Amours De Voyage

Canto I.

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, 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.

I. Claude to Eustace.

Dear Eustatio, I write that you may write me an answer, Or at the least to put us again en rapport with each other. Rome disappoints me much,--St Peter's, perhaps, in especial; Only the Arch of Titus and view from the Lateran please me: This, however, perhaps is the weather, which truly is horrid. Greece must be better, surely; and yet I am feeling so spiteful, That I could travel to Athens, to Delphi, and Troy, and Mount Sinai, Though but to see with my eyes that these are vanity also. Rome disappoints me much; I hardly as yet understand it, but RUBBISHY seems the word that most exactly would suit it. All the foolish destructions, and all the sillier savings, All the incongruous things of past incompatible ages, Seem to be treasured up here to make fools of present and future. Would to Heaven the old Goths had made a cleaner sweep of it! Would to Heaven some new ones would come and destroy these churches! However, one can live in Rome as also in London. It is a blessing, no doubt, to be rid, at least for a time, of All one's friends and relations,--yourself (forgive me!) included,-- All the assujettissement of having been what one has been, What one thinks one is, or thinks that others suppose one; Yet, in despite of all, we turn like fools to the English. Vernon has been my fate; who is here the same that you knew him,-- Making the tour, it seems, with friends of the name of Trevellyn.

II. Claude to Eustace.

Rome disappoints me still; but I shrink and adapt myself to it. Somehow a tyrannous sense of a superincumbent oppression Still, wherever I go, accompanies ever, and makes me Feel like a tree (shall I say?) buried under a ruin of brickwork. Rome, believe me, my friend, is like its own Monte Testaceo, Merely a marvellous mass of broken and castaway wine-pots. Ye gods! what do I want with this rubbish of ages departed, Things that Nature abhors, the experiments that she has failed in? What do I find in the Forum? An archway and two or three pillars. Well, but St. Peter's? Alas, Bernini has filled it with sculpture! No one can cavil, I grant, at the size of the great Coliseum. Doubtless the notion of grand and capacious and massive amusement, This the old Romans had; but tell me, is this an idea? Yet of solidity much, but of splendour little is extant: 'Brickwork I found thee, and marble I left thee!' their Emperor vaunted; 'Marble I thought thee, and brickwork I find thee!' the Tourist may answer.

III. Georgina Trevellyn to Louisa ----.

At last, dearest Louisa, I take up my pen to address you. Here we are, you see, with the seven-and-seventy boxes, Courier, Papa and Mamma, the children, and Mary and Susan: Here we all are at Rome, and delighted of course with St. Peter's, And very pleasantly lodged in the famous Piazza di Spagna. Rome is a wonderful place, but Mary shall tell you about it; Not very gay, however; the English are mostly at Naples; There are the A.'s, we hear, and most of the W. party. George, however, is come; did I tell you about his mustachios? Dear, I must really stop, for the carriage, they tell me, is waiting; Mary will finish; and Susan is writing, they say, to Sophia. Adieu, dearest Louise,--evermore your faithful Georgina. Who can a Mr. Claude be whom George has taken to be with? Very stupid, I think, but George says so VERY clever.

IV. Claude to Eustace.

No, the Christian faith, as at any rate I understood it, With its humiliations and exaltations combining, Exaltations sublime, and yet diviner abasements, Aspirations from something most shameful here upon earth and In our poor selves to something most perfect above in the heavens,-- No, the Christian faith, as I, at least, understood it, Is not here, O Rome, in any of these thy churches; Is not here, but in Freiburg, or Rheims, or Westminster Abbey. What in thy Dome I find, in all thy recenter efforts, Is a something, I think, more RATIONAL far, more earthly, Actual, less ideal, devout not in scorn and refusal, But in a positive, calm, Stoic-Epicurean acceptance. This I begin to detect in St. Peter's and some of the churches, Mostly in all that I see of the sixteenth-century masters; Overlaid of course with infinite gauds and gewgaws, Innocent, playful follies, the toys and trinkets of childhood, Forced on maturer years, as the serious one thing needful, By the barbarian will of the rigid and ignorant Spaniard. Curious work, meantime, re-entering society: how we Walk a livelong day, great Heaven, and watch our shadows! What our shadows seem, forsooth, we will ourselves be. Do I look like that? you think me that: then I AM that.

