Far from his cherish’d friends, his native shore,
Banish’d from being—to return no more;
There must he die!—within that circling wave,
That lonely isle—his prison and his grave!
Lo! through the waste, the wilderness of snows,
With fainting step, Siberia’s exile goes!
Homeless and sad, o’er many a polar wild,
Where beam, or flower, or verdure never smiled;
Where frost and silence hold their despot-reign,
And bind existence in eternal chain!