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(From Greece, from Mount Helicon)
EVEN as the pilgrim | |
| Goes with his eye fixed on his prophet’s tomb, | |
| Or where his god is laid, so let me on, | |
| Bent to that summit, where retiring day | |
Kindles its latest fires.
I now have conquered, | 5 |
| And heaven is all above me. Earth below | |
| Spreads infinite, and rolls its mountain waves | |
| Tumultuously around me. Breathless awe | |
| Broods o’er my spirit, and I stand awhile | |
| Rapt and absorbed. The magic vision floats | 10 |
| Dimly before me, and uncertain lights | |
| Flash on my troubled eye, and then a calm, | |
| High and uplifted, like the peace of heaven, | |
| Steals on my heart, and instantly my thoughts | |
| Are fixed and daring. ’T is the land of song,— | 15 |
| The home of heroes. O ye boundless plains, | |
| Ye snowy peaks, ye dusky mountains, heaped | |
| Like ocean billows, far retiring vales, | |
| Blue seas, and gleaming bays, and islands set | |
| Like gems in gold! to you I kneel with awe | 20 |
| Deep and unfeigned. If I have ever felt | |
| The stirring energies of warlike virtue, | |
| The sternness of unbending right, the bliss | |
| Of high and holy dreams, the charm of beauty, | |
| The power of verse and song, only to you | 25 |
| Be all the praise. And now ye are before me, | |
| Rich with the tints of evening. What an arch | |
| Of golden light swells, from the point of setting, | |
| Over the Delphian hills! and how it rolls, | |
| In dazzling waves, round all the mingled heights | 30 |
| That rise between! Yonder my eye can catch | |
| Glimpses from out the far Achaian gulf, | |
| Waving with flame, and seeming through the depths, | |
| That dimly open to them, fiery portals | |
| To brighter worlds. But now to calmer scenes | 35 |
| And shadier skies. I trace the silver stream | |
| Threading its way, now hidden, now revealed, | |
| To the round vale, half up the mountain-side, | |
| Then lost in woods, and then in distant windings | |
| Stealing along the plain. Yon lower ridge | 40 |
| Lies dark in shade; and hidden half in trees, | |
| The whitewashed convent, with its gilded cross | |
| And humble tower, sends upward through the hushed | |
| And vacant air its vesper knoll, by distance | |
| Mellowed to music. This is all the sound | 45 |
| That tells of life. Down through a gloomy gorge, | |
| Walled in by rifted rocks, the vale of Ascra | |
| Lies, like a nook withdrawn beyond the reach | |
| Of violence; and yet the crescent crowns | |
| A minaret, and tells a startling tale | 50 |
| Of woe and fear. Beyond, the Theban plain | |
| Stretches to airy distance, till it seems | |
| lifted in air,—green cornfields, olive groves | |
| Blue as their heaven, and lakes, and winding rivers, | |
| And towns whose white walls catch the amber light, | 55 |
| That burns, then dies away, and leaves them pale | |
| And glimmering, while a floating vapor spreads | |
| From marsh and stream, till all is like a sea, | |
| Rolling to Œta, and the Eubœan chain, | |
| Stretching, in purple dimness, on the verge | 60 |
| Of this unclouded heaven. Far in the east | |
| The Ægean twinkles, and its thousand isles | |
| Hover in mist, and round the dun horizon | |
| Are many floating visions, clouds, or peaks, | |
| Tinted with rose. Before me lies a land | 65 |
| Hallowed with a peculiar sanctity, | |
| The eye of Greece,—a wild of rocks and hills, | |
| Lifted in shadowy cones, and deep between | |
| Mysterious hollows, once the proud abodes | |
| Of genius and of power. Now twilight throws | 70 |
| Around her softest veil, a purple haze | |
| Investing all at hand, and farther on | |
| Skyey and faint and dim. Methinks I catch, | |
| Through the far opening heights, the Parthenon, | |
| And all its circling glories. Salamis | 75 |
| Lies on its dusky wave; and farther out | |
| Islands and capes, and many a flitting sail | |
| White as a sea-bird’s wing. The stars are out, | |
| And all beneath is dark. The lower hills | |
| Float in obscurity, and plain and sea | 80 |
| Are blended in one haze. Cyllene still | |
| Bears on her snowy crown the rosy blush | |
| Of twilight; and thy loftier head, Parnassus, | |
| Has not yet lost the glory and the blaze | |
| That suit the heaven of song. There let me pause; | 85 |
| There fix my latest look. How beautiful, | |
| Sublimely beautiful, thou hoverest | |
| High in the vacant air! Thou seemest uplifted | |
| From all of earth, and like an island floating | |
| Away in heaven. How pure the eternal snows | 90 |
| That crown thee! yet how rich the golden blaze | |
| That flashes from thy peak! how like the rose, | |
| The virgin rose, the tints that fade below, | |
| Till all is sweetly pale! | |
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