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 anchored,
He wound me in his arms with tender care,
And very few, but kindly words he said,
And bore me thro' the tower adown a stair,
Whose smooth descent some ceaseless step to wear
For many a year had fallen1-We came at last
To a small chamber, which with mosses rare

The duties of the dash in Shelley's system of punctuation are very varied; and instances such as this are to be

seen in some of his MSS.
another case in stanza II,
(p. 174),

There is

Canto V

Was tapestried, where me his soft hands placed Upon a couch of grass and oak-leaves interlaced.

III.

The moon was darting through the lattices.
Its yellow light, warm as the beams of day-
So 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,
Which darkened nought but time's unquiet flow
With supernatural shades of clinging sadness;

That gentle Hermit, in my helpless woe,

By my sick couch was busy to and fro,

Like a strong spirit ministrant of good:
When I was healed, he led me forth to shew
The wonders of his sylvan solitude,

And we together sate by that isle-fretted flood.

VI.

He knew his soothing words to weave with skill
From all my madness told; like mine own heart,
Of Cythna would he question me, until

That thrilling name had ceased to make me start,
From his familiar lips-it was not art,

Of wisdom and of justice when he spoke-
When mid soft looks of pity, there would dart
A glance as keen as is the lightning's stroke
When it doth rive the knots of some ancestral oak.

VII.

Thus slowly from my brain the darkness rolled,
My thoughts their due array did re-assume
Thro' the inchantments of that Hermit old;
Then I bethought me of the glorious doom
Of those who sternly struggle to relume
The lamp of Hope o'er man's bewildered lot,
And, sitting by the waters, in the gloom

Of eve, to that friend's heart I told my thoughtThat heart which had grown old, but had corrupted not.

VIII.

That hoary man had spent his livelong age

In converse with the dead, who leave the stamp
Of ever-burning thoughts on many a page,
When they are gone into the senseless damp
Of graves; his spirit thus became a lamp
Of splendour, like to those on which it fed:1
Thro' peopled haunts, the City and the Camp,
Deep thirst for knowledge had his footsteps led,
And all the ways of men among mankind he read.

1 There is no stop here in Shelley's edition. Mrs. Shelley puts a full stop; but I think the colon

more

likely to be the one dropped out in the original edition.

IX.

But custom maketh blind and obdurate

The loftiest hearts: he had beheld the woe

In which mankind was bound, but deemed that fate
Which made them abject, would preserve them so;
And in such faith, some steadfast1 joy to know,
He sought this cell: but when fame went abroad,
That one in Argolis did undergo

Torture for liberty, and that the crowd

High truths from gifted lips had heard and understood;

X.

And that the multitude was gathering wide;

His spirit leaped within his agèd frame,

In lonely peace he could no more abide,
But to the land on which the victor's flame
Had fed, my native land, the Hermit came:
Each heart was there a shield, and every tongue
Was as a sword of truth-young Laon's name
Rallied their secret hopes, tho' tyrants sung
Hymns of triumphant joy our scattered tribes among.

XI.

He came to the lone column on the rock,
And with his sweet and mighty eloquence
The hearts of those who watched it did unlock,

And made them melt in tears of penitence.

They gave him entrance free to bear me thence.

"Since this," the old man said, "seven years are spent, While slowly truth on thy benighted sense

Has crept; the hope which wildered it has lent Meanwhile, to me the power of a sublime intent.

1 In Shelley's edition, stedfast; but

see note at p. 251.

2

The quotation marks are intro

duced here by Mrs. Shelley,-of course rightly; but in Shelley's edition they begin at line 1 of stanza XII.

XII.

"Yes, from the records of my youthful state,
And from the lore of bards and sages old,
From whatsoe'er my wakened thoughts create
Out of the hopes of thine aspirings bold,
Have I collected language to unfold
Truth to my countrymen; from shore to shore
Doctrines of human power my words have told,
They have been heard, and men aspire to more
Than they have ever gained or ever lost of yore.

XIII.

"In secret chambers parents read, and weep,
My writings to their babes, no longer blind;
And young men gather when their tyrants sleep,

And vows of faith each to the other bind;

And marriageable maidens, who have pined

With love, till life seemed melting thro' their look,

A warmer zeal, a nobler hope now find;

And every bosom thus is rapt and shook,

Like autumn's myriad leaves in one swoln mountain brook.

XIV.

"The tyrants of the Golden City tremble

At voices which are heard about the streets,

The ministers of fraud can scarce dissemble

The lies of their own heart; but when one meets
Another at the shrine, he inly weets,1

Tho' he says nothing, that the truth is known;
Murderers are pale upon the judgment seats,
And gold grows vile even to the wealthy crone,

And laughter fills the Fane, and curses shake the Throne.

1 A curious instance of an obsolete word found convenient for rhyming purposes. Whether Shelley got it from Spenser or some such later poet

as Prior, I know not; but these, and of course others, use it in its strict sense of to know.