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
4015
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.
XXVI
The Princes and the Priests were pale with terror;
That monstrous faith wherewith they ruled mankind,
4020
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
4025
In sad procession: each among the train
To his own Idol lifts his supplications vain.
XXVII
‘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
4030
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,
4035
Ere to despair and death thy worshippers be driven.
XXVIII
‘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?
4040
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?
XXIX
4045
‘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
4050
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.’
XXX
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,
4060
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.
XXXI
And Oromaze, Joshua, and Mahomet,
Moses and Buddh, Zerdusht, and Brahm, and Foh,
4065
A tumult of strange names, which never met
Before, as watchwords of a single woe,
Arose; each raging votary ’gan to throw
Aloft his armèd hands, and each did howl
‘Our God alone is God!’—and slaughter now
4070
Would have gone forth, when from beneath a cowl
A voice came forth, which pierced like ice through every soul.
XXXII
’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,
4075
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
4080
To wreak his fear of Heaven in vengeance on mankind.
XXXIII
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
4085
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.
XXXIV
4090
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,
4095
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.
XXXV
‘Peace! Peace!’ he cried, ‘when we are dead, the Day
4100
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
4105
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.
XXXVI
‘Think ye, because ye weep, and kneel, and pray,
That God will lull the pestilence? It rose
4110
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
4115
The gates of death, ere they receive the twain
Who shook with mortal spells his undefended reign?
XXXVII
‘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
4120
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,
4125
When those detested hearts their iron fangs have rent!
XXXVIII
‘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!
XXXIX
4135
‘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
4140
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.
XL
His voice was like a blast that burst the portal
4145
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
4150
All natural pity then, a fear unknown
Before, and with an inward fire possessed,
They raged like homeless beasts whom burning woods invest.
XLI
’Twas morn.—At noon the public crier went forth,
Proclaiming through the living and the dead,
4155
‘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!
4160
But he who both alive can hither bring,
The Princess shall espouse, and reign an equal King.’
XLII
Ere night the pyre was piled, the net of iron
Was spread above, the fearful couch below;
It overtopped the towers that did environ
4165
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
4170
By gadflies, they have piled the heath, and gums, and wood.
XLIII
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;
4175
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.
XLIV
4180
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
4185
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!’
XLV
And Priests rushed through their ranks, some counterfeiting
4190
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.
XLVI
The noontide sun was darkened with that smoke,
The winds of eve dispersed those ashes gray.
4200
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,
4205
And cast a light on those dim labyrinths, where
Hope, near imagined chasms, is struggling with despair.
XLVII
’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,
4210
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!
4215
Kill me!’—They burned them both with hellish mockery.
XLVIII
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 XI
I
4225
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,
4230
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.
II
A cloud was hanging o’er the western mountains;
4235
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,
4240
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.
III
It was a stream of living beams, whose bank
On either side by the cloud’s cleft was made;
4245
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—
4250
Her radiant shape upon its verge did shiver;
Aloft, her flowing hair like strings of flame did quiver.
IV
I stood beside her, but she saw me not—
She looked upon the sea, and skies, and earth;
Rapture, and love, and admiration wrought
4255
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,
4260
All but her dearest self from my regard concealing.
V
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,
4265
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.
VI
4270
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;
4275
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!
VII
Never but once to meet on Earth again!
4280
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