19.
I gnawed my brazen chain, and sought to sever _1270
Its adamantine links, that I might die:
O Liberty! forgive the base endeavour,
Forgive me, if, reserved for victory,
The Champion of thy faith e’er sought to fly.—
That starry night, with its clear silence, sent _1275
Tameless resolve which laughed at misery
Into my soul—linked remembrance lent
To that such power, to me such a severe content.
20.
To breathe, to be, to hope, or to despair
And die, I questioned not; nor, though the Sun _1280
Its shafts of agony kindling through the air
Moved over me, nor though in evening dun,
Or when the stars their visible courses run,
Or morning, the wide universe was spread
In dreary calmness round me, did I shun _1285
Its presence, nor seek refuge with the dead
From one faint hope whose flower a dropping poison shed.
21.
Two days thus passed—I neither raved nor died—
Thirst raged within me, like a scorpion’s nest
Built in mine entrails; I had spurned aside _1290
The water-vessel, while despair possessed
My thoughts, and now no drop remained! The uprest
Of the third sun brought hunger—but the crust
Which had been left, was to my craving breast
Fuel, not food. I chewed the bitter dust, _1295
And bit my bloodless arm, and licked the brazen rust.
22.
My brain began to fail when the fourth morn
Burst o’er the golden isles—a fearful sleep,
Which through the caverns dreary and forlorn
Of the riven soul, sent its foul dreams to sweep _1300
With whirlwind swiftness—a fall far and deep,—
A gulf, a void, a sense of senselessness—
These things dwelt in me, even as shadows keep
Their watch in some dim charnel’s loneliness,
A shoreless sea, a sky sunless and planetless! _1305
23.
The forms which peopled this terrific trance
I well remember—like a choir of devils,
Around me they involved a giddy dance;
Legions seemed gathering from the misty levels
Of Ocean, to supply those ceaseless revels, _1310
Foul, ceaseless shadows:—thought could not divide
The actual world from these entangling evils,
Which so bemocked themselves, that I descried
All shapes like mine own self, hideously multiplied.
24.
The sense of day and night, of false and true, _1315
Was dead within me. Yet two visions burst
That darkness—one, as since that hour I knew,
Was not a phantom of the realms accursed,
Where then my spirit dwelt—but of the first
I know not yet, was it a dream or no. _1320
But both, though not distincter, were immersed
In hues which, when through memory’s waste they flow,
Make their divided streams more bright and rapid now.
25.
Methought that grate was lifted, and the seven
Who brought me thither four stiff corpses bare, _1325
And from the frieze to the four winds of Heaven
Hung them on high by the entangled hair;
Swarthy were three—the fourth was very fair;
As they retired, the golden moon upsprung,
And eagerly, out in the giddy air, _1330
Leaning that I might eat, I stretched and clung
Over the shapeless depth in which those corpses hung.
26.
A woman’s shape, now lank and cold and blue,
The dwelling of the many-coloured worm,
Hung there; the white and hollow cheek I drew _1335
To my dry lips—what radiance did inform
Those horny eyes? whose was that withered form?
Alas, alas! it seemed that Cythna’s ghost
Laughed in those looks, and that the flesh was warm
Within my teeth!—a whirlwind keen as frost _1340
Then in its sinking gulfs my sickening spirit tossed.
27.
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, _1345
And dying, left a silence lone and drear,
More horrible than famine:—in the deep
The shape of an old man did then appear,
Stately and beautiful; that dreadful sleep
His heavenly smiles dispersed, and I could wake and weep. _1350
28.
And, when the blinding tears had fallen, I saw
That column, and those corpses, and the moon,
And felt the poisonous tooth of hunger gnaw
My vitals, I rejoiced, as if the boon
Of senseless death would be accorded soon;— _1355
When from that stony gloom a voice arose,
Solemn and sweet as when low winds attune
The midnight pines; the grate did then unclose,
And on that reverend form the moonlight did repose.