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REVOLT OF ISLAM", BY MRS. SHELLEY

AUTHOR'S PREFACE.

The Poem which I now present to the world is an attempt from which I scarcely

dare to expect success, and in which a writer of established fame might fail

without disgrace. It is an experiment on the temper of the public mind, as to

how far a thirst for a happier condition of moral and political society

survives, among the enlightened and refined, the tempests which have shaken the

age in which we live. I have sought to enlist the harmony of metrical language,

the ethereal combinations of the fancy, the rapid and subtle transitions of

human passion, all those elements which essentially compose a Poem, in the cause

of a liberal and comprehensive morality; and in the view of kindling within the

bosoms of my readers a virtuous enthusiasm for those doctrines of liberty and

justice, that faith and hope in something good, which neither violence nor

misrepresentation nor prejudice can ever totally extinguish among mankind.

For this purpose I have chosen a story of human passion in its most universal

character, diversified with moving and romantic adventures, and appealing, in

contempt of all artificial opinions or institutions, to the common sympathies

of every human breast. I have made no attempt to recommend the motives which I

would substitute for those at present governing mankind, by methodical and

systematic argument. I would only awaken the feelings, so that the reader

should see the beauty of true virtue, and be incited to those inquiries which

have led to my moral and political creed, and that of some of the sublimest

intellects in the world. The Poem therefore (with the exception of the first

canto, which is purely introductory) is narrative, not didactic. It is a

succession of pictures illustrating the growth and progress of individual mind

aspiring after excellence, and devoted to the love of mankind; its influence in

refining and making pure the most daring and uncommon impulses of the

imagination, the understanding, and the senses; its impatience at 'all the

oppressions which are done under the sun;' its tendency to awaken public hope,

and to enlighten and improve mankind; the rapid effects of the application of

that tendency; the awakening of an immense nation from their slavery and

degradation to a true sense of moral dignity and freedom; the bloodless

dethronement of their oppressors, and the unveiling of the religious frauds by

which they had been deluded into submission; the tranquillity of successful

patriotism, and the universal toleration and benevolence of true philanthropy;

the treachery and barbarity of hired soldiers; vice not the object of

punishment and hatred, but kindness and pity; the faithlessness of tyrants; the

confederacy of the Rulers of the World and the restoration of the expelled

Dynasty by foreign arms; the massacre and extermination of the Patriots, and

the victory of established power; the consequences of legitimate

despotism,--civil war, famine, plague, superstition, and an utter extinction of

the domestic affections; the judicial murder of the advocates of Liberty; the

temporary triumph of oppression, that secure earnest of its final and

inevitable fall; the transient nature of ignorance and error and the eternity

of genius and virtue. Such is the series of delineations of which the Poem

consists. And, if the lofty passions with which it has been my scope to

distinguish this story shall not excite in the reader a generous impulse, an

ardent thirst for excellence, an interest profound and strong such as belongs

to no meaner desires, let not the failure be imputed to a natural unfitness for

human sympathy in these sublime and animating themes. It is the business of the

Poet to communicate to others the pleasure and the enthusiasm arising out of

those images and feelings in the vivid presence of which within his own mind

consists at once his inspiration and his reward.

The panic which, like an epidemic transport, seized upon all classes of men

during the excesses consequent upon the French Revolution, is gradually giving

place to sanity. It has ceased to be believed that whole generations of mankind

ought to consign themselves to a hopeless inheritance of ignorance and misery,

because a nation of men who had been dupes and slaves for centuries were

incapable of conducting themselves with the wisdom and tranquillity of freemen

so soon as some of their fetters were partially loosened. That their conduct

could not have been marked by any other characters than ferocity and

thoughtlessness is the historical fact from which liberty derives all its

recommendations, and falsehood the worst features of its deformity. There is a

reflux in the tide of human things which bears the shipwrecked hopes of men

into a secure haven after the storms are past. Methinks, those who now live

have survived an age of despair. The French Revolution may be considered as one

of those manifestations of a general state of feeling among civilised mankind

produced by a defect of correspondence between the knowledge existing in

society and the improvement or gradual abolition of political institutions. The

year 1788 may be assumed as the epoch of one of the most important crises

produced by this feeling. The sympathies connected with that event extended to

every bosom. The most generous and amiable natures were those which

participated the most extensively in these sympathies. But such a degree of

unmingled good was expected as it was impossible to realise. If the Revolution

had been in every respect prosperous, then misrule and superstition would lose

half their claims to our abhorrence, as fetters which the captive can unlock

with the slightest motion of his fingers, and which do not eat with poisonous

rust into the soul. The revulsion occasioned by the atrocities of the

demagogues, and the re-establishment of successive tyrannies in France, was

terrible, and felt in the remotest corner of the civilised world. Could they

listen to the plea of reason who had groaned under the calamities of a social

state according to the provisions of which one man riots in luxury whilst

another famishes for want of bread? Can he who the day before was a trampled

slave suddenly become liberal-minded, forbearing, and independent? This is the

consequence of the habits of a state of society to be produced by resolute

perseverance and indefatigable hope, and long-suffering and long-believing

courage, and the systematic efforts of generations of men of intellect and

virtue. Such is the lesson which experience teaches now. But, on the first

reverses of hope in the progress of French liberty, the sanguine eagerness for

good overleaped the solution of these questions, and for a time extinguished

itself in the unexpectedness of their result. Thus, many of the most ardent and

tender-hearted of the worshippers of public good have been morally ruined by

what a partial glimpse of the events they deplored appeared to show as the

melancholy desolation of all their cherished hopes. Hence gloom and misanthropy

have become the characteristics of the age in which we live, the solace of a

disappointment that unconsciously finds relief only in the wilful exaggeration

of its own despair. This influence has tainted the literature of the age with

the hopelessness of the minds from which it flows. Metaphysics (I ought to

except sir W. Drummond's "Academical Questions"; a volume of very acute and

powerful metaphysical criticism.), and inquiries into moral and political

science, have become little else than vain attempts to revive exploded

superstitions, or sophisms like those of Mr. Malthus (It is remarkable, as a

symptom of the revival of public hope, that Mr. Malthus has assigned, in the

later editions of his work, an indefinite dominion to moral restraint over the

principle of population. This concession answers all the inferences from his

doctrine unfavourable to human improvement, and reduces the "Essay on

Population" to a commentary illustrative of the unanswerableness of "Political

Justice".), calculated to lull the oppressors of mankind into a security of

everlasting triumph. Our works of fiction and poetry have been overshadowed by

the same infectious gloom. But mankind appear to me to be emerging from their

trance. I am aware, methinks, of a slow, gradual, silent change. In that belief

with our greatest contemporary Poets. Yet I am unwilling to tread in the

footsteps of any who have preceded me. I have sought to avoid the imitation of

any style of language or versification peculiar to the original minds of which

it is the character; designing that, even if what I have produced be worthless,

it should still be properly my own. Nor have I permitted any system relating to

mere words to divert the attention of the reader, from whatever interest I may

have succeeded in creating, to my own ingenuity in contriving to disgust them

according to the rules of criticism. I have simply clothed my thoughts in what

appeared to me the most obvious and appropriate language. A person familiar

with nature, and with the most celebrated productions of the human mind, can

scarcely err in following the instinct, with respect to selection of language,

produced by that familiarity.

There is an education peculiarly fitted for a Poet, without which genius and

sensibility can hardly fill the circle of their capacities. No education,

indeed, can entitle to this appellation a dull and unobservant mind, or one,

though neither dull nor unobservant, in which the channels of communication

between thought and expression have been obstructed or closed. How far it is my

fortune to belong to either of the latter classes I cannot know. I aspire to be

something better. The circumstances of my accidental education have been

favourable to this ambition. I have been familiar from boyhood with mountains

and lakes and the sea, and the solitude of forests: Danger, which sports upon

the brink of precipices, has been my playmate. I have trodden the glaciers of

the Alps, and lived under the eye of Mont Blanc. I have been a wanderer among

distant fields. I have sailed down mighty rivers, and seen the sun rise and

set, and the stars come forth, whilst I have sailed night and day down a rapid

stream among mountains. I have seen populous cities, and have watched the

passions which rise and spread, and sink and change, amongst assembled

multitudes of men. I have seen the theatre of the more visible ravages of

tyranny and war, cities and villages reduced to scattered groups of black and

roofless houses, and the naked inhabitants sitting famished upon their

desolated thresholds. I have conversed with living men of genius. The poetry of

ancient Greece and Rome, and modern Italy, and our own country, has been to me,

like external nature, a passion and an enjoyment. Such are the sources from

which the materials for the imagery of my Poem have been drawn. I have

considered Poetry in its most comprehensive sense; and have read the Poets and

the Historians and the Metaphysicians (In this sense there may be such a thing

as perfectibility in works of fiction, notwithstanding the concession often

made by the advocates of human improvement, that perfectibility is a term

applicable only to science.) whose writings have been accessible to me, and

have looked upon the beautiful and majestic scenery of the earth, as common

sources of those elements which it is the province of the Poet to embody and

combine. Yet the experience and the feelings to which I refer do not in

themselves constitute men Poets, but only prepares them to be the auditors of

those who are. How far I shall be found to possess that more essential

attribute of Poetry, the power of awakening in others sensations like those

which animate my own bosom, is that which, to speak sincerely, I know not; and

which, with an acquiescent and contented spirit, I expect to be taught by the

effect which I shall produce upon those whom I now address.

I have avoided, as I have said before, the imitation of any contemporary style.

But there must be a resemblance, which does not depend upon their own will,

between all the writers of any particular age. They cannot escape from

subjection to a common influence which arises out of an infinite combination of

circumstances belonging to the times in which they live; though each is in a

degree the author of the very influence by which his being is thus pervaded.

Thus, the tragic poets of the age of Pericles; the Italian revivers of ancient

learning; those mighty intellects of our own country that succeeded the

Reformation, the translators of the Bible, Shakespeare, Spenser, the Dramatists

of the reign of Elizabeth, and Lord Bacon (Milton stands alone in the age which

he illumined.); the colder spirits of the interval that succeeded;--all

resemble each other, and differ from every other in their several classes. In

this view of things, Ford can no more be called the imitator of Shakespeare

than Shakespeare the imitator of Ford. There were perhaps few other points of

resemblance between these two men than that which the universal and inevitable

influence of their age produced. And this is an influence which neither the

meanest scribbler nor the sublimest genius of any era can escape; and which I

have not attempted to escape.

I have adopted the stanza of Spenser (a measure inexpressibly beautiful), not

because I consider it a finer model of poetical harmony than the blank verse of

Shakespeare and Milton, but because in the latter there is no shelter for

mediocrity; you must either succeed or fail. This perhaps an aspiring spirit

should desire. But I was enticed also by the brilliancy and magnificence of

sound which a mind that has been nourished upon musical thoughts can produce by

a just and harmonious arrangement of the pauses of this measure. Yet there

will be found some instances where I have completely failed in this attempt,

and one, which I here request the reader to consider as an erratum, where there

is left, most inadvertently, an alexandrine in the middle of a stanza.

But in this, as in every other respect, I have written fearlessly. It is the

misfortune of this age that its Writers, too thoughtless of immortality, are

exquisitely sensible to temporary praise or blame. They write with the fear of

Reviews before their eyes. This system of criticism sprang up in that torpid

interval when Poetry was not. Poetry, and the art which professes to regulate

and limit its powers, cannot subsist together. Longinus could not have been the

contemporary of Homer, nor Boileau of Horace. Yet this species of criticism

never presumed to assert an understanding of its own; it has always, unlike

true science, followed, not preceded, the opinion of mankind, and would even

now bribe with worthless adulation some of our greatest Poets to impose

gratuitous fetters on their own imaginations, and become unconscious

accomplices in the daily murder of all genius either not so aspiring or not so

fortunate as their own. I have sought therefore to write, as I believe that

Homer, Shakespeare, and Milton wrote, with an utter disregard of anonymous

censure. I am certain that calumny and misrepresentation, though it may move me

to compassion, cannot disturb my peace. I shall understand the expressive

silence of those sagacious enemies who dare not trust themselves to speak. I

shall endeavour to extract, from the midst of insult and contempt and

maledictions, those admonitions which may tend to correct whatever

imperfections such censurers may discover in this my first serious appeal to

the Public. If certain Critics were as clear-sighted as they are malignant, how

great would be the benefit to be derived from their virulent writings! As it

is, I fear I shall be malicious enough to be amused with their paltry tricks

and lame invectives. Should the Public judge that my composition is worthless,

I shall indeed bow before the tribunal from which Milton received his crown of

immortality, and shall seek to gather, if I live, strength from that defeat,

which may nerve me to some new enterprise of thought which may not be

worthless. I cannot conceive that Lucretius, when he meditated that poem whose

doctrines are yet the basis of our metaphysical knowledge, and whose eloquence

has been the wonder of mankind, wrote in awe of such censure as the hired

sophists of the impure and superstitious noblemen of Rome might affix to what

he should produce. It was at the period when Greece was led captive and Asia

made tributary to the Republic, fast verging itself to slavery and ruin, that a

multitude of Syrian captives, bigoted to the worship of their obscene

Ashtaroth, and the unworthy successors of Socrates and Zeno, found there a

precarious subsistence by administering, under the name of freedmen, to the

vices and vanities of the great. These wretched men were skilled to plead,

with a superficial but plausible set of sophisms, in favour of that

contempt for virtue which is the portion of slaves, and that faith in portents,

the most fatal substitute for benevolence in the imaginations of men, which,

arising from the enslaved communities of the East, then first began to

overwhelm the western nations in its stream. Were these the kind of men whose

disapprobation the wise and lofty-minded Lucretius should have regarded with a

salutary awe? The latest and perhaps the meanest of those who follow in his

footsteps would disdain to hold life on such conditions.

The Poem now presented to the Public occupied little more than six months in

the composition. That period has been devoted to the task with unremitting

ardour and enthusiasm. I have exercised a watchful and earnest criticism on my

work as it grew under my hands. I would willingly have sent it forth to the

world with that perfection which long labour and revision is said to bestow.

But I found that, if I should gain something in exactness by this method, I

might lose much of the newness and energy of imagery and language as it flowed

fresh from my mind. And, although the mere composition occupied no more than

six months, the thoughts thus arranged were slowly gathered in as many years.

I trust that the reader will carefully distinguish between those opinions which

have a dramatic propriety in reference to the characters which they are

designed to elucidate, and such as are properly my own. The erroneous and

degrading idea which men have conceived of a Supreme Being, for instance, is

spoken against, but not the Supreme Being itself. The belief which some

superstitious persons whom I have brought upon the stage entertain of the

Deity, as injurious to the character of his benevolence, is widely different

from my own. In recommending also a great and important change in the spirit

which animates the social institutions of mankind, I have avoided all flattery

to those violent and malignant passions of our nature which are ever on the

watch to mingle with and to alloy the most beneficial innovations. There is no

quarter given to Revenge, or Envy, or Prejudice. Love is celebrated everywhere

as the sole law which should govern the moral world.

DEDICATION.

There is no danger to a man that knows What life and death is: there's not any

law Exceeds his knowledge; neither is it lawful That he should stoop to any

other law.--CHAPMAN.

TO MARY -- --.

1. So now my summer-task is ended, Mary, And I return to thee, mine own heart's

home; As to his Queen some victor Knight of Faery, Earning bright spoils for her

enchanted dome; Nor thou disdain, that ere my fame become A star among the stars

of mortal night, If it indeed may cleave its natal gloom, Its doubtful promise

thus I would unite With thy beloved name, thou Child of love and light.

2. The toil which stole from thee so many an hour, Is ended,--and the fruit is

at thy feet! No longer where the woods to frame a bower With interlaced branches

mix and meet, Or where with sound like many voices sweet, Waterfalls leap among

wild islands green, Which framed for my lone boat a lone retreat Of moss-grown

trees and weeds, shall I be seen; But beside thee, where still my heart has ever

been.

3. Thoughts of great deeds were mine, dear Friend, when first The clouds which

wrap this world from youth did pass. I do remember well the hour which burst My

spirit's sleep. A fresh May-dawn it was, When I walked forth upon the

glittering grass, And wept, I knew not why; until there rose From the near

schoolroom, voices that, alas! Were but one echo from a world of woes-- The

harsh and grating strife of tyrants and of foes.

4. And then I clasped my hands and looked around-- --But none was near to mock

my streaming eyes, Which poured their warm drops on the sunny ground-- So

without shame I spake:--'I will be wise, And just, and free, and mild, if in me

lies Such power, for I grow weary to behold The selfish and the strong still

tyrannise Without reproach or check.' I then controlled My tears, my heart grew

calm, and I was meek and bold.

5. And from that hour did I with earnest thought Heap knowledge from forbidden

mines of lore; Yet nothing that my tyrants knew or taught I cared to learn, but

from that secret store Wrought linked armour for my soul, before It might walk

forth to war among mankind; Thus power and hope were strengthened more and more

Within me, till there came upon my mind A sense of loneliness, a thirst with

which I pined.

6. Alas, that love should be a blight and snare To those who seek all

sympathies in one!-- Such once I sought in vain; then black despair, The shadow

of a starless night, was thrown Over the world in which I moved alone:-- Yet

never found I one not false to me, Hard hearts, and cold, like weights of icy

stone Which crushed and withered mine, that could not be Aught but a lifeless

clod, until revived by thee.

7. Thou Friend, whose presence on my wintry heart Fell, like bright Spring upon

some herbless plain; How beautiful and calm and free thou wert In thy young

wisdom, when the mortal chain Of Custom thou didst burst and rend in twain, And

walked as free as light the clouds among, Which many an envious slave then

breathed in vain From his dim dungeon, and my spirit sprung To meet thee from

the woes which had begirt it long!

8. No more alone through the world's wilderness, Although I trod the paths of

high intent, I journeyed now: no more companionless, Where solitude is like

despair, I went.-- There is the wisdom of a stern content When Poverty can

blight the just and good, When Infamy dares mock the innocent, And cherished

friends turn with the multitude To trample: this was ours, and we unshaken

stood!

9. Now has descended a serener hour, And with inconstant fortune, friends

return; Though suffering leaves the knowledge and the power Which says:--Let

scorn be not repaid with scorn. And from thy side two gentle babes are born To

fill our home with smiles, and thus are we Most fortunate beneath life's

beaming morn; And these delights, and thou, have been to me The parents of the

Song I consecrate to thee.

10. Is it that now my inexperienced fingers But strike the prelude of a loftier

strain? Or, must the lyre on which my spirit lingers Soon pause in silence,

ne'er to sound again, Though it might shake the Anarch Custom's reign, And

charm the minds of men to Truth's own sway Holier than was Amphion's? I would

fain Reply in hope--but I am worn away, And Death and Love are yet contending

for their prey.

11. And what art thou? I know, but dare not speak: Time may interpret to his

silent years. Yet in the paleness of thy thoughtful cheek, And in the light

thine ample forehead wears, And in thy sweetest smiles, and in thy tears, And

in thy gentle speech, a prophecy Is whispered, to subdue my fondest fears: And

through thine eyes, even in thy soul I see A lamp of vestal fire burning

internally.

12. They say that thou wert lovely from thy birth, Of glorious parents thou

aspiring Child. I wonder not--for One then left this earth Whose life was like

a setting planet mild, Which clothed thee in the radiance undefiled Of its

departing glory; still her fame Shines on thee, through the tempests dark and

wild Which shake these latter days; and thou canst claim The shelter, from thy

Sire, of an immortal name.

13. One voice came forth from many a mighty spirit, Which was the echo of three

thousand years; And the tumultuous world stood mute to hear it, As some lone

man who in a desert hears The music of his home:--unwonted fears Fell on the

pale oppressors of our race, And Faith, and Custom, and low-thoughted cares,

Like thunder-stricken dragons, for a space Left the torn human heart, their

food and dwelling-place.

14. Truth's deathless voice pauses among mankind! If there must be no response

to my cry-- If men must rise and stamp with fury blind On his pure name who

loves them,--thou and I, Sweet friend! can look from our tranquillity Like

lamps into the world's tempestuous night,-- Two tranquil stars, while clouds

are passing by Which wrap them from the foundering seaman's sight, That burn

from year to year with unextinguished light.

CANTO 1.

1. When the last hope of trampled France had failed Like a brief dream of

unremaining glory, From visions of despair I rose, and scaled The peak of an

aerial promontory, Whose caverned base with the vexed surge was hoary; And saw

the golden dawn break forth, and waken Each cloud, and every wave:--but

transitory The calm; for sudden, the firm earth was shaken, As if by the last

wreck its frame were overtaken.

2. So as I stood, one blast of muttering thunder Burst in far peals along the

waveless deep, When, gathering fast, around, above, and under, Long trains of

tremulous mist began to creep, Until their complicating lines did steep The

orient sun in shadow:--not a sound Was heard; one horrible repose did keep The

forests and the floods, and all around Darkness more dread than night was

poured upon the ground.

3. Hark! 'tis the rushing of a wind that sweeps Earth and the ocean. See! the

lightnings yawn Deluging Heaven with fire, and the lashed deeps Glitter and

boil beneath: it rages on, One mighty stream, whirlwind and waves upthrown,

Lightning, and hail, and darkness eddying by. There is a pause--the sea-birds,

that were gone Into their caves to shriek, come forth, to spy What calm has

fall'n on earth, what light is in the sky.

4. For, where the irresistible storm had cloven That fearful darkness, the blue

sky was seen Fretted with many a fair cloud interwoven Most delicately, and the

ocean green, Beneath that opening spot of blue serene, Quivered like burning

emerald; calm was spread On all below; but far on high, between Earth and the

upper air, the vast clouds fled, Countless and swift as leaves on autumn's

tempest shed.

5. For ever, as the war became more fierce Between the whirlwinds and the rack

on high, That spot grew more serene; blue light did pierce The woof of those

white clouds, which seem to lie Far, deep, and motionless; while through the

sky The pallid semicircle of the moon Passed on, in slow and moving majesty;

Its upper horn arrayed in mists, which soon But slowly fled, like dew beneath

the beams of noon.

6. I could not choose but gaze; a fascination Dwelt in that moon, and sky, and

clouds, which drew My fancy thither, and in expectation Of what I knew not, I

remained:--the hue Of the white moon, amid that heaven so blue, Suddenly

stained with shadow did appear; A speck, a cloud, a shape, approaching grew,

Like a great ship in the sun's sinking sphere Beheld afar at sea, and swift it

came anear.

7. Even like a bark, which from a chasm of mountains, Dark, vast and

overhanging, on a river Which there collects the strength of all its fountains,

Comes forth, whilst with the speed its frame doth quiver, Sails, oars and

stream, tending to one endeavour; So, from that chasm of light a winged Form On

all the winds of heaven approaching ever Floated, dilating as it came; the

storm Pursued it with fierce blasts, and lightnings swift and warm.

8. A course precipitous, of dizzy speed, Suspending thought and breath; a

monstrous sight! For in the air do I behold indeed An Eagle and a Serpent

wreathed in fight:-- And now, relaxing its impetuous flight, Before the aerial

rock on which I stood, The Eagle, hovering, wheeled to left and right, And hung

with lingering wings over the flood, And startled with its yells the wide air's

solitude.

9. A shaft of light upon its wings descended, And every golden feather gleamed

therein-- Feather and scale, inextricably blended. The Serpent's mailed and

many-coloured skin Shone through the plumes its coils were twined within By

many a swoln and knotted fold, and high And far, the neck, receding lithe and

thin, Sustained a crested head, which warily Shifted and glanced before the

Eagle's steadfast eye.

10. Around, around, in ceaseless circles wheeling With clang of wings and

scream, the Eagle sailed Incessantly--sometimes on high concealing Its

lessening orbs, sometimes as if it failed, Drooped through the air; and still

it shrieked and wailed, And casting back its eager head, with beak And talon

unremittingly assailed The wreathed Serpent, who did ever seek Upon his enemy's

heart a mortal wound to wreak.

11. What life, what power, was kindled and arose Within the sphere of that

appalling fray! For, from the encounter of those wondrous foes, A vapour like

the sea's suspended spray Hung gathered; in the void air, far away, Floated the

shattered plumes; bright scales did leap, Where'er the Eagle's talons made

their way, Like sparks into the darkness;--as they sweep, Blood stains the

snowy foam of the tumultuous deep.

12. Swift chances in that combat--many a check, And many a change, a dark and

wild turmoil; Sometimes the Snake around his enemy's neck Locked in stiff rings

his adamantine coil, Until the Eagle, faint with pain and toil, Remitted his

strong flight, and near the sea Languidly fluttered, hopeless so to foil His

adversary, who then reared on high His red and burning crest, radiant with

victory.

13. Then on the white edge of the bursting surge, Where they had sunk together,

would the Snake Relax his suffocating grasp, and scourge The wind with his wild

writhings; for to break That chain of torment, the vast bird would shake The

strength of his unconquerable wings As in despair, and with his sinewy neck,

Dissolve in sudden shock those linked rings-- Then soar, as swift as smoke from

a volcano springs.

14. Wile baffled wile, and strength encountered strength, Thus long, but

unprevailing:--the event Of that portentous fight appeared at length: Until the

lamp of day was almost spent It had endured, when lifeless, stark, and rent,

Hung high that mighty Serpent, and at last Fell to the sea, while o'er the

continent With clang of wings and scream the Eagle passed, Heavily borne away

on the exhausted blast.

15. And with it fled the tempest, so that ocean And earth and sky shone through

the atmosphere-- Only, 'twas strange to see the red commotion Of waves like

mountains o'er the sinking sphere Of sunset sweep, and their fierce roar to

hear Amid the calm: down the steep path I wound To the sea-shore--the evening

was most clear And beautiful, and there the sea I found Calm as a cradled child

in dreamless slumber bound.

16. There was a Woman, beautiful as morning, Sitting beneath the rocks, upon

the sand Of the waste sea--fair as one flower adorning An icy wilderness; each

delicate hand Lay crossed upon her bosom, and the band Of her dark hair had

fall'n, and so she sate Looking upon the waves; on the bare strand Upon the

sea-mark a small boat did wait, Fair as herself, like Love by Hope left

desolate.

17. It seemed that this fair Shape had looked upon That unimaginable fight, and

now That her sweet eyes were weary of the sun, As brightly it illustrated her

woe; For in the tears which silently to flow Paused not, its lustre hung: she

watching aye The foam-wreaths which the faint tide wove below Upon the spangled

sands, groaned heavily, And after every groan looked up over the sea.

