 | Venice |  |
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VENICE
“Nor bate a jot
Of heart or hope.”
—Milton.
Of heart or hope.”
—Milton.
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I. PART I.
Approach to Venice by night—allusion to her ancient greatness—her present degradation and beauty—effect on the mind of the vicinity of the mountains and sea.
I
Vanished the vine-clad level of the Lombard,The close ways opened on the glimmering Sea;
Along the horizon trembled lights unnumbered,
In conscious cowering glee!
In bright confusion they were blent
With stars that sky and sea besprent,
And throbbed above and streamed below
With restless rays and gladsome glow,
While distant bells that merry motion timed,
And hoarsely sweet in hollow peals, as gaily chimed!
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II
And here and there a large calm light appeared,And dodging slowly o'er the waters dark,
Betrayed, as waywardly it tacked and veered,
The fisher's lonely bark;—
But who that marked the sounds, the sights,
The pealing bells, the busy lights,
Had not believed that Venice shone,
Exulting as in ages gone!
In those high times of triumph, in the dew
Of Fame, when full of youth, the sea-born Osprey flew!
III
As when in hoary pomp her Doges soughtShrines roofed with gold to pour a victor's psalm—
As when Pisani, from a prison brought,
In chains sublimely calm
Came forth beneath the blue of heaven,
Revenge disdained and wrongs forgiven!
Or as when Zeno's fleet was seen
Shadowy on Ocean's edge to lean,
And Venice to annihilation nigh
Deprest, once more rebounded into victory!
Doria the Genoese admiral having taken Chiozza, and sworn to “curb the wild horses of St. Mark,” Vittor Pisani, who had been thrown into prison for suffering unavoidable defeat, was taken thence and raised to the command of the fleet, 1378. The Venetians then besieged the Genoese in Chiozza, but not being strong enough to keep their position or fight at sea, the senate resolved to migrate to Candia, and the Doge to raise the siege if succours did not arrive before the 1st of January, 1380. On that very day the fleet of Carlo Zeno appeared from the Levant.
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IV
—Unpitying Day lays Desolation bare!At morn a dying City we deplore,
Wasting in melancholy wanness there!
Sweet Venice! now no more
White flocks of winged vessels come
To nestle in their island-home!
Thy blackening palaces are made
The haunt of each ignoble trade,—
Each staring stranger, whom thy spectral Fame
Lights to thy fall, and ushers to the show of shame!
V
The stucco peels from every time-stained wall;O'er bridge and quay the grass unheeded grows;
Each palace piecemeal drops;—mart—mansion—hall—
In cold neglect repose.
The sluggish water sleeps below
Arched windows ne'er illumined now,
Or hangs with green and slimy tresses,
The stairs no festive footstep presses!
Where erst nice Luxury smiled, self-pleased, serene,
Unseemly Ruin droops with blank dejected mien!
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VI
A dumb Despair has struck thee to the core!List! as the sable water-hearse glides by,
The quiet plash of the deliberate oar
Falls like a stifled sigh!—
The life that feebly stirs around,
'Tis Death at work—that stilly sound!—
Thus stunned by woe too much to weep,
And mourning midway on the Deep,
Thou look'st, sad Venice, in thy voiceless care,
Like Ariadne dreaming 'mid the waters bare!
VII
She through the wave with frantic fondness rushingFirst sought to follow her Athenian chief,
Then all the dreary Truth her bosom crushing,
Stood stupified with grief!
The heedless waves around her danced
As statuelike she stood entranced,
With pale fixed brow—with floating hair,
In marble muteness of despair!
So dost thou languish for thy Lord, thy pride,
Lost Ocean, wedded to a mightier Island Bride!
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VIII
Yet still thy Lion spreads his wings in air,Still towers the Campanilè to the sky—
Those fairy pillars still like magic bear
Thy ducal halls on high!
Still shines St. Mark's—each eye admires
Its clustered domes, its crowded spires!
Yes! though dethroned, thou look'st a Queen,
Majestic is thy mournful mien!
