The Works of Lord Byron Volume IV Part 2

When skies are blue, and earth is gay.

XI.

A kind of change came in my fate, 300 My keepers grew compa.s.sionate; I know not what had made them so, They were inured to sights of woe, But so it was:--my broken chain With links unfastened did remain, And it was liberty to stride Along my cell from side to side, And up and down, and then athwart, And tread it over every part; And round the pillars one by one, 310 Returning where my walk begun, Avoiding only, as I trod, My brothers' graves without a sod; For if I thought with heedless tread My step profaned their lowly bed, My breath came gaspingly and thick, And my crushed heart felt blind and sick.

XII.

I made a footing in the wall, It was not therefrom to escape, For I had buried one and all, 320 Who loved me in a human shape; And the whole earth would henceforth be A wider prison unto me:[27]

No child--no sire--no kin had I, No partner in my misery; I thought of this, and I was glad, For thought of them had made me mad; But I was curious to ascend To my barred windows, and to bend Once more, upon the mountains high, 330 The quiet of a loving eye.[28]

XIII.

I saw them--and they were the same, They were not changed like me in frame; I saw their thousand years of snow On high--their wide long lake below,[g]

And the blue Rhone in fullest flow;[29]

I heard the torrents leap and gush O'er channelled rock and broken bush; I saw the white-walled distant town,[30]

And whiter sails go skimming down; 340 And then there was a little isle,[31]

Which in my very face did smile, The only one in view; A small green isle, it seemed no more,[32]

Scarce broader than my dungeon floor, But in it there were three tall trees, And o'er it blew the mountain breeze, And by it there were waters flowing, And on it there were young flowers growing, Of gentle breath and hue. 350 The fish swam by the castle wall, And they seemed joyous each and all;[33]

The eagle rode the rising blast, Methought he never flew so fast As then to me he seemed to fly; And then new tears came in my eye, And I felt troubled--and would fain I had not left my recent chain; And when I did descend again, The darkness of my dim abode 360 Fell on me as a heavy load; It was as is a new-dug grave, Closing o'er one we sought to save,-- And yet my glance, too much opprest, Had almost need of such a rest.

XIV.

It might be months, or years, or days-- I kept no count, I took no note-- I had no hope my eyes to raise, And clear them of their dreary mote; At last men came to set me free; 370 I asked not why, and recked not where; It was at length the same to me, Fettered or fetterless to be, I learned to love despair.

And thus when they appeared at last, And all my bonds aside were cast, These heavy walls to me had grown A hermitage--and all my own![34]

And half I felt as they were come To tear me from a second home: 380 With spiders I had friendship made, And watched them in their sullen trade, Had seen the mice by moonlight play, And why should I feel less than they?

We were all inmates of one place, And I, the monarch of each race, Had power to kill--yet, strange to tell!

In quiet we had learned to dwell;[h]

My very chains and I grew friends, So much a long communion tends 390 To make us what we are:--even I Regained my freedom with a sigh.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] {7}[In the first draft, the sonnet opens thus--

"Beloved G.o.ddess of the chainless mind!

Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art, Thy palace is within the Freeman's heart, Whose soul the love of thee alone can bind; And when thy sons to fetters are consign'd-- To fetters, and the damp vault's dayless gloom, Thy joy is with them still, and unconfined, Their country conquers with their martyrdom."

Ed. 1832.]

[2] [Compare--

"I appeal from her [sc. Florence] to Thee."

_Proph. of Dante_, Canto I. line 125.]

[a] {8} _When the foregoing.... Some account of his life will be found in a note appended to the Sonnet on Chillon, with which I have been furnished, etc.--[Notes, The Prisoner of Chillon, etc._, 1816, p. 59.]

[3] {13} Ludovico Sforza, and others.--The same is a.s.serted of Marie Antoinette's, the wife of Louis the Sixteenth, though not in quite so short a period. Grief is said to have the same effect; to such, and not to fear, this change in _hers_ was to be attributed.

[It has been said that the Queen's hair turned grey during the return from Varennes to Paris; but Carlyle (_French Revolution_, 1839, i. 182) notes that as early as May 4, 1789, on the occasion of the a.s.sembly of the States-General, "Her hair is already grey with many cares and crosses."

Compare "Thy father's beard is turned white with the news" (Shakespeare, I _Henry IV_., act ii. sc. 4, line 345); and--

"For deadly fear can time outgo, And blanch at once the hair."

_Marmion_, Canto I. stanza xxviii. lines 19, 20.]

[b] _But with the inward waste of grief_.--[MS.]

[4] [The _N. Engl. Dict_., art. "Ban," gives this pa.s.sage as the earliest instance of the use of the verb "to ban" in the sense of "to interdict, to prohibit." Exception was taken to this use of the word in the _Crit. Rev_., 1817, Series V. vol. iv. p. 571.]

[5] {14}[Compare the epitaph on the monument of Richard Lord Byron, in the chancel of Hucknall-Torkard Church, "Beneath in a vault is interred the body of Richard Lord Byron, who with the rest of his family, being seven brothers," etc. (Elze's _Life of Lord Byron_, p. 4, note 1).

Compare, too, Churchill's _Prophecy of Famine_, lines 391, 392--

"Five brothers there I lost, in manhood's pride, Two in the field and three on gibbets died."

The Bonivard of history had but two brothers, Amblard and another.]

[c] _Braving rancour--chains--and rage_.--[MS.]

[6] ["This is really so: the loop-holes that are partly stopped up are now but long crevices or clefts, but Bonivard, from the spot where he was chained, could, perhaps, never get an idea of the loveliness and variety of radiating light which the sunbeam shed at different hours of the day.... In the morning this light is of luminous and transparent shining, which the curves of the vaults send back all along the hall.

Victor Hugo (_Le Rhin_, ... Hachette, 1876, I. iii. pp. 123-131) describes this ... 'Le phenomene de la grotto d'azur s'accomplit dans le souterrain de Chillon, et le lac de Geneve n'y reussit pas moins bien que la Mediterranee.' During the afternoon the hall a.s.sumes a much deeper and warmer colouring, and the blue transparency of the morning disappears; but at eventide, after the sun has set behind the Jura, the scene changes to the deep glow of fire ..."--_Guide to the Castle of Chillon_, by A. Naef, architect, 1896, pp, 35, 36.]

[7] {15}[Compare--

"One little marshy spark of flame."

_Def. Trans_., Part I. sc. I.

Kolbing notes six other allusions in Byron's works to the "will-o'-the-wisp," but omits the line in the "Incantation" (_Manfred_, act i. sc. I, line 195)--

"And the wisp on the mora.s.s,"

which the Italian translator would have rendered "bundle of straw" (see Letter to Hoppner, February 28, 1818, _Letters_, 1900, iv. 204, _note 2, et post_ p. 92, note 1).]

[8] [This "...is not exactly so; the third column does not seem to have ever had a ring, but the traces of these rings are very visible in the two first columns from the entrance, although the rings have been removed; and on the three last we find the rings still riveted on the darkest side of the pillars where they face the rock, so that the unfortunate prisoners chained there were even bereft of light.... The fifth column is said to be the one to which Bonivard was chained during four years. Byron's name is carved on the southern side of the third column ... on the seventh tympanum, at about 1 metre 45 from the lower edge of the shaft." Much has been written for and against the authenticity of this inscription, which, according to M. Naef, the author of _Guide_, was carved by Byron himself, "with an antique ivory-mounted stiletto, which had been discovered in the duke's room."--_Guide, etc._, pp. 39-42. The inscription was _in situ_ as early as August 22, 1820, as Mr. Richard Edgc.u.mbe points out (_Notes and Queries_, Series V. xi. 487).]

[d] {16}--_pined in heart_.--[Editions 1816-1837.]

[9] [Compare, for similarity of sound--

"Thou tree of covert and of rest For this young Bird that is distrest."

_Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle,_ by W. Wordsworth, _Works,_ 1889, p. 364.