I am grown peaceful as old age to-night. 
     I regret little, I would change still less. 
     Since there my past life lies, why alter it? 
     The very wrong to Francis!—­it is true
     I took his coin, was tempted and complied,
     And built this house and sinned, and all is said. 
     My father and my mother died of want. 
     Well, had I riches of my own? you see
     How one gets rich!  Let each one bear his lot. 
     They were born poor, lived poor, and poor they died;
     And I have labored somewhat in my time
     And not been paid profusely.  Some good son
     Paint my two hundred pictures—­let him try! 
     No doubt, there’s something strikes a balance.  Yes,
     You loved me quite enough, it seems to-night. 
     This must suffice me here.  What would one have? 
     In heaven, perhaps, new chances, one more chance—­
     Four great walls in the New Jerusalem,
     Meted on each side by the angel’s reed,
     For Leonard, Rafael, Agnolo, and me
     To cover—­the three first without a wife,
     While I have mine!  So still they overcome—­
     Because there’s still Lucrezia,—­as I choose.

     Again the cousin’s whistle!  Go, my love.

     A TOCCATA OF GALUPPI’S

     O GALLUPI, 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!

     Have 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?

     Ay, because the sea’s the street there; and ’tis arched by—­what
                you call—­
     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.

     Did 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 made 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,
     While you sat and played Toccatas, stately at the clavichord!

     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!”