Now I breathe the word of the prudence that walks abreast with time,
    space, reality,
That answers the pride which refuses every lesson but its own.

What is prudence is indivisible,
Declines to separate one part of life from every part,
Divides not the righteous from the unrighteous or the living from the dead,
Matches every thought or act by its correlative,
Knows no possible forgiveness or deputed atonement,
Knows that the young man who composedly peril’d his life and lost it
    has done exceedingly well for himself without doubt,
That he who never peril’d his life, but retains it to old age in
    riches and ease, has probably achiev’d nothing for himself worth
    mentioning,
Knows that only that person has really learn’d who has learn’d to
    prefer results,
Who favors body and soul the same,
Who perceives the indirect assuredly following the direct,
Who in his spirit in any emergency whatever neither hurries nor
    avoids death.

} The Singer in the Prison

        O sight of pity, shame and dole! 
        O fearful thought—­a convict soul.

     1
Rang the refrain along the hall, the prison,
Rose to the roof, the vaults of heaven above,
Pouring in floods of melody in tones so pensive sweet and strong the
    like whereof was never heard,
Reaching the far-off sentry and the armed guards, who ceas’d their pacing, Making the hearer’s pulses stop for ecstasy and awe.

2 The sun was low in the west one winter day, When down a narrow aisle amid the thieves and outlaws of the land, (There by the hundreds seated, sear-faced murderers, wily counterfeiters, Gather’d to Sunday church in prison walls, the keepers round, Plenteous, well-armed, watching with vigilant eyes,) Calmly a lady walk’d holding a little innocent child by either hand, Whom seating on their stools beside her on the platform, She, first preluding with the instrument a low and musical prelude, In voice surpassing all, sang forth a quaint old hymn.

     A soul confined by bars and bands,
     Cries, help!  O help! and wrings her hands,
     Blinded her eyes, bleeding her breast,
     Nor pardon finds, nor balm of rest.

     Ceaseless she paces to and fro,
     O heart-sick days!  O nights of woe! 
     Nor hand of friend, nor loving face,
     Nor favor comes, nor word of grace.

     It was not I that sinn’d the sin,
     The ruthless body dragg’d me in;
     Though long I strove courageously,
     The body was too much for me.

     Dear prison’d soul bear up a space,
     For soon or late the certain grace;
     To set thee free and bear thee home,
     The heavenly pardoner death shall come.

        Convict no more, nor shame, nor dole! 
        Depart—­a God-enfranchis’d soul!