Where teems with first foreshadowings
Your pier-glass scrawled with diamond rings:
And on your bosom all night worn
Yesterday's rose now droops forlorn,
But dies not yet this summer morn.

And now without, as if some word
Had called upon them that they heard,
The London sparrows far and nigh
Clamour together suddenly;

And Jenny's cage-bird grown awake
Here in their song his part must take,
Because here too the day doth break.

And somehow in myself the dawn
Among stirred clouds and veils withdrawn
Strikes greyly on her. Let her sleep.
But will it wake her if I heap

These cushions thus beneath her head

Where my knee was? No, there's your bed, My Jenny, while you dream.

I lay among your golden hair,

And there

Perhaps the subject of your dreams,
These golden coins.

For still one deems

That Jenny's flattering sleep confers

New magic on the magic purse,

Grim web, how clogged with shrivelled flies!
Between the threads fine fumes arise

And shape their pictures in the brain.
There roll no streets in glare and rain,
Nor flagrant man-swine whets his tusk;
But delicately sighs in musk

The homage of the dim boudoir;
Or like a palpitating star

Thrilled into song, the opera-night

Breathes faint in the quick pulse of light;
Or at the carriage-window shine

Rich wares for choice; or, free to dine,
Whirls through its hour of health (divine
For her) the concourse of the Park.
And though in the discounted dark
Her functions there and here are one,
Beneath the lamps and in the sun

There reigns at least the acknowledged belle
Apparelled beyond parallel.

Ah Jenny, yes, we know your dreams.

For even the Paphian Venus seems

A goddess o'er the realms of love,
When silver-shrined in shadowy grove :
Aye, or let offerings nicely plac'd
But hide Priapus to the waist,
And whoso looks on him shall see
An eligible deity.

Why, Jenny, waking here alone
May help you to remember one,
Though all the memory's long outworn
Of many a double-pillowed morn.

I think I see you when you wake,
And rub your eyes for me, and shake
My gold, in rising, from your hair,
A Danaë for a moment there.

Jenny, my love rang true! for still Love at first sight is vague, until That tinkling makes him audible.

And must I mock you to the last, Ashamed of my own shame,-aghast Because some thoughts not born amiss Rose at a poor fair face like this? Well, of such thoughts so much I know: In my life, as in hers, they show, By a far gleam which I may near, A dark path I can strive to clear.

Only one kiss. Good-bye, my dear.

OUR Lombard country-girls along the coast
Wear daggers in their garters: for they know
That they might hate another girl to death
Or meet a German lover. Such a knife

I bought her, with a hilt of horn and pearl.

Father, you cannot know of all my thoughts
That day in going to meet her, that last day
For the last time, she said;-of all the love
And all the hopeless hope that she might change
And go back with me. Ah! and everywhere,
At places we both knew along the road,
Some fresh shape of herself as once she was
Grew present at my side; until it seemed-

So close they gathered round me-they would all

Be with me when I reached the spot at last,

To plead my cause with her against herself

So changed. O Father, if you knew all this

You cannot know, then you would know too, Father,
And only then, if God can pardon me.
What can be told I'll tell, if you will hear.

I passed a village-fair upon my road,
And thought, being empty-handed, I would take
Some little present: such might prove, I said,
Either a pledge between us, or (God help me!)
A parting gift. And there it was I bought
The knife I spoke of, such as women wear.

That day, some three hours afterwards, I found For certain, it must be a parting gift.

And, standing silent now at last, I looked

Into her scornful face; and heard the sea

Still trying hard to din into my ears

Some speech it knew which still might change her heart,
If only it could make me understand.

One moment thus. Another, and her face
Seemed further off than the last line of sea,
So that I thought, if now she were to speak

I could not hear her. Then again I knew
All, as we stood together on the sand
At Iglio, in the first thin shade o' the hills.

"Take it," I said, and held it out to her, While the hilt glanced within my trembling hold; "Take it and keep it for my sake," I said. Her neck unbent not, neither did her eyes Move, nor her foot left beating of the sand; Only she put it by from her and laughed.

