Such is the Venice of my youth and age, Its spell a void, its charm a vacancy. Rosy Romance, thou owest many a page, Ay, many that erst grew beneath _mine_ eye, To what was once the loved reality Of this true fairy-land; but I refuse To deck with Art's fantastic wizardry A haunt of Trade. Mine is not Mammon's Muse, _She_ will not sing for hire of Soaps, or Silks, or Shoes. I know that there are such,--but let them go,-- They came like ghouls, they'll disappear like dreams. But oh! my Venice, dare they treat thee so? I fain would flay the Vandal horde; still teems My mind with memories of thy towers and streams,-- All that I sought for in thy midst, and found. Must these too go? The ogre Progress deems Such fair and flattering phantasies unsound; Now other voices speak, and other sights surround. "The spouseless Adriatic mourns her lord," Ay, and yet worse, Venetian souls grow rude. The Gondola lies rotting unrestored, The Gondolier unhired must lounge and brood, Or stoop to "stoking" for his daily food, On board a puffing fiend that by "horse pow'r" Measures its might. Oh! base ingratitude! Dogs! ye one day shall howl for the lost hour, When Venice was a Queen, with loveliness for dower. Gondolas ruled, and now the Steam Launch reigns, A stoker shovels where a lover knelt. This thing of steam and smoke that stinks and stains, Might suit the tainted Thames, the sluggish Scheldt; But the Canal, which for long years hath felt The sunshine of Romance--that downward go? This is the deadliest blow that Trade hath dealt; Enough to bring back blind old DANDOLO, To fight his country's latest most debasing foe. Before St. Mark still glow his steeds of brass, But garish signboards glitter in the sun; And up and down the watery alleys pass The snorting steamers. Venice lost and won, Her thirteen hundred years of beauty done, Sinks to an Isle of Dogs. Let her life close! Better be whelmed beneath the waves, and shun Ev'n in destruction's depths her Vandal foes, Than live a thrall to Trade, a scourge to eyes and nose. Dreams of Romance--all shattered! They revile Our "Ruskinismo," do these souls of dust, Who care not for their sumptuous marble pile, Oh, sons unworthy of their splendid trust! With his oar broken, and his dry keel thrust, Unused ashore, the Gondolier recalls Gay days and nights of glory, such as must Too oft remind him _who_ his land enthrals, And flings a sordid cloud o'er Venice' shining walls.