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 drooped 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, In vision centering the astounded mind:

The mists that erewhile swathed his front are broken,
Hurled upward as by some imprisoned wind
Earth could no more within her caverns bind;
Lo, scroll-like forth in scattered wreathings driven
From his cleft brow, gray clouds that disentwined
From their black trunk shot forth like branches riven,
Opening their pine-like shape in the profound of heaven!

Statues of fear, mute, motionless they stood:
The mountain that had slept a thousand years
Wakes from his slumber! lo, yon sable flood
Of eddying cloud its giant shape uprears:
They gaze, yet fly not, who had linked with fears
Vesuvius robed in ever green attire?

But lo, each moment wilder, fiercer nears
The unfolding canopy, its skirts respire

Lightnings around, away, yon lurid mass is fire!

John Edmund Reade.

POMPEII.

HE silence there was what most haunted me.

THEO

Long speechless streets, whose stepping-stones invite Feet which shall never come; to left and right

Gay colonnades and courts, beyond the glee,
Heartless, of that forgetful Pagan sea;

On roofless homes and waiting streets the light
Lies with a pathos sorrowfuller than night.
Fancy forbids this doom of Life with Death
Wedded, and with her wand restores the Life.
The jostling throngs swarm, animate, beneath
The open shops, and all the tropic strife

Of voices, Roman, Greek, Barbarian, mix. The wreath
Indolent hangs on far Vesuvius' crest;

And over all the glowing town and guiltless sea, sweet

rest.

Thomas Gold Appleton.

POMPEII.

BRIGHT

RIGHT was the sky and blue the sea, when I
On the paved causeway of Pompeii stood,

Perplexed at my amazing solitude :

The silent forum, open to the sky,

The empty barracks of the soldiery,

The stone mills fixed to grind the daily food,
The houses of the rich and poorer brood,
Bath, temple, theatre, I sauntered by.
Surely, methought, the folk hath left its home
But for excursion or high holiday;

And soon shall I behold them swarming back,
Like busy bees that buzz about their comb,
Or those gregarious birds whose aery track
Instinctive, nestward, points their evening way.

John Bruce Norton.

SIR WALTER SCOTT AT POMPEII.

"A FÊTE was given at Pompeii in honor of Scott. All the guests took some character from the Waverley novels. The deserted city echoed with music; lamps flung their light over walls so long unconscious of festivity. The city of the dead suited well the festival of the dying. Sir Walter was present, but unconscious; he sat wan, exhausted, and motionless, —‘the centre of the glittering ring' formed by his own genius."

I

SEE the ancient master pale and worn,

Though on him shines the lovely southern heaven, And Naples greets him with festivity.

The dying by the dead: for his great sake
They have laid bare the city of the lost;
His own creations fill the silent streets;
The Roman pavement rings with golden spurs,
The Highland plaid shades dark Italian eyes,
And the young king himself is Ivanhoe.

But there the old man sits, - majestic, wan,
Himself a mighty vision of the past;
The glorious mind has bowed beneath its toil;
He does not hear his name on foreign lips
That thank him for a thousand happy hours;
He does not see the glittering groups that press
In wonder and in homage to his side;

Death is beside his triumph.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon.

POMPEII.

TROD old footprints in their streets, their halls, The people of Pompeii! and I heard ·

As, along pillared vistas, light winds stirred
The natural-leaved Corinthian capitals -

-

Rustlings, like wide-waved skirts, and plaintive calls.
And answers, as though gods were disinterred
With these, their antique altars, sepulchred
Long as the Cæsars. How came perfect walls
Of fresco thus unroofed? As falls the foot
On rich mosaic, in domestic courts,

The marble echo with vain reason sports;
The Lares all too vivid to be mute!

Plash on, O fount, they told me thou wást dried!
Was thine that lyre, Ione?- Glaucus calls his bride!

William Gibson.

Pontine Marshes.

NYMPHA,

A CITY NOW IN RUINS.,.

[N the far south lies Nympha, a city long since dead;

She lies, half sunk, half buried, in her green cloak at rest, And harmless 'mong the ruins now stalks the Pontine pest.