Selected Poems (Penguin Classics) Page 5
In, as far as the point could go –
[20] Not to our ingle, though,
Where we loved each the other so!
IV
Laughs with so little cause!
We devised games out of straws.
We would try and trace
One another’s face
In the ash, as an artist draws;
Free on each other’s flaws,
How we chattered like two church daws!
V
What’s in the ‘Times’? – a scold
[30] At the Emperor deep and cold;
He has taken a bride
To his gruesome side,
That’s as fair as himself is bold:
There they sit ermine-stoled,
And she powders her hair with gold.
VI
Fancy the Pampas’ sheen!
Miles and miles of gold and green
Where the sunflowers blow
In a solid glow,
[40] And – to break now and then the screen –
Black neck and eyeballs keen,
Up a wild horse leaps between!
VII
Try, will our table turn?
Lay your hands there light, and yearn
Till the yearning slips
Through the finger-tips
In a fire which a few discern,
And a very few feel burn,
And the rest, they may live and learn!
VIII
[50] Then we would up and pace,
For a change, about the place,
Each with arm o’er neck:
’Tis our quarter-deck,
We are seamen in woeful case.
Help in the ocean-space!
Or, if no help, we’ll embrace.
IX
See, how she looks now, dressed
In a sledging-cap and vest!
’Tis a huge fur cloak –
[60] Like a reindeer’s yoke
Falls the lappet along the breast:
Sleeves for her arms to rest,
Or to hang, as my Love likes best.
X
Teach me to flirt a fan
As the Spanish ladies can,
Or I tint your lip
With a burnt stick’s tip
And you turn into such a man!
Just the two spots that span
[70] Half the bill of the young male swan.
XI
Dearest, three months ago
When the mesmerizer Snow
With his hand’s first sweep
Put the earth to sleep:
’Twas a time when the heart could show
All – how was earth to know,
’Neath the mute hand’s to-and-fro?
XII
Dearest, three months ago
When we loved each other so,
[80] Lived and loved the same
Till an evening came
When a shaft from the devil’s bow
Pierced to our ingle-glow,
And the friends were friend and foe!
XIII
Not from the heart beneath –
’Twas a bubble born of breath,
Neither sneer nor vaunt,
Nor reproach nor taunt.
See a word, how it severeth!
[90] Oh, power of life and death
In the tongue, as the Preacher saith!
XIV
Woman, and will you cast
For a word, quite off at last
Me, your own, your You, –
Since, as truth is true,
I was You all the happy past –
Me do you leave aghast
With the memories We amassed?
XV
Love, if you knew the light
[100] That your soul casts in my sight,
How I look to you
For the pure and true
And the beauteous and the right, –
Bear with a moment’s spite
When a mere mote threats the white!
XVI
What of a hasty word?
Is the fleshly heart not stirred
By a worm’s pin-prick
Where its roots are quick?
[110] See the eye, by a fly’s foot blurred –
Ear, when a straw is heard
Scratch the brain’s coat of curd!
XVII
Foul be the world or fair
More or less, how can I care?
’Tis the world the same
For my praise or blame,
And endurance is easy there.
Wrong in the one thing rare –
Oh, it is hard to bear!
XVIII
[120] Here’s the spring back or close,
When the almond-blossom blows:
We shall have the word
In a minor third
There is none but the cuckoo knows:
Heaps of the guelder-rose!
I must bear with it, I suppose.
XIX
Could but November come,
Were the noisy birds struck dumb
At the warning slash
[130] Of his driver’s-lash –
I would laugh like the valiant Thumb
Facing the castle glum
And the giant’s fee-faw-fum!
XX
Then, were the world well stripped
Of the gear wherein equipped
We can stand apart,
Heart dispense with heart
In the sun, with the flowers unnipped, –
Oh, the world’s hangings ripped,
[140] We were both in a bare-walled crypt!
XXI
Each in the crypt would cry
‘But one freezes here! and why?
When a heart, as chill,
At my own would thrill
Back to life, and its fires out-fly?
Heart, shall we live or die?
The rest, … settle by-and-by!’
XXII
So, she’d efface the score,
And forgive me as before.
[150] It is twelve o’clock:
I shall hear her knock
In the worst of a storm’s uproar,
I shall pull her through the door,
I shall have her for evermore!
Up at a Villa – Down in the City
(As Distinguished by an Italian Person of Quality)
I
Had I but plenty of money, money enough and to spare,
The house for me, no doubt, were a house in the city-square;
Ah, such a life, such a life, as one leads at the window there!
II
Something to see, by Bacchus, something to hear, at least!
There, the whole day long, one’s life is a perfect feast;
While up at a villa one lives, I maintain it, no more than a beast.
III
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!
[10] – I scratch my own, sometimes, to see if the hair’s turned wool.
IV
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.
V
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,
[20] And the hills over-smoked behind by the faint grey olive-trees.
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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.
VII
Is it ever hot in the square? There’s a fountain to spout and splash!
In the shade it sings and springs; in the shine such foam-bows flash
On the horses with curling fish-tails, that prance and paddle and pash
Round the lady atop in her conch – fifty gazers do not abash,
[30] Though all that she wears is some weeds round her waist in a sort of sash.
VIII
All the year long at the villa, nothing to see though you linger,
Except yon cypress that points like death’s lean lifted forefinger.
Some think fireflies pretty, when they mix i’ the corn and mingle,
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.
IX
Ere you open your eyes in the city, the blessed church-bells begin:
No sooner the bells leave off than the diligence rattles in:
[40] 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,
[50] Having preached us those six Lent-lectures 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.
X
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,
[60] And the penitents dressed in white shirts, a-holding the yellow candles;
One, he carries a flag up straight, and another a cross with handles,
And the Duke’s guard brings up the rear, for the better prevention of scandals:
Bang-whang-whang goes the drum, tootle-te-tootle the fife.
