No More Learning

"Drop his hand, you insult him. Avoid us for fear we should cost you
a scar--
You take us for harlots, I tell you, and not for the women we are.

XXVI.

"You wronged me: but then I considered . . . there's Walter! And so at
the end
I vowed that he should not be mulcted, by me, in the hand of a
friend.

XXVII.

"Have I hurt you indeed? We are quits then. Nay, friend of my
Walter, be mine!
Come, Dora, my darling, my angel, and help me to ask him to dine. "




BIANCA AMONG THE NIGHTINGALES.


I.
The cypress stood up like a church
That night we felt our love would hold,
And saintly moonlight seemed to search
And wash the whole world clean as gold;
The olives crystallized the vales'
Broad slopes until the hills grew strong:
The fire-flies and the nightingales
Throbbed each to either, flame and song.
The nightingales, the nightingales!

II.

Upon the angle of its shade
The cypress stood, self-balanced high;
Half up, half down, as double-made,
Along the ground, against the sky;
And _we_, too! from such soul-height went
Such leaps of blood, so blindly driven,
We scarce knew if our nature meant
Most passionate earth or intense heaven
The nightingales, the nightingales!

III.

We paled with love, we shook with love,
We kissed so close we could not vow;
Till Giulio whispered "Sweet, above
God's Ever guaranties this Now. "
And through his words the nightingales
Drove straight and full their long clear call,
Like arrows through heroic mails,
And love was awful in it all.
The nightingales, the nightingales!

IV.

O cold white moonlight of the north,
Refresh these pulses, quench this hell!
O coverture of death drawn forth
Across this garden-chamber . . . well!
But what have nightingales to do
In gloomy England, called the free .