10. These words had fallen on my unheeding ear, Whilst I had watched the motions of the crew _1190 With seeming-careless glance; not many were Around her, for their comrades just withdrew To guard some other victim--so I drew My knife, and with one impulse, suddenly All unaware three of their number slew, _1195 And grasped a fourth by the throat, and with loud cry My countrymen invoked to death or liberty! 11. What followed then, I know not--for a stroke On my raised arm and naked head, came down, Filling my eyes with blood.--When I awoke, _1200 I felt that they had bound me in my swoon, And up a rock which overhangs the town, By the steep path were bearing me; below, The plain was filled with slaughter,--overthrown The vineyards and the harvests, and the glow _1205 Of blazing roofs shone far o'er the white Ocean's flow. 12. Upon that rock a mighty column stood, Whose capital seemed sculptured in the sky, Which to the wanderers o'er the solitude Of distant seas, from ages long gone by, _1210 Had made a landmark; o'er its height to fly Scarcely the cloud, the vulture, or the blast, Has power--and when the shades of evening lie On Earth and Ocean, its carved summits cast The sunken daylight far through the aerial waste. _1215 13. They bore me to a cavern in the hill Beneath that column, and unbound me there; And one did strip me stark; and one did fill A vessel from the putrid pool; one bare A lighted torch, and four with friendless care _1220 Guided my steps the cavern-paths along, Then up a steep and dark and narrow stair We wound, until the torch's fiery tongue Amid the gushing day beamless and pallid hung. 14. They raised me to the platform of the pile, _1225 That column's dizzy height:--the grate of brass Through which they thrust me, open stood the while, As to its ponderous and suspended mass, With chains which eat into the flesh, alas! With brazen links, my naked limbs they bound: _1230 The grate, as they departed to repass, With horrid clangour fell, and the far sound Of their retiring steps in the dense gloom was drowned. 15. The noon was calm and bright:--around that column The overhanging sky and circling sea _1235 Spread forth in silentness profound and solemn The darkness of brief frenzy cast on me, So that I knew not my own misery: The islands and the mountains in the day Like clouds reposed afar; and I could see _1240 The town among the woods below that lay, And the dark rocks which bound the bright and glassy bay.