The child stands gazing up at the American; he keeps mysterious dark eyes fixed upon him answering solemnly:
The Woodcarver,—he sings
A song of many lines
And all about the doves.
“Pigeons,” he sings, “are wise
They know their way so well,
For they mark it out by stars
And spiral paths of air;
They know their way so well,
And their way is always home
To quietness and peace—”
The child, keeping his eyes gravely fastened on the war correspondent, chants with a weird insistence:
The Woodcarver, he knows
The meaning of everything;
What makes the flowers grow,
What makes the bright stars fall,
What makes the echoes stay
After the priests’ intoning,
And boom around the walls
Of our cathedral there.
He says to keep on watching
The doves with soaring wings,
The peaceful, happy doves,
For they have a message for men—
Feverish, stupid men
Who are caught in a tangling net
Of their own imaginings.
The American looks puzzled, he puts his hand on the child’s head and searches the large mournful eyes; he mutters something under his breath, and shakes his head sadly.
American caressing the child’s hair:
Your city is lonely, Child.
Are you the only thing
That lives—comes out to the sun?
Do the Venetians hide
In cellars and in tombs—
They who were made of sun?
The palaces are closed,
The gondolas are gone,
But your people—all the play
Of their merry liquid eyes,
The white of their perfect teeth,
The olive glow of their skins,
And their saucy ragged ways;
The dark faced coral women,
The laughing lacemakers,
The choruses clamoring
Under the bobbing lanterns
At night on the canals—
Are they sleeping a happy sleep?
A long siesta-hour?
(Ah! that siesta-hour,
It has grown very long
For many Italian youths.)
Where have the people gone?
The child, slipping from under the war correspondent’s hand, looks away from him up to the pigeons that stream in circles around them, saying simply:
There is no one left here now
But the Woodcarver and me.
The Woodcarver makes saints
And angels young and sweet;
They poise all over his shop,
They smile at us from the walls,
We sit with the angels there
And eat the bitter bread
The Woodcarver has saved;
Though the guns go snarling on,
We are not much afraid;
We stay to guard the doves.
The Woodcarver has said
They watch over Venice,
So we watch over them.
American to himself: