Poems on Travel Part 4

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 peac.o.c.k'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-h.o.a.ry 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 n.o.ble 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 s.p.a.ce, 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 suns.h.i.+ne 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 sh.o.r.e, 25 With villas scattered one by one Upon their wooded spurs, and lower Bellagio blazing in the sun.

And dimly seen, a tangled ma.s.s Of walls and woods, of light and shade, 30 Stands beckoning up the Stelvio Pa.s.s Varenna with its white cascade.