| |
| WHAT I dream, you ask? That yesterday | |
| We had died, we two. In fair array— | |
| Clad in white, our hair with flowers wound— | |
| In our gondola we’re seaward bound. | |
| Bells from yonder campanile peal, | 5 |
| But the water gurgles round the keel, | |
| Drowns the distant toll that’s gently failing. | |
| Onward, onward to the sea we’re sailing, | |
| Where the ships with masts that tower high, | |
| Sombre shadows, rest against the sky, | 10 |
| Where on fishing-boats there gleam the moist, | |
| Deep-stained red and yellow sails they hoist, | |
| Where the roaring mighty waves are swelling, | |
| Where the sailors lurid tales are telling. | |
| Through a gate of bluest water, deeply | 15 |
| Downward now our boat is gliding steeply. | |
| In the depths we find a widening range | |
| Filled with many trees of coral strange, | |
| Where in lustrous shells that hidden gleam | |
| Pale gigantic pearls alluring beam. | 20 |
| Silvery fishes pass us, glistening, shy, | |
| Leaving tinted trails as they flit by, | |
| In whose furrows other fish instead | |
| Gleam with slender tails of golden red. | |
| At the bottom, fathoms deeps, we dream: | 25 |
| As if bells were calling, it will seem, | |
| Now and then, as if from some far land | |
| Winds sang songs we cannot understand, | |
| Songs of narrow streets we long ago | |
| Left behind, of things we used to know— | 30 |
| Songs so far, far off about the ways | |
| That we trod in long forgotten days. | |
| And with wonder we’ll remember slowly | |
| Now a street, now some cathedral holy, | |
| Or the shouting of a gondolier— | 35 |
| Many names that once we used to hear. | |
| Smiling then, as children smile in sleep, | |
| We our silent lips still moving keep, | |
| And the word will, ere it spoken seems, | |
| Fall into oblivion, death in dreams. | 40 |
| Over us the mighty vessels float, | |
| Sails are bright on many a sombre boat, | |
| Snow-white birds in gleaming sunshine fly, | |
| Glist’ning nets upon the water lie; | |
| Spanning all, with arches high and true | 45 |
| Glows the heavens’ vault of sunlit blue. | |
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