VI.


They have doffed her clothes till all but stark;
They have tied her with ropes in her cutty sark;
They have torn the snood from her silvery hair,
And her locks they fall on her shoulders bare,
Or stream in the cold and piercing breeze
Blowing muggy and moist from the eastern seas.
Hush! silence is over all that crowd,
Then an echoing shout both long and loud;
The fagots flare up with a lurid glare--
In the middle shines bright that white figure there,
Like those sad spirits of endless woe
'Midst eternal fires in the shades below!
There lances and glances each long-pronged fork,[A]
As through the wild flames it is quick at work,
Till the red blood squirts and seethes and sings,
As through the red flame each squirtlet springs,
The flames lap round her like forkèd levin;
The priests send up their prayers to heaven;
But what these prayers are to do when there,
It is likely they could not themselves declare
Yet all this while, in her agony,
She made no murmur, she uttered no cry,
As if she would show by a silent ban
Her scorn of the great wise creature Man.