Classic Poem

Will this be true? Oh, it sounds like true!
Is Jeffreys dead at last?
They say that the breath he drew for death
Went out like a furnace blast.

They say he cried so horribly,
That no one durst come nigh;
But only a bat and an old grey rat
Sat up to see him die.

They came at morn and found him dead,
Alone on his truss of straw:
And the hair stood up on the corpse's head
At that which the dead eyes saw.

So horribly the dead eyes stared; —
That last sight had so frozen them, —
That not a man or woman dared
Reach out a hand to close on them.

And the body, so twisted and torn about
By all the fear and hate in him, —
When the women came to lay him out
They couldn't ever straighten him.

For out of the earth, like a great black mole,
The Devil had come from Hell for him;
And when the sexton went to toll,
The church-bell wouldn't knell for him.

So ill a death he had to die,
It surely had been kept for him:
And blind, indeed, had been the eye,
Had anybody wept for him!

Down in the ground where he now lies
The long safe grass shall cover him;
And every bird in air that flies
Shall pass with a wide wing over him.

Judge Jeffreys, Judge Jeffreys,
So now you're dead and done!
And freely again falls down the rain,
And easily shines the sun.