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(From Italy)
’T IS said a stranger in the days of old | |
| (Some say a Dorian, some a Sybarite; | |
| But distant things are ever lost in clouds),— | |
| ’T is said a stranger came, and, with his plough, | |
| Traced out the site; and Posidonia rose, | 5 |
| Severely great, Neptune the tutelar god; | |
| A Homer’s language murmuring in her streets, | |
| And in her haven many a mast from Tyre. | |
| Then came another, an unbidden guest. | |
| He knocked and entered with a train in arms; | 10 |
| And all was changed, her very name and language! | |
| The Tyrian merchant, shipping at his door | |
| Ivory and gold and silk and frankincense, | |
| Sailed as before, but, sailing, cried, “For Pæstum!” | |
| And now a Virgil, now an Ovid, sung | 15 |
| Pæstum’s twice-blowing roses; while, within, | |
| Parents and children mourned, and every year | |
| (’T was on the day of some old festival) | |
| Met to give way to tears, and once again | |
| Talk in the ancient tongue of things gone by. | 20 |
| At length an Arab climbed the battlements, | |
| Slaying the sleepers in the dead of night, | |
| And from all eyes the glorious vision fled, | |
| Leaving a place lonely and dangerous, | |
| Where whom the robber spares a deadlier foe | 25 |
| Strikes at unseen, and at a time when joy | |
| Opens the heart, when summer skies are blue, | |
| And the clear air is soft and delicate: | |
| For then the demon works, then with that air | |
| The thoughtless wretch drinks in a subtle poison | 30 |
| Lulling to sleep; and, when he sleeps, he dies. | |
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