My track like a sea-bird.—I was a boy then.
LORD BYRON.
BOATS AND VOICES
The boat rocks backwards and forwards, to the gondolier’s circling oar, the shadows dance a delicious contredanse. Splash, gentle oar; rise, domes and spires upon the vault; sing, voices, calling along the water; stream, golden suns, reflected there. The gondola flies down a narrow passage towards an open place where the canals diverge; the shadows part, and fire is streaming from the tumultuous water. Sà premi! cry the gondoliers; for a moment all is in swinging confusion.... Lights flash from the upper windows of the tall palaces, balconies start overhead marked upon the sky. Now it is a palace to let, with wooden shutters swinging in shadow; now we pass the yawning vaults of great warehouses filled with saffron and crimson dyes, where barges are moored and workmen strain at the rolling barrels.... Now it is the brown wall of some garden terrace; a garland has crept over the brick, and droops almost to the water; one little spray encircles a rusty ring hanging there with its shadow.... Now we touch palace walls, and with a hollow jar start off once more. Now comes a snatch of song through an old archway; here are boats and voices, the gondolier’s earrings twinkle in the sun; here are vine wreaths, and steps where children, those untiring spectators of life, are clustering; more barges with heavy fruit and golden treasure go by. A little brown-faced boy is lying with his brown legs in the sun on the very edge of a barge, dreaming over into the green water; he lazily raises his head to look, and falls back again; now a black boat passes like a ghost, its slender points start upwards in a line with the curve of yonder spire; now it is out of all this swing of shadow and confusion that we cross a broad sweet breadth of sunlight, and come into the Grand Canal.
LADY RITCHIE.
FROM A PALACE-STEP AT VENICE
I muse ... on a ruined palace-step
At Venice: why should I break off, nor sit
Longer upon my step, exhaust the fit
England gave birth to? Who’s adorable