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.

 

LI

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: –

 

1

 

»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.

 

2

 

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!

 

3

 

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.

 

4

 

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!

 

5

 

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!

 

6

 

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!«

 

LII

 

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.

 

LIII

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.

 

LIV

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.

 

LV

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, –

 

LVI

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.

 

LVII

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.

 

LVIII

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.

 

Canto VI

I

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;

 

II

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 –

 

III

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!

 

IV

 

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.

 

V

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.

 

VI

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 firlds like rain.

 

VII

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.

 

VIII

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.

 

IX

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.

 

X

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.

 

XI

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.

 

XII

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.

 

XIII

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 foe on every side invest.

 

XIV

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.

 

XV

 

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.

 

XVI

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,

 

XVII

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.

 

XVIII

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:

 

XIX

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;

 

XX

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.

 

XXI

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.

 

XXII

 

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.

 

XXIII

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.

 

XXIV

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.

 

XXV

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,

 

XXVI

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.

 

XXVII

 

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.

 

XXVIII

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.

 

XXIX

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.

 

XXX

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: –

 

XXXI

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,

 

XXXII

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.

 

XXXIII

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.

 

XXXIV

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.

 

XXXV

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?

 

XXXVI

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?

 

XXXVII

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.

 

XXXVIII

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.

 

XXXIX

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.

 

XL

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;

 

XLI

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.

 

XLII

 

The tones of Cythna's voice like echoes were

Of those far murmuring streams; they rose and fell,

Mixed with mine own in the tempestuous air, –

And so we sate, until our talk befell

Of the late ruin, swift and horrible,

And how those seeds of hope might yet be sown,

Whose fruit is evil's mortal poison: well,

For us, this ruin made a watch-tower lone,

But Cythna's eyes looked faint, and now two days were gone

 

XLIII

Since she had food: – therefore I did awaken

The Tartar steed, who, from his ebon mane

Soon as the clinging slumbers he had shaken,

Bent his thin head to seek the brazen rein,

Following me obediently; with pain

Of heart, so deep and dread, that one caress,

When lips and heart refuse to part again

Till they have told their fill, could scarce express

The anguish of her mute and fearful tenderness,

 

XLIV

Cythna beheld me part, as I bestrode

That willing steed – the tempest and the night,

Which gave my path its safety as I rode

Down the ravine of rocks, did soon unite

The darkness and the tumult of their might

Borne on all winds. – Far through the streaming rain

Floating at intervals the garments white

Of Cythna gleamed, and her voice once again

Came to me on the gust, and soon I reached the plain.

 

XLV

I dreaded not the tempest, nor did he

Who bore me, but his eyeballs wide and red

Turned on the lightning's cleft exultingly;

And when the earth beneath his tameless tread,

Shook with the sullen thunder, he would spread

His nostrils to the blast, and joyously

Mock the fierce peal with neighings; – thus we sped

O'er the lit plain, and soon I could descry

Where Death and Fire had gorged the spoil of victory.

 

XLVI

There was a desolate village in a wood

Whose bloom-inwoven leaves now scattering fed

The hungry storm; it was a place of blood,

A heap of hearthless walls; – the flames were dead

Within those dwellings now, – the life had fled

From all those corpses now, – but the wide sky

Flooded with lightning was ribbed overhead

By the black rafters, and around did lie

Women, and babes, and men, slaughtered confusedly.

 

XLVII

Beside the fountain in the market-place

Dismounting, I beheld those corpses stare

With horny eyes upon each other's face,

And on the earth and on the vacant air,

And upon me, close to the waters where

I stooped to slake my thirst; – I shrank to taste,

For the salt bitterness of blood was there;

But tied the steed beside, and sought in haste

If any yet survived amid that ghastly waste.

 

XLVIII

No living thing was there beside one woman,

Whom I found wandering in the streets, and she

Was withered from a likeness of aught human

Into a fiend, by some strange misery:

Soon as she heard my steps she leaped on me,

And glued her burning lips to mine, and laughed

With a loud, long, and frantic laugh of glee,

And cried, »Now, Mortal, thou hast deeply quaffed

The Plague's blue kisses – soon millions shall pledge the draught!