18. And when she saw the wounded Serpent make His path between the waves, her

lips grew pale, Parted, and quivered; the tears ceased to break From her

immovable eyes; no voice of wail Escaped her; but she rose, and on the gale

Loosening her star-bright robe and shadowy hair Poured forth her voice; the

caverns of the vale That opened to the ocean, caught it there, And filled with

silver sounds the overflowing air.

19. She spake in language whose strange melody Might not belong to earth. I

heard alone, What made its music more melodious be, The pity and the love of

every tone; But to the Snake those accents sweet were known His native tongue

and hers; nor did he beat The hoar spray idly then, but winding on Through the

green shadows of the waves that meet Near to the shore, did pause beside her

snowy feet.

20. Then on the sands the Woman sate again, And wept and clasped her hands, and

all between, Renewed the unintelligible strain Of her melodious voice and

eloquent mien; And she unveiled her bosom, and the green And glancing shadows

of the sea did play O'er its marmoreal depth:--one moment seen, For ere the

next, the Serpent did obey Her voice, and, coiled in rest in her embrace it

lay.

21. Then she arose, and smiled on me with eyes Serene yet sorrowing, like that

planet fair, While yet the daylight lingereth in the skies Which cleaves with

arrowy beams the dark-red air, And said: 'To grieve is wise, but the despair

Was weak and vain which led thee here from sleep: This shalt thou know, and

more, if thou dost dare

With me and with this Serpent, o'er the deep, A voyage divine and strange,

companionship to keep.'

22. Her voice was like the wildest, saddest tone, Yet sweet, of some loved

voice heard long ago. I wept. 'Shall this fair woman all alone, Over the sea

with that fierce Serpent go? His head is on her heart, and who can know How

soon he may devour his feeble prey?'-- Such were my thoughts, when the tide gan

to flow; And that strange boat like the moon's shade did sway Amid reflected

stars that in the waters lay:--

23. A boat of rare device, which had no sail But its own curved prow of thin

moonstone, Wrought like a web of texture fine and frail, To catch those

gentlest winds which are not known To breathe, but by the steady speed alone

With which it cleaves the sparkling sea; and now We are embarked--the mountains

hang and frown Over the starry deep that gleams below, A vast and dim expanse,

as o'er the waves we go.

24. And as we sailed, a strange and awful tale That Woman told, like such

mysterious dream As makes the slumberer's cheek with wonder pale! 'Twas

midnight, and around, a shoreless stream, Wide ocean rolled, when that majestic

theme Shrined in her heart found utterance, and she bent Her looks on mine;

those eyes a kindling beam Of love divine into my spirit sent, And ere her lips

could move, made the air eloquent.

25. 'Speak not to me, but hear! Much shalt thou learn, Much must remain

unthought, and more untold, In the dark Future's ever-flowing urn: Know then,

that from the depth of ages old Two Powers o'er mortal things dominion hold,

Ruling the world with a divided lot, Immortal, all-pervading, manifold, Twin

Genii, equal Gods--when life and thought Sprang forth, they burst the womb of

inessential Nought.

26. 'The earliest dweller of the world, alone, Stood on the verge of chaos. Lo!

afar O'er the wide wild abyss two meteors shone, Sprung from the depth of its

tempestuous jar: A blood-red Comet and the Morning Star Mingling their beams in

combat--as he stood, All thoughts within his mind waged mutual war, In dreadful

sympathy--when to the flood That fair Star fell, he turned and shed his

brother's blood.

27. 'Thus evil triumphed, and the Spirit of evil, One Power of many shapes

which none may know, One Shape of many names; the Fiend did revel In victory,

reigning o'er a world of woe, For the new race of man went to and fro, Famished

and homeless, loathed and loathing, wild, And hating good--for his immortal

foe, He changed from starry shape, beauteous and mild, To a dire Snake, with

man and beast unreconciled.

28. 'The darkness lingering o'er the dawn of things, Was Evil's breath and

life; this made him strong To soar aloft with overshadowing wings; And the

great Spirit of Good did creep among The nations of mankind, and every tongue

Cursed and blasphemed him as he passed; for none Knew good from evil, though

their names were hung In mockery o'er the fane where many a groan, As King, and

Lord, and God, the conquering Fiend did own,--

29. 'The Fiend, whose name was Legion: Death, Decay, Earthquake and Blight, and

Want, and Madness pale, Winged and wan diseases, an array Numerous as leaves

that strew the autumnal gale; Poison, a snake in flowers, beneath the veil Of

food and mirth, hiding his mortal head; And, without whom all these might

nought avail, Fear, Hatred, Faith, and Tyranny, who spread Those subtle nets

which snare the living and the dead.

30. 'His spirit is their power, and they his slaves In air, and light, and

thought, and language, dwell; And keep their state from palaces to graves, In

all resorts of men--invisible, But when, in ebon mirror, Nightmare fell To

tyrant or impostor bids them rise, Black winged demon forms--whom, from the

hell, His reign and dwelling beneath nether skies, He loosens to their dark and

blasting ministries.

31. 'In the world's youth his empire was as firm As its foundations...Soon the

Spirit of Good, Though in the likeness of a loathsome worm, Sprang from the

billows of the formless flood, Which shrank and fled; and with that Fiend of

blood Renewed the doubtful war...Thrones then first shook, And earth's immense

and trampled multitude In hope on their own powers began to look, And Fear, the

demon pale, his sanguine shrine forsook.

32. 'Then Greece arose, and to its bards and sages, In dream, the

golden-pinioned Genii came, Even where they slept amid the night of ages,

Steeping their hearts in the divinest flame Which thy breath kindled, Power of

holiest name! And oft in cycles since, when darkness gave New weapons to thy

foe, their sunlike fame Upon the combat shone--a light to save, Like Paradise

spread forth beyond the shadowy grave.

33. 'Such is this conflict--when mankind doth strive With its oppressors in a

strife of blood, Or when free thoughts, like lightnings, are alive, And in each

bosom of the multitude Justice and truth with Custom's hydra brood Wage silent

war; when Priests and Kings dissemble In smiles or frowns their fierce

disquietude, When round pure hearts a host of hopes assemble, The Snake and

Eagle meet--the world's foundations tremble!

34. 'Thou hast beheld that fight--when to thy home Thou dost return, steep not

its hearth in tears; Though thou may'st hear that earth is now become The

tyrant's garbage, which to his compeers, The vile reward of their dishonoured

years, He will dividing give.--The victor Fiend, Omnipotent of yore, now

quails, and fears His triumph dearly won, which soon will lend An impulse swift

and sure to his approaching end.

35. 'List, stranger, list, mine is an human form, Like that thou wearest--touch

me--shrink not now! My hand thou feel'st is not a ghost's, but warm With human

blood.--'Twas many years ago, Since first my thirsting soul aspired to know The

secrets of this wondrous world, when deep My heart was pierced with sympathy,

for woe Which could not be mine own, and thought did keep, In dream, unnatural

watch beside an infant's sleep.

36. 'Woe could not be mine own, since far from men I dwelt, a free and happy

orphan child, By the sea-shore, in a deep mountain glen; And near the waves,

and through the forests wild, I roamed, to storm and darkness reconciled: For I

was calm while tempest shook the sky: But when the breathless heavens in beauty

smiled, I wept, sweet tears, yet too tumultuously For peace, and clasped my

hands aloft in ecstasy.

37. 'These were forebodings of my fate--before A woman's heart beat in my

virgin breast, It had been nurtured in divinest lore: A dying poet gave me

books, and blessed With wild but holy talk the sweet unrest In which I watched

him as he died away-- A youth with hoary hair--a fleeting guest Of our lone

mountains: and this lore did sway My spirit like a storm, contending there

alway.

38. 'Thus the dark tale which history doth unfold I knew, but not, methinks, as

others know, For they weep not; and Wisdom had unrolled The clouds which hide

the gulf of mortal woe,-- To few can she that warning vision show-- For I loved

all things with intense devotion; So that when Hope's deep source in fullest

flow, Like earthquake did uplift the stagnant ocean Of human thoughts--mine

shook beneath the wide emotion.

39. 'When first the living blood through all these veins Kindled a thought in

sense, great France sprang forth, And seized, as if to break, the ponderous

chains Which bind in woe the nations of the earth. I saw, and started from my

cottage-hearth; And to the clouds and waves in tameless gladness Shrieked, till

they caught immeasurable mirth-- And laughed in light and music: soon, sweet

madness Was poured upon my heart, a soft and thrilling sadness.

40. 'Deep slumber fell on me:--my dreams were fire-- Soft and delightful

thoughts did rest and hover Like shadows o'er my brain; and strange desire, The

tempest of a passion, raging over My tranquil soul, its depths with light did

cover, Which passed; and calm, and darkness, sweeter far, Came--then I loved;

but not a human lover! For when I rose from sleep, the Morning Star Shone

through the woodbine-wreaths which round my casement were.

41. ''Twas like an eye which seemed to smile on me. I watched, till by the sun

made pale, it sank Under the billows of the heaving sea; But from its beams

deep love my spirit drank, And to my brain the boundless world now shrank Into

one thought--one image--yes, for ever! Even like the dayspring, poured on

vapours dank, The beams of that one Star did shoot and quiver Through my

benighted mind--and were extinguished never.

42. 'The day passed thus: at night, methought, in dream A shape of speechless

beauty did appear: It stood like light on a careering stream Of golden clouds

which shook the atmosphere; A winged youth, his radiant brow did wear The

Morning Star: a wild dissolving bliss Over my frame he breathed, approaching

near, And bent his eyes of kindling tenderness Near mine, and on my lips

impressed a lingering kiss,--

43. 'And said: "A Spirit loves thee, mortal maiden, How wilt thou prove thy

worth?" Then joy and sleep Together fled; my soul was deeply laden, And to the

shore I went to muse and weep; But as I moved, over my heart did creep A joy

less soft, but more profound and strong Than my sweet dream; and it forbade to

keep The path of the sea-shore: that Spirit's tongue Seemed whispering in my

heart, and bore my steps along.

44. 'How, to that vast and peopled city led, Which was a field of holy warfare

then, I walked among the dying and the dead, And shared in fearless deeds with

evil men, Calm as an angel in the dragon's den-- How I braved death for liberty

and truth, And spurned at peace, and power, and fame--and when Those hopes had

lost the glory of their youth, How sadly I returned--might move the hearer's

ruth:

45. 'Warm tears throng fast! the tale may not be said-- Know then, that when

this grief had been subdued, I was not left, like others, cold and dead; The

Spirit whom I loved, in solitude Sustained his child: the tempest-shaken wood,

The waves, the fountains, and the hush of night-- These were his voice, and

well I understood His smile divine, when the calm sea was bright With silent

stars, and Heaven was breathless with delight.

46. 'In lonely glens, amid the roar of rivers, When the dim nights were

moonless, have I known Joys which no tongue can tell; my pale lip quivers When

thought revisits them:--know thou alone, That after many wondrous years were

flown, I was awakened by a shriek of woe; And over me a mystic robe was thrown,

By viewless hands, and a bright Star did glow Before my steps--the Snake then

met his mortal foe.'

47. 'Thou fearest not then the Serpent on thy heart?' 'Fear it!' she said, with

brief and passionate cry, And spake no more: that silence made me start-- I

looked, and we were sailing pleasantly, Swift as a cloud between the sea and

sky; Beneath the rising moon seen far away, Mountains of ice, like sapphire,

piled on high, Hemming the horizon round, in silence lay On the still

waters--these we did approach alway.

48. And swift and swifter grew the vessel's motion, So that a dizzy trance fell

on my brain-- Wild music woke me; we had passed the ocean Which girds the pole,

Nature's remotest reign-- And we glode fast o'er a pellucid plain Of waters,

azure with the noontide day. Ethereal mountains shone around--a Fane Stood in

the midst, girt by green isles which lay On the blue sunny deep, resplendent

far away.

49. It was a Temple, such as mortal hand Has never built, nor ecstasy, nor

dream Reared in the cities of enchanted land: 'Twas likest Heaven, ere yet

day's purple stream Ebbs o'er the western forest, while the gleam Of the

unrisen moon among the clouds Is gathering--when with many a golden beam The

thronging constellations rush in crowds, Paving with fire the sky and the

marmoreal floods.

50. Like what may be conceived of this vast dome, When from the depths which

thought can seldom pierce Genius beholds it rise, his native home, Girt by the

deserts of the Universe; Yet, nor in painting's light, or mightier verse, Or

sculpture's marble language, can invest That shape to mortal sense--such glooms

immerse That incommunicable sight, and rest Upon the labouring brain and

overburdened breast.

51. Winding among the lawny islands fair, Whose blosmy forests starred the

shadowy deep, The wingless boat paused where an ivory stair Its fretwork in the

crystal sea did steep, Encircling that vast Fane's aerial heap: We disembarked,

and through a portal wide We passed--whose roof of moonstone carved, did keep A

glimmering o'er the forms on every side, Sculptures like life and thought,

immovable, deep-eyed.

52. We came to a vast hall, whose glorious roof Was diamond, which had drunk

the lightning's sheen In darkness, and now poured it through the woof

Of spell-inwoven clouds hung there to screen Its blinding splendour--through

such veil was seen That work of subtlest power, divine and rare; Orb above orb,

with starry shapes between, And horned moons, and meteors strange and fair, On

night-black columns poised--one hollow hemisphere!

53. Ten thousand columns in that quivering light Distinct--between whose shafts

wound far away The long and labyrinthine aisles--more bright With their own

radiance than the Heaven of Day; And on the jasper walls around, there lay

Paintings, the poesy of mightiest thought, Which did the Spirit's history

display; A tale of passionate change, divinely taught, Which, in their winged

dance, unconscious Genii wrought.

54. Beneath, there sate on many a sapphire throne, The Great, who had departed

from mankind, A mighty Senate;--some, whose white hair shone Like mountain

snow, mild, beautiful, and blind; Some, female forms, whose gestures beamed

with mind; And ardent youths, and children bright and fair; And some had lyres

whose strings were intertwined With pale and clinging flames, which ever there

Waked faint yet thrilling sounds that pierced the crystal air.

55. One seat was vacant in the midst, a throne, Reared on a pyramid like

sculptured flame, Distinct with circling steps which rested on Their own deep

fire--soon as the Woman came Into that hall, she shrieked the Spirit's name And

fell; and vanished slowly from the sight. Darkness arose from her dissolving

frame, Which gathering, filled that dome of woven light, Blotting its sphered

stars with supernatural night.

56. Then first, two glittering lights were seen to glide In circles on the

amethystine floor, Small serpent eyes trailing from side to side, Like meteors

on a river's grassy shore, They round each other rolled, dilating more And

more--then rose, commingling into one, One clear and mighty planet hanging o'er

A cloud of deepest shadow, which was thrown Athwart the glowing steps and the

crystalline throne.

57. The cloud which rested on that cone of flame Was cloven; beneath the planet

sate a Form, Fairer than tongue can speak or thought may frame, The radiance of

whose limbs rose-like and warm Flowed forth, and did with softest light inform

The shadowy dome, the sculptures, and the state Of those assembled shapes--with

clinging charm Sinking upon their hearts and mine. He sate Majestic, yet most

mild--calm, yet compassionate.

58. Wonder and joy a passing faintness threw Over my brow--a hand supported me,

Whose touch was magic strength; an eye of blue Looked into mine, like

moonlight, soothingly; And a voice said:--'Thou must a listener be This

day--two mighty Spirits now return, Like birds of calm, from the world's raging

sea, They pour fresh light from Hope's immortal urn; A tale of human

power--despair not--list and learn!

59. I looked, and lo! one stood forth eloquently. His eyes were dark and deep,

and the clear brow Which shadowed them was like the morning sky, The cloudless

Heaven of Spring, when in their flow Through the bright air, the soft winds as

they blow Wake the green world--his gestures did obey The oracular mind that

made his features glow, And where his curved lips half-open lay, Passion's

divinest stream had made impetuous way.

60. Beneath the darkness of his outspread hair He stood thus beautiful; but

there was One Who sate beside him like his shadow there, And held his hand--far

lovelier; she was known To be thus fair, by the few lines alone Which through

her floating locks and gathered cloak, Glances of soul-dissolving glory,

shone:-- None else beheld her eyes--in him they woke Memories which found a

tongue as thus he silence broke.

CANTO 2.

1. The starlight smile of children, the sweet looks Of women, the fair breast

from which I fed, The murmur of the unreposing brooks, And the green light

which, shifting overhead, Some tangled bower of vines around me shed, The

shells on the sea-sand, and the wild flowers, The lamp-light through the

rafters cheerly spread, And on the twining flax--in life's young hours These

sights and sounds did nurse my spirit's folded powers.

2. In Argolis, beside the echoing sea, Such impulses within my mortal frame

Arose, and they were dear to memory, Like tokens of the dead:--but others came

Soon, in another shape: the wondrous fame Of the past world, the vital words

and deeds Of minds whom neither time nor change can tame, Traditions dark and

old, whence evil creeds Start forth, and whose dim shade a stream of poison

feeds.

3. I heard, as all have heard, the various story Of human life, and wept

unwilling tears. Feeble historians of its shame and glory, False disputants on

all its hopes and fears, Victims who worshipped ruin, chroniclers Of daily

scorn, and slaves who loathed their state Yet, flattering power, had given its

ministers A throne of judgement in the grave:--'twas fate, That among such as

these my youth should seek its mate.

4. The land in which I lived, by a fell bane Was withered up. Tyrants dwelt

side by side, And stabled in our homes,--until the chain Stifled the captive's

cry, and to abide That blasting curse men had no shame--all vied In evil, slave

and despot; fear with lust Strange fellowship through mutual hate had tied,

Like two dark serpents tangled in the dust, Which on the paths of men their

mingling poison thrust.

5. Earth, our bright home, its mountains and its waters, And the ethereal

shapes which are suspended Over its green expanse, and those fair daughters,

The clouds, of Sun and Ocean, who have blended The colours of the air since

first extended It cradled the young world, none wandered forth To see or feel;

a darkness had descended On every heart; the light which shows its worth, Must

among gentle thoughts and fearless take its birth.

6. This vital world, this home of happy spirits, Was as a dungeon to my blasted

kind; All that despair from murdered hope inherits They sought, and in their

helpless misery blind, A deeper prison and heavier chains did find, And

stronger tyrants:--a dark gulf before, The realm of a stern Ruler, yawned;

behind, Terror and Time conflicting drove, and bore On their tempestuous flood

the shrieking wretch from shore.

7. Out of that Ocean's wrecks had Guilt and Woe Framed a dark dwelling for

their homeless thought, And, starting at the ghosts which to and fro Glide o'er

its dim and gloomy strand, had brought The worship thence which they each other

taught. Well might men loathe their life, well might they turn Even to the ills

again from which they sought Such refuge after death!--well might they learn To

gaze on this fair world with hopeless unconcern!

8. For they all pined in bondage; body and soul, Tyrant and slave, victim and

torturer, bent Before one Power, to which supreme control Over their will by

their own weakness lent, Made all its many names omnipotent; All symbols of

things evil, all divine; And hymns of blood or mockery, which rent The air from

all its fanes, did intertwine Imposture's impious toils round each discordant

shrine.

9. I heard, as all have heard, life's various story, And in no careless heart

transcribed the tale; But, from the sneers of men who had grown hoary In shame

and scorn, from groans of crowds made pale By famine, from a mother's desolate

wail O'er her polluted child, from innocent blood Poured on the earth, and

brows anxious and pale With the heart's warfare, did I gather food To feed my

many thoughts--a tameless multitude!

10. I wandered through the wrecks of days departed Far by the desolated shore,

when even O'er the still sea and jagged islets darted The light of moonrise; in

the northern Heaven, Among the clouds near the horizon driven, The mountains

lay beneath one planet pale; Around me, broken tombs and columns riven Looked

vast in twilight, and the sorrowing gale Waked in those ruins gray its

everlasting wail!

11. I knew not who had framed these wonders then, Nor had I heard the story of

their deeds; But dwellings of a race of mightier men, And monuments of less

ungentle creeds Tell their own tale to him who wisely heeds The language which

they speak; and now, to me The moonlight making pale the blooming weeds, The

bright stars shining in the breathless sea, Interpreted those scrolls of mortal

mystery.

12. Such man has been, and such may yet become! Ay, wiser, greater, gentler

even than they Who on the fragments of yon shattered dome Have stamped the sign

of power--I felt the sway Of the vast stream of ages bear away My floating

thoughts--my heart beat loud and fast-- Even as a storm let loose beneath the

ray Of the still moon, my spirit onward passed Beneath truth's steady beams

upon its tumult cast.

13. It shall be thus no more! too long, too long, Sons of the glorious dead,

have ye lain bound In darkness and in ruin!--Hope is strong, Justice and Truth

their winged child have found-- Awake! arise! until the mighty sound Of your

career shall scatter in its gust The thrones of the oppressor, and the ground

Hide the last altar's unregarded dust, Whose Idol has so long betrayed your

impious trust!

14. It must be so--I will arise and waken The multitude, and like a sulphurous

hill, Which on a sudden from its snows has shaken The swoon of ages, it shall

burst and fill The world with cleansing fire; it must, it will-- It may not be

restrained!--and who shall stand Amid the rocking earthquake steadfast still,

But Laon? on high Freedom's desert land A tower whose marble walls the leagued

storms withstand!

15. One summer night, in commune with the hope Thus deeply fed, amid those

ruins gray I watched, beneath the dark sky's starry cope; And ever from that

hour upon me lay The burden of this hope, and night or day, In vision or in

dream, clove to my breast: Among mankind, or when gone far away To the lone

shores and mountains, 'twas a guest Which followed where I fled, and watched

when I did rest.

16. These hopes found words through which my spirit sought To weave a bondage

of such sympathy, As might create some response to the thought Which ruled me

now--and as the vapours lie Bright in the outspread morning's radiancy, So were

these thoughts invested with the light Of language: and all bosoms made reply

On which its lustre streamed, whene'er it might Through darkness wide and deep

those tranced spirits smite.

17. Yes, many an eye with dizzy tears was dim, And oft I thought to clasp my

own heart's brother, When I could feel the listener's senses swim, And hear his

breath its own swift gaspings smother Even as my words evoked them--and

another, And yet another, I did fondly deem, Felt that we all were sons of one

great mother; And the cold truth such sad reverse did seem As to awake in grief

from some delightful dream.

18. Yes, oft beside the ruined labyrinth Which skirts the hoary caves of the

green deep, Did Laon and his friend, on one gray plinth, Round whose worn base

the wild waves hiss and leap, Resting at eve, a lofty converse keep: And that

this friend was false, may now be said Calmly--that he like other men could

weep Tears which are lies, and could betray and spread Snares for that

guileless heart which for his own had bled.

19. Then, had no great aim recompensed my sorrow, I must have sought dark

respite from its stress In dreamless rest, in sleep that sees no morrow-- For

to tread life's dismaying wilderness Without one smile to cheer, one voice to

bless, Amid the snares and scoffs of human kind, Is hard--but I betrayed it

not, nor less With love that scorned return sought to unbind The interwoven

clouds which make its wisdom blind.

20. With deathless minds which leave where they have passed A path of light, my

soul communion knew; Till from that glorious intercourse, at last, As from a

mine of magic store, I drew Words which were weapons;--round my heart there

grew The adamantine armour of their power; And from my fancy wings of golden

hue Sprang forth--yet not alone from wisdom's tower, A minister of truth, these

plumes young Laon bore.

21. An orphan with my parents lived, whose eyes Were lodestars of delight,

which drew me home When I might wander forth; nor did I prize Aught human thing

beneath Heaven's mighty dome Beyond this child; so when sad hours were come,

And baffled hope like ice still clung to me, Since kin were cold, and friends

had now become Heartless and false, I turned from all, to be, Cythna, the only

source of tears and smiles to thee.

22. What wert thou then? A child most infantine, Yet wandering far beyond that

innocent age In all but its sweet looks and mien divine; Even then, methought,

with the world's tyrant rage A patient warfare thy young heart did wage, When

those soft eyes of scarcely conscious thought Some tale, or thine own fancies,

would engage To overflow with tears, or converse fraught With passion, o'er

their depths its fleeting light had wrought.

23. She moved upon this earth a shape of brightness, A power, that from its

objects scarcely drew One impulse of her being--in her lightness Most like some

radiant cloud of morning dew, Which wanders through the waste air's pathless

blue, To nourish some far desert; she did seem Beside me, gathering beauty as

she grew, Like the bright shade of some immortal dream Which walks, when

tempest sleeps, the wave of life's dark stream.

24. As mine own shadow was this child to me, A second self, far dearer and more

fair; Which clothed in undissolving radiancy All those steep paths which

languor and despair Of human things, had made so dark and bare, But which I

trod alone--nor, till bereft Of friends, and overcome by lonely care, Knew I

what solace for that loss was left, Though by a bitter wound my trusting heart

was cleft.

25. Once she was dear, now she was all I had To love in human life--this

playmate sweet, This child of twelve years old--so she was made My sole

associate, and her willing feet Wandered with mine where earth and ocean meet,

Beyond the aereal mountains whose vast cells The unreposing billows ever beat,

Through forests wild and old, and lawny dells Where boughs of incense droop

over the emerald wells.

26. And warm and light I felt her clasping hand When twined in mine; she

followed where I went, Through the lone paths of our immortal land. It had no

waste but some memorial lent Which strung me to my toil--some monument Vital

with mind; then Cythna by my side, Until the bright and beaming day were spent,

Would rest, with looks entreating to abide, Too earnest and too sweet ever to

be denied.

27. And soon I could not have refused her--thus For ever, day and night, we two

were ne'er Parted, but when brief sleep divided us: And when the pauses of the

lulling air Of noon beside the sea had made a lair For her soothed senses, in

my arms she slept, And I kept watch over her slumbers there, While, as the

shifting visions over her swept, Amid her innocent rest by turns she smiled and

wept.

28. And, in the murmur of her dreams was heard Sometimes the name of

Laon:--suddenly She would arise, and, like the secret bird Whom sunset wakens,

fill the shore and sky With her sweet accents, a wild melody! Hymns which my

soul had woven to Freedom, strong The source of passion, whence they rose, to

be; Triumphant strains, which, like a spirit's tongue, To the enchanted waves

that child of glory sung--

29. Her white arms lifted through the shadowy stream Of her loose hair. Oh,

excellently great Seemed to me then my purpose, the vast theme Of those

impassioned songs, when Cythna sate Amid the calm which rapture doth create

After its tumult, her heart vibrating, Her spirit o'er the Ocean's floating

state From her deep eyes far wandering, on the wing Of visions that were mine,

beyond its utmost spring!

