Note 408 — CANTO THE FOURTH[375]
Reading edition
The above description may seem fantastical or exaggerated to those who have never seen an Oriental or an Italian sky; yet it is but a literal and hardly sufficient delineation of an August evening (the eighteenth), as contemplated in one of many rides along the banks of the Brenta, near La Mira.
[Compare Shelley's Julian and Maddalo (Poetical Works, 1895, i. 343)—
"How beautiful is sunset, when the glow Of Heaven descends upon a land like thee, Thou Paradise of exiles, Italy! ... We stood Looking upon the evening, and the flood, Which lay between the city and the shore, Paved with the image of the sky ... the hoar And aëry Alps towards the north appeared, Thro' mist, an heaven-sustaining bulwark reared Between the East and West; and half the sky Was roofed with clouds of rich emblazonry, Dark purple at the zenith, which still grew Down the steep West into a wondrous hue, Brighter than burning gold."]