Chapter V: Part II (3)

Ascension Day draws nearer. The brasses of the _Bucentoro_ shine like gold. Surely the Doge will not desert his bride; or has the jilt tired of her long subjection? False water, upon your breast rock many navies, how should you remain true to a ship which fears to wet its keel. The _Bucentoro_ glitters in the Arsenal, she blazes with glass and gilding drawn up safely on a runway of dry planks, while over the sea, beyond the Lido, rises the spark of sails. The vessel is hull down, but the tiers of canvas lift up, one after the other: skysails, royals, topgallantsails, topsails, mainsails, and at last, the woodwork. Then gleaming ports, then streaming water flashed from a curved bow. A good ship, but she flys the _tricolore_. This is no wedding barge, there is no winged lion on that flag. There is no music, no choir singing hymns. Men run to and fro in San Nicolo Fort, peering through spy-glasses. Ah, she will observe the rules, the skysails come down, then the royals--but why in thunder do not the topgallantsails follow? The fellow is coming right under the fort. Guns. He salutes. Answer from the fort. Citizen Lallemont has agreed that no French vessel shall enter the port, even the English do not attempt it. But the son of a dog comes on. Send out boats, Comandatore Pizzamano. _Per Dio_, he is passing them! Touch off the cannon as a warning. One shot. Two. Some one is on the poop with a speaking-trumpet. "What ship is that?" "_Le Libérateur d'Italie. Le Capitaine Laugier. Marine de la République Française._" "It is forbidden to enter the port, _Signor Capitano Laugier_." "We intend to anchor outside." Do you! Then why not clew up those damned topgallantsails. My God! She is past the fort. She has slipped through the entrance; she is in the Lagoon. Her forefoot cuts the diamond water, she sheers her way through the calm colour reflections, her bow points straight at the rose and violet city swimming under the light clouds of early afternoon. Shock! Shiver! Foul of a Venetian galley, by all that's holy. What beastly seamanship! The Venetians will not stand it, I tell you. Pop! Pop! Those are muskets, drop on them with cutlasses, _mes enfants_. Chop into the cursed foreigners. "_Non vogliamo forestieri qui._" Boom! The cannon of Fort Sant' Andrea. Good guns, well pointed, the smoke from them draws a shade over the water. Down come the topgallantsails. You have paid a price for your entrance, Captain Laugier, but it is not enough. "_Viva San Marco!_" Detestable voices, these Venetians. That cry is confusing. Puff! The smoke goes by. Three marines have fallen. The cannon fire at intervals of two minutes. Hot work under a burning sky. Hot work on a burning deck. The smoothness of the water is flecked with bits of wood. A dead body rolls overboard, and bobs up and down beside the ships. A sailor slips from a yard, and is spiked on an upturned bayonet. Over the water comes the pealing of many bells. Captain Laugier is dead, and the city tolls his requiem. Strike your colours, beaten Frenchmen. Bronze cannot walk upon the sea. You have failed and succeeded, for upon your Captain's fallen body the bronze feet have found their bridge. Do you rejoice, old Arsenal? A captive ship towed up to you again! Ah, the cannon firing has brought the rain. Yes, and thunder too, and in the thunder a voice of bronze. The _Bucentoro_ will not take the water this year. Cover up the brasses, _Arsenalotti_. Ascension Day is nothing to Venice now.

Yesterday this was matter for rejoicing, but to-day... Get the best rowers, order relays of horses on the mainland, post hot foot to the Commissioners at Gratz. One ship is nothing, but if they send twenty! What has the bronze General already said to the Commissioners. The Senate wonders, and wears itself out in speculation. They will give money, they will plunder the pockets of the populace to save Venice. Can a child save his toys when manhood is upon him? The century is old, already another lies in its arms. Month by month a new moon rises over Venice, but century by century! They cannot see, these Senators. They cannot hear the General cutting the Commissioners short in a sort of fury. "I wish no more Inquisition, no more Senate. I will be an Attila for Venice. This government is old; it must fall!" Pretty words from bronze to porcelain. A stain on a brave, new gospel. "Save Venice," the letter urges, and the Commissioners depart for Trieste. But the doors are locked. The General blocks his entrances. "I cannot receive you, Gentlemen, you and your Senate are disgusting to the French blood." A pantomime before a temple, with a priest acting the part of chief comedian. Strange burlesque, arabesquing the characters of a creed. You think this man is a greedy conqueror. Go home, thinking. Your moment flutters off the calendar, your world dissolves and another takes its place. This is the cock-crow of ghosts. Slowly pass up the canal, slowly enter the Ducal Palace. Debate, everlastingly debate. And while you quibble the communication with the continent is cut.

He has declared war, the bronze General. What can be done? The little glass figures crack under the strain. Condulmer will not fight. Pesaro flees to Austria. So the measure awaits a vote. A grave Senate consulting a ballot-box as to whether it shall cut its throat. This is not suicide, but murder; this is not murder, but the turned leaf of an almanac. "Divide! Divide!" What is the writing on the other side? "_Viva la Libertà_," shouts General Salimbeni from a window. Stupid crowd, it will not give a cheer. It is queer what an unconscionable objection people have to dying. "_Viva San Marco!_" shouts General Salimbeni. Ah, now you hear! Such a racket, and the old lion flag hoisted everywhere. But that was a rash thing to do. It brings the crash. They fight, fight for old Saint Mark, they smash, burn, demolish. Who wore the _tricolore_? Plunder their houses. No you don't, no selling us to foreigners. They cannot read, the people, they do not see that the print has changed. By dint of cannon you can stop them. Stop them suddenly like a clock dropped from a wall.

Venice! Venice! The star-wakes gleam and shatter in your still canals, and the great horses pace forward, vigorous, unconcerned, beautiful, treading your grief as they tread the passing winds.

The riot is over, but another may break out. A dead republic cannot control its citizens. General Baraguey d'Hilliers is at Mestre. His dragoons will keep order. Shame, nobles and abdicated Senate! But can one blame the inactivity of the dead? French dragoons in little boats. The 5th and 63rd of the line proceeding to Venice in forty little boats. Grenadiers embarked for a funeral. Soldiers cracking jokes, and steady oar-strokes, warping them over the water toward Venice. A dark city, scarcely a lamp is lit. A match-spark slits the darkness, a drummer is lighting his pipe. Ah, there are walls ahead. The dull bones of the dead. Water swashes against marble. They are in the canal, their voices echo from doors and porches. Forty boats, and the bobble of them washes the water step and step above its usual height on the stairways. "_C'est une église ça!_" "_Mais, oui, Bêta, tu pensais pourtant pas que tu entrais en France. Nous sommes dans une sale ville aristocratique, et je m'en fiche, moi!_" Brave brigadier, spit into the canal, what else can a man of the new order do to show his enlightenment. Two regiments of seasoned soldiers, two regiments of free citizens, forty boat-loads of thinking men to goad a moribund nation into the millennium. The new century arriving with a flower in its button-hole, the _carmagnole_ ousting the _furlana_. Perhaps--perhaps--but years pile up and then collapse. Will gaps start between one and another? Settle your gun-straps, 63rd of the line, we land here by the dim shine of a lantern held by a bombardier. Tier and tier the soldiers march through Venice. Their steps racket like the mallets of marble-cutters in the narrow _calli_, and the sound of them over bridges is the drum-beating of hard rain.

There are soldiers everywhere, Venice is stuffed with soldiers. They are at the Arsenal, on the Rialto, at San Stefano, and four hundred stack muskets, and hang their bearskins on the top of them, in the middle of the Piazza.

Golden horses, the sound of violins is hushed, the pigeons who brush past you in the red and rising sunlight have just been perching on crossed bayonets. Set your faces to this army, advance toward them, paw the air over their heads. They do not observe you--yet. You are confounded with jewels, and leaves, and statues. You are a part of the great church, even though you stand poised to leave it, and already a sergeant has seen you. "_Tiens,_" says he, "_voilà les quatre chevaux d'or. Ah, mais ils sont magnifiques! Et quelle drôle d'idée de les avoir montés sur la Cathédrale._"

The century wanes, the moon-century is gnawed and eaten, but the feet of the great horses stand upon its fragments, full-tilted to an arrested advance, and the green corroding on their sides is hidden in the glare of gold.

