And my bare limbs his mantle did enwrap,-
Fearing it was a fiend. At last, he bent

O'er me his aged face; as if to snap

Those dreadful thoughts, the gentle grandsire bent,
And to my inmost soul his soothing looks he sent.
32. A soft and healing potion to my lips

At intervals he raised-now looked on high,
To mark if yet the starry giant dips

His 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 :33. A dim and feeble joy, whose glimpses oft

Were quenched in a relapse of wildering dreams.

Yet still methought we sailed, until aloft

The stars of night grew pallid, and the beams
Of morn descended on the ocean-streams;
And still that aged man, so grand and mild,
Tended me, even as some sick mother seems
To hang in hope over a dying child,

Till in the azure east darkness again was piled.
34. 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, though slantingly;
Soon I could hear the leaves sigh, and could see
The myrtle-blossoms starring the dim grove,
As past the pebbly beach the boat did flee
On sidelong wing into a silent cove,

Where ebon pines a shade under the starlight wove.

CANTO IV.

I. THE old man took the oars, and soon the bark
Smote on the beach beside a tower of stone.
It was a crumbling heap whose portal dark

With 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 thrown
Within the walls of that great tower, which stood
A changeling of man's art nursed amid nature's brood.
2. 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 wear

For many a year had fallen.—We came at last
To a small chamber which with mosses rare
Was tapestried, where me his soft hands placed
Upon a couch of grass and oak-leaves interlaced.
3. The moon was darting through the lattices

Its yellow light, warm as the beams of day—
So warm that, to admit the dewy breeze,
The old man opened them; the moonlight lay
Upon a lake whose waters wove their play
Even to the threshold of that lonely home:

Within was seen in the dim wavering ray
The antique sculptured roof, and many a tome
Whose lore had made that sage all that he had become.
4. The rock-built barrier of the sea was past,—
And I was on the margin of a lake,
A lonely lake, amid the forests vast

And snowy mountains.-Did my spirit wake
From sleep as many-coloured as the snake
That 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?
5. Thus madness came again, -a milder madness
Which darkened nought but time's unquiet flow
With 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 show
The wonders of his sylvan solitude,

And we together sate by that isle-fretted flood.
6. He knew his soothing words to weave with skill,
From all my madness told: like mine own heart,
Of Cythna would he question me, until

That 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 dart A glance as keen as is the lightning's stroke When it doth rive the knots of some ancestral oak. 7. Thus slowly from my brain the darkness rolled; My thoughts their due array did re-assume Through the enchantments of that hermit old. Then I bethought me of the glorious doom Of those who sternly struggle to relume The lamp of hope o'er man's bewildered lot; And, sitting by the waters in the gloom Of eve, to that friend's heart I told my thoughtThat heart which had grown old, but had corrupted not.

8. That hoary man had spent his livelong age

In converse with the dead who leave the stamp
Of ever-burning thoughts on many a page,

When they are gone into the senseless damp
Of graves: his spirit thus became a lamp
Of 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.
9. But custom maketh blind and obdurate

The loftiest hearts :-he had beheld the woe
In which mankind was bound, but deemed that fate
Which made them abject would preserve them so ;
And in such faith, some steadfast joy to know,
He sought this cell. But, when fame went abroad
That one in Argolis did undergo

Torture for liberty, and that the crowd

High truths from gifted lips had heard and understood.
10. 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 flame
Had fed, my native land, the hermit came.
Each heart was there a shield, and every tongue
Was as a sword, of truth-young Laon's name
Rallied their secret hopes, though tyrants sung
Hymns of triumphant joy our scattered tribes among.
11. He came to the lone column on the rock,

