Quotes from book
Sordello
Sordello is a narrative poem by the English poet Robert Browning. Worked on for seven years, and largely written between 1836 and 1840, it was published in March 1840. It consists of a fictionalised version of the life of Sordello da Goito, a 13th-century Lombard troubadour depicted in Canto VI of Dante Alighieri's Purgatorio.
“Deeds let escape are never to be done.”
Book the Third
Sordello (1840)
“Each a God's germ, but doomed remain a germ
In unexpanded infancy”
Book the Third
Sordello (1840)
“So men believe
And worship what they know not, nor receive
Delight from.”
Book the Second
Sordello (1840)
Book the First
Sordello (1840)
Context: But, gathering in its ancient market-place,
Talked group with restless group; and not a face
But wrath made livid, for among them were
Death's staunch purveyors, such as have in care
To feast him. Fear had long since taken root
In every breast, and now these crushed its fruit,
The ripe hate, like a wine: to note the way
It worked while each grew drunk! men grave and grey
Stood, with shut eyelids, rocking to and fro.
Letting the silent luxury trickle slow
About the hollows where a heart should be;
But the young gulped with a delirious glee
Some foretaste of their first debauch in blood
At the fierce news
“Any nose
May ravage with impunity a rose.”
Book the Sixth
Sordello (1840)
