His bones are consumed, and his life-blood is dried, With wishes the past to undo; And his crime, through the pains that o’erwhelm him, descried, Still blackens and grows on his view. When from the dark synod, or blood-reeking field, 25 To his chamber the monarch is led, All soothers of sense their soft virtue shall yield, And quietness pillow his head. But if grief, self-consumed, in oblivion would doze, And conscience her tortures appease, 30 ’Mid tumult and uproar this man must repose, In the comfortless vault of disease. When his fetters at night have so press’d on his limbs, That the weight can no longer be borne, If, while a half-slumber his memory bedims, 35 The wretch on his pallet should turn, While the jail-mastiff howls at the dull clanking chain, From the roots of his hair there shall start A thousand sharp punctures of cold-sweating pain, And terror shall leap at his heart. 40 But now he half-raises his deep-sunken eye, And the motion unsettles a tear; The silence of sorrow it seems to supply, And asks of me why I am here. “Poor victim! no idle intruder has stood 45 With o’erweening complacence our state to compare, But one, whose first wish is the wish to be good, Is come as a brother thy sorrows to share. “At thy name though compassion her nature resign, Though in virtue’s proud mouth thy report be a stain, 50 My care, if the arm of the mighty were mine, Would plant thee where yet thou might’st blossom again.” 1798 “THE SNOW-TRACKS OF MY FRIENDS I SEE” The following incomplete stanzas were evidently written when _The Complaint of a Forsaken Indian Woman_ was being composed. They were all discarded, but have a biographical interest. I assign them to the year 1798.--ED. The snow-tracks of my friends I see, Their foot-marks do not trouble me, For ever left alone am I. Then wherefore should I fear to die? They to the last my friends did cherish 5 And to the last were good and kind, Methinks ’tis strange I did not perish The moment I was left behind.