Читать книгу The Sword Decides! - Bowen Marjorie - Страница 3

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PROLOGUE

Table of Contents

Softly to my side she came,

In the Villa of the Belvidere;

The lamplight cast a tender flame

On the emeralds in her ear.

Leaning on the time-stained marble silently I watched the stars,

And she whispered—they had shone so through the Cencis' prison bars.

Her noble fingers stole to mine,

In the Villa of the Belvidere;

She brought me roses, gave me wine,

And murmured stories in my ear;

And I saw that, like to Bacchus, she wore a leopard skin,

And I saw the Roman moonshine was misty, pale, and thin.

"Splendid names of ladies weeping,

Gorgeous eyes of ladies dead—

Bianca by her dark Duke sleeping,

Marble flowers round her head:

Dreaming of the slain Capello

In her mighty, gloomy tomb;

Dreaming, 'Once my hair was yellow,

And I kissed him to his doom.'

Vittoria—a face of flowers,

Pride of Corambona's name;

Dancing in the midnight hours,

Five times stabbed when morning came;

So waxen white, so deadly fair,

Even grim Montalto crept

To see the shimmer of her hair

When she before the altar slept.

Splendid names of ladies weeping,

Gorgeous eyes of ladies dead!—

Imilda through the twilight creeping,

Shoes and kirtle stained with red:

Magnificent Imilda slowly

Tracing blood-stains on the ground,

While her tears make holy

The ash-heap where her love she found.

The Princess nailed against the wall—

She and her minstrel hand to hand.

La Pia watching vapours fall

Above the barren marshy land,

Youth in the foul Maremna dying

To please a butcher's jealous hate:

Still, with failing eyesight, trying

To picture Raphael at her villa gate.

O sweet red lips and childlike eyes,—

A Duchess of the Medici

In the summer midnight dies,

Strangled, at painted Pietro's knee.

And she, the queen, young, proud, and still,

The wedded of four lords,

Who bent great Naples to her will

Still-eyed among the clashing swords:

Still-eyed, still-lipped, she dared the world,

Yet at the last was flung

From where young Andreas was hurled

In silken halter hung.

Ilaria, whose patient lips

Grieve in th' eternal stone.

Isotta, watching for Sig'mondo's ships,

Hard-eyed, alone.

And, see—that 'silk dame,' velvet shod,

Venice and Cyprus knew,

Beloved of man, beloved of God

Soft, golden, true—

All gem-like ladies, fire bright,

Whose names stand like the stars

Pulsating 'thwart the sombre night

That gulfs their day from ours."

* * *

Of these she told me

In the Villa of the Belvidere,

And I felt her breath enfold me

As I leant my head to hear.

Seeing her Italian beauty—its cruelty I knew—

And I thought of the King from Hungary, and

Giovanna of Anjou.