(FROM BOCCACCIO.)

I will that if I say a heavy thing 
Your tongues forgive me; seeing ye know that spring 
Has flecks and fits of pain to keep her sweet, 
And walks somewhile with winter-bitten feet. 
Moreover it sounds often well to let 
One string, when ye play music, keep at fret 
The whole song through; one petal that is dead 
Confirms the roses, be they white or red; 
Dead sorrow is not sorrowful to hear 
As the thick noise that breaks mid weeping were; 
The sick sound aching in a lifted throat 
Turns to sharp silver of a perfect note; 
And though the rain falls often, and with rain 
Late autumn falls on the old red leaves like pain, 
I deem that God is not disquieted. 
Also while men are fed with wine and bread, 
They shall be fed with sorrow at his hand. 
There grew a rose-garden in Florence land 
More fair than many; all red summers through 
The leaves smelt sweet and sharp of rain, and blew 
Sideways with tender wind; and therein fell 
Sweet sound wherewith the green waxed audible, 
As a bird's will to sing disturbed his throat 
And set the sharp wings forward like a boat 
Pushed through soft water, moving his brown side 
Smooth-shapen as a maid's, and shook with pride 
His deep warm bosom, till the heavy sun's 
Set face of heat stopped all the songs at once. 
The ways were clean to walk and delicate; 
And when the windy white of March grew late, 
Before the trees took heart to face the sun 
With ravelled raiment of lean winter on, 
The roots were thick and hot with hollow grass. 
Some roods away a lordly house there was, 
Cool with broad courts and latticed passage wet 
From rush-flowers and lilies ripe to set, 
Sown close among the strewings of the floor; 
And either wall of the slow corridor 
Was dim with deep device of gracious things; 
Some angel's steady mouth and weight of wings 
Shut to the side; or Peter with straight stole 
And beard cut black against the aureole 
That spanned his head from nape to crown; thereby 
Mary's gold hair, thick to the girdle-tie 
Wherein was bound a child with tender feet; 
Or the broad cross with blood nigh brown on it.


Within this house a righteous lord abode, 
Ser Averardo; patient of his mood, 
And just of judgment; and to child he had 
A maid so sweet that her mere sight made glad 
Men sorrowing, and unbound the brows of hate; 
And where she came, the lips that pain made strait 
Waxed warm and wide, and from untender grew 
Tender as those that sleep brings patience to. 
Such long locks had she, that with knee to chin 
She might have wrapped and warmed her feet therein. 
Right seldom fell her face on weeping wise; 
Gold hair she had, and golden-coloured eyes, 
Filled with clear light and fire and large repose 
Like a fair hound's; no man there is but knows 
Her face was white, and thereto she was tall; 
In no wise lacked there any praise at all 
To her most perfect and pure maidenhood; 
No sin I think there was in all her blood. 
She, where a gold grate shut the roses in, 
Dwelt daily through deep summer weeks, through green 
Hushed hours of rain upon the leaves; and there 
Love made him room and space to worship her 
With tender worship of bowed knees, and wrought 
Such pleasure as the pained sense palates not 
For weariness, but at one taste undoes 
The heart of its strong sweet, is ravenous 
Of all the hidden honey; words and sense 
Fail through the tune's imperious prevalence. 
In a poor house this lover kept apart, 
Long communing with patience next his heart 
If love of his might move that face at all, 
Tuned evenwise with colours musical; 
Then after length of days he said thus: "Love, 
For love's own sake and for the love thereof 
Let no harsh words untune your gracious mood; 
For good it were, if anything be good, 
To comfort me in this pain's plague of mine; 
Seeing thus, how neither sleep nor bread nor wine 
Seems pleasant to me, yea no thing that is 
Seems pleasant to me; only I know this; 
Love's ways are sharp for palms of piteous feet 
To travel, but the end of such is sweet: 
Now do with me as seemeth you the best." 
She mused a little, as one holds his guest 
By the hand musing, with her face borne down: 
Then said: "Yea, though such bitter seed be sown, 
Have no more care of all that you have said; 
Since if there is no sleep will bind your head, 
Lo, I am fain to help you certainly; 
Christ knoweth, sir, if I would have you die; 
There is no pleasure when a man is dead." 
Thereat he kissed her hands and yellow head 
And clipped her fair long body many times; 
I have no wit to shape in written rhymes 
A scanted tithe of this great joy they had. 
They were too near love's secret to be glad; 
As whoso deems the core will surely melt 
From the warm fruit his lips caress, hath felt 
Some bitter kernel where the teeth shut hard: 
Or as sweet music sharpens afterward, 
Being half disrelished both for sharp and sweet; 
As sea-water, having killed over-heat 
In a man's body, chills it with faint ache; 
So their sense, burdened only for love's sake, 
Failed for pure love; yet so time served their wit, 
They saved each day some gold reserves of it, 
Being wiser in love's riddle than such be 
Whom fragments feed with his chance charity. 
