Canto Seventh.

I.

So we sate joyous as the morning ray
Which fed upon the wrecks of night and storm
Now lingering on the winds; light airs did play
Among the dewy weeds, the sun was warm,
And we sate linked in the inwoven charm

Of converse and caresses sweet and deep,
Speechless caresses, talk that might disarm

Time, tho' he wield the darts of death and sleep, And those thrice mortal barbs in his own poison steep.

II.

I told her of my sufferings and my madness, And how, awakened from that dreamy mood By Liberty's uprise, the strength of gladness Came to my spirit in my solitude; And all that now I was, while tears pursued Each other down her fair and listening cheek Fast as the thoughts which fed them, like a flood From sunbright dales; and when I ceased to speak, Her accents soft and sweet the pausing air did wake.

III.

She told me a strange tale of strange endurance,
Like broken memories of many a heart
Woven into one; to which no firm assurance,
So wild were they, could her own faith impart.

She said that not a tear did dare to start

From the swoln brain, and that her thoughts were firm When from all mortal hope she did depart,

Borne by those slaves across the Ocean's term,

And that she reached the port without one fear infirm.

IV.

One was she among many there, the thralls
Of the cold Tyrant's1 cruel lust: and they
Laughed mournfully in those polluted halls;
But she was calm and sad, musing alway
On loftiest enterprise, till on a day

The Tyrant heard her singing to her lute

A wild, and sad, and spirit-thrilling lay,

Like winds that die in wastes-one moment mute

The evil thoughts it made, which did his breast pollute.

V.

Even when he saw her wondrous2 loveliness,
One moment to great Nature's sacred power
He bent, and was no longer passionless;
But when he bade her to his secret bower
Be borne, a loveless victim, and she tore
Her locks in agony, and her words of flame
And mightier looks availed not; then he bore
Again his load of slavery, and became

A king, a heartless beast, a pageant and a name.

1 In this case tyrant is spelt with a small t in the original edition, though with a capital in line 6 of the same

stanza. This cannot, of course, be intentional.

2 Wonderous in Shelley's edition.

VI.

She told me what a loathsome agony

Is that when selfishness mocks love's delight,
Foul as in dream's most fearful imagery
To dally with the mowing dead—that night
All torture, fear, or horror made seem light
Which the soul dreams or knows, and when the day
Shone on her awful frenzy, from the sight

Where like a Spirit in fleshly chains she lay
Struggling, aghast and pale the Tyrant fled away.

VII.

Her madness was a beam of light, a power

Which dawned thro' the rent soul; and words it gave
Gestures and looks, such as in whirlwinds bore
Which might not be withstood, whence none could save
All who approached their sphere, like some calm wave
Vexed into whirlpools by the chasms beneath;2

And sympathy made each attendant slave
Fearless and free, and they began to breathe

Deep curses, like the voice of flames far underneath.

1 Dreams, without the apostrophe, in Shelley's edition.

2 The sense of this much-canvassed passage seems to me to be perfectly clear, namely, "it (her madness) gave to looks and gestures such words as bore (upon all opposing forces) in whirlwinds which might not be withstood, and from the effect of which none could save or guard all those (fellow slaves) who approached the sphere of their operation, which sphere (the harem) was like some calm wave vexed into whirlpools." The expression bore in whirlwinds, which Mr. Rossetti pronounces nonsense, I take to be parallel to such phrases as came in torrents; and nothing would be

said against a poet's talking of even gusts of eloquent speech: why not whirlwinds then? Looks such as in whirlwinds lour, Mr. Rossetti's proposed "emendation," would, it seems to me, make nonsense of the passage. Mr. Swinburne's explanation, as interpreted by Mr. Rossetti, seems to need the insertion of a comma after and words it gave; but I feel sure the sense is not that her madness" gave words, gestures, and looks" &c., but that it gave eloquence to her gestures and looks, as explained above. Mr. Swinburne's own remarks (Essays and Studies, page 193) are confined to giving bore the sense of "bore onward or forward.".

VIII.

The King felt pale upon his noonday throne :
At night two slaves he to her chamber sent,
One was a green and wrinkled eunuch, grown
From human shape into an instrument

Of all things ill-distorted, bowed and bent.
The other was a wretch from infancy

Made dumb by poison; who nought knew or meant
But to obey from the fire-isles came he,

A diver lean and strong, of Oman's coral sea.

IX.

They bore her to a bark, and the swift stroke
Of silent rowers clove the blue moonlight seas,
Until upon their path the morning broke;
They anchored then, where, be there calm or breeze,
The gloomiest of the drear Symplegades

Shakes with the sleepless surge;-the Ethiop there
Wound his long arms around her, and with knees
Like iron clasped her feet, and plunged with her
Among the closing waves out of the boundless air.

X.

"Swift as an eagle stooping from the plain1
Of morning light, into some shadowy wood,
He plunged thro' the green silence of the main,
Thro' many a cavern which the eternal flood
Had scooped, as dark lairs for its monster brood;
And among mighty shapes which fled in wonder,
And among mightier shadows which pursued

His heels, he wound: until the dark rocks under
He touched a golden chain-a sound arose like thunder.

1 From this point, at which Laon begins to give the narrative in Cythna's words, her speech is almost unbroken for nearly three Cantos. After the she said of stanza XII in this Canto,

Laon only appears as a narrator once (namely in stanzas XVIII and XIX) until after the close of the speech. It extends to the last stanza but one of Canto IX.

XI.

"A stunning clang of massive bolts redoubling
Beneath the deep-a burst of waters driven

As from the roots of the sea, raging and bubbling:
And in that roof of crags a space was riven

Thro' which there shone the emerald beams of heaven,
Shot thro' the lines of many waves inwoven,

Like sunlight thro' acacia woods at even,

Thro' which, his way the diver having cloven, Past like a spark sent up out of a burning oven.

XII.

"And then," she said, "he laid me in a cave
Above the waters, by that chasm of sea,
A fountain round and vast, in which the wave
Imprisoned, boiled and leaped perpetually,
Down which, one moment resting, he did flee,
Winning the adverse depth; that spacious cell
Like an hupaithric1 temple wide and high,

Whose aëry dome is inaccessible,

Was pierced with one round cleft thro' which the sun-beams fell.

XIII.

"Below, the fountain's brink was richly paven

With the deep's wealth, coral, and pearl, and sand
Like spangling gold, and purple shells engraven
With mystic legends by no mortal hand,

Left there, when thronging to the moon's command,
The gathering waves rent the Hesperian gate

Of mountains, and on such bright floor did stand
Columns, and shapes like statues, and the state

Of kingless thrones, which Earth did in her heart create.

1 How Shelley wrote this word I know not; but it is printed upaithric

in his edition, and in those of Mrs. Shelley.