I know not if it late were free,
Or broke its cage to perch on mine,
But knowing well captivity,
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 smile- I sometimes deem'd 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, I know not what had made them so, They were inured to sights of woe, But so it was:-my broken chain With links unfasten'd 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 crush'd 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 barr'd 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 channell❜d rock and broken bush; I saw the white-wall'd 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;
A small green isle, it seem'd no more, Scarce broader than my dungeon floor, But in it there were three tall trees, And o'er it blew the mountain breeze, And by it there were waters flowing, And on it there were young flowers growing, Of gentle breath and hue.
The fish swam by the castle wall, And they seem'd joyous each and all; The eagle rode the rising blast, Methought he never flew so fast As then to me he seem'd to fly, And then new tears came in my eye, And I felt troubled-and would fain 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 ask'd not why, and reck'd not where, It was at length the same to me, Fetter'd or fetterless to be,
I learn'd to love despair.
And thus when they appear'd at last, And all my bonds aside were cast,
*Between the entrances of the Rhone and Villeneuve, not far from Chillon, is a very small island; the only one I could perceive, in my voyage round and over the lake, within its circumference. It contains a few trees (I think not above three), and from its singleness and diminutive size has a peculiar effect upon the view.
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 watch'd 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 learn'd to dwell- My very chains and I grew friends, So much a long communion tends To make us what we are:-even I Regain'd my freedom with a sigh.
OUR life is twofold: Sleep hath its own world, A boundary between the things misnamed Death and existence: Sleep hath its own world, And a wide realm of wild reality,
And dreams in their development have breath, And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy; They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts, They take a weight from off our waking toils, They do divide our being; they become A portion of ourselves as of our time, And look like heralds of eternity;
They pass like spirits of the past-they speak Like sibyls of the future; they have power- The tyranny of pleasure and of pain;
They make us what we were not-what they will, And shake us with the vision that's gone by, The dread of vanish'd shadows-Are they so? Is not the past all shadow? What are they? Creations of the mind?-The mind can make Substance, and people planets of its own With beings brighter than have been, and give A breath to forms which can outlive all flesh. I would recall a vision which I dream'd Perchance in sleep-for in itself a thought, A slumbering thought, is capable of years, And curdles a long life into one hour.
I saw two beings in the hues of youth Standing upon a hill, a gentle hill, Green and of mild declivity, the last As 'twere the cape of a long ridge of such, Save that there was no sea to lave its base, But a most living landscape, and the wave Of woods and cornfields, and the abodes of men Scatter'd at intervals, and wreathing smoke Arising from such rustic roofs;-the hill Was crown'd with a peculiar diadem Of trees, in circular array, so fix'd, Not by the sport of nature, but of man:
These two, a maiden and a youth, were there Gazing-the one on all that was beneath Fair as herself-but the boy gazed on her; Aud both were young, and one was beautiful: And both were young-yet not alike in youth. As the sweet moon on the horizon's verge, The maid was on the eve of womanhood; The boy had fewer summers, but his heart Had far outgrown his years, and to his eye There was but one beloved face on earth, And that was shining on him; he had look'd Upon it till it could not pass away; He had no breath, no being, but in hers: She was his voice; he did not speak to her, But trembled on her words: she was his sight, For his eye follow'd hers, and saw with hers, Which colour'd all his objects :-he had ceased To live within himself; she was his life, The ocean to the river of his thoughts, Which terminated all: upon a tone,
A touch of hers, his blood would ebb and flow, And his cheek change tempestuously-his heart Unknowing of its cause of agony.
But she in these fond feelings had no share: Her sighs were not for him; to her he was Even as a brother-but no more; 'twas much, For brotherless she was, save in the name Her infant friendship had bestow'd on him: Herself the solitary scion left
Of a time-honour'd race.-It was a name
Which pleased him, and yet pleased him not-and why? Time taught him a deep answer-when she loved
Another; even now she loved another,
And on the summit of that hill she stood Looking afar if yet her lover's steed Kept pace with her expectancy, and flew.
A change came o'er the spirit of my dream. There was an ancient mansion, and before Its walls there was a steed caparison'd: Within an antique Oratory stood
The Boy of whom I spake ;-he was alone, And pale, and pacing to and fro: anon
He sate him down, and seized a pen, and traced Words which I could not guess of; then he lean'd His bow'd head on his hands, and shook as 'twere With a convulsion-then rose again,
And with his teeth and quivering hands did tear What he had written, but he shed no tears. And he did calm himself, and fix his brow Into a kind of quiet: as he paused,
The Lady of his love re-enter'd there; She was serene and smiling then, and yet
She knew she was by him beloved;-she knew—
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