The Revolt of Islam. A Poem in Twelve Cantos.
Canto Fifth


                 I
     OVER the utmost hill at length I sped,
     A snowy steep:--the moon was hanging low
     Over the Asian mountains, and, outspread
     The plain, the City, and the Camp below,
     Skirted the midnight Ocean's glimmering flow;
     The City's moon-lit spires and myriad lamps
     Like stars in a sublunar sky did glow,
     And fires blazed far amid the scattered camps,
   Like springs of flame which burst where'er swift Earthquake stamps.

                 II
     All slept but those in watchful arms who stood,
     And those who sate tending the beacon's light;
     And the few sounds from that vast multitude
     Made silence more profound. Oh, what a might
     Of human thought was cradled in that night!
     How many hearts impenetrably veiled
     Beat underneath its shade! what secret fight
     Evil and Good, in woven passions mailed,
   Waged through that silent throng--a war that never failed!

                 III
     And now the Power of Good held victory.
     So, through the labyrinth of many a tent,
     Among the silent millions who did lie
     In innocent sleep, exultingly I went.
     The moon had left Heaven desert now, but lent
     From eastern morn the first faint lustre showed
     An armèd youth; over his spear he bent
     His downward face:--'A friend!' I cried aloud,
   And quickly common hopes made freemen understood.

                 IV
     I sate beside him while the morning beam
     Crept slowly over Heaven, and talked with him
     Of those immortal hopes, a glorious theme,
     Which led us forth, until the stars grew dim;
     And all the while methought his voice did swim,
     As if it drownèd in remembrance were
     Of thoughts which make the moist eyes overbrim;
     At last, when daylight 'gan to fill the air,
   He looked on me, and cried in wonder, 'Thou art here!'

                 V
     Then, suddenly, I knew it was the youth
     In whom its earliest hopes my spirit found;
     But envious tongues had stained his spotless truth,
     And thoughtless pride his love in silence bound,
     And shame and sorrow mine in toils had wound,
     Whilst he was innocent, and I deluded;
     The truth now came upon me--on the ground
     Tears of repenting joy, which fast intruded,
   Fell fast--and o'er its peace our mingling spirits brooded.

                 VI
     Thus, while with rapid lips and earnest eyes
     We talked, a sound of sweeping conflict, spread
     As from the earth, did suddenly arise.
     From every tent, roused by that clamor dread,
     Our bands outsprung and seized their arms; we sped
     Towards the sound; our tribes were gathering far.
     Those sanguine slaves, amid ten thousand dead
     Stabbed in their sleep, trampled in treacherous war
   The gentle hearts whose power their lives had sought to spare.

                 VII
     Like rabid snakes that sting some gentle child
     Who brings them food when winter false and fair
     Allures them forth with its cold smiles, so wild
     They rage among the camp; they overbear
     The patriot hosts--confusion, then despair,
     Descends like night--when 'Laon!' one did cry;
     Like a bright ghost from Heaven that shout did scare
     The slaves, and, widening through the vaulted sky,
   Seemed sent from Earth to Heaven in sign of victory.

                 VIII
     In sudden panic those false murderers fled,
     Like insect tribes before the northern gale;
     But swifter still our hosts encompassèd
     Their shattered ranks, and in a craggy vale,
     Where even their fierce despair might nought avail,
     Hemmed them around!--and then revenge and fear
     Made the high virtue of the patriots fail;
     One pointed on his foe the mortal spear--
   I rushed before its point, and cried 'Forbear, forbear!'

                 IX
     The spear transfixed my arm that was uplifted
     In swift expostulation, and the blood
     Gushed round its point; I smiled, and--'Oh! thou gifted
     With eloquence which shall not be withstood,
     Flow thus!' I cried in joy, 'thou vital flood,
     Until my heart be dry, ere thus the cause
     For which thou wert aught worthy be subdued!--
     Ah, ye are pale--ye weep--your passions pause--
   'T is well! ye feel the truth of love's benignant laws.

                 X
     'Soldiers, our brethren and our friends are slain;
     Ye murdered them, I think, as they did sleep!
     Alas, what have ye done? The slightest pain
     Which ye might suffer, there were eyes to weep,
     But ye have quenched them--there were smiles to steep
     Your hearts in balm, but they are lost in woe;
     And those whom love did set his watch to keep
     Around your tents truth's freedom to bestow,
   Ye stabbed as they did sleep--but they forgive ye now.

                 XI
     'Oh, wherefore should ill ever flow from ill,
     And pain still keener pain forever breed?
     We all are brethren--even the slaves who kill
     For hire are men; and to avenge misdeed
     On the misdoer doth but Misery feed
     With her own broken heart! O Earth, O Heaven!
     And thou, dread Nature, which to every deed
     And all that lives, or is, to be hath given,
   Even as to thee have these done ill, and are forgiven.

                 XII
     'Join then your hands and hearts, and let the past
     Be as a grave which gives not up its dead
     To evil thoughts.'--A film then overcast
     My sense with dimness, for the wound, which bled
     Freshly, swift shadows o'er mine eyes had shed.
     When I awoke, I lay 'mid friends and foes,
     And earnest countenances on me shed
     The light of questioning looks, whilst one did close
   My wound with balmiest herbs, and soothed me to repose;

                 XIII
     And one, whose spear had pierced me, leaned beside
     With quivering lips and humid eyes; and all
     Seemed like some brothers on a journey wide
     Gone forth, whom now strange meeting did befall
     In a strange land round one whom they might call
     Their friend, their chief, their father, for assay
     Of peril, which had saved them from the thrall
     Of death, now suffering. Thus the vast array
   Of those fraternal bands were reconciled that day.

                 XIV
     Lifting the thunder of their acclamation,
     Towards the City then the multitude,
     And I among them, went in joy--a nation
     Made free by love; a mighty brotherhood
     Linked by a jealous interchange of good;
     A glorious pageant, more magnificent
     Than kingly slaves arrayed in gold and blood,
     When they return from carnage, and are sent
   In triumph bright beneath the populous battlement.

                 XV
     Afar, the City walls were thronged on high,
     And myriads on each giddy turret clung,
     And to each spire far lessening in the sky
     Bright pennons on the idle winds were hung;
     As we approached, a shout of joyance sprung
     At once from all the crowd, as if the vast
     And peopled Earth its boundless skies among
     The sudden clamor of delight had cast,
   When from before its face some general wreck had passed.

                 XVI
     Our armies through the City's hundred gates
     Were poured, like brooks which to the rocky lair
     Of some deep lake, whose silence them awaits,
     Throng from the mountains when the storms are there;
     And, as we passed through the calm sunny air,
     A thousand flower-inwoven crowns were shed,
     The token-flowers of truth and freedom fair,
     And fairest hands bound them on many a head,
   Those angels of love's heaven that over all was spread.

                 XVII
     I trod as one tranced in some rapturous vision;
     Those bloody bands so lately reconciled,
     Were ever, as they went, by the contrition
     Of anger turned to love, from ill beguiled,
     And every one on them more gently smiled
     Because they had done evil; the sweet awe
     Of such mild looks made their own hearts grow mild,
     And did with soft attraction ever draw
   Their spirits to the love of freedom's equal law.

                 XVIII
     And they, and all, in one loud symphony
     My name with Liberty commingling lifted--
     'The friend and the preserver of the free!
     The parent of this joy!' and fair eyes, gifted
     With feelings caught from one who had uplifted
     The light of a great spirit, round me shone;
     And all the shapes of this grand scenery shifted
     Like restless clouds before the steadfast sun.
   Where was that Maid? I asked, but it was known of none.

                 XIX
     Laone was the name her love had chosen,
     For she was nameless, and her birth none knew.
     Where was Laone now?--The words were frozen
     Within my lips with fear; but to subdue
     Such dreadful hope to my great task was due,
     And when at length one brought reply that she
     To-morrow would appear, I then withdrew
     To judge what need for that great throng might be,
   For now the stars came thick over the twilight sea.

                 XX
     Yet need was none for rest or food to care,
     Even though that multitude was passing great,
     Since each one for the other did prepare
     All kindly succor. Therefore to the gate
     Of the Imperial House, now desolate,
     I passed, and there was found aghast, alone,
     The fallen Tyrant!--silently he sate
     Upon the footstool of his golden throne,
   Which, starred with sunny gems, in its own lustre shone.

                 XXI
     Alone, but for one child who led before him
     A graceful dance--the only living thing,
     Of all the crowd, which thither to adore him
     Flocked yesterday, who solace sought to bring
     In his abandonment; she knew the King
     Had praised her dance of yore, and now she wove
     Its circles, aye weeping and murmuring,
     'Mid her sad task of unregarded love,
   That to no smiles it might his speechless sadness move.

                 XXII
     She fled to him, and wildly clasped his feet
     When human steps were heard; he moved nor spoke,
     Nor changed his hue, nor raised his looks to meet
     The gaze of strangers. Our loud entrance woke
     The echoes of the hall, which circling broke
     The calm of its recesses; like a tomb
     Its sculptured walls vacantly to the stroke
     Of footfalls answered, and the twilight's gloom
   Lay like a charnel's mist within the radiant dome.

                 XXIII
     The little child stood up when we came nigh;
     Her lips and cheeks seemed very pale and wan,
     But on her forehead and within her eye
     Lay beauty which makes hearts that feed thereon
     Sick with excess of sweetness; on the throne
     She leaned; the King, with gathered brow and lips
     Wreathed by long scorn, did inly sneer and frown,
     With hue like that when some great painter dips
   His pencil in the gloom of earthquake and eclipse.

                 XXIV
     She stood beside him like a rainbow braided
     Within some storm, when scarce its shadows vast
     From the blue paths of the swift sun have faded;
     A sweet and solemn smile, like Cythna's, cast
     One moment's light, which made my heart beat fast,
     O'er that child's parted lips--a gleam of bliss,
     A shade of vanished days; as the tears passed
     Which wrapped it, even as with a father's kiss
   I pressed those softest eyes in trembling tenderness.

                 XXV
     The sceptred wretch then from that solitude
     I drew, and, of his change compassionate,
     With words of sadness soothed his rugged mood.
     But he, while pride and fear held deep debate,
     With sullen guile of ill-dissembled hate
     Glared on me as a toothless snake might glare;
     Pity, not scorn, I felt, though desolate
     The desolator now, and unaware
   The curses which he mocked had caught him by the hair.

                 XXVI
     I led him forth from that which now might seem
     A gorgeous grave; through portals sculptured deep
     With imagery beautiful as dream
     We went, and left the shades which tend on sleep
     Over its unregarded gold to keep
     Their silent watch. The child trod faintingly,
     And as she went, the tears which she did weep
     Glanced in the star-light; wilderèd seemed she,
   And, when I spake, for sobs she could not answer me.

                 XXVII
     At last the Tyrant cried, 'She hungers, slave!
     Stab her, or give her bread!'--It was a tone
     Such as sick fancies in a new-made grave
     Might hear. I trembled, for the truth was known,--
     He with this child had thus been left alone,
     And neither had gone forth for food, but he
     In mingled pride and awe cowered near his throne,
     And she, a nursling of captivity,
   Knew nought beyond those walls, nor what such change might be.

                 XXVIII
     And he was troubled at a charm withdrawn
     Thus suddenly--that sceptres ruled no more,
     That even from gold the dreadful strength was gone
     Which once made all things subject to its power;
     Such wonder seized him as if hour by hour
     The past had come again; and the swift fall
     Of one so great and terrible of yore
     To desolateness, in the hearts of all
   Like wonder stirred who saw such awful change befall.

                 XXIX
     A mighty crowd, such as the wide land pours
     Once in a thousand years, now gathered round
     The fallen Tyrant; like the rush of showers
     Of hail in spring, pattering along the ground,
     Their many footsteps fell--else came no sound
     From the wide multitude; that lonely man
     Then knew the burden of his change, and found,
     Concealing in the dust his visage wan,
   Refuge from the keen looks which through his bosom ran.

                 XXX
     And he was faint withal. I sate beside him
     Upon the earth, and took that child so fair
     From his weak arms, that ill might none betide him
     Or her; when food was brought to them, her share
     To his averted lips the child did bear,
     But, when she saw he had enough, she ate,
     And wept the while; the lonely man's despair
     Hunger then overcame, and, of his state
   Forgetful, on the dust as in a trance he sate.

                 XXXI
     Slowly the silence of the multitudes
     Passed, as when far is heard in some lone dell
     The gathering of a wind among the woods:
     'And he is fallen!' they cry, 'he who did dwell
     Like famine or the plague, or aught more fell,
     Among our homes, is fallen! the murderer
     Who slaked his thirsting soul, as from a well
     Of blood and tears, with ruin! he is here!
   Sunk in a gulf of scorn from which none may him rear!'

                 XXXII
     Then was heard--'He who judged, let him be brought
     To judgment! blood for blood cries from the soil
     On which his crimes have deep pollution wrought!
     Shall Othman only unavenged despoil?
     Shall they, who by the stress of grinding toil
     Wrest from the unwilling earth his luxuries,
     Perish for crime, while his foul blood may boil
     Or creep within his veins at will? Arise!
   And to high Justice make her chosen sacrifice!'

                 XXXIII
     'What do ye seek? what fear ye?' then I cried,
     Suddenly starting forth, 'that ye should shed
     The blood of Othman? if your hearts are tried
     In the true love of freedom, cease to dread
     This one poor lonely man; beneath Heaven spread
     In purest light above us all, through Earth--
     Maternal Earth, who doth her sweet smiles shed
     For all--let him go free, until the worth
   Of human nature win from these a second birth.

                 XXXIV
     'What call ye justice? Is there one who ne'er
     In secret thought has wished another's ill?
     Are ye all pure? Let those stand forth who hear
     And tremble not. Shall they insult and kill,
     If such they be? their mild eyes can they fill
     With the false anger of the hypocrite?
     Alas, such were not pure! The chastened will
     Of virtue sees that justice is the light
   Of love, and not revenge and terror and despite.'

                 XXXV
     The murmur of the people, slowly dying,
     Paused as I spake; then those who near me were
     Cast gentle looks where the lone man was lying
     Shrouding his head, which now that infant fair
     Clasped on her lap in silence; through the air
     Sobs were then heard, and many kissed my feet
     In pity's madness, and to the despair
     Of him whom late they cursed a solace sweet
   His very victims brought--soft looks and speeches meet.

                 XXXVI
     Then to a home for his repose assigned,
     Accompanied by the still throng, he went
     In silence, where to soothe his rankling mind
     Some likeness of his ancient state was lent;
     And if his heart could have been innocent
     As those who pardoned him, he might have ended
     His days in peace; but his straight lips were bent,
     Men said, into a smile which guile portended,--
   A sight with which that child, like hope with fear, was blended.

                 XXXVII
     'T was midnight now, the eve of that great day
     Whereon the many nations, at whose call
     The chains of earth like mist melted away,
     Decreed to hold a sacred Festival,
     A rite to attest the equality of all
     Who live. So to their homes, to dream or wake,
     All went. The sleepless silence did recall
     Laone to my thoughts, with hopes that make
   The flood recede from which their thirst they seek to slake.

                 XXXVIII
     The dawn flowed forth, and from its purple fountains
     I drank those hopes which make the spirit quail,
     As to the plain between the misty mountains
     And the great City, with a countenance pale,
     I went. It was a sight which might avail
     To make men weep exulting tears, for whom
     Now first from human power the reverend veil
     Was torn, to see Earth from her general womb
   Pour forth her swarming sons to a fraternal doom:

                 XXXIX
     To see, far glancing in the misty morning,
     The signs of that innumerable host;
     To hear one sound of many made, the warning
     Of Earth to Heaven from its free children tossed;
     While the eternal hills, and the sea lost
     In wavering light, and, starring the blue sky,
     The City's myriad spires of gold, almost
     With human joy made mute society--
   Its witnesses with men who must hereafter be:

                 XL
     To see, like some vast island from the Ocean,
     The Altar of the Federation rear
     Its pile i' the midst--a work which the devotion
     Of millions in one night created there,
     Sudden as when the moonrise makes appear
     Strange clouds in the east--a marble pyramid
     Distinct with steps;--that mighty shape did wear
     The light of genius; its still shadow hid
   Far ships; to know its height the morning mists forbid!--

                 XLI
     To hear the restless multitudes forever
     Around the base of that great Altar flow,
     As on some mountain islet burst and shiver
     Atlantic waves; and, solemnly and slow,
     As the wind bore that tumult to and fro,
     To feel the dreamlike music, which did swim
     Like beams through floating clouds on waves below,
     Falling in pauses, from that Altar dim,
   As silver-sounding tongues breathed an aërial hymn.

                 XLII
     To hear, to see, to live, was on that morn
     Lethean joy! so that all those assembled
     Cast off their memories of the past outworn;
     Two only bosoms with their own life trembled,
     And mine was one,--and we had both dissembled;
     So with a beating heart I went, and one,
     Who having much, covets yet more, resembled,--
     A lost and dear possession, which not won,
   He walks in lonely gloom beneath the noonday sun.

                 XLIII
     To the great Pyramid I came; its stair
     With female choirs was thronged, the loveliest
     Among the free, grouped with its sculptures rare.
     As I approached, the morning's golden mist,
     Which now the wonder-stricken breezes kissed
     With their cold lips, fled, and the summit shone
     Like Athos seen from Samothracia, dressed
     In earliest light, by vintagers; and One
   Sate there, a female Shape upon an ivory throne:--

                 XLIV
     A Form most like the imagined habitant
     Of silver exhalations sprung from dawn,
     By winds which feed on sunrise woven, to enchant
     The faiths of men. All mortal eyes were drawn--
     As famished mariners through strange seas gone
     Gaze on a burning watch-tower--by the light
     Of those divinest lineaments. Alone,
     With thoughts which none could share, from that fair sight
   I turned in sickness, for a veil shrouded her countenance bright.

                 XLV
     And neither did I hear the acclamations,
     Which from brief silence bursting filled the air
     With her strange name and mine, from all the nations
     Which we, they said, in strength had gathered there
     From the sleep of bondage; nor the vision fair
     Of that bright pageantry beheld; but blind
     And silent, as a breathing corpse, did fare,
     Leaning upon my friend, till like a wind
   To fevered cheeks a voice flowed o'er my troubled mind.

                 XLVI
     Like music of some minstrel heavenly gifted,
     To one whom fiends enthrall, this voice to me;
     Scarce did I wish her veil to be uplifted,
     I was so calm and joyous. I could see
     The platform where we stood, the statues three
     Which kept their marble watch on that high shrine,
     The multitudes, the mountains, and the sea,--
     As, when eclipse hath passed, things sudden shine
   To men's astonished eyes most clear and crystalline.

                 XLVII
     At first Laone spoke most tremulously;
     But soon her voice the calmness which it shed
     Gathered, and--'Thou art whom I sought to see,
     And thou art our first votary here,' she said;
     'I had a dear friend once, but he is dead!
     And, of all those on the wide earth who breathe,
     Thou dost resemble him alone. I spread
     This veil between us two that thou beneath
   Shouldst image one who may have been long lost in death.

                 XLVIII
     'For this wilt thou not henceforth pardon me?
     Yes, but those joys which silence well requite
     Forbid reply. Why men have chosen me
     To be the Priestess of this holiest rite
     I scarcely know, but that the floods of light
     Which flow over the world have borne me hither
     To meet thee, long most dear. And now unite
     Thine hand with mine, and may all comfort wither
   From both the hearts whose pulse in joy now beat together,

                 XLIX
     'If our own will as others' law we bind,
     If the foul worship trampled here we fear,
     If as ourselves we cease to love our kind!'--
     She paused, and pointed upwards--sculptured there
     Three shapes around her ivory throne appear.
     One was a Giant, like a child asleep
     On a loose rock, whose grasp crushed, as it were
     In dream, sceptres and crowns; and one did keep
   Its watchful eyes in doubt whether to smile or weep--

                 L
     A Woman sitting on the sculptured disk
     Of the broad earth, and feeding from one breast
     A human babe and a young basilisk;
     Her looks were sweet as Heaven's when loveliest
     In Autumn eves. The third Image was dressed
     In white wings swift as clouds in winter skies;
     Beneath his feet, 'mongst ghastliest forms, repressed
     Lay Faith, an obscene worm, who sought to rise,--
   While calmly on the Sun he turned his diamond eyes.

                 LI
     Beside that Image then I sate, while she
     Stood 'mid the throngs which ever ebbed and flowed,
     Like light amid the shadows of the sea
     Cast from one cloudless star, and on the crowd
     That touch which none who feels forgets bestowed;
     And whilst the sun returned the steadfast gaze
     Of the great Image, as o'er Heaven it glode,
     That rite had place; it ceased when sunset's blaze
     Burned o'er the isles; all stood in joy and deep amaze--
     When in the silence of all spirits there
     Laone's voice was felt, and through the air
   Her thrilling gestures spoke, most eloquently fair.

                 1
   'Calm art thou as yon sunset! swift and strong
   As new-fledged Eagles beautiful and young,
   That float among the blinding beams of morning;
   And underneath thy feet writhe Faith and Folly,
   Custom and Hell and mortal Melancholy.
   Hark! the Earth starts to hear the mighty warning
     Of thy voice sublime and holy;
     Its free spirits here assembled
     See thee, feel thee, know thee now;
     To thy voice their hearts have trembled,
     Like ten thousand clouds which flow
     With one wide wind as it flies!
   Wisdom! thy irresistible children rise
   To hail thee; and the elements they chain,
   And their own will, to swell the glory of thy train!

                 2
   'O Spirit vast and deep as Night and Heaven,
   Mother and soul of all to which is given
   The light of life, the loveliness of being!
   Lo! thou dost reascend the human heart,
   Thy throne of power, almighty as thou wert
   In dreams of Poets old grown pale by seeing
     The shade of thee;--now millions start
     To feel thy lightnings through them burning!
     Nature, or God, or Love, or Pleasure,
     Or Sympathy, the sad tears turning
     To mutual smiles, a drainless treasure,
     Descends amidst us! Scorn and Hate,
   Revenge and Selfishness, are desolate!
   A hundred nations swear that there shall be
   Pity and Peace and Love among the good and free!

