PIPPA PASSES.
63
New Year’s day is over and spent,
Ill or well, I must be content.
Even my lily ’s asleep, I vow:
Wake up—here ’s a friend I ’ve plucked you;
Call this flower a heart’s-ease now!
Something rare, let me instruct you,
Is this, with petals triply swollen,
Three times spotted, thrice the pollen;
While the leaves and parts that witness
Old proportions and their fitness,
Here remain unchanged, unmoved now;
Call this pampered thing improved now!
Suppose there ’s a king of the flowers
And a girl-show held in his bowers—
“Look ye, buds, this growth of ours,”
Says he, “Zanze from the Brenta,
I have made her gorge polenta
Till both cheeks are near as bouncing
As her … name there ’s no pronouncing!
See this heightened color too,
For she swilled Breganze wine
Till her nose turned deep carmine;
’T was but white when wild she grew.
And only by this Zanze’s eyes
Of which we could not change the size,
The magnitude of all achieved
Otherwise, may be perceived.”
Ill or well, I must be content.
Even my lily ’s asleep, I vow:
Wake up—here ’s a friend I ’ve plucked you;
Call this flower a heart’s-ease now!
Something rare, let me instruct you,
Is this, with petals triply swollen,
Three times spotted, thrice the pollen;
While the leaves and parts that witness
Old proportions and their fitness,
Here remain unchanged, unmoved now;
Call this pampered thing improved now!
Suppose there ’s a king of the flowers
And a girl-show held in his bowers—
“Look ye, buds, this growth of ours,”
Says he, “Zanze from the Brenta,
I have made her gorge polenta
Till both cheeks are near as bouncing
As her … name there ’s no pronouncing!
See this heightened color too,
For she swilled Breganze wine
Till her nose turned deep carmine;
’T was but white when wild she grew.
And only by this Zanze’s eyes
Of which we could not change the size,
The magnitude of all achieved
Otherwise, may be perceived.”
Oh what a drear dark close to my poor day!
How could that red sun drop in that black cloud?
Ah Pippa, morning’s rule is moved away,
Dispensed with, never more to be allowed!
Day’s turn is over, now arrives the night’s.
Oh lark, be day’s apostle
How could that red sun drop in that black cloud?
Ah Pippa, morning’s rule is moved away,
Dispensed with, never more to be allowed!
Day’s turn is over, now arrives the night’s.
Oh lark, be day’s apostle
