Darkness was overtraced on every face,
⁠Around clouded with storm and ominous gloom;
In hut or hall smiled out no resting-place;
⁠There was no resting-place but one—the tomb!

All our hearths were the mansions of distress,
⁠And no one laughed, and none seemed free from care;
Our children felt their fathers' wretchedness;
⁠Our homes, one, all were shadowed with despair:
It was not fear that made the land so sad.

May 1838.