 | The poems and prose writings of Sumner Lincoln Fairfield |  |
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CANTO III.
ARGUMENT.
The Pompeiians prepare to attend the games of the amphitheatre. Cruelty has become universal custom. Chariot races. The trumpet sounds, the athlete and agonistes enter, and the gladiatorial games begin. The first fatal combat. The second combat between a Briton and a Gaul. The summons for the Christians. Procession of the Heathen Priests around the arena. Adoration rendered to the Phidian Statue of Jove. A Christian, overwhelmed by mortal terror, apostatizes, and is reserved to endure the contempt of the Paynims, whom in his soul he abhorred. Pansa brought forth from the dungeon to contend with the African Lion. His appearance in the arena. His apostrophe to the Statue of Jove. The ejaculations of the audience, who denounce the vengeance of the gods on the blasphemer of their power. Pansa's reply. The volcano begins its ravages. The famished lion let loose upon Pansa. His speech over the crouching and fearful beast. Torrents of lava rush down the sides of Vesuvius and the ampitheatre is strewn with ashes, cinders, and fiery hail. The shrieks of multitudes rushing from Herculaneum destroyed by deluges of burning lava. Pansa's warning. The escape of the many thousand spectators of the games through the vomitories of the ampitheatre. Instinctive flight of the fearstruck lion. The action of the volcano described. Dialogue between the Prætor and Pansa alone in the ampitheatre. The tyrant and the intended victim fly forth along the desolated streets of Pompeii, the one to secure his treasures, the other to seek Mariamne. The Christians meet and fly towards the sea. The vision of the Flamen. Pansa, Mariamne, the Virgin of Pompeii, and the Aged Christian embark upon the agitated and discolored sea. The Death Cries of Pompeii. The ruin consummated. Farewell of the Christians. Description of their refuge among the mountains of Switzerland. The martyrs of Paganism become the Patriots of Christendom.
Oh, mightiest spirit of the merciless!
How like a Demon from hell's lava throne,
Thou risest on my eye, as I behold
The spectres of the Past, and paint their deeds!
Up from the abyss of ages—from the Night
Of Earth's extinguished generations—rise
The beings of an elder world to be
The theme in song of one whom all the earth,
And all it hath or ever can inherit,
Ne'er can solace for all the woes of Time.
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Of empires rent and centuries past career—
Now giant Shadows of the Buried move
Around me—beautiful and haughty forms—
Waked from the dust of ages to endure,
Again, the vanities of earth's best joys,
The certainties of evil—(mind restores
The dead)—and havoc cries ascend the heavens
While to Pompeii's waiting thousands, groans
Of the convulsed volcano give reply.
The feeble and the famishing and slaves,
Whose toil a thousand years will not reveal,
Alone are seen upon the public ways;
And every face is chronicled with care,
Loathing the lingering lapse of wasted breath,
The purposeless continuance of low toil
And want and thankless servitude, amid
The meshes of a wan and dim despair.
All else find pastime in the savageness
Of games where smiles and shouts are bought with blood.
Quæstor, ædile, senator and knight,
Censor and flamen, vestal and courtesan,
Noble and commoner, commingling, meet
Amid the horrors of that final day,
Whose shuddering sunlight to Pompeii bids
Farewell—through centuries of Night interred,—
In torture to seek rapture, in the pangs
Of gladiators gored and Christians gashed
And mangled to proclaim their ecstacies!
The dicer in the midst suspends his skill,
Tested by spoil wrung from the heart of want,
To witness and applaud the guiltier tests
Of science; and the banqueter forsakes
The wanton wassail of the flesh to seek
The richer revel of the bandit mind;
And spotless vestals the electric fire
Of Vesta's shrine desert and through their veils
Gaze, from the podium of patrician pride,
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From the hot veins of causeless strife; the judge
Bears from the Forum the remorseless thoughts,
Which, petrified by usage, have become
His Nature, never thrilled by mercy's voice.
The matron, whom dishonour dares not name;
The virgin in her beauty angel pure;
The warrior, who, amid the Torrid Zone
Or icehills of Helvetia, ne'er had learned
The strategy of pale retreat, nor paused
In the swift triumph of his bannered march;
The merchant, whose integrity no thought
Assails; the poet from his dreams of eld,
Elfland and wizardry and fabled gods;
Sages, by their disciples canonized,
Who from Saturnian visions, feigning power
Without oppression and republics stained
By no corruptions, bosomed 'mid the bowers
Of the Evening Isles or Orcades—arise
To look upon the agonistes' face
Imaging hell, and with the circus' shouts
Mingle the fiats of philosophy!
And augurs to perfect their oracles
Come now to gaze upon the cloven heart
And watch the spasms of Nature's utter throes.
Pompeii's might and affluence await
The Prætor's voice, and the vast fabric gleams
With million glances and with million cries
Echoes, as from the Podium now the word
Of Power commands—“Lo! let the games begin!”
However the sages of antiquity condemned the cruel sports of their countrymen, they seldom hesitated to witness and thereby sanction the atrocities which were perpetrated in every amphitheatre. Like the bullfights of modern Spain, the gladiatorial contests (the death struggle of the agonistes and athlete) always attracted the presence and enjoyment of the most learned, opulent and famed of the Romans.
Reining their fury, round the battlement
Rush the barbed chargers, like the samiel cloud
O'er Zara when the tropic burns with death;
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Risk many a talent, when they would deny
The alms of one poor obolus to woe,
Hang waiting sudden triumph or despair.
One wins, the prelude closes, and the host,
Like winds amid a wilderness of leaves,
Sink down and to the dread arena turn.
The trumpet summons—awful silence floats
Over the multitudes who fix their gaze
Upon the portals of the cells beneath.
They open, and the gladiators move
Round the thronged circle to display their forms,
Athlete and strong, and with the voice of death
Salute the ruthless Genius of the Games.
From many a kingdom thralled they come—from realms
Spoiled by the locust hordes of Rome; the Gaul,
The Briton and the Thracian and the Frank,
The Wehrmanne and the Hebrew and the Celt,
Every clime's vanquished—every age's wreck,
All codes and creeds, strangers or friends, contend
Here in assassin strife to please their lords.
One deep wild shout like breaking billows swells,
Hailing the victims of the carnage fiend,
And on the sands two stalwart forms alone
Remain; and now Sigalion, voiceless god
Of Memphian mysteries, of all the host
Seems sovereign, such a quivering stillness hangs
Over the thousands, who await the fray
With eyes electric as the ether fires,
Lips sealed by passion, hearts, like lava, still
In their intensest rapture! Bickering swords
Clash quickly, yet, with matchless skill, each blow
Or thrust falls on the flashing steel; and long,
With fixed eyes dropping not their folded lids,
And marble lips, and brows whereon the veins
Burn like the stormbolt o'er ice pinnacles,
And heaving bosoms, naked in their strength,
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And power—they struggle, not in hope of fame,
To win dominion, or achieve revenge;
But by their toil and agony and blood
To amuse the languid masters of the world.
From the free forest where he walked a king,
From his hearth's altar where he stood a priest,
Hither, in manacles, was guiltless man
Dragged for a mockery and gory show!
An erring glance—and o'er a prostrate form
Of beauty stands the unrejoicing foe,
Sternly receiving from the merciless
The still command to slay! and now he lifts
His serried sabre purpled to the hilt
With that heart's blood he might have deeply loved;
One groan—a gasp—a shudder—and a soul
Hath gone to join the myriad witnesses
Who in the winds of northern wilds invoke
The Desolators to avenge their doom.
The Avengers hear, and cry aloud ‘Revenge!’
Morituri te salutant! (the dead salute thee) were the melancholy words of prophecy uttered by all condemned to fight in the arena.
The place of carnage with uncrimsoned dust,
Mirth reigns and voices mingle everywhere,
Lauding the skill of the barbarian's strife,
The picturesque agony—the lingering gasp—
And awful struggle of the dying slave.
Some talk of Titus, deeming him too just,
Gentle and generous, while conspiracy
Mutters Domitian and Locasta's cup.
And some relate, looking upon the mount,
Traditions of volcanoes direr far
Than ought that menace men in latter days;
The depths of mountains boiling—valleys filled
With o'erthrown hills—and islands through the floods
Of ocean, apparitions, to the stars
Casting the torrid terrors of their birth.
Some say, the Prætor, when the lustrum ends,
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That confiscation in Campania bought
The Senate's will that he should rule the East.
Wine, love, the dance, war, wealth, ambition, hate,
Earthquake, plague, priesthood, revel, rival sects
In faith or knowledge, yesterday's delights,
Tomorrow's deeds—each, all, in various speech,
Absorb the mind until the trumpet sounds.
Titus is supposed to have been poisoned by his brother Domitian—who was himself finally assassinated. Locasta was the female fiend of Colchian drugs.
