Music and talking, who but Lippo! I! Mazed, motionless and moon-struck I'm the man! Back I shrink- what is this I see and hear? I, caught up with my monk's things by mistake, Where's a hole, where's a corner for escape? Then steps a sweet angelic slip of a thing Addresses the celestial 66 presence, nay He made you and devised you, after all, Though he's none of you! Could Saint John there, draw- We come to brother Lippo for all that, I shuffle sideways with my blushing face Thrown like a spread of kirtles when you're gay And play hot cockles, all the doors being shut, The hothead husband! Thus I scuttle off To some safe bench behind, not letting go The palm of her, the little lily thing That spoke the good word for me in the nick, A TOCCATA OF GALUPPI'S. 1. Он, Galuppi, Baldassaro, this is very sad to find! I can hardly misconceive you; it would prove me deaf and blind; But although I give you credit, 'tis with such a heavy mind! 2. Here you come with your old music, and here's all the good it brings. What, they lived once thus at Venice, where the merchants were the kings, Where St. Mark's is, where the Doges used to wed the sea with rings? 3. Ay, because the sea's the street there; and 'tis arched by... what you call ... Shylock's bridge with houses on it, where they kept the carnival! I was never out of England it's as if I saw it all! 4. 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? 5. 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? 6. 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 ? 7. What? Those lesser thirds so plaintive, sixths dimin ished, sigh on sigh, Told them something? Those suspensions, those solu tions" Must we die?" "Then more kisses "-"Did I stop them, when a million seemed so few?" the dominant's persistence, till it must be an swered to! 9. So an octave struck the answer. Oh, they praised you, I dare say! "Brave Galuppi! that was music! good alike at grave and gay! I can always leave off talking, when I hear a master play." 10. 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. 11. But when I sit down to reason, think to take my stand nor swerve Till 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. 12. Yes, you, like a ghostly cricket, creaking where a house "Dust and ashes, dead and done with, Venice spent what Venice earned ! The soul, doubtless, is immortal· where a soul can be discerned. 13. "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 ! 14. "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? |