FullReads

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 …
(Yes, free to die in!…) when we two
Are sundered, singing still to me?
And still they sing, the nightingales!

V.

I think I hear him, how he cried
“My own soul’s life!” between their notes.
Each man has but one soul supplied,
And that’s immortal. Though his throat’s
On fire with passion now, to her
He can’t say what to me he said!
And yet he moves her, they aver.
The nightingales sing through my head,–
The nightingales, the nightingales!

VI.

He says to her what moves her most.
He would not name his soul within
Her hearing,–rather pays her cost
With praises to her lips and chin.
Man has but one soul, ‘t is ordained,
And each soul but one love, I add;
Yet souls are damned and love’s profaned;
These nightingales will sing me mad!
The nightingales, the nightingales!

VII.

I marvel how the birds can sing.
There’s little difference, in their view,
Betwixt our Tuscan trees that spring
As vital flames into the blue,
And dull round blots of foliage meant,
Like saturated sponges here,
To suck the fogs up. As content
Is he too in this land, ‘t is clear.
And still they sing, the nightingales.

VIII.

My native Florence! dear, forgone!
I see across the Alpine ridge
How the last feast-day of Saint John
Shot rockets from Carraia bridge.
The luminous city, tall with fire,
Trod deep down in that river of ours,
While many a boat with lamp and choir
Skimmed birdlike over glittering towers.
I will not hear these nightingales.

IX.

I seem to float, we seem to float
Down Arno’s stream in festive guise;
A boat strikes flame into our boat,
And up that lady seems to rise
As then she rose. The shock had flashed
A vision on us! What a head,
What leaping eyeballs!–beauty dashed
To splendour by a sudden dread.
And still they sing, the nightingales.

X.

Too bold to sin, too weak to die;
Such women are so. As for me,
I would we had drowned there, he and I,
That moment, loving perfectly.
He had not caught her with her loosed
Gold ringlets … rarer in the south …
Nor heard the “Grazie tanto” bruised
To sweetness by her English mouth.
And still they sing, the nightingales.