Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Last Days of Pompeii

BOOK THE FOURTH 3. Chapter III (continued)

This apparition, removed but by a cord from one's pericranium, and indulging the most vehement leaps, apparently with the intention of alighting upon that cerebral region, would probably be regarded with some terror by a party in May Fair; but our Pompeian revellers seemed to behold the spectacle with delighted curiosity, and applauded in proportion as the dancer appeared with the most difficulty to miss falling upon the head of whatever guest he particularly selected to dance above. He paid the senator, indeed, the peculiar compliment of literally falling from the rope, and catching it again with his hand, just as the whole party imagined the skull of the Roman was as much fractured as ever that of the poet whom the eagle took for a tortoise. At length, to the great relief of at least Ione, who had not much accustomed herself to this entertainment, the dancer suddenly paused as a strain of music was heard from without. He danced again still more wildly; the air changed, the dancer paused again; no, it could not dissolve the charm which was supposed to possess him! He represented one who by a strange disorder is compelled to dance, and whom only a certain air of music can cure. At length the musician seemed to hit on the right tune; the dancer gave one leap, swung himself down from the rope, alighted on the floor, and vanished.

One art now yielded to another; and the musicians who were stationed without on the terrace struck up a soft and mellow air, to which were sung the following words, made almost indistinct by the barrier between and the exceeding lowness of the minstrelsy:-

             FESTIVE MUSIC SHOULD BE LOW

                      I

     Hark! through these flowers our music sends its greeting
        To your loved halls, where Psilas shuns the day;
      When the young god his Cretan nymph was meeting
        He taught Pan's rustic pipe this gliding lay:
           Soft as the dews of wine
             Shed in this banquet hour,
           The rich libation of Sound's stream divine,
             O reverent harp, to Aphrodite pour!

                     II