PIPPA PASSES.
13
—We call such light, the morning: let us see!
Mind how you grope your way, though! How these tall
Naked geraniums straggle! Push the lattice
Behind that frame!—Nay, do I bid you?—Sebald,
It shakes the dust down on me! Why, of course
The slide-bolt catches. Well, are you content,
Or must I find you something else to spoil?
Kiss and be friends, my Sebald! Is ’t full morning?
Oh, don’t speak then!
Oh, don’t speak then!Sebald. Ay, thus it used to be.
Ever your house was, I remember, shut
Till mid-day; I observed that, as I strolled
On mornings through the vale here; country girls
Were noisy, washing garments in the brook,
Hinds drove the slow white oxen up the hills:
But no, your house was mute, would ope no eye.
And wisely: you were plotting one thing there,
Nature, another outside. I looked up—
Rough white wood shutters, rusty iron bars,
Silent as death, blind in a flood of light.
Oh, I remember!—and the peasants laughed
And said, “The old man sleeps with the young wife.”
This house was his, this chair, this window—his.
Ottima. Ah, the clear morning! I can see St. Mark’s;
That black streak is the belfry. Stop: Vincenza
Should lie… there ’s Padua, plain enough, that blue!
Look o’er my shoulder, follow my finger!
Look o’er my shoulder, follow my finger!Sebald. Morning?
It seems to me a night with a sun added.
Where ’s dew, where ’s freshness? That bruised plant, I bruised
In getting through the lattice yestereve,
Mind how you grope your way, though! How these tall
Naked geraniums straggle! Push the lattice
Behind that frame!—Nay, do I bid you?—Sebald,
It shakes the dust down on me! Why, of course
The slide-bolt catches. Well, are you content,
Or must I find you something else to spoil?
Kiss and be friends, my Sebald! Is ’t full morning?
Oh, don’t speak then!
Oh, don’t speak then!Sebald. Ay, thus it used to be.
Ever your house was, I remember, shut
Till mid-day; I observed that, as I strolled
On mornings through the vale here; country girls
Were noisy, washing garments in the brook,
Hinds drove the slow white oxen up the hills:
But no, your house was mute, would ope no eye.
And wisely: you were plotting one thing there,
Nature, another outside. I looked up—
Rough white wood shutters, rusty iron bars,
Silent as death, blind in a flood of light.
Oh, I remember!—and the peasants laughed
And said, “The old man sleeps with the young wife.”
This house was his, this chair, this window—his.
Ottima. Ah, the clear morning! I can see St. Mark’s;
That black streak is the belfry. Stop: Vincenza
Should lie… there ’s Padua, plain enough, that blue!
Look o’er my shoulder, follow my finger!
Look o’er my shoulder, follow my finger!Sebald. Morning?
It seems to me a night with a sun added.
Where ’s dew, where ’s freshness? That bruised plant, I bruised
In getting through the lattice yestereve,
