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1. ‘Revolution’ said Mr Adams ‘took place in the
2. minds of the people
3. in the fifteen years before Lexington’,
4. That wd have been in Peter Leopold’s time
5. to his Lordship the Count Orso and his descendants
6. male legitimate and natural the administration of
7. civil and criminal justice in the said place
   
   
8. debt when the Medici took the throne was 5 million
9. and when they left was fourteen
10. and its interest ate up all the best income
    
    
11. the first folly was planting factories for wool spinning
12. in England and Flanders
13. then England kept her raw wool, so that
14. damped down the exchanging
15. the arts gone to hell by 1750
16. and Leopoldo cut down the taxes
17. found there was ‘Un’ abbondanza che affamava’
18. says Zobi
19. Leopold cut down the debt interest
20. and put the Jesuits out
21. and put end to the Inquisition
22. 1782
23. and they brought in
24. Mr Locke’s
25. essay on interest
27. but Genoa took our trade and Livorno
28. kept treaty with England to the loss of Livorno
29. that is to say Livorno trade took a loss
30. Te, admirabile, O VashinnnTTonn!
31. Livorno stuff went in Genovese bottoms
32. because Tuscany kept her word and a treaty
33. Voi, popoli transatlantici admirabili!
34. saith Zobi, sixty years later.
35. ‘Pardon our brief digression’ saith Zobi:
36. America is our daughter and VashiNNtonn had civic virtues.
37. and Leopoldo meant to cut off two thirds of state debt,
38. to abolish it
39. and then they sent him off to be Emperor
40. in hell’s bog, in the slough of Vienna, in
41. the midden of Europe in the black hole of all
42. mental vileness, in the privvy that stank Franz Josef,
43. in Metternich’s merdery in the absolute rottenness,
44. among embastardized cross-breeds,
    
    
45. But Ferdinando staved off an Anschluss and Paris exploded
    
    
46. ‘certain practices called religious’ said Zobi
47. ‘lack of experience in economic affairs’
48. Pius sixth, vicar of foolishness, no Jew God
49. wd. have kept THAT in power.
50. So that about the time of MARENGO the First Consul
51. wrote: I left peace. I find war.
52. I find enemies inside yr frontier
53. Your cannon sold to yr enemies
54. 1791, end of representative government
55. 18th Brumale, 10th of November
56. 14th. June, 1800 MARENGO
57. Mars meaning, in that case, order
58. That day was Right with the victor
59. mass weight against wrong
60. a.d. 1800
61. interest at 24 to the hundred
62. and as they say ‘commerce languished’
63. 1801 the triumvirs wanted to go Leopoldine as was.
64. A thousand of the old guard at Portoferraio
65. and two million a year, one half of it
66. reversable to the Empress
67. from Elba
68. for the mildness of the climate
69. and the suavity of its denizens
70. from an English frigate descended
71. And Ferdinando Habsburg (but of the House of Lorraine)
72. which is the true name of the clean part of that family
73. got back a state free of debt
74. coffers empty
75. but the state without debt
76. England and Austria were for despots with commerce
77. considered
78. put back the Pope but
79. reset no republics: Venice, Genova, Lucca
80. and split up Poland in their soul was usura
81. and in their hand bloody oppression
82. and that son of a dog, Rospigliosi,
83. came into Tuscany to make serfs of old Tuscans.
84. S..t on the throne of England, s..t on the Austrian sofa
85. In their soul was usura and in their minds darkness
86. and blankness, greased fat were four Georges
87. Pus was in Spain, Wellington was a jew’s pimp
88. and lacked mind to know what he effected.
89. ‘Leave the Duke, Go for gold’
90. In their souls was usura and in their hearts cowardice
91. In their minds was stink and corruption
92. Two sores ran together,
93. and hell pissed up Metternich
94. Filth stank as in our day
95. ‘From the brigantine Incostante’
96. for a hundred days against hell belch
97. Hope spat from March into June
98. Ney out of his saddle
99. Grouchy delayed
100. Bentinck’s word was, naturally,
101. not kept by the English. Genova under Sardegna. Hope
102. spat from Cannes, March, into Flanders.
103. ‘Not’
104. said Napoleon ‘because of that league of lice
105. but for opposing the Zeitgeist! That was my ruin,

106. That I ran against my own time, turning backward’
107. OBIT, aetatis 57,
108. five hundred years after D. Alighieri.
109. Not, certainly, for what most embellishes il sesso femminile
110. and causes us to admire it, they wrote of Marie de Parma
111. his widow.
112. Italy ever doomed with abstractions, 1850, wrote Zobi,
113. By following brilliant abstractions.
114. Mastai, Pio Nono, D’Azeglio went into exile
115. and so on the 30th of October Lord Minto
116. was in Arezzo (I think Bowring had preceded) and the
117. crowd cried EVVIVA
118. Evviva the Tariff League
119. and Minto yelled Evviva Leopoldo
120. Evviv’ INDIPENDENZA, this was the new Leopoldo
121. though Minto was for slowness and sureness.

122. Lalage’s shadow moves in the fresco’s knees

123. She is blotted with Dirce’s shadow
124. dawn stands there fixed and unmoving
125. only we two have moved.