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OXFORD GARLANDS
POEMS ON TRAVEL
SELECTED BY
R. M. LEONARD
How much a dunce that has been sent to roam
Excels a dunce that has been kept at home.
COWPER.
HUMPHREY MILFORD
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON EDINBURGH GLASGOW NEW YORK
TORONTO MELBOURNE BOMBAY
1914
OXFORD: HORACE HART
PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY
INDEX OF AUTHORS
ARNOLD, MATTHEW (1822-88), 12, 13, 35, 38, 79, 95
BLUNT, WILFRID SCAWEN (b. 1840), 78
BRIDGES, ROBERT (b. 1844), 11
BROWNING, ROBERT (1812-89), 49, 77, 91
BUTLER, ARTHUR GREY (1831-1909), 29
BYRON, GEORGE GORDON,
LORD (1788-1824), 25, 47, 53, 56, 60, 80, 87, 88, 96
CALVERLEY, CHARLES STUART (1831-84), 99
CLEVELAND, JOHN (1613-58), 121
CLOUGH, ARTHUR HUGH (1819-61), 7, 18, 23, 48, 55, 64
COLERIDGE, SAMUEL TAYLOR (1772-1834), 14, 98
COWPER, WILLIAM (1731-1800), 118
FABER, FREDERICK WILLIAM (1814-63), 107
GODLEY, ALFRED DENIS (b. 1856), 26
GOLDSMITH, OLIVER (1728-74), 8
HARDY, THOMAS (b. 1840), 31, 62
HOOD, THOMAS (1799-1845), 97, 99, 116
KEATS, JOHN (1795-1821), 39
LANDOR, WALTER SAVAGE (1775-1864), 46, 74, 89
LOCKER-LAMPSON, FREDERICK (1821-95), 56
LONGFELLOW, HENRY WADSWORTH (1807-82), 5, 44, 69, 103, 108
MANGAN, JAMES CLARENCE (1803-49), 120
MARVELL, ANDREW (1621-78), 113
NEWMAN, JOHN HENRY (1801-90), 75, 76
PHILLIMORE, JOHN SWINNERTON (b. 1873), 73
PRIOR, MATTHEW (1664-1721,) 114
RODD, SIR RENNELL (b. 1858), 83, 85
ROGERS, SAMUEL (1763-1855), 51, 66
ROSSETTI, DANTE GABRIEL (1828-82), 112
SHELLEY, PERCY BYSSHE (1792-1822), 52, 86
STEVENSON, ROBERT LOUIS (1850-94), 121
SYMONDS, JOHN ADDINGTON (1840-93), 38
TENNYSON, ALFRED, LORD (1809-92), 7, 20, 21, 22, 40, 81
TRENCH, RICHARD CHENEVIX (1807-86), 68, 77
WATTS-DUNTON, THEODORE (1832-1914), 32, 33
WORDSWORTH, WILLIAM (1770-1850), 9, 10, 34, 62, 65, 108
POEMS ON TRAVEL
TRAVELS BY THE FIRESIDE
The ceaseless rain is falling fast,
And yonder gilded vane,
Immovable for three days past,
Points to the misty main.
It drives me in upon myself 5
And to the fireside gleams,
To pleasant books that crowd my shelf,
And still more pleasant dreams.
I read whatever bards have sung
Of lands beyond the sea, 10
And the bright days when I was young
Come thronging back to me.
In fancy I can hear again
The Alpine torrent's roar,
The mule-bells on the hills of Spain, 15
The sea at Elsinore.
I see the convent's gleaming wall
Rise from its groves of pine,
And towers of old cathedrals tall,
And castles by the Rhine. 20
I journey on by park and spire,
Beneath centennial trees,
Through fields with poppies all on fire,
And gleams of distant seas.
I fear no more the dust and heat, 25
No more I fear fatigue,
While journeying with another's feet
O'er many a lengthening league.
Let others traverse sea and land,
And toil through various climes, 30
I turn the world round with my hand
Reading these poets' rhymes.
From them I learn whatever lies
Beneath each changing zone,
And see, when looking with their eyes, 35
Better than with mine own.
H. W. LONGFELLOW.
FANCIES FOR MEMORIES
Over the great windy waters, and over the clear-crested summits,
Unto the sun and the sky, and unto the perfecter earth,
Come, let us go,--to a land wherein gods of the old time wandered,
Where every breath even now changes to ether divine.
Come, let us go; though withal a voice whisper, 'The world
that we live in, 5
Whithersoever we turn, still is the same narrow crib;
'Tis but to prove limitation, and measure a cord, that we travel;
Let who would 'scape and be free go to his chamber and think;
'Tis but to change idle fancies for memories wilfully falser;
'Tis but to go and have been.'--Come, little bark! let us go. 10
A. H. CLOUGH.
THE CRY OF ULYSSES
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades 5
Vexed the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men,
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honoured of them all; 10
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move. 16
LORD TENNYSON.
THE TRAVELLER
Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow,
Or by the lazy Scheldt, or wandering Po;
Or onward, where the rude Carinthian boor
Against the houseless stranger shuts the door;
Or where Campania's plain forsaken lies, 5
A weary waste expanding to the skies:
Where'er I roam, whatever realms to see,
My heart untravelled fondly turns to thee;
Still to my brother turns with ceaseless pain,
And drags at each remove a lengthening chain. 10
In all my wanderings round this world of care,
In all my griefs--and God has given my share--
still had hopes my latest hours to crown,
Amidst these humble bowers to lay me down;
To husband out life's taper at the close, 15
And keep the flame from wasting by repose.
I still had hopes, for pride attends us still,
Amidst the swains to show my book-learned skill,
Around my fire an evening group to draw,
And tell of all I felt, and all I saw; 20
And, as a hare, whom hounds and horns pursue,
Pants to the place from whence at first she flew,
I still had hopes, my long vexations passed,
Here to return--and die at home at last.
