To James Russell Lowell, in Return for a Talbotype Picture of Venice

Poet and friend! if any gift could bring
A joy like that of listening while you sing,
'T were such as this, — memories of the days
When Tuscan airs inspired more tender lays:
When the gray Appennine, or Lombard plain,
Sunburnt, or spongy with autumnal rain,
Mingled perchance, as first they met your sight,
Some drops of disappointment with delight;
When, rudely wakened from the dream of years,
You heard Velino thundering in your ears,
And fancy drooped, — until Romagna's wine
Brought you new visions, thousand-fold more fine;
When first in Florence, hearkening to the flow
Of Arno's midnight music, hoarse below,
You thought of home, and recollected those
Who loved your verse, but hungered for your prose,
And more than all the sonnets that you made,
Longed for the letters — ah, too poorly paid!
Thanks for thy boon! I look, and I am there;
The soaring belfry guides me to the square;
The punctual doves, that wait the stroke of one,
Flutter above me and becloud the sun;
'T is Venice! Venice! and with joy I put
In Adria's wave, incredulous, my foot;
I smell the sea-weed, and again I hear
The click of oars, the screaming gondolier.
Ha! the Rialto — Dominic! a boat;
Now in a gondola to dream and float:
Pull the slight cord and draw the silk aside,
And read the city's history as we glide;
For strangely here, where all is strange, indeed,
Not he who runs, but he who swims, may read.
Mark now, albeit the moral make thee sad,
What stately palaces these merchants had!
Proud houses once! — Grimani and Pisani,
Spinelli, Foscari, Giustiniani;
Behold their homes and monuments in one!
They writ their names in water, and are gone.
My voyage is ended, all the round is past, —
See! the twin columns and the bannered mast,
The domes, the steeds, the lion's winged sign,
"Peace to thee, Mark! Evangelist of mine!"
Poetic art! reserved for prosy times
Of great inventions and of little rhymes;
For us, to whom a wisely-ordering heaven
Ether for Lethe, wires for wings, has given;
Whom vapor work for, yet who scorn a ghost,
Amid enchantments, disenchanted most;
Whose light, whose fire, whose telegraph had been
In blessed Urban's liberal days a sin.
Sure, in Damascus, any reasoning Turk
Would count your Talbotype a sorcerer's work.
Strange power! that thus to actual presence brings
The shades of distant or departed things,
And calls dead Thebes or Athens up, or Aries,
To show like spectres on the banks of Charles!
But we receive this marvel with the rest;
Nothing is new or wondrous in the West;
Life 's all a miracle, and every age
To the great wonder-book but adds a page.