I.

   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 sate in state, throned on her hundred isles!

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     I.

   Is thy face like thy mother’s, my fair child!
   Ada! sole daughter of my house and heart?
   When last I saw thy young blue eyes, they smiled,
   And then we parted, - not as now we part,
   But with a hope. -
                    Awaking with a start,
   The waters heave around me; and on high
   The winds lift up their voices: I depart,
   Whither I know not; but the hour’s gone by,
When Albion’s lessening shores could grieve or glad mine eye.

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CANTO THE SECOND.

     I.

   Come, blue-eyed maid of heaven! - but thou, alas,
   Didst never yet one mortal song inspire -
   Goddess of Wisdom! here thy temple was,
   And is, despite of war and wasting fire,
   And years, that bade thy worship to expire:
   But worse than steel, and flame, and ages slow,
   Is the drear sceptre and dominion dire
   Of men who never felt the sacred glow
That thoughts of thee and thine on polished breasts bestow.

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     I.

   Oh, thou, in Hellas deemed of heavenly birth,
   Muse, formed or fabled at the minstrel’s will!
   Since shamed full oft by later lyres on earth,
   Mine dares not call thee from thy sacred hill:
   Yet there I’ve wandered by thy vaunted rill;
   Yes! sighed o’er Delphi’s long-deserted shrine
   Where, save that feeble fountain, all is still;
   Nor mote my shell awake the weary Nine
To grace so plain a tale - this lowly lay of mine.

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   Not in those climes where I have late been straying,
   Though Beauty long hath there been matchless deemed,
   Not in those visions to the heart displaying
   Forms which it sighs but to have only dreamed,
   Hath aught like thee in truth or fancy seemed:
   Nor, having seen thee, shall I vainly seek
   To paint those charms which varied as they beamed -
   To such as see thee not my words were weak;
To those who gaze on thee, what language could they speak?

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I said that like a picture by Giorgione
Venetian women were, and so they are,
Particularly seen from a balcony
(For beauty's sometimes best set off afar),

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