TWO TRAMPS. BY LAND AND SEA.
"Travelers must be content."
"Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety."
The translation of Petrarch, Plutarch, Tacitus, Terence, and particularly Homer, by Chapman, gave a great impulse to dramatic writers, and inspired a feverish desire to travel through classic lands where classic authors lived and died.
Shakspere was a natural bohemian, and while he could conform to the conventionalities of society, he was never more pleased than when mixing with the variegated mass of mankind, where vice and virtue predominated without the guilt of hypocrisy to blur and blast the principles of sincerity.
Art, fashion and human laws he knew to be often only blinds for the concealment of plastic iniquity, and were secretly purchased by the few who had the gold to buy.
By sinking the grappling iron of independent investigation into every form and phase of human life, he plucked from the deepest ocean of adversity the rarest shells, weeds and flowers of thought, and spread them before the world as a new revelation.
By mingling with and knowing the good and bad, he solved the riddle of human passions, and with mind, tongue and pen unpurchased, he flashed his matchless philosophy on an admiring world, lifting the curtain of deceit and obscurity from the stage of falsehood, giving to the beholder a sight of Nature in her unexpurgated nakedness!
On the first of May, 1598, William and myself determined to travel into and around continental and oriental lands, and view some of the noted monuments, cities, seas, plains and mountains, where ancient warriors and philosophers had left their imperishable records.
Sailing through the Strait of Dover into the English Channel, our good ship Albion landed us in three days at Havre, the port town at the mouth of the river Seine, leading on to Rouen and up to the ancient city of Paris.
Our good ship Albion was to remain a week trading between Havre and Cherbourg, when we were to be again on board for a lengthy trip to the various ports of the Mediterranean.
Our first night in Paris was spent at the Hotel Reims, a jolly headquarters for students, painters, authors and actors.
LeMour was the blooming host, with his daughter Nannette as the coquettish "roper in." Father and daughter spoke English about as well as William and myself spoke French; and what was not understood by our mutual words and phrases was explained by our gesticulation of hand, shoulder, foot, eye, and clinking "francs" and "sovereigns."
Cash speaks all languages, and it is a very ignorant mortal who can't understand the voice of gold and silver.
"Francs," "pounds" and "dollars" are the real monarchs of mankind! William in a prophetic mood recited these few lines to the "boys" at the bar:
With circumspect steps as we pick our way through
This intricate world, as all prudent folks do,
May we still on our journey be able to view
The benevolent face of a dollar or two.
For an excellent thing is a dollar or two;
No friend is so true as a dollar or two;
In country or town, as we pass up and down,
We are cock of the walk with a dollar or two!
Do you wish that the press should the decent thing do,
And give your reception a gushing review,
Describing the dresses by stuff, style and hue,
On the quiet, hand "Jenkins" a dollar or two;
For the pen sells its praise for a dollar or two;
And flings its abuse for a dollar or two;
And you'll find that it's easy to manage the crew
When you put up the shape of a dollar or two!
Do you wish your existence with Faith to imbue,
And so become one of the sanctified few;
Who enjoy a good name and a well cushioned pew
You must freely come down with a dollar or two.
For the gospel is preached for a dollar or two,
Salvation is reached for a dollar or two;
Sins are pardoned, sometimes, but the worst of all crimes
Is to find yourself short of a dollar or two!
Although the Bard delivered this truthful poem off hand, so to speak, in "broken" French, the cosmopolitan, polyglot audience "caught on" and "shipped" the Stratford "poacher" a wave of tumultuous cheers!
That very night at the Theatre Saint Germain the new play of Garnier, "Juives," was to be enacted before Henry the Fourth and a brilliant audience.
William and myself were invited by a band of rollicking students to join them in a front bench "clapping" committee, as Garnier himself was to take the part of Old King Nebuchadnezzar in the great play, illustrating the siege and capture of Jerusalem.
The curtain went up at eight o'clock, and the French actors began their mimic contortions of face, lips, legs and shoulders for three mortal hours, and while there was a constant shifting of scenes, citizens, soldiers, Jews and battering rams, yells, groans and cheers, it looked as if the audience, including King Henry, was doing the most of the acting, and all the cheering! A maniac would be thoroughly at home in a French theatre!
The play had neither head, tail nor body, but it was sufficient for the excitable, revolutionary Frenchman to see that the Jews were being robbed, banished and slaughtered in the interest of Christianity and the late Jesus, who is reported as having taught the lessons of "love," "charity" and "mercy!"
