The song for the dead below,

Or the living who shortly shall be so ! For a departing being's soul

The death-hymn peals and the hollow bells knoll :

He is near his mortal goal;
Kneeling at the friar's knee;
Sad to hear-and piteous to see-
Kneeling on the bare cold ground,

With the block before and the guards around-

And the headsman with his bare arm ready,
That the blow may be both swift and steady,
Feels if the axe be sharp and true-
Since he set its edge anew:

While the crowd in a speechless circle gather
To see the Son fall by the doom of the
Father.

XVI.

It is a lovely hour as yet

Before the summer sun shall set,
Which rose upon that heavy day,
And mock'd it with its steadiest ray;
And his evening beams are shed
Full on Hugo's fated head,
As his last confession pouring
To the monk, his doom deploring
In penitential holiness,

He bends to hear his accents bless
With absolution such as may
Wipe our mortal stains away.
That high sun on his head did glisten
As he there did bow and listen-
And the rings of chestnut hair
Curl'd half down his neck so bare;
But brighter still the beam was thrown
Upon the axe which near him shone
With a clear and ghastly glitter-
Oh! that parting hour was bitter!
Even the stern stood chill'd with awe :
Dark the crime, and just the law-
Yet they shudder'd as they saw.

XVII.

The parting prayers are said and over
Of that false son-and daring lover!
His beads and sins are all recounted,
His hours to their last minute, mounted-
His mantling cloak before was stripp'd,
His bright brown locks must now be clipp'd:
'Tis done-all closely are they shorn-
The vest which till this moment worn-
The scarf which Parisina gave-
Must not adorn him to the grave.
Even that must now be thrown aside,
And o'er his eyes the kerchief tied;
But no-that last indignity

Shall ne'er approach his haughty eye.
All feelings seemingly subdued,
In deep disdain were half renew'd
When headsman's hands prepared to bind
Those eyes which would not broke such
blind

As if they dared not look on death.
'No-yours my forfeit blood and breath-
These hands are chain'd, but let me die
At least with an unshackled eye-
Strike !'-And as the word he said,
Upon the block he bow'd his head;
These the last accents Hugo spoke :
'Strike!'-and flashing fell the stroke
Roll'd the head-and, gushing, sunk
Back the stain'd and heaving trunk
In the dust, which each deep vein
Slaked with its ensanguined rain:
His eyes and lips a moment quiver,
Convulsed and quick-then fix for ever.

He died, as erring man should die,
Without display, without parade;
Meekly had he bow'd and pray'd,
As not disdaining priestly aid,
Nor desperate of all hope on high.
And while before the prior kneeling,
His heart was wean'd from earthly feeling;
His wrathful sire-his paramour-
What were they in such an hour?
No more reproach-no more despair;
No thought but heaven-no word but
prayer-

Save the few which from him broke,
When, bared to meet the headsman's stroke,
He claim'd to die with eyes unbound,
His sole adieu to those around.

XVIII.

Still as the lips that closed in death,
Each gazer's bosom held his breath:
But yet, afar, from man to man,
A cold electric shiver ran,

As down the deadly blow descended
On him whose life and love thus ended;
And, with a hushing sound compress'd,
A sigh shrunk back on every breast;
But no more thrilling noise rose there,
Beyond the blow that to the block
Pierced through with forced and sullen
shock,

Save one:-What cleaves the silent air
So madly shrill, so passing wild?,
That, as a mother's o'er her child
Done to death by sudden blow,
To the sky these accents go,
Like a soul's in endless woe.
Through Azo's palace-lattice driven,
That horrid voice ascends to heaven,
And every eye is turn'd thereon;
But sound and sight alike are gone!
It was a woman's shriek-and ne'er
In madlier accents rose despair;
And those who heard it, as it pass'd.
In mercy wish'd it were the last.

XIX.

Hugo is fallen; and from that hour,
No more in palace, hall, or bower,
Was Parisina heard or seen :
Her name as if she ne'er had been-

Was banish'd from each lip and ear,
Like words of wantonness or fear;
And from Prince Azo's voice, by none
Was mention heard of wife or son.
No tomb-no memory had they ;
Theirs was unconsecrated clay;

At least the knight's who died that day.
But Parisina's fate lies hid

Like dust beneath the coffin lid :
Whether in convent she abode,
And won to heaven her dreary road,
By blighted and remorseful years

Of scourge, and fast, and sleepless tears;
Or if she fell by bowl or steel,

For that dark love she dared to feel;
Or if upon the moment smote,

She died by tortures less remote,
Like him she saw upon the block,

With heart that shared the headsman's shock,

In quicken'd brokenness that came,
In pity, o'er her shatter'd frame,

None knew-and none can ever know:
But whatsoe'er its end below,
Her life began and closed in woe!

XX.

And Azo found another bride,
And goodly sons grew by his side;
But none so lovely and so brave
As him who wither'd in the grave.
Or if they were-on his cold eye
Their growth but glanced unheeded by,
Or noticed with a smother'd sigh.
But never tear his cheek descended,
And never smile his brow unbended;
And o'er that fair broad brow were wrought
The intersected lines of thought:
Those furrows which the burning share
Of Sorrow ploughs untimely there;
Scars of the lacerating mind

Which the Soul's war doth leave behind.