30. For, before Cythna loved it, had my song Peopled with thoughts the

boundless universe, A mighty congregation, which were strong Where'er they trod

the darkness to disperse The cloud of that unutterable curse Which clings upon

mankind:--all things became Slaves to my holy and heroic verse, Earth, sea and

sky, the planets, life and fame And fate, or whate'er else binds the world's

wondrous frame.

31. And this beloved child thus felt the sway Of my conceptions, gathering like

a cloud The very wind on which it rolls away: Hers too were all my thoughts,

ere yet, endowed With music and with light, their fountains flowed In poesy;

and her still and earnest face, Pallid with feelings which intensely glowed

Within, was turned on mine with speechless grace, Watching the hopes which

there her heart had learned to trace.

32. In me, communion with this purest being Kindled intenser zeal, and made me

wise In knowledge, which, in hers mine own mind seeing, Left in the human world

few mysteries: How without fear of evil or disguise Was Cythna!--what a spirit

strong and mild, Which death, or pain or peril could despise, Yet melt in

tenderness! what genius wild Yet mighty, was enclosed within one simple child!

33. New lore was this--old age with its gray hair, And wrinkled legends of

unworthy things, And icy sneers, is nought: it cannot dare To burst the chains

which life for ever flings On the entangled soul's aspiring wings, So is it

cold and cruel, and is made The careless slave of that dark power which brings

Evil, like blight, on man, who, still betrayed, Laughs o'er the grave in which

his living hopes are laid.

34. Nor are the strong and the severe to keep The empire of the world: thus

Cythna taught Even in the visions of her eloquent sleep, Unconscious of the

power through which she wrought The woof of such intelligible thought, As from

the tranquil strength which cradled lay In her smile-peopled rest, my spirit

sought Why the deceiver and the slave has sway O'er heralds so divine of

truth's arising day.

35. Within that fairest form, the female mind, Untainted by the poison clouds

which rest On the dark world, a sacred home did find: But else, from the wide

earth's maternal breast, Victorious Evil, which had dispossessed All native

power, had those fair children torn, And made them slaves to soothe his vile

unrest, And minister to lust its joys forlorn, Till they had learned to breathe

the atmosphere of scorn.

36. This misery was but coldly felt, till she Became my only friend, who had

endued My purpose with a wider sympathy; Thus, Cythna mourned with me the

servitude In which the half of humankind were mewed Victims of lust and hate,

the slaves of slaves, She mourned that grace and power were thrown as food To

the hyena lust, who, among graves, Over his loathed meal, laughing in agony,

raves.

37. And I, still gazing on that glorious child, Even as these thoughts flushed

o'er her:--'Cythna sweet, Well with the world art thou unreconciled; Never will

peace and human nature meet Till free and equal man and woman greet Domestic

peace; and ere this power can make In human hearts its calm and holy seat, This

slavery must be broken'--as I spake, From Cythna's eyes a light of exultation

brake.

38. She replied earnestly:--'It shall be mine, This task,--mine, Laon!--thou

hast much to gain; Nor wilt thou at poor Cythna's pride repine, If she should

lead a happy female train To meet thee over the rejoicing plain, When myriads

at thy call shall throng around The Golden City.'--Then the child did strain My

arm upon her tremulous heart, and wound Her own about my neck, till some reply

she found.

39. I smiled, and spake not.--'Wherefore dost thou smile At what I say? Laon, I

am not weak, And, though my cheek might become pale the while, With thee, if

thou desirest, will I seek Through their array of banded slaves to wreak Ruin

upon the tyrants. I had thought It was more hard to turn my unpractised cheek

To scorn and shame, and this beloved spot And thee, O dearest friend, to leave

and murmur not.

40. 'Whence came I what I am? Thou, Laon, knowest How a young child should thus

undaunted be; Methinks, it is a power which thou bestowest, Through which I

seek, by most resembling thee, So to become most good and great and free; Yet

far beyond this Ocean's utmost roar, In towers and huts are many like to me,

Who, could they see thine eyes, or feel such lore As I have learnt from them,

like me would fear no more.

41. 'Think'st thou that I shall speak unskilfully, And none will heed me? I

remember now, How once, a slave in tortures doomed to die, Was saved, because

in accents sweet and low He sung a song his Judge loved long ago, As he was led

to death.--All shall relent Who hear me--tears, as mine have flowed, shall

flow, Hearts beat as mine now beats, with such intent As renovates the world; a

will omnipotent!

42. 'Yes, I will tread Pride's golden palaces, Through Penury's roofless huts

and squalid cells Will I descend, where'er in abjectness Woman with some vile

slave her tyrant dwells, There with the music of thine own sweet spells Will

disenchant the captives, and will pour For the despairing, from the crystal

wells Of thy deep spirit, reason's mighty lore, And power shall then abound,

and hope arise once more.

43. 'Can man be free if woman be a slave? Chain one who lives, and breathes

this boundless air, To the corruption of a closed grave! Can they whose mates

are beasts, condemned to bear Scorn, heavier far than toil or anguish, dare To

trample their oppressors? in their home Among their babes, thou knowest a curse

would wear The shape of woman--hoary Crime would come Behind, and Fraud rebuild

religion's tottering dome.

44. 'I am a child:--I would not yet depart. When I go forth alone, bearing the

lamp Aloft which thou hast kindled in my heart, Millions of slaves from many a

dungeon damp Shall leap in joy, as the benumbing cramp Of ages leaves their

limbs--no ill may harm Thy Cythna ever--truth its radiant stamp Has fixed, as

an invulnerable charm, Upon her children's brow, dark Falsehood to disarm.

45. 'Wait yet awhile for the appointed day-- Thou wilt depart, and I with tears

shall stand Watching thy dim sail skirt the ocean gray; Amid the dwellers of

this lonely land I shall remain alone--and thy command Shall then dissolve the

world's unquiet trance, And, multitudinous as the desert sand Borne on the

storm, its millions shall advance, Thronging round thee, the light of their

deliverance.

46. 'Then, like the forests of some pathless mountain, Which from remotest

glens two warring winds Involve in fire which not the loosened fountain Of

broadest floods might quench, shall all the kinds Of evil, catch from our

uniting minds The spark which must consume them;--Cythna then Will have cast

off the impotence that binds Her childhood now, and through the paths of men

Will pass, as the charmed bird that haunts the serpent's den.

47. 'We part!--O Laon, I must dare nor tremble, To meet those looks no

more!--Oh, heavy stroke! Sweet brother of my soul! can I dissemble The agony of

this thought?'--As thus she spoke The gathered sobs her quivering accents

broke, And in my arms she hid her beating breast. I remained still for

tears--sudden she woke As one awakes from sleep, and wildly pressed My bosom,

her whole frame impetuously possessed.

48. 'We part to meet again--but yon blue waste, Yon desert wide and deep, holds

no recess, Within whose happy silence, thus embraced We might survive all ills

in one caress: Nor doth the grave--I fear 'tis passionless-- Nor yon cold

vacant Heaven:--we meet again Within the minds of men, whose lips shall bless

Our memory, and whose hopes its light retain When these dissevered bones are

trodden in the plain.'

49. I could not speak, though she had ceased, for now The fountains of her

feeling, swift and deep, Seemed to suspend the tumult of their flow; So we

arose, and by the starlight steep Went homeward--neither did we speak nor weep,

But, pale, were calm with passion--thus subdued Like evening shades that o'er

the mountains creep, We moved towards our home; where, in this mood, Each from

the other sought refuge in solitude.

CANTO 3.

1. What thoughts had sway o'er Cythna's lonely slumber That night, I know not;

but my own did seem As if they might ten thousand years outnumber Of waking

life, the visions of a dream Which hid in one dim gulf the troubled stream Of

mind; a boundless chaos wild and vast, Whose limits yet were never memory's

theme: And I lay struggling as its whirlwinds passed, Sometimes for rapture

sick, sometimes for pain aghast.

2. Two hours, whose mighty circle did embrace More time than might make gray

the infant world, Rolled thus, a weary and tumultuous space: When the third

came, like mist on breezes curled, From my dim sleep a shadow was unfurled:

Methought, upon the threshold of a cave I sate with Cythna; drooping briony,

pearled With dew from the wild streamlet's shattered wave, Hung, where we sate

to taste the joys which Nature gave.

3. We lived a day as we were wont to live, But Nature had a robe of glory on,

And the bright air o'er every shape did weave Intenser hues, so that the

herbless stone, The leafless bough among the leaves alone, Had being clearer

than its own could be, And Cythna's pure and radiant self was shown, In this

strange vision, so divine to me, That if I loved before, now love was agony.

4. Morn fled, noon came, evening, then night descended, And we prolonged 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 seemed 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.

5. 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 plucked at Cythna--soon to me then clung A sense of actual things those

monstrous dreams among.

6. 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 poured around Our

dwelling; breathless, pale and unaware I rose, and all the cottage crowded

found With armed men, whose glittering swords were bare, And whose degraded

limbs the tyrant's garb did wear.

7. And, ere with rapid lips and gathered 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--'twas Cythna's cry! Beneath most calm resolve did agony wreak

Its whirlwind rage:--so I passed quietly Till I beheld, where bound, that

dearest child did lie.

8. I started to behold her, for delight And exultation, and a joyance free,

Solemn, serene and lofty, filled the light Of the calm smile with which she

looked on me: So that I feared some brainless ecstasy, Wrought from that bitter

woe, had wildered her-- 'Farewell! farewell!' she said, as I drew nigh; 'At

first my peace was marred by this strange stir, Now I am calm as truth--its

chosen minister.

9. '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, In victory or

in death our hopes and fears must blend.'

10. These words had fallen on my unheeding ear, Whilst I had watched 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

grasped a fourth by the throat, and with loud cry My countrymen invoked to

death or liberty!

11. What followed 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 filled with slaughter,--overthrown

The vineyards and the harvests, and the glow Of blazing roofs shone far o'er

the white Ocean's flow.

12. 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 daylight far through the

aerial waste.

13. 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 torch's fiery tongue Amid the gushing day beamless and pallid hung.

14. 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 drowned.

15. 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, And the dark rocks which bound the bright and glassy

bay.

16. It was so calm, that scarce the feathery weed Sown by some eagle on the

topmost stone Swayed 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.

17. 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, And watched it with such

thoughts as must remain untold.

18. I watched until the shades of evening wrapped Earth like an

exhalation--then the bark Moved, for that calm was by the sunset snapped. 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.

19. I gnawed 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 laughed at misery Into my

soul--linked remembrance lent To that such power, to me such a severe content.

20. To breathe, to be, to hope, or to despair And die, I questioned 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 From one faint hope whose flower a

dropping poison shed.

21. Two days thus passed--I neither raved nor died-- Thirst raged within me,

like a scorpion's nest Built in mine entrails; I had spurned aside The

water-vessel, while despair possessed My thoughts, and now no drop remained!

The uprest Of the third sun brought hunger--but the crust Which had been left,

was to my craving breast Fuel, not food. I chewed the bitter dust, And bit my

bloodless arm, and licked the brazen rust.

22. My brain began to fail when the fourth morn Burst o'er the golden isles--a

fearful sleep, Which through the caverns dreary and forlorn Of the riven soul,

sent its foul dreams to sweep With whirlwind swiftness--a fall far and deep,--

A gulf, a void, a sense of senselessness-- These things dwelt in me, even as

shadows keep Their watch in some dim charnel's loneliness, A shoreless sea, a

sky sunless and planetless!

23. The forms which peopled this terrific trance I well remember--like a choir

of devils, Around me they involved a giddy dance; Legions seemed 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 bemocked themselves, that I descried All shapes like mine own

self, hideously multiplied.

24. 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 accursed, 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, Make their divided streams

more bright and rapid now.

25. Methought that grate 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 stretched and clung Over the shapeless depth in

which those corpses hung.

26. A woman's shape, now lank and cold and blue, The dwelling of the

many-coloured worm, Hung there; the white and hollow cheek I drew To my dry

lips--what radiance did inform Those horny eyes? whose was that withered form?

Alas, alas! it seemed that Cythna's ghost Laughed in those looks, and that the

flesh was warm Within my teeth!--a whirlwind keen as frost Then in its sinking

gulfs my sickening spirit tossed.

27. Then seemed 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 languished 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.

28. And, when the blinding tears had fallen, I saw That column, and those

corpses, and the moon, And felt the poisonous tooth of hunger gnaw My vitals, I

rejoiced, as if the boon Of senseless death would be accorded soon;-- When from

that stony gloom a voice arose, Solemn and sweet as when low winds attune The

midnight pines; the grate did then unclose, And on that reverend form the

moonlight did repose.

29. He struck my chains, and gently spake and smiled; As they were loosened by

that Hermit old, Mine eyes were of their madness half beguiled, To answer those

kind looks; he did enfold His giant arms around me, to uphold My wretched

frame; my scorched limbs he wound In linen moist and balmy, and as cold As dew

to drooping leaves;--the chain, with sound Like earthquake, through the chasm

of that steep stair did bound,

30. As, lifting me, it fell!--What next I heard, Were billows leaping on the

harbour-bar, And the shrill sea-wind, whose breath idly stirred My hair;--I

looked abroad, and saw a star Shining beside a sail, and distant far That

mountain and its column, the known mark Of those who in the wide deep wandering

are, So that I feared some Spirit, fell and dark, In trance had lain me thus

within a fiendish bark.

31. For now indeed, over the salt sea-billow I sailed: yet dared not look upon

the shape Of him who ruled the helm, although the pillow For my light head was

hollowed in his lap, And my bare limbs his mantle did enwrap, Fearing it was a

fiend: at last, he bent O'er me his aged face; as if to snap Those dreadful

thoughts the gentle grandsire bent, And to my inmost soul his soothing looks he

sent.

32. A soft and healing potion to my lips At intervals he raised--now looked on

high, To mark if yet the starry giant dips His zone in the dim sea--now

cheeringly, Though he said little, did he speak to me. 'It is a friend beside

thee--take good cheer, Poor victim, thou art now at liberty!' I joyed as those

a human tone to hear, Who in cells deep and lone have languished many a year.

33. A dim and feeble joy, whose glimpses oft Were quenched in a relapse of

wildering dreams; Yet still methought we sailed, 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.

34. And then the night-wind steaming from the shore, Sent odours dying sweet

across the sea, And the swift boat the little waves which bore, Were cut by its

keen keel, though slantingly; Soon I could hear the leaves sigh, and could see

The myrtle-blossoms starring the dim grove, As past the pebbly beach the boat

did flee On sidelong wing, into a silent cove, Where ebon pines a shade under

the starlight wove.

CANTO 4.

1. The old man took the oars, and soon the bark Smote on the beach beside a

tower of stone; It was a crumbling heap, whose portal dark With blooming

ivy-trails was overgrown; Upon whose floor the spangling sands were strown, And

rarest sea-shells, which the eternal flood, Slave to the mother of the months,

had thrown Within the walls of that gray tower, which stood A changeling of

man's art nursed amid Nature's brood.

2. When the old man his boat had anchored, He wound me in his arms with tender

care, And very few, but kindly words he said, And bore me through the tower

adown a stair, Whose smooth descent some ceaseless step to wear For many a year

had fallen.--We came at last To a small chamber, which with mosses rare Was

tapestried, where me his soft hands placed Upon a couch of grass and oak-leaves

interlaced.

3. The moon was darting through the lattices Its yellow light, warm as the

beams of day-- So warm, that to admit the dewy breeze, The old man opened them;

the moonlight lay Upon a lake whose waters wove their play Even to the

threshold of that lonely home: Within was seen in the dim wavering ray The

antique sculptured roof, and many a tome Whose lore had made that sage all that

he had become.

4. 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?

5. Thus madness came again,--a milder madness, Which darkened 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.

6. 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 spoke-- When 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.

7. Thus slowly from my brain the darkness rolled, 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 bewildered lot, And, sitting by the waters, in the gloom Of eve, to

that friend's heart I told my thought-- That heart which had grown old, but had

corrupted not.

8. That hoary man had spent his livelong age In converse with the dead, who

leave the stamp Of ever-burning thoughts on many a page, When they are gone

into the senseless damp Of graves;--his spirit thus became a lamp Of splendour,

like to those on which it fed; Through peopled haunts, the City and the Camp,

Deep thirst for knowledge had his footsteps led, And all the ways of men among

mankind he read.

9. But custom maketh blind and obdurate The loftiest hearts;--he had beheld the

woe In which mankind was bound, but deemed that fate Which made them abject,

would preserve them so; And in such faith, some steadfast joy to know, He

sought this cell: but when fame went abroad That one in Argolis did undergo

Torture for liberty, and that the crowd High truths from gifted lips had heard

and understood;

10. And that the multitude was gathering wide,-- His spirit leaped 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 Hymns of triumphant joy our

scattered tribes among.

11. He came to the lone column on the rock, And with his sweet and mighty

eloquence The hearts of those who watched 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 wildered it has lent Meanwhile, to me

the power of a sublime intent.

12. 'Yes, from the records of my youthful state, And from the lore of bards and

sages old, From whatsoe'er my wakened thoughts create Out of the hopes of thine

aspirings bold, Have 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 gained or ever lost of yore.

13. '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 seemed melting through their look, A warmer zeal, a nobler hope, now

find; And every bosom thus is rapt and shook, Like autumn's myriad leaves in

one swoln mountain-brook.

14. 'The tyrants of the Golden City tremble At voices which are heard about the

streets; The ministers of fraud can scarce dissemble The lies of their own

heart, but when one meets Another at the shrine, he inly weets, Though he says

nothing, that the truth is known; Murderers are pale upon the judgement-seats,

And gold grows vile even to the wealthy crone, And laughter fills the Fane, and

curses shake the Throne.

15. '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, Which round thy secret

strength now throng in wide array.

16. '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--ay, 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

gathered beams to bear.

17. 'But I, alas! am both unknown and old, And though the woof of wisdom I know

well To dye in hues of language, I am cold In seeming, and the hopes which inly

dwell, My manners note that I did long repel; But Laon's name to the tumultuous

throng Were like the star whose beams the waves compel And tempests, and his

soul-subduing tongue Were as a lance to quell the mailed crest of wrong.

18. 'Perchance blood need not flow, if thou at length Wouldst rise, perchance

the very slaves would spare Their brethren and themselves; great is the

strength Of words--for lately did a maiden fair, Who from her childhood has

been taught to bear The Tyrant's heaviest yoke, arise, and make Her sex the law

of truth and freedom hear, And with these quiet words--"for thine own sake I

prithee spare me;"--did with ruth so take

19. 'All hearts, that even the torturer who had bound Her meek calm frame, ere

it was yet impaled, Loosened her, weeping then; nor could be found One human

hand to harm her--unassailed Therefore she walks through the great City, veiled

In virtue's adamantine eloquence, 'Gainst scorn, and death and pain thus trebly

mailed, And blending, in the smiles of that defence, The Serpent and the Dove,

Wisdom and Innocence.

20. 'The wild-eyed women throng around her path: From their luxurious dungeons,

from the dust Of meaner thralls, from the oppressor's wrath, Or the caresses of

his sated lust They congregate:--in her they put their trust; The tyrants send

their armed slaves to quell Her power;--they, even like a thunder-gust Caught

by some forest, bend beneath the spell Of that young maiden's speech, and to

their chiefs rebel.

21. 'Thus she doth equal laws and justice teach To woman, outraged and polluted

long; Gathering the sweetest fruit in human reach For those fair hands now

free, while armed wrong Trembles before her look, though it be strong;

Thousands thus dwell beside her, virgins bright, And matrons with their babes,

a stately throng! Lovers renew the vows which they did plight In early faith,

and hearts long parted now unite,

22. 'And homeless orphans find a home near her, And those poor victims of the

proud, no less, Fair wrecks, on whom the smiling world with stir, Thrusts the

redemption of its wickedness:-- In squalid huts, and in its palaces Sits Lust

alone, while o'er the land is borne Her voice, whose awful sweetness doth

repress All evil, and her foes relenting turn, And cast the vote of love in

hope's abandoned urn.

23. 'So in the populous City, a young maiden Has baffled Havoc of the prey

which he Marks as his own, whene'er with chains o'erladen Men make them arms to

hurl down tyranny,-- False arbiter between the bound and free; And o'er the

land, in hamlets and in towns The multitudes collect tumultuously, And throng

in arms; but tyranny disowns Their claim, and gathers strength around its

trembling thrones.

24. 'Blood soon, although unwillingly, to shed The free cannot forbear--the

Queen of Slaves, The hoodwinked Angel of the blind and dead, Custom, with iron

mace points to the graves Where her own standard desolately waves Over the dust

of Prophets and of Kings. Many yet stand in her array--"she paves Her path

with human hearts," and o'er it flings The wildering gloom of her immeasurable

wings.

25. 'There is a plain beneath the City's wall, Bounded by misty mountains, wide

and vast, Millions there lift at Freedom's thrilling call Ten thousand

standards wide, they load the blast Which bears one sound of many voices past,

And startles on his throne their sceptred foe: He sits amid his idle pomp

aghast, And that his power hath passed away, doth know-- Why pause the victor

swords to seal his overthrow?

26. 'The tyrant's guards resistance yet maintain: Fearless, and fierce, and

hard as beasts of blood, They stand a speck amid the peopled plain; Carnage and

ruin have been made their food From infancy--ill has become their good, And for

its hateful sake their will has wove The chains which eat their hearts. The

multitude Surrounding them, with words of human love, Seek from their own decay

their stubborn minds to move.

27. 'Over the land is felt a sudden pause, As night and day those ruthless

bands around, The watch of love is kept:--a trance which awes The thoughts of

men with hope; as when the sound Of whirlwind, whose fierce blasts the waves

and clouds confound, Dies suddenly, the mariner in fear Feels silence sink upon

his heart--thus bound, The conquerors pause, and oh! may freemen ne'er Clasp

the relentless knees of Dread, the murderer!

28. 'If blood be shed, 'tis but a change and choice Of bonds,--from slavery to

cowardice A wretched fall!--Uplift thy charmed voice! Pour on those evil men

the love that lies Hovering within those spirit-soothing eyes-- Arise, my

friend, farewell!'--As thus he spake, From the green earth lightly I did arise,

As one out of dim dreams that doth awake, And looked upon the depth of that

reposing lake.

29. I saw my countenance reflected there;-- And then my youth fell on me like a

wind Descending on still waters--my thin hair Was prematurely gray, my face was

lined With channels, such as suffering leaves behind, Not age; my brow was

pale, but in my cheek And lips a flush of gnawing fire did find Their food and

dwelling; though mine eyes might speak A subtle mind and strong within a frame

thus weak.

30. And though their lustre now was spent and faded, Yet in my hollow looks and

withered mien The likeness of a shape for which was braided The brightest woof

of genius, still was seen-- One who, methought, had gone from the world's

scene, And left it vacant--'twas her lover's face-- It might resemble her--it

once had been The mirror of her thoughts, and still the grace Which her mind's

shadow cast, left there a lingering trace.

31. What then was I? She slumbered with the dead. Glory and joy and peace, had

come and gone. Doth the cloud perish, when the beams are fled Which steeped its

skirts in gold? or, dark and lone, Doth it not through the paths of night

unknown, On outspread wings of its own wind upborne Pour rain upon the earth?

The stars are shown, When the cold moon sharpens her silver horn Under the sea,

and make the wide night not forlorn.

32. Strengthened in heart, yet sad, that aged man I left, with interchange of

looks and tears, And lingering speech, and to the Camp began My war. O'er many

a mountain-chain which rears Its hundred crests aloft, my spirit bears My

frame; o'er many a dale and many a moor, And gaily now meseems serene earth

wears The blosmy spring's star-bright investiture, A vision which aught sad

from sadness might allure.

33. My powers revived within me, and I went, As one whom winds waft o'er the

bending grass, Through many a vale of that broad continent. At night when I

reposed, fair dreams did pass Before my pillow;--my own Cythna was, Not like a

child of death, among them ever; When I arose from rest, a woful mass That

gentlest sleep seemed from my life to sever, As if the light of youth were not

withdrawn for ever.

34. Aye as I went, that maiden who had reared The torch of Truth afar, of whose

high deeds The Hermit in his pilgrimage had heard, Haunted my thoughts.--Ah,

Hope its sickness feeds With whatsoe'er it finds, or flowers or weeds! Could

she be Cythna?--Was that corpse a shade Such as self-torturing thought from

madness breeds? Why was this hope not torture? Yet it made A light around my

steps which would not ever fade.

CANTO 5.

1. Over the utmost hill at length I sped, A snowy steep:--the moon was hanging

low Over the Asian mountains, and outspread The plain, the City, and the Camp

below, Skirted the midnight Ocean's glimmering flow; The City's moonlit spires

and myriad lamps, Like stars in a sublunar sky did glow, And fires blazed far

amid the scattered camps, Like springs of flame, which burst where'er swift

Earthquake stamps.

2. All slept but those in watchful arms who stood, And those who sate tending

the beacon's light, And the few sounds from that vast multitude Made silence

more profound.--Oh, what a might Of human thought was cradled in that night!

How many hearts impenetrably veiled Beat underneath its shade, what secret

fight Evil and good, in woven passions mailed, Waged through that silent

throng--a war that never failed!

3. And now the Power of Good held victory. So, through the labyrinth of many a

tent, Among the silent millions who did lie In innocent sleep, exultingly I

went; The moon had left Heaven desert now, but lent From eastern morn the first

faint lustre showed An armed youth--over his spear he bent His downward

face.--'A friend!' I cried aloud, And quickly common hopes made freemen

understood.

4. I sate beside him while the morning beam Crept slowly over Heaven, and

talked with him Of those immortal hopes, a glorious theme! Which led us forth,

until the stars grew dim: And all the while, methought, his voice did swim As

if it drowned in remembrance were Of thoughts which make the moist eyes

overbrim: At last, when daylight 'gan to fill the air, He looked on me, and

cried in wonder--'Thou art here!'

5. Then, suddenly, I knew it was the youth In whom its earliest hopes my spirit

found; But envious tongues had stained his spotless truth, And thoughtless

pride his love in silence bound, And shame and sorrow mine in toils had wound,

Whilst he was innocent, and I deluded; The truth now came upon me, on the

ground Tears of repenting joy, which fast intruded, Fell fast, and o'er its

peace our mingling spirits brooded.

6. Thus, while with rapid lips and earnest eyes We talked, a sound of sweeping

conflict spread As from the earth did suddenly arise; From every tent roused by

that clamour dread, Our bands outsprung and seized their arms--we sped Towards

the sound: our tribes were gathering far. Those sanguine slaves amid ten

thousand dead Stabbed in their sleep, trampled in treacherous war The gentle

hearts whose power their lives had sought to spare.