O. GOLDSMITH.
I TRAVELLED AMONG UNKNOWN MEN
I travelled among unknown men,
In lands beyond the sea;
Nor, England! did I know till then
What love I bore to thee.
'Tis past, that melancholy dream! 5
Nor will I quit thy shore
A second time; for still I seem
To love thee more and more.
Among thy mountains did I feel
The joy of my desire; 10
And she I cherished turned her wheel
Beside an English fire.
Thy mornings showed, thy nights concealed,
The bowers where Lucy played;
And thine too is the last green field 15
That Lucy's eyes surveyed.
W. WORDSWORTH.
WHERE LIES THE LAND
Where lies the land to which yon ship must go?
Fresh as a lark mounting at break of day,
Festively she puts forth in trim array;
Is she for tropic suns, or polar snow?
What boots the inquiry?--Neither friend nor foe 5
She cares for; let her travel where she may,
She finds familiar names, a beaten way
Ever before her, and a wind to blow.
Yet still I ask, what haven is her mark?
And, almost as it was when ships were rare, 10
(From time to time, like pilgrims, here and there
Crossing the waters) doubt, and something dark,
Of the old sea some reverential fear,
Is with me at thy farewell, joyous bark!
W. WORDSWORTH.
A PASSER-BY
Whither, O splendid ship, thy white sails crowding,
Leaning across the bosom of the urgent West,
That fearest nor sea rising, nor sky clouding,
Whither away, fair rover, and what thy quest?
Ah! soon, when Winter has all our vales opprest, 5
When skies are cold and misty, and hail is hurling,
Wilt thou glide on the blue Pacific, or rest
In a summer haven asleep, thy white sails furling.
I there before thee, in the country that well thou knowest,
Already arrived am inhaling the odorous air: 10
I watch thee enter unerringly where thou goest,
And anchor queen of the strange shipping there,
Thy sails for awnings spread, thy masts bare;
Nor is aught from the foaming reef to the snow-capped, grandest
Peak, that is over the feathery palms more fair 15
Than thou, so upright, so stately, and still thou standest.
And yet, O splendid ship, unhailed and nameless,
I know not if, aiming a fancy, I rightly divine
That thou hast a purpose joyful, a courage blameless,
Thy port assured in a happier land than mine. 20
But for all I have given thee, beauty enough is thine,
As thou, aslant with trim tackle and shrouding,
From the proud nostril curve of a prow's line
In the offing scatterest foam, thy white sails crowding.
R. BRIDGES.
AT CARNAC
Far on its rocky knoll descried
Saint Michael's chapel cuts the sky.
I climbed;--beneath me, bright and wide,
Lay the lone coast of Brittany.
Bright in the sunset, weird and still 5
It lay beside the Atlantic wave,
As if the wizard Merlin's will
Yet charmed it from his forest grave.
Behind me on their grassy sweep,
Bearded with lichen, scrawled and grey, 10
The giant stones of Carnac sleep,
In the mild evening of the May.
No priestly stern procession now
Streams through their rows of pillars old;
No victims bleed, no Druids bow; 15
Sheep make the furze-grown aisles their fold.
From bush to bush the cuckoo flies,
The orchis red gleams everywhere;
Gold broom with furze in blossom vies,
The blue-bells perfume all the air. 20
And o'er the glistening, lonely land,
Rise up, all round, the Christian spires.
The church of Carnac, by the strand,
Catches the westering sun's last fires.
And there across the watery way, 25
See, low above the tide at flood,
The sickle-sweep of Quiberon bay
Whose beach once ran with loyal blood!
And beyond that, the Atlantic wide!--
All round, no soul, no boat, no hail! 30
But, on the horizon's verge descried,
Hangs, touched with light, one snowy sail!
M. ARNOLD.
THE GRAND CHARTREUSE
Through Alpine meadows, soft-suffused
With rain, where thick the crocus blows,
Past the dark forges long disused,
The mule-track from Saint Laurent goes.
The bridge is crossed, and slow we ride, 5
Through forest, up the mountain-side.
The autumnal evening darkens round
The wind is up, and drives the rain;
While hark! far down, with strangled sound
Doth the Dead Guiers' stream complain, 10
Where that wet smoke among the woods
Over his boiling cauldron broods.
Swift rush the spectral vapours white
Past limestone scars with ragged pines,
Showing--then blotting from our sight. 15
Halt! through the cloud-drift something shines!
High in the valley, wet and drear,
The huts of Courrerie appear.
_Strike leftward!_ cries our guide; and higher
Mounts up the stony forest-way. 20
At last the encircling trees retire;
Look! through the showery twilight grey
What pointed roofs are these advance?
A palace of the Kings of France?
Approach, for what we seek is here. 25
Alight and sparely sup and wait
For rest in this outbuilding near;
Then cross the sward and reach that gate;
Knock; pass the wicket! Thou art come
To the Carthusians' world-famed home. 30
M. ARNOLD.
HYMN BEFORE SUNRISE IN THE VALE OF CHAMOUNI
Hast thou a charm to stay the morning-star
In his steep course? So long he seems to pause
On thy bald awful head, O sovran BLANC,
The Arve and Arveiron at thy base
Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful Form! 5
Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines,
How silently! Around thee and above
Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black,
An ebon mass: methinks thou piercest it,
As with a wedge! But when I look again, 10
It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine,
Thy habitation from eternity
O dread and silent Mount! I gazed upon thee,
Till thou, still present to the bodily sense,
Didst vanish from my thought: entranced in prayer 15
I worshipped the Invisible alone.
Yet, like some sweet beguiling melody,
So sweet, we know not we are listening to it,
Thou, the meanwhile, wast blending with my Thought,
Yea, with my Life and Life's own secret joy: 20
Till the dilating Soul, enrapt, transfused,
Into the mighty vision passing--there
As in her natural form, swelled vast to Heaven!
Awake, my soul! not only passive praise
Thou owest! not alone these swelling tears, 25
Mute thanks and secret ecstasy! Awake,
Voice of sweet song! Awake, my heart, awake!