"For the honour and independence of the infant Cisalpine Republic, the affectionate and loving Republic of France orders and commands--"

What does she command? Precisely, that the new Government shall walk in solemn procession round the Piazza, and that a mass of thanksgiving shall be celebrated in Saint Mark's Church and the image of the Virgin exposed to the rejoicing congregation. Who would have supposed that Venetians could be so dumb. The acclamations seem mostly in the French tongue. Never mind, it takes more than a day to translate a creed into a new language. Liberty is a great prize, good Venetians, although it must be admitted that she appears in disguise for the moment. She wears a mask, that is all, and you should be accustomed to masks. The soldiers bask in the warm sunshine, and doubtless the inhabitants bask in the sight of the soldiers, but they conceal their satisfaction very adroitly. Still, General Baraguey d'Hilliers has no doubt that it is there. This liberation of a free people is a famous exploit. He is a bit nettled at their apathy, for he has always heard that they were of a gay temperament. "_Sacré Bleu!_ And we are giving them so much!"

Indeed, this giving is done with a magnificent generosity. It is exactly on Ascension Day that Bonaparte writes from Montebello: "Conformably to your desire, Citizens, I have ordered the municipalities of Padua and Treviso to allow the passage of the foodstuffs necessary to the provisionment of the town of Venice."

"Real and perpetual dominion," and now a boat-load of food is a condescension! Pink and purple water, your little ripples jest at these emblazoned palaces, your waves chuckle down the long Rivas, you reflect the new flag of Venice which even the Dey of Algiers refuses to respect, and patter your light heels upon it as on a dancing-floor. There will be no more use for the _Bucentoro_, of course. So rip off the gilding, pack up the mirrors, chop the timbers into firewood. This is good work for soldiers with nothing to do. There are other ships to be dismantled too, and some few seaworthy enough to send to the army at Corfu. But if they have taken away Ascension Day, the French will give Venice a new fête. Ah! and one so beautiful! Beat the drums, ring the church-bells, set up a Tree of Liberty in the Great Square, this fête is past telling. So writes the Citizen Arnault, from his room in the _Queen of England_ inn. He bites his pen, he looks out on the little canal with its narrow bridge, he fusses with his watch-chain. It is not easy to write to the bronze General. He dips in the ink and starts again. "The people take no active part in what goes on here. They have seen the lions fall without making any sign of joy." That certainly is queer. Perhaps Citizen Arnault did not hear that gondolier, who when they chiselled out "_Pax tibi, Marce, evangelista meus_" on the lion's book, and chiselled in "_Diritti dell' uomo e del cittadino_," exclaimed: "The lion has turned over a new leaf." Does that sound like grief? Certainly not, think the French soldiers, and yet the Doge's robes, the Golden Book, burn in silence, until a corporal strikes up the "_Marseillaise_." They make a grand blaze too; why, the boatmen far off in the hazy Lagoon can hear the crackle of it snapping over the water. Then the columns! The columns produce a lovely effect, one all wound with _tricolore_ flags and with this inscription: "To the French, regenerators of Italy, Venice grateful," on its front, and on the back, "Bonaparte." The other is not so gay, but most proper and desirable. It is hung with crêpe, and the letters read: "To the shade of the victim of oligarchy, Venice sorrowful," and, "Laugier." To be sure there has been considerable excitement, and the great green lion has been thrown down and shattered in at least eighty fragments, but the soldiers did it. The populace were simply stolid and staring. Citizen Arnault fidgets in his chair. But other affairs march better. He has found the only copy of Anacharsis which is known to be in Venice; he is going to hunt for Homer, for he wants to put it with the Ossian of Cesarotti which he has already taken from the Library. Here his pen runs rapidly, he has an inspiration. "There are four superb horses which the Venetians took when, in company with the French, they sacked Constantinople. These horses are placed over the portal of the Ducal Church. Have not the French some right to claim them, or at least to accept them of Venetian gratitude?" The bronze General has an eye to a man, witness this really excellent plan. Fold your letter, Citizen. Press your fob down upon the seal. You may feel proud as you ring for candles, no one will have hurt Venice more than you.

