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Flutters and falters, like a dying child's.
So day by day, and year by year, he sits,
The victim of his own and others' crimes;
A living monument! till, life itself
Become a lengthened curse, he trusts to die,
By spurning the scant food which only makes
That life a living death; he turns away
Disgusted from the offering; and though worn
Almost to frightfulness, a spectral form,
Rejects the proffered scrap, and calls on death,
As he would call a friend of youth, to save him!
O! wretched being! famine will not stay
To parley with despair; she urges him
Again, with double fierceness, to his food,
And the weak pulse revives, again to beat
The melancholy hours; and thus he drags
The remnant of bis being: no one sees
Or pities him; his varying agony,
Shut from the public view, disturbs no smile
Upon a happier cheek; no father craves
A blessing on his broken-hearted son;
No mother bends for him; no sister pours
Her young fond tears; no brother round the walls,
That bold the playmate of his infancy,
Walks in his manlier sorrow, wistfully
To gaze upon his cell; the busy world,
So day by day, and year by year, he sits,
The victim of his own and others' crimes;
A living monument! till, life itself
Become a lengthened curse, he trusts to die,
By spurning the scant food which only makes
That life a living death; he turns away
Disgusted from the offering; and though worn
Almost to frightfulness, a spectral form,
Rejects the proffered scrap, and calls on death,
As he would call a friend of youth, to save him!
O! wretched being! famine will not stay
To parley with despair; she urges him
Again, with double fierceness, to his food,
And the weak pulse revives, again to beat
The melancholy hours; and thus he drags
The remnant of bis being: no one sees
Or pities him; his varying agony,
Shut from the public view, disturbs no smile
Upon a happier cheek; no father craves
A blessing on his broken-hearted son;
No mother bends for him; no sister pours
Her young fond tears; no brother round the walls,
That bold the playmate of his infancy,
Walks in his manlier sorrow, wistfully
To gaze upon his cell; the busy world,
