But none to them, a pleasure, a delight, To ply their utmost skill, and send me forth Fare thee well, Carlo. We shall count the hours!' Will not go from me."-"Health and strength be thine In thy long travel! May no sunbeam strike; No vapor cling and wither! May'st thou be, Sleeping or waking, sacred and secure; And when again thou com'st, thy labor done, Joy be among ye! In that happy hour All will pour forth to bid thee welcome, Carlo; And there is one, or I am much deceived, One thou hast named, who will not be the last." "O, she is true as Truth itself can be! But, ah! thou know'st her not. Would that thou couldst! For, though they take me further from her door, AN INTERVIEW. PLEASURE that comes unlooked-for is thrice welcome; The sun was wheeling westward, and the cliffs 208 Hear thee and answer thee, were left at length 66 209 'Well, of a thousand tracks we chose the best!" And, turning round an oak, oracular once, Now lightning-struck, a cave, a thoroughfare For all that came, each entrance a broad arch, Whence many a deer, rustling his velvet coat, Had issued, many a gypsy and her brood Peered forth, then housed again—the floor yet gray With ashes, and the sides, where roughest, hung Loosely with locks of hair I looked and saw What, seen in such an hour by Sancho Panza, Had given his honest countenance a breadth, His cheeks a blush of pleasure and surprise, Unknown before, had chained him to the spot, And thou, Sir Knight, hadst traversed hill and dale, Squire-less. -Below and winding far away, A narrow glade unfolded, such as Spring Broiders with flowers, and, when the moon is high, Sent up a gale of fragrance. Through the midst, A rainbow's splendor (somewhere in the east Sported as loth to go; and on the bank The enamelled bank, bruising nor herb nor flower, And with her brother, as when last we met. Dropt from the sky amid the wild and rude, Of many an arch, o'er-wrought and lavishly When RAPHAEL and his school from FLORENCE came, Filling the land with splendor 2-nor less oft Not silent once, what time in rivalry Mossy the seats, the stage a verdurous floor, The scenery rock and shrub-wood, Nature's own; MONTORIO. GENEROUS, and ardent, and as romantic as he could be, MONTORIO was in his earliest youth, when, on a summerevening not many years ago, he arrived at the Baths of With a heavy heart, and with many a blessing on his head, he had set out on his travels at day-break. It was his first flight from home; but he was now to enter the world; and the moon was up and in the zenith when he alighted at the Three Moors, 213 a venerable house of vast dimensions, and anciently a palace of the Albertini family, whose arms were emblazoned on the walls. Every window was full of light, and great was the stir, above and below; but his thoughts were on those he had left so lately; and, retiring early to rest, and to a couch the very first for which he had ever exchanged his own, he was soon among them once more; undisturbed in his sleep by the music that came at intervals from a pavilion in the garden, where some of the company had assembled to dance. But, secluded as he was, he was not secure from intrusion; and Fortune resolved on that night to play a frolic in his chamber, a frolic that was to determine the color of hist life. Boccaccio himself has not recorded a wilder; nor would he, if he had known it, have left the story untold. At the first glimmering of day he awaked; and, looking round, he beheld-it could not be an illusion; yet anything so lovely, so angelical, he had never seen before— no, not even in his dreams a lady still younger than himself, and in the profoundest, the sweetest slumber by his side. But, while he gazed, she was gone, and through a door that had escaped his notice. Like a zephyr she trod |