_Sordello_, so closely allied to _Paracelsus_ in time of composition (pub. 1840, begun before _Strafford_, 1836), demands a brief reference since it has been especially singled out for notice in this connection as constituting "an indirect vindication of the conceptions of human life which _Christmas Eve and Easter Day_ condemns."[84] In the _Sixth Book of Sordello_ the question of renunciation has become imminent and practical. It is the moment for decision. The imperial badge which he tells his soul "would suffer you improve your Now!" must be accepted or rejected: and with it the attendant temporal advantages. But the reflections occupying the poet's mind, at this crisis of his fate, are akin to those following the Vision of the Judgment in _Easter Day_. Why not enjoy life to the full? Why treat it as a mere ante-room to the palace at the door of which stands the Usher, Death? Even accepting the simile I, for one, Will praise the world, you style mere ante-room To palace. * * * * * Oh, 'twere too absurd to slight For the hereafter the to-day's delight.[85] Yet the thought recurs, how often has the cup of life been set aside by "sage, champion, martyr," to whom had been revealed the secret of that which "masters life." To what causes is attributable the failure which he recognizes in reviewing his own Past? The soul, true inhabitant of the Infinite, has been unable to adapt itself to its lodgment in the body fitted, by its constitution, for Time only. Sorrow has been the inevitable result of the soul's attempts at subjecting the body to its use. Sorrow to be avoided only when the employer shall Match the thing employed, Fit to the finite his infinity.[86] Some solution of the difficulty there must assuredly be. The question of _Sordello_ is in different form the question of the soliloquist of _Easter Day_-- Must life be ever just escaped which should Have been enjoyed?[87] And the answer?-- Nay, might have been and would, Each purpose ordered right--the soul's no whit Beyond the body's purpose under it.[88] Yet the struggle ends in _renunciation_, and Salinguerra arrives to find Sordello dead, "under his foot the badge": but Still, Palma said, A triumph lingering in the wide eyes.[89] In _Rabbi Ben Ezra_ a more material conception of life is to be expected from the change in the personality of the soliloquist. The Jewish Rabbi of the twelfth century takes the place of the Mantuan poet of the thirteenth. The Rabbi also recognizes the limitations imposed by the body upon the development of the soul. Pleasant is this flesh, Our soul, in its rose-mesh Pulled ever to the earth, still yearns for rest. (_R. B. E._, xi.) * * * * * Thy body at its best, How far can that project thy soul on its lone way? (viii.)