The Revolt of Islam/Canto 3
Canto Third.
I.What thoughts had sway o'er Cythna's lonely slumberThat night, I know not; but my own did seemAs if they might ten thousand years outnumberOf waking life, the visions of a dream,Which hid in one dim gulph the troubled streamOf mind; a boundless chaos wild and vast,Whose limits yet were never memory's theme:And I lay struggling as its whirlwinds past,Sometimes for rapture sick, sometimes for pain aghast.
II.Two hours, whose mighty circle did embraceMore time than might make grey the infant world,Rolled thus, a weary and tumultuous space:When the third came, like mist on breezes curled,From my dim sleep a shadow was unfurled:Methought, upon the threshold of a caveI sate with Cythna; drooping briony, pearledWith dew from the wild streamlet's shattered wave,Hung, where we sate to taste the joys which Nature gave.
III.We lived a day as we were wont to live,But Nature had a robe of glory on,And the bright air o'er every shape did weaveIntenser hues, so that the herbless stone,The leafless bough among the leaves alone,Had being clearer than its own could be,And Cythna's pure and radiant self was shownIn this strange vision, so divine to me,That if I loved before, now love was agony.
IV.Morn fled, noon came, evening, then night descended,And we prolonged calm talk beneath the sphereOf the calm moon—when, suddenly was blendedWith our repose a nameless sense of fear;And from the cave behind I seemed to hearSounds gathering upwards!—accents incomplete,And stifled shrieks,—and now, more near and near,A tumult and a rush of thronging feetThe cavern's secret depths beneath the earth did beat.
V.The scene was changed, and away, away, away!Thro' the air and over the sea we sped,And Cythna in my sheltering bosom lay,And the winds bore me—thro' the darkness spreadAround, the gaping earth then vomitedLegions of foul and ghastly shapes, which hungUpon my flight; and ever as we fled,They plucked at Cythna—soon to me then clungA sense of actual things those monstrous dreams among.
VI.And I lay struggling in the impotenceOf sleep, while outward life had burst its bound,Tho', still deluded, strove the tortured senseTo its dire wanderings to adapt the soundWhich in the light of morn was poured aroundOur dwelling—breathless, pale, and unawareI rose, and all the cottage crowded foundWith armed men, whose glittering swords were bare,And whose degraded limbs the tyrant's garb did wear.
VII.And ere with rapid lips and gathered browI could demand the cause—a feeble shriek—It was a feeble shriek, faint, far and low,Arrested me—my mien grew calm and meek,And grasping a small knife, I went to seekThat voice among the crowd—'twas Cythna's cry!Beneath most calm resolve did agony wreakIts whirlwind rage:—so I past quietlyTill I beheld, where bound, that dearest child did lie.
VIII.I started to behold her, for delightAnd exultation, and a joyance free,Solemn, serene and lofty, filled the lightOf the calm smile with which she looked on me:So that I feared some brainless ecstacy,Wrought from that bitter woe, had wildered her—Farewell! farewell!" she said, as I drew nigh."At first my peace was marred by this strange stir,Now I am calm as truth—its chosen minister.
IX."Look not so, Laon—say farewell in hope,These bloody men are but the slaves who bearTheir mistress to her task—it was my scopeThe slavery where they drag me now, to share,And among captives willing chains to wearAwhile—the rest thou knowest—return, dear friend!Let our first triumph trample the despairWhich would ensnare us now, for in the end,In victory or in death our hopes and fears mast blend."
X.These words had fallen on my unheeding ear,Whilst I had watched the motions of the crewWith seeming careless glance; not many wereAround her, for their comrades just withdrewTo guard some other victim—so I drewMy knife, and with one impulse, suddenlyAll unaware three of their number slew,And grasped a fourth by the throat, and with loud eryMy countrymen invoked to death or liberty!
XI.What followed then, I know not—for a strokeOn my raised arm and naked head, came down,Filling my eyes with blood—when I awoke,I felt that they had bound me in my swoon,And up a rock which overhangs the town,By the steep path were bearing me: below,The plain was filled with slaughter,—overthrownThe vineyards and the harvests, and the glowOf blazing roofs shone far o'er the white Ocean's flow.
