 | The poems and prose writings of Sumner Lincoln Fairfield |  |
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Their pictured wings fanning the ether, flew
The songbirds, and the groves were full of joy
Too pure for any voice but music's, when,
Lifting their dim eyes to the blaze of day,
Campania's proud patricians deemed the hour
So far removed from common time of rest,
That, with due honour, they might breathe the breeze,
That o'er the dimpled waters and the flowers,
Since the first tints of dawn, had played like thought
Over the face of childhood—yet bore now
The vivid heat and dense effluviæ
Of culminating sun and marsh exhaled.
To mask the treacheries of eye and lip
Is pride's philosophy, the felon's skill,
The code of kings, the priesthood's mystic creed,
Unknown to commoners; and none beheld,
Save the bronze lares, revel's quivering eye,
And dull brow bound with iron, or the face
Of matron guilt pallid with watch and waste,
And trembling in the faintness of a heart
Wrecked by excess of passion, yet again
Gasping for midnight poison! Untrimmed lamps,
Sculptured with shapes of ribaldry to lure
Even satiety to sin's embrace,
To tempt the timid and inflame the inured,
Stood round the household altar, and upon
The silken couch of customary crime
Shed the pale, sickly light of vice o'erworn.
Oh, that lascivious guilt at midnight wore
The lurid look, the loathing shame of morn!
Bracelets of gems, enchanted amulets,
And vases wrought with wanton images,
And frescoes, picturing the satyr joys
Of Jove and Hermes and the Laurel God,
(For the old divinities were human crimes)
And fountains, with nude naiads twining round
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And groups of Paphians, in the forest dim,
(Where gloating forms lifted the filmy robes
Of the bacchantes in voluptuous sleep,)
Holding their revelries with gods disguised,
And every portraiture of pleasure known
To them, whose whole religion was excess,—
All, in the chaos of the morning, flung
Alluring raptures over sated sense
And sickened passion, uttering, without voice,
“Ye buy Repentance at the price of Hell!”
The sensualities of Pompeii were not restricted by any deference to decorum even in external dissembling; but the passions, which burned in their bosoms, were too graphically represented upon their customary utensils. The secret deposites of the Museum Borbonico at Naples will illustrate this to any who are incredulous of the noisome excess to which sin may be extended.
| The poems and prose writings of Sumner Lincoln Fairfield | |