Too late for sermon at St. Antholin's!
Now! But tread softly-children are at play
In the next room. Precede! I follow-
(Enter Lady CARLISLE, with many Attendants.)
Lady Car.

Me! Follow me, Strafford, and be saved! The King?

[To the KING.] Well-as you ordered, they are ranged without,

The convoy [seeing the KING's state.] [To STRAFFORD.] You know all, then! Why, I thought

It looked best that the King should save you, Charles

-

Alone; 't is a shame that you should owe me aught.

Or no, not shame! Strafford, you'll not feel shame

At being saved by me?
Hol.
All true! Oh Strafford,
She saves you! all her deed! this lady's deed!
And is the boat in readiness? You, friend,
Are Billingsley, no doubt. Speak to her,
Strafford!

See how she trembles, waiting for your voice!
The world's to learn its bravest story yet.

Lady Car. Talk afterward! Long nights in France enough,

To sit beneath the vines and talk of home. Straf. You love me, child? Ah, Strafford can be loved

As well as Vane! I could escape, then?
Lady Car.

Advance the torches, Bryan!
Straf.

Haste!

I will die.

They call me proud: but England had no right, When she encountered me- - her strength to

No bitterer pang than first I felt, the hour
I swore that Wentworth might leave us, but I
Would never leave him: I do leave him now.
I render up my charge (be witness, God!)
To England who imposed it. I have done
Her bidding-poorly, wrongly, it may be,
With ill effects for I am weak, a man:
Still, I have done my best, my human best,
Not faltering for a moment. It is done.
And this said, if I say yes, I will say
I never loved but one man David not
More Jonathan! Even thus, I love him now:
And look for my chief portion in that world
Where great hearts led astray are turned again,
(Soon it may be, and, certes, will be soon:
My mission over, I shall not live long,)
Ay, here I know I talk - I dare and must,
Of England, and her great reward, as all
I look for there; but in my inmost heart,
Believe, I think of stealing quite away

ror till

She's fit with her white face to walk the world Scaring kind natures from your cause and you Then to sit down with you at the board-head, The gathering for prayer ... O speak, but speak!

Creep up, and quietly follow each one home, You, you, you, be a nestling care for each To sleep with,- hardly moaning in his dreams, She gnaws so quietly,- till, lo he starts, Gets off with half a heart eaten away! Oh, shall you 'scape with less if she 's my child? You will not say a word—to me- to Him ? Pym. If England shall declare such will to

BROWNING began Sordello in 1837, interrupted his work to write the earlier parts of Bells and Pomegranates, but resumed it and completed it in 1840, when it was published by Moxon. In 1863, when reprinting the poem, Browning dedicated it as below to M. Milsand, and in his dedication wrote practically a preface to the poem.

TO J. MILSAND, OF DIJON

DEAR FRIEND, Let the next poem be introduced by your name, therefore remembered along with one of the deepest of my affections, and so repay all trouble it ever cost me. I wrote it twenty-five years ago for only a few, counting even in these on somewhat more care about its subject than they really had. My own faults of expression were many; but with care for a man

or book such would be surmounted, and without it what avails the faultlessness of either? I blame nobody, least of all myself, who did my best then and since; for I lately gave time and pains to turn my work into what the many might instead of what the few must-like ; but after all, I imagined another thing at first, and therefore leave as I find it. The historical decoration was purposely of no more importance than a background requires; and my stress lay on the incidents in the development of a soul: little else is worth study. I, at least, always thought so; you, with many known and unknown to me, think so; others may one day think so; and whether my attempt remain for them or not, I trust, though away and past it, to continue ever yours,

LONDON, June 9, 1863.

R. B.

WHO will, may hear Sordello's story told:
His story? Who believes me shall behold
The man, pursue his fortunes to the end,
Like me: for as the friendless-people's friend
Spied from his hill-top once, despite
A Quixotic
the din
attempt.

And dust of multitudes, Pentapolin
Named o' the Naked Arm, I single out
Sordello, compassed murkily about
With ravage of six long sad hundred years.
Only believe me. Ye believe?

