The poems and prose writings of Sumner Lincoln Fairfield ::

Mid mellow folds of gorgeous purple clouds,
The flowered pavilions of the spirit winds,
That danced in music to the Ausonian breeze,
Along the deep blue vault of Italy,
Like a descending god of Fable's creed,
(Titan in ancient dreams, whose faintest smile

Elysian splendours breathed through ocean's realm,)
Casting aside earth's throbbing dust, to put
His diadem of deathless glory on,
The sun went slowly down the Apennines.
Far up the living dome of heaven, the clouds,
Pearling the azure, like a seraph's robe,
Wreathed o'er the blessed and beaming face of heaven,
And glanced, mid blush and shadow, o'er the sky,
Full of the gentle spirit of the air,
The mediator of the elements.
As if imbued with virgin thought, the leaves
Smiled in their love and tenderness; sweet airs
Sighed o'er the summer earth, their music, soft
As hymns of heaven o'er spirits disenthralled;
And odours rose from vale and hillside green
Like the incense of a heart earth ne'er can soil.
The hills cast giant shadows, in whose depth
Wild jagged rocks and solitary floods,
And forests gnarl'd and hoar, looking deep awe,
Like the vast deserts of a dream, replied
To voices of unresting phantoms, there,
Till daydawn, wrapt in dark sublimities.
On the fair shores and seaworn promontories,
Where many a Doric palace, in its pride
And hoary grandeur, hung above the lapse
Of twilight waters whispering vesper songs
And matin anthems, childlike slumbered now,
In speechless beauty, the last light; afar,
The avalanche in the ravine glimmered back
The trembling and most transitory glow;
The beaked and burnished galleys on the wave
With quivering banners hung, and gay triremes
Passed by each isle and headland like the shade
Of Enna's idol through the realm of Dis.
All nature, in her holy hour of love,
Lifted in rapture the heart's vesper prayer;
The prayer, which purer hearts in every age
Uplift when Time or Grief casts over earth
The shadow of the tomb, and fills the soul
With influences of a happier world.
And from Pompeii's Field of Tombs the voice

Of Vesta's priestess, o'er Love's sepulchre
Bending beneath the holy Heaven, sent up
The anguish of bereavement, and the doubts
Of an immortal mind, that knew not yet
Its immortality, yet seeking Faith,
And sighing o'er the pomp of paynim rites.

THE VESTAL'S HYMN.

Zephyr of Twilight! thine ethereal breath,
With spirit strains, steals through elysian groves:
Bringst thou no memories from the home of death?
No whispered yearnings from departed loves?

Fann'd not thy wing, ere stars above thee glowed,
The pure, pale brow that on my birthhour smiled?
And bearst thou not from Destiny's abode
One kiss from mother to her vestal child?

Cold sleep the ashes of the heart that breathed
But for my bliss—when being's suns were few;
And hath the spirit no bright hope bequeathed?
Oh! must it drink the grave's eternal dew?

Hesper! the beauty of thy virgin light
Blossoms along the blue of yon sweet sky;
Yet vain my heart soars—from the deep of night
No voice or vision thrills my ear or eye.

From Vesta's vigil shrine no light ascends
Beyond this realm of sin, doubt, grief, and death;
Reveals no heaven where meet immortal friends,
Shadows no being victor over breath!

Around the throne of Angerona lie,
Buried in darkness, all the hopes of Time;
Dreams, auguries, oracles beyond the sky
Predict no Future filled with thought sublime.

What realm mysterious, wrapt in loneliest gloom,
Lives, Oh, my mother! in thy love's sweet light?

Whither, upsoaring from Earth's prison tomb,
Wanders thy spirit on the shores of night?

Sunlight and fragrance, dewbeam and still eve
Shed not their bliss and beauty on thine urn!
Has Earth no hope time never can bereave?
No power again to bid the pale dust burn?

The rippling rills, the radiant morns, the flowers,
Bursting in beauty, showers of iris hues,
Starlight and Love—the Graces and the Hours—
Each—all must vanish like the twilight dews!

Budding to wither—lingering to impart
Life's hopeless pangs when thought shall sink in gloom—
Can all earth's beauties soothe the shuddering heart?
Or e'en the Thunderer's eye illume the tomb?

Alone, and in her soul bewildered, to her shrine
Of old accustomed worship slowly passed
The solitary seeker after Truth.
And now from mountain tents 'mid ilex woods,
Or gay pavilions in Campanian vales,
Wandered, on twilight airs, through clustering vines,
The cithern's music, and the lute's soft strain
Echoed the spirit of love's melody.
The hills seemed living with delight, and there,
As summer's burning solstice felt the breath
Of gentlest Autumn, had the wise and gay
Retired to revel or to meditate,
In fellowship or loneliness, and seek
Felicity or wisdom from the woods;
And there the dreams of Arcady—high thoughts,
That, in the elder days, inspired the soul
Of sage or poet with revealments caught
From heaven, that clothed all earth with light, became
The blest companions of the pure in heart.

The gorgeous radiance of the sunset fled
Like young Love's visions or the arrow's plume,
O'er the dim isles and sea of Italy,

'Mid the dark foliage mingling like the hopes
Of morn with night-fears, when Thought's shadows blend
With beautiful existences beyond
The mockery and the madness of this life.
In glimmering grandeur lay the glorious sea,
Whose waters wafted spoils from orient realms,
And mirrored Nature's beauty, while dread war
Bathed Punic banners in the gore of Rome.
The Evening Isles of love and loveliness
Slept in the soothing solitude, wherein
The awful intellect of Rome sought peace
In grey philosophy, while faction drenched
The earth with blood, and dark conspirators
Walked the thronged Forum, dooming, at a glance,
The loftiest to extinction; here the bard
Unfolded earth's and heaven's mysteries,
Creating the world's creed, and Fiction's brow
Wreathing with the immortal buds of truth.
Among the sanctities of groves and streams,
The worn and wearied bosom breathed again
Its birthright bliss, and wisdom, born of woe,
Uttered its oracles to coming years;
And in the midst of all that thrills and charms,
Weds beauty unto grandeur, earth to heaven,
Here tyrant crime achieved, by nameless deeds,
The world's redemption from remorseless guilt.

Bland airs flew o'er the faded heavens, and streams,
That in the noonday dazzled, and e'en now
Drank the rich hues of eventide, purled on
With lovelier music, and the green still shores
Looked up to the blue mountains with the face—
The cherub face of sinless infancy—
With hope and joy perpetual in that look;
For, 'mid all changes, still the faded bloom
Shall be renewed—the slumbering heart revived.
The pearly moonlight streamed through softest clouds
With an ethereal lustre; and the stars,
The dread sabaoth of the unbounded air,

From the blue depths between the snowy drifts,
Gleamed like the eyes of holiest seraphim.

