ch 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
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.

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
Poured in her lap all gems in sparkling showers.
In purple was she robed, and of her feast
Monarchs partook, and deemed their dignity increased.

[Illustration: THE BAPTISM OF CHRIST
FROM THE PAINTING BY CIMA
_In the Church of S. Giovanni in Bragora_]

Byron wrote also, in 1818, an "Ode on Venice," a regret for its decay,
in spirit not unlike the succeeding _Childe Harold_ stanzas which I do
not here quote. Here too he planned _Marino Faliero_, talking it over
with his guest, "Monk" Lewis. Another Venetian play of Byron's was _The
Two Foscari_, and both prove that he attacked the old chronicles to some
purpose and with all his brilliant thoroughness. None the less he made
a few blunders, as when in _The Two Foscari_ there is an allusion to the
Bridge of Sighs, which was not, as it happens, built for more than a
century after the date of the play.

No city, however alluring, could be Byron's home for long, and this
second sojourn in Venice was not made any simpler by the presence of his
daughter Ada. In 1819 he was away again and never returned. No one so
little liked the idea of being rooted as he; at a blow the home was
broken.

The best account of Byron at this time is that which his friend Hoppner,
the British Consul, a son of the painter, wrote to Murray. Hoppner not
only saw Byron regularly at night, but used to ride with him on the
Lido. "The spot," he says, "where we usually mounted our horses had been
a Jewish cemetery; but the French, during their occupation of Venice,
had thrown down the enclosure, and levelled all the tombstones with the
ground, in order that they might not interfere with the fortifications
upon the Lido, under the guns of which it was situated. To this place,
as it was known to be that where he alighted from his gondola and met