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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=348520" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Amours de Voyage, Canto I</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Over the great windy waters, and over the clear-crested summits, <br>Unto the sun and the sky, and unto the perfecter earth, <br>Come, let us go,--to a land wherein gods of the old time wandered, <br>Where every breath even now changes to ether divine. <br>Come, let us go; though withal a voice whisper, 'The world that we live in, <br>Whithersoever we turn, still is the same narrow crib; <br>'Tis but to prove limitation, and measure a cord, that we travel; <br>Let who would 'scape and be free go to his chamber and think; <br>'Tis but to change idle fancies for memories wilfully falser; <br>'Tis but to go and have been.'--Come, little bark! let us go. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">I. Claude to Eustace.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Dear Eustatio, I write that you may write me an answer, <br>Or at the least to put us again en rapport with each other. <br>Rome disappoints me much,--St Peter's, perhaps, in especial; <br>Only the Arch of Titus and view from the Lateran please me: <br>This, however, perhaps is the weather, which truly is horrid. <br>Greece must be better, surely; and yet I am feeling so spiteful, <br>That I could travel to Athens, to Delphi, and Troy, and Mount Sinai, <br>Though but to see with my eyes that these are vanity also. <br>Rome disappoints me much; I hardly as yet understand it, but <br>Rubbishy seems the word that most exactly would suit it. <br>All the foolish destructions, and all the sillier savings, <br>All the incongruous things of past incompatible ages, <br>Seem to be treasured up here to make fools of present and future. <br>Would to Heaven the old Goths had made a cleaner sweep of it! <br>Would to Heaven some new ones would come and destroy these churches! <br>However, one can live in Rome as also in London.* <br>It is a blessing, no doubt, to be rid, at least for a time, of <br>All one's friends and relations,--yourself (forgive me!) included,-- <br>All the assujettissement of having been what one has been, <br>What one thinks one is, or thinks that others suppose one; <br>Yet, in despite of all, we turn like fools to the English. <br>Vernon has been my fate; who is here the same that you knew him,-- <br>Making the tour, it seems, with friends of the name of Trevellyn. <br>* The 1968 Oxford Edition, edited by A.L.P. Norrington,<br>includes a line immediately following this:<br>Rome is better than London, because it is other than London.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">II. Claude to Eustace.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Rome disappoints me still; but I shrink and adapt myself to it. <br>Somehow a tyrannous sense of a superincumbent oppression <br>Still, wherever I go, accompanies ever, and makes me <br>Feel like a tree (shall I say?) buried under a ruin of brickwork. <br>Rome, believe me, my friend, is like its own Monte Testaceo, <br>Merely a marvellous mass of broken and castaway wine-pots. <br>Ye gods! what do I want with this rubbish of ages departed, <br>Things that Nature abhors, the experiments that she has failed in? <br>What do I find in the Forum? An archway and two or three pillars. <br>Well, but St. Peter's? Alas, Bernini has filled it with sculpture! <br>No one can cavil, I grant, at the size of the great Coliseum. <br>Doubtless the notion of grand and capacious and massive amusement, <br>This the old Romans had; but tell me, is this an idea? <br>Yet of solidity much, but of splendour little is extant: <br>'Brickwork I found thee, and marble I left thee!' their Emperor vaunted; <br>'Marble I thought thee, and brickwork I find thee!' the Tourist may answer. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">III. Georgina Trevellyn to Louisa ----.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">At last, dearest Louisa, I take up my pen to address you. <br>Here we are, you see, with the seven-and-seventy boxes, <br>Courier, Papa and Mamma, the children, and Mary and Susan: <br>Here we all are at Rome, and delighted of course with St. Peter's, <br>And very pleasantly lodged in the famous Piazza di Spagna. <br>Rome is a wonderful place, but Mary shall tell you about it; <br>Not very gay, however; the English are mostly at Naples; <br>There are the A.'s, we hear, and most of the W. party. <br>George, however, is come; did I tell you about his mustachios? <br>Dear, I must really stop, for the carriage, they tell me, is waiting; <br>Mary will finish; and Susan is writing, they say, to Sophia. <br>Adieu, dearest Louise,--evermore your faithful Georgina. <br>Who can a Mr. Claude be whom George has taken to be with? <br>Very stupid, I think, but George says so very clever.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">IV. Claude to Eustace.