The gladiators enter, and the strife,
Protracted but to close in death, goes on.
A Briton, from the land of Caradoc,
Whose daily breath had been Plinlimmon's breeze,
Beneath the weapon of the Gaul pours out
Blood glowing with the soul of liberty,
And dies, to Druid altars in the realm
Of Mona, breathing back his heart, whose voice
Andraste in her home of vengeance, hears.
Triumphant shouts and quick expiring shrieks,
Dread silence and hurrahs and agonies
Succeed each mortal fray; and oft the sands,
Dabbled by gory fingers, trampled o'er
By feet that fail beneath the crushing strength
Of the grim victors—freshly again are strewn
To bury blood which sunk not into earth,
But from beholding heaven drew down the wrath
That made almighty Rome, to every land,
A curse, a mockery and a shuddering jest.
“Three spirits wander by the spectre stream!
Are the great people glutted with the gore?”
Said Diomede, for Pansa's trial hour
With an exulting patience waiting long.
“Sound for the Christians and the desert king!
It darkens hurriedly and lava hail
Hurtles amid the ashes! we may rob
The God of Triumph of the Apostates' blood,
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Throw wide the portals! let the Christians come!”
Or Andate, the British goddess of victory and retribution; to whom sacrifices were offered amid the Llwyn and on the cromleche of the Druids.
Come on in bannered pomp and conscious power,
Circling the arena; and the lictor guard
Followed with Pansa, and another form
That shrunk and faltered as ten thousand eyes
Searched out the fear that harrowed his pale heart.
Slow to the wail of Lydian flutes and blast
Of clarions breathing death, with looks of awe
Feigned and drooped eyes of mystery, around
Moved the procession; and the Præsul's gaze
Wandered, in haughty majesty, along
The risen and revering host he blessed.
Few think, for thought is born of pain, and night
Hath not repose, nor day, free bliss to him
Whose spirit 's rapt; yet all can feel and fear,—
For that is flesh—the earthborn shadows cast
Around them by their destinies; and they,
Who dwell in earth's abundance and from domes,
Stately and glistering, issue to receive
Guerdons of gold for oracles of wrath,
Illume not, save with fires of hell, the gloom
That curtains the black portal of the grave.
Virtue needs no interpreter, and vice,
Like palace tombs, mocks its own turpitude,
When painted o'er with saintly imageries;
But Faith, that searches not, dreads every dream,
Becoming to itself a hell, and seeks
Heaven through the pontiff, who, in secret doubt
Of joys elysian, craves earth's richest gifts,
And at his votary's phantom banquet smiles.
His faithless country unto rival realms
Banished his genius)—of the supreme Jove,
The Præsul paused, and with adoring zeal
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Of perfumed vapour round the eagle's beak,
The lifted sceptre and most godlike brow,
(The artist's mind was the sole deity)
Curled as in homage, and one blended voice
Burst from the thousands—“Supreme Jove is God!”
Then all the priests from every fane and all
The acolytes and soldiers incense flung,
And the proud statue proudly seemed to smile.
Next, bent and trembling, blind and dumb with fear,
A Christian came (from noisome catacombs
Dragged forth to prove his feebleness of faith,)
Like the great Pisan, who from midnight heavens
Could summon the eternal stars and fill
His angel spirit with their glories, yet
Abjured, in fear, before his bigot foes,
All the magnificence of thought, and knelt,
A hoar apostate, in the dust, to win
The lingering torture of a few sad hours,
And live—a monument of mind dethroned!
Onward he came with tottering childhood's step,
And with a face to all but terror dead.
He loved the light, adored the truth, yet dared
Meet not the perils it revealed; and now
He clung unto the altar and gasped out
His panic breath, and gazed beseeching round
In utter horror's wilderment, and groped
Amid the shrine lights for the frankincense,
With quivering fingers hurriedly; but Fear
Had quenched soul, feeling, sense—and, as his hand
Moved o'er the marble with a mindless aim,
And the wild pantings of his bosom spread
Hues ghastlier than death's along his cheek,
A stern centurion, with a frown of scorn
And sickened pity, from the censer took
The idol's odour and upon the palm
Of the apostate threw it with a curse;
And ere the lapse of thought, his worship flashed
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And, onward borne triumphantly, he passed
To meet, through every hour of haunted time,
Derision for denial of his Lord!
Galileo. See Brewster's life of that great and weak man, for an account of his sad recantation of his magnificent doctrines and discoveries.
Diomede glared upon the lofty form
That now before the awful statue stood.
No pride, lightening defiance, in his eye,
Dared the despair of fortune; no wild faith
Waited for miracles; but there he stood,
Beautiful in the magnificence of Truth,
Before the haughty scorners of chained kings,
The mightiest and most merciless of earth,
His thought above the proudest of them all,
And on the countless eyes, that watched him, looked
With the sublime serenity unknown
To natures weak or terrible as hours
And their events decree. No joy, no pain
Changed the fixed features of a calm resolve;
No glance betrayed a triumph in his fate,
Or doubt that might avert his martyrdom.
Upon the still crowd rose his gentle eyes
Blue and translucent as the heaven, as erst
The sungod, gliding up the glacier steeps
Of Hæmus, o'er the tossed Ægean cast
His deathless smile among the Cyclades.
Pure in his faith and passionless in truth,
He never sought to seal with agony
The creed of the Anointed, but, instead,
Shunned Paynimrie's resort and dwelt in wilds,
Distrusting the infirmities that oft
O'ersway the spirit; but the fated hour
Had not passed by—the one deep love, that chained
His heart to earth, was parted, it might be
To welcome him to paradise, if not,
To meet his welcome there; and now, beyond
The tyrant passions of the world, he stood
Dauntless 'mid heathendom, and thus, in tones
Strong as the ocean's, in whose utter deeps
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He to the image of the Thunderer spake.
“Thou breathless Mocker of the humble mind!
Thou Idol Image of remorseless power!
Shall being, quickened by the glowing blood,
In worship bow to thee, a sculptured block?
Shall intellect, illumed and magnified,
Whose home is ether, whose immortal hope
Is deathless glory, render unto thee
The adoration of the Deity?
Oh, how should men be just when they have throned
Amid the universe, o'erswaying all,
A supreme vengeance—demon deified?
Whose common and commended deeds would crown
A mortal with the curses of the world,
And round him spread a solitude of hate
Haunted alone by grovelling infamies!
Well wast thou fabled—son of Earth and Time!
For all impurities and ills are thine,
Transformed despoiler! e'en thy votaries mock
Yet mimic thee, as well they may, the work
Of their own lusts! Canst thou call forth one star
Of all that blossom in the boundlessness
Of that undying heaven unknown to thee?
Will Mazzaroth or Mythra soar or sink?
Or terrible behemoth leave his depths?
Or the proud desert bird feel nature's love?
Because thou bidst? doth thine own eagle fear
The power men quail at? or the tempest float
Along Olympus, hurling arrowy fires,
In reverence to thy hest? yet why is this?
Methinks, I wander back to Pagan faith,
Thus questioning the hewn marble, which portrays
The apotheosis of man's worst revenge!
Beneath the unimaged, unimagined God,
Who hath no temple but infinity,
Where the great multitude of stars adore,
Flying along their glorious spheres—I stand
Here in thy home, (it fits thy nature well,)
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Deny thee incense, prayer, love, fear and faith!”
Not louder in its burning temple roared
The dread volcano when the firestorm came,
And earth's abysses quivered in their wrath,
Than now the voices of the phrenzied host.
“Tear the blasphemer! let the wild beasts forth
To rend his limbs and gnash his living heart!
Impale the accursed! chain him within the fire!
Saw him asunder! cast his viper tongue
Into the serpents' den to poison them!”
Thus thousands shrieked—yet now the shoutings changed.
“Hark! Jove the Avenger answers! lo! the heavens
With shuddering clouds are filled, and lightnings leap
Through their gored bosoms, and the thunder shaft
Bickers along the air! great Jove beholds
And hears—now wither, thou blaspheming slave!”
Awed yet untrembling, Pansa calm replied.
“Ye hear no thunder—but Destruction's howl!
Ye see no lightning—but the lava glare
Of desolation sweeping o'er your pride!
Death is beneath, around, above, within
All who exult to inflict it on my heart,
And ye must meet it, fly when, where ye will,
For in the madness of your cruelties
Ye have delayed till every hope is dead.
Let the doom come! our faiths will soon be tried.
Gigantic spectres from their shadowy thrones,
With ghastly smiles to welcome ye, arise.
The Pharaohs and Ptolemies uplift
Their glimmering sceptres o'er thee—bidding all
Bare their dark bosoms to the Omniscient God:
And every strange and horrid mythos waits
To fold ye in the terrors of its dreams.
