From MOUNT ALBURNUS to the TYRRHENE sea, While, by some spell rendered invisible,
Or, if approached, approached by him alone Who saw as though he saw not, they remained As in the darkness of a sepulchre,
Waiting the appointed time! All, all within Proclaims that Nature had resumed her right, And taken to herself what man renounced; No cornice, triglyph, or worn abacus,
But with thick ivy hung or branching fern; Their iron-brown o'erspread with brightest verdure! From my youth upward have I longed to tread This classic ground—And am I here at last? Wandering at will through the long porticoes, And catching, as through some majestic grove, Now the blue ocean, and now, chaos-like, Mountains and mountain-gulfs, and, half-way up, Towns like the living rock from which they grew? A cloudy region, black and desolate,
Where once a slave withstood a world in arms.
The air is sweet with violets, running wild †
Spartacus. See Plutarch in the Life of Crassus.
+ The violets of Pæstum were as proverbial as the roses. Martial mentions them with the honey of Hybla.
Mid broken friezes and fallen capitals;
Sweet as when TULLY, writing down his thoughts,
Those thoughts so precious and so lately lost,* (Turning to thee, divine Philosophy,
Ever at hand to calm his troubled soul)
Sailed slowly by, two thousand years ago, For ATHENS; when a ship, if north-east winds Blew from the PÆSTAN gardens, slacked her course. On as he moved along the level shore,
These temples, in their splendour eminent Mid arcs and obelisks, and domes and towers, Reflecting back the radiance of the west,
Well might he dream of Glory!-Now, coiled up, The serpent sleeps within them; the she-wolf Suckles her young: and, as alone I stand In this, the nobler pile, the elements Of earth and air its only floor and roof, How solemn is the stillness! Nothing stirs Save the shrill-voiced cicala flitting round On the rough pediment to sit and sing;
Or the green lizard rustling through the grass,
* The introduction to his treatise on Glory. Cic. ad Att. xvi. 6. For an account of the loss of that treatise, see Petrarch, Epist. Rer. Senilium, xv. 1. and Bayle, Dict., in Alcyonius.
And up the fluted shaft with short quick spring, To vanish in the chinks that Time has made.
In such an hour as this, the sun's broad disk Seen at his setting, and a flood of light Filling the courts of these old sanctuaries, (Gigantic shadows, broken and confused, Athwart the innumerable columns flung) In such an hour he came, who saw and told, Led by the mighty Genius of the Place.*
Walls of some capital city first appeared, Half razed, half sunk, or scattered as in scorn; -And what within them? what but in the midst These Three in more than their original grandeur, And, round about, no stone upon another? As if the spoiler had fallen back in fear, And, turning, left them to the elements.
'Tis said a stranger in the days of old (Some say a DORIAN, some a SYBARITE; But distant things are ever lost in clouds) 'Tis said a stranger came, and, with his plough, Traced out the site; and POSIDONIA rose,†
* They are said to have been discovered by accident about the middle of the last century.
+ Originally a Greek City under that name and afterwards a
Severely great, NEPTUNE the tutelar God;
A HOMER'S language murmuring in her streets, And in her haven many a mast from TYRE. Then came another, an unbidden guest.
He knocked and entered with a train in arms;
And all was changed, her very name and language! The TYRIAN merchant, shipping at his door
Ivory and gold, and silk, and frankincense,
Sailed as before, but, sailing, cried For PÆSTUM !" And now a VIRGIL, now an OVID Sung PASTUM's twice-blowing roses; while, within, Parents and children mourned—and, every year, ("Twas on the day of some old festival) Met to give way to tears, and once again Talk in the ancient tongue of things gone by.* At length an Arab climbed the battlements, Slaying the sleepers in the dead of night; And from all eyes the glorious vision fled! Leaving a place lonely and dangerous,
Where whom the robber spares, a deadlier foe + Strikes at unseen-and at a time when joy
Roman City under the name of Pæstum. It was surprised and destroyed by the Saracens at the beginning of the tenth century. + The Mal'aria.
Opens the heart, when summer-skies are blue, And the clear air is soft and delicate;
For then the demon works-then with that air The thoughtless wretch drinks in a subtle poison Lulling to sleep; and, when he sleeps, he dies.
But what are These still standing in the midst? The Earth has rocked beneath; the Thunder-bolt Passed thro' and thro', and left its traces there; Yet still they stand as by some Unknown Charter! Oh, they are Nature's own! and, as allied To the vast Mountains and the eternal Sea, They want no written history; theirs a voice For ever speaking to the heart of Man!
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