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 ;—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 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;

* The winged Lion was asserted to be the ensign of St. Mark, the patron saint of Venice.

In the palmier days of Venice it was customary for the gondoliers to chant in pairs the Jerusalem of Tasso, each singing a stanza by turns.

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.

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 a while, and downward go

Like lauwine§ loosen'd from the mountain's belt;

* The name is applied to the island, the exchange which stood upon it, and the bridge which conducts to it. It is to the last that Lord Byron refers.

Every year the Doge, accompanied by a festive procession, went in the state-galley, the Bucentaur, to the mouth of the harbour, and cast a ring into the sea, in token that Venice had subjugated the Adriatic as a spouse is subjugated to her lord.

In 1177 the Venetians made common cause with Pope Alexander III. against Frederick Barbarossa. After the emperor was defeated he prostrated himself before Alexander in the cathedral of Venice, and the arrogant pontiff set his foot upon his neck. The reign of the Austrian emperor dates from 1798, when Venice was made over to him by the treaty of Campo Formio.

§ In the greater part of Switzerland the avalanches are known by the name of lauwine.-LORD BYRON.

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.

In youth she was all glory,—a new Tyre,—
Her very by-word sprung from victory,
"The Planter of the Lion," § which through fire
And blood she bore o'er subject earth and sea ;
Though making many slaves, herself still free,
And Europe's bulwark 'gainst the Öttomite ;
Witness Troy's rival, Candia ! || Vouch it, ye
Immortal waves that saw Lepanto's fight!

For ye are names no time nor tyranny can blight.

* Henry Dandolo, when elected Doge in 1192, was eighty-five years of age. When he commanded the Venetians, at the taking of Constantinople, he was consequently ninety-seven years old.-HOBHOUSE.

The Venetians, reduced to extremity in the war of Chioza, A.D. 1379, sued for peace, and Doria, who led the Genoese, replied that they should have no peace till he himself had bridled the horses of St. Mark. The Venetians resisted with the courage of despair, and the Genoese were compelled to sue in turn.

This line is evidently derived from Pope's "Essay on Man: "—

"Mark by what wretched steps their glory grows

From dirt and sea-weed as proud Venice rose."

§ Pantaloon is a corruption of Piantaleone.

|| Candia was more than the rival of Troy, for the siege lasted twenty years. The Turks commenced the attack in 1648, and it was not till 1669 that the Venetians surrendered. The naval battle of Lepanto, which destroyed the ascendancy of the Turks in the Mediterranean, was fought

Statues of glass—all shiver’d—the long file
Of her dead Doges are declined to dust;
But where they dwelt, the vast and sumptuous pile
Bespeaks the pageant of their splendid trust;
Their sceptre broken, and their sword in rust,
Have yielded to the stranger: empty halls,
Thin streets, and foreign aspects, such as must
Too oft remind her who and what enthrals,
Have flung a desolate cloud o'er Venice' lovely walls.

When Athens' armies fell at Syracuse,
And fetter'd thousands bore the yoke of war,
Redemption rose up in the Attic Muse,
Her voice their only ransom from afar :
See! as they chant the tragic hymn, the car
Of the o'ermaster'd victor stops, the reins

Fall from his hands, his idle scimitar

Starts from its belt-he rends his captive's chains, And bids him thank the bard for freedom and his strains.*

Thus, Venice, if no stronger claim were thine,
Were all thy proud historic deeds forgot,
Thy choral memory of the Bard divine,
Thy love of Tasso, should have cut the knot
Which ties thee to thy tyrants; and thy lot
Is shameful to the nations,-most of all,
Albion to thee: the Ocean queen should not
Abandon Ocean's children; in the fall

Of Venice think of thine, despite thy watery wall.

in 1571. The fleets of the Pope, Spain, and Genoa were leagued with that of Venice.

* It was the verse of Euripides which, according to the narrative of Plutarch, produced such a humanising effect. The Sicilians had a peculiar admiration for his works, and some of the Athenians, after the defeat, obtained refreshment by a repetition of a few of his lines, while others, for teaching more considerable passages, were set at liberty by their masters.

AN ITALIAN SCENE.

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.

CHILDE HAROLD.-Canto IV.

AN ITALIAN SCENE.

BUT my soul wanders; I demand it back
To meditate amongst decay, and stand
A ruin amidst ruins; there to track
Fall'n states and buried greatness, o'er a land
Which was the mightiest in its old command,
And is the loveliest, and must ever be

The master-mould of Nature's heavenly hand;
Wherein were cast the heroic and the free,
The beautiful, the brave, the lords of earth and sea,

The commonwealth of kings, the men of Rome !
And even since, and now, fair Italy!
Thou art the garden of the world, the home
Of all Art yields, and Nature can decree ;
Even in thy desert, what is like to thee?
Thy very weeds are beautiful, thy waste

* Venice Preserved; Mysteries of Udolpho; The Ghost-Seer; The Merchant of Venice; Othello.-LORD BYRON.

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