O most magnificent Venice!
Whoever has been able to taste

The sweetness of love

Amid thy life of poesy

For eternity will not forget thee!

I love thee in thy desolation,

In thy vestment of mourning;

And in thy gondolas

Which lose themselves among the canals,
Like an uncompleted dream.

I love thee with fervent regret,
For thy beautiful Past,

And for the reminiscences

Of the sacred love,

And of the being I have lost.

ALEKSANDRI.

Tr. Henry Stanley.

THE GONDOLA

TILTS the gondola lightly over the wave like a
cradle,

And the chest thereupon me of a coffin reminds.
Just so we, 'twixt cradle and coffin, go tilting and

floating

On Time's larger canal carelessly on through our
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE.

life.

Tr. J. S. Dwight.

SUNRISE IN VENICE

NIGHT seems troubled and scarce asleep;
Her brows are gathered in broken rest;
Sullen old lion of grand St. Mark

Lordeth and lifteth his front from the dark,
And a star in the east starts up from the deep,
White as my lilies that grow in the west;

And the day leaps up with a star on his breast.
Hist! men are passing hurriedly.

I see the yellow wide wings of a bark
Sail silently over my morning-star.
I see men move in the moving dark,
Tall and silent as columns are,—

Great sinewy men that are good to see,
With hair pushed back and with open breasts;
Barefooted fishermen seeking their boats,
Brown as walnuts and hairy as goats,-

Brave old water-dogs, wed to the sea,
First to their labours and last to their rests,

Ships are moving. I hear a horn;
A silver trumpet it sounds to me,
Deep-voiced and musical, far a-sea
Answers back, and again it calls.

"T is the sentinel-boats that watch the town

All night, as mounting her watery walls,
And watching for pirate or smuggler. Down
Over the sea, and reaching away,

And against the east, a soft light falls,—
Silvery soft as the mist of morn,

And I catch a breath like the breath of day.

The east is blooming! Yea, a rose,
Vast as the heavens, soft as a kiss,
Sweet as the presence of woman is,
Rises and reaches and widens and grows
Right out of the sea, as a blooming tree;
Richer and richer, so higher and higher,
Deeper and deeper it takes its hue;
Brighter and brighter it reaches through
The space of heaven and the place of stars,
Till all is as rich as a rose can be,
And my rose-leaves fall into billows of fire.
Then beams reach upward as arms from a sea;
Then lances and arrows are aimed at me.
Then lances and spangles and spars and bars
Are broken and shivered and strewn on the sea;
And around and about me tower and spire
Start from the billows like tongues of fire.
JOAQUIN MILLER.

1

A TOCCATA OF GALUPPI'S

O, GALUPPI, Baldassaro, this is very sad to find! I can hardly misconceive you; it would prove me deaf and blind;

But although I take your meaning, 'tis with such a heavy mind!

Here you come with your old music, and here's all the good it brings.

What, they lived once thus at Venice where the merchants were the kings,

Where St. Mark's is, where the Doges used to wed the sea with rings?

Ay, because the sea's the street there; and 'tis arch'd by ... what you call ...

Shylock's bridge with houses on it, where they kept the carnival:

I was never out of England-it's as if I saw it all!

Did young people take their pleasure when the sea was warm in May?

Balls and masks begun at midnight, burning ever to mid-day

When they made up fresh adventures for the morrow, do you say?

Was a lady such a lady, cheeks so round and lips

so red,

On her neck the small face buoyant, like a bellflower on its bed,

O'er the breast's superb abundance where a man might base his head?

Well, (and it was graceful of them) they'd break talk off and afford

She, to bite her mask's black velvet; he, to finger on his sword,

While you sat and play'd Toccatas, stately at the clavichord?

What? Those lesser thirds so plaintive, sixths diminish'd, sigh on sigh,

Told them something? Those suspensions, those solutions-'Must we die?"

Those commiserating sevenths-'Life might last! we can but try!'

'Were you happy?' 'Yes.'-'And are you still as happy?' 'Yes. And you?'

-"Then, more kisses!'-'Did I stop them, when a million seem'd so few?"

Hark! the dominant's persistence, till it must be answer'd to!

So an octave struck the answer. O, they praised you, I dare say!