IN A GONDOLA.
Joaquin Miller
was night in Venice. Then down to the tide, - Where a tall and a shadowy gondolier
- Lean'd on his oar, like a lifted spear;—
- Twas night in Venice; then side by side
- We sat in his boat. Then oar a-trip
- On the black boat s keel, then dip and dip,
- These boatmen should build their boats more wide,
- For we were together, and side by side.
- The sea it was level as seas of light,
- As still as the light ere a hand was laid
- To the making of lands, or the seas were made.
- Twas fond as a bride on her bridal night
- When a great love swells in her soul like a sea,
- And makes her but less than divinity.
- Twas night,—The soul of the day, I wis.
- A woman s face hiding from her first kiss.
- ....Ah, how one wanders! Yet after it all,
- To laugh at all lovers and to learn to scoff . . . .
- When you really have naught of account to say,
- It is better, perhaps, to pull leaves by the way;
- Watch the round moon rise, or the red stars fall;
- And then, too, in Venice! dear, moth-eaten town;
- One palace of pictures; great frescoes spill'd down
- Outside the walls from the fullness there of:—
- 'Twas night in Venice. On o'er the tide
- These boats they are narrow as they can be,
- These crafts they are narrow enough, and we,
- To balance the boat, sat side by side—
- Out under the arch of the Bridge of Sighs,
- On under the arch of the star-sown skies;
- We two were together on the Adrian Sea,—
- The one fair woman of the world to me.