III
Dear Pilgrim, art thou for the East indeed? 
Go!—­saying ever as thou dost proceed,
That I, French Rudel, choose for my device
A sunflower outspread like a sacrifice
Before its idol.  See!  These inexpert
And hurried fingers could not fail to hurt
The woven picture; ’t is a woman’s skill
Indeed; but nothing baffled me, so, ill
Or well, the work is finished.  Say, men feed 30
On songs I sing, and therefore bask the bees
On my flower’s breast as on a platform broad: 
But, as the flower’s concern is not for these
But solely for the sun, so men applaud
In vain this Rudel, he not looking here
But to the East—­the East!  Go, say this, Pilgrim dear!

NOTES

“Rudel to the Lady of Tripoli”:  Rudel symbolizes his love as the aspiration of the sunflower that longs only to become like the sun, so losing a flower’s true grace, while the sun does not even perceive the flower.  He imagines himself as a pilgrim revealing to the Lady of Tripoli by means of this symbol the entire sinking of self in his love for her.  Even men’s praise of his songs is no more to him than the bees which bask on a sunflower are to it.

Rudel was a Provencal troubadour, and lived in the twelfth century.  The Crusaders, returning from the East, spread abroad wonderful reports of the beauty, learning, and wit of the Countess of Tripoli, a small duchy on the Mediterranean, north of Palestine.  Rudel, although never having seen her, fell in love with her and composed songs in honor of her beauty, and finally set out to the East in pilgrim’s garb.  On his way he was taken ill, but lived to reach the port of Tripoli.  The countess, being told of his arrival, went on board the vessel.  When Rudel heard she was coming, he revived, said she had restored him to life by her coming, and that he was willing to die, having seen her.  He died in her arms; she gave him a rich and honorable burial in a sepulchre of porphyry on which were engraved verses in Arabic.

ONE WORD MORE

TO E. B. B.

1855

[Originally appended to the collection of Poems called “Men and Women,” the greater portion of which has now been, more correctly, distributed under the other titles of this edition.-R.  B.]

I
There they are, my fifty men and women
Naming me the fifty poems finished! 
Take them, Love, the book and me together: 
Where the heart lies, let the brain lie also.

II
Rafael made a century of sonnets,
Made and wrote them in a certain volume
Dinted with the silver-pointed pencil
Else he only used to draw Madonnas: 
These, the world might view—­but one, the volume. 
Who that one, you ask?  Your heart instructs you. 10
Did she live and love it all her life-time? 
Did she drop, his lady of the sonnets,