Every legal right has perished, every social tie is snapped!
Crushing Force is ever present, body mind and soul entrapped!
Kindness is a total stranger, human treatment rarely shown,
Man is faultless when his fellow for a fault must needs atone!
Can such beings know the rapture Heaven decrees to poet souls?
Know they where to place the cymbals of the sounding lyre
Never yet has human malice stilled the music of the spheres!
In the loathesome prison dungeon Heaven the sweetest music hears!
Guilt or shame, or human anger, ne'er can fold the poet's wings.
Howsoever deep his anguish, still his heart exultant sings—