Europe, repentant of her parricide,

Shall yet redeem thee, and, all backward driven, Roll the barbarian tide, and sue to be forgiven.

VENICE.

(CHILDE HAROLD, Canto iv. Stanzas 1-4.)

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
Around me,
and a dying Glory smiles

O'er the far times, when many a subject land

Look'd to the winged Lion's marble piles,

Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles!

She looks a sea Cybele, fresh from ocean,
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;
From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East
Pour'd in her lap all gems in sparkling showers.
In purple was she robed, and of her feast

her daughters had their dowers

Monarchs partook, and deem'd their dignity increased.

In Venice Tasso's echoes are no more,
And silent rows the songless gondolier;

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,
The pleasant place of all festivity,
The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy!

But unto us she hath a spell beyond
Her name in story, and her long array

Of mighty shadows, whose dim forms despond
Above the dogeless city's vanish'd 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
For us repeopled were the solitary shore.

VENICE IN DECAY.

(CHILDE HAROLD, Canto iv. Stanzas 11-13.)

THE spouseless Adriatic mourns her lord;
And, annual marriage, now no more renew'd,
The Bucentaur lies rotting unrestored,
Neglected garment of her widowhood!
St. Mark yet sees his lion where he stood,
Stand, but in mockery of his wither'd power,
Over the proud Place where an Emperor sued,
And monarchs gazed and envied in the hour

When Venice was a queen with an unequall'd dower.

The Suabian sued, and now the Austrian reigns -
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 awhile, and downward go
Like lauwine loosen'd from the mountain's belt;
Oh for one hour of blind old Dandolo !

Th' octogenarian chief, Byzantium's conquering foe.

Before St. Mark still glow his steeds of brass, Their gilded collars glittering in the sun; 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 sea-weed, into whence she rose! Better be whelm'd beneath the waves, and shun, Even in destruction's depth, her foreign foes, From whom submission wrings an infamous repose.

THE SAME.

(CHILDE HAROLD, Canto iv. Stanza 18.)

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;
And Otway, Radcliffe, Schiller, Shakspeare's art,
Had stamp'd 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.

AN AUGUST EVENING IN ITALY.

(CHILDE HAROLD, Canto iv. Stanzas 27-29.)

THE moon is up, and yet it is not night —
Sunset divides the sky with her

a sea

Of glory streams along the Alpine height
Of blue Friuli's mountains; Heaven is free
From clouds, but of all colors seems to be
Melted to one vast Iris of the West,

Where the Day joins the past Eternity;

While, on the other hand, meek Dian's crest Floats through the azure air - an island of the blest!

A single star is at her side, and reigns

With her o'er half the lovely heaven; but still
Yon sunny sea heaves brightly, and remains
Roll'd o'er the peak of the far Rhætian hill,
As day and Night contending were, until
Nature reclaim'd her order: - gently flows
The deep-dyed Brenta, where their hues instil
The odorous purple of a new-born rose,

Which streams upon her stream, and glass'd within it glows,

Fill'd with the face of heaven, which, from afar,

Comes down upon the waters; all its hues,

From the rich sunset to the rising star,

Their magical variety diffuse:

And now they change; a paler shadow strews

Its mantle o'er the mountains; parting day
Dies like the dolphin, whom each pang imbues
With a new color as it gasps away,

The last still loveliest, till — 't is gone

and all is gray.

THE AVE MARIA.

(DON JUAN, Canto iii. Stanzas 102–109.)

AVE Maria! blessed be the hour!

The time, the clime, the spot, where I so oft Have felt that moment in its fullest power

Sink o'er the earth so beautiful and soft, While swung the deep bell in the distant tower, Or the faint dying day-hymn stole aloft, And not a breath crept through the rosy air, And yet the forest leaves seem'd stirr'd with prayer.

Ave Maria! 't is the hour of prayer!

Ave Maria! 't is the hour of love!

Ave Maria! may our spirits dare

Look up to thine and to thy Son's above!

Ave Maria! oh, that face so fair!

Those downcast eyes beneath the Almighty doveWhat though 't is but a pictured image? — strike That painting is no idol - 't is too like.

Sweet hour of twilight!

- in the solitude

Of the pine forest, and the silent shore

Which bounds Ravenna's immemorial wood,

Rooted where once the Adrian wave flowed o'er,