And all the grey town of Asolo Is full of lutes and songs of love, And vows exchanged from balcony to balcony Across the singing streets ... But in the garden of the nunnery, Of the sisters of poverty, daughters of dust, The cock crows. The cock crows. The watchman rubs his old ribbed brow: Through the gate, in silk all dusty from the road, Into the grey town asleep under the stars, On tired mules and lean old war-horses Comes a crowd of quarrelling men-at-arms After a much-veiled lady with a falcon on her wrist. --This Asolo? What a nasty silent town He sends me to, that dull old doge. And you, watchman, I've told you thrice That I am Cypress's Queen, Jerusalem's, And Lady of this dull village, Asolo; Tend your gates better. Are you deaf, That you stand blinking at me, pulling at your dirty beard? You shall be thrashed, when I rule Asolo. --What strange dreams, mumbled in his beard The ancient watchman, come from eating tripe. VI HARLEQUINADE Shrilly whispering down the lanes That serpent through the ancient night, They, the scoffers, the scornful of chains, Stride their turbulent flight. The stars spin steel above their heads In the shut irrevocable sky; Gnarled thorn-branches tear to shreds Their cloaks of pageantry. A wind blows bitter in the grey, Chills the sweat on throbbing cheeks, And tugs the gaudy rags away From their lean bleeding knees. Their laughter startles the scarlet dawn Among a tangled spiderwork Of girdered steel, and shrills forlorn And dies in the rasp of wheels. Whirling like gay prints that whirl In tatters of squalid gaudiness, Borne with dung and dust in the swirl Of wind down the endless street, With thin lips laughing bitterly, Through the day smeared in sooty smoke That pours from each red chimney, They speed unseemily. Women with unlustered hair, Men with huge ugly hands of oil, Children, impudently stare And point derisive hands. Only ... where a barrel organ thrills Two small peak-chested girls to dance, And among the iron clatter spills A swiftening rhythmy song, They march in velvet silkslashed hose, Strumming guitars and mellow lutes, Strutting pointed Spanish toes, A stately company. VII TO THE MEMORY OF DEBUSSY _Good Friday, 1918._ This is the feast of death We make of our pain God; We worship the nails and the rod and pain's last choking breath and the bleeding rack of the cross.