Once more in full possession of their rights. "Let us have Rome again! On me it lights To build up Rome--on me, the first and last: For such a future was endured the past!" And thus, in the gray twilight, forth he sprung To give his thought consistency among The very People--let their facts avail Finish the dream grown from the archer's tale. BOOK THE FIFTH Is it the same Sordello in the dusk As at the dawn?--merely a perished husk Now, that arose a power fit to build [Sidenote: Mankind triumph of a sudden?] Up Rome again? The proud conception chilled So soon? Ay, watch that latest dream of thine--A Rome indebted to no Palatine-- Drop arch by arch, Sordello! Art possessed Of thy wish now, rewarded for thy quest To-day among Ferrara's squalid sons? Are this and this and this the shining ones Meet for the Shining City? Sooth to say, Your favored tenantry pursue their way After a fashion! This companion slips On the smooth causey, t' other blinkard trips At his mooned sandal. "Leave to lead the brawls Here i' the atria?" No, friend! He that sprawls On aught but a stibadium ... what his dues Who puts the lustral vase to such an use? Oh, huddle up the day's disasters! March, Ye runagates, and drop thou, arch by arch, Rome! Yet before they quite disband--a whim-- Study mere shelter, now, for him, and him, Nay, even the worst,--just house them! Any cave Suffices: throw out earth! A loophole? Brave! They ask to feel the sun shine, see the grass Grow, hear the larks sing? Dead art thou, alas, And I am dead! But here's our son excels At hurdle-weaving any Scythian, fells Oak and devises rafters, dreams and shapes His dream into a door-post, just escapes The mystery of hinges. Lie we both Perdue another age. The goodly growth Of brick and stone! Our building-pelt was rough, But that descendant's garb suits well enough A portico-contriver. Speed the years-- [Sidenote: Why, the work should be one of ages,] What's time to us? At last, a city rears Itself! nay, enter--what's the grave to us? Lo, our forlorn acquaintance carry thus The head! Successively sewer, forum, cirque-- Last age, an aqueduct was counted work, But now they tire the artificer upon Blank alabaster, black obsidion, --Careful, Jove's face be duly fulgurant, And mother Venus' kiss-creased nipples pant Back into pristine pulpiness, ere fixed Above the baths. What difference betwixt This Rome and ours--resemblance what, between That scurvy dumb-show and this pageant sheen-- These Romans and our rabble? Use thy wit! The work marched: step by step,--a workman fit Took each, nor too fit,--to one task, one time,-- No leaping o'er the petty to the prime, [Sidenote: If performed equally and thoroughly;]