Glided his youth away; beyond the glades On the fir-forest border, and the rim Of the low range of mountain, was for him No other world: but this appeared his own To wander through at pleasure and alone. The castle too seemed empty; far and wide Might he disport; only 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. [Sidenote: The delights of his childish fancy,] 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 dissheathed; 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 favorite. 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, [Sidenote: Which could blow out a great bubble,] Gave to familiar things a face grotesque; Only, preserving through the mad burlesque A grave regard. Conceive! the orpine patch Blossoming earliest on the 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; He o'er-festooning every interval, As the adventurous spider, making light Of distance, shoots her threads from depth to height, From barbican to battlement: so flung Fantasies forth and in their centre swung Our architect,--the breezy morning fresh