You'd see pearls and sapphires, topaz and cinnamon from Ceylon; lac and agates, brocades and coral from Cambay; hammered vessels and inlaid weapons and embroidered shawls from Cashmere.

As for spices, never would your nostrils meet such an odor: bdellium from Scinde, musk from Tibet, galbanum from Khorasan; from Afghanistan, asafetida; from Persia, sagapenum; ambergris and civet from Zanzibar, and from Zanzibar came ivory, too.

And from Zeila, Berbera, and Shehri came balsam and frankincense...
And that was Venice, and Marco Polo a young man.

And now it's only a town like any other town but for its churches and canals.

There's many a town has ghosts, but none the ghosts that Venice has; not Rome itself, or Tara of the kings.
"Once did she hold," Randall quoted, "the gorgeous East in fee; And was the safeguard of the West; the worth Of Venice did not fall below her birth, Venice, the eldest Child of Liberty.
She was a maiden city, bright and free; No guile seduced, no force could violate; And, when she took unto herself a mate, She must espouse the everlasting Sea!" Time is the greatest rogue of all.