Delphi Poetry Anthology: The World's Greatest Poems (Delphi Poets Series Book 50)

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Delphi Poetry Anthology: The World's Greatest Poems (Delphi Poets Series Book 50) Page 207

by Homer


  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)
<
br />   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:

 

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