The Southern Literary Messenger, Vol. I., No. 5, January, 1835

by Various

"Awed, yet untrembling, Pansa calm replied, 'Ye hear no thunder—but Destruction's howl! Ye see no lightning—but the lava glare Of desolation sweeping o'er your pride! Death is beneath, around, above, within All who exult to inflict it on my heart, And ye must meet it, fly when, where ye will, For in the madness of your cruelties Ye have delayed till every hope is dead. Let the doom come! our faiths will soon be tried. Gigantic spectres from their shadowy thrones, With ghastly smiles to welcome ye, arise. The Pharaohs and Ptolemies uplift Their glimmering sceptres o'er ye—bidding all Bare their dark bosoms to the Omniscient God: And every strange and horrid mythos waits To fold ye in the terrors of its dreams.'" "Like an earthshadowing cypress, o'er the skies Lifting its labyrinth of leaves, the boughs Of molten brass, the giant trunk of flame, The breath of the volcano's Titan heart Hung in the heavens; and every maddened pulse Of the vast mountain's earthquake bosom hurled Its vengeance on the earth that gasped beneath." "From every cell shrieks burst; hyenas cried Like lost child stricken in its loneliness: The giant elephant with matchless strength Struggled against the portal of his tomb, And groaned and panted; and the leopard's yell And tiger's growl with all surrounding cries Of human horror mingled; and in air, Spotting the lurid heavens and waiting prey, The evil birds of carnage hung and watched." "Vesuvius answered: from its pinnacles Clouds of farflashing cinders, lava showers, And seas drank up by the abyss of fire To be hurled forth in boiling cataracts, Like midnight mountains, wrapt in lightnings, fell." "All awful sounds of heaven and earth met now; Darkness behind the sungod's chariot rolled, Shrouding destruction, save when volcan fires Lifted the folds to gaze on agony; And when a moment's terrible repose Fell on the deep convulsions, all could hear The toppling cliffs explode and crash below, While multitudinous waters from the sea In whirlpools through the channell'd mountain rocks Rushed, and with hisses like the damned's speech, Fell in the mighty furnace of the mount." "Oh, then, the love of life! the struggling rush, The crushing conflict of escape! few, brief, And dire the words delirious fear spake now— One thought, one action swayed the tossing crowd. All through the vomitories madly sprung, And mass on mass of trembling beings pressed, Gasping and goading, with the savageness That is the child of danger, like the waves Charybdis from his jagged rocks throws down, Mingled by fury—warring in their foam. Some swooned and were trod down by legion feet; Some cried for mercy to the unanswering gods; Some shrieked for parted friends forever lost; And some in passion's chaos, with the yells Of desperation did blaspheme the heavens; And some were still in utterness of woe. Yet all toiled on in trembling waves of life Along the subterranean corridors. Moments were centuries of doubt and dread! Each breathing obstacle a hated thing: Each trampled wretch, a footstool to o'erlook The foremost multitudes; and terror, now, Begat in all a maniac ruthlessness, For in the madness of their agonies Strong men cast down the feeble who delayed Their flight, and maidens on the stones were crushed," etc.

Let the reader compare each of these extracts with the other, and form his own opinion of Mr. Bulwer's great powers and originality. These very remarkable coincidences are followed by others not less extraordinary and worthy of commemoration:

"But suddenly a duller shade fell over the air. Instinctively he turned to the mountain, and behold! one of the two gigantic crests, into which the summit had been divided, rocked and wavered to and fro; and then, with a sound the mightiness of which no language can describe, it fell from the burning base, and rushed, an avalanche of fire, down the sides of the mountain! At the same instant gushed forth a volume of blackest smoke, rolling on, over air, sea, and earth."

"Bright and gigantic through the darkness, which closed around it like the walls of hell, the mountain shone—a pile of fire! Its summit seemed riven in two; or rather above its surface there seemed to rise two monster-shapes, each confronting each, as demons contending for a world. These were of one deep blood-red hue of fire, which lighted up the whole atmosphere far and wide; but below, the nether part of the mountain was still dark and shrouded,—save in three places, adown which flowed, serpentine and irregular, rivers of the molten lava. Darkly red through the profound gloom of their banks, they flowed slowly on, as towards the devoted city. Over the broadest there seemed to spring a cragged and stupendous arch, from which, as from the jaws of hell, gushed the sources of the sudden Phlegethon."

Among the Death Cries of Pompeii, as we imagined them, is the following lyric:

"It bursts! it bursts! and thousand thunders blent, From the deep heart of agonizing earth, Knell, shatter, crash along the firmament, And new hells peopled startle into birth. Vesuvius sunders! pyramids of fire From fathomless abysses blast the sky; E'en desolating Ruin doth expire, And mortal Death in woe immortal die. Torrents like lurid gore, Hurled from the gulf of horror, pour, Like legion fiends embattled to the spoil, And o'er the temple domes, And joy's ten thousand homes, Beneath the whirlwind hail and storm of ashes boil."

Again says Mr. Bulwer, who boasts that he has succeeded where all others have failed:

"In the pauses of the showers, you heard the rumbling of the earth beneath, and the groaning waves of the tortured sea; or, lower still, and audible but to the watch of intensest fear, the grinding and hissing murmur of the escaping gases through the chasms of the distant mountain. Sometimes the cloud appeared to break from its solid mass, and, by the lightning, to assume quaint and vast mimicries of human or of monster-shapes, striding across the gloom, hustling one upon the other, and vanishing swiftly into the turbulent abyss of shade; so that, to the eyes and fancies of the affrighted wanderers, the unsubstantial vapors were as the bodily forms of gigantic foes,—the agents of terror and of death."

Is there nothing similar to the preceding quotation in this?

"Vesuvius poured its deluge forth, the sea Shuddered and sent unearthly voices up, The isles of beauty, by the fire and surge Shaken and withered, on the troubled waves Looked down like spirits blasted; and the land Of Italy's once paradise became The home of ruin—vineyard, grove and bower, Tree, shrub, fruit, blossom—love, life, light and hope, All vanishing beneath the fossil flood And storm of ashes from the cloven brow Of the dread mountain buried in horror down. The echoes of ten thousand agonies Arose from mount and shore, and some looked back Cursing, and more bewailing as they fled." ——————"what a horrid gleam is flung Along that face of madness, as it turns From sea to mountain, and the wild eyes burn With revelations of the unborn time! We may not linger—shelter earth denies— The very heavens like a gehenna lour— And ocean is our refuge—on—on—on!"