Yet once more, ye old Penates, Let not your quenched hearths be Atè's! Yet again, ye shadowy heroes, Yield not to these stranger Neros! Though the son who slew his mother Shed Rome's blood, he was your brother: 'Twas the Roman curbed the Roman;-- Brennus was a baffled foeman. Yet again, ye saints and martyrs, Rise! for yours are holier charters! Mighty gods of temples falling, Yet in ruin still appalling, Mightier founders of those altars True and Christian--strike the assaulters! Tiber! Tiber! let thy torrent Show even nature's self abhorrent. Let each breathing heart dilated Turn, as doth the lion baited: Rome be crushed to one wide tomb, But be still the Roman's Rome! VENICE From 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage' I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs; A palace and a prison on each hand; I saw from out the wave her structures rise As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand: A thousand years their cloudy wings expand Around me, and a dying glory smiles O'er the far times when many a subject land Looked to the wingèd Lion's marble piles, Where Venice sat in state, throned on her hundred isles! She looks a sea Cybele, fresh from ocean, Rising with her tiara of proud towers At airy distance, with majestic motion, A ruler of the waters and their powers: And such she was; her daughters had their dowers From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East Poured in her lap all gems in sparkling showers. In purple was she robed, and of her feast Monarchs partook, and deemed their dignity increased. In Venice, Tasso's echoes are no more, And silent rows the songless gondolier; Her palaces are crumbling to the shore, And music meets not always now the ear: Those days are gone--but Beauty still is here. States fall, arts fade--but Nature doth not die, Nor yet forget how Venice once was dear, The pleasant place of all festivity, The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy! But unto us she hath a spell beyond Her name in story, and her long array Of mighty shadows, whose dim forms despond Above the Dogeless city's vanished sway: Ours is a trophy which will not decay With the Rialto; Shylock and the Moor, And Pierre, cannot be swept or worn away-- The keystones of the arch! though all were o'er, For us repeopled were the solitary shore.