668 
Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 
Let the mere star-fish in his vault 
Crawl in a wash of weed, indeed, 
Rose-jacynth to the finger-tips: 
He, whole in body and soul, outstrips 
Man, found with either in default. 
{Bis Aliter Visum XXVIII.) 
Yet we are bidden: 
Rejoice we are allied 
To That which doth provide 
And not partake, effect and not receive! 
A spark disturbs our clod; 
Nearer we hold of God 
Who gives, than of His tribes that take, I must believe. 
{Rabbi Ben Ezra V.) 
The bee receives its message “instantly from tlie teaching of 
God” and has no choice but to obey. It is not so with Sordello; 
for him there is no divine revelation except through the need 
of humanity. The underlying thought constantly suggested in 
Sordello is the same as Professor Royce has insisted on as the 
secret of Paracelsus in the paper already referred to, but here 
again it is not “the meaning of the whole tale.” After the 
statement of Sordello’s problem, near the end of the poem, as 
quoted above, Browning steps forward to supply his own ex- 
planation: 
Ah, my Sordello, I this once befriend 
And speak for you. Of a Power above you still 
Which, utterly incomprehensible, 
Is out of rivalry, which thus you can 
Love, tho’ unloving all conceived by man— 
What need! And of—none the minutest duct 
To that out-nature, naught that would instruct 
And so let rivalry begin to live— 
But of a Power its representative 
Who, being for authority the same, 
Communication different, should claim 
A course, the first chose but this last revealed— 
This Human clear, as that Divine concealed— 
What utter need! 
(VI. 590-603.) 
It is unfortunate that a passage so crucial to the under¬ 
standing of the whole poem should be so difficult, but like 
many other passages in Sordello , it yields to a steady effort, if 
the trend of the poet’s thinking in this .and other poems is kept 
