Amours de Voyage | Page 6

have
quitted the ship of Ulysses;
Quitted the sea and the shore, passed into
the magical island;
Yet on my lips is the moly, medicinal, offered of

Hermes.
I have come into the precinct, the labyrinth closes around me,

Path into path rounding slyly; I pace slowly on, and the fancy,

Struggling awhile to sustain the long sequences, weary, bewildered,

Fain must collapse in despair; I yield, I am lost, and know nothing;

Yet in my bosom unbroken remaineth the clue; I shall use it.
Lo, with
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