WHERE IS THE SEA?
SONG OF THE GREEK ISLANDER IN EXILE.
[A Greek Islander, being taken to the Vale of Tempe, and called upon to admire its beauty, only replied—“The sea—where is it?”]
Where is the sea?—I languish here—
Where is my own blue sea?
With all its barks in fleet career,
And flags, and breezes free?
I miss that voice of waves which first
Awoke my childhood’s glee;
The measured chime—the thundering burst—
Where is my own blue sea?
Oh! rich your myrtle’s breath may rise,
Soft, soft your winds may be;
Yet my sick heart within me dies—
Where is my own blue sea?
I hear the shepherd’s mountain flute,
I hear the whispering tree;
The echoes of my soul are mute,
—Where is my own blue sea?
[All this time, her imagination was at work more busily than ever; new thoughts and fresh fancies seemed to spring up “as willows by the water-courses:” and the facility with which her lyrics were poured forth, approached, in many instances, to actual improvisation. When confined to her bed, and unable to use a pen, she would often employ the services of those about her, to write down what she had composed. “Felicia has just sent for me,” wrote her amanuensis on one of these occasions, “with pencil and paper, to put down a little song, (‘Where is the Sea?’) which, she said, had come to her like a strain of music, whilst lying in the twilight under the infliction of a blister; and as I really think ‘a scrap’ (as our late eccentric visitor would call it) composed under such circumstances, is, to use the words of Coleridge, a ‘psychological curiosity,’ I cannot resist copying it for you. It was suggested by a story she somewhere read lately, of a Greek islander, carried off to the Vale of Tempe, and pining amidst all its beauties for the sight and sound of his native sea.”—Memoir, p. 134.]