Light on the woven boughs which o’er its waves are swinging.
XLII
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
XLIII
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,
XLIV
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.
XLV
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.
XLVI
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.
XLVII
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.
XLVIII
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!
XLIX
‘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!
L
‘What seek’st thou here? the moonlight comes in flashes;
The dew is rising dankly from the dell;
‘T will 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.’—’’T is 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!’
LI
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.
LII
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;
LIII
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.
LIV
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.
LV
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.
REVOLT OF ISLAM: Canto Seventh
I
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 inwov
en 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.
II
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.
III
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.
IV
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.
V
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.
VI
She told me what a loathsome agony
Is that when selfishness mocks love’s delight,
Foul as in dreams, 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.
VII
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.
VIII
The King felt pale upon his noon-day 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.
IX
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 Æthiop 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.
X
‘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,
XI
‘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.
XII
‘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 aëry dome is inaccessible,
Was pierced with one round cleft through which the sunbeams fell.
XIII
‘Below, the fountain’s brink was richly paven
With the deep’s wealth, coral, and pearl, and sand
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.
XIV
‘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 jailer 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: —
XV
‘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.
XVI
‘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.
XVII
‘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.
XVIII
‘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, belovèd!—’t was a dream divine;
Even to remember how it fled, how swift,
How utterly, might make the heart repine, —
Though ‘t was a dream.’ — Then Cythna did uplift
Her looks on mine, as if some doubt she sought to shift —
XIX
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.
XX
‘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.
XXI
‘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 —