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| 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! | |
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| 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, | 5 |
| Where St. Mark’s is, where the Doges used to wed the sea with rings? | |
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| 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. | |
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| Did young people take their pleasure when the sea was warm in May? | 10 |
| Balls and masks begun at midnight, burning ever to mid-day, | |
| When they made up fresh adventures for the morrow, do you say? | |
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| 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? | 15 |
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| Well, and it was graceful of them—they’d break talk off and afford | |
| —She, to bite her mask’s black velvet—he, to finger on his sword, | |
| While you sat and played Toccatas, stately at the clavichord? | |
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| What? Those lesser thirds so plaintive, sixths diminished, sigh on sigh, | |
| Told them something? Those suspensions, those solutions—“Must we die?” | 20 |
| Those commiserating sevenths—“Life might last! we can but try!” | |
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| “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! | |
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| So, an octave struck the answer. Oh, they praised you, I dare say! | 25 |
| “Brave Galuppi! that was music! good alike at grave and gay! | |
| I can always leave off talking when I hear a master play!” | |
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| 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. | 30 |
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| 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. | |
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| Yes, you, like a ghostly cricket, creaking where a house was burned: | |
| “Dust and ashes, dead and done with, Venice spent what Venice earned. | 35 |
| The soul, doubtless, is immortal—where a soul can be discerned. | |
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| “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! | |
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| “As for Venice and her people, merely born to bloom and drop, | 40 |
| 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? | |
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| “Dust and ashes!” So you creak it, and I want the heart to scold. | |
| Dear dear 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. | 45 |
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