Sordello: Book the First

TO J. MILSAND, OF DIJON.

1840.

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

Yet not the best expedient, served to tell

A story I could body forth so well

By making speak, myself kept out of view,

The very man as he was wont to do,

And leaving you to say the rest for him.

Since, though I might be proud to see the dim

Abysmal past divide its hateful surge,

Letting of all men this one man emerge

Because it pleased me, yet, that moment past,

I should delight in watching first to last

His progress as you watch it, not a whit

More in the secret than yourselves who sit

Fresh-chapleted to listen. But it seems

Your setters-forth of unexampled themes,

Makers of quite new men, producing them,

Would best chalk broadly on each vesture's hem

The wearer's quality; or take their stand,

Motley on back and pointing-pole in hand,

Beside him. So, for once I face ye, friends,

Summoned together from the world's four ends,

Dropped down from heaven or cast up from hell,

To hear the story I propose to tell.

Confess now, poets know the dragnet's trick,

Catching the dead, if fate denies the quick,

And shaming her; 't is not for fate to 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,

Verona! stay—thou, spirit, come not near

Now—not this time desert thy cloudy place

To scare me, thus employed, with that pure face!

I need not fear this audience, I make free

With them, but then this is no place for thee!

The thunder-phrase of the Athenian, grown

Up out of memories of Marathon,

Would echo like his own sword's griding screech

Braying a Persian shield,—the silver speech

Of Sidney's self, the starry paladin,

Turn intense as a trumpet sounding in

The knights to tilt,—wert thou to hear! What heart

Have I to play my puppets, bear my part

Before these worthies?

                       Lo, the past is hurled

In twain: up-thrust, out-staggering on the world,

Subsiding into shape, a darkness rears

Its outline, kindles at the core, appears

Verona. 'T is six hundred years and more

Since an event. The Second Friedrich wore

The purple, and the Third Honorius filled

The holy chair. That autumn eve was stilled:

A last remains of sunset dimly burned

O'er the far forests, like a torch-flame turned

By the wind back upon its bearer's hand

In one long flare of crimson; as a brand,

The woods beneath lay black. A single eye

From all Verona cared for the soft sky.

But, gathering in its ancient market-place,

Talked group with restless group; and not a face

But wrath made livid, for among them were

Death's 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,

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 pavis; Este makes

"Mirth for the devil when he undertakes

"To play the Ecelin; as if it cost

"Merely your pushing-by to gain a post

"Like his! The patron tells ye, once for all,

"There be sound reasons that preferment fall

"On our beloved" . . .

                       "Duke o' the Rood, why not?"

Shouted an Estian, "grudge ye such a lot?

"The hill-cat boasts some cunning of her own,

"Some stealthy trick to better beasts unknown,

"That quick with prey enough her hunger blunts,

"And feeds her fat while gaunt the lion hunts."

"Taurello," quoth an envoy, "as in wane

"Dwelt at Ferrara. Like an osprey fain

"To fly but forced the earth his couch to make

"Far inland, till his friend the tempest wake,

"Waits he the Kaiser's coming; and as yet

"That fast friend sleeps, and he too sleeps: but let

"Only the billow freshen, and he snuffs

"The aroused hurricane ere it enroughs

"The sea it means to cross because of him.

"Sinketh the breeze? His hope-sick eye grows dim;

"Creep closer on the creature! Every day

"Strengthens the Pontiff; Ecelin, they say,

"Dozes now at Oliero, with dry lips

"Telling upon his perished finger-tips

"How many ancestors are to depose

"Ere he be Satan's Viceroy when the doze

"Deposits him in hell. So, Guelfs rebuilt

"Their houses; not a drop of blood was spilt

"When Cino Bocchimpane chanced to meet

"Buccio Virtù—God's wafer, and the street

"Is narrow! Tutti Santi, think, a-swarm

"With Ghibellins, and yet he took no harm!

"This could not last. Off Salinguerra went

"To Padua, Podestà, 'with pure intent,'

"Said he, 'my presence, judged the single bar

"'To permanent tranquillity, may jar

"'No longer'—so! his back is fairly turned?

