For prompt and mutual aid, Expected and accorded in the stress And peril of the war that all must wage; To arm the hand of man against his brother, For mutual injury, Not less infatuate seems than in a camp On their own soldiers levied hateful war Their friends to overthrow.* When thoughts like these, made clear, Shine forth apparent to the general mind, Then civil intercourse upright and fair, With such security as all may see That which on error stands elsewhere attains. Oft on this barren shore Clad as in mourning by the lava's flow, That still a wavelike motion seems to show, I sit at night, and, o'er this wilderness, Austere and cultureless, See the clear stars in deeps Of purest blue come forth, Whereto the sea her mirror turns below; And in this glittering sphere Our universe appear, And vast serene of heaven, and all aglow. Then, on these lights I gaze which to my eyes Are only specks, although in truth so great That land and sea with such Compared, seem but a speck; To whom man and this globe, Where man himself is nought, 1. 71, Bk. II, 'The Task.' And 'tis but seemly that, where all deserve To what no few have felt, there should be peace, Are both alike unknown: And when I see Those yet again endless and more remote Each like a filmy cloud To us, for whom not man, nor earth alone, But all summed up in one, The greater stars, the nearer heavenly host, Exist not, or but seem As they to us a point of nebulous light O poor humanity, What art thou in my sight! When, further, I but think On thy estate below, Here imaged in the clod beneath my feet, How, on the other hand, Thou wouldst be lord and ultimate aim of all, Fabling so often, as thy pleasure is, That on this grain of sand Which 'Earth' we call The authors of the universe came down How, too, this age which others would excel And providently stored against the cold— * 1. 214, Bk. III, 'The Task.' I cannot analyse the air, nor catch The parallax of yonder luminous point That seems half quenehed in the immense abyss. Into heaven's vault on high Or, overflowing down her flanks, immense Over the tender grass Descended furiously, And those bright cities by the sea that stood Above them now the goat Browses at will; there other cities stand Or tenderness has Nature for the seed Of ants, whom she esteems Like him, no more nor less.† And if such carnage be indeed more rare For man than for the ant, that puny race Full eighteen hundred years ‡ Have passed since vanished thus, By force of fire o'erthrown these populous seats; His vines, to which on these gaunt fields The parched and lifeless soil with drudgery yields To that dark summit, in no way appeased, Often the jaded hind All night lies sleepless, starting up at times To pace the ground, or from his hovel's roof, Two forms of activity on the part of the volcano are here indicated. Burning material was thrown up into the sky and then descended in a fiery bail on the district. Lava also overflowed from the brink of the crater and poured down like a sea of fire to the coast. L. was well acquainted with Pope whose somewhat similar lines may reear to the reader: 'He sees with equal eye, as God of all, A hero perish or a sparrow fall. And now a bubble burst, and now a world.' Accurately 1757 years at the date of the poem. A.D. 79 was the year of the eruption. In the hot wind, Watch the descending track Of the dread current, seething, that o'erflows Adown the ash strewn back, And burns, and glows, Shining afar o'er Caprian sea and land, Or, from the bottom of the cottage well Of water bubbling up, In haste he wakes his children, wakes his wife, And dear familiar nest, Their sole resource from want, Become the prey Of the devouring flood, Inexorable, that hissing glides along As from the earth a buried skeleton, And in the desolate Forum where he stands The traveller from strange lands Gazes aloft at the divided steep,‡ And smoking crest, That threaten still the ruins round him strewed. And houses rent in twain, Where the bat hides her brood, * The solicitude of the poor man for his children is here contrasted v nature's callousness. † Piety to provide more honourable sepulture. Greed to rob the dead. The top of Vesuvius presents a bifurcated appearance. fumante' is the crater. § At this point Dr Garnett's criticism comes to mind: 'In L.'s later d his horizon seemed to expand.... La Ginestra, inspired by the hardy & humble Broom-plant flourishing on the brink of the lava-fields of Vesuvi is more original in conception and ampler in sweep than any of predecessors.' ted ter Like a funereal torch Through silent palaces that flickering goes Wanders the ominous lava's mournful gleam Thus ignorant of man and of the ages The sons who follow as their grandsires led, * Or rather she proceeds, but by so long Meanwhile the kingdoms fall, Peoples decay, their languages are lost; Man proudly makes his boast. And thou that with thy fragrant woods adornest Must also yield to the relentless sway Who, to the accustomed place Over each downy spray Her ravenous mantle's verge. Under that mortal burden thou wilt bow Vainly the stars, nor scornful of the waste In this-thou deemest not thy feeble flower HENRY CLORISTON. Or rather she proceeds.' 'This is a correction or explanation of "stands," It means; she does not stand still, she advances; her path is, however, so limitless that the movement is indiscernible' (Straccali's note) (eg. The 'fixed' stars). |