The Complete Poetical Works

When the last hope of trampled France had failed

Like a brief dream of unremaining glory,

From visions of despair I rose, and scaled

The peak of an aerial promontory,

Whose caverned base with the vexed surge was hoary;

And saw the golden dawn break forth, and waken

Each cloud, and every wave:—but transitory

The calm; for sudden, the firm earth was shaken,

As if by the last wreck its frame were overtaken.

So as I stood, one blast of muttering thunder

Burst in far peals along the waveless deep,

When, gathering fast, around, above, and under,

Long trains of tremulous mist began to creep,

Until their complicating lines did steep

The orient sun in shadow:—not a sound

Was heard; one horrible repose did keep

The forests and the floods, and all around

Darkness more dread than night was poured upon the ground.

Hark! ’tis the rushing of a wind that sweeps

Earth and the ocean. See! the lightnings yawn

Deluging Heaven with fire, and the lashed deeps

Glitter and boil beneath: it rages on,

One mighty stream, whirlwind and waves upthrown,

Lightning, and hail, and darkness eddying by.

There is a pause—the sea-birds, that were gone

Into their caves to shriek, come forth, to spy

What calm has fall’n on earth, what light is in the sky.

For, where the irresistible storm had cloven

That fearful darkness, the blue sky was seen

Fretted with many a fair cloud interwoven

Most delicately, and the ocean green,

Beneath that opening spot of blue serene,

Quivered like burning emerald; calm was spread

On all below; but far on high, between

Earth and the upper air, the vast clouds fled,

Countless and swift as leaves on autumn’s tempest shed.

For ever, as the war became more fierce

Between the whirlwinds and the rack on high,

That spot grew more serene; blue light did pierce

The woof of those white clouds, which seem to lie

Far, deep, and motionless; while through the sky

The pallid semicircle of the moon

Passed on, in slow and moving majesty;

Its upper horn arrayed in mists, which soon

But slowly fled, like dew beneath the beams of noon.

I could not choose but gaze; a fascination

Dwelt in that moon, and sky, and clouds, which drew

My fancy thither, and in expectation

Of what I knew not, I remained:—the hue

Of the white moon, amid that heaven so blue,

Suddenly stained with shadow did appear;

A speck, a cloud, a shape, approaching grew,

Like a great ship in the sun’s sinking sphere

Beheld afar at sea, and swift it came anear.

Even like a bark, which from a chasm of mountains,

Dark, vast and overhanging, on a river

Which there collects the strength of all its fountains,

Comes forth, whilst with the speed its frame doth quiver,

Sails, oars and stream, tending to one endeavour;

So, from that chasm of light a winged Form

On all the winds of heaven approaching ever

Floated, dilating as it came; the storm

Pursued it with fierce blasts, and lightnings swift and warm.

A course precipitous, of dizzy speed,

Suspending thought and breath; a monstrous sight!

For in the air do I behold indeed

An Eagle and a Serpent wreathed in fight:—

And now, relaxing its impetuous flight,

Before the aerial rock on which I stood,

The Eagle, hovering, wheeled to left and right,

And hung with lingering wings over the flood,

And startled with its yells the wide air’s solitude.

A shaft of light upon its wings descended,

And every golden feather gleamed therein—

Feather and scale, inextricably blended.

The Serpent’s mailed and many-coloured skin

Shone through the plumes its coils were twined within

By many a swoln and knotted fold, and high

And far, the neck, receding lithe and thin,

Sustained a crested head, which warily

Shifted and glanced before the Eagle’s steadfast eye.

Around, around, in ceaseless circles wheeling

With clang of wings and scream, the Eagle sailed

Incessantly—sometimes on high concealing

Its lessening orbs, sometimes as if it failed,

Drooped through the air; and still it shrieked and wailed,

And casting back its eager head, with beak

And talon unremittingly assailed

The wreathed Serpent, who did ever seek

Upon his enemy’s heart a mortal wound to wreak.

What life, what power, was kindled and arose

Within the sphere of that appalling fray!

For, from the encounter of those wondrous foes,

A vapour like the sea’s suspended spray

Hung gathered; in the void air, far away,

Floated the shattered plumes; bright scales did leap,

Where’er the Eagle’s talons made their way,

Like sparks into the darkness;—as they sweep,

Blood stains the snowy foam of the tumultuous deep.

Swift chances in that combat—many a check,

And many a change, a dark and wild turmoil;

Sometimes the Snake around his enemy’s neck

Locked in stiff rings his adamantine coil,

Until the Eagle, faint with pain and toil,

Remitted his strong flight, and near the sea

Languidly fluttered, hopeless so to foil

His adversary, who then reared on high

His red and burning crest, radiant with victory.

Then on the white edge of the bursting surge,

Where they had sunk together, would the Snake

Relax his suffocating grasp, and scourge

The wind with his wild writhings; for to break

That chain of torment, the vast bird would shake

The strength of his unconquerable wings

As in despair, and with his sinewy neck,

Dissolve in sudden shock those linked rings—

Then soar, as swift as smoke from a volcano springs.

Wile baffled wile, and strength encountered strength,

Thus long, but unprevailing:—the event

Of that portentous fight appeared at length:

Until the lamp of day was almost spent

It had endured, when lifeless, stark, and rent,

Hung high that mighty Serpent, and at last

Fell to the sea, while o’er the continent

With clang of wings and scream the Eagle passed,

Heavily borne away on the exhausted blast.

And with it fled the tempest, so that ocean

And earth and sky shone through the atmosphere—

Only, ’twas strange to see the red commotion

Of waves like mountains o’er the sinking sphere

Of sunset sweep, and their fierce roar to hear

Amid the calm: down the steep path I wound

To the sea-shore—the evening was most clear

And beautiful, and there the sea I found

Calm as a cradled child in dreamless slumber bound.

There was a Woman, beautiful as morning,

Sitting beneath the rocks, upon the sand

Of the waste sea—fair as one flower adorning

An icy wilderness; each delicate hand

Lay crossed upon her bosom, and the band

Of her dark hair had fall’n, and so she sate

Looking upon the waves; on the bare strand

Upon the sea-mark a small boat did wait,

Fair as herself, like Love by Hope left desolate.

It seemed that this fair Shape had looked upon

That unimaginable fight, and now

That her sweet eyes were weary of the sun,

As brightly it illustrated her woe;

For in the tears which silently to flow

Paused not, its lustre hung: she watching aye

The foam-wreaths which the faint tide wove below

Upon the spangled sands, groaned heavily,

And after every groan looked up over the sea.

And when she saw the wounded Serpent make

His path between the waves, her lips grew pale,

Parted, and quivered; the tears ceased to break

From her immovable eyes; no voice of wail

Escaped her; but she rose, and on the gale

Loosening her star-bright robe and shadowy hair

Poured forth her voice; the caverns of the vale

That opened to the ocean, caught it there,

And filled with silver sounds the overflowing air.

She spake in language whose strange melody

Might not belong to earth. I heard alone,

What made its music more melodious be,

The pity and the love of every tone;

But to the Snake those accents sweet were known

His native tongue and hers; nor did he beat

The hoar spray idly then, but winding on

Through the green shadows of the waves that meet

Near to the shore, did pause beside her snowy feet.

Then on the sands the Woman sate again,

And wept and clasped her hands, and all between,

Renewed the unintelligible strain

Of her melodious voice and eloquent mien;

And she unveiled her bosom, and the green

And glancing shadows of the sea did play

O’er its marmoreal depth:—one moment seen,

For ere the next, the Serpent did obey

Her voice, and, coiled in rest in her embrace it lay.

Then she arose, and smiled on me with eyes

Serene yet sorrowing, like that planet fair,

While yet the daylight lingereth in the skies

Which cleaves with arrowy beams the dark-red air,

And said: ‘To grieve is wise, but the despair

Was weak and vain which led thee here from sleep:

This shalt thou know, and more, if thou dost dare

With me and with this Serpent, o’er the deep,

A voyage divine and strange, companionship to keep.’

Her voice was like the wildest, saddest tone,

Yet sweet, of some loved voice heard long ago.

I wept. ‘Shall this fair woman all alone,

Over the sea with that fierce Serpent go?

His head is on her heart, and who can know

How soon he may devour his feeble prey?’—

Such were my thoughts, when the tide gan to flow;

And that strange boat like the moon’s shade did sway

Amid reflected stars that in the waters lay:—

A boat of rare device, which had no sail

But its own curved prow of thin moonstone,

Wrought like a web of texture fine and frail,

To catch those gentlest winds which are not known

To breathe, but by the steady speed alone

With which it cleaves the sparkling sea; and now

We are embarked—the mountains hang and frown

Over the starry deep that gleams below,

A vast and dim expanse, as o’er the waves we go.

And as we sailed, a strange and awful tale

That Woman told, like such mysterious dream

As makes the slumberer’s cheek with wonder pale!

’Twas midnight, and around, a shoreless stream,

Wide ocean rolled, when that majestic theme

Shrined in her heart found utterance, and she bent

Her looks on mine; those eyes a kindling beam

Of love divine into my spirit sent,

And ere her lips could move, made the air eloquent.

‘Speak not to me, but hear! Much shalt thou learn,

Much must remain unthought, and more untold,

In the dark Future’s ever-flowing urn:

Know then, that from the depth of ages old

Two Powers o’er mortal things dominion hold,

Ruling the world with a divided lot,

Immortal, all-pervading, manifold,

Twin Genii, equal Gods—when life and thought

Sprang forth, they burst the womb of inessential Nought.

‘The earliest dweller of the world, alone,

Stood on the verge of chaos. Lo! afar

O’er the wide wild abyss two meteors shone,

Sprung from the depth of its tempestuous jar:

A blood-red Comet and the Morning Star

Mingling their beams in combat—as he stood,

All thoughts within his mind waged mutual war,

In dreadful sympathy—when to the flood

That fair Star fell, he turned and shed his brother’s blood.

‘Thus evil triumphed, and the Spirit of evil,

One Power of many shapes which none may know,

One Shape of many names; the Fiend did revel

In victory, reigning o’er a world of woe,

For the new race of man went to and fro,

Famished and homeless, loathed and loathing, wild,

And hating good—for his immortal foe,

He changed from starry shape, beauteous and mild,

To a dire Snake, with man and beast unreconciled.

‘The darkness lingering o’er the dawn of things,

Was Evil’s breath and life; this made him strong

To soar aloft with overshadowing wings;

And the great Spirit of Good did creep among

The nations of mankind, and every tongue

Cursed and blasphemed him as he passed; for none

Knew good from evil, though their names were hung

In mockery o’er the fane where many a groan,

As King, and Lord, and God, the conquering Fiend did own,—

‘The Fiend, whose name was Legion: Death, Decay,

Earthquake and Blight, and Want, and Madness pale,

Winged and wan diseases, an array

Numerous as leaves that strew the autumnal gale;

Poison, a snake in flowers, beneath the veil

Of food and mirth, hiding his mortal head;

And, without whom all these might nought avail,

Fear, Hatred, Faith, and Tyranny, who spread

Those subtle nets which snare the living and the dead.

‘His spirit is their power, and they his slaves

In air, and light, and thought, and language, dwell;

And keep their state from palaces to graves,

In all resorts of men—invisible,

But when, in ebon mirror, Nightmare fell

To tyrant or impostor bids them rise,

Black winged demon forms—whom, from the hell,

His reign and dwelling beneath nether skies,

He loosens to their dark and blasting ministries.

‘In the world’s youth his empire was as firm

As its foundations...Soon the Spirit of Good,

Though in the likeness of a loathsome worm,

Sprang from the billows of the formless flood,

Which shrank and fled; and with that Fiend of blood

Renewed the doubtful war...Thrones then first shook,

And earth’s immense and trampled multitude

In hope on their own powers began to look,

And Fear, the demon pale, his sanguine shrine forsook.

‘Then Greece arose, and to its bards and sages,

In dream, the golden-pinioned Genii came,

Even where they slept amid the night of ages,

Steeping their hearts in the divinest flame

Which thy breath kindled, Power of holiest name!

And oft in cycles since, when darkness gave

New weapons to thy foe, their sunlike fame

Upon the combat shone—a light to save,

Like Paradise spread forth beyond the shadowy grave.

‘Such is this conflict—when mankind doth strive

With its oppressors in a strife of blood,

Or when free thoughts, like lightnings, are alive,

And in each bosom of the multitude

Justice and truth with Custom’s hydra brood

Wage silent war; when Priests and Kings dissemble

In smiles or frowns their fierce disquietude,

When round pure hearts a host of hopes assemble,

The Snake and Eagle meet—the world’s foundations tremble!

‘Thou hast beheld that fight—when to thy home

Thou dost return, steep not its hearth in tears;

Though thou may’st hear that earth is now become

The tyrant’s garbage, which to his compeers,

The vile reward of their dishonoured years,

He will dividing give.—The victor Fiend,

Omnipotent of yore, now quails, and fears

His triumph dearly won, which soon will lend

An impulse swift and sure to his approaching end.

‘List, stranger, list, mine is an human form,

Like that thou wearest—touch me—shrink not now!

My hand thou feel’st is not a ghost’s, but warm

With human blood.—’Twas many years ago,

Since first my thirsting soul aspired to know

The secrets of this wondrous world, when deep

My heart was pierced with sympathy, for woe

Which could not be mine own, and thought did keep,

In dream, unnatural watch beside an infant’s sleep.

‘Woe could not be mine own, since far from men

I dwelt, a free and happy orphan child,

By the sea-shore, in a deep mountain glen;

And near the waves, and through the forests wild,

I roamed, to storm and darkness reconciled:

For I was calm while tempest shook the sky:

But when the breathless heavens in beauty smiled,

I wept, sweet tears, yet too tumultuously

For peace, and clasped my hands aloft in ecstasy.

‘These were forebodings of my fate—before

A woman’s heart beat in my virgin breast,

It had been nurtured in divinest lore:

A dying poet gave me books, and blessed

With wild but holy talk the sweet unrest

In which I watched him as he died away—

A youth with hoary hair—a fleeting guest

Of our lone mountains: and this lore did sway

My spirit like a storm, contending there alway.

‘Thus the dark tale which history doth unfold

I knew, but not, methinks, as others know,

For they weep not; and Wisdom had unrolled

The clouds which hide the gulf of mortal woe,—

To few can she that warning vision show—

For I loved all things with intense devotion;

So that when Hope’s deep source in fullest flow,

Like earthquake did uplift the stagnant ocean

Of human thoughts—mine shook beneath the wide emotion.

‘When first the living blood through all these veins

Kindled a thought in sense, great France sprang forth,

And seized, as if to break, the ponderous chains

Which bind in woe the nations of the earth.

I saw, and started from my cottage-hearth;

And to the clouds and waves in tameless gladness

Shrieked, till they caught immeasurable mirth—

And laughed in light and music: soon, sweet madness

Was poured upon my heart, a soft and thrilling sadness.

‘Deep slumber fell on me:—my dreams were fire—

Soft and delightful thoughts did rest and hover

Like shadows o’er my brain; and strange desire,

The tempest of a passion, raging over

My tranquil soul, its depths with light did cover,

Which passed; and calm, and darkness, sweeter far,

Came—then I loved; but not a human lover!

For when I rose from sleep, the Morning Star

Shone through the woodbine-wreaths which round my casement were.

‘’Twas like an eye which seemed to smile on me.

I watched, till by the sun made pale, it sank

Under the billows of the heaving sea;

But from its beams deep love my spirit drank,

And to my brain the boundless world now shrank

Into one thought—one image—yes, for ever!

Even like the dayspring, poured on vapours dank,

The beams of that one Star did shoot and quiver

Through my benighted mind—and were extinguished never.

