With that absurd pretence which is always so painful, or comic, Just as you happen to make it or see it. In spite of our fictions, Severed from his by that silence, my heart grew ever more anxious, Till last night when together we sat in Piazza San Marco (Then, when the morrow must bring us parting--forever, it might be), Taking our ices al fresco. Some strolling minstrels were singing Airs from the Trovatore. I noted with painful observance, With the unwilling minuteness at such times absolute torture, All that brilliant scene, for which I cared nothing, before me: Dark-eyed Venetian leoni regarding the forestieri With those compassionate looks of gentle and curious wonder Home-keeping Italy's nations bend on the voyaging races,-- Taciturn, indolent, sad, as their beautiful city itself is; Groups of remotest English--not just the traditional English (Lavish Milor is no more, and your travelling Briton is frugal)-- English, though, after all, with the Channel always between them, Islanded in themselves, and the Continent's sociable races; Country-people of ours--the New World's confident children, Proud of America always, and even vain of the Troubles As of disaster laid out on a scale unequalled in Europe; Polyglot Russians that spoke all languages better than natives; White-coated Austrian officers, anglicized Austrian dandies; Gorgeous Levantine figures of Greek, and Turk, and Albanian-- These, and the throngs that moved through the long arcades and Piazza, Shone on by numberless lamps that flamed round the perfect Piazza, Jewel-like set in the splendid frame of this beautiful picture, Full of such motley life, and so altogether Venetian. Then we rose and walked where the lamps were blanched by the moonlight Flooding the Piazzetta with splendor, and throwing in shadow All the facade of Saint Mark's, with its pillars, and horses, and arches; But the sculptured frondage, that blossoms over the arches Into the forms of saints, was touched with tenderest lucence, And the angel that stands on the crest of the vast campanile Bathed his golden vans in the liquid light of the moonbeams. Black rose the granite pillars that lift the Saint and the Lion; Black sank the island campanili from distance to distance; Over the charmed scene there brooded a presence of music, Subtler than sound, and felt, unheard, in the depth of the spirit. How can I gather and show you the airy threads of enchantment Woven that night round my life and forever wrought into my being, As in our boat we glided away from the glittering city? Dull at heart I felt, and I looked at the lights in the water, Blurring their brilliance with tears, while the tresses of eddying seaweed, Whirled in the ebbing tide, like the tresses of sea-maidens drifting Seaward from palace-haunts, in the moonshine glistened and darkened.