Page:The poems of George Eliot (Crowell, 1884).djvu/397

 Whose birth was higher than his fortunes were;

For still your trader likes a mixture fair

Of blood that hurries to some higher strain

Thau reckoning money's loss and money's gain.

And of such mixture good may surely come:

Lords' scions so may learn to cast a sum,

A trader's grandson bear a well-set head,

And have less conscious manners, better bred;

Nor, when he tries to be polite, be rude instead.

'T was Perdicone's friends made overtures

To good Bernardo: so one dame assures

Her neighbor dame who notices the youth

Fixing his eyes on Lisa; and in truth

Eyes that could see her on this summer day

Might find it hard to turn another way.

She had a pensive beauty, yet not sad;

Rather, like minor cadences that glad

The hearts of little birds amid spring boughs;

And oft the trumpet or the joust would rouse

Pulses that gave her cheek a finer glow,

Parting her lips that seemed a mimic bow

By chiselling Love for play in coral wrought,

Then quickened by him with the passionate thought,

The soul that trembled in the lustrous night

Of slow long eyes. Her body was so slight,

It seemed she could have floated in the sky,

And with the angelic choir made symphony;

But in her cheek's rich tinge, and in the dark

Of darkest hair and eyes, she bore a mark

Of kinship to her generous mother earth,

The fervid land that gives the plumy palm-trees birth.

She saw not Perdicone; her young mind

Dreamed not that any man had ever pined