The island city of our orient dreams
Sleeps in a mist from haunted seas, and gray
Horizons dimly shut her from the day,
And rain is on her streets and understreams;
From off St. Mark's no crimson banner gleams;
No balcony with floating silk is gay;
No sails Byzantine dot the sunless bay;
Yet now a beacon, now a window beams:

And by old marble houses here and there
Her gondolas lie moored at step or door,
Like barks funereal about to bear
This lyric race unto no earthly shore,
With Titian's painted dames of russet hair
And Tasso's lute—away forevermore.