XII.Upon that rock a mighty column stood,Whose capital seemed sculptured in the sky,Which to the wanderers o'er the solitudeOf distant seas, from ages long gone by,Had made a landmark; o'er its height to flyScarcely the cloud, the vulture, or the blast,Has power—and when the shades of evening licOn Earth and Ocean, its carv'd summits castThe sunken day-light far thro' the aërial waste.
XIII.They bore me to a cavern in the hillBeneath that column, and unbound me there:And one did strip me stark; and one did fillA vessel from the putrid pool; one bareA lighted torch, and four with friendless careGuided my steps the cavern-paths along,Then up a steep and dark and narrow stairWe wound, until the torches' fiery tongueAmid the gushing day beamless and pallid hung.
XIV.They raised me to the platform of the pile,That column's dizzy height:—the grate of brassThro' which they thrust me, open stood the while,As to its ponderous and suspended mass,With chains which eat into the flesh, alas!With brazen links, my naked limbs they bound:The grate, as they departed to repass,With horrid elangour fell, and the far soundOf their retiring steps in the dense gloom were drowned.
XV.The noon was calm and bright:—around that columnThe overhanging sky and circling seaSpread forth in silentness profound and solemnThe darkness of brief frenzy cast on me,So that I knew not my own misery:The islands and the mountains in the dayLike clouds reposed afar; and I could seeThe town among the woods below that lay,And the dark rocks which bound the bright and glassy bay.
XVI.It was so calm, that scarce the feathery weedSown by some eagle on the topmost stoneSwayed in the air:—so bright, that noon did breedNo shadow in the sky beside mine own—Mine, and the shadow of my chain alone.Below the smoke of roofs involved in flameRested like night, all else was clearly shewnIn that broad glare, yet sound to me none came,But of the living blood that ran within my frame.
XVII.The peace of madness fled, and ah, too soon!A ship was lying on the sunny main,Its sails were flagging in the breathless noon—Its shadow lay beyond—that sight againWaked, with its presence, in my tranced brainThe stings of a known sorrow, keen and cold:I knew that ship bore Cythną o'er the plainOf waters, to her blighting slavery sold,And watched it with such thoughts as must remain untold.
XVIII.I watched, until the shades of evening wraptEarth like an exhalation—then the barkMoved, for that calm was by the sunset snapt.It moved a speck upon the Ocean dark:Soon the wan stars came forth, and I could markIts path no more!—I sought to close mine eyes,But like the balls, their lids were stiff and stark;I would have risen, but ere that I could rise,My parched skin was split with piercing agonies.
XIX.I gnawed my brazen chain, and sought to severIts adamantine links, that I might die:O Liberty! forgive the base endeavour,Forgive me, if reserved for victory,The Champion of thy faith e'er sought to fly.—That starry night, with its clear silence, sentTameless resolve which laughed at miseryInto my soul—linked remembrance lentTo that such power, to me such a severe content.
XX.To breathe, to be, to hope, or to despairAnd die, I questioned not; nor, though the SunIts shafts of agony kindling thro' the airMoved over me, nor though in evening dun,Or when the stars their visible courses run,Or morning, the wide universe was spreadIn dreary calmness round me, did I shunIts presence, nor seek refuge with the deadFrom one faint hope whose flower a dropping poison shed.
XXI.Two days thus past—I neither raved nor died—Thirst raged within me, like a scorpion's nestBuilt in mine entrails: I had spurned asideThe water-vessel, while despair possestMy thoughts, and now no drop remained! the uprest.Of the third sun brought hunger—but the crustWhich had been left, was to my craving breastFuel, not food. I chewed the bitter dust,And bit my bloodless arm, and licked the brazen rust.
XXII.My brain began to fail when the fourth mornBurst o'er the golden isles—a fearful sleep,Which through the caverns dreary and forlornOf the riven soul, sent its foul dreams to sweepWith whirlwind swiftness—a fall far and deep,—A gulph, a void, a sense of senselessness—These things dwelt in me, even as shadows keepTheir watch in some dim charnel's loneliness,A shoreless sea, a sky sunless and planetless!
XXIII.The forms which peopled this terrific tranceI well remember—like a quire of devils,Around me they involved a giddy dance;Legions seemed gathering from the misty levelsOf Ocean, to supply those ceaseless revels,Foul, ceaseless shadows:—thought could not divideThe actual world from these entangling evils,Which so bemocked themselves, that I descriedAll shapes like mine own self, bideously multiplied.
