A hypermedia edition of Robert Browning's

“A Toccata Of Galuppi's”

The text of the poem has been taken from the University of Toronto's on-line Representative Poetry. Publication Date: 1855
Ed. (text): F. E. L. Priestley; (e-text): I. Lancashire.  Rep. Poetry: 3RP.3.128.

In-text Notes are keyed to line numbers.

St. Mark's I

1    Oh Galuppi, Baldassaro, this is very sad to find!
2     I can hardly misconceive you; it would prove me deaf and blind;
3     But although I take your meaning, 'tis with such a heavy mind!

II

4     Here you come with your old music, and here's all the good it brings.
5     What, they lived once thus at Venice where the merchants were the kings,
6     Where Saint Mark's is, where the Doges used to wed the sea with rings?

III

7     Ay, because the sea's the street there; and 'tis arched by . . . what you call
8     . . . Shylock's bridge with houses on it, where they kept the carnival:
9     I was never out of England--it's as if I saw it all.

IV

10   Did young people take their pleasure when the sea was warm in May?
11   Balls and masks begun at midnight, burning ever to mid-day,
12   When they made up fresh adventures for the morrow, do you say?

V

13   Was a lady such a lady, cheeks so round and lips so red,--
14   On her neck the small face buoyant, like a bell-flower on its bed,
15   O'er the breast's superb abundance where a man might base his head?

VI

16   Well, and it was graceful of them--they'd break talk off and afford
17   --She, to bite her mask's black velvet--he, to finger on his sword,
18   While you sat and played Toccatas, stately at the clavichord?

VII

19   What? Those lesser thirds so plaintive, sixths diminished, sigh on sigh,
20   Told them something? Those suspensions, those solutions--"Must we die?"
21   Those commiserating sevenths--"Life might last! we can but try!

VIII

22   "Were you happy?" --"Yes."--"And are you still as happy?"--"Yes. And you?"
23   --"Then, more kisses!"--"Did I stop them, when a million seemed so few?"
24   Hark, the dominant's persistence till it must be answered to!

IX

25   So, an octave struck the answer. Oh, they praised you, I dare say!
26   "Brave Galuppi! that was music! good alike at grave and gay!
27   "I can always leave off talking when I hear a master play!"

X

28   Then they left you for their pleasure: till in due time, one by one,
29   Some with lives that came to nothing, some with deeds as well undone,
30   Death stepped tacitly and took them where they never see the sun.

XI

31   But when I sit down to reason, think to take my stand nor swerve,
32   While I triumph o'er a secret wrung from nature's close reserve,
33   In you come with your cold music till I creep thro' every nerve.

XII

34   Yes, you, like a ghostly cricket, creaking where a house was burned:
35   "Dust and ashes, dead and done with, Venice spent what Venice earned.
36   "The soul, doubtless, is immortal--where a soul can be discerned.

XIII

37   "Yours for instance: you know physics, something of geology,
38   "Mathematics are your pastime; souls shall rise in their degree;
39   "Butterflies may dread extinction,--you'll not die, it cannot be!

XIV

40   "As for Venice and her people, merely born to bloom and drop,
41   "Here on earth they bore their fruitage, mirth and folly were the crop:
42   "What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop?

XV

43   "Dust and ashes!" So you creak it, and I want the heart to scold.
44   Dear dead women, with such hair, too--what's become of all the gold
45   Used to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel chilly and grown old.

Credits and Copyright

Together with the editors, the Department of English (University of Toronto), and the University of Toronto Press, the following individuals share copyright for the work that went into this edition:
Screen Design (Electronic Edition):
Sian Meikle (University of Toronto Library)
Scanning:
Sharine Leung (Centre for Computing in the Humanities)

NOTES  (Most from the Toronto edition; those added for the Browning Multimedia Edition indicated by the student's name in bold).

Form:
triplets
1.
First published in volume I of Men and Women, 1855, but almost certainly written earlier (between 1847 and 1853). Baldassare Galuppi (1706-1785) was a famous Venetian composer, at one time organist at St. Mark's, now best known for his light operas. A toccata is a composition for the keyboard originally intended to exercise the touch, as its name suggests. It comes to serve as an exhibition of the player's technical virtuosity.
6.
In an annual ceremony on Ascension Day, the Doge (from dux) or chief magistrate of Venice "wed" the city to the sea by dropping a ring into the Adriatic, to symbolize the city's close union with the sea and power over it. Venice was for long the greatest maritime power in Europe.  The linked photo of the Palazzo Corner illustrates such an area where the Doges might have "wed the sea with rings."  (Note by Christopher French)
8.
Shylock's bridge: the famous Rialto bridge over the Grand Canal, the speaker as a modern Englishman "never out of England," naturally thinks of Venice in terms of The Merchant of Venice.
19-21:   lesser thirds, sixths diminished, sevenths, suspensions, solutions: the chords Galuppi is using in the toccata.
24.
The seventh chord on the dominant or fifth, one of the "suspensions," demands the resolution of the "octave" or tonic chord.

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