Rare is the poet or writer or artist who visits Venice and is not so inspired that the city finds its way into a creative work. The lines of the architecture, the colours in the clothes, the food, the water, the sky; the scents of votive candles in the churches and the coffee and pastries enjoyed at pavement café tables; the splash of water against the gondolas, the excited gabbling of tourists, the steady hum of locals going about their business… everywhere you look, feel, smell, listen, taste are myriad sensory experiences to nourish your muse.

One of my favourite poems about the city was penned by 19th-century American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who visited the city while on his European travels. Longfellow was one of the ‘Fireside Poets’ – a group of five poets based in New England whose works were very popular and hence read aloud at firesides in the evenings. A significant feature of these poets’ works was that they were aimed at ‘the common man’, and were designed to be accessible, memorable and easy to recite among families and in schools. For his work Longfellow in particular was much admired in his day.

Longfellow’s poem, entitled simply ‘Venice’, bears testament to the lyricism of his writing, his gift for description and his ability to bring to life a notion or a place in such a way that any reader can be moved. I love how he captures the beauty of the city, but also its air of dreaminess in words like ‘phantom’, ‘shadows’, ‘vanish’ and ‘mirage’. I too have always thought mystique to be synonymous with Venice, and that idea forms the basis of my novel, The Echoes of Love, in which what you see at surface level is never entirely the full truth.

Here is the poem. I recommend reading it aloud for the best experience of the lyrical rhythm.

White swan of cities, slumbering in thy nest
So wonderfully built among the reeds
Of the lagoon, that fences thee and feeds,
As sayeth thy old historian and thy guest!
White water-lily, cradled and caressed
By ocean streams, and from the silt and weeds
Lifting thy golden filaments and seeds.
Thy sun-illumined spires, thy crown and crest!
White phantom city, whose untrodden streets
Are rivers, and whose pavements are the shifting
Shadows of palaces and strips of sky;
I wait to see thee vanish like the fleets
Seen in mirage, or towers of cloud uplifting
In air their unsubstantial masonry.