Count Julio.
157
They who through that night of fear
Kept watch with storm and terror till the morn,
Bore its dark memories even to the tomb.
For shrieks and cries seemed mingled with the wind,
And voices, as of warring fiends, prevailed
O'er its low mutterings!
Morn awoke at last,
And with its earliest gleam Count Julio crept
Forth through his palace gardens. Swollen drops
Hung on the curved roofs of the porticoes;
His footsteps dashed them from the earth-bowed leaves,
And the long tangles of the matted grass.
But, over head, the day broke gloriously.
Kept watch with storm and terror till the morn,
Bore its dark memories even to the tomb.
For shrieks and cries seemed mingled with the wind,
And voices, as of warring fiends, prevailed
O'er its low mutterings!
Morn awoke at last,
And with its earliest gleam Count Julio crept
Forth through his palace gardens. Swollen drops
Hung on the curved roofs of the porticoes;
His footsteps dashed them from the earth-bowed leaves,
And the long tangles of the matted grass.
But, over head, the day broke gloriously.
Where once a fountain to the sunlight leapt,
A marble Naiad by its weedy bed
Stood on her pedestal. With hand outstretched
She grasped a hollowed shell, now brimming o'er,
While a green vine that round her arm had crept,
Rose, serpent-like, and in the chalice dipt
Its curling tendrils. Thither turned his eye,
Just as the red uprising of the sun
A marble Naiad by its weedy bed
Stood on her pedestal. With hand outstretched
She grasped a hollowed shell, now brimming o'er,
While a green vine that round her arm had crept,
Rose, serpent-like, and in the chalice dipt
Its curling tendrils. Thither turned his eye,
Just as the red uprising of the sun