Beneath the dying glories of the day,
And the unspeakable beauty of the night,
Yet in the haunt of peril, looking o'er
Pompeii's domes—two Forms in silence stood,
Pale, yet unfaltering—famished, yet in soul,
Fed from the altar of the Atoner's love.
One—a tried warrior by his eye and brow
And dauntless port—leaned on the shattered ledge
Of a Vesuvian cavern, o'er which trailed
Dark matted vines and cedars thickly hung,
Hoar, hideous, wedged in rocks, and fleckering o'er
The jagged vestibule with living gloom,
And shutting from the inner vault, where slept
The banned and hunted Nazarenes, all beams
That on the outward world shed life and love.
With dark eyes lifted to his troubled face,
Her head upon his bosom, half reclined
A Hebrew Captive, dragged amid the spoils
Of holiest Moriah, when the hour
Of Desolation fell on Zion's towers,
To swell the victor's wild array, and add
Another cup of vengeance and despair
To the death banquet of world-wasting Rome.
There, amid Volcan's wrecks and the wild gloom
Of Nature's loneliest and most fearful scenes,
The wedded Christians dwelt in Love's own heaven;
There Mariamne clung to Pansa's breast,
Fearing no fate she e'er might share with him.
The melancholy loveliness of Love,
That dares the voiceless desert and inspires
The forest solitude, around her hung
Like wreathing clouds around an angel's form;
On her pale brow the very soul of faith
Rested as on its shrine; and earth's vain pride
Ne'er found a home within the chastened heart
Which burned and breathed Love's immortality.
Like her, the sun-clothed vision, in whose crown
Gleamed the twelve orbs of glory as she stood

Amid the floating moon's young shadowy light,
When to the earth the giant Dragon cast
The stars, triumphing o'er his spoil; so, 'mid grief,
And want, and loneliness, and danger, stood
The Daughter of the East, in every woe
Fearless, in every peril quick in thought.
Thoughts, winnowed from the gross and grovelling dust
Of earth, and glistening with the hues of heaven,
Passed o'er their mingled spirits in the depth
Of the hoar Apennines, and thus he spake—
The Roman warrior, who had made his home,
In earlier days, ere Truth had pierced his heart,
On tented battlefield—whose joy had been
The spoil of nations gasping on the waste
Of conquest; but amid the flames and shrieks
Of Solyma, he heard the Voice that fills
Infinity, with awe ineffable,
And worshipped 'mid the scorn of pagan bands.
Relentless as the edict he obeyed,
His dauntless soul with war's own wrath had burned,
And in the Triumph's madness, mocked the moans
Of fallen freemen, as his fellows did,
The Legions of the Loveless; but the Faith,
Whose Founder wept the doom which guilt had wrought,
Sunk on his bosom, as the sunset sinks
Upon the wild and savage mountain peak,
Clothing its barrenness with beauty!—Thus
His saddened but serene mind communed now.
“Oh, the still, sacred, soothing light that bathes
The blue, world-studded heavens—while the air
Gushes in living music, and inspires
The purified and thrilled spirit with the power
To cast aside the thrall of flesh and soar
To converse with the seraphim, and prayer
Beneath His throne whose death-groan rent all earth!
Men's madness comes not here—it cannot dwell
Within the bosom's temple that imbibes
The oracles of Truth in every breeze.
Thou need'st not, Love! thy tephilim to lift

Thy thoughts within the vail, nor seek I more
The prestiges of augurs to impart
The destined future, nor vain amulets
To guard what He, who gave, can well preserve.
Look, Mariamne! on the dimpled sea,
That slumbers like the jasper waters seen
In the apocalypse of Patmos, hang
The crowding sails of merchant barks delayed,
The altars at their prows casting pale gleams,
While by the dagon deities of earth,
The terrible apotheoses, wrought
From desolating passions, vainly now
The mariners invoke the gale to bear
Barbaric treasures to the imperial mart;
But lo! nor leaf nor flower the pearl-dew stirs
By Twilight wept o'er forest, in reply!”

Wrapt by the charm and majesty—the bloom,
Verdure and stillness of the world and skies—
Yet looking far beyond them, thus replied
The High Priest's banished child unto the thought
Of the baptized and scorned Decurion.
“Methinks, my Pansa! that in evil times,
The soul becomes a prophet to itself,
And, like the seer before the unholy king,
Predicts the woe it shudders to conceive.
The shadows of the hoar and giant woods,
The sea's unearthly gleam, and hollow voice,
All the unlimited heaven, where phantom shapes
Glimmer amid the void immensity,
And meteors madly rush through shoreless space,
In awful silence, o'er the universe
Throned like Death's Angel, sink upon my soul,
With an unwonted dread, and throng my brain
Like breathless ministries of doom. Among
The rifted ruins of the Volcan's wrath,
Scoriæ and dusky foliage scorched and sear,
The pale green moss, thick shrubs and mazy vines
Of these dark rocks, a spirit seems to breathe
Wild revelations of a fiery doom.
Like the mysterious and unvoiced Name,

Upon the white gem written, which none beheld
But the anointed, fearful characters
Seem to my startled vision forming now
Among yon dense and fire-winged thunderclouds,
Whose dusky peaks ascend above the hills;
And, lo! with what a brow of majesty
Vesuvius, through the bland transparent air,
And pallid moonlight, o'er our vigil bends!
Dwells there not terror in earth's breathlessness?
And peril in the slumber of the Mount?”

Sadly the Roman turned his gaze below
Upon the fated city, gleaming now
With countless lights o'er pageantries and feasts,
That flared in mockery of the hallowed heaven,
Then thus to Mariamne's fear replied:
“The happy deem not so—discern not ought
Beyond the wanton luxuries of Time:
For, knowing not the evil, which, (as clouds
Impart a lovelier glory to the skies,)
Invests all good with loftier attributes,
They fear not Justice which they never knew.
Behold Pompeii's gorgeous luxuries—
The maskings, orgies, agonalia now
Madly triumphing o'er her lava streets!
Her frescoed palaces and sculptured domes
Flash back the torchlights of licentious throngs,
And countless chariots, rivaling their God
Of Morn, are hurled along the trembling side
Of this most awful Mount, as if the fire
Had never wreathed to heaven and poured o'er earth
In bloodred torrents! By the Nola gate,
Towers the proud temple of the Idol, first
Made and adored by earth's first Rebel—him
Called Belus, and exalted to a God
By the debased and impious sons of Ham.
There Parian columns and Mosaic floors,
And golden shrines and lavers and proud forms
Wrought by Praxiteles with godlike skill,
And pictures glowing with unshadowed charms
To tempt, or mythologic pomp to awe

The enthusiast and the sceptic, can attest
Idolatry's magnificence. Within,
The secret stair—the victim, whose wild shrieks
Are oracles—the flamen o'er his wine
Or darker deeds of sacrilege, while throngs
Of blind adorers in Fear's madness bend
And pile first fruits and gold around her shrine—
These are the illusions and the destinies
Of Isis, and her earthborn vassals, love!
Feargotten phantoms triumph there; and all
Impurities exult in their excess.
The rites of Thamuz and Astarte blend,—
Union unhallowed! and cast o'er the heart
Darkness and desolation and despair.
What recks the augur of his auguries?
The aruspices, of portents? or the priests
Of Egypt's Isis, of their oracles?
Think they of aspects men believe they rule?
Dream they of perils in their revelry?
Know they the God whose least respected works
They mock, as deities, by all excess
Loathsome and nameless to the human ear?”

Thought hurried fast through Mariamne's soul,
And on her brow the mighty spirit burned
Of the Judæan dynasties, while thus
She poured the passion of her wrecked heart forth:
“The destined hour of justice and despair,
When they shall gather wisdom, flings its shade
Upon the dial of the conqueror's doom.
Said not the Christ from the bright Olive Mount,
Looking upon the temple in its pride,
And glorious beauty, that the Holy Place
Should be defiled—the city trampled—all
Its princely dwellers captive, slain, or strewn
Like sear leaves o'er the unreceiving world,
Or scorned for uttering creeds the torture taught?
And not one stone upon another left
To mark where once Earth's Sanctuary stood?
Alas! she sleeps in desolation's arms,
The city of my childhood, and not one