Green vales and icy cliffs, all join my Hymn.
Thou first and chief, sole sovereign of the Vale!
O struggling with the darkness all the night, 30
And visited all night by troops of stars,
Or when they climb the sky or when they sink:
Companion of the morning-star at dawn,
Thyself Earth's rosy star, and of the dawn
Co-herald: wake, O wake, and utter praise! 35
Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in Earth?
Who filled thy countenance with rosy light?
Who made thee parent of perpetual streams?
And you, ye five wild torrents fiercely glad!
Who called you forth from night and utter death, 40
From dark and icy caverns called you forth,
Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks,
For ever shattered and the same for ever?
Who gave you your invulnerable life,
Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy, 45
Unceasing thunder and eternal foam?
And who commanded (and the silence came),
Here let the billows stiffen, and have rest?
Ye Ice-falls! ye that from the mountain's brow
Adown enormous ravines slope amain-- 50
Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,
And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge!
Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!
Who made you glorious as the Gates of Heaven
Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun 55
Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living flowers
Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet?--
GOD! let the torrents, like a shout of nations,
Answer! and let the ice-plains echo, GOD!
GOD! sing ye meadow-streams with gladsome voice! 60
Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds!
And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow,
And in their perilous fall shall thunder, GOD!
Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost!
Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle's nest! 65
Ye eagles, play-mates of the mountain-storm!
Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds!
Ye signs and wonders of the element!
Utter forth God, and fill the hills with praise!
Thou too, hoar Mount! with thy sky-pointing peaks, 70
Oft from whose feet the avalanche, unheard,
Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene
Into the depth of clouds, that veil thy breast--
Thou too again, stupendous Mountain! thou
That as I raise my head, awhile bowed low 75
In adoration, upward from thy base
Slow travelling with dim eyes suffused with tears,
Solemnly seemest, like a vapoury cloud,
To rise before me--Rise, O ever rise,
Rise like a cloud of incense from the Earth! 80
Thou kingly Spirit throned among the hills,
Thou dread ambassador from Earth to Heaven,
Great Hierarch! tell thou the silent sky,
And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun
Earth, with her thousand voices, praises GOD. 85
S. T. COLERIDGE.
HOME, ROSE, AND HOME, PROVENCE AND LA PALIE
ITE DOMUM SATURAE, VENIT HESPERUS
The skies have sunk, and hid the upper snow,
(Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie,)
The rainy clouds are filing fast below,
And wet will be the path, and wet shall we.
Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie. 5
Ah dear, and where is he, a year agone
Who stepped beside and cheered us on and on?
My sweetheart wanders far away from me,
In foreign land or on a foreign sea.
Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie. 10
The lightning zigzags shoot across the sky,
(Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie,)
And through the vale the rains go sweeping by;
Ah me, and when in shelter shall we be?
Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie. 15
Cold, dreary cold, the stormy winds feel they
O'er foreign lands and foreign seas that stray.
(Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie.)
And doth he e'er, I wonder, bring to mind
The pleasant huts and herds he left behind? 20
And doth he sometimes in his slumbering see
The feeding kine and doth he think of me,
My sweetheart wandering wheresoe'er it be?
Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie.
The thunder bellows far from snow to snow, 25
(Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie,)
And loud and louder roars the flood below.
Heigh-ho! but soon in shelter shall we be:
Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie.
Or shall he find before his term be sped, 30
Some comelier maid that he shall wish to wed?
(Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie.)
For weary is work, and weary day by day
To have your comfort miles on miles away.
Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie. 35
Or may it be that I shall find my mate,
And he returning see himself too late?
For work we must, and what we see, we see.
And God he knows, and what must be, must be,
When sweethearts wander far away from me. 40
Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie.
The sky behind is brightening up anew,
(Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie,)
The rain is ending, and our journey too;
Heigh-ho! aha! for here at home are we:-- 45
In, Rose, and in, Provence and La Palie.
A. H. CLOUGH.
THERE LIES A VALE IN IDA
There lies a vale in Ida, lovelier
Than all the valleys of Ionian hills.
The swimming vapour slopes athwart the glen,
Puts forth an arm, and creeps from pine to pine,
And loiters, slowly drawn. On either hand 5
The lawns and meadow-ledges midway down
Hang rich in flowers, and far below them roars
The long brook falling through the clov'n ravine
In cataract after cataract to the sea.
Behind the valley topmost Gargarus 10
Stands up and takes the morning: but in front
The gorges, opening wide apart, reveal
Troas and Ilion's columned citadel,
The crown of Troas.
Hither came at noon
Mournful Oenone, wandering forlorn 15
Of Paris, once her playmate on the hills.
Her cheek had lost the rose, and round her neck
Floated her hair or seemed to float in rest.
She, leaning on a fragment twined with vine,
Sang to the stillness, till the mountain-shade 20
Sloped downward to her seat from the upper cliff.
'O mother Ida, many-fountained Ida,
Dear mother Ida, hearken ere I die.
For now the noonday quiet holds the hill:
The grasshopper is silent in the grass: 25
The lizard, with his shadow on the stone,
Rests like a shadow, and the cicala sleeps.
The purple flowers droop: the golden bee
Is lily-cradled: I alone awake.
My eyes are full of tears, my heart of love, 30
My heart is breaking, and my eyes are dim,
And I am all aweary of my life.'
LORD TENNYSON.
COME DOWN, O MAID
Come down, O maid, from yonder mountain height:
What pleasure lives in height (the shepherd sang),
In height and cold, the splendour of the hills?
