Morn fled, noon came, evening, then night descended,
And we prolong'd calm talk beneath the sphere
Of the calm moon-when, suddenly was blended
With our repose a nameless sense of fear;
And from the cave behind I seem'd to hear
Sounds gathering upwards!-accents incomplete,
And stifled shrieks, and now, more near and near,
A tumult and a rush of thronging feet
The cavern's secret depths beneath the earth did beat.
The scene was changed, and away, away, away!
Through the air and over the sea we sped,
And Cythna in my sheltering bosom lay,
And the winds bore me-through the darkness spread
Around, the gaping earth then vomited
Legions of foul and ghastly shapes, which hung
Upon my flight; and ever as we fled,
They pluck'd at Cythna-soon to me then clung
A sense of actual things those monstrous dreams among.
And I lay struggling in the impotence
Of sleep, while outward life had burst its bound,
Though, still deluded, strove the tortured sense
To its dire wanderings to adapt the sound
Which in the light of morn was pour'd around
Our dwelling-breathless, pale, and unaware
I rose, and all the cottage crowded found
These words had fallen on my unheeding ear,
Whilst I had watch'd the motions of the crew
With seeming careless glance; not many were
Around her, for their comrades just withdrew
To guard some other victim-so I drew
My knife, and with one impulse, suddenly
All unaware three of their number slew,
And grasp'd a fourth by the throat, and with loud cry
My countrymen invoked to death or liberty!
What follow'd then, I know not-for a stroke
On my raised arm and naked head, came down,
Filling my eyes with blood-when I awoke,
I felt that they had bound me in my swoon,
And up a rock which overhangs the town,
By the steep path were bearing me: below,
The plain was fill'd with slaughter, -overthrown
The vineyards and the harvests, and the glow
Of blazing roofs shone far o'er the white Ocean's flow.
-
With armed men, whose glittering swords were bare, And whose degraded limbs the tyrant's garb did wear.
And ere with rapid lips and gather'd brow
I could demand the cause-a feeble shriek-
It was a feeble shriek, faint, far and low,
Arrested me-my mien grew calm and meek,
And grasping a small knife, I went to seek
That voice among the crowd-'t was Cythna's cry!
Beneath most calm resolve did agony wreak
Its whirlwind rage:-so I past quietly
Till I beheld, where bound, that dearest child did lie.
I started to behold her, for delight
And exultation, and a joyance free,
Solemn, serene and lofty, fill'd the light
Of the calm smile with which she look'd on me:
So that I fear'd some brainless ecstacy,
Wrought from that bitter woe, had wilder'd her-
• Farewell,! farewell!, she said, as I drew nigh.
• At first my peace was marr'd by this strange stir,
Now I am calm as truth-its chosen minister.
• Look not so, Laon-say farewell in hope,
These bloody men are but the slaves who bear
Their mistress to her task-it was my scope
The slavery where they drag me now, to share,
And among captives willing chains to wear
Awhile the rest thou knowest-return, dear friend!
Let our first triumph trample the despair
Which would ensnare us now, for in the end.
Upon that rock a mighty column stood,
Whose capital seemed sculptured in the sky,
Which to the wanderers o'er the solitude
Of distant seas, from ages long gone by,
Had made a landmark; o'er its height to fly
Scarcely the cloud, the vulture, or the blast,
Has power-and when the shades of evening lie
On Earth and Ocean, its carved summits cast
The sunken day-light far through the aërial waste.
They bore me to a cavern in the hill
Beneath that column, and unbound me there:
And one did strip me stark; and one did fill
A vessel from the putrid pool; one bare
A lighted torch, and four with friendless care
Guided my steps the cavern-paths along,
Then up a steep and dark and narrow stair
We wound, until the torches' fiery tongue
Amid the gushing day beamless and pallid hung.
They raised me to the platform of the pile,
That column's dizzy height:-the grate of brass
Through which they thrust me, open stood the while,
As to its ponderous and suspended mass,
With chains which eat into the flesh, alas!
With brazen links, my naked limbs they bound:
The grate, as they departed to repass,
With horrid clangour fell, and the far sound
Of their retiring steps in the dense gloom was drown'd.
