The Complete Poems of Robert Browning - 22 Poetry Collections in One Edition. Robert Browning
spoil,
Alter the past — nothing would give the chance!
Not that he was to die; he saw askance
Protract the ignominious years beyond
To dream in — time to hope and time despond,
Remember and forget, be sad, rejoice
As saved a trouble; he might, at his choice,
One way or other, idle life out, drop
No few smooth verses by the way — for prop,
A thyrsus, these sad people, all the same,
Should pick up, and set store by, — far from blame,
Plant o’er his hearse, convinced his better part
Survived him. “Rather tear men out the heart
“O’ the truth!” — Sordello muttered, and renewed
His propositions for the Multitude.
But Salinguerra, who at this attack
Had thrown great breast and ruffling corslet back
To hear the better, smilingly resumed
His task; beneath, the carroch’s warning boomed;
He must decide with Tito; courteously
He turned then, even seeming to agree
With his admonisher — ”Assist the Pope,
“Extend Guelf domination, fill the scope
“O’ the Church, thus based on All, by All, for All —
“Change Secular to Evangelical” —
Echoing his very sentence: all seemed lost,
When suddenly he looked up, laughingly almost,
To Palma: “This opinion of your friend’s —
“For instance, would it answer Palma’s ends?
“Best, were it not, turn Guelf, submit our Strength” —
(Here he drew out his baldric to its length)
— ”To the Pope’s Knowledge — let our captive slip,
“Wide to the walls throw ope our gates, equip
“Azzo with… what I hold here! Who ‘ll subscribe
“To a trite censure of the minstrel tribe
“Henceforward? or pronounce, as Heinrich used,
“‘Spear-heads for battle, burr-heads for the joust!’
“ — When Constance, for his couplets, would promote
“Alcamo, from a parti-coloured coat,
“To holding her lord’s stirrup in the wars.
“Not that I see where couplet-making jars
“With common sense: at Mantua I had borne
“This chanted, better than their most forlorn
“Of bull-baits, — that ‘s indisputable!”
Brave!
Whom vanity nigh slew, contempt shall save!
All ‘s at an end: a Troubadour suppose
Mankind will class him with their friends or foes?
A puny uncouth ailing vassal think
The world and him bound in some special link?
Abrupt the visionary tether burst.
What were rewarded here, or what amerced
If a poor drudge, solicitous to dream
Deservingly, got tangled by his theme
So far as to conceit the knack or gift
Or whatsoe’er it be, of verse, might lift
The globe, a lever like the hand and head
Of — ”Men of Action,” as the Jongleurs said,
— ”The Great Men,” in the people’s dialect?
And not a moment did this scorn affect
Sordello: scorn the poet? They, for once,
Asking “what was,” obtained a full response.
Bid Naddo think at Mantua — he had but
To look into his promptuary, put
Finger on a set thought in a set speech:
But was Sordello fitted thus for each
Conjecture? Nowise; since within his soul,
Perception brooded unexpressed and whole.
A healthy spirit like a healthy frame
Craves aliment in plenty — all the same,
Changes, assimilates its aliment.
Perceived Sordello, on a truth intent?
Next day no formularies more you saw
Than figs or olives in a sated maw.
‘T is Knowledge, whither such perceptions tend;
They lose themselves in that, means to an end,
The many old producing some one new,
A last unlike the first. If lies are true,
The Caliph’s wheelwork man of brass receives
A meal, munched millet grains and lettuce leaves
Together in his stomach rattle loose;
You find them perfect next day to produce:
But ne’er expect the man, on strength of that,
Can roll an iron camel-collar flat
Like Haroun’s self! I tell you, what was stored
Bit by bit through Sordello’s life, outpoured
That eve, was, for that age, a novel thing:
And round those three the People formed a ring,
Of visionary judges whose award
He recognised in full — faces that barred
Henceforth return to the old careless life,
In whose great presence, therefore, his first strife
For their sake must not be ignobly fought;
All these, for once, approved of him, he thought,
Suspended their own vengeance, chose await
The issue of this strife to reinstate
Them in the right of taking it — in fact
He must be proved king ere they could exact
Vengeance for such king’s defalcation. Last,
A reason why the phrases flowed so fast
Was in his quite forgetting for a time
Himself in his amazement that the rhyme
Disguised the royalty so much: he there —
And Salinguerra yet all-unaware
Who was the lord, who liegeman!
”Thus I lay
“On thine my spirit and compel obey
“His lord, — my liegeman, — impotent to build
“Another Rome, but hardly so unskilled
“In what such builder should have been, as brook
“One shame beyond the charge that I forsook
“His function! Free me from that shame, I bend
“A brow before, suppose new years to spend, —
“Allow each chance, nor fruitlessly, recur —