The "Son of God," it seems, had been crucified more than fifteen hundred years before the audience had been created; and although "Old Neb" of Babylon had destroyed a million of Hebrews several hundred years previous to the birth of the Bethlehem "Savior of Mankind," the "frog" and "snail" eaters of France were still breaking their lungs and throats in cheering for the destruction of anybody!
It was one o'clock in the morning when we got back to the hotel; and with the Bacchanalian racket made by the "students" and fantastic "grisettes" it must have been nearly daylight before William and myself fell into the arms of sleep.
Sliding into the realm of dreams I heard the "mammoth man" murmur:
"Sleep, that knits up the raveled sleeve of care,
The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast!"
Jodelle, Lariney, Corneille, Moliere, Racine, La Fontaine, Rousseau, Voltaire, Balzac, or even Hugo, never uttered such masterly philosophy.
After partaking of a French breakfast, smothered with herbs and mystery, we hired a fancy phaeton and voluble driver to whirr us around the principal streets, parks and buildings of the rushing, brilliant city, everything moving as if the devil were out with a search warrant for some of the stray citizens of his imperial dominions.
The driver spoke English very well, and with a telephone voice, surcharged with monkey gestures, we listened to and saw the history of Paris from the advent of Cæsar, Clovis, Charlemagne to Louis and Henry. A city directory would have been a surplusage, and we flattered the "garcon" by seeming to believe everything he said, exclaiming "Oh my!" "Do tell!" "Gee whizz!" "Did you ever!" "Wonderful!" and "Never saw the like!"
As our mentor and nestor pulled up at noted wine cafés to water his horse, we contributed to his own irrigation and our champagne thirst. Be good to yourself.
It was sundown when we nestled in the Hotel Reims, but had been richly repaid in our visit to the king's palace, the great Louvre, St. Denis, Notre Dame and the great cathedrals, picture galleries, cemeteries and monuments that decorated imperial Paris.
The evening before we left Paris we accepted the invitation of Garnier to visit the Latin Quarter. The playwright did not know William or myself, except as young English lords—"Buckingham" and "Bacon," traveling for information and pleasure, sowing "wild," financial "oats" with the liberality of princes.
A well dressed, polite man, with lots of money, and a "spender" from "way back" is a welcome guest in home, church and state; and when it comes to the "ladies," he is, of course, "a jewel," "a trump" and "darling." They know a "soft snap" when they see it.
Some of us have been there.
While basking under the light of flashing eyes and sparkling wine at the Royal Café, surrounded by a dozen of the artistic "friends" of the "toast of the town," Garnier said he noticed us in the front bench the night before, and knowing us to be Englishmen, was desirous to know how his play, depicting the siege of Jerusalem compared with the new man Shakspere, who had recently loomed up into the dramatic sky.
William winked at me in a kind of sotto voce way, and with that natural exuberance or intellectual "gall" that never fails to strike the "bull's eye," I bluntly said that Garnier's philosophy and composition were as different from Shakspere's as the earth from the heaven!
The Frenchman arose and made an extended bow when his "girl" friends yelled like the "rebels" at Shiloh and kicked off the tall hat of the noted French dramatist! Great sport!
Extra wine was ordered, and then an improvised ballet girl jumped into the middle of the wine room, with circus antics, champagne glasses in hand, singing the praises of the great and only Garnier! Poor devil, he did not know that my criticism was a double ender. Just as well.
I cannot exactly remember how I got to the hotel, but when William aroused my latent energies the next morning, I felt as if I had been put through a Kentucky corn sheller, or caught up in a Texas blizzard and blown into the middle of Kansas.
William was, as usual, calm, polite, sober and dignified, and while he touched the wine cup for sociability, in search of human hearts, I never saw him intoxicated. He had a marvelous capacity of body and brain, and like an earthly Jupiter he shone over the variegated satellites around him with the force and brilliancy of the morning sun. He was so far above other thinkers and writers that no one who knew him felt a pang of jealousy, for they saw it was impossible to even twinkle in the heaven of his philosophy.
The day before leaving Paris we visited Versailles and wandered through its pictured palaces, drinking in the historical milestones of the past. Here lords, kings, queens, farmers, mechanics, shop keepers, sailors, soldiers, robbers, murderers and beggars had appropriated in turn these royal halls and stately gardens.
