Imatges de pàgina
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LXX.

For on the night that they were buried, she
Restored the embalmers' ruining, and shook
The light out of the funeral lamps, to be

A mimic day within that deathy nook;
And she unwound the woven imagery

Of second childhood's swaddling bands, and took
The coffin, its last cradle, from its niche,
And threw it with contempt into a ditch.

LXXI.

And there the body lay, age after age,

Mute, breathing, beating, warm, and undecaying, Like one asleep in a green hermitage,

With gentle sleep about its eyelids playing, And living in its dreams beyond the rage

Of death or life; while they were still arraying

In liveries ever new the rapid, blind,
And fleeting generations of mankind.

LXXII.

And she would write strange dreams upon the brain
Of those who were less beautiful, and make
All harsh and crooked purposes more vain
Than in the desert is the serpent's wake
Which the sand covers,-all his evil gain

The miser in such dreams would rise and shake

Into a beggar's lap ;-the lying scribe
Would his own lies betray without a bribe.

LXXIII.

The priests would write an explanation full,
Translating hieroglyphics into Greek,
How the god Apis really was a bull,

And nothing more; and bid the herald stick
The same against the temple doors, and pull

The old cant down; they licensed all to speak Whate'er they thought of hawks, and cats, and geese, By pastoral letters to each diocese.

LXXIV.

The king would dress an ape up in his crown
And robes, and seat him on his glorious seat,
And on the right hand of the sunlike throne
Would place a gaudy mock-bird to repeat
The chatterings of the monkey.-Every one

Of the prone courtiers crawled to kiss the feet
Of their great Emperor when the morning came;
And kissed-alas, how many kiss the same!

LXXV.

LXXVII.

And then the Witch would let them take no ill:
Of many thousand schemes which lovers find
The Witch found one, and so they took their fill
Of happiness in marriage warm and kind.
Friends who, by practice of some envious skill,
Were torn apart, a wide wound, mind from
She did unite again with visions clear [mind!
Of deep affection and of truth sincere.

LXXVIII.

These were the pranks she played among the cities
And Gods, entangling them in her sweet ditties,
Of mortal men, and what she did to sprites

To do her will, and show their subtle slights,
I will declare another time; for it is

A tale more fit for the weird winter nightsThan for these garish summer days, when we Scarcely believe much more than we can see.

ODE TO NAPLES *.

EPODE I. a.

I STOOD within the city disinterred + ;

And heard the autumnal leaves like light foot-
falls

Of spirits passing through the streets; and heard
The Mountain's slumberous voice at intervals
Thrill through those roofless halls;

The oracular thunder penetrating shook

The listening soul in my suspended blood;

I felt that Earth out of her deep heart spoke

I felt, but heard not:-through white columns
The isle-sustaining Ocean flood, [glowed

A plane of light between two heavens of azure:
Around me gleamed many a bright sepulchre
Of whose pure beauty, Time, as if his pleasure
Were to spare Death, had never made erasure;
But every living lineament was clear
As in the sculptor's thought; and there
The wreaths of stony myrtle, ivy and pine,
Like winter leaves o'ergrown by moulded snow,
Seemed only not to move and grow

Because the crystal silence of the air

Weighed on their life; even as the Power divine,
Which then lulled all things, brooded upon mine.

EPODE II. a.

Then gentle winds arose,
With many a mingled close

And where the Baian ocean
Welters with air-like motion,

The soldiers dreamed that they were blacksmiths, Of wild Æolian sound and mountain odour keen;
Walked out of quarters in somnambulism, [and
Round the red anvils you might see them stand
Like Cyclopses in Vulcan's sooty abysm,
Beating their swords to ploughshares;—in a band
The gaolers sent those of the liberal schism
Free through the streets of Memphis ; much, I wis,
To the annoyance of king Amasis.

LXXVI.

And timid lovers who had been so coy,

They hardly knew whether they loved or not,
Would rise out of their rest, and take sweet joy,
To the fulfilment of their inmost thought;
And when next day the maiden and the boy
Met one another, both, like sinners caught,
Blushed at the thing which each believed was
Only in fancy-till the tenth moon shone; [done

Within, above, around its bowers of starry green,
Moving the sea-flowers in those purple caves,
Even as the ever stormless atmosphere
Floats o'er the Elysian realm,

It bore me, like an Angel o'er the waves
Of sunlight, whose swift pinnace of dewy air

The Author has connected many recollections of his
visit to Pompeii and Baie with the enthusiasm excited by
the intelligence of the proclamation of a Constitutional
Government at Naples. This has given a tinge of pic-
turesque and descriptive imagery to the introductory
Epodes, which depicture the scenes and some of the
majestic feelings permanently connected with the scene
of this animating event.-Author's Note.
† Pompeii.

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