The Last Days of Pompeii
Page 34
Chapter VIII
A CLASSIC FUNERAL.
WHILE Arbaces had been thus employed, Sorrow and Death were in the houseof Ione. It was the night preceding the morn in which the solemnfuneral rites were to be decreed to the remains of the murderedApaecides. The corpse had been removed from the temple of Isis to thehouse of the nearest surviving relative, and Ione had heard, in the samebreath, the death of her brother and the accusation against herbetrothed. That first violent anguish which blunts the sense to all butitself, and the forbearing silence of her slaves, had prevented herlearning minutely the circumstances attendant on the fate of her lover.His illness, his frenzy, and his approaching trial, were unknown to her.She learned only the accusation against him, and at once indignantlyrejected it; nay, on hearing that Arbaces was the accuser, she requiredno more to induce her firmly and solemnly to believe that the Egyptianhimself was the criminal. But the vast and absorbing importanceattached by the ancients to the performance of every ceremonialconnected with the death of a relation, had, as yet, confined her woeand her convictions to the chamber of the deceased. Alas! it was notfor her to perform that tender and touching office, which obliged thenearest relative to endeavor to catch the last breath--the partingsoul--of the beloved one: but it was hers to close the straining eyes,the distorted lips: to watch by the consecrated clay, as, fresh bathedand anointed, it lay in festive robes upon the ivory bed; to strew thecouch with leaves and flowers, and to renew the solemn cypress-branch atthe threshold of the door. And in these sad offices, in lamentation andin prayer, Ione forgot herself. It was among the loveliest customs ofthe ancients to bury the young at the morning twilight; for, as theystrove to give the softest interpretation to death, so they poeticallyimagined that Aurora, who loved the young, had stolen them to herembrace; and though in the instance of the murdered priest this fablecould not appropriately cheat the fancy, the general custom was stillpreserved.
The stars were fading one by one from the grey heavens, and night slowlyreceding before the approach of morn, when a dark group stood motionlessbefore Ione's door. High and slender torches, made paler by theunmellowed dawn, cast their light over various countenances, hushed forthe moment in one solemn and intent expression. And now there arose aslow and dismal music, which accorded sadly with the rite, and floatedfar along the desolate and breathless streets; while a chorus of femalevoices (the Praeficae so often cited by the Roman poets), accompanyingthe Tibicen and the Mysian flute, woke the following strain:
THE FUNERAL DIRGE
O'er the sad threshold, where the cypress bough Supplants the rose that should adorn thy home, On the last pilgrimage on earth that now Awaits thee, wanderer to Cocytus, come! Darkly we woo, and weeping we invite-- Death is thy host--his banquet asks thy soul, Thy garlands hang within the House of Night, And the black stream alone shall fill thy bowl.
No more for thee the laughter and the song, The jocund night--the glory of the day! The Argive daughters' at their labours long; The hell-bird swooping on its Titan prey--
The false AEolides upheaving slow, O'er the eternal hill, the eternal stone; The crowned Lydian, in his parching woe, And green Callirrhoe's monster-headed son--
These shalt thou see, dim shadowed through the dark, Which makes the sky of Pluto's dreary shore; Lo! where thou stand'st, pale-gazing on the bark, That waits our rite to bear thee trembling o'er! Come, then! no more delay!--the phantom pines Amidst the Unburied for its latest home; O'er the grey sky the torch impatient shines-- Come, mourner, forth!--the lost one bids thee come.
As the hymn died away, the group parted in twain; and placed upon acouch, spread with a purple pall, the corpse of Apaecides was carriedforth, with the feet foremost. The designator, or marshal of the sombreceremonial, accompanied by his torch-bearers, clad in black, gave thesignal, and the procession moved dreadly on.
First went the musicians, playing a slow march--the solemnity of thelower instruments broken by many a louder and wilder burst of thefuneral trumpet: next followed the hired mourners, chanting their dirgesto the dead; and the female voices were mingled with those of boys,whose tender years made still more striking the contrast of life anddeath--the fresh leaf and the withered one. But the players, thebuffoons, the archimimus (whose duty it was to personate thedead)--these, the customary attendants at ordinary funerals, werebanished from a funeral attended with so many terrible associations.
