CASTELLAMARE

AT CASTELLAMARE

AWAKE, my Myrto, with the birth of day,
Forth to the meadow fare this first of May.

Not yet the sun with his o'ermastering might

Hath dried the pearlets upon bud and bloom; Still in pale skies trembles the star of night, Morn's herald star, and all the glorious gloom Is waiting for the dawn to re-illume Her eyes of fire above the burning bay.

Awake, my Myrto, with the birth of day,
Forth to the meadow fare this first of May.

See in thick pleachèd garden-alleys green

How rose by rose deep-sunken drinks the dew: Sheathed in soft sleep they hide their silken sheen, Nor know the passion of fierce light that through

Their crimson spheres will shoot when morn is

new:

So sleep not we when love invites to play.

Awake, my Myrto, with the birth of day,
Forth to the meadow fare this first of May.

Ah, foolish rose! She hath one little hour
To cast her sweetness on the amorous prime;
The kiss of noon her girlhood will deflower,

The wanton bee about her lap will climb,
And birds will sing their clear love-laden rhyme,
Till night descends that taketh all away.

Awake, my Myrto, with the birth of day,
Forth to the meadow fare this first of May.
JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS.

POMPEII

POMPEII

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
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.

A rising mound shuts out the path, the wind Waves the wild fig-tree 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!

The vision in material life confessed;

Time hath the archives of the past unrolled, Their household gods unveiled, and life domestic

told.

The City of the Dead to light restored,
And resurrection, day again began,
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: Truth stands embodied, and with audible tone Points to the house, thy tomb, the dust that is thine own.

Lo, the Pompeian Forum! haunt of rest,
And recreation when the twilight sky

Hued with its beauty the delighted west:
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,

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,
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.

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,
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

From the far-distant amphitheatre,

Air glowed as from a sullen furnace flame: The trees dropped wan, no breath a leaf to stir; Each house was noiseless as a sepulchre, And the all-sickly weight by nature shown Pressed heaviest on human hearts; they were All silent, each foreboding dared not own Fears, the advancing shadows of an ill unknown.

Behold the Mountain! words withheld while spoken,