Match the thing employed,
Fit to the finite his infinity.[86]
Some solution of the difficulty there must assuredly be. The question of Sordello is in different form the question of the soliloquist of Easter Day—
Must life be ever just escaped which should
Have been enjoyed?[87]
Nay, might have been and would,
Each purpose ordered right—the soul’s no whit
Beyond the body’s purpose under it.[88]
Yet the struggle ends in renunciation, and Salinguerra arrives to find Sordello dead, “under his foot the badge”: but
Still, Palma said,
A triumph lingering in the wide eyes.[89]
In Rabbi Ben Ezra a more material conception of life is to be expected from the change in the personality of the soliloquist. The Jewish Rabbi of the twelfth century takes the place of the Mantuan poet of the thirteenth. The Rabbi also recognizes the limitations imposed by the body upon the development of the soul.
Pleasant is this flesh,
Our soul, in its rose-mesh
Pulled ever to the earth, still yearns for rest. (R. B. E., xi.)
·······
Thy body at its best,
How far can that project thy soul on its lone way? (viii.)
Yet, since “gifts should prove their use,” he would, in so far as may be, utilize the body for the advancement of the soul.