Classic Poem

" Yet is earth's agony too strong for thee!
What terrors does the eye this moment see,
That sees like thine our world? What thousands groan
On fields of slaughter; on the dungeon stone;
Lost in the desert; struggling in the wave;
The wrong'd, the exiled, — all in one, the slave.
Aye! give me rack and flame before the den
Where desperate slavery howls for home again.
Are there no other tortures? Love, true love;
Pang, that the light think light, the wise reprove;
But the true anguish that disdains control;
The folly, fever, phrensy of the soul.
Yet, old Sidonia, art thou gazing now
Upon this comforter? or slumbering low
Where sorrow comes no more? Well hadst thou died,
Laid in the grave thy gentle child beside;
Before that second, deeper wound was given;
There, there the dagger to the heart was driven.
Talk I of suffering! All to thine is tame;
A father's sorrow for his daughter's shame. "