And the font took them: let our laurels lie! Braid moonfern now with mystic trifoly Because once more Goito gets, once more, Sordello to itself! A dream is o'er, And the suspended life begins anew; Quiet those throbbing temples, then, subdue [Sidenote: Nature may triumph therefore;] That cheek's distortion! Nature's strict embrace, Putting aside the past, shall soon efface Its print as well--factitious humors grown Over the true--loves, hatreds not his own-- And turn him pure as some forgotten vest Woven of painted byssus, silkiest Tufting the Tyrrhene whelk's pearl-sheeted lip, Left welter where a trireme let it slip I' the sea, and vexed a satrap; so the stain O' the world forsakes Sordello, with its pain, Its pleasure: how the tinct loosening escapes, Cloud after cloud! Mantua's familiar shapes Die, fair and foul die, fading as they flit, Men, women, and the pathos and the wit, Wise speech and foolish, deeds to smile or sigh For, good, bad, seemly or ignoble, die. The last face glances through the eglantines, The last voice murmurs, 'twixt the blossomed vines, Of Men, of that machine supplied by thought To compass self-perception with, he sought By forcing half himself--an insane pulse Of a god's blood, on clay it could convulse, Never transmute--on human sights and sounds, To watch the other half with; irksome bounds It ebbs from to its source, a fountain sealed Forever. Better sure be unrevealed Than part revealed: Sordello well or ill Is finished: then what further use of Will, Point in the prime idea not realized, An oversight? inordinately prized, No less, and pampered with enough of each Delight to prove the whole above its reach. "To need become all natures, yet retain The law of my own nature--to remain Myself, yet yearn ... as if that chestnut, think, Should yearn for this first larch-bloom crisp and pink, Or those pale fragrant tears where zephyrs stanch March wounds along the fretted pine-tree branch! Will and the means to show will, great and small, Material, spiritual,--abjure them all Save any so distinct, they may be left To amuse, not tempt become! and, thus bereft, Just as I first was fashioned would I be! Nor, moon, is it Apollo now, but me [Sidenote: For her son, lately alive, dies again,] Thou visitest to comfort and befriend! Swim thou into my heart, and there an end, Since I possess thee!--nay, thus shut mine eyes And know, quite know, by this heart's fall and rise, When thou dost bury thee in clouds, and when Out-standest: wherefore practise upon men To make that plainer to myself?" Slide here Over a sweet and solitary year Wasted; or simply notice change in him-- How eyes, once with exploring bright, grew dim