From thee in all their vigor came
My arm of strength, my soul of flame-
Thou didst not give me life alone,
But all that made me more thine own.
See what thy guilty love hath done!
Repaid thee with too like a son!
I am no bastard in my soul,

For that, like thine, abhorr'd control;
And for my breath, that hasty boon
Thou gav'st and wilt resume so soon,
I valued it no more than thou,
When rose thy casque above thy brow,
And we, all side by side, have striven,
And o'er the dead our coursers driven :
The past is nothing-and at last
The future can but be the past;
Yet would I that I then had died:

For though thou work'dst my mother's ill, And made thy own my destined bride,

I feel thou art my father still;
And, harsh as sounds thy hard decree,
"Tis not unjust, although from thee.
Begot in sin, to die in shame,
My life begun and ends the same:
As err'd the sire, so err'd the son,
And thou must punish both in one.
My crime seems worst to human view,
But God must judge between us too!"

XIV.

He ceased-and stood with folded arms,
On which the circling fetters sounded;
And not an ear but felt as wounded,
Of all the chiefs that there were rank'd,
When those dull chains in meeting clank'd,
Till Parisina's fatal charms

Again attracted every eye

Would she thus hear him doom'd to die!
She stood, I said, all pale and still,
The living cause of Hugo's ill:
Her eyes unmoved, but full and wide,
Not once had turn'd to either side-
Nor once did those sweet eyelids close,
Or shade the glance o'er which they rose,
But round their orbs of deepest blue
The circling white dilated grew-
And there with glassy gaze she stood
As ice were in her curdled blood;
But every now and then a tear

So large and slowly gather'd slid

From the long dark fringe of that fair lid,

It was a thing to see, not hear!
And those who saw, it did surprise,
Such drops could fall from human eyes.

To speak she thought-the imperfect note
Was choked within her swelling throat,
Yet seem'd in that low hollow groan
Her whole heart gushing in the tone.
It ceased-again she thought to speak,
Then burst her voice in one long shriek,
And to the earth she fell like stone
Or statue from its base o'erthrown,
More like a thing that ne'er had life-
A monument of Azo's wife,-
Than her, that living guilty thing,
Whose every passion was a sting,

Which urged to guilt, but could not bear
That guilt's detection and despair.

But yet she lived-and all too soon
Recover'd from that death-like swoon-
But scarce to reason-every sense
Had been o'erstrung by pangs intense;
And each frail fibre of her brain
(As bowstrings, when relax'd by rain,
The erring arrows launch aside)
Sent forth her thoughts all wild and wide-
The past a blank, the future black,
With glimpses of a dreary track,
Like lightning on the desert path,
When midnight storms are mustering wrath.
She fear'd-she felt that something ill
Lay on her soul, so deep and chill-
That there was sin and shame she knew:
That some one was to die-but who?
She had forgotten ;-did she breathe?
Could this be still the earth beneath,
The sky above, and men around;

Or were they fiends who now so frown'd
On one, before whose eyes each eye
Till then had smiled in sympathy?
All was confused and undefined

To her all-jarr'd and wandering mind;
A chaos of wild hopes and fears:
And now in laughter, now in tears,
But madly still in each extreme,
She strove with that convulsive dream;
For so it seem'd on her to break;
Oh! vainly must she strive to wake!
XV.

The Convent bells are ringing,
But mournfully and slow;
In the gray square turret swinging,
With a deep sound, to and fro.
Heavily to the heart they go!
Hark! the hymn is singing-
The song for the dead below,

Or the living who shortly shall be so!

For a departing being's soul

The death-hymn peals and the hollow bells knoll
He is near his mortal goal;
Kneeling at the Friar's knee;

Sad to hear-and piteous to see-
Kneeling on the bare cold ground,

With the block before and the guards around

And the headsman with his bare arm ready,
That the blow may be both swift and steady,
Feels if the axe be sharp and true-
Since he set its edge anew:

While the crowd in a speechless circle gather
To see the Son fall by the doom of the Father!

XVI.

It is a lovely hour as yet

Before the summer sun shall set,
Which rose upon that heavy day,
And mock'd it with his steadiest ray;
And his evening beams are shed
Full on Hugo's fated head,
As his last confession pouring
To the monk, his doom deploring
In penitential holiness,

He bends to hear his accents bless
With absolution such as may

Wipe our mortal stains away.

That high sun on his head did glisten,

As he there did bow and listen

And the rings of chestnut hair
Curl'd half down his neck so bare;
But brighter still the beam was thrown
Upon the axe which near him shone
With a clear and ghastly glitter-
Oh! that parting hour was bitter!
Even the stern stood chill'd with awe:
Dark the crime, and just the law-
Yet they shudder'd as they saw.

XVII.

The parting prayers are said and over
Of that false son-and daring lover!
His beads and sins are all recounted,
His hours to their last minute mounted-
His mantling cloak before was stripp'd,
His bright brown locks must now be clipp'd:
"Tis done all closely are they shorn-
The vest which till this moment worn-
The scarf which Parisina gave-
Must not adorn him to the grave.
Even that must now be thrown aside,
And o'er his eyes the kerchief tied;
But no-that last indignity

Shall ne'er approach his haughty eye.
All feelings seemingly subdued,
In deep disdain were half renew'd,
When headsman's hands prepared to bind
Those eyes which would not brook such blind;
As if they dared not look on death.
"No-yours my forfeit blood and breath-
These hands are chain'd-but let me die
At least with an unshackled eye-
Strike: "-and as the word he said,
Upon the block he bow'd his head;
These the last accents Hugo spoke-
"Strike "-and flashing fell the stroke-
Roll'd the head-and, gushing, sunk
Back the stain'd and heaving trunk
In the dust, which each deep vein
Slaked with its ensanguined rain;
His eyes and lips a moment quiver,
Convulsed and quick-then fix for ever.
He died as erring man should die,

Without display, without parade;
Meekly had he bow'd and pray'd,
As not disdaining priestly aid,

Nor desperate of all hope on high.
And while before the Prior kneeling,

His heart was wean'd from earthly feeling;
His wrathful sire-his paramour-
What were they in such an hour?
No more reproach-no more despair;

No thought but heaven-no word but prayer-
Save the few which from him broke,
When, bared to meet the headsman's stroke,
He claim'd to die with eyes unbound,
His sole adieu to those around.

