well-set head, And have less conscious manners, better bred; Nor, when he tries to be polite, be rude instead.

p. 11

’Twas Perdicone’s friends made overtures To good Bernardo; so one dame assures Her neighbor dame, who notices the youth p. 12Fixing his eyes on Lisa; and, in truth, Eyes that could see her on this summer day Might find it hard to turn another way. She had a pensive beauty, yet not sad; Rather like minor cadences that glad The hearts of little birds amid spring boughs: And oft the trumpet or the joust would rouse Pulses that gave her cheek a finer glow, Parting her lips that seemed a mimic bow By chiselling Love for play in coral wrought, Then quickened by him with the passionate thought, The soul that trembled in the lustrous night Of slow long eyes. Her body was so slight, It seemed she could have floated in the sky, And with the angelic choir made symphony; But in her cheek’s rich tinge, and in the dark Of darkest hair and eyes, she bore a mark p. 13Of kinship to her generous mother-earth, The fervid land that gives the plumy palm-trees birth.

p. 12

p. 13

She saw not Perdicone; her young mind Dreamed not that any man had ever pined For such a little simple maid as she: She had but dreamed how heavenly it would be To love some hero noble, beauteous, great, Who would live stories worthy to narrate, Like Roland, or the warriors of Troy, The Cid, or Amadis, or that fair boy Who conquered every thing beneath the sun, And somehow, some time, died at Babylon Fighting the Moors. For heroes all were good And fair as that archangel who withstood The Evil One, the author of all wrong,— That Evil One who made the French so strong; p. 14And now the flower of heroes must he be Who drove those tyrants from dear Sicily, So that her maids might walk to vespers tranquilly.

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Young Lisa saw this hero in the king; And as wood-lilies that sweet odors bring Might dream the light that opes their modest eyne Was lily-odored; and as rites divine, Round turf-laid altars, or ’neath roofs of stone, Draw sanctity from out the heart alone That loves and worships: so the miniature Perplexed of her soul’s world, all virgin pure, Filled with heroic virtues that bright form, Raona’s royalty, the finished norm Of horsemanship, the half of chivalry; For how could generous men avengers be, p. 15Save as God’s messengers on coursers fleet?— These, scouring earth, made Spain with Syria meet In one self-world where the same right had 

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