Amy Lowell

“ 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. ”

“ You have much to watch, Lion, the whole earth cannot match the pageant of this great square, in the limpid sun-shot air, between the towering Campanile and the blaze of Saint Mark's angels. Star-fish patterns, jelly-fish rounds of colour, if the sea quivers with variety so does the Piazza. But above, on the façade of the jewelled church, the horses do not change. They stand vigorous and immovable, stepping lightly as though poised upon glass. Metal horses set upon shifting shards of glass, and the soft diphthongs of the Venetian dialect float over them like wind. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Blue as the tip of a deep blue salvia blossom, the inverted cup of the sky arches over the sea. Up to meet it, in a concave curve of bright colour, rises the water, flat, unrippled, for the wind scarcely stirs. How comes the sky so full of clouds on the horizon, with none over head? Clouds! Great clouds of canvas! Mighty ballooning clouds, bearing thunder and crinkled lightning in their folds. They roll up out of the horizon, tiered, stately. Sixty-four great thunder-clouds, more perhaps, throwing their shadows over ten miles of sea. ”

“ Still, over Rome, the white sun sails the blue, stretching sky, casting orange and purple striæ down upon the marble city, cool and majestic, between cool hills, white and omnipotent, dying of languor, amusing herself for a moment with the little boats floating up the Tiber bringing the good grain of Carthage, then relaxed and falling as water falls, dropping into the bath. Weak as water; without contour as water; colourless as water; Rome bathes, and relaxes, and melts. Fluid and fluctuating, a liquid city pouring itself back into the streams of the earth. ”

“ He is blinded by red, blood-red fading to rose, smeared purple, blotted out by blue. Larkspur sea and blue sky above it, with the flickering flags of his signal standing out in cameo.
Boom! A shot passes through the main topgallantsail of the Victory. The ship is under fire. Her guns cannot bear while she is head on. Straight at the floating half-moon of ships goes the Victory, leading her line, muffled in the choking smoke of the Bucentaure's guns. The sun is dimmed, but through the smoke-cloud prick diamond sparkles from the Admiral's stars as he walks up and down the quarter-deck. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Rule, Britannia, though she doesn't deserve it; it is all Nelson and the Ambassadress, in the streets of Naples.
He has rooms at the Palazzo Sesso, the British Admiral, and all day long he watches the red, half-closed eye of Vesuvius gazing down at his riding ships. At night, there is a red plume over the mountain, and the light of it fills the room with a crimson glow, it might be a gala lit for him. His eyes swim. In the open sky hangs a steel-white star, and a bar of silver cuts through the red reflections of the mirrors. Red and silver, for the bay is not blue at night. ”

“ Blood-red plumes, jarring to the footfalls; they have passed through the gate, they are in the walls of the mother city, of marble Rome. Their tunics are purple embroidered with gold, their armour clanks as they walk, the cold steel of their swords is chill in the sun, each is a hero, one by one, endless companies, the soldiers come. Back to Rome with a victor's spoils, with a victor's wreath on every head, and Judah broken is dead, dead! "Io triumphe!" The shout knocks and breaks upon the spears of the legionaries.
The God of the Jews is overborne, he has failed his people. ”

“ The sun whitens the knives in their girdles, the reins flash in the sun like ribbons of spun glass. Three-year-olds in the Green chariot, so black they are blue. Four blue-black horses, with the sheen of their flanks glistening like the grain of polished wood. The little ears point forward, their teeth tease the bits. They snort and jerk, and the chariot wheels quirk over an outstanding stone and jolt down, flat and rumbling. The Blue chariot-driver handles a team of greys, white as the storks who nest in the cemetery beyond the Moslem quarter. ”

“ Altar smoke winding up to the gilded horses as they tread above Rome. Below—laughing, jangling, pushing and rushing. Two carts are jammed at a street corner, and the oaths of the drivers mingle, and snap, and corrode, like hot fused metal, one against another. They hiss and sputter, making a confused chord through which the squeal of a derrick winding up a granite slab pierces, shrill and nervous, a sharp boring sound, shoring through the wide, white light of the Roman sky. People are selling things: matches, broken glass, peas, sausages, cakes. ”

