The doves couch'd breathless in their summer lair;
While from their hands the purple flowerets fell,
The laughing Hours stood listening in the sky;--
From Pan's green cave to AEgle's haunted cell,
Heaved the charm'd earth in one delicious sigh.
Love, sons of earth! I am the Power of Love!
Eldest of all the gods, with Chaos born;
My smile sheds light along the courts above,
My kisses wake the eyelids of the Morn.
Mine are the stars--there, ever as ye gaze,
Ye meet the deep spell of my haunting eyes;
Mine is the moon--and, mournful if her rays,
'Tis that she lingers where her Carian lies.
The flowers are mine--the blushes of the rose,
The violet--charming Zephyr to the shade;
Mine the quick light that in the Maybeam glows,
And mine the day-dream in the lonely glade.
Love, sons of earth--for love is earth's soft lore,
Look where ye will--earth overflows with ME;
Learn from the waves that ever kiss the shore,
And the winds nestling on the heaving sea.
'All teaches love!'--The sweet voice, like a dream,
Melted in light; yet still the airs above,
The waving sedges, and the whispering stream,
And the green forest rustling, murmur'd 'LOVE!'
As the voices died away, the Egyptian seized the hand of Apaecides, and
led him, wandering, intoxicated, yet half-reluctant, across the chamber
towards the curtain at the far end; and now, from behind that curtain,
there seemed to burst a thousand sparkling stars; the veil itself,
hitherto dark, was now lighted by these fires behind into the tenderest
blue of heaven. It represented heaven itself--such a heaven, as in the
nights of June might have shone down over the streams of Castaly. Here
and there were painted rosy and aerial clouds, from which smiled, by the
limner's art, faces of divinest beauty, and on which reposed the shapes
of which Phidias and Apelles dreamed. And the stars which studded the
transparent azure rolled rapidly as they shone, while the music, that
again woke with a livelier and lighter sound, seemed to imitate the
melody of the joyous spheres.
'Oh! what miracle is this, Arbaces,' said Apaecides in faltering
accents. 'After having denied the gods, art thou about to reveal to
me...'
'Their pleasures!' interrupted Arbaces, in a tone so different from its
usual cold and tranquil harmony that Apaecides started, and thought the
Egyptian himself transformed; and now, as they neared the curtain, a
wild--a loud--an exulting melody burst from behind its concealment.
With that sound the veil was rent in twain--it parted--it seemed to
vanish into air: and a scene, which no Sybarite ever more than rivalled,
broke upon the dazzled gaze of the youthful priest. A vast banquet-room
stretched beyond, blazing with countless lights, which filled the warm
air with the scents of frankincense, of jasmine, of violets, of myrrh;
all that the most odorous flowers, all that the most costly spices could
distil, seemed gathered into one ineffable and ambrosial essence: from
the light columns that sprang upwards to the airy roof, hung draperies
of white, studded with golden stars. At the extremities of the room two
fountains cast up a spray, which, catching the rays of the roseate
light, glittered like countless diamonds. In the centre of the room as
they entered there rose slowly from the floor, to the sound of unseen
minstrelsy, a table spread with all the viands which sense ever devoted
to fancy, and vases of that lost Myrrhine fabric, so glowing in its
colors, so transparent in its material, were crowned with the exotics of
the East. The couches, to which this table was the centre, were covered
with tapestries of azure and gold; and from invisible tubes the vaulted
roof descended showers of fragrant waters, that cooled the delicious
air, and contended with the lamps, as if the spirits of wave and fire
disputed which element could furnish forth the most delicious odorous.
