Yes, from all that makes this Venice sole among cities, Peerless forever,--the still lagoons that sleep in the sunlight, Lulled by their island-bells; the night's mysterious waters Lit through their shadowy depths by stems of splendor, that blossom Into the lamps that float, like flamy lotuses, over; Narrow and secret canals, that dimly gleaming and glooming Under palace-walls and numberless arches of bridges, List no sound but the dip of the gondolier's oar and his warning Cried from corner to corner; the sad, superb Canalazzo Mirroring marvellous grandeur and beauty, and dreaming of glory Out of the empty homes of her lords departed; the footways Wandering sunless between the walls of the houses, and stealing Glimpses, through rusted cancelli, of lurking greenness of gardens, Wild-grown flowers and broken statues and mouldering frescos; Thoroughfares filled with traffic, and throngs ever ebbing and flowing To and from the heart of the city, whose pride and devotion, Lifting high the bells of St. Mark's like prayers unto heaven, Stretch a marble embrace of palaces toward the cathedral Orient, gorgeous, and flushed with color and light, like the morning!-- From the lingering waste that is not yet ruin in Venice, And her phantasmal show, through all, of being and doing-- Came a strange joy to us, untouched by regret for the idle Days without yesterdays that died into nights without morrows. Here, in our paradise of love we reigned, new-created, As in the youth of the world, in the days before evil and conscience. Ah! in our fair, lost world was neither fearing nor doubting, Neither the sickness of old remorse nor the gloom of foreboding,-- Only the glad surrender of all individual being Unto him whom I loved, and in whose tender possession, Fate-free, my soul reposed from its anguish. --Of these things I write you As of another's experience; part of my own they no longer Seem to me now, through the doom that darkens the past like the future. VI. Golden the sunset gleamed, above the city behind us, Out of a city of clouds as fairy and lovely as Venice, While we looked at the fishing-tails of purple and yellow Far on the rim of the sea, whose light and musical surges Broke along the sands with a faint, reiterant sadness. But, when the sails had darkened into black wings, through the twilight Sweeping away into night--past the broken tombs of the Hebrews Homeward we sauntered slowly, through dew-sweet, blossomy alleys; So drew near the boat by errant and careless approaches, Entered, and left with indolent pulses the Lido behind us.