Day after day, beat unrelentingly;
Turning all things to dust, and scorching up
The brain, till Reason fled, and the wild yell
And wilder laugh burst out on every side,
Answering each other as in mockery!

Few houses of the size were better filled;
Though many came and left it in an hour.
"Most nights," so said the good old Nicolo
(For three-and-thirty years his uncle kept
The water-gate below, but seldom spoke,

Though much was on his mind), "most nights arrived
The prison-boat, that boat with many oars,

And bore away as to the Lower World,
Disburdening in the Cànal ORFANO,81

That drowning-place, where never net was thrown,
Summer or Winter, death the penalty;

And where a secret, once deposited,

Lay till the waters should give up their dead.”

82

Yet what so gay as VENICE? Every gale

Breathed music! and who flocked not, while she reigned, To celebrate her Nuptials with the Sea;

To wear the mask, and mingle in the crowd

With Greek, Armenian, Persian-night and day
(There, and there only, did the hour stand still)
Pursuing through her thousand labyrinths
The enchantress Pleasure; realizing dreams
The earliest, happiest - for a tale to catch
Credulous ears, and hold young hearts in chains,
Had only to begin, "There lived in VENICE"

"Who were the six we supped with yesternight?" & "Kings, one and all! Thou couldst not but remark The style and manner of the six that served them."

6

84

"Who answered me just now? Who, when I said, 'Tis nine,' turned round and said so solemnly,

'Signor, he died at nine'?""'T was the Armenian; The mask that follows thee, go where thou wilt."

"But who moves there, alone among them all?" 85

The Cypriot. Ministers from distant courts

Beset his doors, long ere his rising-hour;

His the great secret! Not the golden house
Of Nero, nor those fabled in the East,

Rich though they were, so wondrous rich as his!
Two dogs, coal-black, in collars of pure gold,
Walk in his footsteps.- Who but his familiars?
They walk, and cast no shadow in the sun!

"And mark him speaking. They, that listen, stand
As if his tongue dropped honey; yet his glance
None can endure! He looks nor young nor old;
And at a tourney, where I sat and saw,
A very child (full threescore years are gone)
Borne on my father's shoulder through the crowd,
He looked not otherwise. Where'er he stops,
Though short the sojourn, on his chamber-wall,
Mid many a treasure gleaned from many a clime,
His portrait hangs- but none must notice it!
For TITIAN glows in every lineament,
(Where is it not inscribed, The work is his?)
And TITIAN died two hundred years ago."
-Such their discourse. Assembling in St. Mark's,
All nations met as on enchanted ground!

What though a strange mysterious power was there, Moving throughout, subtle, invisible,

And universal as the air they breathed;

A power that never slumbered, nor forgave?

All eye, all ear, nowhere and everywhere,
Entering the closet and the sanctuary,

No place of refuge for the Doge himself;

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86

Most present when least thought of nothing dropt
In secret, when the heart was on the lips,
Nothing in feverish sleep, but instantly

Observed and judged—a power, that if but named
In casual converse, be it where it might,
The speaker lowered at once his eyes, his voice,

And pointed upward as to God in heaven

What though that power was there, he who lived thus, Pursuing Pleasure, lived as if it were not.

But let him in the midnight air indulge

A word, a thought against the laws of VENICE,
And in that hour he vanished from the earth!

THE GONDOLA.

Boy, call the Gondola; the sun is set.-
It came, and we embarked; but instantly,
As at the waving of a magic wand,

Though she had stept on board so light of foot,
So light of heart, laughing she knew not why,
Sleep overcame her; on my arm she slept.
From time to time I waked her; but the boat
Rocked her to sleep again. The moon was now
Rising full-orbed, but broken by a cloud.
The wind was hushed, and the sea mirror-like.
A single zephyr, as enamored, played
With her loose tresses, and drew more and more
Her veil across her bosom. Long I lay

Contemplating that face so beautiful,

That rosy mouth, that cheek dimpled with smiles,
That neck but half concealed, whiter than snow.
'Twas the sweet slumber of her early age.
I looked and looked, and felt a flush of joy
I would express, but cannot. Oft I wished
Gently-by
-by stealth-to drop asleep myself,
And to incline yet lower that sleep might come;
Oft closed my eyes as in forgetfulness.

'T was all in vain. Love would not let me rest.
But how delightful when at length she waked!
When, her light hair adjusting, and her veil
So rudely scattered, she resumed her place
Beside me; and, as gayly as before,
Sitting unconsciously nearer and nearer,
Poured out her innocent mind!

So, nor long since,

Sung a Venetian; and his lay of love,

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Dangerous and sweet, charmed VENICE. For myself (Less fortunate, if Love be Happiness),

No curtain drawn, no pulse beating alarm,
I went alone beneath the silent moon;

Thy square, ST. MARK, thy churches, palaces,
Glittering and frost-like, and, as day drew on,
Melting away, an emblem of themselves.

Those porches passed, through which the water-breeze
Plays, though no longer on the noble forms
That moved there, sable-vested- and the quay,
Silent, grass-grown "-adventurer-like I launched
Into the deep, ere long discovering

Isles such as cluster in the Southern seas,

All verdure. Everywhere, from bush and brake,

The musky odor of the serpents came;

Their slimy track across the woodman's path

Bright in the moonshine; and, as round I went,
Dreaming of GREECE, whither the waves were gliding,
I listened to the venerable pines

Then in close converse, and, if right I guessed,
Delivering many a message to the winds,
In secret, for their kindred on Mount IDA.91
Nor when again in VENICE, when again
In that strange place, so stirring and so still,
Where nothing comes to drown the human voice
But music, or the dashing of the tide,
Ceased I to wander. Now a JESSICA
Sung to her lute, her signal as she sate
At her half-open window. Then, methought,
A serenade broke silence, breathing hope
Through walls of stone, and torturing the proud heart
Of some PRIULI. Once, we could not err

(It was before an old Palladian house,
As between night and day we floated by),
A gondolier lay singing; and he sung,
As in the time when VENICE was herself,
Of TANCRED and ERMINIA.92 On our oars
We rested; and the verse was verse divine!
We could not err— perhaps he was the last
For none took up the strain, none answered him;
And, when he ceased, he left upon my ear
A something like the dying voice of VENICE!

The moon went down; and nothing now was seen
Save where the lamp of a Madonna shone
Faintly or heard, but when he spoke, who stood
Over the lantern at the prow and cried,