ALLEGORIA MARITIMA.
GIORGIONE―ACCADEMIA DELLE BELLE ARTI―VENICE.
UNMOOR, my gondolier, thy sable
bark!
A tender glow, forerunning, bathes the dark
Behind the bulbous cupolas of Saint Mark;
And every pinnacle and cross and spire,
The long-robed saints, the bell-tower's angel, higher,
In that lustration wait the kiss of fire.
With flutter of doves, as luminous glances search
The dream-bewildered sculptures where they perch,
A marvellous bower of night, blossoms the church
All gold and color and spray: floats up the
moon:
The joy of the deep sea in plenilune!
A round face smiling over the lagoon!
O Night-beam, neither pale nor sad of tone!
Thus warm o'er wave-born Aphrodite's zone
Might complemental gold-green scarf have
blown;
And like unfading clouds of sunset seem
The rose-sheen of the ducal walls and gleam
Of painted fisher-sails on Adria's stream―
On tides that fed this halcyon's nest of yore,
Ere Freedom's fledgling grew a bird of
war;
That to grand bridals bore the Bucentaur,
With gonfalon and ring of sovereignty;
That held Saint Mark for many a century
Inviolate in the inviolable sea.
As calmly smiled the moon as now she
smiles,
When Power from these canals and lordly piles,
On wingèd lions, leaped to the far isles;
Or, later, when from subject Cyprus came
A laughing Victress, child of foam and flame,
And Venice revelled in voluptuous
shame.
She smiled when Austria's shackles crushed and galled;
She smiles on the brave city disenthralled
Save of the duties Freedom hath recalled.
O calm, cold irony of superior state!
O perfect beauty, in itself
elate,
Staring us down, as gods do, all too great!
Nay, Moon! of myriad orbs in yon wide roof
Thou only art near, thy heart is not aloof;
Thy lesson is sweet patience, fortune-proof!
Row to San Giorgio, to the Lido
row!
Till the far city floats a fairy show,
And, dreaming, dreams no further grace bestow!
Dreaming I slept. I wakened. Far
away
Had drifted on to sea my gondola,
And lo! there was no more a moon in heaven:
Dark clouds above and waves below were driven
Before a mighty wind and flood, and, ere
I could frame words of question, I was ware
I and my gondolier were not alone.
One at my side, two fronting me,
unknown
And awful as their advent, three cloaked Forms
Sat with me tossing on that sea of storms.
I did not mark, or else I could not brook
Their faces: he beside me held a Book
And wore the Wingèd Lion on his
breast;
One opposite revealed a knightly crest
And glimpses of a suit of mail, and he
Seemed youngest; and the other of the Three
Somehow impressed me most benignantly.
Then rose a baleful glare upon the
sea,
And, broadening swiftly, redly, wrathfully,
Roofed all the night. Up the Adriatic flew
A noble vessel with a demon crew!
From far a waif of storm―a burning wreck―
But, nearer, rolling deep her sides and
deck,
Hull, masts, and rig looked whole and taut and strong.
On such a ship what meant that fearful throng?
Squat on the bulwarks those fierce, grinning apes?
And, perched aloft, those bloated, bat-winged shapes?
The gulfs had emptied upward: all the
bark's
Hot wake was furrowed by the fins of sharks;
And round her swam the phosphorescent breed
Of slimy things whose only sense is greed,
All stomach; and alongside, pilot-wise,
A hornèd monster leered with goggle
eyes;
And there was more of dire than I can tell
(But see Giorgione―he has told it well),
And over all the lurid light of hell!
"Ho! ho!" was shouted with infernal glee,
"We go to sink all Venice in the
sea!"
Then, of my strange guests, he at my right hand
Stood up, with speech and gesture of command:
"By God's Evangel, writ in this my book,
Clasped by the Cross on which ye dare not look,
Foul fiends, begone! And, by the Master's will,
I bid the threatening elements be still!"
Back into depths of sleep―more like a swoon―
I fell entranced; till, lo! again the moon,
The Lido, the lone reach of the lagoon,
And the long vistas in enchantment
closed,
Where Venice on her hundred isles reposed,
And in the distance, clothed in peace supreme,
A vision of that vessel on the stream!
Spoke the same solemn Stranger, only he
The voice of that mysterious company:
"Yon ship is but a symbol, and the sight
That thrilled thee late a vision of the night―
The lesson of an acted parable―
The living truth in ancient miracle.
Yea, Venice in the time remote
withstood,
By grace of God, the tempest and the flood.
With firm foundations on the unstable wave,
Its space and freedom to her sons he gave,
And gloriously they kept from age to age
That empire and that priceless
heritage.
In vain a Doria thundered at her wall,―
Her steeds unbridled, unprofaned their stall,
Chioggia saw the vanquished victor fall.
In vain the Powers in League of Cambray joined,―
Hers was the valor that no odds
declined.
And the long glories of her earlier day
Shone culminating on Lepanto's bay.
Ah! when the stout Republic drooped at length,
Not from without came that which sapped her strength,
From turbulent deep or ever-jealous foe―
Within, within was wrought her overthrow.
In this fair garden of the Hesperides
No watchful dragon by a Hercules
Was slain: the eternal vigilance they cost
Slumbered, and all the golden fruits were lost,
Or, rather, rotted from the boughs. Behold!
In lieu thereof, corruptions manifold,
Pleasure's lewd apples, cruelties, treacheries,
O'erran the garden's stately liberties;
And the chaste daughters of the Evening Star
Fled with the immortal seed to lands afar.
"I speak in language of a heathen myth:
Truth is of God, hath all types, is the pith
Of many a fable. From her proud estate,
With the high qualities that made her
great
And her imperial spirit, Venice fell.
Stalked in defiant insolence of hell
The bravo; but the patriot's splendid pride,
Which had proclaimed the glorious Sea its bride,
Intolerant of a rival on the
wave,
Was scornful only in its self-scorn―a slave.
Let no false preacher, from a text precise,
Confound the highest virtue with a vice:
The pride whose level brow is honest, brave,
That watches the traitor and contemns the
knave;
Such fine disdain as an archangel feels
For grovelling fiends beneath his armèd heels―
More, there's a gracious vanity that charms
In guileless maiden and young knight in arms.
What vanity survives a woman’s
shame?
What pride in man with a dishonored name?
"The globe along its annual round is borne,
And Hesperus becomes the Star of Morn.
The cycle reascending gains its prime:
Returns the Golden Age of song
sublime.
In new Avatars of immortal Good,
World without end, shall Evil be subdued.
So Venice, freed from bondage and from shame,
Is fit inheritor of her noblest fame.
As in the past (thou'st witnessed) God in
me
Did work a miracle, for ever he,
By human means alone, is strong to save.
Behold yon bark how beautiful and brave!
The demons that defiled hurled overboard,
And Duty to the helm and ropes
restored,
On open sea, in shoal-beleaguered strait,
She rides right on, a gallant Ship of State!"
"And thou, then," low I murmured, "art―" "Saint Mark!
These my companions in thy fragile bark―
This is Saint George! and this Saint Nicholas!
Son of America! it may come to pass
Thine own great land shall be in dismal plight
From evil spirits of the day or night:
Then may this Gospel of man's liberty
In Christ, the patron saint of
chivalry,
And saint beloved of children, set you free!
"Now bid the gondolier his oar to ply:
We go, even as we came, invisibly;
But land us where our bones or relics lie."
Was I mistaken? On that phantom
craft,
Slow-melting in the moonlight far abaft,
Far over glistening sheet and shallow bars,
Was it the flutter of the Stripes and Stars?
Catholic World 34 (February 1882): 711-715.