                 3
   'Eldest of things, divine Equality!
   Wisdom and Love are but the slaves of thee,
   The angels of thy sway, who pour around thee
   Treasures from all the cells of human thought
   And from the Stars and from the Ocean brought,
   And the last living heart whose beatings bound thee.
     The powerful and the wise had sought
     Thy coming; thou, in light descending
     O'er the wide land which is thine own,
     Like the spring whose breath is blending
     All blasts of fragrance into one,
     Comest upon the paths of men!
   Earth bares her general bosom to thy ken,
   And all her children here in glory meet
   To feed upon thy smiles, and clasp thy sacred feet.

                 4
   'My brethren, we are free! the plains and mountains,
   The gray sea-shore, the forests and the fountains,
   Are haunts of happiest dwellers; man and woman,
   Their common bondage burst, may freely borrow
   From lawless love a solace for their sorrow;
   For oft we still must weep, since we are human.
     A stormy night's serenest morrow,
     Whose showers are pity's gentle tears,
     Whose clouds are smiles of those that die
     Like infants without hopes or fears,
     And whose beams are joys that lie
     In blended hearts, now holds dominion,--
   The dawn of mind, which, upwards on a pinion
   Borne, swift as sunrise, far illumines space,
   And clasps this barren world in its own bright embrace!

                 5
   'My brethren, we are free! the fruits are glowing
   Beneath the stars, and the night-winds are flowing
   O'er the ripe corn, the birds and beasts are dreaming.
   Never again may blood of bird or beast
   Stain with its venomous stream a human feast,
   To the pure skies in accusation steaming!
     Avenging poisons shall have ceased
     To feed disease and fear and madness;
     The dwellers of the earth and air
     Shall throng around our steps in gladness,
     Seeking their food or refuge there.
   Our toil from thought all glorious forms shall cull,
   To make this earth, our home, more beautiful,
   And Science, and her sister Poesy,
   Shall clothe in light the fields and cities of the free!

                 6
   'Victory, Victory to the prostrate nations!
   Bear witness, Night, and ye mute Constellations
   Who gaze on us from your crystalline cars!
   Thoughts have gone forth whose powers can sleep no more!
   Victory! Victory! Earth's remotest shore,
   Regions which groan beneath the Antarctic stars,
     The green lands cradled in the roar
     Of western waves, and wildernesses
     Peopled and vast which skirt the oceans,
     Where Morning dyes her golden tresses,
     Shall soon partake our high emotions.
     Kings shall turn pale! Almighty Fear,
   The Fiend-God, when our charmèd name he hear,
   Shall fade like shadow from his thousand fanes,
   While Truth with Joy enthroned o'er his lost empire reigns!'

                 LII
     Ere she had ceased, the mists of night entwining
     Their dim woof floated o'er the infinite throng;
     She, like a spirit through the darkness shining,
     In tones whose sweetness silence did prolong
     As if to lingering winds they did belong,
     Poured forth her inmost soul: a passionate speech
     With wild and thrilling pauses woven among,
     Which whoso heard was mute, for it could teach
   To rapture like her own all listening hearts to reach.

                 LIII
     Her voice was as a mountain stream which sweeps
     The withered leaves of autumn to the lake,
     And in some deep and narrow bay then sleeps
     In the shadow of the shores; as dead leaves wake,
     Under the wave, in flowers and herbs which make
     Those green depths beautiful when skies are blue,
     The multitude so moveless did partake
     Such living change, and kindling murmurs flew
   As o'er that speechless calm delight and wonder grew.

                 LIV
     Over the plain the throngs were scattered then
     In groups around the fires, which from the sea
     Even to the gorge of the first mountain glen
     Blazed wide and far; the banquet of the free
     Was spread beneath many a dark cypress tree,
     Beneath whose spires, which swayed in the red flame,
     Reclining as they ate, of Liberty
     And Hope and Justice and Laone's name
   Earth's children did a woof of happy converse frame.

                 LV
     Their feast was such as Earth, the general mother,
     Pours from her fairest bosom, when she smiles
     In the embrace of Autumn; to each other
     As when some parent fondly reconciles
     Her warring children--she their wrath beguiles
     With her own sustenance, they relenting weep--
     Such was this Festival, which from their isles
     And continents and winds and oceans deep
   All shapes might throng to share that fly or walk or creep;

                 LVI
     Might share in peace and innocence, for gore
     Or poison none this festal did pollute,
     But, piled on high, an overflowing store
     Of pomegranates and citrons, fairest fruit,
     Melons, and dates, and figs, and many a root
     Sweet and sustaining, and bright grapes ere yet
     Accursed fire their mild juice could transmute
     Into a mortal bane, and brown corn set
   In baskets; with pure streams their thirsting lips they wet.

                 LVII
     Laone had descended from the shrine,
     And every deepest look and holiest mind
     Fed on her form, though now those tones divine
     Were silent as she passed; she did unwind
     Her veil, as with the crowds of her own kind
     She mixed; some impulse made my heart refrain
     From seeking her that night, so I reclined
     Amidst a group, where on the utmost plain
   A festal watch-fire burned beside the dusky main.

                 LVIII
     And joyous was our feast; pathetic talk,
     And wit, and harmony of choral strains,
     While far Orion o'er the waves did walk
     That flow among the isles, held us in chains
     Of sweet captivity which none disdains
     Who feels; but, when his zone grew dim in mist
     Which clothes the Ocean's bosom, o'er the plains
     The multitudes went homeward to their rest,
   Which that delightful day with its own shadow blest.

The Revolt of Islam. A Poem in Twelve Cantos.
Canto Sixth


                 I
     BESIDE the dimness of the glimmering sea,
     Weaving swift language from impassioned themes,
     With that dear friend I lingered, who to me
     So late had been restored, beneath the gleams
     Of the silver stars; and ever in soft dreams
     Of future love and peace sweet converse lapped
     Our willing fancies, till the pallid beams
     Of the last watch-fire fell, and darkness wrapped
   The waves, and each bright chain of floating fire was snapped,

                 II
     And till we came even to the City's wall
     And the great gate. Then, none knew whence or why,
     Disquiet on the multitudes did fall;
     And first, one pale and breathless passed us by,
     And stared and spoke not; then with piercing cry
     A troop of wild-eyed women--by the shrieks
     Of their own terror driven, tumultuously
     Hither and thither hurrying with pale cheeks--
   Each one from fear unknown a sudden refuge seeks

                 III
     Then, rallying cries of treason and of danger
     Resounded, and--'They come! to arms! to arms!
     The Tyrant is amongst us, and the stranger
     Comes to enslave us in his name! to arms!'
     In vain: for Panic, the pale fiend who charms
     Strength to forswear her right, those millions swept
     Like waves before the tempest. These alarms
     Came to me, as to know their cause I leapt
   On the gate's turret, and in rage and grief and scorn I wept!

                 IV
     For to the north I saw the town on fire,
     And its red light made morning pallid now,
     Which burst over wide Asia;--louder, higher,
     The yells of victory and the screams of woe
     I heard approach, and saw the throng below
     Stream through the gates like foam-wrought waterfalls
     Fed from a thousand storms--the fearful glow
     Of bombs flares overhead--at intervals
   The red artillery's bolt mangling among them falls.

                 V
     And now the horsemen come--and all was done
     Swifter than I have spoken--I beheld
     Their red swords flash in the unrisen sun.
     I rushed among the rout to have repelled
     That miserable flight--one moment quelled
     By voice, and looks, and eloquent despair,
     As if reproach from their own hearts withheld
     Their steps, they stood; but soon came pouring there
   New multitudes, and did those rallied bands o'erbear.

                 VI
     I strove, as drifted on some cataract
     By irresistible streams some wretch might strive
     Who hears its fatal roar; the files compact
     Whelmed me, and from the gate availed to drive
     With quickening impulse, as each bolt did rive
     Their ranks with bloodier chasm; into the plain
     Disgorged at length the dead and the alive
     In one dread mass were parted, and the stain
   Of blood from mortal steel fell o'er the fields like rain.

                 VII
     For now the despot's bloodhounds with their prey,
     Unarmed and unaware, were gorging deep
     Their gluttony of death; the loose array
     Of horsemen o'er the wide fields murdering sweep,
     And with loud laughter for their Tyrant reap
     A harvest sown with other hopes; the while,
     Far overhead, ships from Propontis keep
     A killing rain of fire. When the waves smile
   As sudden earthquakes light many a volcano isle,

                 VIII
     Thus sudden, unexpected feast was spread
     For the carrion fowls of Heaven. I saw the sight--
     I moved--I lived--as o'er the heaps of dead,
     Whose stony eyes glared in the morning light,
     I trod; to me there came no thought of flight,
     But with loud cries of scorn, which whoso heard
     That dreaded death felt in his veins the might
     Of virtuous shame return, the crowd I stirred,
   And desperation's hope in many hearts recurred.

                 IX
     A band of brothers gathering round me made,
     Although unarmed, a steadfast front, and, still
     Retreating, with stern looks beneath the shade
     Of gathered eyebrows, did the victors fill
     With doubt even in success; deliberate will
     Inspired our growing troop; not overthrown,
     It gained the shelter of a grassy hill,--
     And ever still our comrades were hewn down,
   And their defenceless limbs beneath our footsteps strown.

                 X
     Immovably we stood; in joy I found
     Beside me then, firm as a giant pine
     Among the mountain vapors driven around,
     The old man whom I loved; his eyes divine
     With a mild look of courage answered mine,
     And my young friend was near, and ardently
     His hand grasped mine a moment; now the line
     Of war extended, to our rallying cry
   As myriads flocked in love and brotherhood to die.

                 XI
     For ever while the sun was climbing Heaven
     The horseman hewed our unarmed myriads down
     Safely, though when by thirst of carnage driven
     Too near, those slaves were swiftly overthrown
     By hundreds leaping on them; flesh and bone
     Soon made our ghastly ramparts; then the shaft
     Of the artillery from the sea was thrown
     More fast and fiery, and the conquerors laughed
   In pride to hear the wind our screams of torment waft.

                 XII
     For on one side alone the hill gave shelter,
     So vast that phalanx of unconquered men,
     And there the living in the blood did welter
     Of the dead and dying, which in that green glen,
     Like stifled torrents, made a plashy fen
     Under the feet. Thus was the butchery waged
     While the sun clomb Heaven's eastern steep; but, when
     It 'gan to sink, a fiercer combat raged,
   For in more doubtful strife the armies were engaged.

                 XIII
     Within a cave upon the hill were found
     A bundle of rude pikes, the instrument
     Of those who war but on their native ground
     For natural rights; a shout of joyance, sent
     Even from our hearts, the wide air pierced and rent,
     As those few arms the bravest and the best
     Seized, and each sixth, thus armed, did now present
     A line which covered and sustained the rest,
   A confident phalanx which the foes on every side invest.

                 XIV
     That onset turned the foes to flight almost;
     But soon they saw their present strength, and knew
     That coming night would to our resolute host
     Bring victory; so, dismounting, close they drew
     Their glittering files, and then the combat grew
     Unequal but most horrible; and ever
     Our myriads, whom the swift bolt overthrew,
     Or the red sword, failed like a mountain river
   Which rushes forth in foam to sink in sands forever.

                 XV
     Sorrow and shame, to see with their own kind
     Our human brethren mix, like beasts of blood,
     To mutual ruin armed by one behind
     Who sits and scoffs!--that friend so mild and good,
     Who like its shadow near my youth had stood,
     Was stabbed!--my old preserver's hoary hair,
     With the flesh clinging to its roots, was strewed
     Under my feet! I lost all sense or care,
   And like the rest I grew desperate and unaware.

                 XVI
     The battle became ghastlier; in the midst
     I paused, and saw how ugly and how fell,
     O Hate! thou art, even when thy life thou shedd'st
     For love. The ground in many a little dell
     Was broken, up and down whose steeps befell
     Alternate victory and defeat; and there
     The combatants with rage most horrible
     Strove, and their eyes started with cracking stare,
   And impotent their tongues they lolled into the air,

                 XVII
     Flaccid and foamy, like a mad dog's hanging.
     Want, and Moon-madness, and the pest's swift Bane,
     When its shafts smite--while yet its bow is twanging--
     Have each their mark and sign, some ghastly stain;
     And this was thine, O War! of hate and pain
     Thou loathèd slave! I saw all shapes of death,
     And ministered to many, o'er the plain
     While carnage in the sunbeam's warmth did seethe,
   Till Twilight o'er the east wove her serenest wreath.

                 XVIII
     The few who yet survived, resolute and firm,
     Around me fought. At the decline of day,
     Winding above the mountain's snowy term,
     New banners shone; they quivered in the ray
     Of the sun's unseen orb; ere night the array
     Of fresh troops hemmed us in--of those brave bands
     I soon survived alone--and now I lay
     Vanquished and faint, the grasp of bloody hands
   I felt, and saw on high the glare of falling brands,

                 XIX
     When on my foes a sudden terror came,
     And they fled, scattering.--Lo! with reinless speed
     A black Tartarian horse of giant frame,
     Comes trampling over the dead; the living bleed
     Beneath the hoofs of that tremendous steed,
     On which, like to an Angel, robed in white,
     Sate one waving a sword; the hosts recede
     And fly, as through their ranks, with awful might
   Sweeps in the shadow of eve that Phantom swift and bright;

                 XX
     And its path made a solitude. I rose
     And marked its coming; it relaxed its course
     As it approached me, and the wind that flows
     Through night bore accents to mine ear whose force
     Might create smiles in death. The Tartar horse
     Paused, and I saw the shape its might which swayed,
     And heard her musical pants, like the sweet source
     Of waters in the desert, as she said,
   'Mount with me, Laon, now'--I rapidly obeyed.

                 XXI
     Then, 'Away! away!' she cried, and stretched her sword
     As 't were a scourge over the courser's head,
     And lightly shook the reins. We spake no word,
     But like the vapor of the tempest fled
     Over the plain; her dark hair was dispread
     Like the pine's locks upon the lingering blast;
     Over mine eyes its shadowy strings it spread
     Fitfully, and the hills and streams fled fast,
   As o'er their glimmering forms the steed's broad shadow passed.

                 XXII
     And his hoofs ground the rocks to fire and dust,
     His strong sides made the torrents rise in spray,
     And turbulence, as of a whirlwind's gust,
     Surrounded us;--and still away, away,
     Through the desert night we sped, while she alway
     Gazed on a mountain which we neared, whose crest,
     Crowned with a marble ruin, in the ray
     Of the obscure stars gleamed; its rugged breast
   The steed strained up, and then his impulse did arrest.

                 XXIII
     A rocky hill which overhung the Ocean:--
     From that lone ruin, when the steed that panted
     Paused, might be heard the murmur of the motion
     Of waters, as in spots forever haunted
     By the choicest winds of Heaven which are enchanted
     To music by the wand of Solitude,
     That wizard wild,--and the far tents implanted
     Upon the plain, be seen by those who stood
   Thence marking the dark shore of Ocean's curvèd flood.

                 XXIV
     One moment these were heard and seen--another
     Passed; and the two who stood beneath that night
     Each only heard or saw or felt the other.
     As from the lofty steed she did alight,
     Cythna (for, from the eyes whose deepest light
     Of love and sadness made my lips feel pale
     With influence strange of mournfullest delight,
     My own sweet Cythna looked) with joy did quail,
   And felt her strength in tears of human weakness fail.

                 XXV
     And for a space in my embrace she rested,
     Her head on my unquiet heart reposing,
     While my faint arms her languid frame invested;
     At length she looked on me, and, half unclosing
     Her tremulous lips, said, 'Friend, thy bands were losing
     The battle, as I stood before the King
     In bonds. I burst them then, and, swiftly choosing
     The time, did seize a Tartar's sword, and spring
   Upon his horse, and swift as on the whirlwind's wing

                 XXVI
    'Have thou and I been borne beyond pursuer,
     And we are here.' Then, turning to the steed,
     She pressed the white moon on his front with pure
     And rose-like lips, and many a fragrant weed
     From the green ruin plucked that he might feed;
     But I to a stone seat that Maiden led,
     And, kissing her fair eyes, said, 'Thou hast need
     Of rest,' and I heaped up the courser's bed
   In a green mossy nook, with mountain flowers dispread.

                 XXVII
     Within that ruin, where a shattered portal
     Looks to the eastern stars--abandoned now
     By man to be the home of things immortal,
     Memories, like awful ghosts which come and go,
     And must inherit all he builds below
     When he is gone--a hall stood; o'er whose roof
     Fair clinging weeds with ivy pale did grow,
     Clasping its gray rents with a verdurous woof,
   A hanging dome of leaves, a canopy moon-proof.

                 XXVIII
     The autumnal winds, as if spell-bound, had made
     A natural couch of leaves in that recess,
     Which seasons none disturbed; but, in the shade
     Of flowering parasites, did Spring love to dress
     With their sweet blooms the wintry loneliness
     Of those dead leaves, shedding their stars whene'er
     The wandering wind her nurslings might caress;
     Whose intertwining fingers ever there
   Made music wild and soft that filled the listening air.

                 XXIX
     We know not where we go, or what sweet dream
     May pilot us through caverns strange and fair
     Of far and pathless passion, while the stream
     Of life our bark doth on its whirlpools bear,
     Spreading swift wings as sails to the dim air;
     Nor should we seek to know, so the devotion
     Of love and gentle thoughts be heard still there
     Louder and louder from the utmost Ocean
   Of universal life, attuning its commotion.

                 XXX
     To the pure all things are pure! Oblivion wrapped
     Our spirits, and the fearful overthrow
     Of public hope was from our being snapped,
     Though linkèd years had bound it there; for now
     A power, a thirst, a knowledge, which below
     All thoughts, like light beyond the atmosphere
     Clothing its clouds with grace, doth ever flow,
     Came on us, as we sate in silence there,
   Beneath the golden stars of the clear azure air;--

                 XXXI
     In silence which doth follow talk that causes
     The baffled heart to speak with sighs and tears,
     When wildering passion swalloweth up the pauses
     Of inexpressive speech;--the youthful years
     Which we together passed, their hopes and fears,
     The blood itself which ran within our frames,
     That likeness of the features which endears
     The thoughts expressed by them, our very names,
   And all the wingèd hours which speechless memory claims,

                 XXXII
     Had found a voice; and ere that voice did pass,
     The night grew damp and dim, and, through a rent
     Of the ruin where we sate, from the morass
     A wandering Meteor by some wild wind sent
     Hung high in the green dome, to which it lent
     A faint and pallid lustre; while the song
     Of blasts, in which its blue hair quivering bent,
     Strewed strangest sounds the moving leaves among;
   A wondrous light, the sound as of a spirit's tongue.

                 XXXIII
     The Meteor showed the leaves on which we sate,
     And Cythna's glowing arms, and the thick ties
     Of her soft hair which bent with gathered weight
     My neck near hers; her dark and deepening eyes,
     Which, as twin phantoms of one star that lies
     O'er a dim well move though the star reposes,
     Swam in our mute and liquid ecstasies;
     Her marble brow, and eager lips, like roses,
   With their own fragrance pale, which Spring but half uncloses.

                 XXXIV
     The Meteor to its far morass returned.
     The beating of our veins one interval
     Made still; and then I felt the blood that burned
     Within her frame mingle with mine, and fall
     Around my heart like fire; and over all
     A mist was spread, the sickness of a deep
     And speechless swoon of joy, as might befall
     Two disunited spirits when they leap
     In union from this earth's obscure and fading sleep.

                 XXXV
     Was it one moment that confounded thus
     All thought, all sense, all feeling, into one
     Unutterable power, which shielded us
     Even from our own cold looks, when we had gone
     Into a wide and wild oblivion
     Of tumult and of tenderness? or now
     Had ages, such as make the moon and sun,
     The seasons, and mankind their changes know,
   Left fear and time unfelt by us alone below?

                 XXXVI
     I know not. What are kisses whose fire clasps
     The failing heart in languishment, or limb
     Twined within limb? or the quick dying gasps
     Of the life meeting, when the faint eyes swim
     Through tears of a wide mist boundless and dim,
     In one caress? What is the strong control
     Which leads the heart that dizzy steep to climb
     Where far over the world those vapors roll
   Which blend two restless frames in one reposing soul?

                 XXXVII
     It is the shadow which doth float unseen,
     But not unfelt, o'er blind mortality,
     Whose divine darkness fled not from that green
     And lone recess, where lapped in peace did lie
     Our linkèd frames, till, from the changing sky
     That night and still another day had fled;
     And then I saw and felt. The moon was high,
     And clouds, as of a coming storm, were spread
   Under its orb,--loud winds were gathering overhead.

                 XXXVIII
     Cythna's sweet lips seemed lurid in the moon,
     Her fairest limbs with the night wind were chill,
     And her dark tresses were all loosely strewn
     O'er her pale bosom; all within was still,
     And the sweet peace of joy did almost fill
     The depth of her unfathomable look;
     And we sate calmly, though that rocky hill
     The waves contending in its caverns strook,
   For they foreknew the storm, and the gray ruin shook.

                 XXXIX
     There we unheeding sate in the communion
     Of interchangèd vows, which, with a rite
     Of faith most sweet and sacred, stamped our union.
     Few were the living hearts which could unite
     Like ours, or celebrate a bridal night
     With such close sympathies, for they had sprung
     From linkèd youth, and from the gentle might
     Of earliest love, delayed and cherished long,
   Which common hopes and fears made, like a tempest, strong.

                 XL
     And such is Nature's law divine that those
     Who grow together cannot choose but love,
     If faith or custom do not interpose,
     Or common slavery mar what else might move
     All gentlest thoughts. As in the sacred grove
     Which shades the springs of Æthiopian Nile,
     That living tree which, if the arrowy dove
     Strike with her shadow, shrinks in fear awhile,
   But its own kindred leaves clasps while the sunbeams smile,

                 XLI
     And clings to them when darkness may dissever
     The close caresses of all duller plants
     Which bloom on the wide earth;--thus we forever
     Were linked, for love had nursed us in the haunts
     Where knowledge from its secret source enchants
     Young hearts with the fresh music of its springing,
     Ere yet its gathered flood feeds human wants
     As the great Nile feeds Egypt,--ever flinging
   Light on the woven boughs which o'er its waves are swinging.

