Canto IV

The old man took the oars, and soon the barkSmote on the beach beside a tower of stone;It was a crumbling heap, whose portal darkWith blooming ivy-trails was overgrown;Upon whose floor the spangling sands were strown,And rarest sea-shells, which the eternal flood,Slave to the mother of the months, had thrownWithin the walls of that gray tower, which stoodA changeling of man's art nursed amid Nature's brood.

When the old man his boat had anchored,He wound me in his arms with tender care,And very few, but kindly words he said,And bore me through the tower adown a stair,Whose smooth descent some ceaseless step to wearFor many a year had fallen.--We came at lastTo a small chamber, which with mosses rareWas tapestried, where me his soft hands placedUpon a couch of grass and oak-leaves interlaced.

The moon was darting through the latticesIts yellow light, warm as the beams of day--So warm, that to admit the dewy breeze,The old man opened them; the moonlight layUpon a lake whose waters wove their playEven to the threshold of that lonely home:Within was seen in the dim wavering rayThe antique sculptured roof, and many a tomeWhose lore had made that sage all that he had become.

The rock-built barrier of the sea was past,--And I was on the margin of a lake,A lonely lake, amid the forests vastAnd snowy mountains:--did my spirit wakeFrom sleep as many-coloured as the snakeThat girds eternity? in life and truth,Might not my heart its cravings ever slake?Was Cythna then a dream, and all my youth,And all its hopes and fears, and all its joy and ruth?

Thus madness came again,--a milder madness,Which darkened nought but time's unquiet flowWith supernatural shades of clinging sadness;That gentle Hermit, in my helpless woe,By my sick couch was busy to and fro,Like a strong spirit ministrant of good:When I was healed, he led me forth to showThe wonders of his sylvan solitude,And we together sate by that isle-fretted flood.

He knew his soothing words to weave with skillFrom all my madness told; like mine own heart,Of Cythna would he question me, untilThat thrilling name had ceased to make me start,From his familiar lips--it was not art,Of wisdom and of justice when he spoke--When mid soft looks of pity, there would dartA glance as keen as is the lightning's strokeWhen it doth rive the knots of some ancestral oak.

Thus slowly from my brain the darkness rolled,My thoughts their due array did re-assumeThrough the enchantments of that Hermit old;Then I bethought me of the glorious doomOf those who sternly struggle to relumeThe lamp of Hope o'er man's bewildered lot,And, sitting by the waters, in the gloomOf eve, to that friend's heart I told my thought--That heart which had grown old, but had corrupted not.

That hoary man had spent his livelong ageIn converse with the dead, who leave the stampOf ever-burning thoughts on many a page,When they are gone into the senseless dampOf graves;--his spirit thus became a lampOf splendour, like to those on which it fed;Through peopled haunts, the City and the Camp,Deep thirst for knowledge had his footsteps led,And all the ways of men among mankind he read.

But custom maketh blind and obdurateThe loftiest hearts;--he had beheld the woeIn which mankind was bound, but deemed that fateWhich made them abject, would preserve them so;And in such faith, some steadfast joy to know,He sought this cell: but when fame went abroadThat one in Argolis did undergoTorture for liberty, and that the crowdHigh truths from gifted lips had heard and understood;

And that the multitude was gathering wide,--His spirit leaped within his aged frame;In lonely peace he could no more abide,But to the land on which the victor's flameHad fed, my native land, the Hermit came:Each heart was there a shield, and every tongueWas as a sword of truth--young Laon's nameRallied their secret hopes, though tyrants sungHymns of triumphant joy our scattered tribes among.

He came to the lone column on the rock,And with his sweet and mighty eloquenceThe hearts of those who watched it did unlock,And made them melt in tears of penitence.They gave him entrance free to bear me thence.'Since this,' the old man said, 'seven years are spent,While slowly truth on thy benighted senseHas crept; the hope which wildered it has lentMeanwhile, to me the power of a sublime intent.

'Yes, from the records of my youthful state,And from the lore of bards and sages old,From whatsoe'er my wakened thoughts createOut of the hopes of thine aspirings bold,Have I collected language to unfoldTruth to my countrymen; from shore to shoreDoctrines of human power my words have told,They have been heard, and men aspire to moreThan they have ever gained or ever lost of yore.

