parted:

The morn is up again, the dewy morn, With breath all incense, and with cheek all bloom,

thwarted,

Love was the very root of the fond rage

7 The cestus of Venus, which inspired Love.

And living as if earth contained no tomb,—
And glowing into day: we may resume
The march of our existence: and thus I,

13

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.

3

In Venice Tasso's echoes are no more,5
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! 4

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 vanished sway;

1 The gallery spanning the canal between the ducal palace and the prison.

2 See note on Wordsworth's sonnet, p. 427. 3 The Lion of St. Mark, surmounting one of the two pillars in the square in front of the palace. The Lion was also the standard of the republic; see st. 14.

4 In ancient art, the goddess Cybele wore a turreted crown.

5 Stanzas of Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered were once sung by the gondoliers.

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?9

Her thirteen hundred years of freedom done, Sinks, like a sea-weed, into whence she rose! Better be whelmed beneath the waves, and shun, Even in destruction's depth, her foreign foes, From whom submission wrings an infamous

repose.

14

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 Ottomite ;-
Witness Troy's rival, Candia! 10 Vouch it, ye
Immortal waves that saw Lepanto's fight!11

For ye are names no time nor tyranny can blight.

15

Statues of glass-all shivered-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; 6 Here evidently meaning the Bridge of the Rialto across the Grand Canal.

7 Othello

8 A character in Otway's Venice Preserved.

9 This Genoese admiral once threatened to put a bridle on the bronze steeds that adorn St. Mark's.

10 Crete. once possessed by Venice, but lost again to the Turks.

11 The battle of Lepanto, 1571, a victory over the Turks in which Venice took a leading part.

wind;

Thy trumpet voice, though broken now and dying,

The loudest still the tempest leaves behind; Thy tree hath lost its blossoms, and the rind, Chopped by the axe, looks rough and little

worth,

But the sap lasts, and still the seed we find
Sown deep, even in the bosom of the North;
So shall a better spring less bitter fruit
bring forth.

THE COLISEUM. FROM CANTO IV

139

And here the buzz of eager nations ran,
In murmured pity, or loud-roared applause,
As man was slaughtered by his fellow-man,
And wherefore slaughtered? wherefore, but be-

cause

Such were the bloody Circus' genial laws,
And the imperial pleasure.-Wherefore not?
What matters where we fall to fill the maws
Of worms-on battle-plains or listed spot?
Both are but theatres where the chief actors

rot.

The Congress of Vienna, the "Holy Alliance" (into which Wellington would not enter), and the Second Treaty of Paris.-E. H. Coleridge.

And

steam:

here, where buzzing nations choked the ways,

And roared or murmured like a mountain stream

Dashing or winding as its torrent strays: Here, where the Roman million's blame or praise

Was death or life, the playthings of a crowd, My voice sounds much-and fall the stars'

faint rays

On the arena void-seats crushed, walls bowedAnd galleries, where my steps seem echoes strangely loud.

143

A ruin-yet what ruin! from its mass
Walls, palaces, half-cities, have been reared;
Yet oft the enormous skeleton ye pass,
And marvel where the spoil could have ap-
peared.

Hath it indeed been plundered, or but cleared?
Alas! developed, opens the decay,

When the colossal fabric's form is neared:
It will not bear the brightness of the day,
Which streams too much on all years, man,
have reft away.

17 Suggested by the statue of The Dying Gaul, once supposed to represent a dying gladiator.

144

But when the rising moon begins to climb
Its topmost arch, and gently pauses there;
When the stars twinkle through the loops of
time,

And the low night-breeze waves along the air
The garland-forest, which the gray walls wear,
Like laurels on the bald first Cæsar's head; 18
When the light shines serene but doth not glare,
Then in this magic circle raise the dead:
Heroes have trod this spot-'tis on their dust
ye tread.

145

"While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand; "When falls the Coliseum Rome shall fall; "And when Rome falls-the World.'' From our own land

Thus spake the pilgrims o'er this mighty wall In Saxon times, which we are wont to call

For earth's destruction thou dost all despise,
Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,
And send 'st him, shivering in thy playful spray
And howling, to his Gods, where haply lies
His petty hope in some near port or bay,
And dashest him again to earth:-there let
him lay.*

181

The armaments which thunderstrike the wall
Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,
And monarchs tremble in their capitals,
The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make
Their clay creator the vain title take
Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war—
These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake,
They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar
Alike the Armada's pride or spoils of Tra
falgar.

182

On their foundations, and unaltered all;
Rome and her Ruin past Redemption's skill,
The World, the same wide den-of thieves,
or what ye will.

THE OCEAN. FROM CANTO IV
178

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:
I love not Man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel

thee

Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they? Thy waters washed them power while they

were free,

And many a tyrant since; their shores obey The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay Has dried up realms to deserts: not so thou;Unchangeable, save to thy wild waves' play, Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow: Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest

now.

183

ceal.

179

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean-roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with ruin-his control
Stops with the shore; upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,
When, for a moment, like a drop of rain,
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and

unknown.

180

His steps are not upon thy paths-thy fields
Are not a spoil for him,-thou dost arise
And shake him from thee; the vile strength
he wields

18 Cæsar was glad to cover his baldness with the wreath of laurel which the senate decreed he should wear.

Dark-heaving-boundless, endless, and sublime,
The image of eternity, the throne

Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime
The monsters of the deep are made; each zone
Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathom-
less, alone.

184

And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy
Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be
Borne, like thy bubbles, onward; from a boy
I wantoned with thy breakers-they to me
Were a delight; and if the freshening sea
Made them a terror-'twas a pleasing fear,
For I was as it were a child of thee,
And trusted to thy billows far and near,

And laid my hand upon thy mane-as I do here.

This grammatical error, occurring in so lofty a passage, is perhaps the most famous in our literature. It is quite characteristic of Byron's negligence or indifference.