Library of the best American literature / Containing the lives of our authors in story form, their portraits, their homes, and their personal traits, how they worked and what they wrote; choice selections from eminent writers, embracing great American poets and novelists, foremost women in American letters, distinguished critics and essayists, our national humorists, noted journalists and magazine contributors, popular writers for young people, great orators and public lecturers

by Unknown

Silent—save ever and anon,

A sound, half-murmur and half-groan,

Forces apart the painful grip

Of the old sufferer’s bearded lip:

O, sad and crushing is the fate

Of old age chain’d and desolate!

Just God! why lies that old man there?

A murderer shares his prison-bed,

Whose eyeballs, through his horrid hair,

Gleam on him fierce and red;