Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Alfred H. Miles, ed. Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907.

By An Italian Garden (1886). II. Venetian Nocturne

A. Mary F. Robinson-Darmesteter (1857–1944)

DOWN the narrow Calle where the moonlight cannot enter

The houses are so high;

Silent and alone we pierced the night’s dim core and centre—

Only you and I.

Clear and sad our footsteps rang along the hollow pavement,

Sounding like a bell;

Sounding like a voice that cries to souls in Life’s enslavement,

“There is Death as well!”

Down the narrow dark we went, until a sudden whiteness

Made us hold our breath;

All the white Salute towers and domes in moonlit brightness,—

Ah! could this be Death?