AT Pompeii I heard a woman laugh, And turned to find the reason of her mirth; Saw but the silent figure of a girl That centuries had mummied into earth: The running figure of a little maid With face half-hidden in her shielding arm, Silent, yet screaming, yea, in ev'ry limb The cruel torture of her dread alarm. At Pompeii I heard a maiden shriek All down the years from out the distant past; Blind in the awful darkness still she runs; Death in the mould of fear her form has cast. A little maid once soft and sweet and white, Full of the morning's hope, and love and joy, That Nature, moving to the voice of Time, Shook her dark wings to wither and destroy. At Pompeii I saw a woman bend Above this dead, pronounce an epitaph; The mother of a child, it may have been. Oh horrible! I heard a woman laugh. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...HENRY WARD BEECHER by CHARLES HENRY PHELPS SONNET: 71 by WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE A BIT OF MULL by FREDERICK HENRY HERBERT ADLER THE POET'S SPEAR by ARCHILOCHUS THE CHILD AN' THE MOWERS by WILLIAM BARNES THE BALLOON MAN by JEAN M. BATCHELOR |