Читать книгу The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Various - Страница 4

Lightly the river runs between

Hanging cliffs and meadows green.

Blackly the prison, looking down,

Frowns at its shadow's answering frown.

Shut from life in his life's fresh morn,

Crouches a soldier, wounded and worn.

Chained and starved in the dungeon grim,

Day and night are alike to him;

Save that the murmurous twilight air

Stings his soul with a deeper despair.

Day by day, as the taunting breeze

Wafts him the breath of orange trees,

He fancies in meadows far away

The level lines of odorous hay;

And sees the scythes of the mowers run

In and out of the steady sun.

Night by night, as the mounting moon

Climbs from his eager gaze too soon,

The gleams that across the gratings fall,

Broken and bright, on the prison wall,

Seem the tangles of Northern rills,

Like threads of silver winding the hills.

When, sinking into the western skies,

The sun aslant on the window lies;

And motes that hovered dusty and dim,

Golden-winged through the glory swim:

He drops his head on his fettered hands,

And thinks of the fruitful Northern lands.

Between his fingers' wasted lines,

Tear after tear into sunlight shines,

As, wandering in a dream, he treads

The ripened honey of clover heads;

Or watches the sea of yellow grain

Break into waves on the windy plain;

Or sees the orchard's grassy gloom

Spotted with globes of rosy bloom.

Through the shimmer of shadowy haze

Redden the hills with their autumn blaze.

The oxen stand in the loaded teams;

The cider bubbles in amber streams;

And child-like laughter and girlish song

Float with the reaper's shout along.

He stirs his hands, and the jealous chain

Wakes him once more to his tyrant pain—

To festered wounds, and to dungeon taint,

And hunger's agony, fierce and faint.

The sunset vision fades and flits,

And alone in his dark'ning cell he sits:

Alone with only the jailers grim,

Hunger and Pain, that clutch at him;

And, tight'ning his fetters, link by link,

Drag him near to a ghastly brink;

Where, in the blackness that yawns beneath,

Stalks the skeleton form of Death.

Starved, and tortured, and worn with strife;

Robbed of the hopes of his fresh, young life;—

Shall one pang of his martyr pain

Cry to a sleepless God in vain?