"Gondolier" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Tasso's echoes are no more, And silent rows the songless gondolier; Her palaces are crumbling to the shore, And music meets not always now the ear: Those days are gone—but Beauty still is here. States fall, arts fade—but Nature doth not die, Nor yet forget how Venice once was dear, The pleasant ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... By day it is as lively as a scene in Masaniello. By night, after nine o'clock, the whole stir of the quarter has subsided. Far away I hear the bell of some church tell the hours. But no noise disturbs my rest, unless perhaps a belated gondolier moors his boat beneath the window. My one maid, Catina, sings at her work the whole day through. My gondolier, Francesco, acts as valet. He wakes me in the morning, opens the shutters, brings sea-water for my bath, and takes his orders for the day. "Will it do for Chioggia, Francesco;" ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... it was the time of the full moon, when its transcendent beauty led the young folks to wander over the farm from house to house, to sit a while on the doorsteps or on the knoll at the Hive; to sing "Das Klinket" or such part songs as "Row gently here, my gondolier," or "The lone starry hours give me Love, when calm is the beautiful night," or anything else to let out the joyousness of their hearts. They were not wild, for they labored enough to take away the wildness that indolence brings, and to sober them down to the cheerful ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... not assist him in carrying them out; but although we continued to meet daily, as before, he did not recur to the interesting subject, and it was not for me to take the initiative in doing so. Curiosity, I confess, led me to direct my gondolier more than once to the narrow canal over which the Palazzo Martinelli towered; and on each occasion I was rewarded by descrying, from the depths of the miniature mourning-coach which concealed me, the faithful count, seated in his boat and waiting in patient faith, like another Ritter ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... with envy when I think of that first toilet of Oliver's! I too have had just such morning dips —one in Como, with the great cypresses standing black against the glow of an Italian dawn; another in the Lido at sunrise, my gondolier circling about me as I swam; still a third in Stamboul, with the long slants of light piercing the gloom of the stone dome above me—but oh, the smell of the pines and the great sweep of openness, with the ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... not preventing the soft sounds of the singers in the gondolas moored to the poles beneath from reaching their ears. And above the music now and then would come the faint splash of water, and the "Stahi"—"Preme" of some moving gondolier. ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... short—is general assistant in the kitchen, and a good gondolier to boot. When our little family is increased by more than three guests at dinner, Cecco is pressed into dining- room service, and becomes under-butler to Peppina. Here he is not at ease. He scrubs his tanned face until it shines ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the bright vista, the shadowy Rialto threw its colossal curve slowly forth from behind the palace of the Camerlenghi; that strange curve, so delicate, so adamantine, strong as a mountain cavern, graceful as a bow just bent; when first, before its moonlike circumference was all risen, the gondolier's cry, "Ah! Stali," [Footnote: Appendix I, "The Gondolier's Cry."] struck sharp upon the ear, and the prow turned aside under the mighty cornices that half met over the narrow canal, where the plash of ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin |
