Oscar Wilde: The Picture of Dorian Gray

CHAPTER 14 (continued)

      Sur une gamme chromatique,
        Le sein de peries ruisselant,
      La Venus de l'Adriatique
        Sort de l'eau son corps rose et blanc.

      Les domes, sur l'azur des ondes
        Suivant la phrase au pur contour,
      S'enflent comme des gorges rondes
        Que souleve un soupir d'amour.

      L'esquif aborde et me depose,
        Jetant son amarre au pilier,
      Devant une facade rose,
        Sur le marbre d'un escalier.

How exquisite they were! As one read them, one seemed to be floating down the green water-ways of the pink and pearl city, seated in a black gondola with silver prow and trailing curtains. The mere lines looked to him like those straight lines of turquoise-blue that follow one as one pushes out to the Lido. The sudden flashes of colour reminded him of the gleam of the opal-and-iris-throated birds that flutter round the tall honeycombed Campanile, or stalk, with such stately grace, through the dim, dust-stained arcades. Leaning back with half-closed eyes, he kept saying over and over to himself:

      "Devant une facade rose,
         Sur le marbre d'un escalier."

The whole of Venice was in those two lines. He remembered the autumn that he had passed there, and a wonderful love that had stirred him to mad delightful follies. There was romance in every place. But Venice, like Oxford, had kept the background for romance, and, to the true romantic, background was everything, or almost everything. Basil had been with him part of the time, and had gone wild over Tintoret. Poor Basil! What a horrible way for a man to die!