Fiordispina
The season was the childhood of sweet June,Whose sunny hours from morning until noonWent creeping through the day with silent feet,Each with its load of pleasure; slow yet sweet;Like the long years of blest EternityNever to be developed. Joy to thee,Fiordispina and thy Cosimo,For thou the wonders of the depth canst knowOf this unfathomable flood of hours,Sparkling beneath the heaven which embowers--
...
They were two cousins, almost like to twins,Except that from the catalogue of sinsNature had rased their love--which could not beBut by dissevering their nativity.And so they grew together like two flowersUpon one stem, which the same beams and showersLull or awaken in their purple prime,Which the same hand will gather--the same climeShake with decay. This fair day smiles to seeAll those who love--and who e'er loved like thee,Fiordispina? Scarcely Cosimo,Within whose bosom and whose brain now glowThe ardours of a vision which obscureThe very idol of its portraiture.He faints, dissolved into a sea of love;But thou art as a planet sphered above;But thou art Love itself--ruling the motionOf his subjected spirit: such emotionMust end in sin and sorrow, if sweet MayHad not brought forth this morn--your wedding-day.
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'Lie there; sleep awhile in your own dew,Ye faint-eyed children of the ... Hours,'Fiordispina said, and threw the flowersWhich she had from the breathing--
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A table near of polished porphyry.They seemed to wear a beauty from the eyeThat looked on them--a fragrance from the touchWhose warmth ... checked their life; a light suchAs sleepers wear, lulled by the voice they love, which did reproveThe childish pity that she felt for them,And a ... remorse that from their stemShe had divided such fair shapes ... madeA feeling in the ... which was a shadeOf gentle beauty on the flowers: there layAll gems that make the earth's dark bosom gay.... rods of myrtle-buds and lemon-blooms,And that leaf tinted lightly which assumesThe livery of unremembered snow--Violets whose eyes have drunk--
...
Fiordispina and her nurse are nowUpon the steps of the high portico,Under the withered arm of MediaShe flings her glowing arm
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... step by step and stair by stair,That withered woman, gray and white and brown--More like a trunk by lichens overgrownThan anything which once could have been human.And ever as she goes the palsied woman
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'How slow and painfully you seem to walk,Poor Media! you tire yourself with talk.''And well it may,Fiordispina, dearest--well-a-day!You are hastening to a marriage-bed;I to the grave!'--'And if my love were dead,Unless my heart deceives me, I would lieBeside him in my shroud as willinglyAs now in the gay night-dress Lilla wrought.''Fie, child! Let that unseasonable thoughtNot be remembered till it snows in June;Such fancies are a music out of tuneWith the sweet dance your heart must keep to-night.What! would you take all beauty and delightBack to the Paradise from which you sprung,And leave to grosser mortals?--And say, sweet lamb, would you not learn the sweetAnd subtle mystery by which spirits meet?Who knows whether the loving game is played,When, once of mortal disarrayed,The naked soul goes wandering here and thereThrough the wide deserts of Elysian air?The violet dies not till it'--
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