Oh, a day in the city-square, there is no such pleasure in life!
Fra Lippo Lippi
I am poor brother Lippo, by your leave!
You need not clap your torches to my face.
Zooks, what’s to blame? you think you see a monk!
What, ’tis past midnight, and you go the rounds,
And here you catch me at an alley’s end
Where sportive ladies leave their doors ajar?
The Carmine’s my cloister: hunt it up,
Do, – harry out, if you must show your zeal,
Whatever rat, there, haps on his wrong hole,
[10] And nip each softling of a wee white mouse,
Weke, weke, that’s crept to keep him company!
Aha, you know your betters! Then, you’ll take
Your hand away that’s fiddling on my throat,
And please to know me likewise. Who am I?
Why, one, sir, who is lodging with a friend
Three streets off – he’s a certain … how d’ye call?
Master – a … Cosimo of the Medici,
I’ the house that caps the corner. Boh! you were best!
Remember and tell me, the day you’re hanged,
[20] How you affected such a gullet’s-gripe!
But you, sir, it concerns you that your knaves
Pick up a manner nor discredit you:
Zooks, are we pilchards, that they sweep the streets
And count fair prize what comes into their net?
He’s Judas to a tittle, that man is!
Just such a face! Why, sir, you make amends.
Lord, I’m not angry! Bid your hangdogs go
Drink out this quarter-florin to the health
Of the munificent House that harbours me
[30] (And many more beside, lads! more beside!)
And all’s come square again. I’d like his face –
His, elbowing on his comrade in the door
With the pike and lantern, – for the slave that holds
John Baptist’s head a-dangle by the hair
With one hand (‘Look you, now,’ as who should say)
And his weapon in the other, yet unwiped!
It’s not your chance to have a bit of chalk,
A wood-coal or the like? or you should see!
Yes, I’m the painter, since you style me so.
[40] What, brother Lippo’s doings, up and down,
You know them and they take you? like enough!
I saw the proper twinkle in your eye –
’Tell you, I liked your looks at very first.
Let’s sit and set things straight now, hip to haunch.
Here’s spring come, and the nights one makes up bands
To roam the town and sing out carnival,
And I’ve been three weeks shut within my mew,
A-painting for the great man, saints and saints
And saints again. I could not paint all night –
[50] Out! I leaned out of window for fresh air.
There came a hurry of feet and little feet,
A sweep of lute-strings, laughs, and whifts of song, –
Flower o’ the broom,
Take away love, and our earth is a tomb!
Flower o’ the quince,
I let Lisa go, and what good in life since?
Flower o’ the thyme – and so on. Round they went.
Scarce had they turned the corner when a titter
Like the skipping of rabbits by moonlight, – three slim shapes,
[60] And a face that looked up … zooks, sir, flesh and blood,
That’s all I’m made of! Into shreds it went,
Curtain and counterpane and coverlet,
All the bed-furniture – a dozen knots,
There was a ladder! Down I let myself,
Hands and feet, scrambling somehow, and so dropped,
And after them. I came up with the fun
Hard by Saint Laurence, hail fellow, well met, –
Flower o’ the rose,
If I’ve been merry, what matter who knows?
[70] And so as I was stealing back again
To get to bed and have a bit of sleep
Ere I rise up tomorrow and go work
On Jerome knocking at his poor old breast
With his great round stone to subdue the flesh,
You snap me of the sudden. Ah, I see!
Though your eye twinkles still, you shake your head –
Mine�
�s shaved – a monk, you say – the sting’s in that!
If Master Cosimo announced himself,
Mum’s the word naturally; but a monk!
[80] Come, what am I a beast for? tell us, now!
I was a baby when my mother died
And father died and left me in the street.
I starved there, God knows how, a year or two
On fig-skins, melon-parings, rinds and shucks,
Refuse and rubbish. One fine frosty day,
My stomach being empty as your hat,
The wind doubled me up and down I went.
Old Aunt Lapaccia trussed me with one hand,
(Its fellow was a stinger as I knew)
[90] And so along the wall, over the bridge,
By the straight cut to the convent. Six words there,
While I stood munching my first bread that month:
‘So, boy, you’re minded,’ quoth the good fat father
Wiping his own mouth, ’twas refection-time, –
‘To quit this very miserable world?
Will you renounce’ … ‘the mouthful of bread?’ thought I;
By no means! Brief, they made a monk of me;
I did renounce the world, its pride and greed,
Palace, farm, villa, shop and banking-house,
[100] Trash, such as these poor devils of Medici
Have given their hearts to – all at eight years old.
Well, sir, I found in time, you may be sure,
’Twas not for nothing – the good bellyful,
The warm serge and the rope that goes all round,
And day-long blessed idleness beside!
‘Let’s see what the urchin’s fit for’ – that came next.
Not overmuch their way, I must confess.
Such a to-do! They tried me with their books:
Lord, they’d have taught me Latin in pure waste!
[110] Flower o’ the clove,
All the Latin I construe is, ‘amo’ I love!
But, mind you, when a boy starves in the streets
Eight years together, as my fortune was,
Watching folk’s faces to know who will fling
The bit of half-stripped grape-bunch he desires,
And who will curse or kick him for his pains, –
Which gentleman processional and fine,
Holding a candle to the Sacrament,
Will wink and let him lift a plate and catch
[120] The droppings of the wax to sell again,
Or holla for the Eight and have him whipped, –
How say I? – nay, which dog bites, which lets drop
His bone from the heap of offal in the street, –
Why, soul and sense of him grow sharp alike,
He learns the look of things, and none the less
For admonition from the hunger-pinch.
I had a store of such remarks, be sure,
Which, after I found leisure, turned to use.