I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs; A palace and a prison on each hand; I saw from out the wave of her structure’s rise As from the stroke of the enchanter’s wand: A thousand years their cloudy wings expand Around me, and a dying Glory smiles O’er the far times, when many a subject land Look’d to the winged Lion’s marble pines, Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles.