"With other souls in pain
Within another ring."
and his horror as he receives the information muttered by some fellow-prisoner through closed lips that
"That fellow's got to swing."
In words, the simplicity and intensity of which are sublime, he tells us of how the news affected him—
"Dear Christ! the very prison walls
Suddenly seemed to reel."
That apostrophe to the Redeemer is a revelation in itself coming from a man who is enduring his own mortal agony, but his particular sorrows fade into insignificance and are forgotten in the presence of a fellow-creature's crucifixion—
"And, though I was a soul in pain,
My pain I could not feel."
Already he is purified by his months of trial and tribulation, and he can enter sympathetically into the sorrows of others and share their burden.
He now understands the reason of the jaunty step and the defiant manner, he himself has tried to flee from his thoughts.