Sonnets written chiefly during a tour through Holland, Germany, Italy, Turkey, and Hungary. By Lady Emmeline Stuart Wortley |
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SONNET.
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55
SONNET.
ON VENICE.
Venice! thou Empire of the hundred Isles,Thou Armament of Palaces sublime!
Dark falls o'er thee the shadow of old Time;
But scarcely this can shroud thy sweet proud smiles,
Gone are thy gorgeous pomps—the enchanting wiles
Of thy gay triumphs—but thy Sky—thy clime,
Still, still are lovely as in thy young prime;
Though little less than slavery now defiles!
Venice! be thou a home to this crushed heart;
A sanctuary of sympathies be thou!
Another world from this cold world apart,
This dead cold world, that all my soul loathes now!
Thou, like my being, fallen and foundered art,
O'er this hath gone Despair's—o'er that Destruction's plough!
Constantinople.
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