Poems on Travel Part 2

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 gra.s.shopper is silent in the gra.s.s: 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 pa.s.sing down, 30 A skirt of darkest yellow-brown, Coa.r.s.e 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 pa.s.s 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 b.u.t.terfly-like velvet hat; One dame his big ba.s.soon 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 a.s.s 55 Have had the time the bridge to pa.s.s.

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 h.o.a.r that clothe the s.h.a.ggy 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 'Nachstes 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 a.s.sistance 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. G.o.dLEY.

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 G.o.ds The t.i.tans; like the t.i.tans 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 coa.r.s.er 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 pa.s.s, 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' h.o.a.ry 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.