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| O VENICE! Venice! when thy marble walls | |
| Are level with the waters, there shall be | |
| A cry of nations o’er thy sunken halls, | |
| A loud lament along the sweeping sea! | |
| If I, a northern wanderer, weep for thee, | 5 |
| What should thy sons do?—anything but weep? | |
| And yet they only murmur in their sleep. | |
| In contrast with their fathers, as the slime, | |
| The dull green ooze of the receding deep, | |
| Is with the dashing of the spring-tide foam, | 10 |
| That drives the sailor shipless to his home, | |
| Are they to those that were; and thus they creep, | |
| Crouching and crab-like, through their sapping streets. | |
| O agony! that centuries should reap | |
| No mellower harvest! Thirteen hundred years | 15 |
| Of wealth and glory turned to dust and tears; | |
| And every monument the stranger meets, | |
| Church, palace, pillar, as a mourner greets; | |
| And even the Lion all subdued appears, | |
| And the harsh sound of the barbarian drum, | 20 |
| With dull and daily dissonance, repeats | |
| The echo of thy tyrant’s voice along | |
| The soft waves, once all musical to song, | |
| That heaved beneath the moonlight with the throng | |
| Of gondolas,—and to the busy hum | 25 |
| Of cheerful creatures, whose most sinful deeds | |
| Were but the overbeating of the heart, | |
| And flow of too much happiness, which needs | |
| The aid of age to turn its course apart | |
| From the luxuriant and voluptuous flood | 30 |
| Of sweet sensations, battling with the blood. | |
| But these are better than the gloomy errors, | |
| The weeds of nations in their last decay, | |
| When vice walks forth with her unsoftened terrors, | |
| And mirth is madness, and but smiles to slay. * * * * * | 35 |
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