My spirit should startle their rest and tell,
How hour after hour, I wakefully number,
Deep buried from light in my lonely cell!

Yet let them dream on; tho' dreary dreaming
Would haunt my pillow if they were here;
And I were laid warmly under the gleaming
Of that guardian moon and her comrade star.

Better that I my own fate mourning,
Should pine alone in this prison gloom;
Then waken free on the summer morning
And feel they were suffering this awful doom.

August 1845.