Rambles in Italy; in the years 1816 – 1817 By an American

urn:iso:std:iso:639:ed-3:eng

38-39

text excerpt

All vessels arriving at the port of Trieste, are subject of its quarantine laws. These laws, which are rigorously enforced against all vessels from the Levant, are sometimes relaxed in favour of Americans and Europeans; so that while some are doomed to a probation of forty days, our term of confinement did not exceed seven. But the strong desire of liberty everyone feels, who has been long confined to the deck of a vessel, made it appear to us much longer. The strange appearance too of our fellow-prisoners, Greeks, Jews, Turks, and Armenians. To me, who love to contemplate human nature, as it is variously fashioned by custom and political institutions, the national manners and costumes of these people, afforded matter for amusing remark.

I was regularly awakened every morning by the matin song of a Greek, who lodged opposite to my apartment, and who chaunted in a voice disagreeably nasal and monotonous, the popular airs and ballads of his native country. I was incensed to hear the language of Sappho and Anacreon so disgraced, and listened with impatience to the perversion of those harmonious sounds, which

      ——warbled to the string,
      Drew iron tears down Pluto's cheek,
      And made hell grant what love did seek. 

But he was the gayest inhabitant of a place, where every countenance was shaded by the gloom of captivity, and seemed to languish with that "sickness of the heart which arises from hope deferred."

excerpt from 'Rambles in Italy; in the years 1816 – 1817 By an American' pp. 38-39 (241 words)

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