The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4

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ADVERTISEMENT

When this poem[a] was composed, I was not sufficiently aware of the
history of Bonnivard, or I should have endeavoured to dignify the
subject by an attempt to celebrate his courage and his virtues. With
some account of his life I have been furnished, by the kindness of a
citizen of that republic, which is still proud of the memory of a man
worthy of the best age of ancient freedom:--

"Francois De Bonnivard, fils de Louis De Bonnivard, originaire de
Seyssel et Seigneur de Lunes, naquit en 1496. Il fit ses etudes a Turin:
en 1510 Jean Aime de Bonnivard, son oncle, lui resigna le Prieure de St.
Victor, qui aboutissoit aux murs de Geneve, et qui formait un benefice
considerable....

"Ce grand homme--(Bonnivard merite ce litre par la force de son ame, la
droiture de son coeur, la noblesse de ses intentions, la sagesse de ses
conseils, le courage de ses demarches, l'etendue de ses connaissances,
et la vivacite de son esprit),--ce grand homme, qui excitera
l'admiration de tous ceux qu'une vertu heroique peut encore emouvoir,
inspirera encore la plus vive reconnaissance dans les coeurs des
Genevois qui aiment Geneve. Bonnivard en fut toujours un des plus fermes
appuis: pour assurer la liberte de notre Republique, il ne craignit pas
de perdre souvent la sienne; il oublia son repos; il meprisa ses
richesses; il ne negligea rien pour affermir le bonheur d'une patrie
qu'il honora de son choix: des ce moment il la cherit comme le plus zele
de ses citoyens; il la servit avec l'intrepidite d'un heros, et il
ecrivit son Histoire avec la naivete d'un philosophe et la chaleur d'un
patriote.

"Il dit dans le commencement de son Histoire de Geneve, que, _des qu'il
eut commence de lire l'histoire des nations, il se sentit entraine par
son gout pour les Republiques, dont il epousa toujours les interets:_
c'est ce gout pour la liberte qui lui fit sans doute adopter Geneve pour
sa patrie....

"Bonnivard, encore jeune, s'annonca hautement comme le defenseur de
Geneve contre le Duc de Savoye et l'Eveque....

"En 1519, Bonnivard devient le martyr de sa patrie: Le Duc de Savoye
etant entre dans Geneve avec cinq cent hommes, Bonnivard craint le
ressentiment du Duc; il voulut se retirer a Fribourg pour en eviter les
suites; mais il fut trahi par deux hommes qui l'accompagnaient, et
conduit par ordre du Prince a Grolee, ou il resta prisonnier pendant
deux ans. Bonnivard etait malheureux dans ses voyages: comme ses
malheurs n'avaient point ralenti son zele pour Geneve, il etait toujours
un ennemi redoutable pour ceux qui la menacaient, et par consequent il
devait etre expose a leurs coups. Il fut rencontre en 1530 sur le Jura
par des voleurs, qui le depouillerent, et qui le mirent encore entre les
mains du Duc de Savoye: ce Prince le fit enfermer dans le Chateau de
Chillon, ou il resta sans etre interroge jusques en 1536; il fut alors
delivre par les Bernois, qui s'emparerent du Pays-de-Vaud.

"Bonnivard, en sortant de sa captivite, eut le plaisir de trouver Geneve
libre et reformee: la Republique s'empressa de lui temoigner sa
reconnaissance, et de le dedommager des maux qu'il avoit soufferts; elle
le recut Bourgeois de la ville au mois de Juin, 1536; elle lui donna la
maison habitee autrefois par le Vicaire-General, et elle lui assigna une
pension de deux cent ecus d'or tant qu'il sejournerait a Geneve. Il fut
admis dans le Conseil des Deux-Cent en 1537.

"Bonnivard n'a pas fini d'etre utile: apres avoir travaille a rendre
Geneve libre, il reussit a la rendre tolerante. Bonnivard engagea le
Conseil a accorder [aux ecclesiastiques et aux paysans] un tems
suffisant pour examiner les propositions qu'on leur faisait; il reussit
par sa douceur: on preche toujours le Christianisme avec succes quand on
le preche avec charite....

