The Glory Of The Day That Broke Upon Me In This Dream; Its
Freshness, Motion, Buoyancy; Its Sparkles Of The Sun In Water; Its
Clear Blue Sky And Rustling Air; No Waking Words Can Tell.
But,
from my window, I looked down on boats and barks; on masts, sails,
cordage, flags; on groups of
Busy sailors, working at the cargoes
of these vessels; on wide quays, strewn with bales, casks,
merchandise of many kinds; on great ships, lying near at hand in
stately indolence; on islands, crowned with gorgeous domes and
turrets: and where golden crosses glittered in the light, atop of
wondrous churches, springing from the sea! Going down upon the
margin of the green sea, rolling on before the door, and filling
all the streets, I came upon a place of such surpassing beauty, and
such grandeur, that all the rest was poor and faded, in comparison
with its absorbing loveliness.
It was a great Piazza, as I thought; anchored, like all the rest,
in the deep ocean. On its broad bosom, was a Palace, more majestic
and magnificent in its old age, than all the buildings of the
earth, in the high prime and fulness of their youth. Cloisters and
galleries: so light, they might have been the work of fairy hands:
so strong that centuries had battered them in vain: wound round
and round this palace, and enfolded it with a Cathedral, gorgeous
in the wild luxuriant fancies of the East. At no great distance
from its porch, a lofty tower, standing by itself, and rearing its
proud head, alone, into the sky, looked out upon the Adriatic Sea.
Near to the margin of the stream, were two ill-omened pillars of
red granite; one having on its top, a figure with a sword and
shield; the other, a winged lion. Not far from these again, a
second tower: richest of the rich in all its decorations: even
here, where all was rich: sustained aloft, a great orb, gleaming
with gold and deepest blue: the Twelve Signs painted on it, and a
mimic sun revolving in its course around them: while above, two
bronze giants hammered out the hours upon a sounding bell. An
oblong square of lofty houses of the whitest stone, surrounded by a
light and beautiful arcade, formed part of this enchanted scene;
and, here and there, gay masts for flags rose, tapering, from the
pavement of the unsubstantial ground.
I thought I entered the Cathedral, and went in and out among its
many arches: traversing its whole extent. A grand and dreamy
structure, of immense proportions; golden with old mosaics;
redolent of perfumes; dim with the smoke of incense; costly in
treasure of precious stones and metals, glittering through iron
bars; holy with the bodies of deceased saints; rainbow-hued with
windows of stained glass; dark with carved woods and coloured
marbles; obscure in its vast heights, and lengthened distances;
shining with silver lamps and winking lights; unreal, fantastic,
solemn, inconceivable throughout. I thought I entered the old
palace; pacing silent galleries and council-chambers, where the old
rulers of this mistress of the waters looked sternly out, in
pictures, from the walls, and where her high-prowed galleys, still
victorious on canvas, fought and conquered as of old. I thought I
wandered through its halls of state and triumph--bare and empty
now!--and musing on its pride and might, extinct: for that was
past; all past: heard a voice say, 'Some tokens of its ancient
rule and some consoling reasons for its downfall, may be traced
here, yet!'
I dreamed that I was led on, then, into some jealous rooms,
communicating with a prison near the palace; separated from it by a
lofty bridge crossing a narrow street; and called, I dreamed, The
Bridge of Sighs.
But first I passed two jagged slits in a stone wall; the lions'
mouths--now toothless--where, in the distempered horror of my
sleep, I thought denunciations of innocent men to the old wicked
Council, had been dropped through, many a time, when the night was
dark. So, when I saw the council-room to which such prisoners were
taken for examination, and the door by which they passed out, when
they were condemned--a door that never closed upon a man with life
and hope before him--my heart appeared to die within me.
It was smitten harder though, when, torch in hand, I descended from
the cheerful day into two ranges, one below another, of dismal,
awful, horrible stone cells. They were quite dark. Each had a
loop-hole in its massive wall, where, in the old time, every day, a
torch was placed--I dreamed--to light the prisoner within, for half
an hour. The captives, by the glimmering of these brief rays, had
scratched and cut inscriptions in the blackened vaults. I saw
them. For their labour with a rusty nail's point, had outlived
their agony and them, through many generations.
One cell, I saw, in which no man remained for more than four-and-
twenty hours; being marked for dead before he entered it. Hard by,
another, and a dismal one, whereto, at midnight, the confessor
came--a monk brown-robed, and hooded--ghastly in the day, and free
bright air, but in the midnight of that murky prison, Hope's
extinguisher, and Murder's herald. I had my foot upon the spot,
where, at the same dread hour, the shriven prisoner was strangled;
and struck my hand upon the guilty door--low-browed and stealthy--
through which the lumpish sack was carried out into a boat, and
rowed away, and drowned where it was death to cast a net.
Around this dungeon stronghold, and above some part of it: licking
the rough walls without, and smearing them with damp and slime
within: stuffing dank weeds and refuse into chinks and crevices,
as if the very stones and bars had mouths to stop: furnishing a
smooth road for the removal of the bodies of the secret victims of
the State--a road so ready that it went along with them, and ran
before them, like a cruel officer--flowed the same water that
filled this Dream of mine, and made it seem one, even at the time.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 30 of 72
Words from 29687 to 30733
of 73541
