They fled behind me; so pass away
generations; so shift, and sink, and die away affections. In the
wide ocean I was little of a monarch; old men guided me, boys
instructed me; these taught me the names of my towns and harbors,
those showed me the extent of my dominions; one cloud, that dissolved
in one hour, half covered them.
"I debark in Sicily. I place my hand upon the throne of
Tancred, and fix it. I sail again, and within a day or two I behold,
as the sun is setting, the solitary majesty of Crete, mother of a
religion, it is said, that lived two thousand years. Onward, and
many specks bubble up along the blue Aegean; islands, every one of
which, if the songs and stories of the pilots are true, is the
monument of a greater man than I am. I leave them afar off . . . .
and for whom? O, abbot, to join creatures of less import than the
sea-mews on their cliffs; men praying to be heard, and fearing to be
understood, ambitious of another's power in the midst of penitence,
avaricious of another's wealth under vows of poverty, and jealous of
another's glory in the service of their God.
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