Elizabeth Barrett Browning - Bianca among the Nightingales lyrics

I. 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 fire-flies and the nightingales  Throbbed each to either, flame and song. The nightingales, the nightingales! II. 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 pa**ionate earth or intense heaven The nightingales, the nightingales! III. We paled with love, we shook with love,  We kissed so close we could not vow; Till Giulio whispered “Sweet, above  God's Ever guaranties 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! IV. O cold white moonlight of the north,  Refresh these pulses, quench this hell! O coverture of d**h 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! V. 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 pa**ion 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! VI. 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, 't is 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! VII. 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 s** the fogs up. As content  Is he too in this land, 't is clear. And still they sing, the nightingales. VIII. 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. IX. 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. X. 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. XI. She had not reached him at my heart  With her fine tongue, as snakes indeed k** 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. XII. 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. XIII. 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. XIV. 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!) XV. 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 pa**.  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! XVI. Giulio, my Giulio!—sing they so,  And you be silent? Do I speak, And you not hear? An arm you throw  Round someone, 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 d**h who sing through night,  They'll sing and stun me in the tomb— The nightingales, the nightingales!