Father, you hear my speech and not her laugh; But God heard that. Will God remember all?

It was another laugh than the sweet sound
Which rose from her sweet childish heart, that day
Eleven years before, when first I found her
Alone upon the hill-side; and her curls

Shook down in the warm grass as she looked up
Out of her curls in my eyes bent to hers.
She might have served a painter to pourtray
That heavenly child which in the latter days
Shall walk between the lion and the lamb.

I had been for nights in hiding, worn and sick
And hardly fed; and so her words at first
Seemed fiftul like the talking of the trees
And voices in the air that knew my name.
And I remember that I sat me down

Upon the slope with her, and thought the world
Must be all over or had never been,

We seemed there so alone. And soon she told me
Her parents both were gone away from her.

I thought perhaps she meant that they had died;
But when I asked her this, she looked again

Into my face and said that yestereve

They kissed her long, and wept and made her weep,
And gave her all the bread they had with them,

And then had gone together up the hill

Where we were sitting now, and had walked on
Into the great red light; "and so," she said,

"I have come up here too; and when this evening
They step out of the light as they stepped in,
I shall be here to kiss them." And she laughed.

Then I bethought me suddenly of the famine; And how the church-steps throughout all the town,

When last I had been there a month ago,

Swarmed with starved folk; and how the bread was weighed By Austrians armed; and women that I knew

For wives and mothers walked the public street,

Saying aloud that if their husbands feared

To snatch the children's food, themselves would stay

Till they had earned it there. So then this child

Was piteous to me; for all told me then

Her parents must have left her to God's chance,

To man's or to the Church's charity,

Because of the great famine, rather than

To watch her growing thin between their knees.

With that, God took my mother's voice and spoke,

And sights and sounds came back and things long since, And all my childhood found me on the hills;

And so I took her with me.

I was young.

Scarce man then, Father: but the cause which gave
The wounds I die of now had brought me then

Some wounds already; and I lived alone,
As any hiding hunted man must live.
It was no easy thing to keep a child
In safety; for herself it was not safe,
And doubled my own danger: but I knew
That God would help me.

Yet a little while
Pardon me, Father, if I pause. I think

I have been speaking to you of some matters
There was no need to speak of, have I not?
You do not know how clearly those things stood
Within my mind, which I have spoken of,
Nor how they strove for utterance. Life all past
Is like the sky when the sun sets in it,
Clearest where furthest off.

I told you how

She scorned my parting gift and laughed. And yet
A woman's laugh's another thing sometimes :

I think they laugh in Heaven. I know last night

I dreamed I saw into the garden of God,

Where women walked whose painted images

I have seen with candles round them in the church.

They bent this way and that, one to another,

Playing and over the long golden hair

Of each there floated like a ring of fire

Which when she stooped stooped with her, and when she rose Rose with her. Then a breeze flew in among them,

As if a window had been opened in heaven

For God to give His blessing from, before

This world of ours should set; (for in my dream

I thought our world was setting, and the sun
Flared, a spent taper;) and beneath that gust
The rings of light quivered like forest-leaves.
Then all the blessed maidens who were there
Stood up together, as it were a voice

That called them; and they threw their tresses back,
And smote their palms, and all laughed up at once,
For the strong heavenly joy they had in them
To hear God bless the world. Wherewith I woke :
And looking round, I saw as usual

That she was standing there with her long locks
Pressed to her side; and her laugh ended theirs.

For always when I see her now, she laughs.
And yet her childish laughter haunts me too,
The life of this dead terror; as in days
When she, a child, dwelt with me. I must tell
Something of those days yet before the end.

I brought her from the city-one such day
When she was still a merry loving child,-
The earliest gift I mind my giving her;
A little image of a flying Love

Made of our coloured glass-ware, in his hands
A dart of gilded metal and a torch.

And him she kissed and me, and fain would know
Why were his poor eyes blindfold, why the wings
And why the arrow. What I knew I told
Of Venus and of Cupid,-strange old tales.
And when she heard that he could rule the loves