For A Man To Become A Poet

Fair Greece! Sad Relic Of Departed Worth! Immortal, Though No More! Though Fallen, Great!

There's Not A Sea The Passenger E'er Pukes In, Turns Up More Dangerous Breakers Than The Euxine.

And Angling Too, That Solitary Vice, What Izaak Walton Sings Or Says: The Quaint, Old, Cruel Coxcomb, In His Gullet Should Have A Hook, And A Small Trout To Pull It.

There Is Something To Me Very Softening In The Presence Of A Woman, Some Strange Influence, Even If One Is Not In Love With Them, Which I Cannot At All Account For, Having No Very High Opinion Of The Sex. But Yet, I Always Feel In Better Humor With Myself And Every Thing Else, If There Is A Woman Within Ken.

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.