As fresh-poured red wine of a mighty pulse.
Old Gandolf with his paltry onion-stone,
Put me where I may look at him! True peach,
Rosy and flawless: how I earned the prize!
Draw close that conflagration of my church

What then? So much was saved if aught were missed!
My sons, ye would not be my death? Go dig

The white-grape vineyard where the oil-press stood,
Drop water gently till the surface sink,

And if ye find ... Ah God, I know not, I!...
Bedded in store of rotten fig-leaves soft,
And corded up in a tight olive-frail,
Some lump, ah God, of lapis lazuli,
Big as a Jew's head cut off at the nape,
Blue as a vein o'er the Madonna's breast
Sons, all have I bequeathed you, villas, all,
That brave Frascati villa with its bath,
So, let the blue lump poise between my knees,
Like God the Father's globe on both his hands
Ye worship in the Jesu Church so gay,

...

For Gandolf shall not choose but see and burst!

50

Swift as a weaver's shuttle fleet our years:

Man goeth to the grave, and where is he?

Did I say, basalt for my slab, sons? Black
'Twas ever antique-black I meant! How else
Shall ye contrast my frieze to come beneath?
The bas-relief in bronze ye promised me,

Those Pans and Nymphs ye wot of, and perchance

Some tripod, thyrsus, with a vase or so,

The Saviour at his sermon on the mount,

46. Frascati: a town of central Italy, near the site of the ancient Tusculum, ten or twelve miles S. E. of Rome; it has many fine old villas.

53. Did I say, basalt for my slab, sons? Note how all things else, even such reflections as are expressed in the two preceding verses, are incidental with the Bishop; his poor, art-besotted mind turns abruptly to the black basalt which he craves for the slab of his tomb; and see vv. 101, 102.

30

40

Saint Praxed in a glory, and one Pan

Ready to twitch the Nymph's last garment off,
And Moses with the tables . . . but I know
Ye mark me not! What do they whisper thee,
Child of my bowels, Anselm? Ah, ye hope
To revel down my villas while I gasp

Bricked o'er with beggar's mouldy travertine
Which Gandolf from his tomb-top chuckles at !
Nay, boys, ye love me all of jasper, then!

'Tis jasper ye stand pledged to, lest I grieve
My bath must needs be left behind, alas !
One block, pure green as a pistachio-nut,
There's plenty jasper somewhere in the world-
And have I not Saint Praxed's ear to pray
Horses for ye, and brown Greek manuscripts,
And mistresses with great smooth marbly limbs?
-That's if ye carve my epitaph aright,
Choice Latin, picked phrase, Tully's every word,
No gaudy ware like Gandolf's second line-
Tully, my masters? Ulpian serves his need!
And then how I shall lie through centuries,
And hear the blessed mutter of the mass,
And see God made and eaten all day long,
And feel the steady candle-flame, and taste
Good strong thick stupefying incense-smoke!
For as I lie here, hours of the dead night,
Dying in state and by such slow degrees,

I fold my arms as if they clasped a crook,

And stretch my feet forth straight as stone can point,
And let the bedclothes, for a mortcloth, drop

66. travertine: see note to v. 67 of Pictor Ignotus.

71. pistachio-nut, or green almond.

60

70

80

79. Ulpian: Domitius Ulpianus, one of the greatest of Roman jurists, and chief adviser of the emperor, Alexander Severus; born about 170, died 228; belongs to the Brazen age of Roman literature.

Into great laps and folds of sculptor's work:
And as yon tapers dwindle, and strange thoughts
Grow, with a certain humming in my ears,
About the life before I lived this life,

And this life too, popes, cardinals, and priests,
Saint Praxed at his sermon on the mount,
Your tall pale mother with her talking eyes,
And new-found agate urns as fresh as day,
And marble's language, Latin pure, discreet,
Aha, ELUCESCEBAT quoth our friend?
No Tully, said I, Ulpian at the best!
Evil and brief hath been my pilgrimage.
All lapis, all, sons! Else I give the Pope
My villas! Will ye ever eat my
Ever your eyes were as a lizard's quick,
They glitter like your mother's for my soul,
Or ye would heighten my impoverished frieze,
Piece out its starved design, and fill my vase
With grapes, and add a visor and a Term,
And to the tripod ye would tie a lynx
That in his struggle throws the thyrsus down,
To comfort me on my entablature

heart?

Whereon I am to lie till I must ask

"Do I live, am I dead?" There, leave me, there!
For ye have stabbed me with ingratitude

To death: ye wish it — God, ye wish it! Stone ·
Gritstone, a-crumble! Clammy squares which sweat
As if the corpse they keep were oozing through —
And no more lapis to delight the world!

Well go ! I bless ye.

Fewer tapers there,

95. Saint Praxed at his sermon on the mount: the poor dying Bishop, in the disorder of his mind, makes a lapsus linguæ here; see v. 59.

99. elucescebat: "he was beginning to shine forth;" a late Latin word not found in the Ciceronian vocabulary, and therefore condemned by the Bishop; this word is, perhaps, what is meant by the "gaudy ware in the second line of Gandolf's epitaph, referred to in v. 78.

But in a row and, going, turn your backs
-Ay, like departing altar-ministrants,

And leave me in my church, the church for peace,
That I may watch at leisure if he leers
Old Gandolf, at me, from his onion-stone,
As still he envied me, so fair she was!

120

A TOCCATA OF GALUPPI'S.

I.

OH Galuppi, Baldassaro, this is very sad to find!

I can hardly misconceive you; it would prove me deaf and blind; But, although I take your meaning, 'tis with such a heavy mind!

2.

Here you come with your old music, and here's all the good t

brings.

What, they lived once thus at Venice where the merchants were

the kings,

Where Saint 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.

St. 1. Galuppi, Baldassaro (rather Baldassare): b. 1703, in Burano, an island near Venice, and thence called Buranello; d. 1785; a distinguished composer, whose operas, about fifty in number, and mostly comic, were at one time the most popular in Italy; Galuppi is regarded as the father of the Italian comic

opera.

St. 2. Saint Mark's: see Ruskin's description of this glorious basilica, in The Stones of Venice.

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 diminished, sigh on sigh,

Told them something? Those suspensions, those solutions— "Must we die?"

Those commiserating sevenths- "Life might last! we can but

St. 6. Toccatas: the Toccata was a form of musical composition for the organ or harpsichord, somewhat in the free and brilliant style of the modern fantasia or capriccio; clavichord: “a keyed stringed instrument, now superseded by the pianoforte." Webster.

St. 7. The musical technicalities used in this stanza, any musician can explain and illustrate.

St. 8. The questions in this stanza must be supposed to be caused by the effect upon the revellers of the "plaintive lesser thirds," the " diminished sixths," the commiserating sevenths," etc., of the preceding stanza.