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 swol'n 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's 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 wondrous 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.

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 through 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; And sympathy made each attendant slave Fearless and free, and they began to breathe Deep curses, like the voice of flames far underneath.

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 naught 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.

1

X.

"Swift as an eagle stooping from the plain Of morning light, into some shadowy wood, He plunged through the green silence of the main,

Through 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

1 From this point until the last stanza but one of canto ix, the narrator Laon is merely reporting what Cythna said, save in a few lines interpolated on his own account in stanzas xviii and xix, page 149.-ED.

His heels, he wound: until the dark rocks

under

He touched a golden chain—a sound arose like thunder.

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 Through which there shone the emerald beams of heaven,

Shot through the lines of many waves in

woven,

Like sunlight through acacia woods at even, Through which, his way the diver having cloven,

Passed 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 hupaithric temple wide and high, Whose aëry dome is inaccessible,

Was pierced with one round cleft through 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.

XIV.

"The fiend of madness, which had made its

prey

Of my poor heart, was lulled to sleep awhile:
There was an interval of many a day,
And a sea-eagle brought me food the while,
Whose nest was built in that untrodden
isle,

And who, to be the jailor had been taught,
Of that strange dungeon; as a friend whose

smile

Like light and rest at morn and even is

sought,

That wild bird was to me, till madness misery brought.

XV.

"The misery of a madness slow and creeping, Which made the earth seem fire, the sea

seem air,