32
THE IMPROVISATRICE.
My pulses throbbed, my heart beat high,
A flush of dizzy ecstasy
Crimsoned my cheek; I felt warm tears
Dimming my sight, yet was it sweet,
My wild heart’s most bewildering beat,
Consciousness, without hopes or fears,
Of a new power within me waking,
Like light before the morn’s full breaking.
I left the boat—the crowd: my mood
Made my soul pant for solitude.
Amid my palace halls was once,
The most peculiarly my own:
The roof was blue and fretted gold,
The floor was of the Parian stone,
Shining like snow, as only meet
For the light tread of fairy feet;
