The Scipios' tomb contains no ashes now; The very sepulchres lie tenantless

Of their heroic dwellers: dost thou flow, Old Tiber! through a marble wilderness? Rise, with thy yellow waves, and mantle her distress. 711

The Goth, the Christian, Time, War, Flood, and Fire,

Have dealt upon the seven-hill'd city's pride:

She saw her glories star by star expire,
And up the steep barbarian monarchs ride,
Where the car1 climb'd the Capitol; far and
wide

Temple and tower went down, nor left a site:

Chaos of ruins! who shall trace the void, O'er the dim fragments cast a lunar light, And say, "Here was, or is," where all is doubly night? 720

As men's have grown from sudden fears:
My limbs are bow'd, though not with toil,
But rusted with a vile repose,

For they have been a dungeon's spoil,

And mine has been the fate of those
To whom the goodly earth and air
Are bann'd, and barr'd-forbidden fare; 10
But this was for my father's faith

I suffer'd chains and courted death:
That father perish'd at the stake
For tenets he would not forsake;
And for the same his lineal race
In darkness found a dwelling-place.
We were seven who now are one;
Six in youth, and one in age,
Finish'd as they had begun,

Proud of Persecution's rage;
One in fire, and two in field,
Their belief with blood have seal'd
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.

There are seven pillars of Gothic mould,
In Chillon's dungeon deep and old;
There are seven columns, massy and gray,
Dim with a dull imprison'd ray,
A sunbeam which hath lost its way,
And through the crevice and the cleft
Of the thick wall is fallen and left:
Creeping o'er the floor so damp,
Like a marsh's meteor lamp:
And in each pillar there is a ring,

And in each ring there is a chain;
That iron is a cankering thing,

For in these limbs its teeth remain,

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1 The castle of Chillon covers a huge rock at the eastern end of Lake Geneva (Lake Leman).

With marks that will not wear away,
Till I have done with this new day,
Which now is painful to these eyes,
Which have not seen the sun so rise
I cannot count them o'er;

For years
I lost their long and heavy score
When my last brother droop'd and died,
And I lay living by his side.

They chain'd us each to a column stone,
And we were three-yet each alone;
We could not move a single pace,
We could not see each other's face,
But with that pale and livid light
That made us strangers in our sight:
And thus together yet apart,
Fetter'd in hand, but join'd in heart,
'Twas 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,
Or song heroically bold;
But even these at length grew cold.
Our voices took a dreary tone,
An echo of the dungeon-stone,

A grating sound not full and free,
As they of yore were wont to be:
It might be fancy — but to me
They never sounded like our own.

The other was as pure of mind,
But form'd to combat with his kind;
Strong in his frame, and of a mood
Which 'gainst the world in war had stood,
And perish'd in the foremost rank

With joy - but not in chains to pine:
His spirit wither'd with their clank,

I saw it silently decline

And so perchance in sooth did mine; 100 But yet I forced it on to cheer

Those relics of a home so dear.
He was a hunter of the hills,

Had follow'd there the deer and wolf;
To him this dungeon was a gulf,
And fetter'd feet the worst of ills.

Lake Leman lies by Chillon's walls:
A thousand feet in depth below
Its massy waters meet and flow;
Thus much the fathom line was sent
From Chillon's snow-white battlement,

Which round about the wave enthralls:
A double dungeon wall and wave
Have made and like a living grave.

Below the surface of the lake
The dark vault lies wherein we lay,
We heard it ripple night and day;

Sounding o'er our heads it knock'd;
And I have felt the winter's spray
Wash through the bars when winds were high
And wanton in the happy sky;

And then the very rock hath rock'd,
And I have felt it shake, unshock'd,

Because I could have smiled to see

The death that would have set me free.

I said my nearer brother pined,

I said his mighty heart declined,

He loathed and put away his food:

It was not that 'twas coarse and rude,
For we were used to hunters' fare,
And for the like had little care:
The milk drawn from the mountain goat
Was changed for water from the moat;
Our bread was such as captives' tears
Have moisten'd many a thousand years,
Since man first pent his fellow-men
Like brutes within an iron den;
But what were these to us or him?
These wasted not his heart or limb;
My brother's soul was of that mould
Which in a palace had grown cold,
Had his free-breathing been denied
The range of the steep mountain's side.
But why delay the truth? - he died.
I saw, and could not hold his head,

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