I'LL kick your walls to bits,
I'll die scratching a tunnel, If you'll give me a wall, if you'll give me a simple stone, If you'll do me the honour of a dungeon— Anything but this tyranny of sinews. Lashed with a hundred ropes of nerve and bone I lie, poor helpless Gulliver, In a twopenny dock for the want of a penny, Tied up with stuff too cheap, and strings too many. One chain is usually sufficient for a cur. Hair over hair,
I pick my cables loose, But still the ridiculous manacles confine me. I snap them, swollen with sobbing.
What's the use? One hair I break, ten thousand hairs entwine me. Love, hunger, drunkenness, neuralgia, debt, Cold weather, hot weather, sleep and age— If I could only unloose their spongy fingers, I'd have a chance yet, slip through the cage. But who ever heard of a cage of hairs? You can't scrape tunnels in a net. If you'd give me a chain, if you'd give me honest iron, If you'd graciously give me a turnkey, I could break my teeth on a chain,
I could bite through metal, But what can you do with hairs? For God's sake, call the hangman.
