SAN FRANCESCO DELLA VIGNA
Do you know San Francesco della Vigna, in Venice?
Some say that its tall tower is the first point rising above the waves, which the returning Venetian sailor sees as he comes homeward from the south-east, over the foaming bars of Chioggia and Malamocco, one slender shaft lifted against sky, calling him back to his city and his home. All the mariners and fishermen, who come and go over the Adrian waters, have an especial tenderness, an especial reverence, for Saint Francis of the Vineyard. There is no vineyard now; only one small square garden, with a cloister running round it, arched, columned, marble paved, where the dead lie under the worn smooth slabs, and the box-edges hem in thyme, and balsams, and basil, and carnations, and thrift, and saxifrage, and other homely hardy plants which need slight fostering care. The sea winds blow strongly there, and the sea fogs drift thickly, and the steam and smoke of the foundries round about hang in heavy clouds, where once the pavilions and the lawns and the terraces of the patricians of Venice touched the grey-green lagoon; but this garden of San Francesco is still sweet and fresh: shut in between its marble colonnades with the deep brown shadow of the church leaning over it, and the chiming of the bells, and the melody of the organ rolling above it in deep waves of sound, jarred sometimes by the clash of the hammers falling on the iron and the copper of the foundries near at hand, and sometimes sinking to a sweet silence, only softly stirred by the splash of an oar as a boat passes up or down the narrow canal.
For the sake of that cloistered garden, a gondola came one summer every day to the landing-place before San Francesco. In the gondola was an artist, a painter of Paris, Yvon Dorât, who had seen the spot, and liked it, and returned to paint from it every day, finding an inexpressible charm in its contrasts of gloom and light, of high brown walls and low-lying graves, of fresh green herbs and flowers, and melancholy immemorial marble aisles. He meant to make a great picture of it, with the ethereal Venetian sky above all, and, between the straight edges of the bay, a solitary monk passing thoughtfully. Dorât was under the charm of Venice: that subtle dreamy charm, voluptuous and yet spiritual, which no artist or poet ever can resist, and these summer months were to him as a vision of languor, and beauty and rest, in which the white wings of sea-birds, and the silver of gleaming waters, and the festal figures of Carpaccio and the golden warmth of Palma, Vecchio, and the glories of sunsets aflame behind the Euganean hills, and the mystery of moonless night, with the tide washing against the weed-grown piles of a Madonna of the lagoon, were all blended in that confusion of past and present, of art and nature, of desire and repose, which fills the soul and the senses of those who love Venice, and live in thrall to her.
OUIDA.
A TOCCATA OF GALUPPI’S
Oh, Galuppi,[2] Baldassaro, this is very sad to find!
I can hardly misconceive you; it would prove me deaf and blind;
But although I give you credit, ’tis with such a heavy mind!
Here you come with your old music, and here’s all the good it brings.