Appears
Verona... Never, I should warn you first,
Of my own choice had this, if not the worst
Yet not the best expedient, served to tell
A story I could body forth so well

By making speak, myself kept out of view,
The very man as he was wont to do,
And leaving you to say the rest for him.
Since, though I might be proud to see the dim
Abysmal past divide its hateful surge,
Letting of all men this one man emerge
Because it pleased me, yet, that moment past,
I should delight in watching first to last
His progress as you watch it, not a whit
More in the secret than yourselves who sit
Fresh-chapleted to listen. But it seems
Your setters-forth of unexampled themes,
Makers of quite new men, producing them,
Would best chalk broadly on each vesture's

hem

The wearer's quality; or take their stand,
Motley on back and pointing-pole in hand,
Beside him. So, for once I face ye, friends,
Why the Summoned together from the world's
Poet him- four ends,
self ad-

dresses his

Dropped down from heaven or cast
up from hell,

audience To hear the story I propose to tell.
Confess now, poets know the dragnet's trick,
Catehing the dead, if fate denies the quick,
And shaming her; 't is not for fate to choose
Silence or song because she can refuse
Real eyes to glisten more, real hearts to ache
Less oft, real brows turn smoother for our sake:
I have experienced something of her spite;
But there's a realm wherein she has no right
And I have many lovers. Say, but few
Friends fate accords me? Here they are: now

view

The host I muster! Many a lighted face Foul with no vestige of the grave's disgrace;

Have I to play my puppets, bear my part
Before these worthies?

Lo, the past is hurled
In twain: up-thrust, out-staggering on the world,
Subsiding into shape, a darkness rears
Its outline, kindles at the core, appears
Verona. T is six hundred years and more
Since an event. The Second Friedrich wore
The purple, and the Third Honorius filled
The holy chair. That autumn eve was stilled:
A last remains of sunset dimly burned
O'er the far forests, like a torch-flame turned
By the wind back upon its bearer's hand
In one long flare of crimson; as a brand,
The woods beneath lay black. A single eye
From all Verona cared for the soft sky.
But, gathering in its ancient market-place,
Talked group with restless group; and not a face
But wrath made livid, for among them were
Death's stanch purveyors, such as have in care
To feast him. Fear had long since taken root
In every breast, and now these crushed its fruit,
The ripe hate, like a wine: to note the way
It worked while each grew drunk! Men grave
and gray

Stood, with shut eyelids, rocking to and fro, Letting the silent luxury trickle slow About the hollows where a heart should be;

How her Guelfs are discomfited.

But the young gulped with a delirious
glee

Some foretaste of their first debauch in blood
At the fierce news: for, be it understood,
Envoys apprised Verona that her prince
Count Richard of Saint Boniface, joined since
A year with Azzo, Este's Lord, to thrust
Taurello Salinguerra, prime in trust
With Ecelin Romano, from his seat
Ferrara, over-zealous in the feat
And stumbling on a peril unaware,
Was captive, trammelled in his proper snare,
They phrase it, taken by his own intrigue.
Immediate succor from the Lombard
League

Why they

Lombard

entreat the Of fifteen cities that affect the Pope, League, For Azzo, therefore, and his fellowhope

Of the Guelf cause, a glory overcast !
Men's faces, late agape, are now aghast.
Prone is the purple pavis; Este makes
Mirth for the devil when he undertakes
To play the Ecelin; as if it cost

Merely your pushing-by to gain a post
Like his! The patron tells ye, once for all,
There be sound reasons that preferment fall
On our beloved "

"Duke o' the Rood, why not?"
Shouted an Estian, “grudge ye such a lot?
The hill-cat boasts some cunning of her own,
Some stealthy trick to better beasts unknown,
That quick with prey enough her hunger blunts,
And feeds her fat while gaunt the lion hunts.'
"Taurello," quoth an envoy, as in wane
Dwelt at Ferrara. Like an osprey fain
To fly but forced the earth his couch to make
Far inland, till his friend the tempest wake,
Waits he the Kaiser's coming; and as yet
That fast friend sleeps, and he too sleeps: but let
Only the billow freshen, and he snuff's
The aroused hurricane ere it enroughs
The sea it means to cross because of him.
Sinketh the breeze? His hope-sick eye grows

dim;

