The captains of the ships that were not shattered,
Set speedy sail in flight as the winds blew.
The remnant of the host died miserably,
Some in Boeotia round the glimmering springs
Tired out with thirst; some of us scant of breath
Escaped, with bare life to the Phocian bounds,
And land of Doris, and the Melian Gulf,
Where with kind draughts Spercheius soaks the soil.
Thence in our flight Achaia's ancient plain
And Thessaly's stronghold received us worn
For want of food. Most died in that fell place
Of thirst and famine; for both deaths were there.
Yet to Magnesia came we and the coast
Of Macedonia, to the ford of Axius,
And Bolbe's canebrakes and the Pangæan range,
Edonian borders. Then in that grim night
God sent unseasonable frost, and froze
The stream of holy Strymon. He who erst
Recked nought of gods, now prayed with supplication,
Bowing before the powers of earth and sky.
But when the hosts from lengthy orisons
Surceased, it crossed the ice-incrusted ford.
And he among us who set forth before
The sun-god's rays were scattered, now was saved.
For blazing with sharp beams the sun's bright circle
Pierced the mid-stream, dissolving it with fire.
There were they huddled. Happy then was he
Who soonest cut the breath of life asunder.
Such as survived and had the luck of living,
Crossed Thrace with pain and peril manifold,
'Scaping mischance, a miserable remnant,
Into the dear land of their homes. Wherefore
Persia may wail, wanting in vain her darlings.
This is the truth. Much I omit to tell
Of woes by God wrought on the Persian race.

Upon this triumphal note it were well, perhaps, to pause. Yet since the sojourner in Athens must needs depart by sea, let us advance a little way farther beyond Salamis. The low shore of the isthmus soon appears; and there is the hill of Corinth and the site of the city, as desolate now as when Antipater of Sidon made the sea-waves utter a threnos over her ruins. 'The deathless Nereids, daughters of Oceanus,' still lament by the shore, and the Isthmian pines are as green as when their boughs were plucked to bind a victor's forehead. Feathering the grey rock now as then, they bear witness to the wisdom and the moderation of the Greeks, who gave to the conquerors in sacred games no wreath of gold, or title of nobility, or land, or jewels, but the honour of an illustrious name, the guerdon of a mighty deed, and branches taken from the wild pine of Corinth, or the olive of Olympia, or the bay that flourished like a weed at Delphi. What was indigenous and characteristic of his native soil, not rare and costly things from foreign lands, was precious to the Greek. This piety, after the lapse of centuries and the passing away of mighty cities, still bears fruit. Oblivion cannot wholly efface the memory of those great games while the fir-trees rustle to the sea-wind as of old. Down the gulf we pass, between mountain range and mountain. On one hand, two peaked Parnassus rears his cope of snow aloft over Delphi; on the other, Erymanthus and Hermes' home, Cyllene, bar the pastoral glades of Arcady. Greece is the land of mountains, not of rivers or of plains. The titles of the hills of Hellas smite our ears with echoes of ancient music—Olympus and Cithæron, Taygetus, Othrys, Helicon, and Ida. The headlands of the mainland are mountains, and the islands are mountain summits of a submerged continent. Austerely beautiful, not wild with an Italian luxuriance, nor mournful with Sicilian monotony of outline, nor yet again overwhelming with the sublimity of Alps, they seem the proper home of a race which sought its ideal of beauty in distinction of shape and not in multiplicity of detail, in light and not in richness of colouring, in form and not in size.

At length the open sea is reached. Past Zante and Cephalonia we glide 'under a roof of blue Ionian weather;' or, if the sky has been troubled with storm, we watch the moulding of long glittering cloud-lines, processions and pomps of silvery vapour, fretwork and frieze of alabaster piled above the islands, pearled promontories and domes of rounded snow. Soon Santa Maura comes in sight:—

Leucatæ nimbosa cacumina montis,
Et formidatus nautis aperitur Apollo.

Here Sappho leapt into the waves to cure love-longing, according to the ancient story; and he who sees the white cliffs chafed with breakers and burning with fierce light, as it was once my luck to see them, may well with Childe Harold 'feel or deem he feels no common glow.' All through the afternoon it had been raining, and the sea was running high beneath a petulant west wind. But just before evening, while yet there remained a hand's-breadth between the sea and the sinking sun, the clouds were rent and blown in masses about the sky. Rain still fell fretfully in scuds and fleeces; but where for hours there had been nothing but a monotone of greyness, suddenly fire broke and radiance and storm-clouds in commotion. Then, as if built up by music, a rainbow rose and grew above Leucadia, planting one foot on Actium and the other on Ithaca, and spanning with a horseshoe arch that touched the zenith, the long line of roseate cliffs. The clouds upon which this bow was woven were steel-blue beneath and crimson above; and the bow itself was bathed in fire—its violets and greens and yellows visibly ignited by the liquid flame on which it rested. The sea beneath, stormily dancing, flashed back from all its crest the same red glow, shining like a ridged lava-torrent in its first combustion. Then as the sun sank, the crags burned deeper with scarlet blushes as of blood, and with passionate bloom as of pomegranate or oleander flowers. Could Turner rise from the grave to paint a picture that should bear the name of 'Sappho's Leap,' he might strive to paint it thus: and the world would complain that he had dreamed the poetry of his picture. But who could dream anything so wild and yet so definite? Only the passion of orchestras, the fire-flight of the last movement of the C minor symphony, can in the realms of art give utterance to the spirit of scenes like this.

INDEX