The priests of Isis came next in their snowy garments, barefooted, andsupporting sheaves of corn; while before the corpse were carried theimages of the deceased and his many Athenian forefathers. And behindthe bier followed, amidst her women, the sole surviving relative of thedead--her head bare, her locks disheveled, her face paler than marble,but composed and still, save ever and anon, as some tenderthought--awakened by the music, flashed upon the dark lethargy of woe,she covered that countenance with her hands, and sobbed unseen; for herswere not the noisy sorrow, the shrill lament, the ungoverned gesture,which characterized those who honored less faithfully. In that age, asin all, the channel of deep grief flowed hushed and still.
And so the procession swept on, till it had traversed the streets,passed the city gate, and gained the Place of Tombs without the wall,which the traveler yet beholds.
Raised in the form of an altar--of unpolished pine, amidst whoseinterstices were placed preparations of combustible matter--stood thefuneral pyre; and around it drooped the dark and gloomy cypresses soconsecrated by song to the tomb.
As soon as the bier was placed upon the pile, the attendants parting oneither side, Ione passed up to the couch, and stood before theunconscious clay for some moments motionless and silent. The features ofthe dead had been composed from the first agonized expression of violentdeath. Hushed for ever the terror and the doubt, the contest ofpassion, the awe of religion, the struggle of the past and present, thehope and the horror of the future!--of all that racked and desolated thebreast of that young aspirant to the Holy of Life, what trace wasvisible in the awful serenity of that impenetrable brow and unbreathinglip? The sister gazed, and not a sound was heard amidst the crowd;there was something terrible, yet softening, also, in the silence; andwhen it broke, it broke sudden and abrupt--it broke, with a loud andpassionate cry--the vent of long-smothered despair.
'My brother! my brother!' cried the poor orphan, falling upon the couch;'thou whom the worm on thy path feared not--what enemy couldst thouprovoke? Oh, is it in truth come to this? Awake! awake! We grewtogether! Are we thus torn asunder? Thou art not dead--thou sleepest.Awake! awake!'
The sound of her piercing voice aroused the sympathy of the mourners,and they broke into loud and rude lament. This startled, this recalledIone; she looked up hastily and confusedly, as if for the first timesensible of the presence of those around.
'Ah!' she murmured with a shiver, 'we are not then alone!' With that,after a brief pause, she rose; and her pale and beautiful countenancewas again composed and rigid. With fond and trembling hands, sheunclosed the lids of the deceased; but when the dull glazed eye, nolonger beaming with love and life, met hers, she shrieked aloud, as ifshe had seen a spectre. Once more recovering herself she kissed againand again the lids, the lips, the brow; and with mechanic andunconscious hand, received from the high priest of her brother's templethe funeral torch.
The sudden burst of music, the sudden song of the mourners announced thebirth of the sanctifying flame.
HYMN TO THE WIND
I
On thy couch of cloud reclined, Wake, O soft and sacred Wind! Soft and sacred will we name thee, Whosoe'er the sire that claim thee-- Whether old Auster's dusky child, Or the loud son of Eurus wild; Or his who o'er the darkling deeps, From the bleak North, in tempest sweeps; Still shalt thou seem as dear to us As flowe
ry-crowned Zephyrus, When, through twilight's starry dew, Trembling, he hastes his nymph to woo.
II
Lo! our silver censers swinging, Perfumes o'er thy path are flinging-- Ne'er o'er Tempe's breathless valleys, Ne'er o'er Cypria's cedarn alleys, Or the Rose-isle's moonlit sea, Floated sweets more worthy thee. Lo! around our vases sending Myrrh and nard with cassia blending: Paving air with odorous meet, For thy silver-sandall'd feet!
III
August and everlasting air! The source of all that breathe and be, From the mute clay before thee bear The seeds it took from thee! Aspire, bright Flame! aspire! Wild wind!--awake, awake! Thine own, O solemn Fire! O Air, thine own retake!