‘The day passed thus: at night, methought, in dream

A shape of speechless beauty did appear:

It stood like light on a careering stream

Of golden clouds which shook the atmosphere;

A winged youth, his radiant brow did wear

The Morning Star: a wild dissolving bliss

Over my frame he breathed, approaching near,

And bent his eyes of kindling tenderness

Near mine, and on my lips impressed a lingering kiss,—

‘And said: “A Spirit loves thee, mortal maiden,

How wilt thou prove thy worth?” Then joy and sleep

Together fled; my soul was deeply laden,

And to the shore I went to muse and weep;

But as I moved, over my heart did creep

A joy less soft, but more profound and strong

Than my sweet dream; and it forbade to keep

The path of the sea-shore: that Spirit’s tongue

Seemed whispering in my heart, and bore my steps along.

‘How, to that vast and peopled city led,

Which was a field of holy warfare then,

I walked among the dying and the dead,

And shared in fearless deeds with evil men,

Calm as an angel in the dragon’s den—

How I braved death for liberty and truth,

And spurned at peace, and power, and fame—and when

Those hopes had lost the glory of their youth,

How sadly I returned—might move the hearer’s ruth:

‘Warm tears throng fast! the tale may not be said—

Know then, that when this grief had been subdued,

I was not left, like others, cold and dead;

The Spirit whom I loved, in solitude

Sustained his child: the tempest-shaken wood,

The waves, the fountains, and the hush of night—

These were his voice, and well I understood

His smile divine, when the calm sea was bright

With silent stars, and Heaven was breathless with delight.

‘In lonely glens, amid the roar of rivers,

When the dim nights were moonless, have I known

Joys which no tongue can tell; my pale lip quivers

When thought revisits them:—know thou alone,

That after many wondrous years were flown,

I was awakened by a shriek of woe;

And over me a mystic robe was thrown,

By viewless hands, and a bright Star did glow

Before my steps—the Snake then met his mortal foe.’

‘Thou fearest not then the Serpent on thy heart?’

‘Fear it!’ she said, with brief and passionate cry,

And spake no more: that silence made me start—

I looked, and we were sailing pleasantly,

Swift as a cloud between the sea and sky;

Beneath the rising moon seen far away,

Mountains of ice, like sapphire, piled on high,

Hemming the horizon round, in silence lay

On the still waters—these we did approach alway.

And swift and swifter grew the vessel’s motion,

So that a dizzy trance fell on my brain—

Wild music woke me; we had passed the ocean

Which girds the pole, Nature’s remotest reign—

And we glode fast o’er a pellucid plain

Of waters, azure with the noontide day.

Ethereal mountains shone around—a Fane

Stood in the midst, girt by green isles which lay

On the blue sunny deep, resplendent far away.

It was a Temple, such as mortal hand

Has never built, nor ecstasy, nor dream

Reared in the cities of enchanted land:

’Twas likest Heaven, ere yet day’s purple stream

Ebbs o’er the western forest, while the gleam

Of the unrisen moon among the clouds

Is gathering—when with many a golden beam

The thronging constellations rush in crowds,

Paving with fire the sky and the marmoreal floods.

Like what may be conceived of this vast dome,

When from the depths which thought can seldom pierce

Genius beholds it rise, his native home,

Girt by the deserts of the Universe;

Yet, nor in painting’s light, or mightier verse,

Or sculpture’s marble language, can invest

That shape to mortal sense—such glooms immerse

That incommunicable sight, and rest

Upon the labouring brain and overburdened breast.

Winding among the lawny islands fair,

Whose blosmy forests starred the shadowy deep,

The wingless boat paused where an ivory stair

Its fretwork in the crystal sea did steep,

Encircling that vast Fane’s aerial heap:

We disembarked, and through a portal wide

We passed—whose roof of moonstone carved, did keep

A glimmering o’er the forms on every side,

Sculptures like life and thought, immovable, deep-eyed.

We came to a vast hall, whose glorious roof

Was diamond, which had drunk the lightning’s sheen

In darkness, and now poured it through the woof

Of spell-inwoven clouds hung there to screen

Its blinding splendour—through such veil was seen

That work of subtlest power, divine and rare;

Orb above orb, with starry shapes between,

And horned moons, and meteors strange and fair,

On night-black columns poised—one hollow hemisphere!

Ten thousand columns in that quivering light

Distinct—between whose shafts wound far away

The long and labyrinthine aisles—more bright

With their own radiance than the Heaven of Day;

And on the jasper walls around, there lay

Paintings, the poesy of mightiest thought,

Which did the Spirit’s history display;

A tale of passionate change, divinely taught,

Which, in their winged dance, unconscious Genii wrought.

Beneath, there sate on many a sapphire throne,

The Great, who had departed from mankind,

A mighty Senate;—some, whose white hair shone

Like mountain snow, mild, beautiful, and blind;

Some, female forms, whose gestures beamed with mind;

And ardent youths, and children bright and fair;

And some had lyres whose strings were intertwined

With pale and clinging flames, which ever there

Waked faint yet thrilling sounds that pierced the crystal air.

One seat was vacant in the midst, a throne,

Reared on a pyramid like sculptured flame,

Distinct with circling steps which rested on

Their own deep fire—soon as the Woman came

Into that hall, she shrieked the Spirit’s name

And fell; and vanished slowly from the sight.

Darkness arose from her dissolving frame,

Which gathering, filled that dome of woven light,

Blotting its sphered stars with supernatural night.

Then first, two glittering lights were seen to glide

In circles on the amethystine floor,

Small serpent eyes trailing from side to side,

Like meteors on a river’s grassy shore,

They round each other rolled, dilating more

And more—then rose, commingling into one,

One clear and mighty planet hanging o’er

A cloud of deepest shadow, which was thrown

Athwart the glowing steps and the crystalline throne.

The cloud which rested on that cone of flame

Was cloven; beneath the planet sate a Form,

Fairer than tongue can speak or thought may frame,

The radiance of whose limbs rose-like and warm

Flowed forth, and did with softest light inform

The shadowy dome, the sculptures, and the state

Of those assembled shapes—with clinging charm

Sinking upon their hearts and mine. He sate

Majestic, yet most mild—calm, yet compassionate.

Wonder and joy a passing faintness threw

Over my brow—a hand supported me,

Whose touch was magic strength; an eye of blue

Looked into mine, like moonlight, soothingly;

And a voice said:—‘Thou must a listener be

This day—two mighty Spirits now return,

Like birds of calm, from the world’s raging sea,

They pour fresh light from Hope’s immortal urn;

A tale of human power—despair not—list and learn!

I looked, and lo! one stood forth eloquently.

His eyes were dark and deep, and the clear brow

Which shadowed them was like the morning sky,

The cloudless Heaven of Spring, when in their flow

Through the bright air, the soft winds as they blow

Wake the green world—his gestures did obey

The oracular mind that made his features glow,

And where his curved lips half-open lay,

Passion’s divinest stream had made impetuous way.

Beneath the darkness of his outspread hair

He stood thus beautiful; but there was One

Who sate beside him like his shadow there,

And held his hand—far lovelier; she was known

To be thus fair, by the few lines alone

Which through her floating locks and gathered cloak,

Glances of soul-dissolving glory, shone:—

None else beheld her eyes—in him they woke

Memories which found a tongue as thus he silence broke.

The starlight smile of children, the sweet looks

Of women, the fair breast from which I fed,

The murmur of the unreposing brooks,

And the green light which, shifting overhead,

Some tangled bower of vines around me shed,

The shells on the sea-sand, and the wild flowers,

The lamp-light through the rafters cheerly spread,

And on the twining flax—in life’s young hours

These sights and sounds did nurse my spirit’s folded powers.

In Argolis, beside the echoing sea,

Such impulses within my mortal frame

Arose, and they were dear to memory,

Like tokens of the dead:—but others came

Soon, in another shape: the wondrous fame

Of the past world, the vital words and deeds

Of minds whom neither time nor change can tame,

Traditions dark and old, whence evil creeds

Start forth, and whose dim shade a stream of poison feeds.

I heard, as all have heard, the various story

Of human life, and wept unwilling tears.

Feeble historians of its shame and glory,

False disputants on all its hopes and fears,

Victims who worshipped ruin, chroniclers

Of daily scorn, and slaves who loathed their state

Yet, flattering power, had given its ministers

A throne of judgement in the grave:—’twas fate,

That among such as these my youth should seek its mate.

The land in which I lived, by a fell bane

Was withered up. Tyrants dwelt side by side,

And stabled in our homes,—until the chain

Stifled the captive’s cry, and to abide

That blasting curse men had no shame—all vied

In evil, slave and despot; fear with lust

Strange fellowship through mutual hate had tied,

Like two dark serpents tangled in the dust,

Which on the paths of men their mingling poison thrust.

Earth, our bright home, its mountains and its waters,

And the ethereal shapes which are suspended

Over its green expanse, and those fair daughters,

The clouds, of Sun and Ocean, who have blended

The colours of the air since first extended

It cradled the young world, none wandered forth

To see or feel; a darkness had descended

On every heart; the light which shows its worth,

Must among gentle thoughts and fearless take its birth.

This vital world, this home of happy spirits,

Was as a dungeon to my blasted kind;

All that despair from murdered hope inherits

They sought, and in their helpless misery blind,

A deeper prison and heavier chains did find,

And stronger tyrants:—a dark gulf before,

The realm of a stern Ruler, yawned; behind,

Terror and Time conflicting drove, and bore

On their tempestuous flood the shrieking wretch from shore.

Out of that Ocean’s wrecks had Guilt and Woe

Framed a dark dwelling for their homeless thought,

And, starting at the ghosts which to and fro

Glide o’er its dim and gloomy strand, had brought

The worship thence which they each other taught.

Well might men loathe their life, well might they turn

Even to the ills again from which they sought

Such refuge after death!—well might they learn

To gaze on this fair world with hopeless unconcern!

For they all pined in bondage; body and soul,

Tyrant and slave, victim and torturer, bent

Before one Power, to which supreme control

Over their will by their own weakness lent,

Made all its many names omnipotent;

All symbols of things evil, all divine;

And hymns of blood or mockery, which rent

The air from all its fanes, did intertwine

Imposture’s impious toils round each discordant shrine.

I heard, as all have heard, life’s various story,

And in no careless heart transcribed the tale;

But, from the sneers of men who had grown hoary

In shame and scorn, from groans of crowds made pale

By famine, from a mother’s desolate wail

O’er her polluted child, from innocent blood

Poured on the earth, and brows anxious and pale

With the heart’s warfare, did I gather food

To feed my many thoughts—a tameless multitude!

I wandered through the wrecks of days departed

Far by the desolated shore, when even

O’er the still sea and jagged islets darted

The light of moonrise; in the northern Heaven,

Among the clouds near the horizon driven,

The mountains lay beneath one planet pale;

Around me, broken tombs and columns riven

Looked vast in twilight, and the sorrowing gale

Waked in those ruins gray its everlasting wail!

I knew not who had framed these wonders then,

Nor had I heard the story of their deeds;

But dwellings of a race of mightier men,

And monuments of less ungentle creeds

Tell their own tale to him who wisely heeds

The language which they speak; and now, to me

The moonlight making pale the blooming weeds,

The bright stars shining in the breathless sea,

Interpreted those scrolls of mortal mystery.

Such man has been, and such may yet become!

Ay, wiser, greater, gentler even than they

Who on the fragments of yon shattered dome

Have stamped the sign of power—I felt the sway

Of the vast stream of ages bear away

My floating thoughts—my heart beat loud and fast—

Even as a storm let loose beneath the ray

Of the still moon, my spirit onward passed

Beneath truth’s steady beams upon its tumult cast.

It shall be thus no more! too long, too long,

Sons of the glorious dead, have ye lain bound

In darkness and in ruin!—Hope is strong,

Justice and Truth their winged child have found—

Awake! arise! until the mighty sound

Of your career shall scatter in its gust

The thrones of the oppressor, and the ground

Hide the last altar’s unregarded dust,

Whose Idol has so long betrayed your impious trust!

It must be so—I will arise and waken

The multitude, and like a sulphurous hill,

Which on a sudden from its snows has shaken

The swoon of ages, it shall burst and fill

The world with cleansing fire; it must, it will—

It may not be restrained!—and who shall stand

Amid the rocking earthquake steadfast still,

But Laon? on high Freedom’s desert land

A tower whose marble walls the leagued storms withstand!

One summer night, in commune with the hope

Thus deeply fed, amid those ruins gray

I watched, beneath the dark sky’s starry cope;

And ever from that hour upon me lay

The burden of this hope, and night or day,

In vision or in dream, clove to my breast:

Among mankind, or when gone far away

To the lone shores and mountains, ’twas a guest

Which followed where I fled, and watched when I did rest.

These hopes found words through which my spirit sought

To weave a bondage of such sympathy,

As might create some response to the thought

Which ruled me now—and as the vapours lie

Bright in the outspread morning’s radiancy,

So were these thoughts invested with the light

Of language: and all bosoms made reply

On which its lustre streamed, whene’er it might

Through darkness wide and deep those tranced spirits smite.

Yes, many an eye with dizzy tears was dim,

And oft I thought to clasp my own heart’s brother,

When I could feel the listener’s senses swim,

And hear his breath its own swift gaspings smother

Even as my words evoked them—and another,

And yet another, I did fondly deem,

Felt that we all were sons of one great mother;

And the cold truth such sad reverse did seem

As to awake in grief from some delightful dream.

Yes, oft beside the ruined labyrinth

Which skirts the hoary caves of the green deep,

Did Laon and his friend, on one gray plinth,

Round whose worn base the wild waves hiss and leap,

Resting at eve, a lofty converse keep:

And that this friend was false, may now be said

Calmly—that he like other men could weep

Tears which are lies, and could betray and spread

Snares for that guileless heart which for his own had bled.

Then, had no great aim recompensed my sorrow,

I must have sought dark respite from its stress

In dreamless rest, in sleep that sees no morrow—

For to tread life’s dismaying wilderness

Without one smile to cheer, one voice to bless,

Amid the snares and scoffs of human kind,

Is hard—but I betrayed it not, nor less

With love that scorned return sought to unbind

The interwoven clouds which make its wisdom blind.

With deathless minds which leave where they have passed

A path of light, my soul communion knew;

Till from that glorious intercourse, at last,

As from a mine of magic store, I drew

Words which were weapons;—round my heart there grew

The adamantine armour of their power;

And from my fancy wings of golden hue

Sprang forth—yet not alone from wisdom’s tower,

A minister of truth, these plumes young Laon bore.

An orphan with my parents lived, whose eyes

Were lodestars of delight, which drew me home

When I might wander forth; nor did I prize

Aught human thing beneath Heaven’s mighty dome

Beyond this child; so when sad hours were come,

And baffled hope like ice still clung to me,

Since kin were cold, and friends had now become

Heartless and false, I turned from all, to be,

Cythna, the only source of tears and smiles to thee.

What wert thou then? A child most infantine,

Yet wandering far beyond that innocent age

In all but its sweet looks and mien divine;

Even then, methought, with the world’s tyrant rage

A patient warfare thy young heart did wage,

When those soft eyes of scarcely conscious thought

Some tale, or thine own fancies, would engage

To overflow with tears, or converse fraught

With passion, o’er their depths its fleeting light had wrought.

She moved upon this earth a shape of brightness,

A power, that from its objects scarcely drew

One impulse of her being—in her lightness

Most like some radiant cloud of morning dew,

Which wanders through the waste air’s pathless blue,

To nourish some far desert; she did seem

Beside me, gathering beauty as she grew,

Like the bright shade of some immortal dream

Which walks, when tempest sleeps, the wave of life’s dark stream.

As mine own shadow was this child to me,

A second self, far dearer and more fair;

Which clothed in undissolving radiancy

All those steep paths which languor and despair

Of human things, had made so dark and bare,

But which I trod alone—nor, till bereft

Of friends, and overcome by lonely care,

Knew I what solace for that loss was left,

Though by a bitter wound my trusting heart was cleft.