Riot and revolution swept over these memorials like a winter storm, and the thunder and lightning strokes of civil and foreign troops had desolated the works of art, genius and royalty.
Nations rise and fall like individuals, and a thousand or ten thousand years of time are only a "tick" in the clock of destiny.
Early on the morning of the seventh of May, 1598, we went on board a light double-oared galley, swung into the sparkling waters of the Seine, and proceeded on our way to Rouen and Havre.
The morning sun sparkling on the tall spires and towers, the songs of the watermen and gardeners, whirring ropes, flashing flags, blooming flowers, green parks, forest vistas, shining cottages, grand mansions and lofty castles, in the shimmering distance gave the suburbs of Paris a phase of enchantment that lifted the soul of the beholder into the fairy realm of dreamland; and as our jolly crew rowed away with rhythmic sweep we lay under a purple awning, sheltered from the midday sun, gazing out on the works of Dame Nature with entranced amazement.
William, in one of his periodical bursts of impromptu poetry, uttered these lines on
CREATION.
The smallest grain of ocean sand,
Or continent of mountain land,
With all the stars and suns we see
Are emblems of eternity.
God reigns in everything he made—
In man, in beast, in hill and glade;
In sum and substance of all birth;
Component parts of Heaven and Earth.
The moving, ceaseless vital air
Is managed by Almighty care,
And from the center to the rim,
All creatures live and die in Him.
We know not why we come and go
Into this world of joy and woe,
But this we know that every hour
Is clipping off our pride and power.
The links of life that make our chain
Of golden joy and passing pain,
Are broken rudely day by day,
And like the mists we melt away.
The voice of Nature never lies,
Presents to all her varied skies,
And wraps within her vernal breast
The dust of man in pulseless rest.
A billion years of life and death
Are but a moment or a breath
To one unknown Immortal Force
Who guides the planets in their course!
As the stars began to peep through the gathering curtains of night, and the young moon like a broken circle of silver split the evening sky, we came in sight of the busy town of Rouen, with its embattled walls and iron gates still bidding defiance to British invasion.
After a night's slumber and a speedy passage our galley drew up against the side of our stout ship Albion, when gallant Captain Jack O'Neil greeted us on board, and refreshed our manhood with a fine breakfast, interspersed with brandy and champagne.
The next morning, with all sails filled, we wafted away into the open waters of the rolling Atlantic Ocean, touching at the town of Brest, land's end port of France, and then away to Corunna in Spain, and on to Lisbon, Portugal, where we remained three days viewing the architectural and natural sights of the great commercial and shipping city of the Tagus.
About the middle of May we swung out again into the breakers of old ocean, and held our course to the wonderful "Strait of Gibraltar," separating Europe from Africa, whose inland, classic shores are bathed by the emerald waters of the romantic Mediterranean Sea.
We remained for a day at the rocky, stormy town of Gibraltar, meeting variegated men of all lands, who spoke all dialects, and preached and practiced all religions.
The pagan, the Moslem, the Buddhist, the Jew and the Christian dressed in the garb of their respective nationalities, were wrangling, trading, praying and swearing in all languages, every one grasping for the "almighty dollar."
As the sun went down over the shining shoulders of the Western Atlantic, flashing its golden rays over the moving, liquid floor of the heaving ocean and Mediterranean Sea, William and myself stood on the topmost crag of giant Gibraltar, and the Bard sent forth this impulsive sigh from his romantic soul:
How I long to roam o'er the bounding sea,
Where the waters and winds are fierce and free,
Where the wild bird sails in his tireless flight,
As the sunrise scatters the shades of night;
Where the porpoise and dolphin sport at play
In their liquid realm of green and gray.
Ah, me! It is there I would love to be
Engulfed in the tomb of eternity!
In the midnight hour when the moon hangs low
And the stars beam forth with a mystic glow;
When the mermaids float on the rolling tide
And Neptune entangles his beaming bride,—
It is there in that phosphorescent wave
I would gladly sink in an ocean grave—
To rise and fall with the songs of the sea
And live in the chant of its memory.
Around the world my form should sweep—
Part of the glorious, limitless deep;
Enmeshed by fate in some coral cave,
And rising again to the topmost wave,
That curls in beauty its snowy spray
And kisses the light of the garish day;
Ah! there let me drift when this life is o'er,
To be tossed and tumbled from shore to shore!
I clapped my hands intensely at the rendition of the poem, and echo from her rocky caves sent back the applause, while the sea gulls in their circling flight, screamed in chorus to the voice of echo and the eternal roar of old ocean.
