The day draws to its close. Sordello has seen more of the suffering
human beings whom he wishes to serve, and the ideal Rome has collapsed
in his imagination like a mocking dream. Nothing can be effected at
once. No deed can bridge over the lapse of time which divides the first
stage of a great social structure from its completion. Each life may
give its touch; it can give no more; through the endless generations.
The vision of a regenerate humanity, "his last and loveliest," must
depart like the rest. Then suddenly a voice,
"... Sordello, wake!
God has conceded two sights to a man--
One, of men's whole work, time's completed plan,
The other, of the minute's work, man's first
Step to the plan's completeness: what's dispersed
Save hope of that supreme step which, descried
Earliest, was meant still to remain untried
Only to give you heart to take your own
Step, and there stay--leaving the rest alone?" (vol. i. p. 217.)
The facts restate themselves, but from an opposite point of view. No man
can give more than his single touch. The whole could not dispense with
one of them. The work is infinite, but it is continuous. The later poet
weaves into his own song the echoes of the first. "The last of each
series of workmen sums up in himself all predecessors," whether he be
the type of strength like Charlemagne, or of knowledge like Hildebrand.
Strength comes first in the scheme of life; it is the joyousness of
childhood. Step by step Strength works Knowledge with its groans and
tears. And then, in its turn, Knowledge works Strength, Knowledge
controls Strength, Knowledge supersedes Strength. It is Knowledge which
must prevail now. May it not be he who at this moment resumes its whole
inheritance--its accumulated opportunities, in himself? He could stand
still and dream while he fancied he stood alone; but he knows now that
he is part of humanity, and it of him. Goito is left behind; Ferrara is
reached; he must do the one thing that is within his grasp.
He must influence Salinguerra. He must interest him in the cause of
knowledge; which is the people's cause. With this determination, he
proceeds once more to the appointed presence. His minstrelsy is at first
a failure. He is, as usual, outside his song. He is trying to guide it;
it is not carrying him away. He is paralysed by the very consciousness
that he is urging the head of the Ghibellines to become a Guelph.
Salinguerra's habitual tact and good-nature cannot conceal his own sense
of the absurdity of the proposal. Sordello sees in
"a flash of bitter truth:
So fantasies could break and fritter youth
That he had long ago lost earnestness,
Lost will to work, lost power to even express
The need of working!" (vol. i. p. 228.)
But he will not be beaten. He tries once more. We see the blood leap to
his brain, the heart into his purpose, as he challenges Salinguerra to
bow before the royalty of song. He owns himself its unworthy
representative: for he has frittered away his powers. He has identified
himself with existing forms of being, instead of proving his kingship by
a new spiritual birth--by a supreme, as yet unknown revelation of the
power of human will. He has resigned his function. He is a self-deposed
king. He acknowledges the man before him as fitter to help the world
than he is. But this is shame enough. He will not see its now elected
champion scorn the post he renounces on his behalf. And his art is still
royal though he is not. It is the utterance of the spiritual life: of
the informing thought--which was in the world before deeds began--which
brought order out of chaos--which guided deeds in their due gradation
till itself emerged as SONG: to react in deed; but to need no help of
it; to be (so we complete the meaning) as the knowledge which controls
strength, which supersedes strength.[20]
The walls of the presence-chamber have fallen away. Imaginary faces are
crowding around him. He turns to these. He shows them human life as the
poet's mirror reflects it: in its varied masquerade, in its mingled good
and evil, in its steady advance; in the rainbow brightness of its
obstructed lights; the deceptive gloom of its merely repeated shadows.
He enforces in every tone that continuity of the plan of creation to
which the poet alone holds the clue. Finally, in the name of the
unlimited truth, the limited opportunity, the one duty which confronts
him now, the People whose support, in his performance of it, he may
claim for the first time, he forbids the Emperor's coming, and invokes
Salinguerra's protection for the Guelph cause.
Salinguerra is moved at last, though not in the intended way. He does
not yield to Sordello's enthusiasm, but he sees that it is worth
employing. There is no question of his becoming a Guelph, but why should
not Sordello turn Ghibelline? The cause requires a youth to "stalk, and
bustle, and attitudinize;" and he clearly thinks this is all the youth
before him wants to do, whether conscious of the fact or not. He thinks
the thought aloud. "Palma loves her minstrel; it is written in her eyes;
let her marry him. Were she Romano's son instead of his daughter, she
could wear the Emperor's badge. Himself fate has doomed to a secondary
position. To contend against it is useless." Before he knows what he has
done, without really meaning to do it, he has thrown the badge across
Sordello's neck, and thus created him Eccelino's successor.