• So close they gathered round me—they would all
• Be with me when I reached the spot at last,
• To plead my cause with her against herself
• So changed, O Father, if you knew all this
• You cannot know, then you would know too, Father,
• And only then, if God can pardon me.
• 20 What can be told I'll tell, if you will hear.

• I passed a village-fair upon my road,
• And thought, being empty-handed, I would take
• Some little present: such might prove, I said,
• Either a pledge between us, or (God help me!)
• A parting gift. And there it was I bought
• The knife I spoke of, such as women wear.

• That day, some three hours afterwards, I found
• For certain, it must be a parting gift.
• And, standing silent now at last, I looked
• 30 Into her scornful face; and heard the sea
• Still trying hard to din into my ears
• Some speech it knew which still might change her heart,
• If only it could make me understand.
• One moment thus. Another, and her face
• Seemed further off than the last line of sea,
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• So that I thought, if now she were to speak
• I could not hear her. Then again I knew
• All, as we stood together on the sand
• At Iglio, in the first thin shade o' the hills.

• 40 ‘Take it,’ I said, and held it out to her,
• While the hilt glanced within my trembling hold;
• ‘Take it and keep it for my sake,’ I said.
• Her neck unbent not, neither did her eyes
• Move, nor her foot left beating of the sand;
• Only she put it by from her and laughed.

• Father, you hear my speech and not her laugh;
• But God heard that. Will God remember all?

• It was another laugh than the sweet sound
• Which rose from her sweet childish heart, that day
• 50 Eleven years before, when first I found her
• Alone upon the hill-side; and her curls
• Shook down in the warm grass as she looked up
• Out of her curls in my eyes bent to hers.
• She might have served a painter to pourtray
• That heavenly child which in the latter days
• Shall walk between the lion and the lamb.
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• I had been for nights in hiding, worn and sick
• And hardly fed; and so her words at first
• Seemed fitful like the talking of the trees
• 60 And voices in the air that knew my name.
• And I remember that I sat me down
• Upon the slope with her, and thought the world
• Must be all over or had never been,
• We seemed there so alone. And soon she told me
• Her parents both were gone away from her.
• I thought perhaps she meant that they had died;
• But when I asked her this, she looked again
• Into my face, and said that yestereve
• They kissed her long, and wept and made her weep,
• 70 And gave her all the bread they had with them,
• And then had gone together up the hill
• Where we were sitting now, and had walked on
• Into the great red light; ‘and so,’ she said,
• ‘I have come up here too; and when this evening
• They step out of the light as they stepped in,
• I shall be here to kiss them.’ And she laughed.

• Then I bethought me suddenly of the famine;
• And how the church-steps throughout all the town,
• When last I had been there a month ago,
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• 80 Swarmed with starved folk; and how the bread was
• weighed
• By Austrians armed; and women that I knew
• For wives and mothers walked the public street,
• Saying aloud that if their husbands feared
• To snatch the children's food, themselves would stay
• Till they had earned it there. So then this child
• Was piteous to me; for all told me then
• Her parents must have left her to God's chance,
• To man's or to the Church's charity,
• Because of the great famine, rather than
• 90 To watch her growing thin between their knees.
• With that, God took my mother's voice and spoke,
• And sights and sounds came back and things long since,
• And all my childhood found me on the hills;
• And so I took her with me.

• I was young,
• Scarce man then, Father; but the cause which gave
• The wounds I die of now had brought me then
• Some wounds already; and I lived alone,
• As any hiding hunted man must live.
• It was no easy thing to keep a child
• 100 In safety; for herself it was not safe,
• And doubled my own danger: but I knew
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• That God would help me.

• Yet a little while
• Pardon me, Father, if I pause. I think
• I have been speaking to you of some matters
• There was no need to speak of, have I not?
• You do not know how clearly those things stood
• Within my mind, which I have spoken of,
• Nor how they strove for utterance. Life all past
• Is like the sky when the sun sets in it,
• 110 Clearest where furthest off.

• I told you how
• She scorned my parting gift and laughed. And yet
• A woman's laugh's another thing sometimes:
• I think they laugh in Heaven. I know last night
• I dreamed I saw into the garden of God,
• Where women walked whose painted images
• I have seen with candles round them in the church.
• They bent this way and that, one to another,
• Playing: and over the long golden hair
• Of each there floated like a ring of fire
• 120 Which when she stooped stooped with her, and when
• she rose
• Rose with her. Then a breeze flew in among them,
• As if a window had been opened in heaven
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• For God to give His blessing from, before
• This world of ours should set; (for in my dream
• I thought our world was setting, and the sun
• Flared, a spent taper;) and beneath that gust
• The rings of light quivered like forest-leaves.
• Then all the blessed maidens who were there
• Stood up together, as it were a voice
• 130 That called them; and they threw their tresses back,
• And smote their palms, and all laughed up at once,
• For the strong heavenly joy they had in them
• To hear God bless the world. Wherewith I woke:
• And looking round, I saw as usual
• That she was standing there with her long locks
• Pressed to her side; and her laugh ended theirs.