XVIII.

Still as the lips that closed in death,
Each gazer's bosom held his breath;
But yet, afar, from man to man,
A cold electric shiver ran,
As down the deadly blow descended
On him whose life and love thus ended,
And with a hushing sound comprest,
A sigh shrunk back on every breast;

But no more thrilling noise rose there

Beyond the blow that to the block
Pierced through with forced and sullen shock,
Save one-what cleaves the silent air

So madly shrill, so passing wild?
That, as a mother's o'er her child,
Done to death by sudden blow,
To the sky these accents go,
Like a soul's in endless wo.
Through Azo's palace-lattice driven,
That horrid voice ascends to heaven,
And every eye is turn'd thereon;
But sound and sight alike are gone!
It was a woman's shriek-and ne'er
In madlier accents rase despair;
And those who heard it, as it past,
In mercy wish'd it were the last.

XIX.

Hugo is fallen; and, from that hour,
No more in palace, hall, or bower,
Was Parisina heard or seen :

Her name as if she ne'er had been-
Was banish'd from each lip and ear,
Like words of wantonness or fear;
And from Prince Azo's voice by none
Was mention heard of wife or son;
No tomb-no memory had they;
Theirs was unconsecrated clay;
At least the knight's who died that day,
But Parisina's fate lies hid

Like dust beneath the coffin lid:
Whether in convent she abode,

And won to heaven her dreary road,
By blighted and remorseful years

Of scourge, and fast, and sleepless tears;
Or if she fell by bowl or steel,

For that dark love she dared to feel;

Or if, upon the moment smote,

She died by tortures less remote;

Like him she saw upon the block,

With heart that shared the headsman's shock,

In quicken'd brokenness that came,

In pity, o'er her shatter'd frame,

None knew-and none can ever know:

But whatsoe'er its end below,

Her life began and closed in wo! 3

XX.

And Azo found another bride,
And goodly sons grew by his side;
But none so lovely and so brave
As him who wither'd in the grave;
Or if they were on his cold eye
Their growth but glanced unheeded by,
Or noticed with a smother'd sigh.
But never tear his cheek descended,

And never smile his brow unbended,

And o'er that fair broad brow were wrought

The intersected lines of thought;
Those furrows which the burning share
Of Sorrow ploughs untimely there;
Scars of the lacerating mind

Which the Soul's war doth leave behind.
He was pass'd all mirth or wo:
Nothing more remain'd below
But sleepless nights and heavy days,
A mind all dead to scorn or praise,

SONNET ON CHILLON.

(ETERNAL spirit of the chainless mind!

Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art, For there thy habitation is the heartThe heart which love of thee alone can bind; And when thy sons to fetters are consign'dTo fetters, and the damp vault's dayless gloom, Their country conquers with their martyrdom, And Freedom's fame finds wings on every wind. Chillon! thy prison is a holy place,

And thy sad floor an altar-for 'twas trod, Until his very steps have left a trace

Worn, as if thy cold pavement were a sod, By Bonnivard! May none those marks efface! For they appeal from tyranny to God.

I.

My hair is gray, but not with years, Nor grew it white

In a single night,*

As men's have grown from sudden fears: My limbs are bow'd, though not with toil, But rusted with a vile repose, For they have been a dungeon's spoil, And mine has been the fate of those To whom the goodly earth and air Are bann'd, and barr'd-forbidden fare; But this was for my father's faith I suffer'd chains and courted death; That father perish'd at the stake Fortenets he would not forsake; And for the same his lineal race In darkness found a dwelling-place; We were seven-who now are one, Six in youth and one in age, Finish'd as they had begun, Proud of Persecution's rage; One in fire, and two in field, Their belief with blood have seal'd: Dying as their father died, For the God their foes denied ; Three were in a dungeon cast,

Of whom this wreck is left the last.

II.

There are seven pillars of gothic mould,
In Chillon's dungeons deep and old,
There are seven columns, massy and gray,
Dim with a dull imprison'd ray,
A sunbeam which hath lost its way,
And through the crevice and the cleft
Of the thick wall is fallen and left;
Creeping o'er the floor so damp,
Like a marsh's meteor lamp;
And in each pillar there is a ring,
And in each ring there is a chain;
That iron is a cankering thing,

For in these limbs its teeth remain,
With marks that will not wear away,
Till I have done with this new day,
Which now is painful to these eyes,
Which have not seen the sun so rise
For years-I cannot count them o'er,
I lost their long and heavy score
When my last brother droop'd and died,
And I lay living by his side.

III.

They chain'd us each to a column stone,
And we were three-yet, each alone;
We could not move a single pace,
We could not see each other's face,
But with that pale and livid light
That made us strangers in our sight,
And thus together-yet apart,
Fetter'd in hand, but pined in heart;
'Twas still some solace, in the dearth
Of the pure elements of earth,
To hearken to each other's speech,
And each turn comforter to each
With some new hope, or legend old,
Or song heroically bold;
But even these at length grew cold.
Our voices took a dreary tone,
An echo of the dungeon-stone,
A grating sound-not full and free
As they of yore were wont to be;
It might be fancy-but to me
They never sounded like our own.