Hath soared with screams a safer nest to seek.
Awed by the infernal beacon's fitful glare,
The howling wolf hath left his wonted lair.
Man only mocks the peril. Man alone
Defies the sulphurous flame, the warning groan.
While instinct, humbler guardian, wakes and saves,
Proud reason sleeps, nor knows the doom it braves.
5. But see, the opening theater invites
The fated myriads to its gay delights.
In, in, they swarm, tumultuous as the roar
Of foaming breakers on a rocky shore.
The enraptured throng in breathless transport views
The gorgeous Temple of the Tragic Muse.
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.
6. O! 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.
7. The hour is come. Even now the sulphurous cloud
Involves the city in its funeral shroud,
And far along Campania's azure sky,
* Consult the 24th Chapter of Matthew.
Expands its dark and boundless canopy.
The Sun, though throned on Heaven's meridian hight,
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.
8. A moment's pause succeeds. Then wildly rise
Grief's sobbing plaints and terror's frantic cries.
The gates recoil; and toward the narrow pass,
In wild confusion, rolls the living mass.
Death-when thy shadowy scepter 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?
9. On mothers, babes in vain for mercy call,
Beneath the feet of brothers, brothers fall.
Behold the dying wretch in vain upraise
Toward yonder well-known face the accusing gaze.
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 death's wan lightnings from his blazing cone,
And gilded heaven with meteors not its own?
DESTRUCTION OF POMPEII.-CONTINUED,
1. THE morn all blushing rose; but sought in vain
The snowy villas and the flowery plain,
The purpled hills with marshaled vineyards gay,
The domes that sparkled in the sunny ray.
Where art or nature late had deck'd 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.
2. Along that dreary waste where lately rung
The festal lay which smiling virgins sung,
Where rapture echoed from the warbling lute,
dance resounded, all is mute.-
gay
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?
3. 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 shrink 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.
4. Haste, Famine, haste to urge the destined close,
And dull 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 vail of ages and of night.
5. 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.
6. Fear not.-No sign of death thine eyes
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.
Advance, and wander on through crumbling halls,
Through prostrate gates and ivied pedestals,
Arches, whose echoes now no chariots rouse,-
Tombs, on whose summit goats undaunted browse.
7. 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 scepter of the mental world;
Whose minds unraveled 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.
8. Once more, immortal shades, atoning Fame
Repairs the honors of each glorious name.
Behold Pempeii'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 scepters and the swords of earth obey,
And every mighty spell, whose strong control
Could nerve or melt, could fire or soothe the soul.
9. 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 Albion 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.
10. Now shall thy deathless memory live entwined With all that conquers, rules, or charms the mind,Each lofty thought of Poet or of Sage,
Each grace of Virgil's lyre or Tully's page.
Like theirs whose Genius consecrates thy tomb,
Thy fame shall snatch from time a greener bloom,
Shall spread where'er the Muse has rear'd her throne,
And med is accents yet unknown.
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