All things felt sweet were felt sweet overmuch; 
The rose-thorn's prickle dangerous to touch, 
And flecks of fire in the thin leaf-shadows; 
Too keen the breathèd honey of the rose, 
Its red too harsh a weight on feasted eyes; 
They were so far gone in love's histories, 
Beyond all shape and colour and mere breath, 
Where pleasure has for kinsfolk sleep and death, 
And strength of soul and body waxen blind 
For weariness, and flesh entoiled with mind, 
When the keen edge of sense foretasteth sin. 
Even this green place the summer caught them in 
Seemed half deflowered and sick with beaten leaves 
In their strayed eyes; these gold flower-fumèd eves 
Burnt out to make the sun's love-offering, 
The midnoon's prayer, the rose's thanksgiving, 
The trees' weight burdening the strengthless air, 
The shape of her stilled eyes, her coloured hair, 
Her body's balance from the moving feet-- 
All this, found fair, lacked yet one grain of sweet 
It had some warm weeks back: so perisheth 
On May's new lip the tender April breath: 
So those same walks the wind sowed lilies in 
All April through, and all their latter kin 
Of languid leaves whereon the autumn blows-- 
The dead red raiment of the last year's rose-- 
The last year's laurel, and the last year's love, 
Fade, and grow things that death grows weary of. 
What man will gather in red summer-time 
The fruit of some obscure and hoary rhyme 
Heard last midwinter, taste the heart in it, 
Mould the smooth semitones afresh, refit 
The fair limbs ruined, flush the dead blood through 
With colour, make all broken beauties new 
For love's new lesson--shall not such find pain 
When the marred music labouring in his brain 
Frets him with sweet sharp fragments, and lets slip 
One word that might leave satisfied his lip-- 
One touch that might put fire in all the chords? 
This was her pain: to miss from all sweet words 
Some taste of sound, diverse and delicate-- 
Some speech the old love found out to compensate 
For seasons of shut lips and drowsiness-- 
Some grace, some word the old love found out to bless 
Passionless months and undelighted weeks. 
The flowers had lost their summer-scented cheeks, 
Their lips were no more sweet than daily breath: 
The year was plagued with instances of death. 
So fell it, these were sitting in cool grass 
With leaves about, and many a bird there was 
Where the green shadow thickliest impleached 
Soft fruit and writhen spray and blossom bleached 
Dry in the sun or washed with rains to white: 
Her girdle was pure silk, the bosom bright 
With purple as purple water and gold wrought in. 
One branch had touched with dusk her lips and chin, 
Made violet of the throat, abashed with shade 
The breast's bright plaited work: but nothing frayed 
The sun's large kiss on the luxurious hair. 
Her beauty was new colour to the air 
And music to the silent many birds. 
Love was an-hungred for some perfect words 
To praise her with; but only her low name 
"Andrevuola" came thrice, and thrice put shame 
In her clear cheek, so fruitful with new red 
That for pure love straightway shame's self was dead. 
Then with lids gathered as who late had wept 
She began saying: "I have so little slept 
My lids drowse now against the very sun; 
Yea, the brain aching with a dream begun 
Beats like a fitful blood; kiss but both brows, 
And you shall pluck my thoughts grown dangerous 
Almost away." He said thus, kissing them: 
"O sole sweet thing that God is glad to name, 
My one gold gift, if dreams be sharp and sore 
Shall not the waking time increase much more 
With taste and sound, sweet eyesight or sweet scent? 
Has any heat too hard and insolent 
Burnt bare the tender married leaves, undone 
The maiden grass shut under from the sun? 
Where in this world is room enough for pain?" 
The feverish finger of love had touched again 
Her lips with happier blood; the pain lay meek 
In her fair face, nor altered lip nor cheek 
With pallor or with pulse; but in her mouth 
Love thirsted as a man wayfaring doth, 
Making it humble as weak hunger is. 
She lay close to him, bade do this and this, 
Say that, sing thus: then almost weeping-ripe 
Crouched, then laughed low. As one that fain would wipe 
The old record out of old things done and dead, 
She rose, she heaved her hands up, and waxed red 
For wilful heart and blameless fear of blame; 
Saying "Though my wits be weak, this is no shame 
For a poor maid whom love so punisheth 
With heats of hesitation and stopped breath 
That with my dreams I live yet heavily 
For pure sad heart and faith's humility. 
Now be not wroth and I will show you this. 
"Methought our lips upon their second kiss 
Met in this place, and a fair day we had 
And fair soft leaves that waxed and were not sad 
With shaken rain or bitten through with drouth; 
When I, beholding ever how your mouth 
Waited for mine, the throat being fallen back, 
Saw crawl thereout a live thing flaked with black 
Specks of brute slime and leper-coloured scale, 
A devil's hide with foul flame-writhen grail 
Fashioned where hell's heat festers loathsomest; 
And that brief speech may ease me of the rest, 
Thus were you slain and eaten of the thing. 