"The pair of goodly palaces are burned,

"The gardens ravaged, and our Guelfs laugh, drunk

"A week with joy. The next, their laughter sunk

"In sobs of blood, for they found, some strange way,

"Old Salinguerra back again—I say,

"Old Salinguerra in the town once more

"Uprooting, overturning, flame before,

"Blood fetlock-high beneath him. Azzo fled;

"Who 'scaped the carnage followed; then the dead

"Were pushed aside from Salinguerra's throne,

"He ruled once more Ferrara, all alone,

"Till Azzo, stunned awhile, revived, would pounce

"Coupled with Boniface, like lynx and ounce,

"On the gorged bird. The burghers ground their teeth

"To see troop after troop encamp beneath

"I' the standing corn thick o'er the scanty patch

"It took so many patient months to snatch

"Out of the marsh; while just within their walls

"Men fed on men. At length Taurello calls

"A parley: 'let the Count wind up the war!'

"Richard, light-hearted as a plunging star,

"Agrees to enter for the kindest ends

"Ferrara, flanked with fifty chosen friends,

"No horse-boy more, for fear your timid sort

"Should fly Ferrara at the bare report.

"Quietly through the town they rode, jog-jog;

"'Ten, twenty, thirty,—curse the catalogue

"'Of burnt Guelf houses! Strange, Taurello shows

"'Not the least sign of life'—whereat arose

"A general growl: 'How? With his victors by?

"'I and my Veronese? My troops and I?

"'Receive us, was your word?' So jogged they on,

"Nor laughed their host too openly: once gone

"Into the trap!—"

                   Six hundred years ago!

Such the time's aspect and peculiar woe

(Yourselves may spell it yet in chronicles,

Albeit the worm, our busy brother, 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 favour 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,

Its cry: what cry?

                   "The Emperor to come!"

His crowd of feudatories, all and some,

That leapt down with a crash of swords, spears, shields,

One fighter on his fellow, to our fields,

Scattered anon, took station here and there,

And carried it, till now, with little care—

Cannot but cry for him; how else rebut

Us longer?—cliffs, an earthquake suffered jut

In the mid-sea, each domineering crest

Which nought save such another throe can wrest

From out (conceive) a certain chokeweed grown

Since o'er the waters, twine and tangle thrown

Too thick, too fast accumulating round,

Too sure to over-riot and confound

Ere long each brilliant islet with itself,

Unless a second shock save shoal and shelf,

Whirling the sea-drift wide: alas, the bruised

And sullen wreck! Sunlight to be diffused

For that!—sunlight, 'neath which, a scum at first,

The million fibres of our chokeweed nurst

Dispread themselves, mantling the troubled main,

And, shattered by those rocks, took hold again,

So kindly blazed it—that same blaze to brood

O'er every cluster of the multitude

Still hazarding new clasps, ties, filaments,

An emulous exchange of pulses, vents

Of nature into nature; till some growth

Unfancied yet, exuberantly clothe

A surface solid now, continuous, one:

"The Pope, for us the People, who begun

"The People, carries on the People thus,

"To keep that Kaiser off and dwell with us!"

See you?

        Or say, Two Principles that live

Each fitly by its Representative.

"Hill-cat"—who called him so?—the gracefullest

Adventurer, the ambiguous stranger-guest

Of Lombardy (sleek but that ruffling fur,

Those talons to their sheath!) whose velvet purr

Soothes jealous 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 Trevisan,

Conrad descries no fitter, rear or van,

Than Ecelo! They laughed as they enrolled

That name at Milan on the page of gold,

Godego's lord,—Ramon, Marostica,

Cartiglion, Bassano, Loria,

And every sheep cote on the Suabian's fief!

No laughter when his son, "the Lombard Chief"

Forsooth, as Barbarossa's path was bent

To Italy along the Vale of Trent,

Welcomed him at Roncaglia! Sadness now—

The hamlets nested on the Tyrol's brow,

The Asolan and Euganean hills,

The Rhetian and the Julian, sadness fills

Them all, for Ecelin vouchsafes to stay

Among and care about them; day by day

Choosing this pinnacle, the other spot,

A castle building to defend a cot,

A cot built for a castle to defend,

Nothing but castles, castles, nor an end

To boasts how mountain ridge may join with ridge

By sunken gallery and soaring bridge.

