Florence Capital

Slade, ‘Since this must be my final’ 25/10/2011

Vernon Arnold Slade’s seventh poetical epistle: Florence, 10 March 1908

Since this must be my final ere we meet

In London on Good Friday, you shall come

And gaze your last on Florence from the hill

Where ‘David’s’ bronze replica, dominant,

Stares out intrepid on his unseen foes

Past tower, tree, and villa unabashed.

There’s surely no man born could frown him down,

Or move his calm and kingly arrogance

From its fell purpose.

Florence lies below

Like scattered shingle on a desert strand

Where waves have flung their pearl and amber down,

So bright the houses gleam below the hills.

If it’s a sunny day and clear, you’ll view

Fiesole perched high and looped about

With spiral roads that make the way seem long

So often do you turn and turn about

Before you reach the tall lean tower that tolls

The hours for labour and the church’s call.

Then further to your right there’s Ripoli;

A snowy-terraced mountain lies beyond

That tells of air too chilly for the vines;

And to your left tall Mount Morello tilts

A bare grey shoulder into the blue sky.

It’s only half a minute you’ll stay so

Before a tout comes wheedling with his wares.

You fly him like the pest he is, and leap

The steps alternate on the steep stone way

That slants through trees precipitously down

To Porta San Miniato where they tax

All dutiable produce passing through.

Keep on due north and soon you’ll cross a Bridge

Over the river romping to its bourne;

On the green edge gay petticoats a-gleam

Where Arno serves as wash-tub for the wives.

From a high window in a neighbouring palace

A grey-garbed signorina lures your eye

With such a growth of bronze hair in thick braids

Not needing ribbon to maintain it so

In all its wiry vigour freshly coiled,

And such a poise of figure as she leans

Her bare arms on a faded balcony.

Above, a half-obliterated bust

Struck from the stone to mark some ancient triumph,

Looks down on the plebeian multitude

Crowned with vain laurel garlands that acclaim

To all the world its futile arrogance.

I haunt this bridge at nightfall for the sake

Of serenaders with their mandolines

Who, with their trilling, snare light coins that

Fall from blazing hotel windows opened wide,

Along the Arno all the lamps a-row

Shoot down long spears of light into the stream.

The plaintive music swells and ebbs and dies;

Lights twinkle; and the water tremulous

Reflects the thousand lamps like truant stars

Drawn earthward from their chilly altitudes

By the long-wailing music’s amorous tone.

From the far bank the vesper chimes float down

To flout these chants of pagan minstrelsy,

From belfries where the priest-like cypress trees

Keep their eternal vigil night and day.

Here is an echo of a plaintive song,

Song in high tenor there a week ago

English dims its native colouring.

Lovely and strong, now man at his labour

Yearns for his bride.

One that waits for him only I am forsaken.

Now is the vintage come and the vintners

Work in the sun,

Red blood swift in its ferment

Feeding their sinews.

Singing they move in line, and the trellis

Yieldeth its fruit.

Young boys swift to the wine-press

Bear it in baskets.

Laden twixt arm and hip, they are moving

Downward the slope,

One arm wide and the other

Crooked to the burden.

Yonder the brook runs swift, and the cresses

Shake to its song.

Girls spread over the willows

Newly-rinsed linen.

White as the snow it gleams or the lilies

White in the fields;

White swan’s down is not whiter

Cast on the river.

Lovely and strong now man at his labour

Yearns for his bride,

One that waits for him only

I am forsaken.

Wandering last night among the gloomy bow’rs

That crest Mount Oliveto, 1 was moved

By a most gaunt old cypress tree that seemed

The spirit of my darker self that leant

His cheek to mine and whispered ‘All is ill.

The earth is grown too old and topples downward

Into that sunless chaos whence she rose

Because the elder gods are all forgot’.

His cone was a black finger on the sky

Where thunder muttered; and the scared wind smote

The pliant boughs into a hymn of praise

In honour of gods forgotten utterly.

The rain fell downward, hissing in my ears;

Frayed birds fled homeward; and I shut my

Eyes enchaining so the phantom images

Raised by the thunder’s riot; and I heard

Hard breathing and the hurried beat of hooves

From men and beasts, as in an earlier day,

Battling anew for mastery of the world

The cypress sang another song of old.