—For thee, proud Prætor! throned on human hearts
And warded by thy cohorts from the arm
Of violated virtue and spurned Right,
And suffering's madness—though thy regal tomb
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Shall never sleep within it; years shall fade
And nations perish and ten thousand kings,
With all their thrice ten thousand victories,
Rest in oblivion, and the very earth
Change with the changes of her children, yet
The empty mansion of thy vain renown
Shall stand that generations unconceived
May ask the deeds of him who was cast out
By vengeance from his father's sepulchres!”
Diomede's voice, like a wild blast, went forth.
“Let loose the wild beasts on him! why are we
Thus left to bear the traitor's arrogance?
The convict's scorn? the gladiator's speech?
Let loose the only foe that fits his faith;
The Mauretanian's arguments are meet
And suit his mystic cabala. Throw wide
The cells and let the lion make reply.”
“The outer corridors,” the Lanista said,
“Are filled with ashes, and within the vaults
Arches have fallen and no power can ope
The portal of the Atlas beast, my lord!”
“Bring a ballista, then, and shatter it!
For by the eternal Fates and all the Gods!
This darer and blasphemer shall not scape.
Let none depart! why, would the people shun
The luxury of this despiser's pangs,
Or doth his airy talk infect your souls
And sway your thoughts by oracles of woe?
Spare Nazarenes! who would o'erturn the creed
And code of Rome, and on the throne of earth
Exalt the image of a felon God!
Be wise, stern, ruthless, men!—so, dash to earth
The portal and goad on the savage king!”
Still by Jove's altar standing, Pansa looked
Upon the fluctuating host around,
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Some silent in excess of passion, some
Most earnest to behold the game of death,
And thus, like a cathedral knell, he spake.
“I show ye mercy none will show to me!
Fly! ere the banners of the galleys wave
Beyond the cape! fly, ere the earth and air
Become the hell that fiction fables! fly
Ere carnage shrieks amid the torrent fire!
For me 't is nought—for you, 't is all—away!”
Yet, mocking truth and justice, all from flight
Turned back, and in the joy of shedded blood
Leaned o'er the arena. From the shattered cell
The famished lion sprung, with coiling mane
And fiendish eyes and jaws that clashed for gore.
“Take thy sword, Christian! at thy foot it lies—
And let the heathen, as thou callest them, mark
And laud thy skill in combat! take thy sword!”
A demon smile convulsed the Prætor's lip,
Yet Pansa, in the deep unshaken voice
Of Truth's immortal sanctity replied.
“The Martyr needs no weapon: his defence,
Shield, sabre, helm, spear, banner, all are one.
A breath from the Eternal—a quick ray
From the immortality of God—he lives
But in His mercy, dies but when He wills.
—Thou mightiest monarch of the forest beasts!
Who, from the heights of Atlas, on the brow
Of perpendicular precipice, alone,
Planting thine armed foot, hast looked o'er sea
And waste, fearing no equal; or among
The haunted wrecks of Carthage, in the pangs
Of hunger ravining, hast found no food
Where a great nation died that Rome might reign.
Thou fiercest terror of the wilderness!
Who, without contest, dost consume thy foe,
And walkst the earth a conqueror and a king!
Upon thee—though the extreme of famine gnaws
Thy vitals now—and thy flesh burns with stripes
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With Titan limbs thou leapst in bitter joy
Of human banquet, watching with fierce eyes,
Terrible as is the simoom of thy clime,
The moment of thy certain victory—
Upon thee now I fix the eye, whose light
Was born of God's Eternity, and while
Destruction from the face of Deity
Lours o'er creation, I do bid thee kneel
There in the gory dust! ay, by the Power
Of Him who made thee, monster! I command.”
A roar, as if a myriad thunders burst,
Now hurtled o'er the heavens, and the deep earth
Shuddered, and a thick storm of lava hail
Rushed into air to fall upon the world.
And low the lion cowered, with fearful moans
And upturned eyes, and quivering limbs, and clutched
The gory sand instinctively in fear.
The very soul of silence died, and breath
Through the ten thousand pallid lips unfelt
Stole from the stricken bosoms; and there stood
With face uplifted and eyes fixed on air,
(Which unto him was thronged with angel forms)
The Christian—waiting the high will of heaven.
A scene somewhat like this is depicted in “The Vestal,” a little work published, a few years since, and written by Dr Gray, then of Boston. But, while I am happy to acknowledge the pleasure I have derived from that elegant story, I must be allowed to say that the causes of the lion's submission are unlike. He cowers at the feet of the aged Christian in that work, because he sees an old master; here, he is made to submit on the well known principle familiar to naturalists, that, during any great convulsion of nature, the most savage animals forget their common animosities, and that the lion will not attack a man who steadily fixes his eyes upon him. Having formed the plan of the whole poem and finished a considerable portion of it previous to my first perusal of the “Tale of Pompeii,” I was unwilling to forego the scene I had conceived previous to even the knowledge of the publication of Dr Gray.
A cry of coming horror o'er the street
Of Tombs arose, and all the lurid air
Echoed the shrieks of hopelessness and death.
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A ghastly multitude, naked and black
With sulphur fumes and spotted o'er with marl
That clung unto the agonizing flesh
Like a wronged orphan's curse. In terror blind,
They rushed, in dreadful companies, along
The quaking earth, 'neath darkened heavens, and e'er
Their awful voices howled the horrors forth.
“Destroyed! wrecked in its beauty—all destroyed!
Billows of lava boil above the towers
Of Herculaneum! we alone are left!
The lovely city! all our happy homes!
Buried in blackness 'neath a sea of fire!
The deluge came along the shattering rocks—
We fled and met another—yet again
We turned dismayed and a third fiery flood
Came down in ruin's grandeur on our path!
Between the mountain and the sea we scaped.
Oh, many a corse beneath the depths hath sunk
In seas of fire, that o'er our city roll,
Boiling in deeps of blackness! on!—away!
What fated madness holds the death-games now?
Pompeii! fly, the Fates delay not here!”
Down to the dark convulsive sea they rushed,
O'er them the volcano, and beneath,
The earthquake, and around, ruin and death.
“Hear ye not now?” said Pansa. “Death is here!
Ye saw the avalanche of fire descend
Vesuvian steeps, and in its giant strength
Sweep on to Herculaneum; and ye cried,
‘It threats not us, why should we lose the sport?
Though thousands perish, why should we refrain?’
Your sister city—the most beautiful—
Gasps in the burning ocean—from her domes
Fly the survivors of her people, driven
Before the torrent floods of molten earth
With desolation red—and o'er her grave
Unearthly voices raise the heart's last cries—
‘Fly, fly! O horror! O my son! my sire!’
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Are agony and death—within, such rage
Of fossil fire as man may not behold!
Hark! the Destroyer slumbers not—and now,
Be your theologies but true, your Jove,
'Mid all his thunders, would shrink back aghast,
Listening the horrors of the Titans' strife.
The lion trembles; will ye have my blood?
Or flee, ere Herculaneum's fate is yours?”
Vesuvius answered: from its pinnacles
Clouds of far-flashing cinders, lava showers,
And seas, drank up by the abyss of fire
To be hurled forth in boiling cataracts,
Like midnight mountains, wrapt in lightnings, fell.
Oh, then, the love of life! the struggling rush,
The crushing conflict of escape! few, brief,
And dire the words delirious fear spake now—
One thought, one action swayed the tossing crowd.
All through the vomitories madly sprung,
And mass on mass of trembling beings pressed,
Gasping and goading, with the savageness
That is the child of danger, like the waves
Charybdis from his jagged rocks throws down,
Mingled in madness—warring in their wrath.
Some swooned and were trod down by legion feet;
Some cried for mercy to the unanswering gods;
Some shrieked for parted friends forever lost;
And some, in passion's chaos, with the yells
Of desperation did blaspheme the heavens;
And some were still in utterness of woe.
Yet all toiled on in trembling waves of life
Along the subterranean corridors.
Moments were centuries of doubt and dread;
Each breathing obstacle a hated thing:
Each trampled wretch, a footstool to o'erlook
The foremost multitudes; and terror, now,
Begat in all a maniac ruthlessness,
For in the madness of their agonies
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Their flight, and maidens on the stones were crushed,
And mothers maddened when the warrior's heel
Passed o'er the faces of their sons!—The throng
Pressed on, and in the ampler arcades now
Beheld, as floods of human life rolled by,
The uttermost terrors of the destined hour.
In gory vapours the great sun went down;
The broad dark sea heaved like the dying heart,
'Tween earth and heaven hovering o'er the grave,
And moaned through all its waters; every dome
And temple, charred and choked with ceaseless showers
Of suffocating cinders, seemed the home
Of the triumphant desolator, Death.
One dreadful glance sufficed—and to the sea,
Like Lybian winds, breathing despair, they fled.