The blue night softens the broken top of the column in the Piazzetta where it juts against the sky. The violet night sifts shadows over the white, mounting angels of Saint Mark's Church; it throws an aureole of lilac over the star of Christ and melts it into the glimmering dome behind. But upon the horses it clashes with the glitter of steel. Blue striking gold, and together producing a white-heart fire. Cold, as in great fire, hard as in new-kindled fire, outlined as behind a flame which folds back upon itself in lack of fuel, the great horses stand. They strain forward, they recoil even when starting, they raise one foot and hold it lifted, and all about them the stones of the jewelled church writhe, and convolute, and glisten, and dash the foam of their tendrils against the clear curve of the moulded flanks.

The Treaty of Campo Formio! A mask stripped off a Carnival figure, and behold, the sneering face of death! What of the creed the French were bringing the Venetians! Was it greed after all, or has a seed been sown? If so, the flowering will be long delayed. The French are leaving us, and almost we wish they would remain. For Austria! What does it matter that the _Bucentoro_ is broken up; the lions from the Piræus loaded into a vessel; books, parchments, pictures, packed in travelling cases! What does anything matter! A gondolier snaps his fingers: "_Francese non tutti ladri, ma Buona-parte!_" Hush, my friend, that is a dangerous remark, for Madame Bonaparte has descended upon Venice in a whirlwind of laughter, might have made friends had she not been received in an overturned storehouse. But she stays only three days, and the song of the gondoliers who row her away can scarcely be heard for the hammering they make, putting up an immense scaffolding in front of Saint Mark's Church. They have erected poles too, and tackle. It is an awful nuisance, for soldiers are not skilled in carpenter work, and no Venetian will lend a hand. A grand ship sails for Toulon as soon as the horses are on board.

Golden horses, at last you leave your pedestals, you swing in the blue-and-silver air, you paw the reflections flung by rippled water, and the starved pigeons whirl about you chattering. One--one--one--one! The tackle creaks, the little squeaks of the pigeons are sharp and pitiful. A gash in the front of the great Church. A blank window framing nothing. The leaves of the sculptures curl, the swirling angels mount steadily, the star of Christ is the pointed jet of a flame, but the horses drop--drop-- They descend slowly, they jerk, and stop, and start again, and one--one--one--one--they touch the pavement. Women throw shawls over their heads and weep; men pull off their caps and mutter prayers and imprecations. Then silently they form into a procession and march after the hand-carts, down to the quay, down to the waiting vessel. Slow feet following to a grave. Here is a sign, but hardly of joy. This is a march of mourning. Depart, vessel, draw out over the bright Lagoon, grow faint, vague, blur and disappear. The murder is accomplished. To-morrow come the Austrians.

_BONFIRES BURN PURPLE_

_Then the energy which peoples the Earth crystallized into a single man. And this man was Water, and Fire, and Flesh. His core had the strength of metal, and the hardness of metal was in his actions, and upon him the sun struck as upon polished metal. So he went to and fro among the nations, gleaming as with jewels. Of himself were the monuments he erected, and his laws were engraved tablets of fairest bronze. But there grew a great terror among the lesser peoples of the Earth, and they ran hither and yon like the ants, they swarmed like beetles, and they saw themselves impotent, merely making tracks in sand. Now as speed is heat, so did this man soften with the haste of his going. For Fire is supreme even over metal, and the Fire in him overcame the strong metal, so that his limbs failed, and his brain was hot and molten. Then was he consumed, but those of his monuments which harboured not Fire, and were without spirit, and cold, these endured. In the midst of leaping flame, they kept their semblances, and turning many colours in heat, still they cooled as the Fire cooled. For metal is unassailable from without, only a spark in the mid-most circle can force a double action which pours it into Water, and volatilizes it into Air, and sifts it to ashes which are Earth. For man can fashion effigies, but the spark of Life he can neither infuse nor control._

