To deck their Queen, and lend a milder grace
To the stern beauty of that awful face.
Far, far, around the ravished eye surveys
The sculptured forms of Gods and heroes blaze.
Above, the echoing roofs the peal prolong
Of lofty converse, or melodious song,
While, as the tones of passion sink or swell,
Admiring thousands own the moral spell,
Melt with the melting strains of fancied woe,
With terror sicken, or with transport glow.
Oh! for a voice like that which pealed of old
Through Salem's cedar courts and shrines of gold,
And in wild accents round the trembling dome
Proclaimed the havoc of avenging Rome;
While every palmy arch and sculptured tower
Shook with the footsteps of the parting power.
Such voice might check your tears, which idly stream
For the vain phantoms of the poet's dream,
Might bid those terrors rise, those sorrows flow,
For other perils, and for nearer woe.
The hour is come. Even now the sulphurous cloud Involves the city in its funeral shroud,
And far along Campania's azure sky
Expands its dark and boundless canopy.
The Sun, though throned on heaven's meridian height,
Burns red and rayless through that sickly night.
Each bosom felt at once the shuddering thrill.
At once the music stopped. The song was still.
None in that cloud's portentous shade might trace
The fearful changes of another's face:
But through that horrid stillness each could hear
His neighbor's throbbing heart beat high with fear.
A moment's pause succeeds. Then wildly rise
Grief's sobbing plaints and terror's frantic cries.
The gates recoil; and towards the narrow pass
In wild confusion rolls the living mass.
Death, when thy shadowy sceptre waves away
From his sad couch the prisoner of decay,
Though friendship view the close with glistening eye,
And love's fond lips imbibe the parting sigh,
By torture racked, by kindness soothed in vain,
The soul still clings to being and to pain.
But when have wilder terrors clothed thy brow,
Or keener torments edged thy dart than now,
When with thy regal horrors vainly strove
The law of nature, and the power of Love?
On mothers babes in vain for mercy call,
Beneath the feet of brothers, brothers fall.
Behold the dying wretch in vain upraise,
Towards yonder well-known face, the accusing gaze;
See trampled to the earth the expiring maid
Clings round her lover's feet, and shrieks for aid.
Vain is the imploring glance, the frenzied cry;
All, all is fear; to succor is to die.
Saw ye how wild, how red, how broad a light
Burst on the darkness of that mid-day night,
As fierce Vesuvius scattered o'er the vale
Her drifted flames and sheets of burning hail,
Shook hell's wan lightnings from his blazing cone,
And gilded heaven with meteors not its own?
The morn all blushing rose; but sought in vain
The snowy villas and the flowery plain,
The purple hills with marshalled vineyards gay,
The domes that sparkled in the sunny ray.
Where art or nature late had decked the scene
With blazing marble or with spangled green,
There, streaked by many a fiery torrent's bed,
A boundless waste of hoary ashes spread.
Along that dreary waste where lately rung
The festal lay which smiling virgins sung,
Where rapture echoed from the warbling lute,
And the gay dance resounded, all is mute.
Mute! Is it Fancy shapes that wailing sound
Which faintly murmurs from the blasted ground,
Or live there still, who, breathing in the tomb,
Curse the dark refuge which delays their doom,
In massive vaults, on which the incumbent plain
And ruined city heap their weight in vain?
Oh! who may sing that hour of mortal strife, When Nature calls on Death, yet clings to life? Who paint the wretch that draws sepulchral breath, A living prisoner in the house of Death?
Pale as the corpse which loads the funeral pile,
With face convulsed that writhes a ghastly smile,
Behold him speechless move with hurried pace,
Incessant, round his dungeon's caverned space,
Now shriek in terror, and now groan in pain,
Gnaw his white lips, and strike his burning brain,
Till Fear o'erstrained in stupor dies away,
And Madness wrests her victim from dismay.
His arms sink down; his wild and stony eye
Glares without sight on blackest vacancy.
He feels not, sees not: wrapped in senseless trance
His soul is still and listless as his glance.
One cheerless blank, one rayless mist is there,
Thoughts, senses, passions, live not with despair.
