The inmost purple spirit of light, and made
Their very peaks transparent.’
Whoever knows the lagoons of the Lido and of Murano knows the exquisite justness and veracity of this description. I thought of it not long ago when, sailing over the shallow water on the way to the city from Torcello, I saw the sun descend behind the roseate Euganean hills, whilst the full moon hung exactly opposite, over the more distant chain of the Istrian mountains.
Then this again:
‘I see a chaos of green leaves and fruit
Built round dark caverns, even to the root
Of the living stems who feed them; in whose bowers,
There sleep in their dark dew the folded flowers;
Beyond, the surface of the unsickled corn
Trembles not in the slumbering air, and borne