You bloody, craven bastards, I regret
that I share with you some ancestral roots:
King George's thugs in red coats and jackboots,
who murdered---but I say, lynched---Nathan Hale;
nor say now, "It was wartime . . . battle . . . strife."
You should not be forgiven, nor forget,
but writhe and thrash, screaming, and flinch and flail
in LakeFire's deepest pit and fiercest flames
(that burn hotter than any blacksmith's forge,
to scorch the strutting servants of King George).
You have known for some time that your cursed names
are blotted from the crowned Lamb's Book of Life,
and left, eternally, to your damnation
without hope of reprieve or of Salvation.
Starward
[*/+/^]
Author's Notes/Comments:
The murderers of Nathan Hale were as worthless, reprobate, and repulsive as "bonny prince Charlie," now the king of a third-rate nation. (And yet, in our country, we accord his younger son and daughter-in-law with celebrity status; what the hell did we fight the Revolution for, but to separate ourselves from that family, and now here they are still with us). With the exception of Edward VI, and his successor, Jane, no worthy monarch as occcupied the British throne since the upstart usurper, Henry Tudor, murdered the rightful King, Richard III, on Bosworth Field.
Nathan Hale---barely out of adolescence, barely out of college---was lynched. Nothing we can do about that, or to his murderers, in this life. But a Justice does exist, and it operates from Eternity for Eternity. I truly hope his murderers have learned that---the hard way, the painful way, with agonies unceasing.
And please do not lecture me about the Christian Faith, or my admittedly flawed practice of it. This poem stands on the precedent of the great Christian Poet, Dante, and the first Canticle---"Inferno"---of his epic poem, The Divine Comedy.
