Landon in The Improvisatrice; and Other Poems/III
From many a lip came sounds of praise,
Like music from sweet voices ringing;
For many a boat had gathered round,
To list the song I had been singing.
There are some moments in our fate
That stamp the colour of our days;
As, till then, life had not been felt,—
And mine was sealed in the slight gaze
Which fixed my eye, and fired my brain,
And bowed my heart beneath the chain.
‘Twas a dark and flashing eye,
Shadows, too, that tenderly,
With almost female softness, came
O’er its mingled gloom and flame.
His cheek was pale; or toil, or care,
Or midnight study, had been there,
Making its young colours dull,
Yet leaving it most beautiful.
Raven curls their shadow threw,
Like the twilight’s darkening hue,
O’er the pure and mountain snow
Of his high and haughty brow;
Lighted by a smile, whose spell
Words are powerless to tell.
Such a lip!—oh, poured from thence
Lava floods of eloquence
Would come with fiery energy,
Like those words that cannot die.
Words the Grecian warrior spoke
When the Persian’s chain he broke;
Or that low and honey tone,
Making woman’s heart his own;
Such as should be heard at night,
In the dim and sweet starlight;
Sounds that haunt a beauty’s sleep,
Treasures for her heart to keep.
Like the pine of summer tall;
Apollo, on his pedestal
In our own gallery, never bent
More graceful, more magnificent;
Ne’er look’d the hero, or the king,
More nobly than the youth who now,
As if soul-centred in my song,
Was leaning on a galley’s prow.
He spoke not when the other spoke,
His heart was all too full for praise;
But his dark eyes kept fixed on mine,
Which sank beneath their burning gaze.
Mine sank—but yet I felt the thrill
Of that look burning on me still.
I heard no words that others said—
Heard nothing, save one low-breathed sigh.
My hand kept wandering on my lute,
In music, but unconsciously
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;
And in the midst, beneath a shade
Of clustered rose, a fountain played,
Sprinkling its scented waters round,
With a sweet and lulling sound,—
O’er oranges, like Eastern gold,
Half hidden by the dark green fold
Of their large leaves;—o’er hyacinth bells,
Where every summer odour dwells.
And, nestled in the midst, a pair
Of white wood-doves, whose home was there:
And like an echo to their song,
At times a murmur past along;
A dying tone, a plaining fall,
So sad, so wild, so musical—
As the wind swept across the wire,
And waked my lone Æolian lyre,
Which lay upon the casement, where
The lattice wooed the cold night air,
Half hidden by a bridal twine
Of jasmine with the emerald vine.
And ever as the curtains made
A varying light, a changeful shade;
As the breeze waved them to and fro,
Came on the eye the glorious show
Of pictured walls where landscape wild
Of wood, and stream, or mountain piled,
Or sunny vale, or twilight grove,
Or shapes whose every look was love;
Saints, whose diviner glance seemed caught
From Heaven,—some whose earthlier thought
Was yet more lovely,—shone like gleams
Of Beauty’s spirit seen in dreams.
I threw me on a couch to rest,
Loosely I flung my long black hair;
It seemed to soothe my troubled breast
To drink the quiet evening air.
I looked upon the deep-blue sky,
And it was all hope and harmony.
Afar I could see the Arno’s stream
Glorying in the clear moonbeam;
And the shadowy city met my gaze,
Like the dim memory of other days;
And the distant wood’s black coronal
Was like oblivion, that covereth all.
I know not why my soul felt sad;
I touch’d my lute,—it would not waken,
Save to old songs of sorrowing—
Of hope betrayed—of hearts forsaken:
Each lay of lighter feeling slept,
I sang, but, as I sang, I wept.