half-germinating spices, mere decay 
 
 Produces richer life, and day by day 
 
 New pollen on the lily-petal grows, 
 
 And still more labyrinthine buds the rose. 
 
 You recognise at once the finer dress 
 
 Of flesh that amply lets in loveliness 
 
 At eye and ear, while round the rest is furled 
 
 (As though she would not trust them with her world) 
 
 A veil that shows a sky not near so blue, 
 
 And lets but half the sun look fervid through : 
 
 How can such love like souls on each full-fraught 
 
 Discovery brooding, blind at first to aught 
 
 Beyond its beauty ; till exceeding love 
 
 Becomes an aching weight, and to remove 
 
 A curse that haunts such natures — to preclude 
 
 Their finding out themselves can work no good 
 
 To what they love nor make it very blest 
 
 By their endeavour, they are fain invest 
 
 The lifeless thing with life from their own soul 
 
 Availing it to purpose, to control. 
 
22 SORDELLO. 
 
 To dwell distinct and have peculiar joy 
 
 And separate interests that may employ 
 
 That beauty fitly, for its proper sake ; 
 
 Nor rest they here : fresh births of beauty wake 
 
 Fresh homage ; every grade of love is past, 
 
 With every mode of loveliness ; then cast 
 
 Inferior idols off their borrowed crown 
 
 Before a coming glory : up and down 
 
 Runs arrowy fire, while earthly forms combine 
 
 To throb the secret forth ; a touch divine— 
 
 And the scaled eyeball owns the mystic rod : 
 
 Visibly through his garden walketh God. 
 
 So fare they — Now revert : one character 
 
 Denotes them through the progress and the stir ; 
 
 A need to blend with each external charm, 
 
 Bury themselves, the whole heart wide and warm. 
 
 In something not themselves ; they would belong 
 
 To what they worship — stronger and more strong 
 
 Thus prodigally fed — that gathers shape 
 
 And feature, soon imprisons past escape 
 
 The votary framed to love and to submit 
 
 Nor ask, as passionate he kneels to it, 
 
 Whence grew the idol's empery. So runs 
 
 A legend ; Light had birth ere moons and suns. 
 
SORDELLO. 23 
 
 Flowing through space a river and alone, 
 
 Till chaos burst and blank the spheres were strown 
 
 Hither and thither, foundering and blind. 
 
 When into each of them rushed Light — to find 
 
 Itself no place, foiled of its radiant chance. 
 
 Let such forego their just inheritance ! 
 
 For there's a class that eagerly looks, too. 
 
 On beauty, but, unlike the gentler crew, 
 
 Proclaims each new revealment bom a twin 
 
 With a distinctest consciousness within 
 
 Referring still the quality, now first 
 
 Revealed, to their own soul ; its instinct nursed 
 
 In silence, now remembered better, shown 
 
 More thoroughly, but not the less their own ; 
 
 A dream come true ; the special exercise 
 
 Of any special function that implies 
 
 The being fair or good or wise or strong, 
 
 Dormant within their nature all along — 
 
 Whose fault ? So homage other souls direct 
 
 Without, turns inward ; how should this deject 
 
 Thee, soul? they murmur; wherefore strength be quelled 
 
 Because, its trivial accidents withheld. 
 
 Organs are missed that clog the world, inert, 
 
 Wanting a will, to quicken and exert. 
 
24 SORDELLO. 
 
 Like thine — existence cannot satiate 
 Cannot surprise : laugh thou at envious fate, 
 "Who from earth's simplest combination stampt 
 With individuality — uncrampt 
 By living its faint elemental life, 
 Dost soar to heaven s complexest essence, rife 
 With grandeurs, unaffronted to the last, 
 Equal to being all. 
 
 In truth ? Thou hast 
 Life, then — wilt challenge life for us : thy race 
 Is vindicated so, obtains its place 
 In thy ascent, the first of us ; whom we 
 May follow, to the meanest, finally. 
 With our more bounded wills ? 
 
 Ah, but to find 
 A certain mood enervate such a mind. 
 Counsel it slumber in the solitude 
 Thus reached nor, stooping, task for mankind's good 
 Its nature just as life and time accord 
 (Too narrow an arena to reward 
 Emprize — the world's occasion worthless since 
 Not absolutely fitted to evince 
 Its mastery) or if yet worse befall, 
 And a desire possess it to put all 
 
SORDELLO. 25 
 
 That nature forth, forcing our straitened sphere 
 
 Contain it ; to display completely here 
 
 The mastery another life should learn, 
 
 Thrusting in time eternity's concern. 
 
 So that Sordello . . . Fool, who spied the mark 
 
 Of leprosy upon him, violet dark 
 
 Already as he loiters ? Born just now — 
 
 With the new century — beside the glow 
 
 And efflorescence out of barbarism ; 
 
 Witness a Greek or two from the abysm 
 
 That stray through Florence-town with studious air, 
 
 Calming the chisel of that Pisan pair . . . 
 
 If Nicolo should carve a Christus yet ! 
 
 While at Sienna is Guidone set. 
 
 Forehead on hand ; a painful birth must be 
 
 Matured ere San Eufemio's sacristy 
 
 Or transept gather fruits of one great gaze 
 
 At the noon-sun : look you ! An orange haze — 
 
 The same blue stripe round that — and, i'the midst, 
 
 Thy spectral whiteness, mother-maid, who didst 
 
 Pursue the dizzy painter ! 
 
 Woe then worth 
 Any officious babble letting forth 
 The leprosy confirmed and ruinous 
 To spirit lodged in a contracted house ! 
 
26 SORDELLO. 
 
 Go back to the beginning rather ; blend 
 
 It gently with Sordello's life ; the end 
 
 Is piteous, you shall see, but much between 
 
 Pleasant enough; meantime some pyx to screen 
 
 The full-grown pest, some lid to shut upon 
 
 The goblin ! As they found at Babylon, 
 
 (Colleagues mad Lucius and sage Antonine) 
 
 Sacking the city, by Apollo's shrine 
 
 Its pride, in rummaging the rarities, 
 
 A cabinet ; be sure, who made the prize 
 
 Opened it greedily ; and out there curled 
 
 Just such another plague, for half the world 
 
 Was stung. Crawl in then, hag, and crouch asquat, 
 
 Keeping that blotchy bosom thick in spot 
 
 Until your time is ripe ! The coffer-lid 
 
 Is fastened and the coffer safely hid 
 
 Under the Loxian s choicest gifts of gold. 
 
 Who will may hear Sordello*s story told, 
 
 And how he never could remember when 
 
 He dwelt not at Goito ; calmly then 
 
 About this secret lodge of Adelaide's 
 
 Glided his youth away : beyond the glades 
 
 On the fir-forest's border, and the rim 
 
 Of the low range of mountain, was for him 
 
SORDELLO. 27 
 
 No other world : but that appeared his own 
 To wander through at pleasure and alone. 
 The castle too seemed empty ; far and wide 
 Might he disport unless the northern side 
 Lay under a mysterious interdict — 
 Slight, just enough remembered to restrict 
 His roaming to the corridors, the vault 
 Where those font-bearers expiate their fault. 
 The maple-chamber, and the little nooks 
 And nests and breezy parapet that looks 
 Over the woods to Mantua ; there he strolled. 
 Some foreign women-servants, very old. 
 Tended and crept about him — all his clue 
 To the world's business and embroiled ado 
 Distant a dozen hill-tops at the most. 
 And first a simple sense of life engrossed 
 Sordello in his drowsy Paradise ; 
 The day's adventures for the day suffice — 
 Its constant tribute of perceptions strange 
 With sleep and stir in healthy interchange 
 Suffice, and leave him for the next at ease 
 Like the great palmer- worm that strips the trees, 
 Eats the life out of every luscious plant. 
 And when September finds them sere or scant 
 
28 SORDELLO. 
 
 Puts forth two wondrous winglets, alters quite, 
 
 And hies him after unforeseen delight ; 
 
 So fed Sordello, not a shard disheathed ; 
 
 As ever round each new discovery wreathed 
 
 Luxuriantly the fancies infantine 
 
 His admiration, bent on making fine 
 
 Its novel friend at any risk, would fling 
 
 In gay profusion forth : a ficklest king 
 
 Confessed those minions ! Eager to dispense 
 
 So much from his own stock of thought and sense 
 
 As might enable each to stand alone 
 
 And serve him for a fellow ; with his own 
 
 Joining the qualities that just before 
 
 Had graced some older favourite : so they wore 
 
 A fluctuating halo, yesterday 
 
 Set flicker and to-morrow filched away ; 
 
 Those upland objects each of separate name, 
 
 Each with an aspect never twice the same, 
 
 "Waxing and waning as the new-born host 
 
 Of fancies, like a single night's hoar-frost, 
 
 Gave to familiar things a face grotesque ; 
 
 Only, preserving through the mad burlesque 
 
 A grave regard : conceive ; the orpine patch 
 
 Blossoming earliest on our log-house-thatch 
 
SORDELLO. 29 
 
 The day those archers wound along the vmes — 
 
 Related to the Chief that left their lines 
 
 To climb with clinking step the northern stair 
 
 Up to the solitary chambers where 
 
 Sordello never came. Thus thrall reached thrall ; 
 
 He o'er-festooning every interval 
 
 As the adventurous spider, making light 
 
 Of distance, shoots her threads from depth to height. 
 
 From barbican to battlement ; so flung 
 
 Fantasies forth and in their centre swung 
 
 Our architect : the breezy morning fresh 
 
 Above, and merry ; all his waving mesh 
 
 Laughing with lucid dew-drops rainbow-edged. 
 
 This world of ours by tacit pact is pledged 
 
 To laying such a spangled fabric low 
 
 Whether by gradual brush or gallant blow : 
 
 But its abundant will was balked here : doubt 
 
 Rose tardily in one so fenced about 
 
 From most that nurtures judgment, care and pain : 
 
 Judgment, that dull expedient we are fain. 
 
 Less favoured, to adopt betimes and force 
 
 Stead us, diverted from our natural course 
 
 Of joys, contrive some yet amid the dearth. 
 
 Vary and render them, it may be, worth 
 
30 SORDELLO. 
 
 Most we forego : suppose Sordello hence 
 
 Selfish enough, without a moral sense 
 
 However feeble ; what informed the boy 
 
 Others desired a portion in his joy ? 
 
 Or say a ruthful chance broke woof and warp — 
 
 A heron s nest beat down by March winds sharp, 
 
 A fawn breathless beneath the precipice, 
 
 A bird with unsoiled breast and filmless eyes 
 
 Warm in the brake—could these undo the trance 
 
 Lapping Sordello ? Not a circumstance 
 
 That makes for you, friend Naddo ! Eat fern- seed 
 
 And peer beside us and report indeed 
 
 If (your word) Genius dawned with throes and stings 
 
 And the whole fiery catalogue, while springs 
 
 Summers and winters quietly came and went. 
 
 Putting at length that period to content 
 
 By right the world should have imposed : bereft 
 
 Of its good offices, Sordello, left 
 
 To study his companions, managed rip 
 
 Their fringe off, learn the true relationship. 
 
 Core with its crust, their natures with his own ; 
 
 Amid his wild- wood sights he lived alone : 
 
 As if the poppy felt with him ! Though he 
 
 Partook the poppy's red effrontery 
 
SORDELLO. 31 
 
 Till Autumn spoils their fleering quite with rain, 
 
 And, turbanless, a coarse brown rattling crane 
 
 Protrudes : that *s gone ! yet why renounce, for that, 
 
 His disenchanted tributaries — flat 
 
 Perhaps, but scarce so utterly forlorn 
 
 Their simple presence may not well be borne 
 
 Whose parley was a transport once : recall 
 
 The poppy's gifts, it flaunts you, after all, 
 
 A poppy : why distrust the evidence 
 
 Of each soon satisfied and healthy sense ? 
 
 The new-born Judgment answered : little boots 
 
 Beholding other creatures' attributes 
 
 And having none : or say that it sufficed. 
 
 Yet, could one but possess, oneself, (enticed 
 
 Judgment) some special office ! Nought beside 
 
 Serves you ? Well then, be somehow justified 
 
 For this ignoble wish to circumscribe 
 
 And concentrate, rather than swell, the tribe 
 
 Of actual pleasures : what now from without 
 
 Effects it ? — proves, despite a lurking doubt. 
 
 Mere sympathy sufficient, trouble spared ; 
 
 — He tasted joys by proxy, clearly fared 
 
 The better for them ; thus much craved his soul. 
 
 Alas, from the beginning Love is whole 
 
32 BORDELLO. 
 
 And true ; if sure of nought beside, most sure 
 
 Of its own truth at least ; nor may endure 
 
 A crowd to see its face, that cannot know 
 
 How hot the pulses throb its heart below ; 
 
 While its own helplessness and utter want 
 
 Of means to worthily be ministrant 
 
 To what it worships, do but fan the more 
 
 Its flame, exalt the idol far before 
 
 Itself as it would ever have it be ; 
 
 Souls like Sordello, on the contrary, 
 
 Coerced and put to shame, retaining Will, 
 
 Care little, take mysterious comfort still. 
 
 But look forth tremblingly to ascertain 
 
 If others judge their claims not urged in vain 
 
 — Will say for them their stifled thoughts aloud ; 
 
 So they must ever live before a crowd : 
 
 Vanity, Naddo tells you. 
 
 Whence contrive 
 A crowd, now ? These brave women just alive. 
 That archer-troop ? Forth glided — not alone 
 Each painted warrior, every girl of stone, 
 — Nor Adelaide bent double o'er a scroll. 
 One maiden at her knees, that eve his soul 
 Shook as he stumbled through the arras'd glooms 
 On them, for, 'mid quaint robes and weird perfumes, 
 
BORDELLO. 33 
 
 Started the meagre Tuscan up (her eyes 
 The maiden s also, bluer with surprise) 
 — But the entire out- world : whatever scraps 
 And snatches, song and story, dreams perhaps. 
 Conceited the world's offices, and he 
 Transferred to the first comer, flower or tree. 
 Nor counted a befitting heritage 
 Each, of its own right, singly to engage 
 Some Man, no other ; such availed to stand 
 Alone : strength, wisdom, grace on every hand 
 Soon disengaged themselves ; and he discerned 
 A sort of human life : at least, was turned 
 A stream of life-like figures through his brain 
 — Lord, Liegeman, Yalvassor and Suzerain, 
 Ere he could choose, surrounded him ; a stuff 
 To work his pleasure on ; there, sure enough. 
 But as for gazing, what shall fix that gaze ? 
 Are they to simply testify the ways 
 He who convoked them sends his soul alono- 
 
 o 
 
 With the cloud's thunder or a dove's brood-song ? 
 While they live each its life, boast each its own 
 Peculiar dower of bliss, stand each alone 
 In some one point where something dearest loved 
 Is easiest gained — far worthier to be proved 
 
 D 
 
34 SORDELLO. 
 
 Than aught he envies in the forest- wights ! 
 
 No simple and self-evident delights, 
 
 But mixed desires of unimagined range, 
 
 Contrasts or combinations, new and strange, 
 
 Irksome perhaps, yet plainly recognised 
 
 By this, the sudden company — loves prized 
 
 By those who are to prize his own amount 
 
 Of loves. Once care because such make account, 
 
 Allow a foreign recognition stamp 
 
 The current value, and your crowd shall vamp 
 
 You counterfeits enough ; and so their print 
 
 Be on the piece, 'tis gold, attests the mint 
 
 And good, pronounce they whom my new appeal 
 
 Is made to : if their casual print conceal — 
 
 This arbitrary good of theirs o'ergloss 
 
 What I have lived without, nor felt my loss — 
 
 Qualities strange, ungainly, wearisome, 
 
 — What matter ? so must speech expand the dumb 
 
 Part sigh, part smile with which Sordello, late 
 
 No foolish woodland-sights could satiate, 
 
 Betakes himself to study hungrily 
 
 Just what the puppets his crude fantasy 
 
 Supposes notablest, popes, kings, priests, knights. 
 
 May please to promulgate for appetites ; 
 
SORDELLO. 35 
 
 Accepting all their artificial joys 
 Not as he views them, but as he employs 
 Each shape to estimate the other s stock 
 Of attributes, that on a marshalled flock 
 Of authorised enjoyments he may spend 
 Himself, be Men, now, as he used to blend 
 With tree and flower — nay more entirely, else 
 'Twere mockery : for instance, how excels 
 My life that Chieftain s ? (who apprised the youth 
 ' Ecelin, here, becomes this month in truth, 
 Imperial Yicar?) Turns he in his tent 
 Remissly ? Be it so — my head is bent 
 Deliciously amid my girls to sleep : 
 What if he stalks the Trentine-pass ? Yon steep 
 I climbed an hour ago with little toil — 
 
 ■ We are alike there : but can I, too, foil 
 The Guelfs' paid stabber, carelessly afibrd 
 St. Mark's a spectacle, the sleight o' the sword 
 Baffling their project in a moment ? Here 
 No rescue ! Poppy he is none, but peer 
 To Ecelin, assuredly : his hand. 
 Fashioned no otherwise, should wield a brand 
 With Ecelin s success — try, now ! He soon 
 Was satisfied, returned as to the moon 
 D 2 
 
36 SORDELLO. 
 
 From earth ; left each abortive boy's-attempt 
 For feats, from failure happily exempt, 
 In fancy at his beck. One day I will 
 Accomplish it ! Are they not older still 
 — Not grown up men and women ? Tis beside 
 Only a dream ; and though I must abide 
 With dreams now, I may find a thorough vent 
 For all myself, acquire an instrument 
 For acting what these people act ; my soul 
 Hunting a body out, obtain its whole 
 Desire some day ! How else express chagrin 
 And resignation, show the hope steal in 
 With which he let sink from an aching wrist 
 The rough-hewn ash bow, and a gold shaft hiss'd 
 Into the Syrian air, struck Malek down 
 Superbly ! Crosses to the breach ! God's Town 
 Was gained Him back ! Why bend rough ash-bows 
 So lives he : if not careless as before, [more ? 
 
 Comforted : for one may anticipate. 
 Rehearse the future ; be prepared when fate 
 Shall have prepared in turn real men w^hose names 
 Startle, real places of enormous fames, 
 Estes abroad and Ecelins at home 
 To worship him, Mantuas, Yeronas, Rome 
 
SORDELLO. 37 
 
 To witness it. "Who grudges time so spent ? 
 
 Rather test qualities to heart's content — 
 
 Summon them, thrice selected, near and far — 
 
 Compress the starriest into one star 
 
 So grasp the whole at once ! The pageant 's thinned 
 
 Accordingly ; from rank to rank, like wind 
 
 His spirit passed to winnow and divide ; 
 
 Back fell the simpler phantasms ; every side 
 
 The strong clave to the wise ; with either classed 
 
 The beauteous ; so, till two or three amassed 
 
 Mankind's beseemingnesses, and reduced 
 
 Themselves eventually, graces loosed. 
 
 And lavished strengths, to heighten up One Shape 
 
 Whose potency no creature should escape : 
 
 Can it be Friedrich of the bowmen s talk ? 
 
 Surely that grape-juice, bubbling at the stalk. 
 
 Is some grey scorching Saracenic wine 
 
 The Kaiser quaffs with the Miramoline — 
 
 Those swarthy hazel- clusters, seamed and chapped. 
 
 Or filberts russet- sheathed and velvet-capped. 
 
 Are dates plucked from the bough John Brienne sent 
 
 To keep in mind his sluggish armament 
 
 Of Canaan . . . Friedrich's, all the pomp and fierce 
 
 Demeanour ! But harsh sounds and sights transpierce 
 
38 SORDELLO. 
 
 So rarely the serene cloud where he dwells 
 
 Whose looks enjoin, whose lightest words are spells 
 
 Upon the obdurate ; that arm indeed 
 
 Has thunder for its slave ; but where's the need 
 
 Of thunder if the stricken multitude 
 
 Hearkens, arrested in its angriest mood, 
 
 While songs go up exulting, then dispread, 
 
 Dispart, disperse, lingering overhead 
 
 Like an escape of angels ? Tis the tune. 
 
 Nor much unlike the words the women croon 
 
 Smilingly, colourless and faint designed 
 
 Each as a worn-out queen s face some remind 
 
 Of her extreme youth's love-tales. Eglamor 
 
 Made that ! Half minstrel and half emperor, 
 
 Who but ill objects vexed him ? Such he slew. 
 
 The kinder sort were easy to subdue 
 
 By those ambrosial glances, dulcet tones ; 
 
 And these a gracious hand advanced to thrones 
 
 Beneath him. Wherefore twist and torture this^ 
 
 Striving to name afresh the antique bliss. 
 
 Instead of saying, neither less nor more. 
 
 He had discovered, as our world before, 
 
 Apollo ? That shall be the name ; nor bid 
 
 Me rag by rag expose how patchwork hid 
 
SORDELLO. 39' 
 
 The man — what thefts of every clime and day- 
 Contributed to purfle the array 
 He climbs with (June's at deep) some close ravine 
 'Mid clatter of its million pebbles sheen, 
 Over which singing soft the runnel slipt 
 Elate with rains : into whose streamlet dipt 
 He foot, yet trod, you thought, with unwet sock — 
 Though really on the stubs of living rock 
 Ages ago it crenneled ; vines for roof, 
 Lindens for wall ; before him, aye aloof. 
 Flittered in the cool some azure damsel-fly, 
 Child of the simmering quiet, there to die : 
 Emerging whence, Apollo still, he spied 
 Mighty descents of forest ; multiplied 
 Tuft on tuft, here, the frolic myrtle-trees ; 
 There gendered the grave maple-stocks at ease ; 
 And, proud of its observer, strait the wood 
 Tried old surprises on him ; black it stood 
 A sudden barrier ('twas a cloud passed o'er) 
 So dead and dense the tiniest brute no more 
 Must pass ; yet presently (the cloud despatched) 
 Each clump, forsooth, was glistering detached 
 A shrub, oak-boles shrunk into ilex-stems ! 
 Yet could not he denounce the stratagems 
 
40 SORDELLO. 
 
 He saw thro', till, hours thence, aloft would hang 
 White summer-lightnings ; as it sank and sprang 
 In measure, that whole palpitating breast 
 Of Heaven, 'twas Apollo nature prest 
 At eve to worship. 
 
 Time stole : by degrees 
 The Pythons perished off ; his votaries 
 Sunk to respectful distance ; songs redeem 
 Their pains, but briefer ; their dismissals seem 
 Emphatic ; only girls are very slow 
 To disappear : his Delians ! Some that glow 
 O' the instant, more with earlier loves to wrench 
 Away, reserves to quell, disdains to quench ; 
 Alike in one material circumstance — 
 All soon or late adore Apollo ! Glance 
 The bevy through, divine Apollo's choice, 
 A Daphne ! We secure Count Richard's voice 
 In Este's counsels, one for Este's ends 
 As our Taurello, say his faded friends. 
 By granting him our Palma ! The sole child. 
 They mean, of Agnes Este who beguiled 
 Ecelin, years before this Adelaide 
 Wedded and turned hira wicked ; but the maid 
 Rejects his suit, those sleepy women boast. 
 She, scorning all beside, deserves the most 
 
I 
 
 SORDELLO. 41 
 
 Sordello : so conspicuous in his world 
 
 Of dreams sate Palma. How the tresses curled 
 
 Into a sumptuous swell of gold and wound 
 
 About her like a glory, even the ground |~breathe 
 
 Was bright as with shed sunbeams; (breathe not, 
 
 Not) — poised, see, one leg doubled underneath, 
 
 Its small foot buried in the dimpling snow, 
 
 Rests, but the other, listlessly below, 
 
 O'er the couch-side swings feeling for cool air, 
 
 The vein-streaks swoln a richer violet where 
 
 The languid blood lies heavily ; and calm 
 
 On her slight prop, each flat and outspread palm, 
 
 As but suspended in the act to rise 
 
 By consciousness of beauty, whence her eyes 
 
 Turn with so frank a triumph, for she meets 
 
 Apollo's gaze in the pine-glooms. 
 
 Time fleets 
 That's worst ! Because the pre-appointed age 
 Approaches. Fate is tardy with the stage 
 She all but promised. Lean he grows and pale. 
 Though restlessly at rest. Hardly avail 
 Fancies to soothe him. Time steals, yet alone 
 He tarries here ! The earnest smile is gone. 
 How long this might continue matters not : 
 For ever, possibly ; since to the spot 
 
42 SORDELLO. 
 
 None come : for lingering Taurello quits 
 Mantua at last, and light our lady flits 
 Back to her place disburthened of a care. 
 Strange — to be constant here if he is there ! 
 Is it distrust ? Oh, never ! for they both 
 Goad Ecelin alike — Romano's growth 
 So daily manifest that Azzo 's dumb 
 And Richard wavers ... let but Friedrich come ! 
 — Find matter for the minstrelsy's report 
 Lured from the Isle and its young Kaiser s court 
 To sing us a Messina morning up ; 
 Who, double rillets of a drinking cup. 
 Sparkle along to ease the land of drouth. 
 Northward to Provence that, and thus far south 
 The other : what a method to apprise 
 Neighbours of births, espousals, obsequies ! 
 Which in their very tongue the Troubadour 
 Records ; and his performance makes a tour. 
 For Trouveres bear the miracle about. 
 Explain its cunning to the vulgar rout. 
 Until the Formidable House is famed 
 Over the country — as Taurello aimed 
 Who introduced, although the rest adopt, 
 The novelty. Their games her absence stopped 
 
SORDELLO. 43 
 
 Begin afresh now Adelaide, recluse 
 No longer, in the light of day pursues 
 Her plans at Mantua — whence an accident 
 That breaking on Sordello's mixed content 
 Opened, like any flash that cures the blind, ' 
 The veritable business of mankind. 
 
BOOK THE SECOND. 
 
 The woods were long austere with snow : at last 
 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. Nought so sure 
 As that to-day's adventure will secure 
 Palma, the forest-lady — only pass 
 O'er yon damp mound and its exhausted grass. 
 
SORDELLO. 45 
 
 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- vapour, glanced 
 
 Athwart the flying herons ? He advanced, 
 
 But warily ; though Mincio leaped no more. 
 
 Each foot-fall burst up in the marish-floor 
 
 A diamond jet : and if you 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 
 
46 BORDELLO. 
 
 Round a pavilion. How he stood ! 
 
 In truth 
 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 
 This present roving leads 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. 
 
SORDELLO. 47 
 
 — 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 his master s lute 
 
 With the new lute- string, Elys, named to suit 
 
 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 aoain ; 
 
 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 dares no further ? Has he ceased ? 
 