 

XLIX

My name is Pestilence – this bosom dry,

Once fed two babes – a sister and a brother –

When I came home, one in the blood did lie

Of three death-wounds – the flames had ate the other!

Since then I have no longer been a mother,

But I am Pestilence; – hither and thither

I flit about, that I may slay and smother: –

All lips which I have kissed must surely wither,

But Death's – if thou art he, we'll go to work together!

 

 

L

What seek'st thou here? The moonlight comes in flashes, –

The dew is rising dankly from the dell –

'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!«

 

LI

As thus she spake, she grasped me with the strength

Of madness, and by many a ruined hearth

She led, and over many a corpse: – at length

We came to a lone hut where on the earth

Which made its floor, she in her ghastly mirth

Gathering from all those homes now desolate,

Had piled three heaps of loaves, making a dearth

Among the dead – round which she set in state

A ring of cold, stiff babes; silent and stark they sate.

 

LII

She leaped upon a pile, and lifted high

Her mad looks to the lightning, and cried: »Eat!

Share the great feast – to-morrow we must die!«

And then she spurned the loaves with her pale feet,

Towards her bloodless guests; – that sight to meet,

Mine eyes and my heart ached, and but that she

Who loved me, did with absent looks defeat

Despair, I might have raved in sympathy;

But now I took the food that woman offered me;

 

LIII

And vainly having with her madness striven

If I might win her to return with me,

Departed. In the eastern beams of Heaven

The lightning now grew pallid – rapidly,

As by the shore of the tempestuous sea

The dark steed bore me, and the mountain gray

Soon echoed to his hoofs, and I could see

Cythna among the rocks, where she alway

Had sate, with anxious eyes fixed on the lingering day.

 

LIV

And joy was ours to meet: she was most pale,

Famished, and wet and weary, so I cast

My arms around her, lest her steps should fail

As to our home we went, and thus embraced,

Her full heart seemed a deeper joy to taste

Than e'er the prosperous know; the steed behind

Trod peacefully along the mountain waste:

We reached our home ere morning could unbind

Night's latest veil, and on our bridal-couch reclined.

 

LV

Her chilled heart having cherished in my bosom,

And sweetest kisses past, we two did share

Our peaceful meal: – as an autumnal blossom

Which spreads its shrunk leaves in the sunny air,

After cold showers, like rainbows woven there,

Thus in her lips and cheeks the vital spirit

Mantled, and in her eyes, an atmosphere

Of health, and hope; and sorrow languished near it,

And fear, and all that dark despondence doth inherit.

 

Canto VII

I

So we sate joyous as the morning ray

Which fed upon the wrecks of night and storm

Now lingering on the winds; light airs did play

Among the dewy weeds, the sun was warm,

And we sate linked in the 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.

 

II

I told her of my sufferings and my madness,

And how, awakened from that dreamy mood

By Liberty's uprise, the strength of gladness

Came to my spirit in my solitude;

And all that now I was – while tears pursued

Each other down her fair and listening cheek

Fast as the thoughts which fed them, like a flood

From sunbright dales; and when I ceased to speak,

Her accents soft and sweet the pausing air did wake.

 

III

She told me a strange tale of strange endurance,

Like broken memories of many a heart

Woven into one; to which no firm assurance,

So wild were they, could her own faith impart.

She said that not a tear did dare to start

From the swoln brain, and that her thoughts were firm

When from all mortal hope she did depart,

Borne by those slaves across the Ocean's term,

And that she reached the port without one fear infirm.

 

IV

One was she among many there, the thralls

Of the cold Tyrant's cruel lust: and they

Laughed mournfully in those polluted halls;

But she was calm and sad, musing alway

On loftiest enterprise, till on a day

The Tyrant heard her singing to her lute

A wild, and sad, and spirit-thrilling lay,

Like winds that die in wastes – one moment mute

The evil thoughts it made, which did his breast pollute.

 

V

Even when he saw her wondrous loveliness,

One moment to great Nature's sacred power

He bent, and was no longer passionless;

But when he bade her to his secret bower

Be borne, a loveless victim, and she tore

Her locks in agony, and her words of flame

And mightier looks availed not; then he bore

Again his load of slavery, and became

A king, a heartless beast, a pageant and a name.

