PIANO DI SORRENTO.

FORTU, Fortù, my beloved one,

Sit here by my side,

On my knees put up both little feet!
I was sure, if I tried,

I could make you laugh spite of Scirocco:

Now, open your eyes,

Let me keep you amused till he vanish

In black from the skies,
With telling my memories over

As you tell your beads;

All the memories plucked at Sorrento, -
The flowers, or the weeds.

Time for rain! for your long hot dry Autumn Had networked with brown

The white skin of each grape on the bunches,
Marked like a quail's crown,

Those creatures you make such account of,
Whose heads-specked with white
Over brown like a great spider's back,
As I told you last night —

Your mother bites off for her supper;
Red-ripe as could be.

Pomegranates were chapping and splitting

In halves on the tree:

And betwixt the loose walls of great flintstone, Or in the thick dust

On the path, or straight out of the rock-side,
Wherever could thrust

Some burnt sprig of bold, hardy rock-flower,
Its yellow face up,

For the prize were great butterflies fighting,
Some five for one cup.

So I guessed, ere I got up this morning,
What change was in store,

By the quick rustle-down of the quail-nets
Which woke me before

I could open my shutter, made fast

With a bough and a stone,

And look through the twisted dead vine-twigs,

Sole lattice that 's known!

Quick and sharp rang the rings down the net-poles,

While, busy beneath,

Your priest and his brother tugged at them,

The rain in their teeth;

And out upon all the flat house-roofs

Where split figs lay drying,

The girls took the frails under cover:

Nor use seemed in trying

To get out the boats and go fishing,

For, under the cliff,

Fierce the black water frothed o'er the blind-rock.

No seeing our skiff

Arrive about noon from Amalfi,

Our fisher arrive,

And pitch down his basket before us,

All trembling alive

With pink and gray jellies, your sea-fruit,

You touch the strange lumps,

And mouths gape there, eyes open, all manner

Of horns and of humps,

Which only the fisher looks grave at,

While round him like imps

Cling screaming the children as naked
And brown as his shrimps:

Himself, too, as bare to the middle,

You see round his neck

The string and its brass coin suspended,
That saves him from wreck.

But to-day not a boat reached Salerno,

So back to a man

Came our friends, with whose help in the vineyards

Grape-harvest began:

In the vat, half-way up in our house-side,

Like blood the juice spins,

While your brother all bare-legged is dancing

Till breathless he grins

Dead-beaten, in effort on effort

To keep the grapes under,

Since still when he seems all but master,

In pours the fresh plunder

From girls who keep coming and going

With basket on shoulder,

And eyes shut against the rain's driving,

Your girls that are older,

For under the hedges of aloe,

And where, on its bed

Of the orchard's black mould, the love-apple

Lies pulpy and red,

All the young ones are kneeling and filling
Their laps with the snails

Tempted out by this first rainy weather,-
Your best of regales.

As to-night will be proved to my sorrow,
When, supping in state,

We shall feast our grape-gleaners (two dozen,

Three over one plate)

With lasagne so tempting to swallow

In slippery ropes,

And gourds fried in great purple slices,

That color of popes.

Meantime, see the grape-bunch they 've brought you,

The rain-water slips

O'er the heavy blue bloom on each globe
Which the wasp to your lips

Still follows with fretful persistence,—

Nay, taste, while awake,

This half of a curd-white smooth cheese-ball,

That peels, flake by flake,

Like an onion's, each smoother and whiter;

Next, sip this weak wine

From the thin green glass flask, with its stopper,

And end with the prickly-pear's red flesh

That leaves through its juice

The stony black seeds on your pearl-teeth.
. . Scirocco is loose!

Hark! the quick, whistling pelt of the olives
Which, thick in one's track,

Tempt the stranger to pick up and bite them,

Though not yet half black!

How the old twisted olive-trunks shudder!
The medlars let fall

Their hard fruit, and the brittle great fig-trees
Snap off, figs and all,

For here comes the whole of the tempest!

No refuge, but creep

Back again to my side and my shoulder,
And listen or sleep.

O, how will your country show next week,
When all the vine-boughs

Have been stripped of their foliage to pasture

The mules and the cows?

Last eve, I rode over the mountains;

Your brother, my guide,

Soon left me, to feast on the myrtles

That offered, each side,

Their fruit-balls, black, glossy, and luscious,

Or strip from the sorbs

A treasure, so rosy and wondrous,

Of hairy gold orbs!

But my mule picked his sure, sober path out,

Just stopping to neigh

When he recognized down in the valley

His mates on their way

With the fagots, and barrels of water;

And soon we emerged

From the plain, where the woods could scarce follow;

And still as we urged

Our way, the woods wondered, and left us,