rds can give
Description meet.
In the poor mother's mind
Reason forsook its throne. Her last hope gone,
Torn by a torrent from her death-like grasp,
Having no anchor on the eternal Rock,
She plunged beside it, into gulphs profound.
--She slept not, ate not, heeded no kind word,
Caress of fondness, or benignant prayer:
She only shriek'd,
"My boy! my beautiful!
They bind his hands!"
And then with frantic cries
She struggled 'gainst imaginary foes,
Till strength was gone.
Through the long syncope
Her never-resting lips essay'd to form
The gasping sounds,
"My boy! my beautiful!
Hence! Caitiffs! hence! my boy! my beautiful!"
And in that unquell'd madness life went out,
Like lamp before the blast.

* * * * *

With sullen port
Of bravery as one who scorns defeat
Though it hath come upon him, Conrad met
The sentence of the law. But its full force
He fail'd to estimate; the stern restraint
On liberty of movement, coarsest fare,
Stripes for the contumacious, and for all
Labor, and silence.
The inquiring glance
On the new-comer bent, from stolid eyes
Of malefactors, harden'd to their lot,
And hating all mankind, he coldly shunn'd
Or haughtily return'd. Yet there were lights
Even in this dark abode, not often found
In penal regions, where the wrath of man
Is prompt to punish, and remembereth not
The mercy that himself doth ask of God.

--A just man was the warden and humane,
Not credulous, or easily deceiv'd,
But hopeful of our nature, though deprav'd,
And for the incarcerate, careful to restrain
All petty tyranny.
Courteous was he
To visitants, for many such there were.
Philanthropists, whose happy faith believ'd
Prisons reforming schools, came here to scan
Arrangements and appliances as guides
To other institutions: strangers too,
Who 'mid their explorations of the State,
Scenery and structures, would not overlook
Its model-prison.
Now and then, was seen
Some care-worn mother, leading by the hand
Her froward boy, with hope that he might learn
A lesson from the punishment he saw.

--When day was closed and to his narrow cell
Bearing his supper, every prisoner went,
The night-lock firmly clench'd, beside some grate
While the large lamp thro' the long corridors
Threw flickering light, the Chaplain often