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

Where those font-bearers expiate their fault,

The maple-chamber, and the little nooks

And nests, and breezy parapet that looks

Over the woods to Mantua: there he strolled.

Some foreign women-servants, very old,

Tended and crept about him — all his clue

To the world’s business and embroiled ado

Distant a dozen hill-tops at the most.

And first a simple sense of life engrossed

Sordello in his drowsy Paradise;

The day’s adventures for the day suffice —

Its constant tribute of perceptions strange,

With sleep and stir in healthy interchange,

Suffice, and leave him for the next at ease

Like the great palmer-worm that strips the trees,

Eats the life out of every luscious plant,

And, when September finds them sere or scant,

Puts forth two wondrous winglets, alters quite,

And hies him after unforeseen delight.

So fed Sordello, not a shard dissheathed;

As ever, round each new discovery, wreathed

Luxuriantly the fancies infantine

His admiration, bent on making fine

Its novel friend at any risk, would fling

In gay profusion 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 tomorrow 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 dewdrops 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 wildwood 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!