University of Virginia Library

Cease, Syren! cease thy song!—Thy witcheries sweet
No more shall lure me to thy native main:
No more, Parthenope, thy haunts detain
My slow-receding feet.
Yet while I breathe farewell, beam on my sight,
Beam on me yet, fair scene, surpassing fair!
Soon, like a vision wove of air,
In transient colours bright,
A vision, that before the orb of day
Melts into liquid light:
Thus wilt thou glide, evanishing away
In thy clear heav'n's blue distance.—Beauteous scene,
Beam on me yet!—Too swiftly speeds the hour,
When I no more the fragrance shall inhale
That gives to every gale
The breathing of the south—the orange bow'r.
Already Time has wav'd the wing,
Under whose darksome covering
I shall no more behold
Yon gray rocks, nor the green and gilded isles
Where the broad sun-light smiles:
Nor Chiaia's groves, that, as their branches sweep
Along the slumber of the Syren bay,
Confuse their image in the glassy deep:
Nor on Vesuvio's height
The pillar'd cloud by day,
Nor eminent afar the shaft of fire by night.

I shall no more behold Misenum's crest,
That high o'er ocean lifts its thirsty brow,
While ceaselessly below
The white waves curl their fleece around its breast:
Nor where bright sun-beams in perpetual rest
Sleep on Sorrento's cliff: nor e'er again
View Caprea's craggy outline, bleak and bare,
Heave its huge sweep, and, mid-way, meet the storm,
Lest wind or wave unkind the Syren bay deform.

I shall no more behold the smooth descent
Of Somma, where the burning mountain throws
The shadow of its cone in noon repose;
Nor beechen groves, that from the blazing sky
Shelter the hermit on Camaldoli:
Nor daylight die in Pausilippo's gloom:
Nor hail, 'mid purple vines, the hallow'd seat
Where yet the Muses meet
Beneath th' o'ershadowing bay that crowns their Maro's tomb.

If never more beneath that shade
I muse, in blissful vision laid:
If never more, at Day's decline,
By Chiaia's groves, and Mergelline,
I lonely seek that hallow'd spot:
Here live—by me forgotten not—
That peaceful eve—the last—the last—
When 'mid those blooming bow'rs I past.
So shall that scene, on fancy's wing
My woodland wilds revisiting,
Breathe o'er my haunt a charm, of pow'r
To solace life's declining hour.

The sun in splendor had retir'd,
And brighter flames Vesuvius fir'd,
Far Ischia's peak was bath'd in stream
Of purple from the evening beam,
While many an isle beneath its height
Sank slowly fading into night:
No cloud pass'd o'er the clear blue sky,
No star, save Hesper, gliding by,
Nor wav'd a leaf on flow'r and tree,
Nor ripple cross'd the slumberous sea:
Nor sound more harsh in æther heard
Than trilling of the love-lorn bird.
So calm that eve, so sweet that scene,
When last I went o'er Mergelline:
And, as within that haunted gloom
I pass'd, and bent o'er Maro's tomb,
I heard a voice, that seem'd to say,
“Stranger! who dar'dst in youthful year
“Attune to Britain's ear
“The reed that Tityrus blew, here, rest thy way!
“Rest, where the pastoral gods came list'ning to his “lay.

“The Bard, at gray of dawn,
“View'd in yon velvet lawn
“The wood-nymphs dancing on the dewy blade:
“And sometimes Pan was seen
“Winding the choir between:
“Or stretch'd, in noontide sleep, beneath yon “shade,
“Where Solitude and Silence watch'd around,
“Nor Echo dar'd prolong the whisper of a sound.

“Oft, when the winds were still,
“On yon flow'r-gemmed hill
“An Oread stood, deserting his bleak mountain:
“Each tree a Dryad bred;
“And where the rivulet spread,
“From a pure urn a Naiad fed her fountain,
“And if th' unhallow'd stranger ventur'd nigh,
“Veil'd in a wreath of foam, sank from his daring “eye.

“And oft a voice was heard,
“More sweet than vernal bird,
“Song of a Nymph some blooming boy beguiling:
“And when, bow'd o'er the brink,
“He hung, her words to drink,
“An arm more white than snow, with amorous “wiling,
“Entic'd him to her crystal cave profound,
“Whence ne'er again on earth his foot's light print “was found.”

