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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=529749" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Bianca's Dream - A Venetian Story</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=529749" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">BIANCA!—fair Bianca!—who could dwell<br>With safety on her dark and hazel gaze,<br>Nor find there lurk'd in it a witching spell,<br>Fatal to balmy nights and blessed days?<br>The peaceful breath that made the bosom swell,<br>She turn'd to gas, and set it in a blaze;<br>Each eye of hers had Love's Eupyrion in it,<br>That he could light his link at in a minute.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=529749" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">So that, wherever in her charms she shone,<br>A thousand breasts were kindled into flame;<br>Maidens who cursed her looks forgot their own,<br>And beaux were turn'd to flambeaux where she<br>came;<br>All hearts indeed were conquer'd but her own,<br>Which none could ever temper down or tame:<br>In short, to take our haberdasher's hints,<br>She might have written over it,—'from Flints.'</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=529749" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">She was, in truth, the wonder of her sex,<br>At least in Venice—where with eyes of brown<br>Tenderly languid, ladies seldom vex<br>An amorous gentle with a needless frown;<br>Where gondolas convey guitars by pecks,<br>And Love at casements climbeth up and down,<br>Whom for his tricks and custom in that kind,<br>Some have considered a Venetian blind.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=529749" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Howbeit, this difference was quickly taught,<br>Amongst more youths who had this cruel jailer,<br>To hapless Julio—all in vain he sought<br>With each new moon his hatter and his tailor;<br>In vain the richest padusoy he bought,<br>And went in bran new beaver to assail her—<br>As if to show that Love had made him smart<br>All over—and not merely round his heart.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=529749" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>-5-</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=529749" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>In vain he labour'd thro' the sylvan park<br>Bianca haunted in—that where she came,<br>Her learned eyes in wandering might mark<br>The twisted cypher of her maiden name,<br>Wholesomely going thro' a course of bark:<br>No one was touched or troubled by his flame,<br>Except the Dryads, those old maids that grow<br>In trees,—like wooden dolls in embryo.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=529749" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">In vain complaining elegies he writ,<br>And taught his tuneful instrument to grieve,<br>And sang in quavers how his heart was split,<br>Constant beneath her lattice with each eve;<br>She mock'd his wooing with her wicked wit,<br>And slash'd his suit so that it matched his sleeve,<br>Till he grew silent at the vesper star,<br>And, quite despairing, hamstring'd his guitar.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=529749" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Bianca's heart was coldly frosted o'er<br>With snows unmelting—an eternal sheet,<br>But his was red within him, like the core<br>Of old Vesuvius, with perpetual heat;<br>And oft he longed internally to pour<br>His flames and glowing lava at her feet,<br>But when his burnings he began to spout.<br>She stopp'd his mouth, and put the crater out.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=529749" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Meanwhile he wasted in the eyes of men,<br>So thin, he seem'd a sort of skeleton-key<br>Suspended at death's door—so pale—and then<br>He turn'd as nervous as an aspen tree;<br>The life of man is three score years and ten,<br>But he was perishing at twenty-three,<br>For people truly said, as grief grew stronger,<br>'It could not shorten his poor life—much longer.'</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=529749" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">For why, he neither slept, nor drank, nor fed,<br>Nor relished any kind of mirth below;<br>Fire in his heart, and frenzy in his head,<br>Love had become his universal foe,<br>Salt in his sugar—nightmare in his bed,<br>At last, no wonder wretched Julio,<br>A sorrow-ridden thing, in utter dearth<br>Of hope,—made up his mind to cut her girth!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=529749" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>-10-</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=529749" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>For hapless lovers always died of old,<br>Sooner than chew reflection's bitter cud;<br>So Thisbe stuck herself, what time 'tis told,<br>The tender-hearted mulberries wept blood;<br>And so poor Sappho when her boy was cold,<br>Drown'd her salt tear drops in a salter flood,<br>Their fame still breathing, tho' their breath be past,<br>For those old suitors lived beyond their last.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=529749" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">So Julio went to drown,—when life was dull,<br>But took his corks, and merely had a bath;<br>And once he pull'd a trigger at his skull,<br>But merely broke a window in his wrath;<br>And once, his hopeless being to annul,<br>He tied a pack-thread to a beam of lath,<br>A line so ample, 'twas a query whether<br>'Twas meant to be a halter or a tether.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=529749" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Smile not in scorn, that Julio did not thrust<br>His sorrows thro'—'tis horrible to die!