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
Foes, 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,
Toppies 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 aerial 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'srising 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 canst for this fame repay
Aught thine own,-oh! rather say,
Though thy sins and slaveries foul
Overcloud a sunlike soul?
As the ghost of Homer clings
Round Scamander's wasting springs;
As divinest Shakspeare's might
Fills Avon and the world with light,
Like Omniscient Power, which he
Imaged 'mid mortality;

As the love from Petrarch's urn

Yet amid yon hills doth burn,

A quenchless lamp by which the heart

Sees things unearthly ;-so thou art,
Mighty spirit! so shall be

The city that did refuge thee!

Lo, the sun floats up the sky,
Like thought-winged Liberty,
Till the universal light

Seems to level plain and height.
From the sea a mist has spread,
And the beams of morn lie dead
On the towers of Venice now,
Like its glory long ago.

By the skirts of that grey cloud
Many-domed Padua proud
Stands, a peopled solitude
'Mid the harvest-shining plain;
Where the peasant heaps his grain
In the garner of his foe,

And the milk-white oxen slow
With the purple vintage strain
Heaped upon the creaking wain,
That the brutal Celt may swill
Drunken sleep with savage will.
And the sickle to the sword
Lies unchanged, though many a lord,
Like a weed whose shade is poison,
Overgrows this region's foison,
Sheaves of whom are ripe to come
To destruction's harvest-home.
Men must reap the things they sow;
Force from force must ever flow,
Or worse but 'tis a bitter woe
That love or reason cannot change
The despot's rage, the slave's revenge.

Padua ! (thou within whose walls
Those mute guests at festivals,
Son and Mother, Death and Sin,
Played at dice for Ezzelin,

Till Death cried, "I win, I win!"
And Sin cursed to lose the wager;
But Death promised, to assuage her,
That he would petition for
Her to be made Vice-Emperor,
When the destined years were o'er,
Over all between the Po
And the eastern Alpine snow,
Under the mighty Austrian :-
Sin smiled so as Sin only can;

And, since that time, ay long before,

Both have ruled from shore to shore,

That incestuous pair who follow
Tyrants as the sun the swallow,
As repentance follows crime,
And as changes follow time :)--
In thine halls the lamp of learning,
Padua, now no more is burning.
Like a meteor whose wild way

Is lost over the grave of day,
It gleams betrayed and to betray.
Once remotest nations came
To adore that sacred flame,
When it lit not many a hearth
On this cold and gloomy earth;
Now new fires from antique light
Spring beneath the wide world's might,--
But their spark lies dead in thee,
Trampled out by Tyranny.
As the Norway woodman quells,
In the depth of piny dells,
One light flame among the brakes,
While the boundless forest shakes,
And its mighty trunks are torn
By the fire thus lowly born ;-
The spark beneath his feet is dead;
He starts to see the flames it fed
Howling through the darkened sky
With myriad tongues victoriously,
And sinks down in fear;-so thou,
O Tyranny! beholdest now
Light around thee, and thou hearest
The loud flames ascend, and fearest.
Grovel on the earth! ay, hide
In the dust thy purple pride!

Noon descends around me now.
'Tis the noon of autumn's glow;
When a soft and purple mist,
Like a vaporous amethyst,
Or an air-dissolved star

Mingling light and fragrance, far
From the curved horizon's bound
To the point of heaven's profound
Fills the overflowing sky.
And the plains that silent lie
Underneath; the leaves unsodden

Where the infant Frost has trodden

With his morning-winged feet
Whose bright print is gleaming yet;
And the red and golden vines,
Piercing with their trellised lines
The rough dark-skirted wilderness;
The dun and bladed grass no less,
Pointing from this hoary tower
In the windless air; the flower
Glimmering at my feet; the line
Of the olive-sandalled Apennine
In the south dimly islanded;
And the Alps, whose snows are spread

High between the clouds and sun;
And of living things each one;
And my spirit, which so long
Darkened this swift stream of song,—
Interpenetrated lie

By the glory of the sky :
Be it love, light, harmony,

Odour, or the soul of all

Which from heaven like dew doth fall,
Or the mind which feeds this verse
Peopling the lone universe.

Noon descends; and after noon
Autumn's evening meets me soon,
Leading the infantine moon,
And that one star which to her
Almost seems to minister

Half the crimson light she brings
From the sunset's radiant springs.
And the soft dreams of the morn
(Which like winged winds had borne,
To that silent isle which lies
'Mid remembered agonies,

The frail bark of this lone being)
Pass, to other sufferers fleeing;
And its ancient pilot, Pain,

Sits beside the helm again.

Other flowering isles must be
In the sea of Life and Agony:
Other spirits float and flee

O'er that gulf. Even now perhaps
On some rock the wild wave wraps.
With folded wings, they waiting sit
For my bark, to pilot it

To some calm and blooming cove;
Where for me and those I love
May a windless bower be built,
Far from passion, pain, and guilt,
In a dell 'mid lawny hills
Which the wild sea-murmur fills,
And soft sunshine, and the sound
Of old forests echoing round,
And the light and smell divine
Of all flowers that breathe and shine.
We may live so happy there
That the Spirits of the Air,
Envying us, may even entice
To our healing paradise
The polluting multitude.
But their rage would be subdued
By that clime divine and calm,