By Bonnivard !- May none those marks efface !

For they appeal from tyranny to God.

SOXNET ON CHILLON. ETERNAL Spirit of the chainless Mind ! ?

Brightest in dungeons, Liberty ! thou art,

For there thy habitation is the heart The heart which love of thee alone can bind; And when thy sons to fetters are consign'd

To fetters, and the damp vault's dayless gloom,

Their country conquers with their martyrdom, And Freedom's fame finds wings on every wind. Chillon ! thy prison is a holy place,

And thy sad floor an altar — for 't was trod, Until his very steps have left a trace

Worn, as if thy cold pavement were a sod,

The Prisoner of Chillon.'

I.
My hair is grey, but not with years,

Nor grew it white

In a single night, 4 As men's have grown from sudden fears :

" When this poem was composed, I was not sufficiently aware of the history of Bonnivard, or I should have endeavoured to dignify the subject by an attempt to celebrate hii courage and his virtues. With some account of his life I have been furnished, by the kindness of a citizen of that republic, which is still proud of the memory of a man worthy of the best age of ancient freedom:

“ François de Bonnirard, fils de Louis de Bonnivard, originaire de Seysel et Seigneur de Lunes, naquit en 1496. 11 fit ses études à Turin: en 1510 Jean Aimé de Bonnirard, son oncle, lui résigna le Prieuré de St. Victor, qui aboutis. sait aux murs de Genève, et qui formait un bénéfice con. sidérable.

“ Ce grand homme - (Bonnivard mérite ce titre par la force de son âme, la droiture de son cæur, la noblesse de ses intentions, la sagesse de ses conseils, le courage de ses démarches, l'étendue de ses connaissances et la vivacité de son esprit), – ce grand homme, qui excitera l'admiration de tous ceux qu'une vertu héroique peut encore émouvoir, inspirera encore la plus vive reconnaissance dans les ceurs des Génévois qui aiment Genève. Bonnivard en fut toujours un des plus fermes appuis : pour assurer la liberté de notre Ré. publique, il ne craignit pas de perdre sourent la sienne ; il oublia son repos ; il méprisa ses richesses ; il ne négligea rien pour affermir le bonheur d'une patrie qu'il honora de son choix : dès ce moment il la chérit comme le plus zélé de ses citoyens; il la servit avec l'intrépidité d'un héros, et il écrivít son Histoire avec la naiveté d'un philosophe et la chaleur d'un patriote.

" Il dit dans le commencement de son Histoire de Genève, que dès qu'il cut commencé de lire l'histoire des nations, il se sentit entrainé par son goût pour les Républiques, dont il épousa toujours les intérêts : c'est ce goût pour la liberté qui lui fit sans doute adopter Genève pour sa patrie.

" Bonnivard, encore jeune, s'annonça hautement comme le défenseur de Genève contre le Duc de Savoye et l'Eréque.

" En 1519, Bonnivard devient le martyr de sa patrie. Le Duc de Savoye étant entré dans Genève avec cinq cent hommes, Bonnivard craint le ressentiment du Duc; il voulut se retirer à Fribourg pour en éviter les suites, mais il fut trahi par deux hommes qui l'accompagnaient, et conduit par ordre du Prince à Grolée, ou il resta prisonnier pendant deux ans. Bonnivard était malheureux dans ses voyages : comme ses malheurs n'avaient point ralenti son zèle pour Genève, il était toujours un ennemi redoutable pour ceux qui la mena çaient, et par conséquent il devait étre exposé à leurs coups. Il fut rencontré en 1530 sur le Jura par des voleurs, qui le dépouillèrent, et qui le mirent encore entre les mains du Duc de Sarose : ce Prince le fit enfermer dans le Château de Chillon, où il resta sans étre interrogé jusques en 1536 ; il fut alors delivré par les Bernois, qui s'emparèrent du Pays de Vaud.

* Bonnivard, en sortant de sa captivité, eut le plaisir de trouver Genève libre et réformée : la République s'empressa de lui témoigner sa reconnaissance, et de dédommager des maux qu'il avait soufferts ; elle le reçut Bourgeois de la ville au mois de Juin, 1536 ; elle lui donna la maison habitée autrefois par le Vicaire-Général, et elle lui assigna une pension de deux cent écus d'or tant qu'il séjournerait à Genere. Il fut admis dans le Conseil de Deux-Cent en 1537.

