The fiery furnace has no horrors for me.

Mine is a race of martyrs. I can trace

Ancestors by the score who laid their heads

Upon the axman's block. It is a little way

We have. Why should I care to flaunt

My feathered beauty on a bare November bough?

I shall appear again in a far richer dressing.

In years to come it will be said of me,

As of my ancestors, that nothing in my life

Shed so much glory as the leaving of it.

Full many a little child that now

Is prattling at its grandma's knee shall say

In future years that of all days it holds

In the most sacred memory the one

When it officiated at

The funeral of this Turk. And now

Lest some one shall say I knew not how to die,

Let the ax fall.