A Wanderer in Venice

by E. V. Lucas

From the rich peasant cheek of ruddy bronze,

And large black eyes that flash on you a volley

Of rays that say a thousand things at once,

To the high Dama's brow, more melancholy,

But clear, and with a wild and liquid glance,

Heart on her lips, and soul within her eyes,

Soft as her clime, and sunny as her skies.

Byron's next visit to Venice was in 1818, and it was then that he set up state and became a Venetian lion. He had now his gondolas, his horses on the Lido, a box at the Opera, many servants. But his gaiety had left him. Neither in his letters nor his verse did he recapture the fun which we find in Beppo. To this second period belong such graver Venetian work (either inspired here or written here) as the opening stanzas of the fourth canto of Childe Harold. The first line takes the reader into the very heart of the city and is one of the best-known single lines in all poetry. Familiar as the stanzas are, it would be ridiculous to write of Byron in Venice without quoting them again:—

I stood in Venice, on the "Bridge of Sighs";

A Palace and a prison on each hand: