O weird sea-birds, as ye utter your hoarse and discordant cry,
Do ye wot of the north, and the hearts that are watching your ominous course?
Or is it enough for ye, birds, as gyrating and slanting ye fly,
To ride the broad Adriatic, and drink of her glamour and force,
Regardless that realms beyond realms, as waves upon waves, in unrest,
Look up for the message of love that God’s angel brings to the blest?
LADY LINDSAY.
AUTUMN IN VENICE
It is now late in October. The days are short but luminous still when the mists do not drift in from the lagoons of the Lido, or from the marshes of the low-lying lands beyond Mestre and Fucina. Boats still come in with rosy sunrise reflection shed on their orange sails, and take their loads of autumn apples and pears and walnuts to the fruit-market above Rialto. But soon, very soon, it will be winter, and the gondolas will glide by with closed felze, and the water will be a troubled waste between the city and the Lido, and men will hurry with muffled heads over the square of Saint Mark when the Alpine wind blows, and the strange big ships creep on their piloted course tediously and timidly through the snowstorms to their anchorage in the wide Giudecca.
OUIDA.