Rocks, olive-gardens, grim dismantled towns,

Deep-streeted, desolate, yet dear to see,

Smelling of oil and of the Papacy.

Griselda first gave reins to her romance

In this forgotten corner of old France,

Feeding her soul on that ethereal food,

The manna of days spent in solitude.

Lord L. was silent. She, as far away

Saw other worlds which were not of to-day,

32

With cardinals, popes, Petrarch and the Muse.

She stopped to weep with Laura at Vaucluse,

Where waiting in the Mistral poor Lord L.,

Who did not weep, sat, slept and caught a chill;

This sent them southwards on through Christendom,

To Genoa, Florence, and at last to Rome,

Where they remained the winter.

Change had wrought

A cure already in Griselda's thought,

Or half a cure. The world in truth is wide,

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