# The Revolt of Islam/Canto IX
### I.

'That night we anchored in a woody bay,  And sleep no more around us dared to hover  Than, when all doubt and fear has passed away,  It shades the couch of some unresting lover  Whose heart is now at rest; thus night passed over  In mutual joy; around, a forest grew  Of poplars and dark oaks, whose shade did cover  The waning stars pranked in the waters blue, And trembled in the wind which from the morning flew.

### II.

'The joyous mariners and each free maiden  Now brought from the deep forest many a bough,  With woodland spoil most innocently laden;  Soon wreaths of budding foliage seemed to flow  Over the mast and sails; the stern and prow  Were canopied with blooming boughs; the while  On the slant sun's path o'er the waves we go  Rejoicing, like the dwellers of an isle Doomed to pursue those waves that cannot cease to smile.

### III.

'The many ships spotting the dark blue deep  With snowy sails, fled fast as ours came nigh,  In fear and wonder; and on every steep  Thousands did gaze. They heard the startling cry,  Like earth's own voice lifted unconquerably  To all her children, the unbounded mirth,  The glorious joy of thy name—Liberty!  They heard!—As o'er the mountains of the earth From peak to peak leap on the beams of morning's birth,

### IV.

'So from that cry over the boundless hills  Sudden was caught one universal sound,  Like a volcano's voice whose thunder fills  Remotest skies,—such glorious madness found  A path through human hearts with stream which drowned  Its struggling fears and cares, dark Custom's brood;  They knew not whence it came, but felt around  A wide contagion poured—they called aloud On Liberty—that name lived on the sunny flood.

### V.

'We reached the port. Alas! from many spirits  The wisdom which had waked that cry was fled,  Like the brief glory which dark Heaven inherits  From the false dawn, which fades ere it is spread,  Upon the night's devouring darkness shed;  Yet soon bright day will burst—even like a chasm  Of fire, to burn the shrouds outworn and dead  Which wrap the world; a wide enthusiasm, To cleanse the fevered world as with an earthquake's spasm!

### VI.

'I walked through the great City then, but free  From shame or fear; those toil-worn mariners  And happy maidens did encompass me;  And like a subterranean wind that stirs  Some forest among caves, the hopes and fears  From every human soul a murmur strange  Made as I passed; and many wept with tears  Of joy and awe, and wingèd thoughts did range, And half-extinguished words which prophesied of change.

### VII.

'For with strong speech I tore the veil that hid  Nature, and Truth, and Liberty, and Love,—  As one who from some mountain's pyramid  Points to the unrisen sun! the shades approve  His truth, and flee from every stream and grove.  Thus, gentle thoughts did many a bosom fill,  Wisdom the mail of tried affections wove  For many a heart, and tameless scorn of ill Thrice steeped in molten steel the unconquerable will.

### VIII.

'Some said I was a maniac wild and lost;  Some, that I scarce had risen from the grave  The Prophet's virgin bride, a heavenly ghost;  Some said I was a fiend from my weird cave,  Who had stolen human shape, and o'er the wave,  The forest, and the mountain, came; some said  I was the child of God, sent down to save  Woman from bonds and death, and on my head The burden of their sins would frightfully be laid.

### IX.

'But soon my human words found sympathy  In human hearts; the purest and the best,  As friend with friend, made common cause with me,  And they were few, but resolute; the rest,  Ere yet success the enterprise had blessed,  Leagued with me in their hearts; their meals, their slumber,  Their hourly occupations, were possessed  By hopes which I had armed to overnumber Those hosts of meaner cares which life's strong wings encumber.

### X.

'But chiefly women, whom my voice did waken  From their cold, careless, willing slavery,  Sought me; one truth their dreary prison has shaken,  They looked around, and lo! they became free!  Their many tyrants, sitting desolately  In slave-deserted halls, could none restrain;  For wrath's red fire had withered in the eye  Whose lightning once was death,—nor fear nor gain Could tempt one captive now to lock another's chain.

### XI.

'Those who were sent to bind me wept, and felt  Their minds outsoar the bonds which clasped them round,  Even as a waxen shape may waste and melt  In the white furnace; and a visioned swound,  A pause of hope and awe, the City bound,  Which, like the silence of a tempest's birth,  When in its awful shadow it has wound  The sun, the wind, the ocean, and the earth, Hung terrible, ere yet the lightnings have leaped forth.

### XII.

'Like clouds inwoven in the silent sky  By winds from distant regions meeting there,  In the high name of Truth and Liberty  Around the City millions gathered were  By hopes which sprang from many a hidden lair,—  Words which the lore of truth in hues of grace  Arrayed, thine own wild songs which in the air  Like homeless odors floated, and the name Of thee, and many a tongue which thou hadst dipped in flame.

