A kind of change came in my fate, |
My keepers grew compassionate ; |
I know not what had made them so, |
They were inured to sights of woe, |
But so it was:—my broken chain |
With links unfastened did remain, |
And it was liberty to stride, |
Along my cell from side to side, |
And up and down, and then athwart, |
And tread it over every part ; |
And round the pillars one by one |
Returning where my walk begun, |
Avoiding only, as I trod, |
My brothers’ graves without a sod ; |
For if I thought with heedless tread |
My step profaned their lowly bed, |
My breath came gaspingly and thick, |
And my crushed heart felt blind and sick.
|
I made a footing in the wall, |
It was not
therefrom to escape, |
For I had buried one and all, |
Who loved me in a
human shape ; |
And the whole earth would henceforth be |
A wider prison unto me : |
No child, no sire, no kin had I, |
No partner in my misery ; |
I thought of this, and I was glad, |
For thought of them had made me mad ; |
But I was curious to ascend |
To my barred windows, and to bend |
Once more, upon the mountains high, |
The quiet of a loving eye.
|
I saw them, and they were the same, |
They were not changed like me in a frame ; |
I saw their thousand years of snow |
On high—their wide long lake below, |
And the blue Rhone in fullest flow ; |
I heard the torrents leap and gush |
O’er channeled rock and broken bush ; |
I saw the white-walled distant town, |
And whiter sails go skimming down ; |
And then there was a little isle, |
Which in my very face did smile, |
The only one in
view ; |
A small green isle, it seemed no more, |
Scarce broader than my dungeon floor, |
But in it there were three tall trees, |
And o’er it blew the mountain breeze, |
And by it there were waters flowing, |
And on it there were young flowers growing, |
Of gentle breath
and hue. |
The fish swam by the castle wall, |
And they seemed joyous each and all ; |
The eagle rode the rising blast, |
Methought he never flew so fast |
As then to me he seemed to fly ; |
And then new tears came in my eye, |
And I felt troubled—and would fain |
I had not left my recent chain ; |
And when I did descend again, |
The darkness of my dim abode |
Fell on me as a heavy load ; |
It was as is a new-dug grave, |
Closing o’er one we sought to save,— |
And yet my glance, too much opprest, |
Had almost need of such a rest.
|
It might be months, or years, or days, |
I kept no count, I
took no note, |
I had no hope my eyes to raise, |
And clear them of
their dreary mote ; |
At last men came to set me free ; |
I asked not why,
and recked not where ; |
It was at length the same to me, |
Fettered or fetterless to be, |
I learned to love
despair. |
And thus when they appeared at last, |
And all my bonds aside were cast, |
These heavy walls to me had grown |
A hermitage—and all my own ! |
And half I felt as they were come |
To tear me from a second home : |
With spiders I had friendship made, |
And watched them in their sullen trade, |
Had seen the mice by moonlight play, |
And why should I feel less than they ? |
We were all inmates of one place, |
And I, the monarch of each race, |
Had power to kill—yet, strange to tell ! |
In quiet we had learned to dwell ; |
My very chains and I grew friends, |
So much a long communion tends |
To make us what we are:—even I |
Regained my freedom with a sigh.
|
Lord Byron |
Classic Poems |
|
[ Destruction of the Sennacherib ] [ Growing Old ] [ She Walks in Beauty ] [ Italy versus England ] [ The Eve of Waterloo ] [ from The Prisoner of Chillon ] [ The Isles of Greece ] [ from Don Juan ] |