But cease to move so near the heavens, and cease
To glide a sunbeam by the blasted pine, 5
To sit a star upon the sparkling spire;
And come, for Love is of the valley, come,
For Love is of the valley, come thou down
And find him; by the happy threshold, he,
Or hand in hand with Plenty in the maize, 10
Or red with spirted purple of the vats,
Or foxlike in the vine; nor cares to walk
With Death and Morning on the silver horns,
Nor wilt thou snare him in the white ravine,
Nor find him dropped upon the firths of ice, 15
That huddling slant in furrow-cloven falls
To roll the torrent out of dusky doors:
But follow: let the torrent dance thee down
To find him in the valley; let the wild
Lean-headed Eagles yelp alone, and leave 20
The monstrous ledges there to slope, and spill
Their thousand wreaths of dangling water-smoke,
That like a broken purpose waste in air:
So waste not thou; but come; for all the vales
Await thee; azure pillars of the hearth 25
Arise to thee; the children call, and I
Thy shepherd pipe, and sweet is every sound,
Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet;
Myriads of rivulets hurrying through the lawn,
The moan of doves in immemorial elms, 30
And murmuring of innumerable bees.
LORD TENNYSON.
IN THE VALLEY OF CAUTERETZ
All along the valley, stream that flashest white,
Deepening thy voice with the deepening of the night,
All along the valley, where thy waters flow,
I walked with one I loved two and thirty years ago.
All along the valley while I walked to-day, 5
The two and thirty years were a mist that rolls away;
For all along the valley, down thy rocky bed,
Thy living voice to me was as the voice of the dead,
And all along the valley, by rock and cave and tree,
The voice of the dead was a living voice to me. 10
LORD TENNYSON.
CURRENTE CALAMO
Quick, painter, quick, the moment seize
Amid the snowy Pyrenees;
More evanescent than the snow,
The pictures come, are seen, and go:
Quick, quick, _currente calamo_. 5
I do not ask the tints that fill
The gate of day 'twixt hill and hill;
I ask not for the hues that fleet
Above the distant peaks; my feet
Are on a poplar-bordered road, 10
Where with a saddle and a load
A donkey, old and ashen-grey,
Reluctant works his dusty way.
Before him, still with might and main
Pulling his rope, the rustic rein, 15
A girl: before both him and me,
Frequent she turns and lets me see,
Unconscious, lets me scan and trace
The sunny darkness of her face
And outlines full of southern grace. 20
Following I notice, yet and yet,
Her olive skin, dark eyes deep set,
And black, and blacker e'en than jet,
The escaping hair that scantly showed,
Since o'er it in the country mode, 25
For winter warmth and summer shade,
The lap of scarlet cloth is laid.
And then, back-falling from the head,
A crimson kerchief overspread
Her jacket blue; thence passing down, 30
A skirt of darkest yellow-brown,
Coarse stuff, allowing to the view
The smooth limb to the woollen shoe.
But who--here's some one following too,--
A priest, and reading at his book! 35
Read on, O priest, and do not look;
Consider,--she is but a child,--
Yet might your fancy be beguiled.
Read on, O priest, and pass and go!
But see, succeeding in a row, 40
Two, three, and four, a motley train,
Musicians wandering back to Spain;
With fiddle and with tambourine,
A man with women following seen.
What dresses, ribbon ends, and flowers! 45
And,--sight to wonder at for hours,--
The man,--to Phillip has he sat?--
With butterfly-like velvet hat;
One dame his big bassoon conveys,
On one his gentle arm he lays; 50
They stop, and look, and something say,
And to 'Espana' ask the way.
But while I speak, and point them on;
Alas, my dearer friends are gone,
The dark-eyed maiden and the ass 55
Have had the time the bridge to pass.
Vainly, beyond it far descried,
Adieu, and peace with you abide,
Grey donkey, and your beauteous guide.
The pictures come, the pictures go, 60
Quick, quick, _currente calamo_.
A. H. CLOUGH.
CINTRA
Lo! Cintra's glorious Eden intervenes
In variegated maze of mount and glen.
Ah me! what hand can pencil guide, or pen,
To follow half on which the eye dilates
Through views more dazzling unto mortal ken 5
Than those whereof such things the bard relates,
Who to the awe-struck world unlocked Elysium's gates?
The horrid crags, by toppling convent crown'd,
The cork-trees hoar that clothe the shaggy steep,
The mountain-moss by scorching skies imbrown'd, 10
The sunken glen, whose sunless shrubs must weep,
The tender azure of the unruffled deep,
The orange tints that gild the greenest bough,
The torrents that from cliff to valley leap,
The vine on high, the willow branch below, 15
Mix'd in one mighty scene, with varied beauty glow.
LORD BYRON.
SWITZERLAND
In the steamy, stuffy Midlands, 'neath an English summer sky,
When the holidays are nearing with the closing of July,
And experienced Alpine stagers and impetuous recruits
Are renewing with the season their continual disputes--
Those inveterate disputes 5
On the newest Alpine routes--
And inspecting the condition of their mountaineering boots:
You may stifle your reflections, you may banish them afar,
You may try to draw a solace from the thought of 'Naechstes Jahr'--
But your heart is with those climbers, and you'll feverishly yearn 10
To be crossing of the Channel with your luggage labelled 'Bern',
Leaving England far astern
With a ticket through to Bern,
And regarding your profession with a lordly unconcern!
_They_ will lie beside the torrent, just as you were wont to do, 15
With the woodland green around them and a snow-field shining through:
They will tread the higher pastures, where celestial breezes blow,
While the valley lies in shadow and the peaks are all aglow--
Where the airs of heaven blow
'Twixt the pine woods and the snow, 20
And the shades of evening deepen in the valley far below:
They will scale the mountain strongholds that in days of old you won,
They will plod behind a lantern ere the rising of the sun,
On a 'grat' or in a chimney, on the steep and dizzy slope,
For a foothold or a handhold they will diligently grope--
On the rocky, icy slope 26
(Where we'll charitably hope
'Tis assistance only Moral that they're getting from a rope);
They will dine on mule and marmot, and on mutton made of goats,
They will face the various horrors of Helvetian table d'hotes: 30
But whate'er the paths that lead them, and the food whereon they fare,
They will taste the joy of living, as you only taste it there,
As you taste it Only There
In the higher, purer air,
Unapproachable by worries and oblivious quite of care! 35
Place me somewhere in the Valais, 'mid the mountains west of Binn,
West of Binn and east of Savoy, in a decent kind of inn,
With a peak or two for climbing, and a glacier to explore,--
Any mountains will content me, though they've all been climbed before--
Yes! I care not any more 40
Though they've all been done before,
And the names they keep in bottles may be numbered by the score!