 And, lo, the people's frank applause half done, 
 
 Sordello w^as 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, 
 
 After the flying story ; word made leap 
 
 Out word; rhyme — rhyme; the lay could barely keep 
 
48 SORDELLO. 
 
 Pace with the action visibly rushing past : 
 Both ended. Back fell Naddo more aghast 
 Than your Egyptian from the harassed bull 
 That wheels abrupt and, bellowing, fronts full 
 His plague, who spies a scarab 'neath his tongue, 
 And finds 'twas Apis* flank his hasty prong 
 Insulted. But the people — but the cries. 
 And 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 curl 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 'twas many a furlong thence, 
 
SORDELLO. 49 
 
 At home : the sun shining his ruddy wont ; 
 
 The customary birds'-chirp ; but his front [^around 
 
 Was crowned — was crowned ! Her scented scarf 
 
 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 
 
 Assuming, 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 that adventure, and began 
 Imperfectly ; his own task was to fill 
 The frame- work up, sing well what he sang ill, 
 Supply the necessary points, set loose 
 As many incidents of little use 
 
 E 
 
50 SORDELLO. 
 
 — 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 bears oft 
 
 The eye, along the fir-tree-spire, aloft 
 
 To a dove's nest. Then how divine the cause 
 
 Such a performance should exact applause 
 
 From men if they have fancies too ? Can Fate 
 
 Decree they find a beauty separate 
 
 In the poor snatch itself . . . our Elys, there, 
 
 (" Her head that's sharp and perfect like a pear, 
 
 So close and smooth are laid the few fine locks 
 
 Coloured 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 fine locks, let the sun 
 
SORDELLO. 61 
 
 Into the white cool skin . . . nay, thus I clutch 
 Those locks ! — I needs must be a God to such. 
 Or if some few, above themselves, and yet 
 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, and 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 'twas midday yet : 
 You saw each half-shut downcast violet 
 Flutter —a Roman bride, when they 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 
 'Tis Eglamor, no other, these precede 
 E 2 
 
52 SORDELLO. 
 
 Home hither in the woods. Twere surely sweet 
 Far from the scene of one's forlorn defeat 
 To sleep ! thought 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 its hand, 
 Eglamor, lived Bordello'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 
 That 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 
 
SORDELLO. 53 
 
 With his own life, unloosed when he should please, 
 
 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 ! 
 
 The sorriest bat which cowers through noontide 
 
 While other birds are jocund, has one time 
 
 When moon and stars are blinded, and the prime 
 
54 SORDELLO. 
 
 Of earth is its to claim, nor find a peer ; 
 
 And Eglamor was noblest poet here, 
 
 He knew, among the April woods he cast 
 
 Conceits upon in plenty as he past, 
 
 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. 
 
 And what was Eglamor ? who, bending down 
 
 The same, 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 efi'ect ? Give o'er. 
 
 Nor charm his lips, nor craze him ! (here one spied 
 
 An,d disengaged the withered crown) — Beside 
 
SORDELLO. 55 
 
 His crown ! How prompt and clear those verses rung 
 To answer yours ! nay sing them ! And he sung 
 Them calmly. Home he went ; friends used to wait 
 His coming, anxious 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 was 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. 
 They found as much, those friends, when they returned 
 Overflowing with the marvels they had learned 
 About Sordello's paradise, his roves 
 Among the hills and valleys, 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 
 
56 SORDELLO. 
 
 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. 
 Primeval 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 it on his 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 bears his very name. 
 
 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 Baise, when the south wind shed 
 The ripest, made him happier ; filleted 
 
SORDELLO. 57 
 
 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 difi*erence from men 
 
 Surprised him at the grave, he took no rest 
 
 While aught of that old life, superbly drest 
 
 Down to its meanest incident, remained 
 
 A mystery — alas, they soon explained 
 
 Away Apollo ! and the tale amounts 
 
 To this : when at Yicenza both her Counts 
 
 Banished the Yivaresi kith and kin, 
 
 Those Maltraversi hung on Ecelin, 
 
 Reviling as he followed ; he for spite 
 
 Must fire their quarter, though that self-same night 
 
58 SORDELLO, 
 
 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 
 Was high ; into the tliick 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) 
 Can harbour easily when times are rude, 
 When Este schemes for Palm a — would retrieve 
 That pledge, when Mantua is not fit to leave 
 Longer unguarded with a vigilant eye, 
 Taurello bides there so ambiguously 
 (He who can have no motive now to moil 
 For his own fortunes since their utter spoil) 
 
SORDELLO. 59 
 
 As it were worth while yet (goes the report) 
 
 To disengage himself from us. 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. 
 
 But on the morning that array was furled 
 
 For ever, 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 
 
 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 
 
60 SORDELLO. 
 
 If calmly reasoned of, however 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 ^x 
 On one, abiding free meantime, uncramped 
 By any partial organ, never stamped 
 Strong, so 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 
 
SORDELLO. 61 
 
 A soTil SO various — took no casual mould 
 
 Of the first fancy and contracted, cold 
 
 Lay clogged forever thence, averse to change 
 
 As that. Whereas it left her free to range, 
 
 Remains itself a blank, cast into shade, 
 
 Encumbers little, if it cannot aid. 
 
 So, range, my soul ! Who by self-consciousness 
 
 The last drop of all beauty dost express — 
 
 The grace of seeing grace, a quintessence 
 
 For thee : but for the world, that can dispense 
 
 Wonder on men, themselves that wonder — make 
 
 A shift to love at second hand and take 
 
 Those for its idols who but idolize. 
 
 Themselves, — that loves the soul as strong, as wise, 
 
 Whose love is Strength, is Wisdom, — such 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 ; 
 
62 SORDELLO. 
 
 All that is right enough : but why want us 
 
 To know that you yourself know thus and thus ? 
 
 Nay finish — ) 
 
 — 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, 
 Therefore mere consciousness for me ! — 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 — who take no pains to speak, 
 Change no old standards of perfection, vex 
 With no strange forms created to perplex. 
 But mean perform their bidding and no more, 
 At their own satiating-point give o'er. 
 And each shall love in me the love that leads 
 His soul to its 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 and receive their sense 
 Of its existing, but would be content. 
 Obstructed else, with merely verse for vent — 
 
SORDELLO. 63 
 
 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 landstorm : 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. 
 And this, for his, will hardly interfere ! 
 Its businesses in blood and blaze this year 
 — But wile 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 
 
64 SORDELLO. 
 
 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 be blest 
 Supremely by a song — the thrice-renowned 
 Goito manufacture. Then he found 
 (Casting about to satisfy the crowd) 
 That happy vehicle, so late allowed, 
 A sore annoyance ; 'twas 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 over-leaping means for ends — take both 
 For granted or take neither ! I am loth 
 
SORDELLO. 6i 
 
 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 to retire upon 
 
 If the worst happen ; best go stoutly on 
 
 Now ! thought Sordello. 
 
 Ay, and goes on yet ! 
 You pother with your glossaries to get 
 A notion of the Troubadour's intent — 
 His Rondels, Tenzons, Yirlai or Sirvent — 
 p 
 
6^; SORDELLO. 
 
 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 realised 
 Too suddenly in one respect : a crowd 
 Praising, eyes quick to see, and lips as loud 
 To speak, delicious homage to receive, 
 Bianca'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 V* The youth 
 Who bade him earnestly " avow the truth, 
 
SORDELLO. 67 
 
 You love Bianca, surely, from your song ; 
 I knew I was unworthy I" soft or strong, 
 In poured such tributes ere he had arranged 
 Etherial 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 your obvious petty joys that spring 
 From real life, fain relinquish pedestal 
 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 
 *Twas heard salutes him from the cavern roof ? 
 On ! Give thyself, excluding aught beside. 
 To the day's task ; compel thy slave provide 
 Its utmost at the soonest ; turn the leaf 
 Thoroughly conned ; these lays of thine, in brief— 
 ^' Cannot men bear, now, somewhat better? — fly 
 A pitch beyond this unreal pageantry 
 p 2 
 
68 SORDELLO. 
 
 Of essences ? the period sure has ceased 
 For such : present ns with ourselves, at least, 
 Not portions of ourselves, mere loves and hates 
 Made flesh : wait not ! 
 
 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 
 Armour 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 equip 
 Its limbs in harness of his workmanship. 
 Accomplished ! Listen Mantuans ! Fond essay ! 
 Piece after piece that armour broke away 
 
BORDELLO. 69 
 
 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 perceptions ? painfully it tacks 
 
 Together thoughts Sordello, needing such, 
 
 Has rent perception into : it *s to clutch 
 
 And reconstruct — his office to diffuse. 
 
 Destroy : as difficult obtain a Muse 
 
 In short, as be Apollo. For the rest. 
 
 E'en if some wondrous vehicle exprest 
 
 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 
 
 A higher than the highest I present 
 
 Now, and 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, and rings 
 
70 SORDELLO. 
 
 Whirled from each delicatest limb it warps, 
 As 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 given rhyme 
 His auditory recognised 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 lingers* ends ; while past the praise-tide swept 
 To Montfort, either s share distinctly kept. 
 The true meed for true merit — His abates 
 Into a sort he most repudiates. 
 And on them angrily he turns. Who were 
 The Mantuans, after all, that he should care 
 
SORDELLO. 71 
 
 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 those Goito years, 
 
 As erst he toiled for flower or tree ? Why there 
 
 Sate 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. 
 
 Sublimed 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 ; 
 The Poet thwarting hopelessly the Man 
 Who, fooled no longer, free m fancy ran 
 
- 72 SORDELLO. 
 
 Here, there ; let slip no opportunities 
 
 Forsooth, as pitiful 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 [^dream, 
 
 Though ne'er so bright ; which sauntered forth in 
 
 Dress'd any how, 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 that 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 same 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 
 
SORDELLO. 73 
 
 Sufficed : while, out of dream, his day's work went 
 To tune a crazy tenzon or sirvent — 
 So hampered him tlie 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, 
 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. 
 
 And if internal struggles to be one 
 That frittered him incessantly piece-meal. 
 Referred, ne'er so obliquely, to the real 
 Mantuans ! intruding 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 ^x 
 On aught, in rushed the Mantuans ; much they cared 
 For his perplexity ! Thus unprepared. 
 
74 SORDELLO. 
 
 The obvious if not only shelter lay 
 In deeds the dull conventions of his day 
 Prescribed the like of him : why not be glad 
 'Tis settled Palma's minstrel, good or bad, 
 Submits to this and that established rule ? 
 Let Yidal change or any other fool 
 His murrey-coloured robe for philamot 
 And crop his hair ; so skin-deep, is it not, 
 Such vigour ? Then, a sorrow to the heart. 
 His talk ! Whatever topics they might start 
 Had to be groped for in his consciousness 
 Strait, and as strait 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 Mantua 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 
 
SORDELLO. 75 
 
 He too had not impossibly attained, 
 
 Once either of those fancy-flights restrained ; 
 
 For, at conjecture how the words appear 
 
 To others, playing there what passes here. 
 
 And occupied abroad by what he spumed 
 
 At home, 'twas slipt 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 life-time moderately tasked 
 
 To answer, Naddo's fashion ; more disgust 
 
 And more ; why move his soul, since move it must 
 
 At minutes' 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 'twas spoken ; praise and blame 
 
 Of what he said grew pretty well the same 
 
 — Meantime awards to meantime acts : his soul, 
 
 Unequal to the compassing a Whole, 
 
'J^ SORDELLO. 
 
 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 
 Loudly and long enough, without these qualms, 
 Tuned, from Bocafoli's stark -naked psalms, 
 To Plara's sonnets spoilt by toying with, 
 " As knops that stud some almug to the pith 
 Pricked for gum, wry thence, and crinkled worse 
 Than pursed-up eyelids of a river-horse 
 Sunning himself o* the slime when whirrs the breese" 
 Ha, ha ! Of course he might compete with these 
 But— but— 
 
 Observe a pompion-twine afloat ; 
 Pluck me one cup from off the castle-moat — 
 Along with cup you raise leaf, stalk and root, 
 The entire surface of the pool to boot. 
 
SORDELLO. *!1 
 
 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 w^ere tried 
 
 In that, no hollow thrills, afi^ected 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. 
 
78 SORDELLO. 
 
 Ask those calm -hearted doers what they do 
 
 When they have got their cahn ! Nay, is it true 
 
 Fire rankles at the heart of every glohe ? 
 
 Perhaps ! But these are matters one may probe 
 
 Too deeply for poetic purposes : 
 
 Rather select a theory that . . . yes [^midway 
 
 Laugh ! what does that prove ? . . . stations you 
 
 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 ? Yery like ! as well you hid 
 
 That sense of power you have ! True bards believe 
 
 Us 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, 
 
 Malignant, Pappacoda, Tagliafer, 
 
 Picking a sustenance from wear and tear 
 
SORDELLO. 79 
 
 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 ! Twas 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 rectify — 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 : Mantua scenes 
 
80 SORDELLO. 
 
 Supplied a baron, say, he sung 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 fancy into one, 
 
 And, body clean abolished, soul alone 
 
 Sufficed the grey Paulician : by and by 
 
 To balance the ethereality 
 
 Passions were needed ; foiled he sunk again. 
 
 Meanwhile the world rejoiced ('tis time explain) 
 Because a sudden sickness set it free 
 From Adelaide. Missins 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 
 
SORDELLO. 81 
 
 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 1 
 
 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 
 
 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' mount like this mishap 
 
 Startled him. That accursed Yicenza ! I 
 
 Absent, and she selects this time to die ! 
 
 Ho, fellows, for Yicenza ! Half a score 
 
 Of horses ridden dead he stood before 
 
 Romano in his reeking spurs : too late — 
 
 Boniface urged me, Este could not wait, 
 
 G 
 
82 BORDELLO. 
 
 The chieftain stammered ; let me die in peace — 
 
 Forget me ! Was it I e'er 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 ! Palraa, 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 ofi*, 
 Had done a long day's service, so might doff 
 The green and yellow to 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, their tenantry 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 though he forsook himself and spent 
 A prowess on Romano surely meant 
 For his own purposes — he ne'er resorts 
 If wholly satisfied (to trust reports) 
 
SORDELLO. 83 
 
 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 ; *tis a test 
 
 Remember ; Strojavacca looks asquint, 
 
 The rough fat sloven ; and there's plenty hint 
 
 Your pinions have received of late a shock — 
 
 Out-soar them, cobs wan of the silver flock ! 
 
 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 quits, a last shift, 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 afi*ect — 
 Such was a joy, and might not he detect 
 A satisfaction if established joys 
 Were proved imposture ? Poetry annoys 
 G 2 
 
84 SORDELLO. 
 
 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 ; 'twas Goito's mountain-cup 
 
 And castle. He had dropped through one defile 
 
 He never dared explore, the Chief erewhile 
 
 Had vanished by. Back rushed the dream, en wrapt 
 
 Him wholly. 'Twas 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 that thin seedling spice-tree starved and frail 
 
 Pushina: between cat's head or ibis' tail 
 
 Crusted into the porphyry pavement smooth 
 
 — Suffered remain just as it sprung to soothe 
 
 The Soldan s pining daughter, never yet 
 
 AYell in the chilly green-glazed minaret — 
 
SORDELLO. 85 
 
 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, 
 How from his purposes maintained before 
 Only resulted wailing and hot tears. 
 Ah, the slim castle ! dwindled of late years. 
 But more mysterious ; gone to ruin — trails 
 Of vine thro' every loop-hole. Nought 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 'tis like, one after one, you hear 
 In the blind darkness water-drops. The nests 
 And nooks retained 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 
 
86 SORDELLO. 
 
 Had been at the commencement proved unfit ; 
 That for Reflecting, Demonstrating 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, 
 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 perplext 
 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-chase might begin. 
 
SORDELLO. S7 
 
 BOOK THE THIRD. 
 
 And the font took them : let our laurels lie ! 
 Braid moonfem now with mystic trifoly 
 Because once more Goito gets, once more, 
 Sordello to itself ! A dream is o'er 
 And the suspended life begins anew ; 
 Quiet those throbbing temples, then, subdue 
 That cheek's distortion ! Nature's strict embrace, 
 Putting aside the past, shall soon efface 
 Its print as well — factitious humours grown 
 Over the true — loves, hatreds not his own — 
 And turn him pure as some forgotten vest 
 "Woven of painted byssus, silkiest 
 Tufting the Tyrrhene whelk's pearl-sheeted lip. 
 Left welter where a trireme let it slip 
 I' the sea and vexed a Satrap ; so the stain 
 C the world forsakes Sordello with its pain 
 
88 SORDELLO. 
 
 Its pleasure : how the tinct loosening escapes 
 
 Cloud after cloud ! Mantua's familiar shapes 
 
 Die, fair and foul die, fading as they flit, 
 
 Men, women, and the pathos and the wit. 
 
 Wise speech and foolish, deeds to smile or sigh 
 
 For, good, bad, seemly or ignoble, die : 
 
 The last face glances through the eglantines. 
 
 The last voice murmurs 'twixt the blossomed vines 
 
 This May of the Machine supplied by Thought 
 
 To compass Self-perception idly sought 
 
 By forcing half himself — an insane pulse 
 
 Of a God's blood on clay it could convulse 
 
 Never transmute — on human sights and sounds 
 
 To watch the other half with ; irksome bounds 
 
 It ebbs from to its source, a fountain sealed 
 
 Forever. Better sure be unrevealed 
 
 Than part-revealed : Sordello well or ill 
 
 Is finished with : what further use of Will ? 
 
 — Point in the prime idea not realized, 
 
 An oversight, inordinately prized 
 
 No less, and pampered with enough of each 
 
 Delight to prove the whole above its reach. 
 
 To need become all natures yet retain 
 
 The law of one's own nature — to remain 
 
SORDELLO. 89 
 
 Oneself, yet yearn . . . aha, that chesnut, think. 
 To yearn for this first larch-bloom crisp and pink. 
 With those pale fragrant tears where zephyrs staunch 
 March wounds along the fretted pine-tree branch ! 
 Will and the means to show it, great and small 
 Material, spiritual, abjure them all 
 Save any so distinct as to be left 
 Amuse, not tempt become : and, thus bereft, 
 Say, just as I am fashioned would I be ! 
 Nor, Moon, is it Apollo now but me 
 Thou visitest to comfort and befriend ; 
 Swim thou into my heart and there an end 
 Since I possess thee ! nay thus shut mine eyes 
 And know, quite know, by that heart's fall and rise 
 If thou dost bury thee in clouds and when 
 Out-standest : wherefore practise upon Men 
 To make that plainer to myself ? 
 
 Slide here 
 Over a sweet and solitary year 
 Wasted : or simply notice change in him — 
 How eyes, bright with exploring once, grew dim 
 As satiate with receiving. Some distress 
 Occasioned, too, a sort of consciousness 
 Under the imbecility ; nought kept 
 That down : he slept, but was aware he slept 
 
90 SORDELLO. 
 
 And frustrate so ; as who brainsick made pact 
 
 Erst with the overhanging cataract 
 
 To deafen him, yet may distinguish now 
 
 His own blood's measured clicking at his brow. 
 
 To finish. One declining Autumn day — 
 Few birds about the heaven chill and grey, 
 No wind that cared trouble the tacit woods — 
 He sauntered home complacently, their moods 
 According, his and Nature's. Every spark 
 Of Mantua life was trodden out ; so dark 
 The embers that the Troubadour who sung 
 Hundreds of songs forgot, its trick the tongue, 
 Its craft the brain, how either brought to pass 
 Singing so e'er ; that faculty might class 
 With any of Apollo's now. The year 
 Began to find its early promise sere 
 As well. Thus beauty vanishes ! Your stone 
 Outlasts your flesh. Nature's and his youth gone, 
 They left the world to you and wished you joy. 
 When stopping his benevolent employ 
 A presage shuddered through the welkin ; harsh 
 The earth's remonstrance followed. 'Twas the marsh 
 Gone of a sudden. Mincio in its place 
 Laughed a broad water in next morning's face 
 
SORDELLO. 91 
 
 And, where the mists broke up immense and white 
 I' the steady wind, burnt like a spilth of light 
 Out of the crashing of a myriad stars. 
 And here was Nature, bound by the same bars 
 Of fate with him ! 
 
 No : youth once gone is gone : 
 Deeds let escape are never to be done : 
 Leaf-fall and grass-spring for the year, but us — 
 Oh forfeit I unalterably thus 
 My chance ? nor two lives wait me, this to spend 
 Learning save that ? Nature has leisure mend 
 Mistake, occasion, knows she, will recur — 
 Landslip or seabreach how affects it her 
 With her magnificent resources ? I 
 Must perish once and perish utterly ! 
 Not any strollings now at even- close 
 Down the field-path, Sordello, by thorn-rows 
 Alive with lamp-flies, swimming spots of fire 
 And dew, outlining the black cypress' spire 
 She waits you at, Elys, who heard you first 
 Woo her the snow-month — ah, but ere she durst 
 Answer 'twas April ! Linden-flower- time-long 
 Her eyes were on the ground ; 'tis July, strong 
 Now ; and because white dust-clouds overwhelm 
 The woodside, here or by the village elm 
 
92 BORDELLO. 
 
 That holds the moon she meets you, somewhat pale, 
 
 But letting you lift up her coarse flax veil 
 
 And whisper (the damp little hand in yours) 
 
 Of love — heart's love — your heart's love that endures 
 
 Till death. Tush ! No mad mixing with the rout 
 
 Of haggard ribalds wandering about 
 
 The hot torchlit wine -scented island-house 
 
 Where Friedrich holds his wickedest carouse 
 
 Parading to the gay Palermitans, 
 
 Soft Messinese, dusk Saracenic clans 
 
 From Nuocera, those tall grave dazzling Norse, 
 
 Clear-cheeked, lank-haired, toothed whiter than the 
 
 Queens of the caves of jet stalactites Qmorse, 
 
 He sent his barks to fetch through icy seas. 
 
 The blind night seas without a saving-star. 
 
 And here in snowy birdskin robes they are, 
 
 Sordello, here, mollitious alcoves gilt 
 
 Superb as Byzant-domes the devils built 
 
 — Ah, Byzant, there again ! no chance to go 
 
 Ever like august pleasant Dandolo, 
 
 Worshipping hearts about him for a wall, 
 
 Conducted, blind eyes, hundred years and all. 
 
 Through vanquished Byzant to have noted him 
 
 What pillar, marble massive, sardius slim. 
 
SORDELLO. 93 
 
 Twere fittest we transport to Venice* Square — 
 
 Flattered and promised life to touch them there 
 
 Soon, by his fervid sons of senators ! 
 
 No more lifes, deaths, loves, hatreds, peaces, wars — 
 
 Ah, fragments of a Whole ordained to be ! 
 
 Points in the life I waited ! what are ye 
 
 But roundels of a ladder which appeared 
 
 Awhile the very platform it was reared 
 
 To lift me on — that Happiness I find 
 
 Proofs of my faith in, even in the blind 
 
 Instinct which bade forego you all unless 
 
 Ye led me past yourselves ? Ay, Happiness 
 
 Awaited me ; the way life should be used 
 
 Was to acquire, and deeds like you conduced 
 
 To teach it by a self-revealment (deemed 
 
 That very use too long). Whatever seemed 
 
 Progress to that was Pleasure ; aught that stayed 
 
 Me reaching it — No Pleasure. I have laid 
 
 The roundels down ; I climb not ; still aloft 
 
 The platform stretches ! Blisses strong and soft 
 
 I dared not entertain elude me ; yet 
 
 Never of what they promised could I get 
 
 A glimpse till now ! The common sort, the crowd, 
 
 Exist, perceive ; with Being are endowed. 
 
94 SORDELLO. 
 
 However slight, distinct from what they See, 
 However bounded : Happiness must be 
 To feed the first by gleanings from the last, 
 Attain its qualities, and slow or fast 
 Become what one beholds ; such peace-in-strife 
 By transmutation is the Use of Life, 
 The Alien turning Native to the soul 
 Or body — which instructs me ; I am whole 
 There and demand a Palma ; had the world 
 Been from my soul to a like distance hurled 
 'Twere Happiness to make it one with me — 
 Whereas I must, ere I begin to Be, 
 Include a world, in flesh, I comprehend 
 In spirit now ; and this done, what's to blend 
 "With ? Nought is Alien here — my Will 
 Owns it already ; yet can turn it still 
 Less Native, since my Means to correspond 
 With Will are so unworthy 'twas my bond 
 To tread the very ones that tantalize 
 Me now into a grave, never to rise — 
 I die then ! Will the rest agree to die ? 
 Next Age or no ? Shall its Sordello try 
 Clue after clue and catch at last the clue 
 I miss, that's underneath my finger too, 
 
SORDELLO. 95 
 
 Twice, thrice a day, perhaps, — some yearning traced 
 
 Deeper, some petty consequence embraced 
 
 Closer ! Why fled I Mantua then ? Complained 
 
 So much my Will was fettered, yet remained 
 
 Content within a tether half the range 
 
 I could assign it ? — able to exchange 
 
 My ignorance, I felt, for knowledge, and 
 
 Idle because I could thus understand — 
 
 Could e'en have penetrated to its core 
 
 Our mortal mystery, and yet forbore, 
 
 Preferred elaborating in the dark 
 
 My casual stuff*, by any wretched spark 
 
 Born of my predecessors, tho' one stroke 
 
 Of mine had brought the flame forth ! Mantua's yoke. 
 
 My minstrel's-trade, was to behold mankind, 
 
 And my own matter — just to bring my mind 
 
 Behold, just extricate, for my acquist. 
 
 Each object suffered stifle in the mist 
 
 Convention, hazard, blindness could impose 
 
 In their relation to myself. 
 
 He rose. 
 The level wind carried above the firs 
 Clouds, the irrevocable travellers, 
 Onward. 
 
 I 
 
96 SORDELLO. 
 
 Pushed thus into a drowsy copse, 
 Arms twine about my neck, each eyelid drops 
 Under a humid finger ; while there fleets 
 Outside the screen a pageant time repeats 
 Never again ! To be deposed — immured 
 Clandestinely — still petted, still assured 
 To govern were fatiguing work — the Sight 
 Fleeting meanwhile ! 'Tis noontide — wreak ere night 
 Somehow one's will upon it rather ! Slake 
 This thirst somehow, the poorest impress take 
 That serves ! A blasted bud displays you, torn, 
 Faint rudiments of the full flower unborn ; 
 But who divines what petal coats o*erclasp 
 Of the bulb dormant in the Mummy's grasp 
 Taurello sent . . . 
 
