Mankind will class him with their friends or foes? [Sidenote: Scorn flings cold water in his face,] A puny uncouth ailing vassal think The world and him bound in some special link? Abrupt the visionary tether burst. What were rewarded here, or what amerced If a poor drudge, solicitous to dream Deservingly, got tangled by his theme So far as to conceit the knack or gift Or whatsoe'er it be, of verse, might lift The globe, a lever like the hand and head Of--"Men of Action," as the Jongleurs said, --"The Great Men," in the people's dialect? And not a moment did this scorn affect [Sidenote: Arouses him at last, to some purpose,] Sordello: scorn the poet? They, for once, Asking "what was," obtained a full response. Bid Naddo think at Mantua, he had but To look into his promptuary, put Finger on a set thought in a set speech: But was Sordello fitted thus for each Conjecture? Nowise; since within his soul, Perception brooded unexpressed and whole. A healthy spirit like a healthy frame Craves aliment in plenty--all the same, Changes, assimilates its aliment. Perceived Sordello, on a truth intent? Next day no formularies more you saw Than figs or olives in a sated maw. 'T is Knowledge, whither such perceptions tend; They lose themselves in that, means to an end, The many old producing some one new, A last unlike the first. If lies are true, The Caliph's wheel-work man of brass receives A meal, munched millet grains and lettuce leaves Together in his stomach rattle loose; You find them perfect next day to produce: But ne'er expect the man, on strength of that, Can roll an iron camel-collar flat Like Haroun's self! I tell you, what was stored [Sidenote: And thus gets the utmost out of him.] Bit by bit through Sordello's life, outpoured That eve, was, for that age, a novel thing: And round those three the People formed a ring, Of visionary judges whose award He recognized in full--faces that barred Henceforth return to the old careless life, In whose great presence, therefore, his first strife For their sake must not be ignobly fought; All these, for once, approved of him, he thought, Suspended their own vengeance, chose await The issue of this strife to reinstate Them in the right of taking it--in fact He must be proved king ere they could exact Vengeance for such king's defalcation. Last, A reason why the phrases flowed so fast Was in his quite forgetting for a time Himself in his amazement that the rhyme Disguised the royalty so much: he there-- And Salinguerra yet all unaware Who was the lord, who liegeman! "Thus I lay On thine my spirit and compel obey His lord,--my liegeman,--impotent to build Another Rome, but hardly so unskilled