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(From Ginevra da Siena)
LET me go back to when I saw you last. | |
| Our lives till then had close together lain, | |
| Shaped each to each in habit, feeling, thought, | |
| Like almonds twinned within a single shell. | |
| What thought or hope was mine that was not yours? | 5 |
| What joy was mine that was not shared with you? | |
| All was so innocent when we were girls; | |
| Our little walks,—the days you spent with me | |
| In the old villa,—where, with arms loose clasped | |
| Around each other’s waists, we roamed along | 10 |
| Among the giant orange-pots that stood | |
| At every angle of our garden-plot, | |
| And told our secrets, while the fountain plashed, | |
| And, waving in the breeze, its veil of mist | |
| Swept o’er our faces. Think of those long hours | 15 |
| We in the arched and open loggia sat | |
| Pricking the bright flowers on our broidery frames, | |
| And as we chatted, lifting oft our eyes, | |
| We gazed at Amiata’s purple height, | |
| Trembling behind its opal veil of air; | 20 |
| Or on the nearer slopes through the green lanes, | |
| Fenced either side with rich and running vines, | |
| Watched the white oxen trail their basket-carts, | |
| Or contadine with wide-flapping hats | |
| Singing amid the olives, whose old trunks | 25 |
| Stood knee-deep in the golden fields of grain. | |
| Do you remember the red poppies, too, | |
| That glowed amid the tender green of spring,— | |
| The purple larkspur that assumed their place | |
| Mid the sheared stubble of the autumn fields,— | 30 |
| The ilex walk,—the acacia’s fingered twigs,— | |
| The rose-hued oleanders peeping o’er | |
| The terraced wall,—the slanting wall that propped | |
| Our garden, from whose clefts the caper plants | |
| Spirted their leaves and burst in plumy flowers? | 35 |
| All these are still the same, they do not miss | |
| The eye that loved them so; and yet how oft | |
| I wonder if those old magnolia-trees | |
| Still feed the air with their great creamy flowers, | |
| And show the wind their rusted under-leaf. | 40 |
| I wonder if that trumpet-flower is dead. | |
| O heaven! they all should be, I loved them so; | |
| Some one has killed them, if they have not died. | |
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| But you can see the villa any day, | |
| And I am wearying you. Yet all these things | 45 |
| Are beads upon the rosary of youth, | |
| And just to say their names recalls those hours | |
| So full of joy,—each bead is like a prayer. | |
| How many an hour I ’ve sat and dreamed of them! | |
| And dear Siena, with its Campo tower | 50 |
| That seems to fall against the trooping clouds, | |
| And the great Duomo with its pavement rich, | |
| Till sick at heart I felt that I must die. | |
| People are kneeling there upon it now, | |
| But I shall never kneel there any more; | 55 |
| And bells ring out on happy festivals, | |
| And all the pious people flock to mass, | |
| But I shall never go there any more. | |
| How all these little things come back to me | |
| That I shall never see,—no, nevermore! | 60 |
| O, kiss the pavement, dear, when you go back! | |
| Whisper a prayer for me where once I knelt, | |
| And tell the dead stones how I love them still. | |
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