The Lament of Tasso

1. 1Long years!--It tries the thrilling frame to bear
2. 2And eagle-spirit of a Child of Song--
3. 3Long years of outrage--calumny--and wrong;
4. 4Imputed madness, prisoned solitude,
5. 5And the Mind's canker in its savage mood,
6. 6When the impatient thirst of light and air
7. 7Parches the heart; and the abhorred grate,
8. 8Marring the sunbeams with its hideous shade,
9. 9Works through the throbbing eyeball to the brain,
10. 10With a hot sense of heaviness and pain;
11. 11And bare, at once, Captivity displayed
12. 12Stands scoffing through the never-opened gate,
13. 13Which nothing through its bars admits, save day,
14. 14And tasteless food, which I have eat alone
15. 15Till its unsocial bitterness is gone;
16. 16And I can banquet like a beast of prey,
17. 17Sullen and lonely, couching in the cave
18. 18Which is my lair, and--it may be--my grave.
19. 19All this hath somewhat worn me, and may wear,
20. 20But must be borne. I stoop not to despair;
21. 21For I have battled with mine agony,
22. 22And made me wings wherewith to overfly
23. 23The narrow circus of my dungeon wall,
24. 24And freed the Holy Sepulchre from thrall;
25. 25And revelled among men and things divine,
26. 26And poured my spirit over Palestine,
27. 27In honour of the sacred war for Him,
28. 28The God who was on earth and is in Heaven,
29. 29For He has strengthened me in heart and limb.
30. 30That through this sufferance I might be forgiven,
31. 31I have employed my penance to record
32. 32How Salem's shrine was won, and how adored.

1. 33But this is o'er--my pleasant task is done:--
2. 34My long-sustaining Friend of many years!
3. 35If I do blot thy final page with tears,
4. 36Know, that my sorrows have wrung from me none.
5. 37But Thou, my young creation! my Soul's child!
6. 38Which ever playing round me came and smiled,
7. 39And wooed me from myself with thy sweet sight,
8. 40Thou too art gone--and so is my delight:
9. 41And therefore do I weep and inly bleed
10. 42With this last bruise upon a broken reed.
11. 43Thou too art ended--what is left me now?
12. 44For I have anguish yet to bear--and how?
13. 45I know not that--but in the innate force
14. 46Of my own spirit shall be found resource.
15. 47I have not sunk, for I had no remorse,
16. 48Nor cause for such: they called me mad--and why?
17. 49Oh Leonora! wilt not thou reply?
18. 50I was indeed delirious in my heart
19. 51To lift my love so lofty as thou art;
20. 52But still my frenzy was not of the mind:
21. 53I knew my fault, and feel my punishment
22. 54Not less because I suffer it unbent.
23. 55That thou wert beautiful, and I not blind,
24. 56Hath been the sin which shuts me from mankind;
25. 57But let them go, or torture as they will,
26. 58My heart can multiply thine image still;
27. 59Successful Love may sate itself away;
28. 60The wretched are the faithful; 't is their fate
29. 61To have all feeling, save the one, decay,
30. 62And every passion into one dilate,
31. 63As rapid rivers into Ocean pour;
32. 64But ours is fathomless, and hath no shore.

1. 65Above me, hark! the long and maniac cry
2. 66Of minds and bodies in captivity.
3. 67And hark! the lash and the increasing howl,
4. 68And the half-inarticulate blasphemy!
5. 69There be some here with worse than frenzy foul,
6. 70Some who do still goad on the o'er-laboured mind,
7. 71And dim the little light that's left behind
8. 72With needless torture, as their tyrant Will
9. 73Is wound up to the lust of doing ill:
10. 74With these and with their victims am I classed,
11. 75'Mid sounds and sights like these long years have passed;
12. 76'Mid sights and sounds like these my life may close:
13. 77So let it be--for then I shall repose.

