Then a flash of bitter truth:
So fantasies could break and fritter youth
That he had long ago lost earnestness,
Lost will to work, lost power to even express
The need of working! Earth was turned a grave:
No more occasions now, though he should crave
Just one, in right of superhuman toil,
To do what was undone, repair such spoil,
Alter the past — nothing would give the chance!
Not that he was to die; he saw askance
Protract the ignominious years beyond
To dream in — time to hope and time despond,
Remember and forget, be sad, rejoice
As saved a trouble; he might, at his choice,
One way or other, idle life out, drop
No few smooth verses by the way — for prop,
A thyrsus, these sad people, all the same,
Should pick up, and set store by, — far from blame,
Plant o’er his hearse, convinced his better part
Survived him. “Rather tear men out the heart
“O’ the truth!” — Sordello muttered, and renewed
His propositions for the Multitude.
But Salinguerra, who at this attack
Had thrown great breast and ruffling corslet back
To hear the better, smilingly resumed
His task; beneath, the carroch’s warning boomed;
He must decide with Tito; courteously
He turned then, even seeming to agree
With his admonisher — ”Assist the Pope,
“Extend Guelf domination, fill the scope
“O’ the Church, thus based on All, by All, for All —
“Change Secular to Evangelical” —
Echoing his very sentence: all seemed lost,
When suddenly he looked up, laughingly almost,
To Palma: “This opinion of your friend’s —
“For instance, would it answer Palma’s ends?
“Best, were it not, turn Guelf, submit our Strength” —
(Here he drew out his baldric to its length)
— ”To the Pope’s Knowledge — let our captive slip,
“Wide to the walls throw ope our gates, equip
“Azzo with... what I hold here! Who ‘ll subscribe
“To a trite censure of the minstrel tribe
“Henceforward? or pronounce, as Heinrich used,
“‘Spear-heads for battle, burr-heads for the joust!’
“ — When Constance, for his couplets, would promote
“Alcamo, from a parti-coloured coat,
“To holding her lord’s stirrup in the wars.
“Not that I see where couplet-making jars
“With common sense: at Mantua I had borne
“This chanted, better than their most forlorn
“Of bull-baits, — that ‘s indisputable!”
Brave!
Whom vanity nigh slew, contempt shall save!
All ‘s at an end: a Troubadour suppose
Mankind will class him with their friends or foes?
A puny uncouth ailing vassal think
The world and him bound in some special link?
Abrupt the visionary tether burst.
What were rewarded here, or what amerced
If a poor drudge, solicitous to dream
Deservingly, got tangled by his theme
So far as to conceit the knack or gift
Or whatsoe’er it be, of verse, might lift
The globe, a lever like the hand and head
Of — ”Men of Action,” as the Jongleurs said,
— ”The Great Men,” in the people’s dialect?
And not a moment did this scorn affect
Sordello: scorn the poet? They, for once,
Asking “what was,” obtained a full response.
Bid Naddo think at Mantua — he had but
To look into his promptuary, put
Finger on a set thought in a set speech:
But was Sordello fitted thus for each
Conjecture? Nowise; since within his soul,
Perception brooded unexpressed and whole.
A healthy spirit like a healthy frame
Craves aliment in plenty — all the same,
Changes, assimilates its aliment.
Perceived Sordello, on a truth intent?
Next day no formularies more you saw
Than figs or olives in a sated maw.
‘T is Knowledge, whither such perceptions tend;
They lose themselves in that, means to an end,
The many old producing some one new,
A last unlike the first. If lies are true,
The Caliph’s wheel-work man of brass receives
A meal, munched millet grains and lettuce leaves
Together in his stomach rattle loose;
You find them perfect next day to produce:
But ne’er expect the man, on strength of that,
Can roll an iron camel-collar flat
Like Haroun’s self! I tell you, what was stored
Bit by bit through Sordello’s life, outpoured
That eve, was, for that age, a novel thing:
And round those three the People formed a ring,
Of visionary judges whose award
He recognised in full — faces that barred
Henceforth return to the old careless life,
In whose great presence, therefore, his first 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
“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 vapour, since, come death
Come life, he was fresh-sinewed every joint,
Each bone new-marrowed as whom gods anoint
Though mortal to their rescue. Now let sprawl
The snaky volumes hither! 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)
“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,
“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, retrack
“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
“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,
“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 enwomb
“Some wretched Friedrich with his red-hot tomb;
“Some dubious spirit, Lombard Agilulph
“With the black chastening river I engulph!
