1864 <br /> <br />Listless he eyes the palisades <br />And sentries in the glare; <br />'Tis barren as a pelican-beach <br />But his world is ended there. <br /> <br />Nothing to do; and vacant hands <br />Bring on the idiot-pain; <br />He tries to think--to recollect, <br />But the blur is on his brain. <br /> <br />Around him swarm the plaining ghosts <br />Like those on Virgil's shore-- <br />A wilderness of faces dim, <br />And pale ones gashed and hoar. <br /> <br />A smiting sun. No shed, no tree; <br />He totters to his lair-- <br />A den that sick hands dug in earth <br />Ere famine wasted there, <br /> <br />Or, dropping in his place, he swoons, <br />Walled in by throngs that press, <br />Till forth from the throngs they bear <br />him dead-- <br />Dead in his meagreness.<br /><br />Herman Melville<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/in-the-prison-pen/