Let me once more around the silent bay
Of Baia wind my way,
And idly rest the interrupted oar
That sheds its brine drops on the sculptur'd stone,
And wrecks that pave the shore,
With glossy sea-sedge and smooth weeds o'ergrown:
Nor seldom, as it dips beneath the main,
On the rent palace strikes, and prostrate fane:
Such as, 'tis said, the seaman has descried
At times beneath the tide:
And told of Nereids, in their amber cave,
That still frequent that wave:
And monsters of the deep, that make their home
Where Cæsars deign'd with revellers reside,
And, diadem'd with flow'rs, forgot the world, and Rome.

Thou cool reviving hour!
Nurse of awaken'd thought, return again:
That I may feel thy spirit-stirring pow'r,
Thy freshness on that main,
That silent sea, which slumber'd motionless,
The while I sought th' Elysian glades,
To lie at noon in sweet forgetfulness,
'Mid unembodied shades.
Return! lo! twilight dim
Has pal'd the horizon's rim,
And Phœbus sinks in Amphitrite's bow'r.
Breathe thou again the vesper hymn
Of nature on the rising gale:
And fill again the swell of sail,
While, fearlessly, the helmsman joys to weave
From isle to isle my way beneath the star of eve.

Shall I no more, with gradual foot-step slow,
Wind up the deep ascent,
And, resting on St. Elmo's battlement,
Behold a paradise beneath me lie,
A region of fertility,
Earth, one bright garden, one bright lake the sea:
And hear the while, soft blended from below,
From thousands and ten thousands, round me flow
One voice, that ever with the breeze upsent,
Comes mingling with the murmur of the main,
And swells upon the ear like a melodious strain?

What tho', ere long, on Britain's guardian main
I hail the cliffs of Freedom's sacred earth;
And with glad foot revisiting again
The spot that gave me birth,
Repose my wanderings in the woodland plain:
What tho' ere long, from life's loud din aloof,
In the still haunt where peace descends to dwell,
Beneath her wing, that shades my household roof,
I bid the world farewell:
And tho' that household roof be doubly dear,
Because its threshold has so long been strange;
And tho' I would not one home-smile exchange
For ceaseless summer, and th' Italian year,
And all Ausonia's range:
Yet—Albion! when thy sullen mists roll by,
And, like a sea of foam, thy vapour sweeps
O'er the dim earth, and from thy summer cloud
Bleak winds descend, and drizzly Autumn weeps,
Mildewing the harvest as the ears unfold:
How may I then the azure heav'n forget?
How—not those suns regret,
That rise, and rest in gold:
And upward draw the soft ethereal haze,
Which, as it melts away in liquid light,
The burning of the sultry beam allays,
And casts a magic colour on the sight,
That softens into union hill and dale,
And between heav'n and earth spreads its translucent veil?
The dream will linger on the blest champain,
From hill to hill where groves of olive grew,
O'er which the grape her purple clusters threw:
While earth beneath wide wav'd with billowy grain:
And all around the golden orange glow'd
On bow'rs, beneath whose bloom the waveless ocean flow'd.

Yet—beauteous as thou art, ah! happier far
Had'st thou less lovely been, Parthenope!
Ah! happier far for thee,
Had'st thou less lovely been, or that kind heav'n
Had with the gift of fatal beauty giv'n
Thy sons the spirit and the arm in war
To quell th' invader.—But thou still hast bent
To each bold suitor, and resign'd thy charms,
Like her, the peerless Fair,
Who drew brave knights to solemn tournament
And mortal strife in arms,
Her hand the prize—thus, hast thou, Syren! stood
Aloof from perilous combating:
And when the conqueror came from fields of blood,
Unhelmeted his brow, and kiss'd the ring
That fetter'd thee to conquest—each, in turn,
Each, of thy charms in turn possest,
Forgot the battle on thy breast:—
Rome, and the Goth, and they who bore
Fierce war from Odin's icy shore:
And they who, sprung from Otho's stem,
Circled th' imperial diadem:
And he who round his helmet wreath'd
The rose, whose sweets of Provence breath'd,
Whose steed on Benevento's plain
Waded in blood o'er Manfred slain,
And crush'd the flow'r of Swabia's line,
On thy pale brow, young Conradine.

