Julian and Maddalo by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I rode one evening with Count Maddalo / Upon the bank of land which breaks the flow / Of Adria towards Venice: a bare strand / Of hillocks, heaped from ever-shifting sand, / Matted with thistles and amphibious weeds, / Such as from earth's embrace the salt ooze breeds, / Is this; an uninhabited sea-side, / Which the lone fisher, when his nets are dried, / Abandons; and no other object breaks / The waste, but one dwarf tree and some few stakes / Broken and unrepaired, and the tide makes / A narrow space of level sand thereon, / Where 'twas our wont to ride while day went down. / This ride was my delight. I love all waste / And solitary places; where we taste / The pleasure of believing what we see / Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be: / And such was this wide ocean, and this shore / More barren than its billows; and yet more / Than all, with a remembered friend I love / To ride as then I rode; -for the winds drove / The living spray along the sunny air / Into our faces; the blue heavens were bare, / Stripped to their depths by the awakening north; / And, from the waves, sound like delight broke forth / Harmonising with solitude, and sent / Into our hearts aereal merriment. / So, as we rode, we talked; and the swift thought, / Winging itself with laughter, lingered not, / But flew from brain to brain,-such glee was ours, / Charged with light memories of remembered hours, / None slow enough for sadness: till we came / Homeward, which always makes the spirit tame. / This day had been cheerful but cold, and now / The sun was sinking, and the wind also. / Our talk grew somewhat serious, as may be / Talk interrupted with such raillery / As mocks itself, because it cannot scorn / The thoughts it would extinguish: -'twas forlorn, / Yet pleasing, such as once, so poets tell, / The devils held within the dales of Hell / Concerning God, freewill and destiny: / Of all that earth has been or yet may be, / All that vain men imagine or believe, / Or hope can paint or suffering may achieve, / We descanted; and I (for ever still / Is it not wise to make the best of ill? ) / Argued against despondency, but pride / Made my companion take the darker side. / The sense that he was greater than his kind / Had struck, methinks, his eagle spirit blind / By gazing on its own exceeding light. / Meanwhile the sun paused ere it should alight, / Over the horizon of the mountains; -Oh, / How beautiful is sunset, when the glow / Of Heaven descends upon a land like thee, / Thou Paradise of exiles, Italy! / Thy mountains, seas and vineyards, and the towers / Of cities they encircle! -it was ours / To stand on thee, beholding it: and then, / Just where we had dismounted, the Count's men / Were waiting for us with the gondola. - / As those who pause on some delightful way / Though bent on pleasant pilgrimage, we stood / Looking upon the evening, and the flood / Which lay between the city and the shore, / Paved with the image of the sky...the hoar / And aery Alps towards the North appeared / Through mist, an heaven-sustaining bulwark reared / Between the East and West; and half the sky / Was roofed with clouds of rich emblazonry / Dark purple at the zenith, which still grew / Down the steep West into a wondrous hue / Brighter than burning gold, even to the rent / Where the swift sun yet paused in his descent / Among the many-folded hills: they were / Those famous Euganean hills, which bear, / As seen from Lido thro' the harbour piles, / The likeness of a clump of peaked isles- / And then-as if the Earth and Sea had been / Dissolved into one lake of fire, were seen / Those mountains towering as from waves of flame / Around the vaporous sun, from which there came / The inmost purple spirit of light, and made / Their very peaks transparent. ‘Ere it fade,' / Said my companion, ‘I will show you soon / A better station'-so, o'er the lagune / We glided; and from that funereal bark / I leaned, and saw the city, and could mark / How from their many isles, in evening's gleam, / Its temples and its palaces did seem / Like fabrics of enchantment piled to Heaven. / I was about to speak, when-‘We are even / Now at the point I meant,' said Maddalo, / And bade the gondolieri cease to row.