What if--
Love, free as air, at sight of human ties,
Shakes his light wings, and in a moment flies?
The warning of the verse teaches that the skittish god must not be
scared by a premature exhibition of the noose hid beneath the sieve
of corn. Champagne suppers and love among the roses--yes. But there
should be, also, cunningly hidden, the noose among the roses.
And to this wisdom the Diva her well-trained mind did seriously
incline, during that last Milan campaign. Nor did her moral aim seem
to be without good promise of success. The sleek young colts with
their shiny coats, glossy, with the rich pastures of the Lombard
plains, pranced up and nibbled, all unconscious of the hidden noose.
One fine young unsuspecting animal, the noblest of the herd, came so
close to the noose that Bianca thought her work was done, and was on
the point of casting it over his lordly head--and he all but
enchanted into such docility as to submit to it, even seeing it.
When lo! with sudden swoop of hand, sharp vibrating police decrees,
an unsleeping paternal government darts down the fabric of our
hopes, sends off the nearly captured prey, loud neighing and with
heels kicked high in air, but safe, to his ancestral Lombard
pastures, and whirls away the too dangerous enchantress into outer
space.
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