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--

"Belovéd 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 phénomène de la grotto d'azur s'accomplit dans le souterrain de Chillon, et le lac de Genève n'y réussit pas moins bien que la Méditerranée.' 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.]

[7] {15}[Compare--

"One little marshy spark of flame."

_Def. Trans_., Part I. sc. I.

Kölbing notes six other allusions in Byron's works to the "will-o'-the-wisp," but omits the line in the "Incantation" (_Manfred_,

## act i. sc. I, line 195)--

"And the wisp on the morass,"

which the Italian translator would have rendered "bundle of straw" (see Letter to Hoppner, February 28, 1818, _Letters_, 1900, iv. 204, _note 2, et post_ p. 92, note 1).]

[8] [This "...is not exactly so; the third column does not seem to have ever had a ring, but the traces of these rings are very visible in the two first columns from the entrance, although the rings have been removed; and on the three last we find the rings still riveted on the darkest side of the pillars where they face the rock, so that the unfortunate prisoners chained there were even bereft of light.... The fifth column is said to be the one to which Bonivard was chained during four years. Byron's name is carved on the southern side of the third column ... on the seventh tympanum, at about 1 metre 45 from the lower edge of the shaft." Much has been written for and against the authenticity of this inscription, which, according to M. Naef, the author of _Guide_, was carved by Byron himself, "with an antique ivory-mounted stiletto, which had been discovered in the duke's room."--_Guide, etc._, pp. 39-42. The inscription was _in situ_ as early as August 22, 1820, as Mr. Richard Edgcumbe points out (_Notes and Queries_, Series V. xi. 487).]

[d] {16}--_pined in heart_.--[Editions 1816-1837.]

[9] [Compare, for similarity of sound--

"Thou tree of covert and of rest For this young Bird that is distrest."

_Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle,_ by W. Wordsworth, _Works,_ 1889, p. 364.

Compare, too--

"She came into the cave, but it was merely To see her bird reposing in his nest."

_Don Juan,_ Canto II. stanza clxviii. lines 3, 4.]

[10] {17}[Compare--

"Those polar summers, _all_ sun, and some ice."

_Don Juan_, Canto XII. stanza lxxii. line 8.]

[11] {18} [Ruskin (_Modern Painters_, Part IV. chap. i. sect. 9, "Touching the Grand Style," 1888, iii. 8, 9) criticizes these five lines 107-111, and points out that, alike in respect of accuracy and inaccuracy of detail, they fulfil the conditions of poetry in contradistinction to history. "Instead," he concludes, "of finding, as we expected, the poetry distinguished from the history by the omission of details, we find it consisting entirely in the addition of details; and instead of it being characterized by regard only of the invariable, we find its whole power to consist in the clear expression of what is singular and particular!"]

[12] The Château 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 Héloïse, 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 château is large, and seen along the lake for a great distance. The walls are white.

["Le château de Chillon ... est situé dans le lac sur un rocher qui forme une presqu'isle, et autour du quel j'ai vu sonder à plus de cent cinquante brasses qui font près de huit cents pieds, sans trouver le fond. On a creusé dans ce rocher des caves et des cuisines au-dessous du niveau de l'eau, qu'on y introduit, quand on veut, par des robinets. C'est-là que fut détenu six ans prisonnier François Bonnivard ... homme d'un mérite rare, d'une droiture et d'une fermeté à toute épreuve, ami de la liberté, quoique Savoyard, et tolérant quoique prêtre," etc. (_La Nouvelle Héloïse_, par J. J. Rousseau, partie vi. Lettre 8, note (1); _Oeuvres complètes_, 1836, ii. 356, note 1).

With Byron's description of Chillon, compare that of Shelley, contained in a letter to Peacock, dated July 12, 1816 (_Prose Works of P. B. Shelley_, 1880, ii. 171, sq.). The belief or tradition that Bonivard's prison is "below the surface of the lake," for which Shelley as well as Rousseau is responsible, but which Byron only records in verse, may be traced to a statement attributed to Bonivard himself, who says (_Mémoires, etc._, 1843, iv. 268) that the commandant thrust him "en unes croctes desquelles le fond estoit plus bas que le lac sur lequel Chillon estoit citue." As a matter of fact, "the level [of _les souterrains_] is now three metres higher than the level of the water, and even if we take off the difference arising from the fact that the level of the lake was once much higher, and that the floor of the halls has been raised, still the halls must originally have been built about two metres above the surface of the lake."--_Guide_, etc., pp. 28, 29.]

[13] {19}[The "real Bonivard" might have indulged in and, perhaps, prided himself on this feeble and irritating _paronomasy_; but nothing can be less in keeping with the bearing and behaviour of the tragic and sententious Bonivard of the legend.]

[14] [Compare--

"...I'm a forester and breather Of the steep mountain-tops."

_Werner_, act iv. sc. 1.]

[e] _But why withhold the blow?--he died_. [MS.]

[f] {20}_To break or bite_----.--[MS.]

