Forgive me, love, but thus alone
My time is cheered while thou art gone.
EXTRACT XI.
Florence.
No--'tis not the region where Love's to be found--
They have bosoms that sigh, they have glances that rove,
They have language a Sappho's own lip might resound,
When she warbled her best--but they've nothing like Love.
Nor is't that pure _sentiment_ only they want,
Which Heaven for the mild and the tranquil hath made--
Calm, wedded affection, that home-rooted plant
Which sweetens seclusion and smiles in the shade;
That feeling which, after long years have gone by,
Remains like a portrait we've sat for in youth,
Where, even tho' the flush of the colors may fly,
The features still live in their first smiling truth;
That union where all that in Woman is kind,
With all that in Man most ennoblingly towers,
Grow wreathed into one--like the column, combined
Of the _strength_ of the shaft and the capital's _flowers_.
Of this--bear ye witness, ye wives, everywhere,
By the ARNO, the PO, by all ITALY'S streams--
Of this heart-wedded love, so delicious to share,
Not a husband hath even one glimpse in his dreams.
But it _is_ not this only;--born full of the light
Of a sun from whose fount the luxuriant festoons
Of these beautiful valleys drink lustre so bright
That beside him our suns of the north are but moons,--
We might fancy at least, like their climate they burned;
And that Love tho' unused in this region of spring
To be thus to a tame Household Deity turned,
Would yet be all soul when abroad on the wing.
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