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,
1510
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.
XII
‘Yes, from the records of my youthful state,
And from the lore of bards and sages old,
1515
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,
1520
They have been heard, and men aspire to more
Than they have ever gained or ever lost of yore.
XIII
‘In secret chambers parents read, and weep,
My writings to their babes, no longer blind;
And young men gather when their tyrants sleep,
1525
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,
1530
Like autumn’s myriad leaves in one swoln mountain-brook.
XIV
‘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
1535
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.
XV
1540
‘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
1545
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.
XVI
‘For I have been thy passive instrument’—
1550
(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
1555
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.
XVII
‘But I, alas! am both unknown and old,
And though the woof of wisdom I know well
1560
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
1565
And tempests, and his soul-subduing tongue
Were as a lance to quell the mailèd crest of wrong.
XVIII
‘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
1570
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
1575
I prithee spare me;”—did with ruth so take
XIX
‘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
1580
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.
XX
1585
‘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;
1590
The tyrants send their armèd 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.
XXI
‘Thus she doth equal laws and justice teach
1595
To woman, outraged and polluted long;
Gathering the sweetest fruit in human reach
For those fair hands now free, while armèd wrong
Trembles before her look, though it be strong;
Thousands thus dwell beside her, virgins bright,
1600
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,
XXII
‘And homeless orphans find a home near her,
And those poor victims of the proud, no less,
1605
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
1610
All evil, and her foes relenting turn,
And cast the vote of love in hope’s abandoned urn.
XXIII
‘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
1615
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
1620
Their claim, and gathers strength around its trembling thrones.
XXIV
‘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
1625
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.
XXV
1630
‘Th
ere 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,
1635
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?
XXVI
‘The tyrant’s guards resistance yet maintain:
1640
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
1645
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.
XXVII
‘Over the land is felt a sudden pause,
As night and day those ruthless bands around,
1650
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,
1655
The conquerors pause, and oh! may freemen ne’er
Clasp the relentless knees of Dread the murderer!
XXVIII
‘If blood be shed, ’tis but a change and choice
Of bonds,—from slavery to cowardice
A wretched fall!—Uplift thy charmèd voice!
1660
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,
1665
And looked upon the depth of that reposing lake.
XXIX
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
1670
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.
XXX
1675
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,
1680
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.
XXXI
What then was I? She slumbered with the dead.
1685
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
1690
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.
XXXII
Strengthened in heart, yet sad, that aged man
I left, with interchange of looks and tears,
1695
And lingering speech, and to the Camp began
My way. 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
1700
The blosmy spring’s star-bright investiture.
A vision which aught sad from sadness might allure.
XXXIII
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.
1705
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,
1710
As if the light of youth were not withdrawn for ever.
XXXIV
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
1715
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 V
I
1720
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;
1725
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.
II
All slept but those in watchful arms who stood,
1730
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
1735
Beat underneath its shade, what secret fight
Evil and good, in woven passions mailed,
Waged through that silent throng; a war that never failed!
III
And now the Power of Good held victory,
So, through the labyrinth of many a tent,
1740
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 armèd youth—over his spear he bent
1745
His downward face.—‘A friend!’ I cried aloud,
And quickly common hopes made freemen understood.
IV
I sate beside him while the morning beam
Crept slowly over Heaven, and talked with him
Of those immortal hopes, a glorious theme!
1750
Which led us forth, until the stars grew dim:
And all the while, methought, his voice did swim
As if it drownèd in remembrance were
Of thoughts which make the moist eyes overbrim:
At last, when daylig
ht ’gan to fill the air,
1755
He looked on me, and cried in wonder—‘Thou art here!’
V
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,
1760
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.
VI
1765
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
1770
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.
VII
Like rabid snakes, that sting some gentle child
1775
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.
VIII