Asolando - Dedication
By Robert Browning
TO MRS. ARTHUR BRONSON
To whom but you, dear Friend, should I dedicate versessome few written, all of them supervised, in the comfort of your presence, and with yet another experience of the gracious hospitality now bestowed on me since so many a year,adding a charm even to my residences at Venice, and leaving me little regret for the surprise and delight at my visits to Asolo in bygone days?
I unite, you will see, the disconnected poems by a title-name popularly ascribed to the inventiveness of the ancient secretary of Queen Cornaro whose palace-tower still over-looks us: Asolareto disport in the open air, amuse ones self at random. The objection that such a word nowhere occurs in the works of the Cardinal is hardly importantBembo was too thorough a purist to conserve in print a term which in talk he might possibly toy with: but the word is more likely derived from a Spanish source. I use it for love of the place, and in reqital of your pleasant assurance that an early poem of mine first attracted you thitherwhere and elsewhere, at Mura as C Alvisi, may all happiness attend you!
Gratefully and affectionately yours,
R. B.
Asolo: October 15,1889