Classic Poem

To him no more an inward hate
Shall speak, nor aught but beauty sing,
Who walks within this Garden late
And hears the fountain murmuring.

A vestige of some other day
Once lived, but dim-remembered now,
Goes in the moon's familiar way
Beneath the stately ilex-bough.

The parterre — I but half forget —
The Tuscan melancholy night —
Too faintly I regain them, yet
Too keenly to have lost them quite.

Was I the Other of some song
That many a year hath left the lips
Of her who walks alone along
The water where the Triton dips?

And she — how her rispetti claim
The sad, bewildered heart of me
That ever almost saith her name,
Yet loseth it continually!

Slow moving down the marble stair,
Or leaned on sculptured balustrade,
Her face is shadowed by her hair,
Her arms are buried in its shade.

Oh, would she lift that face, or free
Those hidden hands, I know that soon
My faint, old faded Italy
Again might blossom to the moon!