[Sidenote: For honor,] Equal to being all!" In truth? Thou hast Life, then--wilt challenge life for us: our race Is vindicated so, obtains its place In thy ascent, the first of us; whom we [Sidenote: Or shame--] May follow, to the meanest, finally, With our more bounded wills? Ah, but to find A certain mood enervate such a mind, Counsel it slumber in the solitude Thus reached, nor, stooping, task for mankind's good Its nature just as life and time accord "--Too narrow an arena to reward Emprise--the world's occasion worthless since Not absolutely fitted to evince Its mastery!" Or if yet worse befall, And a desire possess it to put all That nature forth, forcing our straitened sphere Contain it,--to display completely here The mastery another life should learn, Thrusting in time eternity's concern,-- So that Sordello ... [Sidenote: Which may the Gods avert] Fool, who spied the mark Of leprosy upon him, violet-dark Already as he loiters? Born just now, With the new century, beside the glow And efflorescence out of barbarism; Witness a Greek or two from the abysm That stray through Florence-town with studious air, Calming the chisel of that Pisan pair: If Nicolo should carve a Christus yet! While at Siena is Guidone set, Forehead on hand; a painful birth must be Matured ere Saint Eufemia's sacristy Or transept gather fruits of one great gaze At the moon: look you! The same orange haze,-- The same blue stripe round that--and, in the midst, Thy spectral whiteness, Mother-maid, who didst Pursue the dizzy painter! Woe, then, worth Any officious babble letting forth The leprosy confirmed and ruinous To spirit lodged in a contracted house! Go back to the beginning, rather; blend It gently with Sordello's life; the end Is piteous, you may see, but much between Pleasant enough. Meantime, some pyx to screen The full-grown pest, some lid to shut upon The goblin! So they found at Babylon, (Colleagues, mad Lucius and sage Antonine) Sacking the city, by Apollo's shrine, In rummaging among the rarities, A certain coffer; he who made the prize Opened it greedily; and out there curled Just such another plague, for half the world Was stung. Crawl in then, hag, and couch 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 now he never could remember when He dwelt not at Goito. Calmly, then, [Sidenote: From Sordello, now in childhood.] About this secret lodge of Adelaide's