In Venice, on a small peninsula formed by the meeting of two canals, stands the church of Santa Maria della Salute, bearing a statue of the Virgin Mary. Further out stand statues of Atlas and Fortune. And on the very tip of the point there used to stand a solitary cast-iron lamppost, on whose base was inscribed the legend FONDERIA DI FERRO IN VENEZIA DI THEODOR E HASSELQUIST. This tableau inspired John Sparrow, former Warden of All Souls College, to write a memorable poem:

See the Saviour Queen on high,
Crowned with stars against the sky!
Poised in her appointed place
Gravely she dispenses grace,
While, the pattern to repeat,
From the dome beneath her feet
Flows the marble, fold on fold,
Convoluted, white and cold.
Close at hand a patient pair
On their backs the planet bear;
Atlas bends beneath the strain,
Fortune flaunts her golden vane:
Lucid in the moonlight pale,
Gleams the globe and shifts the sail.

While aloft in ranks serene,
Serving their celestial queen,
Countless constellations bright
Circumnavigate the night,
Two poor earth-bound slaves below
Where the sea-fogs settle slow,
Stationed on the shadowy ledge
That defines the water’s edge,
Lift their lantern through the mist —
Theodor and Hasselquist.

Air and water, sky and stone,
Need foundations not their own:
How can they subsist alone?
I, their structure to sustain,
Recompose them in my brain
Endlessly, but all in vain.
Air and water, stone and sky,
No less mortal they than I,
Human Atlas, doomed to die.

Yet there stirs within my breast
Something not to be suppressed,
Reaching out beyond my reach,
Inexpressible in speech,
Dumb presentiment of prayer
To the Queen of night and air:

When the globe dissolves for me
And the land is lost in sea,
When I cross the last lagoon
Starless, and without a moon,
Faithful still beneath the dome
Be they there to light me home,
Shining from the farther shore —
Hasselquist and Theodor.

(Via John Julius Norwich, More Christmas Crackers, 1990.)