_As a sharp sun this man passed across his century, and of the cenotaphs of his burning, some remain as a shadow of splendour in the streets of his city, but others have returned whence he gathered them, for the years of these are many and the touch of kings upon them is as the dropping of particles of dust._

VENICE AGAIN

Sunday evening, May 23, 1915. A beautiful Sunday evening with the Lagoon just going purple, and the angel on the tip of the new Campanile dissolved to a spurt of crocus-coloured flame. Up into the plum-green sky mount the angels of the Basilica of Saint Mark, their wings, curved up and feathered to the fragility of a blowing leaf, making incisive stabs of whiteness against the sky.

An organ moans in the great nave, and the high voices of choristers float out through the open door and surge down the long Piazza. The chugging of a motor-boat breaks into the chant, swirls it, churns upon it, and fades to a distant pulsing down the Grand Canal. The Campanile angel goes suddenly crimson, pales to rose, dies out in lilac, and remains dark, almost invisible, until the starting of stars behind it gives it a new solidity in hiding them.

In the warm twilight, the little white tables of the Café Florian are like petals dropped from the rose of the moon. For a moment they are weird and magical, but the abrupt glare of electric lights touches them back into mere tables: mere tables, flecked with coffee-cups and liqueur-glasses; mere tables, crumpling the lower halves of newspapers with their hard edges; mere tables, where gesticulating arms rest their elbows, and ice-cream plates nearly meet disaster in the excitement of a heated discussion. Venice discusses. What will the Government do? Austria has asked that her troops might cross over Italian territory, South of Switzerland, in order to attack the French frontier. Austria! "I tell you, Luigi, that alliance the Government made with the Central Powers was a ghastly blunder. You could never have got Italians to fight on the side of Austrians. Blood is thicker than ink, fortunately. But we are ready, thanks to Commandante Cadorna. It was a foregone conclusion, ever since we refused passage to their troops." "I saw Signor Colsanto, yesterday. He told me that the order had come from the General Board of Antiquities and Fine Arts to remove everything possible to Rome, and protect what can't be moved. He begins the work to-morrow." "He does! Well, that tells us. Here, Boy, Boy, give me a paper. Listen to that roar! There you are, _cinque centesimi_. Well, we're off, Luigi. It's declared. Italy at war with Austria again. Thank God, we've wiped off the stain of that abominable treaty." With heads bared, the crowd stands, and shouts, and cheers, and the pigeons fleer away in frightened circles to the sculptured porticoes of the Basilica. The crowd bursts into a sweeping song. A great patriotic chorus. It echoes from side to side of the Piazza, it runs down the colonnades of the Procuratie like a splashing tide, it dashes upon the arched portals of Saint Mark's and flicks upward in jets of broken music. Wild, shooting, rolling music; vibrant, solemn, dedicated music; throbbing music flung out of loud-pounding hearts. The Piazza holds the sound of it and lifts it up as one raises an offering before an altar. Higher--higher--the song is lifted, it engulfs the four golden horses over the centre door of the church. The horses are as brazen cymbals crashing back the great song in a cadence of struck metal, the carven capitals are fluted reeds to this mighty anthem, the architraves bandy it to and fro in revolving canons of harmony. Up, up, spires the song, and the mounting angels call it to one another in an ascending scale even to the star of fire on the topmost pinnacle which is the Christ, even into the distant sky where it curves up and over falling down to the four horizons, to the highest point of the aconite-blue sky, the sky of the Kingdom of Italy.

Garibaldi's Hymn! For war is declared and Italy has joined the Allies!

Soft night falling upon Venice. Summer night over the moon-city, the flower-city. _Fiore di Mare!_ Garden of lights in the midst of dark waters, your star-blossoms will be quenched, the strings of your guitars will snap and slacken. Nights, you will gird on strange armour, and grow loud and strident. But now-- The gilded horses shimmer above the portico of Saint Mark's! How still they are, and powerful. Pride, motion, activity set in a frozen patience.