7. Like rabid snakes, that sting some gentle child Who brings them food, when

winter false and fair Allures them forth with its cold smiles, so wild They

rage among the camp;--they overbear The patriot hosts--confusion, then despair,

Descends like night--when 'Laon!' one did cry; Like a bright ghost from Heaven

that shout did scare The slaves, and widening through the vaulted sky, Seemed

sent from Earth to Heaven in sign of victory.

8. In sudden panic those false murderers fled, Like insect tribes before the

northern gale: But swifter still, our hosts encompassed Their shattered ranks,

and in a craggy vale, Where even their fierce despair might nought avail,

Hemmed them around!--and then revenge and fear Made the high virtue of the

patriots fail: One pointed on his foe the mortal spear-- I rushed before its

point, and cried 'Forbear, forbear!'

9. The spear transfixed my arm that was uplifted In swift expostulation, and

the blood Gushed round its point: I smiled, and--'Oh! thou gifted With

eloquence which shall not be withstood, Flow thus!' I cried in joy, 'thou vital

flood, Until my heart be dry, ere thus the cause For which thou wert aught

worthy be subdued-- Ah, ye are pale,--ye weep,--your passions pause,-- 'Tis

well! ye feel the truth of love's benignant laws.

10. 'Soldiers, our brethren and our friends are slain. Ye murdered them, I

think, as they did sleep! Alas, what have ye done? the slightest pain Which ye

might suffer, there were eyes to weep, But ye have quenched them--there were

smiles to steep Your hearts in balm, but they are lost in woe; And those whom

love did set his watch to keep Around your tents, truth's freedom to bestow, Ye

stabbed as they did sleep--but they forgive ye now.

11. 'Oh wherefore should ill ever flow from ill, And pain still keener pain for

ever breed? We all are brethren--even the slaves who kill For hire, are men;

and to avenge misdeed On the misdoer, doth but Misery feed With her own broken

heart! O Earth, O Heaven! And thou, dread Nature, which to every deed And all

that lives, or is, to be hath given, Even as to thee have these done ill, and

are forgiven!

12. 'Join then your hands and hearts, and let the past Be as a grave which

gives not up its dead To evil thoughts.'--A film then overcast My sense with

dimness, for the wound, which bled Freshly, swift shadows o'er mine eyes had

shed. When I awoke, I lay mid friends and foes, And earnest countenances on me

shed The light of questioning looks, whilst one did close My wound with

balmiest herbs, and soothed me to repose;

13. And one whose spear had pierced me, leaned beside With quivering lips and

humid eyes;--and all Seemed like some brothers on a journey wide Gone forth,

whom now strange meeting did befall In a strange land, round one whom they

might call Their friend, their chief, their father, for assay Of peril, which

had saved them from the thrall Of death, now suffering. Thus the vast array Of

those fraternal bands were reconciled that day.

14. Lifting the thunder of their acclamation, Towards the City then the

multitude, And I among them, went in joy--a nation Made free by love;--a mighty

brotherhood Linked by a jealous interchange of good; A glorious pageant, more

magnificent Than kingly slaves arrayed in gold and blood, When they return from

carnage, and are sent In triumph bright beneath the populous battlement.

15. Afar, the city-walls were thronged on high, And myriads on each giddy

turret clung, And to each spire far lessening in the sky Bright pennons on the

idle winds were hung; As we approached, a shout of joyance sprung At once from

all the crowd, as if the vast And peopled Earth its boundless skies among The

sudden clamour of delight had cast, When from before its face some general

wreck had passed.

16. Our armies through the City's hundred gates Were poured, like brooks which

to the rocky lair Of some deep lake, whose silence them awaits, Throng from the

mountains when the storms are there And, as we passed through the calm sunny

air A thousand flower-inwoven crowns were shed, The token flowers of truth and

freedom fair, And fairest hands bound them on many a head, Those angels of

love's heaven that over all was spread.

17. I trod as one tranced in some rapturous vision: Those bloody bands so

lately reconciled, Were, ever as they went, by the contrition Of anger turned

to love, from ill beguiled, And every one on them more gently smiled, Because

they had done evil:--the sweet awe Of such mild looks made their own hearts

grow mild, And did with soft attraction ever draw Their spirits to the love of

freedom's equal law.

18. And they, and all, in one loud symphony My name with Liberty commingling,

lifted, 'The friend and the preserver of the free! The parent of this joy!' and

fair eyes gifted With feelings, caught from one who had uplifted The light of a

great spirit, round me shone; And all the shapes of this grand scenery shifted

Like restless clouds before the steadfast sun,-- Where was that Maid? I asked,

but it was known of none.

19. Laone was the name her love had chosen, For she was nameless, and her birth

none knew: Where was Laone now?--The words were frozen Within my lips with

fear; but to subdue Such dreadful hope, to my great task was due, And when at

length one brought reply, that she To-morrow would appear, I then withdrew To

judge what need for that great throng might be, For now the stars came thick

over the twilight sea.

20. Yet need was none for rest or food to care, Even though that multitude was

passing great, Since each one for the other did prepare All kindly

succour--Therefore to the gate Of the Imperial House, now desolate, I passed,

and there was found aghast, alone, The fallen Tyrant!--Silently he sate Upon

the footstool of his golden throne, Which, starred with sunny gems, in its own

lustre shone.

21. Alone, but for one child, who led before him A graceful dance: the only

living thing Of all the crowd, which thither to adore him Flocked yesterday,

who solace sought to bring In his abandonment!--She knew the King Had praised

her dance of yore, and now she wove Its circles, aye weeping and murmuring Mid

her sad task of unregarded love, That to no smiles it might his speechless

sadness move.

22. She fled to him, and wildly clasped his feet When human steps were

heard:--he moved nor spoke, Nor changed his hue, nor raised his looks to meet

The gaze of strangers--our loud entrance woke The echoes of the hall, which

circling broke The calm of its recesses,--like a tomb Its sculptured walls

vacantly to the stroke Of footfalls answered, and the twilight's gloom Lay like

a charnel's mist within the radiant dome.

23. The little child stood up when we came nigh; Her lips and cheeks seemed

very pale and wan, But on her forehead, and within her eye Lay beauty, which

makes hearts that feed thereon Sick with excess of sweetness; on the throne She

leaned;--the King, with gathered brow, and lips Wreathed by long scorn, did

inly sneer and frown With hue like that when some great painter dips His pencil

in the gloom of earthquake and eclipse.

24. She stood beside him like a rainbow braided Within some storm, when scarce

its shadows vast From the blue paths of the swift sun have faded; A sweet and

solemn smile, like Cythna's, cast One moment's light, which made my heart beat

fast, O'er that child's parted lips--a gleam of bliss, A shade of vanished

days,--as the tears passed Which wrapped it, even as with a father's kiss I

pressed those softest eyes in trembling tenderness.

25. The sceptred wretch then from that solitude I drew, and, of his change

compassionate, With words of sadness soothed his rugged mood. But he, while

pride and fear held deep debate, With sullen guile of ill-dissembled hate

Glared on me as a toothless snake might glare: Pity, not scorn I felt, though

desolate The desolator now, and unaware The curses which he mocked had caught

him by the hair.

26. I led him forth from that which now might seem A gorgeous grave: through

portals sculptured deep With imagery beautiful as dream We went, and left the

shades which tend on sleep Over its unregarded gold to keep Their silent

watch.--The child trod faintingly, And as she went, the tears which she did

weep Glanced in the starlight; wildered seemed she, And, when I spake, for sobs

she could not answer me.

27. At last the tyrant cried, 'She hungers, slave! Stab her, or give her

bread!'--It was a tone Such as sick fancies in a new-made grave Might hear. I

trembled, for the truth was known; He with this child had thus been left alone,

And neither had gone forth for food,--but he In mingled pride and awe cowered

near his throne, And she a nursling of captivity Knew nought beyond those

walls, nor what such change might be.

28. And he was troubled at a charm withdrawn Thus suddenly; that sceptres ruled

no more-- That even from gold the dreadful strength was gone, Which once made

all things subject to its power-- Such wonder seized him, as if hour by hour

The past had come again; and the swift fall Of one so great and terrible of

yore, To desolateness, in the hearts of all Like wonder stirred, who saw such

awful change befall.

29. A mighty crowd, such as the wide land pours Once in a thousand years, now

gathered round The fallen tyrant;--like the rush of showers Of hail in spring,

pattering along the ground, Their many footsteps fell, else came no sound From

the wide multitude: that lonely man Then knew the burden of his change, and

found, Concealing in the dust his visage wan, Refuge from the keen looks which

through his bosom ran.

30. And he was faint withal: I sate beside him Upon the earth, and took that

child so fair From his weak arms, that ill might none betide him Or her;--when

food was brought to them, her share To his averted lips the child did bear,

But, when she saw he had enough, she ate And wept the while;--the lonely man's

despair Hunger then overcame, and of his state Forgetful, on the dust as in a

trance he sate.

31. Slowly the silence of the multitudes Passed, as when far is heard in some

lone dell The gathering of a wind among the woods-- 'And he is fallen!' they

cry, 'he who did dwell Like famine or the plague, or aught more fell Among our

homes, is fallen! the murderer Who slaked his thirsting soul as from a well Of

blood and tears with ruin! he is here! Sunk in a gulf of scorn from which none

may him rear!'

32. Then was heard--'He who judged let him be brought To judgement! blood for

blood cries from the soil On which his crimes have deep pollution wrought!

Shall Othman only unavenged despoil? Shall they who by the stress of grinding

toil Wrest from the unwilling earth his luxuries, Perish for crime, while his

foul blood may boil, Or creep within his veins at will?--Arise! And to high

justice make her chosen sacrifice!'

33. 'What do ye seek? what fear ye,' then I cried, Suddenly starting forth,

'that ye should shed The blood of Othman?--if your hearts are tried In the true

love of freedom, cease to dread This one poor lonely man--beneath Heaven spread

In purest light above us all, through earth-- Maternal earth, who doth her

sweet smiles shed For all, let him go free; until the worth Of human nature win

from these a second birth.

34. 'What call ye "justice"? Is there one who ne'er In secret thought has

wished another's ill?-- Are ye all pure? Let those stand forth who hear And

tremble not. Shall they insult and kill, If such they be? their mild eyes can

they fill With the false anger of the hypocrite? Alas, such were not pure!--the

chastened will Of virtue sees that justice is the light Of love, and not

revenge, and terror and despite.'

35. The murmur of the people, slowly dying, Paused as I spake, then those who

near me were, Cast gentle looks where the lone man was lying Shrouding his

head, which now that infant fair Clasped on her lap in silence;--through the

air Sobs were then heard, and many kissed my feet In pity's madness, and to the

despair Of him whom late they cursed, a solace sweet His very victims

brought--soft looks and speeches meet.

36. Then to a home for his repose assigned, Accompanied by the still throng, he

went In silence, where, to soothe his rankling mind, Some likeness of his

ancient state was lent; And if his heart could have been innocent As those who

pardoned him, he might have ended His days in peace; but his straight lips were

bent, Men said, into a smile which guile portended, A sight with which that

child like hope with fear was blended.

37. 'Twas midnight now, the eve of that great day Whereon the many nations at

whose call The chains of earth like mist melted away, Decreed to hold a sacred

Festival, A rite to attest the equality of all Who live. So to their homes, to

dream or wake All went. The sleepless silence did recall Laone to my thoughts,

with hopes that make The flood recede from which their thirst they seek to

slake.

38. The dawn flowed forth, and from its purple fountains I drank those hopes

which make the spirit quail, As to the plain between the misty mountains And

the great City, with a countenance pale, I went:--it was a sight which might

avail To make men weep exulting tears, for whom Now first from human power the

reverend veil Was torn, to see Earth from her general womb Pour forth her

swarming sons to a fraternal doom:

39. To see, far glancing in the misty morning, The signs of that innumerable

host; To hear one sound of many made, the warning Of Earth to Heaven from its

free children tossed, While the eternal hills, and the sea lost In wavering

light, and, starring the blue sky The city's myriad spires of gold, almost With

human joy made mute society-- Its witnesses with men who must hereafter be.

40. To see, like some vast island from the Ocean, The Altar of the Federation

rear Its pile i' the midst; a work, which the devotion Of millions in one night

created there, Sudden as when the moonrise makes appear Strange clouds in the

east; a marble pyramid Distinct with steps: that mighty shape did wear The

light of genius; its still shadow hid Far ships: to know its height the morning

mists forbid!

41. To hear the restless multitudes for ever Around the base of that great

Altar flow, As on some mountain-islet burst and shiver Atlantic waves; and

solemnly and slow As the wind bore that tumult to and fro, To feel the

dreamlike music, which did swim Like beams through floating clouds on waves

below Falling in pauses, from that Altar dim, As silver-sounding tongues

breathed an aerial hymn.

42. To hear, to see, to live, was on that morn Lethean joy! so that all those

assembled Cast off their memories of the past outworn; Two only bosoms with

their own life trembled, And mine was one,--and we had both dissembled; So with

a beating heart I went, and one, Who having much, covets yet more, resembled; A

lost and dear possession, which not won, He walks in lonely gloom beneath the

noonday sun.

43. To the great Pyramid I came: its stair With female choirs was thronged: the

loveliest Among the free, grouped with its sculptures rare; As I approached,

the morning's golden mist, Which now the wonder-stricken breezes kissed With

their cold lips, fled, and the summit shone Like Athos seen from Samothracia,

dressed In earliest light, by vintagers, and one Sate there, a female Shape

upon an ivory throne:

44. A Form most like the imagined habitant Of silver exhalations sprung from

dawn, By winds which feed on sunrise woven, to enchant The faiths of men: all

mortal eyes were drawn, As famished mariners through strange seas gone Gaze on

a burning watch-tower, by the light Of those divinest lineaments--alone With

thoughts which none could share, from that fair sight I turned in sickness, for

a veil shrouded her countenance bright.

45. And neither did I hear the acclamations, Which from brief silence bursting,

filled the air With her strange name and mine, from all the nations Which we,

they said, in strength had gathered there From the sleep of bondage; nor the

vision fair Of that bright pageantry beheld,--but blind And silent, as a

breathing corpse did fare, Leaning upon my friend, till like a wind To fevered

cheeks, a voice flowed o'er my troubled mind.

46. Like music of some minstrel heavenly gifted, To one whom fiends enthral,

this voice to me; Scarce did I wish her veil to be uplifted, I was so calm and

joyous.--I could see The platform where we stood, the statues three Which kept

their marble watch on that high shrine, The multitudes, the mountains, and the

sea; As when eclipse hath passed, things sudden shine To men's astonished eyes

most clear and crystalline.

47. At first Laone spoke most tremulously: But soon her voice the calmness

which it shed Gathered, and--'Thou art whom I sought to see, And thou art our

first votary here,' she said: 'I had a dear friend once, but he is dead!-- And

of all those on the wide earth who breathe, Thou dost resemble him alone--I

spread This veil between us two that thou beneath Shouldst image one who may

have been long lost in death.

48. 'For this wilt thou not henceforth pardon me? Yes, but those joys which

silence well requite Forbid reply;--why men have chosen me To be the Priestess

of this holiest rite I scarcely know, but that the floods of light Which flow

over the world, have borne me hither To meet thee, long most dear; and now

unite Thine hand with mine, and may all comfort wither From both the hearts

whose pulse in joy now beat together,

49. 'If our own will as others' law we bind, If the foul worship trampled here

we fear; If as ourselves we cease to love our kind!'-- She paused, and pointed

upwards--sculptured there Three shapes around her ivory throne appear; One was

a Giant, like a child asleep On a loose rock, whose grasp crushed, as it were

In dream, sceptres and crowns; and one did keep Its watchful eyes in doubt

whether to smile or weep;

50. A Woman sitting on the sculptured disk Of the broad earth, and feeding from

one breast A human babe and a young basilisk; Her looks were sweet as Heaven's

when loveliest In Autumn eves. The third Image was dressed In white wings swift

as clouds in winter skies; Beneath his feet, 'mongst ghastliest forms,

repressed Lay Faith, an obscene worm, who sought to rise, While calmly on the

Sun he turned his diamond eyes.

51. Beside that Image then I sate, while she Stood, mid the throngs which ever

ebbed and flowed, Like light amid the shadows of the sea Cast from one

cloudless star, and on the crowd That touch which none who feels forgets,

bestowed; And whilst the sun returned the steadfast gaze Of the great Image, as

o'er Heaven it glode, That rite had place; it ceased when sunset's blaze Burned

o'er the isles. All stood in joy and deep amaze-- --When in the silence of all

spirits there Laone's voice was felt, and through the air Her thrilling

gestures spoke, most eloquently fair:--

51.1. 'Calm art thou as yon sunset! swift and strong As new-fledged Eagles,

beautiful and young, That float among the blinding beams of morning; And

underneath thy feet writhe Faith, and Folly, Custom, and Hell, and mortal

Melancholy-- Hark! the Earth starts to hear the mighty warning Of thy voice

sublime and holy; Its free spirits here assembled See thee, feel thee, know

thee now,-- To thy voice their hearts have trembled Like ten thousand clouds

which flow With one wide wind as it flies!-- Wisdom! thy irresistible children

rise To hail thee, and the elements they chain And their own will, to swell the

glory of thy train.

51.2. 'O Spirit vast and deep as Night and Heaven! Mother and soul of all to

which is given The light of life, the loveliness of being, Lo! thou dost

re-ascend the human heart, Thy throne of power, almighty as thou wert In dreams

of Poets old grown pale by seeing The shade of thee;--now, millions start To

feel thy lightnings through them burning: Nature, or God, or Love, or Pleasure,

Or Sympathy the sad tears turning To mutual smiles, a drainless treasure,

Descends amidst us;--Scorn and Hate, Revenge and Selfishness are desolate-- A

hundred nations swear that there shall be Pity and Peace and Love, among the

good and free!

51.3. 'Eldest of things, divine Equality! Wisdom and Love are but the slaves of

thee, The Angels of thy sway, who pour around thee Treasures from all the cells

of human thought, And from the Stars, and from the Ocean brought, And the last

living heart whose beatings bound thee: The powerful and the wise had sought

Thy coming, thou in light descending O'er the wide land which is thine own Like

the Spring whose breath is blending All blasts of fragrance into one, Comest

upon the paths of men!-- Earth bares her general bosom to thy ken, And all her

children here in glory meet To feed upon thy smiles, and clasp thy sacred feet.

51.4 'My brethren, we are free! the plains and mountains, The gray sea-shore,

the forests and the fountains, Are haunts of happiest dwellers;--man and woman,

Their common bondage burst, may freely borrow From lawless love a solace for

their sorrow; For oft we still must weep, since we are human. A stormy night's

serenest morrow, Whose showers are pity's gentle tears, Whose clouds are smiles

of those that die Like infants without hopes or fears, And whose beams are joys

that lie In blended hearts, now holds dominion; The dawn of mind, which upwards

on a pinion Borne, swift as sunrise, far illumines space, And clasps this

barren world in its own bright embrace!

51.5 'My brethren, we are free! The fruits are glowing Beneath the stars, and

the night-winds are flowing O'er the ripe corn, the birds and beasts are

dreaming-- Never again may blood of bird or beast Stain with its venomous

stream a human feast, To the pure skies in accusation steaming; Avenging

poisons shall have ceased To feed disease and fear and madness, The dwellers of

the earth and air Shall throng around our steps in gladness, Seeking their food

or refuge there. Our toil from thought all glorious forms shall cull, To make

this Earth, our home, more beautiful, And Science, and her sister Poesy, Shall

clothe in light the fields and cities of the free!

51.6 'Victory, Victory to the prostrate nations! Bear witness Night, and ye

mute Constellations Who gaze on us from your crystalline cars! Thoughts have

gone forth whose powers can sleep no more! Victory! Victory! Earth's remotest

shore, Regions which groan beneath the Antarctic stars, The green lands cradled

in the roar Of western waves, and wildernesses Peopled and vast, which skirt

the oceans Where morning dyes her golden tresses, Shall soon partake our high

emotions: Kings shall turn pale! Almighty Fear, The Fiend-God, when our charmed

name he hear, Shall fade like shadow from his thousand fanes, While Truth with

Joy enthroned o'er his lost empire reigns!'

51.52. Ere she had ceased, the mists of night entwining Their dim woof, floated

o'er the infinite throng; She, like a spirit through the darkness shining, In

tones whose sweetness silence did prolong, As if to lingering winds they did

belong, Poured forth her inmost soul: a passionate speech With wild and

thrilling pauses woven among, Which whoso heard was mute, for it could teach To

rapture like her own all listening hearts to reach.

53. Her voice was as a mountain stream which sweeps The withered leaves of

Autumn to the lake, And in some deep and narrow bay then sleeps In the shadow

of the shores; as dead leaves wake, Under the wave, in flowers and herbs which

make Those green depths beautiful when skies are blue, The multitude so

moveless did partake Such living change, and kindling murmurs flew As o'er that

speechless calm delight and wonder grew.

54. Over the plain the throngs were scattered then In groups around the fires,

which from the sea Even to the gorge of the first mountain-glen Blazed wide and

far: the banquet of the free Was spread beneath many a dark cypress-tree,

Beneath whose spires, which swayed in the red flame, Reclining, as they ate, of

Liberty, And Hope, and Justice, and Laone's name, Earth's children did a woof

of happy converse frame.

55. Their feast was such as Earth, the general mother, Pours from her fairest

bosom, when she smiles In the embrace of Autumn;--to each other As when some

parent fondly reconciles Her warring children, she their wrath beguiles With

her own sustenance, they relenting weep: Such was this Festival, which from

their isles And continents, and winds, and oceans deep, All shapes might throng

to share, that fly, or walk or creep,--

56. Might share in peace and innocence, for gore Or poison none this festal did

pollute, But, piled on high, an overflowing store Of pomegranates and citrons,

fairest fruit, Melons, and dates, and figs, and many a root Sweet and

sustaining, and bright grapes ere yet Accursed fire their mild juice could

transmute Into a mortal bane, and brown corn set In baskets; with pure streams

their thirsting lips they wet.

57. Laone had descended from the shrine, And every deepest look and holiest

mind Fed on her form, though now those tones divine Were silent as she passed;

she did unwind Her veil, as with the crowds of her own kind She mixed; some

impulse made my heart refrain From seeking her that night, so I reclined Amidst

a group, where on the utmost plain A festal watchfire burned beside the dusky

main.

58. And joyous was our feast; pathetic talk, And wit, and harmony of choral

strains, While far Orion o'er the waves did walk That flow among the isles,

held us in chains Of sweet captivity which none disdains Who feels; but when

his zone grew dim in mist Which clothes the Ocean's bosom, o'er the plains The

multitudes went homeward, to their rest, Which that delightful day with its own

shadow blessed.

CANTO 6.

1. Beside the dimness of the glimmering sea, Weaving swift language from

impassioned themes, With that dear friend I lingered, who to me So late had

been restored, beneath the gleams Of the silver stars; and ever in soft dreams

Of future love and peace sweet converse lapped Our willing fancies, till the

pallid beams Of the last watchfire fell, and darkness wrapped The waves, and

each bright chain of floating fire was snapped;

2. And till we came even to the City's wall And the great gate; then, none knew

whence or why, Disquiet on the multitudes did fall: And first, one pale and

breathless passed us by, And stared and spoke not;--then with piercing cry A

troop of wild-eyed women, by the shrieks Of their own terror

driven,--tumultuously Hither and thither hurrying with pale cheeks, Each one

from fear unknown a sudden refuge seeks--

3. Then, rallying cries of treason and of danger Resounded: and--'They come! to

arms! to arms! The Tyrant is amongst us, and the stranger Comes to enslave us

in his name! to arms!' In vain: for Panic, the pale fiend who charms Strength

to forswear her right, those millions swept Like waves before the

tempest--these alarms Came to me, as to know their cause I lept On the gate's

turret, and in rage and grief and scorn I wept!

4. For to the North I saw the town on fire, And its red light made morning

pallid now, Which burst over wide Asia;--louder, higher, The yells of victory

and the screams of woe I heard approach, and saw the throng below Stream

through the gates like foam-wrought waterfalls Fed from a thousand storms--the

fearful glow Of bombs flares overhead--at intervals The red artillery's bolt

mangling among them falls.

5. And now the horsemen come--and all was done Swifter than I have spoken--I

beheld Their red swords flash in the unrisen sun. I rushed among the rout, to

have repelled That miserable flight--one moment quelled By voice and looks and

eloquent despair, As if reproach from their own hearts withheld Their steps,

they stood; but soon came pouring there New multitudes, and did those rallied

bands o'erbear.

6. I strove, as, drifted on some cataract By irresistible streams, some wretch

might strive Who hears its fatal roar:--the files compact Whelmed me, and from

the gate availed to drive With quickening impulse, as each bolt did rive Their

ranks with bloodier chasm:--into the plain Disgorged at length the dead and the

alive In one dread mass, were parted, and the stain Of blood, from mortal steel

fell o'er the fields like rain.

7. For now the despot's bloodhounds with their prey Unarmed and unaware, were

gorging deep Their gluttony of death; the loose array Of horsemen o'er the wide

fields murdering sweep, And with loud laughter for their tyrant reap A harvest

sown with other hopes; the while, Far overhead, ships from Propontis keep A

killing rain of fire:--when the waves smile As sudden earthquakes light many a

volcano-isle,

8. Thus sudden, unexpected feast was spread For the carrion-fowls of Heaven.--I

saw the sight-- I moved--I lived--as o'er the heaps of dead, Whose stony eyes

glared in the morning light I trod;--to me there came no thought of flight, But

with loud cries of scorn, which whoso heard That dreaded death, felt in his

veins the might Of virtuous shame return, the crowd I stirred, And

desperation's hope in many hearts recurred.

9. A band of brothers gathering round me, made, Although unarmed, a steadfast

front, and still Retreating, with stern looks beneath the shade Of gathered

eyebrows, did the victors fill With doubt even in success; deliberate will

Inspired our growing troop; not overthrown It gained the shelter of a grassy

hill, And ever still our comrades were hewn down, And their defenceless limbs

beneath our footsteps strown.

10. Immovably we stood--in joy I found, Beside me then, firm as a giant pine

Among the mountain-vapours driven around, The old man whom I loved--his eyes

divine With a mild look of courage answered mine, And my young friend was near,

and ardently His hand grasped mine a moment--now the line Of war extended, to

our rallying cry As myriads flocked in love and brotherhood to die.

11. For ever while the sun was climbing Heaven The horseman hewed our unarmed

myriads down Safely, though when by thirst of carnage driven Too near, those

slaves were swiftly overthrown By hundreds leaping on them:--flesh and bone

Soon made our ghastly ramparts; then the shaft Of the artillery from the sea

was thrown More fast and fiery, and the conquerors laughed In pride to hear the

wind our screams of torment waft.

