Quick-spoken words of soft Italian speech:
So far the simple utterance seemed to reach,
To Roman skies my dreaming thoughts it bore,
While home’s familiar walls new aspect wore.
Seemed it almost, beneath that dark of dawn,
As if my feet fell Roman pavement on,
The lights that twinkled through the open door
Burning some altar, centuries old, before,
Whose glow, in truth, fell soft on northern fir
O’er whose dark shadow shone the face of her,