He sings.

   I send my heart up to thee, all my heart

           In this my singing.

   For the stars help me, and the sea bears part;

           The very night is clinging

   Closer to Venice' streets to leave one space

           Above me, whence thy face

   May light my joyous heart to thee its dwelling-place.

   She speaks.

   Say after me, and try to say

   My very words, as if each word

   Came from you of your own accord,                              10

   In your own voice, in your own way:

   "This woman's heart and soul and brain

   Are mine as much as this gold chain

   She bids me wear, which (say again)

   I choose to make by cherishing

   A precious thing, or choose to fling

   Over the boat-side, ring by ring."

   And yet once more say... no word more!

   Since words are only words.  Give o'er!

   Unless you call me, all the same,                              20

   Familiarly by my pet name,

   Which if the Three should hear you call,

   And me reply to, would proclaim

   At once our secret to them all.

   Ask of me, too, command me, blame—

   Do, break down the partition-wall

   'Twixt us, the daylight world beholds

   Curtained in dusk and splendid folds!

   What's left but—all of me to take?

   I am the Three's: prevent them, slake                          30

   Your thirst!  'Tis said, the Arab sage,

   In practising with gems, can loose

   Their subtle spirit in his cruce

   And leave but ashes: so, sweet mage,

   Leave them my ashes when thy use

   Sucks out my soul, thy heritage!

   He sings.

   I

   Past we glide, and past, and past!

           What's that poor Agnese doing

   Where they make the shutters fast?

           Grey Zanobi's just a-wooing                            40

   To his couch the purchased bride:

           Past we glide!

   II

   Past we glide, and past, and past!

           Why's the Pucci Palace flaring

   Like a beacon to the blast?

           Guests by hundreds, not one caring

   If the dear host's neck were wried:

           Past we glide!

   She sings.

   I

   The moth's kiss, first!

   Kiss me as if you made believe                                 50

   You were not sure, this eve,

   How my face, your flower, had pursed

   Its petals up; so, here and there

   You brush it, till I grow aware

   Who wants me, and wide ope I burst..

   II

   The bee's kiss, now!

   Kiss me as if you entered gay

   My heart at some noonday,

   A bud that dares not disallow

   The claim, so all is rendered up,                              60

   And passively its shattered cup

   Over your head to sleep I bow.

   He sings.

   I

   What are we two?

   I am a Jew,

   And carry thee, farther than friends can pursue,

   To a feast of our tribe;

   Where they need thee to bribe

   The devil that blasts them unless he imbibe.

   Thy... Scatter the vision for ever! And now

   As of old, I am I, thou art thou!                              70

   II

   Say again, what we are?

   The sprite of a star,

   I lure thee above where the destinies bar

   My plumes their full play

   Till a ruddier ray

   Than my pale one announce there is withering away

   Some... Scatter the vision forever!  And now,

   As of old, I am I, thou art thou!

   He muses.

   Oh, which were best, to roam or rest?

   The land's lap or the water's breast?                          80

   To sleep on yellow millet-sheaves,

   Or swim in lucid shallows just

   Eluding water-lily leaves,

   An inch from Death's black fingers, thrust

   To lock you, whom release he must;

   Which life were best on Summer eves?

   He speaks, musing.

   Lie back; could thought of mine improve you?

   From this shoulder let there spring

   A wing; from this, another wing;

   Wings, not legs and feet, shall move you!                      90

   Snow-white must they spring, to blend

   With your flesh, but I intend

   They shall deepen to the end,

   Broader, into burning gold,

   Till both wings crescent-wise enfold

   Your perfect self, from 'neath your feet

   To o'er your head, where, lo, they meet

   As if a million sword-blades hurled

   Defiance from you to the world!

   Rescue me thou, the only real!                                100

   And scare away this mad ideal

   That came, nor motions to depart!

   Thanks!  Now, stay ever as thou art!

   Still he muses.

   I

   What if the Three should catch at last

   Thy serenader?  While there's cast

   Paul's cloak about my head, and fast

   Gian pinions me, Himself has past

   His stylet thro' my back; I reel;

   And... is it thou I feel?

   II

   They trail me, these three godless knaves,                    110

   Past every church that saints and saves,

   Nor stop till, where the cold sea raves

   By Lido's wet accursed graves,

   They scoop mine, roll me to its brink,

   And... on thy breast I sink!

   She replies, musing.

   Dip your arm o'er the boat-side, elbow-deep,

   As I do: thus: were death so unlike sleep,

   Caught this way? Death's to fear from flame or steel,

   Or poison doubtless; but from water—feel!

   Go find the bottom! Would you stay me?  There!                120

   Now pluck a great blade of that ribbon-grass

   To plait in where the foolish jewel was,

   I flung away: since you have praised my hair,

   'Tis proper to be choice in what I wear.

   He speaks.

   Row home? must we row home? Too surely

   Know I where its front's demurely

   Over the Giudecca piled;

   Window just with window mating,

   Door on door exactly waiting,

   All's the set face of a child:                                130

   But behind it, where's a trace

   Of the staidness and reserve,

   And formal lines without a curve,

   In the same child's playing-face?

   No two windows look one way

   O'er the small sea-water thread

   Below them.  Ah, the autumn day

   I, passing, saw you overhead!

