Browning began Sordello in 1837, interrupted his work to write the earlier parts of Bells and Pomegranates, but resumed it and completed it in 1840, when it was published by Moxon. In 1863, when reprinting the poem, Browning dedicated it as below to M. Milsand, and in his dedication wrote practically a preface to the poem. TO J. MILSAND, OF DIJON Dear Friend,—Let the next poem be introduced by your name, therefore remembered along with one of the deepest of my affections, and so repay all trouble it ever cost me. I wrote it twenty-five years ago for only a few, counting even in these on somewhat more care about its subject than they really had. My own faults of expression were many; but with care for a man or book such would be surmounted, and without it what avails the faultlessness of either? I blame nobody, least of all myself, who did my best then and since; for I lately gave time and pains to turn my work into what the many might—instead of what the few must—like; but after all, I imagined another thing at first, and therefore leave as I find it. The historical decoration was purposely of no more importance than a background requires; and my stress lay on the incidents in the development of a soul: little else is worth study. I, at least, always thought so; you, with many known and unknown to me, think so; others may one day think so; and whether my attempt remain for them or not, I trust, though away and past it, to continue ever yours, R. B.
Concerning this revised edition he wrote to a friend:— "I do not understand what —— can mean by saying that Sordello has been 'rewritten.' I did certainly at one time intend to rewrite much of it, but changed my mind,—and the edition which I reprinted was the same in all respects as its predecessors—only with an elucidatory heading to each page, and some few alterations, presumably for the better, in the text, such as occur in most of my works. I cannot remember a single instance of any importance that is rewritten, and I only suppose that —— has taken project for performance, and set down as 'done' what was for a while intended to be done." For the sake of such elucidation as these head-lines give, they are introduced here as side-notes. SORDELLO BOOK THE FIRST
v> Nature has broadly severed from her mass Of men, and framed for pleasure, as she frames Some happy lands, that have luxurious names, For loose fertility; a footfall there Suffices to upturn to the warm air Half-germinating spices; mere decay Produces richer life; and day by day New pollen on the lily-petal grows, And still more labyrinthine buds the rose. You recognize at once the finer dress Of flesh that amply lets in loveliness At eye and ear, while round the rest is furled (As though she would not trust them with her world) A veil that shows a sky not near so blue, And lets but half the sun look fervid through. How a poet's soul comes into play. How can such love?—like souls on each full-fraught Discovery brooding, blind at first to aught Beyond its beauty, till exceeding love Becomes an aching weight; and, to remove A curse that haunts such natures—to preclude Their finding out themselves can work no good To what they love nor make it very blest By their endeavor,—they are fain invest The lifeless thing with life from their own soul, Availing it to purpose, to control, To dwell distinct and have peculiar joy And separate interests that may employ That beauty fitly, for its proper sake. Nor rest they here; fresh births of beauty wake Fresh homage, every grade of love is past, With every mode of loveliness: then cast Inferior idols off their borrowed crown Before a coming glory. Up and down Runs arrowy fire, while earthly forms combine To throb the secret forth; a touch divine— And the sealed eyeball owns the mystic rod; Visibly through his garden walketh God. What denotes such a soul's progress. So fare they. Now revert. One character Denotes them through the progress and the stir,— A need to blend with each external charm, Bury themselves, the whole heart wide and warm,— In something not themselves; they would belong To what they worship—stronger and more strong Thus prodigally fed—which gathers shape And feature, soon imprisons past escape The votary framed to love and to submit Nor ask, as passionate he kneels to it, Whence grew the idol's empery. So runs A legend; light had birth ere moons and suns, Flowing through space a river and alone, Till chaos burst and blank the spheres were strown Hither and thither, foundering and blind: When into each of them rushed light—to find Itself no place, foiled of its radiant chance. Let such forego their just inheritance! For there 's a class that eagerly looks, too, On beauty, but, unlike the gentler crew, Proclaims each new revealment born a twin With a distinctest consciousness within, Referring still the quality, now first Revealed, to their own soul—its instinct nursed In silence, now remembered better, shown More thoroughly, but not the less their own; A dream come true; the special exercise How poets class at length— Of any special function that implies The being fair, or good, or wise, or strong, Dormant within their nature all along— Whose fault? So, homage, other souls direct Without, turns inward. "How should this deject Thee, soul?" they murmur; "wherefore strength be quelled Because, its trivial accidents withheld, Organs are missed that clog the world, inert, Wanting a will, to quicken and exert, Like thine—existence cannot satiate, Cannot surprise? Laugh thou at envious fate, Who, from earth's simplest combination stampt With individuality—uncrampt By living its faint elemental life, Dost soar to heaven's complexest essence, rife With grandeurs, unaffronted to the last, For honor, Equal to being all!" In truth? Thou hast Life, then—wilt challenge life for us: our race Is vindicated so, obtains its place In thy ascent, the first of us; whom we Or shame— May follow, to the meanest, finally, With our more bounded wills? Ah, but to find A certain mood enervate such a mind, Counsel it slumber in the solitude Thus reached, nor, stooping, task for mankind's good Its nature just as life and time accord "—Too narrow an arena to reward Emprise—the world's occasion worthless since Not absolutely fitted to evince Its mastery!" Or if yet worse befall, And a desire possess it to put all That nature forth, forcing our straitened sphere Contain it,—to display completely here The mastery another life should learn, Thrusting in time eternity's concern,— So that Sordello ... Which may the Gods avert Fool, who spied the mark Of leprosy upon him, violet-dark Already as he loiters? Born just now, With the new century, beside the glow And efflorescence out of barbarism; Witness a Greek or two from the abysm That stray through Florence-town with studious air, Calming the chisel of that Pisan pair: If Nicolo should carve a Christus yet! While at Siena is Guidone set, Forehead on hand; a painful birth must be Matured ere Saint Eufemia's sacristy Or transept gather fruits of one great gaze At the moon: look you! The same orange haze,— The same blue stripe round that—and, in the midst, Thy spectral whiteness, Mother-maid, who didst Pursue the dizzy painter! Woe, then, worth Any officious babble letting forth The leprosy confirmed and ruinous To spirit lodged in a contracted house! Go back to the beginning, rather; blend It gently with Sordello's life; the end Is piteous, you may see, but much between Pleasant enough. Meantime, some pyx to screen The full-grown pest, some lid to shut upon The goblin! So they found at Babylon, (Colleagues, mad Lucius and sage Antonine) Sacking the city, by Apollo's shrine, In rummaging among the rarities, A certain coffer; he who made the prize Opened it greedily; and out there curled Just such another plague, for half the world Was stung. Crawl in then, hag, and couch asquat,<
in his world Of dreams sat Palma. How the tresses curled Into a sumptuous swell of gold and wound About her like a glory! even the ground Was bright as with spilt sunbeams; breathe not, breathe Not!—poised, see, one leg doubled underneath, Its small foot buried in the dimpling snow, Rests, but the other, listlessly below, O'er the couch-side swings feeling for cool air, The vein-streaks swollen a richer violet where The languid blood lies heavily; yet calm On her slight prop, each flat and outspread palm, As but suspended in the act to rise By consciousness of beauty, whence her eyes But when will this dream turn truth? Turn with so frank a triumph, for she meets Apollo's gaze in the pine glooms. Time fleets: That 's worst! Because the pre-appointed age Approaches. Fate is tardy with the stage And crowd she promised. Lean he grows and pale, Though restlessly at rest. Hardly avail Fancies to soothe him. Time steals, yet alone He tarries here! The earnest smile is gone. How long this might continue matters not; For the time is ripe, and he ready. —Forever, possibly; since to the spot None come: our lingering Taurello quits Mantua at last, and light our lady flits Back to her place disburdened of a care. Strange—to be constant here if he is there! Is it distrust? Oh, never! for they both Goad Ecelin alike, Romano's growth Is daily manifest, with Azzo dumb And Richard wavering: let but Friedrich come, Find matter for the minstrelsy's report! —Lured from the Isle and its young Kaiser's court To sing us a Messina morning up, And, double rillet of a drinking cup, Sparkle along to ease the land of drouth, Northward to Provence that, and thus far south The other. What a method to apprise Neighbors of births, espousals, obsequies! Which in their very tongue the Troubadour Records; and his performance makes a tour, For Trouveres bear the miracle about, Explain its cunning to the vulgar rout, Until the Formidable House is famed Over the country—as Taurello aimed, Who introduced, although the rest adopt, The novelty. Such games, her absence stopped, Begin afresh now Adelaide, recluse No longer, in the light of day pursues Her plans at Mantua: whence an accident Which, breaking on Sordello's mixed content, Opened, like any flash that cures the blind, The veritable business of mankind. BOOK THE SECOND
212;all lift The groaning monster, stricken to the heart. Lo ye, the world's concernment, for its part, If the world esteem this equivalent. And this, for his, will hardly interfere! Its businesses in blood and blaze this year But while the hour away—a pastime slight Till he shall step upon the platform: right! And, now thus much is settled, cast in rough, Proved feasible, be counselled! thought enough,— Slumber, Sordello! any day will serve: Were it a less digested plan! how swerve To-morrow? Meanwhile eat these sun-dried grapes, And watch the soaring hawk there! Life escapes Merrily thus. He thoroughly read o'er His truchman Naddo's missive six times more, Praying him visit Mantua and supply A famished world. The evening star was high When he reached Mantua, but his fame arrived Before him: friends applauded, foes connived, And Naddo looked an angel, and the rest Angels, and all these angels would he blest Supremely by a song—the thrice-renowned Goito-manufacture. Then he found (Casting about to satisfy the crowd) He has loved song's results, not song; That happy vehicle, so late allowed, A sore annoyance; 't was the song's effect He cared for, scarce the song itself: reflect! In the past life, what might be singing's use? Just to delight his Delians, whose profuse Praise, not the toilsome process which procured That praise, enticed Apollo: dreams abjured, No overleaping means for ends—take both For granted or take neither! I am loth To say the rhymes at last were Eglamor's; But Naddo, chuckling, bade competitors Go pine; "the master certes meant to waste No effort, cautiously had probed the taste He 'd please anon: true bard, in short, disturb His title if they could; nor spur nor