areless fashion has been
opened for us, as it were, a little window on a grief now buried in
the oblivion of a hundred generations. After reading his words one
May morning, beneath the pediment of Paestum's noblest ruin, I could
not refrain from thinking that if the spirits of those captive
Hellenes were to revisit their old habitations, they would change
their note of wailing into a thin ghostly paean, when they found that
Romans and Lucanians had passed away, that Christians and Saracens
had left alike no trace behind, while the houses of their own
[Greek: antelioi theoi]--dawn-facing deities--were still abiding in
the pride of immemorial strength. Who knows whether buffalo-driver
or bandit may not ere now have seen processions of these Poseidonian
phantoms, bearing laurels and chaunting hymns on the spot where once
they fell each on the other's neck to weep? Gathering his cloak
around him and cowering closer to his fire of sticks, the
night-watcher in those empty colonnades may have mistaken the
Hellenic outlines of his shadowy visitants for fevered dreams, and
the melody of their evanished music for the whistling of night winds
or the cry of owls. So abandoned is Paestum in its solitude that we
know not even what legends may have sprung up round those relics of
a mightier age.

The shrine is ruined now; and far away
To east and west stretch olive groves, whose shade
Even at the height of summer noon is grey.

Asphodels sprout upon the plinth decayed
Of these low columns, and the snake hath found
Her haunt 'neath altar-steps with weeds o'erlaid.

Yet this was once a hero's temple, crowned
With myrtle-boughs by lovers, and with palm
By wrestlers, resonant with sweetest sound

Of flute and fife in summer evening's calm,
And odorous with incense all the year,
With nard and spice, and galbanum and balm.

These lines sufficiently express the sense of desolation felt at
Paestum, except that the scenery is more solemn and mournful, and the
temples are too august to be the shrine of any simple hero. There
are no olives. The sea plunges on its sandy shore within the space
of half a mile to westward. Far and wide on either hand stretch
dreary fever-stricken marshes. The plain is bounded to the north,
and east, and south, with mountains, purple, snow-peaked, serrated,
and grandly broken like the hills of Greece. Driving over this vast
level where the Silarus stagnates, the monotony of the landsc