"Men loved darkness rather than the light."
ST. JOHN III., XIX.
Here on the barren soil
Of Mount Vesuvius dread,
That fell destroyer stern
Who doth delight no other flower or tree,
Thy solitary blossoms thou dost spread,
Fragrant Genista sweet,
Rejoicing in the deserts. I beheld
Thy flowers adorn the lonely hills that stand
Around the city grand,
That was of yore the Empress of mankind,
And for the reign resigned,
They with their dumb solemnity austere
Seem from the wanderer to claim a tear.
Now I again behold thee on this shore;
Fond of sad haunts, abandoned by the world,
Companion of misfortune evermore.
These regions, sprinkled o'er
With showers of barren ashes and supplied
With lava petrified,
Resounding to the pilgrim as he treads:
Where we see twining in the sun the snake,
And where in caverns dark
The timorous hares their wonted refuge take:
Were happy homes, and fields,
Like those where harvest now its rich boon yields,
Alive with lowing herds;
They were palatial halls
And wondrous gardens, dear
Unto the great, and famous cities' walls:
All which the haughty mountain with the torrents
That from his fiery crater ruthless rolled,
Crushed, while their inmates were by death destroyed.
Now ruin makes a void
Of all around where, beauteous flower, thou growest,
And as in pity for the scene of woe
Upon the air a perfume sweet bestowest,
Consoling to the desert. To this shore
Let him proceed whose wont it is to praise
Our earthly state, and let him see how much
Our race is held in care
By loving Nature. And he here as well
Can more exactly tell
How far extends the power of human kind,
Whom its harsh tyrant, when it least may fear,
With slight exertion can destroy in part,
And with a little more
Could in an instant wholly sweep away,
Annihilate, and slay.
Upon these shores are seen
Of our poor human race
"The splendid fortunes and progressive pace."[9]
Here gaze as on a mirror,
Thou age unwise and proud,
Who errest from the way
That rising thought illumined with its ray,
And as thy steps a backward course pursue,
Art glad of thy return,
Which seemeth progress to thy troubled view.
Thy folly by all minds
Whose evil destiny made thee their sire,
Is pampered, even though
They, when unheeded, throw
Disdain on thee. Not I
Will so inglorious sink into my grave,
'Twere easy enough, I know,
For me to join the others in their wrong
And to thine ears melodious make my song:
But rather the disdain of thee that lies
Within my bosom deep,
I shall, as widely as I can, display,
Although neglect for those
Be held in store who much their age oppose.
This evil which I've borne
With thee in common, moved till now my scorn.
Fair freedom is the subject of thy dreams:
Yet thou enslavest thought,
By whom alone we're brought
From rudeness by degrees, by whom alone
Is culture fostered, who alone can send
The fate of nations to a better end.
So much didst thou in horror hold the truth
Of the harsh doom and dungeon-like abode
That Nature gave us. Therefore didst thou turn,
With craven soul, thy vision from the light
That made it clear; and in thy flight dost spurn
As vile who seek its rays,
And him alone dost praise,
Who, scornful of himself or of the rest,
Above the stars says man's degree is blest.
He, poor of state and suffering of frame,
Who has a generous and lofty soul,
Doth not the homage claim
That gold and strength procure,
Nor of a splendid life and figure proud
Maketh among the crowd
An empty show absurd;
But not with treasures or with vigour blessed
He owns himself unfeigning, and is heard
In discourse to be candid on himself,
Still giving truth its due.
Unwise I hold his mind,
And not of loftier kind,
Who, born to perish and in sorrow bred,
?Says: "I am made for joy;"
And with unhallowed pride
The annals of humanity supplied,
Grand destinies and wondrous happiness,
Which even to Heaven are strange, not to our globe
Alone, predicting here
To those whom stormy wave
Or breath of air malignant, or the shock
Of earthquake, so destroys
That Memory scarcely lingers o'er their grave.
A noble nature he
Who with a spirit free
Dares mortal eye to raise
Upon our common fate; who with bold tongue,
Debarring nought from truth,
Owneth the evil Fortune bade prevail,
And our low state and frail;
Who in affliction dire
Shows fortitude and lofty strength of soul,
Nor the fraternal hatred and the ire
So frequent on our earth, and worst of ills,
Unto his misery addeth by declaring
Man guilty of his woe, but casteth blame
On her alone who merits all the shame,
Who gives birth to mankind,
But all whose deeds we harsh and cruel find.
Her he calls hostile; and considering men,
As truth itself declares,
In union joined against her evil ways
By social bonds of old,
He as confederates doth all mortals hold
Among themselves, and all
With equal love surveys,
And giveth aid where 'tis desired and needed
In various peril and disastrous ways,
Beset by common warfare. And to raise
A vengeful hand for injuries of men,
Our neighbour to destroy,
So ill-advised he deems as on the field
Of battle, close surrounded by the foe,
When most the fight doth rage
Against our friends to wage
Disastrous war, oblivious of the rest,
And with pernicious sword
To spread dismay and slaughter 'mid their ranks.