Thy proud air lasts through prostrate years of ill,
Thy crown is reft away—thy brow is regal still!
IX
A queenly beauty in a slow decline,Too visibly thou witherest day by day;
No hectic mimicry of health is thine
To decorate decay!
For thee,—whose very voice so long
Was Music, all thy converse song,
No sounds of wail need Woe invent,
Thy silence is thy best lament!
And hushed are all thy chaunts—and all the daughters
Of Music are laid low by thy deserted waters!
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X
—From houses sad with sinking roof and rafter,From dank canals—how startling to behold The myriad dimples of that brilliant laughter
On Ocean's cheek of gold!
The waves around are playing, plashing,
With low and tinkling murmur dashing;
Fresh flows the wind and fanningly,
With saltweed scented, from the Sea!
England is in that odour!—Can it be
Such generous breezes blow on lands that are not free!
XI
Venice! that breeze with thrilling memories rife,Full of the might of the majestic main,
Methinks might rouse the very dead to life!
Ah, no! it blows in vain!—
There rise the Mountains—sternly proud—
Do they not hide their heads in cloud?
Methinks the Mountains tempest-worn
Should shrink away in shame and scorn
At sight of thee! Alas! in vain they soar—
For Freedom, Glory, Power, return to thee no more!
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II. PART II.
Considerations of some of the uses of Venice in history; such as to nurse the infancy of commerce (one chief source of social freedom) after feudalism had revived decaying faith and honour—and to resist the advance of the Ottoman arms, whilst its commerce preserved that inter-course of the West with the East from which the latter will eventually reap the blessings of civilization and knowledge.—The fate of nations teaches lessons of wisdom which gathered and followed will ameliorate the condition of mankind; some of those supplied by Venice.—Reflections suggested by a fallen state as to the causes and preventions of national decline—physical causes alluded to, and their cure—the advantages of savage and civilized life to be blended and secured by study and knowledge of our mixed nature.
I
'Tis the prerogative of Time to makeWhate'er he touches, precious. Deep Reverse
Is a religion too, whose martyrs wake
An awe that good men nurse.
And wise and kind our nature's law
That Grief attracts—has power to draw
Warm pity forth—compassion pure,
Itself the mother of its cure.
We yearn with fondness for a heart left drear,
And very sad is but another name for dear!
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II
Fair Magdalene of faded Cities! gayAnd guilty once as sad, yet lovely now!
To hide thy crimes, thou hast but to display
That sorrowful sweet brow!
It tasks the mind, though stern it be
To dwell on them, yet gaze on thee!
Before thy beautiful distress,
Before thy death-struck loveliness,
We feel awhile our indignation fly,
Our loathing all forgot in lively sympathy!
III
But reason lifts her voice when kingdoms fail:Grief has its hour as well as use. A state
Is but a man upon a larger scale,
A life of longer date!
And nations have their youth and age,
A part to play on history's stage;
Their manhood wasted, they decay,—
Their end fulfilled, they pass away!
And he who marks the puppet-show of things,
May dimly guess how move the secret wheels and springs.
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IV
The fresh free North poured a tumultuous blazeOf life on the dead world; then effervesced,
The brilliant barbarism of feudal days—
Slavery in spangles drest!
The stormy splendour broke away,
But two fair Angels deigned to stay!
Faith, snowy-amiced as spring-cloud,
And bright-eyed Honour, open-browed,
That sensitive bold Child of Chivalry,
In silver arms came shining, never more to flee!
V
But Commerce calm'd man's glory-fever'd veins,For social rites and sober freedom first;
The glassy labyrinth of thy liquid lanes
The kindly infant nursed
Ere southward stemming through despair,
Great Vasco's patient heart might dare
Leap with Good Hope of Ind, new-steel'd
To see those weary mountains yield;
While opening slow in conscious grandeur mild,
An Ocean all unknown, inflam'd with morning smil'd!
