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Literary Gazette, 2nd November, 1822, Pages 697-698
ORIGINAL POETRY.
DRAMATIC SCENES. — II.[1]
Leonardi. 'Tis finished now: look on my picture. Love!
Alvine. Oh, that sweet ring of graceful figures! one
Flings her white arms on high, and gaily strikes
Her golden cymbals—I can almost deem
I hear their beatings; one with glancing feet
Follows her music, while her crimson cheek
Is flushed with exercise, till the red grape
'Mid the dark tresses of a sister nymph
Is scarcely brighter; there another stands,
A darker spirit yet, with joyous brow,
And holding a rich goblet; oh, that child!
With eyes as blue as spring-days, and those curls
Throwing their auburn shadow o'er a brow
So arch, so playful—have you bodied forth
Young Cupid in your colours ?
Leonardi. No—oh no,
I could not paint Love as a careless boy,—
That passionate Divinity, whose life
Is of such deep and intense feeling! No,
I am too true, too earnest, and too happy,
To ever image by a changeful child
That which is so unchangeable. But mark
How sweet, how pale, the light that I have thrown
Over the picture: it is just the time
When Dian's dewy kiss lights up the dreams
That make Endymion's sleep so beautiful.
Look on the calm blue sky, so set with stars:
Is it not like some we can both recall?
Those azure shadows of a summer night,
That veiled the cautious lutanist who waked
Thy slumbers with his song. How more than fair,
How like a spirit of that starry hour,
I used to think you, as your timid hand
Unbarr'd the casement and you leant to hear,
Your long hair floating loose amid the vines
Around your lattice; and how very sweet
Your voice, scarce audible, with the soft fear
That mingled in its low and tender tones!
- ↑ This scene appears as 'Bacchus and Ariadne' in The Vow of the Peacock and Other Poems (1835)