curb, Fancy nor reason, wanting in him; whence The staple of his verses, common sense: He built on man's broad nature—gift of gifts, That power to build! The world contented shifts With counterfeits enough, a dreary sort Of warriors, statesmen, ere it can extort Its poet-soul—that 's, after all, a freak (The having eyes to see and tongue to speak) With our herd's stupid sterling happiness So plainly incompatible that—yes— Yes—should a son of his improve the breed And turn out poet, he were cursed indeed!" "Well, there 's Goito and its woods anon, If the worst happen; best go stoutly on Now!" thought Sordello. So, must effect this to obtain those. Ay, and goes on yet! You pother with your glossaries to get A notion of the Troubadour's intent In rondel, tenzon, virlai, or sirvent— Much as you study arras how to twirl His angelot, plaything of page and girl Once; but you surely reach, at last,—or, no! Never quite reach what struck the people so, As from the welter of their time he drew Its elements successively to view, Followed all actions backward on their course, And catching up, unmingled at the source, Such a strength, such a weakness, added then A touch or two, and turned them into men. Virtue took form, nor vice refused a shape; Here heaven opened, there was hell agape, As Saint this simpered past in sanctity, Sinner the other flared portentous by A greedy people. Then why stop, surprised At his success? The scheme was realized Too suddenly in one respect: a crowd Praising, eyes quick to see, and lips as loud To speak, delicious homage to receive, The woman's breath to feel upon his sleeve, Who said, "But Anafest—why asks he less Than Lucio, in your verses? how confess, It seemed too much but yestereve!"—the youth, Who bade him earnestly, "Avow the truth! You love Bianca, surely, from your song; I knew I was unworthy!"—soft or strong, In poured such tributes ere he had arranged Ethereal ways to take them, sorted, changed, Digested. Courted thus at unawares, In spite of his pretensions and his cares, He caught himself shamefully hankering After the obvious petty joys that spring From true life, fain relinquish pedestal He succeeds a little, but fails more; And condescend with pleasures—one and all To be renounced, no doubt; for, thus to chain Himself to single joys and so refrain From tasting their quintessence, frustrates, sure, His prime design; each joy must he abjure Even for love of it. He laughed: what sage But perishes if from his magic page He look because, at the first line, a proof 'T was heard salutes him from the cavern roof? "On! Give yourself, excluding aught beside, To the day's task; compel your slave provide Its utmost at the soonest; turn the leaf Thoroughly conned. These lays of yours, in brief— Cannot men hear, now, something better?—fly A pitch beyond this unreal pageantry Of essences? the period sure has ceased For such: present us with ourselves, at least, Not portions of ourselves, mere loves and hates Made flesh: wait not!" Tries again, is no better satisfied, Awhile the poet waits However. The first trial was enough: He left imagining, to try the stuff That held the imaged thing, and, let it writhe Never so fiercely, scarce allowed a tithe To reach the light—his Language. How he sought The cause, conceived a cure, and slow re-wrought That Language,—welding words into the crude Mass from the new speech round him, till a rude Armor was hammered out, in time to be Approved beyond the Roman panoply Melted to make it,—boots not. This obtained With some ado, no obstacle remained To using it; accordingly he took An action with its actors, quite forsook Himself to live in each, returned anon With the result—a creature, and, by one And one, proceeded leisurely to equip Its limbs in harness of his workmanship. "Accomplished! Listen, Mantuans!" Fond essay! Piece after piece that armor broke away, Because perceptions whole, like that he sought Just how he was more awkward than his wont The night before, when Naddo, who had seen Taurello on his progress, praised the mien For dignity no crosses could affect— Such was a joy, and might not he detect A satisfaction if established joys Were proved imposture? Poetry annoys Its utmost: wherefore fret? Verses may come Or keep away! And thus he wandered, dumb Till evening, when he paused, thoroughly spent, On a blind hill-top: down the gorge he went, Yielding himself up as to an embrace. The moon came out; like features of a face, A querulous fraternity of pines, Sad blackthorn clumps, leafless and grovelling vines Also came out, made gradually up The picture; 't was Goito's mountain-cup And castle. He had dropped through one defile He never dared explore, the Chief erewhile He chances upon his old environment, Had vanished by. Back rushed the dream, enwrapped Him wholly. 'T was Apollo now they lapped, Those mountains, not a pettish minstrel meant To wear his soul away in discontent, Brooding on fortune's malice. Heart and brain Swelled; he expanded to himself again, As some thin seedling spice-tree starved and frail, Pushing between cat's head and ibis' tail Crusted into the porphyry pavement smooth, —Suffered remain just as it sprung, to soothe The Soldan's pining daughter, never yet Well in her chilly green-glazed minaret,— When rooted up, the sunny day she died, And flung into the common court beside Its parent tree. Come home, Sordello! Soon Was he low muttering, beneath the moon, Of sorrow saved, of quiet evermore,— Since from the purpose, he maintained before, Only resulted wailing and hot tears. Sees but failure in all done since, Ah, the slim castle! dwindled of late years, But more mysterious; gone to ruin—trails Of vine through every loop-hole. Naught avails The night as, torch in hand, he must explore The maple chamber: did I say, its floor Was made of intersecting cedar beams? Worn now with gaps so large, there blew cold streams Of air quite from the dungeon; lay your ear Close and 't is like, one