Chapter XIV

Love, you saw me gather men and women, Live or dead or fashioned by my fancy, 130 Enter each and all, and use their service, Speak from every mouth--the speech, a poem. Hardly shall I tell my joys and sorrows, Hopes and tears, belief and disbelieving: I am mine and yours--the rest be all men's, Karshish, Cleon, Norbert and the fifty. Let me speak this once in my true person, Not as Lippo, Roland or Andrea, Though the fruit of speech be just this sentence; Pray you, look on these my men and women, 140 Take and keep my fifty poems finished; Where my heart lies, let my brain lie also! Poor the speech; be how I speak, for all things. Not but that you know me! Lo, the moon's self! Here in London, yonder late in Florence, Still we find her face, the thrice-transfigured. Curving on a sky imbrued with color, Drifted over Fiesole by twilight, Came she, our new crescent of a hair's-breadth. Full she flared it, lamping Samminiato, 150 Rounder 'twixt the cypresses and rounder, Perfect till the nightingales applauded. Now, a piece of her old self, impoverished, Hard to greet, she traverses the houseroofs, Hurries with unhandsome thrift of silver, Goes dispiritedly, glad to finish.