Canto III: Canto III VI

Meanwhile--long--anxious--weary--still the sameRolled day and night: his soul could Terror tame--This fearful interval of doubt and dread,When every hour might doom him worse than dead;iaWhen every step that echoed by the gate,Might entering lead where axe and stake await;When every voice that grated on his earMight be the last that he could ever hear;Could Terror tame--that Spirit stern and highHad proved unwilling as unfit to die;'Twas worn--perhaps decayed--yet silent boreThat conflict, deadlier far than all before:The heat of fight, the hurry of the gale,Leave scarce one thought inert enough to quail:But bound and fixed in fettered solitude,To pine, the prey of every changing mood;To gaze on thine own heart--and meditateIrrevocable faults, and coming fate--Too late the last to shun--the first to mend--To count the hours that struggle to thine end,With not a friend to animate and tellTo other ears that Death became thee well;Around thee foes to forge the ready lie,And blot Life's latest scene with calumny;Before thee tortures, which the Soul can dare,Yet doubts how well the shrinking flesh may bear;But deeply feels a single cry would shame,To Valour's praise thy last and dearest claim;The life thou leav'st below, denied aboveBy kind monopolists of heavenly love;And more than doubtful Paradise--thy HeavenOf earthly hope--thy loved one from thee riven.Such were the thoughts that outlaw must sustain,And govern pangs surpassing mortal pain:And those sustained he--boots it well or ill?Since not to sink beneath, is something still!