I asked not why, and recked not where,
It was at length the same to me,
Fettered or fetterless to be,

I learned to love despair.

375 And thus when they appeared 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
380 To tear me from a second home:

With spiders I had friendship made,
And watched them in their sullen trade,
Had seen the mice by moonlight play,
And why should I feel less than they?
385 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 learned to dwell
My very chains and I grew friends,
390 So much a long communion tends
To make us what we are:

even I

Regained my freedom with a sigh.

MAZEPPA.

INTRODUCTORY NOTE.

This poem was written at Venice and Ravenna in the autumn of 1818. Byron drew his story from an incident related by Voltaire in his History of Charles XII., which is as follows: :

The Ukraine (the country of the Cossacks) has always aspired to liberty; but being surrounded by Muscovy, the dominions of the Grand Seignior, and Poland, it has been obliged to choose a protector, and, consequently, a master, in one of these three States. The Ukrainians at first put themselves under the

protection of the Poles, who treated them with great severity. They afterwards submitted to the Russians, who governed them with despotic sway. They had originally the privilege of electing a prince under the name of general; but they were soon deprived of that right, and their general was nominated by the court of Moscow.

The person who then filled that station was a Polish gentleman, named Mazeppa, and born in the palatinate of Podolia. He had been brought up as a page to John Casimir, and had received some tincture of learning in his court. An intrigue which he had had in his youth with the lady of a Polish gentleman, having been discovered, the husband caused him to be bound stark naked upon a wild horse, and let him go in that condition. The horse, which had been brought out of Ukraine, returned to its own country, and carried Mazeppa along with it, half-dead with hunger and fatigue. Some of the country people gave him assistance; and he lived among them for a long time, and signalized himself in several excursions against the Tartars. The superiority of his knowledge gained him great respect among the Cossacks; and his reputation daily increasing, the czar found it necessary to make him prince of the Ukraine.

I.

"T WAS after dread Pultowa's day,
When fortune left the royal Swede,
Around a slaughter'd army lay,

No more to combat and to bleed.
5 The power and glory of the war,
Faithless as their vain votaries, men,
Had pass'd to the triumphant Czar,
And Moscow's walls were safe again,
Until a day more dark and drear,
10 And a more memorable year,
Should give to slaughter and to shame
A mightier host and haughtier name;
A greater wreck, a deeper fall,

A shock to one

II.

15 Such was the hazard of the die ;
The wounded Charles was taught to fly
By day and night through field and flood,
Stain'd with his own and subjects' blood;
For thousands fell that flight to aid:
20 And not a voice was heard t' upbraid
Ambition in his humbled hour,

When truth had naught to dread from power.
His horse was slain, and Gieta gave

His own

and died the Russians' slave. 25 This too sinks after many a league Of well-sustain'd, but vain fatigue; And in the depth of forests darkling, The watch-fires in the distance sparkling – The beacons of surrounding foes30 A king must lay his limbs at length. Are these the laurels and repose

For which the nations strain their strength? They laid him by a savage tree,

In outworn nature's agony;

35 His wounds were stiff- his limbs were stark-
The heavy hour was chill and dark;
The fever in his blood forbade

A transient slumber's fitful aid:
And thus it was; but yet through all,
40 Kinglike the monarch bore his fall,
And made, in this extreme of ill,
His pangs the vassals of his will:
All silent and subdued were they,
As once the nations round him lay.

III.

45 A band of chiefs!-alas! how few, Since but the fleeting of a day

50

Had thinn'd it; but this wreck was true
And chivalrous: upon the clay

Each sate him down, all sad and mute,
Beside his monarch and his steed,
For danger levels man and brute,

And all are fellows in their need. Among the rest, Mazeppa made His pillow in an old oak's shade 55 Himself as rough, and scarce less old, The Ukraine's hetman, calm and bold. But first, outspent with his long course, The Cossack prince rubb'd down his horse, And made for him a leafy bed,

60

And smooth'd his fetlocks and his mane, And slack'd his girth, and stripp'd his rein, And joy'd to see how well he fed ;

For until now he had the dread
His wearied courser might refuse

65 To browse beneath the midnight dews:
But he was hardy as his lord,

And little cared for bed and board;
But spirited and docile too;

Whate'er was to be done, would do.
70 Shaggy and swift, and strong of limb,
All Tartar-like he carried him ;
Obey'd his voice, and came to call,
And knew him in the midst of all:

Though thousands were around, — and Night, 75 Without a star, pursued her flight,

56. Hetman, a Cossack chief.

That steed from sunset until dawn
His chief would follow like a fawn.

IV.

This done, Mazeppa spread his cloak, And laid his lance beneath his oak, 80 Felt if his arms in order good

The long day's march had well withstood If still the powder fill'd the pan,

And flints unloosen'd kept their lockHis sabre's hilt and scabbard felt, 85 And whether they had chafed his belt And next the venerable man,

From out his haversack and can,

Prepared and spread his slender stock; And to the monarch and his men

90 The whole or portion offer'd then With far less of inquietude

Than courtiers at a banquet would. And Charles of this his slender share With smiles partook a moment there, 95 To force of cheer a greater show,

And seem above both wounds and woe; And then he said "Of all our band,

Though firm of heart and strong of hand, In skirmish, march, or forage, none 100 Can less have said or more have done Than thee, Mazeppa! On the earth So fit a pain had never birth, Since Alexander's days till now, As thy Bucephalus and thou:

105 All Scythia's fame to thine should yield For pricking on o'er flood and field." Mazeppa answer'd" Ill betide