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ON THE LIDO
ON her still lake the city sits | |
| While bark and boat beside her flits, | |
| Nor hears, her soft siesta taking, | |
| The Adriatic billows breaking. | |
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IN THE PIAZZA AT NIGHT
O beautiful beneath the magic moon | 5 |
| To walk the watery way of palaces! | |
| O beautiful, o’er-vaulted with gemmed blue, | |
| This spacious court! with color and with gold, | |
| With cupolas and pinnacles and points | |
| And crosses multiplex and tips and balls | 10 |
| (Wherewith the bright stars unreproving mix, | |
| Nor scorn by hasty eyes to be confused); | |
| Fantastically perfect this lone pile | |
| Of Oriental glory; these long ranges | |
| Of classic chiselling; this gay flickering crowd, | 15 |
| And the calm Campanile,—beautiful! | |
| O, beautiful! | |
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| My mind is in her rest; my heart at home | |
| In all around; my soul secure in place, | |
| And the vext needle perfect to her poles. | 20 |
| Aimless and hopeless in my life, I seemed | |
| To thread the winding by-ways of the town | |
| Bewildered, baffled, hurried hence and thence, | |
| All at cross purpose ever with myself, | |
| Unknowing whence or whither. Then, at once, | 25 |
| At a step, I crown the Campanile’s top, | |
| And view all mapped below; islands, lagoon, | |
| An hundred steeples, and a myriad roofs, | |
| The fruitful champaign, and the cloud-capt Alps, | |
| And the broad Adriatic. | 30 |
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