Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry. 1904.

Descriptive Poems: III. Places

Venice

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)

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 vaporous 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 mask of death

O’er the waters of his path.