Classic Poem

D ETCHAIEFF is dead, your Majesty.
You knew him not. He was a common hind,
Who lived ten years in hell, and then he died —
To seek another hell, as we must think,
Since he was rebel to your Majesty.

Ten years! The time is long, if only spent
In gilded courts and palaces like thine
E'en courtiers, courtesans, and gilded moths
That flutter round a throne find weary hours
And days of ennui . But Netchaieff
Counted the minutes through ten dragging years
Of pain. His soul was God's; his body man's,
To chain and maim and kill: and he is dead.
Yet something left he that you cannot kill, —
The story of his hell, writ in his blood:
Plebeian blood, base, ruddy, yet in hue
And substance just such blood as once we saw
Baptizing the Ekatrinofsky road:
And that blood was your sainted sire's, the same
That fills your veins, and would your face suffuse
Did ever tyrant know the way to blush.

The tale? But to what end repeat
A thrice-told tale? Netchaieff is dead.
Ten thousand others live. Go view their lives:
See the wan captive in his narrow cell;
Mark the shrunk frame and shoulders bowed and bent,
The thin hand trembling, shading blinded eyes
From unaccustomed light; the fettered limbs,
The shuffling tread, and furtive look and start.
Bid the dank walls give up the treasured groans
The proud lips still withheld from mortal ear;
Ask of the slimy stones what they have seen,
And shrank to see, polluted with the blood
Of martyred innocence, — youth linked to age,
And both to death; the matron and the maid
Prey to the slaver's lust and driver's whip;
All gladly welcoming the silent cell
And vermin's company, less vile than man's.

See these and these in twice a score of hells,
And faintly guess what horrors lie behind
That you can never see; and you shall guess
Why we rejoice that Netchaieff is dead:
Kings cannot harm the dead.