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,370 I asked not why, and recked not where, It was at length the same to me, Fettered or fetterless to be, I learned to love despair. And thus when they appeared at last,375 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:380 With spiders I had friendship made, And watched 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,385 And I, the monarch of each race, Had power to kill—yet, strange to tell! In quiet we had learned to dwell— My very chains and I grew friends, So much a long communion tends390 To make us what we are:—even I Regained my freedom with a sigh.[123]
[MAZEPPA]
I
'Twas after dread Pultowa's[124] day, When Fortune left the royal Swede. Around a slaughter'd army lay, No more to combat and to bleed. The power and glory of the war,5 Faithless as their vain votaries, men, Had pass'd to the triumphant Czar, And Moscow's walls were safe again, Until a day more dark and drear,[125] And a more memorable year,10 Should give to slaughter and to shame A mightier host and haughtier name; A greater wreck, a deeper fall, A shock to one—a thunderbolt to all.
II
Such was the hazard of the die[126];15 The wounded Charles was taught to fly By day and night through field and flood, Stain'd with his own and subjects' blood; For thousands fell that flight to aid; And not a voice was heard t' upbraid20 Ambition in his humbled hour, When truth had naught to dread from power. His horse was slain, and Gieta[127] gave His own—and died the Russians' slave. This too sinks after many a league25 Of well-sustain'd, but vain fatigue; And in the depth of forests darkling, The watch-fires in the distance sparkling— The beacons of surrounding foes— A king must lay his limbs at length.30 Are these the laurels and repose For which the nations strain their strength? They laid him by a savage tree, In outworn nature's agony; His wounds were stiff—his limbs were stark—35 The heavy hour was chill and dark; The fever in his blood forbade a transient slumber's fitful aid: And thus it was; but yet through all, Kinglike the monarch bore his fall,40 And made, in this extreme of ill, His pangs the vassals of his will: All silent and subdued were they, As once the nations round him lay.
III
A band of chiefs!—alas! how few,45 Since but the fleeting of a day Had thinn'd it; but this wreck was true And chivalrous: upon the clay Each sate him down, all sad and mute, Beside his monarch and his steed,50 For danger levels man and brute,[128] And all are fellows in their need. Among the rest, Mazeppa made His pillow in an old oak's shade— Himself as rough, and scarce less old,55 The Ukraine's hetman,[129] calm and bold. But first, outspent with his long course, The Cossack prince rubb'd down his horse, And made for him a leafy bed, And smooth'd his fetlocks and his mane,60 And slack'd his girth, and stripp'd his rein, And joy'd to see how well he fed; For until now he had the dread His wearied courser might refuse To browse beneath the midnight dews:65 But he was hardy as his lord, And little cared for bed and board; But spirited and docile too; Whate'er was to be done, would do. Shaggy and swift, and strong of limb,70 All Tartar-like he carried him; Obey'd his voice, and came to call, And knew him in the midst of all: Though thousands were around,—and Night, Without a star, pursued her flight,—75 That steed from sunset until dawn His chief would follow like a fawn.
IV