The Norton Anthology of English literature. Volume 2

us To death�ye wish it�God, ye wish it! Stone� Gritstone,2 a-crumble! Clammy squares which sweat

As if the corpse they keep were oozing through�

And no more lapis to delight the world!

Well go! I bless ye. Fewer tapers there,

120 But in a row: and, going, turn your backs

�Aye, like departing altar-ministrants,

And leave me in my church, the church for peace,

That I may watch at leisure if he leers�

Old Gandolf, at me, from his onion-stone,

125 As still he envied me, so fair she was!

1844 1845

A Toccata of Galuppi's1

Oh, Galuppi, Baldassaro, this is very sad to find!

I can hardly misconceive you; it would prove me deaf and blind;

But although 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,

Where Saint Mark's is, where the Doges used to wed the sea with rings?2

7. Cf. Genesis 47.9. performs his composition for an audience. From 8. Statue of Terminus, the Roman god of bound-line 20 onward we hear snippets of conversation aries, usually represented without arms. "Vizor": from members of this audience as they respond to part of a helmet, often represented in sculpture. the different moods of the piece, and then, in lines 9. An animal that traditionally accompanied Bac-3S�43, Galuppi's own imagined musings. "Tocchus. cata": according to Grove's Dictionary of Music, a 1. Horizontal platform supporting a statue or "touch-piece, or a composition intended to exhibit effigy-the touch and execution of the performer." The 2. Coarse sandstone. same authority states that "no particular compo1. For the main speaker of this poem, Browning sition was taken as the basis of the poem." invents a 19th-century English scientist, who is lis-2. An annual ceremony in which the doge, the tening to music by the Italian composer Baldassaro Venetian chief magistrate, threw a ring into the Galuppi (1706�1785). The music evokes for the water to symbolize the bond between his city, with scientist visions of 18th-century Venice, including its maritime empire, and the sea. an imaginary scene of a party at which Galuppi

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A TOCCATA OF GALUPPI'S / 126 3

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

. . . Shylock's bridge3 with houses on it, where they kept the carnival:

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

4

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

Balls and masks" begun at midnight, burning ever to midday, masquerades

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

5

Was a lady such a lady, cheeks so round and lips so red�

On her neck the small face buoyant, like a bellflower on its bed,

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

6

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?4

7

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!"

8

"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!

9

So, an octave struck the answer.5 Oh, they praised you, I dare say!

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

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

10

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

11

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.

12

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.

3. The Rialto, a bridge over the Grand Canal. devices used by Galuppi to produce alternating 4. A keyboard instrument whose strings are struck moods in his music, conflict in each instance being by metal hammers. Its mechanism resembles that resolved into harmony. Thus the "dominant" (the of a piano, but its sound is more like that of a harp-fifth note of the scale), after being persistently sichord. sounded, is answered by a resolving chord (lines 5. The terms in these lines refer to the technical 24-25).

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126 4 / ROBERT BROWNING

r3 "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!

14

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