Modern Italian Poets - William Dean Howells

Скачать книгу

occasion warranting the use

       Of so great freedom.

      When one reads of these springs and little hops, which were once so elegant, it is almost with a sigh for a world which no longer springs or hops in the service of beauty, or even dreams of doing it. But a passage which will touch the sympathetic with a still keener sense of loss is one which hints how lovely a lady looked when carving, as she then sometimes did:

       Swiftly now the blade,

       That sharp and polished at thy right hand lies,

       Draw naked forth, and like the blade of Mars

       Flash it upon the eyes of all. The point

       Press 'twixt thy finger-tips, and bowing low

       Offer the handle to her. Now is seen

       The soft and delicate playing of the muscles

       In the white hand upon its work intent.

       The graces that around the lady stoop

       Clothe themselves in new forms, and from her fingers

       Sportively flying, flutter to the tips

       Of her unconscious rosy knuckles, thence

       To dip into the hollows of the dimples

       That Love beside her knuckles has impressed.

      Throughout the dinner it is the part of the well-bred husband—if so ill-bred as to remain at all to sit impassive and quiescent while the cavalier watches over the wife with tender care, prepares her food, offers what agrees with her, and forbids what harms. He is virtually master of the house; he can order the servants about; if the dinner is not to his mind, it is even his high prerogative to scold the cook.

      The poet reports something of the talk at table; and here occurs one of the most admired passages of the poem, the light irony of which it is hard to reproduce in a version. One of the guests, in a strain of affected sensibility, has been denouncing man's cruelty to animals:

       Thus he discourses; and a gentle tear

       Springs, while he speaks, into thy lady's eyes.

       She recalls the day—

       Alas, the cruel day!—what time her lap-dog,

       Her beauteous lap-dog, darling of the Graces,

       Sporting in youthful gayety, impressed

       The light mark of her ivory tooth upon

       The rude foot of a menial; he, with bold

       And sacrilegious toe, flung her away.

       Over and over thrice she rolled, and thrice

       Rumpled her silken coat, and thrice inhaled

       With tender nostril the thick, choking dust,

       Then raised imploring cries, and “Help, help, help!”

       She seemed to call, while from the gilded vaults

       Compassionate Echo answered her again,

       And from their cloistral basements in dismay

       The servants rushed, and from the upper rooms

       The pallid maidens trembling flew; all came.

       Thy lady's face was with reviving essence

       Sprinkled, and she awakened from her swoon.

       Anger and grief convulsed her still; she cast

       A lightning glance upon the guilty menial,

       And thrice with languid voice she called her pet,

       Who rushed to her embrace and seemed to invoke

       Vengeance with her shrill tenor. And revenge

       Thou hadst, fair poodle, darling of the Graces.

       The guilty menial trembled, and with eyes

       Downcast received his doom. Naught him availed

       His twenty years' desert; naught him availed

       His zeal in secret services; for him

       In vain were prayer and promise; forth he went,

       Spoiled of the livery that till now had made him

       Enviable with the vulgar. And in vain

       He hoped another lord; the tender dames

       Were horror-struck at his atrocious crime,

       And loathed the author. The false wretch succumbed

       With all his squalid brood, and in the streets

       With his lean wife in tatters at his side

       Vainly lamented to the passer-by.

      It would be quite out of taste for the lover to sit as apathetic as the husband in the presence of his lady's guests, and he is to mingle gracefully in the talk from time to time, turning it to such topics as may best serve to exploit his own accomplishments. As a man of the first fashion, he must be in the habit of seeming to have read Horace a little, and it will be a pretty effect to quote him now; one may also show one's acquaintance with the new French philosophy, and approve its skepticism, while keeping clear of its pernicious doctrines, which insidiously teach—

       That every mortal is his fellow's peer;

       That not less dear to Nature and to God

       Is he who drives thy carriage, or who guides

       The plow across thy field, than thine own self.

      But at last the lady makes a signal to the cavalier that it is time to rise from the table:

       Spring to thy feet

       The first of all, and drawing near thy lady

       Remove her chair and offer her thy hand,

       And lead her to the other rooms, nor suffer longer

       That the stale reek of viands shall offend

       Her delicate sense. Thee with the rest invites

       The grateful odor of the coffee, where

       It smokes upon a smaller table hid

       And graced with Indian webs. The redolent gums

       That meanwhile burn

Скачать книгу