At sunrise we sailed away into the land-locked waters of the Mediterranean Sea, where man for a million years has loved, lived, fought and died among beautiful, blooming islands that nestle on its bosom like emeralds in the crown of immortality.
We passed along the coast of Spain to Cape Nao, in sight of the Balearic Islands, on to Barcelona, to the mouth of the river Rhone, and up to the ancient city of Avignon.
In and around this city popes, princes and international warriors lived in royal style; but they are virtually forgotten, while Petrarch, the poetic saint and laureate of Italy, is as fresh in the memory of man as the day he died—July 18th, 1374, at the age of seventy.
William and myself remained all night in the Lodge House of the Gardens of "Vacluse," the hermit home of the sighing, soaring poet, who pined his life away in platonic love for "Laura," who married Hugh de Sade, when she was only seventeen years of age, and presented the nobleman ten children as pledges of her homespun affection.
And this is the married lady who Petrarch, the poet, wasted his sonnets upon, and was treated in fact as we were told by the "oldest inhabitant" of Avignon, with supercilious contempt.
Boccaccio and Petrarch were intimate friends, and both of these passionate poets lavished their love on "married flirts," who give promise to the ear and disappointment to the heart.
I could see that while Shakspere reveled deep in the mental philosophy of Petrarch, and even plucked a flower from his rustic bower, he had no sympathy with lovesick swains, and as we signed our names in the Lodge House book, he wrote this:
Petrarch, grand, immortal in thy sonnets;
Sugared by the eloquence of philosophy—
Destined to shine through the rolling ages;
Emulating, competing with the stars.
Thy love for Laura, pure, unreciprocated;
Yet, thou, foolish man, passion dazed and sad,
Like many of the greatest of mankind
Lie dashed in the vale of disappointment;
And flowers of hope, given by woman,
Have crowned thy brows with nettles of despair!
Next day the Albion sailed into the Mediterranean, passed by the island of Corsica (cradle of one of the greatest soldiers of the world), through the Strait of Bonifacio, and in due course kept on to the flourishing city of Naples.
It was dark twilight when we came to peer into the surrounding hills and mountains of classic Italy.
To the wonder and amazement of every passenger on board, Mount Vesuvius was in brilliant action, and the flash of sparks and blazing lights from this huge chimney top of Nature dazzled the beholder, and produced a fearful sensation in the soul.
As the great jaws of the mountain opened its fiery lips and belched forth molten streams of lava, shooting a million red hot meteors into the caves of night, the earth and ocean seemed to tremble with the sound and birds and beasts of prey rushed screaming and howling to their nightly homes.
Shakspere entranced stood on the bow of the ship and soliloquized:
Great God! Almighty in thy templed realm;
And mysterious in thy matchless might;
Suns, moons, planets, stars, ocean, earth and air
Move in harmony at thy supreme will;
And yonder torch light of eternity,
Blazing into heaven, candle of omnipotence—
Lights thy poor, wandering human midgets—
An hundred miles at sea, with lofty hope—
That nothing exists or dies in vain;
But changed into another form lives on
Through countless, boundless, blazing, brilliant worlds
Beyond this transient, seething, suffering sod!
At this moment the vessel struck the dock and lurched William out of his reverie, coming "within an ace" of pitching the poet into the harbor of Naples.
Captain O'Neil informed us that he would be engaged unloading and loading his ship for a week or ten days at Naples, before he started for Sicily, Greece and Egypt.
William and myself concluded to hire a guide and ride and tramp by land to Rome, and view the ancient capital and test the hospitality of the Italians.
Early the next morning we set out for the Imperial City, perched on her seven hills, and enlightening the world with the radiance of her classic memorials.
Our guide, Petro, was a villainous looking fellow, yet the landlord of the Hotel Columbo told us he was well acquainted with the mountain bypaths and open roads, and could, in the event of meeting robbers, be of great service to us.
Petro wanted ten "florins" in advance, and wine and bread on the road; and as we could not do any better, the bargain was made, and off we tramped through the great city of Milan, scaling the surrounding hills and pulling up as the sun went down at the town of Terracino.
After a good night's rest and hot breakfast, we started on horseback through a mountain trail for the banks of the Tiber, but when within three miles of the Capitoline hills Petro seemed to lose his way and rode off into the underbrush to find it.
