The Project Gutenberg eBook of Poems on Travel

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Title: Poems on Travel

Compiler: R. M. Leonard


Release date: April 21, 2012 [eBook #39496]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/39496

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS ON TRAVEL ***

OXFORD GARLANDS

POEMS ON TRAVEL

SELECTED BY

R. M. LEONARD

How much a dunce that has been sent to roam
 Excels a dunce that has been kept at home.

Cowper.

HUMPHREY MILFORD
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON EDINBURGH GLASGOW NEW YORK
TORONTO MELBOURNE BOMBAY
1914

OXFORD: HORACE HART
PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY

INDEX OF AUTHORS

POEMS ON TRAVEL

TRAVELS BY THE FIRESIDE

The ceaseless rain is falling fast,
 And yonder gilded vane,
 Immovable for three days past,
 Points to the misty main.
It drives me in upon myself5
 And to the fireside gleams,
 To pleasant books that crowd my shelf,
 And still more pleasant dreams.
I read whatever bards have sung
 Of lands beyond the sea,10
 And the bright days when I was young
 Come thronging back to me.
In fancy I can hear again
 The Alpine torrent's roar,
 The mule-bells on the hills of Spain,15
 The sea at Elsinore.
I see the convent's gleaming wall
 Rise from its groves of pine,
 And towers of old cathedrals tall,
 And castles by the Rhine.20
I journey on by park and spire,
 Beneath centennial trees,
 Through fields with poppies all on fire,
 And gleams of distant seas.
I fear no more the dust and heat,25
 No more I fear fatigue,
 While journeying with another's feet
 O'er many a lengthening league.
Let others traverse sea and land,
 And toil through various climes,30
 I turn the world round with my hand
 Reading these poets' rhymes.
From them I learn whatever lies
 Beneath each changing zone,
 And see, when looking with their eyes,35
 Better than with mine own.

H. W. Longfellow.

FANCIES FOR MEMORIES

Over the great windy waters, and over the clear-crested summits,
 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.
 Come, let us go; though withal a voice whisper, 'The world that we live in,5
 Whithersoever we turn, still is the same narrow crib;
 'Tis but to prove limitation, and measure a cord, that we travel;
 Let who would 'scape and be free go to his chamber and think;
 'Tis but to change idle fancies for memories wilfully falser;
 'Tis but to go and have been.'—Come, little bark! let us go.10

A. H. Clough.

THE CRY OF ULYSSES

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
 Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed
 Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
 That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
 Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades5
 Vexed the dim sea: I am become a name;
 For always roaming with a hungry heart
 Much have I seen and known; cities of men,
 And manners, climates, councils, governments,
 Myself not least, but honoured of them all;10
 And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
 Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
 I am a part of all that I have met;
 Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
 Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
 For ever and for ever when I move.16

Lord Tennyson.

THE TRAVELLER

Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow,
 Or by the lazy Scheldt, or wandering Po;
 Or onward, where the rude Carinthian boor
 Against the houseless stranger shuts the door;
 Or where Campania's plain forsaken lies,5
 A weary waste expanding to the skies:
 Where'er I roam, whatever realms to see,
 My heart untravelled fondly turns to thee;
 Still to my brother turns with ceaseless pain,
 And drags at each remove a lengthening chain.10
 In all my wanderings round this world of care,
 In all my griefs—and God has given my share—
 I still had hopes my latest hours to crown,
 Amidst these humble bowers to lay me down;
 To husband out life's taper at the close,15
 And keep the flame from wasting by repose.
 I still had hopes, for pride attends us still,
 Amidst the swains to show my book-learned skill,
 Around my fire an evening group to draw,
 And tell of all I felt, and all I saw;20
 And, as a hare, whom hounds and horns pursue,
 Pants to the place from whence at first she flew,
 I still had hopes, my long vexations passed,
 Here to return—and die at home at last.

O. Goldsmith.

I TRAVELLED AMONG UNKNOWN MEN

I travelled among unknown men,
 In lands beyond the sea;
 Nor, England! did I know till then
 What love I bore to thee.
'Tis past, that melancholy dream!5
 Nor will I quit thy shore
 A second time; for still I seem
 To love thee more and more.
Among thy mountains did I feel
 The joy of my desire;10
 And she I cherished turned her wheel
 Beside an English fire.
Thy mornings showed, thy nights concealed,
 The bowers where Lucy played;
 And thine too is the last green field15
 That Lucy's eyes surveyed.