Once she was dear, now she was all I had

To love in human life—this playmate sweet,

This child of twelve years old—so she was made

My sole associate, and her willing feet

Wandered with mine where earth and ocean meet,

Beyond the aereal mountains whose vast cells

The unreposing billows ever beat,

Through forests wild and old, and lawny dells

Where boughs of incense droop over the emerald wells.

And warm and light I felt her clasping hand

When twined in mine; she followed where I went,

Through the lone paths of our immortal land.

It had no waste but some memorial lent

Which strung me to my toil—some monument

Vital with mind; then Cythna by my side,

Until the bright and beaming day were spent,

Would rest, with looks entreating to abide,

Too earnest and too sweet ever to be denied.

And soon I could not have refused her—thus

For ever, day and night, we two were ne’er

Parted, but when brief sleep divided us:

And when the pauses of the lulling air

Of noon beside the sea had made a lair

For her soothed senses, in my arms she slept,

And I kept watch over her slumbers there,

While, as the shifting visions over her swept,

Amid her innocent rest by turns she smiled and wept.

And, in the murmur of her dreams was heard

Sometimes the name of Laon:—suddenly

She would arise, and, like the secret bird

Whom sunset wakens, fill the shore and sky

With her sweet accents, a wild melody!

Hymns which my soul had woven to Freedom, strong

The source of passion, whence they rose, to be;

Triumphant strains, which, like a spirit’s tongue,

To the enchanted waves that child of glory sung—

Her white arms lifted through the shadowy stream

Of her loose hair. Oh, excellently great

Seemed to me then my purpose, the vast theme

Of those impassioned songs, when Cythna sate

Amid the calm which rapture doth create

After its tumult, her heart vibrating,

Her spirit o’er the Ocean’s floating state

From her deep eyes far wandering, on the wing

Of visions that were mine, beyond its utmost spring!

For, before Cythna loved it, had my song

Peopled with thoughts the boundless universe,

A mighty congregation, which were strong

Where’er they trod the darkness to disperse

The cloud of that unutterable curse

Which clings upon mankind:—all things became

Slaves to my holy and heroic verse,

Earth, sea and sky, the planets, life and fame

And fate, or whate’er else binds the world’s wondrous frame.

And this beloved child thus felt the sway

Of my conceptions, gathering like a cloud

The very wind on which it rolls away:

Hers too were all my thoughts, ere yet, endowed

With music and with light, their fountains flowed

In poesy; and her still and earnest face,

Pallid with feelings which intensely glowed

Within, was turned on mine with speechless grace,

Watching the hopes which there her heart had learned to trace.

In me, communion with this purest being

Kindled intenser zeal, and made me wise

In knowledge, which, in hers mine own mind seeing,

Left in the human world few mysteries:

How without fear of evil or disguise

Was Cythna!—what a spirit strong and mild,

Which death, or pain or peril could despise,

Yet melt in tenderness! what genius wild

Yet mighty, was enclosed within one simple child!

New lore was this—old age with its gray hair,

And wrinkled legends of unworthy things,

And icy sneers, is nought: it cannot dare

To burst the chains which life for ever flings

On the entangled soul’s aspiring wings,

So is it cold and cruel, and is made

The careless slave of that dark power which brings

Evil, like blight, on man, who, still betrayed,

Laughs o’er the grave in which his living hopes are laid.

Nor are the strong and the severe to keep

The empire of the world: thus Cythna taught

Even in the visions of her eloquent sleep,

Unconscious of the power through which she wrought

The woof of such intelligible thought,

As from the tranquil strength which cradled lay

In her smile-peopled rest, my spirit sought

Why the deceiver and the slave has sway

O’er heralds so divine of truth’s arising day.

Within that fairest form, the female mind,

Untainted by the poison clouds which rest

On the dark world, a sacred home did find:

But else, from the wide earth’s maternal breast,

Victorious Evil, which had dispossessed

All native power, had those fair children torn,

And made them slaves to soothe his vile unrest,

And minister to lust its joys forlorn,

Till they had learned to breathe the atmosphere of scorn.

This misery was but coldly felt, till she

Became my only friend, who had endued

My purpose with a wider sympathy;

Thus, Cythna mourned with me the servitude

In which the half of humankind were mewed

Victims of lust and hate, the slaves of slaves,

She mourned that grace and power were thrown as food

To the hyena lust, who, among graves,

Over his loathed meal, laughing in agony, raves.

And I, still gazing on that glorious child,

Even as these thoughts flushed o’er her:—‘Cythna sweet,

Well with the world art thou unreconciled;

Never will peace and human nature meet

Till free and equal man and woman greet

Domestic peace; and ere this power can make

In human hearts its calm and holy seat,

This slavery must be broken’—as I spake,

From Cythna’s eyes a light of exultation brake.

She replied earnestly:—‘It shall be mine,

This task,—mine, Laon!—thou hast much to gain;

Nor wilt thou at poor Cythna’s pride repine,

If she should lead a happy female train

To meet thee over the rejoicing plain,

When myriads at thy call shall throng around

The Golden City.’—Then the child did strain

My arm upon her tremulous heart, and wound

Her own about my neck, till some reply she found.

I smiled, and spake not.—‘Wherefore dost thou smile

At what I say? Laon, I am not weak,

And, though my cheek might become pale the while,

With thee, if thou desirest, will I seek

Through their array of banded slaves to wreak

Ruin upon the tyrants. I had thought

It was more hard to turn my unpractised cheek

To scorn and shame, and this beloved spot

And thee, O dearest friend, to leave and murmur not.

‘Whence came I what I am? Thou, Laon, knowest

How a young child should thus undaunted be;

Methinks, it is a power which thou bestowest,

Through which I seek, by most resembling thee,

So to become most good and great and free;

Yet far beyond this Ocean’s utmost roar,

In towers and huts are many like to me,

Who, could they see thine eyes, or feel such lore

As I have learnt from them, like me would fear no more.

‘Think’st thou that I shall speak unskilfully,

And none will heed me? I remember now,

How once, a slave in tortures doomed to die,

Was saved, because in accents sweet and low

He sung a song his Judge loved long ago,

As he was led to death.—All shall relent

Who hear me—tears, as mine have flowed, shall flow,

Hearts beat as mine now beats, with such intent

As renovates the world; a will omnipotent!

‘Yes, I will tread Pride’s golden palaces,

Through Penury’s roofless huts and squalid cells

Will I descend, where’er in abjectness

Woman with some vile slave her tyrant dwells,

There with the music of thine own sweet spells

Will disenchant the captives, and will pour

For the despairing, from the crystal wells

Of thy deep spirit, reason’s mighty lore,

And power shall then abound, and hope arise once more.

‘Can man be free if woman be a slave?

Chain one who lives, and breathes this boundless air,

To the corruption of a closed grave!

Can they whose mates are beasts, condemned to bear

Scorn, heavier far than toil or anguish, dare

To trample their oppressors? in their home

Among their babes, thou knowest a curse would wear

The shape of woman—hoary Crime would come

Behind, and Fraud rebuild religion’s tottering dome.

‘I am a child:—I would not yet depart.

When I go forth alone, bearing the lamp

Aloft which thou hast kindled in my heart,

Millions of slaves from many a dungeon damp

Shall leap in joy, as the benumbing cramp

Of ages leaves their limbs—no ill may harm

Thy Cythna ever—truth its radiant stamp

Has fixed, as an invulnerable charm,

Upon her children’s brow, dark Falsehood to disarm.

‘Wait yet awhile for the appointed day—

Thou wilt depart, and I with tears shall stand

Watching thy dim sail skirt the ocean gray;

Amid the dwellers of this lonely land

I shall remain alone—and thy command

Shall then dissolve the world’s unquiet trance,

And, multitudinous as the desert sand

Borne on the storm, its millions shall advance,

Thronging round thee, the light of their deliverance.

‘Then, like the forests of some pathless mountain,

Which from remotest glens two warring winds

Involve in fire which not the loosened fountain

Of broadest floods might quench, shall all the kinds

Of evil, catch from our uniting minds

The spark which must consume them;—Cythna then

Will have cast off the impotence that binds

Her childhood now, and through the paths of men

Will pass, as the charmed bird that haunts the serpent’s den.

‘We part!—O Laon, I must dare nor tremble,

To meet those looks no more!—Oh, heavy stroke!

Sweet brother of my soul! can I dissemble

The agony of this thought?’—As thus she spoke

The gathered sobs her quivering accents broke,

And in my arms she hid her beating breast.

I remained still for tears—sudden she woke

As one awakes from sleep, and wildly pressed

My bosom, her whole frame impetuously possessed.

‘We part to meet again—but yon blue waste,

Yon desert wide and deep, holds no recess,

Within whose happy silence, thus embraced

We might survive all ills in one caress:

Nor doth the grave—I fear ’tis passionless—

Nor yon cold vacant Heaven:—we meet again

Within the minds of men, whose lips shall bless

Our memory, and whose hopes its light retain

When these dissevered bones are trodden in the plain.’

I could not speak, though she had ceased, for now

The fountains of her feeling, swift and deep,

Seemed to suspend the tumult of their flow;

So we arose, and by the starlight steep

Went homeward—neither did we speak nor weep,

But, pale, were calm with passion—thus subdued

Like evening shades that o’er the mountains creep,

We moved towards our home; where, in this mood,

Each from the other sought refuge in solitude.

What thoughts had sway o’er Cythna’s lonely slumber

That night, I know not; but my own did seem

As if they might ten thousand years outnumber

Of waking life, the visions of a dream

Which hid in one dim gulf the troubled stream

Of mind; a boundless chaos wild and vast,

Whose limits yet were never memory’s theme:

And I lay struggling as its whirlwinds passed,

Sometimes for rapture sick, sometimes for pain aghast.

Two hours, whose mighty circle did embrace

More time than might make gray the infant world,

Rolled thus, a weary and tumultuous space:

When the third came, like mist on breezes curled,

From my dim sleep a shadow was unfurled:

Methought, upon the threshold of a cave

I sate with Cythna; drooping briony, pearled

With dew from the wild streamlet’s shattered wave,

Hung, where we sate to taste the joys which Nature gave.

We lived a day as we were wont to live,

But Nature had a robe of glory on,

And the bright air o’er every shape did weave

Intenser hues, so that the herbless stone,

The leafless bough among the leaves alone,

Had being clearer than its own could be,

And Cythna’s pure and radiant self was shown,

In this strange vision, so divine to me,

That if I loved before, now love was agony.

Morn fled, noon came, evening, then night descended,

And we prolonged calm talk beneath the sphere

Of the calm moon—when suddenly was blended

With our repose a nameless sense of fear;

And from the cave behind I seemed to hear

Sounds gathering upwards!—accents incomplete,

And stifled shrieks,—and now, more near and near,

A tumult and a rush of thronging feet

The cavern’s secret depths beneath the earth did beat.

The scene was changed, and away, away, away!

Through the air and over the sea we sped,

And Cythna in my sheltering bosom lay,

And the winds bore me—through the darkness spread

Around, the gaping earth then vomited

Legions of foul and ghastly shapes, which hung

Upon my flight; and ever, as we fled,

They plucked at Cythna—soon to me then clung

A sense of actual things those monstrous dreams among.

And I lay struggling in the impotence

Of sleep, while outward life had burst its bound,

Though, still deluded, strove the tortured sense

To its dire wanderings to adapt the sound

Which in the light of morn was poured around

Our dwelling; breathless, pale and unaware

I rose, and all the cottage crowded found

With armed men, whose glittering swords were bare,

And whose degraded limbs the tyrant’s garb did wear.

And, ere with rapid lips and gathered brow

I could demand the cause—a feeble shriek—

It was a feeble shriek, faint, far and low,

Arrested me—my mien grew calm and meek,

And grasping a small knife, I went to seek

That voice among the crowd—’twas Cythna’s cry!

Beneath most calm resolve did agony wreak

Its whirlwind rage:—so I passed quietly

Till I beheld, where bound, that dearest child did lie.

I started to behold her, for delight

And exultation, and a joyance free,

Solemn, serene and lofty, filled the light

Of the calm smile with which she looked on me:

So that I feared some brainless ecstasy,

Wrought from that bitter woe, had wildered her—

‘Farewell! farewell!’ she said, as I drew nigh;

‘At first my peace was marred by this strange stir,

Now I am calm as truth—its chosen minister.

‘Look not so, Laon—say farewell in hope,

These bloody men are but the slaves who bear

Their mistress to her task—it was my scope

The slavery where they drag me now, to share,

And among captives willing chains to wear

Awhile—the rest thou knowest—return, dear friend!

Let our first triumph trample the despair

Which would ensnare us now, for in the end,

In victory or in death our hopes and fears must blend.’

These words had fallen on my unheeding ear,

Whilst I had watched the motions of the crew

With seeming-careless glance; not many were

Around her, for their comrades just withdrew

To guard some other victim—so I drew

My knife, and with one impulse, suddenly

All unaware three of their number slew,

And grasped a fourth by the throat, and with loud cry

My countrymen invoked to death or liberty!

What followed then, I know not—for a stroke

On my raised arm and naked head, came down,

Filling my eyes with blood.—When I awoke,

I felt that they had bound me in my swoon,

And up a rock which overhangs the town,

By the steep path were bearing me; below,

The plain was filled with slaughter,—overthrown

The vineyards and the harvests, and the glow

Of blazing roofs shone far o’er the white Ocean’s flow.

Upon that rock a mighty column stood,

Whose capital seemed sculptured in the sky,

Which to the wanderers o’er the solitude

Of distant seas, from ages long gone by,

Had made a landmark; o’er its height to fly

Scarcely the cloud, the vulture, or the blast,

Has power—and when the shades of evening lie

On Earth and Ocean, its carved summits cast

The sunken daylight far through the aerial waste.

They bore me to a cavern in the hill

Beneath that column, and unbound me there;

And one did strip me stark; and one did fill

A vessel from the putrid pool; one bare

A lighted torch, and four with friendless care

Guided my steps the cavern-paths along,

Then up a steep and dark and narrow stair

We wound, until the torch’s fiery tongue

Amid the gushing day beamless and pallid hung.

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!

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 was drowned.

The noon was calm and bright:—around that column

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

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.

It was so calm, that scarce the feathery weed

Sown by some eagle on the topmost stone

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

In that broad glare; yet sound to me none came,

But of the living blood that ran within my frame.

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—

Its shadow lay beyond—that sight again

Waked, with its presence, in my tranced 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,

And watched it with such thoughts as must remain untold.

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:

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 parched skin was split with piercing agonies.

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.—

That starry night, with its clear silence, sent

Tameless resolve which laughed at misery

Into my soul—linked remembrance lent

To that such power, to me such a severe content.

To breathe, to be, to hope, or to despair

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

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.

Two days thus passed—I neither raved nor died—

Thirst raged within me, like a scorpion’s nest

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

Fuel, not food. I chewed the bitter dust,

And bit my bloodless arm, and licked the brazen rust.

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

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,

A shoreless sea, a sky sunless and planetless!

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

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.

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

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.

Methought that grate was lifted, and the seven

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,

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.

A woman’s shape, now lank and cold and blue,

The dwelling of the many-coloured worm,

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

Within my teeth!—a whirlwind keen as frost

Then in its sinking gulfs my sickening spirit tossed.

Then seemed it that a tameless hurricane

Arose, and bore me in its dark career

Beyond the sun, beyond the stars that wane

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 sleep

His heavenly smiles dispersed, and I could wake and weep.

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

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.

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

My wretched frame; my scorched 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,

As, lifting me, it fell!—What next I heard,

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

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.

For now indeed, over the salt sea-billow

I sailed: yet dared not look upon the shape

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

Those dreadful thoughts the gentle grandsire bent,

And to my inmost soul his soothing looks he sent.

A soft and healing potion to my lips

At intervals he raised—now looked on high,

To mark if yet the starry giant dips

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,

Who in cells deep and lone have languished many a year.

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

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.

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

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.

The old man took the oars, and soon the bark

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,

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.

