20
THE IMPROVISATRICE.
On long-remembered things, which soon
Must take our first and last farewell!
Day fades apace; another day,
That maiden will be far away,
A wanderer o’er the dark-blue sea,
And bound for lovely Italy,
Her mother’s land! Hence, on her breast
The cross beneath a Moorish vest;
And hence those sweetest sounds, that seem
Like music murmuring in a dream,
When in our sleeping ear is ringing
The song the nightingale is singing;
When by that white and funeral stone,
Half-hidden by the cypress gloom,