Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

Sweet-breathing May is on the Golden Horn,
And that can be no star which I behold
Fixed in the cloudless noon, a spot of gold
Bright as the single orb which doth adorn
The rosy flush of morn.

491

O that it were an emblem half so chaste,
Or one which to a Christian stranger's eye
Read no reproachful comment on the past!
See, how it shines, how starlike up on high
In its tranquillity!
It is the prophet's Crescent mutely gleaming,
And far across the blue Propontis streaming
From St. Sophia's stately cupola;
And I, all wrapped in melancholy dreaming,
In spite of sunny May,
Could weep the hours away
For ages past, which to my vision rise
With solemn pomp of bitter memories.

II

Here, in sweet Eyoub, May's scent-laden breath
Steals through the cypress vistas faint and cool,
And gathered round me are the beautiful
And soothing sights of this voluptuous faith,
Veiling the woe of death.
The minarets with gleamy shafts repose
Within the green embraces of a plane,
Whose lower boughs a very realm of rose
With countless links of flower doth interchain,
And mounting blends again
With pendent bowers of quince, all blossoming,
White as a snow-wreath in the eye of spring,
Whose lithe twigs trail in fringes on the ground;
And flights of sacred pigeons on the wing,
And turtles heard all round,
As though a natural sound
From the sad cypress breathed, my fancy wooed,
A paradise of earthly solitude.

492

III

See, how the cypress fastens on the steep
With its red starting roots, and slanting throws
Its sable spires in endless leaning rows,
Just tremulously stirred when breezes creep
By fits from off the deep!
The pointed arch, the floor of withered leaves,
The architecture of the sombre glade,
The nightingale doth claim; and there he grieves,
Well pleased to have that night-by-day, the shade
Perpetually made
By the dusk foliage for his shrinking eye;
And there he dwells, renouncing the blue sky
For ever, and with mournful heart beguiles
His penitence of life-long melody;
And in the shadowy aisles
The sun though green mists smiles,
Save when the wind may part the graceful plumes,
For eve to gild the turban-headed tombs.

IV

Not weary is the weight of sober thought,
When we can read in nature's genial eye
An answer to our own solemnity,
And all the images around, untaught
By our own mood, are fraught
With an inherent sadness. Yet, oh never
Was there a spot on earth where melancholy
Should be more sued with purpose and endeavour
And greedy welcome, or should be more wholly
A growth of nature, solely

493

And deeply spiritual, than the glooms
Of these cool leafy crypts, whose airy plumes
Speak low as if endued with some dim sense
Of what they symbolize! There, mid the tombs
I lie, and viewed from thence,
In contrast most intense,
Doth the poor desecrated city seem
All beautiful and clear as childhood's dream.

V

Not the soft transit of a summer cloud
Doth interrupt that eastern show: the sea
Reflects the unstained heaven, and airs are free
To bend the falling fountains in the proud
And jealous screens that shroud
The mosque's refulgent domes; and in the limes,
Which gird Suleiman's cloister, from his cell
The stockdove emulates the lisping chimes
Of the Propontid breeze, or rustling swell
Born of the invisible
And restless spirit of the Euxine. There
The sweet creation, innocently fair,
In nought doth its magnificent office miss:
The blessing circulates through sea and air,
And the original bliss
Of earth unfettered is;
Yet o'er the heart a humbling shade is cast,
While thought confronts the present with the past.

494

VI

A ceremonial comes! Before mine eye
A twin procession through the tombs doth press,
With angel pursuivants, in silentness.
Slowly the phantom-pageant glimmers by,
The twofold destiny,
Dimly impersonated, of old Rome,
Mother and mistress of the western world,
And this fair city, Constantine's new home,
A Christian vision suddenly unfurled
When the false gods were hurled
From their foul thrones. See how the figures climb
The hill of Eyoub in array sublime,
And yet with difficult slowness, like the old,
Laic or priestly, who at holy time
Are fain to be enrolled
In some procession, bold
In heart, but soon heat-stricken left and weary
Outside the portal of the sanctuary.

VII

So seemed those destinies but half fulfilled,
For each in working out its doom had faltered,
And, once again renewed, had swerved, and altered
The orbit wherein God its mission willed;
And each methought had spilled
Somewhat of the quick life which had been given
Unto them for an instinct, oft impelling
Their awful fortunes, like the Hand of Heaven,

495

Across the unwilling earth,—a strange indwelling
Mysteriously swelling
Through the tumultuous records of the past:
In more than mortal mould their deeds were cast,
Cities anointed to a singular doom
And in a special law of fate embraced:
Yet, ah! thou, pagan Rome,
And thou, bright eastern home!
Ye both have failed, world-stricken left and weary,
Short of the ends which were your sanctuary.