### XIII.

'The Tyrant knew his power was gone, but Fear,  The nurse of Vengeance, bade him wait the event—  That perfidy and custom, gold and prayer,  And whatsoe'er, when Force is impotent,  To Fraud the sceptre of the world has lent,  Might, as he judged, confirm his failing sway.  Therefore throughout the streets, the Priests he sent  To curse the rebels. To their gods did they For Earthquake, Plague and Want, kneel in the public way.

### XIV.

'And grave and hoary men were bribed to tell,  From seats where law is made the slave of wrong,  How glorious Athens in her splendor fell,  Because her sons were free,—and that among  Mankind, the many to the few belong  By Heaven, and Nature, and Necessity.  They said, that age was truth, and that the young  Marred with wild hopes the peace of slavery, With which old times and men had quelled the vain and free.

### XV.

'And with the falsehood of their poisonous lips  They breathed on the enduring memory  Of sages and of bards a brief eclipse.  There was one teacher, who necessity  Had armed with strength and wrong against mankind,  His slave and his avenger aye to be;  That we were weak and sinful, frail and blind,  And that the will of one was peace, and we Should seek for nought on earth but toil and misery—

### XVI.

'"For thus we might avoid the hell hereafter."  So spake the hypocrites, who cursed and lied.  Alas, their sway was passed, and tears and laughter  Clung to their hoary hair, withering the pride  Which in their hollow hearts dared still abide;  And yet obscener slaves with smoother brow,  And sneers on their strait lips, thin, blue and wide,  Said that the rule of men was over now, And hence the subject world to woman's will must bow.

### XVII.

'And gold was scattered through the streets, and wine  Flowed at a hundred feasts within the wall.  In vain! the steady towers in Heaven did shine  As they were wont, nor at the priestly call  Left Plague her banquet in the Æthiop's hall,  Nor Famine from the rich man's portal came,  Where at her ease she ever preys on all  Who throng to kneel for food; nor fear, nor shame, Nor faith, nor discord, dimmed hope's newly kindled flame.

### XVIII.

'For gold was as a god whose faith began  To fade, so that its worshippers were few;  And Faith itself, which in the heart of man  Gives shape, voice, name, to spectral Terror, knew  Its downfall, as the altars lonelier grew,  Till the Priests stood alone within the fane;  The shafts of falsehood unpolluting flew,  And the cold sneers of calumny were vain The union of the free with discord's brand to stain.

### XIX.

'The rest thou knowest.—Lo! we two are here—  We have survived a ruin wide and deep—  Strange thoughts are mine. I cannot grieve or fear.  Sitting with thee upon this lonely steep  I smile, though human love should make me weep.  We have survived a joy that knows no sorrow,  And I do feel a mighty calmness creep  Over my heart, which can no longer borrow Its hues from chance or change, dark children of to-morrow.

### XX.

'We know not what will come. Yet, Laon, dearest,  Cythna shall be the prophetess of Love;  Her lips shall rob thee of the grace thou wearest,  To hide thy heart, and clothe the shapes which rove  Within the homeless Future's wintry grove;  For I now, sitting thus beside thee, seem  Even with thy breath and blood to live and move,  And violence and wrong are as a dream Which rolls from steadfast truth,—an unreturning stream.

### XXI.

'The blasts of Autumn drive the wingèd seeds  Over the earth; next come the snows, and rain,  And frosts, and storms, which dreary Winter leads  Out of his Scythian cave, a savage train.  Behold! Spring sweeps over the world again,  Shedding soft dews from her ethereal wings;  Flowers on the mountains, fruits over the plain,  And music on the waves and woods she flings, And love on all that lives, and calm on lifeless things.

### XXII.

'O Spring, of hope and love and youth and gladness  Wind-wingèd emblem! brightest, best and fairest!  Whence comest thou, when, with dark Winter's sadness  The tears that fade in sunny smiles thou sharest?  Sister of joy! thou art the child who wearest  Thy mother's dying smile, tender and sweet;  Thy mother Autumn, for whose grave thou bearest  Fresh flowers, and beams like flowers, with gentle feet, Disturbing not the leaves which are her winding sheet.

### XXIII.

'Virtue and Hope and Love, like light and Heaven,  Surround the world. We are their chosen slaves.  Has not the whirlwind of our spirit driven  Truth's deathless germs to thought's remotest caves?  Lo, Winter comes!—the grief of many graves,  The frost of death, the tempest of the sword,  The flood of tyranny, whose sanguine waves  Stagnate like ice at Faith the enchanter's word, And bind all human hearts in its repose abhorred.

### XXIV.

'The seeds are sleeping in the soil. Meanwhile  The Tyrant peoples dungeons with his prey;  Pale victims on the guarded scaffold smile  Because they cannot speak; and, day by day,  The moon of wasting Science wanes away  Among her stars, and in that darkness vast  The sons of earth to their foul idols pray,  And gray Priests triumph, and like blight or blast A shade of selfish care o'er human looks is cast.