 Taurello ? Palma sent 
 Your Trouvere (Naddo interposing leant 
 Over the lost bard's shoulder) and believe 
 You cannot more reluctantly conceive 
 Than I pronounce her message : we depart 
 Together : what avail a poet's heart 
 Verona and her gauds ? ^Ye blades of grass 
 Sufiice him. News ? Why, where your marish was, 
 On its mud-banks smoke rises after smoke 
 r the valley like a spout of hell new-broke. 
 
SORDELLO. 97 
 
 Oh, the world's tidings ! little thanks, I guess, 
 
 For them. The father of our Patroness 
 
 Playing Taurello an astounding trick 
 
 Parts between Ecelin and Alberic 
 
 His wealth and goes into a convent : both 
 
 Wed Guelfs : the Count and Palma plighted troth 
 
 A week since at Verona : and she wants 
 
 You doubtless to contrive the marriage-chants 
 
 Ere Richard storms Ferrara. Your response 
 
 To Palma ? Wherefore jest ? Depart at once ? 
 
 A good resolve ! In truth I hardly hoped 
 
 So prompt an acquiescence. Have you groped 
 
 Out wisdom in the wilds here ? — Thoughts may be 
 
 Over-poetical for poetry ? 
 
 Pearl-white you minstrels liken Palma's neck, 
 
 And yet what spoils an orient like some speck 
 
 Of genuine white turning its own white grey ? 
 
 You take me ? Curse the cicales ! 
 
 One more day — 
 One eve — appears Yerona ! Many a group, 
 (You mind) instructed of the osprey's swoop 
 On 1 nx and ounce, was gathering — Christendom 
 Sure to receive, whatever it might be, from 
 The evening's purpose cheer or detriment 
 Since Friedrich only waited some event 
 H 
 
98 SORDELLO. 
 
 Like this of Ghibellins establishing 
 
 Themselves within Ferrara, ere, as King 
 
 Of Lombardy, he'd glad descend there, wage 
 
 Old warfare with the Pontiff, disengage 
 
 His barons from the burghers, and restore 
 
 The rule of Charlemagne broken of yore 
 
 By Hildebrand. That eve-long each by each 
 
 Sordello sate and Palma : little speech 
 
 At first in that dim closet, face with face 
 
 Despite the tumult in the market place 
 
 Exchanging quick low laughters : now would gush 
 
 Word upon word to meet a sudden flush, 
 
 A look left off, a shifting lips' surmise — 
 
 But for the most part their two histories 
 
 Ran best thro' the locked fingers and linked arms. 
 
 And so the night flew on w4th its alarms 
 
 Till in burst one of Palma's retinue ; 
 
 Now Lady, gasped he. Then arose the two 
 
 And leaned into Verona's air dead still. 
 
 A balcony lay black beneath until 
 
 Out 'mid a gush of torchfire gTey-haired men 
 
 Came on it and harangued the people : then 
 
 Sea-like that people surging to and fro 
 
 Shouted, Hale forth the Carroch — trumpets, ho, 
 
SORDELLO. 99 
 
 A flourish ! run it in the ancient grooves — 
 Back from the bell ! Hammer ! that whom behooves 
 May hear the League is up ! Peal ! learn who list 
 Verona means not be the first break tryst 
 To-morrow with the League. 
 
 Enough. Now turn — 
 Over the Eastern cypresses : discern 
 You any beacon set a-glimmer ? 
 
 Rang 
 The air with shouts that overpowered the clang 
 Of the incessant carroch even. Haste — 
 The Candle's at the gate- way ! ere it waste 
 Each soldier stands beside, armed fit to march 
 With Tiso Sampier thro' that Eastern arch ! 
 Ferrara's succoured, Palma ! 
 
 Once again 
 They sate together ; some strange thing in train 
 To say, so difiicult was Palma's place 
 In taking, with a coy fastidious grace 
 Like the bird's flutter ere it fix and feed ; 
 But when she felt she held her friend indeed 
 Safe, she threw back her curls, began implant 
 Her lessons ; telling of another want 
 Goito's quiet nourished than his own ; 
 Palma — to serve, as him — be served, alone 
 h2 
 
100 SORDELLO. 
 
 Importing ; Agnes' milk so neutralised 
 
 The blood of Ecelin. Nor be surprised 
 
 If, while Sordello nature captive led, 
 
 In dream was Palma wholly subjected 
 
 To some out-soul which dawned not though she pined 
 
 Delaying still (pursued she) heart and mind 
 
 To live : how dared I let expand the force 
 
 Within me till some out-soul whose resource 
 
 It grew for should direct it ? Every law 
 
 Of life, its fitnesses and every flaw, 
 
 Must that determine whose corporeal shape 
 
 Would be no other than the prime escape 
 
 And revelation to me of a Will 
 
 Orb-like o'ershrouded and inscrutable 
 
 Above except the point I was to know 
 
 Shone that myself, my powers, might overflow 
 
 So far, so much ; as now it signified 
 
 Which earthly shape it henceforth chose to guide 
 
 Me by, whose lip selected to declare 
 
 Its oracles, what fleshly garb would wear: 
 
 — The first of intimations, whom to love ; 
 
 The next, how love him. And that orb above 
 
 The castle-covert and the mountain-close 
 
 Slow in appearing, if beneath arose 
 
BORDELLO. 101 
 
 Cravings, aversions, and our green precinct 
 Took pride in me at unawares distinct 
 With this or that endowment, how represt, 
 At once such jetting power shrunk to the rest ! 
 Was I to have a chance touch spoil me, leave 
 My spirit thence unfitted to receive 
 The consummating spell ? — that spell so near 
 Moreover : waits he not the waking year ? 
 His almond- blossoms must be honey-ripe 
 By this ; to welcome him fresh runnels stripe 
 The thawed ravines ; because of him the wind 
 Walks like a herald. I shall surely find 
 Him now ! 
 
 And chief that earnest April mom 
 Of Richard's Love-court was it time, so worn 
 And white her cheek, so idly her blood beat. 
 Sitting that morn beside the Lady's feet 
 And saying as she prompted ; till outburst 
 One face from all the faces — not then first 
 She knew it ; where in maple-chamber glooms, 
 Crowned with what sanguine-heart pomegranate 
 Advanced it ever ? Men s acknowledgment j^blooms 
 Sanctioned her own : 'twas taken, Palma's bent, 
 She said. 
 
102 SORDELLO. 
 
 And day by day the Tuscan dumb 
 Sat scheming, scheming ; Ecelin would come 
 Gaunt, scared, Cesano baffles me, he'd say : 
 Better I fought it out my father s way ! 
 Strangle Ferrara in its drowning flats 
 And you and your Taurello yonder — what's 
 Romano's business there ? An hour's concern 
 To cure the fro ward Chief ! induced return 
 Much heartened from those overmeaning eyes, 
 Wound up to persevere, his enterprise 
 Marked out anew, its exigent of wit 
 Apportioned, she at liberty to sit 
 And scheme against the next emergence, I — 
 To covet what I deemed their sprite, made fly 
 Or fold the wing — to con your horoscope 
 For leave command those steely shafts shoot ope 
 Or straight assuage their blinding eagerness 
 To blank smooth snow : what semblance of success 
 To any of my plans for making you 
 Romano's lord ? That Chief — her children too — 
 There Salinguerra would obstruct me sheer. 
 And the insuperable Tuscan here 
 Stayed me ! But one wild eve that Lady died 
 Jn her lone chamber : only I beside : 
 
SORDELLO. 103 
 
 Taurello far at Naples, and my sire 
 At Padua, Ecelin away in ire 
 With Alberic : she held me thus — a clutch 
 To make our spirits as our bodies touch — 
 And so began flinging the past up, heaps 
 Of uncouth treasure from their sunless sleeps 
 Within her soul ; deeds rose along with dreams, 
 Fragments of many miserable schemes, 
 Secrets, more secrets, then — no, not the last — 
 'Mongst others, like a casual trick o' the past, 
 How . . . ay, she told me, gathering her face 
 — That face of hers into one arch-grimace 
 To die with . . . 
 
 Friend, 'tis gone ! but not the fear 
 Of that fell laughing, heard as now I hear. 
 Nor faltered voice, nor seemed herself grow weak, 
 When i' the midst abrupt she ceased to speak 
 — Dead, as to serve a purpose, mark, for in 
 Rushed o' the very instant Ecelin 
 (How summoned who divines ?) looking as if 
 Part understood he why his mate lay stiff 
 Already in my arms for, Girl, how must 
 I manage Este in the matter thrust 
 Upon me, how unravel their bad coil ? 
 Since (he declared) 'tis on your brow — a soil 
 
104 SORDELLO. 
 
 Like hers there ! then said in a breath he lacked 
 
 No counsel after all, had signed no pact 
 
 With devils, nor was treason here or there, 
 
 Goito or Yicenza, his affair : 
 
 He 'd bury it in Adelaide's deep grave 
 
 And begin life afresh, nor, either, slave 
 
 For any Friedrich's or Taurello's sake ! 
 
 What booted him to meddle or to make 
 
 In Lombardy ? 'Twas afterward I knew 
 
 The meaning of his promise to undo 
 
 All she had done — why marriages were made, 
 
 New friendships entered on, old followers paid 
 
 In curses for their pains, people's amaze 
 
 At height, when passing out by Gate St. Blaise 
 
 He stopped short in Yicenza, bent his head 
 
 Over a friar s neck, had vowed, he said. 
 
 Long since, nigh thirty years, because his wife 
 
 And child were saved there, to bestow his life 
 
 On God, his gettings on the Church. 
 
 Exiled 
 Within Goito, still that dream beguiled 
 Her days and nights ; 'twas found the orb she sought 
 To serve, those glimpses came of Fomalhaut 
 No other : how then serve it ? — authorise 
 Him and Romano mingle destinies ? 
 
SORDELLO. 105 
 
 And straight Romano's angel stood beside 
 Her who had else been Boniface's bride, 
 For Salinguerra 'twas, the neck low bent, 
 The voice lightened to music as he meant 
 To learn not teach me how Romano waxed, 
 Wherefore it waned, and why if I relaxed 
 My grasp (think, I !) would drop a thing effete, 
 Frayed by itself, unequal to complete 
 The course and counting every step astray 
 A gain so much. Romano every way 
 Stable, a House now — why this starting back 
 Into the very outset of its track ? 
 This recent patching-principle allied 
 Our House with other Houses — what beside 
 Concerned the apparition, yon grim Knight 
 Who followed Conrad hither in such plight 
 His utmost wealth was reckoned in his steed ? 
 For Ecelo, that prowler, was decreed 
 A task in the beginning hazardous 
 To him as ever task can be to us, 
 But did the weather-beaten thief despair 
 When first our crystal cincture of warm air. 
 That binds the Trivisan as its spice-belt 
 (Crusaders say) the tract where Jesus' dwelt, 
 
106 SORDELLO. 
 
 Furtive he pierced and Este was to face — 
 
 Despaired Saponian Strength of Lombard Grace ? 
 
 Said he for making surer aught made sure, 
 
 Maturing what already was mature ? 
 
 No ; his heart prompted Ecelo, Confront 
 
 Este, inspect yourself. What's nature ? Wont. 
 
 Discard three-parts your nature and adopt 
 
 The rest as an advantage I Old Strength propped 
 
 The earliest of Podestas among 
 
 The Yincentines, no less than, while there sprung 
 
 His Palace up in Padua like a threat, 
 
 Their noblest spied a Grace unnoticed yet 
 
 In Conrad's crew. Thus far the object gained, 
 
 Romano was established ; has remained — 
 
 For are you not Italian, truly peer 
 
 With Este ? Azzo better soothes it ear 
 
 Than Alberic ? or is this lion s-crine 
 
 From over-mount (this yellow hair of mine) 
 
 So weak a graft on Agnes Este's stock ? 
 
 (Thus went he on with something of a mock) 
 
 Wherefore recoil then from the very fate 
 
 Conceded you, refuse to imitate 
 
 Your model farther ? Este long since left 
 
 Being mere Este : as a blade its heft. 
 
SORDELLO. 107 
 
 Este requires the Pope to further him : 
 
 And you, the Kaiser : whom your father's whim 
 
 Foregoes or, better, never shall forego 
 
 If Palma dares pursue what Ecelo 
 
 Commenced but Ecelin desists from : just 
 
 As Adelaide of Susa could intrust 
 
 Her donative (that 's Piedmont to the Pope, 
 
 The Alpine-pass for him to shut or ope 
 
 Twixt France and Italy) to the superb 
 
 Matilda's perfecting, — lest aught disturb 
 
 Our Adelaide's great counter-project for 
 
 Giving her Trentine to the Emperor 
 
 And passage here from Germany, shall you 
 
 Take it, my slender plodding talent, too — 
 
 Urged me Taurello w4th his half-smile. 
 
 He 
 As Patron of the scattered family 
 Conveyed her to his Mantua, kept in bruit 
 Azzo's alliances and Richard's suit 
 Until, the Kaiser excommunicate. 
 Nothing remains, Taurello said, but wait 
 Some rash procedure : Palma was the link, 
 As Agnes' child, between us, and they shrink 
 From losing Palma : judge if we advance 
 Your father s method your inheritance ! 
 
108 SORDELLO. 
 
 That day she was betrothed to Boniface 
 
 At Padua by Taurello's self, took place 
 
 The outrage of the Ferrarese : again, 
 
 That day she sought Yerona with the train 
 
 Agreed for, by Taurello's policy 
 
 Convicting Richard of the fault, since she 
 
 Was present to annul or to confirm, 
 
 Richard, whose patience had outstayed its term. 
 
 Quitted Yerona for the siege. 
 
 And now 
 "What glory may engird Sordello's brow 
 For this ? A month since Oliero sunk 
 All Ecelin that was into a Monk ; 
 But how could Salinguerra so forget 
 His liege of thirty summers as grudge yet 
 One effort to recover him ? He sent 
 Forthwith the tidings of the Town s event 
 To Oliero, adding, he, despite 
 The recent folly, recognised his right 
 To order such proceedings ; should he wring 
 Its uttermost advantage out, or fling 
 This chance away ? If not him, who was Head 
 Now of the House ? Through me that missive sped ; 
 My father s answer will by me return. 
 Behold ! For him, he writes, no more concern 
 
SORDELLO. 109 
 
 With strife than for his children with the plots 
 Of Friedrich. Old engagements out he blots 
 For aye : Taurello shall no more subserve 
 Nor Ecelin impose. Lest this unnerve 
 Him therefore at this juncture, slack his grip 
 Of Richard, suffer the occasion slip, 
 I, in his sons' default (who, mating with 
 Este, forsake Romano as the frith 
 Its mainsea for the firmland that makes head 
 Against) I stand, Romano ; in their stead 
 Assume the station they desert, and give 
 Still, as the Kaiser s Representative, 
 Taurello licence he demands. Midnight — 
 Morning — by noon to-morrow, making light 
 Of the League's issue, we, in some gay weed 
 Like yours disguised together, may precede 
 The arbitrators to Ferrara ; reach 
 Him, let Taurello' s noble accents teach 
 The rest ! then say if I have misconceived 
 Your destiny, too readily believed 
 The Kaiser s cause your own. 
 
 And Palma 's fled. 
 Though no affirmative disturbs the head 
 A dying lamp-flame sinks and rises o'er 
 Like the alighted planet Pollux wore. 
 
110 SORDELLO. 
 
 Until, morn breaking, he resolves to be 
 
 Gate- vein of this heart's blood of Lombardy, 
 
 Soul to their body — have their aggregate 
 
 Of souls and bodies, and so conquer fate 
 
 Though he should live, a centre of disgust 
 
 Even, apart, core of the outward crust 
 
 He vivifies, assimilates. For thus 
 
 Bring I Bordello to the rapturous 
 
 Exclaim at the crowd's cry, because one round 
 
 Of life was quite accomplished and he found 
 
 Not only that a soul, howe'er its might, 
 
 Is insufficient to its own delight 
 
 Both in corporeal organs and in skill 
 
 By means of such to body forth its Will — 
 
 And, after, insufficient to apprise 
 
 Men of that Will, oblige them recognise 
 
 The Hid by the Revealed — but that, the last 
 
 Nor lightest of the struggles overpast, 
 
 His Will, bade abdicate, which would not void 
 
 The throne, might sit there , suffer be enjoyed 
 
 The same a varied and divine array 
 
 Incapable of homage the first way 
 
 Nor fit to render incidentally 
 
 Tribute connived at, taken by the by, 
 
SORDELLO. lil 
 
 In joys : and if, thus warranted rescind 
 
 The ignominious exile of mankind 
 
 Whose proper service, ascertained intact 
 
 As yet (by Him to be themselves made act. 
 
 Not watch Sordello acting each of them) 
 
 "Was to secure — if the true diadem 
 
 Seenied imminent while our Sordello drank 
 
 The wisdom of that golden Palma, thank 
 
 Yerona's Lady in her Citadel 
 
 Founded by Gaulish Brennus legends tell — 
 
 And truly when she left him the sun reared 
 
 A head like the first clamberer's that peered 
 
 A-top the Capitol, his face on flame 
 
 With triumph, triumphing till Manlius came. 
 
 Nor slight too much my rhymes — " that spring, 
 
 Dispart, disperse, lingering overhead [^dispread. 
 
 Like an escape of angels ? " Hather say 
 
 My transcendental platan ! mounting gay 
 
 (An archimage so courts a novice-queen) 
 
 With tremulous silvered trunk, whence branches sheen 
 
 Laugh out, thick foliaged next, a-shiver soon 
 
 With coloured buds, then glowing like the moon 
 
 One mild flame, last a pause, a burst, and all 
 
 Her ivory limbs are smothered by a fall, 
 
112 SORDELLO. 
 
 Bloom-flinders and fruit-sparkles and leaf-dust, 
 Ending the weird work prosecuted just 
 For her amusement ; he decrepit, stark, 
 Dozes ; her uncontrolled delight may mark 
 Apart — 
 
 Yet not so, surely never so ! 
 Only as good my soul were suffered go 
 O'er the lagune : forth fare thee, put aside 
 Ehtrance thy synod, as a God may glide 
 Out of the world he fills and leave it mute 
 A myriad ages as we men compute. 
 Returning into it without a break 
 I' the consciousness ! They sleep, and I awake 
 O'er the lagune. 
 
 Sordello said once, note 
 In just such songs as Eglamor, say, wrote 
 With heart and soul and strength, for he believed 
 Himself achieving all to be achieved 
 By singer — in such songs you find alone 
 Completeness, judge the song and singer One 
 And either s purpose answered, his in it 
 Or its in him : while from true works (to wit 
 Sordello's dream-performances that will 
 Be never more than dream) escapes there still 
 
SORDELLO. 113 
 
 Some proof the singer s proper life 's beneath 
 
 The life his song exhibits, this a sheath 
 
 To that ; a passion and a knowledge far 
 
 Transcending these, majestic as they are. 
 
 Smoulder ; his lay was but an episode 
 
 In the bard's life. Which evidence you owed 
 
 To some slight weariness, a looking-off 
 
 Or start-away, the childish skit or scoff 
 
 In " Charlemagne,'* for instance, dreamed divine 
 
 In every point except one restive line 
 
 (Those daughters !) — what significance may lurk 
 
 In that ? My life commenced before that work. 
 
 Continues after it, as on I fare 
 
 With no more stopping possibly, no care 
 
 To jot down (says the bard) the why and how 
 
 And where and when of life as I do now : 
 
 But shall I cease to live for that ? Alas 
 
 For you ! who sigh, when shall it come to pass 
 
 We read that story, when will he compress 
 
 The future years, his whole life's business, 
 
 Into another lay which that one flout, 
 
 Howe'er inopportune it be, lets out 
 
 Engrosses him already while professed 
 
 To meditate with us eternal rest ? 
 
114 , SORDELLO. 
 
 Strike sail, slip cable ! here the galley 's moored 
 For once, the awning's stretched, the poles assured ; 
 Noontide above ; except the wave's crisp dash. 
 Or buzz of colibri, or tortoise' splash, 
 The margin's silent ; out with every spoil 
 Made in our tracking, coil by mighty coil, 
 This serpent of a river to his head 
 I' the midst ! Admire each treasure as we spread 
 The turf to help us tell our history 
 Aright : give ear then, gentles, and descry 
 The groves of giant rushes how they grew 
 Like demons' endlong tresses we sailed through. 
 How mountains yawned, forests to give us vent 
 Opened, each doleful side, yet on we went 
 Till . . . may that beetle (shake your cap) attest 
 The springing of a land-wind from the West ! 
 Wherefore ? Ah yes, we frolic it to-day : 
 To-morrow, and the pageant's moved away 
 Down to the poorest tent-pole : we and you 
 Part company : no other may pursue 
 Eastward your voyage, be informed what fate 
 Intends, if triumph or decline await 
 The tempter of the everlasting steppe. 
 I sung this on an empty palace -step 
 
SORDELLO. 115 
 
 At Venice : why should I break off, nor sit 
 Longer upon my step, exhaust the fit 
 England gave birth to ? Who's adorable 
 
 Enough reclaim a no Sordello's Will 
 
 Alack ! — be queen to me ? That Bassanese 
 Busied among her smoking fruit -boats ? These 
 Perhaps from our delicious Asolo 
 Who twinkle, pigeons o'er the portico 
 Not prettier, bind late lilies into sheaves 
 To deck the bridge-side chapel, dropping leaves 
 Soiled by their own loose gold-meal ? Ah, beneath 
 The cool arch stoops she, brownest-cheek ! Her wreath 
 Endures a month — a half month — if I make 
 A queen of her, continue for her sake 
 Bordello's story ? Nay, that Paduan girl 
 Splashes with barer legs where a live whirl 
 In the dead black Giudecca proves sea- weed 
 Drifting has sucked down three, four, all indeed 
 Save one pale-red striped, pale-blue turbaned post 
 For gondolas. 
 
 You sad disheveled ghost 
 That pluck at me and point, are you advised 
 I breathe ? Let stay those girls (e'en her disguised 
 — Jewels in the locks that love no crownet like 
 Their native field-buds and the green wheat spike, 
 i2 
 
116 SORDELLO. 
 
 So fair ! — Who left this end of June's turmoil, 
 
 Shook off, as might a lily its gold soil, 
 
 Pomp, save a foolish gem or two, and free 
 
 Came join the peasants o'er the kissing sea.) 
 
 Look they too happy, too tricked out ? Confess 
 
 You have so niggard stock of happiness 
 
 To share that, do one's uttermost, dear wretch. 
 
 One labours ineffectually stretch 
 
 It o'er you so that mother, children, both 
 
 May equitably flaunt the sumpter-cloth ! 
 
 No : tear the robe yet farther : be content 
 
 With seeing some few score pre-eminent 
 
 Through shreds of it, acknowledged happy wights, 
 
 Engrossing what should furnish all, by rights — 
 
 (At home we dizen scholars, chiefs and kings. 
 
 But in this magic weather hardly clings 
 
 The old garb gracefully : Venice, a type 
 
 Of Life, 'twixt blue and blue extends, a stripe, 
 
 As Life, the somewhat, hangs'twixt nought and nought r 
 
 'Tis Venice, and 'tis Life — as good you sought 
 
 To spare me the Piazza's slippery stone. 
 
 Or stay me thrid her cross canals alone. 
 
 As hinder Life what seems the single good 
 
 Sole purpose, one thing to be understood 
 
SORDELLO. 117 
 
 Of Life) — best, be they Peasants, be they Queens, 
 
 Take them, I say, made happy any means. 
 
 Parade them for the common credit, vouch 
 
 A luckless residue we send to crouch 
 
 In corners out of sight was just as framed 
 
 For happiness, its portion might have claimed 
 
 And so, could we concede that portion, stalked 
 
 Fastuous as any — such my project, baulked 
 
 Already ; hardly venture I adjust 
 
 A lappet when I find you ! To mistrust 
 
 Me ! nor unreasonably. You, no doubt, 
 
 Have the true knack of tiring suitors out 
 
 With those thin lips on tremble, lashless eyes 
 
 Inveterately tear-shot — there, be wise 
 
 Mistress of mine, there, there, as if I meant 
 
 You insult ! Shall your friend (not slave) be shent 
 
 For speaking home ? Beside care-bit erased 
 
 Broken-up beauties ever took my taste 
 
 Supremely, and I love you more, far more 
 
 That she I looked should foot Life's temple-floor — 
 
 Years ago, leagues at distance, when and where 
 
 A whisper came. Seek others, since thy care 
 
 Is found, a life's provision ; if a race 
 
 Should be thy mistress, and into one face 
 
118 SORDELLO. 
 
 The many faces crowd ? Ah, had I, judge, 
 Or no, your secret ? Rough apparel — grudge 
 All ornaments save tag or tassel worn 
 To hint we are not thoroughly forlorn — 
 Slouch bonnet, unloop mantle, careless go 
 Alone (that's saddest but it must be so) 
 Through Venice, sing now and now glance aside, 
 Aught desultory or undignified. 
 And, ravishingest lady, will you pass 
 Or not each formidable group, the mass 
 Before the Basilike (that feast gone by, 
 God's day, the great June Corpus Domini) 
 And wistfully foregoing proper men 
 Come timid up to me for alms ? And then 
 The luxury to hesitate, feign do 
 Some unexampled grace, when whom but you 
 Dare I bestow your own upon ? And hear , 
 Me out before you say it is to sneer 
 I call you ravishing, for I regret 
 Little that she, whose early foot was set 
 Forth as she'd plant it on a pedestal, 
 Now i' the silent city, seems to fall 
 Towards me — no wreath, only a lip's unrest 
 To quiet, surcharged eyelids to be pressed 
 
SORDELLO. 119 
 
 Dry of their tears upon my bosom : strange 
 
 Such sad chance should produce in thee such change, 
 
 My love ! warped men, souls, bodies ! yet God spoke 
 
 Of right-hand foot and eye — selects our yoke 
 
 Sordello ! as your poetship may find : 
 
 So sleep upon my shoulder, child, nor mind 
 
 Their foolish talk ; we'll manage reinstate 
 
 The matter ; ask moreover, when they prate 
 
 Of evil men past hope, don t each contrive 
 
 Despite the evil you abuse to live ? 
 
 Keeping, each losel, thro' a maze of lies, 
 
 His own conceit of truth ? to which he hies 
 
 By obscure tortuous windings, if you will. 
 
 But to himself not inaccessible ; 
 
 He sees it, and his lies are for the crowd 
 
 Who cannot see ; some fancied right allowed 
 
 His vilest wrong, empowered the fellow clutch 
 
 One pleasure from the multitude of such 
 
 Denied him : then assert, all men appear 
 
 To think all better than themselves, by here 
 
 Trusting a crowd they wrong ; but really, say. 
 
