My task is done theme CLXXXV. my song hath ceased Has died into an echo; it is fit my The spell should break of this protracted dream. The torch shall be extinguish'd which hath lit My midnight lamp-and what is writ, is writ,Would it were worthier! but I am not now That which I have been-and my visions flit Less palpably before me-and the glow Which in my spirit dwelt is fluttering, faint, and low. CLXXXVI. Farewell! a word that must be, and hath beenA sound which makes us linger;-yet-farewell! Ye! who have traced the Pilgrim to the scene Which is his last, if in your memories dwell A thought which once was his, if on ye swell A single recollection, not in vain He wore his sandal-shoon, and scallop shell; Farewell! with him alone may rest the pain. If such there were with you, the moral of his strain! NOTES TO CANTO IV. 1. I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs; Stanza i. lines 1 and 2. The communication between the ducal palace and the prisons of Venice is by a gloomy bridge, or covered gallery, high above the water, and divided by a stone wall into a passage and a cell. The state dungeons, called "pozzi... or wells, were sunk in the thick walls of the palace; and the pri soner when taken out to die was conducted across the gallery to the other side, and being then led back into the other compartment, or cell, upon the bridge, was there strangled. The low portal through which the criminal was taken into this cell is now walled up; but the passage is still open, and is still known by the name of the Bridge of Sighs. The pozzi are under the flooring of the chamber at the foot of the bridge. They were for. merly twelve, but on the first arrival of the French, the Venetians hastily blocked or broke up the deeper of these dungeons. You may still, however, descend by a trap-door, and crawl down through holes, half-choked by rubbish, to the depth of two stories below the first range. If you are in want of consolation for the extinction of patrician power, perhaps you may find it there; scarcely a ray of light glimmers into the narrow gallery which leads to the cells. and the places of confinement themselves are totally dark. A small hole in the wall admitted the damp air of the passages, and served for the introduction of the prisoner's food. A wooden pallet, raised a foot from the ground, was the only furniture. The conductors tell you that a light was not allowed. The cells are about five paces in length, two and a half in width, and seven feet in height. They are directly beneath one another, and respiration is somewhat difficult in the lower holes. Only one prisoner was found when the republicans descended into these hideous recesses, and he is said to have been confined sixteen years. But the inmates of the dungeons beneath had left traces of their re pentance, or of their despair, which are still vi sible, and may perhaps owe something to recent ingenuity. Some of the detained appear to have offended against, and others to have belonged to, the sacred body, not only from their signatures, but from the churches and belfries which they have scratched upon the walls. The reader may not object to see a specimen of the records prompted by so terrific a solitude. As nearly as they could be copied by more than one pencil, three of them are as follows: 1. NON TI FIDAR AD ALCUNO PENSA e TACI MA BEN DI VALOR TUO LA VERA PROVA 1607. ADI 2. GENARO. FUI RETENTO P' LA BESTIEMMA P' AVER DATO DA MANZAR A UN MORTO 2. UN PARLAR POCHO et NEGARE PRONTO et IACOMO. GRITTI. SCRISSE. UN PENSAR AL FINE PUO DARE LA VITA A NOI ALTRI MESCHINI 1605 EGO IOAN BAPTISTA AD ECCLESIAM CORTELLARIUS. 3. DE CHI MI FIDO GUARDAMI DIO DE CHI NON MI FIDO MI GUARDARO 10 The copyist has followed, not corrected the solecisms; some of which are however not quite so decided, since the letters were evidently scratched in the dark. It only need be observed, that bestemmia and mangiar may be read in the first inscription, which was probably written by a pri soner confined for some act of impiety committed at a funeral; that Cortellarius is the name of a parish on terra firma, near the sea; and that the fast initials evidently are put for Viva la santa Chiesa Kattolica Romana. 2. She looks a sea Cybele, fresh from ocean, Stanza ii. lines 1 and 2. An old writer, describing the appearance of Ve nice, has made use of the above image, which would not be poetical were it not true. "Quo fit ut qui superne urbem contempletur, turritam telluris imaginem medio Oceano figura tam se putet inspicere... 1) 3. In Venice Tasso's echoes are no more. Stanza iii. line 1. The well known song of the gondoliers, of alternate stanzas from Tasso's Jerusalem, has died with the independence of Venice. Editions of the poem, with the original on one column, and the Venetian variations on the other, as sung by the boatmen were once common, and are still to be found. The following extract will serve to show the difference between the Tuscan epic and the "Canta alla Barcariola... ORIGINAL. Canto l'arme pietose, e 'l capitano Che 1 gran Sepolcro liberò di Christo. 1 Marci Antonii Sabelli de Venetae Urbis situ narratio, edit. Taurin. 1527, lib. i. fol. 202. Molto egli oprò col senno, e con la mano E in van 'Inferno a lui s' oppose, e in vano VENETIAN. L'arme pietose de cantar gho vogia, Some of the elder gondoliers will, however, take up and continue a stanza of their once familiar bard. On the 7th of last January, the author of Childe Harold, and another Englishman, the writer of this notice, rowed to the Lido with two singers, one of whom was a carpenter, and the other a gondolier. The former placed himself at the prow, the latter at the stern of the boat. A little after leaving the quay of the Piazzetta, they began to sing, and continued their exercise until we arrived at the island. They gave us, amongst other essays, the death of Clorinda, and the palace of Armida; and did not sing the Venetian, but the Tuscan The carpenter, however, who was the cleverer of the two, and was frequently obliged to prompt his companion, told us that he could trans late the original. He added, that he could sing almost three hundred stanzas, but had not spirits (morbin was the word he used) to learn any more, or to sing what he already knew: a man must have idle time on his hands to acquire, or to repeat, and, said the poor fellow, "look at my clothes and at me; I am starving... This speech was more affecting than his performance, which habit alone can make attractive. The recitative was shrill, screaming, and monotonous, and the gondolier |