Long years!—It tries the thrilling frame to bear

And eagle-spirit of a Child of Song—

Long years of outrage—calumny—and wrong;

Imputed madness, prisoned solitude,[176]

And the Mind's canker in its savage mood,

When the impatient thirst of light and air

Parches the heart; and the abhorred grate,

Marring the sunbeams with its hideous shade,

Works through the throbbing eyeball to the brain,

With a hot sense of heaviness and pain;10

And bare, at once, Captivity displayed

Stands scoffing through the never-opened gate,

Which nothing through its bars admits, save day,

And tasteless food, which I have eat alone

Till its unsocial bitterness is gone;

And I can banquet like a beast of prey,

Sullen and lonely, couching in the cave

Which is my lair, and—it may be—my grave.

All this hath somewhat worn me, and may wear,

But must be borne. I stoop not to despair;20

For I have battled with mine agony,

And made me wings wherewith to overfly

The narrow circus of my dungeon wall,

And freed the Holy Sepulchre from thrall;

And revelled among men and things divine,

And poured my spirit over Palestine,[177]

In honour of the sacred war for Him,

The God who was on earth and is in Heaven,

For He has strengthened me in heart and limb.

That through this sufferance I might be forgiven,30

I have employed my penance to record

How Salem's shrine was won, and how adored.