• For always when I see her now, she laughs.
• And yet her childish laughter haunts me too,
• The life of this dead terror; as in days
• 140 When she, a child, dwelt with me. I must tell
• Something of those days yet before the end.

• I brought her from the city—one such day
• When she was still a merry loving child,—
• The earliest gift I mind my giving her;
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• A little image of a flying Love
• Made of our coloured glass-ware, in his hands
• A dart of gilded metal and a torch.
• And him she kissed and me, and fain would know
• Why were his poor eyes blindfold, why the wings
• 150 And why the arrow. What I knew I told
• Of Venus and of Cupid,—strange old tales.
• And when she heard that he could rule the loves
• Of men and women, still she shook her head
• And wondered; and, ‘Nay, nay,’ she murmured still,
• ‘So strong, and he a younger child than I!’
• And then she'd have me fix him on the wall
• Fronting her little bed; and then again
• She needs must fix him there herself, because
• I gave him to her and she loved him so,
• 160 And he should make her love me better yet,
• If women loved the more, the more they grew.
• But the fit place upon the wall was high
• For her, and so I held her in my arms:
• And each time that the heavy pruning-hook
• I gave her for a hammer slipped away
• As it would often, still she laughed and laughed
• And kissed and kissed me. But amid her mirth,
• Just as she hung the image on the nail,
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• It slipped and all its fragments strewed the ground:
• 170 And as it fell she screamed, for in her hand
• The dart had entered deeply and drawn blood.
• And so her laughter turned to tears: and ‘Oh!’
• I said, the while I bandaged the small hand,—
• ‘That I should be the first to make you bleed,
• Who love and love and love you!’—kissing still
• The fingers till I got her safe to bed.
• And still she sobbed,—‘not for the pain at all,’
• She said, ‘but for the Love, the poor good Love
• You gave me.’ So she cried herself to sleep.

• 180 Another later thing comes back to me.
• 'Twas in those hardest foulest days of all,
• When still from his shut palace, sitting clean
• Above the splash of blood, old Metternich
• (May his soul die, and never-dying worms
• Feast on its pain for ever!) used to thin
• His year's doomed hundreds daintily, each month
• Thirties and fifties. This time, as I think,
• Was when his thrift forbad the poor to take
• That evil brackish salt which the dry rocks
• 190 Keep all through winter when the sea draws in.
• The first I heard of it was a chance shot
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• In the street here and there, and on the stones
• A stumbling clatter as of horse hemmed round.
• Then, when she saw me hurry out of doors,
• My gun slung at my shoulder and my knife
• Stuck in my girdle, she smoothed down my hair
• And laughed to see me look so brave, and leaped
• Up to my neck and kissed me. She was still
• A child; and yet that kiss was on my lips
• 200 So hot all day where the smoke shut us in.

• For now, being always with her, the first love
• I had—the father's, brother's love—was changed,
• I think, in somewise; like a holy thought
• Which is a prayer before one knows of it.
• The first time I perceived this, I remember,
• Was once when after hunting I came home
• Weary, and she brought food and fruit for me,
• And sat down at my feet upon the floor
• Leaning against my side. But when I felt
• 210 Her sweet head reach from that low seat of hers
• So high as to be laid upon my heart,
• I turned and looked upon my darling there
• And marked for the first time how tall she was;
• And my heart beat with so much violence
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• Under her cheek, I thought she could not choose
• But wonder at it soon and ask me why;
• And so I bade her rise and eat with me.
• And when, remembering all and counting back
• The time, I made out fourteen years for her
• 220 And told her so, she gazed at me with eyes
• As of the sky and sea on a grey day,
• And drew her long hands through her hair, and
• asked me
• If she was not a woman; and then laughed:
• And as she stooped in laughing, I could see
• Beneath the growing throat the breasts half-globed
• Like folded lilies deepset in the stream.

• Yes, let me think of her as then; for so
• Her image, Father, is not like the sights
• Which come when you are gone. She had a mouth
• 230 Made to bring death to life,—the underlip
• Sucked in, as if it strove to kiss itself.
• Her face was pearly pale, as when one stoops
• Over wan water; and the dark crisped hair
• And the hair's shadow made it paler still:—
• Deep-serried locks, the dimness of the cloud
• Where the moon's gaze is set in eddying gloom.
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• Her body bore her neck as the tree's stem
• Bears the top branch; and as the branch sustains
• The flower of the year's pride, her high neck bore
• 240 That face made wonderful with night and day.
• Her voice was swift, yet ever the last words
• Fell lingeringly; and rounded finger-tips
• She had, that clung a little where they touched
• And then were gone o' the instant. Her great eyes,
• That sometimes turned half dizzily beneath
• The passionate lids, as faint, when she would speak,
• Had also in them hidden springs of mirth,
• Which under the dark lashes evermore
• Shook to her laugh, as when a bird flies low
• 250 Between the water and the willow-leaves,
• And the shade quivers till he wins the light.

