Like some fresh martyr, eyes fixed--who can tell? As Heaven, now all 's at end, did not so well, [Sidenote: And we have done.] Spite of the faith and victory, to leave Its virgin quite to death in the lone eve. While the persisting hermit-bee ... ha! wait No longer: these in compass, forward fate! BOOK THE SIXTH The thought of Eglamor's least like a thought, [Sidenote: At the close of a day or a life,] And yet a false one, was, "Man shrinks to naught If matched with symbols of immensity; Must quail, forsooth, before a quiet sky Or sea, too little for their quietude:" And, truly, somewhat in Sordello's mood Confirmed its speciousness, while eve slow sank Down the near terrace to the farther bank, And only one spot left from out the night Glimmered, upon the river opposite-- A breadth of watery heaven like a bay, A sky-like space of water, ray for ray, And star for star, one richness where they mixed As this and that wing of an angel, fixed, Tumultuary splendors folded in To die. Nor turned he till Ferrara's din (Say, the monotonous speech from a man's lip Who lets some first and eager purpose slip In a new fancy's birth; the speech keeps on Though elsewhere its informing soul be gone) --Aroused him, surely offered succor. Fate Paused with this eve; ere she precipitate Herself,--best put off new strange thoughts awhile, That voice, those large hands, that portentous smile,-- What help to pierce the future as the past, Lay in the plaining city? And at last The main discovery and prime concern, All that just now imported him to learn, Truth's self, like yonder slow moon to complete Heaven, rose again, and, naked at his feet, Lighted his old life's every shift and change, [Sidenote: Past procedure is fitliest reviewed,] Effort with counter-effort; nor the range Of each looked wrong except wherein it checked Some other--which of these could he suspect, Prying into them by the sudden blaze? The real way seemed made up of all the ways-- Mood after mood of the one mind in him; Tokens of the existence, bright or dim, Of a transcendent all-embracing sense Demanding only outward influence, A soul, in Palma's phrase, above his soul, Power to uplift his power,--such moon's control Over such sea-depths,--and their mass had swept Onward from the beginning and still kept Its course: but years and years the sky above Held none, and so, untasked of any love, His sensitiveness idled, now amort, Alive now, and, to sullenness or sport Given wholly up, disposed itself anew At every passing instigation, grew And dwindled at caprice, in foam-showers spilt, Wedge-like insisting, quivered now a gilt Shield in the sunshine, now a blinding race