BOOK I.--The poem in its first scene places us in imagination in Verona

six hundred years ago. A restless group has gathered in its market-place to discuss the news which has arrived,--that their prince, Count Richard of St. Boniface, the great supporter of the cause of the Guelfs, who had joined Azzo, the lord of Este, to depose the Ghibelline leader, Tauzello Salinguerra, from his position in Ferrara, has become prisoner in Ferrara; and in consequence immediate aid is demanded from the "Lombard League of fifteen cities that affect the Pope." The Pope supported the Guelf cause, the Kaiser that of the Ghibellines. The leaders of the two causes are described, and the principles of which each was the representative. We are next introduced to Sordello; not in his youth, but in a supreme moment before the end of his career--a moment which has to determine his future. How this pregnant moment has come about, and how the past has fashioned the present, the poet now proceeds to explain. We are taken back to the castle of Goïto, when Sordello was a boy already of the regal class of poets, musing by the marble figures of the fountain, and finding companions in the embroidered figures on the arras. Adelaide, wife of Eccelino da Romano, the Ghibelline prince, was mistress of the castle. Sordello was only a page, known only as the orphan of Elcorte, an archer, who, in the slaughter of Vicenza, had saved his mistress and her new-born son at the cost of his own life. The son was afterwards known as Eccelin the Cruel. Sordello led the ideal life of a poet child at Goïto. All nature was a scene of enchantment to him, was endowed with form and colour from his own rich fancy. But Sordello was not content with living his own life, he must combine in his person the lives of his imaginary heroes. He will be perfect: he chooses Apollo as his ideal: he must love a woman to match his high ambition. He aims at Palma, Eccelin's only child by his former wife, Agnes Este, but who has been already set apart, for reasons of state, as the wife of Count Richard of St. Boniface, the Guelf. Palma, however, it is reported in the castle, will refuse him. Sordello anxiously awaits his opportunity. The return of Adelaide to the castle demands the services of the troubadours: Sordello's chance lies this way.