Richard Wilbur

Audio Player



Piazza di Spagna, Early Morning

            I can’t forget     
    How she stood at the top of that long marble stair      
    Amazed, and then with a sleepy pirouette
Went dancing slowly down to the fountain-quieted square;

            Nothing upon her face
But some impersonal loneliness, - not then a girl       
    But as it were a reverie of the place,           
       A called-for falling glide and whirl;

     As when a leaf, petal, or thin chip
Is drawn to the falls of a pool and, circling a moment above it, 
          Rides on over the lip -        
    Perfectly beautiful, perfectly ignorant of it.