Of all the pleasant haunts, the palmgrove plain
Of Sharon, and Siloa's holy fount,
And Lebanon's pavillioned wood—which Love,
At daydawn and the twilight, sanctified,
Is left amid the ruins of my home!
But, Pansa! thou my home and temple art,
And the Atoner, whom my people slew,
The God of this wrecked heart—wrecked when it felt
Its father slain, its race to bondage sold
Beneath the patriarch's Terebinth! alas!
That bigot faction—pride unquenched by woe—
And thanklessness and treachery and wrath,
Perpetuated by all punishment,
And more than either, the one awful crime
That ne'er shall be forgiven, till the faith
That mocked and shall mock, ages hence the same,
Without a country, law, chief, priest and home,
They were, in glory, with them all—shall fill
Their dark and desolated minds with light—
Alas! these led the Romans to the spoil,
And allied with his bands to our despair!
—But I do grieve thee, love! by selfish plaint,
And shut my soul from knowledge of the rites
And ministrations of thy monarch race.
Power and impunity with them, as all,
Forestall, I dread, their doom; but yet once more,
As we behold Campania's loveliest realm
Unfolded far beneath us, let me learn
The polity and faith of Italy.
Yon Dome, that now in dusky grandeur soars
O'er all Pompeii's fanes and palaces?”—

“Was once,” said Pansa, with a Roman's pride
And grief, “ere Freedom perished, and the car
Of conquest bore the tyrant to his throne,
The venerated home of Human Right,
Liberty's temple, where the tribune's voice
Forbade the consul's edict, and the least,
Unworthiest citizen of Rome's great realm
Saw himself honoured as a son of Rome.
Now, beautified by Parian colonnades,

And jetting fountains and immortal busts
Of Rome's immortal mind, when power, conferred
In peril, was resigned in safety's arms;
Now, 'mid Mosaic corridors and halls,
And princely trophies, from the spoils of Greece,
Of Zeuxis and Apelles, and the forms
Of Phidias, warrior statues, giant steeds,
And consuls stern in look, austere in life,
Dispensing bondage from the Capitol,
Or tributary diadems to earth—
Now, o'er this pomp of intellect and might,
The serpent spirit of a helot race,
Licking the dust of purple tyranny,
And crushing thought that dares be fetterless,
Through the mind's ruin, fraught with venom, glides.
Behold yon pillared ranges to the east!
(A sceptered figure overtops the dome,
Her brazen scales are superfluities—)
In the Ausonian days ere heaven revoked
Its holiest gifts to man; ere granite gods,
Sphynxes, cabiri, apes and crocodiles
Became corrupted nature's deities,
There reigned Astræa, bright Aurora's child,
The Titan's seraph—gentle e'en to crime,
Radiant in beauty to the Good; the clouds
Of passion never darkened her sweet brow,
Revenge and hate and venal compact ne'er
Confronted her calm look of sanctity.
Then the Basilicæ were temples meet
For prayer and hymn to the Divinity,
And Majesty and wisdom, peace and love
Dwelt with a sad yet just humanity.
Alas, for the brief vision! and alas
For the world's madness! giant Evil rushed
Through wrecked hearts and crushed spirits, and o'erspread
All realms; and casting earth's stain from her wings,
The goddess rose to the elysian throne
She left to meet derision and despair.
Then grovelling men groped through the dens of guilt,

Blaspheming and infuriate with crime,
The agonies of guilt without its shame,
Remorselessness and misery, to their home—
The sepulchre, their sons built to defile.
Thus felt, though feigning, pagan Rome's best minds:
And since the fated hour when faction raised
The tyrant's banner and the Cæsar's blood
Poured o'er his rival's pillar, none have stayed
The fiery deluge of unpunished wrong.
The Ambracian waters were not deeper dyed
Than judgment in yon courts; there's not a stone,
That bears not witness to man's wrong and woe,
Injustice, calumny and death; wrung tears
Have stained the Prætor's seat of perfidy;
And sighs unsolaced through the long arcades
Echoed like voices of accusing ghosts;
And hopeless shrieks ascended from the cells
Beneath the dark tribunal, where the will
Of one that cannot be arraigned, dooms all
To lingering anguish or unwitnessed death.
Alas, my Mariamne! while I gaze
On those dread mansions, burning terrors thrill
My heart, lest this dark, dripping mountain vault,
The home of fear and famine, where we wake
Gasping amid the sulphur fumes and blind
With the volcano's gory glare, and awed
By the earthquake's shudder and the mountain's roar—
Lest even this should be no refuge, love!
And fail to shield us from the felon clutch
Of Diomede's apparitors! forefend,
O Heaven! the hour of our betrayal! once
My stricken and stunned soul beheld the death—
Let us within, my love! my heart misgives
E'en while it images the wanton power,

The gnawing avarice, the bigot pride,
And pagan hate, the maddening lusts of him,
Whose sire—(and ne'er had father truer son)
Sejanus taught, Tiberius trusted in,
Caligula exalted; Nero loved
This subtle, quick Sicilian, and all since
Upon the imperial throne have left in place
Pompeii's Prætor—for his heart feels not!
Honoured by these, what have not we to fear?
His minion's glance is ruin unto both!
My life, his prey, thy beauty—stand not so,
Beyond the shadow of the precipice!
His seekers are abroad—the assassin games
Of yon vast amphitheatre will feast,
Erelong, the merciless idolators!
Enter the cavern, Mariamne! hark!
Torn lichens fall from the steep rocks o'erhead—
A sandal hath dislodged them—yet no eye
Of mortal may discern us from the crag
That beetles there—again! I hear the fall
Of guarded steps—so, softly, love! within!”

Darkness around the rugged crypt—(wherein
The pard had sorted with the serpent, ere
The Roman Convert made his home there, sought
By the fierce demon of the idol faith)—
Floated in wreaths, and round the jutting rocks,
Whence trickled the hill fountains, drop by drop,
Mocking the pulses of each lingering hour,
Hung in its home of centuries; but now
Gloom e'en more terrible from thunder clouds
Rushed on the tempest's wings o'er every star
Of bright blue ether, and o'er laughing earth,
(Breathed on by Zephyr from his vesper throne,
Late when the Oreads danced upon the mount,)
And winds in moaning gusts, like spirits doomed,
Swept through the cavern; and the giant trees,
Through shivering canopies, their voices cast
Upon the whirlwind; and the Apennines
Loomed through the ghastly midnight, shadowing forms
Like Earth Gods in the revel of their wrath,

With whom through ages of quick agony,
Vengeance had been an ecstacy; and whirled
In fury o'er the crags, huge boughs, and leaves,
And dust, leaving the gnarl'd grotesque roots bare,
Quivered along the sky; and lightning leapt
O'er cloven yet contending woods, from mass
To mass of all the surging sea of clouds,
That rioted amid the firmament,
Flashing like edicts from the infinite Mind
Of Godhead; and from sea, shore, cliff and vale
A deep wild groan in shuddering echoes passed
Through the earth's heart, and met the crash and howl
Of momentary thunders in mid air.

In silence from the moss couch of their cell,
'Mid the deep arches of the grotto, prayer
Ascended from the pale lips but tried hearts
Of earth's unfriended exiles—heaven's redeemed;
And there, as o'er their voiceless orisons
The wild tornado's music rushed, the Faith
Sublime, which, through all torture and all dread,
The Christian Martyr in heaven's triumph bore,
Pervaded every thought that soared beyond
The doubt and fear and anguish of their fate.
The first vast masses of dark vapour poured
Their deluge, and the torrents from ravines
And precipices hurried, in wild foam,
To channels bright with verdure and dry beds
Of mountain lakes, flinging their turbid floods
Down the deep boiling chasm and with the sea,
Now hurling its tumultuous waves along
The echoing shores and up the promontories,
Conflicting for the masterdom. Each glen,
Tangled with thorns, and every dim defile,
O'erhung with jagged cliffs, to the dread hymn
Of the night storm, shouted their oracles;
And from the summit of Vesuvius curled
A pyramid of vapour, tinged and stained
With a strange, smothered and unearthly light.
Portents and prophecies more awful fell
On every vigilant awed sense than e'er,

From Pythia shrieking on the tripod, sent
Terror and madness to the undoubting heart.
But, while the hollow dirge of the strong blast
Startled the dreaming world, the unruffled minds
Of the disciples with The Paraclete
Communed and gathered from the Cross new power
O'er famine, danger, loneliness and death.