Though the hand of Time be heavy: though your ancient comrades fail:
Though the mountains you ascended be accessible by rail: 44
Though your nerve begin to weaken, and you're gouty grown and fat,
And prefer to walk in places which are reasonably flat--
Though you grow so very fat
That you climb the Gorner Grat
Or perhaps the Little Scheideck,--and are rather proud of that:
Yet I hope that till you die 50
You will annually sigh
For a vision of the Valais with the coming of July,
For the Oberland or Valais and the higher, purer air,
And the true delight of living, as you taste it only there!
A. D. GODLEY.
ZERMATT CHURCHYARD
_'C'etait une guerre avec le Matterhorn,' said a Zermatt peasant
of the many attempts to scale this great mountain_
They warred with Nature, as of old with gods
The Titans; like the Titans too they fell,
Hurled from the summit of their hopes, and dashed
Sheer down precipitous tremendous crags,
A thousand deaths in one. 'Tis o'er, and we 5
Who sit at home, and by the peaceful hearth
Read their sad tale, made wise by the event,
May moralize of folly and a thirst
For barren honour, fruitful of no end.
'Tis well: we were not what we are without 10
That cautious wisdom, and the sober mind
Of prudence, steering calm 'twixt rock and storm.
Yet, too, methinks, we were not what we are
Without that other fiery element--
The love, the thirst for venture, and the scorn 15
That aught should be too great for mortal powers
That yet one peak in all the skyey throng
Should rise unchallenged with unvanquished snows,
Virgin from the beginning of the world.
Such fire was theirs; O not for fame alone-- 20
That coarser thread in all the finer skein
That draws adventure, oft by vulgar minds
Deemed man's sole aim--but for the high delight
To tread untrodden solitudes, and feel
A sense of power, of fullest freedom, lost 25
In the loud vale where _Man_ is all in all.
For this they dared too much; nor they alone,
They but the foremost of an Alpine band,
Who in the life of cities pine and pant
For purer air, for peak, and pass, and glen, 30
With slow majestic glacier, born to-day,
Yet with the trophies of a thousand years
On its scarred bosom, till its icy bonds
It burst, and rush a torrent to the main.
Such sons still hast thou, England; be thou proud
To have them, relics of thy younger age. 36
Nor murmur if not all at once they take
The care and burden on them. Learn of them!
Youth has its teaching, too, as well as age:
We grow too old too soon; the flaxen head 40
Of childhood apes experience' hoary crown,
And prudent lisps ungraceful aged saws.
'Tis so: yet here in Zermatt--here beneath
The fatal peak, beside the heaving mound
That bears the black cross with the golden names 45
Of men, our friends, upon it--here we fain
Would preach a soberer lesson. Forth they went,
Fearless and gay as to a festival,
One clear, cold morn: they climbed the virgin height;
They stood where still the awestruck gazer's eye 50
Shudders to follow. There a little while
They spake of home, that centre whose wide arms
Hold us where'er we are, in joy, or woe,
On earth, in air, and far on stormy seas.
Then they turned homeward, yet not to return. 55
It was a fearful place, and as they crept
Fearfully down the giddy steep, there came
A slip--no more--one little slip, and down
Linked in a living avalanche they fell,
Brothers in hope, in triumph, and in death, 60
Nor dying were divided. One remained
To tell their story, and to bury them.
A. G. BUTLER.
ZERMATT
TO THE MATTERHORN
(_June-July, 1897_)
Thirty-two years since, up against the sun,
Seven shapes, thin atomies to lower sight,
Labouringly leapt and gained thy gabled height,
And four lives paid for what the seven had won.
They were the first by whom the deed was done, 5
And when I look at thee, my mind takes flight
To that day's tragic feat of manly might,
As though, till then, of history thou hadst none.
Yet ages ere men topped thee, late and soon
Thou didst behold the planets lift and lower; 10
Saw'st, maybe, Joshua's pausing sun and moon,
And the betokening sky when Caesar's power
Approached its bloody end; yea, even that Noon
When darkness filled the earth till the ninth hour.
T. HARDY.
NATURA MALIGNA
The Lady of the Hills with crimes untold
Followed my feet, with azure eyes of prey;
By glacier-brink she stood--by cataract-spray--
When mists were dire, or avalanche-echoes rolled.
At night she glimmered in the death-wind cold, 5
And if a footprint shone at break of day,
My flesh would quail, but straight my soul would say:
''Tis hers whose hand God's mightier hand doth hold.'
I trod her snow-bridge, for the moon was bright,
Her icicle-arch across the sheer crevasse, 10
When lo, she stood!... God made her let me pass,
Then felled the bridge!... Oh, there in sallow light
There down the chasm, I saw her cruel, white,
And all my wondrous days as in a glass.
T. WATTS-DUNTON.
NATURA BENIGNA
What power is this? what witchery wins my feet
To peaks so sheer they scorn the cloaking snow,
All silent as the emerald gulfs below,
Down whose ice-walls the wings of twilight beat?
What thrill of earth and heaven--most wild, most sweet-- 5
What answering pulse that all the senses know,
Comes leaping from the ruddy eastern glow
Where, far away, the skies and mountains meet?
Mother, 'tis I reborn: I know thee well:
That throb I know and all it prophesies, 10
O Mother and Queen, beneath the olden spell
Of silence, gazing from thy hills and skies!
Dumb Mother, struggling with the years to tell
The secret at thy heart through helpless eyes!
