Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 4.djvu/180

146 With needless torture, as their tyrant Will

Is wound up to the lust of doing ill:

With these and with their victims am I classed,

'Mid sounds and sights like these long years have passed;

'Mid sights and sounds like these my life may close:

So let it be—for then I shall repose.

IV.

I have been patient, let me be so yet;

I had forgotten half I would forget,

But it revives—Oh! would it were my lot

To be forgetful as I am forgot!—

Feel I not wroth with those who bade me dwell

In this vast Lazar-house of many woes?

Where laughter is not mirth, nor thought the mind,

Nor words a language, nor ev'n men mankind;

Where cries reply to curses, shrieks to blows.

And each is tortured in his separate hell—

For we are crowded in our solitudes—

Many, but each divided by the wall,

Which echoes Madness in her babbling moods;

While all can hear, none heed his neighbour's call—

None! save that One, the veriest wretch of all,

Who was not made to be the mate of these,

Nor bound between Distraction and Disease.

Feel I not wroth with those who placed me here?

Who have debased me in the minds of men,