Shall I be prisoner till my pulses stop

Shall I be prisoner till my pulses stop
To hateful Love and drag his noisy chain,
And bait my need with sugared crusts that drop
From jeweled fingers neither kind nor clean?—
Mewed in an airless cavern where a toad
Would grieve to snap his gnat and lay him down,
While in the light along the rattling road
Men shout and chaff and drive their wares to town? . . .
Perfidious Prince, that keep me here confined,
Doubt not I know the letters of my doom:
How many a man has left his blood behind
To buy his exit from this mournful room
These evil stains record, these walls that rise
Carved with his torment, steamy with his sighs.