My waked eyes felt the new day shuddering 
On their low lids, felt the whole east so beat, 
Pant with close pulse of such a plague-struck heat, 
As if the palpitating dawn drew breath 
For horror, breathing between life and death, 
Till the sun sprang blood-bright and violent." 
So finishing, her soft strength wholly spent, 
She gazed each way, lest some brute-hoovèd thing, 
The timeless travail of hell's childbearing, 
Should threat upon the sudden: whereat he, 
For relish of her tasted misery 
And tender little thornprick of her pain, 
Laughed with mere love. What lover among men 
But hath his sense fed sovereignly 'twixt whiles 
With tears and covered eyelids and sick smiles 
And soft disaster of a painèd face? 
What pain, established in so sweet a place, 
But the plucked leaf of it smells fragrantly? 
What colour burning man's wide-open eye 
But may be pleasurably seen? what sense 
Keeps in its hot sharp extreme violence 
No savour of sweet things? The bereaved blood 
And emptied flesh in their most broken mood 
Fail not so wholly, famish not when thus 
Past honey keeps the starved lip covetous. 
Therefore this speech from a glad mouth began, 
Breathed in her tender hair and temples wan 
Like one prolonged kiss while the lips had breath: 
"Sleep, that abides in vassalage of death 
And in death's service wears out half his age, 
Hath his dreams full of deadly vassalage, 
Shadow and sound of things ungracious; 
Fair shallow faces, hooded bloodless brows, 
And mouths past kissing; yea, myself have had 
As harsh a dream as holds your eyelids sad. 
"This dream I tell you came three nights ago: 
In full mid sleep I took a whim to know 
How sweet things might be; so I turned and thought; 
But save my dream all sweet availed me not. 
First came a smell of pounded spice and scent 
Such as God ripens in some continent 
Of utmost amber in the Syrian sea; 
And breaths as though some costly rose could be 
Spoiled slowly, wasted by some bitter fire 
To burn the sweet out leaf by leaf, and tire 
The flower's poor heart with heat and waste, to make 
Strong magic for some perfumed woman's sake. 
Then a cool naked sense beneath my feet 
Of bud and blossom; and sound of veins that beat 
As if a lute should play of its own heart 
And fearfully, not smitten of either part; 
And all my blood it filled with sharp and sweet 
As gold swoln grain fills out the huskèd wheat; 
So I rose naked from the bed, and stood 
Counting the mobile measure in my blood 
Some pleasant while, and through each limb there came 
Swift little pleasures pungent as a flame, 
Felt in the thrilling flesh and veins as much 
As the outer curls that feel the comb's first touch 
Thrill to the roots and shiver as from fire; 
And blind between my dream and my desire 
I seemed to stand and held my spirit still 
Lest this should cease. A child whose fingers spill 
Honey from cells forgotten of the bee 
Is less afraid to stir the hive and see 
Some wasp's bright back inside, than I to feel 
Some finger-touch disturb the flesh like steel. 
I prayed thus; Let me catch a secret here 
So sweet, it sharpens the sweet taste of fear 
And takes the mouth with edge of wine; I would 
Have here some colour and smooth shape as good 
As those in heaven whom the chief garden hides 
With low grape-blossom veiling their white sides 
And lesser tendrils that so bind and blind 
Their eyes and feet, that if one come behind 
To touch their hair they see not, neither fly; 
This would I see in heaven and not die. 
So praying, I had nigh cried out and knelt, 
So wholly my prayer filled me: till I felt 
In the dumb night's warm weight of glowing gloom 
Somewhat that altered all my sleeping-room, 
And made it like a green low place wherein 
Maids mix to bathe: one sets her small warm chin 
Against a ripple, that the angry pearl 
May flow like flame about her: the next curl 
Dips in some eddy coloured of the sun 
To wash the dust well out; another one 
Holds a straight ankle in her hand and swings 
With lavish body sidelong, so that rings 
Of sweet fierce water, swollen and splendid, fail 
All round her fine and floated body pale, 
Swayed flower-fashion, and her balanced side 
Swerved edgeways lets the weight of water slide, 
As taken in some underflow of sea 
Swerves the banked gold of sea-flowers; but she 
Pulls down some branch to keep her perfect head 
Clear of the river: even from wall to bed, 
I tell you, was my room transfigured so. 
Sweet, green and warm it was, nor could one know 
If there were walls or leaves, or if there was 
No bed's green curtain, but mere gentle grass. 
