Senseless is the breast, and cold, Which relenting love would fold; Bloodless are the veins and chill Which the pulse of pain did fill; Every little living nerve
That from bitter words did swerve Round the tortured lips and brow, Are like sapless leaflets now Frozen upon December's bough. On the beach of a northern sea Which tempests shake eternally,
As once the wretch there lay to sleep, Lies a solitary heap,
One white skull and seven dry bones, On the margin of the stones, Where a few gray rushes stand, Boundaries of the sea and land: Nor is heard one voice of wail But the sea-mews, as they sail O'er the billows of the gale; Or the whirlwind up and down Howling, like a slaughtered town, When a king in glory rides
Through the pomp of fratricides: Those unburied bones around
There is many a mournful sound;
There is no lament for him, Like a sunless vapour, dim,
Who once clothed with life and thought What now moves nor murmurs not.
Ay, many flowering islands lie In the waters of wide Agony: To such a one this morn was led My bark by soft winds piloted: 'Mid the mountains Euganean I stood listening to the pean,
With which the legioned rooks did hail The sun's uprise majestical;
Gathering round with wings all hoar, Thro' the dewy mist they soar
Like gray shades, till the eastern heaven
Bursts, and then, as clouds of even, Flecked with fire and azure, lie
In the unfathomable sky,
So their plumes of purple grain,
Starred with drops of golden rain, Gleam above the sunlight woods,
As in silent multitudes
On the morning's fitful gale Thro' the broken mist they sail, And the vapours cloven and gleaming Follow down the dark steep streaming, Till all is bright, and clear, and still, Round the solitary hill.
Beneath is spread like a green sea The waveless plain of Lombardy, Bounded by the vapourous air, Islanded by cities fair;
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 masque 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
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