Paved with the image of the sky.  The hoar
    And airy Alps, towards the north, appeared,
    Thro’ mist, a heaven-sustaining bulwark, reared
    Between the east and west; and half the sky
    Was roofed with clouds of rich emblazonry,
    Dark purple at the zenith, which still grew
    Down the steep west into a wondrous hue
    Brighter than burning gold, even to the rent
    Where the swift sun yet paused in his descent
    Among the many-folded hills.  They were
    Those famous Euganean hills, which bear,
    As seem from Lido through the harbour piles,
    The likeness of a clump of peaked isles—­
    And then, as if the earth and sea had been
    Dissolved into one lake of fire, were seen
    Those mountains towering, as from waves of flame,
    Around the vaporous sun, from which there came
    The inmost purple spirit of light, and made
    Their very peaks transparent.  “Ere it fade,”
    Said my companion, “I will show you soon
    A better station.”  So o’er the lagune
    We glided; and from that funereal bark
    I leaned, and saw the city, and could mark
    How from their many isles, in evening’s gleam,
    Its temples and its palaces did seem
    Like fabrics of enchantment piled to heaven. 
    I was about to speak, when—­“We are even
    Now at the point I meant,” said Maddalo,
    And bade the gondolieri cease to row. 
    “Look, Julian, on the west, and listen well
    If you hear not a deep and heavy bell.” 
    I looked, and saw between us and the sun
    A building on an island, such a one
    As age to age might add, for uses vile,—­
    A windowless, deformed, and dreary pile;
    And on the top an open tower, where hung
    A bell, which in the radiance swayed and swung,—­
    We could just hear its coarse and iron tongue: 
    The broad sun sank behind it, and it tolled
    In strong and black relief—­“What we behold
    Shall be the madhouse and its belfry tower,”—­
    Said Maddalo; “and ever at this hour,
    Those who may cross the water hear that bell,
    Which calls the maniacs, each one from his cell,
    To vespers.”

It may be parenthetically observed that one of the few familiar quotations from Shelley’s poems occurs in “Julian and Maddalo":—­

    Most wretched men
    Are cradled into poetry by wrong: 
    They learn in suffering what they teach in song.

Byron lent the Shelleys his villa of the Cappuccini near Este, where they spent some weeks in the autumn.  Here “Prometheus Unbound” was begun, and the “Lines written among the Euganean Hills” were composed; and here Clara became so ill that her parents thought it necessary to rush for medical assistance to Venice.  They had forgotten their passport; but Shelley’s irresistible energy overcame all difficulties, and they entered Venice—­only in time, however, for the child to die.