Gladder Than All These

Another total impossibility for photos - here's some advice for anyone jaded with a photo a day - save up if you need to, and come to Venice for a couple of days - guaranteed inspiration. My main photo is of some of the glass on the island of Murano; the second is a detail of the colourful houses on Burano; and the third is coming to the end of the Grand Canal on the vaporetto this evening, because (sob) I won't be seeing La Serenissima at night again for who knows how long?

And the poem is "A Birthday", by Christina Rossetti; just the first stanza:

My heart is like a singing bird
   Whose nest is in a watered shoot:
My heart is like an apple tree
   Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit;
My heart is like a rainbow shell
   That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all these
   Because my love is come to me.  ...

Been thinking today about this unexpected gift of a stay in Venice - is it a gift from my love to me? and if so, how I should be exulting like Rossetti in this poem...