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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, | 5 |
| 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 | 10 |
| Broken and unrepaired, and the tide makes | |
| A narrow space of level sand thereon, | |
| Where ’t was our wont to ride while day went down. | |
| This ride was my delight. I love all waste | |
| And solitary places, where we taste | 15 |
| 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 | 20 |
| 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 | 25 |
| Harmonizing with solitude, and sent | |
| Into our hearts aerial merriment. | |
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