Chapter M: Arnold

FAREWELL TO MALTA

Adieu, ye joys of La Valette! Adieu, sirocco, sun, and sweat! Adieu, thou palace rarely entered! Adieu, ye mansions where--I've ventured! Adieu, ye cursed streets of stairs! 5 (How surely he who mounts you swears!) Adieu, ye merchants often failing! Adieu, thou mob for ever railing! Adieu, ye packets--without letters! Adieu, ye fools--who ape your betters! 10 Adieu, thou damned'st quarantine, That gave me fever, and the spleen! Adieu, that stage which makes us yawn, Sirs, Adieu, his Excellency's dancers! Adieu to Peter--whom no fault's in, 15 But could not teach a colonel waltzing; Adieu, ye females fraught with graces! Adieu, red coats, and redder faces! Adieu, the supercilious air Of all that strut 'en militaire!' 20 I go--but God knows when, or why, To smoky towns and cloudy sky, To things (the honest truth to say) As bad--but in a different way. Farewell to these, but not adieu, 25 Triumphant sons of truest blue! While either Adriatic shore, And fallen chiefs, and fleets no more, And nightly smiles, and daily dinners, Proclaim you war and woman's winners. 30 Pardon my muse, who apt to prate is, And take my rhyme--because 'tis 'gratis'.

And now, O Malta! since thou'st got us, Thou little military hothouse! I'll not offend with words uncivil, 35 And wish thee rudely at the Devil, But only stare from out my casement, And ask, for what is such a place meant? Then, in my solitary nook, Return to scribbling, or a book, 40 Or take my physic while I'm able (Two spoonfuls hourly by the label), Prefer my nightcap to my beaver, And bless the gods I've got a fever.

LORD BYRON.

TO E[DWARD] L[EAR], ON HIS TRAVELS IN GREECE

Illyrian woodlands, echoing falls
Of water, sheets of summer glass,
The long divine Peneian pass,
The vast Akrokeraunian walls,

Tomohrit, Athos, all things fair, 5
With such a pencil, such a pen,
You shadow forth to distant men,
I read and felt that I was there:

And trust me while I turned the page,
And tracked you still on classic ground, 10
I grew in gladness till I found
My spirits in the golden age.

For me the torrent ever poured
And glistened--here and there alone
The broad-limbed Gods at random thrown 15
By fountain-urns;--and Naiads oared

A glimmering shoulder under gloom
Of cavern pillars; on the swell
The silver lily heaved and fell;
And many a slope was rich in bloom 20

From him that on the mountain lea
By dancing rivulets fed his flocks,
To him who sat upon the rocks,
And fluted to the morning sea.

LORD TENNYSON.

HELLAS

It is not only that the sun
Loves best these southern lands,
It is not for the trophies won
Of old by hero hands,
That nature wreathed in softer smiles 5
Was here the bride of art;
A closer kinship claims these isles,
The love-land of the heart.
It is because the poet's dream
Still haunts each happy vale, 10
That peopled every grove and stream
To fit his fairy tale.

There may be greener vales and hills
Less bare to shelter man;
But still they want the naiad rills, 15
And miss the pipe of Pan.
There may be other isles as fair
And summer seas as blue,
But then Odysseus touched not there
Nor Argo beached her crew. 20
The Nereid-haunted river shore,
The Faun-frequented dell,
Possess me with their magic more
Than sites where Caesars fell:
And where the blooms of Zante blow 25
Their incense to the waves;
Where Ithaca's dark headlands show
The legendary caves;
Where in the deep of olive groves
The summer hardly dies; 30
Where fair Phaeacia's sun-brown maids
Still keep their siren eyes;
Where Chalcis strains with loving lips
Towards the little bay,
The strand that held the thousand ships, 35
The Aulis of delay;
Where Oeta's ridge of granite bars
The gate Thermopylae,
Where huge Orion crowned with stars
Looks down on Rhodope; 40
Where once Apollo tended flocks
On Phera's lofty plain,
Where Peneus cleaves the stubborn rocks
To find the outer main;
Where Argos and Mycenae sleep 45
With all the buried wrong,
And where Arcadian uplands keep
The antique shepherd song,
There is a spirit haunts the place
All other lands must lack, 50
A speaking voice, a living grace,
That beckons fancy back.

Dear isles and sea-indented shore,
Till songs be no more sung,
The singers that have gone before 55
Will keep your lovers young:
And men will hymn your haunted skies,
And seek your holy streams,
Until the soul of music dies,
And earth has done with dreams. 60

SIR RENNELL RODD.