 All men think all men stupider than they 
 
 Since save themselves no other comprehends 
 
 The complicated scheme to make amends 
 
120 SORDELLO. 
 
 — Evil, the scheme by which, thro' Ignorance 
 Good labours to exist. A slight advance 
 Merely to find the sickness you die through 
 And nought beside : but if one can t eschew 
 One's portion in the common lot, at least 
 One can avoid an ignorance increased 
 Tenfold by dealing out hint after hint 
 How nought is like dispensing without stint 
 The water of life — so easy to dispense 
 Beside, when one has probed the centre whence 
 Commotion's born — could tell you of it all 
 — Meantime, just meditate my madrigal 
 O* the mugwort that conceals a dewdrop safe ! . 
 What, dullard ? we and you in smothery chafe 
 Babes, baldheads, stumbled thus far into Zin 
 The Horrid, getting neither out nor in, 
 A hungry sun above us, sands among 
 Our throats, each dromedary lolls a tongue. 
 Each camel churns a sick and frothy chap. 
 And you, 'twixt tales of Potiphar s mishap 
 And sonnets on the earliest ass that spoke. 
 Remark you wonder any one needs choak 
 With founts about ! Potsherd him, Gibeonites, 
 While awkwardly enough your Moses smites 
 
SORDELLO. 121 
 
 The rock though he forego his Promised Land, 
 
 Thereby, have Satan claim his carcass, and 
 
 Dance, forsooth, Metaphysic Poet ... ah 
 
 Mark ye the dim first oozings ? Meribah ! 
 
 And quaffing at the fount my courage gained 
 
 Recall — not that I prompt ye — who explained . . . 
 
 Presumptuous ! interrupts one. You not I 
 
 'Tis, Brother, marvel at and magnify 
 
 Mine office : office, quotha ? can we get 
 
 To the beginning of the office yet ? 
 
 What do we here ? simply experiment 
 
 Each on the other's power and its intent 
 
 When elsewhere tasked, if this of mine were trucked 
 
 For thine to either s profit, — watch construct, 
 
 In short, an engine : with a finished one 
 
 What it can do is all, nought how 'tis done ; 
 
 But this of ours yet in probation, dusk 
 
 A kernel of strange wheel work thro' its husk 
 
 Grows into shape by quarters and by halves ; 
 
 Remark this tooth's spring, wonder what that valve's 
 
 Fall bodes, presume each faculty's device. 
 
 Make out each other more or less precise — 
 
 The scope of the whole engine's to be proved — 
 
 We die : which means to say the whole's removed, 
 
124 SORDELLO. 
 
 The Minster minded that ! in heaps the dust 
 Lay every where : that town, the Minster s trust, 
 Held Plara ; who, its denizen, bade hail 
 In twice twelve sonnets, Naddo, Tempers vale. 
 
 Exact the town, the minster and the street ! 
 
 As all mirth triumphs, sadness means defeat : 
 Lust triumphs and is gay, Love's triumphed o'er 
 And sad : but Lucio's sad : I said before ^ 
 Love's sad, not Lucio ; one who loves may be 
 As gay his love has leave to hope, as he 
 Downcast his lusts' desire escapes the springe : 
 Tis of the mood itself I speak, what tinge 
 Determines it, else colourless, or mirth. 
 Or melancholy, as from Heaven or Earth. 
 
 Ay, that's the variation's gist ! Indeed ? 
 Thus far advanced in safety then, proceed ! 
 And having seen too what I saw, be bold 
 Enough encounter what I do behold 
 (That's sure) but you must take on trust ! Attack 
 The use and purpose of such sights ! Alack, 
 Not so unwisely hastes the crowd dispense 
 On Salinguerras praise in preference 
 To the Sordellos : men of action these ! 
 Who seeing just as little as you please 
 
SORDELLO. 125 
 
 Yet turn that little to account ; engage 
 
 With, do not gaze at ; carry on a stage 
 
 The work o* the world, not merely make report 
 
 The work existed ere their time — In short, 
 
 When at some future no-time a hrave band 
 
 Sees, using what it sees, then shake my hand 
 
 In heaven, my brother ! Meanwhile where's the hurt 
 
 To keep the Makers- see on the alert 
 
 At whose defection mortals stare aghast 
 
 As though Heaven s bounteous window^s were slammed 
 
 Incontinent ? whereas all you beneath [^fast 
 
 Should scowl at, curse them, bruise lips, break their 
 
 Who ply the pullies for neglecting you : [^teeth 
 
 And therefore have I moulded, made anew 
 
 A Man, delivered to be turned and tried, 
 
 Be angry with or pleased at. On your side 
 
 Have ye times, places, actors of your own ? 
 
 Try them upon Sordello once full-grown, 
 
 And then — ah then ! If Hercules first parched 
 
 His foot in Egypt only to be marched 
 
 A sacrifice for Jove with pomp to suit. 
 
 What chance have I ? The demigod was mute 
 
 Till at the altar, where time out of mind 
 
 Such guests became oblations, chaplets twined 
 
126 SORDELLO. 
 
 His forehead long enough, and he began 
 
 Slaying the slayers, nor escaped a man — 
 
 Take not affront, my gentle audience ! whom 
 
 No Hercules shall make his hecatomb 
 
 Believe, nor from his brows your chaplet rend — 
 
 That's your kind suffrage, yours, nay, yours, my friend 
 
 Whose great verse blares unintermittent on 
 
 Like any trumpeter at Marathon, 
 
 He'll testify who when Plataeas grew scant 
 
 Put up with ^tna for a stimulant ! 
 
 And well too, I acknowledged, as it loomed 
 
 Over the Midland sea that morn, presumed 
 
 All day, demolished by the blazing West 
 
 At eve, while towards it tilting cloudlets prest 
 
 Like Persian ships for Salamis. Friend, wear 
 
 A crest proud as desert while I declare 
 
 Had I a flawless ruby fit to wring 
 
 A tear its colour from that painted king 
 
 To lose, I would, for that one smile which went 
 
 To my heart, fling it in the sea content 
 
 Wearing your verse in place, an amulet 
 
 Sovereign against low-thoughtedness and fret ! 
 
 My English Eyebright, if you are not glad 
 
 That, as I stopped my task awhile, the sad 
 
SORDELLO. 127 
 
 Disheveled form wherein I put mankind 
 
 To come at times and keep my pact in mind 
 
 Renewed me, — hear no crickets in the hedge 
 
 Nor let a glowworm spot the river s edge 
 
 At home, and may the summer showers gush 
 
 Without a warning from the missel thrush ! 
 
 For, Eyebright, what I sing's the fate of such 
 
 As find our common nature (overmuch 
 
 Despised because restricted and unfit 
 
 To bear the burthen they impose on it) 
 
 Cling when they would discard it ; craving strength 
 
 To leap from the allotted world, at length 
 
 Tis left — they floundering without a term 
 
 Each a God's germ, but doomed remain a germ 
 
 In unexpanded infancy, assure 
 
 Yourself, nor misconceive my portraiture 
 
 Nor undervalue its adornments quaint ! 
 
 What seems a fiend perchance may prove a saint : 
 
 Ponder a story ancient pens transmit, 
 
 Then say if you condemn me or acquit. 
 
 John the Beloved, banished Antioch 
 
 For Patmos, bade collectively his flock 
 
 Farewell but set apart the closing eve 
 
 To comfort some his exile most would grieve 
 
128 SORDELLO. 
 
 He kDew : a touching spectacle, that house 
 
 In motion to receive him ! Xanthus' spouse 
 
 You missed, made panther's meat a month since; but 
 
 Xanthus himself (for 'twas his nephew shut 
 
 'Twixt boards and sawn asunder) Polycarp, 
 
 Soft Charicle next year no wheel could warp 
 
 To swear by Ca3sar's fortune, with the rest 
 
 Were ranged ; thro' whom the grey disciple prest 
 
 Busily blessing right and left, just stopt 
 
 To pat one infant's curls the hangman crept 
 
 Soon after, reached the portal ; on its hinge 
 
 The door turns and he enters — what deep twinge 
 
 Ruins the smiling mouth, those wide eyes ^x 
 
 Whereon ? How like some spectral candlestick's 
 
 Branch the disciple's arms ! Dead swooned he, woke 
 
 Anon, heaved sigh, made shift to gasp heart-broke 
 
 Get thee behind me Satan ! have I toiled 
 
 To no more purpose ? is the gospel foiled 
 
 Here too, and o'er my son's, my Xanthus' hearth, 
 
 Pourtrayed with sooty garb and features swarth — 
 
 Ah Xanthus, am I to thy roof beguiled 
 
 To see the — the — the Devil domiciled? 
 
 Whereto sobbed Xanthus, Father, 'tis yourself 
 
 Installed, a limning which our utmost pelf 
 
SORDELLO, 129 
 
 "Went to procure against to-morrow's loss, 
 And that's no twy-prong but a pastoral cross 
 You're painted with ! The puckered brows unfold — 
 And you shall hear Sordello's story told. 
 
130 SORDELLO. 
 
 BOOK THE FOURTH. 
 
 Meantime Ferrara lay in rueful case ; 
 
 The lady-city, for whose sole embrace 
 
 Her pair of suitors struggled, felt their arms 
 
 A brawny mischief to the fragile charms 
 
 Each tugged for — one discovering to twist 
 
 Her tresses twice or thrice about his wrist 
 
 Secured a point of vantage — one, how best 
 
 He'd parry that by planting in her breast 
 
 His elbow-spike — both parties too intent 
 
 For noticing, howe'er the battle went. 
 
 Its conqueror would have a corpse to kiss. 
 
 May Boniface be duly damned for this ! 
 
 Howled some old Ghibellin as up he turned, 
 
 From the wet heap of rubbish where they burned 
 
 His house, a little scull with dazzling teeth : 
 
 A boon, sweet Christ — let Salinguerra seethe 
 
BORDELLO. 131 
 
 In hell for ever, Christ, and let myself 
 
 Be there to laugh at him ! moaned some young Guelf 
 
 Stumbling upon a shrivelled hand nailed fast 
 
 To the charred lintel of the doorway Tast 
 
 His father stood w^ithin to bid him speed. 
 
 The thoroughfares looked overrun with weed 
 
 --Docks, quitchgrass, loathly mallows no man plants. 
 
 The stranger none of its inhabitants 
 Crept out of doors to taste fresh air again, 
 Or ask the purpose of a sumptuous train 
 Admitted on a morning ; every town 
 Of the East League was come by envoy down 
 To treat for Richard's ransom : here you saw 
 The Yicentine, here snowy oxen draw 
 The Paduan carroch, its vermilion cross 
 On its white j&eld : a-tiptoe o*er the fosse 
 Looked Legate Montelungo wistfully 
 After the flock of steeples he might spy 
 In Este*s time, gone (doubts he) long ago 
 To mend the ramparts — sure the laggards know 
 The Pope 's as good as here ! They paced the streets 
 More soberly. At last, Taurello greets 
 The League, announced a pursuivant, — will match 
 Its courtesy, and labours to despatch 
 
 K 2 
 
130 SORDELLO. 
 
 BOOK THE FOURTH. 
 
 Meantime Ferrara lay in rueful case ; 
 
 The lady- city, for whose sole embrace 
 
 Her pair of suitors struggled, felt their arms 
 
 A brawny mischief to the fragile charms 
 
 Each tugged for — one discovering to twist 
 
 Her tresses twice or thrice about his wrist 
 
 Secured a point of vantage — one, how best 
 
 He'd parry that by planting in her breast 
 
 His elbow-spike — both parties too intent 
 
 For noticing, howe'er the battle went. 
 
 Its conqueror would have a corpse to kiss. 
 
 May Boniface be duly damned for this ! 
 
 Howled some old Ghibellin as up he turned. 
 
 From the wet heap of rubbish where they burned 
 
 His house, a little scull with dazzling teeth : 
 
 A boon, sweet Christ — let Salinguerra seethe 
 
SORDELLO. 131 
 
 In hell for ever, Christ, and let myself 
 
 Be there to laugh at him ! moaned some young Guelf 
 
 Stumbling upon a shrivelled hand nailed fast 
 
 To the charred lintel of the doorway Tast 
 
 His father stood v^ithin to bid him speed. 
 
 The thoroughfares looked overrun vv^ith weed 
 
 —Docks, quitchgrass, loathly mallows no man plants. 
 
 The stranger none of its inhabitants 
 Crept out of doors to taste fresh air again. 
 Or ask the purpose of a sumptuous train 
 Admitted on a morning ; every town 
 Of the East League was come by envoy down 
 To treat for Richard's ransom : here you saw 
 The Yicentine, here snowy oxen draw 
 The Paduan carroch, its vermilion cross 
 On its white field : a-tiptoe o*er the fosse 
 Looked Legate Montelungo wistfully 
 After the flock of steeples he might spy 
 In Este*s time, gone (doubts he) long ago 
 To mend the ramparts — sure the laggards know 
 The Pope 's as good as here ! They paced the streets 
 More soberly. At last, Taurello greets 
 The League, announced a pursuivant, — will match 
 Its courtesy, and labours to despatch 
 K 2 
 
132 SORDELLO. 
 
 At earliest Tito, Friedrich*s Pretor, sent 
 On pressing matters from his post at Trent 
 With Mainard Count of Tyrol,— simply waits 
 Their going to receive the delegates. 
 Tito ! Our delegates exchanged a glance. 
 And, keeping the main way, admired askance 
 The lazy engines of outlandish birth 
 Couched like a king each on its bank of earth— 
 Arbalist, manganel, and catapult ; 
 While stationed by, as waiting a result. 
 Lean silent gangs of mercenaries ceased 
 Working to watch the strangers — this, at least, 
 Were better spared ; he scarce presumes gainsay 
 The League's decision ! Get our friend away 
 And profit for the future : how else teach 
 Azzo 'tis not so safe within claw's reach 
 Till Salinguerra's final gasp be blown ? 
 Those mere convulsive scratches find the bone 
 — Who bade him bloody the spent osprey's nare ? 
 
 The carrochs halted in the public square. 
 Pennons of every blazon once a-flaunt. 
 Men prattled, freelier that the crested gaunt 
 White ostrich with a horse- shoe in her beak 
 Was missing ; whosoever chose might speak 
 
SORDELLO. 133 
 
 Ecdin boldly out: so, Ecelin 
 
 Needed his wife to swallow half the sin 
 
 And sickens by himself : the devil's whelp 
 
 He styles his son dwindles away, no help 
 
 From conserves, your fine triple-curded froth 
 
 Of virgin's blood, your Venice viper-broth — 
 
 Eh ? Jubilate ! Tush ! no little word 
 
 You utter here that's not distinctly heard 
 
 At Oliero : he was absent sick 
 
 When we besieged Bassano — who i' the thick 
 
 O' the work perceived the progress Azzo made 
 
 Like Ecelin ? through his witch Adelaide 
 
 Who managed it so well that night by night 
 
 At their bed-foot stood up a soldier-sprite 
 
 First fresh, pale by-and-by without a wound, 
 
 And w4ien he came with eyes filmed as in s wound 
 
 They knew the place was taken — Ominous 
 
 Your Ghibellin should get what cautelous 
 
 Old Redbeard sought from Azzo's sire to wrench 
 
 Vainly ; St. George contrived his town a trench 
 
 O' the marshes, an impermeable bar ; 
 
 Young Ecelin is meant the tutelar 
 
 Of Padua rather ; veins embrace upon 
 
 His hand like Brenta and Bacchiglion . , . 
 
134 SORDELLO. 
 
 What now ? The founts ! God's bread, touch not a 
 
 A crawling hell of carrion — every tank [plank ! 
 
 Choke full ! found out just now to Cino's cost — 
 
 The same who gave Taurello's side for lost, 
 
 And, making no account of fortune's freaks, 
 
 Refused to budge from Padua then, but sneaks 
 
 Back now with Concorezzi — ^'faith ! they drag 
 
 Their carroch to San Vital, plant the flag 
 
 On his own Palace so adroitly razed 
 
 He knew it not ; a sort of Guelf folk gazed 
 
 And laughed apart ; Cino disliked their air — 
 
 Must pluck up spirit, show he does not care — 
 
 Seats himself on the tank's edge — will begin 
 
 To hum, za za^ Cavaler Ecelin — 
 
 A silence ; he gets warmer, clinks to chime. 
 
 Now both feet plough the ground, deeper each time. 
 
 At last, za za^ and up with a fierce kick 
 
 Comes his own mother s face caught by the thick 
 
 Grey hair about his spur ! 
 
 Which means, they lift 
 The covering Taurello made a shift 
 To stretch upon the truth ; as well avoid 
 Further disclosures ; leave them thus employed. 
 Our dropping Autumn morning clears apace. 
 And poor Ferrara puts a softened face 
 
SORDELLO. 135 
 
 On her misfortunes, save one spot — this tall 
 
 Huge foursquare line of red brick gar den- wall 
 
 Bastioned within by trees of every sort 
 
 On three sides, slender, spreading, long and short, 
 
 (Each grew as it contrived, the poplar ramped, 
 
 The fig-tree reared itself,) but stark and cramped, 
 
 Made fools of ; whence upon the very edge. 
 
 Running 'twixt trunk and trunk to smooth one ledge 
 
 Of shade, are shrubs inserted, warp and woof, 
 
 Which smother up that variance. Scale the roof 
 
 Of solid tops and o'er the slope you slide 
 
 Down to a grassy space level and wide. 
 
 Here and there dotted with a tree, but trees 
 
 Of rarer leaf, each foreigner at ease, 
 
 Set by itself ; and in the centre spreads, 
 
 Born upon three uneasy leopards' heads, 
 
 A laver, broad and shallow, one bright spirt 
 
 Of water bubbles in : the walls begirt 
 
 With trees leave off on either hand : pursue 
 
 Your path along a wondrous avenue 
 
 The walls abut on, heaped of gleamy stone, 
 
 With aloes leering everywhere, grey-grown 
 
 From many a Moorish summer ; how they wind 
 
 Out of the fissures ! likelier to bind 
 
1^6 SORDELLO. 
 
 The building than those rusted cramps which drop 
 
 Already in the eating sunshine. Stop 
 
 Yon fleeting shapes above there ! Ah, the pride 
 
 Or else despair of the whole country-side — 
 
 A range of statues, swarming o'er with wasps, 
 
 God, goddess, woman, man, your Greek rough-rasps 
 
 In crumbling Naples marble 1 meant to look 
 
 Like those Messina marbles Constance took 
 
 Delight in, or Taurello's self conveyed 
 
 To Mantua for his mistress, Adelaide, 
 
 A certain font with caryatides 
 
 Since cloistered at Goito ; only, these 
 
 Are up and doing, not abashed, a troop 
 
 Able to right themselves — who see you, stoop 
 
 O' the instant after you their arms ! unplucked 
 
 By this or that you pass, for they conduct 
 
 To terrace raised on terrace, and, between. 
 
 Creatures of brighter mould and braver mien 
 
 Than any yet, the choicest of the Isle 
 
 No doubt ; here, left a sullen breathing- while. 
 
 Up-gathered on himself the Fighter stood 
 
 For his last fight, and, wiping treacherous blood 
 
 Out of the eyelids just held ope beneath 
 
 Those shading fi-ngers in their iron sheath ,. 
 
SORDELLO. 137 
 
 Steadied his strengths amid the buz and stir 
 
 Of a dusk hideous amphitheatre 
 
 At the announcement of his over-match 
 
 To wind the day's diversion up, despatch 
 
 Their pertinacious friend : while, limbs one heap. 
 
 The Slave, no breath in her round mouth, watched leap 
 
 Dart after dart forth as her hero's car 
 
 Clove dizzily the solid of the war 
 
 — Let coil about his knees for pride in him. 
 
 We reach the farthest terrace and the grim 
 
 San Pietro Palace stops us. 
 
 Such the state 
 Of Salinguerra's plan to emulate 
 Sicilian marvels that his girlish wife 
 Retrude still might lead her ancient life 
 In her new home — whereat enlarged so much 
 Neighbours upon the novel princely touch 
 He took who here imprisons Boniface. 
 Here must the Envoys come to sue for grace ; 
 And here, emerging from the labyrinth 
 Below, two minstrels pause beside the plinth 
 Of the door-pillar. 
 
 One had really left 
 Yerona for the cornfields (a poor theft 
 
138 SORDELLO. 
 
 From the morass) where Este's camp was made, 
 
 The Envoys' march, the Legate's cavalcade — 
 
 Looked cursorily o'er, but scarce as when, 
 
 Eager for cause to stand aloof from men 
 
 At every point save the fantastic tie 
 
 Acknowledged in his boyish sophistry. 
 
 He made account of such. A crowd ; he meant 
 
 To task the whole of it ; each part's intent 
 
 Concerned him therefore, and the more he pried 
 
 The less became Sordello satisfied 
 
 With his own figure at the moment. Sought 
 
 He respite from his task ? descried he aught 
 
 Novel in the anticipated sight 
 
 Of all those livers upon all delight ? 
 
 A phalanx as of myriad points combined 
 
 Whereby he still had imaged that mankind 
 
 His youth was passed in dreams of rivalling, 
 
 His age — in plans to show at least the thing 
 
 So dreamed, but now he hastened to impress 
 
 With his own will, effect a happiness 
 
 From theirs, supply a body to his soul 
 
 Thence, and become eventually whole 
 
 With them as he had hoped to be without — 
 
 Made these the mankind he was mad about ? 
 
SORDELLO. 139 
 
 Because a few of them were notable 
 
 Must all be figured worthy note ? As well 
 
 Expect to find Taurello's triple line 
 
 Of trees a single and prodigious pine. 
 
 Real pines rose here and there, but, close among, 
 
 Thrust into and mixed up with pines, a throng 
 
 Of shrubs you saw, a nameless common sort 
 
 O'erpast in dreams, left out of the report, 
 
 Fast hurried into corners, or at best 
 
 Admitted to be fancied like the rest. 
 
 Reckon that morning's proper chiefs ; how few! 
 
 And yet the people grew, the people grew, 
 
 Grew ever, as with many there indeed, 
 
 More left behind and most who should succeed. 
 
 Simply in virtue of their faces, eyes. 
 
 Petty enjoyments and huge miseries. 
 
 Were veritably mingled with, made great 
 
 Those chiefs : no overlooking Mainard's state 
 
 Nor Concorezzi's station, but instead 
 
 Of stopping there, each dwindled to be head 
 
 Of infinite and absent Tyrolese 
 
 Or Paduans ; startling too the more that these 
 
 Seemed passive and disposed of, uncared for. 
 
 Yet doubtless on the whole (quoth Eglamor) 
 
140 SORDELLO. 
 
 Smiling — for if a wealthy man decays 
 
 And out of store of such must wear all days 
 
 One tattered suit alike in sun and shade, 
 
 *Tis commonly some tarnished fine brocade 
 
 Fit for a feast-night's flourish and no more ; 
 
 Nor otherwise poor Misery from her store 
 
 Of looks is fain upgather, keep unfurled 
 
 For common wear as she goes through the world 
 
 The faint remainder of some worn-out smile 
 
 Meant for a feast-night's service merely. While 
 
 Crowd upon crowd rose on Sordello thus, — 
 
 Crowds no way interfering to discuss 
 
 Much less dispute life's joys with one employed 
 
 In envying them, or, if they enjoyed. 
 
 There lingered somewhat indefinable 
 
 In every look and tone, the mirth as well 
 
 As woe, that fixed at once his estimate 
 
 Of the result, their good or ba^i estate, — 
 
 Old memories flocked but with a new efibct : 
 
 And the new body, ere he could suspect. 
 
 Cohered, mankind and he were really fused. 
 
 The new self seemed impatient to be used 
 
 By him, but utterly another way 
 
 To that anticipated : strange to say, 
 
I 
 
 SORDELLO. 141 
 
 They were too much below him, more in thrall 
 
 Than he, the adjunct than the principal. 
 
 What booted scattered brilliances ? the mind 
 
 Of any number he might hope to bind 
 
 And stamp with his own thought, howe'er august, 
 
 If all the rest should grovel in the dust ? 
 
 No : first a mighty equilibrium sure 
 
 To be established, privilege procure 
 
 For them himself had long possessed 1 he felt 
 
 An error, an exceeding error melt— - 
 
 While he was occupied with Mantuan chants 
 
 Behoved him think of men and of their wants 
 
 Such as he now distinguished every side. 
 
 As his own want that might be satisfied. 
 
 And, after that, of wondrous qualities 
 
 Of his own soul demanding exercise. 
 
 And like demand it longer : nor a claim 
 
 On their part, nor was virtue in the aim 
 
 At serving them on his, but, past retrieve, 
 
 He in their toils felt with them, nor could leave, 
 
 Wonder that in the eagerness to rule, 
 
 Impress his will upon them, he the fool 
 
 Had never entertained the obvious thought 
 
 This last of his arrangements would be fraught 
 
142 SORDELLO. 
 
 With good to them as well, and he should be 
 
 Rejoiced thereat ; and if, as formerly. 
 
 He sighed the merry time of life must fleet, 
 
 'Twas deeplier now, for could the crowds repeat 
 
 Their poor experiences ? His hand that shook 
 
 Was twice to be deplored. The Legate, look ! 
 
 With eyes, like fresh-blown thrush-eggs on a thread, 
 
 Faint-blue and loosely floating in his head, 
 
 Large tongue, moist open mouth ; and this long while 
 
 That owner of the idiotic smile 
 
 Serves them ! He fortunately saw in time 
 
 His fault however, and the office prime 
 
 Includes the secondary — best accept 
 
 Both offices ; Taurello its adept 
 
 Could teach him the preparatory one. 
 
 And how to do what he had fancied done 
 
 Long previously, ere take the greater task. 
 
 How render then these people happy ? ask 
 
 The people's friends : for there must be one good, 
 
 One way to it — the Cause ! he understood 
 
 The meaning now of Palma ; else why are 
 
 The great ado, the trouble wide and far. 
 
 These Guelfs and Ghibellins, the Lombard's hope 
 
 Or its despair ! 'twixt Emperor or Pope 
 
SORDELLO. 143 
 
 The confused shifting sort of Eden tale — 
 
 Of hardihood recurring still to fail — 
 
 That foreign interloping fiend, this free 
 
 And native overbrooding Deity — 
 
 Yet a dire fascination o'er the palms 
 
 His presence ruined troubling thorough calms 
 
 Of Paradise — or, on the other hand, 
 
 The Pontiff, as your Kaisers understand, 
 
 That, snake-like cursed of God to love the ground. 
 
