LVI + 

Corcyra + 

I sat beneath an olive’s branches grey, + 

And gazed upon the sight of a lost town, + 

By sage and poet raised to long renown; + 

Where dwelt a race that on the sea held sway, + 

And, restless as its waters, forced a way + 

For civil strife a hundred states to drown. + 

That multitudinous stream we now note down + 

As though one life, in birth and in decay. + 

But is their being’s history spent and run, + 

Whose spirits live in awful singleness, + 

Each in its self-form’d sphere of light or gloom? + 

Henceforth, while pondering the fierce deeds then done, + 

Such reverence on me shall its seal impress + 

As though I corpses saw, and walk’d the tomb. + 