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

That suited. News received of this acquist,

Friedrich did come to Lombardy: who missed

Taurello then? Another year: they took

Vicenza, left the Marquis scarce a nook

For refuge, and, when hundreds two or three

Of Guelfs conspired to call themselves “The Free,”

Opposing Alberic, — vile Bassanese, —

(Without Sordello!) — Ecelin at ease

Slaughtered them so observably, that oft

A little Salinguerra looked with soft

Blue eyes up, asked his sire the proper age

To get appointed his proud uncle’s page.

More years passed, and that sire had dwindled down

To a mere showy turbulent soldier, grown

Better through age, his parts still in repute,

Subtle — how else? — but hardly so astute

As his contemporaneous friends professed;

Undoubtedly a brawler: for the rest,

Known by each neighbour, and allowed for, let

Keep his incorrigible ways, nor fret

Men who would miss their boyhood’s bugbear: “trap

“The ostrich, suffer our bald osprey flap

“A battered pinion!” — was the word. In fine,

One flap too much and Venice’s marine

Was meddled with; no overlooking that!

She captured him in his Ferrara, fat

And florid at a banquet, more by fraud

Than force, to speak the truth; there ‘s slender laud

Ascribed you for assisting eighty years

To pull his death on such a man; fate shears

The life-cord prompt enough whose last fine threads

You fritter: so, presiding his board-head,

The old smile, your assurance all went well

With Friedrich (as if he were like to tell!)

In rushed (a plan contrived before) our friends,

Made some pretence at fighting, some amends

For the shame done his eighty years — (apart

The principle, none found it in his heart

To be much angry with Taurello) — gained

Their galleys with the prize, and what remained

But carry him to Venice for a show?

— Set him, as ‘t were, down gently — free to go

His gait, inspect our square, pretend observe

The swallows soaring their eternal curve

‘Twixt Theodore and Mark, if citizens

Gathered importunately, fives and tens,

To point their children the Magnifico,

All but a monarch once in firmland, go

His gait among them now — ”it took, indeed,

“Fully this Ecelin to supersede

“That man,” remarked the seniors. Singular!

Sordello’s inability to bar

Rivals the stage, that evening, mainly brought

About by his strange disbelief that aught

Was ever to be done, — this thrust the Twain

Under Taurello’s tutelage, — whom, brain

And heart and hand, he forthwith in one rod

Indissolubly bound to baffle God

Who loves the world — and thus allowed the thin

Grey wizened dwarfish devil Ecelin,

And massy-muscled big-boned Alberic

(Mere man, alas!) to put his problem quick

To demonstration — prove wherever’s will

To do, there’s plenty to be done, or ill

Or good. Anointed, then, to rend and rip —

Kings of the gag and flesh-hook, screw and whip,

They plagued the world: a touch of Hildebrand

(So far from obsolete!) made Lombards band

Together, cross their coats as for Christ’s cause,

And saving Milan win the world’s applause.

Ecelin perished: and I think grass grew

Never so pleasant as in Valley Rù

By San Zenon where Alberic in turn

Saw his exasperated captors burn

Seven children and their mother; then, regaled

So far, tied on to a wild horse, was trailed

To death through raunce and bramble-bush. I take

God’s part and testify that ‘mid the brake

Wild o’er his castle on the pleasant knoll,

You hear its one tower left, a belfry, toll —

The earthquake spared it last year, laying flat

The modern church beneath, — no harm in that!

Chirrups the contumacious grasshopper,

Rustles the lizard and the cushats chirre

Above the ravage: there, at deep of day

A week since, heard I the old Canon say

He saw with his own eyes a barrow burst

And Alberic’s huge skeleton unhearsed

Only five years ago. He added, “June ‘s

“The month for carding off our first cocoons

“The silkworms fabricate” — a double news,

Nor he nor I could tell the worthier. Choose!

And Naddo gone, all’s gone; not Eglamor!

Believe, I knew the face I waited for,

A guest my spirit of the golden courts!

Oh strange to see how, despite ill-reports,

Disuse, some wear of years, that face retained

Its joyous look of love! Suns waxed and waned,

And still my spirit held an upward flight,

Spiral on spiral, gyres of life and light

More and more gorgeous — ever that face there

The last admitted! crossed, too, with some care

As perfect triumph were not sure for all,

But, on a few, enduring damp must fall,

— A transient struggle, haply a painful sense

Of the inferior nature’s clinging — whence

Slight starting tears easily wiped away,

Fine jealousies soon stifled in the play

Of irrepressible admiration — not

Aspiring, all considered, to their lot

Who ever, just as they prepare ascend

Spiral on spiral, wish thee well, impend

Thy frank delight at their exclusive track,

That upturned fervid face and hair put back!

Is there no more to say? He of the rhymes —

Many a tale, of this retreat betimes,

Was born: Sordello die at once for men?

The Chroniclers of Mantua tired their pen

Telling how Sordello Prince Visconti saved

Mantua, and elsewhere notably behaved —

Who thus, by fortune ordering events,

Passed with posterity, to all intents,

For just the god he never could become.

As Knight, Bard, Gallant, men were never dumb

In praise of him: while what he should have been,

Could be, and was not — the one step too mean

For him to take, — we suffer at this day

Because of: Ecelin had pushed away

Its chance ere Dante could arrive and take

That step Sordello spurned, for the world’s sake:

He did much — but Sordello’s chance was gone.

Thus, had Sordello dared that step alone,

Apollo had been compassed: ‘t was a fit

He wished should go to him, not he to it

— As one content to merely be supposed

Singing or fighting elsewhere, while he dozed

Really at home — one who was chiefly glad

To have achieved the few real deeds he had,

Because that way assured they were not worth

Doing, so spared from doing them henceforth —

A tree that covets fruitage and yet tastes

Never itself, itself. Had he embraced

Their cause then, men had plucked Hesperian fruit

And, praising that, just thrown him in to boot

All he was anxious to appear, but scarce

Solicitous to be. A sorry farce

Such life is, after all! Cannot I say

He lived for some one better thing? this way. —

Lo, on a heathy brown and nameless hill

By sparkling Asolo, in mist and chill,

Morning just up, higher and higher runs

A child barefoot and rosy. See! the sun’s

On the square castle’s inner-court’s low wall

Like the chine of some extinct animal

Half turned to earth and flowers; and through the haze

(Save where some slender patches of grey maize

Are to be overleaped) that boy has crossed

The whole hillside of dew and powder-frost

Matting the balm and mountain camomile.

Up and up goes he, singing all the while

Some unintelligible words to beat

The lark, God’s poet, swooning at his feet,

So worsted is he at “the few fine locks