 With lulling eye breaks in the noon profound 
 
 Some saving tree — who but the Kaiser drest 
 
 As the dislodging angel of the pest 
 
 Then ? yet that pest bedropt, flat head, full fold, 
 
 With coruscating dower of dyes ; behold 
 
 The secret, so to speak, and master-spring 
 
 Of the whole contest ! which of them shall bring 
 
 Men good — perchance the most good — ay, it may 
 
 Be that ; the question is which knows the way. 
 
 And hereupon Count Mainard strutted past 
 Out of San Pietro ; never looked the last 
 Of archers, slingers ; and our friend began 
 To recollect strange modes of serving man — 
 Arbalist, catapult, brake, manganel. 
 And more : this way of theirs may, who can tell, 
 
144 BORDELLO. 
 
 Need perfecting, said he : all's better solved 
 At once : Taurello 'twas the task devolved 
 On late— -confront Taurello ! 
 
 And at last 
 They did confront him. Scarcely an hour past 
 When forth Sordello came, older by years 
 Than at his entry. Unexampled fears 
 Oppressed him, and he staggered off, blind, mute 
 And deaf, like some fresh-mutilated brute. 
 Into Ferrara — not the empty tov^n 
 That morning witnessed : he w^ent up and down 
 Streets whence the veil was stripped shred after shred. 
 So that in place of huddling with their dead 
 Indoors to answer Salinguerra*s ends, 
 Its folk made shift to crawl and sit like friends 
 With any one. A woman gave him choice 
 Of her two dauo^hters, the infantile voice 
 Or dimpled knee, for half a chain his throat 
 Was clasped with ; but an archer knew the coat — 
 Its blue cross and eight lilies, bade beware 
 One dogging him in concert with the pair 
 Though thrumming on the sleeve that hid his knife. 
 Night set in early, autumn dews fell rife, 
 And fires were kindled while the Leaguer s mass 
 Began at every carroch — he must pass 
 
SORDELLO. 145 
 
 Between that kneeling people : presently 
 
 The carroch of Yerona caught his eye 
 
 With purple trappings ; silently he bent 
 
 Over its fire, when voices violent 
 
 Began, Afiirm not whom the youth was like 
 
 That, striking from the porch, I did not strike 
 
 Again ; I too have chesnut hair ; my kin 
 
 Hate Azzo and stand up for Ecelin ; 
 
 Here, minstrel, drive bad thoughts away; sing; take 
 
 My glove for guerdon I and for that man's sake 
 
 He turned : A song of Eglamor's ! scarce named. 
 
 When, Our Sordello's, rather ! all exclaimed ; 
 
 Is not Sordello famousest for rhyme ? 
 
 He had been happy to deny, this time ; 
 
 Profess as heretofore the aching head, 
 
 The failing heart ; suspect that in his stead 
 
 Some true Apollo had the charge of them. 
 
 Was champion to reward or to condemn 
 
 So his intolerable risk might shift 
 
 Or share itself ; but Naddo's precious gift 
 
 Of gifts returned, be certain ! at the close — 
 
 I made that, said he to a youth who rose 
 
 As if to hear : 'twas Palma through the band 
 
 Conducted him in silence by the hand. 
 
146 SORDELLO. 
 
 Back now for Salinguerra. Tito of Trent 
 Gave place, remember, to the pair ; who went 
 In turn at Montelungo's visit — one 
 After the other are they come and gone. 
 A drear vast presence-chamber roughly set 
 In order for this morning's use ; you met 
 The grim black twy-necked eagle, coarsely blacked 
 AYith ochre on the naked walls, nor lacked 
 There green and yellow tokens either side ; 
 But the new symbol Tito brought had tried 
 The Legate's patience — nay, if Palma knew 
 What Salinguerra almost meant to do 
 Until the sight of her restored his lip 
 A certain half- smile three months' chieftainship 
 Had banished ? Afterward the Legate found 
 No change in him, nor asked what badge he wound 
 And unwound carelessly ! Now sate the Chief 
 Silent as when our couple left whose brief 
 Encounter wrought so opportune effect 
 In thoughts he summoned not, nor would reject — 
 Though time, if ever, 'twas to pause now — fix 
 On any sort of ending : wiles and tricks 
 Exhausted, judge 1 his charge, the crazy town, 
 Just managed to be hindered crashing down — 
 
SORDELLO. 147 
 
 His last sound troops ranged — care observed to post 
 His last of the maimed soldiers innermost — 
 So much was plain enough, but somehow struck 
 Him not before : and now with this strange luck 
 Of Tito's news, rewarding his address 
 So well, what thought he of? How the success 
 With Friedrich's rescript there would either hush 
 Ecelin's fiercest scruple up, or flush 
 Young Ecelin s white cheek, or, last, exempt 
 Himself from telling what there was to tempt ? 
 No : that this minstrel was Romano's last 
 Servant — himself the first ! Could he contrast 
 The whole ! that minstrel's thirty autumns spent 
 In doing nought, his notablest event 
 This morning's journey hither, as we told — 
 Who yet was lean, outworn and really old, 
 A stammering awkward youth (scarce dared he raise 
 His eye before that magisterial gaze) 
 — And Salinguerra with his fears and hopes 
 Of sixty years, his Emperors and Popes, 
 Cares and contrivances, yet you would say 
 A youth 'twas nonchalantly looked away 
 Through the embrasure northward o'er the sick 
 Expostulating trees — so agile quick 
 l2 
 
148 . SORDELLO. 
 
 And graceful turned the head on the broad chest 
 Encased in pliant steel, his constant vest, 
 Whence split thesun off in a spray of fire 
 Across the room ; and, loosened of its tire 
 Of steel, that head let see the comely brown 
 Large massive locks discoloured as a crown 
 Encircled them, so frayed the basnet where 
 A sharp white line divided clean the hair ; 
 Glossy above, glossy below, it swept 
 Curling and fine about a brow thus kept 
 Calm, laid coat upon coat, marble and sound : 
 This was the mystic mark the Tuscan found. 
 Mused of, turned over books about. Square-faced, 
 No lion more ; two vivid eyes, enchased 
 In hollows filled with many a shade and streak 
 Settling from the bold nose and bearded cheek ; 
 Nor might the half- smile reach them that deformed 
 A lip supremely perfect else — unwarmed, 
 Unwidened, less or more ; indifferent 
 Whether on trees or men his thoughts were bent — 
 Thoughts rarely, after all, in trim and train 
 As now : a period was fulfilled again ; 
 Such in a series made his life, compressed 
 In each, one story serving for the rest — 
 
SORDELLO. 149 
 
 Therefore he smiled. Beyond stretched garden-grounds 
 Where late the adversary, breaking bounds, 
 Procured him an occasion That above. 
 That eagle, testified he could improve 
 Effectually ; the Kaiser s symbol lay 
 Beside his rescript, a new badge by way 
 Of baldric ; while another thing that marred 
 Alike emprize, achievement and reward, 
 Ecelin s missive was conspicuous too. 
 
 What a past life those flying thoughts pursue ! 
 As his no name in Mantua half so old ; 
 But at Ferrara, where his sires enrolled 
 It latterly, the Adelardi spared 
 Few means to rival them : both factions shared 
 Ferrara, so that, counted out, 't would yield 
 A product very like the city's shield, 
 Half black and white, or Ghibelin and Guelf, 
 As after Salinguerra styled himself 
 And Este who, till Marchesalla died 
 — Last of the Adelardi, never tried 
 His fortune there ; but Marchesalla's child 
 Transmits (can Blacks and Whites be reconciled 
 And young Taurello wed Linguetta) wealth 
 And sway to a sole grasp : each treats by stealth 
 
150 SORDELLO. 
 
 Already : when the Guelfs, the Ravennese 
 
 Arrive, assault the Pietro quarter, seize 
 
 Linguetta, and are gone ! Our first dismay 
 
 Abated somewhat, hurries down to lay 
 
 The after indignation Boniface, 
 
 No meaner spokesman : Learn the full disgrace 
 
 Averted ere you blame us — wont to rate 
 
 Your Salinguerra, and sole potentate 
 
 That might have been, 'mongst Este's valvassors- 
 
 Ay, Azzo's — who, not privy to, abhors 
 
 Our step — but we were zealous. Azzo 's then 
 
 To do with ! Straight a meeting of old men : 
 
 The Lombard Eagle of the azure sphere 
 
 With Italy to build in, builds he here ? 
 
 This deemed— the other owned upon advice — 
 
 A third reflected on the matter twice — 
 
 In fine, young Salinguerra's staunchest friends 
 
 Talked of the townsmen making him amends. 
 
 Gave him a goshawk, and affirmed there was 
 
 Rare sport, one morning, over the morass 
 
 A mile or so. He sauntered through the plain, 
 
 Was restless, fell to thinking, turned again 
 
 In time for Azzo's entry with the bride ; 
 
 Count Boniface rode smirking at his side ; 
 
SORDELLO. 151 
 
 There's half Ferrara with her, whispers flew, 
 And all Ancona ! If the stripling knew ! 
 
 Anon the stripling was in Sicily 
 Where Heinrich ruled in right of Constance ; he 
 Was gracious nor his guest incapable ; 
 Each understood the other. So it fell, 
 One Spring, when Azzo, thoroughly at ease, 
 Had near forgotten what precise degrees 
 He crept by into such a downy seat, 
 Over the Count trudged in a special heat 
 To bid him of God's love dislodge from each 
 Of Salinguerra's Palaces ; a breach 
 Might yawn else not so readily to shut, 
 For who was just arrived at Mantua but 
 The youngster, sword to thigh, tuft upon chin, 
 With tokens for Celano, Ecelin, 
 Pistore and the like ! Next news : no whit 
 Do any of Ferrara's domes befit 
 His wife of Heinrich's very blood : a band 
 Of foreigners assemble, understand 
 Garden-constructing, level and surround, 
 Build up and bury in. A last news crowned 
 The consternation : since his infant's birth 
 He only waits they end his wondrous girth 
 
152 SORDELLO. 
 
 Of trees that link San Pietro with Toma 
 To visit us. When, as its Podesta 
 Regaled him at Yicenza, Este, there 
 With Boniface beforehand, each aware 
 Of plots in progress, gave alarm, expelled 
 A party which abetted him, but yelled 
 Too hastily. The burning and the flight. 
 And how Taurello, occupied that night 
 With Ecelin, lost wife and son, were told : 
 — Not how he bore the blow, retained his hold, 
 Got friends safe through, left enemies the worst 
 O* the fray, and hardly seemed to care at first — 
 But afterward you heard not constantly 
 Of Salinguerra's House so sure to be ! 
 Though Azzo simply gained by the event 
 A shifting of his plagues — this one content 
 To fall behind the other and estrange, 
 You will not say, his nature, but so change 
 That in Romano sought he wife and child, 
 And for Romano's sake was reconciled 
 To losing individual life, deep sunk, 
 A very pollard mortised in a trunk 
 Which Arabs out of wantonness contrive 
 Shall dwindle that the alien stock may thrive 
 
SORDELLO. 153 
 
 Till forth that vine-palm feathers to the root 
 
 And red drops moisten them its arid fruit. 
 
 Once set on Adelaide, the subtle mate 
 
 And wholly at his beck, to emulate 
 
 The Churches valiant women deed for deed, 
 
 To paragon her namesake, win the meed 
 
 Of its Matilda,-^and they overbore 
 
 The rest of Lombardy — not as before 
 
 By an instinctive truculence, but patched 
 
 The Kaiser s strategy until it matched 
 
 The Pontiff's, sought old ends by novel means : 
 
 Only, Romano Salinguerra screens. 
 
 Heinrich was somewhat of the tardiest 
 
 To comprehend, nor Philip acquiesced 
 
 At once in the arrangement ; reasoned, plied 
 
 His friend with offers of another bride, 
 
 A statelier function — fruitlessly : 'tis plain » 
 
 Taurello's somehow one to let remain 
 
 Obscure ; and Otho, free to judge of both, 
 
 — Ecelin the unready, harsh and loth, 
 
 And this more plausible and facile wight 
 
 With every point a-sparkle — chose the right. 
 
 Admiring how his predecessors harped 
 
 On the wrong man : thus, quoth he, wits are warped 
 
 I. 
 
154 SORDELLO. 
 
 By outsides ! Carelessly, withal, his life 
 
 Suffered its many turns of peace and strife 
 
 In many lands — you hardly could surprise 
 
 A man who shamed Sordello (recognise) 
 
 In this as much beside, that, unconcerned 
 
 What qualities are natural or earned. 
 
 With no ideal of graces, as they came 
 
 He took them, singularly well the same — 
 
 Speaking a dozen languages because 
 
 Your Greek eludes you, leave the least of flaws 
 
 In contracts, while, through Arab lore, deter 
 
 Who may the Tuscan, once Jove trined for her. 
 
 From Friedrich's path ! Friedrich, whose pilgrimage 
 
 The same man puts aside, whom he '11 engage 
 
 To leave next year John Brienne in the lurch, 
 
 And see Bassano for Saint Francis' church 
 
 — Profound on Guide the Bolognian s piece 
 
 That, if you lend him credit, rivals Greece — 
 
 Angels, with aureoles like golden quoits 
 
 Pitched home, applauding Ecelin s exploits 
 
 In Painimrie. He strung the angelot ; 
 
 Made rhymes thereto ; for prowess, clove he not 
 
 Tiso, last siege, from crest to crupper ? why 
 
 Detail you thus a varied mastery 
 
SORDELLO. 155 
 
 But that Taurello, ever on the watch 
 For men, to read their hearts and thereby catch 
 Their capabilities and purposes, 
 Displayed himself so far as displayed these : 
 While our Sordello only cared to know- 
 About men as a means for him to show 
 Himself, and men were much or little worth 
 According as they kept in or drew forth 
 That self; the other's choicest instruments 
 Surmised him shallow. Meantime malecontents 
 Dropped off, town after town grew wiser ; how 
 Change the world's face ? said people ; as 'tis now 
 It has been, will be ever : very fine 
 Subjecting things profane to things divine 
 In talk : this contumacy will fatigue 
 The vigilance of Este and the League, 
 Observe ! accordingly, their basement sapped, 
 Azzo and Boniface were soon entrapped 
 By Ponte Alto, and in one month's space 
 Slept at Yerona : either left a brace 
 Of sons — so three years after, cither's pair 
 Lost Guglielm and Aldobrand its heir : 
 Azzo remained and Richard — all the stay 
 Of Este and St. Boniface, at bay 
 
156 BORDELLO. 
 
 As 'twere ; when either Ecelin grew old 
 
 Or his brain altered — not the proper mould 
 
 For new appliances — his old palm stock 
 
 Endured no influx of strange strengths : he'd rock 
 
 As in a drunkenness, or chuckle low 
 
 As proud of the completeness of his woe, 
 
 Then weep — real tears ! Now make some mad 
 
 On Este, heedless of the lesson taught [^onslaught 
 
 So painfully — now cringe, sue peace, but peace 
 
 At price of all advantage ; therefore cease 
 
 The fortunes of Romano ! Up at last 
 
 Rose Este and Romano sank as fast. 
 
 And men remarked this sort of peace and war 
 
 Commenced while Salinguerra was afar : 
 
 And every friend besought him, but in vain, 
 
 To wait his old adherent, call again 
 
 Taurello : not he — who had daughters, sons, 
 
 Could plot himself, nor needed any one's 
 
 Advice. 'Twas Adelaide's remaining staunch 
 
 Prevented his destruction root and branch 
 
 Forthwith ; Goito green above her, gay 
 
 He made alliances, gave lands away 
 
 To whom it pleased accept them, and withdrew 
 
 For ever from the world. Taurello, who 
 
SORDELLO. 157 
 
 Was summoned to the convent, then refused 
 A word, — however patient, thus abused, 
 At Este's mercy through his imbecile 
 Ally, was fain dismiss the foolish smile, 
 And a few movements of the happier sort 
 . Changed matters, put himself in men s report 
 As heretofore ; he had to fight, beside. 
 And that became him ever. So in pride 
 . And flushing of this kind of second youth 
 He dealt a good- will blow : Este in truth 
 Was prone — and you remembered, somewhat late, 
 A laughing old outrageous stifled hate 
 He bore that Este — how it would outbreak 
 At times spite of disguise, like an earthquake 
 In sunny weather — as that noted day 
 When with his hundred friends he ofibred slay 
 Azzo before the Kaiser's face : and how 
 On Azzo's calm refusal to allow 
 A liegeman's challenge straight he too was calmed : 
 His hate, no doubt, would bear to lie embalmed. 
 Bricked up, the moody Pharaoh, to survive 
 All intermediate crumblings, be alive 
 At earth's catastrophe — 'twas Este's crash 
 Not Azzo's he demanded, so no rash 
 
158 SORDELLO. 
 
 Procedure ! Este's true antagonist 
 Eose out of Ecelin : all voices whist, 
 Each glance was sharpened, wit predicted. He 
 Twas leaned in the embrasure presently. 
 Amused with his own efforts, now, to trace 
 With his steel- sheathed forefinger Friedrich's face 
 I' the dust : and as the trees waved sere, his smile 
 Deepened, and words expressed its thought erewhile. 
 
 Ay, fairly housed at last, my old compeer ? 
 That we should stick together all the year 
 I kept Yerona ! — How old Boniface, 
 Old Azzo caught us in its market-place, 
 He by that pillar, I this pillar, each 
 In mid swing, more than fury of his speech. 
 Egging our rabble on to disavow 
 Allegiance to the Marquis — Ba^cchus, how 
 They caught us ! Ecelin must turn their drudge ; 
 Nor, if released, will Salinguerra grudge 
 Paying arrears of tribute due long since — 
 Bacchus ! My man, could promise then, nor wince. 
 The bones-and-muscles ! sound of wind and limb, 
 Spoke he the set excuse I framed for him ; 
 And now he sits me, slavering and mute. 
 Intent on chafing each starved purple foot 
 
SORDELLO. 159 
 
 Benumbed past aching with the altar slab — 
 
 Will no vein throb there when some monk shall blab 
 
 Spitefully to the cir^cle of bald scalps 
 
 " Friedrich 's affirmed to be our side the Alps" 
 
 — Eh, brother Lactance, brother Anaclet ? 
 
 Sworn to abjure the world and the world's fret, 
 
 God's own now ? drop the dormitory bar, 
 
 Enfold the scanty grey serge scapular 
 
 Twice o'er the cowl to muffle memories out — 
 
 So ! but the midnight whisper turns a shout, 
 
 Eyes wink, mouths open, pulses circulate 
 
 In the stone walls : the past, the world you hate 
 
 Is with you, ambush, open field — or see 
 
 The surging flame — they fire Yicenza — glee ! 
 
 Follow, let Pilio and Bernard! chafe — 
 
 Bring up the Mantuans — through San Biagio — safe ! 
 
 Ah, the mad people waken ? Ah, they writhe 
 
 And reach you ? if they block the gate — no tithe 
 
 Can pass — keep back you Bassanese ! the edge, 
 
 Use the edge — shear, thrust, hew, melt down the 
 
 wedge, 
 Let out the black of those black upturned eyes ! 
 Hell — are they sprinkling fire too ? the blood fries 
 And hisses on your brass gloves as they tear 
 Those upturned faces choaking with despair. 
 
160 SORDELLO. 
 
 Brave ! Slidder through the reeking gate — how now ! 
 You six had charge of her ? And then the vow 
 Comes, and the foam spirts, hair 's plucked, till one shriek 
 (I hear it) and you fling — you cannot speak — 
 Your gold-flowered basnet to a man who haled 
 The Adelaide he dared scarce view unveiled 
 This morn, naked across the fire : how crown 
 The archer that exhausted lays you down 
 Your infant, smiling at the flame, and dies ? 
 While one, while mine . . . 
 
 Bacchus ! I think there lies 
 More than one corpse there (and he paced the room) 
 — Another cinder somewhere — 'twas my doom 
 Beside, my doom : if Adelaide is dead 
 I am the same, this Azzo lives instead 
 Of that to me, and we pull any how 
 Este into a heap — the matter s now 
 At the true juncture slipping us so oft ; 
 Ay, Heinrich died and Otho, please you, dofibd 
 His crown at such a juncture : let but hold 
 Our Friedrich's purpose, let this chain enfold 
 The neck of . . . who but this same Ecelin ? 
 That must recoil when the best days begin — 
 Recoil ? that's nought ; so the recoiler leaves 
 His name for me to fight with, no one grieves ! 
 
SORDELLO. 161 
 
 But he must interfere, forsooth, unlock 
 
 His cloister to become my stumbling-block 
 
 Just as of old ! Ay, ay, there 'tis again — 
 
 The land's inevitable Head — explain 
 
 The reverences that subject us ! Count 
 
 These Ecelins now ! not to say as fount. 
 
 Originating power of thought, from twelve 
 
 That drop i' the trenches they joined hands to delve 
 
 Six shall surpass him, but . . . why, men must twine 
 
 Somehow with something ! Ecelin 's a fine 
 
 Clear name! Twere simpler, doubtless, twine with me 
 
 At once : our cloistered friend's capacity 
 
 Was of a sort ! I had to share myself 
 
 In fifty portions, like an o'ertasked elf 
 
 That's forced illume in fifty points the vast 
 
 Rare vapour he 's environed by : at last 
 
 My strengths, though sorely frittered, e'en converge 
 
 And crown — no, Bacchus, they have yet to urge 
 
 The man be crowned ! 
 
 That aloe, an he durst, 
 Would climb ! just such a bloated sprawler first 
 I noted in Messina's castle court 
 The day I came, and Heinrich asked in sport 
 If I would pledge my faith to win him back 
 His right in Lombardy ; for, once bid pack 
 
 M 
 
162 SORDELLO. 
 
 Marauders, he continued, in my stead 
 You rule, Taurello ! and upon this head 
 Laid the silk glove of Constance — I see her 
 Too, mantled head to foot in miniver, 
 Eetrude following ! 
 
 I am absolved 
 From further toil : the empery devolved 
 On me, 'twas Tito's word : and think, to lay 
 For once my plan, pursue my plan my way. 
 Prompt nobody, and render an account 
 Taurello to Taurello ! nay, I mount 
 To Friedrich — he conceives the post I kept. 
 Who did true service, able or inept. 
 Who's worthy guerdon, Ecelin or I : 
 Me guerdoned, counsel follows ; would he vie 
 With the Pope really ? Azzo, Boniface 
 Compose a right-arm Hohenstauffen's race 
 Must break ere govern Lombardy ; I point 
 How easy 'twere to twist, once out of joint. 
 The socket from the bone ; my Azzo's stare 
 Meanwhile ! for I, this idle strap to wear. 
 Shall — fret myself abundantly, what end 
 To serve ? There's left me tw^enty years to spend 
 — How better than my old way ? Had I one 
 Who laboured overthrow my work — a son 
 
BORDELLO. 163 
 
 Hatching with Azzo superb treachery, 
 To root my pines up and then poison me, 
 Suppose — 'twere worth while frustrate that ! Beside 
 Another life 's ordained me : the world's tide 
 Rolls, and what hope of parting from the press 
 Of waves, a single wave through weariness 
 That's gently led aside, laid upon shore ? 
 My life must be lived out in foam and roar, 
 No question. Fifty years the province held 
 Taurello ; troubles raised, and troubles quelled. 
 He in the midst — who leaves this quaint stone place. 
 Those trees a year or two, then, not a trace 
 Of him ! How obtain hold, fetter men s tongues 
 Like that Sordello with his foolish songs — 
 To which, despite our bustle, he is linked ? 
 — Flowers one may teaze, that never seem extinct ; 
 Ay, that patch, surely, green as ever, where 
 I set Her Moorish lentisk, by the stair. 
 To overawe the aloes — and we trod 
 Those flowers, how call you such ? into the sod ; 
 A stately foreigner — and worlds pf pain 
 To make it thrive, arrest rough winds — all vain ! 
 It would decline — these would not be destroyed — 
 And now, where is it — where can you avoid 
 M 2 
 
164 SORDELLO. 
 
 The flowers ? I frighten children twenty years 
 Longer ! — which way, too, Ecelin appears 
 To thwart me, for his son s besotted youth 
 Gives promise of the proper tiger-tooth, 
 They prattle, at Yicenza ! Fate, fate, fate, 
 My fine Taurello ! go you, promulgate 
 Friedrich*s decree, and here's shall aggrandise 
 Young Ecelin — our Prefect's badge ! a prize 
 Too precious, certainly. 
 
 How now ? Compete 
 With my old comrade ? shufl3^e from their seat 
 His children ? Paltry dealing ! don t I know 
 Ecelin ? now, I think, and years ago ! 
 What 's changed — the weakness? did not I compound 
 For that, and undertake preserve him sound 
 Despite it ? Say Taurello 's hankering 
 After the boy s preferment — this play-thing 
 To carry, Bacchus ! And he laughed. 
 
 Remark 
 Why schemes wherein cold-blooded men embark 
 Prosper, when your enthusiastic sort 
 Fails : for these last are ever stopping short — 
 (Much to be done — so little they can do !) 
 The careless tribe see nothing to pursue 
 
SORDELLO. 165 
 
 Should they desist ; meantime their scheme succeeds. 
 
 Thoughts were caprices in the course of deeds 
 Methodic with Taurello ; so he turned, 
 Enough amused by fancies fairly earned 
 Of Este's horror-struck submitted neck, 
 And Boniface completely at his beck, 
 To his own petty but immediate doubt 
 If he could pacify the League without 
 Conceding Richard ; just to this was brought 
 That interval of vain discursive thought ! 
 As, shall I say, some Ethiop, past pursuit 
 Of all enslavers, dips a shackled foot. 
 Burnt to the blood, into the drowsy black 
 Enormous water current, his sole track 
 To his own tribe again, where he is King ; 
 And laughs because he guesses, numbering 
 The yellower poison- wattles on the pouch 
 Of the first lizard wrested from its coucli 
 Under the slime (whose skin, the while, he strips 
 To cure his nostril with, and festered lips. 
 And eyeballs bloodshot through the desert blast) 
 That he has reached its boundary, at last 
 May breathe; — thinks o'er enchantments of the South 
 Sovereign to plague his enemies, their mouth 
 
166 SORDELLO. 
 
 And nails, and hair ; but, these enchantments tried 
 
 In fancy, puts them soberly aside 
 
 For truth, cool projects, a return with friends, 
 
 The likelihood of winning wild amends 
 
 Ere long ; thinks that, takes comfort silently, 
 
 And from the river's brink his wrongs and he, 
 
 Hugging revenge close to their hearts, are soon 
 
 Off-striding for the Mountains of the Moon. 
 