12. For on one side alone the hill gave shelter, So vast that phalanx of

unconquered men, And there the living in the blood did welter Of the dead and

dying, which in that green glen, Like stifled torrents, made a plashy fen Under

the feet--thus was the butchery waged While the sun clomb Heaven's eastern

steep--but when It 'gan to sink--a fiercer combat raged, For in more doubtful

strife the armies were engaged.

13. Within a cave upon the hill were found A bundle of rude pikes, the

instrument Of those who war but on their native ground For natural rights: a

shout of joyance sent Even from our hearts the wide air pierced and rent, As

those few arms the bravest and the best Seized, and each sixth, thus armed, did

now present A line which covered and sustained the rest, A confident phalanx,

which the foes on every side invest.

14. That onset turned the foes to flight almost; But soon they saw their

present strength, and knew That coming night would to our resolute host Bring

victory; so dismounting, close they drew Their glittering files, and then the

combat grew Unequal but most horrible;--and ever Our myriads, whom the swift

bolt overthrew, Or the red sword, failed like a mountain river Which rushes

forth in foam to sink in sands for ever.

15. Sorrow and shame, to see with their own kind Our human brethren mix, like

beasts of blood, To mutual ruin armed by one behind Who sits and scoffs!--That

friend so mild and good, Who like its shadow near my youth had stood, Was

stabbed!--my old preserver's hoary hair With the flesh clinging to its roots,

was strewed Under my feet!--I lost all sense or care, And like the rest I grew

desperate and unaware.

16. The battle became ghastlier--in the midst I paused, and saw, how ugly and

how fell O Hate! thou art, even when thy life thou shedd'st For love. The

ground in many a little dell Was broken, up and down whose steeps befell

Alternate victory and defeat, and there The combatants with rage most horrible

Strove, and their eyes started with cracking stare, And impotent their tongues

they lolled into the air,

17. Flaccid and foamy, like a mad dog's hanging; Want, and Moon-madness, and

the pest's swift Bane When its shafts smite--while yet its bow is twanging--

Have each their mark and sign--some ghastly stain; And this was thine, O War!

of hate and pain Thou loathed slave! I saw all shapes of death And ministered

to many, o'er the plain While carnage in the sunbeam's warmth did seethe, Till

twilight o'er the east wove her serenest wreath.

18. The few who yet survived, resolute and firm Around me fought. At the

decline of day Winding above the mountain's snowy term New banners shone; they

quivered in the ray Of the sun's unseen orb--ere night the array Of fresh

troops hemmed us in--of those brave bands I soon survived alone--and now I lay

Vanquished and faint, the grasp of bloody hands I felt, and saw on high the

glare of falling brands,

19. When on my foes a sudden terror came, And they fled, scattering--lo! with

reinless speed A black Tartarian horse of giant frame Comes trampling over the

dead, the living bleed Beneath the hoofs of that tremendous steed, On which,

like to an Angel, robed in white, Sate one waving a sword;--the hosts recede

And fly, as through their ranks with awful might, Sweeps in the shadow of eve

that Phantom swift and bright;

20. And its path made a solitude.--I rose And marked its coming: it relaxed its

course As it approached me, and the wind that flows Through night, bore accents

to mine ear whose force Might create smiles in death--the Tartar horse Paused,

and I saw the shape its might which swayed, And heard her musical pants, like

the sweet source Of waters in the desert, as she said, 'Mount with me, Laon,

now'--I rapidly obeyed.

21. Then: 'Away! away!' she cried, and stretched her sword As 'twere a scourge

over the courser's head, And lightly shook the reins.--We spake no word, But

like the vapour of the tempest fled Over the plain; her dark hair was dispread

Like the pine's locks upon the lingering blast; Over mine eyes its shadowy

strings it spread Fitfully, and the hills and streams fled fast, As o'er their

glimmering forms the steed's broad shadow passed.

22. And his hoofs ground the rocks to fire and dust, His strong sides made the

torrents rise in spray, And turbulence, as of a whirlwind's gust Surrounded

us;--and still away! away! Through the desert night we sped, while she alway

Gazed on a mountain which we neared, whose crest, Crowned with a marble ruin,

in the ray Of the obscure stars gleamed;--its rugged breast The steed strained

up, and then his impulse did arrest.

23. A rocky hill which overhung the Ocean:-- From that lone ruin, when the

steed that panted Paused, might be heard the murmur of the motion Of waters, as

in spots for ever haunted By the choicest winds of Heaven, which are enchanted

To music, by the wand of Solitude, That wizard wild, and the far tents

implanted Upon the plain, be seen by those who stood Thence marking the dark

shore of Ocean's curved flood.

24. One moment these were heard and seen--another Passed; and the two who stood

beneath that night, Each only heard, or saw, or felt the other; As from the

lofty steed she did alight, Cythna, (for, from the eyes whose deepest light Of

love and sadness made my lips feel pale With influence strange of mournfullest

delight, My own sweet Cythna looked), with joy did quail, And felt her strength

in tears of human weakness fail.

25. And for a space in my embrace she rested, Her head on my unquiet heart

reposing, While my faint arms her languid frame invested; At length she looked

on me, and half unclosing Her tremulous lips, said, 'Friend, thy bands were

losing The battle, as I stood before the King In bonds.--I burst them then, and

swiftly choosing The time, did seize a Tartar's sword, and spring Upon his

horse, and swift, as on the whirlwind's wing,

26. 'Have thou and I been borne beyond pursuer, And we are here.'--Then,

turning to the steed, She pressed the white moon on his front with pure And

rose-like lips, and many a fragrant weed From the green ruin plucked, that he

might feed;-- But I to a stone seat that Maiden led, And, kissing her fair

eyes, said, 'Thou hast need Of rest,' and I heaped up the courser's bed In a

green mossy nook, with mountain flowers dispread.

27. Within that ruin, where a shattered portal Looks to the eastern stars,

abandoned now By man, to be the home of things immortal, Memories, like awful

ghosts which come and go, And must inherit all he builds below, When he is

gone, a hall stood; o'er whose roof Fair clinging weeds with ivy pale did grow,

Clasping its gray rents with a verdurous woof, A hanging dome of leaves, a

canopy moon-proof.

28. The autumnal winds, as if spell-bound, had made A natural couch of leaves

in that recess, Which seasons none disturbed, but, in the shade Of flowering

parasites, did Spring love to dress With their sweet blooms the wintry

loneliness Of those dead leaves, shedding their stars, whene'er The wandering

wind her nurslings might caress; Whose intertwining fingers ever there Made

music wild and soft that filled the listening air.

29. We know not where we go, or what sweet dream May pilot us through caverns

strange and fair Of far and pathless passion, while the stream Of life, our

bark doth on its whirlpools bear, Spreading swift wings as sails to the dim

air; Nor should we seek to know, so the devotion Of love and gentle thoughts be

heard still there Louder and louder from the utmost Ocean Of universal life,

attuning its commotion.

30. To the pure all things are pure! Oblivion wrapped Our spirits, and the

fearful overthrow Of public hope was from our being snapped, Though linked

years had bound it there; for now A power, a thirst, a knowledge, which below

All thoughts, like light beyond the atmosphere, Clothing its clouds with grace,

doth ever flow, Came on us, as we sate in silence there, Beneath the golden

stars of the clear azure air;--

31. In silence which doth follow talk that causes The baffled heart to speak

with sighs and tears, When wildering passion swalloweth up the pauses Of

inexpressive speech:--the youthful years Which we together passed, their hopes

and fears, The blood itself which ran within our frames, That likeness of the

features which endears The thoughts expressed by them, our very names, And all

the winged hours which speechless memory claims,

32. Had found a voice--and ere that voice did pass, The night grew damp and

dim, and, through a rent Of the ruin where we sate, from the morass A wandering

Meteor by some wild wind sent, Hung high in the green dome, to which it lent A

faint and pallid lustre; while the song Of blasts, in which its blue hair

quivering bent, Strewed strangest sounds the moving leaves among; A wondrous

light, the sound as of a spirit's tongue.

33. The Meteor showed the leaves on which we sate, And Cythna's glowing arms,

and the thick ties Of her soft hair, which bent with gathered weight My neck

near hers; her dark and deepening eyes, Which, as twin phantoms of one star

that lies O'er a dim well, move, though the star reposes, Swam in our mute and

liquid ecstasies, Her marble brow, and eager lips, like roses, With their own

fragrance pale, which Spring but half uncloses.

34. The Meteor to its far morass returned: The beating of our veins one

interval Made still; and then I felt the blood that burned Within her frame,

mingle with mine, and fall Around my heart like fire; and over all A mist was

spread, the sickness of a deep And speechless swoon of joy, as might befall Two

disunited spirits when they leap In union from this earth's obscure and fading

sleep.

35. Was it one moment that confounded thus All thought, all sense, all feeling,

into one Unutterable power, which shielded us Even from our own cold looks,

when we had gone Into a wide and wild oblivion Of tumult and of tenderness? or

now Had ages, such as make the moon and sun, The seasons, and mankind their

changes know, Left fear and time unfelt by us alone below?

36. I know not. What are kisses whose fire clasps The failing heart in

languishment, or limb Twined within limb? or the quick dying gasps Of the life

meeting, when the faint eyes swim Through tears of a wide mist boundless and

dim, In one caress? What is the strong control Which leads the heart that dizzy

steep to climb, Where far over the world those vapours roll Which blend two

restless frames in one reposing soul? 37. It is the shadow which doth float

unseen, But not unfelt, o'er blind mortality, Whose divine darkness fled not

from that green And lone recess, where lapped in peace did lie Our linked

frames, till, from the changing sky That night and still another day had fled;

And then I saw and felt. The moon was high, And clouds, as of a coming storm,

were spread Under its orb,--loud winds were gathering overhead.

38. Cythna's sweet lips seemed lurid in the moon, Her fairest limbs with the

night wind were chill, And her dark tresses were all loosely strewn O'er her

pale bosom:--all within was still, And the sweet peace of joy did almost fill

The depth of her unfathomable look;-- And we sate calmly, though that rocky

hill, The waves contending in its caverns strook, For they foreknew the storm,

and the gray ruin shook.

39. There we unheeding sate, in the communion Of interchanged vows, which, with

a rite Of faith most sweet and sacred, stamped our union.-- Few were the living

hearts which could unite Like ours, or celebrate a bridal night With such close

sympathies, for they had sprung From linked youth, and from the gentle might Of

earliest love, delayed and cherished long, Which common hopes and fears made,

like a tempest, strong.

40. And such is Nature's law divine, that those Who grow together cannot choose

but love, If faith or custom do not interpose, Or common slavery mar what else

might move All gentlest thoughts; as in the sacred grove Which shades the

springs of Ethiopian Nile, That living tree which, if the arrowy dove Strike

with her shadow, shrinks in fear awhile, But its own kindred leaves clasps

while the sunbeams smile;

41. And clings to them, when darkness may dissever The close caresses of all

duller plants Which bloom on the wide earth--thus we for ever Were linked, for

love had nursed us in the haunts Where knowledge, from its secret source

enchants Young hearts with the fresh music of its springing, Ere yet its

gathered flood feeds human wants, As the great Nile feeds Egypt; ever flinging

Light on the woven boughs which o'er its waves are swinging.

42. The tones of Cythna's voice like echoes were Of those far murmuring

streams; they rose and fell, Mixed with mine own in the tempestuous air,-- And

so we sate, until our talk befell Of the late ruin, swift and horrible, And how

those seeds of hope might yet be sown, Whose fruit is evil's mortal poison:

well, For us, this ruin made a watch-tower lone, But Cythna's eyes looked

faint, and now two days were gone

43. Since she had food:--therefore I did awaken The Tartar steed, who, from his

ebon mane Soon as the clinging slumbers he had shaken, Bent his thin head to

seek the brazen rein, Following me obediently; with pain Of heart, so deep and

dread, that one caress, When lips and heart refuse to part again Till they have

told their fill, could scarce express The anguish of her mute and fearful

tenderness,

44. Cythna beheld me part, as I bestrode That willing steed--the tempest and

the night, Which gave my path its safety as I rode Down the ravine of rocks,

did soon unite The darkness and the tumult of their might Borne on all

winds.--Far through the streaming rain Floating at intervals the garments white

Of Cythna gleamed, and her voice once again Came to me on the gust, and soon I

reached the plain.

45. I dreaded not the tempest, nor did he Who bore me, but his eyeballs wide

and red Turned on the lightning's cleft exultingly; And when the earth beneath

his tameless tread, Shook with the sullen thunder, he would spread His nostrils

to the blast, and joyously Mock the fierce peal with neighings;--thus we sped

O'er the lit plain, and soon I could descry Where Death and Fire had gorged the

spoil of victory.

46. There was a desolate village in a wood Whose bloom-inwoven leaves now

scattering fed The hungry storm; it was a place of blood, A heap of hearthless

walls;--the flames were dead Within those dwellings now,--the life had fled

From all those corpses now,--but the wide sky Flooded with lightning was ribbed

overhead By the black rafters, and around did lie Women, and babes, and men,

slaughtered confusedly.

47. Beside the fountain in the market-place Dismounting, I beheld those corpses

stare With horny eyes upon each other's face, And on the earth and on the

vacant air, And upon me, close to the waters where I stooped to slake my

thirst;--I shrank to taste, For the salt bitterness of blood was there; But

tied the steed beside, and sought in haste If any yet survived amid that

ghastly waste.

48. No living thing was there beside one woman, Whom I found wandering in the

streets, and she Was withered from a likeness of aught human Into a fiend, by

some strange misery: Soon as she heard my steps she leaped on me, And glued her

burning lips to mine, and laughed With a loud, long, and frantic laugh of glee,

And cried, 'Now, Mortal, thou hast deeply quaffed The Plague's blue

kisses--soon millions shall pledge the draught!

49. 'My name is Pestilence--this bosom dry, Once fed two babes--a sister and a

brother-- When I came home, one in the blood did lie Of three death-wounds--the

flames had ate the other! Since then I have no longer been a mother, But I am

Pestilence;--hither and thither I flit about, that I may slay and smother:--

All lips which I have kissed must surely wither, But Death's--if thou art he,

we'll go to work together!

50. 'What seek'st thou here? The moonlight comes in flashes,-- The dew is

rising dankly from the dell-- 'Twill moisten her! and thou shalt see the gashes

In my sweet boy, now full of worms--but tell First what thou seek'st.'--'I seek

for food.'--''Tis well, Thou shalt have food. Famine, my paramour, Waits for us

at the feast--cruel and fell Is Famine, but he drives not from his door Those

whom these lips have kissed, alone. No more, no more!'

51. As thus she spake, she grasped me with the strength Of madness, and by many

a ruined hearth She led, and over many a corpse:--at length We came to a lone

hut where on the earth Which made its floor, she in her ghastly mirth,

Gathering from all those homes now desolate, Had piled three heaps of loaves,

making a dearth Among the dead--round which she set in state A ring of cold,

stiff babes; silent and stark they sate.

52. She leaped upon a pile, and lifted high Her mad looks to the lightning, and

cried: 'Eat! Share the great feast--to-morrow we must die!' And then she

spurned the loaves with her pale feet, Towards her bloodless guests;--that

sight to meet, Mine eyes and my heart ached, and but that she Who loved me, did

with absent looks defeat Despair, I might have raved in sympathy; But now I

took the food that woman offered me;

53. And vainly having with her madness striven If I might win her to return

with me, Departed. In the eastern beams of Heaven The lightning now grew

pallid--rapidly, As by the shore of the tempestuous sea The dark steed bore me;

and the mountain gray Soon echoed to his hoofs, and I could see Cythna among

the rocks, where she alway Had sate with anxious eyes fixed on the lingering

day.

54. And joy was ours to meet: she was most pale, Famished, and wet and weary,

so I cast My arms around her, lest her steps should fail As to our home we

went, and thus embraced, Her full heart seemed a deeper joy to taste Than e'er

the prosperous know; the steed behind Trod peacefully along the mountain waste;

We reached our home ere morning could unbind Night's latest veil, and on our

bridal-couch reclined.

55. Her chilled heart having cherished in my bosom, And sweetest kisses past,

we two did share Our peaceful meal:--as an autumnal blossom Which spreads its

shrunk leaves in the sunny air, After cold showers, like rainbows woven there,

Thus in her lips and cheeks the vital spirit Mantled, and in her eyes, an

atmosphere Of health, and hope; and sorrow languished near it, And fear, and

all that dark despondence doth inherit.

CANTO 7.

1. So we sate joyous as the morning ray Which fed upon the wrecks of night and

storm Now lingering on the winds; light airs did play Among the dewy weeds, the

sun was warm, And we sate linked in the inwoven charm Of converse and caresses

sweet and deep, Speechless caresses, talk that might disarm Time, though he

wield the darts of death and sleep, And those thrice mortal barbs in his own

poison steep.

2. I told her of my sufferings and my madness, And how, awakened from that

dreamy mood By Liberty's uprise, the strength of gladness Came to my spirit in

my solitude; And all that now I was--while tears pursued Each other down her

fair and listening cheek Fast as the thoughts which fed them, like a flood From

sunbright dales; and when I ceased to speak, Her accents soft and sweet the

pausing air did wake.

3. She told me a strange tale of strange endurance, Like broken memories of

many a heart Woven into one; to which no firm assurance, So wild were they,

could her own faith impart. She said that not a tear did dare to start From the

swoln brain, and that her thoughts were firm When from all mortal hope she did

depart, Borne by those slaves across the Ocean's term, And that she reached the

port without one fear infirm.

4. One was she among many there, the thralls Of the cold Tyrant's cruel lust;

and they Laughed mournfully in those polluted halls; But she was calm and sad,

musing alway On loftiest enterprise, till on a day The Tyrant heard her singing

to her lute A wild, and sad, and spirit-thrilling lay, Like winds that die in

wastes--one moment mute The evil thoughts it made, which did his breast

pollute.

5. Even when he saw her wondrous loveliness, One moment to great Nature's

sacred power He bent, and was no longer passionless; But when he bade her to

his secret bower Be borne, a loveless victim, and she tore Her locks in agony,

and her words of flame And mightier looks availed not; then he bore Again his

load of slavery, and became A king, a heartless beast, a pageant and a name.

6. She told me what a loathsome agony Is that when selfishness mocks love's

delight, Foul as in dream's most fearful imagery, To dally with the mowing

dead--that night All torture, fear, or horror made seem light Which the soul

dreams or knows, and when the day Shone on her awful frenzy, from the sight

Where like a Spirit in fleshly chains she lay Struggling, aghast and pale the

Tyrant fled away.

7. Her madness was a beam of light, a power Which dawned through the rent soul;

and words it gave, Gestures and looks, such as in whirlwinds bore Which might

not be withstood--whence none could save-- All who approached their

sphere,--like some calm wave Vexed into whirlpools by the chasms beneath; And

sympathy made each attendant slave Fearless and free, and they began to breathe

Deep curses, like the voice of flames far underneath.

8. The King felt pale upon his noonday throne: At night two slaves he to her

chamber sent,-- One was a green and wrinkled eunuch, grown From human shape

into an instrument Of all things ill--distorted, bowed and bent. The other was

a wretch from infancy Made dumb by poison; who nought knew or meant But to

obey: from the fire isles came he, A diver lean and strong, of Oman's coral

sea.

9. They bore her to a bark, and the swift stroke Of silent rowers clove the

blue moonlight seas, Until upon their path the morning broke; They anchored

then, where, be there calm or breeze, The gloomiest of the drear Symplegades

Shakes with the sleepless surge;--the Ethiop there Wound his long arms around

her, and with knees Like iron clasped her feet, and plunged with her Among the

closing waves out of the boundless air.

10. 'Swift as an eagle stooping from the plain Of morning light, into some

shadowy wood, He plunged through the green silence of the main, Through many a

cavern which the eternal flood Had scooped, as dark lairs for its monster

brood; And among mighty shapes which fled in wonder, And among mightier shadows

which pursued His heels, he wound: until the dark rocks under He touched a

golden chain--a sound arose like thunder.

11. 'A stunning clang of massive bolts redoubling Beneath the deep--a burst of

waters driven As from the roots of the sea, raging and bubbling: And in that

roof of crags a space was riven Through which there shone the emerald beams of

heaven, Shot through the lines of many waves inwoven, Like sunlight through

acacia woods at even, Through which, his way the diver having cloven, Passed

like a spark sent up out of a burning oven.

12. 'And then,' she said, 'he laid me in a cave Above the waters, by that chasm

of sea, A fountain round and vast, in which the wave Imprisoned, boiled and

leaped perpetually, Down which, one moment resting, he did flee, Winning the

adverse depth; that spacious cell Like an hupaithric temple wide and high,

Whose aery dome is inaccessible, Was pierced with one round cleft through which

the sunbeams fell.

13. 'Below, the fountain's brink was richly paven With the deep's wealth,

coral, and pearl, and sand Like spangling gold, and purple shells engraven With

mystic legends by no mortal hand, Left there, when thronging to the moon's

command, The gathering waves rent the Hesperian gate Of mountains, and on such

bright floor did stand Columns, and shapes like statues, and the state Of

kingless thrones, which Earth did in her heart create.

14. 'The fiend of madness which had made its prey Of my poor heart, was lulled

to sleep awhile: There was an interval of many a day, And a sea-eagle brought

me food the while, Whose nest was built in that untrodden isle, And who, to be

the gaoler had been taught Of that strange dungeon; as a friend whose smile

Like light and rest at morn and even is sought That wild bird was to me, till

madness misery brought.

15. 'The misery of a madness slow and creeping, Which made the earth seem fire,

the sea seem air, And the white clouds of noon which oft were sleeping, In the

blue heaven so beautiful and fair, Like hosts of ghastly shadows hovering

there; And the sea-eagle looked a fiend, who bore Thy mangled limbs for

food!--Thus all things were Transformed into the agony which I wore Even as a

poisoned robe around my bosom's core.

16. 'Again I knew the day and night fast fleeing, The eagle, and the fountain,

and the air; Another frenzy came--there seemed a being Within me--a strange

load my heart did bear, As if some living thing had made its lair Even in the

fountains of my life:--a long And wondrous vision wrought from my despair, Then

grew, like sweet reality among Dim visionary woes, an unreposing throng.

17. 'Methought I was about to be a mother-- Month after month went by, and

still I dreamed That we should soon be all to one another, I and my child; and

still new pulses seemed To beat beside my heart, and still I deemed There was a

babe within--and, when the rain Of winter through the rifted cavern streamed,

Methought, after a lapse of lingering pain, I saw that lovely shape, which near

my heart had lain.

18. 'It was a babe, beautiful from its birth,-- It was like thee, dear love,

its eyes were thine, Its brow, its lips, and so upon the earth It laid its

fingers, as now rest on mine Thine own, beloved!--'twas a dream divine; Even to

remember how it fled, how swift, How utterly, might make the heart repine,--

Though 'twas a dream.'--Then Cythna did uplift Her looks on mine, as if some

doubt she sought to shift:

19. A doubt which would not flee, a tenderness Of questioning grief, a source

of thronging tears; Which having passed, as one whom sobs oppress She spoke:

'Yes, in the wilderness of years Her memory, aye, like a green home appears;

She sucked her fill even at this breast, sweet love, For many months. I had no

mortal fears; Methought I felt her lips and breath approve,-- It was a human

thing which to my bosom clove.

20. 'I watched the dawn of her first smiles; and soon When zenith stars were

trembling on the wave, Or when the beams of the invisible moon, Or sun, from

many a prism within the cave Their gem-born shadows to the water gave, Her

looks would hunt them, and with outspread hand, From the swift lights which

might that fountain pave, She would mark one, and laugh, when that command

Slighting, it lingered there, and could not understand.

21. 'Methought her looks began to talk with me; And no articulate sounds, but

something sweet Her lips would frame,--so sweet it could not be, That it was

meaningless; her touch would meet Mine, and our pulses calmly flow and beat In

response while we slept; and on a day When I was happiest in that strange

retreat, With heaps of golden shells we two did play,-- Both infants, weaving

wings for time's perpetual way.

22. 'Ere night, methought, her waning eyes were grown Weary with joy, and tired

with our delight, We, on the earth, like sister twins lay down On one fair

mother's bosom:--from that night She fled,--like those illusions clear and

bright, Which dwell in lakes, when the red moon on high Pause ere it wakens

tempest;--and her flight, Though 'twas the death of brainless fantasy, Yet

smote my lonesome heart more than all misery.

23. 'It seemed that in the dreary night the diver Who brought me thither, came

again, and bore My child away. I saw the waters quiver, When he so swiftly

sunk, as once before: Then morning came--it shone even as of yore, But I was

changed--the very life was gone Out of my heart--I wasted more and more, Day

after day, and sitting there alone, Vexed the inconstant waves with my

perpetual moan.

24. 'I was no longer mad, and yet methought My breasts were swoln and

changed:--in every vein The blood stood still one moment, while that thought

Was passing--with a gush of sickening pain It ebbed even to its withered

springs again: When my wan eyes in stern resolve I turned From that most

strange delusion, which would fain Have waked the dream for which my spirit

yearned With more than human love,--then left it unreturned.

25. 'So now my reason was restored to me I struggled with that dream, which,

like a beast Most fierce and beauteous, in my memory Had made its lair, and on

my heart did feast; But all that cave and all its shapes, possessed By thoughts

which could not fade, renewed each one Some smile, some look, some gesture

which had blessed Me heretofore: I, sitting there alone, Vexed the inconstant

waves with my perpetual moan.

26. 'Time passed, I know not whether months or years; For day, nor night, nor

change of seasons made Its note, but thoughts and unavailing tears: And I

became at last even as a shade, A smoke, a cloud on which the winds have

preyed, Till it be thin as air; until, one even, A Nautilus upon the fountain

played, Spreading his azure sail where breath of Heaven Descended not, among

the waves and whirlpools driven.

27. 'And, when the Eagle came, that lovely thing, Oaring with rosy feet its

silver boat, Fled near me as for shelter; on slow wing, The Eagle, hovering

o'er his prey did float; But when he saw that I with fear did note His purpose,

proffering my own food to him, The eager plumes subsided on his throat-- He

came where that bright child of sea did swim, And o'er it cast in peace his

shadow broad and dim.

28. 'This wakened me, it gave me human strength; And hope, I know not whence or

wherefore, rose, But I resumed my ancient powers at length; My spirit felt

again like one of those Like thine, whose fate it is to make the woes Of

humankind their prey--what was this cave? Its deep foundation no firm purpose

knows Immutable, resistless, strong to save, Like mind while yet it mocks the

all-devouring grave.

