ВЕРРО; A VENETIAN STORY. 'T is known, at least it should be, that throughout However high their rank or low their station, With fiddling, feasting, dancing, drinking, masking And other things that may be had for asking. II. The moment night with dusky mantle covers Giggling with all the gallants who beset her; III. And there are dresses splendid, but fantastical, Masks of all times and nations, Turks and Jews, And harlequins and clowns, with feats gymnastical, Greeks, Romans, Yankee-doodles, and Hindoos; All kinds of dress, except the ecclesiastical, All people, as their fancies hit, may choose; But no one in these parts may quiz the clergyTherefore take heed, ye freethinkers! I charge ye. IV. You'd better walk about begirt with briars, Although you swore it only was in fun : V. But, saving this, you may put on whate'er With prettier names in softer accents spoke, No place that 's call'd "Piazza" in Great Britain. VI. This feast is named the Carnival, which, being VII. And thus they bid farewell to carnal dishes, 66 Because they have no sauces to their stews, A thing which causes many poohs" and "pishes," And several oaths (which would not suit the Muse). From travellers accustom'd from a boy To eat their salmon, at the least, with soy: VIII. And therefore humbly I would recommend Ketchup, Soy, Chili-vinegar, and Harvey, Or, by the Lord! a Lent will well nigh starve ye; IX. That is to say, if your religion 's Roman, Would rather dine in sin on a ragout— Dine, and be d-d!—I don't mean to be coarse- X. Of all the places where the Carnival Was most facetious in the days of yore, Venice the bell from every city bore; XI. They 've pretty faces yet, those same Venetians, Black eyes, arch'd brows, and sweet expressions still, Such as of old were copied from the Grecians, (The best 's at Florence-see it, if ye will) They look when leaning over the balcony, Or stepp'd from out a picture by Giorgione, XII. Whose tints are truth and beauty at their best ; That picture (howsoever fine the rest) And that's the cause I rhyme upon it so ; XIII. Love in full life and length, not love ideal, No, nor ideal beauty, that fine name. But something better still, so very real, That the sweet model must have been the same: XIV. One of those forms which flit by us, when we Are young, and fix our eyes on every face; And, oh! the loveliness at times we see In momentary gliding, the soft grace, The youth, the bloom, the beauty which agree In many a nameless being we retrace, Whose course and home we knew not, nor shall know, Like the lost Pleiad, seen no more below. XV. I said that like a picture by Giorgione (For beauty 's sometimes best set off afar); For glances beget ogles, ogles sighs, Sighs wishes, wishes words, and words a letter, Which flies on wings of light-heel'd Mercuries, Who do such things because they know no better; And then, God knows what mischief may arise, When love links two young people in one fetter : Vile assignations, and adulterous beds, Elopements, broken vows, and hearts, and heads. XVII. Shakspeare described the sex in Desdemona Such matters may be probably the same, To suffocate a wife no more than twenty, a XVIII. Their jealousy (if they are ever jealous) Which smothers women in a bed of feather: |