We stopped in the trail, and in less than five minutes after the disappearance of our faithful guide we were captured by a gang of bandits, whose garb and countenance convinced us that robbery or murder or both would be our fate.
We were dragged off our horses, hustled into the forest gloom, through briars, over streams and rocks, until finally pitched into the tiptop mountain lair of Roderick, the Terrible.
The evening camp fire was lit, and Tamora, the queen of the robbers, with a couple of robber cooks, was preparing supper for the whole band when they returned from their daily avocations.
They seemed to be a jolly set, and with joke, laughter and song, these chivalric sons of sunny Italy were relating their various exploits, and laughing at the trepidation and futile resistance of their former victims.
Just before the band sat around on the ferny, pine clad rocks for supper, Roderick addressed William, and asked him if he had anything to say why he should not be robbed and murdered.
William said he was perfectly indifferent; for, being only a writer of plays and an actor, working for the amusement of mankind, he led a kind of dog's life anyhow, and didn't give a damn what they did with him.
The Robber Chief gave a yell and a roar that could be heard for three miles among the columned pines and oaks of the Apennines, and yelled, "Bully for you! Shake!"
Roderick then turned to me and said, "Who are you?"
I replied at once, "I am a fool and a poet."
He grasped my hand intensely and yelled, "I'm another." That sealed our friendship.
Then these gay and festive robbers invited us to partake of the best in the mountain wilds, with the request that after the evening feast was over we should give samples of our trade.
With the blazing light of a mountain fire, hemmed in by inaccessible rocks and gulches, from a tablerock overhanging a roaring, dashing stream, five thousand feet below, William stood and was requested to give a sample of his dramatic poetry for the edification of the beautiful cut-throat audience! And this, as I well remember, was his encomium in Latin to the "Gentlemen" and "Queen" of independent, gold-getting, robbing, murdering, fantastic Italian "society."
When first I beheld your noble band
Pounce from rock and lairs vernal,
My soul and hair were lifted
With admiration and amazement.
Free as air, ye sons of immortal sires,
Hold these crags, defiant still,
As eagles in their onward sweep—
Citizens of destiny,
Entertainment awaits your advent,
Even beneath yon columned capitol!
The emperors, pampered in power
Were subject to some human laws,
But you, great, wonderful chief,
Roderick, the Terrible, and fierce
Soar superior over all, bloody villain,
Force with gold and silver alone—
Dictating thy generous onslaughts!
Cæsar, Pompey and Scipio
Could not compete with thy valor;
Only Nero, paragon of infamy,
Could match the renown of Roderick,
Thy fame, great chief, boundless as the globe!
Italy, Spain, France and England
Pay constant tribute to thy purse,
Travelers and pilgrims, seeking glory
By kissing the pope's big toe
Drop their golden coin and jewels
Into thy pockets capacious,
Hear me, ye sprites of Apennine,
And the ghouls of murdered travelers
Let the circumambient air
Ring with universal cheers
For Roderick, the glory of Robbers,
And the terror of mankind.
(Whirlwind of cheers.)
At the conclusion of William's apostrophe to the prince of robbers, Tamora, the fair queen, jabbed me with a poniard and ordered me to sing.
I mounted the platform rock, overlooking the horrible vale below, and sang in my sweetest strain "Black Eyed Susan," gesticulating at the conclusion of each verse in the direction of the queen, who seemed to be charmed with my voice and audacity.
An encore was demanded with a yell of delight, and I forthwith sang the new song "America," which was cheered to the echo—and as they still insisted that I "go on," "go on," I rendered in my best voice the recent composition of "Hiawatha."
The robber band yelled like wild Indians, and the fair queen took me to her pine bower and fondled me into the realm of dreams, although I could see that Roderick was disposed to throw me on the rocks below—but, the "madam" was "boss" of that mountain ranch and gave orders with her poniard.
As the earliest beams of morning lit up the crests of the Apennines we fed on a roast of roe buck and quail, and barley bread washed down by goblets of Falernian wine that had been captured the day before from a pleasure party from Brindisi.
The goblets we drank from were skulls of former citizens of the world, who attempted to dally with the dictates of Roderick.
The noble chief Roderick and his imperial queen, Tamora, who seemed to rule her terrible husband, with one hundred of the most villainous cut-throats it had ever been my misfortune to behold, gave us a "great send off" from their inaccessible mountain lair.
Roderick gave William a talismanic ring that shown to any of his brother robbers on the globe would at once secure safety and hospitality.
