The traditional site of the tomb of Themistocles, "a rock-hewn grave on the very margin of the sea generally covered with water," adjoins the lighthouse, which stands on the westernmost promontory of the Piræus, some three quarters of a mile from the entrance to the harbour. Plutarch, in his Themistocles (cap. xxxii.), is at pains to describe the exact site of the "altar-like tomb," and quotes the passage from Plato (the comic poet, B.C. 428-389) which Cumberland paraphrases. Byron and Hobhouse "made the complete circuit of the peninsula of Munychia," January 18, 1810.—Travels in Albania, 1858, i. 317, 318.]
[cg] {86}
Fair clime! where ceaseless summer smiles
Benignant o'er those blessed isles,
Which seen from far Colonna's height,
Make glad the heart that hails the sight,
And lend to loneliness delight.
There shine the bright abodes ye seek,
Like dimples upon Occan's cheek,
So smiling round the waters lave
These Edens of the Eastern wave.
Or if, at times, the transient breeze
Break the smooth crystal of the seas,
Or brush one blossom from the trees,
How grateful is each gentle air
That wakes and wafts the fragrance there.—[MS.]
——the fragrance there.—[Second Edition.]
[56] The attachment of the nightingale to the rose is a well-known Persian fable. If I mistake not, the "Bulbul of a thousand tales" is one of his appellations.
[Thus Mesihi, as translated by Sir William Jones—
"Come, charming maid! and hear thy poet sing,
Thyself the rose and he the bird of spring:
Love bids him sing, and Love will be obey'd.
Be gay: too soon the flowers of spring will fade."
"The full style and title of the Persian nightingale (Pycnonotus hæmorrhous) is 'Bulbul-i-hazár-dástán,' usually shortened to 'Hazar' (bird of a thousand tales = the thousand), generally called 'Andalib.'" (See Arabian Nights, by Richard F. Burton, 1887; Supplemental Nights, iii. 506.) For the nightingale's attachment to the rose, compare Moore's Lalla Rookh—
"Oh! sooner shall the rose of May
Mistake her own sweet nightingale," etc.
(Ed. "Chandos Classics," p. 423)
and Fitzgerald's translation of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (stanza vi.)—