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XI.

So Julio went to drown,–when life was dull,
But took his corks, and merely had a bath;
And once he pull’d a trigger at his skull,
But merely broke a window in his wrath;
And once, his hopeless being to annul,
He tied a pack-thread to a beam of lath,
A line so ample, ’twas a query whether
‘Twas meant to be a halter or a tether.

XII.

Smile not in scorn, that Julio did not thrust
His sorrows thro’–’tis horrible to die!
And come down, with our little all of dust,
That dun of all the duns to satisfy:
To leave life’s pleasant city as we must,
In Death’s most dreary spunging-house to lie,
Where even all our personals must go
To pay the debt of nature that we owe!

XIII.

So Julio liv’d:–’twas nothing but a pet
He took at life–a momentary spite;
Besides, he hoped that time would some day get
The better of love’s flame, howover bright;
A thing that time has never compass’d yet,
For love, we know, is an immortal light.
Like that old fire, that, quite beyond a doubt,
Was always in,–for none have found it out.

XIV.

Meanwhile, Bianca dream’d–’twas once when Night
Along the darken’d plain began to creep,
Like a young Hottentot, whose eyes are bright,
Altho’ in skin as sooty as a sweep:
The flow’rs had shut their eyes–the zephyr light
Was gone, for it had rock’d the leaves to sleep.
And all the little birds had laid their heads
Under their wings–sleeping in feather beds.

XV.

Lone in her chamber sate the dark-ey’d maid,
By easy stages jaunting thro’ her pray’rs,
But list’ning side-long to a serenade,
That robb’d the saints a little of their shares;
For Julio underneath the lattice play’d
His Deh Vieni, and such amorous airs,
Born only underneath Italian skies,
Where every fiddle has a Bridge of Sighs.

XVI.

Sweet was the tune–the words were even sweeter–
Praising her eyes, her lips, her nose, her hair,
With all the common tropes wherewith in metre
The hackney poets overcharge their fair.
Her shape was like Diana’s, but completer;
Her brow with Grecian Helen’s might compare:
Cupid, alas! was cruel Sagittarius,
Julio–the weeping water-man Aquarius.

XVII.

Now, after listing to such laudings rare,
‘Twas very natural indeed to go–
What if she did postpone one little pray’r–
To ask her mirror “if it was not so?”
‘Twas a large mirror, none the worse for wear,
Reflecting her at once from top to toe:
And there she gazed upon that glossy track,
That show’d her front face tho’ it “gave her back.”

XVIII.

And long her lovely eyes were held in thrall,
By that dear page where first the woman reads:
That Julio was no flatt’rer, none at all,
She told herself–and then she told her beads;
Meanwhile, the nerves insensibly let fall
Two curtains fairer than the lily breeds;
For Sleep had crept and kiss’d her unawares,
Just at the half-way milestone of her pray’rs.

XIX.

Then like a drooping rose so bended she,
Till her bow’d head upon her hand reposed;
But still she plainly saw, or seem’d to see,
That fair reflection, tho’ her eyes were closed,
A beauty-bright as it was wont to be,
A portrait Fancy painted while she dozed:
‘Tis very natural some people say,
To dream of what we dwell on in the day.

XX.

Still shone her face–yet not, alas! the same,
But ‘gan some dreary touches to assume,
And sadder thoughts, with sadder changes came–
Her eyes resigned their light, her lips their bloom,
Her teeth fell out, her tresses did the same,
Her cheeks were tinged with bile, her eyes with rheum:
There was a throbbing at her heart within,
For, oh! there was a shooting in her chin.