<br>And come down, with our little all of dust,<br>That dun of all the duns to satisfy:<br>To leave life's pleasant city as we must,<br>In Death's most dreary spunging-house to lie,<br>Where even all our personals must go<br>To pay the debt of nature that we owe!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=529749" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">So Julio liv'd:—'twas nothing but a pet<br>He took at life—a momentary spite;<br>Besides, he hoped that time would some day get<br>The better of love's flame, howover bright;<br>A thing that time has never compass'd yet,<br>For love, we know, is an immortal light.<br>Like that old fire, that, quite beyond a doubt,<br>Was always in,—for none have found it out.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=529749" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Meanwhile, Bianca dream'd—'twas once when Night<br>Along the darken'd plain began to creep,<br>Like a young Hottentot, whose eyes are bright,<br>Altho' in skin as sooty as a sweep:<br>The flow'rs had shut their eyes—the zephyr light<br>Was gone, for it had rock'd the leaves to sleep.<br>And all the little birds had laid their heads<br>Under their wings—sleeping in feather beds.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=529749" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>-15-</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=529749" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>Lone in her chamber sate the dark-ey'd maid,<br>By easy stages jaunting thro' her pray'rs,<br>But list'ning side-long to a serenade,<br>That robb'd the saints a little of their shares;<br>For Julio underneath the lattice play'd<br>His Deh Vieni, and such amorous airs,<br>Born only underneath Italian skies,<br>Where every fiddle has a Bridge of Sighs.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=529749" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Sweet was the tune—the words were even sweeter—<br>Praising her eyes, her lips, her nose, her hair,<br>With all the common tropes wherewith in metre<br>The hackney poets overcharge their fair.<br>Her shape was like Diana's, but completer;<br>Her brow with Grecian Helen's might compare:<br>Cupid, alas! was cruel Sagittarius,<br>Julio—the weeping water-man Aquarius.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=529749" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Now, after listing to such laudings rare,<br>'Twas very natural indeed to go—<br>What if she did postpone one little pray'r—<br>To ask her mirror 'if it was not so?'<br>'Twas a large mirror, none the worse for wear,<br>Reflecting her at once from top to toe:<br>And there she gazed upon that glossy track,<br>That show'd her front face tho' it 'gave her back.'</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=529749" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And long her lovely eyes were held in thrall,<br>By that dear page where first the woman reads:<br>That Julio was no flatt'rer, none at all,<br>She told herself—and then she told her beads;<br>Meanwhile, the nerves insensibly let fall<br>Two curtains fairer than the lily breeds;<br>For Sleep had crept and kiss'd her unawares,<br>Just at the half-way milestone of her pray'rs.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=529749" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Then like a drooping rose so bended she,<br>Till her bow'd head upon her hand reposed;<br>But still she plainly saw, or seem'd to see,<br>That fair reflection, tho' her eyes were closed,<br>A beauty-bright as it was wont to be,<br>A portrait Fancy painted while she dozed:<br>'Tis very natural some people say,<br>To dream of what we dwell on in the day.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=529749" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>-20-</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=529749" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>Still shone her face—yet not, alas! the same,<br>But 'gan some dreary touches to assume,<br>And sadder thoughts, with sadder changes came—<br>Her eyes resigned their light, her lips their bloom,<br>Her teeth fell out, her tresses did the same,<br>Her cheeks were tinged with bile, her eyes with<br>rheum:<br>There was a throbbing at her heart within,<br>For, oh! there was a shooting in her chin.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=529749" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And lo! upon her sad desponding brow,<br>The cruel trenches of besieging age,<br>With seams, but most unseemly, 'gan to show<br>Her place was booking for the seventh stage;<br>And where her raven tresses used to flow,<br>Some locks that Time had left her in his rage.<br>And some mock ringlets, made her forehead shady,<br>A compound (like our Psalms) of Tête and braidy.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=529749" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Then for her shape—alas! how Saturn wrecks,<br>And bends, and corkscrews all the frame about,<br>Doubles the hams, and crooks the straightest necks,<br>Draws in the nape, and pushes forth the snout,<br>Makes backs and stomachs concave or convex:<br>Witness those pensioners called In and Out,<br>Who all day watching first and second rater,<br>Quaintly unbend themselves—but grow no<br>straighter.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=529749" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">So Time with fair Bianca dealt, and made<br>Her shape a bow, that once was like an arrow;<br>His iron hand upon her spine he laid,<br>And twisted all awry her 'winsome marrow.'<br>In truth it was a change!