by Byron
975
In one wild roar expired!
The shatter’d town – the walls thrown down –
The waves a moment backward bent –
The hills that shake, although unrent,
As if an earthquake pass’d –
980
The thousand shapeless things all driven
In cloud and flame athwart the heaven,
By that tremendous blast –
Proclaim’d the desperate conflict o’er
On that too long afflicted shore:
985
Up to the sky like rockets go
All that mingled there below:
Many a tall and goodly man,
Scorch’d and shrivell’d to a span,
When he fell to earth again
990
Like a cinder strew’d the plain:
Down the ashes shower like rain;
Some fell in the gulf, which received the sprinkles
With a thousand circling wrinkles;
Some fell on the shore, but, far away,
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Scatter’d o’er the isthmus lay;
Christian or Moslem, which be they?
Let their mothers see and say!
When in cradled rest they lay,
And each nursing mother smiled
1000
On the sweet sleep of her child,
Little deem’d she such a day
Would rend those tender limbs away.
Not the matrons that them bore
Could discern their offspring more;
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That one moment left no trace
More of human form or face
Save a scatter’d scalp or bone:
And down came blazing rafters, strown
Around, and many a falling stone,
1010
Deeply dinted in the clay,
All blacken’d there and reeking lay.
All the living things that heard
That deadly earth-shock disappear’d:
The wild birds flew; the wild dogs fled,
1015
And howling left the unburied dead;
The camels from their keepers broke;
The distant steer forsook the yoke –
The nearer steed plunged o’er the plain,
And burst his girth, and tore his rein; ’
1020
The bull-frog’s note, from out the marsh,
Deep-mouth’d arose, and doubly harsh;
The wolves yell’d on the cavern’d hill
Where echo roll’d in thunder still;
The jackal’s troop, in gather’d cry,1
1025
Bay’d from afar complainingly,
With a mix’d and mournful sound,
Like crying babe, and beaten hound:
With sudden wing, and ruffled breast,
The eagle left his rocky nest,
1030
And mounted nearer to the sun,
The clouds beneath him seem’d so dun;
Their smoke assail’d his startled beak,
And made him higher soar and shriek –
Thus was Corinth lost and won!
When we two parted
When we two parted
In silence and tears,
Half brokenhearted
To sever for years,
5
Pale grew thy cheek and cold,
Colder thy kiss;
Truly that hour foretold
Sorrow to this.
The dew of the morning
10
Sunk chill on my brow –
It felt like the warning
Of what I feel now.
Thy vows are all broken,
And light is thy fame;
15
I hear thy name spoken,
And share in its shame.
They name thee before me,
A knell to mine ear;
A shudder comes o’er me –
20
Why wert thou so dear?
They know not I knew thee,
Who knew thee too well: –
Long, long shall I rue thee,
Too deeply to tell.
25
In secret we met –
In silence I grieve,
That thy heart could forget,
Thy spirit deceive.
If I should meet thee
30
After long years,
How should I greet thee? –
With silence and tears.
1808.
Fare thee well!
‘Alas! they had been friends in Youth;
But whispering tongues can poison truth;
And constancy lives in realms above;
And Life is thorny; and youth is vain:
And to be wroth with one we love,
Doth work like madness in the brain;
*
But never either found another
To free the hollow heart from paining –
They stood aloof, the scars remaining,
Like cliffs, which had been rent asunder;
A dreary sea now flows between,
But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder
Shall wholly do away, I ween,
The marks of that which once hath been.’
COLERIDGE’S Christabel.
Fare thee well! and if for ever,
Still for ever, fare thee well:
Even though unforgiving, never
‘Gainst thee shall my heart rebel.
5
Would that breast were bared before thee
Where thy head so oft hath lain,
While that placid sleep came o’er thee
Which thou ne’er canst know again:
Would that breast, by thee glanced over,
10
Every inmost thought could show!
Then thou would’st at last discover
’Twas not well to spurn it so.
Though the world for this commend thee –
Though it smile upon the blow,
15
Even its praises must offend thee,
Founded on another’s woe:
Though my many faults defaced me,
Could no other arm be found,
Than the one which once embraced me,
20
To inflict a cureless wound?
Yet, oh yet, thyself deceive not;
Love may sink by slow decay,
But by sudden wrench, believe not
Hearts can thus be torn away:
25
Still thine own its life retaineth —
Still must mine, though bleeding, beat;
And the undying thought which paineth
Is — that we no more may meet.
