Letitia Elizabeth Landon (L. E. L.) in Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1838/Death of the Lion among the Ruins of Sbeitlah
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RUINS OF SBEITLAH, THE ANCIENT SUFETULA, TUNIS.
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DEATH OF THE LION AMONG THE RUINS OF SBEITLAH.
Hurriedly, disturbing night
With a red and sudden light,
Came the morning, as it knew
What there was for day to do.
And that ere it sank again,
It must show the Lion's den.
All night long, a sullen roar,
Like the billows on the shore,
Sounded on the desert air,
Telling who was lurking there.
And the sleepless child was prest
Closer to the mother's breast
Girdled by the watch-fire's ray
Did we wait the coming day;
And beneath the morning sun
Flashed the spear and gleamed the gun.
Forth we went to seek the shade
Where the Lion-King was laid.
Dark the towering palm was spread,
Like a giant, overhead;
But the dewy grass below
Served the Lion's path to show.
Long green bough and flowery spray
He had rent upon his way.
By the aqueduct, of old,
Where the silver river rolled,
Long since laid in ruins low—
But there still the waters flow.
Soon decayeth man's endeavour,
Nature's works endure for ever.
There we found the Lion's cave-
There we made the Lion's grave.
Three shots echoed—three—no more,
And the grass is red with gore.
For the claws and skin we come—
Let us bear our trophy home.
Sbeitlah (anciently Sufetula) stands on a spacious plain, at the base of a range of hills that are clothed with the juniper, the cistus, and the pine, and on the right bank of the Wady-Sbeitlah, a limpid stream, rushing in whirling eddies through a deep, meandering, rocky chasm. The principal surviving ruins consist of three contiguous temples, two triumphal arches, a palace, and an aqueduct which spans the stream. Besides ruins of churches, triumphal arches, and other demonstrations of ancient pride, one paved street remains entire. This lonely avenue, that formerly resounded with the trampling of the high-spirited steeds, as they drew, through crowds of admiring citizens, the gorgeous chariot of their imperial master, is now trodden, at long intervals, only by the Christian traveller, who, as his footstep falls, the sole interruption of a death-like silence, disturbs occasionally the lizard or the leffah, basking in the heat of noon. Here, where "sad memory brings the light of other days around us," the solitude of day is succeeded by the terrific sounds that disturb the night—the bark of the prowling wolf, the melancholy scream of the night-bird, and the awful roar of the lordly lion. The vicinity of Sbeitlah is still the Leonum arida natrix, and lion-hunting forms not only one of the chief amusements, but even most profitable occupations: so replete is every spot of ground, every shattered column, nay, every lion slain, with classical feeling and allusion, that this was nature's nursery whence one hundred lions at a time were furnished, for the sports of warlike Rome, at the command of Sylla: Pompey drew hence six hundred, and Caesar was content with four hundred of the fiercest.