My hair is grey, but not with years, Nor grew it white In a single night,[3] As men's have grown from sudden fears: My limbs are bowed, though not with toil, But rusted with a vile repose,[b] For they have been a dungeon's spoil, And mine has been the fate of those To whom the goodly earth and air Are banned,[4] and barred-forbidden fare;10 But this was for my father's faith I suffered chains and courted death; That father perished at the stake For tenets he would not forsake; And for the same his lineal race In darkness found a dwelling place; We were seven-who now are one,[5] Six in youth, and one in age, Finished as they had begun, Proud of Persecution's rage;[c]20 One in fire, and two in field, Their belief with blood have sealed, Dying as their father died, For the God their foes denied;- Three were in a dungeon cast, Of whom this wreck is left the last.

There are seven pillars of Gothic mould,[6] In Chillon's dungeons deep and old, There are seven columns, massy and grey, Dim with a dull imprisoned ray,30 A sunbeam which hath lost its way, And through the crevice and the cleft Of the thick wall is fallen and left; Creeping o'er the floor so damp, Like a marsh's meteor lamp:[7] And in each pillar there is a ring,[8] And in each ring there is a chain; That iron is a cankering thing, For in these limbs its teeth remain, With marks that will not wear away,40 Till I have done with this new day, Which now is painful to these eyes, Which have not seen the sun so rise For years-I cannot count them o'er, I lost their long and heavy score When my last brother drooped and died, And I lay living by his side.

They chained us each to a column stone, And we were three-yet, each alone; We could not move a single pace,50 We could not see each other's face, But with that pale and livid light That made us strangers in our sight: And thus together-yet apart, Fettered in hand, but joined in heart,[d] 'Twas still some solace in the dearth Of the pure elements of earth, To hearken to each other's speech, And each turn comforter to each With some new hope, or legend old,60 Or song heroically bold; But even these at length grew cold. Our voices took a dreary tone, An echo of the dungeon stone, A grating sound, not full and free, As they of yore were wont to be: It might be fancy-but to me They never sounded like our own.