For all was blank, and bleak, and grey-
It was not night, it was not day,
It was not e'en the dungeon light,
So hateful to my heavy sight,
But vacancy absorbing space,
And fixedness-without a place;

There were no stars-no earth-no time
No check-no change-no good-no crime,
But silence, and a stirless breath,

Which neither was of life nor death;
A sea of stagnant idleness,

Blind, boundless, mute, and motionless.

VII.

A light broke in upon my brain,—
It was the carol of a bird;

It ceased, and then it came again,

The sweetest song ear ever heard.
And mine was thankful till my eyes
Ran over with the glad surprise,
And they that moment could not see
I was the mate of misery;
But then by dull degrees came back
My senses to their wonted track:
I saw the dungeon walls and floor
Close slowly round me as before;
I saw the glimmer of the sun
Creeping, as it before had done;

But through the crevice, where it came,
That bird was perched as fond and tame,
And tamer than upon the tree;

A lovely bird with azure wings,
A song that said a thousand things,
And seemed to say them all for me;
I never saw its like before,

I ne'er shall see its likeness more:
It seemed like me to want a mate,
But was not half so desolate,
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 winged guise,
A visitant from Paradise,

For-Heaven forgive that thought! the while
Which made me both to weep and smile;
I sometimes deem'd that it might be
My brother's soul come down to me.
But then at last away it flew,

And then 'twas mortal-well I knew,
For he would never thus have flown,
And left me twice as 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.

VIII.

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.
But so it was my broken chain

With link unfasten'd did remain,
And it was liberty to stride
Along my cell from side to side,
And up and down, and then atlıwart,
And tread it over every part,
And round the pillars one by one,
Returning where my walk begun;
Avoiding only, as I trod,

My brother's grave without a sod;
For if I thought with heedless tread
My steps profaned his lowly bed,
My breath came gaspingly and thick,
And my crush'd heart felt blind and sick.

IX.

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 ask'd not why, and reck'd not where, It was at length the same to me Fetter'd or fetterless to be,

I learnt to love despair.

And thus, when they appear'd 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 watch'd 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 learn'd to dwell;
My very chains and I grew friends,
So much a long communion tends
To make us what we are: even I
Regain'd my freedom with a sigh.

BYRON.

ESCAPE OF CHARLES II. AFTER THE BATTLE OF WORCESTER.

Though the king could not get a body of horse to fight, he could have too many to fly with him; and he had not been many hours from Worcester, when he found about him near, if not above, four thousand of his horse. There was David Lesley with all his own equipage, as if he had not fled upon the sudden; so that good order, and regularity, and obedience, might yet have made a retreat even into Scotland itself. But there was paleness in every man's looks, and jealousy and confusion in their faces; and scarce anything could worse befal the king than a return into Scotland, which yet he could not reasonably promise to himself in that company. But when the night covered them, he found means to withdraw himself with one or two of his own servants, whom he

likewise discharged when it begun to be light; and after he had made them cut off his hair, he betook himself alone into an adjacent wood, and relied only upon Him for his preservation who alone could, and did miraculously deliver him.

When it was morning, and the troops which had marched all night, and who knew that when it begun to be dark, the king was with them, found now that he was not there, they cared less for each other's company; and most of them who were English separated themselves, and went into other roads; and wherever twenty horse appeared of the country, which was now awake, and upon their guard to stop and arrest the runaways, the whole body of the Scottish horse would fly and run several ways; and twenty of them would give themselves prisoners to two country fellows; however David Lesley reached Yorkshire with above fifteen hundred horse in a body. But the jealousies increased every day; and those of his own country who were so unsatisfied with his own conduct and behaviour, that they did, that is, many of them, believe that he was corrupted by Cromwell; and the rest, who did not think so, believed him not to understand his profession, in which he had been bred from his cradle. When he was in his flight, considering one morning with the principal persons which way they should take, some proposed this and others that way, Sir William Armorer asked him, which way he thought best? which, when he had named, the other said, 'he would then go to the other; for, he swore, he had betrayed the king and the army all the time:' and so left him.

When the darkness of the night was over, after the king had cast himself into that wood, he discerned another man, who had gotten upon an oak in the same