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">No, the Christian faith, as at any rate I understood it, <br>With its humiliations and exaltations combining, <br>Exaltations sublime, and yet diviner abasements, <br>Aspirations from something most shameful here upon earth and <br>In our poor selves to something most perfect above in the heavens,-- <br>No, the Christian faith, as I, at least, understood it, <br>Is not here, O Rome, in any of these thy churches; <br>Is not here, but in Freiburg, or Rheims, or Westminster Abbey. <br>What in thy Dome I find, in all thy recenter efforts, <br>Is a something, I think, more rational far, more earthly, <br>Actual, less ideal, devout not in scorn and refusal, <br>But in a positive, calm, Stoic-Epicurean acceptance. <br>This I begin to detect in St. Peter's and some of the churches, <br>Mostly in all that I see of the sixteenth-century masters; <br>Overlaid of course with infinite gauds and gewgaws, <br>Innocent, playful follies, the toys and trinkets of childhood, <br>Forced on maturer years, as the serious one thing needful, <br>By the barbarian will of the rigid and ignorant Spaniard. <br>Curious work, meantime, re-entering society: how we <br>Walk a livelong day, great Heaven, and watch our shadows! <br>What our shadows seem, forsooth, we will ourselves be. <br>Do I look like that? you think me that: then I am that. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">V. Claude to Eustace.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Luther, they say, was unwise; like a half-taught German, he could not <br>See that old follies were passing most tranquilly out of remembrance; <br>Leo the Tenth was employing all efforts to clear out abuses; <br>Jupiter, Juno, and Venus, Fine Arts, and Fine Letters, the Poets, <br>Scholars, and Sculptors, and Painters, were quietly clearing away the <br>Martyrs, and Virgins, and Saints, or at any rate Thomas Aquinas: <br>He must forsooth make a fuss and distend his huge Wittenberg lungs, and <br>Bring back Theology once yet again in a flood upon Europe: <br>Lo you, for forty days from the windows of heaven it fell; the <br>Waters prevail on the earth yet more for a hundred and fifty; <br>Are they abating at last? the doves that are sent to explore are <br>Wearily fain to return, at the best with a leaflet of promise,-- <br>Fain to return, as they went, to the wandering wave-tost vessel,-- <br>Fain to re-enter the roof which covers the clean and the unclean,-- <br>Luther, they say, was unwise; he didn't see how things were going; <br>Luther was foolish,--but, O great God! what call you Ignatius? <br>O my tolerant soul, be still! but you talk of barbarians, <br>Alaric, Attila, Genseric;--why, they came, they killed, they <br>Ravaged, and went on their way; but these vile, tyrannous Spaniards, <br>These are here still,--how long, O ye heavens, in the country of Dante? <br>These, that fanaticized Europe, which now can forget them, release not <br>This, their choicest of prey, this Italy; here you see them,-- <br>Here, with emasculate pupils and gimcrack churches of Gesu, <br>Pseudo-learning and lies, confessional-boxes and postures,-- <br>Here, with metallic beliefs and regimental devotions,-- <br>Here, overcrusting with slime, perverting, defacing, debasing, <br>Michael Angelo's Dome, that had hung the Pantheon in heaven, <br>Raphael's Joys and Graces, and thy clear stars, Galileo! </div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">VI. Claude to Eustace.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Which of three Misses Trevellyn it is that Vernon shall marry <br>Is not a thing to be known; for our friend is one of those natures <br>Which have their perfect delight in the general tender-domestic, <br>So that he trifles with Mary's shawl, ties Susan's bonnet, <br>Dances with all, but at home is most, they say, with Georgina, <br>Who is, however, too silly in my apprehension for Vernon. <br>I, as before when I wrote, continue to see them a little; <br>Not that I like them much or care a bajocco for Vernon, <br>But I am slow at Italian, have not many English acquaintance, <br>And I am asked, in short, and am not good at excuses. <br>Middle-class people these, bankers very likely, not wholly <br>Pure of the taint of the shop; will at table d'hôte and restaurant <br>Have their shilling's worth, their penny's pennyworth even: <br>Neither man's aristocracy this, nor God's, God knoweth! <br>Yet they are fairly descended, they give you to know, well connected; <br>Doubtless somewhere in some neighbourhood have, and are careful to keep, some <br>Threadbare-genteel relations, who in their turn are enchanted <br>Grandly among county people to introduce at assemblies <br>To the unpennied cadets our cousins with excellent fortunes. <br>Neither man's aristocracy this, nor God's, God knoweth! </div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">VII. Claude to Eustace.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Ah, what a shame, indeed, to abuse these most worthy people! <br>Ah, what a sin to have sneered at their innocent rustic pretensions! <br>Is it not laudable really, this reverent worship of station? <br>Is it not fitting that wealth should tender this homage to culture? <br>Is it not touching to witness these efforts, if little availing, <br>Painfully made, to perform the old ritual service of manners? <br>Shall not devotion atone for the absence of knowledge? and fervour <br>Palliate, cover, the fault of a superstitious observance? <br>Dear, dear, what do I say? but, alas! just now, like Iago, <br>I can be nothing at all, if it is not critical wholly; <br>So in fantastic height, in coxcomb exaltation, <br>Here in the garden I walk, can freely concede to the Maker <br>That the works of His hand are all very good: His creatures, <br>Beast of the field and fowl, He brings them before me; I name them; <br>That which I name them, they are,--the bird, the beast, and the cattle. <br>But for Adam,--alas, poor critical coxcomb Adam! <br>But for Adam there is not found an help-meet for him. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">VIII. Claude to Eustace.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">No, great Dome of Agrippa, thou art not Christian! canst not, <br>Strip and replaster and daub and do what they will with thee, be so! <br>Here underneath the great porch of colossal Corinthian columns, <br>Here as I walk, do I dream of the Christian belfries above them? <br>Or, on a bench as I sit and abide for long hours, till thy whole vast <br>Round grows dim as in dreams to my eyes, I repeople thy niches, <br>Not with the Martyrs, and Saints, and Confessors, and Virgins, and children, <br>But with the mightier forms of an older, austerer worship; <br>And I recite to myself, how <br>Eager for battle here <br>Stood Vulcan, here matronal Juno, <br>And with the bow to his shoulder faithful <br>He who with pure dew laveth of Castaly <br>His flowing locks, who holdeth of Lycia <br>The oak forest and the wood that bore him, <br>Delos' and Patara's own Apollo.* </div><div style="margin:10px 0">* Hic avidus stetit <br>Vulcanus, hic matrona Juno, et <br>Nunquam humeris positurus arcum; <br>Qui rore puro Castaliae lavit <br>Crines solutos, qui Lyciae tenet <br>Dumeta natalemque silvam, <br>Delius et Patareus Apollo. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">IX. Claude to Eustace.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Yet it is pleasant, I own it, to be in their company; pleasant, <br>Whatever else it may be, to abide in the feminine presence. <br>Pleasant, but wrong, will you say? But this happy, serene coexistence <br>Is to some poor soft souls, I fear, a necessity simple, <br>Meat and drink and life, and music, filling with sweetness, <br>Thrilling with melody sweet, with harmonies strange overwhelming, <br>All the long-silent strings of an awkward, meaningless fabric. <br>Yet as for that, I could live, I believe, with children; to have those <br>Pure and delicate forms encompassing, moving about you, <br>This were enough, I could think; and truly with glad resignation <br>Could from the dream of Romance, from the fever of flushed adolescence, <br>Look to escape and subside into peaceful avuncular functions. <br>Nephews and nieces! alas, for as yet I have none! and, moreover, <br>Mothers are jealous, I fear me, too often, too rightfully; fathers <br>Think they have title exclusive to spoiling their own little darlings; <br>And by the law of the land, in despite of Malthusian doctrine, <br>No sort of proper provision is made for that most patriotic, <br>Most meritorious subject, the childless and bachelor uncle. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">X. Claude to Eustace.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Ye, too, marvellous Twain, that erect on the Monte Cavallo <br>Stand by your rearing steeds in the grace of your motionless movement, <br>Stand with your upstretched arms and tranquil regardant faces, <br>Stand as instinct with life in the might of immutable manhood,-- <br>O ye mighty and strange, ye ancient divine ones of Hellas. <br>Are ye Christian too? to convert and redeem and renew you, <br>Will the brief form have sufficed, that a Pope has set up on the apex <br>Of the Egyptian stone that o'ertops you, the Christian symbol? <br>And ye, silent, supreme in serene and victorious marble, <br>Ye that encircle the walls of the stately Vatican chambers, <br>Juno and Ceres, Minerva, Apollo, the Muses and Bacchus, <br>Ye unto whom far and near come posting the Christian pilgrims, <br>Ye that are ranged in the halls of the mystic Christian Pontiff, <br>Are ye also baptized? are ye of the kingdom of Heaven? <br>Utter, O some one, the word that shall reconcile Ancient and Modern! <br>Am I to turn me from this unto thee, great Chapel of Sixtus? </div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">XI. Claude to Eustace.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">These are the facts. The uncle, the elder brother, the squire (a <br>Little embarrassed, I fancy), resides in the family place in <br>Cornwall, of course; 'Papa is in business,' Mary informs me; <br>He's a good sensible man, whatever his trade is. The mother <br>Is--shall I call it fine?--herself she would tell you refined, and <br>Greatly, I fear me, looks down on my bookish and maladroit manners; <br>Somewhat affecteth the blue; would talk to me often of poets; <br>Quotes, which I hate, Childe Harold; but also appreciates Wordsworth; <br>Sometimes adventures on Schiller; and then to religion diverges; <br>Questions me much about Oxford; and yet, in her loftiest flights still <br>Grates the fastidious ear with the slightly mercantile accent. