Lyric bough / Clinton Scollard [electronic text]

GUIDO, THE GONDOLIER

Over the long lagoon The orient gold of the moon; Out of the gardens blown The rose's spicery, And the low and languid moan Of the Adriatic sea!

Night in Venice, —night, With its web of spangled dreams! The Grand Canal alight With a myriad lantern-beams; Music in languorous bars From a maze of strummed guitars; Lattices open thrown, And balconies wreathed with bloom; Gloom? —not a ghost of gloom In the queenly island-town, (The sculptured flower of stone That beauty-lovers praise) But song borne far adown Through all of its water-ways!

Song? —aye, strain on strain, With ever the one refrain! Love, —its glamour and gleam; Love, —the rapture-dream! And the clearest voice in all Of the crowded carnival, The most ecstatic note On the night-tide set afloat (Golden ripple and run Like a heavenly antiphon) That many hung mute to hear, Was that of a youth, —of one Guido, the gondolier.

As blithe he was to see As the lad of the Latmian glen, The hale Endymion, when He wooed the queen of the night; Yet upon no goddess he, Whose song was without a peer, Had turned his yearning sight, But the Doge's daughter, pure As the Maytime of the year; And she loved this troubadour, Guido, the gondolier.

The moon-smile touches the earth; The bird dips out of the air; Thus Love, of immortal birth, Joineth the high and low, Until it is theirs to know Bliss or divine despair. "The garden water-stair At the heart of the carnival night!" This was the word that came, And fanned his soul to a flame, And thither, without a fear, Sped, with his oar-sweep light, Guido, the gondolier.

One little liquid trill, Such as the nightingales spill, When the first star burns on the breast Of the violet-colored west, Then, a face like the sudden bloom Of dawn in the scented gloom! Afar, from wall to wall, Echoed the carnival; Song, in a passionate tide, Swelled, drooped, but never died; "Rejoice!" all Venice cried,

And the skies gave back, "Rejoice!" But a voice men longed to hear Was lifted not, —his voice, — Guido, the gondolier.

From out of the byways dim, What long and shadowy shape Makes sudden swift escape, And seems like a gull to swim Over the broad lagoon, In the radiant flood of the moon? A gondola, wherein twain, Fain as a flower is fain Of the sun, know naught save the bliss Of love, and a lover's kiss! The Doge's daughter dear, And her blithesome minstrel-swain, Guido, the gondolier.

Why follow them o'er the foam? They heeded the world-old call, Caught in its wondrous thrall; Ravenna, Rimini, Rome? — Nay,'tis the Land of Love (Ah, the happiness thereof!) That is henceforth their home!

A vision of youth's delight, They vanished into the night, — The night of a bygone year, — The Doge's daughter fair, Fearless and debonair, And Guido, the gondolier.