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,
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,

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

III.

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I ought to do-and did my bestAnd 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'st 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 a mood
Which 'gainst the world in war had stood,
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 his dungeon was a gulf,

And fetter'd feet the worst of ills.

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I

saw,

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.

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His martyr'd father's dearest thought,
My latest care, for whom I sought
To hoard my life, that his might be
Less wretched now, and one day free;
He, too, who yet had held untired
A spirit natural or inspired—
He, too, was struck, and day by day
Was wither'd on the stalk away.
Oh, God! it is a fearful thing
To see the human soul take wing
In any shape, in any mood:-
I've seen it rushing forth in blood,
I've seen it on the breaking ocean
Strive with a swoln convulsive motion,
I've seen the sick and ghastly bed
Of Sin delirious with its dread;
But these were horrors-this was woe

Unmix'd with such-but sure and slow;

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