In contravention of the laws of right,

Man's cruel passion and his guilty might,

Has bound me tightly with a galling chain

Of heaped-up malice and unjust disdain!

From front rank lawyer to a felon's cell,

Through perjured villains, not by sin I fell!

By fiat law my body was consigned

To this grim cell for guilty ones designed.

Yet I'm no convict—I have never known

The deep remorse by guilty wretches shown!