Rather test qualities to heart's content-- Summon them, thrice selected, near and far-- Compress the starriest into one star, [Sidenote: So, only to be appropriated in fancy,] And grasp the whole at once! The pageant thinned Accordingly; from rank to rank, like wind His spirit passed to winnow and divide; Back fell the simpler phantasms; every side The strong clave to the wise; with either classed The beauteous; so, till two or three amassed Mankind's beseemingnesses, and reduced Themselves eventually, graces loosed, Strengths lavished, all to heighten up One Shape Whose potency no creature should escape. Can it be Friedrich of the bowmen's talk? Surely that grape-juice, bubbling at the stalk, Is some gray scorching Sarasenic wine The Kaiser quaffs with the Miramoline-- Those swarthy hazel-clusters, seamed and chapped, Or filberts russet-sheathed and velvet-capped, Are dates plucked from the bough John Brienne sent, To keep in mind his sluggish armament Of Canaan:--Friedrich's, all the pomp and fierce Demeanor! But harsh sounds and sights transpierce So rarely the serene cloud where he dwells, [Sidenote: And practised on till the real come.] Whose looks enjoin, whose lightest words are spells On the obdurate! That right arm indeed Has thunder for its slave; but where 's the need Of thunder if the stricken multitude Hearkens, arrested in its angriest mood, While songs go up exulting, then dispread, Dispart, disperse, lingering overhead Like an escape of angels? 'T is the tune, Nor much unlike the words his women croon Smilingly, colorless and faint-designed Each, as a worn-out queen's face some remind Of her extreme youth's love-tales. "Eglamor Made that!" Half minstrel and half emperor, What but ill objects vexed him? Such he slew. The kinder sort were easy to subdue By those ambrosial glances, dulcet tones; And these a gracious hand advanced to thrones Beneath him. Wherefore twist and torture this, Striving to name afresh the antique bliss, Instead of saying, neither less nor more, [Sidenote: He means to be perfect--say, Apollo;] He had discovered, as our world before, Apollo? That shall be the name; nor bid Me rag by rag expose how patchwork hid The youth--what thefts of every clime and day Contributed to purfle the array He climbed with (June at deep) some close ravine 'Mid clatter of its million pebbles sheen, Over which, singing soft, the runnel slipped Elate with rains: into whose streamlet dipped He foot, yet trod, you thought, with unwet sock-- Though really on the stubs of living rock Ages ago it crenelled; vines for roof, Lindens for wall; before him, aye aloof, Flittered in the cool some azure damsel-fly,