Written from jail in 1888, these still-forceful lines register the multiple losses suffered inside the ‘convent without God’
Sonnets III and V from In Vinculis
III.
Honoured I lived erewhile with honoured men
In opulent state. My table nightly spread
Found guests of worth, peer, priest and citizen,
And poet crowned, and beauty garlanded.
Nor these alone, for hunger too I fed.
And many a lean tramp and sad Magdalen
Passed from my doors less hard for sake of bread.
Whom grudged I ever purse or hand or pen ?
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