Poems In The Light

The Prisoner of Chillon Byron

The Prisoner of Chillon

By Lord Byron (George Gordon)

   My hair is grey, but not with years,

          Nor grew it white

          In a single night, 

As men's have grown from sudden fears:

My limbs are bow'd, though not with toil,

       But rusted with a vile repose,

For they have been a dungeon's spoil,

       And mine has been the fate of those

To whom the goodly earth and air

Are bann'd, and barr'd—forbidden fare;

But this was for my father's faith

I suffer'd chains and courted death;

That father perish'd at the stake

For tenets he would not forsake;

And for the same his lineal race

In darkness found a dwelling place;

We were seven—who now are one,

       Six in youth, and one in age,

Finish'd as they had begun,

       Proud of Persecution's rage;

One in fire, and two in field,

Their belief with blood have seal'd,

Dying as their father died,

For the God their foes denied;—

Three were in a dungeon cast,

Of whom this wreck is left the last.

(This is not the complete poem, this is the bit I can recite from memory. Sad init!)