Because a straw descended on this scale

Rather than that, made death o'erbalance life.

But think of cage-mates in captivity,

Inured to day-long, night-long vigilance

Each of the other's tread and angry turn

If behind prison bars the jailer knocked:

These whom society shut out, and thus

Penned in, to settle down and regulate

By the strange law, the solitary life—

When death divorces such a fellowship,