“ Strange city, belonging neither to earth nor water, where the slender spandrels of vines melt into the carvings of arched windows, and crabs ferry themselves through the moon-green water rippling over the steps of a decaying church.
Beautiful, faded city. The sea wind has dimmed your Oriental extravagance to an iris of rose, and amber, and lilac. You are dim and reminiscent like the frayed hangings of your State Chambers, and the stucco of your house-fronts crumbles into the canals with a gentle dripping which no one notices. ”

“ She is fairer than the Blessed Virgin; and good! Never was such a soul in such a body! The role of her benefactions would stretch from here to Posilipo. And she loves the people, loves to go among them and speak to this one and that, and her apple-blossom face under the big blue hat works miracles like the Holy Images in the Churches.
In her great house with the red marble stairway, Lady Hamilton holds brilliant sway. From her boudoir windows she can see the bay, and on the left, hanging there, a flame in a cresset, the blood-red glare of Vesuvius staring at the clear blue air. ”

“ Magnificent churches, splendid palaces, great commercial streets, are burning. Golden domes melt and liquefy, and people flee from the dripping of them. Lakes of gold lie upon the pavements; pillars crack and tumble, making dams and bridges over the hot gold. Two days, two nights, the fire rages, and through the roar of it the little cries of frightened birds come thin and pitiful. Earth pleading with fire. Earth begging quarter of the awful majesty of fire. The birds wheel over Constantinople; they perch upon the cool bronze horses standing above the Hippodrome. ”

“ The white glitter is quenched; the white glitter of his life will shine no more. "Doctor, I am gone. I leave Lady Hamilton and my daughter Horatia as a legacy to my Country." Pathetic trust, thrusting aside knowledge. Flint, the men who sit in Parliament, flint which no knocking can spark to fire. But you still believe in men's goodness, knowing only your own heart. "Let my dear Lady Hamilton have my hair, and all other things belonging to me."
The red darkens, and is filled with tossing fires. He sees Vesuvius, and over it the single silver brilliance of a star. ”

“ People pluck the strings of rebecks and psalteries; they shock the cords of lyres; they batter tin drums, and shatter the guts of kettle-drums when the Emperor goes to Saint Sophia to worship at an altar of precious stones fused into a bed of gold and silver, and, as he walks up the nave between the columns of green granite, and the columns of porphyry, under the golden lily on the Octagonal Tower, the bells pour their notes over the roofs, spilling them in single jets down on each side of the wide roofs. ”

“ Constantinople is a yellow honey-comb, with fat bees buzzing in all its many-sided cells. Bees come over the flower-blue seas; bees humming from the Steppes of Tartary, from the long line of Nile-fed Egypt. Tush! What would you! Where there is gold there are always men about it; to steal it, to guard it, to sit and rot under its lotus-shining brilliance. The very army is woven of threads drawn from the edges of the world. Byzantines are merchantmen, they roll and flounder in the midst of gold coins, they tumble and wallow in money-baths, they sit and chuckle under a continuous money-spray. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And the reflection of it also floats, perfect in colour but cooler, perfect in outline but more vague, in the glassy water of the Grand Canal. The blue sky sustains it; the blue water encloses it. Then balloon and reflection swing gently seaward. One ascends, the other descends. Each dwindles to a speck. Ah, the semblance is gone, the water has nothing; but the sky focusses about a point of fire, a formless iridescence sailing higher, become a mere burning, until that too is absorbed in the brilliance of the clouds. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Cloud-shadows run ahead of us along the streets. Morning. Summer. England. "Have a light, Sir? Tobacco tastes well in this fresh air."
Hedges of England, how many wheels spatter you in a day? How many coaches roll between you on their star-point way? What rainbow colours slide past you with the fluency of water? Crimson mails rumble and glide the night through, but the Cambridge Telegraph is a brilliant blue. The Bull and Mouth coaches are buttercup yellow, those of the Bull are painted red, while the Bell and Crown sports a dark maroon with light red wheels. ”

“ The silver prow of a gondola winds round a wall, and in the moss-brown water another gondola joins it, bottom to bottom, with the teeth of the prow infinitely repeated. A cypress closes the end of a rio, and driven into the thick water another cypress spindles beneath us, and the wake of our boat leaves its foliage cut to tatters as it passes on. We plough through the veined pinks and subdued scarlets of the façades of palaces; we sheer a path through a spotted sky and blunt the tip of a soaring campanile. Are we swimming in the heavens, turned legend and constellation? ”

“ 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. ”