Nature's quick instinct, in most savage beasts,
Prophesies danger ere man's thought awakes,
And shrinks in fear from common savageness,
Made gentle by its terror; thus, o'erawed
E'en in his famine's fury by a Power
Brute beings more than human oft adore,
The Lion lay, his quivering paws outspread,
His white teeth gnashing, till the crushing throngs
Had passed the corridors; then, glaring up
His eyes imbued with samiel light, he saw
The crags and forests of the Apennines
Gleaming far off, and with the exulting sense
Of home and lone dominion, at a bound,
He leapt the lofty palisades and sprung
Along the spiral passages, with howls
Of horror through the flying multitudes
Flying to seek his lonely mountain lair.
From every cell shrieks burst; hyænas cried
Like lost child, wandering o'er the wilderness,
That, in deep loneliness, mingles its voice
With wailing winds and stunning waterfalls;
The giant elephant with matchless strength
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And groaned and panted; and the leopard's yell
And tiger's growl with all surrounding cries
Of human horror mingled; and in air,
Spotting the lurid heavens and waiting prey,
The evil birds of carnage hung and watched,
As ravening heirs watch o'er the miser's couch.
All awful sounds of heaven and earth met now;
Darkness behind the sungod's chariot rolled,
Shrouding destruction, save when volcan fires
Lifted the folds to glare on agony;
And when a moment's terrible repose
Fell on the deep convulsions, all could hear
The toppling cliffs explode and crash below,
While multitudinous waters from the sea
In whirlpools through the channelled mountain rocks
Rushed, and, with hisses like the damned's speech,
Fell in the mighty furnace of the mount.
Tyrant not dastard, daring in his guilt
And fearless of its issues, Diomede
Frowned on the panic flight, and, in his wrath,
Man, earth and heaven, demons and gods defied.
“The craven people—e'en my very slaves
Have fled as dustborn vassals ever flee,
And I am left alone with marble gods
And howling savageness, 'mid showers of flame.
Gods! I trust not elysium feigned by them
Who make the earth a very mock of hell.
Ay, roar, yell, struggle till your fierce hearts burst!
And with thy thousand thunders shake the throne
Of Jove, Vesuvius! and the world confound!
I have not loved nor sought the love of man,
And higher than his nature I know not,
Nor lower; and alone I sit to laugh
At mortal fear and dare immortal hate,
For, if ought die not, 't is revenge and pain.”
“Hath memory wed with madness that thou sayst
‘Alone,’ proud Prætor? one yet looks on Jove
147
The pleasure of Campania's haughty lord.
The hour and scene fit well the deadly fight,
Yet I behold no foe; what wouldst thou more?”
Pansa stood motionless and spake in scorn.
“Thou damned Nazarene! the imperial law
Shall forge new tortures for thy treacheries,
Thy necromancies and apostate deeds.
Meantime, exult, thank, praise and bless thy God,
Convict redeemer, buried deity,
That my condition fits not contest now
With thine, or wolves should gash and gnaw thy limbs,
And eagles' talons bear to mountain cliffs
Thy heart yet quivering with the pulse of fear.
Some fiendish potence foils me now; again
Thou shalt not win fire-fiends unto thy aid:
Pompeii yet shall celebrate thy death—
Again, thou shalt not scape though hell arise!”
Like the last echo of a trumpet's blast,
Thus, in his last reply, rose Pansa's voice.
“Again we shall not meet in all the realms
Of universal being—all the hours
That linger o'er eternity! we part
Forever, now, each to his deathless doom.
But had not other creed than vengeance filled
A Roman's mind with mercy, words like thine,
(Now thy prætorians leave us twain, the one
With all to lose, the other, all to gain,)
Would bring a direr parting hour, howe'er
Thy Punic blood and Volscian pride revolt.
Oh, thou may'st scoff! thou wouldst outdare the fiends
And mock in Orcus sin's undying moans;
But here we part, proud victim! so, farewell!
Jehovah's wrath is o'er thee—o'er us all—
The shocked earth cries unto the blackened heavens,
The mighty heart of earthly being bursts.
And thou shalt quickly know what Hebrew awe
Trembled to hear—El Shaddai! 't is a name
148
Vainly—yon mount is its interpreter—
The Almighty looks in lightning from His throne.
Jove's shrine is covered with the lava shower,
The ashes gather round me! oh, farewell!”
Through deepening cinders, tossing sulphur clouds,
And victims shrieking in their agonies,
The Prætor sought his way. His harnessed steeds,
Maddened by fear, had with his chariot flown,—
The charioteer had perished 'neath the wheels:
And haughtily through all the Street of Tombs,
Among the whirlpool waves of human life,
And lighted by destruction's breath of flame,
He struggled tow'rd his palace, to the wrath
Of heaven fronting defiance, e'en while Death
Dwelt in the bosom of all elements
And the world trembled! Hastening to his home,
Of power mid Syrian splendors and a fame
Immortal as the flatterer's pander verse,
He dreamed; and bearing to the vaulted crypt,
Whose labyrinths wandered far beneath the hills,
His gold and gems, he on his household closed
The marble door, deeming their safety won,
Whose strangled death cries rose unheard—whose bones
The daily sunlight of a thousand years
Ne'er visited beneath the deeps of death.
Pansa, meantime, in gladiator guise,
By other paths had hurried from the scene;
And though the shuddering earth, and lurid heavens
Writhed as in immortal agonies, and shrieks
And death groans rose through all Pompeii's bounds,
Yet on he rushed—fearless though fraught with fear.
Vesuvius poured its deluge forth, the sea
Shuddered and sent unearthly voices up,
The isles of beauty, by the fire and surge
Shaken and withered, on the troubled waves
Looked down like spirits blasted; and the land
Of Italy's one paradise became
149
Tree, shrub, fruit, blossom—love, life, light, and hope,
All vanishing beneath the fossil flood
And storm of ashes from the cloven brow
Of the dread mountain hurled in horror down.
The echoes of ten thousand agonies
Arose from mount and shore, and some looked back
Cursing, and more bewailing as they fled,
With glowing marl or ashes on their heads.
“Thou one great Spirit of all being! here,
Where power is helplessness, and hope, a dream,
Here 'mid the horror of the havoc, breathe
Thy smile upon my soul; and time and death,
With all their anguish, shall o'erawe me not!”
Imploring thus, the Christian held his way
Through the wild scene, with undefined impulse,
Nor shunning death, nor daring it, but filled
With emanations of undying faith.
A voice, whose tones, like music heard when youth
Lives in the visions of the blue blest heaven,
Thrilled the quick heart of Pansa, from the gloom
Of a lone street came forth, and bended forms
Stole from the hutted refuge of despair,
And tow'rd the Appian by the Forum fled.
And through the night the voice of age went up.
That is, of the aged Christian with whom Mariamne had taken refuge on her escape from the temple of Venus.
Dust they soon must be—though the world revered—
And, if my hour be come, the woe is past.
But hasten, daughter! moments have become
Ages—the air, the earth, the ocean blend
Their agonizing energies—away!
Beneath the o'erhung rocks—where fishers wont
To moor their boats, now stranded on the beach,
The pinnace lies I spake of—and the word
Is Marcion! Thither, without let or fear,
150
Command, and, ere an hour, its oars and sails
Shall waft you far from ruin round us now.”
I hurried when the violator's wrath
Hung o'er me—and thine own familiar fears
Denied me not a refuge! we shall sleep
Mid fire together or together flee.
Yet more—no barque shall bear me from the beach
Till the last hope expires that from his bonds
Pansa may burst to bear us company.
Perchance, among the fugitives, e'en now,
He flies, and wanders by the ocean marge”—
On through the death-storm the Decurion sprung.
“No, Mariamne! my beloved restored!
Here, in the home of desolation, here,
I fold thee spotless to my happy heart!
And find my paradise in ruin's arms!
But here we pause not to pour out our souls.
A pinnace lies beneath the cliffs, sayst thou?
Thy hoary wisdom hath redeemed us, sage!
Stay thy weak limbs upon my strength! on! on!
I snatched the slaughtered gladiator's helm—
Cast o'er your heads your mantles—so, away!”
Down the steep path unto the moaning sea
They passed with quickened steps, and upward glanced
The maiden of the vaults of Isis, once,
Eyes floating in the farewell tears of love,
As by the black and desolated home
Of all her childhood's innocence and bliss,
They fled like shades and to the ramparts came.
Upon them, by the volcan glare revealed,
Wandered the hoary idol priest of Jove
In maniac horror; and amidst the roar,
The riot and the wreck of earth and heaven,
Thus rose his awful voice in prophecies.
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THE VISION OF THE FLAMAN.
Call in thy cohorts Rome! from every land
Thy power hath deluged with unsinning blood!
Call in thy legions from Iberia's strand,
From Albion's rocks, and Rhætia's mountain wood!
The foe, like glaciers hurled
Through darkness on the trembling world,
Springs from his forest in the wildest north,
Scenting his prey afar:
And, like the samiel, from the waste comes forth
To steep your glories in the gore of war.
