Over the Giudecca piled;

Window just with window mating,
Door on door exactly waiting,
All's the set face of a child:
But behind it, where's a trace
Of the staidness and reserve,
And formal lines without a curve,
In the same child's playing-face?
No two windows look one way
O'er the small sea-water thread
Below them. Ah, the autumn day
I, passing, saw you overhead!
First, out a cloud of curtain blew,
Then a sweet cry, and last came you
To catch your lory that must needs
Escape just then, of all times then,
To peck a tall plant's fleecy seeds,
And make me happiest of men.

I scarce could breathe to see you reach
So far back o'er the balcony

To catch him ere he climbed too high
Above you in the Smyrna peach,

That quick the round smooth cord of gold,

This coiled hair on your head, unrolled,
Fell down you like a gorgeous snake
The Roman girls were wont, of old,
When Rome there was, for coolness' sake
To let lie curling o'er their bosoms.
Dear lory, may his beak retain
Ever its delicate rose stain
As if the wounded lotus-blossoms
Had marked their thief to know again!

With all its rarities that ache In silence while day lasts, but wake At night-time and their life renew, Suspended just to pleasure you Who brought against their will together. These objects, and, while day lasts, weave Around them such a magic tether

That dumb they look: your harp, believe,

With all the sensitive tight strings
Which dare not speak, now to itself
Breathes slumberously, as if some elf
Went in and out the chords, his wings
Make murmur wheresoe'er they graze,
As an angel may, between the maze

Of midnight palace-pillars, on

And on, to sow God's plagues, have gone
Through guilty glorious Babylon.

And while such murmurs flow, the nymph
Bends o'er the harp-top from her shell
As the dry limpet for the lymph

Come with a tune he knows so well.
And how your statues' hearts must swell!
And how your pictures must descend
To see each other, friend with friend!
Oh, could you take them by surprise,
You'd find Schidone's eager Duke
Doing the quaintest courtesies

To that prim saint by Haste-thee-Luke!
And, deeper into her rock den,
Bold Castelfranco's Magdalen
You'd find retreated from the ken
Of that robed counsel-keeping Ser
As if the Tizian thinks of her,
And is not, rather, gravely bent
On seeing for himself what toys
Are these, his progeny invent,
What litter now the board employs
Whereon he signed a document
That got him murdered! Each enjoys
Its night so well, you cannot break
The sport up, so, indeed must make
More stay with me, for others' sake.
She speaks

To-morrow, if a harp-string, say,
Is used to tie the jasmine back
That overfloods my room with sweets,
Contrive your Zorzi somehow meets
My Zanze! If the ribbon's black,
The Three are watching: keep away!

Your gondola - let Zorzi wreathe
A mesh of water-weeds about
Its prow, as if he unaware

Had struck some quay or bridge-foot stair!

That I may throw a paper out

As you and he go underneath.

There's Zanze's vigilant taper; safe are

we.

Only one minute more to-night with me?
Resume your past self of a month ago!
Be you the bashful gallant, I will be
The lady with the colder breast than

snow.

Now bow you, as becomes, nor touch my hand

More than I touch yours when I step to land,

And say, "All thanks, Siora!"

Heart to heart And lips to lips! Yet once more, ere we part,

Clasp me and make me thine, as mine thou art!

[He is surprised, and stabbed.]

It was ordained to be so, sweet! and best

'Twas moonset at starting; but while we drew near

Lokeren, the cocks crew and twilight dawned clear;

At Boom, a great yellow star came out to see;

At Düffeld, 'twas morning as plain as could be;

And from Mecheln church-steeple we heard the half-chime,

So Joris broke silence with, "Yet there is time!"

At Aershot, up leaped of a sudden the

sun,

breast.

And sunk tail, and horrible heave of the flank,

As down on her haunches she shuddered and sank.

-Old Gandolf with his paltry onionstone,

Put me where I may look at him! True peach,

church

What then? So much was saved if
aught were missed!

My sons, ye would not be my death?
Go dig

The white-grape vineyard where the oilpress stood,

Drop water gently till the surface sink, And if ye find. Ah God, I know not,

I!.. Bedded in store of rotten fig-leaves soft, And corded up in a tight olive-frail, Some lump, ah God, of lapis lazuli, Big as a Jew's head cut off at the nape, Blue as a vein o'er the Madonna's breast. Sons, all have I bequeathed you, villas, all,

That brave Frascati villa with its bath, So, let the blue lump poise between my knees,

Like God the Father's globe on both his hands

Ye worship in the Jesu Church so gay, For Gandolf shall not choose but see and burst!

Swift as a weaver's shuttle fleet our years: Man goeth to the grave, and where is he? Did I say basalt for my slab, sons? Black

Nay, boys, ye love me all of jasper,

then!

And marble's language, Latin pure, discreet,

Aha, ELUCESCEBAT quoth our friend? No Tully, said I, Ulpian at the best! Evil and brief hath been my pilgrimage. All lapis, all, sons! Else I give the Pope My villas! Will ye ever eat my heart? Ever your eyes were as a lizard's quick, They glitter like your mother's for my soul,

Thou return with the joyful assurance the King liveth yet,

Shall our lip with the honey be bright, with the water be wet.

For out of the black mid-tent's silence, a space of three days,

Not a sound hath escaped to thy servants, of prayer nor of praise, To betoken that Saul and the Spirit have ended their strife,

arch sinks back upon life.

II

"Yet now my heart leaps, O beloved! God's child with his dew

On thy gracious gold hair, and those lilies still living and blue Just broken to twine round thy harpstrings, as if no wild heat Were now raging to torture the desert!"

III

Then I, as was meet, Knelt down to the God of my fathers, and rose on my feet,

And ran o'er the sand burnt to powder. The tent was unlooped;

I pulled up the spear that obstructed, and under I stooped;

Hands and knees on the slippery grass-
patch, all withered and gone,
That extends to the second enclosure, I
groped my way on

Till I felt where the foldskirts fly open.
Then once more I prayed,
And opened the foldskirts and entered,
and was not afraid

But spoke, "Here is David, thy serv-
ant!" And no voice replied.
At the first I saw naught but the black-
ness but soon I descried
A something more black than the black-
ness the vast, the upright
Main prop which sustains the pavilion:
and slow into sight

Grew a figure against it, gigantic and blackest of all.

Then a sunbeam, that burst through the tent-roof, showed Saul.