 

VI

She told me what a loathsome agony

Is that when selfishness mocks love's delight,

Foul as in 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.

 

VII

Her madness was a beam of light, a power

Which dawned through the rent soul; and words it gave,

Gestures, and looks, such as in whirlwinds bore

Which might not be withstood – whence none could save –

All who approached their sphere, – like some calm wave

Vexed into whirlpools by the chasms beneath;

And sympathy made each attendant slave

Fearless and free, and they began to breathe

Deep curses, like the voice of flames far underneath.

 

VIII

The King felt pale upon his 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.

 

IX

They bore her to a bark, and the swift stroke

Of silent rowers clove the blue moonlight seas,

Until upon their path the morning broke;

They anchored then, where, be there calm or breeze,

The gloomiest of the drear Symplegades

Shakes with the sleepless surge; – the 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.

 

X

 

»Swift as an eagle stooping from the plain

Of morning light, into some shadowy wood,

He plunged through the green silence of the main,

Through many a cavern which the eternal flood

Had scooped, as dark lairs for its monster brood;

And among mighty shapes which fled in wonder,

And among mightier shadows which pursued

His heels, he wound: until the dark rocks under

 

He touched a golden chain – a sound arose like thunder.

 

XI

A stunning clang of massive bolts redoubling

Beneath the deep – a burst of waters driven

As from the roots of the sea, raging and bubbling:

And in that roof of crags a space was riven

Through which there shone the emerald beams of heaven,

Shot through the lines of many waves inwoven,

Like sunlight through acacia woods at even,

Through which, his way the diver having cloven,

 

Passed like a spark sent up out of a burning oven.

 

XII

And then,« she said, »he laid me in a cave

Above the waters, by that chasm of sea,

A fountain round and vast, in which the wave

Imprisoned, boiled and leaped perpetually,

Down which, one moment resting, he did flee,

Winning the adverse depth; that spacious cell

Like an hupaithric temple wide and high,

Whose aëry dome is inaccessible,

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

 

XIII

Below, the fountain's brink was richly paven

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

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.

 

XIV

The fiend of madness which had made its prey

Of my poor heart, was lulled to sleep awhile:

There was an interval of many a day,

And a sea-eagle brought me food the while,

Whose nest was built in that untrodden isle,

And who, to be the 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.

 

XV

The misery of a madness slow and creeping,

Which made the earth seem fire, the sea seem air,

And the white clouds of noon which oft were sleeping,

In the blue heaven so beautiful and fair,

Like hosts of ghastly shadows hovering there;

And the sea-eagle looked a fiend, who bore

Thy mangled limbs for food! – Thus all things were

Transformed into the agony which I wore

Even as a poisoned robe around my bosom's core.

 

XVI

Again I knew the day and night fast fleeing,

The eagle, and the fountain, and the air;

Another frenzy came – there seemed a being

Within me – a strange load my heart did bear,

As if some living thing had made its lair

Even in the fountains of my life: – a long

And wondrous vision wrought from my despair,

Then grew, like sweet reality among

Dim visionary woes, an unreposing throng.

 

XVII

 

Methought I was about to be a mother –

Month after month went by, and still I dreamed

That we should soon be all to one another,

I and my child; and still new pulses seemed

To beat beside my heart, and still I deemed

There was a babe within – and, when the rain

Of winter through the rifted cavern streamed,

Methought, after a lapse of lingering pain,

I saw that lovely shape, which near my heart had lain.

 

XVIII

It was a babe, beautiful from its birth, –

It was like thee, dear love, its eyes were thine,

Its brow, its lips, and so upon the earth

It laid its fingers, as now rest on mine

Thine own, 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:

 

XIX

A doubt which would not flee, a tenderness

Of questioning grief, a source of thronging tears:

Which having passed, as one whom sobs oppress

She spoke: »Yes, in the wilderness of years

Her memory, aye, like a green home appears;

She sucked her fill even at this breast, sweet love,

For many months. I had no mortal fears;

Methought I felt her lips and breath approve, –

It was a human thing which to my bosom clove.

