“ I love my Walter profoundly,--you, Maude, though you

faltered a week, For the sake of ... what was it ? an eyebrow ? or, less

still, a mole on a cheek ?

" And since, when all's said, you're too noble to stoop to

the frivolous cant About crimes irresistible, virtues that swindle, betray and

supplant,

“I determined to prove to yourself that, whate'er you

might dream or avow By illusion, you wanted precisely no more of me than

you have now.

“ There ! look me full in the face !-in the face. Under

stand, if you can, That the eyes of such women as I am, are clean as the

palm of a man.

“ Drop his hand, you insult him. Avoid us for fear we

should cost you a scarYou take us for harlots, I tell you, and not for the women

we are.

“ 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.

a

“ 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 BIANCA AMONG THE NIGHTINGALES.

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 crystallised the vales'

Broad slopes until the hills grew strong :
The fireflies and the nightingales

Throbbed each to either, flame and song.
The nightingales, the nightingales.

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.

We paled with love, we shook with love,

We kissed so close we could not vow ;
Till Giulio whispered, “Sweet, above

God's Ever guarantees 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

My native Florence ! dear, foregone!

I see across the Alpine ridge How the last feast-day of St. 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.

up

I seem to float, we seem to float

Down Arno's stream in festive guise ; A boat strikes Alame into our boat

And that lady seems to rise As then she rose. The shock had flashed

A vision on us! What a head, What leaping eyeballs I-beauty dashed

To splendour by a sudden dread. And still they sing, the nightingales.

As for me,

Too bold to sin, too weak to die;

Such women are so.
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.

.

She had not reached him at my heart

With her fine tongue, as snakes indeed Kill Alies ; nor had I, for my part,

Yearned after, in my desperate need,

And followed him as he did her

To coasts left bitter by the tide, Whose very nightingales, elsewhere

Delighting, torture and deride! For still they sing, the nightingales.

A worthless woman ! mere cold clay

As all false things are ! but so fair,
She takes the breath of men away

Who gaze upon her unaware.
I would not play her larcenous tricks

To have her looks! She lied and stole,
And spat into my love's pure pyx

The rank saliva of her soul.
And still they sing, the nightingales.

I would not for her white and pink,

Though such he likes—her grace of limb, Though such he has praised-nor yet, I think,

For life itself, though spent with him, Commit such sacrilege, affront

God's nature which is love, intrude 'Twixt two affianced souls, and hunt

Like spiders, in the altar's wood. I cannot bear these nightingales.

If she chose sin, some gentler guise

She might have sinned in, so it seems : She might have pricked out both my eyes,

And I still seen him in my dreams!
-Or drugged me in my soup or wine,

Nor left me angry afterward :
To die here with his hand in mine,

His breath upon me, were not hard. (Our Lady hush these nightingales !)