That buzzard-beaked, hawk-taloned octopus
Who played with pale poltroonery of men,
And drank the cup of flattery till he reeled;
Hell’s pope uncrowned, immortal for a day. 
Tinville, relentless dog of murder-plot—­
Doom-judge whose trembling victims were foredoomed;
Maillard who sucked his milk from Murder’s dugs,
Twin-whelp to Theroigne, captain of the hags;
Jourdan, red-grizzled mule-son blotched with blood,
Headsman forever “famous-infamous;”
Keen, hag-whelped journalist Camille Desmoulins,
Who with a hundred other of his ilk
Hissed on the hounds and smeared his bread with blood;
Lebon, man-fiend, that vampire-ghoul who drank
Hot blood of headless victims, and compelled
Mothers to view the murder of their babes;
At whose red guillotine, in Arras raised,
The pipe and fiddle played at every fall
Of ghastly head the ribald “Ca Ira;”
And fiends unnamed and nameless brutes untaled.

Petticoat-patriots sans bas, and Sans-culottes,
Rampant in rags and hunger-toothed uproar
Paris the proud.  With Jacobin clubs they club
The head of France till all her brains are out. 
Hired murder hunts in packs.  Men murder-mad
Slay for the love of murder.  Gloomy night,
Hiding her stars lest they in pity fall,
Beholds a thousand guiltless, trembling souls—­
Men, women, children—­forth from prisons flung
In flare of torch and glare of demon eyes,
Among the howling wolves and lazar-hags,
Crying for mercy where no mercy is,
Hewed down in heaps by bloody ax and pike. 
From their grim battlements the imps of hell
Indignant hissed and damped their fires with tears;
And Manhood from the watch-towers of the world
Cried in the name of Human Nature—­“Hold!”
As well the drifting snail might strive to still
The volcan-heaved, storm-struck, moon-maddened sea. 
Blood-frenzied beasts demand their feast of blood.
"Liberty—­Equality—­Fraternity!"—­the cry
Of blood-hounds baying on the track of babes. 
Queen innocent beheaded—­mother-queen! 
And queenly Roland—­Nature’s queenly queen! 
Aye, at the foot of bloody guillotine
She stood a heroine:  before her loomed
The Goddess of Liberty—­in statue-stone. 
Queen Roland saw, and spake the words that ring
Along the centuries—­"O Liberty! 
What crimes are committed in thy name!"—­and died. 
And when the headsman raised her severed head
To hell-dogs shouting "Vive la Liberte,"
Godlike disdain still sparkled in her eyes. 
Grim Hell herself in pity stood aghast,
Clanged shut her doors and stopped her ears with pitch.