<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=348524" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Amours de Voyage, Canto V</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">There is a city, upbuilt on the quays of the turbulent Arno, <br>Under Fiesole's heights,--thither are we to return? <br>There is a city that fringes the curve of the inflowing waters, <br>Under the perilous hill fringes the beautiful bay,-- <br>Parthenope, do they call thee?--the Siren, Neapolis, seated <br>Under Vesevus's hill,--are we receding to thee?-- <br>Sicily, Greece, will invite, and the Orient;--or are we turn to <br>England, which may after all be for its children the best? </div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">I. Mary Trevellyn, at Lucerne, to Miss Roper, at Florence.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">So you are really free, and living in quiet at Florence; <br>That is delightful news; you travelled slowly and safely; <br>Mr. Claude got you out; took rooms at Florence before you; <br>Wrote from Milan to say so; had left directly for Milan, <br>Hoping to find us soon;--if he could, he would, you are certain.-- <br>Dear Miss Roper, your letter has made me exceedingly happy. <br>You are quite sure, you say, he asked you about our intentions; <br>You had not heard as yet of Lucerne, but told him of Como.-- <br>Well, perhaps he will come; however, I will not expect it. <br>Though you say you are sure,--if he can, he will, you are certain. <br>O my dear, many thanks from your ever affectionate Mary. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">II. Claude to Eustace.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Florence.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Action will furnish belief,--but will that belief be the true one? <br>This is the point, you know. However, it doesn't much matter. <br>What one wants, I suppose, is to predetermine the action, <br>So as to make it entail, not a chance belief, but the true one. <br>Out of the question, you say; if a thing isn't wrong we may do it. <br>Ah! but this wrong, you see--but I do not know that it matters. <br>Eustace, the Ropers are gone, and no one can tell me about them. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Pisa.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Pisa, they say they think, and so I follow to Pisa, <br>Hither and thither inquiring. I weary of making inquiries. <br>I am ashamed, I declare, of asking people about it.-- <br>Who are your friends? You said you had friends who would certainly know them. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Florence.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But it is idle, moping, and thinking, and trying to fix her <br>Image once more and more in, to write the whole perfect inscription <br>Over and over again upon every page of remembrance. <br>I have settled to stay at Florence to wait for your answer. <br>Who are your friends? Write quickly and tell me. I wait for your answer. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">III. Mary Trevellyn to Miss Roper.--at Lucca Baths.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">You are at Lucca baths, you tell me, to stay for the summer; <br>Florence was quite too hot; you can't move further at present. <br>Will you not come, do you think, before the summer is over? <br>Mr. C. got you out with very considerable trouble; <br>And he was useful and kind, and seemed so happy to serve you. <br>Didn't stay with you long, but talked very openly to you; <br>Made you almost his confessor, without appearing to know it,-- <br>What about?--and you say you didn't need his confessions. <br>O my dear Miss Roper, I dare not trust what you tell me! <br>Will he come, do you think? I am really so sorry for him. <br>They didn't give him my letter at Milan, I feel pretty certain. <br>You had told him Bellaggio. We didn't go to Bellaggio; <br>So he would miss our track, and perhaps never come to Lugano, <br>Where we were written in full, To Lucerne across the St. Gothard. <br>But he could write to you;--you would tell him where you were going. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">IV. Claude to Eustace.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Let me, then, bear to forget her. I will not cling to her falsely: <br>Nothing factitious or forced shall impair the old happy relation. <br>I will let myself go, forget, not try to remember; <br>I will walk on my way, accept the chances that meet me, <br>Freely encounter the world, imbibe these alien airs, and <br>Never ask if new feelings and thoughts are of her or of others. <br>Is she not changing herself?--the old image would only delude me. <br>I will be bold, too, and change,--if it must be. Yet if in all things, <br>Yet if I do but aspire evermore to the Absolute only, <br>I shall be doing, I think, somehow, what she will be doing;-- <br>I shall be thine, O my child, some way, though I know not in what way, <br>Let me submit to forget her; I must; I already forget her. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">V. Claude to Eustace.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Utterly vain is, alas! this attempt at the Absolute,--wholly! <br>I, who believed not in her, because I would fain believe nothing, <br>Have to believe as I may, with a wilful, unmeaning acceptance. <br>I, who refused to enfasten the roots of my floating existence <br>In the rich earth, cling now to the hard, naked rock that is left me,-- <br>Ah! she was worthy, Eustace,--and that, indeed, is my comfort,-- <br>Worthy a nobler heart than a fool such as I could have given her. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------<br>Yes, it relieves me to write, though I do not send, and the chance that <br>Takes may destroy my fragments. But as men pray, without asking <br>Whether One really exist to hear or do anything for them,-- <br>Simply impelled by the need of the moment to turn to a Being <br>In a conception of whom there is freedom from all limitation,-- <br>So in your image I turn to an ens rationis of friendship, <br>Even so write in your name I know not to whom nor in what wise. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------<br>There was a time, methought it was but lately departed, <br>When, if a thing was denied me, I felt I was bound to attempt it; <br>Choice alone should take, and choice alone should surrender. <br>There was a time, indeed, when I had not retired thus early, <br>Languidly thus, from pursuit of a purpose I once had adopted, <br>But it is all over, all that! I have slunk from the perilous field in <br>Whose wild struggle of forces the prizes of life are contested. <br>It is over, all that! I am a coward, and know it. <br>Courage in me could be only factitious, unnatural, useless. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------<br>Comfort has come to me here in the dreary streets of the city, <br>Comfort--how do you think?--with a barrel-organ to bring it. <br>Moping along the streets, and cursing my day as I wandered, <br>All of a sudden my ear met the sound of an English psalm-tune, <br>Comfort me it did, till indeed I was very near crying. <br>Ah, there is some great truth, partial, very likely, but needful, <br>Lodged, I am strangely sure, in the tones of the English psalm-tune. <br>Comfort it was at least; and I must take without question <br>Comfort, however it come, in the dreary streets of the city. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------<br>I shall behold thee again (is it so?) at a new visitation, <br>O ill genius thou! I shall at my life's dissolution <br>(When the pulses are weak, and the feeble light of the reason <br>Flickers, an unfed flame retiring slow from the socket), <br>Low on a sick-bed laid, hear one, as it were, at the doorway, <br>And, looking up, see thee standing by, looking emptily at me; <br>I shall entreat thee then, though now I dare to refuse thee,-- <br>Pale and pitiful now, but terrible then to the dying.-- <br>Well, I will see thee again, and while I can, will repel thee. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">VI. Claude to Eustace.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Rome is fallen, I hear, the gallant Medici taken, <br>Noble Manara slain, and Garibaldi has lost il Moro;-- <br>Rome is fallen; and fallen, or falling, heroical Venice. <br>I, meanwhile, for the loss of a single small chit of a girl, sit <br>Moping and mourning here,--for her, and myself much smaller. <br>Whither depart the souls of the brave that die in the battle, <br>Die in the lost, lost fight, for the cause that perishes with them? <br>Are they upborne from the field on the slumberous pinions of angels <br>Unto a far-off home, where the weary rest from their labour, <br>And the deep wounds are healed, and the bitter and burning moisture <br>Wiped from the generous eyes? or do they linger, unhappy, <br>Pining, and haunting the grave of their by-gone hope and endeavour? <br>All declamation, alas! though I talk, I care not for Rome nor <br>Italy; feebly and faintly, and but with the lips, can lament the <br>Wreck of the Lombard youth, and the victory of the oppressor. <br>Whither depart the brave?--God knows; I certainly do not. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">VII. Mary Trevellyn to Miss Roper.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He has not come as yet; and now I must not expect it. <br>You have written, you say, to friends at Florence, to see him, <br>If he perhaps should return;--but that is surely unlikely. <br>Has he not written to you?--he did not know your direction. <br>Oh, how strange never once to have told him where you were going! <br>Yet if he only wrote to Florence, that would have reached you. <br>If what you say he said was true, why has he not done so? <br>Is he gone back to Rome, do you think, to his Vatican marbles?-- <br>O my dear Miss Roper, forgive me! do not be angry!-- <br>You have written to Florence;--your friends would certainly find him. <br>Might you not write to him ?--but yet it is so little likely! <br>I shall expect nothing more.--Ever yours, your affectionate Mary. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">VIII. Claude to Eustace.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I cannot stay at Florence, not even to wait for a letter. <br>Galleries only oppress me. Remembrance of hope I had cherished <br>(Almost more than as hope, when I passed through Florence the first time) <br>Lies like a sword in my soul. I am more a coward than ever, <br>Chicken-hearted, past thought. The caffès and waiters distress me. <br>All is unkind, and, alas! I am ready for anyone's kindness. <br>Oh, I knew it of old, and knew it, I thought, to perfection, <br>If there is any one thing in the world to preclude all kindness <br>It is the need of it,--it is this sad, self-defeating dependence. <br>Why is this, Eustace? Myself, were I stronger, I think I could tell you. <br>But it is odd when it comes. So plumb I the deeps of depression, <br>Daily in deeper, and find no support, no will, no purpose. <br>All my old strengths are gone. And yet I shall have to do something. <br>Ah, the key of our life, that passes all wards, opens all locks, <br>Is not I will, but I must. I must,--I must,--and I do it. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------<br>After all, do I know that I really cared so about her? <br>Do whatever I will, I cannot call up her image; <br>For when I close my eyes, I see, very likely, St. Peter's, <br>Or the Pantheon facade, or Michel Angelo's figures, <br>Or, at a wish, when I please, the Alban hills and the Forum,-- <br>But that face, those eyes,--ah, no, never anything like them; <br>Only, try as I will, a sort of featureless outline, <br>And a pale blank orb, which no recollection will add to. <br>After all, perhaps there was something factitious about it; <br>I have had pain, it is true: I have wept; and so have the actors. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------<br>At the last moment I have your letter, for which I was waiting; <br>I have taken my place, and see no good in inquiries. <br>Do nothing more, good Eustace, I pray you. It only will vex me. <br>Take no measures. Indeed, should we meet, I could not be certain; <br>All might be changed, you know. Or perhaps there was nothing to be changed. <br>It is a curious history, this; and yet I foresaw it; <br>I could have told it before. The Fates, it is clear, are against us; <br>For it is certain enough I met with the people you mention; <br>They were at Florence the day I returned there, and spoke to me even; <br>Stayed a week, saw me often; departed, and whither I know not. <br>Great is Fate, and is best. I believe in Providence partly. <br>What is ordained is right, and all that happens is ordered. <br>Ah, no, that isn't it. But yet I retain my conclusion. <br>I will go where I am led, and will not dictate to the chances. <br>Do nothing more, I beg. If you love me, forbear interfering. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">IX. Claude to Eustace.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Shall we come out of it all, some day, as one does from a tunnel? <br>Will it be all at once, without our doing or asking, <br>We shall behold clear day, the trees and meadows about us, <br>And the faces of friends, and the eyes we loved looking at us? <br>Who knows? Who can say? It will not do to suppose it. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">X. Claude to Eustace,-from Rome.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Rome will not suit me, Eustace; the priests and soldiers possess it; <br>Priests and soldiers:--and, ah! which is the worst, the priest or the soldier? <br>Politics, farewell, however! For what could I do? with inquiring, <br>Talking, collating the journals, go fever my brain about things o'er <br>Which I can have no control. No, happen whatever may happen, <br>Time, I suppose, will subsist; the earth will revolve on its axis; <br>People will travel; the stranger will wander as now in the city; <br>Rome will be here, and the Pope the custode of Vatican marbles. <br>I have no heart, however, for any marble or fresco; <br>I have essayed it in vain; 'tis in vain as yet to essay it: <br>But I may haply resume some day my studies in this kind; <br>Not as the Scripture says, is, I think, the fact. Ere our death-day, <br>Faith, I think, does pass, and Love; but Knowledge abideth. <br>Let us seek Knowledge;--the rest may come and go as it happens. <br>Knowledge is hard to seek, and harder yet to adhere to. <br>Knowledge is painful often; and yet when we know we are happy. <br>Seek it, and leave mere Faith and Love to come with the chances. <br>As for Hope,--to-morrow I hope to be starting for Naples. <br>Rome will not do, I see, for many very good reasons. <br>Eastward, then, I suppose, with the coming of winter, to Egypt. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">XI. Mary Trevellyn to Miss Roper.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">You have heard nothing; of course I know you can have heard nothing. <br>Ah, well, more than once I have broken my purpose, and sometimes, <br>Only too often, have looked for the little lake steamer to bring him. <br>But it is only fancy,--I do not really expect it. <br>Oh, and you see I know so exactly how he would take it: <br>Finding the chances prevail against meeting again, he would banish <br>Forthwith every thought of the poor little possible hope, which <br>I myself could not help, perhaps, thinking only too much of; <br>He would resign himself, and go. I see it exactly. <br>So I also submit, although in a different manner. <br>Can you not really come? We go very shortly to England. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------</div><div style="margin:10px 0">So go forth to the world, to the good report and the evil! <br>Go, little book! thy tale, is it not evil and good? <br>Go, and if strangers revile, pass quietly by without answer. <br>Go, and if curious friends ask of thy rearing and age, <br>Say, 'I am flitting about many years from brain unto brain of <br>Feeble and restless youths born to inglorious days: <br>But,' so finish the word, 'I was writ in a Roman chamber, <br>When from Janiculan heights thundered the cannon of France.'</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> <img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share"> <script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=348524" data-title="Amours de Voyage, Canto V de Arthur Hugh Clough" data-description="There is a city, upbuilt on the quays of the turbulent Arno, Under Fiesole's heights,--thither are we to return? There is a city that fringes the curve of the inflowing waters, Under the perilous hill fringes the beautiful bay,-- Parthenope, d..."></div> </div> </div>

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