When grief was sin and strength was bom of joy,

All trees that flourished were as ministers

To hearten and console; their boughs conspired

In benediction round the homes of men.

Well, that’s my fancy. Here the thing’s worked out

Into a chant slow sung reproachfully

By hidden dryads to complaining boors

In times when these lacked trains and telephones,

Three posts a day and pensions from the state,

And yet perchance were happier. Who shall say?

Are things uncouth?

There shall be loveliness if you be kind.

Fear draws a veil o’er beauty,

Death’s own shadow.

Fear not your kin;

For if all men be watchers who shall toil!

Chill hearts among the sowers

Chill earth’s bosom.

O, soft and brave

Are men who earn our favour, maiming naught.

Mindful are they and cherish

Newt and fledgling;

And when these pass,

Or a frayed squirrel scampers up the bole,

Clap not their hands nor gather

Mirth from terror.

Who snare or slay

Snare their own spirit, clip the wings of joy;

Nor shall the earth for slayers

Yield her plenty.

All things that live

Share of their loveliness with them that love.

Our breath shall shape their nostrils,

Fan their pulses.

Farewell till Friday week, I’m loth to leave

My lair among the house-tops with its view

Of Giotto’s bell-tower leaping to the sky

Most like a froz’n cascade, all iridescent,

My uncompleted canvas, and my hosts

So prompt and sedulous to all my needs.

But other things a-tugging at my heart

Make call peremptory – my village home.

Green fields, trim hedgerows and my mother tongue

From voices that I love among the Downs.

Slade, ‘I’ve been to the Certosa’ 27/09/2011

Vernon Arnold Slade’s sixth poetical epistle: Florence, 28 February 1908

I’ve been to the Certosa. On a mount

The Abbey perches amid cypress trees

Slim-shaped as needles set the wrong end up

To spear the cloud-wrack that goes drifting by.

A white-robed friar with a shining pate

Close-shaven, for a fee will pilot you,

And speak in slow French in your ear’s unused

To bear the torrent of Italian.

They’ve Brunelleschi cloisters, panels wrought

By Andrea della Robbia in his prime;

And one pale slab shows Michael’s prentice hand

At work upon the mitre of a priest

In death’s last sleep recumbent All around

The mountains rise like billows; and, from thence,

Far belfries peer like sunken masts at sea

And toll the hour to shepherds. The warm air

Has more of languor than your Scotch hills know

Besieged by dark battalions of tall pines

Whose vanguard’s lost in cloud like battlesmoke

About their hidden summits. Here the vines

And olives fledge the hillsides in long files

To the remotest vistas of the south;

And northward past Galuzzo where the line

Curves into Gelsomino – such a sight!

On this same highway you may pass to Rome

By gaunt Siena and a hundred hills

Still bearing on their breasts the unhealing scars

Of that inhuman tempest in whose broils

Proud Florence battened on her weaker peers

It was a grey day when I went. The wind

Snatched up the clouds and would not let them pause

To comfort the dry vales; in sudden puffs

It smote the roadway dust into a steam

Like water on red embers loth to die.

About the Abbey’s base there ran a brook

In merry ripples that the sun made dance

Thro’ slits in the grey cloud. A gipsy camp

With three rude shanties set on aching wheels

Was pitched beside it; and about the fire

Two boys, a monkey, and a shaggy mule

Tied by his fetlock to a stump of wood

A picture ready for the hand of Claude.

From Christian World to Pagan’s but a span

In that long bridge that links eternal time.

I’ve been to the museum where a store

Of shattered remnants from Etruria

Crowd the low rooms; above Egyptian runes

Press close on antique vases, urns, and rings,

And Greek and Roman bronzes turned to green;

Helmets and armour from the loot of Kings

Once crowned in cities now depopulate;

Rams’ heads with hollow eyes, and mouths agape;

A war-steed’s head and neck all creased to show

The bridle’s sudden tension in the mouth.

The stress upon the haunches, and the snort

That spread his eager nostrils gaping wide;

Blurred hand-mirrors that brightly once gave back

The proud glance of some beauty in her prime;

Snapped spears, cracked bucklers, all things that attest

Dead valour, futile beauty, fill the mind

With dust of chariots and the shout of men

Defiant on the far dim verge of time.

