Not that I bid you spare her the pain;
Let death be felt and the proof remain: 
Brand, burn up, bite into its grace—­
He is sure to remember her dying face! 40

Is it done?  Take my mask off!  Nay, be not morose;
It kills her, and this prevents seeing it close: 
The delicate droplet, my whole fortune’s fee! 
If it hurts her, beside, can it ever hurt me?

Now, take all my jewels, gorge gold to your fill,
You may kiss me, old man, on my mouth if you will! 
But brush this dust off me, lest horror it brings
Ere I know it—­next moment I dance at the King’s!

* * * * *

HOME THOUGHTS, FROM ABROAD

Oh, to be in England
Now that April’s there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England—­now!

And after April, when May follows,
And the white-throat builds, and all the swallows! 10
Hark I where my blossomed pear tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops—­at the bent spray’s edge—­
That’s the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture! 
And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children’s dower
—­Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower! 20

* * * * *

UP AT A VILLA—­DOWN IN THE CITY

(As distinguished by an Italian person of quality.)

Had I but plenty of money, money enough and to spare,
The house for me, no doubt, were a house in the city square;
Ah, such a life, such a life, as one leads at the window there! 
Something to see, by Bacchus deg., something to hear, at least! deg.4
There, the whole day long, one’s life is a perfect feast;
While up at a villa one lives, I maintain it, no more than a beast.

Well now, look at our villa! stuck like the horn of a bull
Just on a mountain edge as bare as the creature’s skull,
Save a mere shag of a bush with hardly a leaf to pull! 
—­I scratch my own, sometimes, to see if the hair’s turned wool. 10

But the city, oh the city—­the square with the houses!  Why? 
They are stone-faced, white as a curd, there’s something to take the eye! 
Houses in four straight lines, not a single front awry;
You watch who crosses and gossips, who saunters, who hurries by;
Green blinds, as a matter of course, to draw when the sun gets high;
And the shops with fanciful signs which are painted properly.