filch my jewel from it! O strange theft,
Which made you richer though you knew it not,
And left me poorer, and yet glad of it!
guido [clasping her in his arms]
O love, love, love! Nay, sweet, lift up your head,
·58· Let me unlock those little scarlet doors
That shut in music, let me dive for coral
In your red lips, and I’ll bear back a prize
Richer than all the gold the Gryphon guards
In rude Armenia.
duchess
You are my lord,
And what I have is yours, and what I have not
Your fancy lends me, like a prodigal
Spending its wealth on what is nothing worth.
[Kisses him.]
guido
Methinks I am bold to look upon you thus:
The gentle violet hides beneath its leaf
And is afraid to look at the great sun
For fear of too much splendour, but my eyes,
O daring eyes! are grown so venturous
That like fixed stars they stand, gazing at you,
And surfeit sense with beauty.
duchess
Dear love, I would
You could look upon me ever, for your eyes
Are polished mirrors, and when I peer
·59· Into those mirrors I can see myself,
And so I know my image lives in you.
guido [taking her in his arms]
Stand still, thou hurrying orb in the high heavens,
And make this hour immortal! [A pause.]
duchess
Sit down here,
A little lower than me: yes, just so, sweet,
That I may run my fingers through your hair,
And see your face turn upwards like a flower
To meet my kiss.
Have you not sometimes noted,
When we unlock some long-disuséd room
With heavy dust and soiling mildew filled,
Where never foot of man has come for years,
And from the windows take the rusty bar,
And fling the broken shutters to the air,
And let the bright sun in, how the good sun
Turns every grimy particle of dust
Into a little thing of dancing gold?
Guido, my heart is that long-empty room,
But you have let love in, and with its gold
·60· Gilded all life. Do you not think that love
Fills up the sum of life?
guido
Ay! without love
Life is no better than the unhewn stone
Which in the quarry lies, before the sculptor
Has set the God within it. Without love
Life is as silent as the common reeds
That through the marshes or by rivers grow,
And have no music in them.
duchess
Yet out of these
The singer, who is Love, will make a pipe
And from them he draws music; so I think
Love will bring music out of any life.
Is that not true?
guido
Sweet, women make it true.
There are men who paint pictures, and carve statues,
Paul of Verona and the dyer’s son,
Or their great rival, who, by the sea at Venice,
Has set God’s little maid upon the stair,
·61· White as her own white lily, and as tall,
Or Raphael, whose Madonnas are divine
Because they are mothers merely; yet I think
Women are the best artists of the world,
For they can take the common lives of men
Soiled with the money-getting of our age,
And with love make them beautiful.
duchess
Ah, dear,
I wish that you and I were very poor;
The poor, who love each other, are so rich.
guido
Tell me again you love me, Beatrice.
duchess [fingering his collar]
How well this collar lies about your throat.
[Lord Moranzone looks through the door from the corridor outside.]
guido
Nay, tell me that you love me.
duchess
I remember,
That when I was a child in my dear France,
Being
