Classic Poem

I know that tonight the wind is sighing,
The soft August wind, over forest and moor;
While I in a grave-like chill am lying
On the damp black flags of my dungeon-floor.
I know that the Harvest Moon is shining:
She neither will wax nor wane for me;
Yet I weary, weary with vain repining,
One gleam of her heaven-bright face to see!
For this constant darkness is wasting the gladness,
Fast wasting the gladness of life away:
It gathers up thoughts akin to madness
That never would cloud the world of day.
I chide with my soul—I bid it cherish
The feelings it lived on when I was free,
But shrinking it murmurs, “Let Memory perish,*
Forget, for thy friends have forgotten thee!”*
Alas, I did think that they were weeping
Such tears as I weep—it is not so!
Their careless young eyes are closed in sleeping;
Their brows are unshadowed, undimmed by woe.
Might I go to their beds, I'd rouse that slumber;
My spirit should startle their rest, and tell
How, hour after hour, I wakefully number
Deep buried from light in my lonely cell!
Yet, let them dream on, though dreary dreaming
Would haunt my pillow if they were here,
And I were laid warmly under the gleaming
Of that guardian moon and her comrade star.
Better that I, my own fate mourning,
Should pine alone in the prison-gloom,*
Than waken free on the summer morning
And feel they were suffering this awful doom.
M.A.