Ode on Venice

1. 1Oh Venice! Venice! when thy marble walls
2. 2Are level with the waters, there shall be
3. 3A cry of nations o'er thy sunken halls,
4. 4A loud lament along the sweeping sea!
5. 5If I, a northern wanderer, weep for thee,
6. 6What should thy sons do?--anything but weep:
7. 7And yet they only murmur in their sleep.
8. 8In contrast with their fathers--as the slime,
9. 9The dull green ooze of the receding deep,
10. 10Is with the dashing of the spring-tide foam,
11. 11That drives the sailor shipless to his home,
12. 12Are they to those that were; and thus they creep,
13. 13Crouching and crab-like, through their sapping streets.
14. 14Oh! agony--that centuries should reap
15. 15No mellower harvest! Thirteen hundred years
16. 16Of wealth and glory turned to dust and tears;
17. 17And every monument the stranger meets,
18. 18Church, palace, pillar, as a mourner greets;
19. 19And even the Lion all subdued appears,
20. 20And the harsh sound of the barbarian drum,
21. 21With dull and daily dissonance, repeats
22. 22The echo of thy Tyrant's voice along
23. 23The soft waves, once all musical to song,
24. 24That heaved beneath the moonlight with the throng
25. 25Of gondolas --and to the busy hum
26. 26Of cheerful creatures, whose most sinful deeds
27. 27Were but the overbeating of the heart,
28. 28And flow of too much happiness, which needs
29. 29The aid of age to turn its course apart
30. 30From the luxuriant and voluptuous flood
31. 31Of sweet sensations, battling with the blood.
32. 32But these are better than the gloomy errors,
33. 33The weeds of nations in their last decay,
34. 34When Vice walks forth with her unsoftened terrors,
35. 35And Mirth is madness, and but smiles to slay;
36. 36And Hope is nothing but a false delay,
37. 37The sick man's lightning half an hour ere Death,
38. 38When Faintness, the last mortal birth of Pain,
39. 39And apathy of limb, the dull beginning
40. 40Of the cold staggering race which Death is winning,
41. 41Steals vein by vein and pulse by pulse away;
42. 42Yet so relieving the o'er-tortured clay,
43. 43To him appears renewal of his breath,
44. 44And freedom the mere numbness of his chain;
45. 45And then he talks of Life, and how again
46. 46He feels his spirit soaring--albeit weak,
47. 47And of the fresher air, which he would seek;
48. 48And as he whispers knows not that he gasps,
49. 49That his thin finger feels not what it clasps,
50. 50And so the film comes o'er him--and the dizzy
51. 51Chamber swims round and round--and shadows busy,
52. 52At which he vainly catches, flit and gleam,
53. 53Till the last rattle chokes the strangled scream,
54. 54And all is ice and blackness,--and the earth
55. 55That which it was the moment ere our birth.

1. 56There is no hope for nations!--Search the page
2. 57Of many thousand years--the daily scene,
3. 58The flow and ebb of each recurring age,
4. 59The everlasting to be which hath been,
5. 60Hath taught us nought or little: still we lean
6. 61On things that rot beneath our weight, and wear
7. 62Our strength away in wrestling with the air;
8. 63For't is our nature strikes us down: the beasts
9. 64Slaughtered in hourly hecatombs for feasts
10. 65Are of as high an order--they must go
11. 66Even where their driver goads them, though to slaughter.
12. 67Ye men, who pour your blood for kings as water,
13. 68What have they given your children in return?
14. 69A heritage of servitude and woes,
15. 70A blindfold bondage, where your hire is blows.
16. 71What! do not yet the red-hot ploughshares burn,
17. 72O'er which you stumble in a false ordeal,
18. 73And deem this proof of loyalty the real;
19. 74Kissing the hand that guides you to your scars,
20. 75And glorying as you tread the glowing bars?
21. 76All that your Sires have left you, all that Time
22. 77Bequeaths of free, and History of sublime,
23. 78Spring from a different theme!--Ye see and read,
24. 79Admire and sigh, and then succumb and bleed!
25. 80Save the few spirits who, despite of all,
26. 81And worse than all, the sudden crimes engendered
27. 82By the down-thundering of the prison-wall,
28. 83And thirst to swallow the sweet waters tendered,
29. 84Gushing from Freedom's fountains--when the crowd,
30. 85Maddened with centuries of drought, are loud,
31. 86And trample on each other to obtain
32. 87The cup which brings oblivion of a chain
33. 88Heavy and sore,--in which long yoked they ploughed
34. 89The sand,--or if there sprung the yellow grain,
35. 90'Twas not for them, their necks were too much bowed,
36. 91And their dead palates chewed the cud of pain:--
37. 92Yes! the few spirits--who, despite of deeds
38. 93Which they abhor, confound not with the cause
39. 94Those momentary starts from Nature's laws,
40. 95Which, like the pestilence and earthquake, smite
41. 96But for a term, then pass, and leave the earth
42. 97With all her seasons to repair the blight
43. 98With a few summers, and again put forth
44. 99Cities and generations--fair, when free--
45. 100For, Tyranny, there blooms no bud for thee!

