XI

The house of Diomed, the pleasant place
Of the refined patrician, where the hand
Of luxury ruled, and art traced forms of grace
That, 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 they again must share,
Decay, and change, and time, too long eluded there.

XII

Pause, while embodying the visions past,
The scenes of life and passion acted here;
Evoke the dead, their shroudings from them cast;
Call up the shadows of the forms that were!
These ruined halls again in beauty rear,
Until their substance settles on the view,
Till the dead living in their homes appear.
Lo, the flowers bloom around as once they grew,
The columns rise, the founts their waters still renew.

XIII

A marble bench is near that fountain, graced
With Roman forms that live upon the eye:
There Diomed reclines, his wife embraced,
And fair-haired daughter; but the lowering sky
Has passed into their faces; heavily
Day sinks in thunder-clouds, the air oppressed
Weighs o'er them like a sulphurous canopy;
Foreboding prescience of ill, repressed,
Woke restlessness that grew from Nature's thrilling rest.

XIV

The daughter leaned upon her father's breast,
And their eyes met as both their thoughts controlled,
Presaging evil felt, though unconfessed;
Her eyes watched mournfully the murky fold
Of heaviest mists that thus long days had rolled,
Upon Vesuvius' hidden bosom nursed:
Prophet he looked of evil yet untold;
Fear strained her eyes to see those clouds dispersed,
Tempest whose wrath withheld might yet in thunder burst.

XV

The town was hushed, save where a faint shout came
From the far-distant amphitheatre;
The sullen air glowed as with furnace flame;
Trees withering drooped, no breath a leaf to stir;
Each house was voiceless 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, lowering from the shadows of an ill unknown.

XVI

Behold the mountain! — utterance half spoken
Died on their lips; the vapours that enshrined
Erewhile his front as with a robe, 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, grey clouds that, disentwined
From their black trunk, shot forth like branches riven,
Opening their pine-like shape in the profound of heaven!

XVII

Statues of fear, mute, motionless, they stood.
The mountain that had slept a thousand years
Wakes from his death-like sleep; 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 with each moment wilder, fiercer, nears
The writhen canopy; its skirts respire
Lightning around: away! that lurid mass is fire.

XVIII

Then from the city the astounding cry
Of thousands, rising for a moment, drowned
The war of elements; then, wild and high
Rose woman's screams, a shriller, fuller sound,
Ere sunk for ever; who might hear, the ground
Reeling beneath? — who see, when air was night
Lit by the forked lightnings hurtling round
Their arrowy deaths? — the flash that blinded sight,
The scathing ashes showered from the red mountain height;

XIX

Making the shape of darkness visible,
As the live flame, devouring the air,
Blazed forth as from the world's funereal pile;
Within the walls, Death, Terror, and Despair,
Strode, dreadful shapes half seen; beneath the glare
Of lightning fled the crowds, or wildly clung
To the deaf shrines assailing heaven with prayer,
As o'er their hearths in tortured madness hung,
Or motionless lay crushed beneath rent columns flung.

XX

Beside the arch, apart from crowds that reeled,
Crushed, trampled, scathed, along the fiery streets,
Cowers the pale priest, in his keen eyes revealed
Triumph, and passion satiate, that greets
Strangely with awe and terror; fiercely beats
His heart; the altar's treasure he doth bear,
While through the sea-ward passage he retreats;
In vain; the fiery airs have entered there
Stifling alike the cry of agony and despair.