Notes:
[1] The bones of St. Mark repose in his church at Venice.
[2] The famous bronze horses of St. Mark's still shine with the gold
that once covered them.
[3] Venice early swept the Adriatic of the pirates who infested it.
[4] The Doge Enrico Dandolo, who, though blind and bowed with eighty
years of war, was the first to plant the banner of Saint Mark on the
walls of Constantinople when that city was taken by the Venetians and
Crusaders.
The late poems of Aleardi are nearly all in this lyrical form, in
which the thought drops and rises with ceaseless change of music,
and which wins the reader of many empty Italian canzoni by the mere
delight of its movement. It is well adapted to the subjects for which
Aleardi has used it; it has a stateliness and strength of its own, and
its alternate lapse and ascent give animation to the ever-blending
story and aspiration, appeal or reflection. In this measure are
written The Three Rivers, The Three Maidens, and The Seven Soldiers.
The latter is a poem of some length, in which the poet, figuring
himself upon a battle-field on the morrow after a combat between
Italians and Austrians, "wanders among the wounded in search of
expiated sins and of unknown heroism. He pauses," continues his
eloquent biographer in the _Galleria Nazionale_, "to meditate on the
death of the Hungarian, Polish, Bohemian, Croatian, Austrian, and
Tyrolese soldiers, who personify the nationalities oppressed by the
tyranny of the house of Hapsburg.
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