Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Last Days of Pompeii

BOOK THE FOURTH 5. Chapter V (continued)

'By the bright goddess, a beautiful land this Cyprus! Ho! how they fill us with wine instead of blood! now they open the veins of the Faun yonder, to show how the tide within bubbles and sparkles. Come hither, jolly old god! thou ridest on a goat, eh?--what long silky hair he has! He is worth all the coursers of Parthia. But a word with thee--this wine of thine is too strong for us mortals. Oh! beautiful! the boughs are at rest! the green waves of the forest have caught the Zephyr and drowned him! Not a breath stirs the leaves--and I view the Dreams sleeping with folded wings upon the motionless elm; and I look beyond, and I see a blue stream sparkle in the silent noon; a fountain--a fountain springing aloft! Ah! my fount, thou wilt not put out rays of my Grecian sun, though thou triest ever so hard with thy nimble and silver arms. And now, what form steals yonder through the boughs? she glides like a moonbeam!--she has a garland of oak-leaves on her head. In her hand is a vase upturned, from which she pours pink and tiny shells and sparkling water. Oh! look on yon face! Man never before saw its like. See! we are alone; only I and she in the wide forest. There is no smile upon her lips--she moves, grave and sweetly sad. Ha! fly, it is a nymph!--it is one of the wild Napaeae! Whoever sees her becomes mad-fly! see, she discovers me!'

'Oh! Glaucus! Glaucus! do you not know me? Rave not so wildly, or thou wilt kill me with a word!'

A new change seemed now to operate upon the jarring and disordered mind of the unfortunate Athenian. He put his hand upon Nydia's silken hair; he smoothed the locks--he looked wistfully upon her face, and then, as in the broken chain of thought one or two links were yet unsevered, it seemed that her countenance brought its associations of Ione; and with that remembrance his madness became yet more powerful, and it swayed and tinged by passion, as he burst forth: