DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.11448#0307
ma
CRESCENT AND THE CROSS
CHAPTER r.
the levant-beyrout
Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee,
Greece, Egypt, Tyre, Assyria—where are they?
Thy waters wasted them, when they were free,
And many a tyrant since. They now obey
The stranger, slave or savage—their decay
Has dried up realms to nations, not so thou ;
Unchangeable, save to thy wild waves' play:
Time writes no wrinkles on thine azure brow ;
Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.
Childe Harold
The " Levant" of the Italians, the " Orient" of the French,
the " Morgenland" of the Germans, and Eothen, now made clas.
sical by Kinglake, are mere paraphrases of the " East." The
former term is applied not only to the shores but to the seas, over
which the sun rises to the morningward of Malta. Bright and
blue as it is, and fringed by the brightest and most memorial
shores, it is yet a very lonely sea: wild winds, that are almost
Typhoons, sweep over it; iron coasts wrap it round, and to the
south of Cerigo there is not a safe harbour in all its wide expanse,
save that of Alexandria.
The commerce of the early world found shelter in the ports of
Tyre, Sidon, Acre, and other harbours for small craft, such as
that of Scanderoon. These are now filled up with the ruins of
fart. ii. 2
CRESCENT AND THE CROSS
CHAPTER r.
the levant-beyrout
Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee,
Greece, Egypt, Tyre, Assyria—where are they?
Thy waters wasted them, when they were free,
And many a tyrant since. They now obey
The stranger, slave or savage—their decay
Has dried up realms to nations, not so thou ;
Unchangeable, save to thy wild waves' play:
Time writes no wrinkles on thine azure brow ;
Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.
Childe Harold
The " Levant" of the Italians, the " Orient" of the French,
the " Morgenland" of the Germans, and Eothen, now made clas.
sical by Kinglake, are mere paraphrases of the " East." The
former term is applied not only to the shores but to the seas, over
which the sun rises to the morningward of Malta. Bright and
blue as it is, and fringed by the brightest and most memorial
shores, it is yet a very lonely sea: wild winds, that are almost
Typhoons, sweep over it; iron coasts wrap it round, and to the
south of Cerigo there is not a safe harbour in all its wide expanse,
save that of Alexandria.
The commerce of the early world found shelter in the ports of
Tyre, Sidon, Acre, and other harbours for small craft, such as
that of Scanderoon. These are now filled up with the ruins of
fart. ii. 2