Hark! the whole earth rejoices!
Sea shouts to isle and mountain unto main,
And ocean to the heaven, with myriad voices—
Rome's sepulchre shall be amid her slain,
And as she spared not, none shall spare her now,
But Hun, Goth, Vandal, Alemanne and Frank
Shall lift the poison cup all earth hath drank,
And steep her shuddering lips, and on her brow
Pour blood for ointment, and upon her head,
Till thousand ages have in darkness fled,
Mocking, press down
The accursed crown
Which shall not cease to bleed as conquered men have bled!
Thy power hath deluged with unsinning blood!
Call in thy legions from Iberia's strand,
From Albion's rocks, and Rhætia's mountain wood!
The foe, like glaciers hurled
Through darkness on the trembling world,
Springs from his forest in the wildest north,
Scenting his prey afar:
And, like the samiel, from the waste comes forth
To steep your glories in the gore of war.
Hark! the whole earth rejoices!
Sea shouts to isle and mountain unto main,
And ocean to the heaven, with myriad voices—
Rome's sepulchre shall be amid her slain,
And as she spared not, none shall spare her now,
But Hun, Goth, Vandal, Alemanne and Frank
Shall lift the poison cup all earth hath drank,
And steep her shuddering lips, and on her brow
Pour blood for ointment, and upon her head,
Till thousand ages have in darkness fled,
Mocking, press down
The accursed crown
Which shall not cease to bleed as conquered men have bled!
Thy monarchs, slaves to every lust and crime,
Shall fall, as they have fallen, by the sword,
Or Colchian chalice, and unweeping time
O'erthrow the deities by dust adored,
And leave but ruin to lament
O'er pillar, shrine and battlement,
And solitude o'er desert realms to moan,
Where warriors mocked chained kings and called the world their own!
The coalblack petrel and the grey curlew
Shall wing thy waters and see not thy sail;
From trembling towers the stork shall watch the blue
Of the lone heavens and hear no human hail:
For in the vales that bask in bloom,
The Pontine's flowers, the bright Maremma's green.
Shall dwell the shadow of the tomb,
In Love's voluptuous arms, the tyrant death unseen!
And Nero's golden house shall be
The pallid serf's abode,
And tombs imperial, soaring from the sea,
Shall guide the corsair through his night of blood.
Despair with folded wings,
Where the Eagle's pinions hung,
Shall cower beneath the throne of kings,
Who o'er the Alps the curse of hell have flung.
Shall fall, as they have fallen, by the sword,
Or Colchian chalice, and unweeping time
O'erthrow the deities by dust adored,
And leave but ruin to lament
O'er pillar, shrine and battlement,
And solitude o'er desert realms to moan,
Where warriors mocked chained kings and called the world their own!
The coalblack petrel and the grey curlew
Shall wing thy waters and see not thy sail;
From trembling towers the stork shall watch the blue
Of the lone heavens and hear no human hail:
For in the vales that bask in bloom,
The Pontine's flowers, the bright Maremma's green.
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In Love's voluptuous arms, the tyrant death unseen!
And Nero's golden house shall be
The pallid serf's abode,
And tombs imperial, soaring from the sea,
Shall guide the corsair through his night of blood.
Despair with folded wings,
Where the Eagle's pinions hung,
Shall cower beneath the throne of kings,
Who o'er the Alps the curse of hell have flung.
Woe to the beautiful! the barbarian comes!
Woe to the proud! the peasant lays thee low!
Woe to the mighty! o'er your kingly domes
The savage banner soars—the watchfires glow;
Triumph and terror through the Forum rush,
Art's trophies vanish—learning's holy lore,—
Alaric banquets while red torrents gush,
Attila slumbers on his couch of gore!
And there the eye of ruin roams
O'er guilt and grief and desolation;
And there above a thousand homes
The voice of Ruin mourns a buried nation.
Buried, O Rome! not like Campania's cities,
To wake in beauty when the centuries flee,
But in the guilt and grief and shame none pities,
The living grave of guilt and agony!
Alas! for Glory that must close in gloom!
Alas! for Pride that loves the tyrant's scorn!
Alas! for Fame that from the Scipio's tomb
Rises to look on infamy and mourn!
But Vengeance, wandering long,
With many a battle hymn and funeral song,
Shakes Fear's pale slumber from earth's awestruck eyes,
And bids Sarmatia's hordes redeem her agonies!
Woe to the proud! the peasant lays thee low!
Woe to the mighty! o'er your kingly domes
The savage banner soars—the watchfires glow;
Triumph and terror through the Forum rush,
Art's trophies vanish—learning's holy lore,—
Alaric banquets while red torrents gush,
Attila slumbers on his couch of gore!
And there the eye of ruin roams
O'er guilt and grief and desolation;
And there above a thousand homes
The voice of Ruin mourns a buried nation.
Buried, O Rome! not like Campania's cities,
To wake in beauty when the centuries flee,
But in the guilt and grief and shame none pities,
The living grave of guilt and agony!
Alas! for Glory that must close in gloom!
Alas! for Pride that loves the tyrant's scorn!
Alas! for Fame that from the Scipio's tomb
Rises to look on infamy and mourn!
But Vengeance, wandering long,
With many a battle hymn and funeral song,
Shakes Fear's pale slumber from earth's awestruck eyes,
And bids Sarmatia's hordes redeem her agonies!
Yet not alone the civic wreath,
The conqueror's laurel, the triumpher's pride,
Shall wither 'neath the samiel eye of Death;
On Rome's old mount of glory shall abide,
Tiar'd and robed like the Orient's vainest kings,
The hoar devoter of earth's diadems;
His glance shall haunt the heart's imaginings—
His footfall shall be felt where misers hoard their gems!
And from the palace of the Sacred Hill
The thrice crown'd pontiff shall to earth dispense
The awful edict of his mighty will,
And reign o'er mind in Fear's magnificence.
Prince, peasant, bandit, slave shall bow
Beneath his throne in voiceless adoration,
And years of crime redeem by one wrung vow;
And age on age shall die—and many a nation
Sink in the shadow of the tyrant's frown
And disappear,
Without a song or tear,
While clarion'd conquerors tread
In hymned triumph o'er the dead;
And wild barbarian hordes,
Whose faith and fealty hang upon their swords,
Shall feel the mellowing breath of human love,
And dwell entranced amid romance and lore;
Yet from the awful Vatican no dove
Shall bear freewill to any earthly shore!
But he, the Rock amid the ruins old
Of mythologic temples, shall o'ersway
The very earth, till thrones and kingdoms sold—
And empires blasted in the blaze of day—
Awake the world—and from the human heart
The crushing mountain of Oppression cast;
Then man shall bid all tyrannies depart,
And from the blue blest heavens elysium dawn at last!”
The conqueror's laurel, the triumpher's pride,
Shall wither 'neath the samiel eye of Death;
On Rome's old mount of glory shall abide,
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The hoar devoter of earth's diadems;
His glance shall haunt the heart's imaginings—
His footfall shall be felt where misers hoard their gems!
And from the palace of the Sacred Hill
The thrice crown'd pontiff shall to earth dispense
The awful edict of his mighty will,
And reign o'er mind in Fear's magnificence.
Prince, peasant, bandit, slave shall bow
Beneath his throne in voiceless adoration,
And years of crime redeem by one wrung vow;
And age on age shall die—and many a nation
Sink in the shadow of the tyrant's frown
And disappear,
Without a song or tear,
While clarion'd conquerors tread
In hymned triumph o'er the dead;
And wild barbarian hordes,
Whose faith and fealty hang upon their swords,
Shall feel the mellowing breath of human love,
And dwell entranced amid romance and lore;
Yet from the awful Vatican no dove
Shall bear freewill to any earthly shore!
But he, the Rock amid the ruins old
Of mythologic temples, shall o'ersway
The very earth, till thrones and kingdoms sold—
And empires blasted in the blaze of day—
Awake the world—and from the human heart
The crushing mountain of Oppression cast;
Then man shall bid all tyrannies depart,
And from the blue blest heavens elysium dawn at last!”
The allusion throughout is to what was, for a long time, an almost omnipotent sovereignty—the Popedom; and even the very strictest disciple of papal supremacy must lament the desecration of almost unlimited power in the hands of many who better understood the law of might, the pageantries of the tournament, the forms of the duello, the intrigues of diplomacy, and the dominion of the castle, than the edicts and ceremonies and devotions of the pontificate. The “Rock amid the ruins” alludes to Peter,—in the Greek, Πετρος.
O'er the broad winter wilderness, that voice
Ascends; and what a horrid gleam is flung
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From sea to mountain, and the wild eyes burn
With revelations of the unborn time!
We may not linger—shelter earth denies—
The very heavens like a gehenna lour—
And ocean is our refuge—on—on—on!
Yet hark! the wildest shriek of death! and lo!
