A TOCCATA OF GALUPPI'S

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?

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, tog -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 bear

When I find a Giotto join the rest.

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,

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,

Measured by Art in your breadth and length,

You learned-to submit is a mortal's duty.

-When I say "you" 'tis the common soul,

The collective, I mean: the race of Man

That receives life in parts to live in a whole,

And grow here according to God's clear plan.

Growth came when, looking your last on them all,

You turned your eyes inwardly one fine day

And cried with a start--What if we so small

Be greater and grander the while than they?

Are they perfect of lineament, perfect of stature?

In both, of such lower types are we Precisely because of our wider nature; For time, theirs-ours, for eternity.

To-day's brief passion limits their range: It seethes with the morrow for us and

You bald old saturnine poll-clawed parrot?)

Not a poor glimmering Crucifixion,

Where in the foreground kneels the donor ?

If such remain, as is my conviction,

The hoarding it does you but little honor.

They pass; for them the panels may thrill,

The tempera grow alive and tinglish; Their pictures are left to the mercies still

Of dealers and stealers, Jews and the English,

Who, seeing mere money's worth in their prize,

Will sell it to somebody calm as Zeno At naked High Art, and in ecstasies

Before some clay-cold vile Carlino!

No matter for these! But Giotto, you, Have you allowed, as the town-tongues babble it,

Oh, never! it shall not be counted true--That a certain precious little tablet Which Buonarrotti eyed like a lover

Was buried so long in oblivion's womb And, left for another than I to discover, Turns up at last! and to whom? - to whom?

I, that have haunted the dim San Spirito,

(Or was it rather the Ognissanti ?) Patient on altar-step planting a weary toe!