"Bonnivard fut savant: ses manuscrits, qui sont dans la bibliotheque
publique, prouvent qu'il avait bien lu les auteurs classiques Latins, et
qu'il avait approfondi la theologie et l'histoire. Ce grand homme aimait
les sciences, et il croyait qu'elles pouvaient faire la gloire de
Geneve; aussi il ne negligea rien pour les fixer dans cette ville
naissante; en 1551 il donna sa bibliotheque au public; elle fut le
commencement de notre bibliotheque publique; et ces livres sont en
partie les rares et belles editions du quinzieme siecle qu'on voit dans
notre collection. Enfin, pendant la meme annee, ce bon patriote institua
la Republique son heritiere, a condition qu'elle employerait ses biens a
entretenir le college dont on projettait la fondation.

"Il parait que Bonnivard mourut en 1570; mais on ne peut l'assurer,
parcequ'il y a une lacune dans le Necrologe depuis le mois de Juillet,
1570, jusques en 1571."--[_Histoire Litteraire de Geneve_, par Jean
Senebier (1741-1809), 1786, i. 131-137.]

THE PRISONER OF CHILLON

I.

My hair is grey, but not with years,
Nor grew it white
In a single night,[3]
As men's have grown from sudden fears:
My limbs are bowed, though not with toil,
But rusted with a vile repose,[b]
For they have been a dungeon's spoil,
And mine has been the fate of those
To whom the goodly earth and air
Are banned,[4] and barred--forbidden fare; 10
But this was for my father's faith
I suffered chains and courted death;
That father perished 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,[5]
Six in youth, and one in age,
Finished as they had begun,
Proud of Persecution's rage;[c] 20
One in fire, and two in field,
Their belief with blood have sealed,
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,[6]
In Chillon's dungeons deep and old,
There are seven columns, massy and grey,
Dim with a dull imprisoned ray, 30
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:[7]
And in each pillar there is a ring,[8]
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, 40
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 drooped and died,
And I lay living by his side.

III.

They chained us each to a column stone,
And we were three--yet, each alone;
We could not move a single pace, 50
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,
Fettered in hand, but joined in heart,[d]
'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, 60
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 70
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 distressed
To see such bird in such a nest;[9]
For he was beautiful as day--
(When day was beautiful to me 80
As to young eagles, being free)--
A polar day, which will not see[10]
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 flowed like mountain rills,
Unless he could assuage the woe 90
Which he abhorred to view below.

V.

The other was as pure of mind,
But formed to combat with his kind;
Strong in his frame, and of a mood
Which 'gainst the world in war had stood,
And perished in the foremost rank
With joy:--but not in chains to pine:
His spirit withered 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 followed there the deer and wolf;
To him this dungeon was a gulf,
And fettered 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 110
From Chillon's snow-white battlement,[11]
Which round about the wave inthralls:
A double dungeon wall and wave
Have made--and like a living grave.
Below the surface of the lake[12]
The dark vault lies wherein we lay:
We heard it ripple night and day;
Sounding o'er our heads it knocked;
And I have felt the winter's spray
Wash through the bars when winds were high 120
And wanton in the happy sky;
And then the very rock hath rocked,
And I have felt it shake, unshocked,[13]
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 hunter's fare, 130
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 moistened 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 140
Which in a palace had grown cold,
Had his free breathing been denied
The range of the steep mountain's side;[14]
But why delay the truth?--he died.[e]
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.[f]
He died--and they unlocked his chain,
And scooped for him a shallow grave[15] 150
Even from the cold earth of our cave.
I begged 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,[16]
That even in death his freeborn breast
In such a dungeon could not rest.
I might have spared my idle prayer--
They coldly laughed--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.

But he, the favourite and the flower,
Most cherished since his natal hour,
His mother's image in fair face,
The infant love of all his race,
His martyred father's dearest thought,[17]
My latest care, for whom I sought
To hoard my life, that his might be 170
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 withered on the stalk away.[18]
Oh, God! it is a fearful thing
To see the human soul take wing
In any shape, in any mood:[19]
I've seen it rushing forth in blood,
I've seen it on the breaking ocean 180
Strive with a swoln convulsive motion,
I've seen the sick and ghastly bed
Of Sin delirious with its dread:
But these were horrors--this was woe
Unmixed 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 190
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 200
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 listened, but I could not hear;
I called, for I was wild with fear;
I knew 'twas hopeless, but my dread
Would not be thus admonished;
I called, and thought I heard a sound--
I burst my chain with one strong bound, 210
And rushed to him:--I found him not,
_I_ only stirred in this black spot,
_I_ only lived, _I_ only drew
The accursed breath of dungeon-dew;
The last, the sole, the dearest link
Between me and the eternal brink,
Which bound me to my failing race,
Was broken in this fatal place.
One on the earth, and one beneath--
My brothers--both had ceased to breathe: 220
I took that hand which lay so still,
Alas! my own was full as chill;
I had not strength to stir, or strive,
But felt that I was still alive--
A frantic feeling, when we know
That what we love shall ne'er be so.
I know not why
I could not die,[20]
I had no earthly hope--but faith,
And that forbade a selfish death. 230

IX.