When the old man his boat had anchored,

He wound me in his arms with tender care,

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

Was tapestried, where me his soft hands placed

Upon a couch of grass and oak-leaves interlaced.

The moon was darting through the lattices

Its yellow light, warm as the beams of day—

So warm, that to admit the dewy breeze,

The old man opened them; the moonlight lay

Upon a lake whose waters wove their play

Even to the threshold of that lonely home:

Within was seen in the dim wavering ray

The antique sculptured roof, and many a tome

Whose lore had made that sage all that he had become.

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

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?

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,

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.

He knew his soothing words to weave with skill

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—

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.

Thus slowly from my brain the darkness rolled,

My thoughts their due array did re-assume

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

Of eve, to that friend’s heart I told my thought—

That heart which had grown old, but had corrupted not.

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,

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,

And all the ways of men among mankind he read.

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;

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;

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:

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.

He came to the lone column on the rock,

And with his sweet and mighty eloquence

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,

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.

‘Yes, from the records of my youthful state,

And from the lore of bards and sages old,

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,

They have been heard, and men aspire to more

Than they have ever gained or ever lost of yore.

‘In secret chambers parents read, and weep,

My writings to their babes, no longer blind;

And young men gather when their tyrants sleep,

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,

Like autumn’s myriad leaves in one swoln mountain-brook.

‘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

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.

‘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

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.

‘For I have been thy passive instrument’—

(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

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.

‘But I, alas! am both unknown and old,

And though the woof of wisdom I know well

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

And tempests, and his soul-subduing tongue

Were as a lance to quell the mailed crest of wrong.

‘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

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

I prithee spare me;”—did with ruth so take

‘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

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.

‘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;

The tyrants send their armed 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.

‘Thus she doth equal laws and justice teach

To woman, outraged and polluted long;

Gathering the sweetest fruit in human reach

For those fair hands now free, while armed wrong

Trembles before her look, though it be strong;

Thousands thus dwell beside her, virgins bright,

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,

‘And homeless orphans find a home near her,

And those poor victims of the proud, no less,

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

All evil, and her foes relenting turn,

And cast the vote of love in hope’s abandoned urn.

‘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

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

Their claim, and gathers strength around its trembling thrones.

‘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

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.

‘There 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,

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?

‘The tyrant’s guards resistance yet maintain:

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

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.

‘Over the land is felt a sudden pause,

As night and day those ruthless bands around,

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,

The conquerors pause, and oh! may freemen ne’er

Clasp the relentless knees of Dread, the murderer!

‘If blood be shed, ’tis but a change and choice

Of bonds,—from slavery to cowardice

A wretched fall!—Uplift thy charmed voice!

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,

And looked upon the depth of that reposing lake.

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

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.

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,

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.

What then was I? She slumbered with the dead.

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

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.

Strengthened in heart, yet sad, that aged man

I left, with interchange of looks and tears,

And lingering speech, and to the Camp began

My war. 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

The blosmy spring’s star-bright investiture,

A vision which aught sad from sadness might allure.

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.

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,

As if the light of youth were not withdrawn for ever.

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

With whatsoe’er it finds, or flowers or weeds!

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.

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;

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.

All slept but those in watchful arms who stood,

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

Beat underneath its shade, what secret fight

Evil and good, in woven passions mailed,

Waged through that silent throng—a war that never failed!

And now the Power of Good held victory.

So, through the labyrinth of many a tent,

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 armed youth—over his spear he bent

His downward face.—‘A friend!’ I cried aloud,

And quickly common hopes made freemen understood.

I sate beside him while the morning beam

Crept slowly over Heaven, and talked with him

Of those immortal hopes, a glorious theme!

Which led us forth, until the stars grew dim:

And all the while, methought, his voice did swim

As if it drowned in remembrance were

Of thoughts which make the moist eyes overbrim:

At last, when daylight ‘gan to fill the air,

He looked on me, and cried in wonder—‘Thou art here!’

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,

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.

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

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.

Like rabid snakes, that sting some gentle child

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.

In sudden panic those false murderers fled,

Like insect tribes before the northern gale:

But swifter still, our hosts encompassed

Their shattered ranks, and in a craggy vale,

Where even their fierce despair might nought avail,

Hemmed them around!—and then revenge and fear

Made the high virtue of the patriots fail:

One pointed on his foe the mortal spear—

I rushed before its point, and cried ‘Forbear, forbear!’

The spear transfixed my arm that was uplifted

In swift expostulation, and the blood

Gushed round its point: I smiled, and—‘Oh! thou gifted

With eloquence which shall not be withstood,

Flow thus!’ I cried in joy, ‘thou vital flood,

Until my heart be dry, ere thus the cause

For which thou wert aught worthy be subdued—

Ah, ye are pale,—ye weep,—your passions pause,—

’Tis well! ye feel the truth of love’s benignant laws.

‘Soldiers, our brethren and our friends are slain.

Ye murdered them, I think, as they did sleep!

Alas, what have ye done? the slightest pain

Which ye might suffer, there were eyes to weep,

But ye have quenched them—there were smiles to steep

Your hearts in balm, but they are lost in woe;

And those whom love did set his watch to keep

Around your tents, truth’s freedom to bestow,

Ye stabbed as they did sleep—but they forgive ye now.

‘Oh wherefore should ill ever flow from ill,

And pain still keener pain for ever breed?

We all are brethren—even the slaves who kill

For hire, are men; and to avenge misdeed

On the misdoer, doth but Misery feed

With her own broken heart! O Earth, O Heaven!

And thou, dread Nature, which to every deed

And all that lives, or is, to be hath given,

Even as to thee have these done ill, and are forgiven!

‘Join then your hands and hearts, and let the past

Be as a grave which gives not up its dead

To evil thoughts.’—A film then overcast

My sense with dimness, for the wound, which bled

Freshly, swift shadows o’er mine eyes had shed.

When I awoke, I lay mid friends and foes,

And earnest countenances on me shed

The light of questioning looks, whilst one did close

My wound with balmiest herbs, and soothed me to repose;

And one whose spear had pierced me, leaned beside

With quivering lips and humid eyes;—and all

Seemed like some brothers on a journey wide

Gone forth, whom now strange meeting did befall

In a strange land, round one whom they might call

Their friend, their chief, their father, for assay

Of peril, which had saved them from the thrall

Of death, now suffering. Thus the vast array

Of those fraternal bands were reconciled that day.

Lifting the thunder of their acclamation,

Towards the City then the multitude,

And I among them, went in joy—a nation

Made free by love;—a mighty brotherhood

Linked by a jealous interchange of good;

A glorious pageant, more magnificent

Than kingly slaves arrayed in gold and blood,

When they return from carnage, and are sent

In triumph bright beneath the populous battlement.

Afar, the city-walls were thronged on high,

And myriads on each giddy turret clung,

And to each spire far lessening in the sky

Bright pennons on the idle winds were hung;

As we approached, a shout of joyance sprung

At once from all the crowd, as if the vast

And peopled Earth its boundless skies among

The sudden clamour of delight had cast,

When from before its face some general wreck had passed.

Our armies through the City’s hundred gates

Were poured, like brooks which to the rocky lair

Of some deep lake, whose silence them awaits,

Throng from the mountains when the storms are there

And, as we passed through the calm sunny air

A thousand flower-inwoven crowns were shed,

The token flowers of truth and freedom fair,

And fairest hands bound them on many a head,

Those angels of love’s heaven that over all was spread.

I trod as one tranced in some rapturous vision:

Those bloody bands so lately reconciled,

Were, ever as they went, by the contrition

Of anger turned to love, from ill beguiled,

And every one on them more gently smiled,

Because they had done evil:—the sweet awe

Of such mild looks made their own hearts grow mild,

And did with soft attraction ever draw

Their spirits to the love of freedom’s equal law.

And they, and all, in one loud symphony

My name with Liberty commingling, lifted,

‘The friend and the preserver of the free!

The parent of this joy!’ and fair eyes gifted

With feelings, caught from one who had uplifted

The light of a great spirit, round me shone;

And all the shapes of this grand scenery shifted

Like restless clouds before the steadfast sun,—

Where was that Maid? I asked, but it was known of none.

Laone was the name her love had chosen,

For she was nameless, and her birth none knew:

Where was Laone now?—The words were frozen

Within my lips with fear; but to subdue

Such dreadful hope, to my great task was due,

And when at length one brought reply, that she

To-morrow would appear, I then withdrew

To judge what need for that great throng might be,

For now the stars came thick over the twilight sea.

Yet need was none for rest or food to care,

Even though that multitude was passing great,

Since each one for the other did prepare

All kindly succour—Therefore to the gate

Of the Imperial House, now desolate,

I passed, and there was found aghast, alone,

The fallen Tyrant!—Silently he sate

Upon the footstool of his golden throne,

Which, starred with sunny gems, in its own lustre shone.

Alone, but for one child, who led before him

A graceful dance: the only living thing

Of all the crowd, which thither to adore him

Flocked yesterday, who solace sought to bring

In his abandonment!—She knew the King

Had praised her dance of yore, and now she wove

Its circles, aye weeping and murmuring

Mid her sad task of unregarded love,

That to no smiles it might his speechless sadness move.

She fled to him, and wildly clasped his feet

When human steps were heard:—he moved nor spoke,

Nor changed his hue, nor raised his looks to meet

The gaze of strangers—our loud entrance woke

The echoes of the hall, which circling broke

The calm of its recesses,—like a tomb

Its sculptured walls vacantly to the stroke

Of footfalls answered, and the twilight’s gloom

Lay like a charnel’s mist within the radiant dome.

The little child stood up when we came nigh;

Her lips and cheeks seemed very pale and wan,

But on her forehead, and within her eye

Lay beauty, which makes hearts that feed thereon

Sick with excess of sweetness; on the throne

She leaned;—the King, with gathered brow, and lips

Wreathed by long scorn, did inly sneer and frown

With hue like that when some great painter dips

His pencil in the gloom of earthquake and eclipse.

She stood beside him like a rainbow braided

Within some storm, when scarce its shadows vast

From the blue paths of the swift sun have faded;

A sweet and solemn smile, like Cythna’s, cast

One moment’s light, which made my heart beat fast,

O’er that child’s parted lips—a gleam of bliss,

A shade of vanished days,—as the tears passed

Which wrapped it, even as with a father’s kiss

I pressed those softest eyes in trembling tenderness.

The sceptred wretch then from that solitude

I drew, and, of his change compassionate,

With words of sadness soothed his rugged mood.

But he, while pride and fear held deep debate,

With sullen guile of ill-dissembled hate

Glared on me as a toothless snake might glare:

Pity, not scorn I felt, though desolate

The desolator now, and unaware

The curses which he mocked had caught him by the hair.

I led him forth from that which now might seem

A gorgeous grave: through portals sculptured deep

With imagery beautiful as dream

We went, and left the shades which tend on sleep

Over its unregarded gold to keep

Their silent watch.—The child trod faintingly,

And as she went, the tears which she did weep

Glanced in the starlight; wildered seemed she,

And, when I spake, for sobs she could not answer me.

At last the tyrant cried, ‘She hungers, slave!

Stab her, or give her bread!’—It was a tone

Such as sick fancies in a new-made grave

Might hear. I trembled, for the truth was known;

He with this child had thus been left alone,

And neither had gone forth for food,—but he

In mingled pride and awe cowered near his throne,

And she a nursling of captivity

Knew nought beyond those walls, nor what such change might be.

And he was troubled at a charm withdrawn

Thus suddenly; that sceptres ruled no more—

That even from gold the dreadful strength was gone,

Which once made all things subject to its power—

Such wonder seized him, as if hour by hour

The past had come again; and the swift fall

Of one so great and terrible of yore,

To desolateness, in the hearts of all

Like wonder stirred, who saw such awful change befall.

A mighty crowd, such as the wide land pours

Once in a thousand years, now gathered round

The fallen tyrant;—like the rush of showers

Of hail in spring, pattering along the ground,

Their many footsteps fell, else came no sound

From the wide multitude: that lonely man

Then knew the burden of his change, and found,

Concealing in the dust his visage wan,

Refuge from the keen looks which through his bosom ran.

And he was faint withal: I sate beside him

Upon the earth, and took that child so fair

From his weak arms, that ill might none betide him

Or her;—when food was brought to them, her share

To his averted lips the child did bear,

But, when she saw he had enough, she ate

And wept the while;—the lonely man’s despair

Hunger then overcame, and of his state

Forgetful, on the dust as in a trance he sate.

Slowly the silence of the multitudes

Passed, as when far is heard in some lone dell

The gathering of a wind among the woods—

‘And he is fallen!’ they cry, ‘he who did dwell

Like famine or the plague, or aught more fell

Among our homes, is fallen! the murderer

Who slaked his thirsting soul as from a well

Of blood and tears with ruin! he is here!

Sunk in a gulf of scorn from which none may him rear!’

Then was heard—‘He who judged let him be brought

To judgement! blood for blood cries from the soil

On which his crimes have deep pollution wrought!

Shall Othman only unavenged despoil?

Shall they who by the stress of grinding toil

Wrest from the unwilling earth his luxuries,

Perish for crime, while his foul blood may boil,

Or creep within his veins at will?—Arise!

And to high justice make her chosen sacrifice!’

‘What do ye seek? what fear ye,’ then I cried,

Suddenly starting forth, ‘that ye should shed

The blood of Othman?—if your hearts are tried

In the true love of freedom, cease to dread

This one poor lonely man—beneath Heaven spread

In purest light above us all, through earth—

Maternal earth, who doth her sweet smiles shed

For all, let him go free; until the worth

Of human nature win from these a second birth.

‘What call ye “justice”? Is there one who ne’er

In secret thought has wished another’s ill?—

Are ye all pure? Let those stand forth who hear

And tremble not. Shall they insult and kill,

If such they be? their mild eyes can they fill

With the false anger of the hypocrite?

Alas, such were not pure!—the chastened will

Of virtue sees that justice is the light

Of love, and not revenge, and terror and despite.’

The murmur of the people, slowly dying,

Paused as I spake, then those who near me were,

Cast gentle looks where the lone man was lying

Shrouding his head, which now that infant fair

Clasped on her lap in silence;—through the air

Sobs were then heard, and many kissed my feet

In pity’s madness, and to the despair

Of him whom late they cursed, a solace sweet

His very victims brought—soft looks and speeches meet.

Then to a home for his repose assigned,

Accompanied by the still throng, he went

In silence, where, to soothe his rankling mind,

Some likeness of his ancient state was lent;

And if his heart could have been innocent

As those who pardoned him, he might have ended

His days in peace; but his straight lips were bent,

Men said, into a smile which guile portended,

A sight with which that child like hope with fear was blended.

’Twas midnight now, the eve of that great day

Whereon the many nations at whose call

The chains of earth like mist melted away,

Decreed to hold a sacred Festival,

A rite to attest the equality of all

Who live. So to their homes, to dream or wake

All went. The sleepless silence did recall

Laone to my thoughts, with hopes that make

The flood recede from which their thirst they seek to slake.

The dawn flowed forth, and from its purple fountains

I drank those hopes which make the spirit quail,

As to the plain between the misty mountains

And the great City, with a countenance pale,

I went:—it was a sight which might avail

To make men weep exulting tears, for whom

Now first from human power the reverend veil

Was torn, to see Earth from her general womb

Pour forth her swarming sons to a fraternal doom:

To see, far glancing in the misty morning,

The signs of that innumerable host;

To hear one sound of many made, the warning

Of Earth to Heaven from its free children tossed,

While the eternal hills, and the sea lost

In wavering light, and, starring the blue sky

The city’s myriad spires of gold, almost

With human joy made mute society—

Its witnesses with men who must hereafter be.

To see, like some vast island from the Ocean,

The Altar of the Federation rear

Its pile i’ the midst; a work, which the devotion

Of millions in one night created there,

Sudden as when the moonrise makes appear

Strange clouds in the east; a marble pyramid

Distinct with steps: that mighty shape did wear

The light of genius; its still shadow hid

Far ships: to know its height the morning mists forbid!