                 XLII
     The tones of Cythna's voice like echoes were
     Of those far murmuring streams; they rose and fell,
     Mixed with mine own in the tempestuous air;
     And so we sate, until our talk befell
     Of the late ruin, swift and horrible,
     And how those seeds of hope might yet be sown,
     Whose fruit is Evil's mortal poison. Well,
     For us, this ruin made a watch-tower lone,
   But Cythna's eyes looked faint, and now two days were gone

                 XLIII
     Since she had food. Therefore I did awaken
     The Tartar steed, who, from his ebon mane
     Soon as the clinging slumbers he had shaken,
     Bent his thin head to seek the brazen rein,
     Following me obediently. With pain
     Of heart so deep and dread that one caress,
     When lips and heart refuse to part again
     Till they have told their fill, could scarce express
   The anguish of her mute and fearful tenderness,

                 XLIV
     Cythna beheld me part, as I bestrode
     That willing steed. The tempest and the night,
     Which gave my path its safety as I rode
     Down the ravine of rocks, did soon unite
     The darkness and the tumult of their might
     Borne on all winds.--Far through the streaming rain
     Floating, at intervals the garments white
     Of Cythna gleamed, and her voice once again
   Came to me on the gust, and soon I reached the plain.

                 XLV
     I dreaded not the tempest, nor did he
     Who bore me, but his eyeballs wide and red
     Turned on the lightning's cleft exultingly;
     And when the earth beneath his tameless tread
     Shook with the sullen thunder, he would spread
     His nostrils to the blast, and joyously
     Mock the fierce peal with neighings;--thus we sped
     O'er the lit plain, and soon I could descry
   Where Death and Fire had gorged the spoil of victory.

                 XLVI
     There was a desolate village in a wood,
     Whose bloom-inwoven leaves now scattering fed
     The hungry storm; it was a place of blood,
     A heap of hearthless walls;--the flames were dead
     Within those dwellings now,--the life had fled
     From all those corpses now,--but the wide sky
     Flooded with lightning was ribbed overhead
     By the black rafters, and around did lie
   Women and babes and men, slaughtered confusedly.

                 XLVII
     Beside the fountain in the market-place
     Dismounting, I beheld those corpses stare
     With horny eyes upon each other's face,
     And on the earth, and on the vacant air,
     And upon me, close to the waters where
     I stooped to slake my thirst;--I shrank to taste,
     For the salt bitterness of blood was there!
     But tied the steed beside, and sought in haste
   If any yet survived amid that ghastly waste.

                 XLVIII
     No living thing was there beside one woman
     Whom I found wandering in the streets, and she
     Was withered from a likeness of aught human
     Into a fiend, by some strange misery;
     Soon as she heard my steps she leaped on me,
     And glued her burning lips to mine, and laughed
     With a loud, long and frantic laugh of glee,
     And cried, 'Now, mortal, thou hast deeply quaffed
   The Plague's blue kisses--soon millions shall pledge the draught!

                 XLIX
    'My name is Pestilence; this bosom dry
     Once fed two babes--a sister and a brother;
     When I came home, one in the blood did lie
     Of three death-wounds--the flames had ate the other!
     Since then I have no longer been a mother,
     But I am Pestilence; hither and thither
     I flit about, that I may slay and smother;
     All lips which I have kissed must surely wither,
   But Death's--if thou art he, we 'll go to work together!

                 L
    'What seek'st thou here? the moonlight comes in flashes;
     The dew is rising dankly from the dell;
    'T will moisten her! and thou shalt see the gashes
     In my sweet boy, now full of worms. But tell
     First what thou seek'st.'--'I seek for food.'--''T is well,
     Thou shalt have food. Famine, my paramour,
     Waits for us at the feast--cruel and fell
     Is Famine, but he drives not from his door
   Those whom these lips have kissed, alone. No more, no more!'

                 LI
     As thus she spake, she grasped me with the strength
     Of madness, and by many a ruined hearth
     She led, and over many a corpse. At length
     We came to a lone hut, where on the earth
     Which made its floor she in her ghastly mirth,
     Gathering from all those homes now desolate,
     Had piled three heaps of loaves, making a dearth
     Among the dead--round which she set in state
   A ring of cold, stiff babes; silent and stark they sate.

                 LII
     She leaped upon a pile, and lifted high
     Her mad looks to the lightning, and cried, 'Eat!
     Share the great feast--to-morrow we must die!'
     And then she spurned the loaves with her pale feet
     Towards her bloodless guests;--that sight to meet,
     Mine eyes and my heart ached, and but that she
     Who loved me did with absent looks defeat
     Despair, I might have raved in sympathy;
   But now I took the food that woman offered me;

                 LIII
     And vainly having with her madness striven
     If I might win her to return with me,
     Departed. In the eastern beams of Heaven
     The lightning now grew pallid, rapidly
     As by the shore of the tempestuous sea
     The dark steed bore me; and the mountain gray
     Soon echoed to his hoofs, and I could see
     Cythna among the rocks, where she alway
   Had sate with anxious eyes fixed on the lingering day.

                 LIV
     And joy was ours to meet. She was most pale,
     Famished and wet and weary; so I cast
     My arms around her, lest her steps should fail
     As to our home we went,--and, thus embraced,
     Her full heart seemed a deeper joy to taste
     Than e'er the prosperous know; the steed behind
     Trod peacefully along the mountain waste;
     We reached our home ere morning could unbind
   Night's latest veil, and on our bridal couch reclined.

                 LV
     Her chilled heart having cherished in my bosom,
     And sweetest kisses past, we two did share
     Our peaceful meal; as an autumnal blossom,
     Which spreads its shrunk leaves in the sunny air
     After cold showers, like rainbows woven there,
     Thus in her lips and cheeks the vital spirit
     Mantled, and in her eyes an atmosphere
     Of health and hope; and sorrow languished near it,
   And fear, and all that dark despondence doth inherit.

The Revolt of Islam. A Poem in Twelve Cantos.
Canto Seventh

                 I
     SO we sate joyous as the morning ray
     Which fed upon the wrecks of night and storm
     Now lingering on the winds; light airs did play
     Among the dewy weeds, the sun was warm,
     And we sate linked in the inwoven charm
     Of converse and caresses sweet and deep--
     Speechless caresses, talk that might disarm
     Time, though he wield the darts of death and sleep,
   And those thrice mortal barbs in his own poison steep.

                 II
     I told her of my sufferings and my madness,
     And how, awakened from that dreamy mood
     By Liberty's uprise, the strength of gladness
     Came to my spirit in my solitude,
     And all that now I was, while tears pursued
     Each other down her fair and listening cheek
     Fast as the thoughts which fed them, like a flood
     From sunbright dales; and when I ceased to speak,
   Her accents soft and sweet the pausing air did wake.

                 III
     She told me a strange tale of strange endurance,
     Like broken memories of many a heart
     Woven into one; to which no firm assurance,
     So wild were they, could her own faith impart.
     She said that not a tear did dare to start
     From the swoln brain, and that her thoughts were firm,
     When from all mortal hope she did depart,
     Borne by those slaves across the Ocean's term,
   And that she reached the port without one fear infirm.

                 IV
     One was she among many there, the thralls
     Of the cold Tyrant's cruel lust; and they
     Laughed mournfully in those polluted halls;
     But she was calm and sad, musing alway
     On loftiest enterprise, till on a day
     The Tyrant heard her singing to her lute
     A wild and sad and spirit-thrilling lay,
     Like winds that die in wastes--one moment mute
   The evil thoughts it made which did his breast pollute.

                 V
     Even when he saw her wondrous loveliness,
     One moment to great Nature's sacred power
     He bent, and was no longer passionless;
     But when he bade her to his secret bower
     Be borne, a loveless victim, and she tore
     Her locks in agony, and her words of flame
     And mightier looks availed not, then he bore
     Again his load of slavery, and became
   A king, a heartless beast, a pageant and a name.

                 VI
     She told me what a loathsome agony
     Is that when selfishness mocks love's delight,
     Foul as in dreams, most fearful imagery,
     To dally with the mowing dead; that night
     All torture, fear, or horror made seem light
     Which the soul dreams or knows, and when the day
     Shone on her awful frenzy, from the sight,
     Where like a Spirit in fleshly chains she lay
   Struggling, aghast and pale the Tyrant fled away.

                 VII
     Her madness was a beam of light, a power
     Which dawned through the rent soul; and words it gave,
     Gestures and looks, such as in whirlwinds bore
     (Which might not be withstood, whence none could save)
     All who approached their sphere, like some calm wave
     Vexed into whirlpools by the chasms beneath;
     And sympathy made each attendant slave
     Fearless and free, and they began to breathe
   Deep curses, like the voice of flames far underneath.

                 VIII
     The King felt pale upon his noon-day throne.
     At night two slaves he to her chamber sent;
     One was a green and wrinkled eunuch, grown
     From human shape into an instrument
     Of all things ill--distorted, bowed and bent;
     The other was a wretch from infancy
     Made dumb by poison; who nought knew or meant
     But to obey; from the fire isles came he,
   A diver lean and strong, of Oman's coral sea.

                 IX
     They bore her to a bark, and the swift stroke
     Of silent rowers clove the blue moonlight seas,
     Until upon their path the morning broke;
     They anchored then, where, be there calm or breeze,
     The gloomiest of the drear Symplegades
     Shakes with the sleepless surge; the Æthiop there
     Wound his long arms around her, and with knees
     Like iron clasped her feet, and plunged with her
   Among the closing waves out of the boundless air.

                 X
    'Swift as an eagle stooping from the plain
     Of morning light into some shadowy wood,
     He plunged through the green silence of the main,
     Through many a cavern which the eternal flood
     Had scooped as dark lairs for its monster brood;
     And among mighty shapes which fled in wonder,
     And among mightier shadows which pursued
     His heels, he wound; until the dark rocks under
   He touched a golden chain--a sound arose like thunder,

                 XI
    'A stunning clang of massive bolts redoubling
     Beneath the deep--a burst of waters driven
     As from the roots of the sea, raging and bubbling:
     And in that roof of crags a space was riven
     Through which there shone the emerald beams of heaven,
     Shot through the lines of many waves inwoven,
     Like sunlight through acacia woods at even,
     Through which his way the diver having cloven
   Passed like a spark sent up out of a burning oven.

                 XII
    'And then,' she said, 'he laid me in a cave
     Above the waters, by that chasm of sea,
     A fountain round and vast, in which the wave
     Imprisoned, boiled and leaped perpetually,
     Down which, one moment resting, he did flee,
     Winning the adverse depth; that spacious cell
     Like an hupaithric temple wide and high,
     Whose aëry dome is inaccessible,
   Was pierced with one round cleft through which the sunbeams fell.

                 XIII
    'Below, the fountain's brink was richly paven
     With the deep's wealth, coral, and pearl, and sand
     Like spangling gold, and purple shells engraven
     With mystic legends by no mortal hand,
     Left there when, thronging to the moon's command,
     The gathering waves rent the Hesperian gate
     Of mountains; and on such bright floor did stand
     Columns, and shapes like statues, and the state
   Of kingless thrones, which Earth did in her heart create.

                 XIV
    'The fiend of madness which had made its prey
     Of my poor heart was lulled to sleep awhile.
     There was an interval of many a day;
     And a sea-eagle brought me food the while,
     Whose nest was built in that untrodden isle,
     And who to be the jailer had been taught
     Of that strange dungeon; as a friend whose smile
     Like light and rest at morn and even is sought
   That wild bird was to me, till madness misery brought:--

                 XV
     'The misery of a madness slow and creeping,
     Which made the earth seem fire, the sea seem air,
     And the white clouds of noon which oft were sleeping
     In the blue heaven so beautiful and fair,
     Like hosts of ghastly shadows hovering there;
     And the sea-eagle looked a fiend who bore
     Thy mangled limbs for food!--thus all things were
     Transformed into the agony which I wore
   Even as a poisoned robe around my bosom's core.

                 XVI
     'Again I knew the day and night fast fleeing,
     The eagle and the fountain and the air;
     Another frenzy came--there seemed a being
     Within me--a strange load my heart did bear,
     As if some living thing had made its lair
     Even in the fountains of my life;--a long
     And wondrous vision wrought from my despair,
     Then grew, like sweet reality among
   Dim visionary woes, an unreposing throng.

                 XVII
     'Methought I was about to be a mother.
     Month after month went by, and still I dreamed
     That we should soon be all to one another,
     I and my child; and still new pulses seemed
     To beat beside my heart, and still I deemed
     There was a babe within--and when the rain
     Of winter through the rifted cavern streamed,
     Methought, after a lapse of lingering pain,
   I saw that lovely shape which near my heart had lain.

                 XVIII
    'It was a babe, beautiful from its birth,--
     It was like thee, dear love! its eyes were thine,
     Its brow, its lips, and so upon the earth
     It laid its fingers as now rest on mine
     Thine own, belovèd!--'t was a dream divine;
     Even to remember how it fled, how swift,
     How utterly, might make the heart repine,--
     Though 't was a dream.'--Then Cythna did uplift
   Her looks on mine, as if some doubt she sought to shift--

                 XIX
     A doubt which would not flee, a tenderness
     Of questioning grief, a source of thronging tears;
     Which having passed, as one whom sobs oppress
     She spoke: 'Yes, in the wilderness of years
     Her memory aye like a green home appears.
     She sucked her fill even at this breast, sweet love,
     For many months. I had no mortal fears;
     Methought I felt her lips and breath approve
   It was a human thing which to my bosom clove.

                 XX
    'I watched the dawn of her first smiles; and soon
     When zenith stars were trembling on the wave,
     Or when the beams of the invisible moon
     Or sun from many a prism within the cave
     Their gem-born shadows to the water gave,
     Her looks would hunt them, and with outspread hand,
     From the swift lights which might that fountain pave,
     She would mark one, and laugh when, that command
   Slighting, it lingered there, and could not understand.

                 XXI
    'Methought her looks began to talk with me;
     And no articulate sounds, but something sweet
     Her lips would frame,--so sweet it could not be
     That it was meaningless; her touch would meet
     Mine, and our pulses calmly flow and beat
     In response while we slept; and, on a day
     When I was happiest in that strange retreat,
     With heaps of golden shells we two did play--
   Both infants, weaving wings for time's perpetual way.

                 XXII
    'Ere night, methought, her waning eyes were grown
     Weary with joy--and, tired with our delight,
     We, on the earth, like sister twins lay down
     On one fair mother's bosom:--from that night
     She fled,--like those illusions clear and bright,
     Which dwell in lakes, when the red moon on high
     Pause ere it wakens tempest; and her flight,
     Though 't was the death of brainless fantasy,
   Yet smote my lonesome heart more than all misery.

                 XXIII
    'It seemed that in the dreary night the diver
     Who brought me thither came again, and bore
     My child away. I saw the waters quiver,
     When he so swiftly sunk, as once before;
     Then morning came--it shone even as of yore,
     But I was changed--the very life was gone
     Out of my heart--I wasted more and more,
     Day after day, and, sitting there alone,
   Vexed the inconstant waves with my perpetual moan.

                 XXIV
    'I was no longer mad, and yet methought
     My breasts were swoln and changed:--in every vein
     The blood stood still one moment, while that thought
     Was passing--with a gush of sickening pain
     It ebbed even to its withered springs again;
     When my wan eyes in stern resolve I turned
     From that most strange delusion, which would fain
     Have waked the dream for which my spirit yearned
   With more than human love,--then left it unreturned.

                 XXV
    'So now my reason was restored to me
     I struggled with that dream, which like a beast
     Most fierce and beauteous in my memory
     Had made its lair, and on my heart did feast;
     But all that cave and all its shapes, possessed
     By thoughts which could not fade, renewed each one
     Some smile, some look, some gesture which had blessed
     Me heretofore; I, sitting there alone,
   Vexed the inconstant waves with my perpetual moan.

                 XXVI
    'Time passed, I know not whether months or years;
     For day, nor night, nor change of seasons made
     Its note, but thoughts and unavailing tears;
     And I became at last even as a shade,
     A smoke, a cloud on which the winds have preyed,
     Till it be thin as air; until, one even,
     A Nautilus upon the fountain played,
     Spreading his azure sail where breath of heaven
   Descended not, among the waves and whirlpools driven.

                 XXVII
    'And when the Eagle came, that lovely thing,
     Oaring with rosy feet its silver boat,
     Fled near me as for shelter; on slow wing
     The Eagle hovering o'er his prey did float;
     But when he saw that I with fear did note
     His purpose, proffering my own food to him,
     The eager plumes subsided on his throat--
     He came where that bright child of sea did swim,
   And o'er it cast in peace his shadow broad and dim.

                 XXVIII
    'This wakened me, it gave me human strength;
     And hope, I know not whence or wherefore, rose,
     But I resumed my ancient powers at length;
     My spirit felt again like one of those,
     Like thine, whose fate it is to make the woes
     Of humankind their prey. What was this cave?
     Its deep foundation no firm purpose knows
     Immutable, resistless, strong to save,
   Like mind while yet it mocks the all-devouring grave.

                 XXIX
    'And where was Laon? might my heart be dead,
     While that far dearer heart could move and be?
     Or whilst over the earth the pall was spread
     Which I had sworn to rend? I might be free,
     Could I but win that friendly bird to me
     To bring me ropes; and long in vain I sought
     By intercourse of mutual imagery
     Of objects if such aid he could be taught;
   But fruit and flowers and boughs, yet never ropes he brought.

                 XXX
    'We live in our own world, and mine was made
     From glorious fantasies of hope departed;
     Aye we are darkened with their floating shade,
     Or cast a lustre on them; time imparted
     Such power to me--I became fearless-hearted,
     My eye and voice grew firm, calm was my mind,
     And piercing, like the morn, now it has darted
     Its lustre on all hidden things behind
   Yon dim and fading clouds which load the weary wind.

                 XXXI
    'My mind became the book through which I grew
     Wise in all human wisdom, and its cave,
     Which like a mine I rifled through and through,
     To me the keeping of its secrets gave--
     One mind, the type of all, the moveless wave
     Whose calm reflects all moving things that are,
     Necessity, and love, and life, the grave,
     And sympathy, fountains of hope and fear,
   Justice, and truth, and time, and the world's natural sphere.

                 XXXII
    'And on the sand would I make signs to range
     These woofs, as they were woven, of my thought;
     Clear elemental shapes, whose smallest change
     A subtler language within language wrought--
     The key of truths which once were dimly taught
     In old Crotona; and sweet melodies
     Of love in that lorn solitude I caught
     From mine own voice in dream, when thy dear eyes
   Shone through my sleep, and did that utterance harmonize.

                 XXXIII
    'Thy songs were winds whereon I fled at will,
     As in a wingèd chariot, o'er the plain
     Of crystal youth; and thou wert there to fill
     My heart with joy, and there we sate again
     On the gray margin of the glimmering main,
     Happy as then but wiser far, for we
     Smiled on the flowery grave in which were lain
     Fear, Faith and Slavery: and mankind was free,
   Equal, and pure, and wise, in Wisdom's prophecy.

                 XXXIV
    'For to my will my fancies were as slaves
     To do their sweet and subtle ministries;
     And oft from that bright fountain's shadowy waves
     They would make human throngs gather and rise
     To combat with my overflowing eyes
     And voice made deep with passion;--thus I grew
     Familiar with the shock and the surprise
     And war of earthly minds, from which I drew
   The power which has been mine to frame their thoughts anew.

                 XXXV
    'And thus my prison was the populous earth,
     Where I saw--even as misery dreams of morn
     Before the east has given its glory birth--
     Religion's pomp made desolate by the scorn
     Of Wisdom's faintest smile, and thrones uptorn,
     And dwellings of mild people interspersed
     With undivided fields of ripening corn,
     And love made free--a hope which we have nursed
   Even with our blood and tears,--until its glory burst.

                 XXXVI
    'All is not lost! There is some recompense
     For hope whose fountain can be thus profound,--
     Even thronèd Evil's splendid impotence
     Girt by its hell of power, the secret sound
     Of hymns to truth and freedom, the dread bound
     Of life and death passed fearlessly and well,
     Dungeons wherein the high resolve is found,
     Racks which degraded woman's greatness tell,
   And what may else be good and irresistible.

                 XXXVII
    'Such are the thoughts which, like the fires that flare
     In storm-encompassed isles, we cherish yet
     In this dark ruin--such were mine even there;
     As in its sleep some odorous violet,
     While yet its leaves with nightly dews are wet,
     Breathes in prophetic dreams of day's uprise,
     Or as, ere Scythian frost in fear has met
     Spring's messengers descending from the skies,
   The buds foreknow their life--this hope must ever rise.

                 XXXVIII
    'So years had passed, when sudden earthquake rent
     The depth of Ocean, and the cavern cracked
     With sound, as if the world's wide continent
     Had fallen in universal ruin wracked,
     And through the cleft streamed in one cataract
     The stifling waters:--when I woke, the flood
     Whose banded waves that crystal cave had sacked
     Was ebbing round me, and my bright abode
   Before me yawned--a chasm desert, and bare, and broad.

                 XXXIX
    'Above me was the sky, beneath the sea;
     I stood upon a point of shattered stone,
     And heard loose rocks rushing tumultuously
     With splash and shock into the deep--anon
     All ceased, and there was silence wide and lone.
     I felt that I was free! The Ocean spray
     Quivered beneath my feet, the broad Heaven shone
     Around, and in my hair the winds did play
   Lingering as they pursued their unimpeded way.

