Читать книгу Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 17, No. 097, January, 1876 - Various - Страница 3

Sleep, Venice, sleep! the evening gun resounds

Over the waves that rock thee on their breast:

The bugle blare to kennel calls the hounds

Who sleepless watch thy waking and thy rest.

Sleep till the night-stars do the day-star meet,

And shuddering echoes o'er the water run,

Rippling through every glass-green, wavering street

The stern good-morrow of thy guardian Hun.

Still do thy stones, O Venice! bid rejoice,

With their old majesty, the gazer's eye,

In their consummate grace uttering a voice,

From every line, of blended harmony.

Still glows the splendor of the wondrous dreams

Vouchsafed thy painters o'er each sacred shrine,

And from the radiant visions downward streams

In visible light an influence divine.

Still through thy golden day and silver night

Sings his soft jargon the gay gondolier,

And o'er thy floors of liquid malachite

Slide the black-hooded barks to mystery dear.

Like Spanish beauty in its sable veil,

They rustle sideling through the watery way,

The wild, monotonous cry with which they hail

Each other's passing dying far away.

As each steel prow grazes the island strands

Still ring the sweet Venetian voices clear,

And wondering wanderers from far, free lands

Entranced look round, enchanted listen here.

From the far lands of liberty they come—

England's proud children and her younger race;

Those who possess the Past's most noble home,

And those who claim the Future's boundless space.

Pitying they stand. For thee who would not weep?

Well it beseems these men to weep for thee,

Whose flags (as erst they own) control the deep,

Whose conquering sails o'ershadow every sea.

Yet not in pity only, but in hope,

Spring the hot tears the brave for thee may shed:

Thy chain shall prove but a sand-woven rope;

But sleep thou still: the sky is not yet red.

Sleep till the mighty helmsman of the world,

By the Almighty set at Fortune's wheel,

Steers toward thy freedom, and, once more unfurled,

The banner of St. Mark the sun shall feel.

Then wake, then rise, then hurl away thy yoke,

Then dye with crimson that pale livery,

Whose ghastly white has been the jailer's cloak

For years flung o'er thy shame and misery!

Rise with a shout that down thy Giants' Stair

Shall thy old giants bring with thundering tread—

The blind crusader standing stony there,

And him, the latest of thy mighty dead.

Whose patriot heart broke at the Austrian's foot,

Whose ashes under the black marble lie,

From whose dry dust, stirred by the voice, shall shoot

The glorious growth of living liberty.