![]() | The Poetical Works of Robert Browning | ![]() |
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PROLOGUE.
Pray, Reader, have you eaten ortolansEver in Italy?
Recall how cooks there cook them: for my plan's
To—Lyre with Spit ally.
They pluck the birds,—some dozen luscious lumps,
Or more or fewer,—
Then roast them, heads by heads and rumps by rumps,
Stuck on a skewer.
But first,—and here's the point I fain would press,—
Don't think I'm tattling!—
They interpose, to curb its lusciousness,
—What, 'twixt each fatling?
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Then, a strong sage-leaf:
(So we find books with flowers dried here and there
Lest leaf engage leaf.)
First, food—then, piquancy—and last of all
Follows the thirdling:
Through wholesome hard, sharp soft, your tooth must bite
Ere reach the birdling.
Now, were there only crust to crunch, you'd wince:
Unpalatable!
Sage-leaf is bitter-pungent—so's a quince:
Eat each who's able!
But through all three bite boldly—lo, the gust!
Flavour—no fixture—
Flies, permeating flesh and leaf and crust
In fine admixture.
So with your meal, my poem: masticate
Sense, sight and song there!
Digest these, and I praise your peptics' state,
Nothing found wrong there.
Whence springs my illustration who can tell?
—The more surprising
That here eggs, milk, cheese, fruit suffice so well
For gormandizing.
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Delightful Gressoney!
Who laughest “Take what is, trust what may be!”
That's Life's true lesson,—eh?
Maison Delapierre,
Gressoney St. Jean, Val d' Aosta.
September 12, 83.
![]() | The Poetical Works of Robert Browning | ![]() |