When Philoctetes, in the Lemnian Isle
Reclined with shaggy forehead earthward bent,
Lay silent like a weed-grown Monument,
Such Friend, for such brief moment as a smile
Asks to be born and die in, might beguile
The wounded Chief of pining discontent
From home affections, and heroic toil.
Seen, or unseen, beneath us, or above,
Are Powers that soften anguish, if not heal;
And toads and spiders have sufficed to prove
To fettered wretchedness that no Bastile
Is deep enough to exclude the light of Love,
Though man for Brother man have ceased to feel.
Philoctetes, one of the Argonauts, received from the dying Hercules his arrows. Called by Menelaus to go with the Greeks to the Trojan war, he was sent to the island of Lemnos, owing to a wound in his foot. There he remained for ten years, till the oracle informed the Greeks that Troy could not be taken without the arrows of Hercules. The sonnet refers to the legend of his life in Lemnos.—Ed.
[474] 1837.
... isle
Lay couched; upon that breathless Monument,
On him, or on his fearful bow unbent, 1827.
[475] 1837.
From home affections, and heroic toil.
Nor doubt ... 1827.
[476] 1837.
... that ... 1827.
[477] 1837.
And very ... 1827.