Suddenly--Boom! A signal gun. Then immediately the shrill shriek of a steam whistle, and another, and whistles and whistles, from factories and boats, yawling, snarling, mewling, screeching, a cracked cacophony of horror.

Minutes--one--two--three--and the batteries of the Aerial-Guard Station begin to fire. Shells--red and black, white and grey--bellow, snap, and crash into the blue-black sky. A whirr--the Italian planes are rising. Their white centre lights throw a halo about them, and, tip and tip, a red light and a green, spark out to a great spread, closing together as the planes gain in altitude. Up they go, the red, white, and green circles underneath their wings and on either side of the fan-tails bright in the glow of the white centre light. Up, up, slanting in mounting circles. "Holy Mother of God! What is it?" Taubes over the city, flying at a great height, flying in a wedge like a flight of wild geese. Boom! The anti-aircraft guns are flinging up strings of luminous balls. Range 10,000 feet, try 10,500. Loud detonations, echoing far over the Lagoon. The navigation lights of the Italian planes are a faint triangle of bright dots. They climb in deliberate spirals, up and up, up and up. They seem to hang. They hover without direction. Ah, there are the Taubes, specks dotting the beam of a search-light. One of them is banking. Two Italian machines dart up over him. He spins, round--round--top-whirling, sleeping in speed, to us below he seems stationary. Pup-pup-pup-pup-pup--machine-guns, clicking like distant typewriters, firing with indescribable rapidity. The Italian planes drop signal balloons, they hang in the air like suspended sky-rockets, they float down, amber balls, steadily burning. The ground guns answer, and white buds of smoke appear in the sky. They seem to blossom out of darkness, silver roses beyond the silver shaft of the search-light. The air is broken with noise: thunder-drumming of cannon, sharp pocking of machine-guns, snap and crack of rifles. Above, the specks loop, and glide, and zig-zag. The spinning Taube nose-dives, recovers, and zums upward, topping its adversary. Another Taube swoops in over a Nieuport and wags its tail, spraying lead bullets into the Italian in a wide, wing-and-wing arc. The sky is bitten red with stinging shrapnel. Two machines charge head on, the Taube swerves and rams the right wing of the Nieuport. Flame! Flame leaping and dropping. A smear from zenith to--following it, the eye hits the shadow of a roof. Blackness. One poor devil gone, and the attacking plane is still airworthy though damaged. It wobbles out of the search-light and disappears, rocking. Two Taubes shake themselves free of the tangle, they glide down--down--all round them are ribbons of "flaming onions," they avoid them and pass on down, close over the city, unscathed, so close you can see the black crosses on their wings with a glass. Rifles crack at them from roofs. Pooh! You might as well try to stop them with pea-shooters. They curve, turn, and hang up-wind. Small shells beat about them with a report like twanged harp-strings. "_Klar sum Werfen?_" "_Jawohl._" "_Gut dock, werfen._" Words cannot carry down thousands of feet, but the ominous hovering is a sort of speech. People wring their hands and clutch their throats, some cover their ears. Z-z-z-z-z! That whine would pierce any covering. The bomb has passed below the roofs. Nothing. A pause. Then a report, breaking the hearing, leaving only the apprehension of a great light and no sound. They have hit us! _Misericordia_! They have hit Venice! One--two--four--ten bombs. People sob and pray, the water lashes the Rivas as though there were a storm. Another machine falls, shooting down in silence. It is not on fire, it merely falls. Then slowly the Taubes draw off. The search-light shifts, seeking them. The gun-fire is spaced more widely. Field-glasses fail to show even a speck. There is silence. The silence of a pulse which has stopped. But the people walk in the brightness of fire. Fire from the Rio della Tanna, from the Rio del Carmine, from the quarter of Santa Lucia. Bells peal in a fury, fire-boats hurry with forced engines along the canals. Water streams jet upon the fire; and, in the golden light, the glittering horses of Saint Mark's pace forward, silent, calm, determined in their advance, above the portal of the untouched church.

