Amours de Voyage | Page 6

the rope on my loins I descend through the fissure; I sink, yet?Inly secure in the strength of invisible arms up above me;?Still, wheresoever I swing, wherever to shore, or to shelf, or?Floor of cavern untrodden, shell sprinkled, enchanting, I know I?Yet shall one time feel the strong cord tighten about me,--?Feel it, relentless, upbear me from spots I would rest in; and though the?Rope sway wildly, I faint, crags wound me, from crag unto crag reBounding,?or, wide in the void, I die ten deaths, ere the end I?Yet shall plant firm foot on the broad lofty spaces I quit, shall?Feel underneath me again the great massy strengths of abstraction,?Look yet abroad from the height o'er the sea whose salt wave I have tasted.
XIII. Georgina Trevellyn to Louisa ----.
Dearest Louisa,--Inquire, if you please, about Mr. Claude ----.?He has been once at R., and remembers meeting the H.'s.?Harriet L., perhaps, may be able to tell you about him.?It is an awkward youth, but still with very good manners;?Not without prospects, we hear; and, George says, highly connected.?Georgy declares it absurd, but Mamma is alarmed, and insists he has?Taken up strange opinions, and may be turning a Papist.?Certainly once he spoke of a daily service he went to.?'Where?' we asked, and he laughed and answered, 'At the Pantheon.'?This was a temple, you know, and now is a Catholic church; and?Though it is said that Mazzini has sold it for Protestant service,?Yet I suppose this change can hardly as yet be effected.?Adieu again,--evermore, my dearest, your loving Georgina.
P.S. by Mary Trevellyn.
I am to tell you, you say, what I think of our last new acquaintance.?Well, then, I think that George has a very fair right to be jealous.?I do not like him much, though I do not dislike being with him.?He is what people call, I suppose, a superior man, and?Certainly seems so to me; but I think he is terribly selfish.

Alba, thou findest me still, and, Alba, thou findest me ever,?Now from the Capitol steps, now over Titus's Arch,?Here from the large grassy spaces that spread from the Lateran portal,?Towering o'er aqueduct lines lost in perspective between,?Or from a Vatican window, or bridge, or the high Coliseum,?Clear by the garlanded line cut of the Flavian ring.?Beautiful can I not call thee, and yet thou hast power to o'ermaster,?Power of mere beauty; in dreams, Alba, thou hauntest me still.?Is it religion? I ask me; or is it a vain superstition??Slavery abject and gross? service, too feeble, of truth??Is it an idol I bow to, or is it a god that I worship??Do I sink back on the old, or do I soar from the mean??So through the city I wander and question, unsatisfied ever,?Reverent so I accept, doubtful because I revere.
Canto II.
Is it illusion? or does there a spirit from perfecter ages,?Here, even yet, amid loss, change, and corruption abide??Does there a spirit we know not, though seek, though we find, comprehend not,?Here to entice and confuse, tempt and evade us, abide??Lives in the exquisite grace of the column disjointed and single,?Haunts the rude masses of brick garlanded gaily with vine,?E'en in the turret fantastic surviving that springs from the ruin,?E'en in the people itself? is it illusion or not??Is it illusion or not that attracteth the pilgrim transalpine,?Brings him a dullard and dunce hither to pry and to stare??Is it illusion or not that allures the barbarian stranger,?Brings him with gold to the shrine, brings him in arms to the gate?
I. Claude to Eustace.
What do the people say, and what does the government do?--you?Ask, and I know not at all. Yet fortune will favour your hopes; and?I, who avoided it all, am fated, it seems, to describe it.?I, who nor meddle nor make in politics,--I who sincerely?Put not my trust in leagues nor any suffrage by ballot,?Never predicted Parisian millenniums, never beheld a?New Jerusalem coming down dressed like a bride out of heaven?Right on the Place de la Concorde,--I, nevertheless, let me say it,?Could in my soul of souls, this day, with the Gaul at the gates shed?One true tear for thee, thou poor little Roman Republic;?What, with the German restored, with Sicily safe to the Bourbon,?Not leave one poor corner for native Italian exertion??France, it is foully done! and you, poor foolish England,--?You, who a twelvemonth ago said nations must choose for themselves, you?Could not, of course, interfere,--you, now, when a nation has chosen----?Pardon this folly! The Times will, of course, have announced the occasion,?Told you the news of to-day; and although it was slightly in error?When it proclaimed as a fact the Apollo was sold to a Yankee,?You may believe when it tells you the French are at Civita Vecchia.
II. Claude to Eustace.
Dulce it is, and decorum, no doubt, for the country to fall,--to?Offer one's blood an oblation to Freedom,