| |
| INSIDE this northern summer’s fold | |
| The fields are full of naked gold, | |
| Broadcast from heaven on lands it loves; | |
| The green veiled air is full of doves; | |
| Soft leaves that sift the sunbeams let | 5 |
| Light on the small warm grasses wet, | |
| Fall in short broken kisses sweet, | |
| And break again like waves that beat | |
| Round the sun’s feet. | |
| |
| But I, for all this English mirth | 10 |
| Of golden-shod and dancing days, | |
| And the old green-girt, sweet-hearted earth, | |
| Desire what here no spell can raise. | |
| Far hence, with holier heavens above, | |
| The lovely city of my love | 15 |
| Bathes deep in the sun-satiate air | |
| That flows round no fair thing more fair | |
| Her beauty bare. | |
| |
| There the utter sky is holier, there | |
| More pure the intense white height of air, | 20 |
| More clear men’s eyes that mine would meet, | |
| And the sweet springs of things more sweet. | |
| There for this one warm note of doves | |
| A clamor of a thousand loves | |
| Storms the night’s ear, the day’s assails, | 25 |
| From the tempestuous nightingales, | |
| And fills, and fails. | |
| |
| O gracious city well-beloved, | |
| Italian, and a maiden crowned, | |
| Siena, my feet are no more moved | 30 |
| Toward thy strange-shapen mountain-bound: | |
| But my heart in me turns and moves, | |
| O lady loveliest of my loves, | |
| Toward thee, to lie before thy feet | |
| And gaze from thy fair fountain-seat | 35 |
| Up the sheer street; | |
| |
| And the house midway hanging see | |
| That saw Saint Catherine bodily, | |
| Felt on its floors her sweet feet move, | |
| And the live light of fiery love | 40 |
| Burn from her beautiful, strange face, | |
| As in the sanguine sacred place | |
| Where in pure hands she took the head | |
| Severed, and with pure lips still red | |
| Kissed the lips dead. * * * * * | 45 |
| For the outer land is sad, and wears | |
| A raiment of a flaming fire; | |
| And the fierce, fruitless mountain stairs | |
| Climb, yet seem wroth and loth to aspire, | |
| Climb, and break, and are broken down, | 50 |
| And through their clefts and crests the town | |
| Looks west and sees the dead sun lie | |
| In sanguine death that stains the sky | |
| With angry dye. | |
| |
| And from the war-worn wastes without | 55 |
| In twilight, in the time of doubt, | |
| One sound comes of one whisper, where, | |
| Moved with low motions of slow air, | |
| The great trees nigh the castle swing | |
| In the sad colored evening; | 60 |
| “Ricorditi di me, che son | |
| La Pia,”—that small sweet word alone | |
| Is not yet gone. | |
| |
| “Ricorditi di me,”—the sound | |
| Sole out of deep dumb days remote | 65 |
| Across the fiery and fatal ground | |
| Comes tender as a hurt bird’s note | |
| To where, a ghost with empty hands, | |
| A woe-worn ghost, her palace stands | |
| In the mid city, where the strong | 70 |
| Bells turn the sunset air to song, | |
| And the towers throng. | |
| |
| With other face, with speech the same, | |
| A mightier maiden’s likeness came | |
| Late among mourning men that slept, | 75 |
| A sacred ghost that went and wept, | |
| White as the passion-wounded Lamb, | |
| Saying, “Ah, remember me, that am | |
| Italia.” (From deep sea to sea | |
| Earth heard, earth knew her, that this was she.) | 80 |
| “Ricorditi.” * * * * * | |
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