So swoln the torrent was, its back would seem
Able to carry ships however great;
But this so light was, any other stream,
However slightly increased, had borne its weight.
VIII
Swifter, far swifter, than their natural way,
The breezes drive the vessel towards the shore
Around its prow the sea is blanched with spray,
And in its wake the broken billows roar.
Lo! they now reach a spacious estuary,
Whose larger bed the river calms, since here,
Merged in the vast abysses of the sea,
It nought becomes, at least doth naught appear.
IX
Scarce did the enchanted vessel touch the mouth
Of the great troubled deep that roared and rolled,
Than disappeared the clouds, and from the south
Ceased the strong blasts that had a storm foretold;
Planed was each mountain wave by zephyrs mild,
That only curled its fair cerulean breast;
And heaven, a sweet serene diffusing, smiled,
Nor ever had a calmer look possessed.
X
They passed by Ascalon, and westward steered
The little vessel thro’ the halcyon sea,
And soon the famous town of Gaza neared,
Which was the port of Gaza formerly;
Increasing then, on others’ fall, it rose
Into a city powerful, great, and grand,
Whose teeming plains and swarming shores disclose
Almost as many men as grains of sand.
XI
The travellers, looking towards the land, descry
Of fluttering tents illimitable store;
Distinguish cavalry and infantry
Pass to and fro from city to the shore;
Camels and elephants great weights transport,
Beneath whose tread the sandy paths subside;
And in the deep recesses of the port
View the moored vessels at their anchors ride.
XII
Some spread the flowing canvas, some attest
The strength and swiftness of the straining oar;
And as they cleave the water’s yielding breast,
Sparkles the foam in silver clouds before.
Then spake the damsel: ‘Tho’ ye now behold
Both land and sea filled with the impious race,
Not all his forces has the king enrolled;
This does not all his mighty host embrace.
XIII
‘Alone from Egypt and its confines he
Has mustered these; those distant he attends,
Since the vast sway of his authority
Far to the east and glowing south extends;
So that I trust we shall have homewards sped
Ere he has struck his tents, or left the coast,
He, or whatever captain in his stead
Appointed may be to command the host.’
XIV
While speaking thus, like scornful eagle, who
Passes ‘mid other birds in fearless flight,
And, soaring upwards, is soon lost to view
In the full splendour of the sun’s broad light;
So ‘mid the different ships her shallop flew,
Nor had the damsel the least care or dread
That they would either hinder or pursue.
Away, away, with unslacked speed she sped,
XV
And in a moment Raffia reached, the town
That first in Syria’s kingdom doth appear
To those from Egypt coming; then sailed down
The lonely coast of barren Rinocere.
Not distant far a mountain they espied
That towers in lordly grandeur o’er the main,
Whose base is washed by the unstable tide,
Whose bowels Pompey’s famous bones contain.
XVI
Then Damietta they observe, and see
How the broad Nile her heaven-born tribute pays,
Thro’ her seven famous channels, to the sea,
And thro’ a hundred other lesser ways;
Then pass that famous city which the Greek
Founded for Greek inhabitants of yore;
Then on past Pharos, once an island bleak
Cut off from land, but which now joins the shore.
XVII
Far to the northward Rhodes she leaves, and Crete,
And coasting towards barbaric Afric stands,
Whose shores alone are tilled and wave with wheat;
Within are monsters and unfruitful sands.
Then Marmorica and the coast she shaves,
Where once Cyrene’s five proud cities stood;
Here Tolomita, and, with its calm waves,
There view the source of fabled Lethe’s flood.
XVIII
The greater Syrtes, the bold seaman’s dread,
Landward, she shuns, and keeps well out to sea;
And, doubling round Giudeca’s beetling head,
Passes the Magra’s mouth; then Tripoli
They view upon the coast, but can’t perceive
The spot where Malta’s neighbouring lowlands lie;
Then the other Syrtes and Alzerbe leave,
The dwelling once of the Lotophagi.
XIX
Her bay extending two high hills between,
Upon the moon-shaped sea-board, Tunis stands —
Tunis, the wealthy and the honoured queen
Of cities, noted throughout Lybia’s lands;
On the opposite side Sicilia sits, and rears
His brow great Lilybæum; and here shows
The damsel the illustrious cavaliers
The historic site where once proud Carthage rose.
XX
Low lies proud Carthage; scarcely does the shore
A trace retain of her wide ruins now.
Great cities die, realms sink to rise no more,
Rank weeds and sand deface their pomp; yet thou
Wouldst seem to spurn mortality, vain man!
Thou mass of grasping selfishness and pride!
They reach Biserta then, and, farther on,
Sardinia leave upon the other side.
