The Rising Sun, Greece; William Haygarth and Lord Byron

A stranger, deep in thought.

Son of the morning, rise! approach you here!

Lord Byron

His last sunrise on the island?

Maybe he's missing the mountains over on the mainland.

Maybe they're calling him...

"Land of Albania! let me bend mine eyes
On thee, thou rugged nurse of savage men!"

Lord Byron

"O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall 

Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap 

May who ne'er hung there."

Gerard Manley Hopkins. 

Morn dawns; and with it stern Albania's hills,

   Dark Suli's rocks, and Pindus' inland peak,

   Robed half in mist, bedewed with snowy rills,

   Arrayed in many a dun and purple streak,

   Arise; and, as the clouds along them break,

   Birds, beasts of prey, and wilder men appear,

   Disclose the dwelling of the mountaineer;

   Here roams the wolf, the eagle whets his beak,

And gathering storms around convulse the closing year.

Lord Byron

No city's towers pollute the lovely view;

   Unseen is Yanina, though not remote,

   Veiled by the screen of hills:  here men are few,

   Scanty the hamlet, rare the lonely cot;

   But, peering down each precipice, the goat

   Browseth:  and, pensive o'er his scattered flock,

   The little shepherd in his white capote

   Doth lean his boyish form along the rock,

Or in his cave awaits the tempest's short-lived shock.

Lord Byron

From Greece, A Poem, In Three Parts, 1814

William Haygarth

(Part 1)

Ascent of Mount Pindus

With what impatience do I spring to thee,
 Eternal Nature ; how I love to steal
From the rude jar and clamour of the world
To thy retirement, where I may compose
My ruffled brow, and lay my limbs secure,
 And listen to the blast which howls afar.
0 let me seek thy haunts upon the brow
Of Pindus, where thou dwell'st 'midst solitudes
Of stern sublimity : with slow, slow step,
 Painfully press'd upon th' unyielding rock,
1 scale its rugged steeps ; the dang'rous path,
 Now lost behind a broken mass of crag,
And now along the precipice's edge
 Trac'd fearfully, eludes at length the eye,
Its course just shewn by a long line of flocks,
On whose white fleeces ev'ning's level beam
Glances. Wilder, and sterner to the view,
The prospect opens : here the torrent pours
Its waters, breaking into gems of foam
 O'er the black rock, that midway in its stream
 Rears its rough front; or round the shatter 'd root
 Of some vast tree, torn from its parent cliff,
Curling in silv'ry eddies : there the pine
Stretches his giant limbs, scorch'd by the fires
Of Heav'n, and stands to guard yon narrow pass,
An aged warrior, cover 'd o'er with wounds.
More distant the brown woods around me rise,
 Range over range, a sylvan theatre,
Their tops illumin'd by a flood of light,
The rest deep sunk in shade ; whilst far above
The broad bare peaks shoot boldly to the clouds,
Flinging from their bleak bosoms the last hues
Of day; yellow and purple melting soft
 Into the russet tints that sleep below.

Summit of Mount Pindus
(an engraving of a sketch by William Haygarth)