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The hours fly like winged Mercuries

       And leave existence golden.

      DUCHESS

       I did not think

       I should be ever loved: do you indeed

       Love me so much as now you say you do?

      GUIDO

       Ask of the sea-bird if it loves the sea,

       Ask of the roses if they love the rain,

       Ask of the little lark, that will not sing

       Till day break, if it loves to see the day:-

       And yet, these are but empty images,

       Mere shadows of my love, which is a fire

       So great that all the waters of the main

       Can not avail to quench it. Will you not speak?

      DUCHESS I hardly know what I should say to you.

      GUIDO Will you not say you love me?

      DUCHESS

       Is that my lesson?

       Must I say all at once? ‘Twere a good lesson

       If I did love you, sir; but, if I do not,

       What shall I say then?

      GUIDO

       If you do not love me,

       Say, none the less, you do, for on your tongue

       Falsehood for very shame would turn to truth.

      DUCHESS

       What if I do not speak at all? They say

       Lovers are happiest when they are in doubt

      GUIDO

       Nay, doubt would kill me, and if I must die,

       Why, let me die for joy and not for doubt.

       Oh, tell me may I stay, or must I go?

      DUCHESS

       I would not have you either stay or go;

       For if you stay you steal my love from me,

       And if you go you take my love away.

       Guido, though all the morning stars could sing

       They could not tell the measure of my love.

       I love you, Guido.

      GUIDO

       [stretching out his hands]

       Oh, do not cease at all;

       I thought the nightingale sang but at night;

       Or if thou needst must cease, then let my lips

       Touch the sweet lips that can such music make.

      DUCHESS To touch my lips is not to touch my heart.

      GUIDO Do you close that against me?

      DUCHESS

       Alas! my lord,

       I have it not: the first day that I saw you

       I let you take my heart away from me;

       Unwilling thief, that without meaning it

       Did break into my fenced treasury

       And filch my jewel from it! O strange theft,

       Which made you richer though you knew it not,

       And left me poorer, and yet glad of it!

      GUIDO [clasping her in his arms]

       O love, love, love! Nay, sweet, lift up your head,

       Let me unlock those little scarlet doors

       That shut in music, let me dive for coral

       In your red lips, and I’ll bear back a prize

       Richer than all the gold the Gryphon guards

       In rude Armenia.

      DUCHESS

       You are my lord,

       And what I have is yours, and what I have not

       Your fancy lends me, like a prodigal

       Spending its wealth on what is nothing worth.

       [Kisses him.]

      GUIDO

       Methinks I am bold to look upon you thus:

       The gentle violet hides beneath its leaf

       And is afraid to look at the great sun

       For fear of too much splendour, but my eyes,

       O daring eyes! are grown so venturous

       That like fixed stars they stand, gazing at you,

       And surfeit sense with beauty.

      DUCHESS

       Dear love, I would

       You could look upon me ever, for your eyes

       Are polished mirrors, and when I peer

       Into those mirrors I can see myself,

       And so I know my image lives in you.

      GUIDO [taking her in his arms]

       Stand still, thou hurrying orb in the high heavens,

       And make this hour immortal! [A pause.]

      DUCHESS

       Sit down here,

       A little lower than me: yes, just so, sweet,

       That I may run my fingers through your hair,

       And see your face turn upwards like a flower

       To meet my kiss.

       Have you not sometimes noted,

       When we unlock some long-disuséd room

       With heavy dust and soiling mildew filled,

       Where never foot of man has come for years,

       And from the windows take the rusty bar,

       And fling the broken shutters to the air,

       And let the bright sun in, how the good sun

       Turns every grimy particle of dust

       Into a little thing of dancing gold?

       Guido, my heart is that long-empty room,

       But you have let love in, and with its gold

       Gilded all life. Do you not think that love

       Fills up the sum of life?

      GUIDO

       Ay! without love

       Life is no better than the unhewn stone

       Which in the quarry lies, before the sculptor

       Has set the God within it. Without love

       Life is as silent as the common reeds

       That through the marshes or by rivers grow,

       And have no music in them.

      DUCHESS

       Yet out of these

       The singer, who is Love, will make a pipe

       And from them he draws music; so I think

       Love will bring music out of any life.

       Is that not true?

      GUIDO

       Sweet, women make it true.

       There are men who paint pictures, and carve statues,

       Paul of Verona and the dyer’s son,

       Or their great rival, who, by the sea at Venice,

       Has set God’s little maid upon the stair,

       White as her own white lily, and as tall,

       Or Raphael, whose Madonnas are divine

      

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