XXIV.The sense of day and night, of false and true,Was dead within me. Yet two visions burstThat darkness—one, as since that hour I knew,Was not a phantom of the realms accurst,Where then my spirit dwelt—but of the firstI know not yet, was it a dream or no.But both, tho' not distincter, were immersedIn hues which, when thro' memory's waste they flow,Make their divided streams more bright and rapid now.
XXV.Methought that gate was lifted, and the sevenWho brought me thither, four stiff corpses barc,And from the frieze to the four winds of HeavenHung them on high by the entangled hair:Swarthy were three—the fourth was very fair:As they retired, the golden moon upsprung,And eagerly, out in the giddy air,Leaning that I might eat, I stretched and clungOver the shapeless depth in which those corpses hung.
XXVI.A woman's shape, now lank and cold and blue,The dwelling of the many-coloured wormHung there, the white and hollow check I drewTo my dry lips—what radiance did informThose horny eyes? whose was that withered form?Alas, alas! it seemed that Cythna's ghostLaughed in those looks, and that the flesh was warmWithin my teeth!—a whirlwind keen as frostThen in its sinking gulphs my sickening spirit tost.
XXVII.Then seemed it that a tameless hurricaneArose, and bore me in its dark careerBeyond the sun, beyond the stars that waneOn the verge of formless space—it languished there,And dying, left a silence lone and drear,More horrible than famine:—in the deepThe shape of an old man did then appear,Stately and beautiful, that dreadful sleepHis heavenly smiles dispersed, and I could wake and weep.
XXVIII.And when the blinding tears had fallen, I sawThat column, and those corpses, and the moon,And felt the poisonous tooth of hunger gnawMy vitals, I rejoiced, as if the boonOf senseless death would be accorded soon;—When from that stony gloom a voice arose,Solemn and sweet as when low winds attuneThe midnight pines; the grate did then unclose,And on that reverend form the moonlight did repose.
XXIX.He struck my chains, and gently spake and smiled:As they were loosened by that Hermit old,Mine eyes were of their madness half beguiled,To answer those kind looks—he did infoldHis giant arms around me, to upholdMy wretched frame, my scorched limbs he woundIn linen moist and balmy, and as coldAs dew to drooping leaves;—the chain, with soundLike earthquake, thro' the chasm of that steep stair did bound,
XXX.As lifting me, it fell!—What next I heard,Were billows leaping on the harbour bar,And the shrill sea-wind, whose breath idly stirredMy hair;—I looked abroad, and saw a starShining beside a sail, and distant farThat mountain and its column, the known markOf those who in the wide deep wandering are,So that I feared some Spirit, fell and dark,In trance had lain me thus within a fiendish bark.
XXXI.For now indeed, over the salt sea billowI sailed yet dared not look upon the shapeOf him who ruled the helm, altho' the pillowFor my light head was hollowed in his lap,And my bare limbs his mantle did enwrap,Fearing it was a fiend: at last, he bentO'er me his aged face, as if to snapThose dreadful thoughts the gentle grandsire bent,And to my inmost soul his soothing looks he sent.
XXXII.A soft and healing potion to my lipsAt intervals he raised—now looked on high,To mark if yet the starry giant dipsHis zone in the dim sea—now cheeringly,Though he said little, did he speak to me."It is a friend beside thee—take good cheer,Poor victim, thou art now at liberty!"I joyed as those a human tone to hear,Who in cells deep and lone have languished many a year.
XXXIII.A dim and feeble joy, whose glimpses oftWere quenched in a relapse of wildering dreams,Yet still methought we sailed, until aloftThe stars of night grew pallid, and the beamsOf morn descended on the ocean streams,And still that aged man, so grand and mild,Tended me, even as some sick mother seemsTo hang in hope over a dying child,Till in the azure East darkness again was piled.
XXXIV.And then the night-wind steaming from the shore,Sent odours dying sweet across the sea,And the swift boat the little waves which bore,Were cut by its keen keel, tho' slantingly;Soon I could hear the leaves sigh, and could seeThe myrtle blossoms starring the dim grove,As past the pebbly beach the boat did fleeOn sidelong wing, into a silent cove,Where ebon pines a shade under the starlight wove.