Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Last Days of Pompeii

BOOK THE FIRST 8. Chapter VIII (continued)

                ANACREONTIC

       In the veins of the calix foams and glows
          The blood of the mantling vine,
        But oh! in the bowl of Youth there glows
          A Lesbian, more divine!
              Bright, bright,
             As the liquid light,
         Its waves through thine eyelids shine!

       Fill up, fill up, to the sparkling brim,
          The juice of the young Lyaeus;
        The grape is the key that we owe to him
          From the gaol of the world to free us.
              Drink, drink!
             What need to shrink,
         When the lambs alone can see us?

       Drink, drink, as I quaff from thine eyes
          The wine of a softer tree;
        Give the smiles to the god of the grape--thy sighs,
          Beloved one, give to me.
              Turn, turn,
             My glances burn,
         And thirst for a look from thee!

As the song ended, a group of three maidens, entwined with a chain of starred flowers, and who, while they imitated, might have shamed the Graces, advanced towards him in the gliding measures of the Ionian dance: such as the Nereids wreathed in moonlight on the yellow sands of the AEgean wave--such as Cytherea taught her handmaids in the marriage-feast of Psyche and her son.

Now approaching, they wreathed their chaplet round his head; now kneeling, the youngest of the three proffered him the bowl, from which the wine of Lesbos foamed and sparkled. The youth resisted no more, he grasped the intoxicating cup, the blood mantled fiercely through his veins. He sank upon the breast of the nymph who sat beside him, and turning with swimming eyes to seek for Arbaces, whom he had lost in the whirl of his emotions, he beheld him seated beneath a canopy at the upper end of the table, and gazing upon him with a smile that encouraged him to pleasure. He beheld him, but not as he had hitherto seen, with dark and sable garments, with a brooding and solemn brow: a robe that dazzled the sight, so studded was its whitest surface with gold and gems, blazed upon his majestic form; white roses, alternated with the emerald and the ruby, and shaped tiara-like, crowned his raven locks. He appeared, like Ulysses, to have gained the glory of a second youth--his features seemed to have exchanged thought for beauty, and he towered amidst the loveliness that surrounded him, in all the beaming and relaxing benignity of the Olympian god.