312 LYALL
Massacre, torture, and black despair; Reading it all in my easy-chair.
Passionate prayer for a minute's life;
Tortured crying for death as rest; Husband pleading for child or wife,
Pitiless stroke upon tender breast. Was it all real as that I lay there Lazily stretched on my easy-chair?
Could I believe in those hard old times,
Here in this safe luxurious age ? Were the horrors invented to season rhymes,
Or truly is man so fierce in his rage ? What could I suffer, and what could I dare ? I who was bred to that easy-chair.
They were my fathers, the men of yore, Little they recked of a cruel death;
They would dip their hands in a heretic's gore, They stood and burnt for a rule of faith.
What would I burn for, and whom not spare ?
I, who had faith in an easy-chair.
Now do I see old tales are true, Here in the clutch of a savage foe;
Now shall I know what my fathers knew, Bodily anguish and bitter woe,
Naked and bound in the strong sun's glare,
Far from my civilised easy-chair.
Now have I tasted and understood That old-world feeling of mortal hate;
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