Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Italy: Vols. XI–XIII. 1876–79.
Baiæ
By James Thomson (1834–1882)T
Her bank all beaming with the pride of Rome:
No generous vines now bask along the hills,
Where sport the breezes of the Tyrrhene main:
With baths and temples mixed, no villas rise;
Nor, art sustained amid reluctant waves,
Draw the cool murmurs of the breathing deep:
No spreading ports their sacred arms extend:
No mighty moles the big intrusive storm,
From the calm station, roll resounding back.
An almost total desolation sits,
A dreary stillness saddening o’er the coast;
Where, when soft suns and tepid winters rose,
Rejoicing clouds inhaled the balm of peace;
Where citied hill to hill reflected blaze;
And where, with Ceres Bacchus wont to hold
A genial strife. Her youthful form, robust,
E’en Nature yields; by fire and earthquake rent:
Whole stately cities in the dark abrupt
Swallowed at once, or vile in rubbish laid,
A nest for serpents; from the red abyss
New hills, explosive, thrown; the Lucrine lake
A reedy pool: and all to Cuma’s point,
The sea recovering his usurped domain,
And poured triumphant o’er the buried dome.