“Oh God! from this hell grant us—emancipation,
Or else, in thy mercy, give annihilation!”
But hell bellowed back, “everlasting damnation!”
But, most frightful of all!—tiger-like and inhuman,
I hear the fierce howls of three men and one woman,
Whose necks, hung in halters right over the flood,
Are stretched by a wretch all bedabbled with blood!
All five call on “Lincoln” for mercy; when lo!
They are plunged, in a twinkling, to regions below;
Where long in the torrent they struggling remain,