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 suns.

'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.

Or thrid the stinking hemp till the stalks of it seem a-tingle.

Late August or early September, the stunning cicala is shrill,

And the bees keep their tiresome whine round the resinous firs on the hill. Enough of the seasons,-I spare you the months of the fever and chill.

Ere you open 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, some little new law of the Duke's!

Or a sonnet with flowery marge, to the Reverend Don So-and-so,

Who is Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarca, Saint Jerome, and Cicero,

"And moreover," (the sonnet goes rhyming,)" the skirts of Saint Paul has reached,

Having preached us those six Lentlectures 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 swords stuck in her heart! Bang-whang-whang goes the drum, tootle-te-tootle the fife;

No keeping one's haunches still it's the greatest pleasure in life.

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,

OH Galuppi, Baldassare, 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!

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?

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.

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 themthey 'd break talk off and afford -She, to bite her mask's black velvethe, 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!"

"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!

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!"

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.

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 through 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 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?

"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. 1855.

OLD PICTURES IN FLORENCE

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 water gold,

Florence lay out on the mountain-side.

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?

Giotto, how, with that soul of yours, Could you play me false who loved you so?

Some slights if a certain heart endures Yet it feels, I would have your fellows know!

I' faith, I perceive not why I should care To break a silence that suits them best, But the thing grows somewhat hard to

The Michaels and Rafaels, you hum and buzz

Round the works of, you of the little wit!

Do their eyes contract to the earth's old scope,

Now that they see God face to face, And have all attained to be poets, I hope?

'T is their holiday now, in any case. Much they reck of your praise and you! But the wronged great souls-can they be quit

Of a 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:

A younger succeeds to an elder brother, Da Vincis derive in good time from Dellos.

And here where your praise might yield returns,

And a handsome word or two give

help,

Here, after your kind, the mastiff girns And the puppy pack of poodles yelp. What, not a word for Stefano there,

Of brow once prominent and starry, Called Nature's Ape, and the world's despair

For his peerless painting? (See Vasari.)

There stands the Master. Study, my

friends,

What a man's work comes to! So he plans it,