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(Rispetti.)
THE COLOUR of the olives who shall say? | |
| In winter on the yellow earth they’re blue, | |
| A wind can change the green to white or gray, | |
| But they are olives still in every hue; | |
| But they are olives always, green or white, | 5 |
| As love is love in torment or delight; | |
| But they are olives, ruffled or at rest, | |
| As love is always love in tears or jest. | |
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| We walked along the terraced olive-yard, | |
| And talked together till we lost the way; | 10 |
| We met a peasant, bent with age, and hard, | |
| Bruising the grape-skins in a vase of clay; | |
| Bruising the grape-skins for the second wine. | |
| We did not drink, and left him, Love of mine; | |
| Bruising the grapes already bruised enough: | 15 |
| He had his meagre wine, and we our love. | |
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| We climbed one morning to the sunny height, | |
| Where chestnuts grow no more, and olives grow; | |
| Far-off the circling mountains, cinder-white, | |
| The yellow river and the gorge below. | 20 |
| “Turn round,” you said, O flower of Paradise; | |
| I did not turn, I looked upon your eyes. | |
| “Turn round,” you said, “turn round, look at the view!” | |
| I did not turn, my Love, I looked at you. | |
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| How hot it was! Across the white-hot wall | 25 |
| Pale olives stretch towards the blazing street; | |
| You broke a branch, you never spoke at all, | |
| But gave it me to fan with in the heat; | |
| You gave it me without a sign or word, | |
| And yet, my love, I think you knew I heard. | 30 |
| You gave it me without a word or sign: | |
| Under the olives first I called you mine. | |
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| At Lucca, for the autumn festival, | |
| The streets are tulip-gay; but you and I | |
| Forget them, seeing over church and wall | 35 |
| Guinigi’s tower soar i’ the black-blue sky, | |
| A stem of delicate rose against the blue, | |
| And on the top two lonely olives grew, | |
| Crowning the tower, far from the hills, alone, | |
| As on our risen love our lives are grown. | 40 |
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| Who would have thought we should stand again together, | |
| Here, with the convent a frown of towers above us; | |
| Here, mid the sere-wooded hills and wintry weather; | |
| Here, where the olives bend down and seem to love us; | |
| Here, where the fruit-laden olives half remember | 45 |
| All that began in their shadow last November; | |
| Here, where we knew we must part, must part and sever; | |
| Here where we know we shall love for aye and ever. | |
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| Reach up and pluck a branch, and give it me, | |
| That I may hang it in my Northern room, | 50 |
| That I may find it there, and wake, and see | |
| —Not you! not you!—dead leaves and wintry gloom. | |
| O senseless olives, wherefore should I take | |
| Your leaves to balm a heart that can but ache? | |
| Why should I take you hence, that can but show | 55 |
| How much is left behind? I do not know. | |
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