Night falls in the convict prison,—
The eve of a summer day;
Through the heated cells and galleries,
The cooler nightwinds play.
And slumber on folded pinions
With oblivion brought relief;
Stilling the weary tossings,—
Smoothing the brow of grief.

Through a dungeon’s narrow grating
The slanting moonlight fell
Down by a careworn prisoner,
Asleep in his lonely cell.
The hand which lay so nerveless
Had grasp’d a sword ere now,
And the lips now parch’d with fever
Had utter’d a patriot’s vow.

He stirr’d and the silence was broken,
By the clanking of a chain,
He sigh’d, but the sigh no longer,
Show’d the spirit’s restless pain.
For to him the dark walls faded,
And the prisoner stood once more
Beneath the vine-wreath’d trellis,
Beside his loved home’s door.

And memory drew the faces
So dear in earlier days,
Of the sisters who were with him
Joining in childish plays,
And the mother whose lips first murmured
The prayer which had made him brave,
“Let his fate be what Thou wiliest,
But not, oh! not a slave.”

And the friends whose blood beat quickly
At the wrongs of their native land
And the vow they had vowed together,
Grasping each other’s hand.
He dreamt of the first resistance,
Of the one who basely fled;
And the guard’s o’erwhelming numbers
And the hopes of life all dead.

And then of the weary waiting,
An exile on foreign ground;
With stranger voices near him,
And unknown faces round.
Oh! ships o’er the gladsome waters,
What news do you bring to-day?
What tidings of home and kindred
To the exile far away?

And he dreamt of the glad returning
To the well-loved native shore;
When news had come—All are ready
To dare the fight once more.
Of the hearts that throbbed exulting,
With hope of the coming strife,
Of the sigh which fell unheeded
To the thought of child and wife.

And he dreamt of the day of contest,
Of whistling shot and shell,
When he bore his country’s banner,
And had borne it high and well.
“Rally for Freedom! Forward!
Stand! for our cause is Right;
Sooner be slain than defeated,
Better is death than flight.”

Ah! happy the first who perished,
Who saw not the turning day,
And the fallen flag, and the broken line,
And the rout without hope or stay!
And the prisoner groaned in his slumbers,
But now, with a sudden glow,
The glorious moonlight’s splendour
Poured full on his humid brow.

On its rays there floated to him
The friends of his early youth,
Who had borne their steadfast witness
In the holy cause of Truth.
“Welcome,” they said, “we await thee;
Come, and receive thy meed,
The crown of those who flinched not
In our country’s greatest need.”

Was it a dream, or delusion?
Or vision? Who shall say?
Its spell consoled the hours
Of many a weary day.
And months went slowly over,
And the winter’s icy breath
Blew chill through an empty dungeon:
The convict was freed—by Death.