—she had obey'd<br>The holy Pope before her chest grew narrow,<br>But spectacles and palsy seem'd to make her<br>Something between a Glassite and a Quaker.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=529749" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Her grief and gall meanwhile were quite extreme,<br>And she had ample reason for her trouble;<br>For what sad maiden can endure to seem<br>Set in for singleness, tho' growing double.<br>The fancy madden'd her; but now the dream,<br>Grown thin by getting bigger, like a bubble,<br>Burst,—but still left some fragments of its size,<br>That, like the soapsuds, smarted in her eyes.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=529749" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>-25-</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=529749" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>And here—just here—as she began to heed<br>The real world, her clock chimed out its score;<br>A clock it was of the Venetian breed,<br>That cried the hour from one to twenty-four;<br>The works moreover standing in some need<br>Of workmanship, it struck some dozens more;<br>A warning voice that clench'd Bianca's fears,<br>Such strokes referring doubtless to her years.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=529749" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">At fifteen chimes she was but half a nun,<br>By twenty she had quite renounced the veil;<br>She thought of Julio just at twenty-one,<br>And thirty made her very sad and pale,<br>To paint that ruin where her charms would run;<br>At forty all the maid began to fail,<br>And thought no higher, as the late dream cross'd her,<br>Of single blessedness, than single Gloster.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=529749" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And so Bianca changed;—the next sweet even,<br>With Julio in a black Venetian bark,<br>Row'd slow and stealthily—the hour, eleven,<br>Just sounding from the tow'r of old St. Mark;<br>She sate with eyes turn'd quietly to heav'n,<br>Perchance rejoicing in the grateful dark<br>That veil'd her blushing cheek,—for Julio brought her<br>Of course—to break the ice upon the water.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=529749" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">But what a puzzle is one's serious mind<br>To open;—oysters, when the ice is thick,<br>Are not so difficult and disinclin'd;<br>And Julio felt the declaration stick<br>About his throat in a most awful kind;<br>However, he contrived by bits to pick<br>His trouble forth,—much like a rotten cork<br>Grop'd from a long-necked bottle with a fork.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=529749" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">But love is still the quickest of all readers;<br>And Julio spent besides those signs profuse<br>That English telegraphs and foreign pleaders,<br>In help of language, are so apt to use,<br>Arms, shoulders, fingers, all were interceders,<br>Nods, shrugs, and bends,—Bianca could not choose<br>But soften to his suit with more facility,<br>He told his story with so much agility.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=529749" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>-30-</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=529749" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>'Be thou my park, and I will be thy dear,<br>(So he began at last to speak or quote<br>Be thou my bark, and I thy gondolier,<br>(For passion takes this figurative note<br>Be thou my light, and I thy chandelier;<br>Be thou my dove, and I will be thy cote:<br>My lily be, and I will be thy river;<br>Be thou my life—and I will be thy liver.'</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=529749" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">This, with more tender logic of the kind,<br>He pour'd into her small and shell-like ear,<br>That timidly against his lips inclin'd;<br>Meanwhile her eyes glanced on the silver sphere<br>That even now began to steal behind<br>A dewy vapour, which was lingering near,<br>Wherein the dull moon crept all dim and pale,<br>Just like a virgin putting on the veil:—</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=529749" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Bidding adieu to all her sparks—the stars,<br>That erst had woo'd and worshipp'd in her train,<br>Saturn and Hesperus, and gallant Mars—<br>Never to flirt with heavenly eyes again.<br>Meanwhile, remindful of the convent bars,<br>Bianca did not watch these signs in vain,<br>But turn'd to Julio at the dark eclipse,<br>With words, like verbal kisses, on her lips.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=529749" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">He took the hint full speedily, and, back'd<br>By love, and night, and the occasion's meetness,<br>Bestow'd a something on her cheek that smack'd<br>(Tho' quite in silence) of ambrosial sweetness;<br>That made her think all other kisses lack'd<br>Till then, but what she knew not, of completeness;<br>Being used but sisterly salutes to feel,<br>Insipid things—like sandwiches of veal.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=529749" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">He took her hand, and soon she felt him wring<br>The pretty fingers all instead of one;<br>Anon his stealthy arm began to cling<br>About her waist that had been clasp'd by none,<br>Their dear confessions I forbear to sing,<br>Since cold description would but be outrun;<br>For bliss and Irish watches have the pow'r,<br>In twenty minutes, to lose half an hour!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><a href="http://poems.citatepedia.com/">poem</a> by <strong><a rel="author" href="http://authors.citatepedia.com/by.php?a=Thomas+Hood">Thomas Hood</a></strong></div>