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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 heart?
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 vizor 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
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,
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!

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, 't is with such a heavy

mind!

II

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?

III

Ay, 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:

I was never out of England—it's as if I saw it all.

IV

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?

V

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?

VI

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?

VII

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!"

VIII

"Were you happy?"—"Yes."-"And are you still as happy?" "Yes. And you?"

"Then, more kisses!"-"Did I stop them, when a million seemed so few?"

Hark, the dominant's persistence till it must be answered

to !

IX

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!"

X

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 stepped tacitly and took them where they never see the sun.

XI

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.

XII

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.

XIII

"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 !

XIV

"As for Venice and her 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?

XV

"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? I feel chilly and grown old.

HOW IT STRIKES A CONTEMPORARY.

I ONLY knew one poet in my life:

And this, or something like it, was his way.

You saw go up and down Valladolid,

A man of mark, to know next time you saw.

His very serviceable suit of black

Was courtly once and conscientious still,

And many might have worn it, though none did:

The cloak, that somewhat shone and showed the threads,

Had purpose, and the ruff, significance.

He walked, and tapped the pavement with his cane,

Scenting the world, looking it full in face:

An old dog, bald and blindish, at his heels.

They turned up, now, the alley by the church,

That leads no whither; now, they breathed themselves
On the main promenade just at the wrong time.
You'd come upon his scrutinizing hat,
Making a peaked shade blacker than itself
Against the single window spared some house
Intact yet with its mouldered Moorish work,—

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