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!
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,

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,

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,
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,

Or broke its cage to perch on mine,
But knowing well captivity,

260

270

280

Sweet bird! I could not wish for thine! Or if it were, in winged guise, A visitant from Paradise; For-Heaven forgive that thought! the while Which made me both to weep and smileI sometimes deemed that it might be My brother's soul come down to me; But then at last away it flew, And then 'twas mortal well I knew, For he would never thus have flown, And left me twice so doubly lone, Lone as the corse within its shroud, Lone as a solitary cloud,

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

When skies are blue, and earth is gay.
A kind of change came in my fate,
My keepers grew compassionate;

290

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 fell blind and sick.

I made a footing in the wall,

It was not therefrom to escape,

For I had buried one and all

Who loved me in a human shape;

And the whole earth would henceforth be

A wider prison unto me:

No child, no sire, no kin had I,

No partner in my misery;

I thought of this, and I was glad,

For thought of them had made me mad;
But I was curious to ascend

To my barred windows, and to bend
Once more, upon the mountains high,
The quiet of a loving eye.

I saw them, and they were the same,
They were not changed like me in frame;
I saw their thousand years of snow
On high-their wide long lake below,
And the blue Rhone in fullest flow;
I heard the torrents leap and gush
O'er channelled rock and broken bush;
I saw the white-walled distant town,
And whiter sails go skimming down;

And then there was a little isle,
Which in my very face did smile,

The only one in view;

I had not left my recent chain;
And when I did descend again,
The darkness of my dim abode
Fell on me as a heavy load;
It was as is a new-dug grave,
Closing o'er one we sought to save,-
And yet my glance, too much opprest,
Had almost need of such a rest.

It might be months, or years, or days,
I kept no count, I took no note,
I had no hope my eyes to raise,

And clear them of their dreary mote; At last men came to set me free;

I asked not why, and recked not where; It was at length the same to me, Fettered or fetterless to be,

I learned to love despair.

And thus when they appeared at last,
And all my bonds aside were cast,
These heavy walls to me had grown
A hermitage-and all my own!
And half I felt as they were come
To tear me from a second home:
With spiders I had friendship made,
And watched them in their sullen trade,
Had seen the mice by moonlight play,
And why should I feel less than they?
We were all inmates of one place,
And I, the monarch of each race,
Had power to kill-yet, strange to tell!
In quiet we had learned to dwell;
My very chains and I grew friends,
So much a long communion tends
To make us what we are:-even I
Regained my freedom with a sigh.

FROM CHILDE HAROLD WATERLOO. FROM CANTO III* 21

There was a sound of revelry by night,
And Belgium's capital had gathered then
Her Beauty and her Chivalry, and bright
The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave

men;

A thousand hearts beat happily; and when
Music arose with its voluptuous swell,
Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again,
And all went merry as a marriage-bell;

But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell!

Three days before the battle of Waterloo, on the eve of the battle of Quatre-Bras, the Duchess of Richmond gave a ball in Brussels, which was attended by Wellington and other British officers.

quell;

He rushed into the field, and, foremost fighting, fell.

24

Ah! then and there was hurrying to and fro, And gathering tears, and tremblings of distress, And cheeks all pale, which but an hour ago Blushed at the praise of their own loveliness; And there were sudden partings, such as press The life from out young hearts, and choking

And there was mounting in hot haste: the steed,
The mustering squadron, and the clattering car,
Went pouring forward with impetuous speed,
And swiftly forming in the ranks of war;
And the deep thunder peal on peal afar;
And near, the beat of the alarming drum
Roused up the soldier ere the morning star;
While thronged the citizens with terror dumb,
Or whispering, with white lips-"The foe,
they come! they come!"'

1 The Duke of Brunswick, nephew of George III. His father was killed at Auerstädt in 1806.

eron clan.

3 Scotland's

That I with stern delights should e'ei have been so moved.

86

It is the hush of night, and all between
Thy margin and the mountains, dusk, yet clear
Mellowed and mingling, yet distinctly seen,
Save darkened Jura, whose capt heights appear
Precipitously steep; and drawing near,
There breathes a living fragrance from the
shore,

Of flowers yet fresh with childhood; on the ear
Drops the light drip of the suspended oar,
Or chirps the grasshopper one good-night
carol more;

87

He is an evening reveller, who makes
His life an infancy, and sings his fill;
At intervals, some bird from out the brakes
Starts into voice a moment, then is still.
There seems a floating whisper on the hill,
But that is fancy, for the starlight dews
All silently their tears of love instil,
Weeping themselves away, till they infuse
Deep into nature's breast the spirit of her
hues.

88

Ye stars! which are the poetry of heaven!
If in your bright leaves we would read the fate
Of men and empires,-'tis to be forgiven,
That in our aspirations to be great,
Our destinies o'erleap their mortal state,
And claim a kindred with you; for ye are
A beauty and a mystery, and create
In us such love and reverence from afar,
That fortune, fame, power, life, have named
themselves a star.

