The World's Greatest Books [Volumes 1-15, 17-20]

The world with cleansing fire; it must, it will—> It may not be restrained!—and who shall stand Amid the rocking earthquake steadfast still, But Laon ? on high Freedom's desert land A tower whose marble walls the leagued storms shall stand!

8 One summer night, in commune with the hope Thus deeply fed, amid some ruins gray

I watched, beneath the dark sky's starry cope; And ever from that hour upon me lay The burden of this hope, and night or day, 216

In vision or in dream, clove to my breast: Among mankind, or when gone far away To the lone shores and mountains, 'twas a guest Which followed where I fled, and watched when I did rest.

9 An orphan with my parents lived, whose eyes Were lodestars of delight, which drew me home When I might wander forth; nor did I prize Aught human thing beneath Heaven's mighty dome Beyond this child: so when sad hours were come, And baffled hope like ice still clung to me,

Since kin were cold, and friends had now become Heartless and false, I turned from all, to be, Cythna, the only source of tears and smiles to thee.

10 What wert thou then? A child most infantine, Yet wandering far beyond that innocent age In all but its sweet looks and mien divine:

Even then, methought, with the world's tyrant rage A patient warfare thy young heart did wage, When those soft eyes of scarcely conscious thought Some tale, or thine own fancies, would engage To overflow with tears, or converse fraught With passion, o'er their depths its fleeting light had wrought.

11 She moved upon this earth a shape of brightness, A power, that from its objects scarcely drew One impulse of her being—in her lightness Most like some radiant cloud of morning dew, Which wander through the waste air's pathless blue, To nourish some far desert: she did seem

Beside me, gathering beauty as she grew, Like the bright shade of some immortal dream Which walks, when tempest sleeps, the wave of life's dark stream.

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Canto II

But Laon and Cythna had only just agreed to preach the gospel of liberty and to rouse the people, the one in countries adjacent, the other in the Golden City itself, when the tyrant, in a murderous frenzy which led him to butcher the citizens and to burn their homes, carried off Cythna to make her a member of his harem, and imprisoned Laon without food on the platform of a mighty column which overlooked the sea. On the fourth day of his imprisonment, when Laon was going mad, he was released by an old hermit, who, conveying him to his abode on the margin of a lake, nursed him back to life. Laon was then told how the old man's powerful eloquence had melted the hearts of the keepers of the prison, how in the Golden City a beautiful maiden had arisen whose speeches had roused the people to assert their liberty, and how the patriots were now keeping night and day a strict blockade around the desperate bands of mercenaries who still maintained the cause and palace of the tyrant.

Stirred by this news, and urged on by the hermit, who hailed the young enthusiast as the inspired prophet of liberty, Laon travelled back to the Golden City, where, despite the fact that the tyrant's guards had just slain ten thousand of the patriots in their sleep, these same murderers were quickly persuaded by his appeals to join the popular party and to desert their master. Great rejoicings then took place in celebration of this auspicious event; Laon and Cythna—for she it was who was the beautiful and inspired maiden—were publicly acclaimed as the saviours of the nation, and a great altar of the Federation was erected to commemorate their victory. But the tyrant, whose life had been spared, was not yet at the end of his resources. In the midst of these demonstrations of joy and happiness he called in the aid of foreign powers, and taking the patriots by surprise, crushed them and put them to the sword. Laon fought desperately till the end, and was just on the point of receiving his death-blow when Cythna, mounted on a gigantic horse, swept down upon his foes, rescued him, and bore him away to a ruined tower which overhung the ocean. There they celebrated their nuptial rites, and Cythna related how after passing some time in the tyrant's harem she was confined in a cage, where, in the intervals of madness, she bore a daughter who was taken from her, and how, after a long time had passed, she was delivered from her captivity by an earthquake, which cracked the cage and enabled her to sail back to the Golden City and there to accomplish the work of liberation. She was not despondent over the ruin of her hopes: on the contrary, she was confident that they had sown the seeds of ultimate victory for the cause of Liberty.

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1 " 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 superstition's word, And bind all human hearts in its repose abhorred.

2 " 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.