PART II.

I

T HOU glorious Adriatic! do I gaze
On thee, bright dream of boyhood? Fount-like springs
Again the memories of classic days
When thou didst fill the heart's imaginings;
The full sail wafts me with expanded wings
Over thy azure waters, the glad foam
On the white deck its feathery eddy flings;
Free as the bounding sea-bird, on we roam,
But whither tends her course, what port shall be her home?

II

The sun is setting, his last rays are sleeping
In golden hues yon clouds that steadfast keep
Their station on the far horizon sleeping,
Breasting the sky, yet blended with the deep,
While from their braided edges glittering creep
Sharp pointed spires, in blue air faintly shown
O'ershadowed as the sea-mists round them sweep;
Lo, where those veils are raised, while, substant grown,
Fair Venice there reclines upon her ocean-throne!

III

Yea, there she sleeps, while on the waters lying
Her spires and gilded domes reflected shine
In the rich light's last lustre o'er her dying;
Silent and lone as a deserted shrine
Reared o'er that mirror's floating hyaline;
Ancestral Venice! earth to her bowed down
Deeming her Roman birth should mock decline:
There sits the queen enthroned, but now her crown
Is the pale halo lightened by her past renown.

IV

Enter as in the vision of a dream,
Where all is strange, grotesque, mysterious, wild;
Ye glide through paths that are the ocean stream,
Mid palaces with sea-green weed defiled,
Looking desertion, yet unreconciled
To be the sepulchres of greatness fled;
Where silence is a presence felt, the child
Of desolation, for ye hear no tread,
No shout, no trump to wake this city of the dead!

V

And the Rialto's arch is left behind,
Ere memory from the past can disenthrall
Visions that crowd on the bewildered mind;
Ere startled meditation can recall
Bright Venice, when her ring imperial
Wedded her green-haired bride; lo, witness stands
The bridge where first with freedom's coronal
She bound her brows, when her devoted bands
Of patriots fixed their homes upon the shifting sands.

VI

Vainly the waves roared and the tempests dashed
Round that last hold, no father could they flee;
Vain from the shore the tyrant's falchion flashed,
They looked to heaven and felt that they were free,
And thundered back the shout of liberty;
Patriots, themselves devoting in that hour
On freedom's altar-place, the chainless sea;
Want nurtured daring, wealth embodied power,
The Ocean's spoil was theirs, the east and west their dower.

VII

Wast thou not child of Rome and her great heir?
Stamped not thy deeds thy lineal origin?
The stoic will to suffer as to dare?
Thou who from that heaped sand-bank didst begin
To cope with mightiest dynasties, and win
Homage from thrones: thou saw'st their rise and fall,
Roman, Frank, Lombard, Goth, and Saracen;
Byzantium's friend or foe, until thy thrall
The Orient owned, succumbing to thy watery wall.

VIII

Here blend the past and present till we deem
Our life an unreality; can it be
That thou didst head the Italian league supreme,
Regenerator thou of Italy?
That kings, and greater, Venice! knelt to thee,
Owning thee sovereign umpire of their fates?
That thou sole champion wast of liberty,
Then when pale Europe shook through all her states,
When, conquest-flushed, the Turk first thundered at her gates?

IX

Rome of the Ocean! thou thy Carthage foe
Hadst also, and thy Dorian Hannibal,
Till haughty Genoa was taught to know,
That glory kept for thee her festival;
And victory thy appointed carnival;
Cyprus, Lepanto, Troy-like Candia; Fame!
Thou shouldst have bound to thy fixed pedestal
Fortune, ere wearied of fair Venice' name,
Ere States revolting dared to question her high claim.

X

Yet wherefore wast thou crushed at once? thy shield
Braced on, thy hand armed, with thy bulwarks crowned,
By foeman never entered? didst thou yield
Without one stroke? thy foe thou didst astound,
Until contempt the soldier's bosom found
For slaves who, crouching, dared not wake his ire;
Where was the pride that Genoa could not bound?
Oh, where the soul of valour, that, like fire
In the Morea blazed, for ever to expire?