The Last Days of Pompeii | Page 5

not to lose their time too. When the
dancing-girls swim before them in all the blandishment of Persian
manners, some drone of a freedman, with a face of stone, reads them a
section of Cicero "De Officiis". Unskilful pharmacists! pleasure and
study are not elements to be thus mixed together, they must be enjoyed
separately: the Romans lose both by this pragmatical affectation of
refinement, and prove that they have no souls for either. Oh, my
Clodius, how little your countrymen know of the true versatility of a
Pericles, of the true witcheries of an Aspasia! It was 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,