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AT VENICE LO Venice, gay with color, lights and song, | |
| Calls from St. Mark’s with ancient voice and strange: | |
| I am the Witch of Cities! glide along | |
| My silver streets that never wear by change | |
| Of years: forget the years, and pain, and wrong, | 5 |
| And ever sorrow reigning men among. | |
| Know I can soothe thee, please and marry thee | |
| To my illusions. Old and siren strong, | |
| I smile immortal, while the mortals flee | |
| Who whiten on to death in wooing me. | 10 |
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AT FLORENCE Say, what more fair by Arno’s bridgèd gleam | |
| Than Florence, viewed from San Miniato’s slope | |
| At eventide, when west along the stream | |
| The last of day reflects a silver hope!— | |
| Lo, all else softened in the twilight beam:— | 15 |
| The city’s mass blent in one hazy cream, | |
| The brown Dome ’midst it, and the Lily tower, | |
| And stern Old Tower more near, and hills that seem | |
| Afar, like clouds to fade, and hills of power | |
| On this side greenly dark with cypress, vine and bower. | 20 |
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AT ROME End of desire to stray I feel would come | |
| Though Italy were all fair skies to me, | |
| Though France’s fields went mad with flowery foam | |
| And Blanc put on a special majesty, | |
| Not all could match the growing thought of home | 25 |
| Nor tempt to exile. Look I not on Rome— | |
| This ancient, modern, mediæval queen— | |
| Yet still sigh westward over hill and dome, | |
| Imperial ruin and villa’s princely scene | |
| Lovely with pictured saints and marble gods serene. | 30 |
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REFLECTION Rome, Florence, Venice—noble, fair and quaint, | |
| They reign in robes of magic round me here; | |
| But fading, blotted, dim, a picture faint, | |
| With spell more silent, only pleads a tear. | |
| Plead not! Thou hast my heart, O picture dim! | 35 |
| I see the fields, I see the autumn hand | |
| Of God upon the maples! Answer Him | |
| With weird, translucent glories, ye that stand | |
| Like spirits in scarlet and in amethyst! | |
| I see the sun break over you: the mist | 40 |
| On hills that lift from iron bases grand | |
| Their heads superb!—the dream, it is my native land. | |
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