What I Remember Part 24

Cones of maize like golden netting, Fringe the st.u.r.dy colonnade, And the lizards pertly pausing glance across the bal.u.s.trade.

III.

"Brown cicala drily proses, Creaking the hot air to sleep, Bounteous orange flowers and roses, Yield the wealth of love they keep, To the sun's imperious ardour in a dream of fragrance deep.

IV.

"And a cypress, mystic hearted, Cleaves the quiet dome of light With its black green ma.s.ses parted But by gaps of blacker night, Which the giddy moth and beetle circle round in dubious flight.

V.

"Here the well chain's pleasant clanging, Sings of coolness deep below; There the vine leaves breathless hanging, s.h.i.+ne transfigured in the glow, And the pillars stare in silence at the shadows which they throw.

VI.

"Portly nurse, black-browed, red-vested, Knits and dozes, drowsed with heat; Bice, like a wren gold-crested, Chirps and teases round her seat, Hides the needles, plucks the stocking, rolls the cotton o'er her feet.

VII.

"Nurse must fetch a draught of water, In the gla.s.s with painted wings,[1]

Nurse must show her little daughter All her tale of silver rings, Dear sweet nurse must sing a couplet--solemn nurse, who _never_ sings!

VIII.

"Blest Madonna! what a clamour!

Now the little torment tries, Perched on tiptoe, all the glamour Of her coaxing hands and eyes!

May she hold the gla.s.s she drinks from--just one moment, Bice cries.

IX.

"Nurse lifts high the Venice beaker, Bossed with masks, and flecked with gold, Scarce in time to 'scape the quicker Little fingers over-bold, Craving tendril-like to grasp it, with the will of four years old.

X.

"Pretty wood bird, pecking, flitting, Round the cherries on the tree.

Ware the scarecrow, grimly sitting, Crouched for silly things, like thee!

Nurse hath plenty such in ambush. 'Touch not, for it burns,'[2] quoth she.

XI.

"And thine eyes' blue mirror widens With an awestroke of belief; Meekly following that blind guidance, On thy finger's rosy sheaf, Blow'st thou softly, fancy wounded, soothing down a painless grief.

XII.

"Nurse and nursling, learner, teacher, Thus foreshadow things to come, When the girl shall grow the creature Of false terrors vain and dumb, And entrust their baleful fetish with her being's scope and sum.

XIII.

"Then her heart shall shrink and wither, Custom-straitened like her waist, All her thought to cower together, Huddling sheep-like with the rest, With the flock of soulless bodies on a pattern schooled and laced.

XIV.

"Till the stream of years encrust her With a numbing mail of stone, Till her laugh lose half its l.u.s.tre, And her truth forswear its tone, And she see G.o.d's might and mercy darkly through a gla.s.s alone!

XV.

"While our childhood fair and sacred.

Sapless doctrines doth rehea.r.s.e, And the milk of falsehoods acrid, Burns our babe-lips like a curse, Cling we must to G.o.dless prophets, as the suckling to the nurse.

XVI.

"As the seed time, so the reaping, Shame on us who overreach, While our eyes yet smart with weeping, Hearts so all our own to teach, Better they and we lay sleeping where the darkness hath no speech!"

[Footnote 1: Those unacquainted with the forms of the old decorated Venetian gla.s.s will hardly understand the phrase in the text. Those who know them will feel the accuracy of the picture.]

[Footnote 2: "_Non toccare che brucia_," Tuscan proverb.]

It is impossible for any but those who know--not Florence, but--rural Tuscany well, to appreciate the really wonderful accuracy and picturesque perfection of the above scene from a Tuscan afternoon. But I think many others will feel the lines to be good. In the concluding stanzas, in which the writer draws her moral, there are weak lines.

But in the first eleven, which paint her picture, there is not one.

Every touch tells, and tells with admirable truth and vividness of presentation. In one copy of the lines which I have, the name is changed from Bice to "Flavia," and this, I take it, because of the entire non-applicability of the latter stanzas to the child, whose rearing was in her own hands. But the picture of child and nurse--how life-like none can tell, but I--was the picture of her "baby Beatrice," and the description simply the reproduction of things seen.

I think I may venture to print also the following lines. They are, in my opinion, far from being equal in merit to the little poem printed above, but they are pretty, and I think sufficiently good to do no discredit to her memory. Like the preceding, they have no t.i.tle.

I.

"I built me a temple, and said it should be A shrine, and a home where the past meets me, And the most evanescent and fleeting of things, Should be lured to my temple, and shorn of their wings, To adorn my palace of memories.

II.

"The pearl of the morning, the glow of the noon, The play of the clouds as they float past the moon, The most magical tint on the snowiest peak, They are gone while I gaze, fade before you can speak, Yet they stay in my palace of memories.

III.

"I stood in the midst of the forest trees, And heard the sweet sigh of the wandering breeze, And this with the tinkle of heifer bells, As they trill on the ear from the dewy dells, Are the sounds in my palace of memories.

IV.

"I looked in the face of a little child, With its fugitive dimples and eyes so wild, It springs off with a bound like a wild gazelle, It is off and away, but I've caught my[1]

And here's mirth for my palace of memories.

V.

"In the morning we meet on a mountain height, And we walk and converse till the fall of night, We hold hands for a moment, then pa.s.s on our way, But that which I've got from the friend of a day, I'll keep in my palace of memories."

[Footnote 1: Word here illegible.]

The verses which Landor praised with enthusiasm so excessive were most, or I think all of them, published in the annual edited by his friend Lady Blessington, and were all written before our marriage. I have many long letters addressed to her by that lady, and several by her niece Miss Power, respecting them. They always in every instance ask for "more."