He was past all mirth or woe:
Nothing more remain'd below
But sleepless nights and heavy days,
A mind all dead to scorn or praise,
A heart which shunn'd itself—and yet
That would not yield--nor could forget,
Which, when it least appear'd to melt,
Intently thought-intensely felt :
The deepest ice which ever froze
Can only o'er the surface close-
The living stream lies quick below,
And flows and cannot cease to flow.
Still was his seal'd-up bosom haunted
By thoughts which Nature had implanted:
Too deeply rooted thence to vanish,
Howe'er our stifled tears we banish,
When, struggling as they rise to start,
We check those waters of the heart,
They are not dried-those tears unshed,
But flow back to the fountain-head,
And resting in their spring more pure,
For ever in its depth endure,
Unseen, unwept, but uncongeal'd,
And cherish'd most where least reveal'd.
With inward starts of feeling left,
To throb o'er those of life bereft ;
Without the power to fill again
The desert gap which made his pain;
Without the hope to meet them where
United souls shall gladness share;
With all the consciousness that he
Had only pass'd a just decree;
That they had wrought their doom of ill;
Yet Azo's age was wretched still.
The tainted branches of the tree,

Iflopp'd with care, a strength may give,
By which the rest shall bloom and live
All greenly fresh and wildly free:
But if the lightning in its wrath,

The waving boughs with fury scathe,
The massy trunk the ruin feels,
And never more a leaf reveals.

1816.

I.

My hair is grey, but not with years;

Nor grew it white

In a single night,*

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;
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.

II.

There are seven pillars of Gothic mould,
In Chillon's dungeons deep and old;
There are seven columns, massy and grey,'
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, 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 For years I cannot count them o'er; I lost their long and heavy score When my last brother droop'd and died, And I lay living by his side.

III.

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:

Ludovico Sforza, and others.-The same is asserted of Marie Antoinette's, the wife of Louis XVI., though not in quite so short a period. Grief is said to have the same effect; to such, and not to fear, this change in hers was to be attri Lated.

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.

IV.

I was the eldest of the three;

And to uphold and cheer the rest I ought to do and did-my best, And each did well in his degree.

The youngest, whom my father loved, Because our mother's brow was given To him-with eyes as blue as heaven, For him my soul was sorely moved. And truly might it be distress'd To see such bird in such a nest; For he was beautiful as day

(When day was beautiful to me As to young eagles, being free) — A polar day, which will not see A sunset till its summer's gone,

Its sleepless summer of long light, The snow-clad offspring of the sun : And thus he was as pure and bright, And in his natural spirit gay, With tears for nought but others' ills. And then they flow'd like mountain rills, Unless he could assuage the woe Which he abhorr'd to view below.

V.

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;
But yet I forced it on to cheer
Those relics of a nome 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.

VI.

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
And wanton in the happy sky; [high
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.

VII.

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,
Nor reach his dying hand-nor dead-
Though hard I strove, but strove in vain,
To rend and gnash my bonds in twain.
He died-and they unlock'd his chain,
And scoop'd for him a shallow grave
Even from the cold earth of our cave.
I begg'd them, as a boon, to lay
His corse in dust whereon the day

The Chateau de Chillon is situated between Clarens and Villeneuve, which last is at one extremity of the Lake of Geneva. On its left are the entrances of the Rhone, and opposite are the heights of Meillerie and the range of Alps above Boveret and St Gingo.

Near it, on a hill behind, is a torrent; below it, washing its walls, the lake has been fathomed to the depth of 800 feet (French measure); within it are a range of dungeons, in which the early reformers, and subsequently prisoners of state, were confined. Across one of the vaults is a beam black with age, on which we were informed that the condemned were formerly executed. In the cells are seven pillars, or rather eight, one being half merged in the wall; in some of these are rings for the fetters and the fettered. In the pavement, the steps of Bonnivard have left their traces. He was confined here several years.

It is by this castle that Rousseau has fixed the catastrophe of his Heloïse, in the rescue of one of her children by Julie from the water; the shock of which, and the illness produced by the immersion, is the cause of her death.

The chateau is large, and seen along the lake for a great distance. The walls are white

Might shine-it was a foolish thought,
But then within my brain it wrought,
That even in death his free-born 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
The being we so much did love;
His empty chain above it leant,
Such murder's fitting monument!

VIII.

But he, the favourite and the flower,
Most cherish'd since his natal hour,
His mother's image in fair face,
The infant love of all his race,
His martyr'd father's dearest thought,
My latest care, for whom I sought
To hoard my life, that his might be
Less wretched now, and one day free;
He, too, who yet had held untired
A spirit natural or inspired-
He, too, was struck, and day by day
Was wither'd on the stalk away.
O God! it is a fearful thing
To see the human soul take wing
In any shape, in any mood:-
I've seen it rushing forth in blood,
I've seen it on the breaking ocean
Strive with a swoll'n convulsive motion,
I've seen the sick and ghastly bed
Of Sin delirious with its dread:
But these were horrors-this was woe
Unmix'd with such, -but sure and slow.
He faded, and so calm and meek,
So softly worn, so sweetly weak,
So tearless, yet so tender,-kind,
And grieved for those he left behind;
With all the while a cheek whose bloom
Was as a mockery of the tomb,
Whose tints as gently sunk away
As a departing rainbow's ray-
An eye of most transparent light,
That almost made the dungeon bright,
And not a word of murmur-not
A groan o'er his untimely lot!
A little talk of better days,
A little hope my own to raise,
For I was sunk in silence-lost
In this last loss, of all the most;
And then the sighs he would suppress
Of fainting nature's feebleness,
More slowly drawn, grew less and less :
I listen'd, but I could not hear-
I call'd, for I was wild with fear;

I knew 'twas hopeless, but my dread
Would not be thus admonished;

I call'd, and thought I heard a sound-
I burst my chain with one strong bound,
And rush'd to him ;-I found him not;
I only stirr'd in this black spot,

I only lived-I only drew

The accursed breath of dungeon-dew;