He takes, in brief, a figure that beseems

The griesliest nightmare of the Church's dreams,

—A Signory firm-rooted, unestranged

From its old interests, and nowise changed

By its new 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

Had sons, in turn, and daughters sly and tall

And curling and compliant; but for all

Romano (so they styled him) throve, that neck

Of his so pinched and white, that hungry cheek

Proved 't was some fiend, not him, the man's-flesh went

To feed: whereas Romano's instrument,

Famous Taurello Salinguerra, sole

I' the world, a tree whose boughs were slipt the bole

Successively, why should not he shed blood

To further a design? Men understood

Living was pleasant to him as he wore

His careless surcoat, glanced some missive o'er,

Propped on his truncheon in the public way,

While his lord lifted writhen hands to pray,

Lost at Oliero's convent.

                           Hill-cats, face

Our Azzo, our Guelf Lion! Why disgrace

A worthiness conspicuous near and far

(Atii at Rome while free and consular,

Este at Padua who repulsed the Hun)

By trumpeting the Church's princely son?

—Styled Patron of Rovigo's Polesine,

Ancona's march, Ferrara's . . . ask, in fine,

Our chronicles, commenced when some old monk

Found it intolerable to be sunk

(Vexed to the quick by his revolting cell)

Quite out of summer while alive and well:

Ended when by his mat the Prior stood,

'Mid busy promptings of the brotherhood,

Striving to coax from his decrepit brains

The reason Father Porphyry took pains

To blot those ten lines out which used to stand

First on their charter drawn by Hildebrand.

The same night wears. Verona's rule of yore

Was vested in a certain Twenty-four;

And while within his palace these debate

Concerning Richard and Ferrara's fate,

Glide we by clapping doors, with sudden glare

Of cressets vented on the dark, nor care

For aught that 's seen or heard until we shut

The smother in, the lights, all noises but

The carroch's booming: safe at last! Why strange

Such a recess should lurk behind a range

Of banquet-rooms? Your finger—thus—you push

A spring, and the wall opens, would you rush

Upon the banqueters, select your prey,

Waiting (the slaughter-weapons in the way

Strewing this very bench) with sharpened ear

A preconcerted signal to appear;

Or if you simply crouch with beating heart,

Bearing in some voluptuous pageant part

To startle them. Nor mutes nor masquers now;

Nor any . . . does that one man sleep whose brow

The dying lamp-flame sinks and rises o'er?

What woman stood beside him? not the more

Is he unfastened from the earnest eyes

Because that arras fell between! Her wise

And lulling words are yet about the room,

Her presence wholly poured upon the gloom

Down even to her vesture's creeping stir.

And so reclines he, saturate with her,

Until an outcry from the square beneath

Pierces the charm: he springs up, glad to breathe,

Above the cunning element, and shakes

The stupor off as (look you) morning breaks

On the gay dress, and, near concealed by it,

The lean frame like a half-burnt taper, lit

Erst at some marriage-feast, then laid away

Till the Armenian bridegroom's dying day,

In his wool wedding-robe.

                           For he—for he,

Gate-vein of this hearts' blood of Lombardy,

(If I should falter now)—for he is thine!

Sordello, thy forerunner, Florentine!

A herald-star I know thou didst absorb

Relentless into the consummate orb

That scared it from its right to roll along

A sempiternal path with dance and song

Fulfilling its allotted period,

Serenest of the progeny of God—

Who yet resigns it not! His darling stoops

With no quenched lights, desponds with no blank troops

Of disenfranchised brilliances, for, blent

Utterly with thee, its shy element

Like thine upburneth prosperous and clear.