Forth from the cavern's freezing gloom again
Came Mariamne, and upon the verge
Of the black rocks she with her wedded lord
Stood gazing on the tempest—then thus said:
“Thou fearest not now, my Pansa! though the Mount
Unquenchable beneath us quakes; wars not
The dread of human wrath with thy fixed trust
In God? thine eye shrinks not when all the heavens
Blaze, and thine ear shuts not when thunders burst,
Shocking the immensity; why fearst thou man?”

“I know him, and that knowledge is worst fear.
The Little and the Mighty are with him
In peril imminent; his passions grasp
All, being or to be, and what his love
Spares, his hate dooms—and what his avarice,
Ambition tortures; and his envy creeps,
A cold, still, mortal serpent, o'er the wreck
Of the quick heart he rends. But He, who died
For crime not his, hath taught my else fierce heart
To bend in meekness; therefore, fear invades
My too acquainted spirit when the shade
Of Diomede along my night dreams stalks.
But from His revelations I do know
The Maker, and his holiest name is Love,
And that consists not with the sceptic's dread.
Man, gifted with a might above all law,
And made exempt by guilt from punishment,
(And such is this proconsul) must become
The tyrant of his province; and the heart,
That weds a persecuted faith, and loves
A banished mortal, who on earth to him

Is as elysium, must from peril quail,
And shudder e'en at shadows menacing.”

“Yet paynim hate but lifts our thoughts to heaven,”
Said Mariamne, (e'en in woe like hers,
Breathing the thoughts which Miriam from the shores
Of Edom's sea breathed o'er the drowning host,)
“Their fountain first and final home, as feigned
Thy poet, of the Titans, thrown to earth
By might supernal, yet unconquered; still
They from the bosom of their mother sprung
With strength renewed, and added wrath, pourtrayed
Upon their godlike majesty of mien.
Man may destroy, but cannot desecrate;
May mock, but never can make vain our faith;
And if our hopes, like Christ's own kingdom, are
Not of this world, why should we linger on
In this unworthy fear, and shun the crown
Laid up for martyred witnesses of truth?
Let the worst come in the worst agonies!
We part, my love! but for an hour of woe;
Nor shall we leave—the sport of heathen scorn—
Bright sons and gentle daughters to endure
Inherited affliction, homeless need,
Perpetuated vengeance; round our hearts,
In the dread trial hour of tortured flesh,
The parent's matchless and undying love,
With all its blest endearments, and the charms
Of budding childhood's rainbow pleasantries,
Gushings of the soul's springtime, falling o'er
Maturer years like sunbright dews of heaven,
Will never cling and chain our daunted minds
To earth's vain interests. We shall depart
Like sunbows from the cataract, renewed
By luminaries that have no twilight—where
Winter and hoar age, doubt, care, strife and fear,
The desert and the samiel, the realm
Of flowers and pestilence, the purple pomp
And tattered want of human life are not.
What say the Greek and Roman sages, love?
What Judah's peerless monarch, mid the wealth,

The radiance and the perfumes and the power,
The majesty of thrones and diadems,
And the excess of mortal pleasure, said
In his immortal wisdom (how 't was soiled
By passion, in his age, for idol charms,
Heaven knows and sorrows o'er humanity,)
Ambition, pride, pomp, pleasure—all
Are but the vanities that tempt man on
To shame, satiety and death—or worse,
Reckless dishonour and shunned solitude,
Living with dire remembrances of joy.”

To Judah's daughter thus her lord replied:
“The God, my Mariamne! who for guilt,
Incurred in other forms or worlds unknown,
Ere the great cycles brought our being here,
(As some have deemed, if erring or inspired
I know not,) clothed our spirits in this robe
Of frail flesh, subject to necessities
From birth to burial, ne'er debased the mind
Unto the body's weakness, yet left not
Thought, at all seasons, master of our clay.
Wander not oft the wisest? sink not oft
The strong? and blench the fearless? and delay
To reason with blasphemers the most skilled?
And tamper with temptation, the most pure?
In the imparted strength of heaven I trust,
When the last trial of my faith shall come,
That the disciple will not prove apostate.
But having thee, my bride! e'en from the mouth
Of this wild Cacus vault, that looks beneath
Into the chaos of the mountain gorge,
The air, the forest, the blue glimmering waves,
The meadows with their melodies, the cliffs
Curtained by countless waving vines, or dark
With desolate magnificence, o'erwhelm
My soul with grandeur, love and beauty, till,
Uttering to thee the bliss which nature breathes,
And thrilled by her seraphic eloquence,
I mingle with the tenderness and bloom
Of her unfolded scenes, and shrink to meet

The power that rends away these charms—this love
So sternly proved through each uncertain hour
Since from Moriah's temple, wreathed with flame,
I snatched thee, pale and shuddering, and abjured
Fame, country, faith, home, hope to win thy love,
And share the bliss of its immortal bloom.
Life pure amid corruption, will to bear
Protracted evil, gratitude for all
The gifts of God, and prayer and praise in grief,
May prove a sacrifice to heaven not less
Than all the tortures of the martyrdom.
The tempest passes and the night wears on;
The dome of heaven is filled with prophecies!
With voices low, but heard where breathless thoughts
Are oft the most accepted music, let
Our evening hymn ascend, and then to rest.”

THE MIDNIGHT PRAYER.

From the wild cavern's still profound,
From cliffs that hang o'er viewless flame,
Our spirits soar beyond the bound
Of being to THY hallowed name.
In gloom and peril, God! thou art
Our hope amid the lion's lair,
And from the desolated heart,
Redeemer! hear our midnight prayer!

The lustres of our lives are few,
On darkened earth, our bliss still less;
Yet daydawn hears, and evelight dew,
Our hymns of love in lone distress:
By no green banks, as prayed our sires,
Our sighs win heaven to Time's despair,
But we are heard by seraph choirs—
Hear thou, O Christ! our midnight prayer!

No magian charms or mystic dreams,
Or Delian voices, uttering doubt,

By fountains dim and shadowy streams,
The fear, the awe of doom breathe out;
By shrines, red bolts have sanctified,
While dragons haunted meteor air,
We worship not as shadows glide—
Redeemer! hear our midnight prayer!

The breathing earth, the gleaming heaven,
The song of sea, mount, vale and stream,
While dimness waves o'er holy even,
Blend our glad souls with beauty's beam;
But darkness, danger, torrents raise
Our hopes to Thee, Death-Victor! where
In virgin light fly tearless days—
Redeemer! hear our midnight prayer!

The bard bereaved from Orcus' gloom,
Through Hades, led his love to light,
And thine adorers from thy tomb
Drink glory in their being's night;
More blest to need as thou didst, Lord!
Than be the Phrygian monarch's heir,
Wanting the rapture of thy word—
Redeemer! hear our midnight prayer?

Judea's incense hills are dim
And silent, where the song went up;
Hushed holy harp and temple hymn—
The slayer drinks the spoiler's cup!
Earth o'er the sophist's vision sighs,
O'er deeds, king, priest, and people dare,
And wilt thou not from pitying skies,
Redeemer! hear our midnight prayer!

Loosed from dark homage unto Fear,
Lamiæ, lares, teraphim,
And Delphian voice and Ebal seer,
Thy bright revealments round us swim,
Pouring upon the path we tread,
Though perill'd, lone, and rough and bare,
Light that inspires the martyred dead!
Redeemer! hear our midnight prayer!