Tamora in her sweetest mountain manner gave me a diamond hilted poniard, and then with a Fra Diavolo chorus, we were waved off down the precipitous crags with a special guide on the main road leading to imperial Rome.
William and myself drew long breaths after we had passed the Horatio Bridge, and planted our feet firmly on the Appian Way, leading direct to the precincts of Saint Peter's, with its lofty dome shining in the morning sun.
Gentle reader, if you have never been in battle or captured by robbers, you needn't "hanker" for the experience, but take it as you would your clothing, "second hand."
At the "Hotel Cæsar" we brushed the dust from our anatomy, and ordered dinner, which was served in fine style by a lineal descendant of the great Julius, who wore a spreading mustache, a purple smile and an abbreviated white apron.
In the afternoon we called on Pope Clement, who had heard of our experience with the robbers, and seemed very much interested in our narration of the details of our capture and entertainment.
Clement seemed to be a nice, smooth man, setting on a purple chair with a purple skull cap on his head, and a purple robe on his fat form.
His big toe was presented to us for adoration, but as we did not seem to "ad," he withdrew his pedal attachment and talked about the "relics" and the "weather."
We did not purchase any "relics," and as to the Roman "weather," no mortal who tries it in summer desires a second dose.
There seemed to be a continuous smell of something dead in the atmosphere of Rome, while the droves of virgins, monks, priests, bishops and cardinals seemed to be pressing through the streets, night and day, begging, singing, riding, and like ants, coming and going out of the churches continually.
Selling "relics," psalm singing and preaching was about all the business we could see in the Imperial City.
It is very funny how a fool habit will cling to the century pismires of humanity, and actually blind the elements of common sense and patent truth.
We were offered a job lot of "relics" for five florins, which included a piece of the true cross, a bit of the rope that hung Judas, a couple of hairs from the head of the Virgin Mary, a peeling from the apple of Mother Eve, a part of the toe nail of Saint Thomas, a finger of Saint John, a thigh bone of Saint Paul, a tooth of Saint Antony, and a feather of the cock of Saint Peter, but we persistently declined the proffered honors and true "relics of antiquity," spending the five florins for a "night liner" to wheel us about the grand architectural sights of the city of the Cæsars.
The night before leaving Rome William and myself climbed upon the topmost rim of the crumbling Coliseum and gazed down upon the sleeping moonlit capital with entranced admiration.
The night was almost as bright as day, and the mystic rays from the realm of Luna, shining on gate, arch, column, spire, tower, temple and dome, revealed to us the ghosts of vanished centuries, and from the depths of the Coliseum there seemed to rise the shouts of a hundred thousand voices, cheering the gladiator from Gaul, who had just slain a Numidian lion in the arena, when, with "thumbs up," he was proclaimed the victor, decorated with a crown of laurel and given his freedom forever.
Shakspere could not resist his natural gift of exuberant poetry to sound these chunks of eloquence to the midnight air, while I listened with enraptured enthusiasm to the elocution of the Bard:
Hark! Saint Peter, with his brazen tongue
Voices the hour of twelve;
The wizard tones of tireless Time
Thrills the silvery air;
The multitudinous world sleeps,
Pope and beggar alike—
In the land of lingering dreams—
Oblivious of glory,
Poverty, or war, destructive;
Sleep, the daily death of all
Throws her mesmeric mantle
Over prince and pauper;
And care, vulture of fleeting life
Folds her bedraggled wings
To rest a space, 'till first cock crow
Hails the glimmering dawn
With piercing tones triumphant;
Father Tiber, roaring, moves along
Under rude stony arches
And chafes the wrinkled, rocky shores
As when Romulus and Remus
Suckled wolf of Apennines!
Vain are all the triumphs of man.
These temples and palaces,
Reaching up to the brilliant stars
In soaring grandeur, vast—
Shall pass away like morning mist,
Leaving a wilderness of ruins.
And, where now sits pride, wealth and fraud
Pampered in purpled power—
The lizard, the bat and the wolf
Shall hold their habitation;
And the vine and the rag-weed
Swaying in the whistling winds
Shall sing their mournful requiem.
The silence of dark Babylon
Shall brood where millions struggled,
And naught shall be heard in cruel Rome,
But the wail of the midnight storm,
Echoing among the broken columns
Of its lofty, vanished glory—
Where vain, presumptive, midget man
Promised himself Immortality!
