for her, the white mule
     She rode with round the terrace,—­all and each
     Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
     Or blush, at least.  She thanked men,—­good! but thanked
     Somehow—­I know not how—­as if she ranked
     My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
     With anybody’s gift.  Who’d stoop to blame
     This sort of trifling?  Even had you skill
     In speech (which I have not) to make your will
     Quite clear to such an one, and say, “Just this
     Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
     Or there exceed the mark,”—­and if she let
     Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
     Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,—­
     E’en then would be some stooping; and I choose
     Never to stoop.  O sir! she smiled, no doubt,
     When’er I passed her; but who passed without
     Much the same smile?  This grew; I gave commands;
     Then all smiles stopped together.  There she stands
     As if alive.  Will’t please you rise?  We’ll meet
     The company below, then.  I repeat,
     The Count your master’s known munificence
     Is ample warrant that no just pretense
     Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
     Though his fair daughter’s self, as I avowed
     At starting, is my object.  Nay, we’ll go
     Together down, sir.  Notice Neptune, though,
     Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
     Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!

     UP AT A VILLA—­DOWN IN THE CITY

     (As DISTINGUISHED BY AN ITALIAN PERSON OF QUALITY)

     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!

     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.

Well, now, look at our villa! stuck like the horn of a bull Just on a mountain edge as bare as the creature’s skull, Save a mere shag of a bush with hardly a leaf to pull!—­ scratch my own, sometimes, to see if the hair’s turned wool.

     But the city, oh the city—­the square with the houses!  Why! 
     They are stone-faced, white as a curd; there’s something 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.

     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-plowed land before, where the oxen steam and
                wheeze,
     And the hills over-smoked behind by the faint gray olive-trees.