Whether It Was That The Lay
Of The Ground Hindered My View Towards The Sea, Or That I Was All
Intent upon Ida, or whether my mind was in vacancy, or whether, as
is most like, I had strayed from
The Dardan plains all back to
gentle England, there is now no knowing, nor caring, but it was not
quite suddenly indeed, but rather, as it were, in the swelling and
falling of a single wave, that the reality of that very sea-view,
which had bounded the sight of the Greeks, now visibly acceded to
me, and rolled full in upon my brain. Conceive how deeply that
eternal coast-line, that fixed horizon, those island rocks, must
have graven their images upon the minds of the Grecian warriors by
the time that they had reached the ninth year of the siege!
conceive the strength, and the fanciful beauty, of the speeches
with which a whole army of imagining men must have told their
weariness, and how the sauntering chiefs must have whelmed that
daily, daily scene with their deep Ionian curses!
And now it was that my eyes were greeted with a delightful
surprise. Whilst we were at Constantinople, Methley and I had
pored over the map together. We agreed that whatever may have been
the exact site of Troy, the Grecian camp must have been nearly
opposite to the space betwixt the islands of Imbros and Tenedos,
"[Greek verse],"
but Methley reminded me of a passage in the Iliad in which Neptune
is represented as looking at the scene of action before Ilion from
above the island of Samothrace.
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