The Prisoner of Chillon, and Other Poems, Volume 1

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John Murray, Albermarle-Street., 1816 - 60 pages

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Page 2 - To fetters, and the damp vault's dayless gloom, Their country conquers with their martyrdom, And Freedom's fame finds wings on every wind. Chillon! thy prison is a holy place, And thy sad floor an altar — for 'twas trod, Until his very steps have left a trace Worn, as if thy cold pavement were a sod, By Bonnivard ! — May none those marks efface ! For they appeal from tyranny to God.
Page 6 - T was still some solace, in the dearth Of the pure elements of earth, To hearken to each other's speech, And each "turn comforter to each With some new hope, or legend old, 60 Or song heroically bold; But even these at length grew cold.
Page 47 - Though thy slumber may be deep, Yet thy spirit shall not sleep, There are shades which will not vanish, There are thoughts thou canst not banish...
Page 12 - He faded, and so calm and meek, So softly worn, so sweetly weak, So tearless, yet so tender — kind...
Page 4 - Dying as their father died, For the God their foes denied; Three were in a dungeon cast, Of whom this wreck is left the last.
Page 10 - I begg'd them, as a boon, to lay His corse in dust whereon the day Might shine — it was a foolish thought, But then within my brain it wrought, That even in death his freeborn breast In such a dungeon could not rest. I might have spared my idle prayer — They coldly laugh'd — and laid him there : The flat and turfless earth above 160 The being we so much did love ; His empty chain above it leant, Such murder's fitting monument ! VIII.
Page 36 - I saw two beings in the hues of youth Standing upon a hill, a gentle hill, Green and of mild declivity, the last As 'twere the cape of a long ridge of such, Save that there was no sea to lave its base, But a most living landscape, and the wave Of woods and cornfields, and the abodes of men Scattered at intervals, and wreathing smoke Arising from such rustic roofs; — the hill Was crowned with a peculiar diadem Of trees, in circular array, so fixed, Not by the sport of nature, but of man...
Page 53 - ... Mortals of their fate and force ; Like thee, Man is in part divine, A troubled stream from a pure source ; And Man in portions can foresee His own funereal destiny ; His wretchedness, and his resistance, And his sad unallied existence...
Page 42 - That in the antique oratory shook His bosom in its solitude; and then — As in that hour — a moment o'er his face The tablet of unutterable thoughts Was traced — and then it faded as it came...
Page 11 - Oh God! it is a fearful thing To see the human soul take wing In any shape, in any mood...

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