The Patriot: An Old Story

6The air broke into a mist with bells,

7 The old walls rocked with the crowd and cries.

8Had I said, "Good folk, mere noise repels —

9 But give me your sun from yonder skies!"

10They had answered "And afterward, what else?"

11Alack, it was I who leaped at the sun

12 To give it my loving friends to keep!

13Naught man could do, have I left undone:

14 And you see my harvest, what I reap

15This very day, now a year is run.

16There's nobody on the house-tops now —

17 Just a palsied few at the windows set;

18For the best of the sight is, all allow,

19 At the Shambles' Gate — or, better yet,

20By the very scaffold's foot, I trow.

21I go in the rain, and, more than needs,

22 A rope cuts both my wrists behind;

23And I think, by the feel, my forehead bleeds,

24 For they fling, whoever has a mind,

25Stones at me for my year's misdeeds.

26Thus I entered, and thus I go!

27 In triumphs, people have dropped down dead,

28"Paid by the world, what dost thou owe

29 Me? " — God might question; now instead,

30'Tis God shall repay: I am safer so.