Through the Rialto 105 to the Ducal Palace,
And at a banquet, served with honor there,
Sat representing, in the eyes of all,
Eyes not unwet, I ween, with grateful tears,
Their lovely ancestors, the Brides of VENICE.
LET us lift up the curtain, and observe
What passes in that chamber. Now a sigh,
And now a groan is heard. Then all is still.
Twenty are sitting as in judgment there; 105
Men who have served their country and grown gray
In governments and distant embassies,
Men eminent alike in war and peace;
Such as in effigy shall long adorn
The walls of VENICE - to show what she was!
Their garb is black, and black the arras is,
And sad the general aspect. Yet their looks
Are calm, are cheerful; nothing there like grief,
Nothing or harsh or cruel. Still that noise,
That low and dismal moaning.
A little to the left, sits one in crimson,
A venerable man, fourscore and five.
Cold drops of sweat stand on his furrowed brow.
His hands are clenched; his eyes half-shut and glazed;
His shrunk and withered limbs rigid as marble.
'Tis FOSCARI, the Doge. A young man, lying at his In torture. 'Tis his son.
And there is one,
feet, stretched out
"T is GIACOMO,
His only joy (and has he lived for this?)
Accused of murder. Yesternight the proofs,
If proofs they be, were in the Lion's mouth
Dropt by some hand unseen; and he, himself,
Must sit and look on a beloved son
To save, while yet he could, a falling house,
And turn the hearts of his fell adversaries,
Those who had now, like hell-hounds in full
cry,
Chased down his last of four, twice did he ask
To lay aside the crown, and they refused,
An oath exacting, never more to ask;
And there he sits, a spectacle of woe,
Condemned in bitter mockery to wear
The bauble he had sighed for.
The screw is turned; and, as it turns, the son
Looks up, and, in a faint and broken tone,
Murmurs "My father!" The old man shrinks back,
And in his mantle muffles up his face.
"Art thou not guilty?" says a voice, that once Would greet the sufferer long before they met, "Art thou not guilty?". "No! Indeed I am not!" But all is unavailing. In that court
Groans are confessions; patience, fortitude,
The work of magic; and, released, revived,
For condemnation, from his father's lips
He hears the sentence, "Banishment to CANDIA.
Death, if he leaves it." And the bark sets sail;
And he is gone from all he loves in life!
Gone in the dead of night-unseen of any —
Without a word, a look of tenderness,
To be called up, when, in his lonely hours,
He would indulge in weeping. Like a ghost,
Day after day, year after year, he haunts
An ancient rampart that o'erhangs the sea;
Gazing on vacancy, and hourly there
Starting as from some wild and uncouth dream,
To answer to the watch. Alas! how changed
From him the mirror of the youth of VENICE;
Whom in the slightest thing, or whim or chance,
Did he but wear his doublet so and so,
All followed; at whose nuptials, when he won
That maid at once the noblest, fairest, best,107
A daughter of the house that now among
Its ancestors in monumental brass
Numbers eight Doges-to convey her home,
The Bùcentaur went forth; and thrice the sun
Shone on the chivalry, that, front to front,
And blaze on blaze reflecting, met and ranged
To tourney in ST. MARK'S. - But, lo! at last,
Messengers come. He is recalled: his heart
Springs to the oar, and back again he goes-
Into that very chamber! there to lie
In his old resting-place, the bed of steel;
And thence look up (five long, long years of grief
Have not killed either) on his wretched sire,
Still in that seat-as though he had not stirred;
Immovable, and muffled in his cloak.
But now he comes convicted of a crime
Great by the laws of VENICE. Night and day,
Brooding on what he had been, what he was,
'T was more than he could bear. His longing-fits
Thickened upon him. His desire for home
Became a madness; and, resolved to go,
If but to die, in his despair he writes
A letter to the sovereign-prince of MILAN
(To him whose name, among the greatest now,108
Had perished, blotted out at once and razed,
But for the rugged limb of an old oak),
Soliciting his influence with the state,
And drops it to be found."Would ye know all ?
I have transgressed, offended wilfully;
And am prepared to suffer as I ought.
But let me, let me, if but for an hour
(Ye must consent for all of you are sons,
Most of you husbands, fathers) - let me first
Indulge the natural feelings of a man,
And, ere I die, if such my sentence be,
Press to my heart ('t is all I ask of you)
My wife, my children—and my aged mother-
Say, is she yet alive?"
To go ere set of sun, go whence he came,
A banished man; and for a year to breathe
The vapor of a dungeon. But his prayer
(What could they less ?) is granted.
In a hall
Open and crowded by the common herd,
"T was there a wife and her four sons yet young,
A mother borne along, life ebbing fast,
And an old Doge, mustering his strength in vain,
Assembled now, sad privilege! to meet
One so long lost, one who for them had braved,
For them had sought—death and yet worse than death' To meet him, and to part with him forever!-
Time and their wrongs had changed them all — him most!
Yet when the wife, the mother, looked again,
"T was he―'t was he himself—'t was GIACOMO!
And all clung round him, weeping bitterly;
Weeping the more, because they wept in vain.
Unnerved, and now unsettled in his mind
From long and exquisite pain, he sobs and cries,
Kissing the old man's check, "Help me, my father!
Let me, I pray thee, live once more among ye:
Let me go
home." "My son," returns the Doge,
"Obey. Thy country wills it." 110
GIACOMO
That night embarked; sent to an early grave
For one whose dying words, "The deed was mine!
He is most innocent! "T was I who did it!"
Came when he slept in peace. The ship, that sailed
Swift as the winds with his deliverance,
Bore back a lifeless corse.
Affection, kindness, the sweet offices
Of duty and love were from his tenderest years
To him as needful as his daily bread;
And to become a by-word in the streets,
Bringing a stain on those who gave him life,
And those, alas! now worse than fatherless
To be proclaimed a ruffian, a night-stabber,
He on whom none before had breathed reproach
He lived but to disprove it. That hope lost,
Death followed. O! if justice be in heaven,
A day must come of ample retribution!
Then was thy cup, old man, full to the brim.
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