Lexington weekly intelligencer., 1883-05-12

! stood In Venice on the Bridge of sIshs;
A palace and prison on each hand;
AS from The stroke Of the enchanter's wand
thousand years their cloudy wings expand
q Around me, and dying glory smiles
Looked to the winged Lions marble piles,
Where Venice sate IN state. thl oned on hel
hundred islesl
She looks a sea Cybele. fresh from ocean,
Rising with her tiara of proud towers
Al airy distance. win majestic motion,
ruler OF waters and their powers,
Ana such she was; her daughters had theil
From spolls of nations and the exhaustles
East,
Pour'd in her lap all gems in sparkling showers
In purple was she robed, and OF. her feast
MOnarchs partoOk, and deem'd their dignity
increased.
In Venice Tasso's echoes are no more.
:, And silent rows the songless sondolisr;
Her palaces are crumbling to the shore,
And music meets not always now the ear;
Those days are gone, bat Beauty still Ia here.
States iail, 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 mosque OF states!
But unto us she hath spell beyond
Her name in story. and her long away
Above fbe Do9eIess .oss ciio un sSr%s asspond
Oars Is trophy which will not decay
With the Rislto; Shylock and the Moor.
AND Pierre cannot be swept or worn away
The keystones OF the arch! though ali were
ore,
For us repeopled were the solitary shore.
The beings of the mind are not of clav.
Essentially immortal. they create
Ana multiply IN US brighter ray
- And more beloved existence; that which fate
Prohibits to duil life, IN this our state
Oi mortal bondage, by these spirits supplied
Fist eNiles, and then replaces what We hate;
Watering the heart whose early flowers have
And with fresher growth replenish,ng the
Such is the refuge of our youth aud age,
The drst from hope, the last from vacsncy;
Anu this worn feeling peoples many page,
anu, Maybe. that which grows beneath mine
Yet there are things whose strong reality
Outshlnts our Iairy-land; in shape and hue,
More beautiiul than our fantastic sky
AHd the strange considerations which the Muse
Ger her Wild universe ls ski.lrul to difuse
Ihen venice Of no stronger claim were thine
-, Where ali thy proud historic deeds forgot,
my coral memory OF the Bard divine;
Ihy love oil TassO should have cut the knot
winch ties thee to thy tyrants; and thy lot
Is shameful to the nutions-most OF vii
Albion. to thee; the Ocean Queen should not
abandon OCEANS children, IN the tall
wall.
l loved her from my boyhood; she to me
Was as fairy city of the heart,
Rising like wa!ery columns from the sea;
o! JOY the sojOnrn, and or wealth the mart.
Ana otway, Radcliffe. Schiller, Shakespear;i
art,
Had stamped her image In me. even 80,
Although found her thus wo did not pnrt -
perchance even dearer in her day of woe
Ihhn when she was boast, marvel and ,
show. NJ"
can repeople with the past-audof
Inc present there still for eye and tboupht
Ana meditation chaeen ID down, enough:
And more 1t may be, than hoped or souoh,
And Of the happiest memeuts which Yer.
wrought = "s''
Within the web Of my existence, some =
caught! "'
There are some feelings Time cannot benumh
NOE torture shake, or mine would now 10 sole
AID dumb. ~ >~A>