after one, you hear In the blind darkness water drop. The nests And nooks retain their long ranged vesture-chests Empty and smelling of the iris root The Tuscan grated o'er them to recruit Her wasted wits. Palma was gone that day, Said the remaining women. Last, he lay Beside the Carian group reserved and still. The Body, the Machine for Acting Will, Had been at the commencement proved unfit; That for Demonstrating, Reflecting it, Mankind—no fitter: was the Will Itself In fault? His forehead pressed the moonlit shelf Beside the youngest marble maid awhile; Then, raising it, he thought, with a long smile, and resolves to desist from the like. "I shall be king again!" as he withdrew The envied scarf; into the font he threw His crown. Next day, no poet! "Wherefore?" asked Taurello, when the dance of Jongleurs, masked As devils, ended; "don't a song come next?" The master of the pageant looked perplexed Till Naddo's whisper came to his relief. "His Highness knew what poets were: in brief, Had not the tetchy race prescriptive right To peevishness, caprice? or, call it spite, One must receive their nature in its length And breadth, expect the weakness with the strength!" —So phrasing, till, his stock of phrases spent, The easy-natured soldier smiled assent, Settled his portly person, smoothed his chin, And nodded that the bull-bait might begin. BOOK THE THIRD
0">Tried he at 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 Who remedied ill wrought by Ecelin, The rest as an advantage!' Old strength propped The man who first grew Podesta among The Vicentines, 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 peers With Este? "Azzo" better soothes our ears Than "Alberic"? or is this lion's-crine From over-mounts' (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, Este required the Pope to further him; And you, the Kaiser—whom your father's whim Foregoes or, better, never shall forego If Palma dare pursue what Ecelo Commenced, but Ecelin desists from: just As Adelaide of Susa could intrust Her donative,—her Piedmont given the Pope, Her Alpine-pass for him to shut or ope 'Twixt France and Italy,—to the superb Matilda's perfecting,—so, lest aught curb Our Adelaide's great counter-project for Giving her Trentine to the Emperor With passage here from Germany,—shall you Take it,—my slender plodding talent, too!' —Urged me Taurello with his half-smile. "He As Patron of the scattered family Conveyed me 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 And had a project for her own glory, From losing Palma: judge if we advance, Your father's method, your inheritance!' The day I was betrothed to Boniface At Padua by Taurello's self, took place The outrage of the Ferrarese: again, The day I sought Verona with the train Agreed for,—by Taurello's policy Convicting Richard of the fault, since we Were present to annul or to confirm,— Richard, whose patience had outstayed its term, Quitted Verona for the siege. "And now What glory may engird Sordello's brow Through this? A month since at Oliero slunk All that was Ecelin into a monk; But how could Salinguerra so forget His liege of thirty years as grudge even yet One effort to recover him? He sent Forthwith the tidings of this last event To Ecelin—declared that he, despite The recent folly, recognized his right To order Salinguerra: 'Should he wring Its uttermost advantage out, or fling This chance away? Or were his sons now Head O' the House?' Through me Taurello's missive sped; My father's answer will by me return. Behold! 'For him,' he writes, 'no more concern With strife than, for his children, with fresh plots Of Friedrich. Old engagements out he blots For aye: Taurello shall no more subserve, Nor Ecelin impose.' Lest this unnerve Taurello 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 that firmland, sea makes head Against) I stand, Romano,—in their stead Assume the station they desert, and give Still, as the Kaiser's representative, Taurello license he demands. Midnight— Morning—by noon to-morrow, making light Which she would change to Sordello's. 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, Until, morn breaking, he resolves to be Gate-vein of this heart's blood of Lombardy, Soul of this body—to wield this 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 I bring Sordello to the rapturous Thus then, having completed a circle, Exclaim at the crowd's cry, because one round Of life was quite accomplished; and he found Not only that a soul, whate'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 recognize The Hid by the Revealed—but that, the last Nor lightest of the struggles overpast, Will he bade abdicate, which would not void The throne, might sit there, suffer he enjoyed Mankind, a varied and divine array Incapable of homage, the first way, Nor fit to render incidentally Tribute connived at, taken by the by, In joys. If thus with warrant to rescind The ignominious exile of mankind— Whose proper service, ascertained intact As yet, (to be by him themselves made act, Not watch Sordello acting each of them) Was to secure—if the true diadem Seemed imminent while our Sordello drank The wisdom of that golden Palma,—thank Verona'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 who peered A-top the Capitol, his face on flame With triumph, triumphing till Manlius came. Nor slight too much my rhymes—that spring, dispread, Dispart, disperse, lingering overhead Like an escape
