He, too, who yet had held untired
A spirit natural or inspired-

He, too, was struck, and day by day
Was withered on the stalk away.1
Oh, God! it is a fearful thing
To see the human soul take wing
In any shape, in any mood: 2
I've seen it rushing forth in blood,
I've seen it on the breaking ocean

180

Strive with a swoln convulsive motion,

I've seen the sick and ghastly bed

Of Sin delirious with its dread :

But these were horrors-this was woe
Unmixed with such-but sure and slow:
He faded, and so calm and meek,

So softly worn, so sweetly weak,
So tearless, yet so tender-kind,

And grieved for those he left behind;
With all the while a cheek whose bloom
Was as a mockery of the tomb,

190

Whose tints as gently sunk away

As a departing rainbow's ray;
An eye of most transparent light,

That almost made the dungeon bright;

1. [Kölbing quotes parallel uses of the same expression in Werner, act iv. sc. 1; Churchill's The Times, line 341, etc.; but does not give the original

"But earthlier happy is the rose distill'd,

Than that which, withering on the virgin-thorn," etc.
Midsummer Night's Dream, act i. sc. 1, lines 76, 77.]

2. [Compare

"The first, last look of Death revealed."

The Giaour, line 89, note 2.

Byron was a connoisseur of the incidents and by-play of "sudden death," so much so that Goethe was under the impression that he had been guilty of a venial murder (see his review of Manfred in his paper Kunst und Alterthum, Letters, 1901, v. 506, 507). A year after these lines were written, when he was at Rome (Letter to Murray, May 30, 1817), he saw three robbers guillotined, and observed himself and them from a psychological standpoint.

"The ghastly bed of Sin" (lines 182, 183) may be a reminiscence of the death-bed of Lord Falkland (English Bards, etc., lines 680-686; Poetical Works, 1898, i. 351, note 2).]

And not a word of murmur-not
A groan o'er his untimely lot,-
A little talk of better days,
A little hope my own to raise,
For I was sunk in silence-lost
In this last loss, of all the most;
And then the sighs he would suppress
Of fainting Nature's feebleness,
More slowly drawn, grew less and less :
I listened, but I could not hear;
I called, for I was wild with fear;
I knew 'twas hopeless, but my dread
Would not be thus admonished;

I called, and thought I heard a sound-
I burst my chain with one strong bound,
And rushed to him :-I found him not,
I only stirred in this black spot,
I only lived, I only drew

The accursed breath of dungeon-dew;
The last, the sole, the dearest link
Between me and the eternal brink,
Which bound me to my failing race,
Was broken in this fatal place.

200

210

One on the earth, and one beneath

My brothers-both had ceased to breathe:
I took that hand which lay so still,

220

Alas! my own was full as chill;
I had not strength to stir, or strive,
But felt that I was still alive-
A frantic feeling, when we know
That what we love shall ne'er be so.

IX.

What next befell me then and there

I know not well-I never knew-
First came the loss of light, and air,
And then of darkness too:

I had no thought, no feeling-none-
Among the stones I stood a stone,1
And was, scarce conscious what I wist,
As shrubless crags within the mist;
For all was blank, and bleak, and grey;
It was not night-it was not day;
It was not even the dungeon-light,
So hateful to my heavy sight,

But vacancy absorbing space,

And fixedness-without a place;

There were no stars-no earth-no time-
No check-no change-no good-no crime-
But silence, and a stirless breath

Which neither was of life nor death;

A sea of stagnant idleness,

Blind, boundless, mute, and motionless!

X.

A light broke in upon my brain,-
It was the carol of a bird;

It ceased, and then it came again,

The sweetest song ear ever heard,
And mine was thankful till my eyes
Ran over with the glad surprise,
And they that moment could not see
I was the mate of misery;
But then by dull degrees came back
My senses to their wonted track;
I saw the dungeon walls and floor
Close slowly round me as before,
I saw the glimmer of the sun
Creeping as it before had done,

1. [Compare

"I wept not; so all stone I felt within."

240

250

260

Dante's Inferno, xxxiii. 47 (Cary's translation).]

But through the crevice where it came
That bird was perched, as fond and tame,
And tamer than upon the tree;
A lovely bird, with azure wings,1
And song that said a thousand things,
And seemed to say them all for me!

I never saw its like before,

I ne'er shall see its likeness more':

It seemed like me to want a mate,

But was not half so desolate,2
And it was come to love me when
None lived to love me so again,

And cheering from my dungeon's brink,
Had brought me back to feel and think.
I know not if it late were free,

270

Or broke its cage to perch on mine,

But knowing well captivity,

Or if it were, in wingéd guise,

Sweet bird! I could not wish for thine!

A visitant from Paradise;

For-Heaven forgive that thought! the while
Which made me both to weep and smile-
I sometimes deemed that it might be

My brother's soul come down to me;3
But then at last away it flew,

And then 'twas mortal well I knew,

For he would never thus have flown

280

290

And left me twice so doubly lone,

Lone-as the corse within its shroud,

1. [Compare "Song by Glycine "

"A sunny shaft did I behold,

2. [Compare

From sky to earth it slanted;

And poised therein a bird so bold

Sweet bird, thou wert enchanted," etc.

Zapolya, by S. T. Coleridge, act ii. sc. 1.]

"When Ruth was left half desolate,

Her Father took another Mate."

Ruth, by W. Wordsworth, Works, 1889, p. 121.]

3. ["The souls of the blessed are supposed by some of the Mahommedans to animate green birds in the groves of Paradise."-Note to Southey's Thalaba, bk. xi. stanza 5, line 13.]

Lone as a solitary cloud,1

A single cloud on a sunny day,
While all the rest of heaven is clear,
A frown upon the atmosphere,
That hath no business to appear 2
When skies are blue, and earth is gay.

:

XI.

A kind of change came in my fate,
My keepers grew compassionate;
I know not what had made them so,
They were inured to sights of woe,
But so it was my broken chain
With links unfastened did remain,
And it was liberty to stride
Along my cell from side to side,
And up and down, and then athwart,
And tread it over every part;
And round the pillars one by one,
Returning where my walk begun,
Avoiding only, as I trod,

My brothers' graves without a sod;
For if I thought with heedless tread
My step profaned their lowly bed,
My breath came gaspingly and thick,
And my crushed heart felt blind and sick.

XII.

I made a footing in the wall,

It was not therefrom to escape,

For I had buried one and all,

300

310

320

Who loved me in a human shape;

1. [Compare

"I wandered lonely as a cloud."

2. [Compare

Works of W. Wordsworth, 1889, p. 205.]

"Yet some did think that he had little business here."
Ibid., p. 183.

Compare, too, The Dream, line 166, vide post, p. 39

"What business had they there at such a time?"]