T. WATTS-DUNTON.
THE SIMPLON PASS
----Brook and road
Were fellow-travellers in this gloomy Pass,
And with them did we journey several hours
At a slow step. The immeasurable height
Of woods decaying, never to be decayed, 5
The stationary blasts of waterfalls,
And in the narrow rent, at every turn,
Winds thwarting winds bewildered and forlorn,
The torrents shooting from the clear blue sky,
The rocks that muttered close upon our ears, 10
Black drizzling crags that spake by the wayside
As if a voice were in them, the sick sight
And giddy prospect of the raving stream,
The unfettered clouds and region of the heavens,
Tumult and peace, the darkness and the light-- 15
Were all like workings of one mind, the features
Of the same face, blossoms upon one tree,
Characters of the great Apocalypse,
The types and symbols of Eternity,
Of first, and last, and midst, and without end. 20
W. WORDSWORTH.
OBERMANN
I
In front the awful Alpine track
Crawls up its rocky stair;
The autumn storm-winds drive the rack
Close o'er it, in the air.
Behind are the abandoned baths 5
Mute in their meadows lone;
The leaves are on the valley paths;
The mists are on the Rhone--
The white mists rolling like a sea.
I hear the torrents roar. 10
--Yes, Obermann, all speaks of thee!
I feel thee near once more.
How often, where the slopes are green
On Jaman, hast thou sate
By some high chalet door, and seen 15
The summer day grow late,
And darkness steal o'er the wet grass
With the pale crocus starred,
And reach that glimmering sheet of glass
Beneath the piny sward, 20
Lake Leman's waters, far below:
And watched the rosy light
Fade from the distant peaks of snow:
And on the air of night
Heard accents of the eternal tongue 25
Through the pine branches play:
Listened, and felt thyself grow young:
Listened, and wept----Away!
Away the dreams that but deceive!
And thou, sad Guide, adieu! 30
I go; Fate drives me: but I leave
Half of my life with you.
II
Glion?----Ah, twenty years, it cuts
All meaning from a name!
White houses prank where once were huts!
Glion, but not the same,
And yet I know not. All unchanged 5
The turf, the pines, the sky!
The hills in their old order ranged.
The lake, with Chillon by!
And 'neath those chestnut-trees, where stiff
And stony mounts the way, 10
Their crackling husk-heaps burn, as if
I left them yesterday.
Across the valley, on that slope,
The huts of Avant shine--
Its pines under their branches ope 15
Ways for the tinkling kine.
Full-foaming milk-pails, Alpine fare,
Sweet heaps of fresh-cut grass,
Invite to rest the traveller there
Before he climb the pass-- 20
The gentian-flowered pass, its crown
With yellow spires aflame,
Whence drops the path to Alliere down
And walls where Byron came.
Still in my soul the voice I heard 25
Of Obermann--away
I turned; by some vague impulse stirred,
Along the rocks of Naye
And Sonchaud's piny flanks I gaze
And the blanched summit bare 30
Of Malatrait, to where in haze
The Valais opens fair,
And the domed Velan with his snows
Behind the upcrowding hills
Doth all the heavenly opening close 35
Which the Rhone's murmur fills--
And glorious there, without a sound,
Across the glimmering lake,
High in the Valais depth profound,
I saw the morning break. 40
M. ARNOLD.
THE TERRACE AT BERNE
Ten years!--and to my waking eye
Once more the roofs of Berne appear;
The rocky banks, the terrace high,
The stream--and do I linger here?
The clouds are on the Oberland, 5
The Jungfrau snows look faint and far;
But bright are those green fields at hand,
And through those fields comes down the Aar,
And from the blue twin lakes it comes,
Flows by the town, the church-yard fair, 10
And 'neath the garden-walk it hums,
The house--and is my Marguerite there?
M. ARNOLD.
NEVER, OH NEVER MORE
Never, oh never more shall I behold
A sunrise on the glacier:--stars of morn
Paling in primrose round the crystal horn;
Soft curves of crimson mellowing into gold 4
O'er sapphire chasm, and silvery snow-field cold;
Fire that o'er-floods the horizon; beacons borne
From wind-worn peak to storm-swept peak forlorn;
Clear hallelujahs through heaven's arches rolled.
Never, oh never more these feet shall feel
The firm elastic tissue of upland turf, 10
Or the crisp edge of the high rocks; or cling
Where the embattled cliffs beneath them reel
Through cloud-wreaths eddying like the Atlantic surf,
Far, far above the wheeling eagle's wing.
J. A. SYMONDS.
HAPPY IS ENGLAND
Happy is England! I could be content
To see no other verdure than its own;
To feel no other breezes than are blown
Through its tall woods with high romances blent:
Yet do I sometimes feel a languishment 5
For skies Italian, and an inward groan
To sit upon an Alp as on a throne,
And half forget what world or worldling meant.
Happy is England, sweet her artless daughters;
Enough their simple loveliness for me, 10
Enough their whitest arms in silence clinging:
Yet do I often warmly burn to see
Beauties of deeper glance, and hear their singing,
And float with them about the summer waters.
J. KEATS.
THE DAISY
WRITTEN AT EDINBURGH
O love, what hours were thine and mine,
In lands of palm and southern pine;
In lands of palm, of orange-blossom,
Of olive, aloe, and maize and vine.
What Roman strength Turbia showed 5
In ruin, by the mountain road;
How like a gem, beneath, the city
Of little Monaco, basking, glowed.
How richly down the rocky dell
The torrent vineyard streaming fell 10
To meet the sun and sunny waters,
That only heaved with a summer swell.
What slender campanili grew
By bays, the peacock's neck in hue;
Where, here and there, on sandy beaches 15
A milky-belled amaryllis blew.
How young Columbus seemed to rove,
Yet present in his natal grove,
Now watching high on mountain cornice,
And steering, now, from a purple cove, 20
Now pacing mute by ocean's rim;
Till, in a narrow street and dim,
I stayed the wheels at Cogoletto,
And drank, and loyally drank to him.