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VI
And thou with her whose gore to heaven shall leap,Whose loud wrong sieges Time with cries to smite;
Thou bad'st the Moslem storm roll back—nor steep
The West in second night,
Then luminous with dawn. So came
The dusky Orient, all aflame
With gems, and by thy portal stood
With musk, and silks, and sandalwood!—
And so commercing, yet shall drink the rays
Of western light, so saved, in far-off famous days.
VII
Shall nations die in vain?—great Empires flitAway, nor teach the next what ills to fly?
Thou Chart of rocks whereon great Empries split,
Forbid it—History!
Show Man in each reverse the fuel
For hope's more brightly-starred renewal;
Bid each defeat by fate supply,
Arms better forged for victory!
With the slow honey of experience stored
In thee its hive, O sweeten life, no more abhorred!
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VIII
Nought that has ever been shall wholly die!Dead empires whisper wisdom:—from the first
Troy, flaming through all time, to thee, well nigh
The latest bubble burst!
As sands are thickest sown with gold,
Where ravening torrents fiercest rolled,
So foaming centuries leave a spoil
Of truths that shine through blood and toil!—
Groaning along the grating path of ill,
The world strikes knowledge out in sparks increasing still!
IX
How slow is Reason's march!—how wide a plainOf Thought's fair roses must we till and dress,
One drop of Truth's pure attar to obtain,
Whose scent is happiness!
Life, steep'd in Truth, were perfect here—
Progress is Truth becoming clear;
Evil but ignorance; rightly viewed,
The dim and rugged road to good!—
Some blessing, Venice! in thy fall we see,
And simple maxims take oracular might from thee!
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X
Thy silence calls aloud to teach mankindThat wisest wickedness is worst self-hate—
The sharpest-sighted tyranny stark-blind
Against avenging Fate!
Though boundless power intensely brood
In cold sagacious lust of blood,
Make subtlest cunning slave with Time,
In patient constancy to crime,
Exhaust the ingenuity of Hell
To fence its foulness round—'tis vain—for Venice fell!
XI
Thou bids't beware of Commerce! bold balloonThat lifts so high, a touch may dash it down;
Thou teachest swoln Aristocrats how soon
Their order's flight is flown—
How soon that costly delicate wine
Of States its flavour must resign,
Unless preserved by purest spirit,
Distilled from a whole nation's merit—
Not fools chance-dowered with worth beneath the sod,
But Nature's lowly Lords—the noblemen of God!
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XII
All hearts reap riches that with thee condole!Ere yet the ungentle touches of the world
Have rubbed the down of Heaven from off the soul,
Its pinions just unfurled,
What millions then inspired by thee,
With deep disgust for treachery,
Shall find a fount, in future times,
Of virtue in thy very crimes!
For ever dear must be thy glittering story
To Childhood's span-broad World of wonder, hope and glory!
XIII
The heedless Nations rush into the snareOf greatness—to decay exulting go!
None on the whirl of swift success beware
The precipice below!
Monotonous in ruin, all
Sweep headlong to the selfsame fall!
For pride is power's insidious neighbour,
And luxury spurns its parent labour,
And glory-winning hardship seems too hard
To sloth which deems no more e'en glory a reward!
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XIV
Alas! even nations know satiety!Even glory must be novel to allure!—
Clear signs declare a people's dotage nigh;
And evil days are sure
When things so cold as to be proud
Of strength of passion swell the crowd
Of baser worms, whose only shame
Is every high enthusiast flame!
Who impotently sneer when soaring zeal
Assaults with trampling scorn their selfish hearts of steel!
XV
Time saps a race by stealthy arts and slow!Close, social life—thought—luxury—weaken; air
And soil outworn less stalwart nerves bestow,
And then great hearts grow rare!
From individuals to the whole
First sinks the body, then the soul;
No hope for men until they find
How much the body makes the mind!
What outward links keep flesh, heart, spirit akin,
What lurk in finespun threads of curious life within!
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XVI
To blend in one the savage and refined—The charm of each condition to preserve—
Is man's high task:—the facile, freewinged mind,
The tense and iron nerve,
The point-blank purpose—range of skill,
The cataract of a mighty will,
All must be kept—no gift refused—
E'en passion's lightenings rightly used—
Restraint, indulgence—labour, luxury—
Be mixed and meted out with cunning ministry!
