Out of Pompeii

She lay, face downward, on her beaded arm,
In this her new, sweet dream of human bliss,
Her heart within her fearful, fluttering, warm,
Her lips yet pained with love’s first timorous kiss.
She did not note the darkening afternoon,
She did not mark the lowering of the sky
O’er that great city. Earth had given its boon
Unto her lips, love touched her and passed by.
In one dread moment all the sky grew dark,
The hideous rain, the panic, the red rout,
Where love lost love, and all the world might mark
The city overwhelmed, blotted out
Without one cry, so quick oblivion came,
And life passed to the black where all forget;
But she,—we know not of her house or name,—
In love’s sweet musings doth lie dreaming yet.

The dread hell passed, the ruined world grew still,
And the great city passed to nothingness:
The ages went and mankind worked its will.
Then men stood still amid the centuries’ press,
And in the ash-hid ruins opened bare,
As she lay down in her shamed loveliness,
Sculptured and frozen, late they found her there,
Image of love ‘mid all that hideousness.

Her head, face downward, on her bended arm,
Her single robe that showed her shapely form,
Her wondrous fate love keeps divinely warm
Over the centuries, past the slaying storm,
The heart can read in writings time hath left,
That linger still through death’s oblivion;
And in this waste of life and light bereft,
She brings again a beauty that had gone.

And if there be a day when all shall wake,
As dreams the hoping, doubting human heart,
The dim forgetfulness of death will break
For her as one who sleeps with lips apart;
And did God call her suddenly, I know
She’d wake as morning wakened by the thrush,
Feel that red kiss across the centuries glow,
And make all heaven rosier by her blush.