God pity the wretched prisoners,
In their lonely cells to-day!
Whatever the sins that tripped them,
God pity them! still I say.
Only a strip of sunshine,
Cleft by rusty bars;
Only a patch of azure,
Only a cluster of stars;
Only a barren future,
To starve their hope upon;
Only stinging memories...
Beat on, proud billows; Boreas, blow;
Swell, curlèd waves, high as Jove’s roof;
Your incivility doth show
That innocence is tempest proof;
Though surly Nereus frown, my thoughts are calm;
Then strike, Affliction, for thy wounds are balm.
That which the world miscalls a jail
A private closet is to me;
Whilst a good...
When Love with unconfinèd wings
Hovers within my gates,
And by divine Althea brings
To whisper at my grates;
When I lie tangled in her hair
And fettered with her eye,
The birds that wanton in the air
Know no such liberty.
When flowing cups pass swiftly round
With no allaying Thames,
Our careless heads...
WHENE’ER with haggard eyes I view
This dungeon that I ’m rotting in,
I think of those companions true
Who studied with me at the U-
niversity of Gottingen,
niversity of Gottingen.
[Weeps and pulls out a blue kerchief, with which he wipes his eyes; gazing tenderly at it, he proceeds:]
Sweet...
How soft this Prison is
How sweet these sullen bars
No Despot but the King of Down
Invented this repose
Of Fate if this is All
Has he no added Realm
A Dungeon but a Kinsman is
Incarceration — Home.
