APPENDIX.

POMPEII.

A POEM WHICH OBTAINED THE CHANCELLOR'S MEDAL AT THE CAMBRIDGE COMMENCEMEXT

JULY, 1819.

On! land to Memory and to Freedom dear, Heedless, like him, the impending stroke await, Land of the melting lyre and conquering spear, And sport and wanton on the brink of fole. Land of the vine-clad hill, the fragrant grove,

What 'vails it that where yonder heights aspire, Of arts and arms, of Genius and of Love,

With ashes piled, and scathed with rills of fire, Hear, fairest Italy: Though now no more Gigantic phantoms dimly seem to glide, * The glittering eagles awe the Atlantic shore, In misty files, along the mountain's side, Nor at thy feel the gorgeous Orient Alings To view with threatening scowl your fated lands, The blood-bought treasures of her tawny Kings, And toward your city point their shadowy hands? Though vanished all that formed thine old renown, In vain celestial omens prompted fear, The laurel garland, and the jewelled crown, And nature's signal spoke the ruin near. The avenging poniard, the victorious sword, In vain through many a night ye viewed from far Which reared thine empire, or thy rights restored, The meteor flag of elemental war Yet still the constant Muses haunt thy shore, Unroll its blazing folds from yonder

height, And love to linger where they dwelt of yore. In fearful sign of earth's intestine fight. If e'er of old they deigned, with favouring smile, In vain Vesuvius groaned with wrath supprest, To tread the sea-girt shores of Albion's isle, And muttered thunder in his burning breast. To smooth with classic arts our rugged tongue, Long since the Eagle from that flaming peak And warm with classic glow the British song, Hath soared with screams a safer nest to seek. Oh! bid them snatch their silent harps which wave Awed by the infernal beacon's fitful glare, On the lone oak that shades thy Maro's grave,* The howling fox hath left his wonted lair; And sweep with magic hand the slumbering strings, Nor dares the browsing goat in venturous leap To fire the poet.-For thy clime he sings, To spring, as erst, from dizzy steep to steep.Thy scenes of gay delight and wild despair, Man only mocks the peril. Man alone Thy varied forms of awful and of fair.

Defies the sulphurous flame, the warning groan. How rich that climate's sweets, how wild its While instinct, humbler guardian, wakes and saves, storms,

Proud reason sleeps, nor knows the doom it braves. What charms array it, and what rage deforms, But see the opening theatre invites Well have they mouldering walls, Pompeii, known, The fated myriads to its gay delights. Decked in those charms, and by thai rage o'er: In, in, they swarm, tumultuous as the roar thrown.

Of foaming breakers on a rocky shore. Sad City, gayly dawned thy latest

The enraptured throng in breathless transport viewe And poured its radiance on a scene as gay. The gorgeous temple of the Tragic Muse. The leaves scarce rustled in the sighing breeze; There, while her wand in shadowy pomp arrays In azure dimples curled the sparkling seas, Ideal scenes, and forms of other days, And as the golden tide of light they quaffed, Fair as the hopes of youth, a radiant band, Campania's

sunny meads and vineyards laughed, The sister arts around her footstool stand, While gleamed each lichened oak and giant pine To deck their Queen, and lend a milder grace On the far sides of swarthy Apennine.

To the stern beauty of that awful face.
Then mirth and music through Pompeii rung; Far, far, around the ravished eye surveys
Then verdant wreaths on all her portals hung; The sculptured forms of Gods and heroes blaze.
Her sons with solemn rite and jocund lay,

Above the echoing roofs the peal prolong
Hailed the glad splendours of that festal day. Of lofty converse, or melodious song,
With fillets bound the hoary priests advance, While, as the tones of passion sink or swell,
And rosy virgins braid the choral dance.

Admiring thousands own the moral spell,
The rugged warrior here bends awhile

Melt with the melting strains of fancied wo, His iron front, and deigns a transient smile ; With terror sicken, or with transport glow. There, frantic with delight, the ruddy boy

Oh! for a voice like that which pealed of old Scarce treads on earth, and bounds and laughs with Through Salem's cedar courts and shrines of gold, joy.

And in wild accents round the trembling dome From every crowded altar perfumes rise

Proclaimed the havoc of avenging Rome; In billowy clouds of fragrance to the skies. While every palmy arch and sculptured tower The milk-white monarch of the herd they lead, Shook with the footsteps of the parting power. With gilded horns, at yonder shrine to bleed; Such voice might check your tears, which idly streatus And while the victim crops the broidered plain, For the vain phantoms of the poet's dream. And frisks and gambols towards the destined fane, They little deem that like himself they stray To death, unconscious, o'er a flowery way;

• Dio Cassius relates that figures of gigantic size ap. peared for some time previous to the destruction of Pom.

peii, on the summits of Vesuvius. This appearance was • See Eustace's description of the Tomb of Virgil, on probably occasioned by the fantastic forms which the the Neapolitan coast.

smoke from the crater of the volcano assumed.

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Might bid those terrors rise, those sorrows flow; Yet ere, dire Fiend, thy lingering fortures cease, For other perils, and for nearer wo. (cloud And all be hushed in still sepulchral peace,

The hour is come. Even now the sulphurous Those caves shall wilder, darker deeds behold Involves the city in its funeral shroud,

Than e'er the voice of song or fable told, And far along Campania's azure sky

Whate'er dismay may prompt, or madness dare, Expands its dark and boundless canopy. [height, Feasts of the grave, and banquets of despair. The Sun, though throned on heaven's meridian Hide, bide the scene; and o'er the blasting sight Burns red and rayless through that sickly night. Fling the dark veil of ages and of night. Each bosom felt at once the shuddering thrill, Go, seek Pompeii now:-with pensive tread At once the music stopped. The song was still. Roam through the silent city of the dead. None in that cloud's portentous shade might trace Explore each spot, where still, in ruin grand, The fearful changes of another's face.

