Letitia Elizabeth Landon (L. E. L.) in Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1838/Kalendria
73
KALENDRIA, COAST OF CILICIA.
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KALENDRIA,
A PORT IN CILICIA.
Do you see yon vessel riding,
Anchored in our island bay,
Like a sleeping sea-bird biding
For the morrow’s onward way?
See her white wings folded round her
As she rocks upon the deep;
Slumber with a spell hath bound her,
With a spell of peace and sleep.
Seems she not as if enchanted
To that lone and lovely place,
Henceforth ever to be haunted
By that sweet ship’s shadowy grace.
Yet, come here again to-morrow,
Not a vestige will remain,
Though those sweet eyes strain in sorrow,
They will search the sea in vain.
’Twas for this I bade thee meet me,
For a parting word and tear;
Other lands and lips may greet me;
None will ever seem so dear.
Other lands—I may say, other—
Mine again I shall not see;
I have left mine aged mother,
She has other sons than me.
Where my father’s bones are lying,
There mine own will never lie;
Where the myrtle groves are sighing,
Soft beneath our summer sky.
Mine will be a wilder ending,
Mine will be a wilder grave,
Where the shriek and shout are blending,
Or the tempest sweeps the wave.
Mine may be a fate more lonely,
In some sick and foreign ward,
Where my weary eyes meet only
Hired nurse or sullen guard.
Dearest maiden, thou art weeping,
Must I from those eyes remove?
Hath thy heart no soft pulse sleeping
Which might ripen into love?
No! I see thy brow is frozen,
And thy look is cold and strange;
Ah! when once the heart has chosen,
Well I know it cannot change.
And I know that heart has spoken
That another’s it must be.
Scarce I wish that pure faith broken,
Though the falsehood were for me.
No: be still the guileless creature
That upon my boyhood shone;
Couldst thou change thy angel nature,
Half my faith in heaven were gone.
Still thy memory shall be cherished,
Dear as it is now to me;
When all gentler thoughts have perished,
One shall linger yet for thee.
Farewell!—With those words I sever
Every tie of youth and home;
Thou, fair isle! adieu for ever!
See, a boat cuts through the foam.
Wind, time, tide, alike are pressing,
I must hasten from the shore.
One first kiss, and one last blessing—
Farewell, love! we meet no more.
The little sea-port of Kalendria looks, by moonlight, more like the creation of the artist's imagination than the realities of nature. During the friendly silence of the moon, the bold and spiry cliffs, the precipices of shivered slate and fractured limestone, rarely relieved by verdure of any kind, softened by the calm, cold light that falls on each peak, rock, and tower, mercifully shrouds the nakedness and dreariness bared by the fierce and scorching beams of day. At this lone and unfrequented spot, the arrival or departure of a vessel creates an unusual degree of bustle and interest; and if it were not that the couriers for Cyprus from Constantinople embark here, the inhabitants might soon forget that they owed allegiance to the city of the Sultan. This too is the place where, in Tiberius's reign, the progress of the injurious Piso was arrested, after, by his plots and machinations, he had contributed to the death of Germanicus.