Her smile is to know Italy.

Her hair was like a coronet
Upon her Grecian forehead set,
Where one gem glistened sunnily,
Like Venice, when first seen at sea.
I saw within her violet eyes
The starlight of Italian skies,
And on her brow and breast and hand
The olive of her native land.

And knowing how, in other times,
Her lips were ripe with Tuscan rhymes
Of love and wine and dance, I spread
My mantle by an almond-tree:
"And here, beneath the rose," I said,
"I'll hear thy Tuscan melody!"

I heard a tale that was not told
In those ten dreamy days of old,
When Heaven, for some divine offence,
Smote Florence with the pestilence,
And in that garden's odorous shade
The dames of the Decameron,
With each a happy lover, strayed,
To laugh and sing, at sorest need,
To lie in the lilies, in the sun,
With glint of plume and golden brede.

And while she whispered in my ear,