Huge piles of human sculls, long since dispersed in air.
And who art thou whose quenchless thirst of fame
Thus furiously lays waste th’ affrighted earth?
Not near so puissant as the nightly flame,
Which the volcano’s entrails vomit forth.
The harden’d lava-streams its force attest,
And though a thousand long long years have fled,
Give to the swelling grape its poignant zest:
Thy deed, like ashes, moulders with the dead;
The ravens on thy fame, as on thy limbs, have fed.