The noon was calm and bright:-around that column
The overhanging sky and circling sea
Spread forth in silentness profound and solemn
The darkness of brief frenzy cast on me,
So that I knew not my own misery:
The islands and the mountains in the day
Like clouds reposed afar; and I could see
The town among the woods below that lay,
In victory or in death our hopes and fears must blend. And the dark rocks which bound the bright and glassy
It was so calm, that scarce the feathery weed
Sown by some eagle on the topmost stone
Sway'd in the air :-so bright, that noon did breed
No shadow in the sky beside mine own-
Mine, and the shadow of my chain alone.
Below the smoke of roofs involved in flame
Rested like night, all else was clearly shown
In that broad glare, yet sound to me none came,
But of the living blood that ran within my frame.
The peace of madness fled, and ah, too soon!
A ship was lying on the sunny main,
Its sails were flagging in the breathless noon-
Its shadow lay beyond that sight again
Waked, with its presence, in my tranced brain
The stings of a known sorrow, keen and cold:
I knew that ship bore Cythna o'er the plain
Of waters, to her blighting slavery sold,
The forms which peopled this terrific trance
I well remember-like a quire of devils,
Around me they involved a giddy dance;
Legions seem'd gathering from the misty levels
Of Ocean, to supply those ceaseless revels,
Foul, ceaseless shadows:-thought could not divide
The actual world from these entangling evils,
Which so bemock'd themselves, that I descried
And watch'd it with such thoughts as must remain untold. All shapes like mine own self, hideously multiplied.
I watch'd, until the shades of evening wrapt
Earth like an exhalation-then the bark
Moved, for that calm was by the sunset snapt.
It moved a speck upon the Ocean dark:
Soon the wan stars came forth, and I could mark
Its path no more!-I sought to close mine eyes,
But like the balls, their lids were stiff and stark;
I would have risen, but ere that I could rise,
My parched skin was split with piercing agonies.
I gnaw'd my brazen chain, and sought to sever
Its adamantine links, that I might die:
O Liberty! forgive the base endeavour,
Forgive me, if reserved for victory,
The Champion of thy faith e'er sought to fly.-
That starry night, with its clear silence, sent
Tameless resolve which laugh'd at misery
Into my soul-link'd remembrance lent
To that such power, to me such a severe content.
To breathe, to be, to hope, or to despair
And die, I question'd not; nor, though the Sun
Its shafts of agony kindling through the air
Moved over me, nor though in evening dun,
Or when the stars their visible courses run,
Or morning, the wide universe was spread
In dreary calmness round me, did I shun
Its presence, nor seek refuge with the dead
The sense of day and night, of false and true,
Was dead within me. Yet two visions burst
That darkness-one, as since that hour I knew,
Was not a phantom of the realms accurst,
Where then my spirit dwelt-but of the first
I know not yet, was it a dream or no.
But both, though not distincter, were immersed
In hues which, when through memory's waste they
flow,
Made their divided streams more bright and rapid now.
XXV.
Methought that gate was lifted, and the seven
Who brought me thither, four stiff corpses bare,
And from the frieze to the four winds of Heaven
Hung them on high by the entangled hair:
Swarthy were three-the fourth was very fair:
As they retired, the golden moon upsprung,
And eagerly, out in the giddy air,
Leaning that I might eat, I stretch'd and clung
Over the shapeless depth in which those corpses hung.
A woman's shape, now lank and cold and blue,
The dwelling of the many-colour'd worm,
Hung there, the white and hollow cheek I drew
To my dry lips-what radiance did inform
Those horny eyes? whose was that wither'd form?
Alas, alas! it seem'd that Cythna's gliost
Laugh'd in those looks, and that the flesh was warm
Within my teeth!-a whirlwind keen as frost
From one faint hope whose flower a dropping poison shed. Then in its sinking gulfs my sickening spirit tost.
Two days thus past-I neither raved nor died-
Thirst raged within me, like a scorpion's nest
Built in mine entrails: I had spurn'd aside
The water-vessel, while despair possest
My thoughts, and now no drop remain'd! the uprest
Of the third sun brought hunger-but the crust
Which had been left, was to my craving breast
Fuel, not food. I chew'd the bitter dust,
And bit my bloodless arm, and lick'd the brazen rust.
Then seem'd it that a tameless hurricane
Arose, and bore me in its dark career
Beyond the sun, beyond the stars that wane
On the verge of formless space-it languish'd there,
And dying, left a silence lone and drear,
More horrible than famine:-in the deep
The shape of an old man did then appear,
Stately and beautiful, that dreadful sleep
His heavenly smiles dispersed, and I could wake and weep.
