The Life, Travels, and Literary Career of Bayard TaylorConwell, Russell H.
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The Life, Travels, and Literary Career of Bayard Taylor
Conwell, Russell H.
Taylor, Bayard, 1825-1878
“The wild and windy morning is lit with lurid fire;
The thundering surf of ocean beats on the rocks of Tyre,—
Beats on the fallen columns and round the headland roars,
And hurls its foamy volume along the hollow shores,
And calls with angry clamor, that speaks its long desire:
‘Where are the ships of Tarshish, the mighty ships of Tyre?’
Within her cunning harbor, choked with invading sand,
No galleys bring their freightage, the spoils of every land,
And like a prostrate forest, when autumn gales have blown,
Her colonnades of granite lie shattered and o’erthrown;
And from the reef the pharos no longer flings its fire,
To beacon home from Tarshish, the lordly ships of Tyre.”
“Where is the wealth of ages that heaped thy princely mart?
The pomp of purple trappings; the gems of Syrian art;
The silken goats of Kedar; Sabæa’s spicy store;
The tributes of the islands thy squadrons homeward bore,
When in thy gates triumphant they entered from the sea
With sound of horn and sackbut, of harp and psaltery.”
“Though silent and forgotten, yet Nature still laments
The pomp and power departed, the lost magnificence:
The hills were proud to see thee, and they are sadder now;
The sea was proud to bear thee, and wears a troubled brow,
And evermore the surges chant forth their vain desire:
‘Where are the ships of Tarshish, the mighty ships of Tyre?’”
One of the most sublime experiences of life is to stand where he stood,
with the great waves rolling up the beach and shaking the earth with
their powerful surges, and with the spray breaking about the dark ruins
of the ancient city, and there repeat the poem from which the above
verses are taken. It gives power and life to the words which can never
be felt or seen by those who have never heard the bellowings or felt the
shocks of the Mediterranean surf.
From Tyre he ascended Mount Carmel, and following the shore to Jaffa,
took the usual route to Jerusalem. It was the most pleasant season of the
year (April), and all vegetation was fast springing into its bountiful
life. The cactus, orange, and pomegranate were in bloom, and all nature
seemed in its most cheerful mood. So like a paradise did it look to him,
that it was some little time before he could get into that frame of mind
which brought a realization that he was in that land of great renown. But
as that thrilling moment arrived when he stepped upon the highest plateau
of the mountains near Jerusalem and looked with astonished eyes over the
valley and on the “City of our God and the mountain of his holiness,”
he felt, with a sudden thrill, that he was in the presence of the Great
and the Holy. With emotions that cannot be described he rode over those
sacred fields and entered the gates of the city.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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