And know if yet that woman smiles

With the calm smile; some little farm
She lives in there, no doubt; what harm

If I sate on the door-side bench,
And while her spindle made a trench
Fantastically in the dust,

Inquired of all her fortunes-just
Her children's ages and their names,
And what may be the husband's aims

For each of them - I'd talk this out,

And sit there, for an hour about,

Then kiss her hand once more, and lay

Mine on her head, and go my way.

So much for idle wishing—how

It steals the time! To business now!

UP AT A VILLA — DOWN IN THE CITY.

(As distinguished by an Italian person of quality.)

I.

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!

II.

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.

III.

Well now, look at our villa! stuck like the horn of a bull

Just on a mountain's edge as bare as the creature's

skull,

Save a mere shag of a bush with hardly a leaf to

pull!

-I scratch my own, sometimes, to see if the hair's turned wool.

IV.

But the city, oh the city-the square with the houses! Why?

They are stone-faced, white as a curd, there's some

thing 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.

V.

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 ploughed land before, where the oxen steam and wheeze,

And the hills over-smoked behind by the faint gray olive trees.

VI.

Is it better in May, I ask you? You've summer all

at once;

In a day he leaps complete with a few strong April

suns!

'Mid the sharp short emerald wheat, scarce risen three fingers well,

The wild tulip, at end of its tube, blows out its

great red bell,

Like a thin clear bubble of blood, for the children

to pick and sell.

VII.

Is it ever hot in the square? There's a fountain to

spout and splash!

In the shade it sings and springs; in the shine such foam-bows flash

On the horses with curling fish-tails, that prance and and paddle and pash

Round the lady atop in the conch-fifty gazers do not abash,

Though all that she wears is some weeds round her waist in a sort of sash!

VIII.

All the year round at the villa, nothing's to see though you linger,

Except yon cypress that points like Death's lean lifted forefinger.

Some think fireflies pretty, when they mix in the corn and mingle,

Or thrid the stinking hemp till the stalks of it seem

a-tingle.