The other would be a piazza piece.
And the term piazza is known to half the country,
and not everywhere.
Richard Blackmer, the Maine man.
The great critic from Maine who died about two years ago.
Said that it was common, that phrase, in New England.
I began to think it was not common,
it wasn't universal-- that phrase piazza.
Because a highly educated lady, and the wife
of a very important professor, and then one of the--
Big Ten Conference-- came to me and asked me
about that pizza piece.
And it goes I kept a straight face.
And I didn't dare to explain to her.
But the piazza is a porch.
Of course it's more than that in the Italian.
In the Italian, it's a stone porch
extending out into the weather with a roof over it,
and a back to it, but not sidewalls.
This is one on which there's a trellis, to which the roses are
attached.
And this is a dialogue between the person,
and obviously a male that you'll have to identify.
And the reply in the sestet of the person
addressed, who is a young girl sitting on that piazza.
I am a gentleman in a dust coat, trying to make you hear.
Your ears are soft and small, and listen to an old man
not at all.
They want the young man's whispering and crying.
But see the roses on your trellis dying.
And hear the spectral singing of the moon.
I must have my lovely lady soon.
I am a lady, I am a gentleman in a dust coat trying.
I am a lady, young in beauty, waiting until my true love
comes and then we kiss.
With what gray man among the vines is this?
Whose words are dry and faint as in a dream.
Back from my trellis sir, before I scream.
I am a lady, young in beauty, waiting.
Well, no harm.
No immediate harm comes.
A date comes along presently, and they go to the movies
after they kiss.
But who is the gentleman?
And well, this is honest truth.
It doesn't happen now.
It hasn't-- well it happened the last spring,
about the 1st of June.
And about four years before that,
it was happening every June, that I
would get to long distance telephone calls
from certain colleges and universities.
And they said, Dr. Ransom--
which I'm not.
We've been studying a poem of yours that we like very much,
and we don't agree about how it's interpreted.
And I wonder if you would tell us.
And usually they would say, the piazza piece.
But I belong to a good strong union of college instructors,
and I didn't want to be a scab.
And I would always say, tell me how you interpret it?
And so they would name-- they say a sentence or so.
And I would say, well I think that's good,
but that's not the whole matter of it.
Could you add something there?
And I probably didn't give them any information,
because central would say, time is up.
$1.85 more, please.
Well that-- of course, in the sense,
they don't ask me that question now.
That's the old man with the scythe.
That's old death.
Who's given her, her first intimation of mortality.