In Venice only the melancholy drenching rain of a winter’s day brings rest to the eye, when water meets water, and sky is washed into sea and the city lies soaking and dripping between two floods. But soon the wind shifts to the north-east, out breaks the sun again, and all Venice is instantly in a glare of light and colour and startling distinctness, like the sails and rigging of a ship at sea on a clear day.
FRANCIS MARION CRAWFORD.
VENICE: THE END OF WINTER
There is joy in the heart of each Venetian when the end of winter is reached at last, and once more are visible, lying like pearls on the spring-blue ocean, the islands of Murano and Malamocco. They have long been veiled from view by opal mists, sometimes but half obscured and lying like a ghostly mirage in the distance. But now they stand out like bright and beautiful cameos, glistening white on a surface of blue. Tower and wall and roof, washed clean and new by the refreshing winter mists, stand ready to receive the sunlight. For these sun-loving and warmth-loving people the year should be always summer! This first bright burst of warm sunshine has set the spirit of cheer in the heart of each gondolier as he stands by his own favourite traghetto, furbishing up his gondola and preparing for the coming glorious seasons of spring and summer in Venice! He smiles and jokes again; he shouts once more in his old way to his brother gondolier across the opposite shore—É primavera! é primavera!
ENRICO ALBINI.
VENICE OF THE PAST
Dim phantoms of banners for conquest unfurl’d,
Of brows bright with diamonds, of bosoms empearl’d,
Of Venice, the mistress and Queen of the world;
Of argosies laden with damask and gold,