Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, NAPLES, by AMY LOWELL


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

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First Line: Red tiles, yellow stucco, layer on layer of windows
Subject(s): Naples, Italy


Red tiles, yellow stucco, layer on layer of windows, roofs, and
balconies, Naples pushes up the hill away from the curving bay. A
red, half-closed eye, Vesuvius watches and waits. All Naples prates
of this and that, and runs about its little business, shouting,
bawling, incessantly calling its wares. Fish frying, macaroni
drying, seven feet piles of red and white brocoli, grapes heaped high
with rosemary, sliced pomegranates dripping seeds, plucked and
bleeding chickens, figs on spits, lemons in baskets, melons cut and
quartered nicely, "Ah, che bella cosa! They even sell water,
clear crystal water for a paul or two. And everything done to a
hullabaloo. They jabber over cheese, they chatter over wine, they
gabble at the corners in the bright sunshine. And piercing through
the noise is the beggar-whine, always, like an undertone, the
beggar-whine; and always the crimson, watching eye of Vesuvius.

Have you seen her -- the Ambassadress? Ah, Bellissima Creatura!_
Una Donna Kara! She is fairer than the Blessed Virgin; and good!
Never was such a soul in such a body! The role of her benefactions
would stretch from here to Posilipo. And she loves the people, loves
to go among them and speak to this one and that, and her
apple-blossom face under the big blue hat works miracles like the
Holy Images in the Churches.

In her great house with the red marble stairway, Lady Hamilton holds
brilliant sway. From her boudoir windows she can see the bay, and on
the left, hanging there, a flame in a cresset, the blood-red glare of
Vesuvius staring at the clear blue air.

Blood-red on a night of stars, red like a wound, with lava scars. In
the round wall-mirrors of her boudoir, is the blackness of the bay,
the whiteness of a star, and the bleeding redness of the mountain's
core. Nothing more. All night long, in the mirrors, nothing more.
Black water, red stain, and above, a star with its silver rain.

Over the people, over the king, trip the little Ambassadorial feet;
fleet and light as a pigeon's wing, they brush over the artists, the
friars, the abb??s - the Court. They bear her higher and higher at
each step. Up and over the hearts of Naples goes the beautiful Lady
Hamilton till she reaches even to the Queen; then rests in a
sheening, shimmering altitude, between earth and sky, high and
floating as the red crater of Vesuvius. Buoyed up and sustained in a
blood-red destiny, all on fire for the world to see.

Proud Lady Hamilton! Superb Lady Hamilton! Quivering, blood-swept,
vivid Lady Hamilton! Your vigour is enough to awake the dead, as you
tread the newly uncovered courtyards of Pompeii. There is a murmur
all over the opera house when you enter your box. And your frocks!
Jesu! What frocks! "India painting on wyte sattin!" And a new
camlet shawl, all sea-blue and blood-red, in an intricate pattern,
given by Sir William to help you do your marvellous "Attitudes."
Incomparable actress! No theatre built is big enough to compass you.
It takes a world; and centuries shall elbow each other aside to watch
you act your part. Art, Emma, or heart?

The blood-red cone of Vesuvius glows in the night.

She sings "Luce Bella_, and Naples cries "Brava! Ancora!" and
claps its hands. She dances the tarantella, and poses before a
screen with the red-blue shawl. It is the frescoes of Pompeii
unfrozen; it is the fine-cut profiles of Sicilian coins; it is Apollo
Belvedere himself--Goethe has said it. She wears a Turkish dress,
and her face is sweet and lively as rippled water.

The lava-streams of Vesuvius descend as far as Portici. She climbs
the peak of fire at midnight--five miles of flame. A blood-red
mountain, seeping tears of blood. She skips over glowing ashes and
laughs at the pale, faded moon, wan in the light of the red-hot lava.
What a night! Spires and sparks of livid flame shooting into the
black sky. Blood-red smears of fire; blood-red gashes, flashing her
out against the smouldering mountain. A tossing fountain of
blood-red jets, it sets her hair flicking into the air like licking
flamelets of a burning aureole. Blood-red is everywhere. She wears
it as a halo and diadem. Emma, Emma Hamilton, Ambassadress of Great
Britain to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.





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