Shine like obelisks of fire,
Pointing with inconstant motion
From the altar of dark ocean
To the sapphire-tinted skies;110
As the flames of sacrifice
From the marble shrines did rise,
As to pierce the dome of gold
Where Apollo spoke of old.
Sun-girt[1] City, thou hast been115
Ocean's child, and then his queen;
Now is come a darker day,
And thou soon must be his prey,
If the power that raised thee here
Hallow so thy watery bier.120
A less drear ruin then than now,
With thy conquest-branded brow
Stooping to the slave of slaves
From thy throne, among the waves
Wilt thou be, when the sea-mew 125
Flies, as once before it flew,
O'er thine isles depopulate,
And all is in its antient state,
Save where many a palace gate
With green sea-flowers overgrown 130
Like a rock of ocean's own,
Topples o'er the abandoned sea
As the tides change sullenly.
- ↑ As to this beautiful epithet sun-girt, I entirely agree with Mr. Swinburne, who says Mr. Palgrave's proposal (Golden Treasury,—Notes), to substitute sea-girt, "may look plausible, but the new epithet is feeble, inadequate, inaccurate. Venice is not a sea-girt city ; it is interlaced and interwoven with sea, but not girdled; pierced through with water, but not ringed about. Seen by noon from the Euganean heights, clothed as with the very and visible glory of Italy, it might seem to Shelley a city girdled with the sunlight, as some Nereid with the arms of the sun-god."—Essays and Studies, p. 199.
