HOTEL VENICE VENICE

At last I reached the ruins of a city,
Built not like ours but of another world,
As if the aged earth had loved in youth
The mightiest city of a perished planet,
And kept the image of it in her heart,
So dreamlike, shadowy, and spectral was it.

from Death’s Jest Book, III, I , by Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803-1849)