Lo, the sun floats up the sky
Like thought-winged Liberty,
Till the universal light
Seems to level plain and height;
From the sea a mist has spread, 210
And the beams of morn lie dead
On the towers of Venice now,
Like its glory long ago. 
By the skirts of that gray cloud
Many-domed Padua proud 215
Stands, a peopled solitude,
’Mid the harvest-shining plain,
Where the peasant heaps his grain
In the garner of his foe,
And the milk-white oxen slow 220
With the purple vintage strain,
Heaped upon the creaking wain,
That the brutal Celt may swill
Drunken sleep with savage will;
And the sickle to the sword 225
Lies unchanged, though many a lord,
Like a weed whose shade is poison,
Overgrows this region’s foison,
Sheaves of whom are ripe to come
To destruction’s harvest-home:  230
Men must reap the things they sow,
Force from force must ever flow,
Or worse; but ’tis a bitter woe
That love or reason cannot change
The despot’s rage, the slave’s revenge. 235

Padua, thou within whose walls
Those mute guests at festivals,
Son and Mother, Death and Sin,
Played at dice for Ezzelin,
Till Death cried, “I win, I win!” 240
And Sin cursed to lose the wager,
But Death promised, to assuage her,
That he would petition for
Her to be made Vice-Emperor,
When the destined years were o’er, 245
Over all between the Po
And the eastern Alpine snow,
Under the mighty Austrian. 
Sin smiled so as Sin only can,
And since that time, ay, long before, 250
Both have ruled from shore to shore,—­
That incestuous pair, who follow
Tyrants as the sun the swallow,
As Repentance follows Crime,
And as changes follow Time. 255

In thine halls the lamp of learning,
Padua, now no more is burning;
Like a meteor, whose wild way
Is lost over the grave of day,
It gleams betrayed and to betray:  260
Once remotest nations came
To adore that sacred flame,
When it lit not many a hearth
On this cold and gloomy earth: 
Now new fires from antique light 265
Spring beneath the wide world’s might;
But their spark lies dead in thee,
Trampled out by Tyranny. 
As the Norway woodman quells,
In the depth of piny dells, 270
One light flame among the brakes,
While the boundless forest shakes,
And its mighty trunks are torn