Even in destruction's depth, her foreign foes, From whom submission wrings an infamous repose.

In youth she was all glory, - a new Tyre, -
Her very byword sprung from victory,
The Planter of the Lion," which through fire
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!

For ye are names no time nor tyranny can blight.

*

*

I loved her from my boyhood,

Was as a fairy city of the heart,

*

she to me

Rising like water-columns from the sea, Of joy the sojourn and of wealth the mart; 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.

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
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.
Lord Byron.

OF

THE CARNIVAL.

all the places where the Carnival

Was most facetious in the days of yore,

For dance, and song, and serenade, and ball,

And masque, and mime, and mystery, and more Than I have time to tell now, or at all,

Venice the bell from every city bore; And at the moment when I fix my story That sea-born city was in all her glory.

They've pretty faces yet, those same Venetiaus,

Black eyes, arched brows, and sweet expressious still; Such as of old were copied from the Grecians,

In ancient arts by moderns mimicked ill; And like so many Venuses of Titian's

(The best 's at Florence, see it, if ye will), They look when leaning over the balcony, Or stepped from out a picture by Giorgione,

Whose tints are truth and beauty at their best;
And when you to Manfrini's palace go,
That picture (howsoever fine the rest)

Is loveliest to my mind of all the show:
It may perhaps be also to your zest,

And that's the cause I rhyme upon it so: "T is but a portrait of his son, and wife, And self; but such a woman! love in life!

Lord Byron.

I

SAN GIOVANNI AND SAN PAOLO.

AM before the hour, the hour whose voice,
Pealing into the arch of night, might strike
These palaces with ominous tottering,

Aud rock their marbles to the corner-stone,
Waking the sleepers from some hideous dream
Of indistinct but awful augury

Of that which will befall them. Yes, proud city!
Thou must be cleansed of the black blood which makes

thee

A lazar-house of tyranny: the task

Is forced upon me, I have sought it not;
And therefore was I punished, seeing this
Patrician pestilence spread on and on,

Until at length it smote me in my slumbers,
And I am tainted, and must wash away

The plague-spots in the healing wave. Tall fane !
Where sleep my fathers, whose dim statues shadow
The floor which doth divide us from the dead,
Where all the pregnant hearts of our bold blood,
Mouldered into a mite of ashes, hold

In one shrunk heap what once made many heroes, When what is now a handful shook the earth, Fane of the tutelar saints who guard our house! Vault where two doges rest, - my sires! who died The one of toil, the other in the field,

With a long race of other lineal chiefs

And sages, whose great labors, wounds, and state

I have inherited, let the graves gape,

Till all thine aisles be peopled with the dead,
And pour them from thy portals to gaze on me!
I call them up, and them and thee to witness
What it hath been which put me to this task,
Their pure high blood, their blazon-roll of glories,
Their mighty name dishonored all in me,
Not by me, but by the ungrateful nobles
We fought to make our equals, not our lords.

Lord Byron.

A

PALAZZO LIONI.

ROUND me are the stars and waters, -
Worlds mirrored in the ocean, goodlier sight
Than torches glared back by a gaudy glass;
And the great element, which is to space
What ocean is to earth, spreads its blue depths,
Softened with the first breathings of the spring;
The high moon sails upon her beauteous way
Serenely smoothing o'er the lofty walls
Of those tall piles and sea-girt palaces,
Whose porphyry pillars, and whose costly fronts,
Fraught with the orient spoil of many marbles,
Like altars ranged along the broad canal,
Seem each a trophy of some mighty deed

Reared up from out the waters, scarce less strangely
Than those more massy and mysterious giants

Of architecture, those Titanian fabrics,

Which point in Egypt's plains to times that have
No other record. All is gentle naught

:

Stirs rudely; but, congenial with the night,
Whatever walks is gliding like a spirit.
The tinklings of some vigilant guitars
Of sleepless lovers to a wakeful mistress,
And cautious opening of the casement, showing
That he is not unheard; while her young hand,
Fair as the moonlight of which it seems part,
So delicately white, it trembles in

The act of opening the forbidden lattice,

To let in love through music, makes his heart
Thrill like his lyre-strings at the sight; the dash
Phosphoric of the oar, or rapid twinkle
Of the far lights of skimming gondolas,
And the responsive voices of the choir

Of boatmen answering back with verse for verse;
Some dusky shadow checkering the Rialto,
Some glimmering palace roof, or tapering spire,
Are all the sights and sounds which here pervade
The ocean-born and earth-commanding city.

Lord Byron.

DUCAL PALACE.

I

SPEAK to Time and to Eternity,

Of which I grow a portion, not to man. Ye elements in which to be resolved

I hasten, let my voice be as a spirit

Upon you! Ye blue waves! which bore my banner,
Ye winds! which fluttered o'er as if you loved it,
And filled my swelling sails as they were wafted
To many a triumph! Thou, my native earth,