Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast,
  Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round;
  And while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn
  Throws up a steamy column, and the cups
  That cheer but not inebriate, wait on each,
  So let us welcome peaceful evening in.

  [THE BASTILE]

  Then shame to manhood, and opprobrious more
  To France than all her losses and defeats
  Old or of later date, by sea or land,
  Her house of bondage worse than that of old
  Which God avenged on Pharaoh—­the Bastile! 
  Ye horrid towers, th’ abode of broken hearts,
  Ye dungeons and ye cages of despair,
  That monarchs have supplied from age to age
  With music such as suits their sovereign ears—­
  The sighs and groans of miserable men,
  There’s not an English heart that would not leap
  To hear that ye were fallen at last, to know
  That even our enemies, so oft employed
  In forging chains for us, themselves were free: 
  For he that values liberty, confines
  His zeal for her predominance within
  No narrow bounds; her cause engages him
  Wherever pleaded; ’tis the cause of man. 
  There dwell the most forlorn of human kind,
  Immured though unaccused, condemned untried. 
  Cruelly spared, and hopeless of escape. 
  There, like the visionary emblem seen
  By him of Babylon, life stands a stump,
  And filleted about with hoops of brass,
  Still lives, though all its pleasant boughs are gone. 
  To count the hour-bell and expect no change;
  And ever as the sullen sound is heard,
  Still to reflect that though a joyless note
  To him whose moments all have one dull pace,
  Ten thousand rovers in the world at large
  Account it music—­that it summons some
  To theatre, or jocund feast, or ball;
  The wearied hireling finds it a release
  From labour; and the lover, who has chid
  Its long delay, feels every welcome stroke
  Upon his heart-strings trembling with delight: 
  To fly for refuge from distracting thought
  To such amusements as ingenious woe
  Contrives, hard-shifting and without her tools—­
  To read engraven on the muddy walls,
  In staggering types, his predecessor’s tale,
  A sad memorial, and subjoin his own;
  To turn purveyor to an overgorged
  And bloated spider, till the pampered pest
  Is made familiar, watches his approach,
  Comes at his call, and serves him for a friend;
  To wear out time in numbering to and fro
  The studs that thick emboss his iron door,
  Then downward and then upward, then aslant
  And then alternate, with a sickly hope
  By dint of change to give his tasteless task
  Some relish, till, the sum exactly found
  In all directions, he begins again:—­
  Oh comfortless existence! hemmed around
  With woes, which who that suffers would not kneel
  And beg for exile or the pangs of death?