Thy choral memory of the Bard divine,
Thy love of Tasso, should have cut the knot[1]
Which ties thee to thy tyrants; and thy lot
Is shameful to the nations,—most of all,
Albion! to thee:[2] the Ocean queen should not
Abandon Ocean's children; in the fall
Of Venice think of thine, despite thy watery wall.[3]
XVIII.
I loved her from my boyhood—she to me
Was as a fairy city of the heart,
Rising like water-columns from the sea—
Of Joy the sojourn, and of Wealth the mart;
And Otway, Radclifife, Schiller, Shakespeare's art,[4][5]
Had stamped her image in me, and even so,
- ↑ Thy love of Tasso's verse should cut the knot.—[MS. M.]
- ↑ [By the Treaty of Paris, May 3, 1814, Lombardy and Venice, which since the battle of Austerlitz had formed part of the French kingdom of Naples, were once more handed over to Austria. Great Britain was represented by "a bungler even in its disgusting trade" (Don Juan, Dedication, stanza xiv.), Lord Castlereagh.]
- ↑ ——for come it will and shall.—[MS. M., D. erased.]
- ↑ And Otway's—Radcliffe's—Schiller's—Shakspeare's art.—[MS. M., D.]
- ↑ Venice Preserved; Mysteries of Udolpho; The Ghost-Seer, or Armenian; The Merchant of Venice; Othello.
[For Venice Preserved, vide ante, stanza iv. line 7, note. To the Mysteries of Udolpho Byron was indebted for more than one suggestion, vide ante, stanza i. line 4, note, and Mysteries, etc., London, 1794, 2. 39: "The air bore no sounds, but those of sweetness echoing along each margin of the canal and from gondolas on its surface, while groups of masks were seen dancing on the moonlit terraces, and seemed almost to realize the romance of fairy-land." The scene of Schiller's