29. 'And where was Laon? might my heart be dead, While that far dearer heart

could move and be? Or whilst over the earth the pall was spread, Which I had

sworn to rend? I might be free, Could I but win that friendly bird to me, To

bring me ropes; and long in vain I sought By intercourse of mutual imagery Of

objects, if such aid he could be taught; But fruit, and flowers, and boughs,

yet never ropes he brought.

30. 'We live in our own world, and mine was made From glorious fantasies of

hope departed: Aye we are darkened with their floating shade, Or cast a lustre

on them--time imparted Such power to me--I became fearless-hearted, My eye and

voice grew firm, calm was my mind, And piercing, like the morn, now it has

darted Its lustre on all hidden things, behind Yon dim and fading clouds which

load the weary wind.

31. 'My mind became the book through which I grew Wise in all human wisdom, and

its cave, Which like a mine I rifled through and through, To me the keeping of

its secrets gave-- One mind, the type of all, the moveless wave Whose calm

reflects all moving things that are, Necessity, and love, and life, the grave,

And sympathy, fountains of hope and fear, Justice, and truth, and time, and the

world's natural sphere.

32. 'And on the sand would I make signs to range These woofs, as they were

woven, of my thought; Clear, elemental shapes, whose smallest change A subtler

language within language wrought: The key of truths which once were dimly

taught In old Crotona;--and sweet melodies Of love, in that lorn solitude I

caught From mine own voice in dream, when thy dear eyes Shone through my sleep,

and did that utterance harmonize.

33. 'Thy songs were winds whereon I fled at will, As in a winged chariot, o'er

the plain Of crystal youth; and thou wert there to fill My heart with joy, and

there we sate again On the gray margin of the glimmering main, Happy as then

but wiser far, for we Smiled on the flowery grave in which were lain Fear,

Faith and Slavery; and mankind was free, Equal, and pure, and wise, in Wisdom's

prophecy.

34. 'For to my will my fancies were as slaves To do their sweet and subtile

ministries; And oft from that bright fountain's shadowy waves They would make

human throngs gather and rise To combat with my overflowing eyes, And voice

made deep with passion--thus I grew Familiar with the shock and the surprise

And war of earthly minds, from which I drew The power which has been mine to

frame their thoughts anew.

35. 'And thus my prison was the populous earth-- Where I saw--even as misery

dreams of morn Before the east has given its glory birth-- Religion's pomp made

desolate by the scorn Of Wisdom's faintest smile, and thrones uptorn, And

dwellings of mild people interspersed With undivided fields of ripening corn,

And love made free,--a hope which we have nursed Even with our blood and

tears,--until its glory burst.

36. 'All is not lost! There is some recompense For hope whose fountain can be

thus profound, Even throned Evil's splendid impotence, Girt by its hell of

power, the secret sound Of hymns to truth and freedom--the dread bound Of life

and death passed fearlessly and well, Dungeons wherein the high resolve is

found, Racks which degraded woman's greatness tell, And what may else be good

and irresistible.

37. 'Such are the thoughts which, like the fires that flare In

storm-encompassed isles, we cherish yet In this dark ruin--such were mine even

there; As in its sleep some odorous violet, While yet its leaves with nightly

dews are wet, Breathes in prophetic dreams of day's uprise, Or as, ere Scythian

frost in fear has met Spring's messengers descending from the skies, The buds

foreknow their life--this hope must ever rise.

38. 'So years had passed, when sudden earthquake rent The depth of ocean, and

the cavern cracked With sound, as if the world's wide continent Had fallen in

universal ruin wracked: And through the cleft streamed in one cataract The

stifling waters--when I woke, the flood Whose banded waves that crystal cave

had sacked Was ebbing round me, and my bright abode Before me yawned--a chasm

desert, and bare, and broad.

39. 'Above me was the sky, beneath the sea: I stood upon a point of shattered

stone, And heard loose rocks rushing tumultuously With splash and shock into

the deep--anon All ceased, and there was silence wide and lone. I felt that I

was free! The Ocean-spray Quivered beneath my feet, the broad Heaven shone

Around, and in my hair the winds did play Lingering as they pursued their

unimpeded way.

40. 'My spirit moved upon the sea like wind Which round some thymy cape will

lag and hover, Though it can wake the still cloud, and unbind The strength of

tempest: day was almost over, When through the fading light I could discover A

ship approaching--its white sails were fed With the north wind--its moving

shade did cover The twilight deep; the mariners in dread Cast anchor when they

saw new rocks around them spread.

41. 'And when they saw one sitting on a crag, They sent a boat to me;--the

Sailors rowed In awe through many a new and fearful jag Of overhanging rock,

through which there flowed The foam of streams that cannot make abode. They

came and questioned me, but when they heard My voice, they became silent, and

they stood And moved as men in whom new love had stirred Deep thoughts: so to

the ship we passed without a word.

CANTO 8.

1. 'I sate beside the Steersman then, and gazing Upon the west, cried, "Spread

the sails! Behold! The sinking moon is like a watch-tower blazing Over the

mountains yet;--the City of Gold Yon Cape alone does from the sight withhold;

The stream is fleet--the north breathes steadily Beneath the stars; they

tremble with the cold! Ye cannot rest upon the dreary sea!-- Haste, haste to

the warm home of happier destiny!"

2. 'The Mariners obeyed--the Captain stood Aloof, and, whispering to the Pilot,

said, "Alas, alas! I fear we are pursued By wicked ghosts; a Phantom of the

Dead, The night before we sailed, came to my bed In dream, like that!" The

Pilot then replied, "It cannot be--she is a human Maid-- Her low voice makes

you weep--she is some bride, Or daughter of high birth--she can be nought

beside."

3. 'We passed the islets, borne by wind and stream, And as we sailed, the

Mariners came near And thronged around to listen;--in the gleam Of the pale

moon I stood, as one whom fear May not attaint, and my calm voice did rear; "Ye

are all human--yon broad moon gives light To millions who the selfsame likeness

wear, Even while I speak--beneath this very night, Their thoughts flow on like

ours, in sadness or delight.

4. '"What dream ye? Your own hands have built an home, Even for yourselves on a

beloved shore: For some, fond eyes are pining till they come, How they will

greet him when his toils are o'er, And laughing babes rush from the well-known

door! Is this your care? ye toil for your own good-- Ye feel and think--has

some immortal power Such purposes? or in a human mood, Dream ye some Power thus

builds for man in solitude?

5. '"What is that Power? Ye mock yourselves, and give A human heart to what ye

cannot know: As if the cause of life could think and live! 'Twere as if man's

own works should feel, and show The hopes, and fears, and thoughts from which

they flow, And he be like to them! Lo! Plague is free To waste, Blight, Poison,

Earthquake, Hail, and Snow, Disease, and Want, and worse Necessity Of hate and

ill, and Pride, and Fear, and Tyranny!

6. '"What is that Power? Some moon-struck sophist stood Watching the shade from

his own soul upthrown Fill Heaven and darken Earth, and in such mood The Form

he saw and worshipped was his own, His likeness in the world's vast mirror

shown; And 'twere an innocent dream, but that a faith Nursed by fear's dew of

poison, grows thereon, And that men say, that Power has chosen Death On all who

scorn its laws, to wreak immortal wrath.

7. '"Men say that they themselves have heard and seen, Or known from others who

have known such things, A Shade, a Form, which Earth and Heaven between Wields

an invisible rod--that Priests and Kings, Custom, domestic sway, ay, all that

brings Man's freeborn soul beneath the oppressor's heel, Are his strong

ministers, and that the stings Of death will make the wise his vengeance feel,

Though truth and virtue arm their hearts with tenfold steel.

8. '"And it is said, this Power will punish wrong; Yes, add despair to crime,

and pain to pain! And deepest hell, and deathless snakes among, Will bind the

wretch on whom is fixed a stain, Which, like a plague, a burden, and a bane,

Clung to him while he lived; for love and hate, Virtue and vice, they say are

difference vain-- The will of strength is right--this human state Tyrants, that

they may rule, with lies thus desolate.

9. '"Alas, what strength? Opinion is more frail Than yon dim cloud now fading

on the moon Even while we gaze, though it awhile avail To hide the orb of

truth--and every throne Of Earth or Heaven, though shadow, rests thereon, One

shape of many names:--for this ye plough The barren waves of ocean, hence each

one Is slave or tyrant; all betray and bow, Command, or kill, or fear, or

wreak, or suffer woe.

10. '"Its names are each a sign which maketh holy All power--ay, the ghost, the

dream, the shade Of power--lust, falsehood, hate, and pride, and folly; The

pattern whence all fraud and wrong is made, A law to which mankind has been

betrayed; And human love, is as the name well known Of a dear mother, whom the

murderer laid In bloody grave, and into darkness thrown, Gathered her wildered

babes around him as his own.

11. '"O Love, who to the hearts of wandering men Art as the calm to Ocean's

weary waves! Justice, or Truth, or Joy! those only can From slavery and

religion's labyrinth caves Guide us, as one clear star the seaman saves. To

give to all an equal share of good, To track the steps of Freedom, though

through graves She pass, to suffer all in patient mood, To weep for crime,

though stained with thy friend's dearest blood,--

12. '"To feel the peace of self-contentment's lot, To own all sympathies, and

outrage none, And in the inmost bowers of sense and thought, Until life's sunny

day is quite gone down, To sit and smile with Joy, or, not alone, To kiss salt

tears from the worn cheek of Woe; To live, as if to love and live were one,--

This is not faith or law, nor those who bow To thrones on Heaven or Earth, such

destiny may know.

13. '"But children near their parents tremble now, Because they must obey--one

rules another, And as one Power rules both high and low, So man is made the

captive of his brother, And Hate is throned on high with Fear her mother, Above

the Highest--and those fountain-cells, Whence love yet flowed when faith had

choked all other, Are darkened--Woman as the bond-slave dwells Of man, a slave;

and life is poisoned in its wells.

14. '"Man seeks for gold in mines, that he may weave A lasting chain for his

own slavery;-- In fear and restless care that he may live He toils for others,

who must ever be The joyless thralls of like captivity; He murders, for his

chiefs delight in ruin; He builds the altar, that its idol's fee May be his

very blood; he is pursuing-- O, blind and willing wretch!--his own obscure

undoing.

15. '"Woman!--she is his slave, she has become A thing I weep to speak--the

child of scorn, The outcast of a desolated home; Falsehood, and fear, and toil,

like waves have worn Channels upon her cheek, which smiles adorn, As calm decks

the false Ocean:--well ye know What Woman is, for none of Woman born Can choose

but drain the bitter dregs of woe, Which ever from the oppressed to the

oppressors flow.

16. '"This need not be; ye might arise, and will That gold should lose its

power, and thrones their glory; That love, which none may bind, be free to fill

The world, like light; and evil faith, grown hoary With crime, be quenched and

die.--Yon promontory Even now eclipses the descending moon!-- Dungeons and

palaces are transitory-- High temples fade like vapour--Man alone Remains,

whose will has power when all beside is gone.

17. '"Let all be free and equal!--From your hearts I feel an echo; through my

inmost frame Like sweetest sound, seeking its mate, it darts-- Whence come ye,

friends? Alas, I cannot name All that I read of sorrow, toil, and shame, On

your worn faces; as in legends old Which make immortal the disastrous fame Of

conquerors and impostors false and bold, The discord of your hearts, I in your

looks behold.

18. '"Whence come ye, friends? from pouring human blood Forth on the earth? Or

bring ye steel and gold, That Kings may dupe and slay the multitude? Or from

the famished poor, pale, weak and cold, Bear ye the earnings of their toil?

Unfold! Speak! Are your hands in slaughter's sanguine hue Stained freshly? have

your hearts in guile grown old? Know yourselves thus! ye shall be pure as dew,

And I will be a friend and sister unto you.

19. '"Disguise it not--we have one human heart-- All mortal thoughts confess a

common home: Blush not for what may to thyself impart Stains of inevitable

crime: the doom Is this, which has, or may, or must become Thine, and all

humankind's. Ye are the spoil Which Time thus marks for the devouring tomb--

Thou and thy thoughts and they, and all the toil Wherewith ye twine the rings

of life's perpetual coil.

20. '"Disguise it not--ye blush for what ye hate, And Enmity is sister unto

Shame; Look on your mind--it is the book of fate-- Ah! it is dark with many a

blazoned name Of misery--all are mirrors of the same; But the dark fiend who

with his iron pen Dipped in scorn's fiery poison, makes his fame Enduring

there, would o'er the heads of men Pass harmless, if they scorned to make their

hearts his den.

21. '"Yes, it is Hate, that shapeless fiendly thing Of many names, all evil,

some divine, Whom self-contempt arms with a mortal sting; Which, when the heart

its snaky folds entwine Is wasted quite, and when it doth repine To gorge such

bitter prey, on all beside It turns with ninefold rage, as with its twine When

Amphisbaena some fair bird has tied, Soon o'er the putrid mass he threats on

every side.

22. '"Reproach not thine own soul, but know thyself, Nor hate another's crime,

nor loathe thine own. It is the dark idolatry of self, Which, when our thoughts

and actions once are gone, Demands that man should weep, and bleed, and groan;

Oh, vacant expiation! Be at rest.-- The past is Death's, the future is thine

own; And love and joy can make the foulest breast A paradise of flowers, where

peace might build her nest.

23. '"Speak thou! whence come ye?"--A Youth made reply: "Wearily, wearily o'er

the boundless deep We sail;--thou readest well the misery Told in these faded

eyes, but much doth sleep Within, which there the poor heart loves to keep, Or

dare not write on the dishonoured brow; Even from our childhood have we learned

to steep The bread of slavery in the tears of woe, And never dreamed of hope or

refuge until now.

24. '"Yes--I must speak--my secret should have perished Even with the heart it

wasted, as a brand Fades in the dying flame whose life it cherished, But that

no human bosom can withstand Thee, wondrous Lady, and the mild command Of thy

keen eyes:--yes, we are wretched slaves, Who from their wonted loves and native

land Are reft, and bear o'er the dividing waves The unregarded prey of calm and

happy graves.

25. '"We drag afar from pastoral vales the fairest Among the daughters of those

mountains lone, We drag them there, where all things best and rarest Are

stained and trampled:--years have come and gone Since, like the ship which

bears me, I have known No thought;--but now the eyes of one dear Maid On mine

with light of mutual love have shone-- She is my life,--I am but as the shade

Of her,--a smoke sent up from ashes, soon to fade.

26. '"For she must perish in the Tyrant's hall-- Alas, alas!"--He ceased, and

by the sail Sate cowering--but his sobs were heard by all, And still before the

ocean and the gale The ship fled fast till the stars 'gan to fail; And, round

me gathered with mute countenance, The Seamen gazed, the Pilot, worn and pale

With toil, the Captain with gray locks, whose glance Met mine in restless

awe--they stood as in a trance.

27. '"Recede not! pause not now! Thou art grown old, But Hope will make thee

young, for Hope and Youth Are children of one mother, even Love--behold! The

eternal stars gaze on us!--is the truth Within your soul? care for your own, or

ruth For others' sufferings? do ye thirst to bear A heart which not the serpent

Custom's tooth May violate?--Be free! and even here, Swear to be firm till

death!" They cried, "We swear! We swear!"

28. 'The very darkness shook, as with a blast Of subterranean thunder, at the

cry; The hollow shore its thousand echoes cast Into the night, as if the sea

and sky, And earth, rejoiced with new-born liberty, For in that name they

swore! Bolts were undrawn, And on the deck, with unaccustomed eye The captives

gazing stood, and every one Shrank as the inconstant torch upon her countenance

shone.

29. 'They were earth's purest children, young and fair, With eyes the shrines

of unawakened thought, And brows as bright as Spring or Morning, ere Dark time

had there its evil legend wrought In characters of cloud which wither not.--

The change was like a dream to them; but soon They knew the glory of their

altered lot, In the bright wisdom of youth's breathless noon, Sweet talk, and

smiles, and sighs, all bosoms did attune.

30. 'But one was mute; her cheeks and lips most fair, Changing their hue like

lilies newly blown, Beneath a bright acacia's shadowy hair, Waved by the wind

amid the sunny noon, Showed that her soul was quivering; and full soon That

Youth arose, and breathlessly did look On her and me, as for some speechless

boon: I smiled, and both their hands in mine I took, And felt a soft delight

from what their spirits shook.

CANTO 9.

1. 'That night we anchored in a woody bay, And sleep no more around us dared to

hover Than, when all doubt and fear has passed away, It shades the couch of

some unresting lover, Whose heart is now at rest: thus night passed over In

mutual joy:--around, a forest grew Of poplars and dark oaks, whose shade did

cover The waning stars pranked in the waters blue, And trembled in the wind

which from the morning flew.

2. 'The joyous Mariners, and each free Maiden Now brought from the deep forest

many a bough, With woodland spoil most innocently laden; Soon wreaths of

budding foliage seemed to flow Over the mast and sails, the stern and prow Were

canopied with blooming boughs,--the while On the slant sun's path o'er the

waves we go Rejoicing, like the dwellers of an isle Doomed to pursue those

waves that cannot cease to smile.

3. 'The many ships spotting the dark blue deep With snowy sails, fled fast as

ours came nigh, In fear and wonder; and on every steep Thousands did gaze, they

heard the startling cry, Like Earth's own voice lifted unconquerably To all her

children, the unbounded mirth, The glorious joy of thy name--Liberty! They

heard!--As o'er the mountains of the earth From peak to peak leap on the beams

of Morning's birth:

4. 'So from that cry over the boundless hills Sudden was caught one universal

sound, Like a volcano's voice, whose thunder fills Remotest skies,--such

glorious madness found A path through human hearts with stream which drowned

Its struggling fears and cares, dark Custom's brood; They knew not whence it

came, but felt around A wide contagion poured--they called aloud On

Liberty--that name lived on the sunny flood.

5. 'We reached the port.--Alas! from many spirits The wisdom which had waked

that cry, was fled, Like the brief glory which dark Heaven inherits From the

false dawn, which fades ere it is spread, Upon the night's devouring darkness

shed: Yet soon bright day will burst--even like a chasm Of fire, to burn the

shrouds outworn and dead, Which wrap the world; a wide enthusiasm, To cleanse

the fevered world as with an earthquake's spasm!

6. 'I walked through the great City then, but free From shame or fear; those

toil-worn Mariners And happy Maidens did encompass me; And like a subterranean

wind that stirs Some forest among caves, the hopes and fears From every human

soul, a murmur strange Made as I passed; and many wept, with tears Of joy and

awe, and winged thoughts did range, And half-extinguished words, which

prophesied of change.

7. 'For, with strong speech I tore the veil that hid Nature, and Truth, and

Liberty, and Love,-- As one who from some mountain's pyramid Points to the

unrisen sun!--the shades approve His truth, and flee from every stream and

grove. Thus, gentle thoughts did many a bosom fill,-- Wisdom, the mail of tried

affections wove For many a heart, and tameless scorn of ill, Thrice steeped in

molten steel the unconquerable will.

8. 'Some said I was a maniac wild and lost; Some, that I scarce had risen from

the grave, The Prophet's virgin bride, a heavenly ghost:-- Some said, I was a

fiend from my weird cave, Who had stolen human shape, and o'er the wave, The

forest, and the mountain, came;--some said I was the child of God, sent down to

save Woman from bonds and death, and on my head The burden of their sins would

frightfully be laid.

9. 'But soon my human words found sympathy In human hearts: the purest and the

best, As friend with friend, made common cause with me, And they were few, but

resolute;--the rest, Ere yet success the enterprise had blessed, Leagued with

me in their hearts;--their meals, their slumber, Their hourly occupations, were

possessed By hopes which I had armed to overnumber Those hosts of meaner cares,

which life's strong wings encumber.

10. 'But chiefly women, whom my voice did waken From their cold, careless,

willing slavery, Sought me: one truth their dreary prison has shaken,-- They

looked around, and lo! they became free! Their many tyrants sitting desolately

In slave-deserted halls, could none restrain; For wrath's red fire had withered

in the eye, Whose lightning once was death,--nor fear, nor gain Could tempt one

captive now to lock another's chain.

11. 'Those who were sent to bind me, wept, and felt Their minds outsoar the

bonds which clasped them round, Even as a waxen shape may waste and melt In the

white furnace; and a visioned swound, A pause of hope and awe the City bound,

Which, like the silence of a tempest's birth, When in its awful shadow it has

wound The sun, the wind, the ocean, and the earth, Hung terrible, ere yet the

lightnings have leaped forth.

12. 'Like clouds inwoven in the silent sky, By winds from distant regions

meeting there, In the high name of truth and liberty, Around the City millions

gathered were, By hopes which sprang from many a hidden lair,-- Words which the

lore of truth in hues of flame Arrayed, thine own wild songs which in the air

Like homeless odours floated, and the name Of thee, and many a tongue which

thou hadst dipped in flame.

13. 'The Tyrant knew his power was gone, but Fear, The nurse of Vengeance, bade

him wait the event-- That perfidy and custom, gold and prayer, And whatsoe'er,

when force is impotent, To fraud the sceptre of the world has lent, Might, as

he judged, confirm his failing sway. Therefore throughout the streets, the

Priests he sent To curse the rebels.--To their gods did they For Earthquake,

Plague, and Want, kneel in the public way.

14. 'And grave and hoary men were bribed to tell From seats where law is made

the slave of wrong, How glorious Athens in her splendour fell, Because her sons

were free,--and that among Mankind, the many to the few belong, By Heaven, and

Nature, and Necessity. They said, that age was truth, and that the young Marred

with wild hopes the peace of slavery, With which old times and men had quelled

the vain and free.

15. 'And with the falsehood of their poisonous lips They breathed on the

enduring memory Of sages and of bards a brief eclipse; There was one teacher,

who necessity Had armed with strength and wrong against mankind, His slave and

his avenger aye to be; That we were weak and sinful, frail and blind, And that

the will of one was peace, and we Should seek for nought on earth but toil and

misery--

16. '"For thus we might avoid the hell hereafter." So spake the hypocrites, who

cursed and lied; Alas, their sway was past, and tears and laughter Clung to

their hoary hair, withering the pride Which in their hollow hearts dared still

abide; And yet obscener slaves with smoother brow, And sneers on their strait

lips, thin, blue and wide, Said that the rule of men was over now, And hence,

the subject world to woman's will must bow;

17. 'And gold was scattered through the streets, and wine Flowed at a hundred

feasts within the wall. In vain! the steady towers in Heaven did shine As they

were wont, nor at the priestly call Left Plague her banquet in the Ethiop's

hall, Nor Famine from the rich man's portal came, Where at her ease she ever

preys on all Who throng to kneel for food: nor fear nor shame, Nor faith, nor

discord, dimmed hope's newly kindled flame.

18. 'For gold was as a god whose faith began To fade, so that its worshippers

were few, And Faith itself, which in the heart of man Gives shape, voice, name,

to spectral Terror, knew Its downfall, as the altars lonelier grew, Till the

Priests stood alone within the fane; The shafts of falsehood unpolluting flew,

And the cold sneers of calumny were vain, The union of the free with discord's

brand to stain.

19. 'The rest thou knowest.--Lo! we two are here-- We have survived a ruin wide

and deep-- Strange thoughts are mine.--I cannot grieve or fear, Sitting with

thee upon this lonely steep I smile, though human love should make me weep. We

have survived a joy that knows no sorrow, And I do feel a mighty calmness creep

Over my heart, which can no longer borrow Its hues from chance or change, dark

children of to-morrow.

20. 'We know not what will come--yet, Laon, dearest, Cythna shall be the

prophetess of Love, Her lips shall rob thee of the grace thou wearest, To hide

thy heart, and clothe the shapes which rove Within the homeless Future's wintry

grove; For I now, sitting thus beside thee, seem Even with thy breath and blood

to live and move, And violence and wrong are as a dream Which rolls from

steadfast truth, an unreturning stream.

21. 'The blasts of Autumn drive the winged seeds Over the earth,--next come the

snows, and rain, And frosts, and storms, which dreary Winter leads Out of his

Scythian cave, a savage train; Behold! Spring sweeps over the world again,

Shedding soft dews from her ethereal wings; Flowers on the mountains, fruits

over the plain, And music on the waves and woods she flings, And love on all

that lives, and calm on lifeless things.

22. 'O Spring, of hope, and love, and youth, and gladness Wind-winged emblem!

brightest, best and fairest! Whence comest thou, when, with dark Winter's

sadness The tears that fade in sunny smiles thou sharest? Sister of joy, thou

art the child who wearest Thy mother's dying smile, tender and sweet; Thy

mother Autumn, for whose grave thou bearest Fresh flowers, and beams like

flowers, with gentle feet, Disturbing not the leaves which are her

winding-sheet.

23. 'Virtue, and Hope, and Love, like light and Heaven, Surround the world.--We

are their chosen slaves. Has not the whirlwind of our spirit driven Truth's

deathless germs to thought's remotest caves? Lo, Winter comes!--the grief of

many graves, The frost of death, the tempest of the sword, The flood of

tyranny, whose sanguine waves Stagnate like ice at Faith the enchanter's word,

And bind all human hearts in its repose abhorred.

24. 'The seeds are sleeping in the soil: meanwhile The Tyrant peoples dungeons

with his prey, Pale victims on the guarded scaffold smile Because they cannot

speak; and, day by day, The moon of wasting Science wanes away Among her stars,

and in that darkness vast The sons of earth to their foul idols pray, And gray

Priests triumph, and like blight or blast A shade of selfish care o'er human

looks is cast.

25. 'This is the winter of the world;--and here We die, even as the winds of

Autumn fade, Expiring in the frore and foggy air. Behold! Spring comes, though

we must pass, who made The promise of its birth,--even as the shade Which from

our death, as from a mountain, flings The future, a broad sunrise; thus arrayed

As with the plumes of overshadowing wings, From its dark gulf of chains, Earth

like an eagle springs.

26. 'O dearest love! we shall be dead and cold Before this morn may on the

world arise; Wouldst thou the glory of its dawn behold? Alas! gaze not on me,

but turn thine eyes On thine own heart--it is a paradise Which everlasting

Spring has made its own, And while drear Winter fills the naked skies, Sweet

streams of sunny thought, and flowers fresh-blown, Are there, and weave their

sounds and odours into one.

27. 'In their own hearts the earnest of the hope Which made them great, the

good will ever find; And though some envious shade may interlope Between the

effect and it, One comes behind, Who aye the future to the past will bind--

Necessity, whose sightless strength for ever Evil with evil, good with good

must wind In bands of union, which no power may sever: They must bring forth

their kind, and be divided never!

