Chalky cliffs and miles of sand,
  Ragged reefs and salty caves,
  And the sparkling emerald waves
  Faded; and I seemed to stand,
  Myself a languid Florentine,
  In the heart of that fair land. 
  And in a garden cool and green,
  Boccaccio’s own enchanted place,
  I met Pampenea face to face,—­
  A maid so lovely that to see
  Her smile is to know Italy.

  Her hair was like a coronet
  Upon her Grecian forehead set,
  Where one gem glistened sunnily,
  Like Venice, when first seen at sea. 
  I saw within her violet eyes
  The starlight of Italian skies,
  And on her brow and breast and hand
  The olive of her native land.

  And knowing how, in other times,
  Her lips were ripe with Tuscan rhymes
  Of love and wine and dance, I spread
  My mantle by an almond-tree: 
  “And here, beneath the rose,” I said,
  “I’ll hear thy Tuscan melody!”

  I heard a tale that was not told
  In those ten dreamy days of old,
  When Heaven, for some divine offence,
  Smote Florence with the pestilence,
  And in that garden’s odorous shade
  The dames of the Decameron,
  With each a happy lover, strayed,
  To laugh and sing, at sorest need,
  To lie in the lilies, in the sun,
  With glint of plume and golden brede.

  And while she whispered in my ear,
  The pleasant Arno murmured near,
  The dewy, slim chameleons run
  Through twenty colors in the sun,
  The breezes broke the fountain’s glass,
  And woke Aeolian melodies,
  And shook from out the scented trees
  The bleached lemon-blossoms on the grass.

  The tale?  I have forgot the tale!—­
  A Lady all for love forlorn;
  A Rosebud, and a Nightingale
  That bruised his bosom on a thorn;
  A pot of rubies buried deep;
  A glen, a corpse, a child asleep;
  A Monk, that was no monk at all,
  I’ the moonlight by a castle-wall;—­
  Kaleidoscopic hints, to be
  Worked up in farce or tragedy.

  Now while the sweet-eyed Tuscan wove
  The gilded thread of her romance,
  (Which I have lost by grievous chance,)
  The one dear woman that I love,
  Beside me in our seaside nook,
  Closed a white finger in her book,
  Half-vexed that she should read, and weep
  For Petrarch, to a man asleep. 
  And scorning me, so tame and cold,
  She rose, and wandered down the shore,
  Her wine-dark drapery, fold in fold,
  Imprisoned by an ivory hand;
  And on a ridge of granite, half in sand,
  She stood, and looked at Appledore.

  And waking, I beheld her there
  Sea-dreaming in the moted air,
  A Siren sweet and debonair,
  With wristlets woven of colored weeds,
  And oblong lucent amber beads
  Of sea-kelp shining in her hair. 
  And as I mused on dreams, and how
  The something in us never sleeps,