To hear the restless multitudes for ever

Around the base of that great Altar flow,

As on some mountain-islet burst and shiver

Atlantic waves; and solemnly and slow

As the wind bore that tumult to and fro,

To feel the dreamlike music, which did swim

Like beams through floating clouds on waves below

Falling in pauses, from that Altar dim,

As silver-sounding tongues breathed an aerial hymn.

To hear, to see, to live, was on that morn

Lethean joy! so that all those assembled

Cast off their memories of the past outworn;

Two only bosoms with their own life trembled,

And mine was one,—and we had both dissembled;

So with a beating heart I went, and one,

Who having much, covets yet more, resembled;

A lost and dear possession, which not won,

He walks in lonely gloom beneath the noonday sun.

To the great Pyramid I came: its stair

With female choirs was thronged: the loveliest

Among the free, grouped with its sculptures rare;

As I approached, the morning’s golden mist,

Which now the wonder-stricken breezes kissed

With their cold lips, fled, and the summit shone

Like Athos seen from Samothracia, dressed

In earliest light, by vintagers, and one

Sate there, a female Shape upon an ivory throne:

A Form most like the imagined habitant

Of silver exhalations sprung from dawn,

By winds which feed on sunrise woven, to enchant

The faiths of men: all mortal eyes were drawn,

As famished mariners through strange seas gone

Gaze on a burning watch-tower, by the light

Of those divinest lineaments—alone

With thoughts which none could share, from that fair sight

I turned in sickness, for a veil shrouded her countenance bright.

And neither did I hear the acclamations,

Which from brief silence bursting, filled the air

With her strange name and mine, from all the nations

Which we, they said, in strength had gathered there

From the sleep of bondage; nor the vision fair

Of that bright pageantry beheld,—but blind

And silent, as a breathing corpse did fare,

Leaning upon my friend, till like a wind

To fevered cheeks, a voice flowed o’er my troubled mind.

Like music of some minstrel heavenly gifted,

To one whom fiends enthral, this voice to me;

Scarce did I wish her veil to be uplifted,

I was so calm and joyous.—I could see

The platform where we stood, the statues three

Which kept their marble watch on that high shrine,

The multitudes, the mountains, and the sea;

As when eclipse hath passed, things sudden shine

To men’s astonished eyes most clear and crystalline.

At first Laone spoke most tremulously:

But soon her voice the calmness which it shed

Gathered, and—‘Thou art whom I sought to see,

And thou art our first votary here,’ she said:

‘I had a dear friend once, but he is dead!—

And of all those on the wide earth who breathe,

Thou dost resemble him alone—I spread

This veil between us two that thou beneath

Shouldst image one who may have been long lost in death.

‘For this wilt thou not henceforth pardon me?

Yes, but those joys which silence well requite

Forbid reply;—why men have chosen me

To be the Priestess of this holiest rite

I scarcely know, but that the floods of light

Which flow over the world, have borne me hither

To meet thee, long most dear; and now unite

Thine hand with mine, and may all comfort wither

From both the hearts whose pulse in joy now beat together,

‘If our own will as others’ law we bind,

If the foul worship trampled here we fear;

If as ourselves we cease to love our kind!’—

She paused, and pointed upwards—sculptured there

Three shapes around her ivory throne appear;

One was a Giant, like a child asleep

On a loose rock, whose grasp crushed, as it were

In dream, sceptres and crowns; and one did keep

Its watchful eyes in doubt whether to smile or weep;

A Woman sitting on the sculptured disk

Of the broad earth, and feeding from one breast

A human babe and a young basilisk;

Her looks were sweet as Heaven’s when loveliest

In Autumn eves. The third Image was dressed

In white wings swift as clouds in winter skies;

Beneath his feet, ‘mongst ghastliest forms, repressed

Lay Faith, an obscene worm, who sought to rise,

While calmly on the Sun he turned his diamond eyes.

Beside that Image then I sate, while she

Stood, mid the throngs which ever ebbed and flowed,

Like light amid the shadows of the sea

Cast from one cloudless star, and on the crowd

That touch which none who feels forgets, bestowed;

And whilst the sun returned the steadfast gaze

Of the great Image, as o’er Heaven it glode,

That rite had place; it ceased when sunset’s blaze

Burned o’er the isles. All stood in joy and deep amaze—

—When in the silence of all spirits there

Laone’s voice was felt, and through the air

Her thrilling gestures spoke, most eloquently fair:—

‘Calm art thou as yon sunset! swift and strong

As new-fledged Eagles, beautiful and young,

That float among the blinding beams of morning;

And underneath thy feet writhe Faith, and Folly,

Custom, and Hell, and mortal Melancholy—

Hark! the Earth starts to hear the mighty warning

Of thy voice sublime and holy;

Its free spirits here assembled

See thee, feel thee, know thee now,—

To thy voice their hearts have trembled

Like ten thousand clouds which flow

With one wide wind as it flies!—

Wisdom! thy irresistible children rise

To hail thee, and the elements they chain

And their own will, to swell the glory of thy train.

‘O Spirit vast and deep as Night and Heaven!

Mother and soul of all to which is given

The light of life, the loveliness of being,

Lo! thou dost re-ascend the human heart,

Thy throne of power, almighty as thou wert

In dreams of Poets old grown pale by seeing

The shade of thee;—now, millions start

To feel thy lightnings through them burning:

Nature, or God, or Love, or Pleasure,

Or Sympathy the sad tears turning

To mutual smiles, a drainless treasure,

Descends amidst us;—Scorn and Hate,

Revenge and Selfishness are desolate—

A hundred nations swear that there shall be

Pity and Peace and Love, among the good and free!

‘Eldest of things, divine Equality!

Wisdom and Love are but the slaves of thee,

The Angels of thy sway, who pour around thee

Treasures from all the cells of human thought,

And from the Stars, and from the Ocean brought,

And the last living heart whose beatings bound thee:

The powerful and the wise had sought

Thy coming, thou in light descending

O’er the wide land which is thine own

Like the Spring whose breath is blending

All blasts of fragrance into one,

Comest upon the paths of men!—

Earth bares her general bosom to thy ken,

And all her children here in glory meet

To feed upon thy smiles, and clasp thy sacred feet.

‘My brethren, we are free! the plains and mountains,

The gray sea-shore, the forests and the fountains,

Are haunts of happiest dwellers;—man and woman,

Their common bondage burst, may freely borrow

From lawless love a solace for their sorrow;

For oft we still must weep, since we are human.

A stormy night’s serenest morrow,

Whose showers are pity’s gentle tears,

Whose clouds are smiles of those that die

Like infants without hopes or fears,

And whose beams are joys that lie

In blended hearts, now holds dominion;

The dawn of mind, which upwards on a pinion

Borne, swift as sunrise, far illumines space,

And clasps this barren world in its own bright embrace!

‘My brethren, we are free! The fruits are glowing

Beneath the stars, and the night-winds are flowing

O’er the ripe corn, the birds and beasts are dreaming—

Never again may blood of bird or beast

Stain with its venomous stream a human feast,

To the pure skies in accusation steaming;

Avenging poisons shall have ceased

To feed disease and fear and madness,

The dwellers of the earth and air

Shall throng around our steps in gladness,

Seeking their food or refuge there.

Our toil from thought all glorious forms shall cull,

To make this Earth, our home, more beautiful,

And Science, and her sister Poesy,

Shall clothe in light the fields and cities of the free!

‘Victory, Victory to the prostrate nations!

Bear witness Night, and ye mute Constellations

Who gaze on us from your crystalline cars!

Thoughts have gone forth whose powers can sleep no more!

Victory! Victory! Earth’s remotest shore,

Regions which groan beneath the Antarctic stars,

The green lands cradled in the roar

Of western waves, and wildernesses

Peopled and vast, which skirt the oceans

Where morning dyes her golden tresses,

Shall soon partake our high emotions:

Kings shall turn pale! Almighty Fear,

The Fiend-God, when our charmed name he hear,

Shall fade like shadow from his thousand fanes,

While Truth with Joy enthroned o’er his lost empire reigns!’

Ere she had ceased, the mists of night entwining

Their dim woof, floated o’er the infinite throng;

She, like a spirit through the darkness shining,

In tones whose sweetness silence did prolong,

As if to lingering winds they did belong,

Poured forth her inmost soul: a passionate speech

With wild and thrilling pauses woven among,

Which whoso heard was mute, for it could teach

To rapture like her own all listening hearts to reach.

Her voice was as a mountain stream which sweeps

The withered leaves of Autumn to the lake,

And in some deep and narrow bay then sleeps

In the shadow of the shores; as dead leaves wake,

Under the wave, in flowers and herbs which make

Those green depths beautiful when skies are blue,

The multitude so moveless did partake

Such living change, and kindling murmurs flew

As o’er that speechless calm delight and wonder grew.

Over the plain the throngs were scattered then

In groups around the fires, which from the sea

Even to the gorge of the first mountain-glen

Blazed wide and far: the banquet of the free

Was spread beneath many a dark cypress-tree,

Beneath whose spires, which swayed in the red flame,

Reclining, as they ate, of Liberty,

And Hope, and Justice, and Laone’s name,

Earth’s children did a woof of happy converse frame.

Their feast was such as Earth, the general mother,

Pours from her fairest bosom, when she smiles

In the embrace of Autumn;—to each other

As when some parent fondly reconciles

Her warring children, she their wrath beguiles

With her own sustenance, they relenting weep:

Such was this Festival, which from their isles

And continents, and winds, and oceans deep,

All shapes might throng to share, that fly, or walk or creep,—

Might share in peace and innocence, for gore

Or poison none this festal did pollute,

But, piled on high, an overflowing store

Of pomegranates and citrons, fairest fruit,

Melons, and dates, and figs, and many a root

Sweet and sustaining, and bright grapes ere yet

Accursed fire their mild juice could transmute

Into a mortal bane, and brown corn set

In baskets; with pure streams their thirsting lips they wet.

Laone had descended from the shrine,

And every deepest look and holiest mind

Fed on her form, though now those tones divine

Were silent as she passed; she did unwind

Her veil, as with the crowds of her own kind

She mixed; some impulse made my heart refrain

From seeking her that night, so I reclined

Amidst a group, where on the utmost plain

A festal watchfire burned beside the dusky main.

And joyous was our feast; pathetic talk,

And wit, and harmony of choral strains,

While far Orion o’er the waves did walk

That flow among the isles, held us in chains

Of sweet captivity which none disdains

Who feels; but when his zone grew dim in mist

Which clothes the Ocean’s bosom, o’er the plains

The multitudes went homeward, to their rest,

Which that delightful day with its own shadow blessed.

Beside the dimness of the glimmering sea,

Weaving swift language from impassioned themes,

With that dear friend I lingered, who to me

So late had been restored, beneath the gleams

Of the silver stars; and ever in soft dreams

Of future love and peace sweet converse lapped

Our willing fancies, till the pallid beams

Of the last watchfire fell, and darkness wrapped

The waves, and each bright chain of floating fire was snapped;

And till we came even to the City’s wall

And the great gate; then, none knew whence or why,

Disquiet on the multitudes did fall:

And first, one pale and breathless passed us by,

And stared and spoke not;—then with piercing cry

A troop of wild-eyed women, by the shrieks

Of their own terror driven,—tumultuously

Hither and thither hurrying with pale cheeks,

Each one from fear unknown a sudden refuge seeks—

Then, rallying cries of treason and of danger

Resounded: and—‘They come! to arms! to arms!

The Tyrant is amongst us, and the stranger

Comes to enslave us in his name! to arms!’

In vain: for Panic, the pale fiend who charms

Strength to forswear her right, those millions swept

Like waves before the tempest—these alarms

Came to me, as to know their cause I lept

On the gate’s turret, and in rage and grief and scorn I wept!

For to the North I saw the town on fire,

And its red light made morning pallid now,

Which burst over wide Asia;—louder, higher,

The yells of victory and the screams of woe

I heard approach, and saw the throng below

Stream through the gates like foam-wrought waterfalls

Fed from a thousand storms—the fearful glow

Of bombs flares overhead—at intervals

The red artillery’s bolt mangling among them falls.

And now the horsemen come—and all was done

Swifter than I have spoken—I beheld

Their red swords flash in the unrisen sun.

I rushed among the rout, to have repelled

That miserable flight—one moment quelled

By voice and looks and eloquent despair,

As if reproach from their own hearts withheld

Their steps, they stood; but soon came pouring there

New multitudes, and did those rallied bands o’erbear.

I strove, as, drifted on some cataract

By irresistible streams, some wretch might strive

Who hears its fatal roar:—the files compact

Whelmed me, and from the gate availed to drive

With quickening impulse, as each bolt did rive

Their ranks with bloodier chasm:—into the plain

Disgorged at length the dead and the alive

In one dread mass, were parted, and the stain

Of blood, from mortal steel fell o’er the fields like rain.

For now the despot’s bloodhounds with their prey

Unarmed and unaware, were gorging deep

Their gluttony of death; the loose array

Of horsemen o’er the wide fields murdering sweep,

And with loud laughter for their tyrant reap

A harvest sown with other hopes; the while,

Far overhead, ships from Propontis keep

A killing rain of fire:—when the waves smile

As sudden earthquakes light many a volcano-isle,

Thus sudden, unexpected feast was spread

For the carrion-fowls of Heaven.—I saw the sight—

I moved—I lived—as o’er the heaps of dead,

Whose stony eyes glared in the morning light

I trod;—to me there came no thought of flight,

But with loud cries of scorn, which whoso heard

That dreaded death, felt in his veins the might

Of virtuous shame return, the crowd I stirred,

And desperation’s hope in many hearts recurred.

A band of brothers gathering round me, made,

Although unarmed, a steadfast front, and still

Retreating, with stern looks beneath the shade

Of gathered eyebrows, did the victors fill

With doubt even in success; deliberate will

Inspired our growing troop; not overthrown

It gained the shelter of a grassy hill,

And ever still our comrades were hewn down,

And their defenceless limbs beneath our footsteps strown.

Immovably we stood—in joy I found,

Beside me then, firm as a giant pine

Among the mountain-vapours driven around,

The old man whom I loved—his eyes divine

With a mild look of courage answered mine,

And my young friend was near, and ardently

His hand grasped mine a moment—now the line

Of war extended, to our rallying cry

As myriads flocked in love and brotherhood to die.

For ever while the sun was climbing Heaven

The horseman hewed our unarmed myriads down

Safely, though when by thirst of carnage driven

Too near, those slaves were swiftly overthrown

By hundreds leaping on them:—flesh and bone

Soon made our ghastly ramparts; then the shaft

Of the artillery from the sea was thrown

More fast and fiery, and the conquerors laughed

In pride to hear the wind our screams of torment waft.

For on one side alone the hill gave shelter,

So vast that phalanx of unconquered men,

And there the living in the blood did welter

Of the dead and dying, which in that green glen,

Like stifled torrents, made a plashy fen

Under the feet—thus was the butchery waged

While the sun clomb Heaven’s eastern steep—but when

It ‘gan to sink—a fiercer combat raged,

For in more doubtful strife the armies were engaged.

Within a cave upon the hill were found

A bundle of rude pikes, the instrument

Of those who war but on their native ground

For natural rights: a shout of joyance sent

Even from our hearts the wide air pierced and rent,

As those few arms the bravest and the best

Seized, and each sixth, thus armed, did now present

A line which covered and sustained the rest,

A confident phalanx, which the foes on every side invest.

That onset turned the foes to flight almost;

But soon they saw their present strength, and knew

That coming night would to our resolute host

Bring victory; so dismounting, close they drew

Their glittering files, and then the combat grew

Unequal but most horrible;—and ever

Our myriads, whom the swift bolt overthrew,

Or the red sword, failed like a mountain river

Which rushes forth in foam to sink in sands for ever.

