Sordello. Robert Browning

"'Ten, twenty, thirty—curse the catalogue "'Of burnt Guelf houses! Strange, Taurello shows "'Not the least sign of life'—whereat arose "A general growl: 'How? With his victors by? "'I and my Veronese? My troops and I? "'Receive us, was your word?' So jogged they on, "Nor laughed their host too openly: once gone "Into the trap!—" Six hundred years ago! Such the time's aspect and peculiar woe (Yourselves may spell it yet in chronicles, Albeit the worm, our busy brother, drills His sprawling path through letters anciently Made fine and large to suit some abbot's eye) When the new Hohenstauffen dropped the mask, Flung John of Brienne's favour from his casque, Forswore crusading, had no mind to leave Saint Peter's proxy leisure to retrieve Losses to Otho and to Barbaross, Or make the Alps less easy to recross; And, thus confirming Pope Honorius' fear, Was excommunicate that very year. "The triple-bearded Teuton come to life!" Groaned the Great League; and, arming for the strife, Wide Lombardy, on tiptoe to begin, Took up, as it was Guelf or Ghibellin, Its cry: what cry? "The Emperor to come!" His crowd of feudatories, all and some, That leapt down with a crash of swords, spears, shields, One fighter on his fellow, to our fields, Scattered anon, took station here and there, And carried it, till now, with little care— Cannot but cry for him; how else rebut Us longer?—cliffs, an earthquake suffered jut In the mid-sea, each domineering crest Which nought save such another throe can wrest From out (conceive) a certain chokeweed grown Since o'er the waters, twine and tangle thrown Too thick, too fast accumulating round, Too sure to over-riot and confound Ere long each brilliant islet with itself, Unless a second shock save shoal and shelf, Whirling the sea-drift wide: alas, the bruised And sullen wreck! Sunlight to be diffused For that!—sunlight, 'neath which, a scum at first, The million fibres of our chokeweed nurst Dispread themselves, mantling the troubled main, And, shattered by those rocks, took hold again, So kindly blazed it—that same blaze to brood O'er every cluster of the multitude Still hazarding new clasps, ties, filaments, An emulous exchange of pulses, vents Of nature into nature; till some growth Unfancied yet, exuberantly clothe A surface solid now, continuous, one: "The Pope, for us the People, who begun "The People, carries on the People thus, "To keep that Kaiser off and dwell with us!" See you? Or say, Two Principles that live Each fitly by its Representative. "Hill-cat"—who called him so?—the gracefullest Adventurer, the ambiguous stranger-guest Of Lombardy (sleek but that ruffling fur, Those talons to their sheath!) whose velvet purr Soothes jealous neighbours when a Saxon scout —Arpo or Yoland, is it?—one without A country or a name, presumes to couch Beside their noblest; until men avouch That, of all Houses in the Trevisan, Conrad descries no fitter, rear or van, Than Ecelo! They laughed as they enrolled That name at Milan on the page of gold, Godego's lord—Ramon, Marostica, Cartiglion, Bassano, Loria, And every sheep cote on the Suabian's fief! No laughter when his son, "the Lombard Chief" Forsooth, as Barbarossa's path was bent To Italy along the Vale of Trent, Welcomed him at Roncaglia! Sadness now— The hamlets nested on the Tyrol's brow, The Asolan and Euganean hills, The Rhetian and the Julian, sadness fills Them all, for Ecelin vouchsafes to stay Among and care about them; day by day Choosing this pinnacle, the other spot, A castle building to defend a cot, A cot built for a castle to defend, Nothing but castles, castles, nor an end To boasts how mountain ridge may join with ridge By sunken gallery and soaring bridge. He takes, in brief, a figure that beseems The griesliest nightmare of the Church's dreams, —A Signory firm-rooted, unestranged From its old interests, and nowise changed By its new neighbourhood: perchance the vaunt Of Otho, "my own Este shall supplant "Your Este," come to pass. The sire led in A son as cruel; and this Ecelin Had sons, in turn, and daughters sly and tall And curling and compliant; but for all Romano (so they styled him) throve, that neck Of his so pinched and white, that hungry cheek Proved 't was some fiend, not him, the man's-flesh went To feed: whereas Romano's instrument, Famous Taurello Salinguerra, sole I' the world, a tree whose boughs were slipt the bole Successively, why should not he shed blood To further a design? Men understood Living was pleasant to him as he wore His careless surcoat, glanced some missive o'er, Propped on his truncheon in the public way, While his lord lifted writhen hands to pray, Lost at Oliero's convent. Hill-cats, face Our Azzo, our Guelf Lion! Why disgrace A worthiness conspicuous near and far (Atii at Rome while free and consular, Este