Another glanced: so dazzled by my wealth,
Knowing not which to leave nor which to choose,
For all my thoughts so floated, nought was fixed —
And then thou said’st a perfect bard was one
Who shadowed out the stages of all life,
And so thou badest me tell this my first stage: —
‘Tis done: and even now I feel all dim the shift
Of thought. These are my last thoughts; I discern
Faintly immortal life, and truth, and good.
And why thou must be mine is, that e’en now,
In the dim hush of night — that I have done —
With fears and sad forebodings: I look thro’
And say, “E’en at the last I have her still,
“With her delicious eyes as clear as heaven,
“When rain in a quick shower has beat down mist,
“And clouds float white in the sun like broods of swans.”
How the blood lies upon her cheek, all spread
As thinned by kisses; only in her lips
It wells and pulses like a living thing,
And her neck looks, like marble misted o’er
With love-breath, a dear thing to kiss and love,
Standing beneath me — looking out to me,
As I might kill her and be loved for it.
Love me — love me, Pauline, love nought but me;
Leave me not. All these words are wild and weak,
Believe them not, Pauline. I stooped so low
But to behold thee purer by my side,
To show thou art my breath — my life — a last
Resource — an extreme want: never believe
Aught better could so look to thee, nor seek
Again the world of good thoughts left for me.
There were bright troops of undiscovered suns.
Each equal in their radiant course. There were
Clusters of far fair isles, which ocean kept
For his own joy, and his waves broke on them
Without a choice. And there was a dim crowd
Of visions, each a part of the dim whole.
And a star left his peers and came with peace
Upon a storm, and all eyes pined for him,
And one isle harboured a sea-beaten ship,
And the crew wandered in its bowers, and plucked
Its fruits, and gave up all their hopes for home.
And one dream came to a pale poet’s sleep,
And he said, “I am singled out by God,
“No sin must touch me.” I am very weak,
But what I would express is, — Leave me not,
Still sit by me — with beating breast, and hair
Loosened — watching earnest by my side,
Turning my books, or kissing me when I
Look up — like summer wind. Be still to me
A key to music’s mystery, when mind fails,
A reason, a solution and a clue,
You see I have thrown off my prescribed rules:
I hope in myself — and hope, and pant, and love —
You’ll find me better — know me more than when
You loved me as I was. Smile not; I have
Much yet to gladden you — to dawn on you.
No more of the past — I’ll look within no more —
I have too trusted to my own wild wants —
Too trusted to myself — to intuition.
Draining the wine alone in the still night,
And seeing how — as gathering films arose,
As by an inspiration life seemed bare
And grinning in its vanity, and ends
Hard to be dreamed of, stared at me as fixed,
And others suddenly became all foul,
As a fair witch turned an old hag at night.
No more of this — we will go hand in hand,
I will go with thee, even as a child,
Looking no further than thy sweet commands.
And thou hast chosen where this life shall be —
The land which gave me thee shall be our home,
Where nature lies all wild amid her lakes
And snow-swathed mountains, and vast pines all girt
With ropes of snow — where nature lies all bare,
Suffering none to view her but a race
Most stinted and deformed — like the mute dwarfs
Which wait upon a naked Indian queen.
And there (the time being when the heavens are thick
With storms) I’ll sit with thee while thou dost sing
Thy native songs, gay as a desert bird
Who crieth as he flies for perfect joy,
Or telling me old stories of dead knights,
Or I will read old lays to thee — how she,
The fair pale sister, went to her chill grave
With power to love, and to be loved, and live.
Or will go together, like twin gods
Of the infernal world, with scented lamp
Over the dead — to call and to awake —
Over the unshaped images which lie
Within my mind’s cave — only leaving all
That tells of the past doubts. So when spring comes,
And sunshine comes again like an old smile,
And the fresh waters, and awakened birds,
And budding woods await us — I shall be
Prepared, and we will go and think again,
And all old loves shall come to us — but changed
As some sweet thought which harsh words veiled before;
Feeling God loves us, and that all that errs,
Is a strange dream which death will dissipate;
And then when I am firm we’ll seek again
My own land, and again I will approach
My old designs, and calmly look on all
The works of my past weakness, as one views
Some scene where danger met him long before
Ah! that such pleasant life should be but dreamed!
But whate’er come of it — and tho’ it fade,
And tho’ ere the cold morning all be gone
As it will be; — tho’ music wait for me,
And fair eyes and bright wine, laughing like sin,
Which steals back softly on a soul half saved;
And I be first to deny all, and despise
This verse, and these intents which seem so fair;
Still this is all my own, this moment’s pride,
No less I make an end in perfect joy.
E’en in my brightest time, a lurking fear
Possessed me. I well knew my weak resolves,
I felt the witchery that makes mind sleep
Over its treasures — as one half afraid
To make his riches definite — but now
These feelings shall not utterly be lost,
I shall not know again that nameless care,
Lest leaving all undone in youth, some new
And undreamed end reveal itself too late:
For this song shall remain to tell for ever,
That when I lost all hope of such a change
Suddenly Beauty rose on me again.
