Sordello. Robert Browning

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: Judgment, that dull expedient we are fain, Less favoured, to adopt betimes and force Stead us, diverted from our natural course Of joys—contrive some yet amid the dearth, Vary and render them, it may be, worth Most we forego. Suppose Sordello hence Selfish enough, without a moral sense However feeble; what informed the boy Others desired a portion in his joy? Or say a ruthful chance broke woof and warp— A heron's nest beat down by March winds sharp, A fawn breathless beneath the precipice, A bird with unsoiled breast and unfilmed eyes Warm in the brake—could these undo the trance Lapping Sordello? Not a circumstance That makes for you, friend Naddo! Eat fern-seed And peer beside us and report indeed If (your word) "genius" dawned with throes and stings And the whole fiery catalogue, while springs, Summers, and winters quietly came and went. Time put at length that period to content, By right the world should have imposed: bereft Of its good offices, Sordello, left To study his companions, managed rip Their fringe off, learn the true relationship, Core with its crust, their nature with his own: Amid his wild-wood sights he lived alone. As if the poppy felt with him! Though he Partook the poppy's red effrontery Till Autumn spoiled their fleering quite with rain, And, turbanless, a coarse brown rattling crane Lay bare. That 's gone: yet why renounce, for that, His disenchanted tributaries—flat Perhaps, but scarce so utterly forlorn, Their simple presence might not well be borne Whose parley was a transport once: recall The poppy's gifts, it flaunts you, after all, A poppy:—why distrust the evidence Of each soon satisfied and healthy sense? The new-born judgment answered, "little boots "Beholding other creatures' attributes "And having none!" or, say that it sufficed, "Yet, could one but possess, oneself," (enticed Judgment) "some special office!" Nought beside Serves you? "Well then, be somehow justified "For this ignoble wish to circumscribe "And concentrate, rather than swell, the tribe "Of actual pleasures: what, now, from without "Effects it?—proves, despite a lurking doubt, "Mere sympathy sufficient, trouble spared? "That, tasting joys by proxy thus, you fared "The better for them?" Thus much craved his soul, Alas, from the beginning love is whole And true; if sure of nought beside, most sure Of its own truth at least; nor may endure A crowd to see its face, that cannot know How hot the pulses throb its heart below. While its own helplessness and utter want Of means to worthily be ministrant To what it worships, do but fan the more Its flame, exalt the idol far before Itself as it would have it ever be. Souls like Sordello, on the contrary, Coerced and put to shame, retaining will, Care little, take mysterious comfort still, But look forth tremblingly to ascertain If others judge their claims not urged in vain, And say for them their stifled thoughts aloud. So, they must ever live before a crowd: —"Vanity," Naddo tells you. Whence contrive A crowd, now? From these women just alive, That archer-troop? Forth glided—not alone Each painted warrior, every girl of stone, Nor Adelaide (bent double o'er a scroll, One maiden at her knees, that eve, his soul Shook as he stumbled through the arras'd glooms On them, for, 'mid quaint robes and weird perfumes, Started the meagre Tuscan up—her eyes, The maiden's, also, bluer with surprise) —But the entire out-world: whatever, scraps And snatches, song and story, dreams perhaps, Conceited the world's offices, and he Had hitherto transferred to flower or tree, Not counted a befitting heritage Each, of its own right, singly to engage Some man, no other—such now dared to stand Alone. Strength, wisdom, grace on every hand Soon disengaged themselves, and he discerned A sort of human life: at least, was turned A stream of lifelike figures through his brain. Lord, liegeman, valvassor and suzerain, Ere he could choose, surrounded him; a stuff To work his pleasure on; there, sure enough: But as for gazing, what shall fix that gaze? Are they to simply testify the ways He who convoked them sends his soul along With the cloud's thunder or a dove's brood-song? —While they live each his life, boast each his own Peculiar dower of bliss, stand each alone In some one point where something dearest loved Is easiest gained—far worthier to be proved Than aught he envies in the forest-wights! No simple and self-evident delights, But mixed desires of unimagined range, Contrasts or combinations, new and strange, Irksome perhaps, yet plainly recognized By this, the sudden company—loves prized By those who are to prize his own amount Of loves. Once care because such make account, Allow that foreign recognitions stamp The current value, and his crowd shall vamp Him counterfeits enough; and so their print Be on the piece, 't is gold, attests the mint, And "good," pronounce they whom his new appeal Is made to: if their casual print conceal— This arbitrary good of theirs o'ergloss What he has lived without, nor felt the loss— Qualities strange, ungainly, wearisome, —What matter? So must speech expand the dumb Part-sigh, part-smile with which Sordello, late Whom no poor woodland-sights could satiate, Betakes himself to study hungrily Just what the puppets his crude phantasy Supposes notablest—popes, kings, priests, knights— May please to promulgate for appetites; Accepting all their artificial joys Not as he views them, but as he employs Each shape to estimate the other's stock Of attributes, whereon—a marshalled flock Of authorized enjoyments—he may spend Himself, be men, now, as he used to blend With tree and flower—nay more entirely, else 'T were mockery: for instance, "How excels "My life that chieftain's?" (who apprised the youth Ecelin, here, becomes this month, in truth, Imperial Vicar?) "Turns he in his tent "Remissly? Be it so—my head is bent "Deliciously amid my girls to sleep. "What if he stalks the Trentine-pass? Yon steep "I climbed an hour ago with little toil: "We are alike there. But can I, too, foil "The Guelf's paid stabber, carelessly afford "Saint Mark's a spectacle, the sleight o' the sword "Baffling the treason in a moment?" Here No rescue! Poppy he is none, but peer To Ecelin, assuredly: his hand, Fashioned no otherwise, should wield a brand With Ecelin's success—try, now! He soon Was satisfied, returned as to the moon From earth; left each abortive boy's-attempt For feats, from failure happily exempt, In fancy at his beck. "One day I will "Accomplish it! Are they not older still "—Not grown-up men and women? 'T is beside "Only a dream; and though I must abide "With dreams now, I may find a thorough vent "For all myself, acquire an instrument "For acting what these people act; my soul "Hunting a body out may gain its whole "Desire some day!" How else express chagrin And resignation, show the hope steal in With which he let sink from an aching wrist The rough-hewn ash-bow? Straight, a gold shaft hissed Into the Syrian air, struck Malek down Superbly! "Crosses to the breach! God's Town "Is gained him back!" Why bend rough ash-bows more? Thus lives he: if not careless as before, Comforted: for one may anticipate, Rehearse the future, be prepared when fate Shall have prepared in turn real men whose names Startle, real places of enormous fames, Este abroad and Ecelin at home To worship him—Mantua, Verona, Rome To witness it. Who grudges time so spent? Rather test qualities to heart's content— Summon them, thrice selected, near and far— Compress the starriest into one star, And grasp the whole at once! The pageant thinned Accordingly; from rank to rank, like wind His spirit passed to winnow and divide; Back fell the simpler phantasms; every side The strong clave to the wise; with either classed The beauteous; so, till two or three amassed Mankind's beseemingnesses, and reduced Themselves eventually—graces loosed, Strengths lavished—all to heighten up One Shape Whose potency no creature should escape. Can it be Friedrich of the bowmen's talk? Surely that grape-juice, bubbling at the stalk, Is some grey scorching Saracenic wine The Kaiser quaffs with