| |
| HANG it all, there can be but one Sordello! | |
| But say I want to, say I take your whole bag of tricks, | |
| Let in your quirks and tweeks, and say the thing’s an art-form, | |
| Your Sordello, and that the modern world | |
| Needs such a rag-bag to stuff all its thought in; | 5 |
| Say that I dump my catch, shiny and silvery | |
| As fresh sardines flapping and slipping on the marginal cobbles? | |
| (I stand before the booth, the speech; but the truth | |
| Is inside this discourse—this booth is full of the marrow of wisdom.) | |
Give up th’ intaglio method.
Tower by tower | 10 |
| Red-brown the rounded bases, and the plan | |
| Follows the builder’s whim. Beaucaire’s slim gray | |
| Leaps from the stubby base of Altaforte— | |
| Mohammed’s windows, for the Alcazar | |
| Has such a garden, split by a tame small stream. | 15 |
| The moat is ten yards wide, the inner court-yard | |
| Half a-swim with mire. | |
Trunk hose?
There are not. The rough men swarm out | |
| In robes that are half Roman, half like the Knave of Hearts; | |
And I discern your story:
Peire Cardinal | 20 |
| Was half forerunner of Dante. Arnaut’s that trick | |
| Of the unfinished address, | |
| And half your dates are out, you mix your eras; | |
| For that great font Sordello sat beside— | |
| ’Tis an immortal passage, but the font?— | 25 |
| Is some two centuries outside the picture. | |
Does it matter?
Not in the least. Ghosts move about me | |
| Patched with histories. You had your business: | |
| To set out so much thought, so much emotion; | |
| To paint, more real than any dead Sordello, | 30 |
| The half or third of your intensest life | |
| And call that third Sordello; | |
| And you’ll say, “No, not your life, | |
| He never showed himself.” | |
| Is’t worth the evasion, what were the use | 35 |
| Of setting figures up and breathing life upon them, | |
| Were ’t not our life, your life, my life, extended? | |
| I walk Verona. (I am here in England.) | |
| I see Can Grande. (Can see whom you will.) | |
| You had one whole man? | 40 |
| And I have many fragments, less worth? Less worth? | |
| Ah, had you quite my age, quite such a beastly and cantankerous age? | |
| You had some basis, had some set belief. | |
| Am I let preach? Has it a place in music? | |
| |
| I walk the airy street, | 45 |
| See the small cobbles flare with the poppy spoil. | |
| ’Tis your “great day,” the Corpus Domini, | |
| And all my chosen and peninsular village | |
| Has made one glorious blaze of all its lanes— | |
| Oh, before I was up—with poppy flowers. | 50 |
| Mid-June: some old god eats the smoke, ’tis not the saints; | |
| And up and out to the half-ruined chapel— | |
| Not the old place at the height of the rocks, | |
| But that splay, barn-like church the Renaissance | |
| Had never quite got into trim again. | 55 |
| As well begin here. Began our Catullus: | |
| “Home to sweet rest, and to the waves’ deep laughter,” | |
| The laugh they wake amid the border rushes. | |
| This is our home, the trees are full of laughter, | |
| And the storms laugh loud, breaking the riven waves | 60 |
| On “north-most rocks”; and here the sunlight | |
| Glints on the shaken waters, and the rain | |
| Comes forth with delicate tread, walking from Isola Garda— | |
| Lo soleils plovil, | |
| As Arnaut had it in th’ inextricable song. | 65 |
| The very sun rains and a spatter of fire | |
| Darts from the “Lydian” ripples; “locus undae,” as Catullus, “Lydiae,” | |
| And the place is full of spirits. | |
| Not lemures, not dark and shadowy ghosts, | |
| But the ancient living, wood-white, | 70 |
| Smooth as the inner bark, and firm of aspect, | |
| And all agleam with colors—no, not agleam, | |
| But colored like the lake and like the olive leaves, | |
| Glaukopos, clothed like the poppies, wearing golden greaves, | |
| Light on the air. | 75 |
| Are they Etruscan gods? | |
| The air is solid sunlight, apricus, | |
| Sun-fed we dwell there (we in England now); | |
| It’s your way of talk, we can be where we will be, | |
| Sirmio serves my will better than your Asolo | 80 |
Which I have never seen.
Your “palace step”? | |
| My stone seat was the Dogana’s curb, | |
| And there were not “those girls,” there was one flare, one face. | |
| ’Twas all I ever saw, but it was real…. | |
| And I can no more say what shape it was … | 85 |
But she was young, too young.