                 XL
    'My spirit moved upon the sea like wind
     Which round some thymy cape will lag and hover,
     Though it can wake the still cloud, and unbind
     The strength of tempest. Day was almost over,
     When through the fading light I could discover
     A ship approaching--its white sails were fed
     With the north wind--its moving shade did cover
     The twilight deep; the mariners in dread
     Cast anchor when they saw new rocks around them spread.

                 XLI
    'And when they saw one sitting on a crag,
     They sent a boat to me; the sailors rowed
     In awe through many a new and fearful jag
     Of overhanging rock, through which there flowed
     The foam of streams that cannot make abode.
     They came and questioned me, but when they heard
     My voice, they became silent, and they stood
     And moved as men in whom new love had stirred
   Deep thoughts; so to the ship we passed without a word.

The Revolt of Islam. A Poem in Twelve Cantos.
Canto Eighth

                 I
    'I SATE beside the steersman then, and gazing
     Upon the west cried, "Spread the sails! behold!
     The sinking moon is like a watch-tower blazing
     Over the mountains yet; the City of Gold
     Yon Cape alone does from the sight withhold;
     The stream is fleet--the north breathes steadily
     Beneath the stars; they tremble with the cold!
     Ye cannot rest upon the dreary sea!--
   Haste, haste to the warm home of happier destiny!"

                 II
    'The Mariners obeyed; the Captain stood
     Aloof, and whispering to the Pilot said,
     "Alas, alas! I fear we are pursued
     By wicked ghosts; a Phantom of the Dead,
     The night before we sailed, came to my bed
     In dream, like that!" The Pilot then replied,
     "It cannot be--she is a human maid--
     Her low voice makes you weep--she is some bride,
   Or daughter of high birth--she can be nought beside."

                 III
    'We passed the islets, borne by wind and stream,
     And as we sailed the Mariners came near
     And thronged around to listen; in the gleam
     Of the pale moon I stood, as one whom fear
     May not attaint, and my calm voice did rear:
     "Ye are all human--yon broad moon gives light
     To millions who the self-same likeness wear,
     Even while I speak--beneath this very night,
   Their thoughts flow on like ours, in sadness or delight.

                 IV
     '"What dream ye? Your own hands have built an home
     Even for yourselves on a belovèd shore;
     For some, fond eyes are pining till they come--
     How they will greet him when his toils are o'er,
     And laughing babes rush from the well-known door!
     Is this your care? ye toil for your own good--
     Ye feel and think--has some immortal power
     Such purposes? or in a human mood
   Dream ye some Power thus builds for man in solitude?

                 V
    '"What is that Power? Ye mock yourselves, and give
     A human heart to what ye cannot know:
     As if the cause of life could think and live!
     'T were as if man's own works should feel, and show
     The hopes and fears and thoughts from which they flow,
     And he be like to them. Lo! Plague is free
     To waste, Blight, Poison, Earthquake, Hail, and Snow,
     Disease, and Want, and worse Necessity
   Of hate and ill, and Pride, and Fear, and Tyranny.

                 VI
     '"What is that Power? Some moonstruck sophist stood,
     Watching the shade from his own soul upthrown
     Fill Heaven and darken Earth, and in such mood
     The Form he saw and worshipped was his own,
     His likeness in the world's vast mirror shown;
     And 't were an innocent dream, but that a faith
     Nursed by fear's dew of poison grows thereon,
     And that men say that Power has chosen Death
   On all who scorn its laws to wreak immortal wrath.

                 VII
    '"Men say that they themselves have heard and seen,
     Or known from others who have known such things,
     A Shade, a Form, which Earth and Heaven between
     Wields an invisible rod--that Priests and Kings,
     Custom, domestic sway, ay, all that brings
     Man's free-born soul beneath the oppressor's heel,
     Are his strong ministers, and that the stings
     Of death will make the wise his vengeance feel,
   Though truth and virtue arm their hearts with tenfold steel.

                 VIII
    '"And it is said this Power will punish wrong;
     Yes, add despair to crime, and pain to pain!
     And deepest hell, and deathless snakes among,
     Will bind the wretch on whom is fixed a stain,
     Which, like a plague, a burden, and a bane,
     Clung to him while he lived; for love and hate,
     Virtue and vice, they say, are difference vain--
     The will of strength is right. This human state
   Tyrants, that they may rule, with lies thus desolate.

                 IX
    '"Alas, what strength? Opinion is more frail
     Than yon dim cloud now fading on the moon
     Even while we gaze, though it awhile avail
     To hide the orb of truth--and every throne
     Of Earth or Heaven, though shadow, rests thereon,
     One shape of many names:--for this ye plough
     The barren waves of Ocean--hence each one
     Is slave or tyrant; all betray and bow,
   Command, or kill, or fear, or wreak or suffer woe.

                 X
    '"Its names are each a sign which maketh holy
     All power--ay, the ghost, the dream, the shade
     Of power--lust, falsehood, hate, and pride, and folly;
     The pattern whence all fraud and wrong is made,
     A law to which mankind has been betrayed;
     And human love is as the name well known
     Of a dear mother whom the murderer laid
     In bloody grave, and, into darkness thrown,
   Gathered her wildered babes around him as his own.

                 XI
    '"O Love, who to the hearts of wandering men
     Art as the calm to Ocean's weary waves!
     Justice, or Truth, or Joy! those only can
     From slavery and religion's labyrinth-caves
     Guide us, as one clear star the seaman saves.
     To give to all an equal share of good,
     To track the steps of Freedom, though through graves
     She pass, to suffer all in patient mood,
   To weep for crime though stained with thy friend's dearest blood,

                 XII
    '"To feel the peace of self-contentment's lot,
     To own all sympathies, and outrage none,
     And in the inmost bowers of sense and thought,
     Until life's sunny day is quite gone down,
     To sit and smile with Joy, or, not alone,
     To kiss salt tears from the worn cheek of Woe;
     To live as if to love and live were one,--
     This is not faith or law, nor those who bow
   To thrones on Heaven or Earth such destiny may know.

                 XIII
    '"But children near their parents tremble now,
     Because they must obey; one rules another,
     And, as one Power rules both high and low,
     So man is made the captive of his brother,
     And Hate is throned on high with Fear his mother
     Above the Highest; and those fountain-cells,
     Whence love yet flowed when faith had choked all other,
     Are darkened--Woman as the bond-slave dwells
   Of man, a slave; and life is poisoned in its wells.

                 XIV
    '"Man seeks for gold in mines that he may weave
     A lasting chain for his own slavery;
     In fear and restless care that he may live
     He toils for others who must ever be
     The joyless thralls of like captivity;
     He murders, for his chiefs delight in ruin;
     He builds the altar that its idol's fee
     May be his very blood; he is pursuing--
   Oh, blind and willing wretch!--his own obscure undoing.

                 XV
    '"Woman!--she is his slave, she has become
     A thing I weep to speak--the child of scorn,
     The outcast of a desolated home;
     Falsehood, and fear, and toil, like waves have worn
     Channels upon her cheek, which smiles adorn
     As calm decks the false Ocean:--well ye know
     What Woman is, for none of Woman born
     Can choose but drain the bitter dregs of woe,
   Which ever from the oppressed to the oppressors flow.

                 XVI
    '"This need not be; ye might arise, and will
     That gold should lose its power, and thrones their glory;
     That love, which none may bind, be free to fill
     The world, like light; and evil faith, grown hoary
     With crime, be quenched and die.--Yon promontory
     Even now eclipses the descending moon!--
     Dungeons and palaces are transitory--
     High temples fade like vapor--Man alone
   Remains, whose will has power when all beside is gone.

                 XVII
    '"Let all be free and equal!--from your hearts
     I feel an echo; through my inmost frame
     Like sweetest sound, seeking its mate, it darts.
     Whence come ye, friends? Alas, I cannot name
     All that I read of sorrow, toil and shame
     On your worn faces; as in legends old
     Which make immortal the disastrous fame
     Of conquerors and impostors false and bold,
   The discord of your hearts I in your looks behold.

                 XVIII
    '"Whence come ye, friends? from pouring human blood
     Forth on the earth? or bring ye steel and gold,
     That kings may dupe and slay the multitude?
     Or from the famished poor, pale, weak and cold,
     Bear ye the earnings of their toil? unfold!
     Speak! are your hands in slaughter's sanguine hue
     Stained freshly? have your hearts in guile grown old?
     Know yourselves thus! ye shall be pure as dew,
   And I will be a friend and sister unto you.

                 XIX
    '"Disguise it not--we have one human heart--
     All mortal thoughts confess a common home;
     Blush not for what may to thyself impart
     Stains of inevitable crime; the doom
     Is this, which has, or may, or must, become
     Thine, and all humankind's. Ye are the spoil
     Which Time thus marks for the devouring tomb--
     Thou and thy thoughts, and they, and all the toil
   Wherewith ye twine the rings of life's perpetual coil.

                 XX
    '"Disguise it not--ye blush for what ye hate,
     And Enmity is sister unto Shame;
     Look on your mind--it is the book of fate--
     Ah! it is dark with many a blazoned name
     Of misery--all are mirrors of the same;
     But the dark fiend who with his iron pen,
     Dipped in scorn's fiery poison, makes his fame
     Enduring there, would o'er the heads of men
   Pass harmless, if they scorned to make their hearts his den.

                 XXI
    '"Yes, it is Hate, that shapeless fiendly thing
     Of many names, all evil, some divine,
     Whom self-contempt arms with a mortal sting;
     Which, when the heart its snaky folds entwine,
     Is wasted quite, and when it doth repine
     To gorge such bitter prey, on all beside
     It turns with ninefold rage, as with its twine
     When Amphisbæna some fair bird has tied,
   Soon o'er the putrid mass he threats on every side.

                 XXII
    '"Reproach not thine own soul, but know thyself,
     Nor hate another's crime, nor loathe thine own.
     It is the dark idolatry of self,
     Which, when our thoughts and actions once are gone,
     Demands that man should weep, and bleed, and groan;
     Oh, vacant expiation! be at rest!
     The past is Death's, the future is thine own;
     And love and joy can make the foulest breast
   A paradise of flowers, where peace might build her nest.

                 XXIII
    '"Speak thou! whence come ye?"--A youth made reply,--
     "Wearily, wearily o'er the boundless deep
     We sail; thou readest well the misery
     Told in these faded eyes, but much doth sleep
     Within, which there the poor heart loves to keep,
     Or dare not write on the dishonored brow;
     Even from our childhood have we learned to steep
     The bread of slavery in the tears of woe,
   And never dreamed of hope or refuge until now.

                 XXIV
    '"Yes--I must speak--my secret should have perished
     Even with the heart it wasted, as a brand
     Fades in the dying flame whose life it cherished,
     But that no human bosom can withstand
     Thee, wondrous Lady, and the mild command
     Of thy keen eyes:--yes, we are wretched slaves,
     Who from their wonted loves and native land
     Are reft, and bear o'er the dividing waves
   The unregarded prey of calm and happy graves.

                 XXV
    '"We drag afar from pastoral vales the fairest
     Among the daughters of those mountains lone;
     We drag them there where all things best and rarest
     Are stained and trampled; years have come and gone
     Since, like the ship which bears me, I have known
     No thought; but now the eyes of one dear maid
     On mine with light of mutual love have shone--
     She is my life--I am but as the shade
   Of her--a smoke sent up from ashes, soon to fade!--

                 XXVI
    '"For she must perish in the Tyrant's hall--
     Alas, alas!"--He ceased, and by the sail
     Sat cowering--but his sobs were heard by all,
     And still before the Ocean and the gale
     The ship fled fast till the stars 'gan to fail;
     And, round me gathered with mute countenance,
     The Seamen gazed, the Pilot, worn and pale
     With toil, the Captain with gray locks whose glance
   Met mine in restless awe--they stood as in a trance.

                 XXVII
    '"Recede not! pause not now! thou art grown old,
     But Hope will make thee young, for Hope and Youth
     Are children of one mother, even Love--behold!
     The eternal stars gaze on us!--is the truth
     Within your soul? care for your own, or ruth
     For others' sufferings? do ye thirst to bear
     A heart which not the serpent Custom's tooth
     May violate?--be free! and even here,
   Swear to be firm till death!"--they cried, "We swear! we swear!"

                 XXVIII
    'The very darkness shook, as with a blast
     Of subterranean thunder, at the cry;
     The hollow shore its thousand echoes cast
     Into the night, as if the sea and sky
     And earth rejoiced with new-born liberty,
     For in that name they swore! Bolts were undrawn,
     And on the deck with unaccustomed eye
     The captives gazing stood, and every one
   Shrank as the inconstant torch upon her countenance shone.

                 XXIX
    'They were earth's purest children, young and fair,
     With eyes the shrines of unawakened thought,
     And brows as bright as spring or morning, ere
     Dark time had there its evil legend wrought
     In characters of cloud which wither not.
     The change was like a dream to them; but soon
     They knew the glory of their altered lot--
     In the bright wisdom of youth's breathless noon,
   Sweet talk and smiles and sighs all bosoms did attune.

                 XXX
    'But one was mute; her cheeks and lips most fair,
     Changing their hue like lilies newly blown
     Beneath a bright acacia's shadowy hair
     Waved by the wind amid the sunny noon,
     Showed that her soul was quivering; and full soon
     That youth arose, and breathlessly did look
     On her and me, as for some speechless boon;
     I smiled, and both their hands in mine I took,
   And felt a soft delight from what their spirits shook.

The Revolt of Islam. A Poem in Twelve Cantos.
Canto Ninth

                 I
     'THAT night we anchored in a woody bay,
     And sleep no more around ns dared to hover
     Than, when all doubt and fear has passed away,
     It shades the couch of some unresting lover
     Whose heart is now at rest; thus night passed over
     In mutual joy; around, a forest grew
     Of poplars and dark oaks, whose shade did cover
     The waning stars pranked in the waters blue,
   And trembled in the wind which from the morning flew.

                 II
     'The joyous mariners and each free maiden
     Now brought from the deep forest many a bough,
     With woodland spoil most innocently laden;
     Soon wreaths of budding foliage seemed to flow
     Over the mast and sails; the stern and prow
     Were canopied with blooming boughs; the while
     On the slant sun's path o'er the waves we go
     Rejoicing, like the dwellers of an isle
   Doomed to pursue those waves that cannot cease to smile.

                 III
    'The many ships spotting the dark blue deep
     With snowy sails, fled fast as ours came nigh,
     In fear and wonder; and on every steep
     Thousands did gaze. They heard the startling cry,
     Like earth's own voice lifted unconquerably
     To all her children, the unbounded mirth,
     The glorious joy of thy name--Liberty!
     They heard!--As o'er the mountains of the earth
   From peak to peak leap on the beams of morning's birth,

                 IV
    'So from that cry over the boundless hills
     Sudden was caught one universal sound,
     Like a volcano's voice whose thunder fills
     Remotest skies,--such glorious madness found
     A path through human hearts with stream which drowned
     Its struggling fears and cares, dark Custom's brood;
     They knew not whence it came, but felt around
     A wide contagion poured--they called aloud
   On Liberty--that name lived on the sunny flood.

                 V
    'We reached the port. Alas! from many spirits
     The wisdom which had waked that cry was fled,
     Like the brief glory which dark Heaven inherits
     From the false dawn, which fades ere it is spread,
     Upon the night's devouring darkness shed;
     Yet soon bright day will burst--even like a chasm
     Of fire, to burn the shrouds outworn and dead
     Which wrap the world; a wide enthusiasm,
   To cleanse the fevered world as with an earthquake's spasm!

                 VI
    'I walked through the great City then, but free
     From shame or fear; those toil-worn mariners
     And happy maidens did encompass me;
     And like a subterranean wind that stirs
     Some forest among caves, the hopes and fears
     From every human soul a murmur strange
     Made as I passed; and many wept with tears
     Of joy and awe, and wingèd thoughts did range,
   And half-extinguished words which prophesied of change.

                 VII
     'For with strong speech I tore the veil that hid
     Nature, and Truth, and Liberty, and Love,--
     As one who from some mountain's pyramid
     Points to the unrisen sun! the shades approve
     His truth, and flee from every stream and grove.
     Thus, gentle thoughts did many a bosom fill,
     Wisdom the mail of tried affections wove
     For many a heart, and tameless scorn of ill
   Thrice steeped in molten steel the unconquerable will.

                 VIII
    'Some said I was a maniac wild and lost;
     Some, that I scarce had risen from the grave
     The Prophet's virgin bride, a heavenly ghost;
     Some said I was a fiend from my weird cave,
     Who had stolen human shape, and o'er the wave,
     The forest, and the mountain, came; some said
     I was the child of God, sent down to save
     Woman from bonds and death, and on my head
   The burden of their sins would frightfully be laid.

                 IX
    'But soon my human words found sympathy
     In human hearts; the purest and the best,
     As friend with friend, made common cause with me,
     And they were few, but resolute; the rest,
     Ere yet success the enterprise had blessed,
     Leagued with me in their hearts; their meals, their slumber,
     Their hourly occupations, were possessed
     By hopes which I had armed to overnumber
   Those hosts of meaner cares which life's strong wings encumber.

                 X
    'But chiefly women, whom my voice did waken
     From their cold, careless, willing slavery,
     Sought me; one truth their dreary prison has shaken,
     They looked around, and lo! they became free!
     Their many tyrants, sitting desolately
     In slave-deserted halls, could none restrain;
     For wrath's red fire had withered in the eye
     Whose lightning once was death,--nor fear nor gain
   Could tempt one captive now to lock another's chain.

                 XI
    'Those who were sent to bind me wept, and felt
     Their minds outsoar the bonds which clasped them round,
     Even as a waxen shape may waste and melt
     In the white furnace; and a visioned swound,
     A pause of hope and awe, the City bound,
     Which, like the silence of a tempest's birth,
     When in its awful shadow it has wound
     The sun, the wind, the ocean, and the earth,
   Hung terrible, ere yet the lightnings have leaped forth.

                 XII
    'Like clouds inwoven in the silent sky
     By winds from distant regions meeting there,
     In the high name of Truth and Liberty
     Around the City millions gathered were
     By hopes which sprang from many a hidden lair,--
     Words which the lore of truth in hues of grace
     Arrayed, thine own wild songs which in the air
     Like homeless odors floated, and the name
   Of thee, and many a tongue which thou hadst dipped in flame.

                 XIII
    'The Tyrant knew his power was gone, but Fear,
     The nurse of Vengeance, bade him wait the event--
     That perfidy and custom, gold and prayer,
     And whatsoe'er, when Force is impotent,
     To Fraud the sceptre of the world has lent,
     Might, as he judged, confirm his failing sway.
     Therefore throughout the streets, the Priests he sent
     To curse the rebels. To their gods did they
   For Earthquake, Plague and Want, kneel in the public way.

                 XIV
    'And grave and hoary men were bribed to tell,
     From seats where law is made the slave of wrong,
     How glorious Athens in her splendor fell,
     Because her sons were free,--and that among
     Mankind, the many to the few belong
     By Heaven, and Nature, and Necessity.
     They said, that age was truth, and that the young
     Marred with wild hopes the peace of slavery,
   With which old times and men had quelled the vain and free.

                 XV
    'And with the falsehood of their poisonous lips
     They breathed on the enduring memory
     Of sages and of bards a brief eclipse.
     There was one teacher, who necessity
     Had armed with strength and wrong against mankind,
     His slave and his avenger aye to be;
     That we were weak and sinful, frail and blind,
     And that the will of one was peace, and we
   Should seek for nought on earth but toil and misery--

                 XVI
    '"For thus we might avoid the hell hereafter."
     So spake the hypocrites, who cursed and lied.
     Alas, their sway was passed, and tears and laughter
     Clung to their hoary hair, withering the pride
     Which in their hollow hearts dared still abide;
     And yet obscener slaves with smoother brow,
     And sneers on their strait lips, thin, blue and wide,
     Said that the rule of men was over now,
   And hence the subject world to woman's will must bow.

                 XVII
    'And gold was scattered through the streets, and wine
     Flowed at a hundred feasts within the wall.
     In vain! the steady towers in Heaven did shine
     As they were wont, nor at the priestly call
     Left Plague her banquet in the Æthiop's hall,
     Nor Famine from the rich man's portal came,
     Where at her ease she ever preys on all
     Who throng to kneel for food; nor fear, nor shame,
   Nor faith, nor discord, dimmed hope's newly kindled flame.

                 XVIII
     'For gold was as a god whose faith began
     To fade, so that its worshippers were few;
     And Faith itself, which in the heart of man
     Gives shape, voice, name, to spectral Terror, knew
     Its downfall, as the altars lonelier grew,
     Till the Priests stood alone within the fane;
     The shafts of falsehood unpolluting flew,
     And the cold sneers of calumny were vain
   The union of the free with discord's brand to stain.

                 XIX
     'The rest thou knowest.--Lo! we two are here--
     We have survived a ruin wide and deep--
     Strange thoughts are mine. I cannot grieve or fear.
     Sitting with thee upon this lonely steep
     I smile, though human love should make me weep.
     We have survived a joy that knows no sorrow,
     And I do feel a mighty calmness creep
     Over my heart, which can no longer borrow
   Its hues from chance or change, dark children of to-morrow.

                 XX
    'We know not what will come. Yet, Laon, dearest,
     Cythna shall be the prophetess of Love;
     Her lips shall rob thee of the grace thou wearest,
     To hide thy heart, and clothe the shapes which rove
     Within the homeless Future's wintry grove;
     For I now, sitting thus beside thee, seem
     Even with thy breath and blood to live and move,
     And violence and wrong are as a dream
   Which rolls from steadfast truth,--an unreturning stream.

                 XXI
    'The blasts of Autumn drive the wingèd seeds
     Over the earth; next come the snows, and rain,
     And frosts, and storms, which dreary Winter leads
     Out of his Scythian cave, a savage train.
     Behold! Spring sweeps over the world again,
     Shedding soft dews from her ethereal wings;
     Flowers on the mountains, fruits over the plain,
     And music on the waves and woods she flings,
   And love on all that lives, and calm on lifeless things.

