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There was marvelous
freshness in the colors of the mosaics in the great arches of the facade,
and all that gracious harmony into which the temple rises, of marble
scrolls and leafy exuberance airily supporting the statues of the saints,
was a hundred times etherealized by the purity and whiteness of the
drifting flakes. The snow lay lightly on the golden globes that tremble
like peacock-crests above the vast domes, and plumed them with softest
white; it robed the saints in ermine; and it danced over all its work, as
if exulting in its beauty--beauty which filled me with subtle, selfish
yearning to keep such evanescent loveliness for the little-while-longer of
my whole life, and with despair to think that even the poor lifeless
shadow of it could never be fairly reflected in picture or poem.
Through the wavering snow-fall, the Saint Theodore upon one of the granite
pillars of the Piazzetta did not show so grim as his wont is, and the
winged lion on the other might have been a winged lamb, so mild and gentle
he looked by the tender light of the storm.


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