'In secret chambers parents read, and weep,My writings to their babes, no longer blind;And young men gather when their tyrants sleep,And vows of faith each to the other bind;And marriageable maidens, who have pinedWith love, till life seemed melting through their look,A warmer zeal, a nobler hope, now find;And every bosom thus is rapt and shook,Like autumn's myriad leaves in one swoln mountain-brook.

'The tyrants of the Golden City trembleAt voices which are heard about the streets;The ministers of fraud can scarce dissembleThe lies of their own heart, but when one meetsAnother at the shrine, he inly weets,Though he says nothing, that the truth is known;Murderers are pale upon the judgement-seats,And gold grows vile even to the wealthy crone,And laughter fills the Fane, and curses shake the Throne.

'Kind thoughts, and mighty hopes, and gentle deedsAbound, for fearless love, and the pure lawOf mild equality and peace, succeedsTo faiths which long have held the world in awe,Bloody and false, and cold:--as whirlpools drawAll wrecks of Ocean to their chasm, the swayOf thy strong genius, Laon, which foresawThis hope, compels all spirits to obey,Which round thy secret strength now throng in wide array.

'For I have been thy passive instrument'--(As thus the old man spake, his countenanceGleamed on me like a spirit's)--'thou hast lentTo me, to all, the power to advanceTowards this unforeseen deliveranceFrom our ancestral chains--ay, thou didst rearThat lamp of hope on high, which time nor chanceNor change may not extinguish, and my shareOf good, was o'er the world its gathered beams to bear.

'But I, alas! am both unknown and old,And though the woof of wisdom I know wellTo dye in hues of language, I am coldIn seeming, and the hopes which inly dwell,My manners note that I did long repel;But Laon's name to the tumultuous throngWere like the star whose beams the waves compelAnd tempests, and his soul-subduing tongueWere as a lance to quell the mailed crest of wrong.

'Perchance blood need not flow, if thou at lengthWouldst rise, perchance the very slaves would spareTheir brethren and themselves; great is the strengthOf words--for lately did a maiden fair,Who from her childhood has been taught to bearThe Tyrant's heaviest yoke, arise, and makeHer sex the law of truth and freedom hear,And with these quiet words--"for thine own sakeI prithee spare me;"--did with ruth so take

'All hearts, that even the torturer who had boundHer meek calm frame, ere it was yet impaled,Loosened her, weeping then; nor could be foundOne human hand to harm her--unassailedTherefore she walks through the great City, veiledIn virtue's adamantine eloquence,'Gainst scorn, and death and pain thus trebly mailed,And blending, in the smiles of that defence,The Serpent and the Dove, Wisdom and Innocence.

'The wild-eyed women throng around her path:From their luxurious dungeons, from the dustOf meaner thralls, from the oppressor's wrath,Or the caresses of his sated lustThey congregate:--in her they put their trust;The tyrants send their armed slaves to quellHer power;--they, even like a thunder-gustCaught by some forest, bend beneath the spellOf that young maiden's speech, and to their chiefs rebel.

'Thus she doth equal laws and justice teachTo woman, outraged and polluted long;Gathering the sweetest fruit in human reachFor those fair hands now free, while armed wrongTrembles before her look, though it be strong;Thousands thus dwell beside her, virgins bright,And matrons with their babes, a stately throng!Lovers renew the vows which they did plightIn early faith, and hearts long parted now unite,

'And homeless orphans find a home near her,And those poor victims of the proud, no less,Fair wrecks, on whom the smiling world with stir,Thrusts the redemption of its wickedness:--In squalid huts, and in its palacesSits Lust alone, while o'er the land is borneHer voice, whose awful sweetness doth repressAll evil, and her foes relenting turn,And cast the vote of love in hope's abandoned urn.

'So in the populous City, a young maidenHas baffled Havoc of the prey which heMarks as his own, whene'er with chains o'erladenMen make them arms to hurl down tyranny,--False arbiter between the bound and free;And o'er the land, in hamlets and in townsThe multitudes collect tumultuously,And throng in arms; but tyranny disownsTheir claim, and gathers strength around its trembling thrones.

