'Tarantella'

from Faηade

General Information – Performing Forces – Manuscript – Publication – Arrangements – Recordings – Text

General Information:

Text:
Dame Edith Sitwell (1887–1964)
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Text:

Where the satyrs are chattering, nymphs with their flattering
                                            glimpse of the forest enhance
All the beauty of marrow and cucumber narrow and
                                        Ceres will join in the dance.
Where the satyrs can flatter the flat-leaved fruit
                                    and the gherkin green and the marrow,
Said Queen Venus, 'Silenus, we'll settle between us
                                the gourd and the cucumber narrow.'
See, like palaces hid in the lake, they shake —
                            those greenhouses shot by her arrow narrow!
The gardener seizes the pieces, like Croesus,
                        for gilding the potting-shed barrow.
There the radish roots and the strawberry fruits
                    feel the nymphs' high boots in the glade.
Trampling and sampling mazurkas, cachucas and turkas,
Cracoviaks hid in the shade.
Where, in the haycocks, the country nymphs' gay flocks
    wear gowns that are looped over bright yellow petticoats,
Gaiters of leather and pheasants' tail feathers
        in straw hats bewildering many a leathern bat.
They they haymake,
Cowers and whines in showers,
        the dew in the dogskin bright flowers;
Pumpking and marrow and cucumber narrow
        have grown through the spangled June hours.
Melons as dark as caves have for their fountain waves
        thickest gold honey, and wrinkled as dark as Pan,
Or old Silenus, yet youthful as Venus,
        are gourds and the wrinkled figs whence all the jewels ran.
Said Queen Venus, 'Silenus we'll settle between us
        the nymphs' disobedience, forestall
With my bow and my quiver each fresh evil liver:
        for I don't understand it at all!'

— Dame Edith Sitwell (1887–1964)

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