Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, MEDITATIVE FRAGMENTS, ON VENICE: 4, by RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

MEDITATIVE FRAGMENTS, ON VENICE: 4, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Oh poverty! Thou bitter-hearted fiend!
Last Line: Its separate beauty in one dark long curve.
Alternate Author Name(s): Houghton, 1st Baron; Houghton, Lord
Subject(s): Venice, Italy


OH Poverty! thou bitter-hearted fiend!
How darest thou approach the Beautiful?
How darest thou give up these Palaces,
Where delicate Art in wood and marble wove
Its noblest fancies, with laborious skill,
To the base uses of the artizan?
How darest thou defile with coarsest stores,
And vermin's loathsome nests, the aged walls,
Whence Titian's women burningly looked down
On the rich-vested pomp that shone below?
Is nothing sacred for thy hand, no names,
No memories, -- thou bold Iniquity!
Shall men, on whose fine brows we recognize
The lines of some great ducal effigies,
Which frown along St. John's cathedral aisles,
With hearts as high as any of their fathers,
Sink silent under thy slow martyrdom,
Leaving their children, Liberty's just heirs,
Children like those that Gianbellini painted,
To batten on the miserable alms,
The sordid fragments of their country's wealth,
Doled out by servants of a stranger king?
Is there no engine of compassionate Death,
Which with a rapid mercy will relieve
This ancient city of its shamed being?
Is War so weary that he cannot strike
One iron blow, that she may fold her robe
About her head, and fall imperially?
Is there no eager earthquake far below,
To shiver her frail limbs, and hurl her down
Into the bosom of her mated sea?
Or must she, for a lapse of wretched years,
Armless and heartless, tremble on as now,
Like one who hears the tramp of murderous foes,
Unseen, and feels them nearer, nearer still; --
Till round her Famine's pestilential breath,
Fatally closing, to the gloom of Time,
She shall, in quivering agony, give up
The spirit of that light, which burnt so long,
A stedfast glory, an unfailing fire?
Thus ran the darkling current of my thoughts,
As one sad night, from the Rialto's edge,
I looked into the waters, -- on whose face
Glimmered the reflex of some few faint stars,
And two far-flitting lamps of gondoliers,
That seemed on that black flat to move alone,
While, on each side, each well-known building lost
Its separate beauty in one dark long curve.





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