                 XXII
    'O Spring, of hope and love and youth and gladness
     Wind-wingèd emblem! brightest, best and fairest!
     Whence comest thou, when, with dark Winter's sadness
     The tears that fade in sunny smiles thou sharest?
     Sister of joy! thou art the child who wearest
     Thy mother's dying smile, tender and sweet;
     Thy mother Autumn, for whose grave thou bearest
     Fresh flowers, and beams like flowers, with gentle feet,
   Disturbing not the leaves which are her winding sheet.

                 XXIII
    'Virtue and Hope and Love, like light and Heaven,
     Surround the world. We are their chosen slaves.
     Has not the whirlwind of our spirit driven
     Truth's deathless germs to thought's remotest caves?
     Lo, Winter comes!--the grief of many graves,
     The frost of death, the tempest of the sword,
     The flood of tyranny, whose sanguine waves
     Stagnate like ice at Faith the enchanter's word,
   And bind all human hearts in its repose abhorred.

                 XXIV
     'The seeds are sleeping in the soil. Meanwhile
     The Tyrant peoples dungeons with his prey;
     Pale victims on the guarded scaffold smile
     Because they cannot speak; and, day by day,
     The moon of wasting Science wanes away
     Among her stars, and in that darkness vast
     The sons of earth to their foul idols pray,
     And gray Priests triumph, and like blight or blast
   A shade of selfish care o'er human looks is cast.

                 XXV
    'This is the Winter of the world; and here
     We die, even as the winds of Autumn fade,
     Expiring in the frore and foggy air.
     Behold! Spring comes, though we must pass who made
     The promise of its birth,--even as the shade
     Which from our death, as from a mountain, flings
     The future, a broad sunrise; thus arrayed
     As with the plumes of overshadowing wings,
   From its dark gulf of chains Earth like an eagle springs.

                 XXVI
    'O dearest love! we shall be dead and cold
     Before this morn may on the world arise.
     Wouldst thou the glory of its dawn behold?
     Alas! gaze not on me, but turn thine eyes
     On thine own heart--it is a Paradise
     Which everlasting spring has made its own,
     And while drear winter fills the naked skies,
     Sweet streams of sunny thought, and flowers fresh blown,
   Are there, and weave their sounds and odors into one.

                 XXVII
    'In their own hearts the earnest of the hope
     Which made them great the good will ever find;
     And though some envious shade may interlope
     Between the effect and it, One comes behind,
     Who aye the future to the past will bind--
     Necessity, whose sightless strength forever
     Evil with evil, good with good, must wind
     In bands of union, which no power may sever;
   They must bring forth their kind, and be divided never!

                 XXVIII
    'The good and mighty of departed ages
     Are in their graves, the innocent and free,
     Heroes, and Poets, and prevailing Sages,
     Who leave the vesture of their majesty
     To adorn and clothe this naked world;--and we
     Are like to them--such perish, but they leave
     All hope, or love, or truth, or liberty,
     Whose forms their mighty spirits could conceive,
   To be a rule and law to ages that survive.

                 XXIX
    'So be the turf heaped over our remains
     Even in our happy youth, and that strange lot,
     Whate'er it be, when in these mingling veins
     The blood is still, be ours; let sense and thought
     Pass from our being, or be numbered not
     Among the things that are; let those who come
     Behind, for whom our steadfast will has bought
     A calm inheritance, a glorious doom,
   Insult with careless tread our undivided tomb.

                 XXX
    'Our many thoughts and deeds, our life and love,
     Our happiness, and all that we have been,
     Immortally must live and burn and move
     When we shall be no more;--the world has seen
     A type of peace; and as some most serene
     And lovely spot to a poor maniac's eye--
     After long years some sweet and moving scene
     Of youthful hope returning suddenly--
   Quells his long madness, thus Man shall remember thee.

                 XXXI
    'And Calumny meanwhile shall feed on us
     As worms devour the dead, and near the throne
     And at the altar most accepted thus
     Shall sneers and curses be;--what we have done
     None shall dare vouch, though it be truly known;
     That record shall remain when they must pass
     Who built their pride on its oblivion,
     And fame, in human hope which sculptured was,
   Survive the perished scrolls of unenduring brass.

                 XXXII
    'The while we two, belovèd, must depart,
     And Sense and Reason, those enchanters fair,
     Whose wand of power is hope, would bid the heart
     That gazed beyond the wormy grave despair;
     These eyes, these lips, this blood, seems darkly there
     To fade in hideous ruin; no calm sleep,
     Peopling with golden dreams the stagnant air,
     Seems our obscure and rotting eyes to steep
   In joy;--but senseless death--a ruin dark and deep!

                 XXXIII
    'These are blind fancies. Reason cannot know
     What sense can neither feel nor thought conceive;
     There is delusion in the world--and woe,
     And fear, and pain--we know not whence we live,
     Or why, or how, or what mute Power may give
     Their being to each plant, and star, and beast,
     Or even these thoughts.--Come near me! I do weave
     A chain I cannot break--I am possessed
   With thoughts too swift and strong for one lone human breast.

                 XXXIV
    'Yes, yes--thy kiss is sweet, thy lips are warm--
     Oh, willingly, belovèd, would these eyes
     Might they no more drink being from thy form,
     Even as to sleep whence we again arise,
     Close their faint orbs in death. I fear nor prize
     Aught that can now betide, unshared by thee.
     Yes, Love when Wisdom fails makes Cythna wise;
     Darkness and death, if death be true, must be
   Dearer than life and hope if unenjoyed with thee.

                 XXXV
    'Alas! our thoughts flow on with stream whose waters
     Return not to their fountain; Earth and Heaven,
     The Ocean and the Sun, the clouds their daughters,
     Winter, and Spring, and Morn, and Noon, and Even--
     All that we are or know, is darkly driven
     Towards one gulf.--Lo! what a change is come
     Since I first spake--but time shall be forgiven,
     Though it change all but thee!' She ceased--night's gloom
   Meanwhile had fallen on earth from the sky's sunless dome.

                 XXXVI
     Though she had ceased, her countenance uplifted
     To Heaven still spake with solemn glory bright;
     Her dark deep eyes, her lips, whose motions gifted
     The air they breathed with love, her locks undight;
     'Fair star of life and love,' I cried, 'my soul's delight,
     Why lookest thou on the crystalline skies?
     Oh, that my spirit were yon Heaven of night,
     Which gazes on thee with its thousand eyes!'
   She turned to me and smiled--that smile was Paradise!

The Revolt of Islam. A Poem in Twelve Cantos.
Canto Tenth

                 I
     WAS there a human spirit in the steed
     That thus with his proud voice, ere night was gone,
     He broke our linkèd rest? or do indeed
     All living things a common nature own,
     And thought erect an universal throne,
     Where many shapes one tribute ever bear?
     And Earth, their mutual mother, does she groan
     To see her sons contend? and makes she bare
   Her breast that all in peace its drainless stores may share?

                 II
     I have heard friendly sounds from many a tongue
     Which was not human; the lone nightingale
     Has answered me with her most soothing song,
     Out of her ivy bower, when I sate pale
     With grief, and sighed beneath; from many a dale
     The antelopes who flocked for food have spoken
     With happy sounds and motions that avail
     Like man's own speech; and such was now the token
   Of waning night, whose calm by that proud neigh was broken.

                 III
     Each night that mighty steed bore me abroad,
     And I returned with food to our retreat,
     And dark intelligence; the blood which flowed
     Over the fields had stained the courser's feet;
     Soon the dust drinks that bitter dew,--then meet
     The vulture, and the wild-dog, and the snake,
     The wolf, and the hyena gray, and eat
     The dead in horrid truce; their throngs did make
   Behind the steed a chasm like waves in a ship's wake.

                 IV
     For from the utmost realms of earth came pouring
     The banded slaves whom every despot sent
     At that throned traitor's summons; like the roaring
     Of fire, whose floods the wild deer circumvent
     In the scorched pastures of the south, so bent
     The armies of the leaguèd kings around
     Their files of steel and flame; the continent
     Trembled, as with a zone of ruin bound,
   Beneath their feet--the sea shook with their Navies' sound.

                 V
     From every nation of the earth they came,
     The multitude of moving heartless things,
     Whom slaves call men; obediently they came,
     Like sheep whom from the fold the shepherd brings
     To the stall, red with blood; their many kings
     Led them, thus erring, from their native land--
     Tartar and Frank, and millions whom the wings
     Of Indian breezes lull; and many a band
   The Arctic Anarch sent, and Idumea's sand

                 VI
     Fertile in prodigies and lies. So there
     Strange natures made a brotherhood of ill.
     The desert savage ceased to grasp in fear
     His Asian shield and bow when, at the will
     Of Europe's subtler son, the bolt would kill
     Some shepherd sitting on a rock secure;
     But smiles of wondering joy his face would fill,
     And savage sympathy; those slaves impure
   Each one the other thus from ill to ill did lure.

                 VII
     For traitorously did that foul Tyrant robe
     His countenance in lies; even at the hour
     When he was snatched from death, then o'er the globe,
     With secret signs from many a mountain tower,
     With smoke by day, and fire by night, the power
     Of Kings and Priests, those dark conspirators,
     He called; they knew his cause their own, and swore
     Like wolves and serpents to their mutual wars
   Strange truce, with many a rite which Earth and Heaven abhors.

                 VIII
     Myriads had come--millions were on their way;
     The Tyrant passed, surrounded by the steel
     Of hired assassins, through the public way,
     Choked with his country's dead; his footsteps reel
     On the fresh blood--he smiles. 'Ay, now I feel
     I am a King in truth!' he said, and took
     His royal seat, and bade the torturing wheel
     Be brought, and fire, and pincers, and the hook,
   And scorpions, that his soul on its revenge might look.

                 IX
    'But first, go slay the rebels--why return
     The victor bands?' he said, 'millions yet live,
     Of whom the weakest with one word might turn
     The scales of victory yet; let none survive
     But those within the walls--each fifth shall give
     The expiation for his brethren here.
     Go forth, and waste and kill!'--'O king, forgive
     My speech,' a soldier answered, 'but we fear
   The spirits of the night, and morn is drawing near;

                 X
    'For we were slaying still without remorse,
     And now that dreadful chief beneath my hand
     Defenceless lay, when on a hell-black horse
     An Angel bright as day, waving a brand
     Which flashed among the stars, passed.'--'Dost thou stand
     Parleying with me, thou wretch?' the king replied;
    'Slaves, bind him to the wheel; and of this band
     Whoso will drag that woman to his side
   That scared him thus may burn his dearest foe beside;

                 XI
    'And gold and glory shall be his. Go forth!'
     They rushed into the plain. Loud was the roar
     Of their career; the horsemen shook the earth;
     The wheeled artillery's speed the pavement tore;
     The infantry, file after file, did pour
     Their clouds on the utmost hills. Five days they slew
     Among the wasted fields; the sixth saw gore
     Stream through the City; on the seventh the dew
   Of slaughter became stiff, and there was peace anew:

                 XII
     Peace in the desert fields and villages,
     Between the glutted beasts and mangled dead!
     Peace in the silent streets! save when the cries
     Of victims, to their fiery judgment led,
     Made pale their voiceless lips who seemed to dread,
     Even in their dearest kindred, lest some tongue
     Be faithless to the fear yet unbetrayed;
     Peace in the Tyrant's palace, where the throng
   Waste the triumphal hours in festival and song!

                 XIII
     Day after day the burning Sun rolled on
     Over the death-polluted land. It came
     Out of the east like fire, and fiercely shone
     A lamp of autumn, ripening with its flame
     The few lone ears of corn; the sky became
     Stagnate with heat, so that each cloud and blast
     Languished and died; the thirsting air did claim
     All moisture, and a rotting vapor passed
   From the unburied dead, invisible and fast.

                 XIV
     First Want, then Plague, came on the beasts; their food
     Failed, and they drew the breath of its decay.
     Millions on millions, whom the scent of blood
     Had lured, or who from regions far away
     Had tracked the hosts in festival array,
     From their dark deserts, gaunt and wasting now
     Stalked like fell shades among their perished prey;
     In their green eyes a strange disease did glow--
   They sank in hideous spasm, or pains severe and slow.

                 XV
     The fish were poisoned in the streams; the birds
     In the green woods perished; the insect race
     Was withered up; the scattered flocks and herds
     Who had survived the wild beasts' hungry chase
     Died moaning, each upon the other's face
     In helpless agony gazing; round the City
     All night, the lean hyenas their sad case
     Like starving infants wailed--a woful ditty;
   And many a mother wept, pierced with unnatural pity.

                 XVI
     Amid the aërial minarets on high
     The Æthiopian vultures fluttering fell
     From their long line of brethren in the sky,
     Startling the concourse of mankind. Too well
     These signs the coming mischief did foretell.
     Strange panic first, a deep and sickening dread,
     Within each heart, like ice, did sink and dwell,
     A voiceless thought of evil, which did spread
   With the quick glance of eyes, like withering lightnings shed.

                 XVII
     Day after day, when the year wanes, the frosts
     Strip its green crown of leaves till all is bare;
     So on those strange and congregated hosts
     Came Famine, a swift shadow, and the air
     Groaned with the burden of a new despair;
     Famine, than whom Misrule no deadlier daughter
     Feeds from her thousand breasts, though sleeping there
     With lidless eyes lie Faith and Plague and Slaughter--
   A ghastly brood conceived of Lethe's sullen water.

                 XVIII
     There was no food; the corn was trampled down,
     The flocks and herds had perished; on the shore
     The dead and putrid fish were ever thrown;
     The deeps were foodless, and the winds no more
     Creaked with the weight of birds, but as before
     Those wingèd things sprang forth, were void of shade;
     The vines and orchards, autumn's golden store,
     Were burned; so that the meanest food was weighed
   With gold, and avarice died before the god it made.

                 XIX
     There was no corn--in the wide marketplace
     All loathliest things, even human flesh, was sold;
     They weighed it in small scales--and many a face
     Was fixed in eager horror then. His gold
     The miser brought; the tender maid, grown bold
     Through hunger, bared her scornèd charms in vain;
     The mother brought her eldest born, controlled
     By instinct blind as love, but turned again
   And bade her infant suck, and died in silent pain.

                 XX
     Then fell blue Plague upon the race of man.
    'Oh, for the sheathèd steel, so late which gave
     Oblivion to the dead when the streets ran
     With brothers' blood! Oh, that the earthquake's grave
     Would gape, or Ocean lift its stifling wave!'
     Vain cries--throughout the streets thousands pursued
     Each by his fiery torture howl and rave
     Or sit in frenzy's unimagined mood
   Upon fresh heaps of dead--a ghastly multitude.

                 XXI
     It was not hunger now, but thirst. Each well
     Was choked with rotting corpses, and became
     A caldron of green mist made visible
     At sunrise. Thither still the myriads came,
     Seeking to quench the agony of the flame
     Which raged like poison through their bursting veins;
     Naked they were from torture, without shame,
     Spotted with nameless scars and lurid blains--
   Childhood, and youth, and age, writhing in savage pains.

                 XXII
     It was not thirst, but madness! Many saw
     Their own lean image everywhere--it went
     A ghastlier self beside them, till the awe
     Of that dread sight to self-destruction sent
     Those shrieking victims; some, ere life was spent,
     Sought, with a horrid sympathy, to shed
     Contagion on the sound; and others rent
     Their matted hair, and cried aloud, 'We tread
   On fire! the avenging Power his hell on earth has spread.'

                 XXIII
     Sometimes the living by the dead were hid.
     Near the great fountain in the public square,
     Where corpses made a crumbling pyramid
     Under the sun, was heard one stifled prayer
     For life, in the hot silence of the air;
     And strange 't was 'mid that hideous heap to see
     Some shrouded in their long and golden hair,
     As if not dead, but slumbering quietly,
   Like forms which sculptors carve, then love to agony.

                 XXIV
     Famine had spared the palace of the King;
     He rioted in festival the while,
     He and his guards and Priests; but Plague did fling
     One shadow upon all. Famine can smile
     On him who brings it food, and pass, with guile
     Of thankful falsehood, like a courtier gray,
     The house-dog of the throne; but many a mile
     Comes Plague, a wingèd wolf, who loathes alway
   The garbage and the scum that strangers make her prey.

                 XXV
     So, near the throne, amid the gorgeous feast,
     Sheathed in resplendent arms, or loosely dight
     To luxury, ere the mockery yet had ceased
     That lingered on his lips, the warrior's might
     Was loosened, and a new and ghastlier night
     In dreams of frenzy lapped his eyes; he fell
     Headlong, or with stiff eyeballs sate upright
     Among the guests, or raving mad did tell
   Strange truths--a dying seer of dark oppression's hell.

                 XXVI
     The Princes and the Priests were pale with terror;
     That monstrous faith wherewith they ruled mankind
     Fell, like a shaft loosed by the bowman's error,
     On their own hearts; they sought and they could find
     No refuge--'t was the blind who led the blind!
     So, through the desolate streets to the high fane,
     The many-tongued and endless armies wind
     In sad procession; each among the train
   To his own idol lifts his supplications vain.

                 XXVII
    'O God!' they cried, 'we know our secret pride
     Has scorned thee, and thy worship, and thy name;
     Secure in human power, we have defied
     Thy fearful might; we bend in fear and shame
     Before thy presence; with the dust we claim
     Kindred; be merciful, O King of Heaven!
     Most justly have we suffered for thy fame
     Made dim, but be at length our sins forgiven,
   Ere to despair and death thy worshippers be driven!

                 XXVIII
    'O King of Glory! Thou alone hast power!
     Who can resist thy will? who can restrain
     Thy wrath when on the guilty thou dost shower
     The shafts of thy revenge, a blistering rain?
     Greatest and best, be merciful again!
     Have we not stabbed thine enemies, and made
     The Earth an altar, and the Heavens a fane,
     Where thou wert worshipped with their blood, and laid
   Those hearts in dust which would thy searchless works have weighed?

                 XXIX
    'Well didst thou loosen on this impious City
     Thine angels of revenge! recall them now;
     Thy worshippers abased here kneel for pity,
     And bind their souls by an immortal vow.
     We swear by thee--and to our oath do thou
     Give sanction from thine hell of fiends and flame--
     That we will kill with fire and torments slow
     The last of those who mocked thy holy name
   And scorned the sacred laws thy prophets did proclaim.'

                 XXX
     Thus they with trembling limbs and pallid lips
     Worshipped their own hearts' image, dim and vast,
     Scared by the shade wherewith they would eclipse
     The light of other minds; troubled they passed
     From the great Temple; fiercely still and fast
     The arrows of the plague among them fell,
     And they on one another gazed aghast,
     And through the hosts contention wild befell,
   As each of his own god the wondrous works did tell.

                 XXXI
     And Oromaze, Joshua, and Mahomet,
     Moses, and Buddh, Zerdusht, and Brahm, and Foh,
     A tumult of strange names, which never met
     Before, as watchwords of a single woe,
     Arose; each raging votary 'gan to throw
     Aloft his armèd hands, and each did howl
    'Our God alone is God!' and slaughter now
     Would have gone forth, when from beneath a cowl
   A voice came forth which pierced like ice through every soul.

                 XXXII
    'T was an Iberian Priest from whom it came,
     A zealous man, who led the legioned West,
     With words which faith and pride had steeped in flame,
     To quell the unbelievers; a dire guest
     Even to his friends was he, for in his breast
     Did hate and guile lie watchful, intertwined,
     Twin serpents in one deep and winding nest;
     He loathed all faith beside his own, and pined
   To wreak his fear of Heaven in vengeance on mankind.

                 XXXIII
     But more he loathed and hated the clear light
     Of wisdom and free thought, and more did fear,
     Lest, kindled once, its beams might pierce the night,
     Even where his Idol stood; for far and near
     Did many a heart in Europe leap to hear
     That faith and tyranny were trampled down,--
     Many a pale victim, doomed for truth to share
     The murderer's cell, or see with helpless groan
   The Priests his children drag for slaves to serve their own.

                 XXXIV
     He dared not kill the infidels with fire
     Or steel, in Europe; the slow agonies
     Of legal torture mocked his keen desire;
     So he made truce with those who did despise
     The expiation and the sacrifice,
     That, though detested, Islam's kindred creed
     Might crush for him those deadlier enemies;
     For fear of God did in his bosom breed
   A jealous hate of man, an unreposing need.

                 XXXV
    'Peace! Peace!' he cried, 'when we are dead, the Day
     Of Judgment comes, and all shall surely know
     Whose God is God; each fearfully shall pay
     The errors of his faith in endless woe!
     But there is sent a mortal vengeance now
     On earth, because an impious race had spurned
     Him whom we all adore,--a subtle foe,
     By whom for ye this dread reward was earned,
   And kingly thrones, which rest on faith, nigh overturned.

                 XXXVI
    'Think ye, because ye weep and kneel and pray,
     That God will lull the pestilence? It rose
     Even from beneath his throne, where, many a day,
     His mercy soothed it to a dark repose;
     It walks upon the earth to judge his foes,
     And what art thou and I, that he should deign
     To curb his ghastly minister, or close
     The gates of death, ere they receive the twain
   Who shook with mortal spells his undefended reign?

                 XXXVII
    'Ay, there is famine in the gulf of hell,
     Its giant worms of fire forever yawn,--
     Their lurid eyes are on us! those who fell
     By the swift shafts of pestilence ere dawn
     Are in their jaws! they hunger for the spawn
     Of Satan, their own brethren, who were sent
     To make our souls their spoil. See, see! they fawn
     Like dogs, and they will sleep, with luxury spent,
   When those detested hearts their iron fangs have rent!

                 XXXVIII
    'Our God may then lull Pestilence to sleep.
     Pile high the pyre of expiation now!
     A forest's spoil of boughs; and on the heap
     Pour venomous gums, which sullenly and slow,
     When touched by flame, shall burn, and melt, and flow,
     A stream of clinging fire--and fix on high
     A net of iron, and spread forth below
     A couch of snakes, and scorpions, and the fry
   Of centipedes and worms, earth's hellish progeny!