The priest falls gasping from the ramparts now—
The breath of oracles upon his lips,
The Future's knowledge in his dying heart.
He reels—pants—gazes on the sulphur light—
(How like the glare of hell it wraps his form!)
Expiring, mutters woe—and falls to sleep
Shroudless in the red burial of the doomed!
—On to the ocean! and, far o'er its waves,
To Rhætia's home of glaciers—if God wills!
Look not behind! a moment gains the shore!”
So Pansa cried, and windlike was their flight.
The pinnace cleaves the waters; heaving, black
And desolate, the dismal billows groan
And swell the dirges of the earth and sky.
Upon the bosom of the sea, the barque
Sweeps on in darkness, save when furnace light
Flares o'er the upturned floods; and now they pass
The promontory's cliffs, and o'er the deeps
Fly like a midnight vision.—From the shores
Voices in terror cry, and countless shapes
Now in the lava blaze appear—and now
Vanish in the fell night, and far away,
Pliny's lone galleys, dimly from their prows
Casting their watchlights through the fitful gloom,
Hear not the implorings of the fugitives.
THE DEATH-CRIES OF POMPEII.
FIRST VOICE.Hear us! oh, hear us! will no God reply?
No ear of mercy open to our prayer?
Hath utter vengeance throned the accursed sky?
And must we perish in this wild despair?
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Succour in horror—pity in our dread?
Woe! Desolation sweeps o'er all the land!
Woe! woe! earth trembles 'neath the Death-King's tread!
SECOND VOICE.
Oh, Fear and Gloom and Madness are around,
And hope from earth is vain;
The sky is blackness—waves of fire, the ground—
And every bosom's breath—the pulse of pain.
Yet let us not deny,
In shuddering nature's agony,
The universal and immortal King!
But rather, while we gasp,
Our dying children closer clasp,
And pass, with them, the deep where blossoms deathless spring!
THIRD VOICE.
Who bids us sink resigned?
Who bids us bless the Slayer?
And mid the storm of ruin, blind,
Scorched—blasted—dying—breathe again the spurned-back prayer?
Let the Creator in his vengeance take
The life he heaped on men!
No sigh—no voice—no tear shall slake
The almighty hatred that could thus condemn!
He made us but to die—
To die yet see our city's burial first—
And he shall feast upon no wailing cry
From me:—take what thy wrath has cursed!
I yet have power to hate and scorn the might
That strews the earth with dead in Desolation's night!
FOURTH VOICE.
Blaspheme not in thine anguish!
We may not hope to linger—
Yet, quickly quenched, we shall not moan and languish
In wan disease—emaciating pain—
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Would be a burden!—Oh, the fiery rain
Comes down and withers and consumes
The mighty and the weak,
And not a voice from out yon horrid glooms,
That shroud the Sarnus and the sea,
Replies to hearts that break
In the last agony.
Yet shut not out the hope elysian,
And fold not darkness to thy breast!—
—My babe! oh, sweet, most blest and briefest vision!
As at thy birthhour, here 's thy home of rest—
My bosom was thy pillow—'t is thy tomb—
It gave thee life—and, in thine early death,
Thy latest throbs to mine—
—Oh, like harp thrillings in thy bliss and bloom,
While o'er my face stole soft thy odorous breath,
They touched my spirit with a joy divine!—
Thy latest throbs shall be
The warning that shall waft
My soul up through the starr'd infinity,
E'en where the nectar cup is by the I mortals quaff'd.
FIFTH VOICE.
And must we die?
In being's brightness and the bloom of thought!
Sepulchred beneath a sunless sky!
And all the spirit's godlike powers be—nought!
Wail o'er thy doom, fair boy!
Shriek thy last sorrow, maiden! for the doom,
That o'er earth's tearless joy
Rolls gory mid the shadows of the tomb!
The tomb! there shall be none
Save dark-red shroudings of the lava sea—
The fire shall quench the agonizing groan—
Moments become—eternity!
And must we perish so?
Sink, shuddering, thus and gasp our breath in flame?
And o'er our unremembered burial flow
The pomps and pageants of a worthless name?
In being's brightness and the bloom of thought!
Sepulchred beneath a sunless sky!
And all the spirit's godlike powers be—nought!
Wail o'er thy doom, fair boy!
Shriek thy last sorrow, maiden! for the doom,
That o'er earth's tearless joy
Rolls gory mid the shadows of the tomb!
The tomb! there shall be none
Save dark-red shroudings of the lava sea—
The fire shall quench the agonizing groan—
Moments become—eternity!
And must we perish so?
Sink, shuddering, thus and gasp our breath in flame?
And o'er our unremembered burial flow
The pomps and pageants of a worthless name?
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At wonted feasts, no voices shall salute—
In temple hymns, no soul-breathed strain awake
Our memories from the realms forever mute—
But o'er our graves barbarian kings shall slake
Their demon thirst of gore—
And redcross slayers march in bandit ranks,
From Alp and sea and shore,
To heap the Asian sands with hordes of slaughtered Franks!
Wail for the joy that never more shall breathe!
Wail for the lore and love, the bloom and bliss
That to the ocean world of fire bequeathe
Their paradise of hope! and this
Must be our only trust—to quickly die—
And leave the pleasant things of earth behind;
Through thousand ages unremembered lie
Unknown to sunbeam smile or breath of summer wind!—
In temple hymns, no soul-breathed strain awake
Our memories from the realms forever mute—
But o'er our graves barbarian kings shall slake
Their demon thirst of gore—
And redcross slayers march in bandit ranks,
From Alp and sea and shore,
To heap the Asian sands with hordes of slaughtered Franks!
Wail for the joy that never more shall breathe!
Wail for the lore and love, the bloom and bliss
That to the ocean world of fire bequeathe
Their paradise of hope! and this
Must be our only trust—to quickly die—
And leave the pleasant things of earth behind;
Through thousand ages unremembered lie
Unknown to sunbeam smile or breath of summer wind!—
DIOMEDE,
(rushing in.)
Away! bewailers of decrees that bring
Rest to the grief and restlessness of earth!
Away! pale tremblers mid the dawn of spring
That o'er the winter of your fate comes forth!
What are your woes to his,
Who from the throne of power beheld the glory—
Ambition's grandeur, pleasure's bliss,—
Gleam on the Syrian towers like gods in minstrel story!
Gone! gone! why, see ye not the eyes
Of hell's own Furies glaring through the flame?
And hear ye not the wild, deep, dreadful cries
That call in curses on the Avenger's name?
No barque to bear us o'er the sea!
No refuge on the mountain's breast!
Earth, time, and hope like unblest shadows flee,
And death and darkness pall our everlasting rest!
Rest to the grief and restlessness of earth!
Away! pale tremblers mid the dawn of spring
That o'er the winter of your fate comes forth!
What are your woes to his,
Who from the throne of power beheld the glory—
Ambition's grandeur, pleasure's bliss,—
Gleam on the Syrian towers like gods in minstrel story!
Gone! gone! why, see ye not the eyes
Of hell's own Furies glaring through the flame?
And hear ye not the wild, deep, dreadful cries
That call in curses on the Avenger's name?
No barque to bear us o'er the sea!
No refuge on the mountain's breast!
Earth, time, and hope like unblest shadows flee,
And death and darkness pall our everlasting rest!
What spectre sail sweeps yon?
Now in the black night buried—now upon
The billow in the horrid light careering,
Like a spirit that hath passed
The glacier and the Lybian blast,
It feels not human fearing!
It flies toward the promontory now—
The torrent fire of ruin hangs above—
And earthly forms are standing by the prow,
Clasped in the arms of love!
O Hell of Thought! and must I—in the fame
Of sumless wealth and power—sink down and die,
And, helpless, hopeless, leave the Prætor's name
To moulder with the herd's beneath
The mountain monument of death,
And be a doubt, or mock and scorn
To fierce barbarians, yet unborn,
When in the spoiler's lust, they seek the Italian sky?
Now in the black night buried—now upon
The billow in the horrid light careering,
Like a spirit that hath passed
The glacier and the Lybian blast,
It feels not human fearing!
158
The torrent fire of ruin hangs above—
And earthly forms are standing by the prow,
Clasped in the arms of love!
O Hell of Thought! and must I—in the fame
Of sumless wealth and power—sink down and die,
And, helpless, hopeless, leave the Prætor's name
To moulder with the herd's beneath
The mountain monument of death,
And be a doubt, or mock and scorn
To fierce barbarians, yet unborn,
When in the spoiler's lust, they seek the Italian sky?
Ay, curse the gods who in their hate created
The serpent death that gnaws your core of life!
E'en in your childhood's beauty, ye were fated
To writhe, howl, shudder, perish in the strife
Of elemental agonies,
As were your sires by ghastly wan disease;
And wrath, shame, guilt, despair, remorse and pain,
Their heritage and testament, have swept
Your hearts as vultures sweep the battle plain!
