It seem'd like me to want a mate,
But was not half so desolate,

And it was come to love me when
None lived to love me so again,

And cheering from my dungeon's brink,
Had brought me back to feel and think.
I know not if it late were free,

Or broke its cage to perch on mine,

But knowing well captivity,

Sweet bird! I could not wish for thine! Or if it were, in wingèd guise,

A visitant from Paradise;

For

Heaven forgive that thought! the while Which made me both to weep and smile; I sometimes deem'd that it might be My brother's soul come down to me; But then at last away it flew, And then 'twas mortal well I knew; For he would never thus have flown, And left me twice so doubly lone,Lone as the corse within its shroud, Lone as a solitary cloud,

A single cloud on a sunny day, While all the rest of heaven is clear, A frown upon the atmosphere,

That hath no business to appear

When skies are blue, and earth is gay.

A kind of change came in my fate,
My keepers grew compassionate;
I know not what had made them so,
They were inured to sights of woe,
But so it was: my broken chain

With links unfastened did remain,

And it was liberty to stride
Along my cell from side to side,

And up and down, and then athwart,
And tread it over every part;

And round the pillars one by one,
Returning where my walk begun,
Avoiding only as I trod,

My brothers' graves without a sod;
For if I thought with heedless tread,
My step profaned their lowly bed,
My breath came gaspingly and thick,
And my crush'd heart felt blind and sick.

I made a footing in the wall,

It was not therefrom to escape,

For I had buried one and all

Who loved me in a human shape;

And the whole earth would henceforth be

A wider prison unto me:

No child, no sire, no kin had I,

No partner in my misery;

I thought of this, and I was glad,

For thought of them had made me mad;

But I was curious to ascend

To my barr'd windows, and to bend
Once more, upon the mountains high,
The quiet of a loving eye.

I saw them and they were the same,
They were not changed like me in frame;
I saw their thousand years of snow
On high their wide long lake below,
And the blue Rhone in fullest flow;

I heard the torrents leap and gush
O'er channel'd rock and broken bush;
I saw the white-wall'd distant town,
And whiter sails go skimming down;
And then there was a little isle,
Which in my very face did smile,
The only one in view;

A small green isle, it seem'd no more,
Scarce broader than my dungeon floor,
But in it there were three tall trees,
And o'er it blew the mountain breeze,
And by it there were waters flowing,
And on it there were young flowers growing,
Of gentle breath and hue.

The fish swam by the castle wall,

And they seemed joyous each and all;
The eagle rode the rising blast,
Methought he never flew so fast
As then to me he seem'd to fly,
And then new tears came in my eyes,
And I felt troubled - and would fain

I had not left my recent chain;
And when I did descend again,
The darkness of my dim abode
Fell on me as a heavy load;
It was as is a new-dug grave,
Closing o'er one we sought to save
And yet my glance, too much oppress'd,
Had almost need of such a rest.

It might be months, or years, or days,
I kept no count — I took no note,

I had no hope my eyes to raise,

And clear them of their dreary mote;

At last men came to set me free,

I ask'd not why, and reck'd not where,
It was at length the same to me,
Fetter'd or fetterless to be,

I learn'd to love despair.

And thus when they appeared at last,
And all my bonds aside were cast,
These heavy walls to me had grown
A hermitage and all my own!

And half I felt as they were come
To tear me from a second home;
With spiders I had friendship made,
And watch'd them in their sullen trade,
Had seen the mice by moonlight play,
And why should I feel less than they?
We were all inmates of one place,
And I, the monarch of each race

Had power to kill — yet, strange to tell!
In quiet we had learn'd to dwell –
My very chains and I grew friends.
So much a long communion tends
To make us what we are: even I
Regain'd my freedom with a sigh.

APOSTROPHE TO THE OCEAN

THERE

LORD BYRON

HERE is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society, where none intrudes, By the deep sea, and music in its roar;

I love not man the less, but nature more, From these our interviews, in which I steal

From all I may be, or have been before, To mingle with the universe, and feel

What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean

roll!

Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain; Man marks the earth with ruin - his control Stops with the shore; - upon the watery plain The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain A shadow of man's ravage, save his own

When for a moment, like a drop of rain, He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.

The armaments which thunderstrike the walls
Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,
And monarchs tremble in their capitals;
The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make
Their clay creator the vain title take
Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war,-

These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake,
They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar
Alike the Armada's pride or spoils of Trafalgar.

Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee: —
Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they?
Thy waters washed them power while they were free,
And many a tyrant since; their shores obey
The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay
Had dried up realms to deserts; not so thou;
Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' play,