There were set also hard against the feet 
Gold plates with honey and green grapes to eat, 
With the cool water's noise to hear in rhymes: 
And a wind warmed me full of furze and limes 
And all hot sweets the heavy summer fills 
To the round brim of smooth cup-shapen hills. 
Next the grave walking of a woman's feet 
Made my veins hesitate, and gracious heat 
Made thick the lids and leaden on mine eyes: 
And I thought ever, surely it were wise 
Not yet to see her: this may last (who knows?) 
Five minutes; the poor rose is twice a rose 
Because it turns a face to her, the wind 
Sings that way; hath this woman ever sinned, 
I wonder? as a boy with apple-rind, 
I played with pleasures, made them to my mind, 
Changed each ere tasting. When she came indeed, 
First her hair touched me, then I grew to feed 
On the sense of her hand; her mouth at last 
Touched me between the cheek and lip and past 
Over my face with kisses here and there 
Sown in and out across the eyes and hair. 
Still I said nothing; till she set her face 
More close and harder on the kissing-place, 
And her mouth caught like a snake's mouth, and stung 
So faint and tenderly, the fang scarce clung 
More than a bird's foot: yet a wound it grew, 
A great one, let this red mark witness you 
Under the left breast; and the stroke thereof 
So clove my sense that I woke out of love 
And knew not what this dream was nor had wit; 
But now God knows if I have skill of it." 
Hereat she laid one palm against her lips 
To stop their trembling; as when water slips 
Out of a beak-mouthed vessel with faint noise 
And chuckles in the narrowed throat and cloys 
The carven rims with murmuring, so came 
Words in her lips with no word right of them, 
A beaten speech thick and disconsolate, 
Till his smile ceasing waxed compassionate 
Of her sore fear that grew from anything-- 
The sound of the strong summer thickening 
In heated leaves of the smooth apple-trees: 
The day's breath felt about the ash-branches, 
And noises of the noon whose weight still grew 
On the hot heavy-headed flowers, and drew 
Their red mouths open till the rose-heart ached; 
For eastward all the crowding rose was slaked 
And soothed with shade; but westward all its growth 
Seemed to breathe hard with heat as a man doth 
Who feels his temples newly feverous. 
And even with such motion in her brows 
As that man hath in whom sick days begin, 
She turned her throat and spake, her voice being thin 
As a sick man's, sudden and tremulous; 
"Sweet, if this end be come indeed on us, 
Let us love more;" and held his mouth with hers. 
As the first sound of flooded hill-waters 
Is heard by people of the meadow-grass, 
Or ever a wandering waif of ruin pass 
With whirling stones and foam of the brown stream 
Flaked with fierce yellow: so beholding him 
She felt before tears came her eyelids wet, 
Saw the face deadly thin where life was yet, 
Heard his throat's harsh last moan before it clomb: 
And he, with close mouth passionate and dumb, 
Burned at her lips: so lay they without speech, 
Each grasping other, and the eyes of each 
Fed in the other's face: till suddenly 
He cried out with a little broken cry 
This word, "O help me, sweet, I am but dead." 
And even so saying, the colour of fair red 
Was gone out of his face, and his blood's beat 
Fell, and stark death made sharp his upward feet 
And pointed hands: and without moan he died. 
Pain smote her sudden in the brows and side, 
Strained her lips open and made burn her eyes: 
For the pure sharpness of her miseries 
She had no heart's pain, but mere body's wrack; 
But at the last her beaten blood drew back 
Slowly upon her face, and her stunned brows 
Suddenly grown aware and piteous 
Gathered themselves, her eyes shone, her hard breath 
Came as though one nigh dead came back from death; 
Her lips throbbed, and life trembled through her hair. 
And in brief while she thought to bury there 
The dead man that her love might lie with him 
In a sweet bed under the rose-roots dim 
And soft earth round the branchèd apple-trees, 
Full of hushed heat and heavy with great ease, 
And no man entering divide him thence. 
Wherefore she bade one of her handmaidens 
To be her help to do upon this wise. 
And saying so the tears out of her eyes 
Fell without noise and comforted her heart: 
Yea, her great pain eased of the sorest part 
Began to soften in her sense of it. 
There under all the little branches sweet 
The place was shapen of his burial; 
They shed thereon no thing funereal, 
But coloured leaves of latter rose-blossom, 
Stems of soft grass, some withered red and some 
Fair and fresh-blooded; and spoil splendider 
Of marigold and great spent sunflower. 
And afterward she came back without word 
To her own house; two days went, and the third 
Went, and she showed her father of this thing. 
And for great grief of her soul's travailing 
He gave consent she should endure in peace 
Till her life's end; yea, till her time should cease, 
She should abide in fellowship of pain. 
And having lived a holy year or twain 
She died of pure waste heart and weariness. 
And for love's honour in her love's distress 
This word was written over her tomb's head; 
"Here dead she lieth, for whose sake Love is dead."