Six hundred years ago, in Dante’s time,

      Before his cheek was furrowed by deep rhyme;

      When Europe, fed afresh from Eastern story,

      Was like a garden tangled with the glory

      Of flowers hand-planted and of flowers air-sown,

      Climbing and trailing, budding and full-blown,

      Where purple bells are tossed amid pink stars,

      And springing blades, green troops in innocent wars,

      Crowd every shady spot of teeming earth,

      Making invisible motion visible birth,—

      Six hundred years ago, Palermo town

      Kept holiday.  A deed of great renown,

      A high revenge, had freed it from the yoke

      Of hated Frenchmen; and from Calpe’s rock

      To where the Bosporus caught the earlier sun,

      ’Twas told that Pedro, King of Aragon,

      Was welcomed master of all Sicily,—

      A royal knight, supreme as kings should be

      In strength and gentleness that make high chivalry.

      Spain was the favorite home of knightly grace,

      Where generous men rode steeds of generous race;

      Both Spanish, yet half Arab; both inspired

      By mutual spirit, that each motion fired

      With beauteous response, like minstrelsy

      Afresh fulfilling fresh expectancy.

      So, when Palermo made high festival,

      The joy of matrons and of maidens all

      Was the mock terror of the tournament,

      Where safety, with the glimpse of danger blent,

      Took exaltation as from epic song,

      Which greatly tells the pains that to great life belong.

      And in all eyes King Pedro was the king

      Of cavaliers; as in a full-gemmed ring

      The largest ruby, or as that bright star

      Whose shining shows us where the Hyads are.

      His the best genet, and he sat it best;

      His weapon, whether tilting or in rest,

      Was worthiest watching; and his face, once seen,

      Gave to the promise of his royal mien

      Such rich fulfilment as the opened eyes

      Of a loved sleeper, or the long-watched rise

      Of vernal day, whose joy o’er stream and meadow flies.

      But of the maiden forms that thick enwreathed

      The broad piazza, and sweet witchery breathed,

      With innocent faces budding all arow,

      From balconies and windows high and low,

      Who was it felt the deep mysterious glow,

      The impregnation with supernal fire

      Of young ideal love, transformed desire,

      Whose passion is but worship of that Best

      Taught by the many-mingled creed of each young breast?

      ’Twas gentle Lisa, of no noble line,

      Child of Bernardo, a rich Florentine,

      Who from his merchant-city hither came

      To trade in drugs; yet kept an honest fame,

      And had the virtue not to try and sell

      Drugs that had none.  He loved his riches well,

      But loved them chiefly for his Lisa’s sake,

      Whom with a father’s care he sought to make

      The bride of some true honorable man,—

      Of Perdicone (so the rumor ran),

      Whose birth was higher than his fortunes were,

      For still your trader likes a mixture fair

      Of blood that hurries to some higher strain

      Than reckoning money’s loss and money’s gain.

      And of such mixture good may surely come:

      Lord’s 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.

      ’Twas 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

      For such a little simple maid as she:

      She had but dreamed how heavenly it would be

      To love some hero noble, beauteous, great,

      Who would live stories worthy to narrate,

      Like Roland, or the warriors of Troy,

      The Cid, or Amadis, or that fair boy

      Who conquered every thing beneath the sun,

      And somehow, some time, died at Babylon

      Fighting the Moors.  For heroes all were good

      And fair as that archangel who withstood

      The Evil One, the author of all wrong,—

      That Evil One who made the French so strong;

      And now the flower of heroes must he be

      Who drove those tyrants from dear Sicily,

      So that her maids might walk to vespers tranquilly.

      Young Lisa saw this hero in the king;

      And as wood-lilies that sweet odors bring

      Might dream the light that opes their modest eyne

      Was lily-odored; and as rites divine,

      Round turf-laid altars, or ’neath roofs of stone,

      Draw