Creep closer on the creature! Every day
Strengthens the Pontiff; Ecelin, they say,
Dozes now at Oliero, with dry lips
Telling upon his perished finger-tips
How many ancestors are to depose
Ere he be Satan's Viceroy when the doze
Deposits him in hell. So, Guelfs rebuilt
Their houses; not a drop of blood was spilt
When Cino Bocchimpane chanced to meet
Buccio Virtù God's wafer, and the street
Is narrow! Tutti Santi, think, a-swarm
With Ghibellins, and yet he took no harm!
This could not last. Off Salinguerra went
To Padua, Podestà, 'with pure intent,'
Said he, my presence, judged the single bar
To permanent tranquillity, may jar
No longer-so! his back is fairly turned?
The pair of goodly palaces are burned,

The gardens ravaged, and our Guelfs laugh, drunk

To see troop after troop encamp beneath
I' the standing corn thick o'er the scanty patch
It took so many patient months to snatch
Out of the marsh; while just within their walls
Men fed on men. At length Taurello calls
A parley let the Count wind up the war!
Richard, light-hearted as a plunging star,
Agrees to enter for the kindest ends
Ferrara, flanked with fifty chosen friends,
No horse-boy more, for fear your timid sort
Should fly Ferrara at the bare report.
Quietly through the town they rode, jog-jog;
Ten, twenty, thirty, -curse the catalogue
Of burnt Guelf houses! Strange, Taurello shows
Not the least sign of life'-whereat arose
A general growl: How? With his victors by?
I and my Veronese? My troops and I?
Receive us, was your word?' So jogged they on,
Nor laughed their host too openly once gone
Into the trap!”.

Six hundred years ago!
Such the time's aspect and peculiar woe
(Yourselves may spell it yet in chronicles,
Albeit the worm, our busy brother, drills
His sprawling path through letters anciently
Made fine and large to suit some abbot's eye)
When the new Hohenstauffen dropped the mask,
Flung John of Brienne's favor from his casque,
Forswore crusading, had no mind to leave
Saint Peter's proxy leisure to retrieve
Losses to Otho and to Barbaross,
Or make the Alps less easy to recross;
And, thus confirming Pope Honorius' fear,
Was excommunicate that very year.
"The triple-bearded Teuton come to life!"
Groaned the Great League; and, arming for the
strife,

For the

times grow

stormy again.

Wide Lombardy, on tiptoe to begin,
Took up, as it was Guelf or Ghibellin,
Its cry; what cry?

The Emperor to come!"

His crowd of feudatories, all and some,
That leapt down with a crash of swords, spears,

shields,

One fighter on his fellow, to our fields,
Scattered anon, took station here and there,
And carried it, till now, with little care —
Cannot but cry for him; how else rebut

Us longer? Cliffs, an earthquake suffered jut
In the mid-sea, each domineering crest

Which naught save such another throe can wrest
From out (conceive) a certain chokeweed grown
Since o'er the waters, twine and tangle thrown
Too thick, too fast accumulating round,
Too sure to over-riot and confound
Ere long each brilliant islet with itself,
Unless a second shock save shoal and shelf,
Whirling the sea-drift wide: alas, the bruised
And sullen wreck! Sunlight to be diffused
For that! Sunlight, 'neath which, a scum at
first,

The million fibres of our chokeweed nurst Dispread themselves, mantling the troubled main,

And, shattered by those rocks, took hold again,
So kindly blazed it that same blaze to brood
O'er every cluster of the multitude
Still hazarding new clasps, ties, filaments,
An emulous exchange of pulses, vents
Of nature into nature; till some growth
Unfancied yet, exuberantly clothe

The Ghi. A surface solid now, continuous, one: "The Pope, for us the People, who begun

bellins'

wish the

Guelfs'

wish.

The People, carries on the People thus,

To keep that Kaiser off and dwell with us!" See you?