Well, well, I fall to ranting. To be brief

For all these marvels – for the owls, storks, bulls,

And long-horned antelopes that haunted once

The reedy waters of old Father Nile,

I care but little – more remote to me

Than the Chimera whose long tail becomes

A serpent self-devouring at the tip.

Two things I treasured; one, a weeping girl

And one, a scornful peasant gazing back.

I chose, in fancy, to connect the two

And call the girl abandoned, whence there came

The three-versed poem that I here append.

Sung to a reed-pipe when the world was younger.

O! lover passing in the night

Beneath my window, hear my cry!

I cannot see the lantern’s light

For bitter tears fast flowing by

O! help me, help me ere I die.

By day thou reapest in the field

My dear brown god amid the grain;

And I by night to thee would yield

This virgin body without stain.

Ah me! Ah me! the bitter pain!

Come to me ere the harvest goes,

Ere all the hot sun’s golden shine

Suck dry the full heart of the rose,

Ere all my sweetness turn to brine.

Ah! lover dear for whom I pine!

I’m well and working hard, but I can give

No details of my painting, for, alas!

I find my rhymed lament has filled the quire.

Slade, ‘New Year dawned’ 23/08/2011

Vernon Arnold Slade’s fifth poetical epistole: Florence, 2 January 1907

New Year dawned on frosted windows;

All the hills were veiled; the belfries

Chimed their holy summons dimly

Through the haze; while youths went chanting

Songs of carnival in chorus.

Such dull weather’s ill for Florence;

With the sun goes half her beauty,

What are all those wave-stained bastions

With the plaster slowly flaking,

Licked by Arno, without sunlight?

Those defaced facades discoloured

By inclement Time; those pillars

Peeping shapely from the plaster

Like a live limb out of chaos?

Light’s the thing enhances colour

Makes the ten poor rags that flutter

On yon clothes-line things of beauty,

Ten live tints; and glosses over

All decay and all dishonour

Wrought by Time or vandal blunder;

Gives a gold ground to the cypress

Cones thrust up into the sunlight

Clean as swords but sans their glitter;

Careless flings a myriad twinkling

Points of light upon the ilex;

Underlines the crumbled fret-work;

Puts new fire in faded dragons

Rampant on their worn escutcheons;

Heals and clarifies and cleanses.

Post gave way to rain this morning.

Arno’s flood leaps turbulently

Past each bridge in foaming eddies

Like the swine of old Gadara

Devil-spurred to self-destruction.

There’s a most astounding tumult

Where the weir’s self makes a sudden

Downfall of their swift impulsion,

And the rabble roars confounded.

Though I boast a high top-story

I’ve no light, and chilly fingers

Poorly warmed by two scaldinoes:

Hence to-day, I left my painting;

Hid my canvas in a corner

(Lest I found its glance too tempting)

;

Took my lamp and read dear Reynold’s

Counsel sage in his ‘Discourses’,

So urbane, so gentlemanly!

Out of this has grown a book-plate,

Interlacing vine and laurel

Round three cameo-heads. There’s Raphael

Fronting poor pope-pestered Michael

Whom he loved so; Titian under.

He of Venice only pardoned,

Throned aloof from all his fellows.

This I send: the thing may serve you

For some album’s front; or haply

Please your sister to embroider

Sans the heads, all which are taken

Much dwarfed, from Uffizi portraits.

Since my last, I’ve lost my novice,

Bruno Melli, who’s absconded

From his order, none knows whither.

I was fancied an abettor

Of his flight. A girl’s gone with him

From the flat below. A slattern

With a mole on her left eyebrow,

And grey eyes wide-spread. I marvel

Such an earthy goddess lured him.

Once she served me as a model

Languorous, unkempt, and frowsy

In a street scene selling flowers

Where she served to prop a corner

As her wont was. There’ll be sudden

Penitence, recrimination,

And the narrow aisle’s redemption

For poor Bruno. But – for Ida?

Well, again she’ll proffer flowers;

Prop the grey street corners, luring

Other Brunos, none that love her.

Will her numbed heart then remember

All is done for one dear Bruno

Snug there in the church’s bosom?

We shall see. His abjuration

Of the holy spouse won’t aid him

To find bread for the supplanter.

