Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 1.djvu/792

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784 *Amours de Voyage*. [May,

AMOURS DE VOYAGE.

[Concluded.]

IV. EASTWARD, or Northward, or West? I wander, and ask as I wander, Weary, yet eager and sure, Where shall I come to my love? Whitherward hasten to seek her? Ye daughters of Italy, tell me, Graceful and tender and dark, is she consorting with you? Then that out-climbest the torrent, that rendest thy goats to the summit, Call to me, child of the Alp, has she been seen on the heights? Italy, farewell! bid thee I fay, whither she leads me, I follow. Farewell the vineyard! for I, where I but guess her, must go. Weariness welcome, and labor, wherever it be, if at last it Bring me in mountain or plain into the sight of my love.

I.—CLAUDE TO EUSTACE,—*from Florence. Gone from Florence; indeed; and that is truly provoking;— Gone to Milan, it seems; then I go also to Milan. Five days now departed; but they can travel but slowly;— I quicken my; and I know, as it happens, the house they will go to.— Why, what else should I do? Stay here and look at the pictures, Statues, and churches? Alack, I am sick of the statues and pictures!— No, to Bologna, Parma, Piacenza, Lodi, and Milan, Off go we to-night,—and the Venus go to the Devil!

II.—CLAUDE TO EUSTACE,—*from Bellaggio.* Gone to Como, they said; and I have posted to Como. There was a letter left, but the *cameriere* had lost it. Could it have been for me? They came, however, to Como, And from Como went by the boats; perhaps to the Splügen,— Or to the Stelvio, say, and the Tyrol,—so it might be By Porlezza across to Lugano, and so to the Simplon Possibly, or the St. Gothard,—or possibly, too, to Baveno, Orta, Turin, and elsewhere. Indeed, I am greatly bewildered.

III.—CLAUDE TO EUSTACE,—*from Bellaggio. I HAVE been up the Splügen, and on the Stelvio also: Neither of these can I find they have followed; in no one inn, and This would be odd, have they written their names. I have been to Porlezza. There they have not been seen, and therefore not at Lugano. What shall I do? Go on through the Tyrol, Switzerland, Deutschland, Seeking, in inverse Sault, a kingdom to find only one? There is a tide, at least in the love affairs of mortals, Which, when taken at flood, leads on to the happiest fortune,— Leads to the marriage-morn and the orange-flowers and the altar,

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