| |
| I WENT to greet the full May-moon | |
| On that long narrow shoal | |
| Which lies between the still Lagoon | |
| And the open ocean’s roll. | |
| |
| How pleasant was that grassy shore, | 5 |
| When one for months had been | |
| Shut up in streets,—to feel once more | |
| One’s foot fall on the green! | |
| |
| There are thick trees too in that place; | |
| But straight from sea to sea, | 10 |
| Over a rough uncultured space, | |
| The path goes drearily. | |
| |
| I passed along, with many a bound, | |
| To hail the fresh free wave; | |
| But, pausing, wonderingly found | 15 |
| I was treading on a grave. | |
| |
| Then, at one careless look, I saw | |
| That, for some distance round, | |
| Tombstones, without design or law, | |
| Were scattered on the ground: | 20 |
| |
| Of pirates or of mariners | |
| I deemed that these might be | |
| The fitly chosen sepulchres, | |
| Encircled by the sea. | |
| |
| But there were words inscribed on all, | 25 |
| I’ the tongue of a far land, | |
| And marks of things symbolical, | |
| I could not understand. | |
| |
| They are the graves of that sad race | |
| Who from their Syrian home, | 30 |
| For ages, without resting-place, | |
| Are doomed in woe to roam; | |
| |
| Who, in the days of sternest faith, | |
| Glutted the sword and flame, | |
| As if a taint of moral death | 35 |
| Were in their very name: | |
| |
| And even under laws most mild, | |
| All shame was deemed their due, | |
| And the nurse told the Christian child | |
| To shun the curséd Jew. | 40 |
| |
| Thus all their gold’s insidious grace | |
| Availed not here to gain | |
| For their last sleep a seemlier place | |
| Than this bleak-featured plain. | |
| |
| Apart, severely separate, | 45 |
| On the verge of the outer sea, | |
| Their home of death is desolate | |
| As their life’s home could be. | |
| |
| The common sand-path had defaced | |
| And pressed down many a stone; | 50 |
| Others can be but faintly traced | |
| I’ the rank grass o’er them grown. | |
| |
| I thought of Shylock,—the fierce heart | |
| Whose wrongs and injuries old | |
| Temper, in Shakespeare’s world of art, | 55 |
| His lusts of blood and gold; | |
| |
| Perchance that form of broken pride | |
| Here at my feet once lay,— | |
| But lay alone,—for at his side | |
| There was no Jessica! | 60 |
| |
| Fondly I love each island-shore, | |
| Embraced by Adrian waves; | |
| But none has Memory cherished more | |
| Than Lido and its graves. | |
| |
