Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1821 edition. Excerpt: ... act iii. scene I. Scene, the Space between the Canal and the Church of San Giovanni e San Paolo. Jin equestrian Statue before it.--A Gondola lies in the Canal at some distance. Enter the Doge alone, disguised. Doge (solus.) I am before the hour, the hour whose voice, Pealing into the arch of night, might strike These palaces with ominous tottering, And rock their marbles to the corner stone, Waking the sleepers from some hideous dream Of indistinct but awful augury Of that which will befall them. Yes, proud city! Thou must be cleansed of the black blooc1 which makes thee A lazar-house of tyranny: the task Is forced upon me, I have sought it not; And therefore was I punish'd, seeing this Patrician pestilence spread on and on, Until at length it smote me in my slumbers, And I am tainted, and must wash away The plague-spots in the healing wave. Tall fane! Where sleep my fathers, whose dim statues shadow The floor which doth divide us from the dead, Where all the pregnant hearts of our bold blood, Moulder'd into a mite of ashes, hold In one shrunk heap what once made many heroes, When what is now a handful shook the earth--Fane of the tutelar saints who guard our house! Vault where two Doges rest--my sires! who died The one of toil, the other in the field, With a long race of other lineal chiefs And sages, whose great labours, wounds, and state I have inherited, --let the graves gape, Till all thine aisles be peopled with the dead, And pour them from thy portals to gaze on me! I call them up, and them and thee to witness What it hath been which put me to this task--Their pure high blood, their blazon-roll of glories, Their mighty name dishonour'd all in me, Not by me, but by the ungrateful nobles We fought to make our equals, not our...