In The Prison Pen

1864

Listless he eyes the palisades

  And sentries in the glare;

'Tis barren as a pelican-beach

  But his world is ended there.

Nothing to do; and vacant hands

  Bring on the idiot-pain;

He tries to think--to recollect,

  But the blur is on his brain.

Around him swarm the plaining ghosts

  Like those on Virgil's shore--

A wilderness of faces dim,

  And pale ones gashed and hoar.

A smiting sun. No shed, no tree;

  He totters to his lair--

A den that sick hands dug in earth

  Ere famine wasted there,

Or, dropping in his place, he swoons,

  Walled in by throngs that press,

Till forth from the throngs they bear

    him dead--

  Dead in his meagreness.