Bruno is some serving woman’s

Luckless child born out of wedlock,

Gossips hint a ducal father,

Twenty years ago, resulting

From a summer day’s hot fancy

In the vales of Vallombrosa

When not one small wind was moving

To assuage with gentle motion

The warm air’s intemperate ardour.

Him a humane dame adopted

Soon as born, and vowed to monkhood;

Hoped to make a new St. Francis

Of the amorous delinquent.

Poor vain fancies! Ida’s father

Grovels daily near the portals

Of San Marco, with a bandage

On one eye to mimic blindness.

Begging is a high profession.

One of the fine arts in Florence.

Ragged heaps of human flotsam

Whine for alms at every corner

Proffering, like ancient pontiffs,

Peace eternal for your ‘soldi’,

And damnation for refusal

Of their claims. They’re mimes and graceful

Always, spite of rage and foulness.

And the slow law’s idle menace.

Please allay your ‘shrewd suspicions’

As to the young wife. I’m gauging

Better now the shallow fancy

Of her sudden love. She’s bridled

Now, and moves along sedately.

All alert, apologetic

To myself your humble servant

Should she misdemean; she’s easy

To subdue. I’ll change my manner

Of address, and drop the trustful

Form, and use the second person;

Yield no thanks, and hint of leaving

That’s a loss of silver lire

To the coffers.

Tall Pietro

Now parades the streets as carter

To an export firm. He proudly

Tells me he has English horses

‘Always excellent, Signore’.

Old Francesco – that’s her father –

Acts as cook. We all on Sunday

Sit together at the table

For our mid-day meal. They’re flattered

Highly, and defer in all things

To my whim. The tender morsels

All come my way. After dinner

Babbo, Nita and Pietro

Puff their cigarettes quite gravely.

I, who cannot share their fancy

For the weed, tip up a flagon.

Fill my glass, and leaning backward

Sip Marsala or Spumante,

While they smoke and hum Mascagni.

Nita, with her full lips parted

And a curl of blue smoke passing

Slowly through that pearly portal,

With her black hair, coarse and glossy

As a horse’s mane, seems fashioned

For a sunnier realm than Florence

In these chilly days. She rather

Seems befitting to the harem

Of some bronzed Arabian Nimrod

Further south where lips grow ardent,

Fanned by airs that make the rosebuds

Pout and open wide their bosoms,

Begging all the bees to sip there.

I’m a dilatory scribe. Don’t serve me

With a like long term of silence.

Let instead your pen go gallop.

Promptly. Yield me good for evil.

Slade, ‘Ere your letter came’ 26/07/2011

Vernon Arnold Slade’s fourth poetical epistole: 10 December, 1906

Ere your letter came, bright sunshine

Broke my swamping cloud the thunder

Rolled away and laughed remotely

At my tremors. Dark Anita

Came next morning to my chamber;

Swore the wicked fiend possessed her

When she spoke, and prayed forgiveness:

Him she’d exorcised with candles

Trebled on her tiny altar.

Her remorse was naively cheerful

Like a child who, reprimanded,

Sulks an hour and says returning

‘Please I’m good now; won’t you kiss me?

It’s a case of pique quite clearly

She’d a quarrel with Pietro

Her tall lover who’s reclaimed her.

While she, smiling, begged my pardon

He was waiting in the doorway;

And a note for fifty lire

Made them glad as birds in April.

Now they’re man and wife, and dwelling

In this house with me as tenant

Whom they treat as lord and master.

Her old father chuckles proudly

O’er a wilful bird safe-nested,

‘No more plaints and no more flapping

Skyward after stars alluring.

Now she’s mated.’ So he mutters.

Well, my love’s gone and we’re plighted.

Wholly trusting and contented.

Three days spent in restful languor

Eased the rapid pulse; the roses

Bloomed again as in my portrait

I’ve recorded – just a twinkle

In the brown eyes deep and drowsy

Like a sparkle in a wine-cup.

I can see you smile, old cynic!

My revenge will come, don’t doubt it

When the love-god overtakes you.

I’ve a new friend in a novice

Chance-met in a street one morning

Where I’d lost my way. My query

Drew his gay reply in English

Naively formed and scorning S’s

As their wont is with Italians.

