XL.

But oh, the warring passions that, o'erwrought

To desperate frenzy, led without a guide,
Through the wild darkness to that wilder spot!
The clinging love, yet the remorseful pride;
Forgiveness, whose revenge was suicide;
And its reward absorbing, so it won

Tears, or a sigh; for this was death defied,
And heaven forgotten! here, that erring one
Stood lingering-trembling-fixed-till, plunging—all

was done!

XLI.

Along the narrow road with willows lined,

A silvery brook glides silently along:

And SARNO keeps its name, whose waters wind
Between their roots with a low murmuring song:
Once did its now all-shrunken bosom throng
A thousand barks borne proudly to the sea!
But they who took their name and place among
The nations, like the rest, have ceased to be:
Joined, and forgotten with the past eternity.

XLII.

A broad, and lengthened ridge of mossy green,

With fig-trees waving o'er its wild-flowered crest,

Fronting the

eye, shuts out the levelled scene;

Till, opening behind them, stands confessed

The grave reclaimed from Nature's sheltering breast:

POMPEII-city of the dead, behold!

How is the Vision on the mind impressed!

The mighty marvel: Time hath here unrolled

The Past-o'er hidden ages raised the mantling fold.

XLIII.

We move, as in the mystic Realm of Dreams

The spirit moves where all is overwrought,

Till natural each marvellous object seems;

So, passively, we turn from spot to spot:

But this is mute reality of what

Is dream-like; lo! the roofless chambers round:

The bench left in the hall, as if forgot:

The wine-stains on the floor- the goblet crowned:

We start-and pause to hear the reveller's distant sound!

XLIV.

Exquisite figures, dim in fading grace,
Adorn the arabesqued and roofless walls,

Which, hourly vanishing, shall leave no trace,
Save what the record or the verse recals!

Tales of heroic time: how love enthralls
The brave the soft reward by beauty given;
Dash but the sands aside that choke the halls,
Lo, the Mosaic shows its hues of heaven,

The vanities of wealth which now may be forgiven.

XLV.

The City of the Dead again restored

To life and resurrection, and the plan

Of Destiny suspended to record

The grandeur and the nothingness of man;

Arresting here from Time and Nature's ban,

That, which embowelled, they had claimed their own. 'Tis here the moralizer feels the span

Of brief existence: truths familiar known,

But never to the eye thus eloquently shown!

XLVI.

And, ever brooding there, as o'er its shrine,

A Spirit, invisible and bodiless,

Making us own its influence divine,

With awe-an awe we would not render less-
SILENCE doth reign; not such as we confess,
Musing o'er Nature, when above, beneath,

Is felt her life, though all be motionless;

But the cold pulseless apathy of death:

A void, a chilling stillness that suspends the breath.

XLVII

An open space girt round with shattered walls,

Where broken frieze and cornice show the ground,
And pillars riven from the capitals;

The white bright stucco's fragments clinging round
Their dull, red tufa, once with marble bound;
Lo-the rent shrine of Jove upreared on high!

Beside it-she who aye hath altars found:
Love-Venus! worship of eternity,

To whom, where'er man kneels, 'tis not idolatry.

XLVIII.

The Shrine of Isis, and the open cell;

The hollowed spaces where the jugglers gave
Words which hope tortured to an oracle;

So Truth succumbed to Cunning still the slave,
Till raised at last, immortal from her grave!

All, save the broken shafts, to earth are cast:
They, like the Forest-trunks, still standing, brave

The present-as the Tempest of the Past:

Head, stem, and branches shorn by that earth-rending

blast.

XLIX.

Such the Pompeian Forum! even now

Sitting, where round this arch its ruin throws,
How close above frowns yon Destroyer's brow!
Not, as once, beautiful in green repose,

King of the Mountains which around him close,
But dark and savage, as when based with wood,
O'er the Phlegræan burning fields he rose :
When the earth round was fen or fiery flood:

Haunt of the savage wild, or wilder solitude.