 Midnight : the watcher nodded on his spear, 
 Since clouds dispersing left a passage clear, 
 If any meagre and discoloured moon 
 Should venture forth ; and such was peering soon 
 Above the harassed city — her close lanes 
 Closer, not half so tapering her fanes. 
 As though she shrunk into herself to keep 
 What little life was saved more safely. Heap 
 By heap the watch-fires mouldered, and beside 
 The blackest spoke Sordello and replied 
 Palma with none to listen. Tis your Cause — 
 What makes a Ghibellin ? There should be laws — 
 (Remember how my youth escaped ! I trust 
 To you for manhood, Palma ; tell me just 
 As any child) — laws secretly at work 
 Explaining this. Assure me good may lurk 
 
SORDELLO. 167 
 
 Under the bad ; my multitude has part 
 In your designs, their welfare is at heart 
 With Salinguerra, to their interest 
 Refer the deeds he dwelt on — so divest 
 Our conference of much that scared me : why 
 Affect that heartless tone to Tito ? I 
 Esteemed myself, yes, in my inmost mind 
 This morn, a recreant to that wide mankind 
 O'erlooked till now : why boast my spirit's force, 
 — That force denied its object ? why divorce 
 These, then admire my spu-it's flight the same, 
 As though it bore a burden, which could tame 
 No pinion, from d^ead void to living space ? 
 — That orb consigned to chaos and disgrace. 
 Why vaunt complacently my frantic dance. 
 Making a feat's facilities enhance 
 The marvel ? But I front Taurello, one 
 Of happier fate, and what I should have done 
 He does ; the multitude aye paramount 
 With him, its making progress may account 
 For his abiding still : when . . . but you heard 
 His talk with Tito — the excuse preferred 
 For burning those five hostages — and broached 
 By way of blind, as you and I approached, 
 I do believe. 
 
168 SORDELLO. 
 
 She spoke : then he, My thought 
 Plainer expressed ! All Friedrich's profit — nought 
 Of these meantime, of conquests to achieve 
 For them, of wretchednesses to relieve 
 While profiting that Friedrich. Azzo, too. 
 Supports a cause : what is it ? Guelfs pursue 
 Their ends by means like yours, or better ? 
 
 When 
 The Guelfs were shown alike, men ranged with men, 
 And deed with deed, blaze, blood, with blood and blaze. 
 Morn broke : once more, Sordello, meet its gaze 
 Proudly — the people's charge against thee fails 
 In every point, while either party quails ! 
 These are the busy ones — be silent thou ! 
 Two parties take the world up, and allow 
 No third, yet have one principle, subsist 
 By the same method ; whoso shall enlist 
 With either, ranks with man's inveterate foes. 
 So there is one less quarrel to compose 
 'Twixt us : the Guelf 's, the Ghibellin 's to curse — 
 I have done nothing, but both sides do worse 
 Than nothing ; nay to me, forgotten^ reft 
 Of insight, lapped by trees and flowers, was left 
 The notion of a service— ha ? What lured 
 Me here, what mighty aim was I assured 
 
SORDELLO. 169 
 
 Moved Salinguerra ? If a Cause remained 
 Intact, distinct from these, and fate ordained, 
 For all the past, that Cause for me ? 
 
 One pressed 
 Before them here, a watcher, to suggest 
 The subject for a ballad : he must know 
 The tale of the dead worthy, long ago 
 Consul of Rome — that 's long ago for us. 
 Minstrels and bowmen, idly squabbling thus 
 In the world's corners — but too late, no doubt. 
 For the brave time he sought to bring about 
 — Not know Crescentius Nomentanus ? Then 
 He cast about for terms to tell him, when 
 Sordello disavowed it, how they used 
 Whenever their Superior introduced 
 A novice to the Brotherhood (for I 
 Was just a brown-sleeve brother, merrily 
 Appointed too, quoth he, till Innocent 
 Bade me relinquish, to my small content, 
 My wife or my brown sleeves) out some one spoke 
 Ere nocturns of Crescentius, to revoke 
 The edict issued after his demise 
 That blotted memory, and effigies, 
 All out except a floating power, a name 
 Including, tending to produce the same 
 
1/0 SORDELLO. 
 
 Great act. Rome, dead, forgotten, lived at least 
 
 Within that man, though to a vulgar priest 
 
 And a vile stranger, fit to be a slave 
 
 Of Rome's, Pope John, King Otho, fortune gave 
 
 The rule there : but Crescentius, haply drest 
 
 In white, called Roman Consul for a jest, 
 
 Taking the people at their word, forth stept 
 
 As upon Brutus' heel, nor ever kept 
 
 Us waiting ; stept he forth and from his brain 
 
 Gave Rome out on its ancient place again. 
 
 Ay, bade proceed with Brutus' Rome kings styled 
 
 Themselves the citizens of, and, beguiled 
 
 Thereby, were fain select the lustrous gem 
 
 Out of a lapfull, spoil their diadem 
 
 — The Senate's cypher was so hard to scratch ! 
 
 He flashes like a phanal, men too catch 
 
 The flame, and Rome's accomplished ; when returned 
 
 Otho and John the Consul's step had spurned, 
 
 With Hugo Lord of Este, to redress 
 
 The wrongs of each. Crescentius in the stress 
 
 Of adverse fortune bent. They crucified 
 
 Their Consul in the Forum and abide 
 
 Such slaves at Rome e'er since, that I — (for I 
 
 Was once a brown-sleeve brother, merrily 
 
SORDELLO. 171 
 
 Appointed) — I had option to keep wife 
 
 Or keep brown sleeves, and managed in the strife 
 
 Lose both. A song of Rome ! 
 
 And Rome, indeed, 
 Robed at Goito in fantastic weed. 
 The Mother-City of those Mantuan days, 
 Looked an established point of light whence rays 
 Traversed the world ; and all the clustered homes 
 Beside of men were bent on being Romes 
 In their degree ; the question was how each 
 Should most resemble Rome, clean out of reach 
 Herself ; nor struggled either principle 
 To change what it aspired possess — Rome, still 
 For Friedrich or Honorius. 
 
 Rome 's the Cause ! 
 The Rome of the old Pandects, our new laws — 
 The Capitol turned Castle Angelo 
 And structures that inordinately glow 
 Corrected by the Theatre forlorn 
 As a black mundane shell, its world late born 
 — Yerona, that 's beside it. These combined, 
 We typify the scheme to put mankind 
 Once more in full possession of their rights 
 By his sole agency. On me it lights 
 
172 SORDELLO. 
 
 To build up Rome again — me, first and last : 
 For such a Future was endured the Past ! 
 And thus in the grey twilight forth he sprung 
 To give his thought consistency among 
 The People's self, and let their truth avail 
 Finish the dream grown from the archer s tale. 
 
SORDELLO. 173 
 
 BOOK THE FIFTH. 
 
 Is it the same Sordello in the dusk 
 
 As at the dawn ? merely a perished husk 
 
 Now, that arose a power like to build 
 
 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 possest 
 
 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 
 
 Our favoured 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 
 
174 SORDELLO. 
 
 On aught but a stibadium suffers . . . goose, 
 Puttest our lustral vase to such an use ? 
 Oh, huddle up the day s disasters — march 
 Ye runagates, and drop thou, arch by arch, 
 Eome ! 
 
 Yet before they quite disband — a whim — 
 Study a shelter, now, for him, and him. 
 Nay, even him, to 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 
 That 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 — 
 What 's time to us ? and lo, a city rears 
 Itself ! nay, enter — what's the grave to us ? 
 So our forlorn acquaintance carry thus 
 A head ! successively sewer, forum, cirque — 
 Last age that aqueduct was counted work, 
 
SORDELLO. 175 
 
 And now they tire the artificer upon 
 
 Blank alabaster, black obsidion, 
 
 — Careful Jove's face be duly fulgurant, 
 
 And mother Yenus' kiss-creased nipples pant 
 
 Back into pristine pulpiness, ere fixed 
 
 Above the baths. What difference betwixt 
 
 This Rome and ours ? Resemblance what between 
 
 The scurvy dumb- show and the pageant sheen — 
 
 These Romans and our rabble ? Rest thy wit 
 
 And listen : step by step, — a workman fit 
 
 With each, nor too fit, — to one's task, one's time, — 
 
 No leaping o'er the petty to the prime, 
 
 When just the substituting osier lithe 
 
 For bulrushes, and after, wood for withe 
 
 To further loam and roughcast work a stage. 
 
 Exacts an architect, exacts an age, — 
 
 Nor tables of the Mauritanian tree 
 
 For men whose maple-log 's their luxury, — 
 
 And Rome's accomplished ! Better (say you) merge 
 
 At once all workmen in the demiurge, 
 
 All epochs in a life-time, and all tasks 
 
 In one : undoubtedly the city basks 
 
 I' the day — w^hile those you'd feast there want the knack 
 
 Of keeping fresh-chalked gowns from speck and brack. 
 
176 SORDELLO. 
 
 Distinguish not your peacock from your swan, 
 
 Or Mareotic juice from Coecuban, 
 
 Nay sneer . . . enough ! 'twas happy to conceive 
 
 Rome on a sudden, nor shall fate bereave 
 
 Us of that credit : for the rest, her spite 
 
 Is an old story — serves us very right 
 
 For adding yet another to the dull 
 
 List of devices — things proved beautiful 
 
 Could they be done, Sordello cannot do. 
 
 He sate 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 (lower than a Pythoness 
 Conceding to a Lydian King's distress 
 The cause of his long error — one mistake 
 Of her past oracle) Sordello, wake ! 
 Where is the vanity ? Why count you, one 
 The first step with the last step ? What is gone 
 Except that aery magnificence — 
 That last step you took first ? an evidence 
 
SORDELLO. 177 
 
 You were ... no matter. Let those glances fall ! 
 
 This basis, this beginning step of all, 
 
 Which proves you one of us, is this gone too ? 
 
 Pity to disconcert one versed as you 
 
 In fate's ill-nature, but its full extent 
 
 Eludes Sordello, even : the veil 's rent, 
 
 Read the black writing — that collective man 
 
 Outstrips the individual ! Who began 
 
 The greatnesses you know ? — ay, your own art 
 
 Shall serve us : put the poet's mimes apart — 
 
 Close with the poet — closer — what ? a dim 
 
 Too plain form separates itself from him ? 
 
 Alcama's song enmeshes the lulled Isle, 
 
 Woven into the echoes left erewhile 
 
 Of Nina's, one soft web of song : no more 
 
 Turning his name, now, flower-like o'er and o'er ! 
 
 An elder poet 's in the younger's place — 
 
 Take Nina's strength — but lose Alcama's grace ? 
 
 Each neutralizes each then I gaze your fill ; 
 
 Search further and the past presents you still 
 
 New Ninas, new Alcamas, time's mid-night 
 
 Concluding, — better say its evenlight 
 
 Of yesterday. You, now, in this respect 
 
 Of benefitting people (to reject 
 
178 BORDELLO. 
 
 The favour of your fearful ignorance 
 
 A thousand phantasms eager to advance, 
 
 Refer you but to those within your reach) 
 
 Were you the first who got, to use plain speech, 
 
 The Multitude to be materialized ? 
 
 That loose eternal unrest — who devised 
 
 An apparition i' the midst ? the rout 
 
 Who checked, the breathless ring who formed about 
 
 That sudden flower ? Get round at any risk 
 
 The gold-rough pointel, silver-blazing disk 
 
 0' the lily ! Swords across it ! Reign thy reign 
 
 And serve thy frolic service, Charlemagne ! 
 
 — The very child of over-joy ousness. 
 
 Unfeeling thence, strong therefore : Strength by stress 
 
 Of Strength comes of a forehead confident. 
 
 Two widened eyes expecting heart's content, 
 
 A calm as out of just-quelled noise, nor swerves 
 
 The ample cheek for doubt, in gracious curves 
 
 Abutting on the upthrust nether lip — 
 
 He wills, how should lie doubt then ? Ages slip — 
 
 Was it Sordello pried into the work 
 
 So far accomplished, and discovering lurk 
 
 A company amid the other clans, 
 
 Only distinct in priests for castellans 
 
SORDELLO. 179 
 
 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 he into its capabilities 
 And dared create out of that sect a soul 
 Should turn the multitude, already whole, 
 To some account ? 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 sand shall be demolished, but the rock 
 Endures — a column of black fiery dust 
 Blots heaven — woe, woe, 'tis prematurely thrust 
 Aside, that step ! — the air clears — nought's erased 
 Of the true outline ? Thus much is firm based — 
 The other was a scaffold : see you 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 's tight-corded, too, the chin deep-trenched, 
 As if a cloud enveloped him while fought 
 Under it all, grim prizers, thought with thought 
 N 2 
 
180 SORDELLO. 
 
 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. 
 
 — A root, the crippled mandrake of the earth. 
 
 Thwarted and dwarfed and blasted in its birth, 
 
 Be certain ; fruit of suffering's excess. 
 
 Whence feeling, therefore stronger : still by stress 
 
 Of Strength, work Knowledge ! Full threehundred years 
 
 For men to wear away in smiles and tears 
 
 Between the two that nearly seem to touch, 
 
 Observe you : quit one workman and we clutch 
 
 Another, letting both their trains go by — 
 
 The actors-out of cither's policy, 
 
 Heinrich, on this hand, Otho, Barbaross, 
 
 May carry the Imperial crowns across, 
 
 Aix' Iron, Milan's Silver, and Rome's Gold — 
 
 As Alexander, Innocent uphold 
 
 On that the Papal keys — 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 ! 
 
 The couple there alone help Gregory ? 
 
 Hark — from the hermit Peter's thin sad cry 
 
SORDELLO. 181 
 
 At Claremont, yonder to the 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 Yimmercato, 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's making cease 
 The fierce ones, to Saint Francis preacliing peace 
 Yonder 1 God's Truce — or trick to supersede 
 The use of strength at all, is safe. Indeed 
 We trench upon the future ! Who shall found 
 Next step, next age — trail plenteous o'er the ground 
 Yine-like, produced by joy and sorrow, whence 
 Unfeeling and yet feeling, strongest thence : 
 Knowledge by stress of Knowledge is it ? No — 
 E'en were Sordello ready to forego 
 His work for this, 'twere overleaping work 
 Some one must do before, howe'er it irk : 
 No end 's in sight yet of that second road : 
 Who means to help must still support the load 
 Hildebrand lifted — why hast Thou, he groaned, 
 Imposed, my God, a thing thy Paul had moaned. 
 
182 SORDELLO. 
 
 Thy Moses failed beneath, on me ? and yet 
 
 That grandest of the tasks God ever set 
 
 On man left much to do : a mighty wrench — 
 
 The scaffold falls — but half the 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 — Ay, then perchance may start 
 
 Sordello on his race —but who'll divulge 
 
 Time's secrets ? lo, a step 's awry, a bulge 
 
 To be corrected by a step we thought 
 
 Got over long ago — till that is wrought. 
 
 No progress ! and that scaffold in its turn 
 
 Becomes, its service o'er, a thing to spurn. 
 
 Meanwhile, your some half-dozen years of life 
 
 Longer, dispose you to forego the strife — 
 
 Who takes exception ? 'Tis Ferrara, mind. 
 
 Before us, and Goito 's left behind : 
 
 As you then were, as half yourself, desist ! 
 
 — The warrior-part of you may, an it list. 
 
 Finding real faulchions diiSicult to poise. 
 
 Fling them afar and taste the cream of joys 
 
SORDELLO. 183 
 
 By wielding one in fancy, — what is bard 
 
 Of you, may spurn the vehicle that marred 
 
 Elys so much, and in mere fancy glut 
 
 His sense on her free beauties — we have but 
 
 To please ourselves for law, and you could please 
 
 What then appeared yourself by dreaming these 
 
 Rather than doing these : now — fancy's trade 
 
 Is ended, mind, nor one half may evade 
 
 The other half : our friends are half of you : 
 
 Out of a thousand helps, just one or two 
 
 Can be accomplished presently — but flinch 
 
 From these (as from the faulchion raised an inch, 
 
 Elys described a couplet) and make proof 
 
 Of fancy, — and, while one half lolls aloof 
 
 O' the grass completing Rome to the tip-top — 
 
 See if, for that, the other half will stop 
 
 A tear, begin a smile : that 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 spawling idiot who recounts 
 
184 SORDELLO. 
 
 How, lopt 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 chesnut bread, — 
 And Cino, always in the self-same place 
 Weeping ; beside that other wretches' 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 stm ; and see 
 Lucchino, beauty, with the favors free, 
 Trim hacqueton and sprucely scented hair. 
 Campaigning it for the first time — cut there 
 In two already, boy enough to crawl 
 For latter orpine round the Southern wall, 
 Toma, where Richard 's kept, because that whore 
 Marfisa the fool never saw before 
 Sickened for flowers this wearisomest siege : 
 Then 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 
 
SORDELLO. 185 
 
 From the pine barrier) — "What if, now the scene 
 Draws to a shutting, if yourself have been 
 — You, plucking purples in Goito's moss 
 Like edges of a trabea (not to cross 
 Your consul-feeling) or dry aloe-shafts 
 Here at Ferrara — He whom fortune wafts 
 This very age her best inheritance 
 Of opportunities ? Yet we advance . 
 Upon the last ! Since talking is your trade, 
 There 's Salinguerra left you to persuade. 
 And then — 
 
 No — no — which latest chance secure ! 
 Leapt up and cried Sordello : this made sure, 
 The Past is yet redeemable whose work 
 Was — help the Guelfs, and I, howe'er it irk. 
 Thus help ! He shook the foolish aloe-haulm 
 Out of his doublet, paused, proceeded 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) 
 Our sober councils have diversified : 
 Elcorte's son ! — but forward as you may, 
 Our lady's minstrel with so much to say ! 
 
186 SORDELLO. 
 
 The hesitating sunset floated back, 
 
 Rosily traversed in a single 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 ; 'twas Day looped back Night's pall; 
 
 Sordello had a chance left spite of all. 
 
 And much he made of the convincing speech 
 He meant should compensate the Past and reach 
 Through his youth's daybreak of unprofit, quite 
 To his noon s labour, so proceed till night 
 At leisure ! The contrivances to bind 
 Taurello body with the Cause and mind, 
 — "Was the consummate rhetoric just that ? 
 Yet most Bordello'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 ? 
 
SORDELLO. 187 
 
 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 colour rose 
 
 Or his lip moved, while he discreetly urged 
 
 The need of Lomhardy's becoming purged 
 
 At soonest of her barons ; the poor part 
 
 Abandoned thus missing the blood at heart. 
 
 Spirit in brain, unseasonably off 
 
 Elsewhere ! But, though his speech was worthy scoff, 
 
 Good-humoured Salinguerra, famed for tact 
 
 That way, who, careless of his phrase, ne'er lacked 
 
 The right phrase, and harangued Honor ius dumb 
 
 At his accession, looked as all fell plumb 
 
 To purpose and himself took interest 
 
 In every point his new instructor pressed 
 
 — Left playing with the rescript's white wax seal 
 
 To scrutinize Sordello head to heel : 
 
 Then means he . . . yes, assent sure ? Well ? Alas, 
 
 He said no more than. So it comes to pass 
 
 That poesy, sooner than politics. 
 
 Makes fade young hair : to think his speech could fix 
 
 Taurello ! 
 
 Then a flash ; he knew the truth : 
 So fantasies shall break and fritter youth 
 
188 SORDELLO. 
 
 That he has long ago lost earnestness, 
 
 Lost will to work, lost power to express 
 
 Even the need of working ! Ere the grave 
 
 No more occasions now, though he should crave 
 
 One such in right of superhuman toil 
 
 To do what was undone, repair his spoil, 
 
 Alter the Past — nought brings again 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, suited to his choice, 
 
 — One way or other idle life out, drop 
 
 No few smooth verses by the way — for prop 
 
 A thyrsus these sad people should, the same, 
 
 Pick up, set store by, and, so far from blame. 
 
 Plant o'er his hearse convinced his better part 
 
 Survived him. Rather tear men out the heart 
 
 Of the truth ! Sordello muttered, and renewed 
 
 His propositions for the Multitude. 
 
 But Salinguerra who, the last attack. 
 Threw himself in his ruffling corslet back 
 To hear the better, smilingly resumed 
 Some task ; beneath the carroch's warning boomed; 
 
^ 
 
 SORDELLO. 189 
 
 He must decide with Tito ; courteously 
 
 He turned then, even seeming to agree 
 
 With his admonisher — " Assist the Pope, • 
 
 Extend his domination, fill the scope 
 
 Of the Church based on All, by All, for All — 
 
 Change Secular to Evangelicar' — 
 
 Echoing his very sentence : all seemed lost, 
 
 When sudden he looked, 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 — letting Richard slip. 
 
 Wide to the walls throw ope your gates, equip 
 
 Azzo with . . . but no matter ! Who '11 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 
 
 Alcama from a parti-coloured coat 
 
 To holding her lord's stirrup in the wars. 
 
 Not that I see where couplet -making jars 
 
 With common sense : at Mantua we had borne 
 
 This chanted, easier than their most forlorn 
 
190 SORDELLO. 
 
 Of bull-fights, that's indisputable ! 
 
 Brave ! 
 Whom vanity nigh slew, contempt shall save ! 
 All's at an end : a Troubadour suppose 
 Mankind 's to class him with their friends or foes ? 
 A puny uncouth ailing vassal think 
 The world and him in some especial link ? 
 Abrupt the visionary tether 's burst — 
 "What's to reward or what to be amerced 
 If a poor drudge, solicitous to dream 
 Deservingly, gets tangled by his theme 
 So far as to conceit his 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 
 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 
 His hand on a set thought in a set speech : 
 And was Sordello fitted thus for each 
 Conjuncture ? No wise ; since within his soul 
 Perception brooded unexpressed and whole: 
 
SORDELLO. 191 
 
 A healthy spirit like a healthy frame 
 
 Craves aliment in plenty and, 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 
 
 — Tis 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 Haroun s man of brass receives 
 
 A^meal, ay, 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 
 
 Parcel by parcel through his life, outpoured 
 
 That eve, was, for that age, a novel thing : 
 
 And round those three the People formed a ring, 
 
 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 their lord ere they exact 
 
192 SORDELLO. 
 
 Amends for that lord's defalcation. Last, 
 A reason why the phrases flowed so fast 
 Was in his quite forgetting for the time 
 Himself in his amazement that his rhyme 
 Disguised the royalty so much : he there — 
 They full face to him — and yet unaware 
 Who was the King and who . . . But if I lay 
 On thine my spirit and compel obey 
 His lord — Taurello ? Impotent to build 
 Another Rome, but hardly so unskilled 
 In what such builder should have been as brook 
 One shame beyond the charge that he forsook 
 His function ! Set me free 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 
 At any crown he claims ! That I must cede 
 As 'tis, my right to my especial meed — 
 Confess you fitter help the world than I 
 Ordained its champion from eternity. 
 Is much : but to behold you scorn the post 
 I quit in your behalf— as aught 's to boast 
 Unless you help the world ! And while he rung 
 The changes on this theme, the roof up-sprung, 
 
SORDELLO. 193 
 
 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 vapour, 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, Typhon's all 
 
 For Hercules to trample — good report 
 
 From Salinguerra 's only to extort ? 
 
 So was I (closed he his inculcating 
 A poet must be earth's essential king) 
 So was I, royal so, and if I fail 
 Tis not the royalty ye witness quail 
 But one deposed who, caring not exert 
 Its proper essence, trifled malapert 
 With accidents instead — good things assigned 
 The herald of a better thing behind — 
 And, worthy through display of these, put forth 
 Never the inmost all- surpassing worth 
 
194 SORDELLO. 
 
 That constitutes him King precisely since 
 
 As yet no other creature 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 whose novel birth 
 
 Should, in its novelty, be kingship's proof — 
 
 Now, whether he came near or kept aloof, 
 
 Those forms unalterable first to last 
 
 Proved him her copy, not the protoplast 
 
 Of Nature : what could come of being free 
 
 By action to exhibit tree for tree, 
 
 Bird, beast for beast and bird, or prove earth bore 
 
 A veritable man or woman more ? 
 
 Means to an end, such proofs ; and what the end ? 
 
 Your essence, whatsoe'er it be, extend — 
 
 Never contract ! Already you include 
 
 The multitude ; now let the multitude 
 
 Include yourself, and the result is new ; 
 
 Themselves before, the multitude turn you ; 
 
 This were to live and move and have (in them) 
 
 Your being, and secure a diadem 
 
 That 's to transmit (because no cycle yearns 
 
 Beyond itself, but on itself returns) 
 
SORDELLO. 195 
 
 When the full sphere in wane, the world overlaid 
 Long since with you, shall have in turn obeyed 
 Some orb still prouder, some displayer, still 
 More potent than the last, of human Will, 
 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 
 Once deeds sufficed : for, let the world roll back. 
 Who fails, through deeds diverse so e'er, re-track 
 My purpose still, my task ? A teeming crust — 
 Air, flame, earth, wave at conflict — see ! Needs must 
 Emerge some Calm embodied these refer 
 (Saturn — no yellow-bearded Jupiter!) 
 The brawl to ; some existence like a pact 
 And protest against Chaos, some first fact 
 r 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 those about us, minds which, more or less, 
 Lofty or low, in moving seek impress 
 o 2 
 
196 SORDELLO. 
 
 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. 
 
 Is soul from body still to disengage 
 
 As tending to a freedom which rejects 
 
 Such help and incorporeally aflfects 
 
 The world, producing deeds but not by deeds. 
 
 Swaying, in others, frames itself exceeds, 
 
 Assigning them the simpler tasks it used 
 
 As patiently perform till Song produced 
 
 Acts, by thoughts only, for the mind : divest 
 
 Mind of e'en Thought, and, lo, God's unexpressed 
 
 Will dawns above us. But so much to win 
 
 Ere that ! A lesser round of steps within 
 
 The last. 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 ? I covet the first task 
 
 And marshal yon Life's elemental Masque 
 
 Of Men, on evil or on good lay stress, 
 
 This light, this shade make prominent, suppress 
 
 All ordinary hues that softening blend 
 
 Such natures with the level : apprehend 
 
BORDELLO. 197 
 
 "Which evil is, which good, if I allot 
 
 Your Hell, the Purgatory, Heaven ye v^ot. 
 
 To those you doubt concerning : I en womb 
 
 Some wretched Friedrich with his red-hot tomb, 
 
 Some dubious spirit, Lombard Agilulph 
 
 With the black chastening river I engulph ; 
 
 Some unapproached Matilda I enshrine 
 
 With languors of the planet of decline — 
 
 These fail to recognise, 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, helped, 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 
 
 In presence of you all ! Myself implied C^v^ge? 
 
