'Brave Galuppi! that was music! good alike at grave and gay!

I can always leave off talking, when I hear a master play.'

Then they left you for their pleasure: till in due time, one by one,

Some with lives that came to nothing, some with deeds as well undone,

Death came tacitly and took them where they never see the sun.

But when I sit down to reason, think to take my stand nor swerve,

While I triumph o'er a secret wrung from nature's close reserve,

In you come with your cold music, till I creep through every nerve.

Yes, you, like a ghostly cricket, creaking where a house was burn'd

'Dust and ashes, dead and done with, Venice spent what Venice earn'd!

The soul, doubtless, is immortal-where a soul can be discern'd.

'Yours for instance, you know physics, something of geology,

Mathematics are your pastime; souls shall rise in their degree;

alike

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Butterflies may dread extinction,-you'll not die, it cannot be!

'As for Venice and its people, merely born to bloom and drop,

Here on earth they bore their fruitage, mirth and folly were the crop;

What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop?

'Dust and ashes! So you creak it, and I want the heart to scold.

Dear dead women, with such hair, too-what's become of all the gold

Used to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel chilly and grown old.

ROBERT BROWNING.

As if with resting wing
Like herons in a ring,
Vessels and shallops keep,
Their quiet sleep

Upon the vapoury bay;
And when the light winds play,
Their pennons, lately whist,
Cross in the mist.

The moon is now concealed,
And now but half revealed,
Veiling her face so pale
With starry veil.

In convent of Sainte-Croix
Thus doth the abbess draw
Her ample-folded cape

Round her fair shape.

The palace of the knight,
The staircases so white,

The solemn porticos

Are in repose.

Each bridge and thoroughfare

The gloomy statues there,

The gulf which trembles so

When the winds blow,

All still, save guards who pace,
With halberds long, their space,
Watching the battled walls

Of arsenals.

ALFRED DE MUSSET.

Tr. C. F. Bates.

VENICE

WHITE Swan of cities, slumbering in thy nest
So wonderfully built among the reeds
Of the lagoon, that fences thee and feeds,
As sayeth thy old historian and thy guest!
White water-lily, cradled and caressed
By ocean streams, and from the silt and weeds
Lifting thy golden pistils with their seeds,
Thy sun-illumined spires, thy crown and crest!
White phantom city, whose untrodden streets
Are rivers, and whose pavements are the shifting
Shadows of palaces and strips of sky;

I wait to see thee vanish like the fleets

Seen in mirage, or towers of cloud uplifting
In air their unsubstantial masonry.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.

VENETIAN SUNRISE

HOW OFTEN have I now outwatched the night
Alone in this grey chamber toward the sea
Turning its deep-arcaded balcony!

Round yonder sharp acanthus-leaves the light
Comes stealing, red at first, then golden bright;
Till when the day-god in his strength and glee
Springs from the orient flood victoriously,
Each cusp is tipped and tongued with quivering
white.

The islands that were blots of purple bloom,
Now tremble in soft liquid luminous haze,
Uplifted from the sea-floor to the skies;
And dim discerned erewhile through roseate gloom,
A score of sails now stud the waterways,
Ruffling like swans afloat from paradise.

JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS.

VENICE

VENICE, thou Siren of sea-cities, wrought
By mirage, built on water, stair o'er stair,
Of sunbeams and cloud-shadows, phantom-fair,
With naught of earth to mar thy sea-born
thought!