Equalled the works of that self-governed band,
Who fixed the Delos of the Adrian waves;
Planting upon these strips of yielding sand
A Temple of the Beautiful, which braves
The jealous strokes of ocean, nor yet fears
The far more perilous sea,
"whose waves are years"?
Walk in St. Mark's again, some few hours after,
When a bright sleep is on each storied pile,
When fitful music and inconstant laughter
Give place to Nature's silent moonlight smile:
Now Fancy wants no faery gale to waft her
To Magian haunt or charm-engirded isle,
All too content, in passive bliss, to see
This show divine of visible poetry.
On such a night as this impassionedly
The old Venetian sung those verses rare,
"That Venice must of needs eternal be,
For Heaven had looked through the pellucid air,
And cast its reflex in the crystal sea,
And Venice was the image pictured there."
I hear them now, and tremble, for I seem
As treading on an unsubstantial dream.
Who talks of vanished glory, of dead power,
Of things that were, and are not? Is he here?
Can he take in the glory of this hour,
And call it all the decking of a bier?
No, surely as on that Titanic tower
The Guardian Angel stands in æther clear,
With the moon's silver tempering his gold wing,
So Venice lives, as lives no other thing:
That strange Cathedral! exquisitely strange, That front, on whose bright varied tints the eye those arches, whose high range
Gives its rich-broidered border to the sky,
Those ever-prancing steeds! My friend, whom change
Of restless will has led to lands that lie
Deep in the East, does not thy fancy set
Above those domes an airy minaret?
Dost thou not feel that in this scene are blent
Wide distances of the estrangéd earth,
Far thoughts, far faiths, beseeming her who bent
The spacious Orient to her simple worth,
Who, in her own young freedom eminent,
Scorning the slaves that shamed their ancient birth,
And feeling what the West could be, had been,
Went out a traveller, and returned a queen?
WENT to greet the full May-moon
On that long narrow shoal
Which lies between the still Lagoon
And the open ocean's roll.
How pleasant was that grassy shore,
When one for months had been
Shut up in streets, - to feel once more One's foot fall on the green!
There are thick trees too in that place;
But straight from sea to sea,
Over a rough uncultured space,
The path goes drearily.
I passed along, with many a bound,
To hail the fresh free wave;
But, pausing, wonderingly found
I was treading on a grave.
Then, at one careless look, I saw
That, for some distance round,
Tombstones, without design or law,
Were scattered on the ground:
Of pirates or of mariners
I deemed that these might be
The fitly chosen sepulchres,
Encircled by the sea.
But there were words inscribed on all,
I' the tongue of a far land,
And marks of things symbolical,
I could not understand.
They are the graves of that sad race
Who from their Syrian home,
For ages, without resting-place,
Are doomed in woe to roam;
Who, in the days of sternest faith,
Glutted the sword and flame,
As if a taint of moral death
Were in their very name:
And even under laws most mild,
All shame was deemed their due,
And the nurse told the Christian child
To shun the cursed Jew.
Thus all their gold's insidious grace
Availed not here to gain
For their last sleep a seemlier place
Than this bleak-featured plain.
Apart, severely separate,
On the verge of the outer sea,
Their home of death is desolate
As their life's home could be.
The common sand-path had defaced
And pressed down many a stone;
Others can be but faintly traced
I' the rank grass o'er them grown.
I thought of Shylock, the fierce heart
Whose wrongs and injuries old
Temper, in Shakespeare's world of art,
His lusts of blood and gold;
Perchance that form of broken pride
Here at my feet once lay,
But lay alone, for at his side
There was no Jessica !
Fondly I love each island-shore,
Embraced by Adrian waves;
But none has Memory cherished more
Than Lido and its graves.
OT only through the golden haze
Of indistinct surprise,
With which the Ocean-bride displays
Her pomp to stranger eyes;
Not with the fancy's flashing play,
The traveller's vulgar theme,
Where following objects chase away
The moment's dazzling dream;
Not thus art thou content to see
The city of my love,
Whose beauty is a thought to me
All mortal thoughts above;
And pass in dull unseemly haste,
Nor sight nor spirit clear,
As if the first bewildering taste
Were all the banquet here!
When the proud sea, for Venice' sake,
Itself consents to wear
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