LXX.

Making the Shape of Darkness visible !
As, blazing up all terribly in air,

It stood out there, the World's last funeral pile;
Death was within the walls, without-despair;

How the crowds rushed beneath that lurid glare,
Deliriously on! or wildly clung

To the deaf shrines, assailing Heaven with prayer!
Or, o'er their hearths in gibbering madness hung;
Or motionless lay crushed 'neath giant columns flung !—

LXXI.

Caught mid-way in the jaws of earth while flying;

Or writhing, scathed beneath the fiery rain,
Prostrate, in agonies undreamed of dying!
Trampled like worms-invoking those in vain
Above them rushing from the maddening pain,
Like tortured fiends-their flight but to delay
One moment—no voice answered them again!
The chase was life and death-no foot dared stay:

Alas-the crushing walls were not more deaf than they!

LXXII.

All was forgotten in the one wild strife

For preservation; for the short-lived span,

The fleeting tenement of human life!

Then rose the prayers of faith-the reckless ban

Of pale Apostasy! no longer ran

Blood in the veins, nor tears from answering eyes, Into a demon seemed transformed the man :

Bared was his naked heart!-love's social ties, Law, habit, reverence, life's soft sympathies,

LXXIII.

Were crushed like threads before the giant force
Of Nature's master-passion! which now made
That spot a Hell, without its vain remorse!
The Son shook off his grey Sire, who delayed
His flight, and plunged the parricidal blade!
The husband left his wife; but she, in death,
All woman-like, forgot not, though betrayed,
She was a mother! from the ashes' breath

She with her body shields her dying child beneath.

LXXIV.

Beneath yon arch-apart from the blind crowdsCrushed, trampled, scathed along the fiery streets, How yon pale Priest amidst the darkness shrouds ! Triumph is in his hollow eyes, that meets

Strangely with awe and horror; yet how beats

His heart with joy! his shrine's wealth he doth bear, While through the sea-ward passage he retreats; Hark-his sharp cry of torture and despair!

The light of twenty ages found his ashes there.

LXXV.

Or turn to the Patrician's marble hall,

Where yon gigantic slave doth sit alone:

Nature and his red hand have burst his thrall! Lifeless his murdered victims round are thrown; How full-how fierce his triumph! 'tis his own, That Hall-but how escape the ash-heaped door? Through one thick wall his axe hath wildly hewn! The second yields—the roof gives way-'tis o'erThe Murderer sinks, crushed down upon the buried floor.

LXXVI.

But while the human tides rush through the gate,

How the red Mountain blazing full in view,

Yon Roman Sentinel doth contemplate !
Motionless as a Statue there he grew :
Composed his face, though livid is its hue:
Sternness with awe in his undaunted eye!
Vainly the fiery Tempest round him flew :

He had not, like yon herd, been taught to fly; Scorched-blasted in his place, the warrior stood to die!

LXXVII.

Descend yon subterranean gallery :

A lamp burns dimly there, which, as ye look,
Reveals forms palpable before the eye:

So mute, so motionless in that dark nook,

That ye might well deem life had each forsook ;
Save that, at times, a sigh, a groan was sped
From bosoms that convulsive tremors shook;
Ah, better were it the faint spark had fled,
Than by delusive hope thus vainly, fondly fed!

LXXVIII.

But as their faces toward each other turned,

They told the truths, like prophets, which their love Would hide in vain; the lamp that flickering burned, O'er their pale features gleaming, showed how strove Death and life busy there! its ray above

Sicklily waved-expired—and all was gloom, Darkness and Silence! save when wilder drove The thunders bellowing o'er their living tomb! Or when the flashing Light the vaulted caves illume!

LXXIX.

Then their long silence was no more withheld ?
"Air-air!-one desperate impulse was obeyed
By all; for mad despair alike impelled

To burst the door-their fate no more delayed;
What recked it now, debarred all human aid,
How they expired? while here, a living death

In tenfold horrors they beheld arrayed?

To die above-to gasp in fiery breath

Were heaven, so they escaped this sulphurous hold be

neath!