Sometimes, for absolutely no apparent reason, one remembers a phrase or two one may not have thought about for 30 years. Thus, unprompted, came into my head a day or two ago a poem in Irish learned at school; older readers, surely, will remember it. It tells of a young man who dreams of sultry, distant and romantic places. It might be loosely translated from the Irish as:
A stately ship from Valparaiso
Slowly sailed into the bay,
And it conjured up a kingdom
Of the sun, so far away.
The vessel casts a spell upon the lad, and beckons him away, but to his regret in later life, he declines the invitation.
And then I wondered if Mgr Padraig de Brun, who wrote the poem, had read The Voyage of the Beagle. The story is that of the young Charles Darwin, who was similarly captivated but who was lucky enough to be able to realise his dreams as "gentleman-naturalist, victualled but without pay" aboard HMS Beagle in the early 1830s.
Voyage is his personal account of a famous trip that was ultimately to provide the inspiration for The Origin of Species, and his sentiments on Valparaiso echo closely in tone those of the poem by de Brun.
Darwin disembarked in the city on July 23rd, 1834, and wrote: "The climate felt delicious - the atmosphere so dry, and the heavens so clear and blue and the sun shining so brightly, that all nature seemed to be sparkling with life.
"The mountains here owe the greater part of their beauty to the atmosphere through which they are seen; when the sun was setting in the Pacific it was admirable to watch how clearly their rugged outlines could be distinguished, yet how varied and how delicate were the shades of their colour.
"What a difference does the climate make in our enjoyment of life! How opposite are the sensations when viewing black mountains half-enveloped in clouds, and seeing another range through the light blue haze of a fine day. The one for a time may be sublime; the other is all gaiety and happy life!"