Still, what if I approach the august sphere

Named now with only one name, disentwine

That under-current soft and argentine

From its fierce mate in the majestic mass

Leavened as the sea whose fire was mixt with glass

In John's transcendent vision,—launch once more

That lustre? Dante, pacer of the shore

Where glutted hell disgorgeth filthiest gloom,

Unbitten by its whirring sulphur-spume—

Or whence the grieved and obscure waters slope

Into a darkness quieted by hope;

Plucker of amaranths grown beneath God's eye

In gracious twilights where his chosen lie,—

I would do this! If I should falter now!

In Mantua territory half is slough,

Half pine-tree forest; maples, scarlet oaks

Breed o'er the river-beds; even Mincio chokes

With sand the summer through: but 't is morass

In winter up to Mantua walls. There was,

Some thirty years before this evening's coil,

One spot reclaimed from the surrounding spoil,

Goito; just a castle built amid

A few low mountains; firs and larches hid

Their main defiles, and rings of vineyard bound

The rest. Some captured creature in a pound,

Whose artless wonder quite precludes distress,

Secure beside in its own loveliness,

So peered with airy head, below, above,

The castle at its toils, the lapwings love

To glean among at grape-time. Pass within.

A maze of corridors contrived for sin,

Dusk winding-stairs, dim galleries got past,

You gain the inmost chambers, gain at last

A maple-panelled room: that haze which seems

Floating about the panel, if there gleams

A sunbeam over it, will turn to gold

And in light-graven characters unfold

The Arab's wisdom everywhere; what shade

Marred them a moment, those slim pillars made,

Cut like a company of palms to prop

The roof, each kissing top entwined with top,

Leaning together; in the carver's mind

Some knot of bacchanals, flushed cheek combined

With straining forehead, shoulders purpled, hair

Diffused between, who in a goat-skin bear

A vintage; graceful sister-palms! But quick

To the main wonder, now. A vault, see; thick

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, some, to veil

Their eyes, some, propping chin and cheek so pale,

Some, hanging slack an utter helpless length

Dead as a buried vestal whose whole strength

Goes when the grate above shuts heavily.

So dwell these noiseless girls, patient to see,

Like priestesses because of sin impure

Penanced 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

Her load were lightened, one shade less the stain

Obscured her forehead, yet one more bead slipt

From off the rosary whereby the crypt

Keeps count of the contritions of its charge?

Then with a step more light, a heart more large,

He may depart, leave her and every one

To linger out the penance in mute stone.

Ah, but Sordello? 'T is the tale I mean

To tell you.

            In this castle may be seen,

On the hill tops, or underneath the vines,

Or eastward by the mound of firs and pines

That shuts out Mantua, still in loneliness,

A slender boy in a loose page's dress,

Sordello: do but look on him awhile

Watching ('t is autumn) with an earnest smile

The noisy flock of thievish birds at work

Among the yellowing vineyards; see him lurk

('T is winter with its sullenest of storms)

Beside that arras-length of broidered forms,

On tiptoe, lifting in both hands a light

Which makes yon warrior's visage flutter bright

—Ecelo, dismal father of the brood,

And Ecelin, close to the girl he wooed,

Auria, and their Child, with all his wives

From Agnes to the Tuscan that survives,

Lady of the castle, Adelaide. His face

—Look, now he turns away! Yourselves shall trace

(The delicate nostril swerving wide and fine,

A sharp and restless lip, so well combine

With that calm brow) a soul fit to receive

Delight at every sense; you can believe

Sordello foremost in the regal class

Nature has broadly severed from her mass

Of men, and framed for pleasure, as she frames

Some happy lands, that have luxurious names,

For loose fertility; a footfall there

Suffices to upturn to the warm air

Half-germinating spices; mere decay

Produces richer life; and day by day

New pollen on the lily-petal grows,

And still more labyrinthine buds the rose.

You 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,

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—which gathers shape

And feature, soon imprisons past escape

The votary framed to love and to submit

Nor ask, as passionate he kneels to it,

Whence grew the idol's empery. So runs

A legend; light had birth ere moons and suns,

Flowing through space a river and alone,

Till chaos burst and blank the spheres were strown

Hither and thither, foundering and blind:

When into each of them rushed light—to find

Itself no place, foiled of its radiant chance.

Let such forego their just inheritance!

