I never set my two eyes on a head was so fine as your head, but I’d no way to be looking down into your heart. It’s for that I was tricked out and out--that was the thanks I got for being so steady in my love. I tell you, if I could have laid my hands on the whole set of the stars, the moon and the sun along with it, by Christ I’d have given the lot to her. No place have I set eyes on the like of her; she’s bad to her friends, and gay and playful with those she’d have a right to hate. I ask you can that behaviour have a good end come to it? LEOPARDI SILVIA Are you bearing in mind that time when there was a fine look out of your eyes, and yourself, pleased and thoughtful, were going up the boundaries that are set to childhood? That time the quiet rooms, and the lanes about the house, would be noisy with your songs that were never tired out; the time you’d be sitting down with some work that is right for women, and well pleased with the hazy coming times you were looking out at in your own mind. May was sweet that year, and it was pleasantly you’d pass the day. Then I’d leave my pleasant studies, and the paper I had smudged with ink where I would be spending the better part of the day, and cock my ears from the sill of my father’s house, till I’d hear the sound of your voice, or of your loom when your hands moved quickly. It’s then I would set store of the quiet sky and the lanes and little places, and the sea was far away in one place and the high hills in another. There is no tongue will tell till the judgment what I feel in myself those times. * * * * * Transcriber’s note Minor punctuation errors have been changed without notice.