89

All heaven and earth are still-though not in sleep,

But breathless, as we grow when feeling most;
And silent, as we stand in thoughts too deep:-
All heaven and earth are still: From the high
host

Of stars, to the lulled lake and mountain coast,
All is concentered in a life intense,
Where not a beam, nor air, nor leaf is lost,
But hath a part of being, and a sense

Of that which is of all Creator and defence. 90

Then stirs the feeling infinite, so felt
In solitude, where we are least alone;

against Cromwell).

5 A forest, properly Soignies.

6 The Lake of Geneva (Latin Lemannus).

melt,

And purifies from self: it is a tone,

Eternal harmony, and sheds a charm
Like to the fabled Cytherea's zone,7

Binding all things with beauty:-'t would dis

arm

The spectre Death, had he substantial power to harm.

91

Not vainly did the early Persian make
His altar the high places, and the peak
Of earth-o'ergazing mountains, and thus take
A fit and unwalled temple, there to seek
The Spirit, in whose honour shrines are weak,
Upreared of human hands. Come, and compare
Columns and idol-dwellings, Goth or Greek,
With Nature's realms of worship, earth and air,
Nor fix on fond abodes to circumscribe thy
prayer!

92

The sky is changed!—and such a change! Oh night,

parted:

The morn is up again, the dewy morn, With breath all incense, and with cheek all bloom,

thwarted,

Love was the very root of the fond rage

7 The cestus of Venus, which inspired Love.

And living as if earth contained no tomb,—
And glowing into day: we may resume
The march of our existence: and thus I,

With the Rialto;6 Shylock and the Moor,7

VENICE. FROM CANTO IV

1

I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs;1
A palace and a prison on each hand:

I saw from out the wave her structures rise
As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand:
A thousand years their cloudy wings expand
Around me,2 and a dying Glory smiles
O'er the far times, when many a subject land
Looked to the winged Lion's3 marble piles,
Where Venice sate in state, throned on her
hundred isles!

2

She looks a sea Cybele, fresh from ocean,
Rising with her tiara of proud towers
At airy distance, with majestic motion,
A ruler of the waters and their powers;
And such she was;-her daughters had their

dowers

From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East

Poured in her lap all gems in sparkling showers. In purple was she robed, and of her feast Monarchs partook, and deemed their dignity increased.

3

In Venice Tasso's echoes are no more,5
And silent rows the songless gondolier;
Her palaces are crumbling to the shore,
And music meets not always now the ear:
Those days are gone-but Beauty still is here.
States fall, arts fade-but Nature doth not die,
Nor yet forget how Venice once was dear,
The pleasant place of all festivity,

The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy! 4

But unto us she hath a spell beyond
Her name in story, and her long array
Of mighty shadows, whose dim forms despond
Above the dogeless city's vanished sway;

1 The gallery spanning the canal between the ducal palace and the prison.

2 See note on Wordsworth's sonnet, p. 427. 3 The Lion of St. Mark, surmounting one of the two pillars in the square in front of the palace. The Lion was also the standard of the republic; see st. 14.

4 In ancient art, the goddess Cybele wore a turreted crown.

5 Stanzas of Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered were once sung by the gondoliers.

o'er,

For us repeopled were the solitary shore.

5

The beings of the mind are not of clay;
Essentially immortal,. they create
And multiply in us a brighter ray

And more beloved existence: that which Fate
Prohibits to dull life, in this our state
Of mortal bondage, by these spirits supplied,
First exiles, then replaces what we hate;
Watering the heart whose early flowers have
died,

And with a fresher growth replenishing the void.

13

Before St. Mark still glow his Steeds of brass,
Their gilded collars glittering in the sun;
But is not Doria's menace come to pass?9
Are they not bridled?—Venice, lost and won,
Her thirteen hundred years of freedom done,
Sinks, like a sea-weed, into whence she rose!
Better be whelmed beneath the waves, and shun,
Even in destruction's depth, her foreign foes,
From whom submission wrings an infamous

repose.

14

In youth she was all glory, a new Tyre,
Her very by-word sprung from victory,
The "Planter of the Lion," which through fire
And blood she bore o'er subject earth and sea;
Though making many slaves, herself still free,
And Europe's bulwark 'gainst the Ottomite ;-
Witness Troy's rival, Candia! 10 Vouch it, ye
Immortal waves that saw Lepanto's fight!11

For ye are names no time nor tyranny can blight.

15

Statues of glass-all shivered-the long file
Of her dead Doges are declined to dust;
But where they dwelt, the vast and sumptuous
pile

Bespeaks the pageant of their splendid trust;
6 Here evidently meaning the Bridge of the Rialto
across the Grand Canal.
7 Othello

8 A character in Otway's Venice Preserved. 9 This Genoese admiral once threatened to put a bridle on the bronze steeds that adorn St. Mark's.

10 Crete. once possessed by Venice, but lost again to the Turks.

11 The battle of Lepanto. 1571, a victory over the Turks in which Venice took a leading part.