Like convicts sent in dreaming flight
To forest green and liberation,
So we in fancy then were borne
Back to our springtime's golden morn.
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Filled with his heart's regrets, and leaning
Against the rampart's granite shelf,
Eugene stood lost in pensive dreaming
(As once some poet drew himselP).
The night grew still. . . with silence falling;
Only the sound of sentries calling,
Or suddenly from Million Street
Some distant droshky's rumbling beat;
Or floating on the drowsy river,
A lonely boat would sail along,
While far away some rousing song
Or plaintive horn would make us shiver.
But sweeter still, amid such nights,
Are Tasso's octaves' soaring flights.
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#62038; Adriatic! Grand Creation!
O Brenta!* I shall yet rejoice,
When, filled once more with inspiration,
I hear at last your magic voice!
It's sacred to Apollo's choir;
Through Albion's great and haughty lyre*
It speaks to me in words I know.
On soft Italian nights I'll go
In search of pleasure's sweet profusion;
A fair Venetian at my side,
Now chatting, now a silent guide,
I'll float in gondola's seclusion;
And she my willing lips will teach
Both love's and Petrarch's ardent speech.
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Will freedom comeand cut my tether?
It's time, it's time! I bid her hail;
I roam the shore,* await fair weather,
And beckon to each passing sail.
#62038; when, my soul, with waves contesting,
And caped in storms, shall I go questing
Upon the crossroads of the sea?
It's time to quit this dreary lee
And land of harsh, forbidding places;
And there, where southern waves break high,
Beneath my Africa's warm sky,*
To sigh for sombre Russia's spaces,
Where first I loved, where first I wept,
And where my buried heart is kept.
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