THE VIOLET CROWN

'Wherefore the "city of the violet crown"?' One asked me, as the April sun went down Behind the shadows of the Persian's mound, The fretted crags of Salamis. 'Look round, And see the question answered!' For we were Upon the summit of that battled square, 6 The rock of ruin, in whose fallen shrine The world still worships what man made divine, The maiden fane, that yet may boast the birth Of half the immortalities of earth. 10

The last rays light the portal, a gold wave Runs up the columns to the architrave, Lingers about the gable and is gone:-- Parnes, Hymettus, and Pentelicon Show shadowy violet in the after-rose, 15 Cithaeron's ridge and all the islands close The mountain ring, like sapphires o'er the sea, And from this circle's heart aetherially Springs the white altar of the land's renown, A marble lily in a violet crown. 20

And fairer crown had never queen than this That girds thee round, far-famed Acropolis! So of these isles, these mountains, and this sea, I wove a crown of song to dedicate to thee.

SIR RENNELL RODD.

ATHENS

The nodding promontories and blue isles,
And cloud-like mountains, and dividuous waves
Of Greece, basked glorious in the open smiles
Of favouring heaven: from their enchanted caves
Prophetic echoes flung dim melody 5
On the unapprehensive wild.
The vine, the corn, the olive wild,
Grew, savage yet, to human use unreconciled;
And like unfolded flowers beneath the sea,
Like the man's thought dark in the infant's brain, 10
Like aught that is which wraps what is to be,
Art's deathless dreams lay veiled by many a vein
Of Parian stone; and yet a speechless child,
Verse murmured, and Philosophy did strain
Her lidless eyes for thee; when o'er the Aegean main 15
Athens arose: a city such as vision
Builds from the purple crags and silver towers
Of battlemented cloud, as in derision
Of kingliest masonry: the ocean-floors
Pave it; the evening sky pavilions it; 20
Its portals are inhabited
By thunder-zoned winds, each head
Within its cloudy wings with sun-fire garlanded,--
A divine work! Athens, diviner yet,
Gleamed with its crest of columns, on the will
Of man, as on a mount of diamond, set; 26
For thou wert, and thine all-creative skill
Peopled, with forms that mock the eternal dead
In marble immortality, that hill
Which was thine earliest throne and latest oracle.
Within the surface of Time's fleeting river 31
Its wrinkled image lies, as then it lay
Immovably unquiet, and for ever
It trembles, but it cannot pass away!

P. B. SHELLEY.

PARNASSUS

Oh, thou Parnassus! whom I now survey, Not in the frenzy of a dreamer's eye, Not in the fabled landscape of a lay, But soaring snow-clad through thy native sky, In the wild pomp of mountain majesty! 5 What marvel if I thus essay to sing? The humblest of thy pilgrims passing by Would gladly woo thine Echoes with his string, Though from thy heights no more one Muse will wave her wing. Oft have I dreamed of Thee! whose glorious name Who knows not, knows not man's divinest lore: 11 And now I view thee, 'tis, alas! with shame That I in feeblest accents must adore. When I recount thy worshippers of yore I tremble, and can only bend the knee; 15 Nor raise my voice, nor vainly dare to soar, But gaze beneath thy cloudy canopy In silent joy to think at last I look on Thee!

LORD BYRON.

CORINTH

Many a vanished year and age, And tempest's breath, and battle's rage, Have swept o'er Corinth; yet she stands, A fortress formed to Freedom's hands. The whirlwind's wrath, the earthquake's shock, 5 Have left untouched her hoary rock, The keystone of a land, which still, Though fallen, looks proudly on that hill, The landmark to the double tide That purpling rolls on either side, 10 As if their waters chafed to meet, Yet pause and crouch beneath her feet. But could the blood before her shed, Since first Timoleon's brother bled, Or baffled Persia's despot fled, 15 Arise from out the earth which drank The stream of slaughter as it sank, That sanguine ocean would o'erflow Her isthmus idly spread below: Or could the bones of all the slain, 20 Who perished there, be piled again, That rival pyramid would rise More mountain-like, through those clear skies, Than yon tower-capped Acropolis, Which seems the very clouds to kiss. 25

LORD BYRON.

CORINNA TO TANAGRA

FROM ATHENS

Tanagra! think not I forget
Thy beautifully-storied streets;
Be sure my memory bathes yet
In clear Thermodon, and yet greets
The blithe and liberal shepherd-boy, 5
Whose sunny bosom swells with joy
When we accept his matted rushes
Upheaved with sylvan fruit; away he bounds and blushes.

A gift I promise: one I see
Which thou with transport wilt receive, 10
The only proper gift for thee,
Of which no mortal shall bereave
In later times thy mouldering walls,
Until the last old turret falls;
A crown, a crown from Athens won, 15
A crown no God can wear, beside Latona's son.

There may be cities who refuse
To their own child the honours due,
And look ungently on the Muse;
But ever shall those cities rue 20
The dry, unyielding, niggard breast,
Offering no nourishment, no rest,
To that young head which soon shall rise
Disdainfully, in might and glory, to the skies.