Her shapeless piles and rottering columns stand, But through that horrid stillness each could hear Where the pale ivy's clasping wreaths o'ershade His neighbour's throbbing heart beat high with fear. The ruined temple's moss-clad colonnade,

A moment's pause succeeds. Then wildly rise Or violets on the hearth's cold marble wave, Grief's sobbing plaints and terror's frantic cries. And muse in silence on a people's grave. The gates recoil; and towards the narrow pass Fear not.-No sign of death thine eyes shall In wild confusion rolls the iiving mass.

scare, Death-when thy shadowy sceptre waves away No, all is beauty, verdure, fragrance there. From his sad couch the prisoner of decay, A gentle slope includes the fatal ground Though friendship view the close with glistening eye, with odorous shrubs and tufted myrtles crowned; And love's fond lips imbibe the parting sigh, Beneath, o'ergrown with grass, or wreathed with By torture racked, by kindness soothed in vain,

flowers, The soul still clings to being and to pain.

Lie tombs and temples, columns, baths, and towers. But when have wilder terrors clothed thy brow, As if, in mockery, Nature seems to dress Or keener torments edged thy dart than now, In all her charms the beauteous wilderness, When with thy regal horrors vainly strove And bids her gayest flowerets twine and bloom The law of Naturo and the power of Love? In sweet profusion o'er a city's tomb. On mothers, babes in vain for mercy call,

With roses here she decks the untrodden path, Beneath the feet of brothers, brothers fall. With lilies fringes there the stately bath; Behold the dying wretch in vain upraise

The acanthus'* spreading foliage here she weaves Towards yonder well-known face the accusing gaze; Round the gay capital which mocks its leaves; See trampled to the earth the expiring maid There hangs the sides of every mouldering room Clings round her lover's feet, and shrieks for aid. With tapestry from her own fantastic loom, Vain is the imploring glance, the frenzied cry; Wallflowers and weeds, whose glowing hues supply All, all is fear;-to succour is to die.

With simple grace the purple's Tyrian dye. Saw ye how wild, how red, how broad a light The ruined city sleeps in fragrant shade, Burst on the darkness of that mid-day night, Like the pale corpse of some Athenian maid, t As fierce Vesuvius scattered o'er the vale

Whose marble arms, cold brows, and snowy neck Her drifted flames and sheets of burning hail, The fairest flowers of fairest climates deck, Shook hell's wan lightnings from his blazing cone, Meet types of her whose form their wreaths array, And gilded heaven with meteors not its own? Of radiant beauty, and of swift decay.

The morn all blushing rose; but sought in vain Advance, and wander on through crumbling halls, The snowy villas and the flowery plain,

Through prostrate gates and ivied pedestals, The purpled hills with marshalled vineyards gay, Arches, whose echoes now no chariots rouse, The domes that sparkled in the sunny ray. Tombs, on whose summits goats undaunted browse. Where art or nature late hath deck'd the scene See where yon ruined wall on earth reclines, With blazing marble or with spangled green, Through weeds and moss the half-seen painting There, streaked by many a fiery torrent's bed,

shines,
A boundless waste of hoary ashes spread. Still vivid midst the dewy cowslips glows,

Along that dreary waste where lately rung Or blends its colours with the blushing rose.
The festal lay which smiling virgins sung,

Thou lovely, ghastly scene of fair decay,
Where rapture echoed from the warbling lute, In beauty awful, and midst horrors gay,
And the gay dance resounded, all is mute.- Renown more wide, more bright shall gild thy name,
Mute!- Is it Fancy shapes that wailing sound Than thy wild charms or fearful doom could claim.
Which faintly murmurs from the blasted ground, Immortal spirits, in whose deathless song
Or live there still, who, breathing in the tomb, Latium and Athens yet their reign prolong,
Curse the dark refuge which delays their doom, And from their thrones of fame and empire hurled,
In massive vaults, on which the incumbent plain Still sway the sceptre of the mental world,
And ruined city heap their weight in vain ? You in whose breasts the flames of Pindus beamed,

Oh! who may sing that hour of mortal strife, Whose copious lips with rich persuasion streamed,
When Nature calls on Death, yet clings to life? Whose minds unravelled nature's mystic plan,
Who paint the wretch that draws sepulchral breath, Or traced the mazy labyrinth of man:
A living prisoner in the house of Death ? Bend, glorious spirits, from your blissful bowers,
Pale as the corpse which loads the funeral pile, And broidered couches of unfading flowers,
With face convulsed that writhes a ghastly smile, While round your locks the Elysian garlands blow,
Behold him speechless move with hurried pace, With sweeter odours, and with brighter glow.
Incessant, round his dungeon's caverned space, Once more, immortal shades, atoning Fame
Now shrink in terror, and now groan in pain, Repairs the honours of each glorious name.
Gnaw his white lips and strike his burning brain, Behold Pompeii's opening vaults restore
Till Fear o'erstrained in stupor dies away, The long-lost treasures of your ancient lore,
And Madness wrests her victim from dismay. The vestal radiance of poetic fire,
His arms sink down; his wild and stony eye The stately buskin and the tuneful lyre,
Glares without sight on blackest vacancy.
He feels not, sees not: wrapped in senseless trance
His soul is still and listless as his glance.

* The capital of the Corinthian pillar is carved, as te One cheerless blank, one rayless mist is there,

well known, in imitation of the acanthus. Mons. de

Chateaubriand, as I have found since this poem wat Thoughts, senses, passions, live not with despair.