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

The boaster, all ‘s to care for. He, beside

Some shape not visible, in power and pride

Approached, out of the dark, ginglingly near,

Nearer, passed close in the broad light, his ear

Crimson, eyeballs suffused, temples full-fraught,

Just a snatch of the rapid speech you caught,

And on he strode into the opposite dark,

Till presently the harsh heel’s turn, a spark

I’ the stone, and whirl of some loose embossed throng

That crashed against the angle aye so long

After the last, punctual to an amount

Of mailed great paces you could not but count, —

Prepared you for the pacing back again.

And by the snatches you might ascertain

That, Friedrich’s Prefecture surmounted, left

By this alone in Italy, they cleft

Asunder, crushed together, at command

Of none, were free to break up Hildebrand,

Rebuild, he and Sordello, Charlemagne —

But garnished, Strength with Knowledge, “if we deign

“Accept that compromise and stoop to give

“Rome law, the Cæsar’s Representative.”

Enough, that the illimitable flood

Of triumphs after triumphs, understood

In its faint reflux (you shall hear) sufficed

Young Ecelin for appanage, enticed

Him on till, these long quiet in their graves,

He found ‘t was looked for that a whole life’s braves

Should somehow be made good; so, weak and worn,

Must stagger up at Milan, one grey morn

Of the to-come, and fight his latest fight.

But, Salinguerra’s prophecy at height —

He voluble with a raised arm and stiff,

A blaring voice, a blazing eye, as if

He had our very Italy to keep

Or cast away, or gather in a heap

To garrison the better — ay, his word

Was, “run the cucumber into a gourd,

“Drive Trent upon Apulia” — at their pitch

Who spied the continents and islands which

Grew mulberry leaves and sickles, in the map —

(Strange that three such confessions so should hap

To Palma, Dante spoke with in the clear

Amorous silence of the Swooning-sphere, —

Cunizza, as he called her! Never ask

Of Palma more! She sat, knowing her task

Was done, the labour of it, — for, success

Concerned not Palma, passion’s votaress.)

Triumph at neight, and thus Sordello crowned —

Above the passage suddenly a sound

Stops speech, stops walk: back shrinks Taurello, bids

With large involuntary asking lids,

Palma interpret. “‘T is his own foot-stamp —

“Your hand! His summons! Nay, this idle damp

“Befits not!” Out they two reeled dizzily.

“Visconti ‘s strong at Milan,” resumed he,

In the old, somewhat insignificant way —

(Was Palma wont, years afterward, to say)

As though the spirit’s flight, sustained thus far,

Dropped at that very instant.

Gone they are —

Palma, Taurello; Eglamor anon,

Ecelin, — only Naddo ‘s never gone!

— Labours, this moonrise, what the Master meant:

“Is Squarcialupo speckled? — purulent,

“I ‘d say, but when was Providence put out?

“He carries somehow handily about

“His spite nor fouls himself!” Goito’s vines

Stand like a cheat detected — stark rough lines,

The moon breaks through, a grey mean scale against

The vault where, this eve’s Maiden, thou remain’st

Like some fresh martyr, eyes fixed — who can tell?

As Heaven, now all ‘s at end, did not so well,

Spite of the faith and victory, to leave

Its virgin quite to death in the lone eve.

While the persisting hermit-bee… ha! wait

No longer: these in compass, forward fate!

Table of Contents

The thought of Eglamor’s least like a thought,

And yet a false one, was, “Man shrinks to nought

“If matched with symbols of immensity;

“Must quail, forsooth, before a quiet sky

“Or sea, too little for their quietude:”

And, truly, somewhat in Sordello’s mood

Confirmed its speciousness, while eve slow sank

Down the near terrace to the farther bank,

And only one spot left from out the night

Glimmered upon the river opposite —

A breadth of watery heaven like a bay,

A sky-like space of water, ray for ray,

And star for star, one richness where they mixed

As this and that wing of an angel, fixed,

Tumultuary splendours folded in

To die. Nor turned he till Ferrara’s din

(Say, the monotonous speech from a man’s lip

Who lets some first and eager purpose slip

In a new fancy’s birth — the speech keeps on

Though elsewhere its informing soul be gone)

— Aroused him, surely offered succour. Fate

Paused with this eve; ere she precipitate

Herself, — best put off new strange thoughts awhile,

That voice, those large hands, that portentous smile, —

What help to pierce the future as the past

Lay in the plaining city?

And at last

The main discovery and prime concern,

All that just now imported him to learn,

Truth’s self, like yonder slow moon to complete

Heaven, rose again, and, naked at his feet,

Lighted his old life’s every shift and change,

Effort with counter-effort; nor the range

Of each looked wrong except wherein it checked,

Some other — which of these could he suspect,

Prying into them by the sudden blaze?

The real way seemed made up of all the ways —

Mood after mood of the one mind in him;

Tokens of the existence, bright or dim,

Of a transcendent all-embracing sense

Demanding only outward influence,

A soul, in Palma’s phrase, above his soul,

Power to uplift his power, — such moon’s control

Over such sea-depths, — and their mass had swept

Onward from the beginning and still kept

Its course: but years and years the sky above

Held none, and so, untasked of any love,

His sensitiveness idled, now amort,

Alive now, and, to sullenness or sport

Given wholly up, disposed itself anew

At every passing instigation, grew

And dwindled at caprice, in foam-showers spilt,

Wedge-like insisting, quivered now a gilt

Shield in the sunshine, now a blinding race

Of whitest ripples o’er the reef — found place

For much display; not gathered up and, hurled

Right from its heart, encompassing the world.

So had Sordello been, by consequence,

Without a function: others made pretence

To strength not half his own, yet had some core

Within, submitted to some moon, before

Them still, superior still whate’er their force, —

Were able therefore to fulfil a course,

Nor missed life’s crown, authentic attribute.

To each who lives must be a certain fruit

Of having lived in his degree, — a stage,

Earlier or later in men’s pilgrimage,

To stop at; and to this the spirits tend

Who, still discovering beauty without end,

Amass the scintillations, make one star

— Something unlike them, self-sustained, afar, —

And meanwhile nurse the dream of being blest

By winning it to notice and invest

Their souls with alien glory, some one day

Whene’er the nucleus, gathering shape alway,

Round to the perfect circle — soon or late,

According as themselves are formed to wait;

Whether mere human beauty will suffice

— The yellow hair and the luxurious eyes,

Or human intellect seem best, or each

Combine in some ideal form past reach

On earth, or else some shade of these, some aim,

Some love, hate even, take their place, the same,

So to be served — all this they do not lose,