The Englishman in Italy by Robert Browning

Piano di Sorrento

Fortù, Fortù, my beloved one, / Sit here by my side, / On my knees put up both little feet! / I was sure, if I tried, / I could make you laugh spite of Scirocco. / Now, open your eyes, / Let me keep you amused till he vanish / In black from the skies, / With telling my memories over / As you tell your beads; / All the Plain saw me gather, I garland / -- The flowers or the weeds. / Time for rain! for your long hot dry Autumn / Had net-worked with brown / The white skin of each grape on the bunches, / Marked like a quail's crown, / Those creatures you make such account of, / Whose heads, -- speckled white / Over brown like a great spider's back, / As I told you last night, -- / Your mother bites off for her supper. / Red-ripe as could be, / Pomegranates were chapping and splitting / In halves on the tree: / And betwixt the loose walls of great flintstone, / Or in the thick dust / On the path, or straight out of the rock-side, / Wherever could thrust / Some burnt sprig of bold hardy rock-flower / Its yellow face up, / For the prize were great butterflies fighting, / Some five for one cup. / So, I guessed, ere I got up this morning, / What change was in store, / By the quick rustle-down of the quail-nets / Which woke me before / I could open my shutter, made fast / With a bough and a stone, / And look through the twisted dead vine-twigs, / Sole lattice that's known. / Quick and sharp rang the rings down the net-poles, / While, busy beneath, / Your priest and his brother tugged at them, / The rain in their teeth. / And out upon all the flat house-roofs / Where split figs lay drying, / The girls took the frails under cover: / Nor use seemed in trying / To get out the boats and go fishing, / For, under the cliff, / Fierce the black water frothed o'er the blind-rock, / No seeing our skiff / Arrive about noon from Amalfi, / -- Our fisher arrive, / And pitch down his basket before us, / All trembling alive / With pink and gray jellies, your sea-fruit; / You touch the strange lumps, / And mouths gape there, eyes open, all manner / Of horns and of humps, / Which only the fisher looks grave at, / While round him like imps / Cling screaming the children as naked / And brown as his shrimps; / Himself too as bare to the middle / -- You see round his neck / The string and its brass coin suspended, / That saves him from wreck. / But to-day not a boat reached Salerno, / So back, to a roan. / Came our friends, with whose help in the vine-yards / Grape-harvest began. / In the vat, halfway up in our house-side, / Like blood the juice spins, / While your brother all bare-legged is dancing / Till breathless he grins / Dead-beaten in effort on effort / To keep the grapes under, / Since still when he seems all but master, / In pours the fresh plunder / From girls who keep coming and going / With basket on shoulder, / And eyes shut against the rain's driving; / Your girls that are older, -- / For under the hedges of aloe, / And where, on its bed / Of the orchard's black mould, the love-apple / Lies pulpy and red, / All the young ones are kneeling and filling / Their laps with the snails / Tempted out by this first rainy weather, -- / Your best of regales, / As to-night will be proved to my sorrow, / When, supping in state, / We shall feast our grape-gleaners (two dozen, / Three over one plate) / With lasagne so tempting to swallow / In slippery ropes, / And gourds fried in great purple slices, / That color of popes. / Meantime, see the grape bunch they've brought you: / The rain-water slips / O'er the heavy blue bloom on each globe / Which the wasp to your lips / Still follows with fretful persistence: / Nay, taste, while awake, / This half of a curd-white smooth cheese-ball / That peels, flake by flake, / Like an onion, each smoother and whiter; / Next, sip this weak wine / From the thin green glass flask, with its stopper, / A leaf of the vine; / And end with the prickly-pear's red flesh / That leaves through its juice / The stony black seeds on your pearl-teeth. / Scirocco is loose! / Hark, the quick, whistling pelt of the olives / Which, thick in one's track, / Tempt the stranger to pick up and bite them, / Though not yet half black! / How the old twisted olive trunks shudder, / The medlars let fall / Their hard fruit, and the brittle great fig-trees / Snap off, figs and all, / For here comes the whole of the tempest! / No refuge, but creep / Back again to my side and my shoulder, / And listen or sleep.