To E.L., On His Travels In Greece

by Alfred Lord Tennyson

　　

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Illyrian woodlands, echoing falls Of water, sheets of summer glass, The long divine Peneïan pass, The vast Akrokeraunian walls, Tomohrit, Athos, all things fair, With such a pencil, such a pen, You shadow forth to distant men, I read and felt that I was there: And trust me while I turn’d the page, And track’d you still on classic ground, I grew in gladness till I found My spirits in the golden age. For me the torrent ever pour’d And glisten’d–here and there alone The broad-limb’d Gods at random thrown By fountain-urns;–and Naiads oar’d A glimmering shoulder under gloom Of cavern pillars; on the swell The silver lily heaved and fell; And many a slope was rich in bloom From him that on the mountain lea By dancing rivulets fed his flocks To him who sat upon the rocks, And fluted to the morning sea.

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