                 XXXIX
    'Let Laon and Laone on that pyre,
     Linked tight with burning brass, perish!--then pray
     That with this sacrifice the withering ire
     Of Heaven may be appeased.' He ceased, and they
     A space stood silent, as far, far away
     The echoes of his voice among them died;
     And he knelt down upon the dust, alway
     Muttering the curses of his speechless pride,
   Whilst shame, and fear, and awe, the armies did divide.

                 XL
     His voice was like a blast that burst the portal
     Of fabled hell; and as he spake, each one
     Saw gape beneath the chasms of fire immortal,
     And Heaven above seemed cloven, where, on a throne
     Girt round with storms and shadows, sate alone
     Their King and Judge. Fear killed in every breast
     All natural pity then, a fear unknown
     Before, and with an inward fire possessed
   They raged like homeless beasts whom burning woods invest.

                 XLI
    'T was morn.--At noon the public crier went forth,
     Proclaiming through the living and the dead,--
    'The Monarch saith that his great empire's worth
     Is set on Laon and Laone's head;
     He who but one yet living here can lead,
     Or who the life from both their hearts can wring,
     Shall be the kingdom's heir--a glorious meed!
     But he who both alive can hither bring
   The Princess shall espouse, and reign an equal King.'

                 XLII
     Ere night the pyre was piled, the net of iron
     Was spread above, the fearful couch below;
     It overtopped the towers that did environ
     That spacious square; for Fear is never slow
     To build the thrones of Hate, her mate and foe;
     So she scourged forth the maniac multitude
     To rear this pyramid--tottering and slow,
     Plague-stricken, foodless, like lean herds pursued
   By gadflies, they have piled the heath and gums and wood.

                 XLIII
     Night came, a starless and a moonless gloom.
     Until the dawn, those hosts of many a nation
     Stood round that pile, as near one lover's tomb
     Two gentle sisters mourn their desolation;
     And in the silence of that expectation
     Was heard on high the reptiles' hiss and crawl--
     It was so deep, save when the devastation
     Of the swift pest with fearful interval,
   Marking its path with shrieks, among the crowd would fall.

                 XLIV
     Morn came.--Among those sleepless multitudes,
     Madness, and Fear, and Plague, and Famine, still
     Heaped corpse on corpse, as in autumnal woods
     The frosts of many a wind with dead leaves fill
     Earth's cold and sullen brooks; in silence still,
     The pale survivors stood; ere noon the fear
     Of Hell became a panic, which did kill
     Like hunger or disease, with whispers drear,
   As 'Hush! hark! come they yet?--Just Heaven, thine hour is near!'

                 XLV
     And Priests rushed through their ranks, some counterfeiting
     The rage they did inspire, some mad indeed
     With their own lies. They said their god was waiting
     To see his enemies writhe, and burn, and bleed,--
     And that, till then, the snakes of Hell had need
     Of human souls; three hundred furnaces
     Soon blazed through the wide City, where, with speed,
     Men brought their infidel kindred to appease
   God's wrath, and, while they burned, knelt round on quivering knees.

                 XLVI
     The noontide sun was darkened with that smoke;
     The winds of eve dispersed those ashes gray.
     The madness, which these rites had lulled, awoke
     Again at sunset. Who shall dare to say
     The deeds which night and fear brought forth, or weigh
     In balance just the good and evil there?
     He might man's deep and searchless heart display,
     And cast a light on those dim labyrinths where
   Hope near imagined chasm is struggling with despair.

                 XLVII
    'T is said a mother dragged three children then
     To those fierce flames which roast the eyes in the head,
     And laughed, and died; and that unholy men,
     Feasting like fiends upon the infidel dead,
     Looked from their meal, and saw an angel tread
     The visible floor of Heaven, and it was she!
     And, on that night, one without doubt or dread
     Came to the fire, and said, 'Stop, I am he!
   Kill me!'--They burned them both with hellish mockery.

                 XLVIII
     And, one by one, that night, young maidens came,
     Beauteous and calm, like shapes of living stone
     Clothed in the light of dreams, and by the flame,
     Which shrank as overgorged, they laid them down,
     And sung a low sweet song, of which alone
     One word was heard, and that was Liberty;
     And that some kissed their marble feet, with moan
     Like love, and died, and then that they did die
   With happy smiles, which sunk in white tranquillity.

The Revolt of Islam. A Poem in Twelve Cantos.
Canto Eleventh

                 I
     SHE saw me not--she heard me not--alone
     Upon the mountain's dizzy brink she stood;
     She spake not, breathed not, moved not--there was thrown
     Over her look the shadow of a mood
     Which only clothes the heart in solitude,
     A thought of voiceless depth;--she stood alone--
     Above, the Heavens were spread--below, the flood
     Was murmuring in its caves--the wind had blown
   Her hair apart, through which her eyes and forehead shone.

                 II
     A cloud was hanging o'er the western mountains;
     Before its blue and moveless depth were flying
     Gray mists poured forth from the unresting fountains
     Of darkness in the North; the day was dying;
     Sudden, the sun shone forth--its beams were lying
     Like boiling gold on Ocean, strange to see,
     And on the shattered vapors which, defying
     The power of light in vain, tossed restlessly
   In the red Heaven, like wrecks in a tempestuous sea.

                 III
     It was a stream of living beams, whose bank
     On either side by the cloud's cleft was made;
     And where its chasms that flood of glory drank,
     Its waves gushed forth like fire, and as if swayed
     By some mute tempest, rolled on her; the shade
     Of her bright image floated on the river
     Of liquid light, which then did end and fade--
     Her radiant shape upon its verge did shiver;
   Aloft, her flowing hair like strings of flame did quiver.

                 IV
     I stood beside her, but she saw me not--
     She looked upon the sea, and skies, and earth.
     Rapture and love and admiration wrought
     A passion deeper far than tears, or mirth,
     Or speech, or gesture, or whate'er has birth
     From common joy; which with the speechless feeling
     That led her there united, and shot forth
     From her far eyes a light of deep revealing,
   All but her dearest self from my regard concealing.

                 V
     Her lips were parted, and the measured breath
     Was now heard there; her dark and intricate eyes,
     Orb within orb, deeper than sleep or death,
     Absorbed the glories of the burning skies,
     Which, mingling with her heart's deep ecstasies,
     Burst from her looks and gestures; and a light
     Of liquid tenderness, like love, did rise
     From her whole frame--an atmosphere which quite
   Arrayed her in its beams, tremulous and soft and bright.

                 VI
     She would have clasped me to her glowing frame;
     Those warm and odorous lips might soon have shed
     On mine the fragrance and the invisible flame
     Which now the cold winds stole; she would have laid
     Upon my languid heart her dearest head;
     I might have heard her voice, tender and sweet;
     Her eyes, mingling with mine, might soon have fed
     My soul with their own joy.--One moment yet
   I gazed--we parted then, never again to meet!

                 VII
     Never but once to meet on earth again!
     She heard me as I fled--her eager tone
     Sunk on my heart, and almost wove a chain
     Around my will to link it with her own,
     So that my stern resolve was almost gone.
    'I cannot reach thee! whither dost thou fly?
     My steps are faint.--Come back, thou dearest one--
     Return, ah me! return!'--the wind passed by
   On which those accents died, faint, far, and lingeringly.

                 VIII
     Woe! woe! that moonless midnight! Want and Pest
     Were horrible, but one more fell doth rear,
     As in a hydra's swarming lair, its crest
     Eminent among those victims--even the Fear
     Of Hell; each girt by the hot atmosphere
     Of his blind agony, like a scorpion stung
     By his own rage upon his burning bier
     Of circling coals of fire. But still there clung
   One hope, like a keen sword on starting threads uphung:--

                 IX
     Not death--death was no more refuge or rest;
     Not life--it was despair to be!--not sleep,
     For fiends and chasms of fire had dispossessed
     All natural dreams; to wake was not to weep,
     But to gaze, mad and pallid, at the leap
     To which the Future, like a snaky scourge,
     Or like some tyrant's eye which aye doth keep
     Its withering beam upon his slaves, did urge
   Their steps; they heard the roar of Hell's sulphureous surge.

                 X
     Each of that multitude, alone and lost
     To sense of outward things, one hope yet knew;
     As on a foam-girt crag some seaman tossed
     Stares at the rising tide, or like the crew
     Whilst now the ship is splitting through and through;
     Each, if the tramp of a far steed was heard,
     Started from sick despair, or if there flew
     One murmur on the wind, or if some word
   Which none can gather yet the distant crowd has stirred.

                 XI
     Why became cheeks, wan with the kiss of death,
     Paler from hope? they had sustained despair.
     Why watched those myriads with suspended breath
     Sleepless a second night? the are not here,
     The victims--and hour by hour, a vision drear,
     Warm corpses fall upon the clay-cold dead;
     And even in death their lips are wreathed with fear.
     The crowd is mute and moveless--overhead
   Silent Arcturus shines--ha! hear'st thou not the tread

                 XII
     Of rushing feet? laughter? the shout, the scream
     Of triumph not to be contained? See! hark!
     They come, they come! give way! Alas, ye deem
     Falsely--'t is but a crowd of maniacs stark
     Driven, like a troop of spectres, through the dark
     From the choked well, whence a bright death-fire sprung,
     A lurid earth-star, which dropped many a spark
     From its blue train, and, spreading widely, clung
   To their wild hair, like mist the topmost pines among.

                 XIII
     And many, from the crowd collected there,
     Joined that strange dance in fearful sympathies;
     There was the silence of a long despair,
     When the last echo of those terrible cries
     Came from a distant street, like agonies
     Stifled afar.--Before the Tyrant's throne
     All night his agèd Senate sate, their eyes
     In stony expectation fixed; when one
   Sudden before them stood, a Stranger and alone.

                 XIV
     Dark Priests and haughty Warriors gazed on him
     With baffled wonder, for a hermit's vest
     Concealed his face; but when he spake, his tone
     Ere yet the matter did their thoughts arrest--
     Earnest, benignant, calm, as from a breast
     Void of all hate or terror--made them start;
     For as with gentle accents he addressed
     His speech to them, on each unwilling heart
   Unusual awe did fall--a spirit-quelling dart.

                 XV
    'Ye Princes of the Earth, ye sit aghast
     Amid the ruin which yourselves have made;
     Yes, Desolation heard your trumpet's blast,
     And sprang from sleep!--dark Terror has obeyed
     Your bidding. Oh, that I, whom ye have made
     Your foe, could set my dearest enemy free
     From pain and fear! but evil casts a shade
     Which cannot pass so soon, and Hate must be
   The nurse and parent still of an ill progeny.

                 XVI
    'Ye turn to Heaven for aid in your distress;
     Alas, that ye, the mighty and the wise,
     Who, if ye dared, might not aspire to less
     Than ye conceive of power, should fear the lies
     Which thou, and thou, didst frame for mysteries
     To blind your slaves! consider your own thought--
     An empty and a cruel sacrifice
     Ye now prepare for a vain idol wrought
   Out of the fears and hate which vain desires have brought.

                 XVII
    'Ye seek for happiness--alas the day!
     Ye find it not in luxury nor in gold,
     Nor in the fame, nor in the envied sway
     For which, O willing slaves to Custom old,
     Severe task-mistress, ye your hearts have sold.
     Ye seek for peace, and, when ye die, to dream
     No evil dreams;--all mortal things are cold
     And senseless then; if aught survive, I deem
   It must be love and joy, for they immortal seem.

                 XVIII
     'Fear not the future, weep not for the past.
     Oh, could I win your ears to dare be now
     Glorious, and great, and calm! that ye would cast
     Into the dust those symbols of your woe,
     Purple, and gold, and steel! that ye would go
     Proclaiming to the nations whence ye came
     That Want and Plague and Fear from slavery flow;
     And that mankind is free, and that the shame
   Of royalty and faith is lost in freedom's fame!

                 XIX
    'If thus 't is well--if not, I come to say
     That Laon--' While the Stranger spoke, among
     The Council sudden tumult and affray
     Arose, for many of those warriors young
     Had on his eloquent accents fed and hung
     Like bees on mountain-flowers; they knew the truth,
     And from their thrones in vindication sprung;
     The men of faith and law then without ruth
   Drew forth their secret steel, and stabbed each ardent youth.

                 XX
     They stabbed them in the back and sneered--a slave,
     Who stood behind the throne, those corpses drew
     Each to its bloody, dark and secret grave;
     And one more daring raised his steel anew
     To pierce the Stranger: 'What hast thou to do
     With me, poor wretch?'--Calm, solemn and severe,
     That voice unstrung his sinews, and he threw
     His dagger on the ground, and, pale with fear,
   Sate silently--his voice then did the Stranger rear.

                 XXI
    'It doth avail not that I weep for ye--
     Ye cannot change, since ye are old and gray,
     And ye have chosen your lot--your fame must be
     A book of blood, whence in a milder day
     Men shall learn truth, when ye are wrapped in clay;
     Now ye shall triumph. I am Laon's friend,
     And him to your revenge will I betray,
     So ye concede one easy boon. Attend!
   For now I speak of things which ye can apprehend.

                 XXII
    'There is a People mighty in its youth,
     A land beyond the Oceans of the West,
     Where, though with rudest rites, Freedom and Truth
     Are worshipped; from a glorious Mother's breast,
     Who, since high Athens fell, among the rest
     Sate like the Queen of Nations, but in woe,
     By inbred monsters outraged and oppressed,
     Turns to her chainless child for succor now,
   It draws the milk of Power in Wisdom's fullest flow.

                 XXIII
    'That land is like an Eagle, whose young gaze
     Feeds on the noontide beam, whose golden plume
     Floats moveless on the storm, and in the blaze
     Of sunrise gleams when earth is wrapped in gloom;
     An epitaph of glory for the tomb
     Of murdered Europe may thy fame be made,
     Great People! as the sands shalt thou become;
     Thy growth is swift as morn when night must fade;
   The multitudinous Earth shall sleep beneath thy shade.

                 XXIV
    'Yes, in the desert there is built a home
     For Freedom. Genius is made strong to rear
     The monuments of man beneath the dome
     Of a new Heaven; myriads assemble there,
     Whom the proud lords of man, in rage or fear,
     Drive from their wasted homes. The boon I pray
     Is this--that Cythna shall be convoyed there,--
     Nay, start not at the name--America!
   And then to you this night Laon will I betray.

                 XXV
    'With me do what ye will. I am your foe!'
     The light of such a joy as makes the stare
     Of hungry snakes like living emeralds glow
     Shone in a hundred human eyes.--'Where, where
     Is Laon? haste! fly! drag him swiftly here!
     We grant thy boon.'--'I put no trust in ye,
     Swear by the Power ye dread.'--'We swear, we swear!'
     The Stranger threw his vest back suddenly,
   And smiled in gentle pride, and said, 'Lo! I am he!'

The Revolt of Islam. A Poem in Twelve Cantos.
Canto Twelfth

                 I
     THE transport of a fierce and monstrous gladness
     Spread through the multitudinous streets, fast flying
     Upon the winds of fear; from his dull madness
     The starveling waked, and died in joy; the dying,
     Among the corpses in stark agony lying,
     Just heard the happy tidings, and in hope
     Closed their faint eyes; from house to house replying
     With loud acclaim, the living shook Heaven's cope,
   And filled the startled Earth with echoes. Morn did ope

                 II
     Its pale eyes then; and lo! the long array
     Of guards in golden arms, and Priests beside,
     Singing their bloody hymns, whose garbs betray
     The blackness of the faith it seems to hide;
     And see the Tyrant's gem-wrought chariot glide
     Among the gloomy cowls and glittering spears--
     A Shape of light is sitting by his side,
     A child most beautiful. I' the midst appears
   Laon--exempt alone from mortal hopes and fears.

                 III
     His head and feet are bare, his hands are bound
     Behind with heavy chains, yet none do wreak
     Their scoffs on him, though myriads throng around;
     There are no sneers upon his lip which speak
     That scorn or hate has made him bold; his cheek
     Resolve has not turned pale; his eyes are mild
     And calm, and, like the morn about to break,
     Smile on mankind; his heart seems reconciled
   To all things and itself, like a reposing child.

                 IV
     Tumult was in the soul of all beside,
     Ill joy, or doubt, or fear; but those who saw
     Their tranquil victim pass felt wonder glide
     Into their brain, and became calm with awe.--
     See, the slow pageant near the pile doth draw.
     A thousand torches in the spacious square,
     Borne by the ready slaves of ruthless law,
     Await the signal round; the morning fair
   Is changed to a dim night by that unnatural glare.

                 V
     And see! beneath a sun-bright canopy,
     Upon a platform level with the pile,
     The anxious Tyrant sit, enthroned on high,
     Girt by the chieftains of the host; all smile
     In expectation but one child: the while
     I, Laon, led by mutes, ascend my bier
     Of fire, and look around;--each distant isle
     Is dark in the bright dawn; towers far and near
   Pierce like reposing flames the tremulous atmosphere.

                 VI
     There was such silence through the host as when
     An earthquake, trampling on some populous town,
     Has crushed ten thousand with one tread, and men
     Expect the second; all were mute but one,
     That fairest child, who, bold with love, alone
     Stood up before the king, without avail,
     Pleading for Laon's life--her stifled groan
     Was heard--she trembled like one aspen pale
   Among the gloomy pines of a Norwegian vale.

                 VII
     What were his thoughts linked in the morning sun,
     Among those reptiles, stingless with delay,
     Even like a tyrant's wrath?--the signal-gun
     Roared--hark, again! in that dread pause he lay
     As in a quiet dream--the slaves obey--
     A thousand torches drop,--and hark, the last
     Bursts on that awful silence; far away
     Millions, with hearts that beat both loud and fast,
   Watch for the springing flame expectant and aghast.

                 VIII
     They fly--the torches fall--a cry of fear
     Has startled the triumphant!--they recede!
     For, ere the cannon's roar has died, they hear
     The tramp of hoofs like earthquake, and a steed
     Dark and gigantic, with the tempest's speed,
     Bursts through their ranks; a woman sits thereon,
     Fairer it seems than aught that earth can breed,
     Calm, radiant, like the phantom of the dawn,
   A spirit from the caves of daylight wandering gone.

                 IX
     All thought it was God's Angel come to sweep
     The lingering guilty to their fiery grave;
     The Tyrant from his throne in dread did leap,--
     Her innocence his child from fear did save;
     Scared by the faith they feigned, each priestly slave
     Knelt for His mercy whom they served with blood,
     And, like the refluence of a mighty wave
     Sucked into the loud sea, the multitude
   With crushing panic fled in terror's altered mood.

                 X
     They pause, they blush, they gaze; a gathering shout
     Bursts like one sound from the ten thousand streams
     Of a tempestuous sea; that sudden rout
     One checked who never in his mildest dreams
     Felt awe from grace or loveliness, the seams
     Of his rent heart so hard and cold a creed
     Had seared with blistering ice; but he misdeems
     That he is wise whose wounds do only bleed
   Inly for self,--thus thought the Iberian Priest indeed,

                 XI
     And others, too, thought he was wise to see
     In pain, and fear, and hate, something divine--
     In love and beauty, no divinity.
     Now with a bitter smile, whose light did shine
     Like a fiend's hope upon his lips and eyne,
     He said, and the persuasion of that sneer
     Rallied his trembling comrades--'Is it mine
     To stand alone, when kings and soldiers fear
   A woman? Heaven has sent its other victim here.'

                 XII
    'Were it not impious,' said the King, 'to break
     Our holy oath?'--'Impious to keep it, say!'
     Shrieked the exulting Priest:--'Slaves, to the stake
     Bind her, and on my head the burden lay
     Of her just torments; at the Judgment Day
     Will I stand up before the golden throne
     Of Heaven, and cry,--"To Thee did I betray
     An infidel! but for me she would have known
   Another moment's joy!" the glory be thine own.'

                 XIII
     They trembled, but replied not, nor obeyed,
     Pausing in breathless silence. Cythna sprung
     From her gigantic steed, who, like a shade
     Chased by the winds, those vacant streets among
     Fled tameless, as the brazen rein she flung
     Upon his neck, and kissed his moonèd brow.
     A piteous sight, that one so fair and young
     The clasp of such a fearful death should woo
   With smiles of tender joy as beamed from Cythna now.

                 XIV
     The warm tears burst in spite of faith and fear
     From many a tremulous eye, but, like soft dews
     Which feed spring's earliest buds, hung gathered there,
     Frozen by doubt,--alas! they could not choose
     But weep; for, when her faint limbs did refuse
     To climb the pyre, upon the mutes she smiled;
     And with her eloquent gestures, and the hues
     Of her quick lips, even as a weary child
   Wins sleep from some fond nurse with its caresses mild,

                 XV
     She won them, though unwilling, her to bind
     Near me, among the snakes. When then had fled
     One soft reproach that was most thrilling kind,
     She smiled on me, and nothing then we said,
     But each upon the other's countenance fed
     Looks of insatiate love; the mighty veil
     Which doth divide the living and the dead
     Was almost rent, the world grew dim and pale--
   All light in Heaven or Earth beside our love did fail.

                 XVI
     Yet--yet--one brief relapse, like the last beam
     Of dying flames, the stainless air around
     Hung silent and serene--a blood-red gleam
     Burst upwards, hurling fiercely from the ground
     The globèd smoke; I heard the mighty sound
     Of its uprise, like a tempestuous ocean;
     And, through its chasms I saw, as in a swound,
     The Tyrant's child fall without life or motion
   Before his throne, subdued by some unseen emotion.--

                 XVII
     And is this death?--The pyre has disappeared,
     The Pestilence, the Tyrant, and the throng;
     The flames grow silent--slowly there is heard
     The music of a breath-suspending song,
     Which, like the kiss of love when life is young,
     Steeps the faint eyes in darkness sweet and deep;
     With ever-changing notes it floats along,
     Till on my passive soul there seemed to creep
   A melody, like waves on wrinkled sands that leap.

