List not ye with tender feeling,
But your heart control
And invoke a Pater Noster
For his pitiable soul.
Brutally, to a wild mare’s tail
They tied him by his feet,
And dragged him over cobblestones
And mire, through the street.
And in his wake the journalist—
Oh, may the fates forfend—
Was inhumanely fastened
To a stallion’s rear end!
Thus the Tsar’s cruel satraps
Who held the hangman’s role,
With the unfortunate creatures
Wiped every muddy hole.
Coming to the river’s bank
Badly cut and torn,
There, like kittens, they were drowned,—
Blind, helpless, newly born.
Thus they perished, unconfessed,
Sadly disappointed,
Save that on their final trip
They were with mud anointed.
I, myself, did not attend
This affair—I quote
That which Nestor, for his kin,
In his “Memoirs” wrote.—
[40]
