PESTU M.

OH thou! at whose dread word the stormy deep

Lay hushed, and pillowed in primeval sleep;

God of the waters !-with thy fabled reign,

Has this thy city vanished from the plain * ?

Where now thy praise by suppliant nations poured?

Where now thy victims, and thy rites adored?

The city was dedicated to Neptune.

All, all are past, and envious time alone

Usurps the glories of thy prostrate throne.

Yet, o'er that mouldering wreck of empire fled,
Majestic rise the temples of the dead;

Dawn of Hesperia's splendour, still they tell
How science flourished, and how PÆSTUM fell.
Dark o'er the scene oblivion's shades are cast†,
Nor breathes the wind one echo of the past ;-
Of those bright days, when yon proud piles among,
Swelled the loud rapture of the mingling throng:
When rose, conspicuous in the realms of thought,
The chief who governed, or the sage who taught,
And sung the bard, by inspiration's power,

The wild sweet fragrance of yon lonely flower.

Obscurity bangs over the origin as well as the general history of

the city.

But years have fled, and still the rose blooms on!

Though man, the animating soul, is gone.

Yet has his genius left such traces here,

As pilgrims traverse empires to revere*!

What were this empty pomp of earth and sky,

And circling ocean's boundless majesty†,

Save for these relics of creative mind,

Stamped with high powers, and visions undefined?

Yet, stranger, linger not, nor dare to tread t

These solemn confines of the mighty dead;

Pause not, though still the rose of Pæstum bloom

O'er the fallen Atlas, and the nameless tomb;

* Various travellers mention the multitudes of people that visit

Pæstum.

The Tyrrhene Sea.

The malaria mentioned by Strabo still exists. The person affected is seized with a numbness in all his faculties, and a tendency to sleep, which always ends in death.