These are words of deeper sorrow
30
Than the wail above the dead;
Both shall live, but every morrow
Wake us from a widow’d bed.
And when thou would solace gather,
When our child’s first accents flow,
35
Wilt thou teach her to say ‘Father!’
Though his care she must forego?
When her little hands shall press thee,
When her lip to thine is press’d,
Think of him whose prayer shall bless thee,
40
Think of him thy love had bless’d!
Should her lineaments resemble
Those thou never more may’st see,
Then thy heart will softly tremble
With a pulse yet true to me.
45
All my faults perchance thou knowest,
All my madness none can know;
All my hopes, where’er thou goest,
Wither, yet with thee they go.
Every feeling hath been shaken;
50
Pride, which not a world could bow,
Bows to thee — by thee forsaken,
Even my soul forsakes me now:
But ’tis done — all words are idle —
Words from me are vainer still;
55
But the thoughts we cannot bridle
Force their way without the will. —
Fare thee well! — thus disunited,
Torn from every nearer tie,
Sear’d in heart, and lone, and blighted,
60
More than this I scarce can die.
March 17, 1816.
Prometheus
I
Titan! to whose immortal eyes
The sufferings of mortality,
Seen in their sad reality,
Were not as things that gods despise;
5
What was thy pity’s recompense?
A silent suffering, and intense;
The rock, the vulture, and the chain,
All that the proud can feel of pain,
The agony they do not show,
10
The suffocating sense of woe,
Which speaks but in its loneliness,
And then is jealous lest the sky
Should have a listener, nor will sigh
Until its voice is echoless.
II
15
Titan! to thee the strife was given
Between the suffering and the will,
Which torture where they cannot kill;
And the inexorable Heaven,
And the deaf tyranny of Fate,
20
The ruling principle of Hate.
Which for its pleasure doth create
The things it may annihilate,
Refused thee even the boon to die:
The wretched gift eternity
25
Was thine – and thou hast borne it well.
All that the Thunderer wrung from thee
Was but the menace which flung back
On him the torments of thy rack;
The fate thou didst so well foresee,
30
But would not to appease him tell;
And in thy Silence was his Sentence,
And in his Soul a vain repentance,
And evil dread so ill dissembled
That in his hand the lightnings trembled.
III
35
Thy Godlike crime was to be kind,
To render with thy precepts less
The sum of human wretchedness,
And strengthen Man with his own mind;
But baffled as thou wert from high,
40
Still in thy patient energy,
In the endurance, and repulse
Of thine impenetrable Spirit,
Which Earth and Heaven could not convulse,
A mighty lesson we inherit:
45
Thou art a symbol and a sign
To Mortals of their fate and force;
Like thee, Man is in part divine,
A troubled stream from a pure source;
And Man in portions can foresee
50
His own funereal destiny;
His wretchedness, and his resistance,
And his sad unallied existence:
To which his Spirit may oppose
Itself — and equal to all woes,
55
And a firm will, and a deep sense,
Which even in torture can descry
Its own concenter’d recompense,
Triumphant where it dares defy,
And making Death a Victory.
Diodati, July, 1816.
THE PRISONER OF CHILLON
A Fable
Sonnet on Chillon
Eternal Spirit of the chainless Mind!
Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art,
For there thy habitation is the heart —
The heart which love of thee alone can bind;
5
And when thy sons to fetters are consign’d —
To 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,
10
And thy sad floor an altar — for ’twas trod,
Worn, as if thy cold pavement were a sod,
B Bonnivard! — May none those marks efface!
Until his very steps have left a trace
For they appeal from tyranny to God.
When this poem was composed, I was not sufficiently aware of the history of Bonnivard, or I should have endeavoured to dignify the subject by an attempt to celebrate his courage and his virtues. With some account of his life I have been furnished, by the kindness of a citizen of that republic, which is still proud of the memory of a man worthy of the best age of ancient freedom: —
‘François de Bonnivard, fils de Louis de Bonnivard, originaire de Seyssel et Seigneur de Lunes, naquit en 1496. Il fit ses études à Turin: en 1510 Jean Aimé de Bonnivard, son oncle, lui résigna le Prieuré de St Victor, qui aboutissoit aux murs de Genève, et qui formoit un bénéfice considérable.
