“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,
     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 through 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;
     Butterflies may dread extinction,—­you’ll not die, it cannot be!

     “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.

     CONFESSIONS

     What is he buzzing in my ears? 
       “Now that I come to die
     Do I view the world as a vale of tears?”
       Ah, reverend sir, not I!

     What I viewed there once,—­what I viewed again
       Where the physic bottles stand
     On the table’s edge,—­is a suburb lane,
       With a wall to my bedside hand.

     That lane sloped, much as the bottles do,
       From a house you could descry
     O’er the garden wall:  is the curtain blue,
       Or green to a healthy eye?

     To mine, it serves for the old June weather
       Blue above lane and wall;
     And that farthest bottle labeled “Ether”
       Is the house o’ertopping all.

     At a terrace, somewhat near the stopper,
        There watched for me, one June,
     A girl:  I know, sir, it’s improper,
        My poor mind’s out of tune.

     Only, there was a way—­you crept
        Close by the side, to dodge
     Eyes in the house, two eyes except: 
        They styled their house “The Lodge”