Nor knew we well what pleased us most, 25
Not the clipt palm of which they boast;
But distant colour, happy hamlet,
A mouldered citadel on the coast,
Or tower, or high hill-convent, seen
A light amid its olives green; 30
Or olive-hoary cape in ocean;
Or rosy blossom in hot ravine,
Where oleanders flushed the bed
Of silent torrents, gravel-spread;
And, crossing, oft we saw the glisten 35
Of ice, far up on a mountain head.
We loved that hall, tho' white and cold,
Those niched shapes of noble mould,
A princely people's awful princes,
The grave, severe Genovese of old. 40
At Florence too what golden hours,
In those long galleries, were ours;
What drives about the fresh Cascine,
Or walks in Boboli's ducal bowers.
In bright vignettes, and each complete, 45
Of tower or duomo, sunny-sweet,
Or palace, how the city glittered,
Thro' cypress avenues, at our feet.
But when we crost the Lombard plain
Remember what a plague of rain; 50
Of rain at Reggio, rain at Parma;
At Lodi, rain, Piacenza, rain.
And stern and sad (so rare the smiles
Of sunlight) looked the Lombard piles;
Porch-pillars on the lion resting, 55
And sombre, old, colonnaded aisles.
O Milan, O the chanting quires,
The giant windows' blazoned fires,
The height, the space, the gloom, the glory!
A mount of marble, a hundred spires! 60
I climbed the roofs at break of day;
Sun-smitten Alps before me lay.
I stood among the silent statues,
And statued pinnacles, mute as they.
How faintly-flushed, how phantom-fair, 65
Was Monte Rosa, hanging there
A thousand shadowy-pencilled valleys
And snowy dells in a golden air.
Remember how we came at last
To Como; shower and storm and blast 70
Had blown the lake beyond his limit,
And all was flooded; and how we past
From Como, when the light was grey,
And in my head, for half the day,
The rich Virgilian rustic measure 75
Of Lari Maxume, all the way,
Like ballad-burthen music, kept,
As on The Lariano crept
To that fair port below the castle
Of Queen Theodolind, where we slept; 80
Or hardly slept, but watched awake
A cypress in the moonlight shake,
The moonlight touching o'er a terrace
One tall Agave above the lake.
What more? we took our last adieu, 85
And up the snowy Splugen drew,
But ere we reached the highest summit
I plucked a daisy, I gave it you.
It told of England then to me,
And now it tells of Italy. 90
O love, we two shall go no longer
To lands of summer across the sea;
So dear a life your arms enfold
Whose crying is a cry for gold:
Yet here to-night in this dark city, 95
When ill and weary, alone and cold,
I found, though crushed to hard and dry,
This nurseling of another sky
Still in the little book you lent me,
And where you tenderly laid it by: 100
And I forgot the clouded Forth,
The gloom that saddens Heaven and Earth,
The bitter east, the misty summer
And grey metropolis of the North.
Perchance, to lull the throbs of pain, 105
Perchance, to charm a vacant brain,
Perchance, to dream you still beside me,
My fancy fled to the South again.
LORD TENNYSON.
CADENABBIA
LAKE OF COMO
No sound of wheels or hoof-beat breaks
The silence of the summer day,
As by the loveliest of all lakes
I while the idle hours away.
I pace the leafy colonnade 5
Where level branches of the plane
Above me weave a roof of shade
Impervious to the sun and rain.
At times a sudden rush of air
Flutters the lazy leaves o'erhead, 10
And gleams of sunshine toss and flare
Like torches down the path I tread.
By Somariva's garden gate
I make the marble stairs my seat,
And hear the water, as I wait, 15
Lapping the steps beneath my feet.
The undulation sinks and swells
Along the stony parapets,
And far away the floating bells
Tinkle upon the fisher's nets. 20
Silent and slow, by tower and town
The freighted barges come and go,
Their pendent shadows gliding down
By town and tower submerged below.
The hills sweep upward from the shore, 25
With villas scattered one by one
Upon their wooded spurs, and lower
Bellagio blazing in the sun.
And dimly seen, a tangled mass
Of walls and woods, of light and shade, 30
Stands beckoning up the Stelvio Pass
Varenna with its white cascade.
I ask myself, Is this a dream?
Will it all vanish into air?
Is there a land of such supreme 35
And perfect beauty anywhere?
Sweet vision! Do not fade away;
Linger until my heart shall take
Into itself the summer day,
And all the beauty of the lake. 40
Linger until upon my brain
Is stamped an image of the scene,
Then fade into the air again,
And be as if thou hadst not been.
H. W. LONGFELLOW.
TO VERONA
Verona! thy tall gardens stand erect
Beckoning me upward. Let me rest awhile
Where the birds whistle hidden in the boughs,
Or fly away when idlers take their place,
Mated as well, concealed as willingly; 5
Idlers whose nest must not swing there, but rise
Beneath a gleaming canopy of gold,
Amid the flight of Cupids, and the smiles
Of Venus ever radiant o'er their couch.
Here would I stay, here wander, slumber here, 10
Nor pass into that theatre below
Crowded with their faint memories, shades of joy.
But ancient song arouses me: I hear
Coelius and Aufilena; I behold
Lesbia, and Lesbia's linnet at her lip 15
Pecking the fruit that ripens and swells out
For him whose song the Graces loved the most,
Whatever land, east, west, they visited.
Even he must not detain me: one there is
Greater than he, of broader wing, of swoop 20
Sublimer. Open now that humid arch
Where Juliet sleeps the quiet sleep of death,
And Romeo sinks aside her.
Fare ye well,
Lovers! Ye have not loved in vain: the hearts
Of millions throb around ye. This lone tomb, 25
One greater than yon walls have ever seen,
Greater than Manto's prophet-eye foresaw
In her own child or Rome's, hath hallowed;
And the last sod or stone a pilgrim knee 29
Shall press (Love swears it, and swears true) is here.
