Lord Byron Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage IV

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 Look’d to the winged Lion’s marble piles, Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles! III In Venice Tasso’s echoes are no more, And silent rows the songless gondolier; Her palaces are crumbling