I.

    “In the noon-day’s golden pleasance,
      Little Bice, baby fair,
    With a fresh and flowery presence,
      Dances round her nurse’s chair,
  In the old grey loggia dances, haloed by her shining hair.

  II.

    “Pretty pearl in sober setting,
      Where the arches garner shade! 
    Cones of maize like golden netting,
      Fringe the sturdy colonnade,
  And the lizards pertly pausing glance across the balustrade.

  III.

    “Brown cicala drily proses,
      Creaking the hot air to sleep,
    Bounteous orange flowers and roses,
      Yield the wealth of love they keep,
  To the sun’s imperious ardour in a dream of fragrance deep.

  IV.

    “And a cypress, mystic hearted,
      Cleaves the quiet dome of light
    With its black green masses parted
      But by gaps of blacker night,
  Which the giddy moth and beetle circle round in dubious flight.

  V.

    “Here the well chain’s pleasant clanging,
      Sings of coolness deep below;
    There the vine leaves breathless hanging,
      Shine transfigured in the glow,
  And the pillars stare in silence at the shadows which they throw.

  VI.

    “Portly nurse, black-browed, red-vested,
      Knits and dozes, drowsed with heat;
    Bice, like a wren gold-crested,
      Chirps and teases round her seat,
  Hides the needles, plucks the stocking, rolls the cotton o’er her feet.

  VII.

    “Nurse must fetch a draught of water,
      In the glass with painted wings,[1]
    Nurse must show her little daughter
      All her tale of silver rings,
  Dear sweet nurse must sing a couplet—­solemn nurse, who never
  sings!

  VIII.

    “Blest Madonna! what a clamour! 
      Now the little torment tries,
    Perched on tiptoe, all the glamour
      Of her coaxing hands and eyes! 
  May she hold the glass she drinks from—­just one moment, Bice cries.

  IX.

    “Nurse lifts high the Venice beaker,
      Bossed with masks, and flecked with gold,
    Scarce in time to ’scape the quicker
      Little fingers over-bold,
  Craving tendril-like to grasp it, with the will of four years old.

  X.

    “Pretty wood bird, pecking, flitting,
      Round the cherries on the tree. 
    Ware the scarecrow, grimly sitting,
      Crouched for silly things, like thee! 
  Nurse hath plenty such in ambush.  ’Touch not, for it burns,’[2] quoth
    she.

  XI.

    “And thine eyes’ blue mirror widens
      With an awestroke of belief;
    Meekly following that blind guidance,
      On thy finger’s rosy sheaf,
  Blow’st thou softly, fancy wounded, soothing down a painless grief.

  XII.