The Last Days of Pompeii | Page 5

but the other day that I paid a visit to Pliny: he was sitting in his summer-house writing, while an unfortunate slave played on the tibia. His nephew (oh! whip me such philosophical coxcombs!) was reading Thucydides' description of the plague, and nodding his conceited little head in time to the music, while his lips were repeating all the loathsome details of that terrible delineation. The puppy saw nothing incongruous in learning at the same time a ditty of love and a description of the plague.'
'Why, they are much the same thing,' said Clodius.
'So I told him, in excuse for his coxcombry--but my youth stared me rebukingly in the face, without taking the jest, and answered, that it was only the insensate ear that the music pleased, whereas the book (the description of the plague, mind you!) elevated the heart. "Ah!" quoth the fat uncle, wheezing, "my boy is quite an Athenian, always mixing the utile with the dulce." O Minerva, how I laughed in my sleeve! While I was there, they came to tell the boy-sophist that his favorite freedman was just dead of a fever. "Inexorable death!" cried he; "get me my Horace. How beautifully the sweet poet consoles us for these misfortunes!" Oh, can these men love, my Clodius? Scarcely even with the senses. How rarely a Roman has a heart! He is but the mechanism of genius--he wants its bones and flesh.'
Though Clodius was secretly a little sore at these remarks on his countrymen, he affected to sympathize with his friend, partly because he was by nature a parasite, and partly because it was the fashion among the dissolute young Romans to affect a little contempt for the very birth which, in reality, made them so arrogant; it was the mode to imitate the Greeks, and yet to laugh at their own clumsy imitation.
Thus conversing, their steps were arrested by a crowd gathered round an open space where three streets met; and, just where the porticoes of a light and graceful temple threw their shade, there stood a young girl, with a flower-basket on her right arm, and a small three-stringed instrument of music in the left hand, to whose low and soft tones she was modulating a wild and half-barbaric air. At every pause in the music she gracefully waved her flower-basket round, inviting the loiterers to buy; and many a sesterce was showered into the basket, either in compliment to the music or in compassion to the songstress--for she was blind.
'It is my poor Thessalian,' said Glaucus, stopping; 'I have not seen her since my return to Pompeii. Hush! her voice is sweet; let us listen.'
THE BLIND FLOWER-GIRL'S SONG
I.
Buy my flowers--O buy--I pray! The blind girl comes from afar; If the earth be as fair as I hear them say, These flowers her children are! Do they her beauty keep? They are fresh from her lap, I know; For I caught them fast asleep In her arms an hour ago. With the air which is her breath-- Her soft and delicate breath-- Over them murmuring low!
On their lips her sweet kiss lingers yet, And their cheeks with her tender tears are wet. For she weeps--that gentle mother weeps-- (As morn and night her watch she keeps, With a yearning heart and a passionate care) To see the young things grow so fair; She weeps--for love she weeps; And the dews are the tears she weeps From the well of a mother's love!
II.
Ye have a world of light, Where love in the loved rejoices; But the blind girl's home is the House of Night, And its beings are empty voices.
As one in the realm below, I stand by the streams of woe! I hear the vain shadows glide, I feel their soft breath at my side. And I thirst the loved forms to see, And I stretch my fond arms around, And I catch but a shapeless sound, For the living are ghosts to me.
Come buy--come buy?-- Hark! how the sweet things sigh For they have a voice like ours), `The breath of the blind girl closes The leaves of the saddening roses-- We are tender, we sons of light, We shrink from this child of night; From the grasp of the blind girl free us-- We yearn for the eyes that see us-- We are for night too gay, In your eyes we behold the day-- O buy--O buy the flowers!'
'I must have yon bunch of violets, sweet Nydia,' said Glaucus, pressing through the crowd, and dropping a handful of small coins into the basket; 'your voice is more charming than ever.'
The blind girl started forward as she heard the Athenian's voice; then as suddenly paused, while the blood rushed violently over neck, cheek, and temples.
'So you are returned!' said she, in a low