at Padua who repulsed the Hun) By trumpeting the Church's princely son? —Styled Patron of Rovigo's Polesine, Ancona's march, Ferrara's … ask, in fine, Our chronicles, commenced when some old monk Found it intolerable to be sunk (Vexed to the quick by his revolting cell) Quite out of summer while alive and well: Ended when by his mat the Prior stood, 'Mid busy promptings of the brotherhood, Striving to coax from his decrepit brains The reason Father Porphyry took pains To blot those ten lines out which used to stand First on their charter drawn by Hildebrand. The same night wears. Verona's rule of yore Was vested in a certain Twenty-four; And while within his palace these debate Concerning Richard and Ferrara's fate, Glide we by clapping doors, with sudden glare Of cressets vented on the dark, nor care For aught that 's seen or heard until we shut The smother in, the lights, all noises but The carroch's booming: safe at last! Why strange Such a recess should lurk behind a range Of banquet-rooms? Your finger—thus—you push A spring, and the wall opens, would you rush Upon the banqueters, select your prey, Waiting (the slaughter-weapons in the way Strewing this very bench) with sharpened ear A preconcerted signal to appear; Or if you simply crouch with beating heart, Bearing in some voluptuous pageant part To startle them. Nor mutes nor masquers now; Nor any … does that one man sleep whose brow The dying lamp-flame sinks and rises o'er? What woman stood beside him? not the more Is he unfastened from the earnest eyes Because that arras fell between! Her wise And lulling words are yet about the room, Her presence wholly poured upon the gloom Down even to her vesture's creeping stir. And so reclines he, saturate with her, Until an outcry from the square beneath Pierces the charm: he springs up, glad to breathe, Above the cunning element, and shakes The stupor off as (look you) morning breaks On the gay dress, and, near concealed by it, The lean frame like a half-burnt taper, lit Erst at some marriage-feast, then laid away Till the Armenian bridegroom's dying day, In his wool wedding-robe. For he—for he, Gate-vein of this hearts' blood of Lombardy, (If I should falter now)—for he is thine! Sordello, thy forerunner, Florentine! A herald-star I know thou didst absorb Relentless into the consummate orb That scared it from its right to roll along A sempiternal path with dance and song Fulfilling its allotted period, Serenest of the progeny of God— Who yet resigns it not! His darling stoops With no quenched lights, desponds with no blank troops Of disenfranchised brilliances, for, blent Utterly with thee, its shy element Like thine upburneth prosperous and clear. Still, what if I approach the august sphere Named now with only one name, disentwine That under-current soft and argentine From its fierce mate in the majestic mass Leavened as the sea whose fire was mixt with glass In John's transcendent vision—launch once more That lustre? Dante, pacer of the shore Where glutted hell disgorgeth filthiest gloom, Unbitten by its whirring sulphur-spume— Or whence the grieved and obscure waters slope Into a darkness quieted by hope; Plucker of amaranths grown beneath God's eye In gracious twilights where his chosen lie— I would do this! If I should falter now! In Mantua territory half is slough, Half pine-tree forest; maples, scarlet oaks Breed o'er the river-beds; even Mincio chokes With sand the summer through: but 't is morass In winter up to Mantua walls. There was, Some thirty years before this evening's coil, One spot reclaimed from the surrounding spoil, Goito; just a castle built amid A few low mountains; firs and larches hid Their main defiles, and rings of vineyard bound The rest. Some captured creature in a pound, Whose artless wonder quite precludes distress, Secure beside in its own loveliness, So peered with airy head, below, above, The castle at its toils, the lapwings love To glean among at grape-time. Pass within. A maze of corridors contrived for sin, Dusk winding-stairs, dim galleries got past, You gain the inmost chambers, gain at last A maple-panelled room: that haze which seems Floating about the panel, if there gleams A sunbeam over it, will turn to gold And in light-graven characters unfold The Arab's wisdom everywhere; what shade Marred them a moment, those slim pillars made, Cut like a company of palms to prop The roof, each kissing top entwined with top, Leaning together; in the carver's mind Some knot of bacchanals, flushed cheek combined With straining forehead, shoulders purpled, hair Diffused between, who in a goat-skin bear A vintage; graceful sister-palms! But quick To the main wonder, now. A vault, see; thick Black shade about the ceiling, though fine slits Across the buttress suffer light by fits Upon a marvel in the midst. Nay, stoop—