VIII

If we believe no more than what we see,
How undivine is earth! If to the sense
There be no seams of mighty Providence,
No lucid furrows by some past decree
Worn on the land or sea,
Is not the world a cipher we have lost?
Nay, rather let us in her cities kneel,
Pilgrims not idly borne from coast to coast,
And kiss the footprints of the Invisible,
Which haply we may spell
In vision true, inscriptions half effaced,
Where with His Church in ancient times He passed;
And let us sink in adoration down
Before the dark prophetic shadows cast
On destined field or town,—
Through sin there earthward thrown,
Here for awhile drawn backward at the prayer
Of the weak saints who thrones and states upbear.

496

IX

Hail, mighty Rome, that in the panoply
Of thy past greatness still art bravely clad!
Slowly didst thou emerge from out the shade,
Till thou hadst filled the terror-stricken eye
Of wide humanity:
Yet not from the majestic heathen ruin
Of thy first self couldst thou e'er extricate
Thy second life: for there was no undoing
The yet unsated curse which doth await
Thy lingering secular State;
Albeit Christ's Holy Church, upon thy hill
A sojourner, detains a blessing still,
And woos the impending wrath awhile to pause.
Dread city! yet she doth but half fulfil
Her office, while she draws
By mediæval laws
The Church and World augustly into one,
And, for men's sins, leaves the grand work undone.

X

See this fair birth of British Constantine,
Which, like a sweet disdainful vision, loth
To brook the tardy pace of common growth,
Sprang from the shore, even as a quivering line
Of sudden lamps doth shine
Upon a festal night! And there advanced,
The very outpost of the Christian East,
Like a memorial beacon-fire it glanced

497

Through the vexed ages, till the light decreased
Slowly from less to least.
A sign might this uncradled city be
Of the new power and virgin unity,
Wherewith the founder hoped to recement
The fissures in the outworn majesty
Of ancient Rome, intent
To make that element
A trick of State: there! see the type unfurled!
The Church brooks no alliance with the world.

XI

Ah, how the past is crowding on mine eyes;
A stirring maze with nodding figures blent,
Like rings uncleared before the tournament!
Through all the streets I hear the midnight cry,
When Arius from on high
Was struck; and down into the cypress gloom,
Hailing the mystic colors, strangely fall
The fourfold clamors of the Hippodrome:
And with wild surge outside yon bulging wall
The Latin armies call
For entrance: and amazed I hear the clash,
And see the foamy war-horse madly dash
Across the pavement, like a mirror, lying
Around the altar, and the lamplights flash
Upon the virgins flying,
And the rude conqueror crying
“For God and Mahomet,” while at the word
Sophia's Angel sheathes his guardian sword.

498

XII

O scene thrice beautiful! the tier on tier
Of mulberry-tinted houses by the spires
Of cypress intersected, and the fires
Of countless crescents topped, while, like a mere,
The blue sea murmurs near.
O'er terrace, tower, and gleamy-roofed kiosk
A dipping cloud of foliage lightly swings,
And on that cypress thicket by the mosque
The royal fleet its crimson pennants flings,
Like magic blossomings
Wooed from the sombre trees by sunny May.
The fair Seraglio Point appears to sway,
Like a trim galley, at her anchorage
Between two seas. Ah me! on such a day
From out the bright mirage
We scarce can disengage
Sunshine and shadow, doubtful if it be
True city or an eastern phantasy.

XIII

There is in this fair spot a Turkish faith,
Which prophesies, though in its own despite,
And is unto my wandering hopes a light,—
That they with calmer grace can bow to death,
Secure to lie beneath
The hallowed soil of Asian Scutari:
Europe, to whose impatient skirts they cling,
Once more a bodily Christendom shall be,
And on the Bosphorus shall sweet bells ring
With ancient welcoming.

499

Like faith is mine; though on the flowery steeps,
By oath detained, Sophia's Angel weeps
O'er the imperial city's demon-trance;
Yet his kind, prescient vigil there he keeps,
And with unruffled glance
Looks o'er the dim expanse
Of Euxine, where the vast prophetic scroll
The patient North doth visibly unroll!