Do I put on the jewels rare
Thou'st always loved to see me wear?
Do I perfume the locks that thou
So oft hast braided o'er my brow,
Thus deckt thro' festive crowds to run,
And all the assembled world to see,—
All but the one, the absent one,
Worth more than present worlds to me!
No, nothing cheers this widowed heart—
My only joy from thee apart,
From thee thyself, is sitting hours
And days before thy pictured form—
That dream of thee, which Raphael's powers
Have made with all but life-breath warm!
And as I smile to it, and say
The words I speak to thee in play,
I fancy from their silent frame,
Those eyes and lips give back the same:
And still I gaze, and still they keep
Smiling thus on me—till I weep!
Our little boy too knows it well,
For there I lead him every day
And teach his lisping lips to tell
The name of one that's far away.
Forgive me, love, but thus alone
My time is cheered while thou art gone.
EXTRACT XI.
Florence.
No—'tis not the region where Love's to be found—
They have bosoms that sigh, they have glances that rove,
They have language a Sappho's own lip might resound,
When she warbled her best—but they've nothing like Love.
Nor is't that pure sentiment only they want,
Which Heaven for the mild and the tranquil hath made—
Calm, wedded affection, that home-rooted plant
Which sweetens seclusion and smiles in the shade;
That feeling which, after long years have gone by,
Remains like a portrait we've sat for in youth,
Where, even tho' the flush of the colors may fly,
The features still live in their first smiling truth;
That union where all that in Woman is kind,
With all that in Man most ennoblingly towers,
Grow wreathed into one—like the column, combined
Of the strength of the shaft and the capital's flowers.
Of this—bear ye witness, ye wives, everywhere,
By the ARNO, the PO, by all ITALY'S streams—
Of this heart-wedded love, so delicious to share,
Not a husband hath even one glimpse in his dreams.
But it is not this only;—born full of the light
Of a sun from whose fount the luxuriant festoons
Of these beautiful valleys drink lustre so bright
That beside him our suns of the north are but moons,—
We might fancy at least, like their climate they burned;
And that Love tho' unused in this region of spring
To be thus to a tame Household Deity turned,
Would yet be all soul when abroad on the wing.