actors of your own? At all events, his own audience may: Try them upon Sordello when 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 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, my patron-friend, Whose great verse blares unintermittent on Like your own trumpeter at Marathon,— You who, PlatÆa and Salamis being scant, Put up with Ætna for a stimulant— And did well, I acknowledged, as he loomed Over the midland sea last month, presumed Long, lay demolished in the blazing West At eve, while towards him tilting cloudlets pressed Like Persian ships at Salamis. Friend, wear A crest proud as desert while I declare Had I a flawless ruby fit to wring Tears of its color from that painted king Who lost it, I would, for that smile which went To my heart, fling it in the sea, content, What if things brighten, who knows? Wearing your verse in place, an amulet Sovereign against all passion, wear and fret! My English Eyebright, if you are not glad That, as I stopped my task awhile, the sad Dishevelled 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! So, to our business, now—the fate of such As find our common nature—overmuch Despised because restricted and unfit To bear the burden they impose on it— Cling when they would discard it; craving strength To leap from the allotted world, at length They do leap,—flounder on without a term, Each a god's germ, doomed to remain a germ In unexpanded infancy, unless ... But that 's the story—dull enough, confess! There might be fitter subjects to allure; Still, neither 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 Whereupon, with a story to the point, Farewell, but set apart the closing eve To comfort those his exile most would grieve, He knew: a touching spectacle, that house In motion to receive him! Xanthus' spouse You missed, made panther's meat a month since; but Xanthus himself (his nephew 't was, they shut 'Twixt boards and sawed asunder), Polycarp, Soft Charicle, next year no wheel could warp To swear by CÆsar's fortune, with the rest Were ranged; through whom the gray disciple pressed, Busily blessing right and left, just stopped To pat one infant's curls, the hangman cropped Soon after, reached the portal. On its hinge The door turns and he enters: what quick twinge Ruins the smiling mouth, those wide eyes fix Whereon, why like some spectral candlestick's Branch the disciple's arms? Dead swooned he, woke Anon, heaved sigh, made shift to gasp, heartbroke, "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, Portrayed 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, 't is yourself Installed, a limning which our utmost pelf Went to procure against to-morrow's loss; He takes up the thread of discourse. And that's no twy-prong, but a pastoral cross, You're painted with!" His puckered brows unfold— And you shall hear Sordello's story told. BOOK THE FOURTH
ed garden-grounds Where late the adversary, breaking bounds, Had gained 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 emprise, achievement and reward,— Ecelin's missive was conspicuous too. What past life did those flying thoughts pursue? As his, few names in Mantua half so old; But at Ferrara, where his sires enrolled It latterly, the Adelardi spared No pains 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 Ghibellin and Guelf As after Salinguerra styled himself And Este, who, till Marchesalla died, (Last of the Adelardi)—never tried His fortune there: with Marchesalla's child Would pass—could Blacks and Whites be reconciled, And young Taurello wed Linguetta—wealth And sway to a sole grasp. Each treats by stealth Already: when the Guelfs, the Ravennese Arrive, assault the Pietro quarter, seize Linguetta, and are gone! Men's first dismay Abated somewhat, hurries down, to lay The after indignation, Boniface, This Richard's father. "Learn the full disgrace Averted, ere you blame us Guelfs, who rate Your Salinguerra, your 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: "Old Salinguerra dead, his heir a boy, What if we change our ruler and decoy The Lombard Eagle of the azure sphere With Italy to build in, fix him here, Settle the city's troubles in a trice? For private wrong, let public good suffice!" The original check to his fortunes, In fine, young Salinguerra's stanchest friends Talked of the townsmen making him amends, Gave him a goshawk, and affirmed there was Rare sport, one morning, over the green grass 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 their side; "She brings him half Ferrara," 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 by what precise degrees He crept at first to such a downy seat, The Count trudged over 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 on thigh and tuft on chin, Which he was in the way to retrieve, 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 Of trees that link San Pietro with TomÀ, To visit Mantua. When the PodestÀ Ecelin, at Vicenza, called his friend Taurello thither, what could be their end But to restore the Ghibellins' late Head, The Kaiser helping? He with most to dread From vengeance and reprisal, Azzo, there With Boniface beforehand, as aware Of plots in progress, gave alarm, expelled Both plotters: but the Guelfs in triumph yelled Too hastily. The burning and the flight, And how Taurello, occupied that night With Ecelin, lost wife and son, I told: When a fresh calamity destroyed all: —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 men heard not constantly Of Salinguerra's House so sure to be! Though Azzo simply gained by the event A shifting of his plagues—the first, content To fall behind the second and estrange So far his nature, suffer such a change That in Romano sought he wife and child And for Romano's sake seemed reconciled To losing individual life, which shrunk As the other prospered—mortised in his trunk, Like a dwarf palm which wanton Arabs foil Of bearing its own proper wine and oil, By grafting into it the stranger-vine, Which sucks its heart out, sly and serpentine, Till forth one vine-palm feathers to the root, And red drops moisten the insipid fruit. Once Adelaide set on,—the subtle mate Of the weak soldier, urged to emulate The Church's valiant women deed for deed, And paragon her namesake, win the meed O' the great Matilda,—soon 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, why is it Salinguerra screens Himself behind Romano?—him we bade Enjoy our shine i' the front, not seek the shade!" —Asked Heinrich, 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: 't was plain He sank into a secondary personage, Taurello through some weakness must 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 By outsides!" Carelessly, meanwhile, his life Suffered its many turns of peace and strife In many lands—you hardly could surprise The man; who shamed Sordello (recognize!) In this as much beside, that, unconcerned W
