Verona

Cross Adria's gulf, and land where softly glide
A stream's crisp waves, to join blue Ocean's tide;
Still westward hold thy way, till Alps look down
On old Verona's walled and classic town.
Fair is the prospect; palace, tower, and spire,
And blossomed grove, the eye might well admire:
Heaven-piercing mountains capped with endless snow,
Where Winter reigns, and frowns on earth below;
Old castles crowning many a craggy steep,
From which in silver sounding torrents leap;
Southward the plain where Summer builds her bowers,
And floats on downy gales the soul of flowers;

…

Here did the famed Catullus rove and dream,
And godlike Pliny drink of Wisdom's stream:
Wronged by his friends, and exiled by his foes,
Amid these vales did Dante breathe his woes,
Raise demons up, call seraphs from the sky,
And frame the dazzling verse that ne'er shall die.
Here, too, hath Fiction weaved her loveliest spell,
Visions of beauty float o'er crag and dell;
But chief we seem to hear at evening hour
The sigh of Juliet in her star-lit bower,
Follow her form slow gliding through the gloom,
And drop a tear above her mouldered tomb.