CHORUS OF CONTADINE.

List and learn, ye dainty roses,
Roses white and roses red,
Why we bind you into posies
Ere your morning bloom has fled.
By a law of maiden's making,
Accents of a heart that's aching,
Even though that heart be breaking,
Should by maiden be unsaid:
Though they love with love exceeding,
They must seem to be unheeding--
Go ye then and do their pleading,
Roses white and roses red!

FIAMETTA.

Two there are for whom in duty,
Every maid in Venice sighs--
Two so peerless in their beauty
That they shame the summer skies.
We have hearts for them, in plenty,
They have hearts, but all too few,
We, alas, are four-and-twenty!
They, alas, are only two!
We, alas!

CHORUS. Alas!

FIA. Are four-and-twenty,
They, alas!

CHORUS. Alas!

FIA. Are only two.

CHORUS. They, alas, are only two, alas!
Now ye know, ye dainty roses,
Roses white and roses red,
Why we bind you into posies,
Ere your morning bloom has fled,
Roses white and roses red!

(During this chorus Antonio, Francesco, Giorgio, and other
Gondoliers have entered unobserved by the Girls--at first two,
then two more, then four, then half a dozen, then the remainder
of the Chorus.)

SOLI.

FRANC. Good morrow, pretty maids; for whom prepare ye
These floral tributes extraordinary?

FIA. For Marco and Giuseppe Palmieri,
The pink and flower of all the Gondolieri.

GIU. They're coming here, as we have heard but lately,
To choose two brides from us who sit sedately.

ANT. Do all you maidens love them?

ALL. Passionately!

ANT. These gondoliers are to be envied greatly!

GIOR. But what of us, who one and all adore you?
Have pity