In sleep and vigil, guard and guide,
In secret quest of earthly food,
From outward foes and inward pride,
And the fiend's wiles in solitude!
O'er idol rites Thy radiance pour,
Till, like the myriad worlds of air,
The Universe, as one, adore!
Redeemer! hear our midnight prayer!

“What terrible and ghastly blaze flares through
The cavern, filling its abyss with flame?”
Said Pansa, hurrying from the grotto's gloom,
As the last breathings of the solemn song
Whispered along the arches. “Love! behold!
The surges of the tempest fluctuate
In fierce tumultuous masses 'neath yon orb
Of livid fire that from the north careers
O'er the astonished and convulsed firmament!
Nor terror nor surprise is in thy look,
For well thou know'st that awful herald, seen
Through shadows of events yet unconceived
By all, save Him who mourned while all the pomp
Of thy Jerusalem before Him glowed.
The comet! meteor of despair to man!
Like a condemned, demolished world of flame,
With a vast atmosphere of torrent fire,
It traverses immensity with speed
Confounding thought, hurled on by viewless power
Omnipotent and unimagined, robed
In dreadful beauty—heaven's volcano—home,
Perchance, of those gigantic spirits cast
From holiness to hopelessness by pride.
Lo! how it sweeps o'er the sky's ocean! wreaths
Of purple light along its borders mount
What seem innumerable colonnades
Wrought by the seraphim, most meet to bear
A temple huge as Atlas; myriad hues,
Deeper and lovelier than prismatic lights,
Curl o'er the quivering arch as if to roof
The vast mysterious fabric of the sea

Of clouds that throng eternity, to which
Egypt's most mighty pyramid were not
More than a tinted shell to Caucasus.
Are those, that swirl like wrecks amid the surf,
Vast mountains wrenched from their abysses, thrown
From one fire billow's bosom and engulphed
To be again hurled on another's crest?
Lo! through the sky, air-rocks, hissing and red,
From the volcanic worlds of heaven descend!
What terrors of infinity they speak!
What revelations of Almighty Mind!
What be yon dark and spectral images
That through the bickering fiery waves move slow
Yet haughtily? oh, what a furnace glare
Rolled o'er the shadows then, and left their forms
Radiant with ruin! and above, methinks,
Broad wings of diamond brilliance wave and flash.
What said thy sires, Love! Israel's holy seers
Of such revealments of divinity?”

With dark eyes lifted to the troubled sky,
And voice subdued by awe, and heart o'erfraught,
Thus Mariamne to her lord replied.
“Seldom they came and brandished o'er the world
Their flickering and serpent tongues of flame:
Seldom—for generations, centuries passed,
And men saw not the burning heavens o'erwrit
In gory characters of forewarned fate.
Yet deemed our sages, least of dust, that all
The meteors warring with the myriad worlds,
That circle through the abyss of air, had been,
Ere man, time, sin, or death was, stars of bloom,
Casting their beauty and their fragrance on
The zephyr, hymning, on their flight through space,
The Maker, and awaiting life to fill
Their groves and valleys with the prayer and song.
Yon shattered mass of boiling minerals,
Thus in its whirlwind madness driven on
O'er shocked and startled ether, starskill'd eyes
Of the Captivity's prophetic Eld

Beheld in vision ere, in arcs and wreaths,
The gory torrents of volcanic fire
Precipitated through the sphere of earth.
Much in dread visions when between the wings
Of cherubim The Glory rested—much
In banishment and desert solitude—
And more in ruin—to the soul of seers
Was given to know; more than all human thought
Through all its systems can impart to man.
Yet with least erring eye the Apostle saw,
What time he felt the martyr's hovering crown.

“The cohorts of the conqueror, when we trod—
(A banished nation from our birth soil rent,
Outcast from earth and heaven—from home and hope)
The path of bondage, paused beneath the hill
Of sycamores, when the meridian sun
Hurled his fierce arrowy splendours; and around
The cool o'ershadowed fountains, scowling on
The scorched and agonizing captives, lay
The imperial legions, casting bitter scorn
And ribald merriment on each who passed
Among their stern battalions to assuage
His deadly thirst:—scarce deigned plebeian hate
This solitary solace;—and they held
Each pilgrim by the beard and bade him bow
In adoration to the Labarum,
And then with cruel scoffs, they questioned him
Of the sacked Temple's spoils—what hoards of gold
The chalices, cups, lavers, shrines would bring
To the vast coffers of the Palatine!
With lips unmoistened, weary, sick in soul,
I turned aside into a dreary rift
Of rock o'erbowered with briar and aconite,
To pray and perish, for I had on earth
No friend! my father, on that morn, had laid
His weary head upon my breaking heart
And died. They bound him to a blighted tree
Upon a desert crag, and, to my shrieks
Shouting, ‘The traitor may forget the path

The Avenger treads! let him look on to Rome!’
The savage spoilers dragged me from his corse.
Thus to the earth I cast me, wailing low,
When a hand lifted me, and I beheld
A form, a face, so towering, worn and full
Of grief and intellect and holiness,
Of majesty and mildness, that, methought,
'T was the Love-Angel! then his deep soft voice
Passed through my mind's depths like a cherub hymn.
‘Daughter!’ he said, ‘one doom is sealed in blood!
The Holy City, stained by guilt, defiled
By treason, sacrilege and rapine, sleeps
In dust—and who but God shall bid her wake?
Yet judgment tarries not, because the arm
Of Rome's proud Desolator worked the will
Of heaven, fulfilling his own ruthless lust.
Thou shalt behold the destiny of them
Who from the furnace of ambition cast
Their brands of ruin o'er the world—for me—
The numbered hours rush on. My daughter! hear!
Thou art the child's child of one great in all
That magnifies the mind and fills the heart
With earth's sublimest influences—all
That clothes our flesh with spirit light, and lifts
Our dim thoughts from the dungeon of our clay.
Gamaliel, thy wise ancestor’—My soul
Glowed at the name, and, gazing on that face
Which never blanched with fear though tyrants frowned,
Nor in success exulted, proud of gifts,
Quickly I said, ‘Who should have talked with him,
Master in Israel, and yet survive?’

‘'T is Saul of Tarsus!’ said he, with his eyes
Downcast in pale contrition: ‘he who first
Bore faggot, brand and crucifix, and watched
O'er the red garments of the martyred saint;
And, when the Temple's vail was rent, and heaven
Shuddered as the pale King of Shadows waved
His sceptre o'er the Son of God,—was held
Aloft, amidst the people, to behold

Him by our sires blasphemed and slain.—If toil,
Baffled temptation, patient suffering,
Perils by land and wave, and every ill
Mortality hath borne—added to zeal
And many years of vigil thought, may hope
For pardon of my crime, I have not lacked.
But, daughter! as I rested on my path,
And saw thee clinging to thy father's corse,
I sought to unfold to thee, now wrapt in grief,
The sole Redemption our ost fathers spurned.’”

She paused as on its wandering orbit now
Rushed madly the lost star, and gazing, cried;
“—But mark red Ruin's summoner! beneath
The quivering zenith and the zodiac dimmed
By his wild glories, how the herald scorns
The dominations of the dust, and dares
The loftiest hierarchies of the heaven!
Ghastly with lava light, the molten clouds
In cloven masses swirl before his path,
And with the crash and uproar of the war
Of all the antagonizing elements,
The demon comet cleaves the shuddering air!”

