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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=116236" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Up at a Villa – Down in the City</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">AS DISTINGUISHED BY AN ITALIAN PERSON OF QUALITY</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Had I but plenty of money, money enough and to spare,<br>The house for me, no doubt, were a house in the city-square;<br>Ah, such a life, such a life, as one leads at the window there!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Something to see, by Bacchus, something to hear, at least!<br>There, the whole day long, one's life is a perfect feast;<br>While up at a villa one lives, I maintain it, no more than a beast.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Well now, look at our villa! stuck like the horn of a bull<br>Just on a mountain-edge as bare as the creature's skull,<br>Save a mere shag of a bush with hardly a leaf to pull!<br>---I scratch my own, sometimes, to see if the hair's turned wool.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But the city, oh the city---the square with the houses! Why?<br>They are stone-faced, white as a curd, there's something to take the eye!<br>Houses in four straight lines, not a single front awry;<br>You watch who crosses and gossips, who saunters, who hurries by;<br>Green blinds, as a matter of course, to draw when the sun gets high;<br>And the shops with fanciful signs which are painted properly.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">What of a villa? Though winter be over in March by rights,<br>'Tis May perhaps ere the snow shall have withered well off the heights:<br>You've the brown ploughed land before, where the oxen steam and wheeze,<br>And the hills over-smoked behind by the faint grey olive-trees.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Is it better in May, I ask you? You've summer all at once;<br>In a day he leaps complete with a few strong April suns.<br>'Mid the sharp short emerald wheat, scarce risen three fingers well,<br>The wild tulip, at end of its tube, blows out its great red bell<br>Like a thin clear bubble of blood, for the children to pick and sell.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Is it ever hot in the square? There's a fountain to spout and splash!<br>In the shade it sings and springs; in the shine such foam-bows flash<br>On the horses with curling fish-tails, that prance and paddle and pash<br>Round the lady atop in her conch---fifty gazers do not abash,<br>Though all that she wears is some weeds round her waist in a sort of sash.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">All the year at the villa, nothing to see though you linger,<br>Except yon cypress that points like a death's lean lifted forefinger.<br>Some think fireflies pretty, when they mix i' the corn and mingle,<br>Or thrid the stinking hemp till the stalks of it seem a-tingle.<br>Late August or early September, the stunning cicala is shrill,<br>And the bees keep their tiresome whine round the resinous firs on the hill.<br>Enough of the seasons,---I spare you the months of the fever and chill.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Ere you open your eyes in the city, the blessed church-bells begin:<br>No sooner the bells leave off than the diligence rattles in:<br>You get the pick of the news, and it costs you never a pin.<br>By-and-by there's the travelling doctor gives pills, lets blood, draws teeth;<br>Or the Pulcinello-trumpet breaks up the market beneath.<br>At the post-office such a scene-picture---the new play, piping hot!<br>And a notice how, only this morning, three liberal thieves were shot.<br>Above it, behold the Archbishop's most fatherly of rebukes,<br>And beneath, with his crown and his lion, some little new law of the Duke's!<br>Or a sonnet with flowery marge, to the Reverend Don So-and-so<br>Who is Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarca, Saint Jerome and Cicero,<br>And moreover, (the sonnet goes rhyming,) the skirts of Saint Paul has reached,<br>Having preached us those six Lent-lectures more unctuous than ever he preached.<br>Noon strikes,---here sweeps the procession! our Lady borne smiling and smart<br>With a pink gauze gown all spangles, and seven swords stuck in her heart!<br>_Bang-whang-whang_ goes the drum, _tootle-to-tootle_ the fife;<br>No keeping one's haunches still: it's the greatest pleasure in life.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But bless you, it's dear---it's dear! fowls, wine, at double the rate.<br>They have clapped a new tax upon salt, and what oil pays passing the gate<br>It's a horror to think of. And so, the villa for me, not the city!<br>Beggars can scarcely be choosers: but still---ah, the pity, the pity!<br>Look, two and two go the priests, then the monks with cowls and sandals,<br>And the penitents dressed in white shirts, a-holding the yellow candles;<br>One' he carries a flag up straight, and another a cross with handles,<br>And the Duke's guard brings up the rear, for the better prevention of scandals:<br>Bang-whang-whang goes the drum, tootle-te-tootle the fife.<br>Oh, a day in the city-square, there is no such pleasure in life!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Robert+Browning">Robert Browning</a> from <i>Men and Women</i><div class=q>
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