66

And with his sweet and mighty eloquence
The 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 sense
Has crept; the hope which wildered it has lent
Meanwhile to me the power of a sublime intent.
12. "Yes, from the records of my youthful state,
And from the lore of bards and sages old,
From whatsoe'er my wakened thoughts create
Out of the hopes of thine aspirings bold,
Have I collected language to unfold
Truth to my countrymen; from shore to shore
Doctrines of human power my words have told.;
They have been heard, and men aspire to more
Than they have ever gained or ever lost of yore.
13. "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 pined
With 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-brɔɔk. 14. "The tyrants of the Golden City tremble

At voices which are heard about the streets;
The ministers of fraud can scarce dissemble

The lies of their own heart,-but, when one meets
Another at the shrine, he inly weets,

Though he says nothing, that the truth is known;
Murderers are pale upon the judgment-seats;
And gold grows vile even to the wealthy crone;
And laughter fills the fane, and curses shake the throne.
15. "Kind thoughts and mighty hopes and gentle deeds
Abound; for fearless love, and the pure law

Of mild equality and peace, succeeds

To faiths which long have held the world in awe,
Bloody and false and cold.

As whirlpools draw

All wrecks of ocean to their chasm, the sway

Of thy strong genius, Laon, which foresaw
This hope, compels all spirits to obey,

Which round thy secret strength now throng in wide array.

16. "For I have been thy passive instrument

(As thus the old man spake, his countenance

Gleamed on me like a spirit's). "Thou hast lent
To me, to all, the power to advance
Towards this unforeseen deliverance

From our ancestral chains-ay, thou didst rear

That lamp of hope on high which time nor chance
Nor change may not extinguish; and my share
Of good was o'er the world its gathered beams to bear.
17. "But I, alas! am both unknown and old;

And, though the woof of wisdom I know well
To dye in hues of language, I am cold

In seeming, and the hopes which inly dwell
My manners note that I did long repel ;-
But Laon's name to the tumultuous throng

Were like the star whose beams the waves compel,
And tempests, and his soul-subduing tongue
Were as a lance to quell the mailed crest of wrong.
18. "Perchance blood need not flow, if thou at length

Wouldst rise; perchance the very slaves would spare
Their brethren and themselves. Great is the strength
Of words-for lately did a maiden fair,

Who from her childhood has been taught to bear
The tyrant's heaviest yoke, arise, and make

Her sex the law of truth and freedom hear;

And with these quiet words-For thine own sake, I prithee spare me,' -did with ruth so take

19.

"All hearts that even the torturer, who had bound
Her meek calm frame, ere it was yet impaled,
Loosened her, weeping then; nor could be found
One human hand to harm her. Unassailed
Therefore she walks through the great city, veiled
In 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.
20. "The wild-eyed women throng around her path:
From their luxurious dungeons, from the dust
Of meaner thralls, from the oppressor's wrath,
Or the caresses of his sated lust,

They congregate: in her they put their trust.
The tyrants send their armed slaves to quell

Her power; they, even like a thunder-gust
Caught by some forest, bend beneath the spell
Of that young maiden's speech, and to their chiefs rebel.
21. "Thus she doth equal laws and justice teach
To woman, outraged and polluted long;
Gathering the sweetest fruit in human reach

For those fair hands now free, while armèd wrong
Trembles 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 plight
In early faith, and hearts long parted now unite.
22. "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 palaces,

Sits Lust alone, while o'er the land is borne

Her voice, whose awful sweetness doth repress
All evil; and her foes relenting turn,

And cast the vote of love in hope's abandoned urn. 23. "So, in the populous city, a young maiden

Has baffled Havoc of the prey which he

Marks as his own whene'er, with chains o'erladen,
Men make them arms to hurl down tyranny,—
False arbiter between the bound and free;
And o'er the land, in hamlets and in towns,
The multitudes collect tumultuously,

And throng in arms; but tyranny disowns

Their claim, and gathers strength around its trembling thrones, 24. "Blood soon, although unwillingly, to shed

The free cannot forbear. The queen of slaves,
The hoodwinked angel of the blind and dead,
Custom, with iron mace points to the graves

G