Gabriele D'Annunzio

“ Perdita and Stelio, entranced, gazed into each other's eyes; for an instant their spirits rushed together and mingled, in all the joy of an actual embrace.
La Marangona, the largest bell of San Marco, sounded midnight, and, as at the eventide, the two enamored ones felt the reverberation of the bronze bell in the roots of their hair, almost like a quiver of their own flesh. Once more they felt, hovering over them, the whirlwind of sound, in the midst of which, in the twilight, they had suddenly become aware of the rising apparition of consoling Beauty, evoked by unanimous prayer. ”

“ Around Pescara is the level sea, the river and mountains and the broad campagnia, the vines, the wine vats and oil presses, the dwellings of mud and reeds; the plain is flooded with magnificent noon, and, at night, Turlendana, drunk, is mocked by the barking of vagrant dogs; the men linger under Violetta’s lighted windows, and the strains of her song run through all the salons, all the heads, of the town.... It is as far away as possible, and yet, in its truth, implied in every heart. ”

“ All the rest is a dream. I love you and you love me. I am yours as you are mine. I know you to be so absolutely mine that I ask for no caress; I ask for no proof of your love. I can wait. My dearest delight is to obey you. I ask for no caresses, but I can feel them in your voice, in your eyes, your attitudes, your slightest movement. All that comes to me from you intoxicates me like a kiss, and when I touch your hand I know not which is greater, the rapture of my senses or the exaltation of my soul.'
He lightly laid his hand on hers. ”

“ Her Dominican robe is full not only of the odour of blood, but of all the odours of the proud life through which she moved unconquered. A vast multitude clothed in sackcloth and in purple, in iron and in gold, have swept her away like a whirlwind, with 'the fire of anger and hatred,’ which burns just as fiercely as the fire of love. Friars, nuns, hermits, light women, soldiers of fortune, princes, cardinals, queens, popes, all the different temperaments of a hard and magnificent century she deals with by her indefatigable will. She is powerful in contemplation and in action. ”

“ The aria of Claudio Monteverde composed itself in the auditors' memories like an immutable lineament.
"Is there any Greek marble that has a perfection of style more sure and simple?" said Daniele Glauro softly, as if he feared to break the musical silence.
"But what sorrow on earth ever has wept like that?" stammered Lady Myrta, her eyes full of tears, that ran down her poor, pale cheeks, which she wiped with her trembling hands, misshaped by gout.
The austere intellect of the ascetic and the sweet, sensitive soul shut within the old, infirm body bore witness to the same power. ”

“ In that attitude her whole figure, continued by the train, seemed taller and more erect; the shadow of the palm veiled and, so to speak, spiritualised the pallor of her skin. Andrea gazed at her in a kind of rapture, increased by the pathos of the music.
As if drawn by the young man's impetuous desire, Elena turned her head a little, and smiled at him—a smile so subtle, so spiritual, that it seemed rather an emanation of the soul than a movement of the lips, while her eyes remained sad and as if lost in a far away dream. ”

“ The ruins of Linturno embraced by the water and the flowers looked, in their secular, stony apathy, like a great collection of broken skeletons. Even the eyeballs of a human skull are not so lifelessly empty as were the hollows of those worn-out stones, bleached white like bones by the mists and the heat. And I imagined that I was ferrying a dead maiden.
Everything after that bore the impress of my sadness on that cloudless afternoon. For a long time we wandered about the ruins searching out the traces of vanished life. ”