CANTO IV.]
CHILDE HAROLD’S PILGRIMAGE.
329
And such she was;—her daughters had their dowers
From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East[1]
Poured in her lap all gems in sparkling showers.[2]
In purple was she robed,[3] and of her feast
Monarchs partook, and deemed their dignity increased.[4]
III.
In Venice Tasso's echoes are no more,N2
And silent rows the songless Gondolier;[5]
Her palaces are crumbling to the shore,
And Music meets not always now the ear:
- ↑ From spoils of many nations and the East.—[MS. M., D, erased.]
- ↑ ["Gems wrought into drinking-vessels, among which the least precious were framed of turquoise, jasper, or amethyst ... unnumbered jacinths, emeralds, sapphires, chrysolites, and topazes, and, lastly, those matchless carbuncles which, placed on the High Altar of St. Mark's, blazed with intrinsic light, and scattered darkness by their own beams;—these are but a sample of the treasures which accrued to Venice" (Villehardouin, lib. iii. p. 129). (See Sketches from Venetian History, 1831, i. 161.)]
- ↑ [After the fall of Constantinople, in 1204, "the illustrious Dandolo ... was permitted to tinge his buskins in the purple hue distinctive of the Imperial Family, to claim exemption from all feudal service to the Emperor, and to annex to the title of Doge of Venice the proud style of Despot of Romania, and Lord of One-fourth and One-eighth of the Roman Empire" (ibid., 1831, i. 167).]
- ↑ Monarchs sate down——.—[D. erased.]
- ↑ [The gondoliers (see Hobhouse's note ii.) used to sing alternate stanzas of the Gerusalemme Liberata, capping each other like the shepherds in the Bucolics. The rival reciters were sometimes attached to the same gondola; but often the response came from a passing gondolier, a stranger to the singer who challenged the contest. Rogers, in his
