Death in the Floating City Quotes

“ugliest bridge in the city. It was made from iron, did not have a graceful arching form like the famous stone bridges prevalent throughout Venice, and had been placed too low over the water, making it difficult for gondoliers during high tide. Around us, the canal was crowded with boats, the only method of transport in a place with no streets. I’d already decided I didn’t miss them. I much preferred the sleek gondolas, with their singing boatmen, to the clatter of horse and carriage.”
― Tasha Alexander, Death in the Floating City

“Sunlight poured around us, its reflection dancing over the ornate facades of the buildings that rose, majestic, straight from the water. We passed the domed church of Santa Maria della Salute, built in the seventeenth century to give thanks for the end of the plague that had killed upwards of a hundred thousand people in the city, and we crossed under the Ponte della Carita,”
― Tasha Alexander, Death in the Floating City

“A ruler of the waters and their powers: And such she was; her daughters had their dowers From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East Pour’d in her lap all gems in sparkling showers. In purple was she rob’d, and of her feast Monarchs partook, and deem’d their dignity increas’d. In Venice Tasso’s echoes are no more, And silent rows the songless gondolier; Her palaces are crumbling to the shore, And music meets not always now the ear: Those days are gone—but Beauty still is here. States fall, arts fade—but Nature doth not die, Nor yet forget how Venice once was dear, The pleasant place of all festivity, The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy! —GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage:”
― Tasha Alexander, Death in the Floating City

“A ruler of the waters and their powers: And such she was; her daughters had their dowers From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East Pour’d in her lap all gems in sparkling showers. In purple was she rob’d, and of her feast Monarchs partook, and deem’d their dignity increas’d. In Venice Tasso’s echoes are no more, And silent rows the songless gondolier; Her palaces are crumbling to the shore, And music meets not always now the ear: Those days are gone—but Beauty still is here.”
― Tasha Alexander, Death in the Floating City

“I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs; A palace and a prison on each hand: I saw from out the wave her structures rise As from the stroke of the enchanter’s wand: A thousand years their cloudy wings expand Around me, and a dying Glory smiles O’er the far times, when many a subject land Look’d to the winged Lion’s marble piles, Where Venice sate in state, thron’d on her hundred isles! She looks a sea Cybele, fresh from ocean, Rising with her tiara of proud towers At airy distance, with majestic motion,”
― Tasha Alexander, Death in the Floating City

“details of my afternoon, staying silent until I mentioned the”
― Tasha Alexander, Death in the Floating City