XII.
Yes, you, like a ghostly cricket, creaking where a house was burned:
``Dust and ashes, dead and done with, Venice spent what Venice earned.
``The soul, doubtless, is immortal---where a soul can be discerned.
XIII.
``Yours for instance: you know physics, something of geology,
``Mathematics are your pastime; souls shall rise in their degree;
``Butterflies may dread extinction,---you'll not die, it cannot be!
XIV.
``As for Venice and her people, merely born to bloom and drop,
``Here on earth they bore their fruitage, mirth and folly were the crop:
``What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop?
XV.
``Dust and ashes!'' So you creak it, and I want the heart to scold.
Dear dead women, with such hair, too---what's become of all the gold
Used to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel chilly and grown old.
* 1. An overture---a touch piece.
OLD PICTURES IN FLORENCE.
I.
The morn when first it thunders in March,
The eel in the pond gives a leap, they say:
As I leaned and looked over the aloed arch
Of the villa-gate this warm March day,
No flash snapped, no dumb thunder rolled
In the valley beneath where, white and wide
And washed by the morning water-gold,
Florence lay out on the mountain-side.
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