28. 'The good and mighty of departed ages Are in their graves, the innocent and

free, Heroes, and Poets, and prevailing Sages, Who leave the vesture of their

majesty To adorn and clothe this naked world;--and we Are like to them--such

perish, but they leave All hope, or love, or truth, or liberty, Whose forms

their mighty spirits could conceive, To be a rule and law to ages that survive.

29. 'So be the turf heaped over our remains Even in our happy youth, and that

strange lot, Whate'er it be, when in these mingling veins The blood is still,

be ours; let sense and thought Pass from our being, or be numbered not Among

the things that are; let those who come Behind, for whom our steadfast will has

bought A calm inheritance, a glorious doom, Insult with careless tread, our

undivided tomb.

30. 'Our many thoughts and deeds, our life and love, Our happiness, and all

that we have been, Immortally must live, and burn and move, When we shall be no

more;--the world has seen A type of peace; and--as some most serene And lovely

spot to a poor maniac's eye, After long years, some sweet and moving scene Of

youthful hope, returning suddenly, Quells his long madness--thus man shall

remember thee.

31. 'And Calumny meanwhile shall feed on us, As worms devour the dead, and near

the throne And at the altar, most accepted thus Shall sneers and curses

be;--what we have done None shall dare vouch, though it be truly known; That

record shall remain, when they must pass Who built their pride on its oblivion;

And fame, in human hope which sculptured was, Survive the perished scrolls of

unenduring brass.

32. 'The while we two, beloved, must depart, And Sense and Reason, those

enchanters fair, Whose wand of power is hope, would bid the heart That gazed

beyond the wormy grave despair: These eyes, these lips, this blood, seems

darkly there To fade in hideous ruin; no calm sleep Peopling with golden dreams

the stagnant air, Seems our obscure and rotting eyes to steep In joy;--but

senseless death--a ruin dark and deep!

33. 'These are blind fancies--reason cannot know What sense can neither feel,

nor thought conceive; There is delusion in the world--and woe, And fear, and

pain--we know not whence we live, Or why, or how, or what mute Power may give

Their being to each plant, and star, and beast, Or even these thoughts.--Come

near me! I do weave A chain I cannot break--I am possessed With thoughts too

swift and strong for one lone human breast.

34. 'Yes, yes--thy kiss is sweet, thy lips are warm-- O! willingly, beloved,

would these eyes, Might they no more drink being from thy form, Even as to

sleep whence we again arise, Close their faint orbs in death: I fear nor prize

Aught that can now betide, unshared by thee-- Yes, Love when Wisdom fails makes

Cythna wise: Darkness and death, if death be true, must be Dearer than life and

hope, if unenjoyed with thee.

35. 'Alas, our thoughts flow on with stream, whose waters Return not to their

fountain--Earth and Heaven, The Ocean and the Sun, the Clouds their daughters,

Winter, and Spring, and Morn, and Noon, and Even, All that we are or know, is

darkly driven Towards one gulf.--Lo! what a change is come Since I first

spake--but time shall be forgiven, Though it change all but thee!'--She

ceased--night's gloom Meanwhile had fallen on earth from the sky's sunless

dome.

36. Though she had ceased, her countenance uplifted To Heaven, still spake,

with solemn glory bright; Her dark deep eyes, her lips, whose motions gifted

The air they breathed with love, her locks undight. 'Fair star of life and

love,' I cried, 'my soul's delight, Why lookest thou on the crystalline skies?

O, that my spirit were yon Heaven of night, Which gazes on thee with its

thousand eyes!' She turned to me and smiled--that smile was Paradise!

CANTO 10.

1. Was there a human spirit in the steed, That thus with his proud voice, ere

night was gone, He broke our linked rest? or do indeed All living things a

common nature own, And thought erect an universal throne, Where many shapes one

tribute ever bear? And Earth, their mutual mother, does she groan To see her

sons contend? and makes she bare Her breast, that all in peace its drainless

stores may share?

2. I have heard friendly sounds from many a tongue Which was not human--the

lone nightingale Has answered me with her most soothing song, Out of her ivy

bower, when I sate pale With grief, and sighed beneath; from many a dale The

antelopes who flocked for food have spoken With happy sounds, and motions, that

avail Like man's own speech; and such was now the token Of waning night, whose

calm by that proud neigh was broken.

3. Each night, that mighty steed bore me abroad, And I returned with food to

our retreat, And dark intelligence; the blood which flowed Over the fields, had

stained the courser's feet; Soon the dust drinks that bitter dew,--then meet

The vulture, and the wild dog, and the snake, The wolf, and the hyaena gray,

and eat The dead in horrid truce: their throngs did make Behind the steed, a

chasm like waves in a ship's wake.

4. For, from the utmost realms of earth came pouring The banded slaves whom

every despot sent At that throned traitor's summons; like the roaring Of fire,

whose floods the wild deer circumvent In the scorched pastures of the South; so

bent The armies of the leagued Kings around Their files of steel and

flame;--the continent Trembled, as with a zone of ruin bound, Beneath their

feet, the sea shook with their Navies' sound.

5. From every nation of the earth they came, The multitude of moving heartless

things, Whom slaves call men: obediently they came, Like sheep whom from the

fold the shepherd brings To the stall, red with blood; their many kings Led

them, thus erring, from their native land; Tartar and Frank, and millions whom

the wings Of Indian breezes lull, and many a band The Arctic Anarch sent, and

Idumea's sand,

6. Fertile in prodigies and lies;--so there Strange natures made a brotherhood

of ill. The desert savage ceased to grasp in fear His Asian shield and bow,

when, at the will Of Europe's subtler son, the bolt would kill Some shepherd

sitting on a rock secure; But smiles of wondering joy his face would fill, And

savage sympathy: those slaves impure, Each one the other thus from ill to ill

did lure.

7. For traitorously did that foul Tyrant robe His countenance in lies,--even at

the hour When he was snatched from death, then o'er the globe, With secret

signs from many a mountain-tower, With smoke by day, and fire by night, the

power Of Kings and Priests, those dark conspirators, He called:--they knew his

cause their own, and swore Like wolves and serpents to their mutual wars

Strange truce, with many a rite which Earth and Heaven abhors.

8. Myriads had come--millions were on their way; The Tyrant passed, surrounded

by the steel Of hired assassins, through the public way, Choked with his

country's dead:--his footsteps reel On the fresh blood--he smiles. 'Ay, now I

feel I am a King in truth!' he said, and took His royal seat, and bade the

torturing wheel Be brought, and fire, and pincers, and the hook, And scorpions,

that his soul on its revenge might look.

9. 'But first, go slay the rebels--why return The victor bands?' he said,

'millions yet live, Of whom the weakest with one word might turn The scales of

victory yet;--let none survive But those within the walls--each fifth shall

give The expiation for his brethren here.-- Go forth, and waste and kill!'--'O

king, forgive My speech,' a soldier answered--'but we fear The spirits of the

night, and morn is drawing near;

10. 'For we were slaying still without remorse, And now that dreadful chief

beneath my hand Defenceless lay, when on a hell-black horse, An Angel bright as

day, waving a brand Which flashed among the stars, passed.'--'Dost thou stand

Parleying with me, thou wretch?' the king replied; 'Slaves, bind him to the

wheel; and of this band, Whoso will drag that woman to his side That scared him

thus, may burn his dearest foe beside;

11. 'And gold and glory shall be his.--Go forth!' They rushed into the

plain.--Loud was the roar Of their career: the horsemen shook the earth; The

wheeled artillery's speed the pavement tore; The infantry, file after file, did

pour Their clouds on the utmost hills. Five days they slew Among the wasted

fields; the sixth saw gore Stream through the city; on the seventh, the dew Of

slaughter became stiff, and there was peace anew:

12. Peace in the desert fields and villages, Between the glutted beasts and

mangled dead! Peace in the silent streets! save when the cries Of victims to

their fiery judgement led, Made pale their voiceless lips who seemed to dread

Even in their dearest kindred, lest some tongue Be faithless to the fear yet

unbetrayed; Peace in the Tyrant's palace, where the throng Waste the triumphal

hours in festival and song!

13. Day after day the burning sun rolled on Over the death-polluted land--it

came Out of the east like fire, and fiercely shone A lamp of Autumn, ripening

with its flame The few lone ears of corn;--the sky became Stagnate with heat,

so that each cloud and blast Languished and died,--the thirsting air did claim

All moisture, and a rotting vapour passed From the unburied dead, invisible and

fast.

14. First Want, then Plague came on the beasts; their food Failed, and they

drew the breath of its decay. Millions on millions, whom the scent of blood Had

lured, or who, from regions far away, Had tracked the hosts in festival array,

From their dark deserts; gaunt and wasting now, Stalked like fell shades among

their perished prey; In their green eyes a strange disease did glow, They sank

in hideous spasm, or pains severe and slow.

15. The fish were poisoned in the streams; the birds In the green woods

perished; the insect race Was withered up; the scattered flocks and herds Who

had survived the wild beasts' hungry chase Died moaning, each upon the other's

face In helpless agony gazing; round the City All night, the lean hyaenas their

sad case Like starving infants wailed; a woeful ditty! And many a mother wept,

pierced with unnatural pity.

16. Amid the aereal minarets on high, The Ethiopian vultures fluttering fell

From their long line of brethren in the sky, Startling the concourse of

mankind.--Too well These signs the coming mischief did foretell:-- Strange

panic first, a deep and sickening dread Within each heart, like ice, did sink

and dwell, A voiceless thought of evil, which did spread With the quick glance

of eyes, like withering lightnings shed.

17. Day after day, when the year wanes, the frosts Strip its green crown of

leaves, till all is bare; So on those strange and congregated hosts Came

Famine, a swift shadow, and the air Groaned with the burden of a new despair;

Famine, than whom Misrule no deadlier daughter Feeds from her thousand breasts,

though sleeping there With lidless eyes, lie Faith, and Plague, and Slaughter,

A ghastly brood; conceived of Lethe's sullen water.

18. There was no food, the corn was trampled down, The flocks and herds had

perished; on the shore The dead and putrid fish were ever thrown; The deeps

were foodless, and the winds no more Creaked with the weight of birds, but, as

before Those winged things sprang forth, were void of shade; The vines and

orchards, Autumn's golden store, Were burned;--so that the meanest food was

weighed With gold, and Avarice died before the god it made.

19. There was no corn--in the wide market-place All loathliest things, even

human flesh, was sold; They weighed it in small scales--and many a face Was

fixed in eager horror then: his gold The miser brought; the tender maid, grown

bold Through hunger, bared her scorned charms in vain; The mother brought her

eldest born, controlled By instinct blind as love, but turned again And bade

her infant suck, and died in silent pain.

20. Then fell blue Plague upon the race of man. 'O, for the sheathed steel, so

late which gave Oblivion to the dead, when the streets ran With brothers'

blood! O, that the earthquake's grave Would gape, or Ocean lift its stifling

wave!' Vain cries--throughout the streets thousands pursued Each by his fiery

torture howl and rave, Or sit in frenzy's unimagined mood, Upon fresh heaps of

dead; a ghastly multitude.

21. It was not hunger now, but thirst. Each well Was choked with rotting

corpses, and became A cauldron of green mist made visible At sunrise. Thither

still the myriads came, Seeking to quench the agony of the flame, Which raged

like poison through their bursting veins; Naked they were from torture, without

shame, Spotted with nameless scars and lurid blains, Childhood, and youth, and

age, writhing in savage pains.

22. It was not thirst, but madness! Many saw Their own lean image everywhere,

it went A ghastlier self beside them, till the awe Of that dread sight to

self-destruction sent Those shrieking victims; some, ere life was spent,

Sought, with a horrid sympathy, to shed Contagion on the sound; and others rent

Their matted hair, and cried aloud, 'We tread On fire! the avenging Power his

hell on earth has spread!'

23. Sometimes the living by the dead were hid. Near the great fountain in the

public square, Where corpses made a crumbling pyramid Under the sun, was heard

one stifled prayer For life, in the hot silence of the air; And strange 'twas,

amid that hideous heap to see Some shrouded in their long and golden hair, As

if not dead, but slumbering quietly Like forms which sculptors carve, then love

to agony.

24. Famine had spared the palace of the king:-- He rioted in festival the

while, He and his guards and priests; but Plague did fling One shadow upon all.

Famine can smile On him who brings it food, and pass, with guile Of thankful

falsehood, like a courtier gray, The house-dog of the throne; but many a mile

Comes Plague, a winged wolf, who loathes alway The garbage and the scum that

strangers make her prey.

25. So, near the throne, amid the gorgeous feast, Sheathed in resplendent arms,

or loosely dight To luxury, ere the mockery yet had ceased That lingered on his

lips, the warrior's might Was loosened, and a new and ghastlier night In dreams

of frenzy lapped his eyes; he fell Headlong, or with stiff eyeballs sate

upright Among the guests, or raving mad did tell Strange truths; a dying seer

of dark oppression's hell.

26. The Princes and the Priests were pale with terror; That monstrous faith

wherewith they ruled mankind, Fell, like a shaft loosed by the bowman's error,

On their own hearts: they sought and they could find No refuge--'twas the blind

who led the blind! So, through the desolate streets to the high fane, The

many-tongued and endless armies wind In sad procession: each among the train To

his own Idol lifts his supplications vain.

27. 'O God!' they cried, 'we know our secret pride Has scorned thee, and thy

worship, and thy name; Secure in human power we have defied Thy fearful might;

we bend in fear and shame Before thy presence; with the dust we claim Kindred;

be merciful, O King of Heaven! Most justly have we suffered for thy fame Made

dim, but be at length our sins forgiven, Ere to despair and death thy

worshippers be driven.

28. 'O King of Glory! thou alone hast power! Who can resist thy will? who can

restrain Thy wrath, when on the guilty thou dost shower The shafts of thy

revenge, a blistering rain? Greatest and best, be merciful again! Have we not

stabbed thine enemies, and made The Earth an altar, and the Heavens a fane,

Where thou wert worshipped with their blood, and laid Those hearts in dust

which would thy searchless works have weighed?

29. 'Well didst thou loosen on this impious City Thine angels of revenge:

recall them now; Thy worshippers, abased, here kneel for pity, And bind their

souls by an immortal vow: We swear by thee! and to our oath do thou Give

sanction, from thine hell of fiends and flame, That we will kill with fire and

torments slow, The last of those who mocked thy holy name, And scorned the

sacred laws thy prophets did proclaim.'

30. Thus they with trembling limbs and pallid lips Worshipped their own hearts'

image, dim and vast, Scared by the shade wherewith they would eclipse The light

of other minds;--troubled they passed From the great Temple;--fiercely still

and fast The arrows of the plague among them fell, And they on one another

gazed aghast, And through the hosts contention wild befell, As each of his own

god the wondrous works did tell.

31. And Oromaze, Joshua, and Mahomet, Moses, and Buddh, Zerdusht, and Brahm,

and Foh, A tumult of strange names, which never met Before, as watchwords of a

single woe, Arose; each raging votary 'gan to throw Aloft his armed hands, and

each did howl 'Our God alone is God!'--and slaughter now Would have gone forth,

when from beneath a cowl A voice came forth, which pierced like ice through

every soul.

32. 'Twas an Iberian Priest from whom it came, A zealous man, who led the

legioned West, With words which faith and pride had steeped in flame, To quell

the unbelievers; a dire guest Even to his friends was he, for in his breast Did

hate and guile lie watchful, intertwined, Twin serpents in one deep and winding

nest; He loathed all faith beside his own, and pined To wreak his fear of

Heaven in vengeance on mankind.

33. But more he loathed and hated the clear light Of wisdom and free thought,

and more did fear, Lest, kindled once, its beams might pierce the night, Even

where his Idol stood; for, far and near Did many a heart in Europe leap to hear

That faith and tyranny were trampled down; Many a pale victim, doomed for truth

to share The murderer's cell, or see, with helpless groan, The priests his

children drag for slaves to serve their own.

34. He dared not kill the infidels with fire Or steel, in Europe; the slow

agonies Of legal torture mocked his keen desire: So he made truce with those

who did despise The expiation, and the sacrifice, That, though detested,

Islam's kindred creed Might crush for him those deadlier enemies; For fear of

God did in his bosom breed A jealous hate of man, an unreposing need.

35. 'Peace! Peace!' he cried, 'when we are dead, the Day Of Judgement comes,

and all shall surely know Whose God is God, each fearfully shall pay The errors

of his faith in endless woe! But there is sent a mortal vengeance now On earth,

because an impious race had spurned Him whom we all adore,--a subtle foe, By

whom for ye this dread reward was earned, And kingly thrones, which rest on

faith, nigh overturned.

36. 'Think ye, because ye weep, and kneel, and pray, That God will lull the

pestilence? It rose Even from beneath his throne, where, many a day, His mercy

soothed it to a dark repose: It walks upon the earth to judge his foes; And

what are thou and I, that he should deign To curb his ghastly minister, or

close The gates of death, ere they receive the twain Who shook with mortal

spells his undefended reign?

37. 'Ay, there is famine in the gulf of hell, Its giant worms of fire for ever

yawn.-- Their lurid eyes are on us! those who fell By the swift shafts of

pestilence ere dawn, Are in their jaws! they hunger for the spawn Of Satan,

their own brethren, who were sent To make our souls their spoil. See! see! they

fawn Like dogs, and they will sleep with luxury spent, When those detested

hearts their iron fangs have rent!

38. 'Our God may then lull Pestilence to sleep:-- Pile high the pyre of

expiation now, A forest's spoil of boughs, and on the heap Pour venomous gums,

which sullenly and slow, When touched by flame, shall burn, and melt, and flow,

A stream of clinging fire,--and fix on high A net of iron, and spread forth

below A couch of snakes, and scorpions, and the fry Of centipedes and worms,

earth's hellish progeny!

39. 'Let Laon and Laone on that pyre, Linked tight with burning brass,

perish!--then pray That, with this sacrifice, the withering ire Of Heaven may

be appeased.' He ceased, and they A space stood silent, as far, far away The

echoes of his voice among them died; And he knelt down upon the dust, alway

Muttering the curses of his speechless pride, Whilst shame, and fear, and awe,

the armies did divide.

40. His voice was like a blast that burst the portal Of fabled hell; and as he

spake, each one Saw gape beneath the chasms of fire immortal, And Heaven above

seemed cloven, where, on a throne Girt round with storms and shadows, sate

alone Their King and Judge--fear killed in every breast All natural pity then,

a fear unknown Before, and with an inward fire possessed, They raged like

homeless beasts whom burning woods invest.

41. 'Twas morn.--At noon the public crier went forth, Proclaiming through the

living and the dead, 'The Monarch saith, that his great Empire's worth Is set

on Laon and Laone's head: He who but one yet living here can lead, Or who the

life from both their hearts can wring, Shall be the kingdom's heir--a glorious

meed! But he who both alive can hither bring, The Princess shall espouse, and

reign an equal King.'

42. Ere night the pyre was piled, the net of iron Was spread above, the fearful

couch below; It overtopped the towers that did environ That spacious square;

for Fear is never slow To build the thrones of Hate, her mate and foe; So, she

scourged forth the maniac multitude To rear this pyramid--tottering and slow,

Plague-stricken, foodless, like lean herds pursued By gadflies, they have piled

the heath, and gums, and wood.

43. Night came, a starless and a moonless gloom. Until the dawn, those hosts of

many a nation Stood round that pile, as near one lover's tomb Two gentle

sisters mourn their desolation; And in the silence of that expectation, Was

heard on high the reptiles' hiss and crawl-- It was so deep--save when the

devastation Of the swift pest, with fearful interval, Marking its path with

shrieks, among the crowd would fall.

44. Morn came,--among those sleepless multitudes, Madness, and Fear, and

Plague, and Famine still Heaped corpse on corpse, as in autumnal woods The

frosts of many a wind with dead leaves fill Earth's cold and sullen brooks; in

silence, still The pale survivors stood; ere noon, the fear Of Hell became a

panic, which did kill Like hunger or disease, with whispers drear, As 'Hush!

hark! Come they yet?--Just Heaven! thine hour is near!'

45. And Priests rushed through their ranks, some counterfeiting The rage they

did inspire, some mad indeed With their own lies; they said their god was

waiting To see his enemies writhe, and burn, and bleed,-- And that, till then,

the snakes of Hell had need Of human souls:--three hundred furnaces Soon blazed

through the wide City, where, with speed, Men brought their infidel kindred to

appease God's wrath, and, while they burned, knelt round on quivering knees.

46. The noontide sun was darkened with that smoke, The winds of eve dispersed

those ashes gray. The madness which these rites had lulled, awoke Again at

sunset.--Who shall dare to say The deeds which night and fear brought forth, or

weigh In balance just the good and evil there? He might man's deep and

searchless heart display, And cast a light on those dim labyrinths, where Hope,

near imagined chasms, is struggling with despair.

47. 'Tis said, a mother dragged three children then, To those fierce flames

which roast the eyes in the head, And laughed, and died; and that unholy men,

Feasting like fiends upon the infidel dead, Looked from their meal, and saw an

Angel tread The visible floor of Heaven, and it was she! And, on that night,

one without doubt or dread Came to the fire, and said, 'Stop, I am he! Kill

me!'--They burned them both with hellish mockery.

48. And, one by one, that night, young maidens came, Beauteous and calm, like

shapes of living stone Clothed in the light of dreams, and by the flame Which

shrank as overgorged, they laid them down, And sung a low sweet song, of which

alone One word was heard, and that was Liberty; And that some kissed their

marble feet, with moan Like love, and died; and then that they did die With

happy smiles, which sunk in white tranquillity.

CANTO 11.

1. She saw me not--she heard me not--alone Upon the mountain's dizzy brink she

stood; She spake not, breathed not, moved not--there was thrown Over her look,

the shadow of a mood Which only clothes the heart in solitude, A thought of

voiceless depth;--she stood alone, Above, the Heavens were spread;--below, the

flood Was murmuring in its caves;--the wind had blown Her hair apart, through

which her eyes and forehead shone.

2. A cloud was hanging o'er the western mountains; Before its blue and moveless

depth were flying Gray mists poured forth from the unresting fountains Of

darkness in the North:--the day was dying:-- Sudden, the sun shone forth, its

beams were lying Like boiling gold on Ocean, strange to see, And on the

shattered vapours, which defying The power of light in vain, tossed restlessly

In the red Heaven, like wrecks in a tempestuous sea.

3. It was a stream of living beams, whose bank On either side by the cloud's

cleft was made; And where its chasms that flood of glory drank, Its waves

gushed forth like fire, and as if swayed By some mute tempest, rolled on HER;

the shade Of her bright image floated on the river Of liquid light, which then

did end and fade-- Her radiant shape upon its verge did shiver; Aloft, her

flowing hair like strings of flame did quiver.

4. I stood beside her, but she saw me not-- She looked upon the sea, and skies,

and earth; Rapture, and love, and admiration wrought A passion deeper far than

tears, or mirth, Or speech, or gesture, or whate'er has birth From common joy;

which with the speechless feeling That led her there united, and shot forth

From her far eyes a light of deep revealing, All but her dearest self from my

regard concealing.

5. Her lips were parted, and the measured breath Was now heard there;--her dark

and intricate eyes Orb within orb, deeper than sleep or death, Absorbed the

glories of the burning skies, Which, mingling with her heart's deep ecstasies,

Burst from her looks and gestures;--and a light Of liquid tenderness, like

love, did rise From her whole frame, an atmosphere which quite Arrayed her in

its beams, tremulous and soft and bright.

6. She would have clasped me to her glowing frame; Those warm and odorous lips

might soon have shed On mine the fragrance and the invisible flame Which now

the cold winds stole;--she would have laid Upon my languid heart her dearest

head; I might have heard her voice, tender and sweet; Her eyes, mingling with

mine, might soon have fed My soul with their own joy.--One moment yet I

gazed--we parted then, never again to meet!

7. Never but once to meet on Earth again! She heard me as I fled--her eager

tone Sunk on my heart, and almost wove a chain Around my will to link it with

her own, So that my stern resolve was almost gone. 'I cannot reach thee!

whither dost thou fly? My steps are faint--Come back, thou dearest one--

Return, ah me! return!'--The wind passed by On which those accents died, faint,

far, and lingeringly.

8. Woe! Woe! that moonless midnight!--Want and Pest Were horrible, but one more

fell doth rear, As in a hydra's swarming lair, its crest Eminent among those

victims--even the Fear Of Hell: each girt by the hot atmosphere Of his blind

agony, like a scorpion stung By his own rage upon his burning bier Of circling

coals of fire; but still there clung One hope, like a keen sword on starting

threads uphung:

9. Not death--death was no more refuge or rest; Not life--it was despair to

be!--not sleep, For fiends and chasms of fire had dispossessed All natural

dreams: to wake was not to weep, But to gaze mad and pallid, at the leap To

which the Future, like a snaky scourge, Or like some tyrant's eye, which aye

doth keep Its withering beam upon his slaves, did urge Their steps; they heard

the roar of Hell's sulphureous surge.

10. Each of that multitude, alone, and lost To sense of outward things, one

hope yet knew; As on a foam-girt crag some seaman tossed Stares at the rising

tide, or like the crew Whilst now the ship is splitting through and through;

Each, if the tramp of a far steed was heard, Started from sick despair, or if

there flew One murmur on the wind, or if some word Which none can gather yet,

the distant crowd has stirred.

11. Why became cheeks, wan with the kiss of death, Paler from hope? they had

sustained despair. Why watched those myriads with suspended breath Sleepless a

second night? they are not here, The victims, and hour by hour, a vision drear,

Warm corpses fall upon the clay-cold dead; And even in death their lips are

wreathed with fear.-- The crowd is mute and moveless--overhead Silent Arcturus

shines--'Ha! hear'st thou not the tread

12. 'Of rushing feet? laughter? the shout, the scream, Of triumph not to be

contained? See! hark! They come, they come! give way!' Alas, ye deem

Falsely--'tis but a crowd of maniacs stark Driven, like a troop of spectres,

through the dark, From the choked well, whence a bright death-fire sprung, A

lurid earth-star, which dropped many a spark From its blue train, and spreading

widely, clung To their wild hair, like mist the topmost pines among.

13. And many, from the crowd collected there, Joined that strange dance in

fearful sympathies; There was the silence of a long despair, When the last echo

of those terrible cries Came from a distant street, like agonies Stifled

afar.--Before the Tyrant's throne All night his aged Senate sate, their eyes In

stony expectation fixed; when one Sudden before them stood, a Stranger and

alone.

14. Dark Priests and haughty Warriors gazed on him With baffled wonder, for a

hermit's vest Concealed his face; but when he spake, his tone, Ere yet the

matter did their thoughts arrest,-- Earnest, benignant, calm, as from a breast

Void of all hate or terror--made them start; For as with gentle accents he

addressed His speech to them, on each unwilling heart Unusual awe did fall--a

spirit-quelling dart.

