| |
| I LAY upon a dungeon floor, | |
| On my damp and scanty bed; | |
| And many a wretch had lain there before, | |
| For the walls were scrawled and scribbled o’er | |
| On high above my head. | 5 |
| There were rude initials, strangely blent, | |
| The pastime of imprisonment; | |
| There were holy signs of faith and trust, | |
| Sketched with the foul corroding rust | |
| Of some iron instrument; | 10 |
| There were ribald couplets, deeply writ, | |
| Where coarseness marred the effect of wit, | |
| And negatived the intent; | |
| There were outlines, which appeared to trace | |
| The features of some cherished face, | 15 |
| The work of time and care, | |
| Begun, perhaps, when hope was high, | |
| In the first months of captivity, | |
| But finished in despair! | |
| And all this had been wrought by hands | 20 |
| Fettered, like mine, in iron bands; | |
| The task, perchance, of many years, | |
| Produced mid misery and tears; | |
| The pastime which had tried its power | |
| To cheat pale Sorrow of an hour. | 25 |
| |
| And, still more sad! there was a row | |
| Of notches in the cell, | |
| Which seemed to have been made to show | |
| How many days could come and go | |
| Mid fate so terrible! | 30 |
| Alas! it was a weary line, | |
| At once a symbol and a sign, | |
| To those who followed there;— | |
| Weeks, months, and years were counted o’er, | |
| And set apart, a saddening store | 35 |
| Of anguish and despair! | |
| |
| I tried to guess what hand had wrought | |
| These promptings to soul-maddening thought; | |
| I tried to picture forth the gaze | |
| Of the stern and steadfast eye, | 40 |
| Which numbered there the noted days | |
| Of a dread captivity! | |
| At first each notch was straight and long; | |
| The captive’s nerves were firm and strong, | |
| Or thus the line could not have gone | 45 |
| So deeply through the jagged stone; | |
| Long wore the marks this trace of force, | |
| But soon they ceased to be | |
| So firm and even in their course, | |
| And I almost seemed to see | 50 |
| The throbbings of the unsteady hand | |
| Which shook within its iron band,— | |
| The bounding pulse that beat, and spurned | |
| The fetter beneath which it burned, | |
| And fevered to be free! | 55 |
| |
| This was the first sad change; but more | |
| Upon the next I wept: | |
| He who once smote even to the core | |
| Of the rude stone, which darkly bore | |
| The record that he kept, | 60 |
| Now left a lighter trace of woe, | |
| As if his strength were waning low. | |
| Faint, and more faintly, every line | |
| Bore proof of manhood’s swift decline, | |
| Mid famine, grief, and thrall. | 65 |
| At last there was one notch, so light | |
| It scarcely had been finished quite,— | |
| Life’s last sad effort, half in vain, | |
| To follow up the list of pain,— | |
| And I could almost feel and see | 70 |
| That death had set the prisoner free | |
| Ere he had time for all! | |
| But, saddest still! full many a trace | |
| Remained in that unhappy place | |
| Of the wild madness which despair | 75 |
| Had wrought upon the brain, | |
| And which had been eternized there | |
| In agony and pain,— | |
| The madness of demoniac glee, | |
| Vented in curse and blasphemy; | 80 |
| Dark images of frenzied mirth, | |
| In the heart’s misery poured forth; | |
| Clingings to base, unholy things; | |
| Unbridled, vain imaginings; | |
| Murmurs, where prayers had more availed, | 85 |
| Curses, where orisons had failed, | |
| Blood, where there needed tears; | |
| And still each base impress remained | |
| By which the rough-hewn walls were stained | |
| Of erst, in long-passed years. | 90 |
| |
| Others had been less dark of mood | |
| In their ungenial solitude; | |
| And it was strange to mark how thought | |
| Was with bright gleams of freedom fraught: | |
| How it had fondly loved to rest | 95 |
| On each unfettered thing,— | |
| A ship upon the billow’s crest, | |
| A bird upon the wing, | |
| A tall steed riderless and free,— | |
| All symbols of that liberty | 100 |
| For which each hour they sighed; | |
| And it was maddening to know | |
| That they who strove to cheat their woe, | |
| By leaving this mute registry | |
| Of their heart-sickness thus to me, | 105 |
| Had striven till they died! | |
| |