For there 's a class that eagerly looks, too,

On beauty, but, unlike the gentler crew,

Proclaims each new revealment born a twin

With a distinctest consciousness within,

Referring still the quality, now first

Revealed, to their own soul—its instinct nursed

In silence, now remembered better, shown

More thoroughly, but not the less their own;

A dream come true; the special exercise

Of any special function that implies

The being fair, or good, or wise, or strong,

Dormant within their nature all along—

Whose fault? So, homage, other souls direct

Without, turns inward. "How should this deject

"Thee, soul?" they murmur; "wherefore strength be quelled

"Because, its trivial accidents withheld,

"Organs are missed that clog the world, inert,

"Wanting a will, to quicken and exert,

"Like thine—existence cannot satiate,

"Cannot surprise? Laugh thou at envious fate,

"Who, from earth's simplest combination stampt

"With individuality—uncrampt

"By living its faint elemental life,

"Dost soar to heaven's complexest essence, rife

"With grandeurs, unaffronted to the last,

"Equal to being all!"

                      In truth? Thou hast

Life, then—wilt challenge life for us: our race

Is vindicated so, obtains its place

In thy ascent, the first of us; whom we

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

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 Siena is Guidone set,

Forehead on hand; a painful birth must be

Matured ere Saint Eufemia's sacristy

Or transept gather fruits of one great gaze

At the moon: look you! The same orange haze,—

The same blue stripe round that—and, in the midst,

Thy spectral whiteness, Mother-maid, who didst

Pursue the dizzy painter!

                           Woe, then, worth

Any officious babble letting forth

The leprosy confirmed and ruinous

To spirit lodged in a contracted house!

Go back to the beginning, rather; blend

It gently with Sordello's life; the end

Is piteous, you may see, but much between

Pleasant enough. Meantime, some pyx to screen

The full-grown pest, some lid to shut upon

The goblin! So they found at Babylon,

(Colleagues, mad Lucius and sage Antonine)

Sacking the city, by Apollo's shrine,

In rummaging among the rarities,

A certain coffer; he who made the prize

Opened it greedily; and out there curled

Just such another plague, for half the world

Was stung. Crawl in then, hag, and couch asquat,

Keeping that blotchy bosom thick in spot

Until your time is ripe! The coffer-lid

Is fastened, and the coffer safely hid

Under the Loxian's choicest gifts of gold.

Who will may hear Sordello's story told,

And 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 border, and the rim

Of the low range of mountain, was for him

No other world: but this appeared his own

To wander through at pleasure and alone.

The castle too seemed empty; far and wide

Might he disport; only the northern side

Lay under a mysterious interdict—

Slight, just enough remembered to restrict

His roaming to the corridors, the vault

Where those font-bearers expiate their fault,

The maple-chamber, and the little nooks

And nests, and breezy parapet that looks

Over the woods to Mantua: there he strolled.

Some foreign women-servants, very old,

Tended and crept about him—all his clue

To the world's business and embroiled ado

Distant a dozen hill-tops at the most.

And first a simple sense of life engrossed

Sordello in his drowsy Paradise;

The day's adventures for the day suffice—

Its constant tribute of perceptions strange,

With sleep and stir in healthy interchange,

Suffice, and leave him for the next at ease

Like the great palmer-worm that strips the trees,

Eats the life out of every luscious plant,

And, when September finds them sere or scant,

Puts forth two wondrous winglets, alters quite,

And hies him after unforeseen delight.

So fed Sordello, not a shard dissheathed;

As ever, round each new discovery, wreathed

Luxuriantly the fancies infantine

His admiration, bent on making fine

Its novel friend at any risk, would fling

In gay profusion forth: a ficklest king,

Confessed those minions!—eager to dispense

So much from his own stock of thought and sense

As might enable each to stand alone

And serve him for a fellow; with his own,

Joining the qualities that just before

Had graced some older favourite. Thus they wore

A fluctuating halo, yesterday

Set flicker and to-morrow filched away,—

Those upland objects each of separate name,

Each with an aspect never twice the same,

Waxing and waning as the new-born host

Of fancies, like a single night's hoar-frost,

Gave to familiar things a face grotesque;