V. Claude to Eustace.

Luther, they say, was unwise; like a half-taught German, he could not See that old follies were passing most tranquilly out of remembrance; Leo the Tenth was employing all efforts to clear out abuses; Jupiter, Juno, and Venus, Fine Arts, and Fine Letters, the Poets, Scholars, and Sculptors, and Painters, were quietly clearing away the Martyrs, and Virgins, and Saints, or at any rate Thomas Aquinas: He must forsooth make a fuss and distend his huge Wittenberg lungs, and Bring back Theology once yet again in a flood upon Europe: Lo you, for forty days from the windows of heaven it fell; the Waters prevail on the earth yet more for a hundred and fifty; Are they abating at last? the doves that are sent to explore are Wearily fain to return, at the best with a leaflet of promise,-- Fain to return, as they went, to the wandering wave-tost vessel,-- Fain to re-enter the roof which covers the clean and the unclean,-- Luther, they say, was unwise; he didn't see how things were going; Luther was foolish,--but, O great God! what call you Ignatius? O my tolerant soul, be still! but you talk of barbarians, Alaric, Attila, Genseric;--why, they came, they killed, they Ravaged, and went on their way; but these vile, tyrannous Spaniards, These are here still,--how long, O ye heavens, in the country of Dante? These, that fanaticized Europe, which now can forget them, release not This, their choicest of prey, this Italy; here you see them,-- Here, with emasculate pupils and gimcrack churches of Gesu, Pseudo-learning and lies, confessional-boxes and postures,-- Here, with metallic beliefs and regimental devotions,-- Here, overcrusting with slime, perverting, defacing, debasing, Michael Angelo's Dome, that had hung the Pantheon in heaven, Raphael's Joys and Graces, and thy clear stars, Galileo!

VI. Claude to Eustace.

Which of three Misses Trevellyn it is that Vernon shall marry Is not a thing to be known; for our friend is one of those natures Which have their perfect delight in the general tender-domestic, So that he trifles with Mary's shawl, ties Susan's bonnet, Dances with all, but at home is most, they say, with Georgina, Who is, however, TOO silly in my apprehension for Vernon. I, as before when I wrote, continue to see them a little; Not that I like them much or care a bajocco for Vernon, But I am slow at Italian, have not many English acquaintance, And I am asked, in short, and am not good at excuses. Middle-class people these, bankers very likely, not wholly Pure of the taint of the shop; will at table d'hote and restaurant Have their shilling's worth, their penny's pennyworth even: Neither man's aristocracy this, nor God's, God knoweth! Yet they are fairly descended, they give you to know, well connected; Doubtless somewhere in some neighbourhood have, and are careful to keep, some Threadbare-genteel relations, who in their turn are enchanted Grandly among county people to introduce at assemblies To the unpennied cadets our cousins with excellent fortunes. Neither man's aristocracy this, nor God's, God knoweth!

VII. Claude to Eustace.

Ah, what a shame, indeed, to abuse these most worthy people! Ah, what a sin to have sneered at their innocent rustic pretensions! Is it not laudable really, this reverent worship of station? Is it not fitting that wealth should tender this homage to culture? Is it not touching to witness these efforts, if little availing, Painfully made, to perform the old ritual service of manners? Shall not devotion atone for the absence of knowledge? and fervour Palliate, cover, the fault of a superstitious observance? Dear, dear, what do I say? but, alas! just now, like Iago, I can be nothing at all, if it is not critical wholly; So in fantastic height, in coxcomb exaltation, Here in the garden I walk, can freely concede to the Maker That the works of His hand are all very good: His creatures, Beast of the field and fowl, He brings them before me; I name them; That which I name them, they are,--the bird, the beast, and the cattle. But for Adam,--alas, poor critical coxcomb Adam! But for Adam there is not found an help-meet for him.

Continue reading Amours De Voyage free in the Wunder reader →