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(From Italy)
KNOW’ST thou yon stream, its veiny current threading | |
| Between the willow banks it loves, that makes | |
| Its low voice heard by thee as thou art treading | |
| That green bank thoughtfully; the aspen shakes | |
| Its boughs above, the deep sky gives and takes | 5 |
| Its azure from it, and that river keeps | |
| Its name, while states have vanished as the flakes | |
| Of snow, sun-melted: Sarno to the deeps | |
| Rolls on, its waves no more the painted trireme sweeps. | |
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| A rising mound shuts out the path, the wind | 10 |
| Waves the wild fig-trees o’er its flower-crowned crest: | |
| Enter, a world is opened from behind, | |
| The dead are disinterred from Nature’s breast, | |
| The buried raised from their sepulchral rest; | |
| Living Pompeii again behold! | 15 |
| The vision in material life confessed; | |
| Time hath the archives of the past unrolled, | |
| Their household gods unveiled, and life domestic told. | |
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| The City of the Dead to light restored, | |
| And resurrection, day again began, | 20 |
| The law of fate suspended to record | |
| The greatness and the nothingness of man: | |
| Decay arrested and oblivion’s ban | |
| From wrecks that rise on life’s cold shore alone: | |
| Here, moralist! thou seest thy bounded span: | 25 |
| Truth stands embodied, and with audible tone | |
| Points to the house, thy tomb, the dust that is thine own. | |
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| Lo, the Pompeian Forum! haunt of rest, | |
| And recreation when the twilight sky | |
| Hued with its beauty the delighted west: | 30 |
| When the sea’s rising breath refreshingly | |
| Gladdened each heart, and soothed each wearied eye | |
| Oppressed and fevered with the heats of day: | |
| Moments when life was felt, when the light sigh | |
| Was pleasure, impulses that all obey, | 35 |
| As Nature o’er the heart asserts her healthful sway. * * * * * | |
| The Street of Tombs! the dwelling-places rent | |
| Of those who felt not fires that o’er them swept, | |
| Engulfed within a living monument; | |
| But in those hollow niches where they slept, | 40 |
| Yea, in their urns the fiery vapor crept, | |
| The mountain’s ashes and the human dust | |
| Together heaped: the dead no longer kept | |
| Their couches, forth by earth convulsive thrust | |
| From that last home where love the loved ones still intrust. | 45 |
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| The house of Diomed, the pleasant place | |
| Of the refined patrician, where the hand | |
| Of luxury ruled, and Art traced forms of grace | |
| Which from time hidden could decay withstand; | |
| Playthings that shall again resolve to sand, | 50 |
| Opened to skyey influence and air, | |
| All that his vanity or fondness planned; | |
| The law of nature it again doth share, | |
| Decay, change, time, and death, too long evaded there. * * * * * | |
| The town was hushed, save where a faint shout came | 55 |
| From the far-distant amphitheatre, | |
| Air glowed as from a sullen furnace flame: | |
| The trees drooped wan, no breath a leaf to stir; | |
| Each house was noiseless as a sepulchre, | |
| And the all-sickly weight by nature shown | 60 |
| Pressed heaviest on human hearts; they were | |
| All silent, each foreboding dared not own | |
| Fears, the advancing shadows of an ill unknown. | |
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| Behold the Mountain! words withheld while spoken, | |
| In vision centering the astounded mind: | 65 |
| The mists that erewhile swathed his front are broken, | |
| Hurled upward as by some imprisoned wind | |
| Earth could no more within her caverns bind; | |
| Lo, scroll-like forth in scattered wreathings driven | |
| From his cleft brow, gray clouds that disentwined | 70 |
| From their black trunk shot forth like branches riven, | |
| Opening their pine-like shape in the profound of heaven! | |
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| Statues of fear, mute, motionless they stood: | |
| The mountain that had slept a thousand years | |
| Wakes from his slumber! lo, yon sable flood | 75 |
| Of eddying cloud its giant shape uprears: | |
| They gaze, yet fly not, who had linked with fears | |
| Vesuvius robed in ever green attire? | |
| But lo, each moment wilder, fiercer nears | |
| The unfolding canopy, its skirts respire | 80 |
| Lightnings around, away, yon lurid mass is fire! | |
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