clatters into Asolo? These are not men-at-arms, These ruddy boys with vineleaves in their hair! That great-bellied one no seneschal Can be, astride an ass so gauntily! Virgin Mother! Saints! They wear no clothes!

 And through the gate a warm wind blows, A dizzying perfume of the grape, And a great throng crying Cypris, Cyprian, with cymbals crashing and a shriek Of Thessalian pipes, and swaying of torches, That smell hot like wineskins of resin, That flare on arms empurpled and hot cheeks, And full shouting lips vermillion-red.

 Youths and girls with streaming hair Pelting the night with flowers:       Yellow blooms of Adonis, white scented stars of pale Narcissus, Mad incense of the blooming vine, And carmine passion of pomegranate blooms.

 A-sudden all the strummings of the night, All the insect-stirrings, all the rustlings Of budding leaves, the sing-song Of waters brightly gurgling through meadowland, Are shouting with the shouting throng, Crying Cypris, Cyprian, Queen of the seafoam, Queen of the budding year, Queen of eyes that flame and hands that twine, Return to us, return from the fields of asphodel.

And all the grey town of Asolo Is full of lutes and songs of love, And vows exchanged from balcony to balcony Across the singing streets ... But in the garden of the nunnery, Of the sisters of poverty, daughters of dust, The cock crows. The cock crows.

 The watchman rubs his old ribbed brow:       Through the gate, in silk all dusty from the road, Into the grey town asleep under the stars, On tired mules and lean old war-horses Comes a crowd of quarrelling men-at-arms After a much-veiled lady with a falcon on her wrist.       —This Asolo? What a nasty silent town He sends me to, that dull old doge.

  And you, watchman, I've told you thrice That I am Cypress's Queen, Jerusalem's, And Lady of this dull village, Asolo; Tend your gates better. Are you deaf, That you stand blinking at me, pulling at your dirty beard? You shall be thrashed, when I rule Asolo.       —What strange dreams, mumbled in his beard The ancient watchman, come from eating tripe.

VI HARLEQUINADE

Shrilly whispering down the lanes That serpent through the 

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