1. 78I have been patient, let me be so yet;
2. 79I had forgotten half I would forget,
3. 80But it revives--Oh! would it were my lot
4. 81To be forgetful as I am forgot!--
5. 82Feel I not wroth with those who bade me dwell
6. 83In this vast Lazar-house of many woes?
7. 84Where laughter is not mirth, nor thought the mind,
8. 85Nor words a language, nor ev'n men mankind;
9. 86Where cries reply to curses, shrieks to blows,
10. 87And each is tortured in his separate hell--
11. 88For we are crowded in our solitudes--
12. 89Many, but each divided by the wall,
13. 90Which echoes Madness in her babbling moods;
14. 91While all can hear, none heed his neighbour's call--
15. 92None! save that One, the veriest wretch of all,
16. 93Who was not made to be the mate of these,
17. 94Nor bound between Distraction and Disease.
18. 95Feel I not wroth with those who placed me here?
19. 96Who have debased me in the minds of men,
20. 97Debarring me the usage of my own,
21. 98Blighting my life in best of its career,
22. 99Branding my thoughts as things to shun and fear?
23. 100Would I not pay them back these pangs again,
24. 101And teach them inward Sorrow's stifled groan?
25. 102The struggle to be calm, and cold distress,
26. 103Which undermines our Stoical success?
27. 104No!--still too proud to be vindictive--I
28. 105Have pardoned Princes' insults, and would die.
29. 106Yes, Sister of my Sovereign! for thy sake
30. 107I weed all bitterness from out my breast,
31. 108It hath no business where thou art a guest:
32. 109Thy brother hates--but I can not detest;
33. 110Thou pitiest not--but I can not forsake.

1. 111Look on a love which knows not to despair,
2. 112But all unquenched is still my better part,
3. 113Dwelling deep in my shut and silent heart,
4. 114As dwells the gathered lightning in its cloud,
5. 115Encompassed with its dark and rolling shroud,
6. 116Till struck,--forth flies the all-ethereal dart!
7. 117And thus at the collision of thy name
8. 118The vivid thought still flashes through my frame,
9. 119And for a moment all things as they were
10. 120Flit by me;--they are gone--I am the same.
11. 121And yet my love without ambition grew;
12. 122I knew thy state--my station--and I knew
13. 123A Princess was no love-mate for a bard;
14. 124I told it not--I breathed it not --it was
15. 125Sufficient to itself, its own reward;
16. 126And if my eyes revealed it, they, alas!
17. 127Were punished by the silentness of thine,
18. 128And yet I did not venture to repine.
19. 129Thou wert to me a crystal-girded shrine,
20. 130Worshipped at holy distance, and around
21. 131Hallowed and meekly kissed the saintly ground;
22. 132Not for thou wert a Princess, but that Love
23. 133Had robed thee with a glory, and arrayed
24. 134Thy lineaments in beauty that dismayed--
25. 135Oh! not dismayed--but awed, like One above!
26. 136And in that sweet severity there was
27. 137A something which all softness did surpass--
28. 138I know not how--thy Genius mastered mine--
29. 139My Star stood still before thee:--if it were
30. 140Presumptuous thus to love without design,
31. 141That sad fatality hath cost me dear;
32. 142But thou art dearest still, and I should be
33. 143Fit for this cell, which wrongs me--but for thee.
34. 144The very love which locked me to my chain
35. 145Hath lightened half its weight; and for the rest,
36. 146Though heavy, lent me vigour to sustain,
37. 147And look to thee with undivided breast,
38. 148And foil the ingenuity of Pain.

1. 149It is no marvel--from my very birth
2. 150My soul was drunk with Love,--which did pervade
3. 151And mingle with whate'er I saw on earth:
4. 152Of objects all inanimate I made
5. 153Idols, and out of wild and lonely flowers,
6. 154And rocks, whereby they grew, a Paradise,
7. 155Where I did lay me down within the shade
8. 156Of waving trees, and dreamed uncounted hours,
9. 157Though I was chid for wandering; and the Wise
10. 158Shook their white agéd heads o'er me, and said
11. 159Of such materials wretched men were made,
12. 160And such a truant boy would end in woe,
13. 161And that the only lesson was a blow; --
14. 162And then they smote me, and I did not weep,
15. 163But cursed them in my heart, and to my haunt
16. 164Returned and wept alone, and dreamed again
17. 165The visions which arise without a sleep.
18. 166And with my years my soul began to pant
19. 167With feelings of strange tumult and soft pain;
20. 168And the whole heart exhaled into One Want,
21. 169But undefined and wandering, till the day
22. 170I found the thing I sought--and that was thee;
23. 171And then I lost my being, all to be
24. 172Absorbed in thine;--the world was past away;--
25. 173Thou didst annihilate the earth to me!

