[Sidenote: When a fresh calamity destroyed all:] --Not how he bore the blow, retained his hold, Got friends safe through, left enemies the worst O' the fray, and hardly seemed to care at first: But afterward men heard not constantly Of Salinguerra's House so sure to be! Though Azzo simply gained by the event A shifting of his plagues--the first, content To fall behind the second and estrange So far his nature, suffer such a change That in Romano sought he wife and child And for Romano's sake seemed reconciled To losing individual life, which shrunk As the other prospered--mortised in his trunk, Like a dwarf palm which wanton Arabs foil Of bearing its own proper wine and oil, By grafting into it the stranger-vine, Which sucks its heart out, sly and serpentine, Till forth one vine-palm feathers to the root, And red drops moisten the insipid fruit. Once Adelaide set on,--the subtle mate Of the weak soldier, urged to emulate The Church's valiant women deed for deed, And paragon her namesake, win the meed O' the great Matilda,--soon they overbore The rest of Lombardy,--not as before By an instinctive truculence, but patched The Kaiser's strategy until it matched The Pontiff's, sought old ends by novel means. "Only, why is it Salinguerra screens Himself behind Romano?--him we bade Enjoy our shine i' the front, not seek the shade!" --Asked Heinrich, somewhat of the tardiest To comprehend. Nor Philip acquiesced At once in the arrangement; reasoned, plied His friend with offers of another bride, A statelier function--fruitlessly: 't was plain [Sidenote: He sank into a secondary personage,] Taurello through some weakness must remain Obscure. And Otho, free to judge of both, --Ecelin the unready, harsh and loth, And this more plausible and facile wight With every point a-sparkle--chose the right, Admiring how his predecessors harped On the wrong man: "thus," quoth he, "wits are warped By outsides!" Carelessly, meanwhile, his life Suffered its many turns of peace and strife In many lands--you hardly could surprise The man; who shamed Sordello (recognize!) In this as much beside, that, unconcerned What qualities were natural or earned, With no ideal of graces, as they came He took them, singularly well the same-- Speaking the Greek's own language, just because Your Greek eludes you, leave the least of flaws In contracts with him; while, since Arab lore Holds the stars' secret--take one trouble more And master it! 'Tis done, and now deter Who may the Tuscan, once Jove trined for her, From Friedrich's path!--Friedrich, whose pilgrimage The same man puts aside, whom he'll engage To leave next year John Brienne in the lurch, Come to Bassano, see Saint Francis' church