English

" Garden of no fruit! Lichen on a stone!
And what is life but a barren laborious tree
Too streaked and scored with black mortality? "
Abbott said several dooms with firm intone,
And had more worlds to sentence, he had not done,
When trot, trot, trot, and squeezing under the wicket
Where one peach hung there came a fellow to pick it;
It was his heathen brother, famished and blown.

Paul had a smile always in waiting. " Brother,
Can you have kept this only peach for me?
If you want half of it though, I will agree. "

Here were the end, had anything an end:
Thus, lit and launched, up and up roared and soared
A rocket, till the key o' the vault was reached,
And wide heaven held, a breathless minute-space,
In brilliant usurpature: thus caught spark,
Rushed to the height, and hung at full of fame
Over men's upturned faces, ghastly thence,
Our glaring Guido: now decline must be.
In its explosion, you have seen his act,
By my power — may-be, judged it by your own, —
Or composite as good orbs prove, or crammed

Do you see this Ring?
'T is Rome-work, made to match
(By Castellani's imitative craft)
Etrurian circlets found, some happy morn,
After a dropping April; found alive
Spark-like 'mid unearthed slope-side figtree-roots
That roof old tombs at Chiusi: soft, you see,
Yet crisp as jewel-cutting. There 's one trick,
(Craftsmen instruct me) one approved device
And but one, fits such slivers of pure gold
As this was, — such mere oozings from the mine,
Virgin as oval tawny pendent tear

And has all nature, then, espoused my part?
Have I bribed heaven, and earth, to plead against thee?
And is thy soul immortal? — What remains?
All, all, L ORENZO ! — Make immortal, bless'd.
Unbless'd, immortals! — what can shock us more?
And yet L ORENZO still affects the world;
There, stows his treasure; thence, his title draws,
Man of the world (for such wouldst thou be call'd.)
And art thou proud of that inglorious style?
Proud of reproach? for a reproach it was,
In ancient days; and C HRISTIAN , — in an age

[EPILOGUE]

Scene: PIPPA's chamber again. She enters it .

The bee with his comb,
The mouse at her dray,
The grub in his tomb,
Wile winter away;
But the fire-fly and hedge-shrew and lob-worm, I pray,
How fare they?
Ha, ha, thanks for your counsel, my Zanze!
" Feast upon lampreys, quaff Breganze" —
The summer of life so easy to spend,
And care for tomorrow so soon put away!
But winter hastens at summer's end,
And fire-fly, hedge-shrew, lob-worm, pray,
How fare they?

PART IV

NIGHT

Scene: Inside the Palace by the Duomo. MONSIGNOR, dismissing his Attendants.

PART III

EVENING

Scene: Inside the Turret on the Hill above Asolo. LUIGI and his Mother entering .

MOTHER: If there blew wind, you'd hear a long sigh, easing
The utmost heaviness of music's heart.
LUIGI: Here in the archway?
MOTHER: Oh no, no — in farther,
Where the echo is made, on the ridge.
LUIGI: Here surely, then.
How plain the tap of my heel as I leaped up!

PART II

Noon

Scene: Over Orcana. The house of JULES, who crosses its threshold with PHENE: she is silent, on which JULESbegins —

Do not die, Phene! I am yours now, you
Are mine now; let fate reach me how she likes,
If you'll not die: so, never die! Sit here —
My work-room's single seat. I over-lean
This length of hair and lustrous front; they turn
Like an entire flower upward: eyes, lips, last
Your chin — no, last your throat turns: 'tis their scent

PART I

MORNING

Scene: Up the Hill-side, inside the Shrub-House.

LUCA' s wife , OTTIMA, and her paramour, the German SEBALD.

SEBALD [ sings ]:

Let the watching lids wink!
Day's a-blaze with eyes, think!
Deep into the night, drink!

OTTIMA: Night? Such may be your Rhine-land nights perhaps;
But this blood-red beam through the shutter's chink
— We call such light, the morning: let us see!

INTRODUCTION

NEW YEAR'S DAY AT ASOLO IN THE TREVISAN

Scene: A large mean airy chamber. A girl , PIPPA, from the Silk-mills, springing out of bed .

Day!
Faster and more fast,
O'er night's brim, day boils at last:
Boils, pure gold, o'er the cloud-cup's brim
Where spurting and suppressed it lay,
For not a froth-flake touched the rim
Of yonder gap in the solid grey
Of the eastern cloud, an hour away;
But forth one wavelet, then another, curled,
Till the whole sunrise, not to be suppressed,