Only, preserving through the mad burlesque

A grave regard. Conceive! the orpine patch

Blossoming earliest on the log-house thatch

The day those archers wound along the vines—

Related to the Chief that left their lines

To climb with clinking step the northern stair

Up to the solitary chambers where

Sordello never came. Thus thrall reached thrall;

He o'er-festooning every interval,

As the adventurous spider, making light

Of distance, shoots her threads from depth to height,

From barbican to battlement: so flung

Fantasies forth and in their centre swung

Our architect,—the breezy morning fresh

Above, and merry,—all his waving mesh

Laughing with lucid dew-drops rainbow-edged.

This world of ours by tacit pact is pledged

To laying such a spangled fabric low

Whether by gradual brush or gallant blow.

But its abundant will was baulked 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

Most we forego. Suppose Sordello hence

Selfish enough, without a moral sense

However feeble; what informed the boy

Others desired a portion in his joy?

Or say a ruthful chance broke woof and warp—

A heron's nest beat down by March winds sharp,

A fawn breathless beneath the precipice,

A bird with unsoiled breast and unfilmed eyes

Warm in the brake—could these undo the trance

Lapping Sordello? Not a circumstance

That makes for you, friend Naddo! Eat fern-seed

And peer beside us and report indeed

If (your word) "genius" dawned with throes and stings

And the whole fiery catalogue, while springs,

Summers, and winters quietly came and went.

Time put at length that period to content,

By right the world should have imposed: bereft

Of its good offices, Sordello, left

To study his companions, managed rip

Their fringe off, learn the true relationship,

Core with its crust, their nature with his own:

Amid his wild-wood sights he lived alone.

As if the poppy felt with him! Though he

Partook the poppy's red effrontery

Till Autumn spoiled their fleering quite with rain,

And, turbanless, a coarse brown rattling crane

Lay bare. That 's gone: yet why renounce, for that,

His disenchanted tributaries—flat

Perhaps, but scarce so utterly forlorn,

Their simple presence might not well be borne

Whose parley was a transport once: recall

The poppy's gifts, it flaunts you, after all,

A poppy:—why distrust the evidence

Of each soon satisfied and healthy sense?

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?

"That, tasting joys by proxy thus, you fared

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

Alas, from the beginning love is whole

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 have it ever be.

Souls like Sordello, on the contrary,

Coerced and put to shame, retaining will,

Care little, take mysterious comfort still,

But look forth tremblingly to ascertain

If others judge their claims not urged in vain,

And say for them their stifled thoughts aloud.

So, they must ever live before a crowd:

—"Vanity," Naddo tells you.

                              Whence contrive

A crowd, now? From these women just alive,

That archer-troop? Forth glided—not alone

Each painted warrior, every girl of stone,

Nor Adelaide (bent double o'er a scroll,

One maiden at her knees, that eve, his soul

Shook as he stumbled through the arras'd glooms

On them, for, 'mid quaint robes and weird perfumes,

Started the meagre Tuscan up,—her eyes,

The maiden's, also, bluer with surprise)

—But the entire out-world: whatever, scraps

And snatches, song and story, dreams perhaps,

Conceited the world's offices, and he

Had hitherto transferred to flower or tree,

Not counted a befitting heritage

Each, of its own right, singly to engage

Some man, no other,—such now dared to stand

Alone. Strength, wisdom, grace on every hand

Soon disengaged themselves, and he discerned

A sort of human life: at least, was turned

A stream of lifelike figures through his brain.

Lord, liegeman, valvassor and suzerain,

Ere he could choose, surrounded him; a stuff

To work his pleasure on; there, sure enough:

But as for gazing, what shall fix that gaze?

Are they to simply testify the ways

He who convoked them sends his soul along

With the cloud's thunder or a dove's brood-song?

—While they live each his life, boast each his own

Peculiar dower of bliss, stand each alone

In some one point where something dearest loved

Is easiest gained—far worthier to be proved

Than aught he envies in the forest-wights!

