  The first, in B minor, is decidedly the more vigorous of the two, and the more difficult. It is based upon the pathetically tragic story of the Prisoner of Chillon, so ably told in Byron’s poem, which the player should read with care, so as to familiarize himself thoroughly with its incidents and moods. The poem tells of that nameless captive chained for life to a pillar in a rock-hewn dungeon beneath the castle of Chillon, on Lake Leman, below the surface of the lake, so that he listens “A double dungeon, wall and wave Have made—and like a living grave. Below the surface of the lake The dark vault lies, wherein we lay: We heard its ripple night and day, Sounding o’er our heads it knocked, And then the very rock hath rocked, And I have felt it shake unshocked: Because I could have smiled to see The death that would have set me free.” Years drag themselves out to eternities. One by one his few companions die of cold and hunger, leaving him alone in that living tomb, with his endless, changeless, unutterable misery. “I had no thought, no feeling—none. Among the stones I stood a stone. It was not night, it was not day, For all was blank and bleak and gray: A sea of stagnant idleness, Blind, boundless, mute, and motionless.” His only gleam of comfort were the occasional visits of an azure-winged bird that came now and then and perched on the window ledge outside his dungeon bars, a fair and gentle companion symbolizing for him all the beauty and tenderness and sweetness in the life he has lost; and on which he comes to concentrate the love and interest of his famished heart. “A lovely bird with azure wings, And song that said a thousand things, And seemed to say them all to me! I never saw the like before, I ne’er shall see its likeness more: It seemed, like me, to want a mate, But was not half so desolate; And it was come to love me, when None lived to love me so again.” The opening movement of the ballade, representing the thunder of the waves reverberating through the gloom of that cavern-like cell, and the later lyric, which might be called the bird theme, suggesting his tender communing with his little friend, are the best movements in the work. The details of the story are not carried out, but its outlines, and especially its moods, are clearly given. |
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