Then by the tears unpitied grief hath wept,
By lone bereavement's wail,
And Evil's dark ovations,
Bid universal ruin hail!
And swell Death's monarch march o'er buried nations!
The serpent death that gnaws your core of life!
E'en in your childhood's beauty, ye were fated
To writhe, howl, shudder, perish in the strife
Of elemental agonies,
As were your sires by ghastly wan disease;
And wrath, shame, guilt, despair, remorse and pain,
Their heritage and testament, have swept
Your hearts as vultures sweep the battle plain!
Then by the tears unpitied grief hath wept,
By lone bereavement's wail,
And Evil's dark ovations,
Bid universal ruin hail!
And swell Death's monarch march o'er buried nations!
For me—as fits the Roman lord,
When hopeless peril darkens on his way,
I crave no lingering tortures with the horde
Who gasp and grovel in the slave's dismay,
And to the sick and sulphurous air,
Where Gloom and Fire and Horror dwell,
Pour out to fiction's gods the unheard prayer,
And seek in clouds a heaven, to find on earth a hell!
Thou one omnipotent Despair!
Whose shadow awes the prostrate world,
Thou kingly Queller of lamenting care!
Oblivion's voiceless home prepare,
And let Extinction's lightning bolt be hurled!
Banished, yet dauntless, doomed but undismayed,
Least willing, yet without a groan or sigh,
I go—dark Nemesis! thou art obeyed!
Thou awful cliff! the billow's funeral cry
Thrills through my quickened sense,
That feels with life intense,
Yet, ere a moment's lapse, this soul shall sleep—
This form, a sweltering corse, beneath the unsounded deep!”
When hopeless peril darkens on his way,
I crave no lingering tortures with the horde
Who gasp and grovel in the slave's dismay,
And to the sick and sulphurous air,
Where Gloom and Fire and Horror dwell,
Pour out to fiction's gods the unheard prayer,
And seek in clouds a heaven, to find on earth a hell!
Thou one omnipotent Despair!
Whose shadow awes the prostrate world,
Thou kingly Queller of lamenting care!
Oblivion's voiceless home prepare,
And let Extinction's lightning bolt be hurled!
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Least willing, yet without a groan or sigh,
I go—dark Nemesis! thou art obeyed!
Thou awful cliff! the billow's funeral cry
Thrills through my quickened sense,
That feels with life intense,
Yet, ere a moment's lapse, this soul shall sleep—
This form, a sweltering corse, beneath the unsounded deep!”
Thus to the proud heart's last throb breathing out
Defiance and blaspheming wrath—though wrecked
And ruined, hurling his terrific thoughts
Of baffled vengeance to the shuddering heavens—
A monumental Memnon, sending up
Death's music to the burning hills of death—
Upon the extremest edge of awful cliffs,
That beetled o'er the blackened billows now
Howling their dirges o'er the expected dead,
The haughty Prætor stood alone, and flung
His agonizing spirit's deadliest glance,
The farewell execrating look of pride,
Unquenched by horror, unsubdued by death,
O'er hill, shore, forest, ocean—earth and heaven;
Then, towering like a rebel demigod,
And to the fierce volcano turning quick
His brow of fearful beauty, while his lips
Curved with convulsive curses, o'er the rocks—
Down—down the void, black depths, like a bann'd star,
Or demon from a meteor mountain's brow,
He plunged and o'er him curled the shivering floods!
Defiance and blaspheming wrath—though wrecked
And ruined, hurling his terrific thoughts
Of baffled vengeance to the shuddering heavens—
A monumental Memnon, sending up
Death's music to the burning hills of death—
Upon the extremest edge of awful cliffs,
That beetled o'er the blackened billows now
Howling their dirges o'er the expected dead,
The haughty Prætor stood alone, and flung
His agonizing spirit's deadliest glance,
The farewell execrating look of pride,
Unquenched by horror, unsubdued by death,
O'er hill, shore, forest, ocean—earth and heaven;
Then, towering like a rebel demigod,
And to the fierce volcano turning quick
His brow of fearful beauty, while his lips
Curved with convulsive curses, o'er the rocks—
Down—down the void, black depths, like a bann'd star,
Or demon from a meteor mountain's brow,
He plunged and o'er him curled the shivering floods!
Meantime, charred corses in one sepulchre
Of withering ashes lay, and voices rose,
Fewer and fainter, and, each moment, groans
Were hushed, and dead babes on dead bosoms lay,
And lips were blasted into breathlessness
Ere the death kiss was given, and spirits passed
The ebbless, dark, mysterious waves, where dreams
Hover and pulses throb and many a brain
Swims wild with terrible desires to know
The destinies of worlds that lie beyond.
The thick air panted as in nature's death,
And every breath was anguish; every face
Was terror's image, where the soul looked forth,
As looked, sometimes, far on the edge of heaven,
A momentary star the tempest palled.
From ghastlier lips now rose a wilder voice,
As from a ruined sanctuary's gloom,
Like savage winds from the Chorasmian waste
Rushing, with sobs and suffocating screams:
And thus the last despair found utterance.
Of withering ashes lay, and voices rose,
Fewer and fainter, and, each moment, groans
Were hushed, and dead babes on dead bosoms lay,
And lips were blasted into breathlessness
Ere the death kiss was given, and spirits passed
The ebbless, dark, mysterious waves, where dreams
Hover and pulses throb and many a brain
Swims wild with terrible desires to know
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The thick air panted as in nature's death,
And every breath was anguish; every face
Was terror's image, where the soul looked forth,
As looked, sometimes, far on the edge of heaven,
A momentary star the tempest palled.
From ghastlier lips now rose a wilder voice,
As from a ruined sanctuary's gloom,
Like savage winds from the Chorasmian waste
Rushing, with sobs and suffocating screams:
And thus the last despair found utterance.
SIXTH VOICE.
“It bursts! it bursts! and thousand thunders blent,
From the deep heart of agonizing earth,
Knell, shatter, crash along the firmament,
And new hells peopled startle into birth.
Vesuvius sunders! pyramids of fire
From fathomless abysses blast the sky;
E'en desolating Ruin doth expire,
And mortal Death in woe immortal die.
Torrents, like lurid gore,
Hurled from the gulf of horror, pour,
Like legion fiends embattled to the spoil,
And o'er the temple domes,
And joy's ten thousand homes,
Beneath the whirlwind hail and storm of ashes boil.
From the deep heart of agonizing earth,
Knell, shatter, crash along the firmament,
And new hells peopled startle into birth.
Vesuvius sunders! pyramids of fire
From fathomless abysses blast the sky;
E'en desolating Ruin doth expire,
And mortal Death in woe immortal die.
Torrents, like lurid gore,
Hurled from the gulf of horror, pour,
Like legion fiends embattled to the spoil,
And o'er the temple domes,
And joy's ten thousand homes,
Beneath the whirlwind hail and storm of ashes boil.
The surges, like coil'd serpents, rise
From midnight caverns of the deep,
And writhe around the rocks,
That shiver in the earthquake shocks”
And through the blackness of fear's mysteries,
Chained Titans from their beds of torture leap,
And o'er the heavens, Eumenides
Seek parting souls for prey.
Oh, God! that on those dark and groaning seas
Would soar one other day!
Vain is the mad desire,
Darkness, convulsion, fire,
Infernal floods, dissolving mountains, fold
The helpless children of woe, sin and Time—
O'er fiery wrecks has Desolation rolled,
The Infinite Curse attends the finite crime!
From midnight caverns of the deep,
And writhe around the rocks,
That shiver in the earthquake shocks”
And through the blackness of fear's mysteries,
Chained Titans from their beds of torture leap,
And o'er the heavens, Eumenides
Seek parting souls for prey.
Oh, God! that on those dark and groaning seas
Would soar one other day!
Vain is the mad desire,
Darkness, convulsion, fire,
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The helpless children of woe, sin and Time—
O'er fiery wrecks has Desolation rolled,
The Infinite Curse attends the finite crime!
No melancholy moon to gaze
With dim, cold light remote!
No star, through stormy sphere, with holy rays,
O'er dying eyes, like hope of heaven, to float!
No spot—the oasis of the waste above—
Whose still, sweet beauty glistens
Through clouds that heave and riot in wild masses,
Breaks on the breaking heart! no seraph listens
In blue pavilions, while the spirit passes,
And o'er the dreariest waters bears,
Beyond the unburied's desert shore,
To skies ambrosial and elysian airs,
Where e'en the awful Destinies adore!
No tenderness from lips,
Blackened and swoln and gasping, steals
Amid the soul's eclipse:
Each, in the solitude of misery, feels,
Ineffable, his own despair,
And sinks unsolaced, unsolacing, down,
O'ercanopied by sulphurous air,
Palled, tombed by seas that terror's last cry drown!
