Richard Chenevix Trench

Sonnet to Silvio Pellico, on Reading the Account of His Imprisonment

Ah! who may guess, who yet was never tried
How fearful the temptation to reply
With wrong for wrong, yea fiercely to defy
In spirit, even when action is denied?
Therefore praise waits on thee, not drawn aside
By this strong lure of hell--on thee whose eye
Being formed by love, could every where descry
Love, or some workings unto love allied--
And benediction on the grace that dealt
So with thy soul--and prayer, more earnest prayer,
Intenser longing than before we felt
For all that in dark places lying are,
For captives in strange lands, for them who pine
In depth of dungeon, or in sunless mine.