all the old loves

It's not that I don't like Venice—I do, mostly—but it is a very weird city about which I have very complex feelings, not all of which are entirely positive. Some of this is probably the result of being in Venice at the end of a too-long trip, when I'm already tired and worn out; on the other hand, weird shit keeps happening. For example: tonight we spent half an hour waiting in an abandoned vaparetto stop for a water-bus that never came, while the wind howled and the whole floating platform creaked and wailed like a dying banshee. It was an interesting life choice.

I submit this poem, therefore, with a mild dose of irony.

Love, in this summer night, do you recall
Midnight, and Venice, and those skies of June
Thick-sown with stars, when from the still lagoon
We glided noiseless through the dim canal?
A sense of some belated festival
Hung round us, and our own hearts beat in tune
With passionate memories that the young moon
Lit up on dome and tower and palace wall.
We dreamed what ghosts of vanished loves made part
Of that sweet light and trembling, amorous air.
I felt — in those rich beams that kissed your hair,
Those breezes, warm with bygone lovers' sighs—
All the dead beauty of Venice in your eyes,
All the old loves of Venice in my heart.

—John Hay (1838-1905), "Night in Venice," in this case from The Complete Poetical Works of John Hay (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1917). This is an uncollected poem.