Is Famine, but he drives not from his door Those whom these lips have kissed, alone. No more, no more!" LI. As thus she spake, she grasped me with the strength Of madness, and by many a ruined hearth She led, and over many a corpse :—at length LII. She leaped upon a pile, and lifted high Her mad looks to the lightning, and cried: "Eat! LIII. And vainly having with her madness striven As by the shore of the tempestuous sea Cythna among the rocks, where she alway Had sate, with anxious eyes fixed on the lingering day. LIV. And joy was ours to meet she was most pale, We reached our home ere morning could unbind LV. Her chilled heart having cherished in my bosom, Of health, and hope; and sorrow languished near it, 1 Reclined is contracted into reclin'd in Shelley's edition,-I presume by the printer, as such contractions are quite exceptional in that edition. Canto Seventh. I. So we sate joyous as the morning ray Of converse and caresses sweet and deep, Time, tho' he wield the darts of death and sleep, And those thrice mortal barbs in his own poison steep. II. I told her of my sufferings and my madness, And how, awakened from that dreamy mood By Liberty's uprise, the strength of gladness Came to my spirit in my solitude; And all that now I was, while tears pursued Each other down her fair and listening cheek Fast as the thoughts which fed them, like a flood From sunbright dales; and when I ceased to speak, Her accents soft and sweet the pausing air did wake. III. She told me a strange tale of strange endurance, Woven into one; to which no firm assurance, So wild were they, could her own faith impart. She said that not a tear did dare to start From the swoln brain, and that her thoughts were firm When from all mortal hope she did depart, Borne by those slaves across the Ocean's term, And that she reached the port without one fear infirm. IV. One was she among many there, the thralls The Tyrant heard her singing to her lute A wild, and sad, and spirit-thrilling lay, Like winds that die in wastes-one moment mute The evil thoughts it made, which did his breast pollute. V. Even when he saw her wondrous loveliness, A king, a heartless beast, a pageant and a name. 1 In this case tyrant is spelt with a small t in the original edition, though with a capital in line 6 of the same stanza. This cannot, of course, be intentional. 2 Wonderous in Shelley's edition. VI. She told me what a loathsome agony Is that when selfishness mocks love's delight, Where like a Spirit in fleshly chains she lay VII. Her madness was a beam of light, a power Which dawned thro' the rent soul; and words it gave Fearless and free, and they began to breathe Deep curses, like the voice of flames far underneath. 1 Dreams, without the apostrophe, in Shelley's edition. 2 The sense of this much-canvassed passage seems to me to be perfectly clear, namely," it (her madness) gave to looks and gestures such words as bore (upon all opposing forces) in whirlwinds which might not be withstood, and from the effect of which none could save or guard all those (fellow slaves) who approached the sphere of their operation, which sphere (the harem) was like some calm wave. vexed into whirlpools." The expression bore in whirlwinds, which Mr. Rossetti pronounces nonsense, I take to be parallel to such phrases as came in torrents; and nothing would be said against a poet's talking of even gusts of eloquent speech: why not whirlwinds then? Looks such as in whirlwinds lour, Mr. Rossetti's proposed "emendation," would, it seems to me, make nonsense of the passage. Mr. Swinburne's explanation, as interpreted by Mr. Rossetti, seems to need the insertion of a comma after and words it gave; but I feel sure the sense is not that her madness " gave words, gestures, and looks" &c., but that it gave eloquence to her gestures and looks, as explained above. Mr. Swinburne's own remarks (Essays and Studies, page 193) are confined to giving bore the sense of "bore onward or forward." |