GUIDO. O, sweet Bianca! How can I leave thee now! Thy beauty made Two captives of my eyes, and they were mad To feast them on thy form, but now thy wit, The liberated perfume of a bud, Which while a bud seemed perfect, but now is That which can make its former self forgot: How can I leave the flower who loved the leaf? Till now I was the richest prince in Florence, I am a lover now would shun its throngs, And put away all state and seek retreat At Bellosguardo or Fiesole, Where roses in their fin’st profusion hide Some marble villa whose cool walls have rung A laughing echo to Decameron, And where thy laughter shall as gaily sound. Say thou canst love or with a silent kiss Instil that balmy knowledge on my soul. BIANCA. Canst tell me what love is? GUIDO. It is consent, The union of two minds, two souls, two hearts, In all they think and hope and feel. BIANCA. Such lovers might as well be dumb, for those Who think and hope and feel alike can never Have anything for one another’s ear. GUIDO. Love is? Love is the meeting of two worlds In never-ending change and counter-change. BIANCA. Thus will my husband praise the mercer’s mart, Where the two worlds of East and West exchange. GUIDO. Come. Love is love, a kiss, a close embrace. It is . . . BIANCA. My husband calls that love When he hath slammed his weekly ledger to. GUIDO. I find my wit no better match for thine Than thou art match for an old crabbed man; But I am sure my youth and strength and blood Keep better tune with beauty gay and bright As thine is, than lean age and miser toil. BIANCA. Well said, well said, I think he would not dare To face thee, more than owls dare face the sun; He’s the bent shadow such a form as thine Might cast upon a dung heap by the road, Though should it fall upon a proper floor Twould be at once a better man than he. GUIDO. Your merchant living in the dread of loss Becomes perforce a coward, eats his heart. Dull souls they are, who, like caged prisoners watch And envy others’ joy; they taste no food But what its cost is present to their thought. BIANCA. I am my father’s daughter, in his eyes A home-bred girl who has been taught to spin. He never seems to think I have a face Which makes you gallants turn where’er I pass. GUIDO. Thy night is darker than I dreamed, bright Star. BIANCA. He waits, stands by, and mutters to himself, And never enters with a frank address To any company. His eyes meet mine And with a shudder I am sure he counts The cost of what I wear.