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Updated: June 15, 2025
"On the clear hyaline, the glassy sea," to observe the last sunbeams fade on the tufted gardens of the Giudecca, and to contemplate the distant Euganean hills, once the happiest region of Italy; where wandering nations enjoyed the simplicity of a pastoral life, long before the arrival of Antenor.
The city lay before us, with all its palaces, churches, vineyards, picturesque towers, and forked battlements, divided by the swiftly flowing river, which curved round like a flash of light; and beyond lay the circling landscape, crowned with convents and villas; and in the far distance the Euganean Hills, with their blue and purple tints, and the snowy peaks of the Tyrolese Alps.
The Chauffeulier set them to music by quoting from Shelley's "Lines Written in Dejection in the Euganean Hills" a sweet old-fashioned title of other days, and words so beautiful that for a moment I was depressed in sympathy though I couldn't help feeling that I should be happy in the Euganean Hills.
"Nunc," I could exclaim with Propertius. "Nunc mihi summa licet sidera contingere plantis." And that exalted strain, which was my perdition, alas, was hers also! That which followed was a very hot still night, with thunder in the Euganean hills; and Aurelia may have been lax or languid, or in my miserable person some of the summer's fire may have throbbed.
In September Byron entered into negotiations, afterwards completed, for renting a country house among the Euganean hills near Este, from Mr. Hoppner, the English Consul at Venice, who bears frequent testimony to his kindness and courtesy.
And now, in the afternoon, I felt as if I had been in this long, rambling, tumble-down Villa of Mistra a villa three-quarters of which was given up to the storage of grain and garden tools, or to the exercise of rats, mice, scorpions, and centipedes all my life; as if I had always sat there, in Count Alvise's study, among the pile of undusted books on agriculture, the sheaves of accounts, the samples of grain and silkworm seed, the ink-stains and the cigar-ends; as if I had never heard of anything save the cereal basis of Italian agriculture, the diseases of maize, the peronospora of the vine, the breeds of bullocks, and the iniquities of farm laborers; with the blue cones of the Euganean hills closing in the green shimmer of plain outside the window.
"The intense blue of the sea, contrasted with the fainter blue of the Euganean Hills," said Leslie suddenly, "is most remarkable and beautiful. What?" He was proud of having noticed that. He was always proud of noticing beauty unaided. He made his remark with the simple pleasure of a child in his own appreciation. His glance at Peter said, "I am getting on, I think?"
Here "Prometheus Unbound" was begun, and the "Lines written among the Euganean Hills" were composed; and here Clara became so ill that her parents thought it necessary to rush for medical assistance to Venice. They had forgotten their passport; but Shelley's irresistible energy overcame all difficulties, and they entered Venice only in time, however, for the child to die.
Of course all this would be more genuinely appropriate to Shelley himself than to Moore: still it would admit of some application to Moore, of whom our poet spoke highly more than once elsewhere. The image of a forest on fire is more fully expressed in a passage from the Lines written among the Euganean Hills, composed by him in 1818:
I was sorry to leave Venice, and regretted my peaceful excursions upon the Adriatic, when the Euganean hills were lost in a golden haze, and the sun cast his departing gleam across the waters. No bright rays illuminated my departure, but the coolness and perfume of the air made some amends for their absence.
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