IX ROBERT BROWNING Ere opening your eyes in the city, the blessed church-bells begin: No sooner the bells leave off, than the diligence rattles in: You get the pick of the news, and it costs you never a pin. By and by there's the travelling doctor gives pills, lets blood, draws teeth; Or the Pulcinello-trumpet breaks up the market beneath. At the post-office such a scene-picture- the new play, piping hot! And a notice how, only this morning, three liberal thieves were shot. Above it, behold the archbishop's most fatherly of rebukes, And beneath, with his crown and his lion, Who is Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarca, Saint And moreover,' (the sonnet goes rhyming,) 'the skirts of Saint Paul has reached, Having preached us those six Lent lec tures more unctuous than ever he preached.' Noon strikes, - here sweeps the procession! our Lady borne smiling and smart With a pink gauze gown all spangles, and seven words stuck in her heart! Bang, whang, whang goes the drum, tootlete-tootle the fife; No keeping one's haunches still: it's the greatest pleasure in life. X But bless you, it 's dear-it 's dear! fowls, wine, at double the rate. They have clapped a new tax upon salt, and what oil pays passing the gate It's a horror to think of. And so, the villa for me, not the city! Beggars can scarcely be choosers: but still -ah, the pity, the pity! Look, two and two go the priests, then the monks with cowls and sandals, And the penitents dressed in white shirts, a-holding the yellow candles: One, he carries a flag up straight, and another a cross with handles, And the Duke's guard brings up the rear, for the better prevention of scandals: Bang, whang, whang goes the drum, tootlete-tootle the fife; Oh, a day in the city-square, there is no A TOCCATA OF GALUPPI'S "Touch-pière (1855.] - prelude. 165 Did young people take their pleasure when the sea was warm in May? Balls and masks begun at midnight, burning ever to mid-day When they made up fresh adventures for the morrow, do you say? Was a lady such a lady, cheeks so round and lips so red, On her neck the small face buoyant, like a bell-flower on its bed, O'er the breast's superb abundance where a man might base his head? Well, (and it was graceful of them) they'd break talk off and afford She, to bite her mask's black velvet, he, to finger on his sword, While you sat and played Toccatas, stately at the clavichord? What? Those lesser thirds so plaintive, sixths diminished, sigh on sigh, Told them something? Those suspensions, those solutions- 'Must we die?' Those commiserating sevenths- 'Life might last! we can but try!' Then they left you for their pleasure: till in due time, one by one, Some with lives that came to nothing, some with deeds as well undone, Death came tacitly and took them where they never see the sun. But when I sit down to reason, think to take my stand nor swerve, While I triumph o'er a secret wrung from nature's close reserve, In you come with your cold music, till I creep thro' every nerve. Yes, you, like a ghostly cricket, creaking where a house was burned 'Dust and ashes, dead and done with, Venice spent what Venice earned! The soul, doubtless, is immortal - where a soul can be discerned. 'Yours for instance, you know physics, something of geology, Mathematics are your pastime; souls shall rise in their degree; -- Butterflies may dread extinction, - you'll not die, it cannot be! As for Venice and its people, merely born to bloom and drop, Here on earth they bore their fruitage, mirth and folly were the crop: What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop? 'Dust and ashes! So you creak it, and I want the heart to scold. Dear dead women, with such hair, too what's become of all the gold Used to hang and brush their bosoms? feel chilly and grown old. OLD PICTURES IN FLORENCE [1855.] I I THE morn when first it thunders in March, The eel in the pond gives a leap, they say: As I leaned and looked over the aloed arch Of the villa-gate, this warm March day, No flash snapped, no dumb thunder rolled In the valley beneath where, white and wide And washed by the morning's water-gold, Florence lay out on the mountain-side. II River and bridge and street and square Lay mine, as much at my beck and call, Through the live translucent bath of air, As the sights in a magic crystal ball. And of all I saw and of all I praised, The most to praise and the best to see, Was the startling bell-tower Giotto raised: But why did it more than startle me? |