CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE.

CANTO IV.

I.

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

(1)

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!

II.

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:

(2)

And such she was ;-her daughters had their dowers
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

Monarchs partook, and deem'd their dignity incréased.

III.

In Venice Tasso's echoes are no more, (3)

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!

IV.

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, can not be swept or worn away— The keystones of the arch! though all were o'er,

For us repeopled were the solitary shore.

V.

The beings of the mind are not of clay;

Essentially immortal, they create

And multiply in us a brighter ray

And more beloved existence: that which Fate

Prohibits to dull life, in this our state

Of mortal bondage, by these spirits supplied

First exiles, then replaces what we hate;

Watering the heart whose early flowers have died,

And with a fresher growth replenishing the void.

VI.

Such is the refuge of our youth and

age,

The first from Hope, the last from Vacancy;
And this worn feeling peoples many a page,
And, may be, that which grows beneath mine eye:
Yet there are things whose strong reality

Outshines our fairy-land; in shape and hues
More beautiful than our fantastic sky,

And the strange constellations which the Muse
O'er her wild universe is skilful to diffuse:

VII.

I saw or dream'd of such, but let them go-
They came like truth, and disappear'd like dreams;
And whatsoe'er they were-are now but so:

I could replace them if I would, still teems
My mind with many a form which aptly seems
Such as I sought for, and at moments found;
Let these too go—for waking Reason deems
Such over-weening phantasies unsound,

And other voices speak, and other sights surround.