VENETIAN NOCTURNE
Down the narrow Calle where the moonlight cannot enter,
The houses are so high;
Silent and alone we pierced the night’s dim core and centre—
Only you and I.
Clear and sad our footsteps rang along the hollow pavement,
Sounding like a bell;
Sounding like a voice that cries to souls in Life’s enslavement,
‘There is Death as well!’
Down the narrow dark we went, until a sudden whiteness
Made us hold our breath;
All the white Salute towers and domes in moonlit brightness,—
Ah! could this be Death?
A. Mary F. Robinson (Madame Duclaux).
NIGHT IN THE PIAZZA
There have been times, not many, but enough
To quiet all repinings of the heart;
There have been times, in which my tranquil soul,
No longer nebulous, sparse, errant, seemed
Upon its axis solidly to move,
Centred and fast: no mere elastic blank
For random rays to traverse unretained,
But rounding luminous its fair ellipse
Around its central sun....
O happy hours!
O compensation ample for long days
Of what impatient tongues call wretchedness!
O beautiful, beneath the magic moon,
To walk the watery way of palaces!
O beautiful, o’ervaulted with gemmed blue,
The spacious court, with colour and with gold,
With cupolas, and pinnacles, and points,
And crosses multiplex, and lips and balls
(Wherewith the bright stars unreproving mix,
Nor scorn by hasty eyes to be confused);
Fantastically perfect this low pile
Of Oriental glory; these long ranges
Of classic chiselling, this gay flickering crowd,
And the calm campanile. Beautiful!
O beautiful! and that seemed more profound
This morning by the pillar when I sat
Under the great arcade, at the review,
And took, and held, and ordered on my brain
The faces, and the voices, and the whole mass
O’ the motley facts of existence flowing by!
O perfect, if ’twere all!
ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH.
VENETA MARINA
INTERMEZZO: VENETIAN NIGHTS
The masts rise white to the stars,
White on the night of the sky,
Out of the water’s night,
And the stars lean down to them white.
Ah! how the stars seem nigh;
How far away are the stars!
And I too under the stars,
Alone with the night again,
And the water’s monotone;
I and the night alone,
And the world and the ways of men
Farther from me than the stars.
ARTHUR SYMONS.
VENETIAN NIGHT
Her eyes in the darkness shone, in the twilight shed
By the gondola bent like the darkness over her head.
Softly the gondola rocked, lights came and went;
A white glove shone as her black fan lifted and leant
Where the silk of her dress, the blue of a bittern’s wing,
Rustled against my knee, and, murmuring
The sweet slow hesitant English of a child,
Her voice was articulate laughter, her soul smiled.
Softly the gondola rocked, lights came and went;
From the sleeping houses a shadow of slumber leant
Over our heads like a wing, and the dim lagoon,
Rustling with silence, slumbered under the moon.
Softly the gondola rocked, and a pale light came
Over the waters, mild as a silver flame;
She lay back, thrilling with smiles, in the twilight shed
By the gondola bent like the darkness over her head;
I saw her eyes shine subtly, then close awhile:
I remember her silence, and, in the night, her smile.
ARTHUR SYMONS.