rdello, 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 injustice; whoso shall enlist With either, ranks with man's inveterate foes. So there is one less quarrel to compose: The Guelf, the Ghibellin may be 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 Must move Taurello? What if there remained Have men a cause distinct from both? A cause, intact, distinct from these, ordained For me, its true discoverer?" Some one pressed Before them here, a watcher, to suggest The subject for a ballad: "They 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 corner—but too late no doubt, For the brave time he sought to bring about. Who was the famed Roman Crescentius? —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")—some brother spoke Ere nocturns of Crescentius, to revoke The edict issued, after his demise, Which blotted fame alike and effigies, All out except a floating power, a name Including, tending to produce the same Great act. Rome, dead, forgotten, lived at least Within that brain, though to a vulgar priest And a vile stranger,—two not worth a slave Of Rome's, Pope John, King Otho,—fortune gave The rule there: so, Crescentius, haply dressed In white, called Roman Consul for a jest, Taking the people at their word, forth stepped As upon Brutus' heel, nor ever kept Rome waiting,—stood erect, and from his brain Gave Rome out on its ancient place again, Ay, bade proceed with Brutus' Rome, Kings styled Themselves mere citizens of, and, beguiled Into great thoughts thereby, would choose the gem Out of a lapfull, spoil their diadem —The Senate's cypher was so hard to scratch! He flashes like a phanal, all men catch The flame, Rome 's just accomplished! when returned Otho, with John, the Consul's step had spurned, And 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 E'er since such slaves at Rome, that I—(for I Was once a brown-sleeve brother, merrily 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 his Mantuan days, Looked an established point of light whence rays Traversed the world; for, all the clustered homes Beside of men, seemed bent on being Romes In their degree; the question was, how each Should most resemble Rome, clean out of reach. How if, in the reintegration of Rome, Nor, of the Two, did either principle Struggle to change—but to possess—Rome, still, Guelf Rome or Ghibellin Rome. Let Rome advance! Rome, as she struck Sordello's ignorance— How could he doubt one moment? Rome 's the Cause! Rome of the Pandects, all the world's new laws— Of the Capitol, of Castle Angelo; New structures, that inordinately glow, Subdued, brought back to harmony, made ripe By many a relic of the archetype Extant for wonder; every upstart church That hoped to leave old temples in the lurch, Corrected by the Theatre forlorn That,—as a mundane shell, its world late born,— Lay and o'ershadowed it. These hints combined, Be typified the triumph of mankind? Rome typifies the scheme to put mankind Once more in full possession of their rights. "Let us have Rome again! On me it lights To build up Rome—on me, the first and last: For such a future was endured the past!" And thus, in the gray twilight, forth he sprung To give his thought consistency among The very People—let their facts avail Finish the dream grown from the archer's tale. BOOK THE FIFTH
irst strife For their sake must not be ignobly fought; All these, for once, approved of him, he thought, Suspended their own vengeance, chose await The issue of this strife to reinstate Them in the right of taking it—in fact He must be proved king ere they could exact Vengeance for such king's defalcation. Last, A reason why the phrases flowed so fast Was in his quite forgetting for a time Himself in his amazement that the rhyme Disguised the royalty so much: he there— And Salinguerra yet all unaware Who was the lord, who liegeman! "Thus I lay On thine my spirit and compel obey His lord,—my liegeman,—impotent to build Another Rome, but hardly so unskilled In what such builder should have been, as brook One shame beyond the charge that I forsook His function! Free me from that shame, I bend A brow before, suppose new years to spend,— Allow each chance, nor fruitlessly, recur— Measure thee with the Minstrel, then, demur He asserts the poet's rank and right, At any crowd he claims! That I must cede Shamed now, my right to my especial meed— Confess thee fitter help the world than I Ordained its champion from eternity, Is much: but to behold thee scorn the post I quit in thy behalf—to hear thee boast What makes my own despair!" And while he rung The changes on this theme, the roof up-sprung, The sad walls of the presence-chamber died Into the distance, or embowering vied With far-away Goito's vine-frontier; And crowds of faces—(only keeping clear The rose-light in the midst, his vantage-ground To fight their battle from)—deep clustered round Sordello, with good wishes no mere breath, Kind prayers for him no vapor, since, come death, Come life, he was fresh-sinewed every joint, Each bone new-marrowed as whom gods anoint Though mortal to their rescue. Now let sprawl The snaky volumes hither! Is Typhon all For Hercules to trample—good report From Salinguerra only to extort? "So was I" (closed he his inculcating, A poet must be earth's essential king) Basing these on their proper ground, "So was I, royal so, and if I fail, 'T is not the royalty, ye witness quail, But one deposed who, caring not exert Its proper essence, trifled malapert With accidents instead—good things assigned As heralds of a better thing behind— And, worthy through display