The Englishman in Italy

Piano di Sorrento

Fortù, Fortù, my beloved one,
     Sit here by my side,
On my knees put up both little feet!
     I was sure, if I tried,
I could make you laugh spite of Scirocco.
     Now, open your eyes,
Let me keep you amused till he vanish
     In black from the skies,
With telling my memories over
     As you tell your beads;
All the Plain saw me gather, I garland
     --The flowers or the weeds.

Time for rain! for your long hot dry Autumn
     Had net-worked with brown
The white skin of each grape on the bunches,
     Marked like a quail's crown,
Those creatures you make such account of,
     Whose heads--speckled whlte
Over brown like a great spider's back,
     As I told you last night--
Your mother bites off for her supper.
     Red-ripe as could be,
Pomegranates were chapping and splitting
     In halves on the tree:
And betwixt the loose walls of great flintstone,
     Or in the thick dust
On the path, or straight out of the rockside,
     Wherever could thrust
Some burnt sprig of bold hardy rock-flower
     Its yellow face up,
For the prize were great butterflies fighting,
     Some five for one cup.
So, I guessed, ere I got up this morning,
     What change was in store,
By the quick rustle-down of the quail-nets
     Which woke me before
I could open my shutter, made fast
     With a bough and a stone,
And look thro' the twisted dead vine-twigs,
     Sole lattice that's known.
Quick and sharp rang the rings down the net-poles,
     While, busy beneath,
Your priest and his brother tugged at them,
     The rain in their teeth.
And out upon all the flat house-roofs
     Where split figs lay drying,
The girls took the frails under cover:
     Nor use seemed in trying
To get out the boats and go fishing,
     For, under the cliff,
Fierce the black water frothed o'er the blind-rock.
     No seeing our skiff
Arrive about noon from Amalfi,
     --Our fisher arrive,
And pitch down his basket before us,
     All trembling alive
With pink and grey jellies, your sea-fruit;
     You touch the strange lumps,
And mouths gape there, eyes open, all manner
     Of horns and of humps,
Which only the fisher looks grave at,
     While round him like imps
Cling screaming the children as naked
     And brown as his shrimps;
Himself too as bare to the middle
     --You see round his neck
The string and its brass coin suspended,
     That saves him from wreck.
But to-day not a boat reached Salerno,
     So back, to a man,
Came our friends, with whose help in the vineyards
     Grape-harvest began.
In the vat, halfway up in our houseside,
     Like blood the juice spins,
While your brother all bare-legged is dancing
     Till breathless he grins
Dead-beaten in effort on effort
     To keep the grapes under,
Since still when he seems all but master,
     In pours the fresh plunder
From girls who keep coming and going
     With basket on shoulder,
And eyes shut against the rain's driving;
     Your girls that are older,--
For under the hedges of aloe,
     And where, on its bed
Of the orchard's black mould, the love-apple
     Lies pulpy and red,
All the young ones are kneeling and filling
     Their laps with the snails
Tempted out by this first rainy weather,--
     Your best of regales,
As to-night will be proved to my sorrow,
     When, supping in state,
We shall feast our grape-gleaners (two dozen,
     Three over one plate)
With lasagne so tempting to swallow,
     In slippery ropes,
And gourds fried in great purple slices,
     That colour of popes.
Meantime, see the grape bunch they've brought you:
     The rain-water slips
O'er the heavy blue bloom on each globe
     Which the wasp to your lips
Still follows with fretful persistence:
     Nay, taste, while awake,
This half of a curd-white smooth cheese-ball
     That peels, flake by flake,
Like an onion, each smoother and whiter;
     Next, sip this weak wine
From the thin green glass flask, with its stopper,
     A leaf of the vine;
And end with the prickly-pear's red flesh
     That leaves thro' its juice
The stony black seeds on your pearl-teeth.
     Scirocco is loose!
Hark, the quick, whistling pelt of the olives
     Which, thick in one's track,
Tempt the stranger to pick up and bite them,
     Tho' not yet half black!
How the old twisted olive trunks shudder,
     The medlars let fall
Their hard fruit, and the brittle great fig-trees
     Snap off, figs and all,
For here comes the whole of the tempest!
     No refuge, but creep
Back again to my side and my shoulder,
     And listen or sleep.
O how will your country show next week,
     When all the vine-boughs
Have been stripped of their foliage to pasture
     The mules and the cows?
Last eve, I rode over the mountains,
     Your brother, my guide,
Soon left me, to feast on the myrtles
     That offered, each side,
Their fruit-balls, black, glossy and luscious,--
     Or strip from the sorbs
A treasure, or, rosy and wondrous,
     Those hairy gold orbs!
But my mule picked his sure sober path out,
     Just stopping to neigh
When he recognized down in the valley
     His mates on their way
With the faggots and barrels of water;
     And soon we emerged
From the plain, where the woods could scarce follow;
     And still as we urged
Our way, the woods wondered, and left us,
     As up still we trudged
Though the wild path grew wilder each instant,
     And place was e'en grudged
'Mid the rock-chasms and piles of loose stones
     Like the loose broken teeth
Of some monster which climbed there to die
     From the ocean beneath--
Place was grudged to the silver-grey fume-weed
     That clung to the path,
And dark rosemary ever a-dying
     That, 'spite the wind's wrath,
So loves the salt rock's face to seaward,
     And lentisks as staunch
To the stone where they root and bear berries,
     And . . . what shows a branch
Coral-coloured, transparent, with circlets
     Of pale seagreen leaves;
Over all trod my mule with the caution
     Of gleaners o'er sheaves,
Still, foot after foot like a lad
     Till, round after round,
He climbed to the top of Calvano,
     And God's own profound
Was above me, and round me the mountains,
     And under, the sea,
And within me my heart to bear witness
     What was and shall be.

