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 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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