What next befell me then and there
I know not well--I never knew--
First came the loss of light, and air,
And then of darkness too:
I had no thought, no feeling--none--
Among the stones I stood a stone,[21]
And was, scarce conscious what I wist,
As shrubless crags within the mist;
For all was blank, and bleak, and grey;
It was not night--it was not day; 240
It was not even the dungeon-light,
So hateful to my heavy sight,
But vacancy absorbing space,
And fixedness--without a place;
There were no stars--no earth--no time--
No check--no change--no good--no crime--
But silence, and a stirless breath
Which neither was of life nor death;
A sea of stagnant idleness,
Blind, boundless, mute, and motionless! 250

X.

A light broke in upon my brain,--
It was the carol of a bird;
It ceased, and then it came again,
The sweetest song ear ever heard,
And mine was thankful till my eyes
Ran over with the glad surprise,
And they that moment could not see
I was the mate of misery;
But then by dull degrees came back
My senses to their wonted track; 260
I saw the dungeon walls and floor
Close slowly round me as before,
I saw the glimmer of the sun
Creeping as it before had done,
But through the crevice where it came
That bird was perched, as fond and tame,
And tamer than upon the tree;
A lovely bird, with azure wings,[22]
And song that said a thousand things,
And seemed to say them all for me! 270
I never saw its like before,
I ne'er shall see its likeness more:
It seemed like me to want a mate,
But was not half so desolate,[23]
And it was come to love me when
None lived to love me so again,
And cheering from my dungeon's brink,
Had brought me back to feel and think.
I know not if it late were free,
Or broke its cage to perch on mine, 280
But knowing well captivity,
Sweet bird! I could not wish for thine!
Or if it were, in winged guise,
A visitant from Paradise;
For--Heaven forgive that thought! the while
Which made me both to weep and smile--
I sometimes deemed that it might be
My brother's soul come down to me;[24]
But then at last away it flew,
And then 'twas mortal well I knew, 290
For he would never thus have flown--
And left me twice so doubly lone,--
Lone--as the corse within its shroud,
Lone--as a solitary cloud,[25]
A single cloud on a sunny day,
While all the rest of heaven is clear,
A frown upon the atmosphere,
That hath no business to appear[26]
When skies are blue, and earth is gay.

XI.

A kind of change came in my fate, 300
My keepers grew compassionate;
I know not what had made them so,
They were inured to sights of woe,
But so it was:--my broken chain
With links unfastened did remain,
And it was liberty to stride
Along my cell from side to side,
And up and down, and then athwart,
And tread it over every part;
And round the pillars one by one, 310
Returning where my walk begun,
Avoiding only, as I trod,
My brothers' graves without a sod;
For if I thought with heedless tread
My step profaned their lowly bed,
My breath came gaspingly and thick,
And my crushed heart felt blind and sick.

XII.

I made a footing in the wall,
It was not therefrom to escape,
For I had buried one and all, 320
Who loved me in a human shape;
And the whole earth would henceforth be
A wider prison unto me:[27]
No child--no sire--no kin had I,
No partner in my misery;
I thought of this, and I was glad,
For thought of them had made me mad;
But I was curious to ascend
To my barred windows, and to bend
Once more, upon the mountains high, 330
The quiet of a loving eye.[28]

XIII.

I saw them--and they were the same,
They were not changed like me in frame;
I saw their thousand years of snow
On high--their wide long lake below,[g]
And the blue Rhone in fullest flow;[29]
I heard the torrents leap and gush
O'er channelled rock and broken bush;
I saw the white-walled distant town,[30]
And whiter sails go skimming down; 340
And then there was a little isle,[31]
Which in my very face did smile,
The only one in view;
A small green isle, it seemed no more,[32]
Scarce broader than my dungeon floor,
But in it there were three tall trees,
And o'er it blew the mountain breeze,
And by it there were waters flowing,
And on it there were young flowers growing,
Of gentle breath and hue. 350
The fish swam by the castle wall,
And they seemed joyous each and all;[33]
The eagle rode the rising blast,
Methought he never flew so fast
As then to me he seemed to fly;
And then new tears came in my eye,
And I felt troubled--and would fain
I had not left my recent chain;
And when I did descend again,
The darkness of my dim abode 360
Fell on me as a heavy load;
It was as is a new-dug grave,
Closing o'er one we sought to save,--
And yet my glance, too much opprest,
Had almost need of such a rest.