Bow down beneath the despot's yoke,
Thou, whose rang'd host, when Freedom call'd,
Ere yet the shock of arms their battle broke,
Fled from Rieti's shore: fled back appall'd,
To slumber where their sires had slept,
And the upbraiding woman wept
O'er her man-child's ill-fated birth:
Born to bow down his front sublime,
Low-levell'd with the dust of earth:
A criminal, without a crime:
To live and die a branded slave,
Nor find in death a freeman's grave.
So shall she weep, while yon bright sky
Retains its azure brilliancy;
While heav'n outspreads her sheltering roof,
And robes her with its sunny woof:
Till nature shall no longer yield
Fresh harvests from the untill'd field:
Till the ripe chestnut cease to shed
On earth's full lap th' unpurchas'd bread:
Till the gold fruit its feast decline,
Nor swells a grape with pendent wine:
Till on the mount the snowy flake
Fail her summer thirst to slake:
Till elements of sterner mould,
Suns dark with clouds, earth clos'd with cold,
That brace the native of the north,
Force, by kind harshness, manhood forth,
In Wants chill breast a soul inspire,
And strike from flints the spark of fire.

Once, Naples! thou wert free;
And Fortune, as in mockery of thy woe,
Press'd on thy lip, athirst for liberty,
Th' intoxicating chalice, whose o'erflow
Works merciless frenzy.—On, before thee, rode
One, o'er whose brow a nation pois'd a crown,
Wrought by rude hands, worn with continual toil,
And slaves that delv'd the soil.
A mariner's white garb his robe of state,
His canopy the heaven, his audience-throne
'Mid the throng'd market, an unsculptur'd stone,
Where, at his side, th' assessor, Justice, sate:
There, Naples hail'd her choice, her low-born son,
Whose daily task had of the scaly deep
Scant earnings made, and spread his net to dry
In sun-shine, on Amalfi's rocky steep.
The Fisher, thus, like Rome's Rienzi, soar'd:
Thus, each in evil hour,
The idol of a realm, the man ador'd,
A murder'd victim fell, hurl'd from the height of pow'r.
Such Gallia's worshipp'd Chief: he, at whose frown
Earth's fetter'd kings bow'd down,
Ere Britain's arm and lightning stroke
Shiver'd the galling yoke:
And the doom'd exile, where wild billows roar
Around a shipless shore,
On the bleak cliff of a volcanic rock,
Like chain'd Prometheus, in the lightning's blast,
Proudly defying Fate's severest shock,
Breath'd out his last.

Naples! awake! awake!
Each stone whereon thy swarms in sunbeams sleep,
Sprung from the riven womb of central night.
Where'er thou turn'st thy sight,
Round thee thy earth, thy sea, thy every isle
One element of fire.—On yonder brow
The blazing flood, that drank the Deep below,
Tow'r'd in its rage o'er Epomeo's pile;
The blast sulphureous from Agnano flows,
And green Astroni's woods the crater's womb enclose.

Ask of yon palace, round whose marble crest
The sea-winds softly breathe,
On what foundation bas'd, securely rest
The pillars of its strength?—Securely rest!
On Herculaneum—on a sea of fire,
Whose deluge swept the revellers from earth
In madness of their mirth:
Their gods, their arts, their science swept away.
Their winding-sheet a flame; and on their grave,
Where never earth-worm pierc'd the unyielding clay,
And banqueted on death, the lava lay;
Nor aught remain'd for future time to trace
A relic of the race,
Save when relentless toil forc'd up to light
Thro' the rent rock, whose subterranean bed
Dissevers day from night,
The living from the dead,
Th' equestrian statue, and the fire-bound scroll:
Or, where the torrent, as it ceas'd to roll,
Slow hardening on a Hebe's living breast,
In th' eternal stone that beauteous mould imprest.

Naples! awake!
Hast thou not heard of Stabia, and that sage,
Who, when the flame-cloud hung o'er all thy shore,
And lightning flash'd along his lifted oar,
There steer'd his prow: and, questioning the rage
Of the fierce elements that rav'd around,
While Death before him shook his fiery brand,
Sank on the burning sand?

