Page:Romance & Reality 2.pdf/123

Rh an old tree, through which the moonlight was falling like rain—and he has sung some one of those divine airs whose popularity has verily floated on the wings of the wind. Gradually his voice has died away, and he has sat silent and absorbed, as if wholly given up to the quiet enjoyment of the soft summer night. Ought not that man to have been a poet?" "The feeling for poetry is not the power, and I firmly believe its source lies not without, but within." "Nothing struck me so much as the extreme beauty of the women. To take one instance out of many—look at the young peasants who plait the Leghorn straw: brought up from infancy to that most feminine employment, which requires the utmost delicacy of touch, their hands and arms are as white as those of the heroines of romance always are; the outline of their face is perfect—the finely formed nose, the ivory teeth, the high, intellectual forehead—and such eye-brow's—to say nothing of their large dark eyes, either of a deep purple blue, or a radiant black; and then their hair, so profuse, so exquisitely dressed, put up into those rich masses of shade, and falling into one or two large ringlets that Berenice might have envied.