By Lord Byron (1816)
My hair is grey, but not with years,
Nor grew it white
In a single night,
As men’s have grown from sudden fears:
…
And in our narrow cell is room
For only three, and that not long;
They chain’d us each to a column stone,
And we were three — yet each alone.
…
I made a footing in the wall,
It was not therefrom to escape,
For I had buried one and all,
Who loved me in my happier shape;
And the whole earth would henceforth be
A wider prison unto me.
Originally published in The Prisoner of Chillon, and Other Poems (1816) by Lord Byron. Public domain.
Analysis
Byron converts political imprisonment into a meditation on inner liberty. The tale balances incident with introspection — chains and columns become emblems for the mind’s endurance. Brotherhood gives the poem its pathos, as the speaker survives his dead companions only to discover that grief enlarges captivity into a metaphysical condition.
Formally the narrative alternates swift movement with stilled reflection, so that memory and present suffering fold into one voice. The most piercing turn rejects escape: the world itself would be a larger cell. Freedom, Byron suggests, is not merely spatial; it requires a self that can bear its own history.