1. 101Glory and Empire! once upon these towers
2. 102With Freedom--godlike Triad! how you sate!
3. 103The league of mightiest nations, in those hours
4. 104When Venice was an envy, might abate,
5. 105But did not quench, her spirit--in her fate
6. 106All were enwrapped: the feasted monarchs knew
7. 107And loved their hostess, nor could learn to hate,
8. 108Although they humbled--with the kingly few
9. 109The many felt, for from all days and climes
10. 110She was the voyager's worship;--even her crimes
11. 111Were of the softer order, born of Love--
12. 112She drank no blood, nor fattened on the dead,
13. 113But gladdened where her harmless conquests spread;
14. 114For these restored the Cross, that from above
15. 115Hallowed her sheltering banners, which incessant
16. 116Flew between earth and the unholy Crescent,
17. 117Which, if it waned and dwindled, Earth may thank
18. 118The city it has clothed in chains, which clank
19. 119Now, creaking in the ears of those who owe
20. 120The name of Freedom to her glorious struggles;
21. 121Yet she but shares with them a common woe,
22. 122And called the "kingdom" of a conquering foe,--
23. 123But knows what all--and, most of all, we know--
24. 124With what set gilded terms a tyrant juggles!

1. 125The name of Commonwealth is past and gone
2. 126O'er the three fractions of the groaning globe;
3. 127Venice is crushed, and Holland deigns to own
4. 128A sceptre, and endures the purple robe;
5. 129If the free Switzer yet bestrides alone
6. 130His chainless mountains, 't is but for a time,
7. 131For Tyranny of late is cunning grown,
8. 132And in its own good season tramples down
9. 133The sparkles of our ashes. One great clime,
10. 134Whose vigorous offspring by dividing ocean
11. 135Are kept apart and nursed in the devotion
12. 136Of Freedom, which their fathers fought for, and
13. 137Bequeathed--a heritage of heart and hand,
14. 138And proud distinction from each other land,
15. 139Whose sons must bow them at a Monarch's motion,
16. 140As if his senseless sceptre were a wand
17. 141Full of the magic of exploded science--
18. 142Still one great clime, in full and free defiance,
19. 143Yet rears her crest, unconquered and sublime,
20. 144Above the far Atlantic!--She has taught
21. 145Her Esau-brethren that the haughty flag,
22. 146The floating fence of Albion's feebler crag,
23. 147May strike to those whose red right hands have bought
24. 148Rights cheaply earned with blood.--Still, still, for ever
25. 149Better, though each man's life-blood were a river,
26. 150That it should flow, and overflow, than creep
27. 151Through thousand lazy channels in our veins,
28. 152Dammed like the dull canal with locks and chains,
29. 153And moving, as a sick man in his sleep,
30. 154Three paces, and then faltering:--better be
31. 155Where the extinguished Spartans still are free,
32. 156In their proud charnel of Thermopylæ,
33. 157Than stagnate in our marsh,--or o'er the deep
34. 158Fly, and one current to the ocean add,
35. 159One spirit to the souls our fathers had,
36. 160One freeman more, America, to thee!