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THE CONVICT. BY L. E. L.
"These are words that we should read like warnings,
Meekly, as fearing, if we had been tried,
We might have done the same, and thankfully
That such temptation fell not to our lot:
The human heart is evil in itself,
And, like a child, requires restraint and care;
Restraint to keep from wrong, and care to soothe
Its wilder beatings into peace and love."
The light of two or three pale stars
Is dimly shining through the bars
Of my lone cell, and the cool air
Seems as it loath'd to enter there.
Now are those wan and gloomy hours,
When Night and Day, like struggling powers,
Make the sky cheerless with their strife,
Then most resembling human life:
It suits with me!—ill could I brook
Upon a cloudless heaven to look;
The calm blue air, the clear sunshine,
Were mockery to gaze like mine;
To watch the sun look bright on me,
Although the last that I shall see.
—Ah! even while I speak, the light
Is breaking beautiful through night.
’Tis all the same! the earth, the sky,
Nothing with me has sympathy!
—The clouds are breaking fast away—
Oh! why art thou so lovely, Day?
Oh! for a morn of clouds and rain,
To shroud and soothe my last of pain.
No—faster the glad sunbeams break—
They will not sorrow for my sake!
—It has been—it will be my fate—
I've lived—I shall die desolate!
—Oh! take your rosary away,
For what are prayers of mine to pray?
For pardon?—if the burning tears
That fed upon my earlier years—
If blasted hopes and ruin'd name,
And all the venom Love lends Shame—
The violent death, and rabble eye,
To look upon its agony;
If these are not enough to win
A pardon for Earth's deadliest sin,
Words will not, cannot!—never dare
Tell me it may be won by prayer!
The coward prayer, the coward tear,
Not from remorse wrung, but from fear!
—Here still—then, yield my last relief—
My woman's solace—hear my grief.
Come nearer—thou a judge shalt be
Between my misery and me!
"I grew up a neglected child:
The meanest floweret of the wild