“And now,” said Pansa, “lo! the meteor flings
Its glare o'er the voluptuous wantonness
Of Baiæ and Pausylipo, upon
The fairest bosom of earth's beauty laid
To stain, defile and desecrate! beyond,
The waters of Parthenope, along
The curved and blossomed shores, from the dark brow
Of the Misenum to Surrentum rocks
And Capreæ's isle of carnage, curl and moan;
And on the ebbless sea the furnace fires,
With darkness struggling, cast their horrid light.
The promontories and proud Apennines
Seem to uplift their precipices o'er
The wild air and affrighted sea in dread;
And the deep forests, quaking yet beneath
The Alpine torrent blast, through all their clouds

Of leaves, drink the dark crimson streams that pour
In lurid cataracts of flame from heaven:
And every breathing thing—man, beast, tree, flower—
Pants in the siroc that from Lybian sands
Hastens to mingle with the withering breath
Of yon gigantic world of Death! Fear holds
My spirit captive to the majesty
Of the unearthly Portent. But thou, Love!
With the Apostle didst commune, thou saidst—
O God! I saw him die!—what said he, then,
In his own peril and thine agony?”

“Thus spake the prophet saint, with voice as sweet
As when he uttered blessings on his foes.
‘Fulfilled by Christian faith, the Law, whose voice
Was judgment to our fathers, by the blood
Of the One Victim unto all becomes
The very soul of Love!’ Thus he began,
And with an eloquence that thrilled my heart,
Contrite and meek, interpreted the law,
That spake in thunders from the Desert Mount;—
He, the Awakener of nations, whose high gifts,
E'en in the grandest spheres of fame, had won
The palm and laurel crown, but that in vain
Cajoling tempters spread their blandishments
And the seducings of apt sophistries
Tangled their meshes round him. Affluence,
Dominion o'er the treasures and the thoughts
Of traitor worshippers, the feigned awe breathed
By vassal sycophants through tainted courts,
Thronged temples, porticoes, and schools of sects,
He cast aside as winds do dust to dust.
He felt his intellect's supremacy,
And shrunk from moulded clay that lipped his name
In interested ecstacies—he knew
Himself and sought not other knowledge here.
In place of men's dissembled treacheries,
He, clothed with immortality's own light,
Pictured the Passion, spread the Eucharist,
Soothed the quick pangs of lonely malady,

Warded the fold of faith assailed, and stood
In every danger on the vanward tower
To watch, guard, counsel, lead, bear scorn, and die!
Brief was our converse, for the Flavian trump,
With its deep echoes, startled the great host.
But from that hour, through agony and shame,
I have not trembled to confess The Word,
Whose smile is, e'en in the worst evil, heaven.
‘Farewell! my captive child!’ he said, ‘when power
Purples the rills with blood of martyrdom
And wanton crime mocks thy unpitied moans,
Forget not Calvary and Gethsemane!
Forget not that my eye beholds e'en now,
Down the dark lapses of Time unconceived,
A terrible atonement of the doom
That made our Solyma a desert! o'er
Infinitude the vision rushes—earth
With shrieks of wrath and quick convulsions hails
The herald of despair—it whirls and leaps,
Like living madness now, and tosses o'er
Unterminating and unsounded air
Perpetual deluges of flame, to warn
The scoffer and the rioter. Farewell!
Desolate daughter of a slaughtered sire!
Forget not! and the Paraclete console
Thy lingering sorrows! mine are almost done!’
The fountain of my heart o'erflowed; I looked,
Yet never more beheld the godlike brow
Of Christendom's apostle; through the shades
Of the descending cavern slowly waved
His mantle, the white turban seemed to hang
A moment in the gloom; his sandalled feet
Sent back a few low sounds—and he had passed
Unto his mission and his martyrdom!
But tell me, love! beneath this ghastly light,
The story of his doom—how passed his soul
From torture into triumph when the flesh
Clung round the spirit in its agony?”

“In calm magnificence that spirit passed
From gloom to glory, through its martyrdom,

Triumphant over agony and scorn!”
Said Pansa, casting on the o'erhung crags
And piles of rifted scoriæ half green'd o'er,
(Beauty embracing ruin,) glances quick
As through the midnight smothered sounds arose
Like breaths held back, and then, at intervals,
Gasping in sobs, like moanings of the surf.
With startled ear, strained eye and quivering brow,
Listened the Christian; but the dells reposed
In their green blessedness, the hills looked down
From their cold solitudes; above, the flame
Of the banned star flared far and dim—beneath,
Pompeii lay, folded in sleep that flings
Oblivion o'er the exhaustion of desire;
And, breathing terror from his burdened heart,
He thus pourtrayed the passion of the Saint.

“No psalteries or harps their music poured
Around his death-hour; no bewailing dirge
Gushed from the tabret, and no gentle voice
Arose, lamenting o'er his felon doom.
Alone amid his slayers and the foes
Of Him they crucified, Paul calmly stood,
Nor daring pagan hate nor dreading it,
His white hair streaming on the autumnal wind.
His countenance, trenched o'er by thought and care
And toil and suffering, gathered, as he looked
Upon the Prætor on his throne of power,
The grandeur of his youth, the matchless light
Of a triumphant intellect that grasped
An immortality of bliss, and feared
No mortal agony when death was heaven.
‘Thou art a Christian?’ Paul held up the Cross.
‘Thou art a Hebrew?’ ‘Ay, I was, and worse!’
‘Thou art a Traitor?’ ‘Not to God or man!’
Cried the Apostle, and his monarch form
Rose from the ruins of his years, and stood,
Like the unpeered statue of Olympian Jove,
Before the quailing Paynim. ‘Edicts, hurled
By Agrippina's son, had Rome a soul,

E'en from blasphemed humanity would call
For vengeance on the utterer. Where 's the guilt
Of thought? the crime of faith, whose very soul
Is low-voiced worship and still charities?
The loftiest mind most loves humility!
The imperial ban, ('t was uttered by the banned,)
Leaves deeds untouched but criminates the thought:
Hales famished, homeless and (for this vain world)
Hopeless believers of an humble faith,
To judgment, not to trial, and allows
The apostacy, it e'er arraigns as crime.
Death or Denial! is the only law
Of Rome, whose wings are o'er the world, to men
So poor, they have no pillow, and so few,
They have no power: and yet the Palatine
Fears they—they may subvert its giant might!
Is Truth so terrible to the Immortal Gods,
That they should tremble at a mortal voice?
Dreads the fierce Thunderer the cicada's song?
Or your gay god of Revels, lest the charm
Of his wreathed thyrsus may depart, when woods
And caverns are the palaces, and rills
And berries all the banquet of his foes?
Yet none of all thy fabled deities,
Save hirsute fauns and lonely oreads,
Behold our rites, or need shrink to behold.
How should conspiracy consort with want
And weakness so extreme, they lack the power
To lift the dying head or bear the corse
Beyond the grotto where they weep and pray?
And who of all Rome's judges can arraign
The Christian for a deed that could design
Possession of a hamlet, or a hut?
We seek no empire save the free soul's thought;
We court no patron save The Crucified;
We win no crown save that of martyrdom.’

‘Smite, silence the blasphemer!’ shrieked the judge,
Robing his fear in wrath; ‘too long we waste
The Empire's time—chain the conspirator!
And, lictors! guard his cross from slaves, and all

The baser multitudes that throng to hear
The maniac treasons of the Nazarenes.
Hoar breeder of sedition, thou must die!’

