Ferishtah's Fancies/Prologue

by Robert Browning

PROLOGUE.

Pray, Reader, have you eaten ortolansEver in Italy? Recall how cooks there cook them: for my plan 'sTo—Lyre with Spit ally. They pluck the birds,—some dozen luscious lumps,Or more or fewer,—Then roast them, heads by heads and rumps by rumps,Stuck on a skewer. But first,—and here's the point I fain would press,—Don't think I'm tattling!—They interpose, to curb its lusciousness,—What, 'twixt each fatling? First comes plain bread, crisp, brown, a toasted square:Then, a strong sage-leaf: (So we find books with flowers dried here and thereLest leaf engage leaf.) First, food—then, piquancy—and last of allFollows the thirdling: Through wholesome hard, sharp soft, your tooth must biteEre reach the birdling. Now, were there only crust to crunch, you'd wince:Unpalatable! Sage-leaf is bitter-pungent—so's a quince:Eat each who's able! But through all three bite boldly—lo, the gust!Flavour—no fixture—Flies permeating flesh and leaf and crustIn fine admixture. So with your meal, my poem: masticateSense, sight and song there! Digest these, and I praise your peptics' state,Nothing found wong there. Whence springs my illustration who can tell?—The more surprising That here eggs, milk, cheese, fruit suffice so wellFor gormandizing. A fancy-freak by contrast born of thee,Delightful Gressoney! Who laughest "Take what is, trust what may be!"That's Life's true lesson,—eh?

 

Maison Delapierre,

Gressoney St. Jean, Val d' Aosta.

September 12, '83.