The Prisoner of Chillon 09

IX

What next befell me then and there
I know not well - I never knew -
First came the loss of light, and air,
And then of darkness too:
I had no thought, no feeling - none -
Among the stones I stood a stone,
And was, scare conscious what I wist,
As shrubless crags within the mist;
For all was blank, and bleak, and grey;
It was not night - it was day;
It was not even the dungeon-light,
So hateful to my heavy sight,
But vacancy absorbing space,
And fixedness - without a place;
There were no stars - no earth - no time -
No check - no change - no good, no crime -
But silence, and a stirless breath
Which neither was of life nor death;
A sea of stagnant idleness,
Blind, boundless, mute, and motionless!

George Gordon Byron, Lord Byron (1788-1824) ByronLong