Let the watching lids wink!
Day's ablaze with eyes, think!
Deep into the night, drink!
Ottima. Night? Such may be your Rhineland nights, perhaps;
But this blood-red beam through the shutter's chink5
—We call such light the morning: let us see!
Mind how you grope your way, though! How these tall
Naked geraniums straggle! Push the lattice
Behind that frame!—Nay, do I bid you?—Sebald,
It shakes the dust down on me! Why, of course10
The slide-bolt catches. Well, are you content,
Or must I find you something else to spoil?
Kiss and be friends, my Sebald! Is 't full morning?
Oh, don't speak then!
Sebald.Aye, thus it used to be.
Ever your house was, I remember, shut15
Till midday; I observed that, as I strolled
On mornings through the vale here; country girls
Were noisy, washing garments in the brook,
Hinds drove the slow white oxen up the hills;
But no, your house was mute, would ope no eye.20
And wisely; you were plotting one thing there,
Nature, another outside. I looked up—
Rough white wood shutters, rusty iron bars,
Silent as death, blind in a flood of light,
Oh, I remember!—and the peasants laughed25
And said, "The old man sleeps with the young wife."
This house was his, this chair, this window—his!
Ottima. Ah, the clear morning! I can see St. Mark's;
That black streak is the belfry. Stop: Vicenza
Should lie—there's Padua, plain enough, that blue!30
Look o'er my shoulder, follow my finger!
Sebald.Morning?
It seems to me a night with a sun added.
Where's dew, where's freshness? That bruised plant, I bruised
In getting through the lattice yestereve,
Droops as it did. See, here's my elbow's mark35
I' the dust o' the sill.
Ottima.Oh, shut the lattice, pray!
Sebald. Let me lean out. I cannot scent blood here,
Foul as the morn may be.
There, shut the world out!
How do you feel now, Ottima? There, curse
The world and all outside! Let us throw off40
This mask: how do you bear yourself? Let's out
With all of it.
Ottima.Best never speak of it.
Sebald. Best speak again and yet again of it.
Till words cease to be more than words. "His blood,"
For instance—let those two words mean "His blood"45
And nothing more. Notice, I'll say them now,
"His blood."
Ottima.Assuredly if I repented
The deed—