Like the pianist ecstatic

In Giorgione’s lovely ‘Chorus’

Is his glance that ebbs or brightens

As a flame the breezes flutter.

Thrice a week he comes for lessons,

Never prompt and always tiring

Ere his task’s complete. Though facile

Both of hand and eye, he cheapens

All his work with vain convention

Trite and symbolising nothing.

Ere a work’s half done he’s listless,

Rapt anew by some stray fancy

Which his body’s poise expresses

With a kind of wanton languor

That’s Italia. Never people

Felt the primal curse so keenly

‘In thy brow’s sweat shalt thou labour

All thy days:’ and they, like Adam,

Seize the plough but ever backward

Gaze on some receding glory.

For the youth I feel compassion,

Sworn to priesthood ere he’s twenty.

Seldom he’s austere. He whistles

Love songs full of threats and kisses

Wave on wave of wild ‘crescendo’

Like a pigeon wooing hotly:

Here’s a snatch may serve as sampler.

Of songs I have a store within

Love-taught; my dancing senses spin

To hear them on the violin.

And, should that sweet girl satisfy

My soul; and she her tongue untie

In song, while pity brimmed her eye,

What solace would my spirit drink!

Ah, then for her my notes I’d link

Blithe as a warbling bobolink.

Dear golden angel whom I’d teach

To sing of love; forbidden peach

Full ripe and hanging out of reach,

Bright sun above the lowly rye

Look down upon me ere I die

For love of thee aloft so high!

Here the most of art and music

But exploits such pagan senses.

You will find in crypt and courtyard

Not the spirit’s strife exalted,

But each type of human impulse.

Doll Christs nestle close to Mary

Clad in gaudy robes; about her

Kneel the saints with lips disparted

As though sipping unseen nectar.

Wrapt in a most sensual languor.

You’ve a hint of this in Sarto’s

Bland ‘Madonna of the Harpies’

With the saints in adoration

Round the smiling babe who whispers

‘Foolish men; I’m really Cupid

Creeping slyly to Griefs bosom:

On the morrow she’ll be merry.’

It’s an art that leaves no summit

For the spirit’s upward toiling

Such as northern tempers cherish.

Does such art advance man’s stature

In the civil scale? I doubt it.

Don’t forget there’s Leonardo,

Angelo and Botticelli

Shall I venture Donatello?

Men who touch the universal,

From my scruples clear exempted.

There is music played each Sunday

In the Park, that draws all beauty.

Horse, man, woman, like a magnet.

Black-haired donnas walk there hatless,

(As at home our northern mill-hands)

Tousled heads and powdered faces:

(Powder’s such a swift ablution;

Gives a peach bloom; water roughens)

Officers, their gold braid shining

In the keen December sunshine,

Pace the walks with cloaks flung round

them

Like the Belvidere Apollo,

Truculent or vainly smiling

At the brown girls promenading;

Nuns, with hats like toy feluccas

In full sail, move slowly forward;

Much-bejewelled matrons jostle

A slim nurse whose pale blue streamers

Gaily flutter from her bonnet,

As she shakes a Punchinello

At her charge who laughs responsive.

All the way down the Lung Amo

Eye meets eye in shameless challenge.

While the full lips prelude loving

In a manner hardly sacred.

There’s a hint of snow-capped mountains

Just beyond the four arched bridges

All a-glitter like gold fetters

Linking towns of dream together

Over pearl streams. Groups of cypress

Sentinel remoter Edens

On the sky-line. Opened windows

Flash a sparkle down the vista.

Arno’s barred with white where softly

O’er the weir its waters tumble.

There a score of gazing loafers

Lean enraptured by the motion

Of the ripples sudden plashing

O’er the stone shelf into billows

Tossing for a yard’s width under.

Then a chain of pack-mules greet you,

With their tiny bells a-jingle,

Which the driver cheers with music

Chanted in a thin falsetto.

Passing thence into some byeway

Seems like diving under water,

Such a swift chill gloom accepts you;

Narrow streets and lofty houses

Ban the sunshine so completely

That you fancy for a moment

Sudden storm-clouds have descended.

So felt I when last I wrote you.

Now the vista’s one long sparkle:

That’s my life and all its promise

To my lover’s gaze; I’ll warrant

Three new pictures done ere Christmas

Proving that I’m no mere dreamer.