SHELLEY IN VENICE
WRITTEN TO MARY SHELLEY
We shall travel hence within a few hours, with the speed of the post.... We have now got a comfortable carriage, and two mules, and, thanks to Paolo, have made a very decent bargain, comprising everything to Padua. I should say we had delightful fruit for breakfast, figs, very fine, and peaches, unfortunately gathered before they were ripe, whose smell was like what one fancies of the wakening of Paradise flowers.... I came from Padua [to Venice] in a gondola, and the gondolier, among other things, without any hint on my part, began talking of Lord Byron. He said he was a giovinotto Inglese, with a nome stravagante, who lived very luxuriously, and spent great sums of money. This man, it seems, was one of Lord B.’s gondoliers.... These gondolas are the most beautiful and convenient boats in the world. They are finely carpeted and furnished with black, and painted black. The couches on which you lean are extraordinarily soft, and are so disposed as to be the most comfortable to those who lean or sit. The windows have at will either Venetian plate-glass flowered, or Venetian blinds, or blinds of black cloth to shut out the light.... I called on Lord Byron: he was delighted to see me. He took me in his gondola across the lagoon to a long sandy island, which defends Venice from the Adriatic. When we disembarked, we found his horses waiting for us, and we rode along the sands of the sea, talking. Our conversation consisted in histories of his wounded feelings, and questions as to my affairs, and great professions of friendship and regard for me.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
THE VENETIAN SERENADE
When along the light ripple the far serenade
Has accosted the ear of each passionate maid,
She may open the window that looks on the stream,—
She may smile on her pillow and blend it in dream;
Half in words, half in music, it pierces the gloom,