Poems, Dialogues in Verse and Epigrams :: :: University of Virginia Library

“I am an old man now; and yet my soul
By fifteen years is younger than its frame:
Fifteen I lived (if life it was) in one
Dark dungeon, ten feet square: alone I dwelt
Six; then another enter'd: by his voice
I knew it was a man: I could not see
Feature or figure in that dismal place.
One year we talkt together of the past,
Of joys for ever gone . . ay, worse than gone,
Remember'd, prest into our hearts, that swell'd
And sorely soften'd under them: the next,
We exchanged what thoughts we found: the third, no thought
Was left us; memory alone remain'd.
The fourth, we askt each other, if indeed
The world had life within it, life and joy
As when we left it.

Now the fifth had come,
And we sat silent: all our store was spent.
When the sixth enter'd, he had disappear'd,
Either for death or doom less merciful:

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And I repined not! all things were less sad
Than that dim vision, that unshapen form.
A year or two years after (indistinct
Was time, as light was, in that cell) the door
Crept open, and these sounds came slowly through:
His Majesty the Emperor and King
Informs you that twelve months ago your wife
Quitted the living . .

I did hear the words,
All, ere I fell, then heard not bolt nor bar.”