[15] [Compare "With the aid of Suleiman's ataghan and my own sabre, we scooped a shallow grave upon the spot which Darvell had indicated" (_A fragment of a Novel by Byron, Letters,_ 1899, iii. Appendix IX. p. 452).]

[16] [Compare--

"And to be wroth with one we love Doth work like madness in the brain."

_Christabel_, by S. T. Coleridge, part ii. lines 412, 413.]

[17] [It is said that his parents handed him over to the care of his uncle, Jean-Aimé Bonivard, when he was still an infant, and it is denied that his father was "literally put to death."]

[18] {21}[Kölbing quotes parallel uses of the same expression in _Werner_, act iv. sc. 1; Churchill's _The Times_, line 341, etc.; but does not give the original--

"But earthlier happy is the rose distill'd, Than that which, withering on the virgin-thorn," etc.

_Midsummer Night's Dream_, act i. sc. i, lines 76, 77.]

[19] [Compare--

"The first, last look of Death revealed."

_The Giaour_, line 89, note 2.

Byron was a connoisseur of the incidents and by-play of "sudden death," so much so that Goethe was under the impression that he had been guilty of a venial murder (see his review of _Manfred_ in his paper _Kunst and Alterthum_, _Letters_, 1901, v. 506, 507). A year after these lines were written, when he was at Rome (Letter to Murray, May 30, 1817), he saw three robbers guillotined, and observed himself and them from a psychological standpoint.

"The ghastly bed of Sin" (lines 182, 183) may be a reminiscence of the death-bed of Lord Falkland (_English Bards_, etc., lines 680-686; _Poetical Works_, 1898, i. 351, note 2).]

[20] {22}[Compare--

"And yet I could not die."

_Ancient Mariner_, Part IV. line 262.]

[21] {23}[Compare--

"I wept not; so all stone I felt within."

Dante's _Inferno_, xxxiii. 47 (Cary's translation).]

[22] {24}[Compare "Song by Glycine"--

"A sunny shaft did I behold, From sky to earth it slanted; And poised therein a bird so bold-- Sweet bird, thou wert enchanted," etc.

_Zapolya_, by S. T. Coleridge, act ii. sc. 1.]

[23] [Compare--

"When Ruth was left half desolate, Her Father took another Mate."

_Ruth_, by W. Wordsworth, _Works_, 1889, p. 121.]

[24] ["The souls of the blessed are supposed by some of the Mahommedans to animate green birds in the groves of Paradise."--Note to Southey's _Thalaba_, bk. xi. stanza 5, line 13.]

[25] {25}[Compare--

"I wandered lonely as a cloud."

_Works_ of W. Wordsworth, 1889, p. 205.]

[26] [Compare--

"Yet some did think that he had little business here."

_Ibid_., p. 183.

Compare, too, _The Dream_, line 166, _vide post_, p. 39--

"What business had they there at such a time?"]

[27] {26}[Compare--

"He sighed, and turned his eyes, because he knew 'Twas but a larger jail he had in view."

Dryden, _Palamon and Arcite_, bk. i. lines 216, 217.

Compare, too--

"An exile---- Who has the whole world for a dungeon strong."

_Prophecy of Dante_, iv. 131, 132.]

[28] [Compare--

"The harvest of a quiet eye."

_A Poet's Epitaph_, line 51, _Works_ of W. Wordsworth, 1889, p. 116.]

[g]

_I saw them with their lake below,_ _And their three thousand years of snow_.--[MS.]

[29] [This, according to Ruskin's canon, may be a poetical inaccuracy. The Rhone is blue below the lake at Geneva, but "les embouchures" at Villeneuve are muddy and discoloured.]

[30] [Villeneuve.]

[31] Between the entrances of the Rhone and Villeneuve, not far from Chillon, is a very small island [Ile de Paix]; the only one I could perceive in my voyage round and over the lake, within its circumference. It contains a few trees (I think not above three), and from its singleness and diminutive size has a peculiar effect upon the view.

[32] {27}[Compare--

"Of Silver How, and Grasmere's peaceful lake, And one green island."

_Works_ of W. Wordsworth, 1889, p. 220.]

[33] [Compare the Ancient Mariner on the water-snakes--

"O happy living things! no tongue Their beauty might declare,"

_Ancient Mariner_, Part IV. lines 282, 283.

There is, too, in these lines (352-354), as in many others, an echo of Wordsworth. In the _Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle_ it is told how the "two undying fish" of Bowscale Tarn, and the "eagle lord of land and sea" ministered to the shepherd-lord. It was no wonder that the critics of 1816 animadverted on Byron's "communion" with the Lakers. "He could not," writes a Critical Reviewer (Series V. vol. iv. pp. 567-581), "carry many volumes on his tour, but among the few, we will venture to predict, are found the two volumes of poems lately republished by Mr. Wordsworth.... Such is the effect of reading and enjoying the poetry of Mr. W., to whose system (ridiculed alike by those who could not, and who would not understand it) Lord Byron, it is evident, has become a tardy convert, and of whose merits in the poems on our table we have a silent but unequivocal acknowledgment."]

