Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Switzerland and Austria: Vol. XVI. 1876–79.
The Prisoner of Chillon
By Lord Byron (1788–1824)*****
In Chillon’s dungeons deep and old:
There are seven columns, massy and gray,
Dim with a dull imprisoned ray,
A sunbeam which hath lost its way,
And through the crevice and the cleft
Of the thick wall is fallen and left;
Creeping o’er the floor so damp,
Like a marsh’s meteor lamp:
And in each pillar there is a ring,
And in each ring there is a chain;
That iron is a cankering thing,
For in these limbs its teeth remain,
With marks that will not wear away,
Till I have done with this new day,
Which now is painful to these eyes,
Which have not seen the sun so rise
For years,—I cannot count them o’er,
I lost their long and heavy score,
When my last brother drooped and died,
And I lay living by his side.
Lake Leman lies by Chillon’s walls;
A thousand feet in depth below
Its massy waters meet and flow;
Thus much the fathom-line was sent
From Chillon’s snow-white battlement,
Which round about the wave enthralls:
A double dungeon wall and wave
Have made, and like a living grave.
Below the surface of the lake
The dark vault lies wherein we lay,
We heard it ripple night and day,
Sounding o’er our heads it knocked;
And I have felt the winter’s spray
Wash through the bars when winds were high
And wanton in the happy sky;
And then the very rock hath rocked,
And I have felt it shake unshocked,
Because I could have smiled to see
The death that would have set me free.