Isabella Flashcards
So said, his erewhile timid lips grew bold,
And poesied with hers in dewy rhyme
Parting they seem’d to tread upon the air,
Twin roses by the zephyr blown apart
“O may I never see another night,
“Lorenzo, if thy lips breathe not love’s tune.”
And many a jealous conference had they, and many times they bit their lips alone,
Before they fix’d upon a surest way to make the youngster for his crime atone;
Though Dido silent is in under-grove,
and Isabella’s was a great distress,
Though young Lorenzo in warm Indian clove was not embalm’d
In torched mines and noisy factories, and many once proud-quiver’d loins did melt in blood from stinging whip; - with hollow eyes
Many all day in dazzling river stood, to take the rich-ored driftings of the flood.
Why were they proud? Because red-lin’d accounts
Were richer than the songs of Grecian years?
Their crimes came on them, like a smoke from Hinnom’s vale;
And every night in dreams they groan’d aloud, to see their sister in her snowy shroud.
She kiss’d it with a lip more chill than stone, and put it in her bosom, where it dries
And freezes utterly unto the bone those dainties made to still an infant’s cries:
For Isabel, sweet Isabel, will die;
Will die a death too lone and incomplete,
Great bliss was with them, and great happiness
grew, like a lusty flower in June’s caress.
The breath of Winter comes from far away,
And the sick west continually bereaves of death among the bushes and the leaves,
Close in a bower of hyacinth and musk,
Unknown of any, free from whispering tale.
FAIR Isabel, poor simple Isabel!
Lorenzo, a young palmer in Love’s eye!
