Pieces People Ask For / Serious, Humorous, Pathetic, Patriotic, and Dramatic Selections in Prose and Poetry for Reading and Recitations

by Unknown

THE PRISONER.

Closed in by four gray walls, Grim, and grimy, and hard! One only break in the slimy dark, A window, iron-barred!

Quivering on tiptoe there, I spy at the world without, And wearily scan that blue sea-bay, Where the white sails glide about. I gaze, till my hot eyes ache With the changeful, flashing light: That billowy blue, so terribly blue; That white, so intensely white! And I step from my trembling hold Down on the loathsome floor; Then bruised, half-blinded, and sick, I climb, and gaze once more.

Out of this fearful dun-light,— Darkness “made visible,”— I gaze on the summer sunlight Which never visits my cell,— Out on yon summer-glory Flooding the golden sand; And I sigh for the distant freedom: I weep for my far-off land!

So I cling to the bars, and wonder If my lot will ever be To float in that skifflet yonder, Home o’er that tempting sea.

Oh! I loathe the foreign banner, With its fluttering, flaunting brag; And my soul is sad and weary, Heart-sick for the dear old flag! Oh! could I loose from her moorings, Could I reach yon tiny boat, With what glad, wild heart-boundings. Away, away I’d float!

But the sunbeams lie still and burning, On ocean and on land, While scarce by one breezy flutter Is my burning forehead fanned.

’Tis maddening!—this awful still, Round me in my hollow stone! Though yonder the glad notes thrill, I hear not, I hear not one! But out of my terrible silence, I can see these voices yonder, While over my tugging heart-strings Creep echoes, dearer, fonder.

I ache for liberty, Over the far blue sea, O’er the blue sea so wide! And I hear the angels singing, “Keeping time, In silver rhyme” With that boat so slowly swinging, On the restless, heaving tide. Ripple, dipple, Plashing, dashing, The wavelets sleepily lap the shore; Lazily, hazily; Drearily, wearily, I cling here, listening o’er and o’er—

To the sobbing oozing gurgle Slushing underneath the keel, And the restless, dipping murmur Which I cannot know by the outward ear, The tide is too far for me to hear, But deep in my soul I feel.