                 XVIII
     The warm touch of a soft and tremulous hand
     Wakened me then; lo, Cythna sate reclined
     Beside me, on the waved and golden sand
     Of a clear pool, upon a bank o'ertwined
     With strange and star-bright flowers which to the wind
     Breathed divine odor; high above was spread
     The emerald heaven of trees of unknown kind,
     Whose moonlike blooms and bright fruit overhead
   A shadow, which was light, upon the waters shed.

                 XIX
     And round about sloped many a lawny mountain
     With incense-bearing forests and vast caves
     Of marble radiance, to that mighty fountain;
     And, where the flood its own bright margin laves,
     Their echoes talk with its eternal waves,
     Which from the depths whose jagged caverns breed
     Their unreposing strife it lifts and heaves,
     Till through a chasm of hills they roll, and feed
   A river deep, which flies with smooth but arrowy speed.

                 XX
     As we sate gazing in a trance of wonder,
     A boat approached, borne by the musical air
     Along the waves which sung and sparkled under
     Its rapid keel. A wingèd Shape sate there,
     A child with silver-shining wings, so fair
     That, as her bark did through the waters glide,
     The shadow of the lingering waves did wear
     Light, as from starry beams; from side to side
   While veering to the wind her plumes the bark did guide.

                 XXI
     The boat was one curved shell of hollow pearl,
     Almost translucent with the light divine
     Of her within; the prow and stern did curl,
     Hornèd on high, like the young moon supine,
     When o'er dim twilight mountains dark with pine
     It floats upon the sunset's sea of beams,
     Whose golden waves in many a purple line
     Fade fast, till, borne on sunlight's ebbing streams,
   Dilating, on earth's verge the sunken meteor gleams.

                 XXII
     Its keel has struck the sands beside our feet.
     Then Cythna turned to me, and from her eyes,
     Which swam with unshed tears, a look more sweet
     Than happy love, a wild and glad surprise,
     Glanced as she spake: 'Ay, this is Paradise
     And not a dream, and we are all united!
     Lo, that is mine own child, who in the guise
     Of madness came, like day to one benighted
   In lonesome woods; my heart is now too well requited!'

                 XXIII
     And then she wept aloud, and in her arms
     Clasped that bright Shape, less marvellously fair
     Than her own human hues and living charms,
     Which, as she leaned in passion's silence there,
     Breathed warmth on the cold bosom of the air,
     Which seemed to blush and tremble with delight;
     The glossy darkness of her streaming hair
     Fell o'er that snowy child, and wrapped from sight
   The fond and long embrace which did their hearts unite.

                 XXIV
     Then the bright child, the plumèd Seraph, came,
     And fixed its blue and beaming eyes on mine,
     And said, 'I was disturbed by tremulous shame
     When once we met, yet knew that I was thine
     From the same hour in which thy lips divine
     Kindled a clinging dream within my brain,
     Which ever waked when I might sleep, to twine
     Thine image with her memory dear; again
   We meet, exempted now from mortal fear or pain.

                 XXV
    'When the consuming flames had wrapped ye round,
     The hope which I had cherished went away;
     I fell in agony on the senseless ground,
     And hid mine eyes in dust, and far astray
     My mind was gone, when bright, like dawning day,
     The Spectre of the Plague before me flew,
     And breathed upon my lips, and seemed to say,
     "They wait for thee, belovèd!"--then I knew
   The death-mark on my breast, and became calm anew.

                 XXVI
    'It was the calm of love--for I was dying.
     I saw the black and half-extinguished pyre
     In its own gray and shrunken ashes lying;
     The pitchy smoke of the departed fire
     Still hung in many a hollow dome and spire
     Above the towers, like night,--beneath whose shade,
     Awed by the ending of their own desire,
     The armies stood; a vacancy was made
   In expectation's depth, and so they stood dismayed.

                 XXVII
    'The frightful silence of that altered mood
     The tortures of the dying clove alone,
     Till one uprose among the multitude,
     And said--"The flood of time is rolling on;
     We stand upon its brink, whilst they are gone
     To glide in peace down death's mysterious stream.
     Have ye done well? they moulder, flesh and bone,
     Who might have made this life's envenomed dream
   A sweeter draught than ye will ever taste, I deem.

                 XXVIII
    '"These perish as the good and great of yore
     Have perished, and their murderers will repent;
     Yes, vain and barren tears shall flow before
     Yon smoke has faded from the firmament,
     Even for this cause, that ye, who must lament
     The death of those that made this world so fair,
     Cannot recall them now; but then is lent
     To man the wisdom of a high despair,
   When such can die, and he live on and linger here.

                 XXIX
    '"Ay, ye may fear not now the Pestilence,
     From fabled hell as by a charm withdrawn;
     All power and faith must pass, since calmly hence
     In pain and fire have unbelievers gone;
     And ye must sadly turn away, and moan
     In secret, to his home each one returning;
     And to long ages shall this hour be known,
     And slowly shall its memory, ever burning,
     Fill this dark night of things with an eternal morning.

                 XXX
    '"For me that world is grown too void and cold,
     Since hope pursues immortal destiny
     With steps thus slow--therefore shall ye behold
     How those who love, yet fear not, dare to die;
     Tell to your children this!" then suddenly
     He sheathed a dagger in his heart, and fell;
     My brain grew dark in death, and yet to me
     There came a murmur from the crowd to tell
   Of deep and mighty change which suddenly befell.

                 XXXI
    'Then suddenly I stood, a wingèd Thought,
     Before the immortal Senate, and the seat
     Of that star-shining Spirit, whence is wrought
     The strength of its dominion, good and great,
     The Better Genius of this world's estate.
     His realm around one mighty Fane is spread,
     Elysian islands bright and fortunate,
     Calm dwellings of the free and happy dead,
   Where I am sent to lead!' These wingèd words she said,

                 XXXII
     And with the silence of her eloquent smile,
     Bade us embark in her divine canoe;
     Then at the helm we took our seat, the while
     Above her head those plumes of dazzling hue
     Into the winds' invisible stream she threw,
     Sitting beside the prow; like gossamer
     On the swift breath of morn the vessel flew
     O'er the bright whirlpools of that fountain fair,
   Whose shores receded fast while we seemed lingering there;

                 XXXIII
     Till down that mighty stream dark, calm and fleet,
     Between a chasm of cedarn mountains riven,
     Chased by the thronging winds whose viewless feet,
     As swift as twinkling beams, had under Heaven
     From woods and waves wild sounds and odors driven,
     The boat fled visibly; three nights and days,
     Borne like a cloud through morn, and noon, and even,
     We sailed along the winding watery ways
   Of the vast stream, a long and labyrinthine maze.

                 XXXIV
     A scene of joy and wonder to behold,--
     That river's shapes and shadows changing ever,
     Where the broad sunrise filled with deepening gold
     Its whirlpools where all hues did spread and quiver;
     And where melodious falls did burst and shiver
     Among rocks clad with flowers, the foam and spray
     Sparkled like stars upon the sunny river;
     Or, when the moonlight poured a holier day,
   One vast and glittering lake around green islands lay.

                 XXXV
     Morn, noon and even, that boat of pearl outran
     The streams which bore it, like the arrowy cloud
     Of tempest, or the speedier thought of man,
     Which flieth forth and cannot make abode;
     Sometimes through forests, deep like night, we glode,
     Between the walls of mighty mountains crowned
     With Cyclopean piles, whose turrets proud,
     The homes of the departed, dimly frowned
   O'er the bright waves which girt their dark foundations round.

                 XXXVI
     Sometimes between the wide and flowering meadows
     Mile after mile we sailed, and 't was delight
     To see far off the sunbeams chase the shadows
     Over the grass; sometimes beneath the night
     Of wide and vaulted caves, whose roofs were bright
     With starry gems, we fled, whilst from their deep
     And dark green chasms shades beautiful and white,
     Amid sweet sounds across our path would sweep,
   Like swift and lovely dreams that walk the waves of sleep.

                 XXXVII
     And ever as we sailed, our minds were full
     Of love and wisdom, which would overflow
     In converse wild, and sweet, and wonderful;
     And in quick smiles whose light would come and go,
     Like music o'er wide waves, and in the flow
     Of sudden tears, and in the mute caress;
     For a deep shade was cleft, and we did know,
     That virtue, though obscured on Earth, not less
   Survives all mortal change in lasting loveliness.

                 XXXVIII
     Three days and nights we sailed, as thought and feeling
     Number delightful hours--for through the sky
     The spherèd lamps of day and night, revealing
     New changes and new glories, rolled on high,
     Sun, Moon and moonlike lamps, the progeny
     Of a diviner Heaven, serene and fair;
     On the fourth day, wild as a wind-wrought sea
     The stream became, and fast and faster bare
   The spirit-wingèd boat, steadily speeding there.

                 XXXIX
     Steady and swift, where the waves rolled like mountains
     Within the vast ravine, whose rifts did pour
     Tumultuous floods from their ten thousand fountains,
     The thunder of whose earth-uplifting roar
     Made the air sweep in whirlwinds from the shore,
     Calm as a shade, the boat of that fair child
     Securely fled that rapid stress before,
     Amid the topmost spray and sunbows wild
   Wreathed in the silver mist; in joy and pride we smiled.

                 XL
     The torrent of that wide and raging river
     Is passed, and our aërial speed suspended.
     We look behind; a golden mist did quiver
     When its wild surges with the lake were blended;
     Our bark hung there, as on a line suspended
     Between two heavens,--that windless, waveless lake,
     Which four great cataracts from four vales, attended
     By mists, aye feed; from rocks and clouds they break,
   And of that azure sea a silent refuge make.

                 XLI
     Motionless resting on the lake awhile,
     I saw its marge of snow-bright mountains rear
     Their peaks aloft; I saw each radiant isle;
     And in the midst, afar, even like a sphere
     Hung in one hollow sky, did there appear
     The Temple of the Spirit; on the sound
     Which issued thence drawn nearer and more near
     Like the swift moon this glorious earth around,
   The charmèd boat approached, and there its haven found.

Rosalind and Helen: A Modern Eclogue.



ROSALIND, HELEN, and her Child.

SCENE. The Shore of the Lake of Como.

HELEN
      COME hither, my sweet Rosalind.
      'T is long since thou and I have met;
      And yet methinks it were unkind
      Those moments to forget.
      Come, sit by me. I see thee stand
      By this lone lake, in this far land,
      Thy loose hair in the light wind flying,
      Thy sweet voice to each tone of even
      United, and thine eyes replying
      To the hues of yon fair heaven.                                 10
      Come, gentle friend! wilt sit by me?
      And be as thou wert wont to be
      Ere we were disunited?
      None doth behold us now; the power
      That led us forth at this lone hour
      Will be but ill requited
      If thou depart in scorn. Oh, come,
      And talk of our abandoned home!
      Remember, this is Italy,
      And we are exiles. Talk with me                                 20
      Of that our land, whose wilds and floods,
      Barren and dark although they be,
      Were dearer than these chestnut woods;
      Those heathy paths, that inland stream,
      And the blue mountains, shapes which seem
      Like wrecks of childhood's sunny dream;
      Which that we have abandoned now,
      Weighs on the heart like that remorse
      Which altered friendship leaves. I seek
      No more our youthful intercourse.                               30
      That cannot be! Rosalind, speak,
      Speak to me! Leave me not! When morn did come,
      When evening fell upon our common home,
      When for one hour we parted,--do not frown;
      I would not chide thee, though thy faith is broken;
      But turn to me. Oh! by this cherished token
      Of woven hair, which thou wilt not disown,
      Turn, as 't were but the memory of me,
      And not my scornèd self who prayed to thee!

ROSALIND
      Is it a dream, or do I see                                      40
      And hear frail Helen? I would flee
      Thy tainting touch; but former years
      Arise, and bring forbidden tears;
      And my o'erburdened memory
      Seeks yet its lost repose in thee.
      I share thy crime. I cannot choose
      But weep for thee; mine own strange grief
      But seldom stoops to such relief;
      Nor ever did I love thee less,
      Though mourning o'er thy wickedness                             50
      Even with a sister's woe. I knew
      What to the evil world is due,
      And therefore sternly did refuse
      To link me with the infamy
      Of one so lost as Helen. Now,
      Bewildered by my dire despair,
      Wondering I blush, and weep that thou
      Shouldst love me still--thou only!--There,
      Let us sit on that gray stone
      Till our mournful talk be done.                                 60

HELEN
      Alas! not there; I cannot bear
      The murmur of this lake to hear.
      A sound from there, Rosalind dear,
      Which never yet I heard elsewhere
      But in our native land, recurs,
      Even here where now we meet. It stirs
      Too much of suffocating sorrow!
      In the dell of yon dark chestnut wood
      Is a stone seat, a solitude
      Less like our own. The ghost of peace                           70
      Will not desert this spot. To-morrow,
      If thy kind feelings should not cease,
      We may sit here.

ROSALIND
                        Thou lead, my sweet,
      And I will follow.

HENRY
                          'T is Fenici's seat
      Where you are going? This is not the way,
      Mamma; it leads behind those trees that grow
      Close to the little river.

HELEN
                                  Yes, I know;
      I was bewildered. Kiss me and be gay,
      Dear boy; why do you sob?

HENRY
                                 I do not know;
      But it might break any one's heart to see                       80
      You and the lady cry so bitterly.

HELEN
      It is a gentle child, my friend. Go home,
      Henry, and play with Lilla till I come.
      We only cried with joy to see each other;
      We are quite merry now. Good night.

                                           The boy
      Lifted a sudden look upon his mother,
      And, in the gleam of forced and hollow joy
      Which lightened o'er her face, laughed with the glee
      Of light and unsuspecting infancy,
      And whispered in her ear, 'Bring home with you                  90
      That sweet strange lady-friend.' Then off he flew,
      But stopped, and beckoned with a meaning smile,
      Where the road turned. Pale Rosalind the while,
      Hiding her face, stood weeping silently.

      In silence then they took the way
      Beneath the forest's solitude.
      It was a vast and antique wood,
      Through which they took their way;
      And the gray shades of evening
      O'er that green wilderness did fling                           100
      Still deeper solitude.
      Pursuing still the path that wound
      The vast and knotted trees around,
      Through which slow shades were wandering,
      To a deep lawny dell they came,
      To a stone seat beside a spring,
      O'er which the columned wood did frame
      A roofless temple, like the fane
      Where, ere new creeds could faith obtain,
      Man's early race once knelt beneath                            110
      The overhanging deity.
      O'er this fair fountain hung the sky,
      Now spangled with rare stars. The snake,
      The pale snake, that with eager breath
      Creeps here his noontide thirst to slake,
      Is beaming with many a mingled hue,
      Shed from yon dome's eternal blue,
      When he floats on that dark and lucid flood
      In the light of his own loveliness;
      And the birds, that in the fountain dip                        120
      Their plumes, with fearless fellowship
      Above and round him wheel and hover.
      The fitful wind is heard to stir
      One solitary leaf on high;
      The chirping of the grasshopper
      Fills every pause. There is emotion
      In all that dwells at noontide here;
      Then through the intricate wild wood
      A maze of life and light and motion
      Is woven. But there is stillness now--                         130
      Gloom, and the trance of Nature now.
      The snake is in his cave asleep;
      The birds are on the branches dreaming;
      Only the shadows creep;
      Only the glow-worm is gleaming;
      Only the owls and the nightingales
      Wake in this dell when daylight fails,
      And gray shades gather in the woods;
      And the owls have all fled far away
      In a merrier glen to hoot and play,                            140
      For the moon is veiled and sleeping now.
      The accustomed nightingale still broods
      On her accustomed bough,
      But she is mute; for her false mate
      Has fled and left her desolate.

      This silent spot tradition old
      Had peopled with the spectral dead.
      For the roots of the speaker's hair felt cold
      And stiff, as with tremulous lips he told
      That a hellish shape at midnight led                           150
      The ghost of a youth with hoary hair,
      And sate on the seat beside him there,
      Till a naked child came wandering by,
      When the fiend would change to a lady fair!
      A fearful tale! the truth was worse;
      For here a sister and a brother
      Had solemnized a monstrous curse,
      Meeting in this fair solitude;
      For beneath yon very sky,
      Had they resigned to one another                               160
      Body and soul. The multitude,
      Tracking them to the secret wood,
      Tore limb from limb their innocent child,
      And stabbed and trampled on its mother;
      But the youth, for God's most holy grace,
      A priest saved to burn in the market-place.

      Duly at evening Helen came
      To this lone silent spot,
      From the wrecks of a tale of wilder sorrow
      So much of sympathy to borrow                                  170
      As soothed her own dark lot.
      Duly each evening from her home,
      With her fair child would Helen come
      To sit upon that antique seat,
      While the hues of day were pale;
      And the bright boy beside her feet
      Now lay, lifting at intervals
      His broad blue eyes on her;
      Now, where some sudden impulse calls,
      Following. He was a gentle boy                                 180
      And in all gentle sorts took joy.
      Oft in a dry leaf for a boat,
      With a small feather for a sail,
      His fancy on that spring would float,
      If some invisible breeze might stir
      Its marble calm; and Helen smiled
      Through tears of awe on the gay child,
      To think that a boy as fair as he,
      In years which never more may be,
      By that same fount, in that same wood,                         190
      The like sweet fancies had pursued;
      And that a mother, lost like her,
      Had mournfully sate watching him.
      Then all the scene was wont to swim
      Through the mist of a burning tear.
      For many months had Helen known
      This scene; and now she thither turned
      Her footsteps, not alone.
      The friend whose falsehood she had mourned
      Sate with her on that seat of stone.                           200
      Silent they sate; for evening,
      And the power its glimpses bring,
      Had with one awful shadow quelled
      The passion of their grief. They sate
      With linkèd hands, for unrepelled
      Had Helen taken Rosalind's.
      Like the autumn wind, when it unbinds
      The tangled locks of the nightshade's hair
      Which is twined in the sultry summer air
      Round the walls of an outworn sepulchre,                       210
      Did the voice of Helen, sad and sweet,
      And the sound of her heart that ever beat
      As with sighs and words she breathed on her,
      Unbind the knots of her friend's despair,
      Till her thoughts were free to float and flow;
      And from her laboring bosom now,
      Like the bursting of a prisoned flame,
      The voice of a long-pent sorrow came.

ROSALIND
      I saw the dark earth fall upon
      The coffin; and I saw the stone                                220
      Laid over him whom this cold breast
      Had pillowed to his nightly rest!
      Thou knowest not, thou canst not know
      My agony. Oh! I could not weep.
      The sources whence such blessings flow
      Were not to be approached by me!
      But I could smile, and I could sleep,
      Though with a self-accusing heart.
      In morning's light, in evening's gloom,
      I watched--and would not thence depart--                       230
      My husband's unlamented tomb.
      My children knew their sire was gone;
      But when I told them, 'He is dead,'
      They laughed aloud in frantic glee,
      They clapped their hands and leaped about,
      Answering each other's ecstasy
      With many a prank and merry shout.
      But I sate silent and alone,
      Wrapped in the mock of mourning weed.

      They laughed, for he was dead; but I                           240
      Sate with a hard and tearless eye,
      And with a heart which would deny
      The secret joy it could not quell,
      Low muttering o'er his loathèd name;
      Till from that self-contention came
      Remorse where sin was none; a hell
      Which in pure spirits should not dwell.

      I 'll tell thee truth. He was a man
      Hard, selfish, loving only gold,
      Yet full of guile; his pale eyes ran                           250
      With tears which each some falsehood told,
      And oft his smooth and bridled tongue
      Would give the lie to his flushing cheek;
      He was a coward to the strong;
      He was a tyrant to the weak,
      On whom his vengeance he would wreak;
      For scorn, whose arrows search the heart,
      From many a stranger's eye would dart,
      And on his memory cling, and follow
      His soul to its home so cold and hollow.                       260
      He was a tyrant to the weak,
      And we were such, alas the day!
      Oft, when my little ones at play
      Were in youth's natural lightness gay,
      Or if they listened to some tale
      Of travellers, or of fairyland,
      When the light from the wood-fire's dying brand
      Flashed on their faces,--if they heard
      Or thought they heard upon the stair
      His footstep, the suspended word                               270
      Died on my lips; we all grew pale;
      The babe at my bosom was hushed with fear
      If it thought it heard its father near;
      And my two wild boys would near my knee
      Cling, cowed and cowering fearfully.

      I 'll tell thee truth: I loved another.
      His name in my ear was ever ringing,
      His form to my brain was ever clinging;
      Yet, if some stranger breathed that name,
      My lips turned white, and my heart beat fast.                  280
      My nights were once haunted by dreams of flame,
      My days were dim in the shadow cast
      By the memory of the same!
      Day and night, day and night,
      He was my breath and life and light,
      For three short years, which soon were passed.
      On the fourth, my gentle mother
      Led me to the shrine, to be
      His sworn bride eternally.
      And now we stood on the altar stair,                           290
      When my father came from a distant land,
      And with a loud and fearful cry
      Rushed between us suddenly.
      I saw the stream of his thin gray hair,
      I saw his lean and lifted hand,
      And heard his words--and live! O God!
      Wherefore do I live?--'Hold, hold!'
      He cried, 'I tell thee 't is her brother!
      Thy mother, boy, beneath the sod
      Of yon churchyard rests in her shroud so cold;                 300
      I am now weak, and pale, and old;
      We were once dear to one another,
      I and that corpse! Thou art our child!'
      Then with a laugh both long and wild
      The youth upon the pavement fell.
      They found him dead! All looked on me,
      The spasms of my despair to see;
      But I was calm. I went away;
      I was clammy-cold like clay.
      I did not weep; I did not speak;                               310
      But day by day, week after week,
      I walked about like a corpse alive.
      Alas! sweet friend, you must believe
      This heart is stone--it did not break.