And now, from behind the snowy draperies, trooped such forms as Adonis
beheld when he lay on the lap of Venus. They came, some with garlands,
others with lyres; they surrounded the youth, they led his steps to the
banquet. They flung the chaplets round him in rosy chains. The
earth--the thought of earth, vanished from his soul. He imagined
himself in a dream, and suppressed his breath lest he should wake too
soon; the senses, to which he had never yielded as yet, beat in his
burning pulse, and confused his dizzy and reeling sight. And while thus
amazed and lost, once again, but in brisk and Bacchic measures, rose the
magic strain:
ANACREONTIC
In the veins of the calix foams and glows
The blood of the mantling vine,
But oh! in the bowl of Youth there glows
A Lesbian, more divine!
Bright, bright,
As the liquid light,
Its waves through thine eyelids shine!
Fill up, fill up, to the sparkling brim,
The juice of the young Lyaeus;
The grape is the key that we owe to him
From the gaol of the world to free us.
Drink, drink!
What need to shrink,
When the lambs alone can see us?
Drink, drink, as I quaff from thine eyes
The wine of a softer tree;
Give the smiles to the god of the grape--thy sighs,
Beloved one, give to me.
Turn, turn,
My glances burn,
And thirst for a look from thee!
As the song ended, a group of three maidens, entwined with a chain of
starred flowers, and who, while they imitated, might have shamed the
Graces, advanced towards him in the gliding measures of the Ionian
dance: such as the Nereids wreathed in moonlight on the yellow sands of
the AEgean wave--such as Cytherea taught her handmaids in the
marriage-feast of Psyche and her son.
Now approaching, they wreathed their chaplet round his head; now
kneeling, the youngest of the three proffered him the bowl, from which
the wine of Lesbos foamed and sparkled. The youth resisted no more, he
grasped the intoxicating cup, the blood mantled fiercely through his
veins. He sank upon the breast of the nymph who sat beside him, and
turning with swimming eyes to seek for Arbaces, whom he had lost in the
whirl of his emotions, he beheld him seated beneath a canopy at the
upper end of the table, and gazing upon him with a smile that encouraged
him to pleasure. He beheld him, but not as he had hitherto seen, with
dark and sable garments, with a brooding and solemn brow: a robe that
dazzled the sight, so studded was its whitest surface with gold and
gems, blazed upon his majestic form; white roses, alternated with the
emerald and the ruby, and shaped tiara-like, crowned his raven locks.
He appeared, like Ulysses, to have gained the glory of a second
youth--his features seemed to have exchanged thought for beauty, and he
towered amidst the loveliness that surrounded him, in all the beaming
and relaxing benignity of the Olympian god.
'Drink, feast, love, my pupil!' said he, 'blush not that thou art
passionate and young. That which thou art, thou feelest in thy veins:
that which thou shalt be, survey!'
With this he pointed to a recess, and the eyes of Apaecides, following
the gesture, beheld on a pedestal, placed between the statues of Bacchus
and Idalia, the form of a skeleton.
'Start not,' resumed the Egyptian; 'that friendly guest admonishes us
but of the shortness of life. From its jaws I hear a voice that summons
us to ENJOY.'
As he spoke, a group of nymphs surrounded the statue; they laid chaplets
on its pedestal, and, while the cups were emptied and refilled at that
glowing board, they sang the following strain:
BACCHIC HYMNS TO THE IMAGE OF DEATH
I
Thou art in the land of the shadowy Host,
Thou that didst drink and love:
By the Solemn River, a gliding ghost,
But thy thought is ours above!
If memory yet can fly,
Back to the golden sky,
And mourn the pleasures lost!
By the ruin'd hall these flowers we lay,
Where thy soul once held its palace;
When the rose to thy scent and sight was gay,
And the smile was in the chalice,
And the cithara's voice
Could bid thy heart rejoice
When night eclipsed the day.
Here a new group advancing, turned the tide of the music into a quicker
and more joyous strain.
II
Death, death is the gloomy shore
Where we all sail--
Soft, soft, thou gliding oar;
Blow soft, sweet gale!
Chain with bright wreaths the Hours;
Victims if all
Ever, 'mid song and flowers,
Victims should fall!
Pausing for a moment, yet quicker and quicker danced the silver-footed
music:
Since Life's so short, we'll live to laugh,
Ah! wherefore waste a minute!
