city gate.

The watchman, fumbling with his keys,
Mumbles in his beard:--Had thought
She was another Cyprian, strange the dreams
That come when one has eaten tripe.
The great gates creak and groan,
The hinges shriek, and the Queen's white mule
Stalks slowly through.

The watchman, in the shadow of the wall,
Looks out with heavy eyes:--Strange,
What cavalcade is this that clatters into Asolo?
These are not men-at-arms,
These ruddy boys with vineleaves in their hair!
That great-bellied one no seneschal
Can be, astride an ass so gauntily!
Virgin Mother! Saints! They wear no clothes!

And through the gate a warm wind blows,
A dizzying perfume of the grape,
And a great throng crying Cypris,
Cyprian, with cymbals crashing and a shriek
Of Thessalian pipes, and swaying of torches,
That smell hot like wineskins of resin,
That flare on arms empurpled and hot cheeks,
And full shouting lips vermillion-red.

Youths and girls with streaming hair
Pelting the night with flowers:
Yellow blooms of Adonis, white
scented stars of pale Narcissus,
Mad incense of the blooming vine,
And carmine passion of pomegranate blooms.

A-sudden all the strummings of the night,
All the insect-stirrings, all the rustlings
Of budding leaves, the sing-song
Of waters brightly gurgling through meadowland,
Are shouting with the shouting throng,
Crying Cypris, Cyprian,
Queen of the seafoam, Queen of the budding year,
Queen of eyes that flame and hands that twine,
Return to us, return from the fields of asphodel.

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;