1. 174I loved all Solitude--but little thought
2. 175To spend I know not what of life, remote
3. 176From all communion with existence, save
4. 177The maniac and his tyrant;--had I been
5. 178Their fellow, many years ere this had seen
6. 179My mind like theirs corrupted to its grave.
7. 180But who hath seen me writhe, or heard me rave?
8. 181Perchance in such a cell we suffer more
9. 182Than the wrecked sailor on his desert shore;
10. 183The world is all before him--mine is here,
11. 184Scarce twice the space they must accord my bier.
12. 185What though he perish, he may lift his eye,
13. 186And with a dying glance upbraid the sky;
14. 187I will not raise my own in such reproof,
15. 188Although 'tis clouded by my dungeon roof.

1. 189Yet do I feel at times my mind decline,
2. 190But with a sense of its decay: I see
3. 191Unwonted lights along my prison shine,
4. 192And a strange Demon, who is vexing me
5. 193With pilfering pranks and petty pains, below
6. 194The feeling of the healthful and the free;
7. 195But much to One, who long hath suffered so,
8. 196Sickness of heart, and narrowness of place,
9. 197And all that may be borne, or can debase.
10. 198I thought mine enemies had been but Man,
11. 199But Spirits may be leagued with them--all Earth
12. 200Abandons--Heaven forgets me;--in the dearth
13. 201Of such defence the Powers of Evil can--
14. 202It may be--tempt me further,--and prevail
15. 203Against the outworn creature they assail.
16. 204Why in this furnace is my spirit proved,
17. 205Like steel in tempering fire? because I loved?
18. 206Because I loved what not to love, and see,
19. 207Was more or less than mortal, and than me.

1. 208I once was quick in feeling--that is o'er;--
2. 209My scars are callous, or I should have dashed
3. 210My brain against these bars, as the sun flashed
4. 211In mockery through them;--- If I bear and bore
5. 212The much I have recounted, and the more
6. 213Which hath no words,--'t is that I would not die
7. 214And sanction with self-slaughter the dull lie
8. 215Which snared me here, and with the brand of shame
9. 216Stamp Madness deep into my memory,
10. 217And woo Compassion to a blighted name,
11. 218Sealing the sentence which my foes proclaim.
12. 219No--it shall be immortal!--and I make
13. 220A future temple of my present cell,
14. 221Which nations yet shall visit for my sake.
15. 222While thou, Ferrara! when no longer dwell
16. 223The ducal chiefs within thee, shall fall down,
17. 224And crumbling piecemeal view thy hearthless halls,
18. 225A Poet's wreath shall be thine only crown,--
19. 226A Poet's dungeon thy most far renown,
20. 227While strangers wonder o'er thy unpeopled walls!
21. 228And thou, Leonora!--thou--who wert ashamed
22. 229That such as I could love--who blushed to hear
23. 230To less than monarchs that thou couldst be dear,
24. 231Go! tell thy brother, that my heart, untamed
25. 232By grief--years--weariness--and it may be
26. 233A taint of that he would impute to me--
27. 234From long infection of a den like this,
28. 235Where the mind rots congenial with the abyss,--
29. 236Adores thee still;--and add--that when the towers
30. 237And battlements which guard his joyous hours
31. 238Of banquet, dance, and revel, are forgot,
32. 239Or left untended in a dull repose,
33. 240This--this--shall be a consecrated spot!
34. 241But Thou--when all that Birth and Beauty throws
35. 242Of magic round thee is extinct--shalt have
36. 243One half the laurel which o'ershades my grave.
37. 244No power in death can tear our names apart,
38. 245As none in life could rend thee from my heart.
39. 246Yes, Leonora! it shall be our fate
40. 247To be entwined for ever--but too late!