“Their houses shall be full of doleful creatures, and the daughters of the owl shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there!”
The Villa Bauli used to stand near Baiæ. Here, Nero plotted his mother’s murder. Another ruined pile was the villa in which he consented, with a feint of reluctance that did not impose upon his accomplice, to the proposition of Anicetus to drown her by the sinking of her galley. Julius Cæsar had a summer residence upon the neighboring heights.
Ernesto brought us back to Naples over the hill of Posilipo, instead of through the tunnel, gaining the summit when the glory of the sunsetting was at fullest tide. Such light and such splendor as were never before—or since—for us upon land or sea. To attempt description in human speech would be, in me, presumption so rank as to verge upon profanation. But when I would renew—in such faint measure as memory and fancy can revive past ecstasy—the scene and emotion that made that evening a joy for ever, I recite to myself words evoked by the view from a true poet-soul and—
“With dreamful eyes
My spirit lies
Under the walls of Paradise.”
CHAPTER XXI.
“A Sorosis Lark.”
