But knowing well captivity,

Sweet bird! I could not wish for thine! Or if it were, in wingéd 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;
But then at last away it flew,

And then 't was mortal, well I knew,
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,

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

When skies are blue, and earth is gay.

XI.

A kind of change came in my fate,
My keepers grew compassionate;
I know not what had made them so,
They were inured to sights of woe,

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,
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 fell blind and sick.

XII.

I made a footing in the wall,

It was not therefrom to escape,

For I had buried one and all

Who loved me in a human shape;

And the whole earth would henceforth be

A wider prison unto me:

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
The quiet of a loving eye.

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,
And the blue Rhone in fullest flow;
I heard the torrents leap and gush
O'er channelled rock and broken bush;
I saw the white-walled distant town,
And whiter sails go skimming down;
And then there was a little isle,
Which in my very face did smile,
The only one in view;

A small green isle, it seemed no more,
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.

The fish swam by the castle wall,

And they seemed joyous each and all;
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
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;

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!
And half I felt as they were come
To tear me from a second home:
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,
My very chains and I grew friends,
So much a long communion tends
To make us what we are:-even I
Regained my freedom with a sigh.

SOLDIER of the Legion lay dying in Algiers, There was lack of woman's nursing, there was dearth of woman's tears;

But a comrade stood beside him, while his life-blood ebbed away,

And bent, with pitying glances, to hear what he might

say:

The dying soldier faltered, as he took that comrade's

hand,

And he said, "I never more shall see my own, my native

land:

Take a message, and a token to some distant friends of

mine;

For I was born at Bingen, at Bingen on the Rhine.

"Tell my brothers and companions, when they meet and crowd around,

To hear my mournful story, in the pleasant vineyard ground,