No less I make an end in perfect joy,
For I, having thus again been visited,
Shall doubt not many another bliss awaits,
And tho’ this weak soul sink, and darkness come,
Some little word shall light it up again,
And I shall see all clearer and love better;
I shall again go o’er the tracts of thought,
As one who has a right; and I shall live
With poets — calmer — purer still each time,
And beauteous shapes will come to me again,
And unknown secrets will be trusted me,
Which were not mine when wavering — but now
I shall be priest and lover, as of old.
Sun-treader, I believe in God, and truth,
And love; and as one just escaped from death
Would bind himself in bands of friends to feel
He lives indeed — so, I would lean on thee;
Thou must be ever with me — most in gloom
When such shall come — but chiefly when I die,
For I seem dying, as one going in the dark
To fight a giant — and live thou for ever,
And be to all what thou hast been to me —
All in whom this wakes pleasant thoughts of me,
Know my last state is happy — free from doubt,
Or touch of fear. Love me and wish me well!
RICHMOND,
October 22, 1832.
Je crains biers que mon pauvre ami ne soit pas toujours parfaitement compris dans ce qui reste à lire de cet étrange fragment — mais it est moins propre que tout autre à éclaircir ce qui de sa nature ne peut jamais être que songe et confusion. D’ailleurs je ne sais trop si en cherchant à mieux co-ordonner certaines parties l’on ne courrait pas le risque de nuire au seul mérite auquel une production si singulière peut prétendre — celui de donner une idée assez précise du genre qu’elle n’a fait que ébaucher. — Ce début sans prétention, ce remuement des passions qui va d’abord en accroissant et puis s’appaise par degrés, ces élans de l’âme, ce retour soudain sur soi-même. — Et par dessus tout, la tournure d’esprit toute particulière de mon ami rendent les changemens presque impossibles. Les raisons qu’il fait valoir ailleurs, et d’autres encore plus puissantes, ont fait trouver grâce à mes yeux pour cet écrit qu’autrement je lui eusse conseillé de jeter au feu. — Je n’en crois pas moins au grand principe de toute composition — à ce principe de Shakespeare, de Raffaelle, de Beethoven, d’où il suit que la concentration des idées est dûe bien plus à leur conception, qu’a leur mise en execution . . . j’ai tout lieu de craindre que la première de ces qualités ne soit encore étrangère à mon ami — et je doute fort qu’un redoublement de travail lui fasse acquérir la seconde. Le mieux serait de brûler ceci; mais que faire?
Je crois que dans ce qui suit il fait allusion à un certain examen qu’il fit autrefois de l’âme ou plutôt de son âme, pour découvrir la suite des objets auxquels il lui serait possible d’atteindre, et dont chacun une fois obtenu devait former une espèce de plateau d’ou l’on pouvait aperçevoir d’autres buts, d’autres projets, d’autres jouissances qui, à leur tour, devaient être surmontés. Il en résultait que l’oubli et le sommeil devaient tout terminer. Cette idée que je ne saisis pas parfaitement lui est peutêtre aussi intelligible qu’à moi.
PAULINE.
SORDELLO
This narrative poem took Browning several years to compose, written between 1836 and 1840, and finally published in March of that year. Sordello consists of a fictionalised version of the life of Sordello da Goito, a 13th-century Lombard troubadour, who appeared as a character in Canto VI of Dante’s Purgatorio. The poem is set in northern Italy in the 1220s, detailing the struggle between the Guelphs (partisans of the Pope) and the Ghibellines (partisans of the Holy Roman Emperor). Sordello is a Ghibelline, like his lord Ecelin II da Romano and the soldier Taurello.
Convoluted and obscure, the poem is regarded as being one of the most challenging works in English literature. Harshly received at the time of publication, Sordello has since been championed by such critics as Algernon Swinburne and Ezra Pound. Nevertheless, the poem severly damaged Browning’s reputation due to its hostile crirtical reception and almost this single poem alone tainted his literary career for decades. It was only with the publication of his later poetry collections that Browning was able to move away from the shadow of neglect that Sordello had created for the young poet.
Sordello pleads with Dante and Virgil in the Purgatorio, as depicted on the Monumento a Dante a Trento by Cesare Zocchi, 1896
CONTENTS
SORDELLO BOOK THE FIRST.
SORDELLO BOOK THE SECOND.
SORDELLO BOOK THE THIRD.
SORDELLO BOOK THE FOURTH.
SORDELLO BOOK THE FIFTH.
SORDELLO BOOK THE SIXTH.
The first edition’s title page
DEDICATION
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.
London, June 9, 1863.
SORDELLO BOOK THE FIRST.
Who will, may hear Sordello’s story told:
His story? Who believes me shall behold
The man, pursue his fortunes to the end,
Like me: for as the friendless-people’s friend
Spied from his hill-top once, despite the din
And dust of multitudes, Pentapolin
Named o’ the Naked Arm, I single out
Sordello, compassed murkily about
With ravage of six long sad hundred years.
Only believe me. Ye believe?
Appears
Verona... Never, — I should warn you first, —
Of my own choice had this, if not the worst
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
Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series Page 4