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Children like those that Gianbellini painted,*
To batten on the miserable alms,

The sordid fragments of their country's wealth,
Doled out by servants of a stranger king?
Is there no engine of compassionate Death,
Which with a rapid mercy will relieve
This ancient city of its shamèd being?
Is War so weary that he cannot strike
One iron blow, that she may fold her robe
About her head, and fall imperially?

Is there no eager earthquake far below,
To shiver her frail limbs, and hurl her down
Into the bosom of her mated sea?

Or must she, for a lapse of wretched years,
Armless and heartless, tremble on as now,

Like one who hears the tramp of murderous foes,
Unseen, and feels them nearer, nearer still;—
Till round her Famine's pestilential breath,
Fatally closing, to the gloom of Time,
She shall, in quivering agony, give up
The spirit of that light, which burnt so long,
A stedfast glory, an unfailing fire?

Thus ran the darkling current of my thoughts,
As one sad night, from the Rialto's edge,
I looked into the waters,—on whose face

* E. G. In the refectories of the Redentore and Frari,

Glimmered the reflex of some few faint stars,
And two far-flitting lamps of gondoliers,

That seemed on that black flat to move alone,
While, on each side, each well-known building lost
Its separate beauty in one dark long curve.

V.

CITY, whose name did once adorn the world,
Thou might'st have been all that thou ever wert,
In form and feature and material strength,

Up from the sea, which is thy pedestal,
Unto thy Campanile's golden top,

And yet have never won the precious crown,
To be the loved of human hearts, to be

The wise man's treasure now and evermore.-
The ingenious boldness, the creative will,
Which from some weak uncertain plots of sand,
Cast up among the waters, could erect
Foundations firm as on the central ground,-
The art which changed thy huts to palaces,
And bade the God of Ocean's temples rise
Conspicuous far above the crystal plain,-
The ever-active nerve of Industry,

That bound the Orient to the Occident

In fruitful commerce, till thy lap was filled

With wealth, the while thy head was girt with power;
Each have their separate palm from wondering men,
But the sage thinker's passion must have source

In sympathy entire with that rare spirit
Which did possess thee, as thy very life,-
That power of union and self-sacrifice,
Which from the proud republics of old time
Devolved upon thee, by a perfect faith
Strung to a tenfold deeper energy.
Within thy people's mind immutable
Two notions held associate monarchy,
Religion and the State, to which alone,
In their full freedom, they declared themselves
Subject, and deemed this willing servitude
Their dearest privilege of liberty.

Thus at the call of either sacred cause,
All wealth, all feelings, all peculiar rights,
Were made one universal holocaust,

Without a thought of pain,-thus all thy sons
Bore thee a love, not vague and hard defined,
But close and personal, a love no force
Could take away, no coldness could assuage.
Thus when the noble body of Italy,

Which God has bound in one by Alps and sea,

Was struggling with torn heart and splintered limbs,

So that the very marrow of her strength

Mixed with the lavished gore and oozed away,—

Town banded against town, street against street,
House against house, and father against son,
The servile victims of unmeaning feuds,-

Thou didst sustain the wholeness of thy power,—
Thy altar was as a domestic hearth,

Round which thy children sat in brotherhood ;-
Never was name of Guelf or Ghibelline

Writ on thy front in letters of bright blood;
Never the stranger, for his own base ends,
Flattered thy passions, or by proffered gold
Seduced the meanest of thy citizens.→→→→
Thus too the very sufferers of thy wrath,
Whom the unsparing prudence of the state,
For erring judgment, insufficient zeal,

Or heavier fault, had banished from its breast,
Even they, when came on thee thy hour of need,
Fell at thy feet and prayed, with humble tears,
That thou wouldst deign at least to use their wealth,
Though thou didst scorn the gift of their poor

*

Prime model of a Christian commonwealth!
Thou wise simplicity, which present men
Calumniate, not conceiving,-joy is mine,

lives.*

* As in the instance of Antonio Grimani, who was living in exile at Rome at the time of the league of Cambray. He had been condemned for some error in fighting against the Turks. When Venice was in distress, he offered all his private fortune to the state. After her victory he was not only recalled, but elected Doge some years later.

That I have read and learnt thee as I ought,
Not in the crude compiler's painted shell,
But in thine own memorials of live stone,
And in the pictures of thy kneeling princes,
And in the lofty words on lofty tombs,
And in the breath of ancient chroniclers,
And in the music of the outer sea.

THE VENETIAN SERENADE.

WHEN along the light ripple the far senerade
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,
"I am coming-Stalì-but you know not for whom! "
Stali-not for whom! "

Now the tones become clearer,-you hear more and more
How the water divided returns on the oar,-

Does the prow of the gondola strike on the stair?
Do the voices and instruments pause and prepare?
Oh! they faint on the ear as the lamp on the view,
"I am passing-Premi-but I stay not for you!

Premi-not for you !"

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