IV. All things that we love and cherish Love itself would, did they not. The Waning Moon ND like a dying lady, lean and pale, Who totters forth, wrapt in a gauzy veil, Out of her chamber, led by the insane And feeble wanderings of her fading brain, In hating such a hateless thing as There is no sport in hate when all the rage '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 picturesque and descriptive imagery to the introductory epodes which depicture these scenes, and some of the majestic feelings permanently connected with the scene of this animating event. * Pompeii. The oracular thunder penetrating shook The isle-sustaining Ocean-flood, 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 Of wild Æolian sound and mountain-odour keen; And where the Baian ocean Welters with airlike motion, Within, above, around its bowers of starry green, Moving the sea-flowers in those purple caves It bore me like an Angel, o'er the waves air No storm can overwhelm ; A spirit of deep emotion Of the dead kings of Melody.' 'Homer and Virgil. |