Sorrow and shame, to see with their own kind

Our human brethren mix, like beasts of blood,

To mutual ruin armed by one behind

Who sits and scoffs!—That friend so mild and good,

Who like its shadow near my youth had stood,

Was stabbed!—my old preserver’s hoary hair

With the flesh clinging to its roots, was strewed

Under my feet!—I lost all sense or care,

And like the rest I grew desperate and unaware.

The battle became ghastlier—in the midst

I paused, and saw, how ugly and how fell

O Hate! thou art, even when thy life thou shedd’st

For love. The ground in many a little dell

Was broken, up and down whose steeps befell

Alternate victory and defeat, and there

The combatants with rage most horrible

Strove, and their eyes started with cracking stare,

And impotent their tongues they lolled into the air,

Flaccid and foamy, like a mad dog’s hanging;

Want, and Moon-madness, and the pest’s swift Bane

When its shafts smite—while yet its bow is twanging—

Have each their mark and sign—some ghastly stain;

And this was thine, O War! of hate and pain

Thou loathed slave! I saw all shapes of death

And ministered to many, o’er the plain

While carnage in the sunbeam’s warmth did seethe,

Till twilight o’er the east wove her serenest wreath.

The few who yet survived, resolute and firm

Around me fought. At the decline of day

Winding above the mountain’s snowy term

New banners shone; they quivered in the ray

Of the sun’s unseen orb—ere night the array

Of fresh troops hemmed us in—of those brave bands

I soon survived alone—and now I lay

Vanquished and faint, the grasp of bloody hands

I felt, and saw on high the glare of falling brands,

When on my foes a sudden terror came,

And they fled, scattering—lo! with reinless speed

A black Tartarian horse of giant frame

Comes trampling over the dead, the living bleed

Beneath the hoofs of that tremendous steed,

On which, like to an Angel, robed in white,

Sate one waving a sword;—the hosts recede

And fly, as through their ranks with awful might,

Sweeps in the shadow of eve that Phantom swift and bright;

And its path made a solitude.—I rose

And marked its coming: it relaxed its course

As it approached me, and the wind that flows

Through night, bore accents to mine ear whose force

Might create smiles in death—the Tartar horse

Paused, and I saw the shape its might which swayed,

And heard her musical pants, like the sweet source

Of waters in the desert, as she said,

‘Mount with me, Laon, now’—I rapidly obeyed.

Then: ‘Away! away!’ she cried, and stretched her sword

As ’twere a scourge over the courser’s head,

And lightly shook the reins.—We spake no word,

But like the vapour of the tempest fled

Over the plain; her dark hair was dispread

Like the pine’s locks upon the lingering blast;

Over mine eyes its shadowy strings it spread

Fitfully, and the hills and streams fled fast,

As o’er their glimmering forms the steed’s broad shadow passed.

And his hoofs ground the rocks to fire and dust,

His strong sides made the torrents rise in spray,

And turbulence, as of a whirlwind’s gust

Surrounded us;—and still away! away!

Through the desert night we sped, while she alway

Gazed on a mountain which we neared, whose crest,

Crowned with a marble ruin, in the ray

Of the obscure stars gleamed;—its rugged breast

The steed strained up, and then his impulse did arrest.

A rocky hill which overhung the Ocean:—

From that lone ruin, when the steed that panted

Paused, might be heard the murmur of the motion

Of waters, as in spots for ever haunted

By the choicest winds of Heaven, which are enchanted

To music, by the wand of Solitude,

That wizard wild, and the far tents implanted

Upon the plain, be seen by those who stood

Thence marking the dark shore of Ocean’s curved flood.

One moment these were heard and seen—another

Passed; and the two who stood beneath that night,

Each only heard, or saw, or felt the other;

As from the lofty steed she did alight,

Cythna, (for, from the eyes whose deepest light

Of love and sadness made my lips feel pale

With influence strange of mournfullest delight,

My own sweet Cythna looked), with joy did quail,

And felt her strength in tears of human weakness fail.

And for a space in my embrace she rested,

Her head on my unquiet heart reposing,

While my faint arms her languid frame invested;

At length she looked on me, and half unclosing

Her tremulous lips, said, ‘Friend, thy bands were losing

The battle, as I stood before the King

In bonds.—I burst them then, and swiftly choosing

The time, did seize a Tartar’s sword, and spring

Upon his horse, and swift, as on the whirlwind’s wing,

‘Have thou and I been borne beyond pursuer,

And we are here.’—Then, turning to the steed,

She pressed the white moon on his front with pure

And rose-like lips, and many a fragrant weed

From the green ruin plucked, that he might feed;—

But I to a stone seat that Maiden led,

And, kissing her fair eyes, said, ‘Thou hast need

Of rest,’ and I heaped up the courser’s bed

In a green mossy nook, with mountain flowers dispread.

Within that ruin, where a shattered portal

Looks to the eastern stars, abandoned now

By man, to be the home of things immortal,

Memories, like awful ghosts which come and go,

And must inherit all he builds below,

When he is gone, a hall stood; o’er whose roof

Fair clinging weeds with ivy pale did grow,

Clasping its gray rents with a verdurous woof,

A hanging dome of leaves, a canopy moon-proof.

The autumnal winds, as if spell-bound, had made

A natural couch of leaves in that recess,

Which seasons none disturbed, but, in the shade

Of flowering parasites, did Spring love to dress

With their sweet blooms the wintry loneliness

Of those dead leaves, shedding their stars, whene’er

The wandering wind her nurslings might caress;

Whose intertwining fingers ever there

Made music wild and soft that filled the listening air.

We know not where we go, or what sweet dream

May pilot us through caverns strange and fair

Of far and pathless passion, while the stream

Of life, our bark doth on its whirlpools bear,

Spreading swift wings as sails to the dim air;

Nor should we seek to know, so the devotion

Of love and gentle thoughts be heard still there

Louder and louder from the utmost Ocean

Of universal life, attuning its commotion.

To the pure all things are pure! Oblivion wrapped

Our spirits, and the fearful overthrow

Of public hope was from our being snapped,

Though linked years had bound it there; for now

A power, a thirst, a knowledge, which below

All thoughts, like light beyond the atmosphere,

Clothing its clouds with grace, doth ever flow,

Came on us, as we sate in silence there,

Beneath the golden stars of the clear azure air;—

In silence which doth follow talk that causes

The baffled heart to speak with sighs and tears,

When wildering passion swalloweth up the pauses

Of inexpressive speech:—the youthful years

Which we together passed, their hopes and fears,

The blood itself which ran within our frames,

That likeness of the features which endears

The thoughts expressed by them, our very names,

And all the winged hours which speechless memory claims,

Had found a voice—and ere that voice did pass,

The night grew damp and dim, and, through a rent

Of the ruin where we sate, from the morass

A wandering Meteor by some wild wind sent,

Hung high in the green dome, to which it lent

A faint and pallid lustre; while the song

Of blasts, in which its blue hair quivering bent,

Strewed strangest sounds the moving leaves among;

A wondrous light, the sound as of a spirit’s tongue.

The Meteor showed the leaves on which we sate,

And Cythna’s glowing arms, and the thick ties

Of her soft hair, which bent with gathered weight

My neck near hers; her dark and deepening eyes,

Which, as twin phantoms of one star that lies

O’er a dim well, move, though the star reposes,

Swam in our mute and liquid ecstasies,

Her marble brow, and eager lips, like roses,

With their own fragrance pale, which Spring but half uncloses.

The Meteor to its far morass returned:

The beating of our veins one interval

Made still; and then I felt the blood that burned

Within her frame, mingle with mine, and fall

Around my heart like fire; and over all

A mist was spread, the sickness of a deep

And speechless swoon of joy, as might befall

Two disunited spirits when they leap

In union from this earth’s obscure and fading sleep.

Was it one moment that confounded thus

All thought, all sense, all feeling, into one

Unutterable power, which shielded us

Even from our own cold looks, when we had gone

Into a wide and wild oblivion

Of tumult and of tenderness? or now

Had ages, such as make the moon and sun,

The seasons, and mankind their changes know,

Left fear and time unfelt by us alone below?

I know not. What are kisses whose fire clasps

The failing heart in languishment, or limb

Twined within limb? or the quick dying gasps

Of the life meeting, when the faint eyes swim

Through tears of a wide mist boundless and dim,

In one caress? What is the strong control

Which leads the heart that dizzy steep to climb,

Where far over the world those vapours roll

Which blend two restless frames in one reposing soul?

It is the shadow which doth float unseen,

But not unfelt, o’er blind mortality,

Whose divine darkness fled not from that green

And lone recess, where lapped in peace did lie

Our linked frames, till, from the changing sky

That night and still another day had fled;

And then I saw and felt. The moon was high,

And clouds, as of a coming storm, were spread

Under its orb,—loud winds were gathering overhead.

Cythna’s sweet lips seemed lurid in the moon,

Her fairest limbs with the night wind were chill,

And her dark tresses were all loosely strewn

O’er her pale bosom:—all within was still,

And the sweet peace of joy did almost fill

The depth of her unfathomable look;—

And we sate calmly, though that rocky hill,

The waves contending in its caverns strook,

For they foreknew the storm, and the gray ruin shook.

There we unheeding sate, in the communion

Of interchanged vows, which, with a rite

Of faith most sweet and sacred, stamped our union.—

Few were the living hearts which could unite

Like ours, or celebrate a bridal night

With such close sympathies, for they had sprung

From linked youth, and from the gentle might

Of earliest love, delayed and cherished long,

Which common hopes and fears made, like a tempest, strong.

And such is Nature’s law divine, that those

Who grow together cannot choose but love,

If faith or custom do not interpose,

Or common slavery mar what else might move

All gentlest thoughts; as in the sacred grove

Which shades the springs of Ethiopian Nile,

That living tree which, if the arrowy dove

Strike with her shadow, shrinks in fear awhile,

But its own kindred leaves clasps while the sunbeams smile;

And clings to them, when darkness may dissever

The close caresses of all duller plants

Which bloom on the wide earth—thus we for ever

Were linked, for love had nursed us in the haunts

Where knowledge, from its secret source enchants

Young hearts with the fresh music of its springing,

Ere yet its gathered flood feeds human wants,

As the great Nile feeds Egypt; ever flinging

Light on the woven boughs which o’er its waves are swinging.

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

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,

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

‘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!

‘What seek’st thou here? The moonlight comes in flashes,—

The dew is rising dankly from the dell—

’Twill 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.’—’’Tis 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!’

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.

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;

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.

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.

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.

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 inwoven 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

She told me what a loathsome agony

Is that when selfishness mocks love’s delight,

Foul as in dream’s 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.

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.

The King felt pale upon his noonday 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.

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 Ethiop 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.

‘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.

‘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.

‘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 aery dome is inaccessible,

Was pierced with one round cleft through which the sunbeams fell.

‘Below, the fountain’s brink was richly paven

With the deep’s wealth, coral, and pearl, and sand

Like spangling gold, and purple shells engraven

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.

‘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 gaoler 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.

‘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.

‘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.

‘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.

‘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, beloved!—’twas a dream divine;

Even to remember how it fled, how swift,

How utterly, might make the heart repine,—

Though ’twas a dream.’—Then Cythna did uplift

Her looks on mine, as if some doubt she sought to shift:

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.

‘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.

‘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,—

Both infants, weaving wings for time’s perpetual way.

‘Ere night, methought, her waning eyes were grown

Weary with joy, and tired with our delight,

We, on the earth, like sister twins lay down

On one fair mother’s bosom:—from that night

She fled,—like those illusions clear and bright,

Which dwell in lakes, when the red moon on high

Pause ere it wakens tempest;—and her flight,

Though ’twas the death of brainless fantasy,

Yet smote my lonesome heart more than all misery.

‘It seemed that in the dreary night the diver

Who brought me thither, came again, and bore

My child away. I saw the waters quiver,

When he so swiftly sunk, as once before:

Then morning came—it shone even as of yore,

But I was changed—the very life was gone

Out of my heart—I wasted more and more,

Day after day, and sitting there alone,

Vexed the inconstant waves with my perpetual moan.

‘I was no longer mad, and yet methought

My breasts were swoln and changed:—in every vein

The blood stood still one moment, while that thought

Was passing—with a gush of sickening pain

It ebbed even to its withered springs again:

When my wan eyes in stern resolve I turned

From that most strange delusion, which would fain

Have waked the dream for which my spirit yearned

With more than human love,—then left it unreturned.

‘So now my reason was restored to me

I struggled with that dream, which, like a beast

Most fierce and beauteous, in my memory

Had made its lair, and on my heart did feast;

But all that cave and all its shapes, possessed

By thoughts which could not fade, renewed each one

Some smile, some look, some gesture which had blessed

Me heretofore: I, sitting there alone,

Vexed the inconstant waves with my perpetual moan.

‘Time passed, I know not whether months or years;

For day, nor night, nor change of seasons made

Its note, but thoughts and unavailing tears:

And I became at last even as a shade,

A smoke, a cloud on which the winds have preyed,

Till it be thin as air; until, one even,

A Nautilus upon the fountain played,

Spreading his azure sail where breath of Heaven

Descended not, among the waves and whirlpools driven.

‘And, when the Eagle came, that lovely thing,

Oaring with rosy feet its silver boat,

Fled near me as for shelter; on slow wing,

The Eagle, hovering o’er his prey did float;

But when he saw that I with fear did note

His purpose, proffering my own food to him,

The eager plumes subsided on his throat—

He came where that bright child of sea did swim,

And o’er it cast in peace his shadow broad and dim.

‘This wakened me, it gave me human strength;

And hope, I know not whence or wherefore, rose,

But I resumed my ancient powers at length;

My spirit felt again like one of those

Like thine, whose fate it is to make the woes

Of humankind their prey—what was this cave?

Its deep foundation no firm purpose knows

Immutable, resistless, strong to save,

Like mind while yet it mocks the all-devouring grave.

‘And where was Laon? might my heart be dead,

While that far dearer heart could move and be?

Or whilst over the earth the pall was spread,

Which I had sworn to rend? I might be free,

Could I but win that friendly bird to me,

To bring me ropes; and long in vain I sought

By intercourse of mutual imagery

Of objects, if such aid he could be taught;

But fruit, and flowers, and boughs, yet never ropes he brought.

‘We live in our own world, and mine was made

From glorious fantasies of hope departed:

Aye we are darkened with their floating shade,

Or cast a lustre on them—time imparted

Such power to me—I became fearless-hearted,

My eye and voice grew firm, calm was my mind,

And piercing, like the morn, now it has darted

Its lustre on all hidden things, behind

Yon dim and fading clouds which load the weary wind.

‘My mind became the book through which I grew

Wise in all human wisdom, and its cave,

Which like a mine I rifled through and through,

To me the keeping of its secrets gave—

One mind, the type of all, the moveless wave

Whose calm reflects all moving things that are,

Necessity, and love, and life, the grave,

And sympathy, fountains of hope and fear,

Justice, and truth, and time, and the world’s natural sphere.

‘And on the sand would I make signs to range

These woofs, as they were woven, of my thought;

Clear, elemental shapes, whose smallest change

A subtler language within language wrought:

The key of truths which once were dimly taught

In old Crotona;—and sweet melodies

Of love, in that lorn solitude I caught

From mine own voice in dream, when thy dear eyes

Shone through my sleep, and did that utterance harmonize.

‘Thy songs were winds whereon I fled at will,

As in a winged chariot, o’er the plain

Of crystal youth; and thou wert there to fill

My heart with joy, and there we sate again

On the gray margin of the glimmering main,

Happy as then but wiser far, for we

Smiled on the flowery grave in which were lain

Fear, Faith and Slavery; and mankind was free,

Equal, and pure, and wise, in Wisdom’s prophecy.

‘For to my will my fancies were as slaves

To do their sweet and subtile ministries;

And oft from that bright fountain’s shadowy waves

They would make human throngs gather and rise

To combat with my overflowing eyes,

And voice made deep with passion—thus I grew

Familiar with the shock and the surprise

And war of earthly minds, from which I drew

The power which has been mine to frame their thoughts anew.

