lfully blind, or ignorantly heedless, who is not struck with the
extraordinary capacity of this people, or, if such a word be admissible,
their _capabilities_,[369] the facility of their acquisitions, the
rapidity of their conceptions, the fire of their genius, their sense of
beauty, and, amidst all the disadvantages of repeated revolutions, the
desolation of battles, and the despair of ages, their still unquenched
"longing after immortality,"[370]--the immortality of independence. And
when we ourselves, in riding round the walls of Rome, heard the simple
lament of the labourers' chorus, "Roma! Roma! Roma! Roma non e piu come
era prima!"[371] it was difficult not to contrast this melancholy dirge
with the bacchanal roar of the songs of exultation still yelled from the
London taverns, over the carnage of Mont St. Jean,[372] and the betrayal
of Genoa, of Italy, of France, and of the world, by men whose conduct
you yourself have exposed in a work worthy of the better days of our
history.[373] For me,--

"Non movero mai corda
Ove la turba di sue ciance assorda."

What Italy has gained by the late transfer of nations, it were useless
for Englishmen to enquire, till it becomes ascertained that England has
acquired something more than a permanent army and a suspended Habeas
Corpus;[374] it is enough for them to look at home. For what they have
done abroad, and especially in the South, "Verily they _will have_ their
reward," and at no very distant period.

Wishing you, my dear Hobhouse, a safe and agreeable return to that
country whose real welfare can be dearer to none than to yourself, I
dedicate to you this poem in its completed state; and repeat once more
how truly I am ever

Your obliged
And affectionate friend,
BYRON.

CANTO THE FOURTH[375]

I.

I stood in Venice, on the "Bridge of Sighs;"[376][1.H.]
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:[377]
A thousand Years their cloudy wings expand
Around me, and a dying Glory smiles
O'er the far times, when many a subject land
Looked to the winged Lion's marble piles,
Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles![lb]

II.

She looks a sea Cybele,[378] fresh from Ocean,
Rising with her tiara of prou