With dim, cold light remote!
No star, through stormy sphere, with holy rays,
O'er dying eyes, like hope of heaven, to float!
No spot—the oasis of the waste above—
Whose still, sweet beauty glistens
Through clouds that heave and riot in wild masses,
Breaks on the breaking heart! no seraph listens
In blue pavilions, while the spirit passes,
And o'er the dreariest waters bears,
Beyond the unburied's desert shore,
To skies ambrosial and elysian airs,
Where e'en the awful Destinies adore!
No tenderness from lips,
Blackened and swoln and gasping, steals
Amid the soul's eclipse:
Each, in the solitude of misery, feels,
Ineffable, his own despair,
And sinks unsolaced, unsolacing, down,
O'ercanopied by sulphurous air,
Palled, tombed by seas that terror's last cry drown!
Oh, still the piteous cry
Mounts up the heavens—“fly! fly!”
“Whither?” the billows roar
Among the wrecks and rent crags of the shore.
“Whither?” the Volcano's voice
Repeats, bidding pale death rejoice.
Oh, Hope with madness dwells,
And love of life creates the worst of deaths;
Hark! world to world ten thousand voices swells—
‘Resign your breaths!’
We die; the sinner with the sinless dies,
The bud, the flower, the fruit, corruption wastes,
Childhood and hoar age blend their agonies,
Destruction o'er the earth—the missioned slayer hastes.
Mounts up the heavens—“fly! fly!”
“Whither?” the billows roar
Among the wrecks and rent crags of the shore.
“Whither?” the Volcano's voice
Repeats, bidding pale death rejoice.
Oh, Hope with madness dwells,
And love of life creates the worst of deaths;
Hark! world to world ten thousand voices swells—
‘Resign your breaths!’
We die; the sinner with the sinless dies,
The bud, the flower, the fruit, corruption wastes,
Childhood and hoar age blend their agonies,
Destruction o'er the earth—the missioned slayer hastes.
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The Alpine gale, scudded the Christians' barque;
Night veiled Lucania's rugged shore, but oft
The dreadful radiance of the firemount hung
Upon the mightiest Apennines, and there
The giant cliffs, hoar forest trees, and glens
Haunted by endless midnight, and the foam
Of cataracts—glared upon the fear-charmed eye,
Distinct though distant; and Salernum's crags
Spurned the chafed sea that rushed before the prow.
“Lo! Pliny's galleys speed to aid at last!”
Said Pansa, gazing through the meteor light,
Towards the Sarnus and the victim host.
“All shall not perish; oars and sails bear on
The Roman armament—and now, in hope
Renewed exulting, from the dust upspring
A thousand prostrate shapes, and from the rocks
Lift their scorched hands, and shout (though we hear not)
The late rescuers on! yet many a heart
Will throb and thrill no more, but buried lie,
Like its own birthplace, till oblivion rests
On the Campanian cities and their guilt.
Salernum's rocks forever from our gaze
Hide the dark scene of trial, and we leave,
With swelling canvas, Rome's imperial realm,
Where Christian faith shall, like the sandal tree,
Impart its odour to the feller's axe,
To seek a heritage in wilds afar.
—Now, as we hasten, let our spirits soar
To Him who shelters when the Avenger slays!”
THE FAREWELL OF THE CHRISTIANS.
PANSA.Alone, on darkness, on the deep,
Spirit of Love! redeemed by thee,
While fear its watch o'er ruin keeps,
Thy grace our sign and shield, we flee
The billows burst around our barque,
The death streams roll and burn behind—
Thy mercy guides our little ark,
Thy breath can swell or hush the wind.
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When drowning voices shrieked for aid—
The cavern'd billow yawn'd—a grave—
“Be still!” it heard Thee and obeyed!
From idol rites and tyrant power,
Now o'er the midnight sea we fly—
Be with us through our peril's hour!
Saviour! with Thee we cannot die!
MARIAMNE.
To men a mocked and homeless stranger,
Thy truth, love, grace and goodness blest
The world, whose first gift was a manger,
Whose last, the Cross! no down of rest
Pillowed, O Christ! thy holy head,
No crown, but thorns, Thy temples wreathed,
Yet Thou the Death King captive led,
And through the tomb a glory breathed!
The scorner all thy love reviled,
Thy path was pain, thy kingdom shame,
Yet sorrow on thine aspect smiled,
E'en Death revered Thy deathless name!
The bittern moans where Zion stood,
The serpent crawls where nations trod—
Be with us on the mountain flood!
Fill our dim hearts with light from God!
THE MAIDEN OF POMPEII.
The flame, that wrapt my childhood's bowers,
Revealed Thee to my darkened mind;
Thee whom e'en sybils, seers and powers
Of Night in Delphi's grove divined;
With the dim glimpse of shadowed thought,
They saw the Atoner's form of light,
Yet pale doubt sighed o'er visions wrought,
The idol world still walked in night.
Now paynim dreams of dread no more,
The feigned response, the magi's charms,
O'erawe and on my spirit pour
The torturer's spells, the tomb's alarms.
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Hope unto heaven bears human love;
Doubt, grief, lone tears, remorse, despair
Haunt not the soul's own home above.
My chill heart cheered by thoughts like these,
Far from my ruined bowers I roam;
Thy love lights up the midnight seas,
Thy smile is earth's most heavenly home!
THE OLD CHRISTIAN.
Dimmer, like hoary years that bring
Life's winter, wanes the volcan's glare;
Destruction furls his meteor wing,
Watching the desert of despair!
Now far before, the Æolian Isles
Send up their vassal fires, but still,
Where fair Trinacria's Hybla smiles,
Darkness sits throned on Ætna's hill.
Soon, by Sicilia's whirlpool streight,
Our barque shall seek the Ionian sea,
And o'er the Adria, pagan hate
To Rhætian hills hunt not the free!
The sun, with beams that bloom, shall soar,
And vineyard, vale, hillside and grove,
Sea, mountain, meadow, isle and shore
Bask in voluptuous light of love.
Yet darker Ruin still must come
O'er midnight minds and hearts defiled—
A direr storm, a deadlier doom—
Where Glory stood, and Beauty smiled.
Away! the grave's wild shadows swim
O'er my pale eve of autumn days;
Away! the wild to harp and hymn,
Like sphere-voiced choirs, shall breathe, O Christ! Thy love and praise!
* * * * * * * * * *
'T is summer's tenderest twilight, and the woods
Glow like an inner glory of the mind,
And rills, veining the verdure, and among
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And music dancing, purl from fountains known
But to the gnomes and kobalds of the Alps—
Mysterious springs, o'er which eternal Night
Watches and weeps in solitude, her tears
Mingling, at last, with the green ocean deeps.
Brightness and beauty, love and blessedness
Breathe on each other's bosoms, while afar,
From jagged cliffs the torrent cataract
Hymns the Omnipotent; and from the brows
Of desolate peaks ice-diademed, which thought
Alone may climb, the mountain avalanche,
Vast Ruin, falls and with it ruin bears.
All else is loneliness, beauty and love,
Peace and a hallowed stillness, and the souls
Of the lone mountain dwellers, in the hush
Of solitude and nature's majesty,
Partake the sanctity and power around.
The sunbow o'er precipitated floods—
The ice-lakes, and ravines where chaos dwells,
And desolation; flowers beneath snow-hills,
Where the great sun looks wan—the mightiest pines,
Rooted in chasms, that o'er the unfathomed gorge
Hang, wave and murmur—vales of paradise,
That smile upon suspended horror—all
With memories and oracles and dreams,
Time's hopes, eternity's imaginings,
Infinity's vast grandeur, the meek love
Of birthplace home,—the boundlessness of power,
The holiness of earth's reliance—fill
The awed and yet exultant intellect!
Flowered fields and harvests bloom around the door
Of a lone forest cottage, and amidst
The Eden of the wild a hoary head
Is lifted and the wan lips move in prayer.
Around, three beings kneel in thought o'erawed,
Vesper responses breathing from high hearts,
And Echo whispers in the clefted rocks.
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Then rose they, not as worshippers arise
In latter days of evil, with proud eyes
And minds revenge corrodes, but violet-like,
And gentle as the dawn breath of sweet May,
Patient, serene and robed in holy thoughts.
Dayspring and evelight, thus, year after year,
Dawned and departed, and the seasons had
Their own peculiar joys in Pansa's home.
And there—the Roman Convert's testament—
The storm-nursed heritors of Faith, blasphemed,
Throned Liberty on Alpine pinnacles,
And bade her temple be the Switzer hills.
There in love worshipped, there with hoar hairs died
The Christians, but their deathless spirits lived
In the high thoughts of many a patriot heart,
Which, thrilled with Freedom and God's holy Law,
With tyrant Wrong warred through Guilt's thousand years.
| The poems and prose writings of Sumner Lincoln Fairfield | |