After long years, some sweet and moving scene
Of youthful hope, returning suddenly,
Quells his long madness—thus man shall remember thee.
XXXI
‘And Calumny meanwhile shall feed on us,
3740
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
3745
Who built their pride on its oblivion;
And fame, in human hope which sculptured was,
Survive the perished scrolls of unenduring brass.
XXXII
‘The while we two, belovèd, must depart,
And Sense and Reason, those enchanters fair,
3750
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,
3755
Seems our obscure and rotting eyes to steep
In joy;—but senseless death—a ruin dark and deep!
XXXIII
‘These are blind fancies—reason cannot know
What sense can neither feel, nor thought conceive;
There is delusion in the world—and woe,
3760
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
3765
With thoughts too swift and strong for one lone human breast.
XXXIV
‘Yes, yes—thy kiss is sweet, thy lips are warm—
O! willingly, belovèd, would these eyes,
Might they no more drink being from thy form,
Even as to sleep whence we again arise,
3770
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.
XXXV
‘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
3780
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.
XXXVI
Though she had ceased, her countenance uplifted
3785
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?
3790
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 X
I
WAS there a human spirit in the steed,
That thus with his proud voice, ere night was gone,
3795
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
3800
To see her sons contend? and makes she bare
Her breast, that all in peace its drainless stores may share?
II
I have heard friendly sounds from many a tongue
Which was not human—the lone nightingale
Has answered me with her most soothing song,
3805
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
3810
Like man’s own speech; and such was now the token
Of waning night, whose calm by that proud neigh was broken.
III
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;
3815
Soon the dust drinks that bitter dew,—then meet
The vulture, and the wild dog, and the snake,
The wolf, and the hyæna gray, and eat
The dead in horrid truce: their throngs did make
Behind the steed, a chasm like waves in a ship’s wake.
IV
3820
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
3825
The armies of the leaguèd 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.
V
From every nation of the earth they came,
3830
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;
3835
Tartar and Frank, and millions whom the wings
Of Indian breezes lull, and many a band
The Arctic Anarch sent, and Idumea’s sand,
VI
Fertile in prodigies and lies;—so there
Strange natures made a brotherhood of ill.
3840
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,
3845
And savage sympathy: those slaves impure,
Each one the other thus from ill to ill did lure.
VII
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,
3850
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
3855
Like wolves and serpents to their mutual wars
Strange truce, with many a rite which Earth and Heaven abhors.
VIII
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
3860
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.
IX
3865
‘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
3870
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;
X
‘For we were slaying still without remorse,
3875
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;
3880
‘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;
XI
‘And gold and glory shall be his.—Go forth!’
They rushed into the plain.—Loud was the roar
3885
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
3890
Stream through the city; on the seventh, the dew
Of slaughter became stiff, and there was peace anew:
XII
Peace in the desert fields and villages,
Between the glutted beasts and mangled dead!
Peace in the silent streets! save when the cries
3895
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
3900
Waste the triumphal hours in festival and song!
XIII
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
3905
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.
XIV
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,
3915
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.
XV
The fish were poisoned in the streams; the birds
3920
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
3925
All night, the lean hyænas their sad case
Like starving infants wailed; a woeful ditty!
And many a mother wept, pierced with unnatural pity.
XVI
Amid the aëreal minarets on high,
The Ethiopian vultures fluttering fell
3930
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,
3935
A voiceless thought of evil, which did spread
With the quick glance of eyes, like withering lightnings shed.
XVII
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
3940
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
3945
A ghastly brood; conceived of Lethe’s sullen water.
XVIII
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
3950
Creaked with the weight of birds, but, as before
Those wingèd 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.
XIX
3955
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
3960
Through hunger, bared her scornèd 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.
XX
Then fell blue Plague upon the race of man.
3965
‘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
3970
Each by his fiery torture howl and rave,
Or sit, in frenzy’s unimagined mood,
Upon fresh heaps of dead; a ghastly multitude.
XXI
It was not hunger now, but thirst. Each well
Was choked with rotting corpses, and became
3975
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,
3980
Spotted with nameless
scars and lurid blains,
Childhood, and youth, and age, writhing in savage pains.
XXII
It was not thirst but madness! Many saw
Their own lean image everywhere, it went
A ghastlier self beside them, till the awe
3985
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
3990
On fire! the avenging Power his hell on earth has spread!’
XXIII
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
3995
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.
XXIV
4000
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
4005
Of thankful falsehood, like a courtier gray,
The house-dog of the throne; but many a mile
Comes Plague, a wingèd wolf, who loathes alway
The garbage and the scum that strangers make her prey.
XXV
So, near the throne, amid the gorgeous feast,
4010