O sight of glory, sight of wonder!
Seen, a pictorial portent, under.
O great Rialto, the vast round
Of thy thrice-solid arch profound!
(How light we go, how softly! Ah,
Life should be as the gondola!)
ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH.
THE SONGS OF THE GONDOLIERS
This evening I bespoke the celebrated song of the mariners, who sing Tasso and Ariosto to melodies of their own. This must actually be ordered, as it is not to be heard as a thing of course, but rather belongs to the half-forgotten traditions of former times. I entered a gondola by moonlight, with one singer before and the other behind me. They sing their song, taking up the verses alternately. The melody, which we know through Rousseau, is of a middle kind, between choral and recitative, maintaining throughout the same cadence, without any fixed time. The modulation is also uniform, only varying with a sort of declamation both tone and measures, according to the subject of the verse. But the spirit—the life of it, is as follows:
Without inquiring into the construction of the melody, suffice it to say that it is admirably suited to that easy class of people who, always humming something or other to themselves, adapt such tunes to any little poem they know by heart.