Oh, heaven and the terrible crystal!
     No rampart excludes
Your eye from the life to be lived
     In the blue solitudes.
Oh, those mountains, their infinite movement!
     Still moving with you;
For, ever some new head and breast of them
     Thrusts into view
To observe the intruder; you see it
     If quickly you turn
And, before they escape you surprise them.
     They grudge you should learn
How the soft plains they look on, lean over
     And love (they pretend)
--Cower beneath them, the flat sea-pine crouches,
     The wild fruit-trees bend,
E'en the myrtle-leaves curl, shrink and shut:
     All is silent and grave:
'Tis a sensual and timorous beauty,
     How fair! but a slave.
So, I turned to the sea; and there slumbered
     As greenly as ever
Those isles of the siren, your Galli;
     No ages can sever
The Three, nor enable their sister
     To join them,--halfway
On the voyage, she looked at Ulysses--
     No farther to-day,
Tho' the small one, just launched in the wave,
     Watches breast-high and steady
From under the rock, her bold sister
     Swum halfway already.
Fortù, shall we sail there together
     And see from the sides
Quite new rocks show their faces, new haunts
     Where the siren abides?
Shall we sail round and round them, close over
     The rocks, tho' unseen,
That ruffle the grey glassy water
     To glorious green?
Then scramble from splinter to splinter,
     Reach land and explore,
On the largest, the strange square black turret
     With never a door,
Just a loop to admit the quick lizards;
     Then, stand there and hear
The birds' quiet singing, that tells us
     What life is, so clear?
--The secret they sang to Ulysses
     When, ages ago,
He heard and he knew this life's secret
     I hear and I know.

Ah, see! The sun breaks o'er Calvano;
     He strikes the great gloom
And flutters it o'er the mount's summit
     In airy gold fume.
All is over. Look out, see the gipsy,
     Our tinker and smith,
Has arrived, set up bellows and forge,
     And down-squatted forthwith
To his hammering, under the wall there;
     One eye keeps aloof
The urchins that itch to be putting
     His jews'-harps to proof,
While the other, thro' locks of curled wire,
     Is watching how sleek
Shines the hog, come to share in the windfall
     --Chew, abbot's own cheek!
All is over. Wake up and come out now,
     And down let us go,
And see the fine things got in order
     At church for the show
Of the Sacrament, set forth this evening.
     To-morrow's the Feast
Of the Rosary's Virgin, by no means
     Of Virgins the least,
As you'll hear in the off-hand discourse
     Which (all nature, no art)
The Dominican brother, these three weeks,
     Was getting by heart.
Not a pillar nor post but is dizened
     With red and blue papers;
All the roof waves with ribbons, each altar
     A-blaze with long tapers;
But the great masterpiece is the scaffold
     Rigged glorious to hold
All the fiddlers and fifers and drummers
     And trumpeters bold,
Not afraid of Bellini nor Auber,
     Who, when the priest's hoarse,
Will strike us up something that's brisk
     For the feast's second course.
And then will the flaxen-wigged Image
     Be carried in pomp
Thro' the plain, while in gallant procession
     The priests mean to stomp.
All round the glad church lie old bottles
     With gunpowder stopped,
Which will be, when the Image re-enters,
     Religiously popped;
And at night from the crest of Calvano
     Great bonfires will hang,
On the plain will the trumpets join chorus,
     And more poppers bang.
At all events, come-to the garden
     As far as the wall;
See me tap with a hoe on the plaster
     Till out there shall fall
A scorpion with wide angry nippers!

     --"Such trifles!" you say?
Fortù, in my England at home,
     Men meet gravely to-day
And debate, if abolishing Corn-laws
     Be righteous and wise
--If 'twere proper, Scirocco should vanish
     In black from the skies!