other room, nor suffer longer
That the stale reek of viands shall offend
Her delicate sense. Thee with the rest invites
The grateful odor of the coffee, where
It smokes upon a smaller table hid
And graced with Indian webs. The redolent gums
That meanwhile burn, sweeten and purify
The heavy atmosphere, and banish thence
All lingering traces of the feast. Ye sick
And poor, whom misery or whom hope, perchance!
Has guided in the noonday to these doors.
Tumultuous, naked, and unsightly throng,
With mutilated limbs and squalid faces,
In litters and on crutches from afar
Comfort yourselves, and with expanded nostrils
Drink in the nectar of the feast divine
That favourable zephyrs waft to you;
But do not dare besiege these noble precincts,
Importunately offering her that reigns
Within your loathsome spectacle of woe!
And now, sir, 't is your office to prepare
The tiny cup that then shall minister,
Slow sipped, its liquor to thy lady's lips;
And now bethink thee whether she prefer
The boiling beverage much or little tempered
With sweet; or if, perchance, she likes it best,
As doth the barbarous spouse, then when she sits
Upon brocades of Persia, with light fingers,
The bearded visage of her lord caressing.

This is from _Il Mezzogiorno_ (_Noon_). The other three poems, rounding
out _The Day_, are _Il Mattino_ (_Morning_), _Il Vespre_ (_Evening_),
and _La Notte_ (_Night_). In _Il Mattino_, Parini sings:

Should dreary hypochondria's woes oppress thee,
Should round thy charming limbs in too great measure
Thy flesh increase, then with thy lips do honor
To that clear beverage, made from the well-bronzed,
The smoking, ardent beans Aleppo sends thee,
And distant Mocha too, a thousand ship-loads;
When slowly sipped it knows no rival.

Belli's _Il Caffe_ supplies a partial bibliography of the Italian
literature on coffee. There are many poems, some of them put to music.
As late as 1921, there were published in Bologna some advertising verses
on coffee by G.B. Zecchini with music by Cesare Cantino.

Pope Leo XIII, in his Horatian poem on _Frugality_ composed in his
eighty-eighth year, thus verses his appreciation of coffee:

Last comes the beverage of the Orient shore,
Mocha, far off, the fragrant berries bore.
Taste the dark fluid with a dainty lip,
Digestion waits on pleasure as you sip.

Peter Altenberg, a Vienna poet, thus celebrated the cafes of his native
city:

TO THE COFFEE HOUSE!

When you are worried, hav