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.

I can repeople with the past--and of
The present there is still for eye, and thought,
And meditation chasten'd down, enough;
And more, it may be, than I hoped or sought;
And of the happiest moments which were wrought
Within the web of my existence, some
From thee, fair Venice! have their colours caught:
There are some feelings Time can not benumb,
Nor Torture shake, or mine would now be cold and dumb.


Again, in the notes to Childe Harold, where these spirit-breathing lines
occur:

"The population of Venice, at the end of the 17th century amounted to
nearly two hundred thousand souls. At the last census, taken two years
ago, it was no more than about one hundred and three thousand, and it
diminishes daily. The commerce and the official employments, which were
to be the unexhausted source of Venetian grandeur, have both expired.
Most of the patrician mansions are deserted, and would gradually
disappear, had not the government, alarmed by the demolition of
seventy-two, during the last two years, expressly forbidden this sad
resource of poverty. Many remnants of the Venetian nobility are now
scattered and confounded with the wealthier Jews upon the banks of the
Brenta, whose palladian palaces, have sunk, or are sinking, in the
general decay. Of the 'gentil uomo Veneto,' the name is still known,