A Toccata of Galuppi's

4Here you come with your old music, and here's all the good it brings.

5What, they lived once thus at Venice where the merchants were the kings,

6Where St. Mark's is, where the Doges used to wed the sea with rings?

7Ay, because the sea's the street there; and 'tis arched by ... what you call

8... Shylock's bridge with houses on it, where they kept the carnival:

9I was never out of England — it's as if I saw it all.

10Did young people take their pleasure when the sea was warm in May?

11Balls and masks begun at midnight, burning ever to mid-day,

12When they make up fresh adventures for the morrow, do you say?

13Was a lady such a lady, cheeks so round and lips so red, —

14On her neck the small face buoyant, like a bell-flower on its bed,

15O'er the breast's superb abundance where a man might base his head?

16Well, and it was graceful of them: they'd break talk off and afford

17 — She, to bite her mask's black velvet — he, to finger on his sword,

18While you sat and played Toccatas, stately at the clavichord?

19What? Those lesser thirds so plaintive, sixths diminished sigh on sigh,

20Told them something? Those suspensions, those solutions — "Must we die?"

21Those commiserating sevenths — "Life might last! we can but try!"

22"Were you happy?" — "Yes." — "And are you still as happy?" — "Yes. And you?"

23 — "Then, more kisses !" — "DidI_ stop them, when, a million seemed so few?"

24Hark, the dominant's persistence till it must be answered to!

25So, an octave struck the answer. Oh, they praised you, I dare say!

26"Brave Galuppi! that was music! good alike at grave and gay!

27I can always leave off talking when I hear a master play!"

28Then they left you for their pleasure: till in due time, one by one,

29Some with lives that came to nothing, some with deeds as well undone,

30Death, stepped tacitly and took them where they never see the sun.

31But when I sit down to reason, think to take my stand nor swerve,

32While I triumph o'er a secret wrung from nature's close reserve,

33In you come with your cold music till I creep thro' every nerve.

34Yes, you, like a ghostly cricket, creaking where a house was burned:

35"Dust and ashes, dead and done with, Venice spent what Venice earned.

36The soul, doubtless, is immortal — where a soul can be discerned.

37"Yours, for instance: you know physics, something of geology,

38Mathematics are your pastime; souls shall rise in their degree;

39Butterflies may dread extinction, — you'll not die, it cannot be!

40"As for Venice and her people, merely born to bloom and drop,

41Here on earth they bore their fruitage, mirth and folly were the crop:

42What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop?

43"Dust and ashes!" So you creak it, and I want the heart to scold.

44Dear dead women, with such hair, too — what's become of all the gold

45Used to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel chilly and grown old.