Who in cells deep and lone have languish'd many a year. Whose lore had made that sage all that he had become.
That heart which had grown old, but had corrupted not. Like autumn's myriad leaves in one swoln mountain
The antique sculptured roof, and many a tome
A dim and feeble joy, whose glimpses oft
Were quench'd in a relapse of wildering dreams,
Yet still methonght we sail'd, until aloft
The stars of night grew pallid, and the beams
Of morn descended on the ocean-streams,
And still that aged man, so grand and mild,
Tended me, even as some sick mother seems
To hang in hope over a dying child,
Till in the azure East darkness again was piled.
The rock-built barrier of the sea was past, -
And I was on the margin of a lake,
A lonely lake, amid the forests vast
And snowy mountains:-did my spirit wake
From sleep, as many-coloured as the snake
That girds eternity? in life and truth,
Might not my heart its cravings ever slake?
Was Cythna then a dream, and all my youth,
And all its hopes and fears, and all its joy and ruth?
Thus madness came again, -a milder madness,
Which darken'd nought but time's unquiet flow
With supernatural shades of clinging sadness;
That gentle Hermit, in my helpless woe,
By my sick couch was busy to and fro,
Like a strong spirit ministrant of good:
When I was healed, he led me forth to show
The wonders of his sylvan solitude,
And we together sate by that isle-fretted flood.
He knew his soothing words to weave with skill From all my madness told; like mine own heart, Of Cythna would he question me, until That thrilling name had ceased to make me start, From his familiar lips-it was not art, Of wisdom and of justice when he spokeWhen 'mid soft looks of pity, there would dart A glance as keen as is the lightning's stroke When it doth rive the knots of some ancestral oak.
Thus slowly from my brain the darkness roll'd,
My thoughts their due array did re-assume
Through the enchantments of that Hermit old;
Then I bethought me of the glorious doom
Of those who sternly struggle to relume
The lamp of Hope o'er man's bewilder'd lot,
And, sitting by the waters, in the gloom
Of eve, to that friend's heart I told my thought
He came to the lone column on the rock, And with his sweet and mighty eloquence The hearts of those who watch'd it did unlock, And made them melt in tears of penitence. They gave him entrance free to bear me thence. Since this, the old man said, seven years are spent, While slowly truth on thy benighted sense Has crept; the hope which wilder'd it has lent, Meanwhile, to me the power of a sublime intent.
« Yes, from the records of my youthful state, And from the lore of bards and sages old, From whatsoe'er my waken'd thoughts create Out of the hopes of thine aspirings bold, Ilave I collected language to unfold Truth to my countrymen; from shore to shore Doctrines of human power my words have told, They have been heard, and men aspire to more Than they have ever gain'd or ever lost of yore.
<< In secret chambers parents read, and weep,
My writings to their babes, no longer blind;
And young men gather when their tyrants sleep,
And vows of faith each to the other bind;
And marriageable maidens, who have pined
With love, till life seem'd melting through their look,
A warmer zeal, a nobler hope now find;
And every bosom thus is rapt and shook,
• Kind thoughts, and mighty hopes, and gentle deeds
Abound, for fearless love, and the pure law
Of mild equality and peace, succeeds
To faiths which long have held the world in awe,
Bloody and false, and cold:-as whirlpools draw
All wrecks of Ocean to their chasm, the sway
Of thy strong genius, Laon, which foresaw
This hope, compels all spirits to obey,
lligh truths from gifted lips had heard and understood; Which round thy secret strength now throng in wide
And that the multitude was gathering wide; His spirit leap'd within his aged frame, In lonely peace he could no more abide, But to the land on which the victor's flame Had fed, my native land, the Hermit came: Each heart was there a shield, and every tongue Was as a sword of truth-young Laon's name Rallied their secret hopes, though tyrants sung lymns of triumphant joy our scatter'd tribes among.
■ For I have been thy passive instrument-
(As thus the old man spake, his countenance
Gleamed on me like a spirit's)- thou hast lent
To me, to all, the power to advance
Towards this unforeseen deliverance
From our ancestral chains-aye, thou didst rear
That lamp of hope on high, which time nor chance,
Nor change may not extinguish, and my share
Of good, was o'er the world its gather'd beams to bear.
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