18. There must have burned within Marenghi's breast _100 That fire, more warm and bright than life and hope, (Which to the martyr makes his dungeon... More joyous than free heaven's majestic cope To his oppressor), warring with decay,-- Or he could ne'er have lived years, day by day. _105 19. Nor was his state so lone as you might think. He had tamed every newt and snake and toad, And every seagull which sailed down to drink Those freshes ere the death-mist went abroad. And each one, with peculiar talk and play, _110 Wiled, not untaught, his silent time away. 20. And the marsh-meteors, like tame beasts, at night Came licking with blue tongues his veined feet; And he would watch them, as, like spirits bright, In many entangled figures quaint and sweet _115 To some enchanted music they would dance-- Until they vanished at the first moon-glance. 21. He mocked the stars by grouping on each weed The summer dew-globes in the golden dawn; And, ere the hoar-frost languished, he could read _120 Its pictured path, as on bare spots of lawn Its delicate brief touch in silver weaves The likeness of the wood's remembered leaves. 22. And many a fresh Spring morn would he awaken-- While yet the unrisen sun made glow, like iron _125 Quivering in crimson fire, the peaks unshaken Of mountains and blue isles which did environ With air-clad crags that plain of land and sea,-- And feel ... liberty. 23. And in the moonless nights when the dun ocean _130 Heaved underneath wide heaven, star-impearled, Starting from dreams... Communed with the immeasurable world; And felt his life beyond his limbs dilated, Till his mind grew like that it contemplated. _135 24. His food was the wild fig and strawberry; The milky pine-nuts which the autumn-blast Shakes into the tall grass; or such small fry As from the sea by winter-storms are cast; And the coarse bulbs of iris-flowers he found _140 Knotted in clumps under the spongy ground. 25. And so were kindled powers and thoughts which made His solitude less dark. When memory came (For years gone by leave each a deepening shade), His spirit basked in its internal flame,-- _145 As, when the black storm hurries round at night, The fisher basks beside his red firelight. 26. Yet human hopes and cares and faiths and errors, Like billows unawakened by the wind, Slept in Marenghi still; but that all terrors, _150 Weakness, and doubt, had withered in his mind. His couch... ... 27. And, when he saw beneath the sunset's planet A black ship walk over the crimson ocean,-- Its pennon streaming on the blasts that fan it, _155 Its sails and ropes all tense and without motion, Like the dark ghost of the unburied even Striding athwart the orange-coloured heaven,--