Venice
Venice - meaning Summary
Luminous, Fragile City
Longfellow's "Venice" presents the city as an elusive, luminous organism—a swan, a water-lily, a phantom—nested within and sustained by its lagoon. The speaker admires Venice's delicate beauty and watery architecture while anticipating its possible disappearance, comparing its palaces and canals to mirages and cloud‑like masonry. The poem captures wonder and transience, emphasizing visual splendor bound up with fragility and the sense that the city's existence hovers between reality and illusion.
Read Complete AnalysesWhite swan of cities, slumbering in thy nest So wonderfully built among the reeds Of the lagoon, that fences thee and feeds, As sayeth thy old historian and thy guest! White water-lily, cradled and caressed By ocean streams, and from the silt and weeds Lifting thy golden filaments and seeds, Thy sun-illumined spires, thy crown and crest! White phantom city, whose untrodden streets Are rivers, and whose pavements are the shifting Shadows of palaces and strips of sky; I wait to see thee vanish like the fleets Seen in mirage, or towers of cloud uplifting In air their unsubstantial masonry.
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