The poems and prose remains of Arthur Hugh Clough With a selection from his letters and a memoir: Edited by his wife: In two volumes: With a portrait |
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 | The poems and prose remains of Arthur Hugh Clough |  |
—Scene I.
The Piazza at Venice, 9 p.m. Dipsychus and the Spirit.Di.
The scene is different, and the place, the air
Tastes of the nearer north; the people
Not perfect southern lightness; wherefore, then,
Should those old verses come into my mind
I made last year at Naples? Oh, poor fool!
Still resting on thyself—a thing ill-worked—
A moment's thought committed on the moment
To unripe words and rugged verse:—
‘Through the great sinful streets of Naples as I past,
With fiercer heat than flamed above my head
My heart was hot within me; till at last
My brain was lightened when my tongue had said—
Christ is not risen!’
Sp.
Christ is not risen? Oh, indeed,
I didn't know that was your creed.
Di.
So it went on, too lengthy to repeat—
‘Christ is not risen.’
Sp.
Dear, how odd!
He'll tell us next there is no God.
I thought 'twas in the Bible plain,
On the third day He rose again.
Di.
‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust;
As of the unjust, also of the just—
Yea, of that Just One, too!
Is He not risen, and shall we not rise?
Oh, we unwise!’
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H'm! and the tone, then, after all,
Something of the ironical?
Sarcastic, say; or were it fitter
To style it the religious bitter?
Di.
Interpret it I cannot. I but wrote it—
At Naples, truly, as the preface tells,
Last year, in the Toledo; it came on me,
And did me good at once. At Naples then,
At Venice now. Ah! and I think at Venice
Christ is not risen either.
Sp.
Nay,
Such things don't fall out every day:
Having once happened, as we know,
In Palestine so long ago,
How should it now at Venice here?
Where people, true enough, appear
To appreciate more and understand
Their ices, and their Austrian band,
And dark-eyed girls.
Di.
The whole great square they fill,
From the red flaunting streamers on the staffs,
And that barbaric portal of St. Mark's,
To where, unnoticed, at the darker end,
I sit upon my step—one great gay crowd.
The Campanile to the silent stars
Goes up, above—its apex lost in air—
While these do what?
Sp.
Enjoy the minute,
And the substantial blessings in it:
Ices, par exemple; evening air,
Company, and this handsome square;
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Of the old dolce far niente.
Music! Up, up; it is'nt fit
With beggars here on steps to sit.
Up, to the caffé! take a chair,
And join the wiser idlers there.
And see that fellow singing yonder;
Singing, ye gods, and dancing too—
Tooraloo, tooraloo, tooraloo loo—
Fiddledi diddledi, diddle di di;
Figaro sù, Figaro giù—
Figaro quà, Figaro là!
How he likes doing it—Ha, ha!
Di.
While these do what? Ah heaven! too true, at Venice
Christ is not risen either.
| The poems and prose remains of Arthur Hugh Clough | |