Bereft of star or luminary bright, No night so dark as artificial night; No glittering constellations kindly throw Their twinkling beacons o'er the void below; No satellite with pale invasive beam Breaks through the darkness awful and extreme; No comet, through the vast sidereal waste, Pursues its orbit with unbridled haste; No silvery moon, through the dissembling shroud, May shine or burst through orifice of cloud In mellow radiations, soft and sweet; Darkness most dense, oppressive and complete. No friendly voice might penetrate the gloom, Nor break the silence of that fetid tomb, With genial converse, which in some degree Makes men forget their depth of misery. Silence, most tragic, horrible, profound, Except the sharp and intermittent sound Of rodent feet, and noise of creeping things, The squeak of vampires and their whirr of wings; Or cries of swift pursuit, or of despair, Rang out upon the pestilential air, As ever and anon a dying squeak Told of the strong prevailing o'er the weak; For might obtains along the selfsame plan With ruthless vermin and enlightened man. Yet man in his dominion absolute, Removed above the province of the brute, From social claims and attributes released, Has little to distinguish from the beast. With all associative wants denied, And his gregarious longings unsupplied, By human comradeship, affection springs Well up in effluent love for baser things. For 'neath the polish and embellishments Of cultivation and intelligence, There lies a basic bond of sympathy, For man and beast are friends in misery. Yes, friends, the most ill-favored shape which squirms In reptile folds, repulsive snakes and worms, Soon lose their dread repugnance, one and all, To solitary man in prison thrall. Through the long hours of physical distress, In my extremity of loneliness, I felt companionship in this abode, For e'en the vicious rat and sluggish toad. Thrice sixty days of corporal decay And mental anguish, slowly wore away; Thrice sixty nights of filthy durance passed, Each day and night more hopeless than the last. My limbs, no longer brawny and alert, Were famine-wasted, loathsome and inert. With shaggy beard and matted unkempt hair, With face no longer rubicund and fair, Which haggard and emaciated shone, And through the sallow skin disclosed the bone. Thus languished nature in enforced decay, Till hope's last beacon light had burned away.