Elizabeth Barrett Browning - Bianca among the Nightingales lyrics

The cypress stood up like a church
 That night we felt our love would hold
And saintly moonlight seemed to search
 And wash the whole world clean as gold
The olives crystallized the vales’
 Broad slopes until the
Hills grew strong:
The fire-flies and the nightingales
 Throbbed each to either, flame and song
The nightingales, the nightingales!

Upon the angle of it's shade
 The cypress stood, self balanced high
Half up, half down, as double made
 Along the ground, against the sky
And we, too! from such soul height went
 Such leaps of blood, so blindly driven
We scarce knew if our nature meant
 Most passionate earth or intense heaven
The nightingales, the nightingales!



We paled with love, we shook with love
 We kissed so close we could not vow
Till Giulio whispered "Sweet, above
 God’s Ever guaranties this Now"
And through his words the nightingales
 Drove straight and full their
Long clear call
Like arrows through heroic mails
 And love was awful in it all
The nightingales, the nightingales!

O cold white moonlight of the north
 Refresh these pulses, quench this hell!
O coverture of death drawn forth
 Across this garden-chamber well!
But what have nightingales to do
 In gloomy England, called the free
(Yes, free to die in!) when we two
 Are sundered, singing still to me?
And still they sing, the nightingales!

I think I hear him, how he cried
 "My own soul’s life!"
Between their notes
Each man has but one soul supplied
 And that’s immortal though his throat’s
On fire with passion now, to her
 He can’t say what to me he said!
And yet he moves her, they aver
 The nightingales sing through my head
The nightingales, the nightingales!

He says to her what moves her most
 He would not name his soul within
Her hearing, rather pays her cost
 With praises to her lips and chin
Man has but one soul, ’t is ordained
 And each soul but one love, I add
Yet souls are damned and love’s profaned
 These nightingales will sing me mad!
The nightingales, the nightingales!

I marvel how the birds can sing
 There’s little difference, in
Their view
Betwixt our Tuscan trees that spring
 As vital flames into the blue
And dull round blots of foliage meant
 Like saturated sponges here
To suck the fogs up as content
 Is he too in this land, ’t is clear
And still they sing, the nightingales

My native Florence! dear, forgone!
 I see across the Alpine ridge
How the last feast day of Saint John
 Shot rockets from Carraia bridge
The luminous city, tall with fire
 Trod deep down in that river of ours
While many a boat with lamp and choir
 Skimmed birdlike over glittering towers
I will not hear these nightingales

I seem to float, we seem to float
 Down Arno’s stream in festive guise
A boat strikes flame into our boat
 And up that lady seems to rise
As then she rose the shock had flashed
 A vision on us! What a head
What leaping eyeballs! beauty dashed
 To splendour by a sudden dread
And still they sing, the nightingales

Too bold to sin, too weak to die
 Such women are so as for me
I would we had drowned there, he and I
 That moment, loving perfectly
He had not caught her with her loosed
 Gold ringlets rarer in the south
Nor heard the "Grazie tanto" bruised
 To sweetness by her English mouth
And still they sing, the nightingales

She had not reached him at my heart
 With her fine tongue, as snakes indeed
Kill flies nor had I, for my part
 Yearned after, in my desperate need
And followed him as he did her
 To coasts left bitter by the tide
Whose very nightingales, elsewhere
 Delighting, torture and deride!
For still they sing, the nightingales

A worthless woman mere cold clay
 As all false things are: but so fair
She takes the breath of men away
 Who gaze upon her unaware
I would not play her larcenous tricks
 To have her looks! She lied and stole
And spat into my love’s pure pyx
 The rank saliva of her soul
And still they sing, the nightingales

I would not for her white and pink
 Though such he likes her grace of limb
Though such he has praised nor yet, I think
 For life it'self, though spent with him
Commit such sacrilege, affront
 God’s nature which is love, intrude
’Twixt two affianced souls, and hunt
 Like spiders, in the altar’s wood
I cannot bear these nightingales

If she chose sin, some gentler guise
 She might have sinned in, so it seems:
She might have pricked out both my eyes
 And I still seen him in my dreams!
Or drugged me in my soup or wine
 Nor left me angry afterward:
To die here with his hand in mine
 His breath upon me, were not hard
(Our Lady hush these nightingales)

But set a springe for him, "mio ben, "
 My only good, my first last love!
Though Christ knows well what sin is, when
 He sees some things done they must move
Himself to wonder let her pass
 I think of her by night and day
Must I too join her out, alas!
 With Giulio, in each word I say?
And evermore the nightingales!

Giulio, my Giulio! sing they so
 And you be silent? Do I speak
And you not hear? An arm you throw
 Round someone, and I feel so weak?
Oh, owl-like birds! They sing for spite
 They sing for hate, they sing for doom
They’ll sing through death who
Sing through night
 They’ll sing and stun me in the tomb
The nightingales, the nightingales!