See that men rob you of your all by wrong; Add perils to your life; be used with force, Hopeless of help, by brutal foes and strong. ' 'Be driven at length to some mad desperate course; Burst from your dungeon, leap the castle wall; Recaptured, find the prison ten times worse. ' 'Now listen, Luca, to the best of all! Your leg’s been broken; you’ve been bought and sold; Your dungeon’s dripping; you’ve no cloak or shawl. Never one friendly word; your victuals cold ' ' Are brought with sorry news by some base groom Of Prato-soldier now-druggist of old. Mark well how Glory steeps her sons in gloom! You have no seat to sit on, save the stool: ' ' Yet were you active from your mother’s womb. The knave who serves hath orders strict and cool To list no word you utter, give you naught, Scarcely to ope the door; such is their rule. ' 'These toys hath Glory for her nursling wrought! No paper, pens, ink, fire, or tools of steel, To exercise the quick brain’s teeming thought. ' 'Alack that I so little can reveal! Fancy one hundred for each separate ill: Full space and place I’ve left for prison weal! But now my former purpose to fulfil, ' ' And sing the dungeon’s praise with honour due- For this angelic tongues were scant of skill. Here never languish honest men and true, Except by placemen’s fraud, misgovernment, ' ' Jealousies, anger, or some spiteful crew. To tell the truth whereon my mind is bent, Here man knows God, nor ever stints to pray, Feeling his soul with hell’s fierce anguish rent. ' 'Let one be famed as bad as mortal may, Send him in jail two sorry years to pine, He’ll come forth holy, wise, beloved alway.' 'Here soul, flesh, clothes their substance gross refine; Each bulky lout grows light like gossamere; Celestial thrones before purged eyeballs shine. I’ll tell thee a great marvel! Friend, give ear! ' ' The fancy took me on one day to write: Learn now what shifts one may be put to here. My cell I search, prick brows and hair upright, Then turn me toward a cranny in the door, ' ' And with my teeth a splinter disunite; Next find a piece of brick upon the floor, Crumble a part thereof to powder small, And form a paste by sprinkling water o’er. [2] ' 'Then, then came Poesy with fiery call Into my carcass, by the way methought Whence bread goes forth-there was none else at all. ' 'Now to return unto my primal thought: Who wills to know what weal awaits him, must First learn the ill that God for him hath wrought.