Which bound me to my failing race,
Was broken in this fatal place.

One on the earth, and one beneath 1—

My brothers-both had ceased to breathe:
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

220

I had no thought, no feeling-none-
Among the stones I stood a stone,
And was, scarce conscious what I wist,
As shrubless crags within the mist;
For all was blank, and bleak, and gray;
It was not night, it was not day;

It was not even the dungeon light,

So hateful to my heavy sight,

But vacancy absorbing space,3

And fixedness without a place;

2

235

240

1 Study carefully lines 216-219. Are they clear? What is "the eternal brink"?

2 Can you conceive this image?

3 Try to imagine "vacancy absorbing space."

There were no stars, no earth, no time,

No check, no change, no good, no crime,

But silence, and a stirless breath

245

That bird was perched,1 as fond and tame,

1 How could the bird be perched through a crevice?

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,

But knowing well captivity,

Sweet bird! I could not wish for thine!

Or if it were, in wingèd 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,

275

280

285

1 Does the reader know what had made them so?

I saw them, and they were the same,2

They were not changed like me in frame;

1 This is much in the spirit of Wordsworth.

2 Many a tourist climbs to the loopholes of the dungeon, as the prisoner

did and as Byron did, to view the scene here described. The poet tells us in prose: "The Château de Chillon is situated between Clarens and Villeneuve. On its left are the entrances of the Rhone, and opposite are the heights of Meillerie and the range of Alps above Bôveret and Saint-Gingo. Near it, on a hill, behind, is a torrent. . . . "Not far from Chillon is a very small island, the only one I could perceive in my voyage round and over the lake. It contains a few trees (I think not above three), and from its singleness and diinutive size has a peculiar effect upon the view."