nto the service of man within the
limits of life but to always transcend the limits in aspiration), he
falls away from humanity into his own self again; and perfectly happy
for the moment, but lost as an artist and a man, lies lazy, filleted and
robed on the turf, with a lute beside him, looking over the landscape
below the castle and fancying himself Apollo. This is to have the
capacity to be an artist, but it is not to be an artist. And we leave
Sordello lying on the grass enjoying himself, but not destined on that
account to give any joy to man.

* * * * *

CHAPTER VI

_SORDELLO_

The period in which the poem of _Sordello_ opens is at the end of the
first quarter of the thirteenth century, at the time when the Guelf
cities allied themselves against the Ghibellines in Northern Italy. They
formed the Lombard League, and took their private quarrels up into one
great quarrel--that between the partisans of the Empire and those of the
Pope. Sordello is then a young man of thirty years. He was born in 1194,
when the fierce fight in the streets of Vicenza took place which
Salinguerra describes, as he looks back on his life, in the fourth canto
of this poem. The child is saved in that battle, and brought from
Vicenza by Adelaide, the second wife of Ezzelino da Romano II.,[8] to
Goito. He is really the son of Salinguerra and Retrude, a connection of
Frederick II., but Adelaide conceals this, and brings him up as her
page, alleging that he is the son of Elcorte, an archer. Palma (or
Cunizza), Ezzelino's daughter by Agnes Este, his first wife, is also at
Goito in attendance on Adelaide. Sordello and she meet as girl and boy,
and she becomes one of the dreams with which his lonely youth at Goito
is adorned.

At Adelaide's death Palma discovers the real birth of Sordello. She has
heard him sing some time before at a Love-court, where he won the prize;
where she, admiring, began to love him; and this love of hers has been
increased by his poetic fame which has now filled North Italy. She
summons him to her side at Verona, makes him understand that she loves
him, and urges him, as Salinguerra's son, to take the side of the
Ghibellines to whose cause Salinguerra, the strongest military
adventurer in North Italy, has now devoted himself. When the poem
begins, Salinguerra has received from the Emperor the badge which gives
him the leadership of the Ghibelline party in North Italy.

Then Pa