a

She fear'd-she felt that something ill
Lay on her soul, so deep and chill-
That there was sin and shame she knew;
That some one was to die—but who?
She had forgotten : did she breathe ?
Could this be still the earth beneath,
The sky above, and men around;
Or were they fiends who now so frown'd
On one, before whose eyes each eye
Till then had smiled in sympathy ?
All was confused and undefined
To her all-jarr'd and wandering mind;
A chaos of wild hopes and fears :
And now in laughter, now in tears,
But madly still in each extreme,
She strove with that convulsive dream:
For so it seem'd on her to break :
Oh! vainly must she strive to wake!

XV.
The convent bells are ringing,

But mournfully and slow;
In the grey square turret swinging,

With a deep sound, to and fro•

Heavily to the heart they go! Hark! the hymn is singing

The song for the dead below,

Or the living who shortly shall be so!
For a departing being's soul
The death-hymn peals and the hollow bells knoll:
He is near his mortal goal;
Kneeling at the friar's knee,
Sad to hear-and piteous to see-
Kneeling on the bare cold ground,
With the block before and the guards around-
And the headsman with his bare arm ready,
That the blow may be both swift and steady,
Feels if the axe be sharp and true-
Since he set its edge anew:
While the crowd in a speechless circle gather
To sec the son fall by the doom of the father!

XVI.
It is a lovely hour as yet
Before the summer sun shall set,
Which rose upon that heavy day,
And mock'd it with his steadiest ray;
And his evening beams are shed
Full on Hugo's fated head,
As his last confession pouring
To the monk, his doom deploring
In penitential holiness,
He bends to hear his accents bless
With absolution such as may
Wipe our mortal stains away.
That high sun on his head did glisten
As he there did bow and listen-
And the rings of chestnut hair
Curl'd half down his neck so bare;

But brighter still the beam was thrown
Upon the axe which near him shone
With a clear and ghastly glitter-
Oh! that parting hour was bitter!
Even the stern stood chill'd with awe:
Dark the crime, and just the law-
Yet they shudder'd as they saw.

XVII.
The parting prayers are said and over
Of that false son-and daring lover:
His beads and sins are all recounted,
His hours to their last minute mounted-
Mis mantling cloak before was stripp'd
His bright brown locks must now be clippid:
'T is done-all closely are they shorn-
'The vest which till this moment worn-
The scarf which Parisina gave-
Must not adorn him to the grave.
Even that must now be thrown aside,
And o'er his eyes the kerchief tied;
But no-that last indignity
Shall ne'er approach his haughty eye.
All feelings, seemingly subdued
In deep disdain, were half renew'd
When headsman's hands prepared to bind
Those eyes which would not brook such blind :
As if they dared not look on death!

No-yours my forfeit blood and breath-
These hands are chain'd—but let me die
At least with an unshackled eye-
Strike!”_-And as the word he said,
Upon the block he bow'd his head;
These the last accents Hugo spoke;
“Strike!”—and Aashing fell the stroke-
Roll’d the head-and, gushing, sunk
Back the stain’d and heaving trunk
In the dust, which each deep vein
Slaked with its ensanguined rain;
His eyes and lips a moment quiver,
Convulsed and quick-then fix for ever.
He died, as erring man should die,

Without display, without parade;
Meekly had he bow'd and pray'd,
As not disdaining priestly aid,
Nor desperate of all hope on high.
And while before the prior kneeling,
His heart was wean'd from earthly feeling;
His wrathful sire-his paramour-
What were they in such an hour ?
No more reproach--no more despair;
No thought but heaven-no word but prayer-
Save the few which from him broke,
When, bared to meet the headsman's stroke,
He claim'd to die with eyes unbound,
His sole adieu to those around. (1)

(1) “ The grand part of this poem is that wbich describes the execution of the rival son; and in which, though there in no

XVIII.

Still as the lips that closed in death,
Each gazer's bosom held his breath:
But yet, afar, from man to man,
A cold electric shiver ran,

As down the deadly blow descended
On him whose life and love thus ended;
And, with a hushing sound compress'd,
A sigh shrunk back on every breast;
But no more thrilling noise rose there,
Beyond the blow that to the block
Pierced through with forced and sullen shock,
Save one-what cleaves the silent air
So madly shrill, so passing wild?
That, as a mother's o'er her child,
Done to death by sudden blow,
To the sky these accents go,
Like a soul's in endless woe.
Through Azo's palace-lattice driven,
That horrid voice ascends to heaven,
And every eye is turn'd thereon;
But sound and sight alike are gone!
It was a woman's shriek-and ne'er
In madlier accents rose despair;
And those who heard it, as it pass'd,
In mercy wish'd it were the last.

Until his very steps have left a trace

Worn, as if thy cold pavement were a sod, By Bonnivard!-May none those marks efface; For they appeal from tyranny to God.

THE PRISONER OF CHILLON. (1)

I.

My hair is grey, but not with years,
Nor grew it white

In a single night,

As men's have grown from sudden fears : (2)
limbs are bow'd, though not with toil,
But rusted with a vile repose, (3)
For they have been a dungeon's spoil,

And mine has been the fate of those
To whom the goodly earth and air
Are bann'd, and barr'd-forbidden fare;
But this was for my father's faith
I suffer'd chains and courted death:
That father perish'd at the stake
For tenets he would not forsake;
And for the same his lineal race
In darkness found a dwelling-place.
We were seven-who now are one,
Six in youth and one in age,
Finish'd as they had begun,

Proud of Persecution's rage; (4)
One in fire, and two in field,
Their belief with blood have seal'd:
Dying as their father died,
For the God their foes denied:-
Three were in a dungeon cast,
Of whom this wreck is left the last.

