ith her
arms thrown back over her head, all languid and lax, on an earth-heap by
the river side (the softness of the dust being the only softness she had
ever known), in the southern suburb of Turin, one golden afternoon in
August, years ago. She had been at play, after her fashion, with other
patient children, and had thrown herself down to rest, full in the sun,
like a lizard. The sand was mixed with the draggled locks of her black
hair, and some of it sprinkled over her face and body, in an
"ashes to ashes" kind of way; a few black rags about her loins,
but her limbs nearly bare, and her little breasts, scarce dimpled
yet,--white,--marble-like--but, as wasted marble, thin with the
scorching and the rains of Time. So she lay, motionless; black and white
by the shore in the sun; the yellow light flickering back upon her from
the passing eddies of the river, and burning down on her from the west.
So she lay, like a dead Niobid: it seemed as if the Sun-God, as he sank
towards gray Viso (who stood pale in the southwest, and pyramidal as a
tomb), had been wroth with Italy for numbering her children too
carefully, and slain this little one. Black and white she lay, all
breathless, in a sufficiently pictorial manner: the gardens of the Villa
Regina gleamed beyond, graceful with laurel-grove and labyrinthine
terrace; and folds of purple mountain were drawn afar, for curtains
round her little dusty bed.

47. Pictorial enough, I repeat; and yet I might not now have remembered
her, so as to find her figure mingling, against my will, with other
images, but for her manner of "revival." For one of her playmates coming
near, cast some word at her which angered her; and she rose--"en ego,
victa situ"--she rose with a single spring, like a snake; one hardly saw
the motion; and with a shriek so shrill that I put my hands upon my
ears; and so uttered herself, indignant and vengeful, with words of
justice,--Alecto standing by, satisfied, teaching her acute, articulate
syllables, and adding her own voice to carry them thrilling through the
blue laurel shadows. And having spoken, she went her way, wearily: and I
passed by on the other side, meditating, with such Levitical propriety
as a respectable person should, on the asplike Passion, following the
sorrowful Patience; and on the way in which the saying, "Dust shalt thou
eat all thy days" has been confusedly fulfilled, first by much provision
of human dust for the meat of what Keats calls