A life-long agony compress'd, Throbs in the breast of all!
Not on the deck, not on the deck, Resounds the dreaded fall!
Off at his father's word, he Far in the yielding wave, And many a sailor overboard
Dash'd after him, to save.
Safe! safe! how quickly on the deck The rescu'd boy they bear,- Then fail'd at once the father's heart, He might not linger there.
No, ere his trembling arms enfold The child to hope restor❜d,
Lock'd in his cabin, all alone,
His word-less thanks are pour'd.
Too deeply stirr'd his being's tide, Another's eye to brook,
While shuddering sobs so long suppress'd, His frame with tremblings shook.
Calm in the might of prayer, at length He bade them bring his boy,
And clasp'd him to his yearning heart With all a father's joy.
I tell not of the interview,
Which none beside might share ; The loves of father and of son, What language can declare?
Yet from my story, you, my friends, May of obedience learn,
And how the truest love may wear An aspect strange and stern.
My hair is grey, but not with years,
Nor grew it white
In a single night,
As men's have grown from sudden fears : My limbs are bow'd, though not with toil, But rusted with a vile repose;
For they have been a dungeon's spoil,
And mine has been the fate of those
To whom the goodly earth and air Are bann'd and barr'd-forbidden fare; But this was for my father's faith I suffer'd chains and courted death; That father perish'd at the stake For tenets he would not forsake; And for the same his lineal race In darkness found a dwelling-place; We were seven- -who now are one,- Six in youth and one in age, Finished as they had begun,
Proud of persecution's rage; One in fire, and two in field, Their belief with blood have seal'd; Dying as their father died,
For the God their foes denied ;
Three were in a dungeon cast,
Of whom this wreck is left the last.
There are seven pillars of gothic mould, In Chillon's dungeons deep and old, There are seven columns massy and Dim with a dull imprison'd ray, A sunbeam which hath lost its way, And through the crevice and the cleft Of the thick wall is fallen and left; Creeping o'er the floor so damp, Like a marsh's meteor lamp:
And in each pillar there is a ring, And in each ring there is a chain ; That iron is a cankering thing,
For in these limbs its teeth remain, With marks that will not wear away, Till I have done with this new day Which now is painful to these eyes Which have not seen the sun so rise For years-I cannot count them o'er, I lost their long and heavy score, When my last brother droop'd and died, And I lay living by his side.
They chain'd us each to a column stone, And we were three; yet each alone; We could not move a single pace, We could not see each other's face, But with that pale and livid light That made us strangers in our sight; And thus together—yet apart, Fetter'd in hand, but pined in heart ; "Twas still some solace in the dearth Of the pure elements of earth, To hearken to each other's speech, And each turn comforter to each, With some new hope, or legend old, Or song heroically bold;
But even these at length grew cold.
Our voices took a dreary tone, An echo of a dungeon-stone, A grating sound-not full and free, As they of yore were wont to be; It might be fancy—but to me They never sounded like our own.
I was the eldest of the three, And to uphold and cheer the rest I ought to do and did my best- And each did well in his degree. The youngest whom my father loved, Because our mother's brow was given To him—with eyes as blue as heaven, For him my soul was sore distrest To see such bird in such a nest; For he was beautiful as day- (When day was beautiful to me As to young eagles, being free)— A polar day which will not see A sunset till its summer's gone, Its sleepless summer of long light, The snow-clad offspring of the sun; And thus he was as pure and bright, And in his natural spirit gay, With tears for nought but others' ills And then they flow'd like mountain rills, Unless he could assuage the woe
Which he abhorr'd to view below.
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