Pull tight across your face,
The ebony hood of death.
Pulled tight with a rope of lace,
Prepared for the final breath.
Creaking hinges of the jagged casket,
Slam the spikes into his chest.
The sullen corpse is the mascot,
Prepared for the lifeless quest.

Mounted on the gallows, a knot so fine,
Pull the lever, push the man.
Prepared to begin the swift decline
His neck snaps taut, quick as he can.
Dangling now from the tightened noose,
He clings to life with his last thought.
And as the vicar cuts him loose,
His life shall have been for nought.

Tortured now, tied to the stake,
Kindling all around his feet,
His many crimes that were then spake,
Until his body became heat.
As it burns, the wood burns fair.
Which shall kill first, smoke or fire?
Choking on the blackened air,
Or burnt to death on the pyre?

The swiftest way to punish them,
Lies not in wood, or rope, or spikes
The blade that tears head from stem,
And end the life of that it strikes.
And as the head falls on the grounds,
And the body falls limp behind.
He will be quartered and fed to the hounds,
His head will be lost in kind.

Penned by my hand on the 11th of Glacian, in the year 535 AF.