1240s 

Words so terrible and wild - For I left a wife and child.html">child. Never did one tender vision Never once through all my slavery, In my soul it lived, and kept me, And my heart.html">heart was not quite broken, I would hasten to the shore; Nothing I had known before;) Strange the red.html">red glare and black shade, To the sound the fountains made. Then I gazed at the great Ocean, And because she knew old England, So the blue still sky.html">sky above me, And the glimmering stars, (though brighter,) Worn perhaps with work and pain, And I was myself again: Looking up at the far sky, Floated sorrowfully by. A fair face, but pale with sorrow, And the little red mouth, quivering Holding out her baby.html">baby towards me, So it was that last I saw.html">saw her, That the years were floating on,) And the little baby gone: The child, standing by her knee, With the weariness for me. Then I saw, as night grew darker. Holding its small hands together, And I felt her sorrow, weighing Pitying her blighted spring-time, With the rough, harsh toil of years) Woke me from my dream, to tears; Leagues from home.html">home, across the deep; So I sobbed myself to sleep. Well, the years sped on--my Sorrow, Was my shield against all suffering, Thus my cruel master's harshness Yet the tale of what we suffered Of a self-devoted band, Pining in a foreign land. Year by year go forth from Rome, To restore some exiles home. I was freed: they broke the tidings hour.html">Hour by hour sped on, I knew not Better so, perhaps; while sorrow Only strains the sad heart's fibres - And my heart beat full and fast; .

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