Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Italy: Vols. XI–XIII. 1876–79.
Written at Venice
By Richard Monckton Milnes, Lord Houghton (1809–1885)N
Of indistinct surprise,
With which the Ocean-bride displays
Her pomp to stranger eyes;—
Not with the fancy’s flashing play,
The traveller’s vulgar theme,
Where following objects chase away
The moment’s dazzling dream;—
The city of my love,
Whose beauty is a thought to me
All mortal thoughts above;
And pass in dull unseemly haste,
Nor sight nor spirit clear,
As if the first bewildering taste
Were all the banquet here!
Itself consents to wear
The semblance of a land-locked lake,
Inviolably fair;
And in the dalliance of her isles,
Has levelled his strong waves,
Adoring her with tenderer wiles
Than his own pearly caves,—
Our noisy lives subdue,
And bare our bosoms to such balm
As God has given to few;
Surely may we delight to pause
On our care-goaded road,
Refuged from Time’s most bitter laws
In this august abode.
Rejoicing to remain;
The plashing oars fall on thy ear
Like a familiar strain;
No wheel prolongs its weary roll,
The earth itself goes round
Slower than elsewhere, and thy soul
Dreams in the void of sound.
From all disdain refined,
Kept open to be written in
By good of every kind,
Can harmonize its inmost sense
To every outward tone,
And bring to all experience
High reasoning of its own.
And wonder is gone by,
With patient skill it sets about
Its subtle work of joy;
Connecting all it comprehends
By lofty moods of love,—
The earthly Present’s farthest ends,—
The Past’s deep Heaven above.
By many a secret place,
Where darkling loveliness is hid,
And undistinguished grace,—
To mark the gloom, by slow degrees,
Exfoliate, till the whole
Shines forth before our sympathies,
A soul that meets a soul!
Come for the hundredth time,—
Our thoughts shall make a pleasant tune,
Our words a worthy rhyme;
And thickly round us we will set
Such visions as were seen,
By Tizian and by Tintorett,
And dear old Giambellin,—
Taught by this sun and sea,
Flashed on their works those burning dyes,
That fervent poetry;
And wove the shades so thinly clear
They would be parts of light
In northern climes, where frowns severe
Mar half the charms of sight.
Put on such brilliant tire,
As Nature, in this evening view,—
This world of tinted fire?
The glory into whose embrace
The virgin pants to rise
Is but reflected from the face
Of these Venetian skies.
Has sunk, not passed away;
His presence is far lordlier now
Than on the throne of day;
His spirit of splendor has gone forth,
Sloping wide violet rays,
Possessing air and sea and earth
With his essential blaze.
Melts to as pure a glow,
As images on painted glass
Or silken screens can show.
Gaze on the city,—contemplate
With that fine sense of thine
The Palace of the ancient state,—
That wildly grand design!
Of marble amber-tinged,
Like some enormous baldaquin
Gay-checkered and deep-fringed,
It stands in air and will not move,
Upheld by magic power,—
The dun-lead domes just caught above,—
Beside, the glooming tower.
Thy scope of ear and eye,—
That graceful cluster of low hills,
Bounding the western sky,
Which the ripe evening flushes cover
With purplest fruitage-bloom,—
Methinks that gold-lipt cloud may hover
Just over Petrarch’s tomb!
Its music seems to fall
Like distant bells, soft-voiced and sweet,
But sorrowful withal;—
That broken heart of love!—that life
Of tenderness and tears!
So weak on earth, in earthly strife,—
So strong in holier spheres!
While emulous nations ran
To kiss his feet, he stept aside
And wept the woes of man!
How in his genius-woven bower
Of passion ever green,
The world’s black veil fell, hour by hour,
Him and his rest between.
With this more serious mood
Of visible things that night brings on,
In her cool shade to brood;
The moon is clear in heaven and sea,
Her silver has been long
Slow-changing to bright gold, but she
Deserves a separate song.