If youth's the cup we yet can quaff,
Be love the pearl within it!
A third band now approached with brimming cups, which they poured in
libation upon that strange altar; and once more, slow and solemn, rose
the changeful melody:
III
Thou art welcome, Guest of gloom,
From the far and fearful sea!
When the last rose sheds its bloom,
Our board shall be spread with thee!
All hail, dark Guest!
Who hath so fair a plea
Our welcome Guest to be,
As thou, whose solemn hall
At last shall feast us all
In the dim and dismal coast?
Long yet be we the Host!
And thou, Dead Shadow, thou,
All joyless though thy brow,
Thou--but our passing GUEST!
At this moment, she who sat beside Apaecides suddenly took up the song:
IV
Happy is yet our doom,
The earth and the sun are ours!
And far from the dreary tomb
Speed the wings of the rosy Hours--
Sweet is for thee the bowl,
Sweet are thy looks, my love;
I fly to thy tender soul,
As bird to its mated dove!
Take me, ah, take!
Clasp'd to thy guardian breast,
Soft let me sink to rest:
But wake me--ah, wake!
And tell me with words and sighs,
But more with thy melting eyes,
That my sun is not set--
That the Torch is not quench'd at the Urn
That we love, and we breathe, and burn,
Tell me--thou lov'st me yet!
BOOK THE SECOND
Chapter I
A FLASH HOUSE IN POMPEII, AND THE GENTLEMEN OF THE CLASSIC RING.
TO one of those parts of Pompeii, which were tenanted not by the lords
of pleasure, but by its minions and its victims; the haunt of gladiators
and prize-fighters; of the vicious and the penniless; of the savage and
the obscene; the Alsatia of an ancient city--we are now transported.
It was a large room, that opened at once on the confined and crowded
lane. Before the threshold was a group of men, whose iron and
well-strung muscles, whose short and Herculean necks, whose hardy and
reckless countenances, indicated the champions of the arena. On a shelf,
without the shop, were ranged jars of wine and oil; and right over this
was inserted in the wall a coarse painting, which exhibited gladiators
drinking--so ancient and so venerable is the custom of signs! Within
the room were placed several small tables, arranged somewhat in the
modern fashion of 'boxes', and round these were seated several knots of
men, some drinking, some playing at dice, some at that more skilful game
called 'duodecim scriptae', which certain of the blundering learned have
mistaken for chess, though it rather, perhaps, resembled backgammon of
the two, and was usually, though not always, played by the assistance of
dice. The hour was in the early forenoon, and nothing better, perhaps,
than that unseasonable time itself denoted the habitual indolence of
these tavern loungers.
Yet, despite the situation of the house and the character of its
inmates, it indicated none of that sordid squalor which would have
characterized a similar haunt in a modern city. The gay disposition of
all the Pompeians, who sought, at least, to gratify the sense even where
they neglected the mind, was typified by the gaudy colors which
decorated the walls, and the shapes, fantastic but not inelegant, in
which the lamps, the drinking-cups, the commonest household utensils,
were wrought.
'By Pollux!' said one of the gladiators, as he leaned against the wall
of the threshold, 'the wine thou sellest us, old Silenus'--and as he
spoke he slapped a portly personage on the back--'is enough to thin the
best blood in one's veins.'
The man thus caressingly saluted, and whose bared arms, white apron, and
keys and napkin tucked carelessly within his girdle, indicated him to be
the host of the tavern, was already passed into the autumn of his years;
but his form was still so robust and athletic, that he might have shamed
even the sinewy shapes beside him, save that the muscles had seeded, as
it were, into flesh, that the cheeks were swelled and bloated, and the
increasing stomach threw into shade the vast and massive chest which
rose above it.
'None of thy scurrilous blusterings with me,' growled the gigantic
landlord, in the gentle semi-roar of an insulted tiger; 'my wine is good
