XIV
1225
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!
1230
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 were drowned.
XV
The noon was calm and bright:—around that column
1235
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
1240
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.
XVI
It was so calm, that scarce the feathery weed
Sown by some eagle on the topmost stone
1245
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
1250
In that broad glare, yet sound to me none came,
But of the living blood that ran within my frame.
XVII
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—
1255
Its shadow lay beyond—that sight again
Waked, with its presence, in my trancèd 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,
1260
And watched it with such thoughts as must remain untold.
XVIII
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:
1265
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 parchèd skin was split with piercing agonies.
XIX
1270
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.—
1275
That starry night, with its clear silence, sent
Tameless resolve which laughed at misery
Into my soul—linkèd remembrance lent
To that such power, to me such a severe content.
XX
To breathe, to be, to hope, or to despair
1280
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
1285
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.
XXI
Two days thus passed—I neither raved nor died—
Thirst raged within me, like a scorpion’s nest
1290
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
1295
Fuel, not food. I chewed the bitter dust,
And bit my bloodless arm, and licked the brazen rust.
XXII
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
1300
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,
1305
A shoreless sea, a sky sunless and planetless!
XXIII
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
1310
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.
XXIV
1315
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
1320
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.
XXV
Methought that grate was lifted, and the seven
1325
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,
1330
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.
XXVI
A woman’s shape, now lank and cold and blue,
The dwelling of the many-coloured worm,
1335
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
1340
Within my teeth!—A whirlwind keen as frost
Then in its sinking gulfs my sickening spirit tossed.
XXVII
Then seemed it that a tameless hurricane
Arose, and bore me in its dark career
Beyond the sun, beyond the stars that wane
1345
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 sle
ep
1350
His heavenly smiles dispersed, and I could wake and weep.
XXVIII
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
1355
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.
XXIX
1360
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
1365
My wretched frame, my scorchèd 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,
XXX
As, lifting me, it fell!—What next I heard,
1370
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
1375
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.
XXXI
For now indeed, over the salt sea-billow
I sailed: yet dared not look upon the shape
1380
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
1385
Those dreadful thoughts the gentle grandsire bent,
And to my inmost soul his soothing looks he sent.
XXXII
A soft and healing potion to my lips
At intervals he raised—now looked on high,
To mark if yet the starry giant dips
1390
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,
1395
Who in cells deep and lone have languished many a year.
XXXIII
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
1400
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.
XXXIV
1405
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
1410
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 IV
I
THE old man took the oars, and soon the bark
1415
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,
1420
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.
II
When the old man his boat had anchorèd,
He wound me in his arms with tender care,
1425
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
1430
Was tapestried, where me his soft hands placed
Upon a couch of grass and oak-leaves interlaced.
III
The moon was darting through the lattices
Its yellow light, warm as the beams of day—
So warm, that to admit the dewy breeze,
1435
The old man opened them; the moonlight lay
Upon a lake whose waters wove their play
Within was seen in the dim wavering ray
The antique sculptured roof, and many a tome
1440
Whose lore had made that sage all that he had become.
IV
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
1445
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?
V
1450
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,
1455
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.
VI
He knew his soothing words to weave with skill
1460
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—
1465
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.
VII
Thus slowly from my brain the darkness rolled,
My thoughts their due array did re-assume
1470
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
1475
Of eve, to that friend’s heart I told my though
t—
That heart which had grown old, but had corrupted not.
VIII
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,
1480
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,
1485
And all the ways of men among mankind he read.
IX
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;
1490
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;
X
1495
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:
1500
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.
XI
He came to the lone column on the rock,
1505
And with his sweet and mighty eloquence