And thus they bid farewell to carnal dishes, And solid meats, and highly spiced ragouts, To live for forty days on ill-dressed fishes, Because they have no sauces to their stews; A thing which causes many "poohs" and "pishes," And several oaths (which would not suit the Muse), From travellers accustomed from a boy To eat their salmon, at the least, with soy; VIII. And therefore humbly I would recommend "The curious in fish-sauce," before they cross The sea, to bid their cook, or wife, or friend, Walk or ride to the Strand, and buy in gross (Or if set out beforehand, these may send By any means least liable to loss), Ketchup, Soy, Chili-vinegar, and Harvey, Or, by the Lord! a Lent will well nigh starve ye; IX. That is to say, if your religion's Roman, And you at Rome would do as Romans do, According to the proverb,--although no man, If foreign, is obliged to fast; and you, If Protestant, or sickly, or a woman, Would rather dine in sin on a ragout-- Dine and be d--d! I don't mean to be coarse, But that's the penalty, to say no worse. X. Of all the places where the Carnival Was most facetious in the days of yore, For dance, and song, and serenade, and ball, And Masque, and Mime, and Mystery, and more Than I have time to tell now, or at all, Venice the bell from every city bore,-- And at the moment when I fix my story, That sea-born city was in all her glory. XI. They've pretty faces yet, those same Venetians, Black eyes, arched brows, and sweet expressions still; Such as of old were copied from the Grecians, In ancient arts by moderns mimicked ill; And like so many Venuses of Titian's[198] (The best's at Florence--see it, if ye will,) They look when leaning over the balcony, Or stepped from out a picture by Giorgione,[199] XII. Whose tints are Truth and Beauty at their best; And when you to Manfrini's palace go,[200] That picture (howsoever fine the rest) Is loveliest to my mind of all the show; It may perhaps be also to _your_ zest, And that's the cause I rhyme upon it so: Tis but a portrait of his Son, and Wife, And self; but _such_ a Woman! Love in life![201] XIII. Love in full life and length, not love ideal, No, nor ideal beauty, that fine name, But something better still, so very real, That the sweet Model must have been the same; A thing that you would purchase, beg, or steal, Wer't not impossible, besides a shame: The face recalls some face, as 'twere with pain, You once have seen, but ne'er will see again; XIV.