After five days of sightseeing we took the public stage for Milan, guarded by soldiers, and arrived safely on board the Albion, which sailed away, through the Strait of Messina, around classic Greece to Negropont and on to Alexandria, Egypt, where we anchored for a load of dates, figs and Persian spices.
William and myself took a boat up the Nile to Cairo, and hired a guide to steer us over the desert to the far-famed Pyramids.
There in the wild waste of desert sands these monuments to forgotten kings and queens lift their giant peaks, appealing to the centuries for recognition, but although the great granite stone memorials still remain as a wonder to mankind, the dark, silent mummies that sleep within and around these funereal emblems give back no sure voice as to when and where they lived, rose and fell in the long night of Egyptian darkness.
Remains of vast buried cities are occasionally exposed by the shifting, searching storm winds of the desert, and many a modern Arab has cooked his frugal breakfast by splinters picked up from the bones of his ancestors.
It was night when we got to the Pyramids, and we concluded to camp with an Arab and his family at the base of the great Cheops until next morning, and then before sunrise scale its steep steps and lofty crest.
A few silver coins insured us a warm greeting from the "Arab family," who seemed to vie with each other in preparing a hot supper and clean couches.
They sang their desert songs until nearly midnight, the daughter Cleo playing on the harp with dextrous fingers, and throwing a soft soprano voice upon the air, like the tones of an angel, echoing over a bank of wild flowers.
Standing on the pinnacle of the Pyramid William again struck one of his theatrical attitudes, and with outstretched hands exclaimed:
Immortal Sol! Image of Omnipotence!
To thee lift I my soul in pure devotion;
Out of desert wilds, in golden splendor,
Rise and flash thy crimson face, eternal—
Across the wastes of shifting, century sands;
Again is mirrored in my sighing soul
The lofty temples and bastioned walls
Of Memphis, Balback, Nineveh, Babylon—
Gone from the earth like vapor from old Nile,
When thy noonday beams lick up its waters!
Hark! I hear again the vanished voices
Of lofty Memnon, where proud pagan priests
Syllable the matin hour, uttering
Prophecies from Jupiter and Apollo—
To devotees deluded, then as now,
By astronomical, selfish fakirs,
Who pretend claim to heavenly agency
And power over human souls divine.
Poor bamboozled man; know God never yet
Empowered any one of his truant tribe
To ride with a creed rod, image of Himself;
And thou, oh Sol, giver of light and heat,
Speed the hour when man, out of superstition
Shall leap into the light of pure reason,
Only believing in everlasting Truth!
In a short time we crossed the sands of the desert and interviewed the Sphynx, but with that battered, solemn countenance, wrinkled by the winds and sands of ages, those granite lips still refused to give up the secrets of its stony heart, or tell us the mysteries of buried antiquity.
We were soon again in the cabin of the Albion, sailing away to Athens, where we anchored for two days.
William and myself ran hourly risk of breaking our legs and necks among the classic ruins of Athenian genius, where Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Sophocles, Euripides, Pericles, Alcibiades, Demosthenes, Zeno, Solon, Themestocles, Leonidas, Philip and Alexander had lived and loved in their glorious, imperishable careers.
We went on top of Mars Hill, and climbed to the top of the ruined Acropolis, disturbing a few lizards, spiders, bats, rooks and pigeons that made their homes where the eloquence of Greece once ruled the world.
William made a move to strike one of his accustomed dramatic attitudes, but I "pulled him off," remarking that he could not, in an impromptu way, do justice to the occasion, and intimated that when he arrived at the Red Lion in London, he could write up Cleopatra and Antony, and the ten-years' siege of Troy, with Helen, Agamemnon, Ulysses, Achilles, Pandarus, Paris, Troilus, Cressida and Hector as star performers in the plays.
It was not very often that I interfered with William in his personal movements and aspirations, but as he had given so much of his poetry in illustration of our recent travels, and knowing that I was in honor bound to report to posterity all he said and did as his mental stenographer, I begged him to "give us a rest," and "let it go at that."
The next day the Albion bore away for the Strait of Gibraltar, rounding Portugal, Spain and France, sailing into the Strait of Dover, passed Gravesend, until we anchored in safety under the shadow of the Blackfriars Theatre, where a jolly crowd of bohemians greeted our rapid and successful tour of continental and classic lands.
"This accident and flood of Fortune
So far exceed all instance, all discourse,
That I am ready to distrust mine eyes
And wrangle with my reason that
Persuades me to any other trust."