Only you’d have me speak. 
                          Whether to speak
Or whether to be silent is all one;
Whether to sleep and in my dreaming front
Her small scared face forlorn; whether to wake
And muse upon her small soft feet that paced
The hated, hard, inhospitable stone—­
I say all’s one.  But you would have me speak,
And change one sorrow for the other.  Ay,
Right reverend father, comfortable father,
Old, long in thrall, and wearied of the cell,
So will I here—­here staring through the grate,
Whence, sheer beneath us lying the little town,
Her street appears a riband up the rise;
Where ’t is right steep for carts, behold two ruts
Worn in the flat, smooth, stone. 
                               That side I stood;
My head was down.  At first I did but see
Her coming feet; they gleamed through my hot tears
As she walked barefoot up yon short steep hill. 
Then I dared all, gazed on her face, the maid
Martyr and utterly, utterly broke my heart.

Her face, O! it was wonderful to me,
There was not in it what I look’d for—­no,
I never saw a maid go to her death,
How should I dream that face and the dumb soul?

Her arms and head were bare, seemly she walked
All in her smock so modest as she might;
Upon her shoulders hung a painted cape
For horrible adornment, flames of fire
Portrayed upon it, and mocking demon heads.

Her eyes—­she did not see me—­opened wide,
Blue-black, gazed right before her, yet they marked
Nothing; and her two hands uplift as praying,
She yet prayed not, wept not, sighed not.  O father,
She was past that, soft, tender, hunted thing;
But, as it seemed, confused from time to time,
She would half-turn her or to left or right
To follow other streets, doubting her way.

Then their base pikes they basely thrust at her,
And, like one dazed, obedient to her guides
She came; I knew not if ’t was present to her
That death was her near goal; she was so lost,
And set apart from any power to think. 
But her mouth pouted as one brooding, father,
Over a lifetime of forlorn fear.  No,
Scarce was it fear; so looks a timid child
(Not more affrighted; ah! but not so pale)
That has been scolded or has lost its way.

Mother and father—­father and mother kind,
She was alone, where were you hidden?  Alone,
And I that loved her more, or feared death less,
Rushed to her side, but quickly was flung back,
And cast behind o’ the pikemen following her
Into a yelling and a cursing crowd. 
That bristled thick with monks and hooded friars;
Moreover, women with their cheeks ablaze,
Who swarmed after up the narrowing street.