Stay longer yet, for others’ sake
Than mine!  What should your chamber do? 160
—­With all its rarities that ache
In silence while day lasts, but wake
At night-time and their life renew,
Suspended just to pleasure you
Who brought against their will together
These objects, and, while day lasts, weave
Around them such a magic tether
That dumb they look:  your harp, believe,
With all the sensitive tight strings
Which dare not speak, now to itself 170
Breathes slumberously, as if some elf
Went in and out the chords, his wings
Make murmur wheresoe’er they graze,
As an angel may, between the maze
Of midnight palace-pillars, on
And on, to sow God’s plagues, have gone
Through guilty glorious Babylon. 
And while such murmurs flow, the nymph
Bends o’er the harp-top from her shelI
As the dry limpet for the Iymph 180
Come with a tune he knows so well. 
And how your statues’ hearts must swell! 
And how your pictures must descend
To see each other, friend with friend! 
Oh, could you take them by surprise,
You’d find Schidone’s eager Duke
Doing the quaintest courtesies
To that prim saint by Haste-thee-Luke! 
And, deeper into her rock den,
Bold Castelfranco’s Magdalen 190
You’d find retreated from the ken
Of that robed counsel-keeping Ser—­
As if the Tizian thinks of her,
And is not, rather, gravely bent
On seeing for himself what toys
Are these, his progeny invent,
What litter now the board employs
Whereon he signed a document
That got him murdered!  Each enjoys
Its night so well, you cannot break 200
The sport up, so, indeed must make
More stay with me, for others’ sake.

She speaks.

I

To-morrow, if a harp-string, say,
Is used to tie the jasmine back
That overfloods my room with sweets,
Contrive your Zorzi somehow meets
My Zanze!  If the ribbon’s black,
The Three are watching:  keep away!

II

Your gondola—­let Zorzi wreathe
A mesh of water weeds about 210
Its prow, as if he unaware
Had struck some quay or bridge-foot stair! 
That I may throw a paper out
As you and he go underneath. 
There’s Zanze’s vigilant taper; safe are we. 
Only one minute more to-night with me? 
Resume your past self of a month ago! 
Be you the bashful gallant, I will be
The lady with the colder breast than snow. 
Now bow you, as becomes, nor touch my hand 220
More than I touch yours when I step to land,
And say, “All thanks, Siora!”—­
                               Heart to heart
And lips to lips!  Yet once more, ere we part,
Clasp me and make me thine, as mine thou art!