Rhymes On The Road. Extract VIII. Venice.

Female Beauty at Venice.--No longer what it was in the time of Titian.-- His mistress.--Various Forms in which he has painted her.--Venus.--Divine and profane Love.--La Fragilita d'Amore--Paul Veronese.--His Women.-- Marriage of Cana.--Character of Italian Beauty.--Raphael's Fornarina.-- Modesty.     Thy brave, thy learned have passed away:     Thy beautiful!--ah, where are they?     The forms, the faces that once shone,         Models of grace, in Titian's eye,     Where are they now, while flowers live on         In ruined places, why, oh! why         Must Beauty thus with Glory die?     That maid whose lips would still have moved,         Could art have breathed a spirit through them;     Whose varying charms her artist loved         More fondly every time he drew them,     (So oft beneath his touch they past,     Each semblance fairer than the last);     Wearing each shape that Fancy's range         Offers to Love--yet still the one     Fair idol seen thro' every change,         Like facets of some orient stone,--         In each the same bright image shown.     Sometimes a Venus, unarrayed         But in her beauty[1]--sometimes deckt     In costly raiment, as a maid         That kings might for a throne select.[2]     Now high and proud, like one who thought     The world should at her feet be brought;     Now with a look reproachful sad,[3]--     Unwonted look from brow so glad,--     And telling of a pain too deep     For tongue to speak or eyes to weep.     Sometimes thro' allegory's veil,         In double semblance seemed to shine,     Telling a strange and mystic tale         Of Love Profane and Love Divine[4]--     Akin in features, but in heart     As far as earth and heaven apart.     Or else (by quaint device to prove     The frailty of all worldly love)     Holding a globe of glass as thin         As air-blown bubbles in her hand,     With a young Love confined therein,         Whose wings seem waiting to expand--     And telling by her anxious eyes     That if that frail orb break he flies.[5]     Thou too with touch magnificent,     PAUL of VERONA!--where are they?     The oriental forms[6] that lent     Thy canvas such a bright array?     Noble and gorgeous dames whose dress     Seems part of their own loveliness;     Like the sun's drapery which at eve     The floating clouds around him weave     Of light they from himself receive!     Where is there now the living face         Like those that in thy nuptial throng[7]     By their superb, voluptuous grace,     Make us forget the time, the place,         The holy guests they smile among,--     Till in that feast of heaven-sent wine     We see no miracles but thine.     If e'er, except in Painting's dream,     There bloomed such beauty here, 'tis gone,--     Gone like the face that in the stream         Of Ocean for an instant shone,     When Venus at that mirror gave     A last look ere she left the wave.     And tho', among the crowded ways,     We oft are startled by the blaze         Of eyes that pass with fitful light.     Like fire-flies on the wing at night[8]     'Tis not that nobler beauty given     To show how angels look in heaven.     Even in its shape most pure and fair,     'Tis Beauty with but half her zone,     All that can warm the sense is there,         But the Soul's deeper charm has flown:--     'Tis RAPHAEL's Fornarina,--warm,         Luxuriant, arch, but unrefined;     A flower round which the noontide swarm         Of young Desires may buzz and wind,     But where true Love no treasure meets     Worth hoarding in his hive of sweets.     Ah no,--for this and for the hue         Upon the rounded cheek, which tells     How fresh within the heart this dew         Of love's unrifled sweetness dwells,     We must go back to our own Isles,         Where Modesty, which here but gives     A rare and transient grace to smiles,         In the heart's holy centre lives;     And thence as from her throne diffuses         O'er thoughts and looks so bland a reign,     That not a thought or feeling loses         Its freshness in that gentle chain.