Elizabeth Barrett Browning - The Dance lyrics

You remember down at Florence our Cascine
Where the people on the feast
Days walk and drive
And, through the trees, long-drawn in
Many a green way
O’er-roofing hum and murmur like a hive
The river and the mountains look alive?

You remember the piazzone there
The stand-place
Of carriages a-brim with Florence Beauties
Who lean and melt to music as the band plays
Or smile and chat with someone who a-foot is
Or on horseback
In observance of male duties?

’T is so pretty, in the afternoons of summer
So many gracious faces brought together!
Call it rout, or call it
Concert, they have come here
In the floating of the fan
And of the feather
To reciprocate with beauty the fine weather

While the flower-girls offer nosegays
(because they too
Go with other sweets) at every carriage door
Here, by shake of a white finger
Signed away to some next buyer, who sit's
Buying score on score
Piling roses upon roses evermore

And last season
When the French camp had it's station
In the meadow-ground
Things quickened and grew gayer
Through the mingling of the liberating nation
With this people groups
Of Frenchmen everywhere, strolling, gazing
Judging lightly "who was fair"

Then the noblest lady present took upon her
To speak nobly from her
Carriage for the rest:
"Pray these officers from France
To do us honour
By dancing with us straightway" The request
Was gravely apprehended as addressed

And the men of France
Bareheaded, bowing lowly
Led out each a proud signora to the space
Which the startled crowd had
Rounded for them slowly
Just a touch of still emotion in his face
Not presuming, through the symbol
On the grace

There was silence in the
People: some lips trembled
But none jested broke the music, at a glance:
And the daughters of our
Princes, thus assembled
Stepped the measure with the
Gallant sons of France
Hush! it might have been a Mass
And not a dance

And they danced there till the
Blue that overskied us swooned with passion
Though the footing seemed sedate
And the mountains, heaving mighty
Hearts beside us
Sighed a rapture in a shadow, to dilate
And touch the holy stone where Dante sate

Then the sons of France
Bareheaded, lowly bowing
Led the ladies back where
Kinsmen of the south
Stood, received them till
With burst of overflowing
Feeling husbands, brothers, Florence’s
Male youth, turned, and kissed the martial
Strangers mouth to mouth

And a cry went up
A cry from all that people!
You have heard a people
Cheering, you suppose, for the Member
Mayor with chorus from the steeple?
This was different: scarce as loud, perhaps
(who knows?)
For we saw wet eyes around us ere the close

And we felt as if a nation, too long borne in
By hard wrongers
Comprehending in such attitude
That God had spoken somewhere
Since the morning
That men were somehow brothers
By no platitude
Cried exultant in great wonder
And free gratitude