Leave we the horrors of the former age
Grav'd on th' historic page.
Enough what thou hast suffer'd.—Naples! say,
Hast thou not witnessed, thou, in this thy day,
Thy heav'n with flame now vaulted, and anon
With darkness, as the smoke's dense mass roll'd on?
Hast thou not seen Death lift aloft thy shroud,
And in colossal stature reach the sky,
And stand upon the column of the cloud
Whose rest was on thy mount, and from its gloom
Hurl blazing rocks, and launch the lightning down
That clave earth's central womb?
Hast thou not seen the mountain to and fro
Reel, in the rocking of the thunder blast,
And o'er thy plains and populous hamlets cast
A sea of flames, consuming all below,
And Ocean from that sea of flames retire:
While from the ether, canopied with light
Caught from the billowy fire,
A crimson circle fell on far Misenum's height?

And sleep'st thou yet on thy volcanic bed?
Cast off thy bridal robe, Parthenope!
And lay thee in the city of the dead,
And heap her ashes on thy uncrown'd head:
So deprecate thy doom:
Lest Earth should rend, and o'er thy revels close
The unremember'd tomb,
Till Time's slow hand the sepulchre expose,
And thou but rise a stranger to discern
Such as Pompeia views, lone-bending o'er her urn.

Lo! shaking off the dust that veil'd her tombs,
The shroud wherein her buried glory lay,
Pompeia, looking on the light of day,
'Mid living towns her birth-right re-assumes;
And wondering why her sons in exile roam,
Lifts her maternal voice, and calls the wanderer home.
“Return! why stay you? throng this festive gate:
“For you these vaults reserve their hoarded wine;
“Haste to yon forum: heap with gifts this shrine;
“Th' impatient theatres your press await,
“The track your wheel has worn, the car shall greet,
“Tread where each stone retains the pressure of “your feet.
“Come!”—But no voice yields response—none return.
Such as thou art, Pompeia was—Behold,
Her portals wide unfold.
Death waits thy coming: and, impatient, graves
The doom of Naples on Pompeia's urn.
Go, where rob'd Luxury drew her train along,
And the lute made more sweet the Lesbian song:
Where breath'd the statue, and the painter's pow'r
Glow'd on her walls, and wanton'd in her bow'r:
Where for her foot, all hues of earth, sea, skies,
Mixed the Mosaic's fairy-paved dies,
Where, for the Chian wine, Greece subtly chas'd
The gemmed chalice that her banquet grac'd:
Go, where Sidonian girls her tap'stry wove,
And Tyre's deep purple ting'd her couch of love:
Go, where the Ocean God her pearls entwin'd,
And wing'd her tribute in with every wind:
Go, where mid dance and song, and pomp and pride,
The mortal cast mortality aside:
There, through the street of tombs, pass on alone.
A thousand and a thousand years had thrown
Their burdens off, since they who rear'd the tomb
Had sunk in sunless gloom.
Yet I beheld, methought, where'er I went,
A living mourner on each monument,
Methought the sculptor shap'd the yielding stone:
So fair each marble sepulchre arose,
So fresh each votive word, where Lamia's wrecks repose.

Yet shall Pompeia pass—her second rise
The spell of her eternity unseal'd:
One hour her force and feebleness reveal'd.
Oh thou! that half emerging into birth,
Half buried in obscurity,
Like Milton's lion, combating with earth,
Strugglest thyself to free;
Thou city of the dead! why woo the light?
Thy life was wedded to sepulchral gloom.
Thy bridal vesture, the dark shroud of night.
The sunbeams that thy radiant courts relume
But glitter on thy tomb.

Already, Time on thee his shafts has sent
Barb'd with each hostile element.
Already, day and night's vicissitude,
Alternately renew'd,
Keen conflict wage—the winds that softly flow,
And heat and cold, the dew-drop and the rain,
Whose freshness robes the plain,
And lends thy lively tints a livelier glow,
Have struck the fatal blow.
Day after day, thy pomp to dust shall turn,
Nor mortal eye again Pompeia's trace discern.

Stranger! haste! no more delay:
Where yet yon vine's blue clusters shed
A living lustre o'er the dead,
Sweep off that ashy mantle light,
And catch the wonders opening bright:
Speed, ere the colours fade away:
Frail as the arch that spans th' ethereal plain,
When on the cloud of eve the sun declining,
And fairer thro' the sever'd tempest shining,
Pencils his image on each drop of rain;
While underneath its sweep, the glist'ning bow'rs
Smile in the dewy light, and shed their diamond show'rs.

