I.

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[lt]
Which ties thee to thy tyrants; and thy lot
Is shameful to the nations,--most of all,
Albion! to thee:[400] the Ocean queen should not
Abandon Ocean's children; in the fall
Of Venice think of thine, despite thy watery wall.[lu]

XVIII.

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, Shakespeare's art,[lv][401]
Had stamped her image in me, and even so,
Although I found her thus, we did not part;[lw]
Perchance even dearer in her day of woe,
Than when she was a boast, a marvel, and a show.

XIX.

I can repeople with the past--and of
The present there is still for eye and thought,
And meditation chastened down, enough;
And more, it may be, than I hoped or sought;
And of the happiest moments which were wrought
Within the web of my existence, some
From thee, fair Venice![402] have their colours caught:
There are some feelings Time can not benumb,[lx]
Nor Torture shake, or mine would now be cold and dumb.

XX.

But from their nature will the Tannen[403] grow[ly]
Loftiest on loftiest and least sheltered rocks,
Rooted in barrenness, where nought below
Of soil supports them 'gainst the Alpine shocks
Of eddying storms; yet springs the trunk, and mocks
The howling tempest, till its height and frame
Are worthy of the mountains from whose blocks
Of bleak, gray granite into life it came,[lz]
And grew a giant tree;--the Mind may grow the same.

XXI.

Existence may be borne, and the deep root
Of life and sufferance make its firm abode
In bare and desolated bosoms: mute[ma]
The camel labours with the heaviest load,
And the wolf dies in silence--not bestowed
In vain should such example be; if they,
Things of ignoble or of savage mood,
Endure and shrink not, we of nobler clay
May temper it to bear,--it is but for a day.