'Blood soon, although unwillingly, to shedThe free cannot forbear--the Queen of Slaves,The hoodwinked Angel of the blind and dead,Custom, with iron mace points to the gravesWhere her own standard desolately wavesOver the dust of Prophets and of Kings.Many yet stand in her array--"she pavesHer path with human hearts," and o'er it flingsThe wildering gloom of her immeasurable wings.

'There is a plain beneath the City's wall,Bounded by misty mountains, wide and vast,Millions there lift at Freedom's thrilling callTen thousand standards wide, they load the blastWhich bears one sound of many voices past,And startles on his throne their sceptred foe:He sits amid his idle pomp aghast,And that his power hath passed away, doth know--Why pause the victor swords to seal his overthrow?

'The tyrant's guards resistance yet maintain:Fearless, and fierce, and hard as beasts of blood,They stand a speck amid the peopled plain;Carnage and ruin have been made their foodFrom infancy--ill has become their good,And for its hateful sake their will has woveThe chains which eat their hearts. The multitudeSurrounding them, with words of human love,Seek from their own decay their stubborn minds to move.

'Over the land is felt a sudden pause,As night and day those ruthless bands around,The watch of love is kept:--a trance which awesThe thoughts of men with hope; as when the soundOf whirlwind, whose fierce blasts the waves and clouds confound,Dies suddenly, the mariner in fearFeels silence sink upon his heart--thus bound,The conquerors pause, and oh! may freemen ne'erClasp the relentless knees of Dread, the murderer!

'If blood be shed, 'tis but a change and choiceOf bonds,--from slavery to cowardiceA wretched fall!--Uplift thy charmed voice!Pour on those evil men the love that liesHovering within those spirit-soothing eyes--Arise, my friend, farewell!'--As thus he spake,From the green earth lightly I did arise,As one out of dim dreams that doth awake,And looked upon the depth of that reposing lake.

I saw my countenance reflected there;--And then my youth fell on me like a windDescending on still waters--my thin hairWas prematurely gray, my face was linedWith channels, such as suffering leaves behind,Not age; my brow was pale, but in my cheekAnd lips a flush of gnawing fire did findTheir food and dwelling; though mine eyes might speakA subtle mind and strong within a frame thus weak.

And though their lustre now was spent and faded,Yet in my hollow looks and withered mienThe likeness of a shape for which was braidedThe brightest woof of genius, still was seen--One who, methought, had gone from the world's scene,And left it vacant--'twas her lover's face--It might resemble her--it once had beenThe mirror of her thoughts, and still the graceWhich her mind's shadow cast, left there a lingering trace.

What then was I? She slumbered with the dead.Glory and joy and peace, had come and gone.Doth the cloud perish, when the beams are fledWhich steeped its skirts in gold? or, dark and lone,Doth it not through the paths of night unknown,On outspread wings of its own wind upbornePour rain upon the earth? The stars are shown,When the cold moon sharpens her silver hornUnder the sea, and make the wide night not forlorn.

Strengthened in heart, yet sad, that aged manI left, with interchange of looks and tears,And lingering speech, and to the Camp beganMy war. O'er many a mountain-chain which rearsIts hundred crests aloft, my spirit bearsMy frame; o'er many a dale and many a moor,And gaily now meseems serene earth wearsThe blosmy spring's star-bright investiture,A vision which aught sad from sadness might allure.

My powers revived within me, and I went,As one whom winds waft o'er the bending grass,Through many a vale of that broad continent.At night when I reposed, fair dreams did passBefore my pillow;--my own Cythna was,Not like a child of death, among them ever;When I arose from rest, a woful massThat gentlest sleep seemed from my life to sever,As if the light of youth were not withdrawn for ever.

Aye as I went, that maiden who had rearedThe torch of Truth afar, of whose high deedsThe Hermit in his pilgrimage had heard,Haunted my thoughts.--Ah, Hope its sickness feedsWith whatsoe'er it finds, or flowers or weeds!Could she be Cythna?--Was that corpse a shadeSuch as self-torturing thought from madness breeds?Why was this hope not torture? Yet it madeA light around my steps which would not ever fade.