He faced them in his fearless scorn
(The sun was on him as he stood):
"No purer is her babe unborn;
I prove her sinless with my blood."
They spared the babe beneath my breast,—
They bound his hands,—they set me free,—
Hush, hush, my babe! hush, hush and rest;
He died for thee!—he died for me!
They dragged him, bound, to Gallows Hill
(I saw the flowers among the grass);
The women came,—I hear them still,—
They held their babes to see him pass.
God curse them!—Nay,—Oh God forgive!
He said it while their lips reviled;
He kissed my lips,—he whispered: "Live!
The father loves thee in the child."
Then earth and sky grew black,—I fell—
I lay as stone beside their stone.
They did their work. They earned their Hell.
I woke on Gallows Hill, alone.
Oh Christ who suffered, Christ who blessed,
Shield him upon the gallows tree!
O babe, his babe, beneath my breast,
He died for thee!—he died for me!
Ednah Proctor Clarke.
The case of Giles Corey is one of the most tragic in all this hideous drama. When arrested and brought before the court, he refused to plead—"stood mute," as the law termed it. The penalty for "standing mute," according to the English law of the time, was that the prisoner "be remanded to prison ... and there be laid on his back on the bare floor...; that there be placed upon his body as great a weight of iron as he can bear, and more," until death should ensue. This was the penalty Giles Corey suffered.
THE TRIAL