“ Bonnivard n'a pas fini d'être utile : après avoir travaillé à rendre Genève libre, il réussit à la rendre tolérante. Bon

nivard engagea le Conseil d accorder aux ecclésiastiques et aux paysans un tems sutfisant pour examiner les propositions qu'on leur faisait : il réussit par sa douceur : on préche tou. jours le Christianisme avec succès quand on le prèche avec charité.

“ Bonnivard fut savant : ses manuscrits, qui sont dans la Bibliothèque publique, prouvent qu'il avait bien lu les auteurs classiques Latins, et qu'il avait approfondi la théologie et l'histoire. Ce grand homme aimait les sciences, et il croyait qu'elles pouvaient faire la gloire de Genève : aussi il de négligea rien pour les fixer dans cette ville naissante ; en 1551 il donna sa bibliothèque au public; elle fut le commencement de notre bibliothèque publique ; et ces livres sont en partie les rares et belles éditions du quinzième siècle qu'on voit dans notre collection. Enfin, pendant la méme année, ce bon pa. triote institua la République son héritière, à condition qu'elle employerait ses biens à entretenir le collège dont on projets tait la fondation.

“ Il parait que Bonnivard mourut en 1570; mais on ne peut l'assurer, parcequ'il y a une lacune dans le Nécrologe depuis le mois de Juillet, 1570, jusques en 1571."

(Lord Byron wrote this beautiful poem at a small inn, in the little village of Ouchy, pear Lausanne, where he happened in June, 1816, to be detained two days by stress of weather ; " thereby adding," says Moore, “ one more deathless associa ation to the already immortalised localities of the Lake."] 3 [In the first draught, the sonnet opens thus * Beloved Goddess of the chainless inind !

Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art,

Thy palace is within the Freeman's heart,
Whose soul the love of thce alone can bind;
And when thy sons tu fetters are consign'd-

To fetters, and the damp vault's dayless gloom,
Thy joy is with them still, and uncontined,

Their country conquers with their martyrdom."] 3 ["I will tell you something about ' Chillon.' A Mr. De Luc, ninety years old, a Swiss, had it read to him, and is pleased with it - so my sister writes. He said that he was ivith Rousseau at Chilion, and that the description is perfectly correct. But this is not all; I recollected something of the name, and find the following passage in. The Confessions,' vol. iii. p. 247. liv. vii. • De tous ces amusemens celui qui me plut davantage fut une promenade autour du Lac, que je tis en bateau avec De Luc père, sa bru, ses deux fils, et ina Therese. Vous mimes sept jours à cette tournée par le plus beau temps du monde. J'en gardai le vif souvenir des sites, qui m'avaient frappé à l'autre extrémité du Lac, et dont je fis la description quelques années après, dans · La Nouvelle Héloise.'' 'This nonagerian, De Luc, must be one of the deux fils.' He is in England, intirm, but still in faculty. It is odd that he should have lived so long, and not wanting in oddness, that he should have made this voyage with Jean Jacques, and afterwards, at such an interval, read a poem by an Englishman (who made precisely the same cir cumnavigation) upon the same scenery." – Byron Letters, April 9. 1517. Jean André de Luc, F.R.S., died at Windsor, in the July following. He was born in 1726, at Geneva, was the author of many geological works, and corresponded with most of the learned societies of Europe.]

4 Ludovico Sforza, and others. The same is asserted of 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,

Sis in youth, and one in age,
Finish'd 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.

II.
There are seven pillars of Gothic mould,
In Chillon's dungeons deep and old,
There are seven columns, massy and grey,
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 irou is a cankering thing,

For in these limbs its teeth remain,
W th 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,

lost their long and heavy score,
When my last brother droop'd and died,
And I lay living by his side.

III.
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;
'T was 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 the 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. 3

IV.
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 sorely moved :
And truly might it be distress'd
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.