‘And thus my prison was the populous earth—

Where I saw—even as misery dreams of morn

Before the east has given its glory birth—

Religion’s pomp made desolate by the scorn

Of Wisdom’s faintest smile, and thrones uptorn,

And dwellings of mild people interspersed

With undivided fields of ripening corn,

And love made free,—a hope which we have nursed

Even with our blood and tears,—until its glory burst.

‘All is not lost! There is some recompense

For hope whose fountain can be thus profound,

Even throned Evil’s splendid impotence,

Girt by its hell of power, the secret sound

Of hymns to truth and freedom—the dread bound

Of life and death passed fearlessly and well,

Dungeons wherein the high resolve is found,

Racks which degraded woman’s greatness tell,

And what may else be good and irresistible.

‘Such are the thoughts which, like the fires that flare

In storm-encompassed isles, we cherish yet

In this dark ruin—such were mine even there;

As in its sleep some odorous violet,

While yet its leaves with nightly dews are wet,

Breathes in prophetic dreams of day’s uprise,

Or as, ere Scythian frost in fear has met

Spring’s messengers descending from the skies,

The buds foreknow their life—this hope must ever rise.

‘So years had passed, when sudden earthquake rent

The depth of ocean, and the cavern cracked

With sound, as if the world’s wide continent

Had fallen in universal ruin wracked:

And through the cleft streamed in one cataract

The stifling waters—when I woke, the flood

Whose banded waves that crystal cave had sacked

Was ebbing round me, and my bright abode

Before me yawned—a chasm desert, and bare, and broad.

‘Above me was the sky, beneath the sea:

I stood upon a point of shattered stone,

And heard loose rocks rushing tumultuously

With splash and shock into the deep—anon

All ceased, and there was silence wide and lone.

I felt that I was free! The Ocean-spray

Quivered beneath my feet, the broad Heaven shone

Around, and in my hair the winds did play

Lingering as they pursued their unimpeded way.

‘My spirit moved upon the sea like wind

Which round some thymy cape will lag and hover,

Though it can wake the still cloud, and unbind

The strength of tempest: day was almost over,

When through the fading light I could discover

A ship approaching—its white sails were fed

With the north wind—its moving shade did cover

The twilight deep; the mariners in dread

Cast anchor when they saw new rocks around them spread.

‘And when they saw one sitting on a crag,

They sent a boat to me;—the Sailors rowed

In awe through many a new and fearful jag

Of overhanging rock, through which there flowed

The foam of streams that cannot make abode.

They came and questioned me, but when they heard

My voice, they became silent, and they stood

And moved as men in whom new love had stirred

Deep thoughts: so to the ship we passed without a word.

‘I sate beside the Steersman then, and gazing

Upon the west, cried, “Spread the sails! Behold!

The sinking moon is like a watch-tower blazing

Over the mountains yet;—the City of Gold

Yon Cape alone does from the sight withhold;

The stream is fleet—the north breathes steadily

Beneath the stars; they tremble with the cold!

Ye cannot rest upon the dreary sea!—

Haste, haste to the warm home of happier destiny!”

‘The Mariners obeyed—the Captain stood

Aloof, and, whispering to the Pilot, said,

“Alas, alas! I fear we are pursued

By wicked ghosts; a Phantom of the Dead,

The night before we sailed, came to my bed

In dream, like that!” The Pilot then replied,

“It cannot be—she is a human Maid—

Her low voice makes you weep—she is some bride,

Or daughter of high birth—she can be nought beside.”

‘We passed the islets, borne by wind and stream,

And as we sailed, the Mariners came near

And thronged around to listen;—in the gleam

Of the pale moon I stood, as one whom fear

May not attaint, and my calm voice did rear;

“Ye are all human—yon broad moon gives light

To millions who the selfsame likeness wear,

Even while I speak—beneath this very night,

Their thoughts flow on like ours, in sadness or delight.

‘“What dream ye? Your own hands have built an home,

Even for yourselves on a beloved shore:

For some, fond eyes are pining till they come,

How they will greet him when his toils are o’er,

And laughing babes rush from the well-known door!

Is this your care? ye toil for your own good—

Ye feel and think—has some immortal power

Such purposes? or in a human mood,

Dream ye some Power thus builds for man in solitude?

‘“What is that Power? Ye mock yourselves, and give

A human heart to what ye cannot know:

As if the cause of life could think and live!

’Twere as if man’s own works should feel, and show

The hopes, and fears, and thoughts from which they flow,

And he be like to them! Lo! Plague is free

To waste, Blight, Poison, Earthquake, Hail, and Snow,

Disease, and Want, and worse Necessity

Of hate and ill, and Pride, and Fear, and Tyranny!

‘“What is that Power? Some moon-struck sophist stood

Watching the shade from his own soul upthrown

Fill Heaven and darken Earth, and in such mood

The Form he saw and worshipped was his own,

His likeness in the world’s vast mirror shown;

And ’twere an innocent dream, but that a faith

Nursed by fear’s dew of poison, grows thereon,

And that men say, that Power has chosen Death

On all who scorn its laws, to wreak immortal wrath.

‘“Men say that they themselves have heard and seen,

Or known from others who have known such things,

A Shade, a Form, which Earth and Heaven between

Wields an invisible rod—that Priests and Kings,

Custom, domestic sway, ay, all that brings

Man’s freeborn soul beneath the oppressor’s heel,

Are his strong ministers, and that the stings

Of death will make the wise his vengeance feel,

Though truth and virtue arm their hearts with tenfold steel.

‘“And it is said, this Power will punish wrong;

Yes, add despair to crime, and pain to pain!

And deepest hell, and deathless snakes among,

Will bind the wretch on whom is fixed a stain,

Which, like a plague, a burden, and a bane,

Clung to him while he lived; for love and hate,

Virtue and vice, they say are difference vain—

The will of strength is right—this human state

Tyrants, that they may rule, with lies thus desolate.

‘“Alas, what strength? Opinion is more frail

Than yon dim cloud now fading on the moon

Even while we gaze, though it awhile avail

To hide the orb of truth—and every throne

Of Earth or Heaven, though shadow, rests thereon,

One shape of many names:—for this ye plough

The barren waves of ocean, hence each one

Is slave or tyrant; all betray and bow,

Command, or kill, or fear, or wreak, or suffer woe.

‘“Its names are each a sign which maketh holy

All power—ay, the ghost, the dream, the shade

Of power—lust, falsehood, hate, and pride, and folly;

The pattern whence all fraud and wrong is made,

A law to which mankind has been betrayed;

And human love, is as the name well known

Of a dear mother, whom the murderer laid

In bloody grave, and into darkness thrown,

Gathered her wildered babes around him as his own.

‘“O Love, who to the hearts of wandering men

Art as the calm to Ocean’s weary waves!

Justice, or Truth, or Joy! those only can

From slavery and religion’s labyrinth caves

Guide us, as one clear star the seaman saves.

To give to all an equal share of good,

To track the steps of Freedom, though through graves

She pass, to suffer all in patient mood,

To weep for crime, though stained with thy friend’s dearest blood,—

‘“To feel the peace of self-contentment’s lot,

To own all sympathies, and outrage none,

And in the inmost bowers of sense and thought,

Until life’s sunny day is quite gone down,

To sit and smile with Joy, or, not alone,

To kiss salt tears from the worn cheek of Woe;

To live, as if to love and live were one,—

This is not faith or law, nor those who bow

To thrones on Heaven or Earth, such destiny may know.

‘“But children near their parents tremble now,

Because they must obey—one rules another,

And as one Power rules both high and low,

So man is made the captive of his brother,

And Hate is throned on high with Fear her mother,

Above the Highest—and those fountain-cells,

Whence love yet flowed when faith had choked all other,

Are darkened—Woman as the bond-slave dwells

Of man, a slave; and life is poisoned in its wells.

‘“Man seeks for gold in mines, that he may weave

A lasting chain for his own slavery;—

In fear and restless care that he may live

He toils for others, who must ever be

The joyless thralls of like captivity;

He murders, for his chiefs delight in ruin;

He builds the altar, that its idol’s fee

May be his very blood; he is pursuing—

O, blind and willing wretch!—his own obscure undoing.

‘“Woman!—she is his slave, she has become

A thing I weep to speak—the child of scorn,

The outcast of a desolated home;

Falsehood, and fear, and toil, like waves have worn

Channels upon her cheek, which smiles adorn,

As calm decks the false Ocean:—well ye know

What Woman is, for none of Woman born

Can choose but drain the bitter dregs of woe,

Which ever from the oppressed to the oppressors flow.

‘“This need not be; ye might arise, and will

That gold should lose its power, and thrones their glory;

That love, which none may bind, be free to fill

The world, like light; and evil faith, grown hoary

With crime, be quenched and die.—Yon promontory

Even now eclipses the descending moon!—

Dungeons and palaces are transitory—

High temples fade like vapour—Man alone

Remains, whose will has power when all beside is gone.

‘“Let all be free and equal!—From your hearts

I feel an echo; through my inmost frame

Like sweetest sound, seeking its mate, it darts—

Whence come ye, friends? Alas, I cannot name

All that I read of sorrow, toil, and shame,

On your worn faces; as in legends old

Which make immortal the disastrous fame

Of conquerors and impostors false and bold,

The discord of your hearts, I in your looks behold.

‘“Whence come ye, friends? from pouring human blood

Forth on the earth? Or bring ye steel and gold,

That Kings may dupe and slay the multitude?

Or from the famished poor, pale, weak and cold,

Bear ye the earnings of their toil? Unfold!

Speak! Are your hands in slaughter’s sanguine hue

Stained freshly? have your hearts in guile grown old?

Know yourselves thus! ye shall be pure as dew,

And I will be a friend and sister unto you.

‘“Disguise it not—we have one human heart—

All mortal thoughts confess a common home:

Blush not for what may to thyself impart

Stains of inevitable crime: the doom

Is this, which has, or may, or must become

Thine, and all humankind’s. Ye are the spoil

Which Time thus marks for the devouring tomb—

Thou and thy thoughts and they, and all the toil

Wherewith ye twine the rings of life’s perpetual coil.

‘“Disguise it not—ye blush for what ye hate,

And Enmity is sister unto Shame;

Look on your mind—it is the book of fate—

Ah! it is dark with many a blazoned name

Of misery—all are mirrors of the same;

But the dark fiend who with his iron pen

Dipped in scorn’s fiery poison, makes his fame

Enduring there, would o’er the heads of men

Pass harmless, if they scorned to make their hearts his den.

‘“Yes, it is Hate, that shapeless fiendly thing

Of many names, all evil, some divine,

Whom self-contempt arms with a mortal sting;

Which, when the heart its snaky folds entwine

Is wasted quite, and when it doth repine

To gorge such bitter prey, on all beside

It turns with ninefold rage, as with its twine

When Amphisbaena some fair bird has tied,

Soon o’er the putrid mass he threats on every side.

‘“Reproach not thine own soul, but know thyself,

Nor hate another’s crime, nor loathe thine own.

It is the dark idolatry of self,

Which, when our thoughts and actions once are gone,

Demands that man should weep, and bleed, and groan;

Oh, vacant expiation! Be at rest.—

The past is Death’s, the future is thine own;

And love and joy can make the foulest breast

A paradise of flowers, where peace might build her nest.

‘“Speak thou! whence come ye?”—A Youth made reply:

“Wearily, wearily o’er the boundless deep

We sail;—thou readest well the misery

Told in these faded eyes, but much doth sleep

Within, which there the poor heart loves to keep,

Or dare not write on the dishonoured brow;

Even from our childhood have we learned to steep

The bread of slavery in the tears of woe,

And never dreamed of hope or refuge until now.

‘“Yes—I must speak—my secret should have perished

Even with the heart it wasted, as a brand

Fades in the dying flame whose life it cherished,

But that no human bosom can withstand

Thee, wondrous Lady, and the mild command

Of thy keen eyes:—yes, we are wretched slaves,

Who from their wonted loves and native land

Are reft, and bear o’er the dividing waves

The unregarded prey of calm and happy graves.

‘“We drag afar from pastoral vales the fairest

Among the daughters of those mountains lone,

We drag them there, where all things best and rarest

Are stained and trampled:—years have come and gone

Since, like the ship which bears me, I have known

No thought;—but now the eyes of one dear Maid

On mine with light of mutual love have shone—

She is my life,—I am but as the shade

Of her,—a smoke sent up from ashes, soon to fade.

‘“For she must perish in the Tyrant’s hall—

Alas, alas!”—He ceased, and by the sail

Sate cowering—but his sobs were heard by all,

And still before the ocean and the gale

The ship fled fast till the stars ‘gan to fail;

And, round me gathered with mute countenance,

The Seamen gazed, the Pilot, worn and pale

With toil, the Captain with gray locks, whose glance

Met mine in restless awe—they stood as in a trance.

‘“Recede not! pause not now! Thou art grown old,

But Hope will make thee young, for Hope and Youth

Are children of one mother, even Love—behold!

The eternal stars gaze on us!—is the truth

Within your soul? care for your own, or ruth

For others’ sufferings? do ye thirst to bear

A heart which not the serpent Custom’s tooth

May violate?—Be free! and even here,

Swear to be firm till death!” They cried, “We swear! We swear!”

‘The very darkness shook, as with a blast

Of subterranean thunder, at the cry;

The hollow shore its thousand echoes cast

Into the night, as if the sea and sky,

And earth, rejoiced with new-born liberty,

For in that name they swore! Bolts were undrawn,

And on the deck, with unaccustomed eye

The captives gazing stood, and every one

Shrank as the inconstant torch upon her countenance shone.

‘They were earth’s purest children, young and fair,

With eyes the shrines of unawakened thought,

And brows as bright as Spring or Morning, ere

Dark time had there its evil legend wrought

In characters of cloud which wither not.—

The change was like a dream to them; but soon

They knew the glory of their altered lot,

In the bright wisdom of youth’s breathless noon,

Sweet talk, and smiles, and sighs, all bosoms did attune.

‘But one was mute; her cheeks and lips most fair,

Changing their hue like lilies newly blown,

Beneath a bright acacia’s shadowy hair,

Waved by the wind amid the sunny noon,

Showed that her soul was quivering; and full soon

That Youth arose, and breathlessly did look

On her and me, as for some speechless boon:

I smiled, and both their hands in mine I took,

And felt a soft delight from what their spirits shook.

‘That night we anchored in a woody bay,

And sleep no more around us dared to hover

Than, when all doubt and fear has passed away,

It shades the couch of some unresting lover,

Whose heart is now at rest: thus night passed over

In mutual joy:—around, a forest grew

Of poplars and dark oaks, whose shade did cover

The waning stars pranked in the waters blue,

And trembled in the wind which from the morning flew.

‘The joyous Mariners, and each free Maiden

Now brought from the deep forest many a bough,

With woodland spoil most innocently laden;

Soon wreaths of budding foliage seemed to flow

Over the mast and sails, the stern and prow

Were canopied with blooming boughs,—the while

On the slant sun’s path o’er the waves we go

Rejoicing, like the dwellers of an isle

Doomed to pursue those waves that cannot cease to smile.

‘The many ships spotting the dark blue deep

With snowy sails, fled fast as ours came nigh,

In fear and wonder; and on every steep

Thousands did gaze, they heard the startling cry,

Like Earth’s own voice lifted unconquerably

To all her children, the unbounded mirth,

The glorious joy of thy name—Liberty!

They heard!—As o’er the mountains of the earth

From peak to peak leap on the beams of Morning’s birth:

‘So from that cry over the boundless hills

Sudden was caught one universal sound,

Like a volcano’s voice, whose thunder fills

Remotest skies,—such glorious madness found

A path through human hearts with stream which drowned

Its struggling fears and cares, dark Custom’s brood;

They knew not whence it came, but felt around

A wide contagion poured—they called aloud

On Liberty—that name lived on the sunny flood.

