Well now, look at our villa! stuck like the horn of a bull Just on a mountain-edge as bare as the creature's skull, Save a mere shag of a bush with hardly a leaf to pull ! -I scratch my own, sometimes, to see if the hair's turned wool. But the city, oh the city-the square with the houses! Why, They are stone-faced, white as a curd, there's something to take the eye! Houses in four straight lines, not a single front awry; You watch who crosses and gossips, who saunters, who hurries by; Green blinds, as a matter of course, to draw when the sun gets high; And the shops with fanciful signs which are painted properly. What of a villa? Though winter be over in March by rights, 'Tis May perhaps ere the snow shall have withered well off the heights: You've the brown ploughed land before, where the oxen steam and wheeze, And the hills over-smoked behind by the faint gray olive-trees. Is it better in May, I ask you? You've summer all at once; In a day he leaps complete with a few strong April suus. 'Mid the sharp short emerald wheat, scarce risen three fingers well, The wild tulip, at end of its tube, blows out its great red bell Like a thin clear bubble of blood, for the children to pick and sell. Is it ever hot in the square? There's a fountain to spout and splash! Or thrid the stinking hemp till these of it seem a-tingle. Late August or early September. ' stunning cicala is shrill, And the bees keep their tiresome round the resinous firs on the hill Enough of the seasons,-I spare year months of the fever and chill. Ere you open your eyes in the city, You get the pick of the news, ad By and by there's the travelling des gives pills, lets blood, draws teeth Or the Pulcinello-trumpet breaks uptmarket beneath. At the post-office such a scene-picturethe new play, piping hot! And a notice how, only this morning three liberal thieves were shot. Above it, behold the Archbishop's Lo fatherly of rebukes, And beneath, with his crown and b lion, some little new law of t Duke's! Or a sonnet with flowery marge, to t Reverend Don So-and-so, Who is Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarca. Sal Jerome, and Cicero. 66 And moreover," (the sonnet goes rhyming,)"the skirts of Saint Pa has reached, Having preached us those six Let lectures more unctuous than ever b preached." Noon strikes,--here sweeps the pros sion! our Lady borne smiling a smart With a pink gauze gown all spare and seven swords stuck in her heat Bang-whang-whang goes the dr tootle-te-tootle the fife; No keeping one's haunches still: it's greatest pleasure in life. But bless you, it's dear-it's deat fowls, wine, at double the rate. They have clapped a new tax upon sa and what oil pays passing the gale It's a horror to think of. And so, the villa for me, not the city! Beggars can scarcely be choosers b still--ah, the pity, the pity! Look, two and two go the priests, the the monks with cowls and sandals. A TOCCATA OF GALUPPI'S Galuppi, Baldassare, this is very sad o find! an hardly misconceive you; it would rove me deaf and blind; it although I take your meaning, 'tis with such a heavy mind! re you come with your old music, and here's all the good it brings. hat, they lived once thus at Venice where the merchants were the kings, here St. Mark's is, where the Doges used to wed the sea with rings? y, because the sea 's the street there; and 't is arched by . . . what you call .. Shylock's bridge with houses on it, where they kept the carnival: was never out of England-it 's as if I id young people take their pleasure When they made up fresh adventures Vas a lady such a lady, cheeks so round On her neck the small face buoyant, Well, and it was graceful of them- While you sat and played Toccatas, What? Those lesser thirds so plaintive, Oh, So, an octave struck the answer. I can always leave off talking when I Then they left you for their pleasure: But when I sit down to reason, think to While I triumph o'er a secret wrung from nature's close reserve, In you come with your cold music till I Yes, you, like a ghostly cricket, creak- -n's apsis, aisle or nave. pene fingers along with a torch, esel full for the sun to shave. fresco peels and drops, Wherever an outline weakens and o who dies of an ass's kick, mnged great soul of an ancient Master. this world and the wrong it does! are safe in heaven with their cks to it. Michaels and Rafaels, you hum and md the works of, you of the little wit! their eyes contract to the earth's old scope, That they see God face to face, have all attained to be poets, I hope? Tis their holiday now, in any case. March they reck of your praise and you! But the wronged great souls-can they be quit Da world where their work is all to do. Where you style them, you of the little wit, Old Master This and Early the Other, Not dreaming that Old and New are fellows: the younger succeeds to an elder brother, Da Vincis derive in good time from Dellos. Performs it, perfects it, makes amends For the toiling and moiling, and then, sic transit! Happier the thrifty blind-folk labor, With upturned eye while the hand is busy, Not sidling a glance at the coin of their neighbor! Tis looking downward that makes one dizzy. "If you knew their work you would deal your dole." May I take upon me to instruct you? When Greek Art ran and reached the goal, Thus much had the world to boast in fructu The Truth of Man, as by God first spoken, Which the actual generations garble, Was re-uttered, and Soul (which Limbs betoken) And Limbs (Soul informs) made new in marble. So you saw yourself as you wished you were, As you might have been, as you cannot be: Earth here, rebuked by Olympus there: And grew content in your poor degree With your little power, by those statues' godhead, And your little scope, by their eyes' full sway, And your little grace, by their grace embodied And your little date, by their forms that stay. You would fain be kinglier, say, than I am? Even so, you will not sit like Theseus, You would prove a model? The Son of Priam, Has yet the advantage in arms' and knees' use. You're wroth-can you slay your snake like Apollo? You're grieved-still Niobe 's the grander! You live there's the Racers' frieze to follow: You die there's the dying Alexander. So, testing your weakness by their strength, Your meagre charms by their rounded beauty, But what and where depend on life's minute? Hails heavenly cheer or infernal laughter Our first step out of the gulf or in it? Shall Man, such step within his endeavor, Man's face, have no more play and action Than joy which is crystallized forever, Or grief, an eternal petrifaction? On which I conclude, that the early painters, To cries of Greek Art and what more wish you?"Replied, "To become now self-acquainters, And paint man, man, whatever the issue! Make new hopes shine through the flesh And, through earth and its noise, wha is heaven's serene, When our faith in the same has stood the test Why the child grown man, you burn the rod, The uses of labor are surely done; There remaineth a rest for the people of God: And I have had troubles enough, for one. But at any rate I have loved the seasor Of Art's spring-birth so dim and dewy : My sculptor is Nicolo the Pisan, My painter-who but Cimabue? Nor ever was man of them all indeed, From these to Ghiberti and Ghirlandajo, Could say that he missed my critic-meed So, now to my special grievanceheigh-ho! Their ghosts still stand, as I said before. Watching each fresco flaked and rasped, Blocked up, knocked out, or whitewashed o'er: -No getting again what the church has grasped! The works on the wall must take their chance; "Works never conceded to England's thick clime! " (I hope they prefer their inheritance Of a bucketful of Italian quick-lime.) When they go at length, with such a shaking Of heads o'er the old delusion, sadly Each master his way through the black streets taking, Where many a lost work breathes though badly Why don't they bethink them of who has merited? Why not reveal, while their pictures dree Such doom, how a captive might be outferreted? Why is it they never remember me? Not that I expect the great Bigordi, Nor Sandro to hear me, chivalric, belli cose: Nor the wronged Lippino; and not a word I Say of a scrap of Fra Angelico's: But are you too fine, Taddeo Gaddi, |