XXI
Then skirt those plains where nomad Arabs lead
A pastoral life; Bugia pass, Algiers,
Vile nests of pirates; when, still more ahead,
Oran, with its white minarets, appears;
Then coast along wild Tingitana’s shores,
The nurse of lion and of elephant;
Now kingdom of Morocco and the Moors,
Then Fez, then over to Granada slant,
XXII
Reaching those straits thro’ which Alcides’ hand
Poured in the ocean, as old fables feign;
It may be true ‘twere once continuous land,
That some convulsion rudely rent in twain;
The barrier burst, in rushed the sweeping main;
Here Abyla thrusting, forcing Calpé there,
Thus Afric severing by a gulf from Spain:
Such are the changes to which Nature’s heir.
XXIII
Four times in orient had appeared the sun
Since the weird vessel left the land, nor e’er
Had, since ‘twere needless, into harbour run,
And so much had performed of her career,
When, having passed the entrance of the strait,
Fearless she plunged into the unbounded sea:
But if it here, where land-locked, is so great,
When it surrounds the land, what must it be?
XXIV
Thro’ the high billows, Cadiz now no more,
Nor its two neighbouring cities, they descry:
They quit entirely sight of land and shore;
Sky bounds the ocean, ocean bounds the sky.
Then spake Ubal
d: ‘O maiden, who hast led
Us to this pathless infinite expanse,
Say, has ship e’er been here, and if ahead,
In the world we seek, exist inhabitants?’
XXV
And she: ‘When Hercules, with powerful hand,
The monsters slew of Afric and of Spain,
And had passed over and subdued your land,
Yet durst not tempt the perils of the main;
He fixed these Pillars, and within restrained,
In sphere too small, the ambition of mankind.
But great Ulysses his commands disdained:
No limits could his thirst for knowledge bind.
XXVI
‘He boldly past those fabled columns sailed,
And seawards plied his oars’ audacious sweep;
But naught his knowledge of the sea availed;
Engulphed he was by the voracious deep,
Where, with his body, still concealed, remains
His hapless fate, untold by mortal lips.
If others there were driven by hurricanes,
They turned not back, or perished with their ships.
XXVII
‘So that unknown is this vast sea’s expanse;
A thousand isles and realms are here unknown;
Nor is the land without inhabitants,
But teeming, rich, and fruitful as your own;
Not barren can that powerful influence be
Which the sun sheds.’ Then, as away they whirled,
Resumed Ubaldo: ‘Ah, relate to me,
The laws and worship of that hidden world.’
XXVIII
‘As various as their races,’ she begun,
‘Their customs, rites, and language are; nay, more,
Some worship beasts, and some the stars and sun;
Some the great common mother Earth adore;
Others there are that load their loathsome boards
With food at which the sickening thoughts rebel;
Barbarous, in short, and atheist are the hordes,
That on the western side of Calpe dwell.’
XXIX
‘Has, then, that God,’ enquired the curious youth,
‘Whose advent to immortal light gave birth,
Willed to withhold all glimmer of the truth
From such a mighty portion of the earth?’
‘No,’ answered she; ‘nay, more, St. Peter’s faith
Will there with every civil art expand;
Nor will this long and seeming endless path
Divide you always from that distant land.
XXX
‘The day will come when to the sailor bold
Alcides’ marks will be a myth; each sea,
Whose very name remains as yet untold,
And unknown realms, will then illustrious be;
And the most chivalrous of all the ships
Will circumnavigate the sea-girt sphere,
Measure the earths dimensions, and eclipse
The sun in her victorious career.
XXXI
‘Foremost of all, a gallant Genoese
Will tempt that unknown, that untrodden course;
No dubious clime, no inhospitable seas,
No tempest, with resounding menace hoarse,
No peril of most formidable kind,
No dread, no danger, howsoever great,
Will mew his noble and magnanimous mind
Within the limits of that narrow strait.
XXXII
‘Thou shalt, Columbus! spread thy favoured sail
Towards a new world, which so far distant lies,
That Fame, almost to reach thy flight, will fail,
Or with her thousand wings or thousand eyes:
Let her chaunt Bacchus’ and Alcides’ praise;
Thy name alone suffices for thy glory;
Thy very memory, to all future days,
Will furnish theme of deathless song and story.’
XXXIII
Thus spake the maid, and thro’ the watery way
Steered towards the west, and then to southward bore,
Seeing behind how rose the new-born day,
And how the sun in glory set before;
But at the moment when her rays and dews
Around her beautiful Aurora spread,
They saw afar a hazy mountain lose
Amid o’erhanging clouds its lofty head;
XXXIV
But when its form the mist no longer hides,
They see it its own real shape bespeak,
Resembling Egypt’s pointed pyramids,
Large at the base, and tapering towards the peak;
And such a smoking, fiery cone display,
As that ‘neath which Enceladus doth lie,
Whose nature ’tis to vomit smoke by day,
And thro’ the night illume with flame the sky.
