The soul and source of music, which makes | Which blighted their life's bloom, and then deknown Eternal harmony, and sheds a charm Like to the fabled Cytherea's zone,7 Binding all things with beauty:-'t would dis arm parted: Itself expired, but leaving them an age Of years all winters,-war within themselves to wage: 95 The spectre Death, had he substantial power Now, where the quick Rhone thus hath cleft his to harm. 91 Not vainly did the early Persian make 92 The sky is changed!—and such a change! Oh night, And storm, and darkness, ye are wondrous Sky, mountains, river, winds, lake, lightnings! Though in their souls, which thus each other Laughing the clouds away with playful scorn, thwarted, Love was the very root of the fond rage 7 The cestus of Venus, which inspired Love. And living as if earth contained no tomb,- Still on thy shores, fair Leman! may find room | Ours is a trophy which will not decay And food for meditation, nor pass by Much, that may give us pause, if ponder'd fittingly. VENICE. FROM CANTO IV 1 I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs;1 I saw from out the wave her structures rise 2 She looks a sea Cybele, fresh from ocean, dowers From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East Poured in her lap all gems in sparkling showers. In purple was she robed, and of her feast Monarchs partook, and deemed their dignity increased. 3 In Venice Tasso's echoes are no more,5 The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy! 4 But unto us she hath a spell beyond Of mighty shadows, whose dim forms despond With the Rialto; Shylock and the Moor," For us repeopled were the solitary shore. 5 The beings of the mind are not of clay; And more beloved existence: that which Fate And with a fresher growth replenishing the void. 13 Before St. Mark still glow his Steeds of brass, repose. 14 In youth she was all glory, a new Tyre, For ye are names no time nor tyranny can blight. 15 Statues of glass—all shivered-the long file pile Bespeaks the pageant of their splendid trust; 6 Here evidently meaning the Bridge of the Rialto across the Grand Canal. 7 Othello 8 A character in Otway's Venice Preserved. 9 This Genoese admiral once threatened to put a bridle on the bronze steeds that adorn St. Mark's. 10 Crete. once possessed by Venice, but lost again to the Turks. 11 The battle of Lepanto, 1571, a victory over the Turks in which Venice took a leading part. O'er steps of broken thrones and temples, Ye! Their sceptre broken, and their sword in rust, | The cypress, hear the owl, and plod your way 16 When Athens' armies fell at Syracuse, A world is at our feet as fragile as our clay. 79 The Niobe of nations!" there she stands, Of their heroic dwellers: dost thou flow, 80 And bids him thank the bard for freedom The Goth, the Christian, Time, War, Flood, and and his strains. 17 Thus, Venice, if no stronger claim were thine, Of Venice, think of thine, despite thy watery 18 I loved her from my boyhood; she to me Had stamped her image in me, and even so, ROME. FROM CANTO IV 78 Oh Rome! my country! city of the soul see 12 It is said that the Athenian prisoners who could recite Euripides were set free. Cp. page 233, note 5. 13 In The Mysteries of Udolpho. 14 In The Ghost-Seer. 142 Yet, Freedom! yet thy banner, torn but flying, But here, where Murder breathed her bloody Streams like the thunder-storm against the wind; Thy trumpet voice, though broken now and dying, The loudest still the tempest leaves behind; Thy tree hath lost its blossoms, and the rind, Chopped by the axe, looks rough and little worth, steam: And here, where buzzing nations choked the ways, And roared or murmured like a mountain stream Dashing or winding as its torrent strays: praise Was death or life, the playthings of a crowd, My voice sounds much-and fall the stars' faint rays On the arena void-seats crushed, walls bowedAnd galleries, where my steps seem echoes strangely loud. 143 A ruin-yet what ruin! from its mass Hath it indeed been plundered, or but cleared? When the colossal fabric's form is neared: 17 Suggested by the statue of The Dying Gaul, once supposed to represent a dying gladiator. Thus spake the pilgrims o'er this mighty wall In Saxon times, which we are wont to call Ancient; and these three mortal things are still Thy shores are empires, changed in all save On their foundations, and unaltered all; THE OCEAN. FROM CANTO IV There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, thee Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they? Thy waters washed them power while they were free, And many a tyrant since; their shores obey The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay Has dried up realms to deserts: not so thou;— Unchangeable, save to thy wild waves' play, Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow: Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now. 183 Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,— What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all con- Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime ceal. 179 Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean-roll! unknown. 180 His steps are not upon thy paths-thy fields 18 Cæsar was glad to cover his baldness with the wreath of laurel which the senate decreed he should wear. Dark-heaving-boundless, endless, and sublime, Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime 184 And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy And laid my hand upon thy mane-as I do here. * This grammatical error, occurring in so lofty a passage, is perhaps the most famous in our literature. It is quite characteristic of Byron's negligence or indifference. |