Selected Poetry and Prose. Percy Bysshe Shelley

vain men imagine or believe,

      Or hope can paint, or suffering may achieve,

      We descanted; and I (for ever still

      Is it not wise to make the best of ill?)

      Argued against despondency, but pride

      Made my companion take the darker side.

      The sense that he was greater than his kind

      Had struck, methinks, his eagle spirit blind

      By gazing on its own exceeding light.

      —Meanwhile the sun paused ere it should alight,

      Over the horizon of the mountains.—Oh,

      How beautiful is sunset, when the glow

      Of Heaven descends upon a land like thee,

      Thou Paradise of exiles, Italy!

      Thy mountains, seas and vineyards and the towers

      Of cities they encircle!—It was ours

      To stand on thee, beholding it; and then,

      Just where we had dismounted, the Count’s men

      Were waiting for us with the gondola.—

      As those who pause on some delightful way

      Though bent on pleasant pilgrimage, we stood

      Looking upon the evening, and the flood,

      Which lay between the city and the shore,

      Paved with the image of the sky. The hoar

      And aëry Alps towards the north appeared,

      Through mist, an heaven-sustaining bulwark reared

      Between the east and west; and half the sky

      Was roofed with clouds of rich emblazonry,

      Dark purple at the zenith, which still grew

      Down the steep west into a wondrous hue

      Brighter than burning gold, even to the rent

      Where the swift sun yet paused in his descent

      Among the many-folded hills. They were

      Those famous Euganean hills, which bear,

      As seen from Lido through the harbor piles,

      The likeness of a clump of peaked isles—

      And then—as if the earth and sea had been

      Dissolved into one lake of fire, were seen

      Those mountains towering as from waves of flame

      Around the vaporous sun, from which there came

      The inmost purple spirit of light, and made

      Their very peaks transparent. ‘Ere it fade,’

      Said my companion, ‘I will show you soon

      A better station.’—so, o’er the lagune

      We glided; and from that funereal bark

      I leaned, and saw the city, and could mark

      How from their many isles, in evening’s gleam,

      Its temples and its palaces did seem

      Like fabrics of enchantment piled to Heaven.

      I was about to speak, when—‘We are even

      Now at the point I meant,’ said Maddalo,

      And bade the gondolieri cease to row.

      ‘Look, Julian, on the west, and listen well

      If you hear not a deep and heavy bell.’

      I looked, and saw between us and the sun

      A building on an island,—such a one

      As age to age might add, for uses vile,

      A windowless, deformed and dreary pile;

      And on the top an open tower, where hung

      A bell, which in the radiance swayed and swung;

      We could just hear its hoarse and iron tongue;

      The broad sun sunk behind it, and it tolled

      In strong and black relief.—‘What we behold

      Shall be the madhouse and its belfry tower,’

      Said Maddalo; ‘and ever at this hour

      Those who may cross the water hear that bell,

      Which calls the maniacs each one from his cell

      To vespers.’—‘As much skill as need to pray

      In thanks or hope for their dark lot have they

      To their stern Maker,’ I replied. ‘O ho!

      You talk as in years past,’ said Maddalo.

      ‘’Tis strange men change not. You were ever still

      Among Christ’s flock a perilous infidel,

      A wolf for the meek lambs—if you can’t swim,

      Beware of Providence.’ I looked on him,

      But the gay smile had faded in his eye.

      ‘And such,’—he cried, ‘is our mortality;

      And this must be the emblem and the sign

      Of what should be eternal and divine!—

      And, like that black and dreary bell, the soul,

      Hung in a heaven-illumined tower, must toll

      Our thoughts and our desires to meet below

      Round the rent heart and pray—as madmen do

      For what? they know not,—till the night of death,

      As sunset that strange vision, severeth

      Our memory from itself, and us from all

      We sought, and yet were baffled.’ I recall

      The sense of what he said, although I mar

      The force of his expressions. The broad star

      Of day meanwhile had sunk behind the hill,

      And the black bell became invisible,

      And the red tower looked gray, and all between,

      The churches, ships and palaces were seen

      Huddled in gloom;—into the purple sea

      The orange hues of heaven sunk silently.

      We hardly spoke, and soon the gondola

      Conveyed me to my lodgings by the way.

      The following morn was rainy, cold, and dim.

      Ere Maddalo arose, I called on him,

      And whilst I waited, with his child I played.

      A lovelier toy sweet Nature never made;

      A serious, subtle, wild, yet gentle being,

      Graceful without design, and unforeseeing,

      With eyes—oh, speak not of her eyes!—which seem

      Twin mirrors of Italian heaven, yet gleam

      With such deep meaning as we never see

      But in the human countenance. With me

      She was a special favorite; I had nursed

      Her fine and feeble limbs when she came first

      To this bleak world; and she yet seemed to know

      On