XVII
Man of his complex self both mechanistAnd engineer must be! Hard task and high!
The bodily frame to temper as we list,
The mind's intensity!
At will to raise and check the fire
And steam of passion and desire;
To work the weights of fear and shame,
The safety-valves of war and fame!
Until serenely swift the vessel flies,—
Then happiness has reached its height beneath the skies!
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III. PART III.
The unreasonableness of melancholy for a fallen state perhaps best shown by a glance at the probable duration and changes of the human race on the earth, and the grounds of hope in the future.
I
As Earth looks vast to those who never scanThe winking worlds that dance in depths of space,
As waves seem mountains round the narrow span
A drowner's eye can trace,
Sunk in the present, thus we swell
The ills more fancy might dispel;
Imagination is the chief
And sweetest antidote of grief!
Who that foresaw Time's myriad shows arrayed,
Would sigh that some must close ere all can be displayed!
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II
Dost mourn for Venice!—lay the Future bareTo fancy's glance—though like a light cascade,
Flung o'er a cliff and blown away in air,
Adown the abyss it fade!
Think what unopened mines of man
Must yet be worked—in spirit scan
The realms and races all benighted
Where power and glory ne'er alighted!
Mark through how small a spot of earth alone,
Those birds of passage yet in all the past have flown!
III
What eastern tracts yet rough with nature lie!Wide plains where sheep, like clouds, in masses move,
By lilied streams of tented Tartary
And banks grey ermines love!
The rocky ridges of Altay,
The hidden Lama's holy sway;
Where jasmined Himalehs aspire
Like cloven tongues of snowy fire;
From furry North to fiery South—the realm
That Temugin or Timour did of old o'erwhelm;
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IV
By scented seas whose laughing billows wooCoy aromatic isles, to linked lagoons
In that young world, where Nature, born anew,
Scatters unheard-of boons;
Where Emus roam in daisied downs,
Or virgin vales inviting towns;
Where vast oppressive Silence crushes
Far-flooded swamps, whose crowded rushes
Save when slow-moving to the rustling bill
Of paddling watermole, stand gloomy, fixed and still;—
V
There—there shall Learning lift her quiet eyes!There shall the gentle stir of Culture wake;
And far and near, while plastic Science plies
Her myriad arts to make
The tales of older magic tame,
Her giant Vassal fed with flame,
Fierce Genie of her wondrous lamp,
In iron bonds shall snort and ramp,
And, flashing past the lazy lightnings, fly
Through mountains—over scas—direct as destiny!
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VI
No pause—no bounds to Progress backed by Time!Lo! Afric pants for light she yet shall share
From brown Caffraria's lion-haunted clime
Up to the central glare
Where mid the broad exulting spears
The fierce Felatah gay careers!
Aye! light shall flush o'er Timbuctoo,
Ludamar, Mora, and Ibou!
Where'er with gaudier tints when Sunset blends
Soft cinnamon and green, and solemn Eve descends
VII
On palm—trees drooping black against the glare,Young girls among them for their lovers knead,
With rounded limbs in ebon beauty bare,
Sweet cakes of bamboo-seed
And golden-hued mimosa-meal,
While they for sweeter favours kneel!
And o'er dense brakes whose wild-birds lave
And tilt their breasts against the wave,
And sleek their glossy plumes in sluicy spray
While liquid leaping sparks on Tchad's full waters play!
