Through the long hours of physical distress,
In my extremity of loneliness,
I felt companionship in this abode,
For e'en the vicious rat and sluggish toad.
Thrice sixty days of corporal decay
And mental anguish, slowly wore away;
Thrice sixty nights of filthy durance passed,
Each day and night more hopeless than the last.
My limbs, no longer brawny and alert,
Were famine-wasted, loathsome and inert.