Ii

Two silent influences mainly move The captive’s mind, not wholly sunk in sloth, Nor lost in carnal craving--dangers both That to the core the sterling manhood prove. One is the sense of shrinkage, of the groove In which the soul enshuttled--O how loth!-- Feels stoppage of life’s pulse, arrested growth, Heart-sickness which no medicine can remove. The other wakens when departing night Throws up the windows of the spacious morn Upon a new day pulsing with new light; And from the hill the hunter with his horn Sends down imagined valleys strains that smite The spirit with the sense of something born.

RASTATT, 7th May