of these, put forth Never the inmost all-surpassing worth That constitutes him king precisely since As yet no other spirit may evince Its like: the power he took most pride to test, Whereby all forms of life had been professed At pleasure, forms already on the earth, Was but a means to power beyond, whose birth Should, in its novelty, be kingship's proof. Now, whether he came near or kept aloof The several forms he longed to imitate, Not there the kingship lay, he sees too late. Those forms, unalterable first as last, Proved him her copier, not the protoplast Of nature: what would come of being free, By action to exhibit tree for tree, Bird, beast, for beast and bird, or prove earth bore One veritable man or woman more? Means to an end, such proofs are: what the end? Let essence, whatsoe'er it be, extend— Never contract. Already you include The multitude; then let the multitude Include yourself; and the result were new: Themselves before, the multitude turn you. This were to live and move and have, in them, Your being, and secure a diadem You should transmit (because no cycle yearns Beyond itself, but on itself returns) When, the full sphere in wane, the world o'erlaid Long since with you, shall have in turn obeyed Some orb still prouder, some displayer, still More potent than the last, of human will, Recognizing true dignity in service, And some new king depose the old. Of such Am I—whom pride of this elates too much? Safe, rather say, 'mid troops of peers again; I, with my words, hailed brother of the train Deeds once sufficed: for, let the world roll back, Who fails, through deeds howe'er diverse, re-track My purpose still, my task? A teeming crust— Air, flame, earth, wave at conflict! Then, needs must Emerge some Calm embodied, these refer The brawl to—yellow-bearded Jupiter? No! Saturn; some existence like a pact And protest against Chaos, some first fact I' the faint of time. My deep of life, I know, Is unavailing e'en to poorly show" ... For here the Chief immeasurably yawned) ... "Deeds in their due gradation till Song dawned— The fullest effluence of the finest mind, All in degree, no way diverse in kind From minds about it, minds which, more or less, Lofty or low, move seeking to impress Whether successively that of epoist, Themselves on somewhat; but one mind has climbed Step after step, by just ascent sublimed. Thought is the soul of act, and, stage by stage, Soul is from body still to disengage As tending to a freedom which rejects Such help and incorporeally affects The world, producing deeds but not by deeds, Swaying, in others, frames itself exceeds, Assigning them the simpler tasks it used To patiently perform till Song produced Acts, by thoughts only, for the mind: divest Mind of e'en Thought, and, lo, God's unexpressed Will draws above us! All then is to win Save that. How much for me, then? where begin My work? About me, faces! and they flock, The earnest faces. What shall I unlock By song? behold me prompt, whate'er it be, To minister: how much can mortals see Of Life? No more than so? I take the task And marshal you Life's elemental masque, Show Men, on evil or on good lay stress, Dramatist, or, so to call him, analyst, This light, this shade make prominent, suppress All ordinary hues that softening blend Such natures with the level. Apprehend Which sinner is, which saint, if I allot Hell, Purgatory, Heaven, a blaze or blot, To those you doubt concerning! I en
div class="i0">As shows its corpse the world's end some split tomb— A gloom, a rift of fire, another gloom, Faced Palma—but at length Taurello set Her free; the grating held one ragged jet Of fierce gold fire: he lifted her within The hollow underneath—how else begin Fate's second marvellous cycle, else renew The ages than with Palma plain in view? Then paced the passage, hands clenched, head erect, Pursuing his discourse; a grand unchecked Monotony made out from his quick talk And the recurring noises of his walk; —Somewhat too much like the o'ercharged assent Of two resolved friends in one danger blent, Who hearten each the other against heart; Boasting there 's naught to care for, when, apart The boaster, all 's to care for. He, beside Some shape not visible, in power and pride Approached, out of the dark, ginglingly near, Nearer, passed close in the broad light, his ear Crimson, eyeballs suffused, temples full-fraught, Just a snatch of the rapid speech you caught, And on he strode into the opposite dark, Till presently the harsh heel's turn, a spark I' the stone, and whirl of some loose embossed thong That crashed against the angle aye so long After the last, punctual to an amount Of mailed great paces you could not but count,— Prepared you for the pacing back again. And by the snatches you might ascertain That, Friedrich's Prefecture surmounted, left By this alone in Italy, they cleft Asunder, crushed together, at command Of none, were free to break up Hildebrand, If he consent to oppress the world. Rebuild, he and Sordello, Charlemagne— But garnished, Strength with Knowledge, "if we deign Accept that compromise and stoop to give Rome law, the CÆsar's Representative." Enough, that the illimitable flood Of triumphs after triumphs, understood In its faint reflux (you shall hear) sufficed Young Ecelin for appanage, enticed Him on till, these long quiet in their graves, He found 't was looked for that a whole life's braves Should somehow be made good; so, weak and worn, Must stagger up at Milan, one gray morn Of the to-come, and fight his latest fight. But, Salinguerra's prophecy at height— Just this decided, as it now may be, He voluble with a raised arm and stiff, A blaring voice, a blazing eye, as if He had our very Italy to keep Or cast away, or gather in a heap To garrison the better—ay, his word Was, "run the cucumber into a gourd, Drive Trent upon Apulia"—at their pitch Who spied the continents and islands which Grew mulberry-leaves and sickles, in the map— (Strange that