As the love from Petrarch's urn
Yet amid yon hills doth burn,
A quenchless lamp, by which the heart
Sees things unearthly: so thou art,
Mighty spirit; so shall be
The city that did refuge thee.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
IN THE PIAZZA AT NIGHT
O BEAUTIFUL beneath the magic moon
To walk the watery way of palaces!
O beautiful, o'er-vaulted with gemmed blue,
This spacious court! with colour and with gold,
With cupolas and pinnacles and points
And crosses multiplex and tips and balls
(Wherewith the bright stars unreproving mix,
Nor scorn by hasty eyes to be confused);
Fantastically perfect this lone pile
Of Oriental glory; these long ranges
Of classic chiselling; this gay flickering crowd,
And the calm Campanile,-beautiful!
O, beautiful!
My mind is in her rest; my heart at home
In all around; my soul secure in place,
And the vext needle perfect to her poles.
Aimless and hopeless in my life, I seemed
To thread the winding by-ways of the town
Bewildered, baffled, hurried hence and thence,
All at cross purpose ever with myself,
Unknowing whence or whither. Then, at once,
At a step, I crown the Campanile's top,
And view all mapped below; islands, lagoon,
An hundred steeples, and a myriad roofs,
The fruitful champaign, and the cloud-capt Alps, And the broad Adriatic.
THE PIAZZA OF ST. MARK AT MIDNIGHT
HUSHED is the music, hushed the hum of voices;
Gone is the crowd of dusky promenaders,―
Slender-waisted, almond-eyed Venetians,
Princes and paupers. Not a single footfall
Sounds in the arches of the Procuratie.
One after one, like sparks in cindered paper,
Faded the lights out in the goldsmiths' windows.
Drenched with the moonlight lies the still Piazza.
Fair as the palace builded for Aladdin,
Yonder St. Mark uplifts its sculptured splendour,
Intricate fretwork, Byzantine mosaic,
Colour on colour, column upon column,
Barbaric, wonderful, a thing to kneel to!
Over the portal stand the four gilt horses,
Gilt hoof in air, and wide distended nostril,
Fiery, untamed, as in the days of Nero.
Skyward, a cloud of domes and spires and crosses; Earthward, black shadows flung from jutting stone-work.
High over all the slender Campanile
Quivers, and seems a falling shaft of silver!
Hushed is the music, hushed the hum of voices.
From coigne and cornice and fantastic gargoyle,
At intervals the moan of dove or pigeon,
Fairily faint, floats off into the moonlight.
This, and the murmur of the Adriatic,
Lazily restless, lapping the mossed marble,
Staircase or buttress, scarcely break the stillness.
Deeper each moment seems to grow the silence,
Denser the moonlight in the still Piazza.
Hark! on the Tower above the ancient gateway,
The twin bronze Vulcans, with their ponderous
Hammer the midnight on their brazen bell there! THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH.
IN THE narrow Venetian street,
On the wall above the garden gate (Within the breath of the rose is sweet,
And the nightingale sings there, soon and late),
Stands Saint Christopher, carven in stone,
With the little child in his huge caress,
And the arms of the baby Jesus thrown
About his gigantic tenderness;
And over the wall a wandering growth
Of darkest and greenest ivy clings,
And climbs around them, and holds them both
In its netted clasp of knots and rings,
Clothing the saint from foot to beard
In glittering leaves that whisper and dance
To the child, on his mighty arm upreared,
With a lusty summer exuberance.
To the child on his arm the faithful saint
Looks up with a broad and tranquil joy;
His brows and his heavy beard aslant
Under the dimpled chin of the boy,
Who plays with the world upon his palm,
And bends his smiling looks divine
On the face of the giant mild and calm,
And the glittering frolic of the vine,
He smiles on either with equal grace,-
On the simple ivy's unconscious life,
And the soul in the giant's lifted face,
Strong from the peril of the strife:
For both are his own,-the innocence
That climbs from the heart of earth to heaven, And the virtue that greatly rises thence Through trial sent and victory given.
Grow, ivy, up to his countenance,
But it cannot smile on my life as on thine; Look, Saint, with thy trustful, fearless glance, Where I dare not lift these eyes of mine.
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS.
TO THE much-desired Venice
My thoughts fly with longing
When, in the clouded night,
My painful feelings
Are oppressed by bitter regret.
Thus the bird wounded
By a venomous serpent
Flies, flies, till wearied out,
And, deadened, drops
Beside its flowery nest.
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