No simple and self-evident delights,

But mixed desires of unimagined range,

Contrasts or combinations, new and strange,

Irksome perhaps, yet plainly recognized

By this, the sudden company—loves prized

By those who are to prize his own amount

Of loves. Once care because such make account,

Allow that foreign recognitions stamp

The current value, and his crowd shall vamp

Him counterfeits enough; and so their print

Be on the piece, 't is gold, attests the mint,

And "good," pronounce they whom his new appeal

Is made to: if their casual print conceal—

This arbitrary good of theirs o'ergloss

What he has lived without, nor felt the loss—

Qualities strange, ungainly, wearisome,

—What matter? So must speech expand the dumb

Part-sigh, part-smile with which Sordello, late

Whom no poor woodland-sights could satiate,

Betakes himself to study hungrily

Just what the puppets his crude phantasy

Supposes notablest,—popes, kings, priests, knights,—

May please to promulgate for appetites;

Accepting all their artificial joys

Not as he views them, but as he employs

Each shape to estimate the other's stock

Of attributes, whereon—a marshalled flock

Of authorized enjoyments—he may spend

Himself, be men, now, as he used to blend

With tree and flower—nay more entirely, else

'T were mockery: for instance, "How excels

"My life that chieftain's?" (who apprised the youth

Ecelin, here, becomes this month, in truth,

Imperial Vicar?) "Turns he in his tent

"Remissly? Be it so—my head is bent

"Deliciously amid my girls to sleep.

"What if he stalks the Trentine-pass? Yon steep

"I climbed an hour ago with little toil:

"We are alike there. But can I, too, foil

"The Guelf's paid stabber, carelessly afford

"Saint Mark's a spectacle, the sleight o' the sword

"Baffling the treason in a moment?" Here

No rescue! Poppy he is none, but peer

To Ecelin, assuredly: his hand,

Fashioned no otherwise, should wield a brand

With Ecelin's success—try, now! He soon

Was satisfied, returned as to the moon

From earth; left each abortive boy's-attempt

For feats, from failure happily exempt,

In fancy at his beck. "One day I will

"Accomplish it! Are they not older still

"—Not grown-up men and women? 'T is beside

"Only a dream; and though I must abide

"With dreams now, I may find a thorough vent

"For all myself, acquire an instrument

"For acting what these people act; my soul

"Hunting a body out may gain its whole

"Desire some day!" How else express chagrin

And resignation, show the hope steal in

With which he let sink from an aching wrist

The rough-hewn ash-bow? Straight, a gold shaft hissed

Into the Syrian air, struck Malek down

Superbly! "Crosses to the breach! God's Town

"Is gained him back!" Why bend rough ash-bows more?

Thus lives he: if not careless as before,

Comforted: for one may anticipate,

Rehearse the future, be prepared when fate

Shall have prepared in turn real men whose names

Startle, real places of enormous fames,

Este abroad and Ecelin at home

To worship him,—Mantua, Verona, Rome

To witness it. Who grudges time so spent?

Rather test qualities to heart's content—

Summon them, thrice selected, near and far—

Compress the starriest into one star,

And grasp the whole at once!

                              The pageant thinned

Accordingly; from rank to rank, like wind

His spirit passed to winnow and divide;

Back fell the simpler phantasms; every side

The strong clave to the wise; with either classed

The beauteous; so, till two or three amassed

Mankind's beseemingnesses, and reduced

Themselves eventually,—graces loosed,

Strengths lavished,—all to heighten up One Shape

Whose potency no creature should escape.

Can it be Friedrich of the bowmen's talk?

Surely that grape-juice, bubbling at the stalk,

Is some 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

So rarely the serene cloud where he dwells

Whose looks enjoin, whose lightest words are spells

On the obdurate! That right arm indeed

Has thunder for its slave; but where 's the need

Of thunder if the stricken multitude

Hearkens, arrested in its angriest mood,

While songs go up exulting, then dispread,

Dispart, disperse, lingering overhead

Like an escape of angels? 'T is the tune,

Nor much unlike the words his women croon

Smilingly, 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,

What but ill objects vexed him? Such he slew.