XIV.

It might be months, or years, or days--
I kept no count, I took no note--
I had no hope my eyes to raise,
And clear them of their dreary mote;
At last men came to set me free; 370
I asked not why, and recked not where;
It was at length the same to me,
Fettered or fetterless to be,
I learned to love despair.
And thus when they appeared at last,
And all my bonds aside were cast,
These heavy walls to me had grown
A hermitage--and all my own![34]
And half I felt as they were come
To tear me from a second home: 380
With spiders I had friendship made,
And watched them in their sullen trade,
Had seen the mice by moonlight play,
And why should I feel less than they?
We were all inmates of one place,
And I, the monarch of each race,
Had power to kill--yet, strange to tell!
In quiet we had learned to dwell;[h]
My very chains and I grew friends,
So much a long communion tends 390
To make us what we are:--even I
Regained my freedom with a sigh.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] {7}[In the first draft, the sonnet opens thus--

"Beloved Goddess of the chainless mind!
Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art,
Thy palace is within the Freeman's heart,
Whose soul the love of thee alone can bind;
And when thy sons to fetters are consign'd--
To fetters, and the damp vault's dayless gloom,
Thy joy is with them still, and unconfined,
Their country conquers with their martyrdom."

Ed. 1832.]

[2] [Compare--

"I appeal from her [sc. Florence] to Thee."

_Proph. of Dante_, Canto I. line 125.]

[a] {8} _When the foregoing.... Some account of his life will be found
in a note appended to the Sonnet on Chillon, with which I have been
furnished, etc.--[Notes, The Prisoner of Chillon, etc._, 1816, p. 59.]

[3] {13} Ludovico Sforza, and others.--The same is asserted of Marie
Antoinette's, the wife of Louis the Sixteenth, 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 attributed.

[It has been said that the Queen's hair turned grey during the return
from Varennes to Paris; but Carlyle (_French Revolution_, 1839, i. 182)
notes that as early as May 4, 1789, on the occasion of the assembly of
the States-General, "Her hair is already grey with many cares and
crosses."

Compare "Thy father's beard is turned white with the news" (Shakespeare,
I _Henry IV_., act ii. sc. 4, line 345); and--

"For deadly fear can time outgo,
And blanch at once the hair."

_Marmion_, Canto I. stanza xxviii. lines 19, 20.]

[b] _But with the inward waste of grief_.--[MS.]

[4] [The _N. Engl. Dict_., art. "Ban," gives this passage as the
earliest instance of the use of the verb "to ban" in the sense of "to
interdict, to prohibit." Exception was taken to this use of the word in
the _Crit. Rev_., 1817, Series V. vol. iv. p. 571.]

[5] {14}[Compare the epitaph on the monument of Richard Lord Byron, in
the chancel of Hucknall-Torkard Church, "Beneath in a vault is interred
the body of Richard Lord Byron, who with the rest of his family, being
seven brothers," etc. (Elze's _Life of Lord Byron_, p. 4, note 1).

Compare, too, Churchill's _Prophecy of Famine_, lines 391, 392--

"Five brothers there I lost, in manhood's pride,
Two in the field and three on gibbets died."

The Bonivard of history had but two brothers, Amblard and another.]

[c] _Braving rancour--chains--and rage_.--[MS.]

[6] ["This is really so: the loop-holes that are partly stopped up are
now but long crevices or clefts, but Bonivard, from the spot where he
was chained, could, perhaps, never get an idea of the loveliness and
variety of radiating light which the sunbeam shed at different hours of
the day.... In the morning this light is of luminous and transparent
shining, which the curves of the vaults send back all along the hall.
Victor Hugo (_Le Rhin_, ... Hachette, 1876, I. iii. pp. 123-131)
describes this ... 'Le phenomene de la grotto d'azur s'accomplit dans le
souterrain de Chillon, et le lac de Geneve n'y reussit pas moins bien
que la Mediterranee.' During the afternoon the hall assumes a much
deeper and warmer colouring, and the blue transparency of the morning
disappears; but at eventide, after the sun has set behind the Jura, the
scene changes to the deep glow of fire ..."--_Guide to the Castle of
Chillon_, by A. Naef, architect, 1896, pp, 35, 36.]