Bianca Among The Nightingales

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

    The cypress stood up like a church
    That night we felt our love would hold,
    And saintly moonlight seemed to search
    And wash the whole world clean as gold;
    The olives crystallized the vales'
    Broad slopes until the hills grew strong:
    The fireflies and the nightingales
    Throbbed each to either, flame and song.
    The nightingales, the nightingales.

    Upon the angle of its shade
    The cypress stood, self-balanced high;
    Half up, half down, as double-made,
    Along the ground, against the sky.
    And we, too! from such soul-height went
    Such leaps of blood, so blindly driven,
    We scarce knew if our nature meant
    Most passionate earth or intense heaven.
    The nightingales, the nightingales.

    We paled with love, we shook with love,
    We kissed so close we could not vow;
    Till Giulio whispered, 'Sweet, above
    God's Ever guarantees this Now.'
    And through his words the nightingales
    Drove straight and full their long clear call,
    Like arrows through heroic mails,
    And love was awful in it all.
    The nightingales, the nightingales.

    O cold white moonlight of the north,
    Refresh these pulses, quench this hell!
    O coverture of death drawn forth
    Across this garden-chamber... well!
    But what have nightingales to do
    In gloomy England, called the free.
    (Yes, free to die in!…) when we two
    Are sundered, singing still to me?
    And still they sing, the nightingales.

    I think I hear him, how he cried
    'My own soul's life' between their notes.
    Each man has but one soul supplied,
    And that's immortal. Though his throat's
    On fire with passion now, to her
    He can't say what to me he said!
    And yet he moves her, they aver.
    The nightingales sing through my head.
    The nightingales, the nightingales.

    He says to her what moves her most.
    He would not name his soul within
    Her hearing, rather pays her cost
    With praises to her lips and chin.
    Man has but one soul, 'tis ordained,
    And each soul but one love, I add;
    Yet souls are damned and love's profaned.
    These nightingales will sing me mad!
    The nightingales, the nightingales.

    I marvel how the birds can sing.
    There's little difference, in their view,
    Betwixt our Tuscan trees that spring
    As vital flames into the blue,
    And dull round blots of foliage meant
    Like saturated sponges here
    To suck the fogs up. As content
    Is he too in this land, 'tis clear.
    And still they sing, the nightingales.

    My native Florence! dear, forgone!
    I see across the Alpine ridge
    How the last feast-day of Saint John
    Shot rockets from Carraia bridge.
    The luminous city, tall with fire,
    Trod deep down in that river of ours,
    While many a boat with lamp and choir
    Skimmed birdlike over glittering towers.
    I will not hear these nightingales.

    I seem to float, we seem to float
    Down Arno's stream in festive guise;
    A boat strikes flame into our boat,
    And up that lady seems to rise
    As then she rose. The shock had flashed
    A vision on us! What a head,
    What leaping eyeballs! beauty dashed
    To splendour by a sudden dread.
    And still they sing, the nightingales.

    Too bold to sin, too weak to die;
    Such women are so. As for me,
    I would we had drowned there, he and I,
    That moment, loving perfectly.
    He had not caught her with her loosed
    Gold ringlets… rarer in the south…
    Nor heard the 'Grazie tanto' bruised
    To sweetness by her English mouth.
    And still they sing, the nightingales.

    She had not reached him at my heart
    With her fine tongue, as snakes indeed
    Kill flies; nor had I, for my part,
    Yearned after, in my desperate need,
    And followed him as he did her
    To coasts left bitter by the tide,
    Whose very nightingales, elsewhere
    Delighting, torture and deride!
    For still they sing, the nightingales.

    A worthless woman! mere cold clay
    As all false things are! but so fair,
    She takes the breath of men away
    Who gaze upon her unaware.
    I would not play her larcenous tricks
    To have her looks! She lied and stole,
    And spat into my love's pure pyx
    The rank saliva of her soul.
    And still they sing, the nightingales.

    I would not for her white and pink,
    Though such he likes her grace of limb,
    Though such he has praised nor yet, I think,
    For life itself, though spent with him,
    Commit such sacrilege, affront
    God's nature which is love, intrude
    'Twixt two affianced souls, and hunt
    Like spiders, in the altar's wood.
    I cannot bear these nightingales.

    If she chose sin, some gentler guise
    She might have sinned in, so it seems:
    She might have pricked out both my eyes,
    And I still seen him in my dreams!
    Or drugged me in my soup or wine,
    Nor left me angry afterward:
    To die here with his hand in mine
    His breath upon me, were not hard.
    (Our Lady hush these nightingales!)

    But set a springe for him, 'mio ben',
    My only good, my first last love!
    Though Christ knows well what sin is, when
    He sees some things done they must move
    Himself to wonder. Let her pass.
    I think of her by night and day.
    Must I too join her… out, alas!…
    With Giulio, in each word I say!
    And evermore the nightingales!

    Giulio, my Giulio! sing they so,
    And you be silent? Do I speak,
    And you not hear? An arm you throw
    Round some one, and I feel so weak?
    Oh, owl-like birds! They sing for spite,
    They sing for hate, they sing for doom!
    They'll sing through death who sing through night,
    They'll sing and stun me in the tomb
    The nightingales, the nightingales!