| |
| MANY an archéd roof is bent | |
| Over the wave, | |
| But none like thine, from the firmament | |
| To the shells that at thy threshold lave. | |
| What name shall shadow thy rich-blue sheen, | 5 |
| Violet, sapphire, or ultramarine, | |
| Beautiful cave? | |
| |
| Blue,—all blue,—may we not compare it | |
| With heaven’s hue, | |
| With the pearl-shell, with burning spirit, | 10 |
| Or with aught that is azure too? | |
| No! for in ghostly realms alone | |
| Is the like of thy lustre shone, | |
| Cave of blue! | |
| |
| Less of earth than the spirit-world, | 15 |
| Morning ne’er | |
| Waters of thine with its dews impearled, | |
| Nor sunrise crimsoned the concave here; | |
| But evening in thee hath, as grandly glooms | |
| The twilight which thy one star illumes, | 20 |
| A rival sphere. | |
| |
| And that star—the great eye of heaven | |
| Watching thee— | |
| Waxes and wanes with morn and even, | |
| Beams as the skies beyond may be; | 25 |
| Resting on thy horizon’s rim | |
| Steadfast, but burning bright and dim | |
| Changefully. | |
| |
| On thy huge dome and cathedral aisles, | |
| Loftier far | 30 |
| Than man’s monuments, Capri piles | |
| Island rocks, which mountains are. | |
| Gleams through the flood thy spangled floor, | |
| As light streams in by thine open door | |
| On rock and spar. | 35 |
| |
| The world without by that sole portal | |
| May enter in; | |
| And therefore sacred to shapes immortal | |
| For classic ages thy halls have been. | |
| Sailing along from the lessening skylight, | 40 |
| Let us from the deepening twilight | |
| Its secrets win. | |
| |
| Mermaids, mantled in mazarine, | |
| Fancy sees; | |
| The ocean-sirens, and her, their queen, | 45 |
| Of music-charméd memories. | |
| Still breathes the ancient Parthenope, | |
| O’er waters of modern Napoli | |
| Her melodies. | |
| |
| Blue,—blue,—beautiful and intense,— | 50 |
| Everywhere: | |
| Spirits, or some one spirit immense, | |
| Breathing and burning in the air; | |
| Making an ardent presence felt, | |
| Till the rocks seem as like to melt | 55 |
| In the glare! | |
| |
| No! they may emit no heat, | |
| Those prisoned beams. | |
| At noontide, in thy coolness sweet, | |
| The glowing Italian summer dreams, | 60 |
| And the limpid and sparkling lymph | |
| Bath of beauty, in form of nymph, | |
| Well beseems. | |
| |
| World of wonders and strange delights, | |
| Submontane sea, | 65 |
| Bowers of branching stalactites, | |
| Islands of lapis lazuli, | |
| And waves so clear, and air so rich, | |
| That, gazing, we know not which is which,— | |
| Adieu to thee! | 70 |
| |
| To bathe the burning brow is sweet | |
| In such baptism, | |
| Often to find out truth’s retreat, | |
| In sparkling grotto, in cool abysm; | |
| So shall deep quiet thy soul imbue, | 75 |
| And melt into one harmonious hue | |
| The garish prism! | |
| |