Lo, radiant porticos appear,
Halls that painted columns rear,
Courts where central fountains play'd,
Galleries that the noon-sun shade:
Here, Isis' mystic fane, and there
Each marble-structur'd theatre.
What tho' no roof the radiant courts enclose,
Fantastic figures, beaming from below,
Along the rich Mosaic brightly glow:
All that from Raphael's fairy pencil flows
In graceful arabesque the walls adorn,
Wing'd nymphs that float in air, and wind the wreathed horn.

Now a wing'd Zephyr beckons to the sail,
And now, in all the brightness of her smile,
A goddess woos thee to her blissful isle.
Here, fruits bloom forth; there, flow'rs that fear the gale
Drop from their opening bells bright pearls below,
Where sea-things wave their fins, and gambol to and fro.

Amid this splendor! splendor! look again.
Chase not those phantoms vain.
If ever yet unveil'd mortality
Held in the human heart unquestioned pow'r
To claim an awful hour:
If e'er the image of man's sentence, Death,
Chill'd the warm blood, and froze youth's glowing breath,
Look on Pompeia!—None but thou art found
On that sepulchral ground.
The echo of thy solitary tread,
On the worn flint, disturbs with daring sound
The silence of the dead.

How sweet is Silence, when, from worldly din
Free, Fancy shapes her own fair images,
And peoples all the solitude it sees
With the conceptions of the soul within—
Joy's youthful choir, or visions high and holy,
Or soft and soothing forms of patient melancholy!
Not such the silence that inhabits here,
The solitude around Pompeia spread.
I, too, methinks, tomb'd in a nation's bier,
Seem number'd with the dead.
The sun, methinks, has o'er me clos'd his beam,
The last low sigh, the fluttering pulse has ceas'd,
From joy, from woe, from hope, from fear releas'd,
I look on life as a departed dream,
And that already I have reach'd the bourn
Whence foot of mortal man shall never more return.

It is not horror, in unwitness'd gloom,
To bend at times in sorrow o'er the tomb,
And meditate, beneath the churchyard yew,
Whence our light foot instinctively withdrew,
Wing'd with life's freshness: but, when death has been
Familiar with our home, and youth's new scene,
So tempting in its novelty, has lost
Its wonder, and the charm that tempted most
The untried joy: when Time—ourselves unware—
Has, with the auburn, mix'd the silver hair:
And we have wept o'er the funereal earth
Of those whose tear was rapture at our birth:
Of her, on whose maternal breast we hung,
Whose lip first form'd the answer of our tongue:
Of the gay playmate of our youthful year,
Source of our joy, and solace of our tear:
Of the firm friend, whose faith, in peril tried,
Unshaken stood and turn'd the world aside:
And the fair child, on whose sustaining breast,
We, in our second childhood, hop'd to rest:
That haunt, tho' awful, yet in awe, has pow'r
To temper grief, and soothe the mournful hour.
'Tis not as in Pompeia—
At least, a living hand has toll'd the bell,
That to the passing spirit breathes farewell:
At least, the grass there waves, and o'er the dead
Creation has a verdant mantle spread,
And kindly hides, while pass the living by,
The painful image of mortality.
We think on some, who on that bed of rest
Have cast the weight of anguish from their breast:
On some, who on that lenient spot have found
The medicine for the immedicable wound.—
We think on age, who, pillow'd on that bed,
Rests, bow'd with weight of years, th' o'erwearied head:
We think on those, who, in life's earliest stage,
There clos'd their swift, their sinless pilgrimage,
And pure from earth, whereon they scarce had trod,
Pass'd from a parent's bosom to their God.
And if of happiness, of hope, bereft,
We dwell with one in Death's dark chamber left,
With one, sole lov'd, on whose descending bier
We gaz'd in agony that shed no tear:
And when the unechoing earth, like lead, was flung,
“Dust unto dust,” in speechless woe we hung,
While, audibly, o'er the convulsed frame,
Chill as Death's icy grasp a shudder came:
Our heart, unsever'd, haunts that hallow'd ground,
There the lone vestige of our footstep found,
There breath'd the pray'r, in that still spot to rest
Our brow in peace on that beloved breast;
And from that peaceful spot—earth's trial o'er—
In bliss to re-ascend, and part no more.

But in the dust o'er all Pompeia thrown,
None shall their woe, or weight of years lay down:
None on her graves bend o'er a planted flow'r,
More sweet than ever bloom'd on Flora's bow'r.
All, all her race extinct, their memory gone,
There the pale King of Terror dwells alone,
And crushes underneath his iron tread
The chain that links the living and the dead.