Canto VIII

'I sate beside the Steersman then, and gazingUpon the west, cried, "Spread the sails! Behold!The sinking moon is like a watch-tower blazingOver the mountains yet;--the City of GoldYon Cape alone does from the sight withhold;The stream is fleet--the north breathes steadilyBeneath the stars; they tremble with the cold!Ye cannot rest upon the dreary sea!--Haste, haste to the warm home of happier destiny!"

'The Mariners obeyed--the Captain stoodAloof, and, whispering to the Pilot, said,"Alas, alas! I fear we are pursuedBy wicked ghosts; a Phantom of the Dead,The night before we sailed, came to my bedIn 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."

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

'"What dream ye? Your own hands have built an home,Even for yourselves on a beloved 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 powerSuch purposes? or in a human mood,Dream ye some Power thus builds for man in solitude?

'"What is that Power? Ye mock yourselves, and giveA human heart to what ye cannot know:As if the cause of life could think and live!'Twere as if man's own works should feel, and showThe hopes, and fears, and thoughts from which they flow,And he be like to them! Lo! Plague is freeTo waste, Blight, Poison, Earthquake, Hail, and Snow,Disease, and Want, and worse NecessityOf hate and ill, and Pride, and Fear, and Tyranny!

'"What is that Power? Some moon-struck sophist stoodWatching the shade from his own soul upthrownFill Heaven and darken Earth, and in such moodThe Form he saw and worshipped was his own,His likeness in the world's vast mirror shown;And 'twere an innocent dream, but that a faithNursed by fear's dew of poison, grows thereon,And that men say, that Power has chosen DeathOn all who scorn its laws, to wreak immortal wrath.

'"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 betweenWields an invisible rod--that Priests and Kings,Custom, domestic sway, ay, all that bringsMan's freeborn soul beneath the oppressor's heel,Are his strong ministers, and that the stingsOf death will make the wise his vengeance feel,Though truth and virtue arm their hearts with tenfold steel.

'"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 stateTyrants, that they may rule, with lies thus desolate.

'"Alas, what strength? Opinion is more frailThan yon dim cloud now fading on the moonEven while we gaze, though it awhile availTo hide the orb of truth--and every throneOf Earth or Heaven, though shadow, rests thereon,One shape of many names:--for this ye ploughThe barren waves of ocean, hence each oneIs slave or tyrant; all betray and bow,Command, or kill, or fear, or wreak, or suffer woe.

'"Its names are each a sign which maketh holyAll power--ay, the ghost, the dream, the shadeOf 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 knownOf a dear mother, whom the murderer laidIn bloody grave, and into darkness thrown,Gathered her wildered babes around him as his own.

'"O Love, who to the hearts of wandering menArt as the calm to Ocean's weary waves!Justice, or Truth, or Joy! those only canFrom slavery and religion's labyrinth cavesGuide 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 gravesShe pass, to suffer all in patient mood,To weep for crime, though stained with thy friend's dearest blood,--

'"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 bowTo thrones on Heaven or Earth, such destiny may know.

'"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 her 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 dwellsOf man, a slave; and life is poisoned in its wells.

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

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

'"This need not be; ye might arise, and willThat gold should lose its power, and thrones their glory;That love, which none may bind, be free to fillThe world, like light; and evil faith, grown hoaryWith crime, be quenched and die.--Yon promontoryEven now eclipses the descending moon!--Dungeons and palaces are transitory--High temples fade like vapour--Man aloneRemains, whose will has power when all beside is gone.

'"Let all be free and equal!--From your heartsI feel an echo; through my inmost frameLike sweetest sound, seeking its mate, it darts--Whence come ye, friends? Alas, I cannot nameAll that I read of sorrow, toil, and shame,On your worn faces; as in legends oldWhich make immortal the disastrous fameOf conquerors and impostors false and bold,The discord of your hearts, I in your looks behold.

'"Whence come ye, friends? from pouring human bloodForth 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 hueStained 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.

'"Disguise it not--we have one human heart--All mortal thoughts confess a common home:Blush not for what may to thyself impartStains of inevitable crime: the doomIs this, which has, or may, or must becomeThine, and all humankind's. Ye are the spoilWhich Time thus marks for the devouring tomb--Thou and thy thoughts and they, and all the toilWherewith ye twine the rings of life's perpetual coil.

'"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 nameOf misery--all are mirrors of the same;But the dark fiend who with his iron penDipped in scorn's fiery poison, makes his fameEnduring there, would o'er the heads of menPass harmless, if they scorned to make their hearts his den.

'"Yes, it is Hate, that shapeless fiendly thingOf many names, all evil, some divine,Whom self-contempt arms with a mortal sting;Which, when the heart its snaky folds entwineIs wasted quite, and when it doth repineTo gorge such bitter prey, on all besideIt turns with ninefold rage, as with its twineWhen Amphisbaena some fair bird has tied,Soon o'er the putrid mass he threats on every side.

'"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 breastA paradise of flowers, where peace might build her nest.

'"Speak thou! whence come ye?"--A Youth made reply:"Wearily, wearily o'er the boundless deepWe sail;--thou readest well the miseryTold in these faded eyes, but much doth sleepWithin, which there the poor heart loves to keep,Or dare not write on the dishonoured brow;Even from our childhood have we learned to steepThe bread of slavery in the tears of woe,And never dreamed of hope or refuge until now.

'"Yes--I must speak--my secret should have perishedEven with the heart it wasted, as a brandFades in the dying flame whose life it cherished,But that no human bosom can withstandThee, wondrous Lady, and the mild commandOf thy keen eyes:--yes, we are wretched slaves,Who from their wonted loves and native landAre reft, and bear o'er the dividing wavesThe unregarded prey of calm and happy graves.

'"We drag afar from pastoral vales the fairestAmong the daughters of those mountains lone,We drag them there, where all things best and rarestAre stained and trampled:--years have come and goneSince, like the ship which bears me, I have knownNo thought;--but now the eyes of one dear MaidOn mine with light of mutual love have shone--She is my life,--I am but as the shadeOf her,--a smoke sent up from ashes, soon to fade.

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

'"Recede not! pause not now! Thou art grown old,But Hope will make thee young, for Hope and YouthAre children of one mother, even Love--behold!The eternal stars gaze on us!--is the truthWithin your soul? care for your own, or ruthFor others' sufferings? do ye thirst to bearA heart which not the serpent Custom's toothMay violate?--Be free! and even here,Swear to be firm till death!" They cried, "We swear! We swear!"

'The very darkness shook, as with a blastOf subterranean thunder, at the cry;The hollow shore its thousand echoes castInto 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 eyeThe captives gazing stood, and every oneShrank as the inconstant torch upon her countenance shone.

'They were earth's purest children, young and fair,With eyes the shrines of unawakened thought,And brows as bright as Spring or Morning, ereDark time had there its evil legend wroughtIn characters of cloud which wither not.--The change was like a dream to them; but soonThey 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.

'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 soonThat Youth arose, and breathlessly did lookOn 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.