THE VICT.
The glory of evening read through the west;
--On the slope of a mountain I stood;
While the joy that precedes the calm season of rest
Rang loud through the meadow and wood.
"And must we then part from a dwelling so fair?"
In the pain of my spirit I said,
And with a deep sadness I turo repair
To the cell where the vict is laid.
The thick-ribbed walls that oershadow the gate
Resound; and the dungeons unfold:
I pause; and at length, through the glimmering grate,
That outcast of pity behold.
His black matted head on his shoulder is bent,
And deep is the sigh of his breath,
And with stedfast deje his eyes are i
Oters that link him to death.
Tis sorrow enough on that visage to gaze.
That body dismissd from his care;
Yet my fancy has pierced to his heart, and pourtrays
More terrible images there.
His bones are ed, and his life-blood is dried,
With wishes the past to undo;
And his crime, through the pains that oerwhelm him, descried,
Still blas and grows on his view.
When from the dark synod, or blood-reeking ?eld,
To his chamber the monarch is led,
All soothers of seheir soft virtue shall yield,
And quietness pillow his head.
But if grief, self-ed, in oblivion would doze,
And sce her tortures appease,
Mid tumult and uproar this man must repose;
In the fortless vault of disease.
When his fetters at night have so pressd on his limbs,
That the weight o longer be borne,
If, while a half-slumber his memory bedims,
The wret his pallet should turn,
While the jail-mastiff howls at the dull king ,
From the roots of his hair there shall start
A thousand sharp punctures of cold-sweating pain,
And terror shall leap at his heart.
But now he half-raises his deep-sunken eye,
And the motion ules a tear;
The silence of sorrow it seems to supply,
And asks of me why I am here.
"Poor victim! no idle intruder has stood
"With oerweening place our state to pare,
"But one, whose ?rst wish is the wish to be good,
"Is e as a brother thy sorrows to share.
"At thy hough passion her nature resign,
"Though in virtues proud mouth thy report be a stain,
"My care, if the arm of the mighty were mine,
"Would plant thee where yet thou mightst blossom again."