 Superior now, as, by the platform's side, 
 
198 SORDELLO. 
 
 Bidding them do and suffer to content 
 
 The world . . . no — that I wait not — circumvent 
 
 A few it has contented, and to these 
 
 Offer unveil the last of mysteries 
 
 I boast ! Man s life shall have yet freer play : 
 
 Once more I cast external things away 
 
 And Natures, varied now, so decompose 
 
 That . . . but enough ! Why fancy how I rose, 
 
 Or rather 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 attained to talk as brothei:s 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 turn to insignificance 
 
 Those structures' symmetry the Past has strewed 
 
 Your world with, once so bare : leave the mere rude 
 
 Explicit details, 'tis but brother s speech 
 
 We need, speech where an accent's change gives each 
 
SORDELLO. 199 
 
 The other's soul — no speech to understand 
 
 By former audience — need was then expand, 
 
 Expatiate — hardly were they brothers ! true — 
 
 Nor I lament my less 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 Lybian 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 
 
 A single service I am bound effect 
 
 Nor murmur, bid me, still as poet, bow 
 
 Taurello to the Guelf cause, disallow 
 
 The Kaiser's coming — which with heart, soul, strength, 
 
 I labour for, this eve, who feel at length 
 
200 SORDELLO. 
 
 My past career s outrageous vanity 
 
 And would (as vain amends) die, even die 
 
 Now I first estimate the boon of life, 
 
 So death might bow Taurello — sure this strife 
 
 Is the last strife — the People my support. 
 
 My poor Sordello ! what may we extort 
 By this, I wonder ? Palma's lighted eyes 
 Turned to Taurello who, as past surprise. 
 Began, You love him — what you'd say at large 
 If I say briefly ? First your father s charge 
 To me, his friend, peruse : I guessed indeed 
 You were no stranger to the course decreed 
 Us both : I 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 Yicentines will gripe, 
 — To Alberic, a patch the Trevisan 
 Clutches already; extricate who can 
 Treville, Yillarazzi, Puissolo, 
 Cartiglione, Loria — all go, 
 
 And with them go my hopes ! 'Tis lost, then ! Lost 
 This eve, our crisis, and some pains it cost 
 
SORDELLO. 201 
 
 Procuring ; thirty years — as good Fd spent 
 
 Like our admonisher ! But each his bent 
 
 Pursues — no question, one might live absurd 
 
 Oneself this while, by deed as he by word. 
 
 Persisting to obtrude an influence where 
 
 'Tis 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 ! Who*d suppose the dearth 
 
 Of Ecelins and Alberics on earth ? 
 
 Say there's a thing in prospect, must disgrace 
 
 Betide competitors ? An obscure place 
 
 Suits me — there wants youth, bustle, one to stalk 
 
 And attitudinize — some fight, more talk, 
 
 Most flaunting badges — 'twere not hard make clear 
 
 Since Friedrich's very purposes lie here 
 
 — Here — pity they are like to lie ! For me, 
 
 Whose station s 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; Palma were Ecelin 
 
202 SORDELLO. 
 
 For me and welcome ! Could that neck endure 
 
 This bauble for a cumbrous garniture 
 
 You should ... or might one bear it for you ? 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 I 
 
 And the badge was thrown 
 Across Sordello's neck : this badge alone 
 Makes you Romano's Head — the Lombard's Curb 
 Turns on your neck which would, on mine, disturb 
 My pauldron, said Taurello. A mad act, 
 Nor dreamed about a moment since — 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 should make him all he said 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 — 
 
SORDELLO. 203 
 
 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 — mighty 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 
 Silent though his proportions seemed aspire 
 Momently ; and, interpreting the thrill 
 Nigh at its ebb, Palma you found was still 
 Relating somewhat Adelaide confessed 
 A year ago, while dying on her breast. 
 Of a contrivance that Yicenza night. 
 Her 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 
 
204 BORDELLO. 
 
 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's clamour, Ecelin s, up, down 
 
 The disarray : failed Adelaide see then 
 
 Who was the natural Chief, the Man of Men ? 
 
 Outstripping time her Ecelin burst swathe. 
 
 Stood up with haggard eyes beyond the scathe 
 
 From wandering after his heritage 
 
 Lost once and lost for aye — what could engage 
 
 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 
 
 'Twas Salinguerra's for his child : scorn, hate 
 
 Rage, startled her from Ecelin — too late ! 
 
 A moment's work, and rival's foot had spurned 
 
 Never that brow to earth ! Ere sense returned — 
 
 The act conceived, adventured, and complete. 
 
 They stole away towards an obscure retreat 
 
 Mother and child— Retrude's self not slain 
 
 (Nor even here Taurello moved) though pain 
 
SORDELLO. 205 
 
 Was fled ; and what assured them most 'twas fled, 
 
 All pain, was, if you 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 sufi'ered look 
 
 Downward : they marched : no sign of life once shook 
 
 The company's close litter of crossed spears 
 
 Till, as they reached Goito, a few tears 
 
 Slipt 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 Palm a, she would blend 
 
 With this magific 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 
 
206 SORDELLO. 
 
 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, and his cold 
 
 Calm acquiescence in his lot ! But free 
 
 Impart the secret to Romano, slie 
 
 Engaged to repossess Sordello of 
 
 His heritage, and hers, and that way doflP 
 
 The mask, but after years, long years I — while now 
 
 Was not Romano's sign-mark on that brow ? 
 
 Across Taurello's heart his arms were locked : 
 And 'twas, when speak he did, as if he mocked 
 The minstrel, who had not to move, he said. 
 Not stir — should Fate defraud him of a shred 
 Of this son s infancy ? much less of youth 
 (Laughingly all this) which to aid, in truth, 
 Himself, reserved on purpose, had not grown 
 Old, not too old — 'twas better keep alone 
 Till now, and never idly meet till now : 
 — Then, in the same breath, told Sordello how 
 The intimations of this eve's event 
 Were futile — Friedrich means advance to Trent, 
 Thence to Yerona, then to Rome — there stop — 
 Tumble the Church down, institute a-top 
 
SORDELLO. 207 
 
 The Alps a Prefecture of Lombardy : 
 — That's now — no prophesying what may be 
 Anon, beneath a 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 sweatdrops 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 
 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 you scatter, ay, like chaff 
 The 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 
 
208 SORDELLO. 
 
 For any Friedricli 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 Yalsugan ; 
 
 Sofia's Egna by Bolgiano's sure . . . 
 
 So he proceeded. Half of all this pure 
 
 Delusion, doubtless, nor the rest too true, 
 
 But what was undone he felt sure to do 
 
 As ring by ring he wrung ofi*, 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. 209 
 
 Sordello's whiteness, undersize ; 'twas plain 
 
 He hardly rendered right to his own hrain — 
 
 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 ! 
 
 Palma had listened patiently : but when 
 
 Twas time expostulate, attempt withdraw 
 
 Taurello from his child, she, without aw^e 
 
 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 corslet heave [^sank : 
 
 The while) who, loose, rose — tried to speak — then 
 
 They left him in the chamber — all was blank. 
 
 And even reeling down the castle-stair 
 Taurello kept up, as though unaware 
 Palma was guide to him, the old device 
 — Something of Milan — how we muster thrice 
 The Torriani's strength there — all along 
 Our own Yisconti 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. 
 p 
 
210 SORDELLO. 
 
 When he had sate in silence long enough 
 Splintering the stone bench, braving a rebuff 
 She stopt 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 
 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, tho' 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 frame- work with his hands, a shade, 
 A crown, an aureole — there must she remain 
 (Her little mouth compressed w4th 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. 
 
SORDELLO. 211 
 
 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 yengeance, schemes on schemes, not 
 
 one 
 Fit to be told that foolish boy, he said. 
 But only let Sordello Palma wed, 
 —Then ! 
 
 *Twas a dim long narrow place at best : 
 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 ; 
 p2 
 
212 SORDELLO. 
 
 — 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 nought 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 
 
 r 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 might you 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, 
 
 Rebuild, he and Sordello, Charlemagne — 
 
 But garnished. Strength with Knowledge, if we deign 
 
BORDELLO. 213 
 
 Accept that compromise and stoop to give 
 
 Rome law, the Caesars' Representative. 
 
 — Enough that the illimitable flood 
 
 Of triumphs after triumphs, understood 
 
 In its faint reflux (you shall hear) sufiiced 
 
 Young Ecelin for appanage, enticed 
 
 Him till, these long since quiet in their graves, 
 
 He found 'twas looked for that a long life's braves 
 
 Should somehow be made good — so, weak and worn, 
 
 Must stagger up at Milan, one grey morn 
 
 Of the To-Come, to fight his latest fight. 
 
 And Salinguerra's prophecy at height — 
 
 He voluble with a raised arm and stifle, 
 
 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 sickles, mulberry leaflets 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. 
 
214 SORDELLO. 
 
 Cunizza, as he called her ! Never ask 
 
 Of Palma more ! She sate, knowing her task 
 
 Was done, the labour of it — for success 
 
 Concerned not Palma, passion s votaress) 
 
 Triumph at height, I say, Sordello crowned — 
 
 Above the passage suddenly a sound 
 
 Stops speech, stops walk : back shrinks Taurello, bids 
 
 With large involuntary asking lids 
 
 Palma interpret. Tis his own foot-stamp — 
 
 Your hand ! His summons 1 Nay, this idle damp 
 
 Befits not. Out they two reeled dizzily : 
 
 " Yisconti'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, Alberic ... ah, Naddo 's gone ! 
 
 — Labours this moonrise what the Master meant 
 
 " Is Squarcialupo speckled ? — purulent 
 
 rd 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 rouoh lines 
 
SORDELLO. 215 
 
 The moon breaks through, a grey 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 
 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 ! 
 
216 SORDELLO. 
 
 BOOK THE SIXTH. 
 
 The thought of Eglamor 's least like a thought, 
 
 And yet a false one, was, Man shrinks to nought 
 
 If matched with symbols of immensity — 
 
 Must quail, forsooth, before a quiet sky 
 
 Or sea, too little for their quietude : 
 
 And, truly, somewhat in Sordello's mood 
 
 Confirmed its speciousness while evening sank 
 
 Down the near terrace to the further bank. 
 
 And only one spot left out of the night 
 
 Glimmered upon the river opposite — 
 
 A breadth of watery heaven like a bay, 
 
 A sky-like space of water, ray for ray 
 
 And star for star, one richness where they mixed 
 
 As this and that wing of an angel, fixed, 
 
 Tumultuary splendors folded in 
 
 To die : nor turned he till Ferrara's din 
 
BORDELLO. 217 
 
 (Say, the monotonous speech from a man's lip 
 Who lets some first and eager purpose slip 
 In a new fancy's birth ; the speech keeps on 
 Though elsewhere its informing soul be gone) 
 Aroused him, — surely ofi'ered succour ; fate 
 Paused with this eve ; ere she precipitate 
 Herself . . . put ofi* strange after-thoughts awhile, 
 That voice, those large hands, that portentous smile . . . 
 What help to pierce the Future as the Past 
 Lay in the plaining city ? 
 
 And at last 
 The main discovery and prime concern. 
 All that just now imported him to learn. 
 His truth, like yonder slow moon to complete 
 Heaven, rose again, and naked at his feet 
 Lighted his old life's every shift and change. 
 Effort with counter-effort ; nor the range 
 Of each looked wrong except wherein it checked 
 Some other — which of these could he suspect 
 Prying into them by the sudden blaze ? 
 The real way seemed made up of all the ways — 
 Mood after mood of the one mind in him ; 
 Tokens of the existence, bright or dim, 
 Of a transcendent all-embracing sense 
 Demanding only outward influence, 
 
218 BORDELLO. 
 
 A soul, in Palma's phrase, above his soul, 
 
 Power to uplift his power, this moon s control, 
 
 Over the sea-depths, and their mass had swept 
 
 Onward from the beginning and still kept 
 
 Its course ; but years and years the sky above 
 
 Held none, and so, untasked of any love, 
 
 His sensitiveness idled, now amort. 
 
 Alive now, and to sullenness or sport 
 
 Given wholly up, disposed itself anew 
 
 At every passing instigation, grew 
 
 And dwindled at caprice, in foam-showers spilt, 
 
 Wedge-like insisting, quivered now a gilt 
 
 Shield in the sunshine, now a blinding race 
 
 Of whitest ripples o'er the reef — found place 
 
 For myriad charms ; not gathered up and, hurled 
 
 Right from its heart, encompassing the world. 
 
 So had Sordello been, by consequence, 
 
 Without a function : others made pretence 
 
 To strengths not half his own, yet had some core 
 
 Within, submitted to some moon, before 
 
 It still, superior still whatever its force, 
 
 Were able therefore to fulfil a course 
 
 Nor missed Life's crown, authentic attribute — 
 
 To each who lives must be a certain fruit 
 
SORDELLO. 219 
 
 Of having lived in his degree, a stage 
 Earlier or later in men's pilgrimage, 
 To stop at ; and to which those spirits tend 
 Who, still discovering beauty without end, 
 Amass the scintillations for one star 
 — Something unlike them, self- sustained, afar. 
 And meanwhile nurse the dream of being blest 
 By winning it to notice and invest 
 Their souls with alien glory some one day 
 Whene'er the nucleus, gathering shape alway, 
 Round to the perfect circle — soon or late 
 According as themselves are formed to wait ; 
 Whether 'tis human beauty will suffice 
 —The yellow hair and the luxurious eyes, 
 Or human intellect seem best, or each 
 Combine in some ideal form past reach 
 On earth, or else some shade of these, some aim, 
 Some love, hate even, take their place the same, 
 That may be served — all this they do not lose. 
 Waiting for death to live, nor idly choose 
 What Hell shall be — a progress thus pursued 
 Through all existence, still above the food 
 That 's offered them, still towering beyond 
 The widened range in virtue of their bond 
 
220 SORDELLO. 
 
 Of sovereignty : not that a Palma's Love 
 
 A Salinguerra's Hate would equal prove 
 
 To swaying all Sordello : wherefore doubt, 
 
 Love meet for such a Strength, some Moon 's without 
 
 To match his Sea ? — fear, Good so manifest, 
 
 Only the Best breaks faith ? — but that the Best 
 
 Somehow eludes us ever, still might be 
 
 And is not : crave you gems ? where 's penury 
 
 Of their material round us ? pliant earth, 
 
 The plastic flame — what balks the Mage his birth 
 
 — Jacynth in balls, or lodestone by the block ? 
 
 Flinders enrich the strand and veins the rock — 
 
 No more ! Ask creatures ? Life in tempest. Thought 
 
 Clothes the keen hill-top, mid-day woods are fraught 
 
 With fervors . . . ah, these forms are well enough — 
 
 But we had hoped, encouraged by the stuff 
 
 Profuse at Nature's pleasure, Men beyond 
 
 These Men ! and thus, perchance, are over-fond 
 
 In arguing, from Good the Best, from force 
 
 Divided — force combined, an ocean s course 
 
 From this our sea whose mere intestine pants 
 
 Had seemed at times sufficient to our wants. 
 
 — External Power ? If none be adequate 
 
 And he have been ordained (a prouder fate) 
 
SORDELLO. 221 
 
 A law to his own sphere ? the need remove 
 All incompleteness be that law, that love ? 
 Nay, really such be other s laws, though veiled 
 In mercy to each vision that had failed 
 If unassisted by its Want, for lure. 
 Embodied ? stronger vision could endure 
 The simple want — no bauble for a truth ! 
 The People were himself ; and by the ruth 
 At their condition was he less impelled 
 Alter the discrepancy he beheld 
 Than if, from the sound Whole, a sickly Part 
 Subtracted were transformed, decked out with art. 
 Then palmed on him as alien woe — the Guelf 
 To succour, proud that he forsook himself? 
 No : All 's himself — ^all service, therefore, rates 
 Alike, nor serving one part, immolates 
 The rest : but all in time 1 That lance of yours 
 Makes havoc soon with Malek and his Moors, 
 That buckler 's lined with many a Giant's beard 
 Ere long, Porphyrio, be the lance but reared, 
 The buckler wielded handsomely as now ; 
 But view your escort, bear in mind your vow. 
 Count the pale tracts of sand to pass ere that. 
 And, if you hope we struggle through this flat. 
 
222 SORDELLO. 
 
 Put lance and buckler up —next half-month lacks 
 A sturdy exercise of mace or axe 
 To cleave this dismal brake of prickly-pear 
 That bristling holds Cydippe by the hair, 
 Lames barefoot Agathon. 
 
 Oh, People, urge 
 Your claims ! — for thus he ventured to the verge 
 Push a vain mummery which perchance distrust 
 Of his fast-slipping resolution thrust 
 No less : accordingly the Crowd — as yet 
 He had inconsciously contrived forget 
 To dwell upon the points . . . one might assuage 
 The signal horrors sooner than engage 
 With a dim vulgar vast unobvious grief 
 Not to be fancied off, obtain relief 
 In brilliant fits, cured by a happy quirk, 
 But by dim vulgar vast unobvious work 
 To correspond — however, forth they stood : 
 And now content thy stronger vision, brood 
 On thy bare want ; the grave stript turf by turf, 
 Study the corpse-face thro' the taint-worms' scurf ! 
 
 Down sank the People s Then ; uprose their Now. 
 These sad ones render service to ! And how 
 Piteously little must that service prove 
 — Had surely proved in any case ! for move 
 
SORDELLO. 223 
 
 Each other obstacle away, let youth 
 
 Have been aware it had surprised a Truth 
 
 'Twere service to impart — can Truth be seized, 
 
 Settled forthwith, and of the captive eased 
 
 Its captor look around, since this alit 
 
 So happily, no gesture luring it. 
 
 The earnest of a flock to follow ? Yain, 
 
 Most vain ! a life 's to spend ere this he chain. 
 
 To the poor crowd's complacence ; ere the crowd 
 
 Pronounce it captured he descries a cloud 
 
 Its kin of twice the plumage— he, in turn, 
 
 If he shall live as many lives, may learn 
 
 Secure — not otherwise. Then Mantua called 
 
 Back to his mind how certain bards were thralled 
 
 — Buds blasted, but of breaths more like perfumes 
 
 Than Naddo's staring nosegay's carrion blooms 
 
 Could boast — some rose that burnt heart out in sweets, 
 
 A spendthrift in the Spring, no Summer greets — 
 
 Some Dularete, drunk with truths and wine. 
 
 Grown bestial dreaming how become divine. 
 
 Yet to surmount this obstacle, commence 
 
 With the commencement, merits crowning ! Hence 
 
 Must Truth be casual Truth, elicited 
 
 In sparks so mean, at intervals dispread 
 
224 SORDELLO. 
 
 So rarely, that 'tis like at no one time 
 
 Of the world's story has not Truth, the prime 
 
 Of Truth, the very Truth which loosed had hurled 
 
 Its course aright, been really in the world 
 
 Content the while with some mean spark by dint 
 
 Of some chance-blow, the solitary hint 
 
 Of buried fire, which, rip its breast, would stream 
 
 Sky- ward I 
 
 Sordello's miserable gleam 
 Was looked for at the moment : he would dash 
 This badge to earth and all it brought, abash 
 Taurello thus, perhaps persuade him wrest 
 The Kaiser from his purpose ; would attest 
 His constancy in any case. Before 
 He dashes it, however, think once more ! 
 For, was that little truly service ? Ay — 
 r the end, no doubt ; but meantime ? Plain you spy 
 Its ultimate EflPect, but many flaws 
 Of vision blur each intervening Cause ; 
 Were the day's fraction clear as the life's sum 
 Of service. Now as filled as the To-come 
 With evidence of good — nor too minute 
 A share to vie with evil ! How dispute 
 The Guelfs were fitliest maintained in rule ? 
 That made the life's work : not so easy school 
 
BORDELLO. 225 
 
 Your day's work — say, on natures circumstanced 
 So variously, which yet, as each advanced 
 Or might impede that Guelf rule, it behoved 
 You, for the Then's sake, hate what Now you loved, 
 Love what you hated ; nor if one man bore 
 Brand upon temples while his fellow wore 
 The aureole, would it task us to decide — 
 But portioned duly out, the Future vied 
 Never with the unparcelled Present ! Smite 
 Or spare so much on warrant all so slight ? 
 The Present's complete sympathies to break. 
 Aversions bear with, for a Future's sake 
 So feeble ? Tito ruined through one speck, 
 The Legate saved by his sole lightish fleck ? 
 This were work, true — but work performed at cost 
 Of other work — aught gained here, elsewhere lost — 
 For a new segment spoil an orb half-done — 
 Rise with the People one step, and sink . . . one ? 
 Would it were one step — less than the whole face 
 Of things our novel duty bids erase ! 
 Harms are to vanquish ; what ? the Prophet saith. 
 The Minstrel singeth vainly then ? Old faith. 
 Old courage, born of the surrounding harms. 
 Were not, from highest to the lowest, charms ? 
 Q 
 
226 SORDELLO. 
 
 Oh, flame persists but is not glare as stanch ? 
 
 Where the salt marshes stagnate, crystals branch — 
 
 Blood dries to crimson — Evil 's beautified 
 
 In every shape ! But Beauty thrust aside 
 
 You banish Evil : wherefore ? After all 
 
 Is Evil our result less natural 
 
 Than Good ? For overlook the Seasons* strife 
 
 With tree and flower — the hideous animal life, 
 
 Of which who seeks shall find a grinning taunt 
 
 For his solution, must endure the vaunt 
 
 Of Nature's angel, as a child that knows 
 
 Himself befooled, unable to propose 
 
 Auofht better than the foolins: — and but care 
 
 For Men, the varied People then and there, 
 
 Of wliich 'tis easy saying Good and 111 
 
 Claim him alike 1 Whence rose the claim but still 
 
 From 111, the fruit of 111 — what else could knit 
 
 Him theirs but Sorrow ? Any free from it 
 
 Were also free from him ! A happiness 
 
 Could be distinguished in this morning's press 
 
 Of miseries — the fool's who passed a gibe 
 
 On one, said he, so wedded to his tribe 
 
 He carries green and yellow tokens in 
 
 His very face that he 's a Ghibellin — 
 
SORDELLO. 227 
 
 Mucli hold on him that fool obtained f Nay mount 
 Yet higher ; and upon Men's own account 
 Must Evil stay : for what is Joy ? To heave 
 Up one obstruction more, and common leave 
 What was peculiar — by this act destroy 
 Itself; a partial death is every joy ; 
 The sensible escape, enfranchisement 
 Of a sphere's essence : once the vexed — content. 
 The cramped — at large, the growing circle — round, 
 Airs to begin again — some novel bound 
 To break, some new enlargement 's to entreat. 
 The sphere though larger is not more complete. 
 Now for Mankind's experience : who alone 
 Might style the unobstructed world his own ? 
 Whom palled Goito with its perfect things ? 
 Sordello's self; whereas for Mankind springs 
 Salvation — hindrances are interposed 
 For them, not all Life's view at once disclosed 
 To creatures sudden on its summit left 
 With Heaven above and yet of wings bereft — 
 But lower laid, as at the mountain's foot 
 Where, range on range, the girdling forests shoot 
 Between the prospect and the throngs who scale 
 Earnestly ever, piercing veil by veil, 
 Q 2 
 
228 SORDELLO. 
 
 Confirmed witli each discovery ; in their soul 
 
 The Whole they seek by Parts — but, found that Whole, 
 
 Could they revert ? Oh, testify ! The space 
 
 Of time we judge so meagre to embrace 
 
 The Parts, were more than plenty, once attained 
 
 The Whole, to quite exhaust it : for nought 's gained 
 
 But leave to look — -no leave to do : Beneath 
 
 Soon sates the looker — look Above, then ! Death 
 
 Tempts ere a tithe of Life be tasted. Live 
 
 First, and die soon enough, Sordello ! Give 
 
 Body and spirit the bare right they claim 
 
 To pasture thee on a voluptuous shame 
 
 That thou, a pageant -city's denizen. 
 
 Art neither vilely lodged midst Lombard men — 
 
 Canst force joy out of sorrow, seem to truck 
 
 Thine attributes away for sordid muck, 
 
 Yet manage from that very muck educe 
 
 Gold ; then subject, nor scruple, to thy cruce 
 
 The world's discardings ; think, if ingots pay 
 
 Such pains, the clods that yielded them are clay 
 
 To all save thee, and clay remain though quenched 
 
 Thypurging-fire; who's robbed then? Would I wrenched 
 
 An ample treasure forth ! — As 'tis, why crave 
 
 A share that ruins me and will not save 
 
BORDELLO. , 229 
 
 Yourselves ? — imperiously command I quit 
 The course that makes my joy nor will remit 
 Your woe ? Would all arrive at joy ? Reverse 
 The order (time instructs you) nor coerce 
 Each unit till, some predetermined mode, 
 The total be emancipate ; our road 
 Is one, our times of travel many ; thwart 
 No enterprising soul's precocious start 
 Before the general march ; if slow or fast 
 
 All straggle up to the same point at last, 
 Why grudge my having gained a month ago 
 
 The brakes at balm-shed, asphodels in blow, 
 
 While you w^ere landlocked? Speed your Then, but Iiow 
 
 This badge would suffer me improve my Now ! 
 His time of action for, against, or with 
 
 Our world (I labour to extract the pith 
 
 Of this and more) grew up, that even- tide. 
 
 Gigantic with its power of joy beside 
 
 The world's eternity of impotence 
 
 To profit though at all his joy's expense. 
 
 Make nothing of that time because so brief? 
 
 Rather make more — instead of joy take grief 
 
 Before its novelty have time subside ; 
 
 No time for the late savour — leave untried 
 
230 SORDELLO. 
 
 Virtue, the creaming honey wine, quick squeeze 
 Vice like a biting spirit from the lees 
 Of life — together let wrath, hatred, lust. 
 All tyrannies in every shape be thrust 
 Upon this Now, which time may reason out 
 As mischiefs, far from benefits, no doubt — 
 But long ere then Bordello will have slipt 
 Away — you teach him at Goito's crypt 
 There's a blank issue to that fiery thrill ! 
 Stirring, the Few cope with the Many, still : 
 So much of dust as, quiet, makes a mass 
 Unable to produce three tufts of grass. 
 Shall, troubled by the whirlwind, render void 
 The whole calm glebe's endeavour : be employed ! 
 And e*en though somewhat smarts the Crowd for this. 
 Contributes each his pang to make up bliss, 
 'Tis but one pang — one blood-drop to the bowl 
 Which brimful tempts the sluggish asp uncowl 
 So quick, stains ruddily the dull red cape, 
 And, kindling orbs dull as the unripe grape 
 Before, avails forthwith to disentrance 
 The mischief — soon to lead a mystic dance 
 Among you ! Nay, who sits alone in Rome ? 
 Have those great hands indeed hewn out a home 
 
SORDELLO. 231 
 
 For me— compelled to live ? Oh Life, life-breath, 
 
 Life-blood, — ere sleep be travail, life ere death 1 
 
 This life to feed my soul, direct, oblique, 
 
 But alway feeding ! Hindrances ? They pique — 
 
 Helps ? such . . . but wherefore say my soul o'ertops 
 
 All height — than every depth profounder drops ? 
 
