ANGELA.
You look a wave-drenched siren
In those long folds of hair cloyed with the honey
By which the lees of the white wine cling close.
The sun is brilliant!
CATILENA.
And it was kindly done
To save us freckles by the grace of hats
Worn in the presence. Ah, sweet Pope,
Until his Holiness returns to-day
Venus is Sovereign of the Church, its princes
Her laughing hierophants, the Sacred College
Her Loves, her Doves, her Swallows, what you will,
All twittering of her till the air is crazy,
And every breeze a gossip.
LUCREZIA.
Hush!
A pretty jest—
But when it thundered yesterday I sobbed,
And headache like a terror hung on me
All the night long.... I am a daughter
Guarding her father’s house—the Universe:
I am no Pope, and, though the Cardinals
Laugh gallantly or slyly, though I laugh
At all the salt and spice of travesty,
Yet this obedience to my father’s will
Has turned my prayers to stone.
Dear girls,
Here at the toilet let me be a woman,
Whose handmaid forehead the triregno’s weight
Burthens to faintness.
Clarice, did you bruise
The celandine and greater cleaver’s madder
The full time Messer Giambattista Porta
Ordains?
CLARICE.
Before you climbed up to the sun,
The roots were bruised and mixed with cummin-oil,
The boxwood slivers and the saffron, Donna.
LUCREZIA.
Then lay our compound on....
The Envoy from Ferrara cannot enter,
Nor my two Cardinal Secretaries, until
You draw my hair out through the crownless hat,
And spread it like a halo on the brim.