"No longer thought the crowd of justice or of Arbaces; safety for themselves was their sole thought. Each turned to fly--each dashing, pressing, crushing against the other. Trampling recklessly over the fallen,--amid groans, and oaths, and prayers, and sudden shrieks, the enormous crowd vomited itself forth through the numerous passages. Whither should they fly?" Now let us present the description, given in 'The Last _Night_ of Pompeii,' of the horrors that succeeded the scene of the games: "Awed, yet untrembling, Pansa calm replied, 'Ye hear no thunder--but Destruction's howl! Ye see no lightning--but the lava glare Of desolation sweeping o'er your pride! Death is beneath, around, above, within All who exult to inflict it on my heart, And ye must meet it, fly when, where ye will, For in the madness of your cruelties Ye have delayed till every hope is dead. Let the doom come! our faiths will soon be tried. Gigantic spectres from their shadowy thrones, With ghastly smiles to welcome ye, arise. The Pharaohs and Ptolemies uplift Their glimmering sceptres o'er ye--bidding all Bare their dark bosoms to the Omniscient God: And every strange and horrid mythos waits To fold ye in the terrors of its dreams.'" "Like an earthshadowing cypress, o'er the skies Lifting its labyrinth of leaves, the boughs Of molten brass, the giant trunk of flame, The breath of the volcano's Titan heart Hung in the heavens; and every maddened pulse Of the vast mountain's earthquake bosom hurled Its vengeance on the earth that gasped beneath." "From every cell shrieks burst; hyenas cried Like lost child stricken in its loneliness: The giant elephant with matchless strength Struggled against the portal of his tomb, And groaned and panted; and the leopard's yell And tiger's growl with all surrounding cries Of human horror mingled; and in air, Spotting the lurid heavens and waiting prey, The evil birds of carnage hung and watched." "Vesuvius answered: from its pinnacles Clouds of farflashing cinders, lava showers, And seas drank up by the abyss of fire To be hurled forth in boiling cataracts, Like midnight mountains, wrapt in lightnings, fell." "All awful sounds of heaven and earth met now; Darkness behind the sungod's chariot rolled, Shrouding destruction, save when volcan fires Lifted the folds to gaze on agony; And when a moment's terrible repose Fell on the deep convulsions, all could hear The toppling cliffs explode and crash below, While multitudinous waters from the sea In whirlpools through the channell'd mountain rocks Rushed, and with hisses like the damned's speech, Fell in the mighty furnace of the mount."