V. The other was as pure of mind, But form'd to combat with his kind; Strong in his frame, and of mood Which 'gainst the world in war had stoou, And perish'd in the foremost rank

With joy :- but not in chains to pine : His spirit wither'd with their clank,

I saw it silently decline

And so perchance in sooth did mine :
But yet I forced it on to cheer
Those relics of a home so dear.
He was a hunter of the hills,

Had follow'd there the deer and wolf ;

To him this dungeon was a gulf,
And fetter'd feet the worst of ills.

VI.
Lake Leman lies by Chillon's walls :
A thousand feet in depth below
Its massy waters meet and flow;
Thus much the fathom-line was sent
From Chillon's snow-white battlement,

Which round about the wave enthrals :

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 '(Original MS.

" But with the inward waste of grief."] (“ Braving radcour - chains — and rage." - MS.) 3 [This picture of the first feelings of the three gallant brothers, when bound apart in this living tomb, and of the gradual decay of their cheery fortitude, is full of pity and azony. – JEPFREY.]

- The Chateau de Chillon is situated between Clarens and

Villeneuve, which last is at one extremity of the Lake of Geneva. On its left are the entrances of the Rhone, and opposite are the heights of Meillerie and the range of Alps above Boveret and St. Gingo. Near it, on a hill behind, is a torrent : below it, washing its walls, the lake has been fa. thomed to the depth of 800 feet, French measure: within it are a range of dungeons, in which the early reformers, and subsequently prisoners of state, were contined. Across one of the vaults is a beam black with age, on which we were in. formed that the condemned were formerly executed. In the cells are seven pillars, or, rather, eight, one being half merged in the wall ; in some of these are rings for the fetters and the fettered : in the pavement the steps of Bonnivard have left their traces. He was confined here several years. It is hy

A double dungeon wall and wave
Have made — and like a living grave.
Below the surface of the lake
The dark vault lics wherein we lay,
We heard it ripple night and day;

Sounding o'er our heads it knock'd;
And I have felt the winter's spray
Wash through the bars when winds were high
And wanton in the happy sky;

And then the very rock hath rock'd,

And I have felt it shake, unshock'd,
Because I could have smiled to see
The death that would have set me frce.

VII. I said my nearer brother pined, I said his mighty heart declined, He loathed and put away his food ; It was not that 't was coarse and rude, For we were used to bunter's fare, And for the like bad little care : The milk drawn from the mountain goat Was changed for water from the moat, Our bread was such as captive's tears Have moisten'd many a thousand years, Since man first pent his fellow men Like brutes within an iron den; But what were these to us or him? These wasted not his heart or limb; My brother's soul was of that mould Which in a palace had grown cold, Had his free breathing been denied The range of the steep mountain's side ; But why delay the truth ? - he died. 1 I and could not hold his head, Nor reach his dying hand - nor dead, Though hard I strove, but strove in vain, To rend and gnash ' my bonds in twain. He died — and they unlock d his chain, . And scoop'd for him a shallow grave Even from the cold earth of our cave. I begg'd them, as a boon, to lay His corse in dust whereon the day Might shine - it was a foolish thought, But then within my brain it wrought, That even in death his freeborn breast In such a dungeon could not rest. I might have spared my idle prayer — They coldly laugh'd and laid him there : The flat and turfless earth above The being we so much did love ; His empty chain above it leant, Such murder's fitting monument !

saw,

VIII. But he, the favourite and the flower, Most cherish'd since his natal hour,

For — Heaven forgive that thought ! the while
Which made me both to weep and smile ;
I sometimes deem'd that it might be
My brother's soul come down to me;
But then at last away it flew,
And then 't was mortal — well I knew,
For he would never thus have flown,
And left me twice so doubly lone,-
Lone - as the corse within its shroud,
Lone-as a solitary cloud,

A single cloud on a sunny day,
While all the rest of heaven is clear,
A frown upon the atmosphere,
That hath no business to appear

When skies are blue, and earth is gay.

I had not strength to stir, or strive,
But felt that I was still alive
A frantic feeling, when we know
That what we love shall ne'er be so.

I know not why

I could not die,
I had no earthly hope — but faith,
And that forbade a selfish death.