IV
It comes! it comes! Lo! it sweeps, The Wind we invoke the while! And crackles, and darts, and leaps The light on the holy pile! It rises! its wings interweave With the flames--how they howl and heave! Toss'd, whirl'd to and fro, How the flame-serpents glow! Rushing higher and higher, On--on, fearful Fire! Thy giant limbs twined With the arms of the Wind! Lo! the elements meet on the throne Of death--to reclaim their own!
V
Swing, swing the censer round-- Tune the strings to a softer sound! From the chains of thy earthly toil, From the clasp of thy mortal coil, From the prison where clay confined thee, The hands of the flame unbind thee! O Soul! thou art free--all free! As the winds in their ceaseless chase, When they rush o'er their airy sea, Thou mayst speed through the realms of space, No fetter is forged for thee! Rejoice! o'er the sluggard tide Of the Styx thy bark can glide, And thy steps evermore shall rove Through the glades of the happy grove; Where, far from the loath'd Cocytus, The loved and the lost invite us. Thou art slave to the earth no more! O soul, thou art freed!--and we?-- Ah! when shall our toil be o'er? Ah! when shall we rest with thee?
And now high and far into the dawning skies broke the fragrant fire; itflushed luminously across the gloomy cypresses--it shot above themassive walls of the neighboring city; and the early fisherman startedto behold the blaze reddening on the waves of the creeping sea.
But Ione sat down apart and alone, and, leaning her face upon her hands,saw not the flame, nor heard the lamentation of the music: she felt onlyone sense of loneliness--she had not yet arrived to that hallowing senseof comfort, when we know that we are not alone--that the dead are withus!
The breeze rapidly aided the effect of the combustibles placed withinthe pile. By degrees the flame wavered, lowered, dimmed, and slowly, byfits and unequal starts, died away--emblem of life itself; where, justbefore, all was restlessness and flame, now lay the dull and smoulderingashes.
The last sparks were extinguished by the attendants--the embers werecollected. Steeped in the rarest wine and the costliest odorous, theremains were placed in a silver urn, which was solemnly stored in one ofthe neighboring sepulchres beside the road; and they placed within itthe vial full of tears, and the small coin which poetry stillconsecrated to the grim boatman. And the sepulchre was covered withflowers and chaplets, and incense kindled on the altar, and the tombhung round with many lamps.
But the next day, when the priest returned with fresh offerings to thetomb, he found that to the relics of heathen superstition some unknownhands had added a green palm-branch. He suffered it to remain,unknowing that it was the sepulchral emblem of Christianity.
When the above ceremonies were over, one of the Praeficae three timessprinkled the mourners from the purifying branch of laurel, uttering thelast word, 'Ilicet!'--Depart!--and the rite was done.
But first they paused to utter--weepingly and many times--the affectingfarewell, 'Salve Eternum!' And as Ione yet lingered, they woke theparting strain.
SALVE ETERNUM
I
Farewell! O soul departed! Farewell! O sacred urn! Bereaved and broken-hearted, To earth the mourners turn. To the dim and dreary shore, Thou art gone our steps before! But thither the swift Hours lead us, And thou dost but a while precede us, Salve--salve! Loved urn, and thou solemn cell, Mute ashes!--farewell, farewell! Salve--salve!
II
Ilicet--ire licet-- Ah, vainly would we part! Thy tomb is the faithful heart. About evermore we bear thee; For who from the heart can tear thee? Vainly we sprinkle o'er us The drops of the cleansing stream; And vainly bright before us The lustral fire shall beam. For where is the charm expelling Thy thought from its sacred dwelling? Our griefs are thy funeral feast, And Memory thy mourning priest. Salve--salve!
III
Ilicet--ire licet! The spark from the hearth is gone Wherever the air shall bear it; The elements take their own-- The shadows receive thy spirit. It will soothe thee to feel our grief, As thou glid'st by the Gloomy River! If love may in life be brief, In death it is fixed for ever. Salve--salve! In the hall which our feasts illume, The rose for an hour may bloom; But the cypress that decks the tomb-- The cypress is green for ever! Salve--salve!