XX.

Still shone her face—­yet not, alas! the same,
  But ’gan some dreary touches to assume,
And sadder thoughts, with sadder changes came—­
  Her eyes resigned their light, her lips their bloom,
Her teeth fell out, her tresses did the same,
  Her cheeks were tinged with bile, her eyes with rheum: 
There was a throbbing at her heart within,
For, oh! there was a shooting in her chin.

XXI.

And lo! upon her sad desponding brow,
  The cruel trenches of besieging age,
With seams, but most unseemly, ’gan to show
  Her place was booking for the seventh stage;
And where her raven tresses used to flow,
  Some locks that Time had left her in his rage. 
And some mock ringlets, made her forehead shady,
A compound (like our Psalms) of tete and braidy.

XXII.

Then for her shape—­alas! how Saturn wrecks,
  And bends, and corkscrews all the frame about,
Doubles the hams, and crooks the straightest necks,
  Draws in the nape, and pushes forth the snout,
Makes backs and stomachs concave or convex: 
  Witness those pensioners called In and Out,
Who all day watching first and second rater,
Quaintly unbend themselves—­but grow no straighter.

XXIII.

So Time with fair Bianca dealt, and made
  Her shape a bow, that once was like an arrow;
His iron hand upon her spine he laid,
  And twisted all awry her “winsome marrow.” 
In truth it was a change!—­she had obey’d
  The holy Pope before her chest grew narrow,
But spectacles and palsy seem’d to make her
Something between a Glassite and a Quaker.

XXIV.

Her grief and gall meanwhile were quite extreme,
  And she had ample reason for her trouble;
For what sad maiden can endure to seem
  Set in for singleness, tho’ growing double. 
The fancy madden’d her; but now the dream,
  Grown thin by getting bigger, like a bubble,
Burst,—­but still left some fragments of its size,
That, like the soapsuds, smarted in her eyes.

XXV.

And here—­just here—­as she began to heed
  The real world, her clock chimed out its score;
A clock it was of the Venetian breed,
  That cried the hour from one to twenty-four;
The works moreover standing in some need
  Of workmanship, it struck some dozens more;
A warning voice that clench’d Bianca’s fears,
Such strokes referring doubtless to her years.

XXVI.

At fifteen chimes she was but half a nun,
  By twenty she had quite renounced the veil;
She thought of Julio just at twenty-one,
  And thirty made her very sad and pale,
To paint that ruin where her charms would run;
  At forty all the maid began to fail,
And thought no higher, as the late dream cross’d her,
Of single blessedness, than single Gloster.