W. Wordsworth.

WHERE LIES THE LAND

Where lies the land to which yon ship must go?
 Fresh as a lark mounting at break of day,
 Festively she puts forth in trim array;
 Is she for tropic suns, or polar snow?
 What boots the inquiry?—Neither friend nor foe5
 She cares for; let her travel where she may,
 She finds familiar names, a beaten way
 Ever before her, and a wind to blow.
 Yet still I ask, what haven is her mark?
 And, almost as it was when ships were rare,10
 (From time to time, like pilgrims, here and there
 Crossing the waters) doubt, and something dark,
 Of the old sea some reverential fear,
 Is with me at thy farewell, joyous bark!

W. Wordsworth.

A PASSER-BY

Whither, O splendid ship, thy white sails crowding,
 Leaning across the bosom of the urgent West,
 That fearest nor sea rising, nor sky clouding,
 Whither away, fair rover, and what thy quest?
 Ah! soon, when Winter has all our vales opprest,
 When skies are cold and misty, and hail is hurling,
 Wilt thóu glìde on the blue Pacific, or rest7
 In a summer haven asleep, thy white sails furling.
I there before thee, in the country that well thou knowest,
 Already arrived am inhaling the odorous air:10
 I watch thee enter unerringly where thou goest,
 And anchor queen of the strange shipping there,
 Thy sails for awnings spread, thy masts bare;
 Nor is aught from the foaming reef to the snow-capped, grandest14
 Peak, that is over the feathery palms more fair
 Than thou, so upright, so stately, and still thou standest.
And yet, O splendid ship, unhailed and nameless,
 I know not if, aiming a fancy, I rightly divine
 That thou hast a purpose joyful, a courage blameless,
 Thy port assured in a happier land than mine.20
 But for all I have given thee, beauty enough is thine,
 As thou, aslant with trim tackle and shrouding,
 From the proud nostril curve of a prow's line
 In the offing scatterest foam, thy white sails crowding.

R. Bridges.

AT CARNAC

Far on its rocky knoll descried
 Saint Michael's chapel cuts the sky.
 I climbed;—beneath me, bright and wide,
 Lay the lone coast of Brittany.
Bright in the sunset, weird and still5
 It lay beside the Atlantic wave,
 As if the wizard Merlin's will
 Yet charmed it from his forest grave.
Behind me on their grassy sweep,
 Bearded with lichen, scrawled and grey,10
 The giant stones of Carnac sleep,
 In the mild evening of the May.
No priestly stern procession now
 Streams through their rows of pillars old;
 No victims bleed, no Druids bow;15
 Sheep make the furze-grown aisles their fold.
From bush to bush the cuckoo flies,
 The orchis red gleams everywhere;
 Gold broom with furze in blossom vies,
 The blue-bells perfume all the air.20
And o'er the glistening, lonely land,
 Rise up, all round, the Christian spires.
 The church of Carnac, by the strand,
 Catches the westering sun's last fires.
And there across the watery way,25
 See, low above the tide at flood,
 The sickle-sweep of Quiberon bay
 Whose beach once ran with loyal blood!
And beyond that, the Atlantic wide!—
 All round, no soul, no boat, no hail!30
 But, on the horizon's verge descried,
 Hangs, touched with light, one snowy sail!

M. Arnold.

THE GRAND CHARTREUSE

Through Alpine meadows, soft-suffused
 With rain, where thick the crocus blows,
 Past the dark forges long disused,
 The mule-track from Saint Laurent goes.
 The bridge is crossed, and slow we ride,5
 Through forest, up the mountain-side.
The autumnal evening darkens round
 The wind is up, and drives the rain;
 While hark! far down, with strangled sound
 Doth the Dead Guiers' stream complain,10
 Where that wet smoke among the woods
 Over his boiling cauldron broods.
Swift rush the spectral vapours white
 Past limestone scars with ragged pines,
 Showing—then blotting from our sight.15
 Halt! through the cloud-drift something shines!
 High in the valley, wet and drear,
 The huts of Courrerie appear.
Strike leftward! cries our guide; and higher
 Mounts up the stony forest-way.20
 At last the encircling trees retire;
 Look! through the showery twilight grey
 What pointed roofs are these advance?
 A palace of the Kings of France?
Approach, for what we seek is here.25
 Alight and sparely sup and wait
 For rest in this outbuilding near;
 Then cross the sward and reach that gate;
 Knock; pass the wicket! Thou art come
 To the Carthusians' world-famed home.30

