LXX. Making the Shape of Darkness visible ! It stood out there, the World's last funeral pile; How the crowds rushed beneath that lurid glare, To the deaf shrines, assailing Heaven with prayer! LXXI. Caught mid-way in the jaws of earth while flying; Or writhing, scathed beneath the fiery rain, 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 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 ! 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, So mute, so motionless in that dark nook, That ye might well deem life had each forsook ; 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 ? To burst the door-their fate no more delayed; In tenfold horrors they beheld arrayed? To die above-to gasp in fiery breath Were heaven, so they escaped this sulphurous hold be neath! |