The kinder sort were easy to subdue

By those ambrosial glances, dulcet tones;

And these a gracious hand advanced to thrones

Beneath him. Wherefore twist and torture this,

Striving to name afresh the antique bliss,

Instead of saying, neither less nor more,

He had discovered, as our world before,

Apollo? That shall be the name; nor bid

Me rag by rag expose how patchwork hid

The youth—what thefts of every clime and day

Contributed to purfle the array

He climbed with (June at deep) some close ravine

Mid clatter of its million pebbles sheen,

Over which, singing soft, the runnel slipped

Elate with rains: into whose streamlet dipped

He foot, yet trod, you thought, with unwet sock—

Though really on the stubs of living rock

Ages ago it crenelled; vines for roof,

Lindens for wall; before him, aye aloof,

Flittered in the cool some azure damsel-fly,

Born of the simmering quiet, there to die.

Emerging whence, Apollo still, he spied

Mighty descents of forest; multiplied

Tuft on tuft, here, the frolic myrtle-trees,

There gendered the grave maple stocks at ease.

And, proud of its observer, straight the wood

Tried old surprises on him; black it stood

A sudden barrier ('twas a cloud passed o'er)

So dead and dense, the tiniest brute no more

Must pass; yet presently (the cloud dispatched)

Each clump, behold, was glistering detached

A shrub, oak-boles shrunk into ilex-stems!

Yet could not he denounce the stratagems

He saw thro', till, hours thence, aloft would hang

White summer-lightnings; as it sank and sprang

To measure, that whole palpitating breast

Of heaven, 't was Apollo, nature prest

At eve to worship.

                   Time stole: by degrees

The Pythons perish off; his votaries

Sink to respectful distance; songs redeem

Their pains, but briefer; their dismissals seem

Emphatic; only girls are very slow

To disappear—his Delians! Some that glow

O' the instant, more with earlier loves to wrench

Away, reserves to quell, disdains to quench;

Alike in one material circumstance—

All soon or late adore Apollo! Glance

The bevy through, divine Apollo's choice,

His Daphne! "We secure Count Richard's voice

"In Este's counsels, good for Este's ends

"As our Taurello," say his faded friends,

"By granting him our Palma!"—the sole child,

They mean, of Agnes Este who beguiled

Ecelin, years before this Adelaide

Wedded and turned him wicked: "but the maid

"Rejects his suit," those sleepy women boast.

She, scorning all beside, deserves the most

Sordello: so, conspicuous in his world

Of dreams sat Palma. How the tresses curled

Into a sumptuous swell of gold and wound

About her like a glory! even the ground

Was bright as with spilt sunbeams; breathe not, breathe

Not!—poised, see, one leg doubled underneath,

Its small foot buried in the dimpling snow,

Rests, but the other, listlessly below,

O'er the couch-side swings feeling for cool air,

The vein-streaks swollen a richer violet where

The languid blood lies heavily; yet calm

On her slight prop, each flat and outspread palm,

As but suspended in the act to rise

By consciousness of beauty, whence her eyes

Turn with so frank a triumph, for she meets

Apollo's gaze in the pine glooms.

                                   Time fleets:

That 's worst! Because the pre-appointed age

Approaches. Fate is tardy with the stage

And crowd she promised. Lean he grows and pale,

Though restlessly at rest. Hardly avail

Fancies to soothe him. Time steals, yet alone

He tarries here! The earnest smile is gone.

How long this might continue matters not;

—For ever, possibly; since to the spot

None come: our 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

Is daily manifest, with Azzo dumb

And Richard wavering: let but Friedrich come,

Find matter for the minstrelsy's report

—Lured from the Isle and its young Kaiser's court

To sing us a Messina morning up,

And, double rillet of a drinking cup,

Sparkle along to ease the land of drouth,

Northward to Provence that, and thus far south

The other! What a method to apprise

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. Such games, her absence stopped,

Begin afresh now Adelaide, recluse

No longer, in the light of day pursues

Her plans at Mantua: whence an accident

Which, breaking on Sordello's mixed content

Opened, like any flash that cures the blind,

The veritable business of mankind.