Thy heart, by Nature's discipline, Kept open to be written in By good of every kind, Can harmonise its inmost sense To every outward tone, And bring to all experience High reasoning of its own. So, when these forms come freely out, And wonder is gone by, With patient skill it sets about Its subtle work of joy ; Connecting all it comprehends The earthly Present's farthest ends, The Past's deep Heaven above. O bliss! to watch, with half-shut lid, By many a secret place, Where darkling loveliness is hid, And undistinguished grace,— To mark the gloom, by slow degrees, Shines forth before our sympathies, Come out upon the broad Lagoon, Our thoughts shall make a pleasant tune, And thickly round us we will set Such visions as were seen, By Tizian and by Tintorett, And dear old Giambellin, And all their peers in art, whose eyes, 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.— Did ever shape that Paolo drew As Nature, in this evening view,- The glory into whose embrace, The virgin pants to rise, Is but reflected from the face Of these Venetian skies. The sun, beneath the horizon's brow His presence is far lordlier now His spirit of splendour has gone forth, Sloping wide violet rays, Possessing air and sea and earth With his essential blaze.* Transpierced, transfused, each densest mass Melts to as pure a glow, As images on painted glass With that fine sense of thine The Palace of the ancient state,— That wildly-grand design! How 'mid the universal sheen Of marble amber-tinged, Like some enormous baldaquin * The perfect transparency and rich colour of all objects, and their reflections, in southern countries, for some short time after sunset, has an almost miraculous effect to a northern eye. Whenever it has been imitated in art, it has been generally pronounced unnatural or exaggerated. I do not remember to have ever seen the phenomenon so astonishingly beautiful as at Venice, at least in Italy. It stands in air and will not move, The dun-lead Domes just caught above- 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! Petrarch! when we that name repeat, 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 ! How in his most of godlike pride, 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. Welcome such thoughts ;-they well atone 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, Slow-changing to bright gold, but she ODE TO THE MOON OF THE SOUTH. LET him go down,-the gallant Sun! His work is nobly done; Well may He now absorb Within his solid orb The rays so beautiful and strong, The rays that have been out so long Embracing this delighted land as with a mystic song. |