‘Nature said that when I was born, and God,
Ere that, a thousand ages, when Sin rose
From Hades; not in vain have all the power,
Splendour and guilt of Rome before me passed
In danger yet in solitude, and now
I fold unto my bosom that deep death
I never sought nor shunned, and thank the ruth
Of that derision which ordains the Cross.
The MASTER of your vast—of every realm,
Sea, earth and sky hold, taught me by His groan
That the last breath was agony, but He
Hath sent the Paraclete to o'ershadow all
Who perish by his Passion, and I go,
Purple idolater! having wandered long
Through many years of weariness, to rest,
Where, couldst thou ever share my bliss, this hour,
With less of anguish, would pass o'er my soul!’
Then led they him unto the Accursed Field
Beyond the Patriot's Precipice, 'mid bands
Of mailed Prætorians, in the blaze of noon,
Bearing the Labarum, whose folds were dipped
In the world's blood; and proudly in the van
The aruspices in purple trabeæ walked,
Their oakleaf chaplets waving: then in throngs,
The mad Luperci, atheist priests of Mars,
In crimson togas and broad burnished plates
Of brass that mirrored carnage, followed quick,
And the wild flamens of Cybele, stained
By the red vintage, and the countless crowd

Of magi, augurs, senators and slaves,
Paphians and vestals, through the marble streets,
From dusky lanes and sculptured palaces,
Temple and forum and Cimmerian den,
Outpoured in pageantry or squalid want,
Like Scylla's whirlpool fiends, to feast on death.
'T was ever thus in Rome; she nursed her horde
Of bandits, from the first, on blood; and war,
Wedding with carnage, wrote her very creed
In groans, and wrought her gods from myriad crimes.
So on they led the Martyr stooping low
Beneath the felon cross, his glorious brow,
Oft wet with dungeon dew, soiled by the dust
Of the armed cohort, yet his undimmed eye
Flashing its birthlight radiance unto heaven,
Drinking revealments of God's paradise.
Oath, menace, jeer and ribald mockeries,
The vulgar's worship of all greatness, passed
Like the sirocco, o'er Campanian flowers,
Or snowpiles of the Apennines, gathering bloom
And zephyr freshness, o'er his sainted soul.
His lofty nature did, a moment, seem
Burning in scorn upon his lips, and once,
Clasping the heavy cross as 't were a wand,
He lifted his proud form and matchless head,
And o'er the helmed lictors looked upon
The mockers—and they shrunk beneath his glance
Like grass beneath the samiel; yet no more,
Hushing the spirit of his grandeur, he
Deigned to deem earth his home, or earthly things
Fit wakeners of his thought. And so he came
Unto the Accursed Field, and one, all shunned,
Loathing, drave down the massy cross, whereon,
With lingering patience, he had stretched and nailed,
Through palm and sole, the Martyr, every blow
Tearing the impaled nerves, and through heart and brain
Sending a sick convulsion; but the pangs
Passed quickly o'er his features, though the limbs
Quivered, and, as he looked to heaven, a light,
Brighter than all Heaven's constellations blent,
Fell round the Martyr in his agony!

‘A prodigy! Jove flashes wrath! the gods
Forbid the death!’ shouted the multitude,
Like foliage fluctuating, as the spells
Of all-believing Fear fell on their hearts.
‘All Rome shall perish if the Christian dies!’

‘Hence, vassals! fools! home to your huts! away!’
Passed the proud Prefect's deep, stern, ruthless voice,
Whose echo was an oracle. ‘Ye slaves!
The beast should batten on the slain, I know,
And ye can taunt and torture helplessness,
Yet dread the very shade of Danger's ghost;
But, by the Spectre River! Rome's best spears
Shall search your dastard dust, if ye but speak
Ere each adores his Lares! hence! away!’

The Gracchi from the Aventine dragged forth
For senators to slaughter well displayed
The liberties of Rome; and they, who held
The Briton chief barbarian, shrunk away,
When a patrician bade, without a voice!
But bondage and brute violence are one.

Then, as the steps of the vast throng retired
Like dying waves, the priests and guards outspread
Their banquet on the plain beneath the tents,
(The kalends of the seventh month had come)
They bore to shield the sun, while there they watched
The fever, famine, thirst and pangs of death.
Pheasants, Falernian, mirth, song, jest and oath
Inspired the revel 'neath the cross, and all
Care and command, save that which bade them see
The Martyr die, fled from their spirits now.
Wanton with wine, the priest revealed to scorn
His wiles and sophistries and oracles,

Blessing the phantom gods that shadows held
Dominion o'er the conscious fears of men.
Warriors portrayed, on tales of other climes,
Numidia, Arcady or Syrian realms,
The splendour of the spoil, the gems and gold,
The perfumes, luxuries and regal robes,
Fair slaves and diamonds, from the Orient shores
Wafted, in homage to the diadem
That circled nations. Many a demon deed
And dark career of crime then first to light
Leapt from the dizzy brain of guilt, and moved
Applause and rival histories of acts
O'erpast; how dusky kings in palaces,
Amid their pomp, gleaming magnificence,
Did perish in the flame, and none could save
The victim, though they bore his coffers forth.
How queens and virgin beauties in their bowers,
On broidered couches slumbering, while their robes
Like zodiacs, glittered in the purple light,
Felt not the serpent that trailed o'er their sleep,
But died in their pavilions, voicelessly!
Then senators and knights, with mutual mirth,
Discoursed of laws enacted or suppressed
As suited Cæsar; and quenched liberties,
Naming them treason; and asserted rights,
They branded as seditions; and revealed
To the unshuddering guards the mysteries
Of Rome's proud Forum, where the agonies
Of desolated kingdoms, and the shrieks
Of nations in their bondage, and the tears
Of eloquent affection to the lords
Of Power were music and unholy mirth.
Then round the Martyr mingled voices rose
Louder, and laughter to impiety
Replied, and men, the gods, truth, chastity,
Love, honour, courage and fidelity,
All were but mockeries to the rioters.

“Hercle! is this the Lupercal? ye howl
Like Conscript Fathers when the spoil is lost!
Peace!” said the Prefect—“see ye not the lips
Of yon hoar traitor trembling with quick thought?

Listen! he speaks his last,—his heart 's too old
To linger in the torture of the tree!”

“The Isles shall wait, Jehovah! for thy law,
And Knowledge to and fro shall spread, till earth
Utter Thy praise like voices of the sea!”
Thus spake the victim, in delirium,
Wrought by deep anguish, wandering yet among
The dear homes of his mission. “Dangers wave
Their wings around us, brethren! and the waste,
Boundless and shadowless, must still be trod!
Yet not by dim lights of a doubting faith
Are ye led on through wrong and woe and want,
For the Anointed hath not left us here
Without a Comforter, and hath He not
Laid up, in many mansions, crowns of joy,
Where mortal doth put on immortality?
Grieve not the Spirit! yet a little while,
And ye shall reap the harvest and rejoice;
And though, ere then, this flesh must see decay,
Yet I shall mingle with your prayer and hymn,
By morn and eve—and breathe the Saviour's smile
O'er the glad Isles of Gentiles so beloved!”

Then spasms of vivid pain passed o'er his face,
His eyes rolled back upon the brain, and left
The pale streaked orbs writhing in gloom—the lids
Now folded to their lashes, coiling now
In nature's deep convulsion, till the veins,
O'erfraught, seemed bursting o'er his haggard brow.
His livid lips, parted by torture, breathed
Deep undistinguished murmurs, then compressed
Like sculptured curves and lines of thought; the limbs,
Meantime, grew cold, and the dark gathering blood
Forsook its own familiar channel, when
The shadows of the sepulchre stole on.

“Dis leaves his realm to welcome him,” said one.
“Peace! thou discourteous knight! jeers skill not now;
Thy mirth is motlied with mortality,
And thou thyself mayst pray for Lethe ere
The graceless Stygian grasps thine obolus.
Put on thy knighthood! peace! he speaks again!”
And the proud Prefect flung his casque to earth.

