Thy Godlike crime was to be kind,[70]

To render with thy precepts less

The sum of human wretchedness,

And strengthen Man with his own mind;

But baffled as thou wert from high,

Still in thy patient energy,40

In the endurance, and repulse

Of thine impenetrable Spirit,

Which Earth and Heaven could not convulse,

A mighty lesson we inherit:

Thou art a symbol and a sign

To Mortals of their fate and force;

Like thee, Man is in part divine,[71]

A troubled stream from a pure source;

And Man in portions can foresee

His own funereal destiny;50

His wretchedness, and his resistance,

And his sad unallied existence:

To which his Spirit may oppose

Itself—an equal to all woes—[m] [72]

And a firm will, and a deep sense,

Which even in torture can descry

Its own concentered recompense,

Triumphant where it dares defy,

And making Death a Victory.

Diodati, July, 1816.

[First published, Prisoner of Chillon, etc., 1816.]