IX.
What next befell me then and there

I know not well — I never knew -
First came the loss of light, and air,

And then of darkness too :
I had no thought, no feeling - none
Among the stones I stood a stone,
And was, scarce conscious what I wist,
As shrubless crags within the mist;
For all was blank, and bleak, and grey,
It was not night - it was not day,
It was not even the dungeon-light,
So hateful to my heavy sight,
But vacancy absorbing space,
And fixedness — without a place;
There were no stars — no earth — no time
No check — no change - no good — no crime
But silence, and a stirless breath
Which neither was of life nor death;
A sea of stagnant idleness,
Blind, boundless, mute, and motionless !

X.
A light broke in upon my brain,

It was the carol of a bird ;
It ceased, and then it came again,

The sweetest song ear ever heard,
And mine was thankful till my eyes
Ran over with the glad surprise,
And they that moment could not see
I was the mate of misery;
But then by dull degrees came back
My senses to their wonted track,
I saw the dungeon walls and floor
Close slowly round me as before,
I saw the glimmer of the sun
Creeping as it before had done,
But through the crevice where it came
That bird was perch'd, as fond and tame,

And tamer than upon the tree;
A lovely bird, with azure wings,
And song that said a thousand things,

And seem'd to say them all for me!
I never saw its like before,
I ne'er shall see its likeness more :
It seem'd like me to want a mate,
But was not half so desolate,
And it was come to love me when
None lived to love me so again,
And cheering from my dungeon's brink,
Had brought me back to feel and think.
I know not if it late were free,

Or broke its cage to perch on mine,
But knowing well captivity,

Sweet bird ! I could not wish for thine !
Or if it were, in winged guise,
A visitant from Paradise ;
ip" I saw them with their lake below,

And their three thousind years of snow." - MS.] 9 Between the entrances of the Rhonc and Villeneuve, not far from Chillon, is a very small island ; the only one I could

XI. A kind of change came in my fate, My keepers grew compassionate; I know not what bad made them so, They were irured to sights of woe, But so it was: — my broken chain With links unfasten'd 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 one, 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 crush'd heart fell blind and sick.

XII.
I made a footing in the wall,

It was not therefrom to escape,
For I had buried one and all,

Who loved me in a human shape; And the whole earth would henceforth be A wider prison unto me: 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 barr'd windows, and to bend Once more, upon the mountains high, The quiet of a loving eye.

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,'
And the blue Rhone in fullest flow;
I heard the torrents leap and gush
O'er channeli'd rock and broken bush ;
I saw the white-wall'd distant town,
And whiter sails go skimming down;
And then there was a little isle, 2
Which in my very face did smile,

The only one in view; perceive, in my voyage round and orer the lake, within its circumference. It contains a few trees (I think not above three), and from its singleness and diminutive size has a peculiar effect upon the view,

A small green isle, it seem'd no more,
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.
The fish swam by the castle wall,
And they seem'd joyous each and all ;
The eagle rode the rising blast,
Methought he never flew so fast
As then to me he seem'd 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
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 oppress'd,
Had almost need of such a rest.

XIV.
It might be months, or years, or days,

I kept no count- I took no note,

(Here follow in MS. -
Nor slew 1 of my subjects one-
What sovereign {

hath so little

hath done ?"]

yet so much [It has not been the purpose of Lord Byron to paint the peculiar character of Bonnivard. The object of the poem, like that of Sterne's celebrated sketch of the prisoner, is to consider captivity in the abstract, and to mark its effects in gradually chilling the mental powers as it benumbs and freezes the animal frame, until the unfortunate victim becomes, as it were, a part of his dungeon, and identified with his chains. This transmutation we believe to be founded on fact : at least, in the Low Countries, where solitude for life is substituted for capital punishments, something like it may be witnessed. Oa particular days in the course of the year, these victims of a jurisprudence which calls itself humane, are presented to the public eye, upon a stage erected in the open market.place, apparently to prevent their guilt and their punishment froin being forgotten. It is scarcely possible to witness a sight more dezrading to humanity than this exhibition : with matted hair, wild looks, and haggard features, with eyes dazzled by the unwonted light of the sun, and cars