The night turns grey, and silver, and opens into a blue morning. Diamond roses sparkle on the Lagoon, but the people passing quickly through the Piazza are grim, and workmen sniff the smoky air as they fix ladders and arrange tools. Venice has tasted war. "_Evviva Italia!_"

City of soft colours, of amber and violet, you are turning grey-green, and grey-green are the uniforms of the troops who defend you. The Bersaglieri still wear their cocks' feathers, but they are green too, and black. Black as the guns mounted on pontoons among the Lagoons before Venice, green as the bundles of reeds camouflaging them from Austrian observation balloons. Drag up metre after metre of grey-green cloth, stretch it over the five golden domes of Saint Mark's Basilica. Hood their splendour in umbrella bags of cloth, so that not one glint shall answer the mocking shimmer of the moon. Barrows and barrows of nails for the wooden bastion of the Basilica, hods and hods of mortar and narrow bricks to cover the old mosaics of the lunettes. Cart-loads of tar and planking, and heaps, heaps, hills and mountains of sand--the Lido protecting Venice, as it has done for hundreds of years. They shovel sand, scoop sand, pour sand, into bags and bags and bags. Thousands of bags piled against the bases of columns, rising in front of carved corners, blotting out altars, throttling the open points of arches. Porphyries, malachites, and jades are squarely boarded, pulpits and fonts disappear in swaddling bands. Why? The battle front is forty miles away in Friuli, and Venice is not a fortified town. Why? Answer, Reims! Bear witness, Ypres! Do they cover Venice without reason? Nietzsche was a German, still I believe they read him in Vienna. Blood and Iron! And is there not also Blood and Stone, Blood and Bronze, Blood and Canvas? "Kultur," Venetians, in the Rio del Carmine; there is no time to lose. Take down the great ceiling pictures in the Ducal Palace and wrap them on cylinders. Build a high trestle, and fashion little go-carts which draw with string.

Hush! They are coming--the four beautiful horses. They rise in a whirl of disturbed pigeons. They float and descend. The people watch in silence as, one after another, they reach the ground. Across the tiles they step at last, each pulled in a go-cart; merry-go-round horses, detached and solitary, one foot raised, tramp over chequered stones, over chequered centuries. The merry-go-round of years has brought them full circle, for are they not returning to Rome?

For how long? Ask the guns embedded in the snow of glaciers; ask the rivers pierced from their beds, overflowing marshes and meadows, forming a new sea. Seek the answer in the faces of the Grenatieri Brigade, dying to a man, but halting the invaders. Demand it of the women and children fleeing the approach of a bitter army. Provoke the reply in the dryness of those eyes which gaze upon the wreck of Tiepolo's ceiling in the Church of the Scalzi. Yet not in Italy alone shall you find it. The ring of searching must be widened, and France, England, Japan, and America, caught within its edge. Moons and moons, and seas seamed with vessels. Needles stitching the cloth of peace to choke the cannon of war.

The boat draws away from the Riva. The great bronze horses mingle their outlines with the distant mountains. Dim gold, subdued green-gold, flashing faintly to the faint, bright peaks above them. Granite and metal, earth over water. Down the canal, old, beautiful horses, pride of Venice, of Constantinople, of Rome. Wars bite you with their little flames and pass away, but roses and oleanders strew their petals before your going, and you move like a constellation in a space of crimson stars.

So the horses float along the canal, between barred and shuttered palaces, splendid against marble walls in the fire of the sun.

Printed in the United States of America.

Books by AMY LOWELL

PUBLISHED BY

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

_Poetry_

WHAT'S O'CLOCK
LEGENDS
PICTURES OF THE FLOATING WORLD
CAN GRANDE'S CASTLE
MEN, WOMEN AND GHOSTS
SWORD BLADES AND POPPY SEED
A DOME OF MANY-COLOURED GLASS
A CRITICAL FABLE

(IN COLLABORATION WITH FLORENCE ATSCOUGH)
FIR-FLOWER TABLETS: POEMS TRANSLATED FROM THE CHINESE

_Prose_

TENDENCIES IN MODERN AMERICAN POETRY
SIX FRENCH POETS: STUDIES IN CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
JOHN KEATS