And know if yet that woman smiles With the calm smile; some little farm If I sate on the door-side bench, Inquired of all her fortunes-just For each of them - I'd talk this out, And sit there, for an hour about, Then kiss her hand once more, and lay Mine on her head, and go my way. So much for idle wishing—how It steals the time! To business now! UP AT A VILLA — DOWN IN THE CITY. (As distinguished by an Italian person of quality.) I. Had I but plenty of money, money enough and to spare, The house for me, no doubt, were a house in the city-square. Ah, such a life, such a life, as one leads at the window there! II. Something to see, by Bacchus, something to hear, at least! There, the whole day long, one's life is a perfect feast ; While up at a villa one lives, I maintain it, no more than a beast. III. Well now, look at our villa! stuck like the horn of a bull Just on a mountain's edge as bare as the creature's skull, Save a mere shag of a bush with hardly a leaf to pull! -I scratch my own, sometimes, to see if the hair's turned wool. IV. But the city, oh the city-the square with the houses! Why? They are stone-faced, white as a curd, there's some thing to take the eye! Houses in four straight lines, not a single front awry! You watch who crosses and gossips, who saunters, who hurries by: Green blinds, as a matter of course, to draw when the sun gets high; And the shops with fanciful signs which are painted properly. V. What of a villa? Though winter be over in March by rights, 'Tis May perhaps ere the snow shall have withered well off the heights: You've the brown ploughed land before, where the oxen steam and wheeze, And the hills over-smoked behind by the faint gray olive trees. VI. Is it better in May, I ask you? You've summer all at once; In a day he leaps complete with a few strong April suns! 'Mid the sharp short emerald wheat, scarce risen three fingers well, The wild tulip, at end of its tube, blows out its great red bell, Like a thin clear bubble of blood, for the children to pick and sell. VII. Is it ever hot in the square? There's a fountain to spout and splash! In the shade it sings and springs; in the shine such foam-bows flash On the horses with curling fish-tails, that prance and and paddle and pash Round the lady atop in the conch-fifty gazers do not abash, Though all that she wears is some weeds round her waist in a sort of sash! VIII. All the year round at the villa, nothing's to see though you linger, Except yon cypress that points like Death's lean lifted forefinger. Some think fireflies pretty, when they mix in the corn and mingle, Or thrid the stinking hemp till the stalks of it seem a-tingle. |