We heard it ripple night and day;

Sounding o'er our heads it knock'd;

And I have felt the winter's spray

Wash through the bars when winds were high

And wanton in the happy sky;

And then the very rock hath rock'd,

And I have felt it shake, unshock'd,

Because I could have smiled to see

The death that would have set me free.

VII.

I said my nearer brother pined,

I said his mighty heart declined,

He loath'd and put away his food;

It was not that 'twas coarse and rude,
For we were used to hunter's fare,
And for the like had little care:

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The milk drawn from the mountain goat
Was changed for water from the moat,
Our bread was such as captive's tears
Have moisten'd many a thousand years,
Since man first pent his fellow men
Like brutes within an iron den :

But what were these to us or him?
These wasted not his heart or limb;
My brother's soul was of that mold
Which in a palace had grown cold,

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Had his free breathing been denied
The range of the steep mountain's side;
But why delay the truth?-he died.

I saw, and could not hold his head,
Nor reach his dying hand-nor dead,
Though hard I strove, but strove in vain,
To rend and gnash my bonds in twain.
He died-and they unlocked his chain,

And scoop'd for him a shallow grave
Even from the cold earth of our cave.
I begg'd them, as a boon, to lay
His corse in dust whereon the day
Might shine-it was a foolish thought,
But then within my brain it wrought,
That even in death his freeborn breast
In such a dungeon could not rest.

I might have spared my idle prayer—
They coldly laugh'd-and laid him there:

The flat and turfless earth above

The being we so much did love;

His empty chain above it leant,

Such murder's fitting monument!

VIII.

But he, the favorite and the flower,

Most cherish'd since his natal hour,

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His mother's image in fair face,

The infant love of all his race,
His martyred father's dearest thought,
My latest care, for whom I sought
To hoard my life, that his might be
Less wretched now, and one day free;
He, too, who yet had held untired
A spirit natural or inspired-

He, too, was struck, and day by day
Was withered on the stalk away.

Oh God! it is a fearful thing

To see the human soul take wing
In any shape, in any mood:-

I've seen it rushing forth in blood,

I've seen it on the breaking ocean

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Strive with a swoln convulsive motion,

I've seen the sick and ghastly bed

Of Sin delirious with its dread :

But these were horrors-this was woe
Unmix'd with such-but sure and slow:

He faded, and so calm and meek,

So softly worn, so sweetly weak,

So tearless, yet so tender-kind,

And grieved for those he left behind;

With all the while a cheek whose bloom

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Was as a mockery of the tomb,

Whose tints as gently sunk away

As a departing rainbow's ray

An eye of most transparent light,

That almost made the dungeon bright,
And not a word of murmur-not

A groan o'er his untimely lot,

A little talk of better days,

A little hope my own to raise,

For I was sunk in silence-lost

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In this last loss, of all the most;