“Some unapproached Matilda I enshrine
“With languors of the planet of decline —
“These, fail to recognize, to arbitrate
“Between henceforth, to rightly estimate
“Thus marshalled in the masque! Myself, the while,
“As one of you, am witness, shrink or smile
“At my own showing! Next age — what ‘s to do?
“The men and women stationed hitherto
“Will I unstation, good and bad, conduct
“Each nature to its farthest, or obstruct
“At soonest, in the world: light, thwarted, breaks
“A limpid purity to rainbow flakes,
“Or shadow, massed, freezes to gloom: behold
“How such, with fit assistance to unfold,
“Or obstacles to crush them, disengage
“Their forms, love, hate, hope, fear, peace make, war wage,
“In presence of you all! Myself, implied
“Superior now, as, by the platform’s side,
“I bade them do and suffer, — would last content
“The world... no — that ‘s too far! I circumvent
“A few, my masque contented, and to these
“Offer unveil the last of mysteries —
“Man’s inmost life shall have yet freer play:
“Once more I cast external things away,
“And natures composite, so decompose
“That”... Why, he writes Sordello!
“How I rose,
“And how have you advanced! since evermore
“Yourselves effect what I was fain before
“Effect, what I supplied yourselves suggest,
“What I leave bare yourselves can now invest.
“How we attain to talk as brothers talk,
“In half-words, call things by half-names, no balk
“From discontinuing old aids. To-day
“Takes in account the work of Yesterday:
“Has not the world a Past now, its adept
“Consults ere he dispense with or accept
“New aids? a single touch more may enhance,
“A touch less turn to insignificance
“Those structures’ symmetry the past has strewed
“The world with, once so bare. Leave the mere rude
“Explicit details! ‘t is but brother’s speech
“We need, speech where an accent’s change gives each
“The other’s soul — no speech to understand
“By former audience: need was then to expand,
“Expatiate — hardly were we brothers! true —
“Nor I lament my small remove from you,
“Nor reconstruct what stands already. Ends
“Accomplished turn to means: my art in
tends
“New structure from the ancient: as they changed
“The spoils of every clime at Venice, ranged
“The horned and snouted Libyan god, upright
“As in his desert, by some simple bright
“Clay cinerary pitcher — Thebes as Rome,
“Athens as Byzant rifled, till their Dome
“From earth’s reputed consummations razed
“A seal, the all-transmuting Triad blazed
“Above. Ah, whose that fortune? Ne’ertheless
“E’en he must stoop contented to express
“No tithe of what ‘s to say — the vehicle
“Never sufficient: but his work is still
“For faces like the faces that select
“The single service I am bound effect, —
“That bid me cast aside such fancies, bow
“Taurello to the Guelf cause, disallow
“The Kaiser’s coming — which with heart, soul, strength,
“I labour for, this eve, who feel at length
“My past career’s outrageous vanity,
“And would, as its amends, die, even die
“Now I first estimate the boon of life,
“If death might win compliance — sure, this strife
“Is right for once — the People my support.”
My poor Sordello! what may we extort
By this, I wonder? Palma’s lighted eyes
Turned to Taurello who, long past surprise,
Began, “You love him — what you ‘d say at large
“Let me say briefly. First, your father’s charge
“To me, his friend, peruse: I guessed indeed
“You were no stranger to the course decreed.
“He bids me leave his children to the saints:
“As for a certain project, he acquaints
“The Pope with that, and offers him the best
“Of your possessions to permit the rest
“Go peaceably — to Ecelin, a stripe
“Of soil the cursed Vicentines will gripe,
“ — To Alberic, a patch the Trevisan
“Clutches already; extricate, who can,
“Treville, Villarazzi, Puissolo,
“Loria and Cartiglione! — all must go,
“And with them go my hopes. ‘T is lost, then! Lost
“This eve, our crisis, and some pains it cost
“Procuring; thirty years — as good I’d spent
“Like our admonisher! But each his bent
“Pursues: no question, one might live absurd
“Oneself this while, by deed as he by word
“Persisting to obtrude an influence where
“‘T is made account of, much as... nay, you fare
“With twice the fortune, youngster! — I submit,
“Happy to parallel my waste of wit
“With the renowned Sordello’s: you decide
“A course for me. Romano may abide
Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series Page 18