SHELLEY DEPARTING, VERONA APPEARS 195

Verona! stay

thou, spirit, come not near Now not this time desert thy cloudy place

To scare me, thus employed, with that pure face!
I need not fear this audience, I make free
With them, but then this is no place for thee!
The thunder-phrase of the Athenian, grown
Up out of memories of Marathon,

Would echo like his own sword's griding screech
Braying a Persian shield, the silver speech
Of Sidney's self, the starry paladin,
Turn intense as a trumpet sounding in
The knights to tilt, wert thou to hear!
Have I to play my puppets, bear my part
Before these worthies?

What heart

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. 'Tis 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;
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

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
Of fifteen cities that affect the Pope,
For Azzo, therefore, and his fellow-hope
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,
66 as in wane
Dwelt at Ferrara. Like an osprey

66

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 snuffs

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

WHY THEY ENTREAT THE LOMBARD LEAGUE 197

To Padua, Podestà, 'with pure intent,'

6

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
A week with joy. The next, their laughter sunk
In sobs of blood, for they found, some strange way,
Old Salinguerra back again — I say,

Old Salinguerra in the town once more
Uprooting, overturning, flame before,
Blood fetlock-high beneath him. Azzo fled;

Who 'scaped the carnage followed; then the dead
Were pushed aside from Salinguerra's throne,
He ruled once more Ferrara, all alone.

Till Azzo, stunned awhile, revived, would pounce
Coupled with Boniface, like lynx and ounce,

On the gorged bird. The burghers ground their teeth
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
With his victors by?

A general growl: How?

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,
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,
Nothing 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
A surface solid now, continuous, one :
"The Pope, for us the People, who begun
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.

ECELO'S HOUse and azzo, lord of estE 199

"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,
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 grisliest nightmare of the Church's dreams,
A Signory firm-rooted, unestranged
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 't was 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