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(From Italy)
O THOU Vesuvius! that risest there | |
| Image of drear eternity, alone | |
| Seated in thy own silent fields of air; | |
| Titan! whose chainless struggles have been shown, | |
| The annihilating powers are still thine own, | 5 |
| Parent of lightnings, and the tempest’s shroud, | |
| Crowning, or round thy giant shoulders thrown | |
| In majesty of shadow, ere the cloud | |
| Break on the nether world in fulmined wrath avowed. | |
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| Grave of dead cities thou! thy heart is fire, | 10 |
| Thy pulse is earthquake, from thy breast are rolled | |
| The flames in which shall penal earth expire; | |
| Thy robes are of the lava’s burning fold, | |
| Thine armed hand the thunderbolt doth hold, | |
| Thy voice is as the trump that calls to doom; | 15 |
| Creator and destroyer! who hath told | |
| What world of life lies buried in thy womb, | |
| What mightiest wrecks are sunk in thy absorbing tomb? | |
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| Hark! as we onward pass, the sullen ground | |
| Reverberates beneath the hollow tread, | 20 |
| Where Herculaneum sleeps in trance profound; | |
| A city rises o’er her ashes’ bed, | |
| All life, all joy, the living on the dead! | |
| The tear unbidden dims the eye and swells | |
| The heart with its quick throbbings fuller sped: | 25 |
| Deeper than thought a feeling in us tells | |
| Our kindred with the world beneath our feet that dwells. | |
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| Spirit of desolation! here thou art | |
| A Presence palpably bodied on the eye: | |
| Thy sternness to the mind thou dost impart, | 30 |
| Awed while inspired by thy sublimity, | |
| Thou that stand’st here aloof, and draw’st a high | |
| And thrilling grandeur from the sense impressed | |
| Thou giv’st, that thou dost make a mockery | |
| Of death and ruin: Destiny confessed | 35 |
| Art thou, thy throne yon mountain’s thunder-splitten breast! | |
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