The Complete Poems of Robert Browning - 22 Poetry Collections in One Edition. Robert Browning
brings him half Ferrara,” whispers flew,
“And all Ancona! If the stripling knew!”
Anon the stripling was in Sicily
Where Heinrich ruled in right of Constance; he
Was gracious nor his guest incapable;
Each understood the other. So it fell,
One Spring, when Azzo, thoroughly at ease,
Had near forgotten by what precise degrees
He crept at first to such a downy seat,
The Count trudged over in a special heat
To bid him of God’s love dislodge from each
Of Salinguerra’s palaces, — a breach
Might yawn else, not so readily to shut,
For who was just arrived at Mantua but
The youngster, sword on thigh and tuft on chin,
With tokens for Celano, Ecelin,
Pistore, and the like! Next news, — no whit
Do any of Ferrara’s domes befit
His wife of Heinrich’s very blood: a band
Of foreigners assemble, understand
Garden-constructing, level and surround,
Build up and bury in. A last news crowned
The consternation: since his infant’s birth,
He only waits they end his wondrous girth
Of trees that link San Pietro with Tomà,
To visit Mantua. When the Podestà
Ecelin, at Vicenza, called his friend
Taurello thither, what could be their end
But to restore the Ghibellins’ late Head,
The Kaiser helping? He with most to dread
From vengeance and reprisal, Azzo, there
With Boniface beforehand, as aware
Of plots in progress, gave alarm, expelled
Both plotters: but the Guelfs in triumph yelled
Too hastily. The burning and the flight,
And how Taurello, occupied that night
With Ecelin, lost wife and son, I told:
— Not how he bore the blow, retained his hold,
Got friends safe through, left enemies the worst
O’ the fray, and hardly seemed to care at first:
But afterward men heard not constantly
Of Salinguerra’s House so sure to be!
Though Azzo simply gained by the event
A shifting of his plagues — the first, content
To fall behind the second and estrange
So far his nature, suffer such a change
That in Romano sought he wife and child,
And for Romano’s sake seemed reconciled
To losing individual life, which shrunk
As the other prospered — mortised in his trunk;
Like a dwarf palm which wanton Arabs foil
Of bearing its own proper wine and oil,
By grafting into it the stranger-vine,
Which sucks its heart out, sly and serpentine,
Till forth one vine-palm feathers to the root,
And red drops moisten the insipid fruit.
Once Adelaide set on, — the subtle mate
Of the weak soldier, urged to emulate
The Church’s valiant women deed for deed,
And paragon her namesake, win the meed
O’ the great Matilda, — soon they overbore
The rest of Lombardy, — not as before
By an instinctive truculence, but patched
The Kaiser’s strategy until it matched
The Pontiff’s, sought old ends by novel means.
“Only, why is it Salinguerra screens
“Himself behind Romano? — him we bade
“Enjoy our shine i’ the front, not seek the shade!”
— Asked Heinrich, somewhat of the tardiest
To comprehend. Nor Philip acquiesced
At once in the arrangement; reasoned, plied
His friend with offers of another bride,
A statelier function — fruitlessly: ‘t was plain
Taurello through some weakness must remain
Obscure. And Otho, free to judge of both
— Ecelin the unready, harsh and loth,
And this more plausible and facile wight
With every point a-sparkle — chose the right,
Admiring how his predecessors harped
On the wrong man: “thus,” quoth he, “wits are warped
“By outsides!” Carelessly, meanwhile, his life
Suffered its many turns of peace and strife
In many lands — you hardly could surprise
The man; who shamed Sordello (recognize!)
In this as much beside, that, unconcerned
What qualities were natural or earned,
With no ideal of graces, as they came
He took them, singularly well the same —
Speaking the Greek’s own language, just because
Your Greek eludes you, leave the least of flaws
In contracts with him; while, since Arab lore
Holds the stars’ secret — take one trouble more
And master it! ‘T is done, and now deter
Who may the Tuscan, once Jove trined for her,
From Friedrich’s path! — Friedrich, whose pilgrimage
The same man puts aside, whom he ‘ll engage
To leave next year John Brienne in the lurch,
Come to Bassano, see Saint Francis’ church
And judge of Guido the Bolognian’s piece
Which, — lend Taurello credit, — rivals Greece —
Angels, with aureoles like golden quoits
Pitched home, applauding Ecelin’s exploits.
For elegance, he strung the angelot,
Made rhymes thereto; for prowess, clove he not
Tiso, last siege, from crest to crupper? Why
Detail you thus a varied mastery
But to show how Taurello, on the watch
For men, to read their hearts and thereby catch
Their capabilities and purposes,
Displayed himself so far as displayed these:
While our Sordello only cared to know
About men as a means whereby he ‘d show
Himself, and men had much or little worth
According as they kept in or drew forth
That self; the other’s choicest instruments