Sweetly where caverned Dirce flows 25
Do white-armed maidens chant my lay,
Flapping the while with laurel-rose
The honey-gathering tribes away;
And sweetly, sweetly Attic tongues
Lisp your Corinna's early songs; 30
To her with feet more graceful come
The verses that have dwelt in kindred breasts at home.

O let thy children lean aslant
Against the tender mother's knee,
And gaze into her face, and want 35
To know what magic there can be
In words that urge some eyes to dance,
While others as in holy trance
Look up to heaven: be such my praise!
Why linger? I must haste, or lose the Delphic bays.

W. S. LANDOR.

WARING

What's become of Waring Since he gave us all the slip, Chose land-travel or seafaring, Boots and chest or staff and scrip, Rather than pace up and down 5 Any longer London-town?

Ichabod, Ichabod, The glory is departed! Travels Waring East away? Who, of knowledge, by hearsay, 10 Reports a man upstarted Somewhere as a God, Hordes grown European-hearted, Millions of the wild made tame On a sudden at his fame? 15 In Vishnu-land what Avatar? Or who, in Moscow, toward the Czar, With the demurest of footfalls Over the Kremlin's pavement, bright With serpentine and syenite, 20 Steps, with five other Generals That simultaneously take snuff, For each to have pretext enough To kerchiefwise unfold his sash Which, softness' self, is yet the stuff 25 To hold fast where a steel chain snaps, And leave the grand white neck no gash? Waring, in Moscow, to those rough Cold northern natures borne, perhaps, Like the lambwhite maiden dear 30 From the circle of mute kings Unable to repress the tear, Each as his sceptre down he flings, To Dian's fane at Taurica, Where now a captive priestess, she alway 35 Mingles her tender grave Hellenic speech With theirs, tuned to the hailstone-beaten beach, As pours some pigeon, from the myrrhy lands Rapt by the whirlblast to fierce Scythian strands Where breed the swallows, her melodious cry 40 Amid their barbarous twitter? In Russia? Never! Spain were fitter! Ay, most likely 'tis in Spain That we and Waring meet again Now, while he turns down that cool narrow lane Into the blackness, out of grave Madrid 45 All fire and shine, abrupt as when there's slid Its stiff gold blazing pall From some black coffin-lid.

'When I last saw Waring....' 50 (How all turned to him who spoke-- You saw Waring? Truth or joke? In land-travel, or sea-faring?) 'We were sailing by Triest, Where a day or two we harboured: 55 A sunset was in the West, When, looking over the vessel's side, One of our company espied A sudden speck to larboard. And, as a sea-duck flies and swims 60 At once, so came the light craft up, With its sole lateen sail that trims And turns (the water round its rims Dancing, as round a sinking cup) And by us like a fish it curled, 65 And drew itself up close beside, Its great sail on the instant furled, And o'er its planks, a shrill voice cried (A neck as bronzed as a Lascar's), "Buy wine of us, you English brig? 70 Or fruit, tobacco and cigars? A pilot for you to Triest? Without one, look you ne'er so big, They'll never let you up the bay! We natives should know best." 75 I turned, and "Just those fellows' way", Our captain said, "The 'long-shore thieves Are laughing at us in their sleeves."

'In truth, the boy leaned laughing back; And one, half-hidden by his side 80 Under the furled sail, soon I spied, With great grass hat and kerchief black, Who looked up with his kingly throat, Said somewhat, while the other shook His hair back from his eyes to look 85 Their longest at us; then the boat, I know not how, turned sharply round, Laying her whole side on the sea As a leaping fish does; from the lee, Into the weather, cut somehow 90 Her sparkling path beneath our bow; And so went off, as with a bound, Into the rosy and golden half Of the sky, to overtake the sun And reach the shore, like the sea-calf 95 Its singing cave; yet I caught one Glance ere away the boat quite passed, And neither time nor toil could mar Those features: so I saw the last Of Waring!'--You? Oh, never star 100 Was lost here, but it rose afar! Look East, where whole new thousands are! In Vishnu-land what Avatar?

R. BROWNING.

ON THE RHINE

Vain is the effort to forget. Some day I shall be cold, I know, As is the eternal moon-lit snow Of the high Alps, to which I go But ah, not yet! not yet! 5

Vain is the agony of grief. 'Tis true, indeed, an iron knot Ties straitly up from mine thy lot, And were it snapt--thou lov'st me not! But is despair relief? 10

Awhile let me with thought have done; And as this brimmed unwrinkled Rhine And that far purple mountain line Lie sweetly in the look divine Of the slow-sinking sun; 15

So let me lie, and calm as they Let beam upon my inward view Those eyes of deep, soft, lucent hue-- Eyes too expressive to be blue, Too lovely to be grey. 20

Ah Quiet, all things feel thy balm! Those blue hills too, this river's flow, Were restless once, but long ago. Tamed is their turbulent youthful glow: Their joy is in their calm. 25