• I was a moody comrade to her then,
• For all the love I bore her. Italy,
• The weeping desolate mother, long has claimed
• Her sons' strong arms to lean on, and their hands
• To lop the poisonous thicket from her path,
• Cleaving her way to light. And from her need
• Had grown the fashion of my whole poor life
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• Which I was proud to yield her, as my father
• 260 Had yielded his. And this had come to be
• A game to play, a love to clasp, a hate
• To wreak, all things together that a man
• Needs for his blood to ripen; till at times
• All else seemed shadows, and I wondered still
• To see such life pass muster and be deemed
• Time's bodily substance. In those hours, no doubt,
• To the young girl my eyes were like my soul,—
• Dark wells of death-in-life that yearned for day.
• And though she ruled me always, I remember
• 270 That once when I was thus and she still kept
• Leaping about the place and laughing, I
• Did almost chide her; whereupon she knelt
• And putting her two hands into my breast
• Sang me a song. Are these tears in my eyes?
• 'Tis long since I have wept for anything.
• I thought that song forgotten out of mind;
• And now, just as I spoke of it, it came
• All back. It is but a rude thing, ill rhymed,
• Such as a blind man chaunts and his dog hears
• 280 Holding the platter, when the children run
• To merrier sport and leave him. Thus it goes:—

   

• La bella donna*
• Piangendo disse:
• ‘Come son fisse
• Le stelle in cielo!
• Quel fiato anelo
• Dello stanco sole,
• Quanto m' assonna!
• E la luna, macchiata

   

• 290Come uno specchio
• Logoro e vecchio,—
• Faccia affannata,
• Che cosa vuole?

• ‘Chè stelle, luna, e sole,
• Ciascun m' annoja
• E m' annojano insieme;
• Non me ne preme
• Nè ci prendo gioja.
• E veramente,
• 300Che le spalle sien franche
• E la braccia bianche
• E il seno caldo e tondo,
• Non mi fa niente.
• Chè cosa al mondo
• Posso più far di questi
• Se non piacciono a te, come dicesti?’

• La donna rise
• E riprese ridendo:—
• ‘Questa mano che prendo
• 310E dunque mia?
• Tu m' ami dunque?
• Dimmelo ancora,
• Non in modo qualunque,
• Ma le parole
• Belle e precise
• Che dicesti pria.

• ‘ Siccome suole
• La state talora
  page: 159  
• (Dicesti) un qualche istante
• 320 Tornare innanzi inverno,
• Così tu fai ch' io scerno
• Le foglie tutte quante,
• Ben ch' io certo tenessi
• Per passato l' autunno.

• ‘Eccolo il mio alunno!
• Io debbo insegnargli
• Quei cari detti istessi
• Ch' ei mi disse una volta!
• Oimè! Che cosa dargli,’
• 330(Ma ridea piano piano
• Dei baci in sulla mano,)
• ‘Ch' ei non m'abbia da lungo tempo tolta?’

• That I should sing upon this bed!—with you
• To listen, and such words still left to say!
• Yet was it I that sang? The voice seemed hers,
• As on the very day she sang to me;
• When, having done, she took out of my hand
• Something that I had played with all the while
• And laid it down beyond my reach; and so
• 340 Turning my face round till it fronted hers,—
• ‘Weeping or laughing, which was best?’ she said.

• But these are foolish tales. How should I show
• The heart that glowed then with love's heat, each day
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• More and more brightly?—when for long years now
• The very flame that flew about the heart,
• And gave it fiery wings, has come to be
• The lapping blaze of hell's environment
• Whose tongues all bid the molten heart despair.

• Yet one more thing comes back on me to-night
• 350 Which I may tell you: for it bore my soul
• Dread firstlings of the brood that rend it now.
• It chanced that in our last year's wanderings
• We dwelt at Monza, far away from home,
• If home we had: and in the Duomo there
• I sometimes entered with her when she prayed.
• An image of Our Lady stands there, wrought
• In marble by some great Italian hand
• In the great days when she and Italy
• Sat on one throne together: and to her
• 360 And to none else my loved one told her heart.
• She was a woman then; and as she knelt,—
• Her sweet brow in the sweet brow's shadow there,—
• They seemed two kindred forms whereby our land
• (Whose work still serves the world for miracle)
• Made manifest herself in womanhood.
• Father, the day I speak of was the first