Or say, Two Principles that live Each fitly by its Representative. "Hill-cat"- who called him so?- the gracefullest

Adventurer, the ambiguous stranger-guest
Of Lombardy (sleek but that ruffling fur,
Those talons to their sheath!) whose velvet
purr

Soothes jealous neighbors when a Saxon scout
- Arpo or Yoland, is it? - one without
A country or a name, presumes to couch
Beside their noblest; until men avouch
That, of all Houses in the Trevisan,
Conrad descries no fitter, rear or van,
How Ece-
lo's house
grew head
of those,

Than Ecelo! They laughed as they enrolled

That name at Milan on the page of gold,

Godego's lord, Ramon, Marostica, Cartiglion, Bassano, Loria,

And every sheep-cote on the Suabian's fief!
No laughter when his son," the Lombard Chief”
Forsooth, as Barbarossa's path was bent
To Italy along the Vale of Trent,
Welcomed him at Roncaglia! Sadness now
The hamlets nested on the Tyrol's brow,
The Asolan and Euganean hills,

The Rhetian and the Julian, sadness fills
Them all, for Ecelin vouchsafes to stay
Among and care about them; day by day
Choosing this pinnacle, the other spot,
A castle building to defend a cot,
A cot built for a castle to defend,
Nothing but castles, castles, nor an end

To boasts how mountain ridge may join with ridge

By sunken gallery and soaring bridge.
He takes, in brief, a figure that beseems
The griesliest nightmare of the Church's dreams,
A Signory firm-rooted, unestranged

66

From its old interests, and nowise changed
By its new neighborhood: perchance the vaunt
Of Otho, my own Este shall supplant
Your Este," come to pass. The sire led in
A son as cruel; and this Ecelin

Had sons, in turn, and daughters sly and tall
And curling and compliant; but for all
Romano (so they styled him) throve, that neck
Of his so pinched and white, that hungry cheek
Proved 'twas some fiend, not him, the man's-
flesh went

To feed: whereas Romano's instrument,
Famous Taurello Salinguerra, sole

I' the world, a tree whose boughs were slipt the
bole
Successively, why should not he shed blood
To further a design? Men understood
Living was pleasant to him as he wore
His careless surcoat, glanced some missive o'er,
Propped on his truncheon in the public way,
While his lord lifted writhen hands to pray,
Lost at Oliero's convent.

Hill-cats, face
Our Azzo, our Guelf-Lion! Why disgrace
As Azzo A worthiness conspicuous near and

Lord of Este heads

these.

far

(Atii at Rome while free and consu-
lar,

Este at Padua who repulsed the Hun)
By trumpeting the Church's princely son?
-Styled Patron of Rovigo's Polesine,
Ancona's march, Ferrara's ask, in fine,
Our chronicles, commenced when some old monk
Found it intolerable to be sunk

(Vexed to the quick by his revolting cell)
Quite out of summer while alive and well:
Ended when by his mat the Prior stood,
'Mid busy promptings of the brotherhood,
Striving to coax from his decrepit brains
The reason Father Porphyry took pains
To blot those ten lines out which used to stand
First on their charter drawn by Hildebrand.
The same night wears. Verona's rule of
Was vested in a certain Twenty-four;
Count And while within his palace these de-
bate

Richard's

Palace at Verona.

yore

Concerning Richard and Ferrara's fate,

Glide we by clapping doors, with sudden glare
Of cressets vented on the dark, nor care

For aught that 's seen or heard until we shut
The smother in, the lights, all noises but
The carroch's booming: safe at last! Why
strange

Such a recess should lurk behind a range
Of banquet-rooms? Your finger - thus - you
push

A spring, and the wall opens, would you rush Upon the banqueters, select your prey, Waiting (the slaughter-weapons in the way Strewing this very bench) with sharpened ear A preconcerted signal to appear;

Or if you simply crouch with beating heart, Of the Bearing in some voluptuous pageant couple found Nor mutes nor

therein,

part

To startle them. masquers now; Nor any ... does that one man sleep whose brow