The Cruise of the Branwen

CHAPTER V THE PARTHENON Jadis, bien jeune encore, lorsque le jour splendide Sort de l'ombre vainqueur, Ton image a blesse, comme d'un trait rapide, Les forces de mon creur, Ah ! qu'il saigne ce creur ! et toi, mortelle vue, Garde toujours double Au dessus d'une mer egaree et chenue Un temple mutile. . . . IN the midst of a sublime horizon upon the rocky summit of its buttressed hill rises the cold and chaste perfection of the Parthenon against a burning sky. There is a solemnity about it that becomes almost tragic, and the impressions of a first visit, after you have climbed the limestone slopes and reached the hewn Pentelic marble at the top, are confused with a multitude of in– congruous associations. Byron, Chateaubriand, Mounet-Sully, Saint Paul: many more memories spring up, unbidden, inharmonious. Hector and Patroclus, Theseus and Ariadne, Odysseus and Nausicaa form themselves and fade, as in Faust's vision of immortal Helen and the face " that launched a thousand ships and stormed the topless towers of Ilium." But Pericles and 48