From the calm Transparent waters float some thrilling sounds Of Amphionic music, and the words Are Tasso’s, where he passions for his love, That lady Florentine so lily-smooth, Clothed on with haughtiness!
At the black stair Of palace rising shadowy from the wave, Two singing gondolieri wait a freight Of loveliness. A tremulous woman, robed In dazzling satin, and whose dimpled arms, And milky heaving breasts of living snow Shine through their veil diaphanous, floats down From the wide portal; and the ivory prow Of the soft-cushion’d gondola (as she Steps lightly from the marble to her place) Dips, rises, dips again; then through the blue Swift glides into the sunset.
Oh, the glow Of that rich sunset dims whate’er I see In this my own dear valley! O’er the hills— Those craggy Euganean hills, whose peaks Wedge the clear crystalline—a blazonry Of clouds pavilion’d, folded, interwound Inextricably, load the breezeless west With awe and glory. The effulgence gleams Upon a vision’d Belmont, home of her Who loved as Shakespeare’s women do; and gleams Upon those walls wherein Othello’s spear Stabb’d clinging innocence; where that poor wife, The love-Cassandra Belvidera, gave Her soul in martyrdom to love and woe.
And shall I never that far town behold, Crested with sparkling columns, fiery towers, Praxitelean masonry?—behold Venice, the mart of nations, ere I die? By Heaven! her common merchants princes were Unto the continents; her traffickers The honourable of the earth! She stood A crownèd city, and the fawning sea Licked her white feet; and the eternal sun Kissed with departing beam her brow of snow!
Woe to this Venice, with her crown of pride! The Lady of the kingdoms, the perfection Of beauty, and the joy of the whole earth! Through her pavilions shall the crannying winds Whistle, and all her borders in the sea Crumble their Parian wonder. Woe to her, Whose glorious beauty is a fading flower! Her sober-suited nightingales, with notes Of smooth liquidity and softened stops, Solace the brakes; and ’mid her ancient streets Tawny, the gleaming and harmonious sea Makes silvery melody of bygone days. O white Enchantment! Ocean-spouse of old! When thy high battlements and bulging domes, By sunset purpled, trembled in the wave! Now o’er thy towers the Lord hath spread his hand, And as a cottage shalt thou be removed; Like Nineveh, or cloudy Babylon!
The Anemone.
Beneath a clump of furze it grew; And never mortal eye did view Its rathe and slender beauty, till I saw it in no mocking mood; For with its sweetness did it fill To me the ample solitude. A fond remembrance made me see Strange light in the anemone.
One April day when I was seven, Beneath the clear and deepening heaven, My father, God preserve him! went With me a Scottish mile and more; And in a playful merriment He deck’d my bonnet o’er and o’er— To fling a sunshine on his ease— With tenderest anemones.