A Toccata of °
°1 Oh Galuppi,° Baldassaro, this is very sad to find!
I can hardly misconceive you; it would prove me deaf and blind;
But altho’ I take your meaning, ’tis with such a heavy mind!
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,
°6 Where St. Mark’s° is, where the Doges used to wed the sea with rings°?
Ay, 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:
I 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?
Balls and masks begun at midnight, burning ever to mid-day,
When they make up fresh adventures for the morrow, do you say?
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?
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,
°18 While you sat and played Toccatas, stately at the clavichord°?
°19 What? Those lesser thirds° so plaintive, sixths° diminished sigh on sigh,
°20 Told them something? Those suspensions,° those solutions°—“Must we die?”
°21 Those commiserating sevenths°—“Life might last! we can but try!”
“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!
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!”
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,
°30 Death, stepped tacitly and took them where they never see the sun.°
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 thro’ every nerve.
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.
“Yours, for instance: you know physics, something of geology,
Mathematics are your pastime; souls shall rise in their degree;
°39 Butterflies may dread extinction,—you’ll not die, it cannot be!°
40”As for Venice and her 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!” So you creak it, and I want the heart to scold.
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.