W. S. LANDOR.
THE APENNINE
Once more upon the woody Apennine,
The infant Alps, which--had I not before
Gazed on their mightier parents, where the pine
Sits on more shaggy summits, and where roar
The thundering lauwine--might be worshipped more; 5
But I have seen the soaring Jungfrau rear
Her never-trodden snow, and seen the hoar
Glaciers of bleak Mont Blanc both far and near,
And in Chimari heard the thunder-hills of fear,
Th' Acroceraunian mountains of old name; 10
And on Parnassus seen the eagles fly
Like spirits of the spot, as 'twere for fame,
For still they soared unutterably high:
I've looked on Ida with a Trojan's eye;
Athos, Olympus, Aetna, Atlas, made 15
These hills seem things of lesser dignity,
All, save the lone Soracte's height, displayed
Not _now_ in snow, which asks the lyric Roman's aid
For our remembrance, and from out the plain
Heaves like a long-swept wave about to break,
And on the curl hangs pausing. 21
LORD BYRON.
WHERE UPON APENNINE SLOPE
Where, upon Apennine slope, with the chestnut the oak-trees immingle,
Where amid odorous copse bridle-paths wander and wind,
Where under mulberry-branches the diligent rivulet sparkles,
Or amid cotton and maize peasants their water-works ply,
Where, over fig-tree and orange in tier upon tier still repeated, 5
Garden on garden upreared, balconies step to the sky,--
Ah, that I were far away from the crowd and the streets of the city,
Under the vine-trellis laid, O my beloved, with thee!
A. H. CLOUGH.
'DE GUSTIBUS----'
I
Your ghost will walk, you lover of trees,
(If our loves remain)
In an English lane,
By a cornfield-side a-flutter with poppies.
Hark, those two in the hazel coppice-- 5
A boy and a girl, if the good fates please,
Making love, say,--
The happier they!
Draw yourself up from the light of the moon,
And let them pass, as they will too soon, 10
With the beanflowers' boon,
And the blackbird's tune,
And May, and June!
II
What I love best in all the world,
Is, a castle, precipice-encurled, 15
In a gash of the wind-grieved Apennine.
Or look for me, old fellow of mine,
(If I get my head from out the mouth
O' the grave, and loose my spirit's bands,
And come again to the land of lands)-- 20
In a sea-side house to the farther south,
Where the baked cicalas die of drouth,
And one sharp tree--'tis a cypress--stands,
By the many hundred years red-rusted,
Rough iron-spiked, ripe fruit-o'ercrusted, 25
My sentinel to guard the sands
To the water's edge. For, what expands
Before the house, but the great opaque
Blue breadth of sea without a break?
While, in the house, for ever crumbles 30
Some fragment of the frescoed walls,
From blisters where a scorpion sprawls.
A girl bare-footed brings, and tumbles
Down on the pavement, green-flesh melons,
And says there's news to-day--the king 35
Was shot at, touched in the liver-wing,
Goes with his Bourbon arm in a sling:
--She hopes they have not caught the felons.
Italy, my Italy!
Queen Mary's saying serves for me-- 40
(When fortune's malice
Lost her, Calais)
Open my heart and you will see
Graved inside of it, 'Italy,'
Such lovers old are I and she; 45
So it always was, so shall ever be!
R. BROWNING.
VENICE
There is a glorious City in the sea.
The sea is in the broad, the narrow streets,
Ebbing and flowing; and the salt sea-weed
Clings to the marble of her palaces.
No track of men, no footsteps to and fro, 5
Lead to her gates. The path lies o'er the sea,
Invisible; and from the land we went,
As to a floating city--steering in,
And gliding up her streets as in a dream,
So smoothly, silently--by many a dome, 10
Mosque-like, and many a stately portico,
The statues ranged along an azure sky;
By many a pile in more than eastern pride,
Of old the residence of merchant-kings;
The fronts of some, though Time had shattered them,
Still glowing with the richest hues of art, 16
As though the wealth within them had run o'er.
S. ROGERS.
OCEAN'S NURSLING
Underneath Day's azure eyes
Ocean's nursling, Venice lies,
A peopled labyrinth of walls,
Amphitrite's destined halls,
Which her hoary sire now paves 5
With his blue and beaming waves.
Lo! the sun upsprings behind,
Broad, red, radiant, half-reclined
On the level quivering line
Of the waters crystalline; 10
And before that chasm of light,
As within a furnace bright,
Column, tower, and dome, and spire,
Shine like obelisks of fire,
Pointing with inconstant motion 15
From the altar of dark ocean
To the sapphire-tinted skies;
As the flames of sacrifice
From the marble shrines did rise,
As to pierce the dome of gold 20
Where Apollo spoke of old.
Sun-girt City! thou hast been
Ocean's child, and then his queen;
Now is come a darker day,
And thou soon must be his prey, 25
If the power that raised thee here
Hallow so thy watery bier.
P. B. SHELLEY.
VENICE
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 5
Around me, and a dying Glory smiles
O'er the far times, when many a subject land
Looked to the winged Lion's marble piles,
Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles!
She looks a sea Cybele, fresh from ocean, 10
Rising with her tiara of proud towers
At airy distance, with majestic motion,
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 15
Poured in her lap all gems in sparkling showers.
In purple was she robed, and of her feast
Monarchs partook, and deemed their dignity increased.
In Venice Tasso's echoes are no more,
And silent rows the songless gondolier; 20
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, 25
The pleasant place of all festivity,
The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy!
But unto us she hath a spell beyond
Her name in story, and her long array
Of mighty shadows, whose dim forms despond 30
Above the dogeless city's vanished sway;
Ours is a trophy which will not decay
With the Rialto; Shylock and the Moor,
And Pierre, cannot be swept or worn away--
The keystones of the arch! though all were o'er, 35
For us repeopled were the solitary shore.
The spouseless Adriatic mourns her lord;
And, annual marriage now no more renewed,
The Bucentaur lies rotting unrestored,
Neglected garment of her widowhood! 40
St. Mark yet sees his lion where he stood
Stand, but in mockery of his withered power,
Over the proud Place where an Emperor sued,
And monarchs gazed and envied in the hour
When Venice was a queen with an unequalled dower. 45