humous splendor,--
Found all changed and estranged, and, he fancied, more wonder than
welcome.
So, somewhat heavy of heart, and disabled for war, he had wandered
Hither to Europe for perfecter peace. Abruptly his silence,
Full of suggestion and sadness, made here a chasm between us;
But we spanned the chasm with conversational bridges,
Else talked all around it, and feigned an ignorance of it,
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