Sung darkling,”[118]
and who seems to have looked back on that loveliness of nature, from which he was separated, with the melancholy readiness, with which the thoughts of the unfortunate and the sorrowful still revert to past enjoyments; as the prisoner, even when fettered to his dungeon-floor, still turns his eye, almost involuntarily, to that single gleam of light, which reminds him only of scenes that exist no longer to him.
“Thus with the year
Seasons return; but not to me returns
Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn,
Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose,
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;
But cloud instead, and ever-during dark
Surround me.”[119]