### XXV.

'This is the Winter of the world; and here  We die, even as the winds of Autumn fade,  Expiring in the frore and foggy air.  Behold! Spring comes, though we must pass who made  The promise of its birth,—even as the shade  Which from our death, as from a mountain, flings  The future, a broad sunrise; thus arrayed  As with the plumes of overshadowing wings, From its dark gulf of chains Earth like an eagle springs.

### XXVI.

'O dearest love! we shall be dead and cold  Before this morn may on the world arise.  Wouldst thou the glory of its dawn behold?  Alas! gaze not on me, but turn thine eyes  On thine own heart—it is a Paradise  Which everlasting spring has made its own,  And while drear winter fills the naked skies,  Sweet streams of sunny thought, and flowers fresh blown, Are there, and weave their sounds and odors into one.

### XXVII.

'In their own hearts the earnest of the hope  Which made them great the good will ever find;  And though some envious shade may interlope  Between the effect and it, One comes behind,  Who aye the future to the past will bind—  Necessity, whose sightless strength forever  Evil with evil, good with good, must wind  In bands of union, which no power may sever; They must bring forth their kind, and be divided never!

### XXVIII.

'The good and mighty of departed ages  Are in their graves, the innocent and free,  Heroes, and Poets, and prevailing Sages,  Who leave the vesture of their majesty  To adorn and clothe this naked world;—and we  Are like to them—such perish, but they leave  All hope, or love, or truth, or liberty,  Whose forms their mighty spirits could conceive, To be a rule and law to ages that survive.

### XXIX.

'So be the turf heaped over our remains  Even in our happy youth, and that strange lot,  Whate'er it be, when in these mingling veins  The blood is still, be ours; let sense and thought  Pass from our being, or be numbered not  Among the things that are; let those who come  Behind, for whom our steadfast will has bought  A calm inheritance, a glorious doom, Insult with careless tread our undivided tomb.

### XXX.

'Our many thoughts and deeds, our life and love,  Our happiness, and all that we have been,  Immortally must live and burn and move  When we shall be no more;—the world has seen  A type of peace; and as some most serene  And lovely spot to a poor maniac's eye—  After long years some sweet and moving scene  Of youthful hope returning suddenly— Quells his long madness, thus Man shall remember thee.

### XXXI.

'And Calumny meanwhile shall feed on us  As worms devour the dead, and near the throne  And at the altar most accepted thus  Shall sneers and curses be;—what we have done  None shall dare vouch, though it be truly known;  That record shall remain when they must pass  Who built their pride on its oblivion,  And fame, in human hope which sculptured was, Survive the perished scrolls of unenduring brass.

### XXXII.

'The while we two, belovèd, must depart,  And Sense and Reason, those enchanters fair,  Whose wand of power is hope, would bid the heart  That gazed beyond the wormy grave despair;  These eyes, these lips, this blood, seems darkly there  To fade in hideous ruin; no calm sleep,  Peopling with golden dreams the stagnant air,  Seems our obscure and rotting eyes to steep In joy;—but senseless death—a ruin dark and deep!

### XXXIII.

'These are blind fancies. Reason cannot know  What sense can neither feel nor thought conceive;  There is delusion in the world—and woe,  And fear, and pain—we know not whence we live,  Or why, or how, or what mute Power may give  Their being to each plant, and star, and beast,  Or even these thoughts.—Come near me! I do weave  A chain I cannot break—I am possessed With thoughts too swift and strong for one lone human breast.

### XXXIV.

'Yes, yes—thy kiss is sweet, thy lips are warm—  Oh, willingly, belovèd, would these eyes  Might they no more drink being from thy form,  Even as to sleep whence we again arise,  Close their faint orbs in death. I fear nor prize  Aught that can now betide, unshared by thee.  Yes, Love when Wisdom fails makes Cythna wise;  Darkness and death, if death be true, must be Dearer than life and hope if unenjoyed with thee.

### XXXV.

'Alas! our thoughts flow on with stream whose waters  Return not to their fountain; Earth and Heaven,  The Ocean and the Sun, the clouds their daughters,  Winter, and Spring, and Morn, and Noon, and Even—  All that we are or know, is darkly driven  Towards one gulf.—Lo! what a change is come  Since I first spake—but time shall be forgiven,  Though it change all but thee!' She ceased—night's gloom Meanwhile had fallen on earth from the sky's sunless dome.

### XXXVI.

Though she had ceased, her countenance uplifted  To Heaven still spake with solemn glory bright;  Her dark deep eyes, her lips, whose motions gifted  The air they breathed with love, her locks undight;  'Fair star of life and love,' I cried, 'my soul's delight,  Why lookest thou on the crystalline skies?  Oh, that my spirit were yon Heaven of night,  Which gazes on thee with its thousand eyes!' She turned to me and smiled—that smile was Paradise!