Was stung. Crawl in then, hag, and crouch asquat,
Keeping that blotchy bosom thick in spot
Until your time is ripe! The coffer-lid
Is fastened and the coffer safely hid
Under the Loxian's choicest gifts of gold.
Who will may hear Sordello's story told,
And how he never could remember when
He dwelt not at Goito; calmly then
About this secret lodge of Adelaide's
Glided his youth away: beyond the glades
On the fir-forest's border, and the rim
Of the low range of mountain, was for him
No other world: but that appeared his own
To wander through at pleasure and alone.
The castle too seemed empty; far and wide
Might he disport unless the northern side
Lay under a mysterious interdict—
Slight, just enough remembered to restrict
His roaming to the corridors, the vault
Where those font-bearers expiate their fault,
The maple-chamber, and the little nooks
And nests and breezy parapet that looks
Over the woods to Mantua; there he strolled.
Some foreign women-servants, very old,
Tended and crept about him—all his clue
To the world's business and embroiled ado
Distant a dozen hill-tops at the most.
And first a simple sense of life engrossed
Sordello in his drowsy Paradise ;
The day's adventures for the day suffice-
Its constant tribute of perceptions strange
With sleep and stir in healthy interchange
Suffice, and leave him for the next at ease
Like the great palmer-worm that strips the trees, Eats the life out of every luscious plant,
And, when September finds them sere or scant,
Puts forth two wondrous winglets, alters quite,
And hies him after unforeseen delight.
So fed Sordello, not a shard disheathed,
As ever round each new discovery wreathed
Luxuriantly the fancies infantine
His admiration, bent on making fine
Its novel friend at any risk, would fling
In gay profusion forth: a ficklest king,
Confessed those minions! Eager to dispense
So much from his own stock of thought and sense
As might enable each to stand alone
And serve him for a fellow; with his own
Joining the qualities that just before
Had graced some older favourite: thus they wore
A fluctuating halo, yesterday
Set flicker and to-morrow filched away,
Those upland objects each of separate name,
Each with an aspect never twice the same,
Waxing and waning as the new-born host
Of fancies, like a single night's hoar-frost,
Gave to familiar things a face grotesque,
Only, preserving through the mad burlesque
A grave regard: conceive; the orpine patch
Blossoming earliest on our log-house-thatch
The day those archers wound along the vines—
Related to the Chief that left their lines
To climb with clinking step the northern stair
Up to the solitary chambers where
Sordello never came. Thus thrall reached thrall.
THE POPULAR PARTY EXPECT THE ARRIVAL IN ENGLAND OF WENTWORTH.
A House near Whitehall. HAMPDEN, HOLLIS, the younger VANE, RUDYARD, FIENNES and many of the Presbyterian party; LOUDON and other Scots Commissioners.
Vane. I say, if he be here-
Rud.
(And he is here!)—
Hol. For England's sake let every man be still,
Nor speak of him, so much as say his name,
Till Pym rejoin us! Rudyard! Henry Vane!
One rash conclusion may decide our course
And with it England's fate—think—England's fate !
Hampden, for England's sake they should be still!
Vane. You say so, Hollis? Well, I must be still!
It is indeed too bitter that one man,
Any one man's mere presence should suspend
England's combined endeavour: little need
To name him!
For you are his brother, Hollis !
Hamp. Shame on you, Rudyard! Time to tell him
When he forgets the mother of us all.
Rud. Do I forget her?
Against her foes: is that so strange a thing?
Is hating Wentworth all the help she needs?
A Puritan. The Philistine strode, cursing as he
But David, five smooth pebbles from the brook
Within his scrip . . .
Be you as still as David!
Fien. Here's Rudyard not ashamed to wag a
Stiff with ten years' disuse of Parliaments :
Why, when the last sate, Wentworth sate with us! Rud. Let's hope for news of them now he returns— He that was safe in Ireland, as we thought!
But I'll abide Pym's coming.
Vane.
Now, by Heaven,
They may be cool who can, silent who will-
Some have a gift that way! Wentworth is here,
Here, and the King's safe closeted with him
Ere this. And when I think on all that's past
Since that man left us, how his single arm
Rolled the advancing good of England back
And set the woeful Past up in its place,
Exalting Dagon where the ark should be—
How that man has made firm the fickle King
(Hampden, I will speak out)—in aught he feared
To venture on before; taught Tyranny
Her dismal trade, the use of all her tools,
To ply the scourge, yet screw the gag so close
That strangled agony bleeds mute to death-
How he turns Ireland to a private stage
For training infant villanies, new ways
Of wringing treasure out of tears and blood,
Unheard oppressions nourished in the dark
To try how much man's nature can endure—
If he dies under it, what harm? if not,
Why, one more trick is added to the rest
Worth a king's knowing, and what Ireland bears,
England may learn to bear ;-how all this while
That man has set himself to one dear task,
The bringing Charles to relish more and more
Power, power without law, power and blood too-
Can I be still?
For that, you should be still.
Vane. Oh, Hampden, then and now! the year he
The People in full Parliament could wrest
Their Bill of Rights from the reluctant King:
And, now, he'll find in an obscure, small room
A stealthy gathering of great-hearted men
That take up England's cause. England is here!
Hamp. And who despairs of England?
Rud.
If Wentworth comes to rule her. I am sick
To think her wretched masters, Hamilton,
The muckworm Cottington, the maniac Laud,
May yet be longed-for back again. I say,
I do despair.
Vane. And, Rudyard, I'll say this-
Which all true men say after me, not loud
But solemnly and as you'd say a prayer!
This King who treads our England under foot
Has just so much—it may be fear or craft-
As bids him pause at each fresh outrage: friends,
He needs some sterner hand to grasp his own,
Some voice to ask, "Why shrink- -am I not by?"
Now, one whom England loved for serving her
|