With shaggy beard and matted unkempt hair,
With face no longer rubicund and fair,
Which haggard and emaciated shone,
And through the sallow skin disclosed the bone.
Thus languished nature in enforced decay,
Till hope's last beacon light had burned away.
Though never exculpated from offence,
Time brought conditional deliverance;
A writ of amnesty, the Czar's decree,
Within its gracious scope included me.