1832.] [ 609 ] 



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THE POET'S PRISON, 



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I WALKED abroad upon the laughing earth, 



I heard its choristers, I breathed its air, 

 I saw the golden morning giving birth 



To countless shapes of btauty new and rare; 

 Across the sky a thousand bright clouds swept, 

 The voices in their sparkling channels leapt, 



And I was glad, nor thought of bondage or of care. 



I came where stood a castle by the brink 



Of a slow river, and its turrets grey 

 The streaming exhalations seemed to drink 



Of that dull leaden stream, unmarked decay 

 Had crumbled tower and keep, whose walls accursed 

 No velvet moss, nor waving ivy nursed, 



Nor ruin-loving flower, of blossom sweet and gay. 



The neighbouring peasants told me they could show 



Where in a dungeon under ground, had pined 

 A captive Bard, by some vindictive foe 



In that grim prison even till death confined : 

 I entered in,-and O, the bitter shame 

 For fellow man, the weight of grief, which came 

 ; To dim for after days, the sunshine of the mind ! 





I looked upon the mouldering walls ; the hand 



Which might have swept the golden lyre, a prize 

 For sweetest minstrelsy in some glad land, 



Where free-bom melodies to heaven arise, 

 Had traced (its only toil for weary years) 

 A mournful chronicle of fruitless tears 



And meteor gleams of hope, and agonising sighs. 



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Yet here and there, as though the spirit of song 



Had shown her glory in her votary's cell, 

 A strain had broken forth, whose current strong 



No tyrant could constrain, no dungeon quell : 

 There was a hymn to freedom! from their graves 

 I might have waked to combat coward, slaves, 



How could a captive sing of liberty so well ? 



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Anon the chain had fallen round the lyre, 



Stilling those lofty tones to broken lays 

 Of cold despair, and passionate desire, 



And wasting memories of brighter days : 

 l)reams of the free fresh air, fond words in token 

 Of love, by distance, and by bonds unbroken, 



Carved where the light streamed in with few uncertain rays. 



And there were relics too I wept to find 



Trampled in dust, a braid of golden hair ; 

 Surely a charm in every tress had twined 



To soothe the captive in his lone despair ; 



. And on his pallet was a withered flower, , 



Was that love's gift ? or in relenting hour 



Had the stern warden brought that treasured blossom there? 



