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Home  »  The Book of the Sonnet  »  Richard Chenevix Trench (1807–1886)

Hunt and Lee, comps. The Book of the Sonnet. 1867.

III. To Silvio Pellico

Richard Chenevix Trench (1807–1886)

(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 where 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 everywhere 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.