Explore "The Punished" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Not they who know the awful gibbet's anguish, / Not they who, while sad years go by them, in / The sunless cells of lonely prisons languish, / Do suffer fullest penalty for sin.
'Tis they who walk the highways unsuspected, / Yet with grim fear for ever at their side, / Who hug the corpse of some sin undetected, / A corpse no grave or coffin-lid can hide-
'Tis they who are in their own chambers haunted / By thoughts that like unbidden guests intrude, / And sit down, uninvited and unwanted, / And make a nightmare of the solitude.