In moans, like autumn gusts, the Martyr spake,
Hovering o'er shattered memories like the sun
O'er broken billows of the shoreless sea!
Let me behold thy domes, Damascus! meet
It is the arrows of Life's penitence
Should pierce the persecutor.—Oh, farewell!
My brother! blessed in Pisidia be
Thy walk and watching!—To the Unknown God!
Are ye the worshipped wisdom of all Greece,
When ye disdain your thrice ten thousand gods,
Adoring Doubt or Demon, knowing not
The Deity revealed!—Ye can attest,
I have not coveted the gold of earth,
The gorgeous raiment or vain pomp of men,
But ministered, in all, unto myself!
—Ay, driven to and fro in Adria
Upon Euroclydon, no hope is left
But in the Wielder of the wave and wind.
Despair not! though sun, moon and stars are hid,
Jehovah watches from eternity!
—Contend not, brethren! untaught man may win
Redemption from the deep crimes of his age,
And be a law unto himself; e'en Rome
Hath in her centuries of guilt had such.
—Oh, sorrow not like them who have no hope!
The seed shall not decay though I am dust!
—Why do ye scourge me, soldiers! know ye not
I am a Roman? I appeal to Cæsar!
—Bring me a winter robe when thou dost come
Again—the night is cold among the hills,
And I am very weary! so, farewell!”
Then the bare nerves and sinews sent their pangs
For the last time upon his fainting heart,

And, as beyond the trembling battlements
Of agonizing flesh, the spirit strove
To flee, beholding heaven, the bitter strife
O'erawed the infidels, and round the Cross
Stood silent pagan revellers! Once more
The Apostle's peerless mind gleamed out—his eyes,
Living in the dark light of boyhood, flung
Their dying splendours o'er the Imperial Hills,
The mountains and the waters—while his pulse
Intensely throbbed and paused—and the heart's chill
And fever rushed to life's deep fount and spread
A shuddering faintness and sick gasping sense
Of falling through infinitude, o'er all
The vital functions of his frame. “My God!”
'T was the last breath that quivered on his lips—
A hollow echo from the martyr's tomb,
Yet it said “Saviour! let me—see—Thy face!”
And Saul of Tarsus stood before his God!”

“As thou shalt stand before Gætulia's king,
The Barcan lion!” cried the ruthless voice
Of Diomede's outwatching messenger,
The pander of the Prætor's evil will,
Grasping the Christian while his fellows rushed
Upon his pale but dreadless Hebrew bride.
“Well!” said the minion, “traitors serve, sometimes,
The empire's weal, and martyrdom, methinks,
Hath a rare syren music, for ye stood
Wrapt in your exalted Nazarene,
Till we could climb the cliffs and do the hest
Of the proconsul, unfulfilled too long!
Come, Rabbi! thou art skilled in subterfuge,
And hast not scorned the sword in better times—
The games shall test thy genius—on with me!
The Gladiator's banquet waits, and thou
Shalt quaff the Massic or the Tears of Christ.
Veles! thou hast thy charge! the Prætor's coin
Rewards not slack obedience, though his wrath
Ne'er palters with a thought of treachery!

The lady—(Venus! but she hath a brow
Like the coy Delian queen!)—must be disposed,
With all respect,—lead on! the day-star wanes!”

“Thraso! we were not foes when, side by side,
We scaled Antonia's tower, and saw the walls
Of Zion crushed. Why now? what are our deeds
That thus from caverns we to death are dragged?”
Said Pansa, with the heart's best eloquence,
As down the steep crags turned the lictor band,
Bearing his bride. “Why from my heart, by guile
Betrayed, by violence asunder rent,
Tear'st thou my Mariamne, mocking thus?”

“And dost thou ask, apostate? hast thou not
Contemned the gods, scorning thy father's faith?
Forsaken the eagle banners, deeming rocks
Better than camps! and sowed sedition, thick
As sand-clouds, through the legions? Thou hast wed
A captive, too, whom, though with all thy gold
Thou bought'st, poor fool! yet hast not held, as bids
The law, in bondage! dost thou ask again?
Mine office deigns no farther word, but more
Thou soon shalt learn in bitterness! lead on!”

“Bear me with her, where'er ye drag, whate'er
Ye or your lords in lawlessness inflict!
No more my voice shall crave or ye deny!”
Cried Pansa, struggling with the lictor horde.

“The Prætor's edict suits no purposes
Apostates may desire; your destinies
Have separate mansions, renegade!” Along
Ravine and precipice and lava bed,
Vineyard, pomegranate grove and vale of bloom,
The Pagan haled his victims, till the gate
Of doomed Pompeii oped and Pansa saw,
In speechless agony, a moment ere

The Mamertine abysses were his home,
Pale shuddering Mariamne through the gloom
Of statues, pillars, temples and hushed streets,
Where fountains only witnessed deeds of death,
Borne like a shadow to a nameless doom.

The inneffable enormities of Tiberius while he lived, amid massacre and debauchery, at Capri, startled even the degraded Romans into a sense of shame as well as fear.

I have represented Mount Vesuvius throughout the poem as a portion of the Campanian Hills.

Charms in Hebrew and pagan worship, the tricks of jugglers and imaginary protections against evil spirits and earthly calamities.

Mysterious demigods of Egypt and Samothrace.

The battle of Actium, fought upon the Ambracian gulf, forever decided the fate of Roman liberty. The glory of Octavius Cæsar rose from the blood of that fearful day, and most fearfully did it glow till barbarian retribution made Italy's charms a curse.

I have appropriated to the Chief Ruler of Pompeii, the name of its wealthiest citizen. It has been asserted, by some, that he was only a freedman; yet the Emperors seldom hesitated to confer their judicial or fiscal offices upon any who scrupled not to embrace the most oppressive means in the irresponsible administration of power. His character, therefore, as I have attempted to depict it, would synchronize with the condition of the age and the avowed crimes of Pompeii. Apparitors were officers of justice or injustice—bailiffs—so called from their suddenly appearing when undesired.

Solomon. “Vanity of vanities! all is vanity.”

Lustra—periods of fifty months: at the close of which, sacrifices of purification were offered.

The Campus Sceleratus, where vestal virgins were buried alive when they followed the example of Rhœa Sylvia. The Tarpeian Rock was not far removed from such appropriate neighbourhood.

The prognosticators of Rome were allowed extraordinary honours; and their trabeæ, or robes of office, nearly resembled those of the Emperors. Every superstition exalts its expositors; and the Roman priests well knew the power which fear and ignorance conferred upon them, and abhorred in the same degree that they dreaded the illumination of Christianity. The fasces, the trabeæ, pretextæ, and curule chair were introduced by Tarquin Priscus from conquered Tuscany.

For attempting, by the enactment of the Agrarian Law, to restrain the exorbitant power of the patricians, Tiberius Gracchus was assassinated in the Capitol by Scipio Nasica; Caius Gracchus and Fulvius Flaccus were killed by Opimius, the consul; Saturninus, the tribune, was murdered by a mob of Conscript Fathers; and Livius Drusus, on the same account, was slain in his own house. All in Rome, who could not trace their descent from the highwayman Romulus, or some one of his least merciful banditti, were esteemed no better than vassals. The Romans never understood either justice, mercy, or freedom; their dominion was acquired by the sword without remorse, and it perished by the sword without regret.

I have made the dying ejaculations of St Paul to consist mostly of portions of his own powerful writings. Nothing more beautiful or splendid can be found in any compositions—more vivid with the heart's best emotions and the mind's most lofty conceptions—than the remonstrances and arguments of the great Apostle, who devoted himself to the propagation of that religion he had once assailed, with an energy and enthusiasm and utter oblivion of self, which should find more imitators among the curates of men's souls.

The wine of Mount Vesuvius is profanely called Lacrymæ Christi.

Dungeons even more horrible than those of Venetian and Austrian tyranny, dug immediately beneath the elevated seat of the Prætor, in the hall of judgment; and so called from the Roman consul Mamertinus, who planned their construction, and who should have been, like Phalaris and the inventor of the guillotine, the first to test the merit of his philanthropic ingenuity.

University of Virginia Library

CANTO I.

THE VESTAL'S HYMN.

THE MIDNIGHT PRAYER.