BROWNING'S ITALY (37 page)

He speaks, musing. Lie back; could thought of mine improve you ? From this Shoulder let there spring A wing; from this, another wing; Wings, not legs and feet, shall move you! Snow-white must they spring, to blend With your flesh, but I intend They shall deepen to the end,

Broader, into burning gold, Till both wings crescent-wise enfold Your perfect seif, from 'neath your feet To o'er your head, where lo, they meet As if a million sword-blades hurled Defiance from you to the world!

Rescue me thou, the only real! And scare away this mad ideal Thatcame.normotionstodepart! Thanks! Now, stay ever as thou art!

Still he muses. What if the Three should catch at last Thy serenader ? While there's cast Paul's cloak about my head, and fast Gian pinions me, Himself has past His stylet through my back; I reel; And . . . is it thou I feel ? They trail me, these three godless knaves, Past every church that saints and saves, Nor stop tili, where the cold sea raves By Lido's wet accursed graves, They scoop mine, roll me to its brink, And . . . on thy breast I sink!

She replies, musing. Dip your arm o'er the boat-side, elbow-deep, As I do: thus: were death so unlike sleep, Caught this way ? Death's to fear from flame or steel, Or poison doubtless; but from water — feel!

Go find the bottom! Would you stay me? There! Now pluck a great blade of that ribbon-grass

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To plait in wliere the foolish jewel was,

I flung away: since you have praised my hair,

T is proper to be choice in what I wear.

He speaks. Row home ? must we row liome ? Too surely Know I where its front's demurely Over the Giudecca piled; Window just with window mating, Door on door exactly waiting, All's the set face of a child: But behind it, where 's a trace Of the staidness and reserve, And formal lines without a curve, In the same child's playing-face ? No two Windows look one way O'er the small sea-water thread Below them. Ah, the autumn day I, passing, saw you overhead! First, out a cloud of curtain blew, Then a sweet cry, and last came you — To catch your lory that must needs Escape just then, of all times then, To peck a tall plant's fleecy seeds, And make me happiest of men. I scarce could breathe to see you reach So far back o'er the balcony To catch him ere he climbed too high Above you in the Smyrna peach, That quick the round smooth cord of gold, This coiled hair on your head, unrolled, Fell down you like a gorgeous snake The Roman girls were wont, of old, When Rome there was, for coolness' sake

To let lie curling o'er their bosoms, Dear lory, may his beak retain Ever its delicate rose stain As if the wounded lotus-blossoms Had marked their thief to know again!

Stay longer yet, for other's sake

Than mine! What should your chamber do ?

— With all its rarities that ache

In silence while day lasts, but wake

At night-time and their life renew,

Suspended just to pleasure you

Who brought against their will together

These objects and, while day lasts, weave

Around them such a magic tether

That dumb they look: your harp, believe,

With all the sensitive tight strings

Which dare not speak, now to itself

Breathes slumberously, as if some elf

Went in and out the chords, his wings

Make murmur wheresoe'er they graze,

As an angel may, between the maze

Of midnight palace-pillars, on

And on, to sow God's plagues, have gone

Through guilty glorious Babylon.

And while such murmurs flow, the nymph

Bends q'er the harp-top from her shell

As the dry limpet for the lymph

Come with a tune he knows so well.

And how your statues' hearts must swell!

And how your pictures must descend

To see each other, friend with friend!

Oh, could you take them by surprise,

You'd find Schidone's eager Duke

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Doing the quaintest courtesies To that prim saint by Haste-thee-Luke! And, deeper into her rock den, Bold Castelfranco's Magdalen You'd find retreated from the ken Of that robed counsel-keeping Ser — As if the Tizian thinks of her, And is not, rather, gravely bent On seeing for himself what toys Are these, his progeny invent, What litter now the board employs Whereon he signed a document That got him murdered! Eaeh enjoys Its night so well, you cannot break The sport up, so, indeed must make More stay with me, for others' sake.

She speaks. To-morrow, if a harp-string, say, Is used to tie the Jasmine back That overfloods my room with sweets, Contrive your Zorzi somehow meets My Zanze! If the ribbon's black, The Three are watching: keep away!

Your gondola — let Zorzi wreathe

A mesh of water-weeds about

Its prow, as if he unaware

Had Struck some quay or bridge-foot stair!

That I may throw a paper out

As you and he go underneath.

There's Zanze's vigiliant taper; safe are we. Only one minute more to-night with me ?

Resume your past seif of a month ago!

Be you the bashful gaüant, I will be

The lady with the colder breast than snow.

