ballads, full of caressing vowel-sounds, and young passion, and
melancholy beauty:--

"M'ama ancor, belta fulgente,
Come tu m'amasti allor;--
Ascoltar non dei gente,
Solo interroga il tuo cor." ...

--"He sing-a nicee,--mucha bueno!" murmured the fisherman. And then,
suddenly,--with a rich and splendid basso that seemed to thrill every
fibre of the planking,--Sparicio joined in the song:--

"M'ama pur d'amore eterno,
Ne deilitto sembri a te;
T'assicuro che l'inferno
Una favola sol e." ...

All the roughness of the man was gone! To Julien's startled fancy, the
fishers had ceased to be;--lo! Carmelo was a princely page; Sparicio, a
king! How perfectly their voices married together!--they sang with
passion, with power, with truth, with that wondrous natural art which
is the birthright of the rudest Italian soul. And the stars throbbed
out in the heaven; and the glory died in the west; and the night opened
its heart; and the splendor of the eternities fell all about them.
Still they sang; and the San Marco sped on through the soft gloom, ever
slightly swerved by the steady blowing of the southeast wind in her
sail;--always wearing the same crimpling-frill of wave-spray about her
prow,--always accompanied by the same smooth-backed swells,--always
spinning out behind her the same long trail of interwoven foam. And
Julien looked up. Ever the night thrilled more and more with silent
twinklings;--more and more multitudinously lights pointed in the
eternities;--the Evening Star quivered like a great drop of liquid
white fire ready to fall;--Vega flamed as a pharos lighting the courses
ethereal,--to guide the sailing of the suns, and the swarming of fleets
of worlds. Then the vast sweetness of that violet night entered into
his blood,--filled him with that awful joy, so near akin to sadness,
which the sense of the Infinite brings,--when one feels the poetry of
the Most Ancient and Most Excellent of Poets, and then is smitten at
once with the contrast-thought of the sickliness and selfishness of
Man,--of the blindness and brutality of cities, whereinto the divine
blue light never purely comes, and the sanctification of the Silences
never descends ... furious cities, walled away from heaven ... Oh! if
one could only sail on thus always, always through such a
night--through such a star-sprinkled violet light, and hear Sparicio
and Carmelo sing, even though it were the same melody always, always
the same