Robert Browning - The Complete Poems of Robert Browning - 22 Poetry Collections in One Edition

“Far inland, till his friend the tempest wake,

“Waits he the Kaiser’s coming; and as yet

“That fast friend sleeps, and he too sleeps: but let

“Only the billow freshen, and he snuffs

“The aroused hurricane ere it enroughs

“The sea it means to cross because of him.

“Sinketh the breeze? His hope-sick eye grows dim;

“Creep closer on the creature! Every day

“Strengthens the Pontiff; Ecelin, they say,

“Dozes now at Oliero, with dry lips

“Telling upon his perished finger-tips

“How many ancestors are to depose

“Ere he be Satan’s Viceroy when the doze

“Deposits him in hell. So, Guelfs rebuilt

“Their houses; not a drop of blood was spilt

“When Cino Bocchimpane chanced to meet

“Buccio Virtù — God’s wafer, and the street

“Is narrow! Tutti Santi, think, a-swarm

“With Ghibellins, and yet he took no harm!

“This could not last. Off Salinguerra went

“To Padua, Podestà, ‘with pure intent,’

“Said he, ‘my presence, judged the single bar

“‘To permanent tranquillity, may jar

“‘No longer’ — so! his back is fairly turned?

“The pair of goodly palaces are burned,

“The gardens ravaged, and our Guelfs laugh, drunk

“A week with joy. The next, their laughter sunk

“In sobs of blood, for they found, some strange way,

“Old Salinguerra back again — I say,

“Old Salinguerra in the town once more

“Uprooting, overturning, flame before,

“Blood fetlock-high beneath him. Azzo fled;

“Who ‘scaped the carnage followed; then the dead

“Were pushed aside from Salinguerra’s throne,

“He ruled once more Ferrara, all alone,

“Till Azzo, stunned awhile, revived, would pounce

“Coupled with Boniface, like lynx and ounce,

“On the gorged bird. The burghers ground their teeth

“To see troop after troop encamp beneath

“I’ the standing corn thick o’er the scanty patch

“It took so many patient months to snatch

“Out of the marsh; while just within their walls

“Men fed on men. At length Taurello calls

“A parley: ‘let the Count wind up the war!’

“Richard, lighthearted as a plunging star,

“Agrees to enter for the kindest ends

“Ferrara, flanked with fifty chosen friends,

“No horse-boy more, for fear your timid sort

“Should fly Ferrara at the bare report.

“Quietly through the town they rode, jog-jog;

“‘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,