Good unto thy divine
providence, upon those heads which are aching for them!
THE CAPTIVE. PARIS.
The bird in his cage pursued me into my room; I sat down close to
my table, and leaning my head upon my hand, I began to figure to
myself the miseries of confinement. I was in a right frame for it,
and so I gave full scope to my imagination.
I was going to begin with the millions of my fellow-creatures born
to no inheritance but slavery: but finding, however affecting the
picture was, that I could not bring it near me, and that the
multitude of sad groups in it did but distract me. -
- I took a single captive, and having first shut him up in his
dungeon, I then look'd through the twilight of his grated door to
take his picture.
I beheld his body half-wasted away with long expectation and
confinement, and felt what kind of sickness of the heart it was
which arises from hope deferr'd. Upon looking nearer I saw him
pale and feverish: in thirty years the western breeze had not once
fann'd his blood; - he had seen no sun, no moon, in all that time -
nor had the voice of friend or kinsman breathed through his
lattice.
