VI. This feast is named the Carnival, which being fresh. But why they usher Lent with so much glee in, VII. And thus they bid farewell to carnal dishes, Because they have no sauces to their stews, Muse), From travellers accustom'd from a boy To eat their salmon, at the least, with soy; VIII. And therefore humbly I would recommend ye; IX. That is to say, if your religion's Roman, Would rather dine in sin on a ragoutDine, and be d-d! I don't mean to be coarse, But that's the penalty, to say no worse. X. Of all the places where the Carnival 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; Is loveliest to my mind of all the show; And that's the cause I rhyme upon it so, "Tis but a portrait of his son, and wife, And self; but such a woman! love in life! XIII. Love in full life and length, not love ideal, That the sweet model must have been the same; A thing that you would purchase, beg, or steal, 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 I seen no more below. XV. I said that like a picture by Giorgione . (For beauty's sometimes best set off afar) And there, just like a heroine of Goldoni, They peep from out the blind, or o'er the bar; And, truth to say, they're mostly very pretty, And rather like to show it, more's the pity! |