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Title: Sacrificial: The Execution Of Two Greek Sailors At Swansea
Author: J. C. Manning [
More Titles by Manning]
WRITTEN AFTER WITNESSING THE EXECUTION OF TWO
GREEK SAILORS AT SWANSEA, MARCH, 1859.
The morning broke fair, with a florid light,
And the lark fluttered upward in musical flight,
As the sun stept over the distant height
In mantle purple and golden.
The blue bounding billows in waltzing play
Lookt up in the face of the coming day,
And sang, as they danced o'er the sandy bay,
Their sea-songs mystic and olden.
High up, on the gable of yonder jail,
The workmen are plying with hammer and nail,
And the slow-rising framework hinteth a tale
Of mournful and sombre seeming.
'Tis the gibbet that rears its brow on high,
And the morn-breezes pass it with many a sigh,
As it stands gazing up to the fair blue sky
Like a spectre dumbly dreaming.
Through lane and alley: through alley and street
The echoes are startled by hurrying feet;
And thousands, in action fitful and fleet,
Press on to the execution.
The squalid-faced mother her baby bears;
And the father his boy on his shoulder rears:
The frail and the sinning emerge in pairs
From darkness and destitution.
Aloft on the gibbet two beings stand,
Whose foreheads are smirched with the murder-brand,
Whose lives, by the lawgivers bungling and bland,
Declared are to justice forfeit.
Below, like a statue stark and still,
A legion of faces, in brutish will,
Gaze up to the gallows with many a thrill,
And thirst for the coming surfeit.
But one more look at the silvery sea:
One thought of the lark in its musical glee;
One breath of the sweet breeze, balmy and free;
One prayer from two hearts that falter;
And Lo! in reply to a mortal's nod,
From the gibbet-tree dangle two pieces of clod,
Their souls standing face-to-face with their God,
Each wearing a hangman's halter.
Ah! shrink from the murderer; quaint, wise world
Yea: shudder at sight of him; sanctified world!
Go: plume him up deftly; clever old world!
Till he shines like a gilded excrescence:
Then strangle him dog-like--a civilised plan!
Quick! trample his life out: he's not of the clan:
He stinks in the nostrils of saintly man,
Though fit for the Infinite's presence!
[The end]
J. C. Manning's poem: Sacrificial: The Execution Of Two Greek Sailors At Swansea
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