Now the iron is heated, gleaming red, flashing white.
In thine eyeballs they plunge it, the scorching steel.
Thy flesh smokes and hisses, thy senses reel.
God’s daylight has vanished in infinite night.
[Zedekiah screams, and claps his hands to his eyes as if blinded]
But ere thy sight, in a fiery mist
Of blood and tears, is forever gone,
Thy sons, by the sharp sword fiercely kissed,
Shall be slain in thy presence, one by one,
As the headsman’s blade flashes through flesh and through bone.