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

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 undercurrent 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 pinetree 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 goatskin 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 —

A dullish grey-streaked cumbrous font, a group

Round it, — each side of it, where’er one sees, —

Upholds it; shrinking Caryatides

Of just-tinged marble like Eve’s lilied flesh

Beneath her maker’s finger when the fresh

First pulse of life shot brightening the snow.

The font’s edge burthens every shoulder, so

They muse upon the ground, eyelids half closed;

Some, with meek arms behind their backs disposed,

Some, crossed above their bosoms, some, to veil

Their eyes, some, propping chin and cheek so pale,

Some, hanging slack an utter helpless length

Dead as a buried vestal whose whole strength

Goes when the grate above shuts heavily.

So dwell these noiseless girls, patient to see,

Like priestesses because of sin impure

Penanced for ever, who resigned endure,

Having that once drunk sweetness to the dregs.

And every eve, Sordello’s visit begs

Pardon for them: constant as eve he came

To sit beside each in her turn, the same

As one of them, a certain space: and awe

Made a great indistinctness till he saw

Sunset slant cheerful through the buttress-chinks,

Gold seven times globed; surely our maiden shrinks

And a smile stirs her as if one faint grain

Her load were lightened, one shade less the stain

Obscured her forehead, yet one more bead slipt

From off the rosary whereby the crypt

Keeps count of the contritions of its charge?

Then with a step more light, a heart more large,

He may depart, leave her and every one

To linger out the penance in mute stone.

Ah, but Sordello? ‘T is the tale I mean

To tell you.

In this castle may be seen,

On the hill tops, or underneath the vines,

Or eastward by the mound of firs and pines

That shuts out Mantua, still in loneliness,

A slender boy in a loose page’s dress,

Sordello: do but look on him awhile

Watching (‘t is autumn) with an earnest smile

The noisy flock of thievish birds at work

Among the yellowing vineyards; see him lurk