Brushing the floor with what was once a hat

Of ceremony. Gliding on, he comes;

Slip-shod, ungartered; his long suit of black

Dingy and thread-bare, though renewed in patches

Till it has almost ceased to be the old one.

"I am a Poet, Signor

: give me leave

To bid you welcome.

notice,

Though you shrink from

The splendour of your name has gone before you;

And Italy from sea to sea rejoices,

As well indeed she may! But I transgress.

I too have known the weight of Praise, and ought

To spare another."

Saying so, he laid

His sonnet, an impromptu, on my table,

(If his, then Petrarch must have stolen it from him)

And bowed and left me; in his hollow hand

Receiving my small tribute, a zecchino,

Unconsciously, as doctors do their fees.

My omelet, and a flagon of hill-wine,

"The very best in Bergamo !" had long

Fled from all eyes; or like the young Gil Blas

De Santillane, I had perhaps been seen

Bartering my bread and salt for empty praise.

IX.

ITALY.

Am I in Italy? Is this the Mincius ?

Are those the ancient turrets of Verona?

And shall I sup where Juliet at the Masque

Saw her loved Montague, and now sleeps by him?

Such questions hourly do I ask myself;

And not a finger-post by the road-side

"To Mantua"

"To Ferrara" - but excites

Surprise, and doubt, and self-congratulation.

O Italy, how beautiful thou art!

Yet I could weep for thou art lying, alas,

Low in the dust; and they, who come, admire thee

As we admire the beautiful in death.

Thine was a dangerous gift, the gift of Beauty.

Would thou hadst less, or wert as once thou wast,

Inspiring awe in those who now enslave thee!

But why despair? Twice hast thou lived already;

Twice shone among the nations of the world,

As the sun shines among the lesser lights

Of heaven; and shalt again.

X.

VENICE.

No track of men, no foot-steps to and fro,

Led to her gates. The path lay o'er the sea,

Invisible; and from the land we went

As to a floating City — steering in,
And gliding up her streets as in a dream,
So smoothly, silently - by many a dome

Mosque-like, and many a stately portico,

The statues ranged along an azure sky;

By many a pile in more than Eastern splendour,