three such confessions so should hap To Palma, Dante spoke with in the clear Amorous silence of the Swooning-sphere,— Cunizza, as he called her! Never ask Of Palma more! She sat, knowing her task Was done, the labor of it,—for, success Concerned not Palma, passion's votaress) Triumph at height, and thus Sordello crowned— Above the passage suddenly a sound Stops speech, stops walk: back shrinks Taurello, bids With large involuntary asking lids, Palma interpret. "'T is his own foot-stamp— Your hand! His summons! Nay, this idle damp Befits not!" Out they two reeled dizzily. "Visconti 's strong at Milan," resumed he, In the old, somewhat insignificant way— (Was Palma wont, years afterward, to say) As though the spirit's flight, sustained thus far, Dropped at that very instant. Gone they are— Palma, Taurello; Eglamor anon, Ecelin,—only Naddo 's never gone! —Labors, this moonrise, what the Master meant— "Is Squarcialupo speckled?—purulent, I 'd say, but when was Providence put out? He carries somehow handily about His spite nor fouls himself!" Goito's vines Stand like a cheat detected—stark rough lines, The moon breaks through, a gray mean scale against The vault where, this eve's Maiden, thou remain'st Like some fresh martyr, eyes fixed—who can tell? As Heaven, now all 's at end, did not so well, And we have done. Spite of the faith and victory, to leave Its virgin quite to death in the lone eve. While the persisting hermit-bee ... ha! wait No longer: these in compass, forward fate! BOOK THE SIXTH
en the past Gave partially enfranchisement, he cast Himself quite through mere secondary states Of his soul's essence, little loves and hates, Because there is a life beyond life, Into the mid deep yearnings overlaid By these; as who should pierce hill, plain, grove, glade, And on into the very nucleus probe That first determined there exist a globe. As that were easiest, half the globe dissolved, So seemed Sordello's closing-truth evolved By his flesh-half's break up; the sudden swell Of his expanding soul showed Ill and Well, Sorrow and Joy, Beauty and Ugliness, Virtue and Vice, the Larger and the Less, All qualities, in fine, recorded here, Might be but modes of Time and this one sphere, Urgent on these, but not of force to bind Eternity, as Time—as Matter—Mind, If Mind, Eternity, should choose assert Their attributes within a Life: thus girt With circumstance, next change beholds them cinct Quite otherwise—with Good and Ill 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 his past despair? —Most imminent when he seemed most aware Of his own self-sufficiency; made mad By craving to expand the power he had, And not new power to be expanded?—just This made it; Soul on Matter being thrust, Joy comes when so much Soul is wreaked in Time On Matter,—let the Soul's attempt sublime Matter beyond the scheme and so prevent By more or less that deed's accomplishment, And Sorrow follows: Sorrow how avoid? Let the employer match the thing employed, Fit to the finite his infinity. And thus proceed forever, in degree And with new conditions of success, 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, She chose to understand the body's trade More than the body's self—had fain conveyed Her boundless, to the body's bounded lot. Hence, the soul permanent, the body not,— Scarcely its minute for enjoying here,— The soul must needs instruct her weak compeer, Run o'er its capabilities and wring A joy thence, she held worth experiencing: Which, far from half discovered even,—lo, The minute gone, the body's power let go Apportioned to that joy's acquirement! Broke Nor such as, in this, produce failure. Morning o'er earth, he yearned for all it woke— From the volcano's vapor-flag, winds hoist Black o'er the spread of sea,—down to the moist Dale's silken barley-spikes sullied with rain, Swayed earthwards, heavily to rise again— The Small, a sphere as perfect as the Great To the soul's absoluteness. Meditate Too long on such a morning's cluster-chord And the whole music it was framed afford,— The chord's might half discovered, what should pluck One string, his finger, was found palsy-struck. And then no marvel if the spirit, shown A saddest sight—the body lost alone Through her officious proffered help, deprived Of this and that enjoyment Fate contrived,— Virtue, Good, Beauty, each allowed slip hence,— Vaingloriously were fain, for recompense, To stem the ruin even yet, protract The body's term, supply the power it lacked From her infinity, compel it learn These qualities were only Time's concern, And body may, with spirit helping, barred— Advance the same, vanquished—obtain reward, Reap joy where sorrow was intended grow, Of Wrong make Right, and turn Ill 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 Needs must exceed, prove incomplete for, each Single sphere—Time. But does our knowledge reach No farther? Is the cloud of hindrance broke But, even here, is failure inevitable? But by the failing of the fleshly yoke, Its loves and hates, as now when death lets soar Sordello, self-sufficient as before, Though during the mere space that shall elapse 'Twixt his enthralment in new bonds, perhaps? Must life be ever just escaped, which should Have been enjoyed?—nay, might have been and would, Each purpose ordered right—the soul's no whit Beyond the body's purpose under it— Like yonder breadth of watery heaven, a bay, And that sky-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—would soul, proportioned thus, begin Exciting discontent, or surelier quell The body if, aspiring, it rebel? But how so order life? Still brutalize The soul, the sad world's way, with muffled eyes To all that was before, all that shall be After this sphere—all and each quality Save some sole and immutable Great-Good And Beauteous whither fate has loosed its hood Or may failure here be success also 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 M
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