Bianca Among The Nightingales
The cypress stood up like a church
That night we felt our love would hold,
And saintly moonlight seemed to search
And wash the whole world as gold;
The olives crystallized the vales
Broad slopes until the hills grew strong:
The fireflies and the nightingales
Throbbed each to either, flame and song.
The nightihe nightingales.
Upon the angle of its shade
The cypress stood, self-balanced high;
Half up, half down, as double-made,
Along the ground, against the sky.
Aoo! from such soul-height went
Such leaps of blood, so blindly driven,
We scarew if our nature meant
Most passionate earth or intense heaven.
The nightihe nightingales.
We paled with love, we shook with love,
We kissed so close we could not vow;
Till Giulio whispered, Sweet, above
Gods Ever guarahis Now.
And through his words the nightingales
Drove straight and full their long clear call,
Like arrows through heroic mails,
And love was awful in it all.
The nightihe nightingales.
O cold white moonlight of the north,
Refresh these pulses, quench this hell!
O coverture of death drawn forth
Across this garden-chamber... well!
But what have nightio do
In gloomy England, called the free.
(Yes, free to die in!...) whewo
Are sundered, singing still to me?
And still they sing, the nightingales.
I think I hear him, how he cried
My own souls life between their notes.
Each man has but one soul supplied,
And thats immortal. Though his throats
On fire with passion now, to her
He t say what to me he said!
A he moves her, they aver.
The nightingales sing through my head.
The nightihe nightingales.
He says to her what moves her most.
He would not name his soul within
Her hearing,—rather pays her cost
With praises to her lips and .
Man has but one soul, tis ordained,
And each soul but one love, I add;
Yet souls are damned and loves profaned.
These nightingales will sing me mad!
The nightihe nightingales.
I marvel how the birds sing.
Theres little difference, in their view,
Betwixt our Tus trees that spring
As vital flames into the blue,
And dull round blots of foliage meant
Like saturated sponges here
To suck the fogs up. As tent
Is he too in this land, tis clear.
And still they sing, the nightingales.
My native Florence! dear, fone!
I see across the Alpine ridge
How the last feast-day of Saint John
Shot rockets from Carraia bridge.
The luminous city, tall with fire,
Trod deep down in that river of ours,
While many a boat with lamp and choir
Skimmed birdlike littering towers.
I will not hear these nightingales.
I seem to float, we seem to float
Down Arnos stream iive guise;
A boat strikes flame into our boat,
And up that lady seems to rise
As then she rose. The shock had flashed
A vision on us! What a head,
What leaping eyeballs!—beauty dashed
To splendour by a sudden dread.
And still they sing, the nightingales.
Too bold to sin, too weak to die;
Suen are so. As for me,
I would we had drowhere, he and I,
That moment, loving perfectly.
He had not