THE CONVICT. The glory of evening was spread through the west; While the joy that precedes the calm season of rest "And must we then part from a dwelling so fair?” And with a deep sadness I turned, to repair The thick-ribbed walls that o'ershadow the gate I pause; and at length, through the glimmering grate, His black matted head on his shoulder is bent, And with stedfast dejection his eyes are intent On the fetters that link him to death. 'Tis sorrow enough on that visage to gaze, That body dismiss'd from his care; Yet my fancy has pierced to his heart, and pourtrays More terrible images there. His bones are consumed, and his life-blood is dried, With wishes the past to undo; And his crime, through the pains that o'erwhelm him, descried, Still blackens and grows on his view. When from the dark synod, or blood-reeking field, To his chamber the monarch is led, All soothers of sense their soft virtue shall yield, But if grief, self-consumed, in oblivion would doze, And conscience her tortures appease, 'Mid tumult and uproar this man must repose; In the comfortless vault of disease. When his fetters at night have so press'd on his limbs, While the jail-mastiff howls at the dull clanking chain, A thousand sharp punctures of cold-sweating pain, But now he half-raises his deep-sunken eye, The silence of sorrow it seems to supply, And asks of me why I am here. "Poor victim! no idle intruder has stood "With o'erweening complacence our state to compare, "But one, whose first wish is the wish to be good, " Is come as a brother thy sorrows to share. "At thy name though compassion her nature resign, My care, if the arm of the mighty were mine, "Would plant thee where yet thou might'st blossom again." LINES WRITTEN A FEW MILES ABOVE TINTERN ABBEY, On revisiting the banks of the WYE during A TOUR, July 13, 1798. Five years have passed; five summers, with the length These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs Which on a wild secluded scene impress The river is not affected by the tides a few miles above Tintern. |