      My father lived a little while,
      But all might see that he was dying,
      He smiled with such a woful smile.
      When he was in the churchyard lying
      Among the worms, we grew quite poor,
      So that no one would give us bread;                            320
      My mother looked at me, and said
      Faint words of cheer, which only meant
      That she could die and be content;
      So I went forth from the same church door
      To another husband's bed.
      And this was he who died at last,
      When weeks and months and years had passed,
      Through which I firmly did fulfil
      My duties, a devoted wife,
      With the stern step of vanquished will                         330
      Walking beneath the night of life,
      Whose hours extinguished, like slow rain
      Falling forever, pain by pain,
      The very hope of death's dear rest;
      Which, since the heart within my breast
      Of natural life was dispossessed,
      Its strange sustainer there had been.

      When flowers were dead, and grass was green
      Upon my mother's grave--that mother
      Whom to outlive, and cheer, and make                           340
      My wan eyes glitter for her sake,
      Was my vowed task, the single care
      Which once gave life to my despair--
      When she was a thing that did not stir,
      And the crawling worms were cradling her
      To a sleep more deep and so more sweet
      Than a baby's rocked on its nurse's knee,
      I lived; a living pulse then beat
      Beneath my heart that awakened me.
      What was this pulse so warm and free?                          350
      Alas! I knew it could not be
      My own dull blood. 'T was like a thought
      Of liquid love, that spread and wrought
      Under my bosom and in my brain,
      And crept with the blood through every vein,
      And hour by hour, day after day,
      The wonder could not charm away
      But laid in sleep my wakeful pain,
      Until I knew it was a child,
      And then I wept. For long, long years                          360
      These frozen eyes had shed no tears;
      But now--'t was the season fair and mild
      When April has wept itself to May;
      I sate through the sweet sunny day
      By my window bowered round with leaves,
      And down my cheeks the quick tears ran
      Like twinkling rain-drops from the eaves,
      When warm spring showers are passing o'er.
      O Helen, none can ever tell
      The joy it was to weep once more!                              370

      I wept to think how hard it were
      To kill my babe, and take from it
      The sense of light, and the warm air,
      And my own fond and tender care,
      And love and smiles; ere I knew yet
      That these for it might, as for me,
      Be the masks of a grinning mockery.
      And haply, I would dream, 't were sweet
      To feed it from my faded breast,
      Or mark my own heart's restless beat                           380
      Rock it to its untroubled rest,
      And watch the growing soul beneath
      Dawn in faint smiles; and hear its breath,
      Half interrupted by calm sighs,
      And search the depth of its fair eyes
      For long departed memories!
      And so I lived till that sweet load
      Was lightened. Darkly forward flowed
      The stream of years, and on it bore
      Two shapes of gladness to my sight;                            390
      Two other babes, delightful more,
      In my lost soul's abandoned night,
      Than their own country ships may be
      Sailing towards wrecked mariners
      Who cling to the rock of a wintry sea.
      For each, as it came, brought soothing tears;
      And a loosening warmth, as each one lay
      Sucking the sullen milk away,
      About my frozen heart did play,
      And weaned it, oh, how painfully--                             400
      As they themselves were weaned each one
      From that sweet food--even from the thirst
      Of death, and nothingness, and rest,
      Strange inmate of a living breast,
      Which all that I had undergone
      Of grief and shame, since she who first
      The gates of that dark refuge closed
      Came to my sight, and almost burst
      The seal of that Lethean spring--
      But these fair shadows interposed.                             410
      For all delights are shadows now!
      And from my brain to my dull brow
      The heavy tears gather and flow.
      I cannot speak--oh, let me weep!

      The tears which fell from her wan eyes
      Glimmered among the moonlight dew.
      Her deep hard sobs and heavy sighs
      Their echoes in the darkness threw.
      When she grew calm, she thus did keep
      The tenor of her tale:--

                                He died;                             420
      I know not how; he was not old,
      If age be numbered by its years;
      But he was bowed and bent with fears,
      Pale with the quenchless thirst of gold,
      Which, like fierce fever, left him weak;
      And his strait lip and bloated cheek
      Were warped in spasms by hollow sneers;
      And selfish cares with barren plough,
      Not age, had lined his narrow brow,
      And foul and cruel thoughts, which feed                        430
      Upon the withering life within,
      Like vipers on some poisonous weed.
      Whether his ill were death or sin
      None knew, until he died indeed,
      And then men owned they were the same.

      Seven days within my chamber lay
      That corse, and my babes made holiday.
      At last, I told them what is death.
      The eldest, with a kind of shame,
      Came to my knees with silent breath,                           440
      And sate awe-stricken at my feet;
      And soon the others left their play,
      And sate there too. It is unmeet
      To shed on the brief flower of youth
      The withering knowledge of the grave.
      From me remorse then wrung that truth.
      I could not bear the joy which gave
      Too just a response to mine own.
      In vain. I dared not feign a groan;
      And in their artless looks I saw,                              450
      Between the mists of fear and awe,
      That my own thought was theirs; and they
      Expressed it not in words, but said,
      Each in its heart, how every day
      Will pass in happy work and play,
      Now he is dead and gone away!

      After the funeral all our kin
      Assembled, and the will was read.
      My friend, I tell thee, even the dead
      Have strength, their putrid shrouds within,                    460
      To blast and torture. Those who live
      Still fear the living, but a corse
      Is merciless, and Power doth give
      To such pale tyrants half the spoil
      He rends from those who groan and toil,
      Because they blush not with remorse
      Among their crawling worms. Behold,
      I have no child! my tale grows old
      With grief, and staggers; let it reach
      The limits of my feeble speech,                                470
      And languidly at length recline
      On the brink of its own grave and mine.

      Thou knowest what a thing is Poverty
      Among the fallen on evil days.
      'T is Crime, and Fear, and Infamy,
      And houseless Want in frozen ways
      Wandering ungarmented, and Pain,
      And, worse than all, that inward stain,
      Foul Self-contempt, which drowns in sneers
      Youth's starlight smile, and makes its tears                   480
      First like hot gall, then dry forever!
      And well thou knowest a mother never
      Could doom her children to this ill,
      And well he knew the same. The will
      Imported that, if e'er again
      I sought my children to behold,
      Or in my birthplace did remain
      Beyond three days, whose hours were told,
      They should inherit nought; and he,
      To whom next came their patrimony,                             490
      A sallow lawyer, cruel and cold,
      Aye watched me, as the will was read,
      With eyes askance, which sought to see
      The secrets of my agony;
      And with close lips and anxious brow
      Stood canvassing still to and fro
      The chance of my resolve, and all
      The dead man's caution just did call;
      For in that killing lie 't was said--
      'She is adulterous, and doth hold                              500
      In secret that the Christian creed
      Is false, and therefore is much need
      That I should have a care to save
      My children from eternal fire.'
      Friend, he was sheltered by the grave,
      And therefore dared to be a liar!
      In truth, the Indian on the pyre
      Of her dead husband, half consumed,
      As well might there be false as I
      To those abhorred embraces doomed,                             510
      Far worse than fire's brief agony.
      As to the Christian creed, if true
      Or false, I never questioned it;
      I took it as the vulgar do;
      Nor my vexed soul had leisure yet
      To doubt the things men say, or deem
      That they are other than they seem.

      All present who those crimes did hear,
      In feigned or actual scorn and fear,
      Men, women, children, slunk away,                              520
      Whispering with self-contented pride
      Which half suspects its own base lie.
      I spoke to none, nor did abide,
      But silently I went my way,
      Nor noticed I where joyously
      Sate my two younger babes at play
      In the courtyard through which I passed;
      But went with footsteps firm and fast
      Till I came to the brink of the ocean green,
      And there, a woman with gray hairs,                            530
      Who had my mother's servant been,
      Kneeling, with many tears and prayers,
      Made me accept a purse of gold,
      Half of the earnings she had kept
      To refuge her when weak and old.
      With woe, which never sleeps or slept,
      I wander now. 'T is a vain thought--
      But on yon Alp, whose snowy head
      'Mid the azure air is islanded,
      (We see it--o'er the flood of cloud,                           540
      Which sunrise from its eastern caves
      Drives, wrinkling into golden waves,
      Hung with its precipices proud--
      From that gray stone where first we met)
      There--now who knows the dead feel nought?--
      Should be my grave; for he who yet
      Is my soul's soul once said: ''T were sweet
      'Mid stars and lightnings to abide,
      And winds, and lulling snows that beat
      With their soft flakes the mountain wide,                      550
      Where weary meteor lamps repose,
      And languid storms their pinions close,
      And all things strong and bright and pure,
      And ever during, aye endure.
      Who knows, if one were buried there,
      But these things might our spirits make,
      Amid the all-surrounding air,
      Their own eternity partake?'
      Then 't was a wild and playful saying
      At which I laughed or seemed to laugh.                         560
      They were his words--now heed my praying,
      And let them be my epitaph.
      Thy memory for a term may be
      My monument. Wilt remember me?
      I know thou wilt; and canst forgive,
      Whilst in this erring world to live
      My soul disdained not, that I thought
      Its lying forms were worthy aught,
      And much less thee.

HELEN
                           Oh, speak not so!
      But come to me and pour thy woe                                570
      Into this heart, full though it be,
      Aye overflowing with its own.
      I thought that grief had severed me
      From all beside who weep and groan,
      Its likeness upon earth to be--
      Its express image; but thou art
      More wretched. Sweet, we will not part
      Henceforth, if death be not division;
      If so, the dead feel no contrition.
      But wilt thou hear, since last we parted,                      580
      All that has left me broken-hearted?

ROSALIND
      Yes, speak. The faintest stars are scarcely shorn
      Of their thin beams by that delusive morn
      Which sinks again in darkness, like the light
      Of early love, soon lost in total night.

HELEN
      Alas! Italian winds are mild,
      But my bosom is cold--wintry cold;
      When the warm air weaves, among the fresh leaves,
      Soft music, my poor brain is wild,
      And I am weak like a nursling child,                           590
      Though my soul with grief is gray and old.

ROSALIND
      Weep not at thine own words, though they must make
      Me weep. What is thy tale?

HELEN
                                  I fear 't will shake
      Thy gentle heart with tears. Thou well
      Rememberest when we met no more;
      And, though I dwelt with Lionel,
      That friendless caution pierced me sore
      With grief; a wound my spirit bore
      Indignantly--but when he died,
      With him lay dead both hope and pride.                         600

      Alas! all hope is buried now.
      But then men dreamed the aged earth
      Was laboring in that mighty birth
      Which many a poet and a sage
      Has aye foreseen--the happy age
      When truth and love shall dwell below
      Among the works and ways of men;
      Which on this world not power but will
      Even now is wanting to fulfil.

      Among mankind what thence befell                               610
      Of strife, how vain, is known too well;
      When Liberty's dear pæan fell
      'Mid murderous howls. To Lionel,
      Though of great wealth and lineage high,
      Yet through those dungeon walls there came
      Thy thrilling light, O Liberty!
      And as the meteor's midnight flame
      Startles the dreamer, sun-like truth
      Flashed on his visionary youth,
      And filled him, not with love, but faith,                      620
      And hope, and courage mute in death;
      For love and life in him were twins,
      Born at one birth. In every other
      First life, then love, its course begins,
      Though they be children of one mother;
      And so through this dark world they fleet
      Divided, till in death they meet;
      But he loved all things ever. Then
      He passed amid the strife of men,
      And stood at the throne of armèd power                         630
      Pleading for a world of woe.
      Secure as one on a rock-built tower
      O'er the wrecks which the surge trails to and fro,
      'Mid the passions wild of humankind
      He stood, like a spirit calming them;
      For, it was said, his words could bind
      Like music the lulled crowd, and stem
      That torrent of unquiet dream
      Which mortals truth and reason deem,
      But is revenge and fear and pride.                             640
      Joyous he was; and hope and peace
      On all who heard him did abide,
      Raining like dew from his sweet talk,
      As where the evening star may walk
      Along the brink of the gloomy seas,
      Liquid mists of splendor quiver.
      His very gestures touched to tears
      The unpersuaded tyrant, never
      So moved before; his presence stung
      The torturers with their victim's pain,                        650
      And none knew how; and through their ears
      The subtle witchcraft of his tongue
      Unlocked the hearts of those who keep
      Gold, the world's bond of slavery.
      Men wondered, and some sneered to see
      One sow what he could never reap;
      For he is rich, they said, and young,
      And might drink from the depths of luxury.
      If he seeks fame, fame never crowned
      The champion of a trampled creed;                              660
      If he seeks power, power is enthroned
      'Mid ancient rights and wrongs, to feed
      Which hungry wolves with praise and spoil
      Those who would sit near power must toil;
      And such, there sitting, all may see.
      What seeks he? All that others seek
      He casts away, like a vile weed
      Which the sea casts unreturningly.
      That poor and hungry men should break
      The laws which wreak them toil and scorn                       670
      We understand; but Lionel,
      We know, is rich and nobly born.
      So wondered they; yet all men loved
      Young Lionel, though few approved;
      All but the priests, whose hatred fell
      Like the unseen blight of a smiling day,
      The withering honey-dew which clings
      Under the bright green buds of May
      Whilst they unfold their emerald wings;
      For he made verses wild and queer                              680
      On the strange creeds priests hold so dear
      Because they bring them land and gold.
      Of devils and saints and all such gear
      He made tales which whoso heard or read
      Would laugh till he were almost dead.
      So this grew a proverb: 'Don't get old
      Till Lionel's Banquet in Hell you hear,
      And then you will laugh yourself young again.'
      So the priests hated him, and he
      Repaid their hate with cheerful glee.                          690

      Ah, smiles and joyance quickly died,
      For public hope grew pale and dim
      In an altered time and tide,
      And in its wasting withered him,
      As a summer flower that blows too soon
      Droops in the smile of the waning moon,
      When it scatters through an April night
      The frozen dews of wrinkling blight.
      None now hoped more. Gray Power was seated
      Safely on her ancestral throne;                                700
      And Faith, the Python, undefeated
      Even to its blood-stained steps dragged on
      Her foul and wounded train; and men
      Were trampled and deceived again,
      And words and shows again could bind
      The wailing tribes of humankind
      In scorn and famine. Fire and blood
      Raged round the raging multitude,
      To fields remote by tyrants sent
      To be the scornèd instrument                                   710
      With which they drag from mines of gore
      The chains their slaves yet ever wore;
      And in the streets men met each other,
      And by old altars and in halls,
      And smiled again at festivals.
      But each man found in his heart's brother
      Cold cheer; for all, though half deceived,
      The outworn creeds again believed,
      And the same round anew began
      Which the weary world yet ever ran.                            720

      Many then wept, not tears, but gall,
      Within their hearts, like drops which fall
      Wasting the fountain-stone away.
      And in that dark and evil day
      Did all desires and thoughts that claim
      Men's care--ambition, friendship, fame,
      Love, hope, though hope was now despair--
      Indue the colors of this change,
      As from the all-surrounding air
      The earth takes hues obscure and strange,                      730
      When storm and earthquake linger there.

      And so, my friend, it then befell
      To many,--most to Lionel,
      Whose hope was like the life of youth
      Within him, and when dead became
      A spirit of unresting flame,
      Which goaded him in his distress
      Over the world's vast wilderness.
      Three years he left his native land,
      And on the fourth, when he returned,                           740
      None knew him; he was stricken deep
      With some disease of mind, and turned
      Into aught unlike Lionel.
      On him--on whom, did he pause in sleep,
      Serenest smiles were wont to keep,
      And, did he wake, a wingèd band
      Of bright Persuasions, which had fed
      On his sweet lips and liquid eyes,
      Kept their swift pinions half outspread
      To do on men his least command--                               750
      On him, whom once 't was paradise
      Even to behold, now misery lay.
      In his own heart 't was merciless--
      To all things else none may express
      Its innocence and tenderness.

      'T was said that he had refuge sought
      In love from his unquiet thought
      In distant lands, and been deceived
      By some strange show; for there were found,
      Blotted with tears--as those relieved                          760
      By their own words are wont to do--
      These mournful verses on the ground,
      By all who read them blotted too.

      'How am I changed! my hopes were once like fire;
        I loved, and I believed that life was love.
      How am I lost! on wings of swift desire
        Among Heaven's winds my spirit once did move.
      I slept, and silver dreams did aye inspire
        My liquid sleep; I woke, and did approve
      All Nature to my heart, and thought to make                    770
      A paradise of earth for one sweet sake.

      'I love, but I believe in love no more.
        I feel desire, but hope not. Oh, from sleep
      Most vainly must my weary brain implore
        Its long lost flattery now! I wake to weep,
      And sit through the long day gnawing the core
        Of my bitter heart, and, like a miser, keep--
      Since none in what I feel take pain or pleasure--
      To my own soul its self-consuming treasure.'

      He dwelt beside me near the sea;                               780
      And oft in evening did we meet,
      When the waves, beneath the starlight, flee
      O'er the yellow sands with silver feet,
      And talked. Our talk was sad and sweet,
      Till slowly from his mien there passed
      The desolation which it spoke;
      And smiles--as when the lightning's blast
      Has parched some heaven-delighting oak,
      The next spring shows leaves pale and rare,
      But like flowers delicate and fair,                            790
      On its rent boughs--again arrayed
      His countenance in tender light;
      His words grew subtle fire, which made
      The air his hearers breathed delight;
      His motions, like the winds, were free,
      Which bend the bright grass gracefully,
      Then fade away in circlets faint;
      And wingèd Hope--on which upborne
      His soul seemed hovering in his eyes,
      Like some bright spirit newly born                             800
      Floating amid the sunny skies--
      Sprang forth from his rent heart anew.
      Yet o'er his talk, and looks, and mien,
      Tempering their loveliness too keen,
      Past woe its shadow backward threw;
      Till, like an exhalation spread
      From flowers half drunk with evening dew,
      They did become infectious--sweet
      And subtle mists of sense and thought,
      Which wrapped us soon, when we might meet,                     810
      Almost from our own looks and aught
      The wild world holds. And so his mind
      Was healed, while mine grew sick with fear;
      For ever now his health declined,
      Like some frail bark which cannot bear
      The impulse of an altered wind,
      Though prosperous; and my heart grew full,
      'Mid its new joy, of a new care;
      For his cheek became, not pale, but fair,
      As rose-o'ershadowed lilies are;                               820
      And soon his deep and sunny hair,
      In this alone less beautiful,
      Like grass in tombs grew wild and rare.
      The blood in his translucent veins
      Beat, not like animal life, but love
      Seemed now its sullen springs to move,
      When life had failed, and all its pains;
      And sudden sleep would seize him oft
      Like death, so calm,--but that a tear,
      His pointed eye-lashes between,                                830
      Would gather in the light serene
      Of smiles whose lustre bright and soft
      Beneath lay undulating there.
      His breath was like inconstant flame
      As eagerly it went and came;
      And I hung o'er him in his sleep,
      Till, like an image in the lake
      Which rains disturb, my tears would break
      The shadow of that slumber deep.
      Then he would bid me not to weep,                              840
      And say, with flattery false yet sweet,
      That death and he could never meet,
      If I would never part with him.
      And so we loved, and did unite
      All that in us was yet divided;
      For when he said, that many a rite,
      By men to bind but once provided,
      Could not be shared by him and me,
      Or they would kill him in their glee,
      I shuddered, and then laughing said--                          850
      'We will have rites our faith to bind,
      But our church shall be the starry night,
      Our altar the grassy earth outspread,
      And our priest the muttering wind.'

      'T was sunset as I spoke. One star
      Had scarce burst forth, when from afar
      The ministers of misrule sent
      Seized upon Lionel, and bore
      His chained limbs to a dreary tower,
      In the midst of a city vast and wide.                          860
      For he, they said, from his mind had bent
      Against their gods keen blasphemy,
      For which, though his soul must roasted be
      In hell's red lakes immortally,
      Yet even on earth must he abide
      The vengeance of their slaves: a trial,
      I think, men call it. What avail
      Are prayers and tears, which chase denial
      From the fierce savage nursed in hate?
      What the knit soul that pleading and pale                      870
      Makes wan the quivering cheek which late
      It painted with its own delight?
      We were divided. As I could,
      I stilled the tingling of my blood,
      And followed him in their despite,
      As a widow follows, pale and wild,
      The murderers and corse of her only child;
      And when we came to the prison door,
      And I prayed to share his dungeon floor
      With prayers which rarely have been spurned,                   880
      And when men drove me forth, and I
    &nbs

Julian and Maddalo: A Conversation.
Author's Preface


COUNT MADDALO is a Venetian nobleman of ancient family and of great fortune, who, without mixing much in the society of his countrymen, resides chiefly at his magnificent palace in that city. He is a person of the most consummate genius, and capable, if he would direct his energies to such an end, of becoming the redeemer of his degraded country. But it is his weakness to be proud. He derives, from a comparison of his own extraordinary mind with the dwarfish intellects that surround him, an intense apprehension of the nothingness of human life. His passions and his powers are incomparably greater than those of other men; and, instead of the latter having been employed in curbing the former, they have mutually lent each other strength. His ambition preys upon itself, for want of objects which it can consider worthy of exertion. I say that Maddalo is proud, because I can find no other word to express the concentred and impatient feelings which consume him; but it is on his own hopes and affections only that he seems to trample, for in social life no human being can be more gentle, patient and unassuming than Maddalo. He is cheerful, frank and witty. His more serious conversation is a sort of intoxication; men are held by it as by a spell. He has travelled much; and there is an inexpressible charm in his relation of his adventures in different countries.

Julian is an Englishman of good family, passionately attached to those philosophical notions which assert the power of man over his own mind, and the immense improvements of which, by the extinction of certain moral superstitions, human society may be yet susceptible. Without concealing the evil in the world he is forever speculating how good may be made superior. He is a complete infidel and a scoffer at all things reputed holy; and Maddalo takes a wicked pleasure in drawing out his taunts against religion. What Maddalo thinks on these matters is not exactly known. Julian, in spite of his heterodox opinions, is conjectured by his friends to possess some good qualities. How far this is possible the pious reader will determine. Julian is rather serious.

Of the Maniac I can give no information. He seems, by his own account, to have been disappointed in love. He was evidently a very cultivated and amiable person when in his right senses. His story, told at length, might be like many other stories of the same kind. The unconnected exclamations of his agony will perhaps be found a sufficient comment for the text of every heart.