| Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882). Complete Poetical Works. 1893. | | | | Appendix | II. Unacknowledged and Uncollected Translations.
A Florentine Song |
| | | IF I am fair’t is for myself alone, | |
| I do not wish to have a sweetheart near me, | |
| Nor would I call another’s heart my own, | |
| Nor have a gallant lover to revere me. | |
| For surely I will plight my faith to none, | 5 |
| Though many an amorous cit would jump to hear me | |
| For I have heard that lovers prove deceivers, | |
| When once they find that maidens are believers. | |
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| Yet should I find one that in truth could please me, | |
| One whom I thought my charms had power to move, | 10 |
| Why then, I do confess, the whim might seize me, | |
| To taste for once the porringer of love. | |
| Alas! there is one pair of eyes that tease me; | |
| And then that mouth!—he seems a star above, | |
| He is so good, so gentle, and so kind, | 15 |
| And so unlike the sullen, clownish hind. | |
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| What love may be, indeed I cannot tell, | |
| Nor if I e’er have known his cunning arts; | |
| But true it is, there’s one I like so well, | |
| That when he looks at me my bosom starts. | 20 |
| And, if we meet, my heart begins to swell; | |
| And the green fields around, when he departs, | |
| Seem like a nest from which the bird has flown; | |
| Can this be love?—say—ye who love have known. | | | | |
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