II.

There are seven pillars of Gothic mould, (5) In Chillon's dungeons deep and old,

(1) "I will tell you something about Chillon. A M. de Luc, ninety years old, a Swiss, had it read to him, and is pleased with it-so my sister writes. He said that he was with Rousseau at Chillon, and that the description is perfectly correct. But this is not all; I recollected something of the name, and find the following passages in The Confessions, vol. iii. p. 217, liv. iii. De tous ces amusements, celui qui me plut davantage fut une promenade autour du Lac, que je fis en bateau avec De Luc père, sa bonne, ses deux fils, et ma Thérèse. Nous mimes sept jours à cette tournée par le plus beau temps du monde. J'en gardai le vif souvenir des sites qui m'avoient frappé à l'autre extrémité du Lac, et dont je fis la description, quelques années après, dans La Nouvelle Heloise. This nonagenarian, De Luc, must be one of the 'deux fils.' He is in England, infirm, but still in faculty. It is odd that he should have lived so long, and not wanting in oddness, that he should have made this voyage with Jean Jacques, and afterwards, at such an interval, read a poem by an Englishman (who made precisely the same circumnavigation) upon the same scenery."-B. Letters, April 9, 1817.-Jean André de Luc, F.R. S., died at Windsor, in the July following. He was born

They chain'd us each to a column stone,
And we were three-yet, each alone;
We could not move a single pace,
We could not see each other's face,
But with that pale and livid light
That made us strangers in our sight:
And thus together-yet apart,
Fetter'd in hand, but pined in heart;
'T was still some solace, in the dearth
Of the pure elements of earth,
To hearken to each other's speech,
And each turn comforter to each
With some new hope of legend old,
Or song heroically bold;

But even these at length grew cold-
Our voices took a dreary tone,
An echo of the dungeon stone,

A grating sound-not full and free
As they of yore were wont to be;
It might be fancy-but to me
They never sounded like our own. (6)

in 1726, at Geneva, was the author of many geological works, and corresponded with most of the learned societies of Europe.

-E.

(2) Ludovico Sforza, and others. The same is asserted of Marie Antoinette's, the wife of Louis the Sixteenth, though not in quite so short a period. Grief is said to have the same effect; to such, and not to fear, this change in hers was to be attributed. (3) In the MS.

"But with the inward waste of grief.”—E. (4) In the MS.

“Braving rancour-chains-and rage."-E.

(5) The fidelity of Lord Byron's description of the dungeon of Chillon, to which he has given a deathless interest, is shown in the engraving in Finden's Illustrations, from Mr. Stanfield's drawing of the interior of the prison.-E.

(6) "This picture of the first feelings of the three gallang brothers, when bound apart in this living tomb, and of the gradual decay of their cheery fortitude, is full of pity and agony." Jeffrey.

४

VI.

Lake Leman lies by Chillon's walls:
A thousand feet in depth below
Its massy waters meet and flow;
Thus much the fathom-line was sent
From Chillon's snow-white battlement, (1)
Which round about the wave inthrals:
A double dungeon wall and wave
Have made and like a living grave.
Below the surface of the lake
The dark vault lies wherein we lay,
We heard it ripple night and day;

Sounding o'er our heads it knock'd:
And I have felt the winter's spray

Wash through the bars when winds were high
And wanton in the happy sky;

And then the very rock hath rock'd,
And I have felt it shake, unshock'd,
Because I could have smiled to see
The death that would have set me free.

(1) The Château de Chillon is situated between Clarens and Villeneuve, which last is at one extremity of the Lake of Geneva. On its left are the entrances of the Rhone, and opposite are the heights of Meillerie and the range of Alps above Boveret and St. Gingo. Near it, on a hill behind, is a torrent: below it, washing its walls, the lake has been fathomed to the depth of 800 feet, French measure: within it are a range of dungeons, in which the early reformers, and subsequently prisoners of state, were confined. Across one of the vaults is a beam black with age, on which we were informed that the condemned were formerly cuted. In the cells are seven pillars, or rather eight, one being half merged in the wall; in some of these are rings for the fetters and the fettered; in the pavement the steps of Bonnivard have left their traces. He was confined here several years. It is by this castle that Rousseau has fixed the catastrophe of his Héloïse, In the rescue of one of her children by Julie from the water; the shock of which, and the illness produced by the immersion, is the cause of her death. The château is large, and seen along the lake for a great distance. The walls are white.-["The early

VII.

I said my nearer brother pined,
I said his mighty heart declined,
He loathed and put away his food;
It was not that 't was coarse and rude,
For we were used to hunter's fare,
And for the like had little care:
The milk drawn from the mountain-goat
Was changed for water from the moat;
Our bread was such as captive's tears
Have moisten'd many a thousand years,
Since man first pent his fellow-men
Like brutes within an iron den;
But what were these to us or him?
These wasted not his heart or limb:
My brother's soul was of that mould
Which in a palace had grown cold,
Had his free breathing been denied
The range of the steep mountain's side:
But why delay the truth ?-he died. (2)

"But why withhold the blow ?-be died."-E.