True, it was Venice, | |
| And at Florian’s and under the north arcade | |
| I have seen other faces, and had my rolls for breakfast, for that matter; | |
| So, for what it’s worth, I have the background. | |
| And you had a background, | 90 |
| Watched “the soul,” Sordello’s soul, | |
| And saw it lap up life, and swell and burst— | |
| “Into the empyrean?” | |
| So you worked out new form, the meditative, | |
| Semi-dramatic, semi-epic story, | 95 |
| And we will say: What’s left for me to do? | |
| Whom shall I conjure up; who’s my Sordello, | |
| My pre-Daun Chaucer, pre-Boccacio, | |
| As you have done pre-Dante? | |
| Whom shall I hang my shimmering garment on; | 100 |
| Who wear my feathery mantle, hagoromo; | |
| Whom set to dazzle the serious future ages? | |
| Not Arnaut, not De Born, not Uc St. Circ who has writ out the stories. | |
| Or shall I do your trick, the showman’s booth, Bob Browning, | |
| Turned at my will into the Agora, | 105 |
| Or into the old theatre at Arles, | |
| And set the lot, my visions, to confounding | |
| The wits that have survived your damn’d Sordello? | |
| (Or sulk and leave the word to novelists?) | |
| What a hodge-podge you have made there!— | 110 |
| Zanze and swanzig, of all opprobrious rhymes! | |
| And you turn off whenever it suits your fancy, | |
| Now at Verona, now with the early Christians, | |
| Or now a-gabbling of the “Tyrrhene whelk.” | |
| “The lyre should animate but not mislead the pen”— | 115 |
| That’s Wordsworth, Mr. Browning. (What a phrase!— | |
| That lyre, that pen, that bleating sheep, Will Wordsworth!) | |
| That should have taught you avoid speech figurative | |
| And set out your matter | |
| As I do, in straight simple phrases: | 120 |
| Gods float in the azure air, | |
| Bright gods, and Tuscan, back before dew was shed, | |
It is a world like Puvis’?
Never so pale, my friend, | |
| ’Tis the first light—not half light—Panisks | |
| And oak-girls and the Maenads | 125 |
| Have all the wood. Our olive Sirmio | |
| Lies in its burnished mirror, and the Mounts Balde and Riva | |
| Are alive with song, and all the leaves are full of voices. | |
“Non è fuggito.”
“It is not gone.” Metastasio | |
| Is right—we have that world about us, | 130 |
| And the clouds bow above the lake, and there are folk upon them | |
| Going their windy ways, moving by Riva, | |
| By the western shore, far as Lonato, | |
| And the water is full of silvery almond-white swimmers, | |
| The silvery water glazes the up-turned nipple. | 135 |
| How shall we start hence, how begin the progress? | |
| Pace naif Ficinus, say when Hotep-Hotep | |
| Was a king in Egypt— | |
| When Atlas sat down with his astrolabe, | |
| He, brother to Prometheus, physicist— | 140 |
| Say it was Moses’ birth-year? | |
| Exult with Shang in squatness? The sea-monster | |
| Bulges the squarish bronzes. | |
| (Confucius later taught the world good manners, | |
| Started with himself, built out perfection.) | 145 |
| With Egypt! | |
| Daub out in blue of scarabs, and with that greeny turquoise? | |
| Or with China, O Virgilio mio, and gray gradual steps | |
| Lead up beneath flat sprays of heavy cedars, | |
| Temple of teak wood, and the gilt-brown arches | 150 |
| Triple in tier, banners woven by wall, | |
| Fine screens depicted, sea waves curled high, | |
| Small boats with gods upon them, | |
| Bright flame above the river! Kwannon | |
| Footing a boat that’s but one lotus petal, | 155 |
| With some proud four-spread genius | |
| Leading along, one hand upraised for gladness, | |
| Saying, “Tis she, his friend, the mighty goddess! Paean! | |
Sing hymns ye reeds,
and all ye roots and herons and swans be glad, | |
| Ye gardens of the nymphs put forth your flowers.” | 160 |
| What have I of this life, | |
| Or even of Guido? | |
| Sweet lie!—Was I there truly? | |
| Did I knew Or San Michele? | |
| Let’s believe it. | 165 |
| Believe the tomb he leapt was Julia Laeta’s? | |
| Friend, I do not even—when he led that street charge— | |
| I do not even know which sword he’d with him. | |
| Sweet lie, “I lived!” Sweet lie, “I lived beside him.” | |
| And now it’s all but truth and memory, | 170 |
| Dimmed only by the attritions of long time. | |
| |
“But we forget not.”
No, take it all for lies. | |
| I have but smelt this life, a whiff of it— | |
| The box of scented wood | |
| Recalls cathedrals. And shall I claim; | 175 |
| Confuse my own phantastikon, | |
| Or say the filmy shell that circumscribes me | |
Contains the actual sun;
confuse the thing I see | |
With actual gods behind me?
Are they gods behind me? | |
| How many worlds we have! If Botticelli | 180 |
| Brings her ashore on that great cockle-shell— | |
| His Venus (Simonetta?), | |
| And Spring and Aufidus fill all the air | |
| With their clear-outlined blossoms? | |
| World enough. Behold, I say, she comes | 185 |
| “Apparelled like the spring, Graces her subjects,” | |
| (That’s from Pericles). | |
| Oh, we have worlds enough, and brave décors, | |
| And from these like we guess a soul for man | |
| And build him full of aery populations. | 190 |
| Mantegna a sterner line, and the new world about us: | |
| Barred lights, great flares, new form, Picasso or Lewis. | |
| If for a year man write to paint, and not to music— | |
O Casella!
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