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Hichens, Robert Smythe, 1864-1950

"A Spirit in Prison"

"
And all along the sea by night there was music.
From the Piazza before the Palace the band of the Caffe Gambrinus sent
forth its lusty valses. The posturing women of the wooden kiosk caught
up the chain of sound, and flung it on with their shrill voices down
the hill towards Santa Lucia, where, by the waterside and the crowding
white yachts, the itinerant musicians took it into the keeping of
their guitars, their mandolins, their squeaky fiddles, and their hot
and tremulous voices. The "Valse Bleu," "Santa Lucia," "Addio, mia
bella Napoli," "La Frangese," "Sole Mio," "Marechiaro," "Carolina,"
"La Ciociara"; with the chain of lights the chain of songs was woven
round the bay; from the Eldorado, past the Hotel de Vesuve, the Hotel
Royal, the Victoria, to the tree-shaded alleys of the Villa Nazionale,
to the Mergellina, where the naked urchins of the fisherfolk took
their evening bath among the resting boats, to the "Scoglio di
Frisio," and upwards to the Ristorante della Stella, and downwards
again to the Ristorante del Mare, and so away to the point, to the
Antico Giuseppone.


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