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VIII
Ye polar wastes, where serpentining lowAround the horizon peers the sun's sad eye
O'er ice-floored seas, thick-carpeted with snow,
Beneath a leaden sky,
An empty dome—without a sound,
Utterly dumb—from whose dull round,
If haply reached, the lonely bear
Turns southward sullen to his lair;—
Ye endless streams, where Albion's glorious Child,
Fit scion of her might, is fighting through the wild!—
IX
Sun-smitten glades, where songsters ruby brightBlaze on the boughs of amber-dropping trees,
And tolling birds at stillest noon glance white
Through woods of ebonies
In Montezume's old rule—the stain
And glory once of withered Spain!—
Ye pampas wild—a thistly sea
Of rolling rank fertility;—
Two continents fermenting with new life,
And Freedom's first impatience, wrung with longings rife;
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X
What work for Time ye teem with! Nor disdainThe sisterhoods recluse of nun-like isles
Timidly huddling on the lowing Main,
Where only Nature smiles!
Shy nooks and solitary bays
And coves, wherein, when peering strays
The dwindled Ship, her sails drop dead
In sudden calm and darkness shed
From red cliffs—sulphur-stained with lichens hoar—
Whose many-cornered fronts above her frowning soar!
XI
Each isle that, poised in a blue orb of airUpon itself inverted sleeps—so well
Above, below, respond those mountains fair,
So like an opened shell
Bivalve, the doubled islet blooms;
Look down! large ribbon-leaves and plumes
With glossy spincs upturning white,
Hang upward through the crystal light!
Sweet nest!—there damsels oft delightedly
By moonlight dance on grassy spaces by the sea,
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XII
Amid the circling tribe, whose ruddy gearFor wood or wave hard by neglected lies;
And as the swift voluptuous mazes veer,
And melting brilliant eyes
Float multiplied as in a dream,
White-waving arms bewildering gleam,
And heaving bosoms swim around,
With knots of crimson feathers crowned—
The sea-scorched Mariner for joy could die,
Drunk with such sweet wild grace and softest savagery!
XIII
There lurks the raw material of Renown!There Genius yet shall dare the perilous verge
Of passionate Thought—some Bacon there hurl down
Old prejudice, and urge
The tide of mind to channels new,
And march all nature's strongholds through!
Some Newton daringly dissect
The skill of the great Architect,
And like that mightiest, meekest of the wise,
Explore new worlds of Space, Columbus of the Skies!
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XIV
Nay, further—Action is the Almighty's rest!The labour of Creation still proceeds!
God works his wonders quietly—no breast
The silent process heeds!
What homesteads of humanity
Undreamt of yet, are yet to be!
The laughing gold of cornfields gay,
Trim huts where blue-eyed infants play,
Sleek cattle glowing in green meads, shall shine
Where rocks of sandstone rise—where sandy deserts pine!
XV
Oh deem not yet Creation's labour done!What coral continents beneath the sea
Are growing up—whose loftiest peaks alone,
Rich scalpt with greenery,
Like emeralds hung on Ocean's brow,
Are brightening into Edens now!
What grim Volcanoes smouldering sleep,
That yet shall lift from out the deep
Their flaring mouths, gaping with huge surprise
At the soft light and silence into which they rise!
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XVI
All these must Time inform with life and mind!Realms shapeless yet in the Creator's hands;
Late-finished tracts that languish for mankind,
And savage-peopled lands,
Wait to be polished, powerful, free,
And crowd the far futurity!
More toil than mortal though may scan
Remains for Time—inspirits Man,
Gives room and range for Hope, and flouts the folly
Of creeping cold Despair and mole-eyed Melancholy!
XVII
A world that leaps with life, shall these beguile?—Change and Creation are in full career!
Still Progress beckons onwards—with bright smile,
And songs that charm and cheer!
This infant world has but begun
The glorious course it yet shall run!
For spite of checks and adverse chances,—
Men perish, but mankind advances!
The coral insect's myriad races die,
Yet still those snowy towers are climbing to the sky!
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XVIII
But fancy faints o'er Time's stupendous ocean,Its shore Eternity—its billows ages;—
Back—back to Venice then—with what emotion?
Delight—to mark the stages,
The ever-varying brilliant changes,
Through which mankind, the meteor, ranges!—
In hardy hope my Spirit pauses,
Their full effects, their final causes,
All for the good of Man at last agreeing,
Shall feed the joy of thought, in ampler spheres of Being!
THE END.
| Venice | |