And the winds whose wings rain balm On the uplifted soul, and leaves Under which the bright sea heaves; While each breathless interval In their whisperings musical The inspired soul supplies With its own deep melodies, And the love which heals all strife Circling, like the breath of life, All things in that sweet abode With its own mild brotherhood:
They, not it, would change; and soon 370 Every sprite beneath the moon Would repent its envy vain,
And the earth grow young again.
The meadows with fresh streams, the bees with thyme,
The goats with the green leaves of budding Spring, Are saturated not-nor Love with tears.
COUNT MADDALO is a Venetian nobleman of The poet ancient family and of great fortune, who, himself without mixing much in the society of his and Byron countrymen, resides chiefly at his magnificent palace in that city. He is a person of the most consummate genius, and capable, if he would direct his energies to such an end, of becoming the redeemer of his degraded country. But it is his weakness to be proud : he derives, from a comparison of his own extraordinary mind with the dwarfish intellects that surround him, an intense apprehension of the nothingness of human life. His passions and his powers are incomparably greater than those of other men; and, instead of the latter having been employed in curbing the former, they have
Underneath day's azure eyes, Ocean's nursling, Venice lies, A peopled labyrinth of walls, Amphitrite's destined halls, Which her hoary sire now paves With his blue and beaming waves. Lo! the sun upsprings behind, Broad, red, radiant, half reclined On the level quivering line Of the waters crystalline; And before that chasm of light, As within a furnace bright, Column, tower, and dome, and spire, Shine like obelisks of fire,
Pointing with inconstant motion From the altar of dark ocean To the sapphire-tinted skies; As the flames of sacrifice
From the marble shrines did rise, As to pierce the dome of gold Where Apollo spoke of old.
Sun-girt City, thou hast been Ocean's child, and then his queen ; Now is come a darker day, And thou soon must be his prey, If the power that raised thee here Hallow so thy watery bier. A less drear ruin then than now, With thy conquest-branded brow Stooping to the slave of slaves From thy throne, among the waves Wilt thou be, when the sea-mew Flies, as once before it flew,
O'er thine isles depopulate, And all is in its ancient state, Save where many a palace gate With green sea-flowers overgrown Like a rock of ocean's own, Topples o'er the abandoned sea As the tides change sullenly. The fisher on his watery way, Wandering at the close of day, Will spread his sail and seize his oar Till he pass the gloomy shore, Lest thy dead should, from their sleep Bursting o'er the starlight deep, Lead a rapid mask of death O'er the waters of his path.
Those who alone thy towers behold Quivering through aërial gold, As I now behold them here, Would imagine not they were Sepulchres, where human forms, Like pollution-nourished worms To the corpse of greatness cling, Murdered, and now mouldering: But if Freedom should awake In her omnipotence, and shake From the Celtic Anarch's hold All the keys of dungeons cold, Where a hundred cities lie Chained like thee, ingloriously, Thou and all thy sister band Might adorn this sunny land, Twining memories of old time With new virtues more sublime;
If not, perish thou and they, Clouds which stain truth's rising day By her sun consumed away,
Earth can spare ye: while like flowers, In the waste of years and hours, From your dust new nations spring With more kindly blossoming. Perish-let there only be Floating o'er thy hearthless sea As the garment of thy sky Clothes the world immortally, One remembrance, more sublime Than the tattered pall of time, Which scarce hides thy visage wan;- That a tempest-cleaving Swan Of the songs of Albion,
Driven from his ancestral streams By the might of evil dreams, Found a nest in thee; and Ocean Welcomed him with such emotion That its joy grew his, and sprung From his lips like music flung O'er a mighty thunder-fit
Chastening terror :--what though yet Poesy's unfailing River,
Which through Albion winds for ever Lashing with melodious wave
Many a sacred Poet's grave, Mourn its latest nursling fled?
What though thou with all thy dead Scarce can for this fame repay Aught thine own? oh, rather say Though thy sins and slaveries foul Overcloud a sunlike soul?
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