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(From Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage)
I STOOD in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs; | |
| A palace and a prison on each hand: | |
| I saw from out the wave her structures rise | |
| As from the stroke of the enchanter’s wand; | |
| A thousand years their cloudy wings expand | 5 |
| Around me, and a dying glory smiles | |
| O’er the far times when many a subject land | |
| Looked to the wingéd’s Lion’s marble piles, | |
| Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles! | |
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| She looks a sea Cybele, fresh from ocean, | 10 |
| Rising with her tiara of proud towers | |
| At airy distance, with majestic motion, | |
| A ruler of the waters and their powers. | |
| And such she was; her daughters had their dowers | |
| From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East | 15 |
| Poured in her lap all gems in sparkling showers. | |
| In purple was she robed, and of her feast | |
| Monarchs partook, and deemed their dignity increased. | |
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| In Venice Tasso’s echoes are no more, | |
| And silent rows the songless gondolier; | 20 |
| 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, | 25 |
| The pleasant place of all festivity, | |
| The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy! | |
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| But unto us she hath a spell beyond | |
| Her name in story, and her long array | |
| Of mighty shadows, whose dim forms despond | 30 |
| Above the Dogeless city’s vanished sway: | |
| Ours is a trophy which will not decay | |
| With the Rialto; Shylock and the Moor, | |
| And Pierre, cannot be swept or worn away,— | |
| The keystones of the arch! though all were o’er, | 35 |
| For us repeopled were the solitary shore. | |
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| The beings of the mind are not of clay; | |
| Essentially immortal, they create | |
| And multiply in us a brighter ray | |
| And more beloved existence: that which Fate | 40 |
| Prohibits to dull life, in this our state | |
| Of mortal bondage, by these spirits supplied, | |
| First exiles, then replaces what we hate; | |
| Watering the heart whose early flowers have died, | |
| And with a fresher growth replenishing the void. * * * * * | 45 |
| The spouseless Adriatic mourns her lord; | |
| And, annual marriage now no more renewed, | |
| The Bucentaur lies rotting unrestored, | |
| Neglected garment of her widowhood! | |
| St. Mark yet sees his lion where he stood | 50 |
| Stand, but in mockery of his withered power, | |
| Over the proud place where an emperor sued, | |
| And monarchs gazed and envied in the hour | |
| When Venice was a queen with an unequalled dower. | |
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| The Suabian sued, and now the Austrian reigns,— | 55 |
| An emperor tramples where an emperor knelt; | |
| Kingdoms are shrunk to provinces, and chains | |
| Clank over sceptred cities; nations melt | |
| From power’s high pinnacle, when they have felt | |
| The sunshine for a while, and downward go | 60 |
| Like lauwine loosened from the mountain’s belt: | |
| O for one hour of blind old Dandolo! | |
| The octogenarian chief, Byzantium’s conquering foe. | |
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| Before St. Mark still glow his steeds of brass, | |
| Their gilded collars glittering in the sun; | 65 |
| But is not Doria’s menace come to pass? | |
| Are they not bridled? Venice, lost and won, | |
| Her thirteen hundred years of freedom done, | |
| Sinks, like a seaweed, into whence she rose! | |
| Better be whelmed beneath the waves, and shun, | 70 |
| Even in destruction’s depth, her foreign foes, | |
| From whom submission wrings an infamous repose. | |
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| In youth she was all glory,—a new Tyre,— | |
| Her very byword sprung from victory, | |
| The “Planter of the Lion,” which through fire | 75 |
| And blood she bore o’er subject earth and sea; | |
| Though making many slaves, herself still free, | |
| And Europe’s bulwark ’gainst the Ottomite: | |
| Witness Troy’s rival, Candia! Vouch it, ye | |
| Immortal waves that saw Lepanto’s fight! | 80 |
| For ye are names no time nor tyranny can blight. * * * * * | |
| I loved her from my boyhood,—she to me | |
| Was as a fairy city of the heart, | |
| Rising like water-columns from the sea, | |
| Of joy the sojourn and of wealth the mart; | 85 |
| And Otway, Radcliffe, Schiller, Shakespeare’s art, | |
| Had stamped her image in me, and even so, | |
| Although I found her thus, we did not part, | |
| Perchance even dearer in her day of woe | |
| Than when she was a boast, a marvel, and a show. | 90 |
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| I can repeople with the past,—and of | |
| The present there is still for eye and thought, | |
| And meditation chastened down, enough; | |
| And more, it may be, than I hoped or sought; | |
| And of the happiest moments which were wrought | 95 |
| Within the web of my existence, some | |
| From thee, fair Venice! have their colors caught; | |
| There are some feelings time cannot benumb, | |
| Nor torture shake, or mine would now be cold and dumb. | |
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