XXIV. The sense of day and night, of false and true, But both, tho' not distincter, were immersed In hues which, when thro' memory's waste they flow, Make their divided streams more bright and rapid now. XXV. Methought that gate was lifted, and the seven Leaning that I might eat, I stretched and clung Over the shapeless depth in which those corpses hung. XXVI. A woman's shape, now lank and cold and blue, Those horny eyes? whose was that withered form? Laughed in those looks, and that the flesh was warn XXVII. Then seemed it that a tameless hurricane Arose, and bore me in its dark career Beyond the sun, beyond the stars that wane On the verge of formless space-it languished there, His heavenly smiles dispersed, and I could wake and weep. XXVIII. And when the blinding tears had fallen, I saw Of senseless death would be accorded soon;- XXIX. He struck my chains, and gently spake and smiled: His giant arms around me, to uphold My wretched frame, my scorchèd limbs he wound. In linen moist and balmy, and as cold As dew to drooping leaves;-the chain, with sound Like earthquake, thro' the chasm of that steep stair did bound, XXX. As lifting me, it fell!-What next I heard, Were billows leaping on the harbour bar, And the shrill sea-wind, whose breath idly stirred Shining beside a sail, and distant far That mountain and its column, the known mark For now indeed, over the salt sea billow Those dreadful thoughts the gentle grandsire bent, XXXII. A soft and healing potion to my lips His zone in the dim sea-now cheeringly, I joyed as those a human tone to hear, Who in cells deep and lone have languished many a year. XXXIII. A dim and feeble joy, whose glimpses oft Were quenched in a relapse of wildering dreams, Yet still methought we sailed, until aloft Till in the azure East darkness again was piled. XXXIV. And then the night-wind steaming from the shore, And the swift boat the little waves which bore, Where ebon pines a shade under the starlight wove. Canto Fourth. 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 grey tower, which stood A changeling of man's art, nursed amid Nature's brood. . II. When the old man his boat had anchorèd, He wound me in his arms with tender care, III. The moon was darting through the lattices Its yellow light, warm as the beams of daySo 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.. IV. 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? V. Thus madness came again, a milder madness, And we together sate by that isle-fretted flood. VI. He knew his soothing words to weave with skill That thrilling name had ceased to make me start, When it doth rive the knots of some ancestral oak. VII. Thus slowly from my brain the darkness rolled, Of eve, to that friend's heart I told my thoughtThat heart which had grown old, but had corrupted not. |