‘Ce grand homme — (Bonnivard mérite ce titre par la force de son âme, la droiture de son cœur, la noblesse de ses intentions, la sagesse de ses conseils, le courage de ses démarches, I’étendue de ses connaissances et la vivacité de son esprit), – ce grand homme, qui excitera I’admiration de tous ceux qu’une vertu héroïque peut encore émouvoir, inspirera encore la plus vive reconnaissance dans les cœurs des Génévois qui aiment Genève. Bonnivard en fut toujours un des plus fermes appuis: pour assurer la liberté de notre République, il ne craignit pas de perdre souvent la sienne; il oublia son repos; il méprisa ses richesses; il ne négligea rien pour affermir le bonheur d’une patrie qu’il honora de son choix: ds ce moment il la chérit comme le plus zélé de ses citoyens; il la servit avec l’intrépidité d’un héros, et il écrivit son Histoire avec la naïeté d’un philosophe et la chaleur d’un patriote.
‘Il dit dans le commencement de son Histoire de Genève, que, dès qu’il eut commencé de lire l’histoire des nations, il se sentit entraîné par son goût pour les Républiques, dont il épousa toujours les intérêts: c’est ce goût pour la liberté qui lui fit sans doute adopter Genève pour sa patrie.
‘Bonnivard, encore jeune, s’annonça hautement comme le défenseur de Genève contre le Duc de Savoye et l’Evêque.
‘En 1519, Bonnivard devient le martyr de sa patrie. Le Duc de Savoye étant entré dans Genève avec cinq cent hommes, Bonnivard craint le ressentiment du Duc; il voulut se retirer á Fribourg pour en éviter les suites; mais il fut trahi par deux hommes qui l’accompagnoient, et conduit par ordre du Prince á Grolée, oú il resta prisonnier pendant deux ans. Bonnivard etoit malheureux dans ses voyages: comme ses malheurs n’avoient point ralenti son zèle pour Genève, il etoit toujours un ennemi redoutable pour ceux qui la menaçoient, et par conséquent il devait être exposé á leurs coups. Il fut rencontré en 1530 sur le Jura par des voleurs, qui le dépouillèrent et qui le mirent encore entre les mains du Duc de Savoye: ce Prince le fit enfermer dans le Château de Chillon, oú il resta sans être interrogé jusques en 1536; il fut alors delivré par les Bernois, qui s’emparèrent du Pays de Vaud.
‘Bonnivard, en sortant de sa captivité, eut le plaisir de trouver Genève libre et réformée: la République s’empressa de lui témoigner sa reconnaissance, et de le dédommager des maux qu’il avoit soufferts; elle le reçut Bourgeois de la ville au mois de Juin, 1536; elle lui donna la maison habitée autrefois par le Vicaire-Général, et elle lui assigna une pension de deux cent écus d’or tant qu’il séjourneroit à Genève. Il fut admis dans le Conseil de Deux-Cent en 1537.
‘Bnnivard n’a pas fini d’être utile: après avoir travaillé à rendre Genève libre, il réussit à la rendre tolérante. Bonnivard engagea le Conseil à accorder aux Ecclésiastiques et aux paysans un tems suffisant pour examiner les propositions qu’on leur faisoit;
il réussit par sa douceur: on prêche toujours le Christianisme avec succès quand on le prêche avec charité.
‘Bonnivard fut savant: ses manuscrits, qui sont dans la Bibliothèque publique, prouvent qu’il avoit bien lu les auteurs classiques Latins, et qu’il avoit approfondi la théologie et l’histoire. Ce grand homme aimoit les sciences, et il croyoit qu’elles pouvoient faire la gloire de Genève; aussi il ne négligea rien pour les fixer dans cette ville naissante; en 1551 il donna sa bibliothéque au public; elle fut le commencement de notre biblothéque publique; et ces livres sont en partie les rares et belles éditions du quinzième siècle qu’on voit dans notre collection. Enfin, pendant la même année, ce bon patriote institua la République son héritière, à condition qu’elle employeroit ses biens à entretenir le collège dont on projettoit la fondation.
‘Il paroit que Bonnivard mourut en 1570; mais on ne peut l’assurer, parcequ’il y a une lacune dans le Nécrologe depuis le mois de Juillet, 1570, jusques en 1571.’
THE PRISONER OF CHILLON
I
My hair is grey, but not with years,
Nor grew it white
In a single night,1
As men’s have grown from sudden fears:
5
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
10
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
For tenets he would not forsake;
15
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,
20
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; —
25
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 grey,
30
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,
35
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,