Now bow you, as becomes, nor touch my hand

More than I touch yours when I step to land,

And say, "All thanks, Siora!"—

Heart to heart And Ups to lips! Yet once more, ere we part, Clasp me and make me thine, as mine thou art!

He is surprised, and stabbed. It was ordained to be so, sweet! — and best Comes now, beneath thine eyes, upon thy breast. Still kiss me! Care not for the cowards! Care Only to put aside thy beauteous hair My blood will hurt! The Three, I do not scorn To death, because they never lived: but I Have lived indeed,and so—(yet one more kiss)—can die!

»

A "Toccata of Galuppi's" takes us farther along the road of the political and social degen-eracy of Venice, when she had arrived at a point where it was necessary to dance to keep her courage up. The picture given by Horatio E. Brown in his "Sketch of Venice" parallels remarkably that conjured up in the poet's mind by the cold, dead music of Galuppi. He writes:

"The decline of the Republic, the failure of her vital force, did not interrupt the flow of pleasure nor check the flaunting glories of the civic state. Amüsement, ease of life, when busi-ness and battles were over was still sought for

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and found. The political effacement of the Bepublic and the rigid prohibition of politics as a topic, left Venetian society with little but the trivialities of Ufe to engage the attention. The Dlustrissimi, in periw^Id crimson cloak and sword sauntered on the Liston, at the foot of the Campanile, in the Square. The ladies over their chocolate tore each others characters to shreds. They might discuss with ribald tongues the eccentric tastes of the great Procuratore Andrea Trou, but if they ventured to suggest a remedy for financial embarrassmente, if they dared to contemplate a reform, deportation to Verona stared them in the face. And so life was limited to the Listen, the cafe, the casino, to a first night at the Teatro San Moise or San Sarunele, to a cantata at the Mendicante, the Pieta or Incurabüi. Their excitements were scandal and gambling, varied by the interest that might be aroused by a battle-royal between Goldoni and Lozzi, or the piquant processo of Piu Antonio Graturol. Sometimes the whole city would be thrown into a flutter by the arrival of some princes incogniti like the counts of the North, when the ladies would put on their finest dresses, and fight with each other outside the royaJ box for the honor of presentation.

"Tripolo painted their houses with hues as delicate, evanescent, aerial as the miracle of a

sirocco day on the lagoon; Longhi depicted their lives in the Ridotto, in the parlor of a convent, in the alcove; Chiusi, Goldoni, Gozzi, Buratti, or Baffo wrote for them; Galuppi, Jouelli, Hasse, Faustina, Bordone, made music to them in their conservatories. There was taste — though rococo; there was wit — though mali-cious, in their salons, where the dcisbeo and the abbatino ruffled their laces, toyed with tea cups, learned to carry their hat upon their hip while leaning on the back of a lady's chair. An easy, elegant, charming life the Venetians spent in their beautiful Chambers, stuccoed in low relief and tinted with mauve and lemon, with pistaccio green and salmon; there they read their Baffo, their Buratti, their Calmo; and thence late at night, or rather in the early morning, they were wont to pass across the lagoon to the Lido, where they made a matutinal supper and paid their orisons to the rising slm. ,,

The causes for this sinking of a great state into the slough of incompetence and frivohiy were to be found in the raising of that three-headed hydra of destruction, ambition, pros-perity, and the consequent arousing of envy. Ambition led Venice to extend her dominions beyond her lagoons to the mainland, prosperity brought upon her responsibilities as a great nation (the war with the Turks, for example,)

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which she could not sustain single-handed; and envy set the other states of Italy upon her, for as one writer says, while the Republic was act-ually hurling headlong to ruin, the outward pomp, the glory, the splendor of her civilization were for the first time attracting the eyes of Europe. There is something splendid as well as pitiful about the manner in which Venice, with all her wantonness and her frivolity, put up a brave front to the world and gave up at last only to the all-devouring grasp of Napoleon. Browning finds a deeper reason for the decay of Venice in her lack of spiritual aspiration, which is reflected only too surely in the dead-ness of Galuppi's music. The fires of the Renaissance had burned out because of the smoke of selfish ambition that had become mingled with the flaine.

A TOCCATA OF GALUPPFS

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!

n

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 Saint Mark's is, where the Doges used to wed the

sea with rings ?

in

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.

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 f or 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 süperb abundance where a man might

base his head ?

VI

Well, and it was graceful of them — they'd break talk off

and äff ord — She, to bite her mask's black velvet — he, to finger on

his sword, While you sat and played Toccatas, stately at the Clavichord?

In you come with your cold music tili I creep thro' every nerve.

xn

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'11 not die, it can-

not 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