Thou art a portal, whence the Orient,
The long-desired, long-dreamt-of, Orient,
Opens upon us, with its stranger forms,
Outlines immense and gleaming distances,
And all the circumstance of faery-land.
Not only with a present happiness,
But taking from anticipated joys

An added sense of actual bliss, we stand
Upon thy cliffs, or tread the slopes that leave
No interval of shingle, rock, or sand,

Between their verdure and the Ocean's brow,—
Whose olive-groves (unlike the darkling growth,
That earns on western shores the traveller's scorn)
Can wear the grey that on their foliage lies,
As but the natural hoar of lengthened days,-
Making, with their thick-bossed and fissured trunks,
Bases far-spread and branches serpentine,
Sylvan cathedrals, such as in old times
Gave the first life to Gothic art, and led
Imagination so sublime a way.

Then forth advancing, to our novice eyes
How beautiful appears the concourse clad
In that which, of all garbs, may best befit
The grace and dignity of manly form:
The bright-red open vest, falling upon
The white thick-folded kirtle, and low cap

Above the high-shorn brow.

Nor less than these, With earnest joy, and not injurious pride, We recognise of Britain and her force The wonted ensigns and far-known array ; And feel how now the everlasting Sea, Leaving his old and once imperious Spouse, To faint, in all the beauty of her tears, On the dank footsteps of a mouldering throne, Has taken to himself another mate, Whom his uxorious passion has endowed, Not only with her antique properties, But with all other gifts and privilege, Within the circle of his regal hand.

Now forward,-forward on a beaming path,
But be each step as fair as hope has feigned it,
For me, the memory of the little while,
That here I rested happily, within

The close-drawn pale of English sympathies,
Will bear the fruit of many an after-thought,
Bright in the dubious track of after-years.

A DREAM OF SAPPHO.

THE range of rocks which forms the "Leucadian Promontory," on one side shelving to the sea's brink and clothed with greenish heather, on the other fearfully precipitous and of the purest chalk, reminds you much more forcibly of the dread with which of old they filled the approaching mariner *, than of their anti-erotic powers of purgation. The Temple of Apollo, which stood near its extremity, seems to have had reference to both these purposes. Even when the edifice no longer remained to receive the offerings and adjurations of the trembling seamen, a record of the religion of the place was left; and, in these late days, Kendrick mentions that he saw the sailors cast obols into the sea to propitiate the present power. It is also no bad illustration of the different ways in which faith sways the minds of men, that, with regard to the more marvellous function of this sacred shore, lovers, in the cooler stage of Grecian mythology, no longer undertook the ordeal leap, but were content to court the favour of the god by the same safe method of pecuniary oblation. The origin and meaning of the fable itself is most obscure. The gods did not make the Jupiter used it with infallible

miracle, but found it there; success :-this was all Apollo could tell Venus about it, when she asked him the reason of the immediate cessation of her love for Adonis, on leaping from this rock into her native element, and we cannot be expected to know more. But the

*Formidatus nautis. Vir. Æn. iii. 272.

mystery is greatly increased when the experiment passes from divine to mortal adventurers; for that any one of merely human capabilities could jump from any part of this line of cliff, without being dashed to pieces against the rocks below by the fall itself and the raving surge seems quite impossible, even though the devotee were winged or feathered with all the skill of mechanical art. Sappho, the half-goddess, is the first mortal on record who made the trial, and her attempt is followed by that of many of less noble fame of both sexes with various success. In her legend, which is fresh among the people, Phaon is of course the King of the island, and the Poetess a foreign Queen. He slights her passion, and she wanders over the hills in agony of heart; heedless of her steps she falls over the precipice. Another version makes her a "duchessa," to account in a popular way for the Venetian name of the "Doge's Point" (Capo Ducato), which the promontory now bears. Perhaps the adjoining bay and village of "Basilike" may have some connexion with the memory of Queen Artemisia, another heroine of "the leap ;" and the ancient worship of the sun-god have something to do with the selection of "St. Elias," as the saint peculiarly reverenced in the island, in the same manner as Bellerophon speeding his northward flight in quest of the Chimæra has, in its heraldic distinction, assumed the form of "St. George on horseback.

THE mariners were all asleep,

Save one half-dreaming at the stern,
Who gently bade me upward turn
My eyes, long gazing on the deep.
The wind had stol'n away,—our skiff
Rested, as if its sails were furled,
Upon the tide which softly curled

Around a triple-breasted cliff,

Whose steeps, in mistiest day-time bright,
Were almost above nature white,
Bare-fronted to the westering moon,

For the autumn night had past its noon.

I prayed that not a soul might wake,-
To be left utterly alone,—

That not the faintest human tone,

The silence of that time might break;

When, as of old the alien maids,

Who sanctified Dodona's shades,

Drew out the tale of human fate,
From sounds of things inanimate,

Wont with inclinèd ear to listen,

Where branches rock or fountains rise,

Till high intelligences glisten

In their intense Egyptian eyes,— So I began, in that light breeze, Glancing along those noted seas,

To trace a harmony distinct,

A meaning in each change of tone, And sound to sound more strangely linkt, Than in my awe I dared to own :— But when in clearer unison

That marvellous concord still went on,

And, gently as a blossom grows,

A frame of syllables uprose,