Explore "Santa Agueda" by Voltairine De Cleyre on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
(Where the torturer Canovas breathed his last.)
Santa Agueda, thou that wast accursed / With presence of a demon dressed in Man, / Blessed art thou, for on thy stones there ran / The vampire blood from bitter torture nursed; / Along thy streets there flashed the lightning-burst, / "Delivered! " flaming on from eye to eye, / Though lips said "killed," and all thy gateways hearsed / In lying black, made mourning mockery.
Blessed art thou! From thee went forth the cry, / "Vengeance yet loves, Renunciation hates, / And justice smites: the torturer shall die;"
Across his path the steel-nerved slayer waits / "And both shall burn together," -- one in light / Of unconsuming hell and reddened night; / And one with feet on hell and brow dawn-rayed, pure white.
Philadelphia, August, 1898.