Well, I'd like to read you a poem called
"Complaint" in which the speaker is
a neurotic courtier of no particular period, who
can't figure out what his proper relationship to the Duchess
should be.
I guess this would better be my last one, looking at the clock.
Here, I had a marvelous Latin epigraph to this,
was going to be very showy.
How did it go?
Ex divina pulchritudine esse omnium derivatur.
The being or essence of everything
derives from divine beauty.
But I settled for this one, which is from Vitinho.
In reality each love is that of the divine image
and each is pure.
"Complaint."
"Why is it that whenever I talk with the Duchess, my belly
growls and my nose waters?
Why must it be my hand that tumbles the wine glass over
into the Cellini salt dish?
[CHUCKLES]
Stiff as a gaffer, fidgety as a child,
after 20 years of struggling to be a courtier,
I remain incapable of the least politeness, wit, song,
or learning.
And I wonder sometimes what is it in me that hates me.
Is it that rolling captain who should
burst like surf into her presence,
dumping down his pillage of the seas, and in a wink
dissolve her castled pride.
She scorns no common magic, and could
be pleased to be manhandled like a kitchen girl,
so it was sweet and reckless.
Or is it that idolatrous fool that's
in me, who lest she alter should enchant the hour
with gentled sparrows and an aimless lute?
Enthralling her with tales of a king's daughter,
bound in mountain sleep, whose prince and wakener,
detained by trials in deserts, deep sand
grottoes of the world, approaches her forever.
Or am I spited by the priest, I might be.
There in the stone grove of her oratory,
no ship sails out so free as she at prayer with head
bowed and shrouded.
Confessing her and my delight in her
to the great ways and haven of her beauty,
would I not serve her better?
Would not my hand be steady with the wine?
Jackass.
Again, you turn and turn this prism
whose every light is of the purest water.
How should I fathom how whose white hands
fold the rainbow like a fan?
Oh, maiden, muse, and maiden.
Oh, my love whose every moment is the quick of time.
I am your bumbling servant, now and ever,
in this, and the other kingdom."
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]