[34] {28}[Compare the well-known lines in Lovelace's "To Althea--From Prison"--

"Minds innocent and quiet take That for an hermitage."]

[h] Here follows in the MS.--

_Nor stew I of my subjects one_-- / _hath so little_ \ _What sovereign_ < > _done?_ \ _yet so much hath_ /

POEMS OF

JULY-SEPTEMBER, 1816.

THE DREAM.

INTRODUCTION TO _THE DREAM_

_The Dream_, which was written at Diodati in July, 1816 (probably towards the end of the month; see letters to Murray and Rogers, dated July 22 and July 29), is a retrospect and an apology. It consists of an opening stanza, or section, on the psychology of dreams, followed by some episodes or dissolving views, which purport to be the successive stages of a dream. Stanzas ii. and iii. are descriptive of Annesley Park and Hall, and detail two incidents of Byron's boyish passion for his neighbour and distant cousin, Mary Anne Chaworth. The first scene takes place on the top of "Diadem Hill," the "cape" or rounded spur of the long ridge of Howatt Hill, which lies about half a mile to the south-east of the hall. The time is the late summer or early autumn of 1803. The "Sun of Love" has not yet declined, and the "one beloved face" is still shining on him; but he is beginning to realize that "her sighs are not for him," that she is out of his reach. The second scene, which belongs to the following year, 1804, is laid in the "antique oratory" (not, as Moore explains, another name for the hall, but "a small room built over the porch, or principal entrance of the hall, and looking into the courtyard"), and depicts the final parting. His doom has been pronounced, and his first impulse is to pen some passionate reproach, but his heart fails him at the sight of the "Lady of his Love," serene and smiling, and he bids her farewell with smiles on his lips, but grief unutterable in his heart.

Stanza iv. recalls an incident of his Eastern travels--a halt at noonday by a fountain on the route from Smyrna to Ephesus (March 14, 1810), "the heads of camels were seen peeping above the tall reeds" (see _Travels in Albania_, 1858, ii. 59.).

The next episode (stanza v.) depicts an imaginary scene, suggested, perhaps, by some rumour or more definite assurance, and often present to his "inward eye"--the "one beloved," the mother of a happy family, but herself a forsaken and unhappy wife.

He passes on (stanza vi.) to his marriage in 1815, his bride "gentle" and "fair," but _not_ the "one beloved,"--to the wedding day, when he stood before an altar, "like one forlorn," confused by the sudden vision of the past fulfilled with Love the "indestructible"!

In stanza vii. he records and analyzes the "sickness of the soul," the so-called "phrenzy" which had overtaken and changed the "Lady of his Love;" and, finally (stanza viii.), he lays bare the desolation of his heart, depicting himself as at enmity with mankind, but submissive to Nature, the "Spirit of the Universe," if, haply, there may be "reserved a blessing" even for him, the rejected and the outlaw.

Moore says (_Life_, p. 321) that _The Dream_ cost its author "many a tear in writing"--being, indeed, the most mournful as well as picturesque "story of a wandering life" that ever came from the pen and heart of man. In his _Real Lord Byron_ (i. 284) Mr. Cordy Jeaffreson maintains that _The Dream_ "has no autobiographical value.... A dream it was, as false as dreams usually are." The character of the poet, as well as the poem itself, suggests another criticism. Byron suffered or enjoyed vivid dreams, and, as poets will, shaped his dreams, consciously and of set purpose, to the furtherance of his art, but nothing concerning himself interested him or awoke the slumbering chord which was not based on actual fact. If the meeting on the "cape crowned with a peculiar diadem," and the final interview in the "antique oratory" had never happened or happened otherwise; if he had not "quivered" during the wedding service at Seaham; if a vision of Annesley and Mary Chaworth had not flashed into his soul,--he would have taken no pleasure in devising these incidents and details, and weaving them into a fictitious narrative. He took himself too seriously to invent and dwell lovingly on the acts and sufferings of an imaginary Byron. The Dream is "picturesque" because the accidents of the scenes are dealt with not historically, but artistically, are omitted or supplied according to poetical licence; but the record is neither false, nor imaginary, nor unusual. On the other hand, the composition and publication of the poem must be set down, if not to malice and revenge, at least to the preoccupancy of chagrin and remorse, which compelled him to take the world into his confidence, cost what it might to his own self-respect, or the peace of mind and happiness of others.

For an elaborate description of Annesley Hall and Park, written with a view to illustrate _The Dream_, see "A Byronian Ramble," Part II., the _Athenæum_, August 30, 1834. See, too, an interesting quotation from Sir Richard Phillips' unfinished _Personal Tour through the United Kingdom_, published in the _Mirror_, 1828, vol. xii. p. 286; _Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey_, by Washington Irving, 1835, p. 191, _seq._; _The House and Grave of Byron_, 1855; and an article in _Lippincott's Magazine_, 1876, vol. xviii. pp. 637, _seq._

THE DREAM