childe harold's pilgrimage

In Venice, Tasso's echoes are no more,
And silent rows the songless gondolier,
Her palaces are crumbling to the shore,
And music meets not always now the ear.
Those days are gone -- but Beauty is still here.
States fall, arts fade -- but Nature doth not die,
Nor yet forget how Venice once was dear,
The pleasant place of all festivity,
The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy!

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I loved her from my boyhood; she to me
Was as a fairy city of the heart,
Rising like water-columns from the sea,
Of joy the sojourn, and of wealth the mart;
And Otway, Radcliffe, Schiller, Shakespeare's art,
Had stamp'd her image in me, and even so,
Although I found her thus, we did not part;
Perchance even dearer in her day of woe,
Than when she was a boast, a marvel, and a show.

Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage,
both from the Fourth Canto.