10. 'But chiefly women, whom my voice did waken _3550 From their cold, careless, willing slavery, Sought me: one truth their dreary prison has shaken,-- They looked around, and lo! they became free! Their many tyrants sitting desolately In slave-deserted halls, could none restrain; _3555 For wrath's red fire had withered in the eye, Whose lightning once was death,--nor fear, nor gain Could tempt one captive now to lock another's chain. 11. 'Those who were sent to bind me, wept, and felt Their minds outsoar the bonds which clasped them round, _3560 Even as a waxen shape may waste and melt In the white furnace; and a visioned swound, A pause of hope and awe the City bound, Which, like the silence of a tempest's birth, When in its awful shadow it has wound _3565 The sun, the wind, the ocean, and the earth, Hung terrible, ere yet the lightnings have leaped forth. 12. 'Like clouds inwoven in the silent sky, By winds from distant regions meeting there, In the high name of truth and liberty, _3570 Around the City millions gathered were, By hopes which sprang from many a hidden lair,-- Words which the lore of truth in hues of flame Arrayed, thine own wild songs which in the air Like homeless odours floated, and the name _3575 Of thee, and many a tongue which thou hadst dipped in flame. 13. 'The Tyrant knew his power was gone, but Fear, The nurse of Vengeance, bade him wait the event-- That perfidy and custom, gold and prayer, And whatsoe'er, when force is impotent, _3580 To fraud the sceptre of the world has lent, Might, as he judged, confirm his failing sway. Therefore throughout the streets, the Priests he sent To curse the rebels.--To their gods did they For Earthquake, Plague, and Want, kneel in the public way. _3585 14. 'And grave and hoary men were bribed to tell From seats where law is made the slave of wrong, How glorious Athens in her splendour fell, Because her sons were free,--and that among Mankind, the many to the few belong, _3590 By Heaven, and Nature, and Necessity. They said, that age was truth, and that the young Marred with wild hopes the peace of slavery, With which old times and men had quelled the vain and free. 15. 'And with the falsehood of their poisonous lips _3595 They breathed on the enduring memory Of sages and of bards a brief eclipse; There was one teacher, who necessity Had armed with strength and wrong against mankind, His slave and his avenger aye to be; _3600 That we were weak and sinful, frail and blind, And that the will of one was peace, and we Should seek for nought on earth but toil and misery--