I shuffle sideways with my blushing face
Under the cover of a hundred wings

Thrown like a spread of kirtles when you're gay
And play hot cockles, all the doors being shut,
Till, wholly unexpected, in there pops

The hothead husband! Thus I scuttle off

To some safe bench behind, not letting go

The palm of her, the little lily thing

That spoke the good word for me in the nick,

Like the Prior's niece . . . Saint Lucy, I would say.

...

And so all's saved for me, and for the church
A pretty picture gained. Go, six months hence !
Your hand, sir, and good-bye: no lights, no lights!
The street's hushed, and I know my own way back,
Don't fear me! There's the grey beginning. Zooks!

A TOCCATA OF GALUPPI'S.

I.

Он, Galuppi, Baldassaro, this is very sad to find! I can hardly misconceive you; that would prove me deaf and blind;

But although I take your meaning, 'tis with such a heavy mind!

II.

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?

III.

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!

IV.

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

Balls and masks began at midnight, burning ever to

mid-day,

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

V.

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?

VI.

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?

VII.

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

Told them something? Those suspensions, those solutions-"must we die ?"

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

VIII.

'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!

IX.

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."

X.

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 came tacitly and took them where they never see the sun.

XI.

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.

XII.

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.

XIII.

"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 !

XIV.

"As for Venice and its 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!"

heart to scold.

XV.

So you creak it, and I want the

Dear dead 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.