Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Last Days of Pompeii

BOOK THE FOURTH 17. Chapter XVII (continued)

           Hark, the trumpet of thunder!
           Lo, earth rent asunder!
         And, forth, on His Angel-throne,
           He comes through the gloom,
           The Judge of the Tomb,
         To summon and save His own!
              Oh, joy to Care, and woe to Crime,
              He comes to save His own!
        Woe to the proud ones who defy Him!
        Woe to the dreamers who deny Him!
              Woe to the wicked, woe!

A sudden silence from the startled hall of revel succeeded these ominous words: the Christians swept on, and were soon hidden from the sight of the gladiator. Awed, he scarce knew why, by the mystic denunciations of the Christians, Lydon, after a short pause, now rose to pursue his way homeward.

Before him, how serenely slept the starlight on that lovely city! how breathlessly its pillared streets reposed in their security!--how softly rippled the dark-green waves beyond!--how cloudless spread, aloft and blue, the dreaming Campanian skies! Yet this was the last night for the gay Pompeii! the colony of the hoar Chaldean! the fabled city of Hercules! the delight of the voluptuous Roman! Age after age had rolled, indestructive, unheeded, over its head; and now the last ray quivered on the dial-plate of its doom! The gladiator heard some light steps behind--a group of females were wending homeward from their visit to the amphitheatre. As he turned, his eye was arrested by a strange and sudden apparition. From the summit of Vesuvius, darkly visible at the distance, there shot a pale, meteoric, livid light--it trembled an instant and was gone. And at the same moment that his eye caught it, the voice of one of the youngest of the women broke out hilariously and shrill:-

TRAMP! TRAMP! HOW GAILY THEY GO!
HO, HO! FOR THE MORROW'S MERRY SHOW!