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Each comes in state with his train—hangman, priest,
tax-gatherer,
Soldier, lawyer, lords, jailers, and sycophants.

5.Yet behind all, hovering, stealing—lo, a Shape,
Vague as the night, draped interminably, head front
and form, in scarlet folds.
Whose face and eyes none may see,
Out of its robes only this—the red robes, lifted by
the arm,
One finger crook'd, pointed high over the top, like
the head of a snake appears.

6.Meanwhile, corpses lie in new-made graves—bloody
corpses of young men;
The rope of the gibbet hangs heavily, the bullets of
princes are flying, the creatures of power laugh
aloud,
And all these things bear fruits—and they are good.

7.Those corpses of young men,
Those martyrs that hang from the gibbets—those
hearts pierced by the gray lead,
Cold and motionless as they seem, live elsewhere with
unslaughter'd vitality.

8.They live in other young men, O kings!
They live in brothers, again ready to defy you!
They were purified by death—they were taught and
exalted.

9.Not a grave of the murdered for freedom, but grows
seed for freedom, in its turn to bear seed,
Which the winds carry afar and re-sow, and the rains
and the snows nourish.