Page:Fugitive Poetry 1600-1878.djvu/254
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POMPEII.
And in the domes where once she smiled,
The whispering weeds are waving wild.
The prince's court is the jackal's lair—
He peeps through Time's cold windows there;
Broken the harp, and all unstrung—
Perished the strains the minstrel sung;
The moss of ages is their pall,
And dull oblivion hides them all.
Yet there, though now no mortal eye
Looks forth upon the earth and sky,
The evening star steals out as mild,
Above the lone and mighty wild,
As when young lovers hailed its light,
Far in the dark-blue fields of night;
And dews as brightly gem the ground
As when a garden smiled around.
The whispering weeds are waving wild.
The prince's court is the jackal's lair—
He peeps through Time's cold windows there;
Broken the harp, and all unstrung—
Perished the strains the minstrel sung;
The moss of ages is their pall,
And dull oblivion hides them all.
Yet there, though now no mortal eye
Looks forth upon the earth and sky,
The evening star steals out as mild,
Above the lone and mighty wild,
As when young lovers hailed its light,
Far in the dark-blue fields of night;
And dews as brightly gem the ground
As when a garden smiled around.
Go read thy fate, thou thing of clay,
In wrecks of ages rolled away!
Bead it in this dread book of doom,
A city crumbled to a tomb!
Where the lorn remnants of the past
Shed deeper sadness o'er the waste,
Where Melancholy breathes her spell,
And Chroniclers of ruin dwell.
In wrecks of ages rolled away!
Bead it in this dread book of doom,
A city crumbled to a tomb!
Where the lorn remnants of the past
Shed deeper sadness o'er the waste,
Where Melancholy breathes her spell,
And Chroniclers of ruin dwell.
Pompeii.
Pompeii, a town in Italy, at the foot of Mount Vesuvius, was to Rome what Brighton is to London. It was suddenly overwhelmed by an eruption of the mountain, 23rd August, A.D. 79.
In the halls of Pompeii resounded the song,
And the lovely were there, and the brave, and the strong;
From the minstrel's sweet lyre flowed the measure of gladness,
And far, far away fled the demon of sadness,
But an hour—and crushed was the might of the bold,
And the heart that just bounded lay senseless and cold;
The pæan no longer was heard in the grove,
And hushed was the choir in the temple of Jove;
For there burst from the deep-yawning caves of the mountain,
A torrent of fire, like the stream of a fountain,
Like the wide-flaming flood of the terrible rain,
Which the Lord in his wrath poured on Sodoma's plain:—
Ay, rent was the womb of the mountain asunder,
Crash pealed upon crash like the deep rolling thunder,
And the lovely were there, and the brave, and the strong;
From the minstrel's sweet lyre flowed the measure of gladness,
And far, far away fled the demon of sadness,
But an hour—and crushed was the might of the bold,
And the heart that just bounded lay senseless and cold;
The pæan no longer was heard in the grove,
And hushed was the choir in the temple of Jove;
For there burst from the deep-yawning caves of the mountain,
A torrent of fire, like the stream of a fountain,
Like the wide-flaming flood of the terrible rain,
Which the Lord in his wrath poured on Sodoma's plain:—
Ay, rent was the womb of the mountain asunder,
Crash pealed upon crash like the deep rolling thunder,