his fettered hands,
And thinks of the fruitful Northern lands.

Between his fingers' wasted lines,
Tear after tear into sunlight shines,

As, wandering in a dream, he treads
The ripened honey of clover heads;

Or watches the sea of yellow grain
Break into waves on the windy plain;

Or sees the orchard's grassy gloom
Spotted with globes of rosy bloom.

Through the shimmer of shadowy haze
Redden the hills with their autumn blaze.

The oxen stand in the loaded teams;
The cider bubbles in amber streams;

And child-like laughter and girlish song
Float with the reaper's shout along.

He stirs his hands, and the jealous chain
Wakes him once more to his tyrant pain--

To festered wounds, and to dungeon taint,
And hunger's agony, fierce and faint.

The sunset vision fades and flits,
And alone in his dark'ning cell he sits:

Alone with only the jailers grim,
Hunger and Pain, that clutch at him;

And, tight'ning his fetters, link by link,
Drag him near to a ghastly brink;

Where, in the blackness that yawns beneath,
Stalks the skeleton form of Death.

Starved, and tortured, and worn with strife;
Robbed of the hopes of his fresh, young life;--

Shall one pang of his martyr pain
Cry to a sleepless God in vain?

AENONE:

A TALE OF SLAVE LIFE IN ROME.

CHAPTER X.

But though AEnone's sanguinely conceived plan for Cleotos's happiness had
so cruelly failed, it was not in her heart to yield to his passionate,
unreflecting demand, and send him away from her, even to a kinder home
than he would have found at the house of the captain Polidorus. It would
but increase his ill fortune, by enforcing still greater isolation from
every fount of human sympathy. Though the affection of the wily Leta had
been withdrawn from him, her own secret friendship yet remained, and
could be a protection to him as long as he was at her side; and in many
ways she could yet extend her care and favor to him, until such time as
an outward-bound vessel might be found in which to restore him to his
native country.

Whether there was any instinct at the bottom of her heart, telling her
that in the possibility of trying events to come his friendship might be
equally serviceable to her, and that, even in the mere distant
companionship of a slave with his mistress, she might feel a certain
protecting influence, she did not stop to ask. Neither did she inquire
whether