Eothen [114]
and cool to the eyes, and freshening the sense with their earthy and bitter fragrance. There is a lane opened through the thicket, so broad in some places that you can pass along side by side; in some so narrow (the shrubs are for ever encroaching) that you ought, if you can, to go on the first and hold back the bough of the rose-tree. And through this wilderness there tumbles a loud rushing stream, which is halted at last in the lowest corner of the garden, and there tossed up in a fountain by the side of the simple alcove. This is all.
* The rose-trees which I saw were all of the kind we call "damask"; they grow to an immense height and size.
Never for an instant will the people of Damascus attempt to separate the idea of bliss from these wild gardens and rushing waters. Even where your best affections are concerned, and you, prudent preachers, "hold hard" and turn aside when they come near the mysteries of the happy state, and we (prudent preachers too), we will hush our voices, and never reveal to finite beings the joys of the "earthly paradise."
CHAPTER XXVIII - PASS OF THE LEBANON
"THE ruins of Baalbec!" Shall I scatter the vague, solemn thoughts and all the airy phantasies which gather together when once those words are spoken, that I may give you instead tall columns and measurements true, and phrases built with ink? No, no; the glorious sounds shall still float on as of yore, and still hold fast upon your brain with their own dim and infinite meaning.
Come! Baalbec is over; I got "rather well" out of that.
The path by which I crossed the Lebanon is like, I think, in its features to one which you must know, namely, that of the Foorca in the Bernese Oberland. For a great part of the way I toiled rather painfully through the dazzling snow, but the labour of ascending added to the excitement with which I looked for the summit of the pass. The time came. There was a minute in the which I saw nothing but the steep, white shoulder of the mountain, and there was another minute, and that the next, which showed me a nether heaven of fleecy clouds that floated along far down in the air beneath me, and showed me beyond the breadth of all Syria west of the Lebanon. But chiefly I clung with my eyes to the dim, steadfast line of the sea which closed my utmost view. I had grown well used of late to the people and the scenes of forlorn Asia - well used to tombs and ruins, to silent cities and deserted plains, to tranquil men and women sadly veiled; and now that I saw the even plain of the sea, I leapt with an easy leap to its yonder shores, and saw all the kingdoms of the West in that fair path that could lead me from out of this silent land straight on into shrill Marseilles, or round by the pillars of Hercules to the crash and roar of London. My place upon this dividing barrier was as a man's puzzling station in eternity, between the birthless past and the future that has no end. Behind me I left an old, decrepit world; religions dead and dying; calm tyrannies expiring in silence; women hushed and swathed, and turned into waxen dolls; love flown, and in its stead mere royal and "paradise" pleasures. Before me there waited glad bustle and strife; love itself, an emulous game; religion, a cause and a controversy, well smitten and well defended; men governed by reasons and suasion of speech; wheels going, steam buzzing - a mortal race, and a slashing pace, and the devil taking the hindmost - taking ME, by Jove (for that was my inner care), if I lingered too long upon the difficult pass that leads from thought to action.
I descended and went towards the west.
The group of cedars remaining on this part of the Lebanon is held sacred by the Greek Church on account of a prevailing notion that the trees were standing at a time when the temple of Jerusalem was built. They occupy three or four acres on the mountain's side, and many of them are gnarled in a way that implies great age, but except these signs I saw nothing in their appearance or conduct that tended to prove them contemporaries
* The rose-trees which I saw were all of the kind we call "damask"; they grow to an immense height and size.
Never for an instant will the people of Damascus attempt to separate the idea of bliss from these wild gardens and rushing waters. Even where your best affections are concerned, and you, prudent preachers, "hold hard" and turn aside when they come near the mysteries of the happy state, and we (prudent preachers too), we will hush our voices, and never reveal to finite beings the joys of the "earthly paradise."
CHAPTER XXVIII - PASS OF THE LEBANON
"THE ruins of Baalbec!" Shall I scatter the vague, solemn thoughts and all the airy phantasies which gather together when once those words are spoken, that I may give you instead tall columns and measurements true, and phrases built with ink? No, no; the glorious sounds shall still float on as of yore, and still hold fast upon your brain with their own dim and infinite meaning.
Come! Baalbec is over; I got "rather well" out of that.
The path by which I crossed the Lebanon is like, I think, in its features to one which you must know, namely, that of the Foorca in the Bernese Oberland. For a great part of the way I toiled rather painfully through the dazzling snow, but the labour of ascending added to the excitement with which I looked for the summit of the pass. The time came. There was a minute in the which I saw nothing but the steep, white shoulder of the mountain, and there was another minute, and that the next, which showed me a nether heaven of fleecy clouds that floated along far down in the air beneath me, and showed me beyond the breadth of all Syria west of the Lebanon. But chiefly I clung with my eyes to the dim, steadfast line of the sea which closed my utmost view. I had grown well used of late to the people and the scenes of forlorn Asia - well used to tombs and ruins, to silent cities and deserted plains, to tranquil men and women sadly veiled; and now that I saw the even plain of the sea, I leapt with an easy leap to its yonder shores, and saw all the kingdoms of the West in that fair path that could lead me from out of this silent land straight on into shrill Marseilles, or round by the pillars of Hercules to the crash and roar of London. My place upon this dividing barrier was as a man's puzzling station in eternity, between the birthless past and the future that has no end. Behind me I left an old, decrepit world; religions dead and dying; calm tyrannies expiring in silence; women hushed and swathed, and turned into waxen dolls; love flown, and in its stead mere royal and "paradise" pleasures. Before me there waited glad bustle and strife; love itself, an emulous game; religion, a cause and a controversy, well smitten and well defended; men governed by reasons and suasion of speech; wheels going, steam buzzing - a mortal race, and a slashing pace, and the devil taking the hindmost - taking ME, by Jove (for that was my inner care), if I lingered too long upon the difficult pass that leads from thought to action.
I descended and went towards the west.
The group of cedars remaining on this part of the Lebanon is held sacred by the Greek Church on account of a prevailing notion that the trees were standing at a time when the temple of Jerusalem was built. They occupy three or four acres on the mountain's side, and many of them are gnarled in a way that implies great age, but except these signs I saw nothing in their appearance or conduct that tended to prove them contemporaries