 Enough that I can live, and would live ! Wait 
 
 For some transcendent life reserved by Fate 
 
 To follow this ? Oh, never ! Fate I trust 
 
 The same my soul to ; for, as who flings dust 
 
 Perchance — so facile was the deed, she chequed 
 
 The void with these materials to affect 
 
 That soul diversely — these consigned anew 
 
 To nought by death, why marvel if she threw 
 
 A second and superber spectacle 
 
 Before it ? What may serve for sun— what still 
 
 Wander a moon above me — what else wind 
 
 About me like the pleasures left behind ? 
 
 And how shall some new flesh that is not flesh 
 
 Cling to me ? what's new laughter — soothes the fresh 
 
 Sleep like sleep ? Fate 's exhaustless for my sake 
 
 In brave resource, but whether bids she slake 
 
 My thirst at this first rivulet or count 
 
 No draught worth lip save from the rocky fount 
 
232 SORDELLO. 
 
 Above i' the clouds, while here she's provident 
 
 Of (taste) loquacious pearl the soft tree-tent 
 
 Guards, with its face of reate and sedge, nor fail 
 
 The silver globules and gold-sparkling grail 
 
 At bottom— Oh, 'twere too absurd to slight 
 
 For the hereafter the to-day's delight ! 
 
 Quench thirst at this, then seek next well-spring — wear 
 
 Home-lilies ere strange lotus in my hair ! 
 
 Here is the Crowd, whom I with freest heart 
 
 Offer to serve, contented for my part 
 
 To give this life up once for aril, but grant 
 
 I really serve ; if otherwise, why want 
 
 Aught further of me ? Life they cannot chuse 
 
 But set aside — wherefore should I refuse 
 
 The gift ? I take it — I, for one, engage 
 
 Never to falter through the pilgrimage — 
 
 Or end it howling that the stock or stone 
 
 Were enviable, truly : I, for one. 
 
 Will praise the world you style mere anteroom 
 
 To the true palace — but shall I assume 
 
 — My foot the courtly gait, my tongue the trope. 
 
 My eye the glance, before the doors fly ope 
 
 One moment ? What — with guarders row on row^ 
 
 Gay swarms of varletry that come and go. 
 
SORDELLO. 233 
 
 Pages to dice with, waiting-girls unlace 
 
 The plackets of, pert claimants help displace, 
 
 Heart-heavy suitors get a rank for ; laugh 
 
 At yon sleek parasite, break his own staff 
 
 'Cross Beetle-brows the Usher's shoulder ; why — 
 
 Admitted to the presence by and bye. 
 
 Should thought of these recurring make me grieve 
 
 Among new sights I reach, old sights I leave ? 
 
 — Cool citrine-crystals, fierce pyropus-stone — 
 
 Bare floor -work too ! — But did I let alone 
 
 That black-eyed peasant in the vestibule 
 
 Once and for ever ? — Floor- work ? No such fool ! 
 
 Rather, were Heaven to forestal Earth, I'd say 
 
 Must I be blessed or you ? Then my own way 
 
 Bless me — a firmer arm, a fleeter foot, 
 
 111 thank you, but to no mad wings transmute 
 
 These limbs of mine — our greensward is too soft ; 
 
 Nor camp I on the thunder-cloud aloft — 
 
 We feel the bliss distinctlier having thus 
 
 Engines subservient, not mixed up with us — 
 
 Better move palpably through Heaven — nor, freed 
 
 Of flesh forsooth, from space to space proceed 
 
 'Mid flying synods of worlds — but in Heaven's marge 
 
 Show Titan still, recumbent o'er his targe 
 
234 SORDELLO. 
 
 Solid with stars — the Centaur at his game 
 Made tremulously out in hoary flame ! 
 
 Life ! Yet the very cup whose extreme dull 
 Dregs, even, I would quaflf, was dashed, at full, 
 Aside so oft ; the death I fly, revealed 
 So oft a better life this life concealed 
 And which sage, champion, martyr, thro' each path 
 Have hunted fearlessly — the horrid bath, 
 The crippling- irons and the fiery chair : 
 — 'Twas well for them ; let me become aware 
 As they, and I relinquish Life, too ! Let 
 Life's secret but disclose itself ! Forget 
 Vain ordinances, I have one appeal — 
 I feel, am what I feel, know what I feel 
 — So much is Truth to me — What Is then ? Since 
 One object viewed diversely may evince 
 Beauty and ugliness — this way attract, 
 That way repel, why gloze upon the fact ? 
 Why must a single of the sides be right ? 
 Who bids choose this and leave its opposite ? 
 No abstract Right for me — in youth endued 
 With Right still present, still to be pursued, 
 Thro' all the interchange of circles, rife 
 Each with its proper law and mode of life, 
 
SORDELLO. 235 
 
 Each to be dwelt at ease in : thus to sway- 
 Regally witli the Kaiser, or obey 
 Implicit with his Serf of fluttering heart, 
 Or, like a sudden thought of God's, to start 
 Up in the presence, then go forth and shout 
 That some should pick the unstrung jewels out — 
 Were well ! 
 
 And, as in moments when the Past 
 Gave partially enfranchisement, he cast 
 Himself quite thro' mere secondary states 
 Of his soul's essence, little loves and hates, 
 Into the mid vague yearnings overlaid 
 By these ; as who should pierce hill, plain, grove, 
 
 glade. 
 And so into the very nucleus probe 
 That first determined there exist a Globe : 
 And as that 's easiest half the globe dissolved. 
 So seemed Sordello's closing-truth evolved 
 In his flesh -half 's break up — the sudden swell 
 Of his expanding soul showed 111 and Well, 
 Sorrow and Joy, Beauty and Ugliness 
 Virtue and Yice, the Larger and the Less, 
 All qualities, in fine, recorded here. 
 Might be but Modes of Time and this one Sphere, 
 
236 SORDELLO. 
 
 Urgent on these but not of force to bind 
 
 As Time — Eternity, as Matter — Mind, 
 
 If Mind, Eternity shall choose assert 
 
 Their attributes within a Life : thus girt 
 
 With circumstance, next change beholds them cinct 
 
 Quite otherwise — with Good and 111 distinct, 
 
 Joys, sorrows, tending to a like result — 
 
 Contrived to render easy, difficult, 
 
 This or the other course of . . . what new bond 
 
 In place of flesh may stop their flight beyond 
 
 Its new sphere, as that course does harm or good 
 
 To its arrangements. Once this understood, 
 
 As suddenly he felt himself alone, 
 
 Quite out of Time and this World, all was known. 
 
 What made the secret of the past despair ? 
 
 (Most imminent when he seemed most aware 
 
 Of greatness in the Past — nought turned him mad 
 
 Like craving to expand the power he had. 
 
 Not a new power to be expanded) — just 
 
 This made it ; Soul on Matter being thrust, 
 
 Tis Joy when so much Soul is wreaked in Time 
 
 On Matter, — let the Soul attempt sublime 
 
 Matter beyond its scheme and so prevent 
 
 Or more or less that deed's accomplishment. 
 
BORDELLO. 237 
 
 And Sorrow follows : Sorrow to avoid — 
 
 Let the Employer match the thing Employed, 
 
 Fit to the finite his infinity, 
 
 And thus proceed for ever, in degree 
 
 Changed but in kind the same, still limited 
 
 To the appointed circumstance and dead 
 
 To all beyond : a sphere is but a sphere — 
 
 Small, Great, are merely terms we bandy here — 
 
 Since to the spirit's absoluteness all 
 
 Are like : now of the present sphere we call 
 
 Life, are conditions — take but this among 
 
 Many ; the Body was to be so long 
 
 Youthful, no longer — but, since no control 
 
 Tied to that Body's purposes his Soul, 
 
 It chose to understand the Body's trade 
 
 More than the Body's self — had fain conveyed 
 
 Its boundless, to the body's bounded lot — 
 
 So, the soul permanent, the body not, — 
 
 Scarce the one minute for enjoying here. 
 
 The soul must needs instruct its weak compeer, 
 
 Run o'er its capabilities and wring 
 
 A joy thence it holds worth experiencing — 
 
 Which, far from half discovered even, — lo, 
 
 The minute's gone, the body's power's let go 
 
238 SORDELLO. 
 
 Apportioned to that joy*s acquirement ! Broke, 
 
 Say, morning o'er the earth and all it woke — 
 
 From the volcano's vapour-flag to hoist 
 
 Black o'er the spread of sea, to the low moist 
 
 Dale's silken barley- spikes sullied with rain, 
 
 Swayed earthwards, heavily to raise again — 
 
 (The Small a sphere as perfect as the Great 
 
 To the soul's absoluteness) — meditate 
 
 On such an Autumn-morning's cluster-chord 
 
 And the whole music it was framed afford, 
 
 And, the chord's might discovered, what should pluck 
 
 One string, the finger, was found palsy -struck. 
 
 And then what marvel if the Spirit, shown 
 
 A saddest sight — the Body lost alone 
 
 Thro' its officious proffered help, deprived 
 
 Of this and that enjoyment Fate contrived. 
 
 Virtue, Good, Beauty, each allowed slip hence, — 
 
 Yain gloriously were fain, for recompense. 
 
 To stem the ruin even yet, protract 
 
 The Body's term, supply the power it lacked 
 
 From its infinity, compel it learn 
 
 These qualities were only Time's concern, 
 
 That Body may, with its assistance, barred — 
 
 Advance the same, vanquished — obtain reward, 
 
SORDELLO. 239 
 
 Reap joy where sorrow was intended grow, 
 
 Of Wrong make Eight and turn 111 Good below — 
 
 And the result is, the poor Body soon 
 
 Sinks under what was meant a wondrous boon, 
 
 Leaving its bright accomplice all aghast. 
 
 So much was plain then, proper in the Past ; 
 To be complete for, satisfy the whole 
 Series of spheres — Eternity, his soul 
 Exceeded, so was incomplete for, each 
 One sphere — our Time. But does our knowledge reach 
 No farther ? Is the cloud of hindrance broke 
 But by the failing of the fleshly yoke, 
 Its loves and hates, as now when they let soar 
 The spirit, self-sufficient as before, 
 Tho' but the single space that shall elapse 
 Twixt its enthralment in new bonds perhaps ? 
 Must Life be ever but escaped, which should 
 Have been enjoyed ? nay, might have been and would, 
 Once ordered rightly, and a Soul's no whit 
 More than the Body's purpose under it 
 ( A- breadth of watery heaven like a bay, 
 A sky-like space of water, ray for ray 
 And star for star, one richness where they mixed 
 As this and that wing of an angel, fixed, 
 
240 SORDELLO. 
 
 Tumultuary splendours folded in 
 
 To die) and which thus, far from first begin 
 
 Exciting discontent, had surest quelled 
 
 The Body if aspiring it rebelled. 
 
 But how so order Life ? Still brutalize 
 
 The soul, the sad world's method — muffled eyes 
 
 To all that was before, shall after be 
 
 This sphere — and every other quality 
 
 Save some sole and immutable Great and Good 
 
 And Beauteous whither fate has loosed its hood 
 
 To follow ? Never may some soul see All 
 
 — The Great before and after and the Small 
 
 Now, yet be saved by this the simplest lore, 
 
 And take the single course prescribed before, 
 
 As the king-bird with ages on his plumes 
 
 Travels to die in his ancestral glooms ? 
 
 But where descry the Love that shall select 
 
 That course ? Here is a Soul whom to affect 
 
 Nature has plied with all her means — from trees 
 
 And flowers — e'en to the Multitude . . . and these 
 
 Decides he save or no ? One word to end ! 
 
 Ah my Sordello, I this once befriend 
 And speak for you. A Power above him still 
 Which, utterly incomprehensible, 
 
SORDELLO. 241 
 
 Is out of rivalry, which thus he can 
 
 Love, tho' unloving all conceived by Man — 
 
 What need ! And of — none the minutest duct 
 
 To that out-Nature, nought that would instruct 
 
 And so let rivalry begin to live — 
 
 But of a Power its representative 
 
 Who, being for authority the same. 
 
 Communication different, should claim 
 
 A course the first chose and this last revealed — 
 
 This Human clear, as that Divine concealed — 
 
 The utter need ! 
 
 What has Sordello found ? 
 Or can his spirit go the mighty round 
 At length, end where our souls begun ? as says 
 Old fable, the two doves were sent two ways 
 About the world — where in the midst they met 
 Tho' on a shifting waste of sand, men set 
 Jove's temple ? Quick, what has Sordello found ? 
 For they approach — approach — that foot's rebound . . 
 Palma ? No, Salinguerra tho' in mail ; 
 They mount, have reached the threshold, dash the veil 
 Aside— and you divine who sat there dead 
 Under his foot the badge ; still, Palma said, 
 A triumph lingering in the wide eyes 
 Wider than some spent swimmer's if he spies 
 
 R 
 
242 BORDELLO. 
 
 Help from above in his extreme despair 
 
 And, head far back on shoulder thrust, turns there 
 
 With short and passionate cry ; as Palma prest 
 
 In one great kiss her lips upon his breast 
 
 It beat. By this the hermit-bee has stopped 
 
 His day's toil at Goito — the new cropped 
 
 Dead vine-leaf answers, now *tis eve, he bit, 
 
 Twirled so, and filed all day — the mansion s fit 
 
 God counselled for ; as easy guess the word 
 
 That passed betwixt them and become the third 
 
 To the soft small unfrighted bee, as tax 
 
 Him with one fault — so no remembrance racks 
 
 Of the stone maidens and the font of stone 
 
 He, creeping thro* the crevice, leaves alone — 
 
 Alas, my friend — Alas Sordello ! whom 
 
 Anon we laid within that cold font-tomb — 
 
 And yet again alas ! 
 
 And now is 't worth 
 Our while bring back to mind, much less set forth 
 How Salinguerra extricates himself 
 Without Sordello ? Ghibellin and Guelf 
 May fight their fiercest ? If Count Richard sulked 
 In durance or the Marquis paid his mulct, 
 Who cares, Sordello gone ? The upshot, sure, 
 Was peace ; our chief made some frank overture 
 
SORDELLO. 243 
 
 That prospered ; compliment fell thick and fast 
 On its disposer, and Taurello passed 
 With foe and friend for an outstripping soul 
 Nine days at least : then, fairly reached the goal, 
 He, by one effort, blotted the great hope 
 Out of his mind, no further tried to cope 
 With Este that mad evening's style, but sent 
 Away tlie Legate and the League, content 
 No blame at least the brothers had incurred, 
 — Despatched a message to the Monk he heard 
 Patiently first to last, scarce shivered at. 
 Then curled his limbs up on his wolfskin mat 
 And ne'er spoke more, — informed the Ferrarese 
 He but retained their rule so long as these 
 Lingered in pupilage — and last, no mode 
 Apparent else of keeping safe the road 
 From Germany direct to Lombardy 
 For Friedrich, none, that is, to guarantee 
 The faith and promptitude of who should next 
 Obtain Sofia's dowry, sore perplexed — 
 (Sofia being youngest of the tribe 
 Of daughters Ecelin was wont to bribe 
 The envious magnates with — nor since he sent 
 Enrico Egna this fair child had Trent 
 R 2 
 
244 SORDELLO. 
 
 Once failed the Kaiser s purposes — we lost 
 
 Egna last year, and who takes Egna's post — 
 
 Opens the Lombard gate if Friedrich knock ?) 
 
 Himself espoused the Lady of the Rock 
 
 In pure necessity, and so destroyed 
 
 His slender last of chances, quite made void 
 
 Old prophecy, and spite of all the schemes 
 
 Overt and covert, youth's deeds, age's dreams, 
 
 Was sucked into Romano : and so hushed 
 
 He up this evening's work, that when, 'twas brushed 
 
 Somehow against by a blind chronicle 
 
 Which, chronicling whatever woe befell 
 
 Ferrara, scented this the obscure woe 
 
 And " Salinguerra's sole son Giacomo 
 
 Deceased, fatuous and doting, ere his Sire," 
 
 The townsfolk rubbed their eyes, could but admire 
 
 Which of Soj&a's five he meant. The chaps 
 
 Of his dead hope were tardy to collapse, 
 
 Obliterated not the beautiful 
 
 Distinctive features at a crash — scarce dull 
 
 Next year, as Azzo, Boniface withdrew 
 
 Each to his stronghold ; then (securely too 
 
 Ecelin at Campese slept—close by 
 
 Who likes may see him in Solagna lie 
 
BORDELLO. 245 
 
 With cushioned head and gloved hand to denote 
 
 The Cavalier he was) — then his heart smote 
 
 Young Ecelin, conceive ! Long since adult, 
 
 And, save Yicenza's business, what result 
 
 In blood and blaze ? so hard 'twas intercept 
 
 Sordello till Sordello's option ! Stept 
 
 Its lord on Lombardy — for in the nick 
 
 Of time when he at last and Alberic 
 
 Closed with Taurello, came precisely news 
 
 That in Yerona half the souls refuse 
 
 Allegiance to the Marquis and the Count — 
 
 Have cast them from a throne they bid him mount. 
 
 Their Podesta, thro' his ancestral worth : 
 
 Ecelin flew there, and the town henceforth 
 
 Was wholly his — Taurello sinking back 
 
 From temporary station to a track 
 
 That suited : news received of this acquist, 
 
 Friedrich did come to Lombardy — who missed 
 
 Taurello ? Yet another year — they took 
 
 Yicenza, left the Marquis scarce a nook 
 
 For refuge, and, when hundreds two or three 
 
 After conspired to call themselves " the Free," 
 
 Opposing Alberic, these Bassanese, 
 
 (Without Sordello !) — Ecelin at ease 
 
246 SORDELLO. 
 
 Slaughtered them so observably that oft 
 
 A little Salinguerra looked with soft 
 
 Blue eyes up, asked his sire the proper age 
 
 To get appointed his proud uncle's page : 
 
 More years passed, and that sire was dwindled down 
 
 To a mere showy turbulent soldier, grown 
 
 Better through age, his parts still in repute, 
 
 Subtle — how else ? — but hardly so astute 
 
 As his contemporaneous friends professed — 
 
 Undoubtedly a brawler — for the rest. 
 
 Known by each neighbour, so allowed for, let 
 
 Keep his incorrigible ways, nor fret 
 
 Men who had missed their boyhood's bugbear — trap 
 
 The ostrich, suffer our bald osprey flap 
 
 A battered pinion — was the word. In fine. 
 
 One flap too much and Venice's marine 
 
 Was meddled with ; no overlooking that ! 
 
 We captured him in his Ferrara, fat 
 
 And florid at a banquet, more by fraud 
 
 Than force, to speak the truth — there 's slender laud 
 
 Ascribed you for assisting eighty years 
 
 To pull his death on such a man — fate shears 
 
 The life-cord prompt enough whose last fine threads 
 
 You fritter : so, presiding his board-head, 
 
SORDELLO. 247 
 
 A great smile your assurance all went well 
 With Friedrich (as if he were like to tell !) 
 In rushed (a plan contrived before) our friends, 
 Made some pretence at fighting, just amends 
 For the shame done his eighty years — apart 
 The principle, none found it in his heart 
 To be much angry with Taurello — gained 
 Our galleys with the prize, and w^hat remained 
 But carry him to Venice for a show ? 
 — Set him, as 'twere, down gently-^free to go 
 His gait, inspect our square, pretend observe 
 The swallows soaring their eternal curve 
 Twixt Theodore and Mark, if citizens 
 Gathered importunately, fives and tens. 
 To point their children the Magnifico, 
 All but a monarch once in firm-land, go 
 His gait among us now — it took, indeed, 
 Fully this Ecelin to supersede 
 That man, remarked the seniors. Singular 
 Sordello's inability to bar 
 Rivals the stage, that evening, mainly brought 
 About by his strange disbelief that aught 
 Was to be done, should fairly thrust the Twain 
 Under Taurello's tutelage, that, brain 
 
248 SORDELLO. 
 
 And heart and hand, he forthwith in one rod 
 
 Indissolubly bound to baffle God 
 
 Who loves the world — should thus allow the thin 
 
 Grey wizened dwarfish devil Ecelin, 
 
 And massy-mascled big-boned Alberic 
 
 (Mere man, alas) to put his problem quick 
 
 To demonstration — prove wherever s will 
 
 To do, there's plenty to be done, or ill 
 
 Or good : anointed, then, to rend and rip — 
 
 Kings of the gag and flesh -hook, screw and whip, 
 
 They plagued the world : a touch of Hildebrand 
 
 (So far from obsolete !) made Lombards band 
 
 Together, cross their coats as for Christ's cause, 
 
 And saving Milan win the world's applause. 
 
 Ecelin perished : and I think grass grew 
 
 Never so pleasant as in Yalley Hu 
 
 By San Zenon where Alberic in turn 
 
 Saw his exasperated captors burn 
 
 Seven children with their mother, and, regaled 
 
 So far, tied on to a wild horse, was trailed 
 
 To death through raunce and bramble-bush : I take 
 
 God's part and testify that mid the brake 
 
 Wild o'er his castle on Zenone's knoll 
 
 You hear its one tower left, a belfry, toll — 
 
SORDELLO. 249 
 
 Cherups the contumacious grasshopper, 
 Rustles the lizard and the cushats chirre 
 Above the ravage : there, at deep of day 
 A week since, heard I the old Canon say- 
 He saw with his own eyes a barrow burst 
 And Alberic's huge skeleton unhearsed 
 Five years ago, no more : he added, June's 
 A month for carding off our first cocoons 
 The silkworms fabricate— a double news. 
 Nor he nor I could tell the worthier. Choose ! 
 And Naddo gone, all's gone ; not Eglamor ! 
 Believe I knew the face I waited for, 
 A guest my spirit of the golden courts : 
 Oh strange to see how, despite ill-reports, 
 Disuse, some wear of years, that face retained 
 Its joyous look of love ! Suns waxed and waned. 
 And still my spirit held an upward flight. 
 Spiral on spiral, gyres of life and light 
 More and more gorgeous — ever that face there 
 The last admitted ! crossed, too, with some care 
 As perfect triumph were not sure for all. 
 But on a few enduring damp must fall, 
 A transient struggle, haply a painful sense 
 Of the inferior nature's clinging — whence 
 
250 SORDELLO. 
 
 Slight starting tears easily wiped away, 
 Fine jealousies soon stifled in the play 
 Of irrepressible admiration — not 
 Aspiring, all considered, to their lot 
 Who ever, just as they prepare ascend 
 Spiral on spiral, wish thee well, impend 
 Thy frank delight at their exclusive track, 
 That upturned fervid face and hair put back ! 
 
 Is there no more to say ? He of the rhymes — 
 Many a tale of this retreat betimes 
 Was born : Sordello die at once for men ? 
 The Chroniclers of Mantua tired their pen 
 Relating how a Prince Yisconti saved 
 Mantua and elsewhere notably behaved — 
 Who thus by fortune's ordering events 
 Passed with posterity to all intents 
 For just the God he never could become : 
 As Knight, Bard, Gallant, men were never dumb 
 In praise of him : while what he should have been, 
 Could be, and was not — the one step too mean 
 For him to take, we suffer at this day 
 Because of ; Ecelin had pushed away 
 Its chance ere Dante could arrive to take 
 That step Sordello spurned, for the world's sake : 
 
SORDELLO. 251 
 
 He did much — but Sordello's step was gone. 
 Thus had Sordello ta'en that step alone, 
 Apollo had been compassed — 'twas a fit 
 He wished should go to him, not he to it 
 — As one content to merely be supposed 
 Singing or fighting elsewhere, while he dozed 
 Really at home*— and who was chiefly glad 
 To have achieved the few real deeds he had 
 Because that way assured they were not worth 
 Doing, so spared from doing them henceforth — 
 A tree that covets fruitage and yet tastes 
 Never itself, itself — had he embraced 
 Our cause then, Men had plucked Hesperian fruit 
 And, praising that, just thrown him in to boot 
 All he was anxious to appear but scarce 
 Solicitous to be : a sorry farce 
 Such life is after all — cannot I say 
 He lived for some one better thing ? this way — 
 Lo, on a heathy brown and nameless hill 
 By sparkling Asolo, in mist and chill, 
 Morning just up, higher and higher runs 
 A child barefoot and rosy— See ! the sun's 
 On the square castle's inner- court's green wall 
 — Like the chine of some fossil animal 
 
252 SORDELLO. 
 
 Half turned to earth and flowers ; and thro' the haze 
 
 (Save where some slender patches of grey maize) 
 
 Are to be overleaped) that boy has crost 
 
 The whole hill-side of dew and powder-frost 
 
 Matting the balm and mountain camomile : 
 
 Up and up goes he, singing all the while 
 
 Some unintelligible words to beat 
 
 The lark, God's poet, swooning at his feet 
 
 So worsted is he at the few fine locks 
 
 Stained like pale honey oozed from topmost rocks 
 
 Sunblanched the livelong summer. — All that's left 
 
 Of the Goito lay ! And thus bereft, 
 
 Sleep and forget, Sordello ... in effect 
 
 He sleeps, the feverish poet — I suspect 
 
 Not utterly companionless ; but, friends. 
 
 Wake up ; the ghost's gone, and the story ends 
 
 I'd fain hope, sweetly — seeing, peri or ghoul, 
 
 That spirits are conjectured fair or foul. 
 
 Evil or good, judicious authors think, 
 
 According as they vanish in a stink 
 
 Or in a perfume : friends be frank : ye snuff 
 
 Civet, I warrant : really ? Like enough — 
 
 Merely the savour's rareness — any nose 
 
 May ravage with impunity a rose— 
 
SORDELLO. 253 
 
 Rifle a musk-pod and 'twill ache like yours : 
 I'd tell you that same pungency ensures 
 An after-gust — but that were overbold : 
 Who would has heard Sordello's story told. 
 
 THE END. 
 
LONDON : 
 BRADHiniV AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS. 
 
By the same Author. 
 
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 Small 8vo, Price 6s. 
 
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