15. 'Ye Princes of the Earth, ye sit aghast Amid the ruin which yourselves have

made, Yes, Desolation heard your trumpet's blast, And sprang from sleep!--dark

Terror has obeyed Your bidding--O, that I whom ye have made Your foe, could set

my dearest enemy free From pain and fear! but evil casts a shade, Which cannot

pass so soon, and Hate must be The nurse and parent still of an ill progeny.

16. 'Ye turn to Heaven for aid in your distress; Alas, that ye, the mighty and

the wise, Who, if ye dared, might not aspire to less Than ye conceive of power,

should fear the lies Which thou, and thou, didst frame for mysteries To blind

your slaves:--consider your own thought, An empty and a cruel sacrifice Ye now

prepare, for a vain idol wrought Out of the fears and hate which vain desires

have brought.

17. 'Ye seek for happiness--alas, the day! Ye find it not in luxury nor in

gold, Nor in the fame, nor in the envied sway For which, O willing slaves to

Custom old, Severe taskmistress! ye your hearts have sold. Ye seek for peace,

and when ye die, to dream No evil dreams: all mortal things are cold And

senseless then; if aught survive, I deem It must be love and joy, for they

immortal seem.

18. 'Fear not the future, weep not for the past. Oh, could I win your ears to

dare be now Glorious, and great, and calm! that ye would cast Into the dust

those symbols of your woe, Purple, and gold, and steel! that ye would go

Proclaiming to the nations whence ye came, That Want, and Plague, and Fear,

from slavery flow; And that mankind is free, and that the shame Of royalty and

faith is lost in freedom's fame!

19. 'If thus, 'tis well--if not, I come to say That Laon--' while the Stranger

spoke, among The Council sudden tumult and affray Arose, for many of those

warriors young, Had on his eloquent accents fed and hung Like bees on

mountain-flowers; they knew the truth, And from their thrones in vindication

sprung; The men of faith and law then without ruth Drew forth their secret

steel, and stabbed each ardent youth.

20. They stabbed them in the back and sneered--a slave Who stood behind the

throne, those corpses drew Each to its bloody, dark, and secret grave; And one

more daring raised his steel anew To pierce the Stranger. 'What hast thou to do

With me, poor wretch?'--Calm, solemn and severe, That voice unstrung his

sinews, and he threw His dagger on the ground, and pale with fear, Sate

silently--his voice then did the Stranger rear.

21. 'It doth avail not that I weep for ye-- Ye cannot change, since ye are old

and gray, And ye have chosen your lot--your fame must be A book of blood,

whence in a milder day Men shall learn truth, when ye are wrapped in clay: Now

ye shall triumph. I am Laon's friend, And him to your revenge will I betray, So

ye concede one easy boon. Attend! For now I speak of things which ye can

apprehend.

22. 'There is a People mighty in its youth, A land beyond the Oceans of the

West, Where, though with rudest rites, Freedom and Truth Are worshipped; from a

glorious Mother's breast, Who, since high Athens fell, among the rest Sate like

the Queen of Nations, but in woe, By inbred monsters outraged and oppressed,

Turns to her chainless child for succour now, It draws the milk of Power in

Wisdom's fullest flow.

23. 'That land is like an Eagle, whose young gaze Feeds on the noontide beam,

whose golden plume Floats moveless on the storm, and in the blaze Of sunrise

gleams when Earth is wrapped in gloom; An epitaph of glory for the tomb Of

murdered Europe may thy fame be made, Great People! as the sands shalt thou

become; Thy growth is swift as morn, when night must fade; The multitudinous

Earth shall sleep beneath thy shade.

24. 'Yes, in the desert there is built a home For Freedom. Genius is made

strong to rear The monuments of man beneath the dome Of a new Heaven; myriads

assemble there, Whom the proud lords of man, in rage or fear, Drive from their

wasted homes: the boon I pray Is this--that Cythna shall be convoyed there--

Nay, start not at the name--America! And then to you this night Laon will I

betray.

25. 'With me do what ye will. I am your foe!' The light of such a joy as makes

the stare Of hungry snakes like living emeralds glow, Shone in a hundred human

eyes--'Where, where Is Laon? Haste! fly! drag him swiftly here! We grant thy

boon.'--'I put no trust in ye, Swear by the Power ye dread.'--'We swear, we

swear!' The Stranger threw his vest back suddenly, And smiled in gentle pride,

and said, 'Lo! I am he!'

CANTO 12.

1. The transport of a fierce and monstrous gladness Spread through the

multitudinous streets, fast flying Upon the winds of fear; from his dull

madness The starveling waked, and died in joy; the dying, Among the corpses in

stark agony lying, Just heard the happy tidings, and in hope Closed their faint

eyes; from house to house replying With loud acclaim, the living shook Heaven's

cope, And filled the startled Earth with echoes: morn did ope

2. Its pale eyes then; and lo! the long array Of guards in golden arms, and

Priests beside, Singing their bloody hymns, whose garbs betray The blackness of

the faith it seems to hide; And see, the Tyrant's gem-wrought chariot glide

Among the gloomy cowls and glittering spears-- A Shape of light is sitting by

his side, A child most beautiful. I' the midst appears Laon,--exempt alone from

mortal hopes and fears.

3. His head and feet are bare, his hands are bound Behind with heavy chains,

yet none do wreak Their scoffs on him, though myriads throng around; There are

no sneers upon his lip which speak That scorn or hate has made him bold; his

cheek Resolve has not turned pale,--his eyes are mild And calm, and, like the

morn about to break, Smile on mankind--his heart seems reconciled To all things

and itself, like a reposing child.

4. Tumult was in the soul of all beside, Ill joy, or doubt, or fear; but those

who saw Their tranquil victim pass, felt wonder glide Into their brain, and

became calm with awe.-- See, the slow pageant near the pile doth draw. A

thousand torches in the spacious square, Borne by the ready slaves of ruthless

law, Await the signal round: the morning fair Is changed to a dim night by that

unnatural glare.

5. And see! beneath a sun-bright canopy, Upon a platform level with the pile,

The anxious Tyrant sit, enthroned on high, Girt by the chieftains of the host;

all smile In expectation, but one child: the while I, Laon, led by mutes,

ascend my bier Of fire, and look around: each distant isle Is dark in the

bright dawn; towers far and near, Pierce like reposing flames the tremulous

atmosphere.

6. There was such silence through the host, as when An earthquake trampling on

some populous town, Has crushed ten thousand with one tread, and men Expect the

second; all were mute but one, That fairest child, who, bold with love, alone

Stood up before the King, without avail, Pleading for Laon's life--her stifled

groan Was heard--she trembled like one aspen pale Among the gloomy pines of a

Norwegian vale.

7. What were his thoughts linked in the morning sun, Among those reptiles,

stingless with delay, Even like a tyrant's wrath?--The signal-gun Roared--hark,

again! In that dread pause he lay As in a quiet dream--the slaves obey-- A

thousand torches drop,--and hark, the last Bursts on that awful silence; far

away, Millions, with hearts that beat both loud and fast, Watch for the

springing flame expectant and aghast.

8. They fly--the torches fall--a cry of fear Has startled the triumphant!--they

recede! For, ere the cannon's roar has died, they hear The tramp of hoofs like

earthquake, and a steed Dark and gigantic, with the tempest's speed, Bursts

through their ranks: a woman sits thereon, Fairer, it seems, than aught that

earth can breed, Calm, radiant, like the phantom of the dawn, A spirit from the

caves of daylight wandering gone.

9. All thought it was God's Angel come to sweep The lingering guilty to their

fiery grave; The Tyrant from his throne in dread did leap,-- Her innocence his

child from fear did save; Scared by the faith they feigned, each priestly slave

Knelt for his mercy whom they served with blood, And, like the refluence of a

mighty wave Sucked into the loud sea, the multitude With crushing panic, fled

in terror's altered mood.

10. They pause, they blush, they gaze,--a gathering shout Bursts like one sound

from the ten thousand streams Of a tempestuous sea:--that sudden rout One

checked, who, never in his mildest dreams Felt awe from grace or loveliness,

the seams Of his rent heart so hard and cold a creed Had seared with blistering

ice--but he misdeems That he is wise, whose wounds do only bleed Inly for

self,--thus thought the Iberian Priest indeed,

11. And others, too, thought he was wise to see, In pain, and fear, and hate,

something divine; In love and beauty, no divinity.-- Now with a bitter smile,

whose light did shine Like a fiend's hope upon his lips and eyne, He said, and

the persuasion of that sneer Rallied his trembling comrades--'Is it mine To

stand alone, when kings and soldiers fear A woman? Heaven has sent its other

victim here.'

12. 'Were it not impious,' said the King, 'to break Our holy oath?'--'Impious

to keep it, say!' Shrieked the exulting Priest:--'Slaves, to the stake Bind

her, and on my head the burden lay Of her just torments:--at the Judgement Day

Will I stand up before the golden throne Of Heaven, and cry, "To Thee did I

betray An infidel; but for me she would have known Another moment's joy! the

glory be thine own."'

13. They trembled, but replied not, nor obeyed, Pausing in breathless silence.

Cythna sprung From her gigantic steed, who, like a shade Chased by the winds,

those vacant streets among Fled tameless, as the brazen rein she flung Upon his

neck, and kissed his mooned brow. A piteous sight, that one so fair and young,

The clasp of such a fearful death should woo With smiles of tender joy as

beamed from Cythna now.

14. The warm tears burst in spite of faith and fear From many a tremulous eye,

but like soft dews Which feed Spring's earliest buds, hung gathered there,

Frozen by doubt,--alas! they could not choose But weep; for when her faint

limbs did refuse To climb the pyre, upon the mutes she smiled; And with her

eloquent gestures, and the hues Of her quick lips, even as a weary child Wins

sleep from some fond nurse with its caresses mild,

15. She won them, though unwilling, her to bind Near me, among the snakes. When

there had fled One soft reproach that was most thrilling kind, She smiled on

me, and nothing then we said, But each upon the other's countenance fed Looks

of insatiate love; the mighty veil Which doth divide the living and the dead

Was almost rent, the world grew dim and pale,-- All light in Heaven or Earth

beside our love did fail.--

16. Yet--yet--one brief relapse, like the last beam Of dying flames, the

stainless air around Hung silent and serene--a blood-red gleam Burst upwards,

hurling fiercely from the ground The globed smoke,--I heard the mighty sound Of

its uprise, like a tempestuous ocean; And through its chasms I saw, as in a

swound, The tyrant's child fall without life or motion Before his throne,

subdued by some unseen emotion.--

17. And is this death?--The pyre has disappeared, The Pestilence, the Tyrant,

and the throng; The flames grow silent--slowly there is heard The music of a

breath-suspending song, Which, like the kiss of love when life is young, Steeps

the faint eyes in darkness sweet and deep; With ever-changing notes it floats

along, Till on my passive soul there seemed to creep A melody, like waves on

wrinkled sands that leap.

18. The warm touch of a soft and tremulous hand Wakened me then; lo! Cythna

sate reclined Beside me, on the waved and golden sand Of a clear pool, upon a

bank o'ertwined With strange and star-bright flowers, which to the wind

Breathed divine odour; high above, was spread The emerald heaven of trees of

unknown kind, Whose moonlike blooms and bright fruit overhead A shadow, which

was light, upon the waters shed.

19. And round about sloped many a lawny mountain With incense-bearing forests

and vast caves Of marble radiance, to that mighty fountain; And where the flood

its own bright margin laves, Their echoes talk with its eternal waves, Which,

from the depths whose jagged caverns breed Their unreposing strife, it lifts

and heaves,-- Till through a chasm of hills they roll, and feed A river deep,

which flies with smooth but arrowy speed.

20. As we sate gazing in a trance of wonder, A boat approached, borne by the

musical air Along the waves which sung and sparkled under Its rapid keel--a

winged shape sate there, A child with silver-shining wings, so fair, That as

her bark did through the waters glide, The shadow of the lingering waves did

wear Light, as from starry beams; from side to side, While veering to the wind

her plumes the bark did guide.

21. The boat was one curved shell of hollow pearl, Almost translucent with the

light divine Of her within; the prow and stern did curl Horned on high, like

the young moon supine, When o'er dim twilight mountains dark with pine, It

floats upon the sunset's sea of beams, Whose golden waves in many a purple line

Fade fast, till borne on sunlight's ebbing streams, Dilating, on earth's verge

the sunken meteor gleams.

22. Its keel has struck the sands beside our feet;-- Then Cythna turned to me,

and from her eyes Which swam with unshed tears, a look more sweet Than happy

love, a wild and glad surprise, Glanced as she spake: 'Ay, this is Paradise And

not a dream, and we are all united! Lo, that is mine own child, who in the

guise Of madness came, like day to one benighted In lonesome woods: my heart is

now too well requited!'

23. And then she wept aloud, and in her arms Clasped that bright Shape, less

marvellously fair Than her own human hues and living charms; Which, as she

leaned in passion's silence there, Breathed warmth on the cold bosom of the

air, Which seemed to blush and tremble with delight; The glossy darkness of her

streaming hair Fell o'er that snowy child, and wrapped from sight The fond and

long embrace which did their hearts unite.

24. Then the bright child, the plumed Seraph came, And fixed its blue and

beaming eyes on mine, And said, 'I was disturbed by tremulous shame When once

we met, yet knew that I was thine From the same hour in which thy lips divine

Kindled a clinging dream within my brain, Which ever waked when I might sleep,

to twine Thine image with HER memory dear--again We meet; exempted now from

mortal fear or pain.

25. 'When the consuming flames had wrapped ye round, The hope which I had

cherished went away; I fell in agony on the senseless ground, And hid mine eyes

in dust, and far astray My mind was gone, when bright, like dawning day, The

Spectre of the Plague before me flew, And breathed upon my lips, and seemed to

say, "They wait for thee, beloved!"--then I knew The death-mark on my breast,

and became calm anew.

26. 'It was the calm of love--for I was dying. I saw the black and

half-extinguished pyre In its own gray and shrunken ashes lying; The pitchy

smoke of the departed fire Still hung in many a hollow dome and spire Above the

towers, like night,--beneath whose shade Awed by the ending of their own desire

The armies stood; a vacancy was made In expectation's depth, and so they stood

dismayed.

27. 'The frightful silence of that altered mood, The tortures of the dying

clove alone, Till one uprose among the multitude, And said--"The flood of time

is rolling on; We stand upon its brink, whilst THEY are gone To glide in peace

down death's mysterious stream. Have ye done well? They moulder, flesh and

bone, Who might have made this life's envenomed dream A sweeter draught than ye

will ever taste, I deem.

28. '"These perish as the good and great of yore Have perished, and their

murderers will repent,-- Yes, vain and barren tears shall flow before Yon smoke

has faded from the firmament Even for this cause, that ye who must lament The

death of those that made this world so fair, Cannot recall them now; but there

is lent To man the wisdom of a high despair, When such can die, and he live on

and linger here.

29. '"Ay, ye may fear not now the Pestilence, From fabled hell as by a charm

withdrawn; All power and faith must pass, since calmly hence In pain and fire

have unbelievers gone; And ye must sadly turn away, and moan In secret, to his

home each one returning; And to long ages shall this hour be known; And slowly

shall its memory, ever burning, Fill this dark night of things with an eternal

morning.

30. '"For me that world is grown too void and cold, Since Hope pursues immortal

Destiny With steps thus slow--therefore shall ye behold How those who love, yet

fear not, dare to die; Tell to your children this!" Then suddenly He sheathed a

dagger in his heart and fell; My brain grew dark in death, and yet to me There

came a murmur from the crowd, to tell Of deep and mighty change which suddenly

befell.

31. 'Then suddenly I stood, a winged Thought, Before the immortal Senate, and

the seat Of that star-shining spirit, whence is wrought The strength of its

dominion, good and great, The better Genius of this world's estate. His realm

around one mighty Fane is spread, Elysian islands bright and fortunate, Calm

dwellings of the free and happy dead, Where I am sent to lead!' These winged

words she said,

32. And with the silence of her eloquent smile, Bade us embark in her divine

canoe; Then at the helm we took our seat, the while Above her head those plumes

of dazzling hue Into the winds' invisible stream she threw, Sitting beside the

prow: like gossamer On the swift breath of morn, the vessel flew O'er the

bright whirlpools of that fountain fair, Whose shores receded fast, while we

seemed lingering there;

33. Till down that mighty stream, dark, calm, and fleet, Between a chasm of

cedarn mountains riven, Chased by the thronging winds whose viewless feet As

swift as twinkling beams, had, under Heaven, From woods and waves wild sounds

and odours driven, The boat fled visibly--three nights and days, Borne like a

cloud through morn, and noon, and even, We sailed along the winding watery ways

Of the vast stream, a long and labyrinthine maze.

34. A scene of joy and wonder to behold That river's shapes and shadows

changing ever, Where the broad sunrise filled with deepening gold Its

whirlpools, where all hues did spread and quiver; And where melodious falls did

burst and shiver Among rocks clad with flowers, the foam and spray Sparkled

like stars upon the sunny river, Or when the moonlight poured a holier day, One

vast and glittering lake around green islands lay.

35. Morn, noon, and even, that boat of pearl outran The streams which bore it,

like the arrowy cloud Of tempest, or the speedier thought of man, Which flieth

forth and cannot make abode; Sometimes through forests, deep like night, we

glode, Between the walls of mighty mountains crowned With Cyclopean piles,

whose turrets proud, The homes of the departed, dimly frowned O'er the bright

waves which girt their dark foundations round.

36. Sometimes between the wide and flowering meadows, Mile after mile we

sailed, and 'twas delight To see far off the sunbeams chase the shadows Over

the grass; sometimes beneath the night Of wide and vaulted caves, whose roofs

were bright With starry gems, we fled, whilst from their deep And dark-green

chasms, shades beautiful and white, Amid sweet sounds across our path would

sweep, Like swift and lovely dreams that walk the waves of sleep.

37. And ever as we sailed, our minds were full Of love and wisdom, which would

overflow In converse wild, and sweet, and wonderful, And in quick smiles whose

light would come and go Like music o'er wide waves, and in the flow Of sudden

tears, and in the mute caress-- For a deep shade was cleft, and we did know,

That virtue, though obscured on Earth, not less Survives all mortal change in

lasting loveliness.

38. Three days and nights we sailed, as thought and feeling Number delightful

hours--for through the sky The sphered lamps of day and night, revealing New

changes and new glories, rolled on high, Sun, Moon and moonlike lamps, the

progeny Of a diviner Heaven, serene and fair: On the fourth day, wild as a

windwrought sea The stream became, and fast and faster bare The spirit-winged

boat, steadily speeding there.

39. Steady and swift, where the waves rolled like mountains Within the vast

ravine, whose rifts did pour Tumultuous floods from their ten thousand

fountains, The thunder of whose earth-uplifting roar Made the air sweep in

whirlwinds from the shore, Calm as a shade, the boat of that fair child

Securely fled, that rapid stress before, Amid the topmost spray, and sunbows

wild, Wreathed in the silver mist: in joy and pride we smiled.

40. The torrent of that wide and raging river Is passed, and our aereal speed

suspended. We look behind; a golden mist did quiver When its wild surges with

the lake were blended,-- Our bark hung there, as on a line suspended Between

two heavens,--that windless waveless lake Which four great cataracts from four

vales, attended By mists, aye feed; from rocks and clouds they break, And of

that azure sea a silent refuge make.

41. Motionless resting on the lake awhile, I saw its marge of snow-bright

mountains rear Their peaks aloft, I saw each radiant isle, And in the midst,

afar, even like a sphere Hung in one hollow sky, did there appear The Temple of

the Spirit; on the sound Which issued thence, drawn nearer and more near, Like

the swift moon this glorious earth around, The charmed boat approached, and

there its haven found.

NOTE ON THE "REVOLT OF ISLAM", BY MRS. SHELLEY.

Shelley possessed two remarkable qualities of intellect--a brilliant

imagination, and a logical exactness of reason. His inclinations led him (he

fancied) almost alike to poetry and metaphysical discussions. I say 'he

fancied,' because I believe the former to have been paramount, and that it

would have gained the mastery even had he struggled against it. However, he

said that he deliberated at one time whether he should dedicate himself to

poetry or metaphysics; and, resolving on the former, he educated himself for

it, discarding in a great measure his philosophical pursuits, and engaging

himself in the study of the poets of Greece, Italy, and England. To these may

be added a constant perusal of portions of the old Testament--the Psalms, the

Book of Job, the Prophet Isaiah, and others, the sublime poetry of which filled

him with delight.

As a poet, his intellect and compositions were powerfully influenced by

exterior circumstances, and especially by his place of abode. He was very fond

of travelling, and ill-health increased this restlessness. The sufferings

occasioned by a cold English winter made him pine, especially when our colder

spring arrived, for a more genial climate. In 1816 he again visited

Switzerland, and rented a house on the banks of the Lake of Geneva; and many a

day, in cloud or sunshine, was passed alone in his boat--sailing as the wind

listed, or weltering on the calm waters. The majestic aspect of Nature

ministered such thoughts as he afterwards enwove in verse. His lines on the

Bridge of the Arve, and his "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty", were written at this

time. Perhaps during this summer his genius was checked by association with

another poet whose nature was utterly dissimilar to his own, yet who, in the

poem he wrote at that time, gave tokens that he shared for a period the more

abstract and etherealised inspiration of Shelley. The saddest events awaited

his return to England; but such was his fear to wound the feelings of others

that he never expressed the anguish he felt, and seldom gave vent to the

indignation roused by the persecutions he underwent; while the course of deep

unexpressed passion, and the sense of injury, engendered the desire to embody

themselves in forms defecated of all the weakness and evil which cling to real

life.

He chose therefore for his hero a youth nourished in dreams of liberty, some of

whose actions are in direct opposition to the opinions of the world; but who is

animated throughout by an ardent love of virtue, and a resolution to confer the

boons of political and intellectual freedom on his fellow-creatures. He created

for this youth a woman such as he delighted to imagine--full of enthusiasm for

the same objects; and they both, with will unvanquished, and the deepest sense

of the justice of their cause, met adversity and death. There exists in this

poem a memorial of a friend of his youth. The character of the old man who

liberates Laon from his tower prison, and tends on him in sickness, is founded

on that of Doctor Lind, who, when Shelley was at Eton, had often stood by to

befriend and support him, and whose name he never mentioned without love and

veneration.

During the year 1817 we were established at Marlow in Buckinghamshire.

Shelley's choice of abode was fixed chiefly by this town being at no great

distance from London, and its neighbourhood to the Thames. The poem was written

in his boat, as it floated under the beech groves of Bisham, or during

wanderings in the neighbouring country, which is distinguished for peculiar

beauty. The chalk hills break into cliffs that overhang the Thames, or form

valleys clothed with beech; the wilder portion of the country is rendered

beautiful by exuberant vegetation; and the cultivated part is peculiarly

fertile. With all this wealth of Nature which, either in the form of

gentlemen's parks or soil dedicated to agriculture, flourishes around, Marlow

was inhabited (I hope it is altered now) by a very poor population. The women

are lacemakers, and lose their health by sedentary labour, for which they were

very ill paid. The Poor-laws ground to the dust not only the paupers, but those

who had risen just above that state, and were obliged to pay poor-rates. The

changes produced by peace following a long war, and a bad harvest, brought with

them the most heart-rending evils to the poor. Shelley afforded what

alleviation he could. In the winter, while bringing out his poem, he had a

severe attack of ophthalmia, caught while visiting the poor cottages. I mention

these things,--for this minute and active sympathy with his fellow-creatures

gives a thousandfold interest to his speculations, and stamps with reality his

pleadings for the human race.

The poem, bold in its opinions and uncompromising in their expression, met with

many censurers, not only among those who allow of no virtue but such as

supports the cause they espouse, but even among those whose opinions were

similar to his own. I extract a portion of a letter written in answer to one of

these friends. It best details the impulses of Shelley's mind, and his motives:

it was written with entire unreserve; and is therefore a precious monument of

his own opinion of his powers, of the purity of his designs, and the ardour

with which he clung, in adversity and through the valley of the shadow of

death, to views from which he believed the permanent happiness of mankind must

eventually spring.

'Marlowe, December 11, 1817.

'I have read and considered all that you say about my general powers, and the

particular instance of the poem in which I have attempted to develop them.

Nothing can be more satisfactory to me than the interest which your admonitions

express. But I think you are mistaken in some points with regard to the

peculiar nature of my powers, whatever be their amount. I listened with

deference and self-suspicion to your censures of "The Revolt of Islam"; but the

productions of mine which you commend hold a very low place in my own esteem;

and this reassures me, in some degree at least. The poem was produced by a

series of thoughts which filled my mind with unbounded and sustained

enthusiasm. I felt the precariousness of my life, and I engaged in this task,

resolved to leave some record of myself. Much of what the volume contains was

written with the same feeling--as real, though not so prophetic--as the

communications of a dying man. I never presumed indeed to consider it anything

approaching to faultless; but, when I consider contemporary productions of the

same apparent pretensions, I own I was filled with confidence. I felt that it

was in many respects a genuine picture of my own mind. I felt that the

sentiments were true, not assumed. And in this have I long believed that my

power consists; in sympathy, and that part of the imagination which relates to

sentiment and contemplation. I am formed, if for anything not in common with

the herd of mankind, to apprehend minute and remote distinctions of feeling,

whether relative to external nature or the living beings which surround us, and

to communicate the conceptions which result from considering either the moral

or the material universe as a whole. Of course, I believe these faculties,

which perhaps comprehend all that is sublime in man, to exist very imperfectly

in my own mind. But, when you advert to my Chancery-paper, a cold, forced,

unimpassioned, insignificant piece of cramped and cautious argument, and to the

little scrap about "Mandeville", which expressed my feelings indeed, but cost

scarcely two minutes' thought to express, as specimens of my powers more

favourable than that which grew as it were from "the agony and bloody sweat" of

intellectual travail; surely I must feel that, in some manner, either I am

mistaken in believing that I have any talent at all, or you in the selection of

the specimens of it. Yet, after all, I cannot but be conscious, in much of what

I write, of an absence of that tranquillity which is the attribute and

accompaniment of power. This feeling alone would make your most kind and wise

admonitions, on the subject of the economy of intellectual force, valuable to

me. And, if I live, or if I see any trust in coming years, doubt not but that I

shall do something, whatever it may be, which a serious and earnest estimate of

my powers will suggest to me, and which will be in every respect accommodated

to their utmost limits.

[Shelley to Godwin.]