我们沿岸的伦巴第乡村女孩在袜带上别着匕首，因为她们知道她们可能会恨死另一个女孩，或者遇到一个德国情人。我给她买了一把这样的刀，刀柄是角和珍珠做的。父亲，你不可能知道我那天去见她的全部想法吧?最后一天最后一次，她说;所有的爱和所有绝望的希望，她可能会改变，回到我身边。啊!到处都是，在路上我们都熟悉的地方，在我身边又出现了她当年的模样;直到看起来?他们围着我这么近?当我最后到达那里时，他们都会和我在一起，向她为我辩护，反对她自己如此改变。啊，父亲，如果你知道这一切你不知道的，那么你也会知道的，父亲，只有到那时，如果上帝能原谅我。 What can be told I'll tell, if you will hear. I passed a village-fair upon my road, And thought, being empty-handed, I would take Some little present: such might prove, I said, Either a pledge between us, or (God help me!) A parting gift. And there it was I bought The knife I spoke of, such as women wear. That day, some three hours afterwards, I found For certain, it must be a parting gift. And, standing silent now at last, I looked Into her scornful face; and heard the sea Still trying hard to din into my ears Some speech it knew which still might change her heart, If only it could make me understand. One moment thus. Another, and her face Seemed further off than the last line of sea, So that I thought, if now she were to speak I could not hear her. Then again I knew All, as we stood together on the sand At Iglio, in the first thin shade o' the hills. ?Take it,? I said, and held it out to her, While the hilt glanced within my trembling hold; ?Take it and keep it for my sake,? I said. Her neck unbent not, neither did her eyes Move, nor her foot left beating of the sand; Only she put it by from her and laughed. Father, you hear my speech and not her laugh; But God heard that. Will God remember all? It was another laugh than the sweet sound Which rose from her sweet childish heart, that day Eleven years before, when first I found her Alone upon the hill-side; and her curls Shook down in the warm grass as she looked up Out of her curls in my eyes bent to hers. She might have served a painter to pourtray That heavenly child which in the latter days Shall walk between the lion and the lamb. I had been for nights in hiding, worn and sick And hardly fed; and so her words at first Seemed fiftul like the talking of the trees And voices in the air that knew my name. And I remember that I sat me down Upon the slope with her, and thought the world Must be all over or had never been, We seemed there so alone. And soon she told me Her parents both were gone away from her. I thought perhaps she meant that they had died; But when I asked her this, she looked again Into my face and said that yestereve They kissed her long, and wept and made her weep, And gave her all the bread they had with them, And then had gone together up the hill Where we were sitting now, and had walked on Into the great red light; ?and so,? she said, ?I have come up here too; and when this evening They step out of the light as they stepped in, I shall be here to kiss them.? And she laughed. Then I bethought me suddenly of the famine; And how the church-steps throughout all the town, When last I had been there a month ago, Swarmed with starved folk; and how the bread was weighed By Austrians armed; and women that I knew For wives and mothers walked the public street, Saying aloud that if their husbands feared To snatch the children's food, themselves would stay Till they had earned it there. So then this child Was piteous to me; for all told me then Her parents must have left her to God's chance, To man's or to the Church's charity, Because of the great famine, rather than To watch her growing thin between their knees. With that, God took my mother's voice and spoke, And sights and sounds came back and things long since, And all my childhood found me on the hills; And so I took her with me. I was young. Scarce man then, Father: but the cause which gave The wounds I die of now had brought me then Some wounds already; and I lived alone, As any hiding hunted man must live. It was no easy thing to keep a child In safety; for herself it was not safe, And doubled my own danger: but I knew That God would help me. Yet a little while Pardon me, Father, if I pause. I think I have been speaking to you of some matters There was no need to speak of, have I not? You do not know how clearly those things stood Within my mind, which I have sp