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(From Beatrice)
SAD night is o’er the City of the Isles, | |
| And o’er a palace that amid her glooming | |
| With a radiant halo smiles, | |
| While music from its windows booming | |
| Floats the voice of masque and measure | 5 |
| Through distant domes and marble piles, | |
| And hymns the jubilee of youth and pleasure. | |
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| Between the ripple dimly plashing, | |
| And the dark roof looming high, | |
| Lost in the funereal sky, | 10 |
| Like many-colored jewels flashing, | |
| Small lamps in loops and rosaries of fire, | |
| Verdant and blood-red, trembling, turning, | |
| Yellow, blue, in the deep water burning, | |
| From dark till dawning | 15 |
| Sot all aglow the wide concave, | |
| And splash and stain the marble and the nave. | |
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| From balconies in air, | |
| The emblazoned silken awning | |
| Flows like a lazy sail; | 20 |
| And gondoliers down there, | |
| And masks upon the stair, | |
| Hear music swelling o’er them like a gale. | |
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| Italian grace and gayety, | |
| And silver-bearded policy, | 25 |
| Princes and soldiers, sage and great, | |
| The craft and splendor of the state, | |
| Proud dames, and Adria’s fair daughters, | |
| The sirens of Venetian waters, | |
| Beautiful as summer dreams | 30 |
| Dreamed in haunted forest glade | |
| By silvery streams in leafy gleams, | |
| Floating through the awful shade. | |
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| The noble palace peopled was right meetly, | |
| And in its wide saloons the dance went featly, | 35 |
| And high above the hum | |
| Swelled the thunder and the hoot | |
| Of theorbo and of viol, of the hautboy and the flute, | |
| And the roaring of the drum. | |
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