When thoughts like these are made,
As once they were, unto the nations known,
By real knowledge in its influence vast;
And the dread horror shown
That first 'gainst Nature bade
Our humankind in social chain unite:
Then shall the just, the honest and the right,
And patriotic fire,
And mercy find a more enduring source
Than is supplied by haughty dreams and vain
That now the vulgar righteousness sustain,
Which proves itself even so
As everything that doth from error flow.[10]
Full often on this shore,
Clad by the hardened flood
Of lava in a garment dark of hue
That seems to surge, I seat myself at night,
And shining on the saddened land, the stars
In plains of purest azure meet my view,
Reflected by the deep;
And through the space serene in circles vast
The sparkling Heavens open on my sight,
And when my vision on those lights I cast,
That seem so small to be,
And are in truth so large
That by their side would shrivel land and sea
To nothingness; to whom
Not humankind alone
Is utterly unknown,
But even this globe where man is less than nought;
And when I gaze upon those clustering stars
In greater distance without any end,
Seeming to us like vapour, unto whom
Not merely man and not the earth he treads,
But all the stars, the neighbours of our world,
And even the golden radiance of the Sun,
Were never known, or else appear as they
Unto our sight, a spot
Of luminous mist: what then unto my thought,
Becomest thou, mankind?
And when I bear in mind
Thy state below, whereof the signs are seen
Upon the soil I tread: and when I think
Thy pride doth call thee queen
And end of all, and how thou lovest oft
To fable that unto this grain obscure
Of wretched dust which bears the name of earth,
For love of thee, of universal things
The lords descended, and were known to dwell
Benignly in thy midst: and that the dreams
So idle even the present age renews,
Opprobrious to the wise, although it seems
In knowledge and in deed
Superior to the past: what passion fires,
O hapless race of man, what thought inspires
For thee my heart? In truth, I cannot say
If mockery or if pity beareth sway.
As from its tree a ripened apple falling,
By Autumn's power, nought else,
Cast on the earth in full maturity,
Crushes and overwhelms
The populous abode of busy ants,
Destroying all their hoarded treasures vast,
The fruit of summer toil,
Which they had piled in those elaborate caves
Formed by their cunning in the yielding soil:
Even thus in dread and thundering fury cast
From the deep rumbling womb
Of yon destructive mountain in its ire,
Night and destruction in a cloud of ashes,
Of rocks and lurid fire,
Fall on the land devoted to its doom;
And boiling torrents run
And down the mountain flow
With rapid wrath and all-consuming rage;
And o'er the verdure falls
A furious rush and grand
Of liquid metal and of fiery sand,
Such as o'erwhelmed the cities on the shore,
And in an instant they were seen no more.
On their deserted site
We see the browzing goat,
And other cities we behold arise,
Beneath whose splendid domes
Full many a vast and ancient ruin lies;
And even these lofty walls
The haughty mountain threatens and appals.
Nature no more doth hold
In tenderness and love
The race of man than insects of the earth;
And if we in mankind
May less destruction find,
'Tis that of offspring it has greater dearth.
One thousand and eight hundred years have passed
Since by the force of subterranean fire
The peopled cities found an end so dire;
And still the peasant full of anxious fears
For what he planted on the arid soil,
Amid the death-like ashes and the stones,
Suspicious turns his eye
To where he sees, aspiring to the sky,
The fatal peak, as cruel as of yore,
For ever threatening ruin to his home.
And oft at night, alarmed,
Lying for sleepless hours,
In terror listening to the wandering wind,
At last he rises and ascends his roof,
And gazes thence upon the dreaded course
Of boiling lava, rushing from the womb
Of the unexhausted mount,
O'er sandy ridge, and casting lurid light
On Capri's distant strand,
On Naples' bay and Mergellina's land.
He wakes his children and his trembling wife,
If he perceives it coming, or within
His household well heats seething waters boil;
And with whatever they can snatch in haste,
Away they rush, and witness from afar
Their dwelling and their field,
From hunger and despair their only shield,
By the disastrous torrents soon laid waste,
That fiercely rush and cruelly invade,
And lie for ever on the wreck they've made.
Even as a skeleton that from its grave
Is brought to light by piety or greed,
The dead Pompeii to the realms of day
From old oblivion doth again proceed:
And from the ruined Forum and the file
Of shattered columns tall,
The wanderer gazes on the cloven peak
And on the smoky crest,
Still threatening even the ruins in their fall
And in the horror of the secret night,
Among theatres empty and forlorn,
Among the mouldering temples and among
The shattered houses where the bat doth hide,
Like an ill-omened torch
In empty fanes and halls untenanted,
The terrors run of the funereal stream,
Which in the shade doth gleam
And tinges all around with fiery red.
Of man unconscious and of all the years
That he calls old, and offspring laid by sire,
Thus Nature stands in ever-blooming youth;
Or rather, she proceeds
Upon a path so long, a course so wide,
That to our eyes she never seems to move.
Meanwhile realms fall, and tongues and nations wane
She seeth nought, and man doth still presume
Eternity to claim in haughty pride.
And thou, slow-spreading flower,
With many an odorous wood,
Who dost adorn these regions desolate;
Thou too ere long shalt sink beneath the power
Of the unpitying subterranean fire,
Which will extend its ire,
Returning to the scene it knew of old,
Unto thy gentle forests, and beneath
The fatal weight thou wilt thy head incline,
Though innocent, without a murmuring wail,
But not till then in cowardice cast down
With supplication and imploring prayer
Before the future tyrant, but not raised
With frenzied pride unto the very stars,
Nor on the desert where
Thou hadst thy dwelling-place,
Not by thy will, by the decree of Fate:
But wiser far, and less
Ill-starred than man, because thou didst not think.
Thy race endowed by Doom,
Or by thyself, with an immortal bloom.
[Footnote 9: Words of a modern writer to whom mil their elegance is
due. (Leopardi's note.)]
[Footnote 10: In these verses we perceive the germ of a whole system of
ethics.]