Page:Poems PiattVol2.djvu/135

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BEATRICE CENCI. [SEEN IN A CITY SHOP-WINDOW.]
Out of low light an exquisite faint face
Suddenly started. Goldenness of hair,
A South-look of sweet-sorrowful eyes, a trace
Of prison-paleness: what if these were there,
When Guido's hand could never reach the grace
That glimmered on me from the Italian air—
Fairness so fierce, or fierceness half so fair?

"Is it some Actress?" a slight school-boy said.
Some Actress? Yes.
        ———The curtain rolled away,
Dusty and dim. The scene—among the dead—
In some weird, gloomy-pillared palace lay;
The Tragedy, which we have brokenly read,
With its two hundred ghastly years was grey:
None dared applaud with flowers her shadowy way—
Yet, ah! how bitterly well she seemed to play!

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