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Is it contemptible, Eustace--I'm perfectly ready to think so,-- <br>Is it,--the horrible pleasure of pleasing inferior people? <br>I am ashamed of my own self; and yet true it is, if disgraceful, <br>That for the first time in life I am living and moving with freedom. <br>I, who never could talk to the people I meet with my uncle,-- <br>I, who have always failed,--I, trust me, can suit the Trevellyns; <br>I, believe me,--great conquest, am liked by the country bankers. <br>And I am glad to be liked, and like in return very kindly. <br>So it proceeds; Laissez faire, laissez aller,--such is the watchword. <br>Well, I know there are thousands as pretty and hundreds as pleasant, <br>Girls by the dozen as good, and girls in abundance with polish <br>Higher and manners more perfect than Susan or Mary Trevellyn. <br>Well, I know, after all, it is only juxtaposition,-- <br>Juxtaposition, in short; and what is juxtaposition? </div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">XII. Claude to Eustace.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>But I am in for it now,--laissez faire, of a truth, laissez aller. <br>Yes, I am going,--I feel it, I feel and cannot recall it,-- <br>Fusing with this thing and that, entering into all sorts of relations, <br>Tying I know not what ties, which, whatever they are, I know one thing, <br>Will, and must, woe is me, be one day painfully broken,-- <br>Broken with painful remorses, with shrinkings of soul, and relentings, <br>Foolish delays, more foolish evasions, most foolish renewals. <br>But I have made the step, have quitted the ship of Ulysses; <br>Quitted the sea and the shore, passed into the magical island; <br>Yet on my lips is the moly, medicinal, offered of Hermes. <br>I have come into the precinct, the labyrinth closes around me, <br>Path into path rounding slyly; I pace slowly on, and the fancy, <br>Struggling awhile to sustain the long sequences, weary, bewildered, <br>Fain must collapse in despair; I yield, I am lost, and know nothing; <br>Yet in my bosom unbroken remaineth the clue; I shall use it. <br>Lo, with the rope on my loins I descend through the fissure; I sink, yet <br>Inly secure in the strength of invisible arms up above me; <br>Still, wheresoever I swing, wherever to shore, or to shelf, or <br>Floor of cavern untrodden, shell sprinkled, enchanting, I know I <br>Yet shall one time feel the strong cord tighten about me,-- <br>Feel it, relentless, upbear me from spots I would rest in; and though the <br>Rope sway wildly, I faint, crags wound me, from crag unto crag re- <br>Bounding, or, wide in the void, I die ten deaths, ere the end I <br>Yet shall plant firm foot on the broad lofty spaces I quit, shall <br>Feel underneath me again the great massy strengths of abstraction, <br>Look yet abroad from the height o'er the sea whose salt wave I have tasted. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">XIII. Georgina Trevellyn to Louisa ----.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Dearest Louisa,--Inquire, if you please, about Mr. Claude ----. <br>He has been once at R., and remembers meeting the H.'s. <br>Harriet L., perhaps, may be able to tell you about him. <br>It is an awkward youth, but still with very good manners; <br>Not without prospects, we hear; and, George says, highly connected. <br>Georgy declares it absurd, but Mamma is alarmed, and insists he has <br>Taken up strange opinions, and may be turning a Papist. <br>Certainly once he spoke of a daily service he went to. <br>'Where?' we asked, and he laughed and answered, 'At the Pantheon.' <br>This was a temple, you know, and now is a Catholic church; and <br>Though it is said that Mazzini has sold it for Protestant service, <br>Yet I suppose this change can hardly as yet be effected. <br>Adieu again,--evermore, my dearest, your loving Georgina. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>P.S. by Mary Trevellyn.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I am to tell you, you say, what I think of our last new acquaintance. <br>Well, then, I think that George has a very fair right to be jealous. <br>I do not like him much, though I do not dislike being with him. <br>He is what people call, I suppose, a superior man, and <br>Certainly seems so to me; but I think he is terribly selfish. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Alba, thou findest me still, and, Alba, thou findest me ever, <br>Now from the Capitol steps, now over Titus's Arch, <br>Here from the large grassy spaces that spread from the Lateran portal, <br>Towering o'er aqueduct lines lost in perspective between, <br>Or from a Vatican window, or bridge, or the high Coliseum, <br>Clear by the garlanded line cut of the Flavian ring. <br>Beautiful can I not call thee, and yet thou hast power to o'ermaster, <br>Power of mere beauty; in dreams, Alba, thou hauntest me still. <br>Is it religion? I ask me; or is it a vain superstition? <br>Slavery abject and gross? service, too feeble, of truth? <br>Is it an idol I bow to, or is it a god that I worship? <br>Do I sink back on the old, or do I soar from the mean? <br>So through the city I wander and question, unsatisfied ever, <br>Reverent so I accept, doubtful because I revere.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Arthur+Hugh+Clough">Arthur Hugh Clough</a><div class=q>
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Unto the sun and the sky, and unto the perfecter earth, 
Come, let us go,--to a land wherein gods of the old time wandered, 
Where every breath even now changes to ether divine. 
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