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I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs; A palace and a prison on each hand; I saw from out the wave of her structure's 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 Look'd to the winged Lion's marble pines, Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles.

In Venice, Tass's echoes are no more, And silent rows the songless gondolier; Her palaces are crumbling to the shore, And music meets not always now the ear.

Venice once was dear, The pleasant place of all festivity, The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy.

White swan of cities, slumbering in thy nest So wonderfully built among the reeds Of the lagoon, that fences thee and feeds, As sayeth thy old historian and thy guest!

The sylphs and ondines And the sea-kings and queens Long ago, long ago, on the waves built a city, As lovely as seems To some bard in his dreams, The soul of his latest love-ditty.

Once did she hold the gorgeous East in fee, And was the safeguard of the West.