Haste, Famine, haste, to urge the destined close,
And lull the horrid scene to stern repose.
Yet ere, dire Fiend, thy lingering tortures cease,
And all be hushed in still sepulchral peace,
Those caves shall wilder, darker deeds behold
Than e'er the voice of song or fable told,
Whate'er dismay may prompt, or madness dare,
Feasts of the grave, and banquets of despair.
Hide, hide, the scene; and o'er the blasting sight
Fling the dark veil of ages and of night.
Go, seek Pompeii now: - with pensive tread
Roam through the silent city of the dead.
Explore each spot, where still, in ruin grand,
Her shapeless piles and tottering columns stand,
Where the pale ivy's clasping wreaths o'ershade
The ruined temple's moss-clad colonnade,
Or violets on the hearth's cold marble wave,
And muse in silence on a people's grave.
No sign of death thine eyes shall scare,
No, all is beauty, verdure, fragrance there.
A gentle slope includes the fatal ground
With odorous shrubs and tufted myrtles crowned;
Beneath, o'ergrown with grass, or wreathed with flowers,
Lie tombs and temples, columns, baths, and towers.
As if in mockery, Nature seems to dress
In all her charms the beauteous wilderness,
And bids her gayest flowerets twine and bloom
In sweet profusion o'er a city's tomb.
With roses here she decks the untrodden path,
With lilies fringes there the stately bath;
The Acanthus' * spreading foliage here she weaves
Round the gay capital which mocks its leaves;
There hangs the sides of every mouldering room
With tapestry from her own fantastic loom,
Wallflowers and weeds, whose glowing hues supply
With simple grace the purple's Tyrian dye.
The ruined city sleeps in fragrant shade,
Like the pale corpse of some Athenian maid,†
Whose marble arms, cold brows, and snowy neck
The fairest flowers of fairest climates deck,
Meet types of her whose form their wreaths array,
Of radiant beauty, and of swift decay.
Advance, and wander on through crumbling halls,
Through prostrate gates, and ivied pedestals,
Arches, whose echoes now no chariots rouse,
Tombs, on whose summits goats undaunted browse.
See, where yon ruined wall on earth reclines,
Through weeds and moss the half-seen painting shines,
Still vivid 'midst the dewy cowslips glows,
Or blends its colors with the blushing rose.
* The capital of the Corinthian pillar is carved, as is well known, in imitation of the Acanthus. Mons. de Chateaubriand, as I have found since this Poem was written, has employed the same image in his Travels.
It is the custom of the modern Greeks to adorn corpses profusely with flowers.
Thou lovely, ghastly scene of fair decay,
In beauty awful, and 'midst horrors gay,
Renown more wide, more bright shall gild thy name,
Than thy wild charms or fearful doom could claim.
Immortal spirits, in whose deathless song
Latium and Athens yet their reign prolong,
And from their thrones of fame and empire hurled,
Still sway the sceptre of the mental world,
You in whose breasts the flames of Pindus beamed,
Whose copious lips with rich persuasion streamed,
Whose minds unravelled nature's mystic plan,
Or traced the mazy labyrinth of man;
Bend, glorious spirits, from your blissful bowers,
And broidered couches of unfading flowers,
While round your locks the Elysian garlands blow,
With sweeter odors, and with brighter glow.
Once more, immortal shades, atoning Fame
Repairs the honors of each glorious name.
Behold Pompeii's opening vaults restore
The long-lost treasures of your ancient lore,
The vestal radiance of poetic fire,
The stately buskin, and the tuneful lyre,
The wand of eloquence, whose magic sway
The sceptres and the swords of earth obey,
And every mighty spell, whose strong control
Could nerve or melt, could fire or soothe the soul.
And thou sad city, raise thy drooping head,
And share the honors of the glorious dead.
Had Fate reprieved thee till the frozen North
Poured in wild swarms its hoarded millions forth,
Till blazing cities marked where Alboïn trod,*
Or Europe quaked beneath the scourge of GOD,
No lasting wreath had graced thy funeral pall,
No fame redeemed the horrors of thy fall.
Now shall thy deathless memory live entwined
With all that conquers, rules, or charms the mind,
*The well-known name of Attila.
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