 

XX

I watched the dawn of her first smiles, and soon

When zenith-stars were trembling on the wave,

Or when the beams of the invisible moon,

Or sun, from many a prism within the cave

Their gem-born shadows to the water gave,

Her looks would hunt them, and with outspread hand,

From the swift lights which might that fountain pave,

She would mark one, and laugh, when that command

Slighting, it lingered there, and could not understand.

 

XXI

Methought her looks began to talk with me;

And no articulate sounds, but something sweet

Her lips would frame, – so sweet it could not be,

That it was meaningless; her touch would meet

Mine, and our pulses calmly flow and beat

In response while we slept; and on a day

When I was happiest in that strange retreat,

With heaps of golden shells we two did play, –

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

 

XXII

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.

 

XXIII

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.

 

XXIV

I was no longer mad, and yet methought

My breasts were sworn 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.

 

XXV

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.

 

XXVI

 

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.

 

XXVII

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.

 

XXVIII

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.

 

XXIX

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.

 

XXX

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.

 

XXXI

 

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.

 

XXXII

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.

 

XXXIII

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.

 

XXXIV

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.

 

XXXV

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.

 

XXXVI

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.

 

XXXVII

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.

 

XXXVIII

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.

 

XXXIX

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.

 

XL

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.

 

XLI

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.

 

Canto VIII

I

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!‹

 

II

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.‹

 

III

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 all are 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.

 

IV

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?

 

V

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!

 

VI

 

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.

 

VII

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.

 

VIII

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.

 

IX

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.

 

X

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.

 

XI

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, –

 

XII

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.

 

XIII

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.

 

XIV

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.

 

XV

 

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.

 

XVI

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.

 

XVII

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.

 

XVIII

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.

 

XIX

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.

 

XX

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.

 

XXI

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 Amphisbæna some fair bird has tied,

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

 

XXII

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;

O 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.

 

XXIII

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.

 

XXIV

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.

 

XXV

 

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.

 

XXVI

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.

 

XXVII

›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!‹

 

XXVIII

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.

 

XXIX

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.

 

XXX

 

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.

 

Canto IX

I

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.

 

II

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.

 

III

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:

 

IV

 

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.

 

V

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!

 

VI

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.

 

VII

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.

 

VIII

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

Women from bonds and death, and on my head

The burden of their sins would frightfully be laid.

 

IX

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.

 

X

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.

 

XI

 

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.

 

XII

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.

 

XIII

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.

 

XIV

 

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.

 

XV

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 –

 

XVI

›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;

 

XVII

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.

 

XVIII

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.

 

XIX

 

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.

 

XX

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.

 

XXI

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.

 

XXII

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.

 

XXIII

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.

 

XXIV

 

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.

 

XXV

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.

 

XXVI

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.

 

XXVII

In their own hearts the earnest of the hope

Which made them great, the good will ever find;

And though some envious shades 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!

 

XXVIII

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.

 

XXIX

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.

 

XXX

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.

 

XXXI

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.

 

XXXII

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!

 

XXXIII

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.

 

XXXIV

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.

 

XXXV

Alas, our thoughts flow on with stream, whose waters

Return not to their fountain – Earth and Heaven,

The Ocean and the Sun, the Clouds their daughters,

Winter, and Spring, and Morn, and Noon, and Even,

All that we are or know, is darkly driven

Towards one gulf. – Lo! what a change is come

Since I first spake – but time shall be forgiven,

Though it change all but thee!« – She ceased – night's gloom

Meanwhile had fallen on earth from the sky's sunless dome.

 

XXXVI

Though she had ceased, her countenance uplifted

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!

 

Canto X

I

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?

 

II

I have heard friendly sounds from many a tongue

Which was not human – the lone nightingale

Has answered me with her most soothing song,

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.

 

III

Each night, that mighty steed bore me abroad,

And I returned with food to our retreat,

And dark intelligence; the blood which flowed

Over the fields, had stained the courser's feet;

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.

 

IV

 

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.

 

V

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.

 

VI

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.

 

VII

For traitorously did that foul Tyrant robe

His countenance in lies, – even at the hour

When he was snatched from death, then o'er the globe,

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.

 

VIII

Myriads had come – millions were on their way;

The Tyrant passed, surrounded by the steel

Of hired assassins, through the public way,

Choked with his country's dead: – his footsteps reel

On the fresh blood – he smiles.