   First, out a cloud of curtain blew,

   Then a sweet cry, and last came you—                         140

   To catch your lory that must needs

   Escape just then, of all times then,

   To peck a tall plant's fleecy seeds,

   And make me happiest of men.

   I scarce could breathe to see you reach

   So far back o'er the balcony

   To catch him ere he climbed too high

   Above you in the Smyrna peach

   That quick the round smooth cord of gold,

   This coiled hair on your head, unrolled,                      150

   Fell down you like a gorgeous snake

   The Roman girls were wont, of old,

   When Rome there was, for coolness' sake

   To let lie curling o'er their bosoms.

   Dear lory, may his beak retain

   Ever its delicate rose stain

   As if the wounded lotus-blossoms

   Had marked their thief to know again!

   Stay longer yet, for others' sake

   Than mine! What should your chamber do?                       160

   —With all its rarities that ache

   In silence while day lasts, but wake

   At night-time and their life renew,

   Suspended just to pleasure you

   Who brought against their will together

   These objects, and, while day lasts, weave

   Around them such a magic tether

   That dumb they look: your harp, believe,

   With all the sensitive tight strings

   Which dare not speak, now to itself                           170

   Breathes slumberously, as if some elf

   Went in and out the chords, his wings

   Make murmur wheresoe'er they graze,

   As an angel may, between the maze

   Of midnight palace-pillars, on

   And on, to sow God's plagues, have gone

   Through guilty glorious Babylon.

   And while such murmurs flow, the nymph

   Bends o'er the harp-top from her shell

   As the dry limpet for the nymph                               180

   Come with a tune he knows so well.

   And how your statues' hearts must swell!

   And how your pictures must descend

   To see each other, friend with friend!

   Oh, could you take them by surprise,

   You'd find Schidone's eager Duke

   Doing the quaintest courtesies

   To that prim saint by Haste-thee-Luke!

   And, deeper into her rock den,

   Bold Castelfranco's Magdalen                                  190

   You'd find retreated from the ken

   Of that robed counsel-keeping Ser—

   As if the Tizian thinks of her,

   And is not, rather, gravely bent

   On seeing for himself what toys

   Are these, his progeny invent,

   What litter now the board employs

   Whereon he signed a document

   That got him murdered! Each enjoys

   Its night so well, you cannot break                           200

   The sport up, so, indeed must make

   More stay with me, for others' sake.

   She speaks.

   I

   To-morrow, if a harp-string, say,

   Is used to tie the jasmine back

   That overfloods my room with sweets,

   Contrive your Zorzi somehow meets

   My Zanze!  If the ribbon's black,

   The Three are watching: keep away!

   II

   Your gondola—let Zorzi wreathe

   A mesh of water weeds about                                   210

   Its prow, as if he unaware

   Had struck some quay or bridge-foot stair!

   That I may throw a paper out

   As you and he go underneath.

   There's Zanze's vigilant taper; safe are we.

   Only one minute more to-night with me?

   Resume your past self of a month ago!

   Be you the bashful gallant, I will be

   The lady with the colder breast than snow.

   Now bow you, as becomes, nor touch my hand                    220

   More than I touch yours when I step to land,

   And say, "All thanks, Siora!"—

                                  Heart to heart

   And lips to lips!  Yet once more, ere we part,

   Clasp me and make me thine, as mine thou art!

                    [He is surprised, and stabbed.

   It was ordained to be so, sweet!—and best

   Comes now, beneath thine eyes, upon thy breast.

   Still kiss me! Care not for the cowards!  Care

   Only to put aside thy beauteous hair

   My blood will hurt!  The Three, I do not scorn

   To death, because they never lived: but I                     230

   Have lived indeed, and so—(yet one more kiss)—can die!

   NOTES:

   "In a Gondola" is a lyric dialogue between two Venetian

   lovers who have stolen away in a gondola spite of "the

   three"—"Himself'," perhaps a husband, and "Paul"

   and "Gian," her brothers—whose vengeance discovers

   them at the end, but not before their love and danger

   have moved them to weave a series of lyrical fancies, and

   led them to a climax of emotion which makes Life so

   deep a joy that Death is of no account.

   "The first stanza was written,'' writes Browning,

   "to illustrate Maclise's picture, for which he was anxious

   to get some line or two.  I had not seen it, but from

   Forster's description, gave it to him in his room

   impromptu.... When I did see it I thought the serenade

   too jolly, somewhat, for the notion I got from Forster,

   and I took up the subject in my own way.''

   113.  Lido's... graves:  Jewish tombs were there.

   127.  Giudecca:  a canal of Venice.

   155.  Lory:  a kind of parrot.

   186.  Schidone's eager Duke:  an imaginary painting by

   Bartolommeo Schidone of Modena (1560-1616).

   188.  Haste-thee-Luke:  the English form of the nickname,

   Luca-fà-presto, given Luca Giordano (1632-1705),

   a Neapolitan painter, on account of his constantly being

   goaded on in his work by his penurious and avaricious

   father.

   190.  Castelfranco:  the Venetian painter, Giorgione,

   called Castelfranco, because born there, 1478, died 1511.

   193.  Tizian:  (1477-1516).  The pictures are all imaginary,

   but suggestive of the style of each of these artists.