‘We reached the port.—Alas! from many spirits

The wisdom which had waked that cry, was fled,

Like the brief glory which dark Heaven inherits

From the false dawn, which fades ere it is spread,

Upon the night’s devouring darkness shed:

Yet soon bright day will burst—even like a chasm

Of fire, to burn the shrouds outworn and dead,

Which wrap the world; a wide enthusiasm,

To cleanse the fevered world as with an earthquake’s spasm!

‘I walked through the great City then, but free

From shame or fear; those toil-worn Mariners

And happy Maidens did encompass me;

And like a subterranean wind that stirs

Some forest among caves, the hopes and fears

From every human soul, a murmur strange

Made as I passed; and many wept, with tears

Of joy and awe, and winged thoughts did range,

And half-extinguished words, which prophesied of change.

‘For, with strong speech I tore the veil that hid

Nature, and Truth, and Liberty, and Love,—

As one who from some mountain’s pyramid

Points to the unrisen sun!—the shades approve

His truth, and flee from every stream and grove.

Thus, gentle thoughts did many a bosom fill,—

Wisdom, the mail of tried affections wove

For many a heart, and tameless scorn of ill,

Thrice steeped in molten steel the unconquerable will.

‘Some said I was a maniac wild and lost;

Some, that I scarce had risen from the grave,

The Prophet’s virgin bride, a heavenly ghost:—

Some said, I was a fiend from my weird cave,

Who had stolen human shape, and o’er the wave,

The forest, and the mountain, came;—some said

I was the child of God, sent down to save

Woman from bonds and death, and on my head

The burden of their sins would frightfully be laid.

‘But soon my human words found sympathy

In human hearts: the purest and the best,

As friend with friend, made common cause with me,

And they were few, but resolute;—the rest,

Ere yet success the enterprise had blessed,

Leagued with me in their hearts;—their meals, their slumber,

Their hourly occupations, were possessed

By hopes which I had armed to overnumber

Those hosts of meaner cares, which life’s strong wings encumber.

‘But chiefly women, whom my voice did waken

From their cold, careless, willing slavery,

Sought me: one truth their dreary prison has shaken,—

They looked around, and lo! they became free!

Their many tyrants sitting desolately

In slave-deserted halls, could none restrain;

For wrath’s red fire had withered in the eye,

Whose lightning once was death,—nor fear, nor gain

Could tempt one captive now to lock another’s chain.

‘Those who were sent to bind me, wept, and felt

Their minds outsoar the bonds which clasped them round,

Even as a waxen shape may waste and melt

In the white furnace; and a visioned swound,

A pause of hope and awe the City bound,

Which, like the silence of a tempest’s birth,

When in its awful shadow it has wound

The sun, the wind, the ocean, and the earth,

Hung terrible, ere yet the lightnings have leaped forth.

‘Like clouds inwoven in the silent sky,

By winds from distant regions meeting there,

In the high name of truth and liberty,

Around the City millions gathered were,

By hopes which sprang from many a hidden lair,—

Words which the lore of truth in hues of flame

Arrayed, thine own wild songs which in the air

Like homeless odours floated, and the name

Of thee, and many a tongue which thou hadst dipped in flame.

‘The Tyrant knew his power was gone, but Fear,

The nurse of Vengeance, bade him wait the event—

That perfidy and custom, gold and prayer,

And whatsoe’er, when force is impotent,

To fraud the sceptre of the world has lent,

Might, as he judged, confirm his failing sway.

Therefore throughout the streets, the Priests he sent

To curse the rebels.—To their gods did they

For Earthquake, Plague, and Want, kneel in the public way.

‘And grave and hoary men were bribed to tell

From seats where law is made the slave of wrong,

How glorious Athens in her splendour fell,

Because her sons were free,—and that among

Mankind, the many to the few belong,

By Heaven, and Nature, and Necessity.

They said, that age was truth, and that the young

Marred with wild hopes the peace of slavery,

With which old times and men had quelled the vain and free.

‘And with the falsehood of their poisonous lips

They breathed on the enduring memory

Of sages and of bards a brief eclipse;

There was one teacher, who necessity

Had armed with strength and wrong against mankind,

His slave and his avenger aye to be;

That we were weak and sinful, frail and blind,

And that the will of one was peace, and we

Should seek for nought on earth but toil and misery—

‘“For thus we might avoid the hell hereafter.”

So spake the hypocrites, who cursed and lied;

Alas, their sway was past, and tears and laughter

Clung to their hoary hair, withering the pride

Which in their hollow hearts dared still abide;

And yet obscener slaves with smoother brow,

And sneers on their strait lips, thin, blue and wide,

Said that the rule of men was over now,

And hence, the subject world to woman’s will must bow;

‘And gold was scattered through the streets, and wine

Flowed at a hundred feasts within the wall.

In vain! the steady towers in Heaven did shine

As they were wont, nor at the priestly call

Left Plague her banquet in the Ethiop’s hall,

Nor Famine from the rich man’s portal came,

Where at her ease she ever preys on all

Who throng to kneel for food: nor fear nor shame,

Nor faith, nor discord, dimmed hope’s newly kindled flame.

‘For gold was as a god whose faith began

To fade, so that its worshippers were few,

And Faith itself, which in the heart of man

Gives shape, voice, name, to spectral Terror, knew

Its downfall, as the altars lonelier grew,

Till the Priests stood alone within the fane;

The shafts of falsehood unpolluting flew,

And the cold sneers of calumny were vain,

The union of the free with discord’s brand to stain.

‘The rest thou knowest.—Lo! we two are here—

We have survived a ruin wide and deep—

Strange thoughts are mine.—I cannot grieve or fear,

Sitting with thee upon this lonely steep

I smile, though human love should make me weep.

We have survived a joy that knows no sorrow,

And I do feel a mighty calmness creep

Over my heart, which can no longer borrow

Its hues from chance or change, dark children of to-morrow.

‘We know not what will come—yet, Laon, dearest,

Cythna shall be the prophetess of Love,

Her lips shall rob thee of the grace thou wearest,

To hide thy heart, and clothe the shapes which rove

Within the homeless Future’s wintry grove;

For I now, sitting thus beside thee, seem

Even with thy breath and blood to live and move,

And violence and wrong are as a dream

Which rolls from steadfast truth, an unreturning stream.

‘The blasts of Autumn drive the winged seeds

Over the earth,—next come the snows, and rain,

And frosts, and storms, which dreary Winter leads

Out of his Scythian cave, a savage train;

Behold! Spring sweeps over the world again,

Shedding soft dews from her ethereal wings;

Flowers on the mountains, fruits over the plain,

And music on the waves and woods she flings,

And love on all that lives, and calm on lifeless things.

‘O Spring, of hope, and love, and youth, and gladness

Wind-winged emblem! brightest, best and fairest!

Whence comest thou, when, with dark Winter’s sadness

The tears that fade in sunny smiles thou sharest?

Sister of joy, thou art the child who wearest

Thy mother’s dying smile, tender and sweet;

Thy mother Autumn, for whose grave thou bearest

Fresh flowers, and beams like flowers, with gentle feet,

Disturbing not the leaves which are her winding-sheet.

‘Virtue, and Hope, and Love, like light and Heaven,

Surround the world.—We are their chosen slaves.

Has not the whirlwind of our spirit driven

Truth’s deathless germs to thought’s remotest caves?

Lo, Winter comes!—the grief of many graves,

The frost of death, the tempest of the sword,

The flood of tyranny, whose sanguine waves

Stagnate like ice at Faith the enchanter’s word,

And bind all human hearts in its repose abhorred.

‘The seeds are sleeping in the soil: meanwhile

The Tyrant peoples dungeons with his prey,

Pale victims on the guarded scaffold smile

Because they cannot speak; and, day by day,

The moon of wasting Science wanes away

Among her stars, and in that darkness vast

The sons of earth to their foul idols pray,

And gray Priests triumph, and like blight or blast

A shade of selfish care o’er human looks is cast.

‘This is the winter of the world;—and here

We die, even as the winds of Autumn fade,

Expiring in the frore and foggy air.

Behold! Spring comes, though we must pass, who made

The promise of its birth,—even as the shade

Which from our death, as from a mountain, flings

The future, a broad sunrise; thus arrayed

As with the plumes of overshadowing wings,

From its dark gulf of chains, Earth like an eagle springs.

‘O dearest love! we shall be dead and cold

Before this morn may on the world arise;

Wouldst thou the glory of its dawn behold?

Alas! gaze not on me, but turn thine eyes

On thine own heart—it is a paradise

Which everlasting Spring has made its own,

And while drear Winter fills the naked skies,

Sweet streams of sunny thought, and flowers fresh-blown,

Are there, and weave their sounds and odours into one.

‘In their own hearts the earnest of the hope

Which made them great, the good will ever find;

And though some envious shade may interlope

Between the effect and it, One comes behind,

Who aye the future to the past will bind—

Necessity, whose sightless strength for ever

Evil with evil, good with good must wind

In bands of union, which no power may sever:

They must bring forth their kind, and be divided never!

‘The good and mighty of departed ages

Are in their graves, the innocent and free,

Heroes, and Poets, and prevailing Sages,

Who leave the vesture of their majesty

To adorn and clothe this naked world;—and we

Are like to them—such perish, but they leave

All hope, or love, or truth, or liberty,

Whose forms their mighty spirits could conceive,

To be a rule and law to ages that survive.

‘So be the turf heaped over our remains

Even in our happy youth, and that strange lot,

Whate’er it be, when in these mingling veins

The blood is still, be ours; let sense and thought

Pass from our being, or be numbered not

Among the things that are; let those who come

Behind, for whom our steadfast will has bought

A calm inheritance, a glorious doom,

Insult with careless tread, our undivided tomb.

‘Our many thoughts and deeds, our life and love,

Our happiness, and all that we have been,

Immortally must live, and burn and move,

When we shall be no more;—the world has seen

A type of peace; and—as some most serene

And lovely spot to a poor maniac’s eye,

After long years, some sweet and moving scene

Of youthful hope, returning suddenly,

Quells his long madness—thus man shall remember thee.

‘And Calumny meanwhile shall feed on us,

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

Who built their pride on its oblivion;

And fame, in human hope which sculptured was,

Survive the perished scrolls of unenduring brass.

‘The while we two, beloved, must depart,

And Sense and Reason, those enchanters fair,

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,

Seems our obscure and rotting eyes to steep

In joy;—but senseless death—a ruin dark and deep!

‘These are blind fancies—reason cannot know

What sense can neither feel, nor thought conceive;

There is delusion in the world—and woe,

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

With thoughts too swift and strong for one lone human breast.

‘Yes, yes—thy kiss is sweet, thy lips are warm—

O! willingly, beloved, would these eyes,

Might they no more drink being from thy form,

Even as to sleep whence we again arise,

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.

‘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

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.

Though she had ceased, her countenance uplifted

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?

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!

Was there a human spirit in the steed,

That thus with his proud voice, ere night was gone,

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

To see her sons contend? and makes she bare

Her breast, that all in peace its drainless stores may share?

I have heard friendly sounds from many a tongue

Which was not human—the lone nightingale

Has answered me with her most soothing song,

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

Like man’s own speech; and such was now the token

Of waning night, whose calm by that proud neigh was broken.

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;

Soon the dust drinks that bitter dew,—then meet

The vulture, and the wild dog, and the snake,

The wolf, and the hyaena gray, and eat

The dead in horrid truce: their throngs did make

Behind the steed, a chasm like waves in a ship’s wake.

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

The armies of the leagued 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.

From every nation of the earth they came,

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;

Tartar and Frank, and millions whom the wings

Of Indian breezes lull, and many a band

The Arctic Anarch sent, and Idumea’s sand,

Fertile in prodigies and lies;—so there

Strange natures made a brotherhood of ill.

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,

And savage sympathy: those slaves impure,

Each one the other thus from ill to ill did lure.

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,

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

Like wolves and serpents to their mutual wars

Strange truce, with many a rite which Earth and Heaven abhors.

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

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.

‘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

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;

‘For we were slaying still without remorse,

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;

‘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;

‘And gold and glory shall be his.—Go forth!’

They rushed into the plain.—Loud was the roar

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

Stream through the city; on the seventh, the dew

Of slaughter became stiff, and there was peace anew:

Peace in the desert fields and villages,

Between the glutted beasts and mangled dead!

Peace in the silent streets! save when the cries

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

Waste the triumphal hours in festival and song!

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

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.

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,

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.

The fish were poisoned in the streams; the birds

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

All night, the lean hyaenas their sad case

Like starving infants wailed; a woeful ditty!

And many a mother wept, pierced with unnatural pity.

Amid the aereal minarets on high,

The Ethiopian vultures fluttering fell

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,

A voiceless thought of evil, which did spread

With the quick glance of eyes, like withering lightnings shed.

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

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

With lidless eyes, lie Faith, and Plague, and Slaughter,

A ghastly brood; conceived of Lethe’s sullen water.

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

Creaked with the weight of birds, but, as before

Those winged 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.

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

Through hunger, bared her scorned 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.

Then fell blue Plague upon the race of man.

‘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

Each by his fiery torture howl and rave,

Or sit in frenzy’s unimagined mood,

Upon fresh heaps of dead; a ghastly multitude.

It was not hunger now, but thirst. Each well

Was choked with rotting corpses, and became

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,

Spotted with nameless scars and lurid blains,

Childhood, and youth, and age, writhing in savage pains.

It was not thirst, but madness! Many saw

Their own lean image everywhere, it went

A ghastlier self beside them, till the awe

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

On fire! the avenging Power his hell on earth has spread!’

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

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.

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

Of thankful falsehood, like a courtier gray,

The house-dog of the throne; but many a mile

Comes Plague, a winged wolf, who loathes alway

The garbage and the scum that strangers make her prey.

So, near the throne, amid the gorgeous feast,

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

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.

The Princes and the Priests were pale with terror;

That monstrous faith wherewith they ruled mankind,

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

In sad procession: each among the train

To his own Idol lifts his supplications vain.

‘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

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,

Ere to despair and death thy worshippers be driven.

‘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?

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?

‘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

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.’

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,

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.

And Oromaze, Joshua, and Mahomet,

Moses, and Buddh, Zerdusht, and Brahm, and Foh,

A tumult of strange names, which never met

Before, as watchwords of a single woe,

Arose; each raging votary ‘gan to throw

Aloft his armed hands, and each did howl

‘Our God alone is God!’—and slaughter now

Would have gone forth, when from beneath a cowl

A voice came forth, which pierced like ice through every soul.

’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,

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

To wreak his fear of Heaven in vengeance on mankind.

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

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.

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,

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.

‘Peace! Peace!’ he cried, ‘when we are dead, the Day

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

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.

‘Think ye, because ye weep, and kneel, and pray,

That God will lull the pestilence? It rose

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

The gates of death, ere they receive the twain

Who shook with mortal spells his undefended reign?

‘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

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,

When those detested hearts their iron fangs have rent!

‘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!

‘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

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.

His voice was like a blast that burst the portal

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

All natural pity then, a fear unknown

Before, and with an inward fire possessed,

They raged like homeless beasts whom burning woods invest.

’Twas morn.—At noon the public crier went forth,

Proclaiming through the living and the dead,

‘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!

But he who both alive can hither bring,

The Princess shall espouse, and reign an equal King.’

Ere night the pyre was piled, the net of iron

Was spread above, the fearful couch below;

It overtopped the towers that did environ

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

By gadflies, they have piled the heath, and gums, and wood.

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;

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.

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

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!’

And Priests rushed through their ranks, some counterfeiting

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.

The noontide sun was darkened with that smoke,

The winds of eve dispersed those ashes gray.

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,

And cast a light on those dim labyrinths, where

Hope, near imagined chasms, is struggling with despair.

’Tis said, a mother dragged three children then,