XXXV
Then other islands they behold, less great,
And other cliffs, less lofty and less steep;
This is the group of isles called Fortunate
In olden times, and still that title keep;
Whose friendly skies were counted so benign,
That there spontaneously the untilled earth
Was deemed to bear, and there the unpruned vine
To the most prized and luscious fruit gave birth.
XXXVI
The olive there ne’er blossoms to deceive,
There odorous honey trickles from the oak;
There, murmuring softly, rivulets receive
Their sparkling crystal from the living rock;
There to the dew of freshening zephyr yields
The summer’s heat, which ne’er oppressive grows;
And placed are there the famed Elysian fields,
Where the glad spirits of the blest repose.
XXXVII
Making for these, the damsel said: ( Now ye
Approach your journey’s end, O cavaliers;
These are the isles of Fortune that you see,
Whose great, but doubtful fame has reached your ears;
Most fertile, gay, and beautiful they are,
But false reports exaggerate what’s true.’
While speaking this, their lovely escort near
To the first island of the decade drew.
XXXVIII
Then Charles: ‘O lady, if the high emprise
That leads us here forbid not the demand,
Let us debark, and feast our longing eyes
Upon the marvels of this unknown land;
The people see, their customs and their rites;
All that to sage just cause of envy were,
If to the world recounting the strange sights,
I could exclaim, I saw them, I was there!’
XXXIX
She answered: ‘The request is worthy thee,
O noble cavalier; but what can I,
If Heaven’s severe inviolable decree
Refuses with thy wishes to comply?
Since the full period has not yet come round,
That God has for the great discovery planned,
Nor may ye carry from the vast profound
Authentic news to your benighted land.
XL
‘To you ’tis given, by favour from the skies,
Far to transgress the sailor’s common track;
To arrive where bound the captive warrior lies,
And to the glowing orient lead him back;
Let this suffice, for farther to aspire
Were to grow haughty, and wage war with fate.’
Ev’n as she spoke, the second isle seemed higher,
And the first in proportion to abate.
XLI
Then by the knights, she showing them, is seen
How eastward all in lengthened order rise,
And that the space of sea which breaks between
Each isle, is almost of an equal size.
In s
even they huts and cultivation see,
With other signs that of man’s presence tell;
Three are a desert, where, secure and free,
Wild beasts in forest and in mountain dwell.
XLII
In one of these a lone spot they survey,
Where the shore forms a crescent, and extends
Two lengthened horns, between which a vast bay
It holds concealed; a rock the port defends,
And, fronting landwards, with its back defies
And stems the waves that from the westward sweep;
On either side two beetling headlands rise,
Landmarks for sailors o’er the pathless deep.
XLIII
Beneath, the ocean sleeps in peace profound,
Above, dark woods a gloomy landscape made,
Midway, a cavern lay with ivy crowned,
With waters pleasant, and inviting shade;
Ne’er rope, nor anchor with tenacious fluke,
Ships binds nor bridles where such calm prevails.
The damsel entered that secluded nook,
And in a moment furled the flowing sails.
XLIV
Then said: ‘Sir knights, that lofty pile which lies
Upon the summit of you mount, survey;
There, lost in sloth and sensualities,
Christ’s champion whiles his worthless life away.
With the sun rising for your escort, ye
By that ascent must seek the enchanted bower;
Nor such detention chide, since each would be,
Except the matin, an ill-omened hour.
XLV
‘By daylight, which still gilds the mountain’s side,
Far as its base ye can with safety reach.’
At the dismissal of their noble guide,
They leaped with joy upon the wished-for beach,
And found the road, that led to it thus far,
So easy, that no need they felt of rest;
And, at the foot arrived, saw Phoebus’ car
Rolling still distant from the ocean’s breast
XLVI
By many a precipice and ruin they
Perceive they must to the high summit pass;
And that with ice and snow is strewn the way,
While all beyond is flowers and emerald grass.
Near its white chin the hair all verdant grows,
And wintry frost preserves unsullied faith
With the fair lily and the delicate rose:
Such power enchantment over nature hath.
XLVII
In a wild spot, with matted shade o’errun,
At the hill’s foot the warriors passed the night;
But with the earliest blushes of the sun,
Eternal fountain of God’s golden light,
‘Up! up!’ they both exclaimed, and recommenced
Their journey with a prompt determined will,
When a fierce dragon crossed their path, and fenced
(Horrid, diverse!) their passage to the hill.
Jerusalem Delivered Page 94
