1G6 BYRON
Is with the dashing of the spring-tide foam
That drives the sailor shipless to his home,
Are they to those that were; and thus they creep,
Crouching and crab-like, through their sapping
streets.
O agony ! that centuries should reap No mellower harvest ! Thirteen hundred years Of wealth and glory turned to dust and tears, And every monument the stranger meets, Church, palace, pillar, as a mourner greets; And even the Lion all subdued appears, And the harsh sound of the barbarian drum With dull and daily dissonance repeats The echo of thy tyrant's voice along The soft waves, once all musical to song, That heaved beneath the moonlight with the throng Of gondolas and to the busy hum Of cheerful creatures, whose most sinful deeds Were but the overbeating of the heart, And flow of too much happiness, which needs The aid of age to turn its course apart From the luxuriant and voluptuous flood Of sweet sensations, battling with the blood. But these are better than the gloomy errors, The weeds of nations in their last decay, When Vice walks forth with her unsoftened terrors, And Mirth is madness, and but smiles to slay; And Hope is nothing but a false delay, The sick man's lightening half an hour ere death, When Faintness, the last mortal birth of Pain, And apathy of limb, the dull beginning
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