M. Arnold.

HYMN BEFORE SUNRISE IN THE VALE OF CHAMOUNI

Hast thou a charm to stay the morning-star
 In his steep course? So long he seems to pause
 On thy bald awful head, O sovran Blanc,
 The Arve and Arveiron at thy base
 Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful Form!5
 Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines,
 How silently! Around thee and above
 Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black,
 An ebon mass: methinks thou piercest it,
 As with a wedge! But when I look again,10
 It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine,
 Thy habitation from eternity
 O dread and silent Mount! I gazed upon thee,
 Till thou, still present to the bodily sense,
 Didst vanish from my thought: entranced in prayer15
 I worshipped the Invisible alone.
Yet, like some sweet beguiling melody,
 So sweet, we know not we are listening to it,
 Thou, the meanwhile, wast blending with my Thought,
 Yea, with my Life and Life's own secret joy:20
 Till the dilating Soul, enrapt, transfused,
 Into the mighty vision passing—there
 As in her natural form, swelled vast to Heaven!
Awake, my soul! not only passive praise
 Thou owest! not alone these swelling tears,25
 Mute thanks and secret ecstasy! Awake,
 Voice of sweet song! Awake, my heart, awake!
 Green vales and icy cliffs, all join my Hymn.
Thou first and chief, sole sovereign of the Vale!
 O struggling with the darkness all the night,30
 And visited all night by troops of stars,
 Or when they climb the sky or when they sink:
 Companion of the morning-star at dawn,
 Thyself Earth's rosy star, and of the dawn
 Co-herald: wake, O wake, and utter praise!35
 Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in Earth?
 Who filled thy countenance with rosy light?
 Who made thee parent of perpetual streams?
And you, ye five wild torrents fiercely glad!
 Who called you forth from night and utter death,40
 From dark and icy caverns called you forth,
 Down those precipitous, black, jaggèd rocks,
 For ever shattered and the same for ever?
 Who gave you your invulnerable life,
 Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy,
 Unceasing thunder and eternal foam?46
 And who commanded (and the silence came),
 Here let the billows stiffen, and have rest?
Ye Ice-falls! ye that from the mountain's brow
 Adown enormous ravines slope amain—50
 Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,
 And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge!
 Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!
 Who made you glorious as the Gates of Heaven
 Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun55
 Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living flowers
 Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet?—
 God! let the torrents, like a shout of nations,
 Answer! and let the ice-plains echo, God!59
 God! sing ye meadow-streams with gladsome voice!
 Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds!
 And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow,
 And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God!
Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost!
 Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle's nest!65
 Ye eagles, play-mates of the mountain-storm!
 Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds!
 Ye signs and wonders of the element!
 Utter forth God, and fill the hills with praise!
Thou too, hoar Mount! with thy sky-pointing peaks,70
 Oft from whose feet the avalanche, unheard,
 Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene
 Into the depth of clouds, that veil thy breast—
 Thou too again, stupendous Mountain! thou
 That as I raise my head, awhile bowed low75
 In adoration, upward from thy base
 Slow travelling with dim eyes suffused with tears,
 Solemnly seemest, like a vapoury cloud,
 To rise before me—Rise, O ever rise,
 Rise like a cloud of incense from the Earth!80
 Thou kingly Spirit throned among the hills,
 Thou dread ambassador from Earth to Heaven,
 Great Hierarch! tell thou the silent sky,
 And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun
 Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God.85

S. T. Coleridge.

HOME, ROSE, AND HOME, PROVENCE AND LA PALIE

ITE DOMUM SATURAE, VENIT HESPERUS

The skies have sunk, and hid the upper snow,
 (Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie,)
 The rainy clouds are filing fast below,
 And wet will be the path, and wet shall we.
 Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie.5
Ah dear, and where is he, a year agone
 Who stepped beside and cheered us on and on?
 My sweetheart wanders far away from me,
 In foreign land or on a foreign sea.
 Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie.10
The lightning zigzags shoot across the sky,
 (Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie,)
 And through the vale the rains go sweeping by;
 Ah me, and when in shelter shall we be?
 Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie.15
Cold, dreary cold, the stormy winds feel they
 O'er foreign lands and foreign seas that stray.
 (Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie.)
 And doth he e'er, I wonder, bring to mind
 The pleasant huts and herds he left behind?20
 And doth he sometimes in his slumbering see
 The feeding kine and doth he think of me,
 My sweetheart wandering wheresoe'er it be?
 Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie.
The thunder bellows far from snow to snow,25
 (Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie,)
 And loud and louder roars the flood below.
 Heigh-ho! but soon in shelter shall we be:
 Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie.
Or shall he find before his term be sped,30
 Some comelier maid that he shall wish to wed?
 (Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie.)
 For weary is work, and weary day by day
 To have your comfort miles on miles away.
 Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie.35
Or may it be that I shall find my mate,
 And he returning see himself too late?
 For work we must, and what we see, we see.
 And God he knows, and what must be, must be,
 When sweethearts wander far away from me.40
 Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie.
The sky behind is brightening up anew,
 (Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie,)
 The rain is ending, and our journey too;
 Heigh-ho! aha! for here at home are we:—45
 In, Rose, and in, Provence and La Palie.

A. H. Clough.

THERE LIES A VALE IN IDA

There lies a vale in Ida, lovelier
 Than all the valleys of Ionian hills.
 The swimming vapour slopes athwart the glen,
 Puts forth an arm, and creeps from pine to pine,
 And loiters, slowly drawn. On either hand5
 The lawns and meadow-ledges midway down
 Hang rich in flowers, and far below them roars
 The long brook falling through the clov'n ravine
 In cataract after cataract to the sea.
 Behind the valley topmost Gargarus10
 Stands up and takes the morning: but in front
 The gorges, opening wide apart, reveal
 Troas and Ilion's columned citadel,
 The crown of Troas.
 Hither came at noon
 Mournful Oenone, wandering forlorn15
 Of Paris, once her playmate on the hills.
 Her cheek had lost the rose, and round her neck
 Floated her hair or seemed to float in rest.
 She, leaning on a fragment twined with vine,
 Sang to the stillness, till the mountain-shade20
 Sloped downward to her seat from the upper cliff.
 'O mother Ida, many-fountained Ida,
 Dear mother Ida, hearken ere I die.
 For now the noonday quiet holds the hill:
 The grasshopper is silent in the grass:25
 The lizard, with his shadow on the stone,
 Rests like a shadow, and the cicala sleeps.
 The purple flowers droop: the golden bee
 Is lily-cradled: I alone awake.
 My eyes are full of tears, my heart of love,30
 My heart is breaking, and my eyes are dim,
 And I am all aweary of my life.'

Lord Tennyson.

COME DOWN, O MAID

Come down, O maid, from yonder mountain height:
 What pleasure lives in height (the shepherd sang),
 In height and cold, the splendour of the hills?
 But cease to move so near the heavens, and cease
 To glide a sunbeam by the blasted pine,5
 To sit a star upon the sparkling spire;
 And come, for Love is of the valley, come,
 For Love is of the valley, come thou down
 And find him; by the happy threshold, he,
 Or hand in hand with Plenty in the maize,10
 Or red with spirted purple of the vats,
 Or foxlike in the vine; nor cares to walk
 With Death and Morning on the silver horns,
 Nor wilt thou snare him in the white ravine,
 Nor find him dropped upon the firths of ice,15
 That huddling slant in furrow-cloven falls
 To roll the torrent out of dusky doors:
 But follow: let the torrent dance thee down
 To find him in the valley; let the wild
 Lean-headed Eagles yelp alone, and leave20
 The monstrous ledges there to slope, and spill
 Their thousand wreaths of dangling water-smoke,
 That like a broken purpose waste in air:
 So waste not thou; but come; for all the vales
 Await thee; azure pillars of the hearth25
 Arise to thee; the children call, and I
 Thy shepherd pipe, and sweet is every sound,
 Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet;
 Myriads of rivulets hurrying through the lawn,
 The moan of doves in immemorial elms,30
 And murmuring of innumerable bees.

Lord Tennyson.

IN THE VALLEY OF CAUTERETZ