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From “Italy”
THERE is a glorious City in the Sea. | |
| The Sea is in the broad, the narrow streets, | |
| Ebbing and flowing; and the salt sea-weed | |
| Clings to the marble of her palaces. | |
| No track of men, no footsteps to and fro, | 5 |
| Lead to her gates. The path lies o’er the Sea, | |
| Invisible; and from the land we went, | |
| As to a floating City,—steering in, | |
| And gliding up her streets as in a dream, | |
| So smoothly, silently,—by many a dome | 10 |
| Mosque-like, and many a stately portico, | |
| The statues ranged along an azure sky; | |
| By many a pile in more than Eastern splendor, | |
| Of old the residence of merchant kings; | |
| The fronts of some, though Time had shattered them, | 15 |
| Still glowing with the richest hues of art, | |
| As though the wealth within them had run o’er. * * * * * | |
| A few in fear, | |
| Flying away from him whose boast it was | |
| That the grass grew not where his horse had trod, | 20 |
| Gave birth to Venice. Like the waterfowl, | |
| They built their nests among the ocean waves; | |
| And where the sands were shifting, as the wind | |
| Blew from the north, the south; where they that came | |
| Had to make sure the ground they stood upon, | 25 |
| Rose, like an exhalation, from the deep, | |
| A vast Metropolis, with glittering spires, | |
| With theatres, basilicas adorned; | |
| A scene of light and glory, a dominion, | |
| That has endured the longest among men. | 30 |
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| And whence the talisman by which she rose | |
| Towering? ’T was found there in the barren sea. | |
| Want led to Enterprise; and, far or near, | |
| Who met not the Venetian?—now in Cairo, | |
| Ere yet the Califa came, listening to hear | 35 |
| Its bells approaching from the Red Sea coast; | |
| Now on the Euxine, on the Sea of Azoph, | |
| In converse with the Persian, with the Russ, | |
| The Tartar; on his lowly deck receiving | |
| Pearls from the gulf of Ormus, gems from Bagdad, | 40 |
| Eyes brighter yet, that shed the light of love | |
| From Georgia, from Circassia. * * * * * | |
| Thus did Venice rise, | |
| Thus flourish, till the unwelcome tidings came, | |
| That in the Tagus had arrived a fleet | 45 |
| From India, from the region of the Sun, | |
| Fragrant with spices,—that a way was found, | |
| A channel opened, and the golden stream | |
| Turned to enrich another. Then she felt | |
| Her strength departing, and at last she fell, | 50 |
| Fell in an instant, blotted out and razed; | |
| She who had stood yet longer than the longest | |
| Of the Four Kingdoms,—who, as in an Ark, | |
| Had floated down amid a thousand wrecks, | |
| Uninjured, from the Old World to the New. | 55 |
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